HIS LOVE COOLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 23, 28 January 1939, Page 13

HIS LOVE COOLED.

UNIVERSITY MAN.

MARRIAGE PROMISE BROKEN. " SHY AS A SWINEHERD." (By Air Mail.) , LONDON, January 16. Extracts from hundreds of love letters written by a Cambridge University man were quoted by counsel when the woman to whom they were sent was awarded £750 damages for breach of promise in Preston (Lanes.) Sheriff's Court. One quotation was: "I realise how crude and barbarous man is unless he has the restraining hand of some woman he loy®s. You make me feel as shy as a swineherd before a princess." The damagejs were awarded to tliirtv-vear-old Miss Margaret Anne Ruane, of Leeds Road, Barrow-in-Furness, formerly a hotel . bookkeeper, against twenty-eight-year-old Mr. Wilfred Wolfendale, a salesman, of Nessfield, Hest Bank, near Morecambe, Lanes.

For almost an hour Mr. Basil E. Nield counsel for Miss Ruane, quoted extracts from the letters, which, he said had been reduced to 750 pages of tvpe writing.

Mr. Nield said tliat Wolfendale held a pood position with a lirm of linoleum manufacturers in Lancaster and was a graduate of Cambridge University. Wrote Constantly. The couple met at the Grand Hotel, Morecambe, in 1934, while Miss Ruane wasj employed there. In 1936 he asked her to marry him. His firm were sending him to India, and they were to be married 011 his return a year later. They spent a holiday together at Whitsuntide, 1936, and intimacy took place. While he was away he wrote constantly in endearing terms, and in August, 1937, wrote arranging for the marriage to be at Brighton 011 September 17 by special licence 011 his return.

Miss Ruane, in hospital with threatened appendicitis, left the hospital against the doctor's wishes to meet YVolfendale.

On November 19, when she had to go back to hospital, he told her, "I can't go on with it." Asked for his reasons, he saidf "You have no personality."

Mr. Nield said that in one letter Wolfendale wrote: "I have the urge to take you to some South Sea island where we could Ire alone, and live and love and die."