The Ladies of the White House; Or, in the Home of the Presidents: Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time—1789–1881Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter)
History
The Ladies of the White House; Or, in the Home of the Presidents: Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time—1789–1881
Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Presidents' spouses -- United States -- Biography
“I may say that this notice, as restrained as it is, bears internal
evidence showing that it would not have been made but for the necessity
of informing the public in some indirect manner of the termination of
the public receptions for a season. I find none other. In another
column, and in quite a different connection, the _Madisonian_ says: ‘The
Richmond _Whig_ admits, and we heartily concur in the sentiment, that
Mr. Tyler, in his appointment of Washington Irving, the author of the
‘Sketch-Book,’ as minister to Spain, has paid a just tribute to the most
distinguished ornament of American letters.’ Scarcely any notice appears
of the marriage of my sister Elizabeth in the preceding January, that
being regarded as a purely family matter.”
No perceptible change in Mrs. Tyler’s condition of health occurred until
Friday, the 9th day of September, 1842. On the morning of that day, her
family physician detected a change unhappily for the worse, and a
threatened renewal of paralysis. He instantly called in consultation
others of the faculty, and everything devised by the skill of the
profession to ward off the fatal stroke was promptly applied. But all in
vain. On the evening of the next day, Saturday, September the 10th, at
eight o’clock, the hour came for her to be joined to her fathers. A
pious communicant of the Church of Christ, innocent in soul as a little
child, crowned with the virtues which had marked her useful and
unselfish life, fearing and loving God, reverencing her husband, adoring
and adored by her children—she passed into the heavenly kingdom
palpitating with the immortal joys of a spirit released from every
earthly pain and sorrow. On Sunday, the Executive Mansion stood arrayed
in mourning, and the tolling of the bells of the city announced the sad
visitation to those among the living. Every honor that the sincerest
respect and the purest love and the sense of a bitter bereavement could
suggest, was paid to her remains. A committee of the citizens of
Washington conveyed her body, after it had laid in state in the East
Room for several days, to the family burial-ground at the old paternal
residence in New Kent county, and there, in the midst of a sorrowing
assemblage of relatives and friends and neighbors who had known her from
birth, the parting tears of her husband and her children, gushing up
from the fountain of their hearts, were shed upon her coffin ere it was
deposited in the earth, where reposed already the dust of her parents
and of others she had loved, and who fondly loved her.
Thus lived and died Mrs. Letitia Tyler, wife of the last of the Virginia
Presidents of the United States, a model of the exalted civilization of
the “ancient commonwealth and dominion,” a representative of her sex
worthy of their grateful memory, and an honor to the human family.
XIV.
JULIA GARDINER TYLER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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