While these momentous events were stirring both North and South, Betty Van Lew, in her Richmond home, was experiencing the delights of young womanhood in a city celebrated for its gaiety of social life. "There were balls and receptions in the great house, garden-parties in the wonderful garden, journeyings to the White Sulphur Springs, and other resorts of the day, in the coach drawn by six snowy horses," and all sorts of festivities for the young and light-hearted. Even in a city as noted for charming women as was Richmond, Betty Van Lew enjoyed an enviable popularity. To be invited to the mansion on the hill was the great delight of her many acquaintances, while more than one ardent lover laid his heart at her feet; but her pleasure was in the many rather than in the one, and she remained heart-whole while most of her intimate friends married and went to homes of their own. It is said that as she grew to womanhood, she was "of delicate physique and a small but commanding figure, brilliant, accomplished and resolute, with great personality and of infinite charm." At first no one took her fearless expression of opinion in regard to the slavery question seriously, coming as it did from the lips of such a charming young woman, but as time went on and she became more outspoken and more diligent in her efforts to uplift and educate the negroes, she began to be less popular, and to be spoken of as "queer and eccentric" by those who did not sympathize with her views. Nevertheless, Richmond's first families still eagerly accepted invitations to the Van Lew mansion, and it was in its big parlor that Edgar Allan Poe read his poem, "The Raven," to a picked audience of Richmond's elect, there Jenny Lind sang at the height of her fame, and there as a guest came the Swedish novelist, Fredrika Bremer, and in later years came Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, whose admiration of Elizabeth Van Lew was unbounded because of her service to the Union. Betty's father having died soon after she came from school, and her brother John being of a retiring disposition, Mrs. Van Lew and Betty did the honors of the stately house on the hill in a manner worthy of Southern society women, and as years went by and Betty became a woman, always when they had brilliant guests she listened carefully, saying little, but was fearlessly frank in her expression of opinion on vital subjects, when her opinion was asked. "And now, Sumter had been fired on. Three days after the little garrison marched out of the smoking fort, Virginia seceded from the Union, and Richmond went war-mad. In poured troops from other States, and the beautiful Southern city became a vast military camp. Daily the daughters of the Confederacy met in groups to sew or knit for the soldiers, or to shoot at a mark with unaccustomed hands. One day a note was delivered at the Van Lew mansion, and opened by Mrs. Van Lew, who read it aloud to her daughter: