Only the relatives and personal friends attended the Gouverneur-Monroe wedding at the White House; even the members of the Cabinet were not invited. The gallant General Thomas S. Jesup, one of the heroes of the War of 1812 and Subsistance Commissary General of the Army, acted as groomsman to Mr. Gouverneur. Two of his daughters, Mrs. James Blair and Mrs. Augustus S. Nicholson, still reside at the National Capital and are prominent "old Washingtonians." After this quiet wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Gouverneur left Washington upon a bridal tour and about a week later returned to the White House, where, at a reception, Mrs. Monroe gave up her place as hostess to mingle with her guests, while Mrs. Gouverneur received in her place. Commodore and Mrs. Stephen Decatur, who lived on Lafayette Square, gave the bride her first ball, and two mornings later, on the twenty-second of March, 1820, Decatur fought his fatal duel with Commodore James Barron and was brought home a corpse. "The bridal festivities," wrote Mrs. William Winston Seaton, wife of the editor of The National Intelligencer, "have received a check which will prevent any further attentions to the President's family, in the murder of Decatur." The invitations already sent out for an entertainment in honor of the bride and groom by Commodore David Porter, father of the late Admiral David D. Porter, U.S.N., were immediately countermanded.
I never had the pleasure of knowing my mother-in-law, Mrs. Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur, as she died some years before my marriage, but I learned to revere her through her son, whose tender regard for her was one of the absorbing affections of his life and changed the whole direction of his career. At an early age he was appointed a Lieutenant in the regular Army and served with distinction through the Mexican War in the Fourth Artillery. On one occasion subsequent to that conflict, while his mother was suffering from a protracted illness, he applied to the War Department for leave of absence in order that he might visit her sick bed; and when it was not granted he resigned his commission and thus sacrificed an enviable position to his sense of filial duty. Many years later, after my husband's decease, in looking over his papers I found these lines written by him just after his mother's death:—
"A man through life has but one true friend and that friend generally leaves him early. Man enters the lists of life but ere he has fought his way far that friend falls by his side; he never finds another so fond, so true, so faithful to the last—His Mother!"
Mrs. Gouverneur was somewhat literary in her tastes and, like many others of her time, regarded it as an accomplishment to express herself in verse on sentimental occasions. One of my daughters, whom she never saw, owns the original manuscript of the following lines written as a tribute of friendship to the daughter of President John Tyler, at the time of her marriage:—
TO MISS TYLER ON HER WEDDING DAY.
The day, the happy day, has come
That gives you to your lover's arms;
Check not the tear or rising bloom
That springs from all those strange alarms.
To be a blest and happy wife
Is what all women wish to prove;
And may you know through all your life
The dear delights of wedded love.
'Tis not strange that you should feel
Confused in every thought and feeling;
Your bosom heave, the tear should steal
At thoughts of all the friends you're leaving.
Happy girl may your life prove,
All sunshine, joy and purest pleasure;
One long, long day of happy love,
Your husband's joy, his greatest treasure.
Be to him all that woman ought,
In joy and health and every sorrow;
Let his true pleasures be only sought
With you to-day, with you to-morrow.