Note 1 — Chapter II · Washington Personages in the Fifties

Apropos of this reference to Mrs. Douglas, Col. Henry Watterson said to me: “Her passport into Washington society was her relationship to Mistress Dolly Madison, who was her grandaunt. It is true, Mr. James Madison Cutts, Mrs. Douglas’s father, was a department clerk, but he was the nephew of the former mistress of the White House. Mrs. Douglas was very beautiful,” Colonel Watterson continued. “I remember stepping into the Douglas library one morning, and coming upon her unexpectedly as she was dusting some bit of precious bric-à-brac, over which she extended a personal care. She was en negligée, and, as the colour mounted her cheek, upon my unexpected appearance, I thought I had never seen so beautiful, so rosy a girl. I told Douglas so!” A. S.