Not long ago a writer on the staff of the Paris Figaro counted, among the guests in one of the most select drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, thirty-seven American ladies, bearing thirty-seven names of the most authentic French nobility. To name only those which are present at the moment in my memory: the Princess Murat, mother of the Duchesse de Mouchy, is American; the Marquise de Chasseloup-Laubat is American; the Comtesse de Saint-Ronan; la Générale de Charette, the Comtesse de Chevigné, and the Comtesse de Ganay are Americans. The daughters of the Great Democracy have become not only French in heart, but as Royalist as the most ultramontane of our old dowagers.
Everyone knows how many American women the English aristocracy counts in its bosom, and that that Tory and most powerful political association, called the Primrose League, originated with Lady Randolph Churchill, the young and handsome daughter of Mr. Jerome, of New York.
How many noble chevaliers d'industrie have exploited the American market, and at a bound become accepted suitors by some of Jonathan's daughters! It is known that Pranzini was in correspondence with the daughter of a wealthy New York banker, to whom he would probably be married now under the title of Count (I forget whom), had not the cuffs which he left behind in poor Marie Regnault's room put the police on his track.
That passion for rich marriages, which burns in the heart of so many young American women, often leads to disastrous results.
If one may trust one's eyes, American law allows young girls to marry their grandfathers, or at least the contemporaries of those worthies.
It is not rare, I may say it is quite common, to see girls of eighteen and twenty married to men of seventy and over.
As a Frenchman, I know it scarcely becomes me to throw the first stone at my neighbour for this: France is admittedly a country where mariages de convenance are common. Still, I must say the difference is enormous. In France, it is the parents who are to blame, and not the girls. They try to secure for their daughters what they are pleased to call a position; whilst, in America, it is the young girl herself who chooses her husband: she alone is responsible for this crime against Cupid's laws. She has not, either, the French girl's excuse—ignorance of the world; she knows better what awaits her on leaving the church. A French girl sometimes passes straight from the convent to the marriage altar, without her consent having been asked, or even her opinion consulted. And, again, I must add that if French parents often cause a girl of twenty to marry a man twice her age, they would shudder at the idea of giving her into the arms of an old man.
The young American, indulged and petted by her father, counts that an old husband will be more likely to put up with her caprices, and gratify all her whims, than a young man whose fortune was not made. "A young husband," she says to herself, "is all very fine; but there is my father, who does just what I please; I am pretty, and have hosts of men to tell me so every day; I am free to go where I like and receive whom I like; I spend as much as I like: shall I exchange all this for a husband, who will hamper me with a household and perhaps a large family; who will talk of stocks, and perhaps preach economy; who will bore me with the prices of grain or cotton-seed oil, and give me the headache with listening to his politics and heaven knows what? No, no; I will take a husband who will think of nothing but satisfying my caprices." Perhaps she adds, in her wisdom: "A man of seventy or eighty I shall not have to put up with very long."
This kind of marriage is the well-worn theme of many American comedies. A woman is married to an old man or a rich matter-of-fact merchant. A young lover of former days, who at the time of the wedding was travelling abroad, appears upon the scene, and is thrown in contact with the young wife. He reproaches her with her conduct, and reminds her of his love for her, which has never ceased to live in his heart. The husband is out of the way, occupied with business, wrapped up in money-making, and the fair one listens to the tender reproaches of him she loved, but dismissed in favour of a richer husband. The danger is menacing; it is a struggle between love and duty. Duty triumphs, of course; but the picture of American life remains none the less faithful.