


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 became impoverished. Therese de Solms took
to writing stories. After many refusals, her debut took place in the
'Revue des Deux Mondes', and her perseverance was largely due to the
encouragement she received from George Sand, although that great woman
saw everything through the magnifying glass of her genius. But the
person to whom Therese Bentzon was most indebted in the matter of
literary advice--she says herself--was the late M. Caro, the famous
Sorbonne professor of philosophy, himself an admirable writer, "who put
me through a course of literature, acting as my guide through a vast
amount of solid reading, and criticizing my work with kindly severity."
Success was slow. Strange as it may seem, there is a prejudice against
female writers in France, a country that has produced so many admirable
women-authors. However, the time was to come when M. Becloz found one
of her stories in the 'Journal des Debats'. It was the one entitled 'Un
Divorce', and he lost no time in engaging the young writer to become one
of his staff. From that day to this she has found the pages of the Revue
always open to her.

Madame Bentzon is a novelist, translator, and writer of literary essays.
The list of her works runs as follows: 'Le Roman d'un Muet (1868); Un
Divorce (1872); La Grande Sauliere (1877); Un remords (1878); Yette and
Georgette (1880); Le Retour (1882); Tete folle (1883); Tony, (1884);
Emancipee (1887); Constance (1891); Jacqueline (1893). We need not enter
into the merits of style and composition if we mention that 'Un
remords, Tony, and Constance' were crowned by the French Academy, and
'Jacqueline' in 1893. Madame Bentzon is likewise the translator of
Aldrich, Bret Harte, Dickens