But by far the most romantic incident in those annals of “over the Border” elopements was the marriage of Miss Penelope Smyth on May 7th, 1836, at Gretna Hall to Charles Ferdinand Bourbon, Prince of the two Sicilies and Capua, brother and heir-presumptive to Ferdinand the Second, King of Naples. The whole affair reads like the vapourings of some extravagant novelist of the old _Family Reader_ type. Miss Smyth was a beautiful Exeter girl, and additionally attractive to an impecunious Prince in the fact of possessing a fortune of £20,000. The circumstances of her being in Italy do not appear, but she seems to have been married to the Prince at Lucca, and again at Rome. They fled from Italy to avoid the fury of the King of Naples, who denied the legality of the union, and claimed that no marriage could be contracted by a Prince of the Blood Royal without the consent of the reigning sovereign. The Prince appears to have relied upon the affection of his sister, the Queen Regent of Spain, to smooth matters over, but was rebuffed at Madrid, the Queen refusing to receive either him or his bride. They then left for Paris, and afterwards for England, after a third ceremony had been performed, and flew to this inevitable refuge, the Border. Then, coming to London, they applied for a license at Doctor’s Commons. Of the virtuous intentions of this anxious and much-married couple there can be no possible doubt whatever, and the part of “villain of the piece” is taken by the bold bad “Bomba,” the notorious King of Naples, who acted to perfection the character of tyrannical brother. He instructed the Sicilian Ambassador to protest against the license being issued, and it was accordingly refused. The dauntless couple were then married in the ordinary way, by banns, at St. George’s, Hanover Square. The virtuous lived happily ever after, and the wicked met with the retribution that, by all the canons of dramatic art, was to be expected, for the kingdom of Naples was abolished in 1861, and with it went King Bomba and all questions of succession. [Illustration: GRETNA GREEN.] [Sidenote: _GRETNA HALL IN 1852_] The contributor to _Household Words_ in 1852, found John Linton dead, and the glory of Gretna Hall already departed; but Mrs. Linton was there, and he seems to have been provided with a not unpalatable dinner, while some few good cigars remained. But it was not for dinner or for cigars he came. He wanted some juicy facts for his article. He got some, but they were not so _very_ juicy. Everything, you see, spoke of the Past, and he was reduced to being shown the “registers,” which the widow Lang very jealously displayed to him. They were wrapped in an old silk handkerchief, and when they were untied and he would have handled them, the suspicious old dame gently repulsed his hand, and turned over the leaves herself for his inspection.