James Silk Buckingham, by Edwin Dalton
Smith. National Portrait Gallery, London.
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A
British traveler’s
observations
Martin Van Buren was
sometimes criticized for his kingly airs,
but during his administration the White
House was sparsely staffed. The 1840 census
of Washington, D.C., indicates that only
two or three white servants, and about
five free “colored persons,” resided
in the Executive Mansion, although others
may have lived elsewhere.1
The
British writer James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855),
a former Member of Parliament, toured the
United States during the 1830s. His account
of a White House reception in 1838 suggests
that the President's House was not at all
regal, and his recollections seem to confirm
that, at least on the night of March 8, Van
Buren had only a small contingent of aides: "there
were neither guards without the gate or sentries
within nor a single servant or attendant
in livery anywhere visible," Buckingham
wrote.2
Buckingham found that the few servants
he saw were polite and agreeable, even as
they helped nearly 3,000 guests to their
carriages at the end of the evening. He did
not hear "any
angry word . . . exchanged between the drivers
and servants in attendance.”3
Read
more of Buckingham's account:
“On
Thursday, the 8th of March, we had an opportunity
of attending the first drawing-room held
by the President since his accession to office.
. . .
“ .
. . The official residence of the President
is a large and substantial mansion, on the
scale of many of the country-seats of our
English gentry, but greatly inferior in size
and splendour to the country residences of
most of our nobility. . . . The whole air
of the mansion and its accompaniments, is
that of unostentatious comfort, . . . and
therefore well adapted to the simplicity
and economy which is characteristic of the
republican institutions of the country. .
. .
“The
President received his visitors standing,
in the centre of a small oval room.
. . . The introductions were made by
the City-marshal. . . . The President, Mr.
Van Buren, is about 60 years of age, is a little
below the middle stature, and of very bland
and courteous manners; he was dressed in a
plain suit of black; the marshal was habited
also in a plain suit: and there were neither
guards without the gate or sentries within nor a single servant or attendant
in livery anywhere visible. . . .
“.
. . [W]hen the parties retired, which was
between eleven and twelve o’clock,
there was not half so much bustle in getting
up the carriages, which were very numerous,
as is exhibited at a comparatively small
party in England; nor was any angry word,
as far as we could discover, exchanged between
the drivers and servants in attendance.”
—James Silk Buckingham, America,
Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive (London & Paris:
Fisher, son, & co., [1841]), 285–288.
1 William Seale, The President’s
House (Washington, D.C.: White House
Historical Association, 1986), 212.
2 James Silk Buckingham, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive (London & Paris:
Fisher, son, & co., [1841], 287.
3 Ibid., 288. |
