Duke in Disneyland

When once asked just how he happened to become the sort of chap he is, 41-year-old John Robert Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford, airily replied: "I wasn't raised to be a gentleman, you know." Of all Britain's cash-strapped peers whom death and taxes have forced to open their estates to the public, none has done so with such tradition-shattering flamboyance as the duke. On the 3,000 acres of Woburn Park, just 40 miles from London, and in the gold-and-damask rooms of Woburn Abbey, things go on these days that would have made the first twelve Dukes of Bedford shudder. His present Grace has turned the place into a sort of Disneyland--with a degree of success that has made him both the target and the envy of all those engaged in what his duchess calls "the stately-homes racket."

Something for Everyone. Last week, through lands where noble lords once rode to hounds, hundreds of tourists scuttled about in buses and cars, munched sandwiches on rolling lawns, and frolicked on ponds in water scooters and sailboats. They shuffled through halls that once knew royalty, saw Queen Victoria's State Bedroom, gaped at Rembrandts, Van Dycks and Reynoldses, and examined such items as the saltcellars from Louis XV's wedding table.

For the hungry and sore-footed there are restaurants, a milk bar and an outdoor tea garden. There is a penny arcade with a rock-'n'-roll-playing jukebox for the Teddy Boy set, a maze, a miniature train and pony rides for the children. While the ladies can load up at the souvenir shop on bric-a-brac bearing the ducal coat of arms, the men can attend a peepshow called "Ten Beautiful Models in Color and 3-D." Finally, for the benefit of all, there is the duke himself, always around to greet his "guests," to pose for pictures, sign autographs and even judge skiffle contests. "One is," says the duke matter-of-factly, "one of the attractions."

From Carnegie to Ford. The grandson of the famed "Flying Duchess" who set speed records in her plane until the day she disappeared into the blue (1937), John Robert Russell was destined to be a bit out of the ordinary. His father was a religious eccentric who did not speak to his own father for 20 years, once tried to negotiate a peace with Hitler, spent a fortune attempting to develop a breed of homing budgerigars, and so hated all schools, as a result of his life at Eton, that he insisted his children be privately tutored. Young John's education was, as he himself says, "most abnormal," and instead of ending up in the army or the government, he found himself a reporter on the Sunday Express. Lord Beaver-brook's editors taught him "all about giving people what they want, not what they should have." Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People is "a sort of bible with me."

When John succeeded to his title in 1953, he and his wife, an aunt of the new Aga Khan, found Woburn Abbey crumbling from neglect. For two years the couple painted and repaired, rummaged through rooms of stored ancestral treasures. The duke stopped at nothing to advertise his place. He snapped up every TV offer, lectured women's clubs on how to cook venison ("Had to study up for that one"), gave his butler's services as a prize on a U.S. TV show, even invited Marilyn Monroe to spend a night in the bed used by Charles I. His unabashed huckstering paid off. In 1955 an imposing 199,647 visitors went to Woburn. Last year the number was up to 372,000.

Helicopters & Nudists. Though he is far from making the annual $420,000 needed to keep Woburn up, the duke plans a motel and trailer park, will stage a tractor race with the Marquess of Bath in July, will even entertain a convention of nudists in August ("Well, why not?"). For those who call such antics undignified, the duke has only scorn: "Try to sell your dignity to a pawnbroker and see how much you get." Besides, he says with a self-satisfied smile, "the people who have been so bloody nasty in the past are now beginning to copy me."

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