The Dukes (42 page)

The second key witness was Miss Robinson, who had been a "friend and typist" to the Duke, alias Druce, and was privy to the secret of the double identity. She had recorded the whole story, day by day, in her diary. Unfortunately, a few months before the trial, when the news of her diary and the definitive proof it contained had reached the newspapers, a man had snatched her handbag in the street, and stolen the diary. Since her arrival from New Zealand she had already been robbed five times, and had lost in this way some private letters from the Duke. It was strongly implied that someone was frightened enough to go to great lengths to destroy the evidence. But she had made a copy of the diary before the theft, and that was what she proposed to use in court. It later came out, and taused a sensation, that the Duke of Portland and his agents had indeed employed private investigators to track down information, and that these sleuths had on occasion exceeded their instructions. This was tantamount to an admission that Miss Robinson's diary had been snatched by agents of the 6th Duke of Portland, who risked losing his title and his fortune if the case were proven in favour of G. H. Druce.

The trial was not only momentous, but hilarious. The judge's dry wit would not allow the proceedings to assume the gravity that Druce's counsel wished to impose, and hardly a day passed by without the court erupting into laughter. Many hours were spent discussing the late Duke's skin complaint, which was a bulbous nose with two warts upon it, and every attempt to get Mr Caldwell to release the secret of his treatment to the nose was a failure. He would not reveal the secret to the medical faculty. He had been paid, he said, £10,000 for the cure, which the Duke gave him in £500 notes. Why was there no trace of them in his bank? Because he had pinned them to his shirt! If the Duke had wanted to pay by cheque, Caldwell would have refused to accept it. Caldwell testified that he had visited Welbeck through a tunnel from Worksop over a mile long, but counsel success­fully pointed out that the tunnel had not been built until years after­wards, which made Caldwell's claim impossible to substantiate. There was a great deal more of Caldwell's evidence which was questionable, and his counsel, at the end of the case for the prosecution, provided a sensation by disowning him. It transpired that Caldwell had made a habit of appearing at such trials, and had lied his way through them all. He was described in court as "the most noxious perjurer that ever polluted the fountain of justice", at which florid prose more laughter ensued. He was later certified insane, and died in an asylum in 1911.
⁶¹

Miss Robinson was demolished by ridicule. Everyone knew that all her documents had been "lost" or "stolen", and the judge would not admit the "copy" of her diary as evidence. She showed the court gifts which were presented to her by the Duke
alias
Druce, and much fun was had by counsel over their safety.

-
    
Have you the brooch you spoke of the Duke giving you ?

-
    
Yes, I am wearing it, but I am not going to take it off. I have had several things stolen already
{Laughter).

-
    
Have you any objection to showing it to the magistrate ?

The witness then stood up for the magistrate, and eventually took

it off for him to see.

-
    
Did he give you a ring ?

-
    
Yes.

-
    
You will not trust my friend with the brooch ?

-
    
No
{Laughter).

-
    
Will you let Mr Avory see it ? I will be surety for him.
⁵²

The ring and the brooch were discovered to be cheap rubbish that one might find at a fairground, and Miss Robinson further admitted under cross-examination that she had been paid £250 to give her evidence. One of the biggest laughs of the trial occurred when another witness recalled having seen Miss Robinson's famous diary; she had shown it to her on the boat coming from New Zealand. Witness said that it was odd-looking, and that it looked as if it had come out of the Ark. "That would account for the watermark," ventured the judge.
⁵
'

On 30th December 1907 the coffin was eventually opened, and T. C. Druce's remains found to be in it. Thus eleven years of legal wrestling and speculation collapsed like a broken biscuit. Several of the witnesses (we have only mentioned the two principal here) were subsequently tried for perjury, and imprisoned. The 6th Duke of Portland continued to live at Welbeck, and the Druce descendants in Baker Street. The judge in his summing-up commented, "Sufficient to say that this case is an illustration of that love of the marvellous which is so deeply ingrained in human nature, and is likely to be remembered in legal annals as affording one more striking proof of the unfathomable depths of human credulity."
⁵¹

Nevertheless, one mystery remained, and was the subject of some correspondence in
The Times.
In 1864, when T. C. Druce died, he was alleged to be seventy-one years old, and such is the record on the tombstone. The Duke of Portland was then sixty-four. According to the census returns, T. C. Druce in 1861 was sixty-two years old, which would make him sixty-four or sixty-five at death, not seventy- one.

The eccentric invisible old Duke died in 1879, and was buried, according to his wish, in Kensal Green Cemetery in North London, as anonymously as possible. No fuss, no parade, no crowds. Now, the tomb is completely obliterated by shrubs which he ordered to be planted there. He is as mysterious in death as he was in life. As he died childless, the London properties of Marylebone (Harley Street, Welbeck Street, etc.) devolved upon his sisters, one of whom married the Baron Howard de Walden, whose descendant is the present owner.

The 6th Duke of Portland (1857-1943) was a cousin of his predecessor, whom he had never met. He distinguished himself in politics, in literature, and in the army. One of his books,
Men, Women and Things,
though lacking the discipline of selection, is written in a chaste pleasing style. He had a firmly sensible attitude towards the changing times; he decided to move out of Welbeck Abbey long before many of his ducal cousins had abandoned their albatrosses, and built for himself a smaller comfortable house on the estate. The subterranean palace did not appeal to him anyway. His attitude towards his tenants, kindly and charming, was however feudal in its condescension. His duchess, who had been a real beauty and who survived until 1954, once lost her way in London and had to ask a policeman where she was. When he told her, she said, "The City? I have only been here in processions."
⁵⁵

Rather better known than the Duke, and quite a different character, was his bizarre, flamboyant sister, born Ottoline Cavendish-Bentinck but always known as Lady Ottoline Morrell, the feathered centre of the Bloomsbury set.

The Duke died in 1943 and was succeeded by his son, the 7th Duke of Portland, whom the Duke of Bedford has described as "a pompous-looking man with a moustache".
⁵⁶
He sat in the House of Commons for twenty years as Lord Titchfield, and was twice a junior minister. He was a Knight of the Garter, Lord Lieutenant of Nottingham, and Chairman of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. His brother, Lord Morven Cavendish- Bentinck, was quite a well-known concert pianist.'Chopper' Portland died in 1978. His widow,
nee
Ivy Gordon- Lennox, is descended from Charles II through three different lines, by Nell Gwynn, by Louis de Keroualle, and by Barbara Villiers (see Chapter 2). The Portlands had two daughters, but no sons, which meant that the dukedom passed to a kinsman who traced his descent from the 3rd Duke. Ferdinand Cavendish-Bentinck, 8th Duke of Portland, lived in East Africa from 1925 and was Speaker of the Legislative Assembly in Kenya before Independence. When Member for Agriculture in the Legislative Council he was responsible for the establishment of the glorious game parks there.

The present Duke is his brother, William Cavendish-Bentinck, who joined the Foreign Service in 1919. After serving in various posts, he was Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee of the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office Adviser to the Directors of Plans from 1939 to 1945, and then Ambassador to Poland in the difficult years after 1945. Since 1947 he has been Director of various companies in the U.K. and abroad and is now Chairman of Bayer UK Limited, also President of the British Nuclear Forum.

By the financial arrangements which 'Chopper' Portland made he stripped the title of all assets, and specifically excluded the present Duke and his brother from all benefit; they did not receive, and can never receive, a penny from the ducal estates, nor enjoy any of the heirlooms which have passed down from their common ancestor.

As the Duke's son predeceased him, the dukedom will end with the present generation. The Portland title, however, can continue under a different rank. The 1st Duke was the son of Hans Bentinck, created Earl of Portland by his friend, William of Orange. By his second marriage, Hans Bentinck had another son, whose direct descendant is Count Henry Bentinck, a Count of the Holy Roman Empire who was wounded and taken prisoner in the Second World War. Count Henry Bentinck now lives quietly in Devon. His son is an actor. The day will come when he can claim the earldom of Portland.

references

1.
    
Complete Peerage.

2.
   
White Kennet,
Sermon at the Funeral of William Duke of

Devonshire
(1707),
p.
47.

3.
   
Walpole, XX,
66.

4.
   
John Timbs,
English Eccentrics and Eccentricities
(1866),
Vol.

I, p.
142

5.
    
Brougham,
Lives of Philosophers of the Time of George III

(1846).

6.
   
Timbs, p.
143.

7.
    
ibid.,
p. 146.

8.
   
Dorothy Stuart,
Dearest Bess,
p.
143.

9.
   
Elizabeth Jenkins,
Lady Caroline Lamb.

10.
    
Wraxall,
Posthumous Memoirs,
Vol. i, p. 9.

11.
     
Walpole, XXV, 411.

12.
    
Wraxall,
op. cit.,
p. 7.

13.
    
Jenkins,
op. cit., p.
12.

14.
    
ed. The Earl of Ilchester,
Georgiana,
p. 23.

15.
    
ibid.,
p. 97.

16.
    
W. M.
Thackeray,
The Four Georges,
p. 60.

17.
     
Georgiana,
p. 120.        18.
ibid.,
p. 189, 196.

19.
    
D.N.B.

20.
   
Dearest Bess,
pp. 32-3.       21.
ibid.,
p. 44.

22.
   
Greville, V, 308.

23.
    
Georgiana,
pp. 59,63,69, 77.

24.
   
Dearest Bess,
p. 12.

25.
    
Journal
of Elizabeth Lady Holland, Vol. I, p. 244.

26.
    
Georgiana,
p. 281.       27.
ibid.,
p. 10.

28.
   
Dearest Bess,
p. 169.

29.
   
Lady Holland to Her Son,
p. 18.

30.
   
Devonshire Collections,
Paxton Letters,
5, 19.

31.
    
E. F. Benson,
As We Were,
p. 177.       32.
ibid.,
p. 176.

33.
   
Margaret Asquith,
Autobiography,
p. 94.

34.
   
Duke of Portland,
Men, Women and Things,
p. 187.

35.
    
Anita Leslie,
Edwardians in Love,
p. 314.

36.
   
E.
F-
Benson,
op. cit.,
pp. 174, 175.