The Too Sensitive Woman

1910

Those Easily Offended Bring Upon Themselves Many Sorrows That Are Unnecessary

Many are the sorrows of the easily offended. Should she be invited nowhere, it is for spite; should she, on the other hand, be asked to social events, it is for policy, and everyone will avoid her when she gets there.

No one in the world cares anything for her; her friends are false and her enemies many, though all undeserved. Every remark made about her contains a hidden innuendo, and any persons talking whispers in her hearing are gossiping about her.

She believes no proofs of affections, but is haunted always by the thought that the most trusted are the least trustworthy. She takes nothing for granted, but asks permissions and favors that others would never dream of as subjects for question.

And her thoughts are very real ones. It is easy to sneer at the too sensitive woman, but her life is wretched, and there is no one to throw on her the spiritual cold water she needs.

Let her only learn that there are others in the world besides herself, that she for her part has many virtues which must necessarily endear her to her acquaintances, and that if she would have confidence she will gain fidelity, and there will be an end of her, now, and forever!

Girl Twice Bade Suitor 'Shoot' in Suicide Pact

1915

Town Gossip is Blamed for Maryland Tragedy

The town gossiped about them. The story spread and the morsel of scandal was rolled 'neath many tongues. So they made a pact. They went out into the woods, kissed each other good-by and then there were shots. So much for gossip.

CRISFIELD, Md., Dec. 16. — Dying as the result of two bullet wounds in her lung, Miss Hilda Sterling told painfully but graphically of the part she played in a suicide pact. Her partner in the tragedy, C. Clifford Reese, a druggist of this city, was buried the other day. His widow is in a critical condition as the result of shock.

The coroner's jury rendered a verdict of death as the result of a gunshot wound, self-inflicted, and made an ineffectual effort to suppress three letters, two of which Reese had written before his death. One was written to Reese by Miss Sterling, who had been in his employ. In it she said that because of gossip she no longer would come to the store, tho she could speak to him on the street and still be friendly.

The Suicide Pact

The other notes were written by Reese and professed true love for Miss Sterling. They announced the purpose of the pair to commit suicide on account of the town gossip.

Miss Sterling told of their decision to commit suicide. She said they secured a blanket and went to a woods in an isolated part of the county. After wrapping up in the blanket together each took six grains of morphine, which Reese had brought, and lay down to die together. They went to sleep, expecting never to awaken, but both recovered, chilled and dazed.

Reese then drew a pistol and asked the girl if he should shoot. Upon her replying in the affirmative, he pulled the trigger; but the pistol refused to work. He then declared he would go to Crisfield and get a pistol that would shoot.

Kiss Each Other Good-by

After he had gone she decided to leave the woods, but found she was too weak and dazed to move. Upon Reese's return they talked for a little while and then agreed to complete the pact.

After kissing each other good-by, Miss Sterling sat upon the ground. "Shoot, Clifford, shoot!" she begged. He fired three shots into her body, of which two pierced her lungs. He then shot himself in the chest and this not proving fatal, put the pistol into his mouth and fired.

The two lay there for several hours. Finally the girl recovered sufficient strength to crawl to his lifeless body. She wrapped the blanket about the corpse, brushed leaves up over the lower part of his body and placed her own coat upon it.

She fell across his body unconscious, but regaining a little strength, crawled to the side of the road where she was afterward found numbed with cold and dying.

Gossip About Women – "The New Woman"

Feb. 1896

Ella Wheeler Wilcox believes in reincarnation.

A training school for waitresses is a new Philadelphia institution.

Miss Helen Culver, of Chicago, has presented the University of Chicago with $1,000,000.

Mrs. Livermore has explained that when she called newspaper reporters a "pestiferous set" she spoke in a Pickwickian sense.

Victoria Morosini-Schilling, who started the fashion of eloping with coachmen, is now in St. Joseph's Convent, in Rutland, Vt.

Twenty-one sculptors competed for the statue of Sarah Siddons to be erected in London. The model chosen is by a Frenchman, Chevalier.

Mrs. Anna R. Aspinwall, a millionaire recluse of Pittsburg, Penn., has just died in Edinburgh. Her property is estimated at $4,000,000.

Annie Besant was a religious enthusiast in her early years and was inclined to become a nun, but compromised by marrying a clergyman.

Girls of sixteen are called "under buds" in fashionable designation, and have occasional social relaxations the way of a dance or a matinee theatre party.

E. W. Clark, of Nevada, Mo., tried to make Mrs. Caroline Stewart pay him $50,000 for declining to marry him, but the jury decided that he was undamaged.

The Society of the Daughters of the Holland Dames, Descendant of Ancient and Honorable Families of the State of New York, has been incorporated at Albany.

Two contemporary miniatures Joan of Arc, now in a private collection at Isenheim, in Alsace, are said be portraits of the Maid of Orleans, taken from life.

Miss Clara Barton is going to Armenia herself, to head the work of the Red Cross Society in relieving the distress of the Armenians. Five million dollars are asked for.

For several years a woman has driven the stage between Mancelona and Bellaire, Mich. She handles the reins as well as any man in that region, and has never been troubled with stage robbers.

It is reported that the Home Secretary of the British Government has consented to reopen the Maybrick case, and the friends of the unfortunate woman have high hopes of her at last gaining her liberty.

Mme. Dandet, wife of the French novelist, has a beautiful voice and thinks that this fact has caused the rumor that she was an actress before her marriage. She has never sung outside of her own salon.

The new woman is very much in evidence in Marcellus, Mich. The Town Council is composed of women, the local barber is a woman, the undertaker is a woman and many of the business houses are run by women.

Miss Melvina M. Bennett, a graduate of Boston University, has been appointed to the chair of Public Speaking and Vocal Interpretation in that institution. Miss Bennett is the first woman to gain a professorship in the university.

Girl ushers have just been appointed in the Arkansas City (Kan.) Opera House in place of men hitherto employed, There are six of them, and they are alleged to have been chosen from among "the handsomest young ladies in the city."

The Dowager Empress of China has been much affected by the Japanese war. She used to be a rather loud and violent person, who imagined that the whole world was created for her special benefit, but now she is quiet and humble and listens to advice from those who formerly dared not address her. She shows signs of aging rapidly.

Women in Hungary will henceforth be allowed to enter the Budapest University and become doctors and apothecaries, or study in the philosophical faculty. They must pass the same high school examinations as the men, however, and for that purpose the Government will provide them with opportunities to study Latin and Greek.

Cleo Shows Her Ears

1922

Famous French Beauty Disproves A Suspicion

Friend of Edward VII of England and Leopold of Belgium Reveals Them to Reporters

PARIS, (By Mail) — "Kings may come, and kings may go, but I go on forever," sang Cleo de Merode the other day when, after an absence from the public eye of a quarter of a century, the erstwhile famous dancer jumped right back into the first pages of all the Paris newspapers by proving that she had ears.

Time was, in the days when Edward, prince of Wales, and Leopold, king of the Belgians were citizens of Paris by unanimous vote of the boulevards, when it pleased Cleo de Merode to twist her hair flat and low around her shapely head and launch the Merode curl. The style still persists, as did, until a few days ago, the legend that the dancer was imbued not so much with the desire to create a new fashion in coiffure, but to hide the fact that a jealous rival had slashed her ears, or, as some of the stories had it, that a discarded lover, had bitten them off.

It was the heyday of the "grandes vedettes" — of the demimonde — Liane de Pougy, Emilienne d'Alencon and a half dozen others whose gowns and horses and whims set the pace for the entire cosmopolitan crowd who brought their millions and their appetites for the new and startling to the city on the Seine. Kings and kinglets shared honors in their train with diamond kings from the Rand and from iron kings from Pittsburgh.

Was Veritable Queen

Cleo de Merode's beauty and her undoubted choreographic gifts, which had brought her from the music halls to the Paris Opera stage, combined with the unhidden interests which the Belgian sovereign displayed in her, made the dancer a veritable queen. It brought upon her also the bitter hate of less favored aspirants to royal honors. Hence the tale of the blemish under the flat curls.

Now comes this beauty of an age that has vanished to remind the world that she is still here and that her reputation is as much to her in the second decade of the twentieth century as was her fame in the closing years of the nineteenth. All because an American film producer thought fit to bestow the name Cleo on the heroine of a "life story" screen drama having to do with the loves and adventures of a Parisian dancer "the Great Parisian Dancer," to be accurate.

"Why, my name is Cleo and I am The Great Parisian Dancer," exclaimed Mlle. de Merode, and straightway she decided the public must be warned that the film didn't represent in the slightest particular the intimate life of the oldtime music-hall favorite. Certainly, most certainly, King Leopold and King Edward and King Whatshishame and Prince Fromthesouth were her friends and admirers, but what of that? She appealed to the courts to silence the wicked tongues that whispered tales of scandal about her friendships.

Proves Her Ears

While waiting for the court machinery to get into operation, Cleo de Merode allowed her present address to be known to the principal newspaper offices and selected the most stunning of her photographs of the days of triumph.

"It is horrible," she wailed to her visitors, "that I, the most modest, the most classical, the most dressed, of music-hall dancers, should be represented as an exponent of the lewd."

When one of the reporters suggested that perhaps after all there was some basis of truth in the film representation, Mlle. de Merode got furious.

"You remember," she exclaimed, "the story about my not having any ears, that I dressed my hair so as to cover up the deficiency. Well, look here."

And with a quick gesture, she threw back her hair and displayed to the gaze of the newspapermen the pink and pearlies that nature gave her and nobody had destroyed or deformed.

This victory over maleficent gossipers was quickly followed by another when the presiding judge of the court of referees granted her plea that the offending film be ordered withdrawn from the boulevard theater where it was being shown until a final decision is handed down.

—The Lincoln State Journal, Lincoln, NE, Nov. 15, 1922, p. 11.

"Mrs. Grundy Says" – Comments and Asides

1895

That some are confident Hades will have to be enlarged.

That as a reckless talker the girl of the period rivals the parrot.

That unbridled, malicious tongues do as much harm as unloaded guns.

That too many lawyers labor more for their fees than for their clients.

That the sycophant finds himself entirely at home in fashionable society.

That the "fine Italian hand" is seen in some late international engagements.

That women who never went near Worth are loudest deploring his death.

That the social ascendancy of the obscure does not interest the astronomer.

That women who compromise themselves are as lost as those who hesitate.

That society women who have special means of livelihood are numerous.

That he is a foolish fellow who thinks taking the Keeley cure is a distinction.

That it would be a good thing if some of the clubs went out of existence.

That some of the "lectures" under fashionable auspices are akin to twaddle.

That "how d'do" is the only thing that does not cost money in a court of law.

That fashionable sympathy is the kind extended to get further particulars.

That with so many comic papers it is to be expected that old jokes will reappear.

That high collars are the only thing that makes some men hold up their head.

That women interviewed about their divorce are not in need of any nerve tonic.

That the commercial feature of international marriages is not given publicity.

That a power of removal bill for operation in society would be a good thing.

That everybody who is anybody appears to have arranged to "go to Europe."

That amateur poets are sometimes as much a nuisance as dogs in Constantinople.

That it is a precarious thing to change one's religion for the sake of a marriage.

They Do Say

Massachusetts, 1916

That all the world loves to josh a lover.

That the lunch cart boys take their meals at all hours.

That the average messenger boy doesn't look like a runaway.

That taking all in all it is just as well dreams don't come true.

That a change of scene is the only thing to cure the vacation fever.

That some women show wonderful ingenuity in distributing an obese figure.

That some girls can be modest even though their skirts are short and full.

That sometimes 'tis love's young dream and other times it is a nightmare.

That while tenements are in great demand rents have been creeping upward.

That there's not much difference between taking a jitney and taking a chance.

That postal cards from El Paso, Texas, show that there are many fine buildings in that city.

That the fellow who hangs around looking for a political job ought to get life at hard labor.

That a few of our school teachers might with advantage have stayed in school a little longer.

That the fellow with the right kind of civic pride will not throw papers in the streets or parks.

That the price of meat is practically prohibitive for the poor man with a large family of small children.

That life is full of annoyances, including the man who comes in and presents a letter of introduction.

That some widows' soon wish they could take back all the mournful things they said after the funeral.

That the reason a woman always loves the sweetheart she didn't marry Is because she didn't marry him.

That there should be a statute compelling the gossipy man to wear petticoats.

That frequently the man who thinks. he knows it all doesn't know enough to keep still.

That while we wouldn't give our kingdom for a Ford, we'd consider one at a bargain.

That every time a fellow sees a girl driving an automobile he gets out of the way.

That Joe says there isn't any use of washing the windows when it looks like rain.

That the hens are beginning to get that independent look they wear when eggs are going up.

That Jack and Jill went up the hill to feed the little deer, and when they fed the little dear he acted very queer.

That there is a certain contradiction between downcast eyes and striped stockings — when they belong to the same girl.

That sick babies will gain more by one day in the woods than by taking any amount of medicine in the stifling heat of the city.

That a great many people who try to raise vegetables in their gardens show a woeful lack of skill in handling corn, potatoes, tomatoes and lettuce.

—The Lowell Sun, Lowell, Massachusetts, July 15, 1916, p. 4.

Cleo de Merode and La Belle Otero — A Great Rivalry

1907

Will She Wed Just To Show Rival She Can?

The Bitter Rivalry Between the Two Famous Dancers, La Belle Otero and Cleo de Merode.

Has Long Been a Source of Amusement to Paris.

La Belle Otero wills to wed. All Paris is betting that Cleo de Merode must follow suit. The rivalry between these two beauties of the Parisian stage is so great that one never permits the other to enjoy an achievement without immediately attempting to eclipse it.

It has long been a favorite joke of the gay French capital that if Merode got a hat worth 500 francs, Otero would immediately spend twice that sum for a hat of similar design, only manifestly finer in quality and mere luxurious.

If Otero got a dress, Merode drew from her enormous profits in the Congo ventures of King Leopold of Belgium enough money to enable her to cast the creation of Otero's modiste into the shade.

Some years ago an admirer of Otero presented her, says a Paris correspondent to an eastern contemporary, with an automobile worth 25,000 francs. Shortly after Merode startled Paris by appearing with two automobiles. The first of these was an exact counterpart of the one Otero had recently acquired. It was the identical make, colored the same and furnished in every detail so as to be a perfect reproduction.

In this rode Merode's maid and dog.

A few yards back, in an infinitely finer machine, in fact in what has been said to be the costliest one Paris had at that time turned out, rode Merode.

Otero was so angered by this incident that she sold her automobile for only half what it cost, and with the proceeds bought a dog of the same breed as Merode's only a much finer specimen.

These instances are fair illustrations of how the two beauties have vied to outdo each other.

It is not difficult to understand how in the first place the contention began. Both made the same bid for popular favor, being dancers and famous beauties. Otero was the first to flash into brilliancy, and she was the adored of the Paris jeunesse doree before Merode had quit the obscurity of a minor ballet place in the Grand Opera house.

But though Merode arrived a little bit late, her activities soon atoned for lost time.

Her curious style of hairdressing — the arrangements of her lovely locks by bands, so that they encircled her face, but kept the ears completely covered, piqued curiosity. Some of her critics whispered that she had been born without ears, and produced photographs to show that even at the age of 10, long before she had dreamed of going on the stage, she dressed her hair in the same bandeaux.

La Belle Otero, then in the zenith of her glory, is given credit for spreading the report that the closely bound tresses of the younger woman concealed a horrible deformity, which, if revealed, would immediately dispel any claim that the new dancer had to beauty.

This bit of criticism, whether true or false, naturally did not have the effect of endearing Otero to Merode, and from that time an unceasing rivalry has existed.

A great artist pictured Otero as the spirit of "Terpsichore." It was a masterpiece of art, and immediately Merode felt a tingling to have her beauties reproduced.

Two famous artists obliged. Alfred Grevin put her in his group, arranged for the waxworks, "Behind the Scenes at the Opera," in company with such celebrities as Gounod, Rose Caron, Felix Faure and other great ones.

The sensation this picture made was nothing to what followed when a few years later, the eminent sculptor, Falguierre, almost raised a riot with his life-sized nude of Merode, in pink marble, which was exhibited at the Paris salon.

This was a notable triumph for Merode, which she enjoyed to the full, and the point of it was in no sense spoiled by the saying of Otero's that she too might be similarly presented, but that her decency was too great for her to consent.

While Merode, though famous, was still struggling along on a comparatively small income, Otero revelled in wealth, and her wonderful toilettes were the despair of the younger woman.

Merode had admirers, but none who could maintain her on the luxurious scale in which Otero lived.

None — until the King of Belgium came along.

The venerable monarch was quickly attracted by the slender dancer of the Grand Opera, and by a still greater marvel continued to show an abiding interest in her, even after his visit to Paris had ended.

Merode revelled to the full in her opportunity to pay back with interest all the slights she had suffered at the hands of Otero.

The king, recognizing her genuine business ability, gave her liberal interests in his infamous rubber ventures in the Congo Free State, and Cleo managed these with such consummate financial skill that they doubled in value, until it is said she is somewhere near being a millionaire in her own right.

Cleo has handled this wealth with excellent prudence, and has refrained from any prodigality.

Only in matters involving her undying dislike of Otero has she cut loose from caution, and with malicious joy she has made it a point to duplicate every purchase of Otero, and add just enough additional to go her rival one better. But then some admiring masculine has usually paid the bill, Cleo's fortune has not suffered. It must be admitted that Cleo, worsted at first, had reached a few weeks ago a point where she had clearly the better of the battle. She is younger than Otero, and her fortune is greater; therefore her chances for future popularity better. Moreover, the prestige of her connection with the King of Belgium has ever been a thorn in the side of Otero.

But now the situation has undergone a sudden change.

Otero has made a new and unexpected play that temporarily puts Merode in the shade.

The older woman is going to have a husband.

Moreover, he is an enormously wealthy husband, one Rene Webb, an Englishman.

Otero was a long while making up her mind to play her last card and give her hand to this British suitor, for, as she frankly admits, the humdrum of being an English matron does not attract her.

But Webb's importunities won the day, and now Otero is scornfully asking what man ever wanted to marry Merode, especially a man who was fitting in every particular, a gentleman and a man of wealth and taste?

Mr. Webb has already spent a fortune on Otero in jewels, help for her family, contributions to charities in which she is interested, and in a magnificent palace which the pair will inhabit.

Otero will not withdraw from the footlights. This might give Merode a chance to say that the charms of the older woman have waned so that the public no longer want to see her. She will continue to dance, but in the future she will be known as Mrs. Webb, her husband having insisted on this deference to his name.

Merode faces the most critical stage of the long rivalry. Otero is giving out all details of the magnificence of the new life into which she will pass, and insinuating that in the future she will only appear in public when she pleases, and that the receipts of her performances she will give to charity. "An act of generosity which other dancers are either too poor or too selfish to perform," as she puts it.

Half a dozen suitors, who have long vainly wooed the beautiful Cleo, are hoping that to get even she will likewise take a life partner. Paris thinks she will.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, Jan. 6, 1907, page 9, back section.

American Girl Wins London Damage Suit

1920

Paper Ordered to Pay $2,500 for Printing False Story

LONDON, England — Miss Gladys Deacon of Boston, sister of the Princess Radziwill, was awarded $2,500 damages in her suit against the Daily Graphic for its publication of the report that she had been expelled form Germany because of her friendship for the former Crown Prince.

Miss Deacon's lawyer said his client had met the Crown Prince before the war at Blenheim Castle, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough.

Afterwards she went to school at Bonn, but never communicated with the Crown Prince and never heard from him, she said.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 2.

Whole Family Arrested for Horsewhipping Youth

Richmond, Indiana, 1909
----------
LASHED BOY WITH BAD TONGUE.

Whole Family Arrested for Horsewhipping Youth.

Richmond, Ind., Sept. 6.—The entire family of William C. Bass will appear in the city court today to answer to charges of assault and battery on Arthur Englebert. The family includes Mr. and Mrs. Bass, Miss Isabelle Bass and Ellsworth Bass.

The charge of assault and battery grows out of a horsewhipping that Miss Bass administered to young Englebert when she says she learned that he was circulating stories detrimental to her.

The Bass and Englebert families reside close together and Englebert was caught in passing the Bass home and was lashed with a blackshake whip until he was scarcely able to walk.

It is said Englebert apologized before he was allowed to leave the Bass home. He meant to let the matter drop, but the affair became public and he then swore out warrants against the Bass family. At first he tried to obtain a revolver and revisit the Bass home for revenge, but he was dissuaded from this.

--Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, September 8, 1909, page 2.


DIES REJOICING IN CRIME

New York Woman Who Slew Faithless Lover Expires Happily.

New York, Sept. 6.—Still unrepentant for her act, Elizabeth Clara Becker, the young woman who on Saturday killed John A. Gunther, Jr., the garage proprietor, with whom she lived, and then shot herself, died today at a Brooklyn hospital. Her last words expressed satisfaction that Gunther was dead. The woman said she shot him because he was untrue to her.

--Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, September 8, 1909, page 2.



Chocolate quinine proved so toothsome to the five-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Byron Emley, of Huntington, that the little tot drank eight tablespoonsful of the medicine during the absence of her mother. The child will recover, but may be deaf as a result of the dose.

--Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, September 8, 1909, page 2.