Woman's World

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 34, 30 June 1914, Page 6

Woman's World

OOUNTESS OF BATHUKST. OWNS LEADING LONDON NEWSPAPER.

Lady Eatlwrst's refusal to permit the advertisement of the London Times, announcing its reduction of price to one penny, to apnour in the Morning Post, has served (says tlie London correspondent of an American paper) to call attention to tlie fact that this paper is not only owned by the Countess of Bathurst, but likewise managed by her. She takes an active share in its management, and has attracted some attention in the journalistic world by the ; readiness with which she changes the members of the staff of the paper when she has any reason to find fault with them. She inherited the paper from her father, the late Lord Glenesk, as his only surviving child, and is married to the seventh Earl of Bathurst, greatgrandson of that Lord Bathurst whose name is so profoundly execrated by the Bonapartists, owing to the circumstance that ho was the statesman responsible for the exile and captivity of the first Napoleon at St. Helena. Curiously enough, the present Lady \ Bathurst is

AN ADMIRER OP NAPOLEON, j and when, during the Boer War, hor 1 husband was selected by the British 1 Government to command the garrison at 1 St. Helena, where General Cronje and i several thousands of Boer prisoners were j interned until the' end of the conflict, j slie made her headquarters in a bungalow erected for the accommodation of her husband and herself, on the Longwood estate, only a short distance from the house which had been the residence of the first Napoleon and where he died. Lady Bathurst was anxious to buy Longwood, but found that Queen Victoria on the occasion of her first stay in Paris had made a present of it to Napoleon 111., while visiting with him the toml> of the first emperor under the dome of the Palace of tin© Invalided.

Incidentally, I may add that Longwood has, since Lady Bathurst's stay on the Wand, 'been allowed to fall into a lamentable state of wreck and ruin, owing to the fact that neither Empress Eugenie nor the Bonapartist pretender at Brussels, nor yet the French Government, will contribute a penny piece to keep the place in repair. Lady Ba! hurst never makes any secret as to hi r resentment of the manner in which the lirst Xapoleon was treated at St. Uo'eim. and insistu that, 'his exil • there was one of the most deplorable pages in Kng'ish history. She aUo states thai his gaoler, Sir Hudson Low, was stupid, mendacious, and "littie of a gentleman." and that he .contributed more -than anvone els« to give JCnglish' men "the reputation of being cruel." Lady Bathurs.t is one of the best known women in Lculon society. This is due to the fact that her parents' house was among the most hospitab!" in Louden, and her mother's salons

ENJOYED A EUROPEAN 1 REPCTA TION,

and that after Lady Glcnask's death, i! was she, Lady Bathurst, who was woni.

to do the honors of her lather's establishment. The house of the late Lord and f.adv Glenesk was in Piccadilly, just east of the Bachelor's Club, and form»rlv belonged to the poet Byron. It was there that the bard wrote, his "Pari inn'' and the "Siege of Corinth"; and it was there, too, that .-pent his brief maided life, its salons constituting the . '"lie of his filial quarrel and parting with Lady | Byron. Lady Bathurst inherited the home from her father, but after a lew years she sold it, and moved to B niton street, owing to the fact that Piccadilly, with its motor buses, its processions' of socialists, and of unemployed; has become so noisy as to be disagreeable as a place of 'residence.

Lady Bathurst declined to permit the insertion in the Morning Post of the Times advertisement of its reduction in prieo to a p< miy, perhaps because lici' paper is also sold at a penny, and that its circulation bids fair to he impaired by this new move on the part of the Times. Tiie Morning Post is one of the oldest established ergans of the. English Metropolitan Press, and was owned in turn by a Tattersall, a Christie, and by a

Lancashire paper manufacturer of tlic name of Crompton, before passing some sixty years ago into the hands of Lady Batimrst's grand-father, Peter llortliwick, when it became par excellence the organ of Lord Palmerston, tba champion in England of the. cause or' the third Napoleon, and the London paper that devoted more space and attention than any of its contemporaries to the doings of court and society in England. 'When Algernon Borthwick took it over from his father he greatly develop, d it in various wavs, transformed it into

A'.\ EXTKKMELY PROSrEltOrs (VOXCERN, .

and tendered its foreign news second only in prestige, to that of the Times. Through his 'Occupancy during w.vernl autumn srasons of a castle in the neighborhood of Habnoral, he became known to Queen Victoria, who developed _ a great liking for botli him and his wife, and fir,si bestowed upon him a baronetcy and after t'hat raised hilu to the peerage, as Lord Glencsk. ' The great m.mtow of his life, aside from that of the loss of bis gifted ami popular wife, was the premature death of bis only son, the Hon. Oliver i'orthwick, an exceptionally brilliant man ot great promise, who bad become bis father's principal lieutenant in the direction of tin- paper.