Former Saxony Princess and husband separate

September 16, 1911


This dispatch was sent by telgraph from Rome to Clifden, Ireland, and thence by wireless to the New York Times.

Enrico Toselli, the "young Florentine musical conductor," is seeking a legal separation from his wife, former Princess Louise of Saxony, whom he married in 1907.    Louise's recently published autobiography, My Own Story, is "too much for him," and he has "abandoned his discreet reserve" and has poured out "all kind of revelations and complaints" about his wife.

This new attitude "makes him almost the champion" of his wife's first husband, King Friedrich August  of Saxony.     He says her book will "dig an abyss," between her and the House of Saxony.

Signore Toselli said:  "The real truth is that she, whom I shall now call the Countess di Montignoso, arranged to write and publish her memoirs, not inspired by any high motive, but as a low, vulgar speculation, because she is the spoiler of her own fortunes -- and those of others, if she can lay her hands on them.
"I was depicted as a man who lived at my wife's expenses, while, as my poor parents can testify, I suffered the greatest sacrifice for her.  I lost all I had, but all my efforts for her were vain. She spent like a prodigal.

"After our marriage in London, we started on a wedding trip in an automobile, but on the way the machine was sequestered by her creditors, for she had, in  few days, and without my knowledge of over $10,000.

"Four months had not passed after our marriage when my life with her became unbearable.  The trouble was aggravated by several German ladies' maids, who she insisted on keeping with her, sharing her meals with them.  These women, thorough German types of their class, thoughtless and ill-mannered, displayed the greatest disdain for me and everything Italian, openly hinting that I liked to receive and spend German gold, the truth being that I have ruined myself and my parents in order to be financially independent of my wife."

Toselli has asked that the couple's son, Filiberto, "shall not be left" with the Countess, " who, by her actions, proved herself unfit to give the child proper education."

Before he filed the suit, Toselli believed that there would be a "possible reconciliation."   He exchanged telegrams with his wife, "which make interesting reading."    He expected Louise, an archduchess by birth, to abide by the Italian social code, where a "wife must always follow her husband.    The Countess di Montignoso was in London, arranging for the publication of her book, when she received the telegram from her husband, who asked her to return "immediately to the conjugal roof."

Louise replied: "If you wish, I can send you the baby."   Toselli answered, asking that their son be "sent to him at once, accompanied by a trustworthy person."  Instead of receiving further news regarding their son,  Toselli received a telegram from Louise stating that she was going to Brussels to see M. Giron, her children's former tutor.   She had fled from Dresden with Giron.

She asked Toselli to settle in Brussels with Giron.   This was "the last straw," and Toselli took "immediate action" by obtaining a legal separation.