A ROMANTIC LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15002, 25 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

A ROMANTIC LIFE.

SON OF A DUFF,

A STREET MUSICIAN.

All the romance and glitter of life are not the monopoly of ladies and gentlemen with wealth and a name with a sound. There is not. a county in the United Kingdom that does not shelter within its borders, under some humble roof, men and women who carry the old, ancient names that havt) either pussed from high estate, or are borne by alien descendants. Geneologist3 are aware of this, and Mr. Thomas Hardy knew it wh-sn he gave the uncorrupted name of a jjreat county family to one of the humblest of his heroines. It is not often that such a case swims into tho ken of tho newspaper wader, but this is what happened with Mr. George Frederick Stuart Bolton— is insistent upon the Royal way of spelling the third of his names, although there is no Stuart ancestry among the Duffs. There is not now much glitter about Mr. Bolton's life, but thero has been plenty of romance. To sit with him in his little front parlour in Ferguson Road, Now Barnet, with a tiny oil lamp hardly relieving the gloom, and to hear him talk of the ups and downs of his life and of his distinguished ancestry eminent representative of which, recently dead, was connected by marriage with the Royal Family—is to realise something of the bitterness of life's little ironies. Mr. Bolton, in fact, claims kinship with the Into Duke of Fife, although he is now only a street musician, and he and his wife are engaged in what he described as "the charming work of busking." Mr. Bolton is undoubtedly a man of education and refinement, and Mrs. Bolton is undeniably a little woman of the most admirable pluck. It is indeed, a strange and romantic story that Mr. Bolton tells. His Bother was a Duff. "My father," he said, "was Colonel Helv Frederick Bolton, of the Bombay Staff Corps of the Indian army, and it was in Bombay I was born. My mother was a Duff. Elizabeth Jane Duff was her i name, and I always understood from her that thero were certain parts of the Duff estate that would come to her and my uncle, Jekyl Chalmers Doff, of Warnabool, Victoria, who is claiming the title of Earl of Fife. "My aunt, Georgina Duff, died child-, less, and I had imagined that my mother's j share might come to me. However, lam not claiming title or estates, but I thought ' that if the attention of the Princess, Royal J were drawn to my hard case,, some situation might be obtained for tie.' The late Duke of Fife was my fourth cousin." It was pathetic niter hearing this remark quietly dropped to learn that this descendant of. Adam Duff of Cluniebeg, who suffered - heavy pecuniary loss for his attachment to the cause of* the Stuarts, ; had been reduced through no fault of his own, to playing a small harmonium in the streets, while his wife sings operatic selections in a voice which is said by those who have heard it to bo a cultured soprano. How Mr. Bolton came to be in his present position he explained quite frankly. " I am an actor by profession," he said. "I have been with good companies for the past ten years and was stage manager for Neilson's Opera Company, near Manchester. My wife came to learn grand opera, and she was confided to my care by Mr. St. Hilton Just, who was then the proprietor of the company. I took caro of her by marrying her. "It has been loss of money that has brought us to this. I do some political canvassing and get occasional theatrical engagements at night, and my wife gets engagements to sing at picture palaces. " On other nights we go out with this little harmonium: but it is hard work on my wife singing 30 or 40 songs in a night, and it has already made her ill." "I only wish I could get a erood singing engagement," put in Mrs. Bolton. "I am sure I could give satisfaction." The Australian claimant to the Earldom of Fife is the tson of Colonel Daniel George Duff, of the Honourable East India Company's service.