MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 17, 20 January 1905, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.

A COUTTB ROMANCE. Stories of Coutts's bave been plentiful recently, but perhaps the most romantic Incidentooni n all has been told by the "Manchester Guardian." Mr ■Thomas Coutts, the founder of the bank, fell in old age a victim to the charms of the fascinating actress, Harriet Mellon. He married her, died, and left his widow tie whole Interest in the banking business, unfettered and uncontrolled. Mrs Coutts, by no means a young woman, married in 1827 the Duke of St. Albens, aged 26. - The story of her eccentricities, her splendours, her vulgarities, and her capricious but genuine benevolence would fill a volume. She lived partly at her first husband's house in Btratton street and partly at Brighton, where she reigned as a social queen. One evening when she was entertaining a large party In honour of her birthday, Horace Smith, of the "Rejected Addresses," proposed her health at supper, and she replied in a speech which began with the neat exordium: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking—ever since the days when anyone who wished it could hear mc for, twopence in the gallery." Having no children, the Duchess looked about her for heirs. She made her young' Duke happy with a jointure of £10,000 a year, on which be lived in decent comfort till his death in 1849, and the whole of Mr Coutts's great wealth she left to the youngest daughter of his youugeet daughter by his first marriage, Angela Georgina Burdett now the revered and nonagenarian Lady SBurdett-Coutts. The Duchess tied up her bequest In a very unusual form. Sh<? ordained that failing Issue Miss Burdett's fortune should pass In the ascending scale to her elder and eldest slater, and she decreed that if she married a foreigner or naturalised British subject she should forfeit a moiety of her wealth. Both of those provisions became operative, for Lady Burdett-Coutts married Mr Ash-mead-Bartlett, who was born an American citizen, and her heir is her nephew, the son of her next elder sister, Mrs Money-Coutts.