CHAPTER XLII. DIPLOMACY, SOCIETY, AND CIVIL SERVICE.
President Buchanan was virtually his own Secretary of State, although he had courteously placed his defeated rival, General Cass, at the head of the State Department. Nearly all of the important diplomatic correspondence, however, was dictated by Mr. Buchanan, who had, like Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, served as Secretary of State, and who was thoroughly versed in foreign relations. General Thomas, the Assistant Secretary of State, was soon dismissed, and Mr. John Appleton was persuaded to leave the editorial chair of the Washington Union and take his place.
The British Government, which had pleasant personal recollections of Mr. Buchanan, promptly sent Lord Napier as Minister Plenipotentiary, no successor to the dismissed Sir John Crampton having being accredited during the Administration of President Pierce. The new Minister was a Scotchman by birth, slender in figure, with light hair and blue eyes, and thoroughly trained in British diplomacy. He was an especial protégé of Lord Palmerston, and Lord Clarendon had placed the olive-branch in his hand with his instructions. The press of England proclaimed that he had instructions to render himself acceptable to the Government and the people of the United States, and to do all in his power to promote kind feelings between the two countries. Soon after he landed at New York he made a speech at the annual dinner of the St. George's Society, in which he repudiated the previous distrustful and vexatious policy of the British Foreign Office towards the United States, and declared that the interests of the two countries were so completely identified that their policy should never be at variance.
The claim by Great Britain of the right to search vessels belonging to the United States which her naval officers might suspect to be slave-traders, and the establishment of a British protectorate over the Mosquito coast, in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, were knotty questions. Lord Napier, evidently, was not capable of conducting the negotiations on them in a manner satisfactory to Lord Palmerston, who sent to Washington as his adviser Sir William Gore Ouseley, a veteran diplomat. He was not in any way accredited to the United States Government, but was named Special Minister to Central America, and stopped at Washington on his way there, renting the Madison House, on Lafayette Square, and entertaining there with great liberality.
Sir William Gore Ouseley, who was a Knight Commander of the Bath, had resided at Washington as an attaché to the British Legation forty years previously, while Mr. Vaughan was Minister, and had then entered personally into a treaty of permanent peace and amity with the United States by marrying the daughter of Governor Van Ness, of Vermont. Miss Van Ness was a young lady of great beauty, residing at the metropolis with her uncle, General Van Ness, at one time the Mayor of Washington. Sir William afterward visited Persia as the historian of the embassy of his uncle, Sir Gore Ouseley, and his published work contained much new information in relation to that then almost unknown portion of the world. He had afterward been connected with the British Legations in Spain, Brazil, and Buenos Ayres, and his acquaintance with the Spanish race, language, and literature was probably equal, if not superior, to that of any other Englishman. He was the author of a valuable work on the United States, and also of an expensive and illustrated volume on the scenery of Brazil.
It was doubtless due to considerations such as there, the special acquaintanceship of this veteran diplomat with the character, circumstances, and views of the several nationalities involved in the difficulties to be arranged, which had prevailed over mere political affinities and induced his selection by Lord Palmerston for the errand on which he came to Washington. His personal relations with Lord Napier were very friendly, and Mr. Buchanan was the friend of both, having known Lady Ouseley before her marriage. For some months the Ouseleys were prominent in Washington society. Lady Ouseley frequently had the honor of being escorted by the President in her afternoon walks, sometimes attended by her daughter, who wore the first crimson balmoral petticoat seen in Washington. When President Buchanan and Miss Lane took their summer flight for Bedford Springs, the Ouseleys were their traveling companions, sharing their private table, and their entertainments at Washington were numerous and expensive.
At one of these, Lady Ouseley wore a rich, blue brocade trimmed with Honiton lace, with a wreath of blue flowers upon her hair, fastened at each side by a diamond brooch; Miss Lane, the President's niece, wore a dress of black tulle, ornamented with bunches of gold leaves, and a head-dress of gold grapes; Miss Cass, the stately daughter of the Premier of the Administration, was magnificently attired in pearl-colored silk, with point-lace flounces but wore no jewelry of any kind; Mrs. Brown, the wife of the Postmaster- General, wore a rich pink silk dress, with pink roses in her hair; Mrs. Thompson, the wife of the Secretary of the Interior, wore a pink silk dress with lace flounces, and a head-dress of pink flowers; Madame Sartiges, the wife of the French Minister, wore a rich chene silk, and was accompanied with her niece, dressed in pink tarlatan; Madame Stoeckl, the wife of the Russian Minister, looked as stately as a queen and beautiful as a Hebe in a dress of white silk, with black lace flounces, cherry-colored flowers, and gold beads; Miss Schambaugh, of Philadelphia, who was called the handsomest woman in the United States, wore a white-flounced tarlatan dress trimmed with festoons of dark chenille, with a head-dress of red japonicas; Mrs. Pendleton, the wife of the Representative from the Cincinnati District, wore a white silk skirt with a blue tunic trimmed with bright colors; Mrs. McQueen, the wife of a South Carolina Representative, wore a rich black velvet, and Mrs. Boyce, from the same State, wore a lilac silk dress trimmed with black illusion; Mrs. Sickles, wife of the Representative from New York, wore a blue silk dress, with rich point lace flowers, and was accompanied by her mother, who wore a lavender brocade dress, woven with gold and silver flowers, and Miss Woodbury, a daughter of the late Judge Woodbury, wore a black tarlatan dress over black silk, with a head- dress of gilt beads.
Among the gentlemen present were Lord Napier, Edward Everett, Secretary Thompson, Senator Mason, Representatives Keitt, Miles, Boyce, McQueen, Clingman, and Ward; Captains Ringgold and Goldsborough, of the navy; General Harney and Colonel Hardee, of the army, and a number of others.
The commencement of Mr. Buchanan's Administration was distinguished by the number of social entertainments given in Washington. It was then as in Paris just before the Revolution of 1830, when Talleyrand said to the crafty Louis Philippe, at one of his Palais Royal balls: "We are dancing on a volcano." The hidden fires of coming revolution were smoldering at the Capitol; but in the drawing- rooms of the metropolis the Topeka Guelphs cordially fraternized with the Lecompton Ghibellines night after night, very much as the lawyers of Western circuits who, after having abused each other all day in bad English, met at night in the judge's room to indulge in libations of bad liquor. Even when Lent came, instead of going to church, in obedience to the chimes of consecrated bells, society kept on with its entertainments.
Among the most prominent houses were those of the Postmaster-General, Mr. Aaron V. Brown, whose wife was assisted by the daughter of her first marriage, Miss Narcissa Sanders. At Secretary Thompson's a full-length portrait of "Old Hickory," by Sully, kept watch and ward of the refreshment table. The connected houses occupied by Secretary Cass, afterward the Arlington Hotel, were adorned with many rare works of art, brought by him from the Old World. Senators Gwin, of California, Thompson, of New Jersey, and Clay, of Alabama, with Governor Aiken, of South Carolina, also entertained frequently and generously. At the supper-tables wild turkeys, prairie-hens, partridges, quails, reed birds, chicken and lobster salads, terrapin, oysters, ice-creams and confectionery were furnished in profusion, while champagne, sherry, and punch were always abundant.
Among choice bits of scandal then afloat was one at the expense of a lady who prided herself on the exclusiveness of the society which graced her salons. A double-distilled-F.-F.-V., no one could obtain invitations to her parties whose ecusson did not bear the quartering of some old family, and thus these entertainments were accused of resembling the tournaments of ancient times, to which the guests were led, not from any prospect of amusement, but merely to prove their right to ennuyer themselves en bonne compagnie. Foreigners, however, were always welcome, and one of the "pets," a romantic looking young Frenchman, who was quite handsome and made a great sensation in fashionable society, avoided the Legation as representing a usurper, and therefore quite unworthy the attention of one like himself, of the "vielle roche." The young man, enveloping himself somewhat in mystery, assumed the dignity of Louis Quatorze in his earlier days, and his decisions on all fashionable matters were law. Where he lived no one exactly knew, as his letters were left in Willard's card-basket, but his aristocratic protector persuaded Gautier to let her look at the furnaces of his restaurant- kitchen, and there—must it be said?—she found M. le Compte, in white apron and paper cap, constructing a mayonnaise. "This young man is my best cook," said Gautier, but the lady did not wait to receive his salutation.
The wild hunt after office was kept up during the summer and fall after Mr. Buchanan's inauguration, fortunate men occasionally drawing place-prizes in the Government lottery. One of the best jokes about applicants for office was told at the expense of a Bostonian, who presented, among other papers, a copy of a letter to Mr. Buchanan from Rufus Choate, with a note stating that he sent a copy because he knew that the President could never decipher the original, and he had left blanks for some words which he could not himself transcribe.
Governor Geary had returned from Kansas, disgusted with the condition of things there, and had been replaced as Governor by Robert J. Walker, who was expected to play the part of "wrong's redresser," as the Prince did in Verona when called to settle the difficulties between the Montagues and the Capulets.
[Facsimile] Peter Force PETER FORCE was born at Passaic Falls, N. J., November 26th, 1790; became a printer and journalist at Washington; collected and published many volumes of American documentary history; was Mayor of Washington, 1836-1840; died at Washington, D. C., January 23d, 1868.