A Celebrated Social Event  
Early in the season of 1857–’8, our friend Mrs. Senator Gwin announced her intention of giving a ball which should eclipse every gathering of the kind that had ever been seen in Washington. Just what its character was to be was not yet decided; but, after numerous conferences with her friends in which many and various suggestions were weighed, the advocates for the fancy ball prevailed over those in favour of a masquerade, to which, indeed, Senator Gwin himself was averse, and these carried the day.
Surely no hostess ever more happily realised her ambitions! When the function was formally announced, all Washington was agog. For the ensuing weeks men as well as women were busy consulting costumers, ransacking the private collections in the capital, and conning precious volumes of coloured engravings in a zealous search for original and accurate costuming. Only the Senators who were to be present were exempt from this anticipatory excitement, for Senator Gwin, declaring that nothing was more dignified for members of this body than their usual garb, refused to appear in an assumed one, and so set the example for his colleagues.
As the time approached, expectation ran high. Those who were to attend were busy rehearsing their characters and urging the dressmakers and costumers to the perfect completion of their tasks, while those who were debarred deplored their misfortune. I recall a pathetic lament from my friend Lieutenant Henry Myers, who was 127obliged to leave on the United States ship Marion on the fourth of April (the ball was to occur on the ninth), in which he bemoaned the deprivations of a naval officer’s life, and especially his inability to attend the coming entertainment.
When the evening of the ball arrived there was a flutter in every boudoir in Washington, in which preparation for the great event was accelerated by the pleasurable nervousness of maid and mistress. Mrs. Gwin’s costume, and those of other leading Washingtonians, it was known, had been selected in New York, and rumours were rife on the elegant surprises that were to be sprung upon the eventful occasion.
With Senator Clay and me that winter were three charming cousins, the Misses Comer, Hilliard and Withers. They impersonated, respectively, a gypsy fortune-teller, a Constantinople girl, and “Titania”; and, to begin at the last (as a woman may do if she will), a wonderful “Titania” the tiny Miss Withers was, robed in innumerable spangled tulle petticoats that floated as she danced, her gauze wings quivering like those of a butterfly, and her unusually small feet glistening no less brilliantly with spangles.
“Miss Withers, yon tiny fairy,” wrote Major de Havilland, who in his “Metrical Glance at the Fancy Ball” immortalised the evening, “as ‘Titania’ caused many a Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Miss Hilliard, whose beauty was well set off in a costly and picturesque costume of the East, owed her triumph of the evening to the kindness of Mrs. Joseph Holt, who had bought the costume (which she generously placed at my cousin’s disposal) during a tour of the Orient. So attractive was my cousin’s charming array, and so correct in all its details, that as she entered Mrs. Gwin’s ballroom, a party of Turkish onlookers, seeing the familiar garb, broke into applause.
128Miss Comer, in a brilliant gown that was plentifully covered with playing-cards, carried also a convenient pack of the same, with which she told fortunes in a mystifying manner, for I had coached her carefully in all the secrets of the day. I must admit she proved a clever pupil, for she used her knowledge well whenever an opportunity presented, to the confusion of many whose private weaknesses she most tormentingly exposed.
My chosen character was an unusual one, being none other than that remarkable figure created by Mr. Shillaber, Aunt Ruthy Partington. It was the one character assumed during that memorable evening, by one of my sex, in which age and personal attractions were sacrificed ruthlessly for its more complete delineation.
I was not the only one anxious to impersonate the quaint lady from Beanville, over whose grammatical faux pas all America was amusing itself. Ben Perley Poore no sooner heard of my selection of this character than he begged me to yield to him, but I was not to be deterred, having committed to heart the whole of Mrs. Partington’s homely wit. Moreover, I had already, the previous summer, experimented with the character while at Red Sweet Springs, where a fancy ball had been given with much success, and I was resolved to repeat the amusing experience at Mrs. Gwin’s ball.
Finding me inexorable, Mr. Poore at last desisted and chose another character, that of Major Jack Downing. He made a dashing figure, too, and we an amusing pair, as, at the “heel of the morning,” we galloped wildly over Mrs. Gwin’s wonderfully waxed floors. The galop, I may add in passing, was but just introduced in Washington, and its popularity was wonderful.
If I dwell on that evening with particular satisfaction, the onus of such egotism must be laid at the door of my flattering friends; for even now, when nearly twoscore years and ten have passed, those who remain of that 129merry assemblage of long ago recall it with a smile and a tender recollection. “I can see you now, in my mind’s eye,” wrote General George Wallace Jones, in 1894; “how you vexed and tortured dear old President Buchanan at Doctor and Mrs. Gwin’s famous fancy party! You were that night the observed of all observers!” And still more recently another, recalling the scene, said, “The orchestra stopped, for the dancers lagged, laughing convulsively at dear Aunt Ruthy!”
Nor would I seem to undervalue by omitting the tribute in verse paid me by the musical Major de Havilland:
“Mark how the grace that gilds an honoured name,
Gives a strange zest to that loquacious dame
Whose ready tongue and easy blundering wit
Provoke fresh uproar at each happy hit!
Note how her humour into strange grimace
Tempts the smooth meekness of yon Quaker’s face.[13]
But—denser grows the crowd round Partington;
’T’were vain to try to name them one by one.”[14]
It was not without some trepidation of spirit that I surrendered myself into the hands of a professional maker-up of theatrical folk and saw him lay in the shadows and wrinkles necessary to the character, and adjust my front piece of grey hair into position; and, as my conception of the quaint Mrs. Partington was that 130of a kindly soul, I counselled the attendant—a Hungarian attaché of the local theatre—to make good-natured vertical wrinkles over my brow, and not horizontal ones, which indicate the cynical and harsh character.
My disguise was soon so perfect that my friend Mrs. L. Q. C. Lamar, who came in shortly after the ordeal of making-up was over, utterly failed to recognise me in the country woman before her. She looked about the room with a slight reserve aroused by finding herself thus in the presence of a stranger, and asked of Emily, “Where is Mrs. Clay?” At this my cousins burst into merry laughter, in which Mrs. Lamar joined when assured of my identity.
Thus convinced of the success of my costume, I was glad to comply with a request that came by messenger from Miss Lane, for our party to go to the White House on our way to Mrs. Gwin’s, to show her our “pretty dresses,” a point of etiquette intervening to prevent the Lady of the White House from attending the great ball of a private citizen. Forthwith we drove to the Executive Mansion, where we were carried sans cérémonie to Miss Lane’s apartments. Here Mrs. Partington found herself in the presence of her first audience. Miss Lane and the President apparently were much amused at her verdancy, and, after a few initiative malapropisms, some pirouettes by “Titania” and our maid from the Orient, done to the shuffling of our little fortune-teller’s cards, we departed, our zest stimulated, for the Gwin residence.
My very first conquest as Mrs. Partington, as I recall it now, was of Mrs. Representative Pendleton, whom I met on the stairs. She was radiantly beautiful as the “Star-Spangled Banner,” symbolising the poem by which her father, Francis Scott Key, immortalised himself. As we met, her face broke into a smile of delicious surprise.
131“How inimitable!” she cried. “Who is it? No! you shan’t pass till you tell me!” And when I laughingly informed her in Aunt Ruthy’s own vernacular, she exclaimed: “What! Mrs. Clay? Why! there isn’t a vestige of my friend left!”
My costume was ingeniously devised. It consisted of a plain black alpaca dress and black satin apron; stockings as blue as a certain pair of indigos I have previously described, and large, loose-fitting buskin shoes. Over my soft grey front piece I wore a high-crowned cap, which, finished with a prim ruff, set closely around the face. On the top was a diminutive bow of narrowest ribbon, while ties of similarly economical width secured it under the chin. My disguise was further completed by a pair of stone-cutter’s glasses with nickel rims, which entirely concealed my eyes. A white kerchief was drawn primly over my shoulders, and was secured by a huge medallion pin, in which was encased the likeness, as large as the palm of my hand, of “my poor Paul.”
On my arm I carried a reticule in which were various herbs, elecampane and catnip, and other homely remedies, and a handkerchief in brilliant colours on which was printed with fearless and emphatic type the Declaration of Independence. This bit of “stage property” was used ostentatiously betimes, especially when Aunt Ruthy’s tears were called forth by some sad allusion to her lost “Paul.” In my apron pocket was an antique snuff-box which had been presented to me, as I afterward told Senator Seward, by the Governor of Rhode Island, “a lover of the Kawnstitution, Sir.”
But, that nothing might be lacking, behind me trotted my boy “Ike,” dear little “Jimmy” Sandidge (son of the member from Louisiana), aged ten, who for days, in the secrecy of my parlour, I had drilled in the aid he was to lend me. He was a wonderful little second, and the 132fidelity to truth in his make-up was so amusing that I came near to losing him at the very outset. His ostentatiously darned stockings and patched breeches, long since ............