THE EARL AND THE GIRL.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 248, 19 October 1908, Page 3

THE EARL AND THE GIRL.

LONDON, Sept. 4. The practice of becoming' an actress as a stepping stone to the gilded pages of Debrett has met with such astonishing success of late years that one cannot wonder at the fact that "the" profession is getting oveilerowded. Last Wednesday " our old nobility" received yet another shock by the joining in the holy bonds of matrimony of William John Lydston, seventh Earl of Poulett, and Miss Sylvia Lilian Story, a beautiful

voting actress, who recently exhibited ' her charms and smiled her way into = popular favour in Mr Seymour Hicks ;. rollicking play "The Gay Gordons," and who on the eve of her retirement from the comedy stage to grace | the ancestral halls of the Pouletts | was a Gaiety girl in the role of Olive May in ■" Havana." _ Miss Story, comes of a splendid theatrical stock. As a daughter of j yours and our Fred. Story ("actor, dancer and scene-painter"), the blood of real, genuine comedy (when j comedy was something more than a j name) runs in her veins, for Fred helped immensely to' entertain us in the great old burlesque days, wlign he was, with Nellie. Farren and Fred. Leslie, at the old; Gaiety. Miss Story is too young to have histrionic history as^ yet (she is not twenty), but since her debut on the musical comedy stage a few years ago she has been one of its'prettiest ornaments. Just before the Piccadilly clocks struck on last Wednesday she became i Lady Poitlett. The matrimonial proceedings were very qAiet—practically secret, in fact, .:..'■■ The wedding was by ordinary license. At half-past twelve a little party of five alighted at the back entrance, to St. James's Church, Piccadilly. They were my Lord Poulett, Miss .Story, "Lady Violet Wingfield, the Earl's sister, Miss Vesey Fitzgerald. Mr Noel Donnithorne, and the Earl's solicitor. There was not much suggestion about them of a wedding party. The bridegroom was in a blue lounge suit and a bowler hat. The lady was dressed in a close-fit-ting blue costume. There was no particular incident to mark this wedding beyond any other, except that the best man, through nervousness or carelessness—or perhaps a mixture of both—dropped the ring a short time - before utterance was given to the phrase, " With this ring I thee wed." The ring rolled some distance on1 the floor, but it was recovered just in time to be placed safely upon the finger of the bride.

- The Earl's marriage with Miss Story adds another chapter, to +he romance of the Poulett Peerage, and serves to recall the amazing matrimonial adventure of his father, the sixth Earl, who when a lieutenant m the 2nd Foot seriously inconvenienced the coming to the title of the present Earl (who is'the son of the late Earl's third wife) by marrying the daughter of a Portsmouth pilot simply to win a.bet. ■ *: ■. A ,;!. • This marriage ..took place when Lieutenant Poulett was five lives away from the peerage. Six months afterwards a son was born to Mrs Poulett, < which led: to a separation between the couple, as the father repudiated the paternity of the child. Mrs Poulett died, in 1871, and her husband, who had succeeded to the peerage in 1864, married his second wife, who died four years later. In 1879 he married a third wife, whois the mother of the present Earl. The old Earl died in January, 1899, and then arose the question as to who was the rightful heir. For some time previously the son of the sixth Earl's wife, William Tumour Thomas Poulett, had been patrolling the streets of London with a barrel-organ and causing a mild sensation by a placard setting out his claims to I c Visoount Hinton .and heir to the Poulett peerages and estates. If be could show that lie was the legitimate son of the deceased Earl he would step into the Earldom.

The sixth Earl's opinion as to bis heir was shown in his will, in which he specified William John Lydston Poulett as the seventh Earll

The Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords met the following July to consider the rival claims, and decided that it had not been shown that William Tumour Thomas Ponlett was the son of the late Earl, and that therefore the present Earl had made out his claim.