Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
felt so deep an interest, was now a free woman, safe under the shadow of
the British throne. I had the honor of entertaining her under my roof,
sending her in my carriage to Lake Ontario, just eighteen hours before
your arrival: hence my willingness to have you search my premises."
Like the varied combinations of the kaleidoscope, the scenes in our
social life at Peterboro were continually changing from grave to gay.
Some years later we had a most hilarious occasion at the marriage of
Mary Cochrane, sister of General John Cochrane, to Chapman Biddle, of
Philadelphia. The festivities, which were kept up for three days,
involved most elaborate preparations for breakfasts, dinners, etc.,
there being no Delmonico's in that remote part of the country. It was
decided in family council that we had sufficient culinary talent under
the roof to prepare the entire _menu_ of substantials and delicacies,
from soup and salmon to cakes and creams. So, gifted ladies and
gentlemen were impressed into the service. The Fitzhughs all had a
natural talent for cooking, and chief among them was Isabella, wife of a
naval officer,--Lieutenant Swift of Geneva,--who had made a profound
study of all the authorities from Archestratus, a poet in Syracuse, the
most famous cook among the Greeks, down to our own Miss Leslie.
Accordingly she was elected manager of the occasion, and to each one was
assigned the specialty in which she claimed to excel. Those who had no
specialty were assistants to those who had. In this humble
office--"assistant at large"--I labored throughout.
Cooking is a high art. A wise Egyptian said, long ago: "The degree of
taste and skill manifested by a nation in the preparation of food may be
regarded as to a very considerable extent proportioned to its culture
and refinement." In early times men, only, were deemed capable of
handling fire, whether at the altar or the hearthstone. We read in the
Scriptures that Abraham prepared cakes of fine meal and a calf tender
and good, which, with butter and milk, he set before the three angels in
the plains of Mamre. We are told, too, of the chief butler and chief
baker as officers in the household of King Pharaoh. I would like to call
the attention of my readers to the dignity of this profession, which
some young women affect to despise. The fact that angels eat, shows that
we may be called upon in the next sphere to cook even for cherubim and
seraphim. How important, then, to cultivate one's gifts in that
direction!
With such facts before us, we stirred and pounded, whipped and ground,
coaxed the delicate meats from crabs and lobsters and the succulent peas
from the pods, and grated corn and cocoanut with the same cheerfulness
and devotion that we played Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" on the
piano, the Spanish Fandango on our guitars, or danced the minuet, polka,
lancers, or Virginia reel.
During the day of the wedding, every stage coach was crowded with guests
from the North, South, East, and West, and, as the twilight deepened,
carriages began to roll in with neighbors and friends living at short
distances, until the house and grounds were full. A son of Bishop Coxe,
who married the tall and stately sister of Roscoe Conkling, performed
the ceremony. The beautiful young bride was given away by her Uncle
Gerrit. The congratulations, the feast, and all went off with fitting
decorum in the usual way. The best proof of the excellence of our viands
was that they were all speedily swept from mortal view, and every
housewife wanted a recipe for something.
As the grand dinner was to come off the next day, our thoughts now
turned in that direction. The responsibility rested heavily on the heads
of the chief actors, and they reported troubled dreams and unduly early
rising. Dear Belle Swift was up in season and her white soup stood
serenely in a tin pan, on an upper shelf, before the town clock struck
seven. If it had not taken that position so early, it might have been
incorporated with higher forms of life than that into which it
eventually fell. Another artist was also on the wing early, and in
pursuit of a tin pan in which to hide her precious compound, she
unwittingly seized this one, and the rich white soup rolled down her
raven locks like the oil on Aaron's beard, and enveloped her in a veil
of filmy whiteness. I heard the splash and the exclamation of surprise
and entered the butler's pantry just in time to see the heiress of the
Smith estate standing like a statue, tin pan in hand, soup in her curls,
her eyebrows and eyelashes,--collar, cuffs, and morning dress
saturated,--and Belle, at a little distance, looking at her and the soup
on the floor with surprise and disgust depicted on every feature. The
tableau was inexpressibly comical, and I could not help laughing
outright; whereupon Belle turned on me, and, with indignant tones, said,
"If you had been up since four o'clock making that soup you would not
stand there like a laughing monkey, without the least feeling of pity!"
Poor Lizzie was very sorry, and would have shed tears, but they could
not penetrate that film of soup. I tried to apologize, but could only
laugh the more when I saw Belle crying and Lizzie standing as if hoping
that the soup might be scraped off her and gathered from the floor and
made to do duty on the occasion.
After breakfast, ladies and gentlemen, alike in white aprons, crowded
into the dining room and kitchen, each to perform the allotted task.
George Biddle of Philadelphia and John B. Miller of Utica, in holiday
spirits, were irrepressible--everywhere at the same moment, helping or
hindering as the case might be. Dear Belle, having only partially
recovered from the white-soup catastrophe, called Mr. Biddle to hold the
ice-cream freezer while she poured in the luscious compound she had just
prepared. He held it up without resting it on anything, while Belle
slowly poured in the cream. As the freezer had no indentations round the
top or rim to brace the thumbs and fingers, when it grew suddenly
heavier his hands slipped and down went the whole thing, spattering poor
Belle and spoiling a beautiful pair of gaiters in which, as she had very
pretty feet, she took a laudable pride. In another corner sat Wealthea
Backus, grating some cocoanut. While struggling in that operation, John
Miller, feeling hilarious, was annoying her in divers ways; at length
she drew the grater across his nose, gently, as she intended, but alas!
she took the skin off, and John's beauty, for the remainder of the
festivities, was marred with a black patch on that prominent feature.
One can readily imagine the fun that must have transpired where so many
amateur cooks were at work round one table, with all manner of culinary
tools and ingredients.
As assistant-at-large I was summoned to the cellar, where Mrs. Cornelia
Barclay of New York was evolving from a pan of flour and water that
miracle in the pie department called puff paste. This, it seems, can
only be accomplished where the thermometer is below forty, and near a
refrigerator where the compound can be kept cold until ready to be
popped into the oven. No jokes or nonsense here. With queenly dignity
the flour and water were gently compressed. Here one hand must not know
what the other doeth. Bits of butter must be so deftly introduced that
even the rolling pin may be unconscious of its work. As the artist gave
the last touch to an exquisite lemon pie, with a mingled expression of
pride and satisfaction on her classic features, she ordered me to bear
it to the oven. In the transit I met Madam Belle. "Don't let that fall,"
she said sneeringly. Fortunately I did not, and returned in triumph to
transport another. I was then summoned to a consultation with the
committee on toasts, consisting of James Cochrane, John Miller, and
myself. Mr. Miller had one for each guest already written, all of which
we accepted and pronounced very good.
Strange to say, a most excellent dinner emerged from all this uproar and
confusion. The table, with its silver, china, flowers, and rich viands,
the guests in satins, velvets, jewels, soft laces, and bright cravats,
together reflecting all the colors of the prism, looked as beautiful as
the rainbow after a thunderstorm.
Twenty years ago I made my last sad visit to that spot so rich with
pleasant memories of bygone days. A few relatives and family friends
gathered there to pay the last tokens of respect to our noble cousin.
It was on one of the coldest days of gray December that we laid him in
the frozen earth, to be seen no more. He died from a stroke of apoplexy
in New York city, at the home of his niece, Mrs. Ellen Cochrane Walter,
whose mother was Mr. Smith's only sister. The journey from New York to
Peterboro was cold and dreary, and climbing the hills from Canastota in
an open sleigh, nine hundred feet above the valley, with the thermometer
below zero, before sunrise, made all nature look as sombre as the sad
errand on which we came.
Outside the mansion everything in its wintry garb was cold and still,
and all within was silent as the grave. The central figure, the light
and joy of that home, had vanished forever. He who had welcomed us on
that threshold for half a century would welcome us no more. We did what
we could to dissipate the gloom that settled on us all. We did not
intensify our grief by darkening the house and covering ourselves with
black crape, but wore our accustomed dresses of chastened colors and
opened all the blinds that the glad sunshine might stream in. We hung
the apartment where the casket stood with wreaths of evergreens, and
overhead we wove his favorite mottoes in living letters, "Equal rights
for all!" "Rescue Cuba now!" The religious services were short and
simple; the Unitarian clergyman from Syracuse made a few remarks, the
children from the orphan asylum, in which he was deeply interested, sang
an appropriate hymn, and around the grave stood representatives of the
Biddles, the Dixwells, the Sedgwicks, the Barclays, and Stantons, and
three generations of his immediate family. With a few appropriate words
from General John Cochrane we left our beloved kinsman alone in his
last resting place. Two months later, on his birthday, his wife, Ann
Carroll Fitzhugh, passed away and was laid by his side. Theirs was a
remarkably happy union of over half a century, and they were soon
reunited in the life eternal.
CHAPTER V.
OUR WEDDING JOURNEY.
My engagement was a season of doubt and conflict--doubt as to the wisdom
of changing a girlhood of freedom and enjoyment for I knew not what, and
conflict because the step I proposed was in opposition to the wishes of
all my family. Whereas, heretofore, friends were continually suggesting
suitable matches for me and painting the marriage relation in the most
dazzling colors, now that state was represented as beset with dangers
and disappointments, and men, of all God's creatures as the most
depraved and unreliable. Hard pressed, I broke my engagement, after
months of anxiety and bewilderment; suddenly I decided to renew it, as
Mr. Stanton was going to Europe as a delegate to the World's
Anti-slavery Convention, and we did not wish the ocean to roll between
us.
Thursday, May 10, 1840, I determined to take the fateful step, without
the slightest preparation for a wedding or a voyage; but Mr. Stanton,
coming up the North River, was detained on "Marcy's Overslaugh," a bar
in the river where boats were frequently stranded for hours. This delay
compelled us to be married on Friday, which is commonly supposed to be a
most unlucky day. But as we lived together, without more than the usual
matrimonial friction, for nearly a half a century, had seven children,
all but one of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered,