The next week Mr. Bodisco gave a grand ball, on which occasion Madame Bodisco wore her bridal robe. Shortly after the wedding, President Van Buren gave a handsome dinner at the White House in honor of Madame Bodisco and Mrs. Decantzo, another bride. To this dinner all the bridal party were invited. Madame Bodisco wore a black watered silk, trimmed with black thread lace and pearl ornaments. President Van Buren sent his private carriage and his son, Martin, to escort Ellen Carter (an adopted daughter of Jeremiah Williams who was an important shipping merchant of the town) to the dinner. The President thought Miss Carter like her Aunt Marion Stewart of New York, to whom he was engaged while Governor of that State. At the dinner table he drank wine with her, and again in the reception room. Miss Carter afterwards married Paymaster Brenton Boggs of the United States Navy.
Madame Bodisco
On another occasion at one of the diplomatic dinners given at the White House, Madame Bodisco wore a rich, white watered silk, the sleeves, waist and skirt embroidered with pale rosebuds with tender green leaves. Her jewels were diamonds and emeralds.
Alexander de Bodisco was born in Moscow on the 30th of October, 1786, and died at his residence in Georgetown on the 23rd of January, 1854, having filled the post of Russian Envoy to the United States for about seventeen years. He was in Vienna in 1814 during the famous Congress which settled the affairs of the continent, and was afterward charge d'affaires at Stockholm. At his funeral his two nephews, Boris and Waldemar, both very handsome and dressed in white uniforms, marched on either side of the hearse, accompanied by attachés of the legation and members of the household in uniform.
All during my childhood the Williams house stood gaunt and untenanted, the personification of a haunted house. If only a place with such a history could have been renovated and kept, instead of disappearing entirely from Georgetown.
On the next block at 3238 R Street is the house, now somewhat changed, where lived General H. W. Halleck, chief-of-staff of the army during the Civil War. After the war General U. S. Grant made it his home until he became president. Later, until about 1900, it was the home of Colonel John J. Joyce, a picturesque figure with his leonine head and long white hair and mustache and black sombrero. It was said he had been the Goat of the Whiskey Ring. In the last years of his life a lively dispute arose between him and Ella Wheeler Wilcox as to which was the author of the lines
Laugh, and world laughs with you,
Weep, and you weep alone!