COUNT AS MILLINER.

Taihape Daily Times, 31 December 1918, Page 5

COUNT AS MILLINER.

COUSIN' OF LATE . CZAR. FAMILY FORTUNES VANISH ; One of tlic most astonishing 1 of nil the topsy-turvy romances of the war is summed up in the fact that Count Michael Torby has become a dress designer in the West-End of London. Count Micli'ael is the only son of the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, second cousin of the Tsar, who,- was recently killed by Russian revolutionaries. He is thus connected with our own Royal family, and just before the war the King and Queen dined at Ken Wood- —then the Grand Duke’s Hampstead house —and after dinner the finest ball of the 191-1 season was given to celebrate the coming out of Countess Nada Torby, the second daughter, of the Grand Duke and his wife, the Countess Torby. Count Michael’s eldest sister — the Countess Zia —is the wife of Major Sir Derrick Wernherf the inheritor of millions left by his father, Sir Julius, Wernhcr, the great South African diamond company director. The count is the youngest of the three children, and is twenty years of age. But for the war, says the Express, which tells the story, he might possibly have gone some day to Russia, which his father left more than twenty years ago in order to live in England with the wife whom the Tsar of those days refused to recognise because she was not of Royal blood. The late Tsar was on friendly terras with the Grand Duke Michael, and the young count might, perhaps, have gained a position in Russia such as would seem the proper lot of a. cousin of the Tsar. He was brought up in luxury in England. He lived with his father and mother at Keele Hall, in Staffordshire, a magnificent country house in the Tudor stylo, or at Ken Wood, one of the most beautifully situated of the old Hampstead houses, with large gardens and grounds. He seemed assured of a life untroubled by the - need of making money. Then came the war and the Russian revolution, and the family fortunes vanished. The Grand Duke left. Ken Wood, Now the count has set up in business as the rival of Lucilc and Paquin and Poirot.