Project Gutenberg's Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

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Title: Jacqueline, Complete

Author: (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

Last Updated: March 3, 2009
Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3971]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACQUELINE, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

JACQUELINE

By (Mme. Blanc) Therese Bentzon

With a Preface by M. THUREAU-DANGIN, of the French Academy

TH. BENTZON

It is natural that the attention and affection of Americans should
be attracted to a woman who has devoted herself assiduously to
understanding and to making known the aspirations of our country,
especially in introducing the labors and achievements of our women to
their sisters in France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple,
homely virtues and the charm of womanliness may still be studied with
advantage on the cherished soil of France.

Marie-Therese Blanc, nee Solms--for this is the name of the author
who writes under the nom de plume of Madame Bentzon--is considered
the greatest of living French female novelists. She was born in an old
French chateau at Seine-Porte (Seine et Oise), September 21, 1840.
This chateau was owned by Madame Bentzon's grandmother, the Marquise
de Vitry, who was a woman of great force and energy of character, "a
ministering angel" to her country neighborhood. Her grandmother's first
marriage was to a Dane, Major-General Adrien-Benjamin de Bentzon,
a Governor of the Danish Antilles. By this marriage there was one
daughter, the mother of Therese, who in turn married the Comte de Solms.
"This mixture of races," Madame Blanc once wrote, "surely explains a
kind of moral and intellectual cosmopolitanism which is found in my
nature. My father of German descent, my mother of Danish--my nom de
plume (which was her maiden-name) is Danish--with Protestant ancestors
on her side, though she and I were Catholics--my grandmother a sound and
witty Parisian, gay, brilliant, lively, with superb physical health
and the consequent good spirits--surely these materials could not have
produced other than a cosmopolitan being."

Somehow or other, the family