Personalities.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 444, 20 October 1904, Page 2

Personalities.

THE EAFL AND MIS SECRET. THE new Earl of Strathmoro and King home, as owner of Glamis Castle, is the chief repository of one of the best-kept, weirdest secrets in the world. It is a secret centuries old, and has never been known to more than three persons at one time —the owner, the heir at his coming of age, and the factor, or family solicitor. The Earl's son will escape the burden of knowledge until September of next year, when he comes of age. No woman has ever known the story. The beautiful Charlotte Barrington, wife of one of the Earls, endeavoured to fathom it. During her husband's absence she and a party of friends sought to find the second chamber by hanging towels from the windows of all the known rooms. The Earl returned when-the exploration was at its height. There was a terrible scene between himself and the Countess. He bitterly reproached her for seeking lightly that which deeply concerned the honour and fortunes of the family. They parted. She joined her uncle, Lord Normanby, the English Ambassador, in Paris, and never met her husband again. The latter, upon his death-bed, sent for his heir, and besought him to ' pray down' the sinister influence which he himself had vainly endeavoured to laugh down. His successor did as he was bidden. Visitors to the Castle have seen him steal away in the early morning from his private chapel Wearing the clothes in which he had dined the previous evening, having spent the whole night in prayer. One curious feature is that the factor, who has of necessity to be privy to the . SAcret, will never sleep beneath the roof of Glamis Castle. No matter how late the hour, or how furious the storm, after his work at the Castle is ended he rides to his own home.

PRINCE DOLGOROUKI. Prince Alexis Dolgorouki, whose alleged assault on the Czar's Foreign Minister, Count Lamsdorff, is one of the sensations of the moment, is both well-known and popular in English Society. The Prince is the third son of the late Prince Dolgoiouki, who was Secretary of State to Alexander the Second, and is a descendant of a Czar of the 12th century. A Princess of his house was the wife of Peter the Second. Prince Alexis is one of the very few Bussian nobles who have married Englishwomen. His wife was Miss Fleetwood Wilson, daughter of the late owner of Wappenhand Manor. Mr Fleetwood Wilson, a man of rare culture and erudition, was a great deal of a recluse, and it was not until after his death that his clever and charming daughter went into Society. She made her entry under the wings of Mrs Cornwallis-West and Lady Julia Wombach, and become an "immediate success. Prince Alexis fell in love with her at their first meeting, and in 1898 they were married. Their, entertainments are among the most delightful in London, for the Princess is a most charming hostess, well read and witty, and the Prince is far more like a typical Englishman than a Eussian. It was from their town house that Miss Daisy West was married to Prince Henry of Pless. JKARQUIS OF ORMOND.

The Marquis, who ranks among his honours that of entertaining the King and Queen at Kilkenny Castle on their popular visit recently, represents the twentyseventh generation of a great family. The earliest records of the family go back to one Hubert Walteri, who held lands in Norfolk and Suffolk in the middle of the twelfth century. His heir, Herveus Walteri, had four sons, of whom the second was Archbishop of Canterbury and Governor of England during the abseneeSof Richard the First, while the eldest-born Theobald FitzWalter, accompanied Henry the Second to Ireland, and was created Chief Butler of that country in 1177. The rank is still held, the present Marquis of Ormonde being the twenty-seventh hereditary Chief Butler. The sixth Chief Butler, who beginning by being knighted in London when the fourteenth century was nine years old, became Chief Governor of Ireland in 1314, and died Earl of Carrick seven years later. He had married in the meantime the Lady Joan FitzGerald, daughter of the first Earl of Kildare, and it was this Chief Butler's son James who purchased for two thousand marks the right which allowed a minor to marry whomsoever he pleased, and straightway espoused the granddaughter of Edward the First, Lady Eleanor de Bohun. For his temerity the second Edward made him Earl of Ormonde. This was in 1328, and the twelfth Earl, a little more than three hundred years later, became the first Marquis of Ormonde, Baron Butler, Earl of Brecknock, and finally Duke of Ormonde—the ' great Duke of Ormonde,' whose bones were laid in Westminster Abbey. When Goorgo tho First came to tho throne tho English honours of the Ormondes wore extinguished, and tho Irish earldom remained dormant for nearly a century. Tho prosont marquisate dates only from 1825.