Senate, and Kate Chase appeared in Washington as the wife of the
youngest member of that body. The elegance of the new home there over
which she presided, her husband's wealth and prominence, her maturer
beauty, and the dignity with which she carried a matron's honors, all
tended to bring her before the popular imagination in a more enchanting
light than even the glories of her girlhood had done.
The birth of her first child, a son, was a matter of national interest,
and the press of the day contained lengthy accounts of the dawn of
the little life for which fate held in store so forlorn and tragic an
ending. His christening robe was as elaborately described as if it had
been that of a royal infant, and the figures of the handsome settlement
made upon him were widely published.
Chase, however, still loomed the central figure of his daughter's
life, for he continued to confide in her and take counsel with her
in all that concerned him personally, as well as those measures
that hand his name down as that of the greatest Secretary who ever
presided in the Treasury Department. He was the intellectual power of
Lincoln's cabinet, and though he contributed much to the success of his
administration, there was small sympathy between the men personally,
and being overruled by the President in some of the details of his
department, Chase, in 1864, resigned his position as a member of the
cabinet. Donn Piatt, who was one of the many young Ohioans to whom he
was a shining example and a high ideal, said of Chase, that though
he came in direct and intimate contact with Lincoln for three years,
he never appreciated nor understood the man who could clear the
heavy atmosphere of a cabinet meeting, called to consider some such
stupendous proposition as the emancipation proclamation, by a hearty
laugh, induced by the reading of a chapter from Artemus Ward. Lincoln,
however, with his keen knowledge of human nature, discerned Chase's
character more readily, and justly estimating the judicial qualities
of his superior mind, he sent his nomination as Chief Justice of
the United States to the Senate. It was immediately and unanimously
confirmed by that body, and on the 6th of December, 1864, Chase,
already a great man, entered upon the duties of that office, to which,
with one exception, no name has given greater renown.
On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives passed a resolution
to impeach the President of the United States. During his trial, which
terminated on May 26 of the same year, the country passed through a
storm of violent political passion. Above the roar of an angry people
and the threats which assailed him daily from all sections of the
country, rose the august presence of the great Chief Justice, hearing
but not heeding, feeling but not fearing their sting. Throughout the
country there was no name more frequently heard during those days
than that of Chase, and in Washington the President himself was not a
more prominent figure. He followed his usual custom of walking to the
court in the mornings, being frequently accompanied by the daughter
who had so often been his companion in days when there had rested upon
him no such burden as the grave question then in hand imposed. She
forms one of the bright spots in the memory of that dark period, and
he often lifted his eyes during the sessions of the court to refresh
them with a glimpse of her face, in whose luminous sympathy there was
inspiration. She sat in the gallery of the court chamber every day,
surrounded always by men whose names go down in history among those of
the foremost of their period and country,--Garfield, Conkling, Sherman,
Carl Schurz, with Grant, the military idol of the hour, and Greeley, of
editorial eminence.
The chief-justiceship of his country is generally supposed to fill the
measure of a man's political aspirations. Upon Chase, however, the
honors of his office imposed no such quietus, and in 1868 he again
came forward for the Presidential nomination. As a Democrat, who had
left his party only on the slavery question, he offered himself as
a candidate for the nomination of that party. During the convention,
which met in New York, Mrs. Sprague, more ably with her maturer mind
and greater resources at her command than she had possessed in 1860,
endeavored to bring about the realization of that dream of his whole
public life. She was the first, however, to recognize the fact that
the only platform on which he could secure the nomination asked more
than he could honorably grant. Chase, watching the convention from a
distance, confirmed her judgment.
Our history furnishes the names of three men whose ungratified ambition
for the Presidency robbed them of their motive in life. Chase, however,
survived his disappointment longer than either Webster or Blaine. He
was, by nature, profoundly religious, and he endeavored to support
with Christian heroism a blow whose crushing force undermined his very
vitality. In 1870 he suffered a physical collapse, from which, however,
stimulated by his remarkable will-power, he rallied so far as to be
able to resume his duties on the Supreme Bench.
On March 23, 1871, the younger of his daughters, the child of his
third marriage, was married to William Sprague Hoyt, of New York, a
cousin of her sister's husband. Her wedding fastened another brilliant
memory upon her father's Washington home at Sixth and E Streets. In
the drawing-room, to which she had already brought so much fame,
Kate Chase again stood beside her father, and their presence on
that day constitutes to many people still living at the capital a
memory-picture which, with all deference to the bride, yet supersedes
all others of that eventful day. He was a magnificent man, over six
feet in height, fair as a Saxon in coloring, with a fine head, clearly
defined and well-made features, and a noble beauty of countenance;
and she, robed in blue velvet of a turquoise tone, that brought out
the glorious red-gold of her hair and the hazel of her eyes, with
an Elizabethan collar rolling high about her patrician neck, tall,
slender, and full of willowy grace. Perhaps the picture abides because
it was the last before the falling of those lengthening shadows whence
neither ever emerged.
On the 4th of March, 1873, Chase administered the oath of office to
President Grant, and in May of the same year he occupied his chair as
Chief Justice for the last time. A few days before the last on which he
had felt able to go to court, his daughters and his grandchildren, whom
he was accustomed to have much with him, being away from him, a sudden
sense of loneliness, a yearning for some loving human presence, seems
to have overpowered him, for he wrote to a young relative in New York
that he was going to her to be for a while with her and her children.
The day after he arrived, however, he went forth quietly and perhaps
suddenly on that lonely voyage whence neither love nor the glow of
any human presence may withhold us when it comes to be our turn. His
body was sent back to Washington, where it arrived on Sunday morning,
the 11th of May. There, clad in the awful dignity of death, he lay a
day and a night within the bar of the court his living presence had
rendered so illustrious. A simple wreath of white rosebuds, not more
spotless than the life of him they crowned, was the last offering of
the daughter to whom his death, so far as the world knew, brought her
first sorrow.
She had, however, already come to the turn in her short road of
happiness, and had confronted not alone the spectre of disillusion,
which in itself would have been formidable enough to a woman of her
temperament, but a substantial form of unhappiness that neither her
pride nor a brave spirit that never quailed before it could long
conceal. Her life has been so probed, so bared to the scrutiny of the
world, that but little of its sorrow can be left to conjecture. That
in one of her own deficiencies lay undoubtedly the cause of much of
her unhappiness, while it served to render others less culpable, in no
degree lessened the force of the misery it entailed upon her.
A knowledge of the proper value of money, abnormally developed in many,
was totally lacking in Kate Chase. It appealed to her simply as a means
of gratifying the needs and wishes of the moment, never as something
to be hoarded for the satisfying of those of a future time. History
contains the names of many men and women otherwise illustrious but born
apparently with the same defect. The great wealth which came to her
through her marriage she expended lavishly, not alone upon herself,
but upon all whose happiness it was thus in her power to augment, for
such princely natures are rarely selfish. She gave, all her life,
frequently with a generosity wholly out of proportion to her means.
Sprague probably did not realize her munificent tendencies till after
the shrinkage in his fortune caused by the financial panic of the early
seventies. They then became the cause of those fatal misunderstandings
whence sprung later conditions of insupportable wretchedness. A divorce
was granted her by the courts of New York, with permission to resume
her maiden name, of which she availed herself some years later, when
Sprague married again.
With her three daughters she retired to "Edgewood," a suburban home on
the hills two miles north of Washington, which had come to her from
her father and which is closely identified with the last years of both
their lives. The house, an ample unadorned brick structure, stands on
the brow of a hill overlooking the river, the city, and other hills
in its vicinity. From her father she had also inherited an income
somewhat smaller than might have been anticipated, for, although he had
piloted the nation through the financial difficulties of the war, his
personal finances were not flourishing. She found a legal adviser in
a friend of her father's who had been a frequent visitor at Edgewood
during Chase's lifetime, attracted thither both by his admiration for
Chase and by the pleasure of that intercourse with his gifted daughter
which he shared in common with many men of brilliant minds, few of
whom ever came in contact with her without succumbing to a species of
intellectual infatuation. With all the feminine graces that attract,
however, she had many of a man's characteristics, and was capable of
maintaining their intercourse at all times on an intellectual footing.
The idle gossip of people who had no conception of the true loftiness
of her soul, magnified by those who still felt and feared her political
power, cast its blight upon her life. Silently scorning a world that so
cruelly misinterpreted her, she voluntarily abandoned her place in its
midst.
She took her children to Europe and there educated them, remaining
as long as her resources would permit. When they were exhausted she
came home. Edgewood gave her a sorry welcome. Everywhere, within and
without, it showed signs of long neglect. Yet such as it was, it was
home and full of memories of her father, whose portrait still hung in
its broad hallway, and whose marble bust still adorned its library.
There, too, were his beloved books that he had craved in his youth
when he had turned from nature, which became, however, the tender
solace of his ailing years, when he liked to be alone with her and his
own thoughts, while he took long tramps over the hills. There, during
the last three years of his life, he had pursued conscientiously that
tranquil existence which he realized could alone prolong his days. To
his daughter it was all that remained, and even it was slipping from
her grasp. The men of her father's generation were gone, and she was
as a stranger in the land that had once resounded with the echo of her
name.
Edgewood was advertised for public sale. Something of its history
crept into the press of the country. It struck a chord of memory
and appealed to a class of men who had the means of gratifying their
sympathies, men of a younger generation, but who venerated the memory
of Chase and gave substantial proof of their veneration when they saved
his home for the daughter he had so idolized.
She never evinced any desire to resume her place in that life in which
she had once been a motive power.
Among those who knew her best she had loyal friends who loved and
admired her to the end. Her servants had always worshipped her, and
her own children frequently lost themselves in the spell her presence
wrought.
Her eldest daughter went upon the stage, but married shortly after her
_début_ and abandoned whatever hopes she may have had of a histrionic
career.
It was a singular fate that the last days in the life of a woman
whose youth had scarcely known a moment's exemption from the pursuit
of an admiring world should have been passed almost exclusively in
the society of the gentle daughter, whom she ever lovingly called her
little Kitty.
Two loyal canine friends followed in her footsteps to the last,
studying all her movements with a vigilance that was not without its
measure of flattery, and receiving from her a degree of consideration
that she never failed to show to those of lowly condition in whom
she recognized merit not always visible to a more conventional eye.
Often the only sound about the lonely house that greeted an occasional
visitor, was the friendly thump of the collie's tail against the porch
floor, the shrill tone of inquiry in Chiffon's bark, or the melancholy
wail of a violin. When Edgewood was finally closed and abandoned after
Kate Chase's death, new homes were found for her two dog friends: for
the collie, at Brookland, a suburb of Washington, and for the terrier,
in the city itself. A few days later both had disappeared, and a boy
who had occasion to go to Edgewood found them on the porch of the
deserted house. It had been a long tramp for them, especially for the
little terrier, which had had to thread its way across the city. Buoyed
up with hope, they had arrived from their opposite directions only to
realize that a life which at least had been happy for them, had come to
its end.
With that rare courage with which she had borne all the other ills of
her life, Kate Chase endured uncomplainingly the physical sufferings
which its closing days brought to her, endeavoring at first to put them
from her and with an aching body to go on heroically with her daily
life as she had often done with an aching heart. She surrendered only
a few days before the end, realizing then the unusual gravity of her
condition, and in the small hours of the morning of the 31st of July,
1899, with her three daughters beside her, she at length closed her
tired eyes tranquilly and without fear, to open them never again upon
a world that had long since forgotten the once-cherished name of Kate
Chase.
For the last few hours yet to be passed beneath the roof of Edgewood,
they laid her in the room wherein her life had centred in both its glad
and sad days,--her father's library. Its windows overlooked in the
foreground the garden in which she had spent of late so many lonely
hours, and in the distance, lying beneath the spell of a summer's day,
the beautiful city, where regnant woman never held greater sway than
she in whose quiet face there was now no trace either of the triumphs
or the weariness of her life, but the contentment of grateful rest.
MATTIE OULD
(MRS. OLIVER SCHOOLCRAFT)
In the vicinity of one of Richmond's fashionable schools there was
often seen on winter afternoons, in the late sixties, a group of young
girls, who possessed far more than the usual attractiveness that
belongs ever to health and youth. Two, at least, Lizzie Cabell and
Mary Triplett, were singularly beautiful. The third, a tall, slender
girl, with a trim figure, dark skin and hair, and eyes perhaps downcast
as she stepped lightly along listening to her companions, a stranger
would scarcely have observed. If, perchance, however, as they paused
on a street corner for a last word before separating, the downcast
eyes were lifted, there gazed from out their soft depths a spirit that
transformed the entire face. They were truly the windows of a soul,
looking out upon the world with a frankness that was irresistible,
and with a certain caressing fondness for life that begot a kindred
glow in all it looked upon. In her sweet voice there was the same tone
of caress as it gave a parting utterance to some flashing thought
to which, likely as not, she paid the tribute of that honest smile,
whose witchery still lingers in many minds. As she continued her walk
homeward many lifted hats greeted her passing, many eyes followed her,
and her name was murmured among many groups, for, young as she was,
Mattie Ould was already wandering in the pathway of a fame that was to
make her later the idol of the people of the South.
Before she was beyond the tutelage of her old mammy the piquancy of her
wit had established her title to popularity. It had, moreover, much
of that audacity that had characterized the wit of another Virginia
belle, Ann Carmichael, of Fredericksburg, who flourished fifty years
earlier in the century. Conventionality was a term with which Mattie
Ould had no concern. She was a genius, and with a spontaneity that was
overwhelming she dared to give utterance to every sparkling thought
that crossed her mind. She was a very small girl when she made that
bright sally which connects her name with that of her father's friend,
General Young.
A famous _raconteur_ and _bon vivant_, and revelling in her gift for
repartee, her father frequently had her brought forward as a little
child to grace his stag dinners, seating her in the centre of the
table, whence she sent forth such sallies of wit as captivated many a
veteran dinner-giver and guest.
One evening, when she had kept up her amusing prattle until a later
hour than usual, she went up to General Young, who was seated near her
father, and stood beside him, resting her head against his shoulder.
"Come, come," called her father, "it's time mammy was hunting you up,
little sleepy head. General Young can't get on very well with you
there." "No, no," insisted Mattie, dreading a summons of that autocrat,
in whose presence there could be neither pleading nor protest; "don't
send for mammy. I'm not sleepy. I was just trying an old head on young
shoulders." She was quoted through all grades of Richmond life, and
long before she had grown to womanhood a frequent question on many lips
was, "Have you heard what Mattie Ould said?" Then every one listened to
her latest _bon mot_, which was repeated till the whole city had heard
and laughed. With a dash and _esprit_ that were peculiarly her own, she
had many masculine traits, an independence and a _camaraderie_ that
were irresistible.
[Illustration: Mattie Ould
(Mrs. Oliver Schoolcraft)
From photograph by George S. Cook]
With the magnetism of her gifts she would have been known to fame
even had her family been of less prominence. Well placed, however, as
she was in life, her brilliancy illumined a vast horizon. Her father,
Judge Robert Ould, always held a distinguished position, both in the
District of Columbia, where he was born, and in Richmond, whither he
removed at the outbreak of the war. Besides being thrown in intimate
contact with the prominent citizens of both places, he was frequently
called upon to extend his hospitality to eminent strangers who came
to him with letters of introduction. His home during part of his
residence in Washington was in the quaint old building opposite the
Treasury Department, now Riggs Bank. There President Buchanan was
his guest for several days after he quitted the White House. No
extraordinary preparations, however, were made for the entertainment
of the ex-President in a household where distinguished guests were a
frequent occurrence. A loose rod in the stair-carpet was secured on the
suggestion of Mrs. Ould's mother, lest Mr. Buchanan, not accustomed
to the circumnavigation that it had imposed upon the family, should
fall and break his leg, in which event they would have him three weeks
instead of three days.
Judge Ould came prominently before the public as the district attorney
at the time of the prosecution of General Daniel Sickles for the
killing of Barton Key, Sickles being defended by Edwin M. Stanton, who
became more widely known later as Lincoln's Secretary of War.
Ould's prominence was rather augmented after the outbreak of the war
and his removal to Richmond, where he was made commissioner of the
Confederate government for the exchange of prisoners. He had married a
celebrated Virginia beauty, Miss Sarah Turpin, and had four children,
all of whom, with one noted exception, are still living. His wife,
after having been long an invalid, died before his family was grown,
and he, some years later, married Mrs. Handy, of Baltimore, the mother
of the beautiful May Handy, one of Richmond's belles of the present day.
Mattie Ould was born in the District of Columbia, which she left in
her childhood for the home with which her fame is associated. She
returned, however, to spend the last two years of her school life in
the Visitation Convent, Georgetown. Though known to all Richmond from
her childhood, her renown throughout the South dates from her first
appearance at the White Sulphur Springs, which in her day, before
the advent of the Northern pleasure-seeker, still possessed all the
distinctive features of a Southern watering-place. Though it was
already a long-established resort, to the magic which her presence
shed about it during the seasons that she spent there it owes much of
its wide fame to-day. All the details of the war were then yet vivid
memories, and there many a battle was fought over again in graphic
words by men whose bravery and gallantry in action have never been
surpassed. Many of them had been distinguished officers in the army of
the Confederacy,--Joe Johnston, of Virginia; Wade Hampton, of South
Carolina; Gordon, of Georgia; Beauregard, of Louisiana; Butler, Gary,
the gallant Pickett, of Gettysburg fame; and Hood, of Alabama, then
lifting himself about on his crutches. It was such men as these who
stamped their striking individuality upon the life of the Southern
watering-places at that period, and among whom, keenly appreciating
the wit, ardently loving the beauty, and reverencing the goodness of a
woman beyond all things, Mattie Ould came to be the greatest belle the
South has had since the war.
[Illustration: Lizzie Cabell
(Mrs. Albert Ritchie)]
While she was ever superlatively attractive to men, she was yet a
generous friend to women, and frequently avenged the slights to which
she saw some plain woman subjected, for, besides the scintillating
qualities that made her a popular idol she had many noble traits
that commended her to a more profound and lasting admiration.
The toast which is more celebrated than any of her other equally clever
utterances was offered at a supper at the Springs, given in honor of
herself and another famous Richmond belle, Mary Triplett, the late Mrs.
Philip Haxall. Miss Triplett had been asked to propose a toast and had
declined. Mattie Ould, however, rose without hesitation, lifted her
glass, inclined her graceful head towards Miss Triplett, and in her
clear musical voice, said, "Here's to beauty, grace, and wit, which
united make a Triplett." There was, indeed, a peculiar enchantment
about all she did and said that seemed never to have belonged to any
one else. Her dancing infused a new charm into the atmosphere of a
ball-room, and as a horsewoman she possessed a skill and grace that few
could rival.