Part 11
While we were still living at “Green Peace” our youngest brother, Samuel Gridley Howe, Jr., was born. He was a fine, large baby, weighing twelve pounds at birth. Soon after his arrival in this world (on Christmas Day, 1859), and while our mother was still confined to her room, several of us were attacked with scarlet fever. The great danger of contagion from this disease was not then clearly understood. My father inquired of Mr. Gardner, headmaster of the Boston Latin School, whether he wished brother Harry, who had not contracted the fever, to remain away. Mr. Gardner decided it would be safer for the boy to do so. The breaking out of smallpox at the Idiot School, of which my father retained the supervision, brought my mother a new anxiety. Would it come to her, and was it, as she had heard, fatal in confinement cases? Fortunately, our household escaped the disease and the scarlet fever left no bad effects behind.
Little Sammy was a beautiful and healthy child, yet he fell a victim to diphtheritic croup in May, 1863, when he was three and a half years old. His death brought me the first realization of the meaning of sorrow. We had lost my father’s sister, our kind and devoted Aunt Lizzie, two years earlier, but the loss of little Sammy was a much greater bereavement. I could not understand then, nor do I now, the point of view which those persons take who declare that it is a beautiful thing for a little innocent child to leave this world and go to heaven. I felt, at seventeen, as I do at seventy, that it is contrary to the laws of nature for a child to die. It is the saddest death of all, for the little one has been cut off untimely from the life on this earth that his Creator meant him to enjoy.
As this was my first experience of deep sorrow, it brought me the first knowledge of the beautiful human sympathy without which grief would be unendurable. Friends and relatives gathered about my stricken parents, helping them to bear the dull burden of grief. It made my father seriously ill; indeed, he grieved for the boy to the end of his life. My mother, like most women, was able to give more expression to her sorrow. After her death we found a little book of verses and a letter written to her lost darling, in which she poured out her grief.
In her journal are many mentions of the little boy, showing how his memory dwelt in her heart throughout her life.
Fortunately for my father, he had on hand a task of wide importance in connection with the recently freed slaves. From the beginning of the war he had labored to bring about the freeing of the negroes. It had not been five months in progress when he called a meeting of anti-slavery men at his office “to take into consideration measures tending to the emancipation of slaves as a war policy.” This resulted in the formation of the Emancipation League, the _Commonwealth_ being once more brought to life as its organ. As my father’s duties on the Sanitary Commission took him frequently to Washington, in 1861–62, he was able to urge upon the President the necessity of emancipating the negroes.
But he well understood that so tremendous a change involved the making of preparations beforehand. In September, 1862, the month when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, we find him writing from Washington to a friend of his plan for the creation of a bureau to inquire into the actual condition of the freedmen, their wants and their capacities. In 1863 Stanton, then Secretary of War, appointed a Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, the members of it being my father, Robert Dale Owen, and James McKay.
So, when we came to New York for a change of air and scene, shortly after little Sammy’s death, we found my father busy in the office of the commission, in spite of his sufferings from the gout.
It was always his policy to gather facts and knowledge before taking action. Hence the many reforms which he instituted were lasting. They were not built for a day, and as he took no thought of his own glorification, no personal element deflected them from the right track.
Evidently it was important to ascertain what the negroes had done with their freedom in other English-speaking countries. So the commission thoroughly investigated conditions in the Province of Ontario (then Canada West), where twenty thousand colored people were living, and made an exhaustive report.
The labors of the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission were those of a pioneer body. They were carried on later by the Freedmen’s Bureau.
XIII
THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF LIFE IN THE CIVIL WAR
_How We Dressed and Danced in the ’Sixties.—War Prices.—Mrs. Jared Sparks.—Visit of the Russian Fleet.—The Brain Club.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.—Ralph Waldo Emerson.—William R. Alger.—William M. Hunt.—“Mamma’s Owls.”—William and Henry James.—A Clever Group of Society Women.—A Historic Nose-pulling._
IN Boston, your age is always carefully calculated in accordance with the year of your début in society and the sewing-circle to which you belong. In case of doubt, the maximum number of years are unfailingly attributed to you. I had the fortune, bad or good, to come half-way between two sets, and therefore to belong to neither of them. Our mother, who liked to give her daughters a little glimpse of society, took us to a few informal occasions while we were still at school. The exact Boston mind was therefore baffled in the very beginning as to our true age.
At school all the girls in my class were older than I, except my friend, Louise Darling. Sister Julia and I were so nearly of the same age that in our school-girl days, as in those of our childhood, we went to parties together. Hence, when she began to go into society it was rather hard for me to stay behind, although I was only seventeen and still at school. By this time the unwisdom of exaggerating your age had appealed to my Boston soul, which was greatly torn during that winter. The older set, a number of whose members had been classmates at school, were now in society. As by a flash of light, I saw the dangers of my position, and drew back before it was too late. I joined the dancing-class of the younger set—the girls not yet out—although at school there had been little commerce between us.
When a dance was given at our house, sister Julia should really have had all the honors. But she cared little for dancing, while I was very fond of it. One of my special friends, Charlie Longfellow, the poet’s eldest son, was my partner for the german. I carried a large bouquet and altogether had a royal time. Julia danced with Mr. Braggiotti, a Greek gentleman, and no doubt their conversation was less frivolous than ours. Charlie Longfellow ran away to the war not long afterward.
When the time for my real entrance into society came, in the following year, there were only three other débutantes, namely, the Misses Sara P. Lowell, Cora Crowninshield, and Clara Gardner. Obviously no sewing-circle could be formed for us, so I joined that of the older set. Instead of the handsome lunch now customary at the meetings of these societies, we enjoyed a modest repast, consisting exclusively of bread and butter in endless variety—crumpets, brown bread, biscuits, etc., with tea or chocolate. It was served at eleven or twelve o’clock in the forenoon, dinner being at half past two.
With gold going always higher, the price of everything soared in the ’Sixties, as in the present war. The sad part of it was that they did not come down until years afterward. The highest point reached by gold was three hundred, but, although it dropped later, prices did not. They were so sensitive as to respond instantly to any rise, but were entirely unaffected by a fall of the precious metal. This seemed to me very unfair. With occasional help from my mother, I had bought my own clothes after reaching the age of fifteen, when I was given an allowance for dress.
It was indeed a problem for the girls of those days to dress suitably, when everything was so dear. Some of my friends bought braid and made their own straw hats. The price of kid gloves—even the short ones then usually worn—was so high that certain girls with skilful fingers made their own. We also made our own undersleeves and even a few linen collars. The enormous hoops of this period required a large amount of material for the skirts of gowns, especially as these were not gored, the entire fullness being gathered or plaited at the waist-line. When certain girls first appeared at the Assemblies, it was said that their skirts were six yards in circumference! Our hoops were not quite so large as this, but they were terrific in size, especially for evening dress. For a lady to enter an omnibus at that time was no easy matter. Fortunately, our wire cages were very light and elastic. You had to be very careful, however, when you sat down in a crowded car, to pull up the hoop behind, as otherwise it would stick straight out in front! At one time these great bird-cages were arranged so that they teetered back and forth as you moved along. The skirts, which were long, were then looped up gracefully in scallops, when you walked abroad, showing your balmoral, or ornamental petticoat of woolen cloth. The balmorals were often pretty, and did prevent our skirts from trailing in the gutter. They were much more economical, also, than the starched white skirts which preceded them.
But, oh, how sad it was when each succeeding year brought an expansion in the circumference of our gowns, obliging us to discard these before they were half worn out! It is my firm belief that the persons who set the fashions purposely change them in such a way as to promote as much as possible the casting away of half-worn garments and the purchase of new ones.
Fortunately, there were ingenious dressmakers in the ’Sixties who could do wonders in the way of combination, a fine new dress coming out of two old ones. The fashion of making evening dresses of tarlatan and similar diaphanous materials enabled young girls to have a number of gowns for a relatively small price. True, many layers of the stuff were necessary—but the construction, with a little help from the dressmaker, was easy, thus lessening the expense of labor. You can take grand large stitches in tarlatan and they will not show!
We made many of our own bonnets, also, some clever girls actually quilting the silk in diamonds instead of buying it ready made. It must have been a hideous material, but we admired it when it was in fashion. This reminds me that among my early memories are those of certain very old gentlemen in Boston wearing high hats and overcoats of quilted silk!
Our ball dresses were made with bodice cut moderately low, a long point in front and at the back and full sleeves reaching half-way to the elbow. The effect of these pointed waists over the full skirts was certainly elegant. Somebody had to lace you up behind, for obviously you could not do this yourself. If you were clever, you could undo the lacing on your return home from the ball. The Assemblies, usually held in Papanti’s Hall, were the backbone of the winter’s entertainments for the young set, although there were always private dances also.
In that primitive day a book was sent around to the families who were considered eligible as subscribers for the Assemblies. Boston was then extremely stern in its construction of who should and who should not have the privilege of entering their names on this sacred scroll.
My mother, always generous in such matters, asked to have the book sent to certain people who had not hitherto been subscribers, although they were descendants of a good old family. Her request was not granted, probably because it was suspected that the husband had engaged in some financial transaction not altogether in accordance with the Puritan notions of uprightness.
The young people of the ’Sixties owed a debt of gratitude, which they did not fully recognize, to Mrs. Jared Sparks, the wife of the historian. The unique form of her entertainments disturbed the conventionality of the youthful mind. The good lady’s motive was doubtless to prevent boredom by carrying out conceptions of striking originality. As we did not live in Cambridge, we were not invited to the pencil party, nor to that where, all the chairs being removed, the guests sat on the floor. But I did go to the famous _thé dansant_ which Boston discussed long and vigorously.
Mrs. Sparks thought it would be a pleasant thing to give a party early in the evening, where the young people could dance till midnight and then go home. So she asked us to a _thé dansant_ at Papanti’s Hall to which we went, and had a very good time. Chocolate and cake were quite sufficient for the dancers, but Mrs. Sparks had not calculated the probable feelings of the dowagers. They found it hungry work to sit and watch other people dance and highly disapproved of the simple repast. As time went by, low and deep were the murmurings. Even the quality of the cake was unkindly called in question. Mrs. Sparks’s friends sent a sample, it was said, to a lady of the opposite faction, so that the latter might see for herself the excellent quality of the butter and eggs. But she declared it was now so stale (for the controversy lasted for days or even weeks) she could tell nothing about the ingredients!
Mrs. Sparks’s original turn of mind also showed itself in the dealings with her children. One of the daughters had a will of her own and it was sometimes necessary to discipline her. This was done by taking a tuck in her dress, thus doubly punishing her; she had the mortification of appearing in childish array at an age when every girl desires to seem grown up, and she was obliged also to betray to all friends and acquaintances the fact that she had been naughty. You had only to look at her skirts to know what her behavior had been.
The historian himself sometimes came to dances. From the expression of his countenance, I am sure he did not enjoy them. The top of his head was bald, yet the curly hair at the sides stood out in a way to show that it had once been thick. If you had any doubt of it, you had only to look at the tremendous crop of curly hair belonging to his son.
His harassed air made it evident that he had come in a spirit of parental resignation, not in one of joy. A legend of that time described Mr. and Mrs. Sparks driving together on a hot summer’s day. As the horse showed signs of fatigue, Mr. Sparks suggested stopping. “Drive on, Mr. Sparks,” replied the lady, majestically. After two or three similar stoppages the horse fell down dead!
Most of our dancing partners were Harvard students, with a sprinkling of older men and returned soldiers. Two of these, Col. Francis Palfrey and Capt. William Horton, had been wounded in the arm, so that the latter was held in a sling. This did not prevent their dancing, however.
One of our amusements was going on board warships, not only those of our own navy, but on Swedish and Russian vessels as well.
The visit of the latter to American waters was one of the political and social events of the day. Among the hostesses who gave dances for the officers were Mrs. Storer of Cambridge, our aunt, Mrs. Joseph N. Howe, and our mother. We were also invited to dances on board the Russian ships and to services of the Orthodox Church held there.
Uniforms are always attractive to young women. When worn by handsome young foreigners the charm is doubled. My special partner, being in the engineering department, wore silver instead of gold decorations. He was nicknamed “Cranberry Cheeks” by the family. As neither of us could speak the language of the other, our conversation was carried on entirely in French. Now my education in this language at school had not dwelt especially on the sentimental side, so that the explanation of words was occasionally necessary. However, I always succeeded in grasping the idea.
We were very sad when the Russian fleet sailed, taking away all our delightful friends.
Among the pleasant entertainments of the ’Sixties were those given by the Brain Club, as it was popularly called.
My mother’s position in it might fitly be described as “Queen of the Revels,” for she devised and helped carry out many of the programs. We of the younger generation were allowed to attend some of the meetings. William Hunt, the artist, took part in a most ridiculous burlesque of a tourney, where he and his competitor, Hamilton Wilde, mounted on pasteboard hobbyhorses, engaged in a deadly encounter, prancing meanwhile about the drawing-room. Mrs. Charles Homans, as the Queen of Love and Beauty, wore a wonderful wig made of raveled tow. Mr. Hunt, being overthrown, toppled over, pretending to be mortally wounded, and a leech was summoned to prescribe for him. Mr. Jere Abbott, wearing a long false nose, took this part admirably, making many absurd inquiries of the patient: “Have any of your wife’s family suffered from this disease?” etc.
Another burlesque was that of the trio in the opera of “Lucrezia Borgia.” Mr. Otto Dresel played the air on the piano, while my mother enacted the title rôle. Hamilton Wilde represented her son, Gennaro, while the Duke’s part was taken by William Hunt, if I remember aright. All three joined hands in a line, keeping time to the music with exaggerated operatic motions. Mr. Wilde indicated his sufferings from poison, before the arrival of the antidote. It was extremely funny.
At our house in Chestnut Street the Brain Club was entertained by two charades written by my mother, “Pandemonium” and “Catastrophe.”
For “Cat” a scene was adapted from the classic but terrible story of Atreus and Thyestes. The unfortunate owner of the animal has it served up to her in a pie. After she has eaten it the dreadful nature of the pasty is revealed to her!
For “Ass” the second syllable, we acted the scene from “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” where Titania makes love to Bottom. Mr. James C. Davis took the latter part, wearing an ass’s head borrowed from the theater, while I took that of the Fairy Queen.
My mother was always proud of our small accomplishments. Her journal says that Flossy looked beautiful. Doubtless I did—to her maternal eyes.
The President of the Brain Club was called Mrs. Josiah Quincy, Jr., because her husband’s father, a very old gentleman, was still living. The four generations, all having the same name, had their photographs taken in a group when the youngest was only a babe in arms. This carrying on of the family name appeals to sentiment, but is not convenient in practice. The third Josiah Quincy, finding unutterable confusion in his mail, adopted a middle initial in self-defense. He thus became Josiah _P._ Quincy. His brother, Samuel Quincy, fought in the Civil War.
Their sister, Mary Quincy, had a fine contralto voice. We often saw her and her husband, Prof. B. A. Gould, as well as her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Quincy, Jr. I remember the former as a handsome man with beautiful snow-white hair and whiskers. These had turned prematurely, as he was still a vigorous man who took the trouble to make himself agreeable to the young. Perhaps this was owing to his political experience, for he had been Mayor of Boston. The house in Park Street was one of a series of spacious, pleasant residences, occupied by the Lowells, the Thomas Wards, the Misses Quincy, and other worthies of Boston. The last-named ladies were sisters of the ex-Mayor. Both he and they had pleasant summer places in Quincy, one of which has now become the Quincy Mansion School for Girls.
Unitarianism, as all the world knows, became firmly intrenched in Boston in the early part of the nineteenth century. Many Puritan ideals still prevailed, however, especially with regard to the observance of Sunday. Certain persons adhered to the idea that no gay doings should take place on Saturday evening, that time being devoted to preparation for the Sabbath. These were usually plain people. Indeed, some individuals went so far as to disapprove of the celebration of Christmas. It was not uncommon to substitute New Year’s Day as the time to exchange presents. The students at Harvard College were obliged to go to all the services of whatever church they attended. Hence many of them selected our church, that of the Disciples, since here there was only one service on Sunday. During the week, attendance at morning chapel was compulsory, the hour being six and in later years seven o’clock. Small wonder that the undergraduate body learned to dress in a very short space of time, high boots and an ulster covering many deficiencies.
The young Howes were always taken to church in the morning, but were free to spend the rest of Sunday very much as they liked. We were not expected to practise on the piano, however, and we entertained the usual superstition about the impropriety, not to say evil, of sewing on Sunday. Our aunt, Mrs. Crawford, who lived during the greater part of her life in Italy, brought back to us more liberal ideas about the use of the needle.
While we often took a drive on Sunday afternoon, I went with the feeling that it was not quite right, so strong was the influence of the prevalent opinion in the community.
My father liked to have us read aloud from the Bible on Sunday evening, and we often did so while living in South Boston. The friends of the family found it pleasant and convenient to come to high tea on that day, so that at “Green Peace” we often had a tableful of guests. After the removal to Boston these Sunday teas developed into evening receptions of a pleasant and informal character. For these our mother was duly taken to task by a lady who held the old-fashioned view of the day. In spite of this rebuke our mother continued serenely on her way. To entertain her friends was as essential to her happiness as to read and study. My father once said that if she were alone on a desert island, with one old negro, she would manage to have a party!
It had, indeed, required effort on her part, and on that of her friends, to have entertainments in South Boston. At No. 13 Chestnut Street it was much easier. Among the pleasant people who came there were William Hunt, the artist, and his wife. Her handsome and intelligent face lit up with interest and animation as she talked. I remember a little dinner at the Hunt house where my mother and I were the only guests. Mr. Hunt told us various anecdotes of the French circus—then known as the Hippodrome; of an old woman of eighty who still danced on the tight rope. He showed us how the little old bowed figure looked as she came forward to take her part in the performance.
He related, too, the story of two men, one standing on the top of a tall staff, the second performing on a tight rope attached to it. One day, as the latter was testing the rope, it snapped in two! He never loosened his grasp on his balance-pole, never lost his erect position, falling, splendid as Lucifer, through the fifty or more feet of air, till his feet struck the ground. Both legs were broken.
Among the interesting guests at No. 13 Chestnut Street were Celia Thaxter and her husband. She was handsome and looked like the woman of spirit that she undoubtedly was. What she said I cannot, alas! remember.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was in those days the most brilliant and delightful of talkers. Not only did he talk without effort, but it seemed to require an effort on his part to maintain silence. His very mouth looked as if it were ready to overflow into brilliant conversation of its own accord, and one fancied that he was obliged to exercise a certain restraint over it.