headmistress of Allenswood, a finishing shcool on hte outskirts of London for hte daughters of eininet European families. Sou, as Eleanor called her, was a women of flashing wit and wide learning whose milieu was the upper echelon of cultivated western European society. Her standards of morality, propriety, and learning were irreproachable. A year after Eleanor arrived at Allenswood, Mlle Souverstre had following words for her: All what you said when she came here of the purity of her heart, the nobleness of her thought has been veri8fied by her conduct among people who were at first perfect strangers to her. I have not found her easily influenced in anything that was not perfectly straightforward and honest but I often found she influenced others in the right direction. She is full of sympathy for all those who live with her and shows an intellighent interest in everything she comes in contact with. Eleanor blossomed in the warm, freindly environment of Allenswood-it was as if she had started life anew. Behind her were the people who pitied her because she was an orphan or who taunted her for her virtues, and for the first time in her life all fear left her and her personality began to shine forth. "As a pupil she is very satisfactory," Mlle Souvestre's evalution continued, "but even that is of small account when you compare it with the perfect quality of her soul." Stuggle as wife in early 19th century Eleanor returned in 1902 to the United States after three years with Mlle Souvestre. As New York society sought to engage her in its rituals, she peresents us, according to her own accounts of her coming-out, with an image of outer sr...
