Le Vert, Octavia Walton

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LE VERT, Octavia Walton

Born 18 August 1810, near Augusta, Georgia; died 12 March 1877, near Augusta, Georgia

Daughter of George Jr. and Sally Walker Walton; married Henry Strachey Le Vert, 1836

Octavia Walton Le Vert seemed destined by parentage and by place and year of birth to become a Southern belle. Her intelligence, education, vivacity, and wealth suited her to be also a cosmopolitan hostess and traveler. She played both roles flawlessly. Her life began and ended at Belle Vue, the estate of her grandfather George Walker. Her paternal grandfather, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was George Walton, and her father was acting governor and territorial secretary of Florida at Pensacola.

Le Vert's mother and her grandmother carefully groomed and tutored the child for an aristocratic life. She learned to sing, dance, paint, and play the piano and guitar. As child and as adult, she read widely. Her facility for language allowed her Scotch tutor to teach her Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. By the time she was twelve years old, she was so adept at language she could translate foreign dispatches for her father. When Lafayette visited the Waltons in 1825, Le Vert delighted him with her conversation in French. In Pensacola, Le Vert knew the Seminoles who negotiated with her father. From them she learned the Native American language and legends.

Le Vert was well traveled in the U.S. and Europe. She met and charmed people with power and position. In Washington, D.C., she visited President Jackson at the White House and was the friend of Senator Henry Clay. In 1835, the Walton family moved to Mobile, Alabama, where George Walton later served as mayor. There, as a volunteer nurse, Le Vert met a French physician whom she married in 1836. They had five children, several of whom died as children. In Mobile, Le Vert established what was perhaps the only French-styled salon in America. On her "Mondays," she received the social elite and persons distinguished in the arts and politics.

When war came, Le Vert, who had opposed secession, remained in Mobile and welcomed both Yankees and Confederates to her home. Public opinion turned against her, and she was denounced as a "Yankee spy." By the end of the Civil War, her husband was dead and their money gone. For a time, she traveled and gave public readings, but soon returned to Belle Vue where she died.

Souvenirs of Travel (1857), compiled from her journals and letters, is Le Vert's account of two trips to Europe in 1853 and 1855, during which she was received by Queen Victoria and Pope Pius IX, presented to Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, escorted in Paris by ex-President Millard Fillmore, and introduced to Robert and Elizabeth Browning.

The book glorifies the Old World with sentimental descriptions of notable people and famous places. Le Vert followed a popular format for 19th-century travel accounts, a genre which does not adequately reflect her intelligence and scholarly ability. The narrator of Souvenirs often sounds like just another matron on a tour, but Le Vert was an accomplished linguist. For instance, in her diary she wrote about translating Dante's descent into hell into three languages one afternoon for her own enjoyment. Despite its literary deficiencies, Souvenirs was read by some important people who wrote to Le Vert thanking her for a copy of the book or complimenting her on it. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edwin Booth, Washington Irving, and President James Buchanan were among her admirers.

Other Works:

Bibliography:

Delaney, C., "Madame Octavia Walton Le Vert, 1810-1877" (thesis, 1952). Williams, B. B., A Literary History of Alabama: The Nineteenth Century (1979).