The times., 1899-09-10
OLD AGE AND YOUNG LOVE.
some Mature Sirens who Have Cap.
tnred Caffsy Youfb

tnred Cafiow Youth.
Mrs Lily I.angtry. aged forty-seven. has
married Hugo Gerald de Battle. aged twen-
ty-eight, who has not much money. but
will one day be baronet, in spite of al
an irate father can do.
Lady Randolph Churchill. aged presum-
ably forty-hve at least, is engaged to mar
ry Lieutenant Corvallis West, who is ex-
actly two weeks older than her oldest son
IL is said that Cleopatra longed to wed the
young Augustus for his youth as well as
his power.
In the days of good Queen Anne Mr.. Jo-
seph Addison remarked through the mouth
OF VIII Honeycomb that many a man who
had wasted months suing for an lev girl
or nfteen- had, little later, made his for
| tune by running away with her grand
mother. That was, perhaps in part the
wisdom of experience. Addison himseif
married 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
girls mother. lady with a temper to
| match her rank, SO 1t Is hardly necessary
TO add that they lived unhappy ever after.
Samuel Johnson was more fortunate. He
married a woman twenty years older than
himself. fat, simple-mnded. and much
given TO gaudy frocks, but TO the day OF
her death he worshiped his dear Titty .
and thought the world had never held such
another beauty DIsraeli, il is likely, mar
ried through interested motives but it is
unquestionable that he became passionateIy
attached to his wife, although she was
very much Older than himself and almost
painfully insignifcant-look But she
had tact enough, and money enough to
help him become three times Prime Min
ister of England. He paid her only de-
served tribute in refusing a peerage for
himself, but asking that she might be Gre
ated, in her own right, Countess OF Bea-
cclsfield. After her death he himself as
sumed 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 Beaconsfield
she has been very present help through
out her noble husbands career Theirs
was love match contracted in the very
face of prudence. There were several ex-
cellent lives between Lord Robert Cecil
and the marquisate.
Robert Louis Stevenson's matrimonial
fortunes were nearly as unique as his
genius. He fell in love with the wife O.
friend, woman old enough to be his
mother, singularly charming and full of a
renned Bohemianism, the direct ant;thesis
OF his own straight-laced Presbyterian
womenkind- There was an am:cabse-
wholly amicabie-divorce and Mrs Os-
born became Mrs. Stevenson. her former
husband giving the bride away. Yet the
marriage turned out to be so nearly an
ideal one. the world doubtless owes to it
the full Towering 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 Eng
land. refused the Iron Duke of Wellington.
and forty years later lost the favor OF her
queen by marrying a brisk young Ameri-
can. William Ashmead Bartlett, exactly
half as old as herself
Dinah Maria Muioek married a man
whom she had fondled as baby when she
was herself a woman grown. He was very
badly hurt in railway accident, lost a
leg, indeed, and came near dying Miss
Mulock nursed. him, and in the end married
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 Phelps is
said by those who should know TO be Just
one year younger than the mother of her
husband, Herbert D. Ward
There have been plenty of such marriages
among Americas social leaders Mrs o.
H. P. Belmont has several years the adyan-
tage of her husband So has her new
daughter in law, Mrs. William K. Wander
bilt, jr. The number is Tariously stated al
from four to ten-with odds on the latter
figure. Mrs. James Speyer is more than
twenty years the senior OF her banker -hus-
band. The pair are said 10 have been
drawn together by mutual love Of good
works. AS all the world knows. Mrs Cor
neIius Vanderbilt. jr., born Wilson, is so