DEFAMATORY "BABS." A LYING TONGUE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue 4252, 26 June 1895, Page 5

DEFAMATORY "BABS." A LYING TONGUE.

[Fbom the Evening Star's Correspondent. London, April 26. The verdict of the jury in the Russell matrimonial suits (second series) will, let us hope, finally suppress that curiously constituted young person Countess " Babs " and her volatile and voluble mamma. The average damsel of birth and presumable breeding would have hidden her diminished head in strict privacy for ever and ever after the first trial. But notoriety appears to be the breath of life to Lady Scott's daughter. Seemingly she would rather suffer anything than blush— as her ladyship ought to do vigorously — unseen. In the witness box Countess "Babs " assumed the " I-am-an-artless-thing " pose, but Sir Henry James ruthlessly made her display her true colors, and a very painful exhibition it was. Let me briefly summarise the features of this remarkable suit, which will form an important precedent in matrimonial law. The Countess Russell petitioned for an order for the restitution of conjugal rights, her husband having refused to live with her. Earl Russell, on his part, asked the Court to grant him a judicial separation on the ground that the petition was not brought in good faith, and that the Countess had been guilty of " legal " cruelty in charging him with an odious offence. The jury found that Lady Russell had been guilty of such cruelty, and that she had not acted in good faith in her petition. Lord Russell therefore obtained his'decree for judicial separation. In the first and still more serious suit, tried some time ago, it will be remembered Lady Russell based her case mainly on au accusation against her husband, which, as it now turns out, she made on the merest hearsay. She failed in her claim, and Lord Russell, while refusing to live with her, made arrangements for giving her an allowance. But, after the trial, she virtually repeated the charge in an interview, which appeared in one of the minor "society" papers, and, on this repetition, Lord Russell very naturally withdrew the allowance. The second action, the one which has now been decided against her, was brought, as Lord Russell contended, simply to enable her to recover the allowance by suing for the restoration of conjugal rights. The right she wished to recover was the right to traduce him at pleasure, whilst still drawing on his income. The verdict establishes the very important point that a wife may be as " cruel " with her tongue as a husband with the strong arm. The cruelty in this instance was of the most heartless character. The first trial should have convinced Lady Russell that there was absolutely no other foundation than idle gossip for the very serious charge which she had made against her husband. As a matter of fact, it did so convince her, for before the trial ended she withdrew the imputation. Yet, as the very searching cross-examina-tion of Sir Henry James in the present case showed, Lady Russell, while failing in her first action for judicial separation, had not hesitated, as soon as the trial was over, to repeat the accusation which she had just withdrawn. She was equal to all emergencies, and in the present suit she again confessed her disbelief in the charge as readily as she had reiterated her belief in it after the previous withdrawal. This, in Lord Russell's judgment, was " cruelty," even in the eye of the law, and the law has very properly consented to regard it in that light, not without a ver> ingenious attempt on the other side to prove that an eviltongued wife, as such, can do no wrong. Lady Russell's tardy repentance happily did not avail her with the jury. It was shown that in her interview with the "society" reporter in question she had referred to letters written by relations of Earl Russell in confirmation of her terrible charge. In cross-examination she had to confess that she could produce no such letters. She had, moreover, to admit that, long after the period at which she learned that the imputation was undeserved, she had taken no steps to withdraw it. She had published no correction in the miserable little print in which it had appeared under the authority of her name, and had taken no steps whatever to set her husband right before the world. She had, indeed, professed her willingness to apologise if Earl Russell took a similar course with regard to charges which he had made in a "sworn affidavit" held by her. Yet she owned in court that she had no sworn affidavit of the kind, and that her reference to it was a "mistake." In short, her case broke down at all points ; and the much-injured man whose name she bears, and his friend, come as triumphantly out of the second trial as they did out of the first.