On this desperate statement I applied to the Secretary. Within ten days my gallant “friend” was on the sea, and one of Washington’s beautiful maidens in tears. Glancing over my letters, I see that at the end of ten years the young Naval officer was still unwed, though not altogether scarless as to intervening love affairs; but the lady was now the happy wife of a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the United States!
Secretary Dobbin was my escort on my first (a most memorable) visit to Fort Monroe. The occasion was a brilliant one, for the President and his Cabinet had come in a body to review the troops. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, and but recently the hero of the battle of Buena Vista, directed the manœuvres, his spirited figure, superb horsemanship, and warlike bearing attracting general attention. An entire day was given up to this holiday-making, and the scene was one of splendid excitement. At night the Fort and the waters beyond were lit up by a pyrotechnic display of great gorgeousness, and enthusiasm rose to its highest when, amid the booming of cannon and the plaudits of happy people, an especially ingenious device blazed across the night sky the names of Franklin Pierce and Jefferson Davis!
Always a man of distinguished appearance, Secretary Davis at that time was exceedingly slender, but his step was springy, and he carried himself with such an air of conscious strength and ease and purpose as often to cause a stranger to turn and look at him. His voice was very rich and sonorous, his enunciation most pleasing. In public speech he was eloquent and magnetic, but, curiously enough, he was a poor reader, often “mouthing” his phrases in a way that would have aroused Hamlet’s scorn. Though spoken of as cold and haughty, in private his friends found him refreshingly informal and frank. From their first meeting, Secretary Davis was the intimate friend of my husband, whose loyalty to Mr. Davis in the momentous closing days of the Confederacy reacted so unfortunately upon his own liberty and welfare.
Neither the Secretary of War nor his wife appeared frequently in society in the earlier days of his appointment, the attention of Mr. Davis being concentrated upon the duties of his office, and a young family engaging that of his wife. I have heard it said that so wonderful was Mr. Davis’s oversight of the Department of War while under his charge, that it would have been impossible for the Government to have been cheated out of the value of a brass button! So proud was his adopted State of him, that at the close of Mr. Pierce’s administration, Mississippi promptly returned Mr. Davis to Washington as Senator. Almost immediately thereafter he became the victim of a serious illness, which lasted many weeks, and a complication of troubles set in which culminated in the loss of sight in one eye. During that period my husband gave up many nights to the nursing of the invalid, who was tortured by neuralgic pains and nervous tension. Senator Clay’s solicitude for Mr. Davis was ever of the deepest, as his efforts to sustain and defend him to the last were of the most unselfish.
Aaron V. Brown, who became Postmaster-General in 1857, was at once one of the kindest-hearted and simplest of men, loving his home and being especially indifferent to all things that savoured of the merely fashionable and superficial. He occupied a house which by long association with distinguished people had become prominently known. Not infrequently the Brown residence was alluded to as the “Cabinet Mansion.” Here, among other celebrities, had lived Attorney-General Wirt, and in it Mrs. Wirt had compiled the first “Flora’s Dictionary.” The hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, being boundless, served to accentuate its reputation, for, unlike her husband, Mrs. Brown was socially most industrious, and, being exceedingly well-to-do, was full of enterprise in the invention of novel surprises for her guests. Mrs. Brown, who was the sister of the afterward distinguished Major-General Pillow, of the Confederate Army, was the first hostess in Washington, I think, to introduce orchestral music at dinner, and her daughter, Narcissa Sanders, with as pronounced a spirit of innovation,[[5]] sent out enormous cards of invitation in her own name, inviting the distinguished folk of the capital to the house of the Postmaster-General to meet—herself!
I remember a dinner at this luxurious home of Mr. Brown, at which my host, who took me in, amused me immensely at the expense of the elaborate feast before us, and at some of his wife’s kindly, if costly, foibles. Behind a barrier of plants a band played softly; around us were the obsequious waiters from Gautier’s.
“All from Gautier’s!” sighed the Postmaster-General, in mock despair. “My wife’s napery is the best to be had, but she will have Gautier’s! Our silver is—certainly not the plainest in the city, but Mrs. Brown must have Gautier’s! We have an incomparable chef, but nothing will please my wife but these”; and he scanned the mysterious menu with its tier after tier of unknown French names. Then he turned suddenly and asked me, pointing to a line, “My child, what’s this? Don’t know, eh? Well, neither do I, but let’s try it, anyway. I don’t suppose it will kill us,” and so on, the good old gentleman keeping me in a continual bubble of smothered laughter to the end of the dinner.
A member of Mr. Pierce’s Cabinet, whose house was as conspicuous for its large and lavish entertaining as was Mr. Brown’s, was the Secretary of the Treasury, Guthrie, the wealthy Kentuckian. Mr. Guthrie was no society lover (it was a time when statesmen had need to be absorbed in weightier things), but he entertained, I always thought, as a part of his public duty. His was a big, square-shouldered and angular figure, and his appearance, it was obvious, at receptions was perfunctory rather than a pleasure. A widower, his home was presided over by his two daughters, Mrs. Polk and Mrs. Coke, both also widowed. I often thought Secretary Guthrie’s capacious ballroom suggestive, in its proportions, of a public hall.
Here, one evening, I had my never-to-be-forgotten rencontre with Chevalier Bertinatti, the Sardinian Minister. Dear old Bertinatti! In all the diplomatic circle of the Pierce and Buchanan administrations there was not to be found a personage at once more dignified and genial. Serious, yet enthusiastic, his naturally kind heart adding warmth to the gallantry for which foreigners are famous, the Chevalier was a typical ambassador of the Latin people. He was a learned man, especially in matters American, and knew our Constitution better than did many of our native representatives in Washington. He encountered bravely, though not always successfully, the difficulties of the English language, and his defeats in this field (such is the irony of fate) have served to keep him longer in the minds of many than have his successes.
Upon the occasion to which I have referred, a soirée was held at Secretary Guthrie’s house, at which half the world was present. I wore that evening a gown of foreign silk, the colour of the pomegranate blossom, and with it a Sardinian head-dress and ornaments which had been sent me by a Consular friend. Seeing me at some distance, the Chevalier failed to recognise me and asked one of the hostesses, with whom he was conversing, “Who is zat lady wis my kontree-woman’s ornaments?”