AN AMAZING LADY.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12402, 18 November 1908, Page 4

AN AMAZING LADY.

A sensational career has just been ■ closed by the death of Mrs Adeline' Kingscote, or as she was bettor known to the readers of her novels "Lucas Cleeve." A novelist of no mean order, the multiplicity and variety of her financial embarrassments long caused "Lucas Cleeve" to be a notorious figure in the English courts. It was she who was indicated in a famous letter of Sir Geo. Lewis's in "The -Times," in which he referred to the open secret that a West End money-lender had long been advancing money to a married lady at 60 per cent, and that her entanglements had led her to put into circulation a forged promissory note, for £20,000, an insinuation which was immediately; followed by a threat from Mrs Kingscote to bring an action, which, however, was never commenced. "Lucas Cleove" also borrowed large sums from Lord Byron and two clergymen, and in the end was the means of their bankruptcy. Mrs Kingscotc, who was a daughter of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, sometime British Ambassador at Madrid, and who married Colonel Sir Howard Kingscote, had a "most fascinating personality, which, no doubt, was inherited from her grandfather, Joseph Wolff, a converted Tew, who is said by his hypnotic power to have procured the -release if two British officers from the Khan if Bokhara. An example of the inluence which she exercised over all with whom she came in contact is shown by the way in which she inluced Major W. A. Adams to. marry. 'ier sister-in-law to save the latter "ronT bankruptcy. Major Adams saw '.lie lady for the first time in his life m November 1, 1904, and married her on November 7, to divorce her i few years afterwards.