The Dukes

by Brian Masters

  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.

  The King of Spain had been certain of victory. He planned to divide England among his nobles, and the money he sent over with this ship was intended as wages for his invading forces. We all know that his plans were thwarted, but what meanwhile happened to the treasure? It rested on the silt at the bottom of Tobermory Bay, and has since resisted all attempts to recover it. Charles I gave up trying, and granted salvage rights to the 1st Duke of Argyll, who was thereby permitted to keep whatever booty the wreck might con­tain, supposing always that he would be able to lay his hands on it, with the sole condition that the royal coffers might receive one per cent of the treasure's value. The present Duke of Argyll still retains this unique right.
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br />   In 1950 the new Duke enlisted the help of the Royal Navy in a final attempt to locate the wreck. On nine occasions between 1661 and 1919 attempts had been made, and small pieces had been brought to the surface — candlesticks, doubloons, swords, compasses. By now, the wreck had sunk so deeply into the mud that it was completely invisible, and sophisticated devices were required to discover where it was. On 2nd April the experts announced that they had indeed dis­covered a galleon, and brought to the surface specimens of African oak,' which is precisely what the ship would be made of. Sceptics kept their silence.

  Having located the galleon, the Royal Navy's task was complete. It was for others to plunder the treasure. Four years later, the Duke financed another try. This time, more ship's timber was found, some scabbards, and a cannon. But no treasure. The dive had to be abandoned, as being both too dangerous and too expensive, but the Duke had established that the Tobermory Bay galleon was no legend; it was the only known galleon of the Spanish Armada, and it was still there. In al] likelihood, if it did contain £30 million as Eliza­beth I's spies maintained, then it contains as much now

  At all events, the search brought the Duke of Argyll to public notice. It was a romantic and exciting quest, and he as the questor was a popular figure, a folk hero. He was hardly out of the news­papers. But the publicity he received a few years later was of a far less welcome kind, and for a period of four years he eclipsed in public attention even the Duke of Bedford.

  Argyll had not been brought up at Inveraray, being only a cousin of his predecessor. He had been educated in the United States, had fought in World War II, and been taken prisoner. The years from 1940 to 1945 were spent in a P.O.W. camp, an experience which broke his health. He had already married twice when he succeeded to the title. His first wife had been a daughter of Lord Beaverbrook, by whom he had a daughter, Lady Jeanne Louise Campbell, who later married the American writer Norman Mailer for a few months. His second wife, a divorcee called Louise Morris, gave him two sons, one of whom is the present Duke. In 1951 this marriage also ended in divorce, and Argyll married an old friend, Margaret Sweeney (born 1914).

  The new Duchess had been a famous debutante of the 1930s, perhaps the most photographed woman in the inter-war years. She had been born Margaret Whigham, daughter of a poor Glasgow worker who made himself a very wealthy man, and left her his for­tune. She was educated in the United States, and "came out" in London with the effect of a seismic shock. Among the men who sought her were the Earl of Warwick and the Aly Khan, the former of whom she was ready to marry, but withdrew not long before the ceremony. Her husband, in the end, was an American businessman called Charles Sweeney, by whom she had a daughter who is now the Duchess of Rutland.

  It was as Margaret Sweeney that she married the Duke of Argyll in 1951. Whatever else may have happened, she devoted herself to the task of restoring Inveraray Castle with a passion for which the local inhabitants are still grateful, "Her Grace has come to Inveraray like a touch of spring," said one.17 It was largely as the result of her work that the little town of Inveraray, a model of town planning, was recognised as worthy of protection as a national monument. In August 1959 the marriage erupted into a public quarrel which bounced in and out of the courts for the next four years. The Duchess defended unsuccessfully, providing the newspapers with their best opportunity to be shocked, prurient, and snobbish all at the same time. Historians will find in the details of this case an interesting comment on the circular movement of social fashions; there had certainly not been as amazing a divorce case in high circles since the Duchess of Cleveland, mother to the dukes of Grafton had her marriage annulled in 1706.

  The Duke was granted his divorce, and married for a fourth time not long afterwards. Both he and the Duchess wrote about their marriage in the Sunday newspapers, he in terms so private that she successfully brought an order compelling him to excise some sen­tences. The judge read to a silent court the offending passage. "How any man with any decent feelings," he said, "could seek to publish such a thing to the world for his pecuniary benefit passes compre­hension." The principle that marital confidence should be protected was upheld, and occasioned much editorial comment. It contributed to the debate on the limits of privacy. As a direct result of this article, the Duke was asked politely to leave his club, White's.

  In 1969 the Duke went to live in France, where he had spent much of his youth (he was bilingual), and where he felt happiest. He returned to Scotland an ill man in 1973, and died in hospital. The 11th Duke of Argyll had led a life pursued by newspapermen from the day he succeeded to the day he died. It was not always of his choosing. He preferred the quiet life at Inveraray. But his judge­ment sometimes failed him, and the press triumphantly relished his mistakes.

  Very different from his father is Ian Campbell, 12th Duke of Argyll, who is handsome, responsible and happy. Born in 1937 and brought up in the United States, he married Iona Colquhoun of Liss in 1964, and they have two children, Torquhil and Louise. Before he succeeded in the title in 1973, Ian Campbell had tackled a dozen different jobs and had lived in many parts of the world. For four years he worked behind the Iron Curtain, in East Germany, Hungary and Romania, for Rank Xerox. He still has disparate business interests which have nothing to do with the Argyll estates, and has brought to the running of the estate the businessman's priorities of efficiency and profit. The result is that a dynamic pulse is felt at Inveraray which has been lacldng for years. The Duke claims to be able to do any of the jobs which the estate requires of its employees, and has done them all at some stage in his life. He loves every acre at Inveraray, and accepts that the tasks he was born to undertake there involve hard work and responsibility. He does not feel that the treasures in the house (which include a magnificent library) are his, but that he is their custodian.

  The Duchess is a quiet, sensible, disciplined woman, even-tempered and patient. She epitomises the Englishman's idea of a Scottish beauty.

  The Duke and his heir together represent the continuation of a history which is awesome in its antiquity. Dunstaffnage Castle, of which Argyll is Hereditary Keeper, is where the early Scottish kings were crowned. The hereditary baton used by the dukes in their capacity as Keeper of the Royal Household in Scotland was stolen from Inveraray in 1952, and has never been found. The Duke has had a new one made to replace it.

  On 5th November, 1975, fire broke out at Inveraray Castle, com­pletely destroying the top floor and the roof in a conflagration which could be seen for miles. Two hundred paintings stored in the attic were all lost, including a Gainsborough, but damage to the rest of the house was caused by the millions of gallons of water which were pumped in to beat the flames. The entire house was saturated, and all the floors and ceilings had to be lifted and removed to prevent dry and wet rot. None of the furnishings and pictures normally on show to the public was damaged beyond repair, but the house was rendered un­inhabitable, until the Duke of Argyll and his family were able to move into the basement rooms, formerly the old kitchens and laundries, in 1976. The roof was entirely rebuilt in one year, a formidable under­taking for such a large house, and the renovations were scheduled for completion by the end of 1977. The cost of restoration was estimated at £850,000, only 21% of it to be covered by insurance. The remainder was raised from private donations and receipts from a special Fire Exhibition held in the summer of 1976, which attracted 75,000 visitors. Cause of the fire was presumed to be electrical.

  Perhaps the most impressive relic at Inveraray, more eloquent even than a ducal coronet, is a very simple sporran which belonged to Rob Roy.

  * *

  Rob Roy takes us neatly back to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and to the beginning of another dukedom, for the man who captured Rob Roy in 1717 was that mortal enemy of the Campbells and staunch Hanoverian, the 1st Duke of Atholl (1660- 1724). Poor Atholl was waging two wars, one on a national scale against the Jacobite rebellion, and one a private squabble with members of his own family. The House of Atholl was irretri
evably divided over the rebellion, with Murrays on both sides. For the government there was the Duke, and his second son, Lord James Murray. For the Jacobites there were the three other sons, Lord Charles, Lord George, and the heir, Marquess of Tullibardine. These three were pledged to return the House of Stuart to the throne; they were uncompromising in their support, and if it meant schism within the family, so be it. Tullibardine actually took Blair Castle by force, with 500 men, from his own brother. He accompanied the Young Pretender into Scotland, and was intimately identified with his cause. Of the three Murrays involved in the Rising, perhaps the most significant, and the most illustrious leader, was Lord George Mur­ray. But for the purposes of our story, the eldest son, Tullibardine, affects matters more closely.

  The Marquess of Tullibardine brought disgrace upon the family (in his father's eyes, and in the eyes of the government, with which the Duke had busily ingratiated himself) by his Jacobite actions. He was in due course attainted for High Treason and imprisoned in the Tower. His father then procured an Act of Parliament to divert his titles and estates from the heir to his second son, Lord James Murray, who was ideologically safe. Tullibardine thus found himself, most irregularly, disinherited. He can hardly have been surprised. His friend and mentor, the Pretender, in 1717 re-clothed him with some suitable titles, including that of Duke of Rannoch, but of course this was only a nominal dignity, never ratified. (The present Duke of Atholl could lay claim to the dukedom of Rannoch, but it is doubtful whether any support in peerage law would be forthcoming.) When the 1st Duke of Atholl died in 1724, the Jacobites naturally recog­nised the imprisoned and shorn former Marquess as 2nd Duke, but the rest of the country, which is what mattered, recognised the other son, James. In the course of time, James became de facto Duke as well as parliamentary Duke, as Tullibardine died in prison in 1746, frustrated and unheeded.