She died in 1826, leaving two daughters and an infant son.
"She had no autumn, not a storm
Darkened her youthful happiness;
No winter came to bend that form,
Or silver o'er a silken tress.
"We miss her when we gaze on beauty's throng,
We miss her, aye, and we shall mourn her long.
Yet mourn her not, she had the best of life;
A tender mother and a happy wife."
The above lines were written by her friend Fanny Inglis, afterwards Madame Calderon de la Barca.
The chivalrous devotion which her daughters call forth, after more than threescore years, from the men who knew her is in itself sufficient to place her among the classics of American womanhood.
[OCTAVIA WALTON]
(MADAME LE VERT)
Into a world in which so many are born strangers, some later to know it in part and others destined to remain forever out of touch with life, and lonely spectators rather than a part of it, Octavia Walton came as unto her own. Every atom of her being was in absolute accord with the universe. No bristling antipathies hedged in her genial personality nor raised barriers between herself and the beauties of life. She perceived them always and with an enthusiasm that raised not only her own existence, but that of many others, above the level of the commonplace. She was a sort of social sun, radiating light, warmth, and beauty upon all the lives that touched hers, and it has been said that no one ever came in contact with her, of no matter what rank or condition in life, without experiencing a sense of elation. She was one of nature's cosmopolites, a woman to whom the whole world was home and the people of all nations her friends. Far more to this gift of temperament than to those of her personal beauty or intellect, does she owe the eminence of her position among the American women of her century.
She was born early enough in the history of the Republic to partake in a measure of the glow of patriotic enthusiasm that had been the inspiration of its founders. Though she was intensely American, she grew up with no touch of bitterness for the mother-country, cherishing the memory of Chatham's words uttered in the House of Lords, "You cannot conquer America," rather than his sovereign's misguided efforts "to be a king."