Richmond of those days was too small for social divisions and subdivisions. There was but one set, and every one who went into society at all belonged to it. It was well established and conservative. Its traditions were ancient, and it tolerated no innovations. It had its calling hours from twelve till four, when its drawing-rooms were crowded with young men from the neighboring plantations, professional men, and legislators, on whose ears the tones of the Capitol bell announcing the opening of the session were wont to fall in vain. There were dancing-parties for young people, beginning at seven or eight in the evening, and dinner-parties for distinguished guests at four o'clock in the afternoon.
The graceful art of carving formed an indispensable part of a gentleman's education, and a host gave tangible proof of his hospitality when from his end of the table he served his guests with his own hand, selecting the choice parts of a joint or fowl for the guest of honor.
The ladies retired at the conclusion of dinner, leaving the gentlemen in possession of the table, being a custom of their English forefathers which their colonial antecedents had adhered to probably in the log-cabin days when there was a state occasion.
There were no teas and no débuts. Girls never came out, because, as Thomas Nelson Page has said, "they had never been in." As soon as they were old enough to be out of the nursery they drifted naturally into the drawing-room, and there grew up in that social sphere which many of them were destined later to sway as queens.
Within a year after her reign in Richmond society Fanny Taylor became the wife of Archibald Morgan Harrison, of Fluvanna County, a most distinguished agriculturist, at a time when it was worth being a Virginia farmer and a country gentleman. They lived at "Carysbrook," Mr. Harrison's estate on the Rivanna River, in the royal style easily possible to the South in her days of prosperity. She was a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and her husband was a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison, the father of Benjamin the signer. Their life of pastoral beauty closed with Mr. Harrison's death. His widow was at the height of her loveliness, and when she went once more into the world she evoked the most unstinted and genuine admiration. Mrs. Nellie Custis Lewis, who was expending on her motherless grandchildren all the solicitude that her grandmother, Martha Washington, had lavished upon her when she was similarly bereaved, expressed the desire that her son-in-law should woo Mrs. Harrison. So truly did she admire the qualities of her character, as well as her great personal beauty, that she was the only woman she had ever seen, she said, whom she would welcome as her daughter's successor, and willingly see placed over her grandchildren. She never had an opportunity to extend that magnanimous, however cordial, greeting, for the youthful Mrs. Harrison, after six years of widowhood, bestowed her hand upon Colonel Thomas Harding Ellis, of Richmond. He had been secretary of the American legation at Mexico, and was subsequently for nearly fourteen years president of the James River and Kanawha Canal Company, his administration covering the period of the war, when the canal was the most important line of improvement in the State for supplying with agricultural produce the city of Richmond and the army of Northern Virginia.
They visited Washington shortly after their marriage, where they were guests of Mr. John Y. Mason. Mr. Mason presented them to President and Mrs. Polk, whose courtesies to them added much to the pleasure of the Washington chapter of their honeymoon days.
Mrs. Ellis's mother had stood at the bedside of her uncle William Henry Harrison when, in the presence of his cabinet, he uttered those memorable last words, "I desire the principles of the Constitution to be maintained."
The union of Colonel and Mrs. Ellis terminated with the death of Mrs. Ellis in July, 1897, followed, in a few months, by that of her husband. For nearly fifty years had they traversed life's highlands and lowlands together, closest companions, tenderest of lovers, she possessing all the strength not incompatible with the finest and gentlest traits of female character, and retaining to the last all the delicacy of her wonderful beauty, and he the embodiment of chivalry, the highest type of a Virginia gentleman of the old régime.
Sally Chevalier