One hundred keys on the mistress’s chain

Press, 7 March 1978, Page 12

One hundred keys on the mistress’s chain

The Marchioness of Tavistock, two decades ago the most publicised English society beauty of modern times, is now the reluctant mistress of Woburn Abbey.

For three years, since the age of 34, she has presided, glamorous and outwardly serene, over one of Britain’s stateliest homes and one of the richest hoards of Empire-glory loot in the United Kingdom. There are 21 Canalettos in the family dining room, a Sevres dinner service from Louis XV, the Armada portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in the Long Gallery, tigers and elephants on the 3000 acres of ground — and a million visitors a year to look at it all. “I never wanted to live here,” Lady Tavistock said. “When Robin asked me to marry him, I made a deal with him — that we would never have to live at Woburn. Robin said it would not happen, that unless his father died Woburn would skip a generation, would skip us, and go to our eldest son. But I married for better or for worse. It is very sad.” Robin is the Marquis of Tavistock and Lady Tavistock’s father-in-law is the Duke of Bedford, the man, she said, “who almost invented the stately home business.” For three hours recently, sitting under the Gainsborough that dominates her office at Woburn Abbey, the young marchioness told what it is like to live in, run and raise a family in a house that is a national treasure. And what it was like to be plucked out pf a cherished privacy she thought she would have for the rest of her days. Lady Tavistock, born Henrietta Tiarks, was the only child of Henry Tiarks, a multi-millionaire banker. She was photographed by Anthony Arm-strong-Jones just before her debut at the age of 17 in 1957 and presented to the world under the headline; “Is this the most beautiful face in England?” She was called the deb of the year, one of the great debs of the century with her offbeat looks, taste and stardust quality. When she was 21, the face and fortune were crowned with a coronet. She married her childhood sweetheart, the Marquis of Tavistock, in a wedding that snarled London traffic. “The blessing when I got married was to know that I’d never get any publicity ever again,” Lady Tavistock recalled. She bore two sons and went to live in a Queen Anne farmhouse in Newmarket, “with a duck pond in front of the door.” “I was wife, mother and hostess, breeeding thoroughbreds and racing,” she said. “Horses are my special love. We still have the house. There’s no way I could part with it, because, to me, it’s home.”

Stitching away at her petit-point by the sparking fire, she added: “No, we don’t live in this house. We open it, we work in it. Living in a house like this makes it difficult to maintain a family existence. Woburn Abbey has 75 rooms — proper rooms, that is, not counting the little ones. The poor receptionist has to make 20 to 30 calls before she can begin to find us.” “Us’ includes Lady Tavistock; her husband, a stockbroker who still works in London three days a week; Andrew, Lord Howland, aged 16; Robin, aged 14, and James, who was born

after they came to Woburn three years ago. There are more than 300 people on the staff, including those who work in the “Wild Animal Kingdom,” the 42 shops in the antique centre, the farm and the great house. “Some of the servants are fifth generation,” Lady' Tavistock said. “It’s our own little world. Anyone who’s worked on the estate for more than 10 years is housed for life.” In 1961, when she married her father-in-law was in his 40s. “I didn’t think he’d give up the place until he was about 60,” she said. But the Duke of Bedford. forced bv SISM in inheritance taxes in the 1950 s to become a show biz aristocrat, had had enough by' 1974. He handed over the estate to his heir, Robin, and became an expatriate with his dashing Duchess, Nicole. in her native France. Lady Tavistock said: “It was extremely selfish of them to go. Mv husband was enjoying his life. At 34. to be made a prisoner of inheritance is very cruel. Mv father-in-law and mother-in-law showed a total disregard for the human element, the family element.” She went on: “We moved in the day after they left and the entire staff remained the same except for the administrator. We didn’t change anything for a long time. I felt at any moment they’d be back. “I said the night we moved in, ‘Robin, I won’t sleep where they slept before.’ Robin said, ‘Get used ot it, we’ll never move out of here.’ I used to lie in bed at night and think that I was seeing my father-in-law coming through the door, saying, ‘What are you doing here?’ My father-in-law’s valet was here for a year packing up their furniture and their clothes and their china. It was all very weird.” For the first 18 months, Lady Tavistock said: “All I heard was, ‘her grace didn’t do it like that,’ or ‘his grace did it this way.’ I felt like hanging up a notice saying, ‘under new management’.” Repairing briefly to the Caneletto room in the family quarters to be photographed, Ladv Tavistock waved a hand at the artist’s 21 views of Venice on the walls and the long tab’' 1 dovm the middle. “We eat in here every dav. down at one end.” she said. “It’s the only dining room in the house except the State Dining Room, which we can’t use. There’s a drawing room next door. These two rooms are open to the public every day: tourists come in before our lunch and after lunch.” The work goes on seven days a week, 365 days a year. Woburn Abbey is never closed, not even on Christmas Day. The marquis comes home from his job in London on Thursday nights, staying through Monday. “The big decisions are his. 1 do the donkey work,” Lady Tavistock said. She spoke of long, rigidlv-structured days, with fixed appointments with . the gamekeeper, the curator, the farm manager, the executive chief. She is in charge of the antique centre and responsible for the catering — “We do balls, weddings, bar mitzvahs in the sculpture gallery. The gallery will comfortably

seat 250 for dinner. For buffets, many more.” There are" also paying guests (“Never mare than eight”) for dinner with the Master and Mistress of Woburn. This was another of the Duke of Bedford’s more successful ideas. “I’ve always dreaded it and I always will,” said the Duke’s daughter-in-law. “After about the second time, I realised that they knew that I knew that they’d paid. Some people are instantly at their ease. Some aren’t. I get thpm to talking on subjects they’re happy with.”

She has changed the furnishings in the family quarters: “English chintzes instead of brocades in the bedrooms, mare overstuffed sofas and chairs, pillows, many more lamps. Before, you never felt like curling up in the chairs,” Lady Tavistock said.

But in the great public spaces, “It’s like re-doing the bridge over the Firth of Forth to re-do a room,” she said. “Last year we replaced 150 window frames. It cost £40,000 to fix the stable roofs. We have five-year plans here. We’re on a 10-year plan for refacing the house that is costing £400,000. We open up a quarry each time we make a major structural repair.” Lady Tavistock returned to her theme of life at Woburn Abbey. “Basically, these great houses don’t change hands by abdication. They change at the end of someone’s life,” she said.

“As for me, I have no emotional ties here. I feel like an ambassadress. It’s a job. These sorts of houses never really belong to women, either. They belong to men.” It was dark, time to go, and the mistress of Woburn moved from the office to the front door to let her visitor out. She gestured impatiently, then rang a bell for a guard. “I forgot my keys,” she said. “I’ve got a hundred keys on my chain. That’s another thing around here at our hpuse, we’re locked in at night.”