A Washington correspondent describes Mrs. Hayes’ attention to some “poor relations” who were visiting her. The description is well worth reproducing as showing her democratic independence and her appreciation of her friends.
“Not long ago I was passing Corcoran’s Art Gallery, and saw Mrs. Hayes assisting into her carriage some people of a sort that are usually described as ‘countrified.’ They were not finely-dressed, nor were their garments fashionably made. Quite the reverse was the case. But it struck me that the horses were unusually well groomed, and there was a footman in livery, which is a bit of style Mrs. Hayes seldom assumes. It was not the every-day carriage, either, but the best one, and I am as sure as if Mrs. Hayes had told me so, that she was putting on a few frills just to please her guests, for human nature is human nature, and Mrs. Hayes has a keen sense of perception. I afterwards learned that a party of Mrs. Hayes’ friends were visiting the White House, from the interior of Ohio. They were humble people and had never been in Washington before, but their great-grandchildren will all know about that visit, and the taking of those folks around in the President’s best carriage, with driver and footman in livery, will be a tradition in that family for generations. This wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Similar people have visited the White House before, and have received similar attentions. Mrs. Hayes has taken them to the Capitol, and they have sat beside her in the President’s seat in the reserved gallery, and had they been the Queen of England and the Princesses Royal, Mrs. Hayes couldn’t have been more devoted than she was to her ‘poor relations.’”
Mrs. Hayes entertained many guests in the White House, and she made it particularly attractive to her young friends and relatives. She gave them an opportunity of seeing Washington life from the high vantage-ground of the White House, and showed them at the same time the domestic side of a lovely home-life. No mistress of the Executive Mansion, it can truly be said, ever made more of her opportunity in the direction of true sociability. She, from the first, displayed a generous hospitality, not so much to official people as to her old friends and her husband’s and their young connections. She exhibited all the possibilities of a happy home, and left an influence upon the growing generation about her that will never be forgotten. In years to come they will tell of the sweet simplicity of her life there, and the great influence that she had over a public, hardly recovered from all the excessive extravagance and display that followed the restoration of peace, and reached its height under the preceding administration. There was felt towards her a prejudice on the part of a portion of the public, which opposed her temperance views, but she has her surest fame in this stand which no predecessor of hers was ever strong enough to assert and maintain. And from the millions of homes in this country, where young men are growing to manhood with their sisters beside them, have gone up from the hearts of parents thankful, grateful prayers for the honor and reverence paid to the one cause in this land which has most lacked for recognition in high places. Whatever course may be adopted by future generations, the social administration of Mrs. Hayes marks a new era in the history of temperance, and it will be a mile-stone to show the turn in the tide in favor of this principle which had languished for want of just the recognition she gave it and her sex, its standard-bearer. Such is her fame, and her reward is the gratitude of the best men and women of the age.
Mrs. Hayes had with her in the White House all of her children, save the eldest son, who is an Ohio lawyer. The second son, whose coming of age was appropriately celebrated in the White House, acted as his father’s confidential secretary; a third son was at school, and the only daughter and youngest son were with their parents there.
Mrs. Hayes has the distinction of being one of the few women who have lived in the glare and glitter of society in Washington and avoided all manner of extremes in dress. She did not appear in diamonds, eschewed low-neck and short-sleeved dresses, never varied her individual fashion of arranging her hair, and, to quote the remark of one of her girlhood friends, made at the commencement of her husband’s administration, “she is the same Lucy as of old.” This same friend said of her, “It is just like Lucy to go to the Foundry Church. She always despised shams and ostentation.”
Of all the Washington scribes who have written of Mrs. Hayes, Mary Clemmer, in describing the inauguration,has said the most pleasing things. And the queries she made of her possible course are answered in the remark of Mrs. Hayes’ school friend. She wrote of her after seeing her in the Senate Chamber on that auspicious occasion:
“Meanwhile, on this man of whom every one in the nation is this moment thinking, a fair woman between two little children looks down. She has a singularly gentle and winning face. It looks out from the bands of smooth dark hair with that tender light in the eyes which we have come to associate always with the Madonna. I have never seen such a face reign in the White House. I wonder what the world of Vanity Fair will do with it? Will it friz that hair? powder that face? draw those sweet, fine lines awry with pride? bare those shoulders? shorten those sleeves? hide John Wesley’s, discipline out of sight, as it poses and minces before the first lady of the land? what will she do with it, this woman of the hearth and home? Strong as she is fair, will she have the grace to use it as not abusing it; to be in it, yet not of it; priestess of a religion pure and undefiled, holding the white lamp of her womanhood, unshaken and unsullied, high above the heated crowd that fawns, flatters and spoils? The Lord in heaven knows. All I know is that Mr. and Mrs. Hayes are the finest-looking type of man and woman that I have seen take up their abode in the White House.” This description of her tallies with that given by a white-haired Southerner who went to a White House reception, and remarked to his friends that Mrs. Hayes was a “God beautiful woman.” President Hayes cannot be described in so graphic a way, though he is a man easily sketched. His eyes are blue and kindly in expression; his features are strong and his manners are polished. His home-life is, as may well be judged by all that has been said in the foregoing sketch, beautiful. He is refined, affectionate and manly, and when he and his wife stood together in the Blue Room of the White House, on the 31st of December, 1877, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage, their friends gathered about them coincided in the opinion that they were “the finest-looking type of man and woman that they had ever seen take up their abode in the White House.” This silver-wedding, the first ever celebrated in the White House, was a social event which proved of genuine interest to the people of the country, who, irrespective of party, wished them a long-continued career of happiness. The anniversary was celebrated on the afternoon of the 30th, when the Rev. Dr. McCabe, who married, them, renewed his pastoral blessing in the same words and heard the same pledges given that were uttered a quarter of a century ago. Mrs. Hayes wore the same satin dress and slippers which she wore on her wedding-day, and they were surrounded by their five children and the following personal guests: Mr. and Mrs. Herron, Dr. and Mrs. Davis, of Cincinnati; General and Mrs. Force, Secretary Rogers and wife, Miss Platt, Miss McKell, Colonel Wier, Miss Foote and Mrs. Mitchell. After the celebration of the ceremony a most interesting event followed. The infant daughter of Mr. Herron was christened, and received the name of Lucy Webb, in honor of Mrs. Hayes. After it was baptized the President presented his daughter Fannie and youngest son Scott Russell, for baptism, and then the party were ushered into the dining-room, where dinner was served. The next evening the formal ceremonies were held, and one hundred guests were present. The Executive Mansion was brilliantly illuminated, and the parlors and the East Room were elegantly decorated with flowers. Mrs. Hayes wore a reception dress of white striped silk, trimmed with point lace. Her wedding dress of white satin was exhibited to her lady friends, but the idea at first entertained of wearing it was abandoned because of its size, it being too small. The guests were as far as possible the same who attended the wedding in 1852, and among the number were Mr. Rogers, the private secretary and former law partner of the President, Mr. and Mrs. Wilber, Mrs. Hayes’ former teachers, and Mrs. Mitchell, the President’s niece, who as a little girl was the bride’s attendant and held her hand during the ceremony. A large portion of the company present were Ohioans, and the entertainment was social and informal. The only present received, for it had been made known distinctly that the President would accept none, was a gift to Mrs. Hayes from the officers of the Twenty-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, consisting of a silver plate imbedded in a mat of black velvet and enclosed in a richly ornamented ebony frame. The present was given in memory of kindness received at the hands of Mrs. Hayes in the field, and it was inscribed on its face, “To the Mother of the Regiment.” The inscription on the silver is:
“To Thee, ‘Mother of ours,’ from the 23d O. V. I. To Thee, our Mother, on thy silver troth, we bring this token of our love. Thy boys give greeting unto thee with burning hearts. Take the hoarded treasures of thy speech, kind words, gentle when a gentle word was worth the surgery of an hundred schools to heal sick thought and make our bruises whole. Take it, our mother: ’tis but some small part of thy rare beauty we give back to thee, and while love speaks in silver, from our hearts we’ll bribe Old Father Time to spare his gift.”
Above the inscription is a sketch of the log hut erected as Colonel Hayes’ head-quarters in the valley of the Kanawha, during the winter of 1863 and 1864, and above it the tattered and torn battle-flags of the regiment.
After the invitations were written, the President personally addressed each and added these words: “I hope you will be present.”