Today marks the 105th Anniversary of the Birth of Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, who was born on this day in 1920! The youngest of the infamous Mitford sisters who married 12th Duke of Devonshire and made Chatsworth into a glorious tourist destination, the Duchess possessed some spectacular Heirlooms of the Cavendish Family, which included the Devonshire Diamond Tiara!
Diamond Palmette Tiara | Devonshire Diamond Tiara | Devonshire Diamond Rivière | Devonshire Parure | Ruby Clasp | Craven Brooch | Insect Brooches | Aquamarine Brooch | Duchess of Devonshire’s Tiaras
Composed of seven detachable honeysuckle elements over a diamond base, cast in silver and gold with numerous diamonds of various size and cuts, the Tiara can also be worn as a necklace or Stomacher, while the honeysuckle elements can also be worn as brooches. Additionally, other diamond ornaments, like the Devonshire Diamond Earrings, can also be attached to the Tiara.
The Tiara was created around 1865 for Lady Louisa Cavendish, daughter of the 7th Duke of Devonshire, to be worn on the day of her wedding to Hon. Francis Egerton, but first appeared half a century later on the future 9th Duchess of Devonshire, who seems to have worn the Tiara for a visit from King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra to Chatsworth around 1901.
A decade later, the 9th Duchess of Devonshire was the was Mistress of the Robes to Queen Mary at the 1911 Coronation of King George V, and while she wore the magnificent Diamond Palmette Tiara, the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara was worn as a Stomacher along with the Devonshire Diamond Rivière and Earrings. Duchess Debo wrote in her autobiography:
My grandmother-in-law, Evelyn Duchess of Devonshire, was Mistress of the Robes to Queen Mary for forty-three years from 1910. Together they weathered long hours of tiara’d evenings, including those during the fabulous Indian Durbar in Delhi in 1911. The magically beautiful but relentless program, carried out in torrid heat, was exhausting for all concerned, and after one particularly lengthy evening Granny Evie was heard to say, ‘The Queen has been complaining about the weight of her Tiara…The Queen doesn’t know what a heavy tiara is.’ Evelyn knew what she was talking about. The larger of the two Devonshire diamond tiaras in indeed a whopper.”
However, the 9th Duchess was photographed wearing the Honeysuckle Tiara for some official portraits in 1916, when she served as the Viceregal Consort of Canada. She added the Devonshire Diamond Earrings as additional elements between the honeysuckles.
The 10th Duchess of Devonshire served as the Mistress of the Robes to the late Queen and was pictured wearing the Diamond Palmette Tiara on countless occasions but rarely wore the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara, notable exceptions during the French State Visit to Britain in 1950 and the Coronation Gala Performance of ‘Gloriana’ at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1953.
Since the Dowager Duchess wore the Diamond Palmette Tiara to the Coronation for Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in 1953, Deborah, the 11th Duchess wore the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara with the Diamond Rivière to the neckline of robe once worn by Georgina, 6th Duchess of Devonshire, described as:
…Moucher [Mary Devonshire] was to have the robes that had been carefully put away by Granny Evie in 1937 after King George VI’s coronation. Chatsworth, as always, came to the rescue. There were a number of tin boxes…In the vain hope of finding something for me, we started going through them and, lo and behold, from beneath a ton of tissue paper in the box that had held Moucher’s, appeared a second crimson peeress’s robe. The velvet is of exceptional quality, so soft your fingers hardly know they’re touching it, and of such pure brilliant crimson as to make you blink.”
A few years before the Duke and Duchess moved into Chatsworth House, the Duchess wore the Honeysuckle Tiara as a Necklace for a series of photos taken by the famed Norman Parkinson, also wearing the elements as brooches.
The Duchess also wore Devonshire Honeysuckle Tiara with the Diamond Rivière in 1961, for a Dinner at the Dorchester Hotel in London, describing occasions when she wore jewels in the 1960s:
I remember going to…an entertainment in London in the early 1960’s, by myself as Andrew had an engagement elsewhere. With…confidence I wore the big tiara…When I ran out of partners and wanted to go home, I went out to look for a taxi. It never occurred to me that it might not be a good idea to stand alone in the street, long after midnight, with a load of diamonds around my neck and 1,900 more glittering above my head.
Another memorable evening we were staying at Windsor Castle for a dance given by the Queen. I came down to dinner, got up as I thought our hostess and the other guests would be, the big tiara firmly in place. To my horror none of the other women wore theirs. It is far worse to be overdressed than underdressed a I sat through dinner wishing I was anywhere else. When the dancing began, I took it off, put it under a chair and enjoyed myself enormously. I suppose Windsor Castle in the only house where you could be sure of finding the blessed thing still there at bedtime.”
The Duchess wore the Diamond Honeysuckles on her hat for the Wedding of her elder daughter, Lady Emma Cavendish, to Tobias Tennant, along with her Craven Brooch.
In 1967, the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara was worn by Amanda Heywood-Lonsdale for her Wedding to Peregrine Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and now the 12th Duke of Devonshire, in London in 1967.
A generation later, the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara was also worn by Lady Celina Cavendish, the daughter of the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, for her Wedding to Alexander Carter in 1995.
In 2001, Duchess Debo wore five of the Diamond Honeysuckles as Brooches as she and the Duke held a Garden Party at Chatsworth to celebrate their Diamond Wedding Anniversary, inviting other couples also celebrating their Diamond Anniversaries from around Derbyshire.
“Our diamond wedding was in 2001. The list of our golden wedding guests was unearthed, which produced the survivors of sixty years of marriage. The party should have taken place in April, to coincide with our anniversary, but had to be postponed until September because of foot and “mouth disease; it was dangerously close and we feared for the park deer and farm animals. The theme of the party this time was 1941.
We laid out a week’s wartime food rations on a trestle table and our astonished younger guests could hardly believe what they saw. ‘Two ounces of bacon for one week?’ ‘Two ounces of butter? Impossible!’ But that is how it was. Utility clothing was not easy to find as it had been worn to death and thankfully thrown away when clothes rationing came to an end, so the staff dressed up in RAF, Royal Navy and Army uniforms of the period. Few knew how to fasten a Sam Browne or on to which uniform it should go; Sergeant Major Brittain who greeted us outside the church after our wedding would have had apoplexy, and I think Andrew, with his military training, was close to putting the offenders on a charge.
The New Squadronaires Orchestra, inspired by the original RAF Dance Band, played songs made famous by Vera Lynn: ‘We’ll Meet Again’, ‘There’ll be Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover’ and ‘I’ll be Seeing You’. Our ancient guests joined in the singing with gusto and 1941 seemed like yesterday. Andrew commissioned a porcelain loving cup for each celebrating couple and when they eventually tottered off home, a forest of sticks and an array of wheelchairs, with Chatsworth staff at the ready in case of falls, an old gentleman said to me, ‘Goodbye and thank you. See you in ten years.’ It would have been a small, but extra-special tea party. Sadly it was not to be.”
In recent years, replicas of all three of the Devonshire Tiaras went on display at the “House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth” exhibition at Chatsworth in 2017, before the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara went on display at Sotheby’s in New York for a period a few years ago.
More recently, the Diamond Honeysuckle Tiara and Diamond Palmette Tiara both went on display at ‘Power & Image: Royal & Aristocratic Tiaras’ at Sotheby’s in London in 2022. Let’s hope we see the Tiara worn again soon!
Diamond Palmette Tiara | Devonshire Diamond Tiara | Devonshire Diamond Rivière | Devonshire Parure | Ruby Clasp | Craven Brooch | Insect Brooches | Aquamarine Brooch | Duchess of Devonshire’s Tiaras
Devonshire Diamond Palmette Tiara
Devonshire Diamond Tiara
Devonshire Diamond Rivière
Devonshire Parure
Ruby Clasp
Craven Brooch
Insect Brooches
