Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

A mother once putting her little girl to bed related to her as a lullaby the story of the creation of the world, pointing out its beauties and blessings as they came from the hand of God.

"He made the sun that shines in the day," said the mother, "and the moon and the stars that we see in the night, and all the flowers that beautify the world, and the birds that gladden it with their sweet song."

"And mother, don't forget," interrupted the child. "He made Sallie Ward, too."

When the governor of Kentucky, at the outbreak of the Mexican War, was called upon to furnish a regiment of infantry, both the Louisville Legion and the Louisville Guard, among whose officers and men were enrolled many names of which the State was justly proud, volunteered for service. Sallie Ward was selected to present the flags to both companies, and the enthusiasm of the people, when on the bright May morning of their departure the Legion passed in review before her home, testified to the concurrence of the entire city in the choice. There was a prolonged shout of rapture from the throng of spectators as many eyes dim with weeping beheld the already familiar form of Sallie Ward standing beneath the silken folds of her country's flag. Their cheers redoubled as she presented it to the standard-bearer, and they continued to ring in her ears as she waved her own farewell to the embryo heroes, many of whom carried away that last picture of her standing in the sunshine of that bright morning to be an inspiration in a darker hour. She drove to Portland to present the flag to the Guards, who embarked from that point. As they marched by the open carriage in which she sat at the conclusion of the ceremony of the presentation, every man saluted her, and she afterwards declared that it was the proudest moment in a life of many triumphs.

Her father's wealth not only enabled him to maintain one of the most elaborate establishments in Louisville, but in the summer to transport his numerous family, accompanied by men- and maid-servants, in travelling-carriages to the White Sulphur Springs, where his daughters were successively belles. A portion of each winter, including the season of the Mardi Gras, was spent in New Orleans, for though the facilities for travelling that exist to-day were not known at that time, a man blessed with the worldly goods that Mr. Ward possessed could not only permit his family to make frequent journeys, but to make them also under most comfortable and agreeable circumstances.

In this way the fame of Sallie Ward was well established at the South when, before she had reached her twentieth year, she married Bigelow Lawrence, of Boston, and entered upon her brief career at the North. The man who thus won her from many Southern rivals was many years her senior, and it was to a woman of her temperament a most unfortunate alliance. He was the son of the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, who had been our minister to England, and was himself a man of wealth and distinction and an exquisite gentleman of the severe Boston school, whose ethics were wholly at variance with that spirit of liberality which was all Sallie Ward had hitherto known. Developed in an atmosphere of almost passionate admiration, love and appreciation had become as necessary to her being as light and air. Transplanted in the very effulgence of her bloom to a frigid temperature of critical and unsympathetic surroundings, all her spontaneous grace congealed into acts of deliberate effrontery. Bewildered by a chill she had never before felt, too young and inexperienced in the ways of the world beyond those of her own genial climate, where she had been a law unto herself, to realize aught of the value of mutual concessions, she struck blindly against the cold conventionality in which she felt herself encaged. It was a strange and almost cruel fate that put her in the bosom of the Lawrence family, and occasioned as much suffering to her Southern heart as to their Northern sensibilities.

At a ball given in Boston about the time Mrs. Bloomer was seeking to introduce her reform in woman's dress, and while the subject was being widely discussed. Sallie Ward, then the wife of Bigelow Lawrence, appeared in a costume designed on the Bloomer pattern. Socially conservative Boston was agog, and Lawrence achieved through his wife an unenviable notoriety. Another of her proclivities wrought additional sensation and consequently further havoc in his social status. Notwithstanding the natural beauty of her complexion, it was whispered even in Louisville that she sought with more or less artistic skill to further embellish it. One day when the artifice was unusually apparent, as she passed a group of laboring men, one exclaimed, audibly, "By God, painted!" Nothing daunted and without changing color, the story runs, she said, quietly, "Yes, painted by God," and passed on.

Her mother, realizing the unhappy condition of her life with Mr. Lawrence, took her home, and within a year she applied to the Legislature of Kentucky for a divorce, which was granted on the ground of incompatibility of temper. She took her maiden name and lived for several years in retirement.

Her first reappearance in that world of gayety and social emulation which was her natural element was at a ball given in Louisville, and where at midnight, though everybody knew she was in the house, she had not yet made her appearance. Shortly after twelve o'clock the music suddenly ceased; in an instant silence fell upon the ball-room; some one whispered "Sallie Ward," and every one pressed towards the stairway. She was, indeed, a vision of radiant loveliness that held every man and woman spellbound as she descended its winding length. She was enveloped in white tulle, which seemed to float about her like a cloud, a jewelled pin catching the meshes of a filmy veil and holding it imprisoned in her brown hair. One arm covered with jewelled bracelets was extended, the hand resting in that of the man who had the honor of leading her. So light and floating was the effect she produced that the tips of her white slippers seemed scarcely to touch the steps.

She was at all times supreme and irresistible without resorting to extraordinary effects, which she frequently did, for she was not lacking in that vanity which is "the cordial drop," said John Adams, "that makes the bitter cup of life go down," though an existence filled with so many sweets as was hers could have needed no such stimulus.