Canbord Wodehouse's Love Tame His Lively Bride? Why Society Fears the Polo Playing Nobleman May Have to Resort to .More Strenuous Methods and Even Seek His Proud Mother's Aid in Order to Manage This Impulsive Heroine of Two Shattered Romances A recent photograph of Lord Wodehouse's mother, the Countess of Kimberley, and his wife, which seems to indicate that the proud old countess has already taken her daughter-in-law under her guardianship and is trying to make her behave the wife of a Wodehouse should possessor of the courage of her convictions. That was twelve years ago. The lady later on was married, to Montagu when the divorce from Crofton had gone into effect. Last year this second marriage. was also ended by divorce. Will Lord Wodehouse succeed. where Sir Morgan Crofton, † Mohill Castle Mohill, County Leitrim, sixth baronet of his line, and James Montagu, of Melton Park. Doncaster, utterly failed? What method will be used to insure matrimonial happiness? H o w will he tame this lively lady? Of course, the strenuous methods used by Bluebeard, Henry VIII. and Landru to quiet wives are out of the question. They were extreme and were not real solutions of the problem of how to.get on with a wife. Will Lord Wodehouse try love and devotion? By dancing constant attendance, by acting the model husband, by. little acts of kindness, will be attempt to bring the lady's fickle heart completely under his control and domination? Possibly, But perhaps it was those very. methods which have failed twice already. Or maybe. Lord Wodehouse will turn to the pages of wise old Will Shakespeare for his marital hints. Some of the best advice in the world may be had from golden lines of that sagacious old dramatist, with his deep knowledge of • human nature and the human heart. The play to fit the case is; of course, "The Taming of the Shrew." As Pe- A had a mind to.' For Katherine would have caten out of his hand. Lord Wodehouse being a cultured Englishman doubtless has read the potent words of the Bard of Avon. By tradition and family custom the nobleman is qualified to follow this advice.. The family motto shown. on the arms of .his noble house is "Frappe Fort," which, being translated, means "Strike Hard." And. that Lord Wodehouse can strike hard is not doubted by any who have seen him in action. on the polo field, where he both rides hard• and hits hard. There are some who believe that if the polo playing peer should adopt ,some such procedure as this, he would score heavily 011 his wife in the very first matrimonial chukker. The Wodehouses always have been famed for their freedom from conservative beliefs. Not even kings. have been able to awe them. John Wodehouse, one* of the forbears of the present holder of the title, is said to have suffered the imposition of a very heavy fine at the hands of King Henry V, who was angered when the nobleman refused to accept the honor of knighthood from the sovereign. But' the family, for all its independence, boasted of services to the throne which 'were so considerable they could not be ignored. The father of John Wodehouse SO covered himself with glory at the battel of Aginhimself with glory at the battle of Aginthe name of that famous. conflict upon his coat-of-arms. Any husband with "Agincourt" among the devices of his shield is: a man to be reckoned with. It is as if one of our young husbands should significantly disto his brand new wife his service play record with a citation thereon for gallantry at Chateau Thierry. But one need turn no further back in the history of the Wodehouses than that of the father of the present lord to learn of handiness in the art of defence and offence. The aged Earl of Kimberley carried pugnacious policies into. pol- Lady Wodehouse displaying on the tennis court the same dash she has shown in her surprising and muchtalked-about love affairs THEN a man marries, says the W' rhyme, his troubles that's begin. pessimistic.' Some say Some say it's not necessarily so. Some say it isn't so at all. Just look at all the people who keep on getting married regardless, they say. Look at all the husbands who approach bridegrooms-to-be just before the ceremony and declare sentimentally, "Old man, I only hope you'll be as happy as we've been." Consider that, they say. And yet there are marriages, they admit, where breakers can be seen ahead, where there are records of past performances which do not augur well for matrimonial peace and calm. One of these is the recent marriage of Lord Wodehouse, English international polo player, to Mrs. Margaret Montagu, the twice divorced daughter of the late Lieutenant Colonel Howard Irby, of the British army. The question that is being asked by the gossips is: Will Lord Wodehouse be able to tame this lively bride of his by love or any other means? Nobody seems to question the fact that Lady Wodehouse will require a bit of taming, for that beauty during past matrimonial experiences has shown evidences of being somewhat wild. Not only her unwillingness to stay bound by the bonds of matrimony has shown this. The lady was originally the bride of Sir Morgan Crofton. This marriage was not destined to endure long and it was sundered very scandalously. When Lady Crofton decided either that she did not like her husband any more or was tired of him, or, more likely, preferred some one else, she left him. That, however, wasn't all. She left him and ran away with another man, without waiting for the formality of, a divorce. It was widely reported that she spent some weeks in New York with James Montagu, of Melton Park, Doncaster, after her flight from her first husband.• The startling part of the affair was that the lady made absolutely no attempt at secrecy or concealment. She was quite open and aboveboard about it all. Which stamps her as the Lord Wodehouse as 7 Lord Wodehouse on one of his favorite polo ponies truchio reduced the headstrong Kath-. crine to a state of submission and affection, so may Lord Wodehouse prevail upon his willful bride., Petruchio, you remember, was a mernber of the "treat rough" school. He took no back talk. He gave a number of convincing demonstrations as to who was master in the house. . The result of this stern policy 'of aggression was that Petruchio might have sold the dining room table out of his Italian villa if he The story is told. of him that at one of his participations in elections to Parliament he pitched into a number of the supporters of the Conservative party, one of his rights to the jaw knocking, out the novelist, Sir H. Rider Haggard, the. distinguished author of "She" and many other novels. Although it is not surprising that the. Earl lost the office of justice of the peace which he held at the time, he pointed triumphantly to the fact that his own candidate won out in . the election. On 'another occasion the Earl invited a political rival to step over to France and meet him in a duel. The invitation was rejected. But this only indicates how ready the Earl and his son after him are, to give battle. After the Earl of Kimberley, by the way, is named the city at the famous diamond mines of South Africa. When he was Secretary of State for the Colonies he brought this district under the protection of Great Britain. Even the women of the Wodehouse family are fighters, or as near it as women may be. Isabelle Wodehouse,. Lord Wodchouse's sister, served gallantly as*a nurse in France. She was on duty in a hospital behind the lines which was bombed by German airplanes and behaved heroically in the rescue, of the helpless patients. But much as all this may seem to favor the prowess of Lord Wodehouse, it must not be interpreted to mean that Lady Wodehouse is completely defenceless.• She, too, is an athlete, notably on the tennis court., It would seem that she is not one to submit tamely even- to the best polo player in England. It would appear that the man who attempts to tame her would do so at his -peril. She also has behind her the overwhelming advantage -of experience in two previous marriages. When she and Lord Wodehouse were wed he described himself on the register as "a bachelor of independent means." But means, after all, are quite a different thing from experience. Perhaps Lord Wodehouse is, as his own sister described him, "just an ordinary man." What chance has he of taming 'a woman who is so extraordinary and has a past record of two. marriages and two divorces? Perhaps his best chance lies in calling in an ally. He has one ready to hand in E his mother, who is shown with his wife in an accompanying photograph. For centuries jokes have been made about the mother-in-law. Men have laughed loud and long over jests about her, and they still do. But take note of this important, this all-important fact. The mother-in-law joked about always has been the mother of the wife. There have been no jokes about the mother of the husband. She is too serious a matter to be used ag raw material for the fun of the irreverent jokesmiths and cartoonists. The photograph would seem to offer evidence to show that Lord Wodehouse already has called to his assistance his most invaluable ally. This is only one of several photographs to reach this country recently which show the Countess of Kimberley chaperoning her new daughter-in-law on all sorts of occasions-at polo games, tennis matches, afternoon teas and elsewhere. Evidently she has already assumed a pretty active: guardianship over the lively heroine of two. shattered romances whom her is son is courageous enough to think his love and devotion can tame. The Countess, you. may judge from the photograph her reproduced • on 'of this page, is.a very stern faced.a and determined looking • woman. On. .numerous occasions :she has proved that the "striking hard? of her son's crest •is quite in her. line. And her. friends say ' that she is amply capable of curbing Lady Wodehouse's. impulsive nature, and and making her take. a less ephemeral view of her present husband than she did of her two previous ones..: Few marriages of recent years have been watched ed with more interest . by fashionable English society than. this one of the noble polo player. and. His twice divorced bride. If Lord W.odehouse, with the aid of his strong. willed mother, is able to make his wife amble along sedately in her latest Harness of matrimony, it is likely that several. hundred, other worried husbands will call on their own mothers to help: smooth out their matrimonial difficulties and keep them out of the already overcrowded divorce court. .And . brides of the future, who want their own way may not be at all eager to marry men whose mothers are still alive and active enough to take a hand in their sons' domestic affairs. A
