Chapter I: Preface

The rambling personal notes threaded together in these pages were written at the urgent request of my family, and have provided a pleasant diversion during otherwise lonely hours. The idea of their publication was highly distasteful to me until the often repeated importunities of many of those whose judgment commands my respect persuaded me that some of the facts and incidents I have recalled would prove of interest to a large circle of readers. The narrative is concerned with persons and events that have interested me during the busy hours of a lengthy life. I have been deeply impressed by the changes wrought by time in the modes of education, which are now so much at variance with those of my childhood, and in the manners and customs of those with whom I have mingled.

I should be guilty of an act of grave injustice if I failed to express my grateful acknowledgments for the aid so unselfishly rendered, in a score of ways, by my daughter, Mrs. Roswell Randall Hoes, without which these pages would not, and could not, have been written.

M. GOUVERNEUR.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--EARLY LONG ISLAND DAYS 1

II.--NEW YORK AND SOME NEW YORKERS 21

III.--SCHOOL-DAYS AND EARLY FRIENDS 50

IV.--LIFE AND EXPERIENCES IN THE METROPOLIS 69

V.--LONG BRANCH, NEWPORT AND ELSEWHERE 96

VI.--SOME DISTINGUISHED ACQUAINTANCES 118

VII.--FASHION AND LETTERS 138

VIII.--WASHINGTON IN THE FORTIES 170

IX.--SOCIAL LEADERS IN WASHINGTON LIFE 194

X.--DIPLOMATIC CORPS AND OTHER CELEBRITIES 229

XI.--MARRIAGE AND CONTINUED LIFE IN WASHINGTON 256

XII.--SOJOURN IN CHINA AND RETURN 288

XIII.--THE CIVIL WAR AND LIFE IN MARYLAND 312

XIV.--VISIT TO THE FAR SOUTH AND RETURN TO WASHINGTON 335

XV.--TO THE PRESENT DAY 365

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Mrs. Gouverneur _Frontispiece_

Samuel L. Gouverneur, Junior 116

Mrs. John Still Winthrop, _née_ Armistead, by Sully 146

Mrs. Charles Eames, _née_ Campbell, by Gambadella 178

Brigadier General Winfield Scott, U.S.A., by Ingham 202

Mrs. James Munroe, _née_ Kortright, by Benjamin West 258

Miniature of James Monroe, painted in Paris in 1794 by Semé 284

Mrs. Gouverneur's three daughters, Miss Gouverneur, Mrs. Roswell Randall Hoes, Mrs. William Crawford Johnson 310

AS I REMEMBER