"LADY GODIVA" OF PARIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13277, 8 September 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

"LADY GODIVA" OF PARIS.

DEATH OF PRINCESS WHO MADE EUROPE RING. . . " SPENDTHRIFT OF LOVE AND MONEY. Beautiful as a dream, wilful as a spoiled child, wilful indeed, am untamed creature of the forest, a strangely bizarre figure has passed away by the death in Paris of Princess Pierre de Caraman Chimay. The Princess was not a woman of one sensation or of one elopement. Her gallantries were the talk of Europe, and these were carried on with a degree of bluntness and effrontery more in keeping with the Middle Ages, when a princess could do much .as , she pleased, rather than in these democratic days when wealth and position are always under the public magnifying glass. Miss Clara Ward, as the Princess was before her marriage, was bora in Detroit, U.S., and married Prince Chimay of Belgium, in Paris, in 1890. The wedding was a most brilliant affair.. She was very wealthy. Her "dot" was £400,000, and she wore a £2000 wedding dress, the American Minister to France giving her away, in the presence of Lord Lytton and other notable. Early in her married life she began her escapades, her name being mentioned when Prince .Baldwin, heir to the Belgian throne, died mysteriously. Escapade followed escapade, until finally came her elopement with the gipsy fiddler Rigo, described as one of the ugliest men on the Continent. Still, she kept herself before the public eye one way and another. Everywhere she left behind her a trail of debts. - Wherever she saw an article that attracted 'her fancy she bought it. She lavished :gifts' on' everyone who would 6mile on her^jand. on those that wouldn't in order that th*y. might. Everywhere she went she leased whole theatres, hotels, steamboats,"Saying she* must be private. She did everytllirfg'lu the world to be notorious. But One-fine day the gipsy shared the fate of the Prince, and was deserted by his erratic lover. This is the note she left him, a typically hysterical effusion: —

"Try not to miss me, dearest Rigo. I shall always love you, and I shall always provide for you. But love in this sweet world is too gloriously broad to be. confined even to my precious* Rigo. Farewell."

It was while visiting Mount Vesuvius, in Italy, that the Princess Chimay came suddenly face to face with a handsome young Italian, who was des.tined to succeed Rigo. She saw him busying himself about the railroad station and watched him, spellbound. Finally, following him into the office, she found he was the local railway ticket-seller and represented one of the famous tourist agencies. With utter abandon

the rniN'CKS.S THREW HER ARMS about the young Italian and brought him to her hotel in Naples. The bewildered ticket agent was overwhelmed and fascinated by the tumultuous affections of the Princess. Himself a peasant, lie was dazzled by the attentions of this woman of quality, and the dreams of wealth and comfort she painted for his simple mind. What mattered it if he left behind a peasant wife and barefoot'children to enter a new world of life at the beckoning of this great lady? That night the Princess and her new love eloped to Paris. Charmingly hidden in' apartments, they lived in seclusion for some days, while Rigo, distracted with an agony of fears and suspicions, searched high and low for his missing Princess. After a time the Princess, with sudden caprice, sought out her gipsy husband and frankly told him the whole truth. A meeting was arranged at a Paris restaurant, where the Princess insisted on presenting her new lover to Rigo, and, with an arm encircling both, she made them pledge eternal friendship. After this she rented for. Rigo a modest apartment at No. 16, Avenue Macmahonl: and made him a settlement of £10 aweek. Meanwhile she went to a cottage i on Lake Como to be all alone with her new. enchanter. It was characteristic of < the woman that as the photographs of her pub-, lished in the newspapers displeased her, she got a picture taken which she sent to the press. Thousands of these photographs were sold all over Europe. The most charitable assumption one can make concerning this unhappy lady is that she was mad. In no other way can one explain her vagaries. For instance, while living in Paris in the splendid mansion on the Boulevard de Latourmanborg with Prince Chimay, and entertaining there all the personages of that great world, she was known to steal away at midnight and make her way to the Latin Quarter! She was seen there as a Lady Godiva. She was so beautiful, so bewitching, so charming, and her face was so lovely —and she was a Princess still, under the protection of her husband's house. When someone whispered that her hair had fallen below the line of her waist, another answered, " Hush, it was surely not the Princess; believe it was not." And the infinite pity of it —she was! And so they continued to believe until she herself would permit them to believe no longer. She was seen night after night at the cafes—cafes that tho ladies of her world were not supposed to speak of. She went to them in amazing costumes, that created gossipy dismay. She was ablaze with jewels and attended by men and women that did not seem to lie of her class. She got shameless. One night, they recount, she seemed to lose all control of herself. The wild blood of some untamed ancestor seemed to leap to her veins.. SHE JUMPED from HER skat and before anyone could stop her was in among the poor grizzettes who serve the drinks to those but little better off than they. It was at Le Treteau de Tabarin, a poor cafe that the elite do not know—that a princess should never know. The Princess leaped upon a table there and,to the shouts of a hundred bravos danced*on top of it, boldly, and there are those who say captivatingly. It was the end of the beginning of the path down hill. It was at this time occurred the snub inflicted on her at a, garden party in Brussels, given in honour of the Belgian. King and Queen. The ladies of the Court, turned their backs upon her. The Princess Chimay said they were jealous, of the King's attentions to her. However that may be, it was. the Princess' last appearance at' a Court function. She turned a,nd asked an officer to give her his arm. He murmured some excuse. _ Her affairs were already notorious. The insult was brutal, but distinct, in Enrope. Just before her elopement with Rigo the Princess said to a friend:

"I am sinking to the lowest depths. I shall soon be so low that I can go no further."

Rigo was a miserable little swarthy creature. The Princess wms. a superb woman. Yet she .deserted her husband and two lovely little children for him. Madness indeed! She went everywhere with her Rigo, although people openly sneered. She went even to a theatre where her own history was reproduced. The audience yelled and hooted at them, and the Princess smiled? and bowed, and turned eyes of rapture upon her gipsy husband. Presently, when the crisis of the play came and the hideous details of her own degrading elopement were reproduced she leaped from her box and dashing out upon the stage kissed the actress who was impersonating her. She threw away the principal of her millions right and left. In Egypt she owed £10,000 at the end of one year, and she had spent her £10,000 income. There was eccentric blood in the unhappy woman's veins. Her father, Captain Eber Ward, known a.i "King of the Lakes," was a wayward'fellow, though he did not deserve such a daughter. She was always self-willed and high-spirited. When she was very young she said to a school friend : * °

"What is my inheritance? Money? Yes, and wild, riotous blood, with immoralities so gross that they stop just short of crime and State prison She was not 17 then. In Detroit they remember many of the larks in which she was the leading spirit. And many of the pranks were mighty questionable even then. It was observed then, too. that Clara Ward seemed to have no conception of the right and wrong. . She remained in school at Detroit till she was about 17, and then remarking that there was another world to

see, she went to, Europe to see it. She was known never to buy one hat, but always a dozen. Everything else she bought on the same scale. Her . ■ WINE BILLS WERE ENORMOUS and she kept a string of the finest breed horses in every country. Whenever she landed-' in her : tour with Rigo through. the world she-insisted, upon having a house, a castle, a villa, or, if not that, so many floors in the best hotel that she was practically isolated, But what cared she for money? She bought everything, her lovers, her freedom, her lovers again. In addition to, her monthly, allowance to Rigo she had to pay Prince de Chimay 75,000 francs yearly alimony. When she deserted Rigo for the railway man. the end of her amours had not come. The railway, man went the way of all -the Princess'- darlings. He, too, was east off in his turn. Handsome as he undoubtedly was, he bad to go through it just like the ugly little fiddler Rigo. In 1904 in Paris she met Signor Ricardi, and married him. By this time her restless spirit seemed to have been tamed somewhat, or perhaps the check placed .».•»:» her colossal extravagance by the American courts explained her quietude. At any rale, she disappeared somewhat from the public view. And now the end has come. The fiery blood, the dauntless heart have turned to ice. The escapades of Princess de Cliimav have passed into history— sort of history that it were well had) it never been made. ..;..-