YOUNGEST DUKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 204, 29 August 1935, Page 7

YOUNGEST DUKE.

HIS COMING OF AGE. 1400 PEOPLE DANCE. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LOXDOX, August 10. Fourteen hundred country people swayed to the. music of accordions on the lovely lawns of Euston Hall, the Duke of Graf ton's country seat at Thetford, Norfolk, this week. They danced by the light of fairy lamps strung from the firs and copper beeches. Champagne and beer flowed freely. For this was a celebration—the coming of age of the Duke of Grafton, the youngest duke in England. He was the first Duke of Grafton in 200 years to celebrate, as duke, his twenty-first birthday. All the others succeeded later in life. The 1400 were hie tenants and estate workers —a friendly, homely people. The cheerful blare of a merry-go-round floated across from the meadows near by. Here was all the fun of the fair in the young duke's honour. Roundabouts were crowded, swings were filled with shrieking, happy children. About 100 babies in, perambulators and a few octogenarians had gone home earlier, but every other villager from the set-en hamlets in the 14.000-acre estate wan there. At luncheon a case of sporting guns, the gift of his tenants, had been presented to the duke. Later the estate workers presented him with a silver tea service. The duke, shy, horn-rimmed glasses biding his dark eyee, shook hands with 1400 people in an hour and a half. His right hand was crippled for the rest of the niffht.