The Dents of St. Louis

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daydream of himself as a teacher. He saw himself standing throughout the years by the stream of life, a half-recluse, sprinkling algebra and calculus generously upon the heads of the passing generations.

A quiet, soothing dream it was; a dream that could never come true. And it is just as well, after all. He would have been a failure as a teacher. Without the charm of personality which every successful teacher must possess, his work would have become before long an ineffective drudgery. Undistinguished and unpromoted, he would have gone laboring on for years and then the world would have heard no more of him.

His stay at Jefferson Barracks soon came to an end. He had been there only seven months when his regiment was ordered down the Mississippi River and across western Louisiana to the Texas border.

Among Grant's classmates at West Point there had been a cadet named Frederick T. Dent. This young man was wholesome, cheerful, and beefy. His mind was almost wholly untainted by scholarship. His manners were Southern and his ambitions were few and easily satisfied. All he wanted to do at West Point was to get through, and in that desire he found a companion soul in Grant.

Frederick Dent's family lived near St. Louis, some miles from Jefferson Barracks. Young Dent himself was not stationed at the Barracks, but he arranged things so that his family invited young Lieutenant Grant to the Dent home.

Through making this simple gesture of politeness toward his classmate Frederick Dent got himself entangled in the net of history. Innumerable historical archeologists have tramped over his ruins, so to speak, with tape-line and notebook; and genealogical specialists have not failed to trace his family back through the centuries to the lords and ladies from whom all Americans have descended.

The Dents called their home "White Haven," and it is spoken of as an estate, but it was really nothing more than a farm.

They had social aspirations. Colonel Dent, the head of the family, was a hospitable person with a red face and a hearty handshake. My own desultory researches into his antecedents have not been sufficient for me to say positively whether he was a colonel by reason of military service, or merely in the way of Southern courtesy.

A family of slaveholders, the Dents were very different in manner and ideas from any one whom Grant had known as a boy in Ohio. They were not much better off than his father's family, but they possessed a gentle graciousness that would have seemed effeminate to old Jesse Grant.

In the family were five or six young people, among them a seventeen-year-old daughter named Julia, who had just finished her education at Professor Moreau's school in St. Louis. There she had been taught a little music, French, and ballroom etiquette-besides the work of the more refined among the English poets.

Grant does not appear to have met Julia Dent-so far as I have been able to learn-until the month of February, 1844. He was ordered South with his regiment in May, so whatever courting he did must have been done in three months.

I fancy that there was not much courting done by him at any time. Julia liked to ride, and she and the young lieutenant went cantering along the Missouri roads, talking probably about everything except what was on their minds. She attended some dances at the Barracks, where the wallflower Ulysses stood watching her lithe form go swinging around the room in other men's arms. He tried to keep her on horseback as much as possible.

When the regiment was sent to Louisiana Grant was away in Ohio on a short visit. Returning to Jefferson Barracks, he found that his company had departed, and the Colonel's orders were for him to follow the command immediately. Thereupon he made up his mind to propose to Miss Dent before leaving.

Proposes to Miss Dent

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He tells in the Memoirs-of his proposal, though from his story he left out, characteristically, all its romantic features. He says that he procured a horse and started for "White Haven." On the way he had to ford a creek which ordinarily was a mere trickle of water, but there had been a lot of rain, and the creek had become a rushing torrent.

I struck into the stream, and in an instant the horse was swimming, and I being carried down by the current. I headed the horse towards the other bank and soon reached it, wet through and without clothes on that side of the stream. I went on, however, to my destination and borrowed a dry suit from my future brother-in-law.

Before I returned I mustered up courage to make known, in the most awkward manner imaginable, the discovery I had made on learning that the Fourth Infantry had been ordered away from Jefferson Barracks. The young lady afterwards admitted that she, too, although until then she had never looked upon me other than as a visitor whose company was agreeable to her, had experienced a depression of spirits she could not account for when the regiment left. Before separating it was definitely understood that at a convenient time we would join our fortunes, and not let the removal of a regiment trouble us.

In writing his Memoirs he avoided sentiment as if it were a deadly poison, so what I have just quoted is not the full story of his proposal to Julia.

According to Hamlin Garland, who got the story at firsthand from the folks in the neighborhood, Grant arrived at the Dent home and found the family all decked out in their best clothes and aflutter with excitement. They were about to depart to attend some neighborhood wedding. They invited Ulysses to go with them, and he rode in a buggy with Julia. On their way they came to another impetuous and overflowing creek, which had a bridge, but the water was racing, inches deep, over its planks.

"Do you think it safe, Ulysses ?" the damsel inquired, fearsomely.

"Why, of course, it's safe," replied the young warrior and tamer of horses.

"Oh, I'm afraid," Julia went on, oblivious of assurance. "I'm terribly afraid."

"Now, now, don't be frightened," came from Ulysses. "I'll take care of you."

"I'm going to cling to you," she declared, "no matter what happens," and with that she clasped his arm with both her hands.

After they had got safely across Julia said, "Well, I clung to you, didn't I, Ulysses?"

"You certainly did," he replied . . . and after a moment's silence he turned to her and said: "How would you like to cling to me for the rest of your life?"

Miss Julia Dent could hardly be called beautiful. She had a slight squint in her eyes. Those who knew her declare that she was amiable, tactful and placid, but her colorless personality appears to have been without sparkle or fire. Like her parents, she was intensely Southern in spirit.

sense.

I doubt if Grant ever was much in love, in the romantic Yet he was devoted to Julia Dent, in his own phlegmatic fashion. Courtship and marriage seem to have been considered by him as a sort of duty which comes up in a man's life. Very likely he felt relieved when it was settled. He could then check that performance off his list, and never bother about it again.

Colonel Dent was not informed of his daughter's engagement, nor was his consent asked, until about a year had passed. Then Lieutenant Grant came up from Louisiana to ask for Julia's hand, and receive the Colonel's blessing. The Colonel did not like it at all, and his blessing was rather skimpy. Ulysses had not impressed him as the kind of man who would rise in the world. He wanted Julia to marry some one who

Jesse Grant Objects

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had the wit to make a place for himself—who was on his way to becoming a county attorney, or a Congressman, or something. He gave his consent grudgingly.

It was decided that the young people should not marry at that time. Grant had nothing but his pay as a lieutenant, and Julia was still almost a child. So they became engaged, with the wedding indefinitely deferred.

When Jesse Grant learned that his son was engaged to marry the daughter of a Southern slave-owner he was inspired by the information to make acidulous comments. This seems ungracious of him, as he had never met his future daughter-in-law, and knew nothing about her. It irritated him to think that his son was to marry into a slaveholding family; and all he heard of their so-called "estate" and semi-haughty ways increased his annoyance. He carried his dislike of the Dents into his crabbed old age. When eventually he became as deaf as a post, and could only gabble querulously without hearing the answers, still he continued to speak of "that tribe of Dents."

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, Ulysses Grant and Julia Dent must have grown fond, indeed, of each other, for they met but once in the four years that passed between their engagement and their marriage. In May, 1845, the twentythree-year-old lover obtained a short leave of absence and went up from the camp in Louisiana to St. Louis. He was there only a few days. Most of his time was spent at the Dent home and in company with Julia. It was then that he told Colonel Dent of his intention to marry Julia.

Their attachment was undoubtedly real and a little sluggish-otherwise it could not have survived such a long separation. The emotional parsimony of Grant's character was one of his most striking traits. If he possessed any romantic qualities he managed to conceal them; and he was almost grotesquely sensitive to ridicule. Poor equipment for a lover, one must say, for ardent love-making always has an element of the comic,