“You look very pretty,” I said. “It will all shake off.” Wherewith Jane

proceeded to shake, to wash her face, and brush her curls over her

fingers. I helped her re-drape her lace shawl, and was repaid a moment

later by her graceful _posé_ in the front seat of the Senate Gallery,

her hand in Jonathan’s. It was refreshing, in the face of such a

conglomeration of doubtful wisdom, to see two happy idiots, if they did

not know it. The city is full of Janes and Jonathans.

The Capitol grounds are lovely as the gardens of the blessed, these

hours.

The armies of violets which swarmed its green slopes a month ago are

gone, and the dandelions have gone up higher, and are now sailing all

around us through the deep, still air. There is a ripple in the grass

that invites the early mower. The fountains toss their spray into the

very hearts of the old trees that bend above them, and on the easy seats

beneath their shadow, sit black and white, old and young, taking rest.

These grounds, perfect in themselves, utter but one reproach to the men

legislating within yonder walls, and that, because they are not larger

and meet in proportion to the august Capitol which they encircle. We

pass through them out into Pennsylvania avenue—this great and yet to be

fulfilled expectation. Broadway cannot compare with it in magnificent

proportions. It is as wide as two Broadways, and at this hour of the

afternoon its turn-outs are metropolitan. Nevertheless, judged by its

trees and houses, it has a rural, second-rate look. Though here and

there a lonesome building shoots up above its fellows, its average shops

are shabby and small, and do not compare favorably with those of Third

avenue in New York. The idealistic Statesmen of Washington and

Jefferson’s time modelled it to repeat the _Unter den Lindens_ of

Berlin. As a result, the ample rows of Lombardy poplars are defunct, and

the Gradgrind politicians of to-day have voted to dump down a railroad

“depot” in its very centre, because Mr. Thomas Scott wants it, and

because they have free railroad-passes, and a few other little

perquisites in their pockets. This, of course, is very shocking to say;

but then it is much more shocking to be true. Excepting Mr. Sumner, Mr.

Morrill, Mr. Thurman and a few others, who really care for the future of

Washington and who love this Capital, the remainder would, for a

sufficient price, sell out the entire city, Capitol and all, to

monopolies and corporations. But this broad thoroughfare, stretching

straight for a mile between Treasury and Capitol, with its double drive,

smooth as a floor, its borders of bloom, its gay promenades and flashing

turn-outs has a certain splendor of its own, of which no monopoly can

wholly rob it.

Here is the Grant carriage, with its plain brown linings, and in it Mrs.

Grant and her father. A light buggy flies past, drawn by superb horses,

driven by a single occupant. He is the President—small, slight, erect,

smoking a cigar. The courtly equipages of the Peruvian, Argentine,

Turkish and English Ministers, with liveried outriders and beautiful

women occupants, with the no less elegant establishments of American

Senators, Members and citizens, swell the gay cavalcade on this truly

splendid Corso.

Standing on the curb-stone, gazing on it with an expression which would

have made Dickens wild till he had reproduced it, stands Beau Hickman,

long a character of Washington. He is an old man, long and lean, with a

face corrugated like a wizened apple and a complexion like parchment or

an Egyptian mummy. His aspect is a strange compound of gentility and

meanness. His stove-pipe hat, which evidently has survived many a

battering, is carefully brushed; his standing collar is very stiff and

very high. His vest is greyish white, his coat is dingy and shiny. His

faded pantaloons have been darned, and need darning again. His toes are

peering through his shoes, and they are down at the heels; yet he

carries a foppish cane and wears his hat in a rakish manner. Beau

Hickman was born a Virginia gentleman, insomuch as he still manages to

live without labor, it being the pride of his heart that he never did

anything useful in his life. He ekes out a wretched existence by

filching small sums from friends and strangers for telling stories and

relating experiences, for which he invariably demands a drink or a

supper. One of the most miserable objects I ever beheld is Beau Hickman

hungry, hobbling through the Senate restaurant, gazing at one table and

then at another, at the comfortable people sitting by them, filling

their stomachs, not one alas! asking him to partake.

Here with a sweep and swing, with head thrown back, and arms at rest,

comes a man as supremely indifferent to all this show as the other is

abjectly enthralled by it. This man, slowly swinging down the Avenue, is

a “cosmos” in himself. Locks profuse and white, eyes big and blue,

cheeks ruddy, throat bare, wide collar turned back, slouched felt hat

punched in, a perfect lion apparently in muscle and vitality—this is

Walt Whitman. Every sunshiny day he “loafs” and invites his soul on the

Avenue, and there are other poets who do likewise. Here sometimes may be

seen John James Piatt, now Librarian of the House of Representatives,

with his blonde hair and brown-eyed wife, who is quite as much a poet as

he is; and John Burrough the Thoreau of the Treasury Department, gentle

as one of his own birds; and William O’Connor whose poetical fires burn

undimmed within the same dim old walls; and, clad in mourning, Harriet

Prescott Spofford, sweet poet and sweeter woman. Here of old were seen

the gigantic forms of Charles Sumner and of Chief Justice Chase. When

the Supreme Court is in session, at a certain hour, a company of immense

gentlemen doff their long black silk gowns, and slowly and ponderously

wend their way along the Avenue, in mild, dignified pursuit of exercise

and dinner. Here, before the sun grows too hot, may be seen the

moustached, gesticulating, voluble young _attachés_ of the foreign

embassies with the pretty girls of the West End, who they like to flirt

with but rarely marry—which is fortunate for the girls.

I cannot divorce myself long enough from this divine day to write about

men. There is not a man on the face of the earth that would not be

tiresome if one had to think of him, to the exclusion of this weather.

To think that there are any to be written about when I want to sit in

the sun and do nothing, stirs up a perfect rumpus between desire and

duty. I am not so fond of my duty that I always spell it with a big “D,”

or in every emergency put it foremost. I would like to put it out of

sight some times. Wouldn’t you? But then I cannot. “It’s too many for

me,” as poor Tulliver said of his enemy. It won’t go out of sight, much

less stay there. Something clever might have come to me about tedious

men if I had not reached Lafayette Square this morning. There is that in

this new bloom so tender, so unsullied, which makes politicians seem

paltry, and all their outcry a mockery and an impertinence. To be sure,

these green arcades in their outer bound touch another world. Beyond,

and above them, floats the flag on the Arlington House. Below, the

windows of Charles Sumner’s home hint of art and beauty within. The

abodes of famous men and of beautiful women encircle all the square. On

one side the white cornices of the Executive Mansion peer above the

trees.

Almost within call are men and women whose names suggest histories and

prophecies, all the tangled phenomena of individual life. Yet how easy

to forget them all on these seats, which Gen. Babcock has made so

restful—thank him. The long summer wave in the May grass; the low,

swaying boughs, with their deep, mysterious murmur, that seems instinct

with human pleading; the tender plaint of infant leaves; the music of

birds; the depth of sky; the balm, the bloom, the virginity, the peace,

the consciousness of life, new yet illimitable, are all here, just as

perfectly as they are yonder in God’s solitude, untouched of man. If you

need help to love a tree read the diary of Maurice de Guerin. No one

else, not even Thoreau, (whose nature lacked in depth and breadth of

tenderness perhaps in the deepest spiritual insight,) ever came so near

or drew forth with such deep feeling the very soul of inanimate Nature.

He felt the soul of the tree, heard it in the moaning of its voice as it

stood with its roots bound in the earth and its arms outstretched with a

never-ceasing sigh towards infinity. But why do I speak of him? He lived

and died and never saw Washington.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FAIR WASHINGTON—A RAMBLE IN EARLY SPRING.

Washington Weather—Sky Scenery—Professor Tyndall Expresses an

Opinion—A Picture of Beauty—“A City of Enchantment”—“My Own

Washington”—Prejudiced Views—Birds of Rock Creek—The Parsonage—A

Scene of Tranquil Beauty—A Washington May—Charms of the

Season—Mowers at Work—The Public Parks—Frolics of the Little

Ones—Strawberry Festivals—“Flower Gathering.”

The climate of Washington has a villainous reputation, and at certain

times and seasons it deserves it Yet it tantalizes us with days which

prelude Paradise. Under their azure arch, through their beguiling air,

with reluctant steps we enter winter—the oozy, clammy, coughing winter,

which waits us just the other side of the gate of January. But they

linger long—the preluding days. They seem reluctant to yield us to our

impending foes—society and wet weather.

These are the days of days, swathed in masses of lights and color

unfathomable. It is one of the wonders of Washington too rarely

noted—its sky-scenery. So few people take the trouble to look at the sky

save to see if “it looks like rain.” All that New York can afford to

give to tired mortals is a scanty slice of light through which to let a

glimpse of glory down upon its palaces and catacombs of humanity. But

across these banding hills, this broad amphitheatre of space, mass and

sweep on, in the empyrean, wave on wave of polarized light, with a

delicacy of tint, a depth of hue, an immensity of volume, which no words

can portray. This vast sea of color (in its deeps of orange, purple and

gold, which now transfigure the twilight sky, till the Virginia hills

look like open gates to the city of gold) Professor Tyndall, in one of

his lectures on light, in this city, said that he had never seen

approached on the other side of the Atlantic, save by the intense

refractions of light on the Alpine glaciers.

In the autumnal days, and in the advancing spring, through the blue

spaces steals a tremulous, ever hovering purple, like opaline doves’

necks’ lustre, penetrating all the atmosphere like the purple haze above

the hills of Rome, till the yellow walls of Arlington House, and the

snowy masses of the Capitol seem actually to shimmer through waves of

amethystine mist. Under such a light, some morning, spring suddenly

spreads forth its whole panoply, with a vividness of green, a

prodigality of foliage never seen in a more northern latitude. One wide

wilderness of unbroken bloom sends up its fragrance through waves of

purple yellow and azure light, and then, till the day when, without

warning, summer suddenly transmutes all into molten brass, Washington in

light and color, in bloom and fragrance, is a city of enchantment.

Thus I have a Washington of my own, dear friends. I never find it till

some March day, when in walking down the Capitol grounds I discover that

the shining runlets on either side of the Avenue have broken loose and

are racing free through their sluices of stone, and that all the

crocuses in the broad beds under the trees are pushing their little

yellow noses out of the ground. To be sure, they almost always draw them

back again to get them out of the snow which falls after; nevertheless

on that day I find my Washington. Then it is, that just as the grey

lenten veil has covered and extinguished the gay season of the “German,”

we come unaware upon another Washington, which I vainly essay to portray

for you. My season is not fashionable. No portrayer of costumes is

“liberally paid” by “the most enterprising of publishers” to describe

the transcendent suit which decks this season of mine. _My_ Washington

has no chronicler. The scribes are all so busy abusing the Capitol,

depicting its follies and its crimes, that, though they have eyes, they

see not, and ears, they hear not, the sights and sounds of this other

Washington—fair Washington, outlying, above and beyond all.

If I could only paint for you the fathomless purples in which the hills

enfold themselves, the wide glimmering rosy spaces, reaching on and on;

or tell you of the nations of birds in the Rock Creek woods, which have

made there a supreme haunt for naturalists; of its nations of flowers,

which beckon and nod from the Rock Creek and Piney Branch roads; the

anemones, the arbutus, the honeysuckle, the laurel, the violets, the

innocents, covering wide acres with color and perfume; of the shy Rock

Creek parsonage, built of brick brought from England more than a century

ago, above whose trees the Capitol gleams, yet within whose porch you

seem shut in peace away from this loud world, with the bees droning in

the still warm air, and humming-birds drinking from the lilac cups; with

the gentle Christian hearts which abide beneath its roof and minister

beneath the shadow of its venerable church; if I could paint all these

as they are, you would care for my Washington, but as I cannot, I fear

that you never will.

A Washington May is the June of the north, with a pomp of color, an

exuberance of foliage, an allurement of atmosphere which a northern June

has not.

It is May now. All the ugly outlines and shabby old houses are softened

and covered with beneficent foliage. Already the mowers are at work in

the Capitol grounds and in the little public parks, and the sweetness of

the slain grass pervades the atmosphere. The children are everywhere

pretty things. Washington is full of them, tumbling amid the flowers and

in the dirt. It is May, yet June, impatient, has reached across her

sister, dropping her roses everywhere. Washington is one vast garden of

roses. It is the hour of strawberry festivals and of

FLOWER GATHERING.

Miles away from the dusty town,

Out in the beautiful June-time weather,

The wind of the south is rippling down,

And over the purple hills of heather.

Dim, in the distance, the city walls

Rise, like the walls of a dreary prison;

On the healing sward where the sunshine falls,

We stand ’mid the flowery folk arisen.

We watch their innocent eyelids ope,

And below we hear the river flowing;

While wilting sweet on the upland slope

Lies the grass of the early mowing.

On through the bees and butterflies,

The grass and the flowers, the hours are walking;

And we seem to catch their low replies

To the flowing waters forever talking.

We listen and question the fathomless space,

In the deeps of its emerald silence lying,

While we watch the leaves turning face to face,

And their lovers—the winds—wooing and sighing.

And still, like a dream, fades the dusty town,

And dumb on our ear dies its distant murmur;

But the speech, in the stilly air steals down,

And the fainting heart grows calmer and firmer.

Hearts that ache with a wounding smart,

Wander out from the heedless city;

The human yearning on Nature’s heart

Is a thing that God in his love must pity.

Sorrow and sin are in the mart,

And greed and gain killing tender feeling;

Here we draw close to the god Pan’s heart,

And feel on _our_ hearts his touch of healing.

Often we ask, is there room to grow

’Neath the bands of the earth, so hard and binding?

The wisdom of life we are fain to know;

Does it ever pay for the pain of finding?

So, far away from the dissonant town,

Out in the marvellous June-time weather,

We climb the hills to their blossoming crown,

And rest and gather our flowers together.

Lo! we gather our flowers to-day,

We are like thee, O restless river—

We loiter for play on our endless way—

While life, our life, rolls on forever.

CHAPTER XIX.

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE—SHADOWS OF THE PAST.

Haunted Houses—Shadows of the Past—Touching Memories—The Little Angels

Born There—Building of the Presidential Mansion—A State of

Perpetual Dampness—Dingy Aspect of a Monarch’s Palace—Outside the

White House—A Peep Inside the Mansion—The Emperor of Japan

Supersedes the Punch-Bowl—The Unfinished “Banqueting Hall”—Glories

of a _Levée_—Magnificent Hospitalities—A Comfortable

Dining-Room—Interesting Labors of Martha Patterson—A Lady of

Taste—An American “Baronial Hall”—The Furniture of Another

Generation—A Valuable Steward—A Professor of Gastronomy—Paying the

Professor and Providing the Dinner—Feeding the Celebrities—Mrs.

Lincoln’s Unpopular Innovations—Fifteen Hundred Dollars for a

Dinner—How Prince Arthur, of England, was Entertained—Domestic

Economy—“Not Enough Silver”—A Tasty Soup—The Recipe for an

Aristocratic Stew—Having a “Nice Time”—Mrs. Franklin Pierce

Horrified—“Going a Fishing on Sundays”—Hatred of Flummery—An

Admirer of Pork and Beans and Slap-jacks—A Presidential

Reception—Ready for the Festival—“Such a Bore!”—Splendor,

Weariness, and Indigestion—Paying the Penalty—In the

Conservatory—Domestic Arrangements—The Library—Statue of

Jefferson—Pleasant Views—Reminiscence of Abraham Lincoln.

“All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.”

“There are more guests at table, than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.”

These lines were never truer of any human habitation than of the White

House at Washington.

The Nation’s House! The procession of families which the people have

sent to inhabit it, in moving on to make place for others, have left

memories behind which haunt these great rooms and fill staircase,

alcove, and pictorial space with historic recollections. Here human life

has been lived, enjoyed, suffered and resigned, just as it is lived

every day in any house wherein human beings are born, wherein they live

and die. Within its walls children have first opened their eyes upon

this tantalizing life, and here children have died, leaving father and

mother desolate amid all the pomp of place and state. In this room the

hero Taylor laid his earthly burdens and honors down; here, by this

eastern window, stood a girl-bride crowned with beautiful youth and

marriage flowers. In this east room the supreme martyr of freedom,

white, still and cold, received the nation who wept at his feet; in this

dim chamber a woman-saint read her Bible and communed with God, while

pardon crokers crept into secret door-ways, and passion and treason ran

riot in the great rooms which she never entered.

The first child born in the White House was the grandson of

Jefferson—James Madison Randolph; and the last child who died here was

“Willie” Lincoln. Here, also, President Harrison, President Taylor, and

Mrs. Tyler passed through death unto life.

[Illustration:

THE RED ROOM.

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON.

]

The corner stone of the President’s house was laid October 13, 1792. We

have seen how anxious Jefferson was that it should be modelled after

some famous modern palace of Europe. The one, at last selected, was the

country house of the Duke of Leinster. It was designed by James Hoban,

and open, though not ready for occupancy, in the summer of 1800. The

house is built of porous Virginia freestone, which accounts for the fact

of its perpetual dampness, and the more expensive fact that no amount of

money and white-lead can make it a dry and desirable abode. And yet it

is always pleasant and restful to the sight when the eyes fall upon its

Ionic columns, peering pure and softened through the sea of greenery

which sways and dips around it. One front alone of Buckingham Palace,

cost more than the entire White House. Yet, to behold it, the palace is

a black and ugly pile, and in simplicity and purity of outline bears no

comparison with the Nation’s White House. This is 170 feet broad and 86

feet deep. Its north front has a lofty portico with four Ionic columns

and a projecting screen of three columns. Between these columns pass the

carriages which form a perpetual line moving on and round forever

through the gay season. The house is three high stories, with the

rusticated basement which reaches below the Ionic ordonnance.

The portico opens upon a spacious hall forty by fifty feet. It is

divided by a row of Ionic columns, through which we pass to the

reception-room opposite. This is the Red Room. Its light is dim and

rosy. Its form is elliptical, and its bow window in the rear looks out

on the park and away to the Potomac, as do the windows of all the corner

parlors. In this room the President receives foreign ministers and the

officers of the republic. The space over the marble mantel is entirely

occupied with a life size painting of President Grant and his family. We

pass through the Red Room into the Blue Room. All is cool azure here.

The chairs, the sofas, the carpet, the paper on the wall, all are tinged

with the celestial hue, flushed here and there with a tint of rose. In

the Blue Room the President’s wife holds her morning receptions. Here,

with the daylight excluded, soft rays falling from the chandelier above,

flowers in mounds and vases everywhere pouring out fragrance, surrounded

by a group of ladies, chosen and invited to “assist,” decked in jewels

and costly raiment. One day of each week of the season, from three to

five P. M., the President’s wife receives her critic—the public.

The Blue Room opens into the Green Room, the most cosy and home-like of

all the public parlors. It is vividly emerald, softly malachite, all

touched and gleaming with gold. A large mirror covers the space above

the mantel. Beside vases in the centre of the marble mantel-piece stands

an exquisite clock of ebony and malachite; tall vases filled with fresh

flowers rise from the carpet. On the centre table used to stand the

immense punch-bowl, presented to the White House by the Emperor of

Japan. It is now supplanted by a statue in bronze. The furniture is of

rose-wood, cushioned with brocatelle of green and gold, while the same

in heavy hangings are looped back from the lace curtains on the windows.

From the Green Room we enter the famous East Room, extending the entire

eastern side of the house. It is eighty-six feet long, forty feet wide,

and twenty-eight feet high. Three immense chandeliers hang from the

ceiling. It has already taken on the mellowness, not of age but of use,

and in aspect bears no kin to the unfinished “Banqueting Hall” in which

Mrs. Adams dried the family linen, and Mrs. Monroe’s little daughters

played. Now, on a _levée_ night, the East Room presents a sight never to

be forgotten. The enormous chandeliers seem to pour the splendor of noon

upon the glittering and moving host below. Satins, velvets, diamonds,

plumes and laces rise and fall, and sway beside the gleaming gold lace

of American officers, and the jewelled decorations of Foreign ministers.

Eight mirrors repeat the glory of the sights. Eight Presidents, from

their golden frames on the wall, seem to gaze out of the past upon the

feverish splendor of a new generation. The most exquisite carpet ever on

the East Room was a velvet one, chosen by Mrs. Lincoln. Its ground was

of pale sea green, and in effect looked as if ocean, in gleaming and

transparent waves, were tossing roses at your feet.

Coming back to the Red Room, we pass into a narrow corridor, at the

opposite end from which, on either side, open the family and state

dining-room. The state dining-room is a staid and stately apartment,

touched equally with new grace and old time grandeur. Martha Patterson,

the daughter of President Johnson, redeemed it from wreck, and instead

of ruin, adorned it with the harmony of her own artistic nature. The

neutral-tinted walls and carpet, the green satin damask hangings on the

windows, and covering of the quaint furniture, are all her choice. An

antique clock and grim candlesticks, from the Madison reign, stand

stiffly on the marble mantels. With the exception of a pair of modern

sideboards, the furniture of this “baronial hall,” solid and sombre, has

descended from the eras of Washington and Jefferson.

The state dining-room, and its state dinners, are controlled entirely by

“Steward Melah, the silver-voiced Italian,” who was graduated from the

Everett House, the Astor House, and the St. Charles, New Orleans, to the

higher estate of superintending “goodies” for the palates of

Diplomatists, Princes, and Members of Congress in the White House at

Washington. The government pays Professor Melah for his services, but

the President pays for the dinners, and he is expected to continue

giving them till every foreign dignitary and home functionary, from the

highest Diplomat to the most obscure Member of Congress, is invited.

Mrs. Lincoln’s presuming to abolish the time-honored but costly

state-dinner of the White House, increased her personal unpopularity to

an intense degree.

The average state-dinner costs about seven hundred dollars, the special

state dinner may cost fifteen hundred dollars. The one given to Prince

Arthur, of England, cost that sum, without including the wines and other

beverages. The dinner proper consisted of twenty-nine courses. The

President puts a sum of money into the hands of the steward, and his

expenditure is supposed to be in proportion to the official rank and

grandeur of the invited guests. It is said that Professor Melah wrings

his hands in distress when he is about to set the State table for a

supreme occasion, and exclaims to the lady of the White House, who may

be looking on: “Why Madam, there is not silver enough in the White House

to set a respectable free-lunch table.”

At a state dinner the table is always profusely decorated with flowers,

and the “first course” is invariably a soup of French vegetables, which

Miss Grundy says has “never been equalled by any other soup, foreign or

domestic.” “It is said to be a little smoother than peacock’s brains,

but not quite so exquisitely flavored as a dish of nightingales’

tongues; and Professor Melah is the only man in the nation who holds in

his hands the receipt for this aristocratic stew.” No general

conversation prevails at the state dinner. If the lady and gentleman

elected to go in together happen to be agreeable to each other, they

have a “nice time.” If not, they have a stiff and tiresome one.

Exquisite _finesse_ is needed to fitly pair these mentally incongruous

diners. Mike Walsh once horrified the shrinking and saintly Mrs.

Franklin Pierce at a state-dinner by the story of his going “a fishing

on Sunday;” while Hon. Mr. Mudsill, of Mudtown, has been known to regale

dainty Madame Mimosa, of Mignonnette Manor, between the courses, with

his hatred of flummeries and French dishes, and his devotion to pork and

beans and slapjacks.

The President and his wife receive the guests in the Red Room at seven

o’clock. Mrs. President is always attired in full evening dress, with

laces and jewels, and her lady guests likewise, while each gentleman

rejoices in a swallow-tail, white or tinted gloves, and white necktie.

The President leads the way to the state-table with the wife of the

senator the oldest in office, while Mrs. President brings up the rear of

the small procession with the senatorial husband of the President’s lady

companion. Six wine glasses and a _bouquet_ of flowers garnish each

plate. From twelve to thirty courses are served, and the middle of the

feast is marked by the serving of frozen punch. After hours of sitting,

serving and eating, the procession returns to the Red Room in the order

that it left it. Then, after a few moments of conversation, it

disperses,—its honored individuals more than once heard to say in

private, “Such a bore.” Yet what an ado they would make if not invited

to discover for themselves the tiresome splendor and fit of indigestion

attendant upon a state-dinner.

Leaving the state dining-room behind, we pass through the western wing

into the conservatory, one of the largest in the country. It is a

favorite resort for lady and gentlemen promenaders on reception days,

lined, as it is, on either side with the bloom and fragrance of rare

exotics. A large aquarium stands at one end, and a short passage and

flights of steps lead down to a greenhouse and grapery filled with

flowers and luscious fruit. Three other greenhouses flourish in the

gardens west of the mansion.

The White House contains thirty-one rooms. Excepting the family

dining-room, every one on the first floor is devoted to state purposes.

The basement contains eleven rooms, used as kitchens, pantries and

butler’s rooms. These are open, spacious, comfortable and cheerful to

the sight. On the second floor, the six rooms of the north front are

used as chambers by the Presidential family. The south front has seven

rooms—the ante-chamber, audience room, cabinet room, private office of

the president, and the ladies’ parlors. The ladies’ or private parlor is

furnished with ebony, covered with blue satin, with hangings of blue

satin and lace. The daughter of the house has a blue boudoir lined with

mirrors—its pale blue carpet strewn with rose-buds. The state bedroom of

this floor is a grand apartment, furnished with rose-wood and crimson

satin; its walls hang with purple and gold. The bedstead is high,

massive, carved and canopied, its damask curtains hanging from a gilded

hoop near the ceiling. Before the bed lie cushions for the feet; against

the walls stand two stately wardrobes, with full length mirrors lining

their doors, while arm-chairs and couches, deeply cushioned, are

scattered over the velvet carpet. Its articles of furniture are stained

with purple devices—national, historical scenes, and have for their arms

the American Eagle. The ceiling is profusely frescoed, and hung with a

central chandelier, while in the winter a coal fire, under the marble

mantle, suffuses the sumptuous room with a genial glow. One of the

curiosities of the chamber is a cigar-case, inlaid with pearls and

mosaics of wood from China, presented to President Grant by Captain

Ammon, of the United States Navy.

[Illustration:

THE CONSERVATORY.

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON.

]

The Secretaries’ room, on this floor, is a large airy apartment, with

mahogany furniture, set there in Martin Van Buren’s time, with green

curtains, twenty-five years old, on the windows. The President’s

business and reception-room is a large apartment, looking out on the

southern grounds, and carpeted with crimson and white. A large black

walnut table, surrounded with chairs, stands in the centre of the room.

It is furnished with black walnut desks and sofas. On the mantel stands

a clock which tells the time of day and the day of the month, and which

is a thermometer and barometer besides. The walls are high, and frescoed

on a yellow ground tint. Tapestry and lace curtains are looped back from

the windows, which look down upon the lovely southern grounds, and to

the river, gleaming at intervals through the foliage beyond.

The stateliest room on this floor is the library, used in Mrs. John

Adams’ time as a reception-room, furnished then in crimson. It was

almost bookless till Mr. Filmore’s administration, when it was fitted up

as a library, and many books were added during the administration of

President Buchanan. It is now lined with heavy mahogany book-cases,

finished with solid oak, covered with maroon. It is sometimes used by

the President as an official reception-room, and sometimes as an evening

lounging-place for the Presidential family and their guests.

On the north lawn of the President’s house, which in Jefferson’s time

was a barren, stony, unfenced waste, under the green arcade made by

glorious trees, now stands a bronze statue of Jefferson. It was

presented to the government by Captain Levy, of the United States’ army,

who in 1840 owned Monticello.

From the great portico, we look beyond this statue, across Pennsylvania

avenue, to an equestrian image of Jackson, rearing frantically and

preposterously in the centre of Lafayette square. Lovely Lafayette

square, laid out by Downing—perfect in blending tint and outline, flower

of mimic parks! Beyond its trees we catch a glimpse of its encircling

historic houses, and of the brown ivy-hung walls of St. John’s venerable

church, its tiny and old time tower showing so picturesquely against the

evening sky.

The avenue of lofty trees on the west side of the President’s

house—beneath whose shade, in the dimness of the night, Lincoln used to

take his solitary walk, and carry his heavy heart to the War

Department—were planted by John Quincy Adams. No swelling tree-crowned

knolls, no grassy glades could be more restful to the sight than the

southern grounds of the President’s house. From its height it looks down

upon this rolling park, reaching now to the Potomac, bounded by its

gleaming waters, on which so many white sails drift, and doze, and dream

in the languid summer weather.

CHAPTER XX.

LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE.

A Morning Dream—Wives and Daughters of the Presidents—Memories of Martha

Washington—An Average Matron of the 18th Century—Educational

Disadvantages—Comparisons—A Well-Regulated Lady—A Useful Wife—Warm

Words of Abigail Adams—Advantages of Having a Distinguished

Husband—A Modern Lucretia—Washington’s Inauguration Suit—An Awkward

Position for a Lady—A Primitive _Levée_-Festivities in Franklin

Square!—Decorous Ideas of the Father of His Country—The Government

on Its Travels—Transporting the Household Gods—Keeping Early

Hours—Primitive Customs—A Dignified _Congé_—Much-Shaken

Hands—Remembrances of a Past Age—An English Manufacturer “Struck

with Awe”—Very Questionable Humility—The Room in which Washington

Died—Days of Widowhood—A Wife’s Congratulations—A True

Woman—Domestic Affairs at the White House—An Unfinished

Mansion—Interesting Details—A Woman’s Influence—A Monument

Wanted—Devotion of a Husband—The “Single Life”—Theodocia Burr and

Katherine Chase—“_Levées_” Summarily Abolished—Disappointed

Belles—An Extraordinary Reception—Blacked His Own Boots—A Dignified

Foreigner Shocked—Governmental Enquiries—Womanly Indignation—The

Poet Pardoned—“The Sweetest Creature in Virginia”—A Daughter’s

Affection.

Sitting in the lovely Blue Room this June morning, the breezes from the

Potomac floating through the closed blinds and lace curtains, drifting

over the mounds of flowers which, rising high above the great vases,

fill all the air with fragrance, I evoke from the past a company of fair

and stately women who have dwelt under this roof, or influenced the life

and happiness of men who have ruled the nation.

First, Martha Washington. To be sure, she never reigned in the Blue

Room; but who can recall the wives of the Presidents and not see the

very first, the serenely beautiful old lady whose face is so familiar to

us all.

In herself, Martha Washington was in no wise a remarkable woman.

Personally, she was a fair representative of the average American matron

of the eighteenth century. I say American, for whatever may be her right

to boast of superior educational advantages to-day, in the time of

Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, New England ignored utterly the

education of her women. They were shut out even from the Boston

High-School, because they had flocked to it in such numbers in pursuit

of knowledge. While her brother went to Harvard, the girl of

Massachusetts, if taught at all, was self-taught. Massachusetts had no

right to boast over Virginia in that day. The daughters of the cavalier

probably were oftener taught to dance and to play the spinnet than the

daughters of the Puritans; but neither could spell, nor many more than

barely read. But had Martha Washington enjoyed the highest mental

privileges, she would never have been known to the world as an

intellectual woman, or as a woman who, by any impulse of her unassisted

nature, would ever have risen above the commonplace. She could spin, but

she could not spell. She could bask in the warmth of the bountiful home

whose heavy cares were all carried by her illustrious husband. She could

pack the family coach with delicacies, and go through storm and mud once

a year to his camp, when the perils of his country had made him its

deliverer; but it is doubtful if any impulse of her soul would ever have

roused her to the majestic eloquence of Abigail Adams, who, when she

read the English King’s proclamation to his rebellious colonies, with

her little children about her in the depth of the night, wrote to her

absent husband: “This intelligence will make a plain path for you,

though a dangerous one. I could not join to-day in the petition of our

worthy pastor for a reconciliation between our no longer parent state,

but tyrant state, and these colonies. Let us separate; they are unworthy

to be our brethren. Let us renounce them, and instead of supplications

as formerly for their prosperity and happiness; let us beseech the

Almighty to blast their counsels and bring to naught all their devices.”

Abigail Adams comes down to posterity, independently of all relations to

others, as one of the grandest women of her time. Martha Washington’s

only claim to veneration is because she was the wife of Washington. As

his wife, her homely virtues and moral rectitude show to unclouded

advantage. Personally, her most marked characteristics were her strong

natural sense of propriety and fitness and high moral qualities. In

these, if she never added lustre to it, she always honored the name of

Washington. We see the former characteristic in the fact, that during

the Revolution she never wore foreign or costly attire. While all the

outer affairs of the estate, to their minutest detail, were

superintended by General Washington, in addition to the mighty burdens

of state which he bore, Mrs. Washington superintended her handmaidens

and spinning-wheels. Looms were constantly plying in her house, and

General Washington wore, at his first inauguration, a full suit of fine

cloth woven in his own house. At a ball given in New Jersey, in honor of

herself, Martha Washington appeared in “simple russet gown,” with a

white handkerchief about her neck. To the state _levées_ of New York and

Philadelphia she carried the same stately simplicity. A lady of the

olden time, a daughter of Virginia, her ideas of court forms and

etiquette had all been received from the mother country. Hers was the

difficult task to harmonize aristocratic exclusiveness with republican

plainness. She was never to forget that she was the wife of the

President of a Republic,—and also never to forget that she was to

command the respect of the old monarchies who were ready to despise

everything poor and crude in the efforts of the new government to

maintain itself in poverty, difficulty and inexperience. Thus the social

_levées_ of the first President of the United States, at No. 3, Franklin

square, New York, were held under the most rigorous and exclusive rules.

They were only open to persons of privileged rank and degree, and they

could not enter unless attired in full dress. The receptions of Mrs.

Washington merely reproduced, on a smaller plan, the customs and

ceremonies of foreign courts.

The first President and his wife never forgot their personal dignity,

and never forgot that they represented a republic which was already an

object of interested scrutiny to the whole civilized world. President

Washington wrote to his friend Mrs. Macaulay: “Mrs. Washington’s ideas

coincide with my own as to simplicity of dress and everything which can

tend to support propriety of character without partaking of the follies

of luxury and ostentation.”

In the second year of Washington’s administration, the government was

removed to Philadelphia, there to remain for the next ten years. The

household furniture of the Washingtons was moved thither by slow and

weary processes of land and water, the President, in addition to his

public cares, superintending personally the preparation and embarkation

of every article himself. Mrs. Washington was sick at the time, but the

following year, the house of Robert Morris having been taken by the

corporation, as the President’s house, Mrs. Washington again opened her

drawing-rooms from seven to ten P. M. Sensible woman! No haggard and

faded beauties dancing all night, faded and old before their time, owed

their wasted lives and powers to _her_. In Philadelphia and New York,

when the clock’s hand pointed to ten, she arose with affable dignity,

and, bowing to all, retired, leaving her guests to do likewise. With

this action, it was unnecessary to repeat the announcement which she

made at the first _levée_ held by her in New York, viz.: “General

Washington retires at ten o’clock, and I usually precede him.

Good-night.”

At these _levées_ Mrs. Washington sat. The guests were grouped in a

circle, round which the President passed, speaking politely to each one,

but _never shaking hands_. It was reserved to a later generation to

shake that poor member till it has to be poulticed after official

greetings. It was the habit of Mrs. Washington to return the calls of

those who were privileged to pay her visits. A Philadelphia lady who, as

a child, remembered her, wrote: “It was Mrs. Washington’s custom to

return visits on the third day. In calling on my mother she would send a

footman over, who would knock loudly and announce Mrs. Washington, who

would then come over with Mr. Lear. Her manners were very easy, pleasant

and unceremonious, with the characteristics of other Virginia ladies.”

An English manufacturer, who breakfasted with the President’s family in

1794, says:

“I was struck with awe and veneration when I recollected that I was

now in the presence of the great Washington, the noble and wise

benefactor of the world.... Mrs. Washington herself, made tea and

coffee for us. On the table were two small plates of sliced tongue and

dry toast, bread and butter; but no broiled fish, as is the custom

here. She struck me as being somewhat older than the President, though

I understand both were born the same year. She was extremely simple in

her dress, and wore a very plain cap, with her gray hair turned up

under it.”

It is as the wife of Washington, through sentiments called out by the

greatness of his character and the love which she bore him, that the

moral capacity of Martha Washington’s nature ever approaches greatness.

In her reply to Congress, who asked that the body of George Washington

might be placed beneath a monument in the capitol which his patriotism

had done so much to rear, her words rise to the patriotic grandeur of

Abigail Adams, they could not rise higher. She says:

“Taught by that great example, which I have so long had before me,

never to oppose my private wishes to the public will, I must consent

to the request made by Congress, which you have had the goodness to

transmit to me, and in doing this, I need not, I cannot say what a

sacrifice of individual feeling I make to a sense of public duty.”

But it is in the little room at Mount Vernon, in which she died, that

Martha Washington, as a woman, comes nearest to us. Here one can realize

how utterly done with earth, its pangs and glory, was the soul who shut

herself within its narrow walls, there to take on immortality. The rooms

of Washington below, a thrifty mechanic of the present day would think

too small and shabby for him. Here he died. And when the great soul went

forth to the unknown, as a human presence to inhabit it never more, the

wife also went forth, and never again crossed its threshold. Here, in

this little room, scarcely more than a closet, surrounded only by the

simplest necessaries of existence, Martha Washington lived out the

lonely days of her desolate widowhood—and here she died.

* * * * *

Abigail Adams was the first wife of a President who ever presided at the

White House—the President’s house, as it was so fitly called in those

days. Only in this latter time of degenerate English has it swelled into

the “Executive Mansion.”

In February, 1797, John Adams was elected President of the United

States, to succeed President Washington. From her country home in

Massachusetts, Mrs. Adams sent to her husband the following recognition

of his exaltation to be chief ruler of the United States:

“You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O

Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people, give

unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and to

come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and

bad. For who is able to judge this, thy so great a people?’ were the

words of a royal sovereign, and not less applicable to him who is

invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a

crown nor the robes of royalty. My thoughts and meditations are with

you, though personally absent; and my petitions to heaven are, that

the things which make for your peace may not be hidden from your eyes.

My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation upon the occasion.

They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important

trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be enabled

to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and

impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great

people, shall be the daily prayer of yours—”

In such exaltation of spirit, and with such grandeur of speech, did the

wife of the second President receive the fact of her husband’s

elevation. As devout as Deborah, her utterance is equally marked by its

comprehensiveness of view, its devotion and self-forgetfulness. No

visions of personal finery, of fashionable entertainments and show,

gleam through the grand utterances of this majestic woman. And yet no

pictures of the White House, no sketches of the social life of her time

begin to be as graphic, frequent and “telling,” as those of Abigail

Adams. Nothing has been more quoted than her sketch of the White House

as she found it.

“The house is upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty

servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper order, and

perform the ordinary business of the house and stables—an

establishment very well proportioned to the President’s salary. The

lighting the apartments from the kitchen to parlors and chambers, is a

tax indeed, and the fires we are obliged to keep to secure us from

daily agues is another very cheering comfort. To assist us in this

castle, and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly

wanting, not one single one being hung through the whole house, and

promises are all you can obtain. This is so great an inconvenience

that I know not what to do or how to do. The ladies from Georgetown

and in the city have many of them visited me. Yesterday I returned

fifteen visits. But such a place as Georgetown appears! Why, our

Milton is beautiful. But no comparisons; if they put me up bells, and

let me have wood enough to keep fires, I design _to be pleased_. But

surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had,

because people cannot be found to cut and cart it.... We have indeed

come into a new country.

“The house is made habitable, but there is not a single apartment

finished, and all within side, except the plastering, has been done

since B. came.... If the twelve years in which this place has been

considered as the future seat of government, had been improved as they

would have been in New England, very many of the present

inconveniences would have been removed. It is a beautiful spot,

capable of any improvement, and the more I view it the more I am

delighted with it.

* * * * *

“The ladies are impatient for a drawing-room: I have no

looking-glasses but dwarfs, for this house; and a twentieth part lamps

enough to light it. My tea-china is more than half missing.... You can

scarcely believe that here in this wilderness city I should find my

time so occupied as it is. My visitors, some of them, came three or

four miles. The return of one of them is the work of one day.... We

have not the _least fence, yard, or other conveniences without_, and

the great unfinished audience-room—(the East room) I make a

drying-room of to hang my clothes in. Six chambers are made

comfortable; two lower rooms, one for a common parlor and one for a

ball-room.”

Abigail Adams is an illustrious example of the grandeur of human

character. She proved in herself how potent an individual may be, and

that individual a woman, in spite of caste, of sex, or the restrictions

of human law or condition. She never went to school in her life, yet her

thoughtful utterances will live where the labored utterances of her

scholarly husband are forgotten. She was less than a year the mistress

of the President’s house, yet she has lived ever since in memory a grand

model to all who succeed her. The daughter of a country clergyman, the

wife of a patriotic and ambitious man, whether she gathered her children

about her or sent them forth across stormy seas, while she left herself

desolate; whether she stood the wife of the Republican Minister before

the haughty Charlotte in the stateliest and proudest court of Europe;

whether she presided in the President’s house in the new Capital or in

the wilderness, or wrote to statesmen and grandchildren in her own lowly

house in Quincy, in prosperity or sorrow, in youth and in age, in life

and in death, always she was the regnant woman, devout, wise, patriotic,

proud, humble and loving.

Her pictures of the social life of her time are among the most acute,

lively and graphic on record. While in her letters to her son, to her

husband, to Jefferson and other statesmen, we find some of the grandest

utterances of the Revolutionary period. Cut off by her sex from active

participation in the struggles and triumphs of the men of her time, not

one of them would have died more gladly or grandly than she, for

liberty; denied the power of manhood, she made the most of the

privileges of womanhood. She instilled into the souls of her children

great ideas; she inspired her husband by the hourly sight of a grand

example; she gave, through them, her life-long service to the State, and

she gave to her country and to posterity her spotless and heroic memory.

Tardy Massachusetts! You build monuments to your sons, and ignore the

fame of your illustrious daughters. When in the Pantheon of the States

you shall place the sculptured forms of two of your patriots, honor your

ancient fame by giving to posterity the majestic lineaments of the great

woman of the Revolution—Abigail Adams.

In her portrait, Stuart gives us Minerva in a lace cap. Dainty and

delicate, it softens without veiling her august features. The exquisite

lace ruff about the throat, the lace shawl upon the shoulders, all

indicate the finest of feminine tastes, while the broad brow, wide eyes,

keenly cut nose, firm chin and slightly imperious mouth, proclaim the

proud and powerful intellect, and the high head the commanding moral

nature of the woman.

* * * * *

The wife of Jefferson died in her youth. His love for her was the

passion of his life. In his love, and in his existence, she was never

supplanted. Ever after, he lived in his children, his grand-children,

his books and the affairs of State.

Jefferson had two daughters, the only two of his children who survived

to mature life. One of these, Maria, who in childhood went to Paris in

the care of Mrs. Adams, and who was remarkable for her beauty and the

loveliness of her nature, died in early womanhood. She was indifferent

to her own beauty, and almost resented the admiration which it called

forth, exclaiming, “You praise me for _that_ because you can not praise

me for better things.” She set an extraordinary value upon talent,

believing that the possession of it alone could make her the worthy

companion of her father. She was most tenderly beloved by him, and, at

the time of her early death, he wrote to his friend, Governor Page:

“Others may lose of their abundance; but I, of my want, have lost even

the half of that I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender

thread of a single life.” This “single” life was that of Martha

Jefferson Randolph. She lived to be not only the domestic comforter, but

the intellectual companion of her father. She was one of that type of

daughters, of which, in our own country, Theodocia Burr and Katherine

Chase have been such illustrious examples. These women, equally

beautiful, intellectual, and charming, identified themselves not only

with the private interests, but with the public life and political

ambitions of their fathers.

Had Martha Jefferson been less womanly and domestic, she might have made

herself famous as a _belle_, a wit, or a scholar. Married at seventeen,

the mother of twelve children, seven of whom were daughters, the fine

quality of her intellect, and the nobility of her soul were all merged

into a life spent in their guidance, and in devotion and service to her

husband and father. The mother of five children at the time of her

father’s inauguration as President of the United States, separated from

Washington by a long and fatiguing journey, which could only be

performed by coach and horse-travel, Mrs. Randolph never made but two

visits to the President’s house, during his two terms of office. Her

son, James Madison Randolph was born in the “White House.”

Jefferson began his Presidency with a certain ostentation of democracy.

One of the first declarations of his administration was, “_Levées_ are

done away.” Remembering what importance was attached to these assemblies

by Washington and Adams, and what grand court occasions they were made,

we can imagine the disapprobation with which this mandate was received

by the “_belles_ of society.” A party of these gathered in force, and,

all gaily attired, proceeded to the President’s house. On his return

from a horseback ride he was informed that a large number of ladies were

in the “_Levée_ room” waiting for him. Covered with dust, spurs on, and

whip in hand, he proceeded to the drawing-room. Shade of Washington! He

told them he was glad to see them, and asked them to remain. These

_belles_ and beauties received his polite salutations with how much

delight we may fancy. They never came again.

A Virginian accustomed to the service of slaves, as the President of the

United States, Jefferson blacked his own boots. A foreign functionary, a

stickler for etiquette, paid him a visit of ceremony one morning, and

found him engaged in this pleasing employment. Jefferson apologized,

saying, that being a plain man, he did not like to trouble his servants.

The foreign grandee departed, declaring that no government could long

survive, whose head was his own shoe-black. Jefferson gave great offense

to the English Minister, Mr. Merry, because he took Mrs. Madison, to

whom he happened to be talking, into dinner instead of Mrs. Merry. Mr.

Merry made it an official offense which was reported to his government.

Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Monroe, who was then Minister to England, that

he might be ready to answer the call of the British government for

explanations. Mr. Monroe wrote back that he was glad of it, for the wife

of a British under-secretary had recently been given precedence to Mrs.

Monroe, in being escorted to the dinner table. Nevertheless, Mrs.

Merry’s nose never came down from the air, and she never again crossed

the threshold of the President’s house.

The same year Jefferson aroused the ire of Thomas Moore, then

twenty-four years of age, and without fame, save in his own country. The

President, from his altitude of six feet two-and-a-half inches, looked

down on the curled and perfumed little poet, and spoke a word and passed

on. This was an indignity that London’s and Dublin’s darling never

pardoned, and he went back to lampoon, not only America, but the

President. One of his attacks came into the hands of Martha Randolph,

who, deeply indignant, placed it before her father in his library. He

broke into an amused laugh. Years afterwards, when Moore’s Irish

melodies appeared, Jefferson, looking them over, exclaimed: “Why, this

is the little man who satirized me so! Why, he is a poet after all.” And

from that moment Moore had a place beside Burns’ in Jefferson’s library.

John Randolph, her father’s political foe, said of Martha Jefferson:

“She is the sweetest creature in Virginia,” and we all know that John

Randolph believed that nothing “sweet” or even endurable existed outside

of Virginia. In adversity and sorrow, in poverty and trial, in age as in

youth, the steadfast sweetness of character, and elevation of nature,

which made Martha Jefferson remarkable in prosperity, shone forth with

transcendent lustre when all external accessories had fled. The daughter

of a man called a free-thinker, she all her life was sweetly, simply,

devoutly religious. In her letters to her daughter, “Septimia,” she

draws us nearer to her tender soul in its heavenly love and charity.

This daughter, to his latest breath, was to Jefferson, the soul of his

soul. After his retirement she not only entertained his guests, and

ministered to his personal comforts, but shared intellectually all his

thoughts and studies. Six months before her death, Sully painted her

portrait. Her daughter says:

“I accompanied her to Mr. Sully’s studio, and, as she took her seat

before him, she said playfully: ‘Mr. Sully, I shall never forgive you

if you paint me with wrinkles.’

“I quickly interrupted, ‘Paint her just as she is, Mr. Sully, the

picture is for me.’

“He said, ‘I shall paint you, Mrs. Randolph, as I remember you twenty

years ago.’

“The picture does represent her younger—but failed to restore the

expression of health and cheerful, ever-joyous vivacity which her

countenance then habitually wore. My mother’s face owed its greatest

charm to its expressiveness, beaming, as it ever was, with kindness,

good humor, gayety and wit. She was tall and very graceful; her

complexion naturally fair, her hair of a dark chestnut color, very

long and very abundant. Her manners were uncommonly attractive from

their vivacity, amiability and high breeding, and her conversation was

charming.”

CHAPTER XXI.

WIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS—LIFE AT THE WHITE HOUSE.

A Social Queen—“The Most Popular Person in the United States”—“Dolly

Madison’s” Reign—The Slow Days of Old—A Young Lady Rides Five

Hundred Miles on Horseback—Travelling Under Difficulties—Political

Pugnacity—A Peaceful Policy—Formality _versus_ Hospitality—Big

Dishes Laughed at—A Foreign Minister Criticises—Advantages of a Good

Memory—Funny Adventure of a Rustic Youth—A Strange Pocketful—Putting

Him at his Ease—Doleful Visage of a New President—Getting Rid of a

Burden—A Brave Lady—She Writes to Her Sister—Waiting in

Suspense—Taking Care of Cabinet Papers—“Disaffection Stalks Around

Us”—“Col. C.” very Prudently “Skedaddles”—One Hundred “Braves”

Skedaddle with Him—“French John” Makes a Proposition—He Desires to

“Blow up the British”—John “Doesn’t See It”—Watching and

Waiting—Flight—Unscrewing the Picture—After the War—Brilliant

Receptions—Mrs. Madison’s Snuff Box—Clay Takes a Pinch—“This is My

Polisher!”—“_Tempora Mutantur_”—Two Plain Old Ladies from the

West—“If I Jest Kissed you”—They Depart in Peace—Days of Trouble and

Care—Manuscripts Purchased by Congress—The “Franking Privilege”

Conferred upon Mrs. Madison—Honored by Congress—Last Days of a Good

Woman—Mrs. Monroe—A Serene and Aristocratic Woman—“_La Belle

Americaine_”—Madame Lafayette in Prison—Fennimore Cooper Expresses

an Opinion—Grotesque Anomalies at a Reception—The Crown and the

Eagle.

President Jefferson showed his personal appreciation as well as his

official recognition of Mrs. Madison, both in his letters to his

daughters and in the fact that Mrs. Madison, when the wife of the

Secretary of State, presided at Jefferson’s table during the absence of

his own family. But it was as the wife of the fourth President of the

United States that she inaugurated the golden reign of the President’s

house.

She was the only woman of absolute social genius, who ever presided in

this house. Thus the beneficence and brilliancy of her reign was never

approached before her time, and has never been equalled since.

It is a rare combination of gifts and graces which produces the

pre-eminent social queen, in any era or in any sphere. Mrs. Madison

seemed to possess them all. During the administration of her husband she

was openly declared to be “the most popular person in the United

States;” and now, after the lapse of generations, after hosts of women,

bright, beautiful and admired, have lived, reigned, died, and are

forgotten, “Dolly Madison” seems to abide to-day in Washington, a living

and beloved presence. The house in which her old age was spent, and from

which she passed to heaven, is every day pointed out to the stranger as

her abode. Her face abides with us as the face of a friend, while her

words and deeds are constantly recalled as authority, unquestioned and

benign.

When she began her reign in Washington, steamboats were the wonder of

the world; railroads undreamed of; turnpike roads scarcely begun; the

stagecoach slow, inconvenient, and cumbersome. The daughter of one

senator, who wished to enjoy the delights of the new capital, came five

hundred miles on horseback by her father’s side. The wife of a member

rode fifteen hundred miles on horseback, passed through several Indian

settlements, and spent nights without seeing a house in which she could

lodge. Under such difficulties did lovely women come to Washington, and

out of such material were blended the society of that conspicuous era.

When Mrs. Madison entered the President’s house, the strife between the

democratic and republican parties was at its highest. Washington, above

all party, had yet declared himself the advocate of the unity and force

of the central power. Jefferson had been the President of the

opposition, who wished the supremacy of the masses to overrule that of

the higher classes. On these contending factions Mrs. Madison shed

equally the balm of her benign nature. Not because she was without

opinions, but because she was without malignity or rancor of spirit.

Born and reared a “Friend,” she brought the troubled elements of

political society together in the bonds of peace. She possessed, in

pre-eminent degree, the power of intuitive adaptation to individuals,

however diversified in character, and the exquisite tact in dealing with

them, which always characterizes the true social queen. She loved human

beings and delighted in their fellowship. She never forgot an old

friend, and never neglected the opportunity of making a new one. She

banished from her drawing-room the stately forms and ceremonials which

had made the receptions of Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Adams very elegant

and rather dreadful affairs. She was very hospitable, and a table

bountifully loaded was her delight and pride. The abundance and size of

her dishes were objects of ridicule to a Foreign Minister, even when she

entertained as the wife of the Secretary of State, he declaring that her

entertainments were more like “a harvest home supper than the

entertainment of a Cabinet Minister.”

Mrs. Madison never forgot the name of any person to whom she had been

introduced, nor any incident connected with any person whom she knew.

Able to summon these at an instant’s notice, she instinctively made each

individual, who entered her presence, feel that he or she was an object

of especial interest. Nor was this mere society-manners. Genial and

warm-hearted, it was her happiness to make everybody feel as much at

ease as possible. This gentle kindness, the unknown and lowly shared

equally with the highest in worldly station. At one of her receptions

her attention was called to a rustic youth whose back was set against

the wall. Here he stood as if nailed to it, till he ventured to stretch

forth his hand and take a proffered cup of coffee. Mrs. Madison,

according to her wont, wishing to relieve his embarrassment, and put him

at his ease, walked up and spoke to him. The youth, astonished and

overpowered, dropped the saucer, and unconsciously thrust the cup into

his breeches pocket. “The crowd is so great, no one can avoid being

jostled,” said the gentle woman. “The servant will bring you another cup

of coffee. Pray, how did you leave your excellent mother? I had once the

honor of knowing her, but I have not seen her for some years.” Thus she

talked, till she made him feel that she was his friend, as well as his

mother’s. In time, he found it possible to dislodge the coffee cup from

his pocket, and to converse with the Juno-like lady in a crimson turban,

as if she were an old acquaintance.

Like Amelia Opie, and other beautiful “Friends,” who have shone amid

“the world’s people,” Mrs. Madison delighted in deep warm colors, the

very opposite of the silver grays of a demure Quakeress. At the

inauguration ball, when Jefferson, the outgoing President, came to

receive Madison, his successor, Mrs. Madison wore a robe of buff-colored

velvet, a Paris turban with a bird of paradise plume, with pearls on her

neck and arms. A chronicler of the event says that she “looked and moved

a queen.” Jefferson was all life and animation, while the new President

looked care-worn and pale. “Can you wonder at it?” said Jefferson. “My

shoulders have just been freed from a heavy burden—his just laden with

it.”

When a manager brought Mrs. Madison the first number in the dance, she

said, smiling: “I never dance; what shall I do with it?”

“Give it to the lady next to you,” was the answer.

“No, that would look like partiality.”

“Then I will,” said the manager, and presented it to her sister.

This lady, who filled every hour of prosperity with the rare sunshine of

her nature, in the hour of trial was not found wanting, and in the face

of danger rose to the dignity of heroism. Her gallant stay in the White

House, while her husband had gone to hold a council of war, and in spite

of every entreaty to leave it, is a proud fact of our history. In vain

friends brought a carriage to the door. She refused to enter it. The

following well-known letter to her sister, proves how bravely, womanly

was this heroine of the President’s house.

TUESDAY, August 23, 1814.

DEAR SISTER:—My husband left me yesterday to join General Winder. He

enquired anxiously whether I had the courage or firmness to remain in

the President’s house until his return, on the morrow, or succeeding

day, and on my assurance that I had no fear but for him and the

success of our army, he left me, beseeching me to take care of myself

and of the Cabinet papers, public and private.

I have since received two dispatches from him, written with a pencil;

the last is alarming, because he desires that I should be ready at a

moment’s warning, to enter my carriage and leave the city; that the

enemy seemed stronger than had been reported, and that it might happen

that they would reach the city with intention to destroy it.... I am

accordingly ready; I have pressed as many Cabinet papers into trunks

as to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed, as

it is impossible to procure wagons for its transportation. I am

determined not to go myself, until I see Mr. Madison safe, and he can

accompany me—as I hear of much hostility toward him.... Disaffection

stalks around us. My friends and acquaintances are all gone, even

Colonel C. with his hundred men, who were stationed as a guard in this

enclosure.... French John (a faithful domestic) with his usual

activity and resolution offers to spike the cannon at the gate, and

lay a train of powder which would blow up the British, should they

enter the house. To the last proposition, I positively object, without

being able, however, to make him understand why all advantages in war

may not be taken.

_Wednesday morning, twelve o’clock._—Since sunrise, I have been

turning my spy-glass in every direction and watching with unwearied

anxiety, hoping to discover the approach of my dear husband and his

friends; but, alas, I can descry only groups of military wandering in

all directions, as if there was a lack of arms, or of spirits, to

fight for their own firesides.

_Three o’clock._—Will you believe it, my sister? we have had a battle,

or a skirmish, near Bladensburg, and I am still here within sound of

the cannon! Mr. Madison comes not; may God protect him! Two

messengers, covered with dust, came to bid me fly; but I wait for

him.... At this late hour a wagon has been procured; I have filled it

with the plate and most valuable portable articles belonging to the

house; whether it will reach its destination, the Bank of Maryland, or

fall into the hands of British soldiery, events must determine. Our

kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a

very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large

picture of General Washington is secured; and it requires to be

unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these

perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas

taken out; it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands

of two gentlemen of New York for safe-keeping. And now, dear sister, I

must leave this house or the retreating army will make me a prisoner

in it, by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall

again write to you, or where I shall be to-morrow, I cannot tell!

On their return, the President and Mrs. Madison occupied a private house

on Pennsylvania avenue till the White House was repaired. After it was

rebuilt and the treaty of peace signed, the _levées_ given in the East

Room, in the winter of 1816, are said to have been the most resplendent

ever witnessed in Washington. At these, congregated the Justices of the

Supreme Court in their gowns, the Diplomatic Corps in glittering

regalia, the Peace Commissioners and the officers of the late war in

full dress, and the queen of the occasion in gorgeous robes and turban

and bird of paradise plumes.

At one of these Presidential banquets Mrs. Madison offered Mr. Clay a

pinch of snuff from her beautiful box, taking one herself. She then put

her hand in her pocket, took out a bandanna handkerchief, applied it to

her nose and said: “Mr. Clay, this is for rough work,” and this,

touching the few remaining grains of snuff with a fine lace

handkerchief, “is my polisher.” This anecdote is an emphatic comment on

the change of customs, even in the most polished society. If Mrs. Grant,

to-day, were to perpetrate such an act at one of her _levées_, the fact

that it stands recorded against the graceful, gracious and glorious

Dolly Madison would not save her from the taunt of being “underbred” and

suggestive of the land of “snuff dippers.”

Another story of Mrs. Madison illustrates the real kindness of her

heart. Two plain old ladies from the West, halting in Washington for a

single night, yet most anxious to behold the President’s famous and

popular wife before their departure, meeting an old gentleman on the

street, timidly asked him to show them the way to the President’s house.

Happening to be an acquaintance of Mrs. Madison, he conducted them to

the White House. The President’s family were at breakfast, but Mrs.

Madison good-naturedly came out to them wearing a dark gray dress with a

white apron, and a linen handkerchief pinned around her neck. Not

overcome by her plumage, and set at ease by her welcome, when they rose

to depart one said: “P’rhaps you wouldn’t mind if I jest kissed you, to

tell my gals about.”

Mrs. Madison, not to be outdone, kissed each of her guests, who planted

their spectacles on their noses with delight, and then departed.

Poverty compelled Martha Jefferson to part with Monticello after her

father’s death, and the same cruel foe forced Mrs. Madison to sell

Montpelier in her widowhood.

A special message of President Jackson to Congress, concerning the

contents of a letter from Mrs. Madison, offering to the government her

husband’s manuscript record of the debates in Congress of the convention

during the years 1782-1787, caused Congress to purchase it of her, as a

national work, for the sum of thirty thousand dollars. In a subsequent

act Congress gave to Mrs. Madison the honorary privilege of copyright in

foreign countries. The degree of veneration in which she was held may be

judged by the fact that Congress conferred upon Mrs. Madison the

franking privilege and unanimously voted her a seat upon the Senate

floor whenever she honored it with her presence; two privileges never

conferred upon any other American woman.

The last twelve years of her life were spent in Washington, in a house

still standing on Lafayette square. Here, on New Year’s day and Fourth

of July, she held public receptions, the dignitaries of the nation,

after paying their respects at the White House, passing directly to the

abode of the venerable widow of the fourth President of the United

States—a woman who had honored her high station by her high qualities

more than it could possibly honor her.

She died at her home, Lafayette square, Washington, July, 1849, holding

her mental faculties unimpaired to the last. In her later days, while

suffering from great debility, she took extreme delight in having old

letters read to her, whose associations were so remote that they were

unknown to all about, but yet which brought back to her her own beloved

past. She delighted, also, in listening to the reading of the Bible—and

it was while hearing a portion of the gospel of St. John that she passed

in peace into her last sleep.

Mrs. Madison was not the last President’s wife whom the dangers of war

exalted to heroism. Yet, with a few exceptions, she has been followed by

a line of ladies of average gifts and graces, whose domestic virtues and

negative characters are seen but dimly through the reflected glory of

their President husbands’ administrations. The faint outline which we

catch of Mrs. Monroe is that of a serene and aristocratic woman, too

well bred ever to be visibly moved by anything—at least in public. She

was Elizabeth Kortright, of New York—an ex-British officer’s daughter, a

_belle_ who was ridiculed by her gay friends for having refused more

brilliant adorers to accept a plain member of Congress.

During Mr. Monroe’s ministry to Paris, she was called “_la belle

Americaine_,” and entertained the most stately society of the old

_régime_ with great elegance. The only individual act which has survived

her career, as the wife of the American minister to France, is her visit

to Madame Lafayette in prison. The indignities heaped on this grand and

truly great woman, were hard to be borne by an American, to whom the

very name of Lafayette was endeared. The carriage of the American

minister appeared at the jail. Mrs. Monroe was at last conducted to the

cell of the emaciated prisoner. The Marchioness, beholding the stranger

sister woman, sank at her feet, too weak to utter her joy. That very

afternoon she was to have been beheaded. Instead of the messenger

commanding her to prepare for the guillotine, she beheld a woman and a

friend! From the first moment of its existence the American Republic had

_prestige_ in France. The visit of the American ambassadress changed the

minds of the blood-thirsty tyrants. Madame Lafayette was liberated the

next morning,—she gladly accepted her own freedom, that she might go and

share the dungeon of her husband.

The same quiet splendor of spirit and bearing reigned through Mrs.

Monroe in the unfinished “White House.” Mrs. Madison maintained the

courtly forms copied from foreign courts—but the richness of her

temperament and the warmth of her heart pervaded all the atmosphere

around her with a genial glow. Mrs. Monroe mingled very little in the

society of Washington, and secluded herself from the public gaze, except

when the duties of her position compelled her to appear. Her love was

for silence, obscurity, peace, not for bustle, confusion, or glare. Yet,

even in her courtly reign, “the dear people” were many and strong enough

to arise and push on to their rights in the “people’s house.”

James Fennimore Cooper has left on record a letter describing a state

dinner and _levée_, during Mr. Monroe’s time, and any one who has

survived a latter-day jam at the President’s house, will say it was

precisely what a Presidential reception was in the stately Monroe day.

Says Mr. Cooper:

The evening at the White House, or drawing-room, as it is sometimes

pleasantly called, is in fact, a collection of all classes of people

who choose to go to the trouble and expense of appearing in dresses

suited to an evening party. I am not sure that even dress is very much

regarded, for I certainly saw a good many there in boots....Squeezing

through a crowd, we achieved a passage to a part of the room where

Mrs. Monroe was standing, surrounded by a bevy of female friends.

After making our bow here, we sought the President. The latter had

posted himself at the top of the room, where he remained most of the

evening, shaking hands with all who approached. Near him stood the

Secretaries and a great number of the most distinguished men of the

nation. Besides these, one meets here a great variety of people in

other conditions of life. I have known a cartman to leave his horse in

the street, and go into the reception room, to shake hands with the

President. He offended the good taste of all present, because it was

not thought decent that a laborer should come in a dirty dress on such

an occasion; but while he made a mistake in this particular, he proved

how well he understood the difference between government and society.

It is very doubtful, however, if a cartman would have found it possible

to have paid his respects to the government in the person of Washington,

in such a plight. Such a visitor in the Blue Room, to-day, would make a

sensation. In spite of the “cartman,” we read that at Mrs. Monroe’s

drawing-rooms “elegance of dress was absolutely required.” On one

occasion, Mr. Monroe refused admission to a near relative, who happened

not to have a suit of small-clothes and silk hose, in which to present

himself at a public reception. He was driven to the necessity of

borrowing.

When the Monroes entered the White House, it had been partly rebuilt

from its burning in 1814, but it could boast of few comforts, and no

elegance. The ruins of the former building lay in heaps about the

mansion; the grounds were not fenced, and the street before it in such a

condition that it was an hourly sight to see several four-horse wagons

“stalled” before the house. In the early part of the administration, the

East Room was the play-room of Mrs. Monroe’s daughters. It was during

her reign here that the stately furniture, which now stands in the East

Room, was bought by the government in Paris. Each article was surmounted

by the royal crown of Louis XVIII. This was removed, and the American

Eagle took its place. These chairs and sofas have more than once been

“made over, good as new,” but the original eagles remain, more brightly

burnished than ever. May they gleam forever, and let no “modern

furniture,” with surface gilding and thin veneering, take the place of

this historic furniture, in the Nation’s house, fraught, as it is, with

so many memories of the illustrious dead.

CHAPTER XXII.

NOTED WOMEN OF WASHINGTON—A CHAPTER OF GOSSIP.

Quaint Habiliments—Portrait of a President’s Wife—A Travelling Lady—Life

in Russia—A Model American Minister—A Long and Lonely Journey—When

Napoleon Returned from Elba—The Court of St. James—“Mrs. Adams’

Ball”—Mr. John Agg’s Little “Poem”—Verses which Our Fathers

Endured—Peculiar Waists—Costume of an Ancient _Belle_—Fearful and

Wonderful Attire of a _Beau_—“A Suit of Steel”—“Smiling for the

Presidency”—Attending Two Balls the Same Evening—An Ascendant Star—A

Man who Hid his Feelings—The Candidate at a Cattle Show—“She Often

Combed Your Head”—“I Suppose She Combs Yours Now”—Giving “Tone” to

the Whole Country—A Circle of “Rare” Women—A “Perpetual Honor to

Womanhood”—Charles’s Opinion of His Mother—How a Lady “Amused” Her

Declining Days—Lafayette’s Visit to Washington—His Farewell to

America—“A Species of Irregular Diary”—“For the Benefit of My

Grandfather”—Mrs. Andrew Jackson—A Woman’s Influence—Politics and

Piety Disagree—Why the General Didn’t Join the Church—A Head “Full

of Politics”—Swearing Some—The President Becomes a Good Boy—Domestic

Tendencies—His Greatest Loss—Sad News from the Hermitage.

The portrait which Leslie gives us of Louisa Catharine Johnson, the wife

of John Quincy Adams, reminds us in outline and costume of the Empress

Josephine and the Court of the first Napoleon.

She wears the scanty robe of the period, its sparse outline revealing

the slender elegance of the figure, the low waist and short sleeves

trimmed with lace and edged with pearls. One long glove is drawn nearly

to the elbow, the other is held in the hand, which droops carelessly

over the back of the chair. There is a necklace round the throat. From

over one shoulder, and thrown over her lap, is a mantle of exquisite

lace. The close bands of the hair, edged with a few deft curls, and

fastened high at the back with a coronet comb, reveals the classic

outline of the small head; the face is oval, the features delicate and

vivacious; the eyes, looking far on, are beautiful in their clear,

spiritual gaze. This is the portrait of a President’s wife, whose early

advantages of society and culture far transcended those of almost any

other woman of her time.

The daughter of Joshua Johnson, of Maryland, she was born, educated and

married in London. As a bride she went to the court of Berlin, to which

her husband was appointed American Minister on the accession of his

father to the Presidency. In 1801 she went to Boston, to dwell with her

husband’s people, but very soon came to Washington as the wife of a

senator. On the accession of Madison, leaving her two elder children

with their grandparents, she took a third, not two years of age, and

embarked with her husband for Russia, whither he went as United States

Minister.

Nothing could be more graphic than the diary which she kept on this

voyage. It consumed three months. Summer merged into winter before the

little wave-and-wind-beaten bark touched that then inhospitable shore.

The first American Minister to Russia, Mr. Adams lived in St. Petersburg

for six years, “poor, studious, ambitious and secluded.” Happily for

him, his wife possessed mental and spiritual resources, which lifted her

above all dependence on surface or conventional attention from the

world, and made her in every respect the meet companion of a scholar and

patriot.

In the wake of furious war, through storm and snow-drifts, through a

country ravaged by passion and strife, she traveled alone, with her only

child, from St. Petersburg to Paris, whither she went to meet her

husband. Here she witnessed the storm of delight which greeted Napoleon

on his return from Elba. Mr. Adams was appointed Minister to the Court

of St. James, and after a separation of six years Mrs. Adams was

re-united to her children.

In 1817 Mr. Monroe, on his accession to the Presidency, immediately

appointed John Quincy Adams Secretary of State, when Mrs. Adams returned

with him to Washington. For eight years she was the elegant successor of

Mrs. Madison, who filled the same position with so much distinction. No

one was excluded from her house on account of political hostility—all

sectional bitterness and party strife were banished from her

drawing-rooms.

As the wife of the Secretary of State, Mrs. Adams gave a famous ball,

whose fame still lives in Washington. “Mrs. Adams’s Ball” lives in

history as well as in the memories of a few still living. It was given

January 8th, 1824, in commemoration of General Jackson’s victory at New

Orleans. It was announced in advance by the newspapers, and on the

morning before its occurrence its splendor was anticipated and

celebrated by the following lines written by Mr. John Agg, who has

passed into oblivion, although his early poems in his native England

were said to have been taken for Byron’s, and although he was one of the

first of newspaper correspondents and the first short-hand reporter ever

in Washington.

The ladies referred to in the following lines were among the most

celebrated beauties of their day, many of whose descendants still live

in Washington.

MRS. ADAMS’S BALL.

[From the Washington _Republican_, Jan. 8th, 1824.]

Wend you with the world to-night?

Brown and fair, and wise and witty,

Eyes that float in seas of light,

Laughing mouths and dimples pretty,

_Belles_ and matrons, maids and madams,

All are gone to Mrs. Adams’s.

There the mist of the future, the gloom of the past,

All melt into light at the warm glance of pleasure;

And the only regret is, lest melting too fast,

Mammas should move off in the midst of a measure.

Wend you with the world to-night?

Sixty grey, and giddy twenty,

Flirts that court, and prudes that slight,

Stale coquettes and spinsters plenty.

Mrs. Sullivan is there

With all the charms that nature lent her;

Gay M’Kim, with city air,

And charming Gales, and Vandeventer;

Forsyth, with her group of graces;

Both the Crowninshields in blue;

The Peirces, with their heavenly faces,

And eyes like suns, that dazzle through;

_Belles_ and matrons, maids and madams,

All are gone to Mrs. Adams’s.

Wend you with the world to-night?

East and West, and South and North,

Form a constellation bright,

And pour a blended brilliance forth.

See the tide of fashion flowing,

’Tis the noon of beauty’s reign;

Webster, Hamiltons are going,

Eastern Lloyd and Southern Hayne;

Western Thomas, gaily smiling;

Borland, nature’s _protégé_;

Young De Wolfe, all hearts beguiling;

Morgan, Benton, Brown and Lee;

_Belles_ and matrons, maids and madams.

All are gone to Mrs. Adams’s.

Wend you with the world to-night?

Where blue eyes are brightly glancing,

While to measures of delight

Fairy feet are deftly dancing;

Where the young Euphrosyne

Reigns, the sovereign of the scene,

Chasing gloom and courting glee

With the merry tambourine.

Many a form of fairy birth,

Many a Hebe yet unwon;

Wirt, a gem of purest worth,

Lively, laughing Pleasanton,

Vails and Taylor will be there;

Gay Monroe, so _débonnaire_,

Helen, pleasure’s harbinger,

Ramsay, Cottringers, and Kerr;

_Belles_ and matrons, maids and madams,

All are gone to Mrs. Adams’s.

Wend you with the world to-night?

Juno in her court presides,

Mirth and melody invite,

Fashion points and pleasure guides!

Haste away then, seize the hour,

Shun the thorn and pluck the flower.

Youth, in all its spring-time blooming,

Age, the guise of youth assuming,

Wit, through all its circle gleaming,

Glittering wealth, and beauty beaming;

_Belles_ and matrons, maids and madams,

All are gone to Mrs. Adams’s.

The picture of this celebrated entertainment is still extant, and shows

the _belles_ in the full dress of the period, when the dress waists

ended just under the arms, and its depth, front and back, was not over

three or four inches. The skirts, narrow and plain, were terminated by a

flounce just resting on the floor. The gloves reached to the elbow, and

were of such fine kid that they were often imported in the shell of an

English walnut. Slippers and silk stockings of the color of the dress

were worn, crossed and tied with gay ribbons over the instep. The hair

was combed high, fastened with a tortoise-shell comb—the married ladies

wearing ostrich feathers and turbans. While the _belles_ were thus

attired, their _beaux_ were decked in blue coats, and gilt buttons, with

white or buff waistcoats, white neck-ties and high “chokers,” silk

stockings and pumps.

In this picture Daniel Webster, Clay and Calhoun are conspicuous in this

dress. General Jackson, wearing bowed pumps, with Mrs. Adams on his arm,

make the central figures of the assembly. Mrs. Adams wore “a suit of

steel.” The dress was composed of steel llama; her ornaments for head,

throat and arms, were all of cut steel, producing a dazzling effect.

General Jackson’s entire devotion to her, during the evening, was the

subject of comment. After the manner of to-day, it was declared that he

was “smiling for the Presidency.” He was the lion of the evening. All

the houses of the first ward were illuminated in his honor. Bonfires

made the streets light as day, and the “sovereign people” shouted his

name and fame. The same evening, he attended a ball given by the famous

dancing-master, Carusi, and finished the festivities, celebrating his

glory by the side of the reigning lady, the wife of the Secretary of

State.

That night fixed his presidential star in the ascendency. A few days

later the name of Calhoun was withdrawn as the nominee of his party, and

that of Jackson put in its place. The house, a double one, in which this

famous ball was given, still stands unaltered, on F street, opposite the

Ebbitt House. A portion of it was long occupied as lodgings by Hon.

Charles Sumner.

Through fiery opposition, John Quincy Adams was elected President. From

the time she became mistress of the President’s house, failing health

inclined Mrs. Adams to seek seclusion, but she still continued to

preside at public receptions. Her vivacity and pleasing manners did much

to warm the chill caused by Mr. Adams’ apathy or apparent coldness.

Those who knew him, declared that he had the warmest heart and the

deepest sympathies, but he had an unfortunate way of hiding them. It is

told that when he was candidate for the Presidency, his friends

persuaded him to go to a cattle show. Among the persons who ventured to

address him, was a respectable farmer who impulsively exclaimed: “Mr.

Adams, I am very glad to see you. My wife, when she was a gal, lived in

your father’s family; you were then a little boy, and she has often

combed your head.”

“Well,” said Mr. Adams, in a harsh voice, “I suppose she combs yours

now?”

The poor farmer slunk back extinguished. If he gave John Quincy his

vote, he was more magnanimous than the average citizen of to-day would

be to so rude a candidate.

A writer of her time speaks of Mrs. Adams’ “enchanting, elegant and

intellectual _régime_,” declaring that it should give tone to the whole

country. Her fine culture, intellectual tastes, and charming social

qualities, combined to attract about her a circle of rare and

distinguished women. Among these were Mrs. Richard Rush, Mrs. Van

Rensselaer, the wife of the Patroon, and Mrs. Edward Livingston.

Notwithstanding the opposition of her husband’s politics, Mrs.

Livingston was Mrs. Adams’ most intimate friend; a lady whom any land

might be proud to claim, and whose memory lives a perpetual honor to

womanhood.

Mrs. Adams’ son, Charles Francis Adams, writing of his mother in 1839,

says:

“The attractions of great European capitals, and the dissipations

consequent upon high official stations at home, though continued

through that part of her life when habits become the most fixed, have

done nothing to change the natural elegance of her manners, nor the

simplicity of her tastes.... To the world, Mrs. Adams presents a fine

example of the possibility of retiring from the circles of fashion,

and the external fascinations of life, in time still to retain a taste

for the more quiet, though less showy attractions of the domestic

hearth.

A strong literary taste, which has caused her to read much, and a

capacity for composition in prose and verse, have been resources for

her leisure moments; not with a view to that exhibition which renders

such accomplishments too often fatal to the more delicate shades of

feminine character, but for her own gratification, and that of a few

relatives and friends.

The late President Adams used to draw much amusement, in his latest

years at Quincy, from the accurate delineation of Washington manners

and character, which was regularly transmitted, for a considerable

period, in letters from her pen. And if, as time advances, she becomes

gradually less able to devote her sense of sight to reading and

writing, her practice of the more homely virtues of manual industry,

so highly commended in the final chapter of the book of Solomon, still

amuses the declining days of her varied career.”

Mrs. Adams was the “lady of the White House” when, in 1825, Lafayette

visited the United States, and, at the invitation of the President,

spent the last weeks of his stay at the “Executive Mansion,” from which,

on the seventh of September, he bade his pathetic farewell to the land

of his adoption.

Notwithstanding the rare qualities of mind and heart which she brought

to it, and the popularity which she attained in it, her son writes:

“Her residence in the President’s house I have always considered as

the period she enjoyed the least during the public career of my

father. All this appears more or less in her letters, and especially

in a species of irregular diary which she kept for some time at

Washington, for the benefit of my grandfather, John Adams, then living

at Quincy, and of her brother, who was residing in New Orleans.”

Mrs. Adams died May 14, 1852, and was buried beside her husband, in the

family burying ground at Quincy, Massachusetts.

* * * * *

In mental attainments, there was an absolute contrast between Mrs. Adams

and Rachel Donaldson, the next President’s wife.

Mrs. Andrew Jackson never entered the President’s house in visible form,

for she had passed from earth before her husband became the Chief

Magistrate of the Nation. Yet it is doubtful if the wife of any other

President ever exerted so powerful and positive an influence over an

administration in life as did she in death.

Born and reared on the frontiers of civilization, her educational

advantages had been most scanty, and she never mastered more than the

simplest rudiments of knowledge. Yet, looking on her pictured face, it

is easy to fathom and define the power which, through life and beyond

the grave, held the master will of the husband who loved her in sweet

abeyance. It was a power purely womanly—the affectional force of a woman

of exalted moral nature and deep affections. It was impossible that such

a woman should use arts to win love, and equally impossible that she

should not be loved. Men would love her instinctively, through the best

and highest in their natures.

With the wound of her loss fresh and bleeding, President Jackson entered

upon his high office. Thus in death Rachel Jackson became the tutelary

saint of the President’s house. Wherever he went, he wore her miniature.

No matter what had been the duties or pleasures of the day, when the man

came back to himself, and to his lonely room, her Bible and her picture

took the place of the beloved face and tender presence which had been

the one charm and love of his heroic life.

No other President’s wife looks down upon posterity with so winsome and

innocent a gaze as Rachel Jackson. A cap of soft lace surmounts the dark

curls which cluster about her forehead, falling veil-like over her

shoulders. The full lace ruffle around her neck is not fastened with

even a brooch, and, save the long pendants in her ears, she wears no

ornaments. Her throat is massive, her lips full and sweet in expression,

her brow broad and rounded, her eye-brows arching above a pair of large,

liquid, gazelle-like eyes, whose soft, feminine outlook is sure to win

and to disarm the beholder. This remarkable loveliness of spirit and

person was the source of fatal sorrow to Rachel Jackson. It won her

reverence, amounting almost to adoration, but it made her also the

victim of jealousy, envy and malice. These made the shadow always flung

athwart the sunshine of love which made her life.

She was a woman of deep personal piety, and longed for nothing so much

as the time when her husband would be done with political honors, as he

had assured her that then, and not till then, could he “be a Christian.”

The following anecdote, told by the late Judge Bryan of Washington,

illustrates the piety of her character and the profound personal

influence she held over the moral nature of her husband:

The father of Judge Bryan, an intimate friend of Mrs. Jackson, was on a

visit to the Hermitage. Mrs. Jackson talked to him of religion, gave him

a hymn to read that was sung at a late funeral, and said the General was

disposed to be religious, and she believed would join the church but for

the coming presidential election; that his head was now full of

politics. While they were conversing, the General came in with a

newspaper in his hand, to which he referred as denouncing his mother as

a camp follower. “This is too bad!” he exclaimed, rising into a passion

and swearing terribly as our “army in Flanders.” When nearly out of

breath, his wife approached him and, looking him in his face, simply

said: _Mr._ Jackson. He was subdued in an instant, and did not utter

another oath.

In the same presidential contest this gentle being did not herself

escape calumny. When her husband was elected President of the United

States, she said: “For Mr. Jackson’s sake, I am glad; for my own, I

never wished it.” To an intimate friend she said in all sincerity: “I

assure you I would rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God than

to dwell in that palace in Washington.” Dearer to her heart was the

Hermitage, with the little chapel built by her husband for her own

especial use, than all the prospective pomp of the President’s house.

She was a mother to every servant on the estate, and anxious to make

every one comfortable during her absence in Washington. She made

numerous journeys to Nashville, to purchase, for all left behind, their

winter supplies. Worn out, after a day’s shopping, she went to the

parlor of the Nashville Inn to rest. While she waited there for the

family coach which was to convey her back to the Hermitage, she heard

her own name spoken in the adjoining room. She was compelled to hear,

while she sat there, pale and smitten, the false and cruel calumnies

against herself which had so recklessly been used during the campaign to

defeat her husband, and which he had zealously excluded from her sight

in the newspapers. Here the arrow came back from the misfortune of her

youth, when she married a man intellectually and morally her inferior,

from whom she was afterwards divorced, and it entered her gentle heart

too deep to be withdrawn. She was seized almost immediately with

spasmodic disease of the heart. Everything possible was done for her

relief without avail. A few nights afterwards she exclaimed: “I am

fainting,” was lifted to her bed, and in a few moments had breathed her

last sigh.

The grief of her husband amounted to agony. It seemed for a time that

his frame must break under such grief, but he lived to worship and serve

her memory for many years. December 23, 1828, a great ball and banquet

was to have been given in Nashville, in honor of General Jackson’s

victory at New Orleans. The whole city was gay with preparations, when

the word came from the Hermitage: “The President’s wife is dead!”

From that hour her husband seemed to live to avenge her wrongs and to

honor her memory. Probably into no other administration of the

government, from its first to the present, has personal feeling had so

much to do with official appointments as in the offices emptied and

filled by Andrew Jackson. It had only to enter his suspicion that a man

had failed to espouse the cause of the beloved Rachel, and his unlucky

official head immediately came off. It was told him that Mr. Watterson,

the Librarian of Congress, had told, or listened to something to the

detriment of Mrs. Jackson, and Mr. Watterson was immediately deposed.

Thus she was avenged at times, probably in acts of personal injustice,

but in her own pure tones she spoke through him in all the higher acts

of his administration. Thus it was in spirit that Rachel Jackson lived

and reigned at the White House.

The “lovely Emily” Donelson, wife of Andrew Jackson Donelson, Mrs.

Jackson’s nephew and adopted son, with Mrs. Andrew Jackson, Jr., the

wife of another adopted son, shared together the social honors of the

White House during the administration of President Jackson. The delicate

question of precedence between them was thus settled by him. He said to

Mrs. Jackson: “You, my dear, are mistress of the Hermitage, and Emily is

hostess of the White House.”

This Emily was of remarkable beauty, strongly resembling Mary, Queen of

Scots. Her manners were of singular fascination, and she dressed with

exquisite taste. The dress she wore at the first inauguration is still

preserved. It is an amber-colored satin, brocaded with _bouquets_ of

rose-leaves and violets, trimmed with white lace and pearls. It was a

present from General Jackson, and even at that day, before “Jenkins”

supposed birth, it was described in every paper of the Union. General

Jackson always called her “my daughter.” She was the child of Mrs.

Jackson’s brother, and married to her cousin. She was quick at repartee,

and possessed the rare gift of being able to listen gracefully. A

foreign minister once said: “Madame, you dance with the grace of a

Parisian. I can hardly realize that you were educated in Tennessee.”

“Count, you forget,” was the spirited reply, “that grace is a

cosmopolite, and, like a wild flower, is found oftener in the woods than

in the streets of a city.”

Her four children were all born in the White House. But in the midst of

its honors, in the flower of her youth, “the lovely Emily” went out from

its portals to die. She sought the softer airs of “Tulip Grove,” her

home in Tennessee, where she died of consumption, December, 1836. A lady

gives the following picture of an evening scene at the White House, in

the early part of Jackson’s administration:

“The large parlor was scantily furnished; there was light from the

chandelier, and a blazing fire in the grate; four or five ladies

sewing around it; Mrs. Donelson, Mrs. Andrew Jackson, Jr., Mrs. Edward

Livingston. Five or six children were playing about, regardless of

documents or work-baskets. At the farther end of the room sat the

President, in his arm-chair, wearing a long loose coat, and smoking a

long reed pipe, with bowl of red clay—combining the dignity of the

patriarch, monarch, and Indian chief. Just behind, was Edward

Livingston, the Secretary of State, reading a dispatch from the French

Minister for Foreign Affairs. The ladies glance admiringly, now and

then, at the President, who listens, waving his pipe toward the

children, when they become too boisterous.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

SCENES AT THE WHITE HOUSE—MEN AND WOMEN OF NOTE.

Widows “at par”—Four Sonless Presidents—Supported by Flattery—A Delicate

Constitution—Living to a Respectable Age—Teaching Her Grandsons How

to Fight—Inheriting Religion—“Another Sensitive, Saintly Soul”—A

Pathetic Reminiscence—A Perfect Gentlewoman—A Stately Black-eyed

Matron—A Lady of the Old School—Obeying St. Paul—A Woman Who “Kept

Silence”—“Sarah Knows Where It Is”—Commanding “Superlative

Respect”—An English Lady “Impressed”—Three Queens in the

Background—A Very Handsome Woman—Retiring from Active Life—A Lady’s

Heroism—“My Home, the Battle-field”—A Man Who Kept to His Post—A

Life in the Savage Wilderness—A Life’s Devotion—The Colonel’s Brave

Wife—The Conquering Hero from Mexico—Objecting to the

Presidency—“Betty Bliss”—The Reigning Lady—An Overpowering

Reception—“A Bright and Beaming Creature, Dressed Simply in

White”—An Inclination for Retirement—The Penalty of Greatness—Death

in the White House—A Wife’s Prayers—A New _Regime_—The Clothier’s

Apprentice and the School Teacher—The Future President Builds His

Own House—Becomes a Lawyer—Chosen Representative—Domestic

Happiness—Twenty-seven Years of Married Life—“A Matron of Commanding

Person”—A Scarcity of Books—Home “Comforts” at the White House—The

Memory of a Loving Wife—A Well Balanced Young Lady.

Three of the first four Presidents of the United States married widows.

Jefferson, Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Tyler, were all widowers while

occupying the White House. Neither Washington, Jefferson, Madison, or

Monroe, left sons to succeed them. The wife of Martin Van Buren died in

her youth, long before he had grown to high political honors. She had

been dead seventeen years when, as the eighth President of the United

States, he entered the White House. During his administration, its

social honors were dispensed by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Abram Van

Buren, born Angelica Singleton, of South Carolina, who entered upon her

duties and pleasures as a bride. She was of illustrious lineage,

possessed finely cultivated powers, and “is said to have borne the

fatigue of a three hours’ _levée_ with a patience and pleasantry

inexhaustible.” Doubtless she shared some of the help which bore Mr.

Monroe triumphantly through a similar scene.

“Are you not completely worn out?” inquired a friend.

“O, no,” replied the President. “A little flattery will support a man

through great fatigue.”

* * * * *

Anna Symnes, the wife of President Harrison, a lady of strong

intelligence and deep piety, never came to the White House. Her delicate

health forbade it, when her husband made his presidential journey to

Washington. In a little more than a month he was borne back to her,

redeemed by death. She survived, almost to the age of ninety, to bid

sons and grandsons Godspeed when they went forth to fight for their

country—as she had bidden her gallant husband the same, when he left her

amid her flock of little ones, in the days of her youth, for the same

cause. From time to time sons and grandsons came from the field of

battle to receive her blessing anew. She said to one: “Go, my son. Your

country needs your services. I do not. I feel that my prayers in your

behalf will be heard, and that you will return in safety.” And the

grandson did come back to receive her final blessing, after many

hard-fought battles. Her only surviving son writes: “That I am a firm

believer in the religion of Christ, is not a virtue of mine. I imbibed

it at my mother’s breast, and can no more divest myself of it, than of

my nature.”

Mrs. Letitia Christian Tyler, wife of the tenth President of the United

States, was another sensitive, saintly soul, whose children rise up

to-day, and call her blessed. She died in the White House, September 10,

1842. Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Robert Tyler, writing of the event,

says: