Two years before Ellen Conover, the girl of the picture, first came to town a youth had journeyed to her home, Federal Hall, in Monmouth County, New Jersey, on a visit. He was Nathaniel Fish Moore, the son of Dr. Moore. The time was a college vacation, for the young man was a student at Columbia, the institution so closely associated with the Moore name. Mrs. Conover née Anna Fish, his mother's twin sister, was proud of her handsome and high-spirited nephew, and encouraged his intimacy with her sons and daughters.
On the outskirts of Marlboro, where Federal Hall lifted its white head above the low stretches of verdant country, Ellen first met the youth who was to be her future lover. When the great coach rounded the turnpike curve with rumbles and groans, and the foam-flecked horses were becoming mere specks in the gray distance, did any of that merry party realize that in the infrangible twilit silence of an early summer's eve two kindred souls had found each other? Up the hilly meadow whose multitude of young green things seem awed at the shadowy approach of night the family trudges, followed by slaves carrying the horse-hair trunks! What a peaceful pastoral scene it is! The spring and all her delicate children are dead, and in her place have come the thousand charms of happier summer. We hear the mother's tender voice, the father's deep tones, and now and then the eager questions of the boy as he helps the maiden through tangles and over stones. The arms of the darkness are encircling them and shutting them away. Soon they will reach that great hall door which no longer guards the welcoming glow of a high-piled hearth. Before it every year the summer comes and goes. The flowers creep up to it, the wind and the rain sigh against it, but the old-time lovers long ago joined the silent company in God's immutable garden of rest.
Freehold, the next town to Marlboro, was the county-seat and the resort of a gentry which closely modelled itself after the country families of England. Racing, hunting, shooting, and fishing then comprised a large part of the sum of existence for the Jersey squire. Every great landowner possessed a small army of slaves, and the wheels of life ran smoothly. Heavy silver flagons were on the oaken sideboards, old port and sherry in Mammy Dinah's cellaret, and a strong box overflowing with gold pieces was secreted somewhere behind the Spectators on the library shelves. On the yellow road creeping out from the court-house stood half a hundred happy Jersey homes—Battle Hill, Violet Bank, Cincinnati Hall, Forman Place, Mount Pleasant Hall, Wassung Vale, Shipley, Harmony Hall, Haven Home, Lover's Port. Only a few of them are left to-day. Mornings spent in following the hounds through dewy coverts, afternoons in spinning or visiting, and evenings in dancing or reading Goldsmith with some favored companion in the englenook by the hall fire composed the daily and nightly curriculum that Ellen Conover and the Jersey girls of her class knew.
It is said that the portrait of Ellen Conover, by the elder Jarvis, in a white empire gown against a dull pink background, was more like a caricature of her than a faithful rendering of her charms. Her eyes were deep blue, her hair of a gold-brown color, and her complexion had that fresh soft tint only to be compared to wild roses. Clement Moore, a son of Bishop Moore, who wrote "'Twas the Night before Christmas," a poem which has delighted so many generations of children, used to dwell with rapture on the beauty of her arms and neck. He was one of the gay young city sparks who looked with favor on the little country girl when she first appeared in town, and lost his heart in the bargain, too, if tradition does not err. This we know, that the Knickerbocker belles were palling upon him at that period, and his muse hurled fiery diatribes at the modish nakedness of his young country-women.
After the stately dinners were over in the Moore mansion, and the hour for stray patients past, the parlors became scenes of revelry. Eight o'clock was then the usual calling time in the city, and when the voice of the old clock had finished welcoming in that portion of the evening dear to feminine hearts, Thomas had answered the knock of many a beau. These were the good old days when jolly Colonel Marinus Willet, the city's mayor, was the model of every smooth-faced buck, and sweet Anne Bankhead, coming to town with her fair tresses arranged in the Paris mode resembling the comb of a rooster, started a fashion which made the fortune of the "Empereur des Barbieres Frizzing Palace on de Brudeway." We know the names of many of the Moore girls' callers. Among the favored were Henry Major, who married Jane Moore on August 2, 1808, in St. John's Church, still standing on Varick Street. Then there was Henry de Rham, who married her sister Maria; John Titus, engaged in business with Mr. Major; John Swartwout, the loyal friend of Colonel Burr; Theodore Frelinghuysen, and many others.
On the Orleans claw-footed sofas, then humiliated by chintz covering depicting the Corsican's bees, the Misses Moore would sit with their swains. There were four of these ponderous pieces of furniture in the large room, so that there was never any danger of crowding. We can picture to ourselves Ellen and her lover taking part in the gayety and longing to be by themselves in some quieter spot. In Monmouth her heart would not tell her that she loved him, but here she had discovered the sweet secret.
How beautiful was their blossoming love-dream! No doubt, after Thomas crept down to the servants' quarters to bed and the hall was deserted, they often stole away from the company, opened the massive mahogany door, and gazed off over the patch of garden into the night. Only the garden knew of their first kisses,—the nesting birds and the drowsy flowers. They always seem to keep an eye open for human lovers. The robins and the bluebirds chirp sadly, and the flowers give forth fragrant sighs just as if they knew that the course of "true love never runs smooth."
Under the little beech-tree, with his arm about her, he told her of the humble home he hoped to rent in Gansevoort Street when she would say "Yes." He would not be dependent on his father. His office down on Nassau Street was no longer always deserted.
"I will bring mammy from the country," she would whisper. "And Ned."
"Yes, dear," he would answer.