Chambermaid Became Lady Mayoress.
Lady Evans, who, several years ago, as Lady Mayoress of London, was dispensing magnificent hospitality at the Mansion House to crowned heads and royal personages, foreign as well as English, was a chambermaid at the Oak Hotel, at Sevenoaks, in Kent, when her husband first met and married her. Her father was a village plumber, and her mother, until the date of her own marriage, was a cook and general servant.
On the Continent there is no more ancient or illustrious family than that of Kinsky, the chief of which bears the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Two of its most distinguished members—the Counts Eugene and Octavius, both of them Privy Councilors of the Emperor and Knights of the Golden Fleece—married domestic servants, Eugene taking his wife from the laundry, while the Countess Octavius Kinsky was formerly the chambermaid at a small inn.
The Countess Octavius has rendered herself very obnoxious to her husband’s family by her grasping propensities. But the late Countess Eugene, the ex-washerwoman of Ischal, was a singularly charming woman, universally beloved at Vienna, and, although she never asked for a presentation at court, the names of quite a number of members of the imperial family figured on her visiting list.