Thursday, March 8, 2012

Prince Eugen to marry American beauty

Embed from Getty Images 
 March 8, 1902

Helen Gorman Wild, an American girl, has become engaged to Prince Eugen of Sweden, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune.  Prince Eugen is the fourth son of King Oscar V.

Prince Eugen, 37,  will lose his right of succession when he marries Miss Wild, a commoner.  He must also obtain his father's permission to marry.  King Oscar is said to be an "absolute autocrat over the domestic affairs of his family."  Once permission is obtained,  Prince Eugen and Miss Wild will be married. 

The Prince already has the support of his mother, who has already intervened on her son's behalf.  King Oscar swore that Eugen "should never marry an American girl."  But Queen Sofia pointed out to her husband, that their eldest son, the Crown Prince, married for "irreproachable diplomatic reasons, is wretchedly unhappy."       Prince Oscar married morganatically because "he was in love," and Queen Sofia reminded her husband, that Prince Oscar is "supremely happy."

Prince Oscar married his mother's maid of honor, Ebba Munck, and he is now known as Prince Bernadotte.  The couple's children are not royal.

King Oscar mulled all of this over, and, finally, "he wavered."   And now, Prince Eugen and Miss Wild, both of whom live in Paris, are preparing for their wedding "in the highest of spirits."

Miss Wild is said to be "one of the most beautiful of all the girls in the American colony of Paris."  She is young, and she is "an heiress in her own right.  Many young American men have "fallen at her feet" during her family's annual summer visits.   Two years ago, she moved to Paris. 

She is from Baltimore, Maryland, and is related to the Carroll family.  
  
Prince Eugen met Miss Wild earlier this winter in a "studio supper in one of the little ateliers of the Latin Quarter in Paris."   Prince Eugen is an artist who prefers the "artistic environment of the Gallic center."  

It was love at first sight for both the prince and Miss Wild.  He proposed within the first week of their meeting, and she accepted him a week later. 

Prince Eugen is "handsome and attractive," and a "man's man," and is said to be "even more popular with the men of the foreign colony than the women."

Miss Wild is very much a cosmopolitan young woman.  She is "perfectly at home" in Berlin, in Vienna, in London, in St. Petersburg.  She is related to the Carroll family of Baltimore, who have made "such brilliant foreign marriages."  One cousin married Count von Grafenhausen in Vienna, and Miss Wild often stays with her.   Another cousin is a German army officer, and they live in Berlin. 

Although Prince Eugen will lose his royal title when he marries, he won't become a pauper prince.  Queen Sofia, who "dotes on love matches," has plans to divide her "vast fortune of $25,000,000," which she inherited from her father, the Duke of Nassau, "who gained it through the gaming casinos at Wiesbaden, which he owned," between two of her sons, Oscar, and Prince Eugen.

The unhappily married Crown Prince Gustav is not pleased with his mother's decision, and he plans "to have his mother declared with an unsound mind and thus break the will."

Prince Eugen is said to be not at all troubled by his older brother's threats.  Even without his mother's inheritance, he still has a large fortune, and he plans to settle in Paris permanently.

Miss Wills also has a private fortune.   She is Roman Catholic, and she is said to want a simple wedding ceremony in a "little church in the Latin Quarter," where she and Prince Eugen often attend.

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