My late godmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1941-2020), had a unique combination of talents. I’ve tried to record some of them in a new book, with tributes to her from friends including David Hockney, Van Morrison and Tom Stoppard.
Lindy was a painter, yoghurt-maker and the entrepreneurial chatelaine of Clandeboye, one of Northern Ireland’s most bewitching houses, nestled in an estate between Bangor and Belfast.
She was also one of the last great country-house hostesses. Everyone from King Charles to Barry Humphries descended on Clandeboye, where she combined eclectic guests with a brilliant eye.
Among them was David Hockney, first spotted by Sheridan Dufferin, Lindy’s husband, early in the artist’s career. Sheridan showed Hockney’s pictures at the Kasmin Gallery, New Bond Street, which he founded with John Kasmin. In 1963, Hockney’s first ever show was at the Kasmin Gallery.
Lindy was intensely interested in religion and politics, particularly Northern Irish politics. But she played a blinder in never cleaving to one side or the other. In 2000, she had political councillors of all shades over to tea at Clandeboye to hand over a wood to the country. On that occasion, as always, she rose above local politics and any division between Protestants and Catholics.
She didn’t ban political chats – far from it – but you wouldn’t have known which way she leaned. She regularly attended the Protestant service at Clandeboye’s own charming chapel. But, in nearly 50 years as her godson, I never heard her say a word in favour or denigration of Protestantism or Catholicism.
Hockney painted and drew Lindy and Sheridan several times. Among her own subjects was Ian Paisley, whom she painted in a robe and garish tie with his familiar cry of “No!” painted on it. “It’s in the Ulster Museum, I think – perhaps they are too nervous to show it,” Lindy said in her characteristic teasing, comic way. Despite living in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles, she sailed serenely on, blind to sectarian divisions, opening Clandeboye to all.
She said, “Many of my English friends were deeply concerned about my security but understood I had total confidence about being both a Guinness [her father, Loel Guinness, a descendant of the famous clan, was an MP, financier and Battle of Britain pilot] and a Dufferin and was proud of both these cross-border Irish connections.”
My father, the writer Ferdinand Mount, was an old friend of Lindy and Sheridan’s. He says: “The Troubles had not yet broken out when she walked down the aisle with Sheridan in Westminster Abbey in 1964. But she stood dauntless through the worst of them, when the Paras were on the streets of Belfast and automatic weapons poked through the battlements of Derry. She made friends with pretty much every Secretary of State and First Minister of whatever party, from Peter Mandelson to Arlene Foster.”
My dear godmother was a lesson to me in so many ways, right from my neurotic teenage years, when she asked me to choose the wine at my pre-confirmation lunch at the Caprice, then London’s most fashionable restaurant. At the age of 14, I had barely ever drunk a glass of wine, let alone ordered a bottle at a frighteningly grand restaurant. And yet her mighty powers of empathy gave me a confidence rocket-booster.
That gift for insight into people’s souls also allowed Lindy to negotiate the terrible days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She didn’t have a sectarian bone in her body and that was plain for anyone to see. And everyone responded in kind, whatever their religious and political attachments. What a lesson she taught me. In fact, she said in her diary the year before she died, “If I hadn’t been born and given all I have, I would be a teacher in a rural town – bossy and impressed by royalty.”
She was the best of teachers, and I wish I could emulate Lindy’s empathy and confidence. And, on another front, I wish I had the ultimate superpower – efficiency. Forget brains, talent or looks. I’ve realised the one thing that trumps them all is hyper-efficiency. If you can respond quickly to boring tasks and do them without thinking, then you can do anything.
Imagine there’s a small pile of boring pieces of paper on your desk that don’t require immediate attention. Do you: A – race through them automatically; B – let out an inner howl of pain and deal with them at the last moment, on deadline day; C – let them disappear for years beneath other small piles of boring pieces of paper.
I’m a B. Anyone who answers A will become a Master of the Universe.
<em>The Last Marchioness – A Portrait of Lindy Dufferin, edited by Harry Mount, is available exclusively from Heywood Hill Bookshop, www.heywoodhill.com, 0207 629 0647</em>
