Part 13

When this new fame dawned upon him, he had been for nearly fifty years a well-known and popular figure in the life of the city. His military record had been made in his youth during the war of 1812. He had been Postmaster and Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, a leader in Councils, County Treasurer in an era when politics had gone hand in hand with principle and patriotism. He was a Jacksonian Democrat, and had come to be looked upon as the grand old man of his party, who by birth and breeding could adorn a ball at Madam Rush's or make an after-dinner speech with as ready a grace as he could march at the head of the State Fencibles.

In no capacity, however, did he attract that peculiar interest that pursued him whenever he appeared in public with his niece. On winter afternoons, at a time when that season was rather longer in the Middle States than it is at the close of the century, and when the waters of the rivers used to remain fast frozen for many days they frequently appeared among the skaters, of whom, in his youth, Colonel Page had been one of the celebrities. He found new enthusiasm in the graceful sport, however, from the admiration he read in all faces whenever he went upon the ice with his niece.

They formed a picture that many paused to look upon, while others, who knew nothing of the intricacies of the accomplishment, gathered on the river-bank solely for the pleasure of watching them as they took those wonderfully long, sweeping curves of the "outer edge," the lithe figure of the girl seeming to float like a bird on the wing, while the splendid poise of the handsome, vigorous old man was as erect, as easy, and as firm as in his youth. He always held that the highest art in skating was in perfecting, to an almost incredible degree, the delicate balance of the body on the outer edge of the skate, and so broadening and lengthening the curves, which are ever, according to Hogarth, the lines of beauty. The result justified the theory, and he found an apt pupil in his niece, whose skating, like her dancing, was the very poetry of motion.

The beauty of some women admits of a diversity of opinion. Emilie von Schaumburg's did not. It was absolute, and the effect was instantaneous. A head of classic mould, with its rich adornment of lustrous black hair, proudly poised upon a throat and shoulders of perfect form; an oval face, lighted with a fine vivacity and captivating smile; great hazel eyes with dark brows and sweeping lashes; delicate, regular features, and a complexion which no art could imitate in its transparent fairness and brilliancy; a figure, tall and svelt, all undulating lines and willowy grace; a regal carriage, and, above all, an air of high-bred elegance and distinction; such, in her early girlhood, was Emilie von Schaumburg, whom the Prince of Wales declared the most beautiful woman he had seen in America.

It was on that famous night when the visit of His Royal Highness to the Academy of Music brought thither one of the most distinguished audiences ever assembled in Philadelphia. She was dressed with girlish simplicity in white, her only ornament being a small chain of golden sequins, which bound the rich masses of her hair and defined her shapely head, yet such was the subtle power of her presence, that from the moment she entered that crowded assembly, with its tier upon tier of brilliantly arrayed women, she became the focus of all eyes, dividing the attention of the Prince of Wales and the audience with Patti, who was pouring out her soul in matchless melody upon the stage.

One night, a few years ago, during a performance of Madame Bernhardt, in Philadelphia, a woman occupying one of the boxes, and carrying herself with that fine spirit that had been the glory of a previous generation, was recognized as Emilie Schaumburg, for so she still is, and forever will be known, among the people of her own city and country.

The discovery flew from mouth to mouth, and many who had never before seen her, as well as those who looked upon her for the first time after many years, and recalled that memorable night at the Academy of Music, bent upon her a gaze of unmistakable admiration.

Her education was principally directed by Hon. Henry Gilpin, who was the Attorney-General of Van Buren's administration, and a most finished scholar.

To the many advantages she enjoyed in having access to his library she subsequently added a thorough knowledge of several modern languages, for her intellectual endowments were in no degree inferior to her physical gifts. Though she had a fine artistic sense and an almost incredible facility in the acquirement of knowledge, she yet early recognized the necessity of serious study and intelligent application.

In this recognition and the ability to comply with its requirements, perhaps, more than in any other thing, lies the vast difference between the mere butterfly of society and the woman who leaves the impress of her individuality upon the life in which she moves.

Emilie Schaumburg never attempted a thing for which she had no special talent, but, having once undertaken a study, she pursued it with enthusiasm, following its every detail to the limit of her capacity. To an admirer, who once exclaimed, "Is there anything in the world you cannot do, and do brilliantly?" she replied, "Yes: I was a dismal failure at both sewing and arithmetic."

Her voice, in speaking as in singing, lent itself to every delicate inflection. She would delight, when still a very young child, to imitate. Each new song she caught with an unerring ear, the florid passages, roulades, and trills flowing as easily and naturally from the childish throat as from that of a bird. This marvellously flexible quality of voice she has never lost. In speaking of her musical education, she once said to a friend,--

"I have had to study phrasing and style and expression, with sostenuto, crescendo, diminuendo, and various other artistic effects, but the drudgery of exercises was spared me, thanks to my fairy godmother."

She has always retained her habits of study, and even during her first brilliant season in Paris she found time to take lessons from Madame La Grange and also from the celebrated teacher Delle Sédié. Later, however, at Nice, she studied more consecutively with Maestro Gelli, who recognized the unusual order of her talents and wrote several beautiful _morceaux_ expressly for her.

Her beauty and accomplishments were the open sesame to the exclusive circles of the villa society at Nice, and among the many distinguished people whom she delighted with her rare gifts was the late lamented Duke of Albany. Like most of the royal family of England, he was an accomplished critic and an ardent lover of music. He was enthusiastic in his praise of Miss von Schaumburg's singing, and when she again met him, a year or two later, at a court-ball at Buckingham Palace, his greeting proved that he had not forgotten the impression it had made upon him. His first words were, "And how is the beautiful voice?"

Before she left Philadelphia her histrionic talents had perhaps made her more widely known than any other of her many accomplishments. During the war for the Union, when the stage was the means of raising many dollars for the benefit of the wounded and suffering soldiers, she was foremost among the bright and spirited society women who devoted their talents to the cause.

Her dramatic success was due neither to her beauty nor to her personal charm, though her expressive features, her voice, and her perfect grace and ease were undoubtedly powerful adjuncts. Her triumphs were legitimate, and were the result of careful study, artistic finish, and unusual histrionic ability. That she possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the power of getting out of herself and into her parts was evidenced by the tribute contained in the criticism of some friends who went to see her in "Masks and Faces." They had gone, they said, solely to see Miss Schaumburg, whom, however, they soon forgot, their interest becoming absorbed in the brilliant, fascinating, impulsive Peg.

Yet Emilie Schaumburg was a very young girl when she stepped upon the amateur stage of the Seventeenth-Street Drawing-Room, and had never had a lesson in declamation nor a suggestion from any one to help her in the study of her parts. To be able to forget one's identity, and to make one's audience forget it, is, after all, the acme of high art in acting, or, rather, it is the touch of genius which is above art, since it cannot be taught.

As Peg Woffington in "Masks and Faces," and as the Countess in the "Ladies' Battle," she carried conservative and critical audiences by storm. Ristori, who was present at one of the performances, expressed unqualified admiration at the high order of Miss Schaumburg's talent, for both _rôles_ are considered tests to trained actresses.

She scored another success in the little operetta, "Les Noces de Jeannette," which she sang and acted in French, and in which the _pièce de résistance_ is the great _air du rossignol_. There are many people in Philadelphia to-day who yet recall the brilliancy and daring of those _tours de forces_ between the voice and the flute, each one in turn taking up the refrain and soaring higher and higher in imitation of the nightingale; yet there was never a harsh or strained note in her perfect voice, but all as liquid, pure, and full-throated as the warbling of the veritable bird.

Another of the gifts she possessed was for versification. She brought it into frequent and graceful play, but only for the enjoyment of those who were admitted to the privilege of an intimate friendship with her.

It is little wonder that Emilie von Schaumburg should have made an impress upon the city of her nativity which has remained proof against time and absence. No woman ever won a more spontaneous admiration than fell to her lot. She never appeared upon the streets that she was not surrounded and followed by both men and women, who, frequently without knowing her, came simply to look upon her beauty and glory in her possession.

She married, in England, Colonel Hughes-Hallett, of the Royal Artillery, and member of Parliament for Rochester. She resides now during the greater part of the year at Dinard, in France, where she built, some years ago, the beautiful château of Montplaisir.

Still a strikingly handsome and distinguished woman, she gathers about her the aristocracy of both France and England as well as the most eminent and charming of her compatriots. She entertains during each season with that same graciousness of hospitality with which she once presided in her uncle's home in Philadelphia.

She recently added a ball-room to Montplaisir which she inaugurated by a series of concerts and balls, among the picturesque features of the latter being minuets, gavottes, and a cotillon.

Gowned in a white and silver brocade Watteau, with panniers, over a pink satin petticoat trimmed with flounces of old lace, headed with wreaths of roses of a deeper pink, her powdered hair crowned with a black Gainsborough hat with black, white, and pink plumes, Mrs. Hughes-Hallett took part in one of the stately gavottes, making a beautiful picture against the delicate blue background and Louis Quinze decorations of her artistic ball-room.

A life filled with adulation, that would have been the undoing of a less wise woman, has in no way impaired her charm of character. Her fine mental poise, her exquisite humor, together with the generosity and sweetness of her nature, have preserved her from that calamitous sense of satiety that has overtaken many a man and many a woman who have lost their balance completely in an altitude of admiration much below that in which Emilie von Schaumburg has passed her life.

KATE CHASE

(MRS. WILLIAM SPRAGUE)

There was a name in America a little more than a generation ago that possessed a power amounting almost to enchantment, the name of Kate Chase, a woman who holds a unique place in both the political and social history of this century. The story of her life, between the high lights of its early days and the shadows in which it closed, presents a peculiar succession of superlatives. There stands forth, however, through all its changes, one unvarying dominant feature which must strike us at once, whether we approach it in the spirit of a student or actuated merely by a passing curiosity: her absolute devotion to her father. Through our knowledge of him, therefore, we may, in a measure, penetrate those mists in which she is enveloped by the divided opinion of a public, some of whom loved and idealized her as a social divinity, while others hated and maligned her as an opposing political force. Thus may we reach some just valuation of a character that with its man's virility and woman's delicacy was in itself singularly enigmatical, of its incentives and ideals, and, indirectly, therefore, of the failure and disappointments which have left their indelible stamp upon the life of Kate Chase.

In her father, profoundly cultured and endowed with inexhaustible intellectual resources, she found the complete realization of her most exalted conception. She well knew the tenderness of the heart, the sensitiveness of the nature, he carried beneath that superb exterior of majestic and unapproachable dignity. She lived in close communion with the man, the angry rebuke of whose eye, says one of his biographers, no transgressor could support. She was the central feature of his remarkable home. Upon both of his daughters he expended a tenderness of devotion of which those who lived beyond the sphere of a personal acquaintance with him had no conception. Yet there have been inconspicuous women whom he might have fathered with more ultimate happiness to themselves than the remarkable daughter who is the subject of this sketch. Though he was a great man, winning justifiable distinction in every branch of the government of his country, he was yet not competent to cope with the problems which the life of such a woman as Kate Chase was continually presenting. In her presence alone, in the proud carriage of her regal head, there was that singular power that, while it drew forth the love and admiration that are the expression of a generous nature, likewise provoked in those of a baser order a hideous envy and hatred that assailed her even as a young girl. With his benignant belief in the universal goodness of mankind, Chase was singularly deficient in that knowledge of human nature which should have enabled him to throw about her that sort of aggressive protection which she peculiarly required.

There is one little incident in his life that throws light upon his own character, and upon the principle he pursued in directing his daughter. He was a man of the most delicate tastes and with a high appreciation of all the niceties of life. When he took the platform as an abolitionist, he was rotten-egged. Removing as much as possible of the offensive effusion with his handkerchief, he continued with what he was saying. He made no modification in his statements, nor did he close the window through which the unsavory missiles had made their entrance. As far as possible he ignored the occurrence.

The scandal-monger he treated with the same silent scorn, continuing the tenor of his life as if he had not been made aware of his existence. But while he, a courageous man, might walk fearlessly amid the storm of the angry nation that impeached Andrew Johnson, and, regardless of its threats, discharge the duties of his high office with that calmness that distinguished all the acts of his judicial career and adds to the glory of his name in the eyes of a later generation, his daughter, though no less courageous, was yet "too slight a thing" to defy the gossips of even one Western town. "Ah! little woman," she once said, laying her hand on the shoulder of one of her loyal friends to whom sorrow had come, "you, at least, have never made the mistake that I made. I never cared for the opinion or good-will of people. I ran my head against a stone wall. It did not hurt the wall but it has hurt the head." This is perhaps the nearest approach to self-justification she ever made for having essayed, with a man's independence, to live that most circumscribed life of a conspicuously beautiful woman.

Losing her own mother when she was scarcely beyond her infancy, and her step-mother before she had reached womanhood, and realizing early that she was treated in all things as his equal in years and understanding by the man whose superiority among his fellow-men she conceived to be beyond question, that spirit of self-reliance that is the natural outcome of all positive characters was intensified in her to an abnormal degree. While it gave her the fundamental qualifications of that leadership which she maintained with unparalleled brilliancy, it likewise, through lack of direction, developed that imperious tendency that proved so fatal to her own happiness.

She was the first child of Chase's marriage to his second wife, Eliza Ann Smith, and was named by her mother after his first wife, Katherine Garniss, for whom she had had a tender friendship and sincere admiration.

Of her birth, which occurred on the 13th of August, 1840, her father's journal contains the following record, a characteristic statement of the event from a God-fearing man whose knowledge, not only of children, but of the human family in general, was largely drawn from "judicious treatises."

"I went apart, and kneeling down prayed God to support and comfort my dear wife, to preserve the life of the child, and save both from sin. I endeavored to give up the child and all into His hands. After a while I went into the room. The birth had taken place at 2 A.M. on the 13th. After I had seen my wife and child, I went into the library and read a few pages in Eber's book on children, a judicious treatise. At last I became tired, and, though it was now day, lay down and slept awhile. The babe is pronounced pretty. I think it quite otherwise. It is, however, well formed, and I am thankful. May God give the child a good understanding that she may know and keep his commandments."

Of the early age at which Chase elected to test that understanding, his journal also furnishes an evidence. An entry therein, under date of November 24, 1845, about two months after her mother's death, shows the dawn of that remarkable intellectual intercourse which he maintained with his daughter till the end of his life. "This day," it reads, "has been marked by no extraordinary event. Rose, as usual of late, before sunrise; breakfasted with sister Alice and little Kate. Read Scriptures (Job) to little Kate, who listened and seemed to be pleased, probably with the solemn rhythm, for she certainly can understand very little; then prayed with her; then to town in omnibus, unshaven for want of time."

Within that same year he also recorded in his journal that he was teaching "dear little Kate to read verses in the Bible and listening to her recite poems."

Thus early, without any particular system probably, but wholly delightfully and under a most patient and winning master, begun the training of one of the most astute and brilliant minds with which a woman was ever gifted. She was keen and clever rather than profound, and her quick intelligence caught and assimilated the fruit of her father's years of study. Without having his absorbing love of books, she yet read much and forgot nothing. Chase used to say that in the miscellaneous reading of his boyhood, it was the pleasure he derived from a stray law-book that determined his choice of career. He pursued his profession with the ardor of real love, and his daughter imbibed from him a substantial knowledge of its technicalities. He used to go over his cases with her very much at first in the spirit in which he had read Job to her, later because he delighted in her understanding, and finally because she had become genuinely helpful to him.

Well ordered and simple was the atmosphere of the home in which she grew up. As was his custom from the time he established his own home till the end of his life, Chase called his household together at the beginning of every day to ask the blessing and protection of God. There were times, as seen from his journal, when little Kate seems to have been his only companion, yet the duty was never omitted.

She walked with him often to his office or to court in the morning, both in Ohio and after they had removed to Washington, talking sometimes of the things which interested her, but more frequently of those which engrossed him, for it was his life and his ambitions that gave color to both of their existences. He had taught her early his favorite games, chess and backgammon, which she often played with him in the quiet evenings they spent together, or, if it were out of doors, croquet or some simple childish game, for she was part of the relaxation of his lighter hours as she was the repository of all the confidences and hopes of his public career.

His third marriage, in 1846, to Sarah Ludlow identified him with one of the prominent families of Cincinnati; Israel Ludlow, his wife's grandfather, having been one of the founders of the city. Chase, himself, though an Eastern man, born in Cornish, New Hampshire, whence he had migrated on coming of age, was now one of the prominent figures of Cincinnati, a busy, prosperous lawyer, with excellent political prospects, which met their first realization when, in 1849, he was elected to the United States Senate. When he came, six years later, into the governorship of his State he was again a widower, and Kate, though less than fifteen years of age, took her place at the head of his home.

Accustomed since the dawn of memory to the most considerate attentions from the most kingly of men, she already carried herself with that noble grace that made her presence felt in every assemblage above that of all others, no matter how simply she clothed herself nor how quietly she deported herself.

Chase was the first of Ohio's governors to take up his official residence at Columbus. There, for a year, Kate went as a day pupil to Mr. Heyl's seminary, and later studied in the same institution music and languages, having for the latter an unusual gift. She spoke French faultlessly, especially after her long residence abroad, which came later in her life. Her German, while it was fluent, had always a suggestion of a foreign accent that in her seemed rather pleasing than otherwise. Her native tongue she wielded with rare perfection, and no one who has heard Kate Chase talk will ever forget the magic of her voice, the life her graphic and discriminating language breathed into every thought to which she gave utterance, while her wonderful eyes expressed, even betrayed, every emotion. An old man who served the Chase family for years in the capacity of coachman once paid a tribute to the delicacy and power of her verbal delineations which many a man of more enlightened intelligence more gracefully, perhaps, but not more aptly acknowledged. He said he knew no greater pleasure than to take Miss Kate off in the carriage with a book in her lap, and, without opening it, for her to tell him every word that it contained from beginning to end.