CHAPTER V
One of the first events of social importance in the early sixties was the visit of the Prince of Wales to New York. I remember the pretty, slender, fair-haired youth very well, and went to the ball given in his honor. Ladies then dressed in the style of Eugénie's portrait by Winterhalter — long, flowing trains, a rather small hoop, tight sleeves, the low-necked dress defined around the neck with a berthe of lace, and the hair dressed low in bandeaux under the ears, with wreaths and streaming garlands of artificial flowers on the head. Certainly the style left a fine figure well to itself, with no impertinent deformities.
Very aristocratic and grand looked the assemblage in the old Academy of Music at the ball given to greet the Prince.
The Fishes, Belmonts, Astors, Cuttings, Morrises, Kings, Livingstons, Hamiltons, Jays, Duers, Emmets, Russells, Cunards, Howlands, Aspinwalls, Grinnells, Schuylers, Pells, and Rhinelanders made then a very decided and exclusive circle, of which Mrs. Belmont might be called the fashionable leader. Mrs. Hamilton Fish, Mrs. Robert Cutting, and Mrs. J. J. Astor were the duchesses; Mrs. Lloyd Aspinwall and Mrs. G. G. Howland the great beauties. Miss Helen Russell was elected to dance with the Prince. A very beautiful girl, whom I saw for the first time that evening, was Miss Pierrepont, of Brooklyn, who afterwards married Mr. Rutherford Stuyvesant, and who died in her early married life.
This ball, however, was more municipal than exclusive. I remember that Mr. Maunsell B. Field, a very accomplished literary man, took great interest in it, and was especially distressed when a loud explosion took place and down went the floor, a great temporary structure built over the stage and parquet of the Academy. I remember seeing strong men grow pale at this catastrophe; some women shrieked, and the Duke of Newcastle dragged the little Prince out of harm's way. One friend of mine, who had a great horror of balls, happened to stand directly over the very spot where the floor sank gently down into a sort of Y-shaped funnel and then stopped. "There," said she, "I told you so!" as her husband dragged her out. It might have been the most frightful catastrophe of the year, but it was, mercifully, not. It was easily mended, and the Prince was gayly dancing and talking and laughing over the late chasm. It was great "nuts" to him, doubtless.
I principally enjoyed talking to the Duke of Newcastle, who told me of some of his anxieties about the Prince.
"Prince, how air you? and how's your mother?" was the address of one lady to the rather astonished boy. I liked to see the gay procession of carriages and soldiers who accompanied the Prince on his way from his steamer to his hotel through crowds of gazers. The city was en fête. It was but a little city then compared with what it is now. Albert Edward bowed to right and left, and put up his hand to smooth his hair, boyish fashion. He visited Mr. Buchanan, the President, and then went on to Richmond, where he was not so well treated.
Mr. Buchanan wrote a beautiful letter to Queen Victoria about the manly bearing of her son, and of how well he had passed through a trying ordeal for one of his age. Indeed, Albert Edward always had tact; he has it still. "Dignified, frank, and affable, he has conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people," said Mr. Buchanan in this very good letter.
Probably one of the many reasons why Victoria and Albert were so friendly to the North when their friendship was needed was their remembrance of the kindness of the Northern people to their son.
Poor Mr. Buchanan! the Northerners were not satisfied that he was trying to prevent the war, and General Dix's emphatic message to an officer of the navy, "If any one fires on the American flag, shoot him on the spot," fired the American heart; and yet all the Southerners and Washingtonians thought Mr. Buchanan was doing exactly right. Miss Josephine Seaton wrote to Mr. Buchanan, in June, 1862: "I consider you the last constitutional President we shall ever see. At a moment when passion whirled the country to frenzy you had the true courage to refrain, to abide within the lines marked out by the Constitution for the Executive. Were you still with us we should not be embarked in this fearful fratricidal strife."
Such were the two sides of the shield. I think every American should be glad to have not seen that fratricidal strife.
And yet it was profoundly grand and heart-stirring. I had just grown to know Theodore Winthrop, the young author of Cecil Dreeme — a name which seemed to describe him. And it was heart-breaking to learn that his life ended at Ball's Bluff. I remember the soft summer morning when I looked from my window to see a gun-carriage with a coffin covered with roses, on which lay his little blue cap, his sorrowing friends walking by his side. The last of Theodore Winthrop! The next day five young captains were borne by dead on their shields. It seemed as if not all the principles in the world were worth that agony. Had it not been for the Sanitary Commission, our hearts would have broken.
It is amazing to remember how every one responded to the trumpet-call which Dr. Bellows sent forth, how every woman became a "worker" for the soldiers in the field. It was no holiday enthusiasm; it was the business of life.
I became the secretary of the Metropolitan Fair, and wrote innumerable letters to all our representatives in Europe. Mr. Motley and Mr. Marsh (at Rome) responded nobly. All answered well. I only happen to remember these two men whose letters were uncommonly eloquent. I remember that I sold Mr. Motley's letter for fifteen dollars at our autograph counter — a fact which I told him in 1869, when he was minister to England. I said "that ardent youth would have bought your name over again half a dozen times for that amount, Mr. Motley." "Well," said he, "I will let him have it very cheap now." After a winter's work we sent Dr. Bellows "one million three hundred and sixty-five dollars," in one check, as the result of our winter's work at the Metropolitan Fair.
Richard Grant White was the secretary of the male part of the work, and together we got up a Dramatic Committee which was very successful in its little way. Indeed, we made twelve thousand dollars in a month. Mr. Lester Wallack became stage-manager, and ladies and gentlemen worked hard in their various parts at comedy and opera. One of our most beautiful jeunes premiers was Archie Pell, and our play-bills bore this striking record (he left his part unplayed one evening): "Lieutenant Pell obliged to leave for the seat of war." It was all like the ball the night before Waterloo.
A strange carmagnole gayety reigned in society. People were only half sane. They went to the theatre madly, worked seven hours a day at the Sanitary Commission, and then danced all night. Young fops went off to the war and became wonderful soldiers. "The puppies fight well." Leaders of the german became good leaders of men, and one of the best drill-master generals had been a dancing-master.
In our own ranks at the fair, Mrs. Hamilton Fish was our president, Mrs. David Lane vice-president; Mrs. Astor was a diligent worker, Mrs. James B. Colgate very ably led off an auxiliary in Union Square, and a great many earnest women killed themselves by overwork. A most gifted and rare woman, one of our first humorists, Mrs. C. P. Kirkland, fell dead in the fair building one crowded evening; and Mrs. David Dudley Field died at her own house, just after leaving the fair.
One of the most curious epidemics was that of an unbounded generosity. Everybody would give away his or her most treasured possession to be sold for the soldiers. I have always been afraid that many rare editions of books, taken from libraries and committed to these fairs, and many an autograph, were sacrificed. Old silver, too, was given with reckless freedom, to be sadly missed afterwards. And none of them brought what they were worth.Mais c'est la guerre. War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace, and we saw the worst of it in many ways.
We went on, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the soldier, binding up his wounds, harboring the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to the prisoner, and burying the dead, until that blessed day at Appomattox Court House relieved the strain. I went to Washington in 1862-3, when it was a camp. Probably no capital in a state of siege was ever more gay and amusing. Foreigners, princes, and potentates, names of a thousand years and names of yesterday, were all jumbled in a state of frenzy and confusion. And the mud! Oh, the mud! I saw General McClellan with his two young aides, the French princes. Count de Paris and Duc de Chartres, ride into Washington so encrusted with mud that they looked like fossil monsters.
All about the city for thirty miles spread the tents, the camp-fires, the stockades of a citizen soldiery, apprentices to the great art of war. Every new condition of human life, every possible embarrassment of climate, food, and shelter, came to try men's souls. Suffering of the keenest dwelt in those tents, besides joviality and excitement; for the light, easily amused American temperament found much to like and to laugh at even in the surroundings of cold and mud, poor food, and ineradicable dirt, not to speak of the sober realities of the measles and scarlet-fever and smallpox and typhoid fever, all of which paid our army a visit from time to time.
I went to the great ball at the White House given by Mr. Lincoln to General McClellan. There were five thousand people at this ball, and ten thousand outside disappointed. All the upper grades of the army and navy, the diplomatic corps, the distinguished members of the two Houses, the Supreme Court, the cabinet, foreigners of rank, and that class of persons who, having none of these claims, are, by some subtle magnetism, among those who are always invited everywhere — all these were there.
The two French princes were, of course, most conspicuous and honored. The Comte de Paris was then tall, slender, good-looking, and with the ideal manners of a prince. The Duc de Chartres was taller, thinner, less handsome, but with fine manners. They were both young enough to enjoy a ball and the society of young ladies.
There were the brilliant young soldiers gathered from the ranks of civil life, over whom hung the fatal pall; but the clash of civil war paused while the waltzes played, and the gay festival went on while Death waited outside. A great, original, and distinct form, a grotesque figure perhaps, but lighted up with a pair of wonderful eyes, stood there to receive the guests — a man over whom hung the deepest trials and the baleful death of assassination, Abraham Lincoln.
His smile and voice were beautiful and his eyes superb. There his beauty ended, but the magnetic result of genius remained. Every one is glad to have touched his hand.
We all felt that the men about us were making history, and that we were looking at heroes, if we could only find them out. Mine was General McClellan, whom I always continued to admire. I remember now what a thrill ran through me as he was kind enough to come and talk to me. His style was very quiet and reserved, but his conversation had a charm, impressing one with the feeling that he could say a great deal more if he only would.
Washington was at that time full of illy regulated and discontented spirits. Women also had ranged all the way from flannels to flirtation. Among many better women was the femme incomprise, who wanted to "nurse in the hospitals." She, however, wished to do the poetry of nursing — the writing of letters for some mysterious nobleman who was now posing as a common soldier, and who should make this beautiful and fashionable nurse his confidante.
Then, again, there were women spies and women traitors in high places who had the inside track, and who sheltered themselves behind their sex. This miserable spy business, which seems one of the worst horrors of war, contaminating him who gives and him who takes, was amplified and most terribly complicated by the fact that the daughters and wives of distinguished Northern generals were perhaps Southern sympathizers and ready to betray the secrets of the Northern army. There was one such who gave General McClellan great trouble. She was graceful and winning. She went through the camps learning the character of army officers; was as keen and sagacious as she was winning, and was a favorite with all men of mark. And what a strange time it was! Who knew his neighbor? Who was a traitor and who a patriot? The hero of to-day was the suspected of to-morrow. No one knew when he went to bed whether he should rise a general, or, ceasing to be anybody, should be consigned to disgrace and the Capitol prison; for our great War Minister, possessed of strong virtues, was also arbitrary and violent almost to a fault.
Through many such a maze was the plain, honest, incorruptible soul of General McClellan bound to travel until it met relief in action. The plans of the army, however carefully prepared, however secretly conceived, became known to the enemy before they were known to the President. There were traitors in the most secret council-chambers. Generals, senators, and secretaries looked at each other with suspicious eyes. At length a woman discovered one traitor, and thus another was unmasked; and some were asked to cross the sea, and did so.
I think history has not sufficiently emphasized this distracting element in our early warlike days. It was inevitable, perhaps, in a civil war, when father and daughter, and husband and wife, brother and sister, were armed against each other. It is a great wonder that the city of Washington was not betrayed, burned, destroyed a half-dozen times.
The scene for four years was "idyllic, grotesque, and barbaric," and society was most interesting. The student of the romantic side of life had great opportunities. Women of genius, sparkle, and even of eccentricity were sure to succeed. Washington society has always demanded less and given more than any society in this country — demanded less of applause, deference, etiquette, and has accepted as current coin quick wit, appreciative tact, and a talent for talking. The slender figures on horseback of the pretty women made the Long Bridge look like the Row in London, and the physical exercise gave them splendid color.
Picnics out at the camps were the fashion. The camp equipage, tin cups and plates, knives and forks of the simplest. Spartan fare, all added to the attraction of the feast, and as all cavalrymen are bound to be dashing, one or two such were always at the head of the feast, pouring sympathetic and most dangerous compliments into the ears of a New York or Philadelphia belle. It was romance in its concrete form, while the presence of a beautiful woman in a camp has been decidedly fascinating since the days of Antony and Cleopatra.
The cloud was so dark that it needed all the bright lights that could be turned upon it. But for four years there was a contagion of nobility in the land, and the best blood North and South poured itself out a libation to propitiate the deities of Truth and Justice. The great sin of slavery was washed out, but at what a cost!
But for this no work was too hard, no effort too great, no sacrifice too sublime. The thinking bayonets, the men fighting for an idea with no idea of conquest, nothing to gain, facing frightful loss, probable death — such men had different faces from the ordinary soldier. As one heard them chanting their hymns to the accompaniment of iron heels and clanking bayonets there was an expression so lofty, so touching, that no one who has heard it will ever forget.
And the day after was a bright and prosperous one in all our cities. Equipages dashed out in foreign liveries; women dressed superbly; palaces began to go up into the air; New York looked as if she had inherited the wealth of the Indies; and so she had — on paper.
Pay-day came somewhat later on, and has recurred frequently since. But the way these two armies melted immediately into good citizens, how they took up the plough and the hoe — that is the strangest and the most inexplicable fact of all.
During the years after the war, and when General Grant had become President, I made many visits to Washington; twice to the hospitable home of Governor Morgan, whose handsome house was on the very site of the former isolated hut where my negro washer-woman had lived in the early forties. Washington grew like a gourd in the night, and was then fast becoming what it is now, the most beautiful of cities.
Sir Edward Thornton was the English Minister; the Hon. Hamilton Fish was Secretary of State, and his dear accomplished wife was filling her place as it has seldom been filled. I saw the High Joints (as they were facetiously called) in all their glory at her house at a party — Sir Stafford Northcote, Earl de Grey, etc. The High Joint Commission presented a noble list of names on both sides. One of the most agreeable men at Washington at this time, and for many years after, was the Hon. Henry B. Anthony, of Rhode Island, a dear friend, a polished and cultivated man.