Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-05-26
AMERICAN PEERESSES.
of a Curious Historical
Coincidence.
New York World, May IS.

AuhnCIutuCCs
New York World, May IS.
1t is rather curious coincidence that
Just at the time when a young lady
from the White House is on the point
of making her entry into English So
ciety as the wife of a simple English
cofnmoner, the grave should be closing
over the only American lady who ever
held the highest rank In the peerage of
England. The picturesque subtitle of
Sir Walters great novel of "Waver-
ley" IT'S Sixty Years Since" comes
up to the mind with the news Of the
death of Louisa, Duchess-Dowager of
Leeds, which has just taken place at
her dower-home of Horribly Castle, In
Yorkshire. Two generations have
passed away since the allied
conquerors of Napoleonic France did
homage, in the midst of the magnIh-
cent festivities which accompanied
and followed the occupation Of Paris
and the restoration of the Bourbons, to
the dazzling charms of three beauties
of Baltimore. These were the three
daughters of Mir. Richard Cation. The
second daughter, Marianne, had mar
ried at home Mr.. Robert Patterson, of
Baltimore, brother of the not less IA
nous beauty whose marriage with the
Youngest brother of Napoleon /. had
given her legal right to the crown OF
Westphalia, a right which for reasons
of state it pleased the great conqueror,
as all the world knows, to trample un-
der foot. Nice customs curtsey to
great kings" If Jerome Bonaparte
had lived az he was born, simply the
son Of Corsican lawyer, his blgamy
under the laws of France would
have sent him to the galleys
AS it was, it made him a king,
and allied him through his Illegal
second bride with the royal houses Of
Wirtemberg and Of England. To be
sure it is probable enough that if
Jerome Bonaparte had lived as he was
bors he would never have seen or
married either his Baltimore beauty or
Wirtemberg princess. Mime. Jerome
Bonaparte Patterson's sister-in-law and
her two lovely sisters, Louisa and Eliza
beth, made conqests less dazzling but
more durable. Perhaps even this is not
enough to say of them, for they began
by subduing The great world-victor'
victor" himself Wellington found his
Waterloo in their fair presence, The
Iron Duke" who all his lifelong
showed him elf, like the Greek God of
War, most gallant subject of the
Goddess of Beauty, surrendered at dis
cretion to the lovely republicans. He
came, he saw, and he was conquered.
The Iron Duke" then 'made
rain and fair weather" in Paris. He
was in fact, though not In form, the
first parsonage in Europe. ''By him
kings reigned and princes decreed JUS
tice'' or injustice, as the case might be,
and if the chronicles of the time are
to be believed, nothing probably but
the trihing impediments of a husband
on her part and of wife on his, pre-
vented Mrs. Robert Patterson from
taking her place at the head of Apsley
House. Mrs. Robert Patterson's sister
Louisa, however, became the wife in
1917 of one of the Iron Dukes aids
de-camp, Col. Sir FELTON, Bathurst
Hervey, Bart, who died by his own
hand two years afterward. In 1923,
his widow married the Marquis of Car
marthen, who, in due course of time,
became by the death of his father Duke
of Leeds, thus emitting his wife to
wear the strawberry leaves" OF the
highest rank in the British peerage.
Three years before, in 1926, Mrs. Ro-
bert Patterson, a widow then, had
married the gifted and graceful brother
of her earliest European admirer, the
Marquis Wellesley, whom Hazhtt
once described as "a diamond edition
of British nobleman," so sparkling
was he, so polished, and so small of
stature. One sister being thus an
English duchess, and another an Irish
marchioness, the youngest of the three,
Miss Elizabeth Cation, few years later
assumed the coronet of a baroness by
her marriagewith the eighth Lord Stat
ford, of the family of birmingham, a
family, we beg our readers to observe,
not to be COMPOUNDED with that of the
slow-winded valet immortalized in the
Vicar of Wakefield" of whom Miss
Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs
records in that veracious chronicle that
his master was obliged to call down
stairs to him three times, birmingham,
birmingham, birmingham, bring me my
gaiters!'
For many years the ''three American
peeresses," as they were called, were
conspicuous in English society. They
have all now gone to their rest, leaving
behind them but one lady of American
birth who wears the same honors-Miss
Magruder, of Washington, married a
few years ago to the present Lord
Abinger. These four ladies, indeed
with Miss Bingham, of Philadelphia,
who, after some forty years of happy
married life with her British husband
Alexander Barring, was raised with hin
in 1885 to the peerage as Baroness Ash
burton, are the only daughters Of the
republic, we believe, who have ever mar
ried British coronets out of the many
score of cisatlantic beauties who have
carried back the graces of the New
World TO embellish homes in the moth
er island.
Gov. SEYMOUR authorizes the Utica
Observer to amoun &c that be is out of th'