WHILE THE HOUSE BURNED

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 5, 7 January 1908, Page 3

WHILE THE HOUSE BURNED

The Earl of Ore we, the chief guest at the Cutlers' Feast this year, inherited a great deal of his wealth from his uncle, the Lord Crewe of an earlier creation, an eccentric peer who was noted for his dislike of the fair sex and his affection for a certain shape of hat. In Cheshire a good story is told of the old lord. In the early sixties of last century, when Crewe Hall was ablaze, Lord Crewe sat quite cheerful and content in the drawing room until the fire engines arrived and deluged the fine old pile. Then he turned to his sister, Lady Houghton, and said "I think my dear, if you don't mind, I'll have my goloshes." Thus shod he went on to the lawn, and sending a servant for a chair, a table, a pencil, and a telegraph form wired to a well-known architect: "Crewe Hall is burning. Come and build it up again." This Lord Crewe's sister was married to Monckton Milnes, the poet and wit, who was created Baron Houghton. And it was the first Lord Houghton who gave the most forcible of all arguments in favour of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, which was then before the House of Lords. "One argument in favour of the D.W.5.8.," he wrote, "is* unanswerable—if you marry two sisters you have only one mother-in-law."