Dukeses and Duchesses

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 23

Dukeses and Duchesses

SERIALS, and more especially histori- | cal serials, and most especially serials broadcast at 10.45 on alternate mornings, do not, it must be confessed, provide the Viewsreel commentator with much of his weekly material; and I must confess that 3YA’s current saga, of a length which should commend it to Scheherazade (not perhaps typical of listeners to For My Lady sessions) and entitled "The Amazing Duchess," has not somehow come my way for several months. But I can now announce my conversion to become a regular and palpitating fan. The reason for this change of heart is a casual encounter with a back number of Time and Tide which contains the true story of that redoubtable. 18th Century lady, Elizabeth Chudleigh. I knew vaguely that her adventures had landed her on trial before the House of Lords, but I had not yet realised that the charge was of marrying the Duke of Kingston while the Earl of Bristol, to whom she had been secretly married for some years, was still remotely but not ineffectually alive. In real life, as far as I can make out, she lost the Duke’s name, as an outcome of the trial, but kept his money, and died in 1788 a boon companion of Catherine the Great, having selected Russia as a congenial retreat for her declining years. ‘What the compilers of For My Lady programmes will make of this blueblooded scallywaggery I can hardly wait to find out. I should like, too, to have heard more of the earlier episodes, to see just how many of Elizabeth’s earlier recorded enterprises had made the ether. There are some good stories among them. Unkind gossip putting it about that she had become the mother of twins, she complained to Lord Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield: "Madam, I make a point of never believing more than half I hear."