HEIRESS MARRIES CHAUFFEUR.

Otago Witness, Issue 3419, 26 September 1919, Page 59

HEIRESS MARRIES CHAUFFEUR.

REPENTANCE AT LEISURE

The romance of Miss Julia_ Tuck French, the American heirees who, six year 3 ago, forsook her .wealthy parents and her high position in society to elope with Jack Geraghty, one of her father's chauffeurs, has ended in tears and sorrow (says the New York correspondent of the Weekly Despatch). Julia has returned to her father and instituted proceedings for judicial separation. There are, it would seem, no legal grounds for divorce; it is just that the couple are tired of one another. And now! all America is pointing a derisive finger at the dismal failure of a brave under-i taking. Mrs Geraghty was born Julia Estella Tuck French. Her father, Amos Tuck French, is one of the richest men in' America, her family one of the highest socially. Up to the time of her elopement she had few wishes that money would fulfil left ungranted. She had a luxurious home and a Tetinue of servants to wait upon her hand and foot. "Jack" Geraghty's father is a cabman. His mother often had to struggle to make both ends meet. They had no eocial pretensions whatever. They lived in a little one-story house in a squalid suburb of New York. . *

Julia, her parents declared, was only thaj victim of a mad infatuation. As soon aa they got wind of the elopement they cut the -girl off with the proverbial shilling. But they offered to take her back when-* ever ehe grew tired of poverty . . , ; and after six years of struggle the dollars have won. .

She was 17 when her love for her. father's chauffeur' swept her away from her moorings. And now, 24 years, old and back in her parental home, she sees very clearly what has happened to her, and is not afraid to discuss it.

"Love, such love as Jack and I had for each other," she tells her friends, " is not the best basis, for a happy marriage. I have learned, through hard and bitter experience, that an interest in tha same pursuits, the being born to the eama class, to the same standards of living and thinking, and even eating, make the only basis for a continued happiness. " Jack was handsome, and had whafc I thought was a picturesque u ~ of speaking, and, of course, I thought myself undyingly in love with him. His clothes and some of his habits were different from those of our men, but I thought these were but surface matters, and could be quickly changed. And I was willing to face anything with him because of my love. But it wasn't long before I realised how hard it would be for me to find full happiness in the new conditions." The .-"oung couple took a small cottage and endeavoured to settle down. Instead of having her breakfast served in the sunlit breakfast room, with splendid family silver, and by a butler grown grey in her family's service, she had to get up at 6 o'clock, even in the winter, and cook breakfast for herself and her husband. She had to sweep, dust, and scrub. loneliness grew. She made friends .of her two.sisters-in-law, and by precept and example tried to turn them into ' society girls." Here the sturdy good sense of her mother-in-law called a halt! She did not want her girls made into "foolish butterflies," and as for letting them "make up" as the young ladies of New Yqrk society, her girls should live as they were brought up to live. This ended young Mra Geraghty's missionary efforts. When her baby came two years after the elopement (she was then only 19), there was a softening of her parents' atti-. tude; but while this brought her closer to the old life for which every habittrained nerve was craving, still, Tantaluslike, it was just beyond her reach. And now, after these six years, Mra Gexaghty has decided that ehe wants her child to have the advantages that she had: she wants her child brought up in the environment and with the habits that were given her. So she is now living with her mother, Mrs Le Boy French, in Newport, in the luxury to which she was born, and which her child will share.

. Mrs Geraghty returns to a very muchchanged family. Since 1 her elopement hev mother has divorced her father, and the latter is now married again. Ormond French, the eldest son of the family, haa married and has three children. . More recently Edward Tuck French married a pretty telephone operator> and after a sensational experience died sudi denly last June.