Chapter XXXIX: A Visit of Tender Memories 320 (4)

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.

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

Arrived at the end of our river journey, father chartered a whole stage to take his family a two days’ trip into the heart of the blue grass region. Nine passengers filled the interior of the coach, and four or five, if need be, could ride on top. The rumble (we always called it boot) was filled with baggage. The vehicle had no springs, but was swung on braces, which gave it a kind of swaying motion that always made me sick. However, we managed to start off in fine style, but every time there was a stop to change horses all of us alighted, stiff and tired and hot, to “stretch our legs,” like Squeers in Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby.” At noon we rejoiced to hear our coachman’s horn, a grand, loud blast, followed by toot, toot!—one toot for each passenger, so the tavern man would know how many plates to lay, and his wife how many biscuits and chicken legs to have ready. We always made out to spend the one night of the journey at Weissiger’s tavern in Frankfort, the best tavern in all the land. We had a leisurely breakfast the following morning and were refreshed in body and soul for the last lap of our journey.

Late afternoon the stage winds up a hill, and in a woods pasture and surrounded by blue grass meadows the gable end of a red brick house can be seen. My dear, tired mother puts her head out of the window, “Driver, blow your horn.” A great blast sounds over the waving grass and blossoming fields, and we know that they know we are coming. Tired as the horses are after the long, hard pull; tired as the coachman must be, he cracks his whip, and we gallop up the shady lane to the dear old door as briskly as though we were fresh from the stable. Long before we are fully there, and the steps of the nine-passenger coach can be lowered; long before the boys can jump off the top, a host of dear faces, both white and black, is assembled to greet us. As a little child I always wondered why it was, when the occasion was so joyful, and all of us tumbled from that stage so beaming and happy, that as my aunt folded my mother in her arms, they both wept such copious tears. Now I know.

XX

HOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849

If there is a more restful spot on earth than a comfortable rocking-chair on a deep veranda, with a nearby view of the dancing waters of the gulf through a grove of tall pines, commend me to it. A whole month on the west coast of Florida, all sand underfoot, pines and oaks overhead, is ideal for fagged-out, tired-out, frayed-out humanity from busy cities. This is not an advertisement, so I do not propose to tell where six people from six different and widely separated parts of the country last year dropped down from the skies, as it were, upon just such a delightful straight mile of gulf coast.

One halts at a “turpentine depot” and takes a queer little tram to the Gulf, seven miles away. Tram is hauled over wooden rails by two tired nags whose motions suggest the lazy air of the pines. It is loaded with the baggage—crates of hunting dogs—(fine hunting abounds), the mail bag, some miscellaneous freight and finally the passengers.

The country hotel is pine; ceilings, floors, walls are pine, the home-made and built-in furniture is pine; a big fire, roaring in the open fireplace if the day is chilly, is also made of pine—the rich, red Florida pine, ever so much richer in color and in turpentine than the boasted Georgia article. With the fish swimming in front of this hotel and the birds flying behind, and rabbits running in both directions, it goes without saying the table is above the average.

Here on the broad verandas, as we rock and dream the lazy days away, visions visit me of the old hotel at Pass Christian in the forties. The oaks and three China trees in front of the veranda, and the view of the nearby waters, the whistle of mocking-birds among the china berries (thank heaven! sparrows have not found this Elysium) lend additional force to the semblance. One old lady, who hunts not, neither does she fish, rocks on the sunny veranda and dreams, as is the wont of those who have lived beyond their day and generation. She brings forth from a long-forgotten corner of memory’s closet a picture covered with the dust of years, and lovingly brushes away the dimness, when behold! old Pass Christian, dear old Pass Christian, before the day of railroads and summer cottages, before the day of 6 o’clock dinners and trailing skirts, of cotillion favors and abbreviated bathing suits.

The old hotel was built with a wing or extension at each end, which formed with the main building three sides of a square. There was no attempt at landscape gardening; not even a rosebush or an oleander decorated the little court. No plaster Apollos and Dianas such as were seen peeping about the shrubbery of the various cottages (like the De Blancs’ and Ducayets’) that dotted in those days the old bayou road, and were considered so very decorative, but plain sand and scrub such as meet my eye to-day on this little frequented part of the Florida Gulf Coast. There was no beach driving or riding of gay people then—none here now.

I fly back to the summer of ’49, and live again with the young girls who made life one long summer’s day. We walked the pier, the image of one before my eyes now, to the bath-houses in muslin dresses. Bathing suits were hideous, unsightly garments, high neck, long sleeves, long skirts, intended for water only! The young girls returned under parasols and veils. How decorous! No _baigneuse decolletée_ to be seen on the beach. Our amusements were simple and distinctly ladylike. There was no golf or tennis, not even the innocent croquet, to tempt the _demoiselles_ to athletics, so they drifted more to the “Lydia Languish” style.

There was no lack of beaux who came, more than enough to “go round,” by the Saturday boats, in time for the weekly hop—danced all Saturday night and returned to weekly drudge (as they called it) in the city. The bonbons and flowers they brought vanished and faded long before the little boat with its freight of waving hats and handkerchiefs faded in the twilight of a summer Sunday.

Also there come to my dream two dainty Goodman sisters, wonderful and most accommodating musicians they were. One was already affianced to her cousin, George Nathan. He was a prosperous business man at that time. I doubt if even his name is known among his thrifty race in New Orleans to-day. He carried off his accomplished wife to Rio Janeiro, and made his home in that country, which was as far away to us then, as the North Pole is to-day. The younger sister met that summer at the Pass and eventually married E. C. Wharton, an attaché of the _Picayune_, whose articles were signed “Easy Doubleyou.” He was soon dancing attendance on the pretty, curly haired girl. I remember how he wandered around with pad and pencil, and we girls were horribly afraid of being put in the _Picayune_. No reason for fear, as it was before the dawn of the society page and personal column. The Whartons drifted to Texas during the war, and at Houston they found already a host of stranded Louisianians; but “Easy Doubleyou” had a government appointment of some kind. The rest of us were simply runaways.

There, too, was Dick Taylor, propelled in a wheel chair over that hotel veranda, an interesting convalescent from severe illness, or perhaps a wound, I do not recall which, his valet so constant in attendance that we wondered how the young man ever got an opportunity to whisper sweet nothings into the ear of lovely Myrtle Bringier—but he did! And that was the fourth engagement of the season that culminated in marriage, which signalizes the superior advantages of a hotel veranda, and most especially that of dear old Pass Christian. Dick Taylor had a magnetic personality, which overshadowed the fact (to paraphrase a Bible text) he was the only son of his father, and he the President.

In New York some years ago “The Little Church Around the Corner,” still garnished with its wealth of Easter lilies and fragrant with spring bloom, threw wide its portals for the last obsequies of this loved and honored Confederate general. In that throng of mourners was one who had known him in his early manhood on the veranda of that old Pass Christian hotel, and whose heart had followed his career with ever-increasing admiration and veneration even unto the end. I lay aside my old picture forever. Alas! it remains “only a dream at the best, but so sweet that I ask for no more.”

XXI

OLD MUSIC BOOKS

I wonder how many old ladies start to go through an unused hall closet, to make room for an accumulation of pasteboard boxes too good to throw away, and hampers too strong to discard, and in that long-closed closet, which a junk man with push-cart is waiting to help clear out, find a treasure, long since buried under piles of trash, mourned for, and, as in the case of many departed things, at length given up for lost—then forgotten. In just such a dark closet, from beneath a pile of old magazines (what they were kept and stored for goodness knows) and crazy bits of bric-a-brac, that nobody but a junk man (not even Salvation Army men, who are getting to be mighty choosy, by the way) would cart off, I found two bruised music books.

One dated back to 1847, when I was a schoolgirl in New Haven, and played with great éclat “La Fête au Couvent” quadrilles, purchased of Skinner & Co., Chapel Street. Chapel Street still exists, but Skinner & Co. are buried in the dust of more than sixty years. I cannot play “La Fête au Couvent” or any other fête now, but I can close my eyes and see the lovely young girls in the school music room whirling away to the music of the inspiring cotillion. Alas! Alas! Time has whirled every one of them away and stiffened the nimble fingers that danced so merrily over the keys.

In those far away days that are as yesterday to my dreaming there were “Variations” of every familiar melody. Variations that started with the simple air and branched off into all sorts of fantastic and involved and intricate paths. “Oft in the Stilly Night,” “’Tis Midnight Hour,” “Twilight Dews,” “Low-Back’d Car,” “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls,” “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” and so on and on, whole pages of “Variations,” now dim with age, but every blessed note brings to me the faces and voices of those long stilled in death. One sweet young girl played “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls” and “’Tis Midnight Hour” so charmingly that my eyes were dimmed when I turned the leaves of the school-day music book, for her fate was saddest of all—an inmate for years of an insane asylum. Another who sang as she played the “Low-Back’d Car” so delightfully (she was half Irish) died suddenly of yellow fever. Still another associated with “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” played the melody on a guitar, accompanied by her sweet young voice. Alas! She, too, is gone where they play on harps and there are no shadowed brows. So, on and on to the bitter end, and with a sigh I close the first chapter of my musical reminiscences that have lain dormant so many, many years.

The fashion of dedicating bits of music to some well-known person—need not be a musician, either, but a body of some note—has passed away with the one-button glove and the green _barège_ veil of sixty years ago. In the ’50s it was quite common, and my dear music book of that date holds ever so many dedicated polkas and mazourkas. The very front leaf has a picture of a wonderfully crocheted kind of a serpent with a man’s head, rather a shocking thing, “Sea Serpent Polka,” dedicated to Miss Rose Kennedy, by M. Strakosch. Dear Rose used to play it for us. It was not an inspiring bit of music, but her wonderfully deft touch would make melody out of anything that had crochets and quavers in it.

There is, a few pages further, another dedication to the incomparable Rose, “Grande Polka de Concert,” by Wallace. Miss Lou Gross, a most accomplished musician, daughter of the noted surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross, was honored by Strakosch in the “Kossuth Galop,” a galloping thing, much in the Strakosch style, which predominated in those days. Strakosch believed in a grand “send off” of his innumerable productions. There’s “Carnival de Paris,” dedicated to Mme. Caroline Arpin (I did not know of her) and “Flirtation Polka,” to Mme. Lavillebeuvre, who was a delightful pianist and merited something more inspiring than that “Flirtation.”

Then Wallace dances on the pages with a “Polka” adorned with the name of Mlle. Dumilatre, and Ed Armant dedicates “La Rose Polka” to Miss Augusta Slocomb. I don’t think Armant wrote music; he “got it done,” as the saying is. That was not an unusual feat; a valse was dedicated to Miss Philomène Briant, by George McCausland, and he was ignorant of a note in music—he “got it done.” P. A. Frigerio honored Miss Sara Byrne by the dedication of “La Chasse Polka.” Miss Sara was a decided belle in the ’50s, so a bit of music with her name attached found rapid disposal. Also, a belle of the ’50s was Miss Estelle Tricou. Lehman, _chef d’orchestre_ at the opera house, wrote “Souvenir de Paris” in her honor. Miss Estelle was bright and sparkling and beautiful, so was much in evidence. George W. Christy wrote more than one of his “starry” verses to “E. T.,” and they were printed in the _Picayune_. George was not noted for self-effacement and modesty. His signature always appeared in full to his sentimental effusions.

Lehman dedicated his “Clochettes Polka Mazourka,” a fine, inspiring bit of dance music it was, too, to Mme. Odile Ferrier, and “La Valentine Polka,” another charming, catchy dance piece, to Miss Anaïs Boudousquie. There was Mme. Angélina, a new French importation, whose specialty was the new dances that nobody else could teach. She was immortalized by “L’Esmeralda Nouvelle Danse de Salon.” We pupils had to learn some new steps and flourishes to be able to make successful début, after All Saints’ Day, for it was decreed “L’Esmeralda” was to be most popular. Everybody, even some stout old ladies that did not mean to be relegated to back seats, and _passé_ beaux who were fast becoming clumsy and awfully hard to dance with, took dancing lessons on the sly of Mme. Angélina, not to mention the young girls, débutantes and such, that went in small installments to her tiny room in Royal Street....

After this seeming digression I turn a leaf in the old music book to dedications to Mme. Boyer, “Mazourka Sentimentale,” by the fertile Strakosch, and here, too, “La Valse Autrichienne” by a new name—E. Johns. Mme. Boyer was the fashionable teacher of music. Both these dedicated pieces we scholars had to learn, and both bits, besides a dozen other bits a thousand times more difficult and intricate, like Gottschalk’s “Bamboula,” for instance, are so spotted with black pencil marks they are a sight! For the madame did not make a suggestion as to technique or expression or anything else in the musical mind that was not emphasized by a pencil mark on the page.

I find that most of this music was published by Mayo, No. 5 Camp Street; by Lyler & Hewitt, 39 Camp Street. Lehman published his own work at 194 St. Anne Street.... I am not half through, but I am weary of looking over these old music books. So many memories cluster about every page—memories of lovely dances with delightful partners. Oh! That grand _valse à cinq temps_, the music of which was never printed, and no band but Lehman’s band could play it, and nobody taught the whirling steps but Mme. Angélina. Memories of sweet girls, now old and faded, or, better than that, listening to the “Music of the Spheres.” Memories of painstaking professors whose pencil marks are all that is left to bring forcibly to mind their patient personality. I turn the last leaf, and lo! here is a unique bit of music and information—“The Monterey Waltz,” by Eugene Wythe Dawson, a little Texas boy, who dedicates it to the little musicians of his own age (eight years) in the sister States! I do not remember anyone who essayed to render the “Monterey Waltz”—I never did—but Eugene Dawson was still playing the piano in Texas during the war, proving possibly our grandfather’s dictum, “A man who plays the piano is mighty little account for anything else.”

We don’t think so now. I would be glad for a musician, male or female, in this house to render for me the sweet musical numbers that once made my young heart bound.

XXII

THE SONGS OF LONG AGO

How the ballads of our youth are, in memory, merged into the personality of those who sang them! How, as we recall the simple rhymes, the sweet voices of departed friends clothe them in melody. The songs of my early years come to me to-day with more freshness than the songs I heard yesterday, and with them come more vividly to mind the voices and faces of those long-gone friends than come the faces of those of to-day.

How many of us can recall “Blue-eyed Mary”? the little ballad with which my mother always quieted me to rest. The pitiful little song! And in my childhood days, too, mammy rocked me to sleep with “Ole Grimes is daid, dat good ole man.” I never hear “Blue-eyed Mary” or “Old Grimes” now, nor have I for more than threescore years and ten, they are both so buried in oblivion, though I can repeat every word of each, they were so nestled and rocked into my baby life.

When my father’s home was on Customhouse Street Duncan Hennen lived directly opposite. Mrs. Hennen was a dashing beauty. She had a sister from Tennessee visiting her, who had a powerful voice, and she sang “Old Rosin the Beau” and “Life on the Ocean Wave” with all the abandon of a professional. My father admired her style prodigiously, but my mother thought it too robust. “The Carrier Dove—fly away to my native land, sweet dove,” and “Twilight Dews,” she pronounced more ladylike. (How often we used that word “ladylike.” We rarely hear it now.) I must have been a very small “little girl” when I heard Wallace, in concert, sing “The Old Arm Chair.” No one since Wallace ever sung that touching, homely ballad so beautifully. Once having heard his sympathetic rendering, one always associates the song with William Wallace.

I think it has been full sixty years since that song and “Farewell to Tom Moore,” by Byron, have been heard. And “Twilight Dews,” oh, my! and “Shells of the Ocean”—“One summer’s day in pensive thought,” etc. Young girls played their accompaniments and tossed their ringlets and sang those ditties to enraptured swains, who often stood back of them, holding the candle at the proper angle and turning the leaves! How it all comes back to this dreaming old lady, who never sang, but who dearly loved to listen to her more gifted friends....

In the Cajin settlement on the border of which I occasionally visited there was a family of Lafitons—I boldly give the name, for the two sons, Lafiton _fils_ and Pete, never married, and all the family died years and years ago, but there was a lovely sprig of a girl, Amenaide, who possessed a fine voice and no doubt would have made her mark if she had had the necessary training, but she was one of the flowers “born to blush unseen.” I don’t think she knew one note of music. Of course, a guitar, much more a piano, was beyond her reach. She sang the sweet old French melody, “Fleuve du Tage,” delightfully. I wonder now where she ever heard it. For years after when I heard the song Amenaide rose before me, and with her the impression that she was not equaled.

There was another touching little ballad, in the days that were, “We Have Been Friends Together,” and that tender “Good-by,” who ever sings them now? Nobody, unless it be some old lady with quavering voice, who sings them in her heart while she dreams of the sweet girls of “Long, long ago” who have vanished.

“I Cannot Sing the Old Songs,” and “When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies” were two of the songs we loved to hear in the days before “Dixie” and “The Volunteer” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” captured the voices of so many of our sweet singers.

Some of us remember Mollie Haynes, who became the wife of Col. Charles D. Dreux, and none can recall her charming personality without a thought of the superb voice she possessed. “Ave Maria, Ora Pro Nobis”—none that I knew could render that prayerful melody with the pathos of Mollie Dreux. We all remember that Col. Dreux was the first Confederate officer from Louisiana who fell in battle, and no subsequent funeral was more largely attended than was Charles Dreux’s. “Joys That We’ve Tasted” brings to mind a popular singer in the “Long Time Ago,” Mrs. George D. Prentice, of Kentucky. How the names and the very people come thronging my mind as I recall these old melodies in which they are associated.

A few years since, listening to the well-trained voice of a professional, as she rendered some intricate, superlative kind of music, that did not in the least appeal to me, I ventured to ask if she would favor us with “Ben Bolt.” She graciously consented. And she rendered that simple old ballad that every child whistled or hummed when I was a child, with so many trills and bravuras, and I don’t know what else in the vocal line, that I was lost in amazement. Svengali himself could not have idealized to the same extent. Poor “Sweet Alice” was buried under such an avalanche of sound that one could not recognize the “corner, obscure and alone,” where she was supposed to rest under a “slab of granite so gray.”

So, perhaps, in the march of improvement, where none sing unless they possess a voice that would electrify a whole opera house audience, it is well the dear old songs of long ago are not resurrected and amplified to suit the tastes and requirements of to-day. I recall though, with a thrill of tender memory, hearing Jenny Lind sing “Home, Sweet Home”—just the simple ballad—without a single flourish when she was in New Orleans in 1851. I was in deep mourning and did not dream I would have the pleasure of hearing her, but a friend secured a _loge grillée_, and insisted upon my going, accompanied by my brother. It was all arranged so courteously and so sympathetically and so kindly that I could not refuse, and thus I heard that incomparable artist sing “Home, Sweet Home.”

No longer can mother sit in her “old arm chair” waving a turkey tail fan warm summer evenings, and be comforted and soothed by sweet warblings of her girls at the piano. No longer can the tired father call for his favorite, “Oh! Would I Were a Boy Again,” or “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,” or Mrs. Hemans’ “Bring Flowers, Fresh Flowers,” the sweet old flowers that all girls were singing sixty years ago. The old mothers and fathers, the bright young daughters are scarce buried more deeply or mourned more deeply than are the songs of long ago.

XXIII

A RAMBLE THROUGH THE OLD CITY

In the days of which I write New Orleans bore a very different aspect from the present, and it may be well for me to take my readers on a gossipy ramble through the thoroughfares which I so often traverse nowadays in my thoughts.

Canal Street in the early forties was, par excellence, a resident street. From Camp and Chartres Streets, way back as far as sidewalks were flagged or bricked, which was only a few blocks, Canal Street was lined with homes, side by side, often without even an alley to separate them, as though land was scarce and one need economize space, whereas just beyond was land in plenty, but no sidewalks or easy approaches to speak of. From Camp Street to the levee were, as I remember, large wholesale business houses, convenient to the shoppers of large supplies, who arrived at regular intervals from their plantations on _Belle Creole_, or some other coast packet, frequently retained their quarters on the boat the short time it was in port, and so monsieur and madame could accomplish their necessary shopping, untrammeled by the elegancies and inconvenient hours of a hotel.

Things were conducted on a very liberal basis in those days. I have a liking for that old way—it was so debonair and generous, putting the captain on the same social standing as his guests.

On the lower side of Canal Street, about where Holmes’ store now stands, were more homes, in a row, all the houses exactly alike, with narrow balconies stretching clear across the fronts, in a most confidentially neighborly way. The lower floors were doctors’ or lawyers’ offices or exchange brokers’. Fancy goods, dry goods, retail shops, in fact of every kind, were on Chartres or Royal Street; none on Canal. R. W. Montgomery had his home also on that fashionable thoroughfare.

Christ Church was on the corner of Baronne and Canal, and Dr. Laycock was the pastor at the date of which I write, and, with few exceptions, all these families were of his flock.

Lower Camp Street was occupied mostly by exchange brokers’ and such offices. The Sun Mutual Insurance Company had a conspicuous sign on a modest two-story brick building which any insurance structure to-day would put to shame.

If it is near Christmas time, when we are taking this gossipy ramble, we might meet a flock of turkeys marching up Camp Street, guided by a man and boys with long poles. In those days fowls were not offered for sale ready dressed or plucked, but sold “on the hoof,” as we say of cattle. Camp and the adjacent resident streets were, to use another Westernism, a favorite “turkey trot.” Those turkeys may have trotted miles. Goodness knows whence they took up the line of march—presumably at some boat landing—but they were docile as lambs and in good condition. No roast turkey gobbler, or, better still, boiled turkey hen with oyster dressing, tastes now like the ones mother had on her table when I was a child and clamored for the drum-stick. What does taste as good to us old folks to-day? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!...

In Exchange Alley (it may have a new name now, since Triton Walk and Customhouse Street and others of the old days have been rechristened) my father and a number of other “attorneys at law,” as their signs indicated, had offices. Mr. Wharton was one, and I also recall two Hebrew beaux of that date who were neighbors of my father’s, A. K. Josephs and M. M. Cohen. Nobody knew their given names. Beyond Camp Street, near Magazine, Mme. Shall kept a boarding house. It was a popular hostelry for gentlemen. Ladies did not board, except (to use Susan Nippers’ language) as temporaries.

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 _père_ sniffled around (he had some catarrhal trouble, I guess) in carpet slippers. I do not think he ever did anything but bear the high-sounding name, and I never heard, after those album days, that the sons did either.

A family of Lafitons lived so near that we heard their parrot screaming for “_mon déjeuner_” every morning, long before it was time for anybody’s breakfast. I think the bond of friendship that existed between _le vieux_ Lafiton and Dr. Doussan must have been that they came from the same province in France. Most nights, Sundays as well, “_mon voisin_,” as the doctor called him, came for a game at cards. Long after my supper was served on a tray, and I was safely tucked into bed, madame presided at a banquet of gumbo, _jumbalaya_ and salad, with their beloved Bordeaux, which was spread for the old gentlemen. Lafiton had straggling locks of white hair, falling over the collar of his great coat, reminding me of the picture of Little Nell’s grandfather, and the home of the Lafitons carried out the simile, for it was as melancholy and cheerless as any “Old Curiosity Shop” could be. There were two bright, capable girls in it, though, who never knew or saw anything better than the rickety old house, way up on stilts, that they lived in. There they stitched and darned and mended and patched all day (Creole women are not lazy), and managed to make a creditable appearance for an afternoon promenade on the levee.

The two grown sons caught driftwood and fish, and when they tired of that exertion made crawfish nets. (_En parenthèse_, when I had a fifteenth birthday, Pete, the long-legged one, gave me a finger ring he had made of the tooth of a shell comb.) They did not own a skiff, much less a horse or _voiture_. For ever so long I thought Mme. Lafiton had chronic toothache, or some trouble in her jaws, for she always wore a handkerchief over her head, tied under the chin, and also a look of discomfort. In time I discovered that style of headdress, and that troubled smile, were peculiarly her own, and did not signify anything in particular.

We had other neighbors less picturesque than those I have mentioned. Madame had a cousin living quite near, who had, as had all Creole women in those days, a great flock of children. The Dubroca family seemed to be fairly well-to-do. Mr. Dubroca was sugar-maker for a nearby planter. Madame and her daughter Alzire were thrifty, hospitable and kindly. The sons, as they grew up, were sent to schools and colleges. Madame was a sister of Mrs. (Judge) Eustis of New Orleans, both being daughters of Valèrie Allain, a planter of means, whose property when divided among his children did not amount to much for each.

That brings me to the Favrot family. Judge Favrot was a prominent citizen of the parish, and his son, a law student when I knew him, was much above the average. I scarce should mention this family that I saw almost daily and knew so well in connection with the obscure Creoles of the simpler life that I met and knew quite as intimately. The judge, and his son, were violinists. It was no unusual thing for him to play dance music for us, accommodating old gentleman that he was! We always had to adjourn to Lafiton’s to “trip the light fantastic,” for there was a great barn of a room, with bare floor, and no furniture to mention, which they called _le salon_.

Mme. Doussan often visited friends, by rowboat, on the opposite side of the river. She felt the responsibility of the care of the young girls, so strangely placed in her hands, so she never embarked on her frequent visits by boat or _voiture_ without the company of one she might have esteemed an incumbrance if I had not already been received into the holy of holies of her loving heart.

There were two families of Choppins we saw frequently. The daughter of one, quite a child then, became at a later date wife of Dauphin. The eldest son of the other Choppin family, a youth of less than twenty, was already studying medicine in the office of a country town doctor. We saw much of him, the bright, attractive fellow! as he used to row himself over to the impromptu dances in the Lafiton salon. Later his ambition carried him to Paris, and later still he returned, a distinguished physician and surgeon, to New Orleans. He was a devoted citizen also. None who heard his impassioned address, and his rendering in thrilling tones the inspiring “_Aux Armes! Citoyens_” of the Marseillaise from the steps of Clay’s monument, on Canal street, at the beginning of the war, ever forgot it.

Madame and I often visited other families in Baton Rouge, the Bonnecazes, Lanoues, Huguets and so on. As I remember, all lived over or in the rear of their shops. Very many families lived over shops in those days, not always over their own shops either. John Winthrop, a scion of the Massachusetts John Winthrop, and his aristocratic family lived over Symes’ lace store, on Royal street in New Orleans. There was a shoemaker’s establishment on the ground floor of the Miltenberger residence. My father’s family lived over an exchange broker’s office on Canal Street. In 1842, when a mob raided, or threatened to raid, banks and exchange brokers’ offices, the strong box of the firm in our basement was conveyed to my mother for safekeeping. But this was in New Orleans, and I see I am wandering from my Creole friends on the coast, where I delighted to visit with _ma chère madame_.

Twice during that lovely six months’ episode of my life, escorted by the doctor, we boarded the fascinating _Belle Creole_ and made longer flights and longer visits to relatives of madame living beyond a voiture’s possibilities. Once it was to spend a few days with the Valcour Aimes at their incomparable home; at another time we had two never-to-be-forgotten days at Sosthène Allain’s, where I met two sweet girls of my own age. Then and there began a friendship that continued through our young ladyhood. We were three inseparable companions until three weddings sent us (as is the nature of things) on divergent paths. Celeste went to Paris, so remote then that she was practically lost to us. I do not suppose a single one of those who made those six months of my girlhood so happy is living to-day. Some have left no descendants; I do not know who has or who has not, but I pay this tribute to the Creole simple life, that seems in the retrospect almost ideal, and no episode of my checkered life is sweeter to recall.

Dr. Doussan was a botanist. His garden was the mecca of all lovers of plant life. I imagine it was excelled only by the noted grounds of the Valcour Aimes. Fruit and vegetables were sent daily in a skiff to the town market. _Ma chère madame_, in her black silk _blouse volante_ and her cap, with stiff, fluted frill tied under the chin, often let me help her make the formal little bouquets for the market, the dear old stiff bouquets, flat as a plate and nestling in a frill of lace paper! The doctor spent hours in his cabinet with his botanical treasures. Daily I was summoned to read to him his _Paris Journal_, and to write a composition. No teacher could have been more painstaking; no scholar more appreciative.

Early in 1847 a nephew of the doctor’s arrived from France, a dapper, Frenchified youth of eighteen. The Doussans were childless, but they had adopted a young girl. At the time of which I write she was about my age, and was being educated at Sacré Cœur Convent. She was home only for Easter vacation. No one told me, no one even hinted it, but I intuitively understood that a _mariage de convenance_ was planned for the dapper young Frenchman and the pretty blonde girl, and the visit was meant to introduce Marie to her _prétendu_; they seemed to accept the arrangement complacently, but I was most interested in watching the proceedings, and, to say the least, much entertained.

It was fully fifty years after these events when Doussan _neveu_ and I met again, two old gray-haired folks. When the first frost of astonishment melted, and we could recognize each other, we had a grand time recalling places and people. How we laughed over the remembrance of the antics of the doctor’s pet monkey; and, oh yes! the voluble Lafiton parrot! For a brief hour we lived again the halcyon days of fifteen and eighteen. The following year Doussan passed away—severing for me the last living link that bound me to the simple Creole life, on the borders of which I had such a happy girlhood.

XXV

A VISIT TO VALCOUR AIME PLANTATION