The ‘other wife’ of poet John Betjeman
Aristocrat b April 24, 1926 d September 15, 2018
Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, who has died aged 92, was the daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, a childhood friend of the Queen, a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret and, famously, the long-standing companion and soulmate of the poet laureate John Betjeman.
They met in 1951 at a dinner in Mayfair. Dinner was delayed when one of the guests, Guy Burgess, failed to attend, having just defected to Moscow. Though the willowy Cavendish was some 20 years younger than Betjeman (and taller), and he was already married to his wife Penelope, Cavendish became, as Betjeman’s daughter Candida Lycett Green put it, his ‘‘beloved other wife’’. Unflatteringly, he nicknamed her ‘‘Feeble’’; in fact, though ostensibly rather shy, she was anything but.
For some 30 years until his death in 1984, Cavendish’s mother’s house at Edensor on the Chatsworth estate became the poet’s second home. Penelope knew about her, but neither woman wanted to force the issue. Betjeman told friends he felt torn between the two, but could give up neither.
Their relationship remained an open secret among friends until 1973 when Betjeman moved with his wife to a house five doors away from Cavendish in Chelsea and their menage a trois was suddenly all over the media.
Cavendish never married and always refused to discuss her relationship with Betjeman. She did not co-operate with his daughter, Candida, when she edited and published her father’s letters in 1995, and she also declined to help Bevis Hillier, Betjeman’s official biographer.
Their letters to each other have been placed under embargo until 2034. So the precise nature of their friendship remains a matter of some speculation.
Bevis Hillier claimed that ‘‘when John was with Elizabeth, she ministered to his comfort in a way that Penelope rarely did’’, and in a 2001 interview Lady Wilhelmine Harrod, who had been briefly engaged to Betjeman, spoke of a letter she had received from the poet in 1974. ‘‘I have lived so long apart from Penelope, that Elizabeth now loves me more than anybody else in the world,’’ wrote Betjeman. ‘‘I depend on Elizabeth for food for my body and mind . . . Elizabeth has given up marriage and a family with her own children out of love for me.’’
In fact, as revealed much later, the menage a trois was, for many years, a menage a quatre. In a 2007 article in The Spectator, Andrew Geddes claimed that throughout the 1960s and 1970s Betjeman had a third girlfriend, Andrew’s mother Margie. According to Geddes, the sexual element of Betjeman’s relationship with Cavendish, if there had been one, had cooled by the early 1970s.
Betjeman’s letters also reveal the fun, and intellectual companionship, which his relationship with Cavendish afforded him. She was a highly intelligent woman and, like him, a strong Anglican. He is said to have told friends that without her he would never again write anything of consequence. Moreover, as the daughter of a duke and part of the royal circle, she also appealed to his social aspirations.
When Betjeman was awarded the Duff Cooper prize for his Collected Poems in 1958, the presentation was made by Princess Margaret, whose speech, referring to the recipient as ‘‘a friend of mine’’, moved him to tears.
Maurice Bowra, who chaired the judges, was prompted to pen the mock-Betjeman verse: ‘‘Green with lust and sick with shyness, Let me lick your lacquered toes. Gosh, O gosh, your royal highness, Put your finger up my nose . . .’’
Elizabeth Georgiana Alice Cavendish was born three days after the current Queen, and became a close childhood friend of both young princesses.
It was through Cavendish that Princess Margaret met Antony Armstrong-Jones, though Cavendish was horrified when the princess told her of their engagement. According to the princess’s official biographer, Christopher Warwick, Cavendish asked her: ‘‘Are you sure you’re able to put up with his bohemian way of life?’’ ‘‘By ‘bohemian’ I think Lady Elizabeth was using an umbrella term covering all aspects of his life as she knew it,’’ Warwick said. ‘‘She was a very great friend of his, remember, and certainly knew that he had lots of gay and bisexual friends who went to his parties in Pimlico.’’
From childhood, Cavendish developed a keen sense of public good and concern for the less privileged. A magistrate from 1961, she served in the 1980s as chairman of North Westminster magistrates and of Inner London Juvenile Courts. She also spent 10 years as a member of the Advertising Standards Authority, was chairman of the Cancer Research Campaign, a lay member of the Bar Council, and a member of the Press Complaints Commission.
She retired permanently to Edensor, where she lived with her jack russell, Sally, and enjoyed sewing tapestries. – Telegraph Group