The Midnight Escape of Mrs. Christiancy
A high-society divorce scandal in the Washington Territory keeps tongues wagging as long-buried details of a Senator's marriage surface.
During the hearing in the divorce case, Mrs. Christiancy betrayed many eccentricities, which can only be explained on the ground of temporary insanity or the use of stimulants. One dishonorable incident occurred on a cold night about two years ago, when Mrs. Christiancy left her house at midnight, attired only in her night-dress and stockings. Thus arrayed, she fled from her house to the office of her counsel. She was discovered by a night policeman, who, with the help of a man in a carriage, had her placed in his vehicle and driven back to her home. A friend of Christiancy, who knew him well, asked him about his wife's temperament. He said, 'I never knew a woman to whom the sense of emotion was so long. It ranged from the utmost exultation to the deepest depression. She was a creature swayed by impulse. One day she would be buoyant with hope and the next day wretched.'
“I never knew a woman to whom the sense of emotion was so long. It ranged from the utmost exultation to the deepest depression.”
Public fascination with the private marital failures of the powerful has remained a staple of news consumption for over a century. The invasive reporting on mental health and 'eccentricities' in this 1884 piece serves as a stark reminder of how little privacy or empathy was historically afforded to women in the public eye.
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