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originally made to decorate a stateroom door on a fine new river boat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.
[Illustration: STEAMBOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North
America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)]
_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.
[Illustration: AMERICAN STAGECOACH.
(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North
America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)]
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
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.