Viscount Lascelles, Princess Mary's Gallant and Wealthy Lover

Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles featured in The Bystander Royal Wedding Number before their wedding in 1922.

In November 1921, Princess Mary, the only daughter of King George V and Queen, who in 1935 was bestowed the title Princess Royal, was engaged to Henry Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles. The heir to the title of Earl of Harewood, he was a possessor of a fabulous wealth. In this article  from The Australian, Friday(January 20, 1922), we will find out more about the early life, wartime experience and pedigree of Princess Mary’s groom, whom she married in 1922. 

"Don" Lascelles, as he was always called in his old regiment, the Grenadier Guards, is certainly one of the most eligible bachelors in London society (says a society writer).

The eldest son of the Earl of Harewood, he inherited in 1916, quite unexpectedly, the great fortune of his great-uncle, the late Marquis of Clanricarde, who left something like two million pounds to  “Harry Lascelles, by courtesy called Viscount Lascelles; son of my nephew, Henry, Earl of Harewood.

On leaving Eton he obtained a commission the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, but left them in 1905 to become an honorary attache in the Diplomatic Service doing duty at the British Embassy in Rome, and afterwards going out to Canada as aide-de-camp to the Governor-General, the Earl Grey.

Fine War Record

When war broke out he rejoined his regiment, the Grenadier Guards and remained with his old battalion, the 3rd, throughout the war, steadfastly refusing to take a staff appointment. He was wounded three times, and won the D.S.O. with bar and the Croix de Guerre. He finished the war in command of his Battalion, which had the reputation of being probably the finest Battalion in the Guards Division.

It was Lord Lascelles who, in the rain and darkness of the night on November 30, 191.8, after days of strenuous fighting, in person again led his Battalion to the attack near Maubeuge in order that the honor of recapturing the historic French fortress might fall to the Guards' Division. And at the head of his Battalion he marched through the Ardennes into Germany and entered Cologne, and later led his men in the Guards' march through London. 

When the Guards returned from Germany, Lord Lascelles left the Army and soon came into the public eyes as the purchaser from the Dowager Lady Burton of Chesterfield House, one of London's historic mansions, which stands at the corner of Curzon-street and South Audley-strect.  It was designed by Isaac Ware for the famous Lord Chesterfield, who from here wrote the celebrated  Letters to his son. Lord Lascelles also reopened Portumna Castle, the Clanricarde seat in the County Galway, to the great delight of the countryfolk. In 1918 he stood unsuccessfully in the Unionist interest for the Keighley  division

Lord Lascelles, who is 39, having been born on September 9, 1882, has a tall, rather spare figure, with a ruddy coloring  and a pair of remarkably blue eyes. He is of a quiet disposition. His invariable imperturbability, as his Guardsmen found in some of the hottest corners of the war in France, covered a splendid intrepidity in the face of danger and the most untiring solicitude for the welfare of his troops.