Butler’s pantry! My stars! Who ever heard of a butler’s pantry, and sinks, and running water, and faucets inside houses? The only running water was a hydrant in the yard; the only sink was the gutter in the yard; the sewer was the gutter in the street, so why a butler’s pantry? To be sure there was a cistern for rainwater, and jars like those Ali Baba’s forty thieves hid themselves in. Those earthen jars were replenished from the hydrant, and the muddy river water “settled” by the aid of almond hulls or alum.

Of course, every house had a storeroom, called pantry, to hold supplies. It was lined with shelves, but the only light and air was afforded by a half-moon aperture cut into a heavy batten door. We had wire safes on the back porch and a zinc-lined box for the ice—nothing else—wrapped in a gray blanket, gray, I presume, on the same principle we children preferred pink cocoanut cakes—they kept clean longer than the white! Ice was in general use but very expensive. It was brought by ship from the North, in hogsheads.

For the kitchen there were open fireplaces with a pot hanging from a crane, skillets and spiders. We don’t even hear the names of those utensils now. By and by an enterprising housewife ventured on a cook stove. I have a letter written by one such, dated in New Orleans in 1840, in which she descants on the wonders achieved by her stove. “Why, Susan, we baked three large cakes in it at one time.” In the old way it required a spider for each cake.

There were no plated knives, but steel, and they had to be daily scoured with “plenty brickdust on your knife board,” but those knives cut like razors. There was no bric-a-brac, few pictures, nothing ornamental in the parlors. One house I remember well had a Bunker Hill monument, made, I guess, of stucco, and stuck all over with gay seashells; it was perhaps 25 or 30 inches high; it made a most commanding appearance on the center-table. When my sister made a tiresomely long call at that house it amused me to try to count the shells.

An old gentleman, called “Old Jimmie Dick” when I remember him, a rich cotton broker (the firm was Dick & Hill), made a voyage to Europe, and brought home some Apollos, and Cupids, and Mercuries, statues in the “altogether,” for his parlor. Jimmie Dick was a bachelor, and lived on Canal Street, near Carondelet or Baronne, and had a charming spinster niece keeping house for him, who was so shocked when she saw the figures mounted on pedestals (they were glaring white marble and only a trifle under life size) that she immediately made slips of brown holland and enveloped them, leaving only the heads exposed! I never went to that house but the one time when we surprised her in the act of robing her visitors!

I speak of houses that I visited with my grown sister. It was not comme il faut for a young lady to be seen too frequently on the street or to make calls alone. Mother was an invalid and made no visits. Father accompanied sister on ceremonious occasions. I was pressed into service when no one else was available. I feel I am going way back beyond the recollection of my readers, but some of the grandmothers, too old, mayhap, to do their own reading, can recall just such a life, a life that will never be lived again.

VI
A FASHIONABLE FUNCTION IN 1842

It is hard to realize while we are surrounded by so many housekeeping conveniences what an amount of time, energy, and, above all, knowledge of the craft were necessary to the giving of a reception seventy years ago, when every preparation had to be made in the house and under the watchful supervision of the chatelaine.

There were no chefs to be hired, nor caterers to be summoned, not even a postman to deliver invitations. All that was done “by hand.” A darky was sent forth with a basket of nicely “tied up with white ribbons” notes of invitation, and he went from house to house, sending the basket to the occupant, where she not only subtracted her special note, but had the privilege of seeing “who else was invited.” And if the darky was bewildered as to his next stopping-place she could enlighten him. This complicated mode of delivering invitations prevailed into the fifties.