The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-09-02
.swEEr DOLL. OF HADDoN..
Legend of Dorothy Vernon Has Beei
 Proved q Myth.

Proved a Myth.
 London Correspondence.
 Another idol of romance has been shattered; another favorite character of ouasi-historic novelists ana play- wrights has been demolished. Dorothy Vernon. In a word. has been exposed and the very exposure has stripped her sof every vestige of heroism and re- yealed her as a commonplace woman without even beauty to render ner at- tractive. Charles Major made her ne- loved by thousands of American reao- ers with his delightful story, Dorotny vernon of Haddon Hall. ." In The HeIress of Haddon." "Haddon Hall and various other romances she mas charmed maltirudes. Only last season ss ..Dorothy O the Hall. sbe scored great success on the London stage. DO great has been the interest aroused hv the .fictions woven around her that ssst year 40. 900 visitors. the majority of whom had come across the Atlantic waited sHaddon Hall. and passed over fhs "Dorothya Vernon Steps, down which she Is supposed to have fled 10 4oin her bold lover. Sir John Manners
 Alas, 1t must now be acknowledged that they. and the thousands Who nave ureeeded them on the same pilgrimage: have All been fooled. At the time or Dorothy yernon's marriage these steps were not in existence. The ballroom ,,, which. according to mythical legend she was dancing just before her eiope ment. had not then been buiit. sne had no cruel stepunother, no stony hears so father, no adventurous hero lover. There was no palliatinE dasn down the terrace steps, no furious fight through the night, no runaway marriage. no final scene of family rorr nriveness and reunion.
 The high-born ancestress or Jonh Manners, Duke of Rutland. who mas f,.st died. was no heroine at all. Her nsarrias-e was as prosaic as everything eiae known about her which can De lab@leS as a fact Neither her father nor her step-mother opposed it. They Afd not keep her imprisoned In Had don Hall to prevent Sir John Manners from meeting her. He did not hang around the hall disguised as forest CT, awaiting his opportunity to run oil with her. In fact, as the son of an earl and heir to fine estate, he was an ex- celIent match for Dorothy. who was only the second daughter of country auuIre. The sole thing to wonder at Is that he married her at all. for her 1abled beauty is not borne out by her effixy on her tomb in Bakewen Church. She is there portrayed as thin checked. hard -visaged Calvinistic wo- man. praying with tight lips. But the ways of Cupid are sometimes as myste- rioms as those of Providence It was after Sir john married her that he built the steps which bear her name.
 But what the real Dorothy lacks in romantic clements is supplied by the story of her resurrection. Sir Henry Maxwell Lyfe. visiting Belvoir Castle or behalf of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, came across a key bearing a label with the inscription, Key or old writings over stable" He found that they key unlocked a door to left over the stables. Piled to a height of four feet on the floor was a mass of papers covered with at thick layer of fallen plaster and dust. They had been untouched for years save by rats, which had gnawed indiscriminately among their contents and inflicted irrepara- ble damage on many precious historical documents.
 Among those which they had spared sufictently to be still decipherable in part were priceless records of Haddon Han, including letters to the Vernons of Hadon from Warwick the King maker" Edward ", Richard III. and Henry VIII. and enough concerning vernon to destroy thoroughly the claims to heroism and romance which various writers have put forward on her behalf. It was Eliza Metyard, writing under the nom de plume of ~Silverpen." in 1920. who first present. cd Dorothy Vernon as the heroine of the elopement fable, and other better equipped writers following her lead gave full scope to their imagination and made her one of the most popular women tn history. But G. Le Blanc Smith, who mas been allowed to rum mage freely among the papers discov- cred in the stable loft has just wrlt7 ten a book about Haddon Hal, in which. incidentally. he gives ns the rnangIed remains of NorotAy Vernon that have been spared by the rats.
 CsmmpbeIl- Zimmerman Speaks French.