Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1910-10-07

self, was wealthy young New York
lawyer with Virginia estate in Abe
marie county, when he met, in the
late sos, Amelie Rives. Their homes,
Merry Mills and "Castlc HILL" were
contiguous and the meeting had come
about through riding over the country
roads. She was the daughter Of
noted Virginia family. Her father was
"a rather celebrated engineer in the
Civil war and his father had been
thrice minister to France. From her
earliest teens Miss Rives had been
writing verse, short stories and a nov
elette or two had come from her desk.
But the world had given her little
more than passing attention until one
morning there appeared little red
book bearing across its front cover
the somewhat singular title, THE
Quick or the Dead"
Society gasped. It was the original
best seller. No one ever really knew
how many copies of that startling
book were sold, and the chief magnet
OF it all was the fact that 1t had
| been written by girl of twenty-five
years, reared in the somewhat straight
! atmosphere Of an old Virginia house,
| atd having, presumably, no first hand
Information on the fetid world OF
which her book told
| And the hero of the thing was
Chanler. She even describes Jack
Deering.
There was the same curling, brown
hair above the square, strong-modeled
forehead, the determined jut of the
| nose, the pleasing unevenness in the
| crowded white teeth, the fine jaw,
which had that curve from ear to tip,
| like the prov Of cutter"
Then the Marriage.
| Then, only few weeks after the
publication Of this sensational novel,
came the announcement of the mar
! riage Of Chanler and Miss Rives.
| They went abroad and established a
fund for sending chosen American art
| students to the European schools.
Both were interested in painting,
Miss Rives even having at one time
painted the portrait of nude woman
with herself as model
She was the most talked-of woman
In the country and her book went
right on selling year after year. Soon
she added "Herod and Marianne" to
her list of writings. At intervals
came one or two other novels, and in
1895 there appeared her dramatic
poem, "Selene"
In 1896 Amelie Rives Chan1er and
John Armstrong Chanler came to a
crossroads Of life and set out on
devious Ways. There was nothing IN
! any way notable about the parting
save the personalities and their great
repute.
! An Exile at Home.
And two years later began the ro-
mantic-tragic motif OF John Arm
strong Chanlers life. He was a de-
/ voice Of the occult, studied closely
the psychic, which has since come
into frances, In which his face was
said to assume resemblance to the
death mask of Napoleon, and believed
himself able to write automatically
|
Chanler had hunted brigands in Mex
leo, travelled about the world in quest
Of excitement, and what may be more
to the point, had a fortune Of one
| and a half millions. His family
wasn't partial to his vagaries and
had his sanity attacked. By means
which Chanler has always since de-
nounced as fraudulent the other
| brothers., one of the most active be-
Ing Robert Chanler, had him sent to
Bloomington asylum, where he spent
four years. His sensational escape
from this madhouse and the subse-
| quent search for him In every part of
| the world are matters very generally
remembered. Half dozen times
bodies were found and recognized as
that Of Chanler, the escaped mono
maniac.
Answering all these things Chan1er
appeared In Virginia court one day
and had himself declared sane The
courts Of South Carolina subsequent
ly tried his case and approved the
| judgment of Virginia. Thus Chanler
| lives today on his Albemarle county
| estate, declared sane by two states
| and at liberty to go anywhere in the
country save to New York, where his
| status still is that Of an escaped luna
! tic and where his family waits to
| have him cast back into madman's
cell
Not only have the courts of these
states held him possessed of normal
| ity, but his neighbors consider him
| more than sane and he is a really
popular man in his strange exile. IS
Let the City Man Try.