The evening world. Newspaper, August 31, 1922, Page 18

tee ee ae he THE EVENING WORLD, THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1922, i= die Why Are Park Benjamin's Childre — Cat Off witha Dollar ? Does His Charge of “Ingratitude’’ and “Unfilial Conduct’’ Wholly Explain Terms of His Odd Will, or Is It Just Another Chapter in the Old, Old Story Of the Trouble That Nearly Always Follows an : Attempt to Manage Other People’s Lives for Them: Ca ry” Park Benjamin sr. By Marguerite Mooers Marshall. HE father who cuts off Wt pout years of my life. T have had in children with a shilling and yeturn only ingratitude and no help Ary @ curse is a famillar figure in supporting the many and heavy awe —in old-fashioned English burdens which T have had to bear. eee 4 , eo ees “1 conceive it my right to dispose a Bovels, In real life ho is something of my estate to those who have aided, Bi ean ¥ f @ rarity. . | But all New York is talking, just ; Row, about the strange behavior of a Ms pl la father who cut off his children with ELON Ge ANleceu one te BEI A LEG! ckimae cone nlasie i a dollar and a denunci: jan, What did it matter if he were A vilful old man—as well as a wil alls a denunciation. the Napoleon of the musical world— ful woman—will have his way! ie paterfamiling: was the) late If he had an equal right, with Na- — Fresh fuel was thus flung on the Park Benjamin, patent lawyer, author, wealthy head of an old Knickerbocker family, father-in-law of Enrico Ca- ruso and one of New York's best known citizens. In a will dated two Years ago, but just filed for record in the Surrogate's Court, Mr. Benjamin bequeathed the bulk of his estate to Anna Bolchi Benjamin, for many years the Italian nurse and companion ef Dorothy Benjamin Caruso, and in 1919 formally adopted as a daughter H by Mr, Benjamin, This young woman gets not only the tidy sum of $60,000 in cash, but her adopted father's fur poleon to say “E AM an ancestor’? fires ef family hostility, For it is a Papa Benjamin disapproved of him as law ot psychology that if you try to a suitor, “because of the wide vari- manage another person's life and ance of the difference of na- FAIL you have a grievance against tionality the singer's ‘artistic that person forever afterward, Mr. temperament.’ "* Benjamin himself had proved the truth It mattered nothing that Dorothy of this law when, six months after Benjamin Caruso was a happy wife his daughter's marriage to Caruso, he and Caruso a devoted husband, It Sent a letter of sharp protest to the mattered nothing that a little grand- Newspapers because poor Caruso and daughter, Gloria, with her mother's bis wife had gone to Brooklyn to visit big blue eyes and her father's brow, Brother Romeyn, convalescing from came to bless the union. Park Ben. his war wounds. Father Benjamin Jamin died unreconciled to his daugh- took occasion to remark that he ob ter'’s marriage. fected to his son ‘‘being dragged into But that wasn’t the only Benjamin & bald and blatant advertisement of quarrel. If in this instance the Enrico Caruso, a public singer, which father tried to manage his daughter's @ppears in the guise of a report of Anna Bolchi siture, lbrasy, plano, perecnal wea life In accordance with his own—not tls man's visit to the hospital. oo, % ing apparel Aire as fie tntionate her—ideas, within a very short time . 8% When seven montha after the Benjamin, the daughter and her brothers and frst application In New York, Miss : belongings hardly ever left away from sisters wera about to reverse the Bolchi—one-time Italian governess~ From a | & man's closest blood relatives, Sho process and to. try to tell father BUrse—became Miss Benjamin, New ms | also gets the residue of the estat which way he should go. York was not surprised to hear the Snapshep b . Reaueatted in trust to Mr. Benjamin's It was in August, 1918, that Caruso Other Benjamin children hated the % apenop by low, who is in @ sanitarium at r onda (ee {dea as much as ever. As usual, death. teat, It was just a year later that the mildest thing he called his . However, the most remarkable : Park Benjamin applied to the New ther's action was “fantastic Idea.” York Surrogate’s Court for permis ne of us,’ he added, ‘haye sion to adopt as his daughter Anna See or heard from him since last Bolcht, the Italian girl who had been 8Pring, When we saw him in the Sur Paragraphs of the will are not those dealing with Anna Bolchi Benjamin They are the bitter, incisive, meas- ured denunciation of the testator's ; companton and nurse for Dorothy be- Tosate's Court in our fight against his t own children. A more stinging re- fore her marriage. His action. wan idea of adopting Miss Bolchi, There buke administered by a father ti taken over the protest of Dorothy !8 nothing that we oan do now to : his sons and daughters is scarcely herself and of all his other children, Udo whet he has don R j tc be found on public record. ‘Miss Bolchi had entered the Ben. A® for the seventy-year-old Park omeyn : The tall, attractive, blue-eyed Dor jamin home several years earlier, Benjamin, his lawyer gave out the Park ] ethy, who married the world's great when Mrs. Benjamin had been taken following statement: to the sanitarium where she is to-day, ‘‘It was not the purpose of Mr. and before Dorothy's marriage, Miss Benjamin to secure a decree to give Bolchi was a young woman endowed Miss Bolchi any money or his estate. with an opulent brunette beauty, At She has been in the family several Benjamin. est singer in the face of her fathor's Pronounced hostility, is tho best known member of the younger gener ation of Benjamins. Then there arc two other married daughters, Mrs Gloria Caruso. i 3) first the relations between her and the years. His health js falling and he 1s ; Frederick W. Goddard of No. 104 Benjamin children seem to have been going to California, He wanted to | nap} ae Oe ae easels cordial enough. But when, after take Miss Boichi with him, He needs " * he tam orol ne arriage—a n care, To old C4 e) ; te crmcined te too scan tat hensive defense from the Benjamin Dorothy's marriage—at that time all her cal f To avold scandal and silence ; p : 4 facts of the children were married and living the gosslpers he decided the only way Benjamin jr. and Romeyn Benjamin children, Still, trom such facts OF | oe of their own except Romeyn she could go was as a member of his } And here's what their father had the unhappy controversy as have Nah Feniumin-sihe elderly Shor dsciaeat famlley ‘Tet Gent be Eacit. want ; Qo say shout those whom he un come public, it would seem to be /e revi L ha i a th x ‘5s ee as eee wan, itil; based on a common human tendency ! effect, his desire to put Miss Botchi her, and that ts Just why he did tt, : language, members of ‘a froward od comforted and assisted mo rather than —always regrettable and sometimes OD the same legal status as the Ben- he firet sentence of this statement i a ee, ar to those who have acted leas as chil- tragio in its effects—the itching de- Jamin boys and girls—when that hap- 4a interesting, in view of the terms of i mE aie ee ‘amis sag? oki i than as parasites, and who defled pire to manage other people's lives pened the fat WAS In the fire. the will, made six months later, glv- 4 ‘jeea nies ‘Ootaara foe een me under threats of contest to make gor them. Park Benjamin told Surrogate ing Miss Holchi-Benjamin $60,000 in j Greeny, Deethy eet arttiorle any disposition of my sald estate “Why must adult, normal human Cohalan that he wished to adopt Miss money and the greater part of hor i Boe ee en ot to themselves beings—even if they stand In the rela- Bolchi “becauso my children are dis- adopted father's estate 3 i o. ne Drs ‘ark Ben Incidentally, the “threats of con- tion of father and children—try to obedient and unfilial—1 am an old Presumably there will be a bitter jamin, se $1 exch and inut tae about to find fultiment. pull) the strings controlling each man and sick—I want some one to and long-drawn-out contest—such a ‘ie | ee oe ce njamin jr., speaking for his other's destiny? Why can't each of take care of me, and this young contest as that which the children of 3 coe ene eonllnnes,: pereiel ab ua brot ind sisters as well as him- ug ‘gang our an gait’ without inter- woman will do so Richard Croker atready have begun +a peptone ety foward self, announced as soon as the will ference from our families? Park Benjamin jr., speaking for against his will, He also found an 2 at a Hecame public that it would be con- It ts @ matter of record that Park the other junior members of the fam- attractive young woman to care for (Left) ay is I do after mature and care- tested, He added that none of them Benjamin himself did his best to in- fly, objected strenously to the court. him in his old age—his second wife, Mrs. Park a ful deliberation and not because of had thought their father would be terfere when his daughter made up Ho was given three week: in which Beulah Edmondson Croker, who has ; IX any one act severally, or jointly, per- ‘so vindictive.’ her mind to become the wife of to present further facts Indian blood in her veing, | Benjamin cm S f formed by the aforesaid, my children, And why did Park Benjamin pro- Knri¢o Caruso, the world’s greatest And’ then—Father Henjamin proved Whatever the result, there Is one jr. But of all the acts done by each in- claim from the selops, as It were, singing genius that his children were not taying person who need do no worrying, ‘Tie . dividually whether differing from or his excoriating verdict on the conduct Dorothy Benjamin, at that time, down the law as to what he should future of Dorothy Benjamin Caruso similar to those of any other, or all of and characters of his children?) Why waa twenty-five years old—four years and should not do. He was an old gnd of her baby daughter Gloria is the others which muke up the total did he carry bis remarkable hostility past her Maority, Surely a woman man, he was not at all well—but he secu Dorothy may have been cut our A their filial relations toward to them to the grave iin its ef- of twenty-five ls as well fitted to had the energy and the wit to slip off by her father—but the son-in-law $ rect. feota, at least youd the grave? choose her biusband as she ever will quickly over (he border into Penn- to whom he objected coined enough * “They have never agageared te it {8 a mont interesting problem in be, Surely she has the right, at that sylyania and set matters in t gold from his golden voice to mak recognize that they had uny dutles to human 1 We have heard age, to follow the call of her heart, And in December, 1919, it was an- his wife and child utterly independ ae me foe? Mather: Stein tbe feck the f indict. We have not wherever tt may lead her nounced that Anna Bolchi was now of Dad and Kis dollars, Tt 1s not hard hat to t Ne best of ray ability T have 1 probably we never shall hear And yet Papa Renjamin solemnly truly Anna Rolcht Benjamin—legal to imagine the shade of the beloved done my full duty by them and have the evide now = based refused his consent to the marriage ster of Fark Jr, Romeyn, Dorothy Caruso doing a typical Caruso devoted to their cure and support the i, We have not b mpre- He was @ New York Knickert K andailthe: pout Adoption papers chuckle! ! ‘ ~7 t | ] ! 4 } .