THROUGH MANY CHANGING YEARS
With the advent of the Monroes, social life at the President’s House
underwent a transformation. Its character could have been forecast from
the fact that, although for the six years Monroe had been at the head of
the Cabinet his family had been with him in Washington, they were as
nearly strangers to the great body of citizens as if they had been
living in New York or Boston. If a lady wished to call on Mrs. Monroe,
she had to apply for an appointment and have a day and hour fixed,
unless she were a member or intimate of some former Presidential family.
In this administration, too, was born to Washington its first formal
code of social precedence, which, with certain modifications in detail,
has remained unchanged to this day. It differs from the codes of other
American communities in having official rank as a basis. John Quincy
Adams, before becoming Secretary of State, had served at various times
as envoy to five European courts. He was therefore ripe with
information on the rules observed abroad and resolved on bringing
something of the same sort into operation at our capital.
Mrs. Monroe and her daughters made it an absolute rule to pay no visits;
so calls made on them, no matter by whom, went unreturned. Their dislike
of the underbred caused them to take no part in the preparations for the
general levees, which were thronged with anybody and everybody; but
their invitation list for select receptions was cut down mercilessly,
and the reduced company were treated to supper, an innovation on recent
practices. At all such entertainments Mrs. Monroe was so exacting in her
demands as to dress that when one of her near relatives presented
himself in an informal costume which he had worn without criticism at
the best of the Jefferson and Madison functions, she refused him
admittance till he should don the regulation small-clothes and silk
hose.
The Monroes renamed the east room “the banqueting hall” and had their
state dinners there, partly because of its spaciousness, and partly
because the dining-room had been so badly damaged in the fire that it
took a long time to rehabilitate. The table appointments included a
central oval “plateau” twelve feet long by two feet wide, composed of a
mirror “surrounded by gold females holding candlesticks.” The china was
highly gilt, and the dessert knives, forks, and spoons were of beaten
gold. All the plate was the private property of the family and bore the
initials “J. M.”; much of it was afterward purchased by the Government
and made a part of the official furnishing of the White House, where it
remained in use down to Van Buren’s day.
A New York Representative went with some friends to dine with the
Monroes. Arriving at half-past five, his party were “ushered, Indian
file, into the drawing-room,” where they found “some twenty gentlemen
seated in a row in solemn state, mute as fishes, having already
undergone the ceremony of introduction.” And he goes on:
“Mrs. Monroe was seated at the further end of the room, with other
ladies. On our approach, she rose and received us handsomely. After
being myself presented, I introduced the other gentlemen. I now expected
to be led to the President, but my pilot, the private secretary, had
vanished. We beat a retreat, each to his respective chair. Observing the
President sitting very demurely by the chimney-corner, I arose and
advanced to him. He got up and shook me by the hand, as he did the other
gentlemen. This second ceremony over, all again was silence, and each
once more moved to his seat. It was a period of great solemnity. Not a
whisper broke upon the ear to interrupt the silence of the place, and
every one looked as if the next moment would be his last. After a while
the President, in a grave manner, began conversation with some one that
sat near him, and directly the secretary ushered in some more victims,
who submitted to the same ordeal we had experienced. This continued for
fully half an hour, when dinner was announced. It became more lively as
the dishes rattled.” The party remained at table till about half-past
eight.
The retirement of Monroe marked the end of “the Virginia dynasty.” It
had always been a sore point with John Adams that the highest office of
the Government should be passed from hand to hand in the Old Dominion,
and he once threw out the splenetic comment that not “until the last
Virginian was laid in the graveyard” would his son have a chance at the
Presidency. The son had been trained with reference to such an
inheritance, and, on becoming Monroe’s Secretary of State, regarded
himself as in the line of succession. His appearance as a Presidential
candidate, however, aroused no general enthusiasm, whereas General
Andrew Jackson, having given the finishing stroke to the defeat of the
British invaders by his victory over Pakenham, and acquired the
nickname “Old Hickory,” had become the idol of the multitude. In spite
of their approaching competition for the Presidency, Adams was obliged
to recognize Jackson’s prestige at every turn; and on the eighth of
January, 1824, Mrs. Adams gave a ball in the General’s honor which was
so grand that it was still talked of in Washington fifty years
afterward.
The Adams house stood on the site now occupied by the Adams office
building in F Street near Fourteenth. On this occasion the floor of the
ballroom was decorated with pictures in colored chalks. The central
design, which portrayed an American eagle clutching a trophy of flags,
bore the legend: “Welcome to the Hero of New Orleans!” The pillars were
trimmed with laurel and other winter foliage, roses were scattered
everywhere, and the illumination was furnished by variegated lamps, with
a brilliant luster in the middle of the ceiling. There were eight pieces
of music. Mrs. Adams was seated in the center of the hall, with Jackson
standing at her side and a semicircle of distinguished guests behind
them. President Monroe and Mr. Adams attended, but both were conspicuous
for their sobriety of attire. It was this gathering which inspired a
tribute in verse by a local journalist, beginning:
“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!”
Nine months later, Jackson polled a far larger popular vote for the
Presidency than Adams, and so distributed as to give him a lead in the
electoral colleges also. But as there were four candidates, none of whom
had a clear majority of the electoral vote, the decision was left to the
House of Representatives, where Henry Clay, the candidate at the bottom
of the list, threw his support to Adams, giving him the office. Adams
recognized his debt to Clay by appointing him Secretary of State, and
thus placing him in the line of promotion. Jackson never forgave Clay
for his share in electing Adams, and from that day forth had nothing to
do with him beyond the coolest exchange of civilities. In other respects
the General accepted defeat philosophically, attending the inaugural
ceremonies and promptly coming forward to congratulate the new
President, an act of grace that brought tears to the eyes of Adams. The
appearance of the two men together in public delighted the crowd, and
there was vociferous hurrahing for Jackson. Judged solely by
appearances, indeed, the day was a festival in honor of Jackson rather
than of Adams. Many of the General’s friends had come a long distance,
in an era when traveling was so slow that they had been obliged to leave
home before learning the final outcome of the election, and supposed
that they were to attend the inauguration of their favorite. They sought
solace for their disappointment in turbulent demonstrations. For the
whole afternoon the dramshops carried on a tremendous business, and all
night the streets were full of tramping men roaring out Jackson campaign
songs and silencing opposition with their fists. Pistol shots were heard
at frequent intervals, and a rumor spread that Henry Clay had been
killed.
Whatever Adams may have thought of these exhibitions, he bore them with
a calm exterior. He was always indifferent to criticism, and became
famous as the most shabbily clad man who had ever occupied the
Presidential chair, being accused even of having worn the same hat for
ten years. He braved public opinion by setting up a billiard table in
the White House, which gave a North Carolina Representative a text for a
speech denouncing the expenditure of fifty dollars for the table and six
dollars for a set of balls as “alarming to the religious, the moral, and
the reflecting portion of the community.” The anti-administration
press, using the game of billiards as a theme, opened fire upon the
President as a gambler. For a fact, he never made but one bet in his
life. Clay had picked up at auction a picture which Adams tried to buy
of him. One day, in jest, Clay offered it as a stake for a game of
all-fours. To his astonishment, Adams, the supposed ascetic, took him
up, and won the game and the picture.
It was a habit of Adams to take a plunge in the Potomac, at the foot of
his garden, every morning “between daybreak and sunrise,” the weather
permitting. Once he had all his clothing stolen, and had to catch a
passing boy and send him home for enough raiment to cover him. But this
was by no means his most embarrassing adventure. It was during his
administration that the first woman newspaper correspondent turned up in
Washington. She was resolved to procure an interview with the President,
who did not care to gratify her. So she rose early one morning and
repaired, notebook and pencil in hand, to the river bank, and planted
herself beside his clothes till he started to come out. Standing almost
neck-deep in the water, he tried first severity and then persuasion to
induce her to go away, but she held her ground till he surrendered and
answered her most important questions.
[Illustration: _Tudor House, Georgetown_]
The billiard table was not the only basis for charges of prodigal living
brought against Adams. When he ran for reëlection, his enemies made
effective use of a letter written by a member of Congress who had
attended a New Year’s reception at the White House and who mentioned the
“gorgeously furnished east room.” The truth was that the east room,
except for three marble-topped tables and a few mirrors, did not contain
fifty dollars’ worth of furniture of any sort. A Washingtonian of the
period has written that there were no chandeliers, and that the great
room depended for its lighting on candles held in tin candlesticks
nailed to the wall, which “dripped their sperm upon the clothes of those
who came under them, as I well know from experience.”
Adams sometimes aroused personal hostility by his peppery temper. He had
to dine with him one evening a Southern Senator who was notorious for
his dislike of everything in New England but prided himself on his
knowledge of wines. The Senator had the bad manners to remark that he
had “never known a Unitarian who did not believe in the sea-serpent.”
This aroused the ire of Adams, who later, when his guest said that Tokay
and Rhine wine were somewhat alike, turned upon him with the
exclamation: “Sir, I do not believe that you ever drank a drop of Tokay
in your life!” He afterward apologized, but the Senator would not
accept the apology and became the implacable foe of his administration.
Jackson’s election in 1828 was a foregone conclusion from the moment he
reappeared as a Presidential candidate; and, immediately upon the
announcement that he had won an electoral vote a good deal more than
double that of Adams, Washington became the Mecca of a hundred
pilgrimages. By the fourth of March, 1829, the city was so crowded with
worshipers of the President-elect that they overflowed the inns and
boarding-houses, and many were obliged to live in camp. Half the men
wore their trousers tucked into their boot-legs, and not a few carried
pistols openly in their belts. The hickory emblem was in evidence
everywhere: men wielded hickory canes and staffs, women wore bonnets
trimmed with hickory leaves and necklaces composed of hickory nuts
fancifully painted, and scores of horses were driven with bridles of
hickory bark.
Like his father, Adams did not attend the inauguration of his successor;
he withdrew to a hired dwelling on the heights north of the city and
kept to himself till the flurry was over. Probably Jackson did not
regret his absence, for the campaign had been surcharged with bitter
personalities, into which the name
[Illustration: _Bladensburg Duelling-Ground_]
of Mrs. Jackson was remorselessly dragged. Mrs. Jackson had died since
election day, and the General believed her death the direct result of
calumny.
Madison had set the fashion, and Monroe and Adams had improved upon it,
of having a formal escort to the Capitol on the way to inauguration.
Jackson, however, refused to follow custom. As the only militia
organization in the city was under command of a colonel who hated him,
he had no military display, but walked down the middle of Pennsylvania
Avenue with only a body-guard composed of veterans of the War of the
Revolution, then a half-century past. For any lack of enthusiasm on the
part of the resident population, that of the visiting Jacksonians more
than compensated. All the way the General and his little party were so
surrounded by a yelling, cheering crowd that they could advance only at
a snail’s pace. To watchers on Capitol Hill he was distinguishable from
the mob by being the one man in the midst of it who walked bareheaded.
Jackson was the first President to take the oath of office on the east
portico of the Capitol, the place now generally used. He also was the
first to read his speech before being sworn. He wore two pairs of
spectacles,--a pair for looking at the crowd and a pair for reading;
when he was using one pair, the other was perched aloft on his
forehead. At the close of the exercises, he mounted a fine white horse
and rode to the White House, again having to make his way through a mass
of singing and shouting admirers. At the mansion a feast had been
provided, and the gates thrown open to every one. The building was soon
stuffed full; and, as the people waiting outside could hardly hope to
force their way in, negro servants came to the doors with buckets of
punch and salvers of cakes and ices and passed these out. Much of the
food and drink was wasted, and much china and glassware smashed. Women
fainted, men quarreled and bruised one another’s faces. At one stage the
doorways became so blocked that people coming out had to climb through
the windows and drop to the ground. The rabble inside, bent on shaking
the hand of the President, jammed him against a wall to the serious
peril of his ribs, till he succeeded in escaping through a back entry
and taking refuge in the hotel where he had lately had his lodgings.
The boisterous incidents of his first day in office were only an earnest
of the stormy administration which lay before Jackson. Realizing how
much he was indebted to New York for his election, and that Martin Van
Buren had a powerful following there, he appointed Van Buren his
Secretary of State. This proved a pretty lucky investment in human
nature; for in the Peggy Eaton controversy, which broke out soon after
Jackson began his term, Van Buren was a valuable ally. General John H.
Eaton, a lifelong friend whom Jackson had appointed Secretary of War,
had been boarding for several years with a local tavern-keeper named
O’Neal. The publican’s daughter, Peggy, had grown up a pretty, but pert
and forward girl, who flirted with her father’s patrons and married one
of them, Purser Timberlake of the navy. Timberlake was addicted to
drink, and during one of his cruises he ended a spree by suicide,
leaving his wife and children destitute; and Eaton, whose name gossip
had already linked with the widow’s, came to the front with an offer of
marriage, which was accepted.
The wedding followed so closely upon the tragedy as to cause wide
criticism, and this, together with her antecedents, condemned Mrs. Eaton
to social ostracism. Left to themselves, Eaton’s colleagues of the
Cabinet would have ignored the circumstances of his marriage, but the
ladies of their families declared that they would have nothing to do
with the bride. Van Buren, as a widower with no daughters, felt free to
act as he pleased; and Jackson, remembering what his own wife had
endured, gallantly espoused the cause of Mrs. Eaton and gave the hostile
Secretaries their choice between accepting her or resigning their
portfolios, whereupon the Cabinet went promptly to pieces.
Being a man of means, Van Buren did a good deal of entertaining for Mrs.
Eaton’s benefit, and also inspired those members of the diplomatic corps
who were unaccompanied by ladies to join him in “floating” her. The
British Minister was a bachelor, so was the Russian Minister; but,
though the dinners and balls which they gave attracted many feminine
guests who were flattered by being invited, they were not wholly
successful. Madam Huygens, wife of the Dutch Minister, for instance, was
induced to attend a ball, but when escorted to the supper table found
that she was expected to sit next but one to Mrs. Eaton and would have
to exchange a few words with that lady. Instantly she placed her arm in
that of her husband and withdrew with him from the room. When the story
was told to Jackson, he rose in his wrath and declared that he would
send Huygens home to Holland; but he never carried out the threat.
Viewed in historical perspective, Jackson appears to have been a man of
tremendous force, thoroughly patriotic, conscientious in even his most
wayward conceptions of duty, unlearned but not illiterate, and above all
things hating treachery. He handled the sword with more facility than
the pen, and some of his correspondence, reproduced with its crudities
of syntax and spelling, would make the better educated angels weep.
Conscious of his scholastic shortcomings, he rarely attempted anything
original in writing or speaking, except on public questions; and when
his autograph was sought in the albums which were the fashionable fad of
the day, he borrowed his sentiments from the Presbyterian hymn-book,
quoting, as Miss Martineau recalls, “stanzas of the most ominous import
from Dr. Watts.”
Jackson usually flavored his dinners and receptions with a dash of the
unexpected. On one occasion he jostled the proprieties by singing “Auld
Lang Syne.” He ate sparingly at his own table but talked a great deal,
slowly and quietly, and, when women were present, with much real
kindliness of tone. He had a homely way of disposing of questions which
he regarded as not overimportant. At a dinner in honor of the marriage
of his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, Junior, he decided on an innovation
in etiquette by having his Secretary of State precede the diplomatic
corps, the rest of the Cabinet to follow the foreigners. This plan was
vigorously resisted by the Secretary of the Treasury, who argued that
the Cabinet was a unit, and that its members should therefore be
treated on an equal footing. “In that case,” said the President, “we
will put all the Cabinet ahead of the diplomats,” and he sent his
private secretary, Major Donelson, to make the announcement to the
guests. The French Minister at once stirred up the Dutch Minister, as
senior member of the corps, to prevent the threatened indignity.
Meanwhile, dinner had been announced, and every one was standing.
Donelson reported the strained situation to the President, who, instead
of vowing “by the Eternal” that his commands should be obeyed, smiled
good-naturedly and said: “Well, I will lead with the bride. It is a
family affair; so we’ll waive all difficulties, and the company will
please to follow as heretofore.”
The first baby born in the White House probably was Mary Emily Donelson,
child of the private secretary. At her baptism in the east room the
President and Martin Van Buren stood as godfathers. Van Buren took her
in his arms when she was first brought in, but she squirmed and wriggled
so that Jackson reached out for her, whereat she cooed with delight, as
children always did at any attention from him. He held her throughout
the service, and, at the minister’s question, “Do you, in the name of
this child, renounce the devil and all his works?” he stiffened up as he
might have if confronted with a fresh machination of his enemies, and
declared with characteristic emphasis: “I do, sir; I renounce them all!”
It was during Jackson’s administration that Harriet Martineau first
visited Washington. She was suffering from overwork and had been orderd
by her physician in England to cross the sea for a good rest. In spite
of that, people would not let her alone. It is said that within
twenty-four hours after her arrival in town more than six hundred
persons had called to pay their respects. Probably not fifty could have
told why they did so, except that she was a literary celebrity. One lady
was eager to learn “whether her novels were really very pretty,” and
most of the statesmen, when told that she was a political economist,
laughed outright. A social leader, desirous of giving her a dinner such
as she had been accustomed to at home, made the table groan under the
choicest things the market afforded, including eight different meats,
only to see the guest confine herself to a tiny slice of turkey-breast
and a nibble of ham. She was equally disconcerting with her other
simplicities, such as coming to a five o’clock dinner at a little after
three, clad in a walking suit in which she had been tramping about the
city, but bringing in her capacious pockets all the trappings necessary
for a presentable evening toilet.
Notwithstanding her idiosyncrasies, Miss Martineau made a profoundly
pleasant impression wherever she went. Webster, Clay, and Calhoun would
desert their seats in the Senate to join her for a talk, and Chief
Justice Marshall would descend from the bench to greet her when she came
into his courtroom. She could take up her unpretentious position in the
corner of a sofa anywhere, and in a few minutes have a circle of the
country’s elect about her awaiting their turns for a chat; and this in
spite of the fact that she was very deaf and had to make use of an
ear-trumpet of an unfamiliar pattern, so that often a newcomer would
talk into the wrong aperture. She never made anything of her infirmity;
and, of all the poems, addresses, and letters of appreciation with which
she was showered, the production which gave her most delight was an ode
to her trumpet, beginning: “Beloved horn!”
Early in this administration, the east room at the White House, which
had figured in the Democratic campaign speeches as an audience chamber
sumptuous enough for royalty, was discovered to be too shabby for a
President of Jackson’s simple habits. So four large mirrors, heavily
framed in gilt, were hung against its walls, their bases resting on
mantels of black Italian marble. Chandeliers gleaming with glass prisms
were suspended from the ceiling; damask-covered chairs, their woodwork
gilded like the mirror frames, were substituted for the worn-out
furniture which had sufficed for the Adams family; the windows were
richly curtained; a Brussels carpet, with the sprawling pattern then so
much admired, was stretched over the entire floor; and this array of
elegance was capped with bouquets of artificial flowers, in painted
china vases, distributed among the mantels and tables and in the window
recesses.
These things did not long retain their freshness. Jackson’s dinners had
features quaint enough, but his receptions were little short of riots. A
literary visitor has left us the description of one where “generals,
commodores, foreign ministers and members of Congress” brushed elbows
with laborers who had come in their working clothes from a day of canal
digging, and “sooty artificers” direct from the forge. “There were
majors in broadcloth and corduroys, redolent of gin and tobacco, and
majors’ ladies in chintz or russet, with huge Paris earrings, and tawny
necks profusely decorated with beads of colored glass. There were
tailors from the board and judges from the bench; lawyers who opened
their mouths at one bar, and tapsters who closed theirs at another; and
one individual--either a miller or a baker--who, wherever he passed,
left marks of contact on the garments of the company.” Meanwhile, the
waiters who attempted to cross from the pantry to the east room with
cakes and punch were intercepted by a ravenous horde who emptied the
trays as fast as they could be refilled, so that little or nothing
reached the better-mannered guests. This went on till the Irish butler,
in exasperation, enlisted a dozen stalwart men and armed them with
billets of wood, to surround the waiters as a guard, and keep their
sticks swinging about the food so briskly that it could not be captured
except at the cost of a broken head. Of course the carpet, curtains, and
cushions were deluged with sticky refuse, and broken bits of china and
glass were ground into powder under foot.
If it be possible to imagine anything worse in its way than this scene,
it was Jackson’s farewell entertainment, given on the twenty-second of
February, 1837. The chief feature was the cutting of a mammoth cheese
which had been sent to the President by admirers in a northern dairy
district. It weighed fourteen hundred pounds, and nothing would satisfy
Jackson but to give a piece to every man, woman, and child who would
come for it. As a result, the paths leading to the White House, and the
portico itself, were thronged that afternoon with people going in to
get their chunks and coming out with greasy parcels in their hands. “We
forced our way over the threshold,” wrote one of the adventurous souls,
“and encountered an atmosphere to which the mephitic gas over Avernus
must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the hall hung a rough
likeness of General Jackson, emblazoned with eagle and stars, and in the
center of the vestibule stood the fragrant gift, surrounded by a dense
crowd who had in two hours cut and purveyed away more than a half-ton of
horribly smelling ‘Testimonial to the Hero of New Orleans.’ A small
segment had been reserved for the President’s use, but it is doubtful if
he ever tasted it.” The cutting was done by two able-bodied laborers,
armed with big knives extemporized from hand-saws.
In the White House, Jackson lived a good deal apart. He was always glad
to see any one who came on a friendly errand, and loved to frolic with
children; but one of his chief pleasures was sitting by himself in the
big south room of the second story and smoking. An aged friend who, as a
boy, visited the White House with his father while Jackson was there,
told me that the President bade them draw up with him by the fireside,
offered a clean clay pipe to the elder of the visitors, and, lighting
his own well-seasoned corn-cob, puffed the smoke up the chimney,
explaining that Emily Donelson--the wife of his secretary, who kept
house for him--disliked the smell of tobacco.
The ghost of the Peggy Eaton affair could never be permanently
exorcised. Timberlake had not only died penniless and in debt but left
his official accounts in confusion, and a year or two later it was
discovered that he had been a defaulter. His bondsman resisted payment
of the shortage, accusing Lieutenant Robert B. Randolph, who had taken
over Timberlake’s papers, of the actual responsibility for it. Randolph,
in demanding a court-martial, committed a technical breach of discipline
for which the President dismissed him summarily from the service. One
day Jackson was a passenger on a river steamboat which stopped briefly
at a wharf in Alexandria. He was sitting alone, when a stranger
approached him as if to shake hands. Jackson, seeing him drawing off one
of his gloves, said amiably, “Never mind your glove, sir,” and stretched
out his own hand. But the stranger, instead of taking it, made a violent
lunge at Jackson’s face, exclaiming: “I am Lieutenant Randolph, whom you
have wronged and insulted, and I came here to pull your nose!” Startled
by the noise, two or three gentlemen ran forward and sprang upon
Randolph, who, in the struggle that followed, reached the gangplank and
freed himself. The President, convinced by later developments that the
Lieutenant had really suffered an injustice, offered to reinstate him if
he would apologize for the nose-pulling; but he scornfully rejected the
proposal.
The Cabinet, as reorganized in consequence of pretty Peggy’s fight, did
not hang together long. Secretary Eaton intimated presently that he
would like to retire, Van Buren seemed of the same mind, so the
President appointed the former Governor of Florida and the latter
Minister to England. The Senate confirmed Eaton’s appointment with good
enough grace, but balked at that of Van Buren, who, having gone to
England in good faith to enter upon his duties, was put to the
humiliating necessity of coming home again. Jackson was angry, regarding
this as a blow at himself. “If they don’t want him for Minister,” he
thundered, “we’ll see if they like him any better as President!” He
therefore laid out a program beginning with his own reëlection with Van
Buren as his Vice-president, and ending with Van Buren’s election as his
successor. The plan carried; and, as Jackson’s affection for Van Buren
had grown largely out of the latter’s stanch loyalty in the Cabinet
quarrel, Mrs. Eaton may be said to have shaped American history for a
considerable term of years.
Long after this lady ceased to hold the center of the national stage,
her career continued to be picturesque. Her husband, having retired from
the Governorship of Florida, was appointed Minister to Spain, and in
Madrid she appears to have made herself a great favorite at court. After
General Eaton’s death she returned to Washington, and was living down
much of the adverse sentiment of former days, when there appeared on the
scene an Italian dancing-master named Buchignani, whose dark, soulful
eyes and insinuating manners proved too much for even her experienced
heart. Although she was well advanced in years and he was young enough
to be her son, she not only became his wife, but let all her comfortable
fortune slip into his hands, and gradually gave him also the custody of
her grandchildren’s property, which she was holding in trust. He repaid
her kindness by eloping with her favorite granddaughter to Canada, where
he went into business as a saloon-keeper. Mrs. Buchignani died in 1879,
still glorying in the memory of her early activities.
As Vice-president, Van Buren lived in the Decatur house, the big somber
brick dwelling on the corner of Jackson Place and H Street. Across the
park, just south of the present home of the Cosmos Club, lived Mr. and
Mrs. Ogle Tayloe, with whom it was his habit to pass his disengaged
evenings. Suddenly he ceased
[Illustration: _Decatur House_]
coming, and after some weeks Mr. Tayloe hunted him up to inquire what
was the matter. His only response was: “Mrs. Tayloe has things lying
about on her table which should not be there.” Van Buren had always
seemed interested in Mrs. Tayloe’s collection of contemporary
autographs; and, when husband and wife were searching there for the
possible cause of offense, they came upon a letter from a prominent New
York politician containing the passage: “What is little Matt doing? Some
dirty work, of course, as usual.” Mrs. Tayloe cut out the derogatory
paragraph and sent word to Van Buren that she had done so, and at once
he renewed his visits.
Jackson escorted Van Buren to the Capitol, for his inauguration, in a
carriage widely celebrated as the “Constitution coach.” It was a present
to the General from citizens of New York and was built out of timbers
from the old war frigate _Constitution_, a picture of which was
emblazoned on one panel. Van Buren discovered, before he had been long
in office, that a thousand things which the people accepted without
question from a military hero they were prepared to criticize in a
civilian. Moreover, his son John, while in England some years before,
had danced with the Princess Victoria and thus acquired the nickname
“Prince John,” of which the enemies of the administration made use as a
political cudgel, declaring that the whole family were aping the foreign
aristocracy. Along came the financial panic of 1837, reducing thousands
of well-to-do persons to poverty, and this was fatuously laid to Van
Buren’s account when he stood for reëlection in 1840 against General
William Henry Harrison, affectionately styled “Old Tippecanoe” in memory
of one of his victories.
Regardless of the fact that Jackson had refurnished the White House
expensively for those days and then given entertainments which spoiled
nearly everything spoilable, it was Van Buren who became the undeserving
target for attack on the ground that he maintained “a royal
establishment” in “a palace as splendid as that of the Cæsars, and as
richly adorned as the proudest Asiatic mansion.” The stump orators
harped on the use of gold and silver spoons at the White House table,
and on the excessive number of spittoons distributed in the parlors and
halls. Vainly did the President’s defenders show that the gold spoons
were mostly plated ware, and that the spittoons, like the other
furniture, were the property of the Government: the voters who ate their
porridge from wooden vessels and threw their quids into boxes of sawdust
were resolved upon putting into his place a man of different type. Henry
Clay, passing the White House one day when a blaze broke out in the
laundry, joined the firemen in helping to extinguish it, remarking
jocularly to the President: “Though we are bound to have you out of
here, Mr. Van Buren, we don’t want you burned out.”
Harrison was elected. He was sixty-eight when he arrived in Washington
in February, 1841, and was in delicate health, but affected a vain
pretense of robustness. Though the day was chilly, with snow thinly
covering the streets and a cold rain falling, he declined to enter a
carriage, and walked half a mile to the City Hall with his hat in his
hand, bowing to the people on either side of the street. At the hall he
stood on the portico, still uncovered, while the Mayor made a speech of
welcome and he responded. His exposure gave him a cold which, following
his fatigues and excitement, brought on a serious nervous attack, and
this was not improved by the prospect of a wearisome inaugural ceremony.
He had only a common school education, but had read a good deal,
particularly ancient history. Mr. Webster, whom he had selected for
Secretary of State, recognizing his literary limitations, composed an
excellent inaugural address and carried it to him, saying in
explanation: “I feared lest, with all you are called upon to do just
now, you might not find time to do anything of this sort.”
“Oh, yes,” answered Harrison, cheerfully, producing a packet of neatly
written sheets, “I attended to all that before leaving home.”
Webster tactfully contrived to induce him to exchange manuscripts, “so
that each author could read the other’s production, and whichever proved
the better could be used.”
But the next day Harrison handed back Webster’s paper with the remark:
“If I were to read your address, everybody would know you wrote it. Mine
is not so good, but at least it is mine, and I shall prefer my own poor
work to your brilliant one.” As a last resort Webster offered to revise
Harrison’s address, and Harrison consented, though very reluctantly.
Webster struggled with his task a whole day, chopping out paragraph
after paragraph of classical citations. When a lady that evening
inquired what he had been doing to make him look so ill, he exclaimed:
“You’d be ill, too, if you had committed all the crimes I have. Within
twelve hours I have killed seventeen Roman pro-consuls--dead as smelts,
every man of them!”
Though compelled to sacrifice so much of his antique lore, Harrison was
not to be argued out of his resolve to ride a white horse to and from
his inauguration, having read of sundry great Romans who thus traversed
the Appian Way. He refused, too, to wear an overcoat on the fourth of
March, notwithstanding that he had a heavy cold, and that a stiff gale
was blowing which searched the vitals of most men in thick garments. Nor
would he consent to cover his head while delivering his address, which
was a protest against executive usurpation, the corruption of the press,
and the abuses of party spirit. Few who heard it realized how near they
had come to witnessing no inaugural ceremony that day. It had been
arranged that Harrison should join the procession for the Capitol at the
house of a friend whom he was visiting, but he was in such a state of
nervous exhaustion that he fainted twice before the time came to start.
His companions bathed his temples with brandy, and the physician they
called in forbade his going out of doors unless in a carriage; but he
would hear to no change of plans, and managed, by sheer force of will,
not only to perform his part at the Capitol, but to hold an afternoon
reception at the White House and in the evening to look in at two or
three balls with which the Whigs were celebrating their triumph.
During the fortnight that followed, he did his best to conceal his
increasing feebleness, even going in person to market every morning when
he was able. But a succession of colds presently ran into pneumonia, and
the office-seekers hounded him not the less cruelly after this. Just
one month from the day of his inauguration, death came to his relief.
Mrs. Harrison, who had been too ill to accompany him to Washington,
never saw him from the day he parted with her in Ohio till his body was
brought back to her for burial.