The Oregon daily journal., November 29, 1908, Page 29, Image 29

THE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL,'1 PORTLAND, SUNDAY -HORNING, " NOVEMBER ' 29. '.! 908 ' '
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A
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71
Lady Curzon s Estate
Dissipated jn Magnificent
Entertainment
JT UGH CRABBE, who had been one
gW of the employes of the Levi Z.
Leiter estate, a few weeks ago sued
tne Zeigler Coal Company for the trivial "sum
of $416, on account of services rendered.
That pitifully small claim disclosed, through
the evidence adduced in support and rebuttal,
for the first time the inner financial secrets 0
the disposal of the vast fortune of the dead
Chicago millionaire.
it revealed, before all the world of
wealth, fashion and power, the true explana
tion of the grandeurs of Lord Curzon, famed
as the most splendid viceroy who ever reigned
over the empire of I ndia, and of the late Lady
Curzon, the beautiful and devoted Mary
Leiter, who was his vicereine.
More than that: It showed that Mary
Leiter, as Lady -Curzon, in her capacity of
loyal wife and daring social leade; so im
poverished herself that, after the magnifi
cence of her reign in India, and while she was
on the eve of her untimely death, she was i
dire siraits for available funds.
The curtain drawn upon the glories of
their Indian vice-royalty, the Curzons were
so poor that they did not djire return to Lord
Curzon's imposing London house, or even to
his ancestral mansion, Kedleston Hall, in
Derbyshire. Apartments in a modest hotel
were all the fallen rulers could afford.
But the fact became apparent, too, that
of all the millionaires and heirs of millionaires
whom a century has launched into prodigality,
pretty Mary Leiter secured the mostjgorgeous
return for her extravagance that modem his
tory has witnessed. Beside her temporary
magnificence a diamond magnate like the late
Barney Barnato was a cheap vulgarian, while
ier brother, the dashing Joe Leiter, with his
futile "corner" of wheat, seemed merely a
naughty, wasteful child.
life to "
VlM-m WW." . WWW f ls5
BM hhf V b&
j$ . 5I I If ' .i 4. C7 o ft P
r 'A vJ kvifJ &hmM III
v fr'J ' 1 k ; jfyrhJ Mil
. . v. , i i J i i$X,7 jic'ST-' 25?s J-if-f
1 7?-7ZS77s537?
Mere talent, even then. mut be wealthy as well
as distinguished, a condition analogous to that of
American ambassadors at European courts, where the
wage Is utterly unproporttoned to the regal pomp
With which the office must be Invested by the ap
pointee. Lord Curzon. equipped with Mary liter's share of
hfsr father's fortune, was possessed of both the posi
tion and the wealth that qualified him to assume th
enormous power of viceroy of India.
His American wife, with her brilliant beauty and
match she had set her heart upon provided for the
investment of $1,700,000 In trust for her and her hus
band and children.
When her father died, that fl. 700,000 was as duly
deducted from her one-fourth part of the estate; and
her income, apart from the interest accruing from
the rnj,rrlase settlement, was only $68,000 a year.
But until any payment was due, not a cent could
she or her husband obtain, even for the moat pressing
of their needs; and If, at any time, some error of ac
counting should have brought about an overpayment,
it must be deducted from the next subsequent in
terest due.
Thus It happened that Lady Curson. retiring vice
reine of India, and the great viceroy, her lord, must
betake themselves to humble hotel lodgings upon
their return to England, that Lady Curzon. only a
short time before her untimely death, must appeal to
Hugh Orabbe fruitlessly for ready cash; an that,
when she died, Lord Curzon was overpaid. In receiv
ing a share of the estate, to the extent of $10,700. and
wrote to express his "horror" when he was informed
that the next Instalment of his income would be minus .
just $10,700.
Those were the financial considerations that lay
back, unknown, of the dazzling splendors which at
tended the reign of Lord and Lady Curzon in distant
India reign that, for all the fulsome praise and
description avished upon its succession of grandeurs,
. .J .wh0y unappreciated in the marvels that at
tended the path of the first American woman to wr
the royal robes of a ruling queen
She had married a young nobleman of hls;h stand
ing who. as the French are prone to remark, needed
only money In order to be rich. She made him rich;
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and then, as the English have It, he needed only posi
tion m order to be powerful.
In times when India Is not presaging a crisis
which come around during those generations when
India is only hungry, instead of starving that hope
less yet not desperate empire can get along with
mere talent. Instead of genius, In the vloeroy's- palace.
was
1
distinctly eligible
as
her energy and ambition.
consort to the viceroy.
From the first hour when the lofty appointment
was made it seemed as though some strangely grand
Sestlny presided over 4he fortunes of Lord and Lady
urzon.
A century earlier, in 1799, when Lord Wolesley
IstHie Office Olri UinieoescIoiLii
Love Pirate?
sl35
"Gl
M
ART LEITER was the daughter of a hard-,
headed old father who, with all the affection
and pride In his children that kept alive the
UILTY or not guilty t Gentlemen and
I.J? - f . t '
muies ox tne jury, now say you I
The prisoner at the bar of your
justice Drotpsta hrr innnppn in ovorv
eloquent flash of her appealing eyes, in every be
witching curl of her alluring hair, in every attrao,
tive curve of her youthful, Hebe form.
She is the office girl-the dear office girl of
song, story and the comic BUDDlements the dearer
ody of Balzac's Pere Gorlot. was blessed , inrl who is sister, daughter anA neothaart nf ihn
with all the shrewdness and flrmness which unhappy milUrtno i ? .i a
Gorlot -lacked. . '
When Levi Z. Leiter lived, he'stood by every on.e of
his children -In tbelr necessities, even assuming ' the
burden of his son Joseph's disastrous ' adventures
in the wheat pit. '
But when he died, he charged against each of them
whatever sums they had received from him during his
lifetime, an arrangement eminently Just to every one.
but as Imminently painful to any -one who, like the
son, Joseph, discovered he was charged, out of his
share, with the Interest upon $2,000.0 which his
rather had pourea into tne terrible wheat pit before
Joseph could be dragged out with anything like honor.
So now Joseph, as the pitiful suit at law for the
pitiful $41$ disclosed, receives only $54,000 a year as
his. Income from the Leiter estate, while his sister
Xaly, who married Lord Suffolk, and his sister Nancy,
who Is Mrs. Colin Campbell, with no wheat after
maths to discount their, shares, get tl2S,000 a year
each. . . . - ,
About an equal amount, annually, goes to Lord
Curzon and the children who remained to him after ;.
the death of his beautiful wife.
With Mary, as' with her-brothers and sisters. Levi
Leiter was as Just as he was generous. The marriage .
, settlement which enabled Mary Letter- ts jnake the
millions who are the mass af the nation.
In the open court of public opinion she stands '
accused of the shocking crime of piracy that of
fense against society which it was believed, until a
few weeks ago, 'had. been completely eliminated
, f rom the modern calendar of crime.
Is ahe a love pirate! Does she sail the seas
of our vaunted civilisation, pitiless in her course,
under the'banned and baneful colors of Venus, her
only device the sinister one of Cupid with hi hpwl
lne prosecution has already produced its evi
dence. . . r
1
HE prosecution's chief witness : Is Mrs. Bene
detto AUegrettl. wife of a Chicago candy man
ufacturer. She sued for, and secured,, a de-
. cree .of separate maintenance thta fall. Bhe
blamed It all on pretty Mary McLain.who was her
husband's office clerk. 1 ' ' v
"The girl in the downtown office 1 a constant
menace to the wife at home," Mrs. AUegrettl declared
bitterly. "She Is a love pirate, whether she Intends to
be ot not. she is the bird of Arlllttint plumage that
fascinates and lures men from the grave respectability
of the home.
"Consciously or unconsciously, the girl in an office
with another woman's husband exerts on the man an
Influence for evil. He cannot help contrasting her neat
gowns, her well-kept hands, her trimly shod feet, her
picture hats and her care-free, smllins face with the
busy, nomekeeping wife in her gingham gown.
"It is Impossible that a man and U girl can associ
ate constantly in an office without eliminating that
reserve which would exist if the man had met the
girl only In her home, or in a purely social way. The
tact Is that, in a short time, the man gets to know
4be girl better than her own mother knows her."
Mrs. AUegrettl voiced seriously the allegation
which has been made regarding the office girl from
the hour when the first stenographer graduated from
her "college" and applied for a Job "downtown." The
Jealousy wives have bad of hubby's typewriter has
never, been withdrawn from the line drawings ot the
comic page; but it remained for the wife who asked the
courts to make her independent of her husband to ex
plain that the office girl is a love pirate because she Is
just born that way. not because, of her own volition,
she wants to fly the pirate flag.
It is as though, over the cradle of the newly, born
girl babe, some crabbed fairy, uninvited, slipped In
after all the other good fairies had dowered the babe
with beauty, Industry, neatness. Intelligence and man's
devotion, and had breathed upon her the curse of her
destiny, that ail these enviable gifts should end by
making tier Jt Wicked pirate. " '
It remained for Mrs, Nellie Hugglns, the wife of a
wealthy lumber dealer in. the town of Campbell, Mo.,
to treat the modern office girl as they used to treat
pirates in the days of Captain KIdd. On November 7,
only a oouple of weeks wfter Mrs, AUegrettl made her
protest against the very existence of the bewitching
pirate, Mrs. Hugglns calmly shot Miss Victoria May- "
nard. her husband's stenographer, In the hand and the
neck, asserting she did it because -the girl was trying
to steal her hosbsnd s love.
The pretty "pirate," with a bullet's path close to'
'her Jugular, is likely to get well, but ahe will not be ,
able to say a word In her own defense for a long time
to come. The only plea of "not guilty" sincu Mrs.
AUegrettl coined her damning phrase of "love pirate,"
has oeen entered by Mary McLain, the girl whom sne
directly accused,
Miss McLain gave out her own, intimate, private
diary for publication, in order that it might be her
exculpation. That epigrammatic diary has run the
gamut of notoriety from one end of the country to the
other and all its readers have been impressed far
more with her wit than with her innoceuce.
"Married men," she remarks, "are Insufferable when
newly married. They become decently endurable after
Ave years of domesticity, and after that they keep
growing younger until they die. At 45 they are al
most human.
"It kisses were $10 bills, what a merry world this
would be I
"Those sad-eyed men make me weepy. Ginger!
All the fellows that think I'm cute are married, or
baldheaded, or both.
"The preachers came. Two are quite old. but one Is
attractive looking. He is the one that asked to see my
bathing suit. One Old gentleman said I was his' honey
bug when I passed him the money, and be winked like
a floorwalker."
She summed up the girl's-side of It thus:
"It every girl from the time she is 14 kept a dlsry
until she was 18, and wrote all she really thought
about life alt semed to her, every orthodox theory
about girls would go crashing down the toboggan of
conventionality in a heap." .
With these as samples of the argument tor the de
fense, the case-of the accused love pirates has not
gained to any noticeable, extent. But the verdict of
the open court of public opinion takes In much more
evidence than the words of a Mrs. AUegrettl. the
deeds -of a Mrs. Huggins, or the diary of a Mary Mo--1-aln.
And the question of the office girl as a pre
destined pirate Is still an. open one.
How say you guilty, or not guilty? ;-.
built the Imposing "Government House," which tha
young couple were to occupy as their resldenoe la
Calcutta, he recalled the architectural beauties of
the dwelling or Lord Curzon's family, Kedleston Hail,
He could Imagine nothing that was better calou-'
lated, in Its vision of stately grandeur, to Impress the'
Indian potentates over whom the viceroy should hold
sway, than the palatial breadth of that great struo
ture, except that, in planning the four immense wtnga
of the palace at Calcutta, he gave them three stories.
to match the central building, instead of the two In
Kedleston Hall.
Lady Curzon. arriving at the viceregal palaoa.
came not only as the first lady of the tand, but as It
ahe were enterlrig upon a home that had been erects
in anticipation ot the coming Curzon dignities, 100
years before. And indeed, with the enormous arenas
Supporting gigantic figures of the British lion, and
serving as the outer gates; with the vast dimensions
of Its ceremonial apartments, and with the well-nigh, '
limitless extent of Us corridors, the viceroy's palace
at Calcutta Is more imposing to the eye than any of,
the. royal palaces of England Itself, excepting; Windsor
alone. . i)
There was a permanent bodyguard of 110 men. In
long red coats and Immense turbans, and a horde of
servsTnts waiting to perform her royal bidding. On'
state occasions India's kings and princes bent low
before this American woman in humble homage. , -
On the great occasion of Lady Curzon's reign , In
India, the durbar at Delhi, the ceremonial of which '
she and her husband were the ruling figures, was ,
one never approached In splendor by any display of
modern times, if. Indeed, It was equaled by any pa
geantry during the ages that are past. : "'
On the British side ot the ceremony the seen was
set .with thousands of troops belonging to the power-. .
ful white army of India, without whose presence
England's dominion In that reluctant land would not,
be worth an hour's purchase. At the state service
the instrumental music was provided by fifteen full
regimental bands, while a choir of 600 soldiers, thl
picked voices of the whole army, sang the anthems
through megaphones.
Upon one side of the wide plain was a brilliant
throng of officers In their gay uniforms and women
In magnificent gowns; on the other was a mass ot
color investing the COO men of the military orchestra"
and the BOO in the huge choir. .;-'.':;'
Between them was an entire army, standing In close
formation, the regimental uniforms distinguish
ing its units in phalanxes of dark, green, red, khaki
and white, with the glitter of gold In dazzling points
everywhere interspersed.
The procession ot the native princes, which was
held on January 7, 1903, was, however, the spectacle .
ot barbaric splendor in honor of the viceroy and vice
reine which spread the fame of the Delhi durbar,
throughout the whole world, with Lady Curson as tta .
central figure, as though she were some human Jewel ,
of beauty, radiant with proud Joy.
ARMY DID HER HOMAGE
Before b.er paraded an army of the quaintest warm
riora the modern world has ever seen, bearing wess
ons of ages long ago; mighty' elephants decked out
in gold and silver, every one bearing a fortune on hts,
swaying back; camels in bright scarlet and , yellow; ,
horses whose caparisons were of silks and brocades a
society leader must envy a long, seemingly Internal-,
nable vision of tossing plumes and swinging tassels
that left the Impression of dazzling splendor and be-
wllderlng variety. , - .
There were 140 elephants. ISO camels, twenty ear-.-rlages,
forty palanquins, 1800 horses and between .
6000 and 7000 men. There were camels ridden by,
men who bore enormous standards; there were armed
soldiers who marched on stilts, that their height
might the more dismay their foes. '
Three-score horsemen, who came from Jaipur, re
verted to the middle' ages ot Europe In the steel hel
mets and coats of chain armor that were their regu
lar, native uniform; from Jodhpnr came a dozen In
complete coata ot mall; the retainers of Klshengarh
were attired In long, quilted coats guaranteed te turn
aside a s word cut; warriors with lances, warriors
with bows and arrows all armed and accoutered, not
for mere display, but In good faith, aa the weapoci
they would expect to assume If they should engage in
battle that vory day.
. Before her, at the receptions Incident to C.e
durbar, the heirs to India's thrones bowed as to then
queen; and queen she remained until she return!
with her husband to England, and, in the sud4.i
poverty with which sne must pay for her brief rou,
to lodgings in a hotel. .
The durbar was but one Of the many Biagnlfleeil
incidents of the Curson rule la India. It waa a loi ii
of Imposing fetes and triumphs, meaning to tnonifu.i
expediture of-money.
It was glorious while it lasted. TJnless. by n -trick
or turn of .fate, some- other American toj.u... ,
should arrive at a throne in Europe end that h.u '.
be a great one history will find no psraHel lur i--Letter,
of, Chicago, , In the way ot a woman ,h i
the nerve' to go the limit In expenditure, an t, v ,
ahe did. got, perhaps, the worth of hor uony.
There wae nevera more splendid vlve rt , t r -In
India than that ot the Curzons; vry l
to bring new triumph a and added tmifcjitft::.
wonder that so much of the Litr I , i i , . .
toward maintaining this Magnificence, ; ;
any American woman had ever kn t