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at the White House, she asked me to do what I could to make the visit successful.
After the Prince had left I wrote to her stating that he had made a good impression, and Lady Augusta replied expressing Her Majesty's gratification, so that I fancy the lack of the President's visit gave no umbrage.
Still, it may be that Jesse Grant's experience at Windsor was the corollary of the Prince's visit unreturned.
I remained at the White House during the first three months of Grant's Administration, after which I spent four months in England, and then I was on duty again at the Executive Mansion from October until May.
After that I was there as a visitor on only a few occasions in 1875; so that my recollections of the life at the White House are mostly those of the first and second years of Grant's Presidency.
I saw the first Cabinet in power and their families in position.
Some of these, people of undoubted ability and character, yet long unfamiliar with the life of the great world, never acquired that ease of manner which is so exquisite, whether the gift of nature or the result of art; but others were persons early used to elegant associations and fitted to adorn as well as worthily occupy the positions they enjoyed.
But Mrs. Grant was like the General, a good deal of an autocrat in a certain way. If she liked the suggestions made by such women as Mrs. Fish or Mrs. Robeson she accepted them, but she felt that she herself was responsible for the result, and entitled to decide the means; and they of course deferred to her decisions.
Whatever the etiquette or the custom, it either had the sanction of the President or of Mrs. Grant, or it was not introduced at all. I fancy indeed that most of the usages were those that had long prevailed, or else were the suggestion of one of the heads of the establishment themselves.
Those usages must have been generally acceptable, for the greater part of the people who had lived longest in Washington, and had been familiar with society there under many administrations, found themselves very much at home at the
S. S. Scranton and Co., Hartford, 1887.
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