Broken engagements tend be one of those annoying situations in life that are usually best forgotten. Sometimes it is known as to why the betrothal went awry and other times there is no clue, the couple practicing a silence quieter than the proverbial tomb.
For me, I find these exhilarating beyond belief. If somehow we know the reasons behind the rupture, all the better, yet, even just allowing for a brief opportunity to consider what might have been is alluring as well.
I pride myself on finding those long forgotten engagements of the past that never went anywhere. Those that stalled on the romance tarmac of life, never reaching enough momentum to take off, becoming airborne into the matrimonial skies.
Those that are most tempting for me tend to be the ones of royal or noble alliances, if a combination of both types, even better. Over time, there have been many that made it beyond the rumor stage, to where it was even announced in the press by the respective families, only to be withdrawn, as if it had never happened, usually without reason being shared.
It was the hope of one and all, royal and noble alike, that this interrupted denouement in the romantic history of the couple so afflicted would soon be forgotten. More often than not it was not the case, and the absence of the couple’s inability of completing the course would be gossip fodder for some time to come.
Rest assured that this quiet section of The Esoteric Curiosa is by far one of the most interesting ones, and although some of the stories will be told in a ‘whisper’ it in no way indicates the lesser importance of the subject, more to the point, it emphasizes it!
Our first posting deals with a royal brother and sister act that through no failed efforts of their own were denied the romance they both sought, and found that the object of their love, found love with each other instead.
HAPPY CULMINATION OF
A LIFE-LONG ROMANCE
Prince Arthur of Connaught , King Edward’s Nephew,
May Bring Lady Marjorie Manners To Throne Of Servia
March 28, 1907
Queen Marjorie of Servia.
This may soon be the title of a young girl who is not only an English beauty of moderate means, and no nearer royalty by birth than are thousands of British girls of aristocratic families.
Only two essentials lack to carry her to the throne.
She must first wed the Prince Arthur of Connaught , nephew of the King of England, and the troubled statesman of Servia must put into operation their plan to remove Peter from the throne and replace him with some English prince who would lend the stability of that nation to a sorely tried people.
Neither of these contingencies are very far removed.
The Karageorgeovitch dynasty that came to the throne of Servia after assassins had stricken down Alexander and his consort, Queen Draga, has become almost as unpopular as the line it succeeded. The people of Servia have never trusted Peter, who is weak, and lacks the essentials of forceful magnetic leadership.
The thrones of Europe have withheld from him their support and countenance because of the belief that he connived at the death of Alexander and Draga, and hence dare not take steps to punish their murderers. In fact, those whose hands were steeped in the blood of the king and queen are now all-powerful in Peter’s government.
The commerce of the country has been prostrated by this condition, and the party in opposition to the king has reached a point where it is so powerful that his deposition may come at any moment.
Prince Arthur Of Connaught
Servia looks very favorably on Prince Arthur, and the soldier nephew of King Edward, and it is said that when Queen Natalie, wife of the notorious King Milan, visited Britain, she carried to Connaught the assurance that he had only to express his willingness to see himself chosen to succeed Peter.
If only Prince Arthur were to be consulted, it is a certainty that she who accompanies him to rule over the Servians would be Lady Marjorie Manners, the beautiful and fascinating daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, to whom he is passionately devoted, and has remained loyal for years in spite of obstacles that would have broken the courage of any less determined suitor.
But unfortunately there is a villain in this case, no less a one than the generally good natured King Edward of England Britain
The Rutland
In this case the villain is not to prevail! No matter what it may cost him in royal favor, Arthur has announced his intention to renounce all rights to the throne of England
From the first it has been a romance with the young pair, and it would be no more surprising than some of the other developments if eventually fate carried the two to a throne.
When the marriage was first suggested to the king, it seemed entirely impossible of consummation. His Majesty has never liked the girl’s mother, now the Duchess of Rutland, but better known as the Marchioness of Granby.
Furthermore, the prince’s father, the Duke of Connaught, is not rich as royalty goes, and at a period when the lawmakers of England
King Edward, hoping to end the chance of a love match while the romance was still in the bud, told Prince Arthur that he would grant consent to his marriage providing the Rutland’s would guarantee an income of four thousand pounds a year.
When he fixed on this sum – twenty thousand dollars in our money – Edward knew that he had stipulated far more than could ever come from the Rutland
This was nothing less than the establishment of a lingerie shop in Bond Street , London
King Edward turned purple at the thought of any of his kin going into trade, and promptly put his absolute veto on the idea.
The match then suffered another set-back, but could not be completely broken off.
The fact is that the prince and Lady Marjorie had been in love from the first time they met, before they, so far as he was concerned, and even the displeasure of a king seemed a small matter as compared to a separation.
Prince Arthur fell in love with a picture of his sweetheart when she was only a child at school.
When the young girl was presented some years later, she found herself confronted by the respectful gaze of a young man who, from his appearance and the deference with which he was treated, evidently ranked high at court. He managed to get an introduction to his ideal, and found her all that the picture had led him to expect. King Edward, wise on all matters, but especially keen in questions relating to matters of the heart, quickly noticed the partiality of his nephew for the superb Lady Manners, and he at once planned to break up the attachment before it had gone too far.
Prince Arthur was sent on a trip around the world. When he returned he was promptly dispatched to the Boer War. He went away without resistance, but absence failed to have any effect on that royal affection.
Rumor says that in case the throne of Servia is offered to him, he will make it a condition on his acceptance that Lady Marjorie Manners be accepted by the king as his wife. If this is refused, he will decline.
In such a case it is almost certain that love will win, in fact the marriage may come first. Prince Arthur says it will come under any circumstances.
PRINCESS PAT
DO NOW?
DO NOW?
The Milwaukee
August 11, 1912
Maybe she will marry a Crown, after all. Since her lover had gone and engaged himself to a plain girl slightly his senior.
Love? What is it worth nowadays? Lovers? Are they ever true? Marriage? Why, it merely gives a lien on a title, not on a heart.
Girls whose adorers prove forsworn have asked themselves those questions ever since lovers have forsaken them; and the answers have always been the same, always been bitter with the accents of despair.
Beautiful Princess Patricia of Connaught is the latest of her sex to feel the tragedy of love’s desertion. Romance the world over is the loser by her loss. The most thrilling example of fidelity in hopeless devotion since the days of Heloise and Abelard has failed to stand the test of only a little time.
Charles Henry Alexander Paget, 6th Marquess of Anglesey
Princess Par’s most noted worshiper, the lover who shared with her the sympathy of all England over their unhappy plight, the young, good looking, wealthy Marquis of Anglesey, has turned recreant to love’s abiding laws and has betrothed himself to a woman older than he is himself – Lady Marjorie Manners, least handsome of the three daughters of the Duke of Rutland.
But she’s clever – oh, very clever, this plain Jane of the Rutland
And what will Princess Pat do now, poor thing? Marry some kinglet or prince perhaps, just to show people that she never did care for a man who hadn’t the gallantry to wait for her until they should both die and then be united in heaven.
There are wiseacres in fashionable London society who will pretend to remember the precise hour when young Anglesey first lost his heart to Princess Patricia’s keeping. The date they fix and the occasion, meet in the magnificent ball given by the Duchess of Westminster, in Grosvenor House, in June, 1908, when he claimed the princess for half a dozen dances, and the pair of them outraged all the rules laid down for royalty’s reserve in the matter of securing partners.
But that was merely an episode, a trivial incident of delight in the pathway of their romance, no doubt entered upon long before. He didn’t ‘meet’ her there for the first time. They were already more than acquaintances, and the gossip that sprang into instant liveliness, with the sage comments on the way he went right up to her without waiting for the summons of the equerry to signify her royal pleasure, had it that her father, the Duke of Connaught, would be only too glad to acknowledge him as a son-in-law.
For the Princess Pat is almost as poor as she is beautiful, lovely, amiable and talented. If she were quite as poor, she would be just about starving, for she is admitted to possess all there merits and attractions in supportive measure. But she isn’t rich; and the Connaught ’s could use a multi-millionaire in their business more than handily.
Nobody saw, at first, any incongruity in his aspirations to marriage with that branch of the royal family from which Patricia springs. The late Duke of Fife had won the daughter of King Edward, while that monarch was still Prince of Wales, and virtually certain of becoming the ruler of Great Britain Anglesey ’s aspirations was scarcely so presumptuous as had been the duke’s, for the lady’s father is utterly out of the line of probably succession. And the duke’s rank, before his wedding gained him advancement, was no higher than that of Anglesey , who is not only Marquis of Anglesey, but Earl of Uxbridge and Baron Paget. Then, too, there was the Duke of Argyll, who married a sister of King Edward. Love had found the way before Princess Pat’s time; the onlookers at the pretty romance were sure it would find the way again.
NO LOVERS NEED APPLY
But it didn’t. Yet, as the years wore on, it was generally acknowledged that the fair princess held undisputed sway over the young nobleman’s affections, and she gave every evidence that he was the one obstacle in the primrose path of wooing when others came to sue.
She had them aplenty. Alfonso of Spain would have given his kingdom for her hand; but she would have none of him. The Crown Prince of Portugal, that unfortunate heir to the late King Carlos, who shared his father’s cruel fate, was proposed to her and rejected. The eligible’s of European royalty buzzed about her dainty head like bees around a flower; but pretty Pat just let it be known that ‘she really didn’t care to wed a foreigner’ and her parents – fond indulgent souls, both of them – declared their girl should marry whom she pleased.
No young man can hold Anglesey ’s position in English society without being reported engaged on girl after another. Once, it was Gladys Vanderbilt, whose inherited millions were to be joined with his for the gorgeous refurnishing of his numerous residences. Again, it was winsome Billie Burke, because Billie had a swain pursuing her in Washington who was Anglesey ’s living image. Great Britain got all worked up over it, and King Edward let it be known publicly that, while he had a soft spot in his for the stage – which was a superfluous observation on Edward’s part – he didn’t approve of recruiting from the theater all the mother’s of England Italy
The striking feature of these and other reports of his defection has been the manner in which it was taken for granted that he belonged to the charming Patricia; and all England resented what It regarded as another woman’s intrusion on her royal right to him.
Yet she has at no time authorized any hint of relations between them beyond mere friendship. During the last couple of years, it seemed as though either she or her parents had reached the conclusion that the match was definitely impossible. But the royal, proprietary right of pretty Patricia in the Marquis of Anglesey has never been abdicated; and until recently nobody suspected that he, as her real subject in the realm of the heart, would dare revolt.
He had practically all feminine England Australia
That’s what every one said of the Duchess of Rutland. A good many confessed the suspicion that her brains are a little addled, because it is the stodgy British way to believe that any one who differs from British conventions must be criminal or crazy. To be sure, they have often intimated that Her Grace is a trifle, just a trifle, indiscreet in the daring innovations of her attire; but she’s a duchess, you know, and one really must refrain from undermining the pillars of society. So it is more considerate to think her simply a little original and daring, not to say risqué.
The cold truth has been that the Rutland
Sometimes girls, being young and human, rebelled and shrieked for a tailor-made; they weren’t always followers, meekly reverent of their mother’s precious thoughts. But she ground them down with the iron heel of economy and primped them up with the fine arts of the past, until they themselves came to be regarded as quite brilliant and original creatures, inheriting the maternal genius.
That was the way Lady Violet succeeded in making her match with the Hon. Hugo Francis Charteris last year – a very advantageous one all around. And it was the way the duchess, their avid mother planned the marriage of Lord Anglesey and of her remaining girl – Diana, the beautiful younger sister of the older, she didn’t care much which, a sign that Marjorie, now 29, certainly ought to be out of maternal hands as soon as possible.
She is a good deal like Princess Patricia with her record of rejections, and came mighty close to being her defeated rivals own sister-in-law, for nearly ten years ago the royal circle was under distress because of Prince Arthur of Connaught‘s belief by every princely vow he could think of that he’d marry her or quit the royal bed and be provided for by his father. But King Edward came out against it, and that ended clever Marjorie’s hopes of a royal alliance.
Since the, such suitors as the Marquis of Stafford and Craig Wadsworth, the American polo player, have been classed among her captives, but she refused to wed until young Anglesey , two years her junior, offered her his title and wealth.
DESERTED ENGLAND
‘Loveliest Wife!’
Inexplicable And Heartless Conduct Of The
Marquis Who Broke Princess Pat’s Heart
And Who Has Now Abandoned His Beautiful Mate
Because He ‘Can’t Bear To Look At Her!’
September 1, 1914
Why does the young Marquis of Anglesey refuse to live with his wife, the former Lady Marjorie Manners?
Mystery surrounds this desertion of the prettiest and most accomplished girl in English society by one of its richest young noblemen. Certain facts are known, however, which make it appear probable that one of the most peculiar tragedies ever created by monarchial social conventions lies behind the separation.
It is known that the Marquis was formerly devoted to the Princess Patricia of Connaught , the prettiest and most charming member of the English royal family. It is universally believed that the young people were in love and that they planned to marry as soon as they could overcome the opposition of the bride’s family. This statement was published again and again, and no evidence was presented to disprove it. Certainly the Princess has remained unmarried much longer than is customary with women of her rank.
But strange to say, the Lady Marjorie Manners was equally a friend of the Princess’ brother, Prince Arthur of Connaught . Society believed with the same assurance as in the first case that these two were deeply in love and were barred from happiness by royal authority and conventions. These circumstances drew the Marquis and Lady Marjorie much together, and finding that the desires of their hearts could not be fulfilled, they decided to marry one another.
They why have they parted? Was it the Marquis who deserted his pretty wife or the Marchioness who abandoned her noble husband? The facts suggest that it was rather the Marquis who took the initiative.
It is believed that he kept on sighing and longing for the Princess ‘Pat’ whom he had lost, and that as the months went on he found his wife, beautiful though she was, unendurable. She, on her part, was little inclined to tolerate a man whom she had never really loved and who could not now conceal his aversion for her.
They were married on August 3, 1912, and have on daughter, Lady Alexandra Paget. Early this year the Marquis fell ill and after a period in a London
After a month there the Marchioness went home to London Naples
Since then the two have never lived together. Friends of the Marquis say that he has declared in an agonized tome that he never will and never can live with her again. He has nothing against her – far from it, he considers her the best of women. Then he wrings his hands and says; ‘that he can never, never, see her again!’ Sometimes they hear him murmuring, ‘Patricia, Patricia!’
The Marquis is extremely rich. He owns 30,000 acres, including some valuable town property and industrial sites, which bring him in about $400,000 a year. He possesses several beautiful old country places, including the noted Plas Newydd, near Anglesey, in Wales Bavaria
It was expected that the present Marquis who have been a cavalry officer, would prove a very different type of man from his predecessor, but there is now an impression that he inherits some of the family eccentricity. In fact, he has been dubbed ‘the Butterfly Marquis.’
His unhappy wife, the former Lady Marjorie Manners, is by many considered the most charming figure that English society has known in this generation. Not only is she beautiful, but she is a skilled and clever musician, an artist and remarkable linguist.
For several years Lady Marjorie was the most courted girl in English society, as was only natural. Noblemen with the most impressive titles and the biggest millionaires were her suitors. Several Americans fell victim to her charm. Among them was the wealthy and distinguished cotillion leader, Craig Wadsworth. He has never married and has hid himself in distant parts of the world every since.
For a time the leading figures of a gay and happy little social set were Prince Arthur of Connaught, his sister, Princess ‘Pat’, Lady Marjorie Manners and the Marquis of Anglesey. The royal members of this group enjoyed a social freedom that was formerly unknown. They welcomed to their gatherings artists and actors and all sorts of stimulating people. Prince Arthur of Connaught is the oldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught , who was King Edward’s oldest surviving brother and is now the only uncle of the King. In his youth as the King’s senior nephew, Prince Arthur was of great importance from the monarchial point of view, but since Queen Mary has raised such a large family, his importance has diminished. He is a nice looking young man, wearing an air as if the burdens of royalty saddened him.
It was the attachment of Prince Arthur and Lady Marjorie Manners that first became known. King Edward put his foot down severely on all hopes of a marriage in this quarter. The King believed that members of the royal family should mix with interesting persons of all classes of society, but when it came to marriage he stood firmly by the ancient conventions. Besides, he pointed out that Prince Arthur had little money to support his rank and must marry money.
Princess Pat
The King Edward said that Princess ‘Pat’s’ affair with the Marquis of Anglesey must come to an end at once. Obeying the King’s orders, the Duke of Connaught instructed his daughter not to receive the Marquis or even be seen in his company at large social affairs. The king decided that as the only handsome and distinguished Princess in the royal family she must marry a sovereign, or at least an heir to a throne.
Soon after the Princess Patricia yielded to the almost irresistible authority of the King and her own family by giving up the Marquis of Anglesey, he was married to his old friend, Lady Marjorie Manners. It is said that the Princess ‘Pat’ and the Marquis had made a compact that, as they could not marry one another, they would never marry anyone else. When the Princess avoided marrying one after another the royal husbands who proposed to her, she was obeying this compact.
The Marquis was less faithful to the solemn love compact. Men have less fortitude in such matters. Feelings of ennui, of loneliness and disconsolateness were too strong for the Marquis, and he married one who beauty and charm were familiar to him.
The Marquis saw the change in his Princess, and then he bitterly regretted that he had not been faithful to the compact. Recently she became engaged to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a minor German sovereign, for the Marquis’s course had released her from the compact.
NR
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