News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-06-17
A WASHINGTON ROMANCE.
The Story of George III. Buffers Last
Marriage Woman Devotion TO
Human Wreck.

For number of years in Washington
City, says local correspondent, there
has been a tall, slim, beautiful blonde
whom every one called 10 Chespey, and
who was to be met at every house
where wit and culture were apprecl-
ated. There was d saying among her
friends that she simply lodged at home
and ''took her meals out, because there
were so many tables to which she was
welcome guest that the week was not
LONG enough to get around to each in
turn. She has lived alone and has al
WAYS calmly followed her own devices
in finding her amusements and regulat-
ing her life, so that Washington has
! been in a chronic condition of being
shocked at her bland ignoring of all
social rules but, seeing she cared not
fig, society at last grew accustomed to
vagaries and, being hers, rather liked
them. She received men, as many of
! them as amused her, dined with them,
drove with them, treated them as good
and Jolly comrades; and not one of
all these she chose to call friend would
not have fought in a minute any idiot
who had dared to say anything disre-
spectful of handsome, frank, honest
10 Chesney.
She had secret in her life that not
even the female newspaper correspond
ents could quite unveil. 1t might be
noon or it might be midnight when 10
Chesney would send to the club for one
of her friends, or if he could not be
found go alone into the slums or into
the bar-rooms to look for man who
had escaped from the inebriate asylum.
When she found him she carried him
back and then let the whole incident
drop into silence, and no one was quite
brave enough to insist upon an explana-
ton. This man, who would be taken
home helplessly inebriated to the asy-
lum from which he had fled, was George
H. Butler, one of the most brilliant and
talented young men of his generation,
who threw away the great career proph-
esied for him by reason of his fatal
passion. He married the actress Rose
Eytinge and went as consul to Egypt,
but Immediately after their return she
secured a divorce from him on the plea
of his intemperance. He grew only
worse as time went on, and eventually
consented to be sent to the asylum as a
! last hope, but constantly broke away
and hid himself in the slums, from
which he was patiently rescued by Miss
| Chesney. She visited him in the asy-
! lum and watched tenderly over
him, and if it had been any one but
| her, society would not have hesitated to
say that this was too eccentric to be tOler-
ated, but she was so altogether an unusu-
al person herself and so many breaches
of social usage were to be charged up to
her account that one more or less really
did not signify.
In the Washington papers of the past
week appeared the notice of the death
of Geo. H. Butler, and Immediately be-
meath 1t a notice of marriage, which set
State of Maryland, in the year 1880,
been, by the Rev. Bryon Sunderland,
D. D., married to Josephine Chesney.
When Washington read that latter no
tice it opened It's eyes very wide, drew
in its breath and said:
$50 that was the explanation of it,
after all. How strange!'
The woman who had borne and suf-
fered in secret so long in the vain hope
of rescuing the man she loved from his
besetting sin was born in Georgia the
daughter of a presbyterian minister.
| When the civil war began she went to
the hospitals, spending those four years
in caring for the sick and wounded.
Her first appearance in Washington was
as the secretary of Senator Patterson, of
South Carolina. 1t was here that she
met George Butler, aud as soon as his
wife gave him up she secretly married
him and undertook the hopeless task of
curing him of the disease that had stood
in the path of his honor and advance
ment. How the struggle of her love
and patience, her courage and brave
solitary confidence ended those two
notices sum up more sadly than pages
| of elouucnce