With her vigor, high spirits and infinite variety of charm, she is enormously sought after and courted and fêted, but it is noticeable, and none the less admirable, in English eyes, that the American woman established in a foreign land rarely or never fails in either her admiration or her affection for her country across the sea.
At the time of the Spanish-American War, this extreme loyalty to their native home and the land of their birth was made evident in not one but a dozen ways that never escaped the notice of English eyes. Expatriated though in a measure she is, the Anglicized American woman scarcely ever loses her sense of pride and profound satisfaction in being an American, after all, and so strong is this feeling in these delightful women that it is accepted quite as a matter of course, both by them and by their English friends, that their sons should frequently go back to the mothers’ land in order to find their wives.
Two notable instances of the son’s love for his mother’s country and his instinctive interest in her countrywomen have been supplied in the marriages of the young Duke of Manchester and the son of Sir William and Lady Vernon-Harcourt.
It seems scarcely more than natural that Mr. Lewis Vernon-Harcourt should marry pretty Miss Burns, of New York, though, through his mother as well as his father, all his interests and sympathies are naturally centered in England.
Yet it is safe to say that when the average Englishman marries an American he does not feel in the least as though he was marrying, so to speak, outside the family circle.
The marvelous adaptability of the American woman robs the situation of any difficulty, and in no way, so far, has the American wife of the Englishman showed more astonishing adaptability than in the cordial interest with which she often identifies herself with her husband’s political interests, if he is in Parliament.
Three of the keenest politicians in petticoats that England possesses are American women by birth; and the first and leading spirit among them is the American wife of Mr. Chamberlain.
Mrs. Chamberlain cares little or nothing for society, and beyond the obligatory functions at which she has been obliged to preside or attend, she shows small taste for the frivolities of that special world of men and women where the main task and occupation of every day is to amuse one’s self. But in the affairs of state she feels a very burning interest indeed.
She is one of the two women in the British empire who are admitted by men to understand the mysterious and, to the average feminine mind, inexplicable fiscal problem; she knows all about tariff reform; she is her husband’s first secretary, confidante and adviser; she is said to be the most discreet lady in speech, where her husband’s political interests are concerned, and when he speaks in public Mrs. Chamberlain sits so near to him that, in case of a lapse of memory, she can play the part of stage prompter.
Every one of his speeches she commits to memory, and can, therefore, give him any missing word at any critical moment, and in this way she is even more helpful than the capable and intellectual Lady Vernon-Harcourt was to her distinguished husband.