WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 254, 26 April 1912, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

! (Conducted by "Eileen"). I . FAMOUS MEN WHO HAVE BEEN ! I JILTED \ GENIUSES SCORNED BY BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. "Oh, why did I not marry dear Char- ' ley? How happy we should have been!" In this burst of confidence to a friend a beautiful American heiress regretted her jilting years ago of Charles Stewart Parnell; but there are not wanting admirers of the great Triah leader who affirm that the jilting was the best thing that could have happened to him. A happy married' life would probably have prevented him entering the political arena altogether. As a young man—his brother, Mr. John 11. Parnell, tell us, in T.P.'s Magazine—the Irish politician fell in love with a pretty Wicklow girl of good family, with whom be hunted a great deal; but the affair came to nothing, and Parnell remained heart-free until he visited Paris in 1870, and there met a young American heiress, to whom he became engaged. They parted for a time, she to go to Rome and he to return to Ireland, and ultimately the girl wrote saying she was returning to America, without mentioning anything about an engagement. Parnell followed her to America, and the engagement seemed to be renewed, when Miss W suddenly told him she was ; not going to marry him, making the excuse that he was "only an Irish gentleman, without sufficient means to marry, with no name in public, and that she could not marry anyone without a great public name." This dumbfounded "Charley," who, after trying his best to persuade her to marry bim, gave up the heart-breaking { job. To distract his thoughts Parnell I plunged into politics, with what result the world knows. He never met the lady again, but, according to the authority mentioned, another American hejress in later years proposed to "Charley," who left Paris to escape her. This romantic episode of political life calls to mind the jilting of the wellknown Unionist politician, Mr. Henry j Chaplin, who years ago was engaged to Lady Florence Paget, a daughter of a former Lord Anglesey, one of the loveliest women in English society; in fact, she was known as the- "Pocket Venus." The engagement had been publicly announced and the day of the marriage fixed, when the startling news leaked out; that Lady Paget had eloped with the I J late Marquis of Hastings, one of the i ) most daring turf plungers the racing' I world has ever known. Under the pre-; l text of shopping at a certain well-known ■ | emporium in the West End, Lady Paget / walked in at one door and out of anI other, where she met the Marquis, with, whom she immediately drove away. They w«re at once married. Only a year or two later Fate gave Mr. Chaplin his revenge. His horse, Hermit, won the Derby at enormous odds—something like 60 to I—and1 —and Lord Hastings was ruined. He died only four years after bis romantic marriage, and his widow, who afterwards married Sir - George Chetwynd, also died a few years i again. It was something like twelve years before Mr. Chaplin recovered from , the blow, and then he married Lady Flor- ] ence Leveson-Gower, sistsr of the present Duke of Sutherland. HOW CHARLES DICKENS WAS JILTED.

The story of how Charles Dickens was jilted is particularly interesting. When he was eighteen, Dickens became acwith the three daughters of George Beadnell, a Lombard street banker. With one of them, Maria (the original of Dora in "David Copperfield"), who was a year his senior, he4mmedi-t----ately fell in love, and Maria flirted with him very desperately. But the lovemaking of the future novelist was not treated very seriously, for he was not considered by any means an eligible party, and even Maria herself adopted an attitude of amused tolerance. 'For three years the affair went on, and then Dickens Tealised that his case was hopeless. He pleaded in vain with the girl whose taprices maddened and gladdened him alternately; for, as a matter of fact, Maria Beadnell was a wilful coquette. The end of it all was a reply that held out no hope, and so the parting came. For twenty years they saw no more of one another. Ultimately Maria Beadnell was married to .Henry Louis Winter, and when Dickens met her again time had wrought sad havoc on his youthful idea. Mrs. Winter wrote to her old lover, but Dickens did not care to renew a correspondence with his old sweetheart. Then Mr. Winter failed, and the chagrined wife appealed to the lover of her girlhood for help, but without avail, and the romance ended long before Mrs. Winter's death in

1880. ■JILTIN-G which led TO misery. "A" curious fact regarding the. jilting

of famous men is that through pique

they have occasionally been led into marriages which have* resulted in the utmost misery for both " husband and wife. There was, John Ruskin, for instance, who fell in love as a boy with the beautiful Rose de ]a Touche, whom he wooed with poems, romances and dramas, and mute worship, receiving'-no-thing in return but chilly indifference and lively ridicule. The result was that, at the age of twenty-nine, he married a lady of great beauty, Miss Grey, of a family long intimate with the Ruskins.. The marriage, we are told, was a somewhat hurried act, and brought no happiness to either, and six„-y,ears. .afterwards it was dissolved;

Then there is the case of Lord Byron, who was led into his unhappy matrimonial alliance with Miss 'Milbanke, only daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph Milbanke, through being rejected by another lady. He. had proposed to the latter, and, as he held her letter of refusal in his hand, he said to a friend, "It seems that it is to be Miss Milbanke after all." He sat down and wrote the fatal letter, handing it to his friend for perusal. "A very pretty letter," his friend remarked, after reading it; "it is a pity that it should not go." "And it shall go!" exclaimed Byron, and thus opened one of the most tragic chapters of his chequered, life, story.

According to the biography of the "Iron Chancellor," published in 1909, Bismarck, when he was twenty-one years of age, paid ardent court to a ch'arming English girl, a Miss Russell, to whom he ultimately became engaged. He first met Miss Russell at Wiesbaden in company with her uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of 0 ,and Bismarck made no secret of his tender fondness for the blonde of unusual beauty. The engagement, however, was soon broken off, and those who have studied the life of Bismarck assert that Miss Russell, recognising the differences in their life, and station, threw Bismarck over. Proof of this seems to be furnished by the fact that Bismarck took the broken engagement very much to heart, and for a long time was very melancholy and depressed.