HOPE YET AGAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 94, 20 April 1904, Page 4

HOPE YET AGAIN.

■ That .gay young sprig of "our old nobility," Lord Francis Hope, brother to the Duke of Newcastle, heir .-presumptive to the dukedom, and owner of the

beautiful Irish estate of Blaynay Castle, now tenanted by the Duke ■ of Connaught, has once more entered the state matrimonial. His first partner in the yoke was, of course, that sprightly American soubrette, Miss May Yohe, who dragged her husband from the kindly obscurity in which he was born and made him quite a prominent figure in the society columns of newspapers all the world over —especially in America. There May, having given Lord Francis 1 all the prominence he could reasonably hope to obtain, transferred her, affections to a Colonel Strong, and in 1902 there was a divorce. A little later it was rumoured that Lord Francis had set his cap at a particularly eligible parti in the shape of the handsome daughter of a county magnate of irre- - proachable forebears, and possessed of a plethora of this world's goods. A life of eminently dull respectability with only an occasional mention in the "Court" columns of the "Times" and the "Post" seemed looming ahead of Lord Francis, but just as the world was on the point of forgetting his existence he startled it by marrying at a Dover Registry Office last Saturday f a young 'and good looking lady named Olive Muriel Thompson. On the score of the bride's good looks the newspapers are unani-

• mous, and they also agree as to her age ' —26; but whilst two or three journals fsay she is the daughter of an American banker, others credit her parentage to "the late George Thompson, banker, of Melbourne." The v/edding was, at any rate, a very quiet affair. Miss Thompson had been staying during last week with her mother.at the Lord Warden, Hotel, jwhere Lord Francis lunched with them on Saturday morning, and immediately afterwards the party proceeded to the registrar's. The' mother' ~bf the bride, Lord Francis Hope's solicitor, and an officer of the Guards were the only persons present beside^-the registrar and the happy pair, and after the ceremony the little company, returned to the hotel. ~ . -,'■'•. Later in, the day the newly-married "couple left for Paris, Avhere the honey-, moon' will be spent. Though only 38, Lord Henry Francis Pelhani Clinton Hope has twice appeared in the Bankruptcy Court.* He -was allowed to sell his heirloom, the famous Hope collection of pictures, for £121,000, to relieve his financial position, but his request to sell for £18,000 the blue Hope diamond, said to/have been one of the crown jewels of court, f 'v~ ' «-ij-w-<=—_-*.