FEMININE FRAILTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

FEMININE FRAILTY.

FRAUDULENT ~ PRINCESS." CLAIMED KINGSHIP WITH ROYALTY.—-CAREER OF DECEIT ENDS IN PRISON.

';<By HORACE WYNDHAM, author of -A Mayfair Calendar," "Judicial Dramas," etc.)

Tn the (rammer of 1823, Robert Peel, as Home Secretary, officially declared that a certain petition, presented by two M-P.'s, Sir Gerard Noel and Joseph Hume, was "impudent and baseless." The House of Commons obviously shared this view, for a motion to refer the matter to a select committee was negatived without a 1 division. As the petition was submitted on behalf of a Mrs. Olive Serres, then receiving enforced hospitality in a debtor's prison, to be "publicly acknowledged" as the daughter of the Duke of Cumberland and a member of the Royal Family, it is not astonishing that it was ' dismissed.

Who was Mrs. Olive Serres, and what exactly did she claim? Well, she was clearly a lady who did not suffer from a pronounced modesty-complex. Quite the reverse. Thus, according to her own 1 account, she was a cousin of George IV., and legitimate daughter of his late uncle, jthe Duke of Cumberland. She said that '-the Duke had "privately married" her ' mother (a niece, she asserted, of the King ; of Poland) and that she, when an infant, : had been adopted by her mother's uncle. this uncle, one Robert Wilmot, Jja house painter in Warwick, had brought her up as his own offspring and given • her his name. At the age of nineteen, Olive Wilmot ~(as she was then known) became engaged to a Mr. John Serres, a drawing master. jThe wooing appears to have been very : much on her side, for Mr. Serres, appstr'(ently thinking better of it, left England vaomewhat abruptly. His fiancee, how'®ver > promptly recalled him and insisted Jthat he should keep his word. The martriage accordingly took place, the cere- • mpny being conducted by the Rev. Dr. Wilmot, another uncle of the bride. •Tha union did not turn out a success and in 1804, after the birth of two ; daughters, Mrs. Serres separated from her husband. Thereupon the ill-assorted r pair went their own paths. That of Mr. ; Serrea led him to the bankruptcy courts. ■ k His financial troubles were largely due ,to a rash speculation, for he put £2000 Jinto a scheme to build the Coburg Theatre, now the "Old Vic." Having to support herself, Mrs. Serres, who was not without talent, "took up" • art as a means of livelihood. She was : fairly successful, for she exhibited at the ■ IRoyal Academy and alao secured a numI'ber of pupils. In 1806, however, there occurred an event which, although it -Jlooked like a stroke of luck, was to prove -he* downfall. This was to be appointed i "andscape painter" to the Prince of Wales. Vaulting Ambition, Proximity with royalty appears to have 1 turned the head of Mrs. Serres. She ►'began by writing long letters to the - Prince, offering to lend him considerable I sums of money. That she had none to . .lend and was herself at the moment liv- • ing on borrowed cash was a drawback. ■ Still,: as the Prince left her letters unanswered this was of no great sonse- ■ > quenca.

* n tha lady's vanity took a fresh : form. She wrote to the King, giving him * J* I*®®1*®® .°* news which must have aston- : ished him considerably. This was that ; she was thfe "natural" daughter of his ! dead brother, the Duke of Cumberland. It is true that His Majesty was mad, but he was not so mad as to accept such a tale as this without evidence. Mrs. I Serres had no evidence. Instead she waited until the Prince had succeeded jhis father, as George IV. She then improved on her original story and declared ' that the Duke had married her mother. iSr" i? . resu^t "h® now claimed that, her I'birth being legitimate, she was really the -Princess Olive of Cumberland. If a thing be done at all it is just as well not to adopt half measures. CerMrs. Serres adopted none. She hired a carriage, on the panels of which were the royal arms, and put the coach- : man and footman into scarlet liveries. Her next step was to persuade & minded curate to re-christen her, "Olive -.daughter of H.P H. the Duke of Cumtpjerland,*' As such, she then wrote to • the Bishop of London, saying that she wished to be confirmed by him. His ' Grace sent a tactful answer. "The lady," ; lhe said, "who desires, as Princess of Cumberland, to be confirmed must feel that * ,the bishop would not be justified in adopting any measure which would involve his pronouncing an opinion on her claims, and that it would be highly improper in him to enter into any discustsion of a question which he has no i authority to examine." Suspect "Evidence." Despite this episcopal snub, Mrs. Serres pressed her claims. Naturally enough she was asked for documents to suport them. She produced a box crammed full of documents. Odd documents, too —much odder than any-' known to the officials of the Heralds' College or the British Museum—for they included what she described as a will of George 111., leaving her £15,000, and a bundle of certificates bearing the signature of the Earl of Chatham. One of them specifically declared that the marriage of her mother and the Duke of Cumberland had been solemnised by the Rev. Dr. Wilmot at the house of Lord Archer, in London, in the presence of the Earl of Warwick. It was significant that none of the various people whose names appeared on these documents could be questioned. George 111. was dead, the Duke of Cumberland was dead, and the mother of Mrs. Serres, and the Rev. Dr. Wilmot and Mr. Robert Wilmot, as also Lord Chatham and Lord Warwick, h|d long fone to another world. Still, as the 'like, during his lifetime, had been notorious for slips from the narrow path (he had once run away with the Countess Grosvenor and been cast in £10,000 damages), the authorities felt it would perhaps be as weli to examine these precious "papers." Since there were 70 of them, the task took some weeks. The verdict was that they were not genuine. The experts were not quite rude enough j to say that Mrs. Serres had forged them, | but tbey hinted as much. I

The alleged extract from the will of George 111., which was dated . 1774, read as follows: "In the event of our royal demise, we give and bequeath to Olive, our brother of Cumberland's. daughter, the sum of £15,000, to pay the same privately to our niece in recompense iei the misfortunes she may have known through her father." The name of Lord Chatham appeared as a witness. He, however, had resigned ,office six years earlier and, being on bad terms with Hirf' Majesty, was the last person in the world to have been his confidante in so delicate a transaction as this. , The "marriage certificate" also a Weak point. In fact two weak ( points. One was that Lord Wauwiek, who puipoited to have signed it! did not know how to epell his own name; and the other %as that the Rev. Dr. Wilmot was proved to have been in Oxford when the document declared him to have been in London.

Still, since there are always some people who will believe anything, there were people who accepted as gospel truth the preposterous stories of Mrs. Serres. They curtsied and bowed down to the ( ground when they saw her, and habi»,®P°^e h er as the "Pripcess Olive. There was, however, one individual who flatly contradicted the claims she advanced to royal blood. This was John Serres, the husband from whom she had separated. "I would go to prison," he declared, "rather than believe in that woman." A plain-spoken gentleman, Mr. Serres.

A "Process" In Low Water. "Princssa" or not, Mrs. Serres had at least one ardent champion in Sir Gerard Noel, and it was he who, in 1823, petitioned to appoint a select committee to consider her claim. When the petition was negatived, Mrs. Serres got into very low water. The hired carriage, with the royal arms, was returned to_ the Btables, the flunkeys were dismissed, and the scarlet liveries went to the pawnshop. As for Mrs. Serres herfi! 8 went to the Fleet Prison. From that gloomy quarter she issued a manifesto directed to "The British Public": 'The Princess Olive of Cumberland will be grateful for a sufficient loan, by subscription, to enable her to proceed in the recovery of her just rights, being at this period without funds for that purpose, or for her daily support." A newspaper paragraph, headed "A Distressed Princess," recounts that a fund was started for her benefit. Under the chairmanship of Sir Gerard Noel, a public meeting was called and the subscription list reached £36.

This beggarly result must have been a sad disappointment to a lady who had cherished thoughts of living in a palace. As it was, she died in the Fleet Prison in 1834 and was buried in St. James' Church, Piccadilly. Since then several other ambitious ladies have claimed to be "princesses." .Their letters on the subject, however, have always been written from lunatic asylums.