Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth CenturyPeacock, Virginia Tatnall
History
Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century
Peacock, Virginia Tatnall
Women -- United States -- Biography
For the second time within the century an American woman has risen to
viceregal honors. Mary Caton, the granddaughter of Charles Carroll of
Carrollton and the widow of Robert Patterson, of Baltimore, through her
marriage, in 1825, to the Marquis of Wellesley, who was at the time
Viceroy of Ireland, went to reign a queen in the country whence her
ancestors, more than a century before, had emigrated to America. In
Mary Victoria Leiter, whose life, to the people of a future generation,
will read much like romance, we again behold an American woman, who,
like the Marchioness of Wellesley at the time she became Vicereine of
Ireland, is still young and beautiful, filling a similar position in
India, with its four hundred millions of subjects.
The parallel between her life and that of Mary Caton, however,
goes no farther. Wellesley was already in possession of the
Governor-Generalship of Ireland when he married Mrs. Patterson. He
was, moreover, beyond the threescore mark in years, and he bore "his
blushing honors thick upon him," having already been Viceroy of India.
Curzon was but thirty-nine years old when the governor-generalship of
the latter mighty country, the shining mark of many a man's whole
career, was offered to him. His public life bore little more than "the
tender leaves of hope," though his writings on Eastern topics were
already accepted as highly authoritative. Lady Wellesley had but to
follow the leadership of a man of recognized ability and established
fame, while Lady Curzon walks side by side with the man who is making
that steep ascent which the British editorial mind has classified as
"Salisbury's most interesting experiment." It is, moreover, an open
secret that, far from shrinking from the new office, with the weight of
responsibility which it imposed, she encouraged her husband to accept
it.
While we are familiar with that phase of international marriage which
confers rank and title upon the daughters of our republic, no American
woman has ever played such a part in the British empire as has fallen
to the lot of Lady Curzon. From that day in the spring of 1895, when
she became the wife of the young Commoner, George Nathaniel Curzon, she
stepped into English history; the days of her American belleship became
a fragrant reminiscence. The qualities which had given them brilliancy,
however, continued to illuminate the broader horizon of her life in
England, and have become in her present exalted position the admiration
of her own country, whose interest in her is purely personal, and
the gratification of England, whose interest is political and much
farther-reaching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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