Detroit evening times., November 11, 1945, FINAL, THE AMERICAN WEEKLY, Page 23, Image 81

About Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958

Image provided by: Central Michigan University, Clark Historical Library

                
id Dreams and Ruin
o the Upper Crust as
> to Humbler Folk, and
terest Heartbreak of
he Gay Moths Whom
> Forbids to Dance in
s Sacred Flame
' -<*f;
Her Frantic Pleas, Her Bitter Recrimination Filled the Drawing Room; Taunt*
ingly He Told Her She Would Never Again Hava the Boy, and a Few Hours
Later She Shot Him With the Pis+oJ He Had Given Her.
attorneys, pleading temporary insanity, eventually
obtained her acquittal after a sensational trial.
Her son. for whom she had shot his father, was
then returned to her. and with the little hoy, she
sailed for Chile. And that is the end of this episode
(d love and tragedy. For what became of Blanca
and the son she idolized, no one knows. That is,
no one in the Four Hundred where she was a brief
and sparkling ornament.
Humor says she fled to Japan and liv«*d in re
tirement outside Tokyo. She was once reported en
raged to a Harvard educated Japanese. Hut legend
reports tha* eventually she married a wealthy
Chile'dYr -i>ut np one really knows what became of
the pale, somber beauty and the son, now a man
of 33„ for love of vs horn she killed his father.
When Jack fie Saulli s and his bride returned
to New York from their European honeymoon there
still lived on the fringes of the Four Hundred an
Old. old man who had long since furnished Society
with tragedy and cause celebre as shocking as
that which Blanca was to provide.
The World and His Wife had all but forgotten
General Daniel E. Sickles. Only the cave dwellers
who lived in the great private homes that still
fronted Fifth Avenue in those days remembered.
But when the nonagenarian general died in 1914,
his purple obituary was news to the younger gen
erations of Society.
The general, by the time of his death, had out
lived his day and almost outlived the tragedy and
scandal that boiled over him in 1859 when he shot
and killed his wife’s lover. The nation, no less than
Manhattan’s upper crust from which he had sprung,
rocked with the news. For Sickles was a Congress
man at the time of the murder in Washington. IV C.,
and his victim was Fhillip Barton Key, son of Fran
cis Scott Key, author of our national anthem, "The
Star Spangled Banner."
§ li
* . ..!*
As a young man of Manhattan. Daniel Sickles
rut a dashing figure in the staid pre-Civil War
drawing rooms of Little Old New York. Thar.ka
to his father, a mantle of money and romantic
intrigue already surrounded him. Like father, 1 !;e
son. and each knew a pretty face when he saw it.
Sickles flitted from flower to flower, hut his
serious intentions were fixed on politics- at least
until he met Theresa Baglioli. But by the time he
met Theresa, Sickles was a protege of Jam. s Bu
chanan, destined to become our 15th President.
LIOWEVER. Theresa took Sickles’ mind off politics
■* at le.ivt temporarily. She was the 17 year-old
daughter of a poor music teacher.
The young beauty's capture of Sickles’ h« art put
an end to the match making schemes of a score of
Mayfair mothers who had hoped to snare him as a
lirh son-in-law*. In 18.53, Sickles married Theresa
of the huge, flashing black eyes, jet-black hair.
Almost immediately they sailed for London
where Sickles became secretary of the American
Legation after Buchanan was appointed American
Ambassador to the Court of St. James’. His bride
was so young and lovely that she created a sensa
tion in London society.
After Buchanan’s election to the White House,
the Sickleses were frequent visitors there. Finally,
Sickles was elected to Congress, and il Washing
ton’s adulation of young Mrs. Sickles went to her
pretty head, who could blame her?
In those far-off days, the most dashing and
declasse young man about Washington was Key,
a widower with a reputation for a way with the
ladies. Already, conservative Washington had tick
eted hint as a "bounder,” despite his job as L'nited
States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
From the moment they met, Key fell violently in
love with Theresa Sickles and her flamboyant
\
Tjpjpi ™
Theresa Baglioli Sickles —the General Forgave,
Society Ostracized Her.
beauty. Sickles, more and more pre occupied with
polities on The Hill, was less and less at home —
and Theresa more and more lonely.
Key courted Theresa with all his skill and lack
of inhibition. Soon all of Capital society 1 uzzed
with gossip of the Key-Sickles affair, with Danid
Sickles himself the only person in Washington, ap
parently, who was unaware ol the situation.
But Washington gossips, then as now, were un
able to let well enough alone. Finally an anonymous
letter Informed the New V . k Congressman that
his lovely wife was secretly meeting Key everv
day in a house Key had leased as a rendezvous.
INCREDULOUS at first, Sickles soon confirmed the
• truth and forced Theresa to w rite a coniession of
her affair. Then, armed with a shotgun, the in
furiated Sickles prowled the streets of Washington
on Sunday, Feb. 24, 1859. until he got Key in the
sights of his weapon and killed him.
The ensuing scandal rocked both political and
social circles. Public sympathy was with the out
raged husband who, in court, testified that ho had
shot his rival “be i use he polluted my wife.” He
was acquitted of the charge of murder when Thu
esa’s own confession was read to the jury.
Theresa, stunned by the tragedy, was experi
encing woman’s inhumanity to woman. The girl,
w ho had once been the belle of London, Washington
and New York, now found herself shunned.
Not n friend came to her defense—onl\ a lover,
and that lover, her husband! For Dan Sickles
stunned Society by taking her back.
But within a matter of months. Sickles was
gone from Theresa’s side, this lime to fight on the
Union side in the Civil War. The fiery man rose
to he not only a general but a hero and a military
credit to his country. At Gettysburg, he lost a leg.
The war finally concluded, Sickles came back
to hir family mansion on lower Fifth Avenue to
find his Theresa mortally ill. The bullet that had
kill i .1 y merely took longer to dispatch Theresa.
F< * no leper was ever ostracized more harshly
than Uaciety ostracized Theresa. In the ye. rs while
her nu .band had b *cn at the * nrs, the outcast
Theresa had brooded in her lonely home so long
that illness and death claimed her at 31.
T.ils Is the logical end of the Sickles tragedy.
But logic had little part in the Sickles family his
tory*. Laura, the only daughter of Daniel and
Theresa Sickles, was a beauty and a madcap who
became estranged from her father. She spent a
S.jO/HK) inheritance from the Sickles grar. '.father
in riotous living end died literally in the gutter.
By this time, Sickles was the American Ambas
sador to Spain. There he married a Spanish woman
much younger than himself. But the happiness
that should have crowned his old age went glim
mering when his term as Ambassador was over.
His Spanish wife* refused to come to America.
Sickles returned to the lonely mansion in lower
Fifth Avenue where his first wife had died. He
installed an attractive secretary in the house. Soon
the second ?..zs. .sickles in Spain was accusing her
husband of 'il fidelity. ’
Finally, in the spring of 1914, when Sickles
was more than IK) years old, and it was obvious
that a final illness was closing in upon him. his
Spanish wife was persuaded to come to N< • York.
At last, after a tumultuous career, Dan Sickles
died in 1914 just as New York Society was bt com
ing acquainted with beautiful Blanca do Saulles
who in another three years—was to stun Society
with the tragedy of a killing, even as Sickles had
done almost 58 years earlier.
Next week’s article will tell of women squander
ing fortune* attempting to clash Society’** portal*.
i in: AMKitH %\ ntikn
23