TRIP TO GRETNA GREEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 117, 20 May 1932, Page 10

TRIP TO GRETNA GREEN

ELOPEMENT IN VAIN GIRL NOW CONTENTED “IT WILL ALL END HAPPILY.” The Daily Mail publishes the report of an interview with the most-talked-of girl in England—Miss Joan Eve, the pretty 16J-year old granddaughter of Mr. Justice Eve, whoso dramatic elopement to Gretna Green with Mr. Thomas Hanbury, the 17-year-old-son of the Conservative M.P. for North Dorset, recently led to an exciting pursuit of the couple by the youth’s parents in an aeroplane, a motor-ear, and an express train. Joan, a slim brunette with red lips and soft grey eyes, had. just returned from London with her mother, the widow of Mr. Justice Eve’s son, Capt. W. 11. Eve, who was killed in the war, when a reporter called at her home in the little Dorset village of Marnhull. “Everything is now fixed up,” Miss Eve said. “Toni and I are going to be married. We have thrashed out the whole question with our parents and discussed our plans very carefully. But I am not going to tell you what those plans are just. yet. You see, we are keeping it a secret. <f l can tell you, though, that it will not be an elopement this time. We are just going to be married in the ordinary way. It was a disappointment, of course, when we •could not get married at Gretna—owing to our lack of tho residential qualification—but no doubt our parents are taking a wise course.

•'Very Much in Love.” “We are both very much in love, but we are very young. Wo shall just have to grow a little older—and I can assure you that everything will end happily. When the story of our elopement is forgotten and all the fuss has died down we want to get married like ordinary people.” Miss Eve, who has a rather striking appearance, looks more like a woman of 22 than a girl in her teens. She is an expert horsewoman and one of the most popular young people in North Dorset. Friends and villagers in the neighbourhood have watched Joan’s romance with young Rfr. Hanbury a year now. Both are keen followers of the Blackmore Vale Hunt, and it was in the hunting field, it is stated, that they first met. “Everyone here wishes them the very best of luck,” a friend said. Mr. Hanbury is expected to visit Joan’s home within the next few days, and Mrs. Eve has said, “Everything has been settled for the best.’’’ Tom Lost for Two Days. Thomas Hanbury, Miss Eve’s sweetheart. created a sensation shortly after th 0 return from Gretna. On Saturday, March 19, he disappeared from his home after being re-united to his family. It was iu the strangest circumstances that he was found on the afternoon of Monday, March 2J, for the second time. Mr. Cecil Hanbury arrive! in Bristol on the Sundav morning and gave the police a description of his son. The police placed at Mr. Hanbury’s disposal a plain-clothes detective, and the whole of Bristol was combed for the lad. All hotels and lodging-houses wore visited and hope was given up. Mr. Cecil Hanbury was driving through Bristol on Monday toward Bath in his motor-car, with a detective by his side, in the belief that nis son might be at Bath, 12 miles away. The M.P. stopped his car in Victoria Street, Bristol, near Temple Meads railway station, while the detective got out to make a last inquiry at a small lodging-house.

Strange Reappearance. The officer was inside this lodginghouse, and Mr. Hanbury was sitting at the wheel of his motor-car, when the boy was seen by his father to be walking on the opposite pavement. There was a dramatic dash street, a tap on the shoulder, and father and son recognised one another, and, without any fuss, shook hands and walked back to the father’s car. They went then to a house where the son had been staying, collected his baggage, including a banjo which he had been carrying around with him, and drove home to Dorchester. Mrs. Cecil Hanbury, describing her son’s latest adventure, said: “Tom did not run away from home. I should like to contradict that suggestion emphatically. It turns out that he only went to stay with friends at Bristol for a couple of days. Re is quite well and happy, and was not unsettled at home after his escapade at Gretna Green last week. I. am quite easy in my mind about him.”