MILLIONAIRES AND MATRIMONY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 142, 17 June 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

MILLIONAIRES AND MATRIMONY.

TWO HUSBANDS IN THREE

HOURS

It is one of the eccentricities of the New York State divorce law that it can permit one of the parties to marry again while refusing permission to the other.

For example, only a few weeks ago a decree was pronounced In favour or Miss Cissio Loftus, which released her— according to New York law, be it always remembered—but did not release her husband.

The Sloane-Belmont divorce afforcjs another instance of this fantastic law.

An absolute divorce was granted to Mr Henry T. Sloane by Justice Stoner, in the New York Supreme Court on one afternoon last month at 3.55. The decree forbade Mrs Sloane to marry again during the lifetime of Mr Sloane.

But this decree only holds good in« the State' of New York. And at 6.30 p.m. Mrs Sloane had left for Greenwich, in the State of Connecticut, where at H p.m. she was- married to Mr Percy Belmont. Mr Henry T. Sloane, her New York husband, is a millionaire and a kinsman of the Vanderbilts. The scandal which led him to institute divorce proceedings occurred ' last autumn at Newport. He__took his daughters, girls of 16 and 14, but gave his wife a line house and an- ample allowance. This she has now,/ at' Mr Belmont's request, returned. Mr Belmont Is also a millionaire, a banker, president of the Democratic Club at the Tammany headquarters, has been thrice a Congressman, was a volunteer major during the recent war, and is the owner of a racing stud and yachts, and is a kind of transatlantic Beau Brummel, who has been known as 'the bachelor king of New York society.'

He is a brother of Mr Oliver Belmont, the well known banker, who in 1896 was

mixed up in

AN EXACTLY SIMILAR SCANDAL, and married Mrs W. K. Vanderbilt, the mother of the Duchess of Marlborough, as' soon as her husband divorced her.

So complaisant is American society to this kind of matrimonial shuffle and cut that' Mr and Mrs Oliver Belmont were present at the wedding: of the lady's son, Mr W. K. V anderbilt, jun., to Miss Virginia Fair.. And Miss Pair's mother was another of the American matrons who, after being divorced,' was handsomely dowered by her husband.

Mr and Mrs Belmont will return immediately to Newport, where tho lady will, it is said, 'open her social campaign.'