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.
[Illustration: ST. LOUIS CEMETERY, NEW ORLEANS.]
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.
[Illustration: AUGUSTA SLOCOMB URQUHART
Painted in Paris, in 1857]
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
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