The family of the new President reached Washington in June, and soon after took up their residence in the White House. Here was a new field entirely for the diffident woman who was compelled to do the honors in lieu of her mother, who was a confirmed invalid. After the harrowing scenes through which the former occupants had passed, the House looked anything but inviting to the family. Soldiers had wandered unchallenged the entire suites of parlors; and the East Room, dirty and soiled, looked as little like itself as could be imagined. Guards had slept upon the sofas and carpets until they were ruined, and the immense crowds who, during the preceding years of war, filled the President’s house continually, had worn out the already ancient furniture. No sign of neatness or comfort greeted their appearance at their new home, but evidences everywhere of neglect and decay met their eyes. To put aside all ceremony and work constantly, was the portion of Mrs. Patterson, under whose control were placed the numerous servants connected with the establishment.
“The first reception held by President Johnson was on the first of January, 1866, assisted by Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Stover, his two daughters. Their softness and ease of manner had an eloquent external expression in the simple neatness of their apparel, and surpassed in quiet dignity all who gathered to see them. The house had not been renovated, and the apartments were dingy and destitute of ornament save two kinds, which are more touchingly beautiful than gems of the East. Natural flowers were in profusion, and left their fragrance, while the little children of the house were living, breathing ornaments attracting every eye. The old injured furniture of the East Room was removed, and the worn-out carpets covered with linen. The supervision of Mrs. Patterson made the house quite presentable. Mrs. Patterson was attired in a blue velvet, white lace shawl, and point lace collar. Her dark hair was put back from her face, with pendent tresses, and adorned with a single white flower. Mrs. Stover, who was yet in half-mourning for her gallant husband, wore a heavy black silk, with no ornaments in her light hair.”
During the early spring an appropriation was made by Congress of thirty thousand dollars to refurnish the Executive Mansion, and during the long and warm summer succeeding, Mrs. Patterson struggled unceasingly with the atlas-heaps of lumber and old furniture scarcely worth repairing, but which was renovated for use. The firmness and decision of her character was fully tested in this trying ordeal, but she triumphed over every difficulty, and so managed the amount appropriated that the Executive Mansion was once more comfortable and more beautiful than ever before.
Appreciating the condition of the country just emerging from a long strife, she determined to make the funds voted sufficient to satisfy the demands of the upholsterer, and to do so she constituted herself agent.
Hearing the proposals of various firms, she found, to put the matter in other hands, she could not more than furnish the parlors and reception-rooms, and then her determination was formed to superintend the purchases. By dint of perseverance and the co-operation of competent assistants, she had the house completed when the winter season approached. Old and abused sets were repolished and covered, and the papering which she had not the means to remove entirely, was made to assume a brighter appearance by the addition of panelings and gilt ornaments.
The warm weather, which had ever found her before the war in her mountain home, now came upon her in its intensity, as she labored with her numerous assistants in arranging the comfortless residence over which she presided. Who, while admiring the elegant and refined atmosphere of the historic house during her father’s administration, imagined that the entire labor was accomplished by the tact and energy of the daughter who received and entertained her visitors so unostentatiously?
Tenderly caring for her invalid mother, and her children, who grew weary of the restraints imposed upon them, she struggled on and succeeded in making the house not only attractive to her friends, but to citizens and strangers, who pronounced it handsomer than it ever was in times past. The exquisite walls of the Blue Room long remained a lasting proof of her artistic and cultivated taste, and the graceful adornments of the hitherto stiff and ungainly East Room were evidences of her ability. A newspaper correspondent who visited the White House complimented Mrs. Patterson upon the Republican simplicity of the establishment, to which she replied, “We are a plain people, sir, from the mountains of Tennessee, and we do not propose to put on airs because we have the fortune to occupy this place for a little while.” “There is a homeliness in this utterance,” said the Albany Evening Journal, “which will shock the sensitive refinement of ‘ottar of roses and lavender water classes,’ but it has a sentiment in it which must meet with response from every true lover of democratic ideas and practices.”
Throughout the White House there existed not a single evidence of tawdry gaudiness or coarseness in color or quality; and from cellar to garret it was overhauled and adorned by the unaffected hostess, who called herself “a plain person from East Tennessee.”
“The reference of Mrs. Patterson to the mountain home of her family, is suggestive of the fact that when the tornado of war was sweeping over Tennessee, President Johnson’s kin dwelt where its ravages were most dreadful, and that while some who are now leading the shoddy aristocracy of the metropolis were coining their ill-gotten dollars from the sufferings and blood of brave men, they were being hunted from point to point, driven to seek a refuge in the solitude of the wilderness, forced to subsist on coarse and insufficient food, and more than once called to bury with secret and stolen sepulture those whom they loved: murdered because they would not join in deeds of odious treason to union and liberty. A family with such a record of devotion and suffering, needs for its recognition none of the adventitious aids of show and pretence. It is refreshing in these days of extravagant and pompous display, when silly pretence is made to pass current for gentility, when bombast and fustian are palmed off as good breeding, when the shopman’s wife emulates the luxury of a duke’s household, when no one is presumed to be worthy the honors of good society who does not ‘put on airs,’ to hear that the President’s daughter, who, by courtesy of her new position as his housekeeper, is the first lady of the land, proposes to set the example of a truly republican simplicity all too rare among those who influence the customs of the land.”
In September, 1867, Mrs. Patterson accompanied the Presidential party on their tour through the Northern and Western States, leaving her two children with her mother at the White House. Returning in a few weeks, she resumed the routine of her life, and prepared for the approaching season.