Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth CenturyPeacock, Virginia Tatnall
History
Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century
Peacock, Virginia Tatnall
Women -- United States -- Biography
A life filled with adulation, that would have been the undoing of a
less wise woman, has in no way impaired her charm of character. Her
fine mental poise, her exquisite humor, together with the generosity
and sweetness of her nature, have preserved her from that calamitous
sense of satiety that has overtaken many a man and many a woman who
have lost their balance completely in an altitude of admiration much
below that in which Emilie von Schaumburg has passed her life.
KATE CHASE
(MRS. WILLIAM SPRAGUE)
There was a name in America a little more than a generation ago that
possessed a power amounting almost to enchantment, the name of Kate
Chase, a woman who holds a unique place in both the political and
social history of this century. The story of her life, between the high
lights of its early days and the shadows in which it closed, presents
a peculiar succession of superlatives. There stands forth, however,
through all its changes, one unvarying dominant feature which must
strike us at once, whether we approach it in the spirit of a student
or actuated merely by a passing curiosity: her absolute devotion to
her father. Through our knowledge of him, therefore, we may, in a
measure, penetrate those mists in which she is enveloped by the divided
opinion of a public, some of whom loved and idealized her as a social
divinity, while others hated and maligned her as an opposing political
force. Thus may we reach some just valuation of a character that with
its man's virility and woman's delicacy was in itself singularly
enigmatical, of its incentives and ideals, and, indirectly, therefore,
of the failure and disappointments which have left their indelible
stamp upon the life of Kate Chase.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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