_From the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, of July 28th, 1854._
“We yesterday announced in the usual terms the death of Mary A.
Fillmore. The sad event seems to demand some expression of our esteem
for her character, and of our grief at the heavy loss. We would not,
indeed, obtrude our consolations upon those hearts, broken by so sudden
a calamity, whose sorrows human sympathy can only pity in reverent
silence, nor do we expect either to soothe or express the feelings of
that intimate circle of friends which her many attractions had drawn
around her. But the contemplation of her virtues is a relief to
friendship, and we shall perform a most useful duty, if, by a slight
sketch of her character, sincerely and simply drawn, others shall be
inspired to the pursuit of similar excellence. Miss Fillmore’s character
was written upon her face. It was not beautiful, yet it was so full of
vivacity of intellect, of cordiality, and of goodness, that it attracted
more than any beauty, and as it rises before us now its expression only
suggests the simple thought,
“‘How good, how kind! And she is gone.’
In that character were mingled, in just proportion, almost masculine
judgment and the most feminine tenderness. Its leading feature was
excellent common sense, united with great vivacity of temperament,
genuine sensibility, and real intellectual force. With a keen sense of
the ridiculous, overflowing with wit and humor, all her views of life
were nevertheless grave and serious, and she saw clearly beneath its
forms and shows in what consists its real happiness, and devoted herself
to the performance of its duties, with all the energies of a powerful
will, and the fidelity of the strictest conscientiousness. This fidelity
to her own sense of duty had led her most carefully to cultivate all of
her talents; and it is no exaggeration to say that she was among the
most accomplished young women we have ever seen among us.
“She was, for her years, uncommonly familiar with English literature;
spoke the French language with ease and elegance, was well versed in
Italian, and had lately made great progress in her German studies. She
had much taste in drawing, but had mostly abandoned that accomplishment
for music; because, as she said, the latter gave greater pleasure to her
friends, and she was a skilful performer both upon the piano and the
harp. Shortly before her death, she had begun to pay some attention to
sculpture, and had got her materials together for self-instruction in
this highest branch of art. It affords an instructive lesson upon the
use of time to know, that she had perfected herself in all these studies
and accomplishments since her father’s accession to the Presidency, and
in the leisure moments of a life almost devoted to society. In
Washington, the etiquette of the place and her mother’s feeble health
combined to devolve upon her, almost unaided, the entire performance of
the social duties incident to her father’s station. She was but a young
girl fresh from school; but all admired the self-possession, the tact,
and the kindness with which she filled the position allotted to her; and
how, young and retired as she was, society in her presence became
something more genuine and hearty, as if ashamed of its false mockeries
in the light of her sagacious mind and honest heart.
“She was eminently social, and latterly her conversational powers were
of the first order. She had read much; her advantages had been great,
and she had reaped their entire fruit. She was a keen but kind observer
of character, had been familiar with men and women of very various ranks
and descriptions, and she would paint to the life the very interesting
events which she had witnessed, and the character of the many
distinguished persons with whom her fortune had made her acquainted.
Full of information and of spirits, more anxious always to listen than
to talk, yet never at a loss, even with the dullest, for something
pleasant and entertaining to say, with a countenance beaming with
honesty and intellect, and with a sweet cordiality of manners which
invited at once confidence, affection, and respect. No wonder that
wherever she went she became the centre of a circle of friends who loved
her most tenderly, and at the same time looked up to her as one of a
stronger mind and heart, as a guide and confidante.
“She was a genuine tender-hearted woman. Observant of all the forms of
elegant life, yet with the most utter contempt for its mere fashions;
kind and attentive to all, yet without one point of sympathy with merely
worldly people, she loved her friends with all the affection of a strong
and ardent nature. She never saw or read of a kind or noble deed that
her eyes did not fill with tears.
“She clung to her old friends without regard to their position in life,
and her time and talents seemed devoted to their happiness; she was
thinking constantly of some little surprise, some gift, some journey,
some pleasure, by which she could contribute to the enjoyment of others.
‘Blessing she was, God made her so;’ and with her death, with many of
her friends is dried up forever the richest fountain of their happiness.
“She was reserved in the expression of her religious views. As is
natural with youthful and independent minds, she had little comparative
respect for creeds and forms, perhaps less than she would have
manifested in maturer years, but her intimate friends knew that she was
always governed by a sense of religious duty, that her relations to her
Creator and her Saviour were the subject of her constant thought, and
that she trusted for her future happiness to the kind mercies of a
benevolent Father, to the conscientious improvement of all her talents,
to a life devoted to deeds of kindness, and to a heart as pure and
unspotted as a child’s. At home—ah! that house, all ‘emptied of
delight,’ over which she presided with so much dignity and kindness,
that forsaken parlor where all the happiness that social life can give
was wont to be so freely and hospitably enjoyed; the weeping
servants—those bleeding and broken hearts—let these tell what she was at
home!
“But she is gone! and young though she was, she has accomplished much.
She has done much to lay the foundation in our midst of a mode of social
life more kind, genuine, and cultivated than most of what is called
society; and she has left behind her the example of her life, which,
though most private and retired, will always be a blessing to her
friends, and through them, we trust, to a wider circle for many coming
years.
“Farewell!
“Forgive our tears for one removed,
Thy creature whom we found so fair,
We trust she lives in Thee, and there
We find her worthier to be loved.”
XIX.
JANE APPLETON PIERCE.
There are two classes of ladies of whom the biographer is compelled to
write, and both are alike interesting. One includes those whose lives
have been passed in the sunshine of prosperity and allurements of
fashionable society, who have been widely known, and who have mingled
with the leading characters of this country. The lives of such women
include innumerable incidents of public and private interest, and are,
in fact, necessary to a perfect history of their time. They are a part
of the great world about them, and it as easy to gather the facts of
their careers, as of the great men with whom they have been associated
nearly or remotely.
The other class is composed of those of whom the world knows little;
whose perfect seclusion even in a public position has given but little
evidence of their abilities, and the world, with its eager curiosity,
has been but imperfectly apprised of their merits. Such natures,
howsoever cultivated and developed, receive but a small portion of that
admiration awarded to the first-mentioned class. Their lives are known
only to the inmates of their homes, and though cherished there as a
beautiful harmony, and their memory as a holy, sealed book, the inquirer
after facts and incidents is dismayed by the small amount of material to
be gathered from such an existence. Such an one was Jane Means Appleton
Pierce, who was born at Hampton, New Hampshire, March 12th, 1806. She
was but one year of age when her father, Rev. Jesse Appleton, D. D.,
assumed the presidency of Bowdoin College. Reared in an atmosphere of
cultivation and refined Christian influences, the delicate child grew in
years, unfolding rare mental qualifications, but fragile and drooping in
health, developing year by year the most exquisite nervous organization.
Naturally inclined to pensive melancholy—the result, partly, of her
physical condition, she was from her childhood the victim of intense
sensibilities and suffering, and was during her life the unfortunate
possessor of an organism whose every vibration was wonderfully acute and
sensitive. The world of suffering locked up in the hearts of such
persons it is impossible to estimate; but happier by far is the day of
their deaths than the years of their lives. Blended with a naturally
strong mind, Miss Appleton possessed a quick appreciation of the
beautiful, which in the later years of her life was of priceless value
to her own heart. Thrown by her marriage into the political arena, and
much in the society of public men of note, she yet soared to a higher
theme, and, when not incompatible with politeness, discovered to her
company the natural elevation of her nature. Politics, a theme most
generally uninteresting to woman, was peculiarly so to her, and it was
in her presence impossible to sustain a conversation on the subject. In
1834, at the age of twenty-eight, she was married to Hon. Franklin
Pierce, then of Hillsborough, and a member of the lower house of
Congress. The match was a pleasing union of kindred natures, and was a
source of deep and lasting happiness. The wealth and tenderness of Mr.
Pierce’s nature, appreciated to its fullest extent by her, had its
reflex in the urbanity and courteousness with which his conduct was ever
characterized toward others. He is spoken of in a recent publication as
the most popular man, personally, in the District of Columbia, who ever
occupied the position he filled.
To a person organized as was Mrs. Pierce, public observation was
extremely painful, and she shrank from it always, preferring the quiet
of her New England home to the glare and glitter of fashionable life in
Washington. A friend has said of her: “How well she filled her station
as wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend, those only can tell who
knew her in these private relations. In this quiet sphere she found her
joy, and here her gentle but powerful influence was deeply and
constantly felt, through wise counsels and delicate suggestions, the
purest, finest tastes and a devoted life.”
“She was not only ministered to, but ever ministering,” and there is so
much of the spiritual in her life that from Bulwer we gather a refrain
most applicable to her. “The cast of her beauty was so dream-like and
yet so ranging; her temper was so little mingled with the common
characteristics of women; it had so little of caprice, so little of
vanity, so utter an absence of all jealousy and all anger; it was so
made up of tenderness and devotion, and yet so imaginative and
fairy-like in its fondness, that it was difficult to bear only the
sentiments of earth for one who had so little of earth’s clay.”
In 1838, Mr. Pierce removed from Hillsborough to Concord, where he
afterward continued to reside. Four years later, he resigned his seat in
the Senate to practise law, and thereby make provisions for the future.
A bereavement, the second of its kind, occurred two years later in the
loss of his second son, Frank Robert.
When President Polk tendered Mr. Pierce the position of
Attorney-General, it was the illness of his wife which drew from him his
reply declining it. He says:
“Although the early years of my manhood were devoted to public life, it
was never really suited to my taste. I longed, as I am sure you must
often have done, for the quiet and independence that belong only to the
private citizen, and now, at forty, I feel that desire stronger than
ever.
“Coming so unexpectedly as this offer does, it would be difficult, if
not impossible, to arrange the business of an extensive practice,
between this and the first of November, in a manner at all satisfactory
to myself, or to those who have committed their interests to my care,
and who rely on my services. Besides, you know that Mrs. Pierce’s
health, while at Washington, was very delicate. It is, I fear, even more
so now; and the responsibilities which the proposed change would
necessarily impose upon her, ought, probably, in themselves to
constitute an insurmountable objection to leaving our quiet home for a
public station at Washington.”
Mrs. Pierce was not called upon to leave her pleasant home, and for
another year she passed her time in tranquil happiness, little dreaming
that her country would so soon demand the sacrifice of him who thought
not of public honors when she was concerned.
The declaration of war with Mexico found him ready and willing to serve
the best interests of his State and Government, by enlisting as a
private soldier in a company raised in Concord. He was subsequently
appointed Colonel, and finally Brigadier-General, which position he
filled with honor and distinction. He sailed from Newport, the 27th of
May, 1847, and remained in Mexico nine months, during which time Mrs.
Pierce and her son continued at their home in Concord. Her health during
his absence was not more frail than usual, but anxiety and suspense,
watching yet fearing to hear of the absent one, kept her from regaining
or improving her impaired constitution, and of renewing the slender
chord by which her life was held.
The mother of three children, none survived her, and the death of the
last, under circumstances so peculiar, shattered the small remnant of
remaining health, and left her mother’s heart forever desolate. On the
5th of January, previous to the inauguration of Mr. Pierce as President,
an accident occurred on the Boston & Maine Railroad, which resulted in a
great calamity; among the passengers were the President-elect, his wife,
and only son, a bright boy of thirteen years. The family were on their
return to Concord from Boston, and it was between Andover and Lawrence
that the axle of one of the passenger-cars broke, and the cars were
precipitated down a steep embankment. Mr. Pierce, sitting beside his
wife, felt the unsteady movements of the train and instantly divined the
cause. Across the seat from them sat their son, who but a moment ago was
amusing them with his conversation. A crash, a bounding motion as the
cars were thrown over and over down the hill, and men began to recover
from their fright and assist in aiding those injured in the fearful
accident. Mr. Pierce, though much bruised, succeeded in extricating his
wife from the ruins, and bearing her to a place of safety, returned to
hunt his boy.
He was soon found; his young head crushed and confined under a beam, his
little body still in death. Even now it is a subject too painful to
dwell upon. What must have been the feelings of those grief-stricken
parents, in a moment bereft of their all!
The remains were conveyed to Andover until arrangements could be made
for their removal to Concord.
Under such a bereavement, in feeble health and exhausted vitality, came
Mrs. Pierce to the White House.
Through the season, before her great trial was sent upon her, she had
been nerving herself for the undesired duties and responsibilities of
her public station at Washington; and with the burden of that crushing
sorrow she went forward, with the noblest self-sacrifice, to do what was
to be done, as well as to bear what was to be borne. That she performed
her task nobly and sustained the dignity of her husband, the following
letter will prove.
From Mr. J. H. Hoover, who, during President Pierce’s administration,
was Marshal of the District of Columbia, the following facts were
received:
“MY DEAR MADAM: I learn that Prof. Aiken’s notice of Mrs. Pierce, that
appeared in the _Observer_, has been sent to you, and I presume it does
not contain information on all the points you desired to reach
particularly. Hence this note. The idea has somehow gone out that Mrs.
Pierce did not participate in the receptions and entertainments at the
White House. Mr. Gobright, in his book recently published,
‘Recollections of Men and Things at Washington,’ makes the statement
that Mrs. Pierce did not, until the close of the administration of
President Pierce, appear at the receptions. This is an inexcusable
blunder, for Mr. Gobright was here on the spot, and should have known
better. The fact is, Mrs. Pierce seldom omitted attendance upon the
public receptions of the President. She was punctually present also at
her own Friday receptions, although at times suffering greatly. Often in
the evening of the President’s levee, she would allow herself to be
conducted into the Blue Room, and there remain all the evening
receiving, with that quiet ease and dignity that characterized her
always: a duty which few ladies, indeed, would have had the courage to
perform in her then delicate state of health. She presided, too, with
the President at the State dinners, as well as those of a more social
character, and certainly never before or since, was more hospitality
dispensed by any occupant of the White House. The most agreeable
memories of Mrs. Pierce at the Presidential Mansion, and such only, are
retained and cherished in this city. The days of that period when a
quiet and dignified but hearty hospitality signalized the Executive
Mansion, and the protection of the Constitution, which diffused a sense
of all-pervading security, were indeed the bright days of the Republic.
This is the view of our own people, and who are better judges than they
who have seen so many Administrations here?
“Every one knew and respected the enfeebled condition of Mrs. Pierce’s
health, and felt that the sad event which happened only a short time
before she came to Washington, on that fatal railroad train, might have
shattered a much hardier constitution than was hers, and at least have
unfitted her, physically as well as mentally, to discharge the duties of
the Lady of the White House. Yet she suppressed her inward grief before
the public eye, and overcame her debility in deference to what she
believed to be her duty toward her distinguished husband’s exalted
position. Those who knew Mrs. Pierce well at this time eulogized her
heroism.
“No lady of the White House left more warm friends in Washington among
our best people, and she had not a single enemy. What I have written
above, you are at liberty, madam, to use (if you deem it worthy) in your
forthcoming work. It has the merit at least of being the testimony of
‘one who knows.’ I give it in order that the grievously wrong statements
in Mr. Gobright’s work, concerning Mrs. Pierce, may be corrected, and
the error exposed before it passes into history.”
Another friend says of her: “It is no disparagement to others who have
occupied her station at the White House, to claim for her an unsurpassed
dignity and grace, delicacy and purity, in all that pertains to public
life. There was a home, a Christian home, quietly and constantly
maintained, and very many hearts rejoiced in its blessings.”
Mrs. Pierce was always extremely delicate, and was reduced to a mere
shadow after the loss of her son. I have heard a gentleman say, who was
a member of Mr. Pierce’s family at the time, that “it was with the
utmost difficulty she could endure the fatigue of standing during a
reception, or sitting the tedious hours of a dinner party,” and her
courage must have been all-powerful to have sustained her under the most
uncongenial of all things to an invalid—the presence of comparative, and
in many cases entire, strangers. Her pious scruples regarding the
keeping of the Sabbath were a marked attribute of her life. Each Sunday
morning of her four years’ stay in the White House, she would request,
in her gentle, conciliatory way, all the attachés of the Mansion to go
to church, and on their return, would make pleasant inquiries of what
they had heard, etc. “Many a time,” remarked Mr. Webster, the Private
Secretary, “have I gone from respect to her, when, if left to my own
choice, I should have remained in the house.” In her unobtrusive way,
ever thoughtful of the happiness of those about her, she diverted their
minds to the elevated and spiritual, and sought, in her own life, to be
a guide for the young with whom she was thrown. How rare are these
exquisite organizations, and how little do we know of them, even though
they have lived in our midst, and formed a part of us! A while they
linger here to learn the way to brighter spheres, and when they vanish,
naught is left but a memory fragrant with the rich perfume of a
beautiful, unselfish life.
In the autumn of 1857, Mrs. Pierce, accompanied by her husband, left the
United States, on the steamer “Powhatan,” for the island of Madeira, and
passed six months in that delightful place. The following eighteen
months were spent in Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy,
Germany, and England. Of her appreciation of this lengthy sojourn in the
most historic and renowned countries of the old world, we have no
evidence save in the supposition, how one of her fine nervous nature
must have enjoyed the bygone splendors of Spain, the ever-ranging
panorama of luxurious Paris, and the snow-capped mountains of Italy and
Switzerland, of the Alps, of Mont Blanc, and the tamer scenery of German
towns and cities! Would that it were possible to present even one of her
letters to the American public who have ever evinced their regard and
admiration for Mrs. Pierce, through the sympathy extended to her now
desolate husband. But that repugnance to publicity, so characteristic in
life, is respected now by the few of her family who have survived her,
and the painful recollections of what she suffered are as yet too fresh
in the minds of her friends to desire them to be recalled.
From ex-President Pierce, who very kindly replied to my many inquiries,
the following letter was received just previous to his death, which
occurred on the 8th of October, 1869:
“If your attention has been called to the obituary notice of Mrs.
Pierce, published in the _Boston Recorder_, of January 8th, 1864, and
reproduced in the _New York Observer_ within two or three weeks of that
date, you may have been impressed with the sentences, ‘She shrank with
extreme sensitiveness from public observation.’ I cannot help being
influenced by that very controlling trait of her character, and this, I
am sure, is true of all her relatives. Hence, and indeed, in consulting
our own tastes, we were thoroughly satisfied with the sketch from the
hand of one who knew her intimately, from his early manhood, and loved
her well.
“Mrs. Pierce’s life, as far as she could make it so, was one of
retirement. She very rarely participated in gay amusements, and never
enjoyed what is sometimes called fashionable society. Her natural
endowments were of a high order, recognized by all persons with whom she
was, to any considerable extent, associated. She inherited a judgment
singularly clear and correct, and a taste almost unerring. She was
carefully and thoroughly educated, and moved all her life, prior to her
marriage, very quietly in a circle of relatives and intimate friends of
rare culture and refinement.”
* * * * *
On the 2d of December, 1863, at Andover, Massachusetts, she died. Many
of her kindred and all her children had gone before her, and she was
ready to join them. But she was patient, and had “learned to wait, with
growing confidence and love, for the revealing of her Heavenly Father’s
will.” Among her last words was the familiar line,
“Other refuge have I none,”
repeated with all the emphasis of which she was then capable. Now she
has reached that refuge.
On the 5th of December, she was buried by the side of her children in
the cemetery at Concord, New Hampshire.
Those who knew her will be glad, glad just in proportion to the intimacy
of their acquaintance with her, to be reminded of the qualities in which
they found so much delight. To others who have only known of her, and
that mainly in connection with her sorrows, it will be just to present
very briefly other aspects of her life. Her fine natural endowments were
developed by a careful and generous culture, not merely under the forms
of education, but through the agency of all the examples and influences
of her early home and the circle of related families. No one knew better
how to make tributary all the experience of life. All her instincts and
choices drew her toward, and attracted toward her, whatever was refining
and elevating. Her tastes were of exceeding delicacy and purity. Her eye
appreciated, in a remarkable degree, whatever was beautiful in nature
and art. During the last years of her invalid life, she found not merely
physical relief, but the deepest gratification in foreign travel, and in
residence near our own New England mountains and sea-shore. This contact
with nature’s freshness and variety and beauty, often renewed her
strength when the ministries of human affection and skill were alike
powerless.
The following touching tribute was written by a friend whose affection
for Mrs. Pierce knows no change. He sent it carefully wrapped in many
covers to protect it. Oft used and much worn as it is, he prizes the
paper, from the associations clustered with its appearance, and the
circumstances under which it was written. Its beauty is its truth and
simplicity.
“The distinctions of earth fade away in the presence of death; but the
memory of departed excellence comes forth fresh and perennial from the
very portals of the grave.
“To-day this paper records the lamented decease of one who has filled
the highest station in the land with dignity and propriety unsurpassed,
and who has adorned private life with every estimable quality which
could become a true Christian gentlewoman.
“The many who have esteemed and respected her throughout life will
deeply deplore her loss, and will sincerely sympathize with him who has
been thus called to submit to one of the severest of human afflictions.
“His beloved companion has passed through great sufferings, bearing
always with him the memory of a great grief; and she has doubtless gone
to that rest which we know ‘remaineth for the people of God.’”
XX.
HARRIET LANE.
The name of Harriet Lane is so nearly associated with the latest and
most illustrious years of her uncle, James Buchanan, that it is quite
impossible to write a life of the one in which the other shall not fill
some space. Of all his kindred she was the closest to him. Given to his
care when she was scarcely past infancy, she took the place of a child
in his lonely heart, and when she reached womanhood she repaid his
affection by ministering with rare tact and grace, abroad and at home,
in public life and in private, over a household which would otherwise
have been the cheerless abode of an old bachelor. The sketch of her
history which we propose to give will, therefore, necessarily involve
many recollections of the great ex-President, with whom her name is
inseparably associated.
Harriet Lane is of Pennsylvania blood, of English ancestry on the side
of her father, and Scotch-Irish on that of her mother. Her grandfather,
James Buchanan, emigrated to America from the north of Ireland, in the
year 1783, and settled near Mercersburg, in Franklin county,
Pennsylvania. In the year 1788, he married Elizabeth Speer, the daughter
of a substantial farmer, a woman of strong intellect and deep piety. The
eldest child of this marriage was James, the late ex-President. He spoke
uniformly with the deepest reverence of both his father and mother, and
took delight in ascribing to the teaching’s of that good woman all the
success that he had won in this world.
[Illustration: Engraved by J. C. Buttre. Harriet Lane Johnston]
Jane Buchanan, the next child after James, his playmate in youth, his
favorite sister through life, known as the most sprightly and agreeable
member of a family all gifted, was married, in the year 1813, to Elliot
T. Lane, a merchant largely engaged in the lucrative trade at that time
carried on between the East and the West, by the great highway that
passed through Franklin county. In this trade James Buchanan the elder
had accumulated his fortune, and on the marriage of his daughter with
Mr. Lane much of his business passed into the hands of the latter.
Mr. Lane was descended from an old and aristocratic English family, who
had settled in Virginia during the Revolution, and he was connected with
some of the best names of this land. His business talents were well
known and trusted, and all who enjoyed his acquaintance testify to the
uncommon amiability of his disposition.
Harriet, the youngest child of Elliot T. Lane and Jane Buchanan, spent
the first years of her life in the picturesque village of Mercersburg,
in the midst of a society distinguished for its intelligence and
refinement. She inherited the vivacity of her mother, was a mischievous
child, overflowing with health and good humor. Her Uncle James, then in
the prime of life, and already an illustrious man, paid frequent visits
to his birth-place, and the impression which his august presence and
charming talk made upon little Harriet was deep and lasting. She
conceived an affection and reverence for him which knew no abatement
till the hour of his death.
Her mother died when she was but seven years old, and her father
survived but two years longer. She was left well provided with money,
and with a large family connection, but at his solicitation she accepted
as a home the house of her Uncle James, and sought his guardianship in
preference to that of any of her other relatives.
Although Mr. Buchanan was not particularly fond of children, he was
attracted toward this frank and handsome child from her earliest
infancy. Her exuberant spirits, love of mischief, and wild pranks called
forth from him daily lectures and severe rebukes, but his acquaintances
all knew that he was well pleased to have been singled out by the noble
and affectionate girl as her guide, philosopher, and friend. No doubt
that even at that early age he recognized in her a kindred spirit, and
his good angel whispered to him that the boisterous child who sometimes
disturbed his studies and mimicked his best friends, would one day be to
him a fit adviser in difficulty, a sympathetic companion in sorrow, the
light and ornament of his public life, and the comfort, at last, of his
lonely hearth.
Mr. Buchanan was reticent in speaking the praises, however well
deserved, of his near relatives, but he has been known, especially of
late years, to dwell with a delight he could not conceal upon the
admirable qualities displayed by Miss Lane in childhood. Said he: “She
never told a lie. She had a soul above deceit or fraud. She was too
proud for it.”
During the earliest years of Miss Lane’s residence with her uncle, in
Lancaster, she attended a day-school there, and though she evinced much
more than the usual aptitude for study, she was chiefly distinguished as
a fun-loving, trick-playing romp, and a wilful domestic outlaw.
There was one anecdote her uncle liked to tell of her, as an evidence of
her independent spirit and her kind heart. When she was about eleven
years old, she was well grown and, indeed, mature looking for her age.
Unlike most young ladies at that ambitious period of life, she was
entirely unconscious of her budding charms, never dreaming that men must
pause to wonder at and admire her, and that her actions were no longer
unimportant as those of a child. One day Mr. Buchanan was shocked upon
beholding from his window Miss Harriet, with flushed cheek and hat awry
trundling along, in great haste, a wheelbarrow full of wood. Upon his
rushing out to inquire into the cause of such an unseemly and
undignified proceeding, she answered in some confusion, that she was
just on her way to old black Aunt Tabitha, with a load of wood, because
it was so cold.
In administering the reproof that followed, Mr. Buchanan took good care
that she should not see the amused and gratified smile with which he
turned away from the generous culprit.
About this time, her uncle executed a threat which he had long held
suspended over Harriet. This was to place her under the tender care of a
couple of elderly maidens of the place—ladies famous for their strict
sense of propriety and their mean domestic economy—just such rule as our
high-spirited young lady would chafe under. She had never believed her
uncle to be in earnest about the matter, and her horror at finding
herself duly installed in this pious household, under the surveillance
of these old damsels, must have been comical enough to Mr. Buchanan, who
was never blind to the funny side of anything. He was in the Senate at
the time, and she was in the habit of pouring out her soul to him in
childish letters that complained of early hours, brown sugar in tea,
restrictions in dress, stiff necks, and cold hearts. The winter passed
slowly away, only solaced by the regular arrival of fatherly letters
from her uncle, or by an occasional frolic out of doors—to say nothing
of pocketsful of crackers and rock-candy, with which the appetite of the
young woman was appeased, her simple fare being, if not scanty, unsuited
to the tastes of one who had sat at Mr. Buchanan’s table.
The next autumn, when she was twelve years old, she was sent with her
sister, a lovely girl but a few years Harriet’s senior, to a school in
Charlestown, Va. Here they remained three years. Harriet was not a
student, but she knew her lessons because it was no trouble for her to
learn them. She was excessively fond of music, and made great progress
in it. Her vacations were spent with Mr. Buchanan; but the great event
of those three years was a visit with him to Bedford Springs. It was a
glorious time, which even now the woman of the world looks back upon
with her own bright smile of pleasure.
She was next sent to the convent at Georgetown—a school justly
celebrated for the elegant women who have been educated there. Miss Lane
went over to Washington every month, and spent Saturday and Sunday with
her uncle, then Secretary of State. These visits were, of course,
delightful. Without seeing any gay society, she always met at Mr.
Buchanan’s house such men as few young girls could appreciate, and
listened to such conversation as would improve the taste of any one.
Miss Lane at once became a great favorite with the sisters, who
constantly expressed the highest opinion of her talents and her
principles.
Before Mr. Buchanan had decided to send her to the convent, he had
asked, “Do you think you would become a Roman Catholic?” She was anxious
to go, but she answered, “I can’t promise; I don’t know enough about
their faith.” “Well,” said he, “if you are a good Catholic, I will be
satisfied.”
She did not change her religious opinions, but her intercourse with the
good sisters has always made her respect the old church, and has taught
her sympathy and charity for all God’s people.
Here she became very proficient in music, an accomplishment which,
unfortunately for her friends, she has much neglected, owing to her
constant engagements in social life and her disinclination for display
in her public position. The nuns were anxious to have her learn to play
upon the harp, not only on account of her musical taste, but because of
her graceful person and exquisite hand. For some reason, however, she
never took lessons upon that beautiful instrument, so well calculated to
display the charms of a graceful woman.
Her uncle once asked in a letter what were her favorite studies. She
answered, “History, astronomy, and especially mythology.” Mr. Buchanan
did not forget this avowed preference, and in after years gratified his
natural disposition to quiz those of whom he was fond, by appealing to
his niece as authority on mythological questions, in the presence of
company before whom she would have preferred to be silent.
Miss Lane was exceedingly quick and bright. She never applied her whole
mind to study except the last of the two years she spent at Georgetown.
The result of that effort was that she won golden opinions and graduated
with great honor. She left the school, loved and regretted by the
sisters, with some of whom she has been on terms of close friendship
ever since. They always speak of her with pride, and have followed her
career with an interest they seldom evince in anything outside their
sphere of seclusion and quiet.
At this time, Miss Lane’s proportions were of the most perfect
womanliness. Tall enough to be commanding, yet not high enough to
attract observation—light enough to be graceful, but so full as to
indicate the perfect health with which she was blest. Indeed, this
appearance of health was the first impression produced by Miss Lane upon
the beholder. It made one feel stronger only to watch her firm, quick
step and round, elastic form. Her clear, ringing voice spoke of life.
The truthful, steady light of her eyes inspired one with confidence in
humanity, and the color that came and went in her cheek, set one’s own
blood to a more youthful, joyous bound.
Miss Lane was a blonde, her head and features were cast in noble mould,
and her form, when at rest, was replete with dignified majesty, and, in
motion, was instinct alike with power and grace. Hers was a bright, good
face upon which none looked with indifference. Those deep violet eyes,
with the strange dark line around them, could glance cold, stern rebuke
upon the evil-doer, and they could kindle, too, and pour young scorn
upon what was small and mean. Yet of all her features, her mouth was the
most peculiarly beautiful. Although in repose it was indicative of
firmness, it was capable of expressing infinite humor and perfect
sweetness. Her golden hair was arranged with simplicity, and in her
dress she always avoided superfluous ornament. In toilet, speech, and
manner she was a lady.
Miss Lane was fond of games, and invariably excelled at all she ever
attempted. Her uncle secretly prided himself upon her prowess, and, in
her absence, frequently spoke of this success of hers: but he liked to
laugh at her for being able to “distance everybody else in athletic
sports.” He used to tell about her daring some young man to run a race
with her, and then leaving him far behind and out of breath. Yet it was
known he had, upon this occasion, rebuked her for want of that dignity
which, in his heart, he gladly owned she did not lack.
At Wheatland, Miss Lane saw much company from a distance, her uncle
constantly entertaining his foreign and political friends. Their
conversation and her historic reading, directed by Mr. Buchanan, made
her a most congenial companion for him.
She was a good reader, her voice sweet and pure, and her enunciation
clear and distinct. She was in the habit of reading aloud the
newspapers, and afterward discussing with him the news and the political
and literary subjects of the day. She took great interest in the
grounds, and it was her taste that suggested many of the improvements
made at Wheatland.
The quiet of her life here was interrupted by gay visits to
Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Washington, and Virginia. Wherever
she went, she left hosts of friends, and never came home without
bringing with her scores of masculine hearts. Indeed, their former
owners often followed them and the young lady, in hopes of obtaining her
hand in exchange. She remained, however, “fancy free,” until her heart
was touched by the love-tale of Mr. Johnston, whom she met at Bedford
Springs, during the annual visit made there by herself and Mr. Buchanan.
[Illustration:
WHEATLAND—THE HOME OF PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.
]
Mr. Johnston was a young gentleman of Baltimore, fresh from college
honors, manly, frank, and kind—full of enthusiasm, and as demonstrative
as youth and Southern blood make an earnest man when deeply in love.
Geranium leaves exchanged in those golden days of youth—withered surely
in the lapse of time, and, one would fancy, long since cast aside—are
worn by Miss Lane and her husband in memory of a dawning affection of
which neither could have foreseen the end.
Miss Lane’s brothers lived in Lancaster. One of them married there. Her
sister Mary, who had been married to Mr. George W. Baker, also resided
in Lancaster, and was much with Harriet until her removal to California.
It was during her absence, in 1852, that Mr. Buchanan went as Minister
to England, taking Miss Harriet Lane with him.
No more illustrious man than James Buchanan had ever been sent to
represent his country at the court of the greatest empire of the world.
His fame as a statesman had preceded him. To the public men and educated
classes of England his name was familiar, for he had been one of the
most conspicuous figures in the United States for the third of the
century. No citizen of this country had ever held so many great stations
as he. His life had been crowded with the gravest public employments.
Apart from his reputation as a statesman, he had won the highest
encomiums at the bar. For ten consecutive years he had sat in the lower
house of Congress. As Minister to Russia, he had negotiated our first
commercial treaty with that empire. In the Senate of the United States
he had stood for years in the foremost rank of those mighty men whose
statesmanship and eloquence made that body, thirty years ago, the most
dignified assembly on earth. When he resigned his seat as a Senator, it
was to become Secretary of State, and during that period, when he held
that position, he refused a seat on the Supreme Bench of the United
States, urged upon him by Mr. Tyler, and afterward by Mr. Polk. His name
had, for half his lifetime, been associated with the Presidency. When he
went to England, it was at the earnest solicitation of Mr. Pierce, who
was unwilling to trust the settlement of the great questions then at
issue between the two countries, to any hands less able than his, and it
was well believed by many friends that, his work abroad completed, he
would return to take possession of the Executive Chair.
In the blaze of this reputation, and led by the protecting hand of one
so illustrious, did Harriet Lane make her entrance into English society.
And now she became publicly identified with Mr. Buchanan. At dinners and
upon all occasions, she ranked, not as niece, or even daughter, but as
his wife. There was, at first, some question on this point, but the
Queen, upon whom the blooming beauty had made a deep impression, soon
decided that, and our heroine was thenceforward one of the foremost
ladies in the diplomatic corps at St. James.
Her first appearance at a Drawing-room was a memorable occasion, not
only to the young republican girl herself and her uncle, but to all who
witnessed her graceful and dignified bearing at the time.
Notwithstanding her youthful appearance, it could scarcely be credited
that she, who managed her train so beautifully, appeared so unconscious
of the attention she attracted, and diffused her smiles in such sweet
and courtly manner, had never before been in the presence of royalty.
That night when she and Mr. Buchanan discussed the events of the day—as
they habitually did before retiring—he suddenly turned about, saying,
“Well, a person would have supposed you were a great beauty, to have
heard the way you were talked of to-day. I was asked if we had many such
handsome ladies in America. I answered, ‘Yes, and many much handsomer.
She would scarcely be remarked there for her beauty.’”
Upon every occasion Miss Lane was most graciously singled out by the
Queen, and it was well known that she was not only an unusual favorite
with her majesty, but that she was regarded with favor and admiration by
all the royal family. She was so immediately and universally popular,
that she was warmly welcomed in every circle, and added much to the
social reputation Mr. Buchanan’s elegant manners won him everywhere. At
her home she was modest and discreet, as well as sprightly and genial,
and her countrymen never visited their great representative in England
without congratulating themselves upon having there also such a specimen
of American womanhood.
The limits of our sketch prevent us from dwelling upon particular
characters, political, noble and literary, with whom Miss Lane
constantly came in contact. Nor have we time to mention the country
houses of lord and gentry where Mr. Buchanan and herself were gladly
received. Suffice it to say that her offers of marriage were very
numerous, and such as would do honor to any lady of any land—men of
great name, of high position and immense fortune, English and American.
She always confided these _affaires du cœur_ to her uncle, who gave his
advice as freely as it was asked. But he never attempted to influence
her affections, although one could not have blamed him for wishing her
to remain as she was. She always decided for her uncle, and ended the
consideration of each proposal by trusting to the happiness she had
already tried.
The years that Miss Lane spent in England were probably the brightest of
her life. She loved England, English people, and English habits, and
fortunate indeed it was for her that in the days of her early youth,
when just entering upon womanhood, she acquired that taste for exercise,
early hours, wholesome food, and healthy living, which make the ladies
of Great Britain the fairest and most substantial beauties in the world.
One of the incidents of her stay abroad with her uncle was her visit
with him to Ostend, at the time of the celebrated conference between the
American Ministers to England, France, and Spain. From here she
travelled with Mr. Mason and others to Brussels, Aix-la-Chapelle,
Coblentz, and Frankfort on the Main, and thence joined Mr. Buchanan and
Mr. Soulé at Brussels, where the business of the Conference was
completed.
She accompanied Mr. Mason on his return to Paris, and spent two months
at his house. It is needless to say that these were happy months, for
Mr. Mason’s elegant hospitality, and the agreeable manners, and kind
hearts of wife and daughters, made his home a thronged resort of all
Americans who visited the gay capital. Miss Lane’s recollections of that
noble man are as warm as those of any of the thousands who were familiar
with his virtues, and whose feeling regarding him was happily expressed
after his death in an obituary written by a near friend, who summed up
his faults and his merits in the title taken from the most genial
character ever drawn by Bulwer, of “Old Gentleman Waife.”
Among the brilliant circle that nightly assembled in the saloons of Mr.
Mason, Miss Lane reigned a pre-eminent belle.
We must also particularly refer to the enthusiasm excited by Miss Lane
upon a memorable occasion in England. We mean the day when Mr. Buchanan
and Mr. Tennyson received the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws at the
University of Oxford. Her appearance was greeted with loud cheers by the
students, and murmurs of admiration.
She returned to America, leaving Mr. Buchanan in London, waiting for a
release from his mission, which he had long urged, but which the State
Department at Washington had failed to give him.
During this separation, her uncle wrote her long letters, overflowing
with affection and regret that he had suffered her to leave him. Indeed,
she would never have consented to absent herself from his side for an
hour, had she not been expecting a visit at Wheatland from her sister,
Mrs. Baker, whose sweet companionship she had missed in all her
pleasures and triumphs. It was soon after her happy arrival at dear old
Wheatland, with the welcome of friends still in her ears, and amid
hurried and loving preparations for the reception of this beautiful and
only sister, that the dreadful tidings of her death on the distant
shores of the Pacific, smote on the sad heart of Harriet. In the agony
of her first great grief, brooding over the memory of this twin soul,
often did she echo in feeling those verses of Tennyson:
“Ah yet, even yet, if this might be,
I, falling on thy faithful heart,
Would, breathing through thy lips, impart
The life that almost dies in me.
“That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the firmer mind;
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.”
Under these sad circumstances Mr. Buchanan came home, and the news of
his nomination for the Presidency soon afterward reached Wheatland. Miss
Lane heard it, not with indifference, but with less enthusiasm than she
had shown about anything in which her uncle was concerned. She, however,
received his friends with a grace which, if sadder than of old, was none
the less interesting; and the noble figure clad in mourning, and the
modest, tender face beneath her dark English hat, will never be
forgotten by those who saw Harriet Lane dispensing the dignified
hospitalities of Mr. Buchanan’s table, or calmly strolling over the lawn
during the summer of 1856.
Saddened by suffering, but sustained by her warm affection for her
uncle, she became the mistress of the White House. Her younger and
favorite brother, Eskridge, accompanied Mr. Buchanan and Miss Lane to
Washington, and after a few days’ stay there went home to Lancaster,
promising his sister, who was loth to bid him good-by, that he would
return in about a month. But just a month from that parting, the
telegraph bore to Mr. Buchanan the news of his sudden death.
The President loved this youth above all his nephews, and had meant to
have him with him at Washington. This was a terrible blow to him, but in
his affliction he was mindful of Harriet, and it was with the kindest
care he broke to her the intelligence.
The sister, again and so soon smitten, with a crushed heart set out for
the scene of death, there to yearn, over the dear clay of that lost
brother.
When Miss Lane returned to her uncle, it was not to parade her trouble,
but quietly and cheerfully to assist him in his social and domestic
life; to keep her grief for her closet, and in the endurance of it, to
ask no help but God’s. Yet all who saw her, subdued but dignified, as
she received familiar friends during those first months in Washington,
were struck with the elegant repose of her manners, her sweet thanks for
sympathy, and her kind and gentle interest in everything about her.
The next winter she went to no entertainments, but the usual dinners and
receptions at home were not omitted. In her new high sphere she was as
much admired as she had always been, and after she began to participate
in the gayeties of that gayest administration, her life was made up of a
series of honors and pleasures such as have never fallen to the lot of
any other young lady in the United States.
On the occasion of a New Year’s reception, when Mr. Buchanan stood up to
receive the ambassadors of the world’s kingdoms and empires, his great
frame, his massive head, his noble countenance, marked and adorned by
the lines of thought, but untouched by the wrinkles of decay, made him a
spectacle so impressive and majestic, that it did not require the
addition of his courtly manners to elicit a thrill of pride in the
breast of every American who beheld him.
It would have been a trying contrast to the beauty and dignity of any
one to have stood by his side; yet it was difficult for those who saw
Harriet Lane there to decide between the uncle and the niece—to say
which looked the proudest and the greatest—the man or the woman, the
earlier or the later born.
Miss Lane’s position was more onerous and more crowded with social
duties than that of any other person who had filled her place since the
days of Martha Washington, because Mr. Buchanan received not merely
official visits in the capacity of President, but his wide acquaintance
at home and abroad was the cause of his constantly entertaining, as a
private gentleman, foreigners and others, who came, not to see
Washington and the President, but to visit Mr. Buchanan himself.
Jefferson Davis, who, for reasons creditable to Mr. Buchanan’s course at
the outbreak of the secession movement, was not friendly to him,
speaking to Dr. Craven at Fortress Monroe, said: “The White House, under
the administration of Buchanan, approached more nearly to my idea of a
Republican Court than the President’s house had ever done before since
the days of Washington.” In this compliment, extorted by truth, of
course Miss Lane shared.
In the summer of 1860, Queen Victoria accepted the invitation of the
President for the Prince of Wales to extend his Canadian tour to this
country. The duty of preparing for the Prince’s reception devolved upon
Miss Lane, and so admirably did she order the Executive household, that
a party far less amiable than the Prince and the noble gentlemen who
accompanied him, could not have failed to find their visit an agreeable
one. Apart from the personal qualities of this distinguished guest (and
Mr. Buchanan always spoke with enthusiasm of the admirable qualities and
excellent disposition of his young friend), his visit was an occurrence
of memorable interest, being the first occasion on which an heir
apparent to the Crown of Great Britain had stood in the Capital of her
lost colonies. Especially did this interest attach, when, standing
uncovered by the side of the President, before the gateway of
Washington’s tomb, and gazing reverently on the sarcophagus that holds
his ashes, the great-grandson of George the Third paid open homage to
the memory of the chief who rent his empire—when the last born king of
William the Conqueror’s blood bowed his knee before the dust of the
greatest rebel of all time.
The modesty of the Prince’s behavior, and his perfectly frank manners
attested the excellence of the training given him by his good mother and
his high-souled, wise, and pious father. He entered with all the
freshness of youth into every innocent amusement planned to beguile the
hours of his stay.
It may be well here to mention, as an instance of Mr. Buchanan’s care
for the proprieties of his station, that, anxious as it was possible for
man to be to gratify the Prince, who, on more than one occasion,
proposed dancing, approving of it as a harmless pastime, and fond of it
as a spectacle, he yet declined to permit it in the White House, for the
reason that that building was not his private home, that it belonged to
the nation, and that the moral sense of many good people who had
assisted to put him there, would be shocked by what they regarded as
profane gayety in the saloons of the State.
The visit of the English party lasted five days, and they separated from
Mr. Buchanan and Miss Lane leaving behind them most agreeable
recollections.
On the Prince’s arrival in England, the Queen acknowledged her sense of
the cordiality of his reception by the President, in the following
autograph letter, in which the dignity of an official communication is
altogether lost in the personal language of a grateful mother thanking a
friend for kindness done her firstborn child. It is the Queen’s English
employed to express the sentiments of the woman:
“WINDSOR CASTLE, _Nov. 19th, 1860_.
“MY GOOD FRIEND:—Your letter of the 6th ult. has afforded me the
greatest pleasure, containing, as it does, such kind expressions with
regard to my son, and assuring me that the character and object of his
visit to you and to the United States have been fully appreciated, and
that his demeanor and the feelings evinced by him, have secured to him
your esteem and the general good-will of your countrymen.
“I purposely delayed the answer to your letter until I should be able to
couple with it the announcement of the Prince of Wales’ safe return to
his home. Contrary winds and stress of weather have much retarded his
arrival, but we have been fully compensated for the anxiety which this
long delay has naturally caused us, by finding him in such excellent
health and spirits, and so delighted with all he has seen and
experienced in his travels.
“He cannot sufficiently praise the great cordiality with which he has
been everywhere greeted in your country, and the friendly manner in
which you have received him; and whilst, as a mother, I am grateful for
the kindness shown him, I feel impelled to express, at the same time,
how deeply I have been touched by the many demonstrations of affection
personally toward myself which his presence has called forth.
“I fully reciprocate toward your nation the feelings thus made apparent,
and look upon them as forming an important link to connect two nations
of kindred origin and character, whose mutual esteem and friendship must
always have so material an influence upon their respective development
and prosperity.
“The interesting and touching scene at the grave of General Washington,
to which you allude, may be fitly taken as the type of our present
feeling, and, I trust, of our future relations.
“The Prince Consort, who heartily joins in the expressions contained in
this letter, wishes to be kindly remembered to you, as we both wish to
be to Miss Lane.
“Believe me always
“Your good friend,
“VICTORIA R.”
The Prince spoke for himself in the following note:
“JAFFA, _March 29th, 1862_.
“DEAR MR. BUCHANAN:—Permit me to request that you will accept the
accompanying portrait as a slight mark of my grateful recollection of
the hospitable reception and agreeable visit at the White House on the
occasion of my tour in the United States.
“Believe me, that the cordial welcome which was then vouchsafed to me by
the American people, and by you as their chief, can never be effaced
from my memory.
“I venture to ask you at the same time to remember me kindly to Miss
Lane, and
“Believe me, dear Mr. Buchanan,
“Yours, very truly,
“ALBERT EDWARD.”
The portrait to which the Prince alludes in the preceding letter was a
handsome painting of himself, done by Sir John Watson Gordon, and sent
to Mr. Buchanan.
The Prince also presented Miss Lane with a set of engravings of the
Royal Family, which are now in her possession. A newspaper
correspondent, after Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, wrote that the
appearance of the Mansion was very much changed by the removal of the
portraits, which had been presented for the White House.
Mr. Buchanan could not let so grave a charge remain unanswered, and
wrote to Lord Lyons, whose letter is for the first time published.
“WASHINGTON, _Dec. 24th, 1861_.
“SIR: I have this morning had the honor to receive your letter of the
19th of this month, requesting me to state the facts connected with a
present made by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, to Miss Lane,
of a set of engravings representing Her Majesty, the Queen, and other
members of the Royal Family.
“The Prince of Wales told me, when His Royal Highness was at Washington,
that he had asked Miss Lane to accept these engravings—he said that he
had not them with him there, but that he would send them, through me,
from Portland. His Royal Highness accordingly sent them on shore
immediately after he embarked at that place.
“They were marked with Miss Lane’s name, in the handwriting of General
Bruce.
“In obedience to the commands I had received from the Prince, I
presented them in his name, to Miss Lane. I had the honor of placing
them myself in her hand.
“I have the honor to be, with the greatest respect, Sir,
“Your most obedient humble servant and friend,
“LYONS.
“The Honorable
“JAMES BUCHANAN, etc., etc., etc.”
When the secession movement was inaugurated by South Carolina,
immediately after the election of Mr. Lincoln, the position of Mr.
Buchanan become one of extreme delicacy and difficulty, and in its great
cares as well as in its petty social annoyances, Miss Lane bore a heavy
part.
During those last months of his administration, when Mr. Buchanan was
harassed on every side, when his patriotism was doubted, when his
hands—eager to hold steady the reins of Government—were tied fast by the
apathy of Congress and the indifference of the Northern people, his mind
was lightened of much of its load of anxiety by the consciousness that
his niece faithfully represented him in his drawing-room, and that his
patriotism and good sense would never suffer by any conversational lapse
of hers. He always spoke with warmth and gratitude of her admirable
demeanor at this critical time.
And now we see Miss Lane once more at Wheatland, sharing and enjoying
the dignified retirement of her uncle.
The society of that revered man who was preparing for a better world and
appealing to a higher judgment than that of a selfish faction, the calm
pleasures of country life, the continued attentions of enthusiastic
admirers, the many visits of dear tried friends, the consolations of
religion, and the devotion of one true heart that had never ceased its
homage, was her compensation for many trials.
In 1863, Miss Lane was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, at Oxford,
Philadelphia, of which her uncle was the rector, by Bishop Stevens. She
would have joined the Presbyterian Church, to which her uncle belonged,
had he desired it, because she was as liberal as he is known to have
been in his religious views, and they never differed on doctrinal
points. But several circumstances had made it convenient for her to
attend the Episcopal Church a great deal, and she had early learned to
love its beautiful prayer book, and in any other church to miss its
significant forms.
About this time occurred the death of James B. Lane, leaving Harriet no
brother nor sister, nor indeed any near relations except her two uncles,
the Rev. E. Y. Buchanan, and the ex-President, to whom she clung with
renewed affection.
However, one morning in January, 1866, when the evergreens before the
old house at Wheatland were burdened with snow, and the lawn was white,
and the spring was frozen, and icicles hung from the roof, the grounds
there were made gay and bright by the assemblage of carriages that
brought guests to see the marriage, by the Rev. Edward Y. Buchanan, of
Harriet Lane and Henry Elliott Johnston. Indoors, there was nothing in
the glow of the fire, the odor of the flowers, the gratified appearance
of the host, or the sunny faces of the wedding party, to indicate the
struggle just finished between two loves.
Some weeks after the marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Johnston went to Cuba, where
they spent a month or two most delightfully. From there, Mr. Johnston
took his wife to his house in Baltimore, which, with characteristic
taste, thoughtfulness, and liberality, he had elegantly and luxuriously
fitted up for the lady of his dreams, to whom he forthwith presented it.
It would scarcely be fair to dwell, in print, upon the happiness of this
congenial pair, but it would be unpardonable if we did not assure the
reader, that Mr. Johnston is all that Miss Lane’s husband ought to be.
Even those who naturally disliked to see Miss Lane pass out of the house
of her great kinsman into any other home, soon became charmed with Mr.
Johnston, and could not but congratulate Miss Lane upon this choice,
made from many lovers.
Nor can we consent to close this sketch of Mrs. Johnston’s life without
attracting attention to her in her last and most endearing relation. In
her most glorious days, she was never more beautiful than as a mother,
and the matronly grace with which she cares for her child is sweeter to
her husband than the early flush or the queenly prime when he
occasionally ventured on presents of fruits and flowers.
Would that we could now drop the curtain upon this fair domestic scene
without noticing the cloud that darkened the prosperous life of Mrs.
Johnston after her marriage. The death of Mr. Buchanan caused her the
greatest grief of her life, and is its permanent bereavement.
Again, she is at Wheatland—now her own summer home—mourning for the good
man gone; but comforted by the thought that, though in all his dear
familiar haunts she will see him nevermore, he is already understood and
appreciated, and that history is even now doing him justice. Comforted
also in knowing that her husband ministered to her uncle’s dying days,
and that he received his unqualified confidence and affection. Comforted
also in the sweet task, the great work of training up her boy to be
worthy the name of James Buchanan Johnston....
This son grew to be a noble youth of fourteen, and died on the 25th of
March, 1881. His character was affectionate and truthful, and his
bearing was distinguished for its grace. His death was a terrible blow
to his parents, of whom and of him Judge Jere. S. Black wrote as follows
in a letter to a friend:
“I have just returned from the funeral of James Buchanan Johnston,
affected by a deeper sense of bereavement than any death outside of my
own immediate family has caused me in many years. It is strange that we
cannot get hardened to these calamities in the course of time, or at
least learn to accept some measure of consolation when our friends are
fatally stricken. But human philosophy, how well soever it may be
strengthened by trials, is powerless to save our equanimity in cases
like this. The overwhelming grief of that beloved mother and the awful
break down of the proud father’s spirit cannot even be thought of
without strong emotion. Besides that I had built much hope of my own
upon the future of that bright and beautiful boy. He was gifted with
uncommon talents, so well cultivated, and developing so rapidly, that
even at the age of fourteen he was intellectually a full-grown man. With
moral principles clearly defined and quick perceptions of the right, his
sense of justice and his love of truth would have given him a dignity of
character not surpassed by that of his illustrious uncle. But these
visions of a moment are faded forever, and we can only sigh ‘for the
touch of a vanished hand’ and listen in vain ‘for the sound of a voice
that is still.’”
XXI.
MARY TODD LINCOLN.
To Mrs. Lincoln more than to any other President’s wife was the White
House an ambition. She had ever aspired to reach it, and when it became
her home, it was the fruition of a hope long entertained, the
gratification of the great desire of her life. In her early youth she
repeatedly asserted that she should be a President’s wife, and so
profoundly impressed was she with this idea, that she calculated the
probabilities of such a success with all her male friends. She refused
an offer of marriage from Stephen A. Douglas, then a rising young
lawyer, doubting his ability to gratify her ambition, and accepted a man
who at that time seemed to others the least likely to be the President
of the United States.
[Illustration:
M^{RS} ABRAHAM LINCOLN
]
Mary Todd was a Kentuckian by birth, and a member of the good old Todd
family, of Lexington. Her younger years were spent in that homely town
of beautiful surroundings, with an aunt who reared her, she being an
orphan. Childhood and youth were passed in comfort and comparative
luxury, nor did she ever know poverty; but her restless nature found but
little happiness in the society of her elders, and she went, when just
merging into womanhood, to reside with her sister in Springfield. The
attraction of this, then small place, was greatly augmented by the
society of the young people, and Mary Todd passed the pleasantest years
of her life in her sister’s western home. On the 4th of November, 1842,
at the age of twenty-one, she was married to Abraham Lincoln, a
prominent lawyer, of Illinois. A letter written the following May, to
Mr. Speed, of Louisville, Kentucky, by Mr. Lincoln, contains the
following mention of his domestic life: “We are not keeping house,” he
says, “but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by
a widow lady, of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace
occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a week. I most
heartily wish you and your Fanny will not fail to come. Just let us know
the time, a week in advance, and we will have a room prepared for you,
and we’ll all be merry together for a while.” The pleasant spirits in
which the husband wrote, must have argued well for the married life they
had entered upon. Although much in public life, Mr. Lincoln was holding
no office at the time of his marriage, but four years later he was
elected to Congress, and took his seat December 6th, 1847. Mrs. Lincoln
did not accompany her husband to Washington, but remained at her home.
It was a season of war and general disturbance throughout the country,
and while her husband attended to his duties at the Capital, she lived
quietly with her children in Springfield. In August he returned to enter
upon the duties of his profession, and to “devote himself to them
through a series of years, less disturbed by diversions into State and
National politics than he had been during any previous period of his
business life. It was to him a time of rest, of reading, of social
happiness, and of professional prosperity. He was a happy father, and
took an almost unbounded pleasure in his children. Their sweet young
natures were to him a perpetual source of delight. He was never
impatient with their petulance and restlessness, loved always to be with
them, and took them into his heart with a fondness which was
unspeakable. It was a fondness so tender and profound as to blind him to
their imperfections, and to expel from him every particle of sternness
in his management of them.”
At this time Mrs. Lincoln was the mother of four children, and though
one had passed on to the higher life, her home was one of happiness.
Ministered to by a husband who never knew how to be aught but kind to
her, and surrounded by evidences of prosperity, her lines had fallen in
pleasant places, and she was considered by her friends a fortunate
woman.
Mr. Lincoln was a hard student and constant reader, and was steadily
progressing in knowledge. Thrown among talented and educated gentlemen,
and possessing an intense desire for improvement, he had become, during
the years of his married life, a superior lawyer and statesman. His was
an aspiring nature, striving for the golden truths of sage experience.
[Illustration:
HOME OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT SPRINGFIELD.
]
His enemies sometimes speak of him as a man who owed his eminence rather
to the contrast between his social and his political rank, between his
qualifications and the place in history which it was his fortune to
fill, than to his personal character or his political capacity, but the
estimate is not a true one. A man so revered as is his memory by all
classes of his countrymen, had a character untarnished by corruption,
and a moral refinement far above the comprehension of the average public
man. He was in his domestic life the embodiment of fidelity and
gentleness. His career as a statesman, and not the manner of his death,
places him next to Washington in the hearts of Americans. His services
to the country rank as the noblest performed in its history after those
of Washington. Opportunity, while it did much for him, was not all that
made Lincoln great; it was his readiness to meet the emergency when it
came; his ability to seize the occasion, and use it to the honor of his
country, and his own lasting fame.
Mr. Lincoln was so intensely individual in his career, and his life was
so devoted to public affairs, that it is with difficulty that a sketch
of Mrs. Lincoln can be written that is not largely composed of the
events pertaining to the official life of her husband. The White House
during her life in it was the reverse of gay. Officials were the chief
callers at the mansion, and the movement of armies, and the news from
the front occupied the attention of its inmates. She was less fortunate
than any lady who had ever preceded her in this respect, and to judge of
her success in her position, it is needful to keep in mind the
conditions under which the administration existed.
The Republican Convention at Chicago verified Mrs. Lincoln’s prophecy of
being the wife of a President. It assembled the 16th of June, 1860, and
after a close contest between the two favorites of the Republican
party—Governor Seward and Mr. Lincoln—the latter was declared
unanimously nominated as a candidate for the Presidency. In Springfield,
Mrs. Lincoln waited in her own home for the result of her prediction,
and when at noon the cannon on the public square announced the decision
of the Convention, breathless with expectancy, she scarcely dared to ask
the result. Her husband, in the excitement of the moment, did not forget
her, but putting the telegram in his pocket, remarked to his friends
that “there was a little woman on Eighth street who had some interest in
the matter,” walked home to gladden her heart with the good news. That
Friday night must have been the very happiest of her life, for few women
have ever craved the position as she did, and it was hers! Crowds of
citizens and strangers thronged her home all the afternoon, and the roar
of cannon and the wild, tumultuous shouts of excited men filled the town
with a deafening noise. At night the Republicans marched in a body to
Mr. Lincoln’s house, and, after a brief speech, were invited, as many as
could get into the house, to enter, “the crowd responding that after the
fourth of March they would give him a larger house. The people did not
retire until a late hour, and then moved off reluctantly, leaving the
excited household to their rest.”
And now commenced the life which Mrs. Lincoln had so long anticipated,
and if her husband was not elated, she was, and the hearts of these two,
so nearly concerned in this great honor, beat from widely different
emotions. “He could put on none of the airs of eminence; he could place
no bars between himself and those who had honored him. Men who entered
his house impressed with a sense of his new dignities, found him the
same honest, affectionate, true-hearted and simple-minded Abraham
Lincoln that he had always been. He answered his own bell, accompanied
his visitors to the door when they retired, and felt all that interfered
with his old homely and hearty habits of hospitality as a burden—almost
an impertinence.” She, annoyed by the crowds who thronged the house, and
the constant interruptions, found it so intolerable that Mr. Lincoln
took a room in the State House, and met his friends there until his
departure for Washington.
Mrs. Lincoln was not greatly inclined to observe the requirements of her
social position, and she thereby lost opportunities of advancing her
husband’s interests of which she perhaps was unaware. She did not
rightly estimate the importance of conciliatory address with friend and
foe alike, and seemed not conscious of the immense assistance which, as
the wife of a public man, she had it in her power to give her husband.
And this was all the more singular for the reason that she was very
ambitious.
Just after the election, a circumstance occurred which Mrs. Lincoln
interpreted in a manner which forced one to recall the predictions of
her childhood. Mr. Lincoln thus repeated it. “It was after my election,
when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had
been a great ‘hurrah, boys!’ so that I was well tired out and went home
to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to where
I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and looking in that
glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I
noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of
one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little
bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the
illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer,
if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a
little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing
melted away and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all
about it—nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come
up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had
happened. When I went home, I told my wife about it, and a few days
after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came
back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that,
though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was
worried about it somewhat. She thought it was a ‘sign’ that I was to be
elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the
faces was an omen that I should not see life through the second term.”
Mr. Lincoln regarded the vision as an optical illusion, caused from
nervousness, “yet, with that tinge of superstition which clings to every
sensitive and deeply thoughtful man, in a world full of mysteries, he
was so far affected by it as to feel that ‘something uncomfortable had
happened.’” Viewed in the light of subsequent events, Mrs. Lincoln’s
prophetic interpretation of the vision had almost a startling import.
Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their three boys, accompanied by a number of
Mr. Lincoln’s old friends, left Springfield in a special car, and all
along the route they were welcomed by the people with every
demonstration of hearty good-will. It was a time of anxiety, and the
throngs that gathered about the newly elected Chief Magistrate seemed
impelled by a stronger feeling than mere curiosity or excitement.
Between Chicago and Indianapolis, the stations were decorated, the towns
and villages were gay with flags and flower-bedecked mottoes, and
wherever a stop was made, men, women and children grasped the hand of
Mr. Lincoln, and wished him a safe journey and all success in the trying
place he was going to fill.
An immense crowd cheered him as the train reached the depot at
Indianapolis, and a national salute was fired in his honor. The
Cincinnati committee of reception, filling his car, met the party there,
and accompanied it next day. The train passed by the burial-place of
General Harrison, who had for a short month occupied the Presidential
chair, and here the family of the deceased patriot were assembled. Mr.
Lincoln bowed his respects to the group and to the memory of his
predecessor.
The morning of the fourth of March, 1861, broke beautifully clear, and
it found General Scott and the Washington police in readiness for the
day. The friends of Mr. Lincoln had gathered in from far and near,
determined that he should be inaugurated. In the hearts of the surging
crowds there was anxiety; but outside all looked as usual on such
occasions, with the single exception of an extraordinary display of
soldiers. The public buildings, the schools and most of the places of
business were closed during the day, and the stars and stripes were
floating from every flag-staff. There was a great desire to hear Mr.
Lincoln’s inaugural; and at an early hour, Pennsylvania Avenue was full
of people, wending their way to the east front of the Capitol, from
which it was to be delivered.
At five minutes before twelve o’clock, Vice-President Breckinridge and
Senator Foote escorted Mr. Hamlin, the Vice-President-elect, into the
Senate Chamber, and gave him a seat at the left of the chair. At twelve,
Mr. Breckinridge announced the Senate adjourned, and then conducted Mr.
Hamlin to the seat he had vacated. At this moment, the foreign
diplomats, of whom there was a very large and brilliant representation,
entered the chamber, and took the seats assigned to them. At a quarter
before one o’clock, the Judges of the Supreme Court entered, with the
venerable Chief-Justice Taney at their head, each exchanging salutes
with the new Vice-President, as they took their seats. At a quarter past
one o’clock, an unusual stir and excitement announced the coming of the
most important personage of the occasion. It was a relief to many to
know that he was safely within the building; and those who were
assembled in the hall regarded with the profoundest interest the
entrance of President Buchanan and the President-elect—the outgoing and
the incoming man. A procession was then formed which passed to the
platform erected for the ceremonies of the occasion, in the following
order: Marshal of the District of Columbia, Judges of the Supreme Courts
and Sergeant-at-Arms, Senate Committee of Arrangements, President of the
Senate, Senators, Diplomatic Corps, heads of departments, Governors of
States and such others as were in the chamber.
* * * * *
After the reading of the inaugural and the oath of office, administered
by the venerable Chief-Justice Taney, Mr. Lincoln was escorted back to
the White House, where Mr. Buchanan took leave of him, and where he
received the large number of persons who called to see him.
During the afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln took possession of the White House,
and her eventful life commenced in Washington.
The following days were spent with her sisters in happy bustle and
excitement, arranging for the first levee, and domesticating themselves
in their new abode.
It was held the 9th of March, and was the only one of the season. Her
personal appearance was described in these words:
“Mrs. Lincoln stood a few paces from her husband, assisted by her
sisters, Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Baker, together with two of her nieces,
and was attired in a rich pink moire-antique, pearl ornaments, and
flowers in her hair and hands. She is a pleasant-looking,
elegant-appearing lady, of perhaps forty, somewhat inclined to
stoutness, but withal fine-looking and self-possessed.” The levee was a
brilliant one, and many citizens and strangers, not accustomed to taking
part in the gay world about them, did themselves the pleasure of paying
their respects to the new President and his family. It was perhaps the
proudest occasion of Mrs. Lincoln’s life—a triumph she had often mused
upon and looked forward to as in store for her. The desire of her heart
was gratified, and she was mistress of the White House.
Mrs. Lincoln was a fortunate woman in that she secured the measure of
her ambition, but it was the impartial judgment of her friends that she
was not a happy person. The match was an unfortunate one, in that it
united two people of widely divergent tastes and characteristics. Mr.
Lincoln was utterly devoid of those social qualities which would have
made him agreeable in the drawing-room and in the presence of
fashionable people. His wife was fond of society, pleased with
excitement, and gratified to be among the gay and brilliant company
which she, by reason of her husband’s position, found herself in. She
would have made the White House, socially, what it was under other
administrations, but that was impossible. She found herself surrounded
on every side by people who were ready to exaggerate her shortcomings,
find fault with her deportment on all occasions and criticise her
performance of all her semi-official duties. The state dinners were
abandoned and she was said to be parsimonious. Weekly receptions were
substituted, and her entertainments were made the topic of remark. The
first two years of the administration of Mr. Lincoln were years of the
severest trial to him, and his gloom and absorption affected his family.
The death of Willie, the second son, occurred during this period of
anxiety, and for nearly two more years the President’s family were in
mourning. Mrs. Lincoln grieved long and deeply over her loss, and it was
not possible for either husband or wife to allude to him without showing
intense feeling. Mr. Lincoln rarely mentioned his name, and Mrs. Lincoln
never afterward entered the room where he died, or the Blue Room in
which his body lay. Several instances are told by Mr. Carpenter, the
artist, of the affection entertained by the President for his sons. On
one occasion while paying a visit to Commodore Porter at Fortress
Monroe, “Tad,” the youngest son, accompanied his father, and the latter,
noticing that the banks of the river were dotted with spring blossoms,
the President said, with the manner of one asking a special favor:
“Commodore, Tad is very fond of flowers; won’t you let a couple of your
men take a boat and go with him for an hour or two along shore, and
gather a few? it will be a great gratification to him.” On another
occasion, while he was at Fortress Monroe awaiting military operations
upon the Peninsula, he called his aide, who was writing in the adjoining
room, and read to him selections from “Hamlet” and “King John.” Reciting
the words where Constance bewails her imprisoned lost boy, Mr. Lincoln
said: “Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you
were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad
consciousness that it was not a reality? Just so I dream of my boy
Willie.” Overcome with emotion, he dropped his head on the table and
sobbed aloud.
A man who could thus feel towards his children may well be called an
excellent father: and such Mr. Lincoln was. He was, as a lady relative
of his who spent many months in his house said of him, “all that a
husband, father and neighbor should be: kind and affectionate to his
wife and child and very pleasant to all around him. Never,” said she,
“did I hear him utter an unkind word.”
Mr. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln’s law partner, who knew both husband and wife
well, summed up his estimate, based on long acquaintance, in a single
sentence: “All that I know ennobles both.” Mrs. Lincoln was a lonely
woman much of the time spent in the White House. The President had but
little leisure to devote to her, and the state of the country was such
that any display or gayety seemed out of keeping with the position she
occupied. In the summer of 1864, the political canvas absorbed
attention, and much of the season Mrs. Lincoln spent at the
watering-places. In the autumn she renewed the receptions, and after the
re-election of Mr. Lincoln the White House habitués saw promise of more
pleasure than had been enjoyed there. The New Year reception of 1865 was
the most brilliant entertainment given by the administration. Thousands
of people paid their respects to the President and Mrs. Lincoln, and
congratulated them on the confidence reposed in him by the people. The
war was drawing to a close, and the North was inclined to look upon the
Union as well-nigh restored. The inauguration was anxiously looked
forward to, and when it was safely over the people breathed freer, and
gave up the fear that had oppressed them.
There was general rejoicing in the land when the long anticipated peace
was declared. General Lee surrendered on the 9th of April, and the White
House was the scene of excitement from that time on to the close of the
President’s life. People thronged to congratulate him, and from all
parts of the nation telegrams poured in upon him. The 14th of April was
the fourth anniversary of the fall of Sumter, and on that evening the
President, Mrs. Lincoln, Major Rathbone, of the United States army, and
a daughter of Senator Harris attended, by invitation, the performance at
Ford’s Theatre. A large audience greeted the President as he took his
seat at the front of the private box. As he sat waiting for the curtain
to rise on the third act, looking pensive and sad, as was his wont, he
was shot from behind by John Wilkes Booth, the leader of a gang of
conspirators, who had carefully matured their plans to kill the
President and members of the Cabinet. The shot was a deadly one, and
total insensibility followed it.
Mrs. Lincoln, unnerved by the sudden and terrible event, was assisted
from the theatre to a house across the street, where her husband had
been taken. She remained beside him until death released him from all
pain. The return to the White House was a journey never to be forgotten
by those who witnessed it. The grief of Mrs. Lincoln and her children
was shared by a nation of people, but nothing could restore the dead, or
give back the husband and father who went out from their midst so well
only the evening before.
The afternoon of the day on which the President was shot he was out
driving with his wife, and she subsequently remarked that she never saw
him so supremely happy as on this occasion. When the carriage was
ordered she asked him if he would like any one to accompany them, and he
replied, “No; I prefer to ride by ourselves to-day.” During the ride his
wife spoke of his cheerfulness, and his answer was: “Well, I may feel
happy, Mary, for I consider this day the war has come to a close;” and
then added: “We must both be more cheerful in the future; between the
war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have been very miserable.”
His household was very miserable from that awful night.
The grief manifested by little Tad, the youngest son, on learning that
his father had been shot was touching to behold. For twenty-four hours
he was inconsolable. He frequently said that “his father was never happy
after he came here,” and asked questions of those about him as to their
belief in his being in heaven. He seemed resigned when this idea
fastened itself strongly in his mind, and in his simplicity he imagined
that his father’s happiness in heaven made the sun shine brightly.
Mrs. Lincoln never recovered from the shock. After the death of the
President she remained in the White House five weeks, too ill to depart.
The remains of her husband were borne back to Illinois, through towns,
villages and hamlets, bearing every outward token of woe, and the
cortege was met at each stopping-place by thousands of mourners who paid
their respects to the great dead. Impressive scenes occurred all along
the route, and the funeral pageant which met the remains at Springfield
was the largest ever assembled in the country. Robert Lincoln, the
eldest son, accompanied the remains, and after all honor had been paid
the body of the martyred father, he returned to remove his mother to
their future home.
The White House was like a public building during these sad weeks. The
officials were embarrassed under the extraordinary circumstances, and
the mansion was given over to servants. The soldiers on duty there had
no other authority than to keep out the rabble, and no one felt
justified in taking charge of the house while Mrs. Lincoln remained. The
new President, Mr. Johnson, disavowed any inclination to hasten her
departure; and when at last Mrs. Lincoln removed from the building, it
was in the condition to be expected after the hard usage it had received
subsequent to the tragedy.
Mrs. Lincoln left Washington accompanied by her sons, the youngest,
“Tad,” being her special care and protection.
The country learned with sincere regret of the death of this lad after
the return of the family to their western home. Mrs. Lincoln, after all
the excitement and the trials through which she had passed, was unable
to live quietly in any place, and travelled with the hope of recovering
her health. In 1868 she went abroad and remained a considerable time in
Germany. During her stay there she asked Congress for a pension, her
letter to the Vice-President bearing date of January 1st, 1869. The bill
was presented by Senator Morton, of Indiana, and was adversely reported
upon by the Committee on Pensions. It read as follows:
“The committee are aware the friends of the resolution expect to make a
permanent provision for the lady under the guise of a pension; but no
evidence has been furnished to them, or reasons assigned why such
provision should be made. If such was the intention, the committee
submit, the reference should have been made to some other committee, as
the Committee on Pensions, at least for some years past, have not
thought it compatible with their duty or the objects of their
appointment to recommend in any case the granting of any special
pension, or any pension of a greater amount than is allowed by some
general law. If they thought the amount so allowed too small, they would
feel it incumbent on them to report a general bill for the relief in all
similar cases. If the increase proposed was on account of extraordinary
military or naval services, the proper reference would be to the
military or naval committee. Under all these circumstances, the
committee have no alternative but to report against the passage of the
general resolutions.”
It was, however, granted her by a later Congress.
Broken in health and depressed in spirits, Mrs. Lincoln has lived in
various countries, much of her time for several years being spent in
France. She has not and will not recover from the catastrophe which
robbed the country of its President, and her of her husband. With him
died all her hopes of ambition, of home-life, and of rest and
companionship in old age.
In October, 1880, Mrs. Lincoln returned to the United States from France
on the steamer _Amerique_, and among her fellow-voyagers was Mlle.
Bernhardt, the French actress. The New York _Sun_, in describing the
arrival and reception of the latter thus incidentally mentions Mrs.
Lincoln:
“A throng was assembled on the dock and a greater throng was in the
street outside the gates. During the tedious process of working the ship
into her dock there was a great crush in that part of the vessel where
the gang plank was to be swung. Among the passengers who were here
gathered was an aged lady. She was dressed plainly and almost commonly.
There was a bad rent in her ample cloak. Her face was furrowed, and her
hair was streaked with white. This was the widow of Abraham Lincoln. She
was almost unnoticed. She had come alone across the ocean, but a nephew
met her at Quarantine. She has spent the last four years in the south of
France. When the gang plank was finally swung aboard, Mlle. Bernhardt
and her companions, including Mme. Columbier of the troupe, were the
first to descend. The fellow-voyagers of the actress pressed about her
to bid adieu, and a cheer was raised, which turned her head and provoked
an astonished smile, as she stepped upon the wharf. The gates were
besieged, and there was some difficulty in bringing in the carriage
which was to convey the actress to her hotel. She temporarily waited in
the freight office at the entrance to the wharf. Mrs. Lincoln, leaning
on the arm of her nephew, walked toward the gate. A policeman touched
the aged lady on the shoulder and bade her stand back. She retreated
with her nephew into the line of spectators, while Manager Abbey’s
carriage was slowly brought in. The Bernhardt was handed inside, and the
carriage made its way out through a mass of struggling ’longshoremen and
idlers who pressed about it and stared in at the open windows. After it,
went out the others who had been passengers on the _Amerique_, Mrs.
Lincoln among the rest.”
Mrs. Lincoln went at once to Springfield, where her sister resided, and
took up her abode with her, leading thenceforth a quiet and retired
life. Her only son Robert was appointed Secretary of War by President
Garfield. Some years previous to that event he had married the daughter
of ex-Senator Harlan, and has a family of children growing up about him.
XXII.
ELIZA McCARDLE JOHNSON.
In the autumn of 1824, the term of a fatherless boy’s apprenticeship
expired, and he entered the world rich only in energy, and a noble
ambition to provide for a widowed mother. But he was sensitive and
anxious to enlarge his facilities for an education, and his strong mind
grasped and analyzed the fact that to succeed he must form new ties, and
find a broader field of action. Tennessee was the land of promise which
attracted his attention, and accompanied by his mother, who justly
deserved the affection he bestowed upon her, he reached Greenville in
1826.
Young, aspiring, and ambitious, he was not long in making friends, and
among them a beautiful girl evinced her appreciation of his character,
by becoming his wife. Eliza McCardle was the only daughter of a widow,
whose father had been dead many years, and whose life had been spent in
her mountain home. When she was married, she had just reached her
seventeenth year, and her husband was not yet twenty-one.
Education in those days did not comprehend and embrace the scientific
accomplishments it does now, but a naturally gifted mind, endowed with
much common sense, received a broad basis for future development. She
was well versed in the usual branches of instruction, and possessed, in
an extraordinary degree, that beauty of face and form which rendered her
mother one of the most beautiful of women.
[Illustration:
MRS. ANDREW JOHNSON.
]
It is a mistaken idea that she taught her husband his letters; for in
the dim shadows of the workshop at Raleigh, after the toil of the day
was complete, he had mastered the alphabet and made himself generally
acquainted with the construction of words and sentences. The incentive
to acquire mental attainment was certainly enhanced when he felt the
superiority of her acquirements, and from that time his heroic nature
began to discover itself. In the silent watches of the night, while
sleep rested upon the village, the youthful couple studied together; she
ofttimes reading as he completed the weary task before him, oftener
still bending over him to guide his hand in writing.
He never had the benefit of one day’s school routine in his life, yet he
acquired by perseverance the benefits denied by poverty. What a
contemplation it must have been to those mothers who watched over their
children as they struggled together! Let time in its flight transport us
back to those years, and see what a scene was being then enacted there.
In that obscure village in the mountains, three strong, yet
tender-hearted women watched over and cherished the budding genius of
the future statesman. History, in preserving its record of the life and
services of the seventeenth President of the United States, rears to
them a noble tribute of their faithfulness.
The young wife, thrifty and industrious all day, worked patiently and
hopefully as night brought her pupil again to his studies, and
punctually completed her womanly duties that she might be ready for the
never-varying rule of their lives. Much of latent powers he owed to her
indefatigable zeal and encouragement, and he never forgot those evening
hours years ago when the scintillations of natural genius first began to
dawn, which ultimately converted the tailor boy into the Senator, and
subsequently into the President of his country.
Year after year she watched him as he rose step by step, and always as
willing and earnest as when in life’s bright morn they were married.
The later years of Mrs. Johnson’s life were crowned with the honors her
husband’s successes had won, but the story of her younger days is
fraught with most interest to all who can appreciate true worth and
genuine greatness of soul.
In her girlhood she was the purest type of a Southern beauty, and like
her mother was very graceful and agreeable in her manners. I have heard
persons say that her mother was the handsomest lady in all that region
of country, and her old neighbors stoutly maintained that Mrs. Johnson
was the image of her. Her extreme modesty denied the imputation that she
was the belle of the county.
While their means increased as time passed, and the caroling of their
little children gladdened their home, Mr. Johnson received his first
substantial proof of the confidence of the community in which he lived
in his election as “alderman.” How intense must have been the joy of the
good wife as she saw her pupil progressing in a career he was so well
fitted to occupy!
At this time their residence was situated on a hill just out of
Greenville, simple and plain in its surroundings, yet the resort of the
young people of the village. The college boys, as they passed to and fro
on errands, always stopped to enjoy a chat with their “Demosthenes,” and
were ever welcomed by the genial, frank manners of the gentle wife.
Fresh laurels crowned the alderman’s brow when he was chosen Mayor, and
for three terms he filled the position with credit, winning for himself
an enviable reputation for honest deeds and correct principles.
Little has been written of Mrs. Johnson, mainly from the fact that she
always opposed any publicity being given to her private life, and from
the reluctance of her friends to pain her by acceding to the
oft-repeated requests of persons for sketches of her. In a conversation
held with her while she was in the White House, she remarked “that her
life had been spent at home, caring for her children, and practising the
economy rendered necessary by her husband’s small fortune.”
An impartial writer cannot be swayed by such natural and creditable
sentiments, nor is it just that a woman who was the means of advancing
her husband’s interests so materially, and who occupied the position she
did, should be silently passed by. She deserved, as she received from
all who were fortunate enough to know her, the highest encomiums; for by
her unwearying efforts she was a stepping-stone to her husband. Patient
and forbearing she was universally liked, and if she had an enemy it was
from no fault of hers, nor did she number any among the acquaintances of
a lifetime.
Like Mr. Johnson she had very few living relatives; her children having
neither aunts nor uncles, and being deprived of both grandmothers while
they still were young. Mrs. Johnson’s mother died in April, 1854, and
his parent lived until February, 1856; each having been the object of
his tenderest care, and living to see him holding the highest position
his native State could bestow. There was not two years’ difference in
the deaths of these two mothers, and it was the unspeakable happiness of
their children to know that as the wick burned low, and the lamp of time
went out, all that peace and plenty could devise for their happiness
they received, and their departure from earth was rendered calmly serene
by the assurance that their work was well done and finished.
When the civil war, which snapped the cords of so many old persons’
lives and hurried them to premature graves, sounded its dread tocsin
through East Tennessee, it was a source of mournful satisfaction to know
that those two aged mothers lay unconscious of the approaching conflict
which was to bathe that section of the State in blood. The tall grass
grew unharmed, and no impious hand desecrated the resting-place of
departed virtue.
During the meetings of the Legislature to which Mr. Johnson was
repeatedly called, Mrs. Johnson remained at Greenville; and while he
sought honors and support away from home, she found compensation for his
prolonged absence in the knowledge that she best promoted his interest
when she lived within their still slender means. Her children received
the benefit of her ripe, matured experience, until one by one they left
their home; two to marry and dwell near her, and the youngest to be a
comfort in her days of suffering. Her home in Greenville was thus
described in 1865: “Just down there, at the base of this hill, stands a
small brick building with a back porch, and around it the necessary
fixtures. It stands on the corner of the square, near where the
mill-race passes under the street on its way down to the little mill.
That is the first house Andrew Johnson ever owned. It now belongs to
another person. Almost directly opposite the mill, whose large wheel is
still moving, but whose motion is scarcely perceptible, you will see a
rather humble, old-fashioned-looking, two-story brick house, standing
near the south end of Main street. It has but one entrance from the
street. In front of it stand three or four small shade trees. The fences
of the lot and windows of the house show evident signs of dilapidation,
the consequences of rebellion and of rebel rule. Like many other windows
in the South, a number of panes of glass are broken out and their places
supplied with paper. Glass could not be obtained in the Confederacy. As
you pass along the pavement on Main street, by looking into the lot you
will see several young apple trees, and in the spaces between two of
them are potatoes growing. In the rear of the kitchen stands a small
aspen shade-tree, and down there in the lower end of the lot is a
grape-vine trained upon a trellis, forming a pleasant bower. Scattered
over the lot are a number of rose, currant, and gooseberry bushes. At
the lower end of the lot, and just outside, stand two large weeping
willows, and under their shade is a very beautiful spring. This is the
residence of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States. Up the
street stands his former tailor shop, with the old sign still on it. And
in an old store-room up the street are the remains of his library. At
present, it consists principally of law books and public documents, most
of his valuable books having been destroyed by the rebel soldiers.”
In the spring of “’61,” Mrs. Johnson spent two months in Washington with
her husband, then a Senator, but failing health compelled her early
return to Tennessee. Long and stormy were the seasons which passed
before she again met Mr. Johnson, and how changed were all things when
they resumed the broken thread of separation, after an interval of
nearly two years!
At her home quietly attending to the duties of life, and cheered by the
frequent visits of her children, she was startled one bright morning by
the following summons:
“HEAD-QUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF EAST TENNESSEE,}
“OFFICE PROVOST-MARSHAL, _April 24th, 1862_.}
“MRS. ANDREW JOHNSON, Greenville:
“Dear Madam:—By Major-General E. Kirby Smith I am directed to
respectfully require that you and your family pass beyond the
Confederate States’ line (through Nashville, if you please) in
thirty-six hours from this date.
“Passports will be granted you at this office.
“Very respectfully,
“W. M. CHURCHWELL,
“Colonel and Provost-Marshal.”
This was an impossibility, both on account of her very poor health, and
the unsettled state of her affairs. Nor did she know where to go; rumors
reached her of the murder of Mr. Johnson in Kentucky, and again at
Nashville; then again she would hear that he had not left Washington.
She knew not what to do, and accordingly wrote to the authorities for
more time to decide on some definite plan.
The military movements delayed the execution of the next order sent her,
and the continued illness of Mrs. Johnson distressed her children, who
knew that a change of residence would sooner or later become necessary.
All the summer she remained in Greenville, occasionally visiting her
daughters, and hoping daily to hear of her husband. September came, and
knowing she would be compelled to leave East Tennessee, she applied to
the authorities for permission to cross the lines, accompanied by her
children and her son-in-law, Mr. Stover.
Finally, after numerous endeavors, the cavalcade set out. A few miles
out from town they were overtaken by an order to return.