XXHOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849
If there is a more restful spot on earth than a comfortable rocking-chair on a deep veranda, with a nearby view of the dancing waters of the gulf through a grove of tall pines, commend me to it. A whole month on the west coast of Florida, all sand underfoot, pines and oaks overhead, is ideal for fagged-out, tired-out, frayed-out humanity from busy cities. This is not an advertisement, so I do not propose to tell where six people from six different and widely separated parts of the country last year dropped down from the skies, as it were, upon just such a delightful straight mile of gulf coast.
One halts at a “turpentine depot” and takes a queer little tram to the Gulf, seven miles away. Tram is hauled over wooden rails by two tired nags whose motions suggest the lazy air of the pines. It is loaded with the baggage—crates of hunting dogs—(fine hunting abounds), the mail bag, some miscellaneous freight and finally the passengers.
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.
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. She brings forth from a long-forgotten corner of memory’s closet a picture covered with the dust of years, and lovingly brushes away the dimness, when behold! old Pass Christian, dear old Pass Christian, before the day of railroads and summer cottages, before the day of 6 o’clock dinners and trailingskirts, of cotillion favors and abbreviated bathing suits.
The old hotel was built with a wing or extension at each end, which formed with the main building three sides of a square. There was no attempt at landscape gardening; not even a rosebush or an oleander decorated the little court. No plaster Apollos and Dianas such as were seen peeping about the shrubbery of the various cottages (like the De Blancs’ and Ducayets’) that dotted in those days the old bayou road, and were considered so very decorative, but plain sand and scrub such as meet my eye to-day on this little frequented part of the Florida Gulf Coast. There was no beach driving or riding of gay people then—none here now.
I fly back to the summer of ’49, and live again with the young girls who made life one long summer’s day. We walked the pier, the image of one before my eyes now, to the bath-houses in muslin dresses. Bathing suits were hideous, unsightly garments, high neck, long sleeves, long skirts, intended for water only! The young girls returned under parasols and veils. How decorous! Nobaigneuse decolletéeto be seen on the beach. Our amusements were simple and distinctly ladylike. There was no golf or tennis, not even the innocent croquet,to tempt thedemoisellesto athletics, so they drifted more to the “Lydia Languish” style.
There was no lack of beaux who came, more than enough to “go round,” by the Saturday boats, in time for the weekly hop—danced all Saturday night and returned to weekly drudge (as they called it) in the city. The bonbons and flowers they brought vanished and faded long before the little boat with its freight of waving hats and handkerchiefs faded in the twilight of a summer Sunday.
Also there come to my dream two dainty Goodman sisters, wonderful and most accommodating musicians they were. One was already affianced to her cousin, George Nathan. He was a prosperous business man at that time. I doubt if even his name is known among his thrifty race in New Orleans to-day. He carried off his accomplished wife to Rio Janeiro, and made his home in that country, which was as far away to us then, as the North Pole is to-day. The younger sister met that summer at the Pass and eventually married E. C. Wharton, an attaché of thePicayune, whose articles were signed “Easy Doubleyou.” He was soon dancing attendance on the pretty, curly haired girl. I remember how he wandered around with pad and pencil, and we girls were horribly afraid of being put in thePicayune. No reason for fear, as it was before thedawn of the society page and personal column. The Whartons drifted to Texas during the war, and at Houston they found already a host of stranded Louisianians; but “Easy Doubleyou” had a government appointment of some kind. The rest of us were simply runaways.
There, too, was Dick Taylor, propelled in a wheel chair over that hotel veranda, an interesting convalescent from severe illness, or perhaps a wound, I do not recall which, his valet so constant in attendance that we wondered how the young man ever got an opportunity to whisper sweet nothings into the ear of lovely Myrtle Bringier—but he did! And that was the fourth engagement of the season that culminated in marriage, which signalizes the superior advantages of a hotel veranda, and most especially that of dear old Pass Christian. Dick Taylor had a magnetic personality, which overshadowed the fact (to paraphrase a Bible text) he was the only son of his father, and he the President.
In New York some years ago “The Little Church Around the Corner,” still garnished with its wealth of Easter lilies and fragrant with spring bloom, threw wide its portals for the last obsequies of this loved and honored Confederate general. In that throng of mourners was one who had known him in his early manhood on the veranda of that oldPass Christian hotel, and whose heart had followed his career with ever-increasing admiration and veneration even unto the end. I lay aside my old picture forever. Alas! it remains “only a dream at the best, but so sweet that I ask for no more.”