DRAMA IN REAL LIFE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 23 March 1917, Page 2

DRAMA IN REAL LIFE.

romantic career of princess CARAMAN-CHIMY. / A “OUIDA” HEROINE. I f News from Padua of thp death oi \ Clara Ward, the famous Princess Car■V aman-Chimay, recalls to mind happenings in one of the most romantic car- [ eers in history. Clara Ward was the fj American girl of “Ouida’s” novels in M real life. Rich and reckless, she astonished Europe by her caprices, and <; thrilled it with her loves. ] The daughter of Captain Eber Ward t one of the richest yet most illiterate $ men of his day in the North-West —he 1 died insane leaving about two mil- ! lions. His widow brought her chili dren to Europe to be educated. Clara ' was then sixteen, and her escapades at the Italian convent school where she was placed soon shocked the good . nuns. ! When she was eighteen she “came out” at Nice, a beautiful girl “with lips like a pomegranate and the heart of a saint/’ as one of her enthusiastic countrymen wrote. She met at Nice Prince Joseph Marie de Caraman-Chimay, a Belgian nobleman. His father, who was Belgian Minister for Foreign Affairs, was present at the wedding, which took place in Paris in May, 1890. The wedding dress cost £2OO, and the legal witnesses included Lord Lytton, the British Ambassador; Mr. Whitelaw Reid, the American Minister; and the B’elgian Minister. At the Belgian Court the new Princess was enthusiastically received by that susceptible monarch, the late King Leopold 11., the patron of Cleo de Merode and the violet-eyed BaronJess Vaughan. ELOPED WITH A GIPSY.

This led to a scandal, to a boycott by the Court ladies, to coldness between the Prince and Princess, and finally to her elopement in November/ 1896, with Janesi Rigo, a Hungarian gipsy, who had played in a Tsigane orchestra at their house in Paris. Shortly afterwards the Prince obtained a divorce in the Belgian courts, in which he was granted £3OOO a year alimony, his wife* being rich. The Princess and gipsy musician married, and astonished Paris by their escapades. The ex-Princess lived with the gipsy for nine years, a life of excitement, quarrels, rages, and extravagance. She built herself a palace in Cairo, and in a few years had squandered £BO,OOO of her capital, besides £7OOO to £BOOO annual income. The Chicago Courts in 1901 decided that she was a spendthrift, incapable of managing her estates, and appointed an uncle as conservator ,of the estate. THIRD AND LAST IDYLL. In 1904 Clara Ward divorced the gipsy and married Signor Peppino Rlcciardi, an Italian whom she described as “a perfect specimen of absolute faultless manly beauty.’ This third idyll in her life lasted about seven years, and in July, 1911, Signor Riiciardi obtained a judicial separation from her in the Paris Courts. Eighteen months ago the ex-Prin-cess crossed the Atlantic to be at the deathbed -of her mother, who left her, not the expected fortune, but £2OO. Her first husband, the Prince, died in 1913.