While editor of the Messenger, Dr. Bagby wrote occasionally for the Richmond Examiner, thereby becoming associated in a friendly way with its editor, John M. Daniel, whose brilliant and continuous fight upon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before the public.  Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of the Examiner, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchant pen in treating of public affairs.  This led to his possession of the famous latchkey which “fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, opposite the African Church,” a key of which he wrote that it “has its charm,” and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readers than any other such article has ever proved.

These two men, so different in view-point and expression, so similar in principle and purpose, met in Washington in 1861 at Brown’s Hotel, that famous old hostelry dear to the Southern heart in the years before the tide of war swept the old Washington away forever and brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life.  Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the Examiner was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence.  But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor’s hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family.

That latchkey gave to its holder entrance to the first floor front room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty.  The dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which Mr. Daniel was wont to refer as the former property of “old Memminger,” that is, Secretary Memminger of the Confederate Treasury, who had sold his household effects on leaving his home on Church Hill.  Over the mantel in the bachelor’s chamber hung a miniature on ivory, “the most beautiful I have ever seen,” said the doctor, an unknown beauty whose charms mystified as well as enchanted the observer; a wondrously accomplished lady of title and wealth whom Mr. Daniel had known abroad.  The visitor must have viewed with some degree of curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party:  “But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn’t got a white vest and is too poor these war times to buy one?” “——­ it, sir! let him stay at home,” was the decisive answer.