#9504, Deborah (Debo) Vivien (FREEMAN-) MITFORD

As was the custom in those days Debo (as she was known) was given a party, on 22nd March 1938 before being presented at Court in May.  In her memoir Wait for Me Debo wrote Two weeks after my party, I was invited to a dinner given by Lady Blanche Cobbold for her daughter Pamela before Lavinia Pearson's dance.  I sat next to Andrew Cavendish.  We were both just eighteen.  Ignoring our neighbours, we never stopped talking throughout the dinner.  That was it for me - the rest of the season passed in a haze of would-he-wouldn't-he be there; nothing and nobody else mattered.  Meeting him was the beginning and end of everything I had dreamed of.  A month later he left for Lyons 'to learn French' for a term (I never saw, or rather heard, any evidence of this in later life but it didn't seem to matter).  I missed him during his absence, but it was all the more exciting when he came back and we managed to meet at parties time and again.

That dinner took place at Glemham Hall in Suffolk.  Andrew was Lady Blanche's nephew.  They married in 1941 and Andrew became the 11th Duke of Devonshire following the death of his older brother in 1944 and his father in 1950.  Debo was instrumental in turning Chatsworth from a debt ridden liability into the highly profitable leisure enterprise that it is today.  She also became a close friend of the Kennedys.