Winnie Davis

by Heath Hardage Lee

  Winnie, Margaret, and their mother were surely exhausted after the emotionally draining event. Everyone wanted to see “the Davis Girls” and the “Widow of the Confederacy.” But after years of negotiation about the location of Jefferson’s final resting place, it must have been a relief to have the matter resolved. Varina’s biographer Joan Cashin writes, “When her husband’s body was reinterred in Richmond in 1893, she [Varina] negotiated the complex business of who should be invited to the event, and then endured the long elaborate ceremony, feeling overcome by memories, she left town as rapidly as possible.”24

  Aside from burying Jefferson, seeing the tombs of all four of the Davis boys could not have been easy for Varina or her daughters. More than half the family was dead. Those who survived were left with melancholy memories. Winnie and Varina soon left for New York, and Margaret headed west to Colorado Springs. Perhaps distance from the South made tragedy easier to bear for all the Davis women.

  In August 1894 Winnie traveled on her own to see her older sister in Colorado. A photograph now in the collection of the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum confirms Winnie’s visit. In the photo Winnie, Margaret, Addison Hayes, and a friend are pictured at famous Cripple Creek—where gold was discovered in abundance in 1891.25 The Colorado papers made mention of Winnie’s visit, calling her “The Daughter of the Rebellion.”26

  This Western visit, far away from haunting memories of Richmond, was presumably a refreshing respite for Winnie. The sunny climate and blue skies of Colorado Springs were undoubtedly alluring and cleansing for her. All was new, and here the Civil War and its bitter aftermath were only distant, sepia-toned memories. Even so, the Daughter of the Rebellion was soon back in her beloved Manhattan.

  Although Winnie participated enthusiastically in the cultural and social life of the city, she had little interest in the opposite sex. Was this due to her unrequited love for Fred? Winnie apparently called herself a “bachelor” and declared no man would have her. Many acquaintances, including a neighbor in New York, claimed she never got over her romance with Fred.27 There is one story, probably apocryphal, that Winnie and Fred met once after their broken engagement at a dinner party given by the Pulitzers, where they completely avoided each other.28

  Perhaps, even if Winnie did secretly pine for Fred, she ultimately preferred a literary life with her mother, with no other domestic obligations. Marriage and children might have proved too much of a strain for Winnie, given her physical and mental ailments. Perhaps Winnie and Varina realized this on a subconscious level?

  When the Davis women moved to New York City in 1890, Winnie’s writing did not remain a genteel pastime; it became a necessity. Fortunately, both the quality and quantity of her work flourished in this new and inspiring atmosphere. The old rules about women working simply did not apply to Winnie. In her unmarried state she was free to experiment with both her writing and her opinions about relationships between men and women.

  Although most of her time was spent writing and participating in Manhattan’s literary and cultural scene, Winnie still made time to represent her father at Confederate veterans’ Reunions. Her mother always urged her to keep up appearances in this arena. In 1895 Winnie attended one such reunion in Houston, Texas, quickly discovering that she was the focus of the event. Her retiring nature and dislike of the spotlight must have been psychologically difficult for her to overcome. At reunions such as this one, the much-admired Daughter of the Confederacy was mobbed. Thousands thronged one reception for her until she was forced to come out onto a balcony to wave to them like a foreign princess might do.29

  Varina described Winnie returning to New York after the event in Houston with “her hands sore and swollen with greetings to ‘all sorts and conditions of men.’”30 Winnie was not going to disappoint what we would term today as her “fan club,” even if it meant suffering physical discomfort. In this respect she was very much like her father, for whom the sacrifice of personal well-being was a guiding principle.

  Within the same year Winnie published her first novel, The Veiled Doctor. The story reveals much about the young woman’s attitudes toward marriage and perhaps illuminates some of her long-term anxieties about the institution. The story is fairly traditional, with a husband and wife, Isabel and Gordon Wickford, playing the central roles. Early in the tale, however, Isabel questions her existence, sadly noting the status of many a Victorian wife. “I am only a ‘subject’ to him after all,” she says.31 Isabel, as her author notes, is literally her husband’s property.

  The heroine of The Veiled Doctor chafes under the constraints her spouse places upon her, but she is ultimately punished for her rebellion. Her husband dies, and she apparently becomes a better woman through her suffering and consequent remorse. The moral of the tale reflected Winnie’s own experience of failed romance.

  Winnie’s second novel, A Romance of Summer Seas, was published in 1898. This tale is distinctly more cynical than its predecessor. Through her characters the author begins to express sentiments contrary to the prevailing beliefs of her era. A sense of independence shines through this literary work. One of her characters ridicules the institution of marriage, declaring: “Abstractly, I do not approve of dueling. Like marriage, divorce and many other institutions, it leaves a great deal to be desired.”32

  Winnie had been compelled to give up her great love for a higher cause and consequently found both her career and her independence outside the traditional wifely sphere. This arrangement fulfilled her on personal and intellectual levels in a way that being a wife and mother probably never could.

  In Romance Winnie’s characters question the accepted definition of a husband as well: “Obedience is a dead letter and why should not the old conception of a husband’s position as protector and avenger die with it?”33 The author’s fictional characters allow her to express opinions and thoughts that she would likely not voice in her personal life. She empowers these women to speak their minds and vent some of her own frustrations with and perspectives on the domesticity-mad society in which she lived.

  In the rigid Victorian family structure, women were forced into a role that rarely allowed for outside ambitions or opinions. Once safely married, women were expected to be the moral guardians of society.34 The heroines of both The Veiled Doctor and A Romance of Summer Seas began to reject Victorian social constructs and gender roles. Winnie’s novels reflected society’s fascination in the late 1880s and 1890s with a new concept: that of the “New Woman.” Winnie was surely aware of this definition, coined by writer and public speaker Sarah Grand in 1894. The term was a buzzword in the last few years of the nineteenth century.35

  This bicycle-riding, cigarette-smoking female was pictured brilliantly by Massachusetts-born Charles Dana Gibson, the premier pen-and-ink artist of the era, who created his “Gibson Girl” in 1890. She was a flirtatious femme fatale who was often riding a bicycle, playing golf or croquet, while simultaneously breaking hearts. Australian art critic Robert Hughes once depicted the Gibson Girl as the American version of “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” Unlike her European seductress counterpart, the Gibson Girl was a fresh, less-worldly spin on this female archetype.36

  This caricature was inspired by Gibson’s close association with the famed Langhorne sisters, wealthy Virginians whose family fortune was swept away by the destruction of the Civil War. When Charles married Irene, their wedding in Richmond in November 1895 was not only the social event of the year; it was seen by many southerners as the symbolic end of the War between the States.37

  A whole genre of New Woman literature sprung up to accompany such visual depictions. This vision of American loveliness, with her bloomers and bicycle rides, became a focal point for discussions of female liberation.38 The heroines of Winnie’s novels, and indeed Winnie herself, were evolving toward the Gibson girl model, though they were not fully there yet. Winnie and her heroines still sat on the fence between Victorian repression and fin-de-siècle rebellion against traditional women’s roles.

>   The bicycling craze of the late 1890s was inextricably linked with the image of the New Woman. This was an activity in which Winnie fully participated, gleefully whizzing around her Narragansett Pier resort on holiday. The freedom offered by this new mode of transport dovetailed nicely with New Woman sentiments of the time.39

  In 1896 Susan B. Anthony, the leader of the women’s suffrage movement, told the New York World’s reporter Nellie Bly that bicycling had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”40 Winnie was evolving more and more into the type of heroine she described in her novels—a role that was much closer to her true nature than that of the Daughter of the Confederacy.

  The sentiments manifested on the pages of Winnie’s two novels point clearly to the author’s burgeoning spirit of independence. Although Winnie was clearly devastated by her decision to end her relationship with Fred, there were definite upsides to the situation. Once she was freed from the all-absorbing Victorian tasks of finding and pleasing a husband and then creating a bubble of domestic bliss, complete with children, she was able to sort through her own literary needs and ambitions.

  As one can see through her writings in the mid- to late 1890s, the Daughter of the Confederacy ironically seemed to be among the few women of the time who realized that many of the demands placed upon the wives and mothers of Victorian society were antiquated and unreasonable. Although she submitted to the will of southern society by rejecting marriage to Fred, she rebelled against the social dictates of the era in the context of her novels, in her literary life in New York, and within her leisure pursuits such as bicycling.

  Winnie also still delighted in traveling abroad with her glamorous cousin Kate Pulitzer. In 1898 she, Kate, and Kate’s son Ralph, who was on leave from Harvard, decided to make a sightseeing tour of Egypt.41 On February 11, 1898, before she sailed for Egypt, Winnie made out her will. In this document she bequeathed Beauvoir, the family home her father had left to her, and everything else she had to her mother, leaving remembrances of her jewelry to her cousin Anna Smith and to her old nurse, Mary Ahern. She instructed Varina to select a few items of remembrance for her sister Margaret and her children.42 How intriguing that Winnie would have chosen this time to make out her will. Was this a prescient notion? Or was it perhaps just a precaution due to the exotic locale of her trip?

  Winnie, Kate, and Ralph all seemed thoroughly to enjoy their exotic adventure in the Middle East. While on the trip, Winnie also visited Rome, Venice, Florence, and Paris.43 She must have at least had a passing thought or two about Fred and the time they had spent together on her last trip to Italy in 1890. Despite the exhilaration of the trip, Winnie was still not feeling her best. The strain of nineteenth-century travel could not have helped the precarious state of her health. She returned to the States in May feeling worn-out.

  While her physical health was diminished, her literary reputation was on the upswing. Her new novel, A Romance of Summer Seas, had received critical praise. She remained beloved by Confederate veterans, and the women of the United Daughters continued to hold her up as their distinguished role model.44 At last Winnie had blossomed into the New Woman she wrote about in her novels. Like the famed journalist (and reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World) Nellie Bly, she was an intrepid explorer of mysterious lands. She was independent, earning her own money from her literary work. As a single career woman, she was also a nonconformist. Things were indeed looking up, but Winnie’s mother and her Confederate ties would soon unwittingly place the young woman on a dangerous and life-threatening path.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Last Casualty of the Lost Cause

  In July 1898 Varina decided that Winnie should take her place at a large camp gathering of Confederate veterans in Atlanta. Winnie did not wish to go and was feeling poorly, but her mother strongly urged her to attend the event on her behalf. Varina expressed her rationale for this decision in a September 7, 1898, letter to her friend Connie Harrison, saying that it was best for Winnie to go to Atlanta so as not to lose touch with her father’s friends.1 Varina was later to regard this choice as tantamount to signing Winnie’s “death warrant.”2

  With her trip to Egypt and her fame as a writer, Winnie was evolving further and further from her Confederate roots. She was developing her own life and personality. She was an adventurer, a writer, and a novelist. She was a “New Woman” with a career, a social life, and no husband or children to keep her from her literary ambitions. She could have been free. What held her back, then, from taking advantage of such freedom, a state unknown to most women of her era? Her mother and her Confederate past still held her captive. Winnie’s desire to please authority figures—her father before his death, her mother, and the southern war veterans who idolized her—was still strong.

  At Varina’s insistence Winnie unwillingly made the journey to the Atlanta veterans’ reunion. By this time Winnie was a practiced hand at such symbolic events. She knew her job was to consecrate the gathering with her presence. The Daughter of the Confederacy’s role was to look pretty, wave, and meet with all those who supported the Cause, no matter what their level in society. Winnie had to deal with the southern hoi polloi as well as its aristocrats.

  As part of the Atlanta celebrations, Winnie rode in an elaborately decorated carriage with Mrs. “Stonewall” Jackson. The top was left up, and a sudden downpour drenched Winnie, who was forced to keep her clammy clothes on for hours. Winnie did not have the opportunity to change her outfit because of the large crowd pressing around her carriage. When she finally did get back to her lodgings, she immediately headed back out to a glamorous evening ball at Kimball House, a fashionable Atlanta hotel and hot spot for southern politicians of the era.3

  Surrounded by a swirl of silks and satins, Winnie should have enjoyed an amusing and glamorous evening. The extreme corseting required by gowns of the period surely, however, did not help her physical state. Even more damaging was the chill caught during the day’s open carriage ride. After the party Winnie’s health, already precarious, rapidly declined. The next morning, still suffering the effects of the previous day’s events, the exhausted young woman returned by train to Narragansett Pier to meet her mother.4 Sick and worn-out, Winnie had to endure a bumpy ride back to Rhode Island.

  Normally, Winnie was overjoyed to reach Rhode Island for her holidays. Narragansett Pier was a summer playground for the wealthy and prominent. By the late 1800s the community was thriving and rivaling its neighbor Newport, across Narragansett Bay, in terms of social prestige. Narragansett had a more relaxed, familial atmosphere than Newport, where guests tended to display their wealth more conspicuously. Winnie and Varina’s chosen resort had more conservative tastes.5 Summer visitors could enjoy sunbathing or play golf, tennis, and polo at Point Judith Country Club if they had the right connections.6

  Perhaps the best spot to see and be seen was the impressive Narragansett Pier Casino, built by the famous New York architectural firm of the Gilded Age McKim, Mead & White. The casino stood directly across the street from the Rockingham Hotel, where Winnie and her mother spent their summer vacations.

  The hotel Winnie and her mother had chosen was among the most lovely and elegant in Narragansett. Built in 1883, the Rockingham had broad piazzas overlooking a bathing beach, electric lights, hot and cold running water, and 150 rooms for its patrons to choose from. Its glamorous ballroom was raptly described in the hotel brochure as “one of the most charming of the public rooms, being decorated in white and gold.” An orchestra installed in the ballroom provided daily concerts for guests.7

  Winnie and Varina must have enjoyed observing the social cavalcade that took place right outside their windows on a daily basis. The country’s elite appeared there regularly. Famous actor Edwin Booth (brother of Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth), Gen. (and later president) Ulysses S. Grant, abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, publisher Horace Greeley, and Lincoln’s secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase all visited Narragansett Pier. Deca
des later Jacqueline Bouvier, the future Mrs. John F. Kennedy, would summer in the still-chic resort.8

  Instead of plunging into her usual round of summer parties, promenading on Ocean Road alongside the rich and famous, playing croquet or lawn tennis, and indulging in her beloved hobby of bicycling, Winnie found herself in bed with a dangerous fever. She could not eat or sleep for days. Varina wrote to her old friend Major Morgan on the first of August that her daughter was “dreadfully reduced and very patient in her pain.”9

  By early September Varina was deeply worried about Winnie, but she still refused to believe that her youngest daughter was mortally ill. In a letter to Constance Cary Harrison, she said: “My Winnie is the most suffering person not to be dying that I ever saw . . . She cannot retain any nourishment except the occasional teaspoonful of cracked ice and raw white of egg, and even this she cannot assimilate.”10 The summer season typically ended the first or second week of September, and the weather typically soon turned chilly.11

  On September 8 Varina wrote a heartbreaking letter to her grandson, Jefferson Hayes-Davis on Rockingham Hotel stationery. In the letter she thanked Jefferson for his letter to Winnie—or “Nannie,” as Margaret’s children called her. She described his aunt as “patient as an angel and [one who] never says a word of complaint.” The doctor was visiting her twice a day, and the two women had the help of a trained nurse. The note of desperation is clear, however, in Varina’s parting words to her grandson: “You must get down on your knees and pray God to help her and ease her pain and send her angels to guard and comfort her.”12

  Even in her frantic state, Varina noticed the striking similarity in the manner with which both her husband and daughter bore their mortal trials. “She has wasted away dreadfully,” she wrote to Constance Cary Harrison, “but she bears everything with fortitude and patience I have never seen equaled except by her father.”13 During this illness Winnie again mirrored her father’s stoicism. Forbearance, lack of complaint, and gracious acquiescence to suffering and pain were the hallmarks of her behavior during this trying period. These qualities were also perfectly in line with those of the idealized “southern womanhood” variety.