The fact that she kept the romance hidden from her family for months may indicate that Winnie had indeed thought through the repercussions of her involvement with the grandson of an abolitionist. According to a former curator of Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s final home, during this era, “Abolitionists were seen as the ultimate haters of the South, the lunatic fringe.”24 The young woman also knew that her father was the type who would not give his favorite daughter up to any man easily. Jefferson was in very poor health, and Winnie was most likely frightened of shocking him with her controversial news.
Winnie pined for Fred, corresponding regularly with him as she returned to her former life at Beauvoir. She was at this point completely infatuated by her tall, dark, and handsome beau and in the throes of her first mature romance. Her parents knew nothing of her feelings, and the pressure was on Winnie to entertain her father and continue to work with him as his secretary and companion for the Confederate cause. In February 1887 the Washington Post reported that the young woman was happily ensconced at Beauvoir, keeping “busy with her studies and literary work and helpful to her father in what historic research he may undertake.” “Miss Davis’s life is as different as possible from that of a ‘society girl’ of the period,” the paper declared.25
Despite her seeming engagement in literary and historical pursuits, Winnie shared her father’s predisposition for frailty in the face of major life events. The stress of keeping her romance under wraps while working hard to help preserve the family legacy made her physically ill, and she began to waste away, not eating or sleeping well. Her mother worried terribly about Winnie and hoped to build up her strength over the summer. Varina wrote that her daughter was “a shadow of her former self—thin to the point of attenuation and so weak a little drive tires her.”26
Varina promised to send Winnie to Kate Pulitzer in Bar Harbor, Maine, for a restorative visit. She begged her distant cousin’s pardon for the state of Winnie’s wardrobe, which was always minimal due to the depleted state of the Davises’ finances. “I hope you have considered in inviting Winnie that her wardrobe is increasingly very simple and made up your mind to take her as she is. This of course, you have done, but I hope your friends will too.”27
Despite such distractions, Winnie and Fred continued to correspond surreptitiously. Things could not continue for long in this mode, so Fred began to prepare for his most important case to date: the request for the hand in marriage of Jefferson Davis’s youngest, cherished daughter.
Although sickly, Winnie still made the social rounds that summer, first visiting with Kate Pulitzer and her children at their rented house on Mount Desert Island in Maine that June.28 Later she accompanied her parents’ friend and Confederate comrade Gen. Jubal Early and his family to a restorative spa in Virginia, where she spent the rest of the summer attempting to regain her health. The young woman returned home to Beauvoir feeling better in late August.29
Winnie had barely unpacked her bags from the spa when Fred arrived on Beauvoir’s doorstep in September 1888 to ask for his beloved’s hand in marriage.30 Varina and Jefferson were completely unprepared for this encounter. Jefferson was not even at home at the time. Winnie had done such a good job of keeping her true feelings hidden from her parents that neither one of them had realized the depth of the attachment that had apparently formed between the couple.
Varina recalled that Fred was extremely agitated and nervous when he first arrived at Beauvoir and declared the purpose of his mission to her. Despite his apparent anxiety, Varina was immediately struck by Fred’s dark good looks. In a letter to her good friend Major Morgan, she appraised Fred favorably, noting, “Not enough nose, but enough chin, lithe and energetic & had fine teeth & small feet and hands & as tender and boyish a heart as I ever saw & a very good mind as well as exquisite manners.”31 Varina continued: “He came having announced he could no longer be put off . . . I determined my consent never should be given to union with a Yankee—he urged the condition of health into which she [Winnie] had fallen, his great love—his patient waiting & forlorn hope.”32
Shaking with emotion, Winnie fled to her room awaiting the no she felt almost certain would come from her parents. Varina noted that Winnie was “as white as death, after saying she could never love anyone else, but would give him up if I wished it.”33 Even in the throes of an epic love affair, Winnie was still deferential to her elders. The approval of her parents was crucial: she was not the type who would ever have married without their consent.
Jefferson, unlike his daughter, displayed no such qualms when he wed his first wife, Sarah Knox-Taylor, despite extreme disapproval from Sarah’s father, Zachary, who forbade the match for several years. Even when Jefferson and Sarah finally did get married, neither of her parents attended the ceremony. Varina Davis herself was so deeply in love with Jefferson upon her own marriage to him that it is doubtful she would ever have given him up, even if her parents had objected. The adult Winnie was a people-pleaser, something neither of her parents could ever claim to be. This pronounced trait in Winnie would affect both her physical and mental health greatly in the months to come.
Varina claimed in her letter to Major Morgan that when she broke the news of Fred’s plea to her husband, “he was cool and resolved—‘Death would be preferable said he—I will never consent.’”34 Later historians would claim Jefferson never said such a thing, but the initial sense of rebuff was there.35 Despite Jefferson’s immediate refusal of Fred’s proposal, he seemed to like the young man. At least he did not send Fred away immediately or toss him violently out of the house.
How must the young couple have felt after this emotionally charged confrontation? It is doubtful they spent any time alone together. They may have dined together, however, perhaps in tense silence, with longing looks between them. Winnie would have been pale, thin, and exhausted, Fred agitated and upset. Varina and Jefferson were undoubtedly shocked and perhaps angry with both Winnie and Fred for having been taken so off guard by the proposal.
Yet something magical happened the night that Fred arrived at Beauvoir. The grandson of a northern abolitionist somehow engaged Jefferson Davis, past president of the Confederacy. Some kind of alchemy was forced into existence by the old man’s love for his youngest daughter and his concern for her well-being. Fred’s lawyerly ability to negotiate a deal may have also come into play. In any case everyone involved in this drama must have retired feeling emotionally spent that evening.
The next morning Varina related to Major Morgan, “To our profound astonishment the next day Mr. Davis invited him to go up to Brierfield in Oct. next—and then the next day Mr. Davis invited him to go down to the bath house to watch the flounders, a liberty never accorded to any other young man.”36 Very quickly, “Fred had won Jefferson Davis’s attention, if not his total approval.”37
It is interesting to note that Varina took on a traditionally male role during Alfred’s visit and in subsequent other meetings with him. It was she and not Jefferson who talked to him about Winnie’s lack of dowry or practical skills. Varina was also the one who asked for a frank estimate of his financial situation.38
Fred assured Varina he had taken care of his mother and sisters after his father had lost his fortune. He also confided to her that a recent favorable lawsuit had resulted in eighty thousand dollars for his mother; these monies would also help fund the marriage with his new bride. The young lawyer also claimed “his law practice was thriving and that money was no problem . . . He has already achieved some renown through his successful litigation against the General Electric Company over patents for sockets for incandescent lamps. His clients included many of the large businesses in central New York.”39
There were, however, some skeletons lurking in the Wilkinson family’s proverbial closet. Although it is highly possible that Winnie had heard a bit about Fred’s family during her visits to Syracuse, Varina and Jefferson were not aware at this point about the local gossip regarding Fred’s father. Details of the “Wilkinson
affair” were well known among the upper-crust Syracuse set, and it is almost certain that the Emorys were aware of the scandal as well.
Fred’s father, Alfred Sr., had inherited a fortune from his father, John Wilkinson, the first postmaster general of Syracuse and the former president of the Syracuse and Utica Railroad. Alfred Sr. himself had enjoyed an illustrious banking career, even earning a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He was also an influential player in Democratic political circles of the time.40 Fred and his siblings had grown up wealthy, with every comfort, as a result.
But the substantial Wilkinson family fortune was lost, and the family’s reputation was tarnished following the failure of Fred’s father’s banking and investment firm, Wilkinson Brothers, in 1884. Alfred Sr. and his brother Forman were charged with grand larceny. According to Louisa May Alcott’s biographer Eve LaPlante, “The Wilkinsons had swindled more than half a million dollars, creating a ‘sensation in the city, as it had been supposed their high social standing would protect them’ from prosecution.”41
Fred, along with his mother, Charlotte, his brother, and his four sisters, spent the next decade trying to recover both their former lifestyle and the family’s good name. Charlotte was forced to open a boarding school for girls in her home to support the family, while her husband descended into an alcoholic haze. Mrs. Wilkinson had to lock up the family silver to prevent Alfred Sr. from selling it for drink.42
Alfred Sr. never went to prison, probably because of his political connections. When he finally died, on July 28, 1886, Charlotte’s famous cousin, the writer Louisa May Alcott, wrote in her diary: “A. Wilkinson dead. Relief to all.”43 His father’s death and the scandal surrounding him must have greatly impacted Fred. Fortunately, according to Joan Cashin, Varina’s biographer, “no one accused Alfred Jr. of misconduct, and he does not seem to have known what his elders were doing.”44 Fred was able to attend Harvard University thanks to the help of his cousin Louisa May. The author also generously paid for Fred’s sisters, Charlotte and Katherine, to attend Smith College.45 After graduation Fred returned home to Syracuse to study law.
When the young man arrived at Beauvoir to ask for Winnie’s hand, the banking scandal was unknown to the Davis family. Jefferson and Varina’s main objection to Fred was simply a matter of his having been born in the wrong geographic region. In Varina’s letter to Major Morgan she notes Alfred’s insistence that, as he put it, “I am a States’ rights democrat and had nothing to do with the war & he must see that, I could not help being born a Yankee.”46 Varina took the precaution of telling Major Morgan to burn the letter upon reading it (which he clearly did not do) and not to tell a soul about the engagement: “Winnie’s affair is to be a dead secret, no one knows but you, not even Maggie.”47
Jefferson acquiesced to the engagement relatively quickly. To everyone’s great surprise, within a few months a wedding date was set for the next winter.48 Winnie was thrilled, as was Fred, and all seemed to be moving along splendidly. In Syracuse the event was optimistically heralded as the solution for sectional issues caused by the war. “This union will obliterate the last vestige of animosity between North and South,” declared the Syracuse Standard on April 17, 1890.49
Fred and Winnie’s romance was perfectly in tune with the times. In the 1880s and 1890s a “culture of reconciliation” began to blossom between North and South. Plays, tableaux, novels, and songs heralded the rejoining of hands between the two regions. Popular playwright Augustus Thomas offered audiences dramatic interpretations emphasizing the sentimental story of love between a southern girl and a northern man, at first separated by war but eventually brought back together, much to the audience’s delight.50 The surface atmosphere and popular culture at the end of the nineteenth century seemed ready to embrace such a union.
Yet resentment and rebellion still seethed under the facade of southern politesse. The theater crowd might weep empathetically at scenarios of romantic reconciliation between North and South. But in reality many circumstances and events beyond Winnie and Fred’s control were conspiring against them: Fred’s northern birth, his abolitionist heritage, and his family’s financial scandal and ruin. Winnie’s family lineage was completely at odds with that of her fiancé and sure to turn heads both North and South when the news was announced.
The Daughter of the Confederacy desperately wanted her parents’ approval for the match; her physical and mental health depended on it. The couple was most certainly deeply in love and well matched both intellectually and socioeconomically. But serious obstacles lay in their path, many of them still unforeseen.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Engagement Issues
One would expect much rejoicing in both the Davis and Wilkinson households after Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, gave his consent for his adored youngest daughter to wed her gallant northern beau sometime in the winter of 1889. In the weeks after the private betrothal, the happy news was announced only to close friends and family of the couple.
Winnie was radiantly happy—at first. She soon realized, however, the distaste with which many of her southern friends viewed the match.1 Winnie had managed to wear down the resistance of her parents by appealing to their fears for her mental health and well-being. “Friends” of the family, including Gen. Jubal Early, were not so sympathetic.
Many members of the Davises’ southern coterie were more concerned that Winnie’s image as the Daughter of the Confederacy remain untarnished than that she obtain personal happiness and domestic bliss. If Winnie married a northerner, especially one with such an abolitionist heritage, many felt that the union would negate the sacrifices made by so many southern women and men both during and after the war. The Davis family began receiving threatening letters regarding the engagement.2 Upset by the negative response of family, friends, and the southern community, Winnie, following a familiar pattern, again commenced a spiral of emotional and physical decline.
Although the outcry concerning Fred and Winnie’s romance may seem melodramatic to some, the situation brought barely suppressed southern hostility toward the North to a head. The significance of the controversy lies in the fierce state of emotions the young couple unwittingly revealed. Even in 1889, more than two decades after the war had ended, the scars of battle were yet to heal in the South. Southern feelings of resentment simmered under a facade of southern gentility.
Southern men in particular objected to the proposed union. What would Winnie’s marriage to a northerner, after all her presentations and representations as the perfect southern woman at Confederate veterans’ reunions, say about their manhood? Her engagement was seen as an outright rejection of all the men of the South had to offer her. Indeed, it was seen as a denial of southern culture and Confederate heritage.
Moreover, if the Daughter of the Confederacy chose a northerner whose forebears were Abolitionists as her groom, what was to stop other women from following her lead? Southern men felt threatened and humiliated by the idea that southern females might choose their northern conquerors for husbands instead of men from their own communities.3 In the eyes of many southerners, Winnie’s marriage to a New Yorker would be tantamount to treason.
Why the Davises’ youngest daughter would stray from the ranks of eligible southern bluebloods when choosing a husband was unimaginable to many southerners of the era. Even Varina herself indicated that a marital alliance with an aristocratic young man from New Orleans would be most desirable for her youngest child.4 Winnie’s choice was most unexpected for the girl known publicly as the Daughter of the Confederacy. But considering the interests and background of the private Winnie, Fred was not a surprising choice at all. He was perfect for her and she for him.
Despite the couple’s clear compatibility, they faced serious opposition to the match. Fred for his part was totally bewildered by southern reactions to their proposed union. He had followed Victorian engagement protocol to the letter. He had proposed to Winnie, and she had accepted. He had then approached
her father for his approval. All the courting rituals of the day had been followed, and Fred was deeply in love with his fiancée.
Although Fred had waited longer than most men of his generation to marry, once he proposed, his commitment to Winnie never wavered. He was a solid, kind, and thoughtful man whose common sense and calm demeanor could help stabilize Winnie’s nervous tendencies. But all accepted traditions and practices for an 1890s engagement quickly flew out the window. Typically, at this juncture, affianced American couples would each send out formal marriage announcements. The young fiancée would then retire from public life until her wedding day.5 This expected scenario did not occur.
The realization that the engagement was eliciting not jubilation but consternation was slowly dawning on Varina, Jefferson, and Winnie. For some reason neither Varina nor Winnie, nor even Jefferson, seemed to have anticipated the negative reactions they began to receive. Their lack of concern was odd considering the vehement hatred of the North that still consumed so many of their southern friends.
Winnie’s health, always delicate, had been declining for months, if not years. The New York Times claimed on October 20, 1889, that “for the past year, or in fact, since she made her tour of the Northern States, Miss Davis has not been in good health. Her eyesight troubles her seriously, and she suffers from constant pain in her side.”6 Winnie’s ocular problems, which also seemed to develop in early adulthood, were often blamed on her secretarial work for her father.
Gastrointestinal problems also plagued Winnie from her twenties onward; there are numerous mentions of her stomach ailments beginning in 1883. In a letter to family friend Jubal Early in May of that year, Varina declined a trip to Virginia on Winnie’s behalf due to her daughter’s “New Orleans gastritis.”7 Varina remarked in the letter that Winnie “is not a robust girl and sorely needs rest.”8 Any kind of stress seemed to exacerbate the young woman’s underlying health problems.
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