The circle that finally gathered around the fireside in the little
library at 157 Willow Street was long remembered by some of the men who
made it brilliant. John G. Saxe, whom we had known in Washington, was
one of these men. Thither also came the Southern author, William Gilmore
Simms. I remember one evening spent in our tiny library with Mr. Simms,
John R. Thompson, and General Charles Jones, when the trio of literary
men told stories,—not war stories,—ghost stories. Mr. Thompson recalled
a ghost I had known of myself and feared when a child,—the ghost of
the University of Virginia that announced its coming by a sudden wind
bursting open the doors, passed through the room, and walked off across
the lawn to the mountains. His deep foot-tracks could be discerned in
the soft sod, and with snow on the ground these deep tracks could be
seen to grow under his invisible feet as he strode onward. Well do I
remember nights when this ghost "walked." But General Jones had a better
story. His was a visible ghost, an old lady, whose contested will he was
reading one night, who appeared at the challenged point, looked at him
solemnly, and then vanished! Mr. Simms positively declined to mention
his own private ghost after these two thrilling visitations.
We had an interesting visit from Percy Greg, son of the English author.
Mr. Greg brought as a present to my general the proof-sheets of his
father's "Warnings of Cassandra," in which my husband discovered an
error; and according to his lifelong belief that all errors in the
English language are crimes which must be corrected, he proceeded to
enlighten Mr. Greg. "Your father has made a mistake—a slight one—which
he can correct in the next edition. He uses the word 'internecine' where
he clearly means 'intestine.'" Our guest dropped his under jaw, stared,
and reddened. An American correcting an Englishman's English! He had,
I know, respect for my husband's courage, but he had not expected rebel
guns to be turned on him in this manner.
"This was a length, I trow,
A rebel's daring could not go,"
if I may paraphrase Gilbert in the Bab Ballads!
But we had more eminent guests than these,—the divines of the City of
Churches, and her learned judges. Foremost and most cordial of all were
the old generals of the Grand Army of the Republic: General Hancock,
General James Fry, General Slocum, General Grant, General Tracy—a
sometime foe in field and forum; and later General Sherman, General
Fitz-John Porter, General Butterfield, and General McClellan were added
to our list of friends.
Among my husband's earliest clients was General Benjamin F. Butler,
who employed him to defend his son-in-law, Hon. Adelbert Ames, when the
latter was impeached by the state of Mississippi.
In the families of these distinguished men we soon found friends, and
to these were added many others. Brooklyn was noted for its refined and
cultivated society, and on Brooklyn Heights many of its most prominent
citizens lived, men whose names are not yet forgotten: Professor and
Mrs. Eaton, our first and dearest friends; Mr. Abbot Low,—whose splendid
monument is the library of Columbia University,—his charming wife and
daughters and his accomplished sons, one of whom was late President of
Columbia University and mayor of New York; Dr. Henry van Dyke, whose
name is famous in two continents as scholar, writer, and orator of
high distinction; John Roebling, the brilliant engineer, architect, and
builder of the great Brooklyn Bridge, whose beautiful wife was sister
of our friend, General Warren; the Hon. S. B. Chittenden and his wife,
a grand dame of the old school; the family of our minister to the Court
of St. James, Mr. Pierrepont; Mr. and Mrs. Alanson Trask, foremost in
all good works; Mr. Henry K. Sheldon, who gave artistic musicals; Mrs.
John Bullard, the patroness of art and leader in society; Mr. and Mrs.
Allen, who gave a lovely daughter to be the wife of Dr. Holbrook Curtis;
Mr. and Mrs. George L. Nichols, with a most dear and charming family of
sons and daughters; one known to the world to-day—at home and abroad—as
Katrina Trask, the brilliant author, poet, and accomplished chatelaine;
Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, now one of America's charming writers; Mrs.
Louise Chandler Moulton; and Grace Denio Litchfield, then a beautiful
young lady, and now a gifted author. These are but a representative
few of the interesting men and women who were kind enough to visit
us. A multitude of lovely young girls gathered around my school-girl
daughters; and when all the army of men turned out on New Year's Day
to observe—as they did religiously—the old-time custom of making calls,
the little house on Willow Street showed symptoms of bursting!
All of these were Northern people, and many of them from New
England,—the New England we had been taught to regard as the stronghold
of our enemies. There was not a Southern-born man or woman among them.
We had always considered the New Englander upright, narrow, and thorny!
Transplanted to Brooklyn, we found him upright indeed, but as harmless
as a thornless rose.
Many of these delightful people in time crossed the East River and
pitched their tents in New York—and many have crossed the river that
flows close to the feet of all of us; and so I imagine society in
what is now known as the Borough of Brooklyn has formed new systems
revolving around new suns. I sometimes read the old names in the society
columns of the Brooklyn journals, and the old pictures rise before me,
delightful and never to be forgotten.
The time had now come, however, when it was imperative for General Pryor
to live in New York, the city where he had commenced his work and had
always kept his office. The first of May found us in a small house on
33d Street.
A letter written by me in the following August gives my opinion of New
York as a summer resort.
"MY DEAR AGNES:—
"The colonel declares he means to bring you to New York, and
wishes me to give you my own impressions of this place. Well,
all I have to say is 'pray that your flight be not in summer!'
Anything like the heat and desolation of this town in summer
cannot be imagined. Everybody leaves it. I am living in a tiny
house in the heart of the city—and a very hard heart it is!
On one side of me is the rear of a great hotel, its kitchens
and servants' offices overlooking me. Really, I had as soon
hear shrieking shells as the clatter they make with their pots
and pans. Behind me is a sash and blind factory yielding dust
and noise unspeakable. On the other side a dreadful man has
planted a garden, wherein he has spread an awning, and there
he holds his revels—his card and wine parties. Of course I
can but listen to him more than half the stifling hot nights,
but should I remonstrate, it is not improbable he might inform
me that this is a free country, which I doubt. Lucy and Fanny
fortunately are far away in Virginia, and so I am spared the
added discomfort of suffering through their nerves.
"This town is as completely metamorphosed in summer as if it
had changed places with some struggling, dusty manufacturing
city,—building and digging going on everywhere; ugly
dirt-carts, instead of flower-crowned ladies in landaus,
passing through the dusty streets. You might, perhaps with
reason, suggest that I seem to have leisure,—that this is a
fine opportunity to read and improve my mind. Yes, I know,
but somehow I have lost all desire to improve my mind! My
present inclination is to gratify the mind I already have,—go
somewhere, see something, hear some really fine music!
"Here there is nothing to be seen except unhappy
fellow-mortals panting beneath the burden of city existence;
street arabs making free with the front doorstep and
improvising tables for their greasy luncheons; pathetic
organ-grinders who lift melancholy eyes for recognition
and reward, after harrowing the soul with despairing
strains—'Miserere,' 'Ah, I have sighed to rest me,' and such;
unmuzzled little animals in mortal terror of the dog-catcher;
tired, patient horses who know not their own strength, and
quietly obey that other creature with so much less power
and so much more selfishness. All this is not cheerful to
the looker-out, and having seen it once, I look no more.
But I have lately made a discovery. My upper-story window
presents an interesting and instructive landscape. There
is a low-roofed stable between the hotel and the factory. I
can look over a great flat tin roof where snowy garments are
always drying, and upon which, like 'Little Dorritt's' lover,
I can gaze 'until I 'most think they wuz groves.' Moreover,
there is a happy woman who comes up through a trap-door and
walks much under the shadow of those groves. How do I know she
is happy? Partly by the patter of her busy feet, partly by the
bit of song that floats to me 'whiles.' But chiefly because
I have actually found out all about her while I have leaned
idly out of my window. First, she is very good—this dweller
beneath the flat roof.
"On Sunday evenings she tunes up a little melodeon in her
regions below, and sings straight through the Moody and Sankey
hymn-book. Nor is this all. For a time I could not discover
whether she was wife, maid, or mother, and I felt much anxious
solicitude in her behalf. But lately she has brought up to the
roof in the evenings a small rocking-chair of the Mayflower
pattern, some crochet or tatting; and a great cat with an
enormous upright tail has followed her, and rubbed himself
comfortably against her knees.
"She is a blessed little old maid—that's just what _she_ is!
But the cat is not the only 'follower.' A wholesome-looking
Englishman (side-whiskers, fresh complexion, china aster in
buttonhole) comes now and then. The little Mayflower chair
rocks a bit more nervously, the cat is overwhelmed with
surprise by receiving a slight push from the tidy slipper, the
tatting takes on new energy, and I see—well, now, you surely
don't expect me to tell you what I see? Nothing very dreadful
nor altogether unusual in the sphere of my happy woman and
the British coachman, who has her in his 'heye' and is surely
going to have her in his 'ome by and by.
"But when my tired general comes home to me and keenly
scans my face to discover whether I am pining for the pines
or sighing for the sea, I cannot disgrace myself in his
eyes by revealing my low interest in my happy woman. Least
of all reveal my own loneliness! I show him the lovely
little window-box where I have a climbing nasturtium, a
morning-glory, and a curious strong vine that has prehensile
fingers at the end of every cluster of leaves. I show him the
curious ways of these strong climbers—how the nasturtium has
no tendrils, but a great fleshy stalk to be supported, and
so when it grows too tall to stand alone, it puts forth at
intervals a leaf with a mission; as soon as this leaf feels
the touch of the string, it contracts and wraps its brittle
stalk thrice around it—in and out, as you would wind your ball
of silk. And how the great long feelers of the morning-glory
behave just like ourselves. They look abroad for something
to lean upon, waving restlessly to and fro. Finding nothing,
they deliberately turn and _lean upon themselves_!
"My general pities me because the square of blue sky into
which I am always looking is so small. But I tell him of all
the glories and marvels I have seen there, between the high
stone dwellings that shut it in: how a rainbow spanned it
once; how my Lady Moon looks down in some of her phases and
tells me of her hard life of hopeless bondage—while mine is
but for a little time; how the Pleiades have been seen in my
small heaven and bound me with sweetest influences; how my
friend, the Great Bear, straddles across for a look at me, and
a reminder that he knows me very well, and knew generations
of my fathers long before the twenty-three generations that
I know of myself.
"And I have still more to tell him of the lovely time I am
having in my room—how I have watched a fairy castle grow
against my sky. How I saw at first a derrick spring aloft,
and then many tiny spirits of the air build away on a square
foundation; how they made port-holes in the top looking every
way for the Mafia or any other enemy, and over this threw
arches and fairy adornment of cunning work in white marble;
how they threw up a rocket then and hung out electric lights,
and I supposed their work was over and their airy castle
finished, but they then mounted a great calcium light to let
the incoming ships from foreign lands know our eye is upon
them; how they built another and still another story to their
castle—four in all, and were still building. And I call his
attention to a strange bird coming regularly at the same hour
in the evening, sailing (with 'a raucous voice') across our
dwelling and into my own little plantation in the sky. He
is of the species vulgarly called 'Bat'—and so I named him
our Fledermaus. At precisely the same hour every morning has
he come back again, screaming triumphantly, or putting on a
bold front to account to his mate in Central Park how he had
spent the night in the Long Island marshes. The first time
the flashlight was kindled in my castle in the air and its
searching glance fell upon the recreant Fledermaus, he wheeled
around and made his circuit in another direction, and we shall
hear his raucous voice no more!
"Which is additional proof of what we know already:
'Conscience makes cowards of us all.' Or perhaps it is
only that no self-respecting Fledermaus can be expected to
countenance flashlights at hours when sensitive folk are
coming home in the morning.
"My general listens respectfully while I go through all
this. 'Evidently "stone walls do not a prison make,"' is his
comment. 'Here are you interested in botany, astronomy, and in
building the Madison Square Garden.' 'Garden! Do stone walls
a garden make?' 'Here in New York they do,' he tells me; 'a
great, hot theatre is to be called a garden and crowned by
Diana of the Ephesians! St. Gaudens is making the goddess. But
_you'll_ not need gardens or goddesses to make you happy! Ah!
What a wonderful woman you are—so content, so cheery in spite
of all our privations.' Which shows what poor creatures men
are, as far as discernment goes, regarding the ways of women;
for my dear, oh, my dear!—a very lonely, homesick, heartsick
body is
"Your devoted
"SARA A. PRYOR.
"P.S.—I am a wretch—I know I am—to end my letter with a howl.
But an organ-man under my window is grinding away at 'Home,
Sweet Home.' He must be driven away or I perish! There he goes
again—'The Old Folks at Home'! I must put both my sofa pillows
over my ears! Dearly, S. A. P."