ECCENTRIC MILLIONAIRE

Evening Star, Issue 19221, 12 April 1926, Page 5

ECCENTRIC MILLIONAIRE

A VOLUNTARY EXILE STRANGE CASE OF MR DROWN. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright I,ON DON, April 10. The sad story of Mr Bayard Brown’s voluntary oxtio Jrom his native America, reveals that it was the re.sult of an early love romance. . On Good Friday, an anniversary which ho always tenderly regarded, he is stated to have had a promnnilon ot death, lie opened a secret drawer in Hie Valfrevia’a state-room, and withdrew the faded photograph of a woman, to which ho .applied a match, and watched it slowly burn. He then crushed the ashes in the palm ol Ids hand, and virtually did not speak again. It is known that the photograph had been locked on the yacht- since its arrival in England, and that, ho also frcqnentlv gazed upon it in the secrecy ot Jus state-room.

When the end was near the. onh words Mr Brown nitered were: “ J am not a I raid "t death.” A. significant action was a gesture ol reconciliation with his family alter half a century by arranging that his body should ho conveyed to America and buried in ids father’s grave. As a. youth he was regarded as eccentric, and when he 101 lin love his eccentricity fell in liis way, and he was jibed. Mr Brown felt that his family’s attempt to restrain his original outlook on hlo was a. menace to his freedom, so ho left America, vowing that he would not return. Lie remained steadfast, though once ho nearly faltered. Ho ordered his yacht to sail tor America, hut changed his mind when ho heard the captain clanging the orders to the engine room.

Twenty years ago two of his sisters journeyed from America, but they ..were not allowed on board, Air Brown merely speaking to them from the tuifra i I.

It is revealed that ho, enjoyed bio fully when young. Ho was a keen horseman am! dancer, ami was musical. He had constantly lived in loar or visitors to the yacht, and he invariable asked: “Do you bring George or Louis?” Nobody was able to interpret Ihe meaning of the question.— A. and N.Z. Cable.