PORTLAND DUKEDOM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13605, 26 November 1907, Page 5

PORTLAND DUKEDOM.

STILL ANOTHER CLAIMANT.

A STORY FROM FRANCE

By Tel?&Mlili.~FreM Association.—Coftyrlfclit; (Received November 26, 12.15 a.m.)

Paris, November 25. Madame Valktte, ail elderly woman living in Paris, claims to bo the daughter of a natural son of Thomas Charles Druce (alleged to have been identical with the fifth Duke of Portland) by a Frenchwoman. Madame "V alette asserts that Druce sent her father to Australia on a mission to discover a halfbrother. Her father was away a year, and on returning to Paris footpads fatally stabbed him, stealing his birth certificate and other documents. .

Druce, she says, came to Paris, and was terribly distressed when he heard what had happened. He gave her a sealed envelope, bidding her to guard it carefully. After hearing of Druce'a death she was amazed, at his entering her tobacconist's shop four years after the Franco-Prussian war. On her expressing astonishment, he replied, " Yes, Druce is dead, but Portland is still living." She had never opened the envelope, she says, and proposed now to send it to Mr. George Hollamby Druce, the px'esenJ; claimant to the title and estates of the Duke of Portland.