* * * “Lizzie[[21]] has had quite a grand wedding, although the intention was that it should be quiet and private. This, under the circumstances, though, was found impossible. The guests consisted of Mrs. Madison, the members of the cabinet, with their wives and daughters, the foreign ministers near the government, and some few personal friends, outside of the family and their relatives.
[21]. Elizabeth, third daughter of Mrs. Letitia Tyler, was married to Mr. William Waller, of Williamsburg, Virginia, in the East Room of the President’s Mansion, at Washington, on the thirty-first day of January, 1842, in the nineteenth year of her age. In character she greatly resembled her mother, and showed much of her early beauty and grace. Her oldest son, named William, resigned from the West Point military school and married during the recent war between the States the youngest sister of the wife of President Davis, in the Executive Mansion of the Confederate States, at Richmond. And her second son, John, though a mere lad, was killed during the war, “fighting for his mother’s grave,” to use his own words. Another son, Robert, and a daughter, Mary, had been born to her before she died. Her children, through their great-grandfather, the first Secretary of the American Colonial Congress, and their great-grandmother, his wife, the sister of the Earl of Traquaire, and whose grandson is the present titular Earl, bear in their veins, probably, the nearest living blood to that of Queen Mary Stuart, of Scotland, whose name her daughter bears.
“Lizzie looked surpassingly lovely in her wedding dress and long blonde lace-veil; her face literally covered with blushes and dimples. She behaved remarkably well, too; any quantity of compliments were paid to her. I heard one of her bridesmaids express to Mr. Webster her surprise at Lizzie consenting to give up her belle-ship, with all the delights of Washington society, and the advantages of her position, and retire to a quiet Virginia home. ‘Ah,’ said he,
‘Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And love is heaven, and heaven is love.’
“Our dear mother was down-stairs on this occasion for the first time, in so large a circle, since she has been in Washington. She gained by comparison with all the fine ladies around her. I felt proud of her, in her perfectly faultless, yet unostentatious dress, her face shaded by the soft fine lace of her cap, receiving in her sweet, gentle, self-possessed manner, all the important people who were led up and presented to her. She was far more attractive to me in her appearance and bearing than any other lady in the room, and I believe such was the general impression. Somebody says, ‘the highest order of manner is that which combines dignity with simplicity;’ and this just describes mother’s manner, the charm of which, after all, proceeds from her entire forgetfulness of self, and the wish to make those around her happy.”
Major Tyler, who was for more than three years “Major Domo” of the establishment, and to the last private secretary, says, regarding the modes and inmates of the President’s house during this time:
“My mother’s health was entirely too delicate to permit her to charge herself with the semi-official social requirements of the mansion, and my married sisters being unavoidably absent for the most of the time, the task devolved upon Mrs. Robert Tyler to represent my mother on stated occasions. She continued in the rôle of honors, as they are termed, until after my mother’s death, and my brother made his arrangements to practise law in Philadelphia, by which time it also happened that Mr. Semple’s affairs became differently accommodated, and he proceeded to sea as a Purser in the United States Navy, when my sister Letitia[[22]] became at liberty to take up her abode in Washington. Accordingly, both the President and myself now addressed to her letters, inviting her to assume the position and duties of hostess of the White House, which she consented to do, and so acted until May, 1844.