The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1880-03-17
AMERICAN GIRLS IN PARIS.
The Rage For Titles-The False Jusl
rs Good as tho True.

The Rage For Titles-The False Sust
as Good as tho True.
TLondon Trutn.I
What is richest and most uneulti-
vated of American girlhood drifts toward
the Fauborg ST. Germain, and there
casts anchor. The American belle who
has not been "raised" in Virginia, or in
that Athens of the North, Boston, i'm
agines that untitled Europeans are
trashy whites. She would give every
cent she hopes to inherit from her father
in exchange for the right to wear a
Countess comb"
A notion has somehow taken root in
fashionable young Ladies' academies in
the States that it is felonious for woman
whose husbands nobility is not genuine
to have a eoronet on her stationery and
back-comb. This notion is attended
with the happiest consequences for the
Iaristocracy of France. which has been
rewarded a thousand-fold by American
heiresses and widows for the services rem
dered to Washington and his confel-
crates The law re-establishing titles,
passed under the Empire, is vet in force;
but, practically, any one who pleases
can make himself or herself noble.
Mile. c. p is 4 Baroness" at
her place near the source of the Loire.
She borrowed the title from the Baron
who transferred to her his proprietary
rights; and what is more noteworthy,
every friend OF hers who has since gone
ON visit there assumes, during his So
journ, the primal owners name and title.
l heard no less parsonage than the late
Bishop Of Orleans lament this desecra-
ton Of an ancient nobilitary title. A
hemisphere beauty, who can afford to
have carriages and horses in her news, is
nearly always, ii she is not on the stage,
MADAME la Comtesse" with her porter
and the tradespeople with whom she
deals. Nor are instances wanting OF
women in the moude CONNIE il faut en-
nobling themselves, though their hus
bands remain simple bourgeois. Iknov
7 Of remarkably pretty American, the
wife of an artist Of talent. the son of .
simple miller, who has had ''La Com
tesse x" inscribed on her cards.
In point of new blood, that which
flows from the United States into the
veins of the French nobility is the best
1t has, at least, vigor in it, and it goes
with refined manners. 1t also goes with
better morals, though some of cur fai
friends from across the Atlantic soor
learn in Paris to do as Paris does. Their
are in noble circles here some fearful,
Objectionable English women. l hav'
met one at Henri Quinquist eelebra
ton, who expressed moparchical senti
ments with Tower Hamlet's accent.
An heiress, let her be from Chicago
Lambeth, or the Barbican, who pays 1
great sum to a good-ior-nothing nobl
for the right to be called Madame Il
Marquise," values her rank according tt
the money it cost her to obtain it, and tt
the sacrifice she made in rejecting .
suitor with whom she could have livet
more happily than with the Marquis
The airs she assumes are taken very seri
ously by French women who have n
coronets to stick on their backcombs ant
Observation-Disclosures; and they have
profoundly irritating effect on Partisan
bourgeoises, who become too angry to b.
amused at the absurdity Of the ennoble
lady's pretensions.