In the conflict which ensues, Fribeto is worsted by the slim damsels, and takes refuge under Melisinda’s ample wing, from whose pocket he surveys the field of battle. Enraged by the impertinent popping up of the dandy’s head from Melisinda’s pocket, Narcissa aims a blow at him, which glances aside and falls upon the bosom of his protectress, who starts up with a cry of pain and makes her escape, leaving Fribeto prone upon the ball-room floor, a pitiable object.
“One peal of laughter fills the place.
The Hoops their Hero now despise,
And view him with disdainful Eyes,
And with one Voice at once agree
To cry aloud for Liberty”—
declaring
“That Women still
In dress at least should have their will.”
Upon which the humiliated Fribeto announces,—
“My office and my Right
To govern, I resign this Night,
Nor will I meddle should you come
In greasy night Caps to this Room,
Or sit in Rows in yonder Benches,
As black with Dirt as Cynder-wenches.”
This important battle probably occurred after the British evacuation of the city, as Philadelphia gayety did not cease with the departure of the red-coats, an article of apparel that General Knox declared the American girls loved too well. Arnold’s advent as Commandant, we know, was inaugurated by a series of festivities from which the Tory belles were not excluded. Indeed, when such a measure was contemplated in connection with a grand ball to be given to the French and American officers, it was found impossible to make up the company without them, consequently they appeared in full feather, at this and other entertainments, it being alleged by more than one authority that far from being slighted these loyalist ladies were given the preference over Whig belles. Among leading Tory women were Miss Polly Riché, her friend Miss Christian Amiel, the Bards, Bonds, Odells, Oswalds, and Cliftons. It has been whispered that Miss Amiel was the fair lady to whom General Arnold was engaged in writing amatory epistles before Miss Shippen’s charms conquered the hero of many battles. A note from the Commandant to Miss Riché is still extant, in which he thanks her for a picture conveyed to him, in language so guarded that no reading between the lines serves to reveal the original of the miniature, although there are those who shrewdly suspect that it was a picture of General Arnold, which, for reasons best known to herself, Miss Amiel returned to him through Miss Riché. Miss Amiel afterwards married Colonel Richard Armstrong who was in America with Major Simcoe’s British Foot, while her friend Miss Riché became the wife of Charles Swift. It is evidently to her approaching marriage that Miss White refers in a letter written in 1785, in which she relates the disasters that have befallen the wardrobes of several mutual friends, among them Miss B. Lawrence, who has lost “three elegant lisk robes, and seventy yards of Lace, beside the rest of her Cloaths. There is,” she adds, “no dependence on these stage boats, pray be careful how you send your wedding Cloaths up when you come to Town for it must be horribly mortifying to lose them.”
It is evident that the Assembly Balls were revived soon after peace was declared, and held occasionally, if not regularly, as Mrs. John Adams speaks of attending an Assembly while in Philadelphia during the administration of President Washington. The dancing she pronounces “very good and the company of the best kind,” adding that the ladies are more beautiful than those she has seen at foreign courts. Mrs. Adams must have been subject to variable moods at this time, as she writes to her daughter one week of the dazzling brilliancy of Mrs. Washington’s drawing-room, concluding that Mrs. Bingham had given laws to the Philadelphia women in fashion and elegance, while in another letter she says of an Assembly Ball, “the room despicable; the etiquette,—it was difficult to say where it was to be found. Indeed, it was not New York; but you must not report this from me.” This was probably written after one of their long drives to town over muddy roads, which made Bush Hill seem so undesirable a residence to the Vice-President and his wife. Mrs. Adams writes in more amiable mood upon another occasion, and is pleased to find “Mrs. Powell of all the ladies she has met the best informed, beside which she is friendly, affable, good, sprightly, and full of conversation.” This lady who combines so many charms is Mrs. Samuel Powel, born Elizabeth Willing, the aunt of Mrs. Bingham, who also came in for a large share of the New England lady’s admiration, being included in her “constellation of beauties,” with her sister Elizabeth, soon to become the wife of Major William Jackson, whose portrait represents one of the handsomest men of the time. The Chews of whom Mrs. Adams speaks are younger sisters of the Meschianza belles, little Sophia, Juliana, and Maria, grown up to take their sisters’ places. Old Chief Justice Benjamin Chew had a host of pretty daughters, and in the gay world of society, as in court circles, there is always a laudable disposition to hail the rising sun. Instead of Mrs. Benedict Arnold, her sisters, the Redmans, the Bonds, and Miss Wilhelmina Smith, who has gone off to Maryland with her husband Charles Goldsborough, we find a new bevy of beauties, Sally McKean, who afterwards married the Marquis de Yrujo, and whose languid beauty seemed made for a Southern court, Mrs. Walter Stewart, born Deborah McClenachan, Mrs. Henry Clymer, Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick, from Massachusetts, and Miss Wolcott, from Connecticut, whom New England gentlemen were wont to boast equal in beauty and grace to Mrs. Bingham. Mrs. Adams comments upon the gayety and prodigality of Philadelphia living at this period, as General Greene had done a little earlier, the latter having declared the luxury of Boston “an infant babe” to that of the Quaker City. Much of the extravagance which prevailed for some years in Philadelphia was an outcome of the speculation and the pursuit of private gain induced by the enormous inflation of the Continental currency. “Wealth thus easily acquired was as freely squandered,” says Mr. F. D. Stone in his admirable paper on Philadelphia society during the period of the new tender, “and while luxuries were being enjoyed by one class of citizens, the expenses and burdens of others were greatly increased.” In the diary of the moderate and abstemious Washington we read of a number of entertainments and numerous dinners attended by him at the Ingersolls’, Morrises’, Chews’, Rosses’, Willings’, Hamiltons’, and Binghams’; at the latter place “I dined in great splendor,” writes the President, who was well content with one dish of meat and one or two glasses of wine at his own table. Again, in a letter written from Philadelphia to General Wayne by a brother officer we read,—
“Permit me to say a little of the dress, manners, and customs of the town’s people. In respect to the first, great alterations have taken place since I was last here. It is all gayety, and from what I can observe, every lady and gentleman endeavors to outdo the other in splendor and show.... The manner of entertaining in this place has likewise undergone its change. You cannot conceive anything more elegant than the present taste. You can hardly dine at a table but they present you with three courses, and each of them in the most elegant manner.”
Miss Sally McKean, in writing to a friend in New York of Mrs. Washington’s first levee, says,—