CHAPTER IX
THE DUKE AND DUCHESS AT HOME.—THE DUCHESS AS PRINCESS BOUNTIFUL.—THE DUCHESS AT COURT
Christmas is usually spent by the Duke and Duchess at Welbeck, and one of the events of the season is the Household Ball to celebrate the Duke's birthday, which falls on December 28th. It is held in the vast underground picture-gallery, with the subjects of the old painters looking down from their canvases upon the gay dancers.
Choice exotics, stately palms and seasonable shrubs add to the variety of the decorations. The band is almost hidden in a bower of foliage in the centre of the great saloon, and there are 500 guests of all ranks of society from peers and peeresses to the humblest domestic servant.
About ten o'olock the Duke and Duchess appear with their house party, and dancing commences with a Circassion Circle. The Duke has the housekeeper for partner and the Duchess the house-steward, while the aristocratic guests find partners among other chiefs of departments in the Welbeck household.
With midnight comes supper, served in two adjacent underground rooms, that owe their excavation to the grim hobby of the old Duke. All the festive party sit down to supper at the same time, the Duke's French chef providing the menu. The house-steward presides and proposes the health of the ducal family. This is welcomed in the manner it deserves and then dancing is resumed in the picture-gallery.
On another evening the children on the Welbeck estate are invited to a party when the head of a giant Christmas-tree is reared in the centre of the ball-room, laden with toys for distribution to them, and the pleasures of the entertainment are varied with the tricks of a conjurer and ventriloquist. Thus is afforded a glimpse of the happy relations existing between the Portland family and their retainers.
In the neighbourhood of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Cresswell, and the mining district between Mansfield and Worksop the Duchess is regarded as a Princess Bountiful in reality, rather than a creation of fairyland. Her visits to some of the homes of the miners are generally unexpected; for instance one Monday morning in the late autumn she rode up to the unpretending dwelling of a collier to enquire about "an old friend," as she called him, who had worked in Cresswell pits. A few years before he had met with an accident and injured his spine. The occurrence came to the ears of her Grace, who arranged for the patient to visit London to undergo an operation, which he did, with favourable results. A bath-chair was obtained for him and since then she had evinced sympathetic interest in his condition.
As may well be imagined appeals to the Duchess's sympathies are made from all quarters. One day she is taking the chair at the annual meeting of the Children's Hospital at Nottingham. On another day the Nottingham Samaritan Hospital for Women is having her support in the opening of a bazaar in its aid.