Mrs. Polk was considered a very handsome woman. Her hair and eyes were very black, and she had the complexion of a Spanish donna. Without being technically “literary,” she was fond of study, and of intellectual pursuits, and possessed a decided talent for conversation. In her youth, she became a member of the Presbyterian church, and through a long life her character has been eminently a Christian one. Always devout, her piety in later years is said to have merged into austerity; but even in the prime of her beauty and power, she never gave her smile or presence to the dissipation, the insidiously corrupting influence of what is termed “gay life in Washington,” whose baleful exponent to-day is the all-night “German” so destructive to freshness of beauty and purity of soul.
Mrs. Polk still lives at “Polk Place,” Nashville, Tennessee, a stately and noble home, like the Hermitage in this respect, that the mortal remains of its master, amid verdure and flowers, beneath the shadow of its trees, await the final call. The inscription on the monument, to the memory of President Polk, is in Mrs. Polk’s own words; and here, in this home, consecrated by his death, the venerable widow of the eleventh President of the United States peacefully awaits the summons which will recall her to the Soul whose life and name it has been her chief earthly glory to embellish and to represent.
Mrs. Taylor, the wife of General Taylor, the twelfth President of the United States, was one of those unknown heroines of whom fame keeps no record. Her life, in its self-abnegation and wifely devotion, under every stress of privation and danger on the Indian’s trail, amid fever-breeding swamps, and on the edge of the battle-field, was more heroic than that ever dreamed of by Martha Washington—or continuously lived by any Presidential lady of the Revolution—yet time will never give her a chronicler.
When General Taylor received the official announcement that he was elected President of the United States, among other things he said: “For more than a quarter of a century my house has been the tent, and my home the battle-field.” This utterance was simply true, and through all these years, this precarious house and home were shared by his devoted wife. He was one of the hardest worked of fighting officers. Intervals of official repose at West Point and Washington never came to this young “Indian fighter.” His life was literally spent in the savage wilderness, but whether in the swamps of Florida, on the plains of Mexico, or on the desolate border of the frontier, the young wife persistently followed, loved and served him. Thus all her children were born, and kept with her till old enough to live without her care; then, for their own sakes, she gave them up, and sent them back to “the settlements,” for the education indispensable to their future lives—but, whatever the cost, she stayed with her husband.
The devotion to duty, and the cheerfulness under privation of this tender woman—the wife of their chief,—penetrated the whole of his pioneer army. It made every man more contented and uncomplaining, when he thought of her. Her entire married life had been spent thus; but when her husband, as Colonel Taylor, took command against the treacherous Seminoles, in the Florida war, when the newspapers heralded the new-made discovery, that the wife of Colonel Taylor had established herself at Tampa Bay, it was considered unpardonably reckless, that she should thus risk her life, when the odds of success seemed all against her husband. Nothing could move her from her post. As ever, she superintended the cooking of his food; she ministered to the sick and wounded; she upheld the morale of the little army by the steadfastness of her own self-possession and hope, through all the long and terrible struggle. Time passed, and the brave Colonel of the Border became the conquering hero from Mexico, bearing triumphantly back to peace the victories of Palo Alto, Monterey, and Buena Vista, inscribed upon his banners. The obscure “Indian fighter” was at once the hero and idol of the Nation. The long day of battle and glory was ended at last, the wife thought,—and now she, the General, their children, in a four-roomed home, were to be kept together at last, in peace unbroken.
It is not difficult to imagine what a home so hardly earned, so nobly won, was to such a woman. Nor is it hard to realize that when that home was almost immediately invaded by a nomination of its chief to the Presidency of the Nation, the woman’s heart at last rebelled. The wife thought no new honor could add to the lustre of her husband’s renown. She declared that the life-long habits of her husband would make him miserable under the restraints of metropolitan life, and the duties of a civil position. From the first, she deplored the nomination of General Taylor to the Presidency as a misfortune, and sorrowfully said: “It is a plot to deprive me of his society, and to shorten his life by unnecessary care and responsibility.”
When, at last, she came to the White House, as its mistress, she eschewed the great reception-rooms and received her visitors in private apartments. She tried, as far as possible, to establish her daily life on the routine of the small cottage at Baton Rouge, and she essayed personally to minister to her husband’s comforts, as of old, till her simple habits were ridiculed and made a cause of reproach by the “opposition.”
The reigning lady of the White House, at this time, was General and Mrs. Taylor’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, or, as she was familiarly and admiringly called, “Betty Bliss.” She entered the White House at the age of twenty-two, a bride, having married Major Bliss, who served faithfully under her father as Adjutant-general. Perhaps no other President was ever inaugurated with such overwhelming enthusiasm as General Taylor—and the reception given his youngest child, who greatly resembled him, and who, at that time, was the youngest lady who had ever presided at the White House, was almost as overpowering. The vision that remains of her loveliness, shows us a bright and beaming creature, dressed simply in white, with flowers in her hair. She possessed beauty, good sense and quiet humor. As a hostess she was at ease, and received with affable grace; but an inclination for retirement marked her as well as her mother. Formal receptions and official dinners were not to their taste. Nevertheless, these are a part of the inevitable penalty paid by all who have received the Nation’s highest honor. Society, in its way, exacts as much of the ladies of the White House, as party politics do of the men who administer state affairs in it. A lack of entertainment caused part of the universal discontent, already voiced against the hero President, whose heroic ways were naturally not the ways of policy or diplomacy.
The second winter of President Taylor’s term, the ladies of his family seemed to have assumed more prominently and publicly the social duties of their high position. A reception at the President’s house, March 4, 1850, was of remarkable brilliancy. Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Benton and Cass, with many beautiful and cultured women, then added their splendor to society in Washington. The auguries of a brilliant year were not fulfilled. Amid the anguish of his family, President Taylor died at the White House, July 9, 1850. When it was known that he must die, Mrs. Taylor became insensible, and the agonized cries of his family reached the surrounding streets.