To heaven from whence it fell,
It turns not back again;
But waters earth through every pore,
And calls forth all her secret store.”
She married in 1825, Alexander Bliss, law partner of Daniel Webster, who died July 15, 1827, and in 1838, married George Bancroft, the historian, who found in her efficient aid in the performance of his duties as secretary of the Navy, under President Polk, as minister to England from 1846 to 1849, and later as minister to Berlin.
It was my fortune to be in London in the month of February, 1847, during her residence there, and to receive from her and Mr. Bancroft many acts of kindness. It was during the Irish famine, and a benefit was planned to be held at Drury Lane Theatre, to add to the Irish charitable fund. There was no public sale of tickets, but a committee took the house from parquette to ceiling, and sent tickets for whole boxes to such members of the nobility as were available, and to the diplomatic corps, with prices affixed, which of course were taken regardless of cost in the nature of subscriptions, and tickets for the parquette to such single persons as they thought expedient. Mr. Bancroft’s box containing four chairs, was occupied by himself and Mrs. Bancroft, Henry H. Milman, then distinguished as an historian, poet and dramatic writer, and Professor of poetry at Oxford, but later known as Dean of St. Paul’s, and myself. In the dramatic world Mr. Milman was known as the author of the tragedy of Fazio, which I have seen played at the old Tremont theatre by Forrest and the elder Booth. The royal box, directly opposite in the same row, was occupied by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the Duke of Cambridge. In the box next to the royal box were the Duke of Wellington and the Marchioness of Douro, while others whom I remember in other boxes were the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Westminster, the Duke of Norfolk, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Lord Lyndhurst, Macaulay, Hume, and Lord George Bentinck. I was undoubtedly the only American in the house, and probably the only one in the audience whom the society reporter of the Times could not call by name.
At a dinner at Mr. Bancroft’s, I had an opportunity of meeting Thomas Carlyle, and I was astonished at his bitter denunciation of men and events, and his almost brutal speech. While the Irish question was under discussion, Duncan C. Pell of New York, one of the guests, asked him what he would do with the Irish, and bringing his hand down roughly on the table he growled out, “I would shoot every mother’s son of them.” I could not help contrasting his coarseness with the sweet and gentle spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend on our side of the ocean.
Through the kindness of Mr. Bancroft I had an opportunity of seeing most of the above named statesmen in their seats in Parliament during a discussion on the corn laws, with the addition of Daniel O’Connell, who upon the whole, I think, was the most striking looking man I saw in England. During the discussion to which I have referred, Lord George Bentinck, who was well known for his fondness for horses, and the race course, made a speech which placed him on the side of the protectionists against Sir Robert Peel, whom he had before ardently supported. Sir Robert in a reply full of sharp invective said, “It is far from my intention to charge the honorable member with inconsistency, when he is universally known as a man of stable mind.”
After the death of my grandfather in 1826 my grandmother continued to occupy the family mansion until 1830, when she removed to Boston, where she died, April 1, 1847. For a year or more after her departure, the house was occupied by her son, Nathaniel Morton Davis, while his house on Court street, now owned by the Old Colony Club, was undergoing alterations and repairs. In 1832 it was sold to Wm. Morton Jackson, who moved into it from his former residence in North street on the corner of Rope Walk lane, where the house of Isaac M. Jackson now stands. Mr. Jackson fitted the front west room for a store, and removed his business in dry goods from the building on the corner of Summer street and Spring Hill, which was taken down about 1890. In 1851 Mr. Jackson, who had been collector of the port from 1845 to 1849, sold the estate to Mrs. Sarah Plympton, and removed to Boston, where he engaged in the wholesale grocery business on State street, nearly opposite Merchants’ Row. During its ownership by Mrs. Plympton, it was occupied as a boarding house at various times by Ephraim Spooner, Mrs. Wm. H. Spear and Mrs. Ephraim T. Paty, and was sold in 1878 by her executor to George F. Weston, Charles O. Churchill and Samuel Harlow, with whose ownership and the erection of the Rink in 1884 my readers are familiar.
As long ago as I can remember, the next estate on the west, on which the store of W. H. H. Weston stands, was occupied by a building in the lower story of which Zaben Olney and Jas. E. Leonard kept a flour and grain store, established by them in 1827, and in the upper story of which the Custom House was located. In 1831 Harrison Gray Otis Ellis, succeeded Olney and Leonard in the store, but in 1832 gave up business, and the building was sold to the Old Colony Bank, then recently organized. The Custom House continued to occupy the second story until 1845, when Gustavus Gilbert occupied it for a time as a law office. In 1846 Steward and Alderman, who had bought the building of the Bank in 1842, sold it to Wm. Rider Drew, who moved the building back, and added a new front, as the building stands at the present time.