the heart of the seashell,' of her gorgeous hair 'with massive braids shot through with a dead gold arrow,' of her features 'high-bred and queenly.' But mostly do we hear of her hair. "The skein of pale yellow flossy silk sometimes hung up in manufacturers' cases to show how beautiful silk may be... may set one dreaming of this woman's hair.'1 Mrs. Logan will remember her as ‘magnificently dressed and crowned with that beautiful head of hair for which she was so generally admired.' 2 She dresses with perfect taste, with elegance, and always with the view to making the most of her charms which are abundant. Men are fascinated; strangely enough, women share their admiration. They flock to her home on I Street, near Fourteenth, the furniture and decorations for which had been brought over from Paris. In the salon hangs a splendid portrait of the Czar Alexander, by a Russian painter. Here there is gayety and high play and a courtly tone, though the colleagues of her 'short, ugly, scrubby' consort do complain that the Catacazys play against each other, she staking high, he low, and Madame's partner always losing.* Indeed, there is much in this bewitching lady to make her interesting to the romantic. Married in girlhood against her will to a wealthy Italian Prince of the diplomatic service old enough to have been her grandfather, she went as the wife of an ambassador to Dom Pedro's court. There young Catacazy was Secretary of the Russian Legation. The lady and the Secretary fell in love, she disappeared, to be found a week later living in a cottage with her lover on the outskirts of the capital. When her lover was recalled, she went along, and in time, following a divorce or death, the lovers were married. The story was known to the women of Washington — but it was so long ago, and she was so charming, it was resolved to confine the story to the boudoirs.5 Catacazy was old and ugly now, and she was blooming still, handsome and entrancing, and gossip still played with her reputation a little. When at length her husband was recalled, on the demand of Grant on purely diplomatic grounds, there was a disposition to ascribe the trouble to a Cabinet member's infatuation for Madame," though 1 New York Herald, February 21, 1870. 3 New York Herald, January 12, 1870. Ibid. 2 Mrs. Logan, 261. 4 Badeau, 374-76. 6 Brooklyn Eagle, and New York World, August 11, 1898. Mrs. Blaine was sure the recall had nothing to do with the lady.1 Happy she is to-night at Mrs. Sprague's, the center of admiring groups, but the drama of her life in Washington soon is to close. She is to remain to entertain the Grand Duke Alexis in a gorgeous manner, and the curtain is to fall upon this phase of her colorful life, with Madame, dressed in a pale lemon-colored silk tissue, or crêpe de Paris of very fine texture, standing at the door of the Legation, according to tradition, with a silver salver bearing a small loaf of black bread, to greet the Grand Duke with the words, 'I bring you bread and salt.' 2 The guests are now moving to the garden for supper, but we have seen the most unusual women of this tragic era. We get a momentary glimpse of Mrs. Blaine, looking very well despite her dress feeling 'the deadly pressure of the iron,' and Mrs. John A. Logan, fragile, with a mobile face, a mass of turbulent black hair, and eyes of keen intelligence, and Blanche Butler Ames, charming in her youth and her Persian gown, and Mrs. Robeson, pretty and effervescent, and Mrs. Carl Schurz, a stately German matron, not agreeably impressed by the extravagance about her, and... Thus, while the politicians were staking their reputations, and mobs were marching, and men were stealing in high places, there was festivity somewhere, and in the shadow of the Capitol. Some of these fine ladies will meet humiliation before our story is told. 1 Mrs. Blaine, Letters, 1, 50. 2 New York World, November 23, 1871. TH CHAPTER XIII A SEASON OF SCANDAL I HE first summer of his Presidency, Grant was to suffer an irreparable loss in the death of General John A. Rawlins, his Secretary of War, because no other living person was so warmly and wisely devoted to Grant personally. Impetuous, at times violent, uncompromising, and frequently domineering, he had been associated with the President throughout his military career in the capacity of friend and adviser. Wiser in many ways than his chief, he alone had dared to cross him, or to criticize. Time and again, in army days, he had remonstrated with him because of his drinking, and Grant never resented it. No one understood so thoroughly the strength and weakness of the great commander, or comprehended so completely his limitations. Others, convinced of his mistakes, were to be silenced by the grim reticence of the man with the black cigar; Rawlins never. Passionately he would protest, and Grant would listen, and be advised. Then, too, Rawlins was a better judge of men, and had he lived, the man he idolized, and yet did not idealize, would have been spared many of the associations that have so sadly marred the record of his Administration.1 Sick on assuming office, Rawlins had gradually grown worse through the summer, and in the autumn he died, mourned by the Nation. This was the first, perhaps the greatest, tragedy in the Grant Administration. It was a season in which death was plucking busily at the leaders of men. The powerful, impressive, Cato-like Fessenden was no more. One night Henry J. Raymond was mysteriously carried to his home and left in the hall, where, in the morning, he was found dying. Gossip was busy with its curious tidbits about Rose Eytinge, the actress, who appears to have had no connection with 1 'How Judge Hoar Ceased to be Attorney-General,' by J. D. Cox, Atlantic Monthly, 1895. his stroke.1 Ruined politically by his support of Johnson, his death carried no political significance. Even less political importance attached to the passing of three greater men who had played more important rôles more than a generation before. Franklin Pierce died in October, and in November, Amos Kendall, very old and long forgotten, and Robert J. Walker, author of the famous tariff act that bears his name, passed away. One of the elder statesmen, Millard Fillmore, was writing articles that summer for 'The Western World,' on whether we were to have an empire, and Horace Greeley was commenting sneeringly that 'his voice can now excite no other interest than the mild curiosity aroused by any voice from the tomb.' 2 Among the politicians much grumbling was heard against Hoar because of his contemptuous refusal to name improper men to office on a mere senatorial demand. A stern, unbending Puritan of high professional ideals was manifestly out of place, and an Attorney-General who dared respond to a Senate resolution instructing him to report on the status of certain cases with the curt comment that he was a subordinate of the Executive, and not a Senate clerk, was inevitably marked for slaughter. All through the summer and fall the clouds were darkening above him. Grant sat silently listening to the complaints and meditating a graceful way to rid himself of another adviser sadly needed. Very soon he would be nominated for the Supreme Court and refused confirmation, and James Russell Lowell would be protesting against the withdrawal of the nomination, insisting that 'the responsibility lie with the knaves who hate you for your impregnability,' and Godkin, of "The Nation,' would be declaring that the secret of his offending was his refusal 'to degrade the Government by rendering dishonest opinions' and 'to degrade the public service by placing incompetent men in office.' But the nomination was to be withdrawn, and Hoar was to linger in the Cabinet yet a while. In the August mornings of that summer, people lingered longer than usual at the breakfast table over their papers containing columns of controversial matter concerning Harriet 1 Bigelow, Retrospections, Iv, 289. 3 Memoir of Hoar, 183. • Ibid., 193. 2 New York Tribune, June 29, 1869. Beecher Stowe's amazingly frank volume defending Lady Byron, and describing her noble lord as a degraded wretch who had maintained incestuous relations with his sister. For the most part the criticisms were hostile, and the author's motives were roundly denounced- by no one more than by Theodore Tilton, of "The Independent.' He carried his defense of his fellow poet and his denunciations of Mrs. Stowe to the platform; and at the Suffrage Convention at Newport the proceedings were enlivened by an animated debate on Mrs. Stowe's action, Tilton attacking, and Mrs. Stanton as vigorously defending. The irreverent 'New York World,' discussing the verbal battle, asked why 'was the absurd Tilton, who revolts the prime instincts of womanhood, invited to a woman's suffrage convention at all.' And so the jolly controversy simmered and boiled through the broiling August days.1 Meanwhile, as the miasmic heat settled down on Washington like a hot, damp blanket, Grant had gone with his family to Long Branch, then the fashionable watering-place of the country. It was a place of much dancing and heavy drinking and billiardplaying, and, strangely enough, not so much given to bathing; albeit the ladies daily dressed with elaborate care to stand demurely, or flirtatiously, on the sands of the beach and look on discreetly. When a heavier wave than usual rose and broke on the beach, the timid screamed and were reassured and consoled by some strong man. Meandering over the beach, or through the lobbies, or on the piazzas of the hotels, were young men with notebooks jotting down descriptions and comments on the celebrities among the men and beauties among the women, for the brightening of the press. The more sportive of the summer guests had their fast horses there; and, not to be outdone, Grant had his carriage horses, 'Egypt' and 'Cincinnati,' behind which he proudly drove along the neighboring roads. And yet it was observed that first season, when he was living at the Stetson House, that he was not entirely happy. In the mornings he dressed in broadcloth and stood on the piazza bowing to smiling ladies who passed, and without lifting his hat. The glamour of the social life was a bit too glaring, and he was not the most self-possessed of the visitors. Dashing Phil Sheridan was 1 New York World, August 19, 22, 24, 27, 1869. |