Later Years
In 1873, following her father's death, Kate moved onto the “Edgewood” estate, which later became the neighborhood of Edgewood, Washington, D.C. (Her father purchased the bulk of the estate in 1863, and he had constructed a mansion upon it.). She lived a quiet, sometimes reclusive life with her three daughters (according to the 1880 federal census), Ethel Sprague, Kitty Sprague, and Portia Sprague. After her son Willie committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 25, Kate became a recluse. She died in poverty in 1899, at age 58, of Bright's disease (a kidney disease).
The New York Times wrote, on her death, that "the homage of the most eminent men in the country was hers." The Washington Post called her "the most brilliant woman of her day. None outshone her." The Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper of her birthplace, said about her funeral:
| “ | Hardly more than two or three—and they the nearest relatives on earth—were gathered together yesterday morning around the new-made grave in Spring Grove Cemetery, where, with the simple ceremony of commitment—"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes"—the mortal remains of the daughter of Salmon P. Chase were laid to rest forever beside the dust of her illustrious father. | ” |
And yet, the Enquirer recognized her legacy: "No Queen has ever reigned under the Stars and Stripes, but this remarkable woman came closer to being Queen than any American woman has."
Kate Chase's presence in Washington, D.C. would be fictionally recreated in the 1990s TV series "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer." She is prominent in Gore Vidal's historical novel Lincoln and is also portrayed in the 1988 made-for-TV movie.
Read more about this topic: Kate Chase
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“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
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