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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1912)
The Omaha Sunday B ee Magazine Page Copyright, mi by th Star Company. Great Britain Right lUstrved. 1 i -ii-.ihm mm M i H i a PMHnMBMlliMVBMHRMBMMnaMMH- . ""HI "American Girls Are Dunces in Matrimony," Says Miss Drexel, Crossing Off All That America Has thought Made Its Marriage Better Than the European and Holding Up European Standards of Domestic Life as a .Model. mxirsP v::;V J'MM n -Pl . ;f$i"" f" ' w ' ' ' -- ---- ! f i ""V 1 ,-" -,'"v V , c - . " g i 'I r A. 'A t r 1 V 4 3S9E The Duchess of Marlborough,' An American Girl, Who Has Been Left by Her Noble Husband to Pursue Serious Aims. X wJik Hence he maVes a mtich more interesting husband, and married life in European high Society Is a much mora worthy and serious affair than In American fashionable society. Strange to say, it is Miss Drexel's state of mind on this Subject that has decided her parents to live abroad. They are going to live In either France or England until Miss Alice changes her view point or marries. Therefore their beautiful Newport estate is to be rented for a term of years, and their New York man sion, one of the handsomest in the upper Fifth avenue section, will be placed tin the market Before settling on a permanent home in Europe tU Drexels will make a trip around the world, taking their two sons With them. Miss Drexel has Tery decided ideas on the limitations placed on the American society, girl, and she is excellently qualified to con trast the merits of the American girl and her foreign prototype. She was educated entirely in Europe, and until she was eighteen her friends were all girls belonging to the old nobility tit France and England. Her vaca tions were spent at wonderful. chateaus in France or at great country houses in England. She did not spend one Summer In Newport with lier parents, and - came in contact with A Mi. U1I Gilbert, an Heire Who Ma Follow Miss Draxol't Example. NOVEL v view of international mar riages is put before' the American public It is the view of Miss Alice Drexel, daughter of those multi-millionaire members of fashionable society, Mr. and Mrs. John R. Drexel. Miss Drexel thinks that European marriages are preferable to American because they lead to a more serious, useful, unostentatious, hard-working life. This is rather a shock. We have heard a good deal about the failure of marriages be tween American heiresses and foreign noble men on account of the idle and worthless char acter of the latter. There have been many facts that prove there are such failures. But it seems there is something on the other side of the matter Miss Drexel's side. Our opinion of foreign noblemen is often formed by comparing the worst specimens of them with the ordinary, haxd-worklng Ameri can. ' - Miss Drexel's point, however, is that the rich and fashionable American man com pares badly with the European man who occupies a similar social position. Incident ally, these defects are shared by the fash' ionable American's fashionable wife. The American man of this type who Is not in business does nothing but go to the club, drink drinks and wear clothes and talk horses and sports. The European man of correspond ing position has an estate and looks after its management, occupies some public position and is interested in politics and public affairs. His wife shares In his Interests and duties. She had halls given for her in Philadelphia as well as in ' jw York. Then she had a Lon don visit, when she was entertained by her aunt, the handsome Mrs. Tony Drexel. Every thing was done to make this young heiress nappy ana conieniea wun ner lot. r Mr. Drexel is a multi-millionaire and a mem ber of thi Morgan firm. Mr. Morgan sent the lucky debutante a pearl necklace as a coming out gift. Mrs. Drexel, one of the leaders of the New York-Newport set, is a noted hostess, and she did everything possible to provide pleasures for her daughter. It would seem as though the heart of any girl would be satisfied. But no, Miss Drexel finds that this life of dancing, dining, motoring and entertaining generally is a "no-account" existence. "The average American girl of wealth and social position is a useless person," says this discontented young woman. She has no recog nized place in the world. She has no respon sibilities, no rules, no traditions to guide her; in fact, she has no social background. In England and on the Continent the conditions are entirely different. There a girl of family has specified sooial duties to perform, and she knows how to perform them. I do not mean 'calls' end entertaining, but duties connected with the family estates and fortune. Over there a Ctrl has responsibilities that she can no more evade than she : can evade being born. "The schoolgirl of France and England . may be diffident and gauche, but she knows her place in the world is well defined, that it was made for her per haps two hundred years btfore she was born. Her family has been Identified with an estate, or a county, or the Government tor, many generations. This condition gives her a poise, a porver that the American society girl lacks so often. "in this country, the girl who' is to inherit a large .. fortune seldom knows anything about her future possessions, she haB no tenantry to look after, no - parish duties to perform such as the poorest 'lady of the Manor' will have in England or Franoe, It is this lack of per sonal Interest in her estate and in the wel fare of the people who fork on it that char acterizes the usual American woman and makes foreigners mar vel." Miss Drexel not only censures, this butterfly existence generally, but ah A list It varV AMnliaflA Miss Alice Drexel, the Seious Young Heiress, Who Is Tak- opinions on the sub tag Her Family to Live Abroad Because Domestic J"t of matrimony. Life There Has More Duties. lh9A?. itrl?tu!e! la?,d .X ., ',-- , i', xX- -iff K X I -, ; ' S-j. ,, ',, I, ' J , ' ft " ' no American girls of her own class except her cousin, Margharita Drexel, who was brought up in the same way. During these Important formative years she lived, therefore,' as the girls of these foreign families lived. ; She saw her friends trained to care for great estates, to care for their ten antry, to manage large forces of servants, and, as they grew older, to take an interest In public affairs r After eight years of this life Miss Drexel was brought home and given the usual "com ing out" of the girl of her class. Her parents spent, perhaps, two hundred thousand dollars on her first season, and her wealthy relatives, the Drexels of Philadelphia, spent nearly as much more to make her debut a brilliant one. life were not meant for publication and they only concern the girl of fashionable society. They were delivered at a luncheon given In honor of a Newport girl whose engagement was recently announced and were brought forth by the sad fact that so few marriages were occurring among the girls who have come out within the last five years. For this tragic state of affairs Miss Drexel blames the Amerlcsn parent not the girl. 1 Marriages need not be made In heaven, she said, but they should be made on earth. "The continental marriage idea is the right one. The French girls who were at the' con vent with me have all married as their, parents wished and they certainly seem to be happier than the young wives in the Newport set are. None of tnelr parents whose mar riages were also arranged ere separated or divorced and I never near of any scandals in ., their families. Then, too, she added: "There ; are ho old maids among the girls who went , to school when I did, and their people were not all wealthy, either," , Miss Drexel Is very young and very attract ive.' She has been a great favorite in the ' Newport set and has undoubtedly been more feted and Courted than any ether girl there. She will celebrate her twenty-first birthday during the Winter. Her dissatisfaction with her present sooial environment may arise from the fact that she has had too good a time! During the Summer this heiress to ten mil lion dollars was converted to suffrage through Mrs. Belmont's work, and this conversion has added to her Indictment against American society. r "When I marry, I want my husband to have a political career, and I don't like American .. politics. Just see how much Mrs. Waldorf Astor has done tor her husband,, That Is . what I want to do. It looks, she added, as though I should have to marry and English- man!' v - -. - - As a first step, toward this marriage Miss : Drexel has decided to be presented at court immediately after her return from the pro posed trip around the world. She is then to visit her eousin, the Viscountess Maidstone, . whose husband plans to enter upon a seri ,ous public career this Winter. ' Miss Drexel is the latest, and moat inter esting addition to a long list of philosophers, psychologists and novelists, who have dis cussed the intern&tlonl marriage. Miss Drexel has won a convert to her way of thinking, in Miss Lllla Bramhall Gilbert, a neice of William Gould Brokaw and Mrs. Preston Batter white. Miss Gilbert is one ot the extremely wealthy heiresses ot New York. She will Inherit nearly twenty mil lions from her mother, Mrs. Bramhall Gil bert and her several Brokaw aunts and uncles. A few months ago Miss Gilbert's engagement to Howard Price Renshaw was announced. . Mr. Renshaw is an American ' business man, a fine manly fellow. ? Four weeks ago, Miss Gilbert, a friend of Miss Drexel's broke her engagement to Mr. Ren shaw and said she had been converted to Miss Drexel's opinions about the American marriage. Miss Gilbert is to spend a year or two in England and on the continent, and her friends say, that she will undoubtedly live up to her new convictions by marry ing a foreigner. ' Upon no subject Is thers such diversity tit opinion. We were called upon at the same time to thrill with pride over the splendid position achieved by Lady Curzon in Eng . land, and boil with indignation over the scoundrelly treatment of his wife by Count de Castellans. One writer shows that foreign marriages have made American women the most bril liant and influential persons in Europe. An other; shows that they have mostly resulted in unspeakable misery for the American . wives. Does one brilliant marriage compensate for the misery suffered by the American wife in another casef Does the good time enjoyed by the Countess of Granard, as wife of King George's Master of the Horse, make tip for the wrongs of the Countess de la Forest Dlvonne, beaten and driven home without her property f . . Paul Bourget, the psychological novelist, of . France, said that the American girl turned towards a European husband because she had ' received more culture than the American :- man. , Mrs. Emily Post, a clever novelist and mem- . ber of New York society, has expressed a more up-to-date view. She says that if the : American girl is dissatisfied with the Amer- ' lean man It is because' she is not sufficiently educated. He is a worker noted for doing things, while she is too often an idler, without sound education and serious aims in life. Hence she falls an easy victim to some worth less nobleman "whose social positioa ti Euroje is ftU."