When the evening of the ball arrived there was a flutter in every boudoir in Washington, in which preparation for the great event was accelerated by the pleasurable nervousness of maid and mistress. Mrs. Gwin’s costume, and those of other leading Washingtonians, it was known, had been selected in New York, and rumours were rife on the elegant surprises that were to be sprung upon the eventful occasion.
With Senator Clay and me that winter were three charming cousins, the Misses Comer, Hilliard and Withers. They impersonated, respectively, a gypsy fortune-teller, a Constantinople girl, and “Titania”; and, to begin at the last (as a woman may do if she will), a wonderful “Titania” the tiny Miss Withers was, robed in innumerable spangled tulle petticoats that floated as she danced, her gauze wings quivering like those of a butterfly, and her unusually small feet glistening no less brilliantly with spangles.
“Miss Withers, yon tiny fairy,” wrote Major de Havilland, who in his “Metrical Glance at the Fancy Ball” immortalised the evening, “as ‘Titania’ caused many a Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Miss Hilliard, whose beauty was well set off in a costly and picturesque costume of the East, owed her triumph of the evening to the kindness of Mrs. Joseph Holt, who had bought the costume (which she generously placed at my cousin’s disposal) during a tour of the Orient. So attractive was my cousin’s charming array, and so correct in all its details, that as she entered Mrs. Gwin’s ballroom, a party of Turkish onlookers, seeing the familiar garb, broke into applause.
Miss Comer, in a brilliant gown that was plentifully covered with playing-cards, carried also a convenient pack of the same, with which she told fortunes in a mystifying manner, for I had coached her carefully in all the secrets of the day. I must admit she proved a clever pupil, for she used her knowledge well whenever an opportunity presented, to the confusion of many whose private weaknesses she most tormentingly exposed.
My chosen character was an unusual one, being none other than that remarkable figure created by Mr. Shillaber, Aunt Ruthy Partington. It was the one character assumed during that memorable evening, by one of my sex, in which age and personal attractions were sacrificed ruthlessly for its more complete delineation.
I was not the only one anxious to impersonate the quaint lady from Beanville, over whose grammatical faux pas all America was amusing itself. Ben Perley Poore no sooner heard of my selection of this character than he begged me to yield to him, but I was not to be deterred, having committed to heart the whole of Mrs. Partington’s homely wit. Moreover, I had already, the previous summer, experimented with the character while at Red Sweet Springs, where a fancy ball had been given with much success, and I was resolved to repeat the amusing experience at Mrs. Gwin’s ball.
Finding me inexorable, Mr. Poore at last desisted and chose another character, that of Major Jack Downing. He made a dashing figure, too, and we an amusing pair, as, at the “heel of the morning,” we galloped wildly over Mrs. Gwin’s wonderfully waxed floors. The galop, I may add in passing, was but just introduced in Washington, and its popularity was wonderful.
If I dwell on that evening with particular satisfaction, the onus of such egotism must be laid at the door of my flattering friends; for even now, when nearly twoscore years and ten have passed, those who remain of that merry assemblage of long ago recall it with a smile and a tender recollection. “I can see you now, in my mind’s eye,” wrote General George Wallace Jones, in 1894; “how you vexed and tortured dear old President Buchanan at Doctor and Mrs. Gwin’s famous fancy party! You were that night the observed of all observers!” And still more recently another, recalling the scene, said, “The orchestra stopped, for the dancers lagged, laughing convulsively at dear Aunt Ruthy!”
Nor would I seem to undervalue by omitting the tribute in verse paid me by the musical Major de Havilland:
“Mark how the grace that gilds an honoured name,