Tea with the Duke

Thanks, Sir, cried I, 'tis very fine, But where d'ye sleep and where d'ye dine?

Under the leveling influence of the Labor government, many a land-poor British lord was proving willing to provide (for a price) a firsthand answer to questions like this one asked by 18th Century Poet Alexander Pope after a visit to Blenheim Palace.

Last week, to earn some extra money for its upkeep and taxes, the huge doors of Blenheim Palace itself were thrown open to the public for four days weekly. Over the Easter weekend more than 4,000 visitors paid two shillings sixpence apiece to wander through Blenheim's halls, gawp at the tiny bedroom where Winston Churchill was born, and stare at the battle flags of his great ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim's builder. On hand to show them around and plug the sale of a guidebook (threepence the copy) was Blenheim's present owner. "Who's that old geezer?" one broadly accented tourist asked him, pointing to a portrait on the wall. "My grandfather," answered His Grace, the loth Duke of Marlborough, beaming amiably above his Glen plaid jacket and regimental tie. A village caterer served tea at half-a-crown a plate. "I just get a percentage," * admitted the Duke.

The Duchess, Lady Rosemary, the Duke's daughter, and two visiting lords also served as guides. "The carpet," Lady Rosemary told a clutch of gapers in the tapestry-hung hall of state, "is considered very fine. We really shouldn't be standing on it, but it's difficult not to."

"Everything went off fine," said the Duchess, dropping wearily into a chair at the end of the first week. "The people behaved wonderfully. They left hardly any litter. But I still think," she confessed, "that the best place to live is an electrically run cottage."

* An old Marlborough custom. The first Duke had firmly buttressed the family fortune by pocketing a 2 1/2% cut on the wages of his foreign troops in Flanders, and also a percentage on the contracts for bread and tea rationed out to them.

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