Some fifteen years later the same city of Baltimore, or, more correctly, a place contiguous to that city, now known, from its once residents, as Catonsville, gave to society the four Caton sisters, celebrated at home and abroad by the name, conferred by English admirers, of the "American Graces." They were the granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and daughters of Richard Caton, and three of them respectively married, in two cases after prior matrimonial alliances, the Marquis of Wellesley, eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington and himself a distinguished Governor-general of India and, later, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; the Marquis of Carmarthen, eldest son and finally successor of the Duke of Leeds; and Baron Stafford. These were "great matches" for the daughters of a provincial town; and it is a little singular that Louisa Caton, who became the sister-in-law of Elizabeth Bonaparte by her first marriage to William Patterson, should afterward become allied to the family of the man, in the Duke of Wellington, who was most instrumental in overthrowing the fortunes of the family to which Miss Patterson had allied herself by her marriage, and Baltimore be thus connected in its traditions with the respective leaders in the most decisive battle the modern world has ever known.
Though America was spared the adoption of the notable extravagances of European fashions, yet everywhere, in every aspect, were to be seen European conditions of society. Even the type of American woman, preserved till now in certain peculiarities of mental attitude, began to fail. There remained many individual representatives of that type, and these among our most aristocratic society; but in the mass it was not observable. To do away with such type, to lose all distinctiveness of racial attitude, was fast becoming the aim of the American society woman. This was well enough when it had to do with graces of bearing and amenities of intercourse; but it lent itself to affectations and follies as well. The wife and the mother were no longer the representative American women; the homely and the home-giving chrysalis had been cast aside, and the lustrous but useless butterfly was spreading its wings for flight. Still a country of homes in its more widely spread conditions, this was not the aspect assumed by America when it was gazed upon by foreign eyes, for these saw first the most prominent rather than the deeper facts. The capital was fast becoming more of social than of political importance, and the wives and daughters of the senators and representatives in Congress assembled at least thought of themselves, even if they were not generally considered, as being of as much importance in the march of the nation as were their husbands and fathers. The vision of the mothers of the republic, as they looked forward upon the path which they hoped to see their daughters tread as following in their own footsteps, had not been brought to pass. Not that there was failure of the best among American womanhood; taking it in the mass, it was pure and high and true. But it was wrongly directed to bring forth its best potencies, at least in its most representative, though fortunately not most characteristic, expressions; it had taken the wrong turning.
