AMAZING SOCIETY REVEALATIONS

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18850, 21 January 1933, Page 12 (Supplement)

AMAZING SOCIETY REVEALATIONS

Society has its seamy sid9. Where the primary consideration in mamage is money or title, husbands and wives are bought and sold. A wealthy woman approached a certain Countess with a request for a match with a blue-blooded bridegroom on the understanding that she would pay hiß debts as part of the bargain. After their marriage she let a creditor present a petition against him and declare him bankrupt. Other cases of the kind in which marriage bargains were dishonoured are revealed by the “Countess of X’ in an astonishing book, “Society Through the Hoop.” A wealthy woman who had been ostracised because of the part she played in a previous divorce .scandal married again. When the Countess of X asked her: ‘‘Whatever induced you to marry that stupid young Viscount?” she replied: ‘‘Because I wanted the women to incite me to their tea-parties again I" Qottlng Bored. An Earl formed an association with k well-known society vamp. When she had run through his money and tired of him she rang up the Earl’s wife one evening and said: “1 am getting so bored with your husband anJ his running around after me as lie does. Please will you send somebody along to my place now to collect him 1” Charities are used by social climbers as a means of hob-nobbing with titled people who run them. A new Peeress, determined to get in on the “top floor," offered to sell tickets for an organisation presided over by a Marchioness. Such was her suooess that she was Invited to join the committee. It was subsequently found

“Shaking a Leg With the Duchess a Doings In Mayfair.

out that, she had bought practically all the tickets herself and given them away, regarding the realisation of her ambition as cheap at the price. An American Dollar King offered a certain Countess £2OOO If she would “take my gurl to Buckingham Palace to. drop her curtsey,” £IO,OOO if she could get an “invite from Wales for me and my gurl to lunch with him.” Hard-up Debrett could not quite manage that I There is no dearth of society blackmailers. The Countess cites one who posed as a clairvoyante and became the rage among fashionable sets. Her clients confided their troubles and indiscretions to her, paraded their family skeletons. She thereupon demanded “silence money” or handed the information to confederates for the purpose of blackmail. One client became so concerned that she consulted a private detective as well as the clairvoyante—and that was the end of the latter for the Lime being. In Financial Trouble. Another clairvoyante would exert all her influence to get clients in financial trouble to take up loans. “1 see serious trouble and misfortune ahead of you,’ she- would say, “unless you pay out a sum of money within the next for.ty-eight hours to a certain person who is pressing you.” She would then arrange the loan—at a price—this Shylock clairvoyante.

1 A third, who had an uncanny knack of disguising her features and voice effectively, was a society woman who used clairvoyance as a means of hoaxing friends. She would visit them, in disguise, as a fortune-teller, and proceed to scandalise them with the knowledge she displayed of their secret past! One celebrated political hostess was so startled that she changed her mode of life forthwith. This, according to the. Countess, is the kind of conversation you may hear in Mayafir, sets during the London season — “Shake a leg with me, sweetie, at the Duchess's to-morrow? If the old girl is stingy with her drinks I know a place where we can drink ourselves blind afterwards I” Caused a Scandal. One society woman caused a scandal by disposing of her strictly personal voucher for the Royal enclosure al Ascot l'or a cash consideration of three figures; another for submitting herself for presentation at Court at a Lime when slio was also arranging a divorce. “If anyone had warned me that my presentation would have to be held over this season because my stupid divorce suit was not through," she explained guilelessly, ”1. should have dropped■ the case:,Qn.tirely fp&f nother year, arid' got- my : presoutatidiri safely over first."