Home To Roost and Other Peckings
by Deborah Mitford
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
This not being the first Deborah Devonshire née Mitford book I had read (I loved Wait for Me! too), I knew I would like it. Because, despite her humility and self-deprecating humour, this youngest Mitford sister, having reached the highest rank of them all, was of fine intellect and simple charm.
She was always quick to point out how eldest sister and arch-tease Nancy Mitford joked of Deborah never exceeding the sophistication of a nine-year-old (even nicknaming her '9'). This was about Deborah's young spirit and unaffectedness. Famously well adjusted, she treated everyone the same, from royalty to pop star to servant.
Yet being a Mitford, Deborah was hardly conventional and drew from an extraordinary life in her many books. She grew up inventing the secret language 'Honnish' with next older sister Jessica Mitford, stowed away in an airing cupboard they called the 'Hons Cupboard', hidden away from adults in their father's drafty old Oxfordshire mansion inherited by her father, the 2nd Baron Redesdale.
Mostly home educated by governesses, from age 6 Deborah had a passion for chickens which stayed with her for life, becoming, amongst endless other things, a connoisseur of fine poultry, hence this book's title. She was also a keen horse rider and a talented ice skater, reaching professional levels but not taking it up due to lack of parental approval.
After her presentation at court as a debutante, Deborah fell in love with and was betrothed to Lord Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. They married in 1941. By the end of the WWII Deborah had lost two babies, her only brother Tom, four best friends and two brothers-in-law. She still had her famous big sisters though: the Fascist, the Communist, the Nazi, the novelist (and stud farmer Pam).
Her husband Andrew now became heir to his father's Dukedom. In her years as Duchess of Devonshire she discovered a necessary talent for stately home restoration, learning on the job with her magnificent 16th-century mansion Chatsworth House, which her husband the duke inherited with a tax bill of nearly $20 million in the post-WWII years. Their only way of keeping Chatsworth was to restore and open it up to the public to pay for itself.
They sold artworks, land and iconic historic buildings like Hardwick Hall to pay taxes of 80 percent of the estate’s value: around $300 million in today’s money. Deborah's transformation turned it into a self-sustaining family business.
They managed to retain Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and the Lismore Castle estate in Ireland, both having been in the Cavendish family for centuries, Lismore Castle once home to Fred Astaire's sister Adele, wife of Lord Charles Cavendish (Deborah's great uncle-in-law).
As Châtelaine, Deborah entertained world leaders at Chatsworth, her husband serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations from 1960 to 1962, Minister of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office from 1962 to 1963, and for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964.
She received JFK and brother Bobby, to whom she was related by their sister Kathleen's marriage to Deborah's brother-in-law William (Kathleen and William died tragically young, with Kathleen buried with many Dukes of Devonshire in St Peter's Church, Edensor on the Devonshire family estate). Indeed, she was JFK's personal guest at his 1961 presidential inauguration and, more sadly, an attendee his 1963 memorial service.
In the late 1950s and '60s it was not unheard of for the Queen Mother to invite Deborah to some event or other. Queen Elizabeth II herself had tea at Chatsworth. The then dazzling Princess Margaret's Chatsworth visits attracted other VIPs, movie stars such as Gary Cooper, literati figures like Evelyn Waugh (really an old friend of sisters Nancy and Diana), between which Deborah hobnobbed with the world's jet set, oversaw 35,000 acres of gardening, tended her famous hens and generally got her hands dirty.
She wrote fascinating books, many about Chatsworth and her work there (she was even known to man the ticket office herself). Her Chatsworth books include Chatsworth: The House (1980), Farm Animals: Based on the Farmyard at Chatsworth (1991), Treasures of Chatsworth: A Private View (1991), Chatsworth Garden (1999) and Round About Chatsworth (2005).
Yet she remained the down-to-earth country girl who adored her many animals, kept on speaking terms with all her Mitford sisters even when the others were at loggerheads. Deborah never got into those Mitford feuds and fallouts. "Their politics were nothing to do with me," she said.
She was perhaps the happiest and most grounded Mitford sister, despite her marked social elevation that set her somehow apart from her older siblings, having enjoyed a comparatively untroubled childhood then a stable lifelong marriage.
Though minus that glaring Mitford rebellious streak, Deborah shared their sharp minds, penmanship skills, droll humour and regal 'Mitfordese' drawl (“Do admit!” “Do tell!” “Please picture!”). It was Deborah herself who as a girl started "Do admit".
Yet simplistic in so many ways. Lucian Freud, who painted her several times, was a close friend. "I see him when I go to London and I leave him eggs on the doorstep," she said in an interview. "He seems to like that. I really love him and I always have."
Her candid patter of In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor shows her capacity to chew the fat with a famous polyglot as if over beer and peanuts.
Just as her dotty banter in The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters betrays an endearing almost vagueness, yet a deep personal loyalty. She is clearly the 'nice' one, with whom one would feel safest at a state banquet, country pig fair or couture salon hop.
She was an ardent Elvis Presley fan. Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, in 2007, she recounted having tea with Hitler on a visit to Munich in 1937 with her mother and sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and therefore carrying on the entire conversation with Hitler. The Telegraph interviewer asked who Deborah would have preferred tea with: Elvis or Hitler. With astonishment she answered: "Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question."
Being the youngest Mitford, Deborah outlived the others and indeed her husband the duke, becoming Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004, having been appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II for her service to the Royal Collection Trust.
She died aged 94 in 2014, survived by three of seven children, eight grandchildren (including fashion model Stella Tennant, whose Vogue Chatsworth shoot Deborah writes of in this book) and eighteen great-grandchildren. Her funeral at St Peter's Church, Edensor, was attended by family, friends, six hundred staff, the (then) Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.
Her anecdotes and ponderings in this slim volume are a heartwarming treat, written as if she's perched on the end of your bed, an old, old Dowager Duchess, telling you a few wise tales. "When you are very old," she once said, "you accept what has happened. You cry over some things, but not a lot. It's too distant."
Pure pleasure.
