Chapter XXXIX: A Visit of Tender Memories 320 (8)

What a delightful reminder of that visit to New Orleans those unfinished sketches are to us now, a quarter of a century after! The one I like best of all hangs in my own room and brings delightfully to mind the day we went way down Chartres Street to the archbishop’s palace. I am not Catholic, and do not remember if it was the beginning or ending of Lent, but a procession of all classes and conditions of the faithful, with all classes and conditions of receptacles, were filing in and out the gateway, getting their annual supply of _eau bénite_. The lame sacristan who dipped out the holy water from pails into the bottles and mugs became so interested in a sketch my daughter was making, and so busy with a rod driving away inquisitive urchins, that he tired of being constantly interrupted by the _eau bénite_ crowd, so he shut the door of his room. “_Trop tard, c’est fini_,” he said to some belated, disappointed applicants.

Elise sat inside the gateway and sketched a queer house opposite, gable end to the street, and a balcony way high up that looked like a bird cage hanging from a window, a tiny balcony draped in blooming vines. The sacristan was disappointed that she did not attempt the old convent building, but the perspective from the street did not appeal to the artist, as did that one-sided building that seemed to have turned its back to the street.

When we came in after each day’s delightful tramp my dear Creole friend looked over the sketches and told us of places we must not fail to visit—places she and I knew so well, and neither of us had seen for many, many years.

We took an Esplanade Street car, as far as it went, then walked the Bayou road to a rickety bridge, on the further side of which was a quaint little rose-covered hut. To the artist’s eye it was an enchanting cottage. It was a fearfully hot day, so we had a quiet half hour; not a soul passed, to pause and look on and question and comment. We had a hot walk back to our mule car, which did not have a fixed schedule of arrivals and departures, and we were fain to accept the shelter of a decent little cabaret. The proprietor came outside and invited us within, and his cordial invitation was reinforced by a bustling Creole wife. How these people surprised Elise! So generous, so unconventional they were. I added to her surprise by ordering beer!—the only visible way, it appeared to me, of repaying their hospitality.

Another day we took a car in a different direction. When the car stopped—nowhere in particular, just came to the end of the rails—we walked on down, into sparse settlements, occasional fields, frequent crawfish ditches, to the Ursuline Convent, not a sketching trip this time, but a tour of observation. We had to tramp quite a bit, dodging now and again an inquisitive goat, of which my city companion was mortally afraid, following paths, possibly goat paths, for they meandered round about quite unnecessarily.

At length we reached the little entrance gate, to learn it was not visiting day. It was warm, and we were warmer and very tired. Across the road and the two inevitable ditches was a kind of lych gate, I do not know what other name to give it, a covered gateway and benches, where the family who lived behind the inclosure could take the air, and, incidentally, a bit of gossip, if they had any congenial neighbors. We felt neighborly just then and promptly crossed the ditches and narrow roadway and seated ourselves quite _en famille_.

Presently two young girls we had not seen presented themselves and invited us to enter the house. Upon our declining with suitable thanks, a mother came from the house and a grandmother, and we had to accept the cordial hospitality, with a sneaking feeling we had invited it by appropriating the tempting resting-spot. In the tiny parlor was a life-size, full-length portrait of a Confederate officer in full uniform, Captain Sambola, of the Washington Artillery.

They offered us refreshing _eau sucrée_ and had us go to the back gallery to see the pet peacock. _Grandmère_ made him show off. “_Tournez, mon beau, tournez un peu_,” and the proud bird turned around and spread his gaudy tail. We still talk of that naïve family and the peacock. The two young girls we saw in the yard had aprons filled with violets which they were gathering for the market. Mamma tossed quite a handful of the fragrant blooms into an Indian basket and presented them to Elise. They showed us a near path to the car, and we realized we had previously lost our way, and made many unnecessary steps, but would gladly have done it all over again to have had that glimpse of Creole life. Nothing I could have told my children would have been so effective as the little experience of the hospitality of the family of that “_Capitaine en Washington Artillerie_.”

Our hostess mentioned St. Roch’s, and down there we went, easel and all. Those mule cars seemed to come to a final halt where there was no stopping place, and we always had to walk quite a bit to “get there,” no matter where we were bound. We walked a few blocks and turned a few corners, and most unexpectedly ran into the grounds of the sanctuary. At the gatekeeper’s little cottage we bought a candle and a book, I forget what it was about; and a leaden image of Saint Hubert, inscribed “_Preservez nous du choléra_.” We seemed to be expected to make the purchases, so we did not wish to disappoint the modest expectation. At a favorable spot the easel was opened, and my little lady proceeded to sketch a few tombstones and the belfry of St. Roch’s. A kindly priest wandered toward us to say it was against their rules to allow any sketching on the grounds, but as the work was on the way (and he commended it) she could complete the picture. Thus we strolled about the old city of my day, quite ignoring the beautiful Garden District of which everybody was so proud.

Down went we to see Congo Square and the old calaboose. The first is about to be rechristened (some twenty and something street) and the other has gone off the face of the earth, but old Congo Square was still there, and the calaboose, too, when I took my daughter to see the New Orleans of my day. A man with his pail and long brush was whitewashing trees in the square, and a dark-skinned woman was hanging red rags, probably flannel petticoats, on a railing in front of a house. “How picturesque!” in Elise’s eyes. She regretted she had not her brush and colors with her.

A kindly friend escorted us one afternoon over the river to the old Destrihan plantation house, and the enthusiastic young artist, who had learned “Never to leave your pencil and pad in your other pocket,” had a famous time sketching the broad stairway and the interior balconies, upon which all the upper chambers opened. The grand Destrihan house of my young lady days was dismantled and practically vacant, so we roamed around that interior gallery in and out those large rooms. I was full of tender memories of the generous family of only (as seemed to me) a few years ago. The lawn that extended to the river, where were always skiffs to take one to the city when Eliza Destrihan was a beauty and a belle, was now cut up into lots and built up in huts, for the accommodation probably of workmen on Barrataria Canal.

Elise wanted to see the houses her mother had occupied. I knew they must be dreadfully run down at the heels, and I knew how I had told my children of the delightful life we had led in them. Now I was afraid my little girl would be disillusioned, and she was! We started on Customhouse Street, and I confess to a shock when I saw tickets reading “_Chambres à louer_” floating from the balcony where my sister used to walk and from whence she made signals or called across the narrow street to Mrs. Duncan Hennen, on the opposite balcony. I obtained permission to enter the broad corridor. It was lumbered up with trunks and theatrical stuff, and my dear father’s old law office was filled with a smoking crowd of actors and actresses. It was the eating hall, and the late risers were taking their first meal of the day. We did not go upstairs, but I pointed out to the child my mother’s window, where she sat so many, many invalid days, and with a moistened eye turned sadly away from my first New Orleans home.

Wandering up Camp Street, at the corner of Julia, the whole Camp Street side of another and later old home seemed to be a carpenter shop. I wonder what the child thought, as she must have remembered the tales I had told of the dancing parties and dinner parties in that house where Henry Clay and Gen. Gaines, and all sorts of celebrities, were guests from time to time. The side gallery, where dear pa sat and smoked his after-dinner cigar, was all blocked up and covered with boards and carpenters’ tools. The Canal Street house, near Camp Street, was clean gone, as completely gone as all the fine people that used to visit it. In its place was some mercantile or bank building. I was too heartsick with the sad knowledge of the mutability of these mundane affairs to care what the new building represented.

XXXIX

A VISIT OF TENDER MEMORIES

It was the year of the Exposition in New Orleans that I arrived with my little daughter on a visit to a Creole friend. We left the train at the foot of Canal Street, and boarded one of those old-timey mule cars, in which the passenger drops his fare in a box and the driver sits on a stool behind a dashboard, reinforced with a stout facing of sheet iron, and manages his mule, if he can. In our case he couldn’t. A lot of excursionists, with gripsacks and useless overcoats, filled the little car. When they had deposited their coins, and the driver had counted them, and we were ready to start, Mr. Mule took “de studs” and refused to proceed. When, urged by calls and whip, he let those husky feet fly against the dashboard, with deafening and startling results, the wherefore of the iron protector was made manifest to us. Suddenly, as if electrified, the mule bounded forth, up crowded Canal Street, with race-horse speed. Our fellow passengers, Eastern men, probably, and ignorant of mule nature, jumped from the rear of that racing car, as fast as they dared. I held on to the scared little girl, for I had not lived on a plantation without having become acquainted with mule tactics. When our steed reached his destination, at the foot of Camp Street, there were no passengers in that car but ourselves.

That was our first acquaintance with the queer transportation facilities of that date, but it was enriched by others before our visit to the Crescent City terminated.

We found our friend, dear Phine, in considerable excitement about a trunk filled with silver, that had been in her keeping awaiting a claimant. The Louisiana State Bank had, until the war, a branch in Baton Rouge, of which William S. Pike was president or manager, and his family, as was the custom, lived “over the bank.” At the break up and disorganization of all business, this especial Louisiana State Bank removed its assets (if there were any; assets were an uncertain quantity in those days) to the New Orleans headquarters. All the household effects of the manager’s family—the accumulation of years, in garret and closets—were sent to New Orleans, and the Pikes moved there too. After the death of Mr. Pike, the family closed their Camp Street house and went to Canada. Thence a request came to my friend, Phine, whose whole unselfish existence had been spent for the help of others, to pack away personal effects, have the furniture sold, and the house put also on the market.

Looking through boxes and trunks and bundles and barrels, she stumbled upon an old, weather-worn, almost dilapidated trunk, without hasp or lock, but securely tied with bits of strong rope. It was found to be filled with silver, bowls, a tea set and various odd pieces. Not one article bore a mark by which it could be identified, not a scrap of paper—all the pieces were wrapped in rags and securely packed into this apparently unsafe receptacle. Phine knew that this silver did not belong to the family, nor to any friend of the family. The trunk was conveyed to Phine’s garret, and she sat down to rack her brain about it. At last it was decided that in the uncertainty and alarm of the early war days, some planter brought that trunk to the bank at Baton Rouge, for safe keeping, using every precaution to avoid suspicion of its valuable contents. Probably it came, tied behind his own buggy. There it had lain for years, nobody now left to give any information regarding it. Phine wrote to Mr. Pike’s brother at Shreveport, and he knew naught of it, but he advertised it, with the usual “prove property” clause.

In time, a man answered, stating his wife was a very small child during the war, but she remembered a quantity of family silver had been removed from her father’s house. She was now the last remaining one of her family, but she could identify one article in the lot, a unique urn-shaped pitcher, of which she submitted a drawing, from memory. The trunk with its valuable contents had just been dispatched to the woman....

My little daughter and I took many rambles down into the picturesque parts of the old city. I presume in New York it might be called slumming, but every old crawfish ditch and dirty alley was dear to me. Even the old French cemeteries down Basin Street were full of tender memories. When we went home from such tramps, and Elise told, in her graphic way, of the tumbledown appearance of whole streets that mother was so enthusiastic over, our genial host, Phine’s husband, would say, “Why don’t you go up St. Charles Avenue? We fixed that up fine to show to visitors.” But St. Charles Avenue had no sweet memories for me, it had not existed in my day. We saw St. Charles Avenues every day, at home. We had no old French cemeteries, the inscription on almost every tomb calling forth memories of dear, departed Creole friends.

The old cathedral and its environs had to have several visits. I had to show my little girl (oh, how reminiscent I was, to be sure!) the very shop whose windows I used to look into, at the beads, corals, shells, etc., from Southern seas. And, my dear, the very man with gold earrings was there, shuffling around with strings of rough coral beads, and conch shells, that very man (so it seemed)—and he was not a day older—that was doing that very thing seventy years ago, when I had to tip-toe to get a good view of that entrancing interior.

In the narrow street by the cathedral we purchased rosaries for our Catholic maids at home. We walked up and down the narrow way, looking for a tiny shop where I had bought, years and years ago, materials and a book of instruction for the making of paper flowers. Roses and jasmines and pinks and honeysuckles were hung in lavish profusion all about my plantation home, and they lent quite a festive charm on wintry, rainy days, when there was not a blooming plant to be had. I was reveling so far into the sweet past that I was almost surprised that the hustling little French woman (of sixty years ago) was not there, behind her stack of paper goods, like the man with the gold earrings, but she wasn’t, and the very shop was gone, too.

We sat, to rest, on benches in the old Place d’Armes. I looked at those Pontalba buildings, that faded, dilapidated, ramshackle row, and remembered how fine and imposing it was, in my day, and how I had wished that father would take one of those elegant houses, where we would be so near the French market, and the shop of beads and shells, and monkeys and parrots.

We strolled up Royal Street, and the little girl saw the house in which the Boufords lived, sixty years ago. The saucy child ventured to remark she always had thought I visited nice people, but they must have lived in shabby houses. I did not notice her comment, but proceeded to point to the balcony where I stood to see a Mardi Gras procession, a frolicsome lot of the festive beaux of the period, and to catch the bonbons and confetti they threw at us from the landeaus and gaily decked wagons. It was long after the Mardi Gras of the thirties, and long, long before the Mardi Gras of to-day, a kind of interregnum, that the young fashionable men were turning into a festival. I recall Mrs. Slocomb’s disgust when Cuthbert fell ill of pneumonia, after his exposure that day. Cuthbert Slocomb was chubby and blond, and with bare neck and short sleeves, tied up with baby blue ribbon, a baby cap similarly decorated, he made a very good counterfeit baby, seated, too, in a high chair, with a rattle to play with. The “mamma” had long black ringlets and wore a fashionable bonnet. I have forgotten, if in fact I ever knew, what youth represented the mamma. There were no masks, but the disguises with paint, powder and wigs were sufficient to make them unrecognizable. If Cuthbert Slocomb had not been ill, I probably would not have known the “baby.”

During that visit I went to the cemetery Decoration Day. Mind you, I have seen about forty Decoration days, North—but this one in my own Southland, among my own beloved dead, has been the only Decoration Day I have ever seen in a cemetery. (I wish my feelings were not quite so strong.) Phine and I stood beside the tomb that contains the dust of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, a man I had known well, a contemporary and valued friend of my father’s, a man whose children and grandchildren were dear to me. We saw the solemn procession file in, and halt a little beyond us. The band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and hundreds of voices joined in the musical prayer. I could not sing, I never could, but I could weep, and my eyes were not the only moist ones in the assembly. Such a throng of sober, sad people there was, such a lot of veterans, many in shabby, weather-stained gray, that bore evidence of hard service....

Phine had kept track of the people from whom I had been so long separated that age had obliterated means by which I could recognize them. As a veteran, in the shabby old gray (I felt like taking everyone such by the hand), approached, Phine caught my arm and whispered “Douglas West,” and at the same moment his eye met mine with a flash of recognition. I had not seen Douglas for over thirty years. And weren’t we glad to meet? on that ground, too, so sacred to both of us. And didn’t we meet and meet and talk and talk, many times thereafter, in Phine’s dear little parlor on Carondelet Street? Indeed, we did.

Later on, Phine whispered, “You knew that man, I’ll tell you who he is after he passes us.” A quite tottering, wrinkled, old man passed. I gave him a good stare, shook my head. I did not know, nor think I ever had known him. It was A. B. Cammack—who would have believed it? He was a bachelor in 1850, the time when I thought a man of thirty was an old man. We happened to be fellow passengers on that fashionable A No. 1 steamboat, _Belle Key_. I was a frisky young miss, and Mr. Cammack was, as I say, an old bachelor. He did not know, nor want to know anybody on the boat, but it happened he was introduced to our small party, at the moment of sailing, so we had a reluctant sort of bowing acquaintance for the first day or so. _Broderie Anglaise_ was all the rage. Any woman who had time for _frivolité_, as the Creoles called tatting, was busy working eyelets on linen. Of course I had _Broderie_, too. Mr. Cammack gradually thawed, and brought a book to read to me while my fingers flew over the fascinating eyelets. The book, I distinctly remember, was “Aunt Patsy’s Scrap Bag,” a medley of silly nonsensical stuff, written by a woman so long dead and so stupid while she lived that nobody even hears of her now, but Mr. Cammack was immensely entertaining and witty, and we roared over that volume, and his comments thereon. I have often dwelt on that steamboat episode, but I doubt if it ever gave him a moment’s thought. I really think if it had been like my meeting with Douglas West we might have had quite a bit of fun, living again that week on the _Belle Key_. A hearty laugh, such as we had together, so many years before, might have smoothed some of the wrinkles from his careworn face, and a few crow’s feet out of mine. But he never knew, possibly would not have cared if he had known, that we almost touched hands in the crowd on that Decoration Day.

On and on we strolled, past a grand monument to the memory of Dr. Choppin, whom I knew so well, and loved too, girl fashion, when he was twenty, and who sailed away, boy fashion, to complete his medical education in Paris. Maybe if we had met, in the flesh, on that Decoration Day, it might have been _a la Cammack_. We never did meet, after that memorable sailing away, but he has a tender niche in my heart even yet, and I was pleased to see some loving hand had decorated that sacred spot....

Phine and I strolled about after the ceremonies were completed. She had a toy broom and a toy watering pot in the keeper’s cottage, and was reluctant to leave before she had straightened and freshened the bouquets we had placed on the tombs of the dead she loved, and swept away the dust, and watered the little grass border again.

A year ago she herself fell asleep and was laid to rest in the lovely cemetery, and with her death the last close tie was broken that bound me to New Orleans.

Eliza Moore, tenth of the twelve children of Richard Henry and Betsey Holmes Chinn, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on the first day of February, 1832.

Three years later Judge Chinn moved his family to New Orleans, where he continued the practice of law until his death in ’47.

On August 24, 1852, Eliza Chinn and James Alexander McHatton were married in Lexington, and for ten years thereafter they lived at Arlington plantation on the Mississippi, a few miles below Baton Rouge, leaving hastily in ’62, upon the appearance of Federal gunboats at their levee.

During the remainder of the war they lived almost continuously in army ambulances, convoying cotton from Louisiana across Texas to Mexico.

In February, 1865, they went to Cuba, and lived there until the death of Mr. McHatton, owning and operating, with mixed negro and coolie labor, a large sugar plantation—“Desengaño.”

After her return to the United States Mrs. McHatton was married to Dwight Ripley, July 9, 1873, and the remainder of her life was passed in the North. In 1887 Mrs. Ripley published “From Flag to Flag”—a narrative of her war-time and Cuban experiences, now out of print.

The reminiscences which make up the present volume have been written at intervals during the last three or four years. The final arrangements for their publication were sanctioned by her the day before she passed away—on July 13, 1912, in the eighty-first year of her age.

E. R. N.

UNLIKE ANY OTHER BOOK.

A Virginia Girl in the Civil War.

Being the Authentic Experiences of a Confederate Major’s Wife who followed her Husband into Camp at the Outbreak of the War. Dined and Supped with General J. E. B. Stuart, ran the Blockade to Baltimore, and was in Richmond when it was Evacuated. Collected and edited by MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25 net; postage additional.

“The people described are gentlefolk to the back-bone, and
the reader must be a hard-hearted cynic if he does not fall
in love with the ingenuous and delightful girl who tells the
story.”—_New York Sun._

“The narrative is one that both interests and charms. The
beginning of the end of the long and desperate struggle is
unusually well told, and how the survivors lived during the
last days of the fading Confederacy forms a vivid picture of
those distressful times.”—_Baltimore Herald._

“The style of the narrative is attractively informal and
chatty. Its pathos is that of simplicity. It throws upon a
cruel period of our national career a side-light, bringing out
tender and softening interests too little visible in the pages
of formal history.”—_New York World._

“This is a tale that will appeal to every Southern man and
woman, and can not fail to be of interest to every reader. It
is as fresh and vivacious, even in dealing with dark days, as
the young soul that underwent the hardships of a most cruel
war.”—_Louisville Courier-Journal._

“The narrative is not formal, is often fragmentary, and is
always warmly human.... There are scenes among the dead and
wounded, but as one winks back a tear the next page presents a
negro commanded to mount a strange mule in midstream, at the
injustice of which he strongly protests.”—_New York Telegram._

“Taken at this time, when the years have buried all resentment,
dulled all sorrows, and brought new generations to the scenes,
a work of this kind can not fail of value just as it can
not fail in interest. Official history moves with too great
strides to permit of the smaller, more intimate events; fiction
lacks the realistic, powerful appeal of actuality; such works
as this must be depended upon to fill in the unoccupied
interstices, to show us just what were the lives of those
who were in this conflict or who lived in the midst of it
without being able actively to participate in it. And of this
type ‘A Virginia Girl in the Civil War’ is a truly admirable
example.”—_Philadelphia Record._