When the Red Fox arrived in Washington and noted the passionate determination of the iron man at the White House to force a social recognition of Mrs. Eaton, he could not have been unmindful of his advantage. He was a widower. No wife or daughters were with him to be compromised. His biographer[296] makes the point that he called upon the accused woman in response to common instincts of decency, and that his failure to have done so would have amounted to a striking public condemnation. But he did something more than merely call upon her--he became an active and aggressive partisan of her cause, and by so doing endeared himself to Jackson. Common decency did not demand that he feature her at his dinners and receptions, or enter into an agreement with two unmarried members of the diplomatic corps to do likewise.[297] It is impossible to account for this extraordinary partisanship on any other grounds than his desire to curry special favor with the President. His conduct and activities became the subject of jests and quips. “It is asserted that if Mr. Van Buren persists in visiting her [Mrs. Eaton], our ladies will not go to his house,” wrote one of the stubborn dames.[298] With the ladies of the Cabinet giving large parties, the wife of Eaton was omitted from the invitation lists, and Van Buren countered with dinners and dances at the British and Russian Legations at which Mrs. Eaton was treated with marked distinction. But even here “cotillion after cotillion dissolved into its original elements when she was placed at its head.”[299] At the Russian Legation, Madame Huygens, wife of the Dutch Minister, on finding that her seat was beside Mrs. Eaton at the table, haughtily took her husband’s arm and stalked impressively from the room. Because of this affront, Jackson was prone to make it an international incident by demanding the recall of the Minister, but Van Buren’s sense of humor intervened. In sheer delight Adams wrote: “Mr. Vaughan ... gave a ball last night which was opened by Mr. Bankhead, the Secretary of the British Legation, and Mrs. Eaton; and Mr. Van Buren has issued cards also for a ball which is to be given in honor of the same lady. I confine myself to the Russian and Turkish war.”[300] In the late summer of 1829 the effect of the struggle upon both Jackson and Van Buren was apparent. The President, disgusted, worn, and sick at heart, was confiding to his correspondents his partiality for the calm of the Hermitage. And Adams, riding about the environs, and encountering Van Buren, similarly taking the air, spitefully wrote: “His pale and haggard looks show it is already a reward of mortification. If it should prove, as there is every probability that it will, a reward of treachery, it will be but his desert.”[301]