In those days of Washington’s splendour, Mrs. Campbell and her daughter Henrietta were no less distinguished for their culture, intellectuality, and exclusiveness. Mrs. Campbell was the first Southern woman to adopt the English custom of designating her coloured servant as “my man.” At the home of the Campbells one met not only the legal lights of Washington, but scientists and travellers, as if law and the sciences were drawn near to each other by natural selection. Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, was a frequent visitor at this home, as was also Professor Maury, the grand road-master of the ocean, who, by the distribution of his buoys, made a track in the billows of the Atlantic for the safe passing of ships.
I remember an amusing visit paid by a party from our mess to the observatory of Professor Maury. It was an occasion of special interest. Jupiter was displaying his brilliancy in a marvellous way. For no particular reason, in so far as I could see, the Professor’s great telescope seemed to require adjusting for the benefit of each of the bevy present. I noticed Professor Maury’s eye twinkling as he went on with this necessary (?) preliminary, asking, betimes: “What do you see? Nothing clearly? Well, permit me!” And after several experiments he would secure, at last, the right focus. When all of his guests had been treated to a satisfactory view of the wonders of the sky, Professor Maury delivered himself somewhat as follows:
“Now, ladies, whilst you have been studying the heavenly bodies, I have been studying you!” and the quizzical expression deepened in his eye.
“Go on,” we assented.
“Well,” said the Professor, “I have a bill before Congress,” (mentioning its nature) “and if you ladies don’t influence your husbands to vote for it, I intend to publish the ages of each and every one of you to the whole of Washington!”
Remembering the mutability of political life, it was and remains a source of astonishment to me that in the Government circles of the fifties were comprised so many distinguished men who had retained their positions in the political foreground for so many years; years, moreover, in which an expanding territory was causing the envy for office to spread, infecting the ignorant as well as the wise, and causing contestants to multiply in number and their passions to increase in violence at each election.
When Senator Clay and I took up our residence in the Federal City, there were at least a dozen great statesmen who had dwelt almost continuously in Washington for nearly twoscore years. Writing of these to Governor Clay, in 1858, my husband said “Mr. Buchanan looks as ruddy as ever; General Cass as young and vigorous as in 1844, and Mr. Dickens[[8]] appears as he did in 1834, when with you I was at his home at an evening party!” Thomas Hart Benton, the great Missourian, who for seven long years struggled against such allied competitors as Senators Henry Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, in his fight against the Bank of the United States, probably out-ranked all others in length of public service; but, besides Mr. Benton, there were Chief Justice Taney and his associates, Judges Catron, James M. Wayne, and John McLean, of Ohio; Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, and General George Wallace Jones—all men who had entered political life when the century was young.
Among my pleasantest memories of Washington are the evenings spent at the home of Mr. Benton. His household, but recently bereft of its mistress, who had been a long-time invalid, was presided over by his daughters, Mrs. General Frémont, Mrs. Thomas Benton Jones, and Mme. Boileau. The last-named shared, with the Misses Bayard and Maury, a reputation for superior elegance among the young women of the capital. The daughters of Mr. Benton had been splendidly educated, it was said, by their distinguished father, and they repaid his care of them by a lifelong adoration. A handsome man in ordinary attire, the great old author and statesman was yet a more striking figure when mounted. He rode with a stately dignity, quite unlike the pace indulged in by some other equestrians of that city and day; a day, it may be said in passing, when equestrianism was common. Mr. Benton’s appearance and the slow gait of his horse impressed me as powerful and even majestic, and often (as I remarked to him at dinner one evening) there flashed through my mind, as I saw him, a remembrance of Byron’s Moorish King as he rode benignly through the streets of Granada. He seemed gratified at my comparison.
“I’m glad you approve of my pace,” he said. “I ride slowly because I do not wish to be confounded with post-boys and messengers sent in haste for the surgeon. They may gallop if they will, but not Senators.”
At his own table Mr. Benton was an oracle to whom everyone listened eagerly. I have seen twenty guests held spellbound as he recited, with thrilling realism, a history of the Clay-Randolph duel, with the details of which he was so familiarly acquainted. I never heard him allude to his great fight in the Senate, when, the galleries crowded with men inimical to him, his wife and General Jones sent out for arms to protect the fearless Senator from the onslaught which seemed impending; nor to his nearly thirty years’ strife for the removal of the onerous Salt Tax; but the dinners before which his guests sat down were flavoured with the finest of Attic salt, of which he was a connoisseur, which served to sting into increased eagerness our interest in his rich store of recollections.