Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [29]
In the Duke of 1895, neither fortune, nor position as eldest son, nor disinclination to exert himself, nor desire to follow his heart upon the turf were enough to outweigh in him “certain hereditary government instincts.” He felt that “he owed a debt to the State that must be paid.” This sense of obligation, remarked on by all who knew him, originated not only in family estate but also in a consciousness of superior ability. His father, a student of mathematics and the classics, known as the “Scholar” Duke, had educated him at home. Later at Trinity College, Cambridge, despite an idle, sporting, sociable life among the “tufts,” Lord Hartington was the only one of his set to take an Honours degree, a second class in the mathematical tripos. He entered Parliament at twenty-four and achieved his first Cabinet office at thirty. His brother, Lord Frederick Cavendish, also undertook a political career, and in 1882, on his first day as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was assassinated in Phoenix Park in Dublin. The killing of an English minister of the Crown by Irish malcontents created a sensation as great as the death of General Gordon at Khartoum. Whether because of his brother’s murder or some other less obvious reason, the Duke made a habit of always carrying a loaded revolver about with him, and this was a constant source of worry to his family. “He was always losing them and buying new ones,” wrote his nephew, “and there were no less than twenty of them knocking about Devonshire House when he died.”
With the advent of the Duchess, an indefatigable hostess, Devonshire entertainments became the stateliest in Society. Every year on the opening of Parliament, the Duke and Duchess gave a great reception. Every year on Derby Day, Devonshire House, filled with roses and June flowers from the Duke’s gardens, was the scene of a sparkling ball. Before the ball, the King gave a dinner to members of the Jockey Club at Buckingham Palace while the Queen came to dine with the Duchess. In Jubilee Year of 1897 the Devonshire fancy-dress ball was the most famous and lavish party of the era. At Chatsworth in Derbyshire, home of the Cavendishes for four hundred years, house parties reached their peak with the annual visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales, which continued when they were King and Queen. Every royal comfort was anticipated and satisfied, including the presence of the King’s mistress, Mrs. Keppel, brilliant in diamonds, with whom, according to Princess Daisy of Pless, “the King has his bridge in a separate room while in other rooms people are massed together also of course playing bridge.”
Built of the golden stone of the district, Chatsworth was surrounded by an Eighteenth Century park designed by Capability Brown. Luxury was everywhere. Cascades rippled over a series of stone steps six hundred feet long copied after the Renaissance water-landscaping of Italy. A copper willow tree, by an ingenious mechanism, could weep water from every leaf. Elaborate and exquisite garlands of flowers and fruit carved in wood festooned the walls. The library and collection of pictures and sculpture were on a princely scale like the Medicis’ and administered almost as a public trust. Curators in the Duke’s employ kept them open to scholars and connoisseurs, made new purchases and liberally loaned the treasures to exhibitions. The Chatsworth Memling went to Bruges, its Van Dycks to Antwerp, and all year the house was open to the public, who tramped through