“EAST AND WEST.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2043, 18 October 1919, Page 1

“EAST AND WEST.”

HUMAN NATURE THE SAME

The English love of a lord is never more pronounced than when his lordship makes his appearance in the witness box at the Divorce Court. For it is only by means of the Divorce Court that'the English public get an accurate and reliable insight into the inner domestic life of the peerage. It would lie wrong to assume that the picture of domestic unhappiness painted in Hie Divorce Court when society cases are heard proves that all matrimonial partners in the peerage are bored with one another (writes the London correspondent of the Melbourne Age); but the Divorce Court pietur-’" es have the merit of presenting real men and women with human failings in temper and temperament such as the public can understand —and pass judgment upon. Such pictures come a little nearer to life than the idyllic stories of high life published in I lie illustrated society papers. In the case of the petition of the Duchess of Westminster (one of the pretty daughters of Sir George Cornwailis-AVest, whose wife bulked so largely in a military scandal two years ago) for divorce, (he public were robbed of more than half their interest in the case by (he fact that the duke did not fulfil the promise made on his behalf to defend the suit. The duke did not go into (be witness-box to defend bis character, still less “to have, it ail out in public,’’ as he threatened to do in one of his letters to the duchess. Owing to (lie absence of any defence to the petition the duchess was not cross-examined, and the ease presented a one-sided -picture. The .duchess in her evidence gave details of the duke’s discourteous treatment of her in the ducal domestic atmosphere, but gave no hint of Ihe motives that actuated his conducl. The impression left on the superficial mind is that I lie duke is an eccentric person who behaved in a very extraordinary manner wit limit any provocation. This does not harmonise with his threat “to have it all out iu public” —the threat of a man who believed that he bad an interesting and damaging case to disclose.

The unsolved problem of the reason for the duke's discourteous treatment of bis duchess need not prevent anyone from offering a solution satisfactory to themselves. It was staled by the duchess in her evidence that for a couple of years the duke ceased to associate with her, even when (hey were living in the same house. r J]he duke used the house almost daily, but did not sleep there or have his meals there. The duchess, accompanied by her sister, went out to Egypt to, see the duke when bo was staying in -Cairo in 1911 ' but on the day of their arrival iu Cairo the duke left the town. Next year, when he was entertaining some guests at Eaton Hull, his country seat in Chester, the duchess went down to see him, iu the hope of effecting a reconciliation, but the duke hurriedly left the place as soon as she arrived.

Though “Bust is' East ami W est is West, :\nd never (he twain shall meet,” il is pleasing to reflect that the eviclonee in the Mostminster divorce ease estahlishes a close similarity between human nature in the East End of London and the West End. In the East End Courts there are frequently eases in which wives complain to the Magistrates of having been ignored in their own homes by cruel, morose husbands, who eat in silence the meals provided by dutiful hands, hut refuse to open their mouths in conversation because of some fancied wrong eommilled against them. In the West End, where houses and incomes are large, il is possible lor an estranged couple to live separate! lives in the same house, without coming much into personal contact, but in the East End, where incomes are small and the home is limited to two rooms’ in n crowded slum, il needs stoical self-restraint on the part of an estranged pair to refrain from conversation of some kind — which may heal the breach or widen it. It is an interesting fact that East End feminine nature finds it impossible to bear the strain of days of morose silence on the part of a husband, and usually endeavours, by insulting remarks, to bring

about a breach of the peace, as the shortest road to reconciliation. The attitude of an East End wife to the contemptuous silence of a morose partner was expressed to a Magistrate by a wife who publicly confided to him that she “would sooner have a punch-in the jaw and be done with it.” One wonders whether there is such a wide gulf between East End and West End, that such means of adjustment and reconciliation did not occur to the Duchess of Westminster. When she tried to force herself on her husband at. Cairo and again at Eaton Hall, it looks, from the East End view of matrimonial overtures for peace, as if “she was asking for it.”