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Title: Social life in old New Orleans
Being recollections of my girlhood
Author: Eliza Ripley
Release date: December 6, 2023 [eBook #72346]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912
Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ORLEANS ***
SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ORLEANS
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AT TWENTY-TWO
Painted by Moïse]
SOCIAL LIFE IN
OLD NEW ORLEANS
_Being Recollections of my Girlhood_
BY
ELIZA RIPLEY
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
MCMXII
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
_To_
MY CHILDREN
_and_
MY CHILDREN’S CHILDREN
_and to_
THEIR CHILDREN TO COME
FOREWORD
Far more vivid than the twilight of the days in which I dwell, there
rises before my inner eye the vision, aglow in Southern sunshine, of the
days that are gone, never to return, but which formed the early chapters
of a life that has been lived, that can never be lived again.
Many of the following stories are oft-told tales at my fireside—others
were written to record phases of the patriarchal existence before the war
which has so utterly passed away.
They have been printed from time to time in the pages of the New Orleans
_Times-Democrat_, the editor of which has very kindly consented to their
publication in this form.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. NEW ORLEANS CHILDREN OF 1840 1
II. NEW ORLEANS SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS IN THE FORTIES 7
III. BOARDING SCHOOL IN THE FORTIES 14
IV. PICAYUNE DAYS 23
V. DOMESTIC SCIENCE SEVENTY YEARS AGO 31
VI. A FASHIONABLE FUNCTION IN 1842 42
VII. NEW YEAR’S OF OLD 50
VIII. NEW ORLEANS SHOPS AND SHOPPING IN THE FORTIES 58
IX. THE OLD FRENCH OPERA HOUSE 65
X. MURAL DECORATIONS AND PORTRAITS OF THE PAST 71
XI. THOUGHTS OF OLD 80
XII. WEDDING CUSTOMS THEN AND NOW 87
XIII. A COUNTRY WEDDING IN 1846 94
XIV. THE BELLES AND BEAUX OF FORTY 101
XV. AS IT WAS IN MY DAY 107
XVI. FANCY DRESS BALL AT THE MINT IN 1850 116
XVII. DR. CLAPP’S CHURCH 120
XVIII. OLD DAGUERREOTYPES 125
XIX. STEAMBOAT AND STAGE SEVENTY YEARS AGO 130
XX. HOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849 140
XXI. OLD MUSIC BOOKS 146
XXII. THE SONGS OF LONG AGO 153
XXIII. A RAMBLE THROUGH THE OLD CITY 159
XXIV. “OLD CREOLE DAYS” AND WAYS 173
XXV. A VISIT TO VALCOUR AIME PLANTATION 182
XXVI. THE OLD PLANTATION LIFE 191
XXVII. PEOPLE I HAVE ENTERTAINED 200
XXVIII. A MONUMENT TO MAMMIES 209
XXIX. MARY ANN AND MARTHA ANN 216
XXX. WHEN LEXINGTON WON THE RACE 245
XXXI. LOUISIANA STATE FAIR FIFTY YEARS AGO 250
XXXII. THE LAST CHRISTMAS 256
XXXIII. A WEDDING IN WAR TIME 264
XXXIV. SUBSTITUTES 273
XXXV. AN UNRECORDED BIT OF NEW ORLEANS HISTORY 280
XXXVI. CUBAN DAYS IN WAR TIMES 287
XXXVII. “WE SHALL KNOW EACH OTHER THERE” 295
XXXVIII. A RAMBLE THROUGH NEW ORLEANS WITH BRUSH AND EASEL 303
XXXIX. A VISIT OF TENDER MEMORIES 320
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 331
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Author at Twenty-two _Frontispiece_
Richard Henry Chinn _Facing_ 10
Market Doorway 24
A New Orleans Yard and Cistern 33
Door in the French Market _Facing_ 38
Courtyard on Carondelet Street 45
The Old French Opera House 66
Typical Old New Orleans Dwelling 73
A Creole Parterre 81
St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans 111
Augusta Slocomb Urquhart _Facing_ 118
Steamboat on the Mississippi 131
American Stagecoach 137
Seal of the City of New Orleans 160
Exchange Alley 163
Henry Clay _Facing_ 168
Arlington Plantation on the Mississippi _Facing_ 192
James Alexander McHatton _Facing_ 258
The Calaboose 281
A Courtyard in the French Quarter 305
“Behold a Wrecked Fountain” 308
“A Queer House Opposite” 311
St. Roch 316
The Author _Facing_ 324
A New Orleans Cemetery 326
SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD NEW ORLEANS
I
NEW ORLEANS CHILDREN OF 1840
“Children should be seen and not heard.” Children were neither seen nor
heard in the days of which I write, the days of 1840. They led the simple
life, going and coming in their own unobtrusive way, making no stir in
fashionable circles, with laces and flounces and feathered hats. There
were no ready-made garments then for grown-ups, much less for children.
It was before California gold mines, before the Mexican war, before money
was so abundant that we children could turn up our little noses at a
picayune. I recall the time when Alfred Munroe descended from Boston upon
the mercantile world of New Orleans, and opened on Camp Street a “one
price” clothing store for men. Nobody had ever heard of one price, and
no deviation, for anything, from a chicken to a plantation. The fun of
hectoring over price, and feeling, no matter how the trade ended, you had
a bargain after all, was denied the customers of Mr. Alfred Munroe. The
innovation was startling, but Munroe retired with a fortune in course of
time.
Children’s clothes were home-made. A little wool shawl for the shoulders
did duty for common use. A pelisse made out of an old one of mother’s, or
some remnant found in the house, was fine for Sunday wear. Pantalettes
of linen, straight and narrow and untrimmed, fell over our modest little
legs to our very shoetops. Our dresses were equally simple and equally
“cut down and made over.” Pantalettes were white, but I recall, with a
dismal smile, that when I was put into what might be called unmitigated
mourning for a brother, my pantalettes matched my dresses, black
bombazine or black alpaca.
Our amusements were of the simplest. My father’s house on Canal Street
had a flat roof, well protected by parapets, so it furnished a grand
playground for the children of the neighborhood. Judge Story lived next
door and Sid and Ben Story enjoyed to the full the advantages of that
roof, where all could romp and jump rope to their heart’s content. The
neutral ground, that is now a center for innumerable lines of street
cars, was at that time an open, ungarnished, untrimmed, untended strip
of waste land. An Italian banana and orange man cleared a space among the
bushes and rank weeds and erected a rude fruit stall where later Clay’s
statue stood. A quadroon woman had a coffee stand, in the early mornings,
at the next corner, opposite my father’s house. It could not have been
much beyond Claiborne Street that we children went crawfishing in the
ditches that bounded each side of that neutral ground, for we walked, and
it was not considered far.
The Farmers’ and Traders’ Bank was on Canal Street, and the family of Mr.
Bell, the cashier, lived over the bank. There were children there and a
governess, who went fishing with us. We rarely caught anything and had no
use for it when we did.
Sometimes I was permitted to go to market with John, way down to the
old French Market. We had to start early, before the shops on Chartres
Street were open, and the boys busy with scoops watered the roadway from
brimming gutters. John and I hurried past. Once at market we rushed from
stall to stall, filling our basket, John forgetting nothing that had been
ordered, and always carefully remembering one most important item, the
saving of at least a picayune out of the market money for a cup of coffee
at Manette’s stall. I drank half the coffee and took one of the little
cakes. John finished the repast and “dreened” the cup, and with the
remark, “We won’t say anything about this,” we started toward home. We
had to stop, though, at a bird store, on the square above the Cathedral,
look at the birds, chaff the noisy parrots, watch the antics of the
monkeys, and see the man hang up his strings of corals and fix his shells
in the window, ready for the day’s business. We could scarcely tear
ourselves away, it was so interesting; but a reminder that the wax head
at Dr. De Leon’s dentist’s door would be “put out by this time,” hurried
me to see that wonderful bit of mechanism open and shut its mouth, first
with a row of teeth, then revealing an empty cavern. How I watched,
wondered and admired that awfully artificial wax face! These occasional
market trips—and walks with older members of the family—were the sum of
my or any other child’s recreation.
Once, and only once, there was a party! The little Maybins had a party
and every child I knew was invited. The Maybins lived somewhere back of
Poydras Market. I recall we had to walk down Poydras Street, beyond the
market, and turn to the right onto a street that perhaps had a name, but
I never heard it.
The home was detached, and surrounded by ample grounds; quantities of
fig trees, thickets of running roses and in damp places clusters of
palmetto and blooming flags. We little invited guests were promptly on
the spot at 4 P. M., and as promptly off the spot at early candlelight.
I am sure no débutantes ever had a better time than did we little girls
in pantalettes and pigtails. We danced; Miss Sarah Strawbridge played
for us, and we all knew how to dance. Didn’t we belong to Mme. Arraline
Brooks’ dancing school?
The corner of Camp and Julia Streets, diagonally across from the then
fashionable 13 Buildings, was occupied by Mme. Arraline Brooks, a
teacher of dancing. Her school (studio or parlor it would be called now)
was on the second floor of Armory Hall, and there we children—she had
an immense class, too—learned all the fancy whirls and “heel and toe”
steps of the intricate polka, which was danced in sets of eight, like
old-time quadrilles. Mme. Arraline wore in the classroom short skirts and
pantalettes, so we had a good sight of her feet as she pirouetted about,
as agile as a ballet dancer.
By and by, at a signal from Miss Sarah, who had been having a
confidential and persuasive interview with a little miss, we were all
placed with our backs to the wall and a space cleared. Miss Sarah struck
a few notes, and little Tenie Slocomb danced the “Highland fling.” Very
beautiful was the little sylph in white muslin, her short sleeves tied
with blue ribbons, and she so graceful and lovely. It comes to me to-day
with a thrill, when I compare the companion picture—of a pale, delicate,
dainty old lady, with silvered hair and tottering step, on the bank of a
foreign river. It is not easy to bridge the seventy years (such a short
span, too, it is) between the two. Then the march from “Norma” started us
to the room for refreshments. It is full forty years since I have heard
that old familiar air, but for thirty years after that date I did not
hear it that the impulse to march to lemonade and sponge cake did not
seize me.
Alack-a-day! Almost all of us have marched away.
II
NEW ORLEANS SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS IN THE FORTIES
Of course, seventy years ago, as in the ages past and to come, convents
were the places for educating young girls in a Catholic community.
Nevertheless, there have always been schools and schools, for those whom
it was not expedient or convenient to board in a convent. In New Orleans
the Ursuline Convent was too remote from the majority of homes for these
day scholars, so there were a few schools among the many that come to
my mind to-day, not that I ever entered one of them, but I had girl
friends in all. In the thirties St. Angelo had a school on Customhouse
Street, next door to the home of the Zacharies. His method of teaching
may have been all right, but his discipline was objectionable; he had
the delinquent pupils kneel on brickdust and tacks and there study
aloud the neglected lesson. Now, brickdust isn’t so very bad, and tacks
only a trifle worse, when one’s knees are protected by stockings or
even pantalettes, but stockings in those days did not extend over the
knee, and old St. Angelo was sure to see that the pantalettes were well
rolled up. This method of discipline was not acceptable to parents whose
children came home with bruises and wounds. That dominie retired from
business before the forties.
Mme. Granet had a school for girls in the French municipality. Elinor
Longer, one of my most intimate friends, attended it, and she used to
tell us stories that convulsed us with laughter about Madame’s daughter.
Lina had some eye trouble, and was forbidden to “exercise the tear
glands,” but her tears flowed copiously when Madame refused to submit to
her freaks. Thus Lina managed, in a way, to run the school, having half
holidays and other indulgences so dear to the schoolgirl, at her own
sweet will.
At the haunted house (I wonder if it is still standing and still
haunted?) on Royal Street, Mme. Delarouelle had a school for
_demoiselles_. Rosa, daughter of Judge John M. Duncan, was a scholar
there. I don’t think the madame had any boarders, though the house was
large and commodious, even if it was haunted by ghosts of maltreated
negroes. The school could not under those circumstances have continued
many years, for every child knew it was dangerous to cross its portals.
Our John told me he “seed a skel’ton hand” clutching the grated front
door once, and he never walked on that side of the street thereafter. He
even knew a man “dat seen eyes widout sockets or sockets widout eyes, he
dun know which, but dey could see, all de same, and they was a looken
out’en one of the upstairs winders.” With such gruesome talk many a child
was put to bed in my young days.
Doctor, afterward Bishop Hawks, when he was rector of Christ Church, then
on Canal Street, had a school on Girod Street. It was a temporary affair
and did not continue over a season or two. It was entirely conducted by
Mrs. Hawks and her daughters, so far as I know, for, as before mentioned,
I attended none of the schools.
In 1842 there was a class in Spanish at Mr. Hennen’s house, on Royal
Street, near Canal. Señor Marino Cubi y Soler was the teacher of
that class; a very prosaic and painstaking teacher he was, too,
notwithstanding his startlingly high flown cognomen. Miss Anna Maria and
young Alfred Hennen and a Dr. Rhodes, from the Belize, as the mouth of
the Mississippi is called, with a few other grown-ups, formed the señor’s
class. I was ten years old, but was allowed to join with some other
members of my family, though my mother protested it was nonsense for a
child like me and a waste of money. Father did not agree with her, and
after over sixty years to think it over, I don’t either. When the señor’s
class dispersed I imagine the text-books, of which, by the way, he was
author, were laid aside. But years and years thereafter, during the war,
while traveling in Mexico, some of the señor’s teaching came miraculously
back to me, bringing with it enough Spanish to be of material help in
that stranger country.
Another teacher wandered from house to house with his “Telemaque” and
“colloquial phrases,” giving lessons in French. Gimarchi, from the name,
may have been partly, at least, Italian, but he was a fine teacher of
the sister language. _Por supuésto_, his itinerary was confined to the
American district of the city.
Is it any surprise that the miscellaneous education we girls of seventy
years ago in New Orleans had access to, culminated by fitting us for
housewives and mothers, instead of writers and platform speakers,
doctors and lawyers—suffragettes? Everybody was musical; every girl had
music lessons and every mother superintended the study and practice
of the one branch deemed absolutely indispensable to the education of
a _demoiselle_. The city was dotted all over with music teachers, but
Mme. Boyer was, par excellence, the most popular. She did not wander
from house to house, but the _demoiselles_, music roll in hand, repaired
to her domicile, and received instruction in a music room barely large
enough to contain a piano, a scholar and a madame who was, to say the
least, immense in bulk, the style of Creole who appears best in a black
silk _blouse volante_.
[Illustration: RICHARD HENRY CHINN
Painted by Hardin]
Art was not taught, art was not studied, art was not appreciated. I mean
by art the pencil and the brush, so busily wielded in every school now.
No doubt there were stifled geniuses whose dormant talent was never
suspected, so utterly ignored were the brush and the palette of the lover
of art. I call to mind the ability evinced by Miss Celestine Eustis in
the use of the pencil. She occasionally gave a friend a glimpse of some
of her work, of which, I regret to say, she was almost ashamed, not of
the work, but of the doing it. I recall a sketch taken of Judge Eustis’
balcony, and a group of young society men; the likenesses, unmistakably
those of George Eustis and of Destour Foucher, were striking.
M. Devoti, with his violin in a green baize bag, was a professor of
deportment and dancing. He undertook to train two gawky girls of the most
awkward age in my father’s parlor. M. Devoti wore corsets! and laced, as
the saying is, “within an inch of his life.” He wore a long-tail coat,
very full at the spider waist-line, that hung all round him, almost to
the knees, so he used it like a woman’s skirt, and could demonstrate to
the awkward girls the art of holding out their skirts with thumb and
forefinger, and all the other fingers sticking out stiff and straight.
Then curtsey! throw out the right foot, draw up the left.
Another important branch of deportment was to seat the awkwards stiffly
on the extreme edge of a chair, fold the hands on the very precarious
lap, droop the eyes in a pensive way. Then Devoti would flourish up and
present, with an astonishing salaam, a book from the center table. The
young miss was instructed how to rise, bow and receive the book, in the
most affected and mechanical style. Another exercise was to curtsey,
accept old Devoti’s arm and majestically parade round and round the
center table. The violin emerged from the baize bag, Devoti made it
screech a few notes while the trio balanced up and down, changed partners
and promenaded, till the awkwards were completely bewildered and tired
out. He then replaced the violin, made a profound bow to extended skirts
and curtseys, admonished the pupils to practice for next lesson, and
vanished. Thus ended the first lesson. Dear me! Pock-marked, spider-waist
Devoti is as plain to my eye to-day as he was in the flesh, bowing,
smiling, dancing with flourishing steps as in the days of long ago.
Were those shy girls benefited by that artificial training? I opine
not. This seems to modern eyes, mayhap, a whimsical exaggeration;
nevertheless, it is a true picture. Devoti’s style was indeed the “end
of an era”; he had no successor. Turveydrop, the immortal Turveydrop
himself, was not even an imitator. These old schools and teachers march
before my mind’s eye to-day; very vivid it all is to me, though the last
of them, and perhaps all those they tried to teach, have passed away.
Children who went to Mme. Granet and Mme. Delarouelle and Dr. Hawks and
all the other schools of that day, sent their daughters, a decade or
two later, to Mme. Desrayoux. Now she is gone and many of the daughters
gone also. And it is left to one old lady to dig out the past, and
recall, possibly to no one but herself, New Orleans schools, teachers and
scholars of seventy years ago.
III
BOARDING SCHOOL IN THE FORTIES
I wonder if the parents of the present do not sometimes contrast the
fashionable schools in which their daughters are being educated with the
fashionable schools to which their aged mothers, mayhap grandmothers,
were sent sixty and more years ago? Among my possessions that I
keep—according to the dictum of my grandchildren—“for sentimental sake,”
is a much-worn “Scholar’s Companion,” which they scorn to look at when I
bring it forth, and explain it to be the best speller that ever was; and
a bent, much overworked crochet needle of my schooldays, for we worked
with our hands as well as with our brains. The boarding school to which I
refer was not unique, but a typical New England seminary of the forties.
It was both fashionable and popular, but the young ladies were not, as
now, expected to appear at a 6 o’clock dinner in a low neck (oh, my!)
gown.
Lately, passing through the now much expanded city to which I was sent,
such a young girl, on a sailing ship from New Orleans to New York in the
early spring of 1847, I spent a half hour walking on Crown Street looking
for No. 111. It was not there, not a trace of the building of my day
left; nor was one, so far as I know, of the girls, my old schoolmates,
left; all three of the dear, painstaking teachers sleeping in the old
cemetery, at rest at last were they. Every blessed one lives in my
memory, bright and young, patient and middle-aged—all are here to beguile
my twilight hours....
The school routine was simple and precise, especially the latter. We
had duties outside the schoolroom, the performance of which was made
pleasant and acceptable, as when the freshly laundered clothes were
stacked in neat little piles on the long table of the yellow room on
Thursdays, ready for each girl to carry to her own room. There were also
neat little stacks on each girl’s desk, of personal articles requiring
repairs, buttons to replace, holes to patch, stockings to darn, and in
the schoolroom on Thursday afternoons—how some of us hated the work!—it
was examined and passed upon before we were dismissed. The long winter
evenings we were assembled in the library and one of the teachers read to
us. I remember one winter we had “Guy Mannering” and “Quentin Durward,”
Sir Walter Scott’s lovely stories. We girls were expected to bring some
work to occupy our fingers while listening to the readings, with the
comments and explanations that illuminated obscure portions we might not
comprehend.
There was an old-fashioned “high boy” (_haut bois_) in the library, in
the capacious drawers of which were unmade garments for the missionary
box. Woe unto the young lady who had no knitting, crocheting or
hemstitching of her own to do! She could sew on red flannel for the
little Hottentots! After hymn singing Sunday afternoons there was reading
from some suitably saintly book. We had “Keith’s Evidences of Prophecy”
(I have not seen a copy of that much-read and laboriously explained
volume for more than sixty years). The tension of our minds produced
by “prophecy” was mitigated once in a while by two goody-goody books,
“Lamton Parsonage” and “Amy Herbert,” both, no doubt, long out of print.
There also were stately walks to be taken twice a day for recreation;
walks down on the “Strand,” or some back street that led away from
college campus and flirtatious students. Our school happened to be too
near the college green, by the way. We marched in couples, a teacher
to lead who had eyes both before and behind, and a teacher similarly
equipped to follow. With all these precautions we—some of us were
pretty—were often convulsed beyond bounds when “we met by chance, the
only way,” on the very backest street, a procession of college fellows
on mischief bent, marching two and two, just like us. In bad weather we
were shod with what were called “gums” and wrapped in coats long and
shaggy and weighing a ton. Waterproofs were a later invention. Wet or
dry, cold or warm, those exercises had to be taken to keep us in good
physical condition. I must mention in this connection that no matter what
ailed us, in stomach or back, head or foot, we were dosed with hot ginger
tea. I do not remember ever seeing a doctor in the house, or knowing of
one being summoned. The girls hated that ginger tea, so no doubt many an
incipient headache was not reported.
With the four spinsters (we irreverently called No. 111 Old Maids’ Hall)
who lived in the house, there were scraggly, baldheaded, spectacled
teachers from outside—a monsieur who read Racine and Molière with us and
taught us _j’aime, tu aime_, which he could safely do, the snuffy old
man; a fatherly sort of Turveydrop dancing master, who cracked our feet
with his fiddle bow; a drawing master, who, because he sometimes led his
class on sketching trips up Hillhouse Avenue, was immensely popular,
and every one of us wanted to take drawing lessons. We did some water
colors, too; some of us had not one particle of artistic talent. I was
one of that sort, but I achieved a Baltimore oriole, which, years after,
my admiring husband, who also had no artistic taste, had framed and
“hung on the line” in our hall. Perhaps some Yankee may own it now, for
during the war they took everything else we had, and surely a brilliant
Baltimore oriole did not escape their rapacity!
Solid English branches were taught by the dear spinsters. We did not
skin cats and dissect them. There was no class in anatomy, but there
was a botany class, and we dissected wild flowers, which is a trifle
more ladylike. Our drilling in chirography was something to marvel at in
these days when the young people affect such complicated and involved
handwriting that is not easily decipherable. And grammar! I now slip up
in both grammar and rhetoric, but I have arrived at the failing age. We
spent the greater part of a session parsing Pope’s “Essay on Man,” and
at the closing of that book I think we knew the whole thing by heart.
Discipline was, so to say, honorary. There were rules as to study and
practice hours, and various other things. Saturday morning, after the
“Collect of the day” and prayers, when we were presumed to be in a
celestial frame of mind, each girl reported her infringement of rules—if
she was delinquent, and she generally was. That system served to make us
more truthful and conscientious than some of us might have been under a
different training.
It was expressly stipulated that no money be furnished the pupils. A
teacher accompanied us to do necessary shopping and used her discretion
in the selection. If one of us expressed the need of new shoes her entire
stock was inspected, and if a pair could be repaired it was done and
the purchase postponed. Now, bear in mind, this was not a cheap, second
rate school, but one of the best known and most fashionable. There were
several young ladies from the South among the twenty or so boarders.
The Northern girls were from the prominent New York families—Shermans,
Kirbys, Phalens, Pumpellys and Thorns. This was before the fashionables
of to-day came to the fore.
Speaking of reporting our delinquencies, we knew quite well that it was
against the custom, at least, to bring reading matter into the school.
There was a grand, large library of standard works of merit at our free
disposal. In some way “Jane Eyre” (just published) was smuggled in and
we were secretly reading it by turns. How the spinsters found it out we
never knew, but they always found out everything, so we were scarcely
surprised one Saturday morning to receive a lecture on the pernicious
character of the book “Jane Eyre,” so unlike (and alas! so much more
interesting than) Amy Herbert, with her missionary basket, her coals
and her flannel petticoats. We were questioned, not by wholesale, but
individually, if we had the book? If we had read the book? The first two
or three in the row could reply in the negative, but as interrogations
ran down the line toward the guilty ones they were all greatly relieved
when one brave girl replied, “Yes, ma’am, I am almost through, please let
me finish it.” Then “Jane” vanished from our possession.
When the Church Sewing Society met at our house, certain girls who were
sufficiently advanced in music to afford entertainment to the guests were
summoned to the parlor to play and sing, and incidentally have a lemonade
and a jumble. I was the star performer (had I not been a pupil of Cripps,
Dr. Clapp’s organist, since I was able to reach the pedal with my foot?).
My overture of “La Dame Blanche” was quite a masterpiece, but my “Battle
of Prague” was simply stunning. The “advance,” the “rattle of musketry,”
the “beating of drums” (did you ever see the music score?) I could render
with such force that the dear, busy ladies almost jumped from their
seats. There were two Kentucky girls with fine voices also invited to
entertain the guests. Alas! our fun came to an end. On one occasion when
I ended the “Battle of Prague” with a terrific bang, there was an awful
moment of silence, when one of the ladies sneezed with such unexpected
force that her false teeth careered clear across the room! Not one of the
guests saw it, or was aware that she quietly walked over and replaced
them, but we naughty girls were so brimful of fun that we exploded with
laughter. Nothing was said to us of the unfortunate contretemps, but the
musical programmes were discontinued.
College boys helped to make things lively for us, though we did not
have bowing acquaintance with one of them. Valentines poured in to us;
under doors and over fences they rained. The dear spinsters laughed
over them with us. Thanksgiving morning, when the front door was opened
for the first time, and we were assembled in the hall ready to march
to 11 o’clock church service, a gaunt, skinny, starved-to-death turkey
was found suspended to the door knob, conspicuously tied by a broad red
ribbon, with a Thanksgiving greeting painted on, so “one who ran could
read.” No doubt a good many had read and run, for there had been hours
allowed them. The dear spinsters were so mortified and shocked that we
girls had not the courage to laugh.
By reason of my distance from home, reached by a long voyage on a sailing
ship—the first steamer service between New York and New Orleans was in
the autumn of 1848, and the Crescent City was the pioneer steamer—I spent
the vacations under the benign influence of the teachers, always the only
girl left, but busy and happy, enjoying all the privileges of a parlor
boarder. I still have a book full of written directions for knitting
and crocheting, and making all sorts of old-timey needle books and
pincushions, the initial directions dated 1846, largely the collection
and record of more than one long summer vacation at that New England
school. What girl of to-day would submit to such training and routine?
What boarding school, seminary or college is to-day conducted on such
lines? Not one that you or I know. The changes in everything, in every
walk of life, from the simple in my day and generation to the complicated
of the present, sets me to moralizing. Like all old people who are not
able to take an active interest in the present, I live in the past,
where the disappointments and heartaches, for surely we must have had
our share, are forgotten. We old people live in the atmosphere of a day
dead—and gone—and glorified!
IV
PICAYUNE DAYS
The first time I ever saw a penny was at school in Yankeeland in 1847.
It was given me to pay the man for bringing me a letter from the
postoffice—10 cents postage, 1 cent delivery, in those days. People had
to get their mail at the office. There was no free delivery. Certain
neighborhoods of spinsters, however—the college town was full of
such—secured the services of a lame, halt or blind man to bring their
letters from the office to their door once a day for the stipend of a
penny each.
There was no coin in circulation of less value than a picayune where
was my home. A picayune, which represented so little value that a miser
was called picayunish, at the same time represented such a big value
that we children felt rich when we had one tied in the corner of our
handkerchief. At the corner of Chartres and Canal Streets was a tiny
soda fountain, where one could get a glass of soda for a picayune—or
mead. We children liked mead. I never see it now, but, as I recall,
it was a thick, honey, creamy drink. We must have preferred it because
it seemed so much more for a picayune than the frothy, effervescent,
palish soda water. It was a great lark to go with Pa and take my glass of
mead, while he ordered ginger syrup (of all things!) with his soda. The
changing years bring gold mines, greenbacks, tariffs, labor exactions and
_nouveaux riches_, and a penny now buys about what a picayune did in my
day. One pays a penny for ever so big a newspaper to-day. A picayune was
the price of a small sheet in my time.
[Illustration: MARKET DOORWAY.]
Many of us must remember the colored _marchandes_ who walked the street
with trays, deftly balanced on their heads, arms akimbo, calling out
their dainties, which were in picayune piles on the trays—six small
celesto figs, or five large blue ones, nestling on fig leaves; lovely
popcorn tic tac balls made with that luscious “open kettle” sugar, that
dear, fragrant brown sugar no one sees now. Pralines with the same sugar;
why, we used it in our coffee. A few years ago, visiting dear Mrs. Ida
Richardson, I reveled in our breakfast coffee. “I hope you preserve your
taste for brown sugar coffee?” she said. I fairly jumped at the treat.
But a _marchande_ is passing up the street, and if I am a little girl, I
beg a picayune for a praline; if I am an old lady, I invest a picayune
in a leaf with six _figues célestes_. Mme. Chose—I don’t give any more
definite name, for it is a sub rosa venture on her part—had a soirée
last night. Madame buys her _chapeaux_ of Olympe, and her _toilettes_
from Pluche or Ferret, and if her home is way down, even below Esplanade
Street, where many Creoles live, she is thrifty and frugal. So this
morning a chocolate-colored _marchande_, who usually vends picayune
bouquets of violets from madame’s _parterre_, has her tray filled with
picayune stacks of broken nougat pyramid and candied orange and macaroons
very daintily arranged on bits of tissue paper. I vividly recall
encountering way down Royal Street, where no one was loitering to see me,
this chocolate _marchande_, and recognizing the delicacies of a ball the
previous night. I was on my way to call on Mrs. Garnet Duncan, the dear,
delightful woman who was such a _gourmande_, and I knew how delicious
were those sweets; no one could excel a Creole madame in this confection.
So I invested a few picayunes in some of the most attractive, carrying
off to my sweet friend what I conveniently could. How she did enjoy them!
And how she complained I had not brought more! The _mesdames_ of that
date are gone; gone also, no doubt, are the _marchandes_ they sent forth.
It was a very picayunish sort of business, but labor did not count, for
one was not paying $20 a month for the reluctant services of a chocolate
lady.
Then again, in the early morning, when one, _en papilottes_, came down
to breakfast, listless and “out of sorts,” the chant of the cream cheese
woman would be heard. A rush to the door with a saucer for a cheese, a
tiny, heart-shaped cheese, a dash of cream poured from a claret bottle
over it—all this for a picayune! How nice and refreshing it was. What
a glorious addition to the breakfast that promised to pall on one’s
appetite.
Picayune was the standard coin at the market. I wonder what is now?
Soup bone was _un escalin_ (two picayunes), but one paid for the soup
vegetables, a bit of cabbage, a leek, a sprig of parsley, a tiny carrot,
a still tinier turnip, all tied in a slender package. A _cornet_ of fresh
gumbo _filé_, a bunch of horse-radish roots, a little sage, parsley,
herbs of every sort in packages and piles, a string of dried grasshoppers
for the mocking bird, “_un picayun_,” the Indian or black woman squatting
on the _banquette_ at the old French Market would tell you.
A picayune was the smallest coin the richly appareled madame or the poor
market negro could put in the collection box as she paused on her way at
the Cathedral to tell her beads. There was no occasion for the priest
to rebuke his flock for niggardliness. They may have been picayunish,
but not to the extent of the congregation of one of the largest Catholic
churches I wot of to-day, where the fathers were so tired counting
pennies that it was announced from the pulpit: “No more pennies must be
put in the box. We spend hours every week counting and stacking pennies,
and it is a shocking waste of time. If you are so destitute that you
can’t afford at least a nickel to your church, come to the vestry, after
mass, and we will look into your needs and give you the relief the church
always extends to her poor.”
The shabby old negro, with her heavy market basket, returning home, no
doubt needing the prayers of her patron saint or some other churchly
office, filched the picayune from the carefully counted market money. I
know, no matter how carefully my mother doled the market fund to John,
he always contrived to secure a picayune out of it, and for no saint,
either, but for old Coffee-stand Palmyre.
Do not we old ladies remember the picayune dolls of our childhood? The
wooden jointed dolls, the funny little things we had to play with, every
feature, even hair and yellow earrings, painted on little, smooth bullet
heads. They could be made to sit down and to crook their arms, but no
ingenuity could make them stand a-loney. How we loved those little wooden
dolls! We do not see a pauper child, not even a poor little blackie,
with a picayune doll nowadays. I really believe we—I am talking of old
ladies now—were happier, and had more fun with our picayune family than
the little girls of the present day have with their $10 dolls, with glass
eyes that are sure to fall out and long curls that are sure to tangle. We
had no fears about the eyes and hair of our picayunes.
The picayune, whose memory I invoke, was a Spanish coin, generally worn
pretty thin and often having a small hole in it. I remember my ambition
was to accumulate enough picayunes to string on a thread for an ornament.
It is unnecessary to say that in those thrifty days my ambition was not
gratified. It is more than fifty years since I have seen one of those old
6¼ cent picayunes. I have a stiff, wooden corset board that I sometimes
take out to show to my granddaughter when I find her “stooping,” that
she may see the instrument that made grandma so straight. I would like
to have a picayune to add to my very limited collection of relics. They
flourished at the same era and have together vanished from our homes and
shops.
We all must have known some “picayune people.” There was a family living
near us who owned and occupied a large, fine home on St. Joseph Street,
while we and the Grimshaws and Beins lived in rented houses near by.
They had, besides, a summer home “over the lake” (and none of us had!).
Often, on Mondays, a fish, or a quart of shrimp, or something else in the
“over the lake” line, was sent to one of us, for sale. We used to laugh
over the littleness of the thing. A quart of shrimp for a picayune was
cheap and tempting, but none of us cared to buy of our rich neighbor. The
climax came when an umbrella went the rounds for inspection. It was for
raffle! Now, umbrellas, like pocket handkerchiefs, are always useful and
never go out of fashion. With one accord, we declined chances in the
umbrella.
I feel I am, for the fun of the thing, dragging forth a few skeletons
from closets, but I do not ticket them, so no harm is done. In fact, if I
ever knew, I have long since forgotten the name to tack onto the umbrella
skeleton. And the fashionable madame who sent out on the streets what a
lady we knew called the “perquisites” of her soirée supper has left too
many well-known descendants. I would scorn to ticket the skeleton of that
frugal and thrifty madame. There are no more umbrellas for a picayunish
skeleton to raffle, no more such delicious sweets for the madame to stack
into picayune piles, and, alack-a-day! no more picayunes, either.
V
DOMESTIC SCIENCE SEVENTY YEARS AGO
Housekeeping is vastly simplified since the days when my mother washed
her teacups and spoons every morning. I love the old way; however, I
do not practise it. If my grandchildren were to see the little wooden
piggin brought me on a tray after breakfast, and see me wash the silver
and glass they would think grandma has surely lost her mind. That purely
domestic housewifely habit lasted long after my mother had passed away.
It still is the vogue in many a New England household, but no doubt is
among the lost virtues South. When I was a young lady and occasionally
(oh, happy times!) spent a few days with the Slocombs, I always saw Mrs.
Slocomb and her aged mother, dear old Mrs. Cox, who tremblingly loved to
help, pass the tea things through their own delicate hands every morning.
So it was at Mrs. Leonard Matthews’, and so it was in scores of wealthy
homes.
Though we had ever so many servants, our family being a large one, my
semi-invalid mother, who rarely left her home and never made visits, did
a thousand little household duties that are now, even in families where
only one or two servants are kept, entirely ignored by the ladies of the
house. After a dinner party or an evening entertainment, and my father
was hospitably inclined—much beyond his means—my mother passed all the
silver, glass and china through her own delicate fingers, and we did not,
as I recall after all this lapse of years, have anything of superlative
value. It was not a matter of thrift or economy on her part, but a matter
of course; everybody did the same.
After a visit to a New England family several years ago I was telling
a Creole friend of the lovely old India china that had been in daily
use over three generations. The reply was: “Oh, but they did not have
a Christophe.” No doubt they had had several Christophes, but they
never had a chance to wash those valuable cups. In the days of long ago
housewives did not have negligées with floating ribbons and smart laces.
They had calico gowns that a splash of water could not ruin.
[Illustration: A NEW ORLEANS YARD AND CISTERN.]
Household furniture—I go back full seventy years—was simple and easily
cared for. Carpets were generally what was known as “three-ply.” I don’t
see them now, but in places, on humble floors, I see imitation Brussels
or some other counterfeit. The first carpet I ever saw woven in one
piece, like all the rugs so plentiful now (and that was at a much later
date) was on the parlor floor of the Goodman house, on Toulouse Street,
the home so full of bright young girls I so loved to visit. There was
no concern to take away carpets to be cleaned and stored in the summer.
Carpets were taken to some vacant lot and well beaten. The neutral green
on Canal Street, green and weedy it was, too, was a grand place to shake
carpets; no offense given if one carried them beyond Claiborne Street
where were no pretentious houses. Then those carpets were thickly strewn
with tobacco leaves, rolled up and stored in the garret, if you had one.
Every house did not boast of that convenience.
Curtains were not satin damask. At the Mint when Joe Kennedy was
superintendent, and his family were fashionable people, their parlor
curtains were some red cotton stuff, probably what is known as turkey
red; there was a white and red-figured border; they were looped over gilt
rods meant to look like spears and muskets, in deference, I suppose, to
the military side of that government building, for there were sentinels
and guards stationed around about that gave the whole concern a most
imposing and military air.
I remember at the Breedloves’ home there were net curtains (probably
mosquito net), with a red border. They were thought rather novel and
stylish. There were no madras, no Irish point, no Nottingham curtains
even, so one did not have a large variety to choose from.
People had candelabras, and some elaborate affairs—they called them
girandoles—to hold candles; they had heavy crystal drops that tinkled
and scintillated and were prismatic and on the whole were rather fine.
The candles in those gorgeous stands and an oil lamp on the inevitable
center-table were supposed to furnish abundance of light for any
occasion. When my sister dressed for a function she had two candles to
dress by (so did I ten years later!), and two dusky maids to follow her
all about, and hold them at proper points so the process of the toilet
could be satisfactorily accomplished. Two candles without shades—nobody
had heard of shades—were sufficient for an ordinary tea table. I was
a grown girl, fresh from school, when I saw the first gaslight in a
private house, at Mrs. Slocomb’s, on St. Charles Street. People sewed,
embroidered, read and wrote and played chess evenings by candlelight, and
except a few near-sighted people and the aged no one used glasses. There
was not an oculist (a specialist, I mean) in the whole city.
Every woman had to sew. There were well-trained seamstresses in every
house; no “ready-mades,” no machines. Imagine the fine hand-sewing on
shirt bosoms, collars and cuffs. I can hear my mother’s voice now, “Be
careful in the stitching of that bosom; take up two and skip four,” which
I early learned meant the threads of the linen. What a time there was
when the boys grew to tailor-cut pantaloons! Cut by a tailor, sewed at
home, what a to-do there was when Charley had his first tail-coat; he
could not sit on the tails, they were too short, so he made an uproar.
I recall also how I cried when sister’s old red and black “shot silk”
dress was made over for me, and I thought I was going to be so fine (I
was nine years old then and was beginning to “take notice”). The goods
fell short, and I had to have a black, low neck, short-sleeve waist. In
vain I was told it was velvet and ever so stylish and becoming. I knew
better. However, that abbreviated dress and those abbreviated tails did
duty at the dancing school.
But we have wandered from house furnishings to children’s clothes. We
will go upstairs now and take a look at the ponderous four-poster bed,
with its awful tester top, that covered it like a flat roof. That tester
was ornamented with a wall paper stuff, a wreath of impossible red and
yellow roses, big as saucers, stamped on it, and four strands of same
roses reaching to the four corners of the monstrosity. The idea of
lying, with a raging fever or a splitting headache, under such a canopy!
However, there were “swells” (there always are “swells”) who had testers
covered with silk.
I hear a rumor that furniture covered with horse-hair cloth is about to
come to the fore again. Everybody in my early day had black haircloth
furniture; maybe that was one reason red curtains were preferred, for
furniture covered with black haircloth was fearfully funereal. However,
as no moth devoured it, dust did not rest on its slick, shiny surface,
and it lasted forever, it had its advantages. Every household possessed a
haircloth sofa, with a couple of hard, round pillows of the same, the one
too slippery to nap on and the others regular break-necks.
[Illustration: DOOR IN THE FRENCH MARKET.]
Butler’s pantry! My stars! Who ever heard of a butler’s pantry, and
sinks, and running water, and faucets inside houses? The only running
water was a hydrant in the yard; the only sink was the gutter in the
yard; the sewer was the gutter in the street, so why a butler’s pantry?
To be sure there was a cistern for rainwater, and jars like those
Ali Baba’s forty thieves hid themselves in. Those earthen jars were
replenished from the hydrant, and the muddy river water “settled” by the
aid of almond hulls or alum.
Of course, every house had a storeroom, called pantry, to hold supplies.
It was lined with shelves, but the only light and air was afforded by a
half-moon aperture cut into a heavy batten door. We had wire safes on
the back porch and a zinc-lined box for the ice—nothing else—wrapped
in a gray blanket, gray, I presume, on the same principle we children
preferred pink cocoanut cakes—they kept clean longer than the white! Ice
was in general use but very expensive. It was brought by ship from the
North, in hogsheads.
For the kitchen there were open fireplaces with a pot hanging from a
crane, skillets and spiders. We don’t even hear the names of those
utensils now. By and by an enterprising housewife ventured on a cook
stove. I have a letter written by one such, dated in New Orleans in 1840,
in which she descants on the wonders achieved by her stove. “Why, Susan,
we baked three large cakes in it at one time.” In the old way it required
a spider for each cake.
There were no plated knives, but steel, and they had to be daily scoured
with “plenty brickdust on your knife board,” but those knives cut like
razors. There was no bric-a-brac, few pictures, nothing ornamental in
the parlors. One house I remember well had a Bunker Hill monument,
made, I guess, of stucco, and stuck all over with gay seashells; it was
perhaps 25 or 30 inches high; it made a most commanding appearance on the
center-table. When my sister made a tiresomely long call at that house it
amused me to try to count the shells.
An old gentleman, called “Old Jimmie Dick” when I remember him, a rich
cotton broker (the firm was Dick & Hill), made a voyage to Europe, and
brought home some Apollos, and Cupids, and Mercuries, statues in the
“altogether,” for his parlor. Jimmie Dick was a bachelor, and lived on
Canal Street, near Carondelet or Baronne, and had a charming spinster
niece keeping house for him, who was so shocked when she saw the figures
mounted on pedestals (they were glaring white marble and only a trifle
under life size) that she immediately made slips of brown holland and
enveloped them, leaving only the heads exposed! I never went to that
house but the one time when we surprised her in the act of robing her
visitors!
I speak of houses that I visited with my grown sister. It was not _comme
il faut_ for a young lady to be seen too frequently on the street or
to make calls alone. Mother was an invalid and made no visits. Father
accompanied sister on ceremonious occasions. I was pressed into service
when no one else was available. I feel I am going way back beyond the
recollection of my readers, but some of the grandmothers, too old,
mayhap, to do their own reading, can recall just such a life, a life that
will never be lived again.
VI
A FASHIONABLE FUNCTION IN 1842
It is hard to realize while we are surrounded by so many housekeeping
conveniences what an amount of time, energy, and, above all, knowledge of
the craft were necessary to the giving of a reception seventy years ago,
when every preparation had to be made in the house and under the watchful
supervision of the chatelaine.
There were no chefs to be hired, nor caterers to be summoned, not even a
postman to deliver invitations. All that was done “by hand.” A darky was
sent forth with a basket of nicely “tied up with white ribbons” notes
of invitation, and he went from house to house, sending the basket to
the occupant, where she not only subtracted her special note, but had
the privilege of seeing “who else was invited.” And if the darky was
bewildered as to his next stopping-place she could enlighten him. This
complicated mode of delivering invitations prevailed into the fifties.
The preparations for the supper involved so much labor that many hosts
offered only _eau sucrée_ or gumbo. There was no cut nor granulated nor
pulverized sugar, to be turned from the grocer’s bag onto the scales. All
sugar except the crude brown, direct from plantations, was in cone-shaped
loaves as hard as a stone and weighing several pounds each. These
well-wrapped loaves were kept hung (like hams in a smokehouse) from the
closet ceiling. They had to be cut into chips by aid of carving knife
and hammer, then pounded and rolled until reduced to powder, before that
necessary ingredient was ready for use.
There were no fruit extracts, no essences for seasoning, no baking
powder to make a half-beaten cake rise, no ground spices, no seedless
raisins, no washed (?) currants, no isinglass or gelatine, and to wind
up this imperfect list, no egg-beater! Still the thrifty housewife made
and served cakes fit for the gods, with only Miss Leslie’s cook book to
refer to, and that was published in the twenties. Ice cream was seasoned
by boiling a whole vanilla bean in the milk; it was frozen in a huge
cylinder without any inside fixtures to stir the mixture; it was whirled
in the ice tub by hand—and a stout one at that—and required at least one
hour, constant labor, to freeze the cream.
For jelly, calves’ feet were secured days in advance, and Madame
superintended the making of gelatine. Pink jelly was colored with a
drop or two of cochineal, yellow, doctored with lemon, and a beautiful
pale green, colored with the strained juice of scalded spinach. These
varieties were served in various attractive shapes; and all, even the
green, were delicious. These preparations were also complicated by the
necessity of procuring all supplies from the early morning market often a
mile or more away, and which, besides, closed at 10 o’clock. No stepping
to the corner grocery for eggs or butter in an unforeseen emergency, and
to the credit of the community the “borrowing habit” was entirely unknown.
I remember a Mrs. Swiler, chiefly because when I went to see her, with an
older sister, she “passed around” bananas. Cuban fruits were scarce in
those days, and highly prized.
There were no awnings to be used in bad weather; no camp chairs for the
invited guests if all came, and all wanted to sit down at the same time;
no waterproofs for them to come in; no rubbers to protect feet from
rain-soaked sidewalks; no street cars; no public conveyances that people
ever hired for such occasions; no private carriages to bump you over
rough cobblestones. So, there you are!
[Illustration: COURTYARD ON CARONDELET STREET]
Arrived after all these tiresome preparations and your own discomfort at
my father’s house, on Canal Street, to a reception given almost seventy
years ago, in honor of Commodore Moore of the Texas navy, who brought to
my father letters of introduction from President Mirabeau B. Lamar, of
the Republic of Texas, and Gen. Sam Houston of the Texas army!
I have reason to think at this late date, not hearing to the contrary at
the time, that the commodore’s visit was quite amicable and friendly. If
he was escorted by Texas warships! or even arrived in his own flagship!
I never knew. With his imposing uniform and a huge gilt star on his
breast, a sword at his side, and a rather fierce mustache (mustaches
were little worn then), he looked as if he were capable of doing mighty
deeds of daring, for the enterprising new republic on our border. He was
accompanied by his aide, a callow youth, also in resplendent attire, a
sword so long and unwieldy he was continually tripping, and therefore
too embarrassingly incommoded to circulate among the ladies. I met that
“aide,” a real fighter in Texas during the late war. He proudly wore a
lone star under the lapel of his coat of Confederate gray, and we had
a merry laugh over his naval début. He was Lieut. Fairfax Grey. His
sister was the wife of Temple Doswell, and many of her descendants are
identified with New Orleans to-day.
Mr. Clay, grand, serene, homely and affable; also Gen. Gaines in his
inevitable uniform. The two military and naval officers commanded my
admiration, as I sat quietly and unobtrusively in a corner in a way
“becoming to a child of nine”—“a chiel amang ye, takin’ notes”—but no one
took note of the chiel. We had also a jolly itinerant Irish preacher,
I think of the Methodist persuasion, whom my father had met at country
camp meetings. His call was to travel, and incidentally preach where the
harvest was ripe. I remember how, laughingly, he remarked to my father,
anent the commodore’s visit, that the chief inhabitants of Western Texas
were mesquite grass and buffaloes. He was father of John L. Moffitt of
Confederate fame, and a very attractive daughter became the wife of
President Lamar.
There was dance music—a piano only—but the room was too crowded for more
than one attempt at a quadrille. The notabilities, army, navy and State,
did not indulge in such frivolity. Life was too serious with them.
These functions generally began at 8 and terminated before the proverbial
small hours. So by midnight the last petticoat had fluttered away; and
then there followed the clearing up, and, as the old lady said, the
“reinstating of affairs,” which kept the hostess and her sleepy helpers
busy long after the rest of the family had fluttered away also—to the
land of Nod.
VII
NEW YEAR’S OF OLD
“When I was young, time had for me the lazy ox’s pace,
But now it’s like the blooded horse that means to win the race.”
Here it is New Year’s Day again. It seems only yesterday when we had such
a dull, stupid New Year’s Day. Everybody who was anybody was out of town,
at country mansions to flourish with the rich, or to old homesteads to
see their folks. Nobody walking the streets, no shops were open. Those of
us who had no rich friends with country mansions, or no old homesteads to
welcome us, remained gloomily at home, with shades down, servants off for
the day, not even a basket for cards tied to the doorknob.
Nobody calls now at New Year’s. It is out of fashion, or, rather, the
fashion has descended from parlor to kitchen. When Bridget and Mary don
their finery and repair to Bridget’s cousin’s to “receive,” and Sambo
puts on a high shirt collar and a stovepipe hat, and sallies out on his
round of calls, we have a pick-up dinner, and grandma tries to enliven
the family with reminiscences of the New Year’s Days of seventy years
ago, when her mother and sister “received” in state, and father and
brother donned their “stovepipes” and proceeded to fill the society rôle
for the year.
In the forties and for years thereafter, New Year’s Day was the visiting
day for the men, and receiving day for the ladies. All the fathers and
grandfathers, in their newest rig, stick in hand, trotted or hobbled
around, making the only calls they made from year to year. Before noon,
ladies were in their parlors, prinked up, pomatumed up, powdered up,
to “receive.” Calling began as early as 11, for it was a short winter
day, and much to be accomplished. A small stand in the hall held a card
receiver, into which a few cards left from last year’s stock were placed,
so the first caller might not be embarrassed with the fact that he was
the first. No one cared to be the very first then, any more than now.
A table of generous dimensions occupied a conspicuous position in the
parlor (we never said “drawing room”), with silver tray, an immense and
elaborately decorated cake and a grand bowl of foaming eggnog. That was
chiefly designed for the beaux. On the dining room sideboard (we did
not say “buffet,” either) a brandy straight or whisky straight was to
be found for those walking-stick ones whose bones were stiff and whose
digestion could not brook the fifty different concoctions of eggnog
they were liable to find in the fifty different houses. Those varied
refreshments, which every caller was expected to at least taste, often
worked havoc on the young and spry, to say nothing of the halt and lame.
There were no flower decorations. It was the dead season for plants, and
Boston greenhouses were not shipping carloads of roses and carnations
to New Orleans in the ’40s. Rooms were not darkened, either, to be
illuminated with gas or electricity, but windows were thrown wide open to
the blessed light of a New Year’s Day. Little _cornets_ of bonbons and
_dragées_ were carelessly scattered about. Those cornucopias, very slim
and pointed, containing about a spoonful of French confections, were made
of stiff, shiny paper, gaudily colored miniatures of impossible French
damsels ornamenting them. I have not seen one of those pretty trifles for
sixty years. It was quite the style for a swain to send his Dulcinea a
_cornet_ in the early morning. If the Dulcinea did not happen to receive
as many as she wanted, she could buy a few more. One liked to be a Belle!
Living in Canal Street, a little girl was unconsciously taking notes that
blossom now in a chronicle of the doings and sayings of those New Year’s
Days of the early ’40s. She enjoyed looking through the open window, onto
the broad, unshaded street, watching an endless procession of callers.
There were rows of fashionable residences in Canal Street to be visited,
and the darting in and out of open doors, as though on earnest business
bent, was a sight. The men of that day wore skin-tight pantaloons (we
did not call them trousers), often made of light-colored materials. I
clearly remember a pea green pair that my brother wore, flickering like a
chameleon in and out of open street doors. Those tight-fitting pantaloons
were drawn taut over the shoe, a strong leather strap extending under
the foot buckled the garment down good and tight, giving the wearer as
mincing a gait as the girl in the present-day hobble skirt. The narrow
clawhammer coat with tails that hung almost to the knees behind and were
scarcely visible in front, had to have the corner of a white handkerchief
flutter from the tail pocket.
Military men like Gen. E. P. Gaines (he was in his zenith at that date)
and all such who could sport a military record wore stiff stocks about
their long necks. Those stocks made the necks appear abnormally long.
They were made of buckram (or sheet iron?), so broad that three straps
were required to buckle them at the back, covered with black satin, tiny
satin bows in front which were utterly superfluous, for they tied nothing
and were not large enough to be ornamental. The stocks must have been
very trying to the wearers, for they could not turn their heads when they
were buckled up, and, like the little boy with the broad collar, could
not spit over them. However, they did impart a military air of rigidity
and stiffness, as though on dress parade all the time.
I remember Major Waters had a bald spot on the top of his head and two
long strands of sandy hair on each side which he carefully gathered up
over the bald spot and secured in place by the aid of a side comb! I used
to wish the comb would fall out, to see what the major would do, for I
was convinced he could not bend his head over that stiff, formidable
stock. The major won his title at the battle of River Rasin (if you know
where that is, I don’t). My father was in the same battle, but being
only seventeen he did not win a title. I don’t suppose that River Rasin
engagement amounted to much anyway, for dear pa did not wear a stock,
nor a military bearing, either. Gen. Persifor Smith was another stock
man who called always at New Year’s and at no other time. And Major
Messiah! Dear me, how many of us remember him in the flesh, or can forget
the cockaded, epauletted portrait he left behind when he fought his last
life’s battle?
All the men wore tall silk hats that shone like patent leather. Those
hats have not been banished so long ago that all of us have forgotten
their monstrosity, still to be seen now and then in old daguerreotypes or
_cartes de visite_. They flocked in pairs to do their visiting. It would
be a Mardi Gras nowadays to see one of those old-time processions. Men
of business, men of prominence, no longer society men, fulfilled their
social duty once each year, stepped into the dining room at a nod from
mother, who was as rarely in the parlor to “receive,” as the men who, at
the sideboard, with a flourish of the hand and a cordial toast to the New
Year, took a brandy straight. They are long gone. Their sons, the beaux
of that day, quietly graduated from the eggnog to the sideboard, become
even older men than their fathers, are gone, too.
I remember a very original, entertaining beau of those days saying
eggnog was good enough for him, and when he felt he was arriving at the
brandy-straight age he meant to kill himself. How would he know when
the time for hari-kari came? “When my nose gets spongy.” He had a very
pronounced Hebrew nose, by the way. Not so many years ago I heard of him
hobbling on crutches. Not only his nose, but his legs were spongy, but he
gave no indication that life was not as dear to him as in his salad days.
The younger element, beaux of my grown-up sister, rambled in all day
long, hat in hand, with “A happy New Year,” a quaff of eggnog, “No cake,
thanks,” and away like a flash, to go into house after house, do and say
the same things, till night would find they had finished their list of
calls and eggnog had about finished them. So the great day of the year
wore on.
After the house doors were closed at the flirt of the last clawhammer
coat tail, cards were counted and comments made as to who had called and
who had failed to put in appearance, the wreck of glasses, cake and tray
removed, and it was as tired a set of ladies to go to bed as of men to be
put into bed.
As the beautiful custom of hospitality spread from the centers of
fashion to the outskirts of society the _demi mondaines_, then the
small tradesman, then the negroes became infected with the fashion of
“receiving” at New Year’s, in their various shady abodes. The bon tons
gradually relinquished the hospitable and friendly custom of years.
Ladies suspended tiny card receivers on the doorknob, and retired behind
closed blinds. Those of the old friends of tottering steps and walking
sticks, always the last to relinquish a loved habit, wearily dropped
cards into the little basket and passed on to the next closed door.
Now the anniversary, instead of being one of pleasant greetings, is as
stupid and dull as any day in the calendar, unless, as I have said, one
has a friend with a “cottage by the sea” or a château on the hilltop and
is also endowed with the spirit of hospitality to ask one to spend the
week-end and take an eggnog or a brandy straight.
VIII
NEW ORLEANS SHOPS AND SHOPPING IN THE FORTIES
The shopping region of New Orleans was confined to Chartres and Royal
Streets seventy years ago. It was late in the fifties when the first
movement was made to more commodious and less crowded locations on Canal
Street, and Olympe, the fashionable modiste, was the venturesome pioneer.
Woodlief’s was the leading store on Chartres Street and Barrière’s on
Royal, where could be found all the French _nouveautés_ of the day,
beautiful _barèges_, Marcelines and chiné silks, organdies stamped in
gorgeous designs, to be made up with wreathed and bouquet flounces, but,
above and beyond all for utility and beauty, were the imported French
calicoes, fine texture, fast colors. It was before the day of aniline
and diamond dyes; blues were indigo, reds were cochineal pure and
unadulterated; so those lovely goods, printed in rich designs—often the
graceful palm-leaf pattern—could be “made over,” turned upside down and
hindpart before, indefinitely, for they never wore out or lost color,
and were cheap at fifty cents a yard. None but those in mourning wore
black; even the men wore blue or bottle green coats, gay flowered vests
and tan-colored pantaloons. I call to mind one ultra-fashionable beau who
delighted in a pair of sage green “pants.”
The ladies’ toilets were still more gay; even the elderly ones wore
bright colors. The first black silk dress worn on the street, and that
was in ’49, was proudly displayed by Miss Mathilde Eustis, who had
relatives in France who kept her _en rapport_ with the latest Parisian
style. Hers was a soft Marceline silk; even the name, much less the
article, is as extinct as the _barège_ and _crêpe lisse_ of those far
away days. It was at Woodlief’s or Barrière’s these goods were displayed
on shelves and counters. There were no show windows, no dressed and
draped wax figures to tempt the passerby.
Mme. Pluche’s shop, on the corner of Royal and Conti, had one window
where a few trifles were occasionally displayed on the sill or hung,
carefully draped on the side, so as not to intercept the light. Madame
was all French and dealt only in French importations. Mme. Frey was on
Chartres Street. Her specialty (all had specialties; there was no shop
room for a miscellaneous stock of goods) was _mantillas_, _visites_,
_cardinals_ and other confections to envelop the graceful mesdames
_en flânant_. I call to mind a _visite_ of thinnest muslin, heavily
embroidered (no Hamburg or machine embroidery in those days), lined with
blue silk, blue cords and tassels for a finish. It was worn by a belle of
the forties, and Mme. Frey claimed to have imported it. The madame was
not French. She had a figure no French woman would have submitted to, a
fog-horn voice and a well-defined mustache, but her taste was the best
and her dictum in her specialty was final.
The fashionable milliner was Olympe. Her specialty was imported
_chapeaux_. She did not—ostensibly, at least—make or even trim
_chapeaux_. Olympe’s ways were persuasive beyond resistance. She met her
customer at the door with “Ah, madame”—she had brought from Paris the
very bonnet for you! No one had seen it; it was yours! And Mam’zelle
Adèle was told to bring Mme. X’s _chapeau_. It fit to a _merveille_! It
was an inspiration! And so Mme. X had her special bonnet sent home in a
fancy box by the hand of a dainty _grisette_. Olympe was the first of her
class to make a specialty of delivering the goods. And Monsieur X, though
he may have called her “Old Imp,” paid the bill with all the extras of
specialty and delivery included, though not itemized. Those were bonnets
to shade the face—a light blue satin shirred lengthwise; _crêpe lisse_,
same color, shirred crosswise over it, forming indistinct blocks; and a
_tout aller_, of raspberry silk, shirred “every which way,” are two that
I recall.
Madame a-shopping went followed by a servant to bring home the packages.
Gloves, one button only, were light colored, pink, lavender, lemon,
rarely white; and for ordinary wear bottle green gloves were considered
very _comme il faut_. They harmonized with the green _barège_ veil that
every lady had for shopping.
Our shopping trip would be incomplete if we failed to call on an old
Scotch couple who had a lace store under Col. Winthrop’s residence on
Royal Street. The store had a door and a window, and the nice old parties
who had such a prodigious Scotch brogue one would scarcely understand
them, could, by a little skill, entertain three customers at one and the
same time. If one extra shopper appeared, Mr. Syme disappeared, leaving
the old lady to attend to business. She was almost blind from cataract, a
canny old soul and not anyways blind to business advantages. I am pleased
to add they retired after a few busy years quite well-to-do. There was
Seibricht, on Royal Street, a furniture dealer, and still further down
Royal Seignoret, in the same lucrative business, for I do not recall
they had any competitors. Memory does not go beyond the time when Hyde
and Goodrich were not the jewelers; and Loveille, on the corner of
Customhouse and Royal, the grocer, for all foreign wines, cheeses, etc.
Never do I see such Parmesan as we got from Loveille in my early days.
William McKean had a bookshop on Camp Street, a few doors above Canal.
Billy McKean, as the irreverent called him, was a picture of Pickwick,
and a clever, kindly old man was he. There was a round table in the rear
of his shop, where one found a comfortable chair and a few books to
browse over. In my childhood I was always a welcome visitor to that round
table, for I always “sat quiet and just read,” as dear old Mr. McKean
told me. As I turn the pages of my book of memories not only the names
but the very faces of these shopkeepers of seventy years ago come to me,
all smiles and winning ways, and way back I fly to my pantalette and
pigtail days, so happy in these dreams that will never be reality to any
place or people.
There were no restaurants, no lunch counters, no tea rooms, and (bless
their dear hearts, who started it!) no woman’s exchange, no place in the
whole city where a lady could drop in, after all this round of shopping,
take a comfortable seat and order even a sandwich, or any kind of
refreshment. One could take an éclair at Vincent’s, corner of Royal and
Orleans, but éclairs have no satisfying quality.
There was a large hotel (there may be still—it is sixty years since I saw
it), mostly consisting of spacious verandas, up and down and all around,
at the lake end of the shellroad, where parties could have a fish dinner
and enjoy the salt breezes, but a dinner at “Lake End” was an occasion,
not a climax to a shopping trip. The old shellroad was a long drive,
Bayou St. John on one side, swamps on the other, green with rushes and
palmetto, clothed with gay flowers of the swamp flag. The road terminated
at Lake Pontchartrain, and there the restful piazza and well-served
dinner refreshed the inner woman.
I am speaking of the gentler sex. No doubt there were myriads of cabarets
and eating places for men on pleasure or business bent. Three o’clock was
the universal dinner hour, so the discreet _mesdames_ were able to return
to the city and be ready by early candlelight for the inevitable “hand
round” tea.
Then there was Carrollton Garden (I think it is dead and buried now).
There was a short railroad leading to Carrollton; one could see open
fields and grazing cattle from the car windows as one crept along.
Except a still shorter railroad to the Lake, connecting with the Lake
boats, I think the rural road to Carrollton was the only one leading out
of the city. The Carrollton hotel, like the Lake one, was all verandas.
I never knew of any guest staying there, even one night, but there was
a dear little garden and lots of summer houses and pagodas, covered
with jasmines and honeysuckle vines. One could get lemonade or orgeat
or orange flower syrup, and return to the city with a great bouquet of
monthly roses, to show one had been on an excursion. A great monthly rose
hedge, true to its name, always in bloom, surrounded the premises. To see
a monthly rose now is to see old Carrollton gardens in the forties.
IX
THE OLD FRENCH OPERA HOUSE
It was on Orleans Street, near Royal—I don’t have to “shut my eyes and
think very hard,” as the Marchioness said to Dick Swiveller, to see the
old Opera House and all the dear people in it, and hear its entrancing
music. We had “Norma” and “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “Robert le Diable”
and “La Dame Blanche,” “Huguenots,” “Le Prophète,” just those dear old
melodious operas, the music so thrillingly catchy that half the young men
hummed or whistled snatches of it on their way home.
There were no single seats for ladies, only four-seated boxes. The pit,
to all appearances, was for elderly, bald gentlemen only, for the beaux,
the fashionable eligibles, wandered around in the intermissions or
“stood at attention” in the narrow lobbies behind the boxes during the
performances. Except the two stage boxes, which were more ample, and also
afforded sly glimpses towards the wings and flies, all were planned for
four occupants. Also, all were subscribed for by the season. There was
also a row of latticed boxes in the rear of the dress circle, usually
occupied by persons in mourning, or the dear old _messieurs et mesdames_,
who were not chaperoning a _mademoiselle_. One stage box belonged, by
right of long-continued possession, to Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Bullitt.
The opposite box was _la loge des lions_, and no less than a dozen lions
wandered in and out of it during an evening. Some were blasé and looked
dreadfully bored, a few were young and frisky, but every mortal one of
them possessed a pompous and self-important mien.
[Illustration: THE OLD FRENCH OPERA HOUSE.]
If weather permitted (we had to consider the weather, as everybody
walked) and the opera a favorite, every seat would be occupied at 8
o’clock, and everybody quiet to enjoy the very first notes of the
overture. All the fashionable young folks, even if they could not play or
whistle “Yankee Doodle,” felt the opera was absolutely necessary to their
social success and happiness. The box was only five dollars a night, and
pater-familias certainly could afford that!
Think of five dollars for four seats at the most fashionable Opera House
in the land then, and compare it with five dollars for one seat in the
topmost gallery of the most fashionable house in the land to-day. Can one
wonder we old people who sit by our fire and pay the bills wag our heads
and talk of the degenerate times?
Toilets in our day were simple, too. French muslins trimmed with real
lace, pink and blue _barèges_ with ribbons. Who sees a _barège_ now? No
need of jeweled stomachers, ropes of priceless pearls or diamond tiaras
to embellish those Creole ladies, many of whom were direct descendants of
French nobles; not a few could claim a drop of even royal blood.
Who were the beaux? And where are they now? If any are living they are
too old to hobble into the pit and sit beside the old, bald men.
It was quite the vogue to saunter into Vincent’s, at the corner, on the
way home. Vincent’s was a great place and he treated his customers with
so much “confidence.” One could browse about the glass cases of pâtés,
_brioches_, éclairs, meringues, and all such toothsome delicacies, peck
at this and peck at that, lay a dime on the counter and walk out. A
large Broadway firm in New York attempted that way of conducting a lunch
counter and had such a tremendous patronage that it promptly failed. Men
went for breakfast and shopping parties for lunch, instead of dropping in
_en passant_ for an éclair.
As I said, we walked. There were no street cars, no ’buses and precious
few people had carriages to ride in. So we gaily walked from Vincent’s to
our respective homes, where a cup of hot coffee put us in condition for
bed and slumber.
Monday morning Mme. Casimir or Mam’zelle Victorine comes to sew all
day like wild for seventy-five cents, and tells how splendidly Rosa de
Vries (the prima donna) sang “_Robert, toi que j’aime_” last night. She
always goes, “_Oui, madame, toujours_,” to the opera Sunday. Later,
dusky Henriette Blondeau comes, with her _tignon_ stuck full of pins and
the deep pockets of her apron bulging with sticks of bandoline, pots of
pomade, hairpins and a bandeau comb, to dress the hair of mademoiselle.
She also had to tell how fine was “Robert,” but she prefers De Vries in
“Norma,” “_moi_.” The Casimirs lived in a kind of cubby-hole way down
Ste. Anne Street. M. Casimir was assistant in a barber shop near the
French Market, but such were the gallery gods Sunday nights, and no mean
critics were they. Our nights were Tuesday and Saturday.
Society loves a bit of gossip, and we had a delightful dish of it
about this time, furnished us by a denizen of Canal Street. He was
“horribly English, you know.” As French was the fashion then, it was an
impertinence to swagger with English airs. The John Bull in question,
with his wife all decked out in her Sunday war paint and feathers, found
a woman calmly seated in his pew at Christ Church, a plainly dressed,
common appearing woman, who didn’t even have a flower in her bonnet.
The pew door was opened wide and a gesture accompanied it, which the
common-looking somebody did not fail to comprehend. She promptly rose
and retired into the aisle; a seat was offered her nearer the door of
the church, which she graciously accepted. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had
asked for a seat in that pew, as she bore a letter of introduction to its
occupant. This incident gave us great merriment, for the inhospitable
Englishman had been boasting of the coming of Lady Mary. I introduce it
here, for it has a moral which gives a Sunday school flavor to my opera
reminiscences. Now they have all gone where they are happily singing, I
hope, even better than Rosa de Vries, and where there are no doors to the
pews.
X
MURAL DECORATIONS AND PORTRAITS OF THE PAST
The pendulum is swinging. Landscape wall papers, after a seventy years’
truce, are on the warpath, to vanquish damask hangings and other fabrics
that are traps for moths and dust and microbes, we old-time people aver.
Now, in view of the return to favor of landscape wall papers, some
elegant, expensive and striking specimens rise in my memory, and clamor
to be once more displayed to the public.
I vividly remember a decorated wall at a school under the charge of a
superannuated Episcopal clergyman. His aged wife must have possessed
considerable artistic ability, for she painted, on the parlor walls,
mythological subjects, as befits a school teacher’s, if not a preacher’s,
residence. There were Diana and her nymphs (quite modestly wrapped in
floating draperies) on one side the room, and opposite, was Aurora in her
chariot, driving her team of doves. They were up in the dawning sky, and
below was such greenery as I presume old Mrs. Ward thought belonged to
the period of gods and goddesses, but it was strangely like the bushes
and trees in her own back yard. Various other figures were floating or
languishing about. The colors, on the whole, were not brilliant; in
fact, artistically subdued. That bit of mural adornment was a curiosity
to all. I, a little child, thought it most wonderful, and it was. All
these landscape walls had a three or four-foot base of a solid color,
surmounted by a band of wood, called in those days “chair boarding.” So
the figures came near the level of the eye.
Years after the two old people had joined the immortals, I had occasion
to call at the house. It was a great disappointment to find the parlor
wall covered with stiff paper, representing slabs of white marble
(marble, of all things, in that dingy red-brick house!). Aurora and
Diana, and perhaps Calypso, for I imagine the scope was sufficiently
extensive to comprise such a picturesque immortal, were buried under
simulated marble. A weather-beaten portrait of Major Morgan in full
uniform hung right over the spot where Aurora drove her fluttering birds.
I looked at the desecration in dismay, when the voice of old black mammy
was heard. “Dat is Mars Major in his rag-gi-ments; you never know’d him?”
No, I didn’t. “And dat odder portrait over dar” (pointing to a simpering
girl with curly hair) “is Miss Merriky ’fore she married de major.” Where
are those old portraits now? The whirligig of time has doubtless whirled
them away to some obscure closet or garret, where, with faces turned to
the wall, they await a time when there will be a general cleaning up or
tearing down—then where? _Sic transit!_
[Illustration: TYPICAL OLD NEW ORLEANS DWELLING.]
I recall, in later life, a wonderful wall paper on the broad hall
of Judge Chinn’s house in West Baton Rouge. That was very gay and
brilliant, somewhat after the Watteau style, swains playing on impossible
instruments to beauties in various listening attitudes; lambs gamboling
in the distance, birds flying about amid lovely foliage, horsemen on
galloping steeds with extraordinary trappings. How I did love that wall!
It was never permitted the family to cover all that glory with “pillars
and panels,” for the house, shortly after my visit, was destroyed by
fire, and the debonair ladies, prancing steeds and all went up in one
great holocaust.
The new house that rose over the ashes was aptly called Whitehall. It
was all white, inside and out, broad, dead white walls, grand balconies
all around the mansion dead white; white steps led to the lawn, and
the trees surrounding had their trunks whitewashed as high as could be
reached by a long pole and a brush. All the old portraits and some awful
prints (it was long before the chromo era) were fished out of closets
and other hiding places and hung about on the white walls. One old man
with a tremendously long neck and a stiff black stock to help hold up his
head, and a fierce look, had a pair of eyes that looked like great daubs
of ink. His portrait decorated the parlor. I was warned not to handle
the gilt-edged books and little trinkets on the marble-top center-table,
“for your Cousin Christopher will see you; notice, whichever way you turn
his eyes will follow you.” I was mortally afraid of that old spook till
little black Comfort told me, “Laws! if dem eyes could hurt we’d all be’n
daid in dis house.”
At “The Oaks,” Dr. Patrick’s plantation, the wall paper illustrated
scenes from China, in colors not gorgeous, like the last mentioned,
neither was the house so pretentious. There was no broad, high ceilinged
hall to ornament with startling figures that seemed to jump at you. The
orderly processions of pigtailed Chinamen in sepia tints could not by
any possibility get on one’s nerves. Whole processions wended their way
to impossible temples, wedding processions, palanquins, and all that;
funeral processions dwindled away to a mere point in the distance, all
becomingly solemn, until some of the irrepressible Patrick children,
with black pencil, or charcoal, or ink, put pipes into all the mouths
and clouds of smoke therefrom spotted the landscape. Moral suasion was
the discipline of the Patrick children, so that freak was not probably
followed by after-claps, but the Chinese were promptly marched off, and
the inevitable white walls were the result.
Family portraits came forth to brighten the room. One notable one that
superseded the Chinese wall paper was a full-length portrait of Gov.
Poindexter’s (everybody knows “Old Poins” was the first Governor of the
State of Mississippi) first wife, who was a sister of Mrs. Patrick. She
was a vision of beauty, in full evening dress. Facing her was the glum,
“sandy complected” Governor, not one bit fascinated by the sight of his
wife’s smiling face.
The fashionable portrait painter of the time was Moïse; it was he who
painted the author’s portrait shortly after her marriage. He was a
dashing, improvident genius, and many of his portraits were executed to
cancel debts. At one time he designed and had made for my husband, in
settlement for a loan, a handsome silver lidded bowl with alcohol lamp
beneath. It was known as a _pousse café_ and was used to serve hot punch
to after-dinner parties. I am glad to say it has survived all the family
vicissitudes, and is an honored heirloom, in company with a _repoussé_
silver pitcher, which we won as a prize for cattle at the Louisiana State
Fair, described in a later chapter.
At John C. Miller’s place the house was only one story, but it spread
over what seemed to be a half acre of land. A square hall, which was a
favorite lounging place for everybody, had wall paper delineating scenes
from India. Women walked toward the Ganges river, smilingly tripping
along with huge water jars on their shoulders, in full view of another
woman descending the steps of a temple, with a naked baby, poised aloft,
to be thrown into the sacred Ganges. A crocodile ruffled the blue (very
blue) waters, with jaws distended, ready to complete the sacrifice. That
sacred river seemed to course all around the hall, for on another side
were a number of bathers, who appeared to be utterly oblivious of their
vicinity to the mother and babe, not to mention the awful crocodile.
The culmination of landscape wall paper must have been reached in the
Minor plantation dwelling in Ascension parish. Mrs. Minor had received
this plantation as a legacy, and she was so loyal to the donor that the
entreaties of her children to “cover that wall” did not prevail. It was
after that style of mural decoration was of the past, that I visited the
Minors. The hall was broad and long, adorned with real jungle scenes from
India. A great tiger jumped out of dense thickets toward savages, who
were fleeing in terror. Tall trees reached to the ceiling, with gaudily
striped boa constrictors wound around their trunks; hissing snakes peered
out of jungles; birds of gay plumage, paroquets, parrots, peacocks
everywhere, some way up, almost out of sight in the greenery; monkeys
swung from limb to limb; ourang-outangs, and lots of almost naked,
dark-skinned natives wandered about. To cap the climax, right close to
the steps one had to mount to the story above was a lair of ferocious
lions!
I spent hours studying that astonishing wall paper, and I applauded Mrs.
Minor’s decision, “The old man put it there; it shall stay; he liked
it, so do I.” It was in 1849 I made that never-to-be-forgotten trip to
jungle land. The house may still be there; I don’t know; but I warrant
that decorated hall has been “done over,” especially if little children
ever came to invade the premises. Upon the departure of landscape wall
paper, the pendulum swung to depressing simplicity of dead white walls or
else “pillared and paneled,” which is scarcely one degree better.
Old portraits and any kind of inartistic picture or print were brought
forth to gratify the eye unaccustomed to such monotony. Only a few
years ago I asked: “What became of that military epauletted portrait of
old Major Messiah that always hung in your mother’s hall when we were
children?” “Oh, it was hanging twenty or more years ago in the office of
a hardware concern down town. Don’t know where it is now.”
After the war, inquiring for a lot of portraits of various degrees of
merit and demerit that disappeared when the Yankees left, we heard
that some were in negro cabins in West Feliciana. So they come and are
appreciated, those images of loved ones. So they often go, and are
despised by those who follow us, and who, perchance, never knew the
original. Now the questions arise, will landscape wall papers really
return? And in their pristine splendor? Surely the scope in brilliancy
and variety could not be excelled. The limit was reached almost seventy
years ago, and naturally (I was a child then) comes as vividly to my
mind as the counterfeit face of my ancestor with eyes following me all
around the room. The tigers and ourang-outangs, even the den of lions and
the crocodile of the Ganges, never made my little soul quake like the
searching eyes of “my Cousin Christopher.”
XI
THOUGHTS OF OLD
I shall begin to think I am in my second childhood by and by. I have just
been reading of a fashionable wedding where the bride and her attendants
carried flat bouquets with lace paper frills. I don’t doubt the revival
of the _porte bouquet_ will come next, the slender bouquet holders made
of filigree silver with a dagger like a short hatpin to stick clear
through and secure the bouquet—a chain and ring attached to the holder
and all could be hung from the finger. I used to think, a childish
looker-on, that it was pretty to see the ladies in a quadrille “balancing
to your partners,” “ladies changing,” etc., each with a tight little
bouquet in a trim little holder swinging and banging about from the chain.
Later the _porte bouquets_ were abandoned, but the stiff little posies,
in their lacy frills, remained. They were symmetrical, a camellia
japonica, surrounded by a tiny row of heliotrope, then a row of Grand
Duke jasmine, one of violets, finally a _soupçon_ of greenery, and the
paper bed. James Pollock had a fund of such rare flowers to draw from,
for though the Pollock home down on Royal street was the simplest of old
Creole houses, flush on the street, only two steps from the _banquette_
leading into a modest parlor, there was a tiny _parterre_ in the rear, a
vision of the most choice collection of plants. How it was managed and
cultivated I don’t know, for it was hemmed in on all sides by buildings
that intercepted much of the air and almost all of the sun’s rays.
Still those camellias, Grand Dukes and violets thrived and bloomed,
and delighted the heart of any girl to whom James, the best dancer in
society, sent them in one of those tight little bouquets on the eve of a
dance.
[Illustration: A CREOLE PARTERRE.]
I have to-day a much larger _parterre_ in my backyard, open to sun and
rain and wind, but no amount of coddling brings anything better than
dock-weed and tie-grass. I leave it to the climate of my own sunny
Southland to explain the problem. The _porte bouquet_ will no doubt come
in time. I for one will hail an old friend, if I am “on deck” when it
arrives.
Last Christmas what should my granddaughter receive but a mob cap of
gold lace! almost exactly like one my mother wore before I can remember.
Caps! Every woman when she arrived at middle age, and some who found them
becoming at an earlier age, wore caps. My mother was considered very
tasty and expert at cap-trimming. She had a papier mâché, or soft wood
dummy head—I know she stuck pins into it—on which she fashioned her caps.
Mechlin lace (one rarely sees it now) was considered the fashionable cap
lace. Remember cotton laces and Italian laces and machine-made laces were
not in existence in those days, neither were Hamburg embroideries and
Nottingham curtains, two awful products of to-day; and a thousand other
make-believes, cheap and tawdry now. When mother’s fine Mechlin edgings
became soiled she “did them up” herself, clapping the damp lace in her
hands, pulling out and straightening the delicate edges—drying them
without heat; and she had a deft way, too, of what she called “pinching”
with her dainty fingers; she knife pleated it. The net foundation was
fitted to the wooden head, the lace was attached in folds and frills, and
little pink rosebuds or some other tiny flower scattered tastefully here
and there. Behold a dress cap! One can imagine the care and taste and
time and thought consumed in its manufacture. And how the old lady must
have appeared when in full dress!
Many of those dames wore little bunches of black curls to enhance the
effect, those tight, stiff little curls that looked like they had been
wound on a slate-pencil. Dear Mrs. Leonard Matthews always wore the black
curls. Even a few years after the war I met the sweet old lady, curls and
all, jet black, tight little curls, and she looked scarcely older than in
my earliest recollection of her.
Well, I must return to cap trimmings to tell of a bride. She must have
been in the neighborhood of seventy, for she made what her friends called
a suitable match with a widower long past that age. They came to the St.
Charles Hotel on a kind of honeymoon trip. She decorated her head, oh, ye
cherubim and seraphim! with a fussy cap sprinkled with sprays of orange
flowers!
I, who revel in a towering white pompadour, have just had the present of
a soft silk cap, with frills and bows. I presume it will be useful on the
breezy piazzas of the mountains a week hence; but it looks to me now that
the caps of our mothers and grandmothers are on the march hitherward.
I possess a few “Moniteurs des Dames,” dated in the late forties, that
contain pictures and patterns for “bonnets,” as they were called. Who
knows but they may be useful yet?
Now, “in regard to” (as a lady we all know prefaces every remark)—“in
regard to” frills, in my young days we had to make our own frills. Nobody
had dreamed even of machine-made ruchings any more than of vehicles that
run all over the streets without the aid of horses. We made our frills
of lawn, neatly gathered on to a band, and what is more, they had to be
fluted with hot irons. The making was not beyond everybody’s skill, but
the “doing up” and fluting was way beyond me, as beyond many others. How
queer it is, when we recall to mind the images of people so long absent
that they are almost forgotten, the image presents itself, emphasized by
some peculiarity of dress or speech. When I think of Dr. Bein’s daughter
Susanna, whom I knew and loved so well, it is with the beautifully fluted
frill she always wore and so excited my envy. Now, every Biddy in the
kitchen and every little darky one sees wandering around wears handsomer
frills than Susanna and I ever dreamed of.
Parasols had heavy fringes; so, to show to advantage, they were carried
upside down, the ferule end fitted with a ring to be, like the bouquet
holders, hung from the finger. My sister had a blue parasol, with pink
fringe, that I thought too beautiful for words. How I should laugh at it
now!
Best frocks, such as could be utilized for dinners and parties, were
made with short sleeves, “caps,” they were called, and tapes sewed in
the armholes; long sleeves similarly equipped were tied in under the
“caps.” I used to see even party guests take off their sleeves as they
put on their gloves to descend to the dancing room. Black, heelless
slippers, with narrow black ribbons, wound over the instep, and crossed
and recrossed from ankle, way up, over white stockings, were the style;
it was a pretty fashion.
I recall the autumn of 1849, when I, a young girl, was at the Astor
House, in New York. Coming downstairs one morning to breakfast, how
surprised I was at glaring notices posted on walls and doors, “Hop
to-night.” You may well believe I was at the hop, though I had no
suitable dress. I was only a looker-on.
When I mentioned slippers I recalled that hotel hop, for Mme. Le Vert
wore a pink silk dress and pink satin slippers, all laced up and tied
up with broad pink ribbons. Nobody had ever seen the like before. Mme.
Walton, her mother, was on hand, and hopped, too, just as spry a hop as
any young girl. I contrived to sidle along and keep near to Mme. Le Vert,
for I was as fascinated as any one of her numerous beaux. Dr. Le Vert, by
the way, had just started on a trip to Europe for his health. Going to
Europe then was like taking a trip to Mars now.
I heard Mme. Le Vert talking to four different swains in four different
languages. I believe she considered her linguistic versatility her strong
point. She surely was a most remarkable woman. She was as tender and
sweet to me, a very plain, simple, unattractive girl, as to her swellest
friends. One does not easily forget such an episode of early life. I
never met Mme. Le Vert after that autumn. We all returned South together
on the Crescent City, the pioneer steamer between New York and New
Orleans.
I will not moralize or sermonize over these reminiscences. They are all
of the dead past. Both fashions and people are gone.
XII
WEDDING CUSTOMS THEN AND NOW
We were lingering about the breakfast table having such a comfortable,
chatty review of the last night’s party, when a familiar voice was heard.
“Oh! congratulate me; we have captured him; they are engaged.” That was
the first time I had ever heard an “announcement” from headquarters. It
was made to Mrs. Slocomb, in her library. There followed many amusing
particulars, audible to us, in the adjoining room, but we were discreet
young girls; perhaps that was one reason we were among the very few
invited to the wedding, which so quickly followed the engagement that it
was a complete surprise to the whole community.
Sixty years ago only Catholics went to the sanctuary for a wedding
ceremony. Protestant weddings were home affairs, necessarily confined
to family and nearest friends. Houses being limited in space, company
was limited in number. No city house could boast of a ballroom; few had
“double parlors.”
At the wedding whose “announcement” was such a surprise to us, I think
our family and the Slocombs were the only guests, except the families of
the groom’s business associates. The idea of having a grand reception
to announce a marriage engagement, to which everybody who is anybody is
invited, was unheard of. The anxiety, too, of the parties interested to
get the news in a suitable form in the daily papers, for the butcher boy
and the sewing girl, out of the social swim, to read, accompanied by the
genealogies of the engaged people, the wealth of the girl and how she
came by it, and the numbers of clubs of which the young man is a member,
as though the money and the clubs were “the chief end of man”, was
unheard of, too. We did things on a very different scale sixty years ago!
I recall my astonishment when Elèna Longer told me her sister Héda was
married the night before, for Elèna and I (we were ten years old at the
time) had played together all that day of the wedding, and not a hint was
imparted to me of the impending event. I had not even heard the name of
Mr. Charles Kock, the fiancé, mentioned. There were already six married
daughters, with hosts of children, at that time in the Longer family, so
there could have been little room on such an occasion for outsiders, even
if their presence had been desired.
Wedding presents were not made, either. The first time we saw a display
of wedding gifts, how surprised we were, and how we wondered as to how it
happened! There were not many, nor were they expensive, so for ever so
long I could have given the list and the names of the donors. Dear Maria
Shute, who, as I remember, was the bridesmaid, presented a pearl-handled
paper cutter! That article might have escaped my memory, along with the
others, but years after that wedding I met Maria, then Mrs. Babcock, and
we talked of it all, and had a merry laugh over the paper cutter.
Fifty-eight years ago, when I married, I was surprised by a solitary
wedding present, a napkin ring! From the most unexpected source it came.
The giver is long since dead and gone; dead and gone also is the napkin
ring.
At the wedding of Caroline Hennen to Mr. Muir, the first I ever attended,
there were not a dozen guests, but the rooms were filled, indeed the
Hennen family easily filled one of them. At this wedding we met Mr.
William Babcock from New York, a forty-niner en route to California (this
was in 1849). The following day I went with him to call on and introduce
him to his young cousin, an intimate friend of mine he was desirous of
meeting. She was of that handsome family of Smiths, a niece of Mrs.
Labouisse. I never saw either him or her afterwards, for within the
following fortnight they quietly married and started “round the Horn”
to San Francisco. More than fifty years after I saw their children and
grandchildren in California.
Some of us must remember genial, gossipy Mrs. Garnet Duncant, the _bon
vivant_, so bright, so fat and so entertaining? She it was who called
one day (sixty years ago) to tell us Amelia Zacharie had married her
invalid cousin, and sailed away with him. Those two are the only cases I
recall of wedding trips, and both were permanent trips, for there was no
intention of a return to New Orleans of either couple. It was the fashion
for the newly-mated to remain quietly in the home nest, until one of
their very own be made ready for their reception.
James Pollock, I recall to mind, made a late appearance (in 1850) at a
dance given by the Lanfears, on Julia street, that old “13 Buildings.”
The Lanfears were the last to leave that once fashionable row. Pollock
swept in late, full of apologies. His sister Mana had married that
evening and he was detained.
The only other wedding trip I can chronicle was one where the bridegroom
went alone. Do you remember what an excitement there was, years ago, when
a wealthy young man disappeared from the side of his bride the morning
after the wedding? There were no wires or wireless then to facilitate
the hunt, undertaken with frantic haste, and continuing two mortally
anxious weeks. He was eventually discovered, in a semi-conscious, dazed
condition, on a wharfboat at Baton Rouge, or some such river town. He
recovered from that attack, to be blown away by another “brain storm” a
few years later. It was twenty years after this second disappearance that
the courts pronounced him dead, and the widow permitted to administer on
the estate.
In those days old maids were rare. Every girl, so to say, married. The
few exceptions served to emphasize the rarity of an unmated female.
Divorces were so rare when I was young that they were practically unknown
in polite circles. I know of cases, and you would know of them, too, if
I mentioned names, where men sent their erring or cast-off wives, not to
Coventry, but to Paris, and made them stay there. One such died in Paris
lately at the age of ninety-five, who was packed off, under a cloud of
suspicion. There was no divorce, no open scandal. She simply went and
stayed! He simply stayed!
Last winter I was invited to a view (sounds like a picture exhibit!)
of the trousseau and wedding gifts of a fashionable young lady. I was
stunned with amazement! A large room filled to overflowing with glass,
china, silver, mirrors, everything a body could require, and a vast array
of utterly useless articles! and the trousseau which the tired mother,
who has had nervous prostration ever since, spent months accumulating in
Paris. My gracious! the best _blanchisseuse_ in the land could not cope
successfully with all that flimsy finery, laces and ribbons. I could only
look and wonder, “What can all this lead to?” (I add here, anticipating
events: It led to an apartment and one maid servant.) The young man was
a salaried clerk, and the young girl utterly unfit to care for even the
superabundance of china and silver, so much more than they could possibly
find use for in a three-story house, not to mention a six-room apartment
and “light housekeeping.” I wonder if the whirligig of time won’t bring
back some of the simplicity of my day?
Already it is the style to “fire out of sight” the useless bric-a-brac
ornaments that twenty years ago cluttered up drawing rooms till one had
to pick her way carefully lest she stumble over a blue china cat, or tilt
over a bandy-leg table covered with ivory idols and Chinese mandarins
with bobbing heads. Some of the most fashionable drawing rooms to-day
are already so stripped of furniture one has to wander around quite a
bit to find a chair to sit on; not even a pier mirror to prink before,
nor a parlor clock, flanked by “side pieces,” on the mantel. All that
banished for stunning simplicity. Not so, however, the costumes and
entertainments, which are becoming, so it seems to a near-sighted old
lady, more and more luxurious. Perhaps this extreme (we all dote on
extremes) of simplicity will come to take the place of many other equally
absurd extremes of the present day. _Qui vivra verra._
XIII
A COUNTRY WEDDING IN 1846
We missed the train! and here we were in the old Bayou Sara Hotel,
looking for some kind of locomotion. We had eighteen miles to make, and
if the _Belle Creole_ had made the run we would have been all right,
but the _Belle Creole_ was not a flier; it had no time for arrivals or
departures; it just jogged along at its own good will, answering every
call, running all sorts of antics up and down the river. Dick started out
to see what he could do.
I sat on the dirty porch, looking through November china trees towards
the river. Is there anything more depressing than a view of china trees
in November? The pretty, fragrant, blue flowers long gone, and the
mocking birds (nobody ever heard of English sparrows then!) that had
drunk their fill of intoxicating liquor from the scattering china berries
were gone too. The train we had missed, the dear old _Belle Creole_
always missed, was a kind of private affair. The whole outfit, about
twenty miles of track, the lumbering cars, the antiquated engines, and
I think, too, the scattering woods that supplied the fuel were all the
private property of the McGehees. The McGehees had a cotton factory in
the neighborhood of Woodville, twenty miles from the river. They had one
train, cheap and dirty, that made one trip a day, going with freight
very early in the morning, returning later, with freight and one small
passenger car for the owner’s use. This concern stopped for wood and
water and nothing else, and was the only means of transport for “casuals”
like ourselves from the river to Woodville. Ladies going back and forth
and gentlemen of leisure used their own conveyance, a turtle-back affair
that was entered by a row of steps. The dear _Belle Creole_ was too much
of a convenience to have a time table, so it was useless to construct a
time table and plan to “connect” with that equally free and easy train.
Some disgruntled chap chalked on an unused car, left on the rails as a
depot, “We belong to the McGehees, and go when we please.”
Well, to make the matter short, though it was long to me, on that dirty
porch by the china trees, Dick found a man with a turtle-top coach, and
a harness mended by cords and stakes and bits of rawhide. The man had a
mended look, too, but he was sober, and for a good, round sum agreed
to take us to Laurel Hill. Laurel Hill, where we proposed to go, was
a post office station, about ten miles from Woodville and four miles
across country. We meandered along, tired and out of all patience. At
the date of this tramp I was a little girl and not given to moralizing.
When we arrived at Laurel Hill we were told, “Creek is up; been a big
rain somewhere; not even a horseman has crossed all day.” There was no
accommodation for man or beast at the queer little depot, no place to sit
and nothing to sit on. It was long after dark, and there was no one to
tell us the story of the high water but a negro man, who was shutting up
the one door of the building. There was nothing left us but to go to the
nearest plantation house and ask for lodgings.
I was so tired I felt we had gone ten miles further when we reached Major
Dick Haile’s, though it really was only a few miles. The tired horses
and the sleepy driver made slow work. There was a gate and an opening,
but the house was pitch dark, every door closed and everybody apparently
asleep. The nags were willing to stand, unhitched, beside the fence; not
an automobile or flying machine could have scared them; they were asleep,
too.
After much knocking and calling at what seemed to be the door of
entrance, an old gentleman, candle in hand and very scantily dressed,
demanded to know what was wanted. My brother called that we were on our
way to the General’s, and we could not cross the creek, so we begged the
privilege of a lodging for the night.
“General’s for the wedding? Come right in.” A brighter light was
procured, and before we were seated in the reception room we heard the
hospitable voice, “Put your carriage under the shed, give those horses a
good feed, then come to the kitchen and get a bite for yourself.” The two
young daughters came in, hurriedly dressed (people did not have bathrobes
and wrappers seventy years ago). I was awfully tired and awfully sleepy,
and I began to think our lodgings were to be parlor chairs, long before
the dining room door was opened, and the genial old gentleman, in night
shirt and trousers, led the way to the table. We had fried chicken, hot
cornbread, coffee, cakes, and I don’t know what else. It would take me
back forty years to see a cook roused at midnight, to prepare such a
meal. I presume she even took herself to the roost and caught her young
chicken by the legs and wrung its neck before she reached the newly-made
fire. Major Haile knew we had not broken our fast at the town hotel.
It was late the following day when we all assembled to just as fine a
breakfast, and heard the major say, “Your ‘turnout’ is gone. I sent to
see about the condition of the creek; it goes down about as fast as it
rises. When you are rested my carriage is at your disposal. Your driver
was not used to these roads, but mine knows every crossing in the creek.”
It was a four-mile drive, even after we had crossed the waters. The
wedding house we found in commotion. There were no caterers or experts
even in New Orleans in 1846. The wedding supper was in process of
preparation, under the superintendence of a noted old cakemaker from
Woodville, nine miles off. Everybody was busy; only General McCausland,
the dear old master of the house, was quietly seated by his parlor
window, a very old man, but a soldier withal, who could rise to
emergencies when required. I drew up a chair and explained our delay, and
told him how grandly hospitable his neighbor was. The two old men were
the last remaining ones of their company of the battle of New Orleans.
Their homes were in payment from the Government for their services. The
dear old gentlemen said they were neither general nor major; they were
simple soldiers who had discharged their services and accepted their
pay. Both the men were Irish, both poor boys. They worked hard, soon
exhausted the old red soil of their neighborhood.
Later the General moved his workmen to the river bottoms, so that,
while living for health’s sake in the old home, the house of which he
originally helped to build, his income came from Bayou Fordoche, many
miles away.
Time flew; neighbors had arrived, the table was spread in the long
back porch. The guests, many of them, lived miles and miles away, in
common country roads, often through dense woods—a long drive under best
circumstances, a perilous one at night, everybody waiting, everybody
in a hurry, everybody getting tired and fretful. It was long after the
appointed time, and the New Orleans preacher had missed the train! Old
Dilsey in the kitchen was mad because her pig was getting too brown;
Elfey in the porch worrying that her ice cream was waiting too long;
ladies in the parlor trying to kill time; men wandering around the front
yard in restless groups. Carriages had been to the depot; no appearance
of Mr. Jahleel Woodbridge, the New Orleans minister. He was endeared to
the family, had been for years their minister at Woodville. Bride, in
all her regal attire, upstairs in tears; no Presbyterian preacher nearer
than ten miles away. So we waited and waited. At last the General sent
for his especial groom, ordered him to take the buggy and go four miles
through the woods, where there was a Methodist itinerant, and tell him to
come without delay to marry the couple.
The accommodating preacher came, just as he was. He had been plowing
his field, and his wife, off to see a sick child, had carried the keys
with her. He could not even get a clean handkerchief, but he came in his
workaday suit. The company hastily assembled. He performed the ceremony,
gave them his blessings, and congratulated her on her “escape from the
quicksands and shoals of celibacy.” Recognizing his own condition at
the time, he begged to be excused from refreshments, and took a rapid
and hurried departure. The kindly man was scarce gone when Mr. Jahleel
Woodbridge arrived in a coach, most astonishingly like the one we had
used the previous day. Only a year or two later the hospitable Major
passed away; shortly after the General followed him, and the dear old
homes have passed away also from the face of the earth.
XIV
THE BELLES AND BEAUX OF FORTY
Do not think I mean to imply the belles and beaux of which I am about to
speak were forty years old, but they had their butterfly existence in
the year 1840. Some, no doubt, fluttered around before, and a few after
that date, but they all were of that era of simple life that, alas! is of
the distant past—a host, as Auctioneer Beard used to say when parading
his goods, “too multitudinous to particularize.” In the first place, the
costumes, as well as the customs of society, were so different from those
of the present day that they marshal before my mind’s eye almost like a
fancy dress parade.
Miss Ellen Johnson, who became later the wife of William B. Walker (of
the firm of Woodlief & Walker), and her sister, Malvina, wife of our
celebrated Dr. Warren Stone, wore the most beautiful curls—wore them long
after that style ceased to be _haut ton_. I have some “Moniteurs des
Dames” of that early date that afford insight into costumes then worn.
The long pointed waist, chuck full of real, hard, stiff whalebones (all
the whalebones must have been used up then; nobody can find one now),
corset also whaleboned to the limit, laced at the back and with literally
a board up the front, at least three inches wide—a real board, apple
tree wood preferred, hard and stiff and unyielding. Ladies so girded
up walked and stood and sat, too, like drum majors; no round, stooping
shoulders; one just had to stand straight, with an apple tree board as a
constant reminder. I used even to hear that in cases where the poise had
a tendency to lapse it was not unusual for the victim to wear the corset
night and day.
The tournure of 1840 was buried in such oblivion that it requires one to
be almost eighty years old to drag it forth and display its hideousness,
explain its construction. The tournure, called “tchuny” for short, was
long and round, the size and shape of the biggest kind of a rolling pin,
such as your cook uses for pastry. The ends, however, tapered to points,
which met and were secured in front of the waist. It was stuffed with
moss, or cotton, or hair, I don’t know what, for the monstrosity “came
ready-made” from France. Over this awful precipice the full gathered
dress skirt fell in rippling cascades. I remember a chiné silk, an
indistinct, plaided purple and green; it was ruffled to the waist, and
over the tchuny it hung in irregular folds. To my childhood’s eye it
was most graceful and beautiful. Good-by, tchuny! I am sure you will
never resurrect. Your reign was disastrous to taste. You lived one short
decade; without a mourner when you departed. Good-by, tchuny!
Whatever did become of chiné silks? Can it be possible they are back on
the counters masquerading under another name? I never see a silk now that
bears any resemblance to the pretty chiné of 1840. Nor do I see tarletans
of that date. It required a whole piece (or bolt) of that goods for a
dress. It had to have at least three skirts, one over the other, to give
the diaphanous effect. Such sweet, simple dresses they were, too. Miss
Mary Jane Matthews, a belle of the forties, wore a pink tarletan, trimmed
with wreaths of small white roses, that was an inspiration. One very
striking one comes to mind, gold colored, garnished with red hollyhocks!
I think some Western girl must have sported that; it was scarcely simple
enough for Creole taste.
Emma Shields was a noted beauty. I recall a plaster bust of Queen
Victoria, idealized beyond all reason or recognition, one of my brothers
kept on a shelf in his room. He adored it because he saw a resemblance
to beautiful Emma Shields. She, poor girl, married unfortunately, and
dropped suddenly out of sight. About the same time an accidental flourish
of a feather duster knocked Queen Victoria off the shelf—and smashed my
brother’s idol.
Don’t I recall as though he stood before me this minute, on my father’s
balcony, Mr. Peter Anderson? Tall and thin and angular (he imagined
he looked like Henry Clay, and he was of similar build), dressed in
what was known as moleskin, a tan-colored goods looking strangely like
rough-finished kid, the trousers so skin-tight and so firmly strapped
under the shoe that he had to assume a sitting posture with considerable
deliberation and care.
Here comes Adolphus Hamilton, a quiet eligible, more known in business
than in social circles, but the far-seeing mammas kept an eye on him,
he was such a _bon parti_. One fine day he surprised these mammas by
arriving with his bride from a trip to Natchez. Henry Hollister, too, was
a business man who made few social calls, but was in evidence at all the
dances. A few years ago I met his daughter at a summer resort. She was
prodigiously amused that papa, now hobbling about with a gouty foot and
stout cane, ever could have been a dancing beau.
George W. Kendall went off one fine day, to what he proposed would be a
kind of picnic, in the wilds of Western Texas. His Santa Fe expedition
spun out a longer and more varied experience than he contemplated,
of which his graphic account, now unhappily out of print, is most
entertaining. He married in France, and in Texas during the war we
met him, after a lapse of many years. He had founded the town of New
Braunfels, near San Antonio, and retired, full of years, and full of
interest in the rough life around him, so different from the New Orleans
of his earlier days and the Paris of his gayer ones.
The Miltenberger brothers were never old. They danced and made themselves
admired through several generations of belles. The “sere and yellow leaf”
could never be applied to a Miltenberger. Evergreens were they, game to
the last, for no doubt they are all gone, and the places that knew them
will know them no more.
A. K. Josephs, a lawyer of some note and a very acceptable visitor, was
a replica in the way of flowered waistcoat and dangling chains of a
prominent man of his race in England, Disraeli. Don’t I see a bird of
paradise waistcoat? Indeed I do. And also a waistcoat of similar style
sent to another prominent beau of the period, a black satin confection,
with gorgeous peacocks embroidered on the ample front. I don’t think
the recipient of that garment ever appeared in it. Flamboyant as were
the waistcoats of that day, a peacock with spread tail was the limit.
They are all dead, those belles and beaux of the forties. The old lady
chronicler could expect nothing else of these folks she loves to remember
and talk of to children and grandchildren, who listen with becoming
patience, no doubt often thinking, “Dear grandma must be nearing her
dotage.”
XV
AS IT WAS IN MY DAY
I am like the deaf old lady who, when asked why she took a box at the
opera when she could not hear, replied, “I can see.” So it is on piazzas
at summer hotels, I do not overhear remarks, so perforce the pleasure of
gossip is denied me, but “I can see,” and no doubt do observe more than
those who have the other faculty to play upon; also I see and moralize.
Last summer in the mountains didn’t I see young girls, young society
girls, educated girls who ought to have known better, with bare heads and
bare arms playing tennis in the hot sun; and, worse still, racing over
the golf links? I could see them from my window, equally exposed, chasing
balls and flourishing clubs. The sun in August is pitiless even on those
breezy mountains, so I was scarcely surprised when one young girl was
overcome by heat and exposure, and was brought to her mother at the hotel
in a passing grocer’s cart or lumber wagon. I tell my grandchildren who
want to “do like other girls” that is not the way “other girls” did in
my day. Grandma may be so old that she forgets, but she moralizes all the
same. These athletic girls come back to city homes so sunburnt and with
such coarse skin they have to repair to a skin specialist, and have the
rough cuticle burnt off with horrid acids, and be polished up before the
society season opens.
There are, of course, extremes, but years ago young ladies took more care
of their complexions and of their hair, too. Years back of years, I don’t
know how they did. In my day we girls loved to visit the granddaughter
of a voluble dame and listen to the old lady’s talk, just like I am
talking now. She thought we were criminally careless with our “skins,” as
she called it. Why, when she was young, her skin was so thin and clear
that “one saw little blue veins meandering her neck.” We always heard
something as reminiscent in that house to laugh over till we saw the old
lady again, and heard something equally remarkable of her youth. She was
living in the past, as I am now, as I return to my experiences. One young
girl visited me, ever so many years ago, who wore one of those awful,
long, scoop sunbonnets all the time she was not at table or in bed. She
looked like the proverbial lily. I used to wish she would take off that
sunbonnet and say something, for she was dumb as a lily. I have entirely
forgotten her name, though she was my guest for a whole stupid week; but
I recall she was a relative or friend of the Morses. I don’t know Mr.
Morse’s name; he was called Guncotton Morse, for he invented an explosive
of that name, which the United States Government appropriated during the
war.
Years after this young girl’s visit to me I called on the charming Morse
family in Washington. He was then urging his “claim.” Every Southerner
in Washington was after a “claim” at that time. I nearly broke my neck
falling over a green china dog or a blue china cat in their dark parlor.
Enterprising Morse barricaded himself behind his explosive, but I think
he failed in his fight. I find I have wandered from the girls having
their skins burned off to the Morses and their blue china cat!... In my
days there were no specialists except cancer doctors. I think they always
flourished—there were no skin specialists. A doctor was a doctor, nothing
more nor less, and he was supposed to know all that was necessary of the
“human form divine.” He did, too, for people did not have the new-fangled
diseases of to-day. A woman’s hospital! Oh, heavens! Only last week I saw
a friend, old enough to know better, but we never are so old we don’t
want to rid our faces of pimples and warts and wrinkles. This friend was
a sight. I was really alarmed for her. She had been to a specialist. Her
face was fiery red, all the skin removed by acid. Yesterday I saw her
again, cured of sunburn and all the ills skin is heir to. Her complexion
was that of the lily girl who wore the scoop sunbonnet. I do not advise
you to try the experiment. It is shockingly painful, and does not always
prove a success.
When I was a little girl, more than seventy years ago, mother made me,
for summer romps in the country, gloves of nankeen, that well covered
the wrist, had a hole for the thumb and a deep flap to fall over the
hand. It was lucky they were easily made, and nankeen was not expensive,
for I hated them and had a way of losing them in the currant bushes.
Maybe you never saw nankeen? Gentlemen’s waistcoats were often made of
it, and little boys’ trousers. If I lost my scoop sunbonnet one day—and
it was surprising how easily I lost it!—it was sewed on the next. There
were no such things as hatpins—and we had pigtails anyway, so they would
have been of no use. Such tortures were inflicted when we were running
wild over the blue grass farm, but no doubt the little Creole girls on
the lakeshore were similarly protected. The hair specialist was not in
evidence either.
[Illustration: ST. LOUIS CEMETERY, NEW ORLEANS.]
Ladies had their hair done up with bandoline and pomatums made of beef’s
marrow and castor oil and scented with patchouli; hair was done into
marvelous plaits and puffs. A very much admired style which Henriette
Blondeau, the fashionable hair dresser, achieved, was a wide plait
surrounding a nest of stiff puffs. It was called the “basket of fruit.”
The front locks were tiny, fluffy curls each side the face and long
ringlets to float over the shoulders. We all remember Henriette Blondeau.
She dressed my sister’s hair in the early forties, and she dressed mine
ten years later, and I met her in the hall of the St. Charles Hotel,
plying her trade, twenty years later still, the same Henriette, with the
same ample apron, the tools of her trade sticking out from her pockets.
Now, almost forty years later still, she walks the streets of New Orleans
no more. I hope she rests somewhere in the old French cemetery, for she
knew and gossiped with so many who are taking their long sleep in that
peaceful spot.
Mother made—no doubt your grandmother did, too—the pomade that was used
on our hair. It was used, too, very freely; our locks plastered down
good and smooth and flat. You may wonder how long hair so treated could
last; just as long as hair ruffled the wrong way and marcelled with warm
irons lasts our girls to-day. Mother’s pomade was made of beef’s marrow
and castor oil. After the marrow was rendered to a fluid state, oil was
added, then perfume, the whole beaten in a deep bowl until perfectly cold
and white. Mother would beat and beat, add a few drops more of essence
of bergamot, smell and smell and beat and smell, until she had to call a
fresh nose to see if it was all right. I remember being told to try my
olfactories on the soft, creamy stuff. A naughty brother gave my head a
blow that sent my little pug-nose to the bottom of the bowl! My face was
covered to the ears, and while mother scraped it with a spoon and scolded
Henry, she was entreating me not to cry and have tears spoil her pomade.
Maybe I might have forgotten how the stuff was made and how it looked,
but for that ridiculous prank of the dearest brother ever was.
I have a sweet little miniature of that brother Henry, namesake of
my father’s dear friend, Henry Clay, with the queer collared coat
and flourishing necktie of the day, and his long, straight hair well
plastered with mother’s good pomade. The dear man went to Central
America, on a pleasure tour to the ruins of Uxmal in 1844. The vessel
on which he sailed for home from Campeache, in September of that year,
disappeared in the Gulf. We never had any tidings of how, or when, or
where. I remember the firm of J. W. Zacharie was consignee of that
ill-fated _Doric_, and how tenderly Mr. Zacharie came to my stricken
mother, and how much he did to obtain information, and how for weeks
after all hopes were abandoned my mother’s heart refused to believe her
boy was indeed lost. Every night for months she placed with her own
trembling hands a lamp in the window of Henry’s room, to light him when
he came. She never gave up some remnant of hope. So far as I know, only
one friend of that dear brother, one contemporary, is living now, in New
Orleans. She is the last of her generation; I am the last of mine.
In those days there were few patent medicines, washes and lotions.
There was a Jayne’s hair tonic, and somebody’s chologogue, that was a
fever cure much in evidence on plantations, for quinine and blue mass
pills—others, too—were made by hand. I have made many a pill. We had an
old negro woman who was daft on the subject of medicine. There was not
an earthly thing the matter with Hannah—she was just a chronic grumbler,
begging for “any kind of pill.” I doctored her successfully, making for
her bread pills, rolling them in a little rhubarb dust to give them a
nasty taste. They did her a world of good. Mother made our lip salve
(didn’t your grandmother?) of white wax and sweet oil. We did not have
cold cream in those days.
When by accident, or some other way, our faces tanned, a wash overnight
of sour buttermilk was all that was required. It was not very pleasant,
and nobody wanted to occupy the room with you on sour buttermilk night.
Reason obvious. Kentucky belles, who were noted for their rosy cheeks,
often increased the bloom by a brisk rubbing of the leaves of the wild
mullein. Except rice powder (and that is not a cosmetic) no cosmetics
were in use.
We can recall at a later date than my girlhood a lady from somewhere up
the coast married a finicky cotton broker in New Orleans. They made
a wedding trip to Paris, and she returned with her face enameled. I
don’t think it could have been very skillfully done, for she had to be
so careful about using the muscles of the face that she was absolutely
devoid of expression. Once, in a moment of forgetfulness or carelessness,
she “cracked a smile,” which cracked the enamel. She returned to Paris
for repairs. I saw her on the eve of sailing, and do not know if she ever
returned.
XVI
FANCY DRESS BALL AT THE MINT IN 1850
I have never heard of a society ball in a United States mint building,
before nor since, but the Kennedys, who gave this one, were a power in
the social world at that time—and ambitious beyond their means. Rose and
Josephine, the two oldest of quite a flock of daughters, were débutantes
that winter. Both were handsome and accomplished. Rose was also a famous
pianist, even in those days when every woman strove to excel in music,
and it was customary to entertain even a casual caller with a sonata.
Gottschalk declared Rose Kennedy rendered his famous “Bamboula” better
than he did himself, and to hear her was to rise and dance.
Who was at that fancy ball? Everybody who was anybody in the fifties.
The Eustises—George and Mathilde, George as “a learned judge” (he was
son of Chief Justice Eustis), and Mathilde in pure white and flowing
veil was a bewitching nun. George, years after, married the only child
of the banker-millionaire, W. C. Corcoran, in Washington. Mathilde
married Alan Johnson, an Englishman; both are long since dead. There was
Mrs. John Slidell, of “Mason and Slidell” fame, a “marquise,” in thread
lace and velvet, her sisters, the Misses Deslonde, “peasant girls of
France.” Mathilde Deslonde became the wife of Gen. Beauregard, and her
sister, Caroline, married Mr. R. W. Adams. All three sisters are with
the departed. Col. and Mrs. John Winthrop, “gentleman and lady of the
nineteenth century,” the jolly colonel announced. Who fails to recall,
with a smile, the Winthrops, who lived in Royal Street, near Conti; near
neighbors of the—long departed—Bonfords? The genial colonel became a
tottering old man, asking his devoted wife “who and where are we?” before
he peacefully faded away. Young De Wolf of Rhode Island, nephew of Col.
Winthrop’s, “an Arab sheik,” wore probably the only genuine costume in
the room—a flowing robe that was catching in every girl’s coiffure, and
every man’s sword and spurs, in the dance.
All the gilded youth who wanted boisterous fun, and no jury duty, were
firemen, in those days of voluntary service. Philippe De la Chaise wore
his uniform. He later married Victoria Gasquet, and was relegated to a
“back number” shortly after.
I make no special mention of the chaperons, but, Creole like, they were
present in force. Cuthbert Slocomb was a _mousquetaire_, and Augusta, in
red and black, “Diablotan,” a vision of beauty and grace. She married
the Urquhart mentioned in “Musical History of Louisiana,” as the father
of Cora Urquhart Potter. Mr. Urquhart died years ago, but his widow
survives. She lives with her daughter at Staines on the Thames, in a
stone house that was a lodge of Windsor Castle in the time of Henry VIII.
Cuthbert Slocomb married a Miss Day; his widow and daughter, Countess
di Brazza, survive him. Ida Slocomb was the noted philanthropist of New
Orleans, the widow of Dr. T. G. Richardson.
There was the stately Mrs. Martin Gordon chaperoning her exceedingly
pretty sister, Myrtle Bringier, who became the wife of Gen. Dick Taylor,
and whose descendants are among the few of those mentioned above still
living and reigning in New Orleans society.
The mint building was made ample for the gay festivities by utilizing
committee rooms, offices and every apartment that could be diverted for
the crowd’s comfort—so, we wandered about corridors and spacious rooms,
but never beyond the touch of a gendarme—officers, soldiers, policemen
at every step. These precautions gave a rather regal air to the whole
affair.
[Illustration: AUGUSTA SLOCOMB URQUHART
Painted in Paris, in 1857]
The belles retired to their boudoirs for a season, but the beaux had to
go to business, and what a sight some of them were for a whole week after
the fancy dress ball! They had hired costumes from members of the French
opera troupe, and their faces were “made up” with rouge that could not be
washed off; had to wear off in a purplish stain. My brother represented
Louis XIV on that occasion, and I remember he scrubbed his cheeks until
he made them almost raw. Of no avail. In time the pinkish, purplish tint
gradually disappeared.
Shortly after that grandest and most unique entertainment Mr. Joe
Kennedy’s term expired and he retired into private life. Beautiful Rose
fell into a decline and died early. What fortunes befell that family I
know not. They seem to have faded away. The Kennedys were a large family
in those days, closely allied to the Pierce and Cenas families, all of
which were socially prominent. And now their names are “writ in water.”
I should like to know how many of this old Creole society are living
to-day! I was eighteen, one of the youngest of the group, in the fifties.
XVII
DR. CLAPP’S CHURCH
It is quite sixty years since Dr. Clapp’s church went up in smoke. It
was as well known to the denizens and visitors of New Orleans, in its
day, as Talmage’s Tabernacle in Brooklyn some decades later was known
far and wide. Dr. Clapp called it “The First Congregational Church
of New Orleans.” Others designated it as “Clapp’s Church.” It was,
in reality, neither one nor the other, for it was not an organized
congregation, and its building was the property of an eccentric Jew. In
a burst of admiration and generosity Judah Touro gave the church rent
free to Dr. Clapp. The structure had quite the appearance of a “Friends’
Meeting House.” It was of unpainted brick, entirely devoid of any
ornamentation. The little steeple was only high enough and big enough
to hold the inevitable bell. One entered a narrow vestibule, with two
doors leading into the body of the church, and two flights of stairs to
respective galleries. It was further furnished with two conspicuous tin
signs—“Stranger’s Gallery on the Right,” “Gallery for Colored Persons on
the Left.” (Dr. Clapp came from Boston.)
On entering the sanctuary one faced the organ loft, the pulpit being at
the street end between the two doors. It was a little rounded affair,
with, to all appearances, “standing room for one only.” Back of it, to
convey possibly an idea of space, and also to relieve the intense white
of the wall, was a wonderful drapery, very high and very narrow, of red
serge, pleated, looped and convoluted in an amazing way.
Dr. Clapp, a large, handsome, middle-aged man, in a clerical black
silk robe, entered the pulpit from between the folds of that draped
monstrosity. He was dignified and reverential, preached without notes,
sometimes, but not always, using a Bible text. The music of that church
was rated as very fine, the organ was the best in the city. (I wonder if
old Judah Touro furnished that, too?) And Thomas Cripps, the organist,
managed it, _con amore_. There must have been a choir to furnish the
chorus, but I only call to mind Mrs. Renshaw and her sister, Miss White,
who sang solos and duets. Their finely trained voices produced melody
itself. Mr. James I. Day, tall, and thin, and gaunt, with a hatchet face,
who looked as if a squeak was his vocal limit, had a most powerful bass
voice that filled the building and floated out onto the street. The last
time I saw him he was in an open carriage with a red velvet cushion on
his lap, on which reposed the key (as big as the famous Bastile key) of
the city of New Orleans. He was receiving Rex in an initial Mardi Gras
parade. That was years ago.
To return to church, I don’t recall any prayer books or hymnals, nor
hearing any congregational singing. The choir, of course, was volunteer.
We had yet to know a church singer could be salaried. There was no church
organization, as we know it to-day, or even at that day. There were no
officers, no deacons, no elders, far as I can think, for my father was
a devoted communicant and constant attendant and naturally would have
fitted into some church office, if there had been any.
When Dr. Clapp announced the taking of a collection he cast his eye over
the congregation and signaled from it those persons who were to “pass the
plates.”
“Mr. Smith will take the center aisle, Mr. Jones the right aisle, Mr.
Robinson the left aisle, Mr. Dick right gallery, Mr. Harry left gallery,”
whereupon Messrs. Smith, Jones and Robinson and Messrs. Dick and Harry
would come forward, take their plates from a table under the high pulpit
and proceed to their allotted tasks. Remembering this confirms me in the
belief there were no officers of the church whose duty it would have been
to discharge such services.
There was only one service a week, a morning service and sermon on
Sundays, no night meetings, as there was really no means of lighting
the building. No Bible class, no Sunday school, no prayer meeting, no
missionary band, no church committee, no Donors’ Society, no sewing
circle, no donation party, no fairs, no organ recital, absolutely “no
nothing,” but Dr. Clapp and his weekly sermon. The church was always
filled to its utmost capacity. I recall a host of pew holders whose names
have passed into oblivion with their bodies.
The old church stood on St. Charles Street, adjacent to the St. Charles
Hotel, so when one building went up in flames the other did, too. The
Veranda Hotel, next in importance to its neighbor, was across the way,
and from these sources always came strangers, more than enough to fill
the gallery, when they were wafted up the stairs by the conspicuous tin
sign.
Almost simultaneously with the destruction of the building, disappeared
both Dr. Clapp and Mr. Touro from public notice. By the way, Mr. Judah
Touro never had been inside the church, nor had he ever heard Dr. Clapp
preach. Of course, they are both as dead now as the unique old church,
so it matters not how, when or where they departed. The congregation
dissolved as completely. Probably not one member, old enough at the
time to know what Dr. Clapp preached about or to be able to criticise
his utterances, is living to-day. Dr. Clapp was a loyal citizen, a
charitable, kindly man, one of the few who voluntarily remained in the
city and ministered to the stricken and buried the dead in the fearful
epidemics that ravaged the land every two or three years. His counsel
reached the flotsam of a great city, and his teachings bore fruit. He
is gone now where church organizations are not considered, but the good
works he wrought by his simple methods are placed to his credit.
XVIII
OLD DAGUERREOTYPES
I think I can safely say I possess the first daguerreotype ever taken
in New Orleans. An artist came there about 1840 and opened a studio
(artist and studio sound rather grand when one views the work to-day).
That studio was at the corner of Canal Street and Exchange Alley. The
artist needed some pictures of well-known men for his showcase, so he
applied to my father, who was of the “helping hand” variety. And dear
Pa was rewarded with the gift of a picture of himself all done up in a
velvet-lined case, which he brought home to the amazement and wonder of
every member of the family, white and black. I look at it now with a grim
smile. Dear Pa’s cravat ends were pulled out and his coattail laid nicely
over one leg, and his hand spread so that one could see he had five big
fingers. His head had been steadied straight up in a most unnatural
position, with a kind of callipers or steel braces, and he must have been
told to “look up and smile” for a full minute.
We prize that daguerreotype for its antiquity, but I hope seventy years
hence when another and another generation opens my “war album” they will
not laugh at the quaint _cartes de visite_ it contains, though I confess
some of them begin to look rather queer already. They were all gifts of
near and dear friends, most of them with autograph attachments, some of
which were so flourishing that I had to subscribe the names and dates on
the backs.
There are Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Davis, dated 1860, before he was President,
you perceive. Though I have letters from both, I never saw either after
that date. There’s Gen. J. Bankhead Magruder, in full uniform, far and
away the most picturesque of my collection. The first time we ever met
Gen. Magruder was very soon after the capture of the _Harriet Lane_ in
Galveston waters. The Texans were wild and jubilant at the dashing feat,
and when we reached Houston, all travel-stained and worn out, the city
was in a ferment of excitement.
The General dearly loved to tell a good story, and the impediment in his
speech, a drawling lisp, made him vastly amusing. In his office one day
one of his aides was tinkling a banjo. A travel-stained individual called:
“Is the General in?”
“No,” tinkle, tinkle.
“When will he be in?”
“Don’t know,” tinkle, tinkle.
“Will you tell him I called?”
“What name?” tinkle, tinkle.
“Smith.”
“I think I have heard that name before,” tinkle, tinkle. “What Smith?”
“Gen. E. Kirby Smith, young man!”
No tinkle followed that reply. The young aide almost swooned away. Gen.
Magruder surrounded himself with Virginia gentlemen aides, who gave him
infinite trouble, he said.
In the early fifties “we met by chance, the usual way,” Major F. Ducayet.
A party driving down the old Bayou road one Sunday heard that at
Ducayet’s there would be found a rare collection of wonderful fowls and
poultry, and the owner was very gracious about showing his assortment to
visitors. After a bit of hesitation we ventured to introduce ourselves.
Mr. Ducayet received us most hospitably, showed us through his lovely
grounds and gave us the history of his rarest feathered pets, presented
the two ladies with choice bouquets and insisted upon our partaking of
refreshments. During the conversation that ensued Mr. Ducayet said he
would not be able to increase his fancy flock, all of which had been
brought him from foreign parts by captains and sailors, as a change in
the administration would remove him from the position in the Custom House
he had held for years. One of the party at once asked him to call on him
at the St. Charles Hotel the following day, that he, being a Democrat and
a politician of influence, might exert himself in his behalf. Mr. Ducayet
retained his position. From that chance acquaintance sprung a strong
friendship. We saw much of Major Ducayet in war times, hence the little
_carte de visite_ which ornaments my war album.
By the side of Major Ducayet’s is the face of ex-Governor Moore of
Louisiana. He was an inmate of our modest little home in Texas during the
expiring days of the Confederacy.
I have also similar small photos of Major Tom Lee, General Preston,
General Breckinridge, Commodore John N. Maffit, General and Mrs. Robert
Toombs, General Early, Dr. Howard Smith and a host of lesser lights, all
of which were taken in Havana after the war.
Dr. Howard Smith of New Orleans was surgeon on somebody’s (perhaps
Gen. Kirby Smith’s) staff, and was our frequent guest in Texas, a very
valuable guest, too, for his skill carried some members of my family
out of the “valley of the shadow” into the sunshine. One trip we made
together from the Rio Grande into the interior of Texas, quite a caravan
of us in the party.
The first day out from Laredo there was a terrible sandstorm, cold almost
to freezing point, and never was a more disgusted party of travelers. In
a fit of despair Dr. Smith exclaimed: “I would give a thousand dollars
for a drink of brandy.” Now brandy was a luxury a thousand dollars could
not always supply, but I promptly replied: “I will give you a whole
bottle of brandy, the cork of which has not been drawn, if you will
divide it with the rest of the crowd.” Of course, the proposition was
accepted. From my carpetbag I produced a tiny toy bottle, holding perhaps
a half wine glass of the coveted liquor. It was not easy to divide the
contents liberally, but the genial doctor appreciated the joke and did
his utmost to carry out its provisions.
Years after, walking uptown in New Orleans, my escort said: “Look at
the man on that gallery. See if you know him.” I met the man’s eyes
full in my face, and passed on. It was Dr. Howard Smith, neither of us
recognizing the other. He was in ill-health, old and haggard, and I guess
I showed some of time’s footprints, too.
XIX
STEAMBOAT AND STAGE SEVENTY YEARS AGO
In the twilight of my days, seated in my favorite chair, I rock away
many a trip from my New Orleans home to the blue grass region of my
ancestors. Dream trips they are, but dreams of real trips in the old
days when steamboats and stages were the approved, in fact, the only,
transportation for travelers.
About the Fourth of July every year our family migrated to the old
Kentucky homestead. The Fourth was not chosen with any patriotic motive,
but law courts were closed and legal business suspended, and my father’s
vacation at hand at that date. Though the steamboats were called
palatial, viewed from my rocking-chair trip to-day I wonder how people
managed to stand the inconveniences and discomforts they provided.
There was the famed _Grey Eagle_, “a No. 1 floating palace” it was
called. There was the _Belle of the West_ and the _Fashion_ and the
_Henry Clay_. One time and another we churned up the muddy Mississippi
water in every one of them. Naturally the boats catered in every way to
the predilections of the plantation owners, who were their main source
of profit. The picture of Arlington which illustrates this book was
originally made to decorate a stateroom door on a fine new river boat
built in the ’50’s and adorned in that way with views of homes along the
river.
[Illustration: STEAMBOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North
America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)]
_Grey Eagle_ was the finest and best, and therefore most popular boat.
I recall with amusement an eight or ten days’ trip on that palace. The
cabins were divided by curtains, drawn at night for privacy. The ladies’
cabin, at the stern, was equipped with ten or twelve small staterooms.
The gentlemen’s cabin stretched on down to the officers’ quarters, bar,
barber shop, pantries, etc., ending in what was called Social Hall, where
the men sat about, smoking and chewing (the latter as common a habit as
cigarette smoking is now) and talking—in other words, making themselves
sociable.
On that same _Grey Eagle_ I was for the first time promoted to the upper
berth, in a stateroom shared by an older sister. The berth was so narrow
that in attempting to turn over I fell out and landed in the wash basin,
on the opposite side of the room! My sister had to sit on the lower berth
to braid my pigtails, then sent me forth so she could have room to braid
her own. Trunks and other baggage more unwieldy than carpetbags were
piled up in the vicinity of Social Hall. A carpetbag, small enough to be
easily handled, was all there was room for in the stateroom. There were
no valises, suitcases or steamer trunks in those days of little travel,
and unless you are three-quarters of a century old you can’t imagine a
more unwieldy article than a carpetbag of seventy years ago. Only toilet
articles and things that could not muss and tumble could be safely stored
in one.
In the stateroom, where we had to sleep and dress, and, if we could
snatch a chance, take an afternoon nap, there was a corner shelf for a
basin and pitcher and one chair; two doors, one leading out and the
other leading in, transoms over each for light and ventilation—and there
you are for over a week. The cabin was lighted with swinging whale-oil
lamps, and one could light his stateroom if one had thought to provide a
candle.
Every family traveled with a man servant, whose business it was to be
constantly at beck and call. Of course, there was always a colored
chambermaid, and, equally of course, she frisked around and seemed to
have very little responsibility—no bells, no means of summoning her from
her little nodding naps if she happened to be beyond the sound of one’s
voice. The man servant’s duties, therefore, were almost incessant. If an
article was needed from the trunks he was sent to the baggage pile for
it, and often he brought trunk trays to the staterooms. When the boat
stopped “to wood” every man servant rushed to the woodman’s cabin to get
eggs, chickens, milk, what not.
And those men had the privilege of the kitchen to prepare private dishes
for their white folks. I wonder how long a boat or hotel would stand
that kind of management to-day; but in the days where my rocking-chair
is transporting me, steamboat fare was not up to the standard of any
self-respecting _pater familias_. There was no ice chest, no cold
storage; in a word, no way of preserving fresh foods for any length of
time, so passengers resorted to such means as presented themselves for
their own bodily comfort. Those who had not the necessary appendage—a man
servant—foraged for themselves, but the experienced and trusted servant,
to use a vulgarism, “was never left.”
The table for meals extended the length of the gentlemen’s cabin,
stretched out and out to its utmost length, if need be, so that every
passenger had a seat. There was no second table, no second-class
passengers—anybody was the equal of anybody else. If you could not
possibly be that, you could find accommodation on the lower deck and eat
from a tin plate.
It was quite customary, as I have mentioned, for passengers to have
private dishes, prepared by their own servants. I recall with a smile,
on one occasion, a very respectable-looking stranger boarded our boat at
Helena or some such place. At dinner he reached for a bottle of wine.
Cuthbert Bullitt touched the bottle with a fork, saying, “Private wine.”
The man, with a bow, withdrew his hand. Presently he reached for a dish
of eggs. My father said, “Excuse me, private.” There was something else
he reached for, I forget what, and another fellow-passenger touched the
dish and said “Private.” Presently dessert was served, and a fine, large
pie happened to be placed in front of the Helena man. He promptly stuck
his fork into it. “By gracious! this is a private pie.” There was a roar
of laughter.
After dinner the others, finding him delightfully congenial and
entertaining, fraternized with him to the extent of a few games at cards.
He was wonderfully lucky. He left the boat at an obscure river town
during the night, and the next day our captain said he was a notorious
gambler. From his capers at table the captain saw he was planning a way
of winning attention to himself, therefore under cover of darkness he had
been put ashore. My father, who did not play, was vastly amused when he
found the smart gambler had carried off all the spare cash of those who
had enjoyed the innocent sport.
Flatboats floating all manner of freight down stream were a common
sight on the river. Arrived at their destination, the boats, which were
only huge rafts with no propelling power, were broken up and sold for
lumber, and the boatmen traveled back up stream in packets to repeat the
process. Cousin Eliza Patrick used to relate the trip her family made in
about 1820 on a flatboat from Kentucky to Louisiana. The widowed mother
wished to rejoin a son practicing medicine in the latter state, so
she sold her land, and loaded her family and every movable object she
possessed—slaves, cattle, farm implements, household effects—upon a huge
“flat” and they floated by day and tied up to the bank by night, carrying
on, during the weeks consumed by the trip, an existence which must have
been somewhat like that of Noah’s family in the Ark.
There was not, as I have mentioned, any means of keeping foods fresh, nor
was there even ice water to be had on those boats. We used entirely, even
for drinking, the muddy river water, which was hauled up in buckets on
the barber side of the boat, while the steward was emptying refuse to the
fishes on the pantry side. The passengers became more or less intimate,
necessarily, on a trip such as I am attempting to describe. There was
no place to sit but in the general cabin, the sleeping rooms being so
cramped. There was no library, very little reading, but much fancy work,
mostly on canvas, footstools and bell-pulls. A bell-pull, you may want
to know, was a long band about three inches wide; it was hung from the
parlor cornice and connected with a bell in the servant’s region; it was
quite the style to embroider them in gay vines and flower designs.
The elderly ladies knit fine thread nightcaps, collars and lace. Really
some of the “old lady” work was quite handsome. Thus fingers were kept
busy, while gossip and interchange of bread and cake recipes entertained
the housewives who had never heard of cooking schools and domestic
science. Our trip necessarily embraced at least one Sunday. I remember
my father had a dear old relative of the deepest dyed Presbyterian type
(father of the late Dr. T. G. Richardson), who always on his river trips
landed wherever he happened to be on Saturday and on Monday boarded
another boat (if one came along), his scruples forbidding Sunday travel.
[Illustration: AMERICAN STAGECOACH.
(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North
America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)]
Arrived at the end of our river journey, father chartered a whole stage
to take his family a two days’ trip into the heart of the blue grass
region. Nine passengers filled the interior of the coach, and four or
five, if need be, could ride on top. The rumble (we always called it
boot) was filled with baggage. The vehicle had no springs, but was swung
on braces, which gave it a kind of swaying motion that always made me
sick. However, we managed to start off in fine style, but every time
there was a stop to change horses all of us alighted, stiff and tired and
hot, to “stretch our legs,” like Squeers in Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby.”
At noon we rejoiced to hear our coachman’s horn, a grand, loud blast,
followed by toot, toot!—one toot for each passenger, so the tavern man
would know how many plates to lay, and his wife how many biscuits and
chicken legs to have ready. We always made out to spend the one night of
the journey at Weissiger’s tavern in Frankfort, the best tavern in all
the land. We had a leisurely breakfast the following morning and were
refreshed in body and soul for the last lap of our journey.
Late afternoon the stage winds up a hill, and in a woods pasture and
surrounded by blue grass meadows the gable end of a red brick house
can be seen. My dear, tired mother puts her head out of the window,
“Driver, blow your horn.” A great blast sounds over the waving grass and
blossoming fields, and we know that they know we are coming. Tired as
the horses are after the long, hard pull; tired as the coachman must be,
he cracks his whip, and we gallop up the shady lane to the dear old door
as briskly as though we were fresh from the stable. Long before we are
fully there, and the steps of the nine-passenger coach can be lowered;
long before the boys can jump off the top, a host of dear faces, both
white and black, is assembled to greet us. As a little child I always
wondered why it was, when the occasion was so joyful, and all of us
tumbled from that stage so beaming and happy, that as my aunt folded my
mother in her arms, they both wept such copious tears. Now I know.
XX
HOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849
If there is a more restful spot on earth than a comfortable rocking-chair
on a deep veranda, with a nearby view of the dancing waters of the gulf
through a grove of tall pines, commend me to it. A whole month on the
west coast of Florida, all sand underfoot, pines and oaks overhead, is
ideal for fagged-out, tired-out, frayed-out humanity from busy cities.
This is not an advertisement, so I do not propose to tell where six
people from six different and widely separated parts of the country last
year dropped down from the skies, as it were, upon just such a delightful
straight mile of gulf coast.
One halts at a “turpentine depot” and takes a queer little tram to the
Gulf, seven miles away. Tram is hauled over wooden rails by two tired
nags whose motions suggest the lazy air of the pines. It is loaded with
the baggage—crates of hunting dogs—(fine hunting abounds), the mail bag,
some miscellaneous freight and finally the passengers.
The country hotel is pine; ceilings, floors, walls are pine, the
home-made and built-in furniture is pine; a big fire, roaring in the
open fireplace if the day is chilly, is also made of pine—the rich, red
Florida pine, ever so much richer in color and in turpentine than the
boasted Georgia article. With the fish swimming in front of this hotel
and the birds flying behind, and rabbits running in both directions, it
goes without saying the table is above the average.
Here on the broad verandas, as we rock and dream the lazy days away,
visions visit me of the old hotel at Pass Christian in the forties. The
oaks and three China trees in front of the veranda, and the view of the
nearby waters, the whistle of mocking-birds among the china berries
(thank heaven! sparrows have not found this Elysium) lend additional
force to the semblance. One old lady, who hunts not, neither does she
fish, rocks on the sunny veranda and dreams, as is the wont of those
who have lived beyond their day and generation. She brings forth from
a long-forgotten corner of memory’s closet a picture covered with the
dust of years, and lovingly brushes away the dimness, when behold! old
Pass Christian, dear old Pass Christian, before the day of railroads
and summer cottages, before the day of 6 o’clock dinners and trailing
skirts, of cotillion favors and abbreviated bathing suits.
The old hotel was built with a wing or extension at each end, which
formed with the main building three sides of a square. There was no
attempt at landscape gardening; not even a rosebush or an oleander
decorated the little court. No plaster Apollos and Dianas such as were
seen peeping about the shrubbery of the various cottages (like the De
Blancs’ and Ducayets’) that dotted in those days the old bayou road, and
were considered so very decorative, but plain sand and scrub such as meet
my eye to-day on this little frequented part of the Florida Gulf Coast.
There was no beach driving or riding of gay people then—none here now.
I fly back to the summer of ’49, and live again with the young girls who
made life one long summer’s day. We walked the pier, the image of one
before my eyes now, to the bath-houses in muslin dresses. Bathing suits
were hideous, unsightly garments, high neck, long sleeves, long skirts,
intended for water only! The young girls returned under parasols and
veils. How decorous! No _baigneuse decolletée_ to be seen on the beach.
Our amusements were simple and distinctly ladylike. There was no golf or
tennis, not even the innocent croquet, to tempt the _demoiselles_ to
athletics, so they drifted more to the “Lydia Languish” style.
There was no lack of beaux who came, more than enough to “go round,”
by the Saturday boats, in time for the weekly hop—danced all Saturday
night and returned to weekly drudge (as they called it) in the city.
The bonbons and flowers they brought vanished and faded long before the
little boat with its freight of waving hats and handkerchiefs faded in
the twilight of a summer Sunday.
Also there come to my dream two dainty Goodman sisters, wonderful and
most accommodating musicians they were. One was already affianced to her
cousin, George Nathan. He was a prosperous business man at that time. I
doubt if even his name is known among his thrifty race in New Orleans
to-day. He carried off his accomplished wife to Rio Janeiro, and made his
home in that country, which was as far away to us then, as the North Pole
is to-day. The younger sister met that summer at the Pass and eventually
married E. C. Wharton, an attaché of the _Picayune_, whose articles were
signed “Easy Doubleyou.” He was soon dancing attendance on the pretty,
curly haired girl. I remember how he wandered around with pad and pencil,
and we girls were horribly afraid of being put in the _Picayune_. No
reason for fear, as it was before the dawn of the society page and
personal column. The Whartons drifted to Texas during the war, and at
Houston they found already a host of stranded Louisianians; but “Easy
Doubleyou” had a government appointment of some kind. The rest of us were
simply runaways.
There, too, was Dick Taylor, propelled in a wheel chair over that hotel
veranda, an interesting convalescent from severe illness, or perhaps a
wound, I do not recall which, his valet so constant in attendance that
we wondered how the young man ever got an opportunity to whisper sweet
nothings into the ear of lovely Myrtle Bringier—but he did! And that
was the fourth engagement of the season that culminated in marriage,
which signalizes the superior advantages of a hotel veranda, and most
especially that of dear old Pass Christian. Dick Taylor had a magnetic
personality, which overshadowed the fact (to paraphrase a Bible text) he
was the only son of his father, and he the President.
In New York some years ago “The Little Church Around the Corner,” still
garnished with its wealth of Easter lilies and fragrant with spring
bloom, threw wide its portals for the last obsequies of this loved and
honored Confederate general. In that throng of mourners was one who had
known him in his early manhood on the veranda of that old Pass Christian
hotel, and whose heart had followed his career with ever-increasing
admiration and veneration even unto the end. I lay aside my old picture
forever. Alas! it remains “only a dream at the best, but so sweet that I
ask for no more.”
XXI
OLD MUSIC BOOKS
I wonder how many old ladies start to go through an unused hall closet,
to make room for an accumulation of pasteboard boxes too good to throw
away, and hampers too strong to discard, and in that long-closed closet,
which a junk man with push-cart is waiting to help clear out, find a
treasure, long since buried under piles of trash, mourned for, and, as
in the case of many departed things, at length given up for lost—then
forgotten. In just such a dark closet, from beneath a pile of old
magazines (what they were kept and stored for goodness knows) and crazy
bits of bric-a-brac, that nobody but a junk man (not even Salvation Army
men, who are getting to be mighty choosy, by the way) would cart off, I
found two bruised music books.
One dated back to 1847, when I was a schoolgirl in New Haven, and played
with great éclat “La Fête au Couvent” quadrilles, purchased of Skinner
& Co., Chapel Street. Chapel Street still exists, but Skinner & Co.
are buried in the dust of more than sixty years. I cannot play “La Fête
au Couvent” or any other fête now, but I can close my eyes and see the
lovely young girls in the school music room whirling away to the music of
the inspiring cotillion. Alas! Alas! Time has whirled every one of them
away and stiffened the nimble fingers that danced so merrily over the
keys.
In those far away days that are as yesterday to my dreaming there were
“Variations” of every familiar melody. Variations that started with the
simple air and branched off into all sorts of fantastic and involved
and intricate paths. “Oft in the Stilly Night,” “’Tis Midnight Hour,”
“Twilight Dews,” “Low-Back’d Car,” “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s
Halls,” “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” and so on and on, whole
pages of “Variations,” now dim with age, but every blessed note brings
to me the faces and voices of those long stilled in death. One sweet
young girl played “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls” and “’Tis
Midnight Hour” so charmingly that my eyes were dimmed when I turned the
leaves of the school-day music book, for her fate was saddest of all—an
inmate for years of an insane asylum. Another who sang as she played the
“Low-Back’d Car” so delightfully (she was half Irish) died suddenly of
yellow fever. Still another associated with “Oh, Cast That Shadow From
Thy Brow,” played the melody on a guitar, accompanied by her sweet young
voice. Alas! She, too, is gone where they play on harps and there are no
shadowed brows. So, on and on to the bitter end, and with a sigh I close
the first chapter of my musical reminiscences that have lain dormant so
many, many years.
The fashion of dedicating bits of music to some well-known person—need
not be a musician, either, but a body of some note—has passed away with
the one-button glove and the green _barège_ veil of sixty years ago. In
the ’50s it was quite common, and my dear music book of that date holds
ever so many dedicated polkas and mazourkas. The very front leaf has a
picture of a wonderfully crocheted kind of a serpent with a man’s head,
rather a shocking thing, “Sea Serpent Polka,” dedicated to Miss Rose
Kennedy, by M. Strakosch. Dear Rose used to play it for us. It was not an
inspiring bit of music, but her wonderfully deft touch would make melody
out of anything that had crochets and quavers in it.
There is, a few pages further, another dedication to the incomparable
Rose, “Grande Polka de Concert,” by Wallace. Miss Lou Gross, a most
accomplished musician, daughter of the noted surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross,
was honored by Strakosch in the “Kossuth Galop,” a galloping thing,
much in the Strakosch style, which predominated in those days. Strakosch
believed in a grand “send off” of his innumerable productions. There’s
“Carnival de Paris,” dedicated to Mme. Caroline Arpin (I did not know of
her) and “Flirtation Polka,” to Mme. Lavillebeuvre, who was a delightful
pianist and merited something more inspiring than that “Flirtation.”
Then Wallace dances on the pages with a “Polka” adorned with the name
of Mlle. Dumilatre, and Ed Armant dedicates “La Rose Polka” to Miss
Augusta Slocomb. I don’t think Armant wrote music; he “got it done,” as
the saying is. That was not an unusual feat; a valse was dedicated to
Miss Philomène Briant, by George McCausland, and he was ignorant of a
note in music—he “got it done.” P. A. Frigerio honored Miss Sara Byrne
by the dedication of “La Chasse Polka.” Miss Sara was a decided belle in
the ’50s, so a bit of music with her name attached found rapid disposal.
Also, a belle of the ’50s was Miss Estelle Tricou. Lehman, _chef
d’orchestre_ at the opera house, wrote “Souvenir de Paris” in her honor.
Miss Estelle was bright and sparkling and beautiful, so was much in
evidence. George W. Christy wrote more than one of his “starry” verses to
“E. T.,” and they were printed in the _Picayune_. George was not noted
for self-effacement and modesty. His signature always appeared in full to
his sentimental effusions.
Lehman dedicated his “Clochettes Polka Mazourka,” a fine, inspiring bit
of dance music it was, too, to Mme. Odile Ferrier, and “La Valentine
Polka,” another charming, catchy dance piece, to Miss Anaïs Boudousquie.
There was Mme. Angélina, a new French importation, whose specialty was
the new dances that nobody else could teach. She was immortalized by
“L’Esmeralda Nouvelle Danse de Salon.” We pupils had to learn some new
steps and flourishes to be able to make successful début, after All
Saints’ Day, for it was decreed “L’Esmeralda” was to be most popular.
Everybody, even some stout old ladies that did not mean to be relegated
to back seats, and _passé_ beaux who were fast becoming clumsy and
awfully hard to dance with, took dancing lessons on the sly of Mme.
Angélina, not to mention the young girls, débutantes and such, that went
in small installments to her tiny room in Royal Street....
After this seeming digression I turn a leaf in the old music book to
dedications to Mme. Boyer, “Mazourka Sentimentale,” by the fertile
Strakosch, and here, too, “La Valse Autrichienne” by a new name—E. Johns.
Mme. Boyer was the fashionable teacher of music. Both these dedicated
pieces we scholars had to learn, and both bits, besides a dozen other
bits a thousand times more difficult and intricate, like Gottschalk’s
“Bamboula,” for instance, are so spotted with black pencil marks they
are a sight! For the madame did not make a suggestion as to technique or
expression or anything else in the musical mind that was not emphasized
by a pencil mark on the page.
I find that most of this music was published by Mayo, No. 5 Camp Street;
by Lyler & Hewitt, 39 Camp Street. Lehman published his own work at 194
St. Anne Street.... I am not half through, but I am weary of looking over
these old music books. So many memories cluster about every page—memories
of lovely dances with delightful partners. Oh! That grand _valse à cinq
temps_, the music of which was never printed, and no band but Lehman’s
band could play it, and nobody taught the whirling steps but Mme.
Angélina. Memories of sweet girls, now old and faded, or, better than
that, listening to the “Music of the Spheres.” Memories of painstaking
professors whose pencil marks are all that is left to bring forcibly to
mind their patient personality. I turn the last leaf, and lo! here is a
unique bit of music and information—“The Monterey Waltz,” by Eugene Wythe
Dawson, a little Texas boy, who dedicates it to the little musicians of
his own age (eight years) in the sister States! I do not remember anyone
who essayed to render the “Monterey Waltz”—I never did—but Eugene Dawson
was still playing the piano in Texas during the war, proving possibly our
grandfather’s dictum, “A man who plays the piano is mighty little account
for anything else.”
We don’t think so now. I would be glad for a musician, male or female, in
this house to render for me the sweet musical numbers that once made my
young heart bound.
XXII
THE SONGS OF LONG AGO
How the ballads of our youth are, in memory, merged into the personality
of those who sang them! How, as we recall the simple rhymes, the sweet
voices of departed friends clothe them in melody. The songs of my early
years come to me to-day with more freshness than the songs I heard
yesterday, and with them come more vividly to mind the voices and faces
of those long-gone friends than come the faces of those of to-day.
How many of us can recall “Blue-eyed Mary”? the little ballad with which
my mother always quieted me to rest. The pitiful little song! And in my
childhood days, too, mammy rocked me to sleep with “Ole Grimes is daid,
dat good ole man.” I never hear “Blue-eyed Mary” or “Old Grimes” now, nor
have I for more than threescore years and ten, they are both so buried in
oblivion, though I can repeat every word of each, they were so nestled
and rocked into my baby life.
When my father’s home was on Customhouse Street Duncan Hennen lived
directly opposite. Mrs. Hennen was a dashing beauty. She had a sister
from Tennessee visiting her, who had a powerful voice, and she sang “Old
Rosin the Beau” and “Life on the Ocean Wave” with all the abandon of a
professional. My father admired her style prodigiously, but my mother
thought it too robust. “The Carrier Dove—fly away to my native land,
sweet dove,” and “Twilight Dews,” she pronounced more ladylike. (How
often we used that word “ladylike.” We rarely hear it now.) I must have
been a very small “little girl” when I heard Wallace, in concert, sing
“The Old Arm Chair.” No one since Wallace ever sung that touching, homely
ballad so beautifully. Once having heard his sympathetic rendering, one
always associates the song with William Wallace.
I think it has been full sixty years since that song and “Farewell to
Tom Moore,” by Byron, have been heard. And “Twilight Dews,” oh, my! and
“Shells of the Ocean”—“One summer’s day in pensive thought,” etc. Young
girls played their accompaniments and tossed their ringlets and sang
those ditties to enraptured swains, who often stood back of them, holding
the candle at the proper angle and turning the leaves! How it all comes
back to this dreaming old lady, who never sang, but who dearly loved to
listen to her more gifted friends....
In the Cajin settlement on the border of which I occasionally visited
there was a family of Lafitons—I boldly give the name, for the two sons,
Lafiton _fils_ and Pete, never married, and all the family died years
and years ago, but there was a lovely sprig of a girl, Amenaide, who
possessed a fine voice and no doubt would have made her mark if she had
had the necessary training, but she was one of the flowers “born to blush
unseen.” I don’t think she knew one note of music. Of course, a guitar,
much more a piano, was beyond her reach. She sang the sweet old French
melody, “Fleuve du Tage,” delightfully. I wonder now where she ever heard
it. For years after when I heard the song Amenaide rose before me, and
with her the impression that she was not equaled.
There was another touching little ballad, in the days that were, “We Have
Been Friends Together,” and that tender “Good-by,” who ever sings them
now? Nobody, unless it be some old lady with quavering voice, who sings
them in her heart while she dreams of the sweet girls of “Long, long ago”
who have vanished.
“I Cannot Sing the Old Songs,” and “When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies”
were two of the songs we loved to hear in the days before “Dixie” and
“The Volunteer” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” captured the voices of so many
of our sweet singers.
Some of us remember Mollie Haynes, who became the wife of Col. Charles D.
Dreux, and none can recall her charming personality without a thought of
the superb voice she possessed. “Ave Maria, Ora Pro Nobis”—none that I
knew could render that prayerful melody with the pathos of Mollie Dreux.
We all remember that Col. Dreux was the first Confederate officer from
Louisiana who fell in battle, and no subsequent funeral was more largely
attended than was Charles Dreux’s. “Joys That We’ve Tasted” brings to
mind a popular singer in the “Long Time Ago,” Mrs. George D. Prentice, of
Kentucky. How the names and the very people come thronging my mind as I
recall these old melodies in which they are associated.
A few years since, listening to the well-trained voice of a professional,
as she rendered some intricate, superlative kind of music, that did not
in the least appeal to me, I ventured to ask if she would favor us with
“Ben Bolt.” She graciously consented. And she rendered that simple old
ballad that every child whistled or hummed when I was a child, with so
many trills and bravuras, and I don’t know what else in the vocal line,
that I was lost in amazement. Svengali himself could not have idealized
to the same extent. Poor “Sweet Alice” was buried under such an avalanche
of sound that one could not recognize the “corner, obscure and alone,”
where she was supposed to rest under a “slab of granite so gray.”
So, perhaps, in the march of improvement, where none sing unless they
possess a voice that would electrify a whole opera house audience, it is
well the dear old songs of long ago are not resurrected and amplified
to suit the tastes and requirements of to-day. I recall though, with a
thrill of tender memory, hearing Jenny Lind sing “Home, Sweet Home”—just
the simple ballad—without a single flourish when she was in New Orleans
in 1851. I was in deep mourning and did not dream I would have the
pleasure of hearing her, but a friend secured a _loge grillée_, and
insisted upon my going, accompanied by my brother. It was all arranged so
courteously and so sympathetically and so kindly that I could not refuse,
and thus I heard that incomparable artist sing “Home, Sweet Home.”
No longer can mother sit in her “old arm chair” waving a turkey tail fan
warm summer evenings, and be comforted and soothed by sweet warblings
of her girls at the piano. No longer can the tired father call for his
favorite, “Oh! Would I Were a Boy Again,” or “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,”
or Mrs. Hemans’ “Bring Flowers, Fresh Flowers,” the sweet old flowers
that all girls were singing sixty years ago. The old mothers and fathers,
the bright young daughters are scarce buried more deeply or mourned more
deeply than are the songs of long ago.
XXIII
A RAMBLE THROUGH THE OLD CITY
In the days of which I write New Orleans bore a very different aspect
from the present, and it may be well for me to take my readers on a
gossipy ramble through the thoroughfares which I so often traverse
nowadays in my thoughts.
Canal Street in the early forties was, par excellence, a resident street.
From Camp and Chartres Streets, way back as far as sidewalks were flagged
or bricked, which was only a few blocks, Canal Street was lined with
homes, side by side, often without even an alley to separate them, as
though land was scarce and one need economize space, whereas just beyond
was land in plenty, but no sidewalks or easy approaches to speak of. From
Camp Street to the levee were, as I remember, large wholesale business
houses, convenient to the shoppers of large supplies, who arrived at
regular intervals from their plantations on _Belle Creole_, or some other
coast packet, frequently retained their quarters on the boat the short
time it was in port, and so monsieur and madame could accomplish their
necessary shopping, untrammeled by the elegancies and inconvenient hours
of a hotel.
[Illustration]
Things were conducted on a very liberal basis in those days. I have a
liking for that old way—it was so debonair and generous, putting the
captain on the same social standing as his guests.
On the lower side of Canal Street, about where Holmes’ store now stands,
were more homes, in a row, all the houses exactly alike, with narrow
balconies stretching clear across the fronts, in a most confidentially
neighborly way. The lower floors were doctors’ or lawyers’ offices or
exchange brokers’. Fancy goods, dry goods, retail shops, in fact of
every kind, were on Chartres or Royal Street; none on Canal. R. W.
Montgomery had his home also on that fashionable thoroughfare.
Christ Church was on the corner of Baronne and Canal, and Dr. Laycock was
the pastor at the date of which I write, and, with few exceptions, all
these families were of his flock.
Lower Camp Street was occupied mostly by exchange brokers’ and such
offices. The Sun Mutual Insurance Company had a conspicuous sign on a
modest two-story brick building which any insurance structure to-day
would put to shame.
If it is near Christmas time, when we are taking this gossipy ramble, we
might meet a flock of turkeys marching up Camp Street, guided by a man
and boys with long poles. In those days fowls were not offered for sale
ready dressed or plucked, but sold “on the hoof,” as we say of cattle.
Camp and the adjacent resident streets were, to use another Westernism,
a favorite “turkey trot.” Those turkeys may have trotted miles. Goodness
knows whence they took up the line of march—presumably at some boat
landing—but they were docile as lambs and in good condition. No roast
turkey gobbler, or, better still, boiled turkey hen with oyster dressing,
tastes now like the ones mother had on her table when I was a child and
clamored for the drum-stick. What does taste as good to us old folks
to-day? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!...
In Exchange Alley (it may have a new name now, since Triton Walk and
Customhouse Street and others of the old days have been rechristened)
my father and a number of other “attorneys at law,” as their signs
indicated, had offices. Mr. Wharton was one, and I also recall two Hebrew
beaux of that date who were neighbors of my father’s, A. K. Josephs and
M. M. Cohen. Nobody knew their given names. Beyond Camp Street, near
Magazine, Mme. Shall kept a boarding house. It was a popular hostelry for
gentlemen. Ladies did not board, except (to use Susan Nippers’ language)
as temporaries.
[Illustration: EXCHANGE ALLEY.]
Visitors to the city “put up” at the St. Charles Hotel, in the hands
of Colonel Mudge. St. Charles was the best hotel even then, comparing
favorably with the Galt House, in Louisville, under the management of
that prince of hosts, Major Aris Throckmorton—which is saying volumes
for the St. Charles. In the season flocks of Nashville, Louisville and
Cincinnati belles descended upon New Orleans, sat in gorgeous attire
and much chatter of voices on the divans under the chandelier of the
St. Charles parlor, while the kindly fathers and insinuating brothers,
bent on giving the girls a good time, foraged about the ample rotunda,
captured, escorted in and introduced many eligible beaux found sauntering
around that fascinating rendezvous.
Up Carondelet Street—one could not find the location on a city map now,
for, as I remember, the streets were not named—were suburban homes, all
about, quite remote and countrified. Judge John N. Duncan lived in one
of those cottages. There was a grand, big yard surrounding it, with fig
trees, hedges, rosebushes and vines, a perfect bower of delight to us
children. Rose, the only daughter, was a lifelong friend of mine. She
became the first wife of Col. William Preston Johnston. Nearby lived the
Peter Conreys, who gave lovely lawn parties, that the naughty uninvited
dubbed “Feat sham peters.”
Not so very far away, in the neighborhood of Constance and Robin Streets,
there was erected in 1843 Quite a grand residence for the Slark family.
I do not remember much of them in those early days, though they lived
near enough to my father’s to be neighbors. Later in life my acquaintance
with them was more intimate. I recall, though, quite vividly Mrs. Slark’s
visiting card, which I admired prodigiously. Being a small collector
of curios that unique bit of pasteboard was one of my treasures till I
lost it! There seems to have been considerable latitude in the style of
visiting cards about that time—some were highly glazed and had gilt
edges; some were even pink tinged, but I think Mrs. Slark’s was the _ne
plus ultra_—a bird’s beak holding a waving pennant, and on its flowing
folds was engraved “Mrs.—Abigail—L.—Slark,” something after the style of
the eagle and _E pluribus unum_.
I find I am wandering away from that dear old Canal Street of fragrant
memories. Fragrant, though the broad neutral ground was a wilderness of
weeds of dampy growth, and (so our John used to tell me) snakes! There
certainly were frogs after a spring rain. I have heard their croaks.
Further back toward the swamps were deep ditches, with crawfish sneaking
about in them. Fine fishing place for us little ones it was, too. After
a heavy downpour of rain the poorly paved street and the low, marshy
neutral ground was often flooded clear across from sidewalk to sidewalk.
It was great fun to watch the men trying to cross the street after one of
these rains. Rubber shoes were unknown, so men depended on high boots. Of
course, ladies did not venture forth at such times, when they required
more protection for the foot than a thin-soled slipper afforded. There
were goloshes, wooden soles fastened with straps and buckles over the
instep. A golosh looked like a roller skate and was about as easy to walk
with. You never see one now.
I wonder if anyone under seventy-five years of age passes old “Julia
Street row” to-day and knows that those “13 Buildings” between Camp and
St. Charles Streets have an aristocratic past, and were once occupied by
the leading social element of the American colony residing in the early
forties above Canal Street? “13 Buildings” it was called, and at that
date, and a decade later, every one of them was tenanted by prominent
citizens of New Orleans. There they lived and entertained a host of
delightful guests, whose names were a power then, but whose descendants
are perhaps little known to-day.
There lived Mr. Lanfear with his two daughters. Louisa later became the
wife of David Ogden. There lived Mrs. Slocomb and her three children.
They became Mrs. T. G. Richardson, so well known and honored to-day in
the Crescent City; Mrs. David Urquhart, now living in England, and Capt.
Cuthbert Slocomb. Late in the forties that family went to Europe, and
returned to occupy the house, built in their absence, which is now the
home of Mr. Frank Howard, opposite Lafayette Square.
The Branders—Mr. Brander was a merchant of some note and social standing.
His daughter, Caledonia, married Mr. Sager, an Englishman, and eventually
went to Europe. Virginia Brander became the wife of Edward Matthews,
a New York man, who subsequently made a large fortune by speculating
in long leases of valuable business sites in New York during a panic
in commercial circles at the time of the Civil War. Their son, Brander
Matthews, is a distinguished man of letters and professor in Columbia
College. The Smith family, a host of handsome girls, occupied the house
next to the Camp street corner, and in that house the original J. P.
Labouisse married beautiful Dora Smith, whose death, at the advanced age
of ninety, occurred a short time ago. Charles Cammack married Sarah Smith
in the same house, and Mary Smith married Morris, the son of Beverly
Chew, who was a defendant in the noted Gaines case of that day.
H. S. Buckner’s home was midway of the row, and there was born Ellen
Buckner, who became the wife of James B. Eustis, the first United States
ambassador to France. Those old friends who visited Paris in her _régime_
tell of her cordial and gracious hospitality.
Leonard Mathews lived in one of the “13 Buildings.” He was agent of the
Sun Insurance Company. There were young people in that house, too. Mary
Jane Mathews married Mr. Hugh Wilson, a prominent business man, and their
daughter married Lyman Josephs of Rhode Island. There was also the family
of Dr. William Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy was sister of Mr. Levi Peirce and
of Mrs. Hillary Cenas. Their daughter, Charlotte, married a son of the
distinguished Sargent S. Prentiss of Mississippi.
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY]
Diagonally across the corner of Julia and St. Charles Streets was the
home of Col. Maunsel White, a veteran of Chalmette, who won his title on
the field. A genial Irishman, his serenity was disturbed about the time
of which I write by the elopement of his oldest daughter, Eliza, with
the dashing Cuthbert Bullitt. She died many years ago, but Mr. Bullitt
lived and dashed many years after dashing ceased to be becoming. A short
time ago he also passed away at a ripe old age, having survived every
contemporary.
My personal recollections of the guests who came to my father’s house in
“13 Buildings” are distinct. Henry Clay, a lifelong friend of father’s,
the only one I ever heard call him “Dick” (even my mother did not do
that), was a frequent visitor whenever he came to the Crescent City.
My father planned in 1844 to go to England, and his old friend gave him
the following letter. It was never delivered, owing to the enforced
abandonment of the plan, and hangs now on my library wall, framed, beside
the Henry Clay portrait which illustrates this book and which is by far
the best likeness I have ever seen of Kentucky’s gifted son.
ASHLAND, 16th July, 1844.
MY LORD:
Richard H. Chinn, Esq., who will deliver this letter desiring
the honor of your Lordship’s acquaintance, I take pleasure
in introducing him (sic) to you as an eminent and highly
respectable councillor at law, now residing in New Orleans,
whom I have long known.
I avail myself of the opportunity to assure your Lordship of
the constant esteem and regard of
Your Lordship’s faithful and obedient servant,
H. CLAY.
THE RIGHT HONORABLE LORD ASHBURTON, London.
Gen. E. P. Gaines and his tiny, frisky wife, the noted Myra Clark Gaines,
were also frequent guests. The General, a warrior, every inch of him,
very tall, erect and pompously stately, always appeared at “functions”
in full uniform, epaulettes, sword and what not, while she, all smiles
and ringlets and flounces, hung upon his arm like a pink silk reticule.
There also came Charles Gayarré, the Louisiana historian; John R. Grymes,
the noted lawyer; Pierre Soulé, diplomat; Alec Bullitt, Alec Walker and
George W. Kendall—all three editors of the leading paper of the day, the
_Picayune_. And so on, including a host of others just as noted and
interesting in their day, whose names are never mentioned now. I cannot
omit mention of the famous wit and beauty, Miss Sally Carneal, niece of
the original Nick Longworth, of Ohio, for, with her superb voice, she
frequently entertained and entranced my father’s guests. I recall one
occasion when she sang, with inimitable pathos and wild passion, a song
I never wish to hear again, “The Maniac.” The little audience, roused to
a pitch bordering on madness, was almost ready to shriek and tear its
hair. Glendy Burke (does anybody remember him? He was an eligible _parti_
then) fell in desperate love with her that night, and subsequently they
married. All are gone now; and most of them forgotten, except, possibly,
by an old lady, who sits at her fireside, and unfolds the book of
memory....
In course of time a Mme. Peuch took possession of the house on the St.
Charles street corner, and, horrors! opened a boarding house, whereupon
the aristocratic element gradually fluttered away. The Smiths and
Labouisses went, as we thought, into the wilderness, up Carondelet Street
to a kind of country place, with lots of ground and fig trees. The
Buckners flew still further. I think they halted at Jackson Street—I am
not sure the street had as yet a name. The Mathews moved to Annunciation
Street. My father took his _lares et penates_ to Canal Street, and Mrs.
Slocomb still further away, to Europe. The infection spread, and in a
short time the whole “13 Buildings” pimpled out into cheap boarding
houses or rented rooms. _Sic transit!_ Where are all those fine people
now? And what of the “13 Buildings”? Do they still stand and flaunt their
signs over the places once adorned with immaculately shining brass name
plates? or have they, in the march of events, also silently departed, and
left places to be filled by a newer generation of buildings, in imitation
of the lords of the earth that knew them and loved them and patronized
them in their heyday?
XXIV
“OLD CREOLE DAYS” AND WAYS
It was in the autumn of 1846 _La Belle Creole_ carried me, a young girl,
to Dr. Doussan’s home, on the coast, above New Orleans. I was sent there
to learn to speak French, which I had been fairly well taught to read and
write. Both Dr. and Mme. Doussan were past middle life. The doctor was a
native of France, madame a Creole, and the few _arpents_ they owned were
her inheritance. Their home was surrounded by a settlement of Creoles,
pure and simple Creoles, such as I doubt exists to-day in the changed
conditions that seventy years bring.
The simple natives, who had little patches, some of which amounted to
little over an _arpent_ (about an acre), were domiciled so conveniently
near that it afforded an unending source of interest to a wide-awake
American girl to see, listen to, and talk with them. They were not “poor
folks” except possibly in the one meaning of the term. There was a family
of Grandprés in that little settlement. Hearing the name Grandpré would
instantly call to mind the Grandprés of Louisiana’s early days. Was not a
Grandpré Governor, or Captain General, or something else as notable and
commanding in Louisiana history, in the French, or more likely Spanish,
occupancy of the country? This family descended from the original proud
stock. The children, grown, half-grown, babies, at the time of which I
write actually had a resident tutor, M. Marr, a man of no mean ability.
I do not know how far they advanced in other branches of education, but
their beautiful chirography would put to the blush any college graduate
who hovers around our young girls to-day, and they signed themselves,
too, with a grand flourish, De Grandpré. My old red and gilt album (every
girl had an album and her friends wrote fulsome nonsense in it) has a
“_Je suis très flatté, mademoiselle, de pouvoir m’inscrire_,” etc. signed
L. De Grandpré. Looks as if I had flattered a nobleman of France! Doesn’t
it?
That flock of children of all ages and sizes were being educated well
for their day and generation, albeit Grandpré _mère_ strolled about in a
gingham _blouse volante_, her frosty hair covered with a plaid _tignon_;
and Grandpré _père_ sniffled around (he had some catarrhal trouble, I
guess) in carpet slippers. I do not think he ever did anything but bear
the high-sounding name, and I never heard, after those album days, that
the sons did either.
A family of Lafitons lived so near that we heard their parrot screaming
for “_mon déjeuner_” every morning, long before it was time for anybody’s
breakfast. I think the bond of friendship that existed between _le vieux_
Lafiton and Dr. Doussan must have been that they came from the same
province in France. Most nights, Sundays as well, “_mon voisin_,” as the
doctor called him, came for a game at cards. Long after my supper was
served on a tray, and I was safely tucked into bed, madame presided at
a banquet of gumbo, _jumbalaya_ and salad, with their beloved Bordeaux,
which was spread for the old gentlemen. Lafiton had straggling locks of
white hair, falling over the collar of his great coat, reminding me of
the picture of Little Nell’s grandfather, and the home of the Lafitons
carried out the simile, for it was as melancholy and cheerless as any
“Old Curiosity Shop” could be. There were two bright, capable girls in
it, though, who never knew or saw anything better than the rickety old
house, way up on stilts, that they lived in. There they stitched and
darned and mended and patched all day (Creole women are not lazy), and
managed to make a creditable appearance for an afternoon promenade on the
levee.
The two grown sons caught driftwood and fish, and when they tired
of that exertion made crawfish nets. (_En parenthèse_, when I had a
fifteenth birthday, Pete, the long-legged one, gave me a finger ring he
had made of the tooth of a shell comb.) They did not own a skiff, much
less a horse or _voiture_. For ever so long I thought Mme. Lafiton had
chronic toothache, or some trouble in her jaws, for she always wore a
handkerchief over her head, tied under the chin, and also a look of
discomfort. In time I discovered that style of headdress, and that
troubled smile, were peculiarly her own, and did not signify anything in
particular.
We had other neighbors less picturesque than those I have mentioned.
Madame had a cousin living quite near, who had, as had all Creole women
in those days, a great flock of children. The Dubroca family seemed to
be fairly well-to-do. Mr. Dubroca was sugar-maker for a nearby planter.
Madame and her daughter Alzire were thrifty, hospitable and kindly. The
sons, as they grew up, were sent to schools and colleges. Madame was a
sister of Mrs. (Judge) Eustis of New Orleans, both being daughters of
Valèrie Allain, a planter of means, whose property when divided among his
children did not amount to much for each.
That brings me to the Favrot family. Judge Favrot was a prominent
citizen of the parish, and his son, a law student when I knew him, was
much above the average. I scarce should mention this family that I saw
almost daily and knew so well in connection with the obscure Creoles of
the simpler life that I met and knew quite as intimately. The judge, and
his son, were violinists. It was no unusual thing for him to play dance
music for us, accommodating old gentleman that he was! We always had to
adjourn to Lafiton’s to “trip the light fantastic,” for there was a great
barn of a room, with bare floor, and no furniture to mention, which they
called _le salon_.
Mme. Doussan often visited friends, by rowboat, on the opposite side of
the river. She felt the responsibility of the care of the young girls,
so strangely placed in her hands, so she never embarked on her frequent
visits by boat or _voiture_ without the company of one she might have
esteemed an incumbrance if I had not already been received into the holy
of holies of her loving heart.
There were two families of Choppins we saw frequently. The daughter of
one, quite a child then, became at a later date wife of Dauphin. The
eldest son of the other Choppin family, a youth of less than twenty, was
already studying medicine in the office of a country town doctor. We saw
much of him, the bright, attractive fellow! as he used to row himself
over to the impromptu dances in the Lafiton salon. Later his ambition
carried him to Paris, and later still he returned, a distinguished
physician and surgeon, to New Orleans. He was a devoted citizen also.
None who heard his impassioned address, and his rendering in thrilling
tones the inspiring “_Aux Armes! Citoyens_” of the Marseillaise from the
steps of Clay’s monument, on Canal street, at the beginning of the war,
ever forgot it.
Madame and I often visited other families in Baton Rouge, the Bonnecazes,
Lanoues, Huguets and so on. As I remember, all lived over or in the
rear of their shops. Very many families lived over shops in those
days, not always over their own shops either. John Winthrop, a scion
of the Massachusetts John Winthrop, and his aristocratic family lived
over Symes’ lace store, on Royal street in New Orleans. There was a
shoemaker’s establishment on the ground floor of the Miltenberger
residence. My father’s family lived over an exchange broker’s office on
Canal Street. In 1842, when a mob raided, or threatened to raid, banks
and exchange brokers’ offices, the strong box of the firm in our basement
was conveyed to my mother for safekeeping. But this was in New Orleans,
and I see I am wandering from my Creole friends on the coast, where I
delighted to visit with _ma chère madame_.
Twice during that lovely six months’ episode of my life, escorted by the
doctor, we boarded the fascinating _Belle Creole_ and made longer flights
and longer visits to relatives of madame living beyond a voiture’s
possibilities. Once it was to spend a few days with the Valcour Aimes at
their incomparable home; at another time we had two never-to-be-forgotten
days at Sosthène Allain’s, where I met two sweet girls of my own age.
Then and there began a friendship that continued through our young
ladyhood. We were three inseparable companions until three weddings
sent us (as is the nature of things) on divergent paths. Celeste went
to Paris, so remote then that she was practically lost to us. I do not
suppose a single one of those who made those six months of my girlhood
so happy is living to-day. Some have left no descendants; I do not know
who has or who has not, but I pay this tribute to the Creole simple life,
that seems in the retrospect almost ideal, and no episode of my checkered
life is sweeter to recall.
Dr. Doussan was a botanist. His garden was the mecca of all lovers of
plant life. I imagine it was excelled only by the noted grounds of the
Valcour Aimes. Fruit and vegetables were sent daily in a skiff to the
town market. _Ma chère madame_, in her black silk _blouse volante_ and
her cap, with stiff, fluted frill tied under the chin, often let me
help her make the formal little bouquets for the market, the dear old
stiff bouquets, flat as a plate and nestling in a frill of lace paper!
The doctor spent hours in his cabinet with his botanical treasures.
Daily I was summoned to read to him his _Paris Journal_, and to write a
composition. No teacher could have been more painstaking; no scholar more
appreciative.
Early in 1847 a nephew of the doctor’s arrived from France, a dapper,
Frenchified youth of eighteen. The Doussans were childless, but they
had adopted a young girl. At the time of which I write she was about my
age, and was being educated at Sacré Cœur Convent. She was home only for
Easter vacation. No one told me, no one even hinted it, but I intuitively
understood that a _mariage de convenance_ was planned for the dapper
young Frenchman and the pretty blonde girl, and the visit was meant to
introduce Marie to her _prétendu_; they seemed to accept the arrangement
complacently, but I was most interested in watching the proceedings, and,
to say the least, much entertained.
It was fully fifty years after these events when Doussan _neveu_
and I met again, two old gray-haired folks. When the first frost of
astonishment melted, and we could recognize each other, we had a grand
time recalling places and people. How we laughed over the remembrance of
the antics of the doctor’s pet monkey; and, oh yes! the voluble Lafiton
parrot! For a brief hour we lived again the halcyon days of fifteen and
eighteen. The following year Doussan passed away—severing for me the last
living link that bound me to the simple Creole life, on the borders of
which I had such a happy girlhood.
XXV
A VISIT TO VALCOUR AIME PLANTATION
_La Belle Creole!_ That name will bring a smile, mayhap a tear, to your
grandmother, so many sweet reminiscences of her young girlhood may be
associated with the little coast packet that carried her a-visiting from
New Orleans to plantation homes in “the days that were,” those leisurely
days when there were no rail cars tearing and crashing over the land,
no express companies to forward packages, no common carriers of any
sort. A boat like _La Belle Creole_ was a necessity. On her trips she
stopped at every little town and country post office, like Brusle landing
and Lobdell’s store; answered every signal and every hail, shuttling
across the river, back and forth, touching here for a keg of _sirop de
batterie_, a hamper of oranges; touching at the very next plantation to
take in somebody’s carpetbag or put ashore somebody’s darky, Capt. Ure
always at his post on deck to expedite every move. _La Belle Creole_ was
not a freight boat, but a passenger packet, par excellence. There were
boats galore to handle freight, but only one _Belle Creole_! “Steamboat
ahoy!” We slow up, a gentleman rushes down from his plantation house,
followed by a darky, carpetbag in hand. A plank is quickly run out,
touching the shore, steadied by deckhands; passenger rushes aboard, has
a handshake with Capt. Ure, and away we go to perhaps another hail. In
the cabin the scene is like that of an “afternoon tea,” an “at home,”
a “reception,” whatever you will, for everybody knows everybody, and
everybody shakes hands with everybody, and thus the newcomer is welcomed
to the social atmosphere of a circle of Creole friends. “_Comment ça
va?_” “_Aye! quel chance! c’est toi_,” are heard on every side, for some
of these people rarely meet except in transit. And so, we sail along;
the simple little craft is glorified by the magnetic influence of its
passengers.
M. Champomier is on board. Everybody knows _le vieux_ Champomier. He
mingles with all, conspicuously carries his memorandum book and pencil,
and we all know he is “on business bent,” getting from any and every
available source statistics of the year’s crop of sugar. Whether he
acted for a corporation, or it was his individual enterprise, I never
knew, but he visited the planters, traveled up and down and all around
the sugar region, and in the spring compiled and computed and published
in a small, paper-covered book (price $5) the name and address of
every planter and the amount of sugar made on each individual estate.
“Champomier’s report” was considered as authentic as need be for the
planter to know what his neighbor’s crop actually amounted to, and the
city merchant to adjust his mortgages and loans on a safe basis.
It was after midnight when the plank was thrown out to touch the levee
of the Valcour Aime plantation; midnight in late March, 1847. Deckhands
steadied the wabbling plank till three persons and their little baggage
were safely landed ashore. A tram (as it is called to-day) was awaiting
the doctor, Tante Lise and myself, then a girl of fifteen. Darkies with
torches preceded and followed us to the house, not so far away, only a
short walk, but Tante Lise must not be permitted to walk at that hour
of the night. The tram was nothing more than a flat car, fitted for the
occasion with seats, on a short railroad leading to the sugar refinery,
which I believe was the first in the state. A dusky housekeeper received
us at the house. Not knowing at what hour we might appear, the family had
retired. _Belle Creole_, as may be supposed, had no fixed schedule of
arrivals or departures. Fires were already alight in our rooms, affording
a cheery welcome. Before we were ready for bed basins of hot water were
brought for the inevitable foot bath of the Creole. Something warm to
drink, a _tisane_ probably—I remember I thought it might be ambrosia,
fit for the gods, it was so deliciously refreshing. Then I was tenderly
tucked into bed, and told to “_dormez bien_,” which I straightway
proceeded to do.
The sun was already proclaiming a bright spring day when I inhaled
the odor, and opened my eyes to a full-blown rose on my pillow; and
gracious, how good! a steaming cup of _café au lait_. On our descent to
the breakfast room we received an effusive and cordial greeting from M.
and Mme. Valcour, and their daughter Félicie, a girl of my own age. The
air was redolent of the delicious odor of roses, the windows open to the
floor upon the garden, the floor of the room not one step higher than the
garden walks. The Valcour Aime house was a two-story structure. The long,
main building faced, of course, the roadway and the river; there was a
long L at each end, running back, thus forming three sides of a square
court. A broad and partly jalousied balcony extended entirely around the
three sides of the building, fronting the court. This balcony afforded
the entrances to a seemingly endless series of living and sleeping rooms,
the whole house being, so to say, one room deep only. The first floor,
flush with the ground, was entirely paved with square blocks of stone or
brick. There were to be found the small and the grand dining rooms, the
master’s office and den and the various and sundry domestic departments.
The salon opened on the second floor balcony. The paved court below
was protected by the deep balconies and an awning. The assemblage of
all the family and the favorite resort of their multitudinous guests,
madame’s basket, mademoiselle’s embroidery frame, the box of cigars, the
comfortable lounging chairs, were to be found in that entrancing court.
M. Valcour, tall and graceful, was at that time in the prime of life, and
was my (romantic) ideal of a French marquis; Mme. Valcour, inclined to
_embonpoint_ and vivacious, kissed me and called me “_ma petite_,” though
I was quite her height. But the charm of my visit to that incomparable
mansion, the like of which is not to be found on the Mississippi River
to-day, was the daughter, Félicie, who at once took me under her wing and
entertained me as only a well-bred young girl can. She showed me all over
the premises, opening door after door, that I could see how adequate the
accommodations for the guests who frequently filled the house; into the
salon that I might see and listen to the chimes of the gilt clock Gabie
had sent from Paris. Gabriel Aime, the only son, was then in Europe.
Sweet Félicie never tired of talking of Gabie and showing me the pretty
trifles from abroad (so far away then) he had sent home from time to
time. She sent for the key, and opened the door of Gabie’s room, that I
might see how he had left it, and, “Mamma won’t have a thing changed; she
wants him to find his gun and boots and cap just where he left them.”
Girl-like, she confided to me that she would be a young lady when Gabie
came, and they would have a house in the city and a box at the opera, for
Gabie loved music.
By this time a number of the Roman family arrived. M. Valcour’s oldest
daughter had married Gov. Roman’s son, and a flock of Roman grandchildren
came with their parents to welcome the doctor and Tante Lise, and
incidentally the young girl with them. The Valcours and Romans were
closely related, independent of the marriage of their children. Both
families being related to Tante Lise also, there was a great reunion and
rejoicing when the tante made her annual visit. The governess, a New
England woman, was accorded a holiday, in which Félicie participated.
Years after, perhaps as many as forty years, I met and renewed
acquaintance with that governess in her New England town. Only recently
she passed away, having outlived, I understand, all the little pupils who
clustered around “Dear Miss Goddard.”
Félicie and I, with a whole escort of followers, explored the spacious
grounds, considered the finest in Louisiana. There was a miniature river,
meandering in and out and around the beautifully kept parterres, the tiny
banks of which were an unbroken mass of blooming violets. A long-legged
man might have been able to step across this tiny stream, but it was
spanned at intervals by bridges of various designs, some rustic, some
stone, but all furnished with parapets, so one would not tumble in and
drown, as a little Roman remarked. If it had not been before Perry’s
expedition to Japan, at any rate before his report was printed and
circulated, one might have supposed M. Valcour received his inspiration
in landscape gardening from the queer little Eastern people. There were
summer houses draped with strange, foreign-looking vines; a pagoda on a
mound, the entrance of which was reached by a flight of steps. It was
an octagonal building, with stained-glass windows, and it struck my
inexperienced eye as a very wonderful and surprising bit of architecture.
Further on was—a mountain! covered from base to top with beds of
blooming violets. A narrow, winding path led to the summit, from which
a comprehensive view was obtained of the extensive grounds, bounded by a
series of conservatories. It was enchanting. There I saw for the first
time the magnolia frascati, at that date a real rarity.
Another day, doctor, Tante Lise, Félicie and I were rowed in a skiff
across the river to Sacré Cœur Convent to see tante’s adopted daughter,
Marie. I recall spending the day there, the kindly nuns showing the
little heretic all through the building, and being rowed back to the
plantation at sunset.
Next morning the _Belle Creole_ was due, and our visit to fairyland was
drawing to a close. The call, “_la Vapeur_,” rushed us to the landing
in the tram, the “whole pack in full cry” of the Roman children running
by the side and calling adieu to dear Tante Lise. We gingerly walked
the plank, in single file. The boat backed out to get her leeway, and
once more for a moment we were in full view of the house. Two figures
fluttered handkerchiefs from the balcony, Mme. Valcour and Félicie waving
a last adieu—alas! a last. On entering the cabin, behold the ubiquitous
M. Champomier, with his everlasting book and pencil. As he greeted the
doctor I heard (in French, of course), “Can you tell me the exact amount
of——?” I fled, and at the rear end of the boat I had one more last
glimpse of Valcour Aime’s plantation. Alas! the last.
A month later I was on a clipper ship, the _Silas Holmes_, bound for a
New England school. That Yankee, _Silas Holmes_, was a transport during
the war, and like many a war relic has long been out of commission, if
not out of existence. And the dainty _Belle Creole_, gone too! like
thousands of Belles Creoles of her day and date.
Dear Félicie married Alfred Roman, adding another link of relationship to
the Roman and Valcour Aime families, and the adored and only son, Gabriel
Aime, died (I think Tante Lise wrote me) abroad.
I should like to know. No, I do not want to know. I already know too many
wrecked homes and vanished fortunes and broken hearts. I want always to
think of the Valcour Aime home and its charming hospitality, as I saw it
and knew it, and loved it more than sixty years ago, when I waved a last
adieu—alas! a last.
XXVI
THE OLD PLANTATION LIFE
It is almost a half century since the old plantation days. Only those
who number threescore years and ten have a personal remembrance of the
cares, duties and pleasures of the old plantation life. Only those who
bore the cares, discharged the duties and prepared the way for the
pleasures really understand the life that died and was buried fifty
years ago. People who know so much about that fanatic John Brown and
the fantastic “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” are asking what one fought and bled
for (did he bleed?) and what the other was written for. Some of those
inquiring souls are over fifty years old, and what is more, their fathers
were slave owners. The few of us tottering around who can tell of the old
plantation life are threescore years and ten, and if we do not hasten
to tell the story it may never be told. It is well to leave a record of
a life that has passed beyond resurrection, a glorified record it may
appear, for as we stand beside the bier of a loved and lifelong friend,
we recall only his virtues. So as I look back on the old plantation life
only the comforts and pleasures troop before me. It had its duties, but
they were not onerous; its cares, but they were not burdensome, nor were
its pleasures excessive. What we planned and accomplished for our slaves
afforded us more satisfaction than any man of the present day can feel
for his grand stables of hunters and roadsters and racers, that absorb
his time and means....
Booker Washington, in that very interesting volume, “Up from Slavery,”
tells of his early life when his mother (he never knew his father, and
thinks he was a white man) was the slave of a well-to-do Virginia farmer,
and the slave quarters had dirt floors. That may have been in the clay
hills of Virginia, but I never saw a cabin, unless it was a pig pen, with
a dirt floor. I am no apologist for slavery; the whites suffered more
from its demoralizing influence than the blacks, but we were born to it,
grew up with it, lived with it, and it was our daily life. We did well by
it; no people could have done better. It is past now. When I tell of my
own home it is to tell of the plantation homes of everybody I knew. We
did not differ or vary to any extent in our modes of life and management.
[Illustration: ARLINGTON PLANTATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI.]
Slaves were comfortably housed. Their cabins were elevated above the
ground, two rooms in each building, a chimney between, a porch in front
and windows on two sides. The slaves were well fed and well clothed in
osnaburgs and linseys cut and made in the sewing room of the “big house.”
Though the hook worm theory was not at that time exploited they were
well shod. There were drones; I guess there were hook worms too, but we
did not know it. The old and infirm had light tasks. Men pottered around
the woodpile, or tended the cows on their promenades over the levee, and
the women sewed a little and quarreled, as idly disposed old folks will,
among themselves (we who visit almshouses now know how that is) or fussed
with the frolicking children. I never saw in those days a negro with
spectacles, or one who seemed to need them.
There was an infirmary for the sick, and a day nursery for the babies,
under the charge of a granny, a well-ventilated room with a spacious
fireplace, where pots and kettles were always on hand, mush and herb teas
always on tap; there the babies were deposited in cribs all day while the
mothers were at work in the fields. No woman went to work until her child
was a month old. A large diary folio record was kept by the overseer of
all the incidents of the plantation; when a woman was confined, when she
was sent again to the field, who was ill in the hospital, if doctor was
summoned, what part of the canefield was being cultivated day by day,
when sugar-making began, when finished, what the yield of the various
“cuts,” how many hogsheads and barrels of molasses shipped and by what
boats; all these items and ever so many more were recorded. A doctor was
employed at $600 per annum. He came only in extreme cases. Headaches
and stomach aches, earaches, toothaches and backaches, all these minor
ills came under the care of the overseer and “Gunn’s Domestic Medicine,”
a formidable volume of instruction. The lady, the “mistis” of the big
house, made frequent visits to the quarter lot, saw that things were kept
tidy and ministered to the sick.
We did not have “made-over” dishes, cold meats nor stale bread on our
tables; little darkies were sent by the half sick and aged for “left
overs.” Children were not bottlefed or spoonfed; they consumed pot liquor
and mush and molasses as soon as they were weaned. Corn, cowpeas and
turnips were cultivated for the slaves, and when there was an overplus
of garden vegetables it was sent to the quarter kitchen. Their meat
was pickled pork—it was called “clear sides”—shipped from Kentucky or
Missouri. All their cooking was done by two cooks in a big kitchen, but
every cabin had a fireplace, with a pot or skillet, of course, for we
all know how the darky dotes on little messes of her own doing. All the
doors had locks, and the women went to the field with the key hung around
their necks.
Each spring at house-cleaning, cabins were whitewashed inside and out;
also the stables and other plantation buildings, the fences and trees
as high up as a long pole or brush could reach. From Saturday noon till
Monday was holiday, when the enterprising men chopped wood, for which
they were paid, and the drones sunned themselves on the porch steps,
and the women washed their clothes. I knew of only one planter who made
his negroes work on Sundays. He was an Englishman who married into a
plantation. The indignant neighbors called the attention of the grand
jury in that case, with success, too. During sugar-making everybody
worked day and night, but the season was short, terminating in December.
I cannot recall more than three deaths in ten years. I have no record to
refer to (I guess that plantation folio afforded some information to the
Union army). There was a burial ground for the slaves. One of them, the
engineer, by the way, and a mighty good negro, too, acted as preacher. He
married and buried and in all ways ministered to the spiritual needs of
his flock. I recall teaching Lewis to sing “Canaan.” He wanted to learn a
hymn, and had a lusty bass voice, while I did not have any at all. Lewis
was not the only accomplished negro. We did not have white labor. There
were slave carpenters, coopers, masons and sugar makers; women who cut
and made all clothing, shirts, coats, pantaloons, dresses.
By law no child under ten years of age could be sold from its mother. I
suppose that law is obsolete now! It happened a negro child born in the
penitentiary of a convict mother, named Alroy, had to remain ten years
in confinement; he was taught reading and writing, probably all the Rs,
by the convicts, while he imbibed in such surroundings a good many less
desirable accomplishments. Hon. Mr. Alroy represented his native parish
in the Louisiana Legislature of reconstruction times. He was better
fitted probably than some of his dusky colleagues, for he could read the
laws; some of them could not. That is also of the dead past, thank God,
and has no bearing on the old plantation life, except as an illustration
of the law regarding slaves.
The “big house” had no fastenings on the front and back doors. In the
absence of my husband one time I was awakened, in the dead hour of
night, by a touch on my shoulder. “It’s me, mistis; de levee’s broke.”
A crevasse! Without taking time to put on an extra gown, I was an hour
giving orders and dispatching men to the planters, even twenty miles off,
for assistance.
For a week thereafter, day and night, I fairly lived on horseback at the
levee, superintending the repair work in place of my absent husband and
our inefficient overseer. Each planter affected by the crevasse came, or
sent an overseer with a force of slaves, who worked in hour shifts, to
their waists in the water, driving piles and heaping sand bags. As the
shifts changed the men were given a dram and hot soup or coffee, and sent
to a huge bonfire nearby to dry themselves.
Another time I landed from a boat at the witching hour between midnight
and dawn. The boat’s bell and whistle sounded to attract some light
sleeper. By the time I was fairly ashore a glimmering light of a lantern
was seen. I was escorted to the house by the coachman, but if any other
negro had responded I should have felt quite as safe.
Mammy Charlotte was supreme in the domestic department. The little
cupbearers from the quarters reported to her for the “dreenings” of the
coffee pot or the left-over soup. The visitor by the library fire called
to her for a glass of wine or a “finger” of whisky. I called Charlotte
to ask what we were going to have for dinner. She was the busy one, and
every plantation had just such a mammy. Charlotte and I belonged to the
same church. When there was a vacant seat in the carriage Sunday morning
she was called to occupy it.
One of our neighbors, that a New Englander would call a “near” man,
owned a few acres adjoining ours, but too remote from his plantation to
be advantageously cultivated. He would not fence his property nor work
his road, nor keep his levee in repair (it was just there we had the
crevasse); however, it afforded good pasturage for Uncle Billy’s cow, and
for us, a supply of mushrooms. Billy’s nets and lines supplied us with
shrimp and fish, small catfish that William cooked _à la pompano_, not a
poor imitation of that delectable Gulf dainty. I heard Charlotte berating
Billy for not bringing in some more of those fine shrimp, when he knew,
too, there was company in the house. Imagine my consternation at Billy’s
reply, “Dey done gorn; dat ole drowned mule is floated away.”
Col. Hicky was our nearest neighbor, on Hope estate. When the dear old
man was eighty and I was twenty-five we were great chums. He never passed
in his buggy if I was visible on the lawn or porch without stopping for
a chat. There was frequent interchange of neighborly courtesies. He had
fine large pecans, and we didn’t; we had celery and he didn’t, so there
was much flitting back and forth of baskets. If we were having an unusual
occasion, like the dinner my husband gave in honor of Messrs. Slidell
and Benjamin, when they were elected to the United States Senate, a big
basket came from Hope estate. Didn’t the dear old gentleman send a capon
turkey which was too big for any dish we had, and didn’t we have to
borrow the Hicky dish?
Col. Hicky had a birthday dinner, when he was eighty-two, and a grand
dinner it was, to be sure. Sam Moore—I never knew just who he was, or
why he was so essential at every function—sat at the host’s right. The
Colonel was too deaf to hear all the _bon mots_, and Sam interpreted for
him, and read in a loud voice all the toasts, some of which were very
original and bright. Anyone remembering Col. Winthrop, or better still,
Judge Avery, can understand there was no lack of wit and sparkle in any
toast they might make.
XXVII
PEOPLE I HAVE ENTERTAINED
I imagine all of us have read “People I Have Smiled With,” or, “People I
Have Known,” but not many are writing about “People I Have Entertained.”
Rocking away the remnant of a long and varied life, I find myself
dreamingly entertaining guests who are long since departed to the “House
of Many Mansions,” guests who came and stayed, and went, some of whom
I had never seen before, and some I never heard from after, but there
are guests and guests, as every housewife knows. Particularly country
house guests come, whose city houses are not open to what a neighbor
of mine calls “trunk visitors.” In the days of which I write, every
house, especially every plantation house, had a conspicuous latch string
outside the door. I amuse my grandchildren with tales of the varied
assortment of visitors I had “befo’ de war,” just as I had conjured to
rest their mothers and fathers when they clamored to be told again about
the gentleman who brought his own sheets and coffee pot, or the lady
who wanted to pray all the time. I feel I am telling these tales for the
last time. They don’t point a moral, for no guest can do to-day, nor
will hereafter, the things some of my guests did, let us think, in the
innocence of their hearts.
The first visitor I recall when I was a bride in my new home, was a
distinguished, eccentric, literary man, a bachelor, and a Creole, brim
full of cranks and kinks, but a delightful conversationalist withal.
Before he arrived I knew he was coming from a visit to an adjacent parish
where his great heart had been touched by the witchery of a young girl.
With his Sancho, the Don Quixote had been storming the citadel, and to
continue the simile he struck a windmill, and so was put to flight. Now
he was accepting my husband’s invitation to rest, and salve his wounds at
our home. I was amazed when my housemaid told me he had not only brought
his valet, but his own linen sheets and his coffee pot! I understood
then why he was not an acceptable suitor. Linen sheets and the coffee
pot would scare any prospective housewife. When I knew what a blunder he
had committed, I confess to little sympathy in his discomfort. That old
gentleman died full of honors and deeply lamented, in New Orleans, a few
years ago.
Mrs. Breckinridge was our guest, while her husband was vice-president.
The presidential candidates, almost forgotten now, were Buchanan and
Breckinridge. She was active and eager to have her husband mount to the
top of the ladder of preferment, and did no little engineering in his
behalf that winter. Mrs. Breckinridge was charming, a delightful visitor,
a relative by marriage to us, but so remote, that if she had not been so
lovely and the vice-president so distinguished, the dim connection would
never have been thought of. Her aspirations were not realized, and he was
tail to another presidential kite, that could not be made to fly. We did
not meet Mrs. Breckinridge after that long visit, and the last time I
saw her husband he was a fleeing Confederate general in Havana, without
incumbrance of any kind, so he was not our “trunk visitor.”
During the early fifties a planter from Bayou Lafourche bought a
plantation on the Mississippi River, fully five miles from us, and on the
opposite side of the river, as well. My husband, in his grandiloquent
flamboyant manner, invited him to bring his family to our house to stay
till their _lares et penates_ were settled in their new home. The man, in
the same grandiloquent, flamboyant style, accepted. When I asked how many
there were in the family, my hospitable husband replied that he only
heard mention of a wife. In due time a little Lafourche packet, with ever
so much turning and backing, blowing of whistle and ringing of bells, as
if to announce a surprise (which it certainly did), ran out a plank at
our levee, and a whole procession walked that plank and filed up the path
to the house. I looked from an upper window, and counted the guests as
they marched up, in twos and threes: A man and his wife, her aged mother
and brother, four boys, ranging from three to ten years, and a darky with
the baby in arms!
One guest room had been made ready, but three additional chambers were
at once put in commission. By the time wraps had been removed and fresh
fires made all over the house—it was mid-winter—I was ten times more
breathless than my unexpected crowd. Every day for over a week the man
and his wife were conveyed to their new home in our carriage, and there
they stayed from morn to dewy eve. The aged grandmother was left in my
special care. She was unable to cope with the untrained boys, as, indeed,
all of us were. The uncle had rheumatism or something that confined him
to his bed most of the time. So the boys were left to their own devices,
to gallop in and out of doors, from the muddy garden to the Brussels
carpets, all hours of the day. The baby squalled, and the nurse spanked
it, and I didn’t care.
One stormy day the boys found occupation indoors that was very diverting.
They extracted every button from a tufted, upholstered chair in the
library, the one their grandmother most affected, and with hairpin and
nail, scratched hieroglyphics all over a newly-painted mantel, till it
looked like it had been taken from some buried city of Egypt. Thank
goodness! Visits don’t last forever. In the course of time the family
moved into the new home, and gave a house-warming ball within the next
week—_vive la bagatelle_!
Reading with great interest a newly published book, “The Circuit Rider’s
Wife,” brings vividly to mind a visitor we once had. She was one of
the sweetest and loveliest of women. She was a Methodist, the only one
in a wide acquaintance I ever met, who claimed to have “the gift of
sanctification.” I do not believe one possesses the power within oneself
to resist sin, nor do I mean to inject religious views and doctrines
in these remarks about “People I Have Entertained,” but I do say, if
there ever was a really sanctified woman it was this Mrs. Abe Smith of
Mississippi. She was our guest one short, happy, glorified week. She
read her Bible chapter to us every morning, and prayed with and for us
all day long, if we wanted, and we generally did, for surely she had the
gift of prayer. I never listened to such uplifting prayers as dear Mrs.
Smith could utter; her very voice was an inspiration. She was highly
connected and highly cultivated and had a vocal training that comprised
very intricate music, but with “The Coming of the Lord” she confined her
voice entirely to psalms and hymns. Her mission was to pray and sing,
but no doubt when the harvest was waiting, in some meeting house, she
could exhort with an eloquence equal to the most earnest itinerant in
the pulpit. We had one strange glorification and sanctification, but it
was interrupted by the coming of a Methodist preacher, who claimed to
having sought, in vain, the gift of sanctification. The last few days of
lovely Sister Smith’s visit were spent in the library with closed doors,
wrestling with the halting soul of Brother Camp.
These were the expiring days of the old “Peace which passeth
understanding.” After that came the war, which sorely tried the
heart of the glorified woman, and she proved faithful to her gift of
sanctification even unto the bitter end....
One November day I entered my library with an open letter of introduction
in my hand, to say to the young man, placidly warming himself at the
fire, that the letter was not meant for my husband, who was not at
home, but for his brother. He replied he understood the brother was not
in Louisiana, and he took the liberty of transferring the introductory
epistle to the next of kin. He was a young doctor, threatened with lung
trouble, who had come South to spend some time in somebody’s sugar house.
I frankly told him that our sugar house was not by any means a suitable
place for an invalid, but (I glanced out of the door and saw his vehicle
had departed and his trunk was on the porch) I would be pleased to have
him remain my guest until my husband returned to see what could be
devised to further the invalid’s plan. Northern and Western people, who
never had been in a sugar house and inhaled the warm fumes of boiling
cane juice, night and day, and incidentally submitted to the discomforts
of an open building, not intended for sleeping quarters, thought that
the treatment, as they chose to call it, was a cure for tuberculosis.
My guest found himself quite comfortable, and remained in our home five
months. Nothing more was said about sugar house treatment. By spring,
like a butterfly, he emerged into the sunlight, strong and well and ready
to fly to pastures new, which he did. We did not even hear from that
doctor again. He was a physician in good practice in Galveston during the
war, and told Gen. Magruder he thought he had met us years before!
Every planter in my day entertained strangers who came and went, like a
dream. Some were grateful for their entertainment, some did not so much
as write “bread and butter” notes, after their departure.
Queer, inquisitive folks lighted upon us now and then. I recall a party
of Philadelphians who arrived at the adjacent town with a note of
introduction to the president of the bank. They said they wanted to visit
a plantation and see the working thereof. That hospitable husband of mine
happened to be passing; he was called in and introduced to the party, and
he invited them for the whole of the next day. They came, they saw, I
don’t know if they thought they conquered. We thought so, for they were
on a tour of observation. They were delightfully informal and interesting
people. We accompanied them to the canefield—the negroes happened to be
at work quite near the house—into some of the cabins, the infirmary,
where they were surprised to find not one inmate, into the nursery where
the babies were sleeping in cribs, and the older children eating mush and
molasses. They had to taste the food, had to talk to the granny about
her babies, had to ask after her health. Meeting a negro man, walking
as brisk as anybody, with a hoe over his shoulder, they had to inquire
as to his condition, and must have been surprised to hear what an awful
misery he had in his back. They had to see where the plantation sewing,
and the cooking, were done. I began to think before it was all over we
were superintendents of some penal institution and were enduring a visit
from the committee of inspection. However, they were very attractive,
naïve visitors, surprised at everything. After luncheon, waited upon by a
negro boy on a broad grin—it was all so very funny to him—they took their
departure, and my husband and I had a merry laugh over the incidents of
the day. It was rather an interesting interlude in our quiet life, and
remoteness from the abolition storm that was hovering over the land.
All the people I entertained were not queer. We had a house full always
of gay, young people, young girls from the North that were my schoolmates
in New Haven, girls who were my play-mates, and the friends of my young
ladyhood in New Orleans, fresh, bright, happy girls, who rode horseback,
sang and danced and made merry all through the house. All are gone now.
Only the sweet memory of them comes to me in my solitary day-dreams.
XXVIII
A MONUMENT TO MAMMIES
Let us have a memorial, before the last of us who had a black mammy
passes away. We who still linger would love to see a granite monument
to the memory of the dear mammy who fostered our childhood. Our
grandchildren, indeed our children, will never know the kind of mammies
their ancestors were blessed with.
I know of two only of the old stock of nurses and housekeepers left. They
were grown women when Sherman marched through Georgia, destroying their
old homes, laying waste the land, and Butler sat down in New Orleans,
wreaking vengeance on their hapless masters, and scattering their
little bands of servants to the four winds. These two mammies I wot of
remained with their own white folks. The Georgia one lived in a family I
visited, a faithful old woman, doing her utmost to fill a gap (and gaps
were of constant occurrence) in any branch of household duty. Mammy was
a supernumerary after the children grew up, but when the new-fangled
housemaid swept her trailing skirts out of the premises, mammy filled
her place till another of that same half-educated sort came. When cook
flared up and refused to do her duty in the way to which she was called,
mammy descended into the deserted kitchen.
One day I overheard the son of that family, who was about to start to a
Northern college, say: “Mammy, put on your Sunday black silk; I want you
to go down the street with me; I am going to have your picture taken.”
“What fur, son?” “I want it with the rest of my family to put on my
bureau at college.” “Lord! son, you ought’en to hav’ my black face to
show to dem Yankees; den you’ll tell ’em I’se your mammy.” However, the
pleased old darky, as black as her Sunday silk, had her picture taken
just like “son” wanted. I have a copy of it now. God bless her!
A family from the extreme South comes every summer to a quiet place in
Connecticut and brings mammy to take care of the little ones. I doubt
if they feel they could come without her. Mammy is pure black; no
adulterated blood under that skin—black, flat-nosed and homely, but the
children adore her, and she “makes them mind, too,” she proudly tells
you. Every boarder in that big house knows mammy, but I doubt if one of
them knows her name; I do not. It warms my heart to shake hands with
those two remnants of a dear past civilization, the only two I ever met.
When a child I made frequent visits to my cousin, Judge Chinn’s
plantation, in West Baton Rouge. I believe that hospitable house has long
since vanished into the river, with its store of pleasant memories. How I
always, when I arrived there, had to run find mammy first thing, and how
she folded me in her warm embrace and delighted my ears with, “How dis
chile do grow.” Every visitor at that grand, hospitable home knew mammy.
She always stood back of the judge’s chair, and with signals directed the
young girls how to wait at table. She managed after the children grew up,
married and settled (some of them settled, Creole fashion, in the home
nest too) that whole big and mixed household, where another generation of
babies came to claim a portion of her love and care. Nobody thought to
go to the judge or his wife for anything. “All applications,” to use an
office phrase, “made to mammy.” She was always ready to point the way or
to help one through it.
Casually meeting Mrs. Chinn and inquiring of the various members of her
family that from long absence I had lost sight of, “And mammy,” I said.
The dear old lady burst into tears. Mammy had died holding the hand of
the sorrowing mistress, her last words, “My work is done. I tried to do
my best,” and God knows she did.
We had a mammy in my mother’s house when I was a wee little thing, and
we children loved her right along all the week till Saturday night, when
the ponderous woman brought the big washtub upstairs and two pails of
hot water. We hated mammy then, for she had a heavy hand and a searching
eye, and a rough wash rag full of soapsuds. Not a fold in the ear, nor a
crease in the plump body escaped her vigilance. I really think we were
glad when we outgrew need of her assistance at those dreaded Saturday
night’s baths, and she went to other little lambs, in pastures new.
When I went a bride to my husband’s home, Charlotte, his old mammy, met
us and proudly escorted us within doors, where were fresh flowers and
a blazing fire (it was long past midnight, and dreadfully stormy too),
and every comfort prepared and ready for “the coming of the bride.” I
felt then and there mammy would be a comfort for me and a real help,
and so she proved, in all my sunny life in the plantation home and in
the dark days of the war, too. My Mammy Charlotte had complete charge
of everything about the house. She had been thoroughly trained by my
husband’s mother. She made the jellies and the pickles, the ice cream,
the cakes, doing a little of everything to make our home comfortable and
happy. And often she remarked that no one in the house did more and had
less to show for it at night than she did. That is a truth about many
households, one does all the neglected things, and picks up all the loose
threads. Guests were made to understand if they required anything, from a
riding horse to a fresh stick on the fire, from a mint julep to a bedroom
candle, they had only to call Charlotte. She was never beyond the reach
of a summons, day or night. She was mammy to all the children of the
house, and all the other children that floated in from other people’s
houses. It was Mammy Charlotte who hurriedly secreted the spoons (!) when
a Federal cavalry company came prancing down the road toward our gates.
It was mammy who ran to my bedside to whisper, “Don’t you get skeered,
they does look like gentlemen;” and after they had taken a drink of
water and trotted off again it was mammy back to say, “It’s all right;
they didn’t say nothin’ ’bout spoons.” Even at that early date and that
remote spot from Butler’s headquarters the matter of spoons had been so
freely and laughingly discussed that the sable crowd of witnesses that
surrounded every household must have taken the idea that collecting
spoons was “the chief end of man.”
I pity the little ones of to-day with no black mammy of their very own
to cuddle them to her warm bosom and comfort them, and tell them funny
rhymes about “The Monkey and the Baboon’s Sister,” to make them forget
their griefs in a merry laugh. The high-falutin’ nurses they have now,
here to-day, gone to-morrow, without any anchorage in our hearts and
homes, are not and never could be made mammies like we of threescore
years and ten were blessed with.
Who of us that lived within a day’s journey of Col. Hicky but remembers
his Milly, the mammy of that grand, big household? The dear Colonel lived
to see great-grandchildren grow up, and Milly mammied at least three
generations at “Hope Estate.” She was a famous nurse. Mind you, this
was decades before trained nurses arrived on the stage. How many of us
remember how tenderly and untiringly Milly nursed some of our invalids to
health! Her services were tendered, and oh! how gratefully accepted. With
a sad heart I recall a sick baby I nursed until Milly came and put me to
bed and took the ailing child in her tender arms. For two days and nights
unto the end she watched the little flickering spark.
When Mr. Sidell removed his family to Washington after his election to
the United States Senate, I traveled in their company several days. The
children had their colored mammy to care for them. She had been raised
in the Deslonde family, a trusted servant. I was struck with the system
and care with which she managed her little charges from Mathilde, a girl
in her teens, down to baby Johnny. She lived with them during those
troublous times in Washington, she accompanied the family to Paris, and
I presume died there. Always dressed in a neat calico gown, a fichu and
_tignon_, even in Paris she did not alter her dress nor wear another
headgear than her own bandana. There’s a mammy to immortalize!
Then let us raise a monument to the mammies of the days that were.
Quickly, too, before the last one of us who were crowned with such a
blessing shall have passed away “’mid the shadows that flee in the
night.”
XXIX
MARY ANN AND MARTHA ANN
The story of Mary Ann and Martha Ann and the red bonnet has been so
often retold to my children and grandchildren that every detail has been
retained, and in its completeness as I give it here, it is a bit of
authentic family history “dressed up” as its hearers love it.
“What kin we do, Ma’y Ann? I dun hear Miss Liza talkin’ ’bout it agin,
and ’lowin’ it got to be found.” The two little negroes sat under a
wide-spreading pecan tree that scattered its shade and its late autumn
nuts over the grassy lawn of a spacious Southern mansion. They crouched
closely together, heads touching, voices whispering and faces turned to
the river road, their scanty linsey skirts drawn tightly over little
black legs, so that no searching eye from the broad veranda could spy
them. Mary Ann looked anxiously around, and, drawing her knotty, kinky
head closer still to Martha’s softer locks, whispered: “Marm Charlotte
gwine to clean out de L, and you know she’ll go in dat room fust thing.”
Marthy sprang back with dilated eyes.
“Ma’y Ann, it carnt stay dar; it’s gotten to cum outen dar, oh Lordy!
What did you put it dar in the fust place fur?”
“I didn’t put it dar.” Ma’y Ann’s eyes flashed. “You fotch it dar your
own self, unner your apern; you sed it was yourn and Miss Ellen giv it to
you.”
Marthy sprang to her feet. “Miss Ellen never giv me nothin’ in her whole
life.” She shook her clenched fist in Ma’y Ann’s face, then burst into
tears. The stolen conference, like many another that had preceded it,
was opened in a spirit of mutual conciliation, but as the interview
progressed and interest waxed, the poor little negroes became fierce in
their alarm, fast losing sight of the turpitude of the deed committed
in common in the over-mastering anxiety of each one to shift the entire
blame on the other.
“Hush, gal, set down; I hear Marm Charlotte dis bery minit; she mustn’t
kotch me under dis here pecon tree agin. I was down here yisterday,
tryin’ to dig a hole where we’s settin’ now! I want ter berry de rotten
thing. Marm Charlotte kotch’d me here, and she ax’d what I doin’ and I
’low’d I was gitten pecons fur de turkeys, and she ’sponded she low’d ter
tell me when to feed de turkeys.”
Marthy Ann slowly resumed her seat, taking care to get well behind the
pecan tree. She was nervously sobbing, “She’s kept me—a—lookin’ fur
it—till I feared to go in—our—room—feared to find it—a settin’ on de
baid—Oh, Ma’y Ann, what made you take hit?”
Ma’y Ann’s eyes flashed fire. She was of the heroic sort, and by no wise
melted by Marthy’s lamentations and tears.
“I didn’t take hit; you tuck hit, and you know you did; you’s de biggest
rascal on de place. You does a thing, den you goes whinin’ and cryin’
’bout hit. I does a thing, I jist ’sponds fur hit and sticks hit out.”
Marthy wiped her eyes on the linsey skirt and tried to imbibe some of her
companion’s courage.
“Well, Ma’y Ann, you put it whar tis and ghostes cum out ev’ry night and
ties me wid de long, red strings.”
“No ghostes cum arter me,” said Ma’y Ann, bridling up. “Dat shows you put
it dar your own self.”
“We ain’t got no time ter talk and fuss; we got ter find a place to put
hit now. God knows it cums atter me ev’y night, and las’ night de debbel
had it on, Ma’y Ann. I seed him; he jist strutted all around de room wid
it on his haid and de ribbons was tied to his horns.”
“Oh, Lordy, Marthy, is he got hit now?” The terrified child sprang to her
feet and gazed distractedly up the tree. “Marthy, we kin fling hit up in
dis tree; won’t de debbil let hit stay in de crotch?”
The strained eyes eagerly searched for a sheltering limb that would
catch and conceal the thing, the ghost of which would not lay, day or
night. Marm Charlotte had never relaxed in her search, in bureaus,
and armchairs, behind hanging dresses, in the big cedar chest, among
the blankets, upon top shelves, in old bandboxes, in trunks, over bed
testers, downstairs in china closets, among plates and dishes, under
parlor sofas and over library bookcases. Ma’y Ann and Marthy Ann had no
rest. They made believe to search the garden, after the house had been
pulled to pieces, going down among the artichoke bushes and the cherokee
rose hedge that smothered the orchard fence, wishing and praying somebody
might find it in one of those impossible places all torn by squirrels or
made into nests by birds.
* * * * *
Christmas, with its turkeys and capons fattened on pecan nuts, its
dances and flirtations in the wide halls of the big house, its weddings
and breakdowns in the negro quarters, had come and gone. The whirr of
the ponderous mill had ceased; the towering chimney of the sugar house
no longer waved its plume of smoke by day nor scattered its showers of
sparks by night. Busy spiders spun nets over big, dusty kettles, and
hung filmy veils from the tall rafters. Keen-eyed mice scampered over
the floors and scuffled in the walls of the deserted building whence the
last hogshead of sugar and barrel of molasses had been removed, and the
key turned in the great door of the sugar house. Tiny spears of cane
were sprouting up all over the newly plowed fields. Drain and ditches
were bubbling over, and young crawfish darting back and forth in their
sparkling waters. The balmy air of early summer, freighted with odors
of honeysuckle and cape jessamine, and melodious with the whistle and
trill of mocking birds, floated into the open windows and doors of the
plantation dwelling. The shadowy crepe myrtle tree scattered crimpy pink
blossoms over the lawn. Lady Banks rose vines festooned the trellises and
scrambled in wild confusion over the roof of the well house, waving its
golden radiance in the soft, sunny air. Cherokee and Chickasaw hedges,
with prodigal luxuriance, covered the rough wooden fences, holding
multitudes of pink and white blossoms in thorny embrace, and sheltering
the secret nests of roaming turkey hens and their wild-eyed broods.
“Well, Levi, you’se dun your job, and it wus a big one, too.”
“Yes, William, I whitewashed as much as ten miles o’ fencing, and all de
trees in de stable lot, besides de cabins and de chicken houses.”
“Ten miles o’ fencing,” replied William doubtfully. “I didn’t ’low dere
wuz dat much on de whole plantation. Why, dey call hit ten miles from
here to Manchac, and ’bout ten from here to Cohite.”
“I mean ten miles in and out; about five miles one side de fence and five
miles de odder.”
“Oh! that-a-way,” said William dubiously. “Charlotte, give Mr. Stucker
another dodger.”
The speakers were two negro men, one in the shirt sleeves and long apron
that betokened the household cook, the other in the shiny, shabby “store
clothes” of the town darky. They sat at the kitchen table, in front
of a window commanding a view of newly whitewashed fences and trees.
Etiquette required that William should play the rôle of host, on this,
the last morning of the whitewasher’s stay. Charlotte had laid the cloth
and placed the plates and knives for two, and served the fried bacon and
hot corn dodgers to Mr. Levi Stucker, a free man, who had a house of his
own and a wife to wait on him and in view of this dignity and state was
deemed entitled to unusual consideration.
“Lemme ask you, Charlotte,” said Stucker, carefully splitting his dodger,
and sopping the hot crumbs in the bacon gravy, “is you missed ary thing
outen de yard on dese premises? Caze I heard dem two little gals havin’
a big talk in dat room next to me last night; you knows dat’s a mighty
weaky boardin’ ’tween dose rooms and a pusson don’t have to listen to
hear. I bin hearin’ ’em movin’ ’bout and a whisperin’ most ginerally
every night when dey ought most likely to be asleep. Las’ night a old owl
was a squinchin’ on dat mulberry tree by de winder, and de shutter hit
slammed. Dat woke dem gals up; it was atter midnight; dey was skeert, one
on ’em begin to blubber and sed de debbil was dar to kotch ’em. From de
way dey talked—(but it was mystifyin’, I tell you)—I ’lowed in my mind
dem gals had stole somethin’, I couldn’t gather what, fur dey didn’t name
no specials, but sure’s you born dey’s up to somethin’, and skeered to
death ’bout its bein’ foun’ out.”
Charlotte stopped on her way to the frying pan with widening eyes and
uplifted fork, and listened attentively, with an occasional jerk of the
head toward William.
“Jist tell me,” pursued Levi, “if you ’low dose gals to have de run of
de quarters, caze dey gits mischief in dere heads if dey run wid quarter
niggers.”
“No, sir,” responded the woman emphatically, “dey never goes down dar;
I’m keerful ’bout dat—onreason’ble keerful; no, sir, if I was to let ’em
have the run o’ dat quarter lot dere would never be a cold biskit nor a
cup o’ clabber in dis house de minit atter you put ’em outen your hands.
No, sir, Mr. Stucker, if old Hannah, or ary of de sick niggers down dar
wants anything from dis house dey got to send one of their own little
niggers wid de cup or de pan, and I pintedly gives ’em what’s needed;
dere’s nuff work for Ma’y Ann and Marthy Ann ’bout dis house ’dout dey
visitin’ at de quarters and waitin’ on quarter niggers. I bet, dough,
dey’s bin in some mischief I ain’t had time to ferret out.”
After a pause she continued, “And you say you think dey done stole
somethin’?”
“Yes,” answered Stucker, pushing back his chair and rising from the
table; “yes, I understand somethin’ of dat natur’, if you has missed ary
thing.”
“We did miss dat currycomb what William comb his har wid; it was a bran
new, kinder stiff one, and he missed it last Sunday,” replied Charlotte.
“Dat jist fallen outen de winder, it warn’t lost,” interrupted
William, who had been watching for a favorable opportunity to join the
conversation.
“Yes, dem spawns foun’ hit outdoors, when I tole ’em I’d skin ’em if
it wasn’t perjuced,” said Charlotte, turning to William, who thereupon
relapsed into acquiescent silence.
“It warn’t no currycomb dey was talkin’ ’bout last night,” said Stucker,
jerking first one leg then the other to free his shaggy breeches of
dodger crumbs.
“Jist hold on a minit,” said Charlotte, stepping to the kitchen door and
shouting, “Ma’y Ann and Marthy Ann, whar’s you?”
“Here I is, ma’am, I’s comin’, yes ’em,” was responded from an upper
porch, and the two little darkies scuffled down the back stairs.
“Jist you two run down to de orchard whar I kin see you all de time,
hear me? All de time, and look fur dat Dominiker hen’s nest. I hear her
cacklin’ down dar, and don’t neither of you dar’ cum back till you find
it. If you cum back ’fore I call you, I’ll pickle you well. Run!”
Two little guinea blue cotton skirts whisked through a gap in the rose
hedge and emerged in the deep grass of the orchard, before Charlotte
turned back into the kitchen, satisfied they were at a distance,
and still under her observation. Levi Stucker meanwhile, having
carefully tied his two weeks’ earnings in the corner of his red cotton
handkerchief, and shared his last “chaw” of tobacco with William, swung
his bundle from the end of his long whitewash pole and departed, with the
shambling, shuffling gait of the typical Southern negro.
“I’m gwine upstairs, William, and I’ll ramshackle dat room till I find
out what’s dar,” said the woman. She slowly mounted the stairs, down
which the two culprits had so lately descended with flying feet, and
turned into a small room on the servants’ gallery. She glanced around
the bare apartment the two little negroes called their own. There was a
battered trunk against the wall with a damaged cover and no fastening of
any kind, a rickety chair and a bed. Charlotte tore the linsey dresses,
homespun petticoats and check aprons from nails behind the door, shaking
and critically examining each article. In the trunk she found remnants of
rag dolls and broken toys and bits of quilt pieces that had been their
playthings for time out of mind. There were no pockets to examine, no
locks to pry open. “Dey don’t need no pockets to carry dere money in,
and no locked up trunks fur dere jewelry,” Charlotte always said. It was
her habit to go in and out their room freely, to see that it was kept in
some kind of order and the bed regularly made up. The door of the room
was always open, and no means afforded for securing it on the inside.
Notwithstanding these precautions of Charlotte, who practically accepted
the doctrine of infant depravity, there was a mystery concealed in that
room that at intervals almost throttled the two little negroes, and,
strange to say, with all the woman’s vigilance, had slumbered months
within sound of her voice. She rapidly threw the clothes on the window
sill, turned the trunk inside out and pushed its battered frame into the
middle of the floor.
Nothing now remained to be searched but the plain unpainted bed. It was
neatly made up, the coarse brown blankets securely tucked in all around.
Charlotte whisked that off and dragged after it the cotton mattress which
rested on a “sack bottom,” secured by interlacing cords to the bed frame.
There was revealed the hidden secret! Crushed quite flat and sticking to
the sacking, long under pressure of the cotton mattress and the tossing
and tumbling children, what trick of dainty beauty lay before her? It was
so crumpled and smothered, torn and ragged, soiled with fleeces of cotton
lint that had sifted through the bed seams, and covered with dust and
grime that but for glimpses of its original form and color here and there
it would never have been recognized. Charlotte snatched it out and fled
to the porch to see if Ma’y Ann and Marthy Ann were still down in the
orchard. There they lay, prone in the soft grass, happy as only children,
and black ones at that, can be. Four little ebony legs kicked up in the
air, and the sound of merry shouts reached Charlotte’s ear.
“You’ll fly dem laigs to sum purpose yit, fur I lay I’ll git Marse Jim to
giv you a breakdown dat’ll make dem laigs tired,” she said to herself.
“You jist lay dar,” she muttered, as she descended the steps. “You
needn’t waste your time (it’s a awful short one) lookin’ for aigs dat de
ole Dominiker ain’t never laid yit.”
* * * * *
The deep window of the library was wide open, the sash thrown up and
an easy lounging chair drawn to the veranda, on which reposed the
towering form of the planter, lazily smoking a cigar, and looking off
upon the broad, swift river at a passing steamboat, floating so high on
its swelling waves that its deck was almost on a line with the top of
the grass-covered levee. Its passengers, thronging the “guards” in the
fragrance of a fine morning, seemed almost near enough to the spectator
on shore to respond to a friendly nod of the head. The delicate lady of
the mansion sat silently within, also watching the passing boat.
“I see some one waving a paper from the _Belle Creole_. I believe that’s
Green. Yes, he has tied a handkerchief to his crutch, and is waving that.”
The planter rose as he spoke and stood for a moment for a better view.
“Here, give me something, quick, to wave back at him.”
At this critical moment Charlotte appeared on the scene. “This will do,”
he exclaimed, catching the velvet wreck from the astonished woman’s grasp
and tossing it aloft, holding it by the long strings.
“Lord! jist see Marse Jim wid dat bonnet I dun foun’, dat you lost ’fore
grinding time, Miss Liza, and whar you spec it was? Right onder Ma’y
Ann’s bed.”
“My bonnet! for pity’s sake, only look at it. Look!”
“It don’t look much like a bonnet. It’s more like a red rag to make
the turkeys gobble,” replied the master, disdainfully, throwing it to
Charlotte.
“My bonnet I paid Olympe twenty dollars for, and never wore it but once;
see the satin strings! And just look at the cape at the back! And the
feather poppies!”
Charlotte straightened herself up, holding the crumpled bonnet and
turning it around to show its proportions. It was of the “skyscraper”
shape, made on stiff millinette, that is more easily broken than bent.
Mashed sideways, it showed in its flattened state as much of the satin
lining as of velvet cover.
“Levi Stucker ain’t no fool. He tole me and William he heard Ma’y Ann
and Marthy Ann whisperin’ and plannin’ in dere room nights till he was
sure dey was a hatchin’ mischief, ef dey hadn’t already hatched more
snakes dan dey could kiver, so I ’low’d I’d go and ramshackle dat room
o’ theirn, and onder de baid, Marse Jim, ’twixt de sackin’ and de cotton
baid, way onder de very middle, I found dis bonnet what I bin lookin’ fur
ever since grindin’ time. Now, Marse Jim, dere ain’t no use in talkin’ to
dem gals; dere ain’t no use in readin’ no caterkism to ’em, nor in Miss
Liza telling no more tales to ’em ’bout dat liar Anifera, or sum sich
name. No use in whippin’ ’em, nudder. If I’se whipped dem two niggers
once fur not lookin’ fur dis bonnet when I sont ’em to, I’se whipped ’em
forty times. Dat didn’t make ’em find what they hid demselves, and it
ain’t going to do ’em no good now. Marse Jim, you jist got to skeer de
very life outen ’em, and send ’em to de canefields. Dey is rascals and
rogues.”
“Well, Charlotte,” he responded, “put the bonnet on this side, out of
sight, and bring those children here. I’ll see what I can do.”
As Charlotte left he turned to his tender-hearted wife and told her, “It
is important those little negroes should have a lesson that would be of
some use. Charlotte is right on the subject of moral suasion as far as
those little imps are concerned, so don’t let your kindness and sympathy
interfere with my conduct of the case. Keep in the background, and I will
give them a lesson they will not soon forget.”
“I can’t imagine what could have induced those children to make way with
that bonnet,” said Miss Liza, meditatively, as she looked at the crumpled
wreck on the floor.
“Perhaps mischief, perhaps accident. The thing is to make them
acknowledge the theft. Entrenched as they are behind a whole barricade
of lies and deceit, the thing is to make them capitulate,” replied the
husband.
“Cum right in; don’t be modest now. Marse Jim sont fur you,” was heard in
Charlotte’s bantering tone, as she appeared in the doorway, half-leading,
half-dragging the reluctant culprits, who already began to sniff a coming
battle. With some difficulty she marshaled them before the master and
stood close at hand ready to offer moral support if the court of inquiry
gave any signs of weakening, or to cut off retreat on the part of the
little darkies if they became too alarmed to “stand fire.”
“Well, Mary and Martha, where have you been?” inquired Marse Jim, in his
blandest and most conciliatory tone.
“Down in de orchard lookin’ for aigs fur Marm Charlotte.” “And we was
findin’ some when she hollowed fur us to cum to de house.” “De Dominicker
hen got nest in de haige.” “She’s settin’, too.”
“Hold on, hold on, don’t both of you talk at once. I didn’t ask about the
hen’s nest. Have you been all over the orchard in the hot sun?”
“Yes, sir.” “Yes, sir, we goes anywhar fur Marm Charlotte.” “She sont
us.” “Yes, sir, she sont us fur aigs.” “An’ we was findin’ sum too.” “Dat
Dominicker hen——”
With uplifted restraining hand he said: “Hush, don’t both talk at once.
Let me talk some. Did you go away down there without your bonnet?”
“We ain’t got no bonnet.” “Me and Ma’y Ann don’t wear bonnets, Marse Jim.”
“Yes, you have a bonnet. Isn’t this your bonnet?” the master said, in
his quiet, inquiring tone, holding up before their bulging eyes the
dilapidated wreck that they had not dared look at in all the months they
had buried it out of sight. Ma’y Ann steadfastly turned her face away
from the ghost. She bit her lips, but uttered not a word.
“No, Marse Jim—I—I—er, Marse Jim, I feel sick, sick,” stammered Marthy,
as she trembled so she almost fell.
“Sick! Give me your hand.” She quickly recovered, and clasped the tawny
paws behind her back. “Give me your hand; let me feel your pulse.”
Reluctantly she proffered the hand. “There, now,” he said, letting the
limp little hand fall to her side. “You feel chilly, don’t you? Go sit
down on that step.” Marthy sidled slowly away, tears welling her eyes and
her whole frame shaken with suppressed sobs.
“Stop dat cryin’; nobody ain’t doin’ nuthin’ to you; stop dat foolishness
and listen to what Marse Jim is a sayin’ to you two onreasonable
rapscallions,” said Charlotte, in a severe tone. She held Mary Ann (who
was making ready to fly at the first opportunity) by the back of her
neckband.
“Let Martha alone, Charlotte, she is weakening; we’ll talk about the
bonnet to Mary Ann, she knows.”
“No, Marse Jim, I ’clar I never see dat bonnet in all my life; I ’clar I
never did. I ’clar——”
“Hush,” said the master in a stern voice, “let me ask a question or two,
and only answer what I ask.”
“Tell de truth, too,” ejaculated Charlotte, “onless you want de debbil to
kotch you.”
“Give me your hand.” The child clutched at her cotton skirt with both
hands. He reached out, quietly and forcibly took one skinny little black
paw in his firm grasp. Drawing the shrinking, reluctant child toward him,
he fixed his eyes upon her averted face. “Now look me right in the eye;
everybody does that to people who are talking to them; look me in the
eye. What made you hide that bonnet? Look at me when I am talking to you.”
“I didn’t neber see dat bonnet b’fore. I ’clar——”
“Stop, look at me; don’t look at Martha, she’s better.” The child’s eyes
dropped. “Don’t look at the floor, look me in the eye.”
“Marse Jim, slap her; make her look at you.”
“Be quiet, Charlotte; she’s going to tell, I want to help her,” replied
the imperturbable inquisitor in his blandest tones. Still holding the
reluctant hand and drawing the figure more closely to him, he said, “You
say you never saw this bonnet? How came it in your bed?”
There was a long pause. The little negro at last gathered herself up,
and, with a gleam of inspiration, exclaimed: “Marse Jim, de rats put it
dar—de rats runs all over dat floor nights. Me and Marthy Ann jist hears
’em jist toting things all around. Rats put it dar, Marse Jim, big rats.”
“Dat’s a lie,” said Charlotte, positively. “Nary rat on dat floor. Marse
Jim, you jist foolin’ way your time on dese niggers.”
The baffled master turned toward the crouching figure on the steps. She
was still trembling, her face buried in her hands. He saw she was ready
to confess, but he was determined Mary Ann should acknowledge also.
“Have you a mammy, Mary Ann?” he inquired.
“No, Marse Jim; I ain’t got no mammy; I ain’t never had no mammy, and my
daddy, he’s daid, and I ain’t——”
“Hush, I didn’t ask all that. If you haven’t a mammy there’s no one to
care if you die. I am sure I don’t want little girls round the house that
steal and lie. Nobody else would have you; nobody would buy you, and I
can’t keep you here. It’s come to a pretty pass when a lady can’t lay her
bonnet on the bed without you two little imps taking it and hiding it for
months, and lying about it right straight along. You have no mammy to cry
for you, and I don’t want you, and Miss Liza don’t want you. What can be
done with you?”
Martha sobbed, on the veranda step, and Mary looked defiant, but no
response came to that repeated inquiry. After a pause, Mary Ann bridled
up; the matter in question seemed to be taking a broader range; the
bonnet seemed to be merging in generalities, and might in time sink into
the other question of what can be done with them. Martha’s courage also
revived, so she could respond to the inquiry of her parentage.
“I ain’t neber had no daddy, and my mammy she’s married to long Phil now.”
The planter shifted his legs, looked abroad in a meditative way, then
turned to the charge.
“Well, now, you girls want to tell us all you know about this,” holding
up again before them the battered brim and crushed poppies and long,
dingy ribbons. Martha buried her face again, and Mary was suddenly
interested in the gambols of a squirrel in the pecan tree. Neither
culprit would look at the evidence of their guilt. “What will become of
you? I can’t keep you and nobody will buy a rogue; nobody wants you.”
“My mammy wants me, Marse Jim,” whimpered the scared Martha.
“No, your mother is Nancy, isn’t she? She’s a good woman and don’t want
a rogue and a liar tied to her all her days.” Another long pause. “Come
here, Martha, both of you stand by Charlotte and hold her hands. I will
give you one more chance. Which—one—of—you—stole—that bonnet? Did both of
you do it together? Who hid it? What made you do it?” There was a pause
between the questions, not one word of response. Martha’s tears dropped
on her little naked foot, while Mary Ann looked vacantly at the nimble
squirrel in apparent indifference, not a muscle of her face giving any
evidence of emotion.
“Marse Jim,” said Charlotte, whose impatience increased as she saw signs
of action on the part of the inquisitor. “Marse Jim, what you gwine to
do? It’s no use er whippin’ dese gals; dere hides is like cowhide and
whippin’ ain’t no good noways fur liars. Killin’ is good for such.”
The planter rose from his chair, straightened his tired limbs and kicked
the bonnet out of his way. “Bring them along, Charlotte. I’ll see what I
can do.”
Charlotte, with a firm grasp of each child, followed the tall leader,
who, as he turned into the hall, tossed a nod and a significant wink to
his wife. She obediently rose and followed. In all the interview the
mistress had remained a passive but interested spectator, feeling sure
that at a critical moment a signal from her husband would afford her an
opportunity to intervene. The master led his followers straight to the
well-house, under whose vine-clad arbor reposed the dripping bucket,
attached by a windlass to an endless chain.
“I think it best to drown them,” he quietly remarked. The little group
filled the arbor. William and Billy, the gardener; Delia, the laundress;
Lucy, the maid; Sawny, the “woodpile boy” and Oliver, who “went wid de
buggy,” attracted by the spectacle, gathered around the outskirts. The
story of the finding of the long lost bonnet had spread over the yard
and premises; fragments had even wafted to “the quarters,” with the
mysterious rapidity and certainty that always attended a household event
in the old plantation days.
“Mary Ann first,” said the master, as catching her suddenly and firmly by
the neckband of her dress and imprisoning her struggling legs by wrapping
her skirts tightly around them, he held her over the well-hole, head a
little down. The struggles and writhings of the child were of no avail in
the grasp of the strong man. “I want you to tell the truth and promise
never to tell another lie before I drop you down this well.” The child
squirmed and screamed in the relentless clutch, swearing entire ignorance
of the whole matter. Charlotte felt she must pile on the agony, so she
saw “de debbil down dar wid his pitchfork, ready to ketch her.” That
vision was too much for the now thoroughly alarmed little darky.
“I tuck it, Marse Jim, I tuck it,” she screamed.
“Will you ever steal again?” still holding her over the well, where in
her own little reflection in the placid water she was convinced to her
dying day she had seen “de debbil.”
“Neber, neber, ’fore God, neber agin.”
“Never tell another lie if I let you off?”
“Neber, Marse Jim; neber’s long as I lib. Please the Lord and Miss Liza,
I’ll be a good little nigger; neber lie agin if you’ll lemme off dis
time.”
While that harrowing scene was being enacted with the most determined and
refractory of the little witches, and the spectators on the outskirts
were convulsed with laughter—every one of them had at one time or another
been suspected of the theft—Martha, the tearful, was on her knees,
holding despairingly to Miss Liza’s skirts and imploring her “Jist to
save me dis time, I’ll be good, I’ll neber tell anoder lie. I’se got a
mammy dat will cry fur me, and I don’t want ter die. Oh! save me frum
de debbil,” she screamed, when Charlotte’s voice proclaimed him at the
bottom of the well. “Don’t let de debbil have your good little nigger.”
Confessions and promises being obtained, Mary Ann was placed upon
her feet. Four little black legs flew down the backyard; two little
guinea-blue skirts flipped over the cowyard fence and two little dusky
spots vanished in the distance. William called after them to “clip it
’fore de debbil gits outen dat well.” Charlotte held her sides with
outbursts of laughter that had been held in painful restraint.
“De debbil done skeer ’em more en Marse Jim,” Sawny remarked, as he
shambled back to the woodpile.
“I think, my dear,” said the planter, linking his arm into that of his
wife and returning to the library with her, “I think those children had a
lesson that may last them all their lives. They had to be scared into a
confession.”
“I hated to see them badgered,” she replied. “I dropped a few tears over
Martha myself—perhaps,” with a smile, “she thought I was scared too.”
Charlotte came in and picked up the wreck. “Miss Liza, I’se goin’ to take
dis bonnet, jist as it is, all tousled up and mashed and I’m gwine to
make Ma’y Ann war it one day and Marthy Ann de next clean till dey gits
sick o’ bonnets; dey shall war it till de chillen come home Sat-day. I
’spose dere’ll be sum laffin’ done when de chillen sees Ma’y Ann wid dat
bonnet tied on her haid.”
Another winter had come and gone, and June was again filling the old
plantation with its intoxicating odors and delicious melody. The little
room on the back porch was darkened by a heavy curtain at the only
window. A table drawn up by the rough wooden bed, made gay by a patchwork
quilt, held a few medicine bottles, a cup and spoon; also a tumbler
of pink and white roses. The quiet mistress moved about noiselessly,
occasionally putting her cool hand upon the brow of the little sick
negro, or gently stroking the thin, black fingers that lay listlessly
upon the bright coverlet.
“Miss Liza, whar Ma’y Ann?” The lady turned her face from the questioner.
After a moment’s hesitation she replied, cheerfully: “She’s all right,
Martha.”
“Miss Liza, whar is she? Whar Ma’y Ann?”
“She’s down by the quarters now,” was the unsatisfactory response. The
weary patient closed her eyes for a few moments, but it was evident that
with the first consciousness, following a severe illness, the child’s
thoughts turned to her old companion.
“She ain’t bin here sence I was tuk sick.” After a pause, “I want ter
talk to Ma’y Ann ’bout sumthin’.”
“Tell me,” said the mistress, soothingly, “what it was you wanted to see
Mary for.”
Both the little negroes had been ill of scarlet fever. The children of
the household had not been allowed for weeks to come home for their
Saturday holidays. Martha fell ill first, and Mary was removed into the
room formerly occupied by Levi Stucker, where she soon fell a victim to
the disease. The mistress and Charlotte only were allowed to minister to
the invalids. Mary, the robust one of the two, the more mischievous, the
one apparently better equipped for a struggle with disease, succumbed,
after a few days of delirium. The busy hands were stilled, the flying
feet arrested, the voluble tongue silenced, at the touch of the Angel
of Death. The little body was carried past the “quarters” and beyond,
to the negroes’ “burying ground,” where it lay in peaceful shadows of
the trees the romping children loved so well. Martha lingered long on
the mysterious border, fitfully fighting an apparently hopeless battle,
the more tenderly and faithfully nursed by Mammy Charlotte, as the
warm-hearted, childless woman realized the frail tenure of life held by
the little negro whom she had ruled in varying moods of sternness and
tenderness, untempered with judgment. With the fretful peevishness of
convalescence, the sick child whined repeated desires to know “Whar Ma’y
Ann?”
“What is it you want to tell Mary Ann to-day, when she is not here? Can’t
you tell me?” said the patient watcher.
“I jist want ter see her; I’se gwine ter tell you ’bout dat bonnet, Miss
Liza, and she ain’t here, and I mout die; sometimes folkses dies of broke
laigs, and my laigs is broke. I want Ma’y Ann ter know I ain’t goin’
outen dis world wid dat bonnet on my soul.”
The mistress drew closer to the bedside, stroked and patted the
attenuated hand in a soothing way to quiet and compose the restless
invalid.
“Maybe it’s jist as good Ma’y Ann ain’t here, Miss Liza. I kin tell de
tale better’n when she is here to jine in.” After a pause, apparently to
marshal her thoughts more clearly, the child proceeded: “Dat time Miss
Ellen cum here, she tuk outen her trunk a red bonnet, and she sed she
had two on ’em jist alike, dat her chillen had wore out, and she fotched
’em fur me and Ma’y Ann. I was in dar and seed de bonnet, and you tuk
hit, don’t you ’member, Miss Liza? You tuk hit and sed no, Ma’y Ann and
me had no use fur bonnets, and you know’d two pore little white gals
at your church dat didn’t have none, and you was goin’ ter give ’em to
dem. I went out and tole Ma’y Ann all ’bout hit, and she ’low’d if we
had bonnets we cud go to church too. Well, we talked tergedder ’bout dose
bonnets, and we plan we’d take ’em ennyhow, fust time we seed ’em. Well,
one night Ma’y Ann runned right in here, in dat very door. I was in here
den. I shet de door and stood against it, and onder her apern she had de
bonnet. She didn’t find only one, but she grabbed dat. I tole her dat was
the bery one Miss Ellen took outen her trunk, and me and Ma’y Ann, we
tried it on our haids, ’fore dat bery piece o’ lookin’ glass stickin’ on
de wall dere, and we ’greed ter watch till we kotch de udder one, so we
hid it in dat trunk dar, behind you, Miss Liza, and ev’ry day we tried
hit on. I want ter tell you all ’bout hit ’fore Ma’y Ann gits back frum
de quarters. I dun know how long we kep’ hit in dat trunk, ontil one day
dere was a awful fuss, eberybody skeered up, lookin’ fur your bonnet,
dat was missin’. Me and Ma’y Ann was glad. We couldn’t find one of our
bonnets now your’n wuz gone, too.”
“Didn’t you know you had taken my bonnet?” said the mistress, who was at
last seeing through the mystery.
“Jist let me tell you de whole thing, Miss Liza. I bin layin’ here long
time thinkin’ de straight uv hit, so Ma’y Ann can’t bodder me when I
telled it to you. Ma’y Ann is dat sondacious she most make you b’lieve
anythin’. No, Miss Liza, we never thought dat till one day I hear Miss
Ellen say how nice dem red bonnets she brung did look on de Quiggins gals
at church. Den Marm Charlotte, she begun agin ’bout your bonnet bein’
missed and she searchin’ fur hit all de time, and I hear her tell Sawny
it wuz red and had black flowers on hit. Me and Ma’y Ann took de bonnet
outen de trunk dat night and dere wuz de black flowers, jist like she
sed, den we know’d you had give Miss Ellen’s bonnets to the Quigginses,
and Ma’y Ann had stole your’n. We hefted dis baid and put de bonnet under
hit, and, please Gord, Miss Liza, I neber seed dat bonnet agin till Marse
Jim shuck hit at us dat day.”
“Why didn’t you come tell me what you had done, and why you had done it,
when you first found it out?”
“Miss Liza, we was afeerd. Marm Charlotte kep’ sayin’ whoever had dat
bonnet wud be hung, and de odder negroes talked back. Thank de Lord, dey
never seed hit, so Ma’y Ann and me didn’t dar let on.”
“Didn’t you expect it would be found out some day?”
“Yes’em, I ’spec we did.”
XXX
WHEN LEXINGTON WON THE RACE
Every Kentucky woman loves a horse, and when Lexington was entered in the
great State stake in 1854 a crowd of the _crême de la crême_ of the Blue
Grass country clamored to be present at the race. The St. Charles Hotel,
then in the hands of those genial hosts, Messrs. Hall and Hildreth,
was crowded for the event, beyond its capacity, for when that Kentucky
contingent of women, unheralded and unexpected, swarmed into its broad
parlor and halls, even the servants’ quarters, so near the roof that the
only light admitted was skylight, were put into requisition. There was
enough Blue Grass blood in my family to compel a rush to the city, and we
had a “sky parlor,” right next to the one occupied by Gen. John H. Morgan
(simply “John” then. He won his spurs and title a decade or so later) and
his Kentucky wife. It took us “forever and a day” to mount the stairs to
our roosts, and we were so tired when we arrived that we actually found
the quarters acceptable.
All the Breckinridges, Wards, Flournoys, Johnsons and Hunts in Kentucky
were more or less financially interested in the superb racer. Those who
did not own one drop of Lexington’s blood, nor one hair of his tail,
“put their money” on the horse, and therewith a financial interest was
created. Every man, it seemed, in the place, that could spare the time,
wanted to see the great race. “Lee Count,” as a good many Kentuckians
call Le Comte, was the most prominent rival of their boasted and
beloved Lexington, and he showed mettle that astonished even those
blind partisans, and added zest to the wagers. Ladies had never been in
evidence at a horse race in Louisiana. The bare idea was a shock to the
Creole mind, that dominated and controlled all the fashionable, indeed,
all the respectable, minds in New Orleans at that day. But the Kentucky
belles had minds of their own. Every mortal one of them felt a personal
interest, and a personal pride, and a personal ambition in that Kentucky
horse, though probably not ten out of the scores who rushed to see him
race had ever seen him before, and when he did appear on the paddock he
had to be pointed out to those enthusiastic admirers.
What a host of dashing, high-bred, blue-blooded Kentucky women swarmed
the parlors, halls, rotunda of that, the finest hotel in all the land!
How they talked, in the soft, Southern accent, so peculiarly their own!
How they laughed! How they moved about, seemingly knowing everybody they
met. How they bet! Gloves, fans, money, too, on their horse, when they
found any one in all the crowd that was not a “Lexington horse” man.
Those bright women dominated everything in their enthusiasm. I recall a
host of them.
There was a lamentable scarcity of conveyances. Those Kentucky people who
had never felt the lack of vehicles and horses, had apparently made small
provision for travel to the course, so at the moment of departure, when
a large party was almost driven to despair, Messrs. Hall and Hildreth
ordered out the hotel stage, which was one of the “nine-passenger” type.
A nine-passenger coach, one of the kind that was in vogue in the days of
Pickwick, afforded seats inside for nine persons, and could accommodate
as many outside as chose to pile on. The celerity with which those
Kentucky women filled that coach and the Kentucky men covered the top
was a sight worth seeing. No doubt when that stage rattled and bumped
over the cobblestones, en route to Metaire, many a cautious Creole mamma
made her innocent mam’zelles repair to the backyard while she hastily
closed the shutters. It was like a circus van, though no circus had ever
paraded those decorous streets.
Richard Tenbroeck (also a Kentuckian), who was associated in the
management of the course, was on hand to receive the merry crowd from
his own State, furnish it with grandstand seats and make it welcome in
every way. According to my recollection the Kentucky women were the only
females present, so very unfashionable it was for ladies to go to races
in the extreme South. There may have been some _demi-mondaines_ scattered
here and there, in inconspicuous places.
The race, the only one I had ever witnessed, was tremendously exciting,
and as the gallant horses swept round the last lap, Lexington, ever
so little, in the lead, the uproar became quite deafening. One of the
Johnson women, beautiful and enthusiastic, sprang upon the bench and
said to her equally excited escort, “Hold me while I holler.” He threw
his strong arms about her and steadied her feet. “Now, holler”—and never
did I hear the full compass of the female voice before, nor since. Such
excitement, as we all know, is contagious, and it continued for days
after the great achievement that put dear old Lexington in the front
rank, and filled the pocketbooks of his owners, abettors and admirers.
Of course, this race was practically an all-day venture, and, equally
of course, people got hungry; and throats, most particularly Kentucky
throats, awfully dry. Mr. Tenbroeck provided liberally for such a
contingency, so a luncheon was served al fresco, with lots of champagne,
which latter did not dampen the ardor of those terribly dry throats.
We assembled in little groups around the viands, and there were jokes
and puns and stories that varied the monotony of horse talk, that had
dominated every other topic for days. In all the circles there was fun
and frolic. Kentuckians can be very hilarious. The unique vehicle that
carried our party back to the hotel rocked and tumbled tipsily along.
The sprightly crowd that departed in a somewhat steady condition in the
forenoon were sleepily tired when they gained their sky parlors later in
the day. A brief rest must have revived them, for as we passed through
the hall to a rather late breakfast the following morning, trays of empty
glasses and bottles, flanked by freshly blacked boots and shoes, afforded
evidence that more refreshments had been absorbed later, and the parties
had returned to the Land of Nod.
XXXI
LOUISIANA STATE FAIR FIFTY YEARS AGO
It was in 1859 or 1860—I cannot fix the exact dates of many events
immediately prior to the war, for the rush of an overwhelming waste
carried dates, as everything else, away, but it was before the war that
several enterprising and advanced citizens of Louisiana planned and
organized and “resolved” themselves into a committee to stimulate the
indolent agricultural population to a more active life, by inaugurating
a series of State agricultural and mechanical exhibitions, patterned
as near as might be on the annual State and county fairs of Kentucky,
Missouri and other enterprising agricultural States. Mr. John A.
Dougherty, Major Sam Hart, George W. Ward, John Perkins, my husband, Mr.
James McHatton and his brother Charles, Wm. A. Pike and others whose
names escape me now, secured from the United States government, through
the joint efforts of Hon. John Slidell and J. P. Benjamin, United States
Senators from Louisiana, and Thomas Green Davidson, Representative of
the Sixth District, temporary use of the then practically abandoned
Barracks in Baton Rouge, as being the most available site in the State
for the purpose of an experimental fair. Only a corporal’s guard had been
stationed there, to furl and unfurl the flag and to fire the evening
gun, as evidence that the grounds were United States property. In those
precincts and under those auspices, were held the first and the last and
only “Louisiana State Agricultural and Mechanical Fair.”
There came from New Orleans many exhibitors of farming implements and
products; from plantations, whose owners happened to be “wide awake,”
cattle, horses, sugar, molasses, and all such; from the small farmer who
occasionally read the papers, and thereby kept in touch with the march
of events, pigs and poultry; and from the homes of enterprising women,
all sorts of fancy work and domestic articles. There were quite handsome
prizes of silver, worth competing for, offered by the managers. The
parade ground was ample to “show off” harness horses. An area was fenced
off for cattle, and side-show places assigned for pigs and poultry. The
Barrack buildings, two stories in height, surrounding the enclosure,
offered abundant room for the exhibit of farming utensils, harness, etc.
Rooms were appropriated for the luncheons and lounging places of friends
and guests.
The first two days were rather disappointing, so few people understood
just what was being attempted, but the number of the exhibitors increased
day by day, so that, before the final day, the managers had reason to be
enthusiastic at the success and consequent promise for future State fairs.
Old Mr. Kleinpeter, of the high lands, entered a sow with a litter of
nine pigs, whereupon Granville Pierce “went one better” with a sow and
fourteen pigs. To be sure, the pigs varied in size, and people made merry
over the pig exhibit! From the “Cottage” plantation (Cottage, by the way,
was a tremendous big house) came a hogshead of prize open kettle brown
sugar. Immediately “Whitehall” plantation saw it could beat that—and next
day a hogshead of the “Whitehall” brand was entered. It was thus the
project expanded to creditable dimensions. An enterprising lady who had
won a silver spoon prize at a similar fair in the West, entered a dressy
bonnet, made entirely of fine corn shucks; bows, flowers, feathers and
all! Whereupon, a smart miss from Grosse Tête sent three home-made sun
bonnets. The domestic exhibit thus resolved itself into a competitive
show. A Jew in town had met with indifferent success in a sewing machine
venture (sewing machines were in their immaturity then, and not coveted
by women who had domestics to order), till the happy thought of a chance
at the fair. Soon there was a sewing machine on exhibition—a “Finkle and
Lyon”—I don’t forget the make, now happily out of existence, for in an
evil moment, moved by the Jew’s persuasive eloquence, I invested in a
“Finkle and Lyon” which I quickly found could only be made to “run” by
copious drenchings of olive oil, aided by the warm rays of the sun!
All the citizens of Baton Rouge entertained guests for the fair week, the
Harney House and other small hostelries being totally inadequate. Several
New Orleans merchants showed great interest in the venture. Cuthbert
Slocomb entered a fine exhibit of plows, hoes and other farming tools,
that were in his line of trade. So, also, did the firm of Slark, Day and
Stauffer; Henderson & Gaines sent of their stock, as also did many others
whose business brought them in contact with the agricultural world. The
cattle display was quite surprisingly good, as were also the harness
horses. The inexperienced judges of such stock were often criticised
for their decisions, but the people were amiable and in a mood to enjoy
everything.
Such an outpouring from the “Cajin” settlements on the river, and
on Bayou Tête and Bayou Fordoche, and such other communities of
small pretensions, and still smaller achievements, never, I am sure,
had invaded Baton Rouge before. It was as “good as a play” to watch
their interest and enthusiasm, to see the greetings of families and
friends, who lived beyond the reach of a ramshackle _voiture_ and a
worn-out horse. I do not recall the season of the year that immortal
fair occurred, but it must have been in late winter, for I remember
a small dish of radishes on my lunch table, such a rarity that Col.
Sparks ate every one. How one does recall, after a lapse of years,
such insignificant things! Some of the _bon vivants_, like Dr. French,
Mr. Bonnecage, and Dr. Harney, regretted that the enterprise was not
postponed till artichokes and river shrimp were in season.
It seems almost immediately after that I accompanied my delegate husband
to that ill-starred Democratic convention in Charleston, and almost the
next day that the Hon. J. P. Benjamin made his soul-stirring speech
in Congress, that magnificent burst of impassioned oratory, whose
prediction was never verified; almost the next day that Hon. John Slidell
returned to Louisiana a sad, despondent man, and old Tom Green Davidson
hobbled back to Baton Rouge on his crutches, so full of bitterness and
hate—almost the next day that the flag that waved so gloriously over
the parade ground where the hopes and aspirations of those enterprising
citizens took flight, was hauled down.——
And after that—the Deluge!
XXXII
THE LAST CHRISTMAS
Christmas before the war. There never will be another in any land, with
any peoples, like the Christmas of 1859—on the old plantation. Days
beforehand preparations were in progress for the wedding at the quarters,
and the ball at the “big house.” Children coming home for the holidays
were both amused and delighted to learn that Nancy Brackenridge was to
be the quarter bride. “Nancy a bride! Oh, la!” they exclaimed. “Why
Nancy must be forty years old.” And she was going to marry Aleck, who,
if he would wait a year or two, might marry Nancy’s daughter. While the
young schoolgirls were busy “letting out” the white satin ball dress
that had descended from the parlor dance to the quarter bride, and were
picking out and freshening up the wreath and corsage bouquet of lilies
of the valley that had been the wedding flowers of the mistress of the
big house, and while the boys were ransacking the distant woods for
holly branches and magnolia boughs, enough for the ballroom as well as
the wedding supper table, the family were busy with the multitudinous
preparations for the annual dance, for which Arlington, with its ample
parlors and halls, and its proverbial hospitality, was noted far and wide.
The children made molasses gingerbread and sweet potato pies, and one
big bride’s cake, with a real ring in it. They spread the table in the
big quarters nursery, and the boys decorated it with greenery and a
lot of cut paper fly catchers, laid on the roast mutton and pig, and
hot biscuits from the big house kitchen, and the pies and cakes of the
girls’ own make. The girls proceeded to dress Nancy Brackenridge, pulling
together that refractory satin waist which, though it had been “let out”
to its fullest extent, still showed a sad gap, to be concealed by a
dextrous arrangement of some discarded hair ribbons. Nancy was black as a
crow and had rather a startling look in that dazzling white satin dress
and the pure white flowers pinned to her kinks. At length the girls gave
a finishing pat to the toilet, and their brothers pronounced her “bully,”
and called Marthy Ann to see how fine her mammy was.
As was the custom, the whole household went to the quarters to witness
the wedding. Lewis, the plantation preacher, in a cast-off swallow-tail
coat of Marse Jim’s that was uncomfortably tight, especially about the
waist line, performed the ceremony. Then my husband advanced and made
some remarks, to the effect that this marriage was a solemn tie, and
there must be no shirking of its duties; they must behave and be faithful
to each other; he would have no foolishness. These remarks, though by
no means elegant, fitted the occasion to a fraction. There were no high
flights of eloquence which the darky mind could not reach, it was plain,
unvarnished admonition.
The following morning, Christmas Day, the field negroes were summoned to
the back porch of the big house, where Marse Jim, after a few preliminary
remarks, distributed the presents—a head handkerchief, a pocketknife,
a pipe, a dress for the baby, shoes for the growing boy (his first
pair, maybe), etc., etc., down the list. Each gift was received with a
“Thankee, sir,” and, perhaps, also a remark anent its usefulness. Then
after Charlotte brought forth the jug of whisky and the tin cups, and
everyone had a comforting dram, they filed off to the quarters, with a
week of holiday before them and a trip to town to do their little buying.
[Illustration: JAMES ALEXANDER MCHATTON]
The very last Christmas on the old plantation we had a tree. None of
us had ever seen a Christmas tree; there were no cedars or pines, so we
finally settled upon a tall althea bush, hung presents on it, for all
the house servants, as well as for the family and a few guests. The tree
had to be lighted up, so it was postponed till evening. The idea of the
house servants having such a celebration quite upset the little negroes.
I heard one remark, “All us house niggers is going to be hung on a tree.”
Before the dawn of another Christmas the negroes had become discontented,
demoralized and scattered, freer than the whites, for the blacks
recognized no responsibilities whatever. The family had abandoned the old
plantation home. We could not stand the changed condition of things any
longer, and the Federals had entered into possession and completed the
ruin. Very likely some reminiscent darky told new-found friends, “All
de house niggers was hung on a tree last Christmas.” I have heard from
Northern lips even more astonishing stories of maltreated slaves than a
wholesale hanging.
Frequently before the holidays some of the negroes were questioned as to
what they would like to have, and the planter would make notes and have
the order filled in the city. That, I think, was the custom at Whitehall
plantation. I was visiting there on one occasion when a woman told Judge
Chinn she wanted a mourning veil. “A mourning veil!” he replied. “I
thought you were going to marry Tom this Christmas?” “I is, marster,
but you know Jim died last grinding, and I ain’t never mourned none for
Jim. I want to mourn some ’fore I marries ag’in.” I did not remain to
see, but I do not doubt she got the mourning veil and had the melancholy
satisfaction of wearing it around the quarter lot a few days before she
married Tom.
After the departure of our happy negroes, whose voices and laughter could
be heard long after the yard gate was closed and they had vanished out
of sight, we rushed around like wild to complete preparations for the
coming ball guests. They began to arrive in the afternoon from down the
coast and from the opposite side of the river. Miles and miles some of
them drove in carriages, with champagne baskets, capital forerunners
of the modern suit case, tied on behind, and, like as not, a dusky
maid perched on top of it; poor thing, the carriage being full, she
had to travel in that precarious way, holding on for dear life. Those
old-time turtle-back vehicles had outside a small single seat for the
coachman only. Parties came also in skiffs, with their champagne baskets
and maids. Long before time for the guests from town to appear mammas
and maids were busy in the bedrooms, dressing their young ladies for
the occasion. Meanwhile the plantation musicians were assembling, two
violins, a flute, a triangle, and a tambourine. A platform had been
erected at one end of the rooms, with kitchen chairs and cuspidors, for
their accommodation. Our own negroes furnished the dance music, but we
borrowed Col. Hicky’s Washington for the tambourine. He was more expert
than any “end man” you ever saw. He kicked it and butted it and struck
it with elbow and heel, and rattled it in perfect unison with the other
instruments, making more noise, and being himself a more inspiring sight,
than all the rest of the band put together. Col. Hicky always said it was
the only thing Washington was fit for, and he kept the worthless negro
simply because he was the image (in bronze) of Gen. Lafayette. Col. Hicky
was an octogenarian, and had seen Gen. Lafayette, so he could not have
been mistaken. When Washington flagged, a few drops of whisky was all he
needed to refresh his energies.
The whirl of the dance waxed as the night waned. The tired
paterfamiliases sat around the rooms, too true to their mission to retire
for a little snooze. They were restored to consciousness at intervals by
liberal cups of strong coffee. Black William, our first violin, called
out the figures, “Ladies to the right!” “Set to your partners!”—and the
young people whirled and swung around in the giddy reel as though they
would never have such another opportunity to dance—as, indeed, many of
them never did. From the porch and lawn windows black faces gazed at the
inspiring scene. They never saw the like again, either.
Laughing, wide-awake girls and tired fathers and mothers started homeward
at the first blush of dawn, when they could plainly see their way over
the roads. I started too early from a party the year before, and the
buggy I was in ran over a dust-colored cow lying asleep in the road. The
nodding maid again perilously perched on top the champagne basket, and
skiffs with similar freight plied across the broad river as soon as there
was sufficient light to enable them to dodge a passing steamboat.
The last ball was a noble success. We danced on and on, never thinking
this was to be our last dance in the big house. Clouds were hovering all
about us the following Christmas. No one had the heart to dance then.
The negroes had already become restless and discontented. After that the
Deluge! The big house long ago slid into the voracious Mississippi. The
quarters where the wedding feast was spread are fallen into ruins, the
negroes scattered or dead. The children, so happy and so busy then,
are now old people—the only ones left to look on this imperfectly drawn
picture with any personal interest. We lived, indeed, a life never to be
lived again.
XXXIII
A WEDDING IN WAR TIME
“Marse Green says cum right away; he’s gwine to marry Miss Fanny to de
Captain.”
“When?”
“Soon’s I kin git de preacher. I can’t wait for you; I ain’t got no
preacher yit.”
That was a summons I had one hot day in early summer, in war times.
Yankees in New Orleans; gunboats almost hourly reported “jist ’round de
p’int”; and we people distractedly hanging on the ragged edge of alarm
and anxiety, did not pause to think how impossible it was for us to know
what was happening “jist ’round de p’int,” for all information about
things beyond our physical eyesight was questionable. In the rush of
uncertain and unlooked-for events, we could not plan any future, even
one day ahead, so overwhelmed were we in mind and estate (not to mention
body) with the strenuousness of the pitiful present.
I hastily changed my dress and was ready when my carriage was brought to
the door. “Marse Green” (I will not give the full name; everybody in
his old district knows who I mean), was a lawyer, a politician, a man of
family, while not a family man, and his little cottage home in town was
presided over, the best they knew how, by his three daughters, the eldest
of whom was scarcely out of her teens. The disturbed state of the country
had compelled me to stay quietly as I could at my plantation home, and
in the absorbing and frequent rumor of Yankees coming, no real town news
and gossip sifted in. Thus I had not heard that Miss Fanny’s fiancé, a
wounded soldier, was at Marse Green’s.
I was driven at a rapid pace up the road and through the restless,
crowded street throngs to the home of these motherless girls, whose New
England governess had returned North. I had long been their mother’s
dearest friend, and a refuge for her daughters in all their troubles and
perplexities. We were completely cut off from any reliable information of
the doings of the world, almost at our doors. Everybody knew New Orleans
had fallen and Butler was treading the prostrate people with hoofs of
iron, and also it was only a matter of time when his rule would reach our
town only 130 miles off. As a matter of course, under such circumstances,
we were alive to any startling rumor.
Marse Green, who did things by fits and starts, and did them very
thoroughly, too, when he started, had announced to his daughters on
the morning of my visit that they must be ready by early dawn the
following day to move themselves and everything else they might need
to his plantation on the Amite. Then the man of family shook the dust
of further assistance from his feet and proceeded to his office for
the day’s enlightenments. Of course, all business of a legal nature
was suspended. The few able-bodied men lingering outside the rank of
fighters, who were facetiously called “Druthers,” because they’d druther
not fight, or in other words, would druther stay at home, had dropped in
Marse Green’s office to while pleasantly away their idle time. The old
gentleman hobbled on his crutches to his favorite chair and was telling
his lounging visitors that gunboats being “jist ’round de p’int,” he was
sending his family out of harm’s way, when some one casually remarked,
“What you going to do with the Captain? He can’t stay here, a paroled
soldier, and he can’t go with those young girls that way.” “By gracious!”
Marse Green had not thought of that. The Captain must marry Fanny right
away, or run the risk of being captured, for he had no place to go. In
pursuance of that sudden plan, an emissary was dispatched to summon me,
and to get the Methodist preacher. Messengers were also sent with flying
feet among the few near neighbors, asking their presence that afternoon,
while Marse Green himself rushed back home to announce the decision to
his family.
I arrived in a scene of confusion beyond words to express. Already some
kindly neighbors were there helping the distracted girls to pack. Trunks,
boxes, bags, barrels, baskets, were in every room with piles and piles
of household and personal articles to be stowed. Everybody was busy and
everybody stumbling and tearing about in every other body’s way. Marse
Green had already descended upon them with his ultimatum, and worse
became the confusion with this new and unexpected element injected into
it. Dear Fanny must be married in white, so every one declared. Then
ensued a ransacking of trunks and drawers for a pretty white lawn she
had—somewhere! At length it was brought to light in a very crumpled
condition, not having been worn since the winter (the last Buchanan
winter) Fanny spent in Washington with her father. There was no time or
opportunity or place, apparently, to press the wrinkles out and make the
really handsome gown presentable. Then there arose a clamor and frantic
search for white stockings. Nobody had the temerity to mention white
kid gloves. They were of the past, as completely as a thousand other
necessities we had learned to do without. The black dress was laid aside.
Fanny looked very lovely in her white gown, the most calm and composed of
any of us.
The dazed, bewildered and half-sick Captain meandered around in his dingy
Confederate gray, the only suit he had. His skull had been fractured in
battle (I think at Shiloh), the hair had been shaved off one side of his
head and a silver plate covered and protected the wound. Time was passing
swifter than the motions of the little party, fast as they were. All the
packing and loading of wagons had to be completed for the early morning
start. The rest of us could stay in our homes and run our chances—which
we did, woe is me!—but Marse Green’s girls must be off, in accordance
with his dictum, and, of course, a Confederate officer had to get out of
the enemy’s reach.
Meanwhile the other invited neighbors were arriving, and also an
Episcopal minister. Mr. Crenshaw, the Methodist preacher, could not
be found. He had spent hours haranguing the few peace-loving Jews,
superannuated cripples and handful of “Druthers” remaining in town,
telling those incapables or insufficients they were not patriotic
to stand aside and let the enemy’s gunboats land at our wharf, but
it appears when the latter really were “just behind de p’int,” the
voluble gentleman’s discretion got the better of his valor, and he had
ingloriously fled.
One kindly neighbor, a late arrival, whispered to another, who had been
there all day helping, “Any refreshments?” Not a soul had thought of
refreshments; we isolated housekeepers had not even heard the name for
so long that it had not occurred to us to talk of furnishing what we
could not procure. The late comer rushed home and quickly returned with
the half of a cornmeal pound-cake and a pitcher of brown sugar lemonade.
Then the minister required some one to give the bride away. That was not
in Marse Green’s Methodist service, and besides Marse Green was getting
mortally tired and fractious, so, without my knowing it, Mr. McHatton
volunteered to perform that function. We guests who had been behind
the scenes, and were getting to be mortally tired and fractious, too,
assembled in the hastily-cleared parlor to witness the ceremony.
I was struck with amazement to see my husband, who had been the busiest
man there all day, march into the room with dear, pretty Fanny on his
arm! I never did know where the necessary ring came from, but somebody
produced a plain gold ring, which, no doubt, was afterwards returned
with appropriate thanks. The Captain was a strikingly handsome man, even
with a bandaged head and those ill-fitting clothes, not even store-made,
and we all agreed Fanny looked very placid and happy. Their healths were
drunk in tepid lemonade (did you ever drink brown sugar lemonade? If
your grandmother is a Southern woman I’ll be bound she has). There was
a hurried “God bless you!” and a kiss, and I had to rush home to two
wounded brothers needing my care.
Some near neighbors stayed to assist in the further preparations for an
early flight. I afterwards heard the entire family, groom and all, were
at work all night, and at early dawn Marse Green was able to start the
loaded wagons to the piny, sandy country. The bride and groom and two
young sisters piled into the ramshackle old family carriage, and were
driven off, a ten hours’ trip to Amite. I trust they made it before
night, but it was many years thereafter before I knew anything further of
them.
I asked my husband, afterwards, when we talked the wedding over, who
paid the minister? We had not seen yet a Confederate soldier with as
much money as a wedding fee in his pocket. “I don’t think the Captain
had a dollar,” he replied, “so I whispered him to be easy; we would
attend to the minister.” No hat was passed around, but someone produced a
fifty-dollar Confederate bill—unless it was parted with very promptly it
was not worth fifty cents to the preacher.
The gunboats the frantic negroes had so long heralded, got “round de
p’int” at last, and a battle ensued in the very streets of our town.
Marse Green’s house happened to be in the thick of it, and consequently
was so riddled that it was put permanently out of commission. The family
never returned to it, even to view the ruins.
At the time of the exposition I accidentally met the Captain and his wife
on a street car in New Orleans. At Napoleon avenue the car stopped and
the passengers were leaving. I asked in a general way, knowing no one,
“Do we change cars here?” A voice, whose owner was out of sight, promptly
replied, “Yes, madam, you wait for me.” I was thus the last passenger to
descend, and to my unspeakable amazement I was received by the Captain
and Fanny! She said, though she did not see me, she had recognized my
voice, and she reminded me that it was almost twenty-one years since
we parted. It was sweet to know that the marriage in haste had not the
proverbial sequel of repentance at leisure. They were a happy couple.
The whole wedding affair was a painful and pitiful episode, and for
years I had thought of it with a tinge of sadness; but a few years ago,
on a later visit to New Orleans, I had the happiness to meet a dear old
friend who was one of the busiest helpers on the occasion, and we merrily
laughed over the recalled incidents that at the time were so pathetic.
The handsome Captain may be living; I have since lost track of him, but
every other soul that was at that wedding has gone where there’s no
marrying or giving in marriage—I, only, am left to chronicle this wedding
in war-time.
XXXIV
SUBSTITUTES
Mrs. Walker sent me a pan of flour! It was the first time in months and
almost the last time in years that I saw flour. These, you must know,
were war times, and flour was not the only necessary we lacked. Dear Dr.
Stone had a bluff, hearty way of arriving at things. When the Federals
were in New Orleans he was often called for a surgical consultation, or
to administer to an officer, with headache or backache, for they were
mortally afraid of yellow fever, and it was just the season for it; and
their regimental surgeons were not familiar with the scourge. Dr. Stone
frequently “made a bargain” before he would act, and so I do not doubt
in that way he obtained permission to ship a barrel of flour—for which
all of us were famishing—to Mrs. Stone’s sister on the coast. Mrs. Walker
most generously shared it with her neighbors.
Indians had lived on cornmeal and prospered therewith. Negroes had
lived on cornmeal and prospered also. We were living on cornmeal and
not prospering, for we had been brought up on (metaphorically speaking)
nectar and ambrosia. Our cakes even, everybody had to have cakes! were
made of cornmeal and molasses.... But I want to tell more about our Dr.
Stone. When one Northern officer sent for him to consult about amputating
a leg the doctor told him, in his blunt, positive way, he would not even
examine the wounded member until he had in his pocket a permit for Mrs.
Stone and the ladies associated with her to visit the Parish Prison and
minister to the Confederates confined there. It was the only time any of
us ever heard of a body asking the privilege of entering that dirty old
calaboose down by Congo Square.
Many such stories were wafted to us about Dr. Stone. Some may not have
been authentic, but we loved to hear and to repeat them. However, after
the war, I did hear him tell of a Union officer offering him the present
of a fine horse in recognition of some professional obligation. “I needed
that horse,” he said, “for I had none, and so I was going my rounds
a-foot, but it was branded U. S. and I returned it.” Years after I met
that Federal officer in St. Paul, and, speaking of the doctor, whom he
admired greatly, he told of the horse he had tendered him, which was
promptly returned, accompanied with a most amusing note, ending with “So
US don’t want that horse.”
Every blessed one of us was a coffee drinker, and even before the
secession of Louisiana we were weighing and measuring what coffee we had
on hand, not knowing where we could replenish our diminishing stock. Gov.
Manning, of South Carolina, and his wife were our guests at this crisis,
and Mrs. Manning showed me how to prepare a substitute for coffee.
Gracious me! that was the first, but we had substitutes for almost every
article, both to eat and to wear, before we were whipped like naughty
children and dragged back into the Union, and made to take our nauseous
medicine, labeled “Reconstruction.” And now we are all cured! and will
never be naughty again.
That first substitute, which was followed by a score of others, was sweet
potatoes, cut, dried, toasted, ground and boiled. The concoction did not
taste so very bad, but it had no aroma, and, of course, no exhilarating
quality; it was simply a sweety, hot drink. We had lots of Confederate
money, but it quickly lost any purchasing power it ever had. There was
nothing for sale, and we could not have bought anything even if shops
had been stocked with goods and supplies. A pin! Why to this day I
always stoop to pick up a pin, I learned so to value that insignificant
necessary in the days we could not buy a pin. A hairpin! Many women
in country towns used thorns to secure their “waterfalls.” We wore
waterfalls; chignons they were called later. I saw many of them made of
silk strings, plaited or twisted. Women had to be in the fashion, as Dr.
Talmage once said, “though the heavens fell.” If we had had anything to
sew we would have missed the usual needle supply.
I was visiting one day when one large and one small needle were all there
were in the house; if they had been made entirely of gold, instead of
“gold-eyed” only, they could not have been more cherished. I can hear the
wailing voice now, inquiring, “Where is the needle?”
You may smile now at the idea of a substitute for a toothbrush, but, my
dear, that oft-quoted mother of invention taught us an althea switch
made a fairly good toothbrush; of course, it was both scratchy and
stiff, but we never found a better substitute for the necessary article.
As for tea, we Southerners have never been addicted to the tea habit;
however, we soon became disgusted with the various coffee substitutes.
We tried to vary our beverages with draughts of catnip tea, that the
darkies always give their babies for colic; and orange leaf tea, that
old ladies administered to induce perspiration in cases of chills; and
sassafras tea we had drunk years gone by in the spring season to thin the
blood. We did not fancy posing as babies or ague cases—the taste of each
variety was highly suggestive. I wonder if any lady of to-day ever saw a
saucer of home-made soft soap on her washstand? After using it one had to
grease (no use saying oil, for it was generally mutton tallow) the hands
to prevent the skin cracking. I never used that soap, but traveling in
out-of-the-way roads I saw it on many a stand. Clothes, too, wore out,
as is their nature, and the kind we were used to wearing were not of the
lasting variety like osnaburgs and linseys.
Quite early in the war Cuthbert Slocomb and De Choiseul stopped over a
night with us on their way to the front. With them was another young man
whose name escapes me now, who was suffering from chills, so he remained
a few days as our guest. We dosed him with orange-leaf tea, which was
about the best we could do, having no quinine on hand. In his kit he
had a lot of chamois skins, which he laid out before me with the modest
request I make a pair of pantaloons out of them. We talked the project
over and decided overalls were the only thing in that line that could be
made of chamois skins, that, of course, had to be pieced lengthways,
crossways and sideways. The result was satisfactory, and the young man
proudly carried off his overalls. I hoped, but did not expect, that he
would escape a rain or two on his expedition clad in chamois skins!
However, I was amply repaid for my ingenuity and skill, for I had scraps
enough of the skins left me to supply tobacco pouches and gloves to lots
of soldier friends thereafter.
At one time, in dire need, I paid one dollar a yard for thin coarse
muslin, white with black dots, which looked distressingly bad after a
wetting or two, but my crowning extravagance was paying thirty dollars a
yard for common blue denim; that was in Houston. Thus went the last of my
Confederate money. After that for a while we did without things.
Mr. James Phelps of New Orleans—scores of us must remember genial Jim
Phelps—made a call on me in Texas, introducing himself with the whimsical
remark that I must look at him from shoulder up and not down, for he had
on a brand new paper collar, and had borrowed the use of a razor, and was
now out making ceremonious calls! Oh, dear me! we lived through all of
these privations, and the few remaining survivors are not afflicted with
nervous prostration, or any of the fashionable ills of the day. Their
nerves were strengthened, their spirits brightened. They bravely bore the
fires of trouble and privation that make them placidly content with the
comforts and solaces of their declining years.
XXXV
AN UNRECORDED BIT OF NEW ORLEANS HISTORY
Since there are still living descendants of the persons concerned in this
incident, I have omitted names. The story is entirely true and well known
to many old residents of New Orleans.
More than sixty-five years ago, a man I shall not name, was tried and
convicted of fraud against the State Land office. He was in the prime
of life, educated, a West Point graduate, of good parentage, splendid
physique, gracious though a trifle pompous and self-asserting in manner
and of presumed wealth. Of course, his case, when it came to trial, was
bravely contested inch by inch. Rich relatives, influential friends,
and the best legal talent were enlisted, but it was too plain a case
of fraud. So, after tedious trial, conviction and sentence to the
Penitentiary at Baton Rouge resulted. There were the usual delays, a stay
of sentence, a wrangle as to final commitment, a question of length of
sentence. His sureties were caught in the net, and tremendous efforts
they made to dodge liability for the amount of the bond. Two of the
sureties did escape, but the third made good. In steamboat parlance, he
“went to the clerk’s office and settled.”
[Illustration: THE CALABOOSE.]
Meanwhile the convicted man—he was called “Colonel,” not by courtesy
only, for, unlike most Southern Colonels of that date, he had had
military training and might have been even more if he had waited till
Generals were in dire demand in Dixie—the Colonel was behind bars in the
Parish Prison. The horrid old calaboose down by Congo Square, where more
than one Confederate languished two decades later, when the prison was
twenty years older and forty years dirtier. The Colonel’s devoted wife,
who had worn out the energies of a dozen wives, and was still alert and
active in behalf of her unfortunate mate, never relaxed her vigilance.
When the coils of the law wrapped tighter and tighter around the doomed
man, she rose to every emergency. No personal appeals, nothing her
fertile mind had suggested, had availed to stay the process of the law.
Now that worse had come to the worst, and the Colonel was under lock and
key, awaiting the final decision as to length of sentence, Madam and the
Colonel’s oldest daughter (her step-daughter, by the way) went daily to
the calaboose to visit the prisoner. Their visits were made always in the
afternoon. The two cloaked and heavily veiled ladies remained till the
closing of the gates.
It was in the fall of the year, and election times, when politics were
rife. Madam was not only bright and intelligent, but endowed with
remarkable tact, and brim full of schemes and resources. At every visit
she stopped at the gate and had converse with the warden or turnkey, or
whoever was on duty, and related to him the latest news and political
gossip and bantered him on his political bias, no matter what that bias
was. This course she pursued daily and vigorously. The daughter, still
in her teens, was a mere figurehead, always heavily veiled and enveloped
in a voluminous long coat. With the slightest nod of recognition to
“the powers that be,” she proceeded rapidly to her father’s cell,
leaving her mother, so bursting with talk and information that she could
neither enter nor depart without first unburdening herself of the latest
political news.
One evening, when matters at court were nearing the crisis, the two
ladies rushed into prison, almost breathless, they had hurried so! They
had had all sorts of detentions. They realized they were late, and would
only have a minute, but they could not let the day pass without the
customary visit to the Colonel, etc., etc. While madam was endeavoring to
explain to the warden the cause of the delay, and tell also some anecdote
anent the election which was too good to keep, the quiet young girl
proceeded at once to the cell of her father. The turnkey came in sight,
significantly rattling his keys, which roused madam to the consciousness
that she had not been in to kiss the Colonel good-night, after all.
She had been so interested in Mr. Warden, he was so entertaining, and
had such queer views and opinions of the candidates, etc., etc. So, to
the Colonel she rushed, returning immediately to the gate, where her
friend was impatiently waiting to lock up, signal to do so having been
given. The dim lamps about Congo Square had been lighted and a darkening
November day was fast closing around them. “Lavinia, come, the jailor
is waiting to lock up.” “Yes, ma,” was the reply from the cell. A moment
later: “Lavinia, it is getting too dark for us to be out; come at once.”
“Yes, ma, I’m coming right now.” “That girl can’t bear to leave her
father.” As the madam said this, out rushed Lavinia. Her mother caught
her arm and both parties darted through the closing gate, with a wave
from madam’s hand and a “Good-bye, we will be early to-morrow and never
keep you waiting again.”
The lock-up took his rounds at the usual time to close the cells for
the night. The Colonel seemed to be quietly sleeping in his narrow cot,
trousers and stockings carelessly thrown upon the chair. The door was
securely fastened by the officer.
Next morning, when it was opened, a gruff voice called to the sleeper,
who seemed to be stupidly half awake. Miss Lavinia rose from the bed,
showing her face to the attendant for the first time in all these weeks.
The Colonel, disguised in his daughter’s cloak and veil, had flown!
There were no telegraphs, or wireless, nothing, in fact, but nimble legs
and more nimble horses to facilitate the frantic search. The bird had
flown afar.
Long before the cage door was opened the prisoner was beyond the reach of
the long arm of the law. Madam had for weeks been skillfully planning
escape, how skillfully, the result proved. She had engaged the services
of the captain of a fruit schooner to take a lady passenger on his next
trip to Havana. To insure results, she had privately conveyed provisions
and necessary articles for the passenger’s comfort to the vessel, bribed
the captain to secrecy, and it was planned he would give her timely
notice when the tides and winds were favorable to raise sail, and put
rapidly and silently to sea from Lake Pontchartrain.
He fulfilled his promises so to do.
When the two (supposed) women rushed into the hack awaiting them round
the corner from the jail, the driver whipped up his horses and trotted
rather faster than usual down the old shell road he had conveyed these
ladies more times than he could remember, right from that old corner to
the schooner landing.
Years after these events had ceased to be talked of, or even remembered,
and the ladies who bore the colonel’s name had vanished from Louisiana,
from the deck of an incoming steamer in the harbor of Havana my husband
was frantically hailed by a stout old gentleman standing in a lighter.
The gray-haired man, who did not dare venture into an American vessel,
recognized my husband, whom he had slightly known in the days of his
prosperity. He was now an exile, a runner for a Cuban hotel. How eagerly
and gladly he took possession of us and our belongings; how he piloted us
through the narrow streets; how he domiciled us in the best rooms, and
how assiduous he was in attention to our comfort, I cannot tell.
A few years thereafter the poor old man, who had one daughter with him to
solace his declining years, passed sadly away, and I was summoned from
my plantation home to the stricken girl. She tearfully told me the story
of his flight, which had never been revealed before, and, together, we
turned the leaves of the worn and faded diary he had kept during that
exciting voyage to the Spanish Dominion, where there was no extradition
treaty to compel his deliverance to his country. In the early days, when
there were no telegraphs, no cables, he managed to support his wife and
daughters in New York by acting as commercial correspondent for several
newspapers, both in New York and New Orleans, and Charleston also, I
think; but that business died out, and he gradually became too infirm for
any active or sustained occupation.
His death was a blessed release.
XXXVI
CUBAN DAYS IN WAR TIMES
Not a Confederate who was stranded in Havana in the ’60’s but can
recall with grateful feelings the only hotel there kept by an American
woman and kept on American lines. Every Confederate drifted under that
roof-tree. If he possessed the wherewithal he paid a round sum for the
privilege. If he was out of pocket, and I could name a score who were
not only penniless but baggageless, he was quite welcome, well cared for
and in several instances clothed! Some, notwithstanding her “positive
orders,” exposed themselves to night air, when mosquitoes were most in
evidence, and came in with headache and yellow fever. They were cared for
and nursed back to health. No one knew better than Mrs. Brewer how to
manage such cases. I could call the roll of the guests who came—and went,
some to Canada, some to Mexico: Gen. and Mrs. Toombs of Georgia, Gen.
Magruder, Gen. Fry and his beautiful wife, who was a Micou of Alabama;
Commodore Moffitt and Ex-Gov. Moore of Louisiana; Major Bloomfield
and his wife—some of us still remember Bloomfield. He had for years a
blank-book and stationery shop in New Orleans. I have one of his books
now, a leather-bound ledger. He was in service on somebody’s staff. There
were some not of the army, but on business bent, blockade running and so
on.
My gracious! I can’t begin to tell of the crowd that promenaded the
galleries and _azotea_ of Hotel Cubano toward the end of the war. They
all talked and talked fight, the ex-army men declaring they would not
return to their homes with sheathed swords. Alas! They did, though.
Before their talks came to an end the Confederacy did. J. P. Benjamin
arrived on a sailboat with Gen. Breckinridge. They were wise as owls and
had nothing to say. I remember the news came of the assassination of
President Lincoln while a large party of the braves were dining at our
house—on the _cerro_ of Havana. Some of them were jubilant, but a quiet
word from Gen. Breckinridge: “Gentlemen, the South has lost its best
friend,” and a quieter word from Mr. Benjamin: “We will let the painful
subject drop,” acted as a quietus for our boisterous guests....
But I must not wander from our hostess of Hotel Cubano. A strange mixture
was she of parsimony and prodigality, vindictiveness and gratitude, a
grand woman withal, capable of doing heroic things. She knew intimately
and had entertained the family of Pierre Soulé, who tarried at the Cubano
en route to Spain, when Soulé was minister. The Slidells also were
her friends, Jeff Davis’ family and scores of other prominent people.
She made the first donation of $500 to the Jefferson Davis Monument
Association. With vigorous, watchful management she accumulated a large
fortune in Havana, though she maintained a host of parasites, poor
relatives from the States. She had four girls at one time belonging to
her kindred who were too poor to educate them. But her business methods
were too queer and unconventional for words. She had leased the large
hotel long before the war in the United States, for what was, even in
those dull days in Havana, considered a low sum, for the chance of making
it pay was a trifle against her. She kept it American style—had batter
cakes and mince pies—so that, though her prices were, as we say now, “the
limit,” every refugee and newspaper correspondent who was sick of garlic
and crude oil diet, felt he had to live at the American hotel. Havana was
then the refuge of defaulters and others of lax business methods, there
being no extradition treaty between the United States and Spain.
In Cuba when you rent a house, you pay by the month, and so long as you
meet the payments, you cannot be dispossessed. (I do not know what the
law may be now; I write of forty years ago.) Not long after Mrs. Brewer’s
venture proved a success, the owner tried every possible way to make
her throw up the lease. Anyone knowing Mrs. Brewer as I did, could well
understand there was no coercing her. She maintained her rights, paying
rent with utmost promptness, and when paper currency made its unwelcome
advent and was legally declared of equal value with gold, the payments
were made in paper. That currency depreciated steadily and so greatly,
too, that Mrs. Brewer told me the rent of her basement to the German
consulate for storage purposes, which rent she exacted in gold, was, when
exchanged for paper currency, sufficient to pay the rent of her entire
building. When I remonstrated with her as being unjust, she explained
that all the years she had occupied the building the owner refused to
make necessary repairs and alterations. She had been compelled to put
in modern plumbing, repairs, painting—in fact, everything—at her own
expense, and now she was simply reimbursing herself. When she amassed
a fortune, tired of the life, she threw up the lease, returned to the
United States and a few years ago died at an advanced age. Her previous
history is like a “story told by night.”
She was the wife of a United States army officer, stationed at
Charleston, who eloped with his wife’s seamstress. She did not know nor
did she take steps to inform herself, where they fled. He had cashed
his bank account and gone. In her shameful abandonment she took passage
on the first vessel leaving port for foreign lands. She arrived, a
young, deserted wife, in Havana, years before I knew her, homeless
and friendless, and was removed from the schooner on which she made
the voyage from Charleston ill of yellow fever. When she was ready to
leave the hospital, it was found not only the small amount of money in
her purse, but her jewelry as well, was barely sufficient to pay her
expenses. When she recovered, she speedily found work in Havana, sewing
in the house of a Spanish _marquesa_, who became deeply interested in
the case of the forlorn woman, eventually assisting her in getting an
independent start at keeping a boarding house for foreigners in the city
who chafed at Cuban cooking.
A proposition had been made to Mrs. Brewer by two or three American
refugees to keep house for them, they to furnish everything, but the
generous _marquesa_ vetoed the plan and offered to finance a better
scheme. So Mrs. Brewer rented and furnished a small house, and the men
came to her as boarders, thereby placing herself in a more independent
position. From that small beginning sprung the largest, best equipped and
most expensive—for her charges were exorbitant—hostelry in the island.
Meanwhile the kindly _marquesa_ went her way gaily in the fashionable
wealthy society of Havana, Mrs. Brewer working and managing, toiling and
accumulating in her own domain. They rarely met.
When my family went to Cuba it was to escape from war troubles at home.
We sought for rest and peace, but it was not long before we felt we may
have “jumped from the frying pan into the fire.” Rebellion soon became
rife on the island. We, being neutrals, had occasional visits from both
parties of the guerilla type. The captains-general sent at frequent
intervals from the mother country ruled with severity.
One morning while I was visiting Mrs. Brewer, the _marquesa_ called,
in a terrible state of mind. Her young son, an only child, had been
arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to be executed as a rebel sympathizer.
She declared to Mrs. Brewer that she and her friends were powerless to
do anything in the case, and she implored Mrs. Brewer’s assistance. It
was grand to see how the American woman responded. “Go to your home,
possess your soul in peace, if you can. I will intercede with the
Captain-general.” She did, too. As I remember, Mr. Henry Hall was the
American consul. A messenger was sent with flying feet to summon him.
By the time she had dressed herself in her finest finery and decked
her person with all the jewels she could muster and had her carriage
and liveried coachman ready, Mr. Hall had put on his official dress,
both knowing how important it was to create an impression on the wily
Spaniard. They looked as if they might be more than count and countess,
marquis and _marquesa_ themselves.
Arriving at the palace, our consul obtained immediate access to the
potentate. Mrs. Brewer was introduced with a flourish, and she at
once proceeded to tell her story. She told of the extreme youth of
the prisoner, too immature to be a volunteer on either side, too
inexperienced to have any opinion, and so on, imploring him to spare
the life of “an only son, and his mother a widow.” The stern old man
only shook his head and repeated that his orders were absolute and
unchangeable. Mrs. Brewer fell upon her knees before him, declaring she
would not rise until he at least commuted the sentence to banishment to
Spain. She told him her own story; how she, a friendless woman, had been
succored and comforted and assisted by the boy’s mother years before.
She had been grateful, but had never had the opportunity to prove the
depth of her gratitude.
I was still at Hotel Cubano, waiting, oh, so anxiously, to know the
result of the mission, when Mrs. Brewer returned radiant. She had gone
from the palace with the sentence of banishment in her hand to the
_marquesa’s_ home. The young boy sailed the following day to Spain. Mr.
Hall told me afterwards he had never witnessed such a scene; had never
heard such an impassioned appeal. “It would,” he said, “have moved an
image of stone.”
XXXVII
“WE SHALL KNOW EACH OTHER THERE”
Did you ever hear the old Methodist hymn, “We Shall Know Each Other
There”? It appeals to me rather strongly now, when I read a long list of
the names of those already “there,” who attended a meeting in New Orleans
over sixty years ago, in behalf of Gen. Zach Taylor’s nomination for the
United States Presidency. Every name is familiar to me. Each one calls to
mind the features of a friend, and every blessed one of them has long ago
joined the immortals. I trust they “know each other there.”
Here’s the name of Glendy Burke, who promised me a gold thimble when I
was a little girl making my first attempt at cross-stitch, if I would
finish the footstool for him. I earned the gold thimble, large enough for
my finger, long after I was grown and married.
Cuthbert Bullitt and Levi Peirce! It seemed to require the presence
of both to make a mass meeting a complete success. They lived almost
side by side on St. Charles Street at that time. It was only the other
day dear Mrs. Peirce died. She was born in 1812. I loved to visit the
Peirces, though the daughters, Cora and Caroline, were at least ten
years my senior. They never married, so managed to “keep young,” though
Caroline was an invalid. She laughingly told me she had rheumatism of the
heart and inner coating of the ribs, whatever that may mean.
In 1849 her doctor ordered her to Pass Christian, so early that the
hotel, which I have attempted to describe in a previous chapter, was
not open for the season. I was invited to accompany the two sisters. At
first we were the only guests in the hotel, but presently there arrived
J. DeB. De Bow of “Review” fame, and another bachelor, lacking the
giddy and frivolous elements, a Mr. De Saulles. Mr. Pierce had sent us
forth in style, with a mature maid, as duenna, to look after the three
frisky misses, also a pack of cards and a bag of picayunes, to play that
elevating and refining game of poker. I never enjoyed an outing more than
those two out-of-season weeks at the old hotel at Pass Christian.
The two bachelors did not bother us with attentions, but, strange to say,
Mr. De Bow and I actually felt congenial, and after our return to the
city he made me several calls, and as the forgetful old lady remarked,
“Might have been calling till now,” but some busybody—I always had my
suspicions who—sent me at New Year’s, with Mr. De Bow’s card, a gaudily
bound volume of “Poems of Amelia,” the silliest of love trash. I still
have the book; it’s of the kind you never can lose. I showed it to him—so
innocently, too, and thanked him the best I could for the uncomplimentary
present. My old beau never called again. He was sensitive to ridicule,
and seemed to have taken it _au sérieux_....
However, all this is a sidetrack. Mr. De Bow was not at that meeting, but
Col. Christy and J. A. Maybin were. They were not of the De Bow type, but
their familiar names are on the list before me. Both the Christys and
Maybins lived near the Strawbridges, way off Poydras Street.
Here’s the name of Maunsel White, too. Both he and Christy were
colonels—I believe veterans of the battle of New Orleans—the anniversary
of which, the 8th of January, is always celebrated on the spot, and
nowhere else I ever heard of. I never heard of one of Gen. Jackson’s men
that was just a plain soldier in the ranks. They all had titles, from
Gen. McCausland, who lived near Laurel Hill, down. I was a friend of
Col. White’s daughter, Clara, and recall a delightful visit I made to
their plantation, “Deer Range.” It must have been in March, for the dear
Irish gentleman had a holiday. All the bells were ringing the day in,
when I rose the first morning, and the old gentleman, after singing for
our benefit “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning,” proclaimed a plantation
holiday. It was all great fun.
S. J. Peters I knew after my marriage. He was a lifelong friend of my
husband’s. As long as he lived, and we were on our plantation, he sent us
every New Year’s a demijohn of fine Madeira, by that universal express of
the day, the _Belle Creole_. I forget how Mr. Peters looked, or anything
I ever heard him say, but one does not easily forget a yearly present of
five gallons of choice old wine.
Now here’s the name of John Hagan. Isn’t he the one who used to walk
with two canes or a crutch? When I was a little child, of the credulous
type, one of our darkies—the one that knew everything—told me “Dat man
(speaking of a beggar that hobbled by) walks dat-away, caze he ain’t got
no toes; you cain’t walk lessen you got toes.” I visited the Hagans once
on their plantation and knew one of the younger sons, James, quite well,
but he was the kind of beau that did not dance, and the dancing girls of
my day had little use for such. So it is, my mind runs riot over this
list, for I knew each name and some incident in the life or doings of
each, pops up before me, and sends my thoughts wandering afar.
T. G. Morgan and W. W. McMain must have presented themselves as
representing Baton Rouge. Both hailed from there. Besides they may have
had a personal interest in the meeting, as Gen. Taylor was temporarily
a neighbor, being in command at the Baton Rouge barracks. I wonder if
those same barracks was not the only United States military station in
Louisiana?
In the beginning of the war we Baton Rouge folks seemed to talk as though
it was the only one in the South—talked of holding it against all odds—of
never furling that home-made Confederate flag that floated over it. We
delighted in those first days in just such bombastic talk. When I say
“we” I mean those who remained at home, and fired remarks back and forth
anent our invincibility. Very harmless shot, but it served to swell our
breasts and make us believe we could conquer the whole Yankee land.
However, when a few Yankees were good and ready to march in and demand
that United States barracks, nobody said them nay.
My dear father, no doubt, would have helped swell the crowd, but
mercifully he had fought his life’s battle and had joined a greater crowd
where all is peace and rest. Col. John Winthrop was a nomad (doesn’t
that word stand for a modern globe-trotter?), a lawyer who practiced
his profession part of the time, but shut up his office, picked up his
amiable wife and skipped off at frequent intervals to the enjoyment of
travel and foreign life. They lived when at home in a house on Royal
Street, a house with two rooms on each of two stories, which was enough
and to spare for two people in those days. The Winthrops entertained a
good deal too, in a quiet, sociable way, musicales, card parties and
suppers. The last time I saw them was during one of their trips. They
were leisurely resting in a quaint hotel in Havana. Now they are in the
House of Many Mansions, for the dear Winthrops years ago took the long,
final voyage....
But I find I have wandered, like any garrulous old lady, into all the
bypaths leading from the great committee meeting. After the nomination of
the soldier for the Presidency, an office he neither sought nor desired,
and for which he was not fitted, he made a farewell visit to Baton Rouge
and his old quarters at the United States barracks, to superintend the
removal of his family and personal belongings. Of course, the little city
that so loved the brave man was alive with enthusiasm, and rose to the
extraordinary emergency of receiving a future President, to the tune of
a fine satin-lined coach, a kind of chariot affair, and four horses! Such
a sight was never seen there before, for there were no circus parades
in those days, and if there had been they would not have honored small
communities only accessible by river and boat. The modest, reluctant,
great man was transported in this gorgeous affair back and forth, with
the pomp and ceremony so unwelcome to him.
I did not happen to witness that first turnout, but I saw the same coach
and four years after, a faded thing; it had been in the old stable at
the barracks for years, where moth did corrupt, if the thieves did not
steal. It was a sight that set all the little negroes flying to the gate
to see this coach go lumbering down our river road, William S. Pike, the
big man, the rich man, the banker with a capital B, on the box. Mr. Pike
was Kentucky bred and could handle the reins of a four-in-hand as well as
any stage driver in the Blue Grass region. He was collecting blankets for
our soldiers, and made a hurried call (the road being long and business
pressing) on us, just long enough to take every blanket we had, and the
“winter of our discontent” at hand, too; proceeded with grand flourish
and crack of whip to Col. Hicky’s, Fred Conrad’s, Gilbert Daigre’s, on
down, down to William Walker’s at Manchac, taking blankets everywhere.
At nightfall the loaded coach was driven again through our gate, and
the tired coachman told of great success while refreshing himself with
something hot and strengthening. The _Daily Comet_ had published repeated
appeals for blankets, which met with meager results, but Mr. Pike in his
one trip in the old Gen. Taylor moth-eaten, rusty, rattling coach swept
up every blanket that could be spared, and no doubt a good many that
couldn’t. The next call for blankets for our half-frozen men, busy in
the mountains of Virginia, found us so desperate and demoralized that we
gladly parted with our carpets.
The next time—and I suppose the last—that the coach and four were called
into service was when Gen. Breckinridge made the attempt to defeat the
Federals in Baton Rouge. Mr. Pike got secret information of the impending
assault. The Gen. Taylor chariot—four mules this time, but Mr. Pike at
the helm—well packed, tight as blankets, with the Pike family, was driven
furiously out of town.
XXXVIII
A RAMBLE THROUGH NEW ORLEANS WITH BRUSH AND EASEL
Several years ago I visited New Orleans with my artist daughter. She had
heard in her New York home so many wonderful and surprising stories of
her mother’s child-life in the Crescent City that she was possessed with
the idea such a fairyland must be a fine sketching field. We, therefore,
gladly accepted the hospitality of a dear Creole friend, who let us go
and come at all hours, in deference to (I was going to say our, but—) my
little girl’s own free will. It was indeed a foreign land to her when she
opened her eyes to the Creole life, the Creole home, the Creole street.
Every old gateway and every tumbledown iron railing was an inspiration to
her artistic mind. We spent happy days with brush and easel, wandering
about the old French quarter, and the picturesquely dirty back streets.
The very first day in the city happened to be a Sunday. She was up and
ready betimes to go to the French Market, where I used to go once in a
great while and take coffee at Manette’s stall. It was a shock to her
to see the ramshackle old market she had heard so much about, and whose
praises had been sung to her by her Southern mother. No Manette. No stall
where she could have been induced to take a cup of coffee; but a few
steps off and a perspective view revealed to her cultivated eye the very
sketch she wanted, the very thing she “came all the way to New Orleans
for”—and a plan was formulated to go another day when the light would be
more favorable.
In our rambles down Royal Street we passed an open corridor, with a view
beyond of a blooming bit of _parterre_. She paused to look in. I saw only
the bright flowers and the vases covered with vines. She saw only an
iron fretwork lamp suspended from the ceiling. Oh! that was too artistic
for anything! Did I think the people in that house would permit her to
sketch, from the entrance, that long corridor and that wonderful lantern?
[Illustration: A COURTYARD IN THE FRENCH QUARTER.]
At that moment a pretty young girl passed through the shrubbery in the
rear. I beckoned her. “Oh, yes, she knew mamma would be so happy.” The
work was arranged for the following day, when the light would be just
right. While my little lady worked I wandered around the corridor. The
stairs leading to the living rooms above seemed strangely familiar.
It dawned upon me that I had walked years before up those very stairs.
The little Creole girl crossed the _parterre_ again, and was called to
see the finished sketch. It was only a section of the corridor and the
wonderful iron lamp. I ventured to inquire if the Bienvenues had not
occupied that house in the fifties.
“Yes, indeed, my mamma was a Bienvenue.” The child flew upstairs to
tell her mamma, and quickly returned with an invitation for us. Mamma
desired to see the sketch, and to meet the lady who had visited her elder
sisters. My daughter, used to the cold formality of the New York life,
was overwhelmed with the Creole cordiality, delighted to hear that the
lamp which had attracted her was a real Spanish antique, and had been
hanging in the corridor almost a hundred years; delighted to be shown
the superb chandeliers in the parlors, almost as old; and to have a
cordial invitation to come another day and make a sketch of the little
_parterres_ and of the rambling balconies in the rear.
[Illustration: “BEHOLD A WRECKED FOUNTAIN.”]
We did mean to go again, but so many striking exteriors and interiors
caught the eager eye of the maiden with the easel that we did not have
time. The very next day that roving eye stole a peep into another
enchanting corridor. Behold a wrecked fountain, long out of commission,
with a dilapidated angel or sylph, or armless figure of some kind,
clinging to it. There was another artistic temptation, but when she saw
a pretty black-eyed girl washing clothes and playing at the same time
with a saucy parrot it was simply irresistible. The girl was delighted
to pose beside the fountain with Jacko on her finger. Her voluble mamma,
_en blouse volante_, stood on the upper gallery and watched the work
and commented, real Creole fashion. It was not a satisfactory bit of
painting, but the girl was enraptured to accept it and could not have
expressed greater appreciation if it had been a life-size portrait in a
gilt frame.
Mamma would be hospitable, would have us see the faded old house, which
had been a grand mansion in its day. We saw evidences of that in the
very large rooms, the tarnished gilding, and the ample passages and old
boudoirs. I think the _blouse volante_ woman must have had _chambres
garnies_, but we saw no evidence of that. She had the daughter play on
the one bit of furniture that amounted to anything, the fine piano, which
she did quite charmingly. From the rear gallery we could see the top of
the Opera House, and she told us they were _abonnées_, “so her daughter
could hear the best music.” This was a glimpse of the old Creole life
that I was glad my daughter should have.
Wandering down, what to her was “fascinating” St. Anne Street, behold
a narrow alleyway, revealing in the rear sunlight a cistern, only a
cistern, but that atmospheric effect was alluring. Up went the easel,
out came the color box. The street was absolutely deserted, and we
felt quite secure of an uninterrupted half hour; but a swarm of gamins
came, apparently from the bowels of the earth, and surrounded us. At a
critical moment a woman appeared, also from nowhere, and began to sweep
diligently the little half-dark alley. She was transferred to the sketch
before she knew what was “going on.” “_Mais gar! c’est Pauline, oui,
c’est Pauline même_,” the little imps declared, as they peered over the
artist’s shoulder and saw the figure. That final touch broke all attempts
at decorum, and we begged a passing man with a walking cane to put the
mob to flight.
[Illustration: “A QUEER HOUSE OPPOSITE.”]
What a delightful reminder of that visit to New Orleans those unfinished
sketches are to us now, a quarter of a century after! The one I like
best of all hangs in my own room and brings delightfully to mind the day
we went way down Chartres Street to the archbishop’s palace. I am not
Catholic, and do not remember if it was the beginning or ending of Lent,
but a procession of all classes and conditions of the faithful, with
all classes and conditions of receptacles, were filing in and out the
gateway, getting their annual supply of _eau bénite_. The lame sacristan
who dipped out the holy water from pails into the bottles and mugs became
so interested in a sketch my daughter was making, and so busy with a
rod driving away inquisitive urchins, that he tired of being constantly
interrupted by the _eau bénite_ crowd, so he shut the door of his room.
“_Trop tard, c’est fini_,” he said to some belated, disappointed
applicants.
Elise sat inside the gateway and sketched a queer house opposite, gable
end to the street, and a balcony way high up that looked like a bird
cage hanging from a window, a tiny balcony draped in blooming vines.
The sacristan was disappointed that she did not attempt the old convent
building, but the perspective from the street did not appeal to the
artist, as did that one-sided building that seemed to have turned its
back to the street.
When we came in after each day’s delightful tramp my dear Creole friend
looked over the sketches and told us of places we must not fail to
visit—places she and I knew so well, and neither of us had seen for many,
many years.
We took an Esplanade Street car, as far as it went, then walked the
Bayou road to a rickety bridge, on the further side of which was a
quaint little rose-covered hut. To the artist’s eye it was an enchanting
cottage. It was a fearfully hot day, so we had a quiet half hour; not
a soul passed, to pause and look on and question and comment. We had
a hot walk back to our mule car, which did not have a fixed schedule
of arrivals and departures, and we were fain to accept the shelter of
a decent little cabaret. The proprietor came outside and invited us
within, and his cordial invitation was reinforced by a bustling Creole
wife. How these people surprised Elise! So generous, so unconventional
they were. I added to her surprise by ordering beer!—the only visible
way, it appeared to me, of repaying their hospitality.
Another day we took a car in a different direction. When the car
stopped—nowhere in particular, just came to the end of the rails—we
walked on down, into sparse settlements, occasional fields, frequent
crawfish ditches, to the Ursuline Convent, not a sketching trip this
time, but a tour of observation. We had to tramp quite a bit, dodging now
and again an inquisitive goat, of which my city companion was mortally
afraid, following paths, possibly goat paths, for they meandered round
about quite unnecessarily.
At length we reached the little entrance gate, to learn it was not
visiting day. It was warm, and we were warmer and very tired. Across
the road and the two inevitable ditches was a kind of lych gate, I do
not know what other name to give it, a covered gateway and benches,
where the family who lived behind the inclosure could take the air, and,
incidentally, a bit of gossip, if they had any congenial neighbors. We
felt neighborly just then and promptly crossed the ditches and narrow
roadway and seated ourselves quite _en famille_.
Presently two young girls we had not seen presented themselves and
invited us to enter the house. Upon our declining with suitable thanks,
a mother came from the house and a grandmother, and we had to accept
the cordial hospitality, with a sneaking feeling we had invited it
by appropriating the tempting resting-spot. In the tiny parlor was a
life-size, full-length portrait of a Confederate officer in full uniform,
Captain Sambola, of the Washington Artillery.
They offered us refreshing _eau sucrée_ and had us go to the back gallery
to see the pet peacock. _Grandmère_ made him show off. “_Tournez, mon
beau, tournez un peu_,” and the proud bird turned around and spread his
gaudy tail. We still talk of that naïve family and the peacock. The two
young girls we saw in the yard had aprons filled with violets which
they were gathering for the market. Mamma tossed quite a handful of the
fragrant blooms into an Indian basket and presented them to Elise. They
showed us a near path to the car, and we realized we had previously lost
our way, and made many unnecessary steps, but would gladly have done
it all over again to have had that glimpse of Creole life. Nothing I
could have told my children would have been so effective as the little
experience of the hospitality of the family of that “_Capitaine en
Washington Artillerie_.”
[Illustration: ST. ROCH.]
Our hostess mentioned St. Roch’s, and down there we went, easel and
all. Those mule cars seemed to come to a final halt where there was no
stopping place, and we always had to walk quite a bit to “get there,”
no matter where we were bound. We walked a few blocks and turned a few
corners, and most unexpectedly ran into the grounds of the sanctuary.
At the gatekeeper’s little cottage we bought a candle and a book, I
forget what it was about; and a leaden image of Saint Hubert, inscribed
“_Preservez nous du choléra_.” We seemed to be expected to make the
purchases, so we did not wish to disappoint the modest expectation. At
a favorable spot the easel was opened, and my little lady proceeded
to sketch a few tombstones and the belfry of St. Roch’s. A kindly
priest wandered toward us to say it was against their rules to allow
any sketching on the grounds, but as the work was on the way (and he
commended it) she could complete the picture. Thus we strolled about the
old city of my day, quite ignoring the beautiful Garden District of which
everybody was so proud.
Down went we to see Congo Square and the old calaboose. The first is
about to be rechristened (some twenty and something street) and the other
has gone off the face of the earth, but old Congo Square was still there,
and the calaboose, too, when I took my daughter to see the New Orleans of
my day. A man with his pail and long brush was whitewashing trees in the
square, and a dark-skinned woman was hanging red rags, probably flannel
petticoats, on a railing in front of a house. “How picturesque!” in
Elise’s eyes. She regretted she had not her brush and colors with her.
A kindly friend escorted us one afternoon over the river to the old
Destrihan plantation house, and the enthusiastic young artist, who had
learned “Never to leave your pencil and pad in your other pocket,” had
a famous time sketching the broad stairway and the interior balconies,
upon which all the upper chambers opened. The grand Destrihan house of
my young lady days was dismantled and practically vacant, so we roamed
around that interior gallery in and out those large rooms. I was full of
tender memories of the generous family of only (as seemed to me) a few
years ago. The lawn that extended to the river, where were always skiffs
to take one to the city when Eliza Destrihan was a beauty and a belle,
was now cut up into lots and built up in huts, for the accommodation
probably of workmen on Barrataria Canal.
Elise wanted to see the houses her mother had occupied. I knew they
must be dreadfully run down at the heels, and I knew how I had told my
children of the delightful life we had led in them. Now I was afraid
my little girl would be disillusioned, and she was! We started on
Customhouse Street, and I confess to a shock when I saw tickets reading
“_Chambres à louer_” floating from the balcony where my sister used to
walk and from whence she made signals or called across the narrow street
to Mrs. Duncan Hennen, on the opposite balcony. I obtained permission to
enter the broad corridor. It was lumbered up with trunks and theatrical
stuff, and my dear father’s old law office was filled with a smoking
crowd of actors and actresses. It was the eating hall, and the late
risers were taking their first meal of the day. We did not go upstairs,
but I pointed out to the child my mother’s window, where she sat so many,
many invalid days, and with a moistened eye turned sadly away from my
first New Orleans home.
Wandering up Camp Street, at the corner of Julia, the whole Camp Street
side of another and later old home seemed to be a carpenter shop. I
wonder what the child thought, as she must have remembered the tales I
had told of the dancing parties and dinner parties in that house where
Henry Clay and Gen. Gaines, and all sorts of celebrities, were guests
from time to time. The side gallery, where dear pa sat and smoked his
after-dinner cigar, was all blocked up and covered with boards and
carpenters’ tools. The Canal Street house, near Camp Street, was clean
gone, as completely gone as all the fine people that used to visit it. In
its place was some mercantile or bank building. I was too heartsick with
the sad knowledge of the mutability of these mundane affairs to care what
the new building represented.
XXXIX
A VISIT OF TENDER MEMORIES
It was the year of the Exposition in New Orleans that I arrived with
my little daughter on a visit to a Creole friend. We left the train
at the foot of Canal Street, and boarded one of those old-timey mule
cars, in which the passenger drops his fare in a box and the driver
sits on a stool behind a dashboard, reinforced with a stout facing of
sheet iron, and manages his mule, if he can. In our case he couldn’t.
A lot of excursionists, with gripsacks and useless overcoats, filled
the little car. When they had deposited their coins, and the driver had
counted them, and we were ready to start, Mr. Mule took “de studs” and
refused to proceed. When, urged by calls and whip, he let those husky
feet fly against the dashboard, with deafening and startling results,
the wherefore of the iron protector was made manifest to us. Suddenly,
as if electrified, the mule bounded forth, up crowded Canal Street, with
race-horse speed. Our fellow passengers, Eastern men, probably, and
ignorant of mule nature, jumped from the rear of that racing car, as
fast as they dared. I held on to the scared little girl, for I had not
lived on a plantation without having become acquainted with mule tactics.
When our steed reached his destination, at the foot of Camp Street, there
were no passengers in that car but ourselves.
That was our first acquaintance with the queer transportation facilities
of that date, but it was enriched by others before our visit to the
Crescent City terminated.
We found our friend, dear Phine, in considerable excitement about a trunk
filled with silver, that had been in her keeping awaiting a claimant.
The Louisiana State Bank had, until the war, a branch in Baton Rouge, of
which William S. Pike was president or manager, and his family, as was
the custom, lived “over the bank.” At the break up and disorganization
of all business, this especial Louisiana State Bank removed its assets
(if there were any; assets were an uncertain quantity in those days) to
the New Orleans headquarters. All the household effects of the manager’s
family—the accumulation of years, in garret and closets—were sent to New
Orleans, and the Pikes moved there too. After the death of Mr. Pike,
the family closed their Camp Street house and went to Canada. Thence a
request came to my friend, Phine, whose whole unselfish existence had
been spent for the help of others, to pack away personal effects, have
the furniture sold, and the house put also on the market.
Looking through boxes and trunks and bundles and barrels, she stumbled
upon an old, weather-worn, almost dilapidated trunk, without hasp or
lock, but securely tied with bits of strong rope. It was found to be
filled with silver, bowls, a tea set and various odd pieces. Not one
article bore a mark by which it could be identified, not a scrap of
paper—all the pieces were wrapped in rags and securely packed into this
apparently unsafe receptacle. Phine knew that this silver did not belong
to the family, nor to any friend of the family. The trunk was conveyed to
Phine’s garret, and she sat down to rack her brain about it. At last it
was decided that in the uncertainty and alarm of the early war days, some
planter brought that trunk to the bank at Baton Rouge, for safe keeping,
using every precaution to avoid suspicion of its valuable contents.
Probably it came, tied behind his own buggy. There it had lain for years,
nobody now left to give any information regarding it. Phine wrote to Mr.
Pike’s brother at Shreveport, and he knew naught of it, but he advertised
it, with the usual “prove property” clause.
In time, a man answered, stating his wife was a very small child during
the war, but she remembered a quantity of family silver had been
removed from her father’s house. She was now the last remaining one of
her family, but she could identify one article in the lot, a unique
urn-shaped pitcher, of which she submitted a drawing, from memory. The
trunk with its valuable contents had just been dispatched to the woman....
My little daughter and I took many rambles down into the picturesque
parts of the old city. I presume in New York it might be called slumming,
but every old crawfish ditch and dirty alley was dear to me. Even the old
French cemeteries down Basin Street were full of tender memories. When we
went home from such tramps, and Elise told, in her graphic way, of the
tumbledown appearance of whole streets that mother was so enthusiastic
over, our genial host, Phine’s husband, would say, “Why don’t you go up
St. Charles Avenue? We fixed that up fine to show to visitors.” But St.
Charles Avenue had no sweet memories for me, it had not existed in my
day. We saw St. Charles Avenues every day, at home. We had no old French
cemeteries, the inscription on almost every tomb calling forth memories
of dear, departed Creole friends.
The old cathedral and its environs had to have several visits. I had to
show my little girl (oh, how reminiscent I was, to be sure!) the very
shop whose windows I used to look into, at the beads, corals, shells,
etc., from Southern seas. And, my dear, the very man with gold earrings
was there, shuffling around with strings of rough coral beads, and conch
shells, that very man (so it seemed)—and he was not a day older—that was
doing that very thing seventy years ago, when I had to tip-toe to get a
good view of that entrancing interior.
In the narrow street by the cathedral we purchased rosaries for our
Catholic maids at home. We walked up and down the narrow way, looking
for a tiny shop where I had bought, years and years ago, materials and a
book of instruction for the making of paper flowers. Roses and jasmines
and pinks and honeysuckles were hung in lavish profusion all about my
plantation home, and they lent quite a festive charm on wintry, rainy
days, when there was not a blooming plant to be had. I was reveling so
far into the sweet past that I was almost surprised that the hustling
little French woman (of sixty years ago) was not there, behind her stack
of paper goods, like the man with the gold earrings, but she wasn’t, and
the very shop was gone, too.
[Illustration: _Eliza Ripley_]
We sat, to rest, on benches in the old Place d’Armes. I looked at
those Pontalba buildings, that faded, dilapidated, ramshackle row, and
remembered how fine and imposing it was, in my day, and how I had wished
that father would take one of those elegant houses, where we would be so
near the French market, and the shop of beads and shells, and monkeys and
parrots.
We strolled up Royal Street, and the little girl saw the house in which
the Boufords lived, sixty years ago. The saucy child ventured to remark
she always had thought I visited nice people, but they must have lived in
shabby houses. I did not notice her comment, but proceeded to point to
the balcony where I stood to see a Mardi Gras procession, a frolicsome
lot of the festive beaux of the period, and to catch the bonbons and
confetti they threw at us from the landeaus and gaily decked wagons. It
was long after the Mardi Gras of the thirties, and long, long before the
Mardi Gras of to-day, a kind of interregnum, that the young fashionable
men were turning into a festival. I recall Mrs. Slocomb’s disgust when
Cuthbert fell ill of pneumonia, after his exposure that day. Cuthbert
Slocomb was chubby and blond, and with bare neck and short sleeves, tied
up with baby blue ribbon, a baby cap similarly decorated, he made a very
good counterfeit baby, seated, too, in a high chair, with a rattle to
play with. The “mamma” had long black ringlets and wore a fashionable
bonnet. I have forgotten, if in fact I ever knew, what youth represented
the mamma. There were no masks, but the disguises with paint, powder and
wigs were sufficient to make them unrecognizable. If Cuthbert Slocomb had
not been ill, I probably would not have known the “baby.”
[Illustration: A NEW ORLEANS CEMETERY.]
During that visit I went to the cemetery Decoration Day. Mind you, I have
seen about forty Decoration days, North—but this one in my own Southland,
among my own beloved dead, has been the only Decoration Day I have ever
seen in a cemetery. (I wish my feelings were not quite so strong.) Phine
and I stood beside the tomb that contains the dust of Gen. Albert Sidney
Johnston, a man I had known well, a contemporary and valued friend of
my father’s, a man whose children and grandchildren were dear to me.
We saw the solemn procession file in, and halt a little beyond us. The
band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and hundreds of voices joined in
the musical prayer. I could not sing, I never could, but I could weep,
and my eyes were not the only moist ones in the assembly. Such a throng
of sober, sad people there was, such a lot of veterans, many in shabby,
weather-stained gray, that bore evidence of hard service....
Phine had kept track of the people from whom I had been so long separated
that age had obliterated means by which I could recognize them. As a
veteran, in the shabby old gray (I felt like taking everyone such by the
hand), approached, Phine caught my arm and whispered “Douglas West,” and
at the same moment his eye met mine with a flash of recognition. I had
not seen Douglas for over thirty years. And weren’t we glad to meet? on
that ground, too, so sacred to both of us. And didn’t we meet and meet
and talk and talk, many times thereafter, in Phine’s dear little parlor
on Carondelet Street? Indeed, we did.
Later on, Phine whispered, “You knew that man, I’ll tell you who he is
after he passes us.” A quite tottering, wrinkled, old man passed. I
gave him a good stare, shook my head. I did not know, nor think I ever
had known him. It was A. B. Cammack—who would have believed it? He was
a bachelor in 1850, the time when I thought a man of thirty was an old
man. We happened to be fellow passengers on that fashionable A No. 1
steamboat, _Belle Key_. I was a frisky young miss, and Mr. Cammack was,
as I say, an old bachelor. He did not know, nor want to know anybody on
the boat, but it happened he was introduced to our small party, at the
moment of sailing, so we had a reluctant sort of bowing acquaintance for
the first day or so. _Broderie Anglaise_ was all the rage. Any woman who
had time for _frivolité_, as the Creoles called tatting, was busy working
eyelets on linen. Of course I had _Broderie_, too. Mr. Cammack gradually
thawed, and brought a book to read to me while my fingers flew over the
fascinating eyelets. The book, I distinctly remember, was “Aunt Patsy’s
Scrap Bag,” a medley of silly nonsensical stuff, written by a woman so
long dead and so stupid while she lived that nobody even hears of her
now, but Mr. Cammack was immensely entertaining and witty, and we roared
over that volume, and his comments thereon. I have often dwelt on that
steamboat episode, but I doubt if it ever gave him a moment’s thought. I
really think if it had been like my meeting with Douglas West we might
have had quite a bit of fun, living again that week on the _Belle Key_. A
hearty laugh, such as we had together, so many years before, might have
smoothed some of the wrinkles from his careworn face, and a few crow’s
feet out of mine. But he never knew, possibly would not have cared if he
had known, that we almost touched hands in the crowd on that Decoration
Day.
On and on we strolled, past a grand monument to the memory of Dr.
Choppin, whom I knew so well, and loved too, girl fashion, when he
was twenty, and who sailed away, boy fashion, to complete his medical
education in Paris. Maybe if we had met, in the flesh, on that Decoration
Day, it might have been _a la Cammack_. We never did meet, after that
memorable sailing away, but he has a tender niche in my heart even yet,
and I was pleased to see some loving hand had decorated that sacred
spot....
Phine and I strolled about after the ceremonies were completed. She had
a toy broom and a toy watering pot in the keeper’s cottage, and was
reluctant to leave before she had straightened and freshened the bouquets
we had placed on the tombs of the dead she loved, and swept away the
dust, and watered the little grass border again.
A year ago she herself fell asleep and was laid to rest in the lovely
cemetery, and with her death the last close tie was broken that bound me
to New Orleans.
Eliza Moore, tenth of the twelve children of Richard Henry and Betsey
Holmes Chinn, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on the first day of
February, 1832.
Three years later Judge Chinn moved his family to New Orleans, where he
continued the practice of law until his death in ’47.
On August 24, 1852, Eliza Chinn and James Alexander McHatton were married
in Lexington, and for ten years thereafter they lived at Arlington
plantation on the Mississippi, a few miles below Baton Rouge, leaving
hastily in ’62, upon the appearance of Federal gunboats at their levee.
During the remainder of the war they lived almost continuously in army
ambulances, convoying cotton from Louisiana across Texas to Mexico.
In February, 1865, they went to Cuba, and lived there until the death of
Mr. McHatton, owning and operating, with mixed negro and coolie labor, a
large sugar plantation—“Desengaño.”
After her return to the United States Mrs. McHatton was married to
Dwight Ripley, July 9, 1873, and the remainder of her life was passed in
the North. In 1887 Mrs. Ripley published “From Flag to Flag”—a narrative
of her war-time and Cuban experiences, now out of print.
The reminiscences which make up the present volume have been written at
intervals during the last three or four years. The final arrangements
for their publication were sanctioned by her the day before she passed
away—on July 13, 1912, in the eighty-first year of her age.
E. R. N.
UNLIKE ANY OTHER BOOK.
A Virginia Girl in the Civil War.
Being the Authentic Experiences of a Confederate Major’s Wife who
followed her Husband into Camp at the Outbreak of the War. Dined and
Supped with General J. E. B. Stuart, ran the Blockade to Baltimore, and
was in Richmond when it was Evacuated. Collected and edited by MYRTA
LOCKETT AVARY. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25 net; postage additional.
“The people described are gentlefolk to the back-bone, and
the reader must be a hard-hearted cynic if he does not fall
in love with the ingenuous and delightful girl who tells the
story.”—_New York Sun._
“The narrative is one that both interests and charms. The
beginning of the end of the long and desperate struggle is
unusually well told, and how the survivors lived during the
last days of the fading Confederacy forms a vivid picture of
those distressful times.”—_Baltimore Herald._
“The style of the narrative is attractively informal and
chatty. Its pathos is that of simplicity. It throws upon a
cruel period of our national career a side-light, bringing out
tender and softening interests too little visible in the pages
of formal history.”—_New York World._
“This is a tale that will appeal to every Southern man and
woman, and can not fail to be of interest to every reader. It
is as fresh and vivacious, even in dealing with dark days, as
the young soul that underwent the hardships of a most cruel
war.”—_Louisville Courier-Journal._
“The narrative is not formal, is often fragmentary, and is
always warmly human.... There are scenes among the dead and
wounded, but as one winks back a tear the next page presents a
negro commanded to mount a strange mule in midstream, at the
injustice of which he strongly protests.”—_New York Telegram._
“Taken at this time, when the years have buried all resentment,
dulled all sorrows, and brought new generations to the scenes,
a work of this kind can not fail of value just as it can
not fail in interest. Official history moves with too great
strides to permit of the smaller, more intimate events; fiction
lacks the realistic, powerful appeal of actuality; such works
as this must be depended upon to fill in the unoccupied
interstices, to show us just what were the lives of those
who were in this conflict or who lived in the midst of it
without being able actively to participate in it. And of this
type ‘A Virginia Girl in the Civil War’ is a truly admirable
example.”—_Philadelphia Record._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
THE GREATEST LIVING ACTRESS.
Memories of My Life.
By SARAH BERNHARDT. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Ornamental cloth, $4.00
net; postage 30 cents additional.
The most famous of living actresses, Sarah Bernhardt has lived life
to the full as a builder and manager of theatres, author, painter and
sculptor. She turned her theatre into a hospital during the Siege of
Paris. She played French classics in a tent in Texas. She wrote “Memories
of My Life” with her own hand, and with her own inimitable verve.
“Great is Bernhardt, and great is any true description of her
life, for nothing more fascinatingly brilliant could have
come from the mind of the most daring of fictionists. The
autobiography is as interesting to those who care nothing for
the theatre as to those devoted to it.”—_Baltimore Sun._
“It is the work of a genius which feels and sees with
instinctive insight and understanding, and puts into words such
a bright and varied panorama of life as it has been given to
few authors to portray.”—_Cleveland Plain Dealer._
“Out of an overflowing reservoir of reminiscence the author
pours out a flood of anecdote and of dramatic story, and she
always gives the idea that she is only skimming the surface
and that other treasures lie always below.”—_San Francisco
Argonaut._
“The book is interesting and entertaining from cover to cover,
and is related with a vivacity that is engaging.”—_Toledo
Blade._
“The eventful life lived by Madame Bernhardt both on and off
the stage is told with great charm. Not only has the greatest
actress of her generation more to tell than the majority of
persons who write memoirs, but she has the gift of recounting
the things that have befallen her with a real literary
skill.”—_Publishers’ Weekly._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
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