SOCIETY AS I HAVE FOUND IT.

Society
As I Have Found It

BY
WARD McALLISTER
NEW YORK
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York
Copyright,
1890,
By WARD McALLISTER.
All rights reserved.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

“This book is intended to be miscellaneous, with a noble disdain of regularity.”—Obiter Dicta.

“How then does a man, be he good or bad, big or little, make his Memoirs interesting? To say that the one thing needful is individuality, is not quite enough. To have an individuality is no sort of distinction, but to be able to make it felt in writing is not only distinction, but under favorable circumstances, immortality.”—The Same.

AUTHOR’S NOTE.

One who reads this book through will have as rough a mental journey as his physical nature would undergo in riding over a corduroy road in an old stage-coach. It makes no pretension to either scholarship or elegant diction.

W. McA.

CONTENTS.

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 could not do much studying whilst flirting and going to balls and dinners, I went South to my native city, took up the second volume of Blackstone, committed it to memory, passed an examination, and was admitted to the bar by one of our ex-ministers to Austria, then a judge.

Blackstone did not wholly absorb all my time that winter. I exercised my memory in the morning and indulged my imagination of an afternoon, breathing soft words to lovely Southern maidens, in the piney groves which surround that charming city. From time immemorial they had always given these on Valentine’s Eve a Valentine party. I was tempted to go to the one given that year. And as I entered the house a basketful of sealed envelopes was handed me, one of which I took; on breaking the seal, I found on the card the name of a brilliant, charming young woman, whom I then had a right to claim as my partner for the evening, but to whom I must bend the knee, and express interest and devotion to her in a species of poetical rhapsody. As all the young men were to go through the same ordeal, it was less embarrassing. From the time of entering the ball-room until the late hour at which supper was served, the guests in the crowded rooms were laughing over the sight of each young man dropping on one knee before his partner and presenting her with a bouquet of flowers, and in low and tender words pouring out his soul in poetry. When it came my turn, I secured a cushion and down I went, the young woman laughing immoderately; but I, not in the least perturbed, grasping my bouquet of flowers with one hand and placing my other hand over my heart, looking into the depths of her lovely eyes, addressed to her these words:

“These flowers, dear lady, unto thee I bring,
With hopes as timid as the dawning spring,
Which oft repelled by many a chilling blast
Still trusts its offerings may succeed at last.

Receive thou, emblem of the rosy spring,
Charmer of life, of every earthly thing,
These flowers, which lovely as the tints of morn
Yet ne’er can hope thy beauty to adorn.

Oh, may they plead for one who never knew
Perfection’s image till he met with you;
Oh, may their fragrance to thy heart convey
How much he would, but does not dare to say.”

In the mean time, while I was dancing and reciting poetry to beautiful women, my generous brother was rapidly making money at the bar in San Francisco, and urging my father and me to leave Georgia and go to him, writing that he was making more money in two months’ practice than my father received in a year. This to my conservative parent seemed incredible; he shook his head, saying to me, “It is hard for an old tree to take root in a new soil.” His friends of the Savannah bar ridiculed his entertaining the notion of leaving Georgia, where his father had been a Judge of the Superior Court of that State; he himself had been United States District Attorney, for years had presided over the Georgia Senate, had been nominated for Governor of the State, and for a lifetime had been at the head of the Georgia bar. Always a Union man, opposing Nullification, he was beloved by the people of his State, and his law practice was then most lucrative. The idea of his pulling up stakes and going to the outposts of civilization seemed absurd. He would not entertain the thought; he laughed at my brother’s Arabian Nights stories of his law firm in San Francisco making money at the rate of $100,000 a year. But just here, my father’s purpose was suddenly shaken, by my brother’s remitting to me a large amount of money in gold dust, and he, my father, being then paid five thousand dollars by the Bank of the State of Georgia for an argument made for them before the United States Supreme Court at Washington. My gold dust was tangible evidence of my brother’s success, and as continual dropping wears away a stone, so by continual pleading I at last persuaded him to take me to California. Mournfully he sold our old homestead and sadly closed up his Savannah law office, and with me, on the 13th of May, 1850, left for San Francisco, where in two years he made a comfortable fortune, retired from practice and went to Europe. My brother Hall’s motto was, “Ten millions or nothing.” He made himself, to my certain knowledge, two comfortable fortunes. Grand speculations to double my father’s fortune very soon made inroads in it, and the dear old gentleman to save a remnant returned to this country. As he expressed himself to me, “California must have a Circuit Judge of the United States. I will get our Democratic Congress to pass a bill to this effect, and will myself return to California as its United States Circuit Judge. I do not care to return to the practice of law when I reach San Francisco, where, I expect to find that, like the ‘fruit of the Dead Sea,’ my little competency will turn into ashes at the touch. Being on the Bench, I shall at least have a support”; all of which he carried out to the letter, and he died devoted to the people of the State of California.

Imagine me then, a well-fed man, with always an appreciative appetite, learning, on my arrival in San Francisco, that eggs, without which I could not breakfast, cost $2 apiece, a fowl $8, a turkey $16. One week’s mess bill for my breakfast and dinner alone was $225, and one visit to my doctor cost me $50. Gloom settled upon me, until my noble parent requested me to bring back to the office our first retainer (for I was then a member of my father and brother’s law firm). It was $4000 in gold ounces. I put it in a bag and lugged it to the office, and as I laid them ounce by ounce on my father’s desk, he danced a pirouette, for he was as jolly an old fellow as ever lived. I went to work at once in earnest; it struck me that in that country it was “root, pig, or die.”

My first purchase was a desk, which combined the qualities of bed and desk. How well I remember the rats playing hide-and-seek over me at night, and over the large barrel of English Brown Stout that I invested in and placed in the entry to console myself with. After six months’ hard work, I began to ease up, and feel rich. I built a small house for myself, the front entry 4 × 4, the back entry the same, one dining-room 12 × 14, and one bedroom, same dimensions. My furniture, just from Paris, was acajou and white and blue horsehair. My bed-quilt cost me $250; it was a lovely Chinese floss silk shawl. An Indian chief, calling to see me, found me in bed, and was so delighted with the blankets that he seized hold of them and exclaimed, “Quanto pesos?” (How much did they cost?)

My first row as a householder was with my neighbor, a Texan. I found my yard fence, if put up, would close up the windows and front door of his house. We had an interview. He, with strong adjectives, assured me that he would blow out my brains if I put up that fence. I asked him in reply, where he kept his private burying ground. All men then went armed day and night. For two years I slept with a revolver under my pillow. With a strong force of men the next day, I put up the fence, and the Texan moved out and sold his lot. As our firm was then making $100,000 a year, our senior partner, my father, asked me to entertain, for the firm, our distinguished European clients, as he himself had not the time to do so. His injunction to me was, “Be sure, my boy, that you always invite nice people.” I had heard that my dear old father had on more than one occasion gotten off a witticism on me as follows: Being told how well his son kept house, he replied, “Yes, he keeps everything but the Ten Commandments,” so I assured him if he would honor me with his presence I would have to meet him every respectable woman in the city, and I kept my word. Before we reached the turkey, my guests had so thoroughly dined that when it appeared, the handsomest woman in the room heaved a deep sigh and exclaimed, “Oh, that I might have some of it for lunch to-morrow!” Such dinners as I then gave, I have never seen surpassed anywhere. It is needless to say that my father was intensely gratified. We had, tempted by exaggerated accounts of the gold fields, French cooks who received $6000 a year as salary. The turkey, costly as it was at $16, always came on table with its feathered tail intact, and as eggs were so expensive, omelette soufflée was always the dish at dessert. Two years was the length of my stay in San Francisco.

On reaching New York in 1852, from California, I found great objection made to my return there as a married man, and gracefully yielded to circumstances. Though loath to give up my profession of the law, I was forced to make this sacrifice; so the moment I concluded to give up California and the legal profession, not wishing to be idle, I went to Washington and applied to the President for the position of Secretary of Legation in England. The Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and California delegations urged me for this appointment; Mr. Buchanan was going to England as Minister. He was a warm friend of my father’s, and, when approached, expressed not only willingness but gratification at having the son of an old friend as his Secretary of Legation, and I was to have had the position. But just at this time, my father, who had returned from Europe, wished to obtain from President Pierce the appointment of Circuit Judge of the United States for the State of California. He came to me and stated the case as follows: “My boy,” he said, “the President says he cannot give two appointments to one family. If you go to England as Buchanan’s Secretary, President Pierce cannot make me Circuit Judge of California.” “Enough said,” I replied, “I yield with pleasure. I will go abroad, but not in the diplomatic service.” Passing the winter in Washington, I soon learned how to ingratiate myself with the law-makers of our country. Good dinners and wine were always effective. And as I had the friendship of the California, New York and Southern delegations, I was dining out all the time, invited by one man or other who had an axe to grind. On these occasions, there was always a room prepared to receive a guest who had indulged too freely in strong waters. Men then drank in good earnest, a striking contrast to the days in which we now live, when really, at dinner, people only taste wine, but do not drink it. I was then placed on the Committee of Management for the Inaugural Ball, and did good service and learned much from my Washington winter.

An amusing incident I must here relate. Quietly breakfasting and chatting with a beautiful woman, then a bride, who had lived for years in Washington as a widow, she asked me if I was going to Corcoran’s ball that evening, and on my replying, “Yes, of course I was,” she requested me to accompany her husband and self, which I did. On entering Mr. Corcoran’s ball room with her on my arm, I noticed that the old gentleman bowed very stiffly to us; however, I paid no attention to this and went on dancing, and escorting through the rooms my fair partner, from whom I had no sooner been separated than my host slapped me on the shoulder with, “My dear young man, I know you did not know it, but the lady you have just had on your arm is not only not a guest of mine, but this morning I positively refused to send her an invitation to this ball.” Fortunately I had brought letters to this distinguished man, so seeing my annoyance, he patted me on the shoulder and said, “My boy, this is not an unusual occurrence in this city; but let it be a warning to you to take care hereafter whom you bring to a friend’s house.”

INTRODUCTION TO LONDON SPORTS.

CHAPTER III.

Introduction to London Sports—A Dog Fight in the Suburbs—Sporting Ladies—The Drawing of the Badger—My Host gets Gloriously Drunk—Visit to Her Majesty’s Kitchen—Dinner with the Chef of Windsor Castle—I taste Mantilla Sherry for the First Time—“A Shilling to Pay for the ‘Times.’”

After my marriage I took up my residence in Newport, buying a farm on Narragansett Bay and turning farmer in good earnest. I planted out 10,000 trees on that farm and then went to Europe to let them grow, expecting a forest on my return, but I found only one of them struggling for existence three years later. In London, I met a Californian, in with all the sporting world, on intimate terms with the champion prize-fighter of England, the Queen’s pages, Tattersall’s and others. He suggested that if I would defray the expense, he would show me London as no American had ever seen it. Agreeing to do this, I was taken to a swell tailor in Regent Street, to put me, as he expressed it, “in proper rig.” My first introduction to London life was dining out in the suburbs to see a dog-fight, and sup at a Regent Street dry-goods merchant’s residence. I was introduced as an American landed proprietor. Mine host, I was told, spent twelve thousand pounds, i.e. $60,000 a year, on his establishment. He was an enthusiast in his way, an old sport. The women whom I was invited to meet looked like six-footers; the hall of the house and the sitting-rooms were filled with stuffed bull-terriers, prize dogs, that had done good service. We walked through beautifully laid-out grounds to a miniature ornamental villa which contained a rat pit, and there we saw a contest between what seemed to me a myriad of rats and a bull-terrier. The latter’s work was expeditious. We surrounded the pit, each one with his watch in hand timing the dog’s work, which he easily accomplished in the allotted time, killing all the rats, which called forth great applause. From this pit we went to another, where we saw the drawing of the badger, a very amusing sight. There was a long narrow box with a trap-door, by which the badger was shut in; up went the door, in went the terrier; he seized the badger by the ear and pulled him out of his box and around the pit, the badger held back with all his might; should the dog fail to catch the badger by the ear, the badger would kill him. Again, we assembled around a third pit, to see a dog-fight, and saw fight after fight between these bull-terriers, to me a disgusting sight, but the women shouted with delight, and kept incessantly calling “Time, sir; time, sir!” Large bets were made on the result. At midnight we went to supper. I sat next to the champion prize-fighter of England, who informed me that a countryman of mine had died in his arms after a prize-fight. Such drinking I never saw before or since; the host, calling for bumper after bumper, insisted on every one draining his glass. I skillfully threw my wine under the table. The host and all the company were soon intoxicated. The footmen in green and gold liveries never cracked a smile. The master, after a bumper, would fall forward on the table, smashing everything. His butler picked him up and replaced him in his chair. This was kept up until 3 A.M., when with pleasure I slipped out and was off in my hansom for London.

My visit to Windsor Castle, dining at the village inn with Her Majesty’s chef, and the keeper of her jewel room, was interesting. I saw the old, tall doorkeeper, with his long staff, sitting at the door of the servants’ hall. I saw Her Majesty’s kitchen and the roasts for all living in the castle,—at least twenty separate pieces turning on a spit. Then I examined a large, hot, steel table on which any cooked article being placed would stay hot as long as it remained there. The chef told me a German prince, when informed of its price, said it would take all his yearly revenue to pay for it. Then I saw Her Majesty’s jewel room; the walls wainscoted, as it were, with gold plates; the large gold bowl, which looks like a small bath-tub, from which the Prince of Wales was baptized, stood in the dining-room. I saw Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales that morning shooting pheasants, alongside of the Windsor Long Walk, and stood within a few yards of them. I feel sure we ate, that day, at the inn, the pheasants that had been shot by Prince Albert. I visited Her Majesty’s model farm, and found that all the flax-seed cake for the cattle was imported from America. The simple cognomen, American Landed Proprietor, was “open sesame” to me everywhere, accompanied as I was by one of her Majesty’s pages. In London, of an evening, we went to Evans’s, a sort of public hall where one took beer and listened to comic songs. Jubber, a wine merchant, kept the hotel where I lodged. As a celebrated London physician was dining with me, I asked for the palest and most delicate sherry to be found in London, regardless of cost, to be served that day, at my dinner. He looked at me and smiled, seeing I was quite a young man, saying, “If I give it to you, you will not drink it.” “Send me the sherry,” I replied, “and you will see.” The result was I got a delicious Montilla sherry and sent a butt of it to America. This was my first acquaintance with Montilla sherry, the most delicate wine that I know of, to be served from soup to dessert.

Before getting through with my sporting friend, after paying all his expenses and remunerating him liberally for his services, as I was about to cross the Channel, he came up to me and said, “Mc, I want you to lend me some money.” I saw by his face he was in earnest, and thought that he was about to make a demand for a large amount. So, equally serious, I replied, “It is out of the question, my dear fellow; I am here in a strange country with my family and have no money to lend.” He roared, “Why, all I wanted was a shilling to pay for the Times,” which made me feel very sheepish. That was the last I saw of him. When two years later I returned to London, I found he had conscientiously paid no bills, and, strange to relate, his hotel keeper and tailors seemed fully compensated for the food and raiment they had furnished him, by his sending them a few valueless colored plates of sporting scenes in this country.

A WINTER IN ITALY.

CHAPTER IV.

A Winter in Florence and Rome—Cheap Living and Good Cooking—Walnut-fed Turkeys—The Grand Duke of Tuscany’s Ball—An American Girl who Elbowed the King—What a Ball Supper Should be—Ball to the Archduke of Tuscany—“The Duke of Pennsylvania”—Following the Hounds on the Campagna—The American Minister Snubs American Gentlemen.

I landed in France, not knowing how to speak the language, and only remembering a few French words learned in childhood. It was the year of the Paris Exposition of 1857; all the hotels were full. The Meurice Hotel people sent me off to a neighboring house, where we lodged in the ninth story. I saw the baptism of the Prince Imperial, and on that occasion, and later on in Rome, at the Carnival, saw the handsomest women I had yet seen in Europe. We then made for Florence, and there, getting a most captivating little apartment, on the Arno, kept house, and if it had not been for the terrible and incessant winds called the tramontana would probably have passed our days there. I had the most admirable cook, and had never lived as well. Then the economy of the thing; it cost nothing to live. I paid the fellow twenty-four pauls ($2.40) a day. For this sum he gave us breakfast and exquisite dinners. For each extra guest, at dinner, I paid a few pauls; if I gave a dinner party he hired for me as handsome a service of silver plate as I have ever seen. His whole kitchen seemed to consist of half a dozen pots and pans, and everything was cooked by charcoal.

His manner of roasting a turkey was indeed novel; he placed his bird on a spit, put it in an iron pot, covered it with hot coals top and bottom, and then kept turning the spit incessantly and basting the bird. Such a perfect roast I have never before or since eaten. I shall speak later on of the Newport turkey and the Southern barnyard-fed turkey, but they are not a circumstance to the Florentine walnut-fed turkey. In Florence, at the markets, all turkeys and fowls were cut up and sold, not as a whole, but piece by piece. For instance, you saw on the marble slabs the breasts of chickens, the wings of chickens, the legs of chickens; the same with turkeys. To get an entire bird, you had to order him ahead, so that a few days before Christmas, as we came home from our drive, we found a superb turkey strutting through the drawing-room, the largest creature I had ever seen, weighing twenty-five pounds. When he was served, the walnuts he had eaten could be seen all over his back in large, round yellow spots of fat. As he came on the table, he was indeed a sight to behold; the skin, as it were, mahogany color and crisp, his flesh partaking of the flavor of the walnut, would have satisfied Lucullus.

At that period I worshipped doctors; my theory then was that you owed your existence to them, that they kept you in the world, and not to have a doctor within call was to place yourself in danger of immediate and sudden death; so the first man I cultivated in Florence was the English doctor. He came to see me every day; it was indeed a luxury; his fee was two dollars. We became great friends, and as he was the Court physician, he got me invitations to all the balls. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, then the richest sovereign in Europe, gave a ball every fortnight at the Pitti Palace. It was said that the Italians lived on chestnuts and air between these suppers, and, like the bear, laid in such a supply of food at them as comfortably to carry them through from one entertainment to the other. Certainly such feasting I had never before seen. The number of rooms thrown open really confused one, it was hard not to lose one’s way. All the guests were assembled, and grouped in the form of a circle, in the largest of these salons, when the grand ducal party entered. The minister of each foreign country stood at the head of his little band of countrymen and countrywomen who were to be presented. The Grand Duke, Archduke, and suite passed from group to group. The presentation over, the ball began in earnest. All waited until the Archduke started in the dance, and as he waltzed by you, you followed. When he stopped dancing, all stopped.

I remember, at one of these balls, dancing with an American girl, a strikingly handsome woman, a great Stonington belle. As we waltzed by the King of Bavaria, I felt a hand placed on my shoulder, and a voice exclaimed, “Mais, Monsieur, c’est le roi”; I stopped at once, and hastily inquired of my fair partner, “What is it?” She replied, “I did it, I was determined to do it. As I passed the King I punched him in the ribs with my elbow. Now I am satisfied.” I rushed up to the King and Grand Chamberlain, saying, “Mille pardons, mille pardons,” and the affair passed over, but I soon disposed of the young woman and never “attempted her again.” The diamonds the women wore amazed me. You see nothing in this country like the tiaras of diamonds I saw at this ball; tiara after tiara, the whole head blazing with diamonds, and yet there was but little beauty.

It was here that I first learned what a ball supper should be, and what were the proper mural decorations for a ball-room and the halls opening into it. The supper system was perfect. In one salon, large tables for coffee, tea, chocolate, and cakes. In another, tables covered simply with ices and other light refreshments, foie gras, sandwiches, etc. In the grand supper room, the whole of the wall of one side of the room, from floor almost to ceiling, was covered with shelves, on which every imaginable dish was placed, hot and cold. The table in front of these shelves was lined with servants in livery, and simply loaded with empty plates and napkins to serve the supper on. The favorite and most prized dishes at all these suppers was cold sturgeon (a fish we never eat), and the most prized fruit the hot-house pineapple, with all its leaves, and to the eye seemingly growing. Opposite the supper table, in another part of the room, the wines were served, all by themselves, and there was, it appears to me, every wine grown in any quarter of the globe. Everything was abundant and lavish, and the whole affair was most imposing.

That winter the Archduke of Tuscany married one of the princesses of Bavaria, and the Austrian Minister gave them a ball, which I attended. The effect produced in approaching his palace, all the streets illuminated by immense flaring torches attached to the house, was grand. The ball-room was superb. From the ceiling hung, not one or two, but literally fifty or more chandeliers of glass, with long prisms dangling from them. The women were not handsome, but what most struck me was the freshness of their toilets. They all looked new, as if made for the occasion; not so elaborate, but so fresh and light and delicate. I noticed that the royal party supped in a room by themselves, always attended by their host.

As I was strolling through the rooms, my host, the Austrian Minister, approached me and said, “I see I have another American as a guest to-night, and he is decorated. Will you kindly tell me what his decoration is?” “I really do not know,” I replied; “I will present myself to him and ask.”

We approached my countryman together, and, after a few words, the minister most courteously put the question to him. He drew himself up and said, “Sir, my country is a Republic; if it had been a Monarchy, I would have been the Duke of Pennsylvania. The Order I wear is that of The Cincinnati.” The minister, deeply impressed, withdrew, and I intensely enjoyed the little scene.

After the great works of art, what most impressed me in Florence were the immense, orderly crowds seen on all public occasions, a living mass of humanity, as far as the eye could see. No jostling or shoving, but human beings filling up every inch of space between the carriage wheels, as our horses, on a walk, dragged our carriage through them.

The most charming spot on earth for the last of winter and the spring months is the city of Rome. We went there under most favorable circumstances. A kind friend had leased an apartment for us in the Via Gregoriana, and we found Rome full of the crême de la crême of New York society. In Nazzari we had another Delmonico, and we kept dining and wining each other daily. Here I made intimacies that have lasted me through life. I followed the hounds on the Campagna, and was amused at the nonchalance of the young Italian swells as they would attempt a high Campagna fence, tumble off invariably, remount, and go at it again. They were a handsome set of men, as plucky as they were handsome. I myself found “discretion the better part of valor,” and would quietly take to the road when I met a formidable jump, but I lived on horseback and enjoyed every hour. Though carrying letters to our American Minister, then resident at Rome, I gave his legation a wide berth, as I had heard that our distinguished Representative was in the habit of inviting Italians to meet Italians and Americans to meet only Americans at his house; when asked his reason for this, he replied: “I have the greatest admiration for my countrymen: they are enterprising, money getting, in fact, a wonderful nation, but there is not a gentleman among them.” Hearing this, I resolved he should get no chance to meet me and pass on my merits.

Several of our handsomest New York women were then having their busts sculptured in marble; as you saw them first in the clay you found them more attractive. Gibson for the first time colored his Venus; it added warmth to it, and I thought improved it.

The blessing of the multitude by the Pope from the balcony of St. Peter’s, under a canopy, with the emblematic peacock feathers held on either side of him, the illumination of St. Peter’s, and the fireworks at Easter were most impressive. But I shall attempt no description of Rome. Nowhere in the world can you see such a display.

GERMANY AND THE ALPS.

CHAPTER V.

Summer in Baden-Baden—The Late Emperor William no Judge of Wine—My Irish Doctor—His Horror of Water—How an American Girl Tried to Captivate Him—The Louisiana Judge—I Win the Toss and Get the Mule—The Judge “fixes” his Pony—The “Pike Ballet.”

We passed our summer at Baden-Baden and literally lived there in the open air. Opposite to my apartment, Prince Furstenburg of Vienna had his hotel: from him and his suite I learned how to spend the summer months. At early dawn they were out in the saddle for a canter; at ten they went for a drive down the Allée Lichtenthal and through shady woods, nowhere seen as at Baden-Baden. They would stop and breakfast in the open air at twelve noon, again drive in the afternoon, and dine at the Kursaal at six. They kept at least twenty-five horses. We dined daily within a table or two of the then Prince of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor William, whom I soon discovered was no judge of wine, as I drank the best and he was evidently indifferent to it. When you see a man sip his wine and linger over it, that evidences his appreciation of it; but when you see him gulp it down, as the Prince did his, you see that he is no connoisseur. But I must say here, I had an intense admiration for him. His habit of walking two hours under the trees of the Allée Lichtenthal was also mine, and it was with pleasure I bowed most respectfully to him day by day.

Being anxious to cross every Alpine pass, I found a distinguished physician who lived at Pau, France, on account of his health, and had there the practice of the place during the winter months, and who was, necessarily, idle in summer, as Pau was then deserted. Still believing in doctors, I engaged him to travel with me for two months as my physician. I agreed to give him a bottle of 1848 Latour for his dinner daily, pay his expenses, and to give him a medical fee such as I saw fit at the end of our trip. He was indeed a man among men. All I can say is that when we parted and I handed him his fee, the tears came into his eyes; he grasped my hands, swearing eternal friendship. This doctor made a new man of me. “Throw physic to the dogs,” was his motto; “you will never die: you will in the end have to be shot to get you out of the world; air and exercise is all you want: eat slowly and do not deluge yourself with water at dinner.” Of water he had a holy horror. “Drink what good wine you wish and let water alone.” As I had the luxury of a private physician, a friend from Louisiana suggested joining my party with his two young daughters. My Irish doctor was the most sensitive of men. One day I found he could eat no breakfast. I sympathized with him and asked him the cause. He replied, “My dear boy, the habits of your American women. I came down to the breakfast room this morning and there I found the oldest of the Judge’s daughters with her back hair down and the younger one combing it. This settled me.” I assured him this was not the national custom with American women. The young woman was simply trying to captivate him by her lovely, long, flowing tresses. The doctor was a character. On another occasion a Frenchman lighted a cigar in our railway compartment. The Doctor detested cigar smoke, and as there was a large sign in the car, in French, forbidding smoking, he touched the Frenchman and pointed to the sign. The Frenchman simply smiled blandly. The train stopping, the conductor opened our door, when the Frenchman quietly slipped two francs into his hands, saying in French, “Of course I can smoke here, that sign is obsolete, is it not?” The conductor replied, “Oh, yes,” and on we went. My Irishman got up and commenced taking his coat off. “What are you going to do?” exclaimed the Frenchman. “Why, throw you out of that window if you do not at once throw that cigar away.” There was no mistaking the Doctor’s meaning, so the cigar went out and the Frenchman staid in.

My traveling Louisiana friend had a charming way of suggesting each morning, as we paid our hotel bills, that we should toss up a five-franc piece and decide, by heads and tails, who was to pay the bill. I did this once or twice, when I found, as he always won and I lost, it was a losing business for me; but on another occasion was forced into the plan. To ascend the mountain at Lugano, three wretched beasts were brought us by the Italian boys to mount for the ascent. The Judge insisted on tossing up a five-franc piece for choice of animals. I was compelled to give in and accede to his suggestion, and by great good luck won first choice. My friend, the Judge, forbade the Doctor advising me as to the animal I should take, as he knew him to be a good judge of horses. There was a feeble, worthless horse that literally could carry no one; his back all raw; a vicious mule who bit and kicked, and a stone blind pony that would not go. With my experience of mules in the South, knowing what sure-footed creatures they were, I chose the mule, had him blindfolded, mounted him, and off I went. After waiting an hour on the summit, the Judge appeared, coat and hat gone, and swearing terribly that he would prosecute the canton for his treatment, and horsewhip the Italian boys. He had let the horse go, and footed it. I soon slipped away on my mule, letting the irate Louisianian and the Irishman settle it, on top of the mountain, how they were to have satisfaction out of the government for permitting such beasts to be imposed upon travelers. I was two-thirds down the mountain when I looked behind me and heard the most terrible shouts, and saw the Irishman clinging to the pony, over whom he had lost all control, and the Judge hanging on by the pony’s tail, all coming down at a terrific pace. The pony was at first gentle, but it appears would not go beyond a walk. The Judge hung on to his tail to guide himself down the mountain, and finding he would not go fast enough to suit them, he assured the Irishman he would fix him, and immediately stuck his penknife into the beast’s tail. “Fix him,” he did, for the creature was so terrified he dashed off at a break-neck pace, and the Judge, not wishing to be left alone on the mountain, had to hang on by the tail and be dragged along at lightning speed. These beasts alone knew the way down; once parted from them, they were lost, for the Italian boys who had furnished them had long since fled from the Judge’s wrath. The Judge and the Doctor forbade my paying the hotel bill, and I had to do it surreptitiously.

My doctor (who was a victim to rheumatism) called my attention to the fact that on the summit of every Alpine pass we crossed, after all other vegetation ceased, the aconite plant grew, showing nature had provided there a remedy for the disease which the severity of the climate developed in man. My Irish friend, living far from the sea, had a passion for all fish but pike, which he detested, and which was daily served to us wherever we went; finally, reaching Berlin, he insisted on having sea fish. It was promised us, but, lo and behold! when dinner was served, in came the pike, with the apology that no other fish could then be had in the city. After dinner we went to the opera, and there, in the ballet (superbly done as it was), were at least one hundred pike dancing on the stage, which so upset my friend that he seized his hat in a rage and left the house.

WINTER IN PAU.

CHAPTER VI.

Winter in Pau—I Hire a Perfect Villa for $800 a year—Luxury at Small Cost—I Learn How to Give Dinners—Fraternizing with the Bordeaux Wine Merchants—The Judge’s Wild Scheme—I Get Him up a Dinner—General Bosquet—The Pau Hunt—The Frenchmen Wear Beautiful Pink Coats but their Horses Wont Jump—Only the General Took the Ditch.

After you have been a little while in Europe you are seized with a desire to have a house of your own, to enjoy home comforts. Your loss of individuality comes over you. In Paris you feel particularly lost, and as this feeling increased on me I resolved to go to Pau, take a house, and winter there. The Duchess of Hamilton had abandoned the idea of passing the winter in Pau, so that many lovely residences were seeking tenants. For eight hundred dollars a year I hired a beautiful villa, looking on the Pyrénées, directly opposite the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, with lovely grounds filled with camelia bushes, and I then felt that I had all a man could desire,—a perfect home made to one’s hand, a climate where the wind never blows hard enough, even in winter, to stir a leaf on the trees, the best cooks in the world, and where people appeared to live but to eat well and sleep. A country of beautiful women; the peasantry a mixture of Spanish and French blood; the climate so soft and genial as to take away all harshness or roughness from their faces—rich Titian-like women, with fine coloring and superb figures—what more could man desire? I was, I may say, a pioneer American there.

A member of a distinguished New York family, who had been our Secretary of Legation at Madrid, had preceded me; he had a lovely English wife, was the master of the hounds, and gave me a cordial reception. I lived there two winters, with a luxury I have never since enjoyed, and literally for nothing, comparing one’s expenses there to living in New York. The desire to entertain took possession of me and I gratified it; such dinners and such wines! I ran down to Bordeaux, made friends with all the wine fraternity there, tasted and criticised, and wormed myself into the good graces of the owners of those enormous Bordeaux caves, learned there for the first time what claret was, and how impossible it was to drink out of Bordeaux, what a Bordeaux connoisseur would call a perfect wine. There I learned how to give dinners; to esteem and value the Coq de Bruyère of the Pyrénées and the Pie de Mars (squab Magpie).

Pau was filled with sick English people. I was one of the few sound men physically in the place. I dashed into society with a vim. My Louisiana friend, the Judge, followed me there, and I had my hands full in establishing him socially. Shrewd, and immensely clever, he came to me one day and said, “My friend, I am going to make a name for myself in this place; wait and you will see.” Some little distance from Pau, there was a large tract of worthless land, utterly valueless, called Les Landes. Shepherds on stilts tended a few sheep on it. The judge at once had an interview with the Prêfet of the Basses Pyrénées (an officer similar to the governor of one of our States), and assured him of the feasibility of reclaiming all this land and making fine cotton fields of it. This scheme, wonderful to relate, was seized upon with avidity by the Prêfet, and my friend, the Judge, was asked to submit his views. This was all he wanted. Of course he never perfected his plans for such work. The Prêfet, however, was at once his friend and admirer, and he was made the distinguished and sought-after stranger of that winter. He then came to me to get up a dinner for him, to be given to his newly acquired friend, which he charged me to make the most brilliant and superb dinner ever given in that place. I well remember his order to the florist; “Furnish me for my table such a display of flowers as you would provide for your Emperor; spare no expense.” I telegraphed to Paris and exhausted all my resources to give him what he wished. When his guests were all assembled in his salon, my friend could not remember who was to take in who to dinner; so with great coolness he walked over to me, and to distract the attention of his assembled guests, said, in a loud voice, “Your horses, I am told, have run away, upset your carriage, and killed the coachman.” Instantly the French people sprang up, exclaiming, “What! what is it! is it possible!” while the Judge, in a low voice, whispered, “Tell me quick who is to take in Madame J., and who goes in with Count B.?” I told him, when he quietly said, “All made up, my boy, let them believe it.” The dinner was a success, such a success that I resolved to give a ball myself on the arrival from Paris of one of our New York merchant princes, to whom I was much indebted.

The French papers gave a glowing account of this ball, and I was fairly launched into the French society of the Basses Pyrénées. It is hard to convince an old business man, who has had large experience and amassed a fortune, that any one can do anything in his line better than himself. Therefore, when I gave my merchant prince exquisite Bordeaux wines that I knew were incomparable, and extolled them, he quietly replied:

“Why, my young friend, these wines are all from the house of Barton & Guestier. Now, you must know, that the house of Johnson can alone furnish what I class as the best clarets. I have for forty years been in correspondence with that house, and will guarantee to produce here in Pau, from them, clarets and sauternes better than any your house of Barton & Guestier can send you.” I took him up at once, and the wager was a fine dinner of twenty covers. All I had to do was to write the above statement to Mr. Guestier, who at once sent me his own butler to serve the wines, and sent with him a “Haut Brion” and a Chateau Latour of 1848. As he termed it, mise en bouteille tout à fait speciale hors de ligne, whose smoothness, bouquet, and flavor surpassed anything I had ever dreamt of tasting. My merchant prince with his Johnson wines was beaten out of sight, and so mortified was he that the day after the dinner he sent me as a present all the wines Johnson had sent him.

The hunt was then really the feature of Pau life, for those who could not follow in the saddle would, after attending the meet, take to the roads and see the best of the run. General Bosquet, returning then to Pau, his native city, was fêted by both French and English. He had so distinguished himself in the Crimean War that all regarded him as a great hero. The English particularly wanted to express their admiration of him, so they asked him to appear with his friends at the next Meet, and follow in the hunt, promising him rare sport and a good run after a bagged fox. To do him honor, the French, to a man, ordered new hunting suits, all of them turned out in “pink,” and being in force made indeed a great show.

My Irish doctor was by my side, in great good humor, and a wicked twinkle in his eye. Turning to me he said:

“You will soon see some fun; not one of these Frenchmen can take that jump; it is a rasper. Not a man of them will clear that bank and ditch.”

I smiled at this, and felt that to the end of time it would always be English against French. It was cruel; but men should not pretend to ride after hounds when they cannot take the jumps.

“Look at those chaps,” he said, “in spotless pink; not a man among them who can jump a horse to any purpose.”

They were the nobility of the Basses Pyrénées, a splendid, gallant set of fellows; all prepared “to do or die.” The master of the hounds raised his hat, the fox was turned out of the bag; he was given ten minutes’ law; then the huntsman with his pack dashed away, clearing both bank and ditch. It was the severest jump they could find in any part of that country, purposely chosen for that reason. My doctor’s little Irish boy, a lad of sixteen years, went at it, and cleared it at a bound. I saw the master of the hunt (an American, a splendid looking fellow, superbly mounted, and a beautiful rider), with General Bosquet at his side, turn to the General (who was riding one of his horses), and shout:

“General, dash the spurs into her; lift her head a bit, and follow me.”

The General did not hesitate; he plunged the spurs into the beast, dashed ahead, and cleared bank and ditch. All his friends followed him. Forward they went, but only for a few rods, when every horse, as if shot, came to a full stop, planted his forefeet in front of him, and neither whip nor spur could budge him. None would take the jump; every Frenchman’s face became ashey pale, and I really felt sorry for them. Not a Frenchman, with the exception of the General, took that jump. After this, the mere mention of fox hunting would set the Frenchmen wild. It was cruel, but it was sport.

Moral: Men should not attempt to do what is not in them.

Passing two winters at Pau and the summers at Baden-Baden, keeping four horses at the former place, following the hounds at least once a week, giving all through the winter from one to two dinners a week, with an English housekeeper, and living as well as I could possibly live, with the cost of my ball included, I did not spend half the amount in living that I am compelled to in New York. The ball cost me but eight hundred dollars.

HOME AGAIN.

CHAPTER VII.

My Return to New York—Dinner to a Well-known Millionaire—Visit of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Hon. E. Ashley, and G. W. des Voeux to the United States—I Entertain Them at My Southern Home—My Father’s Old Friends Resent my Manner of Entertaining—Her Majesty’s Consul disgruntled—Cedar Wash-tubs and Hot Sheets for my English Guests—Shooting Snipe over the Rice Lands—Scouring the Country for Pretty Girls.

Called home by the stupidity of an agent, who was unable to treat with my old friend, Commodore Vanderbilt, for an extension of his lease of our dock property, most unwillingly we left our dear old Pau, with all its charming associations, and returned to New York.

I have always had a great fondness for men older than myself. Always preferring to associate with my superiors than my inferiors in intellect, and hence when brought in contact with one of America’s noblest and most cultivated men (withal, the then richest man in the United States, if not in the world), by his son-in-law, with whom I had formed a close intimacy abroad, I sought his society, and he, in turn, appeared at least to enjoy mine. Dining with him constantly, I suggested that he should dine with me; to which he readily assented. So I went to Cranston, my landlord of the New York Hotel, and put him to his trumps to give me a suitable dinner. His hotel was then crowded, and I had actually to take down a bedstead and improvise a dining-room. Cranston was one of those hotel-keepers who worked as much for glory as for money. He gave us simply a perfect dinner, and my dear old friend and his wife enjoyed it. I remember his saying to me, “My young friend, if you go on giving such dinners as these you need have no fear of planting yourself in this city.” I here give the menu of this dinner:

CARTE DU DINER.

Les Huitres, salées.
——
Le Potage de Consommé de Volaille, à la Royale.
——
Le Basse rayée, grillée, Sauce Remoulade.
——
Les Pommes de Terre, à la Lyonnaise.
——
La Mayonnaise de Homard, decorée à la gélée.
——
Le Filet de Bœuf, piqué, rôti, aux champignons.
——
Les Cailles, truffées, à la Financière.
Les Côtelettes d’Agneau, à la Soubise.
Les Tomates, à l’Americaine.
Les Petits Pois, à la Française.
——
Canvas-back Ducks, roasted.
Le Celeri, au jus.
——
Les Huitres, grillées, à la Ste. Augustine.
——
Le Pouding de Cabinet.
La Gélée, au rhum.
Les Méringues, à la Chantilly.
——
Les Glaces de Crême, à la Portugaise.
Les Quatre Mendiants.
Les Fruits.
Le Café, etc.

L’Hôtel New York,
Mercredi, le 5 Janvier, 1859.

Just at this time three charming men visited New York and were fêted by my little circle of friends. They were Lord Frederick Cavendish, Hon. Evelyn Ashley, and G. W. des Voeux, now Governor of Hong Kong; three of the brightest spirits I had ever met, and without the slightest pretension; in fact, just what the real English gentleman always is,—the first gentleman in the world. Fearing a cold winter, and a friend who was going off on a foreign mission offering me his furnished house in Savannah, with all his servants, etc., I took it on a lease and proposed leaving for my native city in January. Finding my English friends also going South, I invited them to pass a month with me in my Southern home. All my European purchases, my china, glass, and bric-à-brac, I did not even unbale in New York, but shipped them directly to Savannah. Before leaving I took the precaution to order my marketing from old Waite of Amity Street (the then famous butcher), to be sent to me weekly, and started my new Southern household.

I naturally prided myself, on appearing in my native city, in putting my best foot foremost, and entertaining as well as I knew how, or, rather, in giving to my Southern friends, the benefit of my European education in the way of dinner giving. I found this, at first, instead of gratifying my father’s friends rather piqued them; they said—“Heydey! here is a young fellow coming out here to show us how to live. Why, his father did not pretend to do this. Let us let him severely alone,” which for a time they did. I took up the young fry, who let their elders very soon know that I had certainly learned something and that Mc’s dinners were bound to be a feature in Savannah. Then the old patriarch of the place relented and asked me to a grand dinner.

The papers had announced the intended visit to Savannah of the son of the Duke of Devonshire, and the son of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Southern people then worshipped the English nobility. They prided themselves on retaining all the old English habits and customs, and of being descendants of the greatest nation of the world,—excepting their own. The host at the dinner announced the coming of these distinguished men, and wondered who in Savannah would have the honor of entertaining them. The British Consul then spoke up, he was a great character there, giving the finest dinners, and being an authority on wine, i.e. Madeira, “Her Majesty’s Consul will have the honor.” I secretly smiled, as I knew they were coming to me, and I expected them the next day. This same good old Consul had ignored me, hearing I had had the audacity to give at my table filet de bœuf aux truffes et champignons. I returned home feeling sure that these young noblemen would be but a few hours under my roof before Her Majesty’s Consul would give me the honor of a visit. In fact, my guests had not been with me an hour when my old friend, the Consul, rushed up my front steps. Meeting me at the door he threw his arms around my neck, exclaiming, “My dear boy, I was in love with your mother thirty years ago; you are her image; carry me to your noble guests.” Ever after I had the respect and esteem of this dear old man, who, for Savannah, was rich as Crœsus, and before all things esteemed and valued a good dinner and a fine glass of Madeira. My filets de bœuf, and the scions of noble English houses placed me in the front social rank in that little, aristocratic town, and brought forth from one of its oldest inhabitants the exclamation, “My dear boy, your aunts, the Telfairs, could give breakfasts, but you, you can give dinners.”

Knowing the Englishmen’s habits, I gave to each one of them, on their arrival, enormous cedar wash-tubs and hot sheets for their morning ablutions; then a good breakfast, after which we drove to the river and had my brother-in-law’s ten-oared boat, called “The Rice Bird,” all the oarsmen in yachting rig, myself at the tiller, and the darkeys, knowing they would all have tobacco, or money, pulled for dear life from the start to the finish, giving us their plantation songs. The leader improvised his song, the others only singing in chorus. On these occasions, the colored people would give you in song all the annoyances they were subjected to, and the current events of plantation life, bringing in much of and about their “Massa” and his family, as follows: “Massa Ward marry our little Miss Sara, bring big buckra to Savannah, gwine to be good times, my boys, pull boys, pull, over Jordan!” Reaching the plantations, of which there were three, Fairlawn, Argyle, and Shaftesbury, well equipped with admirable dogs (for my brother-in-law was a great sportsman), we would shoot snipe over the rice lands until 2 P.M., then lunch elaborately in his plantation house, and row back in the cool of the afternoon, dining at 8 o’clock, and having as my guests every pretty girl within a hundred miles and more of the city. The flowers, particularly the rose called the Cloth of Gold, and the black rose, I was most prodigal with. I had given a fee to the clerk of the market to scour the country for game and delicacies, so our dinners were excellent, and the old Southern habit of sitting over Madeira until the small hours was adopted, and was, with the bright minds I had brought together, most enjoyable.

MERRYMAKING IN THE SOUTH.

CHAPTER VIII.

A Southern Deer Park—A Don Quixote Steed—We Hunt for Deer and Bag a Turkey—Getting a Dinner by Force—The French Chef and the Colored Cook Contrasted—One is Inspired, the Other Follows Tradition—Making a Sauce of Herbs and Cream—Shooting Ducks Across the Moon—A Dawfuskie Pic-nic.

In a small place, life is monotonous if you do not in some way break up this monotony. I bethought me of a friend who lived some distance from Savannah, who had a deer park, was a sportsman, and was also the soul of hospitality. His pride lay in his family and his surroundings; so I wrote to him as follows: “My dear friend, I have no baronial mansion; I am a wanderer on the face of the earth, while you possess what I most covet, an ancestral home and a great domain. Will you then invite my guests and me to pay you a visit and give us a chance at your deer?” Back came the invitation: “Come to me at once with your noble friends. I and my whole county will receive them and do them honor.” The next morning, by ten, we were at the railway station. Before leaving the carriage I saw a distinguished General, a sort of Dalgetty of a man, who preferred to fight than eat, pacing up and down the railway platform. A ruffled shirt, not spotless, a fierce air, an enormous false diamond pin, as big as a crown piece, in the center of his ruffled shirt bosom, with a thin gold chain attached to it and to his waistcoat, to prevent its loss. He at once approached me and exclaimed, “By Jove! by Jove! Mc, introduce me to your noble friends.” The introduction made, he accompanied us to the train, and in turn presented us to a large crowd assembled to see what Southern people were so proud of, “thoroughbreds,” as he called them. I repeatedly heard him exclaim, “No jackass stock here, sir; all thoroughbreds! I could tell ’em in the dark.” On rolled the train, and we soon reached our destination, and were no sooner out of the cars than we were enveloped by a myriad of sand flies. You could cut them with a knife, as it were. My friend, a six-footer, stepped up to my guests and was presented. He then addressed them as follows: “Will your lordships ride or drive?”

In the mean while, his coachman, a seedy old darkey, in a white hat at least ten years old, fly specked to such an extent that its original color was lost, in shabby, old, well-worn clothes, seized me by the coat tail, exclaiming, “Massa Ward, show me the ‘big buckras.’” After pointing them out, we all pressed through the crowd to the wagon and horses, two marsh tackeys, with their manes and tails so full of burrs, and so netted together, as to form a solid mass; stirrup leathers pieced with clothes lines, and no evidence of either of the animals having ever seen or been touched by a curry-comb. “Don Quixote, by Jove!” exclaimed the heir of the Shaftesburys, and vaulted into the saddle, while the representative of the house of Devonshire and myself took our seats in the open wagon. At this point, our hospitable host called the attention of his lordship to his horses and gave him their pedigree. One was sixteen hands high, had a bob tail, and high action; the other was a little pony of fourteen hands, with an ambling gait. Not giving any sign of moving, our host held forth as follows: “Your lordship, so well bred are these horses that if they are not properly caparisoned, nothing human could stir them; they will plant their feet in the soil and neither whip nor spur would budge them. You see how well my boy keeps their harnesses.” By this time I was convulsed. Cavendish, I saw, was laughing inwardly, but suppressed it. The straw in one collar was bulging out, one turret was gone, and a piece of rope lengthened one of the traces. Truly, it had seen better days. If he calls that a fitting harness for his horses, what am I to expect in the way of a house and deer park? However, my fears were allayed. The house was a charming old Southern plantation house, and the owner of it, the embodiment of hospitality. When the cloth was removed at dinner, I trembled. For my dear old father had always told me that on his circuit (annually made by the Savannah lawyers) he always avoided this house, for in it one could never find so much as a glass of whiskey. What then was my surprise, to have placed before us a superb bottle of sherry, since world-renowned, i.e. in this country; and a matchless Madeira, which he claimed he had inherited from his father, to be opened at the marriage of his sister.

The next morning, at the very break of day fixed for our deer hunt, the negro boys commenced tooting horns. As soon as I could see, I looked out of my windows and there saw four old lean, lank dogs, lifeless looking creatures, and four marsh tackeys, decorated, front and rear, with an abundance of burrs. Off we went, as sorry a looking company as one’s eye had ever seen, with a crowd of half-naked children following the procession. We were out eight hours, went through swamp after swamp, our tackeys up to their fetlocks in mud, and sorry a deer did we see. One wild turkey flew over us, which my host’s colored huntsman killed, the only man in the party who could shoot at all.

Returning to Savannah, we went after quail. One morning, being some fourteen miles from the city, we felt famished, having provided no lunch basket. I asked a friend, who was shooting with us and acting as our guide, if there was a white man’s house within a mile or two where we could get a biscuit. He replied, “No, not one.”

I pressed the matter, saying, “We must have a bite of something,” and urged him to think again. He reflected, and then said, as if to himself, “Oh, no use to go there, we will get nothing.” I took him up at once.

“What do you refer to,” I said. “Oh,” he replied, “there is a white man who lives within a mile of us, but he is the meanest creature that lives and will have nothing to give us.”

“Who is he?” I exclaimed. He gave me his name. “What,” said I, “Mr. Jones, who goes to Newport every summer?” “The same,” said he; “do you know him?”

“Know him?” I answered, “why, man, I know no one else. He has for years asked me to visit his plantation. He lives like a prince. I saw him at a great fête at Ochre Point, Newport, several years ago. He turned up his nose at everything there, saying to me, ‘Why, my dear fellow, these people don’t know how to live. This fête is nothing to what I can do, at my place. Why, sir, I have so much silver I dare not keep it in my house. The vaults of the State Bank of Georgia are filled with my silver. This fête may be well enough here, but come to me at the South, come to my plantation, and I will show you what a fête is. I will show you how to live.’” My friend listened to all this with astonishment.

“Well,” said he, “I have nothing to say. That is ‘big’ talk. Go on to your friend’s place and see what you will find.” On we moved, four as hungry men as you could well see. We reached the plantation, on which we found a one-story log cabin, with a front piazza, one large center room, and two shed rooms. There was a small yard, inclosed with pine palings to keep out the pigs, who were ranging about and ineffectually trying to gain an entrance. We entered the house, and, seeing an old colored man, my Southern friend opened on the old darkey with: “Where is your master?”

“In Savannah, sir.”

“When does he dine?”

“At six o’clock, sir.”

“What have you got for his dinner, old man?”

“Pea pie.”

“Is that all that he has for his dinner?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is pea pie?” I asked.

“Cow peas and bacon,” was the answer.

With this, my Southern friend stepped to the back door of the house, asked the old man to point him out a fat turkey. The old darkey did this, saying,

“There’s one, sir, but, Lord help me, Massa, don’t kill him.”

The protest came too late. Up to the shoulder went the gun, and down fell the turkey. Now, turning to the old darkey, he said:

“Old man, pick that turkey and roast him, and tell your Massa four big buckra men are coming to dine with him to-day, at six o’clock.” We got some corn-bread from the kitchen and went off shooting. A few minutes before six, we returned, and heard indeed a racket in that old cabin. The “Massa” was there, as we saw by the buggy, standing in the front yard; the horse browsing a few feet off, the harness in the buggy, and the master shouting out, “You tell me white men came here, kill my turkey, tell you to cook him, and you don’t know them? Who in the devil can they be?” No sooner had he got this out, when I appeared on the scene. Up went his arms in astonishment.

“Why, Mc., is this you? Glad to see you and your friends.”

Down we sat at his table, and had a dinner of small rice, pea pie, and roast turkey, washed down by a bottle of fine old Madeira, which he called “the blood of his ancestors.” I looked in vain for a side-board to put silver on, or any evidence of any past fête having been given on the premises. Our host was a thoroughly local man; one of those men who, when in Paris, would say, “I’m going to town,” when he proposed returning to Savannah, which, at that time, was to him the metropolis of America. This gentleman then, like others in the South, cultivated the belief that they alone lived well, and that there was no such thing as good society in New York or other Northern cities; that New Yorkers and Northern people were simply a lot of tradespeople, having no antecedents, springing up like the mushroom, who did not know how to live, and who, when they gave dinners to their friends, ordered them from a neighboring restaurant.

At a large dinner in Savannah, given to an ex-Mayor of New York, one of the best dinner-givers in that city made the foregoing statement, and the ex-Mayor actually called upon me to substantiate it, declaring it had always been his practice thus to supply his table, when he invited a dozen or more people to dinner. So far from this being the case, I then and there assured my Southern friends that no people in the world lived better than New Yorkers, so far as creature comforts were concerned. I have tested the capacity of the Southern cook alongside of the French chef; I had them together, cooking what we call a “Saratoga Lake Dinner” at Newport, a dinner for sixty people; serving alone Spanish mackerel, Saratoga potatoes, soft shell crabs, woodcock, chicken partridges, and lettuce salad. Both were great artists in their way, but the chef came off very much the victor. I doubted then, and I doubt now, if the dinners in London are better than our New York dinners, given by one of the innumerable good dinner-givers. Our material is better in New York, and our cooks are equally as good as those in England. The sauces of the French cuisine are its feature, while there is not a single sauce in African or Southern cooking. The French get the essence and flavor out of fowl, and discard the huge joints. Take for instance, soup; give a colored cook a shin of beef and a bunch of carrots and turnips, and of this he makes a soup. A Frenchman, to give you a consommé royale, requires a knuckle of veal, a shin of beef, two fat fowls, and every vegetable known to man. The materials are more than double the expense, but then you have a delicacy of flavor, and a sifting out of everything that is coarse and gross. The chef is an educated, cultivated artist. The colored cook, such as nature made him, possessing withal a wonderful natural taste, and the art of making things savory, i.e. taste good. His cookery book is tradition. French chefs have their inspirations, are in every way almost as much inspired as writers. To illustrate this: when Henry IV. was fighting in the Pyrénées, he told his French cook to give him a new sauce. The reply was, “Where are the materials for it, your Majesty? I have nothing here but herbs and cream.” “Then make a sauce from them,” was the King’s answer. The chef did this, and produced one of the best sauces in the French cuisine, known as sauce Bearnaise.

Having exhausted quail and snipe shooting and made a failure at deer hunting, we went on the banks of the rice plantations at night, to shoot wild ducks, as they crossed the moon. Whilst whiling away the time, waiting for ducks, we talked over England and America. Lord Frederick Cavendish assured me that if I were then living in England, I could not there lead a pleasanter life than I was then leading. He liked everything at the South, the hospitality of the people, and their simple contentment and satisfaction with their surroundings. On these three places there were then six hundred slaves; the net income of these estates was $40,000 a year. They would have easily brought half a million. When the Civil War terminated, my brother-in-law was offered $100,000 for them; by the war he had lost all his slaves. To-day the estates would scarcely bring $30,000, showing the change in values caused by the Civil War.

I was then able to show my guests a Savannah picnic, which is an institution peculiar to the place. Leaving the city in a river steamer our party consisting of one hundred people, after a little over an hour’s sail we reached an island in the Atlantic Ocean, known as Dawfuskie, a beautiful spot on which stood a charming residence, with five acres of roses surrounding the house. The heads of families carried, each of them, huge baskets containing their dinner, and a full table service, wine, etc., for say, ten or a dozen people. On our arrival, all formed into groups under the trees, a cloth was laid on the ground, dishes, plates and glasses arranged on it, and the champagne at once frapped in small hand pails. There was then a dance in the open air, on a platform, and in the afternoon, with cushions as seats for the ladies, these improvised dinner-tables were filled. Each had its separate hostess; all was harmony and pleasure. As night approached, the people re-embarked on the steamer and returned home by moonlight.

LIFE AT NEWPORT.

CHAPTER IX.

I Leave the South—A Typical British Naval Officer—An Officer of the Household Troops—Early Newport Life—A Country Dinner—The Way I got up Picnics—Farmers Throw their Houses Open to Us—A Bride Receives us in her Bridal Array—My Newport Farm—My Southdowns and my Turkeys—What an English Lady said of our Little Island—Newport a place to Take Social Root in.

My English friends bidding me farewell, soon after, I gave up my Savannah house and made Newport my permanent home, for I spent nine months of the year there, with a winter trip to the West Indies. I must not omit to mention here that while passing the winter at Nassau, N. P., I made the acquaintance of a most polished, elegant, and courtly man, a captain in the British Navy, who entertained me as one can only be entertained on a British man-of-war, giving me Devonshire cream and every luxury, and all as well served as though it had been ashore. Meeting him repeatedly at dinner at the house of the Governor of the Bahamas, he suggested that as it was a most difficult thing to board the steamship that was to take us to New York, she never crossing the bar, he would himself, in his own gig, take us out to that vessel when we left the island.

I had forgotten this kind promise, but on the day fixed for our departure (it then blowing a gale, one of those terrible “northers” of the West Indies), I received a note from this gallant captain, telling me that his boat’s crew had already crossed the bar, boarded our steamer, and learnt the precise spot where she would lie in the afternoon when she would take on her passengers. In vain did I protest against his undertaking this dangerous piece of work. Do it he would; and taking the tiller himself, we were safely rowed in his gig, twelve miles, and boarded the vessel.

I afterwards learned that while he was going from his vessel in full evening dress, with his white gloves carefully buttoned (for he was called the dandy of the English Navy), he sprang overboard and saved one of his men from drowning.

On our reaching the deck of the steamer, I was struck with the obsequiousness of the steamer’s captain to the naval officer, (she was, by the way, a Cunarder). My friend, the captain, then introduced me to one of his countrymen, saying to me, simply, “You will find him a nice fellow.” He turned out to be one of the most distinguished young men in England, an officer of the Household Troops, a most fascinating man, who had been to Jamaica to look after his father’s estates there. I introduced him to my friends in New York, and in return for the hospitality extended to him then, heard later that he, on receiving letters of introduction from me, had paid marked attention to the bearers of the letters. I relate this as an evidence that Englishmen do reciprocate attentions received in this country.

Newport was now at its best. The most charming people of the country had formed a select little community there; the society was small, and all were included in the gaieties and festivities. Those were the days that made Newport what it was then and is now, the most enjoyable and luxurious little island in America. The farmers of the island even seemed to catch the infection, and they were as much interested in the success of our picnics and country dinners, as we were ourselves. They threw open their houses to us, and never heeded the invasion, on a bright sunshiny day, of a party of fifty people, who took possession of their dining-room, in fact of their whole house, and frolicked in it to their heart’s content. To be sure, I had often to pacify a farmer when a liveried groom robbed his hen roost, but as he knew that this fashionable horde paid their way, he was easily soothed. I always then remarked that in Newport, at that time, you could have driven a four-in-hand of camels or giraffes, and the residents of the island would have smiled and found it quite the thing. The charm of the place then was the simple way of entertaining; there were no large balls; all the dancing and dining was done by daylight, and in the country. I did not hesitate to ask the very crême de la crême of New York society to lunch and dine at my farm, or to a fishing party on the rocks. My little farm dinners gained such a reputation that my friends would say to me: “Now, remember, leave me out of your ceremonious dinners as you choose, but always include me in those given at your farm, or I’ll never forgive you.” But to convey any idea of our country parties, one must in detail give the method of getting them up: Riding on the Avenue on a lovely summer’s day, I would be stopped by a beautiful woman, in gorgeous array, looking so fascinating that if she were to ask you to attempt the impossible, you would at least make the effort. She would open on me as follows: “My dear friend, we are all dying for a picnic. Can’t you get one up for us?”

“Why, my dear lady,” I would answer, “you have dinners every day, and charming dinners too; what more do you want?”

“Oh, they’re not picnics. Any one can give dinners,” she would reply; “what we want is one of your picnics. Now, my dear friend, do get one up.”

This was enough to fire me, and set me going. So I reply:

“I will do your bidding. Fix on the day at once, and tell me what is the best dish your cook makes.”

Out comes my memorandum book, and I write: “Monday, 1 P.M., meet at Narragansett Avenue, bring filet de bœuf piqué,” and with a bow am off in my little wagon, and dash on, to waylay the next cottager, stop every carriage known to contain friends, and ask them, one and all, to join our country party, and assign to each of them the providing of a certain dish and a bottle of champagne. Meeting young men, I charge them to take a bottle of champagne, and a pound of grapes, or order from the confectioner’s a quart of ice cream to be sent to me. My pony is put on its mettle; I keep going the entire day getting recruits; I engage my music and servants, and a carpenter to put down a dancing platform, and the florist to adorn it, and that evening I go over in detail the whole affair, map it out as a general would a battle, omitting nothing, not even a salt spoon; see to it that I have men on the road to direct my party to the farm, and bid the farmer put himself and family, and the whole farm, in holiday attire.

On one occasion, as my farmer had just taken unto himself a bride, a young and pretty woman, I found that at mid-day, to receive my guests, she had dressed herself in bridal array; she was décolleté, and seemed quite prepared to sing the old ballad of “Coming thro’ the rye”; but as her husband was a stalwart young fellow, and extremely jealous, I advised the young men in the party to confine their attentions to their own little circle and let Priscilla, the Puritan, alone.

When I first began giving picnics at my farm, I literally had no stock of my own. I felt that it would never do to have a gathering of the brightest and cleverest people in the country at my place with the pastures empty, neither a cow nor a sheep; so my Yankee wit came to my assistance. I at once hired an entire flock of Southdown sheep, and two yoke of cattle, and several cows from the neighboring farm, for half a day, to be turned into my pasture lots, to give the place an animated look. I well remember some of my knowing guests, being amateur farmers, exclaiming:

“Well, it is astonishing! Mc has but fifty acres, and here he is, keeping a splendid flock of Southdowns, two yoke of cattle, to say nothing of his cows!”

I would smile and say:

“My friend I am not a fancy farmer, like yourself; I farm for profit.”

At that time, I was out of pocket from three to four thousand dollars a year by my farm, but must here add, for my justification, that finding amateur farming an expensive luxury, I looked the matter squarely in the face, watched carefully the Yankee farmers around me, and satisfied myself that they knew more about the business than I did, and at once followed in their footsteps, placed my farm on shares, paying nothing out for labor, myself paying the running expenses, and dividing the profits with my farmer. Instead of losing three or four thousand dollars a year by my farm, it then paid me, and continues to pay me seven to eight hundred dollars a year clear of all expenses. We sell off of fifty acres of land, having seventeen additional acres of pasturage, over three thousand dollars of produce each year. I sell fifty Southdown lambs during the months of April and May, at the rate of eight to ten dollars each, to obtain which orders are sent to me in advance, and my winter turkeys have become as famous as my Southdown lambs. The farm is now a profit instead of a loss. I bought this place in 1853; if I had bought the same amount of land south of Newport, instead of north of the town, it would have been worth a fortune to-day.

To return to our picnic. The anxiety as to what the weather would be, was always my first annoyance, for of course these country parties hinge on the weather. After making all your preparations, everything ready for the start, then to look out of your window in the morning, as I have often done, and see the rain coming down in torrents, is far from making you feel cheerful. But, as a rule, I have been most fortunate in my weather. We would meet at Narragansett Avenue at 1 P.M., and all drive out together. On reaching the picnic grounds, I had an army of skirmishers, in the way of servants, thrown out, to take from each carriage its contribution to the country dinner. The band would strike up, and off the whole party would fly in the waltz, while I was directing the icing of the champagne, and arranging the tables; all done with marvelous celerity. Then came my hour of triumph, when, without giving the slightest signal (fearing some one might forestall me, and take off the prize), I would dash in among the dancers, secure our society queen, and lead with her the way to the banquet. Now began the fun in good earnest. The clever men of the party would assert their claims to the best dishes, proud of the efforts of their cook, loud in their praise of their own game pie, which most probably was brought out by some third party, too modest to assert and push his claim. Beauty was there to look upon, and wit to enliven the feast. The wittiest of men was then in his element, and I only wish I dared quote here his brilliant sallies. The beauty of the land was also there, and all feeling that they were on a frolic, they threw hauteur, ceremonial, and grand company manners aside, and, in place, assumed a spirit of simple enjoyment. Toasts were given and drunk, then a stroll in pairs, for a little interchange of sentiment, and then the whole party made for the dancing platform, and a cotillon of one hour and a half was danced, till sunset. As at a “Meet,” the arrivals and departures were a feature of the day. Four-in-hands, tandems, and the swellest of Newport turn-outs rolled by you. At these entertainments you formed lifetime intimacies with the most cultivated and charming men and women of this country.

These little parties were then, and are now, the stepping-stones to our best New York society. People who have been for years in mourning and thus lost sight of, or who having passed their lives abroad and were forgotten, were again seen, admired, and liked, and at once brought into society’s fold. Now, do not for a moment imagine that all were indiscriminately asked to these little fêtes. On the contrary, if you were not of the inner circle, and were a new-comer, it took the combined efforts of all your friends’ backing and pushing to procure an invitation for you. For years, whole families sat on the stool of probation, awaiting trial and acceptance, and many were then rejected, but once received, you were put on an intimate footing with all. To acquire such intimacy in a great city like New York would have taken you a lifetime. A fashionable woman of title from England remarked to me that we were one hundred years behind London, for our best society was so small, every one in it had an individuality. This, to her, was charming, “for,” said she, “one could have no such individuality in London.” It was accorded only to the highest titled people in all England, while here any one in society would have every movement chronicled. Your “personnel,” she added, “is daily discussed, your equipage is the subject of talk, as well as your house and household.” Another Londoner said to me, “This Newport is no place for a man without fortune.” There is no spot in the world where people are more en evidence. It is worth while to do a thing well there, for you have people who appreciate your work, and it tells and pays. It is the place of all others to take social root in.

SOCIETY’S LEADERS.

CHAPTER X.

Society’s Leaders—A Lady whose Dinners were Exquisite and whose Wines were Perfect—Her “Blue Room Parties”—Two Colonial Beauties—The Introduction of the Chef—The Prince of Wales in New York—The Ball in his Honor at the Academy of Music—The Fall of the Dancing Platform—Grotesque Figures cut by the Dancers—The Prince Dances Well—Admirable Supper Arrangements—A Light Tea and a Big Appetite—The Prince at West Point—I get a Snub from General Scott.

Society must have its leader or leaders. It has always had them, and will continue to have them. Their sway is more or less absolute. When I came to New York as a boy, forty years ago, there were two ladies who were skillful leaders and whose ability and social power the fashionable world acknowledged. They gave the handsomest balls and dinners given in this city, and had at them all the brilliant people of that period. Their suppers, given by old Peter Van Dyke, were famous. Living in two adjoining houses which communicated, they had superb rooms for entertaining. These were the days when Isaac Brown, sexton of Grace Church, was, in his line, a great character. His memory was something remarkable. He knew all and everything about everybody, knew always every one’s residence, was good-nature itself, and cracked his jokes and had a word for every one who passed into the ball-room. You would hear him sotto voce remarking upon men as they passed: “Old family, good old stock,” or “He’s a new man; he had better mind his p’s and q’s, or I will trip him up. Ah, here’s a fellow who intends to dance his way into society. Here comes a handsome boy, the women are crazy about him,” etc.

A year or two later, during my absence in Europe and at the South, a lady living in Washington Place found herself filling a very conspicuous place in the matter of social entertainment by the departure of her husband’s relatives, who had been society’s leaders, for a prolonged stay in Europe. A woman of charming manners, possessing eminently the talent of social leadership, she took up and easily carried on society as represented by the “smart” set. For from six to seven years she gave brilliant entertainments; her dinners were exquisite; her wines perfect; her husband’s Madeiras are still famous. At that time, her small dances were most carefully chosen; they were the acme of exclusiveness. On this she prided herself. She also arranged and controlled for two years (the winters of 1870 and 1871) small subscription balls at Delmonico’s, Fourteenth Street, in his “blue rooms.” They were confined to the young men and maidens, with the exception, perhaps, of a dozen of the young married couples; a few elderly married ladies were invited as matrons. These dances were known and became famous as the “Blue Room parties.” There were three hundred subscribers to them. Having a large fortune, she was able to gratify her taste in entertaining. Her manners were charming, and she was a most pleasing conversationalist. Her brother-in-law was one of the founders of the Patriarchs, and at a later period her two sons-in-law also joined them, though the younger of the two, the husband of her accomplished and beautiful daughter, has lived abroad for many years, but is still numbered among the brilliant members of our society. It was during the winter of 1871 that a ball was given in these same rooms to Prince Arthur, when on his visit here. On this occasion, the Prince danced with the daughter of my old friend, the Major, who, in air and distinction, was unrivaled in this country.

About this time two beautiful, brilliant women came to the front. They were both descended from old Colonial families. They had beauty and wealth, and were eminently fitted to lead society. A new era then came in; old fashions passed away, new ones replaced them. The French chef then literally, for the first time, made his appearance, and artistic dinners replaced the old-fashioned, solid repasts of the earlier period. We imported European habits and customs rapidly. Women were not satisfied with their old modistes, but must needs send to Paris for everything. The husband of one of these ladies had a great taste for society, and also a great knowledge of all relating to it. His delight was to see his beautiful young wife worshipped by everybody, which she was, and she soon became, in every sense, the prominent leader. All admired her, and we, the young men of that period, loved her as much as we dared. All did homage to her, and certainly she was deserving of it, for she had every charm, and never seemed to over-appreciate herself, or recognize that as Nature had lavished so much on her, and man had laid wealth at her feet, she was, in every sense, society’s queen. She was a woman sans aucune prétention. When you entered her house, her reassuring smile, her exquisitely gracious and unpretending manner of receiving, placed you at your ease and made you feel welcome. She had the power that all women should strive to obtain, the power of attaching men to her, and keeping them attached; calling forth a loyalty of devotion such as one imagines one yields to a sovereign, whose subjects are only too happy to be subjects. In the way of entertaining, the husband stood alone. He had a handsome house and a beautiful picture gallery (which served as his ball-room), the best chef in the city, and entertained royally.

I well remember being asked by a member of my family, “Why are you so eager to go to this leader’s house?” My reply always was, “Because I enjoy such refined and cultivated entertainments. It improves and elevates one.” From him, I literally took my first lesson in the art of giving good dinners. I heard his criticisms, and well remember asking old Monnot, the keeper of the New York Hotel:

“Who do you think has the best cook in this city?”

“Why, of course, the husband of your leader of fashion, for the simple reason that he makes his cook give him a good dinner every day.”

Just at this time all New York aroused, and put on their holiday attire at the coming of the Prince of Wales. A grand ball at the Academy of Music was given him. Our best people, the smart set, the slow set, all sets, took a hand in it, and the endeavor was to make it so brilliant and beautiful that it would always be remembered by those present as one of the events of their lives.

My invitation to the ball read as follows:

THE GENERAL COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS

Invite Mr. Ward McAllister to a Ball to be given by the Citizens of New York to the

PRINCE OF WALES,

At the Academy of Music, on Friday Evening, the twelfth of October, 1860, at nine o’clock.

Peter Cooper, M. B. Field,
Chairman. Secretary.

The ball was to be opened by a Quadrille d’Honneur. Governor and Mrs. Morgan, Mr. Bancroft the historian, and Mrs. Bancroft, Colonel and Mrs. Abraham Van Buren, with others, were to dance in it. Mrs. Morgan had forgotten all she had learned of dancing in early childhood, so she at once took dancing lessons. Fernando Wood was then Mayor of New York. The great event of the evening was to be the opening quadrille, and the rush to be near it was so great that the floor gave way and in tumbled the whole centre of the stage. I stood up in the first tier, getting a good view of the catastrophe. The Duke of Newcastle, with the Prince, who, as it happened, was advancing to the centre of the stage, followed by all who were to dance in the quadrille, at once retired with the Prince to the reception room, while Mr. Renwick, the architect, and a gang of carpenters got to work to floor over the chasm. I well remember the enormous form of old Isaac Brown, sexton of Grace Church, rushing around and encouraging the workmen. A report had been spread that the Duke would not allow the Prince to again appear on the stage.

In the mean while, the whole royal party were conversing in groups in the reception room. The Prince had been led into a corner of the room by the Mayor’s daughter, when the Duke, feeling the young lady had had fully her share of his Royal Highness, was about to interrupt them, when our distinguished magistrate implored him not to do so. “Oh, Duke,” he exclaimed, “let the young people alone, they are enjoying themselves.” The stage made safe, the quadrille was danced, to the amusement of the assembled people. The old-fashioned curtseys, the pigeon-wings, and genuflexions only known to our ancestors were gone through with dignity and repose. Mrs. Van Buren, who had presided over the White House during Martin Van Buren’s presidency, has repeatedly since discussed this quadrille with me, declaring she was again and again on the point of laughing at the grotesque figures cut by the dancers.

“But, my dear sir,” she said, “I did not permit my dignity and repose to be at all ruffled; I think I went through the trying ordeal well; but why, why will not our people learn to dance!” A waltz immediately followed the quadrille; the Prince, a remarkably handsome young man, with blue eyes and light hair, a most agreeable countenance, and a gracious manner, danced with Miss Fish, Miss Mason, Miss Fannie Butler, and others, and danced well. I followed him with a fair partner, doing all I could to enlarge the dancing circle. He danced incessantly until supper, the arrangements for which were admirable.

One entered the supper room by one stage door and left it by another; a horseshoe table ran around the entire room,—behind it stood an army of servants, elbow to elbow, all in livery. At one end of the room was a raised dais, where the royal party supped. At each stage door a prominent citizen stood guard; the moment the supper room was full, no one else was admitted. As fifty would go out, fifty would come in. I remember on my attempting to get in through one of these doors, stealthily, the vigilant eye of John Jacob Astor met mine. He bid me wait my turn. Nothing could have been more successful, or better done. The house was packed to repletion. Now, all was the Prince. The city rang with his name; all desired to catch a glimpse of him. His own people could not have offered him greater homage.

A friend of mine at Barrytown telegraphed me to come to him and pass Sunday, and on Monday go with him to West Point to a breakfast to be given by Colonel Delafield, the Commandant of the Point, to the Prince of Wales. It was in the fall of the year, when the Hudson was at its best, clothed in its autumnal tints. I was enraptured on looking out of my window on Sunday morning at the scene that lay before me, with the river, like a tiny thread away below, gracefully flowing through a wilderness of foliage, the flock of Southdown sheep on my friend’s lawn, the picturesque little stone chapel adjoining his place, all in full view, and the great masses of autumn leaves raked in huge piles. Going to church in the morning, I proposed to myself a ten-mile walk in the afternoon to get an appetite for what I felt sure would be my friend’s best effort in the way of a dinner, as he well knew I loved the “flesh pots of Egypt.” Fully equipped for my walk, the butler entered my room and announced luncheon. I declined the meal. Again he appeared, stating that the family insisted on my lunching with them, as on Sunday it was always a most substantial repast.

My host now appeared to enforce the request. I protested. “My dear fellow, I can dine but once in twenty-four hours; dinner to me is an event; luncheon is fatal to dinner—takes off the edge of your appetite, and then you are unfit to do it justice.”

“Have it as you will,” he replied, and off I went. Returning, I donned my dress suit, and feeling as hungry as a hound, went to the drawing-room to await dinner. Seven came, half after seven, and still no announcement of that meal. I felt an inward sinking. At eight the butler announced “Tea is served.”

“Good heavens!” I muttered to myself; “I have lost dinner,” and woefully went in to tea. I can drink tea at my breakfast, but that suffices; I can never touch it a second time in twenty-four hours. I think my host took in the situation, and to intensify my suffering, walked over to me, tapping me on the back, exclaiming:

“My dear boy, in this house we never dine on Sunday.”

“Why in the plague, then,” I thought, “did you ask me up here on a fast day? However,” I said to myself, “I will make it up on bread and butter.” In we went to tea, and a tea indeed it was; what the French would call a “Souper dinatoire,” the English, a “high tea,” a combination of a heavy lunch, a breakfast, and tea. No hot dishes; but every cold delicacy you could dream of; a sort of “whipping the devil around the stump.” No dinner, a gorgeous feast at tea.

Down the river the next morning we went to West Point, every moment enjoyable, and reached the Commandant’s house. As General Scott was presenting Colonel Delafield’s guests to the Prince I approached the General, asking him to present me to his Royal Highness. A giant as he was in height, he bent down his head to me, and asked sharply, “What name, sir?” I gave him my name, but at the sound of “Mc,” not thinking it distinguished enough, he quietly said, “Pass on, sir,” and I subsequently was presented by the Duke of Newcastle.

DELIGHTS OF COUNTRY LIFE.

CHAPTER XI.

A Handsome, Courtly Man—A Turkey Chase—A Visit to Livingston Manor—An Ideal Life—On Horseback from Staatsburg to New York—Village Inn Dinners—I Entertain a Fashionable Party at the Gibbons Mansion—An Old House Rejuvenated—The Success of the Party—Country Life may be Enjoyed Here as well as in England if one has the Money and the Inclination for it—It means Hard Work for the Host, though.

All my life I had been taught to have a sort of reverence for the name of Livingston, and to feel that Livingston Manor was a species of palatial residence, that one must see certainly once in one’s lifetime. The opportunity offered itself, and I seized upon it. The owner of the upper Manor jokingly suggested our forming a party to go there, and take possession of his house in October, and see the lovely autumn foliage. By acclamation, it was resolved that the project be carried out, and I went to work, spurring up my old friend, the owner of the Manor, to prepare for us. As an important feature and member of this party, I must here give a slight sketch of one of the handsomest, most fascinating, most polished and courteous gentlemen of that or any other period. We will here call him the Major; amiability itself, a man both sexes could fall in love with. I loved him dearly, and when I lost him I felt much of the charm of life had departed with him. At all these country parties, he was always first and foremost. My rapidity of thought and action always annoyed him. “My dear fellow,” he would say, “for heaven’s sake, go slow; you tear through the streets as if at some one’s bidding. A gentleman should stroll leisurely, casting his eyes in the shop windows, as if in search of amusement, while you go at a killing pace, as if on business bent. The man of fashion should have no business.” Again, he had a holy horror of familiar garments. “My dear boy,” he would smile and say, “when will you discard that old coat? I am so familiar with it, I am fatigued at the sight of it.”

On one subject we were always in accord—our admiration for women. My eye was quicker than his, and I often took advantage of it. I would say, “Major, did you see that beauty? By Jove, a most delicious creature!”

“Who? Where?” he would exclaim.

“Why, man,” I replied, “she has passed you; you have lost her.”

“Lost her! How could you let that happen? Why, why did you not sooner call my attention to her?”

Apropos of the Major, I must tell a good story at his expense:

As my farm parties were always gotten up at a day’s notice, I was often in straits to provide the dishes, for all that was wanting to complete the feast I furnished myself. A boned turkey, on one occasion, was absolutely necessary. The day was a holiday. I must at once place it in the cook’s hands. The shops were all shut, so I suggested to the Major that he drive out with me to my farm and procure one. When we reached the place, farmer and family, we found, had gone off visiting; there was no one there. I took in the situation at a glance.

“Major,” I said, “there, in that field, is a gobbler; that turkey you and I have got to catch, if it takes us all night to get him. Positively I shall not leave the place without him.” He looked aghast. There he was, in Poole’s clothes, the best dressed man in America! This he always was. On this point, a friend once got this off on him. As he was entering his club, with another well-dressed man of leisure, this gentleman exclaimed, “Behold them! like the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Clothes, or no clothes, in pursuit of the turkey we went. Over fences, under fences, in barnyards and through fields, at a full run, the perspiration pouring down the cheeks of the dear old Major, and I screaming encouragement to him. “Try it again, Major! head him off! now you have him!”

Finally, after an hour’s chase, we got the bird, when, throwing off his coat, straightening himself up and throwing his arms akimbo, he exclaimed, “Well, Mc, the profession of a gentleman has fallen very low when it takes him to chasing turkeys.”

“My dear fellow,” I replied, “the great Chancellor Livingston once said, ‘a gentleman can do anything; he can clean his own boots, but he should do it well.’”

To return to our excursion.

The party to go up the North River to the Manor Livingston, and ride back to New York, was at once formed. My first discussion with the Major was as to the propriety of taking a valet, he insisting it was indispensable, that every college boy in England, on three hundred pounds a year, had his valet. I contended that they were nuisances, and it was not the habit to indulge in them here. Besides this, our host would have his hands full in caring for us, and would feel we were imposing on him if each of us took a man servant. This settled it. The Major and I were to travel together and meet the party at Staatsburg. Let me here say that people of the world put up with the annoyance of travel better than any other class of people.

The glorious morning that we left the cars at Poughkeepsie, and mounted our horses, I shall never forget. That lovely ride, from Poughkeepsie to Staatsburg, under that superb row of old trees, put me in mind of the Long Walk at Windsor; it is equally as handsome. We speculated on the way as to what we were to expect. “If he has no chef, I leave in twenty-four hours,” exclaimed my friend. I assured him we might feel secure of finding artistic cooking and of having a very jolly good time. Instead of a palace, I found a fine, old-fashioned country-house, very draughty, but beautifully placed amid magnificent forest trees. My first exploit was to set fire to the carpet in my room by building a huge fire in my grate, to try and keep warm. As the Major put it, “My dear boy, burn yourself up if you will, but kindly remember you endanger all our lives.”

At eleven every morning we were all in the saddle, and went off for a ride of some twenty miles, lunching at some fine house or other. It was English life to perfection, and most enjoyable. Hyde Park, with two superbly kept places, and its little village church on a Sunday, carried you back to England, and it seemed then to me that you there found the perfection of country life.

It was whilst dining in one of these old baronial mansions, that I conceived the idea of transporting the whole party to my late father-in-law’s place at Madison, New Jersey, and giving them myself, in his old residence, another country entertainment. After inviting them, I began to realize what I had undertaken. The house itself was all one could wish, built of brick, and nearly as large as the White House in Washington. But it had been shut up and unoccupied for years; however, I was in for it and I resolved, in spite of all difficulties, to carry it through successfully. After a week at the Manor, our whole party of some dozen ladies and gentlemen mounted our horses, and rode down to New York, sending the servants ahead by rail, to engage apartments, have our rooms ready, and dinner prepared for us at the village inns where we were to sleep. It was amusing to see the gentlemen in dress coats and white cravats, and the ladies in their handsome toilets, sitting down in a village inn to ham and eggs and boiled chicken and cabbage; but, as we had always sent on the wine, and had the best of servants to look after everything, we enjoyed these inn dinners very much. Not a murmur from any of the ladies of any discomfort; they found everything charming and amusing. So day by day we rode, chatting away and enjoying each other’s society, and at night, after a cosy little meal, we were all only too glad to seek the arms of Morpheus.

When I returned to my family at Newport and informed them of what I had done, that I had invited a dozen of the most difficile, fastidious people of Newport to pass ten days with us in New Jersey, at my brother-in-law’s then unoccupied and shut-up residence, there was but one exclamation, “You are crazy! How could you think of such a thing! How are you to care for all these people in that old deserted house?” All they said did not discourage me. I determined to show my friends that, though the Gibbons mansion was not a Manor house, it was deserving of the name, and was, at that date, one of the handsomest, largest, most substantial, and well-built residences at the North. When the Civil War broke out, my brother-in-law requested me to make it my home.

I give in detail all I did to successfully entertain my friends for ten days in this old family house, as it may instruct others how to act in a similar case. In London, during the season, one hires a house for a few days to give a ball in, and there are many very superb large houses used there in this way every year. Telegraphing at once to the agent who had charge of this house to put an army of scrubbing-women in it, and have it cleaned from cellar to garret, I next went into the wholesale business of kerosene and lamps. In the country particularly there is nothing like an illumination à giorno at night. I hunted up an experienced chef, got my servants, and then made menus for ten dinners, lunches, and breakfasts, as my guests were asked for a certain length of time; engaged a country band of music for the evenings, telegraphed to Baltimore for my canvasbacks, arranged for my fish, vegetables, and flowers to be sent up by train daily from New York, purchased myself every article of food that I would require to make up these menus, gave orders for my ices, bonbons, and cakes, everything that must be fresh to be good, to come to me by express; sent up my wines, but no Madeira, as I knew there was enough of that wine in the wine cellars of that old house to float a frigate; looked after my stabling, and found we could stable twenty horses in a fine brick stable, and house all the drags and vehicles. The conservatories were full of orange and lemon trees. The house itself, architecturally, was a duplicate of the White House in Washington, and almost as large. It had a superb marble hall, 20 × 45, leading to a dining-room, 36 × 25. The house was built in 1836, of brick, in a forest of trees, with the three farms surrounding it really forming part of the grounds, containing a thousand acres of land. The house and grounds cost in 1836 over $150,000. All I had to do, then, was to reanimate the interior and take from hidden recesses the fine old family china, and the vast quantity of silver accumulated in the family for three generations. My wife’s grandfather had been a distinguished lawyer; being wealthy, he had some of his lawyer’s fees which were paid in Spanish dollars, melted into plate. I only wish it had been my good fortune to have secured some of those old grand silver salvers.

Before a guest arrived, everything on and about the place had life and animation. To all my guests the house was a surprise, for it had never before been shown to fashionable people. As on the North River, we passed the days in the saddle, and driving four-in-hands, lunched with many distinguished people, at their distant country places, and lived for those ten days as thoroughly an English life as one would have lived at a country house in England. I had invited young men to come down from New York every evening to join us at dinner, and even the fastidious and exacting Major, I think, was satisfied with everything. The success of this party evidenced that a country house can be made as perfect and enjoyable here as in any other country, provided you will take the trouble and bear the expense. Now, Newport life is wholly and entirely a contrast to all this, for the charm of that place is its society. You do not bring it there, but find it there, and it takes care of itself, and comes to you when you wish it; thus you are relieved of the care of providing daily for a large company, to do which is well enough in England, where you inherit your servants with your fortune, while here, to have things properly done, be you who you may, you must give them your time and attention. This country party I gave in November, 1862.

FASHIONABLE PEOPLE.

CHAPTER XII.

John Van Buren’s Dinner—I spend the Entire Day in getting my Dress-Coat—Lord Hartington criticises American Expressions—Contrast in our Way of Living in 1862 and 1890—In Social Union is Social Strength—We band Together for our Common Good—The Organisation of the “Cotillion Dinners”—The “Smart” Set, and the “Solid” Set—A Defense of Fashion.

Meeting John Van Buren as I left the cars in Jersey City to cross the ferry to New York, he insisted on my dining with him that day at the Union Club, to meet Lord Hartington, and his brother, Lord Edward Cavendish, to whom he was giving a large dinner. I declined, as I had no dress-suit in the city, but he would not take no for an answer.

“My dear man,” he said, “it will be an event in your life to meet these distinguished men. Jump in the first train, return to your country home, and get your dress-coat. By all means you must not miss my dinner.” As I knew Lord Frederick Cavendish so well, I really wanted to meet his brothers, and as no one could send me my spike-tail coat as they call it at the South, I took a way train and consumed the entire day getting the necessary outfit, and returning with it to the city. To compensate me for my day’s work, Van Buren put me next to Lord Hartington. Chatting with him, I asked him what he had seen in our habits, manners, and speech that struck him as odd. At first he avoided making any criticism, but finally he laughingly replied, “The way you all have of saying ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir.’ We never do this in England; it is used thus only by servants.” James Brady, a great chum of our host’s, being at the dinner, kept up an incessant fire at Van Buren, who retaliated with, “My dear Lord Hartington, pay no attention to what my friend Brady says; all I can say of him is that he is a man who passes one half his time in defending criminals and the other half in assailing patriots, such as myself.” I was well repaid for all the trouble I had taken to attend this dinner.

At this time there were not more than one or two men in New York who spent, in living and entertaining, over sixty thousand dollars a year. There were not half a dozen chefs in private families in this city. Compare those days to these, and see how easily one or two men of fortune could then control, lead, and carry on society, receive or shut out people at their pleasure. If distinguished strangers failed to bring letters to them, they were shut out from everything. Again, if, though charming people, others were not in accord with those powers, they could be passed over and left out of society. All this many of us saw, and saw how it worked, and we resolved to band together the respectable element of the city, and by this union make such strength that no individual could withstand us. The motto, we felt, must be nous nous soutenons. This motto we then assumed, and we hold it to this day, and have found that the good and wise men of this community could always control society. This they have done and are still doing. Our first step then in carrying out these views was to arrange for a series of “cotillion dinners.”

I must here explain, that behind what I call the “smart set” in society, there always stood the old, solid, substantial, and respected people. Families who held great social power as far back as the birth of this country, who were looked up to by society, and who always could, when they so wished, come forward and exercise their power, when, for one reason or another, they would take no active part, joining in it quietly, but not conspicuously. Ordinarily, they preferred, like the gods, to sit upon Olympus. I remember a lady, the head of one of these families, stating to me that she had lived longer in New York society than any other person. This point, however, was not yielded or allowed to go undisputed, for the daughter of a rival house contended that her family had been longer in New York society than any other family, and though she had heard the assertion, as I gave it, she would not admit its correctness. What I intend to convey is that the heads of these families, feeling secure in their position, knowing that they had great power when they chose to exercise it, took no leading part in society’s daily routine. They gave handsome dinners, and perhaps, once a year, a fine ball. I know of one or two families who have scrupulously all their lives avoided display, anything that could make fashionable people of them, holding their own, esteemed and respected, and when they threw open their doors to society, all made a rush to enter. To this day, if one of these old families, even one of its remotest branches, gives a day reception, you will find the street in which they live blockaded with equipages.

For years we have literally had but one salon in this city—a gathering in the evening of all the brilliant and cultivated people, both young and old, embracing the distinguished strangers. A most polished and cultivated Bostonian, a brilliant woman, was the first, in my day, to receive in this way weekly. During her life she held this salon, both here, and all through the summer in Newport. “The robe of Elijah fell upon Elisha” in an extremely talented woman of the world, who has most successfully held, and now holds, this salon, on the first day of every week during the winter, and at Newport in summer.

The mistake made by the world at large is that fashionable people are selfish, frivolous, and indifferent to the welfare of their fellow-creatures; all of which is a popular error, arising simply from a want of knowledge of the true state of things. The elegancies of fashionable life nourish and benefit art and artists; they cause the expenditure of money and its distribution; and they really prevent our people and country from settling down into a humdrum rut and becoming merely a money-making and money-saving people, with nothing to brighten up and enliven life; they foster all the fine arts; but for fashion what would become of them? They bring to the front merit of every kind; seek it in the remotest corners, where it modestly shrinks from observation, and force it into notice; adorn their houses with works of art, and themselves with all the taste and novelty they can find in any quarter of the globe, calling forth talent and ingenuity. Fashionable people cultivate and refine themselves, for fashion demands this of them. Progress is fashion’s watchword; it never stands still; it always advances, it values and appreciates beauty in woman and talent and genius in man. It is certainly always most charitable; it surrounds itself with the elegancies of life; it soars, it never crawls. I know the general belief is that all fashionable people are hollow and heartless. My experience is quite the contrary. I have found as warm, sympathetic, loving hearts in the garb of fashion as out of it. A thorough acquaintance with the world enables them to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, so that all the good work they do is done with knowledge and effect. The world could not dispense with it. Fashion selects its own votaries. You will see certain members of a family born to it, as it were, others of the same family with none of its attributes. You can give no explanation of this; “One is taken, the other left.” Such and such a man or woman are cited as having been always fashionable. The talent of and for society develops itself just as does the talent for art.

COTILLIONS IN DOORS AND OUT.

CHAPTER XIII.

Cost of Cotillion Dinners—My delicate Position—The Début of a Beautiful Blonde—Lord Roseberry’s mot—We have better Madeira than England—I am dubbed “The Autocrat of Drawing-rooms”—A Grand Domino Ball—Cruel Trick of a fair Mask—An English Lady’s Maid takes a Bath—The first Cotillion Dinners given at Newport—Out-of-Door Feasting—Dancing in the Barn.

But to return to our Cotillion Dinners. A friend thought they were impracticable on account of the expense, but I had remembered talking to the proprietor of the famous Restaurant Phillipe in Paris, as to the cost of a dinner, he assuring me that its cost depended entirely on what he called les primeurs, i.e. things out of season, and said that he could give me, for a napoleon a head, an excellent dinner, if I would leave out les primeurs. Including them, the same dinner would cost three napoleons. “I can give you, for instance,” he said, “a filet de bœuf aux ceps at half the cost of a filet aux truffes, and so on, through the dinner, can reduce the expense.” Submitting all this to my friend Delmonico, I suggested a similar inexpensive dinner, and figured the whole expense down until I reduced the cost of a cotillion dinner for seventy-five or a hundred people to ten dollars each person, music and every expense included. Calling on my friends, they seconded me, and we then had a winter of successful cotillion dinners. It was no easy task, however. How I was beset by the men to give them the women of their choice to take in to dinner! and in turn by the ladies not to inflict on them an uncongenial partner. The largest of these dinners, consisting of over a hundred people, we gave at Delmonico’s, corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, in the large ball-room. The table was in the shape of a horseshoe. I stood at the door of the salon, naming to each man the lady he was to take in to dinner, and well remember one of them positively refusing to accept and take in a lady assigned to him; and she, just entering, heard the dispute, and, in consequence, would never again attend one of these dinners. Sitting at the head of the table, with the two young and beautiful women who were then the grandes dames of that time, one on either side of me, we had opposite to us, on the other side of the narrow, horseshoe table, a young blonde bride, who had just entered society. I well remember the criticisms these grand ladies made of and about her. The one, turning to me, said, “And this is your lovely blonde, the handsomest blonde in America!” The other, the best judge of her sex that I have ever seen, then cast her horoscope, saying, “I consider her as beautiful a blonde as I have ever seen. That woman, be assured, will have a brilliant career. Such women are rare.” These words were prophetic, for that beautiful bride, crossing the ocean in her husband’s yacht, wholly and solely by her beauty gained for her husband and herself a brilliant position in London society. Turning to me, the lady who had made this remark asked me how she herself looked. I replied, “Like Venus rising from the sea.” My serenity was here disturbed by finding that one of the ladies, disliking her next neighbor, as soon as she discovered by the card who it was, had quietly made an exchange of cards, depriving a young gallant of the seat he most coveted, and for which he had long and earnestly prayed. Of course, I was called to explain, and quiet the disturbed waters. The gentleman was furious, and threatened dire destruction to the culprit. I took in the situation, and protected the fair lady by sacrificing the waiter. After the ladies left the table, at these dinners, the gentlemen were given time to smoke a cigar and take their coffee. On this occasion, the Earl of Roseberry was a guest. Whilst smoking and commenting on the dinner, he said to me, “You Americans have made a mistake; your emblematic bird should have been a canvasback, not an eagle.”

It was either to this distinguished man or the Earl of Cork, at one of these after-dinner conversations, that I held forth on the treatment of venison, asserting that here, we always serve the saddle of venison, whilst in England they give the haunch. And when they send it off to a friend, they box it up in a long narrow box, much resembling a coffin. The reason for this was given me,—that their dinners were larger than ours, and there was not enough on a saddle for an English dinner. Again, I called attention to the fact that here we eat the tenderloin steak, there they eat the rump steak, which we give to our servants. The reason for this, I was told, was that they killed their cattle younger than we killed ours, and did not work those intended for beef. On Madeira, I stated, “we had them,” for, I said, “You have none to liken unto ours”; though later on, at another dinner, when I made this assertion, the Duke of Beaufort took me up on this point, and insisted upon it that in many of the old country houses in England they had excellent Madeira.

The following anonymous lines on this dinner were sent to me the day afterwards:

There ne’er was seen so fair a sight
As at Delmonico’s last night;
When feathers, flowers, gems, and lace
Adorned each lovely form and face;
A garden of all thorns bereft,
The outside world behind them left.
They sat in order, as if “Burke”
Had sent a message by his clerk.
And by whose magic wand is this
All conjured up? the height of bliss.
’Tis he who now before you looms,—
The Autocrat of Drawing Rooms.

One of the events of this winter was a grand domino ball, the largest ever given here. Our Civil War was then raging; a distinguished nobleman appeared at that ball with his friend, a member of Parliament. Before he could enter the ball-room, a domino stepped up to him and had an encounter of words with him. “Are you as brave as you look?” she asked; “will you do a woman’s bidding? I challenge you to grant me my request!” “What is it?” he asked. “Allow me to pin on this badge?” “Certainly,” was the gallant reply. As he passed through the rooms, it was seen that he was wearing a Secession badge. It was thought to be an intended affront to Northern people, and was immediately resented. His friend, the member of Parliament, hearing of it, at once went up to him and removed the badge. Many felt that this distinguished man was simply the victim of a cruel, mischievous, and silly woman.

The following summer, as I had been so hospitably entertained in Nassau, at Government House, I invited my old friend, the Governor of the Bahamas, to pay me a visit at Newport. On a beautiful summer afternoon, I drove up to the Brevoort House, and there I found him literally surrounded by all his worldly goods, his entire household, with all their effects. It took two immense stages and a huge baggage wagon to convey them to the Fall River boat. Imagine this party coming from an island where it was a daily struggle to procure food, viewing the sumptuous supper-tables of these magnificent steamers (which certainly made a great impression on them, for it caused them to be loud in their expressions of astonishment and admiration). Reaching Newport at 2 A.M., on attempting to go ashore, I found His Excellency had lost all his tickets. Our sharp Yankee captain took no stock in people who did such things; so out came the Englishman’s pocket-book to pay again for the entire party, the dear old gentleman declaring it was his fault, and he ought to be made to pay for such carelessness. It did not take me long to convince our captain that we were not sharpers; that we had paid our passages, and we must needs be allowed to go ashore.

I was determined to evidence to my guests that they had reached the land of plenty, and before they had been with me a week, the Governor declared, with a sigh, “That he detested the sight of food.” I put him through a course of vapor baths, and galloped him daily. On one occasion, we visited the beach together, when the surf was full of people. We saw an enormously tall, Rubens-like woman, clad in a clinging garment of calico, exhilarated by the bath, jumping up and down, and in her ecstasy throwing her arms up over her head. “Who is the creature?” he exclaimed. “Is this allowed here! Why, man, you should not tolerate it a moment!” I gave one look at the female, and then, convulsed with laughter, seized his arm, exclaiming, “It is your wife’s English maid!” If I had given him an electric shock, he could not have sprung out of the wagon quicker. Rushing to the water’s edge, he shouted, “Down with you! down with you, this instant, you crazy jade! how dare you disgrace me in this way!” The poor girl, one could see, felt innocent of all wrong, but quitted the water at lightning speed when she saw the crowd the Governor had drawn around him.

The first Cotillion Dinner ever given at Newport, I gave at my Bayside Farm. I chose a night when the moon would be at the full, and invited guests enough to make up a cotillion. We dined in the open air at 6 P.M., in the garden adjoining the farm-house, having the gable end of the house to protect us from the southerly sea breeze. In this way we avoided flies, the pest of Newport. In the house itself we could not have kept them from the table, while in the open air even a gentle breeze, hardly perceptible, rids you of them entirely. The farm-house kitchen was then near at hand for use. You sat on closely cut turf, and with the little garden filled with beautiful standing plants, the eastern side of the farm-house covered with vines, laden with pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers, all giving a mixture of bright color against a green background, with the whole farm lying before you, and beyond it the bay and the distant ocean, dotted over with sailing craft, the sun, sinking behind the Narragansett hills, bathing the Newport shore in golden light, giving you, as John Van Buren then said to me, “As much of the sea as you ever get from the deck of a yacht.” Add to this, the exquisite toilets which our women wear on such occasions, a table laden with every delicacy, and all in the merriest of moods, and you have a picture of enjoyment that no shut-in ball-room could present. No “pent-up Utica” then confined our powers. Men and women enjoyed a freedom that their rural surroundings permitted, and, like the lambs gambolling in the fields next them, they frisked about, and thus did away with much of the stiff conventionality pertaining to a city entertainment.

On this little farm I had a cellar for claret and a farm-house attic for Madeira, where the cold Rhode Island winters have done much to preserve for me wines of seventy and eighty years of age. On this occasion, I remember giving them Amory of 1811 (one of the greatest of Boston Madeiras), and I saw the men hold it up to the light to see its beautiful amber color, inhale its bouquet, and quaff it down “with tender eyes bent on them.”

A marked feature of all my farm dinners was Dindonneaux à la Toulouse, and à la Bordelaise (chicken turkeys). In past days, turkeys were thought to be only fine on and after Thanksgiving Day in November, but I learnt from the French that the turkey poult with quenelle de volaille, with either a white or dark sauce, was the way to enjoy the Rhode Island turkey. I think they were first served in this way on my farm in Newport. Now they are thus cooked and accepted by all as the summer delicacy.

After dinner we strolled off in couples to the shore (a beach three-quarters of a mile in length), or sat under the group of trees looking on the beautiful bay.

My brother, Colonel McAllister, had exercised his engineering skill in fitting up my barn with every kind and sort of light. He improvised a chandelier for the center of it, adorned the horse and cattle stalls with vines and greens, fitted them up with seats for my guests (all nicely graveled), and put a band of music in the hay-loft, with the middle part of the barn floored over for dancing. We had a scene that Teniers has so often painted. We danced away late into the night, then had a glorious moonlight to drive home by.

I must not omit to mention one feature of these parties. It was the “Yacht Club rum punch,” made from old Plantation rum, placed in huge bowls, with an immense block of ice in each bowl, the melting ice being the only liquid added to the rum, except occasionally when I would pour a bottle of champagne in, which did it no injury.

AN ERA OF GREAT EXTRAVAGANCE.

CHAPTER XIV.

The first private Balls at Delmonico’s—A Nightingale who drove Four-in-hand—Private Theatricals in a Stable—A Yachting Excursion without wind and a Clam-bake under difficulties—A Poet describes the Fiasco—Plates for foot-stools and parboiled Champagne for the thirsty—The Silver, Gold, and Diamond Dinners—Giving presents to guests.

Let us now return to New York and its gaieties. The Assemblies were always given at Delmonico’s in Fourteenth Street, the best people in the city chosen as a committee of management, and under the patronage of ladies of established position. They were large balls, and embraced all who were in what may be termed General Society. They were very enjoyable. A distinguished banker, the head of one of our old families, then gave the first private ball at Delmonico’s to introduce his daughters to society. It was superb. The Delmonico rooms were admirably adapted for such an entertainment. There were at least eight hundred people present, and the host brought from his well-filled cellar his best Madeira and Hock. His was the pioneer private ball at this house. Being a success, it then became the fashion to give private balls at Delmonico’s, and certainly one could not have found better rooms for such a purpose. One of the grandest and handsomest fancy balls ever given here was given in these rooms a little later. Absent at the South, I did not attend it. Then came in an era of great extravagance and expenditure.

A beautiful woman, who was a nightingale in song, gave a fancy ball. It was brilliantly successful, and brought its leader to the front, and gave her a large following. It made her, with the personal attractions she possessed, the belle of that winter. Among other accomplishments, she drove four horses beautifully. I remember during the summer passing her on Bellevue Avenue as she sat perched up on the box-seat of a drag, driving four fine horses, handling the ribbons with a grace and ease that was admirable. All paid court to her. She won the hearts of both men and women.

At this time a man of great energy and pluck loomed up, and attracted, in fact absorbed to a great extent, the attention of society. Full of energy and enterprise, and supplied with abundant means, he did a great deal for New York, much that will live after him. He created Jerome Park; and not only created it, but got society into it. He made it the Goodwood of America, and caused society to take an interest in it. He opened that park most brilliantly, and, by his energy and perseverance, rendered it for years a most enjoyable place for all New Yorkers. Admiring the beautiful cantatrice, he proposed to her to turn his luxurious stables into a theatre, and ask the fashionable world to come and see her act “for sweet charity’s sake,”—to raise funds for the sick and wounded soldiers. In doing this, he assured her that she would literally bring the fashionable world to her feet to petition and sue for tickets of admission to this theatre. And so it proved. All flocked to see this accomplished woman act. The work of this energetic man was admirably done. He made a gem of his stable. I can but compare it to a little royal theatre. As you entered you were received by liveried servants, and by them conducted to your seat, where you found yourself surrounded by a most brilliant assemblage; and on the stage, as amateur actresses, supporting the fair singer, the fashionable beauties of that day. This was not the least of this generous man’s performances. Being an admirable four-in-hand driver, he at once revived the spirit for driving four horses. He turned out daily with his drag or coach loaded with beautiful women, and drove to every desirable little country inn in and about the city, where one could dine at all well, crossing ferries, and driving up Broadway with the ease and skill of a veteran whip, which he was. His projects were, if anything, too grand. He lavished money on all these things; his conceptions were good, but, like many great minds, at times he was too unmindful of detail. On one occasion, at Newport, he came to me, and told me he had mapped out a country fête, asked my advice about getting it up, but failed to take it, and then brought about his first fiasco. He asked the beau monde to embark on the yachts then lying in the harbor, and go with him to Stone Bridge to a dance and clambake. All the yachtsmen placed their yachts at his disposal. At 12 M., all Newport, i.e. the fashion of the place, was on these yachts. At the prow of the boats he had placed his champagne. Down came the broiling sun, and a dead calm fell upon the waters. Tugs were called in to tow the yachts. Orders had been given that not a biscuit or glass of wine was to be served to any of the party on these boats, that we might reach the feast at the Bridge with sharp appetites. The sun went down, and the night set in before we landed. We were then taken to an orchard, the high grass a foot deep all wet, and saw before us great plates of stewed soft clams and corn that had been cooked and ready for us at 2 P.M. The women put their plates on the grass, and their feet in them, so at least to have a dry footing. The champagne was parboiled, the company enveloped in darkness, and famished, so that all pronounced this kind of clambake picnic a species of fête not to be indulged in knowingly a second time. The great wit of the day, his boon companion, called it “The Melancholy Fête.” The following anonymous lines on this clambake were sent me:

An Adaptation of a Lamentation.
Clams, clams, clams,
Will always be thrown in my teeth.
Clams, clams, clams!
I’ll be crowned with a chowder wreath.

Bread and pickles and corn,
Corn and pickles and bread.
Whenever I sleep huge ghosts appear
With clamorous mouths to be fed.

Oh, women, with appetites strong!
Oh, girls, who I thought lived on air!
I did not mean to leave you so long
With nothing to eat, I declare.

Clams, clams, clams!
I have nothing but clams on the brain.
I’m sure all my life, and after my death
I’ll be roasted and roasted again.

Oh, tugs, why could you not pull?
Oh, winds, why would you not blow?
I’m sure I did all that man could do
That my clambake shouldn’t be slow.

Not in the least discouraged by this failure, returning to New York, he planned three dinners to be given by himself and two of his friends, to be the three handsomest dinners ever given in this city. Lorenzo Delmonico exclaimed, “What are the people coming to! Here, three gentlemen come to me and order three dinners, and each one charges me to make his dinner the best of the three. I am given an unlimited order, ‘Charge what you will, but make my dinner the best.’” Delmonico then said to me, “I told my cook to call them the Silver, Gold, and Diamond dinners, and have novelties at them all.” I attended these three dinners. Among other dishes, we had canvasback duck, cut up and made into an aspic de canvasback, and again, string beans, with truffles, cold, as a salad, and truffled ice cream; the last dish, strange to say, very good. At one dinner, on opening her napkin, each fair lady guest found a gold bracelet with the monogram of Jerome Park in chased gold in the centre. Now it must be remembered that this habit of giving ladies presents at dinners did not originate in this city. Before my day, the wealthy William Gaston, a bachelor, gave superb dinners in Savannah, Ga., and there, always placed at each lady’s plate a beautiful Spanish fan of such value that they are preserved by the grandchildren of those ladies, and are proudly exhibited to this day.

ON THE BOX SEAT AT NEWPORT.

CHAPTER XV.

The Four-in-Hand Craze—Postilions and Outriders Follow—A Trotting-Horse Courtship—Cost of Newport Picnics Then and Now—Driving off a Bridge—An Accident that might have been Serious—A Dance at a Tea-house—The Coachmen make a Raid on the Champagne—They are all Intoxicated and Confusion Reigns—A Dangerous Drive Home.

It seemed at this time, that the ingenuity of man was put to the test to invent some new species of entertainment. The winter in New York being so gay, people were in the vein for frolic and amusement, and feeling rich, as the currency was inflated, prices of everything going up, Newport had a full and rushing season. The craze was for drags or coaches. My old friend, the Major, was not to be outdone, so he brought out four spanking bays; and again, an old bachelor friend of mine, a man of large fortune, but the quietest of men, I found one fine summer morning seated on the box seat of a drag, and tooling four fine roadsters. But this did not satisfy the swells. Soon came two out-riders on postilion saddles, following the drag; and again, several pairs of fine horses ridden by postilions à la demi d’Aumont. A turnout then for a picnic was indeed an event. In those days, a beautiful spot on the water, called “The Glen,” was often selected for these country parties. It was a romantic little nook, about seven miles from Newport, on what is called the East Passage, which opens on the Atlantic Ocean.

A young friend of mine, then paying court to a brilliant young woman, came to me for advice. He wanted to impress the object of his attentions, and proposed to do so by hiring two of the fastest trotting horses in Rhode Island, and driving the young lady out behind them to the “Glen” picnic. His argument was, that it was more American than any of your tandem or four-in-hands, or postilion riding; that the pace he should go at would be terrific, and he would guarantee to do the seven miles within twenty minutes. He was what we call a thorough trotting-horse man; much in love; worshipped horses; disliked style in them, going in for speed alone. I tried to dissuade him.

“It will never do,” I said; “it is not the fashion; the lady you drive out will be beautifully dressed, and you will cover her with dust; besides, the pace will alarm her.”

“Never fear that, my man,” he answered. “The girl has grit; she will go through anything. She is none of your milk-and-water misses; I can’t go too fast for her.”

“Have it as you will, then,” I said; and off he went to Providence to secure, through influence, these two wonderfully speedy trotters.

We were all grouped beautifully at the Glen, when, all of a sudden, we heard something descending the hill at a terrific pace; it was impossible to make out what it was, as it was completely hidden by a cloud of dust. Down it came, with lightning speed, and when it got opposite to the Major and me, we heard a loud “Whoa, my boys, whoa!” and the vehicle came to a stop. The occupants, a man and woman, were so covered with mud and dust that you could barely distinguish the one from the other. I ran up to the side of the wagon, saw a red, indignant face, and an outstretched hand imploring me to take her out. Seizing my arm, she sprang from the wagon, exclaiming, “The horrid creature! I never wish to lay eyes on him again,” and then she burst into tears. Her whole light, exquisite dress was totally ruined, and she a sight to behold. Turning to him, I saw a glow of triumph in his face; his watch was in his hand. “I did it, by Jove! I did it, and ten seconds to spare!—they are tearers!”

I quietly replied, “They are indeed tearers, they have torn your business into shreds.”

“Fudge, man!” he said; “she wont mind it; she was a bit scared, to be sure; but she hung on to my arm, and we came through all right.” He then sought his victim. I soon saw by his dejected manner that she had given him the mitten, and, as I passed him, slowly walking his horses home, I philosophized to this extent: “Trotting horses and fashion do not combine.”

Our next great day-time frolic was at Bristol Ferry. There we had a large country hotel which we took possession of. We got the best dinner giver then in Newport to lend us his chef, and I took my own colored cook, a native of Baltimore, who had, at the Maryland Ducking Club, gained a reputation for cooking game, ducks, etc. We determined, on this occasion, to have a trial of artistic skill between a creole woman cook, the best of her class, and the best chef we had in this country. We were to have sixty at dinner; dishes confined to Spanish mackerel, soft-shell crabs, woodcock, and chicken partridges. It is needless to say, the Frenchman came off victorious, though my creole cook contended that the French chef would not eat his own cooked dishes, but devoured her soft-shell crabs.

On this occasion we had a grand turnout of drags, postilions à la demi d’Aumont, and tandems. I led the cotillion myself, dancing in the large drawing-room of the inn; and it all went so charmingly that it was late into the night when we left the place. It was as dark as Erebus. We had eleven miles to drive, and I saw that some of our four-in-hand drivers felt a little squeamish. My old bachelor friend had in his drag a precious cargo. On the box-seat with him sat our nightingale, and I had in my four-seated open wagon our queen of society and a famous Baltimore belle. “Is the road straight or crooked?” I was asked, on all sides. Having danced myself nearly to death, and being well fortified with champagne, I found it straight as an arrow, as I was then oblivious to its crooks and turns. Off we all started up the hill at a canter. I remember my friend, the Major, shouting to me, “The devil take the hindmost,” and the admonition to him of his old family coachman, who accompanied him that day, “Be careful, sir, the road is not as straight as it might be.” Driving along at a spanking pace, the horses fresh, the ladies jubilant, I as happy as a lord,—there was a scream, then another, then a plunge, and a splash of water. Dark as it was, standing up in my wagon, I shouted, “By Jove! he has driven off the bridge,”—and off the bridge he was, drag upset and four horses mired in mud and water. One young fellow, in the excitement of the moment, sprang to the side of my wagon, and tried to wrench off one of my lamps. How then I admired the plucky, cool little woman at my side! She never lost her presence of mind for a second; gave directions quietly and effectively, and soon brought order out of chaos. From a jolly, festive procession, we were turned into a sad, melancholy species of funeral cortège. The ladies were picked out of the wreck, and placed in the different drags and wagons, and we wended on our way at a walk, ten dreary miles to Newport. One brilliant youth of the Diplomatic Corps, as we passed a farm-house, making it just out in the dark, was asked to procure for our invalids a glass of water. He rushed to the house, banging against the door, and shouting, “House, house, house, wont you hear, wont you hear?” The old farmer poked his head out of the window, answering him, “Why, man, the house can’t talk! what do you want here at this time of night? I know who you are, you are some of McAllister’s picnickers. I saw you go by this morning. I s’pose you want milk, but you wont get a drop here.”

As picnics, country dinners, and breakfasts were then Newport’s feature, they took the place of balls, all the dancing and much of the dining being done in the open air. I would here say that as every family took to these parties their butler, and carried out the wines and all the dishes, their cost in money was insignificant. We would pay twenty-five dollars for the farm or grove to which we went for the day. Twenty-five dollars for the country band, as much for the hire of silver, linen, crockery, etc., and ten dollars for a horse, wagon and man to take everything out, making the entire outlay in money on each occasion eighty-five to a hundred dollars. A picnic dinner and dance at my farm, furnishing everything myself, no outside contributions, for fifty or sixty people, would cost me then three hundred dollars, everything included. What a difference to the present time! I got up one of these country dances and luncheons summer before last at my farm, where, under a pretty grove of trees, I had built a dancing platform from which you can throw a biscuit into the beautiful waters of Narragansett Bay. Lending the farm to the party, every one bringing a dish, hiring the servants and music, cost us in money eight hundred and six dollars and eighty-four cents. There were 140 people present. The railroad running through the farm, the train stopped on the place itself within a few rods of the group of trees. Leaving Newport at 2 P.M., in six minutes we are on the place, and at a quarter of five the train returned to us, thus ridding ourselves of coachmen and grooms, finding them all at the railway station when we reached Newport on our return at 5 P.M., to take us for our usual afternoon drive.

But to return to the past. When Newport was in its glory, and outshone itself, the young men of that day resolved to give me a lesson in picnic-giving. What they had done well in and about New York, they felt they could do equally well in Newport, so they sent to the city for Delmonico with all his staff, and invited all Newport to a dance and country dinner at a large teahouse some six miles from Newport, adjoining Oaklands, the then Gibbs farm, later on the property of Mr. August Belmont, and now belonging to Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, being his model farm, one of the loveliest spots on Newport Island. Delmonico took possession of this huge barrack of a house, and to work his waiters went to arrange in the large, old dining-room his beautiful collation, which was all brought from New York. The entire party were dancing the cotillion in the front parlor of the house, and grouped on its front piazzas. As 5 P.M. approached, an irresistible desire, an inward craving for food, became apparent. Committeemen were beset with the question, when are we going to have the collation? They rushed off to hurry up things, and then one by one reappeared with blanched faces, and an unmistakable anxious, troubled look. Finally they came to me with, “My dear fellow, what is to be done? Come and see for yourself.” Dragging me into the dining-room and pantries of the hotel I there indeed saw a sight to behold. All the coachmen and grooms had made a foray on the abundant supplies, tumbled Delmonico’s French waiters into the cellar of the hotel, and locked them up; then, taking possession of the dining-room, held high carnival. Every mouthful of solid food was eaten up, and all the champagne drunk; the ices, jellies, and confectionery they left untouched. As I viewed the scene, I recalled Virgil’s description of a wreck, “Apparent rari in gurgite nantes.” Every coachman and groom was intoxicated, and, as the whole party at once took flight to secure dinner at home, the scene on the road beggared description. The coachmen swayed to and fro like the pendulum of a clock; the postilions of the demi d’Aumonts hung on by the manes of their horses, when they lost their equilibrium. The women, as usual, behaved admirably. As one said to me, “My man is beastly intoxicated, but I shall appear not to notice it. The horses are gentle, they will go of themselves.” My old friend, the Major, at once held a council of war, and it was suggested that all turn in and thrash the fellows soundly, but prudence dictated that at that work man was as good as master, that the result might be doubtful; so all dolefully got away in the best manner possible. The Major thus harangued his old family coachman: “Richard, I am astonished at you; the other men’s rascally conduct does not surprise me, but you, an old family servant, to so disgrace yourself, shocks me.” The reply was, “I own up, Major, but indade, I am a weak craythur.

”

SOCIAL UNITY.

CHAPTER XVI.

Grand Banquet to a Bride-elect—She sat in a bank of Roses with Fountains playing around her—An Anecdote of Almack’s—The way the Duke of Wellington introduced my Father and Dominick Lynch to the Swells—I determine to have an American Almacks’—The way the “Patriarchs’” was founded—The One-man Power Abolished—Success of the Organization.