The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1879-05-31
Titled American Bellies.

/
AS l look out upon the gay Boulevard
| des Capucines and note some fair faces
IN the stylish carriages passing, and
recollect that they once were the admi-
ration of broad and also very mar
row American circle sat home" and
when / recall their native names, now
lost under foreign titles, am amazed at
what the cockney landlady in the play
calls the hups and downs 1t is o
source of much inward wormwood and
gall to some OF us to behold these fair
ones lost to American citizenship and
lol1ing under French coronets. But
love is sometimes blind and sometimes
very much wideawake, and when the
latter, not even ducal or baronial
title will cause the most independen t
American Republican girl to blink.
Look at the list, even in my momentary
memory of our +" Republican, court
bellies: The Duchess de Prasin Choi :
seul is charming, stately lady, well
known IN BaltEaore society the Coun-
tess Charette is one of family whose
name is a household word in Tennessee.
and identified with the polished period
of Presidency of the United States
when grand and gracious manners
marked men OF court" No higher links
of royal alliances can there be found in
France than those of Nine. Charette by
her French marriage, even if you look
down the avenue of great personages as
far as you will and back again to the
venerable Duchess of st. James, the
grandmother of Nine. Charette's step
children. Yet those who can recall the
person of our simple Democrat, Presi-
dent Polk, little dream that on the banks
of the Seine dwells his favorite niece,
surrounded by the royalists of the Bour-
bon and Legitimist schools, and she the
most charming of them all, crowned with
womanly virtues the true pride of an
American lady. And from the ;" Cres-
cent City came a belle of rare qualities
and womanly beauties, whose name,
as the lovely Nine. de Danbier,
few of us will forget when re-
fined taste and exquisite surroundings
are the topics of our talk I might say
something of the Marchioness d Hursele.
of New York, and that old group of the
Livingston-Power society, but for the
present remain silent. / might also say
something of another sister who became
the Princess Lanti and made mark in
society at Rome, but then I should hate
to speak of another sister who became
the Marehioness Garotti and the adopted
daughter-in-law of the late Pope Pho
Mono, and as | am not disposed to dwell
on details, I simply allude to these
names formally to show the attraction of
our bellies to the gallants abroad and
point to the failures of our beaus at home.
Here / might also say something of a
lovely neice of the foregoing three ladies,
who became the Countess Sala and
graced the salons of Paris and Turin as
well as of Naples and RoIae, but space
forbids the pleasure. How much in the
way of challenging our home-gallants,c can
be said when the names of the Countess
de Damas and her sister, who married an
Italian Prince, are alluded to. Both in
Baltimore ana New York the family pedi-
gree and pi, MS ia nily examples of these
fair and +, rtu late ones is gratefully
known. So, too, that of the Countess
Montanban, and now that Miss Hunger
ford, of California, is added to the list of
foreign-titled American bellies as men
toned in my last letter, it is a source of
some laudable and anxious curiosity to
know who comes next? Why" I say
to my +" Monumental City" fair compan-
ion, do not some of our American men
come over here and marry Princess or
two, just by way of reyenge?" She:
Do you see that little maiden with big
Normandy cap, dark blue stockings,
bright colored kerchief, and with her
violet blue eyes and sweet, artless smile
even she would not marry other than
Frenchmanl" Why have our girls not
the same patriotism?