Betjeman’s mistress leaves £10m fortune to adopted nieces
POET Laureate Sir John Betjeman referred to his mistress, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, as his ‘London wife’ and she was at his bedside when he died.
However, I can reveal that Lady Elizabeth, who died last September aged 92, left nothing in her will to the poet’s son, Paul Betjeman, or his grandchildren.
Instead, she left her entire £ 10 million fortune to her two adopted nieces.
‘It is an unexpected windfall for them,’ says a friend of the family.
Lady Elizabeth was the daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire and served as lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. She is said to have introduced the Queen’s sister to her future husband, Antony Armstrong- Jones.
She was Betjeman’s lover for 33 years and their relationship remained an open secret until 1973, when he and his wife, Penelope Chetwode, moved into a property five doors away.
He had met Lady Elizabeth at a dinner in Mayfair, which was delayed when one of the guests failed to show up; he was Guy Burgess, who had just defected to Moscow.
Lady Elizabeth had no children, so left her estate of £9.9 million to be shared between her nieces, the writer Isabella Tree and Esther Cayzer- Colvin. The pair were adopted by her sister, Lady Anne Tree, and her artist brother-in-law, Michael, an heir to a Chicago department-store fortune.
Issy is married to landowner Sir Charles Burrell and they live at his 13-bedroom Knepp Castle in West Sussex. She has spoken of her adoption, saying: ‘You definitely have a sense of fate that stays with you. I was incredibly lucky to find a loving family.’
Esther married Jamie, who changed his surname from Colvin to Cayzer-Colvin at the behest of his shipping magnate grandfather Lord Cayzer. He duly altered his will in Jamie’s favour — once his name had been double-barrelled.
Lady Elizabeth left all her correspondence with Betjeman to the Chatsworth House Trust, at the stately home where she grew up in Derbyshire.
But she specified a list of items not to go to the trust, including a drawing of two teddy bears and a list of poems, including one with the intriguing first line: ‘He told me I ought to varnish my nails.’