Page:Lamb - History of the city of New York - Volume 3.djvu/23

Rh and Darby replied that he did not see him, because he had mistaken a man "all lace and glitter, botherum and shine," for him, until the show was out of sight, Washington's features relaxed and he indulged in a rare and hearty laugh. The next day, Washington says he called upon Chief Justice Jay and Secretary Knox on business, made informal visits to Governor Clinton, Mr. Ralph Izard, General Philip Schuyler, and Mrs. Dalton, entertained Dr. Johnson, lady and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard and son, and Chief Justice Jay at dinner; "after which went with Mrs. Washington to the dancing assembly, and remained until ten o’clock."

Mrs. Izard had spent several winters prior to the Revolution in the brilliant society of London, after which she had resided in Paris, accompanied her husband to the Court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and visited nearly all the points of interest on the European Continent. She was handsome, witty, and universally admired. She was a New York lady, as the reader has hitherto learned, one of the famous De Lancey family so conspicuous in New York's public affairs, the granddaughter of Lieutenant-Governor Colden, great-granddaughter of Stephanus Van Cortlandt, the first lord of the manor, with a line of distinguished ancestry reaching backward to the very first little dorp on Manhattan Island. Her marriage with the accomplished Ralph Izard of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1767, whose education at the University of Cambridge had engendered foreign tastes, and whose liberal fortune had enabled him to gratify them, separated her in a measure from the influences conspiring to attach the De Lanceys to the Crown. Her affections and her sympathies must have been severely tried, for while she was moving in the honored circle of the most illustrious character in modern history, her favorite brother, who had commanded the forces raised to fight for the king in Westchester,