Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

In all her journeys, both in her own country and in Europe, she was accompanied by her colored maid Betsey. "North, South, East, and West," wrote one of her friends, "goes Betsey with her mistress through bristling ranks of abolitionists, up the Rhine, over the Alps, everywhere goes Betsey."

"If you would see the ideal relationship between a lady and her female slave," said Frederika Bremer, "you should see Octavia Le Vert and her clever, handsome, mulatto attendant, Betsey. Betsey seems really not to live for anything else than for her mistress Octavia."

At the Austrian border they were put through a series of questions, all of their responses "being recorded," said Madame Le Vert, "for the benefit of posterity." Betsey was put down as a Moor, much to her dismay, and she besought her mistress to assure them that she "had nothing but pure American blood in her veins, and was a slave from the South."

During her second visit to Europe, in 1855, Madame Le Vert spent the summer in Paris, the governor of Alabama having named her Commissioner from that State to the Paris Exposition of that year. His gallantry was a frequent subject of comment and appreciation, for she was the only woman among the commissioners. The position, however, seems to have been purely honorary, for she lamented that when asked to point out the products of Alabama in her department, she could only indicate her daughter. "If there had been even only a few cotton-seed," she said, "it would at least have served to swear by."

She witnessed the enthusiastic reception tendered by the French nation to the Queen of England, was present at the ball given by the Emperor in her honor, and was at the opera the night the royal party visited it, when the whole audience rose en masse at the first note of England's national anthem, sung by Roger, Alboni, and Cruvelli. She heard with a thrill of enthusiasm the "Vive la Reine Victoria" that burst from a thousand lips, and saw the Emperor lead the gracious queen three times to the front of the box to acknowledge the tumultuous tribute. In her own box sat, on that memorable night, an ex-President of the great republic across the water,—Millard Fillmore.

A visit made during her stay in Ferrara, Italy, to the home of the poet Ariosto so impressed Madame Le Vert that it was productive of a notable result after her return to America. His house had been purchased by the government, and everything in it was preserved in the order in which he had left it at the time of his death. Realizing that it was regarded as a shrine, and devoutly visited by those who would honor the memory of the immortal poet, her thoughts reverted to the home of the great American general, Mount Vernon, then falling into decay, whereas it might be similarly preserved by the patriotism of the people. She took up the question earnestly after her return to America, and did for the cause at the South as much as Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis did for it at the North. In one day she received at her home in Mobile, in small contributions, upward of a thousand dollars.

Many of Madame Le Vert's most charming letters were written to her mother. After a long day of travel or sight-seeing she frequently sat up far into the night that she might not neglect the pleasant duty of writing these letters.

Her parents' home in Mobile, of which city her father was for a time mayor, was near her own, and she continued to be much with them until their lives closed, which they did in close succession, shortly before the outbreak of the war. Her husband's death occurred during the last year of that melancholy period which shook the homes of the South to their foundation. She went North and remained for over a year after the close of the war, accompanied by her two daughters. She returned to the South for a time, but eventually removed to New York, disposing of her home and many of her possessions, the losses she had sustained and the altered conditions of her life rendering Mobile no longer to her a place of happy existence.

Having been so long a leader, she continued to exercise various queenly prerogatives, which to many people at the North seemed eccentric. She had not the prestige there that would have made them possible, though she was never without her coterie of admirers.

Her later years were not affluent, and she was obliged to put her talents to bread-winning purposes. She died in the city in which she had been born, Augusta, Georgia, on the 13th of March, 1877.