is planning to spend the next year in Paris perfecting her accent before going on to Katie Gibbs. She is a good child with a kind heart—although not much of a heartbreaker, I’m afraid. I wonder if, among your many French friends, you might happen to know of a really nice family in which Honey could live as a paying guest. She is not comfortably off, unfortunately, so she will have to earn her living eventually, but she does have a small sum that should be more than adequate to see her through the next few years, with proper management. I do hope to hear from you, dear Molly, before we arrive. We’ll be at Claridge’s, as usual, in June and we’re both looking forward to seeing you then .
Love ,
Nelie
Lady Molly Emlen Lowell Lloyd Berkeley, who was then a lively seventy-seven, loved nothing more than making such arrangements. She wrote back within three weeks.
Nelie my dear ,
I was delighted to receive your letter and I do have promising news for you! I’ve poked about and discovered that Lilianne de Vertdulac has room for Honey. You must remember her husband, Comte Henrì—such a nice man. He was killed during the war, alas, and the family’s business was ruined. Lilianne only takes one girl a year and we are most fortunate because she is thoroughly appropriate in all ways, a rather remarkable and very charming woman. She has two daughters, younger than Honey, but they will certainly provide lots of youthful company for her .
The pension, with all meals of course, will be seventy-five American dollars a week, which I do think is a jolly fair price considering what food is these days on the Continent. I’ll confirm the arrangements as soon as I hear from you. My love to George—
Fondly,
Molly
The true French aristocracy, not those with new titles conferred by Napoleon but the ancient royalist aristocracy, which traces its ancestors back to the Crusades and beyond, is twice as interested in money as the average Frenchman. This is to say that the old French aristocracy is perhaps four times as interested in money as the average human being. To them, all money is new money unless it is their own family money or becomes their money. If one of their sons marries the daughter of a wealthy wine merchant whose great-grandparents were peasants, instant transubstantiation takes place and her dowry immediately glows with all the grace of an inheritance from Madame de Sévigné herself.
The French aristocracy has taken a lively interest in the good people of Boston ever since the days of the French Revolution when a Bostonian, Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins—whose daughter had married a Cabot—personally rescued the son of the Marquis de Lafayette and brought the boy to safety in the New World. Of course, it had to be recognized that the Bostonians were all merchants or sailors to begin with, generally of untitled English stock if you insisted on tracing the line back before Plymouth Rock—and many did so insist—yet one had to admire their ability to establish and enlarge their fortunes, while with each generation, they became more and more distinguished. Indeed, a good number of their daughters had become so distinguished over the course of history that they now wore some of the most glorious titles in France. And these Bostonians, although they rarely possessed those venerable family acres adorned by a château, which alone could really satisfy the French deification of real estate, nevertheless did own a gratifying number of mills and plants and banks and brokerage firms. Also they had ton . They were never vulgar. They lived with their fortunes in a quiet way, which was compatible to the many great French families who had had, perforce, to renounce the outrageous, indeed fatal, ostentation and grandeur of their ancestors after the Revolution.
It has always been understood that a young male French aristocrat, without a family fortune, must marry money. It is a sacred obligation to his parents, to
Love ,
Nelie
Lady Molly Emlen Lowell Lloyd Berkeley, who was then a lively seventy-seven, loved nothing more than making such arrangements. She wrote back within three weeks.
Nelie my dear ,
I was delighted to receive your letter and I do have promising news for you! I’ve poked about and discovered that Lilianne de Vertdulac has room for Honey. You must remember her husband, Comte Henrì—such a nice man. He was killed during the war, alas, and the family’s business was ruined. Lilianne only takes one girl a year and we are most fortunate because she is thoroughly appropriate in all ways, a rather remarkable and very charming woman. She has two daughters, younger than Honey, but they will certainly provide lots of youthful company for her .
The pension, with all meals of course, will be seventy-five American dollars a week, which I do think is a jolly fair price considering what food is these days on the Continent. I’ll confirm the arrangements as soon as I hear from you. My love to George—
Fondly,
Molly
The true French aristocracy, not those with new titles conferred by Napoleon but the ancient royalist aristocracy, which traces its ancestors back to the Crusades and beyond, is twice as interested in money as the average Frenchman. This is to say that the old French aristocracy is perhaps four times as interested in money as the average human being. To them, all money is new money unless it is their own family money or becomes their money. If one of their sons marries the daughter of a wealthy wine merchant whose great-grandparents were peasants, instant transubstantiation takes place and her dowry immediately glows with all the grace of an inheritance from Madame de Sévigné herself.
The French aristocracy has taken a lively interest in the good people of Boston ever since the days of the French Revolution when a Bostonian, Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins—whose daughter had married a Cabot—personally rescued the son of the Marquis de Lafayette and brought the boy to safety in the New World. Of course, it had to be recognized that the Bostonians were all merchants or sailors to begin with, generally of untitled English stock if you insisted on tracing the line back before Plymouth Rock—and many did so insist—yet one had to admire their ability to establish and enlarge their fortunes, while with each generation, they became more and more distinguished. Indeed, a good number of their daughters had become so distinguished over the course of history that they now wore some of the most glorious titles in France. And these Bostonians, although they rarely possessed those venerable family acres adorned by a château, which alone could really satisfy the French deification of real estate, nevertheless did own a gratifying number of mills and plants and banks and brokerage firms. Also they had ton . They were never vulgar. They lived with their fortunes in a quiet way, which was compatible to the many great French families who had had, perforce, to renounce the outrageous, indeed fatal, ostentation and grandeur of their ancestors after the Revolution.
It has always been understood that a young male French aristocrat, without a family fortune, must marry money. It is a sacred obligation to his parents, to
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