My Day: Reminiscences of a Long Life

by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

All this passed before us and is but dimly remembered. No permanent impression was made by the great display. Little remains except the recollection that there were millions and millions of people lining our pavements, that the show was hardly adequate to the expectation of these people, that it was a time of many mistakes and much discomfort. But this pageant was not all of the Centennial. A number of men of taste and feeling had conceived the happy idea of collecting revolutionary relics, papers, and portraits, and exhibiting them in the Metropolitan Opera House.

We expected to be interested in these, and some of us gave time and thought to the task of making the collection as choice as possible. But we were unprepared for the effect of the exhibition upon the minds of the beholders. We filed along the galleries of the Metropolitan Opera House and mused over the papers of "The Cincinnati"; the books, few and well worn; pocket dictionaries with bookplates, candlesticks that had held the tallow dips in difficult times; silver caddies that had done duty in the "tea-cup times"; pewter platters that had served many a frugal meal at Valley Forge; the curtains that had shaded the bed of Lafayette; the piano-cover embroidered by sweet Nellie Custis; pathetic empty garments, the silken coat of George Washington, the brown silk gown of Martha Washington. We remembered at what price the glories of the preceding days had been purchased. We lived over the early times of anxiety, privation, and danger. Raising our eyes to the walls, we encountered the pictured eyes of the men and women whose spirit, behind our little army, had compelled events and given dignity and importance to our Revolutionary history.

It was difficult to associate thought, learning, courage, foresight, and statesmanship with those placid faces. Artists of that day presented only the calm, impassive features of their sitters. There was George Washington, serene in every pose, dress, and age; Alexander Hamilton, Richard Henry Lee, keen-eyed Patrick Henry, Martha Washington, Elizabeth Washington, fair Nelly Custis, dark-eyed Frances Bland, whose patriot brother fills a lost grave in Trinity churchyard. These and scores of others looked down upon us from the walls of our great opera-house.

And yet it is this, and this only, of all the pageant that made a living and lasting impression upon the minds of the people. Pondering upon the associations connected with these relics and portraits of the Revolutionary time, and rereading the histories connected with them, an impulse was given which is now thrilling our people to the extremest bounds of our country, and which will result in our taking proper steps to acquire and preserve all the localities connected with the struggle for our independence.

I was keenly interested in the celebration. I knew the president, Mr. Henry Marquand, and took upon myself the duty of collecting portraits from Virginia—of Patrick Henry, members of the Washington family, Nelly Custis, Frances Bland, and others. I cherish an engraved resolution of thanks adopted by the committee, stating that such thanks were "especially due" for my "valuable cooperation in the work of the Loan Exhibition of portraits."

The influence of the feeling inspired at the time of the Centennial at once expressed itself in the formation of the societies of patriotic men and women now so numerous in this country. I assisted in the foundation of these societies—the Preservation of the Virginia Antiquities, the association owning Jamestown; the Mary Washington Memorial Association; the Daughters of the American Revolution; and the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America. The duty of organizing a chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was assigned to me, and I named it "The New York City Chapter." Mrs. Vincenzo Botta was my first member, and Mrs. Martha Lamb, honorary life member. I was much in conference with Mrs. Martha Lamb when she was helping to organize the Colonial Dames—and I was early, heart and soul, interested in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Of Jamestown and the noble society which owns it—everybody knows. I managed a great ball at the White Sulphur Springs to help build a monument over Mary Washington's grave. The governors of New York and of Virginia each sent flags—from the state of my birth and the state of my adoption. General Lee conducted the Mary Washington of the hour. The Virginia beauties wore their great grandmother's gowns of quilted petticoat and brocade, and I received a large sum for the monument.

For the Mary Washington monument Mrs. Charles Avery Doremus, with Mrs. Wilbur Bloodgood, gave a beautiful play, for which the Secretary of the Navy lent me colors enough to drape the entire house. I cherish the permit I received to use these colors. It was signed "George Dewey"! Patti, the guest of Mrs. Ogden Doremus, occupied one of the boxes. The orchestra played "Home, Sweet Home," and she rose and bowed as only Patti can bow. I talked with her between acts and told her what a naughty, candy-loving little ten-year-old maid she had been when she would stay in Petersburg with Ellen Glasgow's mother, and Strakosch had to pay her to sing with a hatful of candy! All this she received with her own merry, rippling laughter. It was a kind deed—the great singer to give an afternoon of her time to encourage me in my enterprise, and charm my amiable amateurs by her hearty applause. Authorized by my chief, the widow of Chief Justice Waite, I made the Princess Eulalia and the Duchess of Veragua members of the Mary Washington Memorial Association, and conferred upon them the Golden Star of the order. This was a pleasant souvenir for them of the Columbian Exposition.

The societies based upon Colonial and Revolutionary descent deprecate the idea that anything tending to the creation of an aristocracy is intended by their action,—that they attach any other significance to the accident of birth than the presumption that it insures interest and perpetuity;—that there is any motive underlying their movement less noble than the pure principle of patriotism. Americans, notwithstanding their adulation of foreign titles, have been until lately somewhat sensitive lest they should be thought to assume a right to aristocracy. When Bishop Meade was collecting material for his "History of Old Families and Churches in Virginia," he found the owners of hereditary arms and crests actually ashamed to confess the fact! They felt with Napoleon a desire to create rather than inherit nobility.

The spirit of the times now seems to tend to the American aristocracy of birth, but on the republican foundation of merit, character and service done; not an aristocracy which assumes the right to social rule because of birth, but an aristocracy which recognizes birth as a bond and an obligation. "There can be," said Bishop Potter, "only one true aristocracy in all the world—that of character enriched by learning."

It is interesting to observe the laws that govern enthusiasm. It is like "the wind that bloweth where it listeth"—and no man can discover its source. Once in a hundred years a great wave of patriotic ardor has surged over this continent. Nathaniel Bacon lived a hundred years too soon when he struck the first blow against the tyranny of England. A hundred years later his spirit possessed our revolutionary fathers. Another hundred years passed, and the whole country responded to a similar instinct of patriotism. It is sure to go on and on, and be renewed and invigorated at every centennial celebration; and who will be able to number the ranks, or estimate the strength or compute the riches, or rightly value the influence of the sons and daughters of the American Revolution?