CHAPTER XXIV.THE WHITE HOUSE DURING THE WAR.
Under a Cloud—“A Woman Among a Thousand”—Revival of By-gone Days—Another Lady of the White House—A “Golden Blonde”—Instinct Alike with Power and Grace—A Fun-Loving Romp—Harriet with her Wheelbarrow of Wood—A Deed of Kindness—The Wheel Turns Round—An Impression Made on Queen Victoria—In Paris and on the Continent—An American Lady at Oxford—Gay Doings at the Capital—Rival Claims for a Lady’s Hand—Reigning at the White House—Doing Double Duty—Visit of the Prince of Wales—Marriage of Harriet Lane—As Wife and Mother—Mrs. Abraham Lincoln—Standing Alone—A Time of Trouble and Perplexity—Conciliatory Counsels Needful—Rumors of War—the Life of the Nation Threatened—Whispers of Treason—Awaiting the Event—Peculiar Position of Mary Lincoln—A Life-long Ambition Fulfilled—The Nation Called to Arms—Contagious Enthusiasm—What the President’s Wife Did—Nothing to do but “Shop”—Sensational Stories Afloat—Stirring Times at the Capital—What Came from the River—The Dying and the Dead—Churches and Houses Turned into Hospitals—Arrival of Troops—“Mrs. Lincoln Shopped”—The Lonely Man at the White House—Letters of Rebuke—An Example of Selfishness—Petty Economies—The Back Door of the White House—An Injured Individual—Death of Willie Lincoln—Injustice which Mrs. Lincoln Suffered—The Rabble in the White House—Valuables Carried Away—Big Boxes and Much Goods—Going West—Mrs. Lincoln Disconsolate—False and Cruel Accusations—Considerable Personal Property—Missing Treasures—Mrs. Lincoln as a Woman—Tears and Mimicry—The Faults of a President’s Wife.
Mrs. Franklin Pierce entered the White House under the shadow of ill-health and sore bereavement, having seen her last surviving child killed before her eyes on a railroad train, after the election of her husband to the Presidency of the United States.
Mrs. Pierce was remarkable for fragility of constitution, exquisite sensitiveness of organism, and deep spirituality of nature. She instinctively shrank from observation, and nothing could be more painful to her in average life than the public gaze. She found her joy in the quiet sphere of domestic life, and herein, through her wise counsels, pure tastes, and devoted life, she exerted a powerful influence. One who knew her writes:
“Mrs. Pierce’s life, as far as she could make it so, was one of retirement. She rarely participated in gay amusements, and never enjoyed what is called fashionable society. Her natural endowments were of a high order. She inherited a judgment singularly clear, and a taste almost unerring. The cast of her beauty was so dream-like; her temper was so little mingled with the common characteristics of woman; it had so little of caprice, so little of vanity, so utter an absence of all jealousy and all anger; it was so made up of tenderness and devotion, and yet so imaginative and fairy-like in its fondness, that it was difficult to bear only the sentiments of earth for one who had so little of life’s clay.”
“Mrs. Pierce’s life, as far as she could make it so, was one of retirement. She rarely participated in gay amusements, and never enjoyed what is called fashionable society. Her natural endowments were of a high order. She inherited a judgment singularly clear, and a taste almost unerring. The cast of her beauty was so dream-like; her temper was so little mingled with the common characteristics of woman; it had so little of caprice, so little of vanity, so utter an absence of all jealousy and all anger; it was so made up of tenderness and devotion, and yet so imaginative and fairy-like in its fondness, that it was difficult to bear only the sentiments of earth for one who had so little of life’s clay.”
It was but natural that such a being should be the life-long object of a husband’s adoring devotion. Nor is it strange that the husband of such a wife, reflecting in his outer life the urbanity, gentleness, and courtesy which marked his home intercourse, in addition to his own personal gifts, should have been, what Franklin Pierce was declared to be, the most popular man, personally, who ever was President of the United States. Notwithstanding her ill health, her shrinking temperament, and personal bereavement, Mrs. Pierce forced herself to meet the public demands of her exalted station, and punctually presided at receptions and state dinners, at any cost toherself. No woman, by inherent nature, could have been less adapted to the full blaze of official life than she, yet she met its demands with honor, and departed from the White House revered by all who had ever caught a glimpse of her exquisite nature. She died December, 1863, in Andover, Massachusetts, and now rests, with her husband and children, in the cemetery at Concord, New Hampshire.
During the administration of Mr. Buchanan, the White House seemed to revive the social magnificence of old days. Harriet Lane brought again into its drawing-rooms the splendor of courts, and more than repeated the elegance and brilliancy of fashion, which marked the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams.
Harriet Lane, the adopted daughter of James Buchanan, and “lady of the White House” during his administration, was one of those golden blondes which Oliver Wendell Holmes so delights to portray. “Her head and features were cast in noble mould, and her form which, at rest, had something of the massive majesty of a marble pillar, in motion was instinct alike with power and grace.” Grace, light and majesty seemed to make her atmosphere. Every motion was instinct with life, health and intelligence. Her superbphysiquegave the impression of intense, harmonious vitality. Her eyes, of deep violet, shed a constant, steady light, yet they could flash with rebuke, kindle with humor, or soften in tenderness. Her mouth was her most peculiarly beautiful feature, capable of expressing infinite humor or absolute sweetness, while her classic head was crowned with masses of golden hair, always worn with perfect simplicity.
As a child she was a fun-loving, warm-hearted romp.When eleven years of age she was tall as a woman, nevertheless Mr. Buchanan, one day looking from his window, saw Harriet with flushed cheek and hat awry, trundling through the leading street of Lancaster a wheelbarrow, full of wood. He rushed out to learn the cause of such an unseemly sight, when she answered in confusion, “that she was on her way to old black Aunt Tabitha with a load of wood, because it was so cold.” A few years later this young domestic outlaw, having been graduated with high honor from the Georgetown convent, was shining at the Court of St. James, at which her uncle was American Minister. Queen Victoria, upon whom her surpassing brightness and loveliness seemed to make a deep impression, decided that she should rank not as niece or daughter, but as the wife of the United States Minister. Thus the youthful American girl became one of the “leading ladies” of the diplomatic corps of St. James.
On the continent and in Paris she was everywhere greeted as a girl-queen, and in England her popularity was immense. On the day when Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Tennyson received the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws at the University of Oxford, her appearance was greeted by loud cheers from the students, who aroseen masseto receive her. From this dazzling career abroad, she came back to her native land, to preside over the President’s House. She became the supreme lady of the gayest administration which has marked the government of the United States. Societies, ships of war, neck-ties were named after her. Men, gifted and great, from foreign lands and in her own, sought her hand in marriage. Such cumulated pleasures and honors probably were never heaped upon any other one young woman of the United States.
At White House receptions, and on all state occasions, the sight of this golden beauty, standing beside the grand and gray old man, made a unique and delightful contrast, which thousands flocked to see. Her duties were more onerous than had fallen to the share of any lady of the White House for many years; the long diplomatic service of Mr. Buchanan abroad involving him in many obligations to entertain distinguished strangers privately, aside from his hospitalities as President of the United States. During his administration the Prince of Wales was entertained at the White House, who presented his portrait to Mr. Buchanan and a set of valuable engravings to Miss Lane, as “a slight mark of his grateful recollection of the hospitable reception and agreeable visit at the White House.”
During the last troubled months of Mr. Buchanan’s administration, he always spoke with warmth and gratitude of Miss Lane’s patriotism and good sense. Neither he nor her country ever suffered from any conversational lapse of hers, which, in a day so rife with passion and injustice, is saying much. In 1863, Miss Lane was confirmed in the Episcopal church at Oxford, Philadelphia, of which her uncle, Rev. Edward L. Buchanan, was the rector.
In 1866, Miss Lane was married, at Wheatland, to Mr. Henry Elliott Johnston of Baltimore, a gentleman who had held her affections for many years. The congenial pair now abide in their luxurious home in Baltimore, and in private life, as wife and mother, she is as beautiful and more beloved than when, as Miss Lane, she was the proud lady of the President’s House.
It was the misfortune of Mrs. Lincoln to be the onlywoman personally assailed who ever presided in the White House. She entered it when sectional bitterness was at its height, and when the need of her country for the holiest and highest ministry of women was deeper than it had been in any era of its existence, even that of the Revolution. In that troubled hour, the White House needed a woman to preside over it of lofty soul, of consecrated purpose, of the broadest and profoundest sympathies, and of self-forgetting piety.
The life of the Nation was threatened. The horror of war was imminent. The capital was menaced, as it had never been before, by the treason of its own children. Wives, mothers and daughters, in ten thousand homes, were looking into the faces of husbands, sons and fathers, with trembling and with tears, and yet with sacrificial patriotism. They knew, they felt that the best-beloved were to be slain on their country’s battle-fields. With what supreme devotion and consecration would Abigail Adams, or a thousand women of her heroic type, have approached the Nation’s House as the wife of its President in such an hour. It was the hour for self-forgetting—the hour of sacrifice. Personal vanity and elation, excusable in a more peaceful time, seemed unpardonable in this. Yet, in reviewing the character of the Presidents’ wives, we shall see that there was never one who entered the White House with such a feeling of self-satisfaction, which amounted to personal exultation, as did Mary Lincoln. To her it was the fulfillment of a life-long ambition, and with the first low muttering of war distinctly heard, on every side, she made her journey to Washington a triumphal passage.
A single month, and the President’s call for troops toprotect the capital had penetrated the remotest hamlet of the land. All the manly life-blood of the Nation surged toward its defence. All the heart of its womanhood went up to God, crying for its safety. In the distant farm-house women waited, breathless, the latest story of battle. In the crowded cities they gathered by thousands, crying, only, “Let me work for my brother: he dies for me!”
With the record of the march and the fight, and of the unseemly defeat, the newspapers teemed with gossip concerning the new lady of the White House. While her sister-women scraped lint, sewed bandages, and put on nurses’ caps, and gave their all to country and to death, the wife of its President spent her time in rolling to and fro between Washington and New York, intent on extravagant purchases for herself and the White House. Mrs. Lincoln seemed to have nothing to do but to “shop,” and the reports of her lavish bargains, in the newspapers, were vulgar and sensational in the extreme. The wives and daughters of other Presidents had managed to dress as elegant women, without the process of so doing becoming prominent or public. But not a new dress or jewel was bought by Mrs. Lincoln that did not find its way into the newspapers.
Months passed, and the capital had become one vast hospital. The reluctant river every hour laid at the feet of the city its priceless freight of lacerated men. The wharves were lined with the dying and dead. One ceaseless procession of ambulances moved to and fro. Our streets resounded with the shrieks of the sufferers which they bore. Churches, halls and houses were turned into hospitals. Every railroad-train that entered the city bore fresh troops to the Nation’s rescue, and fresh mournersseeking their dead, who had died in its defence. Through all, Mrs. Lincoln “shopped.”
At the White House, a lonely man, sorrowful at heart, and weighed down by mighty burdens, bearing the Nation’s fate upon his shoulders, lived and toiled and suffered alone. His wife, during all the summer, was at the hotels of fashionable watering-places. Conduct comparatively blameless in happier times, became culpable under such exigencies and in such shadow. Jarred, from the beginning, by Mrs. Lincoln’s life, the Nation, under its heavy stress of sorrow, seemed goaded at last to exasperation. Letters of rebuke, of expostulation, of anathema even, addressed to her, personally, came in to her from every direction. Not a day that did not bring her many such communications, denouncing her mode of life, her conduct, and calling upon her to fulfil the obligations, and meet the opportunities of her high station.
To no other woman of America had ever been vouchsafed so full an opportunity for personal benevolence and philanthropy to her own countrymen. To no other American woman had ever come an equal chance to set a lofty example of self-abnegation to all her countrywomen. But just as if there were no national peril, no monstrous national debt, no rivers of blood flowing, she seemed chiefly intent upon pleasure, personal flattery and adulation; upon extravagant dress and ceaseless self-gratification.
THE CABINET ROOM.INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON.
THE CABINET ROOM.INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON.
THE CABINET ROOM.INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON.
Vain, seeking admiration, the men who fed her weakness for their own political ends were sure of her favor. Thus, while daily disgracing the State by her own example, she still sought to meddle in its affairs. Woe to Mr. Lincoln if he did not appoint her favorites. Prodigalin personal expenditure, she brought shame upon the President’s House, by petty economies, which had never disgraced it before. Had the milk of its dairy been sent to the hospitals, she would have received golden praise. But the whole city felt scandalized to have it haggled over and peddled from the back door of the White House. State dinners could have been dispensed with, without a word of blame, had their cost been consecrated to the soldiers’ service; but when it was made apparent that they were omitted from personal penuriousness and a desire to devote their cost to personal gratification, the public censure knew no bounds.
From the moment Mrs. Lincoln began to receive recriminating letters, she considered herself an injured individual, the honored object of envy, jealousy and spite, and a martyr to her high position. No doubt some of them were unjust, and many more unkind; but it never dawned upon her consciousness that any part of the provocation was on her side, and after a few tastes of their bitter draughts she ceased to open them. Even death did not spare her. Willie Lincoln, the loveliest child of the White House, was smitten and died, to the unutterable grief of his father and the wild anguish of his mother. She mourned according to her nature. Her loss did not draw her nearer in sympathy to the nation of mothers that moment weeping because their sons were not. It did not lead her in time to minister to such, whom death had robbed and life had left without alleviation. She shut herself in with her grief, and demanded of God why he had afflictedher! Nobody suffered as she suffered. The Nation’s House wore a pall, at last, not for its tens of thousands of brave sons slain, but for the President’schild. The Guests’ Room, in which he died, Mrs. Lincoln never entered again; nor the Green Room, wherein, decked with flowers, his fair young body awaited burial.
In the same way, Mrs. Lincoln bewept her husband. And there is no doubt but that, in that black hour, she suffered great injustice. She loved her husband with the intensity of a nature, deep and strong, within a narrow channel. The shock of his untimely and awful taking-off, might have excused a woman of loftier nature than hers for any accompanying paralysis.
It was not strange that Mrs. Lincoln was not able to leave the White House for five weeks after her husband’s death. It would have been stranger, had she been able to have left it sooner. It was her misfortune, that she had so armed public sympathy against her, by years of indifference to the sorrows of others, that when her own hour of supreme anguish came, there were few to comfort her, and many to assail. She had made many unpopular innovations upon the old, serene and statelyrégimeof the President’s house. Never a reign of concord, in her best day, in her hour of affliction it degenerated into absolute anarchy. I believe the long-time steward had been dethroned, that Mrs. Lincoln might manage according to her own will. At-any-rate, while she was shut in with her woe, the White House was left without a responsible protector. The rabble ranged through it at will. Silver and dining-ware were carried off, and have never been recovered. It was plundered, not only of ornaments, but of heavy articles of furniture. Costly sofas and chairs were cut and injured. Exquisite lace curtains were torn into rags, and carried off in pieces.
While all this was going on below, Mrs. Lincoln, shut up in her apartments, refused to see any one but servants, while day after day, immense boxes, containing her personal effects, were leaving the White House for her newly-chosen abode in the West. The size and number of these boxes, with the fact of the pillaged aspect of the White House, led to the accusation, which so roused public feeling against her, that she was robbing the Nation’s House, and carrying the national property with her into retirement. This accusation, which clings to her to this day, was probably unjust. Her personal effects, in all likelihood, amounted to as much as that of nearly all other Presidents’ wives together, and the vandals who roamed at large through the length and breadth of the White House, were quite sufficient to account for all its missing treasures.
The public also did Mrs. Lincoln injustice, in considering her an ignorant, illiterate woman. She was well-born, gently reared, and her education above the average standard given to girls in her youth. She is a fair mistress of the French language, and in English can write a more graceful letter than one educated woman in fifty. She has quick perceptions, and an almost unrivalled power of mimicry. The only amusement of her desolate days, while shut in from the world in Chicago, when she refused to see her dearest friends and took comfort in the thought that she had been chosen as the object of pre-eminent affliction, was to repeat in tone, gesture and expression, the words, actions and looks of men and women who, in the splendor of her life in Washington, had happened to offend her. Her lack was not a lack of keen faculties, or of fair culture, but a constitutionalinability to rise to the action of high motive in a time when every true soul in the nation seemed to be impelled to unselfish deeds for its rescue. She was incapable of lofty, impersonal impulse. She was self-centred, and never in any experience rose above herself. According to circumstance, her own ambitions, her own pleasures, her own sufferings, made the sensation which absorbed and consumed every other. As a President’s wife she could not rise above the level of her nature, and it was her misfortune that she never even approached the bound of her opportunity.