Dinners were a sad trial to the old hospitable and luxurious entertainers. They had fine wines left, but champagne must be taken in plain tumblers, and enough to go around the table of one size or shape could hardly be mustered, even with energetic borrowing. Sets of dishes—whatever, in fact, was breakable—had undergone like disasters.
“But we’re all poor alike,” said a sprightly young friend of Madame Le Vert’s. “It makes no difference to us here. Nobody can do any better; so, what is the use of being unhappy about it. I wear this palmetto hat, for example, made in Mobile. It doesn’t look like the elegant straws of the Northern milliner-shops; but everybody has to wear palmetto, and so I’m in the fashion. This silk may be very old-fashioned, and I’m sure the style in which it’s made is; but how were you going to do any better in Mobile? These gloves are not Jouvin’s best, but find me any Mobile lady that has them. And as for shoes, we’ve all learned not to despise calf-skin, or even something a good deal stronger.” And the little foot gave a stamp that certainly never came from a New York gaiter boot.[[28]]
A wretched officer, who had been listening, had the heartlessness to add: “And when we came here, a dozen of you could sit in a church pew, where it is now crowded with only four or five.” It was true; even crinoline had been added to Mobile wardrobes in less than a month. Most of the dresses still gave ludicrous evidence that they had been made with reference to less expansive underclothing.
Madame Le Vert herself, with a few other Mobile ladies, made up a pleasant party to accompany us down the river to the forts, under whose guns the Wayanda was lying. The noted little lady seemed to have gone bravely through the war; though at its close she was reduced to quite as great straits as the rest. She steered discreetly clear of dangerous complications; scrupulously said “Confederate” in place of “Rebel,” and “Federal” in place of “Yankee,” and could hardly consider her literary labors ended till she, too, had contributed her book about the war.
All were bitter about the sudden collapse of the Confederate currency. It had gone down until a dollar was worth only four or five cents, but still it was worth something, “and Heaven knows,” ejaculated a lively young person, “there was enough of it, such as it was.” But there was no time for such conversions as were possible. There were opportunities for buying real estate with it; Jew brokers were ready to buy up currency and give gold; provisions might at least have been secured with it. But hundreds of widows and orphans still had nearly their whole possessions in Confederate currency; while General Maury assured them they need not be uneasy; that he could hold Mobile against a six-months’ siege from the whole army and navy of the United States. Till the last week, and almost to the last day, the confidence of the most was unshaken. Without a word of warning came the surrender, and in an hour thousands were made penniless.
“You ask,” said one, “why so many white people are drawing rations. You have the reason. Negroes had nothing, and lost nothing. We had what passed for money; your entrance turns it into waste paper in our purses. Of course, therefore, we are destitute.”
All this was plain; but the good Mobilians saw only in part. The negroes had gone to work; the whites too often were listlessly awaiting events, and talking of selling their houses or lands to get bread. The fresh tide of Northern enterprise will soon sweep rudely enough against these broken remnants of the ancien régime, and wash them under. The “old families” seem, in many cases, exhausted of force and energy. They had enough originally to gain position; they have not enough left now to retain it; and it waits the grasping hand of the coming parvenues. “New men” will soon be the order of the day, in Mobile and in many another center of Southern aristocracy.
[28]. Colonel Boynton, writing of his experiences in the interior rural districts of North Carolina, three months later, found, in spite of Wilmington blockade-running, a destitution far beyond that of Mobile.
“Everything has been mended, and generally in the rudest style. Window-glass has given way to thin boards, and these are in use in railway coaches and in the cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced for four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the pitchers have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and in very few families is there enough left to set a table in a manner approaching gentility. A set of forks with whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all stopped. Clothing, including hats, bonnets, and ladies’ and children’s shoes, are nearly all homemade. Hair-brushes and tooth-brushes have all worn out; combs are broken, and are not yet replaced; pins, needles, thread, and a thousand such articles, which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in weaving on the looms, corn-cobs have been substituted for spindles. Few have pocket-knives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an article of sale at the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who were once esteemed luxurious providers, you will find neither tea, coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have been replaced by a cup of grease, in which a piece of cloth is plunged for a wick. The problem which the South had to solve has been, not how to be comfortable during the war, but how to live at all.”