of undisciplined American girlhood, wayward, high spirited, full of
generous impulses, her mind fed on impetuous and misguided admiration,
and herself blessed with a magnetic soul that drew most men and many
women irresistibly to her. She was a toast that stirred the hearts of
the most phlegmatic of mankind and evoked unparalleled enthusiasm from
those of more ardent temperament. Hers was the highest type of Irish
beauty, a marvellously white skin, soft gray eyes, warm chestnut hair
that curled above an expressive brow, exquisite features, a small round
chin, a delicately beautiful figure of medium height, with an erect
carriage and her spirited head nobly poised.
The "Health," written by Edward C. Pinkney, whom Edgar Allen Poe placed
first in his estimate of lyric poets of America, is said to have been
inspired by her in 1824.
"I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon,
To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than
heaven.
"Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows,
As one may see the burthened bee forth issue from the rose.
"Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the
brain,
And of her voice, in echoing hearts a sound must long remain;
And memory such as mine of her so very much endures,
When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers.
"Affections are as naught to her, the measure of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness of young flowers.
And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns the idol of past years.
"I filled this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon.
Her health! And would on earth there stood some more of such a
frame,
That life might be all poetry and weariness a name."
She went to school at Mrs. Hayward's seminary, and later to Mr. Kirk.
She also attended a dancing-school that gave exhibitions of the grace
and proficiency of its pupils in the parlors of the Union Tavern in
Georgetown. At one of these exhibitions Margaret was crowned by Mrs.
Madison, the wife of the President, as the prettiest girl and most
graceful dancer in the room. Naturally ambitious, this first social
triumph pointed out the possibility of greater ones, to be achieved
only after bitter contests that would have crushed the spirit of a more
sensitive woman.
Her father deeming her sufficiently well educated, in which opinion she
concurred, she quitted school in her fifteenth year, and, being now
a young woman of bewitching beauty and abundant leisure, she entered
extensively upon her career as a belle.
Two young military men whom her fascinations had ensnared were at one
time on the point of a duel. With one of them, Captain Root, she had
planned an elopement, and was actually about to descend from her
window when she accidentally overturned a flower-pot: this crashing on
the ground below, roused her father and put an end to her flight. More
than that, her indignant parent carried her off to New York, where he
left her under the wing of his old friend Governor De Witt Clinton, to
go to Madame Nau's school. Clinton was very severe with the spoiled
little beauty, and the staid atmosphere of his home was not congenial
to her. She wrote her father very homesick letters, in one of which she
promised that if he would take her home "neither Root nor branch should
ever tear her from him." Her wit greatly pleased him, and after he had
passed the _bon mot_ around among his guests and his Peggy's admirers,
he went to New York and brought her home.
It has been said that she was not yet sixteen when from a window of her
father's tavern she for the first time saw John Bowie Timberlake, as
he passed along Pennsylvania Avenue on horseback. Their acquaintance,
engagement, and marriage followed within the space of a few weeks.
Several years of quiet happiness ensued, during which three children, a
son, who died in infancy, and two daughters, were born to them.
Timberlake was a purser in the navy, and when he was ordered to sea
duty he closed his little home, and his wife and children went to her
father's to stay during the time of his absence. He died of asthma
aboard the "Constitution," at Port Mahon.
His widow shortly afterwards married General Eaton, who was at that
time a United States Senator and a guest at her father's house. For the
first time the little Peggy O'Neill, of triumphant dancing-school days,
felt that her foot was actually upon the rounds of the social ladder.
John Quincy Adams was President at the time, and one of the bitterest
Presidential campaigns this country has ever witnessed had just drawn
to a close in the election of Jackson. One victim of the freedom
of press and speech, everywhere indulged in, was the wife of the
President-elect. Her gentle soul, stung by the breath of slander, which
all the vigilance of a devoted husband had been powerless to avert, had
passed unregretfully from earth. Jackson came to Washington a bereaved
and embittered man.
There was a puritanical tendency among the women who made up the
society of that era, and to whom Margaret O'Neill appeared as the
embodiment of a sport-loving element that prevailed among men.
Life had a rural quality in those days which it has since lost.
Horse-racing was universal, and the great race between Eclipse and Sir
Henry, run on Long Island May 27, 1823, for a purse of ten thousand
dollars, was a national event. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had
been staked, and Peggy O'Neill no doubt was intimately acquainted with
some of the heaviest winners and losers, among the latter of whom was
John Randolph. Though she was far too young to remember the opening
of the first race-track in Washington, November 3, 1803, she was yet
familiar with all the details of its inauguration, on which occasion
both houses of Congress had adjourned, the Senate to have the ceiling
repapered, and the House, which was apparently less resourceful,
because it had no pressing business on hand.
Growing up in a public house, she was undoubtedly familiar with much in
the lives of men of which other women of her day, leading more secluded
lives, feigned ignorance. Yet she had become in no way contaminated by
the liberal atmosphere she had breathed from infancy.
General Eaton and his bride returned from their honeymoon shortly
before Jackson's inauguration. A few of the Senators' wives called upon
her, but she was generally not well received, and slander had already
begun its mischievous work when Jackson appeared in Washington and
swore "by the Eternal" that his little friend, whom he had known all
her life, should not be defamed.
Her name was already on every lip at the capital, and there is no doubt
that as many went to Jackson's inauguration ball to see her as to
see the President. They stood on chairs and benches in their efforts
to catch a glimpse of her, and she made a picture worthy of their
endeavors, in her pink gown, with her headdress of nodding black plumes.
Eaton was made Secretary of War. He was Jackson's old friend, and
had labored unremittingly for his election. Moreover, thought the
chivalrous old President, this would insure Mrs. Eaton's triumph. The
women of the cabinet, however, refused to recognize her. Though Mrs.
Calhoun, the wife of the Vice-President, had called upon her as a
Senator's wife, she declined to associate with her as the wife of a
cabinet minister. Calhoun, to whom an appeal was made, declared himself
powerless, as "the quarrels of women, like those of the Medes and
Persians, admitted of neither inquiry nor explanation."
Van Buren, Secretary of State, and Barry, Post-Master-General, the
former a widower and the latter a bachelor, stood aloof from the
tempest in which their fellow-officials were engulfed. That astute
politician and prince of diplomats, Martin Van Buren, won Jackson's
undying friendship by the warmth with which he took up his friend's
cause. He had been a beau at evening functions when he was in the
Senate, and he knew the social status of every one at Washington, and
precisely what brought every stranger to the capital. While he admired
Mrs. Eaton and desired to defend her, he also undoubtedly realized all
the advantages to be gained by such a course.
The spirit of hostility gradually spread to every branch of society.
The Diplomatic Corps became involved; Vaughn, the British minister, and
Baron Krudner, the Russian envoy, both bachelors, ranged themselves
beneath Mrs. Eaton's standard. They féted and dined her, and gave her
substantial evidence of their adherence to her cause. Huygens, the
Dutch minister, having a wife who belonged to the opposition, was less
fortunate. Finding herself placed next to Mrs. Eaton at dinner on one
occasion, Mrs. Huygens took her husband's arm and turned her back upon
the assemblage. While all who witnessed the affront were appalled into
an awkward silence, Mrs. Eaton, following the retreating form with
critical eyes, commented admiringly upon her fine carriage.
Between her defenders and her defamers her Celtic blood bore her
up, and her sunny soul lost none of its serenity. One of Jackson's
biographers, however, states that when the matter reached the ears of
the irate President, he threatened to demand Huygens's recall unless he
and his wife forthwith apologize to Mrs. Eaton.
The contest waxed warmer day by day, both houses of Congress furnishing
recruits to one side or the other.
The cabinet was dubbed the "Petticoat Cabinet," and Mrs. Eaton's fame
as Bellona, the Goddess of War, spread through the land. Calhoun
attacked the President for retaining in his cabinet an element of so
much discord. But Jackson was a true knight, and his friendship was
stanch.
The bitter feeling, meanwhile, among the cabinet ministers had attained
such a pitch that they could no longer come together amicably. Their
resignations were tendered to the President and accepted, and a new
cabinet was formed.
It was during a recess of Congress. Van Buren was sent as minister to
England, where he was cordially received. When Congress reassembled,
however, the Senate refused to confirm his appointment, Calhoun casting
the decisive vote.
A letter of Daniel Webster's, written about this time, reveals the
seriousness of the situation. "It is odd enough," he wrote, "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." And they did.
Jackson's power and popularity were such that he was in a position
to dictate to his party the choice of his successor. His choice fell
upon Van Buren, who had undoubtedly labored for him in the days of his
bitter fight for the Presidency, and who had further and effectually
endeared himself to his chief by his zealous defence of Mrs. Eaton,
who in Jackson's eyes was not only a fair and beautiful woman, but the
representative of oppressed womanhood.
General Eaton was appointed governor to the Territory of Florida, and
later he was sent as our minister to the court of Madrid.
This ended Mrs. Eaton's social conflict. She was graciously received
and universally admired in that land of aristocrats, and her long
residence there and in Paris, whither she went before returning to this
country, formed one of the happiest periods of her life.
One of her daughters, the beautiful Virginia Timberlake, familiarly
known among the men and women who were young with her, as "Ginger"
Timberlake, married the Duke de Sampoyo and went to live in France,
where, in turn, one of her daughters has recently married a son of the
elder Rothschild. Margaret, Mrs. Eaton's second daughter, married one
of the Virginia Randolphs. To the children by this marriage, deprived
by death of both parents, Mrs. Eaton devoted many years of her life.
General Eaton died in 1859.
A third marriage contracted by his widow late in life, and subsequently
annulled, was productive of much unhappiness in her home.
On the 8th of November, 1879, she reluctantly gave up her hold on life,
whose volume had held for her so few blank pages.
In the presence of that foe which every woman fears most, slander, she
had never retreated from the position she early determined to carry,
and which circumstances proved she was well able to fill. She bore all
with a sweet courage, feeling keenly, but not morbidly, the world's
sting.
Preserving to the end her wonderful elasticity of spirit, she went
out from a life that had been one of alternate turmoil and triumph,
beholding only its beauties and loving it to the last. "I am not afraid
to die," she said, "but it is such a beautiful world to leave."
CORA LIVINGSTON
(MRS. THOMAS PENNANT BARTON)
Cora Livingston was born in New Orleans, "the little Paris of America,"
on the 16th of June, 1806, the year of the great eclipse. Her father,
writing to announce her advent to his sister in New York, said God had
given him so fair a daughter that the sun had hidden its face.
Though she was a great belle with a national reputation during the
decade from 1820 to 1830, those who attempted an analysis of her charm
declared that she lacked that attribute which many would esteem the
first requisite to belleship,--beauty. Yet she was a notable example of
that subtle power that raises a woman above her contemporaries, that
evokes an involuntary homage from every eye.
Her mother, writing of her when she was about sixteen and already the
belle of New Orleans, to one who had never seen her, said, "She is not
a beauty, not a genius, but a good and affectionate child."
Josiah Quincy, that ubiquitous beau who paid his court to the belles of
so many cities, seeing her in Washington in 1826, declared that she was
not handsome, while he admitted that she was undoubtedly the greatest
belle in the United States. "She has a fine figure, a pretty face,
dances well, and dresses to admiration," he continued, endeavoring
to solve the mystery of the attraction exercised by this exquisite
specimen of womanhood. He further confessed that when he left her he
bore away an image of loveliness and grace never to be erased, and he
went on to quote Burke's apostrophe to the Queen of France,--"Surely
never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more
delightful vision."
She was the daughter of Edward Livingston, a brother of that Chancellor
Livingston who, on the 30th of April, 1789, administered the oath of
office to the first President of the United States, and of an eminently
beautiful creole, Louise Moreau.
Fleeing the terrors of the negro insurrection in San Domingo, Madam
Moreau, a young widow, arrived in New Orleans just as the Louisiana
purchase was consummated and the province became the property of the
United States. French then to the very core, the city has retained
evidences of its origin longer than any city of the Union. The thrill
of anguish with which it realized that Louisiana had been sold by
Napoleon to the United States "on this 9th of July, 1803, at seven
P.M.," left its indelible impression upon a people loyal to their
nationality and tenacious of its prerogatives.
The wave of emigration which swept into the newly acquired territory
from the north bore thither Edward Livingston, of New York. Fortune's
reverses had driven him into the new country with the hope of finding
there a more promising field for his talent and labors.
The Americans were not well received. Scarcely more than a hundred out
of the eight thousand inhabitants had greeted the stars and stripes as
they were raised for the first time over the city. So strong, indeed,
was the prejudice against them that every unfortunate occurrence was
instantly attributed to them. Miss Hunt relates that upon one occasion
when a ball was interrupted by an earthquake an indignant old creole
gentleman exclaimed that the pleasure of ladies had never thus been
interrupted in the days of Spanish or French dominion.
Livingston's knowledge of the language, his tact, his adaptiveness,
together with his splendid ability, soon raised him to a conspicuous
place at the bar. He was a widower, thirty-nine years of age, when
he married Madam Moreau, who was but nineteen. Cora was the only
child of this marriage, and ever, even after her own marriage, the
inseparable companion of both parents. From her father she derived a
sound knowledge of the political questions of the day that made her
an intelligent spectator of the historic period in which she lived.
From her mother she inherited that grace, mental and physical, that so
indelibly impressed her upon the life of which she formed so brilliant
a part that her name can no more be eliminated from it than can the
names of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, or Henry
Clay.
The cultivation of her mind was intrusted to her uncle, Major August
Davezac, from whom she received an education of unusual scope. She
matured early, being probably more or less at all times a part of the
social life that surrounded her parents and into which she made her
formal _entrée_ at the age of fourteen.
The social atmosphere of New Orleans at this time was like that of
no other city on the North American Continent. Creole tastes and
institutions were predominant. The only society of the city was Creole,
and very delightful and very exclusive it was. The French opera was
then, as it has been since, one of its conspicuous features. Tuesdays
and Saturdays were the nights when the fashionable world was to be seen
in the boxes, and the stage presented nothing more attractive than
the beautifully dressed women of the audience, with their artistic
coiffures. There were receptions in the boxes between the acts, and a
belle's powers of attraction were thus publicly manifested to a people
ever ready to add the tribute of its homage.
Cora Livingston before she was sixteen years old, gentle and retiring,
shrinking from publicity such as attaches to belles at this end of the
century, was known throughout the city of her birth as its greatest
belle. In the evenings of the warm season, when the balcony of her
house in Chartres Street was converted into a reception-room, in the
midst of a devoted family she received not only the admiration of
distinguished guests, but the chivalrous and silent homage of many an
unknown passer-by.
Frenchmen visiting New Orleans frequently brought letters of
introduction from Lafayette to Livingston, whom he had known in New
York. Cora thus early became accustomed to an association not only with
people of her own city, but with many eminent cosmopolites.
In 1812, when war was declared against England, New Orleans fell into
line and gave glorious proof of her loyalty. Her prejudices were
swallowed up in the common cause that drew all sections of the country
together, and she became in deed, as she already was in name, an
American city.
General Jackson's friendship for the Livingstons, of which he gave so
many handsome proofs, began at this time.
In 1822 Edward Livingston was elected to Congress, and for eleven years
thereafter Washington became his home. While he achieved prominence
as a legislator and statesman, the brilliancy of his daughter was
acquiring for her a national reputation. He leased the Decatur
residence on Lafayette Square, within a stone's throw of the White
House, and there gathered about this distinguished family the most
cultured element of the Washington of that period,--the Calhouns and
their gifted daughter with her perspicuous political theories, the
Adamses, Webster, Clay, Chief Justice Marshall, Martin Van Buren, Mrs.
Madison, their neighbor across the Park, and the widow of Admiral
Decatur.
[Illustration: Cora Livingston
(Mrs. Thomas Pennant Barton)
From miniature by herself]
It was the exception in those days for members of Congress
to have their own homes. They lived for the most part in hotels
and boarding-houses, and the resident branch of society was more
distinctive. Mrs. Decatur, widowed by the famous Bladensburg duel of
March 20, 1820, had retired to her estate at Kalorama, which became
one of the most delightful centres of resident society. She favored
the Livingstons with her sincere regard, and included them among her
guests, frequently as often as three times in one week. To stand
forth as she does from among the bevy of brilliant women who led the
social life of Washington, at a time when conversation was a fine art,
deriving a stimulus from such men as Randolph, Pinckney, Webster, and
Story, and when women were quite the equals, in wit, humor, and happy
rejoinder, of these veteran conversationalists, is an indisputable
proof of the superior mental endowments of Cora Livingston.
The Capitol was then as much a feature to the people of Washington as
it is to-day to the people outside of Washington. Thither the belles
and beaux of the city betook themselves as regularly as the session
opened, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue beneath the double row of
Lombardy poplars, planted when Jefferson was President. The halls of
Congress were smaller and better adapted to both seeing and hearing
than they are at present. The discussion of public questions differed
also from what one hears nowadays, there being more spontaneity in the
oratory and a larger number participating, unless, indeed, there was a
grand occasion when the big guns were brought into action, and Clay's
mellifluous voice was heard, or Webster's organ notes pealed forth, or
Randolph's shrill pipe rent the air.
A distinctive social feature of the time were the assembly balls,
held usually at some such place as Carucci's, where Cora Livingston's
graceful dancing again made her the cynosure of all eyes. The set
in which she danced--there were no round dances in those days--was
continually surrounded by admiring spectators, many dancers foregoing
that pleasure for the greater one of watching her. Cora Livingston
in a ball-gown, going through the stately evolutions of a quadrille,
the very embodiment of winsome grace, was a vision that tarried long
afterwards with many who so beheld her.
It was at Carucci's in the winter of 1826, when Miss Livingston's
belleship was at its height, that the waltz was first seen in
Washington. Baron Stoekelburg, of the Russian legation, was its
sponsor, and all Washington looked on with dismay, the Baron and his
fair partner, whose name has been lost in oblivion, though her temerity
should have earned her a better fate, having the floor to themselves.
In 1829 Livingston went into the Senate, and in May, 1831, he succeeded
Van Buren as Secretary of State, Van Buren having taken the high
ground, so Livingston expressed it, that as a candidate for the
Presidency he should not remain in the Cabinet.
In 1833 President Jackson offered Livingston the mission to France.
Our affairs with that country were in a complicated condition, and
Livingston's patriotism induced him to accept the office.
In April of that year his daughter was married to Thomas Pennant
Barton, a son of Dr. Benjamin Barton, of Philadelphia. President
Jackson appointed him Secretary of the legation at Paris, sending
his appointment enclosed in a note to Cora, that she might have the
pleasure of presenting it to him with her own hands. Her intimate
acquaintance with the President dated back to her early childhood, when
she was scarcely taller than the cavalry boots worn by the hero of
the battle of New Orleans, who readily promised to hang Mitchell, the
highest English officer among the prisoners, if the British so much as
touched a hair of her father's head. He evinced a paternal pride in the
adulation she everywhere received as a woman. At his request she stood
as godmother to his wife's great niece, Mary Donalson, now Mrs. Wilcox,
who was born in the White House during his term of office.
On their return to America, in 1835, both the Livingstons and Bartons
made their home at Montgomery Place at Barrytown on the Hudson, an
estate of three hundred acres, which Mr. Livingston had inherited
from his sister, Mrs. Montgomery, the widow of General Montgomery, of
Revolutionary fame.