I love going to Chatsworth. I let out a sigh of pleasure at the beauty and familiarity of it from the instant I rumble over the cattle grid at Edensor to the moment I round the bend and sight the House in all its glory. Having had the privilege for so many years of interviewing members of the Devonshire family, I feel a personal sadness at the passing of the Dowager Duchess, whose company I greatly enjoyed and from whom I learned so much.
I remember in particular and with great affection a late October day in 1999, with autumn winds blowing and yellow maple trees radiant as sunbursts, when she took me on a privileged tour of the garden. We went from the Cascade with its clear, tumbling water – 'I had a furious letter from a woman this summer who said, "How disgraceful to allow children to paddle in the Cascade!"' she said with relish – to marvel at Paxton's genius in the Emperor Fountain, that stunning jet of water visible like some mysterious spiral of smoke to walkers on Baslow Edge.
Over the springy Salisbury Lawns with their ancient mix of wild flowers, we headed for the Jack Pond and one of the Duchess's favourite water sculptures, Revelation, by Angela Conner. It stands in the centre of the water, a giant, tulip-shaped form which appears at first to be still. 'It takes five minutes to unfold. We just have to sit and wait,' the Duchess said.
A small appreciative crowd gathered. As the extravagant metal leaves jauntily, audaciously unfolded, they revealed a great golden globe looking for all the world as though it had fallen from some distant galaxy. There was a concerted gasp. We watched hypnotically as it closed again, releasing a torrent of water like an afterthought. The Duchess's pleasure at our pleasure was undisguised. 'Once you start watching it, you can't move. You have to see it do it over and over again,' she said. The man next to us had worked out the engineering behind it, based on water pressure. He thought Paxton would have appreciated it and so did we.
Our last encounter for this magazine was in her bright and book-laden sitting room at the Old Vicarage. 'It's not half bad, is it?' she said in contentment of the favourite furnishings she brought from the House – which she had deemed 'too big for one old woman' – and the view of her garden. At 90, she had just completed a punishing but exhilarating schedule of public appearances following the instant success of her warm, witty and very candid autobiography, Wait for Me! Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister.
And I recall standing with her in front of the portrait painted by Lucien Freud, Woman in a White Shirt (1956-7). It is a rebellious-looking Deborah Mitford, a face slashed with lines that is undoubtedly the face of a young woman but which seems to preface old age. 'Freuds are a bit of a shock but they are so brilliantly clever,' she reflected then, on the occasion of the exhibition two years after her husband's death in 2004, Memories of Andrew Devonshire; an extraordinary 20th century life.
'The person grows into what he has painted. It looks like an old woman, as I look now,' she commented. The two workmen who carried the portrait into the Duke's London house famously asked what the subject of the painting was, and on being told by the Duke, 'That's my wife', one replied, 'Well, thank God it's not my wife.' We regard Annigoni's portrait of her, painted just two years earlier and hanging on this occasion next to the Freud. The chin, hair and eyes are exactly the same but this is a regal, romantic Duchess in high-necked blouse, pearls and a softly draped wrap. 'That's artists for you, and that's what's interesting for people to see,' was her comment.
In one of our interviews, she observed, 'I never take it for granted. Coming home from being away, I'm always struck by the beauty of the place. Every day when I wake up in the morning, I realise how lucky I am.' How lucky I was, too, to have been given the opportunity to see Chatsworth through her eyes.