The Dukes (57 page)

It should be mentioned that the 3rd Duke assembled one of the most valuable private libraries in the country (when he died in 1761 the twenty-one-year-old Duke of Roxburghe was just beginning
his
collection, which would eclipse Argyll's, and remain celebrated among bibliophiles to the present day). He renovated and im­proved Inveraray Castle, and built Whitton Place at Twickenham, on the edge of Hounslow Heath, where highway robbers were hung on gibbets. Bramston wrote a gently satirical epigram which suggested that when the Duke caught sight of a rogue on a gibbet,

He beheld it and wept, for it caused him to muse on

Full many a Campbell, that died with his shoes on.

The ducal coronet passed to a cousin, descended from the Earls of Argyll, who was the 4th Duke of Argyll
(1693-1770).
A military man, his duchess was famed for her wit and beauty, and was buried "with unusual honours" at St Anne's, Soho. Not such wit and beauty as was possessed, however, by the next duchess, wife of the 5th Duke
(1723-1806),
and before that the wife of the Duke of Hamilton - the legendary Elizabeth Gunning.An account of the amazing Gunning story belongs to the Hamilton dukedom, but so riveting is her personal fascination that she can bear some repetition here. In
175Q
it is true to say that there were no more famous women alive than Elizabeth and Maria Gunning, from Ireland, daughters of Mr John Gunning. They were mobbed in the streets by admirers anxious to catch a glimpse of them, or still better to touch them. They could not emerge from a carriage without causing a stampede. "These are two Irish girls," said Walpole, a note of wonder in his voice, "of no fortune, who are declared the hand­somest women alive."
⁸
They even created a proverb. The kindest wish of good fortune you could receive in Dublin was "May the luck of the Gunnings attend you". Luck indeed. Maria became Countess of Coventry, and Elizabeth Duchess of Hamilton. She was then created Baroness Hamilton in her own right, with remainder to her heirs male, and she became Duchess again on her marriage with the Duke of Argyll. A third Duke, of Bridgwater, was also asking her to marry him, and even George III was among her admirers. When she settled for Argyll, however, society approved. "It is a match that would not disgrace Arcadia . . . her beauty has made sufficient noise, and in some people's eyes is even improved . . . exactly like antediluvian lovers, they reconcile contending clans. (The Earl of Argyll, it will be remembered, had defied the Marquess of Hamilton in 1638, and become head of the anti-royalist Covenanters; the families had been hereditary enemies ever since). Again Walpole sounds breathless with astonishment: "What an extraordinary fate is attached to these two women! Who could have believed that a Gunning would unite the two great houses of Campbell and Hamilton?" Not only that, but of Elizabeth Gunning's children, four would become dukes, and one an earl. The present dukes of Hamilton and Argyll are both descended from her. To make the picture complete, she was not only beautiful, not only lucky, but so irreproachably
nice.
She had the most delightful, charming character, which gives strength to her legend; transient beauty is not enough to create the kind of repu­tation that the name Gunning evokes, 200 years later. Her beauty was very temporary; ill-health spoilt its bloom, making her dowdy. Her sister suffered a worse fate. She wore too much white paint on her face, and contracted a consumptive condition as a result, from which she died at the age of twenty-five. The Duke of Argyll has necessarily been smothered by the reputation of his wife. He rose to the rank of Field Marshal, collected another title in the peerage of Great Britain, and died a happy old man. His son, 6th Duke of Argyll (1768-1839), half-brother of the Duke of Hamilton, is known to us only through his affair with Harriette Wilson.

Harriette assures us that Argyll inherited all his mother's Gunning beauty. "For my part", she says, "I had never seen a countenance I had thought half so beautifully expressive."
¹⁰
Since she was something of a connoisseuse, we may take such praise as no light matter. Frederick Lamb had told her he was "the finest fellow on earth, and all the women adore him". Harriette later noticed the beautiful and voluptuous expression of Argyll's dark blue eyes. Resistance was vain. They made an assignation, on the turnpike. Harriette waited, and waited; Argyll failed to arrive. Stinging with humiliation, she wrote him a cold letter, which was intended to put an end to the friendship. She even believed the stories of his vanity, that he knew he could have any woman he wanted, that he was ravishingly beautiful, and that he would derive satisfaction from jilting a young lady. Whatever the case, Harriette seems to be unaware that she is, like all the others, obedient to his bidding. He made an excuse; she believed him; the affair got under way, at his pace and when he wanted. It was a passionate relationship, ending in Miss Wilson's being installed at the nobleman's London residence. Her comment at this time is that he was languishing in the self-neglect of bachelorhood, with some ragged shirts, a threadbare suit, "an old horse, an old groom, an old carri­age, and an old chateau. It was to console himself for all this antiquity, I suppose, that he fixed upon so very young a mistress as myself. Thus, after having gone through all the routine of sighs, vows, and rural walks he at last saw me blooming and safe in his dismal
chateau
in Argyll Street."
^[10]
This precedes in time the more protracted affair with the Duke of Beaufort's heir (see Chapter 5). Happiness was short-lived with Argyll. There were frequent jealous rows, occasioned by his apparently insatiable need to allow the rest of London to enjoy his beauty. In one of her very rare moments of prurient suggestiveness, Harriette relates one such row, and com­ments, "Our reconciliation was completed, in the usual way."
¹¹

But not for long. The jealousies she felt whenever his carriage was spied outside another woman's house were compounded with anger when he took to paying court to her sister, Amy. Suddenly, she noticed less how beautiful were his eyes, and more how old he was. Amy became pregnant by the Duke. Harriette threw a tantrum, and Argyll announced his engagement to Lady Paget, later Lady Anglesea, a woman with Villiers blood. And that was the end of that.

We lose track of the Duke, who retired to a quiet life at Inveraray Castle. Though he was said to have had a son by Lady Anglesea before marriage, there were no children born in wedlock, so he was succeeded in the titles by his brother (another son of Eliza­beth Gunning), whose son eventually became 8th Duke of Argyll (1823-1900). The 8th Duke is the giant of recent history in the Argyll sequence. A list of his positions and honours gives some impression of the stature of the man - Chancellor of the University of St Andrews, Rector of Glasgow, Postmaster-General, three times Lord Privy Seal, and so on — and a further list of nearly twenty books, beginning with
Letter to the Peers from a Peer's Son,
written when he was nineteen, indicates his intellectual ability. He was one of only four persons who have been allowed to retain their Knighthood of the Thistle after being appointed a Knight of the Garter, and he was created Duke of Argyll in the peerage of the United Kingdom by Queen Victoria in 1892. But none of this can reconstruct the presence of the man, which was entirely controlled by his voice. He was brilliant in speech, and ponderous in print. He was one of the great orators of the nine­teenth century, but now that all those who heard him are dead, his oratory has died too. The great Ciceronian eloquence we must per­force believe on trust. There are plenty of impressions assigned to memoirs. His daughter, Lady Frances Balfour, says that her father had "a voice and intonation impossible to describe; I have heard it likened to a silver clarion, to memory it sounds more like the notes of a bell. The beauty of each portion was brought out, though there was never a trace of emphasis or unction."
¹²
The
Dictionary of National Biography
maintains that his oratory was second only to that of Glad­stone and Bright. "He was the last survivor of the school which was careful of literary finish, and not afraid of emotion." He had a happy knack of exposing humbug, and revealing truth, with literary finesse and balance. When there was talk of "peace with honour" he called it "retreat with boasting". His position on the American Civil War was steadfast in support of the union. One of his speeches in the Lords is typically lucid, persuasive, and learned. "There is a curious animal in Loch Fynne," he said, "which I have sometimes dredged up from the bottom of the sea, and which performs the most extraordinary and unaccountable acts of suicide and self-destruc­tion. It is a peculiar kind of star-fish, which, when brought up from the bottom of the water, immediately throws off all its arms; its very centre breaks up, and nothing remains of one of the most beautiful forms in nature but a thousand wriggling fragments. Such undoubt­edly would have been the fate of the American union if its govern­ment had admitted what is called the right of secession. I think we ought to admit in fairness to the Americans, that there are some things worth fighting for, and that national existence is one of them."
¹³

The Duke said he had a cross-bench mind. A Liberal in tempera­ment, and natural leader of the Scottish Whigs, he nevertheless sat with the Conservatives in the House. From the Duke of Portland, we have a rare portrait of the man's appearance. He had, said Portland, a commanding presence. "He had a leonine head of hair, through which he occasionally passed his hand, emphasising his periods with repeated thumps of his stick."
¹⁴

Argyll married three times, first a daughter of the Duke of Suther­land, by whom he had five sons and seven daughters. One of the daughters married the Duke of Northumberland, and was grand­mother of the present Duke. When he died, Argyll was accorded four whole columns of obituary notice in
The Times,
a virtual essay of several thousand words. The writer paid tribute to Argyll's "telling and forcible controversial style", but regretted a certain tendency to preach. "He looked, as a matter of course, for an attitude of intel­lectual and moral submission on the part of his hearers and his fol­lowers, combined of that which the chief expects from his clansmen, the professor from his class, and the minister from his congregation." An old innkeeper in Oban explained the Duke's predicament thus: "Well, ye see, the Duke is in a vara deeficult position; his pride o' birth prevents his associating with men of his ain intellect, and his pride o' intellect equally prevents his associating with men of his ain birth."
¹⁵

His son, 9th Duke of Argyll (1845-1914) married one of Queen Victoria's daughters, Princess Louise, thereby becoming a member of the Royal Family. The Prince of Wales (Edward VII) objected to the marriage on the grounds that the heir to the House of Argyll was below rank.
¹⁶
The Duke and Duchess resided in Canada for five years (he was Governor-General), but otherwise led an uneventful life, as royals. When the Duke died there were two weeks of Court mourn­ing; he was, after all, uncle to the reigning monarch. Should anyone have thought, or still think, that the clan system is dead in Scotland, he need only look at the list of pall-bearers at the Duke's funeral in 1914. Every one of them was a chief in the hierarchy of the Campbell clan. There was the Marquess of Breadalbane, Angus Campbell (Captain of Dunstaffnage Castle), Iain Campbell (Captain of Saddell Castle), Ronald Campbell (heir male of the House of Craignish) Archibald Campbell (Laird of Lochnell,) Colin Campbell (Laird of Jura), Iain Campbell (Laird of Kilberry), and more besides. They were burying not the Duke of Argyll, but Mac Caelein Mhor.

The 10th Duke was a nephew of the 9th. Born in 1872, he entered reluctantly into the twentieth century, grumbling and grunt­ing the while. A crotchety old man, he despised every modern inven­tion, abominated motor-cars, and he rode a bicycle. He refused to use the telephone, or have one in the house. He possessed in full measure the Campbell mastery of words, and any government official who dared to interfere with the adminstration of his estates was devastated with rich invective. One was threatened with being "clapped in the dungeon". He neglected Inveraray abominably, allowing trees to rot where they fell, thunderstorms to sweep untram- meled through the house, while he was busy in his study, writing or copying old letters, indulging his passion for genealogical research.
^[11]
In many respects, he was a brother in spirit to the 11th Duke of Bedford, who died in 1940. The Duke of Argyll lived to 1949. Both men belonged by temperament to the nineteenth century.

No sooner did the nth Duke of Argyll (1903-1973) take pos­session of Inveraray Castle from his late cousin than he plunged headlong into a welter of publicity from which he never quite escaped. The cause of the immediate flurry of attention was his plan to dredge Tobermory Bay and raise the Spanish galleon which tradition held was sunk there. In 1588, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the "Greate Treasure Shippe of Spaine", called the
Duque di Florencia,
sailed northwards to the friendly Scottish coast, hoping for refuge. Although England and Spain were at war, the Scots were still well disposed towards Spain, which was then the richest country in the world. But Elizabeth's highly efficient secret service discovered the Spaniards' intent, and wrecked the ship on nth September 1588, by having a spy set fire to the powder room. Spanish propaganda sub­sequently claimed that it was only a small hired transport, but Elizabeth's informers knew otherwise. The ship was said to contain £30 million worth of treasure.