"She possessed the pure Grecian contour; her head was exquisitely formed, her forehead fair and shapely, her eyes large and dark, with an expression of tenderness that did not belong to her character; and the delicate loveliness of her mouth and chin, the soft bloom of her complexion, together with her beautifully rounded shoulders and tapering arms, combined to form one of the loveliest of women." She had had numerous offers of marriage before she reached her eighteenth year, her father's wealth and prominence, independent of her own attractive personality, having insured her social prestige, but as yet she walked heart whole and fancy free.

In the summer of 1803 Jerome, the youngest brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and then less than nineteen years of age, detaching himself from naval duty in the West Indies and following the bent of his own inclination, eventually put into the port of New York. Whatever breach of military discipline this implies will in no way astound those familiar with Jerome's character.

Too young to have taken part in the struggles that had elevated his family to such dizzy heights, he yet, at an age most susceptible to the altered conditions of his life, came into the full enjoyment of all the advantages they offered. Napoleon was wont to take a humorous rather than a serious view of this "mauvais sujet," as he frequently called Jerome. Madame Junot relates a characteristic anecdote in her memoirs which, she says, she had from the Emperor himself. Returning to Paris after the battle of Marengo, Napoleon was presented with various bills contracted by Jerome during his absence. One of these, to the amount of twenty thousand francs, was for a superb shaving set in gold, mother of pearl, silver, ivory, and costly enamels. It was a work of art, but of no possible use to Jerome, who, being but fifteen years old, was without the suggestion of a beard.

To his mother he was an idol, and to the end of her life he was able to extract from her in generous measure much of that substance which she expended grudgingly even upon herself.

Enveloped in the glory of a great name, Jerome's advent into the social current of New York was noised abroad in the few and ordinarily but little-read newspapers of the day.

By stage the news was brought to Baltimore. The returning coach took an urgent invitation to Jerome and his suite to visit that city from Commodore Barney, who had been his recent comrade-in-arms in the West Indies. They accepted the invitation, and early in September found themselves the objects of a lavish hospitality.

Shortly after their arrival one of Jerome's suite, General Rewbell, lost his heart to Miss Henrietta Pascault, one of the belles of the town, to whom he was, after a brief courtship, married.

At the fall races, which were in progress when he arrived in Baltimore, Jerome for the first time saw the woman in whose life he was thereafter destined to play so conspicuous a part. We may well believe that she was radiantly beautiful in a gown of buff silk with a lace fichu and a leghorn hat with tulle trimmings and black plumes.

He had already heard of the beautiful Miss Patterson, and had declared with youthful impetuosity that he would marry her. The fact that she was aware of his preconceived sentiments gave a piquancy to their first meeting, which was enhanced by the boyish enthusiasm with which he referred to her as his "belle femme." The coquetry with which she resisted his too evident admiration had the invariable effect of further ensnaring his princely affections.

They met frequently in those centres of hospitality, the home of Samuel Chase, who twenty-odd years before had put his name to the Declaration of Independence; at "Belvedere," the home of Colonel John Eager Howard, the hero of Cowpens; at "Greenmount," "Druid Hill," and "Brooklandwood," where three other afterwards celebrated beauties were in course of development.

When the festivities in honor of Jerome were at their height, Elizabeth was borne away to the seclusion of a Virginia estate, under the wing of a vigilant mother, who rightly interpreted the course of events and foresaw the obstacles that loomed in the pathway of their happy termination. There only an occasional echo of the gayety that was rife at Baltimore reached her, making unbearable that rural quiet, which means happiness only to a contented mind, and is a veritable torture to such a restless spirit as ever possessed Elizabeth Patterson. Her entreaties at length prevailed, and she was brought back to the city, where, on the 29th of October, to prove how futile the separation had been, scarcely eight weeks after their first meeting, Jerome procured a license of marriage.

He was probably remonstrated with by the members of his suite, whose age and the length of whose friendship made possible that liberty. Rewbell, in the first flush of his own happy union doubtless gave Jerome a reckless support that not even the crafty Le Camus could counterbalance. To such opposition as Elizabeth's family offered, she replied that she "would rather be the wife of Jerome for one hour than of any other man for a lifetime."

On Christmas Eve, 1803, Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the man who five months later declared himself Emperor of France, and Elizabeth Patterson, daughter of an American merchant, entered into that union whose subsequent rending was to echo throughout Christendom. The ceremony was performed in the home of Elizabeth's father, according to the rites of the Catholic Church, by the Right Reverend John Carroll, first archbishop of America. It was witnessed by the French Consul at Baltimore, M. Sotin, Alexander le Camus, who was Jerome's secretary, and the mayor of Baltimore.

The marriage contract, which was drawn up by Alexander J. Dallas, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury, bears evidence of the apprehension felt by Elizabeth's family as to the outcome of this international union with so youthful a bridegroom.

The dress worn by Elizabeth on her bridal night was of exquisitely fine white muslin, elaborately embroidered. She said of the gown in after years that it was one she had frequently worn, as she particularly desired to avoid anything like vulgar display. "And to tell the truth," she added, "there was as little as possible of any gown at all, dress in that day being chiefly an aid in setting off beauty to advantage," which concurs with the statement made by a man who was present at the wedding, to the effect that he could have put all the clothes worn by the bride into his pocket.

The honeymoon days of Jerome and Elizabeth were passed at her father's estate outside of Baltimore, "Homestead." Late in January they were mingling with the merrymakers one afternoon in Market Street. There was good sleighing, and the crisp air rang with the joyousness of an old-time winter. A snowball, sent with the unerring aim and democratic disregard of a small boy of the town, struck Elizabeth. Jerome was outraged at the indignity, and offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the discovery of the youthful miscreant. How trivial seems this "missile light as air" by comparison with those shafts sped later by a not less unerring hand, and striking into the very soul of her womanhood, Jerome making no effort to avert them.

In February this bride and groom of the early century went to Washington, whither since have wended their way so many happy bridal couples. Of the journey there, made in a stage-coach, General Samuel Smith, member of Congress from Maryland, wrote to Mr. William Patterson describing the runaway of the horses as they entered the city and Betsy's presence of mind. The driver having been thrown from his seat, Jerome sprang from the coach with the hope of catching the horses. But as they still sped on, and her danger increased as they penetrated towards the centre of the straggling little capital, Elizabeth opened the door and jumped out into the snow without injury.

While in Washington they were the guests of the French Minister, General Tureau. Aaron Burr, then Vice-President of the United States, meeting Elizabeth at this time, wrote to his daughter Theodosia, whom he thought Elizabeth much resembled, and referred to her as "a charming little woman with sense, spirit, and sprightliness."

Jerome's thoughts were already turning towards France, where every effort was being made to bring about his return—alone. While in New York during the following summer he was made acquainted with the annulment of his marriage, as follows: "By an Act of the 11 Ventose, all the civil officers of the Empire are prohibited from receiving on their registers the transcription of the act of celebration of a pretended marriage that Jerome Bonaparte has contracted in a foreign country during the age of minority, without the consent of his mother and without the publication in the place of his nativity."

In February following the marriage Mr. William Patterson had written to our Minister at Paris, Robert Livingston, enclosing him letters from the President and Secretary of State, to be presented to Napoleon with the hope of obtaining his approval, or at least mitigating any displeasure the marriage might have caused. "I can assure you," he wrote to Livingston, "that I never directly or indirectly countenanced or gave Mr. Bonaparte the smallest encouragement to address my daughter, but, on the contrary, resisted his pretensions by every means in my power consistent with discretion. Finding, however, that the mutual attachment they had formed for each other was such that nothing short of force or violence could prevent their union, I with much reluctance consented to their wishes."

He had, moreover, despatched his eldest son, Robert Patterson, to Paris, to discover which way the wind of the imperial temper blew. As the matter lay rather outside the pale of usual diplomatic issues, it required most delicate manipulation, and while young Patterson received kindly yet cautious expressions of interest and good-will from Napoleon's brothers, an ominous and forbidding silence enveloped the First Consul. His indignation increased with Jerome's continued absence, and when at length he spoke through his Minister of Marine, it was to bid Jerome, as lieutenant of the fleet, to return to France, at the same time forbidding all captains of French vessels to receive on board "the young person to whom Jerome had attached himself." Through the same channel Napoleon offered his forgiveness to Jerome on condition that he abandon Elizabeth and return to France, there to associate himself with his fortunes. Should he persist in bringing her, she would not be allowed to put foot on French territory. Jerome's mother wrote to him at the same time, suggesting that he return to France alone and send his wife to Holland. Robert Patterson, however, who succeeded admirably in keeping himself posted on the variations in the attitude of Jerome's family, advised that Jerome should not return to France without his wife.

Though he made several efforts during the year that followed to return thither, there is only one on record when it was his purpose to sail alone.

In September, 1804, General Armstrong sailed from New York to replace Livingston at Paris. He had agreed with Jerome to take Madame Bonaparte with him, Jerome himself intending to go on one of the French frigates then in New York harbor. She could thus, at least, have landed in France as a member of the family of the American minister, who might have succeeded in presenting her to Napoleon, with whom she could, no doubt, have pleaded her cause with more effect than could have been produced by any amount of diplomatic correspondence or family intervention. She had the gifts which he most admired in women, great personal beauty and wit, and though the latter might have been too keen for his entire appreciation, she no doubt would have been shrewd enough to temper it to his taste.

She wrote her father from New York, September 5, 1804, of her disappointment at Armstrong's having sailed without her. The reason given was that Jerome and Elizabeth had arrived by stage a few hours after the ship had sailed.

An effort to sail during the following month ended in shipwreck off Pilot Town, where they were finally landed and temporarily housed by one of the inhabitants, on whose clothes-line Madame Bonaparte dried her wardrobe, and from whose hospitable board she enjoyed a dinner of roast goose with apple-sauce, being in exuberant spirits over her rescue.

On March 11, 1805, they finally made their departure from Baltimore in the "Erin," a ship belonging to Mr. Patterson. Though they sailed at an early hour in the morning, and the arrangements for their departure had been conducted with much secrecy, General Tureau wrote from Washington two days later to Mr. Patterson to ask what disposition had been made of Jerome's four carriage-horses, and to suggest, if they were to be sold, that he should like to be considered as a purchaser.

The "Erin" reached Lisbon on April 2, whence Jerome wrote in English to his father-in-law of their safe arrival, and took the opportunity to express his affection for and gratitude towards his second family. He spoke of Elizabeth having been very sea-sick, and added,—

"But you know as well as any body that sea-sick never has killed nobody."

Napoleon's ambassador met the ship upon its arrival, and called upon Elizabeth to ask what he could do for her, addressing her as Miss Patterson.

"Tell your master," she replied, "that Madame Bonaparte is ambitious, and demands her rights as a member of the Imperial family."

She was forbidden to land, and Jerome, taking that farewell of her which fate had destined should be his last, went overland to Paris, while the "Erin" sailed for Amsterdam.

On his way to Paris Jerome met General and Madame Junot en route for their new post in Spain. He breakfasted with them and opened his anxious young heart to them, showing them a miniature of Elizabeth, from whom, he declared, nothing should ever separate him.

Upon reaching Paris he went at once to Malmaison and sought an audience with Napoleon, who refused to see him, bidding him write what he wished to say. He wrote, simply announcing his arrival, and received the following reply:

"I have received your letter this morning. There are no faults you have committed which may not be effaced in my eyes by a sincere repentance. Your marriage is null and void, both from a religious and a legal point of view. I will never acknowledge it. Write Miss Patterson to return to the United States, and tell her it is not possible to give things another turn. On condition of her return to America, I will allow her a pension of sixty thousand francs a year, provided she does not take the name of my family, to which she has no right, her marriage having no existence."

From this position Napoleon never swerved. The annuity was paid to Elizabeth after her return to America until the fall of the Empire, and formed the basis of the fortune of one and a half million dollars, accumulated through a long life of frugality and cautious investment, of which she died possessed.

The reply of Pope Pius, to whom Napoleon appealed for the annulment of the marriage, accompanying his request with a costly gold tiara, to the effect that after mature deliberation he had been able to discover no grounds on which the marriage could be cancelled, though it chagrined the Emperor to an extent which he never forgave, did not yet alter the stand he had taken. When Jerome was finally admitted to his presence, he greeted him with that magnetic smile whose potency swayed men and women alike.

"So, sir, you are the first of the family," he said, "who has shamefully abandoned his post. It will require many splendid actions to wipe off that stain from your reputation. As to your love-affair with your little girl, I pay no attention to it."

The "Erin," meanwhile, arrived in the Texel Roads, where, though flying the flag of a friendly power, and a merchant vessel whose clearance from Baltimore showed that she carried no guns, she was placed under guard of two French men-of-war and all communication with the shore prohibited. Through the intercession of Sylvanus Bourne, our Consul at Amsterdam, she was permitted at the expiration of a week to depart, and, bearing her full measure of human desolation, she headed towards the shores of England. The fame of her fair passenger had preceded her, and so large a concourse of people had gathered at Dover to witness the landing of Madame Jerome Bonaparte that Mr. Pitt, then Prime Minister of England, sent a military escort to protect her from possible annoyance of a sympathetic though curious throng.

At Camberwell, near London, her son was born on the 7th of July, 1805, and named Jerome Napoleon.

In June of that year, two months after his return, Jerome had been restored to his rank in the navy and was cruising off Genoa, whence he wrote, through his secretary, Alexander le Camus, to Mr. William Patterson, of Baltimore, expressing his dissatisfaction at Elizabeth's having gone to England, that country being at the time at war with France. The tone of the letter betrays the change that was already working in Jerome's feelings, though he was at that time sending Elizabeth by every available opportunity messages and pledges of his unswerving love for her.

When we judge him, let us bear in mind not only his youth and all the circumstances of his life, but, above all, that soul-crushing will which he, weakly enough it seems to us, was striving to stand against.

In a subsequent letter to Mr. Patterson, written also by Mr. le Camus, in the course of which Jerome expressed the desire that Elizabeth should return to America and wait there in her own home till he obtained her recall from the Emperor, one feels instinctively that between the lines is written the finale to the short chapter of the romance of Elizabeth Patterson and Jerome Bonaparte.

She returned to her father's home in the fall, though she had written shortly before that she was glad to be among strangers, because "in Baltimore, where people are always on the watch," she would be more observed.

On August 12, 1807, Jerome married Princess Frederika Catherine, daughter of the King of Wurtemburg. As King of Westphalia he offered Elizabeth a home within his dominions, with the title of Princess of Smalcalden and a pension of two hundred thousand francs per year. In regard to the former, she replied that Westphalia was a large kingdom, but not quite large enough for two queens, and with regard to the pension, having already accepted Napoleon's annuity of sixty thousand francs, she made the oft-quoted response that she preferred "being sheltered under the wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill of a goose."

Napoleon, with his high appreciation of a bon mot, desired to know what favor he could bestow upon a woman capable of this witticism. Elizabeth replied through the French Minister at Washington that she was ambitious, and would like to be a duchess.

The Emperor promised the gift, but never conferred it. Notwithstanding her unremitting yet ever futile struggle for recognition, Madame Bonaparte cherished always the most enthusiastic admiration for the genius of the man who had blighted her life. In one of her letters to her father, written from Europe, whither she returned after the fall of the Empire, she said, "They do not in England pretend to revile Napoleon as we have done. His stupendous abilities are admitted; his misfortunes almost respected by his enemies. I listen silently to any discussion in which he bears a part. I easily perceive that he has more justice done him here than with us."

In a subsequent letter she details more fully her attitude towards the entire family.

"I cannot say," she writes, also to her father, "that I have the least reliance on that family, although I am inclined to reciprocate their kind words and receive their offers of friendship without allowing myself to be deceived by either." And farther on in the same letter she says, in regard to allowing her son to visit Pauline Bonaparte, then the Princess Borghese, at Rome, "My resolution is uninfluenced by personal feelings, never having felt the least resentment towards any individual of that family, who certainly injured me, but not from motives which could offend me. I was sacrificed to political considerations, not to the gratification of bad feelings, and under the pressure of insupportable disappointment became not unjust."

From her letters there seem to have been frequent rumors afloat in regard to her marrying again, both in this country and in Europe, where she was greatly admired. In one letter to her father, written in 1823, she says that while the American newspapers were marrying her she was making her will.

Though she obtained from the Maryland Legislature a divorce, after the fall of Napoleon, it seems to have been rather as a precautionary measure against any possible demands Jerome might make upon her financially than with a view to marrying again.

Tom Moore, whom Lady Morgan sent to her with a letter of introduction, afterwards described her as a beautiful woman, but destitute of all sentiment and with a total disbelief in love, on which, indeed, she bestowed only ridicule. There can be no doubt, however, of the concern and tenderness which she expended upon a dog, Le Loup, which belonged to her son, and which she said was "superior to half the persons one meets in the world." There are many traditions of her wit, which, though tinged with asperity, was ever ready and scintillating. The Honorable Mr. Dundas, who sat beside her at a dinner in London, she speared so unsparingly with the shafts of her sarcasm that his egotism never forgave her. When he asked her, finally, if she had read Captain Basil Hall's book on America, she replied affirmatively. "And did you observe," he continued, bluntly, with the hope of avenging his wounded self-love, "that he called all Americans vulgarians?" "Yes," replied Madame Bonaparte, while the table paused to listen, "and I was not surprised. Were the Americans descendants of the Indians and Esquimaux, I should have been. But being the direct descendants of the English, nothing is more natural than that they should be vulgarians." For both her wit and her beauty she was admired by men and women of fastidious taste, among whom were Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, Talleyrand, Gortschakoff, and Madame de Staël. She so fascinated the Prince of Wurtemburg, uncle of Jerome's second wife, that he confessed his wonderment that Jerome could ever have abandoned her. "Si elle n'est pas reine de Westphalie, elle est au moins reine des cœurs," was Baron Bonsteller's tribute to her.

She seldom alluded to Jerome, though she believed that she always stood first in his heart. She referred in a letter to her father to the probability of his coming to Rome while she was there, but added that she should not see him, "nor would he like it himself after the unhandsome way in which he has always conducted himself. I shall hold my tongue, which is all I can possibly do for him."

Though the greater part of her life was spent in Europe, and she was for a time on terms of considerable intimacy with his family, she met Jerome but once, when they passed each other in the gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Jerome with the Princess Catherine upon his arm. Though they recognized each other, they passed without greeting, Jerome exclaiming, "That was my American wife." Jerome Napoleon, the son of his American wife, was frequently his guest, and was treated with much kindness by the Princess Catherine. Jerome, however, added practically nothing to this son's material comfort, much to his mother's chagrin, and at his death in 1860 it was found that he had not even mentioned his name in his will, a lack of recognition which wounded both mother and son in a more profound sense than his lifelong failure to make provision for him had done. So great was his son's resemblance to his family, and particularly to the Emperor, that the chargé d'affaires of France at Amsterdam, in 1820, refused his mother a passport for him to travel through France. It was a strange coincidence that Madame Jerome Bonaparte herself should bear a remarkable resemblance to the Bonaparte family, particularly to Napoleon and Pauline, even having some of their mannerisms.

In August, 1855, Louis Napoleon offered to create Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte Duke of Sartène, but he declined the honor, as the object was to take away his name and the rights he possessed as his father's eldest son.

At the request of his half-brother a family council was called, before which the celebrated Berryer pleaded the cause of Madame Jerome Bonaparte and her son, whose rights were ultimately defined as limited exclusively to the use of the name.

On November 3, 1829, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, to his mother's intense dissatisfaction and disappointment, married an American, the lovely Miss Susan Mary Williams, of Baltimore. During a long residence abroad Madame Bonaparte had become imbued with the idea that it was a duty her son owed both to her and to himself to ally himself matrimonially with some European family of distinction. Writing to her father from Florence, where she was residing at the time of her son's marriage, she said, "I would rather die than marry any one in Baltimore, but if my son does not feel as I do upon this subject, of course he is quite at liberty to act as he likes best."

Her father died in 1835. He had never been in sympathy with her desire to live in a foreign country, and had frequently upbraided her for her prolonged absence from home. In his will he denounced her as an undutiful daughter, bequeathing her a few small houses besides the home in which she was born, on the east side of South Street, with the lot surrounding it.

In April, 1879, Madame Bonaparte, who was then in her ninety-fifth year, having outlived her son and all of her own generation, passed from the sphere where she had been so conspicuous a figure. She died in a boarding-house in her native city, where she had acquired the reputation of being a keen, eccentric old woman. The sorrows of her youth, belonging to the early days of the country, were too remote to be remembered by her later-day contemporaries, who discovered in her no trace of the bewitching Elizabeth Patterson who had taken by storm the heart of the youthful Prince Jerome.

She rests to-day in Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore, in a small triangular lot which she selected shortly before her death, saying that as she had been alone in life, so she wished to be in death. On her monument are graven the words that express so much for her,—"After life's fitful fever she sleeps well."

THE CATON SISTERS

Among the belles of the early century loom the forms of those gracious women whose names are interwoven with those of the most historic figures of their age, the Caton sisters of Baltimore. Granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the most illustrious Americans of the period, they became through marriage identified with the most distinguished families in England.

In 1787 Richard Caton, an Englishman who had settled in Baltimore two years before, and engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods, succeeded in winning the fair hand of Mary Carroll. Rumor said that it had been already partially plighted to her cousin John Carroll of Duddington Manor. Cousin "Longlegs," however, as Kitty, her irreverent younger sister, called him, was in Europe at the time with her brother Charles, and in those days of slow travel Mary had probably capitulated to the young Briton before John even knew that he had a rival.

Her father, who was reputed the wealthiest man in America, and who provided liberally both for his children and grandchildren, settled upon Mary at the time of her marriage to Richard Caton, the beautiful estate of "Brookland Wood," in the centre of the suburb which has since sprung up and been named for them, Catonsville. Their four daughters were born there and grew up to beautiful womanhood,—Mary, Elizabeth, Louisa, and Emily. They derived every grace of mind and body from a cultivated and accomplished mother who had been educated abroad, and who, accompanying her father to Philadelphia when Congress met there, had known the best there was of social life in America. Closely associated, moreover, from their infancy with their grandfather, a most courtly gentleman, who ever beheld in woman an object worthy of his most chivalrous devotion, they bore every evidence of that innate refinement which created distinction for them in England as the "American Graces."

The life at that time surrounding such men as Carroll was idyllic. Honored by his countrymen, blessed with the wealth giving him every material comfort and luxury, owning his town house, his estate of Doughoregan, and his plantation the famous Carrollton, sought out by the most distinguished men and women at home and from abroad, to say nothing of the myriad resources which such a man as Carroll possessed within himself, he already saw his family—the third generation born in America—well established, with the roof-trees of his son and daughters close by his own. His granddaughters were much with him, and though they were the belles of Baltimore town from their earliest girlhood, a very delightful phase of their life was that portion of it spent on their own and their grandfather's estates. There is frequent mention both in the journal and letters of Charles Carroll of visits from them and also of that princely hospitality that is ever associated with the names of many of the old Maryland estates.

In one letter he alludes to a ball to be given by Captain Charles Ridgley of "Hampton," for which three hundred invitations were out, and to which Mary, Betsy, and Louisa were all going. In another he mentions a ball given by Louisa, who was entertaining the Misses Pinkney at his place at Annapolis.

Many a belle in those days went to balls on horseback with a blanket thrown over her muslin gown to protect it from the dust. Yet it was not too much of an undertaking to go all the way from Annapolis to Baltimore, or vice versa, for the pleasure of being present at somebody's ball or dinner-party. Roads and weather permitting, the Catons occasionally made the trip in winter time in a "sled." Roads and weather had much to do with the timing of one's visits in those days of primitive transportation facilities when Charles Carroll recorded that he sent his servant from Doughoregan with a led mare to fetch Miss Nancy Robinson who had been visiting at Homewood, his son's estate.

Nature lent her perfecting hand to the rural life of these people, for nowhere was she ever more munificent in the bestowal of her epicurean gifts than in the State of Maryland, whose lands and whose waters alike cater to the gastronomic proclivities of the bon vivant.

Oliver Wendell Holmes at a later period attributed a lack of appreciation of literature which he fancied he had detected among the Baltimoreans to the preponderance of these very blessings, and suggested that the highest monument in the city should be crowned with a canvas-back duck.

There were club-houses and merrymaking in plenty, with oysters, soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks, and a roasted young pig with an apple in its mouth, or a turkey stuffed with oysters, as pièce de résistance, with a nip of punch for sauce. Miss Ridgley depicts it very temptingly in her little book.

Foremost among the beautiful women whose presence lent piquancy to this life were the Catons. In 1807 Mary, who was at the time nineteen years old, was married to Robert Patterson, the eldest son of William Patterson. She thus became the sister-in-law of the unhappy Madame Jerome Bonaparte, between whom and herself there seems to have existed no great sympathy, through no fault of Mary Caton's.

The event was a welcome one to William Patterson, who was at the time the wealthiest merchant in America. The wedding ceremony was performed in the private chapel of the Carroll family by Archbishop Carroll, who four years previously had similarly united Elizabeth Patterson and Jerome Bonaparte. In April, 1811, Robert and his wife, accompanied by her sisters Elizabeth and Louisa, went abroad, sailing from Baltimore on one of his father's ships and landing in Lisbon in the latter part of May. Robert Patterson had already travelled and lived much in Europe. To the Catons it was the first of a series of numerous trans-Atlantic trips.

While in Spain they met the Duke of Wellington, who was there at that time conducting the peninsular war, and Colonel Sir Felton Bathurst Hervey, who had been his aide-de-camp at Waterloo and whom Louisa Caton afterwards married. Charles Carroll, writing of Hervey after his marriage to Louisa, which occurred on the 1st of March, 1817, said, "All who know him love him." He was a gallant soldier and had lost his right arm at Vittoria.

The Duke of Wellington's ardent admiration for Mrs. Patterson drew him within the wake of the little American party as they progressed in their travels over Europe, lending them the prestige which opened for them the most exclusive houses in England. Apparent as his admiration was, not the least breath of scandal ever touched the name of this beautiful young matron. The Prince Regent, to whom Wellington presented her, spoke later to Richard Rush, the American Minister, of her unusual beauty. When she came, later in life, into contact with William IV. as first lady in waiting at Windsor, she won the sincere admiration of that sovereign on account of the high standard of morality which she maintained.

After the marriage of Hervey and Louisa Caton they were entertained by the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle. The Duchess of Rutland gave them a ball, and bestowed upon the sisters on that memorable night the title under which they became famous,—the "American Graces." Hervey's death occurred in 1819, and Robert Patterson's at Baltimore in the fall of 1822. The widow of the latter shortly afterwards rejoined her sisters in England, where they were again entertained at Wellington's country-seat. While there they met for the first time his eldest brother, Richard Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, and like himself a soldier and a statesman. In 1797 he had been made Governor of India by George III., who, in return for the services he rendered there, had created him Marquis of Wellesley. At the time he met Mrs. Patterson and her sisters he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Two years later, when Mrs. Patterson and Elizabeth Caton visited Dublin, he entertained them royally, bestowing the most devoted attentions upon the former, to whom he subsequently offered himself.

After a brief engagement they were married at the viceregal castle, the ceremony being performed twice, to accord with the religious convictions of both the bride and the groom, the Archbishop of Dublin marrying them according to the rites of the Catholic Church, and the Lord Primate of Ireland according to those of the Church of England.

Unusual magnificence marked the festivities which followed this event, as well as those of the remainder of Lord Mornington's reign as viceroy.

On July 4, 1827, Bishop England, of South Carolina, gave the following toast to Charles Carroll, who was the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence: "To Charles Carroll of Carrollton: in the land from which his grandfather fled in terror his granddaughter now reigns a queen."

It was rather a strange coincidence that two daughters of the little American town of Baltimore, Elizabeth Patterson and Mary Caton, neighbors and contemporaries, should have married brothers of two of the most formidable characters in modern history,—Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-styled conqueror of the world, and the Duke of Wellington, his conqueror.

Madame Jerome Bonaparte, who was in Europe at the time of her sister-in-law's second marriage, thus wrote to her father concerning it:

"Havre, November 21, 1825.

"Dear Sir,—I write by this packet to announce to you the marriage of Mrs. Robert Patterson. Mrs. Brown received a letter from Betsy Caton the day on which it was to take place. She has made the greatest match that any woman ever made.... The Marquis of Wellesley is Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He is sixty-five. He married an Italian singer, by whom he had a family of children. She is dead. He has no fortune. On the contrary, he is over head and ears in debt. His salary is £35,000 per annum as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He will be there eighteen months longer, and if the King does not give him another place he is entitled as a poor nobleman to at least a thousand pounds a year. He is brother of the Duke of Wellington. Mary's fortune is reported in Europe to be £800,000 cash. It has been mentioned in all the papers at that sum."

Wellesley retained his position in Ireland till 1828. He was then appointed Controller of the Royal Household of William IV., and his wife first lady in waiting at Windsor Castle. Wellesley's death occurred in 1842, the Marchioness surviving him over eleven years. The latter part of her life was spent at the Royal Palace at Hampton Court, where Queen Victoria presented her with a house in recognition of her husband's services.

Louisa Caton was married for the second time in 1828 to the eldest son of the Duke of Leeds, Francis Godolphin D'Arcy Osborne, Marquis of Carmarthen, who came into his title and estates ten years later.

This marriage called forth another letter from Madame Jerome Bonaparte to her father: "Louisa has made a great match. He is very handsome, not more than thirty-eight, and will be a duke with £30,000 a year."

Elizabeth Caton married once, and that much later in life than her sisters. She became, in 1836, the wife of Baron Stafford, whose family name was Jerningham.

Emily Caton, the youngest of the four sisters, and the only one who left descendants, married John Mactavish, a Scotchman, who had settled in Canada, whence he was sent as consul to Baltimore. Josiah Quincy, who met her at dinner at her grandfather's in 1826, recorded in his journal that he had been much impressed with her air of high breeding.

MARGARET O'NEILL
(MRS. JOHN H. EATON)

To the student of social history few careers surpass in interest that of Margaret O'Neill. Born of humble parentage, she ran the gamut of social possibilities, exercising more influence over the political destinies of her country than any other American woman has ever done.

Unlike other great belles who owe their fame to the universal admiration they evoke, Margaret O'Neill owed hers quite as much to the animosity she roused. Her cause hotly espoused by the President of the United States, her conduct made the subject of cabinet debates, she rose to fame as broad as the land of her birth, and later beyond the seas to a fame unshadowed by enmity, though not dearer to her patriotic soul. Born late in the last century, she came to be a belle in so far as having beaux makes a girl a belle in the days when the native Washington girl had few rivals. The shriek of Fulton's steamboat had not yet startled the world. The stage-coach was the universal means of conveyance, though the daughters of some Southern and Western Congressmen, from districts unfamiliar even with its lumbering proportions, ambitious to taste the pleasures of a season at the capital, used frequently to make the tedious journey on horseback. Her girlhood belleship had well terminated, indeed she had married and brought children into the world, before the completion of the great canal in 1826, which made the more sanguine voyager of that day hopeful that eventually eight miles might be travelled in an hour!

Though she never knew the exact date of her birth, she had heard it frequently related that she was two weeks old at the time of Washington's funeral, December 18, 1799. She was the eldest daughter of William O'Neill, a descendant of the O'Neills of Ulster County, Ireland, and himself a native of New Jersey, who had migrated to the capital with the hope of improving his fortunes. There he opened a tavern in the western section of the city, a short half-mile from the President's house. He was a genial host, and his house soon attained popularity with the jeunesse dorée, as well as with military men and Congressmen, though it was a long way from the Capitol. The Union Tavern, in Georgetown, however, which was also popular with our early law-makers, was still farther away. From its door to the Capitol the old 'bus known as the Royal George, one of Washington's earliest institutions, made frequent trips, stopping at O'Neill's and other taverns and boarding-houses along the route to pick up its patrons.

Margaret grew up in the unconventional atmosphere of the tavern, a type of undisciplined American girlhood, wayward, high spirited, full of generous impulses, her mind fed on impetuous and misguided admiration, and herself blessed with a magnetic soul that drew most men and many women irresistibly to her. She was a toast that stirred the hearts of the most phlegmatic of mankind and evoked unparalleled enthusiasm from those of more ardent temperament. Hers was the highest type of Irish beauty, a marvellously white skin, soft gray eyes, warm chestnut hair that curled above an expressive brow, exquisite features, a small round chin, a delicately beautiful figure of medium height, with an erect carriage and her spirited head nobly poised.

The "Health," written by Edward C. Pinkney, whom Edgar Allen Poe placed first in his estimate of lyric poets of America, is said to have been inspired by her in 1824.

She went to school at Mrs. Hayward's seminary, and later to Mr. Kirk. She also attended a dancing-school that gave exhibitions of the grace and proficiency of its pupils in the parlors of the Union Tavern in Georgetown. At one of these exhibitions Margaret was crowned by Mrs. Madison, the wife of the President, as the prettiest girl and most graceful dancer in the room. Naturally ambitious, this first social triumph pointed out the possibility of greater ones, to be achieved only after bitter contests that would have crushed the spirit of a more sensitive woman.

Her father deeming her sufficiently well educated, in which opinion she concurred, she quitted school in her fifteenth year, and, being now a young woman of bewitching beauty and abundant leisure, she entered extensively upon her career as a belle.

Two young military men whom her fascinations had ensnared were at one time on the point of a duel. With one of them, Captain Root, she had planned an elopement, and was actually about to descend from her window when she accidentally overturned a flower-pot: this crashing on the ground below, roused her father and put an end to her flight. More than that, her indignant parent carried her off to New York, where he left her under the wing of his old friend Governor De Witt Clinton, to go to Madame Nau's school. Clinton was very severe with the spoiled little beauty, and the staid atmosphere of his home was not congenial to her. She wrote her father very homesick letters, in one of which she promised that if he would take her home "neither Root nor branch should ever tear her from him." Her wit greatly pleased him, and after he had passed the bon mot around among his guests and his Peggy's admirers, he went to New York and brought her home.

It has been said that she was not yet sixteen when from a window of her father's tavern she for the first time saw John Bowie Timberlake, as he passed along Pennsylvania Avenue on horseback. Their acquaintance, engagement, and marriage followed within the space of a few weeks.

Several years of quiet happiness ensued, during which three children, a son, who died in infancy, and two daughters, were born to them.

Timberlake was a purser in the navy, and when he was ordered to sea duty he closed his little home, and his wife and children went to her father's to stay during the time of his absence. He died of asthma aboard the "Constitution," at Port Mahon.

His widow shortly afterwards married General Eaton, who was at that time a United States Senator and a guest at her father's house. For the first time the little Peggy O'Neill, of triumphant dancing-school days, felt that her foot was actually upon the rounds of the social ladder. John Quincy Adams was President at the time, and one of the bitterest Presidential campaigns this country has ever witnessed had just drawn to a close in the election of Jackson. One victim of the freedom of press and speech, everywhere indulged in, was the wife of the President-elect. Her gentle soul, stung by the breath of slander, which all the vigilance of a devoted husband had been powerless to avert, had passed unregretfully from earth. Jackson came to Washington a bereaved and embittered man.

There was a puritanical tendency among the women who made up the society of that era, and to whom Margaret O'Neill appeared as the embodiment of a sport-loving element that prevailed among men.

Life had a rural quality in those days which it has since lost. Horse-racing was universal, and the great race between Eclipse and Sir Henry, run on Long Island May 27, 1823, for a purse of ten thousand dollars, was a national event. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been staked, and Peggy O'Neill no doubt was intimately acquainted with some of the heaviest winners and losers, among the latter of whom was John Randolph. Though she was far too young to remember the opening of the first race-track in Washington, November 3, 1803, she was yet familiar with all the details of its inauguration, on which occasion both houses of Congress had adjourned, the Senate to have the ceiling repapered, and the House, which was apparently less resourceful, because it had no pressing business on hand.

Growing up in a public house, she was undoubtedly familiar with much in the lives of men of which other women of her day, leading more secluded lives, feigned ignorance. Yet she had become in no way contaminated by the liberal atmosphere she had breathed from infancy.

General Eaton and his bride returned from their honeymoon shortly before Jackson's inauguration. A few of the Senators' wives called upon her, but she was generally not well received, and slander had already begun its mischievous work when Jackson appeared in Washington and swore "by the Eternal" that his little friend, whom he had known all her life, should not be defamed.

Her name was already on every lip at the capital, and there is no doubt that as many went to Jackson's inauguration ball to see her as to see the President. They stood on chairs and benches in their efforts to catch a glimpse of her, and she made a picture worthy of their endeavors, in her pink gown, with her headdress of nodding black plumes.

Eaton was made Secretary of War. He was Jackson's old friend, and had labored unremittingly for his election. Moreover, thought the chivalrous old President, this would insure Mrs. Eaton's triumph. The women of the cabinet, however, refused to recognize her. Though Mrs. Calhoun, the wife of the Vice-President, had called upon her as a Senator's wife, she declined to associate with her as the wife of a cabinet minister. Calhoun, to whom an appeal was made, declared himself powerless, as "the quarrels of women, like those of the Medes and Persians, admitted of neither inquiry nor explanation."

Van Buren, Secretary of State, and Barry, Post-Master-General, the former a widower and the latter a bachelor, stood aloof from the tempest in which their fellow-officials were engulfed. That astute politician and prince of diplomats, Martin Van Buren, won Jackson's undying friendship by the warmth with which he took up his friend's cause. He had been a beau at evening functions when he was in the Senate, and he knew the social status of every one at Washington, and precisely what brought every stranger to the capital. While he admired Mrs. Eaton and desired to defend her, he also undoubtedly realized all the advantages to be gained by such a course.

The spirit of hostility gradually spread to every branch of society. The Diplomatic Corps became involved; Vaughn, the British minister, and Baron Krudner, the Russian envoy, both bachelors, ranged themselves beneath Mrs. Eaton's standard. They féted and dined her, and gave her substantial evidence of their adherence to her cause. Huygens, the Dutch minister, having a wife who belonged to the opposition, was less fortunate. Finding herself placed next to Mrs. Eaton at dinner on one occasion, Mrs. Huygens took her husband's arm and turned her back upon the assemblage. While all who witnessed the affront were appalled into an awkward silence, Mrs. Eaton, following the retreating form with critical eyes, commented admiringly upon her fine carriage.

Between her defenders and her defamers her Celtic blood bore her up, and her sunny soul lost none of its serenity. One of Jackson's biographers, however, states that when the matter reached the ears of the irate President, he threatened to demand Huygens's recall unless he and his wife forthwith apologize to Mrs. Eaton.

The contest waxed warmer day by day, both houses of Congress furnishing recruits to one side or the other.

The cabinet was dubbed the "Petticoat Cabinet," and Mrs. Eaton's fame as Bellona, the Goddess of War, spread through the land. Calhoun attacked the President for retaining in his cabinet an element of so much discord. But Jackson was a true knight, and his friendship was stanch.

The bitter feeling, meanwhile, among the cabinet ministers had attained such a pitch that they could no longer come together amicably. Their resignations were tendered to the President and accepted, and a new cabinet was formed.

It was during a recess of Congress. Van Buren was sent as minister to England, where he was cordially received. When Congress reassembled, however, the Senate refused to confirm his appointment, Calhoun casting the decisive vote.

A letter of Daniel Webster's, written about this time, reveals the seriousness of the situation. "It is odd enough," he wrote, "that the consequences of this dispute in the social and fashionable world are producing great political effects, and may very probably determine who shall be successor to the present Chief Magistrate." And they did. Jackson's power and popularity were such that he was in a position to dictate to his party the choice of his successor. His choice fell upon Van Buren, who had undoubtedly labored for him in the days of his bitter fight for the Presidency, and who had further and effectually endeared himself to his chief by his zealous defence of Mrs. Eaton, who in Jackson's eyes was not only a fair and beautiful woman, but the representative of oppressed womanhood.

General Eaton was appointed governor to the Territory of Florida, and later he was sent as our minister to the court of Madrid.

This ended Mrs. Eaton's social conflict. She was graciously received and universally admired in that land of aristocrats, and her long residence there and in Paris, whither she went before returning to this country, formed one of the happiest periods of her life.

One of her daughters, the beautiful Virginia Timberlake, familiarly known among the men and women who were young with her, as "Ginger" Timberlake, married the Duke de Sampoyo and went to live in France, where, in turn, one of her daughters has recently married a son of the elder Rothschild. Margaret, Mrs. Eaton's second daughter, married one of the Virginia Randolphs. To the children by this marriage, deprived by death of both parents, Mrs. Eaton devoted many years of her life. General Eaton died in 1859.

A third marriage contracted by his widow late in life, and subsequently annulled, was productive of much unhappiness in her home.

On the 8th of November, 1879, she reluctantly gave up her hold on life, whose volume had held for her so few blank pages.

In the presence of that foe which every woman fears most, slander, she had never retreated from the position she early determined to carry, and which circumstances proved she was well able to fill. She bore all with a sweet courage, feeling keenly, but not morbidly, the world's sting.

Preserving to the end her wonderful elasticity of spirit, she went out from a life that had been one of alternate turmoil and triumph, beholding only its beauties and loving it to the last. "I am not afraid to die," she said, "but it is such a beautiful world to leave."

CORA LIVINGSTON
(MRS. THOMAS PENNANT BARTON)

Cora Livingston was born in New Orleans, "the little Paris of America," on the 16th of June, 1806, the year of the great eclipse. Her father, writing to announce her advent to his sister in New York, said God had given him so fair a daughter that the sun had hidden its face.

Though she was a great belle with a national reputation during the decade from 1820 to 1830, those who attempted an analysis of her charm declared that she lacked that attribute which many would esteem the first requisite to belleship,—beauty. Yet she was a notable example of that subtle power that raises a woman above her contemporaries, that evokes an involuntary homage from every eye.

Her mother, writing of her when she was about sixteen and already the belle of New Orleans, to one who had never seen her, said, "She is not a beauty, not a genius, but a good and affectionate child."

Josiah Quincy, that ubiquitous beau who paid his court to the belles of so many cities, seeing her in Washington in 1826, declared that she was not handsome, while he admitted that she was undoubtedly the greatest belle in the United States. "She has a fine figure, a pretty face, dances well, and dresses to admiration," he continued, endeavoring to solve the mystery of the attraction exercised by this exquisite specimen of womanhood. He further confessed that when he left her he bore away an image of loveliness and grace never to be erased, and he went on to quote Burke's apostrophe to the Queen of France,—"Surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision."

She was the daughter of Edward Livingston, a brother of that Chancellor Livingston who, on the 30th of April, 1789, administered the oath of office to the first President of the United States, and of an eminently beautiful creole, Louise Moreau.

Fleeing the terrors of the negro insurrection in San Domingo, Madam Moreau, a young widow, arrived in New Orleans just as the Louisiana purchase was consummated and the province became the property of the United States. French then to the very core, the city has retained evidences of its origin longer than any city of the Union. The thrill of anguish with which it realized that Louisiana had been sold by Napoleon to the United States "on this 9th of July, 1803, at seven P.M.," left its indelible impression upon a people loyal to their nationality and tenacious of its prerogatives.

The wave of emigration which swept into the newly acquired territory from the north bore thither Edward Livingston, of New York. Fortune's reverses had driven him into the new country with the hope of finding there a more promising field for his talent and labors.

The Americans were not well received. Scarcely more than a hundred out of the eight thousand inhabitants had greeted the stars and stripes as they were raised for the first time over the city. So strong, indeed, was the prejudice against them that every unfortunate occurrence was instantly attributed to them. Miss Hunt relates that upon one occasion when a ball was interrupted by an earthquake an indignant old creole gentleman exclaimed that the pleasure of ladies had never thus been interrupted in the days of Spanish or French dominion.

Livingston's knowledge of the language, his tact, his adaptiveness, together with his splendid ability, soon raised him to a conspicuous place at the bar. He was a widower, thirty-nine years of age, when he married Madam Moreau, who was but nineteen. Cora was the only child of this marriage, and ever, even after her own marriage, the inseparable companion of both parents. From her father she derived a sound knowledge of the political questions of the day that made her an intelligent spectator of the historic period in which she lived. From her mother she inherited that grace, mental and physical, that so indelibly impressed her upon the life of which she formed so brilliant a part that her name can no more be eliminated from it than can the names of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, or Henry Clay.

The cultivation of her mind was intrusted to her uncle, Major August Davezac, from whom she received an education of unusual scope. She matured early, being probably more or less at all times a part of the social life that surrounded her parents and into which she made her formal entrée at the age of fourteen.

The social atmosphere of New Orleans at this time was like that of no other city on the North American Continent. Creole tastes and institutions were predominant. The only society of the city was Creole, and very delightful and very exclusive it was. The French opera was then, as it has been since, one of its conspicuous features. Tuesdays and Saturdays were the nights when the fashionable world was to be seen in the boxes, and the stage presented nothing more attractive than the beautifully dressed women of the audience, with their artistic coiffures. There were receptions in the boxes between the acts, and a belle's powers of attraction were thus publicly manifested to a people ever ready to add the tribute of its homage.

Cora Livingston before she was sixteen years old, gentle and retiring, shrinking from publicity such as attaches to belles at this end of the century, was known throughout the city of her birth as its greatest belle. In the evenings of the warm season, when the balcony of her house in Chartres Street was converted into a reception-room, in the midst of a devoted family she received not only the admiration of distinguished guests, but the chivalrous and silent homage of many an unknown passer-by.

Frenchmen visiting New Orleans frequently brought letters of introduction from Lafayette to Livingston, whom he had known in New York. Cora thus early became accustomed to an association not only with people of her own city, but with many eminent cosmopolites.

In 1812, when war was declared against England, New Orleans fell into line and gave glorious proof of her loyalty. Her prejudices were swallowed up in the common cause that drew all sections of the country together, and she became in deed, as she already was in name, an American city.

General Jackson's friendship for the Livingstons, of which he gave so many handsome proofs, began at this time.

In 1822 Edward Livingston was elected to Congress, and for eleven years thereafter Washington became his home. While he achieved prominence as a legislator and statesman, the brilliancy of his daughter was acquiring for her a national reputation. He leased the Decatur residence on Lafayette Square, within a stone's throw of the White House, and there gathered about this distinguished family the most cultured element of the Washington of that period,—the Calhouns and their gifted daughter with her perspicuous political theories, the Adamses, Webster, Clay, Chief Justice Marshall, Martin Van Buren, Mrs. Madison, their neighbor across the Park, and the widow of Admiral Decatur.