My Memoirs

MY MEMOIRS

BY MARGUERITE STEINHEIL
ILLUSTRATED
New York STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1912
Copyright 1912 By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY —— Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1912

( Monsieur et Madame Edouard Japy have the honour to inform you of the birth of a daughter. Beaucourt, April, 16th, 1869. )
BEAUCOURT is a village in the Belfort Territory, not far from the Swiss and German frontiers. It was in that village, at the Château Edouard —all large mansions in that region are called châteaux, and the name of the owner is added to the word—that I was born some forty years ago.
Beaucourt and nearly all of the surrounding country belongs to, or is dependent upon, the Japy family, whose vast factories and mills give a living to thousands of workmen.
After a family quarrel, my father, Edouard Japy, had severed his connection with Japy Bros. some time before my birth. Having resigned his directorship of the Company, he busied himself exclusively with his huge estate, devoting his days to the farm and woods, to his beloved park and the picturesque cascades which he had designed himself, to his flowers and orchards, to his family and to music.