First Lady
As First Lady, Hayes brought her zeal to the White House and supported her husband's ban of alcoholic beverages at state functions, excepting only the reception for Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia in 1877, at which wine was served. The Women's Christian Temperance Union hailed her policy and in gratitude commissioned a full-length portrait of her, which now hangs in the White House. She also instituted the custom of conducting an Easter egg roll on the White House lawn. A devout Methodist, she joined the president in saying prayers after breakfast and conducting group hymn sings with the cabinet and congressmen on Sunday evenings.
The social highlight of the Hayes' years was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration, at which the President and the First Lady repeated their vows at a White House ceremony before many of the same guests who had attended the original nuptials in Cincinnati.
Read more about this topic: Lucy Webb Hayes
Famous quotes containing the word lady:
“When Lady Mary Tufton married Dr. Duncan, an elderly physician, Mr. George Selwyn said, “How often will she say with Macbeth ‘Wake, Duncan, with thy knocking—would thou couldst!’””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“—I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)