XITHOUGHTS OF OLD
I shall begin to think I am in my second childhood by and by. I have just been reading of a fashionable wedding where the bride and her attendants carried flat bouquets with lace paper frills. I don’t doubt the revival of theporte bouquetwill come next, the slender bouquet holders made of filigree silver with a dagger like a short hatpin to stick clear through and secure the bouquet—a chain and ring attached to the holder and all could be hung from the finger. I used to think, a childish looker-on, that it was pretty to see the ladies in a quadrille “balancing to your partners,” “ladies changing,” etc., each with a tight little bouquet in a trim little holder swinging and banging about from the chain.
Later theporte bouquetswere abandoned, but the stiff little posies, in their lacy frills, remained. They were symmetrical, a camellia japonica, surrounded by a tiny row of heliotrope, then a row of Grand Duke jasmine, one of violets, finally asoupçonof greenery, and the paper bed. James Pollockhad a fund of such rare flowers to draw from, for though the Pollock home down on Royal street was the simplest of old Creole houses, flush on the street, only two steps from thebanquetteleading into a modest parlor, there was a tinyparterrein the rear, a vision of the most choice collection of plants. How it was managed and cultivated I don’t know, for it was hemmed in on all sides by buildings that intercepted much of the air and almost all of the sun’s rays. Still those camellias, Grand Dukes and violets thrived and bloomed, and delighted the heart of any girl to whom James, the best dancer in society, sent them in one of those tight little bouquets on the eve of a dance.
A Creole Parterre.
A Creole Parterre.
A Creole Parterre.
I have to-day a much largerparterrein my backyard, open to sun and rain and wind, but no amount of coddling brings anything better than dock-weed and tie-grass. I leave it to the climate of my own sunny Southland to explain the problem. Theporte bouquetwill no doubt come in time. I for one will hail an old friend, if I am “on deck” when it arrives.
Last Christmas what should my granddaughter receive but a mob cap of gold lace! almost exactly like one my mother wore before I can remember. Caps! Every woman when she arrived at middle age, and some who found them becoming at an earlier age, wore caps. My mother was considered very tasty and expert at cap-trimming. She had a papier mâché, or soft wood dummy head—I know she stuck pins into it—on which she fashioned her caps.
Mechlin lace (one rarely sees it now) was considered the fashionable cap lace. Remember cotton laces and Italian laces and machine-made laces were not in existence in those days, neither were Hamburg embroideries and Nottingham curtains, two awful products of to-day; and a thousand other make-believes, cheap and tawdry now. When mother’s fine Mechlin edgings became soiled she “did them up” herself, clapping the damp lace in her hands, pulling out and straightening thedelicate edges—drying them without heat; and she had a deft way, too, of what she called “pinching” with her dainty fingers; she knife pleated it. The net foundation was fitted to the wooden head, the lace was attached in folds and frills, and little pink rosebuds or some other tiny flower scattered tastefully here and there. Behold a dress cap! One can imagine the care and taste and time and thought consumed in its manufacture. And how the old lady must have appeared when in full dress!
Many of those dames wore little bunches of black curls to enhance the effect, those tight, stiff little curls that looked like they had been wound on a slate-pencil. Dear Mrs. Leonard Matthews always wore the black curls. Even a few years after the war I met the sweet old lady, curls and all, jet black, tight little curls, and she looked scarcely older than in my earliest recollection of her.
Well, I must return to cap trimmings to tell of a bride. She must have been in the neighborhood of seventy, for she made what her friends called a suitable match with a widower long past that age. They came to the St. Charles Hotel on a kind of honeymoon trip. She decorated her head, oh, ye cherubim and seraphim! with a fussy cap sprinkled with sprays of orange flowers!
I, who revel in a towering white pompadour,have just had the present of a soft silk cap, with frills and bows. I presume it will be useful on the breezy piazzas of the mountains a week hence; but it looks to me now that the caps of our mothers and grandmothers are on the march hitherward. I possess a few “Moniteurs des Dames,” dated in the late forties, that contain pictures and patterns for “bonnets,” as they were called. Who knows but they may be useful yet?
Now, “in regard to” (as a lady we all know prefaces every remark)—“in regard to” frills, in my young days we had to make our own frills. Nobody had dreamed even of machine-made ruchings any more than of vehicles that run all over the streets without the aid of horses. We made our frills of lawn, neatly gathered on to a band, and what is more, they had to be fluted with hot irons. The making was not beyond everybody’s skill, but the “doing up” and fluting was way beyond me, as beyond many others. How queer it is, when we recall to mind the images of people so long absent that they are almost forgotten, the image presents itself, emphasized by some peculiarity of dress or speech. When I think of Dr. Bein’s daughter Susanna, whom I knew and loved so well, it is with the beautifully fluted frill she always wore and so excited my envy. Now, every Biddy in the kitchenand every little darky one sees wandering around wears handsomer frills than Susanna and I ever dreamed of.
Parasols had heavy fringes; so, to show to advantage, they were carried upside down, the ferule end fitted with a ring to be, like the bouquet holders, hung from the finger. My sister had a blue parasol, with pink fringe, that I thought too beautiful for words. How I should laugh at it now!
Best frocks, such as could be utilized for dinners and parties, were made with short sleeves, “caps,” they were called, and tapes sewed in the armholes; long sleeves similarly equipped were tied in under the “caps.” I used to see even party guests take off their sleeves as they put on their gloves to descend to the dancing room. Black, heelless slippers, with narrow black ribbons, wound over the instep, and crossed and recrossed from ankle, way up, over white stockings, were the style; it was a pretty fashion.
I recall the autumn of 1849, when I, a young girl, was at the Astor House, in New York. Coming downstairs one morning to breakfast, how surprised I was at glaring notices posted on walls and doors, “Hop to-night.” You may well believe I was at the hop, though I had no suitable dress. I was only a looker-on.
When I mentioned slippers I recalled that hotel hop, for Mme. Le Vert wore a pink silk dress and pink satin slippers, all laced up and tied up with broad pink ribbons. Nobody had ever seen the like before. Mme. Walton, her mother, was on hand, and hopped, too, just as spry a hop as any young girl. I contrived to sidle along and keep near to Mme. Le Vert, for I was as fascinated as any one of her numerous beaux. Dr. Le Vert, by the way, had just started on a trip to Europe for his health. Going to Europe then was like taking a trip to Mars now.
I heard Mme. Le Vert talking to four different swains in four different languages. I believe she considered her linguistic versatility her strong point. She surely was a most remarkable woman. She was as tender and sweet to me, a very plain, simple, unattractive girl, as to her swellest friends. One does not easily forget such an episode of early life. I never met Mme. Le Vert after that autumn. We all returned South together on the Crescent City, the pioneer steamer between New York and New Orleans.
I will not moralize or sermonize over these reminiscences. They are all of the dead past. Both fashions and people are gone.