Skelendipity

  It didn’t take long for Gerald Purcell Fitzgerald to recover from the loss of Alice ( see Part I ).  Within months of her demise, early in 1899 he met American heiress Lida Eleanor Nicolls (b. 1875) on a train and married her in the Cathedral of St. Vibiana in Los Angeles, California on 1 March 1899. Three sons were born to the couple: John, in September of that year, and twins Gerald and Edward a year later in 1900. Lida Eleanor Fitzgerald, later Princess Lida of Thurn and Taxis It was obviously a stormy marriage and by August 1904 it was all over. The divorce documents available to read online extend to well over 80 pages and are full of savage and vitriolic accusations. Who to believe? Gerald’s affidavit states that Lida committed adultery with one Kenneth Macdonald in London on several occasions in 1904, as well as with another unknown man from whom she contracted a sexual disease. Lida countered saying that she had contracted the sexual disease from him , that Gerald h...

A general search for information on the early feminist South African writer, Olive Schreiner, ended up sending me off on a completely different tangent and new discoveries, which is one of the joys of this hobby. I had come across a highly melodramatic illustrated article from the Boston Sunday Post of 4 March 1900, with the headline “Two Love Stories that have Come Out of the Terrible South African War”, one sub-heading being, “Olive Schreiner, the Famous Novelist, Jilted by Cecil Rhodes, Became His Most Inveterate Enemy.”  (The idea of that Empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes , being romantically involved with any woman is fanciful. Rhodes was either totally asexual or a closet homosexual. While it is true that Olive was initially impressed with him, she became disillusioned with his ruthless character and ambitions and did everything she could to discredit him. Her famous book Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland is worth reading to gain an understanding of her views.) But I di...