* * * “The bridal festivities so profusely extended to us in Charles City, that most hospitable of counties, ended last week. My honeymoon has waned, and I have at last settled down at home. If I can ever learn to think any place a home where my own dear father and sisters are not, I certainly can do so here, for a new father and mother have opened their arms and their hearts to me; new and lovely sisters cluster around me; and I am welcomed and approved of by any number of uncles, aunts and cousins. The introduction to all of them was an awful ordeal to go through, you may be sure, but it is happily over, and I have now settled myself down absolutely as one of the family. I know you want me to tell you of each separate member, and of the house, and all my surroundings.
“You know how entirely charming Mr. Tyler’s father is, for you saw him at my wedding in Bristol, but you cannot imagine the tenderness and kindness with which he received me, his ‘new daughter,’ as he called me. Mr. Tyler’s mother is very much as I imagined her from his description. She must have been very beautiful in her youth, for she is still beautiful now in her declining years and wretched health. Her skin is as smooth and soft as a baby’s; she has sweet, loving black eyes, and her features are delicately moulded; besides this her feet and hands are perfect; and she is gentle and graceful in her movements, with a most peculiar air of native refinement about everything she says and does. She is the most entirely unselfish person you can imagine. I do not believe she ever thinks of herself. Her whole thought and affections are wrapped up in her husband and children; and I thank God I am numbered with those dear children, and can partake with them in the blessing of her love. May He give me grace to be ever a kind and loving daughter to her.
“The house is very large and very airy and pleasant, fronting on a large lawn and surrounded by a most beautiful garden. The parlor is comfortably furnished, and has that homelike and occupied look which is so nice. The prettiest thing in it, to my taste, though very old-fashioned, is the paper upon the walls, which depicts in half life-size pictures the adventures of Telemachus on Calypso’s enchanted isle. Telemachus is very handsome, Calypso and her nymphs as graceful as possible; and old Mentor as disagreeable and stern as all Mentors usually are. I find something new in the paper every day, and love to study it. The dining-room is opposite the parlor, across a broad passage, kept too bright and shiny almost to step upon, and is also a very spacious room, with a great deal of old family silver adorning the sideboard, and some good pictures upon the walls. There are two other rooms behind the parlor and the dining-room, one of which is used as a sitting and reading-room, for it is a large double house, flanked by offices in the yard in which the library is kept, and one of which is used for law and business purposes by Mr. Tyler’s father and himself.
“The room in the main dwelling furthest removed and most retired is ‘the chamber,’ as the bedroom of the mistress of the house is always called in Virginia. This last, to say nothing of others, or of the kitchen, storerooms and pantries, is a most quiet and comfortable retreat, with an air of repose and sanctity about it; at least I feel it so, and often seek refuge here from the company, and beaux, and laughing and talking of the other parts of the house; for here mother, with a smile of welcome on her sweet, calm face, is always found seated on her large arm-chair with a small stand by her side, which holds her Bible and her prayer book—the only books she ever reads now—with her knitting usually in her hands, always ready to sympathize with me in any little homesickness which may disturb me, and to ask me questions about all you dear ones in Bristol, because she knows I want to talk about you. Notwithstanding her very delicate health, mother attends to and regulates all the household affairs, and all so quietly that you can’t tell when she does it. All the clothes for the children, and for the servants, are cut out under her immediate eye, and all the sewing is personally superintended by her. All the cake, jellies, custards, and we indulge largely in them, emanate from her, yet you see no confusion, hear no bustle, but only meet the agreeable result. * * * * All Mr. Tyler’s sisters are lovely and sweet. Sister Mary—Mrs. Jones, who is the oldest of all—I have already introduced you to in my letter from Charles City, where she resides, at ‘Woodburn,’ one of the plantations or ‘farms’ as they are called here, of her husband, and where she so happily entertained us recently. Next comes Letitia, Mrs. Semple, married last February. She is very handsome and full of life and spirits. She has a place called ‘Cedar Hill,’ some distance from Williamsburg, in New Kent county, but is now here on a visit. Then comes Elizabeth, a very great belle here, though she is not yet seventeen. She is remarkably sweet and pretty, with beautiful eyes and complexion, and her hair curled down her neck. John, who is next to Mr. Tyler in age, and who was at my wedding, and therefore needs no description, is not here now, but he and his wife will spend next winter with his father, as he still attends the law department and higher scientific courses of ‘William and Mary’ college, as it is termed in accordance with the original charter of King William and Queen Mary, although it is now and has been for many years a university.
“I have not seen her yet, but hear that she is very beautiful. The two younger children, Alice and Tazewell, make up the family. * * * The children, with all the rest of the family, seem very, very fond of me, but you must not suppose that all this affection and kindness makes me vain. It is very comforting and sweet, but I know they all love me from no merit of my own, but from the devotion the whole family feel for Mr. Tyler, who is idolized by his parents, and profoundly loved and respected by his brothers and sisters.”[[17]]
[17]. The ancient Tylers of Virginia, of whom but few are left in the State, were from a younger branch of the Tylers of Shropshire, in Wales, bordering on England. John and Henry, brothers, came to Virginia in the beginning of the settlement, and finally took up their abode in the “Middle Plantations” between Jamestown and Yorktown, in 1636.
President Tyler was the fifth John from the first of the name. The older line in Shropshire, now divided, still maintain their status there, represented by the present Sir Charles, son of the late Sir William. The Tylers of the North have never been able to trace any connection or common origin with those of Virginia, either in their correspondence with the first Governor Tyler, or with President Tyler; but of recent years many have poured into Eastern Virginia, and some have now purchased estates that formerly belonged to the ancient Virginia family. History in the future will doubtless, under these circumstances, become confused on the subject.
Mrs. Letitia Semple, in a letter addressed to her brother, and which he kindly placed at my disposal, thus writes:
* * * * * * “It is a sad truth, but I know of no one now alive who remembers my mother in her youth. As late as 1861, there were several who had known her from infancy, but now they are all gone. We have not an uncle, or an aunt, of all our once numerous family, left on earth. The early portion of her life must be gleaned from the little incidents we, her children, may remember to have been recited concerning her, by those now dead. Apart from ourselves, there are those who may recall something of her married life, but these have been scattered by the events of the war far and wide asunder. Her character was so unobtrusive, and her personal deportment was so little influenced by a desire to shine before the public eye, that those alone best knew her who were intimately associated with the family as near relatives, or as private friends. Our older and two younger sisters are dead; our elder brother, and one younger, the one driven by the relentless fates to Alabama, and the other to California, and you, the sport of a similar fatality, together with myself, may recollect many little things sacred to filial devotion. The beautiful affection ever manifested toward her by every member of the family—by her uncles and her aunts, by her sisters and her brothers, her nephews and her nieces, and by her cousins, male and female—by all without exception—we know of, and can speak to the fact. It was with each one of them the unadulterated affection of the heart for piety, purity and goodness. There was nothing else to attract it, for their mere worldly circumstances were, in every direction, fully equal to her own, and in many instances superior in affluence to those she enjoyed. Nothing could have exceeded the devotional regard of her sister Anna, the owner of the paternal estate of Cedar Grove, and who in addition to her own inheritance, had derived a large fortune by marriage and the early death of her husband, Mr. Savage. And I have often heard aunt Elizabeth Douglas, her oldest sister, speak of her obedient disposition and truthfulness as a child, and of her almost surpassing beauty, grace, elegance, and refinement in riper years. We ourselves know how exemplary a wife and mother she was. One of the earliest memories I have of her is, that she taught me my letters out of the family Bible. Over and often can I recall her with a book in her lap, reading and reflecting, while her fingers were knitting or stitching for some of us; or while watching over us until a late hour of the night, in the absence of our father upon his public duties.