With sabre and scalpel : the autobiography of a soldier and surgeon / by John Allan Wyeth.

  • Wyeth, John A. (John Allan), 1845-1922.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: With sabre and scalpel : the autobiography of a soldier and surgeon / by John Allan Wyeth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    75/600 (page 41)
    Naturally, the home of such a family as his became a center of the refinement and culture of the community, a rallying-point of the remarkable group of men and women, many of whom as they grew to maturity found high places in the esteem of mankind and later wrote their names in history. First of all, as the memory of these earlier days flashes through my mind, there comes a woman, the girlhood and lifelong friend of my mother, Virginia Tunstall, de¬ scended as were almost all of them from the cavaliers; later to be more widely known as the brilliant leader of society at the national capital in the decade that preceded the tragedy of 1861-65, as the wife of Senator Clement C. Clay, Jr. The story of that unique period is known to all readers of our native literature in a most fascinating book by Mrs. Clay, A Belle of the Fifties. Still holding, in 1914, the sway she could not relinquish if she would, the sole survivor of the brilliant throng of whom I write, one can fitly apply to her that unsurpassed compliment of Shake¬ speare to womanhood: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. The Clays all came from Virginia. The famous orator was from Ashland, near Richmond, and I have always felt a touch of pride that my kinsman, George Wythe, discov¬ ered Henry Clay, educated him, and trained him in the law. Clement C. Clay, the elder, from Halifax, in the Old Dominion, came to Huntsville in 1811, served many terms in the legislature, and was governor and United States Senator. Clement C. Clay, Jr., his son, “to the, manner born and native he^ ” with his university degree, succeeded his father in the United States Senate, and was the first