| Visit of (former) President Benjamin Harrison in 1898
THEME: Tenacious women
Text from If These Walls Could Speak draft:
Unlike the Brown family, the Lowndes made their home in Annapolis throughout his administration. Like the Browns, they entertained frequently. Elizabeth Tasker Lowndes was a
well-educated and very socially active woman. One account attributes at least some of the governor's popularity to her charm and hospitality. One very telling account relates to a dinner
at which the Lowndes entertained the President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, at their home in Cumberland. "It is a fact well remembered, and one that has been frequently
recorded by his biographers and most ardent admirers, that President Harrison, while an astute lawyer and a sound statesman, was likewide distinguished for his want of personal
magnetism. On the occasion mentioned, his manner was so cold and repellant that the social atmosphere in the drawing room of the Lowndes mansion before the dinner was announced
became most depressing. At the dinner, however, [the president] occupying the seat of honor to the right of Mrs. Lowndes, she caught the situation at a glance and proved to be a
magnet for the grave as well as the gay. She deftly turned the tide, and by her sallies of wit and humor, aroused a blaze of enthusiasm that remained unbroken throughout the entire
entertainment, and in which the President most fully and heartily participated and enjoyed." |
