“I am glad to tell that out of all the toil and disappointments of the summer just ended, I have risen up to a victory; that silence of thought since you have been away has won for my spirit a triumph. I read something like this the other day: ‘There is no healthy thought without labor, and thought makes the labor happy.’ Perhaps this is the way I have been able to climb up higher. It came to me one morning when I was making bread. I said to myself, ‘Here I am compelled by an inevitable necessity to make our bread this summer. Why not consider it a pleasant occupation, and make it so by trying to see what perfect bread I can make?’ It seemed like an inspiration, and the whole of life grew brighter. The very sunshine seemed flowing down through my spirit into the white loaves, and now I believe my table is furnished with better bread than ever before; and this truth, old as creation, seems just now to have become fully mine—that I need not be the shrinking slave of toil, but its regal master, making whatever I do yield me its best fruits. You have been king of your work so long that maybe you laugh at me for having lived so long without my crown, but I am too glad to have found it at all to be entirely discontented even by your merriment. Now, I wonder if right here does not lie the ‘terrible wrong,’ or at least some of it, of which the woman suffragists complain. The wrongly educated woman thinks her duties a disgrace, and frets under them or shrinks them if she can. She sees man triumphantly pursuing his vocations, and thinks it is the kind of work he does which makes him grand and regnant; whereas it is not the kind of work at all, but the way in which he does it.”
In this letter is discovered the quality for which Mrs. Garfield is distinguished—self-discipline. She is a woman fitted for emergencies, and it requires them to show her real worth. The control she has over her emotional nature gives her an immense advantage in meeting a trying exigency. She withstands surprises, shocks and disasters with a steady courage that commands respect, and long ago made her a heroine in the eyes of her husband. In speaking to a friend, a few months before he was inaugurated, while remarking upon some public man whose domestic affairs had crippled his course of usefulness, he said of her:
“I have been singularly fortunate in marrying a woman who has never given me any perplexity about anything she has said. I have never had to explain away words of hers. She has been so prudent that I have never been diverted from my work for one minute to take up any mistakes of hers. She is perfectly unstampedable. When things get worse and there is the most public clamor and the most danger to me and to us, then she is the coolest. Sometimes it looks a little blue before me, but I get courage from her perfect bravery.”
A Washington correspondent, in writing of Mrs. Garfield, paid her this tribute:
“She was in Washington City during the years of extravagance, and almost every Congressman’s wife had a carriage and every house competed for brilliant visitors. She lived through that time as if she belonged to a different social scale. She would not refuse to see anybody, but was seldom dressed as if ready for company. She never apologized for her appearance, and she made visits about twice or three times a year, generally calling on foot, but never failing to please with the sweetness of her countenance, the beauty of her eyes, and a self-restraint and reserve perfectly natural.”
Another correspondent, in referring to the same period, says:
“Quietly, but with the truest kindness, has Mrs. Garfield presided over her modest house at the corner of Thirteenth and I streets, in this city, during the years since General Garfield purchased it. In it she has entertained, often in the simplest style, but ever with old-fashioned, true-hearted hospitality, all of wit, wisdom, beauty that Washington has had during the years she has been here. She is an accomplished hostess as well as an accomplished woman—they’re two very different things. Living as the Garfields have had to live, in the most economical way, doing without elegant clothes, fine furniture, sumptuous food, good, new, and rare old books, dearer than all else to them, they have contributed more to make Washington winter life pleasant and profitable than many other families who have supplemented less taste and culture with more money. Mrs. Garfield’s receptions have been the largest ever held by the wife of a mere Representative. They have far surpassed those of more ambitious Senators’ wives, and have approximated those of the ladies of the Supreme Court and Cabinet families in size merely. In attractions they have stood abreast of any of them. This simply because Mrs. Garfield is a sweet-tempered, cultured, refined woman, in whose smile it is a pleasure to bask.
“When we consider that, without allowing her manifold cares to interfere with the performance of her social duties, she has managed her establishment alone, and personally conducted the training of her boys for college, we can conceive her superiority, with all her social success, to the mere ‘society leader.’ General Garfield is the president of our literary society, and during the past year it has met at his house. It was more pleasantly entertained there than it had ever been before. Mrs. Garfield exerted even her latent social powers that night, and it was difficult for her guests to break away from her delightful parlors.”
The summer preceding the Chicago Convention, the Garfield family went to Mentor rather late in the season, and remained there through the fall and winter. It had been their intention to return to Washington as usual before the reassembling of Congress, but the result of the Convention changed previous plans, and the household continued there until the week before the inauguration. During that time the crowds continually visiting Mentor left Mrs. Garfield but little time for relaxation and rest. She was in the midst of excitement of a political kind constantly, and to it were added the onerous duties of hostess—a position scarcely to be desired, under such circumstances. She shrank from the publicity which the nomination of her husband to the highest gift in the nation subjected her, though she met the requirements of the position with a pleasant demeanor and quiet reserve natural to her.
The newspapers abounded in personal allusions to the family, and many efforts were made to obtain her photograph for publication in the illustrated periodicals. This she would not permit, either during the canvass or after the election. It was not in her power, however, to prevent those who had her picture from showing it to their friends, and finally she recognized the natural desire of the public to see the photograph of the Lady of the White House, and she sat for one that was approved by herself and husband. The engraving accompanying this sketch is from that photograph, and is a correct likeness of her, as she appeared at that time.