The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-17
HOW PRINCESS oHIMAY LIVES.
With RigO She ''BiLes' in Socks Show
ing the Bare Leg.
London Sketch.

London Sketch.
There is a real Princess and a real
Butterfly after all. Their story'is not a
fantasy of Mr.. Pinero's making; it is a
drama of solid fact The princess was once
Miss Clara Ward, of Michigan, who mar
one Rigo, a romantic Romeo and Romany.
To-day the Chimay-Rigo affair is as full
of novelty as when the court divorced the
princess from her husband. Her course
through Hungary and the Riviera was fol-
lowed eagerly and since her return to
Paris the utmost interest in her movements
has been evinced Her photographs in an
infinite variety of poses and costumes are
displayed in every shop window in Paris
where such things are sold and there is an
enormous sale for them.
1t was her intention to appear at some
variety theater, but her plans in tbs direc-
ton were frustrated by her former hus-
band, the prince who appealed to the
courts to prevent such disgraceful public
ity. Her husband has also sought the wife
of Rigo and induced her to use her inf1u-
ence in preventing the clippers from enter
ing any hotel in Paris. AT the Hotel Term
mus, where the princess and her lover
stopped on their arrival in Paris, she was
recently arrested in the middle of the night
and obliged to leave. She has since taken
only be addressed through her secretary or
agent. She is frequently seen, however, on
the boulevards and in the Bots on her
wheel accompanied by her gypsy lover,
usually has a cigarette between her lips
and sometimes, rides with low socks, such
her boomers being bare.
The romance of this strange woman has
been already told in these pages, but her
pedigree has not been touched. Her father,
Captain Eber Ward, accounted the
richest and most illiterate man in the great
Northwest. In his boyhOod he tracked beav
ers and muskrats on the great lakes, AiVed
with the Indians and rough lumbermen. He
was shrewd and far-seeing, and he acquired
riches that soon grey INTO vast wealth y
his first wife he had six children of whom
one killed himself, another died insane and
another is in an asylum. By a second mar
rage Ward had two children, of whom the
audacious Clara is one. Old Ward died in
sane and his widow, who had her two chill
dren educated in Europe, married AleXan-
der Cameron, Canadian banker. Clara
came out" at Nice, where, according to
one of her luxuriantly adjectived country
women she was "a perfect feast of white,
soft beauty with eyes that roamed every
where and were restless, full lips like the
heart of a pomegranate, and the look of
a saint"
1t was at Nice that the Prince De Cara
man-Chimay first came into the story. He
saw that she was beautiful and he heard
that she was rich. That was enough. The
girl learned that his title was one of the
prOudeSt in Belgium, and the wedding took
place in Paris on May 20 1890. 1t was a
grand affair, this uniting of the old musk
rat hunters millions and the arms of Cara
man-Chimay. All the great embassies We're
represented. The peers of great lands were
there, from England and France and Bel
GUM The proud ladies from the Faubourg
ST German were many of them in attend
ance and no one could question the smart
ness Of ii all.
When the honeymoon was over the proud
court of Belgium opened it's arms to the
beautiful princess, but the faint of the old
lumberman would have its way and the
scandal she created from the first would
not stay hushed. And when the story be-
came openly discussed along the Paris
boulevards that the princess was giving her
favor and her purse to a little brown fid-
dler in the Hungarian band at Madrid it
wasn't such a tremendous surprise after
what had passed before.