Society as I Have Found It
Ball in Fifth Avenue--I go as the Lover of Margaret de Valois--A great
Journalist at Newport--A British Officer rides into a Club House--The
great Journalist’s masked Ball--A mysterious Blue Domino--Breakfast at
Southwick’s Grove to the Duke of Beaufort--Picnic given President
Arthur--His hearty Enjoyment of it--Governor Morgan misjudges my “Open
Air Lunches”--The Pleasure of Country Frolics, 349
CHAPTER XXVII.
I visit Washington as the guest of Attorney-General Brewster--A Dinner
at the White House--Amusing arrangement of Guests--The Winthrop
Statue--The memorable Winters of 1884-85--A Millionaire’s
House-warming--A London Ball in New York--A Modern Amy
Robsart--Transforming Delmonico’s entire place into a Ball-room--The New
Year’s Ball at the Metropolitan Opera House--Last Words, 367
MY FAMILY.
SOCIETY AS I HAVE FOUND IT.
CHAPTER I.
_My Family--My Mother an Angel of Beauty and Charity--My Father’s
Nobleness of Character--Building Bonfires on Paradise Rocks and
Flying Kites from Purgatory with Uncle Sam Ward--My Brother the
Soldier--My Brother the Lawyer._
In 1820 my mother, a beautiful girl of eighteen years, was introduced
into New York society by her sister, Mrs. Samuel Ward, the wife of
Samuel Ward, the banker, of the firm of Prime, Ward & King. She was a
great belle in the days when Robert and Richard Ray and Prescott Hall
were of the _jeunesse dorée_ of this city. In my opinion, she was the
most beautiful, Murillo-like woman I have ever seen, and she was as good
as she was beautiful;--an angel in works of charity and sympathy for
her race. Charlotte Corday’s picture in the Louvre is a picture of my
mother. The likeness arose from the fact that her family were descended
on the maternal side from the Corday family of France. This also
accounts for all my family being, from time immemorial, good Democrats.
No one was too humble to be received and cared for and sympathized with
by my mother. Her pastime was by the bedside of hospital patients, and
in the schoolroom of her children. She followed the precepts of her
mother’s great-grandfather, the Rev. Gabriel Marion (grandfather of Gen.
Francis Marion) as expressed in his will to the following effect: “As to
the poor, I have always treated them as my brethren. My dear family
will, I know, follow my example.” It also contained this item: “I give
her, my wife, my new carriage and horses, that she may visit her friends
in comfort.” This ancestor came from Rochelle in a large ship chartered
for the Carolinas by several wealthy Huguenot families. The Hugers and
Trapiers and others came over in the same ship. He did not leave France
empty-handed, for on his arrival in Carolina he bought a plantation on
Goose Creek, near Charleston, where he was buried.
While a belle in this city her admirers were legion, until a young
Georgian, in the person of my father, stepped in, and secured the prize
and took her off to Savannah. He was fresh from Princeton College, cut
short in his college career by a large fire in Savannah (his native
city), which burnt it down, destroying my grandfather’s city property.
The old gentleman, when the fire occurred, refused to leave his
residence (now the Pulaski Hotel), and was taken forcibly from the
burning building in his chair. He then owned the valuable business
portion of the city, and at once went to work to rebuild. His relatives
would not assist him, and so he sent for his only son, then at college,
and got him to indorse all his notes, and in this way secured from the
banks the money he wanted for building purposes. He undertook too much,
and my father bore for one-third of his life a burden of debt then
incurred. Nothing daunted, he went to work at the bar and commenced life
with his beautiful, young Northern wife.
At that time, there was a great prejudice against Northern people. My
father’s mother never forgave my mother for being a Northern woman, and
when she died, though she knew her son was weighed down with his
father’s debts, insisted on his freeing all the negroes she owned and
left him by will, enjoining him to do this as her last dying request. It
is needless to say that he did it, and not only this, but became the
guardian of those people and helped and cared for them so long as he
lived. Being repeatedly Mayor of the City of Savannah, he was able to
protect them, and so devoted were the whole colored population to him,
that one Andrew Marshall, the clergyman of the largest colored church
in the city of Savannah, offered up prayers for him on every Sunday, as
is done in our Episcopal church for the President of the United States.
Blest with five sons and one daughter, struggling to maintain them by
his practice at the bar, this best of fathers sent his family North
every summer, with one or two exceptions, to Newport, R. I., which at
that time was really a Southern colony.
It was the fashion then at Newport to lease for the summer a farmer’s
house on the Island, and not live in the town. Well do I remember, with
my Uncle Sam Ward and Dr. Francis, of New York, and my father, building
bonfires on Paradise Rocks on the Fourth of July and flying kites from
Purgatory. The first relief to this hard-worked man was sending his
oldest son to West Point, where, I will here add, he did the family
great credit by becoming, being, and dying a noble soldier and
Christian. Fighting in both armies, one may say, though I believe he was
in active service only in the Mexican War, having graduated second in
his class at West Point and entered the Ordnance Corps; so in place of
fighting, he was making arms, casting cannon, etc. His pride lay in the
fact that he was a soldier. His last request was that the Secretary of
War should grant permission for his remains to be buried at West Point,
which request was granted. My second brother, Hall, grew up with the
poet Milton always under his arm. He was a great student. At the little
village of Springfield, Georgia, where my family had a country house,
and where we occasionally passed the summer in the piney woods, I
remember as a boy of fifteen years of age, reading the Declaration of
Independence on the Fourth of July from the pulpit of the village church
to the descendants of the old Salzburghers, who came over soon after
Oglethorpe, and it was before an audience of these piney woods farmers,
that, with this brother, at a meeting of our Debating Society in this
village, I discussed the question, “Which is the stronger passion, Love
or Ambition,” he advocating Ambition, I Love. I well remember going for
him, as follows: “If his motto be that of Hercules the Invincible, I
assume for mine that of his opponent, Venus the Victorious. With my
sling and stone I will enter this unequal combat and thus hope to slay
the great Goliath.” The twelve good and true men who heard the
discussion decided in my favor. To the end of his days this brother of
mine was guided and governed by this self-same ambition; it made him
what he became, a great lawyer, the lawyer of the Pacific coast; his
boast to me being that he had saved seventeen lives, never having lost a
murder case. I let ambition go, and through life and to the present
moment swear by my goddess Venus. This brother, after entering the
Georgia bar, started for a trip around the world. On reaching San
Francisco he heard of the discovery of gold, and Commodore Jones, then
in command of our Pacific Squadron, urged him to prosecute some sailors
who had thrown an officer overboard and deserted, and it was this which
caused him to settle down there to the practice of law.
LAW AND HOUSEKEEPING.
CHAPTER II.
_My New York Life--A Penurious Aunt who Fed me on Turkey--My First
Fancy Ball--Spending One Thousand Dollars for a Costume--The
Schermerhorns give a Ball in Great Jones Street--Sticking a Man’s
Calf and Drawing Blood--A Craze for Dancing--I Study
Law--Blackstone has a Rival in Lovely Southern Maidens--I go to San
Francisco in ’50--Fees Paid in Gold Dust--Eggs at $2--My First
Housekeeping--A faux pas at a Reception._
I myself soon left Savannah for New York after Hall’s departure,
residing there in Tenth Street with an old maiden lady, my relative and
godmother, whom I always felt would endow me with all her worldly goods,
but who, I regret to say, preferred the Presbyterian church and the
Georgia Historical Society to myself, for between them she divided a
million. At that time Tenth Street was a fashionable street; our house
was a comfortable, ordinary one, but my ancient relative considered it a
palace, so that all her visitors were taken from garret to cellar to
view it. Occupying the front room in the third story, as I would hear
these visitors making for my room, I often had to scramble into the
bath-room or under the bed, to hide myself. Having a large fortune, my
relative, whom I called Aunt (but who was really only my father’s
cousin), was saving to meanness; her plantations in the South furnished
our table; turkeys came on in barrels. “It was turkey hot and turkey
cold, turkey tender, and turkey tough, until at grace one would exclaim,
‘I thank ye, Lord, we’ve had enough.’” As the supposed heir of my saving
godmother, the portals of New York society were easily open to me, and I
well remember my first fancy ball, given by Mrs. John C. Stevens in her
residence in College Place. A company of soldiers were called in to
drill on the waxed floors to perfect them for dancing. A legacy of a
thousand dollars paid me by the New York Life Insurance and Trust
Company I expended in a fancy dress, which I flattered myself was the
handsomest and richest at the ball. I danced the cotillion with a nun, a
strange costume for her to appear in, as “I wont be a nun” was engraved
on every expression of her face. She was at that day one of the
brightest and most charming young women in this city, and had a power of
fascination rarely equaled.
The next great social event that I recall was the great fancy ball given
by the Schermerhorns in their house on the corner of Great Jones Street
and Lafayette Place. All the guests were asked to appear in the costume
of the period of Louis XV. The house itself was furnished and decorated
in that style for this occasion. No pains or expense were spared. It was
intended to be the greatest _affaire de luxe_ New Yorkers had ever seen.
The men, as well as the women, vied with each other in getting up as
handsome costumes as were ever worn at that luxurious Court. The lace
and diamonds on the women astonished society. All the servants of the
house wore costumes, correct copies of those worn at that period. The
men in tights and silk stockings, for the first time in their lives,
became jealous of each other’s calves, and in one instance, a friend of
mine, on gazing at the superb development in this line of a guest,
doubted nature’s having bestowed such generous gifts on him; so, to
satisfy himself, he pricked his neighbor’s calf with his sword, actually
drawing blood, but the possessor of the fine limbs never winced; later
on he expressed forcibly his opinion of the assault. By not wincing the
impression that he had aided nature was confirmed.
These two balls were the greatest social events that had ever occurred
in this city. Even then subscription balls were the fashion. One of the
most brilliant was given at Delmonico’s on the corner of Beaver and
William streets (the old building in which the ball was given is now
being torn down). Saracco’s dancing-rooms were then much resorted to.
They became the rage, and every one was seized with a desire to perfect
himself in dancing.
Disgusted with book-keeping, I resolved to study law, and knowing that I