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Lady Dorothy Macmillan

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Lady Dorothy Macmillan
Lady Dorothy in 1920
Born
Dorothy Evelyn Cavendish

(1900-07-28)28 July 1900
Died21 May 1966(1966-05-21) (aged 65)
Birch Grove, East Sussex, England
NationalityBritish
Known forSpouse of the prime minister of the United Kingdom (1957–1963)
Spouse
(m. 1920)
Children4
Parents

Lady Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan GBE (née Cavendish; 28 July 1900 – 21 May 1966) was an English socialite and the third daughter of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, and Evelyn Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. She was married to Harold Macmillan from 1920 until her death.

Family life

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She spent her first eight years at Holker Hall, Lancashire (located in the county of Cumbria post-1974); and Lismore Castle, Ireland.[1] She became known as Lady Dorothy from the age of eight, when her father succeeded to the dukedom of Devonshire, and the family moved into Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, and the other ducal estates.[2] She received lessons in French, German, riding and golf. From the age of sixteen she lived with the family at Rideau Hall, Ottawa, where her father served as Governor General of Canada.[3]

Marriage

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In 1920 she married publisher and Conservative politician Harold Macmillan, who had been on her father's staff in Canada. Their lavish wedding, on 21 April at St Margaret's, Westminster, was attended by royalty, aristocracy and leading literary figures, and was hailed as the social event of the London season.[4]

Lady Dorothy was a dutiful political wife and the couple remained married and publicly together (despite her long-lasting affair with Conservative politician Robert Boothby) until her death from a heart attack at the Macmillan family estate at Birch Grove, West Sussex, in 1966. Her husband, who was created Earl of Stockton in 1984, outlived her by 20 years.

She and Harold had four children:

In 1929 Lady Dorothy began a lifelong affair with the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, an arrangement that scandalised high society but remained unknown to the general public.[7] Philip Frere, a partner in Frere Cholmely solicitors, urged Macmillan not to divorce his wife, which at that time would have been fatal to a public career even for the "innocent party". Macmillan and Lady Dorothy lived largely separate lives in private thereafter.[8] The stress caused by this may have contributed to Macmillan's nervous breakdown in 1931.[9] He was often treated with condescension by his aristocratic in-laws and was observed to be a sad and isolated figure at Chatsworth in the 1930s.[10] Campbell suggests that Macmillan's humiliation was first a major cause of his odd and rebellious behaviour in the 1930s then, in subsequent decades, made him a harder and more ruthless politician than his rivals Eden and Butler.[11]

Notes

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  1. ^ Williams 2009, p. 53.
  2. ^ Williams 2009, pp. 53–54.
  3. ^ Williams 2009, p. 54.
  4. ^ Williams 2009, p. 58.
  5. ^ Thorpe 2010.
  6. ^ Forbes, Alastair (21 September 1991). "A real book". The Spectator. p. 29. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  7. ^ Thorpe 2010, 2467, 2477.
  8. ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 95. Thorpe points out that divorce still caused muttering as late as the 1950s. Walter Monckton's divorce may have cost him promotion to the highest legal positions of Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor, while Anthony Eden faced criticism for divorcing and remarrying, and talk that he was unfit to make ecclesiastical appointments.
  9. ^ Parris 1997, pp. 98–104.
  10. ^ Horne 1988, p. 67.
  11. ^ Campbell 2010, p. 248.

References

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Unofficial roles
Preceded by Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1957–1963
Succeeded by