Deborah Mitford, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, dies at 94

Deborah Mitford, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, was the last of six famous sisters in an upper-crust British family whose antics left her countrymen shocked, appalled and always entertained. She died Wednesday at 94.

The death was announced by her son, Peregrine, who did not release the location or cause. She lived near the Derbyshire estate of Chatsworth House, the neoclassical palace that she and her husband, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, rescued from its post-World War II nadir and revived as one of England's finest country houses.

Her role in Chatsworth's fortunes alone marked her for posterity, but she will be remembered as the sixth and youngest of the Mitford sisters, whose outlandish behavior and political radicalism seemed to make them characters contrived by one of their chums, the satirical novelist Evelyn Waugh.

Two of her sisters, Diana and Unity, were friends of Adolf Hitler; their eldest sibling, Nancy, was a bestselling novelist; and another, Jessica, was a Communist who moved to California and wrote her own bestseller, "The American Way of Death" (1963), a wry look at the underhanded practices of the funeral industry. Pamela led the quieter life of an upper-class countrywoman, devoted to her dogs and her garden.

In a real-life, upper-class soap opera that made "Downton Abbey" look uneventful, Deborah Mitford -- often called "Debo" -- emerged as a long-suffering peacemaker between her squabbling siblings.

In her late-life memoir, "Wait for Me!" (2010), she sought to explain if not condone the enduring pre-World War II friendship between Hitler and Diana, a political admirer of the Nazi dictator, and Unity, the one groupie who could make the Führer giggle.

"I do not share Diana's fascist views, but my love for her overcame this side of her character," she wrote. "Unity was always the odd one out."

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The sisters proved a great trial to their aristocratic parents, David and Sydney Redesdale. "I'm normal, my wife is normal, but my daughters are each more foolish than the other," Redesdale told friends.

Deborah Vivian Freeman Mitford was born March 31, 1920, in the village of Asthall in the English Cotswolds and grew up in an age of dynamic social change and upheaval following World War I.

Shortly after turning 21, Deborah married Andrew Cavendish, a young Guards officer and younger son of the Duke of Devonshire. In 1944, her husband's brother, Billy, was killed in action in Belgium, meaning Andrew and Deborah would become the 11th Duke and Duchess.

Andrew and Deborah inherited the vast Chatsworth estate in 1950. The great challenge facing her and her husband was how to resuscitate the houses and estates that came with the dukedom, principally Chatsworth, a honey-stoned palace with 297 rooms, more than an acre under roof and 112 fireplaces. The postwar tax laws in Britain imposed a punitive levy of 80 percent of the value of the estate.

They resolved to save Chatsworth by selling a second 16th-century palace, Hardwick Hall, along with many works of art. It took 24 years to settle the debt.

As the matron of one of the most important historic homes in England, she found that she had an entrepreneurial streak that turned the once-moribund property into a thriving enterprise, with 600,000 visitors a year.