The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-28
Present Wife Seeks AnnuImGnt
 of Their Marriage
LOVES DREAM IS ENDED
Mrs. Earle Tells of Spell Her Affinity We've About Her, But She Awakes to the Fact That He Is
 Lunatic.


 New York, March 27.-(Special.) )-"I welded in d huff while in psychologist maze, but now the scales have fallen from my eyes and l recognize in my husband a madman.'
 This remarkable statement to her coun- sel and intimate friends was made today by Mrs. Julia Emelie Kuttner Earle, whilom affinity bride of Ferdinand P. Earle, the eccentric artist, and whom she i7 now suing for an annulment of their marriage on the ground that he is both a bigamist and a lunatic.
 Coincident with Mrs. Earle's statement it became known definitely today that Hughes x Tolden, of White Plains, her attorneys. would shortly apply for com mission in lunaey to inquire into the men tabishing the fact alleged by her that he Is at present of unsound mind.
 Should the action to secure an annul- ment fail upon the contention that Earle is a lunatic, counsel for Mrs. Earle, it is undestood, will then demand Earle's ar rest on a charge of bigamy, in that he contracted marriage with his second wife when he was not legally divorced from Mrs Earle No. l.
 Mrs. Earle In SecIusion.
 Mrs Earle No. ? is in seelusion with her eight months old baby. and only made her statement in the belief that she woIld be harassed by those wishing to gain an expression of her views.
 Her statement can therefore be taken as final preliminary to the testimony that she will give in court. |
 "I am weary of all the distressing no. toriety attaching to my marriage to M9 Earle" she said, "and I wish that jlt might all be forgotten. Had l evsr dreamed of what the future held in stefe for me l would have halted on the brink of the terrible experiences which I have undergone.
 No one but myself will ever know of the sights of terror l experienced at Senl- mering, our home near Monroe. It was hard to find that ones ideals were shat tered that the future held no hope but freedom; that love was dead.
 Summed Publicity.
 You know how l have summed pub licity and dreaded notoriety as a most deadly thing, yet the very force of what had been and exists no longer moved me to take action in the courts to free me from a man to whom it developed l was not legally married because of a defect in h ha
 But that technicality was not the primal factor in my determined purpose to secure freedoms. The knowledge that l had harbored love in my heart for madman was the determining factor that impelled me to secure an annulment of my marriage.
 Personally, I ask nothing at the hands of Ferdinand Pinney Earle. Since 1 made the awful discovery on last January 12 that my husband was beyond all perad- venture a lunatic, l at once ceased to live with him, and left our home in the Orange mountains for New York. There I lived quietly with my child.
 q realize now only too well that my marriage was a mistake from the begin ming. The conventions must inevitably obtain But 1 have made return to plain horse sense,' and in doing so am conscious that my position must receive the indorsement of the right living.
 "Ferdlnand Pinney Earle and l were congenial in many ways. I was interested in socialism and the higher culture. lie at least pretended to be, or at least played his role in surpassing fashion. was young and inexperienced. He was filled with the graces and culture or the artist and the world traveller.
 By the hour he would talk to me on mental telepathy, of psychic phenomena. of altruism, mental and psychological causes and results. l was charmed. admit it freely. In a psychological mo- ment he proposed and l accepted him.
 "Disillusonment came when I began to see through the mazes of our esthetic idealism that my husband was insane. At first the terrifying thought was put away as something unworthy. But it would not down.
 'The first realization of his state of mind occurred on the night of August 16 lsss when my husband grabbed me by the throat and choked me until I was almost unconscious. He then struck me on the face and neck several times until l was mass of bruises.
 Just Like a Woman.
 Tn the days that followed when he was incarcerated in Goshen jail I was de- termined that I could no longer stand hls treatment of me. But he wrote me and openly declared his love for me and womanlike ] relented when we returned to our home.
 But from the return of Mir Earle to Semmering until I escaped with my child on the morning of last January 19, l never knew a moments rest from the fear that some tragedy might happen On one oe- casion l recall that he became angered at newspaper man whom he had ad- mitted to the house and set upon him uit his nj of the foreign servants and four of the great Danes. I was terrified lest the man be badly hurt but he managed to fight his way out.
 "The night of last January 12, how ever, proved concusively to my mind that my husband was a madman. He went raging through our great house with the baying Great Danes at his heels and I was completely terrorized That was the final straw and 1 then and