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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1922)
8- THE SUNDAY OREGONIAX. POT?TT,A?TO. OCTOBER 8, 1922 gum,,, 'iii tBMllli, vc? PsnsioH ? vl . . TaW The Most Up-to-Date Problem Raised by tKe Alienation Suit of Mrs. Nell Kendrick, in Which She Charges "the Other Woman1 Offered Her $100 a Month for Life. Mrs. Edith Huntington Spreckles Wakefield, famous Californian beauty, whose re ported offer of a pension for possession of a younger woman's husband eclipses the spectacular acts of Jier former millionaire spouse, Jack Spreckles..' BT MOLLIE MERRICK. "... and so in consideration of One Hundred Dollars, to be paid to me upon, the first day of each and every month o long: as I shall live, I agree to deliver One Wed ding: Ring, unbroken as the eternal love It symbolizes though, like love that is transitory, tarnished with wear; together with One Husband, pleasing to the eye but proved of no value to the heart. . . ." ' IF it is true that such an astonishing contract was formulated, agreed to and established between two edu cated, cultured and typical American women, does it mean that our feminine kind have jumped the march of progress for a century or more and are waiting lor humanity to catch up? Or does it Indicate that the sex is drifting back, along the sinister road to retrogression, to the day when the cave-woman selected her mate for no reason but the primitive one of furthering the race? Mrs. Edith Huntington Spreckels Wakefield, granddaughter of Collis P. Huntington, the railroad magnate, for mer wife of spectacular Jack Spreckels, the son of California's multi-millionaire shipowner and railroad head, society figure, and internationally known beauty, admits possession of what she declares to be the most modern ideae concerning the acquiring and holding of husbands her own and other women's. She does not claim that her modernism originated or proposed the most startling of developments to date of alimtony, in Itself a comparatively modern institu tion; a pension to be held forth to the current and undesirable, wife by the woman who would like to retire her and so release her husband, to have and to hold, for herself. . But Mrs. Nell Kendrick, who claims no modernism despite the fact that she is thirty y.ears younger than her avowed friend, boasted rival, and natural enemy, maintains that the first offer of its kind ever to be bandied about the eternal triangle originated in the brain of Mrs. Wakefield, and that it was made to her before witnesses, in words of one syl lable. And withal this girl of twenty-four, who is neither beautiful, wealthy nor famous, is so depressed hy what she ap pears to consider the pernicious regres sive sentiments of her husband's middle aged admirer, that she believes only a judge and jury capable of deciding all points at issue. Accordingly she has put the problem up to the law in form of request for divorce and compensation in the sum of $25,000 for what she believes to be alienation of husbandly affections peculiarly her own. Bartering a Husband. As for Rodney Kendrick, poor but fas cinating artist, bargained over like a length of silk on a mark-down Monday morning table what does he care about the abstract features of the case he so cavalierly wandered into, with one wo man babbling over his "sweet depen dence" and another maintaining disap-. proving silence because whatever there may be of sweetness in his disposition has turned in a direction not her own? Let humanity progress to a point where . the daring of its women in the gentle art of courtship staggers the imagination what does he care? Or let family rela tionship slip backward to the tiger-skin and knotted-club days, when Madame's good right arm did service instead of blushing sighs. He is the spoil of vic tory; the passive personality bearing about the same relationship . to this par ticular group of life problems that the bone bears to a dog-fight! The strange family tangle that all of California now knows as the "Wakefield case," reached its climax of sensation on a day when the two women had fore gathered in the luxurious home of the elder in Sausalito. More than the usual allotment of ro mance had gone into making that home the bewildering place It was. First there were the Huntington heirlooms, pos sessed by this daughter of the illustrious house. Likewise there were the odds and ends of rare and valuable objects left over from her marriage with Jack Spreckels: the same dashing youth who married Sidi Wirt, the singer, after his divorce from his first wife, and whose death in an automobile accident saved him from appearing in divorce court a second time. And by way of digression to prove how likely are women-members-iy-mar-riage of the Spreckels family to step out into the places where the bright lights of publicity shine, consider the matter ' of the sprightly Sidi and her $80,000 string of pearls, trustingly confided to that handsome soldier of fortune. Captain Edward Barrett, for repairing, 'and the suit that followed when the jewelers, who never received the string at all, de manded their value from the Spreckels estate! ' Captain Barrett, to digress still fur ther, was the masculine half of Alice Drexel's runaway match, and the hus band from whose oppression and neglect that child of fortune and illustrious fam- A J : i 4 if ff:4 A & t-i v ' 4.:$? ' F V -;xr XV - ' . , 7 s m fM""' " I r f'' .M J h'. J - j J I Mrs. Nell Kendrick, the tubercular wife who says she first accepted, then rejected, Mrs. Wakefield's unusual offer Rodney Kendrick, artist, the "Spoil of Victory" in the modern, or primeval, bargain. of asking guardianship over the children, whom he seems to believe endangered by their mother's ultra-modernism in love and marriage. The artist-husband, blinded by the sud den glare of publicity, moved out of the Wakefield home and into the Sausalito hotel and attempted to squirm out of tacit endorsement of his lady love's modernism by declaring that he himself offered the pension for release, and that anyway relationship between his wife and himself was a thing of the past and ' he had intended for some time to man age an arrangement which would bring him freedom and allow him to marry his wealthy patroness despite her own mar ried state. Is it modernism or primevalism? You can call it what you Ilka, and atlll find it startling. The only other caaa on tecord at all like it. and this only like aa f. shadow resemble aubiitance, la In. stand taken by Sheila Terry, the dainty dancer of Mrs. Wakerield'a own San Francisco, who decided that a Klrl who encourages courtship from one man, and marries another, is In honor bound to compensate the first In something tb. same sum he paid out In attendance on her. Accordingly, when ihe became &lrs. Roy Sedley a few days aro, she aent a check for $150 to another young man whose wife she was to have been, and who considered his aerricea as a suitor north that sum when he beard of her wedding! NO PRINCE OR CRIMINAL, ONLY A CHILD TELLING FAIRY STORIES tContlnned From First Pare.) Mrs. Wakefield as she looked before she' married Jack Spreckles, millionaire sportsman and man of the world. ily was rescued by a reconciled father who went to Paris for the purpose a year or two after the elopement. But to return to the home of romance in Sausalito. A pathetic little figure -was a guest there; shrunken, bright-eyed Nell Kendrick, who had been invited to visit indefinitely after leaving a tuberculosis sanitarium. . They lounged in the boudoir of the woman who loved beauty and the other woman's husband; the plump, elegantly gowned Other Woman, who radiated the health and beauty that had made her a center of gay life, and whose vitality faded to drab the wife who lay, pale and fatigued, midst cushons of the chaise longue. This was their conversation: Mrs. Wakefield: "Ton know, Nell, 1 am divorcing Frank."- Mrs. Kendrick: "Lucky woman! I wish I was free!" Mrs. Wakefield: "Do you mean that?" Mrs. Kendrick: "Indeed I do, if baby and I were sure of a living." Mrs. Wakefield: "All right. You di vorce Rod and I'll marry him. I'll give yon a hundred a month as long as yon live. I'll be awfully good to you, Nell, and you and baby can come and live with us if you like, when the divorce is over." ' Mrs. 'Kendrick: "You've got me. I said I was through with Rod." Mrs. Wakefield: "Do you want that wedding ring, Nell?" Mrs. Kendrick: "Indeed I don't. I'll never live with him again." Mrs. Wakefield: "Then I want It." ,. Thus was the ring tnrned over and the bargain sealed, according to Mrs. Ken drick. The three lived for six days ami cably in the Wakefield mansion. Then the Other Woman and the husband de parted for a motor tour of the state, leaving the abdicated wife to manage the house and the Spreckels children, of whom Marie, a debutante beauty of the season, is nineteen and the eldest. , And it was then, Mrs. Kendrick said, that she had time to think things over and understand just how fantastic was her position and the bargain she had entered Into. She immediately went out and exposed the whole arrangement, which brought Grandaddy' Spreckels a-flying to San Francisco for the purpose courtship to wife No. 4, Lillian Wilkom erson, he assumed tne role of the "Em peror Tai Chu Loon of China" and dubbed her his "Princess Tien Tao." The corre spondence which passed between them .sounds like a translation of genuine Chl . cese letters. One she sent read: "My esteemed emperor, Tai Chu Loon: Knowest thou that the princess is pleased beyond all measure to receive the charm ing missive from the Sun of Heaven. It is with a heavy heart that this humble Tien Tao must relate to the Greatest Mas ter of All China what troubles her soul. "Does Emperor Tai Chu Loon fear that . the princess may care for someone else? There is no need to fear it, for it is not fo, and by the help of Confucius, Jus and the rest of the yellow pedigrees of all China it never will be." His letters in return were Just as fanci ful. They might have been the play let ters of children. M. Tridon's analysis of the bogus prince may warn the credulous against further victimizing by this class. "Harold Schwarm is a high-grade moron suffering from a royal complex. The royal complex is the delusion of greatness held by all inferior people. He is not a crook, but highly insane. He sincerely believes himself to be of royal blood. This belief may lead him to do a lot of things that end in jail. But I re : fuse to call him a rrook. He has 50 per cent of the qualities of the paranoiac. "By his eyebrows I see that he is a very weak man. His eyebrow, beginning from the inner part of the face, as it should, stops suddenly midway over his eye, which it should not. This shows lack of energy and great weakness. It is cansed by a weak thyroid gland, a gland located in the throat. This gland is nndeveloped in idiots. "By his hollow short nose I see that he is unbalanced mentally. Both tha thyroid gland and the pituitary gland are known as glands of intelligence. By his large, protruding thick lips I see that his thyroid gland is extremely under developed. In intelligence he is still a child and he is still dreaming and telling fairytale adventures as children do, and are sometimes punished for telling false hoods. He has the shrewdness of the de veloped part of his brain to put into prac tice the stories that the childish part of his brain invents. An Aristocratic Ailment. "Schwarm is suffering from the de lusion of greatness as are many or most of the so-called 'Four Hundred' of New York, the same sort of delusion of great ness that most of our modern aristocracy suffers from." M. Tridon would not impose a Jail sen tence. He had a method all his own Concerning this cure M. Tridon says: "Harold Schwarm may be cured by giv ing him powdered pituitary and powdered thyroid glands of sheep, and he should be treated mentally about the absurdity of wanting to be some big person." The adventures of Scharm had also an interesting echo in the case of Dominico Simeone. He, too, has a fairy story com plex." He represented himself on dif ferent occasions and in different coun tries as a priest, a nobleman, a physician, an Italian army officer and a count. Miss Mary Pinto of New York city had him arrested for bigamy. He married her In Waterbury, Conn. It is charged be also had a wife in Austria and that he wooed Carmella Carbone of New York city. "You are not only the champion breaker of hearts but the biggest liar I ever had before me," Magistrate Kochen dorfer In the police court of Long Island City, L. I., said to him. "Yon have posed as an army officer, a physician, a priest and a nobleman, whereas yon are only a good plasterer." The statement of M. Tridon that this class of defective might be cnred with the powdered gland treatment baa given rise to the hope among scientists that In the near future many of this class of swindlers may be eliminated. This type of offender against socfcty appears every now and then. How Count Gregory Fooled Society. Count Gregory, whose life ended In a German prison, was one of these. His real name was Bernard Francla Seraph Gruenebaum. In 1909 be got Into New York's smart set and, through bis fad la tongue and elegant manners, aucceeded so well that the late Mrs. William Amor gave a reception In his honor. But funds were needed to keep op the pace and ha signed some bad checks. Then he was jailed. So clever was be and so convinc ing that he succeeded In having parlia ment change his title "baron" to "count" after he disclaimed his alleged noble Aus trian descent and became a British sub ject. "Lord Gray," son of a Glasgow cab driver, who duped the BrltUh war office, went to New York and found little trouble in making himself popular In high society and eventually marrying two heiresses. Anabel Dade, daughter of Mrs. Charles Henderson, wag bis fimt wife. But that marriage was annulled when his mother-in-law learned the truth. Ills second wif was Marjorie Wilson, daughter of VV'illard Wilson, wealthy owner of a chain of ho tels. She later died. He is said to be In a British prison. Cassle Chadwlck will long be associated with clever women swindlers. Ebe came from Canada via the middle west and was harmless looking. But after several bank presidents In New York city bad finished doing business with ber they found that she had eaten away large pieces of their bank rolls by a clever manipulation of checks. She was arrested and died in jail. How to Tie Al Knot Except Matrimonial. A BULLETIN and Tackle" on "The Use of Rope has been issoed by the engineering experiment station of the state college of Washington at Pullman. This Is a collection of useful Informa tion on the method of tying knots and making splices and bitches la ropes and cables. Illustrations are given, showing the different steps In making varldui knots used on the farm. In logging In the building trades, on ship-board, etc. Among others of interest is a description of the famous "diamond bitch" used by pack ers to secure the pack on the pack ani mal. People from practically all walks of life at some time or other nse ropes or cables and will find this bulletin vary interesting.