With a private fortune of some $50,000,000, plus Arundel Castle and estates of 49,900 acres and bearing the name of HOWARD-which is, in English opinion, the most illustrious nonRoyal name in England-there was married at Brompton Oratory in London last week, while some 2,000 women scrambled, screamed and fought with police to glimpse the proceedings, England’s Premier Duke, Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal and Hereditary Marshal and Chief Butler of England, Earl of Arundel, Surrey and Norfolk, Baron Fitz Alan, Clun, Oswaldestre and Maltravers, onetime 2nd Lieut. Royal Horse Guards, aged 28.
The amiable, phlegmatic, intuitively shrewd young Roman Catholic recently and rapidly wooed a pretty, alert, decisive young Protestant who is every bit as horsy as His Grace-and in all England there is no horsier aristocrat or plebeian than Norfolk-the Hon. Lavinia Mary Strutt, 20, daughter of the 3rd Baron
Belper by his first wife, the present Countess of Rosebery, at whose Town House the reception was held. Last year the Hon. Lavinia won the Nottingham Junior Lawn Tennis Championship, next broke her collar bone riding in a point-to-point race. Last week her father, Lord Belper, delighted the happy pair with a wedding present of a fine brood mare,but knowing Viscount & Viscountess St. Davids bestowed the gift supreme: 24 volumes of the Blood Stock Breeders Review. In the friendly atmosphere of English tenantry toward their Duke no less than 94 ash trays and 61 lamps came in, along with the presents of Queen Mother Mary, King George & Queen Elizabeth, for as Burke’s Peerage says: “The Ducal and illustrious Howards stand, next to the Blood Royal, at the head of the Peerage of England.”
When Edward VIII was called “England’s Most Eligible Bachelor” there was perhaps no second, but last week Norfolk was “England’s Most Eligible Bachelor,” and Mrs. Stanley Baldwin went to his wedding with matronly feelings duplicated outside the church by Englishwomen so enthusiastic that some, striving for a better view, staged a sit-down strike in the middle of the street until lifted aside by courteous Bobbies. Partly because the Protestant bride has not yet become Catholic (as both families expect she will) and partly because nothing could add lustre to a wedding so entirely aristocratic, the candles were unlighted, the Oratory was undecked and two of the six page boys, swank moppets dressed in the racing colors of the duke, behaved as lordly little scamps. One pinched another who started bawling so loudly that he had to be rushed out by an adult. After the benediction, as the Duke & Duchess of Norfolk were returning up the aisle, pew occupants were obliged to restrain another page who persisted in the notion that it would be jolly if he could manage to step on the bride’s 15-ft. train of shimmering silver lamé.
While matrons unavoidably trampled by police horses were rubbed with liniment, the Duke & Duchess slipped off from their wedding feast, popped into a buzzing two-seater sport car. They zipped to a suburban station and Britain’s most famed train, The Flying Scotsman, halted to take them aboard, sped them to honeymoon on the estate of his mother, a Maxwell. Short is their Scottish holiday, for conducting the Coronation of George VI is an hereditary duty which the Duke of Norfolk must discharge, and Westminster Abbey has already been closed for preparations and rehearsals.
Most troublesome of all Coronations to the family of Norfolk was that of Edward VII in 1902. Reason: Queen Victoria had lived so long (82 years) that most Court officials who knew how all the little details of a Coronation have to be managed, had preceded Her Majesty to the grave. Some $25.000 was spent by the Howards doing over and refurnishing apartments in one of their castles to be occupied on a brief visit of Queen Victoria, and the present Duke treasures in a glass case the parting gift to his late father bestowed by Her Majesty. This is a small, blue-glass bottle with stopper-intrinsic value perhaps 45¢.
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