Montagues & Capulets

Like dogs and cats fought medieval Italy's famed Montagues and Capulets. Today the Chambruns and the Dampierres of France regard each other with proud, polite disfavor--much as a prize Angora stares at a haughty Pekingese. Last week the French government sent to the U. S. on the maiden voyage of the French line's sumptuous new cabin class liner Lafayette an "official mission," consisting of the Marquis Jacques de Dampierre, the marquise, their son Count Henri de Dampierre and his countess. These personages the government officially called "descendants" of the great French hero of the American Revolution: General the Marquis Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Dumotier de La Fayette.

It was a gesture worthy of France: the Lafayette should come bearing if not La Fayettes, then, since the male line is extinct, descendent Dampierres.

In Paris, however, the Chambruns were furious. They are blood descendants of the great La Fayette, direct offspring of his daughter Virginie (he named his youngest son after an old comrade in arms "Georges Washington Metier de La Fayette"). On the contrary, not a single drop of ancestor La Fayette's blood flows in the veins of the Dampierres. They are collateral descendants of the marquis through one of his four sisters-in-law. That "such descendants" should be sent over on the Lafayette, the Chambruns thought outrageous! Happily U. S. citizens know little, care less about exquisite ripples of this sort on the suave millpond of highest French society. More interested in the S.S. Lafayette herself, they saw a ship sail into New York harbor last week which gives first-class comfort in all but name in "cabin class" cabins. By no means every first-class liner has the major "American feature" of the Lafayette: a private tub or shower bath with every stateroom.

A 22,000-ton "motor ship" (that is, with Diesel instead of steam propulsion), the Lafayette is the largest liner of this advanced type in the French merchant marine. As she was warped into her Manhattan pier not only New York but Virginia officially welcomed the mission Dampierre. In their famed colonial uniforms, Virginia's historic Monticello guard stood at stiffest attention. Just so their ancestors stood to be reviewed by General de La Fayette.

Genial but punctilious M. le Marquis de Dampierre prepared to be Lion Guest at festivities staged by the Thomas Jeffer son Memorial Foundation. Modest, the marquis would never boast that his family is more ancient than the Chambruns, that he himself is a distinguished authority on economics, that it was he who received General Pershing in behalf of the city of Paris on July 4. 1917.

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