Lord Charles Arthur Francis Cavendish

Lord Charles Arthur Francis Cavendish (29 August 1905 – 23 March 1944) was the second son of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire and his wife, Lady Evelyn Petty-FitzMaurice. Married to American dancer Adele Astaire, he died young of alcoholism.

Biography

Cavendish was born in 1905 at Holker Hall, Lancashire, He courted her while he worked for the bank J.P. Morgan & Co. in New York City. Astaire proposed to Cavendish at the 21 Club in Manhattan. They were married in 1932, at his family seat of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Their children included a daughter born in 1933 and twin sons born in 1935 – lived only a few hours. The couple lived at Lismore Castle in County Waterford, Ireland, which had been given to them as a wedding present by Cavendish's father, the 9th Duke of Devonshire.

Death Cavendish died at Lismore Castle, aged 38, of long-term acute alcoholism and was buried at Lismore Cathedral. A clause in his will stipulated that Lismore Castle was to go to his nephew, Lord Andrew Cavendish (later the 11th Duke of Devonshire), if Adele remarried, which she did in 1947.

Ancestry