Eliza Ripley

“ Every man, it seemed, in the place, that could spare the time, wanted to see the great race. “Lee Count,” as a good many Kentuckians call Le Comte, was the most prominent rival of their boasted and beloved Lexington, and he showed mettle that astonished even those blind partisans, and added zest to the wagers. Ladies had never been in evidence at a horse race in Louisiana. The bare idea was a shock to the Creole mind, that dominated and controlled all the fashionable, indeed, all the respectable, minds in New Orleans at that day. But the Kentucky belles had minds of their own. ”

“ We who still linger would love to see a granite monument to the memory of the dear mammy who fostered our childhood. Our grandchildren, indeed our children, will never know the kind of mammies their ancestors were blessed with.
I know of two only of the old stock of nurses and housekeepers left. They were grown women when Sherman marched through Georgia, destroying their old homes, laying waste the land, and Butler sat down in New Orleans, wreaking vengeance on their hapless masters, and scattering their little bands of servants to the four winds. ”

“ The little body was carried past the “quarters” and beyond, to the negroes’ “burying ground,” where it lay in peaceful shadows of the trees the romping children loved so well. Martha lingered long on the mysterious border, fitfully fighting an apparently hopeless battle, the more tenderly and faithfully nursed by Mammy Charlotte, as the warm-hearted, childless woman realized the frail tenure of life held by the little negro whom she had ruled in varying moods of sternness and tenderness, untempered with judgment. ”

“ The guests, many of them, lived miles and miles away, in common country roads, often through dense woods—a long drive under best circumstances, a perilous one at night, everybody waiting, everybody in a hurry, everybody getting tired and fretful. It was long after the appointed time, and the New Orleans preacher had missed the train! Old Dilsey in the kitchen was mad because her pig was getting too brown; Elfey in the porch worrying that her ice cream was waiting too long; ladies in the parlor trying to kill time; men wandering around the front yard in restless groups. ”

“ On her trips she stopped at every little town and country post office, like Brusle landing and Lobdell’s store; answered every signal and every hail, shuttling across the river, back and forth, touching here for a keg of sirop de batterie, a hamper of oranges; touching at the very next plantation to take in somebody’s carpetbag or put ashore somebody’s darky, Capt. Ure always at his post on deck to expedite every move. La Belle Creole was not a freight boat, but a passenger [183] packet, par excellence. There were boats galore to handle freight, but only one Belle Creole! ”

“ Here on the broad verandas, as we rock and dream the lazy days away, visions visit me of the old hotel at Pass Christian in the forties. The oaks and three China trees in front of the veranda, and the view of the nearby waters, the whistle of mocking-birds among the china berries (thank heaven! sparrows have not found this Elysium) lend additional force to the semblance. One old lady, who hunts not, neither does she fish, rocks on the sunny veranda and dreams, as is the wont of those who have lived beyond their day and generation. ”

“ That is a truth about many households, one does all the neglected things, and picks up all the loose threads. Guests were made to understand if they required anything, from a riding horse to a fresh stick on the fire, from a mint julep to a bedroom candle, they had only to call Charlotte. She was never beyond the reach of a summons, day or night. She was mammy to all the children of the house, and all the other children that floated in from other people’s houses. It was Mammy Charlotte who hurriedly secreted the spoons (!) ”

“ The story of the finding of the long lost bonnet had spread over the yard and premises; fragments had even wafted to “the quarters,” with the mysterious rapidity and certainty that always attended a household event in the old plantation days.
“Mary Ann first,” said the master, as catching her suddenly and firmly by the neckband of her dress and imprisoning her struggling legs by wrapping her skirts tightly around them, he held her over the well-hole, head a little down. The struggles and writhings of the child were of no avail in the grasp of the strong man. ”

“ Housekeeping is vastly simplified since the days when my mother washed her teacups and spoons every morning. I love the old way; however, I do not practise it. If my grandchildren were to see the little wooden piggin brought me on a tray after breakfast, and see me wash the silver and glass they would think grandma has surely lost her mind. That purely domestic housewifely habit lasted long after my mother had passed away. It still is the vogue in many a New England household, but no doubt is among the lost virtues South. ”

“ In the twilight of my days, seated in my favorite chair, I rock away many a trip from my New Orleans home to the blue grass region of my ancestors. Dream trips they are, but dreams of real trips in the old days when steamboats and stages were the approved, in fact, the only, transportation for travelers. ”

“ The country hotel is pine; ceilings, floors, walls are pine, the home-made and built-in furniture is pine; a big fire, roaring in the open fireplace if the day is chilly, is also made of pine—the rich, red Florida pine, ever so much richer in color and in turpentine than the boasted Georgia article. With the fish swimming in front of this hotel and the birds flying behind, and rabbits running in both directions, it goes without saying the table is above the average. ”

“ Toilets in our day were simple, too. French muslins trimmed with real lace, pink and blue barèges with ribbons. Who sees a barège now? No need of jeweled stomachers, ropes of priceless pearls or diamond tiaras to embellish those Creole ladies, many of whom were direct descendants of French nobles; not a few could claim a drop of even royal blood.
Who were the beaux? And where are they now? If any are living they are too old to hobble into the pit and sit beside the old, bald men.
[68]
It was quite the vogue to saunter into Vincent’s, at the corner, on the way home. ”

“ Lafiton had straggling locks of white hair, falling over the collar of his great coat, reminding me of the picture of Little Nell’s grandfather, and the home of the Lafitons carried out the simile, for it was as melancholy and cheerless as any “Old Curiosity Shop” could be. There were two bright, capable girls in it, though, who never knew or saw anything better than the rickety old house, way up on stilts, that they lived in. ”

“ Fruit and vegetables were sent daily in a skiff to the town market. Ma chère madame, in her black silk blouse volante and her cap, with stiff, fluted frill tied under the chin, often let me help her make the formal little bouquets for the market, the dear old stiff bouquets, flat as a plate and nestling in a frill of lace paper! The doctor spent hours in his cabinet with his botanical treasures. Daily I was summoned to read to him his Paris Journal, and to write a composition. No teacher could have been more painstaking; no scholar more appreciative. ”

“ Tired as the horses are after the long, hard pull; tired as the coachman must be, he cracks his whip, and we gallop up the shady lane to the dear old door as briskly as though we were fresh from the stable. Long before we are fully there, and the steps of the nine-passenger coach can be lowered; long before the boys can jump off the top, a host of dear faces, both white and black, is assembled to greet us. ”

“ The whirl of the dance waxed as the night waned. The tired paterfamiliases sat around the rooms, too true to their mission to retire for a little snooze. They were restored to consciousness at intervals by liberal cups of strong coffee. Black William, our first violin, called out the figures, [262] “Ladies to the right!” “Set to your partners!”—and the young people whirled and swung around in the giddy reel as though they would never have such another opportunity to dance—as, indeed, many of them never did. From the porch and lawn windows black faces gazed at the inspiring scene. ”

“ Men of business, men of prominence, no longer society men, fulfilled their social duty once each year, stepped into the dining room at a nod from mother, who was as rarely in the parlor to “receive,” as the men who, at the sideboard, with a flourish of the hand and a cordial toast to the New Year, took a brandy straight. ”

“ La Belle Creole! That name will bring a smile, mayhap a tear, to your grandmother, so many sweet reminiscences of her young girlhood may be associated with the little coast packet that carried her a-visiting from New Orleans to plantation homes in “the days that were,” those leisurely days when there were no rail cars tearing and crashing over the land, no express companies to forward packages, no common carriers of any sort. A boat like La Belle Creole was a necessity. ”

“ Rocking away the remnant of a long and varied life, I find myself dreamingly entertaining guests who are long since departed to the “House of Many Mansions,” guests who came and stayed, and went, some of whom I had never seen before, and some I never heard from after, but there are guests and guests, as every housewife knows. Particularly country house guests come, whose city houses are not open to what a neighbor of mine calls “trunk visitors.” In the days of which I write, every house, especially every plantation house, had a conspicuous latch string outside the door. ”

“ Is it any surprise that the miscellaneous education we girls of seventy years ago in New Orleans had access to, culminated by fitting us for housewives and mothers, instead of writers and platform speakers, doctors and lawyers—suffragettes? Everybody was musical; every girl had music lessons and every mother superintended the study and practice of the one branch deemed absolutely indispensable to the education of a demoiselle. ”

“ So, perhaps, in the march of improvement, where none sing unless they possess a voice that would electrify a whole opera house audience, it is well the dear old songs of long ago are not resurrected and amplified to suit the tastes and requirements of to-day. I recall though, with a thrill of tender memory, hearing Jenny Lind sing “Home, Sweet Home”—just the simple ballad—without a single flourish when she was in New Orleans in 1851. ”

“ Years after the two old people had joined the immortals, I had occasion to call at the house. It was a great disappointment to find the parlor wall covered with stiff paper, representing slabs of white marble (marble, of all things, in that dingy red-brick house!) . Aurora and Diana, and perhaps Calypso, for I imagine the scope was sufficiently extensive to comprise such a picturesque immortal, were buried under simulated marble. A weather-beaten portrait of Major Morgan in full uniform hung right over the spot where Aurora drove her fluttering birds. ”

“ Every Kentucky woman loves a horse, and when Lexington was entered in the great State stake in 1854 a crowd of the crême de la crême of the Blue Grass country clamored to be present at the race. The St. Charles Hotel, then in the hands of those genial hosts, Messrs. Hall and Hildreth, was crowded for the event, beyond its capacity, for when that Kentucky contingent of women, unheralded and unexpected, swarmed into its broad parlor and halls, even the servants’ quarters, so near the roof that the only light admitted was skylight, were put into requisition. ”

“ All the old portraits and some awful prints (it was long before the chromo era) were fished out of closets and other hiding places and hung about on the white walls. One old man with a tremendously long neck and a stiff black stock to help hold up his head, and a fierce look, had a pair of eyes that looked like great daubs of ink. His portrait decorated the parlor. ”

“ These old schools and teachers march before my mind’s eye to-day; very vivid it all is to me, though the last of them, and perhaps all those they tried to teach, have passed away. Children who went to Mme. Granet and Mme. Delarouelle and Dr. Hawks and all the other schools of that day, sent their daughters, a decade or two later, to Mme. Desrayoux. Now she is gone and many of the daughters gone also. And it is left to one old lady to dig out the past, and recall, possibly to no one but herself, New Orleans schools, teachers and scholars of seventy years ago. ”