Number 3322 is the interesting old house where, in the forties and fifties lived Baron Bodisco, Minister from Russia to the United States. He had a very romantic marriage of which I shall tell later. Just before the marriage he purchased this house from Sally Van Devanter, who had inherited it in 1840 from her husband, Christopher Van Devanter, apparently, the builder of the house. Baron Bodisco, the same day he bought it, gave it to his fiancee, Harriet Beall Williams. Whether it was a wedding gift or whether, as a foreign envoy, he could not hold property, I do not know. She kept the property for twenty years until her remarriage to Captain Douglas Scott, when it was bought by Abraham H. Herr. During the Civil War, it was headquarters for the officers of the Second U. S. Regiment, whose enlisted men were quartered in Forrest Hall. [Illustration: BODISCO HOUSE] But to return to the period when it was owned and occupied by the Van Devanter family. During these years, they apparently had a most interesting guest, Mrs. Henry Lee, the widow of "Light Horse Harry," and the mother of Robert E. Lee. In Dr. Douglas Freeman's book _R. E. Lee_, he quotes two letters from Mrs. Lee written not long before her death from "Georgetown." She did not specify where she was, but Mrs. Beverley Kennon, many years afterwards, said that this was the house in which she resided. Also, the Van Devanter family, a few years ago, found among old books two books with inscriptions of names of the Lee family, evidently left there during this time. Here, at a ball one night, a young man who was making his entrance into Washington society under the care of a senator had the following experience. (The account is taken from _Harper's Magazine_):