Part 5

Well, I must return to cap trimmings to tell of a bride. She must have been in the neighborhood of seventy, for she made what her friends called a suitable match with a widower long past that age. They came to the St. Charles Hotel on a kind of honeymoon trip. She decorated her head, oh, ye cherubim and seraphim! with a fussy cap sprinkled with sprays of orange flowers!

I, who revel in a towering white pompadour, have just had the present of a soft silk cap, with frills and bows. I presume it will be useful on the breezy piazzas of the mountains a week hence; but it looks to me now that the caps of our mothers and grandmothers are on the march hitherward. I possess a few “Moniteurs des Dames,” dated in the late forties, that contain pictures and patterns for “bonnets,” as they were called. Who knows but they may be useful yet?

Now, “in regard to” (as a lady we all know prefaces every remark)—“in regard to” frills, in my young days we had to make our own frills. Nobody had dreamed even of machine-made ruchings any more than of vehicles that run all over the streets without the aid of horses. We made our frills of lawn, neatly gathered on to a band, and what is more, they had to be fluted with hot irons. The making was not beyond everybody’s skill, but the “doing up” and fluting was way beyond me, as beyond many others. How queer it is, when we recall to mind the images of people so long absent that they are almost forgotten, the image presents itself, emphasized by some peculiarity of dress or speech. When I think of Dr. Bein’s daughter Susanna, whom I knew and loved so well, it is with the beautifully fluted frill she always wore and so excited my envy. Now, every Biddy in the kitchen and every little darky one sees wandering around wears handsomer frills than Susanna and I ever dreamed of.

Parasols had heavy fringes; so, to show to advantage, they were carried upside down, the ferule end fitted with a ring to be, like the bouquet holders, hung from the finger. My sister had a blue parasol, with pink fringe, that I thought too beautiful for words. How I should laugh at it now!

Best frocks, such as could be utilized for dinners and parties, were made with short sleeves, “caps,” they were called, and tapes sewed in the armholes; long sleeves similarly equipped were tied in under the “caps.” I used to see even party guests take off their sleeves as they put on their gloves to descend to the dancing room. Black, heelless slippers, with narrow black ribbons, wound over the instep, and crossed and recrossed from ankle, way up, over white stockings, were the style; it was a pretty fashion.

I recall the autumn of 1849, when I, a young girl, was at the Astor House, in New York. Coming downstairs one morning to breakfast, how surprised I was at glaring notices posted on walls and doors, “Hop to-night.” You may well believe I was at the hop, though I had no suitable dress. I was only a looker-on.

When I mentioned slippers I recalled that hotel hop, for Mme. Le Vert wore a pink silk dress and pink satin slippers, all laced up and tied up with broad pink ribbons. Nobody had ever seen the like before. Mme. Walton, her mother, was on hand, and hopped, too, just as spry a hop as any young girl. I contrived to sidle along and keep near to Mme. Le Vert, for I was as fascinated as any one of her numerous beaux. Dr. Le Vert, by the way, had just started on a trip to Europe for his health. Going to Europe then was like taking a trip to Mars now.

I heard Mme. Le Vert talking to four different swains in four different languages. I believe she considered her linguistic versatility her strong point. She surely was a most remarkable woman. She was as tender and sweet to me, a very plain, simple, unattractive girl, as to her swellest friends. One does not easily forget such an episode of early life. I never met Mme. Le Vert after that autumn. We all returned South together on the Crescent City, the pioneer steamer between New York and New Orleans.

I will not moralize or sermonize over these reminiscences. They are all of the dead past. Both fashions and people are gone.

XII

WEDDING CUSTOMS THEN AND NOW

We were lingering about the breakfast table having such a comfortable, chatty review of the last night’s party, when a familiar voice was heard. “Oh! congratulate me; we have captured him; they are engaged.” That was the first time I had ever heard an “announcement” from headquarters. It was made to Mrs. Slocomb, in her library. There followed many amusing particulars, audible to us, in the adjoining room, but we were discreet young girls; perhaps that was one reason we were among the very few invited to the wedding, which so quickly followed the engagement that it was a complete surprise to the whole community.

Sixty years ago only Catholics went to the sanctuary for a wedding ceremony. Protestant weddings were home affairs, necessarily confined to family and nearest friends. Houses being limited in space, company was limited in number. No city house could boast of a ballroom; few had “double parlors.”

At the wedding whose “announcement” was such a surprise to us, I think our family and the Slocombs were the only guests, except the families of the groom’s business associates. The idea of having a grand reception to announce a marriage engagement, to which everybody who is anybody is invited, was unheard of. The anxiety, too, of the parties interested to get the news in a suitable form in the daily papers, for the butcher boy and the sewing girl, out of the social swim, to read, accompanied by the genealogies of the engaged people, the wealth of the girl and how she came by it, and the numbers of clubs of which the young man is a member, as though the money and the clubs were “the chief end of man”, was unheard of, too. We did things on a very different scale sixty years ago!

I recall my astonishment when Elèna Longer told me her sister Héda was married the night before, for Elèna and I (we were ten years old at the time) had played together all that day of the wedding, and not a hint was imparted to me of the impending event. I had not even heard the name of Mr. Charles Kock, the fiancé, mentioned. There were already six married daughters, with hosts of children, at that time in the Longer family, so there could have been little room on such an occasion for outsiders, even if their presence had been desired.

Wedding presents were not made, either. The first time we saw a display of wedding gifts, how surprised we were, and how we wondered as to how it happened! There were not many, nor were they expensive, so for ever so long I could have given the list and the names of the donors. Dear Maria Shute, who, as I remember, was the bridesmaid, presented a pearl-handled paper cutter! That article might have escaped my memory, along with the others, but years after that wedding I met Maria, then Mrs. Babcock, and we talked of it all, and had a merry laugh over the paper cutter.

Fifty-eight years ago, when I married, I was surprised by a solitary wedding present, a napkin ring! From the most unexpected source it came. The giver is long since dead and gone; dead and gone also is the napkin ring.

At the wedding of Caroline Hennen to Mr. Muir, the first I ever attended, there were not a dozen guests, but the rooms were filled, indeed the Hennen family easily filled one of them. At this wedding we met Mr. William Babcock from New York, a forty-niner en route to California (this was in 1849). The following day I went with him to call on and introduce him to his young cousin, an intimate friend of mine he was desirous of meeting. She was of that handsome family of Smiths, a niece of Mrs. Labouisse. I never saw either him or her afterwards, for within the following fortnight they quietly married and started “round the Horn” to San Francisco. More than fifty years after I saw their children and grandchildren in California.

Some of us must remember genial, gossipy Mrs. Garnet Duncant, the _bon vivant_, so bright, so fat and so entertaining? She it was who called one day (sixty years ago) to tell us Amelia Zacharie had married her invalid cousin, and sailed away with him. Those two are the only cases I recall of wedding trips, and both were permanent trips, for there was no intention of a return to New Orleans of either couple. It was the fashion for the newly-mated to remain quietly in the home nest, until one of their very own be made ready for their reception.

James Pollock, I recall to mind, made a late appearance (in 1850) at a dance given by the Lanfears, on Julia street, that old “13 Buildings.” The Lanfears were the last to leave that once fashionable row. Pollock swept in late, full of apologies. His sister Mana had married that evening and he was detained.

The only other wedding trip I can chronicle was one where the bridegroom went alone. Do you remember what an excitement there was, years ago, when a wealthy young man disappeared from the side of his bride the morning after the wedding? There were no wires or wireless then to facilitate the hunt, undertaken with frantic haste, and continuing two mortally anxious weeks. He was eventually discovered, in a semi-conscious, dazed condition, on a wharfboat at Baton Rouge, or some such river town. He recovered from that attack, to be blown away by another “brain storm” a few years later. It was twenty years after this second disappearance that the courts pronounced him dead, and the widow permitted to administer on the estate.

In those days old maids were rare. Every girl, so to say, married. The few exceptions served to emphasize the rarity of an unmated female.

Divorces were so rare when I was young that they were practically unknown in polite circles. I know of cases, and you would know of them, too, if I mentioned names, where men sent their erring or cast-off wives, not to Coventry, but to Paris, and made them stay there. One such died in Paris lately at the age of ninety-five, who was packed off, under a cloud of suspicion. There was no divorce, no open scandal. She simply went and stayed! He simply stayed!

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

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

XIII

A COUNTRY WEDDING IN 1846

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIV

THE BELLES AND BEAUX OF FORTY

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

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

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

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