Argyll, Margaret, Duchess of

▪ 1994

      British socialite (b. Dec. 1, 1912, Newton Mearns, Renfrewshire, Scotland—d. July 26, 1993, London, England), was an elegant society hostess and one of Britain's most celebrated beauties, but she scandalized the nation when she became embroiled in a prolonged (1959-63), sensational divorce from her second husband, Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll. She was born Ethel Margaret Whigham, the daughter of a Scottish textile manufacturer, and was educated in an exclusive private school in New York City. A stunning brunette with flawless white skin and green eyes, she was named debutante of the year after her coming-out ball in 1930. Thereafter, newspapers chronicled every detail of her life, including her romances with Prince Aly Khan and the 7th Earl of Warwick, her glamorous marriage in 1933 to American stockbroker Charles Sweeney, and her near-fatal illness and stillborn baby the next year. As Mrs. Sweeney, she was named one of the world's best-dressed women and immortalized in Cole Porter's song "You're the Top." After an amicable divorce in 1947, she married (1951) the Duke of Argyll and set about restoring his ancestral home, Inveraray Castle. In their divorce trial the duke charged his wife with slander, forgery, and multiple adulteries, producing a photograph of the duchess in flagrante delicto with a naked man whose face was never seen and whose secret identity sparked public speculation for years afterward. In 1963 the court castigated her in a lengthy divorce judgment. She gradually lost her social position and her home, and she died in poverty. The duchess's autobiography, Forget Not, appeared in 1975.

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