Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

Through the effect she produced in a strange land Buchanan probably for the first time fully realized how unusually beautiful she was. So favorable was the impression she made upon the queen that on state occasions she was assigned to places usually given only to the wives of ambassadors and ministers. She was well known throughout England, and on the day that Oxford University conferred the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws upon her uncle and Alfred Tennyson its ancient walls rang with the cheers that went up from its hundreds of students who rose en masse to greet the entrance of Harriet Lane.

"She was a most distinguished young person," said one of her countrymen recently, growing enthusiastic over the recollection of the impression she created, "whom more than one Englishman would have given his head to marry."

Her beauty was not less appreciated by the artistic eye of the French people, and Mr. James Edward MacFarland, who was secretary of the American legation at the time of her visit to the family of Mr. John Y. Mason, then our minister to France, was full of anecdotes of the naïveté with which the people in the streets of Paris were wont to express their admiration.

Shortly after her return to America the loss of her only sister, Mrs. George W. Baker, who died in California, sent Harriet Lane into deep mourning. While the country was filled with stories of her beauty and the impression it had created in foreign capitals she was passing her days in the grateful quiet of Wheatland. Her uncle's nomination to the Presidency but added to her fame, the campaign, election, and inauguration bringing her gradually into that eminent position she was so admirably fitted to fill. At the ball attending the inaugural ceremonies at Washington she made her first reappearance in public, clad, as best became her noble form, in the simplicity of a white dress, flower trimmed, and with a necklace of pearls.

In those days, before social functions had attained the proportions that now characterize them, they reflected in the White House, as elsewhere, more of the individuality of the host and hostess than is now possible. Many details that are now consigned to secretaries and stewards then appertained to the master and mistress of the house. Harriet Lane and her cousin James Buchanan Henry, who acted as private secretary to his uncle, invariably arranged the seating of the guests at state dinners, an onerous task now performed by an under-secretary of the Executive Mansion, who, besides being familiar with the rules of official precedence, must also know something of the social relationship each guest bears to his possible neighbor. She made no mistakes, for she had been trained to her position as had none of her predecessors, unless we except the wives of the two Adamses.

In 1860, when the Prince of Wales visited England's North American possessions, on President Buchanan's suggestion and invitation, he extended his travels so as to include at least a portion of the United States. The memory of his sojourn among us still lives in many of the cities and towns whose territory had once formed part of the kingdom of his ancestors. The five days he spent in Washington were passed in the White House. A guest of the nation at the capital is usually assigned to a suite of rooms in one of the hotels of the city. Between Buchanan and the Prince of Wales, however, owing to the former's recent residence at the court of St. James, there existed more of a personal feeling than is usual between the President and state guests.

In all the festivities by which the Executive Mansion did honor to his presence the unerring hand and faultless taste of Harriet Lane were evident.

One memorable day of his visit was spent at Mount Vernon. The revenue cutter "Harriet Lane" was selected to take the distinguished little party, consisting of the President, Miss Lane, the Prince, his suite, and the British Minister down the river. The simplicity of George Washington's home and the picturesque beauty of its situation were themes of interesting study to the Englishmen. At his tomb they reverently bared their heads, and near it the Prince planted a tree in remembrance of the day.

After he left Washington he wrote to the President expressing his appreciation of the hospitality he had received, and sending him his portrait painted by Sir John Watson Gordon, with a set of engravings of the Royal family for Miss Lane, to whom now also belong the portrait and the letter, together with one written by the queen. It echoes the gratification already expressed by her son concerning the kindliness of his reception among the American people, and shows in what high regard she personally held both the President and his niece.

Buchanan's administration was the last of the old régime, a period in which there had been that unity of purpose that had fostered the nation, that wise forbearance that had preserved it, and withal much of illustrious oratory and brilliant debate. But the parting of the ways had come. A day of action was at hand. Buchanan, oppressed with a sense of his impotency to avert a crisis that was inevitable, retired to Wheatland, and Lincoln, full of high purposes and many misgivings, stepped into the pathway of destiny. Upon the one public life instantly relaxed its hold, while about the other it threw its myriad feverish tendrils, clutching him hourly closer to itself till the long watches of that fatal April night, during which its imperious tenure was loosened by death.