The Dukes (35 page)
Today, the Russell connection with Bloomsbury is commemorated in over seventy street names which bear their family names, titles or houses. There is a Bedford Square, a Bedford Avenue, a Bedford Place, a Bedford Way, a Bedford Row, a Bedford Street and a Bedford Passage. In Streatham there is a Bedford Park. There is
Woburn Place and Woburn Walk, and again in Streatham, Woburn Road. There is Russell Square, and Great Russell Street, Chenies Street (named after the Buckinghamshire property), Tavistock Square, and Endsleigh Place and Endsleigh Street, named after the house on the Tavistock estate in Devon. Byng Place and Gordon Square are named after the two duchesses of John, 6th Duke of Bedford - the Hon. Georgiana Byng and Lady Georgiana Gordon - while Torrington Street recalls Georgiana's father, Viscount Torrington. Gower Street is an echo of an even earlier duchess, the Hon. Gertrude Leveson Gower, who married the 4th Duke. Even Eversholt Street is a Bedford name. The 2nd Duke, Wriothesley, bought the property of Eversholt in Bedfordshire, and this name was given to the street which linked the Bloomsbury estate with more Bedford lands in Camden Town. The Earl of Southampton, is remembered in Southampton Row.
The course of the twentieth century has seen the gradual, then rapid erosion of this vast inheritance. Covent Garden and the Thorney Estate in Cambridgeshire were both sold before World War I. (The Thorney estate had been with the family since the dissolution of the monasteries, and had increased in value phenomenally as a result of the Russells' pioneer work in draining the Fens, and quite literally changing the map of England in consequence. The estate covered 20,000 acres. Duke Herbrand sold it to the tenants in 1909.)
The disaster which fragmented the remaining Russell properties was the death within fifteen years of the 11th and 12th Dukes. Owing largely to family squabbles, with successive dukes refusing to talk to each other, sufficient provision had not been made to protect the estate when Duke Herbrand died in 1940, leaving a liability for death duties over £3,000,000. The only way in which this could be paid was to sell chunks of the estates. The tax bill had still not been fully met when the 12th Duke died, a few weeks too early, in 1953, adding another £4,600,000 to the death duty assessment. Hence Chenies had to be sold in 1954. Endsleigh House and the 9000-acre estate in Devon went little by little, finally disappearing in 1962; the Blooms- bury estate has been nibbled at, the most recent sale being thirteen houses in Bedford Square in 1970. Only Woburn Abbey and the surrounding park remain intact.
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Even Woburn no longer
belongs
to the Duke of Bedford. The owners are the Bedford Estates, whose trustees have absolute discretion over what should be done with it and who should live there. Under the terms of the trusteeship, the Duke could have been tenant at Woburn for life, but his father and grandfather conspired to prevent that. The trustees wanted to give the house and park to the National Trust, but they met with such fierce opposition from the Duke that they allowed themselves to be persuaded by him to give him a limited tenancy while he would rescue Woburn from neglect, and take steps to see that it paid for itself. This is what he has done, with conspicuous success. (The tenancy was later extended to life, but the Duke chose to hand over Woburn to his son.) But it is important to remember that the opening of Woburn Abbey to paying visitors has contributed in no way to the settlement of death duties, nor was it ever intended to. The death duties were far too huge to be settled in any other way but by selling property. The Duke's entrance fee to Woburn goes towards keeping the house running, with its twenty-two sitting-rooms and twelve dining-rooms, its miles of corridors, maintenance and re- decoration, insurance, heating. It enables him to protect a home which would otherwise quickly succumb to old age, and towards which he feels a remarkably fierce territorial urge (this in spite of his not seeing Woburn until he was sixteen years old, at which point he learnt for the first time that he was related to the Duke of Bedford and would one day inherit that title himself). The Duke has a limited income from the estate, as do his son and grandson, but neither he nor they have any personal property on the Russell estates whatever. The famous Canalettos in the dining-room, worth an incalculable sum, do not belong to him.
The Duke has himself told the story of how he and his second wife set about clearing the junk which had accumulated while his father had been Duke, themselves cleaning, scrubbing, polishing, and arranging the rooms at Woburn so that they might be worth visiting. They went on to make it the most popular ducal residence in England, with an average of nearly 1,600,000 visitors a year, many on second or third visits. The name of Woburn is now known all over the world, the Duke's face recognised more readily than that of many a politician. So successful has he been in attracting tourists to Woburn that the Israeli government is said to have sought his advice on how to increase their tourist trade.
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There was no end to the tricks and inventions he would entertain in order to lure more people to the park. He accepted paying guests, mostly American tourists, who paid large sums for the privilege of dining with a duke and duchess, and he professed to enjoy meeting them. If a farmhouse was derelict and needed to be demolished, he would advertise the fact, and charge a fee for watching the farmhouse go up in flames.
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He was once on a visit to Blenheim Palace, residence of the Duke of Marlborough when he was recognised and his autograph was sought. He wrote astutely in the Blenheim guide-book that he hoped to see the tourists at Woburn.
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More cleverly still, he exploited English snobbery by admitting visitors to Woburn by cheque, made payable to "His Grace the Duke of Bedford".
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He frankly admits that he enjoys being a duke, and he quite clearly derives much pleasure from meeting a great variety of people.
None of this would be quite so remarkable were it not that Ian, 13th Duke of Bedford, is a Russell. He is deeply sensitive, naturally shy, preferably solitary. Although his third marriage, to Nicole, has been very happy, he must inevitably retain that essential Russell reserve. He has. fought against the additional disadvantage of an eccentric upbringing, with tutors, nannies, nurses, maids, but never a relation, and a self-righteous father who, it must be admitted, treated him with malice. He has striven hard to save Woburn, and has found in the process an exhibitionist trait which must have lain dormant within the tight breasts of generations of Russells. "Having been brought up with servants, I have a servant's mind," he says. It is an enthusiastic success story, rare in the British aristocracy.
Bedford is unique among dukes for all these reasons and more. He is a charming and gentle man, with a quiet sense of humour and a gift for making easy conversation. He is also no fool. Disinherited by his father and grandfather, with a miserable allowance of £98 a year to live on, the young Lord Howland had to learn the value of endeavour. The family disapproved of his proposed first marriage (he now speaks himself of marriage as a "perilous enterprise", and tried to dissuade his son, Lord Tavistock, from marrying Henrietta Tiarks), so he supplemented his income by working as a reporter. With his second wife he emigrated to South Africa, where he learnt farming, and grew apricots. It was there that he was tcld he had become Duke of Bedford in 1953. He sometimes regrets the peace and simplicity of those years.
In 1974 he decided to leave Woburn for good, not because he does not still love the place, but because he wanted his son, Lord Tavistock, to take over while he was young enough to develop an interest. The Duke and Duchess are now nomadic, addressing conventions, appearing on television the world over, turning up in Portugal, Switzerland, Rome, Paris; they are "of no fixed abode". Lord Tavistock is by profession a stockbroker, with a quite different style from his father. The indications are that he resembles some of his less flamboyant ancestors. He would have preferred to remain in the City, where he was happy and relaxed, and where he had made his own way. He does not find it easy to adapt to-the role of a public curiosity to be gazed upon and to have his hand shaken by strangers, but he recognises that personal appearances are part of the job, and he has turned Woburn into a thriving business enterprise. His wife is the former Henrietta Tiarks, and they have three sons, of whom the youngest is the first Russell to be born at Woburn for 100 years.
references
1.
Georgiana Blakiston,
Lord William Russell and His Wife,
p.
485.
2.
Greville, V. 459.
3.
Duke of Bedford,
Silver-Plated Spoon,
73.
4.
Blakiston, 28.
5.
Buckle,
Life of Disraeli,
Vol. VI, p. 189.
6.
Blakiston, 25
7.
Greville, IV, 152 n.
8.
Buckle, IV, 421.
9.
Greville, VI, 51.
10.
Bedford, 113
11.
Bedford, 17.
12.
The Times,
12th October 1953.
13.
Bedford, 44.
14.
The Times,
21st October 1941.
15.
The Times,
19th January 1944.
16.
The Times,
26th January 1944.
17.
The Times,
16th October 1953.
18.
Blakiston, 424.
19.
The Times,
14th November 1935.
20.
Bedford, 140.
21.
Blakiston, 82.
22.
The Times,
15th January 1891.
23.
Bedford, 191.
24.
Bedford, 212.
25.
The Times,
3rd September 1945.
26.
Duke of Bedford,
The Flying Duchess,
p. 59.
27.
The Observer,
15th May 1966.
28.
Flying Duchess,
66.
29.
ibid.,
155.
30.
ibid.,
143.
31.
The Times,
29th June 1937.
32.
The Flying Duchess,
92.
33.
Blakiston, 32, 55, 66, 78,526, 539.
34.
The Flying Duchess,
63.
35.
12th Duke of Bedford,
The Years of Transition.
36.
Greville, IV, 261.
37.
J. H. Wiffen,
Memoirs of the House of Russell,
Vol. II, p. 271.
38.
John Evelyn's Diary, entry for 1683.
39.
Chatsworth Collections, 27.4.
40.
Wiffen, I, 17.
41.
Greville, IV, 90.
42.
Collins
Peerage,
I, 285.
43.
Walpole, XVIII, 124.
44.
Great Governing Families in England,
II, 48.
45.
Walpole, XXIII, 274; Blakiston, 433.
46.
Walpole, ed. Cunningham, II, 22, 148, 191.
47.
Walpole, XIX, 160.
48.
Walpole, XX, 203.
49.
Greville, V, 347.
50.
Bateman's
Great Landowners.
51.
Blakiston, 442.
52.
Collections and Recollections of One who has Kept a Diary,
p. 107.
53.
Walpole, XX, 281.
54.
Greville, I, 86; V, 39; IV, 417.
55.
Blakiston, 108.
56.
Duke of Bedford,
A Book of Snobs,
p.31.
57.
Bedford, 8.
58.
The Guardian,
16th June 1971.