Part 7

I think I can safely say I possess the first daguerreotype ever taken in New Orleans. An artist came there about 1840 and opened a studio (artist and studio sound rather grand when one views the work to-day). That studio was at the corner of Canal Street and Exchange Alley. The artist needed some pictures of well-known men for his showcase, so he applied to my father, who was of the “helping hand” variety. And dear Pa was rewarded with the gift of a picture of himself all done up in a velvet-lined case, which he brought home to the amazement and wonder of every member of the family, white and black. I look at it now with a grim smile. Dear Pa’s cravat ends were pulled out and his coattail laid nicely over one leg, and his hand spread so that one could see he had five big fingers. His head had been steadied straight up in a most unnatural position, with a kind of callipers or steel braces, and he must have been told to “look up and smile” for a full minute.

We prize that daguerreotype for its antiquity, but I hope seventy years hence when another and another generation opens my “war album” they will not laugh at the quaint _cartes de visite_ it contains, though I confess some of them begin to look rather queer already. They were all gifts of near and dear friends, most of them with autograph attachments, some of which were so flourishing that I had to subscribe the names and dates on the backs.

There are Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Davis, dated 1860, before he was President, you perceive. Though I have letters from both, I never saw either after that date. There’s Gen. J. Bankhead Magruder, in full uniform, far and away the most picturesque of my collection. The first time we ever met Gen. Magruder was very soon after the capture of the _Harriet Lane_ in Galveston waters. The Texans were wild and jubilant at the dashing feat, and when we reached Houston, all travel-stained and worn out, the city was in a ferment of excitement.

The General dearly loved to tell a good story, and the impediment in his speech, a drawling lisp, made him vastly amusing. In his office one day one of his aides was tinkling a banjo. A travel-stained individual called:

“Is the General in?”

“No,” tinkle, tinkle.

“When will he be in?”

“Don’t know,” tinkle, tinkle.

“Will you tell him I called?”

“What name?” tinkle, tinkle.

“Smith.”

“I think I have heard that name before,” tinkle, tinkle. “What Smith?”

“Gen. E. Kirby Smith, young man!”

No tinkle followed that reply. The young aide almost swooned away. Gen. Magruder surrounded himself with Virginia gentlemen aides, who gave him infinite trouble, he said.

In the early fifties “we met by chance, the usual way,” Major F. Ducayet. A party driving down the old Bayou road one Sunday heard that at Ducayet’s there would be found a rare collection of wonderful fowls and poultry, and the owner was very gracious about showing his assortment to visitors. After a bit of hesitation we ventured to introduce ourselves. Mr. Ducayet received us most hospitably, showed us through his lovely grounds and gave us the history of his rarest feathered pets, presented the two ladies with choice bouquets and insisted upon our partaking of refreshments. During the conversation that ensued Mr. Ducayet said he would not be able to increase his fancy flock, all of which had been brought him from foreign parts by captains and sailors, as a change in the administration would remove him from the position in the Custom House he had held for years. One of the party at once asked him to call on him at the St. Charles Hotel the following day, that he, being a Democrat and a politician of influence, might exert himself in his behalf. Mr. Ducayet retained his position. From that chance acquaintance sprung a strong friendship. We saw much of Major Ducayet in war times, hence the little _carte de visite_ which ornaments my war album.

By the side of Major Ducayet’s is the face of ex-Governor Moore of Louisiana. He was an inmate of our modest little home in Texas during the expiring days of the Confederacy.

I have also similar small photos of Major Tom Lee, General Preston, General Breckinridge, Commodore John N. Maffit, General and Mrs. Robert Toombs, General Early, Dr. Howard Smith and a host of lesser lights, all of which were taken in Havana after the war.

Dr. Howard Smith of New Orleans was surgeon on somebody’s (perhaps Gen. Kirby Smith’s) staff, and was our frequent guest in Texas, a very valuable guest, too, for his skill carried some members of my family out of the “valley of the shadow” into the sunshine. One trip we made together from the Rio Grande into the interior of Texas, quite a caravan of us in the party.

The first day out from Laredo there was a terrible sandstorm, cold almost to freezing point, and never was a more disgusted party of travelers. In a fit of despair Dr. Smith exclaimed: “I would give a thousand dollars for a drink of brandy.” Now brandy was a luxury a thousand dollars could not always supply, but I promptly replied: “I will give you a whole bottle of brandy, the cork of which has not been drawn, if you will divide it with the rest of the crowd.” Of course, the proposition was accepted. From my carpetbag I produced a tiny toy bottle, holding perhaps a half wine glass of the coveted liquor. It was not easy to divide the contents liberally, but the genial doctor appreciated the joke and did his utmost to carry out its provisions.

Years after, walking uptown in New Orleans, my escort said: “Look at the man on that gallery. See if you know him.” I met the man’s eyes full in my face, and passed on. It was Dr. Howard Smith, neither of us recognizing the other. He was in ill-health, old and haggard, and I guess I showed some of time’s footprints, too.

XIX

STEAMBOAT AND STAGE SEVENTY YEARS AGO

In the twilight of my days, seated in my favorite chair, I rock away many a trip from my New Orleans home to the blue grass region of my ancestors. Dream trips they are, but dreams of real trips in the old days when steamboats and stages were the approved, in fact, the only, transportation for travelers.

About the Fourth of July every year our family migrated to the old Kentucky homestead. The Fourth was not chosen with any patriotic motive, but law courts were closed and legal business suspended, and my father’s vacation at hand at that date. Though the steamboats were called palatial, viewed from my rocking-chair trip to-day I wonder how people managed to stand the inconveniences and discomforts they provided.

There was the famed _Grey Eagle_, “a No. 1 floating palace” it was called. There was the _Belle of the West_ and the _Fashion_ and the _Henry Clay_. One time and another we churned up the muddy Mississippi water in every one of them. Naturally the boats catered in every way to the predilections of the plantation owners, who were their main source of profit. The picture of Arlington which illustrates this book was originally made to decorate a stateroom door on a fine new river boat built in the ’50’s and adorned in that way with views of homes along the river.

_Grey Eagle_ was the finest and best, and therefore most popular boat. I recall with amusement an eight or ten days’ trip on that palace. The cabins were divided by curtains, drawn at night for privacy. The ladies’ cabin, at the stern, was equipped with ten or twelve small staterooms. The gentlemen’s cabin stretched on down to the officers’ quarters, bar, barber shop, pantries, etc., ending in what was called Social Hall, where the men sat about, smoking and chewing (the latter as common a habit as cigarette smoking is now) and talking—in other words, making themselves sociable.

On that same _Grey Eagle_ I was for the first time promoted to the upper berth, in a stateroom shared by an older sister. The berth was so narrow that in attempting to turn over I fell out and landed in the wash basin, on the opposite side of the room! My sister had to sit on the lower berth to braid my pigtails, then sent me forth so she could have room to braid her own. Trunks and other baggage more unwieldy than carpetbags were piled up in the vicinity of Social Hall. A carpetbag, small enough to be easily handled, was all there was room for in the stateroom. There were no valises, suitcases or steamer trunks in those days of little travel, and unless you are three-quarters of a century old you can’t imagine a more unwieldy article than a carpetbag of seventy years ago. Only toilet articles and things that could not muss and tumble could be safely stored in one.

In the stateroom, where we had to sleep and dress, and, if we could snatch a chance, take an afternoon nap, there was a corner shelf for a basin and pitcher and one chair; two doors, one leading out and the other leading in, transoms over each for light and ventilation—and there you are for over a week. The cabin was lighted with swinging whale-oil lamps, and one could light his stateroom if one had thought to provide a candle.

Every family traveled with a man servant, whose business it was to be constantly at beck and call. Of course, there was always a colored chambermaid, and, equally of course, she frisked around and seemed to have very little responsibility—no bells, no means of summoning her from her little nodding naps if she happened to be beyond the sound of one’s voice. The man servant’s duties, therefore, were almost incessant. If an article was needed from the trunks he was sent to the baggage pile for it, and often he brought trunk trays to the staterooms. When the boat stopped “to wood” every man servant rushed to the woodman’s cabin to get eggs, chickens, milk, what not.

And those men had the privilege of the kitchen to prepare private dishes for their white folks. I wonder how long a boat or hotel would stand that kind of management to-day; but in the days where my rocking-chair is transporting me, steamboat fare was not up to the standard of any self-respecting _pater familias_. There was no ice chest, no cold storage; in a word, no way of preserving fresh foods for any length of time, so passengers resorted to such means as presented themselves for their own bodily comfort. Those who had not the necessary appendage—a man servant—foraged for themselves, but the experienced and trusted servant, to use a vulgarism, “was never left.”

The table for meals extended the length of the gentlemen’s cabin, stretched out and out to its utmost length, if need be, so that every passenger had a seat. There was no second table, no second-class passengers—anybody was the equal of anybody else. If you could not possibly be that, you could find accommodation on the lower deck and eat from a tin plate.

It was quite customary, as I have mentioned, for passengers to have private dishes, prepared by their own servants. I recall with a smile, on one occasion, a very respectable-looking stranger boarded our boat at Helena or some such place. At dinner he reached for a bottle of wine. Cuthbert Bullitt touched the bottle with a fork, saying, “Private wine.” The man, with a bow, withdrew his hand. Presently he reached for a dish of eggs. My father said, “Excuse me, private.” There was something else he reached for, I forget what, and another fellow-passenger touched the dish and said “Private.” Presently dessert was served, and a fine, large pie happened to be placed in front of the Helena man. He promptly stuck his fork into it. “By gracious! this is a private pie.” There was a roar of laughter.

After dinner the others, finding him delightfully congenial and entertaining, fraternized with him to the extent of a few games at cards. He was wonderfully lucky. He left the boat at an obscure river town during the night, and the next day our captain said he was a notorious gambler. From his capers at table the captain saw he was planning a way of winning attention to himself, therefore under cover of darkness he had been put ashore. My father, who did not play, was vastly amused when he found the smart gambler had carried off all the spare cash of those who had enjoyed the innocent sport.

Flatboats floating all manner of freight down stream were a common sight on the river. Arrived at their destination, the boats, which were only huge rafts with no propelling power, were broken up and sold for lumber, and the boatmen traveled back up stream in packets to repeat the process. Cousin Eliza Patrick used to relate the trip her family made in about 1820 on a flatboat from Kentucky to Louisiana. The widowed mother wished to rejoin a son practicing medicine in the latter state, so she sold her land, and loaded her family and every movable object she possessed—slaves, cattle, farm implements, household effects—upon a huge “flat” and they floated by day and tied up to the bank by night, carrying on, during the weeks consumed by the trip, an existence which must have been somewhat like that of Noah’s family in the Ark.

There was not, as I have mentioned, any means of keeping foods fresh, nor was there even ice water to be had on those boats. We used entirely, even for drinking, the muddy river water, which was hauled up in buckets on the barber side of the boat, while the steward was emptying refuse to the fishes on the pantry side. The passengers became more or less intimate, necessarily, on a trip such as I am attempting to describe. There was no place to sit but in the general cabin, the sleeping rooms being so cramped. There was no library, very little reading, but much fancy work, mostly on canvas, footstools and bell-pulls. A bell-pull, you may want to know, was a long band about three inches wide; it was hung from the parlor cornice and connected with a bell in the servant’s region; it was quite the style to embroider them in gay vines and flower designs.

The elderly ladies knit fine thread nightcaps, collars and lace. Really some of the “old lady” work was quite handsome. Thus fingers were kept busy, while gossip and interchange of bread and cake recipes entertained the housewives who had never heard of cooking schools and domestic science. Our trip necessarily embraced at least one Sunday. I remember my father had a dear old relative of the deepest dyed Presbyterian type (father of the late Dr. T. G. Richardson), who always on his river trips landed wherever he happened to be on Saturday and on Monday boarded another boat (if one came along), his scruples forbidding Sunday travel.

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

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

XX

HOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXI

OLD MUSIC BOOKS