formed was Thomas Coutts, a well-known banker of great wealth. Although a man of business, and famous for his success in the business world, he possessed a marked taste for literature and the drama, and counted among his friends many of the most noted authors and actors of the day. Nor was he without a tinge of romance in his composition, and the unusual circumstances of his first marriage were no secret. His wife, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Starkey, was in the house of his niece in the capacity of a servant, when he fell in love with her and married her. They lived together very happily for many years, and had three daughters, Susan, Frances, and Sophia, all of whom grew to womanhood and made advantageous marriages. About 1815 Mrs. Coutts died, and not very long afterward the widower, then eighty-four years of age, became enamored of Miss Mellon, procured an introduction to her, courted her, and married her.
The young lady was accustomed to relate that the first she knew of her future husband was his sending her five guineas on her benefit night; and these coins she never spent, keeping them always laid carefully away by themselves. Upon her marriage she retired from the stage, and made a most excellent and devoted wife to her very aged husband during the remaining seven years of his life. When he died, at the age of ninety-one, he bequeathed to her the whole of his immense wealth. At the expiration of five years she married again, becoming the wife of the Duke of St. Albans. Ten years later she died, leaving the fortune which she had received from her first husband to his grandchild, Miss Angela Burdett, the youngest daughter of Sir Francis Burdett and of his wife, Sophia Coutts. The sole condition attached to the inheritance was, that the young lady, in addition to her own name and arms, should adopt the name and arms of Coutts.
