This visit was the pleasing forerunner of a sincere friendship between my husband and Horace Greeley. In our intimate association of a few days we recognized as never before his conscientious purpose and intellectual power, and Mr. Gouverneur was so deeply impressed by his remarkable ability and sterling character that later in the same year he started a newspaper in Frederick, which he called The Maryland Herald, with a view of advocating his nomination for the Presidency. My husband had never before been especially interested in politics, but he now entered the political arena with all the enthusiasm of his intense nature, and, at a mass meeting in Frederick, was chosen a delegate to the National Liberal Republican Convention in Cincinnati, which resulted in the nomination of Greeley and Brown. Although this party was largely composed of Republicans who had become dissatisfied with the Grant administration, it will be remembered that its candidates were subsequently endorsed by the Democratic party at its convention in Baltimore, and that the fusion of such hitherto discordant political elements added exceptional interest to the subsequent campaign. The venerable Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of the author of the Declaration of Independence, although he had reached the advanced age of eighty years, was chosen as the temporary chairman of the Baltimore Convention. The proceedings of the Cincinnati delegates were replete with interest and the enthusiasm was intense. During the uproarious demonstration in the convention hall, immediately following Greeley's nomination, Mr. Gouverneur's friend, John Cochrane of New York, of whom I have spoken elsewhere, in the excitement of the moment gave expression to his delight in an Indian war dance, and other usual scenes of boyish hilarity prevailed.
My husband's paper had been the first of the Maryland press, and long before the Convention, to place the name of Greeley at the head of its columns, but others followed, and for a time the movement, both in that State and elsewhere, appeared to gain strength and to assume formidable proportions. Subsequent events, however, proved that it would have been better if the newborn babe had been strangled at its birth, as it was destined to enjoy but a brief and precarious existence. Although the movement commanded the support of the united Democracy and enlisted the active sympathies of able men from the Republican ranks—such as Carl Schurz, Whitelaw Reid, Charles A. Dana, Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Andrew G. Curtin and many more—the voice of the people pronounced for Grant, and in the latter part of the same month that witnessed his defeat, poor Greeley died of a broken heart!
Greeley's defeat was a severe blow to Mr. Gouverneur. As the member from Maryland of the national committee of the Liberal Republican Party, he had engaged in the contest with his characteristic ardor, and his strenuous but unsuccessful efforts had made inroads upon his health that he could but ill afford. Under the circumstances, a change of scene and employment seemed highly expedient, and we accordingly decided to break up our attractive home in Frederick and return to Washington, where so much of Mr. Gouverneur's life had been spent and where I, too, had so many pleasant associations. It was in the summer of 1873 that this plan was consummated, and we began our second Washington life in a house which we bought on Corcoran Street, near Fourteenth Street. It was one of a row of dwellings built as an investment by the late George W. Riggs, the distinguished banker, and was in a portion of the city which still abounded in vacant lots. Houses in our vicinity were so widely scattered that we had an almost uninterrupted view of that part of the District boundary which is now Florida Avenue. As these were the days of horse cars, it was my habit to stand in my vestibule and wait for a car, as I could see it approaching a long distance off, although we lived half a block from the route, which was on Fourteenth Street. The entire northwestern section of the city, which is now a semi-palatial region, was also, at that time, largely a sea of vacant lots. The only house on Dupont Circle was "Stewart Castle," and the fashionable part of the city was still that portion below Pennsylvania Avenue, bounded on the east by Seventeenth Street, although the general trend in the erection of fine residences was towards the northwest. Many of the streets were not paved, but the régime of Alexander R. Shepherd, familiarly called "Boss Shepherd," changed all of this, and the work of grading commenced. It was a trying ordeal for property owners, as it left many houses high in the air and others below the customary grade, while many from the ranks of the poorer classes, unable to meet the necessary assessments, were forced to part with their homes. In the course of several years, however, the situation righted itself. Cellars were dug and English basements became prevalent, and it is only occasionally that one now sees a house far above the level of the street. We sometimes hear the praises of Mr. Shepherd sung, and without a doubt he made Washington the beautiful city it is to-day, but he accomplished it only at a tremendous cost—the sacrifice of many homes. Next followed the paving of the streets with wooden blocks; and I was much surprised when they were being laid on Fourteenth Street, as I recalled the time during my earlier days in New York when they were used in paving Broadway, and I also well remember how speedily they degenerated and decayed. I was told, however, that this form of block was an improvement upon the old style, and was induced to believe it until I saw Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue masses of holes and ruts!
After we were fairly settled in our new home I made the pleasing discovery that my next door neighbors were our old acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Pendleton Gaines. Mrs. Gaines was Frances Hogan, a former neighbor of ours in Houston Street in New York. William Hogan, her aged father, was living with her, and their close proximity recalled many early memories. He was a gentleman of broad culture and a proficient linguist, and at an early age had accompanied his father to the Cape of Good Hope. He formed an intimacy with Lord Byron at Harrow, where he received the early portion of his education. Byron was not then a student but was occupying a small room at Harrow, which he called his "den." Another of Mr. Hogan's daughters, who is still living, wrote me that at this time Lord Byron was a young man and her father a little boy. She says: "Lord Byron often admitted my father to his room, when he would make him repeat stories of his African life and describe the occasional appearance of an orang-outang walking through the streets of Cape Town." After his father's return to New York, Mr. Hogan attended Columbia College, from which he was graduated in 1811, and afterwards studied law. He subsequently purchased land in the Black River country and did much to develop that portion of his native State. The town of Hogansburg in Franklin County was named after him. He became a county judge and member of Congress and later resided in Washington, where he was employed in the Department of State, first as an examiner of claims and then as an official interpreter.
A short distance from our home and on the same street lived Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Sharp with their large and interesting family of children, one of whom, bearing the same name as his father, recently died in Washington while a Captain in the Navy. Dr. Sharp's wife was a younger sister of Mrs. U. S. Grant, and her husband was ably filling at the time the position of U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia. A few doors from Mrs. Sharp's lived her sister-in-law, the widow of Louis Dent; and in the same block, but nearer Thirteenth Street, were the residences of two agreeable Army families, Colonel and Mrs. Almon F. Rockwell and Colonel and Mrs. Asa Bacon Carey, the latter of whom was the niece of the late Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont. I formed a pleasant friendship almost immediately with Mrs. Sharp and was always received with much cordiality in her home. Corcoran Street, in fact, from a social point of view, proved to be an ideal locality until its tranquillity was disturbed by the advent of Mr. —— and family, the former of whom was the Washington representative of a prominent New York daily paper whose columns had been strongly denunciatory of Grant and antagonistic to his election, while they abounded in praises of Greeley. Both Mr. and Mrs. —— were persons of much culture, but they were unfortunate in their selection of a home, as the personal and political sentiment of the neighborhood was friendly to Grant, while his family connections, the Dents and Sharps, residing in that part of the city, were deservedly popular. My own position was one of much delicacy. Although I was especially fond of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Sharp, I could not, in view of Mr. Gouverneur's active interest in the Greeley campaign, be quite so enthusiastic over the Grant administration as were most of my neighbors, and, therefore, when I was invited by a mutual friend to call upon Mrs. —— I had no hesitation in doing so. I was taken to task for my act, however, by some of my friends, but I survived the rebuke and am still alive to tell the tale. I was told that, several months after the family just referred to was established in its Corcoran Street home, Mrs. —— was returning unaccompanied to her residence one evening, when a colored man, carrying a bucket of mud in one hand and a brush in the other, ran after her and besmeared her clothing; but the Dents and Grants were not of the class of people to approve of such a ruffianly act, nor were any of the other decent residents in the community. If Mrs. Sharp ever had any feeling in connection with my calling upon Mrs. ——, I never knew of it. Our relations were of the most cordial character from the first, and when her niece, Nellie Grant, was married to Algernon Sartoris she brought me a box of wedding cake, coupling with it the remark that she knew of no one more entitled to it than I—referring, I presume, to the associations connecting the Gouverneur family with the White House. After the close of the Grant administration, Dr. Sharp was appointed a paymaster in the Army and for many years resided with his family in Yankton, Dakota. I remained in touch with Mrs. Sharp, however, and for a long period we kept up an active correspondence.
At this period Vice-Presidents were not so much en évidence as later, and Vice-President and Mrs. Schuyler Colfax lived quietly in Washington and mingled but little in the social world. During his life at the Capital, Mr. Colfax repeatedly delivered his eloquent oration on Lincoln, which concluded with the lines of N. P. Willis on the death of President William Henry Harrison:—
Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for him—
Not for him who, departing, leaves millions in tears,
Not for him who has died full of honor and years,
Not for him who ascended Fame's ladder so high,
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky.
Directly back of us on Q Street lived an old and intimate friend of mine, Mrs. Septimia Randolph Meikleham, the last surviving grandchild of Thomas Jefferson. She was the widow of Dr. David Scott Meikleham of Glasgow, who was a relative of Sir Walter Scott and died in early life in New York. Mrs. Meikleham was the seventh daughter (hence her name "Septimia," suggested by her grandfather) of Governor Thomas Mann Randolph of Virginia and his wife Martha, the younger daughter of Thomas Jefferson. She was born at Monticello and was familiarly known to her intimate friends as "Tim," a name in surprising contrast with her elegance and dignity. She bore a striking resemblance to her grandfather, and, although a woman of commanding presence, was simple and unaffected in manner. Strong in her convictions, attractive in conversation and loyal in her friendships, she and her home were sources of great delight to me, and it was pleasing to both of us that her children and mine should have been brought into intimate contact. Mrs. Meikleham and I often dwelt upon this family intimacy extending unbroken from Jefferson and Monroe down to the fourth generation. In the same block with Mrs. Meikleham lived Mr. and Mrs. John W. Douglas, the former of whom, some years later, during the Harrison administration, was one of the District Commissioners. A daughter of his is the wife of Henry B. F. Macfarland, the late Senior Commissioner of the District, who, as well as his wife, is universally respected and beloved in Washington. On the same street, but on the other side of Fourteenth Street, Colonel and Mrs. Robert N. Scott resided for many years; while just around the corner, on Iowa Circle, in what was then a palatial home, lived Allan McLane and his only child, Anne, who married from this house John Cropper of New York. She is now a widow but lives in Washington, where she is greatly beloved. In this same general region, on the corner of N and Fourteenth Street, lived Lieutenant Commander (now Rear Admiral) and Mrs. Francis J. Higginson, and the latter's attractive sister, Miss Mary Haldane.
Not far from our dwelling on Corcoran Street lived the attractive wife of Monsieur Grimaud de Caux, Chancelier of the French legation, who left unfading memories behind her. During our many delightful chats I was much interested in the accounts of her early life and experiences in Ireland, and I especially recall many things she told me concerning the members of the Wilde family, with whom she had been quite intimately associated. I learned from her that Oscar Wilde inherited his æsthetic tastes largely from his mother. She was a woman of unusual type and habitually dressed in white—at a time, too, before white garments had become so generally prevalent. I was also told that Oscar Wilde's father was an oculist of some prominence, and that he built a mansion so singular in its construction that the wits of Dublin called it "Wilde's eye-sore."
Another of my intimate friends of those days was Mrs. Mary Donelson Wilcox, widow of the Hon. John A. Wilcox, formerly Secretary of the U.S. Senate, a Member of Congress and a veteran of the Mexican War. She was a woman of rare intellectual ability, and subsequent to her husband's death was for a time one of the official translators of the government. She was the daughter of Colonel Andrew Jackson Donelson, a nephew of President Jackson as well as his adopted son and private secretary. General Jackson when President was a widower, and it was while Mrs. Donelson was presiding as mistress of the White House that Mrs. Wilcox was born. Her memory remained clear until her last illness, and her recollections of prominent men and events, extending back to her childhood, and especially those of her early life at the White House, were of exceptional interest. I was especially amused by her account of the prompt manner in which General Jackson sent her mother back to Tennessee because she refused to accord social recognition to the wife of General John H. Eaton, his Secretary of War. As is well known, this was "Peggy O'Neal" who, before her marriage to Eaton, was the widow of Purser John B. Timberlake of our Navy, who committed suicide while serving in the Mediterranean. The relation which she sustained to the disruption of Jackson's cabinet has passed into history and is too well known to bear repetition here. As Colonel Donelson shared the views of his wife, he resigned his position as the President's private secretary and returned with her to Tennessee. He was succeeded by Nicholas P. Trist of the State Department, but a few months later, through the kindly offices of personal friends, they were both restored to Jackson's favor and resumed their former functions in the White House.