Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

XV

AS IT WAS IN MY DAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVI

FANCY DRESS BALL AT THE MINT IN 1850

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVII

DR. CLAPP’S CHURCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVIII

OLD DAGUERREOTYPES