GAIETY-GIRL DUCHESS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12538, 27 April 1935, Page 9

GAIETY-GIRL DUCHESS

SUNSHINE AND SHADOW

j . CLIMAX IN TRAGIC DEATH. “Poor darling—her life was all sunshine and shadow. Into her lap Fate poured fame and fortune with one hand, and took them away with the other.” It was the broken-hearted | mother of May Etheridge, former j Duchess of Leinster, qx-Gniety star, I hello of London’s thcatreland, who spoke these words. “What can I | say?” she went on. “This sudden loss of my daughter has paralysed me, left me too grief-stricken for ' words . . .” But if the mother was silent, the 1 room, in which she was sitting in a > little red brick cottage by ’ the sea spoke eloquently enough, told its 1 own tragic tale—the tragedy of a woman’s longing for her son. Pic--1 tures adorned the Avails of a young ■ man on horseback, a. youth on a bicycle, a boy of eight, j Pictures, all of them, of the 21j year-old Marquess of Kildare, whom | the ex-ducliess had not, seen for Id j years, and whose name was believed jtobe on her dying lips. May Etherj idge died as the result of an aceidonj tal o\ r erdose of a sleeping draught, I but in recording a verdict of death by misadventure, the coroner added: “The only thing I don't like is the ! absence of this woman’s man triend |at the inquest. I Avould hove liked him to he here.” MOST TRAGIC DUCHESS. So death has closed the stormy earj eer of the world's most tragic and i beautiful duchess, the most amazing | victim •of Fortune’s spinning wheel. ; Once she was dark, bewitching and | fascinatingly beautiful. She was the 1 idol of gay young guardsmen of Loni don. They called her the English Rose. Yet the woman who was destined by Fate to become the premier duchess of Ireland, was horn in Brixton, the daughter of a commercial traveller. “How much better .1 should have been,” she often remarked bitterly to friends, “had I remained that way; how much happier as plain Mrs Smith, wife of a city clerk. But hiy father died when I was a child. I I had to find employment. I had the beauty and voice. The stage seemed the natural outlet. I learned to dance at the age of 13, and got my start with George Grossmith at the Gaiety Theatre.” Following chorus work, she was o\amfamily hilled in a song and dance with Nelson Keys in “The Arcadians.” LORD EDWARD. Then in “Princess Caprice” she became the rage of London. The two front rows of the stalls were packed with her friends in the Guards on the opening night. Among them was the man who ivas to play a leading role in the exciting drama of her liloLord EdAvard Fitz Gerald. , An invitation to supper was fol- ; . lowed by a Avhirhviu'd romance which | Avas cut short by the boy’s family. , He was sent away on a Avorld .tour. He returned. He avhs 21 and her own , age. He married her and took her to < Canada for the honeymoon. Their | son Gerald Avas horn a year later, j The war came. Desmond Fitz Gerald, i the heir to the dukedom, was killed < in France, and Edward Fitz Gerald j was next in the line of the Loinsters. j Gerald, their baby, beam© heir-pre- , smnptmi. Eventually the couple so- . parated, and there was a heartbreak- , ing scene in the offices of tho family | solicitors. The poor little duchess ( begged and prayed with tears in her ] eyes to he allowed to keep her child, | but in A’ain. Tho hoy was sent to , Johnstone Castle, in Ireland, and j from that, time his mother sn w him f but once. f ( PABTED FBOM * SON. t Parted from her son, estranged from her husband, the duchess tried to drown her sorrows in a life of gaiety. The Fitz Gerald family made her g an allowance, but she fell into debt. She Avent to live in Bournemouth. r Tradesmen dunned her for their dues; She faced her creditors in court—a r duchess Avho could not pay her Avav. (■ May returned to seek forgetfulness j in her native Brixton. But even f there happiness eluded her. Hoav dif- j ferent were things for her .now, com- j, pared with the hilarious nights in the ( West End, when guardsmen, fought ( for her smile. j In 1930 she was found in a gasfilled room in Benedict road, Brix- j ton, where she had been living AA-ith f a chef named Williams. The duchess f stated then that she had just turned ( on the gas to frighten her lover, and c she was put on probation. Two months later put an end to her ro-ma-nce, which had died years before. She Avas divorced. j Once more she tried to forget, set- { tling doAvn with a clog and a canary in a cottage at Bognor Regis. Here, among the floAvers in her garden, and in sight of the sea, she tried to re-' build her life.. “I get so lonely,” Avas her only complaint, and she long- 1 ed for her son in the Inniskilling c Dragoon Guards. Then, in the com- '' pany of four -widows—her mother and three aunts—she settled doAvn ir her * little cottage at Saltdean,