Chapter 38

DIVORCE.

_The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists--How Divorce Laws Vary in Certain States--Sweeping Amendments Necessary--Illustrative Cases_.

A large proportion of the marital infelicity now so alarmingly prevalent in this country is no doubt caused by the mal-administration of our divorce laws, and by the demoralizing discord between the legislative statutes of the various States on the subject of divorce. While in the middle and a portion of the Eastern and Southern States, the conditions legally imposed, before a dissolution of marriage can be judicially obtained, are wholesomely exacting and in accord with the strict Scriptural standard, in certain of the Eastern, Southern and Western States the most trifling alleged causes of disagreement or "incompatibility" are sufficient to secure the law's disseverance of the marriage tie. The divorce business of certain courts in Illinois, Iowa, Utah, and some of the territories, enjoy an infamous notoriety all over the world; while even staid old Connecticut offers a positive reward to connubial infidelity by at once granting a full or absolute divorce upon comparatively slight pretexts, leaving both parties legally free to marry again as their altered fancies may elect.

He who, in New York,

"Reads the in image act with pride And fancies that the law is on his side,"

may soon be taught, to his dismay, that some backwood's court in the West has privately given his artful better-half a divorce, and authorized her to wed at her earlier pleasure with the Lothario whom he--the cast-off husband--had not even begun to suspect of treachery. Or, again the lord and master whose preference has wandered from his lawful wife to some designing female poacher on her rightful domain, may openly give that wife the fullest justification in law for a New York divorce, and, after the petition has been granted, go with his paramour to any State outside the jurisdiction of the State of New York, and there be legally joined to her for whom he has forsworn himself. One might infer from these dangerous and disgraceful possibilities that but few of the married ones who, from whatever cause, were discontented with their domestic relations, would be long restrained by any other than the highest exceptional moral considerations from availing themselves of the relief so variously attainable. It must be borne in mind, however, that an honorable action for divorce, openly and honestly undertaken in any State, involves more or less public exposure with considerable pecuniary outlay. These two considerations, in the present lax tendencies of our divorce laws, constitute the chief bar against a wholesome "popular" adoption of the legal remedy for domestic troubles; while their potency has invoked a class of fraudulent practitioners whose insidious business it is to procure dissolution of marriage for any or no cause, "without publicity," and at a cost suited to the most limited means. In other words, New York has been, and still is, the headquarters of a villainous divorce ring, by the audaciously fraudulent practices of which the solemn marital covenant is made a despised and brittle toy of the law--to be broken and discarded at the will of the vicious and depraved.

Lord Howell, for fifty years a judge of Doctor's Commons, pointedly said: "A knowledge that persons uniting in marriage must continue husbands and wives, often makes them good husbands and wives; for necessity is a powerful master to teach the duties it imposes."

These sinister traders in domestic infamy, secret libel, and suborned perjury announce their business and addresses in advertisements in which "success is guaranteed," "no fee required till divorce is granted," "no publicity," etc., while the decree is warranted to be "good in every State,"--in confirmation of which last assertion the divorce specialist's private circular frequently contains the following extract from Article IV, Section I, of the Constitution of the United States: "Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other State."

The question may arise, and it is pertinent, who employ these divorce specialists? We answer: All sorts of people. They may be dissolute actresses, seeking a spurious appearance of law to end an old alliance, and to prepare for a new one. They may be frivolous, extravagant, reckless, misguided wives of poor clerks or hard-working mechanics, infatuatedly following out the first consequences of a matinee at the theatre, and a "personal" in the daily newspaper. They may be the worthless husbands of unsuspecting faithful wives, who, by sickness, or some other unwitting provocation, have turned the unstable husband's mind to dreams of new connubial pastures and the advertising divorcist. They may be the "lovers" of married women, who come to engage fabricated testimony and surreptitious unmarriage for the frail creatures whose virtue is still too cowardly to dare the more honest sin. They are _not_ the wronged partners of marriage, who, by the mysterious chastising providence of outraged hearts and homes are compelled, in bitterest agony of soul to invoke justice of the law for the honor based upon right and religion. The manufacture of a case of the contrabandists of divorce is often such a marvel of unscrupulous audacity, that its very lawlessness constitutes in itself a kind of legal security.

Another question naturally arises: What are such divorces worth? We reply that the whole business is unblushing fraud upon the dupes who are entrapped into patronizing the business. Not one of those divorces has ever yet held good when ultimately contested in open court, by the parties against whom they have been secretly obtained. Many of them, however--perhaps thousands!--have served the whole purpose of those purchasing them, because the husbands or wives so cruelly wronged have either lacked the means, or the heart to take public legal measures for exposing the fraud, and setting the divorce aside. How is the poor clerk, or mechanic, the invalid or unfriended wife, to raise hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars necessary for such a purpose?

It seldom happens that the so-called divorce specialist applies to any of the courts in the States of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland or South Carolina, because in those States the testimony given in divorce proceedings becomes part and parcel of the written court record. The names, residences, and occupations of the witnesses, and all the testimony they offer, is carefully taken down by the referee, and reported upon by him to the court. The judge takes all the papers, and grants the decree or refuses it, upon the report and the testimony, and the record is perpetually on file, and accessible. Consequently when a husband or wife unexpectedly finds that their hymeneal bonds are severed, they have the right and privilege of inspecting the record of the case, in the court archives, and of examining the evidence upon which the decree adverse to them was granted. These are what is termed "dangerous States," in the parlance of the specialists; for there is always a chance of the disbanded mate feeling aggrieved and pugnacious, and of the cat coming with portly stare from the bag with a lively prospect of the perjured witnesses and the specialist having to "scoot" for parts unknown, or run the risk of dignifying the inside of the State prison. Many readers of this page will no doubt remember with what precipitation the notorious Monro Adams made himself "scarce" in January, 1882, upon the discovery of the irregular Chase divorce, and others of the same kind fraudulently procured in Brooklyn.

In the Western and Southwestern States, on the other hand, where the population is sparser, and where no such press of business is before the courts, divorce proceedings are mostly under the immediate control of the court itself. The presiding judge hears the testimony as it is presented, and decides the case on its merits, there and then. There is no necessity for employing a referee, and there are no written records of the case. The decision, the date, and the abstract records appear on the court books, and that is all. And yet, by the section of the Constitution, already quoted, this decree is regarded,--by the court that grants it, at least,--as perfectly legal and operative all over the Union. Although this is not the case, there are almost insuperable obstacles to such a divorce being set aside. For there are no names of witnesses and no records. There is the name of the lawyer; but if a "muss is raised." he is either _non est inventus_, or his memory is paralyzed. He has no recollection of the names of the witnesses, of the date of the hearing, or indeed of the case. No matter what evidence the injured party might be able to produce, he cannot get an iota of satisfaction nor make the least progress until he knows what evidence was presented against him when the decree was granted. Daniel McFarland found this in Indiana, and so have scores of others. These Western and Southwestern States are therefore not unadvisedly deemed "safe," and hence they are very largely patronized.

In Iowa, Indiana, and Rhode Island, again, the court possesses what is termed "discretionary power" in divorce cases. The State Constitution, after specifying the usual prime ground--adultery--goes on to specify: "And for any other cause for which the court shall deem it proper that a divorce should be granted," or "when it shall appear to the satisfaction of the court that the parties can no longer live harmoniously together." It requires no elaborate reasoning to perceive that a decree granted under such conditions remains tolerably secure. For the testimony has been taken _vive voce_, and the decree pronounced in open court, after the judge has been "satisfied" that the complainant "can no longer live harmoniously" with her Johnny or his Jenny.

A case illustrating this point came under our notice some years ago. A wealthy young Frenchman eloped from Bordeaux with the girl-wife of a middle-aged wine exporter. The runaways came to New York, and in a short time, through a specialist, the lady obtained, in an Iowa court, a divorce from her deserted husband. The deferred rite of matrimony was then solemnized between the pair.

About twelve months afterward, business called the happy husband back to France. It was not deemed advisable for his charming wife to accompany him. Neither, as a matter of fact, did she wish to undertake the voyage. But she accompanied him on board the steamer and bade him a touching, emotional and affectionate adieu. Mark what followed! Hardly had he got twenty-four hours beyond Sandy Hook than she proceeded to the same specialist, who had severed her former bonds, and employed him to procure her another divorce. It was applied for, and duly granted by the presiding judge of the Fourth District Court of Iowa. When this decree came to hand, with its flash heading and big red seal, the lady was married to a handsome young dry-goods man.

Meantime the absent husband in Paris kept up a fervent correspondence with his wife, anathematizing his ill-luck in being so long kept from her side. She replied regularly and kindly to these letters until her wedding with the young dry-goods Adonis was consummated, when she abruptly ceased to write. The Frenchman remonstrated, adjured, cursed and cabled, but receiving no response finally hurried across the ocean to find that he was a divorced man, and to be reminded, in the choice phraseology of his supplanter, that "what was sauce for the goose, was sauce for the gander."

With true Gallic impetuosity he sought for VENGEANCE! He employed lawyers and spent considerable money in the expectation not only of setting the divorce aside, but in bringing the lady and her paramour to condign punishment. His efforts, however, proved perfectly impotent. The lawyer, resident at the court, remembered nothing of the evidence, and the court remembered the case only so far as that it was perfectly regular and satisfactory.

Thus it will be seen that

"Domestic happiness, That only bliss of Paradise which has survived the fall,"

when once perverted by cunning treachery like this, leaves the betrayed with little chance to cover its poor grave with the ostentatious monument of legal justice.

There are some aspects of this divorce specialist business which would be amusing did they not furnish such a cloak and encouragement to depravity and licentiousness. The following narrative of actual facts illustrates a phase of the kept-mistress ethics, and shows how the Western bogus divorce operates in lowering the tone of society and in sapping the foundations of morality:

A few years since a young stock broker of this city, spent his summer vacation in the sylvan glades of the country surrounding Lake Champlain. He possessed an appreciative eye for feminine beauty, and a soul burning for adventure. Like most men of this type, he was not apt to be disturbed by qualms of conscience where the gratification of his passions was concerned. In an evil hour, he made the acquaintance of a handsome Vermont girl, just merging upon the full meridian of exceptionally voluptuous charms. Without any special claim to mental endowments, Sadie F----- was a superb animal. Her, our frisky broker saw, and wooed. The girl fell madly in love with him, and, before long, ceased to be a virgin of the vale. Lothario was much attached to her, and by his persuasions and ornate representations of city life, backed by aureate promises, she was induced to fly from her once happy rural home and to live with her seducer in this city. He began by treating her well, placing her in handsome apartments in a boarding house on the west side, and for nearly a year the ardor of his attachment knew no abatement. Gradually, however, the affection on his side began to wane. She awoke from her delusive dream to the consciousness that she was alone in a great city without friends, money, or virtue. Whither could she flee? She could not return to her country home to look into the sorrowful depths of her mother's tender eye, or face the stings and sneers of the people of her native village. "A life of pleasure"--as it is sarcastically termed--seemed her only resource. In her terrible extremity, she made a last appeal to her deceiver, and succeeded in touching a tender spot in his heart. Perplexed as to what disposition he could possibly make of the girl who had loved him "not wisely but too well," he consulted an acquaintance notorious for the number and variety of his amours. "Oh, my dear boy, that's easily settled,"' said the friend, "get a Western divorce through one of those advertising fellows." The broker didn't "catch on"--he couldn't see why he should obtain a divorce, and said as much. "But she wants the divorce!" replied the adviser. "Let her be divorced from Frederick Brown, or Augustus Smith, or Maximilian Johnson, and then, you see, her character will be restored, her virtue whitewashed, and she will be corroborated and sustained as a respectable member of society; an object of envy and emulation on the part of her sex, and of interest, admiration and honest courtship by ours." So a decree was duly applied for through one of those "divorce lawyers" wherein the petitioner, Mrs. Sadie Johnson, sought to be severed from the hated yoke of her husband, George Frederick Johnson, who, as the petition set forth, not only treated her with habitual brutality but continually violated the purity of the hymeneal couch, to wit, etc., etc. The papers were duly served upon the defendant, who assumed the name of George Frederick Johnson for the purpose of the suit. At the expiration of the time allowed in such cases for an answer to the petition, no defense had been set up. The lady's lawyer thereupon moved for the appointment of a referee, as well as for counsel fee and alimony. All went smoothly, of course, for the petitioner, and in due course the decree of absolute divorce was granted to this unmarried lady, with permission for her to marry again, while the disreputable George Frederick Johnson was absolutely debarred from any such privilege.

When the decree was recorded, Sadie returned to her family by the peaceful waters of the lake, and was received with open arms. She was an object of envy to the unsophisticated young ladies of the neighborhood, and of open and unbounded admiration to the young men. She had learned to dress and to put on flash airs, and her experience in vice, gilded over by this divorce sham, rendered her much more attractive metal to matrimonially-disposed Strephons than any quiet, retiring Daphne of the rural district. She soon became the wife of a well-to-do country store-keeper, and made his home a pandemonium, which ended by him employing a regular lawyer to procure a divorce, when the foregoing facts were elicited.