Part 8

I wonder how many old ladies start to go through an unused hall closet, to make room for an accumulation of pasteboard boxes too good to throw away, and hampers too strong to discard, and in that long-closed closet, which a junk man with push-cart is waiting to help clear out, find a treasure, long since buried under piles of trash, mourned for, and, as in the case of many departed things, at length given up for lost—then forgotten. In just such a dark closet, from beneath a pile of old magazines (what they were kept and stored for goodness knows) and crazy bits of bric-a-brac, that nobody but a junk man (not even Salvation Army men, who are getting to be mighty choosy, by the way) would cart off, I found two bruised music books.

One dated back to 1847, when I was a schoolgirl in New Haven, and played with great éclat “La Fête au Couvent” quadrilles, purchased of Skinner & Co., Chapel Street. Chapel Street still exists, but Skinner & Co. are buried in the dust of more than sixty years. I cannot play “La Fête au Couvent” or any other fête now, but I can close my eyes and see the lovely young girls in the school music room whirling away to the music of the inspiring cotillion. Alas! Alas! Time has whirled every one of them away and stiffened the nimble fingers that danced so merrily over the keys.

In those far away days that are as yesterday to my dreaming there were “Variations” of every familiar melody. Variations that started with the simple air and branched off into all sorts of fantastic and involved and intricate paths. “Oft in the Stilly Night,” “’Tis Midnight Hour,” “Twilight Dews,” “Low-Back’d Car,” “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls,” “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” and so on and on, whole pages of “Variations,” now dim with age, but every blessed note brings to me the faces and voices of those long stilled in death. One sweet young girl played “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls” and “’Tis Midnight Hour” so charmingly that my eyes were dimmed when I turned the leaves of the school-day music book, for her fate was saddest of all—an inmate for years of an insane asylum. Another who sang as she played the “Low-Back’d Car” so delightfully (she was half Irish) died suddenly of yellow fever. Still another associated with “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” played the melody on a guitar, accompanied by her sweet young voice. Alas! She, too, is gone where they play on harps and there are no shadowed brows. So, on and on to the bitter end, and with a sigh I close the first chapter of my musical reminiscences that have lain dormant so many, many years.

The fashion of dedicating bits of music to some well-known person—need not be a musician, either, but a body of some note—has passed away with the one-button glove and the green _barège_ veil of sixty years ago. In the ’50s it was quite common, and my dear music book of that date holds ever so many dedicated polkas and mazourkas. The very front leaf has a picture of a wonderfully crocheted kind of a serpent with a man’s head, rather a shocking thing, “Sea Serpent Polka,” dedicated to Miss Rose Kennedy, by M. Strakosch. Dear Rose used to play it for us. It was not an inspiring bit of music, but her wonderfully deft touch would make melody out of anything that had crochets and quavers in it.

There is, a few pages further, another dedication to the incomparable Rose, “Grande Polka de Concert,” by Wallace. Miss Lou Gross, a most accomplished musician, daughter of the noted surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross, was honored by Strakosch in the “Kossuth Galop,” a galloping thing, much in the Strakosch style, which predominated in those days. Strakosch believed in a grand “send off” of his innumerable productions. There’s “Carnival de Paris,” dedicated to Mme. Caroline Arpin (I did not know of her) and “Flirtation Polka,” to Mme. Lavillebeuvre, who was a delightful pianist and merited something more inspiring than that “Flirtation.”

Then Wallace dances on the pages with a “Polka” adorned with the name of Mlle. Dumilatre, and Ed Armant dedicates “La Rose Polka” to Miss Augusta Slocomb. I don’t think Armant wrote music; he “got it done,” as the saying is. That was not an unusual feat; a valse was dedicated to Miss Philomène Briant, by George McCausland, and he was ignorant of a note in music—he “got it done.” P. A. Frigerio honored Miss Sara Byrne by the dedication of “La Chasse Polka.” Miss Sara was a decided belle in the ’50s, so a bit of music with her name attached found rapid disposal. Also, a belle of the ’50s was Miss Estelle Tricou. Lehman, _chef d’orchestre_ at the opera house, wrote “Souvenir de Paris” in her honor. Miss Estelle was bright and sparkling and beautiful, so was much in evidence. George W. Christy wrote more than one of his “starry” verses to “E. T.,” and they were printed in the _Picayune_. George was not noted for self-effacement and modesty. His signature always appeared in full to his sentimental effusions.

Lehman dedicated his “Clochettes Polka Mazourka,” a fine, inspiring bit of dance music it was, too, to Mme. Odile Ferrier, and “La Valentine Polka,” another charming, catchy dance piece, to Miss Anaïs Boudousquie. There was Mme. Angélina, a new French importation, whose specialty was the new dances that nobody else could teach. She was immortalized by “L’Esmeralda Nouvelle Danse de Salon.” We pupils had to learn some new steps and flourishes to be able to make successful début, after All Saints’ Day, for it was decreed “L’Esmeralda” was to be most popular. Everybody, even some stout old ladies that did not mean to be relegated to back seats, and _passé_ beaux who were fast becoming clumsy and awfully hard to dance with, took dancing lessons on the sly of Mme. Angélina, not to mention the young girls, débutantes and such, that went in small installments to her tiny room in Royal Street....

After this seeming digression I turn a leaf in the old music book to dedications to Mme. Boyer, “Mazourka Sentimentale,” by the fertile Strakosch, and here, too, “La Valse Autrichienne” by a new name—E. Johns. Mme. Boyer was the fashionable teacher of music. Both these dedicated pieces we scholars had to learn, and both bits, besides a dozen other bits a thousand times more difficult and intricate, like Gottschalk’s “Bamboula,” for instance, are so spotted with black pencil marks they are a sight! For the madame did not make a suggestion as to technique or expression or anything else in the musical mind that was not emphasized by a pencil mark on the page.

I find that most of this music was published by Mayo, No. 5 Camp Street; by Lyler & Hewitt, 39 Camp Street. Lehman published his own work at 194 St. Anne Street.... I am not half through, but I am weary of looking over these old music books. So many memories cluster about every page—memories of lovely dances with delightful partners. Oh! That grand _valse à cinq temps_, the music of which was never printed, and no band but Lehman’s band could play it, and nobody taught the whirling steps but Mme. Angélina. Memories of sweet girls, now old and faded, or, better than that, listening to the “Music of the Spheres.” Memories of painstaking professors whose pencil marks are all that is left to bring forcibly to mind their patient personality. I turn the last leaf, and lo! here is a unique bit of music and information—“The Monterey Waltz,” by Eugene Wythe Dawson, a little Texas boy, who dedicates it to the little musicians of his own age (eight years) in the sister States! I do not remember anyone who essayed to render the “Monterey Waltz”—I never did—but Eugene Dawson was still playing the piano in Texas during the war, proving possibly our grandfather’s dictum, “A man who plays the piano is mighty little account for anything else.”

We don’t think so now. I would be glad for a musician, male or female, in this house to render for me the sweet musical numbers that once made my young heart bound.

XXII

THE SONGS OF LONG AGO

How the ballads of our youth are, in memory, merged into the personality of those who sang them! How, as we recall the simple rhymes, the sweet voices of departed friends clothe them in melody. The songs of my early years come to me to-day with more freshness than the songs I heard yesterday, and with them come more vividly to mind the voices and faces of those long-gone friends than come the faces of those of to-day.

How many of us can recall “Blue-eyed Mary”? the little ballad with which my mother always quieted me to rest. The pitiful little song! And in my childhood days, too, mammy rocked me to sleep with “Ole Grimes is daid, dat good ole man.” I never hear “Blue-eyed Mary” or “Old Grimes” now, nor have I for more than threescore years and ten, they are both so buried in oblivion, though I can repeat every word of each, they were so nestled and rocked into my baby life.

When my father’s home was on Customhouse Street Duncan Hennen lived directly opposite. Mrs. Hennen was a dashing beauty. She had a sister from Tennessee visiting her, who had a powerful voice, and she sang “Old Rosin the Beau” and “Life on the Ocean Wave” with all the abandon of a professional. My father admired her style prodigiously, but my mother thought it too robust. “The Carrier Dove—fly away to my native land, sweet dove,” and “Twilight Dews,” she pronounced more ladylike. (How often we used that word “ladylike.” We rarely hear it now.) I must have been a very small “little girl” when I heard Wallace, in concert, sing “The Old Arm Chair.” No one since Wallace ever sung that touching, homely ballad so beautifully. Once having heard his sympathetic rendering, one always associates the song with William Wallace.

I think it has been full sixty years since that song and “Farewell to Tom Moore,” by Byron, have been heard. And “Twilight Dews,” oh, my! and “Shells of the Ocean”—“One summer’s day in pensive thought,” etc. Young girls played their accompaniments and tossed their ringlets and sang those ditties to enraptured swains, who often stood back of them, holding the candle at the proper angle and turning the leaves! How it all comes back to this dreaming old lady, who never sang, but who dearly loved to listen to her more gifted friends....

In the Cajin settlement on the border of which I occasionally visited there was a family of Lafitons—I boldly give the name, for the two sons, Lafiton _fils_ and Pete, never married, and all the family died years and years ago, but there was a lovely sprig of a girl, Amenaide, who possessed a fine voice and no doubt would have made her mark if she had had the necessary training, but she was one of the flowers “born to blush unseen.” I don’t think she knew one note of music. Of course, a guitar, much more a piano, was beyond her reach. She sang the sweet old French melody, “Fleuve du Tage,” delightfully. I wonder now where she ever heard it. For years after when I heard the song Amenaide rose before me, and with her the impression that she was not equaled.

There was another touching little ballad, in the days that were, “We Have Been Friends Together,” and that tender “Good-by,” who ever sings them now? Nobody, unless it be some old lady with quavering voice, who sings them in her heart while she dreams of the sweet girls of “Long, long ago” who have vanished.

“I Cannot Sing the Old Songs,” and “When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies” were two of the songs we loved to hear in the days before “Dixie” and “The Volunteer” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” captured the voices of so many of our sweet singers.

Some of us remember Mollie Haynes, who became the wife of Col. Charles D. Dreux, and none can recall her charming personality without a thought of the superb voice she possessed. “Ave Maria, Ora Pro Nobis”—none that I knew could render that prayerful melody with the pathos of Mollie Dreux. We all remember that Col. Dreux was the first Confederate officer from Louisiana who fell in battle, and no subsequent funeral was more largely attended than was Charles Dreux’s. “Joys That We’ve Tasted” brings to mind a popular singer in the “Long Time Ago,” Mrs. George D. Prentice, of Kentucky. How the names and the very people come thronging my mind as I recall these old melodies in which they are associated.

A few years since, listening to the well-trained voice of a professional, as she rendered some intricate, superlative kind of music, that did not in the least appeal to me, I ventured to ask if she would favor us with “Ben Bolt.” She graciously consented. And she rendered that simple old ballad that every child whistled or hummed when I was a child, with so many trills and bravuras, and I don’t know what else in the vocal line, that I was lost in amazement. Svengali himself could not have idealized to the same extent. Poor “Sweet Alice” was buried under such an avalanche of sound that one could not recognize the “corner, obscure and alone,” where she was supposed to rest under a “slab of granite so gray.”

So, perhaps, in the march of improvement, where none sing unless they possess a voice that would electrify a whole opera house audience, it is well the dear old songs of long ago are not resurrected and amplified to suit the tastes and requirements of to-day. I recall though, with a thrill of tender memory, hearing Jenny Lind sing “Home, Sweet Home”—just the simple ballad—without a single flourish when she was in New Orleans in 1851. I was in deep mourning and did not dream I would have the pleasure of hearing her, but a friend secured a _loge grillée_, and insisted upon my going, accompanied by my brother. It was all arranged so courteously and so sympathetically and so kindly that I could not refuse, and thus I heard that incomparable artist sing “Home, Sweet Home.”

No longer can mother sit in her “old arm chair” waving a turkey tail fan warm summer evenings, and be comforted and soothed by sweet warblings of her girls at the piano. No longer can the tired father call for his favorite, “Oh! Would I Were a Boy Again,” or “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,” or Mrs. Hemans’ “Bring Flowers, Fresh Flowers,” the sweet old flowers that all girls were singing sixty years ago. The old mothers and fathers, the bright young daughters are scarce buried more deeply or mourned more deeply than are the songs of long ago.

XXIII

A RAMBLE THROUGH THE OLD CITY

In the days of which I write New Orleans bore a very different aspect from the present, and it may be well for me to take my readers on a gossipy ramble through the thoroughfares which I so often traverse nowadays in my thoughts.

Canal Street in the early forties was, par excellence, a resident street. From Camp and Chartres Streets, way back as far as sidewalks were flagged or bricked, which was only a few blocks, Canal Street was lined with homes, side by side, often without even an alley to separate them, as though land was scarce and one need economize space, whereas just beyond was land in plenty, but no sidewalks or easy approaches to speak of. From Camp Street to the levee were, as I remember, large wholesale business houses, convenient to the shoppers of large supplies, who arrived at regular intervals from their plantations on _Belle Creole_, or some other coast packet, frequently retained their quarters on the boat the short time it was in port, and so monsieur and madame could accomplish their necessary shopping, untrammeled by the elegancies and inconvenient hours of a hotel.

Things were conducted on a very liberal basis in those days. I have a liking for that old way—it was so debonair and generous, putting the captain on the same social standing as his guests.

On the lower side of Canal Street, about where Holmes’ store now stands, were more homes, in a row, all the houses exactly alike, with narrow balconies stretching clear across the fronts, in a most confidentially neighborly way. The lower floors were doctors’ or lawyers’ offices or exchange brokers’. Fancy goods, dry goods, retail shops, in fact of every kind, were on Chartres or Royal Street; none on Canal. R. W. Montgomery had his home also on that fashionable thoroughfare.

Christ Church was on the corner of Baronne and Canal, and Dr. Laycock was the pastor at the date of which I write, and, with few exceptions, all these families were of his flock.

Lower Camp Street was occupied mostly by exchange brokers’ and such offices. The Sun Mutual Insurance Company had a conspicuous sign on a modest two-story brick building which any insurance structure to-day would put to shame.

If it is near Christmas time, when we are taking this gossipy ramble, we might meet a flock of turkeys marching up Camp Street, guided by a man and boys with long poles. In those days fowls were not offered for sale ready dressed or plucked, but sold “on the hoof,” as we say of cattle. Camp and the adjacent resident streets were, to use another Westernism, a favorite “turkey trot.” Those turkeys may have trotted miles. Goodness knows whence they took up the line of march—presumably at some boat landing—but they were docile as lambs and in good condition. No roast turkey gobbler, or, better still, boiled turkey hen with oyster dressing, tastes now like the ones mother had on her table when I was a child and clamored for the drum-stick. What does taste as good to us old folks to-day? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!...

In Exchange Alley (it may have a new name now, since Triton Walk and Customhouse Street and others of the old days have been rechristened) my father and a number of other “attorneys at law,” as their signs indicated, had offices. Mr. Wharton was one, and I also recall two Hebrew beaux of that date who were neighbors of my father’s, A. K. Josephs and M. M. Cohen. Nobody knew their given names. Beyond Camp Street, near Magazine, Mme. Shall kept a boarding house. It was a popular hostelry for gentlemen. Ladies did not board, except (to use Susan Nippers’ language) as temporaries.

Visitors to the city “put up” at the St. Charles Hotel, in the hands of Colonel Mudge. St. Charles was the best hotel even then, comparing favorably with the Galt House, in Louisville, under the management of that prince of hosts, Major Aris Throckmorton—which is saying volumes for the St. Charles. In the season flocks of Nashville, Louisville and Cincinnati belles descended upon New Orleans, sat in gorgeous attire and much chatter of voices on the divans under the chandelier of the St. Charles parlor, while the kindly fathers and insinuating brothers, bent on giving the girls a good time, foraged about the ample rotunda, captured, escorted in and introduced many eligible beaux found sauntering around that fascinating rendezvous.

Up Carondelet Street—one could not find the location on a city map now, for, as I remember, the streets were not named—were suburban homes, all about, quite remote and countrified. Judge John N. Duncan lived in one of those cottages. There was a grand, big yard surrounding it, with fig trees, hedges, rosebushes and vines, a perfect bower of delight to us children. Rose, the only daughter, was a lifelong friend of mine. She became the first wife of Col. William Preston Johnston. Nearby lived the Peter Conreys, who gave lovely lawn parties, that the naughty uninvited dubbed “Feat sham peters.”

Not so very far away, in the neighborhood of Constance and Robin Streets, there was erected in 1843 Quite a grand residence for the Slark family. I do not remember much of them in those early days, though they lived near enough to my father’s to be neighbors. Later in life my acquaintance with them was more intimate. I recall, though, quite vividly Mrs. Slark’s visiting card, which I admired prodigiously. Being a small collector of curios that unique bit of pasteboard was one of my treasures till I lost it! There seems to have been considerable latitude in the style of visiting cards about that time—some were highly glazed and had gilt edges; some were even pink tinged, but I think Mrs. Slark’s was the _ne plus ultra_—a bird’s beak holding a waving pennant, and on its flowing folds was engraved “Mrs.—Abigail—L.—Slark,” something after the style of the eagle and _E pluribus unum_.

I find I am wandering away from that dear old Canal Street of fragrant memories. Fragrant, though the broad neutral ground was a wilderness of weeds of dampy growth, and (so our John used to tell me) snakes! There certainly were frogs after a spring rain. I have heard their croaks. Further back toward the swamps were deep ditches, with crawfish sneaking about in them. Fine fishing place for us little ones it was, too. After a heavy downpour of rain the poorly paved street and the low, marshy neutral ground was often flooded clear across from sidewalk to sidewalk. It was great fun to watch the men trying to cross the street after one of these rains. Rubber shoes were unknown, so men depended on high boots. Of course, ladies did not venture forth at such times, when they required more protection for the foot than a thin-soled slipper afforded. There were goloshes, wooden soles fastened with straps and buckles over the instep. A golosh looked like a roller skate and was about as easy to walk with. You never see one now.

I wonder if anyone under seventy-five years of age passes old “Julia Street row” to-day and knows that those “13 Buildings” between Camp and St. Charles Streets have an aristocratic past, and were once occupied by the leading social element of the American colony residing in the early forties above Canal Street? “13 Buildings” it was called, and at that date, and a decade later, every one of them was tenanted by prominent citizens of New Orleans. There they lived and entertained a host of delightful guests, whose names were a power then, but whose descendants are perhaps little known to-day.

There lived Mr. Lanfear with his two daughters. Louisa later became the wife of David Ogden. There lived Mrs. Slocomb and her three children. They became Mrs. T. G. Richardson, so well known and honored to-day in the Crescent City; Mrs. David Urquhart, now living in England, and Capt. Cuthbert Slocomb. Late in the forties that family went to Europe, and returned to occupy the house, built in their absence, which is now the home of Mr. Frank Howard, opposite Lafayette Square.

The Branders—Mr. Brander was a merchant of some note and social standing. His daughter, Caledonia, married Mr. Sager, an Englishman, and eventually went to Europe. Virginia Brander became the wife of Edward Matthews, a New York man, who subsequently made a large fortune by speculating in long leases of valuable business sites in New York during a panic in commercial circles at the time of the Civil War. Their son, Brander Matthews, is a distinguished man of letters and professor in Columbia College. The Smith family, a host of handsome girls, occupied the house next to the Camp street corner, and in that house the original J. P. Labouisse married beautiful Dora Smith, whose death, at the advanced age of ninety, occurred a short time ago. Charles Cammack married Sarah Smith in the same house, and Mary Smith married Morris, the son of Beverly Chew, who was a defendant in the noted Gaines case of that day.

H. S. Buckner’s home was midway of the row, and there was born Ellen Buckner, who became the wife of James B. Eustis, the first United States ambassador to France. Those old friends who visited Paris in her _régime_ tell of her cordial and gracious hospitality.