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.