The Dowager Duchess of Rutland, society beauty and devoted chatelaine of Belvoir Castle – obituary
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The Dowager Duchess of Rutland, who has died aged 86, was the widow of the 10th Duke of Rutland and a hands-on chatelaine of Belvoir Castle for more than 40 years.
She was the daughter of Charles Sweeny, a fashionable and suave American, known as an amateur golfer of distinction, and of Margaret Whigham, later the scandalous Duchess of Argyll. In her day, she was well known as a debutante and society beauty, though overshadowed by her more formidable mother, which created in her a certain shyness and reserve. She was always a conventional Duchess, dressed by Norman Hartnell, and would support numerous charities.
Frances Helen Sweeny was born in London on June 19 1937 and baptised as a Roman Catholic at the Brompton Oratory, her mother having converted to Catholicism when she married Charles Sweeny in 1933. But Frances was largely brought up by Elizabeth Duckworth, her mother’s cook, since Margaret Sweeny was not an involved 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 was soon being hailed as one of the most beautiful girls of the season, her photograph adorning the society pages. A ball for 500 guests was given for her at Claridge’s. She dutifully appeared at Royal Ascot (in 1956) with her mother, who after divorcing her father had in 1951 married the Duke of Argyll.
In 1958 Frances and her mother went with 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 since Frances was a Roman Catholic, while the Duke of Rutland was an Anglican.
They were married at Caxton Hall on May 15 1958, Frances wearing a blush pink organza cocktail dress with ostrich-feather lining, designed by Norman Hartnell. It was agreed that their children would be raised as Catholics.
The Duke was 18 years her senior, and Frances became Britain’s youngest duchess aged just 20. A few weeks after their marriage they staged a fashion show at Belvoir of Hardy Amies and Worth clothes, in aid of the Melton Division Conservative Association, attended by 700 guests. In 1959 she co-hosted the United Charities Fair with the Duke, at Londonderry House and in April 1962 she was chairman of the Rose Ball at Grosvenor House.
The Rutlands were included in royal occasions such as Princess Alexandra’s wedding ball at Windsor Castle in 1963, and Frances could be found seated with the Duchess of Buccleuch and the Duchess of Fife at the State Opening of Parliament, in the days when peeresses attended in full evening dress and tiaras.
In 1969 she was guest of honour at Queen Charlotte’s Ball at Grosvenor House. Though the Duke was not a favourite with the late Queen – he once cut her at a ball, refusing 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 being their Colonel-in-Chief for 50 years.
Belvoir Castle was a massive commitment, with many 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.
Every year the Duchess would oversee a massive spring-cleaning operation, she and her team dispensing many litres of vinegar, Traffic floor polish, Carefree (for stonework), Sprint (for mirrors) and Sparkle Plenty (for chandeliers). She personally dusted the castle’s valuable sets of china, and polished and waxed 15,000 books (10 books every three hours).
She bred Arab horses at Belvoir for many years, and at shows of the Arab Horse Society imposed £25 fines on those who clapped excessively to spur the horses on and to bamboozle the judges. She found the clapping disruptive.
She restored the four-acre Spring Garden at Belvoir, originally created in 1800, which had been famous before the First World War. This involved her in cutting back a jungle of brambles, and she welcomed the badgers who made it their home.
The Rutlands entertained extensively, guests flocking to the castle, even though in old age the Duke’s aunt Lady Diana Cooper declined. On receiving the invitation she said: “For eternity, yes. For the weekend no!”
The Duke only had a daughter, Charlotte, from his previous marriage, so there was some excitement when Frances produced an heir, David, the present Duke, on May 8 1959. The birth was not without problems, however, and part of the distance created between Frances and her mother was due to Margaret Argyll’s advice over the obstetrician attending the birth.
But soon there were more serious issues. Mother and daughter became estranged, Frances being deeply embarrassed and upset by the prolonged legal battle between her mother and the Duke of Argyll. As early as 1959, the Duke of Argyll banned Margaret from his Scottish seat, Inverary Castle, and launched into lurid divorce proceedings, recently dramatised for television in the BBC mini-series A Very British Scandal.
Many assertions were made about Margaret’s extensive sex life, though there is plenty of evidence that the Duke was determined to blacken her name, and that he broke into her London house and stole her diaries. A Polaroid photograph emerged allegedly showed Margaret wearing only her signature triple-string necklace of pearls, with a “headless” man, whose identity was the cause of speculation for decades.
In the midst of all this, there was a court case concerning Argyll family heirlooms. Frances became unwittingly involved in October 1962, when the Duke of Argyll claimed that five Swiss paintings he had given her as a wedding present were still his property. They were retained at Inverary Castle.
As if this were not enough, in 1966, her father Charles Sweeny was granted a divorce from his wife, Arden Sneed, a New York model, only five years older than Frances, on the grounds of desertion, the judge exercising discretion over Sweeny’s adultery following the desertion. And in 1968 there was a further court case, in which a trust fund set up by Frances’s maternal grandfather, George Hay Whigham, chairman of British Celanese, was varied so that 75 per cent went to the Duchess of Argyll and 25 per cent to Frances and her brother.
Three further children were born to the Rutlands – a daughter Theresa in 1962, something of a wild child in the 1980s (once fined for driving two miles in such a “passionate embrace” with her boyfriend on the M6 that she failed to see the blue flashing lights of a pursuing police car). Their second son Robert died of leukaemia, 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 in the train from Grantham to London or from their flat. Her jewel case was removed from her suitcase.
In 1965 another £4,500 cache of jewels was stolen from their flat in Belgravia, and in 1968 a painting called The Frozen Thames by William Marlow disappeared.
The Duchess became embroiled in controversy in 1969 when she made the valid point, at an exhibition of hospital careers in Nottingham, that nurses were overworked and underpaid, had to climb over beds to get to patients and were often on duty for 36 hours at a stretch. She involved herself in local politics, chairing the Melton Conservative Association for a period, though politically she was at odds with the local MP, Alan Duncan.
Despite years of non-speaks between mother and daughter, Frances and her brother came to Margaret Argyll’s rescue when her health failed her and she lost her money. They paid for her to be cared for in St George’s Nursing Home in Pimlico, where she was a resident along with well-known nonagenarians such as Loelia Lindsay (former Duchess of Westminster) and the actress Evelyn Laye.
Her mother died in 1994 and Frances attended the funeral at Farm Street, the journalist Tim Heald noting that she had chosen the readings with care: “A time of love, and a time of hatred; a time of war, and a 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 June 19 1937, died January 21 2024
