The first wife of John Tyler, tenth President of the United States, was the third daughter of Robert Christian, Esq., of Cedar Grove, in New Kent county, in the State of Virginia; a gentleman of good private fortune, an earnest Federalist of that day in his political opinions, and an attached friend and adherent of George Washington. He possessed the highest social and political influence in the county of his residence, and, indeed, throughout the Peninsular District, embraced between the York and James rivers. His house was the seat of genuine Virginia hospitality, and his neighbors, trusting implicitly to his good sense and integrity, appealed to his arbitration in matters involving legal controversy, in preference to submitting their cases in the courts. For many consecutive years, he was not only the presiding magistrate of his county, but also its representative in the Legislature of the State; and his brothers, among whom was the late Major Edmond Christian, of Creighton, Marshal of Virginia, were men of mark and influence.

This worthy gentleman married in early life Mary Brown, an amiable lady of high worth and character, with whom he lived in happiness until her death, and through whom he was blessed with a large family of sons and daughters; the males being, without exception, distinguished for their personal courage, intelligence, and graceful appearance and manners, and the daughters for their beauty, piety, and domestic virtues.

Among that bevy of fair daughters, Letitia, afterward Mrs. Tyler, born on the 12th of November, 1790, under the paternal roof at Cedar Grove, was, perhaps, the most attractive in her modest refinement and striking loveliness of person and character; and although always instinctively shrinking from public observation, she was regarded as one of the belles of Eastern Virginia. Her hand was sought in marriage by many suitors, but from the number who presented themselves—some of whom were the possessors of large estates—her heart and excellent judgment selected the then talented and rising young lawyer, who, inheriting the unrivalled popularity of his father, Governor John Tyler, with a mind still more brilliant and cultivated, was just entering upon that remarkable career which has so directly and powerfully impressed his genius, not only on the history of his noble old State, but on that of the United States of America.

The marriage of the youthful pair, on the 29th of March, 1813, she being in the twenty-second year of her age, and he having completed his twenty-third on that day, was particularly acceptable to both houses; and Letitia being the idol of her brothers and sisters, upon Mr. Tyler was at once concentrated the unfailing affection and support—an affection and support which attended him through life—of every member of the numerous and powerful Christian family, harmonizing to no inconsiderable extent in Lower Virginia, and uniting in his favor both of the great political parties of the day—his own father having been, privately and publicly, the constant friend of Henry and of Jefferson, a leader in the movement and war of Independence, and the special representative of the State Rights Republicans in his own right, and Mr. Robert Christian having been the constant friend of Washington, and a prominent leader and representative man among the Federalists.

The wedding festivities over, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler retired to their own home in Charles City county, a part of the “Greenway” estate of his father, which at once became an object of attraction and intense interest to the many admirers, friends, and relatives of its happy inmates. Dating from this period until Mrs. Tyler’s death in the Executive Mansion, at the city of Washington, nearly thirty years afterward, nothing, except the loss of two infant children and her subsequent ill-health, ever transpired to mar the felicity of this auspicious union.

In the unselfish, constant, and vigilant affection of his wife, in her personal charms, in her strong common sense and excellent judgment, in her unaffected religious sentiments, in the sweet purity of her gentle life, in her parental and filial devotion, in her watchful care and love for her children, Mr. Tyler found everything to satisfy his affections and to gratify his pride.

In his admitted integrity and worth as a man and citizen, in his great intellectual powers, in his constantly increasing prosperity and rising reputation, in the accounts she received of his eloquence both at the bar and in the legislature, and in the high official trusts which ultimately were literally showered upon him, one after the other, almost without intermission; and finally in his tender solicitude to restore her failing health and to minister to her slightest wish, she discovered all that her woman’s heart, or her feminine ambition required, to complete and secure her wedded happiness. The following letter, the first that Mr. Tyler ever ventured to address to her before marriage, and the original of which is still preserved in the family—apart from the natural simplicity of its style and the ordinary interest that would attach to it—not only presents the most unmistakable evidence of the sound and healthy sentiments, emotions, and principles of character associated with both and impelling to their union, but it is also a remarkable illustration, in view of a long engagement prior to marriage, of the delicate tone and exalted purity of the social structure and civilization that surrounded them and under whose happy influences they were born and reared.

“Although I could not entirely obtain your permission to write to you, yet I am well aware that you will not be displeased at my exercising a privilege, so valuable to one standing in the relation that I do to you. To think of you and to write to you, are the only sources from whence I can derive any real satisfaction during my residence in this place. The prerogative of thinking of those we love, and from whom we are separated, seems to be guaranteed to us by nature, as we cannot be deprived of it either by the bustle and confusion of a town, or by the important duties that attach to our existence. Believe me, my L., that this observation has been completely verified by me since I last saw you, for although deafened by noise, and attentive to the duties of my station, yet you are the subject of my serious meditations and the object of my fervent prayers to heaven. From the first moment of my acquaintance with you, I felt the influence of genuine affection; but now, when I reflect upon the sacrifice which you make to virtue and to feeling, by conferring your hand on me, who have nothing to boast of but an honest and upright soul, and a heart of purest love, I feel gratitude superadded to affection for you. Indeed, I do esteem myself most rich in possessing you. The mean and sordid wretch who yields the unspeakable bliss of possessing her whom he ardently loves, may boast of his ill-acquired wealth, and display his treasures in all the pride of ostentation to the world, but who shall administer to him comfort in the hour of affliction? Whose seraph smile shall chase away the fiends which torment him? The partner of his bosom he neither esteems nor regards, and he knows nothing of the balm which tender affection can bestow. Nature will be still true to herself, for as your favorite Thomson expresses it,

“You express some degree of astonishment, my L., at an observation I once made to you, ‘that I would not have been willingly wealthy at the time that I addressed you.’ Suffer me to repeat it. If I had been wealthy, the idea of your being actuated by prudential considerations in accepting my suit, would have eternally tortured me. But I exposed to you frankly and unblushingly my situation in life—my hopes and my fears, my prospects and my dependencies—and you nobly responded. To ensure to you happiness is now my only object, and whether I float or sink in the stream of fortune, you may be assured of this, that I shall never cease to love you. Forgive me for these remarks, which I have been irresistibly led to make.

“Colonel Christian will deliver you this letter, together with the first two volumes of the ‘Forest of Montabano,’ I do not trouble him with the last two volumes, for fear of incommoding him, and because I shall be at your father’s on Wednesday evening, if the business before the Legislature be not very important. You will feel much sympathy for the unfortunate Angelina, and admiration for the character of good Father Patrick. Frederick is inexplicable until the last volume is read.

“Again suffer me to assure you of my constant esteem and affection, and believe me to be yours most faithfully,

Mrs. Letitia Semple, the only surviving daughter of Mrs. Letitia Tyler, says, regarding this letter, “I enclose you a copy of the first letter my father ever wrote to my mother; and I had a book of original sonnets written by him in his youthful days, many of which were addressed to her; for he was full of music and full of poetry and possessed an exquisite literary taste; but this book has been lost to us, in one of my writing desks stolen during the war.

“My father and my mother were born in the same year—that of 1790, he being from the 29th March to the 12th November older than she was. They were married on father’s twenty-third birthday following that of his birth, after a courtship and engagement of nearly five years. He met her for the first time at a private party in the neighborhood, while on a visit to ‘Greenway,’ the home residence of grandfather Tyler, in Charles City county, adjoining that of New Kent, where grandfather Christian resided at ‘Cedar Grove.’ He had already taken his collegiate degrees at William and Mary College when scarcely more than seventeen years old, and was at the time a law student in Richmond, under the special office counsel and instruction of the celebrated Edmund Randolph, justly esteemed as the father of the Constitution of the United States, as Mr. Jefferson was of the Declaration of American Independence, and who had been the Attorney-General of President Washington, and the Secretary of State of President Jefferson, my grandfather Tyler being Governor of Virginia, and then residing in Richmond. After their troth was plighted, he had been twice or thrice elected to the State Legislature before their marriage was solemnized; and his last visit to her at ‘Cedar Grove’ was only three weeks before the wedding, yet I have heard him repeatedly say that, ‘then, for the first time, he ventured to kiss her hand on parting, so perfectly reserved and modest had she always been.’

“My mother’s mother was Mary Brown, of the same family with that of the late Judge John Brown, of Williamsburg, and Professor Dabney Brown, of William and Mary College, the former of whom finally moved to Kentucky, and the latter more recently to California; and with that of the Hon. James Halyburton, late Judge of the United States District Court of Virginia, and of the Hon. John M. Gregory, late Judge of the Henrico Circuit and Governor of Virginia; and as to the late Judge Christian, and the present Judge Christian, of the Peninsular Circuit and of the General Court of Virginia, the first was her son, and the last her cousin, as are also the present Doctors William and Edward Warren, formerly of Edenton, North Carolina, whither they moved from New Kent in Virginia, but now of Baltimore.”

Not long after her marriage, Mrs. Tyler had the misfortune to lose both of her parents, and now having two less to love in this world, she freely gave the share which had been theirs, to her husband and her children, and to her sisters and her brothers. In truth, at no period of her life does it seem that she existed for herself, but only for those near and dear to her.

She was noted for the beauty of her person and of her features, for the ease and grace of her carriage, for a delicate refinement of taste in dress that excluded with precision every color and ornament not strictly becoming and harmonizing in the general effect. Possessing an acute nervous organization and sensitive temperament, combined with an unusually correct judgment, any observant stranger of polished education would have been almost unconsciously attracted to her among thousands by her air of quiet courtesy and benignity. With these engaging qualities, and the social advantages attaching to her position, she could easily have impressed her power upon what is termed society had she so desired, still she never aspired to wield the sceptre of fashion, and never sought to attract attention beyond the limits of her own family, and the circle of her immediate friends and relatives.

She modestly shrank from all notoriety and evaded the public eye as much as possible. She had not the faintest wish to enjoy the reputation of authoress or wit, or for maintaining an ascendency in the company of brilliant men and women of the world. She was perfectly content to be seen only as a part of the existence of her beloved husband; to entertain her neighbors in her own easy, hospitable, and unostentatious way; to converse with visitors on current topics intelligently; to sit gently by her child’s cradle, reading, knitting, or sewing; or else to while away pleasant hours in the endearing companionship of her sisters and her intimate acquaintances.

It appears that, though she resided in Richmond during the period that Mr. Tyler was Governor of Virginia, and did the honors of the Executive Dwelling of the State with ease, and grace, and singular discretion, winning the commendation of all at a time when the metropolis of Virginia was unexcelled upon the American continent, either in respect to elegant men or accomplished women; yet that she had rarely visited the city while he was a member of the Legislature, and that during his long term of service as Representative and Senator in the Congress of the United States—having been three times elected to the House and twice to the Senate,—she suffered herself to be persuaded only once to pass a winter in Washington, and at the end of another session only reluctantly consented, at his earnest entreaty, to visit one summer the gay centres and resorts of the North.

When either her own health, or that of her husband, or that of her children, absolutely required a change of air and scene, as several times happened, she vastly preferred the bracing temperature and invigorating atmosphere of the mountains of Virginia and the life-imparting Greenbriar waters to the seats of more fashionable display and empty vanity. She was, under all circumstances, the wife and mother, sister and friend, apparently living in and for those whom she loved, and not for herself.

No English lady was ever more skilled and accomplished in domestic culture and economy than was Mrs. Tyler, and she was never so happy as when in the enjoyment of domestic privacy. At her own home she was a pattern of order, system, and neatness, as well as of hospitality, charity, benevolence, and conscientiousness in the discharge of every duty incumbent upon the mistress of a large household, and scrupulously attentive to every wish expressed by her husband as to the management of his interests in his absence on public affairs.

Nothing escaped her watchful yet kindly eye, either within or without the mansion. She loved all pure and beautiful things, whether in nature or in art. The grounds within the curtilage were tastefully arranged in lawns and gardens, and under her immediate inspection were kept carefully adorned with shade trees, and flowering shrubs, and odoriferous plants, and trailing vines, so that in the spring, summer, and fall the airs around were literally loaded with sweets. The kitchen-garden and fruit-orchards were always extensively cultivated.

The dairy and laundry were sedulously supervised, and in all directions poultry and fowls of almost every kind most prized for the table, were to be seen in flocks. She preferred that her servant-women should be held to these milder employments, and to spinning and weaving, knitting and sewing, rather than being assigned to the more onerous tasks of the field upon the plantation.

Thus, under her superintendence, not only were all the negro field-hands and negro children comfortably provided with clothing of home manufacture and make, as well as ministered to with care and supplied with all necessary medical attendance when sick, but, at the same time, the members of the immediate household had their wants, in these respects, for the most part bountifully met; while the rarest and most beautiful toilet fabrics, and counterpanes, and coverlets, such as are not now to be had at any price, were produced by her handmaids, assisted by those of the neighborhood inheriting the art. Beyond all question, and without regard to the portion she brought with her after marriage, as the gift of her father, which was by no means relatively inconsiderable, she maintained by her active economy the pecuniary independence of her husband under his continued public employments, in an age of public virtue, when the representatives of the people, as well as those of the States, received but slight remuneration for their services, and when, in all probability, he would have been otherwise compelled to have withdrawn from the public councils, and to have relinquished the career of ambition in view of his family necessities and requirements.

Mrs. Tyler was baptized in infancy in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in early life became a consistent communicant. At every stage of her existence she was pervaded by a deep religious sentiment, and the Bible was her constant companion. For her neighborly and charitable nature she was proverbial. Although every one who knew her as a young unmarried lady, and nearly all of her contemporaries in more advanced years, are now dead, still her reputation in these respects abides among the living, and is particularly referred to and commented upon in every communication we received concerning her, as well as in all of her obituaries that we have read. And one of the most beautiful traits in her lovely and almost faultless character, in the midst of all her mildness, meekness, gentleness and amiability, was the perfect self-respect which constantly attended her, beating in unison with her true woman’s soul, suffering no encroachment upon true propriety and decorum in her presence, and sustaining her dignity as a Virginia matron, which never, under any circumstances whatever, deserted her.

Mrs. Robert Tyler, the wife of her oldest son, thus wrote concerning her, at her own home, in the bosom of her own family, in the old city of Williamsburg, Virginia, under the first impressions she received after she was married in Pennsylvania, to her sisters at the North:

* * * “The bridal festivities so profusely extended to us in Charles City, that most hospitable of counties, ended last week. My honeymoon has waned, and I have at last settled down at home. If I can ever learn to think any place a home where my own dear father and sisters are not, I certainly can do so here, for a new father and mother have opened their arms and their hearts to me; new and lovely sisters cluster around me; and I am welcomed and approved of by any number of uncles, aunts and cousins. The introduction to all of them was an awful ordeal to go through, you may be sure, but it is happily over, and I have now settled myself down absolutely as one of the family. I know you want me to tell you of each separate member, and of the house, and all my surroundings.

“You know how entirely charming Mr. Tyler’s father is, for you saw him at my wedding in Bristol, but you cannot imagine the tenderness and kindness with which he received me, his ‘new daughter,’ as he called me. Mr. Tyler’s mother is very much as I imagined her from his description. She must have been very beautiful in her youth, for she is still beautiful now in her declining years and wretched health. Her skin is as smooth and soft as a baby’s; she has sweet, loving black eyes, and her features are delicately moulded; besides this her feet and hands are perfect; and she is gentle and graceful in her movements, with a most peculiar air of native refinement about everything she says and does. She is the most entirely unselfish person you can imagine. I do not believe she ever thinks of herself. Her whole thought and affections are wrapped up in her husband and children; and I thank God I am numbered with those dear children, and can partake with them in the blessing of her love. May He give me grace to be ever a kind and loving daughter to her.

“The house is very large and very airy and pleasant, fronting on a large lawn and surrounded by a most beautiful garden. The parlor is comfortably furnished, and has that homelike and occupied look which is so nice. The prettiest thing in it, to my taste, though very old-fashioned, is the paper upon the walls, which depicts in half life-size pictures the adventures of Telemachus on Calypso’s enchanted isle. Telemachus is very handsome, Calypso and her nymphs as graceful as possible; and old Mentor as disagreeable and stern as all Mentors usually are. I find something new in the paper every day, and love to study it. The dining-room is opposite the parlor, across a broad passage, kept too bright and shiny almost to step upon, and is also a very spacious room, with a great deal of old family silver adorning the sideboard, and some good pictures upon the walls. There are two other rooms behind the parlor and the dining-room, one of which is used as a sitting and reading-room, for it is a large double house, flanked by offices in the yard in which the library is kept, and one of which is used for law and business purposes by Mr. Tyler’s father and himself.

“The room in the main dwelling furthest removed and most retired is ‘the chamber,’ as the bedroom of the mistress of the house is always called in Virginia. This last, to say nothing of others, or of the kitchen, storerooms and pantries, is a most quiet and comfortable retreat, with an air of repose and sanctity about it; at least I feel it so, and often seek refuge here from the company, and beaux, and laughing and talking of the other parts of the house; for here mother, with a smile of welcome on her sweet, calm face, is always found seated on her large arm-chair with a small stand by her side, which holds her Bible and her prayer book—the only books she ever reads now—with her knitting usually in her hands, always ready to sympathize with me in any little homesickness which may disturb me, and to ask me questions about all you dear ones in Bristol, because she knows I want to talk about you. Notwithstanding her very delicate health, mother attends to and regulates all the household affairs, and all so quietly that you can’t tell when she does it. All the clothes for the children, and for the servants, are cut out under her immediate eye, and all the sewing is personally superintended by her. All the cake, jellies, custards, and we indulge largely in them, emanate from her, yet you see no confusion, hear no bustle, but only meet the agreeable result. * * * * All Mr. Tyler’s sisters are lovely and sweet. Sister Mary—Mrs. Jones, who is the oldest of all—I have already introduced you to in my letter from Charles City, where she resides, at ‘Woodburn,’ one of the plantations or ‘farms’ as they are called here, of her husband, and where she so happily entertained us recently. Next comes Letitia, Mrs. Semple, married last February. She is very handsome and full of life and spirits. She has a place called ‘Cedar Hill,’ some distance from Williamsburg, in New Kent county, but is now here on a visit. Then comes Elizabeth, a very great belle here, though she is not yet seventeen. She is remarkably sweet and pretty, with beautiful eyes and complexion, and her hair curled down her neck. John, who is next to Mr. Tyler in age, and who was at my wedding, and therefore needs no description, is not here now, but he and his wife will spend next winter with his father, as he still attends the law department and higher scientific courses of ‘William and Mary’ college, as it is termed in accordance with the original charter of King William and Queen Mary, although it is now and has been for many years a university.

“I have not seen her yet, but hear that she is very beautiful. The two younger children, Alice and Tazewell, make up the family. * * * The children, with all the rest of the family, seem very, very fond of me, but you must not suppose that all this affection and kindness makes me vain. It is very comforting and sweet, but I know they all love me from no merit of my own, but from the devotion the whole family feel for Mr. Tyler, who is idolized by his parents, and profoundly loved and respected by his brothers and sisters.”^[17]

Mrs. Letitia Semple, in a letter addressed to her brother, and which he kindly placed at my disposal, thus writes:

* * * * * * “It is a sad truth, but I know of no one now alive who remembers my mother in her youth. As late as 1861, there were several who had known her from infancy, but now they are all gone. We have not an uncle, or an aunt, of all our once numerous family, left on earth. The early portion of her life must be gleaned from the little incidents we, her children, may remember to have been recited concerning her, by those now dead. Apart from ourselves, there are those who may recall something of her married life, but these have been scattered by the events of the war far and wide asunder. Her character was so unobtrusive, and her personal deportment was so little influenced by a desire to shine before the public eye, that those alone best knew her who were intimately associated with the family as near relatives, or as private friends. Our older and two younger sisters are dead; our elder brother, and one younger, the one driven by the relentless fates to Alabama, and the other to California, and you, the sport of a similar fatality, together with myself, may recollect many little things sacred to filial devotion. The beautiful affection ever manifested toward her by every member of the family—by her uncles and her aunts, by her sisters and her brothers, her nephews and her nieces, and by her cousins, male and female—by all without exception—we know of, and can speak to the fact. It was with each one of them the unadulterated affection of the heart for piety, purity and goodness. There was nothing else to attract it, for their mere worldly circumstances were, in every direction, fully equal to her own, and in many instances superior in affluence to those she enjoyed. Nothing could have exceeded the devotional regard of her sister Anna, the owner of the paternal estate of Cedar Grove, and who in addition to her own inheritance, had derived a large fortune by marriage and the early death of her husband, Mr. Savage. And I have often heard aunt Elizabeth Douglas, her oldest sister, speak of her obedient disposition and truthfulness as a child, and of her almost surpassing beauty, grace, elegance, and refinement in riper years. We ourselves know how exemplary a wife and mother she was. One of the earliest memories I have of her is, that she taught me my letters out of the family Bible. Over and often can I recall her with a book in her lap, reading and reflecting, while her fingers were knitting or stitching for some of us; or while watching over us until a late hour of the night, in the absence of our father upon his public duties.

“You know that these days of our childhood were days of struggle with our father, under heavy security obligations, and she had but one idea apart from conjugal piety and affection, and that was to save him from every care and every expense in her power.

“His pecuniary independence was preserved, and much of his success was secured, through her economy, her diligence, her providence, and her admirable self-sacrificing demeanor. I have frequently heard our father say that he rarely failed to consult her judgment in the midst of difficulties and troubles, and that she invariably led him to the best conclusion, and that he had never known her to speak unkindly of any one. She was permitted to see him fill the highest office in the gift of his country, but before he was suffered to enter into his rest from political life, she had gone to that rest remaining for the people of God. She died, as you know, on the 10th September, 1842, in the Executive Mansion at Washington, where her third daughter, our sister Elizabeth Waller, had been shortly before married, and where two of her grandchildren now living,—the oldest daughter of our brother Robert, named Letitia, and the youngest son of our sister Mary, named Robert—were born.

“You remember her fondness for flowers. Her favorite flower was the monthly damask rose, and that brought in to her on the morning of the day of her death, was found clasped in her hand when the spirit was fled. From the time that she had been first stricken by paralysis, her health had been frail, but none of us anticipated an immediate, or even an early renewal of the attack, and far less a sudden dissolution of her system; and I had closed my last visit to her only a few days before, and had gone to ‘Cedar Grove’ to inform Aunt Anne of the condition in which I had left her, as if the sad Fates had carried me there to be ready to receive her remains, returning to the place of their birth to repose, in their separation from her husband, by the side of those of her father and her mother, as when first quickened into life; but our sister, Elizabeth Waller, and our Aunt Elizabeth Douglas, were with her, and witnessed her last breath, and they told me this particularly sweet circumstance of her favorite rose still clinging to her hand in death.”

These letters, taken with the obituaries subjoined, and the lines of Mr. Sargent, together with other communications descriptive of the daily social routine in the “White House” at this epoch, which remain to be submitted and cannot fail to interest, leave but little necessary to fill out and perfect the portraiture of one of the loveliest characters in history.

Upon the accession of her husband to the Presidential office in the beginning of April, 1841, Mrs. Tyler proceeded with him to the Executive Mansion of the nation, at Washington, but with many sighs and tears at parting with her own home, and without the thought of personal triumphs in the world of fashion and display. She resigned herself to the change simply to be with her loved ones, and to receive the tender care and attention of those in whom she literally “lived and had her being.” Her health had become greatly impaired from a severe attack of illness during the year 1839, and her condition remained as has been described by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Robert Tyler, then to have been in the month of October. Nevertheless, in all the private apartments of the President’s mansion, the same modes of life were maintained as those to which she had ever been accustomed. Her sisters and brothers and other relatives, as well as her children, still hovered around her, as they had always done, with increased and increasing affection as they discovered her frame becoming somewhat more feeble. She passed her time chiefly in their society, receiving but few visitors and returning no visits. Her health, indeed, required that she should delegate to some one of her married daughters the semi-official duties of her position.

For the greater part of the time, her own married daughters, Mrs. Jones^[18] and Mrs. Semple, were compelled by their domestic duties, in the line of the private affairs and personal interests of their husbands, to remain at their respective residences in Virginia, but frequently coming to Washington, for brief periods, it is true, through solicitude for her health and to bestow their affection upon her; and as regards her two remaining daughters, Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. Waller, was just grown up to womanhood, and was not yet married; and Alice, afterward Mrs. Henry M. Denison,^[19] was still but a child. However it fortunately so happened that her oldest son and his wife had not permanently located themselves in life since their recent marriage, and it was considered best they should continue in the family. Sometimes, on the temporary visits of Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Semple, all her married daughters would appear together in the Reception-rooms; but under the circumstances, the constant task of representing her mother, in respect to the honors of the establishment, was delegated, with the consent of the President, to Mrs. Robert Tyler,^[20] a lady of admirable culture and address, to whom she was, as well as the rest of the family, devotedly attached as to her own daughter. One of the few occasions on which she assented to appear personally in the public Reception-rooms, before a large and distinguished assemblage of men and women associated with the world of fashion and that of politics and diplomacy, was that of the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth, and is thus portrayed by Mrs. Robert Tyler shortly afterward, in a letter addressed to her relatives near Philadelphia:

* * * “Lizzie^[21] has had quite a grand wedding, although the intention was that it should be quiet and private. This, under the circumstances, though, was found impossible. The guests consisted of Mrs. Madison, the members of the cabinet, with their wives and daughters, the foreign ministers near the government, and some few personal friends, outside of the family and their relatives.

“Lizzie looked surpassingly lovely in her wedding dress and long blonde lace-veil; her face literally covered with blushes and dimples. She behaved remarkably well, too; any quantity of compliments were paid to her. I heard one of her bridesmaids express to Mr. Webster her surprise at Lizzie consenting to give up her belle-ship, with all the delights of Washington society, and the advantages of her position, and retire to a quiet Virginia home. ‘Ah,’ said he,

“Our dear mother was down-stairs on this occasion for the first time, in so large a circle, since she has been in Washington. She gained by comparison with all the fine ladies around her. I felt proud of her, in her perfectly faultless, yet unostentatious dress, her face shaded by the soft fine lace of her cap, receiving in her sweet, gentle, self-possessed manner, all the important people who were led up and presented to her. She was far more attractive to me in her appearance and bearing than any other lady in the room, and I believe such was the general impression. Somebody says, ‘the highest order of manner is that which combines dignity with simplicity;’ and this just describes mother’s manner, the charm of which, after all, proceeds from her entire forgetfulness of self, and the wish to make those around her happy.”

Major Tyler, who was for more than three years “Major Domo” of the establishment, and to the last private secretary, says, regarding the modes and inmates of the President’s house during this time:

“My mother’s health was entirely too delicate to permit her to charge herself with the semi-official social requirements of the mansion, and my married sisters being unavoidably absent for the most of the time, the task devolved upon Mrs. Robert Tyler to represent my mother on stated occasions. She continued in the rôle of honors, as they are termed, until after my mother’s death, and my brother made his arrangements to practise law in Philadelphia, by which time it also happened that Mr. Semple’s affairs became differently accommodated, and he proceeded to sea as a Purser in the United States Navy, when my sister Letitia^[22] became at liberty to take up her abode in Washington. Accordingly, both the President and myself now addressed to her letters, inviting her to assume the position and duties of hostess of the White House, which she consented to do, and so acted until May, 1844.

“During my mother’s life, and up to this date, always contemning pretension and worldly vanity, we lived in the ‘White House’ as we lived at home, save that we were obliged to have rather more company, less select as to true worth than was altogether agreeable. In the course of the ‘fashionable season,’ and while the sessions of the Congress lasted, we gave two dinner parties each week, very much after the plain, substantial Virginia manner and style, to the first of which, usually confined to gentlemen from different parts of the country visiting Washington, and who had shown respectful attention to the President and family, twenty guests were always invited; and to the second, usually embracing both ladies and gentlemen from among the dignitaries of the different departments of the Federal and State governments, and the diplomatic corps of foreign governments, forty persons were invited, making in either case quite a full table.

“Our drawing-rooms, as at home, were open every evening informally until 10 o’clock—never later—when the family rose and retired, and doors were closed. Before my mother’s death, we gave occasionally during the winter months, by special invitations, in the general reception-rooms, a private ball, attended with dancing, but terminating at 11 o’clock. In addition to these private entertainments and strictly social converse, we introduced at this period—for the first time it had been done—music on the grounds of the south front of the Mansion, on the Saturday evenings of each week during the mild weather of the spring, summer, and fall, for the recreation of the public at large; and to a similar end a public levee was held once a month, in addition to the general receptions on the first day of January and the Fourth of July, of each year.

“Nothing whatever preceded by cards of invitation was permitted to be considered in any other light than as a private affair of the Presidential family, with which the world outside and the public press had nothing whatever to do, just precisely as if we had been in our own house in Williamsburg. Even in respect to the public receptions mentioned, the Madisonian was never suffered to indulge in a description either of the persons or characters present, in an individualizing manner, after modern usages, and no encouragement was given to any one so to do. I send you a specimen of the only sort of notice, even in the latter case, that was regarded as at all admissible while my mother lived. Anything more particular would have shocked her delicate sense of propriety, and been absolutely offensive to the President.