The ringing in of the New Year disbanded the party.
Many gay parties were given for the eleventh White House bride, Miss Emily Platt, niece of President Hayes, who married General Russell Hastings in the Blue Room on the evening of July 19, 1878. This gay little wedding was attended by the Cabinet and the many friends of Miss Platt, who had assisted Mrs. Hayes in her social duties. Bishop Jagger of Ohio, a Methodist minister, performed the ceremony beneath a marriage bell composed of fifteen thousand buds and blossoms. The Marine Band played the wedding march, and President Hayes gave the bride away. A very elaborate supper was served to the party in the private dining room.
Although Mrs. Hayes kept aloof from all political matters and attended wholly to her end of the presidential partnership, she did confess to one piece of lobbying for which posterity is indebted to her. Eliphalet Andrews, the noted portrait painter of Ohio, came to Washington in 1877 to found the Corcoran School of Art under the patronage of W. W. Corcoran. He made a charming life-size portrait of Martha Washington as the first of a series of presidential portraits, which includes those of Jefferson, Jackson, Taylor, Buchanan, Johnson, and Garfield. When Mrs. Washington’s portrait was finished, Mrs. Hayes had it placed on exhibition in the East Room. It was hung opposite the one of General Washington. Mrs. Hayes felt that that portrait belonged right there, so she concluded to make an effort to have it purchased. Accordingly, following the next state dinner, she conducted Speaker Randall to view the portrait. She dilated upon its merits and expressed her own wish to have it bought for the mansion. The Speaker coincided and suggested that she direct Senator Edmunds’s attention to the portrait, as he was chairman of the committee on the purchases of portraits for the government. Mrs. Hayes’s appeal brought the matter to a point where it received official attention and was the needed impetus to bring about the purchase of the portrait. It is the only one of the few portraits of the various First Ladies of the Land belonging to the White House that is displayed in the state apartments. The others, that of Mrs. Hayes among them, are relegated to the basement corridor which opens from the cloak rooms and which is used by all of the delegations received by the wife of the President and by the guests at the various state functions.
Life in the White House was very jolly and happy during this entire administration. Mrs. Hayes’s love for young people was one of her great charms. She was the mother of eight children, three of whom died previous to or during the war. The eldest son, Birchard, was practising law; the second one, Webb, performing countless valuable services for his parents in the capacity of confidential secretary. Rutherford, Jr., was at school, and the two little ones livened the house with their pranks.
Christmas was always the occasion of a great celebration, the family returning to spend the holidays together when frolic and fun were the order of the hour. While Mrs. Hayes radiated joy and love to her own, she never overlooked the unfortunate, but made it a rule to dispense charity to the limit of her ability. Among other philanthropies, she distributed forty turkeys with the ingredients for complete dinners to needy families. She taught her children to save a share of their pocket money to buy gifts for less favoured children.
The first Thanksgiving in the White House, November 26, 1877, she established the custom of inviting to dinner all members of the clerical staff of the White House with their families. This custom prevailed throughout her occupancy.
Lucy Webb Hayes was the first college woman to be mistress of the President’s house. Her régime stands out alone, clear and distinct, an epic of womanly courage and loyalty to principle. She had the courage to do what no one else had ever done. She entered official life at a time when the female lobby was at its height, when scandal had the nation in its slimy coils, and when ideals and principles were hibernating. She not only turned a deaf ear to friend and foe when she set her hand to advance the cause of temperance, but she also established anew the regard for Sabbath observance by the example of her own household.
She had always been a strong churchwoman. Her family was originally Presbyterian but left the Southern Presbyterian Church because of a difference on the temperance question and a sectional one in slavery, and became affiliated with the Methodists. While in Washington, they were attendants of Foundry Methodist Episcopal Church, then located on the corner of Fourteenth and G streets. Sunday was distinctly a family day. The Sunday evening impromptu family concerts became so popular as to develop into regular affairs. Mrs. Hayes possessed a fine strong voice, and she loved to sing as much as the family enjoyed hearing her. Vice President Wheeler also had a fine voice. Mrs. Wheeler was a pianist of talent, and with the President joining them in his favourite Scotch folk songs and ballads, they quickly developed a delightful Sunday function that kept adding recruits, Chief Justice Waite, his daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Harlan, and Miss Harlan being among those who made the White House their objective on Sunday evenings for this pleasure.
From her arrival, Mrs. Hayes won popularity for her charm. She has been called the most beautiful of White House mistresses since Dolly Madison’s day and kept that title until the appearance of the lovely Mrs. Cleveland. Warm-hearted, vivacious, fun-loving, she enjoyed every moment of life and loved doing things for other people. Moreover, she was possessed of vigour of health and strength of vitality that added much to the pleasure people experienced in meeting her. She had a strong will and a wholesomeness combined with rare good sense, and left the impress of her strong personality upon the annals of her country.
She loved the White House, so filled with historic associations. She revelled in her explorations of attics, storerooms, and basement, and soon after her installation had appraised the odds and ends of furniture, ornaments, and china, and arranged many of the treasured relics of bygone administrations so that they might be used and admired.