Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1876 — The Story of Mrs. Yelverton. [ARTICLE]

The Story of Mrs. Yelverton.

A girl of MOM genius, who signs hermit ”E. H,” Is writing letters from California to the LouUrriUc Courier Journal Hhe is traveling around the country with two oilier young ladies, called ‘‘Joe" and ** Percy," without male escorts, and gives an interesting narrative of the experience of tin party. She writes from the Yo Be ** It s astonishing how these womet/do get their own win about everything,” said Mr. Snow, who Uvea up among the digs of the Yo Semite. " There was another fine woman here, who stayed in the valley about four months. Her asms was In Yelvcrton." “ Mrs. Yclverton V’ we all say at once. “ Hie one who was divorced from Lord Somebody, and whose case was tried in so many courts?” “ The same one. She was a-stnying here while the thing was lasing decided, and say what people will, there never whs a better nor a smarter woman here than Mrs. Yclverton. She was just heartbroken, but she was that proud that she wouldn't let on. You sec she was m»rvied in Ireland. Lord—well, I forgot his .■ante myself: but after they had lived together several years and had a little bov, who died when he was a baby—this old scapegrace had gone through all her fortune and his own for racing and gambling debts, and then he tackled a rich woman and got in love, and couldn't marry her •or get her fortune unless lie got a divorce, and he hadu’t any grounds except that as an Englishman his marriage wasn't legal in Ireland. Bo he goes to .prove he never had married her, and one time lie meets her in a railway coach and strangles and beats her to make her give np her marriage certificate to him, and she wouldn’t do it, for she said it was all she had to prove she was an honorable wife, and he might kill her, but he should never take away that piece of paper. Then be goes into the courts, and the case is decided in her favor every time, and it is tried times and times, and in every court in Ireland ft was decided she was a legal -wife. Then the scamp bought the House of Lords, and they decided the marriage illegal, that she never had been married, ■ana he married the other woman and is living in greaistyle in Ireland. Hie wife, Mrs. Yelverton.’is now in Russia. She loved that man. I never sec such a devotion ; and when the word came that he was married, and her lawyers told her to bring some technicalities to light and assert her rights, she just said, in a kind of tired way; -*T have fought for my poaittion for three long, long years. Here is .nay marriage certificate, properly signed ■and certified; but it is worth nothing, .they say. My husband is taken from me; bis love is gone; my house is gone; my •child is gone. I have fought long and well for my name and honor; but 1 am 'tired and worn out with the dirty lawsuits, and I give up die struggle and sink from sheer exhaustion,’ anil from that time she fust wanders around these mountains .like a ghost, but if any one comes up she puts on a smile and seems as lively. The way women can put on—they have so anuch pride. Their hearts may be breaking, vet they will keep a kind of mask over it. One time she got lost in the mountains here, and it was in the winter time and cold. She crawled into a hoi- . low pine and held on to the horse’s bridle -all night and made him stay close, for ■company and shelter, and when morning came she tried to find her way home, ami -agrizaly bear came along and scared her horse, and he threw her over a precipice, and she fell down on the snow a distance of perhaps sixty feet, and some men riding along the trail saw the bear-tracks and the horse-tracks, and then looked around and saw her lying, bloody and insensible, on the snow. She was nearly frozen to death, and they carried her to the valley, and it was hours before she came to, ana she had long spell, and was delirious, and they said at the time she just went over the whole trail, and all the points that had . been made, and it would have melted a -bean ot stoue to see the pretty young thing lying here in a foreign country, deserted i>y her husband and disowned by her family, and yet so loving through it all, and so brave and forgiving to the man she .had promised to honor. She wrote a good deal, and they say a better educated woman, nor one who knows more about science, is not to be found in any country. Every one in the valley was sorry when she left, and they all say, ‘ God bless the young English woman!' and she . took *my hand and my wife’s anc( t says she, ‘ I have found such rest from the w orld, and noise and trouble of the world, in here among these mountains. They have calmed me. I can think again. Oh! what friends these still old granite walls have been! The Yoseiyiie Valley of America has been the only place in the world where I have been let alone and allowed to breathe free,’ and says she, 4 1 will always love it next to "my child’s .home. I often think of that hymn, 44 Flee like a bird to the mountain.''’ says she. 4 and it always seems applicable to "me. I did flee like a bird from the destroyer to the.>e hills, and I have found peace" here. I will'do the best I can all through life and leave my future to One higher than •cup.* ” “Oh!” said Mr. Snow, bringing the front legs of the chair tothe floor with a force that Shook the house,,,” when I do -set such educated, lovely, beautiful women as Mrs. Yclverton getting their hearts •broken by fellows who are not their equal in anytking. I feel that there is something wrong in the uni verse, and that God or man, nature or society, has got a curse fastened to it that ought to sound a shriek from every human who has a heart io feel or a head to think.” —I inwardly honor this man Snow, and I go np and shake him by the hand, and say: 14 You are a noble fellow, Mr. Snow, -.awl I honor you, and I am sorry I called you a cross old bear, and I am sorry I stole your book for my ferns, and I’ am smrry for everything, and I admire you more than anybody for taking the part* of the weak against the strong.” And after we have made up and everything is all right again he goes on to his work and I he down on an old spring lounge, whose springs are broken or stick through the hair like clothespins, and while the girls are talking all around me my mind goes back to the newspaper reports I read several years ago of tne beautiful Mrs. Yclverton, who was traveling .Through America, and whose name vkm prominently before the legal world because of the manly fights < she had made in the courts of her native land. Her mind was called extraordinary, her legal knowledge wonderful, her energy untiring, her accomplishments varied, her beauty angel ic. All America was dazzled by her wit and attainments, sod her diamonds and family history were discussed with equal free.dom by the personal journalists—those hyenas of the world of letters. Yet this brilliant, fighting, independent woman, who flashes like a meteor across onr zepith, was shown me here in her refuge, tlitC Yosemite, to be a heartbroken creaiture, which feelings just like the rest of

us, with tears hidden by smiles, with the heartaches counted only by herself. ) How little we know of the inner by the outer life. How often will this story, told by Mr. Snow up there in Bpray cottage yesterday, return to my roina, and with what kind and loving feelings will I always read the name of Yelvcrton, a woman wept and prayed and suffered, and who still suffers, while her husband —a peer, mind you, a nobleman of the Croud old British isle, sits in ancestral alls, and wraps about him the convenient aid great coat of British family pride and family honor and pushes into the world the woman whose wealth lie has squandered; and takes to his heart another whose immense wealth he has his eye upon. i