At this time Washington was not far behind other large cities in games of chance, and gambling was frequently indulged in quite openly. Edward Pendleton's resort, a luxurious establishment down town, was regarded as quite à la mode, and I have heard it said that he had able assistance from social ranks. I have often wondered why a man who indulged in this sport was called a gambler, as the term "gamester," used many years ago, seems decidedly more appropriate. I own two volumes of a very old book, published in the eighteenth century, entitled "The Gamesters," in which the heroes are professional gamblers. I have seen Mrs. Pendleton's costly equipage, drawn by horses with brilliant trappings and followed by blooded hounds, coursing the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, while its owner seemed entirely unconscious of the aching hearts which had contributed to all her grandeur. Cards were universally played in private homes and whist was the fashionable game, General Scott being one of its chief devotees. I have often thought how much the old General would have enjoyed "bridge," as there was nothing that gave him more pleasure than playing the "dummy hand."
My old friend, Mrs. Diana Bullitt Kearny, the widow of General "Phil" Kearny, in our many chats in her latter days, gave me many reminiscences of Washington at a time when I was not residing there. She described a fancy-dress ball given by her while residing in the old Porter house on H Street, which must have been about 1848, as General Kearny had just returned from the Mexican War. She dwelt particularly upon the costume of Emma Meredith, one of her guests and the daughter of Jonathan Meredith of Baltimore, who came to Washington to attend the party. She represented a rainbow and her appearance was so gorgeous that Mrs. Kearny said the Heavenly vision seemed almost within the grasp of common mortals. Miss Meredith's supremacy as a belle has never been eclipsed. I recall a painful incident connected with her life. A young naval officer was deeply in love with her and, it is said, was under the impression that she intended to marry him. At a theater party one evening he discovered his mistake and, taking the affair to heart, returned to his quarters and the same evening swallowed a dose of corrosive sublimate. Physicians were immediately summoned and, although he regretted the act and expressed a desire to live, they were unable to save him. It is said that about the same time Miss Meredith left her home in Baltimore to visit her sister, Mrs. Gardiner G. Howland, whose husband was one of the merchant princes of New York, and that, as she crossed the Jersey City Ferry, one of the first objects which met her eyes was the funeral cortege of her disappointed lover en route to his final resting place. Subsequent to this tragedy, I met Miss Meredith in Saratoga, surrounded by the usual admiring throng. She never married. I heard of her in recent years, at a summer resort near Baltimore, and, although advanced in years, I understood she still possessed exceptional powers of attraction. Only a short time ago I heard a young man remark that he knew her very well and that he would rather converse with her than with women many years her junior.
Mrs. Kearny was said to be the last of the "Lafayette girls." In 1825, when Lafayette made his memorable visit to the United States as the guest of the nation, she was living with her parents in Louisville, and at the tender age of five strewed flowers in the pathway of the distinguished Frenchman. She remembered the incident perfectly and in our numerous conversations I have repeatedly heard her allude to it. She told me that, seated at General Lafayette's side in the carriage which conveyed him through the city, was the great-uncle, Colonel Richard C. Anderson, who led the advance of the American troops at the Battle of Trenton. General Robert Anderson, U.S.A., whose memory the country honors as the defender of Fort Sumpter, was his son. The General's widow, a daughter of General Duncan L. Clinch, U.S.A., resided in Washington until her death a few years ago. She was a woman of rare intelligence and, although a great invalid for many years, gathered around her an appreciative circle of friends, who were always charmed by her attractive personality.
In my earliest recollection of Washington the old Van Ness house was still sheltered by many trees. The foliage was so dense that it may have been the desire of the occupants to shield themselves in this manner from public view. When I first knew the landmark it was occupied by Thomas Green, an old-time resident of the District. He married, as his second wife, Ann Corbin Lomax, a daughter of Major Mann Page Lomax of the Ordnance Department of the Army. During the Civil War, Mr. Green's sympathies were with the South, but he took no active part in the conflict. One of his idiosyncrasies was to pick up, on and around his spacious grounds, scraps of old iron, such as horse shoes, hay rakes and the like, which were placed in a corner of his capacious cellar. Suspicion was centered upon his house by information given to the government by an old family servant who thought he was doing the country a service, and directions were accordingly given that it should be searched. While this order was in process of execution, the discovery of the scrap-iron is said to have played an important part and in some unaccountable manner to have aroused further suspicion. Whatever the logic of the situation may have been is not intelligible, but the fact remains I that Mr. and Mrs. Green and the latter's sister, Miss Virginia Lomax, were arrested in a summary manner and taken to the Old Capital Prison, where for a time they were kept in close confinement, during which Miss Lomax suffered severe indisposition and, as is said, never entirely recovered from the effects of her incarceration. About twenty-five years after the War, while staying at the same house with her in Warrenton, Virginia, I quite longed to hear her reminiscences of prison life; but when I expressed my desire to a member of her family, I was requested not to broach the subject as, even at this late day, it was painful to her as a topic of conversation.
During the War of 1812, Major Lomax was sent upon a mission to Canada by the U.S. Government and, one day during his brief sojourn, dined in company with some British officers. During the dinner a toast was offered by one of the sons of John Bull: "To President Madison, dead or alive." The responding toast by Major Lomax was: "To the Prince Regent, drunk or sober." The British officer who had proposed the toast to Madison immediately sprang to his feet and with much indignation inquired: "Do you mean to insult me, sir?" The quick rejoinder was: "I am responding to an insult!"
I met Charles Sumner soon after his first appearance in the United States Senate as the successor of Daniel Webster, who had become Secretary of State. He was a man of striking appearance and bore himself with the dignity so characteristic of the statesmen of that period. "Sumner is one of them literary fellows," was the facetious criticism of the Hon. Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, who a few years later became one of his colleagues in the Senate, and who in earlier life was accumulating a large fortune while Mr. Sumner, in his Massachusetts home, was engaged in those intellectual and scholarly pursuits which eventually made him one of the ripest and most accomplished students in the land. Chandler, however, in his own way, furnished a conspicuous example to aspiring youths of the day, both by his earlier and subsequent life, of what may be accomplished by determined application.
For a decade or more preceding the Civil War the political sentiment of Washington, especially in reference to the violent anti-slavery agitation then engrossing the thought of the country, was decidedly in sympathy with the attitude of the South. It is not, therefore, surprising that Sumner, whose radical views were known from Maine to Texas, should have been received at first in Washington society with but little cordiality. As the years passed along, he was rapidly forging himself ahead to the leadership of his party in the Senate and, of course, became strongly inimical to Buchanan's administration. He was regarded with confidence and esteem by his own party, and, although naturally both disliked and feared by his political opponents, it could be truthfully said of him that he was
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks,
and that no attempts to socially ostracize or to deride him for his political views and his intense application to his sense of duty deterred the great Massachusetts statesman from pursuing the "even tenor of his way."
An anecdote went the rounds of the Capital to the effect that, one morning when a gentleman called to see Sumner at his rooms on Pennsylvania Avenue, a colored attendant answered the door and after glancing at his card informed him that it would be impossible to disturb his master, as he was rehearsing before a looking-glass a speech which he expected to deliver the following morning. Whether this was originally told by a friend or foe of Mr. Sumner is not known. Mr. Sumner once requested me to take him to see a young Washington belle who combined Parisian grace with Kentucky dash. I refer to Miss Sally Strother, an acknowledged beauty of decidedly Southern views, who lived on Seventh Street near F Street, now a commercial center. Mr. Sumner and I walked to her house from my home on G Street and found several guests in her drawing-room, where the topic of conversation, in the course of the evening, drifted to the subject of spiritualism. It was announced that at a recent séance the spirit of Washington had appeared and uttered the usual platitudes, whereupon Miss Strother, without a moment's hesitation, remarked: "I wonder what General Washington would say about Mr. Sumner?" Someone undertook to define Washington's views, but Miss Strother interrupted and said: "I know just what he would say—that he was a very intelligent, a very handsome, but a very bad man." This remark was naturally productive of much mirth, but failed to arouse any manifestation of feeling or disapprobation on the part of Mr. Sumner. Later, as we were walking homeward he remarked: "I have l'esprit d'escalier and my retorts do not come until I am well-nigh down the flight of stairs." Sally Strother went abroad, where she married Baron Fahnenberg of Belgium, and shared a fate similar to that of many of her country-women, as she was finally separated from her husband. She cherished, however, a pride of title and bequeathed $60,000 to erect in Spa, Belgium, a handsome chapel as well as a vault to contain the remains of her mother, brother and herself. Her Kentucky relatives, however, including the family of Mrs. Basil Duke, succeeded in breaking the will on the ground that her mother's will, through which she had inherited her property, did not permit it to leave the family. The chapel and vault, accordingly, were not built, and all her property reverted to her relatives.