THE GROWTH OF THE NATION
"It is odd enough," wrote Daniel Webster about 1830, "that the
consequences of this dispute in the social and fashionable world are
producing great political effects and may very probably determine who
shall be successor to the present Chief Magistrate." These were ominous
words; and they show, as nothing could better show, the power into which
had come that which is generically termed "Society." So strong had grown
its influence, so firm its hold upon the national _zeitgeist_, that it
could, at least by mediate means, even dictate the nomination and
consequent election of a specific candidate for the highest honor within
the gift of the nation. Powerful indeed had grown the once feeble hands
of the American woman.
The dispute to which Webster referred was so famous in its day and
productive of such notable results upon the general history of our
country that, while its heroine hardly comes within the scope of this
work as being a representative American woman, it merits place here.
When Andrew Jackson was inaugurated President of the United States he
appointed to a seat in his cabinet, with the dignities of Secretary of
War, General Eaton, a life-long friend. Unfortunately, General Eaton had
married a beautiful and attractive but lowborn woman, Margaret O'Neill
by maiden name and the widow of one Timberlake.
Her father had been a tavern-keeper, and it was thought that his
daughter had imbibed too liberal notions during her residence under the
paternal roof. So, those days being more particular in such matters than
others which have succeeded them, Peggy O'Neill, as she was called
endearingly or contemptuously, as the speaker happened to be friend or
foe, was distinctly _persona non grata_ to the society of the capital.
It declined to recognize her as one of its members; Mrs. Calhoun, wife
of the vice-president, openly refused to associate with Mrs. Eaton, and
Calhoun, on being appealed to, declared himself powerless to interfere,
as "the quarrels of women, like the laws of the Medes and Persians,
admitted of neither inquiry or explanation." Certain bachelors among the
diplomatic corps, on the other hand, were delighted to honor the fair
Peggy, and the affair soon developed from a skirmish into a war. The
climax was reached when Mrs. Huygens, wife of the minister from Holland,
on finding herself placed next to Mrs. Eaton at dinner, turned and swept
from the room on the arm of her husband.
President Jackson, always combative, entered into the affair with his
usual zest. He was within an ace of demanding Huygens's recall for the
affront put upon Mrs. Eaton; and, though he did not carry his enthusiasm
quite thus far, he espoused the cause of the lady with most militant
zeal. The contest continued to rage; the cabinet was styled the
"Petticoat Cabinet," and Mrs. Eaton was far-famed as Bellona, the
Goddess of War. There was no surrender on either side; and at last came
the state of affairs which Webster had prophetically foretold. For Mr.
Van Buren, always a staunch supporter of Jackson in all ways, had warmly
adopted the cause of Mrs. Eaton as his own. This lost him the position
of minister to England, since Congress, with Calhoun as chairman casting
the deciding vote, refused to ratify the nomination; but it gained him
the presidency,--which was the fulfilment of Webster's prophecy,--as
Jackson practically had the power to appoint his successor, and there
can be no doubt that Mr. Van Buren's countenance and aid in the social
war influenced him in his choice quite as much as, and probably far more
than, the recollection of his secretary's political services to him
during his campaign and term of office. So that the forces of the fair
Peggy triumphed at last, though she herself gained no victory. Mr. Van
Buren appointed General Eaton as Governor of Florida and, later,
Minister to the Court of Madrid, and Washington society knew its apple
of discord no more.
There may have been instances before this time, there certainly have
been many since, when the decision of our chief legislature was
influenced by the charms of a woman; but the case of Peggy O'Neill and
Martin Van Buren stands as the unique instance of the selection of the
president of the United States resulting from a purely feminine cause.
Not only is the incident thus singular, but it is equally suggestive; it
speaks trumpet-tongued of the power which had by that time been won by
the social element at the national court and it illustrates the changes
which had come into American society as exemplified in its highest and
most typical circles.
Chronology has been neglected in order to give prominence to an instance
so illustrative of the development of the power of society during the
period which is now under consideration; but let us return to find the
causal influences which led to such result. When the War of 1812 came to
its unsatisfactory and indecisive end the city of Washington resumed its
sway among social circles, and this time held its sceptre with firmer
grasp. Thither flocked most of the aspirants for social fame. Not that
in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other growing cities
there were not women whose repute was equal to that of most of the
individual leaders of Washington society, but that the latter was
invested in its mass with a dignity which was wanting in unofficial
circles. It was the court society of the country and thus held as
representative. It was composed of concentric circles, centring in the
White House and thence extending, through the wives and daughters of
cabinet officials and foreign ministers, to those who hung upon the
outer border and peered wistfully through the crowd for a glimpse of the
sacred inner precincts. The war, though marking a period in the history
of womanhood in our country, had been but an interlude in the chronicle
of society, and the latter had but gathered strength and zest during its
period of enforced rest.
In 1825, Mrs. Jackson, the wife of the hero of New Orleans, whose own
place in Washington society was at first a little precarious because of
some irregularity in her marriage, till the noble character of the woman
silenced her detractors,--thus wrote to Mrs. Kingsley of Nashville,
giving her first impressions of the capital:
"To tell you of this city, I would not do justice to the subject. The
extravagance is in dressing, and running to parties; but I must say they
regard the Sabbath, and attend preaching, for there are churches of
every denomination and able ministers of the Gospel.... Oh, my dear
friend, how shall I get through this bustle? There are not less than
from fifty to one hundred persons calling in a day.... Don't be afraid
of my giving way to those vain things. The Apostle says, I can do all
things in Christ, who strengthened me. The play-actors sent me a letter
requesting my countenance to them. No. A ticket to balls and parties.
No, not one. Two dinings; several times to drink tea. Indeed, Mr.
Jackson encourages me in my course."
It does not seem to have occurred to the simple piety of the writer that
attendance at church may have been as much the result of fashion as of
religion; but the more charitable view may be the correct one, as those
were days of greater devoutness than the present, and even society
maintained some of the rigid rules of old Puritan times, The little
picture drawn by Mrs. Jackson is suggestive both of the social whirl of
the capital and the simple ways of her who but for her untimely death
might later have ruled as titular queen of the social circle. Mrs.
Jackson was indeed one who might stand as a representative of much that
is best in American womanhood of that day or any day. She was domestic
and retiring, but by no means illiterate, as she was falsely said to be
when the political fight raged high, and she was a woman, as her letters
show, of the most exemplary piety and resolution in the right. Had she
inhabited the White House as its mistress she might have injected anew
into Washington society a tone which was beginning to be less and less
dominant as time went on.
It was about the beginning of the period chosen for the subject of this
chapter, the period reaching from the close of the War of 1812 to 1850,
that American society, as represented in the upper classes of the
womanhood of America, began to be conventional according to European
standards. There were still, and continued to be, many individuals of
note; but there was very little individuality in the mass. In dress, in
manners, in customs, and even in thought, there was little to
distinguish the American woman of the higher rank from her European
sister. The birth of a national aristocracy had done its invariable
work, and importation of foreign ideals and ideas had completed that
work and given it direction. Certain traits, racial and national, were
visible in most of the daughters of America and differentiated them from
their European compeers; but they were traits which did not affect
society in the mass and which were therefore individual and not social.
Domesticity still held sway in the majority of American circles; the
American woman was still preeminently the home goddess and the home
ruler, and refused to abdicate her crown even at the call of fashion;
but it must be acknowledged that she wore that crown less easily and
comfortably than in earlier days. There was fast dawning the day of
artificiality in the things of existence, the day when the shadow should
seem greater than the substance, when the queen of the home should
degenerate into the queen of the revel. There was needed some cataclysm
to rescue American womanhood from the peril which she was approaching;
and it was well for her that that cataclysm came at need, however
terrible it may have been in the coming.
Yet even in those days the social world did not represent all that was
best in American womanhood or even all that was most noteworthy. Therein
alone, it is true, were to be found those whose individuality became
famous; but in other fields there labored many American women who were
unknown to all but those of their immediate environment, and yet whose
work was of national importance. Steadily, even while the butterflies of
society danced at rout and revel in the East, the western frontiers were
being pushed further and further toward the great ocean that had crept
round the feet of Balboa, first of white men to stand upon its shores.
Kentucky was no longer "the West"; it had sent a president in Jackson, a
great senator in Clay, and it was recognized as a sister state even by
the proudest of its eastern fellows. But beyond the Mississippi still
stretched a country which was practically a _terra incognita_, and which
still awaited reclamation from the rule of the savage and the wild
beast. Into this waiting region strode many a determined explorer with
axe and rifle, bent on winning a home from the grasp of the wilderness;
and with him went his wife to give grace to the home when it should be
won and "make the wilderness blossom like a rose." They were survivals,
these women, of the primitive type of American womanhood: strong, grave
of countenance and bearing, caring little for pleasure or recreation,
putting duty before all things in their lives as in their esteem, almost
masculine in determination and courage. To their hands the rifle was
more familiar than the distaff, for upon them often depended the safety
of home and children when their husbands were afield or slain; yet they
were feminine in many ways of the best and fitted to become the mothers
of a sturdy race of warriors and tillers of the soil.
There is no record of any individual heroines among these women of the
pioneers of western civilization, unless it be of purely local limit,
nor do we even know much of the story of these women in the mass. We
hear no little of the sufferings, privations, and perils of the men who
beat back the Indian from his hunting grounds, chased the grizzly bear
to his lair in the Rocky Mountains, and turned barren prairie into
fruitful field; but of their wives and daughters, who bore the larger
share of those privations and suffered more terror in those perils, we
are given no record save in the most general terms. Perhaps the
chroniclers who tell in terms of admiration of the endurance and courage
of the pioneers and forget to mention those of their wives unconsciously
pay the latter, and womanhood through them, the greatest of homage, in
taking such qualities for granted in women and, hence, too natural to
call for record. However this may be, we know, from acquaintance with
the general facts, that with the ever-encroaching frontier of our
country's western limit of habitation there always advanced the foot of
woman, braving all perils in her love for her husband, her children, and
her home.
It was the presence of this gallant band, as well as their courage and
endurance, which assures us of one of the most predominant traits of the
most distinctive American womanhood in those days. That trait is the
love of home. It was to seek a home, a habitation and spot of ground
that should be their very own, that the pioneer and his wife dared the
perils of the wilderness; and in this search the wife was at least as
instrumental as the husband. To have a home was the ambition of every
American woman of those times; and, if she could not compass this by
ordinary methods, she had recourse to extraordinary ones. If she could
not find a home among the habitations of her fellows, if her good man
could not give to her this one desire of her heart, then she urged her
husband forth into the barren fields of the unknown West, where danger
and death might await them, but where at least there was promise of the
home,--the Mecca of her every wish.
Toward the end of the period included in this chapter there occurred
another westward movement which happily is not entirely relative to the
story of American womanhood, and yet must receive mention here. The
credulous followers of John Smith, the Mormon, as they are conveniently
though incorrectly styled in general terminology, driven from their
abodes among the more civilized of their race, sought asylum on the
shores of the Great Salt Lake and there built a city to be their abiding
place for ever. Somewhat later the Mormon creed boldly avowed its
adherence to the theory of polygamy, in practice only at first and then
in precept as well, and thus revived, even though within narrow limits,
one of the oldest and furthest removed conditions that had ever
environed womanhood. That such a theory should prove attractive to any
woman seems to most of us a thing in itself wonderful, that it did thus
prove attractive to many is a matter of history. It is true that the
majority of recruits to the harems--the word is as correct as
convenient--of the Mormons came from the older countries of the eastern
shores of the Atlantic: Sweden sent many women to Salt Lake City, and
even England furnished her quota, while the Latin countries, probably
because of the prevalence of the Catholic faith in their borders, the
influence of that faith being in all ways antagonistic to Mormon
theories and arguments, lost but few of their daughters to the Mormon
Minotaur. With these accessions to the seraglios of the Utah settlement
we are less concerned; but many an American woman, by birth and rearing
a child of our own land, turned from her ancient traditions to become
the "wife" of a Mormon elder. Those who look upon the Mormon practice of
polygamy as immoral are narrow and prejudiced, for morality is always a
thing of convention and agreement; but that it was a blot upon our
civilization may be admitted without cavil. At one time it became even
an actual threat to the best interests of our social structure; it
promised to engulf in its Charybdis some of the elements of our society
which we could ill spare and to make itself felt as an influence in
places where it dared not openly raise its head. Legislation--whether
justifiable by the spirit of our commonwealth, or otherwise, is
legitimate matter of dispute--at length intervened to banish all fear of
Mormon influence and to abolish the practices which were most
reprobated, and now Mormonism is shorn of its most distinctive feature
and that which lent itself most readily to the cause of proselytism.
However we may condemn the tenets and practices of Mormonism, it must be
admitted that the most representative women of the Mormons, in the
heyday of Mormon power, were thrifty, industrious, economical, and
notable workers. Moreover, though it is generally thought that among the
disciples of Joseph Smith--to whose door, however, the practice of
polygamy cannot be laid, for that was an addendum to the faith made by
Brigham Young--women were held in slight esteem, an idea generally
correct as to the mass, there were many instances of Mormon women of
influence and power in the councils of the men. The adoption of polygamy
as part of the creed was largely the work, if not the inspiration, of a
woman who was "sealed" to Brigham Young; and the practice would never
have grown to any strength, as it had many opponents among the men, had
it not received the approbation and welcome of the women. Its adoption
caused more than one schism in the Church of the Latter-day Saints, as
the Mormons pompously style themselves, but the schismatics never
received the support of more than a few of the women of the "peculiar
people," and it may be broadly stated that the revival of polygamy among
a civilized people was at least as much the work of women as of men.
Mormonism is doomed as a faith; but its existence will always be felt in
national results. Even so limited a movement as this, when it touches
matters of descent, must ever leave its traces, and the very breaking-up
of such a community will have its effect of disseminating impure sources
among the fountains of our nation. In this instance, woman, who has done
so much for America, has brought harm to her.
As the eighteenth century approached its middle age, society in America
grew more and more distinguished and less and less distinctive. It had
long since lost all traces of provincialism; it was a power in itself
with its glamor of aristocracy, and it even had its traditions of rank,
which were not unrecognized by foreign social powers. In the earliest
days of the century, on Christmas Eve, 1803, Elizabeth Patterson, of
Baltimore, had been married to Jerome Bonaparte; and, though the
marriage was unrecognized by the all powerful Emperor Napoleon and was
thus made practically invalid, it was perfectly legitimate and
noteworthy. Though Napoleon, because of the exigencies of his peculiar
position, forced Jerome to renounce his young bride and marry as became
his station, he himself treated Miss Patterson with consideration and
even generosity, his liberality to her in the matter of a pension
enabling her to make the famous retort, when Jerôme offered to provide
for her after his marriage, that she "preferred being sheltered under
the wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill of a goose." She
never bore any rancor to Napoleon for his actions toward her, though she
strove with all her might to win her rights.
Some fifteen years later the same city of Baltimore, or, more correctly,
a place contiguous to that city, now known, from its once residents, as
Catonsville, gave to society the four Caton sisters, celebrated at home
and abroad by the name, conferred by English admirers, of the "American
Graces." They were the granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton
and daughters of Richard Caton, and three of them respectively married,
in two cases after prior matrimonial alliances, the Marquis of
Wellesley, eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington and himself a
distinguished Governor-general of India and, later, Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland; the Marquis of Carmarthen, eldest son and finally successor of
the Duke of Leeds; and Baron Stafford. These were "great matches" for
the daughters of a provincial town; and it is a little singular that
Louisa Caton, who became the sister-in-law of Elizabeth Bonaparte by her
first marriage to William Patterson, should afterward become allied to
the family of the man, in the Duke of Wellington, who was most
instrumental in overthrowing the fortunes of the family to which Miss
Patterson had allied herself by her marriage, and Baltimore be thus
connected in its traditions with the respective leaders in the most
decisive battle the modern world has ever known.
Though America was spared the adoption of the notable extravagances of
European fashions, yet everywhere, in every aspect, were to be seen
European conditions of society. Even the type of American woman,
preserved till now in certain peculiarities of mental attitude, began to
fail. There remained many individual representatives of that type, and
these among our most aristocratic society; but in the mass it was not
observable. To do away with such type, to lose all distinctiveness of
racial attitude, was fast becoming the aim of the American society
woman. This was well enough when it had to do with graces of bearing and
amenities of intercourse; but it lent itself to affectations and follies
as well. The wife and the mother were no longer the representative
American women; the homely and the home-giving chrysalis had been cast
aside, and the lustrous but useless butterfly was spreading its wings
for flight. Still a country of homes in its more widely spread
conditions, this was not the aspect assumed by America when it was gazed
upon by foreign eyes, for these saw first the most prominent rather than
the deeper facts. The capital was fast becoming more of social than of
political importance, and the wives and daughters of the senators and
representatives in Congress assembled at least thought of themselves,
even if they were not generally considered, as being of as much
importance in the march of the nation as were their husbands and
fathers. The vision of the mothers of the republic, as they looked
forward upon the path which they hoped to see their daughters tread as
following in their own footsteps, had not been brought to pass. Not that
there was failure of the best among American womanhood; taking it in the
mass, it was pure and high and true. But it was wrongly directed to
bring forth its best potencies, at least in its most representative,
though fortunately not most characteristic, expressions; it had taken
the wrong turning.
This was so only of the expression, not of the nature. American
womanhood still stood for all the best of its kind. Removed from the
chief temptations offered by Old World conditions, it knew no taint,
felt no canker at its heart. Its head was often in the wrong, but its
heart never. The importation of European customs and manners, as well as
of European fashions, had worked its will upon the outward bearing of
the American woman; but European morals, then at a low ebb in all the
Latin countries and not too high in England herself, had not yet
succeeded in gaining foothold among our women. Moreover, except among
the extreme devotees of the fashionable world, domesticity was still the
keynote of the life of the American woman. Here is the testimony to this
effect born by Fenimore Cooper, a writer whose eyes were never closed to
the follies and foibles of his nation and whose pen was rather given to
blame than praise:
"Foreigners are apt to say that we children of this western world do not
submit to the tender emotions with the same self-abandonment as those
who are born nearer to the rising sun; that our hearts are as cold and
selfish as our manners; and that we live more for the lower and
grovelling passions than for sentiment and the affections. Most
sincerely do we wish that every charge which European jealousy and
European superciliousness have brought against the American character
was as false as this. That the people of this country are more
restrained in the exhibition of all their emotions than those across the
great waters we believe; but that the last feel the most we shall be
very unwilling to allow. Most of all shall we deny that the female form
contains hearts more true to all its affections, spirits more devoted to
the interests of its earthly head, or an identity of existence more
perfect than those with which the American wife clings to her husband.
She is literally 'bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.' It is seldom
that her wishes cross the limits of the domestic circle, which to her is
earth itself and all that it contains which is most desirable. Her
husband and children compose her little world, and beyond them and their
sympathies it is rare indeed that her truant affections ever wish to
stray. A part of this concentration of the American wife's existence in
these domestic interests is doubtless owing to the simplicity of
American life and the absence of temptation. Still, so devoted is the
female heart, so true to its impulses, and so little apt to wander from
house-feelings and home-duties, that the imputation to which there is
allusion is just that of all others to which the wives of the Republic
ought not to be subject."
This is the testimony of a man who knew his people and his time in some
ways better than any other American novelist and who did not hesitate to
use the cautery when he thought its application desirable. Therefore it
is to be regarded as just and accurate, the more so that it contains
admission of interior facts concerning which "European jealousy and
European superciliousness" could find ground for blame that could not be
termed carping. It was of that which is now openly and then secretly
termed "the middle class" that Cooper was chiefly speaking, however,
though most of his words were applicable to all classes of American
society. One may doubt the actuality of the "simplicity of American
life" in its more prominent expressions at that time, and the "absence
of temptation," in the sense in which our author means the phrase, does
not appear, since the conditions which made for such temptation in
European society were to be found in that of America; but morals were
then under the care of the most efficient guardian which they can
know,--public opinion. Indeed, in such matters it was rather the day of
prudery in America. The American woman was justly proud of her virtue,
was indeed something of a catharist; and she would not tolerate the
smallest departure from the rigid code which she set as the
unimpeachable law in these matters. If she was extreme in this wise, at
least the extremity was carried in the right direction; and American
society, whatever its follies, was pure.
Nor were there wanting many of those in high places to fulfil the
statements of Cooper concerning the domesticity of the American wife. In
1824, Mrs. Seaton wrote of Mrs. John C. Calhoun: "You could not fail to
love and appreciate, as I do, her charming qualities: a devoted mother,
a tender wife, industrious, cheerful, intelligent, with the most
perfectly equable temper." Mrs. Crawford, wife of the secretary of war
during Monroe's administration, openly regretted that her husband had
entered public life, since the duties of the position would make inroads
upon the domesticity which she valued as the dearest thing in her
existence. On the other hand, these simpler tastes among so many of the
higher ladies of the land did not produce lack of culture. John Randolph
was no lover of women, and no believer in their entrance into the domain
of politics. When on one occasion they crowded the floor as well as the
gallery of the Senate to hear him pour forth the rich flood of his
eloquence, and he was annoyed by some whisper, he suddenly paused in his
speech, pointed his long index finger at the gallery, and demanded: "Mr.
Speaker, what, pray, are all these women doing here, so out of place in
this arena? Sir, they had much better be at home attending to their
knitting!" Yet even John Randolph, misogynist as he was, thus wrote in
1833 t Edward Livingstone concerning the latter's acceptance of the
position of minister to France: "In Mrs. Livingstone, to whom present my
warmest respects, you have a most able coadjutor. _Dowdies_, dowdies
won't do for European courts, Paris especially. There and at London the
character of the minister's wife is almost as important as his own. It
is the very place for her. There she would dazzle and charm, and surely
the salons of Paris must have far greater attractions for her than the
yahoos of Washington."
The last words show Randolph's estimate of Washington society in the
mass; but never was there a more prejudiced or bitterer man than he of
Roanoke, and his general verdict must not be implicitly accepted.
In 1836 there occurred at the capital an event which was in itself of
note, as being contrary to the theories of the day, and which is yet
more noteworthy as the first instance in America of a practice which in
our day has become common,--the entrance of a woman into journalism.
Mrs. Anne Royall founded a paper in the capital, giving it the somewhat
suggestive name of the _Huntress_, and dedicated it chiefly to the
promulgation of fashionable news. Thus Mrs. Royall not only became the
mother of American women journalists, but absolutely the pioneer of that
long line of society reporters who were to become in later days such an
accepted and welcomed feature of the social world. The office of the
_Huntress_ was on Capitol Hill, and the paper was published every
Saturday; it was eagerly welcomed by society, which up to that time had
found its doings sadly neglected in the columns of the journals. Finding
the innovation received with a warmth which left no doubt of its
popularity, it was adopted by Nathaniel Parker Willis in his letters to
the New York _Mirror_, and by James Gordon Bennett in his correspondence
to the _Courier_; but Mrs. Royall had the honor, if honor it be, of
leading the new movement in journalism. Sooth to say, Mrs. Royall was
more progressive than talented in such matters; her pen pictures of the
chief components of Washington society showed a distressing sameness,
the women whom she favored being always described as of great beauty,
having faces of the classic oval, their hair raven or golden in hue, and
forms that rivalled that of Venus, while the men were "giants of
intellect, with penetrating eyes and expansive brows." Nor was she more
restrained in her reprobation than in her admiration, or truer to fact;
and John Quincy Adams, when he described her as "the virago-errant in
enchanted armor," dealt with her to the full as gently as she deserved.
Her paper ran a longer course than might have been expected under the
circumstances; and, in 1847, it contained an announcement which is
significant both of the pride of sex in the writer and the growth of
prominence among American women in certain lines, when in February of
that year it announced: "Washington City has been honored with the
presence of three of America's most talented authoresses: Mrs. L. H.
Sigourney, Mrs. A. L. Phelps, and Mrs. Ann S. Stephens." The fame of the
last named of this trio has not survived; but the names of the other two
are still known, even if their works are neglected.
The administration of President Harrison brought little addition to the
normal gaiety of Washington; but that of President Tyler was in some
respects the most brilliant from a social standpoint that the capital
had known. Mrs. Tyler's health prevented her from taking the lead in
social functions; but her two daughters, Mrs. Lightfoot Jones and Mrs.
Semple, admirably filled her place, aided by Mrs. Robert Tyler, the
young wife of the president's son. Even a fancy-dress ball was included
among the White House entertainments of that time, one being given in
honor of the president's little granddaughter, Mary Fairlie Tyler, who
appeared thereat as a fairy, with gossamer wings, a diamond star on her
brow, and a silver wand in her hand. The ball given at the White House
in 1841, in honor of the young Prince de Joinville, was another notable
event in the social world. Perhaps a more truly noteworthy function
there, however, was the official reception attended by Charles Dickens,
who was received by President Tyler and Mrs. Semple, and who afterward
spoke in warm terms of the order which was preserved by the concourse of
over three thousand people who had been attracted by his fame.
Though there was now no talk of "republican simplicity," there were
still some old-fashioned people who were repelled by the ever-increasing
dominance of society and social interests at the capital of the nation,
and who reprobated the state with which the chief executive and his
family held their court. Mrs. Fremont tells us that the second Mrs.
Tyler was made the object of much animadversion because "she drove four
horses (finer than those of the Russian minister) and because she
received seated, her armchair on a slightly raised platform, in a velvet
gown with three feathers in her hair;" and certainly, though the number
of feathers would seem to have no bearing upon the matter of
republicanism, that raised platform is unpleasantly suggestive of the
dais of a throne. The first wife of Mr. Tyler died after a residence in
the presidential mansion of little more than a year, and her successor
in the heart of the president and to the dignities of "the first lady of
the land," Miss Julia Gardner, of New York, enjoyed but eight months of
official leadership. She was greatly admired for the ease and dignity
with which she wore her high honors; but that raised platform suggests
that it may not have been ill for some of the still cherished
institutions of our country, even in its social aspects, that she was
mistress of the White House and its customs no longer than was actually
the case.
The last administration during the first half century of the nineteenth
of our era, that of President Taylor, was not remarkable for social
innovations; but it is noteworthy for the fact that one of the prominent
members of the society of the capital was the second Mrs. Jefferson
Davis, who, little less than a decade later, was to abandon the sphere
of her peaceful influence at Washington to share in the responsibilities
of her husband as leader of a cause wholly antagonistic to the interests
represented by the capital. The death of President Taylor in July, 1850,
cast a gloom over the society of Washington and brings us to another era
in the history of American womanhood. Greater gloom was to fall, not
only upon Washington, but the whole country; and once more the leaders
of society were to be forgotten in the heroines, noted or unnoted, of
strife.