White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

Eleanor—or Nellie—Grant was of medium height, beautifully proportioned, with masses of rich brown hair, soft brown eyes, and a creamy complexion of rich colour. Her face was exceedingly attractive, with an expression of amiability that showed her to be an even, sweet-tempered girl. Although quiet and demure, she was a good dancer and was perfectly at ease in any company. On her return from Europe, she met on the steamer Algernon Frederick Sartoris, with whom she fell in love. The consequence was that she had no great belle-ship in Washington, since, even before her début, which her mother decreed should be at a formal reception rather than at a ball, it was known that her heart was given to the young Englishman, who was twenty-three years old, of excellent family, and who had inherited a very substantial income. From the moment of their meeting, their romance developed. But, owing to her youth, her parents would not hear of her immediate marriage, her father insisting that she wait until two months before she was nineteen. At that time, on May 21, 1874, her marriage to Mr. Sartoris occurred in the White House.

Elaborate preparations were made for this wedding, which was the most brilliant affair known for many years in the Capital City.

The East Room was a tribute to the florists’ art. Expense was not reckoned in the quantities of beautiful flowers brought from Florida. The masses of tuberoses, spiræa, lilies of the valley, and other fragrant blossoms, gave forth a perfume almost oppressive. A dais was erected in front of the east window. This was covered by the exquisite rug presented to the White House by the Sultan of Turkey and canopied with ferns and vines surmounted by a marriage bell of white blossoms.

All interest focussed in the wedding gown. It was of rich white satin elaborately trimmed with point lace that alone was estimated to have cost two thousand dollars. The groom wore the regulation English wedding dress and introduced a new note in wedding fashions for men by carrying a bouquet of orange blossoms and tuberoses with a centre of pink buds from whose midst rose a flag-staff with a silver banner inscribed with the word “Love.”

The bridesmaids, eight in number, wore dresses of white corded silk covered with white illusion, with sashes of the same material arranged in loops from the waist downward. Four carried large bouquets of pink flowers, while the other four carried blue. The approach of the bridal party through the East Room was heralded by the Marine Band. First came Mr. Sartoris, with Colonel Frederick Dent Grant his only groomsman, and then the bridesmaids, two by two. Following them came the President with Miss Nellie, and then Mrs. Grant with her younger sons, Ulysses and Jesse. The ceremony was performed by Dr. O. H. Tiffany of the Metropolitan Methodist Church. The menus for the wedding banquet were printed on white satin, and each guest took home a box of wedding cake.

Sartoris was the grandson of Charles Kemble, the actor, and a nephew of Fannie Kemble, the celebrated actress. The young couple were married in the presence of two hundred guests, including the Cabinet families and the high officers of the Army and Navy and Diplomatic Corps, all in their brilliant uniforms. President Grant was deeply disappointed that his daughter married a foreigner, and he noted her departure with a sense of real grief.

A few months later, Colonel Frederick D. Grant brought a bride to the White House, Miss Ida Marie Honoré, of Chicago, to whom he was married on October 28, 1874. Miss Honoré was of a Parisian family which had been most conspicuous in the social and financial affairs of Chicago.

Young Mrs. Grant was a distinct addition to the social life of the White House, and in the summer of 1876, a little girl was born under the historic roof of the mansion. Little Julia Grant arrived to spend the last year of her celebrated grandfather’s régime with him, and to help with her dimples and her baby smiles to lift the loneliness he felt at the loss of his own beloved daughter. Julia Grant, named for her grandmother, in later years followed the example of her aunt Nellie and gave her hand to a distinguished foreigner, a Russian prince, sharing with him all the brilliance and luxury of life at the Court of the late Tsar, and likewise sharing his flight and exile as refugee when the Russian monarchy fell. Inheriting her grandfather’s gift for expressing himself vividly with his pen, Princess Julia Grant Cantacuzene-Speransky joined the group of American women authors after her return to her homeland and her reunion with her three children who had been sent to America to her mother, Mrs. Frederick Dent Grant, at the very beginning of the European conflict.

General Adam Badeau, Military Aide-de-Camp to General Grant, who spent much time at the White House, has given publication to a letter that presents a charming picture of the Grant family life:

“General Grant’s daughter and her husband had spent a day or two at my house in the suburbs of London, and the visit had been so pleasant to me that I wrote an account of it for the General and Mrs. Grant, which I knew would please them. In reply, the General wrote, out of the fullness of a father’s heart, the glowing account of his children that follows. Nothing could exceed the admiration as well as affection with which he regarded his sons and his daughter, and the interest he took in whatever concerned them. The parental feeling was as strong in him as in any man I have ever known.