Snoberica's Saddest Stunt

NZ Truth, Issue 998, 10 January 1925, Page 7

Snoberica's Saddest Stunt

Title-Hunting Heiresses

Ladies Of The Great Republic Pursue Spurious Nobility

■■- f . Mama Sends Unsolicited Card To Foreign Count, Who Is Bought And Bagged *

Of all the ridiculous hallucinations American women hug fondly to their hearts, the most extraordinary is their reverence for foreign titles. ' ' '

I have seen American mothers m Europe send their cards unsolicited to young noblemen sitting near them m public restaurants and introduce them to their beautiful 18-year-old daughters. Take your daughter abroad. But when it comes to marrying her to a dark-eyed, slender scion of a decayed "noble" family — draw the line.

Of all the costly and ridiculous hal- | lucinations that American women hug fondly to their hearts — surely the most extraordinary (writes Mrs. Kathleen Norris) is their deep reverence for foreign titles. '■'< ...•'■ . A god many of them deny this, and perhaps a good many more don't realise it. Some hide it, and others speak of it shamefacedly. But it is pretty general, none .the less, and especially among travelling women. "Our dear friend Countess Blankhe was a perfectly charming man. Lord Nothing— we knew the Earl of Cipher — the Baron of Barren — " they say carelessly, but with what secret j rapture. And with what admiration their friends repeat it: "Jane had an offer from a nobleman — she could have been a baroness. They travelled with a Count and Countess— they said »they were so simple, and so charming!" say the friends, half -enviously. PASS THE GIRL AND THE CHEQUE BOOK! - ; And several hundred American girls every year marry foreign noblemen, and hand their little . cheque-books meekly over to his Lordship or, his Grace. Some of them are genuine love-matches, one supposes. • But some of them are not. Some of them are only the result of Mama's fatuous excitement when she hears that fascinating title. Over and over again, at the fashionable watering places, Mama is the one who sees the prospective son-in-law, and Mama manages the whole affair. Don't flush red with excitement, you American mothers who would honestly scorn the mere idea of such a thing. There are other types of American mothers, and I, myself, have seen them sending their cards unsolicited to the young noblemen who happen to be sitting near them m a public restaurant. The young nobleman may redden, perhaps, but he comes over to Mama's table, and : is introduced to beautiful little . Eighteen, arid Eighteen— after, all!— will be rich even by American' standards, and is an actual heiress m European eyes-^and why not, if they like each other? After ill, she will be "my daughter, the Vicomtesse!" Two millions of rich Americans will go to Europe this yeai% and of those probably one million will be mothers with marriageable daughters. There will be about three hundred marriages between American girls and titled foreigners. And m two hundred and ninety cases, it will he the title that d6es the business.

Now, after all, many of Europe's penniless young noblemen are very nice boys, according to their own standard. :. lt is not an American standard, but that is their misfortune rather than their fault. It is a standard that makes the rich wife. often an absolute necessity, , that includes a curiously immoral idea of permissible infidelity, that holds a wife m the oldfashioned place of child-bearer and underling;. that . giv^s all the money and the responsibility to the man, and that makes divorce legally and socially im-. possible. . -. v : Yet this code has its strong points, and' it would be folly to assert that European wives are not happy women m many instances. . ; BITTERLY UNHAPPY. •..'■'■ But one— l truly believe— may say that American women married to Europeans are generally, bitterly unhappy, arid labor under a smarting sense of failure and injustice. There are shining exceptions, of course, especially m the case of girls who have been educated abroad, or who are half 7 foreign m parentage. But the average American girl, moping m some decaying old palace, seeing her money absorbed by her husband's whole indigent family, and trying to feed her hungry, spoiled, pleasure- loving young heart upon the foolish little coronet on her calling card, is a defrauded and I wretched woman.

Because, for one thing, there are so many of them! There are actual shoals of princes, counts,. barons, lords and marquises, literally "going begging!" The pages of the directories are full of them, hundreds and thousands of them, ten vicomtes of one name, twenty — thirty more of another. At home m Millerstown a title has a certain distinction, it is true, but m Europe — ! There are societies almost entirely composed of them.

And then, for another thing, thousands of them are spurious. And how is one to know whether some defunct old king actually did knight a man who has been 300 years dead, o; whether, perhaps some impudent >ounger son didn't usurp the honor? There is nothing to prevent a valet or stable .jiby from assuming a title, and after a few; generations, who knows the difference? The Almanac of Gotha is good as far as it goes, but what with wars and moves and changes and counterfeits, nobody is sure of anything m these days, and one of the commonest experiences m European society is to have some elderly woman shake her head and say smiling: "Yes, but he's not a count. He calls himself so, but he has no right to it." ....

An American -woman, "married to a "nobleman," ; came home for a visit last year :and the social columns* of the newspapers rolled her title lovingly under their.' tongues, .'arid everyone entertained Her royally— only far more expensively, ' and' elaborately, than royalty is usually entertained m these

days — and all the time she knew that she had no title at all. that the man she married was the son of an enterprising tailor, a sort of upper servant, so far from being "noble" that he bad won her with pretences and. lies. __„_ INHERITOR OF. HOT? AIR. _ And thirdly, supposing that a man's claim to a title is really, genuine, what does it amount to, anyway? It means that .another man, no better than the average, and usually far below it — -a man who chanced to be rich and powerful, bestowed upon this nobleman's great- grandfather a — well, a what? A few sounds. A little — not to put too fine a point upon it — "hot air." ■•■••■-•. Did it make -him any better, happier, wiser? It did not. Was the king who bestowed it qualified to change this man's heart and soul and mind? He was not/W as there, m short, anything m the bestowal of this strange new name,' anything to treasure, hand down, revere? There was not. The man, for honest or unscrupulous help,won the gratitude of, his king. And the king bought — or attempted to buy. — his future loyalty, by permitting him to put a coronet upon his shield. ', ■ But when the reign ended, or the king was beheaded or a different policy and personality came to rule the state, did the man, m all logic and common sense abandon the ..useless, form? Not often,. And so we have the republics of Eurone treasuring the dead titles just as loyally as the monarchies do. Every one of our big American cities includes among its residents two or three or a dozen sadder and wiser fathers of daughters, paying quietly and without protest the large sums that keep. the' expensive, titled "noble" son-in-law safely distant from his American relatives-in-law. She's had her own way all her life, your little.,, daughter. She's had iier frocks, her pocket-money, her trips, her. friends, her camera and wrist watch and car, her fur coats and her trip abroad. * But when it comes to her marrying a dark- eyed, slender scion, of a decayed and "noble" family, it is time, once and for all, to— DRAW T.HE LINE.