WORLD’S RICHEST SOLDIER.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 January 1922, Page 3

WORLD’S RICHEST SOLDIER.

TO MARRY PRINCESS MARY. Viscount Lascelles, whose marriage to Princess Mary takes place in February, is the eldest son and heir of the fifth earl of Harewood, a great forKshire landowner, and a descendant of one of the oldest and proudest families in the country. He was born on September 9, 1882. He followed the traditions of his house in adopting a military career and passed from Eton and Sandhurst to the Grenadier Guards, his father’s old regiment. From that he joined the diplomatic service as an honorary attache and served at the British embassy at Rome from 1905 to 1907. In the three following years he was A.D.C. to the late Earl Grey, then Governor-General of Canada. On the outbreak of the Great War he rejoined, his old regiment as a lieutenant in the 3rd Grenadier Guards, rejecting all offers of a safer position on the staff. He served in the trenches in France and later was in command of his battalion when it captured Maubeuge, two days before the armistice, and’afterwards marched with it to Cologne. He also led the 3rd Grenadiers on their triumphal march through London in March, 1919, when they returned from France. He was wounded three times and gassed once. He won the D.S.O. (1918) and bar (1918) and the French Croix de Guerre. He has been called the richest soldier in the world.

OWNS CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. He is not only the heir to the Harewood estates, which comprise nearly 30,000 acres, but in 1916 he inherited about £250,000, mostly in cash, under the will of his great uncle, Lord Clanricarde, a rather notorious Irish landlord, who was chiefly notable for his absence. One of Viscount Lascelles’ first actions on returning to social life again from the war was to purchase Chesterfield House, the famous Mayfair mansion fronted with tall columns, which faces the park from the end of Stanhope Street. The he use was built, by Isaac Ware, the famous eighteenth century architect, for Lord Chesterfield, who took possession in Mar-h, 1749. “The canonical pillars,” of Lord Chesterfield writes in his well-known letters to his son, came, together with a marble staircase, from the dismantled seat of the Duke of Chandos. The house was bought by Lord Lascelles from, the Dowager Lady Burton, who had put it at the service of the American mission during the war. The price he paid was enormous, over fifty years ago, when West End house values were on a very different scale. A GOOD SPORTSMAN.

Lord Lascelles has interested himself in trade, and it is said he has an interest in a large typewriting factory recently erected in South Leeds. Viscount Lascelles is known as a good sportsman. His father owns a string of racehorses, which he runs on good oldfashioned lines, entering them for notable events, and never for selling platers, which are too often synonymous with “in and out running.” Lascelles rides well to hounds, and is joint master of the Brampton Moor pack, one of the best known packs of fox hounds in Yorkshire.

Princess Mary followed the hounds at Brampton Moor last season, and has been cub-hunting there in winter. She is a good horsewoman, quite as good for her sex as the Prince of Wales is for his, and much better than her younger brothers, and Viscount Lascelles doubtless had. the privilege of piloting her.

•In his salad days Lascelles once got into trouble with the London police. He and a friend were one night held up by a London policeman for kicking their top hats along Burlington Street, off Piccadilly. In the police court next morning Lascelles argued that it was his own hat he had been kicking, and he did not see why any policeman, or any number of policemen, should interfere if he liked to make a football of his own hat. He was fined.

A NOTABLE FAMILY. The Lascelles family is one of the typical old English families rooted in the soil for generations and connected by marriage with half the •hristocracy of th? country. It can be traced back to John De Lascelles, who was living at Hindkerskelfe, now Castle E .ward, in Yorkshire, in 1315, and as records become more ample, one Lascelles is found a colonel in the Cromwellian army and two or three others are recorded as members of Parliament. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Henry Lascelles appears as a director of the East India Company, and at its close Ward Lascelles was* created first Earl of Harewood. Since then, the family has taken an assured position in English social, military and official life. A grandson of the second Lord Harewood was Sir Frank Lascelles, who was British ambassador at Berlin from 1895 to 1908, and his daughter is Lady Spring-Rice, widow of the late Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, at one time Ambassador at Washington. SUGAR PLANTERS.

Much of the Hare woo. 1 wealth which will some day come to Lord Lascelles is derived from Barbadoes sugar plantations. The family has been connected with that industry from the 18th century, and a number of estates in Barbadoes are still in their possession. Harewood Eiouse. near Leeds, is one of the stateliest of the stately homes in England, and the guest house of kings and queens since it was built more than a century and a half ago. Among its curiosities denoting family association withSthe West Indies are its massive mahoganv double doors, seventy-six in number, all specially made on the Harewood estates in the Barbadoes. The mansion was built in 1750 for Henry Lascelles by John Carr. It was fuinished in 1765 and 1771. both Robert Adam and Chippendale being employed on it.

GREAT CHINA COLLECTION. One of its chief glories is its wonderful collection of china, valued at over £200.000, and surpassed in England only by that at Windsor. Among the best pieces are three vases for which the father of the present earl refused an offer of £12.000 from an American. Many of the ceilings are painted by Rebecca Rose and Zucchi. There are some good pictures in the gallery, principally portraits by Reynolds, Hoppner and Lawrence. A well-wooded park of 2000 acres surrounds the house, and the gardens are among the most beautiful in England. One of the sights is the famous Tokay vinf. seventy feet long ..Jmat twenty-four feet wide, planted m !S The ruins of Harewood Castle, a NorMu building, stand m tb« ground.. It

is said to have been wrecked in Cromwellian times by its owner, \«ho removed its roof timbers for other buildings. The estate did not come into the family of Lascelles till some time later.