The morning news., 1899-09-03
IN CLEoPATRA'S FOOTSTEPS.
LANGTRY AND CHURCHILL FOLLOW
A CUSTOM HONORED By EGKPT'S
QUEEN.

DIR. johnson, Mr.. Addison, My LORD
BeacOnfeId, the Marquis of Sails
bury, and Robert Louis Stevenson
Are Just Few Among the Cap
tfvcs of the Mature siren-Where
the .'Iron" Duke of wellington Got
"A .'NO," IA Brisk Young American,
Forty Years Later, Came, Saw and
COnauered-yErs. o. II. Il. Belmont,
Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.,
and Mrs. William Vanderbilt, Jr.,
Are All Considered Older Than
Their Husbands.
New York Sept Mrs. Lily Langtry,
aged a, has married Hugo Gerald de
Battle. aged % VINO has not much money,
but viii one day 0e a baronet, in spite of
all an irate father can do.
Lady Randolph Churchill, aged presum-
ably 45 at least. Is engaged to marry Lieut..
West. who is exactly two
weeks older than her Oldest son. It Is
said that Cleopatra longed to wed the
young Augustus for his youth as we'll as
his power.
In the days of good Queen Anne, Mr..
Joseph Addison remarked through the
mouth of VIII Honeycomb that many a
man who had wasted months suing for an
icy girl Of Is, had, a little later, made his
fortune by running away with her grand
mother. That was, perhaps, in part the
wisdom of experience. Addison himself
married a titled and wealthy widow, the
Countess Of Warwick. He had been en-
gagged as tutor to her son. the young earl.
Before the tutoring ended he married the
earls mother, lady with a temper to
match her rank, so it is hardly necessary
to add they lived unhappy ever after.
Samuel Johnson was more fortunate. He
married a woman twenty years older than
himself, fat supplemented and much Civ
en- to gaudy frockS, but to the day of her
death he worshipped his dear Titty," and
thought the world had never held such
another beauty. D'Israel 1t is likely,
married through interested motives, but
it is unquestionable that he became pas
sionately attached to his wife, although
she was very much older than himself
and almost painfully Misunderstanding
But she had tact enough, and money
enough to help him become three times
prime minister of England. He paid her
only a deserved tribute in refusing a
peerage for himself, but asking that she
might be created. in her own right, Count
ess of BeaconsheId After her death he
himself assumed the title, but solely as
a mark Of Difference to her wishes.
Lady Salisbury, wife of the present pre-
mier, is older than her husband, the Mar
quis Like the Countess Of Beaconsield,
she has been a very present help through
out her noble husbands career. Theirs was
a love match contracted in the very face
nnsv,A
lives between Lord Robert Cecil and the
Marquisate
Robert Louis Stevensons matrimonial
fortunes were nearly as unique as his gem
ius He fell in love with the wife Of a
friend. a woman old enough to be his mo-
ther singularly charming and fun of re-
lined Bohemianism, the direct anuthesis of
his own straight-laced Presbyterian wo-
men-kind. There was an amicable-wholly
Observation-Disclosures, and Mrs Osborn be-
came Mrs. Stevenson, her ex-husband Civ
ing the bride away. Yet the marriage
turned out to be so nearly an ideal one
the world doubtless owes TO it the full
lowering of Stevenson's genius.
Plenty of notable women have matched
themselves unsuitably in age. Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, for example, who when
she was young and only Miss Burdett-
Coutts, yet the greatest heiress in England
refused the Iron Duke of Wellington, and
forty years later, lost the 1aVor OF her
Queen by marrying a brisk young Ameri-
can, William Ashmead Bartlett, exactly
half as old as herself
Dinah Maria Mulock married a man
whom she had fondled as a baby, when
she was herself woman grown. He was
very badly hurt in a railway accident, lost
a leg indeed, and came near dying Miss
NIuock nursed him, end in the end mar
ried him, in spite of the disparity in years.
George Eliot is another of the literary
lights Her scotch marriage" TO Mr.,
Lewes-which in England was no marriage
at all-neither astonished nor grieved her
world half so much as did her later legal
union to Mr.. Cross-who might easily have
been her son. Elizabeth Stuart PhefCs is
said by those who should know to be Just
one year younger than the mother of her
husband, Herbert ID. Ward.
There have been plenty of such mar
riages among Americas social leaders.
Mrs O. II. p. Belmont has several years
The advantage of her husband So has her
new daughter-in-law Mrs. William K.
Vanderbilt, Jr. The number is variously
stated at from four to ten-with odds on
the latter figure, Mrs. James Speyer is
more than twenty years the senior of
her banlIer-husband. The pair are said to
have been drawn together by mutual love
of good works. As ali the world knows.
Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., born VIII
son, is so much Older than her husband.
the difference in ages, on the wrong side.
was at first the ostensibie reason of pater-
nal opposition TO the match.
--s-e-e-
vEcE. II JVrSV,rE