By Lucia Adams

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^{“Happiness is very rare and totally overrated. Contentment is completely different and Chatsworth has made me content. I am the most easily pleased of the sisters.”}

“Then you have the £1million cost to refit the new Old Stables property for the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, because they moved out of their grace and favour apartment near Kensington Palace. York Farm and Stables. York Farm and Stables Horse Boarding & Reated Services.

Deborah, the 11th Duchess of Devonshire (AKA Deborah Devonshire, her nom de plume), the youngest of the six Mitford sisters, left the finest legacy of them all as chatelaine of the finest stately home in England. Chatsworth, The “Palace on the Peak”, in the Derbyshire Dales, home of an unbroken line of succession for 16 generations of the Cavendish family, flourishes today largely due to her efforts.

^{When Deborah Freeman-Mitford married Andrew Cavendish, the second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, she never expected he would inherit the title, the splendid 16th century house and the 35,000 acre estate. She wrote to her sister Diana “I expect we shall be terrifically poor….. But think how nice it will be to have as many dear dogs and things as one likes without anyone to say they must get off the furniture.” Nancy would observe, “Debo has become the sort of English duchess who doesn’t feel the cold.”}

^{Photo Credit: Brian Moody Scope Features}

^{After his older brother Billy (married to Kathleen Kennedy) was killed in the war and his father died in 1950 Andrew became Duke of Devonshire and Deborah the lady of the manor of one of the kingdom’s largest, most palatial houses, a Baroque masterpiece. And it was almost demolished. When postwar tax laws imposed a levy of 80 percent of its value, about 20 million pounds, Andrew sold Hardwick Hall, some Holbeins and other masterpieces taking 24 years to settle the debt . Deborah always attributed the rescue of Chatsworth soley to her husband, never taking credit for her own Herculean efforts.}

^{Like her father the 2nd Baron Redesdale she embraced the country life of dogs, horses, livestock, agricultural shows and equestrian events. She had a particular affection for chickens, Rhode Island Reds, Buff Cochins, Welsummers, enigmatic Burford Browns, pretty idiotic Light Sussexes, stupid White Leghorns, amiable little Warrens which ran loose on the grounds with all their “argy bargy” and pecking orders rather like humans. She wrote often about them in her collections of wickedly funny journalistic essays Counting my Chickens and Home to Roost …And Other Peckings. As Alan Bennett said in his introduction to this collection, “Deborah Devonshire is not someone to whom one can say ‘joking apart …’: with her it’s of the essence, even at the most serious and saddest of moments.” . She often dropped off chicken eggs on the doorsteps of friends such as Lucien Freud who painted her (unloved) portrait.}

Surrounded by 105 acres of gardens designed by Capability Brown (who else could say that England’s most famous landscape artist “buggered up the garden” of “the dump.”)and miles of meadows and wooded hills, she could name the grounds field by field – Mrs Vickers’s Breeches, Big Backsides, Old Zac’s Pingle. In 1959 the Devonshires moved in “over the shop” then in the care of the National Trust which was rundown and in need of restoration. To help repair it for the first round of stately-home-openings Deborah became an entrepreneur who turned it into a thriving business.

As co-architect of the rescue plan and overseer of 600 employees she started The Farm Shop in 1977 one of the oldest in the country that sold beef, lamb, venison from the estate farms and park directly to the consumer along with the Duchess’s Marmalade and the Duke’s Favorite Sausages.She supervised the decor, the traditional gold-leafing of window frames to glow on gloomy November days, put in central heating, phones, new wiring and plumbing for 17 new bathrooms. This hands-on approach to running the house extended to leading tourists herself through the public rooms and frequently teaching classes. Later came restaurants, catering services, boutiques and other moneymakers, including two hotels near Chatsworth.

In 2002, the estate became self-sufficient for the first time, covering its $6.5 million annual costs with income from the Chatsworth House Trust and proceeds from entrance fees, country fairs, restaurants and shops. The house was also a family home for the Devonshires and their three children and occupied 24 (of 297) rooms that were off-limits to visitors. Today, more than five decades after they arrived, 650,000 visitors annually flock to see the magnificent estate and its attractions, from garden, park and farmyard and one of the most important collections of art and antiques in England.

A country matron who preferred to wear gumboots and anoraks, who bought her clothes at agricultural shows and Marks and Spencer (of course there were those Worth and Givenchy gowns and diamond tiaras for grand events) Deborah never resented, as did her sisters, being denied an education. She refused to learn French because it interfered with shooting season and rarely if ever read books, “how I hate books esp about my family”; she said her husband and friends “did not much go in for learning.” Her own favorite reading was the British Goatkeeper’s Monthly, Fancy Fowl magazine and yes, Beatrix Potter. The epigraph for her first book on Chatsworth, The House, quoted Hobbes, “Reading is a pernicious habit. It destroys all originality of sentiment.” She did eventually write ten books claiming that it was easier to write a book than read one.

She called paintings “dabs” but at least on one occasion went to the Tate when “Cake”, her name for the Queen Mother, “in crinoline and diamonds glittering from top to toe” had her insight “like a rabbit and a snake”. She did admire her enormous charm and gaiety, the dinner guest who insisted on mutton not lamb after endless toasts. Not a great music lover Deborah attended two operas in her life far preferring Elvis Presley after seeing his (posthumous) band perform in Manchester. She visited Graceland and bought an Elvis telephone proudly displayed at Chatsworth. When a gullible interviewer asked who she would rather have tea with Adolf Hitler (who she met in 1937) or Elvis Presley with astonishment, she answered: “Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question.”

As a guest of the Queen and Prince Philip for a Sandringham shoot she was overwhelmed by their extravagance. An advocate of field and blood sports, shooting had been her very favorite since she first packed up a gun as a teenager. She rarely missed grouse shooting in August and pheasant shooting November through January, loving all that went with it, friends, country life, conviviality though she would far rather talk to the gun loaders than politicians or other guests. At a shoot at ancient Bolton Abbey, a Cavendish property in Skipton, North Yorks.,over four days her party bagged over a thousand birds. She criticized a (non-aristocratic) friend saying his description of a shoot was all wrong, “like a Hollywood film about England.”

Of all the BRF she loved her friend Prince Charles, another poultry fan, the best. He came to Chatsworth every October to make a start on signing the sack loads of Christmas cards he was expected to send each year. The Devonshires attended his wedding to Diana, a “King’s Evil type” of healer and definitely “not easy”, a “great spectacle” where a scrum of dowagers “like a Brixton riot” scrambled to get the blue and silver balloons. She was appalled at Morton’s impertinent disloyal book.

They were also guests at Charles’ marriage to Camilla which was “a total ripping success”; she sat next to Brig. Andrew Parker Bowles which she thought must have seemed odd to him seeing his wife marrying another, “they’re all friendly but even so.” She loved that Charles invited a housemaid and her husband to the wedding. Also attending were “freaks” like former PM Harold Wilson ”with his garter stitched on to a sort of blazer like house colours for a cricket match”.

It was during the debutante season of 1938 that Deborah first met the young “dull” JFK and kept in close touch after the death of Kathleen in 1948, carefully following his political progress. The Devonshires were invited as guests of honour for his inauguration (“Jack’s coronation”) which Deborah reluctantly attended since it meant missing the pheasant season. Calling him the Loved One she attended his sad funeral and shed some tears. She thought Jackie rather weird,”She is a queer fish. Her face is one of the oddest I ever saw. It is put together in a very wild way.

Deborah discovered she had a knack for writing in her Sixties when Andrew’s uncle PM Harold MacMilllan suggested she write a book about Chatsworth in 1982— the first of several she would write on the subject. Farm Animals 1991 was an illustrated history of how they raise sheep, cattle, cows, ducks, geese, pigs, horses and of course those chickens at Chatsworth. Her respect and admiration for the farmworkers rivals her love for animals, the hardworking, highly skilled men (no women here), burly teams of woodmen, farmers, hedgemen, butchers, dry stone wallers— all “bumpkin stuff”. We are fortunate that the Duchess of Devonshire took to writing for we have, as a matter of record, the forthright and candid distillation of an aristocrat’s views at a moment in time.

Speaking of her role as President of the Royal Smithfield Club’s 50 farmers and butchers she wrote, “I really love these men”. She was also President of the Breeders Survival Trust and could recite a flock of sheeps’ afflictions – “Orf scrapie, swayback, blackleg, water mouth or rattlebelly, scab and footrot, scad or scald.” Proudest of being elected President of the Royal Agricultural Society she attended National Hedging and Walling Competitions, Framework Knitters’ Company meetings, was great friends with county council workmen opening paths for tourists on the estate.

Her best friend in childhood had been the family’s old groom, Hooper, “the human end of the horses; the stables were my heaven”. She said she was never a snob, considering class an irritant: “The biggest pest that has ever been invented”, and she and Andrew sided with those who believed titles should be abolished since they “are meaningless because peers are no longer legislators.” Their point of view was not shared and of course they persist.

Claiming to be apolitical unlike the extremist sisters DIana, Unity and Decca she was in fact a Conservative Tory; she particularly disliked Labour’s Tony Blair “a stranger to common sense” (and “the frightful Cheri”) who presided over the fox-hunting ban. At 77, she made a pilgrimage to London for the Countryside Alliance March, carrying a placard stating her defiance of the proposed ban on the sport: “I’m ready to go to jail.” The Devonshires were prepared to break the law to allow the sport to continue on their estate, confronting the league of complainers whining about everything, “foxhounds, crowing cockrels, quarrying” and declaring “long live banned work and play!”

Most of her most memorable writing and the primary source for her autobiography Wait for Me! were from the one book you must read, her correspondence over several decades with Patrick Leigh Fermor, In Tearing Haste. The brilliant travel writer, adventurer (and social Alpinist!) and the aristocratic matron were breezy and candid with radically different lives and styles but he admired her “flat-out, headlong way of writing” the “whizz bang planchette style hitting the nail on the head without looking”.

Deborah Devonshire was no feminist; she preferred men, even cads (her husband was notoriously one until he gave up drinking) disliked loud English ladies with dirty diamonds, was wary of “the sort of woman who wants to join a gentlemen’s club”, female weather forecasters, supercilious assistants at make-up counters, girls with slouching shoulders and especially female interviewers and TV presenters.

“Recently a young journalist came to interview me about what I was doing the day war broke out. During the course of the interview I recounted the deaths of my only brother, my husband’s only brother, a brother in law and my four best friends. “So,” she said, did the war affect you in any way?”

Other dislikes were the words ‘environment’, ‘conservation’, ‘leisure’ and the ubiquitous “heritage” applied to anything and everything, intis (intellectuals), dietary fads, skimmed milk. She liked Bovril, telegrams, spring cleaning, long letters, Beatrix Potter, (again!) wildflowers, fried mushrooms, Shetland ponies (she had 55) scythes, brogues, silence, border collies, and her favorite book, Anatomy of Desserts, 1923, especially the chapter on gooseberries, the Hue and Cry, Heart of Oak, Dan’s Mistake, Queen of the Rule. She liked wives and listed her occupation in Who’s Who as “housewife” and told a New York Times reporter asking questions about her career as a writer, “I’m a housewife.”

With Charles and Camilla at the Highland Games

With the death of Andrew in 2004 Deborah became the Dowager Duchess and moved to an 18th century house, the Old Vicarage, in the village of Edensor while her son, Peregrine, became the 12th Duke of Devonshire. She was made Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) in 1999 for her service to the Royal Collection Trust and was awarded the honorary Doctor of Literature by Sheffield University. At the time of her death at 94 in 2014 Prince Charles said, “My wife and I were deeply saddened to learn of the death of the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, whom both of us adored and admired greatly.”

Francis Scott Key was a lawyer in Maryland and Washington D.C. for almost 40 years. Among his most famous trials was that of Justus Erick Bollman and Samuel Swartwout, who had been charged for treason as part of an alleged conspiracy led by US Vice President Aaron Burr (most recently made famous for being the arch-villain in the Hamilton musical). In 1807 Burr was charged for his role in a failed British attempt to get Louisiana Territory and Western states to secede from the Union and form its own country. President Thomas Jefferson, who had disagreed with his vice president on almost everything, made it his personal mission to secure Burr’s conviction.

Key made his name with a speech he made on behalf of Bollman and Swartwout before the US Supreme Court arguing that President Jefferson had abused the power of his office.

Is the executive of the United States gifted with the extraordinary powers of divination? Is his message to be reported to this court as an indisputable document as matter of facts? I hold up my hands against such a use of executive means. The president of the United States has no such right whatsoever… The Constitution expressly declares that you are to arrest no man unless there be probably cause on oath or affirmation.

On December 31, 1807, a Senate hearing was held against Ohio Senator John Smith on charges that he had supported Burr, and neglected his duties as a senator. The prosecution was led by future president, John Quincy Adams, and Key defended the senator. The final vote, 19-10, was one short of the two thirds needed to expel the congressman.

Key also prosecuted Richard Lawrence, an English-American house painter who was the first person to attempt to assassinate a US president. On January 30, 1835, Lawrence’s pistols misfired as he tried to shoot President Andrew Jackson. Lawrence was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity but spent the rest of his life in mental hospitals.

Of course, Key is most famous, not for his legal career, but for a poem he wrote on September 14, 1814. The 35-year-old Key published “Defence of Fort M’Henry” anonymously in the Baltimore Patriot, six days later, on September 20, but today it is much better known as “The Star-Spangled Banner” (though it took over 100 years before it became the official national anthem of the USA, on March 3, 1931).

Many people know the story of how in 1814, during the confusingly-named War of 1812, Key was sent, along with John Stuart Skinner, to the British flagship HMS Tonnant , anchored in the Baltimore harbor, to negotiate the release of William Beanes, an elderly and popular physician. Although they were successful in their mission, Key and Skinner were detained for over a week because the two men had heard details of the British plan to attack Baltimore. Aboard a British gunship, they witnessed how the US forces withstood the attack, and saw the flag, with its stars and stripes, flying above Fort Covington.

Even non-Americans are familiar with some of the lyrics to the first verse, but the other three verses of the poem (and anthem) are far less-well known. The third verse contains these words:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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Writing about slaves puts the “land of the free” into context. There is some controversy about exactly what Key meant by that first line. Some say he was referring to slaves who had been freed by the British and were now facing their former master in battle. Others say that it refers to the British themselves, the enemy characterized as “hirelings and slaves” (presumably to King George III). Yet others claim that the anthem is actually a celebration of slavery.

Key’s actual view on slavery is not simple for us to understand. He came from a family of Maryland plantation owners, and therefore owned slaves himself. From 1833 to 1840, Key served as the District Attorney for the City of Washington. By this time, Washington was a city of some 30,000 residents, including 12,000 black people, of whom more than half were legally free.

The decades leading up to the Civil War were a time of upheaval and people from all sides of the political debate gathered in the capital.

For many, Washington represented black aspiration. African Americans owned livery stables, restaurants, and barber shops. Anti-slave activists secretly published and sold abolitionist newspapers, pamphlets, and books.

Yet, there was a growing number of white men becoming rich by trading in human lives. The firm of Franklin and Armfield was the single largest slave trading syndicate in the nation. And under President Andrew Jackson the southern, slave-owning elite had a solid majority in Congress.

As Attorney General, Key sought to defend the Constitution (as he understood it) and prosecuted several abolitionists in high-profile cases.

The most famous was the trial of abolitionist Reuben Crandall for “seditious libel and inciting slaves and free blacks to revolt.” It was the first sedition trial in US history, and according to Key it was “one of the most important cases ever tried here.” In his speech to the all-white jury, Key argued that abolitionism was against the Constitution.

“They declare that every law which sanctions slavery is null and void…” he declaimed. “That we have no more rights over our slaves than they have over us. Does not this bring the constitution and the laws under which we live into contempt? Is it not a plain invitation to resist them?”

It took the jury only three hours to acquit Crandall, in news that made headlines throughout the nation.

Yet Key himself freed his slaves in 1830. He assisted African Americans in bringing cases to the circuit court. He was sometimes publicly critical of the cruelty of slavery.

Back in 1816, the American Colonization Society was formed by the Reverend Robert Finley to assist freed slaves in returning to Africa. We would perhaps view the motivation behind the charitable organization as both honorable and racist.

Finley thought that black people would never fully integrate into American life as true equals and felt that if they returned to Africa, they could fulfill their true potential. Yet, he also saw the presence of black people as a threat to the quality of life for white people in America. Finley won immediate support for his plan from Key, who went on to serve as one of the group’s leaders. The organization was not supported by most abolitionists or freed slaves, but went on to establish the African colony of Liberia and send approximately 12,000 black men and women to live there.

We prefer our villains and heroes to be simple. Either goodies or baddies. Key was neither. He was complex, a caring man who opposed cruelty to slaves, but a public prosecutor who tried abolitionists.

Eulogizing Key after his death in January, 1843, Washington’s chief judge William Cranch praised Key as one of the bar’s “oldest and most respected members, and one of its brightest ornaments” who was always animated “by an overbearing sense of duty.”

So, back to the Star-Spangled Banner.

It was published with the author’s name in The Analectic Magazine (v.4), in December of 1814 (although as the editors note, it had already been published in several newspapers before then).

By this point, the poem already had a tune. It was to be sung to the melody of “Anacreon in Heaven,” which was clearly a well-known song because the Analectic magazine did not feel the need to explain it.

The song was an English drinking song – a fact not lost on Robert Ripley (of Believe It or Not fame) who in 1929, during prohibition, complained that the United States had no official national anthem. He felt it was inappropriate for a dry country that had broken free from British rule a century and a half earlier. In response, over five million people wrote to Congress demanding a national anthem, and on March 3, 1931, the Star-Spangled Banner was officially recognized as such.

The notoriously difficult tune “To Anacreon in Heaven” was composed by John Stafford Smith and was the official song of the Anacereonic Society.

The society was a London gentlemen’s club dedicated to the ancient Greek lyric poet Anacreon, who in his songs worshiped the Muses, wine and love. Despite its risqué name, the society was made up mainly of professionals including barristers and doctors, who were also amateur musicians.

The Anacreonic Society was formed in about the year 1766 and met every month. At its peak it had no more than 80 members. Every session (usually held in a pub) began at 7:30 with a lengthy concert. The performers were then made honorary members of the society. The high point of the group came in January 1791 when Haydn attended a meeting.

However, the Society came to a sudden and unfortunate end in 1792 after the Duchess of Devonshire attended a meeting. Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire was the great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and such an interesting character that she probably deserves her own blog at some time.

Anyhow, when she attended the Anacreonic Society meeting, the men suddenly realized that “some of the comic songs [were not] exactly calculated for the entertainment of ladies” and one after another they resigned their membership. Soon afterwards a general meeting was called, and the society was dissolved.

I find the Anacreonic Society an interesting contrast to Key. The author of the national anthem spent his life focused on a sense of duty, considering the impact of each of his actions (though it is unlikely he could have foreseen how important his poem would become). He chose his path based on the issues as he saw them, and if that was complex and almost contradictory, well that was fine with him. As long as he did what he felt was right.

The members of the Anacreonic Society, on the other hand, never stopped to consider whether their songs were appropriate. It was what they did. As a group they were swept up in the culture they had created. It was only when faced with the crisis of the Duchess of Devonshire’s visit that they suddenly realized they had been wrong all along. In a moment they stopped to question their behavior and immediately abandoned the Society.

I see the same contrast in the behavior of the protagonists in this week’s Torah portion, Miketz.

Joseph was hated by his brothers, but he did not cave to their pressure and instead stuck to his values. He was sold into slavery, yet in Potiphar’s house he remained firm in his convictions to rise to the top, even if he was in a foreign environment which promoted different values. When he was thrown into jail he was again driven by his “overbearing sense of duty” to become a leader within the prison system.

This week’s portion opens with Joseph being rushed from jail straight to Pharaoh’s court. But his values and sense of duty led him to speak to the ruler in the same way he spoke to the prisoners he had just left. He was not awed by the power of the throne but spoke as his conscience told him, knowing that he was doing the right thing and not caring about public expectations.

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That’s the positive spin of the character of Joseph. But he was also a proud favorite son, who flaunted his stripy cloak and haughtily told his brothers and father of his dreams of domination. Because he always lived in the moment, he did not worry about what the future would bring, nor did he dwell on the past. In all his years in Egypt, whether as slave, prisoner, or viceroy, he never once thought to send a letter to his mourning father back in Canaan.

To me, his brothers were more like the members of the Anacreonic Society. They were quite happy doing what they were doing and fitting the facts to their narrative. They were happy with the version of events they had decided upon – Joseph was an upstart threat to the family hierarchy who had to be removed. For over a decade they never once questioned themselves or went to search for Joseph. When they finally did go down to Egypt, according to the midrash, they searched for Joseph in the most insalubrious places. Whatever had happened to him, in their minds he certainly would never amount to anything worthwhile.

For this reason, even when standing before Joseph and seeing him with only the thinnest of disguises, they were unable to recognize him. The viceroy invited the brothers to dine with him; he seemed to know everything about them and their family; he asked after their younger brother Benjamin and knew that Simeon was the dangerous one to put in jail. He was very clearly not part of the Egyptian old-school hierarchy. Yet the power of the narrative that the brothers had told themselves for all those years was so powerful that they could not see who they were looking at.

It was only at the beginning of next week’s Torah portion, when Joseph revealed himself, that the brothers were forced against their wills to change the story and see the truth. Just as the Duchess of Devonshire destroyed the Anacreonic Society overnight, the tale the band of brothers had been telling themselves for all those years was ripped apart by their confrontation with the truth.

The Torah’s account of Joseph and the brothers reminds us that sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are so powerful we cannot recognize the truth even when we stare it in the face. And conversely, sticking to higher values regardless of the pain they may cause others, can sometimes blur the line between good and evil in the quest for the ideal.

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With thanks to No Such Thing As A Fish, who mentioned many of these facts in their episode “No Such Thing As Tug of War for Clowns.”

Beginning December 22nd, I’m beginning a new nine-part series at WebYeshiva on Rabbis of the 19th Century. You can listen to the live or recorded Torah classes by registering on the website. I’ve also started sharing more of my Torah thoughts on Facebook. Follow my page, Rabbi Sedley.