AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SEVENTY YEARS AGO 293 



summer of 1831, the new cabinet was formed, consist- 

 ing of Edward Livingston, Secretary of State ; Louis 



Eaton was received as a visitor, but to my positive conviction never to stay 

 even for a day. . . . Nothing strikes me more in reviewing the past than 

 the liberties taken with the General by those who formed his family circle, 

 and the gentleness with which he submitted to impositions, especially of 

 servants and children. But if it touched a point of duty he was firm, 

 though always amiable and kind. ... I was frequently at the White 

 House in childhood and as a young lady. ... I never met Mrs. Eaton 

 there. When she went she did so as any other acquaintance, and from 

 what I have heard was received with but scant courtesy by Mrs. Donelson. 

 . . . The White House has never since been graced with a more beautiful, 

 refined, gentle woman [Mrs. D.]. except perhaps she may have been 

 excelled by Mrs. Cleveland, who had greater modern educational advan- 

 tages and the rare gift of tact. ... I heard General Jackson comment but 

 once on Mrs. Eaton . . . during my visit to the Hermitage in 1842. . . . 

 " Mrs. Eaton's daughter, Virginia Timberlake, was my school-mate at 

 Mm e . Sigoigne's ; she was a brilliant woman in mind, appearance, and 

 accomplishments, who in spite of her want of veracity attracted me very 

 much, but my mother forbade any intimacy as she did not approve of Miss 

 Timberlake or visit Mrs. Eaton. But Virginia was so amusing that I fear 

 I would have been very disobedient but for my dear friend and monitor, 

 Isabella Cass, who had the same instructions from home, for I know that 

 neither the Cass nor the Woodbury families, with whom I have had a life- 

 long intimacy, visited Mrs. Eaton, though Judge Woodbury and Governor 

 Cass were members of the Jackson Cabinet. After we left school, by hard 

 begging, I. sometimes got permission to go to* see Virginia, which calls she 

 never returned. Still when in trouble she would write for me to come to 

 her. At that time, she was engaged to be married to Barton Key, to which 

 both families objected bitterly. Mrs. Eaton's treatment of her daughter 

 amounted to cruelty. Virginia escaped from some of it by deceiving her 

 mother. I told the General of this episode. . . . He had always felt sorry 

 for The Timberlake children, 1 knowing that their Mother's lack of truth 

 would be fatal to them. 1 He had known their grandparents, the O'Neils, 

 when he was Senator from Tennessee and Mrs. O'Neil had been very kind 

 to his wife, Mrs. Jackson, when ill ; and General Jackson, when consulted 

 by his * friend Eaton ' about his marriage, advised him to marry 'the Widow 

 Timberlake 1 and promised to stand by him. ... I am convinced, and 

 with much reason, that Mme. Sampayo. alias Virginia Timberlake, has 

 inspired these French romances about her mother and General Jackson : 

 she disliked and spoke bitterly of both, and several times in the past thirty 

 years, I have seen and heard of ... different articles on this subject in 

 Paris paper. She always changes her history and gets coarser as she grows 



