The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-06-07
fully for my beautiful friend. Miriam Les
lie, who will be a bride for the fourth time.
RIaaa harN,

fully for my beautiful friend, Miriam Les
10, who Will be a bride for the fourth time.
Bless her!'
There are e~nvioua people, however, who
do not think Mrs. Frank Leslie has made
fs great a catch AS her admirers woul have
the world believe. Some even go 30 far as
to say that De Ieuville ia not n marquis at
all. Among these was one Of the leading
members of the New York Genealogical and
Biographical society, who stated that an
inquiry had been set on foot about the
time that Mis-. Leslie's future husband had
an alteration i'll the Academy of Music
with General Daniel Sickles, tho hero of
Gettysburg, and who, as asserted by some,
thrashed him with his crutch, and charged
him with not being Il blue-blooded noble at
all.
The genealogical enthusiast also said: 81
am sorry for Mrs. Frank Leslie, and | think
1t would be better for her to make some in
quirleS relative to the marquis, for | have
reason to believe he has a wife still living.
Here is the twelfth volume of De MaRny's
Universal Nobility of France and it says
of the gentleman who poses as the Marquis
&c Leuville that 'Ho married. in 1869, Miss
Taunton Now there is no record of his
being a widower and i WouId like to know
what became of the Warehouses. We also
learn that some years ago he
introduced TO his friends Miss
Tussaud, the 'waxwork heiress.' who was
buo VILE OI NH. SHHIlGb hcIIu0ys u
clerk in the British war office, as Madame
Ia Marquise de Leuville. Where is she?
For with all that we have been told about
de Leuville, l cannot believe that he would
commit bigamv, let alone trigamv. Then
again we heard that he was shortly to lead
to the altar a Mrs. Peters, of London, the
extremely rich widow of the famous Lon
don coach builder who was celebrated for
his tally-ho four-in-hands, or, as they call
them on the other side, drags. But it is
funny how his name has come up again, as
l understood that he had buried his alleged
nobility since he opened an old b~ric-a-brac
shop in Picadilly, London.
Tell me-" the writer asked, sis he or is
he not a real French noble dating from the
old regimen
"lou make me SMILE" was the answer.
French marquisates like those in other
countries were either granted by the king
or inherited from the direct ancestor to
whom the monarch gave the title, tor him
self and his lineal descendants only. Now
this is q French title pure and simple, and
an extinct one to boot, for no descendant
of the first Marquis de Leuville, Louis Oil
vier, who died i'll 1863, can be found on this
earth. they have died out without leaving
any issue. There was such a title and it
appears in the old French peeraRes, but
there is not a living soul to-day who has
any right to claim 1t, much less an English
man like the present pretended owner to
the title, whose real name is William Redi-
vious Oliver, and who has not a drop of
French blood in his veins"
"But did not the sol distant marquis de
Leuville correctly assert when he visited
America that the French books of nobility
acknowledged him to be a marquis?" was
asked.
THAT is 30. There are some books pub
lished in Paris which put him down as a
marquis. You can have the same thing
done on anybody else, If you pay the peo-
pie who compile them and who will rig you
Noah's ark, if You give them enough money
for it. We had that thing in New York some
time ago when tho late lamented pedigree
fakir Welles ran, on University place, his
alleged College of Heraldry. which was a
swindle Of about as big proportions as he
was, for we found out of the professors
record that he once upon a time served
q term in Sing Sing. The gentleman call
ing himself the Marquis de Lenville 10
probably a victim of n OF these hum
bugs. for they most certainly nave forged
for him a bogus pedigree. With some other
antiquaries l have been through it step by
step, and discovered that all the links are
not only uncorroborated, but that the per-
sons named in it in many instances never
existed, or that they married other people,
or died without issue. For example there
is a supposed alliance with an Oliver, and
of the famous family of De Lucy in
the fourteenth century. Burke, Betham,
pudiate the affair. Why they have made
him a d escendent of an earl of Suffolk, and
1t it were correct, he ought now to be the
of England, instead of Queen Vic
toria, and 80 it goes all the way through
based on the fiction that he is descended
from a family of which Il member emigrated
to france several hundred years ago-it is
unnaraIIy Q1ln,,Osa2 tina Nnrrnnro ~, 20
England in that way-and there founded
the house of Oliver, which held the title of
marquis de Leuville. This is a fabrication
altogether. and the story of the French Oil
vers other than this particular Oliver fam
lv, being extinct, is all nonsense, for you
will find in the directories of Paris, Mar
settles, Lyons and other big cities of France
any quantity of people of the name. They
did not come from England at all, and they
are Just as pure French stock as the mar
quis so-called and all his family are Eng
lush; and peasant stock at that until Mr..
William II. Olliver's father, through his nat
ural genius, became Il water colorist and
boarding schools.
"A friend of mine has a cop of his cor
OF birth n he is simply described
therein as tho son of an ordinary person of
the name of Oliver. He WAS born in lSt3
and it WAS not until he was about twenty
I'VE years Ola or SO tHat ne DlOSSOineu out
the marquis Nj. Houston, the French
minister at Washington. knows nothing of
hum and 1t is asserted that when he tried to
be presented at the Births court, the lord
pooh-poohed his professions
and referred him to the French ambassador
at the court of st. James. On account of
that Siclles matter We have got him down
very line and for another cause, too. and
this Is, he stated publicly on Il certain
occasion, that Americans were a race of
about the year 1868, we have discov-
cred, he lived at longings in Foley place,
leading out of Laugham place. i'll London.
lie was then simply known among his ASSOC
clntes as 'EillN' OliYnr. His friends mnrn