Four Years in Rebel Capitals Part 36

BOILED: Mule bacon, with poke greens; mule ham, canva.s.sed.

ROAST: Mule sirloin; mule rump, stuffed with rice; saddle-of-mule, _a l'armee_.

VEGETABLES: Boiled rice; rice, hard boiled; hard rice, any way.

ENTReES: Mule head, stuffed _a la Reb_; mule beef, jerked _a la Yankie_; mule ears, frica.s.seed _a la getch_; mule side, stewed--new style, hair on; mule liver, hashed _a l'explosion_.

SIDE DISHES: Mule salad; mule hoof, soused; mule brains _a l'omelette_; mule kidneys, _braises_ on ramrod; mule tripe, on half (Parrot) sh.e.l.l; mule tongue, cold, _a la_ Bray.

JELLIES: Mule foot (3-to-yard); mule bone, _a la_ trench.

PASTRY: Rice pudding, pokeberry sauce; cottonwood-berry pie, _a la_ iron-clad; chinaberry tart.

DESSERT: White-oak acorns; beech-nuts; blackberry-leaf tea; genuine Confederate coffee.

LIQUORS: Mississippi water, vintage 1492, very superior, $3; limestone water, late importation, very fine, $3.75; spring water, Vicksburg bottled up, $4.

Meals at few hours. Gentlemen to wait upon themselves. Any inattention in service should be promptly reported at the office.

JEFF DAVIS & CO., _Proprietors_.

CARD: The proprietors of the justly-celebrated Hotel de Vicksburg, having enlarged and refitted the same, are now prepared to accommodate all who may favor them with a call. Parties arriving by the river, or by Grant's inland route, will find Grape, Cannister & Co.'s carriages at the landing, or any depot on the line of entrenchments. Buck, Ball & Co. take charge of all baggage. No effort will be spared to make the visit of all as interesting as possible.

This capture was printed in the Chicago _Tribune_, with the comment that it was a ghastly and melancholy burlesque. There is really a train of melancholy in the reflection that it was so little of a burlesque; that they who could endure such a siege, on such fare, should have been compelled to bear their trial in vain. But the quick-satisfying reflection must follow of the truth, the heroism--the moral invincibility--of a people who could so endure and--laugh!

But it was not only from the soldiers and the camps that the humor of the South took its color. Spite of the strain upon its better part--from anxiety, hope-deferred and actual privation--the society of every city keeps green memories of brilliant things said and written, on the spur of excitement and contact, that kept the sense of the whole people keenly alert for any point--whether serious or ridiculous.

The society of the Capital was marked evidence of this. It preserved many epigrammatic gems; often coming from the better--and brighter--half of its composition. For Richmond women had long been noted for society ease and _aplomb_, as well as for quickness of wit; and now the social amalgam held stranger dames and maidens who might have shown in any _salon_.

A friend of the writer--then a gallant staff-officer; now a grave, sedate and semi-bald counsellor--had lately returned from European capitals; and he was, of course, in envied possession of brilliant uniform and equipment. At a certain ball, his glittering blind-spurs became entangled in the flowing train of a dancing belle--one of the most brilliant of _the_ set. She stopped in mid-waltz; touched my friend on the broidered chevron with taper fingers, and sweetly said:

"Captain, may I trouble you to dismount?"

Another noted girl--closely connected with the administration--made one of a distinguished party invited by Secretary Mallory to inspect a newly-completed iron-clad, lying near the city. It was after many reverses had struck the navy, causing--as heretofore shown--destruction of similar ships. Every detail of this one explained, lunch over and her good fortune drunk, the party were descending the steps to the captain's gig, when this belle stopped short.

"Oh! Mr. Secretary!" she smiled innocently--"You forgot to show us one thing!"

"Indeed?" was the bland query--"Pray what was it?"

To which came the startling rejoinder:

"Why your arrangement for blowing them up!"

There was one handsome and dashing young aide, equally noted for influence at division-headquarters, which sent him constantly to Richmond; and for persistent devotion, when there, to a sharp-witted belle with a great fortune. One night he appeared at a soiree in brand new uniform, his captain's bars replaced by the major's star on the collar. The belle, leaning on his arm wearily, was pouting; when another pa.s.sed and said: "I congratulate you, major. And what are your new duties?"

The officer hesitated only one instant, but that was fatal; for the lady on his arm softly lisped: "Oh! he is _Mrs._ General ----'s commissary, with the rank of major!"

It is needless to add that the epigram--unjust as it was--had its effect; and the belle was no more besieged.

But of all the bright coteries in Richmond society--its very arcanum of wit, brilliance and culture--rises to memory that wholly unique set, that came somehow to be called "the Mosaic Club." Organization it was none; only a clique of men and women--married as well as single--that comprised the best intellects and prettiest accomplishments of the Capital. Many of the ladies were Will Wyatt's "easy goers;" ever tolerant, genial and genuine at the _symposia_ of the Mosaics, as they showed behind their _chevaux-de-frise_ of knitting-needles elsewhere. Some of them have since graced happy and luxurious homes; some have struggled with poverty and sorrow as only true womanhood may struggle; some have fought out the battle of life, sleeping now at rest forever. But one and all then faced their duty--sad, bitter, uncongenial as it might be--with loyalty and tender truth; one and all were strong enough to put by somber things, when meet to do so, and enjoy to the full the better pleasures society might offer.

And the men one met wore wreaths upon their collars often; quite as likely _chevrons_ of "the men" upon their sleeves. Cabinet ministers, poets, statesmen, artists, and clergymen even were admitted to the "Mosaics;" the only "_Open sesame!_" to which its doors fell wide being that patent of n.o.bility stamped by brain and worth alone.

Without organization, without officers; grown of itself and meeting as chance, or winter inactivity along army lines dictated--the Mosaic Club had no habitat. Collecting in one hospitable parlor, or another--as good fortune happened to provide better material for the delighting "m.u.f.fin-match," or the entrancing "waffle-worry," as Will Wyatt described those festal procedures--the intimates who chanced in town were bidden; or, hearing of it, came to the feast of waffles and the flow of coffee--real coffee! without bids. They were ever welcome and knew it; and they were likewise sure of something even better than m.u.f.fins, or coffee, to society-hungry men from the camps. And once gathered, the serious business of "teaing" over, the fun of the evening began.

The unwritten rule--indeed, the only rule--was the "forfeit essay," a game productive of so much that was novel and brilliant, that no later invention of peace-times has equaled it. At each meeting two hats would be handed round, all drawing a question from the one, a word from the other; question and word to be connected in either a song, poem, essay, or tale for the next meeting. Then, after the drawing for forfeits, came the results of the last lottery of brain; interspersed with music by the best performers and singers of the city; with jest and seriously-brilliant talk, until the wee sma' hours, indeed.

O! those nights ambrosial, if not of Ambrose's, which dashed the somber picture of war round Richmond, with high-lights boldly put in by master-hands! Of them were quaint George Bagby, Virginia's pet humorist; gallant, cultured Willie Meyers; original Trav Daniel; Washington, artist, poet and musician; Page McCarty, recklessly brilliant in field and frolic alike; Ham Chamberlayne, quaint, cultivated and colossal in originality; Key, Elder and other artists; genial, jovial Jim Pegram; Harry Stanton, Kentucky's soldier poet--and a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life--on far different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker--later famed in Congress and law school--told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or sang the unprecedented ballad of "The n.o.ble Skewball," in his own unprecedented fashion!

It was at the Mosaic that Innes Randolph first sang his now famous "Good Old Rebel" song; and there his marvelous quickness was Aaron's rod to swallow all the rest. As example, once he drew from one hat the words, "Daddy Longlegs;" from the other, the question, "What sort of shoe was made on the Last of the Mohicans?" Not high wit these, to ordinary seeming; and yet apparent posers for sensible rhyme. But they puzzled Randolph not a whit; and--waiving his "grace" until the subsequent meeting, he rattled off extempore:

"Old Daddy Longlegs was a sinner h.o.a.ry And punished for his wickedness, according to the story.

Between him and the Indian shoe, this likeness doth come in, One made a mock o' virtue, and one a moccasin!"

Laughter and applause were, in mid-roar, cut by Randolph's voice calling:

_Corollary first:_ If Daddy Longlegs stole the Indian's shoe to keep his foot warm, that was no excuse for him to steal his house, to keep his wigwam.

And again he broke down--only to renew--the chorus with:

_Corollary second:_ Because the Indian's shoe did not fit any Mohawk, was no reason that it wouldn't fit Narragansett!

Such, in brief retrospect was the Mosaic Club! Such in part the fun and fancy and frolic that filled those winter nights in Richmond, when sleet and mud made movements of armies, "Heaven bless us! a thing of naught!"

The old colonel--that staff veteran, so often quoted in these pages--was a rare, if unconscious humorist. Gourmet born, connoisseur by instinct and clubman by life habit, the colonel writhed in spirit under discomfort and camp fare, even while he bore both heroically in the flesh; his two hundred and sixty pounds of it! Once, Styles Staple and Will Wyatt met him, inspecting troops in a West Virginia town; and they received a long lecture, _a la_ Brillat Savarin, on enormities of the kitchen.

"And these people have fine wines, too," sadly wound up the colonel.

"Marvelous wines, egad! But they don't know how to let you enjoy them!"

"'Tis a hard case," sympathized Styles, "I do hear sometimes of a fellow getting a stray tea, but as for a dinner! It's no use, colonel; these people either don't _dine_ themselves, or they imagine we don't."

"Did it ever strike you," said the colonel, waxing philosophic, "that you _can't_ dine in but two places south of the Potomac? True, sir.

Egad! You may stumble upon a country gentleman with a plentiful larder and a pa.s.sable cook, but then, egad, sir! he's an oasis. The ma.s.s of the people South don't live, sir! they vegetate--vegetate and nothing else. You get watery soups. Then they offer you mellow madeira with some hot, beastly joint; and oily old sherry with some confounded stew.

Splendid materials--materials that the hand of an artist would make luscious--egad, sir; _luscious_--utterly ruined in the handling. It's too bad, Styles, too bad!"

"It is, indeed," put in Wyatt, falling into the colonel's vein, "too bad! And as for steaks, why, sir, there is not a steak in this whole country. They stew them, colonel, actually _stew beefsteaks_! Listen to the receipt a 'notable housewife' gave me: 'Put a juicy steak, cut two inches thick, in a saucepan; cover it well with water; put in a large lump of lard and two sliced onions. Let it simmer till the water dries; add a small lump of b.u.t.ter and a dash of pepper--and it's done!' Think of that, sir, for a _bonne bouche_!"

"Good G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the colonel, with beads on his brow. "I have seen those things, but I never knew how they were done! I shall dream of this, egad! for weeks."

"Fact, sir," Wyatt added, "and I've a theory that no nation deserves its liberties that stews its steaks. Can't gain them, sir! How can men legislate--how can men fight with a pound of stewed abomination holding them like lead? 'Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,' but how long do you think he would have been 'bold,' if they had stewed his 'rare beef'

for him? No, sir! mark my words: the nation that stews its beefsteaks contracts its boundaries! As for an omelette----"

"Say no more, Will!" broke in the colonel solemnly. "After the war, come to my club and we'll dine--egad, sir! _for a week!_"

That invincible pluck of the southron, which carried him through starvation and the sweltering march of August, through hailing shot and sh.e.l.l, and freezing mud of midwinter camps--was unconquered even after the surrender. Equally invincible was that twin humor, which laughed amid all these and bore up, even in defeat. Some of the keenest hits of all the war--tinctured though they be with natural bitterness--are recalled from those days, when the beaten, but defiant, Rebel was pa.s.sing under the victor's yoke.

Surprising, indeed, to its administrators must have been the result of "the oath," forced upon one green cavalryman, before he could return to family and farm. Swallowing the obnoxious allegiance, he turned to the Federal officer and quietly asked: