cotton broker (the firm was Dick & Hill), made a voyage to Europe, and
brought home some Apollos, and Cupids, and Mercuries, statues in the
“altogether,” for his parlor. Jimmie Dick was a bachelor, and lived on
Canal Street, near Carondelet or Baronne, and had a charming spinster
niece keeping house for him, who was so shocked when she saw the figures
mounted on pedestals (they were glaring white marble and only a trifle
under life size) that she immediately made slips of brown holland and
enveloped them, leaving only the heads exposed! I never went to that
house but the one time when we surprised her in the act of robing her
visitors!
I speak of houses that I visited with my grown sister. It was not _comme
il faut_ for a young lady to be seen too frequently on the street or
to make calls alone. Mother was an invalid and made no visits. Father
accompanied sister on ceremonious occasions. I was pressed into service
when no one else was available. I feel I am going way back beyond the
recollection of my readers, but some of the grandmothers, too old,
mayhap, to do their own reading, can recall just such a life, a life that
will never be lived again.
VI
A FASHIONABLE FUNCTION IN 1842
It is hard to realize while we are surrounded by so many housekeeping
conveniences what an amount of time, energy, and, above all, knowledge of
the craft were necessary to the giving of a reception seventy years ago,
when every preparation had to be made in the house and under the watchful
supervision of the chatelaine.
There were no chefs to be hired, nor caterers to be summoned, not even a
postman to deliver invitations. All that was done “by hand.” A darky was
sent forth with a basket of nicely “tied up with white ribbons” notes
of invitation, and he went from house to house, sending the basket to
the occupant, where she not only subtracted her special note, but had
the privilege of seeing “who else was invited.” And if the darky was
bewildered as to his next stopping-place she could enlighten him. This
complicated mode of delivering invitations prevailed into the fifties.
The preparations for the supper involved so much labor that many hosts
offered only _eau sucrée_ or gumbo. There was no cut nor granulated nor
pulverized sugar, to be turned from the grocer’s bag onto the scales. All
sugar except the crude brown, direct from plantations, was in cone-shaped
loaves as hard as a stone and weighing several pounds each. These
well-wrapped loaves were kept hung (like hams in a smokehouse) from the
closet ceiling. They had to be cut into chips by aid of carving knife
and hammer, then pounded and rolled until reduced to powder, before that
necessary ingredient was ready for use.
There were no fruit extracts, no essences for seasoning, no baking
powder to make a half-beaten cake rise, no ground spices, no seedless
raisins, no washed (?) currants, no isinglass or gelatine, and to wind
up this imperfect list, no egg-beater! Still the thrifty housewife made
and served cakes fit for the gods, with only Miss Leslie’s cook book to
refer to, and that was published in the twenties. Ice cream was seasoned
by boiling a whole vanilla bean in the milk; it was frozen in a huge
cylinder without any inside fixtures to stir the mixture; it was whirled
in the ice tub by hand—and a stout one at that—and required at least one
hour, constant labor, to freeze the cream.
For jelly, calves’ feet were secured days in advance, and Madame
superintended the making of gelatine. Pink jelly was colored with a
drop or two of cochineal, yellow, doctored with lemon, and a beautiful
pale green, colored with the strained juice of scalded spinach. These
varieties were served in various attractive shapes; and all, even the
green, were delicious. These preparations were also complicated by the
necessity of procuring all supplies from the early morning market often a
mile or more away, and which, besides, closed at 10 o’clock. No stepping
to the corner grocery for eggs or butter in an unforeseen emergency, and
to the credit of the community the “borrowing habit” was entirely unknown.
I remember a Mrs. Swiler, chiefly because when I went to see her, with an
older sister, she “passed around” bananas. Cuban fruits were scarce in
those days, and highly prized.
There were no awnings to be used in bad weather; no camp chairs for the
invited guests if all came, and all wanted to sit down at the same time;
no waterproofs for them to come in; no rubbers to protect feet from
rain-soaked sidewalks; no street cars; no public conveyances that people
ever hired for such occasions; no private carriages to bump you over
rough cobblestones. So, there you are!
[Illustration: COURTYARD ON CARONDELET STREET]
Arrived after all these tiresome preparations and your own discomfort at
my father’s house, on Canal Street, to a reception given almost seventy
years ago, in honor of Commodore Moore of the Texas navy, who brought to
my father letters of introduction from President Mirabeau B. Lamar, of
the Republic of Texas, and Gen. Sam Houston of the Texas army!
I have reason to think at this late date, not hearing to the contrary at
the time, that the commodore’s visit was quite amicable and friendly. If
he was escorted by Texas warships! or even arrived in his own flagship!
I never knew. With his imposing uniform and a huge gilt star on his
breast, a sword at his side, and a rather fierce mustache (mustaches
were little worn then), he looked as if he were capable of doing mighty
deeds of daring, for the enterprising new republic on our border. He was
accompanied by his aide, a callow youth, also in resplendent attire, a
sword so long and unwieldy he was continually tripping, and therefore
too embarrassingly incommoded to circulate among the ladies. I met that
“aide,” a real fighter in Texas during the late war. He proudly wore a
lone star under the lapel of his coat of Confederate gray, and we had
a merry laugh over his naval début. He was Lieut. Fairfax Grey. His
sister was the wife of Temple Doswell, and many of her descendants are
identified with New Orleans to-day.
Mr. Clay, grand, serene, homely and affable; also Gen. Gaines in his
inevitable uniform. The two military and naval officers commanded my
admiration, as I sat quietly and unobtrusively in a corner in a way
“becoming to a child of nine”—“a chiel amang ye, takin’ notes”—but no one
took note of the chiel. We had also a jolly itinerant Irish preacher,
I think of the Methodist persuasion, whom my father had met at country
camp meetings. His call was to travel, and incidentally preach where the
harvest was ripe. I remember how, laughingly, he remarked to my father,
anent the commodore’s visit, that the chief inhabitants of Western Texas
were mesquite grass and buffaloes. He was father of John L. Moffitt of
Confederate fame, and a very attractive daughter became the wife of
President Lamar.
There was dance music—a piano only—but the room was too crowded for more
than one attempt at a quadrille. The notabilities, army, navy and State,
did not indulge in such frivolity. Life was too serious with them.
These functions generally began at 8 and terminated before the proverbial
small hours. So by midnight the last petticoat had fluttered away; and
then there followed the clearing up, and, as the old lady said, the
“reinstating of affairs,” which kept the hostess and her sleepy helpers
busy long after the rest of the family had fluttered away also—to the
land of Nod.
VII
NEW YEAR’S OF OLD
“When I was young, time had for me the lazy ox’s pace,
But now it’s like the blooded horse that means to win the race.”
Here it is New Year’s Day again. It seems only yesterday when we had such
a dull, stupid New Year’s Day. Everybody who was anybody was out of town,
at country mansions to flourish with the rich, or to old homesteads to
see their folks. Nobody walking the streets, no shops were open. Those of
us who had no rich friends with country mansions, or no old homesteads to
welcome us, remained gloomily at home, with shades down, servants off for
the day, not even a basket for cards tied to the doorknob.
Nobody calls now at New Year’s. It is out of fashion, or, rather, the
fashion has descended from parlor to kitchen. When Bridget and Mary don
their finery and repair to Bridget’s cousin’s to “receive,” and Sambo
puts on a high shirt collar and a stovepipe hat, and sallies out on his
round of calls, we have a pick-up dinner, and grandma tries to enliven
the family with reminiscences of the New Year’s Days of seventy years
ago, when her mother and sister “received” in state, and father and
brother donned their “stovepipes” and proceeded to fill the society rôle
for the year.
In the forties and for years thereafter, New Year’s Day was the visiting
day for the men, and receiving day for the ladies. All the fathers and
grandfathers, in their newest rig, stick in hand, trotted or hobbled
around, making the only calls they made from year to year. Before noon,
ladies were in their parlors, prinked up, pomatumed up, powdered up,
to “receive.” Calling began as early as 11, for it was a short winter
day, and much to be accomplished. A small stand in the hall held a card
receiver, into which a few cards left from last year’s stock were placed,
so the first caller might not be embarrassed with the fact that he was
the first. No one cared to be the very first then, any more than now.
A table of generous dimensions occupied a conspicuous position in the
parlor (we never said “drawing room”), with silver tray, an immense and
elaborately decorated cake and a grand bowl of foaming eggnog. That was
chiefly designed for the beaux. On the dining room sideboard (we did
not say “buffet,” either) a brandy straight or whisky straight was to
be found for those walking-stick ones whose bones were stiff and whose
digestion could not brook the fifty different concoctions of eggnog
they were liable to find in the fifty different houses. Those varied
refreshments, which every caller was expected to at least taste, often
worked havoc on the young and spry, to say nothing of the halt and lame.
There were no flower decorations. It was the dead season for plants, and
Boston greenhouses were not shipping carloads of roses and carnations
to New Orleans in the ’40s. Rooms were not darkened, either, to be
illuminated with gas or electricity, but windows were thrown wide open to
the blessed light of a New Year’s Day. Little _cornets_ of bonbons and
_dragées_ were carelessly scattered about. Those cornucopias, very slim
and pointed, containing about a spoonful of French confections, were made
of stiff, shiny paper, gaudily colored miniatures of impossible French
damsels ornamenting them. I have not seen one of those pretty trifles for
sixty years. It was quite the style for a swain to send his Dulcinea a
_cornet_ in the early morning. If the Dulcinea did not happen to receive
as many as she wanted, she could buy a few more. One liked to be a Belle!
Living in Canal Street, a little girl was unconsciously taking notes that
blossom now in a chronicle of the doings and sayings of those New Year’s
Days of the early ’40s. She enjoyed looking through the open window, onto
the broad, unshaded street, watching an endless procession of callers.
There were rows of fashionable residences in Canal Street to be visited,
and the darting in and out of open doors, as though on earnest business
bent, was a sight. The men of that day wore skin-tight pantaloons (we
did not call them trousers), often made of light-colored materials. I
clearly remember a pea green pair that my brother wore, flickering like a
chameleon in and out of open street doors. Those tight-fitting pantaloons
were drawn taut over the shoe, a strong leather strap extending under
the foot buckled the garment down good and tight, giving the wearer as
mincing a gait as the girl in the present-day hobble skirt. The narrow
clawhammer coat with tails that hung almost to the knees behind and were
scarcely visible in front, had to have the corner of a white handkerchief
flutter from the tail pocket.
Military men like Gen. E. P. Gaines (he was in his zenith at that date)
and all such who could sport a military record wore stiff stocks about
their long necks. Those stocks made the necks appear abnormally long.
They were made of buckram (or sheet iron?), so broad that three straps
were required to buckle them at the back, covered with black satin, tiny
satin bows in front which were utterly superfluous, for they tied nothing
and were not large enough to be ornamental. The stocks must have been
very trying to the wearers, for they could not turn their heads when they
were buckled up, and, like the little boy with the broad collar, could
not spit over them. However, they did impart a military air of rigidity
and stiffness, as though on dress parade all the time.
I remember Major Waters had a bald spot on the top of his head and two
long strands of sandy hair on each side which he carefully gathered up
over the bald spot and secured in place by the aid of a side comb! I used
to wish the comb would fall out, to see what the major would do, for I
was convinced he could not bend his head over that stiff, formidable
stock. The major won his title at the battle of River Rasin (if you know
where that is, I don’t). My father was in the same battle, but being
only seventeen he did not win a title. I don’t suppose that River Rasin
engagement amounted to much anyway, for dear pa did not wear a stock,
nor a military bearing, either. Gen. Persifor Smith was another stock
man who called always at New Year’s and at no other time. And Major
Messiah! Dear me, how many of us remember him in the flesh, or can forget
the cockaded, epauletted portrait he left behind when he fought his last
life’s battle?
All the men wore tall silk hats that shone like patent leather. Those
hats have not been banished so long ago that all of us have forgotten
their monstrosity, still to be seen now and then in old daguerreotypes or
_cartes de visite_. They flocked in pairs to do their visiting. It would
be a Mardi Gras nowadays to see one of those old-time processions. Men
of business, men of prominence, no longer society men, fulfilled their
social duty once each year, stepped into the dining room at a nod from
mother, who was as rarely in the parlor to “receive,” as the men who, at
the sideboard, with a flourish of the hand and a cordial toast to the New
Year, took a brandy straight. They are long gone. Their sons, the beaux
of that day, quietly graduated from the eggnog to the sideboard, become
even older men than their fathers, are gone, too.
I remember a very original, entertaining beau of those days saying
eggnog was good enough for him, and when he felt he was arriving at the
brandy-straight age he meant to kill himself. How would he know when
the time for hari-kari came? “When my nose gets spongy.” He had a very
pronounced Hebrew nose, by the way. Not so many years ago I heard of him
hobbling on crutches. Not only his nose, but his legs were spongy, but he
gave no indication that life was not as dear to him as in his salad days.
The younger element, beaux of my grown-up sister, rambled in all day
long, hat in hand, with “A happy New Year,” a quaff of eggnog, “No cake,
thanks,” and away like a flash, to go into house after house, do and say
the same things, till night would find they had finished their list of
calls and eggnog had about finished them. So the great day of the year
wore on.
After the house doors were closed at the flirt of the last clawhammer
coat tail, cards were counted and comments made as to who had called and
who had failed to put in appearance, the wreck of glasses, cake and tray
removed, and it was as tired a set of ladies to go to bed as of men to be
put into bed.
As the beautiful custom of hospitality spread from the centers of
fashion to the outskirts of society the _demi mondaines_, then the
small tradesman, then the negroes became infected with the fashion of
“receiving” at New Year’s, in their various shady abodes. The bon tons
gradually relinquished the hospitable and friendly custom of years.
Ladies suspended tiny card receivers on the doorknob, and retired behind
closed blinds. Those of the old friends of tottering steps and walking
sticks, always the last to relinquish a loved habit, wearily dropped
cards into the little basket and passed on to the next closed door.
Now the anniversary, instead of being one of pleasant greetings, is as
stupid and dull as any day in the calendar, unless, as I have said, one
has a friend with a “cottage by the sea” or a château on the hilltop and
is also endowed with the spirit of hospitality to ask one to spend the
week-end and take an eggnog or a brandy straight.
VIII
NEW ORLEANS SHOPS AND SHOPPING IN THE FORTIES
The shopping region of New Orleans was confined to Chartres and Royal
Streets seventy years ago. It was late in the fifties when the first
movement was made to more commodious and less crowded locations on Canal
Street, and Olympe, the fashionable modiste, was the venturesome pioneer.
Woodlief’s was the leading store on Chartres Street and Barrière’s on
Royal, where could be found all the French _nouveautés_ of the day,
beautiful _barèges_, Marcelines and chiné silks, organdies stamped in
gorgeous designs, to be made up with wreathed and bouquet flounces, but,
above and beyond all for utility and beauty, were the imported French
calicoes, fine texture, fast colors. It was before the day of aniline
and diamond dyes; blues were indigo, reds were cochineal pure and
unadulterated; so those lovely goods, printed in rich designs—often the
graceful palm-leaf pattern—could be “made over,” turned upside down and
hindpart before, indefinitely, for they never wore out or lost color,
and were cheap at fifty cents a yard. None but those in mourning wore
black; even the men wore blue or bottle green coats, gay flowered vests
and tan-colored pantaloons. I call to mind one ultra-fashionable beau who
delighted in a pair of sage green “pants.”
The ladies’ toilets were still more gay; even the elderly ones wore
bright colors. The first black silk dress worn on the street, and that
was in ’49, was proudly displayed by Miss Mathilde Eustis, who had
relatives in France who kept her _en rapport_ with the latest Parisian
style. Hers was a soft Marceline silk; even the name, much less the
article, is as extinct as the _barège_ and _crêpe lisse_ of those far
away days. It was at Woodlief’s or Barrière’s these goods were displayed
on shelves and counters. There were no show windows, no dressed and
draped wax figures to tempt the passerby.
Mme. Pluche’s shop, on the corner of Royal and Conti, had one window
where a few trifles were occasionally displayed on the sill or hung,
carefully draped on the side, so as not to intercept the light. Madame
was all French and dealt only in French importations. Mme. Frey was on
Chartres Street. Her specialty (all had specialties; there was no shop
room for a miscellaneous stock of goods) was _mantillas_, _visites_,
_cardinals_ and other confections to envelop the graceful mesdames
_en flânant_. I call to mind a _visite_ of thinnest muslin, heavily
embroidered (no Hamburg or machine embroidery in those days), lined with
blue silk, blue cords and tassels for a finish. It was worn by a belle of
the forties, and Mme. Frey claimed to have imported it. The madame was
not French. She had a figure no French woman would have submitted to, a
fog-horn voice and a well-defined mustache, but her taste was the best
and her dictum in her specialty was final.
The fashionable milliner was Olympe. Her specialty was imported
_chapeaux_. She did not—ostensibly, at least—make or even trim
_chapeaux_. Olympe’s ways were persuasive beyond resistance. She met her
customer at the door with “Ah, madame”—she had brought from Paris the
very bonnet for you! No one had seen it; it was yours! And Mam’zelle
Adèle was told to bring Mme. X’s _chapeau_. It fit to a _merveille_! It
was an inspiration! And so Mme. X had her special bonnet sent home in a
fancy box by the hand of a dainty _grisette_. Olympe was the first of her
class to make a specialty of delivering the goods. And Monsieur X, though
he may have called her “Old Imp,” paid the bill with all the extras of
specialty and delivery included, though not itemized. Those were bonnets
to shade the face—a light blue satin shirred lengthwise; _crêpe lisse_,
same color, shirred crosswise over it, forming indistinct blocks; and a
_tout aller_, of raspberry silk, shirred “every which way,” are two that
I recall.
Madame a-shopping went followed by a servant to bring home the packages.
Gloves, one button only, were light colored, pink, lavender, lemon,
rarely white; and for ordinary wear bottle green gloves were considered
very _comme il faut_. They harmonized with the green _barège_ veil that
every lady had for shopping.
Our shopping trip would be incomplete if we failed to call on an old
Scotch couple who had a lace store under Col. Winthrop’s residence on
Royal Street. The store had a door and a window, and the nice old parties
who had such a prodigious Scotch brogue one would scarcely understand
them, could, by a little skill, entertain three customers at one and the
same time. If one extra shopper appeared, Mr. Syme disappeared, leaving
the old lady to attend to business. She was almost blind from cataract, a
canny old soul and not anyways blind to business advantages. I am pleased
to add they retired after a few busy years quite well-to-do. There was
Seibricht, on Royal Street, a furniture dealer, and still further down
Royal Seignoret, in the same lucrative business, for I do not recall
they had any competitors. Memory does not go beyond the time when Hyde
and Goodrich were not the jewelers; and Loveille, on the corner of
Customhouse and Royal, the grocer, for all foreign wines, cheeses, etc.
Never do I see such Parmesan as we got from Loveille in my early days.
William McKean had a bookshop on Camp Street, a few doors above Canal.
Billy McKean, as the irreverent called him, was a picture of Pickwick,
and a clever, kindly old man was he. There was a round table in the rear
of his shop, where one found a comfortable chair and a few books to
browse over. In my childhood I was always a welcome visitor to that round
table, for I always “sat quiet and just read,” as dear old Mr. McKean
told me. As I turn the pages of my book of memories not only the names
but the very faces of these shopkeepers of seventy years ago come to me,
all smiles and winning ways, and way back I fly to my pantalette and
pigtail days, so happy in these dreams that will never be reality to any
place or people.
There were no restaurants, no lunch counters, no tea rooms, and (bless
their dear hearts, who started it!) no woman’s exchange, no place in the
whole city where a lady could drop in, after all this round of shopping,
take a comfortable seat and order even a sandwich, or any kind of
refreshment. One could take an éclair at Vincent’s, corner of Royal and
Orleans, but éclairs have no satisfying quality.
There was a large hotel (there may be still—it is sixty years since I saw
it), mostly consisting of spacious verandas, up and down and all around,
at the lake end of the shellroad, where parties could have a fish dinner
and enjoy the salt breezes, but a dinner at “Lake End” was an occasion,
not a climax to a shopping trip. The old shellroad was a long drive,
Bayou St. John on one side, swamps on the other, green with rushes and
palmetto, clothed with gay flowers of the swamp flag. The road terminated
at Lake Pontchartrain, and there the restful piazza and well-served
dinner refreshed the inner woman.
I am speaking of the gentler sex. No doubt there were myriads of cabarets
and eating places for men on pleasure or business bent. Three o’clock was
the universal dinner hour, so the discreet _mesdames_ were able to return
to the city and be ready by early candlelight for the inevitable “hand
round” tea.