The lady has no children, or any prospect of one; and so
there is nothing in the way of a judicial separation on account of
incompatibility. It is not necessary to suppose that the distinguished
prima donna has actually run away from her husband with a lover; but
it would only be natural if there were a man in the distance more to
her taste. It is remarkable, by the way, that so great an interest
should be taken by Americans in the fortunes of this lady, who, since
she has developed her extraordinary talent, has turned her back
entirely on this country. She is spoken of here often as an American
prima donna. This can only be the result of a very great and an absurd
misapprehension. Adelina Patti is an Italian. Her father and mother
were both Italians, who could speak hardly a word of English. Her
education and habits of life have been entirely Italian. Even if she
had been born here by the chance of a professional residence here by
her mother, that would not have made her anything else than Italian,
more than a like chance residence in Russia or in Turkey would have
made her a Russian or a Turk, or than the Irishman's being born in a
stable would have made him a horse. When a family emigrates and
resides permanently in another country, assuming the life and the
habits of that country, and intermarrying there, it changes its
nationality, but not otherwise. The eagerness which many Americans
show to claim as American everything meritorious in art over whose
supposed origin the Stars and Stripes may have been thrown, is a
witness to our real native poverty in that respect, which we reveal by
the very means by which we would conceal it. And besides all this,
Adelina Patti was not even born in this country. She came here from
Europe a little girl, with her mother, Katarina Barili-Patti, a prima
donna, who, although she had not her daughter's facility of execution
and range of voice, sang in the grand style, and who, as a dramatic
vocalist, was far beyond _la diva_, as Adelina is absurdly called. As
to her parting company with M. Caux, nothing is more probable than
that the restraint--at least external--which belongs to the life of a
marquise became too intolerable to her inborn Bohemianism, and that
she seeks deliverance not only from an unloved and unloving husband,
but from the galling restraints of dull respectability.

* * * * *

--THERE is a club in London, the Albemarle, which