End of a Gossipist

Last week the Club-Fellow & Washington Mirror, gossip monthly, reappeared on newsstands for the first time in two months. It had been sold by its founder-owner, Percival L. Harden, to Windsor Publishing Corp., owners of The Tatler & American Sketch, another gossip monthly, after two years, during which Mr. Harden was obliged by poor health to lease his property to an operating company (TIME. April 21). For 30 years prior to that. Publisher Harden had profited from chitchatting Club-Fellow.

As first copies of the revived magazine were being perused by readers, last week, Percival Harden, 54, sat down on a chair in a Manhattan hotel, put a pistol against his breast, killed himself. His lawyer & friends gave as the reason his grief at having to relinquish "his old interests." Then was it the duty of newspapers to report on the life of Gossipist Harden a report which read much like an oldtime Harden-published gossip paragraph-married first Maude Sullivan, Chicago artists' model; won $10,000 for alienation of affections from his friend, William T. Hoops, who later wed Maude Sullivan Harden; married (second) Mabel Doris Mercer, chorus girl, who divorced him and later married (and was divorced from) Sebastian Spering Kresge. cheap-store tycoon; married (third) Lyla Meeker who brought suit for separation, then was reconciled though they lived apart. He left a note expressing fear that she was planning to divorce him.

Of the late Gossipist Harden, Mabel Dons Mercer Kresge said (after their divorce): "My first husband was a delightful, worldly man. He was charming not only to me but unfortunately to every other woman he met. Naturally, that was unsettling."

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