In this sentiment lies the keynote of the perfect sympathy that has been so marked a characteristic of their wedded life. Mr. Bryan came first, his wife and his young daughter remaining in Jacksonville until he had become settled. They then joined him. They immediately began the erection of a modest home in Lincoln, buying a building lot on D street, and upon it erected the home he now occupies, at No. 1625. The money was furnished by Mr. Baird, but has long since been paid. Three children have been born to them, Ruth, now nearly fifteen, William, aged eleven, and Grace, aged nine. The first named is now a registered student at the seminary at Godfrey, where the mother first began her college career.
Even the most casual visitor to the Bryan residence is impressed with the distinctive home atmosphere of the place. Mrs. Bryan, as its presiding genius, has stamped upon it the impress of her individuality, no less marked in that sphere than her husband’s in his. The house itself is little more than a cottage, although it boasts of a second story and a cupola. Outwardly its lines are a little more impressive than when it was first built. This can be traced to the addition within the past year of a many-columned porch, stretching across its entire front and bending in a graceful curve to a point midway of the rear. With its paneled roof and the electric lights, its cosy corners and inviting arm chairs, it is an enticing retreat, and here the Bryan family spend most of their waking hours in the summer months.
There is no ostentation displayed in the furnishings of the Bryan residence. The parlor is the parlor of the well-to-do middle class. The sitting room is simply furnished, but home-like and inviting. The library is the workshop and no unnecessary tools are lying about. On the walls hang large portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, and steel engravings of Benton, Webster, and Calhoun. They are inexpensive pictures, but typical of the ideals of the occupants of the room. Another picture shows Henry Clay, addressing his colleagues in the United States Senate. The artist’s perspective was sadly at fault, but it was not the art, but the subject, that attracted Mr. Bryan. The library is an extensive one, but unique in its character. Fiction and the classics find very little room. In their places are histories, orations, works on political economy, lives and speeches of famous men, who have helped build the nation of the past, dissertations and addresses upon the hundred and one questions that have vexed and still perplex the modern school of statesmanship. Upon few of these has any dust accumulated, and upon all of them are the unmistakable signs of frequent usage.
The characteristic that strikes the visitor most is the bon homme, the camaraderie, of the household. A wholesome sympathy seems to be the bond that unites all members. Neither the father nor the mother is a strict disciplinarian. They do not believe in tyrannizing over their children. They believe in encouraging their respective bents, and in guiding them in the right channels, rather than in forcing in the ways hallowed by tradition. Mrs. Bryan is essentially a home body; her husband and children are her chiefest, but not her only cares. She is a mentor to them all. Miss Ruth is much like her father in temperament. She is quick and impulsive, warm-hearted and generous. Her popularity among her girl friends is attested by the number that throng her lawn every evening. William is a sturdy youth in build, and, boy-like, more self assertive than his sisters. As his father is a typical American man, so is the youth a typical American boy, fun-loving and possessed of a harmless mischievousness that often disturbs the young girls who are his older sister’s confidantes. Grace, the youngest, is delicate in health, and her father’s favorite. It is to him she goes with her childish troubles, sure of the sympathy that never fails her.
Mr. Bryan takes great pride in his household, and he bends every energy to the end that the bonds of mutual confidence and love, the elements so essential in a perfect home, may be strengthened and cemented. Every hour that he can give to them he gladly spares. For four years he has had no other office, no other working place, than in this home. After the campaign of 1896 he gave up, to all intents and purposes, his down town office, and has spent his time at home. His office is now in his library, an inviting room opening off the parlor on one side, and the sitting room on the other. His work is performed on a big flat-topped desk that occupies a goodly share of the floor space. Here he is surrounded by book-cases and statuettes, by curious mementoes, ink stands, canes, a hundred and one articles that admirers in all sections and climes of the country have sent him. Most of these have been gathered together in a glass-covered compartment that separates the two big book-cases.
Mr. Bryan finds that his best work is done with his wife as his counselor and guide. She has a place on one side of the big desk, he on the other. She is no less indefatigable as a worker than he. She finds time between her consultations with him, when an important work is on hand, to care for her household, and to direct the work of the one domestic employed. Mrs. Bryan’s thorough understanding and appreciation of every detail of his labors make her companionship and aid almost indispensable. Together they have gone over the details of his campaigns in the past years, and with him she still plans for the future. What he writes, she either passes upon or assists in its production. Her self-poise, marred by no self-consciousness, but marked by a quiet dignity, is one of her remarkable possessions. Perhaps the best delineation of the characteristics of this woman, remarkable in many ways, is furnished by the eminent novelist, Julian Hawthorne, who spent some time at the Bryan home during the past summer. Of her he said, “Mrs. Bryan is as unusual a woman as her husband is a man, but she is so unobtrusive that few people have much idea of her true character. I had the opportunity to learn something of her during the campaign of ‘96, and I well recollect her admirable bearing at the great meeting in Madison Square Garden, when she was recognized and greeted on entering her box by more than ten thousand people. It was a tremendous ordeal for a woman to undergo. But she sustained herself with steadiness and self-possession, remarkable in any woman, but more than remarkable in her, who had always lived in quiet domestic ways, occupied with her husband, her children, and her household duties. She is a woman of great courage and unshakable faith, of exceptional intellect, also, nourished with adequate education. She possesses the coolness of judgment which must often have served him well in times of doubt. She is not led away by imagination or hope, but sees things as they are, and resolutely faces facts. Should the decrees of Providence see fit to place her in a position of the first lady of the land, I should have no fear that she would discharge her duties irreproachably. A true American woman, she is such as you may always be glad to match against the great dames of the old world. The dominant expression of her face is penetration, combined with a gentle composure. But there is the sparkle of demure humor in her eyes, and she can use speech as the most delicate of rapiers when she chooses. It is easy to know her as an acquaintance, but I surmise that no one really knows her except her husband, and probably she will be able continually to discover new resources and depths even to him. She is a good woman, with strong religious convictions, and she regards Bryan’s political aspirations from that point of view. If it is the will of God that he shall reach the highest place among his countrymen she will accept the mission with good will and confidence. But should he be defeated she will welcome the life of obscurity with unshaken equanimity, believing that the councils of the Almighty are unsearchable, but faithful. If she be destined to higher things, the example to the nation, irrespective of party, of such a wife and such a mother as she is, can not but be beneficial. If not, ‘Those also serve who only stand and wait.’”
Sociability is one of the graces that attach to her naturally. The number of visitors to her husband is so large and his amiability so great, that if Mrs. Bryan did not maintain a watchfulness over them they would consume all of his hours. This guardianship of his time has imbued her with a little more sternness than is her nature, but at the same time has endowed her with shrewdness of discernment that enables her to gauge every one’s errand with astonishing accuracy. The true democracy of the man is shown in his earnest desire that even the lowest of his callers shall be received with the same consideration bestowed upon the great ones, and no visitor ever leaves the Bryan home, even though he may not have gained his wish, without the consciousness of the gentle courtesy and a full-souled welcome.
But Mrs. Bryan is in no sense a society woman. She is of a turn of mind too serious and too well poised to enable her to find enjoyment in the frivolities and vanities that go to make up so much of the life of the society woman. She likes to meet with her friends and talk with them, and she misses no opportunity to indulge in this pleasure. Club and church work take up much of her leisure. She has been active for years in the work of the Nebraska state federation of women’s clubs. She can write, and frequently does, for newspapers and periodicals. She can also speak and speak well, but this she does rarely. Her range of information is as varied as that of her husband, and she knows the ins and outs of politics as well as she does the theories of good government, and the vagaries of the different schools of political economy. For years Mrs. Bryan’s father has resided with them. Now he is sightless and infirm, but his hours are cheered and his burden lightened by the loving care of his daughter.
The passing years have dealt very gently with Mrs. Bryan. She is above the average in height, but her figure is matronly. Her face is pale, but there is no pallor, the graceful curves of youth have softened in outline, but in manner she has gained the dignity that does not hint of reserve. Mrs. Bryan is always well dressed, the unobtrusiveness and appropriateness of her garments marking the taste of the wearer. Her gowns are usually of one color, relieved here and there by the bright tints women love.
“Mrs. Bryan’s whole life has been one of study,” says Miss Wright, of Lincoln, a friend of the family. “Long before she could read she knew the names of all the bugs her little hoe turned up in the garden. In her early life the doctor said she must be kept out of doors. Luckily she did not like indoor life. All day long she tagged her father, and they played together in the garden. By the time she was old enough for books she was kin to everything they told about. She idealized the earth and its generating and regenerating character. From a weak child she has grown to be a strong woman with rare power of endurance and concentration. She and her father would sit on the porch at night and study the skies, and the Greek and Norse stories of the stars were repeated until she had committed all of them to memory. He told her how far away they were and what a speck the world would look if it could be seen from Venus. The idea of the immensity of the Universe and the relation of the world to the solar system seldom enters the mind of a child, but with Mary Baird, it was the most interesting story that could be told. Early star-gazing and her father’s influence trained her to think of things abstractly, nakedly, and without the impediments of custom and fashion. During her first days in school, her text-books were distasteful, as they were new, but she studied them nevertheless, and soon was at the head of her class. This habit of study has clung to her ever since.”