Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

The wedding followed so closely upon the tragedy as to cause wide criticism, and this, together with her antecedents, condemned Mrs. Eaton to social ostracism. Left to themselves, Eaton’s colleagues of the Cabinet would have ignored the circumstances of his marriage, but the ladies of their families declared that they would have nothing to do with the bride. Van Buren, as a widower with no daughters, felt free to act as he pleased; and Jackson, remembering what his own wife had endured, gallantly espoused the cause of Mrs. Eaton and gave the hostile Secretaries their choice between accepting her or resigning their portfolios, whereupon the Cabinet went promptly to pieces.

Being a man of means, Van Buren did a good deal of entertaining for Mrs. Eaton’s benefit, and also inspired those members of the diplomatic corps who were unaccompanied by ladies to join him in “floating” her. The British Minister was a bachelor, so was the Russian Minister; but, though the dinners and balls which they gave attracted many feminine guests who were flattered by being invited, they were not wholly successful. Madam Huygens, wife of the Dutch Minister, for instance, was induced to attend a ball, but when escorted to the supper table found that she was expected to sit next but one to Mrs. Eaton and would have to exchange a few words with that lady. Instantly she placed her arm in that of her husband and withdrew with him from the room. When the story was told to Jackson, he rose in his wrath and declared that he would send Huygens home to Holland; but he never carried out the threat.

Viewed in historical perspective, Jackson appears to have been a man of tremendous force, thoroughly patriotic, conscientious in even his most wayward conceptions of duty, unlearned but not illiterate, and above all things hating treachery. He handled the sword with more facility than the pen, and some of his correspondence, reproduced with its crudities of syntax and spelling, would make the better educated angels weep. Conscious of his scholastic shortcomings, he rarely attempted anything original in writing or speaking, except on public questions; and when his autograph was sought in the albums which were the fashionable fad of the day, he borrowed his sentiments from the Presbyterian hymn-book, quoting, as Miss Martineau recalls, “stanzas of the most ominous import from Dr. Watts.”

Jackson usually flavored his dinners and receptions with a dash of the unexpected. On one occasion he jostled the proprieties by singing “Auld Lang Syne.” He ate sparingly at his own table but talked a great deal, slowly and quietly, and, when women were present, with much real kindliness of tone. He had a homely way of disposing of questions which he regarded as not overimportant. At a dinner in honor of the marriage of his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, Junior, he decided on an innovation in etiquette by having his Secretary of State precede the diplomatic corps, the rest of the Cabinet to follow the foreigners. This plan was vigorously resisted by the Secretary of the Treasury, who argued that the Cabinet was a unit, and that its members should therefore be treated on an equal footing. “In that case,” said the President, “we will put all the Cabinet ahead of the diplomats,” and he sent his private secretary, Major Donelson, to make the announcement to the guests. The French Minister at once stirred up the Dutch Minister, as senior member of the corps, to prevent the threatened indignity. Meanwhile, dinner had been announced, and every one was standing. Donelson reported the strained situation to the President, who, instead of vowing “by the Eternal” that his commands should be obeyed, smiled good-naturedly and said: “Well, I will lead with the bride. It is a family affair; so we’ll waive all difficulties, and the company will please to follow as heretofore.”

The first baby born in the White House probably was Mary Emily Donelson, child of the private secretary. At her baptism in the east room the President and Martin Van Buren stood as godfathers. Van Buren took her in his arms when she was first brought in, but she squirmed and wriggled so that Jackson reached out for her, whereat she cooed with delight, as children always did at any attention from him. He held her throughout the service, and, at the minister’s question, “Do you, in the name of this child, renounce the devil and all his works?” he stiffened up as he might have if confronted with a fresh machination of his enemies, and declared with characteristic emphasis: “I do, sir; I renounce them all!”

It was during Jackson’s administration that Harriet Martineau first visited Washington. She was suffering from overwork and had been orderd by her physician in England to cross the sea for a good rest. In spite of that, people would not let her alone. It is said that within twenty-four hours after her arrival in town more than six hundred persons had called to pay their respects. Probably not fifty could have told why they did so, except that she was a literary celebrity. One lady was eager to learn “whether her novels were really very pretty,” and most of the statesmen, when told that she was a political economist, laughed outright. A social leader, desirous of giving her a dinner such as she had been accustomed to at home, made the table groan under the choicest things the market afforded, including eight different meats, only to see the guest confine herself to a tiny slice of turkey-breast and a nibble of ham. She was equally disconcerting with her other simplicities, such as coming to a five o’clock dinner at a little after three, clad in a walking suit in which she had been tramping about the city, but bringing in her capacious pockets all the trappings necessary for a presentable evening toilet.

Notwithstanding her idiosyncrasies, Miss Martineau made a profoundly pleasant impression wherever she went. Webster, Clay, and Calhoun would desert their seats in the Senate to join her for a talk, and Chief Justice Marshall would descend from the bench to greet her when she came into his courtroom. She could take up her unpretentious position in the corner of a sofa anywhere, and in a few minutes have a circle of the country’s elect about her awaiting their turns for a chat; and this in spite of the fact that she was very deaf and had to make use of an ear-trumpet of an unfamiliar pattern, so that often a newcomer would talk into the wrong aperture. She never made anything of her infirmity; and, of all the poems, addresses, and letters of appreciation with which she was showered, the production which gave her most delight was an ode to her trumpet, beginning: “Beloved horn!”

Early in this administration, the east room at the White House, which had figured in the Democratic campaign speeches as an audience chamber sumptuous enough for royalty, was discovered to be too shabby for a President of Jackson’s simple habits. So four large mirrors, heavily framed in gilt, were hung against its walls, their bases resting on mantels of black Italian marble. Chandeliers gleaming with glass prisms were suspended from the ceiling; damask-covered chairs, their woodwork gilded like the mirror frames, were substituted for the worn-out furniture which had sufficed for the Adams family; the windows were richly curtained; a Brussels carpet, with the sprawling pattern then so much admired, was stretched over the entire floor; and this array of elegance was capped with bouquets of artificial flowers, in painted china vases, distributed among the mantels and tables and in the window recesses.

These things did not long retain their freshness. Jackson’s dinners had features quaint enough, but his receptions were little short of riots. A literary visitor has left us the description of one where “generals, commodores, foreign ministers and members of Congress” brushed elbows with laborers who had come in their working clothes from a day of canal digging, and “sooty artificers” direct from the forge. “There were majors in broadcloth and corduroys, redolent of gin and tobacco, and majors’ ladies in chintz or russet, with huge Paris earrings, and tawny necks profusely decorated with beads of colored glass. There were tailors from the board and judges from the bench; lawyers who opened their mouths at one bar, and tapsters who closed theirs at another; and one individual—either a miller or a baker—who, wherever he passed, left marks of contact on the garments of the company.” Meanwhile, the waiters who attempted to cross from the pantry to the east room with cakes and punch were intercepted by a ravenous horde who emptied the trays as fast as they could be refilled, so that little or nothing reached the better-mannered guests. This went on till the Irish butler, in exasperation, enlisted a dozen stalwart men and armed them with billets of wood, to surround the waiters as a guard, and keep their sticks swinging about the food so briskly that it could not be captured except at the cost of a broken head. Of course the carpet, curtains, and cushions were deluged with sticky refuse, and broken bits of china and glass were ground into powder under foot.

If it be possible to imagine anything worse in its way than this scene, it was Jackson’s farewell entertainment, given on the twenty-second of February, 1837. The chief feature was the cutting of a mammoth cheese which had been sent to the President by admirers in a northern dairy district. It weighed fourteen hundred pounds, and nothing would satisfy Jackson but to give a piece to every man, woman, and child who would come for it. As a result, the paths leading to the White House, and the portico itself, were thronged that afternoon with people going in to get their chunks and coming out with greasy parcels in their hands. “We forced our way over the threshold,” wrote one of the adventurous souls, “and encountered an atmosphere to which the mephitic gas over Avernus must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the hall hung a rough likeness of General Jackson, emblazoned with eagle and stars, and in the center of the vestibule stood the fragrant gift, surrounded by a dense crowd who had in two hours cut and purveyed away more than a half-ton of horribly smelling ‘Testimonial to the Hero of New Orleans.’ A small segment had been reserved for the President’s use, but it is doubtful if he ever tasted it.” The cutting was done by two able-bodied laborers, armed with big knives extemporized from hand-saws.