She knew everyone and everyone knew her. A wealthy belle, married to prominent legislator, Clement Clay, she became one of Washington, D.C.'s great hostesses. This is as witty, gossipy, fashionable, and gritty a tale of antebellum Washington as you'll ever read. As her biographical researcher stated: "I have come upon no record of any other woman of her time who has filled so powerful a place politically, whose belleship has been so long sustained, or whose magnetism and compelling fascinations have swayed others so universally as have those of Mrs. Clay-Clopton." When the American Civil War came, however, she and her husband transferred their loyalty, services, and her "belleship" to the south. She describes in wonderful detail her life in Washington, the sorrows and privations of the war, and her husband's incarceration after the war during his life-threatening illness.