One met dear old Mrs. Crittenden everywhere. She was of the most social disposition, a fact which sometimes aroused the good-natured irony of her distinguished husband. I remember an instance in which this was demonstrated, at the White House, which greatly amused me at the time. It was at a dinner party, and Senator Crittenden, who boasted that he had eaten at the White House table with every President since the days of Monroe, assumed the blasé air which everyone who knew him recognised as a conscious affectation.
“Now there’s ‘Lady’ Crittenden,” he began, nodding in the direction of that smiling personage, “in all the glory of a new and becoming gown, and perfectly happy in the glamour of this.” And he waved his hand about the room with an air of fatigue and, at the same time, a comprehensiveness that swept in every member, grave or giddy, in the large assemblage. “If I had my way,” and he sighed as he said it, “nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hie me back to the wilds of dear old Kentucky! Ah! to don my buckskins once more, shoulder a rifle, and wander through life a free man, away from all this flummery!”
He sighed again (for the tangled woods?) as he detected a speck upon his faultless sleeve and fastidiously brushed it off!
“Pshaw! Stuff and nonsense, Senator!” I retorted, rallying him heartlessly. “Fancy your being condemned to that! You wouldn’t stand it two days, unless an election were in progress and there were country constituents to interview. Everyone knows you are as fond of fat plums and plump capons, both real and metaphorical, as any man in the capital! As for society being disagreeable to you, with a good dinner in view and pretty women about you—Fie, Senator! I don’t believe you!” Whereat our Solon laughed guiltily, like one whose pet pretense has been discovered, and entered forthwith into the evening’s pleasures as heartily as did his spouse, the perfectly happy “Lady” Crittenden.
CHAPTER VI
Fashions of the Fifties
To estimate at anything like their value ante-bellum days at the capital, it must be borne in mind that the period was one of general prosperity and competitive expenditure. While a life-and-death struggle raged between political parties, and oratorical battles of ominous import were fought daily in Senate Chamber and House, a very reckless gaiety was everywhere apparent in social circles. Especially was this to be observed in the predominant and hospitable Southern division in the capital; for predominant Southern society was, as even such deliberately partisan historians as Messrs. Nicolay and Hay admit; and, what these gentlemen designate as “the blandishments of Southern hospitality,” lent a charm to life in the Government circles of that day which lifted the capital to the very apex of its social glory. Writing of these phases of life in the capital, in a letter dated March, 1858, I said to Governor Clay: “People are mad with rivalry and vanity. It is said that Gwin is spending money at the rate of $75,000 a year, and Brown and Thompson quite the same. Mrs. Thompson (of Mississippi) is a great favourite here. Mrs. Toombs, who is sober, and has but one daughter, Sally, who is quite a belle, says they spend $1,800 per month, or $21,000 per annum.”
The four years’ war, which began in ’1, changed these social conditions. As the result of that strife poverty spread both North and South. The social world at Washington, which but an administration before had been scarcely less fascinating and brilliant than the Court of Louis Napoleon, underwent a radical change; and the White House itself, within a month after it went into the hands of the new Black Republican party, became degraded to a point where even Northern men recoiled at the sight of the metamorphosed conditions.[[9]]
In the days of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, Washington was a city of statesmen, and in the foreground, relieving the solemnity of their deliberations in that decade which preceded the Nation’s great disaster, were fashion and mirth, beauty and wit. It was then, as the government city of a Republic must ever be, a place of continuous novelty, of perpetual changes, of new faces. The fashionable world comes and goes in the Federal City with each Presidential term of four and Senatorial term of six years, and its longer or shorter stays of the army and navy contingent, and always it gathers its personnel from as many points as there are States in the Union, and as many parts of the world as those to which our diplomatic relations extend.
In the fifties, when the number of States was but two dozen, the list of representatives gathering at the capital was proportionately smaller than in the present day, and society was correspondingly select. Moreover, political distinction and offices not infrequently continued in many families through several generations, sons often succeeding their fathers in Congress, inheriting, in some degree, their ancestors’ friends, until a social security had been established which greatly assisted to give charm and prestige to the fashionable coteries of the Federal centre. For example, for forty years previous to my husband’s election to the Senate, the two branches of the Clay family had been prominent in the life of the capital. In the late twenties, C. C. Clay, Sr., had been active in the House, while the great Henry Clay was stirring the country through his speeches in the Senate; in the fifties, Mr. James B. Clay, son of the great Kentuckian, was a Congressman when the scholarly statesmanship of Senator C. C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, was attracting the admiration and praise of North and South alike. It is a pathetic coincidence that to my husband, during his sojourn in Canada, fell the sad privilege of ministering at the death-bed of Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, who died in that alien land without the solacing presence of wife or children. Shortly before the end came, he presented to Senator Clay the cane which for years had been carried by the great orator, Henry Clay.[[10]]
The fashions of the times were graceful, rich and picturesque. Those of the next decade, conspicuous for huge chignons, false hair, and distorting bustles, rose like an ugly barrier between the lovely costuming of the fifties and the dressing of to-day. A half century ago, the beauties of the capital wore their hair à la Grecque, with flowers wreathed over it, or a simple golden dagger or arrow to secure it. Their gowns were festooned with blossoms that trailed over bodice and skirt until not seldom they became, by reason of their graceful ornaments, veritable Perditas. These delicate fashions continued until nearly the end of the decade, when they were superseded by more complicated coiffures and a general adoption of heavy materials and styles.