Ramblings
Saunterings
Ramblings: about North-West England
Ramblings is a set of articles about North-West England, of unknown authorship and
indeterminate date, believed to have been written for amusement on rainy days,
which are not unknown in North-West England.
24. The Duke of Westminster’s A to Z
When the dear 6th Duke of Westminster sadly departed from us he left his estate
and title to Hugh, the 7th Duke of Westminster. As the latter was a mere stripling of 25 the 6th Duke also left
an A to Z of advice on how to cope with unwanted and unwarranted celebrity and wealth. Here it is:
A is for Aunt Miriam, whom you have never met because she has been incarcerated in
the east wing since she set fire to Harold Macmillan’s trousers after he rejected her advances in the summer of 1962.
Poor Harold never recovered from this incident. He was still rather off-kilter when in the
notorious ‘Night of the Long Knives’ he decapitated seven members of Cabinet.
B is for boots. It is jolly muddy around our little country house at Abbeystead.
Since you have infinite wealth buy
the best boots there are. I recommend Le Chameau’s Jameson Unisex Standard at £385. You buy one and get one free.
Jolly generous. I’ve said ‘unisex’ because I’m not sure of your inclinations in that direction. We never did have
that chat. Sorry.
C is for charities. You will need to be patron of a few hundred of them, to
show your commitment to society, whatever that is. I used to enjoy the board meetings of the Society for the
Preservation of English Real Men, which aims to stick up for men in our increasingly female-dominated world. The
japes we got up to! But it may not be your kind of thing?
D is for Daniel Snow, who is one of your brothers-in-law. He’s in television, which
is something ordinary people look at. If he turns up with cameras and what-not turf him out. People have no
business looking at what we do here.
E is for Eaton Hall, our home in Cheshire.
It is jolly big. You'll need to get more familiar with it than I managed.
Staff hide away. One girl had a five months holiday there. I
eventually found her wandering in the old stables, where she said that she had become lost and was
living on a diet of mice and hay.
Unfortunately, the wretch was unable to resume her duties, which involved the daily combing of the Duchess’s wigs.
F is for fishing, an activity for the real English gentlemen. Your great-great-grandfather
Arthur – known to all as Bendor or ‘bend or’ or azure, a reference to the family armorials lost in the famous case
of Scrope v Grosvenor heard before the Court of Chivalry in 1389 – was a jolly good fisherman. They say that in his
old age, as he spent more and more time standing in the river, he took on the characteristics of his beloved fish.
But not sufficiently so, for he drowned whilst grappling with a large trout. Even so, after his partial cremation
he was considered to be delicious.
G is for George, of whom you are the godfather. I need hardly say that it is
your duty to inculcate in him the habits of the English gentleman (his parents will be much too busy explaining
the complexities of royal life). In particular, the sooner he is given a gun to shoot grouse the better. If
he should inadvertently dispose of some of the lesser members of the royal family then I am sure that
his parents wouldn’t mind.
H is for Horse and Hound, my complimentary subscription to which should
pass on to you. It has been in the family since the magazine began in 1884. It is nearly all about
horses nowadays, with little about hounds – although there are jolly interesting pieces about fox-hunting
from time to time. Essential reading. My dear wife is a close friend of the editor, Lady Levershoome.
They were at Eton together. The teachers never noticed them but the boys did.
I is for inheritance, which is all yours. If your elder sisters should come
knocking asking for fair shares then tell them that fairness has nothing to do with it. That equality
nonsense does not apply to dukedoms, and it never will as long as esteemed eminences such as our dear friends
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Dallyrymple have a say in the matter.
J is for je ne sais quoi. We superior men have that indefinable quality
that raises us above lesser men. As with a balloon, it is better not to try to pin it down.
K is for knickerbockers. I leave you four wardrobes full of knickerbockers.
They were my favourite garments for the lower limbs until they unaccountably fell out of fashion, the
garments, that is, not my limbs. I tried to make knickerbocker glories with them but with only modest success.
If you cannot find a use for them take them along to the next golf club jumble sale.
L is for Loelia Ponsonby, the most exotic leaf on the family tree. She was the
third wife of the second Duke, but the marriage, despite getting off to a flying start with Winston Churchill
as best man, was described as “a definition of unadulterated hell” by James Lees-Milne (whoever he was). After
her divorce, Loelia became a needlewoman and magazine editor. She sewed every copy herself.
She is known for saying “Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30
has been a failure in life” – but what the age of the bus has to do with it, I don’t know.
M is for marriage, which I am sorry to say you must contemplate if only to
perpetuate the dukedom in the traditional manner. The only advice I can give is to avoid anyone called Loelia,
if such a person exists.
N is for nodding acquaintance, on which you must be with all you see about the
estate. A nod is enough. It shows that you have acknowledged their existence, which is all they need
to lighten their dreary lives. On no account address anyone by name. It is impossible to remember them
all and mistakes can cause untold misery. I was once mangling with a young maid in the laundry and at a
sensitive moment moaned “Oh, Joan”, causing Jean to storm off leaving my underwear unmangled.
O is for Ouija board. You will find mine in the twelfth bedroom. It has
been a great comfort to me, to be able in times of stress to seek advice from my forebears. If you ever
think I can help please get in touch.
P is for parsimony. Look after the pennies and the billions will look
after themselves, my granny used to say. Ordinary people know that we are jolly rich but they don’t
like us to flaunt it. It is better not to offer to pay for anything if you are ever in the unlikely situation
that a payment is required. Ordinary people are, I find, extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to
show that they are momentarily on a par with us.
Q is for queue. This is probably something that you will never encounter yourself but
you may be puzzled by the behaviour of ordinary people. It seems that when they want something that is not immediately
available they stand behind someone who has already wanted it. Very strange! Once, when I lost my valet at Covent
Garden, I had to stand in a queue for the lavatory. The unaccustomed delay led to an unfortunate accident. On
balance, though, sitting in the foyer in wet knickerbockers was preferable to sitting through the third act of Gotterdammerung.
R is for rattlesnake. I trust that you will look after my pet rattlesnake.
I found it great company on those dreadful occasions when we were visited by people from something called
Natural England. They go on and on about things we’re not supposed to kill on the estate. What do they
think an estate is for? However, they were always charmed by the rattlesnake. Once it escaped during
luncheon and the Minister for the Environment nearly stuck her fork in it, which would have been the end
of her, and no bad thing too.
S is for shooting stick. I have been given many of these but I haven’t
managed to shoot anything with any of them.
T is for tweed, essential wear for all occasions, even, or especially, in bed.
My father, who was one of identical twins, was known as Tweedledee because he was not dum, unlike his twin sister.
U is for upper crust. Someone who was ushered off the moor at gun-point shouted at
me that I was a member of the ‘upper crust’. I asked our chief cook what on earth that meant. He said that it’s
better than being a member of the lower crust or even the side crust. Since then I have never dared to eat
the crust of any loaf.
V is for virtus non stemma, the family motto. As you know, it means ‘virtue not
pedigree’. Whichever of our ancestors devised this motto may have had a great sense of irony but it is best to
assume that he just got his Latin back to front.
W is for Westminster, where we have a palace and 650 specially appointed people to
work on our behalf. However, some of these are distressingly independent-minded.
The like-minded ones, however, are always jolly good company for a chin-wag and a touch of venison.
X is for xenodochium. This is the room in the servants’ quarters at Abbeystead
where we quarantine any strangers found wandering on the estate. They keep saying they have a right to roam,
whatever that is. The ones with binoculars are particularly shifty. Our head groundsman returns them to
Preston Lost Property Office on the first Monday of the month.
Y is for yesterday, my favourite day.
Z is for sleep, of which we deserve plenty. The third Duke was a great sleeper. He usually
needed eight hours sleep a day, and nine hours a night. He fell asleep on the eve of the war in 1914. He awoke
eight days later, a couple of hours before his funeral. The Duchess thought of the many great and good people who had travelled
far for the occasion despite the sombre national mood and decided not to disappoint them because of a technicality.
Photos:
The Dukes of Westminster.
Eaton Hall.
Loelia and the second Duke
The family motto.
Comments:
• I'd advise you to emphasise that these 26 paragraphs
are entirely fictional before the lawyers begin sharpening their quills.
• Between you and me, I don't think they are entirely entirely fictional because
I've spotted a few nuggets of non-fiction: about Daniel Snow, Eaton Hall, the Scrope v Grosvenor case, George,
Loelia Ponsonby (L seems to be entirely factual apart from the bit about the magazine), and the family
motto.
Ramblings
Saunterings
© John Self, Drakkar Press, 2024-
Top photo: Rainbow over Kisdon in Swaledale;
Bottom photo: Ullswater