The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-05-08
A TRAGEDY IN BOHEMIA

From the Louisville Courier-Journal. THE murder and suicide which made
 a slaughter house of the domestic
 A establishment of Albert De Brahms in New York the other day provides an other in the long list of instances of the failure of professed bohemians to find happiness in their bohemianisn. And if real Bohemia is not found by youthful artist and his sweetheart who shall find it along the borderline between conventional life and disreputable life?
 De Brahms was slender, handsome, temperamental and 25. Pauline Van Hallsan was also slender, handsome, tenn peramental and in the early twenties. And the scenes of the romance were in Paris and ostend. Its atmosphere was that of the gay cafes. Miss Van Hall sans mother, who essayed the duties of chaperone which the temperament and views of her handsome daughter rendered somewhat difficult and discouraging, it seems. is said to have been wealthy. AL bert De Brahms mother was old and humble and poor and proud-proud of her sons achievement in his chosen work. The liaison meant to the mother of Miss Van Hallsan the disgrace of the child she had striven to bring up in the way she should go in the hope that she would not depart from it. To the mother of the violinist it meant distress, humiliation, fear of the future But De Brahms had found the one woman.' Pauline Van Hallsan's ideal lover had "come into her life," as the noyelists put it. He had spoken to her through the medium Of
 The Meditation of Thais." The plot of the piece and the staging left nothing to be desired. The hopeful couple laughed gayly at Mrs. Grundy, reasoned with a couple of moss backed mammas as pa- tiently as wise young persons could with foolish old persons and decided to live a gypsy life with De Brahms violin as their means of livelihood and his increase ing reputation as their guarantee Of com fort in the future.
 It was not until several years had passed that the vioinist and the girl whose beauty had caused the loungers to stare in Ostend and Paris decided that after all there was no especial advantage in the bohemian life, which loyalty made quite as dull as marriage, and suspicion of disloyalty made quite as tempestuous as a dog fight And so they came to America and were married prosaically by a ships chaplain as they neared New York harbor. Mrs. Van Heallsan does not appear in the plot in it's later devel- opments. Whether she had disowred her daughter, or died, newspaper reports of the story and sordid denouement do not say. But Mrs. De Brahms accepted her daughter-in-law, swallowed her pride and sorrow and tried to make the best of it. And that reminds one of Yvette Guil- bert's song about the boy who, when he had done everything a son could well do to bring sorrow and shame to his mother. was commanded by his mistress to com init matricide and bring the heart of his mother to her while it was yet warm and quivering.
 As MT. and Mrs. De Brahms the couple quarreled as violently as before. And the taste for drink that pretty Pauline Van Hallsan had cultivated in the cafes that comprehended life to her caused Mrs. De Brahms to get quite unmistakably and vulgarly drunk now ana again. Tho teniperament Of De Brahms cropped out in tendency to play soulful music with especial feeling to beautiful women other than Pauline. When one Of these responded by rising from her chair and coming forward to shake hands with the violinist whose soul had filtered through the bow and into the strings of his Strad- livarius-of course 1t was "Strad," as l it always is in fiction--a rather tough and tipsy Madame De Brahms rushed
 forward with vehemence. collared her handsome husband and made scene that caused him to lose a position paying 800 week.
 | Matters went from bad to worse till l De Brahms strangled Pauline to death in their apartment with the intention of
 shipping her away in trunk. covered with plaster of paris, so that her pres snce. wherever she might be sent might