THE MAN WOMAN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 28 August 1907, Page 3

THE MAN WOMAN.

An extraordinary carver of intrigue and deception is revealed iu the diary and correspondence of Xicolai de Ray-

Lan, secretary to the Russian Consul in Chicago, who, after masquerading as a man for eighteen years, was discovered on her death at Arizona last December to lte a woman. Nieolai was thrice married and twice divorced, and it is only within the last week that the widow could be persuaded to abandon her claim

to inherit her "husband's" property and admit that ''lie" was a woman.

Xicolai's real name was Taletsky. She adopted a man's guise when quite young in order to levy blackmail on her mother, a wealthy lady of Kieff, to induce her to reveal the true secret of her parentage. With astounding cunning she had her mother prosecuted for contravening two Russian statutes which provide a long term of iinprTsoiuuc-iit for anyone who gains entrance for a boy into a girl's school or seeks to evade the law of compulsory military service by hiding the sex of a male child. At the age of seventeen, Taletsky, as a man, appealed j to M. Pobiedonosteff, the Procurator of I the Holy Synod, for assistance. He took up the case and testified before the courts at Odessa that she was a man. As a result the mother was cast into prison.

At tliis juncture the young woman fled to Finland to evade medical examination, first writing to M. Pobiedonosteff that filial devotion forbade her to testify sgainst her nTdthcr Nevertheless, according to her diary, the procurator proneeded with the case, appearing as the chief witness of the Oovcrnment in support of the contention that his young protege was a man. It was only when the attorney for the mother produced convincing evidence to the contrary that M Pobiedonosteff would admit that he had been deceived.

The next few years Nieolai spent in evading the secret service men, whom the humiliated statesman set on her trail. She lived an extraordinary life, sucffrssfully making love to young ladies of good fnmilv in Finland, Belgium, and finally America. Though addicted to habits c.f gross dissipation, lier posthumous paper.-, show that she was a poet of no mean order. After a third marriage, she lived for thirteen years as secretary to the Russian Consul, supporting with extraordinary histrionic ability the character of a man devoted to sport and fast living.