This gave me a new thought. I set seriously about studying. I took classes. What I was to teach on the morrow I studied the night before. I worked early and late. With the return of Louis Philippe the St. Memins returned to France and I became a teacher in the school of Madame Nau. Here I studied and taught. On me fell all the burden of the school while Madame Nau amused herself with harp and piano. For this I had only $150 a year. To further assist my family I knit woolen jackets. They were a great deal of trouble to me and I was very grateful to Madame Isaac Iselin, the mother of Mr. Adrain Iselin, who always found purchasers to give me excellent prices. Ah, I was young then. I thought that I earned that money. Now I know that it was only her delicate manner of doing me a service. Madame Iselin bought my jackets and then gave them away.
Feeling that I was worth much to Madame Nau, and that I must do more to relieve my brother Marc, my brother Gustave having gone to sea with Captain de Peyster, I begged Madame Nau to give me $250. This she refused. Her reply, "Me navra le coeur," overwhelmed me. It was Saturday. I started home in great distress and met on the way the dear admirable Miss Sophy Hay to whom I told my sorrow.
"Miss Hay," I exclaimed, "I will open a school for myself." She tapped me on the forehead. "Do, dear Eloise, and God will help you."
How all difficulties were smoothed away! The dear Madame Iselin took charge of all my purchases, advancing the money. They were very simple, those splint chairs and carpets and tables, for we were simpler-minded then. On the 1st of May 1814 I opened my school on Greenwich Street with sixteen pupils. Good M. Roulet gave me his two wards. I received several scholars from a convent just closed and I had my nieces Améline and Laura Bérault de St. Maurice and Clara the daughter of Marc [Désabaye], who afterward married Ponty Lemoine, the lawyer in whose office Charles O'Conor studied. Thus was my school started, and I take this occasion to express my gratitude to those who confided in so young an instructress—for I was only twenty-two—the education of their daughters, and I pray God to bless them and their country....
Many well-known women were educated at this school, and one of the first pupils was Miss Sarah Morris, the granddaughter of Lewis Morris, the Signer, and the mother of the senior Mrs. Hamilton Fish. A younger sister of Mrs. Fish, Christine, who many years later was a pupil of Madame Chegaray, and who is now Mrs. William Preston Griffin of New York, ministered to Madame Chegaray in her last illness, and told me that her parting words to her were, "Adieu, chère Christine, fidèle amie." In spite of her extreme youth Madame Chegaray took an exceptionally serious view of life, even refusing to wear flowers in her bonnets or to sing, although she had a very sweet voice. She dearly loved France, but she was a broad-minded woman and her knowledge of American affairs was as great as that of her own country. She rounded out nearly a century of life, the greater part of which was devoted to others, and I pay her the highest tribute in my power when I say that she faced the many vicissitudes of life with an undaunted spirit, and bequeathed to her numerous pupils the inestimable boon of a wonderful example.
All the teachers in Madame Chegaray's school were men, with the single exception of Mrs. Joseph McKee, the wife of a Presbyterian clergyman. Among those who taught were John Bigelow, who is still living in New York at an advanced age, and who in subsequent years was Secretary of State of New York and our Minister to France; Thatcher T. Payne; Edward G. Andrew, who became in the course of years a Bishop in the Methodist Church; Professor Robert Adrain, who taught mathematics, and who at the same time was one of the faculty of Columbia College; and Lorenzo L. da Ponte. The latter was a man of unusual versatility, and was especially distinguished as a linguist. He taught us English literature in such a successful manner that we regarded that study merely as a recreation. Mr. da Ponte was a son of Lorenzo da Ponte, a Venitian of great learning, who after coming to this country rendered such conspicuous services in connection with Dominick Lynch in establishing Italian opera in New York. He was also a professor of Italian for many years in Columbia College, the author of a book of sonnets, several works relating to the Italian language and of his own life, which was published in three volumes. Mr. Samuel Ward, a noted character of the day, the brother of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and who married Emily Astor, daughter of William B. Astor, wrote an interesting memoir of him. Madame Chegaray taught the highest classes in French. "If I had to give up all books but two," she was fond of saying, "I would choose the Gospels and La Fontaine's Fables. In one you have everything necessary for your spiritual life; in the other you have the epitome of all worldly wisdom."
When I entered Madame Chegaray's school she had about a hundred pupils, a large number of whom were from the Southern States. How well I remember the extreme loyalty of the Southern girls to their native soil! I can close my eyes and read the opening sentence of a composition written by one of my comrades, Elodie Toutant, a sister of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard of the Confederate Army—"The South, the South, the beautiful South, the garden spot of the United States." This chivalric devotion to the soil whence they sprang apparently was literally breathed into my Southern school companions from the very beginning of their lives. Their loyalty possessed a fascination for me, and although I was born, reared and educated in a Northern State, I had a tender feeling for the South, which still lingers with me, for most of the friendships I formed at Madame Chegaray's were with Southern girls.
My first day at Madame Chegaray's, like many other beginnings, was something of an ordeal, but it was my good fortune to meet almost immediately Henrietta Croom, a daughter of Henry B. Croom, a celebrated botanist of North Carolina, but who, with his family, had spent much of his life in Tallahassee. Many are the pleasant hours we spent together, but to my sorrow she graduated at an early age, and a few months later embarked, in company with her parents, a younger brother and sister and an aunt, Mrs. Cammack, upon a vessel called the Home for Charleston, South Carolina, where they had planned to make their future residence. When they had been several days at sea their vessel encountered a severe storm off Cape Hatteras, and after a brave struggle with the terrific elements every member of the family sank with the ship within a few miles of the spot where the Crooms had formerly lived. This occurred on the 9th of October, 1836. They had as fellow voyagers a brother of Madame Chegaray, who, with his wife and three children, had only just left the school to make the voyage to Charleston. They, too, lost their lives. Over Madame Chegaray's school as well as her household at once hung a pall, and gloom and mourning prevailed on every side; indeed, the whole city of New York shared in our sorrow. The newspapers of the day were filled with accounts of this direful disaster, but there were few survivors to tell the tale. My late playmate, Henrietta Croom, was one of the most popular girls at school, possessing great attractions of both mind and person, and, although at the time she was merely a child in years, the New Year's address of a prominent daily newspaper of the day contained an extended reference to her which strongly appealed to my grief-stricken fancy. Though more than sixty years have passed I have always preserved it with great care in memory of the "sweet damsel" of long ago. The following are the lines to which I have just referred:
Dear Home! what magic trembles in the word;
Each bosom's fountain at its sound is stirred,
Disgusted worldlings dream of early love
And weary Christians turn their eyes above—
Well was't thou nam'd, fair bark, whose recent doom
Has many a household wrapt in deepest gloom!
On earth no more those voyagers' steps shall roam
That cast their anchor at an Heavenly "Home"!
High beat their hearts, when first their fated prow
Cut through the surge that boils above them now,
They saw in vision rapt their fatherland
And felt once more its odorous breezes bland—
The frozen North receded from their sight
And fancy's dream entranced them with delight—
Oh! who can tell what pangs their soul assail'd
When every hope of life and rescue fail'd,
When wild despair their throbbing bosoms wrung
And winds and waves a doleful requiem sung?
There stood the husband whose protecting arm
'Till now had kept his lov'd ones safe from harm.
Remorseless grown, the demon of the storm
Swept from his grasp her trembling, fragile form.
Vague fear o'er children's lineaments convuls'd,
But selfish hands their frenzied cling repuls'd.
When death's grim aspect meets the startl'd view
To grovelling souls fair mercy bids adieu!
And thou, sweet damsel! who in girlhood's bloom
Descended then to fill an ocean tomb—
What were thy thoughts, when roaring for their prey
The foaming billows choked the watery way!
'Tis said that souls have giv'n in parting hour
A vast and fearful and mysterious power.
A chart pictorial of the past is made,
In which minute events are all portray'd—
One painful glance the scroll entire surveys
And then in death the blasted eye-balls glaze—
Perchance at that dark moment when the maid
On life's dim verge her coming doom survey'd,
Such vision flash'd across her spirit pure,
And help'd the youthful beauty to endure.
Her infant sports beneath the spreading lime,
Her recent school-days, in a northern clime—
Her gentle deeds—her treasur'd thoughts of love—
All plum'd her pinions for a flight above!
The Croom family owned large plantations in the South together with many slaves. A short time after it was definitely known that not a member of the family had survived, there was a legal contest over the estate by the representatives of both sides of the household, the Crooms and the Armisteads. Eminent members of the Southern bar were employed, among whom were Judge John McPherson Berrien of Savannah and Joseph M. White of Florida, often called "Florida White." After about twenty years of litigation the suit was decided in favor of the Armisteads. It seems that as young Croom, a lad of twelve, nearly reached the shore he was regarded as the survivor, and his grandmother, Mrs. Henrietta Smith of Newbern, North Carolina, his nearest living relative, became his heir. I have always understood that this hotly contested case has since been regarded as a judicial precedent.