Still Divorced

Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont is, so far as American women go, a great lady, a very great lady indeed. She divorced the late William K. Vanderbilt for his pleasures; she remarried; she gave money to help the poor. For many years her clear-hewn, masculine face, wearing, under a shock of cropped hair, few traces of the beauty that made her famous as a girl, has stared down charity committees; her voice, one of those feminine baritones that the years bring to great ladies who express themselves emphatically, has harangued women in clubs and men. Soon Mrs. Belmont is sailing for England. Her grandson, the Marquis of Blanford, has asked her to be godmother at the christening of her great-grandson; the Archbishop of Canterbury will perform the ceremony; the godfather will be King George of England.

But all Bishops, Mrs. Belmont has found, are not so tolerant as he of Canterbury. Last week she addressed a letter to Bishop William T. Manning of New York, from whom she had received, indirectly, an invitation to give money to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She begged Bishop Manning to allow her to remind him that only a few years ago he had refused to permit her name, the name of a divorcee, to appear in the yearbook of a charity home that she herself had founded in his diocese. "What I fail to understand," wrote Mrs. Belmont, "is, why this change on your part, dear Bishop. ... I am still a divorced woman."

Bishop Manning, whose manifold duties do not give him time to strike from the solicitation lists the names of people of whom he disapproves, was vexed, silent.