SOLONS OF THE CAPITAL
The classes of Washington society in the fifties were peculiarly
distinct. They were not unlike its topography, which is made up of many
small circles and triangles, into each of which run tributary streets
and avenues. In the social life, each division in the Congressional body
was as a magnetic circle, attracting to itself by way of defined radii
those whose tastes or political interests were in sympathy with it. Not
less prominent than the Cabinet circle (outranking it, in fact), and
fully as interesting by reason of its undisguised preference for things
solid, scientific and intellectual, was the Judiciary or Supreme Court
set. The several Justices that composed this august body, together with
their wives and daughters, formed a charmed circle into which the merely
light-minded would scarcely have ventured. Here one met the wittiest and
the weightiest minds of the capital, and here, perhaps more than in any
other coterie, the new-comer was impressed with what Messrs. Nicolay and
Hay describe as “the singular charm of Washington life.” In the Supreme
Court circle, the conditions attending Congressional life in those
strenuous times forced themselves less boldly upon one. Here one
discussed philosophies, inventions, history, perhaps, and the arts;
seldom the fashions, and as seldom the _on dits_.
The Nestor of that circle in the fifties was quaint old Roger B. Taney
(pronounced Tawney), who, after various political disappointments,
including a refusal by the Senate to confirm his appointment as a member
of the Cabinet, had received his appointment to the Supreme Court bench
in 1836. Upon the death of Chief Justice Marshall, Judge Taney became
the head of the Supreme Court body; thus, for more than thirty years, he
had been a prominent personage in the country’s legal circles and a
conspicuous resident in Washington. He was an extremely plain-looking
man, with frail body, which once rose tall and erect, but now was so
bent that one always thought of him as small, and with a head which made
me think of a withered nut. Swarthy of skin, but grey-haired, Judge
Taney was a veritable skeleton, “all mind and no body”; yet his opinion
settled questions that agitated the nation, and his contemporaries
agreed he was the ablest man who had ever sat upon the Supreme Court
bench. Judge Taney’s daughters, gifted and brilliant women, were seldom
seen in society, but from choice or necessity chose bread-winning
careers. They were great draughtswomen and made coloured maps, for
which, in those days of expanding territory, there was a great and
constant need.
Of Chief Justice Taney’s associates, Judges Catron and John A. Campbell
became best known to Senator Clay and myself. These, and other statesmen
equally distinguished and later to be mentioned, having been the friends
of ex-Governor (then Senator) C. C. Clay, Sr., my husband had been known
to them from the days when, as a schoolboy, he had visited his parents
in the Federal City. Mrs. Judge Catron, whom I met soon after my arrival
in Washington, was a woman of great elegance of manner and dress, and
always brought to my mind the thought of a dowager Duchess. An associate
of my husband’s mother, and a native of gay Nashville, Mrs. Catron had
been a social queen in Washington in the late thirties, and her position
of interest was still preserved in 1855.
Judge and Mrs. Campbell, being rich beyond many others, their home was
widely known for sumptuous entertaining as well as for its intellectual
atmosphere. Sharing to an extent the public favour, Judge Campbell,
Reverdy Johnson, and Robt. J. Walker were the three legal giants of
their day. Judge Campbell’s clients were among the wealthiest in the
country, and his fees were said to be enormous. Had not the war ensued,
undoubtedly he would have been appointed to the Chief Justiceship, as
was commonly predicted for him. He was a man of great penetration and
erudition, and was held in high esteem by everyone in the capital. In
1861 he cast his lot with the people of the South, among whom he was
born, and went out of the Federal City to meet whatsoever fate the
future held. Judge Campbell became the earnest adviser of Mr. Davis, and
was a Commissioner of the Confederate Government, together with
Alexander H. Stephens and R. M. T. Hunter, when the three conferred with
Mr. Seward, acting as delegate from the Northern President, Lincoln. Nor
did the ensuing years diminish the great regard of great men for our
beloved Southern scholar.[6] Writing to Judge Campbell from Washington
on December 10, 1884, Thomas F. Bayard thus reveals the exalted regard
which the former sustained to the close of a long life:
“Mr. Lamar, now Associate Judge of the Supreme Court, concurs with me,”
he wrote, “in considering it highly important that your counsel and
opinions should be freely given to Mr. Cleveland at this important
juncture, and respectfully and earnestly I trust you will concur in our
judgment in the matter. Mr. Cleveland will resign from his present
office early in January, but can easily and conveniently receive you for
the purpose suggested in the interview.”[7]
In those days of Washington’s splendour, Mrs. Campbell and her daughter
Henrietta were no less distinguished for their culture, intellectuality,
and exclusiveness. Mrs. Campbell was the first Southern woman to adopt
the English custom of designating her coloured servant as “my man.” At
the home of the Campbells one met not only the legal lights of
Washington, but scientists and travellers, as if law and the sciences
were drawn near to each other by natural selection. Professor Henry, of
the Smithsonian Institution, was a frequent visitor at this home, as was
also Professor Maury, the grand road-master of the ocean, who, by the
distribution of his buoys, made a track in the billows of the Atlantic
for the safe passing of ships.
I remember an amusing visit paid by a party from our mess to the
observatory of Professor Maury. It was an occasion of special interest.
Jupiter was displaying his brilliancy in a marvellous way. For no
particular reason, in so far as I could see, the Professor’s great
telescope seemed to require adjusting for the benefit of each of the
bevy present. I noticed Professor Maury’s eye twinkling as he went on
with this necessary (?) preliminary, asking, betimes: “What do you see?
Nothing clearly? Well, permit me!” And after several experiments he
would secure, at last, the right focus. When all of his guests had been
treated to a satisfactory view of the wonders of the sky, Professor
Maury delivered himself somewhat as follows:
“Now, ladies, whilst you have been studying the heavenly bodies, I have
been studying you!” and the quizzical expression deepened in his eye.
“Go on,” we assented.
“Well,” said the Professor, “I have a bill before Congress,” (mentioning
its nature) “and if you ladies don’t influence your husbands to vote for
it, I intend _to publish the ages of each and every one of you to the
whole of Washington_!”
Remembering the mutability of political life, it was and remains a
source of astonishment to me that in the Government circles of the
fifties were comprised so many distinguished men who had retained their
positions in the political foreground for so many years; years,
moreover, in which an expanding territory was causing the envy for
office to spread, infecting the ignorant as well as the wise, and
causing contestants to multiply in number and their passions to increase
in violence at each election.
When Senator Clay and I took up our residence in the Federal City, there
were at least a dozen great statesmen who had dwelt almost continuously
in Washington for nearly twoscore years. Writing of these to Governor
Clay, in 1858, my husband said “Mr. Buchanan looks as ruddy as ever;
General Cass as young and vigorous as in 1844, and Mr. Dickens[8]
appears as he did in 1834, when with you I was at his home at an evening
party!” Thomas Hart Benton, the great Missourian, who for seven long
years struggled against such allied competitors as Senators Henry Clay,
Calhoun, and Webster, in his fight against the Bank of the United
States, probably out-ranked all others in length of public service; but,
besides Mr. Benton, there were Chief Justice Taney and his associates,
Judges Catron, James M. Wayne, and John McLean, of Ohio; Senator
Crittenden, of Kentucky, and General George Wallace Jones—all men who
had entered political life when the century was young.
Among my pleasantest memories of Washington are the evenings spent at
the home of Mr. Benton. His household, but recently bereft of its
mistress, who had been a long-time invalid, was presided over by his
daughters, Mrs. General Frémont, Mrs. Thomas Benton Jones, and Mme.
Boileau. The last-named shared, with the Misses Bayard and Maury, a
reputation for superior elegance among the young women of the capital.
The daughters of Mr. Benton had been splendidly educated, it was said,
by their distinguished father, and they repaid his care of them by a
lifelong adoration. A handsome man in ordinary attire, the great old
author and statesman was yet a more striking figure when mounted. He
rode with a stately dignity, quite unlike the pace indulged in by some
other equestrians of that city and day; a day, it may be said in
passing, when equestrianism was common. Mr. Benton’s appearance and the
slow gait of his horse impressed me as powerful and even majestic, and
often (as I remarked to him at dinner one evening) there flashed through
my mind, as I saw him, a remembrance of Byron’s Moorish King as he rode
benignly through the streets of Granada. He seemed gratified at my
comparison.
“I’m glad you approve of my pace,” he said. “I ride slowly because I do
not wish to be confounded with post-boys and messengers sent in haste
for the surgeon. They may gallop if they will, but not Senators.”
At his own table Mr. Benton was an oracle to whom everyone listened
eagerly. I have seen twenty guests held spellbound as he recited, with
thrilling realism, a history of the Clay-Randolph duel, with the details
of which he was so familiarly acquainted. I never heard him allude to
his great fight in the Senate, when, the galleries crowded with men
inimical to him, his wife and General Jones sent out for arms to protect
the fearless Senator from the onslaught which seemed impending; nor to
his nearly thirty years’ strife for the removal of the onerous Salt Tax;
but the dinners before which his guests sat down were flavoured with the
finest of Attic salt, of which he was a connoisseur, which served to
sting into increased eagerness our interest in his rich store of
recollections.
Wherever Mr. Benton was seen he was a marked personage. There was
something of distinction in the very manner in which he wore his cravat,
and when he spoke, men listened instinctively. Of his daughters, Mrs.
Frémont was probably the most gifted, and Mme. Boileau the most devoted
to fashionable society. Mme. Boileau was the wife of a French attaché,
and was remarked as she drove about in the streets with a be-ribboned
spaniel upon the front seat of her calash. Many years after my
acquaintance in Washington with Mr. Benton’s family (it was during the
Cleveland Administration), I was present at a reception given by Mrs.
Endicott when I observed among the guests a very busy little woman, in
simple black apparel, whose face was familiar to me, but whom I found
myself unable to place; yet everyone seemed to know her. I heard her
address several foreigners, in each case employing the language of his
country, and, my curiosity increasing, I asked at last, “Who is that
small lady in black?”
To my surprise, she proved to be Mrs. Frémont!
I soon made my way to her. She seemed almost impatient as I said, “Mrs.
Frémont, I can never forget you, nor the charming evenings at your
father’s house, though you, I am sure, have forgotten me!” She looked at
me searchingly and then spoke, impetuously:
“Yes! yes! I remember your face perfectly, but your name—Tell me who you
are, quick. Don’t keep me waiting!” I promptly gratified her, and in the
conversation that followed, I added some reference to her father’s great
book, “Thirty Years’ View,” which, until the destruction of my home
during the Civil War, had formed two of our most valued volumes.
“Ah!” cried Mrs. Frémont. “You are a woman of penetration! I have always
said my father’s book is the Political Bible of America. I know it will
not perish!”
I have referred to General George Wallace Jones. No memory of
ante-bellum Washington and its moving personages would be complete were
he, the pet of women and the idol of men, left out. He was born in 1804,
when the Union was young; and adventure and patriotism, then sweeping
over our country, were blended in him. As a child he came out of the
young West, still a wilderness, to be educated in Kentucky. He had been
a sergeant of the body-guard of General Jackson, and to the Marquis de
la Fayette upon the latter’s last visit to the United States in 1824.
Thereafter he figured in the Black Hawk War as aid to General Dodge. His
life was a continual panorama of strange events. In the Great Indian War
he became a Major-General; then a County Judge; and appeared at the
capital as delegate from the Territory of Michigan early in 1835.
General Jones’s personal activity becoming known to the Government, he
was made Surveyor-General of the Northwest. It was about this time that
he, being on the Senate floor, sprang to the side of Mr. Benton while
the gallery hummed ominously with the angry threats of the friends of
the Bank defenders, and personal violence seemed unavoidable. I never
knew how many of the Western States were laid out by General Jones, but
they were numerous. In his work of surveying he was accompanied by young
military men, many of whom played conspicuous parts in the history of
the country, at that time but half of its present size. Among these was
Jefferson Davis, then a civil engineer.
General Jones was indefatigable in his attendance at social gatherings,
and continued to out-dance young men, even when threescore rich years
were his. He had been a great favourite with my husband’s parents during
their Congressional life, so great indeed that father’s message of
introduction spoke of him as “My son!” and his fraternal offices to us
are among the brightest memories I hold of life at the capital. The
General was a small, wiry man, renowned for his long black hair, glossy
and well-kept as was any belle’s, and which seemed even to a very late
period to defy time to change it. In society he was sprightly as a
kitten, and at seventy-five would poke his glistening black head at me,
declaring as he did so, “I’ll give you anything you ask, from a horse to
a kiss, if you can find one grey hair among the black!”
General Jones died in the West, just before the close of the nineteenth
century, but to the end he was gay and brave, and elastic in body and
mind. So indomitable was his spirit even in those closing days, that he
revived a memory of the war days in the following spirited letter
written in 1894, just after the celebration of his ninetieth birthday.
At this time he was made King of the Carnival, was complimented by the
Governor of Iowa, “the two branches of the General Assembly, and by the
Supreme Court, they, too, being Republicans and total strangers to me
save one Republican Senator and one Democratic representative from this
County,” as his gay account of the episode ran.
“I told several times,” he added, “of how you and dear Mrs. Bouligny
prevented me from killing Seward. It was the day you stopped me, as you
sat in your carriage in front of Corcoran & Riggs’s bank, and I was
about to pass you. I would certainly have killed Seward with my
sword-cane but that you stopped me. I was about to follow the Secretary
as he passed the bank door, between his son Frederick and some other
men. I would have run my sword through him and immediately have been cut
into mince-meat by the hundreds of negro guards who stood all round. Do
you recollect that fearful incident? God sent two guardian angels to
save my life. How can I feel otherwise than grateful to you for saving
me that day!”
The recalling of this pioneer-surveyor of the great Western wilderness
revives, too, the name of as notable a character in the Southwest, and
one who will always be identified with the introduction of cotton in the
Southern States, and the land-grants of the territory of Louisiana. I
never met Daniel Clarke, but very early in my married life, and some
years before I went to the capital to reside, I became acquainted with
that remarkable woman, his daughter, Mrs. Myra Clarke Gaines.
I had accompanied my husband to New Orleans, where we stopped at the St.
Charles Hotel, then two steps or more above the ground level, though it
settled, as all New Orleans buildings do sooner or later, owing to the
moist soil.
The evening of our arrival we were seated in the dining-room when my
attention was attracted by the entrance of a very unusual couple. The
man was well-advanced in years, but bore himself with a dignified and
military air that made him at once conspicuous. There was a marked
disparity between this tall, commanding soldier and the very small young
woman who hung upon his arm “like a reticule or a knitting-pocket,” as I
remarked _sotto voce_ to Mr. Clay. Her hair was bright, glistening
chestnut, her colour very fresh and rich, and her golden-hazel eyes
glowed like young suns. These orbs were singularly searching, and seemed
to gauge everyone at a glance. Mr. Clay, having already an acquaintance
with General Gaines, in a few moments I was presented to the (even then)
much-talked-of daughter of General Clarke.
Never did woman exhibit more wifely solicitude, From the beginning of
that dinner Mrs. Gaines became the General’s guardian. She arranged his
napkin, tucking it carefully into the V of his waistcoat, read the menu
and selected his food, waiting upon him as each course arrived, and
herself preparing the dressing for his salad. All was done in so
matter-of-fact and quiet a manner that the flow of General Gaines’s
discourse was not once interrupted. Though I met this interesting woman
a number of times in later years, in Washington and elsewhere, that
first picture of Mrs. Gaines, probably the bravest woman, morally, of
her time, has remained most vividly. When, as a widow, accompanied by
her daughter, Mrs. Gaines visited Washington, she was the cynosure of
all eyes in every assemblage in which she was seen. Her fearless
pleading in the Supreme Court was the theme of conversation the country
over. People thronged to see a woman whose courage was so indomitable,
and none but were surprised at the diminutive and modest heroine.
Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, was already a Solon in the counsels of
the Nation, when, in 1841, Senator C. C. Clay, Sr., left the Senate. A
major in the army in 1812, Mr. Crittenden had made his appearance in
Congress in 1817, and thereafter continued prominent in Washington life,
as Senator or Cabinet member (in the Cabinets of Presidents Harrison and
Fillmore), so that for thirty or more years his name had been associated
with the names of our great law-makers, especially with those of the
second quarter of the century. When I met Senator Crittenden in the
middle fifties, he was a carefully preserved gentleman of courtly and
genial manners. Besides the brilliancy that attached to his long career
in Congressional life, he was distinguished as the husband of a still
charming woman, whose proud boast it was that she was perfectly happy.
This declaration alone was enough to make any woman in society
remarkable; yet, to judge from her serene and smiling appearance, Mrs.
Crittenden did not exaggerate her felicity. She was a sweet type of the
elderly fashionable woman, her face reflecting the utmost kindness, her
corsage and silvery hair gleaming with brilliants, her silken petticoats
rustling musically, and, over the lustrous folds of her rich and by no
means sombre costumes, priceless lace fell prodigally.
Nor were there lacking notes and even whole gowns of warm colour
significant of the lady’s persistent cheeriness. I remember my cousin,
Miss Comer, a débutante of seventeen at that time, remarking upon Mrs.
Crittenden’s dress one evening at a ball.
“It’s exactly like mine, cousin!” she said, not without a pout of
disappointment. And so, in truth, it was, both being of bright, cherry
corded silk, the only difference between them being that the modest
round-necked bodice of my little cousin by no means could compete with
the noble _décolleté_ of the older lady. But, in justice to the most
estimable Mrs. Crittenden, it must be added that her neck and shoulders
were superbly moulded, and, even in middle age, excited the envy of her
less fortunate sisters.
“Lady” Crittenden, as she was often called, accounted for her
contentment in this wise: “I have been married three times, and in each
alliance I have got just what I wanted. My first marriage was for love,
and it was mine as fully as I could wish; my second for money, and
Heaven was as good to me in this instance; my third was for position,
and that, too, is mine. What more could I ask?”
What more, indeed!
[Illustration:
MRS. J. J. CRITTENDEN
of Kentucky
]
One met dear old Mrs. Crittenden everywhere. She was of the most social
disposition, a fact which sometimes aroused the good-natured irony of
her distinguished husband. I remember an instance in which this was
demonstrated, at the White House, which greatly amused me at the time.
It was at a dinner party, and Senator Crittenden, who boasted that he
had eaten at the White House table with every President since the days
of Monroe, assumed the _blasé_ air which everyone who knew him
recognised as a conscious affectation.
“Now there’s ‘Lady’ Crittenden,” he began, nodding in the direction of
that smiling personage, “in all the glory of a new and becoming gown,
and perfectly happy in the glamour of this.” And he waved his hand about
the room with an air of fatigue and, at the same time, a
comprehensiveness that swept in every member, grave or giddy, in the
large assemblage. “If I had my way,” and he sighed as he said it,
“nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hie me back to the wilds
of dear old Kentucky! Ah! to don my buckskins once more, shoulder a
rifle, and wander through life a free man, away from all this flummery!”
He sighed again (for the tangled woods?) as he detected a speck upon his
faultless sleeve and fastidiously brushed it off!
“Pshaw! Stuff and nonsense, Senator!” I retorted, rallying him
heartlessly. “Fancy your being condemned to that! You wouldn’t stand it
two days, unless an election were in progress and there were country
constituents to interview. Everyone knows you are as fond of fat plums
and plump capons, both real and metaphorical, as any man in the capital!
As for society being disagreeable to you, with a good dinner in view and
pretty women about you—Fie, Senator! I don’t believe you!” Whereat our
Solon laughed guiltily, like one whose pet pretense has been discovered,
and entered forthwith into the evening’s pleasures as heartily as did
his spouse, the perfectly happy “Lady” Crittenden.