The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-07-10
THE AMERICANA PRINCESS.
SHE SWAPS THE NAUGHTY GER
MAN KAISER.
Romantic story of New York Mer-
chants Daughter Who Is a Power
Behind the German Throne.

care of herself. She has no need of
friend at court. At the same time there
is no harm in having one capable of whis-
pering sense to the madcap Emperor.
Now. such a friend she already possesses
in the person of one of her own daugh-
ters, a friend so puissant at the German
court that she is even sometimes known
as the power behind the throne.
The Princess Won Noer of the present,
the Mary Esther Lea of the past, is a
New York girl by birth. She is a princess
in her own right being the only Ameri-
can woman that is. Her lesser title of
Countess of Waldersee she derives from
her second husband, chief of the general
staff of the German army.
She was the daughter of wholesale
grocer. Now the grocery trade, even in
its Wholesale aspects, is looked upon an
Europe as incompatible with nobility, or
even with ordinary gentility. 1t is much
worse than the hotel keeping which made
Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer objects oil
the high bred scorn of the Spanish In
fanta Eulalia when she visited our de-
mocracy. Nevertheless, this grocer s
daughter married successfully a royal
ers of the German nobility; she was in
strumental in bringing about the marriage
of the German Emperor to one of her own
connections; she was the cause or the es-
arrangement between him and his mother
and she wields and has welded so great
an influence over both the Emperor and
the Empress that the German people call
her the female Bismarck, seeing her nm
ger in almost every significant event or
the reign, even to that of the downtaI or
the male Bismarck.
At the present moment the efforts OF the
female Bismarck are mainly directed To-
ward placating the heart of the Emperor
in its anti-American mood. That she has
been partly successful and that this par
tial success has prevented any hostile
demonstration up to now is the BELIEF OF
her admirers
The Princess Won Noer, Countess of Wal
! dersee, was the daughter of Mr.. David
Lea, who came TO New York from Con-
uecticut in 1910 and started his fortunes in
the grocery business. He had his store
in Front street and made his home in
College place He afterward made con-
siderable money and moved to Union
| square. He had social ambitions and re-
tired early from business to live the life
of a private gentleman, and when he died,
in 1858, he left but a small fortune to his
wife and four children one boy and three
girls
The second daughter was the famous
Princess of our story. She was born in
1870 AS a child she was remarkably
bright intelligent and pretty. In 1865, two
years after her husbands death, Mrs. Lea
went to Germany with her family of small
children, as she could not afford to live in
! New York. She settled i'm Stuttgart.
| Here the eldest daughter married Baron
! Won Waechter. When the latter was sent
as ambassador from Wurtemberg TO Paris
! IL. -
| other girls should pay visit TO the Bar
| oness. Other perfectly natural things
| happened in due course. Another daugh-
! ter married a captain in the British army
4 and Miss Mary, the youngest, having be-
| gun with an affectionate acquaintance
with Princess Louise of Schleswig- Hol-
! stein, met her father, the Prince, then a
seXagenarian widower, whom the Prus-
! slams had turned out of business.
The Prince fell madly in love with the
bright and beautiful American girl. and
in 1864 made morganatic marriage. 1t
should be remembered that a morganatic
marriage may be perfectly respectable. le-
gal and binding. as this one was Never
theless, even to effect this compromise,
His Royal Highness had to give up his
shadowy title, and still more shadowy
claims, and accept the simpler designation
of Count Won Noer, which was given 10
hum by the Austrian Emperor, the name
! DGlnS uGElNeu lIOIn one Ol ms great GS-
tates.
Immediately after the marriage the
bridegroom of GA and the bride of "a
started on wedding journey to the Holy
Land. Before they reached Cairo the
| bride had persuaded the groom to make
| will leaving his entire fortune to her. Six
months later he died al Beyreut in Syria.
His wealthy widow settled for a period
IN Vienna. She so won the esteem of the
Emperor of Austria that he created her
/ Princess de Noer in her own right.
A summer or two later the young widow
met Count Won Waldersee at Weisba den,
the fashionable German watering place.
The scion of an ancient Prussian family,
staff officer in the Prussian army, ne was
| in high favor with old King William and
Bismarck From this meeting a marriage
resulted in 1866 The young couple moved
to Berlin, where the brilliant American,
an excellent compliment to a man of her
husbands talents and position, helped him
along by counting just the friendships that
were advantageous to him. In fact, she
soon became a social power.
Her pet design. was TO marry off her
grand niece by her first marriage, the
| Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig
| Holsteln, to young Prince William Of
Prussia, eldest son of the then Crown
Prince and the present Emperor of Ger
many.
In this plan she met a strong antagonist
in the Princes mother. The latter, one of
! the cleverest of the feminine royalties of
Europe had a dislike 10 all the Scheswig
Holstein family because of the proverbial
dullnes, which had pot been mitigated in
the case of Augusta Victoria. But the
bashful Princess was white and soft and
round just the kind of blond, blooming
| girlhood to tempt a young man and make
him lose his head. The Countess Won
! Waldersee brought the two together in
the most casual sort of way and that set
tied It, The youthful Prince fell madly
in love with the vision presented by the
shy Princess, and the Countess was salts
| fed.
AS soon as the marriage took place the
aunt of the Princess commenced to mold
the awkward girl according to her own
ideas. The Empress Frederick continued
cold and unkind to the Princess, and Au-
gusta Victoria was made wretchedly UNI
happy ny her royal mother-in-law and few
into the arms of her American aunt for
| comfort. Prince William, who liked the
| Countoss favored the friendship and ad-