Saddened by suffering, but sustained by her warm affection for her uncle, she became the mistress of the White House. Her younger and favorite brother, Eskridge, accompanied Mr. Buchanan and Miss Lane to Washington, and after a few days’ stay there went home to Lancaster, promising his sister, who was loth to bid him good-by, that he would return in about a month. But just a month from that parting, the telegraph bore to Mr. Buchanan the news of his sudden death.
The President loved this youth above all his nephews, and had meant to have him with him at Washington. This was a terrible blow to him, but in his affliction he was mindful of Harriet, and it was with the kindest care he broke to her the intelligence.
The sister, again and so soon smitten, with a crushed heart set out for the scene of death, there to yearn, over the dear clay of that lost brother.
When Miss Lane returned to her uncle, it was not to parade her trouble, but quietly and cheerfully to assist him in his social and domestic life; to keep her grief for her closet, and in the endurance of it, to ask no help but God’s. Yet all who saw her, subdued but dignified, as she received familiar friends during those first months in Washington, were struck with the elegant repose of her manners, her sweet thanks for sympathy, and her kind and gentle interest in everything about her.
The next winter she went to no entertainments, but the usual dinners and receptions at home were not omitted. In her new high sphere she was as much admired as she had always been, and after she began to participate in the gayeties of that gayest administration, her life was made up of a series of honors and pleasures such as have never fallen to the lot of any other young lady in the United States.
On the occasion of a New Year’s reception, when Mr. Buchanan stood up to receive the ambassadors of the world’s kingdoms and empires, his great frame, his massive head, his noble countenance, marked and adorned by the lines of thought, but untouched by the wrinkles of decay, made him a spectacle so impressive and majestic, that it did not require the addition of his courtly manners to elicit a thrill of pride in the breast of every American who beheld him.
It would have been a trying contrast to the beauty and dignity of any one to have stood by his side; yet it was difficult for those who saw Harriet Lane there to decide between the uncle and the niece—to say which looked the proudest and the greatest—the man or the woman, the earlier or the later born.
Miss Lane’s position was more onerous and more crowded with social duties than that of any other person who had filled her place since the days of Martha Washington, because Mr. Buchanan received not merely official visits in the capacity of President, but his wide acquaintance at home and abroad was the cause of his constantly entertaining, as a private gentleman, foreigners and others, who came, not to see Washington and the President, but to visit Mr. Buchanan himself.
Jefferson Davis, who, for reasons creditable to Mr. Buchanan’s course at the outbreak of the secession movement, was not friendly to him, speaking to Dr. Craven at Fortress Monroe, said: “The White House, under the administration of Buchanan, approached more nearly to my idea of a Republican Court than the President’s house had ever done before since the days of Washington.” In this compliment, extorted by truth, of course Miss Lane shared.
In the summer of 1860, Queen Victoria accepted the invitation of the President for the Prince of Wales to extend his Canadian tour to this country. The duty of preparing for the Prince’s reception devolved upon Miss Lane, and so admirably did she order the Executive household, that a party far less amiable than the Prince and the noble gentlemen who accompanied him, could not have failed to find their visit an agreeable one. Apart from the personal qualities of this distinguished guest (and Mr. Buchanan always spoke with enthusiasm of the admirable qualities and excellent disposition of his young friend), his visit was an occurrence of memorable interest, being the first occasion on which an heir apparent to the Crown of Great Britain had stood in the Capital of her lost colonies. Especially did this interest attach, when, standing uncovered by the side of the President, before the gateway of Washington’s tomb, and gazing reverently on the sarcophagus that holds his ashes, the great-grandson of George the Third paid open homage to the memory of the chief who rent his empire—when the last born king of William the Conqueror’s blood bowed his knee before the dust of the greatest rebel of all time.