“Well, perhaps you are, go home then,” came the order, which is testimony to the consideration he had for his employees when he was addressed in a manly, straightforward way.

There was a grotesque procession one day at a farm on the Welbeck estate.  It was a rainy summer, and the farmers were at their wits’-ends to know how they were to secure their hay in anything like good condition.

The Duke was not a man to be beaten by the weather; he defied it; he was determined to have his grass in the rickyard, wet or dry.  So the order went forth that his traction-engine and waggons were to be ready for carrying it on a certain day.

There was to be no shirking, for the Duke’s intention was to be with his men to see that the work was done.  So he went to the farm in his long brown cape and high silk hat and an umbrella which might have done duty for Hans William Bentinck in the swamps of Holland.

The harvesters filled the waggons in a downpour of rain and the cavalcade started for the homestead.  There were three or four waggons behind the engine, and in the last, lo and behold, sat his Grace, grim, silent and self-satisfied that the elements had no terrors for him.

What a life his was to lead; he was a veritable prisoner, having himself for a warder.

The special apartment used by him in the daytime was fitted with a trap-door in the floor, by which he could descend to the regions below, and thus roam about his underground tunnels without the servants knowing whether he was in the house or had left it.  By means of this trap-door, after walking to some distant part of his estate and astonishing his workmen there, he could re-appear in the Abbey as mysteriously as he had left it.

The apartment with the trap-door had another door opening into an ante-room, and here his servants received their orders.

The “Prince of Silence” rarely spoke to his attendants; he wrote down on paper what he required and placed it in the letter-box of the door opening into the ante-room.  Then he rang a bell, when a servant would come and read what he had written and carry out the order accordingly.

The Duke’s bedstead was an immense square erection, constructed in an extraordinary manner.  There were large doors to it, so arranged that when folded it was impossible to know whether the bed was occupied by its owner.

He was a lonely traveller, and even when he went to Paris would have no companion with him.  His arrangements were made by an avant courier, and when it became known that he had arrived in the gay city, the English aristocracy paid formal visits to him.

These attentions were too much for his habit of loneliness, and he vanished to St. Germains.  A few weeks’ stay here was enough for him, and he came back to Paris, not lingering more than a couple of days, and then proceeded by stages to Calais and on to London.

One of the best authenticated stories of the fifth Duke relates to his habit of riding alone in a carriage specially constructed to secure privacy.  As was natural the more it became known that he wanted to escape observation the more was curiosity aroused to see him, so that a considerable part of his life was spent in adopting stratagems to prevent sight-seers from catching a glimpse of the aristocratic enigma.