by The Dowager Duchess of Rutland, who has died aged 86, was the widow of the 10th Duke of Rutland and hand-catalon of Belvoir Castle for more than 40 years.
She was the daughter of Charles Sweeny, a fashionable and relaxed American, known as a famous amateur golfer, and Margaret Whigham, later the scandalous Duchess of Argyll. In her day, she was well known as a debutante and society beauty, although she was overshadowed by her more formidable mother, which created a certain shyness and reserve in her. She was always a typical Duchess, dressed by Norman Hartnell, and would support numerous charities.
Frances Helen Sweeny was born in London on 19 June 1937 and was baptized as a Roman Catholic at the Brompton Oratory, her mother converted to Catholicism when she married Charles Sweeny in 1933. But it was Elizabeth Duckworth, her mother’s cook, who was raised Mostly Frances. since Margaret Sweeny was not a participating mother.
Frances attended finishing schools in Florence and Paris and was presented at court by her mother in March 1955, by which time debutantes no longer wore white dresses and ostrich feathers.
She soon became famous as one of the most beautiful girls of the season, her photo decorating the society’s pages. She was given a ball for 500 guests at Claridge’s. She made a faithful appearance at Royal Ascot (in 1956) with her mother, who married the Duke of Argyll after divorcing her father in 1951.
In 1958 Frances and her mother joined the 10th Duke of Rutland (who had divorced his first wife Anne Cumming Bell two years earlier) on a six-week tour of the Middle East. No sooner had she returned than her engagement to the Duke was announced. This attracted particular publicity as Frances was a Roman Catholic, while the Duke of Rutland was an Anglican.
They married at Caxton Hall on 15 May 1958, and Frances wore a blush pink organza cocktail dress with ostrich feather lining, designed by Norman Hartnell. It was agreed that their children would be brought up as Catholics.
The Duke was 18 years her senior, and Frances became Britain’s youngest Duchess at just 20 years old. A few weeks after their wedding they put on a fashion show at Belvoir de Hardy Amies and Worth clothes, in aid of the Melton Division Conservative Association, which was attended by 700. guests. In 1959 she co-hosted the United Charities Fair with the Duke, at Londonderry House and in April 1962 she chaired the Rose Ball at Grosvenor House.
The Rutlands were included in royal events such as Princess Alexandra’s wedding ball at Windsor Castle in 1963, and Frances could be found sitting with the Duchess of Buccleuch and the Duchess of Fife at the State Opening of Parliament, in the days when peers attended completely. evening dress and tiaras.
In 1969 she was guest of honor at Queen Charlotte’s Ball at Grosvenor House. Although the Duke did not like the late Queen – he once cut her a ball, and refused to dance with her – the Rutlands entertained the monarch at Belvoir in December 1997, when she came to inspect the Queen’s Royal Lancers after becoming a Colonel. -in-Commander for 50 years.
Belvoir Castle was a huge undertaking, with hundreds of rooms. There were still hooks outside the dining room where guests would hang their overcoats as they made their way to dinner through glacially cold corridors.
Each year the Duchess would oversee a massive spring cleaning operation, with her and her staff distributing many liters of vinegar, traffic floor polish, Careful (for stonework), Sprint (for mirrors) and Sparkle Plenty (for chandeliers). She personally prepared the castle’s valuable porcelain sets, and polished and waxed 15,000 books (10 books every three hours).
She bred Arabian horses at Belvoir for many years, and at Arabian Horse Association shows fined £25 on those who clapped too much to encourage the horses and boo the judges. She received the applause shocked.
She restored the four-acre Spring Garden at Belvoir, originally created in 1800, which was famous before the First World War. She meant cutting back a jungle of brambles, and she welcomed the badgers who brought them home.
The Rutlands entertained widely, with guests flocking to the castle, although the Duke’s aunt Lady Diana Cooper declined in old age. On receiving the invitation she said: “For eternity, yes. Not for the weekend!”
The Duke had only one daughter, Charlotte, from his previous marriage, so there was some excitement when Frances produced an heir, David, the current Duke, on 8 May 1959. The birth was not without problems, however, and some of the distance. which was created between Frances and her mother because of Margaret Argyll’s advice about the midwife attending the birth.
But soon there were more serious issues. Mother and daughter became entangled, and Frances was deeply embarrassed by the long legal battle between her mother and the Duke of Argyll. As early as 1959, the Duke of Argyll banned Margaret from her Scottish seat, Inverary Castle, and launched into lurid divorce proceedings, recently dramatized for television in the BBC mini-series A Very British Scandal.
Many assertions have been made about Margaret’s extensive sex life, although there is plenty of evidence that the Duke was determined to blacken her name, and that he broke into her London home and stole her diaries. A Polaroid photo that has emerged shows Margaret wearing only her signature three-string necklace of pearls, with a “headless” man, whose identity has been the subject of speculation for years.
Amongst all these, there was a court case regarding the heirs of the Argyll family. Frances unwittingly took part in October 1962, when the Duke of Argyll claimed to still have five Swiss paintings he had given her as wedding presents. They were held in Inverora Castle.
As if that were not enough, in 1966, her father Charles Sweeny was granted a divorce from his wife, Arden Sneed, a New York model, who is only five years older than Frances, on the grounds of desertion, the judge exercising discretion regarding Sweeny’s adultery. after the abandonment. And in 1968 there was another court case, in which a trust fund set up by Frances’ maternal grandfather, George Hay Whigham, chairman of British Celanese, was changed so that 75 per cent went to the Duchess of Argyll and 25 per cent to Frances. and her brother.
Three more children were born to the Rutlands – daughter Theresa in 1962, something of a wild child in the 1980s (who was once fined for driving two miles in a “passionate embrace” as well as her boyfriend on the M6 for failing to see the blue. flashing lights of a police car in pursuit). Their second son Robert died of leukemia, aged two, in March 1964, and in 1965 their third son, Edward, was born.
They had bad luck with burglars. In December 1960 the Duchess had diamonds worth £28,000 stolen from her, either on the train from Grantham to London or from her flat. Her jewel case was removed from her suitcase.
In 1965 another cache of £4,500 worth of jewelery was stolen from their flat in Belgravia, and in 1968 a painting entitled The Frozen Thames by William Marlow disappeared.
The Duchess courted controversy in 1969 when she made the valid point, at a hospital careers exhibition in Nottingham, that nurses were overworked and underpaid, had to climb over beds to get to patients and were on duty often for at least 36 hours. extension. She was involved in local politics, chairing the Melton Conservative Association for a period, although she was politically at odds with the local MP, Alan Duncan.
Despite years of not speaking between mother and daughter, Frances and her brother came to Margaret Argyll’s rescue when her health failed and she lost her money. They paid for her to be cared for at St George’s Nursing Home in Pimlico, where she lived with well-known people of her age such as Loelia Lindsay (former Duchess of Westminster) and actress Evelyn Lay.
Her mother died in 1994 and Frances attended the funeral on Farm Street, journalist Tim Heald noting that she chose the readings carefully: “A time of love, and a time of hate; in time of war, and in time of peace” (Ecclesiastes 3).
The Duke of Rutland died in 1999, after which the Dowager Duchess moved to nearby Belvoir Lodge.
The Dowager Duchess of Rutland, born 19 June 1937, died 21 January 2024
