Margaret Campell, Duchess of Argyll and married to 11th Duke of Argyll, was alleged to have had multiple affairs throughout her second marriage which eventually led to her divorce
The opera tells the story of the duchess’s 1963 divorce from her second husband, the 11th Duke of Argyll will open in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The Duchess, who was born Margaret Whigham in Newton Mearns, Renfrewshire, and died in 1993 aged 80, had a list of conquests of the Who’s Who of Britain and the United States. She lived her early life in New York and counted the playboy Prince Aly Khan, US publishing heir Max Aitken and wealthy aviator Glen Kidston, a great-grandson of Glasgow shipping magnate AG Kidston, among her partners.
In her prime, the duchess’s beauty was so well known she was mentioned in Cole Porter’s song You’re the Top
Scotland's Inverary Castle, home of Duke and Duchess of Argyll, was Dowton Abbey's Christmas Special setShe became engaged to Charles Guy Fulke Greville, the 7th Earl of Warwick, but called it off as her heart had been won by Charles Sweeny, a US amateur golfer, she married him instead.
The Duchess’s voracious sexual appetite is said to have increased even more after she fell 40ft down a lift shaft.
She had three children with Sweeny but they broke up and she continued on her path, bedding men such as Theodore Rousseau, curator of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1951, she married for a second time and became the third wife of Ian Douglas Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll. They remained together for 12 years until their bitter divorce –dubbed the ‘Headless Man’ hearing – ended in the courts.
During the action, the Duke produced a list of 88 men he claimed she had slept with, which supposedly included three members of royal families and two government ministers.
The judge in the case said the Duchess had engaged in ‘disgusting sexual activities’ after he was shown Polaroid pictures of her in compromising positions with a man – once claimed to be actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr – whose face was not seen in the photos.
The divorce was granted.
The end of the opera shows the Duchess penniless, plagued by mental illness and living in a hotel room she cannot pay for while being cared for by her maid, an electrician and the hotel manager who take pity on her.
In her prime, the duchess’s beauty was so well known she was mentioned in Cole Porter’s song You’re the Top. Powder Her Face was first shown in 1995 at the Cheltenham Music Festival and was written by Thomas Adès.
‘A COMPLETELY PROMISCUOUS WOMAN WHOSE SEXUAL APPETITE COULD ONLY BE SATISFIED BY A NUMBER OF MEN'
She was the only child of Helen Mann Hannay and George Hay Whigham, a Scottish millionaire and spent the first 14 years of her life in New York City.
She had youthful romances with playboy Prince Aly Khan, millionaire aviator Glen Kidston, car salesman Baron Martin Stillman von Brabus, and publishing heir Max Aitken.
Charles Sween who once said of her: 'Of all the attractive girls in England in the early Thirties, one was the undisputed belle of the ball.' She divorced him in 1947.
In 1943, Margaret Sweeny had a near fatal fall down an lift shaft while visiting her chiropodist on Bond Street. After her recovery, she was said to have lost all sense of taste and smell due to nerve damage, and had become sexually voracious.
On 22 March 1951, Margaret became the third wife of Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll only for the Duke to win a divorce action against her in 1963 after compiling a list of her alleged 88 lovers. A note in the Duke’s handwriting, found among the Argyll divorce papers, records: ‘MT and AW-T are both innocent victims of M’s nymphomania.’ The original list contained some famous names. The Hollywood stars Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier were on it. So, too, was David Niven, who had taken Margaret’s virginity at the age of 15.
The 13 Polaroid snaps discovered by the Duke appeared to show two different naked men. Pornographic comments written beneath pictures of one of the naked men were alleged to be in the handwriting of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative Cabinet, and known derisively to the Duke as ‘Shrunken Glands’, paid him £20,000 not to be cited in the divorce. Ian Argyll responded by holding up an envelope to the Press during the divorce evidence on the ‘Headless Man’ pictures, with the word, SANDYS, written in large capital letters.
Under oath in the witness-box, the Duke admitted that the letter S, used by him to refer to his wife, stood for Satan. The Duchess lost the case and had to pay £7,000 in damages. Judge, Lord Wheatley, in a devastating four-and-a-half-hour judgment, denounced the Duchess as ‘a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied by a number of men’.
By the time she died in a London nursing home in 1993, at the age of 80, the fortune, left to her by her millionaire father, had gone — eaten away by litigation, foreign travel and general extravagance.
Of the romantic Scottish castle that enchanted Downton viewers in the Christmas special, she once wrote: ‘I fell in love with Inveraray at first sight.’ Her last wish, recorded in her will, was to be buried in a churchyard ‘close to Inveraray Castle’ — but that wish was ignored. She is buried in the same grave as her first husband, Charles Sweeny, in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey.
She had youthful romances with playboy Prince Aly Khan, millionaire aviator Glen Kidston, car salesman Baron Martin Stillman von Brabus, and publishing heir Max Aitken.
Duchess in style: Born Margaret Whigham the Duchess of Argyll was the most popular debutante in London in the 30s
Charles Sween who once said of her: 'Of all the attractive girls in England in the early Thirties, one was the undisputed belle of the ball.' She divorced him in 1947.
In 1943, Margaret Sweeny had a near fatal fall down an lift shaft while visiting her chiropodist on Bond Street. After her recovery, she was said to have lost all sense of taste and smell due to nerve damage, and had become sexually voracious.
On 22 March 1951, Margaret became the third wife of Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll only for the Duke to win a divorce action against her in 1963 after compiling a list of her alleged 88 lovers. A note in the Duke’s handwriting, found among the Argyll divorce papers, records: ‘MT and AW-T are both innocent victims of M’s nymphomania.’ The original list contained some famous names. The Hollywood stars Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier were on it. So, too, was David Niven, who had taken Margaret’s virginity at the age of 15.
The 13 Polaroid snaps discovered by the Duke appeared to show two different naked men. Pornographic comments written beneath pictures of one of the naked men were alleged to be in the handwriting of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative Cabinet, and known derisively to the Duke as ‘Shrunken Glands’, paid him £20,000 not to be cited in the divorce. Ian Argyll responded by holding up an envelope to the Press during the divorce evidence on the ‘Headless Man’ pictures, with the word, SANDYS, written in large capital letters.
Under oath in the witness-box, the Duke admitted that the letter S, used by him to refer to his wife, stood for Satan. The Duchess lost the case and had to pay £7,000 in damages. Judge, Lord Wheatley, in a devastating four-and-a-half-hour judgment, denounced the Duchess as ‘a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied by a number of men’.
By the time she died in a London nursing home in 1993, at the age of 80, the fortune, left to her by her millionaire father, had gone — eaten away by litigation, foreign travel and general extravagance.
Of the romantic Scottish castle that enchanted Downton viewers in the Christmas special, she once wrote: ‘I fell in love with Inveraray at first sight.’ Her last wish, recorded in her will, was to be buried in a churchyard ‘close to Inveraray Castle’ — but that wish was ignored. She is buried in the same grave as her first husband, Charles Sweeny, in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey.
Castle of divorce: The duke and duchess eventually divorced as a result of her 'nymphomania' and the duke compiled a list of 88 alleged lovers
No comments:
Post a Comment