de her _debut_ at one of them. The
house was well adapted for entertainments, as there were four spacious
drawing-rooms, two on each side of a long hall, one side being reserved
for dancing.

At the time of the Gouverneur-Monroe wedding the bride was but sixteen
years of age, and many years younger than her only sister, Eliza, who
was the wife of Judge George Hay of Virginia, the United States
District-Attorney of that State, and the prosecuting officer at the
trial of Aaron Burr. Mrs. Hay was educated in Paris at Madame Campan's
celebrated school, where she was the associate and friend of Hortense de
Beauharnais, subsequently the Queen of Holland and the mother of
Napoleon III. The Rev. Dr. William Hawley, who performed the marriage
ceremony of Miss Monroe and Mr. Gouverneur, was the rector of old St.
John's Church in Washington. He was a gentleman of the old school and
always wore knee breeches and shoe buckles. In the War of 1812 he
commanded a company of divinity students in New York, enlisted for the
protection of the city. It is said that when ordered to the frontier he
refused to go and resigned his commission, and I have heard that
Commodore Stephen Decatur refused to attend St. John's Church during his
rectorship, because he said he did not care to listen to a man who
refused to obey orders.

[Illustration: MRS. JAMES MONROE, NEE KORTRIGHT, BY BENJAMIN WEST.

_Original portrait owned by Mrs. Gouverneur._]

Only the relatives and personal friends attended the Gouverneur-Monroe
wedding at the White House; even the members of the Cabinet were not
invited. The gallant General Thomas S. Jesup, one of the heroes of the
War of 1812 and Subsistance Commissary General of the Army, acted as
groomsman to Mr. Gouverneur. Two of his daughters, Mrs. James Blair and
Mrs. Augustus S. Nicholson, still reside at the National Capital and are
prominent "old Washingtonians." After this quiet wedding, Mr. and Mrs.
Gouverneur left Washington upon a bridal tour and about a week later
returned to the White House, where, at a reception, Mrs. Monroe gave up
her place as hostess to mingle with her guests, while Mrs. Gouverneur
received in her place. Commodore and Mrs. Stephen Decatur, who lived on
Lafayette Square, gave the bride her first ball, and two mornings later,
on the twenty-second of March, 1820, Decatur fought his fatal duel with
Commodore James Barron and was brought home a corpse. "The bridal
festivities," wrote Mrs. Willi