The Dukes (5 page)

Nor were the heirs told, in some cases, what lay in their future.
The present Duke of Bedford had no idea he was related to the then
Duke, let alone that he was his eventual heir, until a maid told him
when he was sixteen. (He had never been to school, and so had
escaped exposure to the teasing of friends, which would have revealed
the truth of his position.) The present Duke of Newcastle admits that
the fact he might one day be a duke was never discussed in the family
and he never gave it a thought. In contrast, when the heir has been
a distant cousin long since divorced from the main line of descent
("what we tactfully call a kinsman," says the Duke of Somerset), he
and his family seem to have thought of little else. Such was the case
with the Duke of St Albans, who had always been made conscious
that he stood a chance of inheriting the dukedom, although a
substantial genealogical detour was necessary for him to do so.

Two obsessions have united all ducal families without exception,
at least up to World War I, and in some cases beyond it - marriage
and rank, and the former was merely a way of ensuring that the latter
was maintained. Marriage dominated the conversation of duchesses
for two centuries. That the heir to a dukedom should marry went
without saying; it would be fantasy to suggest otherwise. If he didn't
care for women,
tant pis,
he must grit the stone between his teeth and
get on with it.
Whom
he should marry was the abiding question. It
ought to be the daughter of another duke, so that rank would not be
diluted, and more often than not it was. The Duchess of Baden
visited England in 1829 in order to find a husband for her daughter.
She had eyes on the Duke of Buccleuch, but hesitated because he had
only three dukedoms, which she erroneously supposed would go to
the first three sons of the marriage, while the fourth would have no
alternative but to go into the Church.
¹²
Occasionally an earl's daugh­ter would insinuate herself into this private club and become a
duchess, and even less frequently an untitled lady, or
buzz buzz,
a foreigner. The result of this vast incestuous dance, with dukes
only marrying other dukes' daughters, to whom they were probably
related in some way already, is that today all twenty-six dukes
are related to each other. Some are now distant, but a quarter of
them, even today, are close relatives, brothers-in-law, uncles, cousins
to each other.

Of course, marriages were not made for love. Such a word was
beneath their ducal consideration. When the Duke of Portland saw
Miss Dallas-Yorke waiting for a train at Worksop station, fell in love
with her on sight, and made her his duchess, he was not behaving very
ducally. But then she was suitable anyway. Another lucky couple were
the Duke and Duchess of Richmond in the eighteenth century,
married in their adolescence to satisfy parental debts; they hated each
other on sight, but re-met and fell in love two years afterwards. For
the most part, marriage was like a move in a chess game, except that
the partners were obliged, whether they liked it or not, to produce
an heir somehow. Many would have been well advised to follow the
example of John Spencer, who, presented with a list of eligible ladies
drawn up by his grandmother Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, in
alphabetical order, simply pointed to the first on the list beginning
with a C, and that was the end of the matter. Her name was
Cartaret, they were married, and it worked, in so far as such
marketing can work. As long as rank was protected, and money
was obtained in sufficient quantities to support that rank, infideli­ties after marriage were taken for granted. "What's that?"
screamed the Duchess. "A painter? What painter? Who ever heard
of such a thing? Sylvia Roehampton's daughter to marry a painter?
But of course she won't. You marry Tony Wexford and we'll see what
can be done about the painter afterwards."
¹³

Double standards like this have protected the ducal families from
total imbecility, for, indeed, had they continued to marry each other
without the injection of some different blood, it is doubtful that any
could have survived as sane humanity. In fact, there were many who
were not their father's sons at all; this was tacitly known, accepted,
and even applauded, as well it might be. Applauded or not, it is the
inevitable result of marriage as a cold business proposition. It was
gossip that some of the children of Violet, Duchess of Rutland, were
fathered by different men. The Duke of Sutherland is possibly
descended from an adulterous liaison which, if anyone cared to think
about it or if it were true would deprive him in theory of the
dukedom. Jane, Duchess of Gordon, who married three of her
daughters to drunken dukes, married the fourth to the heir of Lord
Cornwallis, but not without some difficulty. Cornwallis objected to
the match because there was said to be madness in the Gordons. The
Duchess reassured him: "I understand that you object to my
daughter marrying your son on account of the insanity in the Gordon
family: now I can solemnly assure you that there is not a single drop
of Gordon blood in her veins."
¹⁴

Lady Anne Foley wrote to her husband: "Dear Richard, I give
you joy. I have just made you father of a beautiful boy. Yours etc.
P.S. This is not a circular."
¹⁵

The question of rank has bestirred dukes and duchesses more than
anything else, and to a certain extent still does. In a way, they should
be counted inferior to earls and barons, who represent much older
English aristocracy. Only the marquesses are of more recent import
than the dukes. But since the first duke (the Black Prince) was the
son of the king, he naturally took precedence over the earls, who were
hardly in a position to complain. When the first non-royal duke was
created, and he too took precedence over the earls, there were some
small stirrings of resentment, but the custom was already established
and would have been difficult to overturn. Since then, the dukes
have sometimes descended to absurd levels in order to let everyone
know their precedence. The Duke of Devonshire thought himself
bound to appear at the races with a coach-and-six and twelve
outriders, and could scarce contain his fury when Lord Fitzwilliam,
of inferior rank, appeared with two coaches and sixteen outriders.
¹⁶
There have been many arguments as to precedence, on which the
House of Lords has been called to decide. The earliest known instance
is a dispute between Baron Grey and Baron Beaumont (ancestor of
the present Duke of Norfolk) in 1405. Coming up to the twentieth
century, the Duke of Manchester displayed no signs that he was
conscious of pleasantry when he challenged Prince Willie of Germany
to a duel. "I offered to give him suitable reparation in Germany," he
said "knowing that my own quarterings were sufficiently high to
permit him to fight a duel without loss of prestige."
¹⁷

In fairness to the dukes, it must be admitted that it was the
duchesses, rather than they, who were most preoccupied with
precedence. They developed the subtleties of rank to a fine art which,
viewed from outside, had all the charm of a stately gavotte, yet all
the absurdity of a farce. The Duke of Bedford remembers seeing the
Duchess of Buccleuch and the Duchess of Northumberland sidling
through the door together in their determination not to give prece­dence to the other.
¹⁸
The Duchess of Marlborough, who came from the
United States as Consuelo Vanderbilt and had suddenly to learn the
intricacies of precedence from one day to the next, said that she was
always glad to know her own number in the order so that she would
not make a mistake entering or leaving a room out of turn. She once
waited at her own dining-room door to allow older women to pass
through, and received a furious push from an irate marchioness who
loudly claimed that it was just as vulgar to hang back as to leave
before one's turn.
¹⁹
Lady Barrington said to Lady Sarah Lennox,
daughter of the Duke of Richmond, when it was commonly expected
that Lady Sarah would marry King George III, "Do, my dear Lady
Sarah, let me take the lead and go in before you this once, for you
will never have another opportunity of seeing my beautiful back."
²⁰
The Duchess of Cleveland reproached an eager young man who tried
to help by pulling her servant's bell for her to indicate that luncheon
was over. "Sir, officiousness is not politeness," she said very slowly and
forcibly.
²¹
Consuelo Vanderbilt attributed this ridiculous behaviour
to an "enthroned fetish", and she was probably right, though I
suspect boredom played a part. Duchesses had little else to worry
about. After she had gained some confidence in this curious Lilliputian
world, Consuelo enjoyed mischievously upsetting the applecart, ever
so gently, when given the chance. She tells how she observed the
Duchess of Buccleuch at a rehearsal in Westminster Abbey for a great

State occasion. The Duchess was "very much aware of the dignity of
her rank and position. When our housekeeper, superb in black satin,
was ushered to a seat beside her, I viewed with apprehension her
surprised reaction; for never could she have supposed that anyone
less than a Duchess would share her pew, and vainly did she try to
place this new arrival among the twenty-seven ducal families she
prided herself on knowing."
²²

A few years later, at the Coronation of Edward VII, four duchesses
were chosen to hold the canopy above Queen Alexandra. Historically,
this part of the ceremony was to shield the Queen from public gaze at
a time when both King and Queen had to be stripped to the waist for
the annointing. Like so much else that is traditional, the cause has gone
and the symbol remains. The four ladies were Duchesses of Portland,
Marlborough, Montrose and Sutherland, and to avoid complicated
fuss, they were referred to in rehearsal as "1, 2, 3 and 4", with no
nonsense about dignity.
²³

Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, took a non-ducal person for her
second husband and so difficult did she find the adjustment to a lower
rank that she actually petitioned the King to grant him a peerage
dignity.
²⁴