River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1885-05-07
An Earl's Divorce Suit.

An Earl's Divorce Suit
Sir Walter Scott, in his thrilling story
of "The Bride of Lammermoor, has
shown us bride driven mad and muir
derlng the bridegroom on the wedding
night. Up to that time she was sub
missiye, silent and apparently resigned
to her appointed fate. The divorce suit
brought by the Earl of Durham, which
is now being tried before SIR James
Hammer in London is scarcely less
strange in its developments than the
great novelist's story, though happily
the tragic climax is wanting. The
young Earl, who inherits one of the
finest estates in England, is a gentle
man universally respected for his ami
able and generous qualities, and is now
only tweEty-nine years old. Two
years ago he met, courted and
married Miss Ethel Miner an orphan,
who had been for two seasons the reign
ing beauty of fashionable society in
London The marriage was the event
of the time and the talk of the town, for
one of England's wealthiest earl's was
marrying for love an orphan girl with
out title. The passionate lover laid at
her feet the most precious of his ances-
trail heirlooms. Had she been kings
daughter her swanlike neck and classic
brow could not have shone with more
Respondent jewels than those he gave
her de loved her with all his acres
and with all his heart
The young earl might as well have
fallen in love with the Venus of Milo.
The snow white arms of his bride were
as cold as the artIstically rounded limbs
of any marble goddess; the beauteous
bosom of his countess never enraptured
him with throb of reciprocal a1fec
ton. 81 wonder" the generous lover
wrote to her after they were engaged,
"if you will ever talk to me. After
marriage [ could gaze on your charms
some hours every day; but it will be-
come monotonous if we maintain this
gloomy silence the rest of the tune. !"
Still, the virgin he adored did not even
wink at him, and he appropriately
styled her CHS silent, shy divinity"
The Earl supposed that this reserve
was modesty blushing at It's own refec-
ton and that her silence was but
maiden meditation, fancy free" He
would not rob his idol of that liberty of
silence and freedom of reserve. 1t was
enough for him that her silence gave
consent when he proposed to marry her
and that her legal guardian made no OBJ
lection to the match. Once or twice,
L hn
beautiful image spoke. Her words
were strange and ominous, "Oh,
there is something awful, dreadful
which / ought to tell YOU" but as she
would not explain and he knew that
her life was as unsullied as her person
was beautiful, no dim forebodlng of the
truth occurred to him.
The case is not, perhaps, so uncom-
mon as at first it seems. Her mother
had destroyed herself in q fit of insanity,
and the sole ground on which the I'M
happy Earl now asks for a divorce is
that the countess is insane This heredi-
tarv brain disease was the something
awful, dreadful" which she said she
ought to tell him, but never did.
Meanwhile, neither before nor after
marriage did she bestow upon her
generous lord a book or word or act of
love. When he addressed her in con-
versation her invariable answer was IL
don't know" One of the features of
her case is not only this insensibihty to
kindness and affection, but like in
difference to pain. The lovely Coun-
tess of Durham has no nerve centers,
no physical senslbilities, no responsible
conscience or will, no moral faculty for
good or evil, no reasonable human soul.
Her exquisitely formed members en-
shrine no divinity; her Ph1dian marble
is but an empty sarcophagus.
Sir James Hammer, who succeeded
Sir James Wilde, now Lord PenZance
as Judge of Probate and Divorce In the
court of which Sir Cresswell Cressweu
was the first Judge, will no doubt grant
the Earl an absolute divorce, when all
these points are proved. The generous
nobleman will doubtless make ample
provision for his unfortunate bride,
who is as free from fault as she is from
| feeling. 1t is fortunate that no heir to
| the great estates and titles has been
born, or the imagination might foresee
line of demented Earls sitting among
the peers of England in the years to
come. This hereditary insanity is an
unspeakabe horror, and it is the
humane duty of those who know of its
existence to communicate the fact to
the intended bride or bridegroom before
the sacramental rite that makes of twain
one flesh is solemnized,