Her mother died when she was but seven years old, and her father survived but two years longer. She was left well provided with money, and with a large family connection, but at his solicitation she accepted as a home the house of her Uncle James, and sought his guardianship in preference to that of any of her other relatives.
Although Mr. Buchanan was not particularly fond of children, he was attracted toward this frank and handsome child from her earliest infancy. Her exuberant spirits, love of mischief, and wild pranks called forth from him daily lectures and severe rebukes, but his acquaintances all knew that he was well pleased to have been singled out by the noble and affectionate girl as her guide, philosopher, and friend. No doubt that even at that early age he recognized in her a kindred spirit, and his good angel whispered to him that the boisterous child who sometimes disturbed his studies and mimicked his best friends, would one day be to him a fit adviser in difficulty, a sympathetic companion in sorrow, the light and ornament of his public life, and the comfort, at last, of his lonely hearth.
Mr. Buchanan was reticent in speaking the praises, however well deserved, of his near relatives, but he has been known, especially of late years, to dwell with a delight he could not conceal upon the admirable qualities displayed by Miss Lane in childhood. Said he: “She never told a lie. She had a soul above deceit or fraud. She was too proud for it.”
During the earliest years of Miss Lane’s residence with her uncle, in Lancaster, she attended a day-school there, and though she evinced much more than the usual aptitude for study, she was chiefly distinguished as a fun-loving, trick-playing romp, and a wilful domestic outlaw.
There was one anecdote her uncle liked to tell of her, as an evidence of her independent spirit and her kind heart. When she was about eleven years old, she was well grown and, indeed, mature looking for her age. Unlike most young ladies at that ambitious period of life, she was entirely unconscious of her budding charms, never dreaming that men must pause to wonder at and admire her, and that her actions were no longer unimportant as those of a child. One day Mr. Buchanan was shocked upon beholding from his window Miss Harriet, with flushed cheek and hat awry trundling along, in great haste, a wheelbarrow full of wood. Upon his rushing out to inquire into the cause of such an unseemly and undignified proceeding, she answered in some confusion, that she was just on her way to old black Aunt Tabitha, with a load of wood, because it was so cold.
In administering the reproof that followed, Mr. Buchanan took good care that she should not see the amused and gratified smile with which he turned away from the generous culprit.
About this time, her uncle executed a threat which he had long held suspended over Harriet. This was to place her under the tender care of a couple of elderly maidens of the place—ladies famous for their strict sense of propriety and their mean domestic economy—just such rule as our high-spirited young lady would chafe under. She had never believed her uncle to be in earnest about the matter, and her horror at finding herself duly installed in this pious household, under the surveillance of these old damsels, must have been comical enough to Mr. Buchanan, who was never blind to the funny side of anything. He was in the Senate at the time, and she was in the habit of pouring out her soul to him in childish letters that complained of early hours, brown sugar in tea, restrictions in dress, stiff necks, and cold hearts. The winter passed slowly away, only solaced by the regular arrival of fatherly letters from her uncle, or by an occasional frolic out of doors—to say nothing of pocketsful of crackers and rock-candy, with which the appetite of the young woman was appeased, her simple fare being, if not scanty, unsuited to the tastes of one who had sat at Mr. Buchanan’s table.
The next autumn, when she was twelve years old, she was sent with her sister, a lovely girl but a few years Harriet’s senior, to a school in Charlestown, Va. Here they remained three years. Harriet was not a student, but she knew her lessons because it was no trouble for her to learn them. She was excessively fond of music, and made great progress in it. Her vacations were spent with Mr. Buchanan; but the great event of those three years was a visit with him to Bedford Springs. It was a glorious time, which even now the woman of the world looks back upon with her own bright smile of pleasure.
She was next sent to the convent at Georgetown—a school justly celebrated for the elegant women who have been educated there. Miss Lane went over to Washington every month, and spent Saturday and Sunday with her uncle, then Secretary of State. These visits were, of course, delightful. Without seeing any gay society, she always met at Mr. Buchanan’s house such men as few young girls could appreciate, and listened to such conversation as would improve the taste of any one.
Miss Lane at once became a great favorite with the sisters, who constantly expressed the highest opinion of her talents and her principles.