“Bessie, you are a fool! My God, that is no costume for a party! You look more like a funeral than a big fashionable dance! Come here and let me see that skirt. My God, it is really what I thought, black merino! Plain and full! You cannot leave my house for a party dressed like that!”
“Aunt,” I said, “If you say another word I will begin to cry and then my costume will be lighted up with a red nose to please you.” This made her laugh and I went on. “You have not looked at the exquisite lace on my bodice. Mrs. Pringle said this was an ideal young girl’s waist.”
She looked, examined the lace, and relented. “Nannie, open that top drawer to the left and get out that set of old Mexican silver. This child must have something to relieve this stern effect.”
Nannie arrived with a box and Aunt took out and had me put on a pair of broad silver bracelets like manacles of fish scales, a string of silver beads round my neck which though not plump is called pretty, and in my ears carved silver earrings about three inches long and weighing about a ton apiece. Then Aunt surveyed me once more, gave me a little push and said, “Now go, all this excitement has made me feel very ill. Do behave yourself and don’t cry if you don’t get a partner.”
Thankfully I escaped and went down to Charley, who was tired waiting for me. He was all admiration of my appearance, but Aunt had injected a new and fearful thought to my mind. “Not get a partner,” what an awful thought! I had always had my choice of partners, but now that I came to think, I had been away from town all the years of the War. Papa and Mamma had never allowed me to accept invitations to stay with my friends who had remained in Charleston. It was said that society was too informal and too gay for them to be willing for me to join it. Most of the dear boy friends whom I used to dance with had been killed or disabled, and I really was going into an unknown company. I suppose it was well that Aunt’s words had made me realize this, for it might have come with too great a shock without that. As we went in, Charley gave me my only pair of well worn slippers which he had carried, and I went into the dressing room and, taking off my walking boots, (an awful pair of English shoes, miles too big for me and stuffed with cotton, which I had worn for two years, we having been lucky to get them through the blockade), put them on. Then I braced myself up and went upstairs with Charley. Miss Annie Heyward received us and put me at my ease at once by asking if I could play a galop, for none of the girls who could play had arrived yet, and so she had to ask me etc., etc. I was delighted and went with alacrity to the piano, which was arranged most considerately, so that you faced the dancers, and you could enjoy watching them as you played. This was my forte, dance music. In Plantersville they said I could make any one dance, and it gave me almost as much pleasure as dancing itself. Soon the floor was full of whirling couples, and I had a chance to see how many of them I knew and how many I didn’t know. Alas, the latter were vastly in the majority, but, I reflected with joy, when ever I had no partner, I could play. So when Miss Heyward came to relieve me I was in a gale of spirits, and C. came to claim a promised dance; so I went through that, though with reluctance, for he was not as good a dancer as he had been fighter. I got on tant bien que mal, until glasses of water were handed round and people began to settle for “the German.” This was unknown to me, and I watched the bringing in of chairs and the happy couples placing themselves around the big room. Mr. Joe Manigault, a great society man and exquisite dancer from “before the War,” was to lead. Nearly all the chairs were filled and I was still at the piano. Then I saw Mr. M. take one young man after another into the piazza and walk them up and down, and I knew he was trying to induce them to let him present them to me so that they could ask me for the German. I could see them glance at me surreptitiously through the window, while walking. One after another returned to the room, not having yielded to Mr. M. At last, he found one who valiantly came forward, was introduced and asked for the pleasure, and I accepted with great alacrity, and never began to tease him about having ignominiously allowed Mr. M. to choose his partner for him until the German was well under way. And then I pointed to the row of “stags,” as they were called who would not take partners, relying on being “taken out,” being all good dancers. Then between times they could retire to the piazza and smoke. He was bright and able to answer my ungracious attacks, so that I got quite as good as I gave. Add to this that, as soon as any one danced with me, being thrown together in the figures of the German, they always wanted to dance with me again, and soon all the stags came up and were introduced, eager to be “taken out” by me; but nay, nay, I let them ornament the wall as far as I was concerned. And oh I had a glorious time, Mr. M. himself selecting me very often to lead the figures with him. He had to tell me just what to do, but I soon learned, and when it was my turn to play he would not let me, but suggested to one sweet quiet girl that played very well that she should take my turn, saying I had played twice my share earlier in the evening. We broke up at 12 exactly, as all the men are working hard and must get their sleep. They have formed a Cotillion Club and are going to give a dance once a month and I have been asked by three men for the next German. My ears are so sore from my adornments that I don’t think I will wear them again, though they are beautiful. Aunt was delighted with my account of the party, and laughed and chuckled over my first German partner, saying, “Men are fools, and always will be.”
CHAPTER XXIX
MAMMA’S SCHOOL
Dec. 1st, 1865.
PREPARATIONS for the school are going on apace. We have moved into our house and it is too beautiful. I had forgotten how lovely it was. Fortunately, the beautiful paper in the second floor, the two drawing rooms and Mamma’s room, has not been at all injured. The school is to open Jan. 1st and, strange to say, Mamma is receiving letters from all over the State asking terms etc. I thought there would be no applications, every one being so ruined by the War, but Mamma’s name and personality make people anxious to give their daughters the benefit of her influence; and, I suppose, the people in the cotton country are not so completely ruined and without money as we rice planters of the low country are. Be it as it may, the limit Mamma put of ten boarding pupils is nearly reached already. My cousin, Marianna Porcher, will be the head teacher of French and Literature; she is wonderfully clever; I will have the younger girls, and I certainly will have my hands full, for there are a great many applications for the entry of day-scholars of the younger set. Mamma will teach all the classes of History, for which she is admirably fitted. Prof. Gibbes from the Charleston College will teach Mathematics and Latin to the advanced scholars; but I want Mlle. Le Prince, who is a first class French teacher, engaged to live in the house as well as teach. There is no way of learning French equal to speaking it. But Mamma very truly says we must go slowly, and be sure we are making, before we expand. I am frightened to death. I know girls and have been to Boarding School and Mamma’s plan of no rules except those of an ordinary well-ordered, well-conducted home, seems to me perfectly impracticable; but, having once said that, I do not dare argue the matter. I am amazed to see how clever Mamma is. She wanted to send C. to College in Virginia, his constitution has been much injured by the heavy marching and privation endured in the Army at 16. Carrying that heavy knapsack on those killing, long marches without food has given him a stoop and a weary look in his beautiful hazel eyes; but it was impossible for her to borrow the $200.00 necessary to send him. She thought the change of climate from this relaxing low country air would do him good, and enable him to build up; but, as she could not get the money, she has placed him at the Charleston College, and I am truly thankful to have him at home. Only, restless, Cassandra-like, I see a problem ahead; he is so very good-looking!
March 21st, 1866. Here we are, almost at the end of our first three months of school, and it has been and is a grand success! I have not had time to write a line here because every second of my time is occupied, and oh, I am so happy! In the first place, I find I can teach! And I love it! I have a class of thirteen girls ranging from twelve to fifteen, and, if you please, I teach them everything! except history which Mamma teaches. They are most of them very bright, delightful girls, and mind my least word, even look. Only once have I had any trouble. I kept a girl in for an hour after school because she had not pretended to study her lesson that day, and the next day I had a note from her Mother to say that she was shocked at her daughter being singled out for punishment, and requesting that it should not happen again. I returned a note saying that I also requested earnestly that it should not happen again, that M. come to her class without having studied her lesson; should it happen a second time, the punishment would have to be much more severe. I had no reply to that, but M., who is very bright tho’ very spoiled, thought wisest to study in future. A Mother, who had taught in her youth and who knew of this passage at arms, wrote me a note of sympathy, saying, “A teacher must be prepared to swallow buckets full of adders.” This was so very strong and so beyond my experience, that I did not answer it, and thus far I can truly say I have not swallowed a single mosquito even.
I have a little time today and I want to put down what I do every day, I really have not added it up even in my mind. First of all, I trim and fill all the lamps, twenty in all, for we have no light but kerosene in the house; the fixtures are all there, but gas is so expensive; then I practise a half hour before going into school at nine; school lasts until two; there is no general recess, each class going into the garden for their recess at a different time; then I give one or two music lessons every day, that takes more out of me than anything. Once a week, Mr. Hambruch gives me a lesson, from pure goodness and love of music; for, of course, I could not afford it. He taught me for years when I was young, and when he offered to give me a spare hour he had, I was too glad. Yesterday I went to him almost crying, and told him how badly I felt at taking money for girls who were not learning any thing. He laughed and answered, “Oh, Miss A., you must not mind that. We music teachers, if we only taught the ones that learn, we would starve.”