The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-01-31
FOOLISH AMERICAN GIRLS.

Vain American girls with money and
without knowledge of human nature
will doubtless continue for all time
making themselves miserable by mar
rying foreign titles hitched to very
scrubby men. Ever since American
girls had money they have been doing
this sort of thing, aud they persist in
refusing to learn by the Ead experience
of their sisters, not one in twenty of
whom, after buying title at high
price. is as happy as she would be with
an American laborer who was . man
with love and respect for her.
Last fall the papers were full Of she
account of the marriage OF Miss Vir-
ginia Knox, Pittsburg girl who had
million, with an Italian Count, 4oater-
cole. Now the papers are full of very
different sturies concerning the pair.
Montercole was blk, as are the great
majority OF the poverty-stricken fell
lows who come TO this country to hunt
for silly girls with money. The couple
had not reached Paris en- route for his
alleged castle in Italy. before he began
his abuse of her, and in the city named
he amused himself by dragging her
about their rooms in the hotel by the
hair. Strangers interfered, and saved
her from further, maltreatment on
that occasion. To avoid q scan
dial she continued to live with
the brute, accompanying him to
Italy, where instead of taking her to q
castle, he led her to q very ordinary
house which was owned by his mother
He was absolutely without means, and
was fraud even as to his title, which
belonged to his wife, who died only
five months before he married Miss
Knox. At the mothers house his
cruelty to the deluded American girl
continued, the latter being held pris-
oner, and even denied the privilege of
writing to her friends. She wa, how
ever, forced to sign drafts for money
with which her bogus count kept up
the household and "swelled" about
the country. The wife of the American
consul finally learned something Of
what was going ton, and in the course
OF time succeeded in rescuing her
miserable counsry-woman, who has
begun proceedings for divorce. It is
the same old story, with the exception
that Montercole seems to be more of a
humbug and somewhat more brutal
than the average of these wife-beating
Adventures. One cannot have much
sympathy for girl like Miss Knox,
who refuses to be guided by common
sense in the most important affair of
life.
The Philadelphia Times, edttoriaIiy
commenting on this case, says:
1t is reproach upon this country that only
here can women of fortune be found as
ready victims for the Rdventurer who S. |
sumes a tit.e. In all other countries such !
marriages are seldom known. The noble
man who justly wears and estimates hi
nobility Will seldom marry outside of his |
own circle; and an ninety-nine cases out of |
every hundred the foreign tit'e that seeks
marriage with American women of fortune
il either bald fraud or an open sale OF
stained nobility for fortune With which to
indulge in dissolute life and destroy the
happine IS of the wife. There are few,
very " xeeptions; hut they are 30 few
that thev are Voiceless in the argument
OF the many American girls OF fortune
who have MARI, d foreign nohIemen during
the last quarter of q century, al of the really
happy or even reasonably happy marriages
can be counted on the fingers of a single
hand. while there are scores and scores of
wasted fortunes and blighted liveS to tell tbs
old, old story of the madness of American
women seeking foreign titles. Miss Knox
has plenty Of company in her humiliation
and sorrow among her own countryWomen,
but her life is none the worse accursed by
her folly.