Chronicles of Chicora Wood

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

This experience was a blow, and destroyed my confidence in and enjoyment of my friends; my eyes had been opened, and I was more careful in accepting men’s friendship as if they were girls. Nearly all the men in town fell victims to my beautiful friends, and when they left to go to their new home in Virginia things were very flat, and the men very gloomy. My diary is at an end and I am very hazy and uncertain about dates. When we went this summer for the holidays up to my brother, at the log house in Plantersville, we took Mlle. le Prince with us, as she had nowhere to go, and I devoted a good deal of my time to studying French with her. We read “Les Travailleurs de la Mer,” and I remember very distinctly her disgust and disappointment; she would exclaim: “Appeler cela un roman! Où est donc l’amour?” Never having had any love-affair of her own, she was unwilling to read any book which did not supply her craving for love-stories, and she saw no beauty in Victor Hugo’s masterpiece.

I cannot be sure, but I think it was this winter that General Sickles was put in command of Charleston. He took a big house in Charlotte Street, and soon after he got established there he brought his little daughter to mamma and asked to enter her at the school as a day-scholar, and mamma accepted her pleasantly as such. But it made quite a commotion; the feeling of many in the community was that mamma should have refused to take her. Those who were so bold as to speak to her on the subject were careful not to repeat their indiscretion. One lady, however, was bold enough to say that she did not desire such association for her daughter, and my mother told her then she had best remove her daughter from school, which she did. There never was a more pathetic little figure than that of the new scholar; very pale, very thin and tall, about ten she looked, and dressed in the deepest, plainest black, with none of the natural gaiety of a child; it was said she had just lost her mother, but there was no way of getting behind the wall of childish reserve which this young spirit had been able to build around her inner being. My mother taught her altogether herself, for she did not fit into any of the classes, and mamma was deeply interested in her.

The last year we were in Charleston the St. Cecilia Society began to revive, and determined to give two balls. This was a great event, and every one began to think about a ball dress. I, being like the immortal Mrs. Gilpin, who, “though on pleasure bent, had a frugal mind,” had bought a good piece of white alpaca, and constructed a frock of that, trimmed with handsome scarlet silk-velvet ribbon, which had trimmed an opera-cloak of my sister’s, made in Paris, which had gone down in the river with the other fine clothes. It was a miracle that the velvet survived the ordeal, and was still beautiful after being steamed, and I was delighted with my frock when it was finished. Mamma had not ever seemed to think about my clothes, but the idea of a St. Cecilia Ball roused her to ask: “Bessie, have you a suitable dress for the approaching ball?”

“Yes, mamma, I have a very nice frock.”

“What is it?”

“A white alpaca trimmed with red velvet, and I have covered my slippers with red velvet to match.”

Mamma exclaimed in horror: “An alpaca dress for a St. Cecilia Ball! Impossible! I cannot consent to your going so unsuitably dressed.”

Then I burst out most improperly: “It is too late now to say that. I have spent my hard-earned money for the frock, and it is finished. I got it because it would last better than a muslin, and when it gets dirty I can have it dyed for a day frock. You used to take great interest in Della’s clothes and choose them all, because she was pretty, but as I am ugly you have never cared what I put on.”

Poor mamma was terribly shocked, and said so; then she said: “I certainly will see that you have a proper outfit for this occasion.”

True to her word, she went out, bought and had made by Mrs. Cummings, the best dressmaker in town, a real ball dress. White tulle over white silk, and trimmed with wreaths of little fine white flowers. When I went to try it on I could scarcely believe my eyes, and found it hard to sleep that night for thinking of it. Mrs. Cummings promised to have it sent by seven o’clock Thursday, the night of the ball. I waited and looked anxiously; eight came, no dress, and finally at nine I sent the others off to the ball and went to bed. I felt I had been well punished for my wicked outburst of temper; but perhaps few can understand how I suffered, for few, I think, have the intense love of pleasure which I had in my youth. I could, and did, throw myself, heart and soul into my work, whatever it was, but I threw myself with equal vehemence into my play when the work was over. In two weeks’ time came the next St. Cecilia, and I went and wore my beautiful ball dress, but I had a very chastened feeling all the evening. The frock was a dream, quite short, with little pleatings of tulle, from the waist to the bottom; the waist fitted perfectly, and mamma had fulfilled her promise of an outfit, for she had bought white kid slippers (one and a half was then my number) and a pair of white kid gloves, something I had never even dreamed of; so for once I was properly attired according to the ideas of the great world, and mamma was very pleased when I went to show myself to her before going. We still walked to all entertainments in our boots, our slippers, carefully wrapped up, being intrusted to our escort, who received them with a kind of reverence mingled with joy, at having committed to his care a part of one’s vital belongings. This was only for real balls, however; at the little informal dances which we had very often, we danced in our walking shoes, always waxing the soles thoroughly before going into the dancing-room. This important service was also rendered by one’s escort, and was regarded almost in the light of an accolade. In the rather laborious life that I led, never any fire in my bedroom, never any hot water, I suffered terribly from chilblains, and my hands and feet were often greatly swollen, so that I could not get on my shoes; then, instead of staying away, I asked mamma if she would lend me her best shoes. This was mamma’s only extravagance; she was a very tall woman with beautiful hands and feet, long and narrow, and common shoes did not fit her at all, so she had her boots made to order, at what to us seemed an enormous price; she wore fives, much too long for her, as she liked them that way, but fitting perfectly in every other way. I could see that it was a supreme sacrifice on her part to lend me those, her most precious possession, but she consented, and I went off to a dance at the Dessaussure’s, arrayed in my black silk and mamma’s shoes, and enjoyed my comfortable feet immensely; I had stuffed the toes with cotton, as it was only in the length they were too big, and when people stepped on my foot, as was often the case that first evening that I wore them, as I had not got accustomed to managing feet so much longer than usual, they would apologize humbly and hope they had not hurt me too badly, I always answered: “You have not hurt me at all; that was only my shoe you stepped on, not my foot”—to their great amusement. One day a man said: “I was asked a conundrum that is going the rounds last night: what young lady has the biggest shoe and the smallest foot in town?” All this is very trivial and very silly, but as I make the effort to recall the past, all these foolish details come, and I just put them down.