Countess Camilla Hoyos to wed

August 21, 1912

The Marquise de Fontenoy's latest dispatch discusses the recently announced engagement of Countess Camilla Hoyos, who is to marry Charles Wilkins Short, Jr., of Cincinnati, Ohio.  The marriage is scheduled to take place in London in November.

The countess is half-English, as her mother is the daughter of Robert Whitehead, "inventor and manufacturer of the famous torpedo." 

One of the major torpedo factories is located at Fiume, on Austria's Adriatic coast.   It was there where the late Count Georg Hoyos, a captain in the Austrian Navy, was "employed to supervise the filling of a large order for his government."   He met and married Miss Alice Whitehead, an heiress to her father's "great fortune."

Although the Hoyos family is Roman Catholic,  Alice and Georg raised their children as Anglicans.    Camilla is the youngest of seven children ("what's so fearful about that") and is the recipient of a large allowance.   She is said to be a "tall, handsome woman with blue eyes and fluffy golden hair."  A previous engagement to Samuel Pepys Cockerell, who works at the Foreign Office, was broken off just two weeks before the wedding.

Camilla was born thirty two years ago on the Isle of Wight, and she is "considerably older than her American fiance," a 1908 graduate of Hamilton College.

She and her siblings were raised in England, due to the "disadvantageous position in Vienna" due to the fact that her mother is a commoner.  For this reason, Camilla cannot be presented at court.

One sister, Marguerite, is the widow of Prince Herbert von Bismarck, son of the late Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.  They were married in 1892, adn were introduced by Marguerite's brother-in-law, Baron Ludwig von Plessen, who is married to her eldest sister, Leopoldine.  A third sister, Lillian, is the wife of Count Adolf von Reventlow, chamberlain of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.  Their eldest brother, Edgar, is married to Countess Ilona Kinsky.

Robert Whitehead died in 1905.  He left most of his fortune to another granddaughter, Agathe Whitehead, the daughter of his son, Sir James Whitehead,and the Hon. Marion Brodrick.  Agathe  is married to Baron Georg von Trapp, commander of the Austrian U-6 submarine, and is based in Pola, Croatia.  Their first child, Rupert, was born in November 1911.  Agathe agreed to raise her children Roman Catholic.