Introduction
‘Tis strange that the feelings of Life’s early Spring
Will linger so long – aye, ever will cling,
So close to the heart, with their earliest power
Their first gushing freshness, ‘till Life’s lastest hour.1
How exactly do you introduce a woman like Madame Octavia Walton LeVert? I imagine there are many ways. If she was introducing herself, she might launch her introduction with a poem or two, embellished with large words, maybe a foreign verse or so thrown in for good measure. Her methods were well-practiced, subtle ways to let those around her know she was a lady of Society, but with a touch of the exotic.
I can see her strumming on her guitar the Spanish tunes she learned in Pensacola, Florida, and lure you into her web with tales of meeting Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In her Mobile residence, her ever-patient husband, Dr. Henry S. LeVert, and her enslaved person and rumored half-sister, Betsey Walton, silently watched as Octavia worked the room. Octavia had that effect on people. I see the Salon of her Federal-style home lit with massive silver candlesticks2, twirling and spinning through the night air. I see the Victorian chairs and settees filled with Mobile influential families, actors from the local theatre, and those well-known people who traveled to the city to attend one of her “Mondays.” She was the ultimate hostess to all visitors during those cotton years of growth.
When she lived in Mobile, her peak of fame and connections took her family to a unique Society level, one well beyond the usual Southern stratosphere. According to Corinne Chadwick Stephens, “Throughout her entire life, these family connections were responsible in a large measure for her social importance, and even, indirectly, for her travels abroad and her literary effort.”3
However, it is one thing to talk about perfect things, but not talk about things when they were not quite so. Madame Octavia Walton LeVert did not always smile, greet, or meet with the Society she loved. The real Octavia encountered emotional struggle, a challenging home life, and family so intent on using her for their gains, they sometimes put her welfare aside. It is even possible she did the same thing with her own family when her fame grew beyond what most people ever experience.
The Octavia you will meet in this book is different than the one you think you know. She is an endless number of conflicts, but she never intended to be so. How does a Unionist rectify the owning of slaves? How does she survive in a city where most of her friends and neighbors supported the Confederacy, a cause she opposed? You would think this contradiction in personhood would be her downfall, but instead, I feel it is the thing that attracted everyone to her more. It is most certainly why she attracted me as a subject for a book.
When women had limitations placed on them and rarely ventured outside the home, Octavia did the opposite. Yet how did she manage this? Even during her time, the ability to charm was confusing to those who met her. In Women of the South, Mary Forrest, a well-known writer herself, recognized Octavia’s different impressions conveyed to other minds. This author expressed, “We had read many of the newspaper sketches of her, and listened to the countless relations of her varied accomplishments, but had failed to recognize her specific charm, until a little child, who had been sitting, one day, in her presence, thinking a child’s “long, long thoughts,” came to whisper softly in our ear: “She isn’t a fine lady at all: she is just like me, and I love her!” The darling! Through all the éclat and circumstances of the famous, flush woman, this six-summered soul had discovered and paid tribute to its sweet counterpart.”4
The reader can glance at her significance in the book by W. Brewer, Alabama: Her History, Resource, War Record, and Public Men.5 In this relatively large printing in 1872, a few glaring points reveal themselves. First, it emphasized men, one only has to read the title to see, and despite this, it does mention a few prominent women. The inclusion of women indicates their achievements were significant. Two of these ladies were from Mobile, Alabama. Augusta Evans Wilson, who spent her life in Mobile, and Octavia Walton LeVert, who left in dubious circumstances in 1865.
Much like her exodus for various reasons, her information seems to have made the same journey in the years that followed, yet the breadcrumbs still exist. In discovering her, I have traveled to many archives, museums and visited valuable personal collections. I have exhausted all known resources about her with this book’s writing, but there must be more to discover. I am sure there are at least two journals, possibly a manuscript and other such relics lurking in an attic or basement somewhere waiting to see the light. If they are not, then the research world should weep, for they have experienced a severe loss.
Those who inherited some of her letters and remains of her wealth live and thrive in Georgia. The city of Pensacola, Florida, still has a few interesting bits it wants to share. Of course, there is a clue of her travels to Europe; her one published book, Souvenirs of Travel, exists today online and is available for everyone to use through the public domain.
While Octavia’s fame did fade after her death in 1877, she remained a part of Alabama history until around the 1930s when a struggling country no longer needed to hear about socialites and Society but how to survive every day. However, her time has now come once more. She is a significant figure in history whose story still matters, and she needs rescuing from disappearing.
Thank you, reader, for investing a few hours of your time learning about a woman who was unlike any other in a time unlike any other. I hope you to will see the difference she made in the world of those around her, marvel at how she has managed to wrap you around her heart and know of her sincerity despite the circumstances.
Works cited and Notes
- Octavia Walton LeVert, Octavia Walton Le Vert Journal 1846-1860. Journal/Diary. SPR638, Closed Stacks, Alabama Department of Archives. Note: This entry is titled “Stanzas” and dated November 10, 1846.
- Note: The silver candlesticks are located at the History Museum of Mobile.
- Corinne Chadwick Stephens, “Madame Octavia Walton Le Vert” (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1940, Collection #837, University of Georgia Libraries, John Donald Wade Papers.
- Mary Forrest, Women of the South Distinguished in Literature (New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1866).
- W. Brewer, Alabama: Her History, Resources, War Record, and Public Men (Tuscaloosa: Willow Publishing Company, 1964).