A SPRIG OF THE NOBILITY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1678, 27 April 1904, Page 60

A SPRIG OF THE NOBILITY.

— 9 HIS MATRIMONIAL A DVENTURES. (Frcum Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, March 4. That gay young sprig of “our old nobility,” Lord Francis Hope, brother to the Duke of Newcastle, heir presumptive to the dukedom, and owner of the beautiful Irish estate of Blaynay Castle, now tenanted by the Duke of Connaught, has once more entered the state matrimonial. His.first partner in the yoke Avas, of course, that sprightly American, soubrette Miss May Yoke, who dragged her husband from the kindly obscurity in which he was bom, and made him quite a prominent figure in the society columns of newspapers alii the world over—e&peciaKly in America. There May, having given Lord Francis all the prominence he could reasonably hope to obtain, transferred her affection® to a Co-lendl Strong, and in 1903 there was a divorce. A little later it was rumoured that Lard Francis had set his cap at a particularly eligible parti, in the shape of the handsome daughter of a county magnate of irreproachable forebears, .and possessed of a plethora of this world’s goods. A life of eminently dull respectability, Avith only an occasional mention in the “Court” columns o*f “The Times” and the “Post;” seemed looming ahead or Lord Francis, but just as the Avorld was on the point of forgetting his existence he startled it by marrying at a Dover registry office, last Saturday, a. young and good-looking lady named Olive Murieil Thompson. On the score of the bride’s good looks the neAvspapeis are unanimous, and they also agree as to' her age—twenty-sixbut whilst two or three journals say she is the daughter of an American banker, others, credit her parentage to “thelato George Thompson, banker, of Melbourne. The wedding was, at any rate, a very affair. °Miss Thompson had been staying during last Aveek with her mother at the Lord Warden Hotel, where Lord Francis lunched with them on Saturday morning, and immediately afterwards the party proceeded to the registrar’s. The mother of the bride, Lord Francis Hope’s solicitor, and an officer of the Guards were the only persons present beside the registrar and the happy pair, and after the ceremony the little company returned to the. hotel. Later in the day the newly-mamed couple left for Paris, where the honeymoon wd* be, spent. Though only thirty-eight, Lord Henry Francis Pelham Clinton Hope bat, twice aweared in the B«fauptcy OoM-fc. He was allowed to sell his lieu--1 ryfflii the famous Hop© collection of Sri, *or £121.000 to relieve his financial position, but lias request to sail for £IB,OOO the blue Hope diamond, said to ’have been one of the Crown jewels of Louis XIV., was refused by the Court,