My husband being duly sworn in on the 14th of December, 1853, in a few days our “mess” was established at the home of Mr. Charles Gardner, at Thirteenth and G Streets. Here my first season in Washington was spent. Besides Senator Clay and myself, our party was composed of Senator and Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and Representatives Dowdell and Orr, and to this little nucleus of congenial spirits were afterward added in our later residences at historic old Brown’s Hotel and the Ebbitt House, many whose names are known to the nation.
Though a sad winter for me, for in it I bore and buried my only child, yet my recollections of that season, as its echoes reached our quiet parlours, are those of boundless entertainment and bewildering ceremony. The season was made notable in the fashionable world by the great fête champêtre given by the British Minister, Mr. Crampton, and the pompous obsequies of Baron Bodisco, for many years resident Minister from Russia; but of these I learned only through my ever kind friend, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, who for months was my one medium of communication with the fashionable outside world. She was a beautiful woman, with superb carriage and rare and rich colouring, and possessed, besides, a voice of great sweetness, with which, during that winter of seclusion, she often made our simple evenings a delight. While shortly she became a leader in matters social, Mrs. Fitzpatrick was still more exalted in our own little circle for her singing of such charming songs as “Roy’s Wife of Aldivalloch,” and other quaint Scotch ditties. Nor was Mrs. Fitzpatrick the one musician of our “mess,” for Mr. Dowdell had a goodly voice and sang with lusty enjoyment the simpler ballads of the day, to say nothing of many melodious Methodist hymns.
My experiences as an active member of Washington society, therefore, began in the autumn of 1854 and the succeeding spring, when, notwithstanding an air of gravity and reserve that was perceptible at that social pivot, the White House, the gaiety of the capital was gaining an impetus in what later appeared to me to be a veritable “merry madness.”
It is true that it did not even then require the insight of a keen observer to detect in social, as in political gatherings, the constantly widening division between the Northern and Southern elements gathered in the Government City. For myself, I knew little of politics, notwithstanding the fact that from my childhood I had called myself “a pronounced Jeffersonian Democrat.” Naturally, I was an hereditary believer in States’ Rights, the real question, which, in an attempt to settle it, culminated in our Civil War; and I had been bred among the law-makers of the sturdy young State of Alabama, many of whom had served at the State and National capitals with marked distinction; but from my earliest girlhood three lessons had been taught me religiously, viz.: to be proud alike of my name and blood and section; to read my Bible; and, last, to know my “Richmond Enquirer.” Often, as an aid to the performance of this last duty, have I read aloud its full contents, from the rates of advertisement down, until my dear uncle Tom Tunstall has fallen asleep over my childish efforts. It is not, then, remarkable that, upon my arrival, I was at once cognisant of the feeling which was so thinly concealed between the strenuous parties established in the capital.
MRS. BENJAMIN FITZPATRICK
of Alabama
During the first half of the Pierce administration, however, though feeling ran high in the Senate and the House, the surface of social life was smiling and peaceful. The President had every reason to feel kindly toward the people of the South who had so unanimously supported him, and he was as indiscriminating and impartial in his attitude to the opposing parties as even the most critical could desire; but, gradually, by a mutual instinct of repulsion that resolved itself into a general consent, the representatives of the two antagonistic sections seldom met save at promiscuous assemblages to which the exigencies of public life compelled them. To be sure, courtesies were exchanged between the wives of some of the Northern and Southern Senators, and formal calls were paid on Cabinet days, as etiquette demanded, upon the ladies of the Cabinet circle; but, by a tacit understanding, even at the entertainments given at the foreign legations, and at the houses of famous Washington citizens, this opposition of parties was carefully considered in the sending out of invitations, in order that no unfortunate rencontre might occur between uncongenial guests.
The White House, as I have said, was scarcely a place of gaiety. Mrs. Pierce’s first appearance in public occurred at the Presidential levee, late in 1853. An invalid for several years, she had recently received a shock, which was still a subject of pitying conversation throughout the country. It had left a terrible impress upon Mrs. Pierce’s spirits. While travelling from her home in New Hampshire to Washington to witness her husband’s exaltation as the President of the United States, an accident, occurring at Norwalk, Connecticut, suddenly deprived her of her little son, the last surviving of her several children. At her first public appearance at the White House, clad in black velvet and diamonds, her natural pallor being thereby greatly accentuated, a universal sympathy was awakened for her. To us who knew her, the stricken heart was none the less apparent because hidden under such brave and jewelled apparel, which she had donned, the better to go through the ordeal exacted by “the dear people.”
I had made the acquaintance of General and Mrs. Pierce during the preceding year while on a visit to the New England States; my husband’s father had been the President’s confrère in the Senate early in the forties; and my brother-in-law, Colonel Hugh Lawson Clay, had fought beside the New Hampshire General in the Mexican War. The occupants of the Executive Mansion therefore were no strangers to us; yet Mrs. Pierce’s sweet graciousness and adaptability came freshly to me as I saw her assume her place as the social head of the nation. Her sympathetic nature and very kind heart, qualities not always to be perceived through the formalities of governmental etiquette, were demonstrated to me on many occasions. My own ill-health proved to be a bond between us, and, while custom forbade the paying of calls by the wife of the Chief Magistrate upon the wives of Senators, I was indebted to Mrs. Pierce for many acts of friendliness, not the least of which were occasional drives with her in the Presidential equipage.
A favourite drive in those days was throughout the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, then but sparsely and irregularly built up. The greatest contrasts in architecture existed, hovels often all but touching the mansions of the rich. The great boulevard was a perfect romping ground for the winds. Chevy Chase and Georgetown were popular objective points, and the banks of the Potomac, in shad-seining season, were alive with gay sight-seers. The markets of Washington have always excelled, affording every luxury of earth and sea, and that at a price which gives to the owner of even a moderate purse a leaning toward epicureanism. In the houses of the rich the serving of dinners became a fine art.