Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1888-11-08
A STRANGE ROMANCE
Recalled BY the Death Of an English
Duchess.

From the Philadelphia Press
The dowager duchess of Hamilton, who died
at Baden-Baden, was the youngest daughter of
the Grand Duke Charles of Baden by his mar
rage with the celebrated Princess Stephanie
de Beauharnais. Her elder sister is the dow
aeer princess of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the mother Of the reigning prince, and Of the
king of Roumania and the Comtesse de Flandre.
The duchess had lived abroad almost entirely
since 1851, when she took an aversion to Scot
land, because during the papai aggression
frenzy mob of furious fanatics attacked her
carriage when she was driving from Hamilton
Palace to the Roman Catholic church, and she
only escaped from being maltreated through
the coachman suddenly whipping up his horses
and starting on at a gallop. During the last
twenty-four years the duchess had passed her
time between her villa at Baden-Baden, her
chateau on the Lake of Constance. at Paris, and
on the Riviera. She possessed a very large for
tune, which was increased few years ago by a
bequest of S250,000 from the duke of Bruins
wick: Her son, the present duke of Hamilton,
pected that Prince Alexander of Hesse and his
sons, the Battenbergs (of whom she was very
fond) will benefit considerably by her will.
The late duchess was very great person in
Paris, relates London Truth, during the reign
of her cousin, Napoleon III. She began to take
Elysee. She was marchioness of Douglass at
that time. had three children in the hands of
nurses and governesses, and a husband who
spent his evenings in high play at the Cercles
and Maison dor. His father, Scotch noble
man OF the old school and ayerse to foreign
ways, left him splendid fortune and palace
near Glasgow filed with rich and rare furniture
and curios, but the duchess refused to live in
Queen Victoria's dominions. She was left a
widow about thirty years ago in consequence
rvFh x,y- H.. ELL
a supper at the Maison dor, and broken his
neck. The real reason why he and his wife re-
sided so much on the continent was the
queens refusal to allow her precedence at
drawing-rooms Of the duchess of Norfolk; as
member Of a sovereign German family, from
German point of view she was Just as "high
and mighty" as no matter what Mecklenburg,
Hesse, or Saxe-Coburg. There was no valid
excuse for the refusal which seems inexplica-
BILE, when it is remembered how the morgan
attic son of younger Hessian princelet is being
foisted as high. royalty on the British people.
Her majesty could not have believed the story
current at Mannheim about the Princess Marie,
Of Baden Duchess Of Hamilton), being a sup
Positions child. and substituted for a prince
with a malformed head, denoting the idiotcy
which from time to time appeared in the grand
ducal Cor before Napoleon's time Margravine)
family. II there had been substitution, a boy
would have been slipped into the place of the
alleged idiot. The Manheimers, near whose
city the Grand Duchess Stephanie used to re-
side, had some plausible explanation to give
for the substitution of girl-or, at any rate,
one that satisfied them
The ''true heir" was never a complainant. He
was the story went. found one day-full grown.
helpless, undressed, hairy as an Orson, and
unable to quit crouching posture-near the
Grand Ducal Park. Altogether he was more
like an animal than human being. How he
got to the place where he was discovered no.
body could ever guess. His vocabulary con-
tanned but two words, "Caspar Hauser." Seas
par Hauser" was the unvarying answer to every
question. For some time it was supposed that
he was the victim of some theorists who wanted
to prove Locke's philosophy by experiment,
and who had kept him without any sort of ex-
perience other than that of a hole in which he
was brought up in solitude. Those who found
him put him in human training He frightened
up; took, in his Sunday clothes, a distinguished
air; was mild tractable, and showed CLEANS of
memory extending far back to few GASES in
his desert life. Speech was coming to him as
he was assassinated. This murder caused stir
along the Rhine. Caspar Hauser had striking
resemblance to past Margrayes of Baden. This,
perhaps, was the reason why the tale of the
substitution was told and believed. However.
the late Duchess of Hamilton's early married
life was poisoned by the queens refusal to treat
her as Princess Of Baden. The terrible mis-
fortune of the rest of her life was terror of in
ternal cancer. She fancied herself liable to
this disease, and believed she was preserved
from its ravages by an American doctor, who,
through her patronage, won a great practice.