LORD FIFE'S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1973, 23 November 1889, Page 3

LORD FIFE'S GREAT-GRAND-MOTHER.

Poor Mrs Jordan (says the Echo), the great-grandmother ef the Earl of Fife, had occasion like many other women, to say, "Put not your trust in princes." A glance at her career, now that her memory hat been revived in connection with the Eoyal betrothal, will be interesting. She was Irish, and like Kitty Clive and Maria Pope, was born in Waterford. Her name was Dorothy Bland. In 1777, when she was " sweet sixteen," she made her debut on the Dublin stage as Phoebe in " As Ton Like It." In 1782 she went to England and got an engagement from Tate Wilkinson, who at that time was managing a theatre at Leeds. Tate tells us in his chatty reminiscences that when he asked her what was her "line"—whether tragedy, camedy or opera —she at once replied with a saucy shake of her pretty ringlets. " Them all;" and indeed she was not long in giving proof that there was no exaggeration in the assertion. i It was at the suggestion of Tate Wilkinson that Miss Bland adopted the name oE " Mrß Jordan "—« For," said he to her, " you have just crossed the waters of Jordan—the Irish Channel." She was the mother of thirteen children. Three of them were the offspring of a gentleman named Ford, and the remaining tern of the Duke of Clarence, subsequently William IV. She made the acquaintance of the latter in 1790, while fulfilling an engagement at Covent Garden Theatre. They lived together for twenty years. 1 The separation took place in 1811. An allowance, which looks handsome enough, was settled on her by her Eoyal master; b*t, of course, the country had to pay it. She get, per annum—on agreeing to leave the stage —£2loo for the education of her four daughters, and a horse and carriage for their accommodation; £ISOO for herself, and £BOO to enable her to make provision for the three children of Ford. The Duke looked after the sons, and on his accession to the threne, made one of them Earl of Munster. It does not appear that these allowances wera contiimed

very long. We are told that Mrs Jordan died in 1816, under very straitened circumstances, in a miserable apartment of a lodging-house at St, Cloud in France.