Upon learning my identity he came forward quickly and, gazing admiringly at me, he threw himself on his knee before me (kissing my hand as he did so, with ardent gallantry) as he exclaimed: “Madame, you are charming wis zat head-dress like my kontree-women! Madame! I assure you, you have conquest me behind and now you conquest me before!” and he bowed profoundly.
This remarkable compliment was long remembered and recounted wherever the name of the kind-hearted diplomat was mentioned. A great many ties bound Monsieur Bertinatti to Washington society, not the least of which was his marriage to Mrs. Bass of Mississippi, an admired member of the Southern and predominating element in the capital. Her daughter, who returned to die in her native land (she was buried from the Cathedral in Memphis, Tennessee), became the Marquise Incisa di Camerana.
When, after decades of political strife, the crucial time of separation came between the North and the South, and we of the South were preparing to leave the Federal City, I could not conceal my sorrow; and tears, ever a blessed boon to women, frequently blinded me as I bade first one and then another of our associates what was to be a long good-bye. At such an expression of my grief the Chevalier Bertinatti was much troubled.
“Don’t weep,” he said. “Don’t weep, my dear Mrs. Clay. You have had sixty years of uninterrupted peace! This is but a revolution, and all countries must suffer from them at times! Look at my poor country! I was born in revolution, and reared in revolution, and I expect to die in revolution!” And with this offering of philosophic consolation we parted.
CHAPTER V
Solons of the Capital
The classes of Washington society in the fifties were peculiarly distinct. They were not unlike its topography, which is made up of many small circles and triangles, into each of which run tributary streets and avenues. In the social life, each division in the Congressional body was as a magnetic circle, attracting to itself by way of defined radii those whose tastes or political interests were in sympathy with it. Not less prominent than the Cabinet circle (outranking it, in fact), and fully as interesting by reason of its undisguised preference for things solid, scientific and intellectual, was the Judiciary or Supreme Court set. The several Justices that composed this august body, together with their wives and daughters, formed a charmed circle into which the merely light-minded would scarcely have ventured. Here one met the wittiest and the weightiest minds of the capital, and here, perhaps more than in any other coterie, the new-comer was impressed with what Messrs. Nicolay and Hay describe as “the singular charm of Washington life.” In the Supreme Court circle, the conditions attending Congressional life in those strenuous times forced themselves less boldly upon one. Here one discussed philosophies, inventions, history, perhaps, and the arts; seldom the fashions, and as seldom the on dits.
The Nestor of that circle in the fifties was quaint old Roger B. Taney (pronounced Tawney), who, after various political disappointments, including a refusal by the Senate to confirm his appointment as a member of the Cabinet, had received his appointment to the Supreme Court bench in 1836. Upon the death of Chief Justice Marshall, Judge Taney became the head of the Supreme Court body; thus, for more than thirty years, he had been a prominent personage in the country’s legal circles and a conspicuous resident in Washington. He was an extremely plain-looking man, with frail body, which once rose tall and erect, but now was so bent that one always thought of him as small, and with a head which made me think of a withered nut. Swarthy of skin, but grey-haired, Judge Taney was a veritable skeleton, “all mind and no body”; yet his opinion settled questions that agitated the nation, and his contemporaries agreed he was the ablest man who had ever sat upon the Supreme Court bench. Judge Taney’s daughters, gifted and brilliant women, were seldom seen in society, but from choice or necessity chose bread-winning careers. They were great draughtswomen and made coloured maps, for which, in those days of expanding territory, there was a great and constant need.
Of Chief Justice Taney’s associates, Judges Catron and John A. Campbell became best known to Senator Clay and myself. These, and other statesmen equally distinguished and later to be mentioned, having been the friends of ex-Governor (then Senator) C. C. Clay, Sr., my husband had been known to them from the days when, as a schoolboy, he had visited his parents in the Federal City. Mrs. Judge Catron, whom I met soon after my arrival in Washington, was a woman of great elegance of manner and dress, and always brought to my mind the thought of a dowager Duchess. An associate of my husband’s mother, and a native of gay Nashville, Mrs. Catron had been a social queen in Washington in the late thirties, and her position of interest was still preserved in 1855.
Judge and Mrs. Campbell, being rich beyond many others, their home was widely known for sumptuous entertaining as well as for its intellectual atmosphere. Sharing to an extent the public favour, Judge Campbell, Reverdy Johnson, and Robt. J. Walker were the three legal giants of their day. Judge Campbell’s clients were among the wealthiest in the country, and his fees were said to be enormous. Had not the war ensued, undoubtedly he would have been appointed to the Chief Justiceship, as was commonly predicted for him. He was a man of great penetration and erudition, and was held in high esteem by everyone in the capital. In 1861 he cast his lot with the people of the South, among whom he was born, and went out of the Federal City to meet whatsoever fate the future held. Judge Campbell became the earnest adviser of Mr. Davis, and was a Commissioner of the Confederate Government, together with Alexander H. Stephens and R. M. T. Hunter, when the three conferred with Mr. Seward, acting as delegate from the Northern President, Lincoln. Nor did the ensuing years diminish the great regard of great men for our beloved Southern scholar.[[6]] Writing to Judge Campbell from Washington on December 10, 1884, Thomas F. Bayard thus reveals the exalted regard which the former sustained to the close of a long life:
“Mr. Lamar, now Associate Judge of the Supreme Court, concurs with me,” he wrote, “in considering it highly important that your counsel and opinions should be freely given to Mr. Cleveland at this important juncture, and respectfully and earnestly I trust you will concur in our judgment in the matter. Mr. Cleveland will resign from his present office early in January, but can easily and conveniently receive you for the purpose suggested in the interview.”[[7]]