[FANNY TAYLOR]
(MRS. THOMAS HARDING ELLIS)
The loveliness of Virginia women has been a theme of song and verse. Among the Richmond belles of sixty years ago none were more justly celebrated than that trio known as the Richmond Graces, Sally Chevalier, Fanny Taylor, and Sally Watson. Close companions from early childhood, their unusual beauty as they grew to womanhood brought them fame individually and collectively. Sally Chevalier became the wife of Abram Warwick, Sally Watson, of Alexander Rives, and Fanny Taylor, of whom this sketch is designed to treat at greater length, was twice married. She was educated at the excellent school of Miss Jane Mackenzie, in Richmond, at a time when a young lady's education embraced a rather superficial dip into the languages, a good deal of poetry, some history, a neat Italian handwriting, and a care of their peach-blossom complexions and slender hands. Frivolous as it sounds compared with the curriculum of girls' schools in good standing at this end of the century, the history of the South furnishes many evidences of the profundity as well as the brilliancy of its women.
Fanny Taylor
(Mrs. Thomas Harding Ellis)
From portrait by Thomas Sully
With her friends, Sally Chevalier and Sally Watson, Fanny Taylor was a pupil in the dancing academies of Mr. Xaupi and Mr. Boisseau. They excelled in the grace and beauty of their dancing, and at the Assembly balls it was their custom to occupy places in the same cotillon. They enjoyed the delicate celebrity of having pieces of dancing-music named after them, and when "Sally Chevalier," "Fanny Taylor," or "Sally Watson," was called for, Judah, Ruffin, and Lomax, those dusky magnates of the ball-room, brought forth the melody with an air that was their own peculiar tribute to the fair young queens.
About the time she reached maturity, Fanny Taylor removed with her mother from Richmond to "Glenarron," the superb James River estate of her brother-in-law, Mr. William Galt. Shortly afterwards she returned to Richmond, where she spent a winter as the guest of her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Warwick. She became noted as the most beautiful woman in the Old Dominion. In a word, she was the belle of Richmond, which boasted the most delightful society in the South, and she would not have exchanged places with a princess of the royal house of England.