SLEPT IN DITCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 3, 5 January 1938, Page 5

SLEPT IN DITCH.

LIVED IN doss-house:

TO WED PEER'S DAUGHTER. MILLIONAIRE'S GOLFER-SON. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, December 17. He has slept in a ditch, lived in a doss-house, driven a butcher's van, and worked as a factory hand—and next month he is to marry a peer's daughter.

Count John do Bendern, whose) engagement to 18-years-old Lady Patricia Douglas, daughter of Lord Queensberry, has been announced, had no need to work for a living. His father, Baron Maurice Arnold de Bendern, is a millionaire.

Ten years ago 20-years-old John de Forest, as he then was, rebelled against the prospects, of becoming merely another of the "idle rich."

He determined that without using influence or money he would find work. So penniless, he walked out of his luxurious home.

He tramped in vain from'factory to factory. For a week he lodged in a cheap doss-house. One night, down and out, he slept in a ditch.

He could drive a car, had a licence. So h e was engaged to drive, a butcher's van.

Before long he had another job, as a hand in a gramophone factory. Meanwhile, Baron de Forest had learned his son's whereabouts and begged him to return home. "You have a marvellous gift for golf," he said. "I will give you a handsome allowance if you will devote yourself to developing that gift." 1 To please his father, John agreed. He set to work to make himself a firstrate golfer, went to America to study the game there. He was chosen as a member of the British Walker Cup team and won the British amateur championship —the only man ever to become a champion because K's father did not like him to work.