It was the exception in those days for members of Congress to have their own homes. They lived for the most part in hotels and boarding-houses, and the resident branch of society was more distinctive. Mrs. Decatur, widowed by the famous Bladensburg duel of March 20, 1820, had retired to her estate at Kalorama, which became one of the most delightful centres of resident society. She favored the Livingstons with her sincere regard, and included them among her guests, frequently as often as three times in one week. To stand forth as she does from among the bevy of brilliant women who led the social life of Washington, at a time when conversation was a fine art, deriving a stimulus from such men as Randolph, Pinckney, Webster, and Story, and when women were quite the equals, in wit, humor, and happy rejoinder, of these veteran conversationalists, is an indisputable proof of the superior mental endowments of Cora Livingston.

The Capitol was then as much a feature to the people of Washington as it is to-day to the people outside of Washington. Thither the belles and beaux of the city betook themselves as regularly as the session opened, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue beneath the double row of Lombardy poplars, planted when Jefferson was President. The halls of Congress were smaller and better adapted to both seeing and hearing than they are at present. The discussion of public questions differed also from what one hears nowadays, there being more spontaneity in the oratory and a larger number participating, unless, indeed, there was a grand occasion when the big guns were brought into action, and Clay's mellifluous voice was heard, or Webster's organ notes pealed forth, or Randolph's shrill pipe rent the air.

A distinctive social feature of the time were the assembly balls, held usually at some such place as Carucci's, where Cora Livingston's graceful dancing again made her the cynosure of all eyes. The set in which she danced—there were no round dances in those days—was continually surrounded by admiring spectators, many dancers foregoing that pleasure for the greater one of watching her. Cora Livingston in a ball-gown, going through the stately evolutions of a quadrille, the very embodiment of winsome grace, was a vision that tarried long afterwards with many who so beheld her.

It was at Carucci's in the winter of 1826, when Miss Livingston's belleship was at its height, that the waltz was first seen in Washington. Baron Stoekelburg, of the Russian legation, was its sponsor, and all Washington looked on with dismay, the Baron and his fair partner, whose name has been lost in oblivion, though her temerity should have earned her a better fate, having the floor to themselves.

In 1829 Livingston went into the Senate, and in May, 1831, he succeeded Van Buren as Secretary of State, Van Buren having taken the high ground, so Livingston expressed it, that as a candidate for the Presidency he should not remain in the Cabinet.

In 1833 President Jackson offered Livingston the mission to France. Our affairs with that country were in a complicated condition, and Livingston's patriotism induced him to accept the office.

In April of that year his daughter was married to Thomas Pennant Barton, a son of Dr. Benjamin Barton, of Philadelphia. President Jackson appointed him Secretary of the legation at Paris, sending his appointment enclosed in a note to Cora, that she might have the pleasure of presenting it to him with her own hands. Her intimate acquaintance with the President dated back to her early childhood, when she was scarcely taller than the cavalry boots worn by the hero of the battle of New Orleans, who readily promised to hang Mitchell, the highest English officer among the prisoners, if the British so much as touched a hair of her father's head. He evinced a paternal pride in the adulation she everywhere received as a woman. At his request she stood as godmother to his wife's great niece, Mary Donalson, now Mrs. Wilcox, who was born in the White House during his term of office.

On their return to America, in 1835, both the Livingstons and Bartons made their home at Montgomery Place at Barrytown on the Hudson, an estate of three hundred acres, which Mr. Livingston had inherited from his sister, Mrs. Montgomery, the widow of General Montgomery, of Revolutionary fame.

Mr. Barton was a man of scholarly tastes, to which the tranquil atmosphere of Montgomery Place, with all its historic associations, together with the close companionship of his gifted wife, was an inspiration. He accumulated there a library which, at the time of his death, was considered one of the most valuable private collections in America. He bequeathed it to his wife with the request that she make such disposition of it as best pleased her. Shortly before her death she arranged for its transfer to the Boston Library, where it is preserved, as she knew her husband desired his life work should be, in its entirety, and known as the Barton collection.

In 1870 she went to France to superintend there the publication of a new edition of her father's work on Penal Laws, which appeared simultaneously with an English edition. In France a number of her father's friends were still living, among them Mr. Charles Lucas, of the French Institute, who wrote the Preface to the edition brought out in that country.

Having survived her parents and husband, Mrs. Barton died suddenly at Montgomery Place on the 23d of May, 1873.

The last two winters of her life were spent in Washington, where, at a time when American society was singularly rapid, she shone as the last ray from the glory of an age that was gone, in her whole manner and bearing the unmistakable gentlewoman.

Going one day to her former home, the Decatur House, she requested, without giving her name, that she might be permitted to see the drawing-room. General Beale, who then occupied the house, of which his widow still retains possession, in courteous compliance with her request, led the way thither. As she entered the familiar apartment, memory, conjuring up the forms that were no more, shut out the actual presence of her host. At length regaining her self-possession, she said, "A strange desire has of late possessed me to see again this house in which I spent such happy days. Just where I am standing now I stood thirty-nine years ago and was married." "You then were Miss Cora Livingston," said the general, entering into her mood and reverting instinctively to the days when her scintillating wit had made the name famous, though in the sorrow-laden woman there was no trace of the glorious girl.

EMILY MARSHALL
(MRS. WILLIAM FOSTER OTIS)

Boston claims as her own the greatest American man of the nineteenth century, and even with more justice, the most beautiful woman born in America within the same period. "Emily Marshall as completely filled the ideal of the lovely and feminine, as did Webster the ideal of the intellectual and the masculine," Quincy, a native of the same State, has written of her, adding that though superlatives were intended only for the use of the very young, not even the cooling influences of half a century enabled him to avoid them in speaking of her.

He never forgot the first time he saw her walking on Dover Street Bridge, Boston's fashionable promenade in those days. "Centuries are likely to come and go," he continued, "before society will again gaze spellbound upon a woman so richly endowed with beauty as was Miss Emily Marshall. She stood before us, a reversion to that faultless type of structure which artists have imagined in the past, and to that ideal loveliness of feminine disposition which poets have placed in the mythical golden age."

Daniel Webster upon one occasion, during his residence in Boston, entered the old Federal Street Theatre, and was hailed with cheers. A few minutes later Emily Marshall appeared in her box, when the entire audience rose as one man and offered her the same homage it had bestowed upon Webster. To us who look back upon her, through nearly three-quarters of a century, she stands forth in such exquisite relief from her environment that we are conscious of it only where the light of her beguiling presence touches it.

She was the daughter of Josiah Marshall, a Boston merchant in the China trade, a man of sagacity and enterprise in business affairs, and possessed of those traits that made him a most lovable father, wisdom, benevolence, and gentleness, with a quaint humor and readiness in repartée that enhanced the bond of comradeship between himself and his children.

The people of his own State, as well as the inhabitants of the far-away Sandwich Islands, are indebted to him for many benefactions. To the latter his ships carried the first missionaries, the materials for the first houses erected there, and the carpenters to build them. Upon being charged duty on some salmon which he had imported from the Columbia River, he pointed out to Louis Cass the desirability of establishing the claim of the United States to the region of Oregon.

In the improvements which added so much to the prosperity of Boston in 1826 he was Mayor Quincy's constant adviser and abettor.

He was a handsome man, with firm mouth and kindling eyes, and his quick step was well known in the business world, where to many a young man he gave the opportunity which was the opening of a successful mercantile career.

He was a son of Lieutenant Isaac Marshall of the Revolutionary army, and a great-grandson of John Marshall, one of the founders of Billerica, Massachusetts, in which town he was born. In the year 1800 he married Priscilla Waterman, a daughter of Freeman Waterman, who represented the town of Halifax in the Cambridge Convention which ratified for Massachusetts the Constitution of the United States.

Waterman had a sister who was distinguished for her charm, and who married a Mr. Josselyn. Traditions of the Josselyn beauty lingered in Plymouth until Emily Marshall's time. Mrs. Marshall was a woman of much beauty, grace, and dignity.

Emily was born in the year 1807 on an estate at Cambridge, which had been laid out a century before by Thomas Brattle. Shortly after her birth her parents moved into a house in Brattle Square, Boston, known as the White House. It was built upon a terrace, with steps running down to the square. A large, old-fashioned garden in the rear was one of its attractions. The house had already had two distinguished tenants, Lieutenant-Governor Bolin and John Adams, the latter having lived there when he was a young lawyer.

When Emily was fourteen years old her family once more transplanted their household gods, going this time into the house on Franklin Place, to which her beauty brought such fame. It had already begun to manifest itself, and when she was but nine or ten years of age she was frequently stopped on the street by strangers, who asked whose child she was and involuntarily told her of her budding loveliness. Yet so unconscious did she ever appear of its possession, so wholly lacking in personal vanity, that one of her sisters, gazing upon her one night arrayed in a ball-gown, and unable to restrain her admiration, asked her if she realized how beautiful she was. "Yes," she replied, "I know that I am beautiful, but I do not understand why people act so unwisely about it."

Her education was begun at Madame English's school, where Russell Sturgis, afterwards a partner of the Barings, said he first made her acquaintance. Like every one else who ever saw her, he never forgot her. More than forty years after her death, writing to thank her daughter for the photograph of a portrait she had sent him, he said, "I remember perfectly the portrait and the time when it was painted. No painter could ever give the brilliant expression which always lighted her beautiful face; the portrait is as good, therefore, as any one could make it."

At Dr. Park's school on Mount Vernon Street, then one of the best girls' schools in Boston, Margaret Fuller was one of her school-mates, and confessed later to a sister of Emily's that she would willingly have changed her mental gifts for those of the beauty and magnetism with which Emily was endowed.

From Dr. Park's Emily went to Madame Canda's French school on Chestnut Street. Her musical education, which continued till the time of her marriage, was conducted by Mr. Matthew, Mademoiselle Berthien, and Mr. Ostinelli.

The long acquaintance existing for generations among the families and individuals who made up the Boston society of Emily Marshall's day, had instilled into it a spirit of delightful simplicity. A traveller from Great Britain who visited the United States early in the century declared that all the people of the Bay State called one another by their Christian names.

Dinner-parties were daylight affairs, beginning usually not later than four o'clock. The dinner was served in courses, beginning with soup, which was followed frequently by a corn-meal pudding designed for the avowed purpose of mitigating the appetite before the introduction of the roast, which was carved upon the table by the host, and served with Madeira, port, or sherry.

One of Harrison Gray Otis's favorite after-dinner stories, which he told in his own matchless way, was of the first appearance of champagne in Boston. It was introduced by the French consul, the unsophisticated Bostonians partaking of the palatable beverage with all the confidence which they were wont to bestow upon cider, of which they thought it to be only a mild form and of foreign extraction.

From eight until twelve were the hours for balls, at which girls out for the first time wore white book-muslin frocks, the belles of a season or more appearing in tarleton, and dancing out a pair of slippers in an evening, slippers then being made with paper soles and no heels. Light refreshments, such as nuts, raisins, or oysters, were served at these evening affairs, and were passed on trays, there being no elaborately set supper-tables.

The five-o'clock tea, now so prevalent throughout the country, made its way first into Boston and New York, where it appeared in all its native English simplicity.

From England also came actors bringing us our first conception of Shakespearean characters, Cooper interpreting Hamlet to a Boston audience in 1807, the year Emily Marshall was born, followed by Wallack, Edmund Kean, Charles Matthews, the comedian, and Phillips, with his infectious songs, the echoes of such refrains as "Though love is warm awhile" floating long after from drawing-room, nursery, and kitchen.

From the mother-country came our literature of the early century, Scott, the new writer, being much read, also Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and Shakespeare always.

Boston early achieved her reputation as a patroness of letters. At her noted seat of learning not only the youth of America, but a number of foreigners were even then educated. Many an American boy who claimed Harvard as his Alma Mater had journeyed to her sacred precincts, when the country was in its teens, all the way from the wilds of Kentucky on horseback.

Commencement day was a State holiday, when the flower of Massachusetts womanhood united to do honor to the occasion. Many a man went thence on his way with a face enshrined in his memory that he had not found in his Virgil or his Homer, though nothing more perfect graced those classic pages than the face of Emily Marshall.

Though Willis's sonnet speaks of her eyes as hazel, they have been described elsewhere as black. It is probable that their color varied and intensified with every thought or emotion. Her hair was of that golden brown that flashes like bronze in the sunlight. In height she was five feet and five inches. "Her personal grace," said one of her admirers, a judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, "was not acquired; a creature of such absolute natural perfection was physically unable to make an ungraceful movement."

One who knew her in daily life writes: "The unspeakable grace, the light of the eye, the expression of the face, they come back to me as I think of her, but I cannot convey them to others. It was the light in a porcelain vase. You could draw the outlines of the vase, but when the light was quenched it could be known no more."

Enshrined in this form of almost unearthly loveliness was a spirit of even rarer beauty, a character that would have made even an ugly woman a force. In every relationship she wielded an exquisite influence. With a nature profoundly and silently religious were combined a high sense of duty, a ready sympathy, an absolute frankness and simplicity, a clear, practical judgment, and a rapid insight into character.

In conversation she drew out the best thoughts of others intuitively and without vanity, reserving her own brilliant intellect and ready wit for those who really enjoyed it.

To her children, her self-abnegation, her gentleness, her faultless judgment, the intense womanliness of her nature, made her an ideal mother. She was as tenderly loved by women as she was chivalrously worshipped by man. Her twenty-nine years of life were all too short for those who prized and lost her.

"Say that no envious thought could have been possible in her presence," is another woman's tribute to her; "that her sunny ways were fascinating to all alike; that she was as kind and attentive to the stupid and tedious as if they were talented and of social prominence." Of the effect everywhere produced by so exquisite a personality there are countless evidences. It was not restricted to any age, sex, or social class. Mr. William Amory claims to have been in his youth the most distinguished man in Boston, because he was not in love with Emily Marshall.

A carpenter, whose shop was near the house in which she lived after her marriage, failed to go home to his dinner one day, and being asked the reason, replied that he had seen Mrs. Otis go out earlier in the day and he hoped that she might come back that way, adding that he would rather see her any day than eat his dinner.

Franklin Place became the favorite walk with the young men of Boston, many of whom never failed once or twice daily to pass her house, with the hope of catching a glimpse of her at one of its windows. Dr. Malcolm's church, of which she was a member, also added many devotees to its congregation, William Lloyd Garrison being among the number, who confessed that he occasionally went there with the hope of seeing the lovely face of Emily Marshall.

Nor was the repute of her beauty confined to her native city. Wherever she went her unusual presence was instantly felt; she needed no society correspondent to herald her, no princely admirer to create prestige for her. Her claim to the world's homage was self-evident. She was a queen in her own right.

When she visited Philadelphia, so great was the desire to see her that the young girls were let out of school before the usual closing hour, that they might have an opportunity to see her as she passed along the street.

While she was at Saratoga, "gay, amusing, and confusing," reached in those days from Boston by a tedious stage-coach ride across the country, she never left the hotel nor returned to it without attracting a throng of people, eager even for a passing glimpse of her.

Nathaniel Parker Willis, who once had made a journey in the same coach in which Emily Marshall and her mother were travelling, related afterwards that wherever the coach stopped for dinner the news of the marvellous beauty of one of the passengers was spread abroad so rapidly that by the time Miss Marshall returned to her seat in the coach a great crowd of people would be assembled to see her.

The following is Willis's very pretty acrostic on Emily Marshall, which is included in his published verses in the form of a sonnet:

Percival's sonnet, published in the Literary Gazette of Philadelphia, August, 1825, is perhaps the best known of the poetical outpourings which her loveliness inspired. It also is an acrostic.

William Foster Otis, to whom she was married in May, 1831, first saw her when she was fourteen years old, on her way home from school. He loved her from the moment his eyes fell upon her, and honored her with the loyalty of a lifetime, though death robbed him of her five years after their marriage.

Of the wedding there is extant a very good description in the form of a letter written by the bridegroom's sister, under date of May 20, 1831.

"There were fifty guests at the wedding, an enormous crowd at the visit [reception] which kept us until half-past ten from supper. The bride looked very lovely, and was modest and unaffected. Her dress was a white crêpe lisse, with a rich vine of silver embroidery at the top of the deep hem. The neck and sleeves were trimmed with three rows of elegant blond lace very wide. Gloves embroidered with silver, stockings ditto. Her dark-brown hair dressed plain in front, high bows with a few orange-blossoms and a rich blond lace scarf, tastefully arranged on her head, one end hanging front over her left shoulder, the other hanging behind over her right. No ornaments of any kind, either on her neck or ears, not even a buckle. I never saw her look so beautiful. Every one was remarking on her beauty as they passed in and out of the room. Mrs. Marshall [the bride's mother] looked extremely handsome. William [the bridegroom] looked quite as handsome as the bride, and seemed highly delighted. The bride and groom went to their house alone [70 Beacon Street] about one o'clock [in the morning]. The groomsmen serenaded them until the birds sang as loud as their instruments."

James Freeman Clarke, who was present at her wedding, said afterwards that he "had often been perplexed at the accounts he had read of the great personal power of Mary Queen of Scots. He had never been able to comprehend how the mere beauty of a woman could so control the destinies of individuals and nations, causing men gladly to accept death as the price of a glance of the eyes or a touch of the hand." After he had beheld Emily Marshall, however, he realized the possibilities of such a power that is not created once in a century.

She died in 1826, leaving two daughters and an infant son.

The above lines were written by her friend Fanny Inglis, afterwards Madame Calderon de la Barca.

The chivalrous devotion which her daughters call forth, after more than threescore years, from the men who knew her is in itself sufficient to place her among the classics of American womanhood.

OCTAVIA WALTON
(MADAME LE VERT)

Into a world in which so many are born strangers, some later to know it in part and others destined to remain forever out of touch with life, and lonely spectators rather than a part of it, Octavia Walton came as unto her own. Every atom of her being was in absolute accord with the universe. No bristling antipathies hedged in her genial personality nor raised barriers between herself and the beauties of life. She perceived them always and with an enthusiasm that raised not only her own existence, but that of many others, above the level of the commonplace. She was a sort of social sun, radiating light, warmth, and beauty upon all the lives that touched hers, and it has been said that no one ever came in contact with her, of no matter what rank or condition in life, without experiencing a sense of elation. She was one of nature's cosmopolites, a woman to whom the whole world was home and the people of all nations her friends. Far more to this gift of temperament than to those of her personal beauty or intellect, does she owe the eminence of her position among the American women of her century.

She was born early enough in the history of the Republic to partake in a measure of the glow of patriotic enthusiasm that had been the inspiration of its founders. Though she was intensely American, she grew up with no touch of bitterness for the mother-country, cherishing the memory of Chatham's words uttered in the House of Lords, "You cannot conquer America," rather than his sovereign's misguided efforts "to be a king."

Her grandfather, George Walton, who died two years before her birth, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was a native of Prince Edward County, Virginia, but removed, prior to the Revolution, to Georgia, whence he was sent as a delegate to the first Congress. He had married, in the State of his adoption, Miss Camber, the daughter of an English nobleman and the heiress to large tracts of land that were grants from the crown. To this grandmother Octavia Walton was indebted for many graphic stories of the thrilling days through which her country had passed in establishing itself as an independent nation. She was in Philadelphia with her husband, who was in attendance upon the Congress there, when the news of the fall of Yorktown was received. The town was quietly sleeping when the watchman calling the hours announced, as usual, "Past midnight, and all's well!" then, after an instant's pause and in a voice that resounded through the streets, "And Cornwallis is taken!" It sent a thrill through the town, and turned that October night into day, for presently the streets were swarming with people wild with joyous excitement.

When Madame Le Vert related to Lamartine, with whom she passed an evening during one of her visits to Paris, in speaking of the Declaration of Independence, that her grandfather's name was thereon inscribed, and that he had given his blood and his fortune to the cause of America's freedom, the Frenchman arose and bowed to her profoundly. "Madame," he said, "in his name you have a noble heritage. It is the true patent of nobility, and you rightly cherish your descent from such a brave and heroic patriot with honest pride."

The State of Georgia gave George Walton high honors, making him governor and, later, judge of the Supreme Court, and erecting a monument to commemorate his sterling qualities in one of the principal thoroughfares of the city of Augusta. His son and namesake married the accomplished and beautiful Miss Sally Walker, the daughter of a distinguished jurist of Georgia. Of the two children of their marriage,—a son and a daughter,—the latter was born at Bellevue, near Augusta, in the year 1810. She was named by her mother after the Roman Octavia, the beloved and noble sister of Augustus and the deserted wife of Marc Anthony, and was taught to revere the beauty of a character that possessed, as Pope Pius IX. said, when Madame Le Vert told him for whom she was named, "every virtue and grace that should adorn a woman."

Her early education was directed entirely by her mother and grandmother. An old Scotch tutor later assumed charge of the studies of Octavia and her brother, instructing them together in the sciences and languages. The facility with which Octavia mastered the latter was an evidence of the remarkable elasticity and adaptability of her nature. She acquired readily not only the language, but all the gestures and mannerisms of a foreign people. To her father this branch of her education was a matter of much interest. In the year 1821, when she was eleven years old, he became Secretary of State for Florida under Andrew Jackson, who was governor of the Territory. There often came to him in connection with the affairs of his office, letters and despatches in French and Spanish, of both of which languages she had so accurate a knowledge that he could entirely rely upon her translations of them. During a court ball at which she was present while in England, some years after her marriage, she delighted the ambassadors from France, Spain, and Italy by talking with each in his own tongue. She pleased the Holy Father no less upon the occasion of her audience with him, when, after he had spoken with her in both French and Spanish, thinking it might be less of an effort for him, she asked him to speak in his own tongue. During her residence in Florida, where her father succeeded General Jackson in the governorship, she also acquired a goodly store of Indian legends, which became later the delight of many an audience. She related on shipboard one night the story of Alabama having received the name from a tribe of Indians who were driven by a fierce northern foe to the forests of the southeast, and, coming upon a beautiful river, the chief struck his tent-pole, exclaiming "Alabama! Alabama!" meaning, "Here we rest." She was greeted, upon going on deck the following day, with an outspread buffalo-robe, which a Chicagoan was taking to England as a gift for the Queen, and requested to make it her "Alabama" during the remainder of the voyage.

When her father selected a permanent seat of government for Florida, he permitted her to give it a name, and she called it Tallahassee,—the Indian word for "beautiful land,"—as a courtesy to the Seminole chief who had first pitched his tent on the spot. She had much sympathy and affection for the Indians, often pleading their cause against some act of aggression or injustice, and they had a tender reverence for her, calling her frequently "the white dove of peace."

One of the memorable events of her young life was the visit of Lafayette to America. It enters into the record of many lives that covered that period, some of which were far spent and some so tenderly youthful that the little marquis saluted them only by proxy, delegating somebody else "to kiss the babies" while he shook countless outstretched hands, for he was as complaisant as he was artistic. He wrote to the widow of his old friend, General George Walton, expressing a wish to see her during his stay in Mobile. Her health was not sufficiently robust, however, to admit of her undertaking a journey with the few comforts that were then possible. She sent her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter to represent her, intrusting to Octavia a miniature of her husband, the better to recall his features to Lafayette's memory and to enable him to realize how strong was the resemblance the little girl bore to her illustrious grandfather. She talked to him in French, so that the interview was to Lafayette a time of delightful relaxation, and it was with genuine reluctance that he saw it draw to a close. To Octavia it was the first in a long series of interesting memories associated with Mobile, whither her family removed from Florida in the year 1835. In the latter State, however, she spent the happy period of her young womanhood; hence Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, in some lines addressed to her at a later period, calls her "Sweet Rose of Florida."

Pensacola was the naval station of the gulf coast, and the constant coming and going of men-of-war, with the attendant festivities of balls of welcome and farewell banquets, were a distinctive feature in the social life of that portion of the Territory.

Octavia Walton, the governor's daughter, cultivated intellectually to a degree that made her the appreciative listener and intelligent talker among men of science and of letters, and with a personal beauty that made her the admiration of every one, occupied from her earliest girlhood a position of unusual prominence.

Long runs with her brother in the invigorating air of the coast had given to her supple figure, with its graceful curves, that erect carriage which she always retained. Her head was well poised, and her soft brown hair parted simply above a broad brow of unusual whiteness and transparency. In her blue eyes there lurked a suggestion of the cool and quiet depth of a forest, while her mouth, that feature which, says Oliver Wendell Holmes, we all make for ourselves, denoted the sweetness of her character. These were the visible forms of the loveliness of the young Octavia Walton, whom Frederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, called "the magnolia flower of the South."

In 1835, the year her family moved to Mobile, accompanied by her mother and brother, she made a tour of the United States, visiting during the summer the famous resort of the North, Saratoga Springs, and going to Washington after the assembling of Congress in December. She attained a fame during that year that made her the inspiration of poets noted for the beauty of their lyric verse, and the subject of several analytical writings. She formed during the same period the friendship of two of the most eminent men of that time, Washington Irving and Henry Clay. She met Irving in travelling, and discovered his identity in a singular way. It was three years after his return from Spain, where he had represented his country with so much dignity and ability that his welcome home had been much in the nature of an ovation. The stage-coach, in which so many pleasant acquaintances were made, was yet the usual means of transportation, though the duration of journeys had been greatly lessened by the successful introduction of the steamboat, in which enterprise Fulton already had competitors, one young Vanderbilt running a rival line on the Sound between New York and Providence. Irving, who had been on the dock when Fulton made the first experiment with his steamer, used to relate with exquisite humor how the breathless silence of the crowd of curious spectators who watched her puff off into the stream was broken by the voice of an incredulous man saying, "She may go well enough for a time, but give me a good sloop." Being singularly shy, he usually talked but little among strangers. Divining in the young girl, who sat opposite him in the stage-coach for several days during the summer of 1835, those same qualities—"the sound and pure intellect and the heart full of affection"—that so endeared her to Miss Bremer, he dropped frequently into the current of bright talk she kept up with her mother and brother. They speculated frequently upon his identity, for his appearance was unusual, his manner courtly, and his language that of a most cultivated man. While she was talking with her brother in Spanish one day, he joined in their conversation and related some incident in connection with a bull-fight he had seen when in Spain. Octavia had already heard the identical story from another source, and, connecting the two narrations, she exclaimed, quickly, and quite unconsciously betraying the fact that his identity had been a matter of curiosity to her, "I know who you are! You are Washington Irving. Mr. Slidell, who related that story to me, told me that Washington Irving was standing beside him when it happened." Thus began a friendship that had an extensive influence upon her life. Realizing how keen were her powers of observation, and how unusual her command of language, he advised her to keep a journal, which was her first effort at writing, at which she attained later a leading position among women of letters at the South. He corresponded with her till the end of his life, and aided her with many suggestions gathered from his own experience in a long literary career. She in return shed many a ray of brightness over an existence that, with all its fame and success, was not without its lonely hours. The last time they met he reluctantly watched her departure from Sunnyside. "I feel, my child," he said, "that you are taking all the sunshine away with you."

Henry Clay looked upon her with the same tender pride that characterized Irving's attitude towards her. The beauty of her feet being at one time a subject of comment in his presence, he said that, while he was not prepared to pass judgment upon them, he was proud to be able to bear testimony to a beauty of tongue that he considered without parallel. Like Irving's, his friendship for her knew no change during the remainder of his lifetime. When the corner-stone of the monument erected to his memory in New Orleans was laid, she delivered an address that was well worthy of the eloquence of the man it eulogized.

In 1836 Octavia Walton was married, in the city of Mobile, to Dr. Henry S. Le Vert, a son of Dr. Claud Le Vert, who, coming to America as surgeon of the fleet under Rochambeau, had remained there after the termination of hostilities, settling in Virginia, and marrying a niece of Admiral Vernon. As Madame Le Vert, Octavia Walton attained that same social sovereignty that was achieved a few years later by Mrs. Rush, of Philadelphia, and at a still more recent period by Mrs. Astor, of New York. The same sort of instinctive tribute was everywhere accorded each of these women, raising her to an eminence in which she was sustained by the unusual order of the gifts with which she was endowed. In Mobile, so absolute was the leadership of Madame Le Vert that she was frequently designated simply as "Madame," it being everywhere understood that the title without the accompaniment of any name applied only to her.

Her home on Government Street was the most noted of the city. There she entertained at various times not only the most distinguished of the people of her own country, but many eminent foreigners, Kossuth, among others, and Frederika Bremer. Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, the daughter of the Duke of Rutland, having been her guest for several weeks, gave her later that introduction that made possible the establishment of her social fame in England.

Joseph Jefferson, growing up in the profession in which he now stands in the foremost rank, and in whom she early recognized the divine spark of genius, had frequent proofs of the kindliness of her hospitality.

Her library was the feature of her home in which she always evinced the most interest. She never abandoned those habits of study which kept her in touch with the progressive minds of the world. Beauty alone is not sufficient to give a woman the place Madame Le Vert filled. It attracts, but there must be behind it the sustaining force of an intelligence radiating sympathy, of a mentality developed and adorned with those graces that enable it to enter into and illuminate the lives that approach it. She continued to read in the foreign languages she had mastered in her early girlhood, painstakingly teaching them to her children, whom, in their infancy, she often sung to sleep with the love ditties of Italy. To her husband she was a continual source of revelation and pride. Precise, practical, profoundly interested in his profession, he felt little interest in the purely fashionable element of the life that revolved about her. In her relationship to it, however, her power to attract and hold such a diversity of tastes and temperaments he found an interesting study. At her levees and receptions it was his delight to take up his position where he could watch her, and, if possible, where he could occasionally catch the sparkle of her words.

To a nature keenly alive to every impression, the loss of her only brother, to whom she was attached by ties of an extraordinary sympathy, brought a grief that for a long time overshadowed her happy spirit. A few years after this loss,—in June, 1853,—accompanied by her father and the elder of her daughters, she made her first visit to the Old World, whose treasures and resources her classical education had so ably fitted her to enjoy. Her journal and letters written during this period and a subsequent trip ring with the enthusiasm of a girl. They formed the basis of her first published work, which met with much success, for in those days the theme was fresher, and she handled it with a sprightliness that gave individuality and interest to every page. Very graphically she relates how the first ardor with which she embarked upon the new and delightful experience of a transatlantic voyage was quenched by that unromantic malady, sea-sickness. With the memory of the torture fresh upon her, she wrote that Solomon, when he ejaculated, "O that mine enemy would write a book!" probably knew nothing of the agonies of sea-sickness, or he would rather have invoked that malady upon him.

The London season was at its height when she arrived there. Well introduced, she created so favorable an impression upon a society where the success of an American depends largely if not entirely upon personal merit as evinced by his or her good breeding, intelligence, and powers to entertain, that she experienced all the delights of a hospitality which to the uninitiated is cold and exclusive. She was presented to the Queen at a court ball, to which she received the unusual honor of an invitation without a previous presentation to Her Majesty. With genuine regret she saw the days allotted to her stay in England draw to a close. Everywhere, however, she found and made friends, many strangers recognizing in her, in all its strength and purity, that sympathy which makes the world akin, and involuntarily opening their hearts to her. She was intensely interested in every one and everything, so that her life never contracted. Her early memories were associated with the Spanish, and she never outgrew her appreciation for the grace of their civilization. Her ability to speak the language added much to the pleasure and profit of her visit to Spain, and her journal recounting her stage-coach experiences contains frequent allusions to the unfailing courtesy of the people of that country. In Italy her knowledge of the language of the land again made her the spokesman of her little party, and with beneficial results. In Florence she had the pleasure of meeting the Brownings, and the interest they inspired in her seems to have been mutual. Mrs. Browning, whose health did not permit her to go out in the night air, broke the rule it had entailed upon her and went to a party given in honor of Madame Le Vert on the eve of her departure, that she might once more have the pleasure of seeing and talking with her. During one of her visits to Rome she had one of those peculiar experiences that evinced the friendliness she everywhere inspired. She had gone with her daughter to St. Peter's to attend the ceremony known as the Apostle's banquet. At the termination of the exercises there began an awful struggle for liberty in the packed aisles of the great church. Madame Le Vert was well-nigh overpowered, when suddenly she felt herself lifted from her feet, raised high in the air, and safely ensconced on a window-ledge, while a reassuring voice whispered, in French, "There, little woman, don't be afraid; you'll be safe there." Her rescuer was a powerful Russian woman, who, when she had placed Miss Le Vert beside her mother, said, simply, "Do not forget me when you think of the Apostle's banquet," and moved away with the surging crowd.

In all her journeys, both in her own country and in Europe, she was accompanied by her colored maid Betsey. "North, South, East, and West," wrote one of her friends, "goes Betsey with her mistress through bristling ranks of abolitionists, up the Rhine, over the Alps, everywhere goes Betsey."

"If you would see the ideal relationship between a lady and her female slave," said Frederika Bremer, "you should see Octavia Le Vert and her clever, handsome, mulatto attendant, Betsey. Betsey seems really not to live for anything else than for her mistress Octavia."

At the Austrian border they were put through a series of questions, all of their responses "being recorded," said Madame Le Vert, "for the benefit of posterity." Betsey was put down as a Moor, much to her dismay, and she besought her mistress to assure them that she "had nothing but pure American blood in her veins, and was a slave from the South."

During her second visit to Europe, in 1855, Madame Le Vert spent the summer in Paris, the governor of Alabama having named her Commissioner from that State to the Paris Exposition of that year. His gallantry was a frequent subject of comment and appreciation, for she was the only woman among the commissioners. The position, however, seems to have been purely honorary, for she lamented that when asked to point out the products of Alabama in her department, she could only indicate her daughter. "If there had been even only a few cotton-seed," she said, "it would at least have served to swear by."

She witnessed the enthusiastic reception tendered by the French nation to the Queen of England, was present at the ball given by the Emperor in her honor, and was at the opera the night the royal party visited it, when the whole audience rose en masse at the first note of England's national anthem, sung by Roger, Alboni, and Cruvelli. She heard with a thrill of enthusiasm the "Vive la Reine Victoria" that burst from a thousand lips, and saw the Emperor lead the gracious queen three times to the front of the box to acknowledge the tumultuous tribute. In her own box sat, on that memorable night, an ex-President of the great republic across the water,—Millard Fillmore.

A visit made during her stay in Ferrara, Italy, to the home of the poet Ariosto so impressed Madame Le Vert that it was productive of a notable result after her return to America. His house had been purchased by the government, and everything in it was preserved in the order in which he had left it at the time of his death. Realizing that it was regarded as a shrine, and devoutly visited by those who would honor the memory of the immortal poet, her thoughts reverted to the home of the great American general, Mount Vernon, then falling into decay, whereas it might be similarly preserved by the patriotism of the people. She took up the question earnestly after her return to America, and did for the cause at the South as much as Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis did for it at the North. In one day she received at her home in Mobile, in small contributions, upward of a thousand dollars.

Many of Madame Le Vert's most charming letters were written to her mother. After a long day of travel or sight-seeing she frequently sat up far into the night that she might not neglect the pleasant duty of writing these letters.

Her parents' home in Mobile, of which city her father was for a time mayor, was near her own, and she continued to be much with them until their lives closed, which they did in close succession, shortly before the outbreak of the war. Her husband's death occurred during the last year of that melancholy period which shook the homes of the South to their foundation. She went North and remained for over a year after the close of the war, accompanied by her two daughters. She returned to the South for a time, but eventually removed to New York, disposing of her home and many of her possessions, the losses she had sustained and the altered conditions of her life rendering Mobile no longer to her a place of happy existence.

Having been so long a leader, she continued to exercise various queenly prerogatives, which to many people at the North seemed eccentric. She had not the prestige there that would have made them possible, though she was never without her coterie of admirers.

Her later years were not affluent, and she was obliged to put her talents to bread-winning purposes. She died in the city in which she had been born, Augusta, Georgia, on the 13th of March, 1877.

FANNY TAYLOR
(MRS. THOMAS HARDING ELLIS)

The loveliness of Virginia women has been a theme of song and verse. Among the Richmond belles of sixty years ago none were more justly celebrated than that trio known as the Richmond Graces, Sally Chevalier, Fanny Taylor, and Sally Watson. Close companions from early childhood, their unusual beauty as they grew to womanhood brought them fame individually and collectively. Sally Chevalier became the wife of Abram Warwick, Sally Watson, of Alexander Rives, and Fanny Taylor, of whom this sketch is designed to treat at greater length, was twice married. She was educated at the excellent school of Miss Jane Mackenzie, in Richmond, at a time when a young lady's education embraced a rather superficial dip into the languages, a good deal of poetry, some history, a neat Italian handwriting, and a care of their peach-blossom complexions and slender hands. Frivolous as it sounds compared with the curriculum of girls' schools in good standing at this end of the century, the history of the South furnishes many evidences of the profundity as well as the brilliancy of its women.