The age-herald., 1898-03-02
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The Next International
 Marriage of Importance


 It is considered a probability so strong that 1t announced with almost degree or certainty that in the Autumn, Miss May Goelet, of New York, will be married 10 the young Duke of Manchester. Miss Goe- let is an attractive young woman, daugn- ter of the late Ogden Goelet, and from her father she has inherited the comfortable fortune of s10,O00, ,0O0 This dowry makes her sought after with great energy and determination by impecumous foreign Dukes of tender years. The Duke of Man. chester is about twenty years of age; he is the son of the late Lord Vaudeville, afterwards Duke of Manchester. and his wife, the pretty Conseulo Yznaga, of New York. The present Duke is not especially promising, and it is believed that he has inherited many of his notorious fathers unfortunate characteristics.
 Ogden Goelet was previous to his death bitterly and uncompromisingly opposed to the marriage of his daughter to the Duke and expressed his opposition in the most unmstakable way. But Mrs. Goelet is a woman with well developed social ambi- tions, and her intimacy with the mother of the Duke has enabled her to encourage the young people in their embizonic romance. The following account of the habits, traits and possessions of the young Duke from an exchange throws much light upon the reasons for the opposition of the late MT. Goelet, to the rumored marriage of his daughter to the Duke of Manches- ter:
 Under the careful training of his mother the Consuelo Yznaga, the present duke, until some little time after the death of his father, lived quietly at home But the hereditary instinct soon broke out in spite of the efforts of his mother Within two years he has established a record to ex- cite the envy of all the callow young men whose idea of "seeing life" begins and ends at the stage door, the National Sporting club, the gambling houses and the all-night restaurants.
 He has been sued at Cambridge for non- payment of livery and boarding bills, and barely escaped Imprisonment; he obtained dinners for his guests at the expense of the old housekeeper who had charge of Kimbelton Castle, and compelled her to sue him for the amount; he is seen at every race meeting; he is happy only in the society of opera bouffe prima donnas or ballet girls, and has recently courted the society of Mrs. Langtry. But he has no money beyond the trif1ing allowance which his mother is able to give him out of her own means of $10,000 a year. For the Manchester estates, like the Manchester name, is involved in chaos of ruin. The ruin did not begin with the late duke, in famous he was. It has descended through three generations of riot and ex- travagance. The seventh duke, grand father of the youth who is to marry Miss Goelet, appears to have made some feeble effort to clear off part of the incumbrances, but the mad extravagances and excesses of Conseulo Yznagas husband crippled his efforts In all about $5,0OO,0O0 represents the net value of the incumbrances on the property, consisting of three houses and 27 900 acres of land
 The houses are Kimbolton Castle, in Huntingdonshire, historical as the place where Queen Catherine of Arragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, found rest for her broken heart in death; Tandagree Cas- tie, in Ireland, and house in Great Stan- hope street, Mayfair. But it is impossible to live in them, for the reason that they uninhabitable. There is scarcely a whole window or a sound roof or an un- cracked ceiling to be found in any of the three places. Centuries of slow decay have reduced Kimbolton Castle and Tandagree to broken, crumbling ruins, now hardly worth the value of the paper on which the mortgage deeds are written.
 The dukes announcement, made some months ago, that "he must marry an heiress or throw up the sponge'' can be well appreciated. His yearnings for the Goelet dowry of $10O0O,O 900 has at least the basis of sound financial reasoning.
 Miss Goelet's $1O,000000 will do these things among others. It will pay for the restoration of Kimboton and Tandagree and revive in them the glories and splen- dor of the days of Anne and the last George. It will give the Manchester fami- ly town house in which they may hope to receive their guests. It will clear off the mortgages on the estate and leave it un- encountered for the first time in nearly a century. It will restore some of the an- cient prestige of the Montagus
 And 1t may even make the duke respect able.