The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-04-16
A Noble Famiiy,s skeleton.


The o'clock tea parties are very much
agitated over the sale of Lord Lonsdale's
great collection. This earl and peer of
the realm, the head of the house of Low
ther, set high society into spasms last
year by creating the matrimonial talk of
the season. He then married that tall,
nearly six foot high, and dark Jewess
type of beauty, Lady Gladys Herbert.
In her immediate circle she is known by
the pet name of ala Gitana," or gypsy.
She is the daughter of the weIl-known
and esteemed Sydney Herbert, of Crimean
fame, and sister of the Earl of Pembroke.
Some few years ago Lady Herbert, the
mother of "La Gitana," and another
daughter joined the Catholic Church.
The tall and handsome Gitana did not
follow their example, but dashed into the
gay world of dance, song and horseman-
ship, and met Lord Lonsdale, who is her
senior by eight years, she being twenty
three years of age. Both loved the world
too well, and not wisely, before and after
marriage. The fashionable bathrooms of
London, Paris and Vienna, the race
courses of Europe, the yachting and
hunting excursions of the night and day,
the season and sunshine of life found
these attractive, too, if not the leaders at
least the chief features. The art world
was ransacked for Lady Lonsdale, and an
income of 100000 per annum brought
to her mansion many costly gem of the
painter and jeweler. Her diamond bill
in seven months was 81 ,000,0 900, and her
upholstery and bric-a-brac invoices were
double the sum. To this menu the noble
earl added sundry and divers items, such
as twenty-five blooded race horses,
various improvements on the three coun-
try estates, and 10! the devourer of all
fortunes, large steam yacht, the North
| umbria.
There are some people so peculiarly
constituted, either mentally or morally,
that neither an immense financial rev.
enue, quarter of a dozen of country
estate, magnificent town pnansion, and
the luxuries of art, science and pleasure
combined, nor, indeed, that ominous and
varied circle called the fashionable
world" can make up the sum of hap
piness. The beautiful Lady Lonsdale
and the dashing, handsome earl, the head
of the house of Lowther, were not happy
There was skeleton in the costly man
sion's cupboard, and l only allude to this
case as a type of many Others, and as
truly portraying the life of the most
modern British aristocracy. When at
Palermo, last fall, | heard and saw some
thing of the yacht Northumbria, and,
later on, when near Nice, | heard and
saw something of my Lady Lonsdale
leaning on the arm OF that no.
torious young rake, Sir John
Lister Kave, Yorkshire baronet,
slightly taller than "la Gitana" and
of that drab or psle-ale visage peculiar
to those who think "the best of all ways
for to lengthen their days is to steal a
few hours from night" Both are in the
spring of life, and both are of that speed
down hill which may be termed rapid.
His mother, with lynx eye, looks at, on
and over the pair, while Lord Lonsdale
is on the Northumbria, off the coast of
Algeria, where rumor says he has made
some well-known efforts not to lengthen
his days or nights either. When York
shire baronet of twenty-three years and
worldly ways becomes skeleton in the
cupboard of any mansion, you may be
sure the furniture, pictures, bric-a-brac,
and even the personal gems of lustrous
briIliancy, come very soon under the
sway of the auctioneer's hammer. And
thus has it come to pass, in period of
little more than eight months of "honey-
moon," that our fashionable 5 o'clock tea
is in troubled sea of excitement over
the head and front of offending of the
chief of the Lowther's lady.