The concert was a memorable one. During the evening I saw Mr. Dowdell across the hall, scanning the performers with an enigmatical expression. At that time Gottschalk’s popularity was at its height. Every concert programme contained, and every ambitious amateur included in her repertory, the young composer’s “Last Hope.” At his appearance, therefore, slender, agile and Gallic to a degree, enthusiasm ran so high that we forgot to hunt up our friend in the short interval between each brilliant number.
When Mr. Dowdell appeared at the breakfast table the following morning, I asked him how he had enjoyed the evening. The Congressman’s response came less enthusiastically than I had hoped.
“Well,” he began, drawing his words out slowly and a bit quizzically, “I went out and got my ticket; did the right thing and got a seat as near Harriet Lane’s box as I could; even invested in new white gloves, so I felt all right; but I can’t say the music struck me exactly! Mr. Gottschalk played mighty pretty; hopped up on the black keys and then down on the white ones” (and the Congressman illustrated by spanning the table rapidly in a most ludicrous manner). “He played slow and then fast, and never seemed to get his hands tangled up once. But for all that I can’t say I was struck by his music! He played mighty pretty, but he didn’t play nary tchune!”
Two interesting members of our “mess” were General and Mrs. Chestnut. The General, a member from South Carolina, who became afterward one of the staff of Jefferson Davis, was among the princes in wealth in the South in the fifties. Approximately one thousand slaves owned by him were manumitted by Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863, when, childless, property-less, our well-loved Mrs. Chestnut suffered a terrible eclipse after her brilliant youth and middle age. She was the only daughter of Governor Miller, of South Carolina, and having been educated abroad, was an accomplished linguist and ranked high among the cultured women of the capital.
Moreover, Mrs. Chestnut was continually the recipient of toilette elegancies, for which the bazaars of Paris were ransacked, and in this way the curiosity of the emulative stay-at-home fashionables was constantly piqued. Her part in that brilliant world was not a small one, for, in addition to her superior personal charms, Mrs. Chestnut chaperoned the lovely Preston girls of South Carolina, belles, all, and the fashionable Miss Stevens, of Stevens Castle, who married Muscoe Garnett of Virginia. Indeed, the zest for social pleasures among our circle was often increased by the coming of guests from other cities. Among others whom I particularly recall was my cousin Miss Collier, daughter of Governor Collier of Alabama, and who married the nephew of William Rufus King, Vice-President of the United States under Mr. Pierce; and our cousins Loula Comer, Hattie Withers, and Miss Hilliard. The latter’s wedding with Mr. Hamilton Glentworth of New York was one of the social events of the winter of 1859.
Nor should I forget to mention the presence, at the Ebbitt House and at Brown’s Hotel, of another much admired South Carolinian, Mrs. General McQueen, who was a Miss Pickens, of the famous family of that name. My remembrance of Mrs. McQueen is always associated with that of the sudden death of Preston Brooks, our neighbour at Brown’s Hotel. At the time of this fatality, Dr. May, the eminent surgeon, was in the building in attendance upon Mrs. McQueen’s little boy, who was suffering from some throat trouble.
Mr. Brooks had been indisposed for several days, and, being absent from his seat in the House, it was the custom for one or the other of his confrères to drop into his room each afternoon, to give him news of the proceedings. On that fatal day, Colonel Orr (“Larry,” as his friends affectionately designated him) had called upon the invalid and was in the midst of narrating the day’s doings, when Mr. Brooks clutched suddenly at his throat and cried out huskily, “Air! Orr, air!”
Mr. Orr hastily threw open the window and began to fan the sufferer, but became bewildered at the alarming continuation of his struggles. Had the Congressman but known it, even as he tried to relieve his friend, Dr. May passed the door of Mr. Brooks’s room, on his way out of the house, his surgical case in hand; but the suddenness of the attack, and a total absence of suspicion as to its gravity, coupled with the swiftness with which it acted, confused the watcher, and, ere assistance could be obtained, the handsome young Southern member had passed away!
Congressman Orr, as has been said, was one of our original “mess” in the capital. From the first he was a conspicuous figure, nature having made him so. He was of gigantic stature, weighing then somewhat over two hundred pounds. His voice was of bugle-like clearness, and when, in 1857, he became speaker of the House of Representatives, it was a source of remark how wonderfully his words penetrated to the farthermost corner of the hall. He was extremely tender-hearted and devoted to his family, around the members of which his affections were closely bound.
Just previous to our arrival in the capital, Mr. Orr had lost a little daughter, and often, ere he brought his family to the Federal City, in a quiet hour he would come to our parlours and ask me to sing to him. He dearly loved simple ballads, his favourite song being “Lilly Dale,” the singing of which invariably stirred him greatly. Often I have turned from the piano to find his eyes gushing with tears at the memories that pathetic old-fashioned ditty had awakened. Mr. Orr was a famous flatterer, too, who ranked my simple singing as greater than that of the piquant Patti; and I question the success of any one who would have debated with him the respective merits of that great artiste and my modest self.