New Britain herald. [microfilm reel], September 10, 1926, Second Section, Image 27

About New Britain herald. [microfilm reel] (New Britain, Conn.) 1890-1976

Image provided by: Connecticut State Library, Hartford, CT

                
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The Baroness who killed herself and her war-crippled husband w 'i ra
to whom she was so devoted and who tried to take his life j HTK.
IFas Beautiful
Russian Baroness Sent
to Her Death Plunge
by the Ominous Spectre
Whose Appearance,
According to Her Family
Centuries-Old Tradition,
Is a Sure Sign of Dreadful
Misfortune
THAT the beautiful Baroness Sophie
Eoyce-Garrett was driven to her
grave by her belief in a grim
superstition which has shadowed her
family for centuries is the latest and,
many think, the most plausible theory to
explain her recent suicide.
As readers of this page will probably
remember, the Baroness committed sui
cide by plunging from an upper floor
of a hotel in Miami, Florida.
The police were greatly puzzled to
find a motive for her act. She was de
voted to her husband whom she had
married during the war after he had lost
a leg on the battlefield. She had just
closed a successful musical season in
Florida, her engagements having netted
her more than $17,000.
In Miami, where she had been living
with her husband for the past year, she
was popular in fashionable society cir
cles and had made a host of warm and
influential friends. Her financial and
artistic success as a singer in Florida
seemed assured for next year and prob
ably many years to come.
Then what was it that impelled the
Baroness, alone in her hotel suite that
afternoon, to climb over a window sill
and leap to a horrid death on the pave
ment far below?
Friends of the dead woman in the
Russian colony in New York think the
answer to this question is to be found in
the tradition of the "phantom head"
which has been handed down from gen
eration to generation in her family for
nobody knows how many centuries.
They suspect that this grisly vision
appeared to the Baroness once, twice,
three times and that she was unable to
fight off the conviction that its appear
ances signified dire misfortune for her
husband and others of her family un
less she promptly killed herself. Suicide
the sacrifice of the life of the person
to whom the head appears that accord
ing to the centuries-old tradition in the
Baroness' family, was the only way of
averting the disaster which the vision
portended.
It is recalled that one evening in New
York not long ago the Baroness told the
story of the "phantom head" -and con
fessed that she would not hesitate to kill
herself in case it should ever appear
to her.
Her father, as she told her friends,
had been an unsuperstitious man and
ii ii vvj riw w nv ii ki mm mm t mm mm m m ii
Impending:
when the spectral head appeared to him
he only laughed and paid no heed to its
warning. And what happened then?
Within a few weeks his fortune, his
prosperous business, his great estates
were all swept out of
his possession; his wife
and children were driv-
mto exile and he
himself went to a
shocking death at the
hands of the revolu
tion. Baroness Royce-Gar-rett
told the strange
story at a musicale one
night after she had
finished singing one of
the morbid songs of
which she was so fond.
It was a song supposed
to be sung by a woman
as she mixed herself a
fatal dose of poison and
its last wailing note
was uttered with the
suicide's last breath.
After the song was
finished some of the
guests marveled that
such a smiling, cheer
ful person as the Bar
oness could lend her
sweet voice to a mor
bid thing like this.
"Suicide," she said
smilingly, "suicide is
all right to sing about
but the reality ah,
that's a different matter. It's a thing
to be dreaded and yet it is something
that sometimes has to be something
inevitable a doom which it is better
not to resist.
"I myself" and the -smile faded from
her face "may some day be driven to
a suicide's grave. The 'phantom head'
may send me there and willingly I will
go, for it would be better by far to obey
this command than to bring on my fam
ily the dire misfortune that would come
if I disobeyed."
Thenthe Baroness, in response to the
eager questioning of her friends, told
the story of the "phantom head" which
has been a tradition in her family for
centuries firmly believed in by many
members of ';he clan and scoffed at by
a few matter o fact persons such as
her father had been.
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la Xltf I ' xHs 8! friends think, she saw the tear- jdKPhlr. 1 ' ll r Ifk"
pi ' V- K fvWSr1' some vision and then obeyed ; Is ifni'l ' f "
5 u,nat ne believed to be its fatal jp J E J l-
JN' M I 1 was known as Russia's platinum king. 04'ft -7
Bizarre stage setting which the Baroness used
for the song recitals which fascinated her audi
ences in spite of the gloomy, morbid character
of many of the numbers she rendered
The legend was that the ghostly head
made its appearance only when terrible
misfortune threatened the family. In
some generations it had never appeared,
in others it made its appearance several
times. It came sometimes in the dark
ness of night and sometimes in the
brightness of day. Three times only it
appeared, on three successive days or
nights, and believers in the superstition
declared that the only way the calamity
presaged by the vision could be averted
was by the self-destruction of the man
or woman to whom alone it made itself
visible.
The written records of the family and
the traditions handed down by word of
mouth all agreed that the spectral head
was that of a man of singularly ominous,
terrifying appearance. But nobody could
say whose ghost the head was or why
Copyright. 196. by
' M '' ' ImmmmM I . r
it haunted the family in this way or why
the threatneed misfortune could be
averted only by the suicide of the per
son seeing the spectre.
Baroness Royce - Garrett's maiden
name was Lavrova and her family was,
until the revolution brought ruin, one
of the richest and most influential in
Russia. It had been wealthy from very
remote times and in recent generations
its wealth had been greatly increased
through successful development of the
platinum industry. The Baroness' father
was known as Russia's platinum king.
After the death of the father and
the exile of the others of the family,
Sophie Vera Lavrova became a Red Cross
nurse. To the hospital where she was
serving was brought one day Baron
Royce-Garrett with a leg so mangled by
a shell that it had to bo amputated. For
weeks his life was dispaired of but with
the splendid surgical attention and the
skillful and tender care which Sophie
Lavrova gave him he was soon on the
road to recovery.
During his convalescence he and the
pretty nurse fell in love and were mar
ried as soon as he was able to hobble
around on crutches. No longer fit for
duty as a soldier he was given clerical
work in the hospital to which his wife
was assigned.
Not until the war was over did the
Baroness realize the full extent of the
misfortune which, according to her su
perstitious belief, had followed the ap
pearance of the "phantom head" and her
father's refusal to obey its grim com
mand. She had hoped and believed that
there would be at least a little something
leffjof the vast wealth her family had
possessed, but there was nothing.
When the war was over she and her
husband found themselves quite penni
less. A few of her jewels which she
Jolinion Features, Inc.
!rH the threatneed misfortune could be lT ElVt Vfflfc ? V - $1, I HV S
If of the richest and most influential in Kffe ! VJWl",l 7Z?I
The late
Baroness
Sophie Roy
Garrett wh
tragic end
bv many of her friends
is thousrht Wfflia
to have been the result of a curious superstition which has held her
family in its grip for countless generations
had managed to bring away from Russia
she was forced to pawn in order to pay
their expenses to Paris and keep them
alive until she could find some way of
earning a living.
Crippled as he was, the Baron's
chances of getting employment were ex
tremely limited and his wife cheerfully
faced the necessity of supporting them
both. After considering various ways
and means she found she could manage
to do this through her singing. She had
a pleasing voice, had received a good
musical education and she also had con
siderable dramatic ability.
PHOTO
But both in Paris and in London,
where they went later, there were many
beautiful and talented Russian noble
women trying to earn their living
through their music and the Royce
Garretts had a hard time getting along.
At last they succeeded in scraping to
gether enough money to go to America
and here their lives entered on happier,
more prosperous days. In New York
and in Florida Baroness Royce-Garrett
had an artistic, a financial and a social
success that made her suicide hard to
understand until the story of the
"phantom head" leaked out
ft