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.
