Thackeray carried away from Philadelphia such pleasant recollections of the Wistar Parties, and the mirth and good cheer there enjoyed, that he thus refers to them in a letter written to Mr. William B. Reed from Washington in 1853. He has just heard of the death of his friend Mr. William Peter, British Consul to Philadelphia.
“Saturday I was to have dined with him, and Mrs. Peter wrote saying he was ill with influenza: he was in bed with his last illness, and there were to be no more Whister parties for him. Will Whister himself, hospitable pig-tailed shade, welcome him to Hades? And will they sit down—no, stand up—to a ghostly supper, devouring the ιφθιμους ψυχας of oysters and all sorts of birds?”
Something else than the mighty oysters impressed the genial novelist, and that was the face and figure of John Irwin, a well-known head-waiter, who so resembled the terrapin over which he presided that Thackeray has, in a few rapid pencil-strokes, put him down on paper as a fine specimen of a diamond-back. Those who still remember Irwin’s great paunch and shining face will recognize his portrait in Mr. Thackeray’s “Orphan of Pimlico.” Thus, this latter-day Bogle, although there arose in his time no poet, like Nicholas Biddle, to embalm his virtues in humorous verse, has, like the “colorless colored man,” been immortalized by the hand of genius.
The pleasing side of Philadelphia social life must have left its impress upon the receptive mind of Thackeray, as he writes from Switzerland in July of the same year,—
“Since my return from the West, it was flying from London to Paris, and vice versa, dinners right and left, parties every night. If I had been in Philadelphia I could scarcely have been more feasted. Oh, you unhappy Reed! I see you (after that little supper with McMichael) on Sunday at your own table, when we had that good Sherry-Madeira, turning aside from the wine-cup with your pale face! That cup has gone down this well so often (meaning my own private cavity) that I wonder the cup isn’t broken, and the well as well as it is.... I always remember you and yours, and honest Mac, and Wharton, and Lewis, and kind fellows who have been kind to me and I hope will be kind to me again.”
The “Mac” is evidently Mr. Morton McMichael, to whose whiskey punch Mr. Thackeray alludes with tenderness in another letter, and who is described by all who knew him as the most genial of men, a very “king of good fellows.” So great were his social talents that, like Shenstone’s Frenchwoman who could “draw wit out of a stone,” he possessed the power to redeem from stagnation the dullest of dinners by his happy faculty of giving his best and leading others to do the same.
The “Lewis” alluded to by Mr. Thackeray is Mr. William D. Lewis, more recently dead; another delightful dinner-talker. Possessed of rare bonhomie, and furnished with a fund of anecdotes of travel,—for he had lived some years in Russia,—he brought mirth and cheer into the circles to which he was welcomed, and was even known, on occasions, to sing some familiar household verses, as “Home, Sweet Home,” in the Russian language, to the great amusement, if not to the edification, of his hearers.
In 1842, Mr. Tyson records only two of the original members of 1818 still surviving, Dr. R. M. Patterson and Robert Walsh. The kindly face of Mr. Vaughan (Johnny Vaughan, as his intimates called him), first Dean of the Wistar Association, had only lately disappeared from the circle. Although death had sadly thinned the ranks of original membership, a number of honored names filled the blanks: among these, Horace Binney, William M. Meredith, John Sergeant, Joshua Francis Fisher, Judge Kane, Langdon Cheves, from South Carolina, Thomas Isaac Wharton, and, there always being a large proportion of medical men, such distinguished sons of the healing art as Dr. Robert Hare, Dr. Thomas C. James, Dr. John K. Mitchell, Dr. Isaac Hays, physician and writer, Dr. Franklin Bache and his friend Dr. George B. Wood closely associated with him in medical literature, Dr. Charles D. Meigs, and Moncure Robinson, Esq., who, among the many who have come and gone, still [1887] recalls delightful evenings spent at the Wistar Parties. Dr. Isaac Lea was in 1843 Dean of the association, which office he held until the stirring events of ’60 and ’61 scattered its members, not again to unite until 1886, within a few months of his death, when he was succeeded in this office by his son, Mr. Henry C. Lea.[29]
Writing during this hiatus of many years, Dr. George B. Wood says,—
“I have always regarded the Wistar Club not merely as an ornamental feature of Philadelphia society, but as a very useful institution; bringing as it did persons together of various pursuits, who would not otherwise perhaps have met, thus removing prejudices and conciliating friendly feeling; and, by a regulation regarding strangers which gave each member the right to introduce one or more to the meetings, facilitating their intercourse with citizens, and contributing to the reputation of our city for hospitality.”