Cavendish, Lady Elizabeth: Poet Laureate inspired by love of a Lady
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Lady Elizabeth Cavendish: Poet Laureate inspired by love of a Lady
Vivienne Smith explores the love affair between Sir John Betjeman, one of Britain’s best-loved poets, and the Chatsworth aristocrat, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish.
  
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And Derbyshire can lay claim to be a key source of his inspiration, as it was the home county of a great love of his life, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish.
Born in North London on August 28, 1906, John was the only child of Ernest and Bess Betjeman.
His father was the third generation to run the family business, which manufactured furniture and luxury goods for the home.
One of the top-selling items when John was a youngster was a metal device called a tantalus, which his grandfather had invented. It locked down the tops of decanters to prevent servants from pilfering the drink.
As a young man, John proved a great disappointment to his father when he declined to join the family firm for, already, he had dreams of being a published poet.
However, after three years studying English at Oxford, he left without a degree and became a preparatory schoolmaster before joining the staff of The Architectural Review in 1930.
Three years later, Betjeman married his girlfriend, Penelope, and they went on to have a son and daughter.
But, although the 1930s saw the publication of his first two collections of poems, it was not until after the war that the writer’s career really began to take off.
Betjeman’s marriage, meanwhile, was proving to be stormy. On one occasion, even his beloved teddy bear, Archie, was drawn into a marital row.
Betjeman had had the bear since the age of three and had even taken him to Oxford with him.
In fact, Archie was later immortalised by Evelyn Waugh as Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear in the novel Brideshead Revisited.
During the row in question, Penelope apparently threw poor Archie out of the window, much to her husband’s distress.
The couple found it impossible to live together without quarrelling and, by the early 1950s, they amicably agreed to separate although remained very close throughout the rest of their lives.
It was around this time that the future Poet Laureate met the young woman who was to have such a great impact on his life.
Lady Elizabeth Georgina Alice Cavendish was the daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. The tall, attractive 25-year-old had recently been appointed a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret.
She and Betjeman first met on May 29, 1951, at a dinner party in London held by Lady Pamela Berry, a leading political hostess of the day.
It turned out to be an historic occasion in more ways than one, for also on the guest list that evening was a Foreign Office official called Guy Burgess, who delayed proceedings by failing to show up.
The following day it came to light that he and fellow civil servant Donald Maclean had absconded to Russia. Both men had been spying for the KGB.
On a personal level, this social engagement had even more momentous consequences for John Betjeman. Although he and Lady Elizabeth never exchanged a word all evening, it was a case of love at first sight. Their subsequent friendship developed into a love affair which lasted until the poet’s death.
Despite being 20 years his junior, the Duke’s daughter became both Betjeman’s rock and his muse and, in her company, he became a regular visitor to the Peak District.
Elizabeth’s widowed mother, the Dowager Duchess, lived at Moor View, in the village of Edensor, on the Chatsworth estate. Over the next 30 years, the place became like a second home to Betjeman.
Built between the wars for Chatsworth’s head gardener, the house was located at the top of the village where, as the name suggests, views of the nearby moorlands could be enjoyed.
As a champion of Victorian architecture, the poet had no complaints about Edensor, although he frequently spoke out against modern buildings he disapproved of.
During a visit to Derbyshire in the summer of 1955, for instance, he criticised the new power station then being built at Willington.
That June, Betjeman attended a fete in aid of the restoration of Foremark Church. As he stood in the churchyard taking in the pastoral scene towards Repton, the writer was horrified to see a blot on the landscape.
He soon voiced his objections in his regular column in The Spectator, complaining that the power station’s clean, modern lines were “mercilessly destroying the gentle skyline”.
Betjeman’s relationship with Lady Elizabeth, meanwhile, was blowing hot and cold. Not wanting to break up his marriage, the Duke’s daughter was trying hard to keep her distance.
This prompted Betjeman to write a personal poem for her to express his feelings. As the last verse of The Cockney Amorist reads:
“I love you, oh my darling,
And what I can’t make out
Is why since you have left me
I’m somehow still about.”
Lady Elizabeth was to prove an important creative influence on the poet and, during their visits to the Peak together, he often wrote verse.
However, the only poem to be inspired by the locality was one entitled Matlock Bath.
It includes the lines:
“I raise mine eyes unto the hill.
The beetling Heights of Abraham;
The branchy trees are white with rime
In Matlock Bath this winter-time.”
“Oop in Derbyshire,” Betjeman once commented, it was rather like being in a foreign country and he was particularly struck by the religious atmosphere of Matlock Bath.
The poet said that while climbing the Heights of Abraham, he would not have been surprised to meet Moses.
Perhaps the best-known work which Betjeman produced during his trips to the county was the verse autobiography Summoned by Bells, which tells of his boyhood and life at Oxford.
Much of it was completed at Moor View during the summer and autumn of 1959. Yet, he still found time to enjoy the local countryside.
In a letter to his daughter that November, Betjeman remarked how the limestone scenery of the Derbyshire Dales was “lovely beyond words”.
Following its publication in 1960, Summoned by Bells became a best-seller, just like his volume of Collected Poems had done two years earlier.
His popularity as a poet soared.
Yet, unknown to his adoring public, Betjeman’s personal life was beset with difficulties. The problem was that he loved two women and the guilt was tearing him apart.
To a close friend the poet admitted that, if Lady Elizabeth fell in love with someone else, he would just about cope. But, without her, he would never write anything of consequence again.
Yet, equally unthinkable, was to give up his wife, Penelope, who knew all about her rival for his affections.
As Betjeman prepared his next poetry collection High and Low in 1966, he decided it was time to publish The Cockney Amorist.
Both this and a piece entitled A Lament for Moira McCavendish were inspired by his dear friend, though neither mentioned her by name.
The poem Matlock Bath was also included in the collection.
All three were later added to a new edition of his celebrated Collected Poems.
In 1969, John Betjeman received a knighthood. Three years later, on the death of Cecil Day Lewis, he was made the new Poet Laureate, to popular acclaim.
Meanwhile, his liaison with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish was about to become common knowledge.
In April 1973, the 66-year-old poet decided to set up home just a few doors away from her in Chelsea.
The gossip columns were soon full of features on the couple and they spent many hours together at Lady Elizabeth’s home.
Unfortunately, by now his health was becoming visibly affected by the onset of Parkinson’s disease.
By all accounts, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish took on the role of the poet’s carer with endless patience.
Yet, despite growing infirmity, Betjeman still made regular trips north to stay at Moor View as he had done for so many years.
While on a visit in April 1981, the poet suffered a stroke which affected his right arm and his ability to speak.
He was taken to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, where he remained for more than a month before being allowed home.
His wife, Penelope, and Lady Elizabeth apparently shared visiting duties between them by working opposite shifts.
Despite further strokes and a series of heart attacks, the Poet Laureate continued to visit Derbyshire right up to shortly before his death.
In April 1984, he spent three weeks at Chatsworth for Easter in the company of Lady Elizabeth and his teddy bear, Archie, with a nurse in attendance.
He died just a month later, on May, 19 at his home in Cornwall with his beloved companion at his side.
The most read of living poets in his day, Sir John Betjeman had become a national institution.
Yet, who knows? Without the love of the 10th Duke of Devonshire’s daughter, he might never have achieved such acclaim.
- Cavendish, Lady Elizabeth: Poet Laureate inspired by love of a Lady
- Poet Laureate inspired by love of a Lady
This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.
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