“Maria, if you can forgive me for not writing, I hope you will let me hear from you by the bearer of this. Write me all the news. You cannot imagine how any little circumstance concerning my friends interests me when absent so far from them. Ask Olive to write to me if she can find leisure. My best respects to your parents, and affectionate remembrance to your brothers and sisters, and believe me your sincere friend and cousin,
“Abigail Fillmore.
“Mr. Fillmore wished me to present his respects to yourself and parents.
“To Miss Maria Fuller.”
In the spring of 1830, Mrs. Fillmore removed with her husband to Buffalo. In the enjoyment of her children’s society, her husband’s prosperity, and the pleasure of entertaining her friends, she found great happiness, and as the years passed by they were noted only for the peace and contentment they brought her.
As her life previous to this time had been spent in comparative seclusion, so now it was a scene of gay society. The social element was very largely developed in her nature, and constant practice rendered it a marked characteristic. All the associations of her youth had been those of the country, and in its freshness and beauty, as well as its drearier garb, she had revelled. Now, in her city home she was the same artless, warm-hearted woman of other years, basking in the brightness about her and reflecting upon others her own quiet peace. Well balanced and self-reliant, affectionate and happy, there was wanting nothing to complete her character. The domestic harmony of her life can be partly appreciated from the remark made by her husband after her death. “For twenty-seven years, my entire married life,” he said, “I was always greeted with a happy smile.”
The result of such unusual evenness of disposition was owing, in a great measure, to the tender sympathy and ennobling affection of her husband, whose ambition was gratified only when he saw that she was content. With her there was no variation or change, no despondency or doubt as to his success in any avocation; she hovered round his pathway, a beacon, and the light never grew dim. True and faithful in all things, at all times, she ever was; but there was even more of ceaseless vigilance than mere faith implies, where he was concerned. To him who shielded her in her sensitiveness and overflowing affectional nature, and, by his gentleness and unremitting watchfulness, guarded every avenue of her heart from sorrow, she meted the wealth of her love and fondness—and existed in the sunshine of his presence. After her husband’s accession to the Presidency, she went to the White House; but the recent death of a sister kept her from entering into the gayety of the outer world. As much as possible she screened herself from public observation, and left to her daughter the duties devolving upon her. Her health had become impaired, and she rather shrank from the necessity of appearing before the world in the position in which she was more than competent to acquit herself. In such a formal routine of life she did not delight; hers was a confiding nature, and to her family she always turned for the happiness the world could not give.
Mr. Fillmore’s friends in New York, soon after he became President, presented her with a fine carriage and a costly pair of horses. This carriage was used by the family during their stay in the White House. After his wife’s death, Mr. Fillmore sold it and invested the proceeds in a set of plate, which he preferred to the elegant equipage and horses.
But only by the most exact details, by endless particularities, breathing out her whole life and giving evidence, by their nature, of the depths from which they spring; only by such means is it possible, in a degree, to give some perception of her remarkable life—the fountain can only be judged of by the channel through which it flows.
She died at Willard’s Hotel, Washington City, on the 30th of March, 1853.