“By the Governor’s encouragement there has been a very handsome Assembly once a fortnight at Andrew Hamilton’s house and stores, which are tenanted by Mr. Inglis [and] make a set of rooms for such a purpose, & Consists of eighty ladies and as many gentlemen, one-half appearing every Assembly Night. Mr. Inglis had the conduct of the whole, and managed exceeding well. There happened a little mistake at the beginning, which at some other times might [have] produced disturbances. The Governor would have opened the Assembly with Mrs. Taylor, but she refused him, I suppose because he had not been to visit her. After Mrs. Taylor’s refusal, two or three other ladies, out of Modesty and from no manner of ill design, excused themselves, so that the Governor was put a little to his shifts when Mrs. Willing, now Mrs. Mayoreas,[35] in a most Genteel Manner put herself into his way, and on the Governor seeing this instance, he”
here there occurs something illegible, but it appears from what follows that the Governor danced the first minuet with this amiable lady, who showed her fine breeding by stepping in to prevent his being placed in an awkward position.
Mr. Peters adds, in judicial form, that “Mrs. Taylor was neither blamed nor excused nor commended, and so it went off, and every person during the continuance of the Assembly, which ended last week, was extremely cheerful and good natured.”
This Mrs. Abraham Taylor was the same Philadelphia Taylor who wrote a little earlier of the exceeding dulness of Provincial life, and the lack of all congenial amusement, sighing the while for an “English Arcadia,” which she thus quaintly described: “The hight of my ambition is to have us all live together in some pretty country place in a clean and genteel manner.”
It is pleasing to know that social life was beginning to come up to this lady’s standard, even if her own manners did not rise with it. Her rude treatment of Governor Hamilton was due to the fact of her husband having some difficulty with the Provincial authorities, which she undertook to revenge upon the person who seems to have been the least to blame in the matter.
The managers of the first Assembly were John Swift, a successful merchant, and Collector of the Port of Philadelphia; John Wallace, son of a Scotch clergyman; John Inglis, whose name is not now represented in Philadelphia, but from whom are descended Fishers, Cadwaladers, Coxes, and Kanes; and Lynford Lardner, an Englishman, who came here in 1740 to hold a number of honorable positions in the Province, and, being addicted to learning as well as to gayety, was a director of the Library Company and an early member of the American Philosophical Society.[36]
Among the subscribers to the first Dancing Assembly was Andrew Elliot, son of Sir Gilbert Elliot, then a young man recently arrived in the Province. Although he married into two Philadelphia families, Mr. Elliot’s associations were much with New York, where he was sometime Collector of Customs and Lieutenant-Governor. Mrs. Jauncey, Governor Elliot’s daughter, writes from that city, in 1783, of a ball at Head-quarters in honor of the Queen’s birthday, which her father urged his wife to attend, yet we find him writing a few months later of Mrs. Elliot being in Philadelphia, and warmly received by the authorities there, “in high spirits and high frolic, with all her best clothes; dancing with the French Minister, Financier-General, Governor of the State, &c., &c., all striving who shall show her most attention.” This latter was after the preliminaries of peace had been signed between Great Britain and the United States, when Governor Elliot’s old friends, “Governor Dickinson, Bob. Morris,” and other officials in the government, had begun to assume the more imposing proportions of winning figures. Both Mrs. Jauncey and Elizabeth Elliot married Englishmen. The latter, as Lady Cathcart, seems to have taken particular delight in dazzling the eyes of her American relatives with pictures of her own magnificent appearance in sable and diamonds assisting at court functions, where she is pleased to find herself on occasions the best dressed person in the company.[37]
Mrs. Jekyll, whose name is to be found on the early Assembly lists, and who is spoken of as “a lady of pre-eminent fashion and beauty,” was a grand-daughter of the first Edward Shippen. Her husband, John Jekyll, was Collector of the Port of Boston. In connection with this lady’s gayety and social distinction, Watson gives some curious information with regard to the invitations in early times, which, he says, were printed upon common playing-cards, there being no blank cards in the country, none but playing-cards being imported for sale. “I have seen at least a variety of a dozen in number addressed to this same lady [Mrs. Jekyll]. One of them, from a leading gentleman of that day, contained on the back the glaring effigy of a queen of clubs!”[38]
The first Assembly Balls were held in a large room at Hamilton’s wharf, on Water Street, between Walnut and Dock. There seems to have been no hall capable of accommodating so many persons, and as Water Street skirted the court end of the town, it was a rather convenient locality in which to hold a ball. A lady of the olden time has left a record of going to one of these balls at Hamilton’s Stores in full dress and on horseback. What would the belles of that early time think if their Rosinantes could land them at the Academy of Music for one of the great routs of our days? The scene of enchantment now presented by the corridors, foyer, and supper-room would certainly bewilder the brains and dazzle the eyes of those beautiful great-grandmothers, for the decorations were not then elaborate, and the entertainment was simple, consisting, says one chronicler, “chiefly of something to drink.”
In 1772 the Assembly Balls seem to have been held at the Freemasons’ Lodge, while it is evident from notices in the Pennsylvania Journal of 1784-85, that they were later held at the City Tavern. In 1802 the managers gave notice to subscribers, in Poulson’s Advertiser, that the first ball of the season would be held at Francis’s Hotel, on Market Street.