Lord BEACONSFIELD Print E-mail
The Maryport Advertiser - May 5, 1882

LORD BEACONSFIELD.
______
 
 
 A very curious story is told about the late Lord BEACONSFIELD’s “star” of the Order of the Garter; and it is a story which seems to us to have a moral. It will be remembered - for did not the newspapers trumpet the fact at the time? - that when Lord BEACONSFIELD on his return from Berlin received the Order of the Garter, Sir Richard WALLACE presented him with the magnificent diamond star which had formerly belonged to the Marquis of Hertford. This star should have been made an heirloom; but Lord BEACONSFIELD omitted to give any direction to this effect in his will, and accordingly it was sold after his death to Messrs, GERRARD.
 
 Now we learn that - sad to tell! - nobody has been found to buy the star as a whole. It is too big, too shining, and altogether too resplendent for any of Lord BEACONSFIELD’s admirers; and so it has been broken, and the three hundred and ninety stones of which it was formed have been “remounted into single stone and gem rings of different sizes.”
 
 Here, truly, we have an apologue. Let us hope that the three hundred and ninety rings - none of them, we presume, particularly brilliant or valuable, though they are of different sizes - will be duly distributed among the numerous gentlemen - also of different sizes, though of no particular merit - who are now squabbling among themselves for the succession to Lord BEACONSFIELD’s post as leader of the Conservative forces of Great Britain.
 
 
< Prev   Next >