Extremes often meet, and probably nothing better illustrates this than the many instances that exist of the elevation of persons of lowly birth to positions of great dignity and importance, while many others who have been delicately nurtured and enjoyed the highest culture have been forced to resort to the humblest forms of hard labor in order to earn the bread which they would eat.
Wicked little Cupid is responsible for many of the former cases, for he dearly loves a joke, and frequently has it at the expense of the rank and traditional glory of some ancient house and name. The world has always been rather democratic when love has stepped in, and some of the great personages of history have contracted alliances which might have been expected to turn things topsy-turvy, yet nothing has been seriously ruffled.
In Paris one of the most influential and popular leaders of society is the Baroness de Waru, the wife of the only son and heir of the multimillionaire president of the Orleans Railroad Company. Her blonde beauty is of the most ethereal kind, and her dainty person is distinguished by so much aristocratic elegance that no one to look at her would ever dream that her father had begun his career as a mere stable-boy, who, in the service of the last reigning Duke of Parma, was promoted from one post to another until he blossomed forth as a general, a baron, and as Prime Minister of the Duchy of Parma, besides being decorated with the grand crosses of most of the orders of chivalry of Europe.
Chambermaid Became Lady Mayoress.
Lady Evans, who, several years ago, as Lady Mayoress of London, was dispensing magnificent hospitality at the Mansion House to crowned heads and royal personages, foreign as well as English, was a chambermaid at the Oak Hotel, at Sevenoaks, in Kent, when her husband first met and married her. Her father was a village plumber, and her mother, until the date of her own marriage, was a cook and general servant.
On the Continent there is no more ancient or illustrious family than that of Kinsky, the chief of which bears the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Two of its most distinguished members—the Counts Eugene and Octavius, both of them Privy Councilors of the Emperor and Knights of the Golden Fleece—married domestic servants, Eugene taking his wife from the laundry, while the Countess Octavius Kinsky was formerly the chambermaid at a small inn.
The Countess Octavius has rendered herself very obnoxious to her husband’s family by her grasping propensities. But the late Countess Eugene, the ex-washerwoman of Ischal, was a singularly charming woman, universally beloved at Vienna, and, although she never asked for a presentation at court, the names of quite a number of members of the imperial family figured on her visiting list.
Lady Hawkins Was a Cook.
The widowed Princess Alexander of Battenberg, whose husband at one time ruled over Bulgaria, may likewise be said to have sprung from the kitchen, her father having been the valet and her mother the cook of the old Austrian General de Martini. Yet in spite of this parentage, Princess Alexander is treated as a sister-in-law by the similarly widowed Princess Henry of Battenberg, who is a daughter of Queen Victoria. The late queen showed great kindness and consideration toward Princess Alexander of Battenberg, acknowledging her as a kinswoman.
The second wife of the late Lord Bramwell had originally been his cook, while Lady Hawkins, who is the better half of the eminent English judge of that name, and the aunt by marriage of “Anthony Hope,” the novelist, was originally a housemaid, as was also the widow of the “Grand Old Man” of Australia, Sir Henry Parkes.