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 homemade. 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.
The LaLaurie Mansion.
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, 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 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.
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!
Pockmarked, 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. III
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.
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
celestes. 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
6 1/4 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.
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 tailcoat; 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! How ever, there were “swells” (there always
are “swells“) who had testers covered with silk.
I hear a rumor that furniture covered with horsehair
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.
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, slated 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 sucré
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!
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.”
IT
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 role 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 bon-bons 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 Barrieres 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 Prophete,” 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.
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,
méringues,
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 Blondéau
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 weatherbeaten 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!
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 white washed 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 afterclaps,
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
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.
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 maché, 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 stunnned
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 bother’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
waistcoast 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.
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 debutantes 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” (be 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.
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 today! 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 state-room door on a fine
new river boat built in the ’50’s and adorned in that
way with views of homes along the river.
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.
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 near-
by 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 Mile. 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. Angèlina, 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 Autrichenne” 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. Angelina.
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 Waltze” — 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.
Seal of the City of New Orleans
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
drumstick.
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.
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.
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
pére
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 Coeur 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 ca 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 Coeur
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 three-score 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 life-long
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.
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 barrel 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 an “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 meat 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 a they were weaned. Corn,
cowpeas and turnip 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 a 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 midwinter — 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 playmates, 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 widespreading 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
overmastering 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 role 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’s 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 “chew” 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 den 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 vent 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 riggers.”
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 afar 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 ketch 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.
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
fiance, 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 “water falls.” 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 Cuthhert 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.”
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 ever 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 be gradually became too
infirm for an 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 year 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 the 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 after wards 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.
Cuthhert 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 some thing 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?
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 an
other day and make a sketch of the little
parterres
and of the rambling balconies in the rear.
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 meme,”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.
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 naive 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.”
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 tumble-down
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.
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.”
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 South-land,
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.
Notes
-
Neutral ground. Neutral ground or neutral zone is what New Orleanians call the median.
-
Demoiselles.
Young women.
-
The LaLaurie Mansion.
The infamous house at 1140 Royal Street in New Orleans,
home to Madame Delphine LaLaurie, widely regarded as
the United States’ first serial killer. She tortured,
mutilated, and killed many of her slaves and fled to France when
her crimes were discovered. According to Ripley, the house was
used as a school during
her childhood. See the
article by George Washington Cable.
-
Telemaque.
Les Aventures de Télémaque, a French novel by Louis Aragon in 1699 about Telemachus used in teaching.
-
Por supuésto.
Of course.
-
Par excellence. Better or more than all others of the same kind.
-
Blouse volante. A frilly coat.
-
Monsieur. A title or form of address used of or to a French-speaking man, corresponding to Mr. or Sir.
-
J’aime, tu aime. I love, you love.
She is conjugating verbs.
-
Marchandes. A female street or country merchant/vendor.
-
Soirée. An evening party or gathering, typically in a private house, for conversation or music.
-
Chapeaux. A hat or cap.
-
Toilettes. The act or process of dressing or grooming oneself; toilet.
-
Parterre. A level space in a garden or yard occupied by an ornamental arrangement of flower beds.
-
Gourmande. A person who takes great pleasure in
food.
-
En papilottes. In parchment.
-
Banquette. An upholstered bench along a wall.
-
Negligées. A sheer long dressing nightgown.
-
Comme il faut. Correct in behavior or etiquette.
-
Eau sucré. Sugar water.
-
Cornets. A cone-shaped wafer.
-
Dragées. A candy consisting of a center covered with a coating.
-
Cartes de visite. A small photographic portrait of someone, mounted on a piece of card.
-
Demi mondaines. A woman considered to belong to the demimonde.
-
Château. A large French country house or castle.
-
Nouveautés. New thing.
-
Barèges. A commune in the Hautes-Pyr�n�es department in southwestern France.
-
En rapport. Having a close and harmonious relationship.
-
Crêpe lisse. Smooth or unwrinkled.
-
Mesdames en flânant. Ladies strolling.
-
Merveille. Wonder.
-
Grisette. A working-class woman, originally French, or later, good-time girl.
-
Tout aller. Go all.
-
Messieurs et mesdames. Men and women.
-
La loge des lions. The lodge of lions.
-
Blasé. Unimpressed or indifferent to something because one has experienced or seen it so often before.
-
Pâtés. A rich, savory paste made from finely minced or mashed ingredients, typically seasoned meat or fish.
-
Brioches. A light, sweet yeast bread typically in the form of a small, round roll.
-
éclairs. A small, soft, log-shaped pastry filled with cream and typically topped with chocolate icing.
-
Méringues. A mixture of egg whites and sugar that is beaten stiff and browned in the oven and is usually used as a topping for pies and cakes, pastry made of a meringue shell that is filled with fruit or whipping cream.
-
En passant. By the way; incidentally.
-
“Robert, toi que j’aime” Robert, thee that I like.
-
“Oui, madame, toujours.” Yes, madam, always.
-
Tignon. A piece of cloth worn as a turban headdress.
-
“Moi.” Me.
-
Pousse café. After-dinner liqueur.
-
Repoussé. Of metalwork; hammered into relief from the reverse side.
-
Porte bouquet. Door bouquet.
-
Soupçon. A very small quantity of something.
-
Bon vivant. A person who enjoys a sociable and luxurious lifestyle.
-
Blanchisseuse. Laundrywoman or laundry man.
-
Qui vivra verra. Time will tell.
-
Haut ton. High Tone.
-
Bon parti. Good party.
-
Mousquetaire. Musketeer, soldier armed with a musket; soldier in the service of the French king in the 1700’s.
-
con amore. With love, tenderness.
-
Pater familias. “father of the family.”
-
Baigneuse decolletée. Undercut bather.
-
éclat. Brilliant display or effect.
-
Fête. A celebration of festival.
-
Chef d’orchestre. Bandmaster, conductor, director.
-
Passé beaux. Past beautiful.
-
Valse à cinq temps. Waltz to five times.
-
Loge grillée. Lodge.
-
Ne plus ultra. The most profound degree of a quality or state.
-
E pluribus unum. One out of many.
-
Régime. Government.
-
Lares et penates. Household gods.
-
Arpents. An old French unit of land area equivalent to 3,420 square meters.
-
“Je suis très flatté, mademoiselle, de pouvoir m’inscrire.” I am very flattered, miss, for me to be able to enroll.
-
Pére. Father.
-
Mon déjeuner. My lunch.
-
Mon voisin. My neighbor.
-
En parenthèse. In parenthesis.
-
Voiture. Car, vehicle; coach, wagon; carriage, motorcar.
-
Le salon. The lounge.
-
Ma chère madame. My dear lady.
-
Mariage de convenance. Marriage of convenience.
-
Prétendu. Alleged.
-
Sirop de batterie. Sugarcane juice.
-
“Comment ca va?” “Aye! quel chance! c’est toi,” “How are you?” “Aye! What luck! It is you.”
-
Le vieux. The old.
-
Tisane. Herbal tea.
-
Dormez bien. Sleep well.
-
Café au lait. Milk coffee.
-
Embonpoint. Overweight.
-
Ma petite. My little one.
-
La Vapeur. The Steam.
-
Bon mots. Good words.
-
Vive la bagatelle. Long live success.
Text prepared by
Fall 2013
- Nicholas Liberatos
- Maegan Goss
- Dawson Gould
- Tanner Wyatt
Winter 2014
- Caleb Boesch
- Blake Cheatwood
- Caitlin Elliott
- Bruce R. Magee
- Tyler Tippen
Source
Ripley, Eliza. Social Life in Old New
Orleans, Being Recollections of My Girlhood. New York: D. Appleton, 1912.
Internet Archive. 19 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
<https:// archive.org/ details/ social lifein oldn00ripl>.
Anthology of Louisiana
Literature