Gaiety Duchess

As it must to all women, Death came last week to May Etheridge, 42, former Duchess of Leinster. Her grace vanished, her beauty gone. Her Former Grace was found sprawled across a bed in Brighton with a bottle of poison by her side. Since 1930 she had been living on $25 a week provided by the Duke's family with the understanding that she would not return to the stage and would make no effort to see her son. the present Marquess of Kildare and heir to the Dukedom.

It is a proud boast of the Peerage that ever since there have been chorus girls to marry, the Lords of Britain have married them. The list is as long as it is imposing but, of the Peers qualified to wear the eight strawberry leaves of a Duke on their coronets, only five have ever married actresses. They were:

The Duke of Bolton, who in 1751 married the famed Lavinia Fenton, original "Polly Peachum" of The Beggars' Opera.

The Duke of St. Albans, who in 1827 unnerved George IV by marrying Harriet Mellon.

The Duke of Cambridge, cousin of Edward VII, who was married morganatically to Louisa Fairbrother in 1847.

The Duke of Leinster, who in 1913 married May Etheridge.

The Duke of Leeds, who married Marianne de Malkhazouny, Serbian ballet dancer, in 1933, sold his estates for $1,250,000 and his ancestral coronet for $40 and now lives on the Italian Riviera.

Because her predecessors were ladies of considerable theatrical importance, May Etheridge was widely hailed as "the first chorus girl duchess." This was a quibble. She had been a chorus girl since the age of 13, but when she met Lord Edward Fitzgerald she had just become leading lady of Princess Caprice at the Shaftesbury, and he was not yet the Premier Duke, Marquess and Earl of Ireland.

His ancestral estates have always had more honors than cash behind them. The pair spent their honeymoon in a Lake Ontario log cabin. Lord Edward returned to serve gallantly through the War with the Irish Guards, go bankrupt in 1918 owing -L-300,000. Already separated from his chorus girl Duchess, he succeeded to the Dukedom in 1922. To recoup his fortunes the Duke of Leinster sold stock in himself as "The Dukedom of Leinster Estates, Inc." The Duchess fell in love with a 26-year-old cook named Stanley Williams.

Naming the cook as corespondent, His Grace obtained a divorce in 1930 and shortly thereafter married the wealthy daughter of Mrs. Joseph Henry Patterson of Manhattan. Living on her little allowance, May Etheridge bore the Duke no ill will.

"I guess it was all partly my fault," said she recently, "in a way."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.