Miss Cutts entered into the enjoyment of the wealth and position which her marriage with Stephen A. Douglas gave her, with the regal manner of a princess. Her toilettes were of the richest and at all times were models of taste and picturesqueness. The effect she produced upon strangers was invariably one of instant admiration. Writing to me in 1863, my cousin, Mrs. Paul Hammond (who, before her marriage, had spent a winter with me at Washington), thus recalled her meeting with the noted beauty:
“Yesterday, with its green leaves and pearl-white flowers, called to my memory how Mrs. Douglas looked when I first saw her. She was receiving at her own house in a crêpe dress looped with pearls, and her hair was ornamented with green leaves and lilies. She was a beautiful picture!”
I had the pleasure, on one occasion, of bringing together Mrs. Douglas and Miss Betty Beirne, the tallest and the shortest belles of their time. They had long desired to meet, and each viewed the other with astonishment and pleasure. Miss Beirne, who afterward became the wife of Porcher Miles of South Carolina, was one of the tiniest of women, as Mrs. Douglas was one of the queenliest, and both were toasted continually in the capital.
During the incumbency of Mr. Crampton, he being a bachelor, few functions were given at the British Embassy which ladies attended. Not that the Minister and his suite were eremites. On the contrary, Mr. Crampton was exceedingly fond of “cutting a figure.” His traps were especially conspicuous on the Washington avenues. Always his own reinsman, the Minister’s fast tandem driving and the stiffly upright “tiger” behind him, for several years were one of the sights of the city. In social life the British Embassy was admirably represented by Mr. Lumley, Chargé d’Affaires, an affable young man who entered frankly into the life of the city and won the friendly feeling of all who met him. He was one of the four young men who took each the novel part of the elephant’s leg at a most amusing impromptu affair given by Mrs. George Riggs in honour of the girl prima donna, Adelina Patti. It was, I think, the evening of the latter’s début in “la Traviata.” Her appearance was the occasion of one of the most brilliant audiences ever seen in Washington. Everyone of note was present, and the glistening of silk and the flash of jewels no doubt contributed their quota of stimulus to the youthful star.
Within a day of the performance, Senator Clay and I received a note from Mrs. Riggs, inviting us informally, not to say secretly, to an after-the-opera supper, to meet the new diva and her supporting artists. We responded cordially and drove to the Riggs residence shortly after the close of the performance.
There, upon our arrival, we found representatives from all the foreign legations, Patti’s entire troupe, and perhaps a dozen others, exclusive of the family of our hostess. The prima donna soon came in, a lovely little maiden in evening dress, with a manner as winsome as was her appearance. The entertainment now began by graceful compliment from all present to the new opera queen, after which Mr. Riggs led her to the dining-room where the sumptuous supper was spread.
The table was almost as wide as that of the White House. Its dazzling silver and gold and crystal vessels, and viands well worthy these receptacles, made a brilliant centre around which the decorated foreigners seemed appropriately to cluster. The little cantatrice’s undisguised pleasure was good to see. She had worked hard during the performance of the opera, and her appetite was keen. She did ample justice, therefore, to Mrs. Riggs’s good cheer, and goblets were kept brimming for quite two hours.
This important part of the programme over, a young Englishman, by name Mr. Palmer, who, as the Chevalier Bertinatti (the Sardinian Minister) whispered to me, had been asked “to make some leetle fun for leetle Mees Patti,” opened the evening’s merriment by an amusing exhibition of legerdemain. Mr. Palmer, at that time a favourite music-teacher, who spent his time between Washington and Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, having in each city numerous fashionable pupils, afterward became known to the world as the great prestidigitator, Heller.
On the evening of the Riggses’ supper the young magician was in his best form. Handkerchiefs and trinkets disappeared mysteriously, only to come to light again in the most unexpected places, until the company became almost silent with wonder. Mr. Palmer’s last trick required a pack of cards, which were promptly forthcoming. Selecting the queen of hearts, he said, looking archly in the direction of the diminutive Patti: “This is also a queen; but she is a naughty girl and we will not have her!” saying which, with a whiff and a toss, he threw the card into the air, where it vanished!
Everyone was mystified; but Baron de Staeckl, the Russian Minister, incontinently broke the spell Mr. Palmer was weaving around us by picking up a card and pronouncing the same formula. Then, as all waited to see what he was about to do, in a most serio-comic manner he deftly and deliberately crammed it down Mr. Palmer’s collar! Amid peals of laughter from all present, the young man gave place to other and more general entertainment, in which the most dignified ambassadors indulged with the hilarity of schoolboys.