The O'Neal Genealogy Association Newsletter

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TOGA NEWS Volume III, Issue 12, December, 2003

Last month we looked at Adele Cutts, daughter of Eleanor O'Neale and James Madison Cutts. This month, we'll take another glimpse into Adele's life and then move on to a couple of her children. A correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial Newspaper, on assignment in Washington, DC wrote the article below on May 26th, 1869.

I've heard it said a picture is worth a thousand words. Inversely, then, a thousand words should paint a picture. And in the article below, I believe they do........

  A beautiful woman is a beautiful memory.  Let her bury herself in a nunnery, and we will gossip about her till she is dead, if we can only catch a glimpse of her cap and vail through the grating.  Sitting the other night in the theater, there was pointed out to me for the first time the once famous and fashionable Adele Douglas, the woman about whose beauties and graces the young ladies of every city in the country heard and talked, around whom, ten years ago, polite society circled like an eddy.  As I looked toward the seat indicated by a friend, I saw a woman dressed in plain black, with a Roman matron cast of face and head, still fine and graceful-looking, with the full ten years upon her celebrated beauty, and suggesting it only as a faded ribbon calls up a forgotton romance or a by-gone fashion.  Not observed more than the ordinary, she sat there quietly, looking not beyond the face of her husband for the looks and smiles that in the old time made her eyes the center of every assembly. The contrast of the picture with the one in memory recalled her romance, as real and vivid a one as the best out of George Sand.

  Your lady readers of twenty-five remember the name of her family well enough.  It was that of Cutts, an old Southern stock here that by the rule and grace of chivalry was accounted good, though none of its members ever grew to much wealth or prominence, and Adele’s father held for his life-time nothing more than a respectable position in a Government department here.  Her mother’s family was poor and ran back for a generation or two in the District.  So the daughter’s fortune, as the Spanish say, was the dower of beauty, and not much besides.  But this she improved with grace and manners and a tolerable education at the Catholic Seminary in Georgetown, and came out upon society here a commanding, courtly aired, conquering belle—the rarest thing that ever happens to girls born in Washington.  She starred a year or two as she was.  Then, when hearts enough had melted and knees had gone down like stubble before her stateliness, the elegant and powerful Douglas bent too, and she lifted him up with her hand.  The “Little Giant” was the pet and the lion of the Senate, a prince in wealth and power, and she was of blood royal by the gift of beauty.