The Duke of Bedford

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I post this obit beause Woburn Abbey was very close to the house where I last lived in England. It's also an illustration of the colorfulness of some of the British aristos.

The Duke of Bedford (Filed: 28/10/2002)

The 13th Duke of Bedford, who died on Friday aged 85, endured an extremely strange upbringing and later, although a shy man, steeled himself to face the glare of publicity as a pioneer of "stately home" showmanship.

He did so in order to save the family seat of Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire which would otherwise have had to be sold, owing to exceptionally heavy death duties incurred by the demise of both his grandfather and his father - a pair of legendary eccentrics - within a dozen or so years.

The great house, remodelled by the fashionable Whig architect Henry Holland, and the 16,000-acre estate - formerly the site of a Cistercian abbey - had belonged to the Russells since the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

But it had fallen into an almost derelict state when the Duke inherited the title from his father, "Spinach", a quixotic pacifist and naturalist, in 1953.

The unassuming "Ian" Bedford blossomed as a superb showman, stopping at almost nothing - even, notoriously, allowing a nudist film to be shot in the grounds - in order to make Woburn into a successful business so that its treasures could be preserved for posterity.

So as not to confuse his paying customers, he thoughtfully took to pronouncing the place as "Woeburn" rather than the etymologically correct "Wooburn"; and from the time he opened the Abbey to the public in 1955 visitors flocked to it, reaching a rate of more than 1.5 million a year.

The "Maverick Duke" enjoyed worldwide fame, though some of his fellow aristocrats shuddered at his publicity stunts - the fun fair, souvenir shop, safari park, the endless embarrassing television performances and "dinner with a Duke" at £90 a head.

But Bedford was unrepentant: "I do not relish the scorn of the peerage, but it is better to be looked down on than overlooked." And many came to admire his remarkable rescue act as he toiled to put the Abbey in order.

John Robert Russell, initially styled Lord Howland, was born in London on May 24 1917 into a family which, in his own words, "thought themselves slightly grander than God".

He was the elder son of the Marquess of Tavistock, who was, in turn, the only child of the 11th Duke of Bedford, a distinctly odd recluse.

The Dukedom was created by William III for the 5th Earl of Bedford, of "Bedford Level" fame, partly to honour the memory of his son, Lord Russell, a martyr to the Whig cause who had been executed after the Rye House Plot.

The unfortunate Lord Russell had contributed to the aggrandisement of the family by marrying the heiress of the Bloomsbury estate in London.

The Russells owned Covent Garden - as the 9th Duke of Bedford observed: "If one hadn't a few acres in London in these times of agricultural depression, I don't know what one would do."

The family was descended from medieval wine merchants who had risen to being county gentry by the end of the 14th century; in the 16th century the durable Tudor diplomatist Sir John Russell was created Baron Russell by Henry VIII and Earl of Bedford by Edward VI.

But all this history was far removed from young Lord Howland's understanding. His father and grandfather were for years estranged, on account of the Duke's disapproval of his only son's pacifism in the 1914-18 War.

The father, a lifelong rebel, was an authority on parrots. The family home was at Warblington, Havant, sufficiently large for the aviaries.

Spinach Tavistock was entirely self-centred, and bigoted in his beliefs; his charity stopped abruptly at his own front door. As a small boy, Howland was kept short of chocolates; he recalled that he used to eat those put out for the parrots.

He spent his childhood and adolescence in complete ignorance of his ducal destiny. Indeed, he did not realise that he was the eventual heir to the Dukedom of Bedford until he was 16.

"I remember reading in the newspaper of the Duchess of Bedford breaking the record for a flight to South Africa," he recalled. "I said to a maid who was working in our house, 'That sounds a very brave woman.'

She said: 'Don't you know, that's your grandmother?' That was the first time I had ever heard of the Dukes and Duchesses of Bedford."

His education was haphazard. He was kept from school and, though he had tutors, he did not go to university. "Crammers" for Cambridge gave him up. He had, he said, never been taught how to learn.

When he came of age he complained that he was still living on the allowance of an impoverished student. His father allowed him a mere £98 a year at a students' hostel in Bloomsbury while he tried to pass into the university.

When friends discovered that he did not even possess an overcoat, they bought him one. He found a job with an estate agent, collecting rents in the East End, but soon found his doorstep technique was of no avail with tenants who suddenly and mysteriously could speak nothing but Yiddish.

In 1939, Spinach Tavistock disinherited him without a penny, because he disapproved of his son's marriage to a divorcee 13 years Howland's senior, Mrs Clare Hollway (nee Bridgman).

On the outbreak of the 1939-45 War Howland enlisted in the Coldstream Guards, for which his temperament and health were quite unsuited. He later described himself as "the Streaming-Cold Guardsman".

After a few months he was duly invalided out of the Army and, after an appeal to Lord Beaverbrook, landed a job as a reporter on the Sunday Express, which he rather enjoyed.

In 1940 his wife gave birth to their elder son, Robin, at the Ritz Hotel in London - the first time a baby had been born on the premises. That summer Howland's grandfather died and his father - whose pacifist sentiments during the war brought him further obloquy - became the 12th Duke of Bedford. He himself now became styled Marquess of Tavistock.

Another son, Lord Rudolf Russell, was born in 1944, but the next year Lady Tavistock fell ill and died.

After the war, Tavistock became a London director for an Indian export-import firm. In 1947 he married again, his bride being Lydia, widow of Capt Ian Lyle and a daughter of the 3rd Lord Churston.

The bridegroom's father came to the wedding at St Peter's Eaton Square and at last a little understanding grew between father and son. The Tavistocks bought a fruit farm and vineyard near Cape Town and settled happily in South Africa. A son, Lord Francis Russell, was born in 1950.

Then, in 1953, Tavistock's father died in a shooting accident. And so, at the age of 36, he succeeded to the Dukedom of Bedford and to Woburn.

In doubt whether to return permanently to England, after his father's funeral he asked his old mentor Beaverbrook for advice. The reply was: "Come back and be Duke of Bedford."

He duly returned and, together with his wife, Lydia, at once set about reviving Woburn Abbey, where his father had never actually lived. Faced with chaos, the Duke and Duchess first set about cleaning the priceless possessions themselves.

This entailed, for instance, washing every item of an 800-piece Sevres dinner service presented by King Louis XV to the wife of the 4th Duke on the conclusion of his peace negotiation in Paris at the end of the Seven Years' War.

As his father's estate qualified for £4.5 million duty, the trustees sold parts to meet taxation, and even wanted to dispose of Woburn to the National Trust. This the Duke fiercely resisted; and restoring Woburn Abbey and making it known to millions was to be the success story of Ian Bedford's life.

The Abbey, with its 120 rooms, then cost some £300,000 a year to maintain. Soon, though, the turnover from the souvenir shop alone amounted to £180,000 a year. The game park was the Duke's most profitable idea, though the weekly butchers' bill for the lions alone was £1,000.

After finding that visitors wanted to meet the Duke as much as to see Woburn, he declared: "I like being recognised and greeted by people. I enjoy being known and talked to. Far from feeling degraded at having to share my stately home with people, I feel flattered that they seem eager to share it with me.

"I have learned the most important lesson of my life from opening Woburn. It is that the pleasure you give to other people is the most rewarding thing in the world. I regard it as the main purpose of my life to keep Woburn Abbey for my family, and I am convinced that my way is the best way of doing this. I am greatly helped by my extreme good luck in not possessing any particular talent."

His second marriage was dissolved in 1960 and later that year he married thirdly, Mme Nicole Milinaire (nee Schneider), a French television producer who was to write some richly fruity memoirs, Nicole Nobody.

Then in 1974, quite unexpectedly, after 20 years of stately "showbiz", Bedford suddenly decided to hand over Woburn to his eldest son and heir, the Marquess of Tavistock, and to live abroad.

He announced that he wanted Robin Tavistock to take over while still young enough to develop an interest in the estate. "I left England because I felt that if I stayed I would always be giving my son advice about how to run the house," he later explained. "I thought it better to give him his head and get out of the country altogether."

The Duke found it difficult to settle down abroad. In the first three years he and his wife lived in five countries, France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal and Monaco. They continued to lead a peripatetic existence and within a few years faded from the limelight.

The Duke wrote several books, including an autobiography, A Silver-Plated Spoon (1959), in which he gave a graphic account of his miserable childhood.

With George Mikes, he wrote The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs (1965) and How To Run a Stately Home (1971). He also published a sympathetic study of his deaf, difficult grandmother, The Flying Duchess (1968).

As for recreations, he once said: "I don't like fishing or shooting or hunting or racing or any of the English Gentleman's occupations."

The Duke of Bedford is survived by his third wife, by the two sons of his first marriage and by the son of his second marriage. The eldest son, (Henry) Robin Ian Russell, Marquess of Tavistock, succeeds to the Dukedom.

-- Anonymous, October 28, 2002


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