July 31, 2011
Australia,
Britain,
Canada,
Crime,
People
 After the 13th Duke of Manchester’s marital misdemeanours
were aired in the High Court, his (very) extended family talk about the
trials that the ignoble aristocrat has put them through.
Â
It
is the astonishing story of the bigamous duke, his three wives, and the
illegitimate Californian son who could now inherit one of Britain’s
most scandal-plagued peerages.
The chequered life of Alexander Montagu, the Australian-born 13th
Duke of Manchester, has been thrown into the spotlight by a High Court
ruling last week that instructed family trustees to re-instate monthly
payments to his two American children, offspring from a marriage that
had been declared “bigamous and voidâ€.
Even by the sometimes ignoble standards of the aristocracy, the
clan’s fall from the grace has been as spectacular as it has been
tawdry.
Today, after the far-flung marital misdemeanours of the errant
48-year-old aristocrat reached the High Court in London, new details
about the Duke – who has served jail time in Australia and been
deported from Canada – can now be revealed.
The Duke’s three wives – two past, one present – as well as the
duke’s teenage son and long-presumed heir, cast light on the
misdemeanours of “Lord Alexâ€, as the disgraced peer calls himself.
His first wife, Marion Stoner, 61, said she was not even aware that
he had married again before divorcing her until she was contacted by The
Sunday Telegraph. She said their short-lived relationship in the early
1980s had ended when he tried to shoot her with a fishing speargun.
But the former Australian model’s marriage to the Duke was not
ended legally until 1996, three years into his purported marriage to
Wendy Buford, 44, a Californian law firm receptionist and mother of his
two children.
Miss Buford, who in 1993 unwittingly entered into the bigamous
relationship with the Duke, last week described her life with the peer
as “15 years of heartacheâ€.
Recognising her children’s claim on financial support from their
father, which had been stopped when the offspring’s illegitimacy was
revealed, Mr Justice Floyd ruled there was “absolutely no doubt that
at the relevant times Wendy reasonably believed that the marriage was
validâ€, before their divorce in 2007.
Even the Duke’s 18-year-old American-born son Alexander, who has
the title Viscount Mandeville, told this paper of his shock at learning
of his and his sister’s illegitimacy. He also explained he is
currently preparing to start his first job – as a cook in a fast-food
outlet in Orange County, California, specialising in chicken sandwiches.
However, Laura Montagu, 49, the current duchess and another former
model, is standing by her man, despite the disclosures about his past,
which she portrayed as youthful indiscretions.
The court saga is the latest sorry twist for a family that is a
living lesson in ducal decadence. The dukedom of Manchester was created
in 1719 by George I, but there is little now left of its estates or
wealth.
Marcus Scriven, the society author, has detailed the family’s
self-destructive descent over a century of profligacy, fecklessness and
philandering in his book Splendour and Squalor.
The family seat for four centuries, Kimbolton Castle in
Cambridgeshire, was sold off by the 10th duke in 1950 while he was
living in Kenya. Another estate, in Co Armagh, was also offloaded and is
now the headquarters a potato crisp maker.
The excesses reached their apogee with the four-times married 12th
duke, Angus, a conman who was jailed in the US for fraud, ran brothels
in Australia and was so overweight when he died in 2002 that he had to
be removed from his flat by a crane.
“It was understandable that a newspaper should describe him as ‘a
one-man argument against the hereditary rights of peers’,†said
Scriven. “As a Kimbolton man who knew Angus in childhood puts it:
‘What I’m wondering is, where are the white sheep in this
family?’â€
The 13th Duke has lived up – or down – to his genes. He was twice
convicted of fraud in Australia and later deported from Canada for
entering the country illegally, but not before striking up a
relationship with an erstwhile stripper and falsely claiming to be a
second cousin of Diana, Princess of Wales, and 52nd in line to the
throne.
Wendy Buford was oblivious to all this when, aged 24, she met a
dashing stranger with an Australian accent in the Crazy Horse bar in the
Californian city of Santa Ana in April 1992. “In retrospect, it was
just one of those nights when you wish you’d gone home,†she said
last week.
Miss Buford, the only child of a waitress and construction salesman,
was working at a law firm, with a part-time job as a waitress, when she
went to the country and western bar with her best friend.
“All of a sudden, there was this guy by my side. He was just a blur
of action. He said he’d seen me in the line to get in and needed to
meet me. He insisted that he really wanted to see me again and gave me a
card with his name, Alexander Charles David Drogo Montagu, in gold
raised letters.
“We spoke for barely five minutes, it was all so fast. He told me
how beautiful I was and that he wanted to take me to dinner. And then he
asked me for my number. That was my big mistake number two. I wasn’t
going to give it to him, but then I thought: ‘What’s the harm?’â€
She was, she says, “swept off her feet†by a man who introduced
himself as Lord Alex and talked of yachts and mansions, even as he
discussed selling off his title to make money.
It was a whirlwind relationship – they met in April 1992, briefly
split in July, and a month later she discovered she was pregnant – a
deliberate move by her to entrap him, he claimed last week.
“He was a handsome man, charming and very well turned out. But he
was also very controlling, wanted to run the show and could get very
angry. And then there were the stories. There was always a glimmer of
truth. But over the years, I came to realise it was only a glimmer.â€
In early May 1993, and several days overdue, Miss Buford came back
from the shops to a stunning demand. “He said: ‘We have to get
married. Now.’ He was insistent. He said he was working on a bond deal
and someone was trying to get him deported.
“He took me straight to the courthouse. I had tears in my eyes, I was
thinking: ‘This is not the way it’s supposed to be.’ I was huge and
wearing a horrible maternity dress.â€
She felt no excitement at becoming a duchess, a title she never used,
just embarrassment at being the bride in a shotgun wedding. And she
says that within days of Alexander’s birth, her new husband was
“dragging me around immigration lawyersâ€.
The Duke disputed her account, saying that he had got married at the
behest of his mother in Australia, who had been telling him “to do the
right thingâ€. Yet it now turns out that it was far from the right
thing to do – for he was still married to his first wife.
Last week, Ms Stoner expressed her dismay when she learned that she
had been one of his contemporaneous wives during an interview with The
Sunday Telegraph in the kitchen of her Melbourne council house.
“Oh my God,†she said, struggling to contain her surprise and
rising anger. “That is shocking. It’s unbelievable. How dare he? I
feel sorry for his wife – I really do. It’s so cruel. How must she
feel? He’s a cunning b––––––. She was as stupid as I
was.â€
They married at a small civil ceremony in Melbourne in 1984, when she
was 33 and he was 21. She said the marriage fell apart within months
when he tried to shoot her with a speargun in their kitchen, but they
never divorced.
Then, in 1996, Ms Stoner received an visit from the duke’s mother,
Mary, Lady Angus Montagu, the daughter of a car dealer in Geelong. She
had not previously met his family, but when the matriarch, accompanied
by her daughter, Emma, asked her to agree to divorce her son, she
happily agreed.
Ms Stoner recalled last week that she had a sickening suspicion that
the Montagu family had an ulterior motive for pursuing a divorce after
so long, suspecting that, perhaps, the convicted criminal had strayed
again.
“I thought it was strange,†said Ms Stoner, shaking her head as
she reached for another cigarette. “Why would Lady Mary lower herself
to come to a council area to ask for a divorce? I thought: ‘I bet he has
done something.’â€
While recounting her various brushes with the Montagu family, Ms
Stoner also express sorrow for the second wife of the duke’s bigamy.
“I feel sorry for her, I really do,†she said, running her hands
through her burgundy-tinted hair.
“I bet she didn’t know anything about me. He has fathered those
children, whether or not they are illegitimate. Those poor kids. I only
hope they don’t turn out like him.â€
Ms Stoner, 61, had two children from a previous relationship when she
was introduced to the Duke by a friend who worked as a secretary for
his guardian. “He had charm but he lived in a fantasy world,†she
said.
“He was not bad looking. He made out he was a thorough gentleman
but as soon as we got married he was different. He was used to having
things. I became his possession.â€
For more than 20 years, the former duchess has lived in a small
box-shaped house whose walls are adorned with black-and-white family
photos, second-hand bric-a-brac and bouquets of faded plastic flowers.
She has kept no photos of the Duke or her marriage, but in a carton
at the bottom of a bedroom cupboard, she found the receipt for a notice
she put in a newspaper to say she would no longer be liable for debts
incurred in his name.
“These people with a title,†she said. “They think they’re so
good. It is just a name. What gives them the right to destroy other
people’s lives?â€
Much of what Ms Stoner recounted about hollow financial promises,
bounced cheques and a life of debt, bore a resemblance to the
experiences of the woman with whom she unknowingly shared a husband for
three years.
Miss Buford said her 15 years with the duke were a “rollercoaster
rideâ€. She said he rarely worked, that they were thrown out of
countless apartments after he failed to pay the rent, and that debt
collectors’ summons were a fact of life.
“I am a very down-to-earth, straightforward person, but I just gave
up complaining, as even my family and friends were sick of hearing
about it.â€
He often dropped famous names with whom he said he was striking
business deals, but only once did she meet a celebrity with him. When
they attended a memorial event for Diana, Princess of Wales, in Los
Angeles in 1997, he turned up with Michael Jackson – “I was never
sure about the connection†– and subsequently took Alexander to meet
the pop star at his Neverland ranch.
She says that he was addicted to prescription drugs; he counters that
he took them for bipolarity, and that she was a hard-drinking “party
girl†who left him in charge of bringing up the children.
The couple finally split after New Year’s in 2007. It was not until
2009, however, that he delivered the bombshell that, not only that he
had been married before, but that the divorce from his first wife had
not been processed until 1996.
“Even after all my years with Alex, I never saw that one coming,â€
she said last week. “I’d been miserable and the kids had been put
through so much, but I thought at least we were married. Even that
wasn’t true.â€
That news was devastating. But then she heard from the family
trustees that they were halting monthly allowance payments of $3,000 –
around £1,850 – a decision that left her once again on the verge of
losing a home, before it was reversed last week.
For the peer’s progeny, the court ruling was a welcome relief after
the unnerving discovery two years ago. “I’d heard the word
‘bigamist’, but it was a total shock to learn my father was one and
what that meant for me and my sister Ashley,†said Alexander. “But
then again, nothing is surprising about my father anymore.â€
He is an unassuming young man, with the typical focus of a southern
Californian teenager – as he spoke to The Sunday Telegraph, his
friends waited for him to join them at the pool in their gated community
in a commuter town in Orange County, in the baking hills south of Los
Angeles.
But he also knows all about the excesses of his recent forebears.
“I don’t think it’s rubbed off on me. At least, I hope not,†he
said.
Indeed, while male Montagus have displayed a peerless penchant for
playing fast and loose with the law and their legacy, he has
down-to-earth goals for life. He wants to make his way as a chef and
hopes to take culinary and business studies after finishing high school
this year.
And he will get his first taste of that world as a cook next month at
a local shopping mall franchise of Chick-Fil-A, the “great chicken
sandwich†outlet. “It’s starting from the ground up, but you have
to begin somewhere,†he said.
“I’m not one to flash titles, unlike my father, who was always
trying to get Ashley and me into theme parks for free, saying he was
Lord Alex. That was so embarrassing,†he said.
“My friends think it’s cool I’m a viscount [he pronounces the
word “vise-countâ€], but they can’t figure out why I’m not living
in a castle in England.â€
Although the High Court ruling restored the modest maintenance
payments from the family trust, it does not establish the issue of
succession. The young Alexander had been viewed as the heir presumptive,
but the 14th duke will be determined by the House of Lords after the
current peer dies.
Amid the controversy and condemnation, the self-styled Lord Alex has a
staunch supporter in his third wife, the former Laura Smith, a
Californian estate agent whom he married shortly after divorcing Miss
Buford in 2007 – in the correct order, on this occasion.
“He’s not a bigamist, he was just a young man who made a genuine
mistake,†she told The Sunday Telegraph. “He really thought he was
divorced and this whole story is very upsetting for him.â€
She echoes her husband’s claims that he has been unjustly vilified
by his last wife, and pillories the family trust for, she says, granting
him a pittance.
And unlike Ms Stoner and Miss Buford, she is enthusiastic about her
title. Indeed, in an online profile, complete with a picture from her
modelling years, she describes herself as “a Duchess of pure positive
energy and love!â€
The Duke, in a rambling interview from his apartment in Las Vegas,
following last week’s court ruling, responded with a barrage of
accusations blaming the family trust, Miss Buford and his mother for his
predicament.
“I am pretty upset this is all going on, to be honest,†he said,
his Australian accent still strong. “This has all been conjured up by
the trustees and Wendy.
“I am not a bigamist. There was no intent to commit bigamy. I
believed I was divorced from my first wife. It was an error in the
paperwork by my mother. She had told me she got it annulled. I can’t
stand my mother.â€
When asked about the alleged speargun incident, he told The Sunday
Telegraph: “This is a lie. If that took place, why am I not in jail?
And why would I not just shoot her with my Walther P5? I never, ever
miss!â€
The younger Alexander Montagu hopes to visit Britain for the first
time later this year. For now, his only inheritance from his father is a
black shirt bearing the family crest and its Latin motto, “Disponendo
Me Non Mutande Me†– “You may displace me but you cannot change
me.â€
He added, matter-of-factly: “That’s it – no castle, no jewels.â€
The bigamist Duke and his three wives – Telegraph.
