“You know that these days of our childhood were days of struggle with our father, under heavy security obligations, and she had but one idea apart from conjugal piety and affection, and that was to save him from every care and every expense in her power.
“His pecuniary independence was preserved, and much of his success was secured, through her economy, her diligence, her providence, and her admirable self-sacrificing demeanor. I have frequently heard our father say that he rarely failed to consult her judgment in the midst of difficulties and troubles, and that she invariably led him to the best conclusion, and that he had never known her to speak unkindly of any one. She was permitted to see him fill the highest office in the gift of his country, but before he was suffered to enter into his rest from political life, she had gone to that rest remaining for the people of God. She died, as you know, on the 10th September, 1842, in the Executive Mansion at Washington, where her third daughter, our sister Elizabeth Waller, had been shortly before married, and where two of her grandchildren now living,—the oldest daughter of our brother Robert, named Letitia, and the youngest son of our sister Mary, named Robert—were born.
“You remember her fondness for flowers. Her favorite flower was the monthly damask rose, and that brought in to her on the morning of the day of her death, was found clasped in her hand when the spirit was fled. From the time that she had been first stricken by paralysis, her health had been frail, but none of us anticipated an immediate, or even an early renewal of the attack, and far less a sudden dissolution of her system; and I had closed my last visit to her only a few days before, and had gone to ‘Cedar Grove’ to inform Aunt Anne of the condition in which I had left her, as if the sad Fates had carried me there to be ready to receive her remains, returning to the place of their birth to repose, in their separation from her husband, by the side of those of her father and her mother, as when first quickened into life; but our sister, Elizabeth Waller, and our Aunt Elizabeth Douglas, were with her, and witnessed her last breath, and they told me this particularly sweet circumstance of her favorite rose still clinging to her hand in death.”
These letters, taken with the obituaries subjoined, and the lines of Mr. Sargent, together with other communications descriptive of the daily social routine in the “White House” at this epoch, which remain to be submitted and cannot fail to interest, leave but little necessary to fill out and perfect the portraiture of one of the loveliest characters in history.
Upon the accession of her husband to the Presidential office in the beginning of April, 1841, Mrs. Tyler proceeded with him to the Executive Mansion of the nation, at Washington, but with many sighs and tears at parting with her own home, and without the thought of personal triumphs in the world of fashion and display. She resigned herself to the change simply to be with her loved ones, and to receive the tender care and attention of those in whom she literally “lived and had her being.” Her health had become greatly impaired from a severe attack of illness during the year 1839, and her condition remained as has been described by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Robert Tyler, then to have been in the month of October. Nevertheless, in all the private apartments of the President’s mansion, the same modes of life were maintained as those to which she had ever been accustomed. Her sisters and brothers and other relatives, as well as her children, still hovered around her, as they had always done, with increased and increasing affection as they discovered her frame becoming somewhat more feeble. She passed her time chiefly in their society, receiving but few visitors and returning no visits. Her health, indeed, required that she should delegate to some one of her married daughters the semi-official duties of her position.
For the greater part of the time, her own married daughters, Mrs. Jones[[18]] and Mrs. Semple, were compelled by their domestic duties, in the line of the private affairs and personal interests of their husbands, to remain at their respective residences in Virginia, but frequently coming to Washington, for brief periods, it is true, through solicitude for her health and to bestow their affection upon her; and as regards her two remaining daughters, Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. Waller, was just grown up to womanhood, and was not yet married; and Alice, afterward Mrs. Henry M. Denison,[[19]] was still but a child. However it fortunately so happened that her oldest son and his wife had not permanently located themselves in life since their recent marriage, and it was considered best they should continue in the family. Sometimes, on the temporary visits of Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Semple, all her married daughters would appear together in the Reception-rooms; but under the circumstances, the constant task of representing her mother, in respect to the honors of the establishment, was delegated, with the consent of the President, to Mrs. Robert Tyler,[[20]] a lady of admirable culture and address, to whom she was, as well as the rest of the family, devotedly attached as to her own daughter. One of the few occasions on which she assented to appear personally in the public Reception-rooms, before a large and distinguished assemblage of men and women associated with the world of fashion and that of politics and diplomacy, was that of the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth, and is thus portrayed by Mrs. Robert Tyler shortly afterward, in a letter addressed to her relatives near Philadelphia:
[18]. Mary, the first child and oldest daughter of Mrs. Letitia Tyler, in her features bore a marked but refined and delicate likeness to her father, and strikingly blended in her character the admirable attributes of both father and mother. She was a lady of the most exalted worth and lovely mould. She married, at an early age, Mr. Henry Lightfoot Jones, of Charles City county, Virginia, and died after her mother, leaving an infant daughter that soon followed her spirit, and three sons, two of whom only survive, Henry and Robert, who fought in the ranks in Lee’s army, both being mentioned in orders, and the latter of whom, born in the “White House,” was promoted for a feat of daring gallantry and three wounds received at Gettysburg, to a first-lieutenancy.
[19]. Alice, fourth and last daughter of Mrs. Letitia Tyler, resembled her mother in features more than any other child. She married, years after her mother’s death, the Rev. Henry M. Denison, of Wyoming, Pennsylvania, a clergyman of marked ability, eloquence, and conscientiousness, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and Rector, at the time, of old Bruton Parish Church, at Williamsburg, Virginia. She died while he was assistant to the Bishop of Kentucky, at Louisville, and he died while Rector at Charleston, South Carolina, a victim to his high sense of duty to his congregation during the prevalence of the yellow fever in that city before the war. They left an infant daughter named Elizabeth, who has been reared and educated by her aunt, Mrs. Letitia Tyler Semple.
[20]. Mrs. Robert Tyler, wife of the second child and oldest son of Mrs. Letitia Tyler, is the daughter of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, the distinguished tragedian, an English gentleman, ward and nephew of Goodwin, the political economist, pupil of Holcroft, and friend and relative of Shelley, the poet. Her mother was the daughter of Major Fairlee, of New York, an officer of the Revolutionary war of Independence, and of the Governor Yates and Vanness family. Her eldest daughter, named after her grandmother, Letitia Christian, was born in the White House.
“Washington, February, 1842.