PROMOTED FROM THE BALLET. A Viscount Married a Dancer.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 68, 20 September 1884, Page 5

PROMOTED FROM THE BALLET. A Viscount Married a Dancer.

Thus writes Archibald Forbes in the " Adelaide Advertiser " : — One strove not to believe the rumour that Lord Savernake had made an addition to the long list of aristocratic mesalliances by marrying Miss Dolly Tester, a sprightly young woman who was dancing and singing in the Empire Theatre But the discreditable story is wholly true. Lord Savernake is a mere lad; he came of age only this week. He has been about town for a couple of years, and has gone in extensively for dissipation of all kinds. Ho can drive a four-in-hand with considerable skill, and is reported to be a fair proficient with the gloves. There is no bluer blood than his in all England. He is grandson of the Marquis of Ailesbury, and heir to that title as well as to the earldom of Cardigan, which fell to the Marquis of Ailesbury on the death of the famous earl who commanded the Balaclava charge. The Bruces of the Ailosbury race, and the Brudewells with whom they intermairied, are both among the oldest of our great families. The present Marquis of Ailesbury is somewhere about 75, and of very little account in any sense. His son, the father of the lad who has outraged his order, was a curiously " fechless " tort of person, and from his Eton days bore the name of " Duffer Bruce." He and the late Georgo Payne thought that they had a good thing for the Derby of '06 in the " Bribery colt," afterward Savernake, which Lord Lyon beat by half a head on tho post, to the final ruin of the poor <l Duffer." He levanted to Corsica, where, after some wretchedness of another kind, he died, and left this only son, Avho has married the ballet girl. Savernake is poor, for the estates are greatly encumbered, and he has not come to them yet. The lady was well endowed with a settlement made by a previous " friend," and looked askance at Savernake. So he became desperate, it appears, and offered her not only his heart but his hand. She consented to become a viscountess by courtesy, with the coronet of a marchioness almost to her hand, and I saw the happy pair on the box seat of a drag at Ascot the other day. [Thus, pretty Dolly Tester, if her husband lives a few years, will be Marchioness of Aiiesbury ; and, like the next Duchess of Grafton, will add lustre of the lime-light kind to the British peerage.]