US Edition The 11th Duke of Devonshire, who died on Monday aged 84, achieved a lifetime's ambition by securing the future of his family seat, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, making it self-financing while sacrificing none of its nobility; he also served as a Conservative minister and was an enthusiastic patron of the Turf.
Humorous, tolerant, self-deprecating and mildly eccentric, the Duke was a man of constant good nature. He was neither spoilt nor the least arrogant. His motto, he claimed, was "never make a fuss". He put a high value on good manners and in 1991 he founded the Polite Society after a taxi driver whom he had thanked for taking him home "put his gnarled old hand on my gnarled old hand and said: 'You've no idea the difference a kind word makes'."
He was often heard to observe that the trouble with being a duke is that "everyone thinks you are a blithering idiot". But to the hundreds working on the estate he seemed a sensitive and generous employer, always willing to take the trouble to help others. In 1989 he announced that he would personally pay the poll tax of all his employees and pensioners.
Thanks to the dedication of the Duke and of his Duchess (the former Deborah Mitford), Chatsworth has become one of the nation's most popular tourist attractions, with half a million visitors a year.
The first house at Chatsworth was started in 1552 by Sir William Cavendish and his wife "Bess of Hardwick", as she became known, but was rebuilt by the first Duke (1617-1707), mainly on designs by Talman and Thomas Archer. It was completed under the 6th Duke (1790-1858) by Jeffry Wyatt.
Lavishly decorated, the house contains a huge collection of furniture and an eclectic and extensive art collection including works by Landseer, Lely, Lawrence, Rembrandt, Van Dyke, Hals and Holbein - as well as more recent works by Freud, Gwen John and Elisabeth Frink. It also contains the greatest collection of old master drawings anywhere in the world outside the Queen's collection at Windsor. It sits in 1,000 acres of deer park, 105 acres of garden and 36,000 acres of estate.
The Duchess of Devonshire once estimated that Chatsworth's 175 rooms occupy more space than 365 average-sized three-bedroom houses, observing in consequence that it was a bad place to housetrain a puppy. Her husband liked to list its 1.3 acres of roof, 3,426 feet of passages, 17 staircases, 56 lavatories and 359 doors, all lit by 2,084 light bulbs.
In 1984 Chatsworth cost an estimated £5,000 a day to run, but when Andrew Cavendish inherited the estate and titles on his father's untimely death in 1950, there seemed no way in which the estate could be made to pay its way.
During the war Chatsworth had been rented out to a girls' boarding school which left it shabby and run down, the "two old housemaids" who had been left in charge having found proper upkeep beyond their powers. But worse still was the state of the Devonshires' finances. The Cavendish family motto - Tuto Cavendo (safety through caution) - notwithstanding, the 10th Duke had been unable effectively to arrange the inheritance, and his son was landed with crippling death duties of 80 per cent of the estate. The sum required was £7 million.
From the outset, though, the Duke and Duchess were determined to keep Chatsworth going both as a family home and as part of the nation's heritage. It was not easy. Neighbouring Hardwick Hall - the great Elizabethan manor house, "more glass than wall" - had to be given to the nation as payment in kind. Huge areas of land were sold, and 12 works of art were handed over in lieu of taxes, including a Rembrandt (one of three) which was later found to have been merely "school of". Negotiations dragged on for 17 years, and there were times when the new Duke almost "ceased to believe that an acceptable solution could be found. There was talk of the house becoming an offshoot of the V & A".
But the death duties were eventually paid off, and in 1981 the Duke established the Chatsworth House Trust, a charitable foundation initially financed by the sale of treasures, principal among them Poussin's Holy Family, which went to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Income from the trust and receipts from visitors to the house meant that the Duke was able to make it self-financing without any help from the taxpayer.
One of the things that made Chatsworth so special under the benevolent stewardship of the 11th Duke and his Duchess was the way it expressed the character of its owners and the fact that they maintained it as a working estate. They rejected the cheap and cheerful formula adopted by places such as Longleat and Woburn in favour of an unashamed - and highly individual - emphasis on quality.
The Duke sought in particular to update the Chatsworth collection by establishing a new line in works by modern British artists. Though he claimed to be colour-blind, and despite failing sight (he developed glaucoma at a comparatively early age), he had an excellent eye for art, and during his early forays into collecting bought works by Lucian Freud and Gwen John long before they became fashionable.
He also purchased works by Ruskin Spear and L S Lowry, Duncan Grant, Rodrigo Moynihan and Elisabeth Frink as well as by lesser-known artists; and he contributed to Chatsworth's public collection by the acquisition of illustrated botanical books dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Yet preserving Chatsworth's 500-year heritage was not how either the Duke or Duchess had originally anticipated spending their lives. She expected to be "a publisher's wife"; Andrew Cavendish was the second son, and took it for granted that he would work for "Uncle Harold" at Macmillan's. His father had warned him that he would inherit nothing. But when his older brother, the Marquess of Hartington, heir to Chatsworth and the dukedom, was killed at the end of the Second World War, he became heir to the title and to vast estates which included not only Chatsworth, but the estates of Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire and Lismore Castle in Ireland.
Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish was born on January 2 1920, the younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. His mother, born Lady Mary Gascoyne-Cecil, was daughter of the 4th Marquess of Salisbury.
The Devonshire fortunes had been established in the 16th century by Sir William Cavendish, who had been awarded monastic lands for his services to King Henry VIII and bought the estate of Chatsworth. His widow, Bess of Hardwick, bequeathed Chatsworth to her son, Henry Cavendish; he sold it to his younger brother William, who became the 1st Earl of Devonshire in 1618. His grandson, also William, was granted a dukedom in 1694 as reward for his part in bringing William of Orange and his wife Mary to the English throne after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Devonshires also held the titles of Earl of Devonshire, Marquess of Hartington, Earl of Burlington, Baron Cavendish of Hardwick and Baron Cavendish of Keighley.
Andrew Cavendish was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge - though he freely admitted to having wasted his time at both. "I was a horrible boy, lazy beyond belief, dirty, filthy, useless. Cambridge was a washout. Too near Newmarket." He was, though, proud that the Devonshires had produced five generations of Etonians, none of whom had been awarded a colour for games.
Tall and spare in shape, and always elegantly dressed, at Cambridge Andrew Cavendish acquired a reputation as a dandy. His interest in matters sartorial, he often explained, was a reaction against his father's studied lack of interest in clothes which amounted almost to a "perversion". Recruited at Cambridge by the tailors Jarvis and Hamilton, he remained loyal for the rest of his life, even insisting on using them during the Second World War instead of the brigade tailors, though sometimes he wore clothes of his own design. One of his famous prejudices, against the word "jacket", inspired the designer Hardy Amies to dedicate some lines to him: "A face above a dinner jacket?/ You'd smack it/ In what glory would it float/ Were it above a dinner coat?"
It was the Army that turned him, as he said, "from a filthy useless boy into something vaguely approaching a man". He served as a major in the Coldstream Guards in the Second World War, winning an MC in 1944 after a notably gallant episode in Italy.
On July 27 that year, Capt the Lord Andrew Cavendish was commanding No 4 Company, the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards, when it was ordered to capture a dominating feature south of Strada. While Cavendish went forward on reconnaissance, his men came under heavy shellfire which continued after his return. He rallied his men, ensured that the wounded received attention, and then led them to take their objective, where he consolidated their position. For the next 24 hours they had the enemy on three sides of them, and were cut off by fire on the fourth side; they had neither food nor water.
According to the citation, Cavendish "kept up the morale of his very tired troops by his endless cheerfulness, energy and disregard of danger. After 36 most difficult and dangerous hours his company was relieved having held its position under the most difficult conditions . . . [His] example and leadership unquestionably was largely responsible for both capturing and holding the feature, whilst his personal gallantry was an inspiration to his men".
In 1941 Cavendish had married Deborah Freeman-Mitford, youngest daughter of the 2nd Lord Redesdale, with no expectations. His elder brother, William, Lord Hartington, was the heir and his father was still relatively young.
Shortly after the ceremony, Deborah wrote to her sister Diana, the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley: "I expect we shall be terrificly [sic] poor, but think how nice it will be to have as many dogs and things as one likes without anyone to say they must get off the furniture. I do wish you weren't in prison."
"She is on the bossy side, of course," observed the Duke later, "but I've always liked that in a woman." He admitted that sometimes, however, he could be a little jealous of the Mitford "cult": "Did you see the musical about them?" he asked an interviewer in 1999. "I called it La Triviata."
Things changed dramatically for Andrew Cavendish after his brother was killed in 1944, leaving no heir, to be followed in 1950 by the death of their father, aged only 55.
Andrew Cavendish had unsuccessfully contested Chesterfield for the Conservatives in 1945 and again in 1950. The new Duke of Devonshire took his seat the same year on the Conservative benches of the House of Lords.
From 1960 until the fall of the Conservatives in October 1964, he served as a minister in Harold Macmillan's government, first as parliamentary undersecretary, then as Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations and later as Minister of State for Colonial Affairs. The Duke attributed these appointments to "gross nepotism" on Macmillan's part: "I think we'd given him some good shooting." And three years ago he claimed that he had secured his promotion as a minister - and his appointment to the Privy Council - by offering friends membership of Pratt's, the club bought by his father in 1938 (once, when asked if he belonged to Pratt's, the Duke replied: "In fact, it belongs to me"). Nevertheless he was a conscientious minister who travelled widely in the Commonwealth.
Although the Duke did not continue an active career in politics, in 1981 he caused a mild political sensation by announcing that he had joined the Social Democratic Party for "romantic" reasons. Despite his new allegiance, he caused further surprise a few years later when he joined the Eurosceptic Bruges Group. In 2000, after losing his seat on the crossbenches in the "reformed" House of Lords, he announced that he was seriously considering standing as an independent on a Eurosceptic and anti-devolution platform in Chesterfield, the constituency which he had fought and lost as a Conservative years earlier. "I think the Scottish and Welsh have too much power in Westminster," he proclaimed, adding disarmingly: "I don't know who would form my campaign team. Most people wouldn't touch me with a bargepole." In the event, he decided he was too old to stand.
In 1985, when giving evidence at the Old Bailey at the trial of a son of a former butler who had been accused of stealing cheques from him, the Duke had to confess to having showered gifts on a series of girlfriends over the years. It was, he later admitted, "a salutary experience and very painful for my family. The only consolation was that I didn't attempt to lie. I think it would be fair to say that the Cavendish line have something of a reputation for philandering right back to the first Duke in the 17th century".
Even though for many years they were often apart - the Duchess living at Chatsworth, while the Duke tended to prefer their house in Mayfair - the Devonshires' marriage was a happy one. On the occasion of their Golden Wedding in 1991, they gave a huge tea party at Chatsworth to which they invited 1,000 Derbyshire couples who were also celebrating Golden Weddings that year. "I think the secret of our success has been tolerance," said the Duke. "Stick it out, and you will get your reward."
The Duke seldom travelled abroad. He spent a week every year at the Cavendish Hotel, Eastbourne, the town which the family had developed as a resort in the 19th century. "I like everything about Eastbourne," he said. "I like the pier. I like the theatre. It puts on jolly shows like A Bedful of Foreigners and Run for Your Wife. You can take a boat trip around the lighthouse. There's a miniature railway and, best of all, on the front, really good military bands. You can't beat the English seaside and a really tiptop military band."
For more than half a century the Duke enthusiastically maintained his family's long tradition of owning racehorses (in the first half of his life he was an enthusiastic gambler, both on the racetrack and in casinos). At a meeting of the Jockey Club in October 1762, the 4th Duke (1720-1764) had registered the Devonshire straw colours. Some 40 years earlier the 2nd Duke (1671-1729) had owned the great Flying Childers. The 11th Duke, who was elected to the Jockey Club in 1956, will always be remembered as the owner of Park Top, one of the best middle-distance fillies of the second half of the 20th century.
Park Top won the Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot, but was at her best as a five-year-old in 1969, winning the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Coronation Cup at Epsom; she also won two races in France, but was beaten three parts of a length in the Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe.
Kept in training as a six-year-old in 1970, Park Top's last appearance was in the Prix Royallieu at Longchamp. Although a hot favourite on the Pari-Mutuel, she could do no better than dead heat for third place; and, as Lester Piggott brought her back to the unsaddling enclosure, the French racegoers booed her loudly. The Duke turned to face the crowd, raising two fingers.
In tribute to his great mare, the Duke wrote A Romance of The Turf - Park Top, a charming book first published in 1976. Only last Saturday, the Duke's colt Bachelor Duke ran in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, finishing seventh.
As well as running horses on the flat, the Duke had jumpers in training with the late Fulke Walwyn at Saxon House, Lambourn. The best of them was Gay George, who won the Scottish Champion Hurdle at Ayr in 1982.
The Duke was Vice-Lieutenant of the County of Derby from 1957 to 1987, and among the many public offices he held were the presidencies of the Royal Hospital and Home for Incurables, and of the Derbyshire Boy Scouts' Association.
He was also president of the Building Societies' Association from 1954 to 1961, and chairman of the Grand Council of the British Empire Cancer Campaign in 1956. He was Mayor of Buxton from 1952 to 1954, and president of the Lawn Tennis Association from 1955 to 1961. From 1966 to 1969 he was a steward of the Jockey Club. He became a trustee of the National Gallery in 1960. He was elected Chancellor of Manchester University in 1965.
From his father he inherited a great feeling of affinity with the Jewish community, and he was president for some years of the Conservative Friends of Israel. In 1991 he held a gathering at Chatsworth to promote peace in the Middle East.
The Duke of Devonshire was sworn of the Privy Council in 1964 and appointed Knight of the Garter in 1996.
He had recently completed his memoirs, Accidents of Fortune, which will be published later this summer.
Andrew Devonshire was not a religious man. "I can't believe in another world," he once said, "though I shall certainly go to Hell if there is one." Yet he was not afraid of death: "Wonderful things have happened in my life - it's time my son had his turn. When I was young I used to like casinos, fast women and God knows what. Now my idea of Heaven, apart from being at Chatsworth, is to sit in the hall of Brooks's, having tea."
The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had a son and two daughters. Their son Peregrine, the Marquess of Hartington, born in 1944, succeeds to the Devonshire titles.