Chapter XXXIX: A Visit of Tender Memories 320 (3)

Last winter I was invited to a view (sounds like a picture exhibit!) of the trousseau and wedding gifts of a fashionable young lady. I was stunned with amazement! A large room filled to overflowing with glass, china, silver, mirrors, everything a body could require, and a vast array of utterly useless articles! and the trousseau which the tired mother, who has had nervous prostration ever since, spent months accumulating in Paris. My gracious! the best _blanchisseuse_ in the land could not cope successfully with all that flimsy finery, laces and ribbons. I could only look and wonder, “What can all this lead to?” (I add here, anticipating events: It led to an apartment and one maid servant.) The young man was a salaried clerk, and the young girl utterly unfit to care for even the superabundance of china and silver, so much more than they could possibly find use for in a three-story house, not to mention a six-room apartment and “light housekeeping.” I wonder if the whirligig of time won’t bring back some of the simplicity of my day?

Already it is the style to “fire out of sight” the useless bric-a-brac ornaments that twenty years ago cluttered up drawing rooms till one had to pick her way carefully lest she stumble over a blue china cat, or tilt over a bandy-leg table covered with ivory idols and Chinese mandarins with bobbing heads. Some of the most fashionable drawing rooms to-day are already so stripped of furniture one has to wander around quite a bit to find a chair to sit on; not even a pier mirror to prink before, nor a parlor clock, flanked by “side pieces,” on the mantel. All that banished for stunning simplicity. Not so, however, the costumes and entertainments, which are becoming, so it seems to a near-sighted old lady, more and more luxurious. Perhaps this extreme (we all dote on extremes) of simplicity will come to take the place of many other equally absurd extremes of the present day. _Qui vivra verra._

XIII

A COUNTRY WEDDING IN 1846

We missed the train! and here we were in the old Bayou Sara Hotel, looking for some kind of locomotion. We had eighteen miles to make, and if the _Belle Creole_ had made the run we would have been all right, but the _Belle Creole_ was not a flier; it had no time for arrivals or departures; it just jogged along at its own good will, answering every call, running all sorts of antics up and down the river. Dick started out to see what he could do.

I sat on the dirty porch, looking through November china trees towards the river. Is there anything more depressing than a view of china trees in November? The pretty, fragrant, blue flowers long gone, and the mocking birds (nobody ever heard of English sparrows then!) that had drunk their fill of intoxicating liquor from the scattering china berries were gone too. The train we had missed, the dear old _Belle Creole_ always missed, was a kind of private affair. The whole outfit, about twenty miles of track, the lumbering cars, the antiquated engines, and I think, too, the scattering woods that supplied the fuel were all the private property of the McGehees. The McGehees had a cotton factory in the neighborhood of Woodville, twenty miles from the river. They had one train, cheap and dirty, that made one trip a day, going with freight very early in the morning, returning later, with freight and one small passenger car for the owner’s use. This concern stopped for wood and water and nothing else, and was the only means of transport for “casuals” like ourselves from the river to Woodville. Ladies going back and forth and gentlemen of leisure used their own conveyance, a turtle-back affair that was entered by a row of steps. The dear _Belle Creole_ was too much of a convenience to have a time table, so it was useless to construct a time table and plan to “connect” with that equally free and easy train. Some disgruntled chap chalked on an unused car, left on the rails as a depot, “We belong to the McGehees, and go when we please.”

Well, to make the matter short, though it was long to me, on that dirty porch by the china trees, Dick found a man with a turtle-top coach, and a harness mended by cords and stakes and bits of rawhide. The man had a mended look, too, but he was sober, and for a good, round sum agreed to take us to Laurel Hill. Laurel Hill, where we proposed to go, was a post office station, about ten miles from Woodville and four miles across country. We meandered along, tired and out of all patience. At the date of this tramp I was a little girl and not given to moralizing. When we arrived at Laurel Hill we were told, “Creek is up; been a big rain somewhere; not even a horseman has crossed all day.” There was no accommodation for man or beast at the queer little depot, no place to sit and nothing to sit on. It was long after dark, and there was no one to tell us the story of the high water but a negro man, who was shutting up the one door of the building. There was nothing left us but to go to the nearest plantation house and ask for lodgings.

I was so tired I felt we had gone ten miles further when we reached Major Dick Haile’s, though it really was only a few miles. The tired horses and the sleepy driver made slow work. There was a gate and an opening, but the house was pitch dark, every door closed and everybody apparently asleep. The nags were willing to stand, unhitched, beside the fence; not an automobile or flying machine could have scared them; they were asleep, too.

After much knocking and calling at what seemed to be the door of entrance, an old gentleman, candle in hand and very scantily dressed, demanded to know what was wanted. My brother called that we were on our way to the General’s, and we could not cross the creek, so we begged the privilege of a lodging for the night.

“General’s for the wedding? Come right in.” A brighter light was procured, and before we were seated in the reception room we heard the hospitable voice, “Put your carriage under the shed, give those horses a good feed, then come to the kitchen and get a bite for yourself.” The two young daughters came in, hurriedly dressed (people did not have bathrobes and wrappers seventy years ago). I was awfully tired and awfully sleepy, and I began to think our lodgings were to be parlor chairs, long before the dining room door was opened, and the genial old gentleman, in night shirt and trousers, led the way to the table. We had fried chicken, hot cornbread, coffee, cakes, and I don’t know what else. It would take me back forty years to see a cook roused at midnight, to prepare such a meal. I presume she even took herself to the roost and caught her young chicken by the legs and wrung its neck before she reached the newly-made fire. Major Haile knew we had not broken our fast at the town hotel.

It was late the following day when we all assembled to just as fine a breakfast, and heard the major say, “Your ‘turnout’ is gone. I sent to see about the condition of the creek; it goes down about as fast as it rises. When you are rested my carriage is at your disposal. Your driver was not used to these roads, but mine knows every crossing in the creek.”

It was a four-mile drive, even after we had crossed the waters. The wedding house we found in commotion. There were no caterers or experts even in New Orleans in 1846. The wedding supper was in process of preparation, under the superintendence of a noted old cakemaker from Woodville, nine miles off. Everybody was busy; only General McCausland, the dear old master of the house, was quietly seated by his parlor window, a very old man, but a soldier withal, who could rise to emergencies when required. I drew up a chair and explained our delay, and told him how grandly hospitable his neighbor was. The two old men were the last remaining ones of their company of the battle of New Orleans. Their homes were in payment from the Government for their services. The dear old gentlemen said they were neither general nor major; they were simple soldiers who had discharged their services and accepted their pay. Both the men were Irish, both poor boys. They worked hard, soon exhausted the old red soil of their neighborhood.

Later the General moved his workmen to the river bottoms, so that, while living for health’s sake in the old home, the house of which he originally helped to build, his income came from Bayou Fordoche, many miles away.

Time flew; neighbors had arrived, the table was spread in the long back porch. The guests, many of them, lived miles and miles away, in common country roads, often through dense woods—a long drive under best circumstances, a perilous one at night, everybody waiting, everybody in a hurry, everybody getting tired and fretful. It was long after the appointed time, and the New Orleans preacher had missed the train! Old Dilsey in the kitchen was mad because her pig was getting too brown; Elfey in the porch worrying that her ice cream was waiting too long; ladies in the parlor trying to kill time; men wandering around the front yard in restless groups. Carriages had been to the depot; no appearance of Mr. Jahleel Woodbridge, the New Orleans minister. He was endeared to the family, had been for years their minister at Woodville. Bride, in all her regal attire, upstairs in tears; no Presbyterian preacher nearer than ten miles away. So we waited and waited. At last the General sent for his especial groom, ordered him to take the buggy and go four miles through the woods, where there was a Methodist itinerant, and tell him to come without delay to marry the couple.

The accommodating preacher came, just as he was. He had been plowing his field, and his wife, off to see a sick child, had carried the keys with her. He could not even get a clean handkerchief, but he came in his workaday suit. The company hastily assembled. He performed the ceremony, gave them his blessings, and congratulated her on her “escape from the quicksands and shoals of celibacy.” Recognizing his own condition at the time, he begged to be excused from refreshments, and took a rapid and hurried departure. The kindly man was scarce gone when Mr. Jahleel Woodbridge arrived in a coach, most astonishingly like the one we had used the previous day. Only a year or two later the hospitable Major passed away; shortly after the General followed him, and the dear old homes have passed away also from the face of the earth.

XIV

THE BELLES AND BEAUX OF FORTY

Do not think I mean to imply the belles and beaux of which I am about to speak were forty years old, but they had their butterfly existence in the year 1840. Some, no doubt, fluttered around before, and a few after that date, but they all were of that era of simple life that, alas! is of the distant past—a host, as Auctioneer Beard used to say when parading his goods, “too multitudinous to particularize.” In the first place, the costumes, as well as the customs of society, were so different from those of the present day that they marshal before my mind’s eye almost like a fancy dress parade.

Miss Ellen Johnson, who became later the wife of William B. Walker (of the firm of Woodlief & Walker), and her sister, Malvina, wife of our celebrated Dr. Warren Stone, wore the most beautiful curls—wore them long after that style ceased to be _haut ton_. I have some “Moniteurs des Dames” of that early date that afford insight into costumes then worn. The long pointed waist, chuck full of real, hard, stiff whalebones (all the whalebones must have been used up then; nobody can find one now), corset also whaleboned to the limit, laced at the back and with literally a board up the front, at least three inches wide—a real board, apple tree wood preferred, hard and stiff and unyielding. Ladies so girded up walked and stood and sat, too, like drum majors; no round, stooping shoulders; one just had to stand straight, with an apple tree board as a constant reminder. I used even to hear that in cases where the poise had a tendency to lapse it was not unusual for the victim to wear the corset night and day.

The tournure of 1840 was buried in such oblivion that it requires one to be almost eighty years old to drag it forth and display its hideousness, explain its construction. The tournure, called “tchuny” for short, was long and round, the size and shape of the biggest kind of a rolling pin, such as your cook uses for pastry. The ends, however, tapered to points, which met and were secured in front of the waist. It was stuffed with moss, or cotton, or hair, I don’t know what, for the monstrosity “came ready-made” from France. Over this awful precipice the full gathered dress skirt fell in rippling cascades. I remember a chiné silk, an indistinct, plaided purple and green; it was ruffled to the waist, and over the tchuny it hung in irregular folds. To my childhood’s eye it was most graceful and beautiful. Good-by, tchuny! I am sure you will never resurrect. Your reign was disastrous to taste. You lived one short decade; without a mourner when you departed. Good-by, tchuny!

Whatever did become of chiné silks? Can it be possible they are back on the counters masquerading under another name? I never see a silk now that bears any resemblance to the pretty chiné of 1840. Nor do I see tarletans of that date. It required a whole piece (or bolt) of that goods for a dress. It had to have at least three skirts, one over the other, to give the diaphanous effect. Such sweet, simple dresses they were, too. Miss Mary Jane Matthews, a belle of the forties, wore a pink tarletan, trimmed with wreaths of small white roses, that was an inspiration. One very striking one comes to mind, gold colored, garnished with red hollyhocks! I think some Western girl must have sported that; it was scarcely simple enough for Creole taste.

Emma Shields was a noted beauty. I recall a plaster bust of Queen Victoria, idealized beyond all reason or recognition, one of my brothers kept on a shelf in his room. He adored it because he saw a resemblance to beautiful Emma Shields. She, poor girl, married unfortunately, and dropped suddenly out of sight. About the same time an accidental flourish of a feather duster knocked Queen Victoria off the shelf—and smashed my brother’s idol.

Don’t I recall as though he stood before me this minute, on my father’s balcony, Mr. Peter Anderson? Tall and thin and angular (he imagined he looked like Henry Clay, and he was of similar build), dressed in what was known as moleskin, a tan-colored goods looking strangely like rough-finished kid, the trousers so skin-tight and so firmly strapped under the shoe that he had to assume a sitting posture with considerable deliberation and care.

Here comes Adolphus Hamilton, a quiet eligible, more known in business than in social circles, but the far-seeing mammas kept an eye on him, he was such a _bon parti_. One fine day he surprised these mammas by arriving with his bride from a trip to Natchez. Henry Hollister, too, was a business man who made few social calls, but was in evidence at all the dances. A few years ago I met his daughter at a summer resort. She was prodigiously amused that papa, now hobbling about with a gouty foot and stout cane, ever could have been a dancing beau.

George W. Kendall went off one fine day, to what he proposed would be a kind of picnic, in the wilds of Western Texas. His Santa Fe expedition spun out a longer and more varied experience than he contemplated, of which his graphic account, now unhappily out of print, is most entertaining. He married in France, and in Texas during the war we met him, after a lapse of many years. He had founded the town of New Braunfels, near San Antonio, and retired, full of years, and full of interest in the rough life around him, so different from the New Orleans of his earlier days and the Paris of his gayer ones.

The Miltenberger brothers were never old. They danced and made themselves admired through several generations of belles. The “sere and yellow leaf” could never be applied to a Miltenberger. Evergreens were they, game to the last, for no doubt they are all gone, and the places that knew them will know them no more.

A. K. Josephs, a lawyer of some note and a very acceptable visitor, was a replica in the way of flowered waistcoat and dangling chains of a prominent man of his race in England, Disraeli. Don’t I see a bird of paradise waistcoat? Indeed I do. And also a waistcoat of similar style sent to another prominent beau of the period, a black satin confection, with gorgeous peacocks embroidered on the ample front. I don’t think the recipient of that garment ever appeared in it. Flamboyant as were the waistcoats of that day, a peacock with spread tail was the limit. They are all dead, those belles and beaux of the forties. The old lady chronicler could expect nothing else of these folks she loves to remember and talk of to children and grandchildren, who listen with becoming patience, no doubt often thinking, “Dear grandma must be nearing her dotage.”

XV

AS IT WAS IN MY DAY

I am like the deaf old lady who, when asked why she took a box at the opera when she could not hear, replied, “I can see.” So it is on piazzas at summer hotels, I do not overhear remarks, so perforce the pleasure of gossip is denied me, but “I can see,” and no doubt do observe more than those who have the other faculty to play upon; also I see and moralize. Last summer in the mountains didn’t I see young girls, young society girls, educated girls who ought to have known better, with bare heads and bare arms playing tennis in the hot sun; and, worse still, racing over the golf links? I could see them from my window, equally exposed, chasing balls and flourishing clubs. The sun in August is pitiless even on those breezy mountains, so I was scarcely surprised when one young girl was overcome by heat and exposure, and was brought to her mother at the hotel in a passing grocer’s cart or lumber wagon. I tell my grandchildren who want to “do like other girls” that is not the way “other girls” did in my day. Grandma may be so old that she forgets, but she moralizes all the same. These athletic girls come back to city homes so sunburnt and with such coarse skin they have to repair to a skin specialist, and have the rough cuticle burnt off with horrid acids, and be polished up before the society season opens.

There are, of course, extremes, but years ago young ladies took more care of their complexions and of their hair, too. Years back of years, I don’t know how they did. In my day we girls loved to visit the granddaughter of a voluble dame and listen to the old lady’s talk, just like I am talking now. She thought we were criminally careless with our “skins,” as she called it. Why, when she was young, her skin was so thin and clear that “one saw little blue veins meandering her neck.” We always heard something as reminiscent in that house to laugh over till we saw the old lady again, and heard something equally remarkable of her youth. She was living in the past, as I am now, as I return to my experiences. One young girl visited me, ever so many years ago, who wore one of those awful, long, scoop sunbonnets all the time she was not at table or in bed. She looked like the proverbial lily. I used to wish she would take off that sunbonnet and say something, for she was dumb as a lily. I have entirely forgotten her name, though she was my guest for a whole stupid week; but I recall she was a relative or friend of the Morses. I don’t know Mr. Morse’s name; he was called Guncotton Morse, for he invented an explosive of that name, which the United States Government appropriated during the war.

Years after this young girl’s visit to me I called on the charming Morse family in Washington. He was then urging his “claim.” Every Southerner in Washington was after a “claim” at that time. I nearly broke my neck falling over a green china dog or a blue china cat in their dark parlor. Enterprising Morse barricaded himself behind his explosive, but I think he failed in his fight. I find I have wandered from the girls having their skins burned off to the Morses and their blue china cat!... In my days there were no specialists except cancer doctors. I think they always flourished—there were no skin specialists. A doctor was a doctor, nothing more nor less, and he was supposed to know all that was necessary of the “human form divine.” He did, too, for people did not have the new-fangled diseases of to-day. A woman’s hospital! Oh, heavens! Only last week I saw a friend, old enough to know better, but we never are so old we don’t want to rid our faces of pimples and warts and wrinkles. This friend was a sight. I was really alarmed for her. She had been to a specialist. Her face was fiery red, all the skin removed by acid. Yesterday I saw her again, cured of sunburn and all the ills skin is heir to. Her complexion was that of the lily girl who wore the scoop sunbonnet. I do not advise you to try the experiment. It is shockingly painful, and does not always prove a success.

When I was a little girl, more than seventy years ago, mother made me, for summer romps in the country, gloves of nankeen, that well covered the wrist, had a hole for the thumb and a deep flap to fall over the hand. It was lucky they were easily made, and nankeen was not expensive, for I hated them and had a way of losing them in the currant bushes. Maybe you never saw nankeen? Gentlemen’s waistcoats were often made of it, and little boys’ trousers. If I lost my scoop sunbonnet one day—and it was surprising how easily I lost it!—it was sewed on the next. There were no such things as hatpins—and we had pigtails anyway, so they would have been of no use. Such tortures were inflicted when we were running wild over the blue grass farm, but no doubt the little Creole girls on the lakeshore were similarly protected. The hair specialist was not in evidence either.

Ladies had their hair done up with bandoline and pomatums made of beef’s marrow and castor oil and scented with patchouli; hair was done into marvelous plaits and puffs. A very much admired style which Henriette Blondeau, the fashionable hair dresser, achieved, was a wide plait surrounding a nest of stiff puffs. It was called the “basket of fruit.” The front locks were tiny, fluffy curls each side the face and long ringlets to float over the shoulders. We all remember Henriette Blondeau. She dressed my sister’s hair in the early forties, and she dressed mine ten years later, and I met her in the hall of the St. Charles Hotel, plying her trade, twenty years later still, the same Henriette, with the same ample apron, the tools of her trade sticking out from her pockets. Now, almost forty years later still, she walks the streets of New Orleans no more. I hope she rests somewhere in the old French cemetery, for she knew and gossiped with so many who are taking their long sleep in that peaceful spot.

Mother made—no doubt your grandmother did, too—the pomade that was used on our hair. It was used, too, very freely; our locks plastered down good and smooth and flat. You may wonder how long hair so treated could last; just as long as hair ruffled the wrong way and marcelled with warm irons lasts our girls to-day. Mother’s pomade was made of beef’s marrow and castor oil. After the marrow was rendered to a fluid state, oil was added, then perfume, the whole beaten in a deep bowl until perfectly cold and white. Mother would beat and beat, add a few drops more of essence of bergamot, smell and smell and beat and smell, until she had to call a fresh nose to see if it was all right. I remember being told to try my olfactories on the soft, creamy stuff. A naughty brother gave my head a blow that sent my little pug-nose to the bottom of the bowl! My face was covered to the ears, and while mother scraped it with a spoon and scolded Henry, she was entreating me not to cry and have tears spoil her pomade. Maybe I might have forgotten how the stuff was made and how it looked, but for that ridiculous prank of the dearest brother ever was.

I have a sweet little miniature of that brother Henry, namesake of my father’s dear friend, Henry Clay, with the queer collared coat and flourishing necktie of the day, and his long, straight hair well plastered with mother’s good pomade. The dear man went to Central America, on a pleasure tour to the ruins of Uxmal in 1844. The vessel on which he sailed for home from Campeache, in September of that year, disappeared in the Gulf. We never had any tidings of how, or when, or where. I remember the firm of J. W. Zacharie was consignee of that ill-fated _Doric_, and how tenderly Mr. Zacharie came to my stricken mother, and how much he did to obtain information, and how for weeks after all hopes were abandoned my mother’s heart refused to believe her boy was indeed lost. Every night for months she placed with her own trembling hands a lamp in the window of Henry’s room, to light him when he came. She never gave up some remnant of hope. So far as I know, only one friend of that dear brother, one contemporary, is living now, in New Orleans. She is the last of her generation; I am the last of mine.

In those days there were few patent medicines, washes and lotions. There was a Jayne’s hair tonic, and somebody’s chologogue, that was a fever cure much in evidence on plantations, for quinine and blue mass pills—others, too—were made by hand. I have made many a pill. We had an old negro woman who was daft on the subject of medicine. There was not an earthly thing the matter with Hannah—she was just a chronic grumbler, begging for “any kind of pill.” I doctored her successfully, making for her bread pills, rolling them in a little rhubarb dust to give them a nasty taste. They did her a world of good. Mother made our lip salve (didn’t your grandmother?) of white wax and sweet oil. We did not have cold cream in those days.

When by accident, or some other way, our faces tanned, a wash overnight of sour buttermilk was all that was required. It was not very pleasant, and nobody wanted to occupy the room with you on sour buttermilk night. Reason obvious. Kentucky belles, who were noted for their rosy cheeks, often increased the bloom by a brisk rubbing of the leaves of the wild mullein. Except rice powder (and that is not a cosmetic) no cosmetics were in use.

We can recall at a later date than my girlhood a lady from somewhere up the coast married a finicky cotton broker in New Orleans. They made a wedding trip to Paris, and she returned with her face enameled. I don’t think it could have been very skillfully done, for she had to be so careful about using the muscles of the face that she was absolutely devoid of expression. Once, in a moment of forgetfulness or carelessness, she “cracked a smile,” which cracked the enamel. She returned to Paris for repairs. I saw her on the eve of sailing, and do not know if she ever returned.

XVI

FANCY DRESS BALL AT THE MINT IN 1850

I have never heard of a society ball in a United States mint building, before nor since, but the Kennedys, who gave this one, were a power in the social world at that time—and ambitious beyond their means. Rose and Josephine, the two oldest of quite a flock of daughters, were débutantes that winter. Both were handsome and accomplished. Rose was also a famous pianist, even in those days when every woman strove to excel in music, and it was customary to entertain even a casual caller with a sonata. Gottschalk declared Rose Kennedy rendered his famous “Bamboula” better than he did himself, and to hear her was to rise and dance.

Who was at that fancy ball? Everybody who was anybody in the fifties. The Eustises—George and Mathilde, George as “a learned judge” (he was son of Chief Justice Eustis), and Mathilde in pure white and flowing veil was a bewitching nun. George, years after, married the only child of the banker-millionaire, W. C. Corcoran, in Washington. Mathilde married Alan Johnson, an Englishman; both are long since dead. There was Mrs. John Slidell, of “Mason and Slidell” fame, a “marquise,” in thread lace and velvet, her sisters, the Misses Deslonde, “peasant girls of France.” Mathilde Deslonde became the wife of Gen. Beauregard, and her sister, Caroline, married Mr. R. W. Adams. All three sisters are with the departed. Col. and Mrs. John Winthrop, “gentleman and lady of the nineteenth century,” the jolly colonel announced. Who fails to recall, with a smile, the Winthrops, who lived in Royal Street, near Conti; near neighbors of the—long departed—Bonfords? The genial colonel became a tottering old man, asking his devoted wife “who and where are we?” before he peacefully faded away. Young De Wolf of Rhode Island, nephew of Col. Winthrop’s, “an Arab sheik,” wore probably the only genuine costume in the room—a flowing robe that was catching in every girl’s coiffure, and every man’s sword and spurs, in the dance.

All the gilded youth who wanted boisterous fun, and no jury duty, were firemen, in those days of voluntary service. Philippe De la Chaise wore his uniform. He later married Victoria Gasquet, and was relegated to a “back number” shortly after.

I make no special mention of the chaperons, but, Creole like, they were present in force. Cuthbert Slocomb was a _mousquetaire_, and Augusta, in red and black, “Diablotan,” a vision of beauty and grace. She married the Urquhart mentioned in “Musical History of Louisiana,” as the father of Cora Urquhart Potter. Mr. Urquhart died years ago, but his widow survives. She lives with her daughter at Staines on the Thames, in a stone house that was a lodge of Windsor Castle in the time of Henry VIII. Cuthbert Slocomb married a Miss Day; his widow and daughter, Countess di Brazza, survive him. Ida Slocomb was the noted philanthropist of New Orleans, the widow of Dr. T. G. Richardson.

There was the stately Mrs. Martin Gordon chaperoning her exceedingly pretty sister, Myrtle Bringier, who became the wife of Gen. Dick Taylor, and whose descendants are among the few of those mentioned above still living and reigning in New Orleans society.

The mint building was made ample for the gay festivities by utilizing committee rooms, offices and every apartment that could be diverted for the crowd’s comfort—so, we wandered about corridors and spacious rooms, but never beyond the touch of a gendarme—officers, soldiers, policemen at every step. These precautions gave a rather regal air to the whole affair.

Painted in Paris, in 1857]

The belles retired to their boudoirs for a season, but the beaux had to go to business, and what a sight some of them were for a whole week after the fancy dress ball! They had hired costumes from members of the French opera troupe, and their faces were “made up” with rouge that could not be washed off; had to wear off in a purplish stain. My brother represented Louis XIV on that occasion, and I remember he scrubbed his cheeks until he made them almost raw. Of no avail. In time the pinkish, purplish tint gradually disappeared.

Shortly after that grandest and most unique entertainment Mr. Joe Kennedy’s term expired and he retired into private life. Beautiful Rose fell into a decline and died early. What fortunes befell that family I know not. They seem to have faded away. The Kennedys were a large family in those days, closely allied to the Pierce and Cenas families, all of which were socially prominent. And now their names are “writ in water.” I should like to know how many of this old Creole society are living to-day! I was eighteen, one of the youngest of the group, in the fifties.

XVII

DR. CLAPP’S CHURCH

It is quite sixty years since Dr. Clapp’s church went up in smoke. It was as well known to the denizens and visitors of New Orleans, in its day, as Talmage’s Tabernacle in Brooklyn some decades later was known far and wide. Dr. Clapp called it “The First Congregational Church of New Orleans.” Others designated it as “Clapp’s Church.” It was, in reality, neither one nor the other, for it was not an organized congregation, and its building was the property of an eccentric Jew. In a burst of admiration and generosity Judah Touro gave the church rent free to Dr. Clapp. The structure had quite the appearance of a “Friends’ Meeting House.” It was of unpainted brick, entirely devoid of any ornamentation. The little steeple was only high enough and big enough to hold the inevitable bell. One entered a narrow vestibule, with two doors leading into the body of the church, and two flights of stairs to respective galleries. It was further furnished with two conspicuous tin signs—“Stranger’s Gallery on the Right,” “Gallery for Colored Persons on the Left.” (Dr. Clapp came from Boston.)

On entering the sanctuary one faced the organ loft, the pulpit being at the street end between the two doors. It was a little rounded affair, with, to all appearances, “standing room for one only.” Back of it, to convey possibly an idea of space, and also to relieve the intense white of the wall, was a wonderful drapery, very high and very narrow, of red serge, pleated, looped and convoluted in an amazing way.

Dr. Clapp, a large, handsome, middle-aged man, in a clerical black silk robe, entered the pulpit from between the folds of that draped monstrosity. He was dignified and reverential, preached without notes, sometimes, but not always, using a Bible text. The music of that church was rated as very fine, the organ was the best in the city. (I wonder if old Judah Touro furnished that, too?) And Thomas Cripps, the organist, managed it, _con amore_. There must have been a choir to furnish the chorus, but I only call to mind Mrs. Renshaw and her sister, Miss White, who sang solos and duets. Their finely trained voices produced melody itself. Mr. James I. Day, tall, and thin, and gaunt, with a hatchet face, who looked as if a squeak was his vocal limit, had a most powerful bass voice that filled the building and floated out onto the street. The last time I saw him he was in an open carriage with a red velvet cushion on his lap, on which reposed the key (as big as the famous Bastile key) of the city of New Orleans. He was receiving Rex in an initial Mardi Gras parade. That was years ago.

To return to church, I don’t recall any prayer books or hymnals, nor hearing any congregational singing. The choir, of course, was volunteer. We had yet to know a church singer could be salaried. There was no church organization, as we know it to-day, or even at that day. There were no officers, no deacons, no elders, far as I can think, for my father was a devoted communicant and constant attendant and naturally would have fitted into some church office, if there had been any.

When Dr. Clapp announced the taking of a collection he cast his eye over the congregation and signaled from it those persons who were to “pass the plates.”

“Mr. Smith will take the center aisle, Mr. Jones the right aisle, Mr. Robinson the left aisle, Mr. Dick right gallery, Mr. Harry left gallery,” whereupon Messrs. Smith, Jones and Robinson and Messrs. Dick and Harry would come forward, take their plates from a table under the high pulpit and proceed to their allotted tasks. Remembering this confirms me in the belief there were no officers of the church whose duty it would have been to discharge such services.

There was only one service a week, a morning service and sermon on Sundays, no night meetings, as there was really no means of lighting the building. No Bible class, no Sunday school, no prayer meeting, no missionary band, no church committee, no Donors’ Society, no sewing circle, no donation party, no fairs, no organ recital, absolutely “no nothing,” but Dr. Clapp and his weekly sermon. The church was always filled to its utmost capacity. I recall a host of pew holders whose names have passed into oblivion with their bodies.

The old church stood on St. Charles Street, adjacent to the St. Charles Hotel, so when one building went up in flames the other did, too. The Veranda Hotel, next in importance to its neighbor, was across the way, and from these sources always came strangers, more than enough to fill the gallery, when they were wafted up the stairs by the conspicuous tin sign.

Almost simultaneously with the destruction of the building, disappeared both Dr. Clapp and Mr. Touro from public notice. By the way, Mr. Judah Touro never had been inside the church, nor had he ever heard Dr. Clapp preach. Of course, they are both as dead now as the unique old church, so it matters not how, when or where they departed. The congregation dissolved as completely. Probably not one member, old enough at the time to know what Dr. Clapp preached about or to be able to criticise his utterances, is living to-day. Dr. Clapp was a loyal citizen, a charitable, kindly man, one of the few who voluntarily remained in the city and ministered to the stricken and buried the dead in the fearful epidemics that ravaged the land every two or three years. His counsel reached the flotsam of a great city, and his teachings bore fruit. He is gone now where church organizations are not considered, but the good works he wrought by his simple methods are placed to his credit.

XVIII

OLD DAGUERREOTYPES

I think I can safely say I possess the first daguerreotype ever taken in New Orleans. An artist came there about 1840 and opened a studio (artist and studio sound rather grand when one views the work to-day). That studio was at the corner of Canal Street and Exchange Alley. The artist needed some pictures of well-known men for his showcase, so he applied to my father, who was of the “helping hand” variety. And dear Pa was rewarded with the gift of a picture of himself all done up in a velvet-lined case, which he brought home to the amazement and wonder of every member of the family, white and black. I look at it now with a grim smile. Dear Pa’s cravat ends were pulled out and his coattail laid nicely over one leg, and his hand spread so that one could see he had five big fingers. His head had been steadied straight up in a most unnatural position, with a kind of callipers or steel braces, and he must have been told to “look up and smile” for a full minute.

We prize that daguerreotype for its antiquity, but I hope seventy years hence when another and another generation opens my “war album” they will not laugh at the quaint _cartes de visite_ it contains, though I confess some of them begin to look rather queer already. They were all gifts of near and dear friends, most of them with autograph attachments, some of which were so flourishing that I had to subscribe the names and dates on the backs.

There are Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Davis, dated 1860, before he was President, you perceive. Though I have letters from both, I never saw either after that date. There’s Gen. J. Bankhead Magruder, in full uniform, far and away the most picturesque of my collection. The first time we ever met Gen. Magruder was very soon after the capture of the _Harriet Lane_ in Galveston waters. The Texans were wild and jubilant at the dashing feat, and when we reached Houston, all travel-stained and worn out, the city was in a ferment of excitement.

The General dearly loved to tell a good story, and the impediment in his speech, a drawling lisp, made him vastly amusing. In his office one day one of his aides was tinkling a banjo. A travel-stained individual called:

“Is the General in?”

“No,” tinkle, tinkle.

“When will he be in?”

“Don’t know,” tinkle, tinkle.

“Will you tell him I called?”

“What name?” tinkle, tinkle.

“Smith.”

“I think I have heard that name before,” tinkle, tinkle. “What Smith?”

“Gen. E. Kirby Smith, young man!”

No tinkle followed that reply. The young aide almost swooned away. Gen. Magruder surrounded himself with Virginia gentlemen aides, who gave him infinite trouble, he said.

In the early fifties “we met by chance, the usual way,” Major F. Ducayet. A party driving down the old Bayou road one Sunday heard that at Ducayet’s there would be found a rare collection of wonderful fowls and poultry, and the owner was very gracious about showing his assortment to visitors. After a bit of hesitation we ventured to introduce ourselves. Mr. Ducayet received us most hospitably, showed us through his lovely grounds and gave us the history of his rarest feathered pets, presented the two ladies with choice bouquets and insisted upon our partaking of refreshments. During the conversation that ensued Mr. Ducayet said he would not be able to increase his fancy flock, all of which had been brought him from foreign parts by captains and sailors, as a change in the administration would remove him from the position in the Custom House he had held for years. One of the party at once asked him to call on him at the St. Charles Hotel the following day, that he, being a Democrat and a politician of influence, might exert himself in his behalf. Mr. Ducayet retained his position. From that chance acquaintance sprung a strong friendship. We saw much of Major Ducayet in war times, hence the little _carte de visite_ which ornaments my war album.

By the side of Major Ducayet’s is the face of ex-Governor Moore of Louisiana. He was an inmate of our modest little home in Texas during the expiring days of the Confederacy.

I have also similar small photos of Major Tom Lee, General Preston, General Breckinridge, Commodore John N. Maffit, General and Mrs. Robert Toombs, General Early, Dr. Howard Smith and a host of lesser lights, all of which were taken in Havana after the war.

Dr. Howard Smith of New Orleans was surgeon on somebody’s (perhaps Gen. Kirby Smith’s) staff, and was our frequent guest in Texas, a very valuable guest, too, for his skill carried some members of my family out of the “valley of the shadow” into the sunshine. One trip we made together from the Rio Grande into the interior of Texas, quite a caravan of us in the party.

The first day out from Laredo there was a terrible sandstorm, cold almost to freezing point, and never was a more disgusted party of travelers. In a fit of despair Dr. Smith exclaimed: “I would give a thousand dollars for a drink of brandy.” Now brandy was a luxury a thousand dollars could not always supply, but I promptly replied: “I will give you a whole bottle of brandy, the cork of which has not been drawn, if you will divide it with the rest of the crowd.” Of course, the proposition was accepted. From my carpetbag I produced a tiny toy bottle, holding perhaps a half wine glass of the coveted liquor. It was not easy to divide the contents liberally, but the genial doctor appreciated the joke and did his utmost to carry out its provisions.

Years after, walking uptown in New Orleans, my escort said: “Look at the man on that gallery. See if you know him.” I met the man’s eyes full in my face, and passed on. It was Dr. Howard Smith, neither of us recognizing the other. He was in ill-health, old and haggard, and I guess I showed some of time’s footprints, too.

XIX

STEAMBOAT AND STAGE SEVENTY YEARS AGO

In the twilight of my days, seated in my favorite chair, I rock away many a trip from my New Orleans home to the blue grass region of my ancestors. Dream trips they are, but dreams of real trips in the old days when steamboats and stages were the approved, in fact, the only, transportation for travelers.

About the Fourth of July every year our family migrated to the old Kentucky homestead. The Fourth was not chosen with any patriotic motive, but law courts were closed and legal business suspended, and my father’s vacation at hand at that date. Though the steamboats were called palatial, viewed from my rocking-chair trip to-day I wonder how people managed to stand the inconveniences and discomforts they provided.

There was the famed _Grey Eagle_, “a No. 1 floating palace” it was called. There was the _Belle of the West_ and the _Fashion_ and the _Henry Clay_. One time and another we churned up the muddy Mississippi water in every one of them. Naturally the boats catered in every way to the predilections of the plantation owners, who were their main source of profit. The picture of Arlington which illustrates this book was originally made to decorate a stateroom door on a fine new river boat built in the ’50’s and adorned in that way with views of homes along the river.

(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)]

_Grey Eagle_ was the finest and best, and therefore most popular boat. I recall with amusement an eight or ten days’ trip on that palace. The cabins were divided by curtains, drawn at night for privacy. The ladies’ cabin, at the stern, was equipped with ten or twelve small staterooms. The gentlemen’s cabin stretched on down to the officers’ quarters, bar, barber shop, pantries, etc., ending in what was called Social Hall, where the men sat about, smoking and chewing (the latter as common a habit as cigarette smoking is now) and talking—in other words, making themselves sociable.

On that same _Grey Eagle_ I was for the first time promoted to the upper berth, in a stateroom shared by an older sister. The berth was so narrow that in attempting to turn over I fell out and landed in the wash basin, on the opposite side of the room! My sister had to sit on the lower berth to braid my pigtails, then sent me forth so she could have room to braid her own. Trunks and other baggage more unwieldy than carpetbags were piled up in the vicinity of Social Hall. A carpetbag, small enough to be easily handled, was all there was room for in the stateroom. There were no valises, suitcases or steamer trunks in those days of little travel, and unless you are three-quarters of a century old you can’t imagine a more unwieldy article than a carpetbag of seventy years ago. Only toilet articles and things that could not muss and tumble could be safely stored in one.

In the stateroom, where we had to sleep and dress, and, if we could snatch a chance, take an afternoon nap, there was a corner shelf for a basin and pitcher and one chair; two doors, one leading out and the other leading in, transoms over each for light and ventilation—and there you are for over a week. The cabin was lighted with swinging whale-oil lamps, and one could light his stateroom if one had thought to provide a candle.

Every family traveled with a man servant, whose business it was to be constantly at beck and call. Of course, there was always a colored chambermaid, and, equally of course, she frisked around and seemed to have very little responsibility—no bells, no means of summoning her from her little nodding naps if she happened to be beyond the sound of one’s voice. The man servant’s duties, therefore, were almost incessant. If an article was needed from the trunks he was sent to the baggage pile for it, and often he brought trunk trays to the staterooms. When the boat stopped “to wood” every man servant rushed to the woodman’s cabin to get eggs, chickens, milk, what not.

And those men had the privilege of the kitchen to prepare private dishes for their white folks. I wonder how long a boat or hotel would stand that kind of management to-day; but in the days where my rocking-chair is transporting me, steamboat fare was not up to the standard of any self-respecting _pater familias_. There was no ice chest, no cold storage; in a word, no way of preserving fresh foods for any length of time, so passengers resorted to such means as presented themselves for their own bodily comfort. Those who had not the necessary appendage—a man servant—foraged for themselves, but the experienced and trusted servant, to use a vulgarism, “was never left.”

The table for meals extended the length of the gentlemen’s cabin, stretched out and out to its utmost length, if need be, so that every passenger had a seat. There was no second table, no second-class passengers—anybody was the equal of anybody else. If you could not possibly be that, you could find accommodation on the lower deck and eat from a tin plate.

It was quite customary, as I have mentioned, for passengers to have private dishes, prepared by their own servants. I recall with a smile, on one occasion, a very respectable-looking stranger boarded our boat at Helena or some such place. At dinner he reached for a bottle of wine. Cuthbert Bullitt touched the bottle with a fork, saying, “Private wine.” The man, with a bow, withdrew his hand. Presently he reached for a dish of eggs. My father said, “Excuse me, private.” There was something else he reached for, I forget what, and another fellow-passenger touched the dish and said “Private.” Presently dessert was served, and a fine, large pie happened to be placed in front of the Helena man. He promptly stuck his fork into it. “By gracious! this is a private pie.” There was a roar of laughter.

After dinner the others, finding him delightfully congenial and entertaining, fraternized with him to the extent of a few games at cards. He was wonderfully lucky. He left the boat at an obscure river town during the night, and the next day our captain said he was a notorious gambler. From his capers at table the captain saw he was planning a way of winning attention to himself, therefore under cover of darkness he had been put ashore. My father, who did not play, was vastly amused when he found the smart gambler had carried off all the spare cash of those who had enjoyed the innocent sport.