AMAZING TANGLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 572, 26 January 1929, Page 30

AMAZING TANGLE

MAN ARRESTED AFTER “MARRIAGE” WIFE AT THE WEDDING One of the queerest tangles ever known in the United States, that country of strange matrimonial adventures, was revealed in the arrest of Herbert J. Leigh-Manuell, organist of the fashionable church in Sayville, Long Island, on a charge of bigamy. Leigh-Manuell’s second marriage took place at the Marble Collegiate Church in Fifth Avenue to one of his pupils, Martha Vanwyen. who is 19 years of age. With them, busily assisting at the ceremony, was Mrs. Leigh-Manuell, who married the musician at the Wesleyan chapel at Foundry, near Hayle, Cornwall, England, on January 7, 1915. Martha Vanwyen, who was brought up in the strict religious atmosphere of an old Dutch family, fell in love with her teacher as he spoke of his genius wasted in his narrow life on Long Island and drew entrancing music from his keyboard. When he found that he, too. was in love, the organist went straight to his wife and stated the ease for her consideration. The wife asked the girl if she really loved her husband and, receiving a passionate affirmative, began preparations for their marriage. The Father’s Reply The marriage was duly celebrated, but newspaper reporters struck the first blow at this triangular happiness. They telegraphed to Martha Vanwyen’s father that his daughter was married. “There must be some mistake. Leigh-Manuell is already married and has three children,” replied the father. Then the law stepped in and arrested the organist on a charge of bigamy, to which he has pleaded not guilty. Both women are in distress. The wife, as her husband left with detectives, put money in his purse so that “my darling can buy cigarettes -when he wauts some”: and the young girl, restored to the stern confines of her religious-minded home, is weeping at the loss of her romance.