Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Bourbon prince charges wife with adultery



May 27, 1910

Prince Luigi of Bourbon-Two Sicilies has started proceedings in Lucca, Italy, for a judicial separation against his wife, naming "the painter Campriani as co-respondent," according to the Marquise de Fontenoy.

The prince is the son of the Count of Roccaguglielma who in 1869 in New York married the Havana-born Miss Amelia Bellow- Hamel. Amelia was "for all intents and purposes an American girl" as she lived in the United States from her infancy to her marriage.

The Roccaguglielma marriage was just as unhappy as the present Prince Luigi's marriage. After the birth of a son and a daughter, the Count and his American wife separated. He was "condemned to pay $2000 a year in alimony to his wife. The late Prince Louis neglected to "comply with the order," but his mother, a sister of the late Brazilian emperor "furnished the funds instead. The payments ceased with Princess Januaria died in 1901, which brought forth a new lawsuit by Amelia against her husband, but the claim was "unavailing" as Prince Luigi owned no property. Januaria bequeathed her son's share of her fortune to his two children, Maria Gennara, who is married to William Freeman, and Luigi, who is now in the process of effecting an official separation from his wife, Enrica Weiss.

The late Count of Roccaguglielma died in 1909. Although his marriage to Amelia Bellow-Hamel was morganatic, and his children do not bear the title Prince or Princess of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, his son succeeded to the countly title.

The present count, who was born in 1872, served in the Italian army as Prince Louis of Borbone, and recently held the commission of captain in the Italian cavalry. He was a favorite of the late King Umberto and his wife, Queen Margherita, and "it was largely owing to this that he succeeded in winning the hand, and incidentally the fortune," of Enrica Weiss, the daughter of an "immensely rich German merchant" who settled in Rome.

Luigi is familiar with the legal process in Italy and in France, as he had to file seventeen different suits to "secure possession" of his grandmother's fortune. Most of the suits against him were raised by his uncle, Prince Filippo di Borbone, his father's younger brother.

Luigi and his estranged wife have three children, Luigi, Gennara, and Carlo.

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