house-parties, where individual gifts and accomplishments show to
best advantage and are most in demand. In the tableaux and burlesque
given at Blenheim Palace in January, 1898, to raise money for the
Restoration Fund of St. Mary Magdalene's church at Woodstock, she
appeared as a lady journalist, portraying the character with a realism
that manifested an accurate knowledge of the original. She was also
a guest at Chatsworth House during a recent visit of the Prince and
Princess of Wales, taking part there in the private theatricals which
were part of the entertainment offered to their Royal Highnesses.
To her sons she is a congenial spirit, being interested in the things
that interest them, particularly in yachting, horses, and the various
racing events of each year. It is owing largely, no doubt, to her love
of an active out-of-door life that her figure yet retains much of the
slenderness and suppleness of young womanhood. She stands and walks
with all the grace of a girl, and is one of the most noted skaters in
England.
Not only into their recreations, but into the serious side of her sons'
lives, she enters with that earnestness which made her so inseparable a
part of her husband's life.
In the summer of 1899 the elder of her sons, Mr. Winston Churchill,
made his first effort for a seat in Parliament. Oldham, in Lancashire,
the scene of his endeavors, has two Parliamentary seats, which both
became vacant at the same time. Though they had been filled by
Conservatives, the result of the balloting in 1899 showed that the
cotton-spinners, who form a large class of the voters of the borough,
were tired of Conservative rule, for both Liberal candidates came in
with heavy majorities.
Towards the end of the campaign Lady Randolph Churchill went vigorously
and enthusiastically to her son's assistance. "The Liberal candidates
being married," she said, "have an advantage." Though she won him many
votes and greatly reduced the opposition, as she had done in the days
of the Birmingham contest, when her husband attacked Bright's seat, the
result was inevitable, and both mother and son accepted it with the
grace and spirit of thoroughbred woman- and manhood.
There is an anecdote frequently related of Lady Churchill's ready wit,
called forth by a situation which arose during the electioneering
campaign, in which she was taking an active interest, of Mr.
Burdett-Coutts, husband of the old Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was
at the time over eighty years of age. An old voter upon whom Lady
Churchill called, and who seemed ready enough to cast his vote for Mr.
Burdett-Coutts, took occasion, however, to relate to her, with much
relish, the price which the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire had paid a
butcher for his vote in the days of the famous Pitt and Fox contest,
permitting him to kiss her lovely cheek. He concluded his narration
with a direct intimation that he would consider a similar reward as
fair payment for his own vote.
"Very well," replied Lady Churchill, smiling a gracious compliance, "I
will book your vote on those terms, but you must remember that I am
working for Mr. Burdett-Coutts, and I must, therefore, refer you for
payment to the Baroness."
In June, 1899, the first number of Lady Churchill's quarterly, the
_Anglo-Saxon Review_, which had been for several months the subject of
much conjecture and speculation, appeared.
"Have you heard of the wonderful new magazine
Lady Randolph's to edit with help from the Queen?
It's a guinea a number--too little by half,
For the crowned heads of Europe are all on the staff,"
ran the opening lines of perhaps the cleverest of the many verses and
paragraphs her new venture called forth.
Its contributions included papers from Lord Rosebery and Whitelaw Reid,
a poem from Swinburne, with stories from Henry James, Gilbert Parker,
and Sir Frank Sweetenham, and a drama from John Oliver Hobbes. Among
the illustrations were a picture of the Queen, as frontispiece, and a
reproduction of Gilbert Stewart's portrait of Washington. The binding
was in keeping with the contents, and was of dark-blue morocco, richly
tooled in gold, with the royal coat of arms in the centre, surmounted
by the crown of England, with supporters, a reproduction of a cover
designed in the seventeenth century by the court binder, Abraham
Bateman. It sold, as have the subsequent editions, for a guinea a
number, and was, as the enterprising editress said in her preface, a
volume "worthy to be taken up into that Valhalla of printed things, the
library."
At the outbreak of the war in the Transvaal in 1899 Lady Randolph
Churchill gave another evidence of her public spirit and enterprise
which identified her once again with her native country. As chairman of
the committee of the American hospital ship "Maine," she took an active
part in the direction and equipment of one of the finest ambulance
ships in the service. The ship itself was loaned by the Atlantic
Transport Company, and named in memory of the ill-fated American
battle-ship "Maine." The contributions for its equipment were made by
Americans on both sides of the ocean. Among the American women living
in England who actively interested themselves in the matter were Mrs.
Joseph Chamberlain, Mrs. Arthur Paget, Mrs. Bradley-Martin, and both of
Lady Randolph Churchill's sisters.
An appeal, issued on the 27th of October, for thirty thousand pounds
met with a speedy response, and in the course of a few weeks the
American hospital ship "Maine," flying the flag that was a gift from
the Queen, and with accommodations for two hundred sick or wounded
soldiers, carrying its corps of surgeons and nurses and Lady Randolph
Churchill herself, was on its way to Durban.
Though it was as the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill and through her
close identification with his interests that Lady Churchill first came
prominently before the world, it is undoubtedly her own personality
that has made for her the place she holds there to-day.
On the 28th of July, 1900, Lady Randolph Churchill became the wife of
Mr. George Cornwallis West. Though marriages of women to men many years
their junior are by no means rare in British society, the rumor of
this engagement, which had been afloat for quite a year, excited an
unusual amount of comment and criticism. The ceremony was performed
at St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, the Duke of Marlborough leading
Lady Churchill to the altar. Though widows of titled men in England
may upon entering into a second marriage retain the name and title
acquired through their former marriage, Lady Randolph Churchill settled
the much-discussed question as to whether she would retain hers by her
decision to be known as Mrs. George Cornwallis West.
Not yet in middle life, and with two sons to be launched upon their
careers, in which she has already foreshadowed what her part may be,
the world may still expect to hear much of her, for there is a bracing
and vigorous quality in her individuality that renders her interesting
and inspiring to many classes and many countries. She has been
frequently reproduced in the fiction of her era, more than one English
writer drawing his material continually from her life and character.
To what extent her beauty forms part of her magnetism is with many
people a debatable question. Though Long painted her as a typical
beauty, and Sargent's canvas of her that hangs in her own library
portrays an exquisite feminine loveliness, she leans perhaps too
much towards the masculine in mental poise and temperament to be an
adequate reflection of purely feminine beauty. A many-sided, strong,
self-sustained character, her outward form is an expression of her own
uncommon personality rather than a type of conventional beauty.
NELLIE HAZELTINE
(MRS. FREDERICK W. PARAMORE)
Among the members of the graduating class at Mary Institute, St. Louis,
in the year 1873, was a young girl who, in addition to the bright mind
and intellectual ambition she had already manifested, was endowed with
so extraordinary a physical beauty and so lovable a character that
much of the brilliancy of her life might even then have been foretold.
She was not yet seventeen years old, and was as absolutely unconscious
of the unusual loveliness of her person as she ever seemed to be even
after ten years of adulation.
Her figure had already attained a faultless contour, and in her simple
graduation gown of white French muslin, the flounces of its skirt
headed with wreaths of pink roses and green leaves, and its round
bodice offset with a bertha covered in the same design of roses and
leaves, she suggested all the fragrance and beauty of a flower. Her
red-gold hair seemed to reflect some of the sun's own glory, and with
the marvellous delicacy of her skin, the deep wine-color of her eyes,
and the classic perfection of her features, there can be little doubt
that she was, as she was so often said to be later, the most beautiful
woman ever born west of the Mississippi.
Among her school-mates Nellie Hazeltine had won that popularity that
was hers in after years to so remarkable an extent among all women. The
power she possessed of diffusing herself and all that pertained to her
among others precluded every thought of envy, and those with whom she
came in contact experienced rather a sense of personal gratification in
the contemplation of her gifts than any desire to despoil her of them
or of the admiration they attracted.
She was the only daughter of Captain William B. Hazeltine, a man who
had made a large fortune in the mercantile world, and she went from
school to further enhance the attractiveness of an already beautiful
home. There for several years she continued her studies, though it
was not unusual then for girls of her age to take up their position
in the social world immediately upon quitting school. As a result her
accomplishments were of a higher order than those commonly possessed
by the young women of her period. She was well read, she spoke French
with the same ease with which she spoke her mother tongue, and was a
musician of unusual ability. Such attributes soon gained for her a wide
reputation and a unique position in the society of her native city.
[Illustration: Nellie Hazeltine
(Mrs. Frederick W. Paramore)
From photograph by J. C. Strauss]
In the matter of its social complexion St. Louis has generally been
classed among the cities of the South. Besides the French, who formed
a large proportion of its early settlers, those who rose early to a
leading position were the families who had migrated there from Virginia
and Kentucky. They were slave-owners and landholders, and as such
gave a substantial character to the social foundations of the city.
The Anglo-Saxon gradually absorbed the French element, which, though
it disappeared from the political horizon, still formed a powerful
undercurrent in the lives of the people, harmonizing the forms of their
social intercourse and imparting a certain artistic value to their
existence generally, that gave St. Louis a distinctive place among
the growing and wealthy young cities in its vicinity. This, with the
character it took from the dominant race, which restrained it from
that tendency to display that was elsewhere more or less apparent, yet
which ever inculcated the sacred laws of hospitality, blended into a
delightful whole and gave to the city a charm that it has never lost.
Of such a civilization Nellie Hazeltine has unquestionably been the
fairest product. Yet no one was less conscious than she of the eminence
of her position or of the sensation her appearance invariably created.
Shortly after the beginning of her social career she went with her
father to Washington to attend a competitive drill of military
organizations from all sections of the country. While there she was
selected to present the colors to the company of which her father was
captain. Among the spectators of a scene which is always more or less
inspiring, was a man who, though already past middle-life, was yet not
proof against the witchery of such a singularly lovely presence as
Nellie Hazeltine's. From the moment she thus crossed his life, like
many another man of less prominence, Samuel J. Tilden followed her
career with an ardent and chivalrous admiration that increased as her
beautiful character developed and disclosed itself.
When he came before the country as the Democratic candidate for the
Presidency, and captured not only the nomination but the majority
vote of the people, when his name was on every tongue in America, and
everything that concerned him was of absorbing interest, the story
of his devotion to Nellie Hazeltine spread throughout the length and
breadth of the country.
From the moment it became known that Samuel J. Tilden had been elected
President of the United States, till Samuel J. Randall, Speaker of the
House of Representatives, cutting the tie vote of that body, redeemed
its pledge to abide by the decision of the Electoral Commission, which
declared Rutherford B. Hayes President of the United States, forms
one of the most thrilling periods in our political history. It was
but eleven years after the great civil struggle, and people living
to-day, when the sinews of the nation are again knitted, cannot easily
estimate the bitterness engendered by the campaign that fell during our
centennial year.
The contest reached nothing less than a sublime climax when Randall,
with nothing in his great form or his strong face to betray the
struggle it had cost him, stepped quietly down from the Speaker's
platform, and, taking his place on the floor of the House, uttered
amid its breathless silence that affirmative syllable upon which hung
national tranquillity.
Both men took the oath of office,--Tilden, the people's choice, in
the privacy of his own home in New York, and Hayes, twice, first, on
Saturday afternoon, the 3d of March, in the White House, overlapping
Grant's term of office by a few hours, that there might be no
intermission occasioned by inauguration-day falling on Sunday; and
again on Monday, the 5th of March, in the presence of the people.
A Presidential campaign that proceeds and terminates in the usual
way is sufficient to entail an enormous amount of publicity upon the
candidates. The campaign of '76, however, gave Tilden both a prominence
and a place in the affections of the people of his country that could
scarcely have been greater had he been permitted to fill the high
office to which they elected him.
His bachelorhood was an interesting feature of his personality, for
we had had at that time but one bachelor President. The sentimental
side of public opinion was satisfied, however, with the report that
he was soon to be married to Miss Hazeltine. On her part, though his
admiration for her was easily apparent, she never referred to his
having offered himself to her any more than she revealed the fact of
any other man ever having honored her with a similar proposal. Yet
it was known through men who could not easily disguise the sharpness
of their disappointment at her rejection of their suit that she was
continually the recipient of such offers.
Though she was already well known socially, in both St. Louis and New
York, her fame was established after the summers of 1876 and 1877 on a
vastly wider basis. During the latter season she made a tour of the
Eastern watering-places, and went for the first time to the Greenbrier
White Sulphur Springs, succeeding Mattie Ould in its social leadership
during the last days of the old _régime_, when it occupied the first
rank as a distinctively Southern resort.
There was no one who made any pretence of rivalling her, though fair
women from every section of the South still upheld the fame of the
old resort. She has been frequently compared to Mattie Ould, and the
history of their short lives furnishes several points of similarity.
Hers was a more faultless type of beauty than Mattie Ould's, however,
and she had a reserve and dignity that were in keeping with its high
order, whereas, Mattie Ould was distinguished by a flow of spirits and
a brilliancy of wit that captivated every fancy and carried all before
it. Both had the power to attract and hold the attention and admiration
of large circles of people, one by the overwhelming sparkle of her
words, the other by the magic of a lovely presence.
Nellie Hazeltine was at all times as charming in the society of her own
sex as she was among men; and women in every rank of life had for her a
tender attachment. Many a girl trying her uncertain young social wings
for the first time owed to her that subsequent enjoyment and happiness
which is called success. She was absolutely unselfish, and without
display used the remarkable power which her own fascinating personality
gave her to add to the happiness or improve the condition of others.
On the 2d of December, 1881, she was married to Mr. Frederick W.
Paramore, a young railroad man of St. Louis, and a son of Mr. J. W.
Paramore, who was president of the Texas and St. Louis Railroad.
Memories of her, like those of Mattie Ould, centre in the days of a
glorious girlhood. She was but twenty-seven years of age when she
passed out of life, a little more than two years after her marriage,
followed by an infant son whose existence had measured but a few days.
The entire city of St. Louis mourned her loss, and few people have been
laid to rest amid such evidences of a profound and universal grief as
followed her. Her grave in Bellefontaine, whither strangers visiting
St. Louis still frequently make a pilgrimage, was literally filled in
with flowers by the young women of the city, to whom her life had been
a beautiful example.
In the Museum of St. Louis, there hangs a portrait of her painted by
Carl Gutherz. It is a full-length figure dressed in white and standing
in her own drawing-room. Her abundant hair is arranged after the
peculiar fashion of the day, with a heavy fringe low on the forehead.
From beneath it, however, there looks down upon the beholder a face
reflecting something of both the heart and mind whence flowed the charm
of Nellie Hazeltine's personality, and of a beauty so ideal as to be
almost sufficient in itself to immortalize her among the women of her
country.
MARY VICTORIA LEITER
(BARONESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON)
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.
To the vast majority of people, who have but a superficial knowledge
of Lady Curzon, her charm lies in the phases of that exterior life
which are visible to all and easily discerned from afar,--her youth,
her beauty, her wealth, the artistic perfection of her raiment, and the
glory and pageant of her present existence. These, however, are but
foot-lights to the real power of the woman rising beyond them.
As a girl in America she stood forth against the rich background
of her home as distinctly as she is silhouetted to-day against the
magnificence of the throne of India. It was not so much what she did
or said, though that was sometimes of an unusual order, that made
her the social power she was in America; it was rather what people
instinctively felt that she was. "What thou art," says Emerson,
defining that force we call character, "so roars and thunders above thy
head, I cannot hear thee speak." She was serious and earnest rather
than scintillating, with a reserve and dignity of manner tempered by a
sweetness that admitted no suggestion of austerity.
The grace with which she now meets every situation, the intelligent
interest she manifests in every theme with which she is approached,
are not matters of happy chance or accident. She has been carefully
equipped for her place in life. Studious and ambitious, she has known
little of frivolity or idleness. Every faculty and every gift with
which she was endowed have been conscientiously cultivated, so that,
like the wise virgins of the parable, she was found ready when the hour
came with a light that guides not only her own footsteps, but is seen
from afar.
[Illustration: Jennie Chamberlain
(Lady Naylor-Leyland)
From the painting by H. Schmiechen]
Though Lady Curzon's life has been largely cosmopolitan, the city of
Chicago, in which she was born and passed her first thirteen years,
has a more substantial claim upon her than any in which she has since
lived. She evidently reciprocates the feeling of the former city,
for it was to it that she recently addressed a plea in behalf of the
famine-stricken districts of India. It was there that her father, Mr.
Levi Z. Leiter, amassed his immense fortune, laying its foundation as a
partner in the dry-goods firm of Marshall Field & Co. There, also, her
brother, Joseph Leiter, still continues his remarkable position in the
stock market.
In the year 1881 Lady Curzon's family joined that ever-increasing
colony at Washington that is made up of wealth and leisure. It has
in recent years become a distinctive feature of the capital, its
members having built there some of the handsome homes that adorn the
city, and which they occupy usually for a few months each year. Their
social functions are attended with much magnificence, and they have
the _entrée_ to official society, and frequently to that exclusive
circle of aristocratic old families, many of whom have lived there in
unostentatious elegance ever since the nation transferred its capital
to the banks of the Potomac.
For a time Mary Leiter attended the school in Washington founded some
years ago by Madam Burr and subsequently conducted by her daughters.
She was a good student. Quiet in her manner, she emitted only
occasionally that sparkle of wit or fun that so often flashes from the
happy school girl of fourteen. She exercised, however, a fascination
to which both her teachers and companions were susceptible. Her beauty
of face, her pose and carriage, together with a sweet, girlish modesty
and a graciousness that was simple and unaffected, rendered her at all
times most attractive.