The Dukes (30 page)
Vol. II, p. 294.
82.
Chatsworth Collections,
228.9 (23rd November 1736).
83.
ibid.,
228.2 (18th September 1735).
84.
ibid.,
228.14.
85.
Walpole, XVIII, 255.
86.
Massey,
History of England,
I, 189.
87.
The Spectator,
12th November 1898.
88.
Letters of Junius
(1797), Vol. I, pp. 77-9.
89.
Wraxall,
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p. 273.
90.
Town and Country
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91.
Walpole,
Memoirs of the Reign of George III,
Vol. IV, p. 47.
92.
Public Record Office, DPP 1,95
/4, 95/5.
93.
Complete Peerage.
94.
Walpole, XXI, 172.
95.
Adamson and Dewar,
The House of Nell Gwynn,
p. 49.
96.
ibid.,
54.
97.
Sir Percy Croft,
The Abbey of Kilkhampton,
quoted in
Com
plete Peerage.
98.
Lady Harriet Cavendish,
Letters,
p. 36.
99.
Adamson and Dewar,
op. cit.,
pp. 97-9.
100.
The Times,
8th August 1837.
101.
Old and New London,
IV, 280.
102.
Mrs Barron-Wilson,
Memoirs of Miss Mellon
(1886), Vol. II,
p. 171.
103.
Creevey
Papers,
II, 120.
104.
Creevy,
Life and Times,
p. 266.
105.
Broughton,
Recollections of a Long Life,
Vol. Ill, p. 203.
106.
Lockhart,
Life of Sir Walter Scott,
Vol. VIII, p. 116.
107.
Adamson and Dewar,
op. cit.,
p. 135.
108.
Lady Holland to Her Son,
p. 65. 11 o.
ibid.,
p. 71.
in. Barron-Wilson,
op. cit.,
p. 175.
112.
Old and New London,
V, 398.
113.
Lady Holland to Her Son, 11b.
hi4.. Adamson and Dewar,
op. cit.,
144.
115.
Barron-Wilson,
op. cit.,
184.
116.
Creevey
Papers,
11,217.
117.
The Times,
8th August 1837.
118.
Old and New London,
IV, 281.
119.
Adamson and Dewar,
op.cit.,
189.
120.
ibid.,
.190.
121.
Hervey,
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122.
Walpole, XVII, 184.
123.
Lord Hervey and His Friends, p.
100.
124.
Earl of March,
A Duke and His Friends
(1911);
Lord
Hervey and His Friends,
p. 137.
125.
Walpole,
George III,
I, 20; Wraxall,
Hist. Mem.,
371.
126.
Hist. MSS. Comm.,
Abergavenny MSS, p. 31.
127.
Correspondence of Charles James Fox,
Vol. I, p. 455.
128.
Alison Olson,
The Radical Duke.
129.
Walpole, XXIX, 54.
130.
Private Letters of Sir Robert Peel,
p. 34.
131.
Mrs Trench,
Remains,
p. 406.
Greville, I, 284; II, 399.
j.
John Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford, known to family and friends as Ian, is undoubtedly the maverick among dukes of the realm. Without apology and with entire success, he has exploited his title for the sake of his home, and has been seen to do so with unabashed relish. Bedford is now a world-famous showman who enjoys the kind of popularity usually accorded only to film stars. He has, indeed, appeared in several films, made countless television appearances, and pays his dues to Equity, the actors' union. Visitors to Woburn Abbey, his magnificent seat in Bedfordshire (pronounced "Wooburn", by the way), would receive the Duke's autograph whether they asked for it or not, and often were allowed, not to say encouraged, to shake the ducal hand. Such relentless exhibitionism has made Bedford the best known of the dukes, allowed him to live comfortably at Woburn, and rescued him from the parallel scourges of a cold manner and an obsessive shyness which are characteristic of his family.
Lord William Russell, brother to the 7th Duke and to Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, wrote these words in his diary: "I think if all the hearts of all the Russells were put together, they would not yet make one good heart. Good God, how the Duke freezes one. I envy him not his possessions, and would not accept them, were I obliged to take his character with them."
1
And that was his own brother. The other brother, Lord John, suffered from the same freezing manner. Often ungracious, and sometimes offensive, he was involved in squabbles which were provoked by the Russell inability to make friends, and their tendency to sulk when thwarted. Queen Victoria developed a powerful aversion to him, and Greville wrote: "He is not conciliatory, and he sometimes gives grievous offence . . . he is miserably wanting in amenity, and in the small arts of acquiring popularity."
2
The same could not be said of the present Duke, who must have had to hold his ground against a tidal wave of inherited reticence and coldness surging within him to achieve the popularity that he now enjoys. His father, Hastings the 12th Duke, was the only son of the nth Duke and his duchess, yet he was never invited, as a child, to join his parents for breakfast. He would appear in the dining-room where they breakfasted in silence (the Duke hardly uttered a word all his life, and the Duchess was stone-deaf so would not have heard him if he had), and would stand in the corner, until his father dismissed him with the words, "Tavistock, you may leave now." (The eldest son of the Duke of Bedford carries the title by courtesy of Marquess of Tavistock.) This same Duke was visited by his grandson, the present Duke, when his wife died in 1937. It was an attempt by the boy to show compassionate affection for the old man in his bereavement. But he was not expected; no appointment had been made, and the "audience" was suitably brief — five minutes. The boy was not invited to stay for lunch, so he returned by train to London.
3
Generations of Russells have clumsily repelled affectionate approaches, not only from outside the family, but from each other. There never was a more unhappy succession of hostilities between fathers and sons. The present Duke had all filial attachment severed by a monstrously impersonal childhood; he grew intensely to dislike his father, who in his turn heartily despised Ian. For years there was no contact between them at all, the 12th Duke preferring to pretend that his lamentable son did not exist. The 12th Duke, Hastings, did not speak to his father Her- brand, the nth Duke, for more than twenty years; Herbrand professed to be disgusted by his son's militant pacifism, which he thought was a disgrace to the family, but the real reason for their estrangement was the congenital Russell coldness. Hastings had been naturally fond of his father in infancy, but this incipient affection was atrophied by the touch of ice, and it ruined his whole life.
The 9th Duke, also called Hastings, son of the Lord William Russell whose reflections above on Russell coldness introduced the topic, shows in his heart-rending letters an eager love for his father and a desperate adolescent desire to please him. As Mrs Blakiston has noted, "the battering his affectionate nature received from both his parents wrings the heart".
4
He grew into such a stiff, formal, loveless old man that he ended his life a morose and sullen hypochondriac. (He and his duchess were commonly called "The Icebergs".) The Duke gradually withdrew into dark misanthropy, unwilling to believe anything good of anyone; his only pleasure lay in congratulating himself that he had seen through the evils of mankind while everyone else remained unenlightened - a prophet of doom, in other words. Disraeli told Queen Victoria that Bedford was "a strange character. He enjoys his power and prosperity, and yet seems to hold a lower opinion of human nature than any man ... a joyous cynic."
5
Hardly joyous; he ended by killing himself.
No less strange was his predecessor, the 8th Duke (cousin to the 9th and son of the 7th), whom Lord Grey found "the most impenetrable person I ever met with. More silent even than a Russell, it is impossible to get a word out of him."
6
He was then twenty-five years old. The poor young man sank deeper and deeper into his protective silence until he became a total recluse. For years, nobody so much as caught a glimpse of him, as the rare excursions he made from his London house were inside a completely dark carriage with the shutters down so that no light could penetrate.
7
"Let me live always among the chimney-pots," he used to say.
8
Cold, abnormally shy and diffident, with a tendency to hypochondria and a deeply suspicious nature, the Russells have not been the easiest family to know. They have not been able to see others except as threats to their trembling personalities, as underminers of their cherished opinions, or as a danger to their precious health. This has made them obstinate in debate to the point of pig-headedness. The 7 th Duke, in yet another example of endemic fraternal disloyalty, told Greville that his brother Lord John Russell was "very obstinate and unmanageable, and does not like to be found fault with or told things which run counter to his own ideas".
9
These precise words would fittingly describe Herbrand, nth Duke; William Lord Russell ("the patriot"), whose obstinacy led to his execution; the 9th Duke, who thought himself unloved; the 8th who was terrified of meeting people; the 5th, of whom Sydney Smith said, "a peculiarity of the Russells is that they never alter their opinions".
10
Even the present Duke, whose stubbornness allowed him to retain Woburn as his home against all the advice of his trustees (who would have given it to the National Trust), may be said to inherit the Russell persistence. But the distillation of a dozen generations of Russells was achieved in that fascinating character the 12th Duke (1888-1953), father to the now Duke of Bedford, who was, like his son, the maverick of his time, though in an entirely different fashion.
Hastings Russell made an inauspicious entry into the world. His mother and father were walking across the windy Scottish moors when Lady Herbrand Russell (as she then was, her husband succeeding his brother as Duke much later) suddenly realised that her baby was about to be born. There was no time to reach home. The couple made for a derelict shepherd's cottage where, with no assistance save for the inexpert attention of two farmhands, the future Duke was born on a rough bed of heather.
11
His mother never recovered from the experience, remaining resolute in her refusal to have more children. She resented the trouble that he had given her, and was a neglectful "busy" mother whose energies were channelled into her cherished hospital work and, later, her flying, leaving none for the lonely son who stood in the corner at breakfast, waiting to be dismissed. He did not see another child until he was packed off to Eton at the age of thirteen. Inevitably, Hastings developed an odd, unorthodox personality. With all the disadvantages of the withdrawn Russell temperament in his blood, and the bonus of a deaf mother who did not pay him any attention and did not hear his plaintive questions, there was little chance of his being normal and healthy.
All his life, Hastings was consumed with self-loathing. Having been told as a child that he was a bother and a nuisance, he quickly assented, and spent the rest of his life considering that he was of little worth. Morbidly sensitive, and easily hurt, his instinct was to deflect attention away from himself, his personality, his intimate concerns, and direct it on to some other object. Hence his absorption in committee work, his active support of all manner of societies and associations for the underprivileged, the neglected, the minorities such as the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society. His blind dedication to causes carried the implication that they were all more worthy of attention than he. His whole life was an exercise in self-effacement and self-abasement. As a conscientious objector, he would take no part in military tasks during the war, preferring to indulge his masochistic delight in menial work. He felt keenly his responsibility to do something for the war effort, and was happiest scrubbing floors or washing up in Y.M.C.A. canteens, which he did anonymously.
12
Secretly, he thought that was all he deserved.
Such deep, dark sourness and self-deprecation as this led very easily to an intensely religious turn of mind. He did not go to church, and went so far as to withdraw the Bedford obligations to finance the church at Woburn (a scandal since redressed by his son), but he embraced unorthodox sects which preached the very values his life most conspicuously lacked — friendliness, brotherhood, trust — and of course the supreme virtue of self-sacrifice. He was an active Quaker for more than twenty years.
The first indication that "Spinach", to give him his nickname, was destined to be rebellious was his pacifist activities in World War I, an example of quixotic thinking which exasperated his traditionalist and orthodox father, and led to a complete severance of relations between them. Duke Herbrand considered that "Spinach" had brought shame to the Bedford name, and never forgave him. He deigned to have contact with him once, when the time came, some twenty-five years later, for the old Duke and his son to conspire together to deprive the grandson, Ian, whom neither of them liked, of his inheritance.
13
The filial distrust of the Russells can be broken only by a yet stronger filial distrust.
"Spinach" held that the participation of Christian people in war was immoral. But the real motive for his pacifism sprang from a Russell trait which he inherited and of which his life was the supreme expression, a profound distrust of human nature. He thought that people, left to their own devices, were more bad than good, and that it was in the natural order of things that they should treat each other badly, and eventually make war upon each other. This feeling, for it was that rather than a belief - it ran in the blood - was not much more than an extension of his feeling that he himself was essentially "bad" unless spiritually guided. With such an underlying misanthropy, it is no wonder that he distrusted everyone with whom he came into contact. Like all his predecessors, he was always on the alert for someone to put him down, trick him, or betray his weakness. He was intensely suspicious. Those who knew him reasonably well affirm that he was the saddest man they ever met.
The Duke was often accused, by his son among others, of being opinionated. Like Lord John Russell, he could not listen to any view that did not agree with his own. But this was his only protection against the humiliation which he always feared was imminent and crushing. He would make speeches in the House of Lords setting forth a usually outrageous point of view, guaranteed at least to be against the majority, and then would leave the chamber without listening for any riposte from his fellow peers; timidity drove him out, not rudeness. The Lords were generally so offended by the Duke's views that they passed resolutions that "the Duke of Bedford be no longer heard", which had little effect, as he had already left by then. On one occasion there were cries of "Lock him up" in the Commons when his name was mentioned.
14
He would have liked nothing better, of course. He was continually disappointed in his desire for martyrdom.
He was labelled a Fascist and a Communist, neither of which was accurate, and there is a dim memory of him now as an eccentric who had to be kept quiet and out of trouble. Yet the views which the 12th Duke expressed were eccentric only because they were not held by the majority. There was little in them that was truly revolutionary. He brushed the sleeve of socialism, but never seized its hand. He was sincere and honest at a time when hypocrites abounded. He raised the matter (in the Lords), for example, of conscientious objectors and their unjustified persecution, with particular reference to an ex-miner who had been sent to a military hospital although he was perfectly sane. "As long as this persecution is allowed to continue it is nonsense for the Prime Minister to say that victimisation and man-hunting are odious to the British people. It is all too obvious that they are extremely agreeable to a section of the British people, including members of the tribunals and members of Parliament."
16
Such views seemed grossly unpatriotic, even treacherous, when the country was staggering from four and a half years of war, but they were not the less sensible for that. Most people accept the evils of war with a shrug; Bedford would not accept them. Sometimes he was led by his frustration into sheer folly. He maintained that Hitler would behave himself if we were to treat him with friendliness. The Lord Chancellor said that he was mad, and that he had "a capacity to swallow any yarn which supported his jaundiced views".
18
But the Duke of Westminster thought that he was the bravest man in England to stand up and express views which he knew excited the hostility of everyone in the Chamber.
17
