The Daily Picayune New Orleans - Monday, May 20, 1895

BEHIND THE SCENES.
Movements of Actors in the Great Drams of the World.
Personal and Social Events Occurring Abroad.
Instructive and Entertaining Panorama of Royal and Imperial Life.
Reported Daily for the New Orleans Picayune by the Marquise de Fontenoy.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones, and the ill-advised action of the ritualistic young duke of Newcastle in attempting to interfere with the celebration of Mr. Theodore Brinckman's marriage on the ground that he was a divorced man, only serves to recall public attention to the innumerable scandals with which the name of the ducal family Newcastle is associated. Sir Theodore Brinckman's eldest son and heir is not only on terms of personal acquaintance with the duke, but a perfect stranger to him, and his grace's action in the matter can only be ascribed to conscientious scruples of an altogether exaggerated and preposterous character. Indeed, he has no vestige of ground for interference, and it is worthy of note that the ritualistic priest, who is his constant companion and his religious advisor, and who personally attempted to arrest the progress of the ceremony, was taken into custody by the police after bein ejected from the church, and fined by the magistrates for brawling. There is nothing in the canon law of the church of England which prohibits the religious marriage of divorced people. The archbishop of Caterbury and the doctors common have even no legal right to refuse a license, nor can a clergyman refuse the use of his church for the purpose and the only thing that he can do in the matter is to personally decline to celebrate a marriage ceremony. The duke, therefore, has not either from an ecciestistical or legal point of view, a leg to stand upon in the matter. He should have been the more inclined to indulgence with what he might regard as the moral shortcomings of his fellowman when he remembers the extraordinary number of appearances of his family in the divorce courts. His grandmother was a divorcee, having eluded with the late earl of Oxford and subsequently married a Belgian picture dealer. His aunt, Lady Albert Pelham-Clinton, was divorced after having eloped with Sir Claude Scott, the father of the countess of Russell. Another aunt, married to Lord Adolphus Vane-Tempest, died in a tragical manner at Trouville, after a notoriously unhappy and stormy existence with her husband. Another uncle, Lord Arther, was incriminated in the disgraceful Boulton and Parke scandal which proved of so horrible a character that the authorities preferred to put a stop to the prosecution, just as they seem to have done in the case of Oscar Wilde, while even the present duke's mother has been the subject of no end of unpleasant gossip in consequence of the position which her late husband, the singer, Tom Hohler, occupied in the ducal household during the lifetime of the late duke. There are plenty more scandals, which might be mentioned anent the ducal house of Newcastle, but I think that these will suffice to show that of all people in the world, Duke Lennie is just about the last who should have put himself forward as an opponent to the celebration of Mr. Brinckman's marriage, his action in the matter serving to recall to mind the sensation caused about two years ago by the refusal of a Chesire rector to admit to the communion table the countess of Shrewsburg and Talbot and her husband, the premier earl of England, on the ground that the countess was a divorced woman, who had only married her present husband three days before the birth of little Lord Ingestre, the heir of earldom.