The Pensacola journal., 1922-12-24


1 } dom sparkled in every cloud and sun-streaked
tree, 1 walked into the Vienna city prison to
cut the last link in the chain Of riches and wretched
ness that for ten years had bound me to Mrs. Mar
garet Teal Paddleford. 1t was to be good-by. was
going to America l believed l would never see her
again Life for me, at seventeen, starting over
again.
AS / write this now, seated in my new guardians
cozy New York apartment, it is hard for me to real
lze that only few months have elapsed since told
Margaret with of pity at the last, that was
going homeland she answered me with a curse. 1t
is hard for me to realize that Mrs. Paddeford. &C
cording to letter | received from DR.. Paddleford
this morning is still in jail, and has been during all
this time.
much that is illuminating encouraging, inspiring.
have learned the truth about my parentage. l know
who my real mother was. have discovered there
other things in the world than society, schemes,
money, biackmai fOggings, selfShness. No thou
sanddollar fur coat from Mrs. Paddleford gave
me the thrill of cheap little hat bought with money
honestly earned by my own hand. In brief, have
found myself. The events Of last July in Vienna
like something that happened in previous incarna-
ton.
And yet, looking back, can see now, as l could
not then, the extraordinary drama Of that scene in
the prison. when waited in stuffy little office my
faculties blunted by suffering, for the woman who
shufflcd through grated door between two Aus
tran pohcemcn.- If that hour marked beginning
for me, it marked ending for her
did not know Margaret Paddleford in that long
ago girlhood when she little Elinor Mckinney,
being coured in the days of hoopskirts and balloon
81.
Paul did not know her when she married William
Charles Toomey, rich secretary to a railroad king,
or when he divorced her and she came to New York
and won Ben Tcals heart in the apex of his glory
Broadway's car producer
But I have seen pictures of ElinOr Mckinney and
of Margic Teal with her cOal-black hair piled high
in pompadour fashion, with her lips parted in that
characteristic scornful SMILE with dark blue eyes
sparkling in the perfect oval of her face and ropes
of pearls sparkling the perfect sheen of her
shoulders.
was captvated by the beauty of her in the pho
tographs, and the thought comes to me now of what
an amazing career that beauty gave her, what
patchwork of triumphs and downEals and marriages
and millions and fraud she made out of her life;
what a mean and sordid Fate had claimed her at the
end of her pyrotcchnc path-arrested for petty
swindnE, accused of fm-hamming shop-keepers
charged with shoplifting few yards of lace
Was she thinking, | wonder, she brooded in
the prison thousands of miles from Broadway of the
days when Ben Teal adored her? There
who had bankrupted his purse and broken his health
to save her from just such situation this;
she could not find a friend to go her bail. Or did
she remember Hollywood, the million-dollar Paddle
ford villa on Laurel avenue her society teas and
musicales her servants, her motors, her descent
New York the Ritz, the Plaza, the shops of Fifth
avenue?
My own vicissitudes strange though they were
an orphan skyrocketed from poverty to luxury and
then dragged over half the world a rebellious
catspaw in of riches, cruelty, Kindness social