'^■? C (\ K '-pm ^m^kW ^^p\f "Z COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. OUR PHILADELPHIA IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES By JOSEPH PENNELL Reproductions of a series of lithographs by him, to- gether with impressions and notes by the artist and an introduction by W. H. D. ROUSE, M.A., L.H.D. Crown Quarto, ■printed on dull finished paper, lithograph by Mr. Pennell on cover. $1.25 net. JOSEPH PENNELL'S PICTURES OF THE PANAMA CANAL Reproductions of a series of twenty-eight lithographs made on the Isthmus of Panama, January-March, 1912, with Mr. Pennell's introduction, giving his expe- riences, impressions and full description of each picture. Volume 7 '4 ^V 10 inches. Beautifully printed on dull finished paper. Lithograph by Mr. Pennell on cover. $1.25 net. life of james McNeill whistler By ELIZABETH R. and JOSEPH PENNELL The Pennells have thoroughly revised the material in their Authorized Life, and added much new matter, which for lack of space they were unable to incorporate in the elaborate two-volume edition now out of print. Fully illustrated with 96 plates reproduced from Whis.- tler's works, more than half reproduced for the first time. Crown octavo. Fifth and revised edition. Whistler binding, deckle edge, $3.50 net. Three quarters grain levant, $7.50 net. J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA ttinai' •«tr 'K^l ih^ -n ., ^ Si-" .! >ij3rf»^ LOOKING UP BROAD STREET FROM SPRUCE STREET 6UR PHILADELPHIA DESCRIBED BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL ILLUSTRATED WITH^ ONE HUNDRED & FIVE llTHO GRAPHS BY JOSEPH PENNELL^ PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY MCMXIV ,0 ^/^ ^ COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY J PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1914 PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. NOV 19 1914 g)CI,A387575 ^ PREFACE To-day, when it is the American born in the Ghetto, or Syria, or some other remote part of the earth, whose recollections are prized, it may seem as if the following pages called for an apology. I have none to make. They were written simply for the pleasure of gathering to- gether my old memories of a town that, as my native place, is dear to me and my new impressions of it after an absence of a quarter of a century. But now I have finished I add to this pleasure in my book the pleasant belief that it will have its value for others, if only for two reasons. In the first place, J.'s drawings which illustrate it are his record of the old Philadelphia that has passed and the new Philadelphia that is passing — a record that in a few years it will be impossible for anybody to make, so con- tinually is Philadelphia changing. In the second, my story of Philadelphia, perfect or imperfect, may in as short a time be equally impossible for anybody to repeat, since I am one of those old-fashioned Americans, Ameri- can by birth with many generations of American fore- fathers, who are rapidly becoming rare creatures among the hordes of new-fashioned Americans who were any- thing and everything else no longer than a year or a week or an hour ago. Elizabeth Robins Pennell 3 Adelphi Terrace House, London May, 1914 CONTENTS CnAPTER PAGE I. An Explanation 1 II. A Child in Philadelphia 24 III. A Child in Philadelphia (Continued) 48 IV. At the Convent 72 V. Transitional 104 VI. The Social Adventure 130 VII. The Social Adventure: The Assembly 154 VIII. A Question of Creed 175 IX. The First Awakening 205 X. The Miracle of Work 233 XI. The Romance of Work 268 XII. Philadelphia and Literature 304 XIII. Philadelphia and Literature (Continued) 332 XIV. Philadelphia and Art 368 XV. Philadelphia and Art (Continued) 390 XVI. Philadelphia at Table 413 XVII. Philadelphia at Table (Continued) 433 XVIII. Philadelphia after a Quarter of a Century 451 XIX. Philadelphia after a Quarter of a Century (Continued) 477 XX. Philadelphia after a Quarter of a Century (Continued) 509 Index 543 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Looking up Broad Street from Spruce Street Frontispiece Delancey Place 3 "Portico Row," Spruce Street 7 Arch Street Meeting House 13 The Schuylkill South from Callowhill Street 17 Friends' Graveyard, Germantown 21 In Rittenhouse Square 25 The Pennsylvania Hospital from the Grounds 29 "Eleventh and Spruce" 33 Drawing Room at Cliveden 37 Back- yards, St. Peter's Spire in the Distance 45 Independence Square and the State House 51 Christ Church Interior 57 Classic Fairmount 65 Down Pine Street 69 Loudoun, Main Street, Germantown 75 Entrance to Fairmount and the Washington Statue 83 Main Street, Germantown 89 Arch Street Meeting 95 The Train Shed, Broad Street Station 99 St. Peter's, Interior 105 The Pennsylvania Hospital from Pine Street 109 Second Street Market 115 Fourth and Arch Streets Meeting House 121 Johnson House, Germantown 127 The Customs House 131 Under Broad Street Station at Fifteenth Street 135 The Philadelphia Club, Thirteenth and Walnut Streets 141 The New Ritz-Carlton; The Finishing Touches; The Walnut Street Addition Has Since Been Made 149 xii ILLUSTRATIONS The Hall, Stenton 155 "Proclaim Liberty Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabi- tants Thereof" 159 Bed Room, Stenton, the Home of James Logan 163 The Tunnel in the Park ■ 167 The Boat Houses on the Schuylkill 171 The Pulpit, St. Peter's 179 The Cathedral, Logan Square 185 Christ Church, from Second Street 189 First Presbyterian Church, Seventh Street and Washington Square 195 Old Swedes' Church 201 Independence Hall: The Original Desk on Which the Declaration of Independence was Signed and the Chair Used by the President of Congress, John Hancock, in 1776 207 Philadelphia from Belmont 211 The Dining Room, Stenton 217 Down the Aisle at Christ Church 223 The Bridge Across Market Street from Broad Street Station .... 229 State House Yard 235 The Penitentiary 247 On the Reading, at Sixteenth Street 251 Locust Street East from Broad Street 255 Broad Street, Looking South from above Arch Street 261 Clinton Street, with the Pennsylvania Hospital at its End 265 The Cherry Street Stairs Near the River 269 The Morris House on Eighth Street 273 The Old Coaching-Inn Yard 279 Franklin's Grave 285 Arch Street Meeting 291 Cliveden, the Chew House 295 Bartram's 301 Carpenter's Hall, Interior 305 Main Street, Germantown 311 Arch Street Meeting — Interior 317 Front and Callowhill 321 The Elevated at Market Street Wharf 327 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii Dr. Furness's House, West Washington Square, Just Before it was Pulled Down 333 The Germantown Academy 339 The State House from Independence Square 345 "The Little Street of Clubs," Camac Street Above Spruce Street 349 Down Sansom Street from Eighth Street. The Low Houses at Seventh Street Have Since Been Torn Down and the Western End of the Curtis Building Now Occupies Their Place 353 The Double Stairway in the Pennsylvania Hospital 359 Carpenter's Hall, Built 1771 365 Independence Hall — Lengthwise View 369 GiRARD College 377 Upsala, Germantown 383 The Hall at Cliveden, the Chew House 387 The Old Water-Works, Fairmount Park 391 The Stairway, State House 397 Upper Room, Stenton 403 Wyck — The Doorway from Within 409 The Philadelphia Dispensary from Independence Square 415 Morris House, Germantown 419 The State House Colonnade 425 The Smith Memorial, West Fairmount Park 431 The Basin, Old Water- Works 435 Girard Street 441 The Union League, from Broad and Chestnut Streets 445 Broad Street Station 453 Wanamaker's 457 St. Peter's Churchyard 461 City Hall from the Schuylkill 465 Chestnut Street Bridge 469 The Narrow Street 475 The Market Street Elevated at the Delaware End 479 The Railroad Bridges at Falls of Schuylkill 483 The Parkway Pergolas 487 Market Street West of the Schuylkill 491 Manheim Cricket Ground 497 xiv ILLUSTRATIONS Dock Street and the Exchange 501 The Locomotive Yard, West Philadelphia 507 The Girakd Trust Company 511 Twelfth Street Meeting House 515 Wyck 519 The Massed Sky-scrapers Above the Housetops 523 Sunset. Philadelphia from Across the Delaware 527 The Union League Between the Sky-scrapers 531 Up Broad Street from League Island 535 From Gray's Ferry 539 / OUR PHILADELPHIA CHAPTER I: AN EXPLANATION I THINK I have a right to call mj'self a Philadelphian, though I am not sure if Philadelphia is of the same opinion. I was born in Philadelphia, as my Father was before me, but my ancestors, having had the sense to emigrate to America in time to make me as American as an American can be, were then so inconsiderate as to waste a couple of centuries in Virginia and Maryland, and my Grandfather was the first of the family to settle in a town where it is important, if you belong at all, to have belonged from the beginning. However, J.'s ances- tors, with greater wisdom, became at the earliest available moment not only Philadelphians, but Philadelphia Friends, and how very much more that means Philadel- phians know without my telling them. And so, as he does belong from the beginning and as I would have be- longed had I had my choice, for I would rather be a Philadelphian than any other sort of American, I do not see why I cannot call myself one despite the blunder of my forefathers in so long calling themselves something else. 1 1 2 OUR PHILADELPHIA I might hope that my affection alone for Philadelphia would give me the right, were I not Philadelphian enough to know that Philadelphia is, as it always was and al- ways will be, cheerfully indifferent to whatever love its citizens may have to offer it. I can hardly suppose my claim for gratitude greater than that of its Founder or the long succession of Philadelphians between his time and mine who have loved it and been snubbed or bullied in return. Indeed, in the face of this Philadelphia indiffer- ence, my affection seems so superfluous that I often wonder why it should be so strong. But wise or foolish, there it is, strengthening with the years whether I will or no, — a deeper rooted sentiment than I thought I was capable of for the town with which the happiest memo- ries of my childhood are associated, where the first irre- sponsible days of my youth were spent, which never ceased to be home to me during the more than a quarter of a century I lived away from it. Besides, Philadelphia attracts me apart from what it may stand for in memory or from the charm sentiment may lend to it. I love its beauty — the beauty of tranquil streets, of red brick houses with white marble steps, of pleasant green shade, of that peaceful look of the past Philadelphians cross the ocean to rave over in the little old dead towns of England and Holland — a beauty that is now fast disappearing. I love its character — the calm, the dignity, the reticence with which it has kept up through 'm ■Wij «^i?»^ Hs Iff. •tHt.^.iS ']'■ M^ ^ f/^i^ 5.* .:-' ,'M " ^4 ■p^:-^t^i^.^,:. »av. / / -;^- DELANCEY PLACE AN EXPLANATION 5 the centuries with the American pace, the airs of a demure country village with which it has done the work and earned the money of a hig bustling town, the cloistered seclusion with which it enjoys its luxury and hides its palaces behind its plain brick fronts — a character that also is fast going. I love its history, though I am no historian, for the little I know colours its beauty and accounts for its character. II It is not for nothing that I begin with this flourish of my birth certificate and public confession of love. I want to establish my right, first, to call myself a Phila- delphian, and then, to talk about Philadelphia as freely as we only can talk about the places and the people and the things we belong to and care for. I would not dare to take such a liberty with Philadelphia if my references were not in order, for, as a Philadelphian, I appreciate the risk. Not that I have any idea of writing the history of Philadelphia. I hope I have the horror, said to be pecu- liar to all generous minds, of what are commonly called facts, and also the intelligence not to attempt what I know I cannot do. Another good reason is that the history has already been written more than once. Philadelphians, almost from their cave-dwelling period, have seemed con- scious of the eye of posterity upon them. They had hardlv landed on the banks of the Delaware before they 6 OUR PHILADELPHIA began to write alarmingly long letters which they pre- served, and elaborate diaries which they kept with equal care. And the letter-writing, diary-keeping fever was so in the air that strangers in the town caught it: from Richard Castleman to John Adams, from John Adams to Charles Dickens, from Charles Dickens to Henry James, every visitor, with writing for profession or amusement, has had more or less to say about it — usually more. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has gathered the old material together; oiu* indispensable antiquary, John Watson, has gleaned the odds and ends left by the way; and no end of modern writers in Philadelphia have ran- sacked their stores of information: Dr. Weir Mitchell making novels out of them, Mr. Sydney Fisher and Miss Agnes Repplier, history; Mr. Hampton Carson using them as the basis of further research ; Miss Anne Hollings- worth Wharton resurrecting Colonial life and society and fashions from them, Mr. Eberlein and Mr. Lippincott, the genealogy of Colonial houses ; other patriotic citizens help- ing themselves in one way or another; until, among them all, they have filled a large library and prepared a suffi- ciently formidable task for the historian of Philadelphia in generations to come without my adding to his burden. Ill It is an amusing library, as Philadelphians may be- lieve now they are getting over the bad habit into which they had fallen of belittling their town, much in their \-'* :V-» x0 ^*^ - > i f ^ ^ (ITS p^^^ »i^*f Ui#iij ...- VI -''^-^^--,.' •^.. V ' •- '''^-i"^^-^" --^iji ^w.-^ /^<^ -'^'^^K-e- "^ -Vv ■f' I'viJ ■%>.. ■ r. t t ■'^sv ■, '• ■■•■* ■ --■■^ ■ ■■■' \ ■ ARCH STREET MEETING HOUSE AN EXPLANATION 15 Friends did not have to shut themselves up to conquer worldliness, they did not have to renounce the world's work and its rewards. For " affluence of the world's goods," Isaac Norris, writing from Philadelphia, could felicitate Jonathan Dickinson, " knowing hoth thyself and dear wife have hearts and souls fit to use them." That was better than shirking temptation in a monk's cell or a philosopher's tub. If George Fox wore a leather suit, it was because he found it convenient, but William Penn, for whom it would have been highly inconvenient, had no scruple in dressing like other men of his position and wearing the blue ribbon of office. Nor because religion was freed from all unessential ornament, was the house stripped of comfort and luxury. I write about Friends with hesitation. I have been married to one now for many years and can realize the better therefore that none save Friends can write of themselves with authority. But I hope I am right in thinking, as I always have thought since I read Thomas Elwood's Memoirs, that their atti- tude is excellently explained in his account of his first visit to the Penningtons " after they were become Quakers " when, though he was astonished at the new gravity of their look and behaviour, he found Guli Spring- ett amusing herself in the garden and the dinner " hand- some." For the world's goods never being the end they w^re to the World's People, Friends were as undisturbed by their possession as by their absence and, as a conse- quence, could meet and accept life, whether its gifts were 16 OUR PHILADELPHIA wealth and power or poverty and obscurity, with the serenity few other men have found outside the cloister. Moreover, they could speak the truth, calling a spade a spade, or their enemy the scabbed sheep, or smooth silly man, or vile fellow, or inhuman monster, or villain infect- ing the air with a hellish stench, he no doubt v/as, and never for a moment lose their tempers. This serenity — this " still strength " — is as the poles apart from the phlegmatic, constitutional slowness of the Dutch in New York or, on the other hand, from the tranquillity Henry James traces in progressive descent from taste, tradition, and history, even from the philosopher's calm of achieved indifference, and Friends, having carried it to perfection in their own conduct, left it as a legacy to their town. The usual American town, when it hustles, lets nobody overlook the fact that it is hustling. But Philadelphia has done its work as calmly as the Friends have done theirs, never boasting of its prosperity, never shouting its success and riches from the house-top, and its dignified serenity has been mistaken for sleep. Whistler used to saj^ that if the General does not tell the world he has won the battle, the world will never hear of it. The trouble with Phila- delphia is that it has kept its triumph to itself. But we have ffot so far from the old Friends that no harm can be done if Philadelphians begin to interpret their town's serenity to a world capable of confusing it M^ith drowsi- ness. If America is ready to forget, if for long Philadel- phians were as ready, it is high time we should remember ■V .^• THE SCHUYLKILL SOUTH FROM CALLOWHILL STREET AN EXPLANATION 19 ourselves and remind America of the services Philadel- phia has rendered to the country, and its good taste in rendering them with so little fuss that all the country has done in return is to laugh at Philadelphia as a back number. Philadelphians have grown accustomed to the laugh. We have heard it since we were in our cradles. We are used to have other Americans come to our town and, — in the face of our factory chimneys smoking along the Schuylkill and our ship-building yards in full swing on the Delaware, and our locomotives pouring out over the world by I do not know how many thousands from the works in Broad Street, and our mills going at full pressure in the " Little England " of Kensington, in Frankford and Germantown, — in the face of our busy schools and hos- pitals and academies, — in the face of our stores and banks and charities, — that is, in the face of our industry, our learning, and our philanthropy that have given tips to the whole country, — see only our sleep-laden eyes and hear only our sluggish snores. We know the foolish stories they tell. We have heard many more times than we can count of the Bostonian who retires to Philadelphia for complete intellectual rest, and the New Yorker w^ho when he has a day off comes to spend a week in Philadeli^hia, and the Philadelphian who goes to New York to eat the snails he cannot catch in his own back-yard. We have 20 OUR PHILADELPHIA heard until we have it by heart that Philadelphia is a cemetery, and the road to it, the Road to Yesterday. We are so familiar with the venerable cliche that we can but wonder at its gift of eternal youth. Never was there a jest that wore so well with those who make it. The comic column is rarely complete without it, and it is forever cropping up where least expected. In the last American novel I opened Philadelphia was described as hanging on to the last strap of the last car to the sound of Gabriel's horn on Judgment Day; in the last American magazine story I read the Philadelphia heroine by her Philadelphia calm conquered the cowboys of the west, as Friends of old disarmed their judges in court. In the general Ameri- canization of London, even the London papers have seized upon the slowness of Philadelphia as a joke for Londoners to roar at. Li Hung Chang couldn't visit Philadelphia without dozing through the ceremonies in his honour and noting the ap^^ropriateness of it in his diary. And so it goes on, the witticism to-day apparently as fresh as it was in the Stone Age from which it has come down to us. If Philadelphians laugh, that is another matter — every man has the right to laugh at himself. But we have outlived our old affectation of indifference to our town, I am not sure that we are not pushing our profession of pride in it too far to the other extreme. I remember the last time I was home I went to a public meeting called to talk about the world's waterways, and no Philadelphian present, from the Mayor down, could talk of anything ^^^ FRIENDS' GRAVEYARD, GERMANTOWN AN EXPLANATION 23 but Philadelphia and its greatness. But whatever may be our pose now, or next year, or the year after, there is always beneath it a substantial layer of affection, for we cannot help knowing, if nobody else does, what Philadel- phia is and what Philadelphia has done. Certainly, it is be- cause I know that I, for one, would so much rather be the Philadelphian I am, and my ancestors were not, than any other sort of American, that, as I have grown older, my love for my town has surprised me by its depth, and makes my confession of it now seem half pleasure, half duty. CHAPTER II: A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA I IF I made my first friendships from my perambulator, or trundling my hoop and skipping my rope, in Rittenhouse Square, as every Philadelphian should, they were interrupted and broken so soon that I have no memory of them. It was my fate to be sent to boarding-school before I had time to lay in a store of the associations that are the common property of happier Philadelphians of my genera- tion. I do not know if I was ever taken, as J. and other privileged children were, to the Pennsylvania Hospital on summer evenings to see William Penn step down from his pedestal when he heard the clock strike six, or to the Philadelphia Library to wait until Benjamin Franklin, hearing the same summons, left his high niche for a neigh- bouring saloon. I cannot recall the firemen's fights and the cries of negroes selling pop-corn and ice-cream thi-ough the streets that fill some Philadelphia reminiscences I have read. I cannot say if I ever went anywhere by the omnibus sleigh in winter, or to West Philadelphia by the stage at any time of the year. I never coasted down the hills of Germantown, I never skated on the Schuylkill. When my contemporaries compare notes of these and many more delightful things in the amazing, romantic, 24 ^ ' IN RITTENHOUSE SQUARE A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 27 incredible Philadelphia they grew up in, it annoys me to find myself out of it all, sharing none of their recollec- tions, save one and that the most trivial. For, from the vagueness of the remote past, no event emerges so clearly as the periodical visit of " Crazy Norah," a poor, harm- less, half-witted wanderer, who wore a man's hat and top boots, with bits of ribbon scattered over her dress, and who, on her aimless rounds, drifted into all the Philadel- phia kitchens to the fearful joy of the children; and my memory may be less of her personally than of much talk of her helped by her resemblance, or so I fancied, to a picture of Meg Merrilies in a collection of engravings of Walter Scott's heroines owned by an Uncle, and almost the first book I can remember. II But great as was my loss, I fancy my memories of old Philadelphia gain in vividness for being so few. One of the most vivid is of the interminable drive in the slow horse-car which was the longest part of the journey to and from my Convent school, — which is the longest part of any journey I ever made, not to be endured at the time but for the chanting over and over to myself of all the odds and ends of verse I had got by heart, from the dramas of IJtth' Miss Muffett and Little Jack Horner to Poe's Bells and Tennyson's Laclij of Shalott — but in memory a drive to be rejoiced in, for nothing could have been more characteristic of Philadelphia as it was then. The Con- 28 OUR PHILADELPHIA vent was in Torresdale on the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Depot — Philadelphia had as yet no Stations and Terminals — was in the distant, unknown quarter of Frankford. I believe it is used as a freight station now and I have sometimes thought that, for senti- ment's sake, I should like to make a pilgrimage to it over the once well-travelled road. But the modern trolley has deserted the straight course of the unadventurous horse- car of my day and I doubt if ever again I could find my way back. The old horse-car went, without turn or twist, along Third Street. I started from the corner of Spruce, having got as far as that by the slower, more infrequent Spruce Street car, and after I had passed the fine old houses where Philadelphians — not aliens — lived, a good part of the route lay through a busy business section. But there has stayed with me as my chief impression of the endless street a sense of eternal calm. No matter how much solid work was being done, no matter how^ many fortunes were being made and unmade, it was always placid on the surface, uneventful and unruffled. The car, jingling along in leisurely fashion, was the one sign of animation. Or often, in spring and summer, I went by boat, from — so false is memory — I cannot say what wharf, up the Delaware. This was a pleasanter journey and every bit as leisurely and as characteristic in its way of Philadel- phia life. For though I might catch the early afternoon boat, it was sure to be full of business men returning v^.^ ^A. >v. I xl^i is K » ^ fe. "? ^^^ '**i*'7*'^**^-^-. THE PENxNSYLVAXIA HOSPITAL FROM THK (IKOUNDS A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 31 from their offices to their houses on the river. Philadel- phians did not wait for the jNIain Line to he invented to settle in the suburbs. They have always had a fancy for the near country ever since Penn lived in state at Penns- bur}^ and Logan at Stenton; ever since Bartram planted his garden on the banks of the Schuylkill, and Arnold brought Peggy Shippen as his bride to Mount Pleasant; ever since all the Colonial country houses we are so proud of were built. I have the haziest memory of the places where the boat stopped between Philadelphia and Torres- dale and of the people who got out there. But I cannot help remembering Torresdale for it was as prominent a stopping-place in my journey through youth as it is in the journey up the Delaware. The Convent was my home for years, and I had many friends in the houses down by the riverside and scattered over the near country. Their names are among the most familiar in my youthfid recol- lections : the Macalisters, the Grants — one of my brothers named after the father — the Hopkins — another of my brothers marrying in the family — the Fishers, Keatings, Steadmans, Kings, Bories, Whelans. It was not often I could go or come without meeting somebody I knew on board. I am a cockney myself, I love the town, but I can understand that Philadelphians whose homes were in the country, especially if that country lay along the shores of the Delaware, liked to get back early enough to profit by it; that, busy and full of affairs as they might be, they not only liked but managed to, shows how far hustling 32 OUR PHILADELPHIA was from the old Philadelphia scheme of things. Nowa- days the motor brings the country into town and town into the country. But the miles between town and country were then lengthened into leagues by the leisurely boat and the leisurely horse-car which, as I look back, seem to set the pace of life in Philadelphia when I was young. Ill At first my holidays were spent mostly at the Convent. My Father, with the young widower's embarrassment when confronted by his motherless children, solved the problem the existence of my Sister and myself was to him by putting us where he knew we were safe and well out of his way. I do not blame him. What is a man to do when he finds himself with two little girls on his clumsy mascu- line hands? But the result was he had no house of his own to bring us to when the other girls hurried joyfully home at Christmas and Easter and for the long summer holiday. It hurt as I used to watch them walking briskly down the long path on the way to the station. And yet, I scored in the end, for Philadelphia was the more marvel- lous to me, visiting it rarely, than it could have been to children to whom it was an everyday affair. For years my Grandfather's house was the scene of the occasional visit. He lived in Spruce Street above Eleventh — the typical Philadelphia Street, straight and narrow, on either side rows of red brick houses, each with white marble steps, white shutters below and green j,^-^ ■■^:, jr,. ^"U^^ --^«ss 1*^. ^ "ELEVENTH AND SPRUCE' A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 35 shutters above, and along the red brick pavement rows of trees which made Philadelphia the green country town of Penn's desire, but the Philadelphian's life a burden in the springtime before the coming of the sparrows. Phila- delphia, as I think of it in the old days at the season when the leaves were growing green, is always heavy with the odour of the evil-smelling ailantus and full of measuring- worms falling upon me from every tree. My fear of " Crazy Norah " is hardly less clear in my early memories than the terror these worms were to the dear fragile little Aunt who had cared for me in my first motherless years, and who still, during my holidays, kept a watchfid eye on me to see that I put my " gums " on if I went out in the rain and that I had the money in my pocket to stop at Dexter's for a plate of ice-cream. I can recall as if it were yesterday, her shrieks one Easter Sunday when she came home from church and found a green horror on her new spring bonnet and another on her petticoat, and her miserable certainty all through the early Sunday dinner that many more were crawling over her somewhere. But, indeed, the Philadelphians of to-day can never know from what loathsome creatiu'es the sparrows have delivered them. ^ly Grandfather's house was as typical as the street — one of the quite modest four-story brick houses that were thought unseemly sky-scrapers and fire-traps when they were first built in Philadelphia. I can never go by the old house of many memories — for sale, alas! the last time I 3G OUR PHILADELPHIA passed and still for sale according to the last news to reach me even as I correct my proofs- — without seeing myself as I used to be, arriving from the Convent, small, plain, unbecomingly dressed and conscious of it, with my pretty, always-becomingly-dressed because nothing was unbecoming to her, not-in-the-least-shy Sister, both stand- ing in the vestibule between the inevitable Philadelphia two front doors, the outer one as inevitably open all day long. And I see myself, when, in answer to our ring, the servant had opened the inner one as well, entering in a fresh access of shyness the wide lofty hall, with the front and back parlours to the right; Philadelphians had no drawing-rooms then but were content with parlours, as Penn had been who knew them by no other name. Com- pared to the rich Philadelphian's house to-day, my Grand- father's looks very impretending, but when houses like it, with two big parlours separated by folding doors, first became the fashion in Philadelphia, they passed for palaces with Philadelphians who disapproved of display, and the " tradesmen " living soberly in them were rebuked for aspiring to the luxury of princes. I cannot imagine why, for the old Colonial houses are, many of them, as lofty and more spacious, though it was the simple spaciousness of my Grandfather's and the loftiness of its ceilings that gave it charm. My Grandfather's two parlours, big as they were, would strike nobody to-day as palatial. It needs the glamour time throws over them for me to discover princely DRAWING ROOM AT CLIVEDEN A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 39 luxury in the rosewood and reps masterpieces of a de- plorable period with which they were furnished, or in their decoration of beaded cushions and worsted-work mats and tidies, the lavish gifts of a devoted family. But I cannot remember the parlours and forget the respect with which they once inspired me. I own to a lingering affection for their crowning touch of ugliness, an ottoman with a top of the fashionable Berlin work of the day— a white arum lily, done by the superior talent of the fancy store, on a red ground filled in by the industrious giver. It stood between the two front windows, so that we might have the additional rapture of seeing it a second time in the mirror which hung behind it. Opposite, between the two windows of the back parlour, was a " Rogers Group " on a blue stand; and a replica, with variations, of both the ottoman and the " Rogers Group " could have been found in every other Philadelphia front and back parlour. I recall also the three or four family portraits which I held in tremendous awe, however I may feel about them now; and the immensely high vases, unique creations that could not possibly have been designed for any purpose save to ornament the Philadelphia mantelpiece; and the trans- parent lamp-shade, decorated with pictures of cats and children and landscapes, that at night, when the gas was lit, helped to keep me awake until I could escape to bed ; and the lustre chandeliers hanging from the ceiling — what joy when one of the long prisms came loose and I could capture it and, looking through it, walk across the parlours 40 OUR PHILADELPHIA and up the stairs straight into the splendid dangers of Rainbow Land! I had no time for these splendours on my arrival, nor, fortunately for me, was I left long to the tortures of my shyness. At the end of the hall, facing me, was the wide flight of stairs leading to the upper stories, and on the first landing, at their turning just where a few more steps led beyond into the back-building dining-room, my Grand- mother, in her white cap and purple ribbons, stood wait- ing. In my memory she and that landing are inseparable. Whenever the door bell rang, she was out there at the first sound, ready to say " Come right up, my dear! " to which- ever one of her innumerable progeny it might be. To her right, filling an amj^le space in the windings of the back stairs, was the inexhaustible pantry which I knew, as well as she, we shoidd presently visit together. Though there could not have been in Philadelphia or anywhere quite such another Grandmother, even if most Philadelphians feel precisely the same way about theirs, she was typical too, like the house and the street. She belonged to the generation of Philadelphia w^omen who took to old age almost as soon as they were mothers, put on caps and large easy shoes, invented an elderly dress from which they never deviated for the rest of their lives, except to ex- change cashmere for silk, the everyday cap for one of fine lace and wider ribbons, on occasions of ceremony, and who as promptly forgot the world outside of their house- A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 41 hold and their family. I do not believe my Grandmother had an interest in anybody except her children, or in any- thing except their aff'airs; though this did not mean that she gave up society when it was to their advantage that she should not. In her stiff silks and costly caps, she pre- sided at every dinner, reception, and party given at home, as conscientiously as, in her sables and demure velvet bonnet, she made and returned calls in the season. oNIy other memories are of comfortable, spacious rooms, good, solid, old-fashioned furniture, a few more old and some better-forgotten new family portraits on the walls, the engraving of Gilbert Stuart's Washington over the dining-room manteli^iece, the sofa or couch in almost every room for the Philadelphia nap before dinner, the two cheerful kitchens where, if the servants were amiable, I sometimes j^layed, and, above all, the most enchanting back-yard that ever was or could be — we were not so elegant in those days as to call it a garden. IV Since it has been the fashion to revive everything old in Philadelphia, most Philadelphians are not happy until they have their garden, as their forefathers had, and very charming they often make it in the suburbs. But in town my admiration has been asked for gardens that would have been lost in my Grandfather's back-yard, and for a few- meagre plants springing up about a cold paved square 42 OUR PHILADELPHIA that would have been condemned as weeds in his luxuriant flower beds. The kindly magnifying glasses of memory cannot con- vert the Spruce Street yard into a rival of Edward Ship- pen's garden in Second Street where the old chronicles say there were orchards and a herd of deer, or of Bartram's with its trees and plants collected from far and wide, or of any of the old Philadelphia gardens in the days when in Philadelphia no house, no public building, almost no church, could exist without a green space and great trees and many flowers about it, and when Philadelphians loved their gardens so well, and hated so to leave them, that there is the story of one at least who came back after death to haunt the shady walks and fragrant lawns that were fairer to her than the fairest Elysian Fields in the land beyond the grave. Much of the old beauty had gone before I was born, much was going as I grew from childhood to youth. M}^ Uncle, Charles Godfrey Leland, has described the Philadelphia garden of his early years, " with vines twined over arbours, where the magnolia, honeysuckle and rose spread rich perfume of summer nights, and where the humming bird rested, and scarlet tanager, or oriole, with the yellow and blue bird flitted in sunshine or in shade." Though I go back to days before the sparrows had driven away not only the worms but all others of their own race, I recall no orioles and scarlet tanagers, no yellow and blue birds. Philadelphia's one magnolia tree stood in front of the old Dundas house at Broad and Walnut. A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 43 All the same, my Grandfather's was a back-yard of enchantment. A narrow brick-paved path led past the kitchens ; on one side, close to the wall dividing my Grand- father's yard from the next door neighbour's, was a border of roses and Johnny- jump-ups and shrubs — the shrubs my Grandmother used to pick for me, crush a little in her fingers, and tie up in a corner of my handkerchief, which was the Philadelphia way — the most effective way that ever was — to make them give out their sweetness. Be- yond the kitchens, where the yard broadened into a large open space, the path enclosed, with a wider border of roses, two big grass plots which were shaded by fruit trees, all pink and white in the springtime. Wistaria hung in purple showers over the high walls. I am sure lilacs bloomed at the kitchen door, and a vine of Isabella grapes — the very name has an old Philadelphia flavour and fragrance — covered the verandah that ran across the entire second story of the back-building. If sometimes this delectable back-yard was cold and bare, in my memory it is more apt to be sweet and gay with roses, shrubs and Johnny- jump-ups, — summer and its pleasures oftener waiting on me there: probably because my visits to my Grandfather's were more frequent in the summer time. But I have vague memories of winter days, when the rose bushes were done up in straw, and wooden steps covered the marble in front, and ashes were strewn over the icy pavement, and snow was piled waist-high in the gutter. 44 OUR PHILADELPHIA V From the verandah there was a pleasant vista, up and down, of the same back-yards and the same back buildings, just as from the front windows there was a pleasant vista, up and down, of the same red-brick fronts, the same white marble steps, the same white and green shutters, — only one house daring upon originality, and this was Bennett's, the ready-made clothes man, whose unusually large garden filled the oj^posite corner of Eleventh and Spruce with big country-like trees over to which I looked from my bedroom window. As a child, instinctively I got to know that inside every house, within sight and beyond, I would find the same front and back parlours, the same back- building dining-room, the same number of bedrooms, the same engraving of George Washington over the dining- room mantelpiece, the same big red cedar chest in the third story hall and, in summer, the same parlours turned into cool grey cellars with the same matting on the floor, the same linen covers on the chairs, the same curtainless windows and carefully closed shutters, the same white gauze over mirrors and chandeliers — to light upon an item for gauze " to cover pictures and glass " in Washington's household accounts while he lived in Philadelphia is one of the things it is worth searching the old archives for. Instinctively, I got to know too that, in every one of these well-regulated interiors where there was a little girl, she must, like me, be striving to be neither seen nor heard If-u ^mf BACK-YARDS, ST. PETERS SPIRE I\ THE DISTANCE A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 47 all the long morning, and sitting primly at the front win- dow all the long afternoon, and that, if she ever played at home it was, like me, with measured steps and modulated voice: at all times cultivating the calm of manner ex- pected of her when she, in her turn, would have just such a red brick house and just such a delectable back-yard of her own. Thus, while the long months at the Convent kept me busy cultivating every spiritual grace, during the occasional holiday at Eleventh and Spruce I was well drilled in the Philadelphia virtues. CHAPTER III: A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA— CONTINUED NATURALLY, I could not live in Spruce Street and not believe, as every Philadelphian should and once did, that no other kind of a house ex- cept the Spruce Street house was fit for a Philadelphian to live in. The Philadelphian, from infancy, was convinced by his surroundings and bringing-up that there was but one way of doing things decently and respectably and that was the Philadelphia w^ay, nor can my prolonged exile relieve me from the sense of crime at times when I catch myself doing things not just as Philadelphians used to do them. I was safe from any such crime in my Grandfather's house. All Philadelphia might have been let in without fear. Had skeletons been concealed in the capacious cup- boards, they would have been of the approved Philadelphia pattern. ^ly Grandfather was not at all of Montaigne's opinion that order in the management of life is sottish, but looked upon it rather as " Heaven's first law." His day's programme was the same as in every red brick house with white marble steps and a back-yard full of roses and shrubs and Johnny- jump-ups. Everything at Eleventh and Spruce was done according to the same Philadelphia 48 A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 49 rules at the same hour, from the washing of the family linen on ^Monday, when Sunday's beef was eaten cold for dinner, to the washing of the front on Saturday morning, when Philadelphia streets from end to end were all mops and maids, rivers and lakes. AVhen my (Trandfather, with his family on their knees around him, began the day by reading morning prayers in the back-building dining-room, he could have had the satisfaction of knowing that every other Philadelphia head of a family was engaged in the same edifying duty, but I hope, for every other Philadelphia family's sake, with a trifle less awe-inspiring solenmity. After being present once at my Grandfather's prayers, nobody needed to be assured that life was earnest. He did not shed his solemnity when he rose from his knees, nor when he had finished his breakfast of scrapple and buckwheat cakes and left the breakfast table. He was as solemn in his progress through the streets to the Philadel2)hia Bank, at Fourth and Chestnut, of which he was President, and having said so much perhaps I might as well add his name, Thomas Robins, for in his day he was widely known and it is a satisfaction to remem- ber, as widely appreciated both in and out of Philadelphia. His clothes were always of the most admirable cut and fit and of a fashion becoming to his years, he carried a sub- stantial cane with a gold top, his stock was never laid aside for a frivolous modern cravat, his silk hat was as indis- pensable, and his slow walk had a dignity royalty might 50 OUR PHILADELPHIA have envied. He was a handsome old man and a notice- ahle figure even in Philadelphia streets at the hour when John Welsh from the corner, and Biddies and Cad- walladers and Whartons and Peppers and Lewises and a host of other handsome old Philadelphians with good Philadelphia names from the near neighborhood, were starting downtown in clothes as irreproachable and with a gait no less dignified. The foreigner's idea of the Ameri- can is of a slouchy, free-and-easy man for ever cracking jokes. But slouchiness and jokes had no place in the dictionary or the deportment of my Grandfather and his contemporaries, at a period when Philadelphia supplied men like John Welsh for its country to send as represen- tatives abroad and there carry on the traditions of Frank- lin and John Adams and Jefferson. INIy Father — ^Edward Robins — inherited more than his share of this old-fashioned Philadelphia manner, making a ceremony of the morning walk to his office and the Sunday walk to church. But it has been lost by younger generations, more's the pity. In memory I would not have my Grandfather a shade less solemn, though at the time his solemnity put me on any- thing but easy terms with him. II The respectful bang of the front door upon my Grand- father's dignified back after breakfast was the signal for the family to relax. The cloth was at once cleared, my Grandmother and my Aimts — like all Philadelphia t^^"**^^ H^-V? ^■^^Hi, s 'k ■• i i "-VK,/- ^. r^V *'^\ 'iJ j* ^'-i:'^ ' INDEPENDENCE SQUARE AND THE STATE HOUSE A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 53 mothers and daughters — brought their work-baskets into the dining-room and sat and gossiped there until it was time for my Grandmother to go and see the butcher and the provision dealer, or for my Aunts to make those formal calls for which the morning then was the un- pardonable hour. It seems to me, in looking back, as if my Grand- mother could never have gone out of the house except on an errand to the provision man, such an important part did it play in her daily round of duties. She never went to market. That was not the Philadelphia woman's busi- ness, it was the Philadelphia man's. My Grandfather, at the time of which I write, must have grown too old for the task, which was no light one, for it meant getting up at unholy hours every Wednesday and every Saturday, leav- ing the rest of the family in their comfortable beds, and being back again in time for prayers and eight o'clock breakfast. I cannot say how this division of daily labour was brought about. The century before, a short time as things go in Philadelphia, it was the other way round and the young Philadelphia woman at her marketing was one of the sights strangers in the town wxre taken to see. But in my time it was so much the man's right that as a child I believed there was something essentially masculine in going to market, just as there was in making the mayon- naise for the salad at dinner. A Philadelphia man valued his salad too highly to trust its preparation to a woman. It was almost a shock to me when my Father allowed my 54 OUR PHILADELPHIA motherly little Aunt to relieve him of the responsibility in the Spruce Street house. And later on, when he re-married and again lived in a house of his own, and my Step- Mother made a mayonnaise quite equal to his or to any mere man's, not even to her would he shift the early market- ing, — his presence in the Twelfth Street Market as essen- tial on Wednesday and Saturday mornings as in the Stock Exchange every day — and his conscientiousness was the more astonishing as his genius was by no means for domesticity. Philadelphia women respected man's duties and rights in domestic, as in all, matters. I remember an elderly Philadelphian, who was stopping at Blos- som's Hotel in Chester, where all Americans thirty years ago began their English tour, telling me the many sauces on the side table had looked so good she would have liked to try them and, on my asking her why in the world she had not, saying they had not been offered to her and she thought perhaps they were for the gentlemen. Only a Philadelphian among Ajnericans could have given that answer. Towards three o'clock in the Spruce Street house, my Grandmother would be found, her cap carefully removed, stretched full-length upon the sofa in the dining-room. The j)icture would not be complete if I left out my Father's rage because the dining-room was used for her before-dinner nap as for almost every purpose of domestic life by the women of the family. I have often wondered where he got such an un-Philadelphia idea. In every A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 55 house where there was a Grandmother, she was taking her nap at the same hour on the same sofa in the same dining- room. I could never see the harm. It was the most com- fortable room in the house, without the isolation of the bed- room or the formality of the parlours. At four, my Grandfather returned from his day's work, the family re-assembled, holding him in sufficient awe never to be late, and dinner was served. The hour was part of the leisurely life of Philadelphia as ordered in Spruce Street. Philadelphians had dined at four dur- ing a hundred years and more, and my Grandfather, who rarely condescended to the frivolity of change, continued to dine at four, as he continued to wear a stock, until the end of his life. It was no doubt because of the contrast with Convent fare that the dinner in my recollection re- mains the most wonderful and elaborate I have ever eaten, though I rack my brains in vain to recall any of its special features except the figs and prunes on the high dessert dishes, altogether the most luscious figs and prunes ever gi'own and dried, and the decanter at my Grandfather's place from which he dropped into his glass the few drops of brandy he drank with his water while everybody else drank their water undiluted. When friends came to dinner, I recall also the Philadelphia decanter of Madeira, though otherwise no greater ceremony. Dinner was al- ways as solemn an affair in my Grandfather's house as morning prayers or any act of daily life over which he presided, the whole house, at all times when he left it, 56 OUR PHILADELPHIA relapsing into dressing-gown and slippered ease after the full-dress decorum his presence required of it. The eight o'clock tea is a more definite function in my memory, perhaps because the hours of waiting for it crept by so slowly. After dinner, the Aunts, my Father, the one Uncle who lived at home, vanished I never knew where, though no doubt Philadelphia supplied some amusement or occupation for the forlorn wreck four o'clock dinner made of the afternoon. But the interval was spent by my Grandfather and Grandmother at one of the front parlour windows, the old-fashioned Philadelphia afghan over their knees, their hands folded, while I, alone, my Sister having had the independence to vanish with the grown-ups, sat at the other, not daring to break the silence in which they looked out into the drowsy street for the people who seldom came and the events that never happened; nothing disturbing the calm of Spruce Street save the Sunday afternoon invasion of the colored people in their Sunday clothes from every near alley. It gives me a pang now to pass and see the window empty that once was always filled, in the hour before twilight, by those two dear grey heads. Ill As I grew a little older, I had the courage to bring a book to the window. It was there I read The Lam plight er which I confuse now with the memory of our own lamp- ':M • *v£ 1.,. CHRIST CHURCH INTERIOR A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 59 lighter making his rounds; and The Initials with a haughty Hilda for heroine — ^she must have been haughty for all real heroines then were; and Queechy and T'he Wide, Wide World and Faith Gartiiey's Girlhood, against whose senti- ment I am glad to say I revolted. And mixed up with these were INIrs. Southworth's Lost Heiress and the anony- mous Koutledge, light books for whose presence I cannot account in my Grandfather's serious house. Does any- body read lioutledge now? Has anybody now ever heard of it? What trash it was, but, after the improving ro- mances with a religious moral of the Convent Library, after Wiseman's edifying Fahiola and Newman's scholarly - — beyond my years — Callista, how I revelled in it, with what a choking throat I galloped through the love- sick chapters! I could recite pages of it to myself to relieve the dreariness of those long drives in the Third Street car, or the long waiting in the dreary station. To this day I remember the last sentence — " with his arm around my waist and my face hidden on his shoulder, I told him of the love, folly and pride that had so long kept me from him." Could Queechy, could Faith Gartney's Girlhood have been more sentimental than that? I dare not look up the old books to see, lest their charm as well as their sentiment should fade in the light of a more critical age. Then Scott and Dickens, IMiss Edgeworth, more often Holiday House, filled the hours before tea. After all, the old division of the day, the young generation would be ashamed to go back to, had its uses. 60 OUR PHILADELPHIA IV The tea, when announced, was worth waiting, or put- ting down tlie most entrancing book, for. Had I my way I would make Philadelphia dine again at four o'clock for the sake of the tea — of the frizzled beef that only Phila- delphia ever frizzled to a turn, the smoked salmon that only Philadelphia ever smoked as an art, the Maryland biscuits that ought to be called Philadelphia biscuits for they were never half so good in their native land, the home-made preserves put up in that sunshiny kitchen where lilacs bloomed at the door. After all this long quarter of a century, the smell of beef frizzling would take me back to Eleventh and Spruce on a winter evening as straight as the fragrance of the flowering bean carries me to Pompeii in the early springtime, or of garlic to the little sunlit towns of Provence at any season of the year. The tea was a triumph of simplicity, but when there were guests it became a feast. As a rule, it was the meal to which the children and grandchildren who did not live in the Spruce Street house were invited, and loved best to be invited. For on these occasions my Grandmother could be relied upon to provide stewed oysters, the masterpiece of Margaret, her old grey-haired cook; and oyster cro- quettes from Augustine's — my Grandfather would as soon have begun the day without prayers as my Grandmother have given a feast without the help of Augustine, that caterer of colour who was for years supreme in Philadel- A CHILI) IN PHILADELPHIA 61 phia; brandy peaches that, like the preserves, had been put up at home, the brandy poured in with unexpected lavishness for so temperate a househohl; and httle round cakes with white icing on top— what dear little ghosts from out a far past they seemed when, after a quarter of a century in a land where people know nothing of the delights of little round cakes with white icing on top, I ate them again at Philadelphia feasts. If the solemn, digni- fied Grandfather at one end of the table kept our enjoy- ment within the bounds of ceremony, we felt no restraint with the little old Grandmother who beamed upon us from the other, as she poured out the tea and coffee with hands trembling so that, in her later years, the man servant,— usually coloured and not to Philadelphia as yet known as butler or footman, — always stood close by to catch the tea or coffee pot when it fell, which it never did. V I recall more formal family reunions, above all the Golden Wedding, as impressive as a court function, the two old people enthroned at the far end of the front par- lour, the sons and daughters and grandchildren approach- ing in a solemn line — an embarrassed line when it came to the youngest, always shy in the awful presence of the Grandfather — and offering, each in turn, their gifts. We were by no means a remarkable family, to the unpre- judiced we may have seemed a commonplace one, my forefathers evidently having decided that leaving Eng- 62 OUR PHILADELPHIA land for America was a feat remarkable enough to satisfy the ambitions of any one family and having then pro- ceeded to rest comfortably on their respectable laurels, but we took each other with great seriousness. The oldest Aunt, who was married and lived in New York, received on her annual visit to Spruce Street the homage due to a Princess Royal, and no King or Emperor could have caused more of a flutter than my Grandfather when he honoured one of his children with a visit. Family anni- versaries were scrupulously observed, the legend of family affection was kept up as conscientiously, whatever it cost us in discomfort, and there were times when we paid heavily. I would have run many miles to escape one Uncle who, when he met me in the street, would stop to ask how I was, and how we all were at home, and then would stand twisting his moustache in visible agony, trying to think what the affectionate intimacy between us that did not exist required him to say, while I thanked my stars that we were in the street and not in a house where he would have felt constrained to kiss me. We were horribly exact in this matter of kissing. There was a family legend of another Uncle from New York who once, when he came over for some family meeting, was so eager to do his duty by his nieces that he kissed not only all of them — no light task — but two or three neighbours' little girls into the bar- gain. I think, however, that every Philadelphia family took itself as seriously and that our scruples were not a monopoly brought with us from Virginia and Maryland. A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 63 In a town where family names are handed down from generation to generation, so that a family often will boast, as onrs did, not only a "Jr." but a "3d," and lose no o])portunity to let the world know it, family feeling is not likely to be allowed to wilt and die. Every public holiday also was a familj^ affair to be observed with the rigoin-s of the family feast. Christmas for me, when I did not celebrate it at the Convent with JMidnight Mass and a Creche in the chapel and kind nuns trying to make me forget I had not gone home like other little girls, took me to the Spruce Street house in time to look on at the succession of Uncles and Aunts who dropped in on Christmas Eve and went away laden witli bundles, and carrying in some safe pocket a collection of envelopes with a crisp new greenback in each, the sum varying from one hundred dollars to five according to the age of the child or grandchild whose name was on the envelope — my Grandfather gave with the fine patriarchal air he maintained in all family relations. The family a|3propriation of Thanksgiving Day and Washington's Birthday I did not grasp until after I left school, for while I was at the Convent they were both spent there, where they dwindled into insignificance compared to Reverend JNIother's feast and its glories. As a rule, I must have been at the Convent as well for the Fourth of July, though I retain one jubilant vision of myself and a bag of torpedoes in the back-yard, solemnizing a little celebration among the roses. And I have larger visions 64 OUR PHILADELPHIA of military parades in broiling sunshine and of the City Troop filling the quiet streets with their gorgeousness which awed me long before the knowledge of their his- toric origin and uniform ins^iired me with reverence, VI Other duties and pleasures and observances that for most Philadelphia children were scattered through the interminable year, were crowded into my short holiday: visits to the dentist, to Dr. Hopkins, Dr. White's assistant, it being a test of Philadelphia respectability to have one's teeth seen to by Dr. White or one of his assistants or stu- dents, and the regular appointment was as much of obliga- tion for me as Mass on Sunday; visits to the Academy of Fine Arts in the old Chestnut Street building, as I remember set back at the end of a court that made of it a place apart, a consecrated place which I entered with as little anticipation of amusement as St. Joseph's Church hidden in Willing's Alley, and was the more surprised therefore to be entertained, as I must have been, by Benja- min West, for of no other painter there have I the faintest recollection; visits to the Academy of Natural Sciences, where I liked the rows upon rows of stuffed birds, and the strange things in bottles, and the colossal skeletons that filled me with the same delicious shivers as the stories of afreets and genii in The Arabian Nights; visits to Fair- mount Park, leagues away, houses left behind before it « ' : *# ;:^- rii ♦>-'( ^ li, -<• -v^^^J'Jg^; ■*»#l*^.,^ ^. ^- CLASSIC FAIRMOUNT A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 67 was reached, where the mysterious machinery of the Waterworks was as terrifying as the skeletons, and I thought it much pleasanter outside under the bhie sky; visits to the theatre — the most wonderful visits of all, for they took me out into the night that I knew only from stolen vigils in the Convent dormitory, or glimpses from the Spruce Street windoM^s. Romance was in the dimly-lit streets, in the stars above, in the town after dark, which I was warned I was never to brave alone until I can laugh now to think how terrified I was the first time I came home late by myself, in my terror jumping into a street-car and claiming the protection of a contemptuous young- woman whom work had not allowed to draw a conventional line between day and night. I have never got rid of that suggestion of romance, not so much in the theatre itself as in the going to it, and, to this day, a matinee in broad daylight will bring back a little of the old thrill. But nothing can bring back to any theatre the glitter, the brilliancy, the splendour of the old Chestnut, the old Walnut, the old Arch, then already dingy with age I have no doubt, but transfigured by my childhood's ecstasies in them. Nothing can persuade me that any plays have been, or could be, written to surpass in beauty, pathos and humour, Solon Shingle, and Arrah-na- Pogue, and Our American Cousin, and The Black Crook, and Ours, though I have forgotten all but their names; that in opera Clara Louise Kellogg ever had a rival; that 68 OUR PHILADELPHIA in gaiety and wit La Grande Duchesse and La Belle Helene could be eclipsed; or that any actors could compete with Sothern and Booth and Mrs. Drew and the Daven- ports, and Charlotte Cushman as Meg Mernlies — there was a bit of good old melodramatic acting to make a small Convent girl's flesh creep! Shakespeare was redeemed by Booth from the dulness of the Convent reading-book and entered gloriously into my Convent life. For one happy winter, it was not I who led the long procession down to the refectory, though nobody could have sus- pected it, but the Ghost of Hamlet's Father, with, close behind me, in gloom absorbed, the Prince of Denmark, mistaken by the unknowing for the little girl, my friend, whose father, with more than the usual father's amiable endurance, had taken me with her and her sister to see the play of Hamlet during the Christmas holidays. The theatre has become part of the modern school course. If an actor like Forbes-Robertson gives a fare- well performance of Hamlet, or a manager like Beerbohm Tree produces a patriotic melodrama, or the company from the Theatre Frangais perform one of the rare classics that the young person may be taken to, I have seen a London theatre filled with school girls and boys. From what I hear I might imagine the theatre and the opera to be the most serious studies of every Philadelphia school. At the Convent I should have envied the modern students could I have foreseen their liberty, but they have i.A f#:- Kiy -s^ tt u^^ ;4^\^T^^ . . /^ >*'*^ *-'.^- >^" ^ ;■ DOWN PINE STREET A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 71 more reason to envy me. The gilt has been rubbed too soon off their gingerbread, too soon has the tinsel of their theatre been tarnished. My Spartan training gave nie a theatre that can never cease to be a Wonderland, just as it endowed me with a Philadelphia that will endure, until this world knows me no more, as a beautiful, peaceful town where roses bloom in the sunny back-yards, and people live with dignity behind the plain red brick fronts of its long, straight streets. CHAPTER IV: AT THE CONVENT l4 S the theatre, in my memory, still gives the crown- / \ ing glory to my holiday in Philadelj^hia, so, in L V looking back, the brief holiday seems the spec- tacle, the romance, the supreme moment, of my early years. The scene of my every-day life was that Convent of the Sacred Heart at Torresdale which was the end of the inter- minable ride in the Third Street horse-car and the shorter ride in the Pennsylvania Railroad train. The Philadelphian who did not live in the Convent would have seen it the other way round, for the Convent was unlike enough to Philadelphia to suggest the romance of the unusual. Only in one or two respects did it provide me with facts that every proper Philadelphian was brought up to know, and let me say again that because I had to find out the others — the more characteristically Philadel- phia facts — for myself, I think they probably made a stronger impression upon me than upon the Philadelphian guiltless of ever straying, or of ever having been allowed to stray, from the approved Philadelphia path. II When the Ladies of the Sacred Heart decided to open a Convent in Philadelj^hia, an uncertain enterprise if it is considered how un-Catholic Philadelphia was, they 72 AT THE CONVENT 73 began in a fairly modest way by taking a large house at Torresdale, with lawns and gardens and woods and a great old-fashioned barn, the country seat of a Philadelphian whose name I have forgotten. It stood to the west of the railroad, at a discreet distance from the little cluster of houses by the riv^erside that alone meant Torresdale to the Philadelphians who lived in them. The house, I can now see, was typical as I first knew it, the sort the Philadelphian built for himself in the suburbs at a period too removed from Colonial days for it to have the beauty of detail and historic interest of the Colonial house, and yet near enough to them for dignity of proportion and spaciousness to be desirable, if not essential to a Philadelphian's comfort. A wide, lofty hall ran from the front door to the back, on either side were two large airy rooms with space between for the broad main stairway, a noble structure, and the carefully con- cealed back stairway — half-way up which in my time was the little infirmary window where, at half past ten every morning. Sister Odille dispensed pills and powders to those in need of them. Along the entire front of the house was a broad porch, — the indispensable Philadelphia piazza — its roof supported by a row of substantial columns over which roses and honeysuckle clambered fragrantly and luxuriantly in the June sunshine. The house was painted a cheerful yellow that went well with the white of the woodwork about the windows and the porch: not a very beautiful type of house, but pleasant, substantial, 74 OUR PHILADELPHIA luxurious, and making as little outward show of its luxury as the plain red brick town house of the wealthy Phila- delphian. How comfortable a type of house it was to live in, I know from experience of another, not a school, within sight, a ten minutes' walk across the fields, and like it in design and arrangement and even colour, — in every- thing except size, — which my Father took one summer: to me a most memorable summer as it was the first I spent outside the Convent limits from the beginning to the end of the long holiday. The jerry-builder had had no part in putting up the solid, well-constructed walls which stood firm against winter storms and winds, and were no less a protection from the torrid heat of a Philadelphia summer. But fashion can leave architecture no more alone than dress. Already, the newer group of houses down by the Delaware were built of the brown stone which, to my mind, dates the beginning of the Philadelphian's fall from architectural grace, the beginning of his distrust in Wil- liam Penn's plans for his well-being and of his foolish hankering after the fleshpots of New York. The Convent, before I came to it, had been a victim to the brown stone fashion. With success, the pleasant old country house had grown too small for the school into which it had been converted, and a southern wing had been added : a long, low building with the Chapel at the far end,, all built in brown stone and in a style that passed for Gothic and that a thousand times I could have wished LOUDOUN, MAIN STREET GER.MANTOWN AT THE CONVENT 77 based upon any other model. For the upper room in the win^y, ambitiously christened by somebody Gothic Hall, had a high pointed roof that made it an ice-house in winter and, for our sins, it was used as the Dormitory of the Sacred Heart where 1 slept. I can recall mornings when the water was frozen in our pitchers while the big stove, in the middle of the high-pitched room, burned red hot as if to mock at us as, with numbed fingers, we struggled to make our beds and wash ourselves and button and hook on our clothes. And the builders had so contrived that smnmer turned our fine Gothic Dormitory into a fiery furnace. How many June nights, contrary to all the rules, have I hung out of the little, horribly Gothic window at the head of my alcove, gasping in the warm darkness that was so sweet and stifling with the fragrance of the flowers in Madame Huguet's garden just below. I had not been long at the Convent before another brown stone wing extended to the north and two stories were added to the main building which, for the sake of harmony, was now painted brown from top to bottom. In a niche on this new facade, a statue of the Sacred Heart was set, and all semblance to the old country house \\as gone, except for the broad porch without and the well- proportioned rooms within. But these, and later improve- ments, additions and alterations cannot make me forget the Convent as it was when I first came to it, growing up about the simple, solidly-built, spacious yellow house that was once the Philadelphian's ideal of suburban comfort. 78 OUR PHILADELPHIA and so like the house where I spent my most memorable summer, so like, save for the size and the colour, my Great- Grandfather Ambrose White's old house on the Turnpike at Chestnut Hill, so like innumerable other country houses of the same date where I visited. HI. The Convent rule and discipline could not alter the changing of the seasons as Philadelphia ordered them. They might appear to us mainly regulated by feasts and fasts — All Saints and All Souls, the milestones on the road to Christmas; Lent and the month of St. Joseph heralding the apj^roach of spring; the month of Mary and the month of the Sacred Heart, Ascension and Corpus-Christi, as ardent and splendid as the spring and summer days they graced. But, all the same, each season came laden with the pleasures held in common by all fortu- nate Philadelphia children who had the freedom of the country or the countrified suburbs. The school year began with the fall, when any night might bring the first frost and the first tingle in the air — champagne to quicken the blood in a school girl's veins, and make the sitting still through the long study and class hours a torture. The woods shone with gold ; the Virginia creeper flamed on the front porch; sickel pears fell, ripe and luscious, from the tree close to the Chapel where it was against the law to go and pick them up but where no law in the world could have barred the way; chestnuts and AT THE ( ONVENT 79 hickory nuts and the wahiuts that stained my fingers black to open offered a substantial dessert after as substantial a dinner as ever children were served with. But those were the joyful years when hunger never could be satisfied and digestion was equal to any surfeit of raw chestnuts — or raw turnips for that matter, if the season supplied no lighter dainties, or of next to anything that coidd be picked up and eaten. I know I drew the line only at the huge, white, overs wee t mulberries strewing the grass by the swings in Mulberry Lane, that favourite scene of the war to the knife we waged under the name of Old jNIan and Bands, primitive games not to be outdone by the Tennis and Hockey of the more sophisticated modern school girl. The minute the Refectory was left for the noonday hour of recreation on a brisk autumn day, there was a wild scamper to the woods where, just beyond the gate that led into them, the hoary old chestnut trees spread their shade and dropped their fruit on either side the hill between the Poisonous Valley, a thrill in its deadly name, and the graveyard, few crosses then in the green enclosure which now, alas! is too well filled. The shadow of death lay so lightly upon us that I recall to-day only the delicious rustle of eager feet through the fallen leaves, and the banging of stone upon stone as hickory nuts cracked between them, I feel only the delicious pricking of the chestnut burrs in the happy, hardened fingers of the school girl. And these, anyway, are memories I share with every Philadel- phian who, as a child, wandered in the suburbs or the near 80 OUR PHILADELPHIA country when the woods were gold and scarlet, and the way through them was carpeted with leaves hiding rich stores of nuts for the seeker after treasure. But no Philadelphia child in the shelter of her own house could know the meaning of the Philadelphia winter as I knew it in the Convent, half frozen in that airy dormi- tory of the Sacred Heart, shivering in shawl and hood through early Mass in the icy Chapel, still huddled in my shawl at my desk or scurrying as fast as discipline would wink at through the windy passages. The heating ar- rangements, somehow, never succeeded in coping with the extreme cold of a severe winter in the large rooms and halls of the new wings, and I must confess that we were often most miserably uncomfortable. I cannot but wonder what the pampered school girls of the present generation in the same Convent would say to such discomfort. But it did us no harm. Indeed, though I shiver at the memory, I am sure it did us good. We came out the healthier and hardier for it, much as the Englishman does from his cold house, the coldest in the world. The old conditions of a hardier life, that either killed or cured, did far more to make a vigorous people than all the new-fangled eugenics ever can. If I had little of the comfort of the Philadelphia child in the Philadelphia house, I shared with him the outdoor pleasures which winter provided by way of compensation — the country white under snow for weeks and weeks, snowballs to be made and snow houses built, sliding to be AT THE CONVENT 81 had on the frozen hike, and coasting down the long hill just beyond the gate into the woods, when there were sleds to coast on. And what excitement in the marvellous snow- storms that have vanished with other marvels of my youth — the storms that put the new blizzard to shame, when the snow drifts were mountains high, and it took all the men on the farm, with Big John at their head, to clear a way through the near paths and roads. I recall one storm in particular when my Father, who had been making his periodical visit to my Sister and myself, left the Convent at six, was snowed up in his train, and never reached the dingy Depot in Frankford until three the next morning, and when for days we got out of the house only for a solemn ten minutes' walk each noon on the wide front porch, where it was a shocking breach of discipline to be seen at all other times except on Thursday and Sunday, the Convent visiting days. Of the inspiriting rigours of a Philadelphia winter I was never in ignorance. In the snow drifts and storms of winter Big John and his men were not more helpless than in the floods and slush that began with the first soft breath of the Philadel- phia spring. Wearing our big shapeless overshoes, we waded through the puddles and jumped over the streams in the Convent paths and roads as, in town, Philadelphia children, with their " gums " on, jumped over the streams and waded through the puddles in the abominably paved streets. But then hope too began when the first spaces of green were uncovered by the melting snow. The first 82 OUR PHILADELPHIA spring-beauty in the sunny spaces of the woods, the first flowery frost in the orchard, the first blooming of the tulip trees, were among the great events of the year. And what joy now in the new hunt! — what treasure of spring- beauties everywhere in the woods as the sun grew warmer, of shyer, retired hepaticas, of white violets running wild in the swampy fields beyond the lake, of sweet trailing arbutus, of Jacks-in-the-pulpit flourishing best in the damp thickets of the Poisonous Valley into which I never wandered without a tremor not merely because it was a forbidden adventure, but because, though I passed through it unscathed, I had seen so often the horrible and un- sightly red rash one whiff" from over its bushes and trees could bring out on the faces and hands of my schoolmates with a skin more sensitive than mine. Games lost their charm in the spring sunshine and our one pleasure was in the hunt, no longer for chestnuts and walnuts and hickory nuts, but solely for flowers, bringing back great bunches wilting in our hot little hands, to place before the shrine that aroused the warmest fervours of our devotion or was tended by the nun of our special adoration. And before we knew it, the spring-beauties and hepa- ticas and white violets and Jacks-in-the-pulpit disappeared from the woods, and the flowery frost from the orchard, and the great blossoms from the tulip trees, and summer was upon us — blazing summer when we lay perspiring on our little beds up there in Gothic Hall where a few months before we shivered and shook, perspiration streamed from ':^-^Xr^K'<^^-^ "<:^>. :^*i^' "t t /- ^ ENTRANCE TO FAIRMOUNT AND THE WASHINGTON STATUE AT THP: convent 85 our faces on our school books at the study hour, more a burden than ever as we drooped and drowsed in the heat; — blazing summer when the fragrance of the roses hung heavy over ]\ladame Huguet's garden and mingled with the too sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle about tlie columns of the porch and over every door; — blazing sum- mer when all day long meadows and gardens and lawns swooned under the pitiless sunshine and we, who had braved the winter cold undismayed, never put as much as our noses out of doors until the hour of sunset ; — blazing summer when for many years I saw the other girls going home, the gaiety of sea and mountain and change awaiting them, while my Sister and I stayed on, desolate at heart despite the efforts of the nuns to help us forget, feeling forlornly forsaken as we watched the green burnt up into brown and the summer flowers wilt and die, and the drought turn the roads to dust, and all Nature parched as we parched with it. The holiday dragged terribly and, reversing the usual order of things, I counted the days until school would begin again. However, at least I can say that I saw the Philadelphia summer in its full terrors as every Philadelphia child ever born, for whom wealth or chance opens no gate of escape, must see it and did see it of old. And so for me in the Convent the seasons were the same as for the child in Philadelphia and its suburbs. And I learnt how cold Philadelphia can be, and how hot^if Penn, safe in England, was grateful for the greater near- 86 OUR PHILADELPHIA ness of his town to the sun, not a Philadelphian on the spot, sweltering through its midsummer heat, has ever yet shared his gratitude. And I learnt how beautiful Phila- delphia is as it grows mild again after winter has done its worst, or as it cools off in the friendlier autumn sun. And not to know these facts is not to know Philadelphia. IV In the Convent regulation of daily life lay the un- conquerable difference. Philadelphia has its laws and traditions that guide the Philadelphian through every hour and duty of the day, and the Philadelphian, who from the cradle does not obey these traditions and laws, can never be quite as other Philadelphians. The Sacred Heart is a French order, and the nuns imported their laws and tradi- tions from France, qualified, modified, perhaps, on the way, but still with an unmistakable foreign flavour and tendency that could not pass unquestioned in a town where the first article of faith is that everybody should do pre- cisely what everybody else does. I remember when the Rhodes scholars were first sent from America to Oxford a friend of mine professed serious concern for the future of the University should they intro- duce buckwheat cakes on Oxford breakfast tables. And, really, he was not as funny as he thought. A man is a good deal what his food makes him. The macaroni-fed Italian is not as the sausage-and-sauerkraut-fed German, nor the Hindu who thrives on rice as the Irishman bred upon AT THE CONVENT 87 potatoes. Never was a town more concerned with the Question of Food than Philadelphia and I now see quite plainly that 1, beginnin(T my day at the Convent on coffee and rolls, could not have been as the correct Philadelphia child beginning the day in Philadelphia or the suburbs on scrapple and buckwheat cakes and maple syrup. Thus, the line of separation was drawn while 1 was still in short skirts with my hair cropped close. The Convent day continued, as it began, with differ- ences. 1 sat down at noon to the substantial French breakfast which at the Convent, as a partial concession to American ideals, became dinner. At half past three, like a little French girl, I had my gouter, for which even the French name was retained — how well I remember the big, napkin-lined basket, full of hunks of good gingerbread, or big crackers, or sweet rolls, passed round by Sister Duffy, probably the most generous of all generous Irish- women, who would have slipped an extra piece into every little hand if she could, but who was so shockingly cross- eyed that we got an idea of her as a disagreeable old thing, an ogress, always watching to see if we took more than our appointed share. Quite recently I argued it all out again with the few old Sisters left to greet me on my first and only visit to the Convent during thirty years and, purely for the sake of the sentiment of other days, I refused to believe them when they insisted that Sister Duffy, who now lies at peace in the little graveyard on the hillside in the woods, wasn't cross at all, but as tender as anv Sister who 88 OUR PHILADELPHIA ever waited on hungry little girls! I would have given a great deal could she have come back, cross-eyes and all, with her big basket of gingerbread to make me feel at home again, as I could not in the Visitors' dining-room where my goiiter was set out on a neatly spread table, even though on one side of me was " Marie " of Our Con- vent Days, my friend who had been Prince of Denmark in our Booth-stricken period, and on the other Miss Rep- plier, the chronicler of our childish adventures. It was the first time we three had sat there together since more years than I am willing to count, and I think we were too con- scious that youth now was no longer of the company not to feel the sadness as keenly as the pleasure of the reunion in our old home. Gouter, with its associations, has sent me wandering far from the daily routine which ended, in the matter of meals, with a supper of meat and potatoes and I hardly know what, at half past six, when little Philadelphia girls were probably just finishing their cambric tea and bread- and-butter, and even the bims from Dexter's when these had been added as a special treat or reward. How could we, upon so much heavier fare, have seen things, how could we have looked upon life, just as those other little girls did? V We did not play, any more than we ate, like the child in Philadelphia or its suburbs. One memory of our play- time I have common to all Philadelphia children of my MAIN STREET. GERMANTOWN AT THE CONVENT 91 generation: the meniorj' of Signor Blitz, on a more than usually blissful Reverend ]Mother's Feast, taking rabbits out of our hats and bowls of gold-fish out of his sleeve, and holding a long conversation with the immortal Bobby, the most prodigious puppet that ever conversed with any pro- fessional ventriloquist. But this was a rare ecstasy never repeated. What games the children in Rittenhouse Square and the Lanes of Germantown had, I cannot record, but of one thing I am sure: they did not go to the tune and the words of " Sur le pont d' Avignon," or " Qu' est-ce qui passe ici si tard," or '' II etait un avocat" Nor, I fancy, were " Malbrough s'en va-t'en guerre " and " An clair de la lune, moil ami Pierrot" the songs heard in the Philadel- phia nursery. Nor is it likely that " C'est le mois de Marie," which we sang as lustily all through May as the devout in France sing it in every church and every ca- thedral from one end of their land to the other, was the canticle of pious little Catholic children celebrating the month of Mary at St. Joseph's or St. Patrick's. Nor outside the Convent could the Bishop on his pastoral rounds have been welcomed with the " Vive! Vive! Vive! Monseigneur au Sacre Coeur, Quel Bonheur! " which, the title appropriately changed, was our form of welcome to every distinguished visitor. And, singing these songs and canticles, how could the associations and memories we were laying up for ourselves be the same as those of Philadelphia children whose ears and voices were trained on " Juanita " 92 OUR PHILADELPHIA and " Listen to the Mocking Bird," or, it may be, " jNIarch- ing through Georgia " and " Way down upon the Swanee River"? These things may make subtle distinctions, but they are distinctions that can never be overcome or out- grown. In study hours, as in playtime and at meals, we were seldom long out of this French atmosphere. French class was only shorter than English. If we were permitted to talk at breakfast, it was not at all that we might amuse ourselves, but that we might practise our French which did not amuse us in the least. Many of the nuns were French, often, it is true, French from Louisiana or Canada, but their English was not one bit more fluent on that account. Altogether, there was less of Philadelphia than of France in the discipline, the devotions, and the relaxa- tions of the Convent. VI But, of all the differences, the most fundamental, I think, came from the fact that the Convent was a Convent and taught us to accept the conventual, the monastic inter- pretation of life. We were there in, not only a French, but a cloistered atmosphere — the atmosphere that Philadel- phia least of all towns could understand. The Friends had attained to peace and unworldliness by staying in their own homes and fulfilling their duty as fathers and mothers of families, as men and women of business. But the nims AT THP: convent 93 saw no way to achieve this end except by shutting them- selves out of the world and avoiding its temptations. The Ladies of the Sacred Heart are cloistered. They leave the Convent grounds only to journey from one of their houses to another, for care is taken that they do not, by staying over long in one school, form too strong an attachment to place or person. Where would be the use of being a nun if you were not made to understand the value of sacrifice? Their pupils are, for the time, as strictly cloistered. Not for us were the walks abroad by which most girls at board- ing school keep up with the times — or get ahead of them. We were as closely confined to the Convent grounds as the nuns, except during the holidays or when a friend or rela- tion begged for us a special outing. It was not a confine- ment depending on high stone walls and big gates with clanging iron chains and bars. But the wood fences run- ning with the board walk above the railroad and about the woods and the fields and the gardens made us no less prisoners — willing and happy prisoners as we might be, and were. This gave us, or gave me at any rate, a curious idea of the Convent as a place entirely apart, a place that had nothing to do with the near town or the suburb in which it stood — a blessed oasis in the sad wilderness of the world. There is no question that, as a result, I felt myself in anticipation a stranger in the wilderness into which I knew I must one day go from the oasis, and in which I used 94 OUR PHILADELPHIA to imagine I should be as much of an exile as the Children of Israel in the desert. Of course I was not quite that when the time came, but that for an interval I was con- vinced I must be explains how unlike in atmosphere the Convent was to Eleventh and Spruce. In all sorts of little ways I was confirmed in this belief by life and its duties at the Convent. For all that con- cerned me nearly, for all that was essential to existence here below, Philadelphia seemed to me as remote as Tim- buctoo. I got insensibly to think of myself first not as a Philadelphian, not as an American, but as a " Child of the Sacred Heart," — the first question under all circum- stances was what I should do, not as a Philadelphian, but as a Child of the Sacred Heart. I cannot say how much the mere name of the thing represented — the honour and the privilege — and there was not a girl who had been for any time a pupil who did not prize it as I did. And we were not given the chance to forget or belittle it. We were impressed with the impor- tance of showing our appreciation of the distinction Provi- dence had reserved for us — of showing it not merely by our increased faith and devotion, but by our bearing and conduct. We might be slack about our lessons. That was all right at a period when slackness prevailed in girls' schools and it was unfeminine, if not unladylike, to be too learned. But we were not let off from the diligent cultiva- tion of our manners. Our faith and devotion were attended to in a daily half hour of religious instruction. ^^'^.V'.A ARCH STREET MEETING AT THE CONVENT 97 But Sunday was not too holy a day for the Politeness Class that was held every week as surely as Sunday came round, in which we were taught all the mysteries of a Deportment that might have given tips to the great Tur- veydrop himself, — ^how to sit, how to walk, how to carry ourselves under all circumstances, how to pick up a hand- kerchief a passer-by might drop — ^an unspeakable martyr- dom of a class when each unfortunate student, in turn, went through her paces with the eyes of all the school upon her and to the sound of the stifled giggles of the boldest. We never met one of our mistresses in the corridors that we did not drop a laboured curtsey — a shy, deplorably awk- ward curtsey when I met the Reverend Mother, Mother Boudreau, a large, portly, dignified nun from Louisiana and a model of deportment, who inspired me with a re- spectful fear I never have had for any other mortal. We could not answer a plain " Yes " or " No " to our mis- tresses, but the " Madam " must always politely follow. " Remember " was a frequent warning, " remember that wherever, or with whom, you may be, to behave like chil- dren of the Sacred Heart ! " A Child of the Sacred Heart, we were often told, should be known by her manners. And so impressed were we with this precept that I remember a half-witted, but harmless, elderly woman whom the nuns, in their goodness, had kept on as a " parlour boarder " after her school days were over, telling us solemnly that when she was in New York and went out shopping with her sister, the young men behind the counter at Stewart's 98 OUR PHILADELPHIA would all look at her with admiring eyes and whisper to each other, " Is it not easy to see that ]Miss C. is a Child of the Sacred Heart? " Seriously, the training did give something that nothing else could, and an admirable training it was for which girls to-day might exchange more than one brain-bewildering course at College and be none the worse for it. In my own case, I admit, I should not mind having had more of the other training, as it has turned out that my work in life is of the sort where a quick intelligence counts for more than an elegant deportment. But I can find no fault with the Convent for neglect. Girls then were not educated to work. If you had asked any girl anywhere what was woman's mission, she would have answered promptly — had she been truthful — " to find a husband as soon as possible;" if she were a Convent girl, — a Child of the Sacred Heart — she would have added, " or else to become a nun." Her own struggles to fit herself for any other career the inconsiderate Fates might drive her into, so far from doing her any harm, were the healthiest and most bracing of tonics. Granted an average mind, she could teach herself through necessity just the important things school could not teach her through a routine she didn't see the use of. She emerged from the ordeal not only heroi- cally but successfully, which was more to the point. A yoimg graduate from Bryn Mawr said to me some few days ago that when she looked at her mother and the women THE TRAIN SHED, BROAD STREET STATION AT THE CONVENT 101 of her mother's generation and realized all they had accom- plished without what is now called education, she wondered whether the girls of her generation, who had the benefit of all the excess of education going, would or could accom- plish more, or as much. To tell the truth, I wonder my- self. But then it may be said that I, belonging to that older generation, am naturally prejudiced. VII There are moments when, reflecting on all I lost as a Philadelphian, I am half tempted to regret my long years of seclusion, busy about my soul and my manners, at the Convent. A year or so would not have much mattered one way or the other. I led, however, no other life save the Convent life until I was seventeen. I knew no other standpoint save the Convent standpoint. But the temptation to regret flies as quickly as it comes. I loved the life too well at the time, I love it too well in the retrospect, to have wanted then, or to want now, to do without it. It was a happy life to live, though I would not have been a school girl had I not, with the school girl's joy in the morbid, liked nothing better than to pose as the unhappiest of mortals — to be a school girl was to be misunderstood I would have vowed, had I, in my safe oasis, ever heard the expression or had the knowledge to guess at its meaning. I loved every stone in the house, brown and ugly as every stone might be, I loved every 102 OUR PHILADELPHIA tree in the woods whether or no it dropped pleasant things to devour, I loved every hour of the day whatever might be its task. I had a quick memory, study was no great trouble to me, and I enjoyed every class and recitation. I enjoyed getting into mischief — I wore once only the Ribbon for Good Conduct — and I enjoyed being pun- ished for it. In a word, I got a good deal out of my life, if it was not exactly what a girl was sent to school to get. And it is as happy a life to remember, with many pictu- resque graces and absurdities, joys and sorrows, that an uninterrupted existence at Eleventh and Spruce could not have given. I have no desire to talk sentimental nonsense about my school days having been my happiest. That sort of talk is usually twaddle. It was not as school that I loved the Convent, though as school it had its unrivalled attrac- tions ; it was as home. When the time came to go from it I suffered that sharp pang felt by most girls on leaving home for school. I remember how I, who affected a sub- lime scorn for the cry-baby, blubbered like one myself when I was faced with the immediate prospect of life in Philadelphia. How well I recall my despair — how vividly I see the foolish scene I made in the empty Refectory, shadowy in the dusk of the June evening, where I was rehearsing the valedictory of the Graduating Class which I had been chosen to recite, and where, after the first few lines I broke down to my shame, and sniffled and gurgled and sobbed in the lap of the beloved mistress who was AT THE CONVENT 103 doing her best to comfort ine, and also to keep nie from disgracing her, as I should have done by any such scene on the great day itself. If the Convent stands for so much in my memory, it would be ungrateful to regret the years I spent in it. The sole reason would be my loss, not as a student, but as a Philadelphian, for this loss was the price I paid. But the older I grow, the better I realize that to the loss I owe an immeasurable gain. For as a child I never got so accus- tomed to Philadelphia as not to see it at all. The thing we know too well is often the thing we see least clearly, or we should not need the philosopher to remind us that that is best which nearest lieth. All through my childhood and early youth I saw Philadelphia chiefly from the outside, and so saw it with more awe and wonder and lasting de- light than those Philadelphians who, in childhood and early youth, saw it only from the inside, — too near for it to come together into the picture that tells. CHAPTER V: TRANSITIONAL I 1^ ND so it was with a great fear in my heart that, / \ in the course of time and after I had learned as 1 m. httle as it was decent for Philadelphia girls to learn in the days before Bryn Mawr, I left the Convent altogetlier for Philadelphia. I can smile now in recalling the old fear, but it was no smiling matter at seventeen: a weeping matter rather, and many were the tears I shed in secret over the prospect before me. My holidays had not revealed Philadelphia to me as a place of evil and many dangers. But as I was to live there, it represented the world, — the sinful world, worse, the unknown world, to battle with whose temptations my life and training at the Convent had been the preparation. It added to the danger that sin could wear so peaceful an aspect and temptation keep so comfortably out of sight. During an interval, longer than I cared to have it, for I did not " come out " at once as a Philadelphia girl should and at the Convent I had made few Philadelphia friends, my personal knowledge of Philadelphia did not go much deeper than its house fronts. For the most part they bore the closest family resemblance to those of Eleventh and Spruce, with the same suggestion of order and repose in their well-washed marble steps and neatly- 104 >^-- •nk •*■; ^& . [I ST PETER'S, INTERIOR TRANSITIONAL 107 di-awn blinds. jNIy Father had then moved to Third Street near Sjn-uce, and there rented a red brick house, one- half, or one-third, the size of my Grandfather's, but very like it in every other way, to the roses in the tiny back- yard and to the daily family routine except that, with a courageous defiance of tradition I do not know how we came by, we dined at the new dinner hour of six and said our prayers in the privacy of our bedrooms. The Stock Exchange was only a minute away, and yet, at our end. Third Street had not lost its character as a respectable residential street. We had for neighbours old JNIiss Grelaud and the Bullitts and, round the corner in Fourth Street, the Wisters and Bories and Schaumbergs,— with what bated breath Philadelphia talked of the beauty and talents of ^Miss Emily Schaumberg, as she still was! — and many other Philadelphia families who had never lived any- where else. Life went on as silently and placidly and regularly as at the Convent. I seemed merely to have exchanged one sort of monastic peace for another and the loudest sound I ever heard, the jingling of my old friend the horse-car, was not so loud as to disturb it. If I walked up Spruce Street, or as far as Pine and up Pine, silence and peace enfolded me. Peace breathed, exuded from the red brick houses with their white marble steps, their white shutters below and green above, their pleasant line of trees shading the red brick pavement. The occasional brown stone front broke the uniformity with such brutal discord that I might have imagined the 108 OUR PHILADELPHIA devil I knew was waiting for me somewhere lurked behind it, and have seen in its pretentious aping of New York fashion the sin in which Philadelphia, as the Sinful World, must abound. I cannot say why it seemed to me, and still seems, so odious, for there were other interruptions to the monotony I delighted in — the beautiful open spaces and great trees about the Pennsylvania Hospital and St. Peter's; the old Mint which, with its severe classical facade, seemed to reproach the frivolity of the Chestnut Street store windows on every side of it; General Paterson's square grey house with long high-walled garden at Thir- teenth and Locust; the big yellow Dundas house at Broad and Walnut, with its green enclosure and the magnolia for whose blossoming I learnt to watch with the coming of spring; that other garden with wide-spreading trees opposite my Grandfather's at Eleventh and Spruce: old friends these quickly grew to be, kindly landmarks on the way when I took the walks that were so solitary in those early days, through streets where it was seldom I met anybody I knew, for the Convent had made me a good deal of a stranger in my native town, — where it was seldom, indeed, I met anybody at all. II When I went out, I usually turned in the direction of Spruce and Pine, for to turn in the other, towards Walnut, was to be at once in the business part of the town where Philadelphia women preferred not to be seen, having no ."ii^/A "' ^^^:f ■ ^-:i, ^'i,i-V:^W^'^^ ■' ' -■'-■■"■■'': i ^hI -^P'i i.^'1 ^'t;^ ■ '^■■■W^^^IS^ H**-^^""-' THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL FROM PINE STREET TRANSITIONAL 111 desire to bridge over the wide gulf of propriety that then yawned between the sex and business. Except for the character of the buildings and the signs at the doors, I might not have been conscious of the embarrassing differ- ence between this and my more familiar haunts. Bankers' and stock-brokers' offices were on every side, but the Third Street car did not jingle any louder as it passed, my way was not more crowded, peace still enveloped me. I gathered from my Father, who was a broker, that the Stock Exchange, when buying and selling had to be done on the spot and not by telephone as in our degenerate days, was now and then a scene of animation, and it might be of noise and disorder, more especially at Christmas, when a brisker business was done in penny whistles and trumpets than in stocks and shares. But the animation overflowed into Third Street only at moments of panic, to us welcome as moments of prosperity for they kept my Father busy — we thrived on panics— and then, once or twice, I saw staid Philadelphians come as near running as I ever knew them to in the open street. Now and then youth got the better of me and I sought adventure in the unadventurous monotony of Walnut Street where the lawyers had their offices, the courts not having as yet migrated up to Broad Street. It was usually lost in heavy legal slumber and if my intrusion was bold, at least nobody was about to resent it. Nor could there be a doubt of the eminent respectabihty into which I in- truded. The recommendation to Philadelphia of its 112 OUR PHILADELPHIA lawyers was not the high esteem in which they were held throughout the country, but their social standing at home — family gave distinction to the law, not the law to family. Approved Philadelphia names adorned the signs at almost every office door and not for some years was the evil day to dawn when the well-known Philadelphia families who inherited the right of the law would be forced to fight for it with the alien and the Jew. For me, I think I am at an age when I may own that the irreproachable names on the signs were not the principal attraction. Sometimes, from one of the somnolent offices, a friendly figure would step into the somnolent street to lighten me on my way, and it was pleasanter to walk up Walnut in company than alone. When I went back the other day, after many years and many changes for Philadelphia and myself, I found most of the familiar signs gone, but at one door I was met by a welcome ghost — but, was it the ghost of that friendly figure or of my lonely youth grasping at romance or its shadow? How many years must pass, how many experi- ences be gone through, before a question like that can be asked ! If I followed Third Street beyond Walnut to Chest- nut, I was in the region of great banks and trust companies and newspaper offices and the old State House and the courts. I had not had the experience, or the training, to realize what architectural monstrosities most of the new, big, heavy stone buildings were, nor the curiosity to investigate what went on inside of them, but after the quiet red brick TRANSITIONAL 113 houses they seemed to have business written all over them and the street, compared to Spruce and Walnut, appeared to my unsophisticated eyes so thronged that I did not have to be told it was no place for me. It was plain that most women felt as I did, so careful were they to efface them- selves. I remember meeting but few on Chestnut Street below Eighth until ]\lr. Childs began to devote his leisure moments and loose change to the innocent amusement of presenting a cup and saucer to every woman who would come to get it, and as most women in Philadelphia, or out of it, are eager to grab anything they do not have to pay for, many visited him in the Ledger office at Sixth and Chestnut. As I shrank from doing what no other woman did, and, as the business end of Chestnut Street did not offer me the same temptation as Walnut, I never got to know it well, — in fact I got to know it so little that my ignorance would seem extraordinary in anybody save a Philadelphian, and it remained as strange to me as the street of a foreign town. I could not have said just where my Grandfather's Bank was, not once during that period did I set my foot across the threshold of the State House, unwilling as I am to con- fess it. But perhaps I might as well make a full confession while I am about it, for the truth will have to come out sooner or later. Let me say then, disgraceful as I feel it to be, that though I spent two years at least in the Third Street house, with so much of the beauty of Philadelphia's beautiful past at my door, it was not until some time after- 114 OUR PHILADELPHIA wards, when we had gone to live up at Thirteenth and Spruce, that I began to appreciate the beauty as well as my folly in not having appreciated it sooner. St. Peter's Church and the Pennsylvania Hospital I could not ignore, many of my walks leading me past them. But I was several years older before I saw Christ Church, inside or out. The existence of the old Second Street Market was unknown to me ; had I been asked I no doubt would have said that the Old Swedes Church was miles off; I was unconscious that I was surrounded by houses of Colonial date; I was blind to the meaning and dignity of great gables turned to the street, and stately Eighteenth Cen- tury doorways, and dormer windows, and old ironwork, and a patchwork of red and black brick ; I was indifferent to the interest these things might have given to every step I took at a time when, too often, every step seemed for- lornly barren of interest or its possibility. Into the old Philadelphia Library on Fifth Street I did penetrate once or twice, and once or twice sat in its quiet secluded alcoves dipping into musty volumes : a mere accident it must have been, my daily reading being provided for at the easy- going, friendly, pleasantly dingy, much more modern Mercantile Library in Tenth Street. But the memory of these visits, few as they were, is one of the strongest my Third Street days have left with me, and I think, or I hope, I must have felt the charm of the old town if I mav not have realized that I did, for I can never look back i 1 S£0 5 ^%,ft, '^^•y':\:Wi ) Iftl^^feiii:^ \V'«^»r ,,^/n,. V - 1. >" *^ '4¥i? 5 - ^^-^^ SECOND STREET MARKET TRANSITIONAL 117 to myself as I was then without seeing it as the background to all my comings and goings— a background that lends colour to my colourless life. Ill I can understand my ignorance and blindness and in- difference, if I cannot forgive them. All my long eleven years at the Convent I had had the virtue of obedience duly impressed upon me, and, though there custom led me easily into the temptation of disobedience, when I returned to Philadelphia I was at first too frightened and bewildered to defy Philadelphia's laws written and especially un- written, for in these I was immediately concerned. I was the more bewildered because I had come away from the Convent comfortably convinced of my own importance, and it was disconcerting to discover that Philadelphia, so far from sharing the conviction, dismissed me as a person of no importance whatever. I had also my natural indolence and moral cowardice to reckon with. I have never been given to taking the initiative when I can avoid it and it is one of my great grievances that, good and thorough Ameri- can as I am, I should have been denied my rightful share of American go. Anyway, I did not have to stay long in Philadelphia to learn for myself that the Philadelphia law of laws obliged every Philadelphian to do as every other Philadelphian did, and that every Philadelphian was too much occupied in evading what was not the thing in the present to bother to cultivate a sentiment for the 118 OUR PHILADELPHIA past. Moreover, I had to contend against what the Phila- delphians love to call the Philadelphia inertia, while all the time they talk about it they keep giving substantial proofs of how little reason there is for the talk. The Philadelphia inertia only means that it is not good form in Philadelphia to betray emotion on any occasion or under any circum- stance. The coolness, or indifference, of Philadelphians at moments and crises of great passion and excitement has always astonished the outsider. If you do not understand the Philadelphia way, as I did not then, you take the Phila- delphian's talk literally and believe the beautiful Philadel- phia calm to be more than surface deep, as I did who had not the sense as yet to see that, even if this inertia was real, it was my business to get the better of it and to de- velop for myself the energy I imagined my town and its people to be without. I have often thought that the Phila- delphia calm is a little like the London climate that either conquers you or leaves you the stronger for having con- quered it. IV If one of Philadelphia's unwritten laws closed my eyes to what was most worth looking at when I took my walks abroad, another, no less stringent, limited those walks to a small section of the town. On the map Philadelphia might stretch over a vast area with the possibility of spreading indefinitely, but for social purposes it was shut in to the East and the West by the Delaware and the Schuylkill, TRANSITIONAL 119 to the North and the South by a single line of the old rhyming list of the streets: "Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine." I have not the antiquarian knowledge to say who drew that rigid line, or when what had })een all right for Washington and Provosts of the University and no end of distinguished people became all wrong for ordinary mortals — I have heard the line ridiculed, but never ex- plained. No geographical boundary has been, or could be, more arbitrary, but there it was, there it is, and the Phila- delphian who crosses it risks his good name. Nor can the stranger, though unwarned, disregard it with impunity. I remember when I met Mrs. Alexander Gilchrist, the first friend I made in London, and she told me the number of the house away out North Twenty-second Street where she lived for two years in Philadelphia, I had a moment of Philadelphia uncertainty as to whether her literary dis- tinction could outbalance her social indiscretion. Phila- delphia never had a doubt, but was serenely unconscious of her presence during her two years there. And yet she had then edited and published, with the help of the Rossettis, her husband's Life of Blake which had brought her fame in England, and her up-town house must have been one of the most interesting to visit. Walt Whitman was a daily guest and few American men of letters passed through Philadelphia without finding their way to it. Philadelphia, however, would scruple going to Heaven were Heaven north of INIarket Street. It is an absurd prejudice, but I am not sure if I have 120 OUR PHILADELPHIA got rid of it now or if I ever shall get rid of it, and when I was too young to see its absurdity I would as soon have questioned the infallibility of the Pope. It was decreed that nobody should go north of Market or south of Pine; therefore I must not go; the reason, probably, why I never went to Christ Church — a pew had not been in my family for generations to excuse my presence in North Second Street — why I never, even by accident, passed the Old Swedes or the Second Street Market. It was bad enough to cross the line when I could not help myself. I am amused now — though my sensitive youth found no amuse- ment in it — when I think of my annoyance because my Great-Grandfather, on my Mother's side, old Ambrose White whose summer home was in Chestnut Hill, lived not many blocks from the Meeting House and the Christ Church Burial Ground where Franklin lies, in one of those fine old Arch Street houses in which Friends had lived for generations since there had been Arch Street houses to live in. Besides, Mass and Vespers in the Cathedral led me to Logan Square, to my dismay that religion should lead where it was as much as my reputation was worth to be met. I have wondered since if it was as compromising for the Philadelphian from north of Market Street to be found in Rittenhouse Square. Outwardly I could see no startling difference between the forbidden Philadelphia and my Philadelphia — " there is not such great odds, Brother Toby, betwixt good and evil as the world imagines," I might have said with Mr. .\ tf^ >^> --'v '"^i',„#t"" in FOURTH AND ARCH STREETS MEETING HOUSE TRANSITI(3NAL 123 Shandy had I known that Mr. Shandy said it or that there was a JNIr. Shandy to say anything so wise. The Phila- delphia rows of red hriek honses, white marble steps, white shutters below and green above, rows of trees shading them, were much the same north of INIarket Street and south of Pine, except that south of Pine the red brick houses shrank and the white marble and white shutters grew shabby, and north of ^larket their uniformity was more often broken by brown stone fronts which, together with the greater width of many of the streets, gave a richer and more prosperous air than we could boast down our way. But it was not for Philadelphians, of all people, to question why, and it must have been two or three years later, when I was less awed by Philadelphia, that I went up town of my own free will and out of sheer defiance. I can remember the time when an innocent visit to so harm- less a place as Girard College appeared to me in the light of outrageous daring. That is the way in my generation we were taught and learned our duty in Philadelphia. My excursions to the suburbs, except to Torresdale, were few, which was my loss for no other town's suburbs are more beautiful, and they were not on Philadelphia's Index. Time and the alien had not yet driven the Phila- delphian out to the Main Line as an alternative to " Chest- nut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine," but many had country houses there; Germantown was popular. Chestnut Hill and Torresdale were beyond reproach. My Father, how- ever, who cultivated most of Philadelphia's prejudices. 124 OUR PHILADELPHIA was unexpectedly heterodox in this particular. He could not stand the suburbs — poor man, he came to spending suburban summers in the end — and of them all he held Germantown most sweepingly in disfavour. I cannot remember that he gave a reason for his dislike. It may be that its grej'-stone houses offended him as an infidelity to Philadelphia's red brick austerity. But he could never speak of it with patience and from him I got the idea that it was the abyss of the undesirable. One of the biggest surprises of my life was, when I came to look at it with my own eyes, to find it as desirable a place as beauty and history can make. V The shopping I had not the money to do would have kept me within a more exclusive radius, for a shopping expedition restricted the Philadelphian who had any re- spect for herself to Chestnut Street between Eighth and Fifteenth. Probably I was almost the only Philadelphian who knew there were plenty of cheap stores in Second Street, but that I bought the first silk dress I ever possessed there was one of the little indiscretions I had the sense to keep to myself. A bargain in Eighth Street might be dis- closed as a clever achievement, if not repeated too often. The old Philadelphia name and the historic record of Lippincott's, for generations among the most successful Philadelphia publishers, would have permitted a periodi- cal excursion into Market Street, even if unlimited latitude. TRANSITIONAL 125 anyway, had not been granted to wholesale houses in the choice of a street. The well-known reliability of Straw- bridge and Clothier might warrant certain purchases up- town and a furniture dealer as reliable, whose name and address I regret have escaped me, sanction the house- keeper's penetrating still fiu-ther north. But it was safer, everj'ihing considered, to keep to Chestnut Street, and on Chestnut Street to stores approved by long patronage — you were hall-marked " common " if you did not, and the wrong name on the inside of your hat or under the flap of your envelope might be your social undoing. The self- respecting Philadelphian would not have bought her needles and cotton anywhere save at Mustin's, her ribbons anywhere save at Allen's. She would have scorned the visiting card not engraved by Dreka. She would have gone exclusively to Bailey's or Caldwell's for her jewels and silver; to Darlington's or Homer and CoUaday's for her gloves and dresses; to Sheppard's for her linen; to Porter and Coates, after Lippincott's, for her books; to Earle's for her pictures ; — prints were such an exotic taste that Gebbie and Barrie could afford to hide in Walnut Street, and the collector of books such a rarity that Tenth, or was it Ninth? was as good as any other street for the old book store where I had so unpleasant an experience that I could not well forget it though I have forgotten its pro- prietor's name. A sign in the window said that old books were bought, and one day, my purse as usual empty but my heart full of hope, I carried there two black-bound, 126 OUR PHILADELPHIA gilt-edged French books of the kind nobody dreams of reading that I had brought home triumphantly as prizes from the Convent : but I and my poor treasures were dis- missed with such contempt and ridicule that my spirit was broken and I could not summon up pluck to carry them to Leary's, in Ninth Street, who were more liberal even than Charles Lamb in their definition, and to whom any- thing printed and bound was a book to be bought and sold. If hunger overtook the shopper, she would have eaten her oyster stew only at Jones's on Eleventh Street or Btirns's on Fifteenth; or if the heat exhausted her, she would have cooled oiF on ice-cream only at Sautter's or Dexter's, on soda-water only at Wyeth's or Hubbell's. The hoiu-s for shopping were as circumscribed as the dis- trict. To be seen on Chestnut Street late in the afternoon, if not unpardonable, was certainly not quite the thing. VI Shopping without money had no charm and could never help to dispose of my interminable hours. The placid beauty of the shopless streets was of a kind to appeal more to age than youth. I wonder to this day at the time I allowed to pass before I shook off my respect for Phila- delphia conventions sufficiently to relieve the dulness of my life by straying from the Philadelphia beaten track. The most daring break at first was a stroll on Sunday afternoon over to West Philadelphia and to Woodland's. Later, when, with a friend, I went on long tramps through JOHNSON HOUSE, GERMANTOWN TRANSITIONAL 129 the Park, by the Wissahickon, to Chestnut Hill, it was looked upon as no less unladylike on our part than the new generation's cigarette and demand for the vote on theirs. Eut if I did my duty, I was sadly bored by it. Often I turned homeward with that cruel aching of the heart the young know so well, longing for something, any- thing, to happen on the way to interrupt, to disorganize, to shatter to pieces the daily routine of life. I still shrink from the sharp pain of those cool, splendid October days when Philadelphia was aglow and quiveringly alive, and with every breath of the brisk air came the desire to be up and away and doing — but away where in Philadelphia? — doing what in Philadelphia ? I still shrink from the sharp pain of the first langourous days of spring when every Philadelphia back-yard w^as full of perfume and every Philadelphia street a golden green avenue leading direct to happiness could I have found the way along its be- wildering straightness. If youth only knew! There was everywhere to go, everything to do, every happiness to claim. Philadelphia waited, the Promised Land of action and romance, had I not been hide-bound by Philadelphia conventions, ab- sorbed in Philadelphia ideals, disdaining all others with the intolerance of my years. According to these conventions and ideals, there was but one adventure for the Philadel- phia girl who had finished her education and arrived at the appointed age — the social adventure of coming out. CHAPTER VI : THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE I LET me say at once that I know no adventure is more important for the Philadelphian, and that mine / was scarcely worth the name as these things go in Philadelphia. It is the one adventure that should be roses all the way, but for me it was next to no roses at all. To begin with, I was poor. My Father had lost his money in the years of upheaval following the Civil War and had never got it back again. Nowadays this would not matter. A girl of seventeen, when she comes home from school, can turn round, find something to do, and support herself. She could in the old days too, if she was thrown on her own resources. I had friends no older than myself who taught, or were in the Mint — that harbour of refuge for the young or old Philadelphia lady in reduced circumstances. But my trouble was that I was not supposed to be thrown on my own resources. A Philadelphia father would have felt the social structure totter had he permitted his daughter to work as long as he was alive to work for her. When he had many daughters and luck went against him, the ad- vantage of this attitude was less obvious to them than to him. Exemplary as was the theory, which I applaud my Father for acting up to since it happened to be his, it had 130 THE CUSTOMS HOUSE THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 133 its inconvenience when put into practice. To be guarded from the hardship of hd)our by the devoted father did not always put money into the daughter's pocket. Had I been more at home in Philadelphia, my poverty might not have stood so much in my light. A hundred years before Gouverneiu* Morris had praised Philadelphia, which in its respect for " virtuous poverty " he thought so mucli more generous than other capitals where social splen- dour was indispensable, and in this the town had not changed. It was to Philadelphia's credit that a girl's social success did not depend on the length of her dressmaker's bill or the scale of her entertaining. JVIore than one as poor as I would have a different story to tell. But I suffered from having had no social training or apprenticeship. The Convent had been concerned in preparing me for society in the next world, not in this, and I had stayed in the Convent too long to make the many friendships that do more than most things to launch a girl on her social career — too long, for that matter, to know what society meant. It was a good thing that I did not know, did not realize what was ahead of me, that I allowed myself to be led like a Philadelphian to the slaughter, for a little experience of society is good for everybody. Unless men are to live like brutes — or like monks — they must establish some sort of social relations, and if the social game is played at all, it shoidd be according to the rules. Nowhere are the rules so rigorous as in Philadelphia, nowhere in America based upon more inexorable, as well as dignified, traditions, and 134 OUR PHILADELPHIA I do not doubt that because of the stumbhng blocks in my path, I learned more about them than the Philadel- phia girl whose path was rose-strewn. Were history my mission, it woidd be amusing to trace these traditions to their source — first through the social life of the Friends who, however, are so exclusive that should this part of the story ever be told, whether as romance or history, it must come from the inside ; and then, through the gaieties of the World's People who flatter themselves the}^ are as exclu- sive, and who have the name for it, and whose exclusiveness is wholesale license compared to that of the Friends: — through the two distinct societies that have lived and flourished side by side ever since Philadelphia was. But my concern is solely with the gaieties as I, individually, shared in them. Now that I have outlived the discomforts of the experience, I can flatter myself that, in my small, insignificant fashion, I was helping to carry on old and fine traditions. II The most serious of these discomforts arose from the question of clothes, a terrifying question under the exist- ing conditions in the Third Street house, involving more industrious dress-making upstairs in the third story front bedroom than I cared about, and a waste of energies that should have been directed into more profitable channels. I sewed badly and was conscious of it. At the Convent, except for the necessity of darning my stockings, I had UNDER BROAD STREET STATION AT FIFTEENTH STREET THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 137 been as free from this sort of toiling as a lily of the field, and yet I too had gone arrayed, if hardly with the same conspieuous success, and, in my awkward hands, the white tarlatan — wlio wears tarlatan now? — and the cheap silk from Second Street, which composed my coming out trous- seau, were not growing into such things of beauty as to reconcile me to my new task. As unpleasant were the preliminary lessons in dancing- forced upon me by my family when, in my pride of recent graduation with honours, it offended me to be thought by anybody in need of learning anything. One evening every week during a few months, two or three friends and cousins joined me in the Third Street parlour to be drilled into dancing shajJe for coming out by INIadame Martin, the large, portly Frenchwoman who, in the same crinoline and heelless, sidelaced shoes, taught generations of Philadelphia children to dance. Even the Convent could not do without her, though there, to avoid the sin- fulness of " round dances," we had, under her tuition, waltzed and polkaed hand in hand, a method which my family feared, if not corrected, might lead to my disgrace. I seem rather a pathetic figure as I see myself obediently stitching and practising my steps without an idea of the true meaning and magnitude of the adventure I was getting ready for, or a chance of being set about it in the right way. That right way would have been for somebody to give a party or a dance or a reception espe- cially for me to come out at. But nobody among my 138 OUR PHILADELPHIA friends and relations was obliging enough to accept the responsibility, and at home my Father could not get so far as to think of it. He would have needed too disastrous a panic in Third Street to provide the money. JNIadame Martin's lessons were already an extravagance and when, on top of them, he had gone so far as to pay for my sub- scription to the Dancing Class, and, in a cabless town, for the carriage, fortunately shared with friends, to go to it in, he had done all his bank account allowed him to do to start me in life. It would be as useful to explain that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west as to tell a Philadelphian that the Dancing Class to which I refer was not of the variety presided over by Madame Martin, but one to which Phila- delphians went to make use of just such lessons as I had been struggling with for weeks. The origin of its name I never kneM% I never asked, the Dancing Class being one of the Philadelphia institutions the Philadelphian took for granted : then, as it always had been and still is, I be- lieve, a distinguished social function of the year. To belong to it was indispensable to the Philadelphian with social pretensions. It was held every other Monday, if I remember — to think I should have a doubt on a subject of such importance! — and the first of the series was given so early in the winter that with it the season may be said to have opened. Perhaps this fact helped my family to decide that it was at the Dancing Class I had best make my first appearance. THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 139 III Youth is brave out of sheer ignorance. Wlien the nionient came, it never occurred to nie to liesitate or to consider the manner of my intro(hiction to the world. I was content that my Brother should be my sole chaperon. 1 rather liked myself in my home-made white tarlatan, feel- ing very much dressed in my first low neck. I entertained no misgivings as to the fate awaiting me, imagining it as inevitable for a girl who was " out " to dance and have a good time as for a bird to fly once its wings were spread. If there were men to dance with, what more was needed? — it never having entered into my silly head that it was the girl's sad fate to have to wait for the man to ask her, and that sometimes the brute didn't. I had to go no further than the dressing-room at the Natatorium, where the Dancing Class then met, to learn that society was not so simple as I thought. I have since been to many strange lands among many strange people, but never have I felt so nuich of a stranger as when I, a Philadelphian born, doing conscientiously what Philadel- phia expected of me, was suddenly dropped down into the midst of a lot of Philadelphia girls engaged in the same duty. There was a freemasonry among them I could not help feeling right away — the freemasonry that went deeper than the chance of birth and the companionship of duty — the freemasonry that came from their all having grown up together since their perambulator days in Ritten- 140 OUR PHILADELPHIA house Square, having learned to dance together, gone to children's parties together, studied at Miss Irwin's school together, spent the summer by the sea and in the moun- tains together, in a word, from their having done every- thing together until they were united by close bonds, the closer for being undefinable, that I, Convent bred, with not an idea, not a habit, not a point of view, in common with them, could not break through. I never have got quite over the feeling, though time has modified it. There is no loneliness like the loneliness in a crowd, doubly so if all the others in the crowd know each other. In the dressing-room that first evening it was so overwhelming to discover my- self entirely out of it where I should have been entirely in, that, without the stay and support of my friend, of old the Prince of Denmark to my Ghost of Hamlet's Father, and her sister, who had come out under more favourable con- ditions, I do not think I could have gone a step further in the great social adventure. As it was, with my heart in my boots, my hand trem- bling on my Brother's arm, to the music of Hassler's band, I entered the big bare hall of the Natatorium, and was out with no more fuss and with nobody particularly excited about it save myself. Things were a little better once away from the dress- ing-room. JNIy Brother was gay, had been out for two or three years, knew everybody. If he could not introduce me to the women he could introduce the men to me, and the freemasonry existing among them from their all having THE PHILADELPHIA CLUB THIRTEENTH AND WALNf T STREETS THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 143 gone to the Episcopal Academy and the University of Pennsylvania together, from their all having played cricket and baseball and football, or gone hunting together, from their all belonging to the same clubs, was not the kind from which I need suffer. Besides, those were the days when it was easy for the Philadelphia girl to get to know men, to make friends of them, without the Philadelphia gossip pouncing upon her and the Philadelphia father asking them their intentions — they could call upon her as often as they liked and the Philadelphia father would retreat from the front and back parlours, she could go out alone with them and the Philadelphia father would not interfere, knowing they had been brought up to see in themselves her protectors, especially appointed to look out for her. Some signs of change I might have discerned had I been observant. 31ore than the five o'clock tea affectation was to come of the new coquetting with English fashions. Enough had already come for me to know that if my Brother now and then asked me to go to the theatre, it was not for the pleasure of my company, but because a girl he wanted to take would not accept if he did not provide a companion for the sake of the proprieties. I am sure the old Philadelphia way was the most sensible. Certainly it was the most helpful if you happened to be a girl com- ing out with next to no friends among the women in what ought to have been your own set, with no chaperon to see that you made them, and, at the Dancing Class, with no hostess to keep a protecting eye on you but, instead, 144 OUR PHILADELPHIA patronesses too absorbed in their triumphs to notice the less fortunate straggling far behind. Well, anyway, if honesty forljids nie to call myself a success, it is a satisfaction to remember that I did not have to play the wall-flower, which I would have thought the most terrible disaster that could befall me. To have to sit out the German alone would have been to sink to such depths of shame that I never afterwards could have held up my head. It was astonishing what mountains of de- spair we made of these social molehills ! I can still see the sad faces of the girls in a row against the wall, with their air of announcing to all whom it might concern: " Here we are, at your service, come and rescue us! " But there was another dreadful custom that did give me away only too often. When a man asked a girl beforehand to dance the German, Philadelphia expected him to send her a bunch of roses : always the same roses — Boston buds, weren't they called? — and from Pennock's on Chestnut Street if he knew what was what. To take your place roseless was to proclaim that you had not been asked until the eleventh hour. It was not pleasant. However, if I went sometimes without the roses, I always had the jjartner, I had even moments of triumph as when, one dizzy evening before the assembled Dancing Class, I danced with Willie White. It is not indiscreet to mention so great a person by name and, in doing so, not presuming to use it so familiarly — he was the Dancing Class, as far as I know, he had no other occupation; and his name was Willie, not William, THE SOCIAL AD\ENTURE 145 not Mr. AVhite. Willie, as Philadelphians said it, was a title of honour, like the C(£ur de Lion or the Petit Caporal bestowed upon other great men — the measure of the estimate in which social Philadelphia held him. Beau Nash in the Pump Room at Bath was no mightier power than Willie White in the Dancing Class at the Natatorium. He ruled it, and ruled it magnificently: an autocrat, a tyrant, under whose yoke social Philadelphia was eager to thrust its neck. What he said was law, whom he approved could enter, whom he objected to was without redress, his recognition of the Philadelphian's claims to admission was a social passport. He saw to everything, he led the German, and I do not supjjose there was a girl who, at her first Dancing Class her first winter, did not, at her first chance, take him out in the German as her solemn initiation. That is how I came to enjoy my triumph, and I do not remember repeating it for he never condescended to take me out in return. But still, I can say that once I danced with Willie White at the Dancing- Class — And did I once see Shelley plain? IV There were other powers, as I was made quickly to understand — not only the powers that all Biddies, Cad- walladers. Rushes, Ingersolls, Whartons, in a word all members of approved Philadelphia families were by Phila- delphia right, but a few who had risen even higher than that splendid throng and were accepted as their leaders. 10 146 OUR PHILADELPHIA It was not one of the most brilliant periods in the social history of Philadelphia. Mrs. Rush had had no successor, no woman presided over what could have been given the name of Salon as she had. Even the Wistar parties, ex- clusively for men, discontinued during the upheaval of the Civil War, had not yet been revived. But, notwith- standing the comparative quiet and depression, there were a few shining social lights. Had I been asked in the year of my coming out who was the greatest woman in the world, I should have answered, without hesitation, Mrs. Bowie. She, too, may be mentioned by name without indiscretion for she, too, has become historical. She was far from beautiful at the date to which I refer, she was no longer in her first youth, was inclined to stoutness and I fear had not learned how to fight it as women who would be in the fashion must learn to-day. She was not rich and the fact is worth recording, so char- acteristic is it of Philadelphia. The names of leaders of society in near New York usually had millions attached to them, those there allowed to lead paid a solid price for it in their entertaining. But Mrs. Bowie's power depended upon her personal fascination — with family of course to back it — which was said to be irresistible. And yet not to know her wvas to be unknown. Intimacy with her was to have arrived. At least a bowing acquaintance, an occa- sional invitation to her house, was essential to success or its dawning. She entertained modestly as far as I could gather from my experience, — as far as I can now depend THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 147 on my memory — gave no balls, no big dinners; if there were select little dinners, I was too young and insignificant to hear of them. I never got farther than the after- noon tea to which everybody was invited once every winter, a comfortless crush in her small house, with next to nothing to eat and drink as things to eat and drink go according to the lavish Philadelphia standard. But that did not matter. Nothing mattered except to be there, to be seen there. I was tremendously pleased with myself the first time the distinction was mine, though of my presence in her house Mrs. Bowie was no doubt amiably imconscious. I never knew her to recognize me out of it, though I sometimes met her when she came informally to see one of my Aunts who was her friend, or to give me the smile at the Dancing Class that would have raised my drooping spirits. The only notice she ever spared me there was to express to my Brother — who naturally, brother-like, made me uncomfortable by reporting it to me — her opinion of my poor, unpretentious, home-made. Second Street silk as an example of the absurdity of a long train to dance in, which shows how completely she had forgotten who I was. Her chief rival, if so exalted a personage could have a rival, was Mrs. Connor, from whom also a smile, a recogni- tion, was equivalent to social promotion. Her fascination did not have to be explained. She was an unqualified beauty, though the vision I have retained is of beauty in high-necked blue velvet and chinchilla, w^hich I could not 148 OUR PHILADELPHIA have enjoyed at the Dancing Class or any evening party. I reahse as I write that in the details of Philadelphia's social history 1 would come out badly from too rigid an examination. V To Mrs. Connor's I was never asked with or without the crowd. But other houses were opened to me, other invitations came, for, if I had not friends, my family had. My white tarlatan and my Second Street silk had grown shabby before the winter was half over. At many parties I got to know what a delightful thing a Philadelphia party was, and if I had gone to one instead of many I should have known as well. Philadelphia had a standard for its parties as for everything, and to deviate from this standard, to attempt originality, to invent the " freak " entertainments of New York, would have been excessively bad form. The same card printed by Dreka requested the pleasure of your company to the same Philadelphia house — the Philadelphia hostess would not have stooped to invite you to the Continental or the Girard, the LaPierre House or the Colonnade, which were the Bellevue and the Ritz of my day — where you danced in the same spacious front and back parlours, with the same crash on the floor, to the same music by Hassler's band; where you ate the same Terrapin, Croquettes, Chicken Salad, Oysters, Boned Turkey, Ice-cream, little round Cakes with white icing on top, and drank the same Fish-House Punch provided by the same Augustine; where the same Cotillon began at THE NEW RITZ-CARLTON; THE FINISHING TOUCHES THE WALNUT STREET ADDITION HAS SINCE BEEN MADE THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 151 tlie same hour with the same figures and the same favours and the same partners ; where there was the same dressing- room in tlie second story front and the same Philadelphia girls who froze me on my arrival and on my departure. There was no getting away from the same people in Phila- deJiDhia. That was the worst of it. The town was big enough for a chance to meet different people in different houses every evening in the week, but by that arbitrary boundary of " Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine," it has made itself socially into a village with the pettiness and limitations of village life. I have never wondered that Philadelphians are as cordial to strangers as everybody who ever came to Philadelphia knows them to be — that Philadelphia doors are as hospitable as Thackeray once de- scribed them. Philadelphians have reason to rejoice and make the most of it when occasionally they see a face they have not been seeing regularly at every party they have been to, and hear talk they have not listened to all their lives. Sometimes it was to the afternoon reception the card engraved by Dreka invited me, and then again it was to meet the same people and — in the barbarous mode of the day — to eat the same Croquettes, Chicken Salad, Terra- pin, Boned Turkey, Ice-cream, and little round Cakes with white icing on top, and to drink the same Punch from Augustine's at five o'clock in the afternoon, and at least risk digestion in a good cause. But rarely did the card engraved by Dreka invite me to dinner, and I could not 152 OUR PHILADELPHIA have been invited to anything I hked better. I liave always thought dinner the most civihzed form of enter- tainment. It may have been an entertainment Phila- delphia preferred to reserve for my elders, and, if I am not mistaken, the most formal dinners, or dinners with any pretence to being public, were then usually men's affairs, just as the Saturday Club, and the Wistar parties had been, and the Clover Club, and the Fish-House Club were: from them women being as religiously excluded as from the dinners of the City Companies in London, or from certain monasteries in Italy and the East. Indeed, as I look back, it seems to me that woman's social presence was correct only in private houses and at private gather- ings. Nothing took away my breath so completely on going back to Philadelphia after my long absence as the Country Clubs where men and women now meet and share their amusements, if it was not the concession of a dining- room to women by a Club like the Union League that, of old, was in my esteem as essentially masculine as the Phila- delphia Lady thought the sauces at Blossom's Hotel in Chester. But tliere were plenty of other things to do which I did with less rather than more thoroughness. I paid midday visits, wondering why duty should have set me so irksome a task. I received with friends on New Year's Day — an amazing day when men paid off their social debts and made, at some houses, their one call of the year, joining together by twos and threes and fours to charter a car- THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 153 riage, or they would never have got through their round, armed with all their courage either to refuse positively or to accept everywhere the glass of JNIadeira or Punch and the usual masterpiece from Augustine's. It was another barharous custom, but an old Philadelphia custom, and Philadelphia has lost so many old customs that I could have wished this one spared. I went to the concerts of the Orpheus Club. I went to the Opera and the Theatre when I was asked, whicli was not often. I passed with the proper degree of self-consciousness the Philadelphia Club at Thirteenth and Walnut, the same row of faces always looking out over newspapers and magazines from the same row of windows. And I did a great many things that were pleasant and a great many more that were un- pleasant, conscientiously rejecting nothing social I was told to do when the opportunity to do it came my way. But it all counted for nothing weighed in the balance with the one thing I did not do — I never went to the Assembly. CHAPTER VII: THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY I AM too good a Philadelphian to begin to talk about the Assembh^ in the middle of a chapter. It holds a place apart in the social life of Philadelphia of which annually it is the supreme moment, and in my record of my experiences of this life, however imperfect, I can treat it with no less consideration. It must have a chapter apart. To go to the Assembly was the one thing of all others I wanted to do, not only on the general principle that the thing one wants most is the thing one cannot have, but because to go to the Assembly was the thing of all others I ought to have done. There could be no question of that. You were not really out in Philadelphia if you did not go; only the Friends could afford not to. And Ameri- cans from other towns felt much the same way about it, they felt they were not anybody if they were not in- vited, and they moved heaven and earth for an invitation, and prized it, when received, as highly as a pedigree. A few honoured guests were always at the Assembly. Philadelphians who are not on the Assembly list may pretend to laugh at it, to despise it, to sneer at the snob- 154 ^f&w^ THE HALL, STENTON THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY 157 bishness of people who endeavour to draw a social line in a countiy where everybody is as good as everybody else and where those on the right side may look down but those on the wrong will not be induced to look up. And not one among those who laugh and sneer would not jump at the chance to get in, were it given them, at the risk of being transformed into snobs themselves. For the Assembly places the Philadelphian as nothing else can. It gives hhn what the German gets from his quarterings or the Briton from an invitation to Court. The Dancing Class had its high social standard, it required grandfathers as cre- dentials before admission could be granted, the archives of the Historical Society of Pensylvania supplied no more authoritative assurance of Philadelphia respectability than its subscription hst, but the Dancing Class was lax in its standard compared to the Assembly. I am not sure what was the number, what the quality, of ancestors the Assembly exacted, but I know that it was as inexorable in its exactions as the Council of Ten. It would have been easier for troops of camels to pass through the eye of a needle than for one Philadelphian north of jNIarket Street to get through the Assembly door. I am told that matters are worse to-day when Philadelphia society has increased in numbers until new limits must be set to the Assembly lest it perish of its own unwieldiness. The applicants must produce not only forefathers but fathers and mothers on the list, and the Philadelphian whose name was there more than a century and a half ago cannot make good his rights 158 OUR PHILADELPHIA if his parents neglected to establish theirs. And to be re- fused is not merely humiliation, but humiliation with Phila- delphia for witness, and the misery and shame that are the burden of the humiliated. It is foolish, I admit, society is too light a matter to suffer for; it is cruel, for the social wound goes deep. But were it ten times more foolish, ten times more cruel, I would not have it otherwise. Philadelphians preserve their State House, their Colonial mansions and churches; why should they not be as careful of their Assembly, since it has as historic a background and as fine Colonial and Revolutionary traditions ? They are proud of having their names among those who signed the Declaration of Inde- pendence; why should they not take equal — or greater — pride in figuring among the McCalls and AVillings and Shippens and Sims and any number of others on the first Assembly lists, since these are earlier in date? Besides, to such an extremity have the changes of the last quarter of a century driven the Philadelphian that he must make a good fight for survival in his own town. When I think of how mere wealth is taking possession of " Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine," how uptown is marrying into it, how the Jew and the alien are forcing their way in, I see in loyalty to the traditions of tlie Assembly of Phila- delphian's strongest defence of the social rights which are his by inheritance. Should he let go, what would there be for him to catch on to again? w \ .\ /■'wrP' )i ■% I If! ' ^:x 'PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF" THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY lOl It would be different if what Philadelphia was getting in exchange were finer, or as fine. But it is not. The old exclusiveness, with its follies, was better, more amus- ing, than the new tendency to do away with everything that gave Philadelf)hia society its character. It was the charm and the strength of Philadelphia society that it had a character of its own and was not just like Boston or New York or Baltimore society. Nobody, however remote was their mission from social matters, could visit Philadelphia without being impressed by this difference, whether it was to discover, with John Adams, that Philadelphians had their particular way of being a happy, elegant, tranquil, polite people, or, with so unlikely an observer as Matthew Ai'nold, that " the leading families in Philadelphia were much thought of," and that Philadelphia names saying nothing to an Englishman said ever}i;hing to every Ameri- can. Who you were counted in Philadelphia, as what 3'ou knew in Boston, or what you were worth in New York, and there was not an American of old who did not accept the fact and respect it. Philadelphia society clung to the Philadelphia surface of tranquillity, of untroubled repose whatever might be going on beneath it, and in my time I would not like to say how disturbing and agitating were the scandals and intrigues that were said to be going on. They were rarely made public. It was not in Phila- delphia as in London where next to everybody you meet has been or is about to be divorced, though it might be 11 162 OUR PHILADELPHIA that next to everybody you met was not making it a practice to keep to the straight and narrow path, to be as innocent as everybody looked. Logan Square could have told tales, if the Divorce Court could not. But now Philadelphia has strayed from its characteris- tic exclusiveness ; gone far to get rid of even the air of tran- quillity. With the modern " Peggy Shippen " and " Sally Wister " alert to give away its affairs in the columns of the daily paper, it could not keep its secrets to itself if it wanted to. And it does not seem to want to — that is the saddest part of the whole sad transformation. It rather hkes the world outside to know what it is doing and, worse, it takes that world as its model. Its aim apparently is to show that it can be as like every other town as two peas, so that, drinking tea to music at the Bellevue, dancing at the Ritz, lunching and dining and playing golf and polo at the Country Clubs, the visitor can comfortably for- get he is not at home but in Philadelphia. The youth of Philadelphia have become eager to desert the Episcopal Academy and the Llniversity for Groton or St. Paul's, Llarvard or Yale, in order that they may be trained to be not Philadelphians but, as they imagine, men of the world, forgetting the distinction there has hitherto been in being- plain Philadelphians. At the moment when in far older towns of Europe people are striving to recover their character by reviving local costumes, language, and cus- toms, Philadelphians are deliberately throwing theirs away with their old traditions. The Assemblv is one of their BED ROOM, STENTON THE HOME OF JAMES LOGAN THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY 165 few rare possessions left, and strict as they are with it in one way, in another they are playing fast and loose with it, holding it, as if it were a mere modern dance, at a fashionable hotel. II If I now regret, as I do, never having gone to the Assembly, it is because of all that it represents, all that makes it a classic. But at the time, my regret, though as keen, was because of more personal reasons. I could have borne the historic side of my loss with equanimity, it was the social side of it that broke my heart. I have had many bad quarters of an hour in my life, but few as poignant as that which followed the appearance at our front door of the coloured man who distributed the cards for the As- sembly — far too precious to be trusted to the post — and who came to leave one for my Brother. It was an injustice that oppressed me with a sense of my wrongs as a woman and might have set me window-smashing had window- smashing as a protest been invented. Why should the Assembly be so much easier for men? My Brother had but to put on the dress suit he had worn it did not matter how many years, and as he was, like every other American young man, at work and an independent person altogether — a millionaire I saw in him — the price of the card in an annual subscription was his affair and nobody else's. But, in my case the price was not my affair. I had not a cent to call my own, I was not at work, I was denied the right 166 OUR PHILADELPHIA to work, and, the Assembly coming fairly late in the sea- son, my white tarlatan and Second Street silk showed wear and tear that unfitted them for the most important social function of the winter. PhiladeliDhia women dressed simply, it is true; that used to be one of the ways the Quaker influence showed itself; they boasted then that their restraint in dress distinguished them from other American women. But simplicit}^ does not mean cheap- ness or indifference. The Friends took infinite pains with their soft brown and silvery grey silks, with their delicate fichus and Canton shawls. The well-dressed Philadel- phia woman knows what she has to pay for the elegance of her simplicity. And the Assembly has always called for the finest she could achieve, from the day when Franklin was made to feel the cost to him if his daughter was to have what she needed to go out " in decency " with the Wash- ingtons in Philadelphia. I had the common sense to understand my position and not to be misled by the poverty-stricken, but irresistible Nancies and Dollies who were enjoying a vogue in the novels of the day and who encircled empty bank accounts and big families with the halo of romance. To read about the struggles with poverty of the irresistible young heroine might be amusing, but I had no special use for them as a personal experience. It would have been preposterous for me to think for a moment that, without a decent gown, I could go to the Assembly and, to do myself justice, I did not think it. But by this time I knew what coming out -,i^ -.ir-lgj^ THE TUNNEL IN THE PARK THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY 169 and being out meant and, therefore, I apj^reciated the social drawback it must be for me not to be able to go. It explained, as nothing hitherto had, how far I was from being caught up in the whirl, and it is only the whirl that keeps one going in society — that makes society a delightful profession, and I think I realized this truth better than the people so extravagantly in the Philadelphia whirl as to have no time to think about it. All that winter I never got to the point of being less concerned as to where the next invitation was to come from than as to how I was to accept all that did come. There is no use denying that I was dis- appointed and suffered from the disappointment. One pays a heavier price for the first foolish illusion lost than for all the others put together, no matter how serious they are. Ill When the season was over, I had as little hope of keep- ing up in other essential ways. If society then adjourned from Philadelphia because the heat made it impossible to stay at home, it was only to start a new Philadelphia on the porch of Howland's Hotel at Long Branch or, as it was just then beginning to do, at Bar Harbor and in the camps of the Adirondacks, or, above all, at Narragan- sett. " It may be accepted as an incontrovertible truth," Janvier says in one of his Philadelphia stories, " that a Philadelphian of a certain class who missed coming to the Pier for August would refuse to believe, for that year at 170 OUR PHILADELPHIA least, in the alternation of the four seasons; while an en- forced absence from that damply delightful watering- place for two successive summers very probably would lead to a rejection of the entire Copernican system." If Philadelphians went abroad, which was much more excep- tional then than now, it was to meet each other. I know hotels in London to-day where, if you go in the afternoon, it is just like an afternoon reception in Philadephia, and hotels in Paris where at certain seasons you find nobody but Philadelphians talking Philadelphia, though the Phila- delphian has not disappeared who does not want to travel because he finds Philadelphia good enough for him. And it has always been like that. But I could not follow Philadelphia society in the summer time any more than I could go with it to the Assembly in the winter. I had reason to consider myself fortunate if I travelled as far as Mount Airy or Chestnut Hill out of the red brick oven Philadelphia used to be — is now and ever shall be ! — from June to September. It was an event if I got oiF with the crowd — the linen-dustered, wilting-collared crow^ds ; surely we are not so demoralized by the heat nowadays? — to Cape INIay or Atlantic City, to enjoy the land breeze blowing, from over the Jersey swamps, clouds of mosquitoes before it so that nobody could stir out of doors without gloves and a veil. These, however, were not the summer joys society demanded of me. The further I went into the social game, the less I got from it, and I had decided that for the poor it was not "im, THE BOAT HOUSES ON THE SCHUYLKILL THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY 173 worth the candle at the end of the first year, — or was it the second? That I should be uncertain shows how httle my heart was in the business of going out. I did not necessarily give up every amusement because I did not go out. In fact, I cannot recall a dance that amused me as much as many a boating party on the Schuyl- kill in the gold of the June afternoon, or many a walking party through the Park in the starlit summer night. There also remained, had I chosen, the staid entertainment of the women who, for one reason or other, had retired from the gayer roimd, and whose amusements consisted of more intimate receptions, teas, without number, sewing societies. And it was the period when Philadelphia was waking up to the charms of the higher education for women, — to the dissipations of " culture." I had friends who filled their time by studying for the examinations Harvard had at last condescended to allow them to pass, or try to pass ; others found their sober recreation by qualifying themselves as teachers and teaching in a large society formed to impart learning by correspondence : all these women keeping their occupation to themselves as much as possible, not wishing to make a public scandal in Philadelphia which had not accustomed itself to the spectacle of women working un- less compelled to ; — all this quite outside of the University set, which must have existed, if I did not know it, as the Bryn Mawr set exists to-day, but which, as far as my experience went, was then never heard of except by the fortunate and privileged few who belonged to it. 174 OUR PHILADELPHIA But this new amusement required effort, and experi- ence had not made me in love with the amusement that had to be striven for, that had to be paid for by exertion of any kind. There was an interval when Philadelphia would have been searched in vain for another idler as confirmed as I. Having foimd nothing to do, I proceeded to do it with all my might. I stood in no need of the poet's com- mand to lean and loaf at my ease, though I am afraid I leaned and loafed so well as to neglect the other half of his precept and to forget to invite my soul. To those years I now look back as to so much good time lost in a working life all to short at the best. CHAPTER VIII: A QUESTION OF CREED IJNIAY not have understood at the time, but I must have been vaguely conscious that if so often I felt myself a stranger in my native town, it was not only because of the long years I had been shut up in boarding- school, but because that boarding-school happened to be a Convent. There were schools in Philadelphia and schools out of it as useful as Rittenhouse Square in laying the founda- tion for profitable friendships. Miss Irwin's furnished ahiiost as good social credentials as a Colonial Governor in the family. But a Philadelphia Convent did the other thing as successfully. It was not the Convent as a Con- vent that was objected to. In Paris, it could lend distinc- tion : the fact that, at the mature age of six, I spent a year at Conflans, might have served me as a social asset. In Louisiana, or JNIaryland, a Philadelpliia girl could see its door close upon her, and not despair of social salvation. Everything depended upon where the Convent was. In some places, it had a social standing, in others it had none, and Philadelphia was one of the others. In France, in Louisiana, in JNIaryland, to be a Catholic was to be at the top of the social scale, approved by society; in Pennsyl- vania, it was to be at the bottom, despised by society. 175 176 OUR PHILADELPHIA This was another Philadelphia fact I accepted on faith. It was not until I began to think about Philadelphia that I saw how consistent Philadelphians were in their incon- sistency. Their position in the matter was what their past had made it, and the inconsistency is in their greater liberal- ity to-day. For Pennsylvania has never been Catholic, has never had an aristocratic Catholic tradition like Eng- land : to the Friends there, all the aristocracy of the tradi- tional kind belongs. The people — the World's People — who rushed to Pennsylvania to secure for themselves the religious liberty William Penn offered indiscriminately to everybody, found they could not enjoy it if Catholics were to profit by it with them. They had not been there any time when, as one of the early Friends had the wit to see and to say, they " were surfeited with liberty," and the Friends, who refused to all sects alike the privilege of expressing their religious fervour in wood piles for witches and prison cells for heretics, could not succeed in depriving them of their healthy religious prejudice which, they might not have been able to explain why, concentrated itself upon the Catholic. Episcopalians approved of a doctrine of free- dom that meant they could build their own churches where they would. Presbyterians and Baptists objected so little to each other that, for a while, they could share the same pulpit. Moravians put up their monasteries where it suited them best. IMennonites took possession of German- town. German mystics were allowed to search in peace for the Woman in White and wait hopefully for the A QUESTION OF CREED 177 Millennium on the banks of the Wissahickon. I^ater on Whitefield set the whole town of Philadelphia to singing psalms, and Philadelphia refrained from interfering with what must have been an intolerable nuisance. Even Jews were welcome — their names are among early legislators ami on early Assembly lists. Catholics, alone, they all agreed, had no right to any portion of Penn's gift, and popular opinion is often stronger than the law. Whatever ill will they had to spare from the Catholics, they reserved for the Friends to whom they owed ever^i;hing — if Penn- sylvania was " a dear Pennsylvania " to Penn, a good part of the blame lay with the " drunken crew of priests " and the " turbulent churchmen " whom he denounced in one of those letters to Logan, which are among the saddest ever written and published to the world. After religious passions had run their course, the religious prejudice against the Catholic was handed down as social prejudice, which was all it was in my day when Philadelphians, who would question the social standing of a Catholic in Philadelphia simply because he was a Catho- lic, could accept him without question in the Catholic town of Baltimore or New Orleans simply because he was one. The Catholic continued to pay a heavy price socially for his religion in Philadelphia where it was not the thing to be a Catholic, where it never had been the thing, where it got to be less the thing as successive Irish emigrations crowded the Catholic churches. I fancy at the period of which I am writing Philadelphians, if asked, would have said that 178 OUR PHILADELPHIA Catholicism was for Irish servants — for the illiterate. I remember a book called Kate Vincent I used to read at a Protestant Uncle's, where it may purposely have been placed in my way. Does anybody else remember it? — a story of school life with a heroine of a school girl who, in the serene confidence of her sixteen or seventeen summers, refuted all the learned Doctors of the Church by convicting a poor little Irish slavey of ignorance for praying to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. I think I must have for- gotten it with many foolish books for children read in my childhood had not Kate Vincent been so like Philadel- phians in her calm superiority, though, fortunately, Phila- delphians did not share her proselytising fervour. They went to the other extreme of lofty indifference and for them the Catholic churches in their town did not exist any more than the streets of little two-story houses south of Pine, a region into which they would not have thought of penetrating except to look up somebody who worked for them. II I might have learned as much during my holidays at my Grandfather's had I been given to reflection during my early years. ^ly Father was a convert with the convert's proverbial ardour. He had been baptised in the Convent chapel with my Sister and myself — I was eight years old at the time — and many who were present declared it the most touching ceremony they had ever seen. However, to the familv, who had not seen it, it was anything but touch- •-■VT^^r^^- THE PULPIT, ST. PETER'S A QUESTION OF CREED 181 ing. They were all good inenibers of the Episcopal Church and had been since they landed in Virginia; more- over, one of my Father's brothers was an Episcopal clergy- man and Head Master of the Episcopal Academy, Phila- delphia's bed-rock of religious respectability. The bap- tism was only conditional, for the Catholic Church baptizes conditionally those who have been baptized in any church before, but even so it must have been trying to them as a precaution insolently superfluous. I do not remember that anything was ever said, or suggested, or hinted. But there was an undercurrent of disapproval that, child as I was, I felt, though I could not have put it into words. One thing plain was that when we children went off to our church with my Father, we were going where nobody else in my Grandfather's house went, except the servants, and that, for some incomprehensible reason, it was rather an odd sort of thing for us to do, making us different from most people we knew in Philadelphia. Nor had I the chance to lose sight of this difference at the Convent. The education I was getting there, when not devoted to launching my soul into Paradise, was pre- paring me for the struggle against the temptations of the world which, from all I heard about it, I pictured as a horrible gulf of evil yawning at the Convent gate, ready to swallow me up the minute that gate shut behind me. To face it was an ordeal so alarming in anticipation that there was an interval when I convinced myself it would be infinitely safer, by becoming a nun, not to face it at all. 182 OUR PHILADELPHIA If I stopped to give the world a name, it was bound to be Philadelphia, the place in which I was destined to live upon leaving the Convent. 1 knew that it was Protestant, as we often prayed for the conversion of its people, I the harder because they included my relations who if not con- verted could, my catechism taught me, be saved only so as by the invincible ignorance with which I hardly felt it polite to credit them. To what other conclusion could I come, arguing logically, than that Philadelphia was the horrible gulf of evil yawning for me, and that in this gulf Protestants swarmed, scattering temptation along the path of the Catholic who walked alone among them? — an idea of Philadelphia that probably would have surprised no- body more than the nuns who were training me for my life of struggle in it. The gulf of the world did not seem so evil once it swallowed me up, but that socially the Catholic walked in it alone, there could be no mistake. When eventually I left school and began going out on my modest scale, I could not fail to see that the people I met in church were not, as a rule, the people I met at the Dancing Class, or at parties, or at receptions, or on that abominable round of morning calls, and this was the more surprising because Philadelphians of the " Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine " set were accustomed to meeting each other wher- ever they went. Except for the small group of those Philadelphia families of French descent with French names who were not descendants of the Huguenots, and A QUESTION OF (REED 183 here and there a coiiAert like iiiy Father, and an occasional native Philadelphian who, unaccountably, had always been a Catholic, the con,t>re<^'ation, whether I went to the Cathedral or St. John's, to St. Joseph's or St. Patrick's, was chiefly Irish, as also were the priests when they were not Italians. Fashion sent the Philadelphian to the Episcopal Church. It could not have been otherwise in a town as true to tradition as Philadelphia had not ceased to be in my young days. No sooner had Episcopalians settled in Philadelphia than, by their greater grandeur of dress and manner, they showed the greater social aspirations they had brought with them from the other side — the English- man's confidence in the social superiority of the Church of England to all religion outside of it. Presbyterians are said to have had a pretty fancy in matters of wigs and powdered and frizzled hair, which may also have been symbolic, for they followed a close fashionable second. Baptists and ^lethodists, on the contrary, affected to despise dress and, while I cannot say if the one fact has anything to do with the other, I knew fewer Baptists and INIethodists than Catholics. By my time the belief that no one could be " a gentleman " outside the Church of Eng- land, or its American offshoot, was stronger than ever, and fashion required a pew at St. Mark's or Holy Trinity or St. James's, if ancient lineage did not claim one at St. Peter's or Christ Church; though old-fashioned people like my Grandfather and Grandmother might cling blame- 181 OUR PHILADELPHIA lessly to St. Andrew's which was highly respectable, if not fashionable, and new-fashioned people might brave critic- ism with the Ritualists at St. Clement's. As for Catholics, a pew down at St. Joseph's in Willing's Alley or, worse still, up town at the Cathedral in Logan Square, put them out of the reckoning, at a hopeless disadvantage socially, however better off they might be for it spiritually. That the Cathedral was in Logan Square was in itself a social offence of a kind that society could not tolerate. At the correct churches every function, every meeting, every Sunday-school, every pious re-union, as well as every ser- vice, became a fashionable duty; and at the church door after service on Sunday, a man with whom one had danced the night l)efore might be picked up to walk on Walnut Street with, which was a social observance only less indis- pensable than attendance at the Assembly and the Dancing Class. I recall the excitement of girls of my age, their feel- ing that they had got to the top of everything, the first time they took this sacramental walk, if not with a man which was the crowning glory, at least with a woman who was prominent, or successful, in society. But I believe I could count the times I joined in the Walnut Street procession on Sunday morning. As long as I lived in Third Street, my usual choice of a church lay between St. Joseph's, the Jesuit church in Willing's Alley with its air of retirement, and St. Mary's on Fourth Street, where the orphans used to come from Seventh and Spruce and sometimes sing an THE CATHEDRAL. LOGAN SQUARE A QUESTION OF CREED 187 anthem that, for any save musical reasons, I deh^hted in, and where we had a pew. After we moved from Third Street, our pew was at the Cathedral, more distinguished from the clerical standpoint, for there we sat under the Bishop. No matter which our church. High Mass was long: I could not have got to the appointed part of Walnut Street in time, had I found at the door the companion to go there with me. There was nothing to do but to walk home alone or sedately at my Father's side, and one's Father, however correct he might be under other circum- tances, was not the right person for these occasions. On Sundays I could not conceal from myself that I was socially at a discount. The reflection that this was where I, as a Catholic, scored, should have consoled me, for if the Episcoj)alian was performing a social duty when he went to church, I, as a Catholic, was making a social sacrifice, and sacrifice of some sort is of the essence of religion. Ill If I could but have taken the trouble to be interested, it must also have occurred to me to wonder why St. Jos- eph's, where I went so often, was hidden in an obscure alley. In Philadelphia, the town of straight streets crossing each other at right angles, it is not easy for a building of the kind to keep out of sight. But not one man in a hundred, not one in a thousand, who, passing along Third Street, looked up Willing's Alley, dreamt for a minute that somewhere in that alley, embedded in a net- 188 OUR PHILADELPHIA work of brokers' and railroad offices, carefully concealing every trace of itself, was a church with a large congrega- tion. INIost churches in Philadelphia, as everywhere, like to display themselves prominently with an elaborate facade, or a lofty steeple, or a green enclosure, or a grave- yard full of monuments. St. Peter's, close by, fills a whole block. Christ Church stands flush with the pave- ment. The simplest Meeting-House, by the beautiful trees that overshadow it or the high walls that enclose it or the bit of green at its door, will not let the passer-by forget it. But St. Joseph's, evidently, did not want to be seen, did not want to be remembered ; evidently hesitated to show that its doors were wide and hospitably open to all the world in the beautiful fashion of the Catholic Church. There was something furtive about it, an air of mystery, it was almost as if one were keeping a clandestine appoint- ment with religion when one turned from the street into the humble alley, and from the alley into the silence of the sanctuary. Perhaps I thought less about this mysterious aloofness because, once in the church, I felt so much at home. I do not mind owning now, though I would not have owned it then for a good deal, that after my return from the Con- vent, I had the uncomfortable feeling of being a stranger not only in my town, but in my family. I had been in the Convent eleven years and until this day when I look back to my childhood, it is the Convent I remember as home. St. Joseph's seemed a part of the Convent, therefore of ^ X A^ Ar ■^u '€m- ■4^ ffc^^ -*^^'', CHRIST CHURCH, FROM SECOND STREET ^-^^^ - A QUESTION OF CREED 191 home, that had strayed into the town by mistake. In some ways it was not Hke the Convent, greatly to my discomfort. The chajjel there was dainty in detail, exqnisitely kejDt, the altars fresh with flowers from the Convent garden, and for congregation the nuns and the girls modestly and de- murely veiled. But nothing was dainty about St. Joseph's, — men are as untidy in running a church as in keeping a house — it was not well kept, the flowers were artificial and tawdry, and the congregation was largely made up of shabby old Irishwomen. The priests — Jesuits — were mostly Italian, with those unpleasant habits of Italian priests that are a shock to the convent-bred American when she first goes to Italy. They had, however, the virtue of old friends, their faces were familiar, I had known them for years at the Convent which they had frequently visited and where, by special grace, they had refrained from some of the unpleasant habits that offended me at St. Joseph's. There was Father de Maria, tall, thin, with a wonder- ful shock of white hair, a fine ascetic face and a kindly smile, not adapted to shine in children's society — too much of a scholar I fancied though I may have been wrong — mid with an effect of severity which I do not think he meant, but which had kept me at a safe distance when he came to see us at Torresdale. But he had come, I could not remember the time when I liad not known him, and that was in his favour. There was Father Ardea, a small, shrinking, dark man, from whom also it was more comfortable to keep at a 192 OUR PHILADELPHIA safe distance, so little had he to say and snch a trick of looking at you with an " Eh? Eh? " of expectation, as if he relied upon you to supply the talk he liad not at his own command. But I could have forgiven him worse, so pleasant a duty did he make of confession. His penances were light and his only comment was "Eh? Eh? mv child? But you didn't mean it! You didn't mean it!" until I longed to accuse myself of the Seven Deadly Sins with the LTnpardonable Sin thrown in, just to see if he would still assure me that I didn't mean it. There was Father Bobbelin — our corruption I fancy of Barbelin — a Frenchman, short and fat, sandy-haired, with a round smiling face: the most welcome of all. He was always very snuffy, and always ready to hand round his snufF-box if talk languished when he went out to walk with us, which I liked better than Father Ardea's em- barrassing "Eh? Eh?" It was to Father Bobbelin an inexhaustible joke, and the only other I knew him to venture upon resulted in so unheard-of a breach of dis- cipline that ever after we saw less of him and his snuff- box. He was walking with us down JNIulberry Avenue one afternoon, the little girls clustered about him as they were always sure to be, and the nun in charge a little behind with the bigger, more sedate girls. When we got to the end of the Avenue, the carriage gate leading straight out into the World was open as it had never been before, as it never was again. Father Bobbelin's fat shoulders shook with laughter. He opened the gate wider. " Now, A QUESTION OF CREED 193 children," he said, "here's your chance. Run for it!" And we did, we ran as if for our lives, though no children could have loved their school better or wanted less to get away from it. One or two ran as far as the railroad, the most adventurous crossed it, and were making full tilt for the river before all were caught and brought back and sent to bed in disgrace. After that Father Bobbelin visited us only in oiu- class-room. And there were other priests whose names escape me, but not their home-like faces. Now and then Jesuits who gave Missions and who had conducted the retreats at the Convent, appeared at St. Joseph's, — Father Smarius, the huge Dutchman, so enormous they used to tell us at the Convent that he had never seen his feet for twenty years, who had baptized my Father and his family in the Con- vent chapel; and Father Boudreau, the silent, shy little Louisianian, whom I remember so well coming with Father Smarius one June day to bless, and sprinkle Holy Water over that big yellow and white house close to the Convent which my Father had taken for the summer; and Father Glackmeyer, and Father Coghlan, and with them others whose presence helped the more to fill St. Joseph's with the intimate convent atmosphere. IV These old friends and old associations took away from the uneasiness it might otherwise have given me to find the church, for which I had exchanged the Convent chapel, 13 194 OUR PHILADELPHIA hidden up an alley as if its existence were a sin. But over- look it as I might, this was the one important fact about St, Joseph's which, otherwise, had no particular interest. It did not count as architecture, it boasted of no beauty of decoration : an inconspicuous, commonplace building from every point of view, of which I consequently retain but the vaguest memory. As I write, I can see, as if it were be- fore me, the Convent chapel, its every nook and corner, almost its every stone, this altar here, that picture there, the confessional in the screened-off space where visitors sat, the dark step close to the altar railing where I carried my wrongs and my sorrows. But try as I may, I cannot see St. Joseph's as it was, cannot see any detail, nothing save the general shabbiness and untidiness that shocked my convent-bred eyes. Could it have appealed by its beauty, like the old Cathedrals of Europe, or, for that matter, like the old churches of Philadelphia, no doubt I should be able to recall it as vividly as the Convent chapel. Because I cannot, because it impressed me so superficially, I regret the more that I had not the sense to appreciate the interest it borrowed from the romance of history and the beauty of suffering — the history of the Catholic religion in Phila- delphia which I might have read in this careful hiding of its temple ; the suffering of the scapegoat among churches, obliged to keep out of sight, atoning for their intolerance in a desert of secrecy, letting no man know where its prayers were said or its services held. Catholics had to practise their religion like criminals skulking from the FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SEVENTH STREET AND WASHINGTON SQUARE A QUESTION OF CREED 197 law. Members of a Protestant church might dispute among tliemselves to the point of blows, but they never thought of interfering with the members of any other church, except the Catholic, against which they could all cheerfully join. There were times when the Friends, most tolerant of men, were influenced by this general hostility, and I rather think the worst moment in Penn's life was when he was forced to protest against the scandal of the Mass in his town of Brotherly Love. The marvel is that Catholics ventured out of their hiding-places as soon as they did. They had emerged so successfully by Revolutionary times that the stranger in Philadelphia could find his way to " the Romish chapel " and enjoy the luxury of knowing that he was not as these poor wretches who fingered their beads and chanted Latin not a word of which they understood. The Jesuits have the wisdom of their reputation. When they built their church the Colonies had for some years been the United States, and hatred was less outspoken, and persecution was more intermittent, but they believed discretion to be the better part of valour and the truest security in not challenging attack. That is why they built St. Joseph's in Willing's Alley where the visitor with a dramatic sense must be as thrilled by it as by the secret chapels and under- ground passages in old Elizabethan mansions and Scott's novels. Philadelphia gave the Jesuits a proof of their wisdom when, within a quarter of a century, Young 198 OUR PHILADELPHIA America, in a playful moment, burnt down as much as it could of St. Michael's and St. Augustine's ; churches which had been built bravely and hopefully in open places. Young America believed in a healthy reminder to Catho- lics, that, if they had not been disturbed for some time, it was not because they did not deserve to be. Philadelphia had got beyond the exciting stage of in- tolerance before I was born. There were no delicious tremors to be had when I heard Mass at St. Joseph's or went to Vespers at St. INIary's. There was no ear alert for a warning of the approach of the enemy, no eye strained for the first wisp of smoke or burst of flame. With churches and convents everywhere — convents intruding even upon Walnut Street and Rittenhouse Square — ^with a big Cathedral in town and a big Seminary at Villanova, Catholics were in a fair way to forget it had ever been as dangerous for them as for the early Christians to venture from their catacombs. Their religion had become a tame affair, holding out no prospect of the martyr's crown. Only the social prejudice survived, but it was the more bitter to fight because, whether the end was victory or defeat, it appeared so inglorious a struggle to be engaged in. One good result there was of this social ostracism. I leave myself out of the argument. Religion, I have often heard it said, is a matter of temperament. As this story of my relations to Philadelphia seems to be resolving itself into a general confession, I must at least confess my cer- A QUESTION OF CREED 199 tainty that I have not and never had the necessary tempera- ment, that, moreover, the necessary temperament is not to be had by any effort of will power, depending rather npon "the influence of the unknown powers." But I am not totally blind, nor was I in the old days when, many as were the things I did not see, my eyes were still open to the effect of social opposition on Catholics with the tempera- ment. It made them more devout, at times more defiant. I know churches that are in themselves alone a reward for faith and fidelity — who would not be a Catholic in the dim religious light of Chartres Cathedral, or in the sombre splendours of Seville and Barcelona? But St. Joseph's and St. INIary's, St. Patrick's and St. John's gave no such reward, nor did the Cathedral in its far-away imitation of the Jesuit churches of Italy and France. In these arid, unemotional interiors, emotion could not kindle piety which, if not fed by more spiritual stuff, was bound to flicker and go out. This is why the Philadelphian who, in those unattractive churches and in spite of the social price paid, remained faithful, was the most devout Catho- lic I have ever met at home or in my wanderings. V For his spiritual welfare, it might have been better had the conditions remained as I knew them. But even at that period, the signs of weakening in the social barrier must have jumped to my eyes had I had eyes for the fine 200 OUR PHILADELPHIA shades. Catholics among themselves had begun to put up social barriers, so much further had Philadelphia travelled on the road to liberty. Religiously, one of their churches was as good as an- other, but not socially. St. Mark's, from its superior Episcopal heights, might look down equally upon St. Patrick's and St. John's, but the Catholic with a pew at St. John's did not at all look upon the Catholic with a seat at St. Patrick's as on the same social level as himself. St. Patrick's name alone was sufficient to attract an Irish congregation, and the Irish who then flocked to Philadel- phia were not the flower of Ireland's aristocracy. St. John's, by some unnamed right, claimed the Catholics of social pretensions — the excellence of its music may have strengthened its claim. I know that my Father, who was a religious man, did not object to having the comfort of religion strengthened by the charms of Gounod's ]\Iass well sung, and, at the last, he drifted from the Cathedral to St. John's. The Cathedral necessarily was above such distinctions, as a Cathedral should be, and it harboured an overflow from St. Patrick's and St. John's both. But it was the Cathedral, rather than St. John's, that did most to weaken the foundations of the social prejudice against the Catholic. The Bishop there was Bishop Wood, and Bishop Wood, like my Father a convert, was no Irish emigrant, no Italian missionary, but came from the same old family of Phila- OLD SWEDES' CHURCH A QUESTION OF CREED 203 delphia Friends as J. Some people think that Quakerism and Catholicism are more in sympathy with each other than with other creeds because neither recog- nizes any half way, each going to a logical extreme. Whether Bishop Wood thought so, I am far from sure, but he had himself gone from one extreme to the other when he became a Catholic, and the religious step had its social bearing. With his splendid presence and splendid voice, he must have added dignity to every service at the Cathedral, but he did more than that: in Philadelphia eyes he gave it the sanction of Philadelphia respectability. The Catholic was no longer quite without Philadelphia's social pale. I had no opportunity, because of my long absence, to watch the gradual breakdown, but I saw that the barrier had fallen when I got back to Philadelphia. Never again will Philadelphia children think they are doing an odd thing when they go to JNIass, never again need the Phila- delphia girl fresh from the Convent fancy herself alone in the yawning gulf of evil that opens at the Convent gate. I should not be surprised if an eligible man from the Danc- ing Class or Assembly list can to-da}^ be picked up at the door of more than one Catholic church for the Sunday Walk on Walnut Street. St. John's has risen, new and resplendent, if ugly, from its ashes; St. Patrick's has blossomed forth from its architectural insignificance into an imposing Romanesque structure. The Cathedral has 204 OUR PHILADELPHIA been new swept and garnished — not so large perhaps as I once saw it, for I have been to St. Paul's and St. Peter's and many a Jesuit church in the meanwhile, but more ornate, with altars and decorations that I knew not, and with Mr. Henry Thouron's design on one wall as a promise of further beauty to come. The difference confronted me at every step — and saddened me, though I coidd not deny that it meant improvement. But the change, as change, displeased me in a Philadelj^hia that ceases to be my Phila- delphia when it ceases to preserve its old standards and prejudices as jealously as its old monuments. For the sake of the character I loved, I could wish Philadelphia as far as ever from hope of salvation by anything save its own invincible ignorance. CHAPTER IX: THE FIRST AWAKENING I HAD been out, I do not remember how long, but long enough to confirm my belief in the Philadel- phia way of doing things as the only way, when I found that Philadelphia was involved in an enterprise for which its history might give the reason but could furnish no precedent. To Philadelphians who were older than I, or who had been in Philadelphia while I was get- ting through the business of education at the Convent, the Centennial Exposition probably did not come as so great a surprise. Having since had experience of how these matters are ordered, I can understand that there must have been some years of leading up to it. But I seem to have heard of it first within no time of its opening, and just as I had got used to the idea that Philadelphia must go on for ever doing things as it always had done them, because to do them otherwise would not be right or proper. The result was that, at the moment, I saw in the Cen- tennial chiefly a violent upheaval shaking the universe to the foundations, with Philadelphia emerging, changed, transformed, unrecognizable, plunging head-foremost into new-fangled amusements, adding new duties to the Phila- delphian's once all-sufRcing duty of being a Philadelphian, inventing new attractions to draw to its drowsy streets 205 206 OUR PHILx\DELPHIA people from the four quarters of the globe, and, more astounding, giving itself up to these innovations with zest. I looked on at the preparations, — as at most things, to my infinite boredom, — from outside: a perspective from which they appeared to me little more than a new form of social diversion. For they kept my gayer friends, who were well on the inside, busy going to Centennial balls at the Academy of Music in the Colonial dress which was as essential for admission as a Colonial name or a Colonial family tree, while I stayed at home and, seeing what lovely creatures powder and patches and paniers made of Phila- delphia girls with no more pretence to good looks than I, felt a little as I did when the coloured dignitary rang at our front door with the Assembly card that was not for me. And between the balls, the same friends were im- mersed in Centennial Societies and Centennial Committees and Centennial Meetings and Centennial Subscriptions and Centennial Petitions, Philadelphia women for the first time admitted, and pining for admission, into public affairs; while I was so far apart from it all that I re- member but one incident in connection with the Centennial orgy of work, and this as trivial as could be. When we moved into the Third Street house we had found in posses- sion a cat who left us in no doubt of her disapproval of our intrusion, but who tolerated us because of the convenience of the ground floor windows from which to watch for her enemies among the dogs of the neighbourhood, and for the comfort of certain cupboards upstairs during the infancy INDEPENDENCE HALL: THE ORIGINAL DESK ON WHICH THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WAS SIGNED AND THE CHAIR USED BY THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS, JOHN HANCOCK, IN 1776 (both on platform) THE FIRST AWAKENING 209 of her kittens. She kept us at a respectful distance and we never ventured upon anj^ liberties with her. Those of our friends who did, heedless of her growls, were sure to regret it. Our family doctor carried the marks of her teeth on his hand for many a day. It happened that once, when two Centennial canvassers called, she was the first to greet them and was unfavourably impressed by the voluminous furs in which they were wrapped. When I came downstairs she was holding the hall, her eyes flam- ing, her tail five times its natural size, and I understood the prudence of non-interference. The canvassers had re- treated to the vestibule between the two front doors and, as I opened the inner door, another glance at the flaming eyes and indignant tail completed their defeat and they fled without explaining the object of their visit. I must indeed have been removed from the Centennial delirium and turmoil to have retained this absurd encounter as one of my most vivid memories. II Upon the Centennial itself I looked at closer quarters. I was as removed from it officially, but not quite so penni- less and friendless as never to have the chance to visit it. Inexperienced and untravelled as I was, it opened for me vistas hitherto undreamed of and stirred my interest as nothing in Philadelphia had until then. As I recall it, that long summer is, as it was at the time, a bewildering jumble of first impressions and revelations — Philadelphia 14 210 OUR PHILADELPHIA all chaos and confusion, functions and formalities, spec- tacles and sensations — buildings Philadelphia could not have conceived of in its sanity covering acres of its beauti- ful Park, a whole shanty town of huge hotels and cheap restaurants and side-shows sprung up on its outskirts — marvels in the buildings, amazing, foreign, unbelievable marvels, the Arabian Nights rolled into one — interminable drives in horriblj'- crowded street-cars to reach them — lunches of Vienna rolls and Vienna coffee in Vienna cafes, as unlike Jones's on Eleventh Street or Burns's on Fif- teenth as I could imagine — dinners in French restaurants that, after Belmont and Strawberry Mansion, struck me as typically Parisian though I do not suppose they were Parisian in the least — the flaring and glaring of millions of gas lamps under Philadelphia's tranquil skies — a de- lightful feeling of triumph that Philadelphia was the first American town to do what London had done, what Paris had done, and to do it so splendidly — ^burning heat, Phila- delphia apparently bent on proving to the unhappy visitor what the native knew too well, that, when it has a mind to, it can be the most intolerably hot place in the world — sweltering, demoralized crowds — unexpected descents upon a household as quiet as ours of friends not seen for years and relations never heard of — brilliant autumn days — an atmosphere of activity, excitement and exultation that made it good to be alive and in the midst of Centennial celebrations without bothering to seek in them a more serious end than a season's amusement. PHILADELPHIA FROM BELMONT THE FIRST AWAKENING 213 III But, without bothering, I could not escape a dim per- ception that Philadelphia had not turned itself topsy-turvy to amuse me and the world. Things were in the air I could not get away from. The very words Centennial and Colonial were too new in my vocabulary not to start me thinking, httle given as I was to thinking when I could save myself the trouble. And however lightly I might be inclined to take the whole affair, the rest of Philadelphia was so far from underestimating it that probably the younger generation, used to big International Expositions and having seen the wonders of the Centennial eclipsed in Paris and Chicago and St. Louis and its pleasures rivalled in an ordinary summer playground like Coney Island or Willow Grove, must wonder at the innocence of Phila- delphia in making such a fuss over such an everyday affair. But in the Eighteen- Seventies the big Interna- tional Exposition was not an everyday affair. Europe had held only one or two, America had held none, Phila- delphia had to find out the way for itself, with the whole country watching, ready to jeer at the sleepy old town if it went wrong. As I look back, though I realize that the Centennial buildings were not architectural master- pieces—how could I help realising it with INIemorial Hall still out there in the Park as reminder? — though I realise that Philadelphia prosperity did not date from the Cen- tennial, that Philadelphians had not lived in a slough of 214 OUR PHILADELPHIA inertia and ignorance until the Centennial pulled them out of it: all the same, I can see how fine an achievement it was, and how successful in jerking Philadel^jhians from their comfortable rut of indifference to everything going on outside of Philadelphia, or to whether there was an out- side for things to go on in. I know that I was conscious of the jerk in my little corner of the rut. The Centennial, for one thing, gave me my first object lesson in patriotism. There was no special training for the patriot when I was young — no school drilling, with flags, to national music. An American was an American, not a Russian Jew, a Slovak, or a Pole, and patriotism was supposed to follow as a matter of course. It did, but I fancy with many, as with me, after a passive, unintelligent sort of fashion. I knew about the Declara- tion of Independence, but had anybody asked for my opinion of it, I doubtless should have dismissed it as a dull page in a dull history book, a difficult passage to get by heart. But I could not go on thinking of it in that way when so remote an occasion as its hundredth birthday was sending Philadelphia off its head in this mad carnival of excitement. In little, as in big, matters I was con- stantly brought up against the fact that things did not exist simply because they were, but because something had been. An old time-worn story that amused the Phila- delphian in its day is of the American from another town, who, after listening to much Philadelphia talk, interrupted to ask: " But what is a Biddle? " I am afraid I should THE FIRST AWAKENING 215 have been puzzled to answer. For a Biddle was a Biddle, just as Spruce Street was Spruce Street, just as Pliila- delphia was Philadelphia. That had been enough in all conscience for the Philadelphian, but the Centennial would not let it be enough for me any longer. . My first hint that Philadelphia and Spruce Street and a Biddle needed a past to justify the esteem in which we held them, came from the spectacle of Mrs. Gillespie towering supreme above Philadelphians with far more familiar names than hers at every Centennial ball and in every Centennial Society, the central figin-e in the Cen- tennial preparations and in the Centennial itself. I did not know her personally, but that made no difference. There was no blotting out her powerful presence, she pervaded the Centennial atmosphere. She remains in the foreground of my Centennial memories, a tall, gaunt woman, not especially gi-acious, apparently without a doubt of her right to her conspicuous position, ready to resent the effrontery of the sceptic who challenged it had there been a sceptic so daring, anything but popular, and yet her rule accepted unquestioningly for no better reason than because she was the descendant of Benjamin Frank- lin, and I could not help knowing that she was his de- scendant, for nobody could mention her without dragging in his name. It revolutionized my ideas of school and school books, no less than of Philadelphia. I had learned the story of Benjamin Franklin and the kite, just as I had learned the story of George Washington and the cherry 216 OUR PHILADELPHIA tree, and of General Marion and the sweet potatoes, and other anecdotes of heroes invented to torment the young. And now here was Franklin turning out to be not merely the hero of an anecdote that bored every right-minded school-girl to death, but a person of such consequence that his descendant in the third or fourth generation had the right to lord it over Philadelphia. There was no getting away from that any more than there was from Mrs. Gillespie herself and, incidentally, it suggested a new reason for Biddies and Cadwalladers and Whartons and Morrises and Norrises and Logans and Philadelphia families with their names on the Assembly list. That they were the resplendent creatures Philadelphia thought them was not so elementary a fact as the shining of the sun in the heavens; they owed it to their ancestors just as Mrs. Gillespie owed her splendour to Franklin ; and an ancestor immediately became the first necessity in Philadelphia. The man who is preoccupied with his ancestors has a terrible faculty of becoming a snob, and Philadelphians for a while concerned themselves with little else. They de- voted every hour of leisure to the study of genealogy, they besieged the Historical Society in search of inconsiderate ancestors who had neglected to make conspicuous figures of themselves and so had to be hunted up, they left no stone unturned to prove their Colonial descent. It must have been this period that my Brother, Grant Robins, irri- tated with our forefathers for their mistake in settling in Virginia half a century before there was a Philadelphia i^^^'' THE DINING ROOM, STENTON THE FIRST AWAKENING 219 to settle in and tlien making a half-way halt in JNIaryland, hurried down to the Eastern Shore to get together what material he could to keep us in countenance in the town of my Grandfather's adoption. It was soothing to find more than one Robins among the earliest settlers of Vir- ginia and mixed up with A'irginia affairs at an agreeably early date. But what wouldn't I have given to see our name in a little square on one of the early maps of the City of Philadelphia as I have since seen J.'s? And the interest in ancestors spread, and no Englishman could ever have been so eager to prove that he came over with the Conqueror as every American was to show that he dated back to William Penn, or the first Virginia Company, or the Dutch, or the Mayflower ; no Order of Merit or Legion of Honour could have conferred more glory on an Ameri- can than a Colonial Governor in the family; no aristocracy was more exclusive than the American founded on the new societies of Colonial Dames and Sons and Daughters of Pennsylvania and of every other State. It was preposterous, I grant, in a country whose first article of faith is that all men are born equal, but Ameri- cans could have stood a more severe attack of snobbish- ness in those days, the prevailing attitude of Americans at home being not much less irreverent than that of the Inno- cents Abroad. In Philadelphia it was not so much irrev- erence as indifference. The habit of Philadelphians to depreciate their town and themselves, inordinate as, actually, was their pride in both, had not been thrown oft'. 220 OUR PHILADELPHIA Why they ever got into the habit remains to me and to every Philadelphian a problem. Some think it was be- cause the rest of the country depreciated them; some attribute it to Quaker influence, though how and why they cannot say ; and some see in it the result of the Phila- delpliia exclusiveness that reduces the social life of Phila- delphia to one small group in one small section of the town so that it is as small as village life, and has the village love of scandal, the village preoccupation with petty gossip, the little things at the front door blotting out the big things beyond. A more plausible reason is that Phila- delphians were so innately sure of themselves — so sure that Philadelphia was the town and Philadelphians the aristoc- racy of the world — ^that they could afford to be indifferent. But whatever the cause, this indifference, this deprecia- tion, was worse than a blunder, it was a loss in a town with a past so well worth looking into and being proud of and taking care of. A few Philadelphians had interested themselves in their past, otherwise the Historical Society would not have existed, but they were distressingly few. I can honestly say that up to the time of the Centennial it had never entered into my mind that the past in Philadelphia had a value for every Philadelphian and that it was every Phila- delphian's duty to help preserve any record that might survive of it — that the State House, the old churches, the old streets where I took my daily walks were a possession Philadelphia should do its best not to part with — and I THE FIRST AWAKENING 221 was such a mere re-echo of Phihulelphia ideas and prej- udices that I know most Philadelj^hians were as ignorant and as heedless. J?ut ahnost the first effort of the new Dames and Sons and Daughters was to protect the old architecture, the outward sign and symbol of age and the aristocracy of age, and they made so much noise in doing so that even I heard it, even I became conscious of a re- search as keen for a past, or a genealogy in the familiar streets and the familiar buildings as in the archives of His- torical Societies. If the Centennial had done no more for Philadelphia than to put Philadelphians to this work, it would have done enough. But it did do more. The pride of family, dismissed by many as pure snobbishness, awoke the sort of patriotism that Philadelphia, with all America, was most in need of if the real American was not to be swept away before the hordes of aliens beginning then to invade his country. In my opinion, the Colonial Dames, for all their follies, are doing far more to keep up the right American spirit than the flaunting of the stars and stripes in the alien's face and the lavishing upon him of the Government's paternal attention. The question is how long they can avoid the pitfall of exaggeration. IV If there was one thing in those days I knew less of than the past in Philadelphia, it was the present outside of it. Of my own country my knowledge was limited to an 222 OUR PHILADELPHIA occasional trip to New York, an occasional visit to Rich- mond and Annapolis, an occasional summer month in Cape May and Atlantic City. Travelling is not for the poor. Rich Philadelphians travelled more, but from no keen desire to see their native land. The end of the journey was usually a social fimction in Washington or Baltimore, in New A'ork or Boston, upon which their presence conferred distinction, though they would rather have dispensed with it than let it interfere with the always more important social functions at home. Or else the heat of summer drove them to those seashore and mountain resorts where they could count upon being with other Philadelphians, and the winter cold sent them in Lent to Florida, when it began to be possible to carry all Phila- delphia there with them. ]\Iy knowledge of the rest of the world was more limited. I had been in France, but when I was such a child that I remembered little of it except the nuns in the Convent at Paris where I went to school, and the Garden of the Tuileries I looked across to from the Hotel Meurice. Nor had going abroad as yet been made a habit in Phila- delphia. There was nothing against the Philadelphian going who chose to and who had the money. It defied no social law. On the contrary, it was to his social credit, though not indispensable as the Grand Tour was to the Englishman in the Eighteenth Century. I remember when my Grandfather followed the correct tourist route through England, France, and Switzerland, his children DOWN THP: aisle at CHRIST CHURCH THE FIRST AWAKENING 225 considered it an event of sufficient importance to be com- memorated by printing, for family circulation, an elabor- ately got up volume of the eminently commonplace letters he had written home— a tribute, it is due to him to add, that met with his great astonishment and complete dis- approval. I can recall my admiration for those of my friends who made the journey and my regret that I had made it when I was too young to get any glory out of it; also, my delight in the trumpery little alabaster figures from Naples and carved wood from Geneva and filigree jewellery from the Rue de Rivoli they brought me back from their journey: the wholesale distribution of presents on his return being the heavy tax the traveller abroad paid for the distinction of having crossed the Atlantic— a tax, I believe, that has sensibly been done away with since the Philadelphian's discovery of the German Bath, the Lon- don season, and the economy of Europe as reasons for going abroad every summer. I was scarcely more familiar with the foreigner than with his country. Philadelphia had Irish in plenty, as many Germans as beer saloons, or so I gathered from the names over the saloon doors, and enough Italians to sell it fruit and black its boots at street corners. But other- Mdse, beyond a rare Chinaman with a pigtail and a rarer Englishman on tour, the foreigner was seldom seen in Philadelphia streets or in Philadelphia parlours. In early days Philadelphia had been the first place the distinguished foreigner in the country made for. It was the most im- 15 226 OUR PHILADELPHIA portant town and, for a time, the capital. But after Wash- ington claimed the diplomat and New York strode ahead in commerce and size and shipping, Philadelphia was too near each for the traveller to stop on his way between them, unless he was an actor, a lecturer, or somebody who could make money out of Philadelphia. I feel sorry for the sophisticated young Philadelphian of to-day who cannot know the emotion that was mine when, of a sudden, the Centennial dumped down " abroad " right into Philadelphia, and the foreigner was rampant. The modern youth saunters into a World's Fair as casually as into a Market Street or Sixth Avenue Department Store, but never had the monotony of my life been broken by an experience so extraordinary as when the easy-going street-car carried me out of my world of red brick into the heart of England, and France, and Ger- jiiany, and Italy, and Spain, and China, and Japan, where I rubbed elbows with yellow Orientals in brilliant silks, and with soldiers in amazing uniforms — I who had seen our sober United States sokhers only on parade — and with people who, if they wore ordinary clothes, spoke all the languages under the sun. It was extraordinary even to meet so many Americans who were not Philadelphians, all talking American with to me a foreign accent, extra- ordinary to see such familiar things as china, glass, silks, stuffs, furniture, carpets, transformed into the unfamiliar, unlike anything 1 had ever seen in Chestnut Street win- THE FIRST AWAKENING 227 dows or on Chestnut Street counters, so extraordinary tliat the most insignificant details magnified themselves into miracles, to the mere froth on top of the cup of Vienna coffee, to the fatuous song of a little Frenchman in a side-show, so that to this day, if 1 could turn a tune, I could still sing the "Ah! Ah! Nicolas!" of its foolish refrain. V Travelling, I should have seen all the Centennial had to show and a thousand times more, but slowly and by degrees, losing the sense of the miraculous with each new marvel. The Centennial came as one comprehensive revelation — overwhelming evidence that the Philadelphia way was not the only way. And this I think was a good thing for me, just as for Philadelphia it was a healthy stimidus. But the Centennial did not give me a new belief in exchange for the old; it did nothing to alter my life, nothing to turn my sluggish ambition into active channels. And big as it was, it was not as big as Philadelphia thought. I do believe that Philadelphians who had helped to make it the splendid success it proved, looked upon it as no less epoch-making than the Declaration of Inde- pendence which it commemorated. But epoch-making as it unquestionably was, it was not so epoch-making as all that. For some years Philadelphians had a way of saying " before " and " after " the Centennial, much as South- erners used to talk of "before" and "after" the War: 228 OUR PHILADELPHIA with the difference that for Philadelphians all the good dated from " after." But manufacturing and commerce had been heard of " before." Cramp's shipyard did not wait for its first commission until the Centennial, neither did Baldwin's Locomotive Works, nor the factories in Kensington; Philadelphia was not so dead commercially that it was out of mere compliment important railroads made it the chief centre on their route. All large Inter- national Kxpositions are bound to do good by the increased knowledge that comes with them of what the world is pro- ducing and by the incentive this knowledge is to competi- tion, and as the Centennial was the first held in America it probably accomplished more for the country than those that followed. But I do not have to be an authority on manufacture and commerce to see that they flourished before the Centennial; I have learned enough about art since to know that its existence was not first revealed to Philadelphia by the Centennial. The Exhibition had an influence on art which I am far from undervaluing. Its galleries of paintings and prints, drawings and sculptures, were an aid in innumerable ways to artists and students who previously had had no facilities for seeing a rej)re- sentative collection. It threw light on the arts of design for the manufacturer. But we knew a thing or two about beauty down in Philadelphia before 1876, though beauty was a subject to which we had ceased to pay much atten- tion, and from the Centennial we borrowed too many tastes and standards that did not belong to us. It set THE BRIDGE ACROSS MARKET STREET FROM BROAD STREET STATION THE FIRST AWAKENING ^31 Philadelpliia talking an appalling lot of rubbish about art, and the new affectation of interest was more deplorable than the old frank indifference. 1 was as ignorant of art as the child unborn, but not more ignorant than the average Philadelphian. The old obligatory visits to the Academy had made but a fleeting impression and I ne\ er repeated them when the obligation rested solely with me. 1 had never met an artist, never been in a studio. The result was that the Art Galleries at the Centennial left me as blank and bewildered as the Hall of Machinery. Of all the paintings, the one I re- membered was Luke Fildes's picture of a milkmaid which I could not forget because, in a glaring, plush-framed chromo-lithograph, it reappeared promptly in Philadel- phia dining- and bedrooms, the most popular picture of the Centennial — a popularity in which I can discern no signs of grace. Nor can I discern them in the Eastlake craze, in the sacrifice of reps and rosew^ood to ^Morris and of Berlin ^vork to crewels, in the outbreak of spinning- wheels and milking-stools and cat's tails and Japanese fans in the old simple, dignified Philadelphia parlour; in the nightmare of wall-papers with dadoes going half- way up the wall and friezes coming halfway down, and every square inch crammed full of pattern; in the pretence and excess of decoration that made the early Victorian ornament, we had all begun to abuse, a delight to the eye in its innocent unpretentiousness. And if to the Cen- tennial we owe the multiplication of our art schools, how OUR PHILADELPHIA many more artists have come out of them, how much more work that counts? However, the good done by the Centennial is not to be sought in the solid profits and losses that can be weighed in a practical balance. It went deeper. Philadelphia was the better for being impressed with the reason of its own importance which it had taken on faith, and for being reminded that the world outside of Philadelphia was not a howling wilderness. I, individually, gained by the widening of my horizon and the stirring of my interest. But the Centennial did not teach me how to think about, or use, what I had learned from it. When it was at an end, I returned placidly to my occupation of doing nothing. CHAPTER X; THE MIRACLE OF WORK IN the story of my life in Philadelphia, and my love for the town which grew with my knowledge of it, my beginning to work was more than an awakening: it was an important crisis. For work first made me know Philadelphia as it is under the surface of calm and the beauty of age, first made me realize how much it offers besides the social adventure. Personally, the Centennial had left me where it found me. It had amused me vastly, but it had inspired me with no desire to make active use of the information and hints of which it had been so prodigal. My interest had been stimulated, awakened, but I did not know Philadelphia any the better for it, I did not love Philadelphia any the better. I had got no further than I was in my scheme of existence, into which work, or research, or interest, on my part had not yet entered, but I had reached a point where that aimless scheme was an insufferable bore. From the moment I began to work, I began to see everything from the standpoint of work, and it is wonderful what a fresh and invigorating standpoint it is. I began to see that everything was not all of course and matter of fact, that everything was worth thinking about. Work is sometimes 233 234 OUR PHILADELPHIA said to help people to put things out of their minds, but it helps them more when it puts things into their minds, and this is what it did for me. Through work I discovered Philadelphia and myself together. II It strikes me as one of the little ironies of life that for the first inducement to work, and therefore the first in- centive to my knowledge and love of Philadelphia, I should have been indebted to my LTncle, Charles Godfrey Leland, who, in 1880, when the Centennial excitement was subsid- ing, settled again in Philadelphia after ten years abroad, chiefly in England. Philadelphia welcomed him with its usual serenity, betrayed into no expression of emotion by the home-coming of one of its most distinguished citizens who, in London, had been received with the open arms London, in expansive moments, extends to the lion from America. The contrast, no doubt, was annoying, and my LTncle, of whom patience could not be said to be the pre- dominating virtue, was accordingly annoyed and, on his side, betrayed into anything but a serene expression of his annoyance. Many smaller slights irritated him further until he worked himself up into the belief that he detested Philadelphia, and he was apt to be so outspoken in criti- cism that he succeeded in convincing me, anyway, that he did. Later, when I read his Memoirs, I found in them passages that suggest the charm of Philadelphia as it has not been suggested by any other writer I know of, and STATK HOUSE YARD THE iVIIRACLE OF WORK 237 that he could not have written had he not felt for the town an affection strong enough to withstand that town's easy indifference. But during the few years he spent in Phila- delphia after his return he was uncommonly successful in hiding his affection, a fact which did not add to his popularitj\ From his talk, I might have been expected to borrow nothing save dislike for Philadelphia. But his influence did not begin and end with his talk. There never was a man — except J. — who had such a contempt for idle- ness and such a talent for work. He could not endure people about him who did not work and, as I was anxious to enjoy as much of his company as I could, for I had found nobody in Philadelphia so entertaining, and as by work I might earn the money to pay for the independence I wanted above all things, I found myself working before I knew it. I had my doubts when he set me to drawing but, my time being wholly my own and frequently hanging drearily on my hands, my ineffectual attempts to make spirals and curves with a pencil on a piece of paper, attempts that could not by the wildest stretch of imagination be supposed to have either an artistic or a financial value, did not strike me as a disproportionate price for the pleasure and stimulus of his companionship. Besides, he held the com- fortable belief that anybody who willed to do it, could do anything — accomplishment, talent, genius reduced by him to a question of will. His will and mine combined, how- 238 OUR PHILADELPHIA ever, could not make a decorative artist of me, but he was so kind as not to throw me over for ruthlessly shattering his favourite theory. He insisted that I should write if I could not draw. I had my doubts about writing too. I have confessed that I was not given to thinking and therefore I had noth- ing in particular to say, nor were words to say it in at my ready disposal, for, there being one or two masters of talk in the immediate home circle, I had cultivated to the ut- most my natural gift of silence. Nor could I forget two literary ventures made inmiediately upon my leaving the Convent, before the blatant conceit of the prize scholar had been knocked out of me — one, an essay on Fran9ois Villon, my choice of a maiden theme giving the measure of my intelligence, the second a short story re-echoing the last love tale I had read — both MSS., neatly tied with brown ribbon to vouch for a masculine mind above feminine pinks and blues, confidently sent to Harper's and as con- fidently sent back with the Editor's thanks and no delay. But my Uncle would not let me off. I must stick at my task of writing or cease to be his companion, and so relapse into my old Desert of Sahara, thrown back into the colour- less life of a Philadelphia girl who did not go out and who had waited to marry longer than her parents thought con- siderate or correct. Of all my sins, of none was I more guiltily conscious than my failure to oblige my family in this respect, for of none was I more frequently and un- comfortably reminded by my family. I scarcely ever went THE MIRACLE OF WORK 239 to see my Grandmother at this period that from her favourite pereh on the huuHng outside tlie dining-room, she did not look at me anxiously and reproachfully and ask, " Any news for me, my dearJ* " and she did not have to tell me there was but one piece of news she cared to hear. Luckily, writing, my substitute for marriage, was an occupation 1 was free to take up if I chose, as the work it involved met with no objection from my Father. It was only when work took a girl where the world could not help seeing her at it, that the Philadelphia father objected. To write in the privacy of a third-story front bedroom, or of a back parlour, seemed a ladylike way of wasting hours that might more profitably have been spent in paying calls and going to receptions. If this waste met with financial return, it could be hushed up and the world be none the wiser. The way in which my friends used to greet me after I was fairly launched is characteristic of the Phila- delphia attitude in the matter — " always scribbling away, I suppose? " they would say with amiable condescension. I could not dismiss my scribbling so jauntily. The record of my struggles day by day might help to keep out of the profession of journalism and book-making many a young aspirant as ardent as I was, and with as little to say and as few words to say it in. Experience has taught me to feel, much as Gissing felt, about the " heavy-laden who sit down to the cursed travail of the pen," but no- body could have made me feel that way then, and I am not 240 OUR PHILADELPHIA sure I should care to have missed my struggles, exhausting and heart-rending as they were. During my apprentice- shijD when nothing, not so much as a newspaper paragraph, came from my mountain of labour, the Philadelj^hia sur- face of calm told gloomily on my nerves. Ready to lay the blame anywhere save on my sluggish brain, and moved by my Uncle's vehement denunciations, I vowed to my- self a hundred times that a sleepy place, a dead place, like Philadelphia did not give anybody the chance to do any- tliing. I changed my point of view when at last my " scribbling away " got into print. Ill My first appearance was with a chapter out of a larger work upon which I had been engaged for months. My Uncle, whose ideas were big, had insisted that I must begin straight off with a book, something monumental, a magnum opus; no writer was known who had not written a book; and to be known was half the battle. I was in the state of mind when I would have agreed to publish a masterpiece in hieroglyphics had he suggested it, and I arranged with him to set to work upon my book then and there, though I was decidedly puzzled to know with what it was to deal. I think he was too, my literary resources and tendencies not being of the kind that revealed them- selves at a glance. But he declared that there was not a subject upon which a book could not be written if one only went about it in the right way, and in a moment of THE MIRACLE OF WORK 241 inspiration, seeking the particular subject suitable to my paTticular needs, lie suddenly, and to me to this day alto- gether incomprehensibly, hit upon JVlischief. There, now, was a subject to make one's reputation on, none could be more original, no author had touched it — what did I think of. JNlischief^ What did I think? Had I been truthful, I should have said that I thought JMischief was the special attribute of the naughty child who was spanked well for it if he got his deserts. But I was not truthful. I said it was the subject of subjects, as I inclined to believe it was before I was done with it, by which time I had persuaded myself to see in it the one force that made the world go round — the in- centive to evolution, the root of the philosophies of the ages, the clue to the mystery of life. My days were devoted to the study of Mischief and, for the purpose, more carefully divided up and regulated than they ever had been at the Convent. Hours were set aside for research — I see myself and my sympathetic Uncle overhauling dusty dictionaries and encyclopjedias at the long table in the balcony of the dusty Mercantile Library where nobody dreamed of disturbing us; I see him at my side during shorter visits to the Philadelphia Library where we were forever running up against people we knew who did disturb us most unconscionably; I see him tramping with me down South Broad Street to the Ridgway Library, that fine mausoleum of the great collec- tions of James Logan and Dr. Rush, where our coming 16 242 OUR PHILADELPHIA awoke the attendants and exposed their awkwardness in waiting upon unexpected readers, and brought ^Mr. Lloyd Smith out of his private room, excited and delighted actually to see somebody in the huge and well-appointed building besides himself and his staff. Hours were re- served for reading at home, for it turned out that I could not possibly arrive at the definition of ^Mischief without a stupendous amount of reading in a stupendous variety of books of any and all kinds from Mother Goose to the Vedas and the Koran, from Darwin to Eliphas Levi. Hours, and they were the longest, were consecrated to my writing-table, putting the results of research and reading into words, defining IMischief in its all-embracing, universe- covering aspect, hewing the phrases from my unwilling brain as the blocks of marble are hewn out of the quarry. As I write, my old MSS. rises before me like a ghost, a dis- orderly ghost, erased, rewritten, pieces added in, pieces cut out, every scratched and blotted line bearing testimony to the toil that produced it. I can see now that I would have done better to begin with a more obvious theme, com- ing more within my limited knowledge and vocabulary. My task was too laborious for the fine frenzy, or the in- spired flights, reputed to be the reward of the literary life. It was all downright hard labour, and so coloured my w^iole idea of the business of writing, that I have never yet managed to sit down to my day's work without the feeling which I imagine must be the navvy's as he starts out for his day's digging in the streets. THE MIRACLE OE WORK 243 In the course of time order grew out of the chaos. A chapter of my monumental work on ^Mischief was finished. It was made ready in a neat copy with hardly an erasure and, having an air of completeness in itself, was sent as a separate article to Lippincotfs Magazine, for I decided magnanimously that, as I was a Philadelphian, Philadel- phia should have the first chance. I had no doubts of it as a prophetic utterance, as a world-convidsing message, but the Editor of Lippincotfs had. He refused it. How it hurt, that i3rompt refusal! All my literary hopes came toppling over and I saw myself condemned to the old idleness and dependence. But our spirits when we are young go up as quickly as they go down. I recalled stories I had heard of great men hawking about their MSS. from publisher to publisher. Carlyle, I said to myself, had suffered and almost every writer of note — it was a sign of genius to be refused. Therefore, — the logic of it was clear and convincing — the refusal proved me a genius! A more substantial reassurance was the publication of the same article, done over and patched up and with the fine title of Mischief in the Middle Ages, in the Atlantic Monthly a very few months later. And when, on top of this, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the Editor of the Atlantic, wrote and told me he would be pleased to have further articles from me; when, in answer to a letter my Uncle had insisted on my writing, Oliver Wendell Holmes promised me his interest in Mischief as I proposed to de- fine it, I saw the world at my feet where, to my sorrow. 244 OUR PHILADELPHIA I have never seen it since that first fine moment of elation. The spectacle of myself in print set Philadelphia danc- ing before my eyes and turned the world a bit unsteady. But it did not relieve the labour of writing. Within the next year or two seven or eight chapters did get done and were published as articles in the Atlantic ^ but the world is still the poorer for the magnum opus that was to bring me fame. The fact was that in the making, it brought me mighty little money. My first cheque only whetted my appetite, but, in fairness to myself I must explain, through no more sordid motive than my desire to become my own bread-winner. The newspapers offered a wider scope at less expense of time and labour, and my Uncle not only relaxed so far as to allow me intervals from the bigger undertaking for simpler tasks, but gave me the benefit of his experience as a newspaper man. In the old days, before he had gone to live in London, he had had the run of almost every newspaper office in town, and he opened their doors for me. Thanks to his introduction, Philadel- phia, at this stage of my progress, conspired to put work into my hands, and writing for Philadelphia papers taught me in a winter more about Philadelphia than I had learned in all the years I had already spent there. I marvelled that I could have thought it dead when it was so alive. I seemed to feel it quiver under my feet at every step, shaking me into speed, and filling me with pity for the sedate pace at which my Father and the Philadelphians of his generation walked through its pulsating streets. THE MIRACLE OF WORK 245 IV ]VIy first newspaper commissions came from the Press and adventure accompanied them — the adventure of busi- ness letters in my morning's mail, of proofs, of visits to the office — adventures that far too soon became the common- places of my busy days as journalist. But my outlook upon life in Philadelphia had, up till then, been bounded by the brick walls of a Spruce Street house, and the editorial office, that holds no surprise for me now, held nothing save surprise when I was first summoned to it. I was be- wildered by the disorder, stunned by the noise — boys com- ing and going, letters and telegrams pouring in, piles of proofs mounting up on the desk, baskets overflowing with MSS., floors strewn with papers, machinery throbbing close by, a heavy smell of tobacco over everything, and in the midst of the confusion — lounging, working, answering questions, tearing open letters and telegrams, correcting proof, and yet managing to talk with me, — ^Moses P. Handy, the editor, a red man in my memory of him, red hair, red beard, red cheeks, whose cordiality I could not flatter myself was due to his eagerness for my contribu- tions, so engrossed was he in talking of the Eastern Shore of Maryland from which he came and in which my family had made their prolonged stay on the way from Virginia to Philadelphia. The Eastern Shore may be a good place to come away from, but the native never forgets that he did come from it and he never fails to hail his fellow exile as brother. 246 OUR PHILADELPHIA My next commission I owed to the Evening Tele- graph, for which I made a remarkable journey to Atlantic City : a a oyage of discovery, though the report of it did not paralyse the Philadelphia public. I was deeply impressed by my exercise of my faculty of observation thus tested on familiar ground, but I am afraid it left the Editor in- different, and, as in his case the Eastern Shore was not a friendly link between us, he expressed no desire for a second article or for a second visit. I have regretted it since, the Editor being Clarke Davis, whom not to know was, I believe, not to have arrived so far in Philadelphia journalism as I liked to think I had. A more remarkable journey followed to New York for I wish I could remember what paper; or perhaps it is just as well I cannot, the adventure adding to the reputa- tion neither of the paper nor of myself. The object was to attend the press vicM^ of an important exhibition of paint- ings, and at that stage of my education I doubt if I could have told a Rembrandt from a Rubens, much less a Ken- yon Cox from a Church, a Chase from a Blum, which was more immediately to the point. I had my punishment on the spot, for my hours in the Gallery maj'^ be counted the most humiliating of my life. My ignorance would not let me lose sight of it for one little second. J. had gone with me — how I came to know him I mean to tell further on — but he had no press ticket, a stern man at the door refused to admit him without one, and I was alone in my incom- ^M, ' \^ 'V-''' ^ Vi > { THE PENITENTIARY THE INIIRACLE OF WORK 249 petencv to wrestle with it as I could. Had he not returned with nie to Philadelphia in the afternoon and devoted the interval in the train to throwing light upon my obscure and agonised notes, my copy could not have been delivered that evening as agreed. 1 know now that the paper would have come out all the same the next morning, but in my misery it did not seem possible that it could, and besides I was from the first, as through my many years of journal- ism, scrupulous to be on time with my copy and to keep to my agreements. That was my first experience in art criticism. I have tried to atone for it by years of con- scientious work, but few Philadelphia papers can say as much for themselves. In those I see from time to time, the art criticism usually reads as if Philadelphia editors had lost nothing of their old amiability in handing it over to young ladies to get their journalistic training on. I was given also my chance in two news^^aper ventures Philadelphia made in the early Eighteen-Eighties. One was the American, a weekly on the lines of the New York Nation. Mr. Howard Jenkins, the editor, sent me books for review, and not the first baby, not the first baby's first tooth, could be as extraordinary a phenomenon as the first book sent for the purpose from the editorial office. ^line, as I have never forgotten, as I never could forget, was Howard Pyle's Robin Hood, and when ;Mr. Jenkins wrote me that " Mr. Pyle's folks " were pleased with what I had written, I thought I had got to the very top of the tree 250 OUR PHILADELPHIA of journalism. That I had got no further than a step from the bottom, and upon that had none too secure a foothold, I was reminded when the second book for review lay open before me. The other venture was Our Continent, also a weekly, but illustrated, edited by Judge Tourgee. Of my con- tributions, I remember chiefly an article on Shop Win- dows, which suggests that I was busy with what I might call a more pretentious kind of reporting. My subjects and my manner of treating them may have been what they were, — of no special value to anybody but myself. But to myself I cannot exaggerate their value. I was learning from them all the time. It was an education just to learn what a newspaper was. Heretofore I had accepted it as a thing that came of itself, arriving in the morning with the milk and the rolls for breakfast. I knew as little of its origin as the town boy knew of where the milk comes from in the Punch story that I do not doubt was old when Punch was young. Milk he had always seen poured from a can, our newspaper we had always had from the nearest news-agent. It was very simple. A newspaper appeared on the breakfast- table of a well-regulated Philadelphia house just as the water ran when the tap was turned on in the bath-room, or the gas burned when lit by a match. But after one article, after one visit to a newspaper office, after one journey to Atlantic City or Xew York, the newspaper did not seem so simple. I began to understand that it would not have ON THE READING AT SIXTEENTH STREET THE MIRACLE OF WORK 253 got as far as Spruce Street had it not been for an army of people writing, printing, correcting proof, tearing from one end of the town — of the world — to the other ; without colossal machinery throbbing night and day, without an immeasurable consumption of tobacco. I began to under- stand the organization required to bring the army of people and the colossal machines into such perfect har- mony that the daily miracle of the newspaper on the break- fast-table might be worked— to understand too that the miracle-working organization had not been created in a day, that behind the daily paper was not merely the toiling of its staff and its machines but a long history of striving, experiment, development. I cannot say I went profoundly into the history, I was too engrossed in contributing my delightful share to the newspaper as it was, but to go superficially sufficed to show me in Philadelphia a spirit of enterprise altogether new to me. I had discovered only shortly before Philadelphia as the scene of the first Colonial Congress, and the Dec- laration of Independence, and the first big International Exposition in America, and now I added to these other discoveries the fact that Philadelphia had been the first American town to publish a daily paper, the last discovery bringing me face to face with Benjamin Franklin who, it appeared, besides flying that tiresome kite and being the ancestor of :Mrs. Gillespie, was the first printer and pub- lisher of the paper that set an example for all America. Tranquil the Philadelphian was by repute, but he rolled 254 OUR PHILADELPHIA up his sleeves and pitched in when the moment came. Philadelphia's famous calm was but skin deep over its seething mass of workers, its energy, its toiling, its triumph. When I reflected on what was going on at night in every newspaper office in town, it seemed to me as un- believable that, on the verge of this volcano of work, Phila- delphians could keep on dancing at parties, at the Dancing Class, at the Assembly, as that men and women should have danced at Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. And newspaper-making was one only of Philadelphia's in- numerable industries. That thought gave me the scale of the labour that goes to keep the machinery of life running. V Of some of the other industries I got to know a little. My Uncle who, as I have said, was a man of ideas and who had his fair proportion of Philadelphia energy, in- cluded among his many interests the subject of education. He deplored existing systems and methods. My belief is that the systems and methods might be of the best and education would still be a mistake, vulgarizing the multi- tude to whom it does not belong and encouraging in them a prejudice against honest work. My Uncle did not think as I do, — that I do not think now as he did frightens me as a disloyalty to his memory. But he could not overlook the distaste for manual work that had grown out of too much attention to books and as he never let his theories exhaust > ■/yy V 3 . oca -.^^•^ < . r A i 'A"Hw'* '- ", ai !/■ / -M J5 : -0 ''•. s-^ ,^ '^f^l -nr-v -.^^> ;/?!,:: ?^, ' ^ * l^^i* ^^'v' iir J*^^ '<^^' •^' ^' LOCUST STREET EAST FROM BRt)AU STREET THE MIRACLE OF WORK 257 themselves in words, he lost no time in persuading the Board of Education to put this particular one to a practi- cal test. Doubts of their methods had assailed the Board, but no way out of the difficulty had been suggested until he came and said, " Set your children, your boys and girls, who are forgetting how to use their hands, to work at the JNIinor Arts." It struck them as a suggestion that warranted the experiment anyway, especially as the cost would be comparatively small. INIy Uncle had been back in Philadelphia not much more than a year when classes were put in his charge and a schoolroom — ^the school- house at Broad and Locust — at his disposal, and he inaugurated the study of the Arts and Crafts in Philadel- phia with the Industrial Art School, as he had in London with the Home Arts. His sole payment was the pleasure of the experiment, a pleasure which few theorists succeed in securing. I, however, was paid by the City in solid dollars and cents for the fine amateurish inefficiency with which I helped him to manage the classes, recommended by him, whose consideration was as practical for my pockets which the Atlantic, backed by newspapers, had not filled to repletion. This is not the place for the history of his experiment. It is known. The school has passed from the experimental stage into a permanent institution, though in the passing my Uncle has been virtually forgotten, — ^often the fate of the man who sets a ball of reform rolling. Of all this I 17 258 OUR PHILADELPHIA have elsewhere made the record. I am at present con- cerned with the influence the school had upon me and the unexpected extent to which it widened my knowledge of Philadelphia and Philadelphia activities. How Philadelphia was educated was not a question that had kept me awake at nights. The Philadelphia girl of my acquaintance, if a day scholar, went naturally to Miss Irwin's or to Miss Annabel's in town; if a boarder perhaps to Miss Chapman's at Holmesburg or Mrs. Come- gys at Chestnut Hill; unless her parents were converts or Catholics by birth when she went instead to the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Torresdale or in Walnut Street. The Philadelphia boy began with the Episcopal Academy and finished with the University of Pennsylvania. Friends went to the Friends' School in Germantown, and to Swarthmore and Haverford. What others did, did not matter. I had heard there were public or free schools where children could go for nothing, but nobody to my knowledge went to them. With what insolence we each of us, in our own little fraction of the world, think everybody outside of it nobody! But up in the top story rooms of the school-house at Broad and Locust, where my work took me two afternoons in the week, I found myself the centre of a vast network of schools! High Schools, Grammar Schools, Primary Schools, Scholarships, more divisions and subdivisions than I could count; with teachers — for there was a class for teachers — and pupils coming from every ward and suburb, every street and alley of the town; a THE MIRACLP: of work 259 School Board keeping a watchful eye upon schools and teachers, not leaving me out; and all about me a vast population without one idea or interest except the educa- tion of Philadelphia. And this implied, like the news- paper, a perfect organization of its own to keep the whole thing going — an organization that never could have been born in a day. The education of Philadelphia had absorbed a vast population since Philadelphia was: the first Philadelphia children hardly escaping from their cave dwellings before they were hurried into school to have their poor little minds trained and disciplined. Really, in my first days of work, life was a succession of startling discoveries about Philadelphia. I could not get paid for my afternoons at the school, which I ought to have paid for considering the education they were to me, v/ithout making another discovery. The pay came monthly from the City in the form of a warrant, or so I believe it is called. As I have explained that I had never been possessed of money of my own, some allowance will be made for my stupidity in thinking it necessary to cash the warrant in person. It never occurred to me to open a bank account or to ask my Father to exchange the warrant for money. I went myself to the office in the big, new, unfinished City Hall — how well I remember, when I was kept waiting which was always, my conscientiousness in jotting down elaborate notes of windows and doors and upholstery and decoration: Zola in France and Howells at home having made Realism the literary fashion, and 260 OUR PHILADELPHIA Realism, I gathered, being achieved only by way of jotting down endless notes in every situation in which I found myself; especially as J. had brought back from Italy ex- emplary and inspiring tales of Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) and JNIary Robinson (Mme. Duclaux) , with whom he had worked and travelled, filling blank books with memoranda collected from the windows of every train they took and every hotel in which they stayed. I am glad I was stupid, such a good thing for me was this going in person, such a suggestive lesson in City Government which I learned was as little of an automatic arrangement as education and the newspaper, and not necessarily something that all decent people should be ashamed of being mixed up with, the way my Father and the old-fashioned Philadelphian of his type looked upon it and every other variety of Government. It was just an- other huge, busy, striving, toiling organization, so huge as to fit with difficulty into the enormous ugly new build- ings, then recently set down for it in Penn Square with complete indifference to Penn's plan for his green country town, or to get its work done in the maze of courts and passages and offices by the hordes of big and little officials no less preoccupied in City Government than journalists in their newspaper, or teachers in their school, or — out- rageous as it may sound — society in the Assembly and Dancing Class and the things which I had been brought up to believe the beginning and end of existence on this earth. BROAD STREET. LOOKING SOUTH FROM ABOVE ARCH STREET THE MIRACLE OF WORK 263 My new knowledge of Philadelphia was widened in various other directions as time went on. My Uncle's experiment, when it took practical shape, attracted atten- tion and he was asked to lecture on it in places like the Franklin Institute — there was no keeping away very long from Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia once I got to know anything about Philadelphia — and to visit institu- tions like Moyamensing Prison or Kirkbride's Insane Asylum that he might consider the advisability of intro- ducing his scheme of manual work for the benefit of the insane and the criminal. I usually accompanied him on these occasions, and before he had got through his rounds I had seen a number of different phases of Philadelphia activity and enterprise and power of organization. I had been given some idea of the armies of doctors and nurses and scientists who had made Kirkbride's a model through- out the land, while Dr. Albert Smith had helped me to an additional insight into the hospitals that set as excel- lent an example. I had been given an idea of the armies of judges and juries and police and governors and warders and visiting inspectors, — of whom my Father was one, with a special tenderness for murderers whom he used to take his family to visit — at Moyamensing. And from the combination of all my new experiences I had gained further knowledge of the energies at work beyond the limits of " Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine " to make Philadelphia what it was. 264 OUR PHILADELPHIA VI I ought to have needed no guide to the knowledge and appreciation of these things, it may be said. I admit it. But the happy mortals who are boi-n observant do not picture to themselves the tortures gone through by those who must have observation thrust upon them before they bemn to use their eyes. I had not been born to observe, I had not been trained to observe, and to become observant I had to go through the sort of practical course Mr. Squeers set to his boys. His method, denounce it as you will, has its merits. The students of Dotheboys Hall could never have forgotten what a window is or what it means to clean it. I had grown up to accept life as a pageant for me to look on at, with no part to play in it. After my initiation into work, I could never forget, in the quietest, emptiest sections of the town, not even in placid little backwaters like Clinton Street and De Lancey Place, the machinery forever crashing and grinding and roaring to produce the pageant, to weave for Philadelphia the beautiful serenity it wore like a garment. I could never forget that, insignificant as my share in the ma- chinery might be, all the same I was contributing some- thing to make it go. I could never be sure that everybody I met, however calm in appearance, might not be as mixed up in the great machine of work as I was beginning to be. I had to work to learn that Philadelphia had worked, and still worked, and worked so well as to be the first to ^^-^^^^- CLINTON STREET, WITH THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL AT ITS END THE MIRACLE OF WORK 267 have given America much that is best and most vital in the country — the first to show the right way with its schools and hospitals and libraries and newspapers and galleries and museums, the leader in the fight for liberty of con- science, the scene of the first Colonial Congress and the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Cen- tennial Exposition to commemorate it, a pioneer in science and industry and manufacture — a town upon which all the others in the land could not do better than model them- selves — while all the time it maintained its fine air of calm that perplexes the stranger and misleads the native. But I had found it out, found out its greatness, before age had dimmed my perceptions and dulled my power of apprecia- tion; and to find Philadelphia out is to love it. CHAPTER XI: THE ROMANCE OF WORK I I WAS still in the stage of wonder and joy at seeing myself in print, when work and Philadelphia joined in the most nnlooked for manner to help me tell my Grandmother that " something " she was so anxiously waiting to hear. An article on Philadelphia which an in- telligent Editor asked me to write was my introduction to J. The town that we both love first brought us to- gether, as it now brings us back to it together after the many years that have passed since it laid the foundation of our long partnership. I would say nothing about the article at this late date had it not added so materially to my life and to my knowl- edge of Philadelphia. I am not proud of it as a piece of literary work. But it seems, as I recall the days of my apprenticeship, to mark the turning of the ways, to point to the new road I was destined to take. I got it out the other day, the first time in over a quarter of a century, proposing to reprint it, thinking the contrast between my impressions of Philadelphia thirty years ago and my im- pressions of Philadelphia to-day might be amusing. In memory, it had remained a brilliant performance, one any editor would be pleased to jump at, and I was astonished to find it youthful and crude, inarticulate, inadequate not 268 ^ vr«ff;-"?" MM: \ . H' V THE CHERRY STREET STAIRS NEAR THE RIVER THE ROMANCE OF WORK 271 only to the subject itself but to my appreciation of the subject which at the time was unbounded. I do not know whether to be more amazed at my failure in it to say what I wanted to say, or at the Editor's amiability in publish- ing it. The article may not have lost all its eloquence for me, since between the halting lines I can read the story I did not know how to tell, but for others it would prove a dull aff'aii* and it is best left where it is, forgotten in the old files of a popular magazine. The story I read is one of a series of discoveries with a romance in each. The way the article came about was that J. had made etchings of Philadelphia, and the Editor, who had wisely arranged to use them, thought they could not be published without accompanying text. When he asked me, as a young Philadelphian just beginning to write, to supply this text, he advised me to consult with J., whom I did not know and whose studio address he gave me. I was thrilled by the prospect, never having been in a studio nor met an artist, and when it turned out not half so simple as it looked on paper, when the first catching my artist was attended with endless delays and difficulties, it did not lessen the thrill or take away from the sense of adventure. J.'s studio, which he shared with Mr. Harry Poore, was at the top of what was then the Presbyterian Building on Chestnut Street above Thirteenth, quite new and of tremendous height at a time when the sky-scraper 272 OUR PHILADELPHIA had not been invented nor the elevator become a necessity of Philadelphia life. Day after day, varying the hour with each attempt, now in the morning, now at noon, now toward evening, I toiled up those long flights of stairs, marvelling at the strange, unaccountable disclosures through half-opened studio doors, for it was a building of studios ; glad of the support of my Uncle who was seeing me through this, as he saw me through all my earliest literary enterprises; arriving at the top, breathless and panting, only to be informed by a notice, written on paper and pinned on the tight-locked door, that J. was out and would be back in half an hour. My Uncle and I were inclined to interpret this literally, once or twice waiting trustingly on the dark landing some little while beyond the appointed time. On one occasion I believe the door was opened, when we knocked, by JNIr. Poore who was not sure of the length of a half hour as J. reckoned it, but had an idea it might vary according to circumstances, especially now that J. was out of town. I went away not annoyed as I should be to-day, but more stirred than ever by the novelty of the adventure. At last I tied J. down by an appointment, as I should have done at the start, and he, having retin-ned to town, kept it to the minute. I think from first to last of this astonishing business I had no greater shock of astonish- ment than when I followed him into his studio. We were in the Eighteen-Eighties then, when American magazines and newspapers were making sensational copy out of the THE MORRIS HOUSE ON EIGHTH STREET THE ROMANCE OF WORK 275 princely splendour of the London studios, above all of Tadema's, Leighton's, Millais': palatial interiors, hung with priceless tapestries, carpeted with rare Oriental rugs, sliining with old brass and pottery and armour, opening upon Moorish courts, reached by golden stairs, fragrant with flowers, filled with soft couches and luxurious cushions — flamboyant, exotic interiors that would not have disgraced Ouida's godlike young Guardsmen but that scarcely seemed to belong to men who made their living by the work of their hands. Indeed, it was their splendour that misled so many incompetent young men and women of the later Victorian age into the belief that art was the easiest and most luxurious short cut to wealth. But there was nothing splendid or princely about J.'s studio. It was frankly a workshop, big and empty, a few unframed drawings and life studies stuck up on the bare walls, the floors carpetless, for furniture an easel or two and a few odd rickety chairs — a room nobody would have dreamed of going into except for work. But then, my first im- pression of J. was of a man who did not want to do any- thing except work. My experience had been that people — if I leave out my Uncle — worked, not because they wanted to but because they had to and that, sceptical as they might be on every other Scriptural point, they were not to be shaken out of their belief in work as a curse inherited from Adam. J., evidently, would have found the curse in not being allowed to work. And as new to me was the enthusiasm with 276 OUR PHILADELPHIA which, while he showed me his prints and drawings, he began to talk about Philadelphia and its beauty. It was unusual for Philadelphians to talk about their town at all ; if they did, it was more unusual for them to talk with enthusiasm; and the interest in it forced upon them by the Centennial had been for every quality rather than its beauty. Even my LTncle — though later, in his Memoirs, he wrote charmingly of the charm of Philadelphia — ^at that time affected to admire nothing in it except the un- sightly arches of the Pennsylvania Railroad, bridging the streets between the Schuylkill and the Station, and if he made the exception in their favour, it was because they reminded him of London. Thanks to the Centennial and the stimulus of hard work, I was not as ignorant of Philadelphia as I had been, but I was not rid of the old popular fallacy that the American in search of beauty must cross the Atlantic and go to Europe. And here was J., in five minutes telling me more about Philadelphia than I had learned in a lifetime, revealing to me in his drawings the beauty of streets and houses I had not had the wit to find out for myself, firing me with sudden enthusiasm in my turn, convincing me that nothing in the world counted but Philadelphia, opening my eyes to its unsuspected resources, so that after this I could walk nowhere without visions of romance where all before had been everyday commonplace, leaving me eager and im- patient to start on my next journey of discovery which was to be in his company. THE ROMANCE OF WORK 277 II To illustrate our article — for ours it had become — J. passed over the obvious picturesqueness of Philadelphia — the venerable Pennsylvania Hospital, the beautiful State House, Christ Church, the Old Swedes, St. Peter's^ buildings for which Philadelphia, after years of indiffer- ence, had at last been exalted by the Centennial into his- toric monuments, the show places of the town, labelled and catalogued — buildings of which J. had already made records, having begun his work by drawing them, his plate of the State House among the first he ever etched. He now went in preference to the obscure by-ways, to the unpretending survivals of the past, so merged, so swallowed up in the present, that it needed keen eyes to detect them: old buildings stamped with age, but too humble in origin for the Centennial to have resurrected; busy docks, grimy river banks, crazy old rookeries abandoned to the business and poverty that claimed them: to the strange, neglected, never-visited corners of a great town where beauty springs from the rich soil of labour and chance, neglect and decay. How little I had known of Philadelphia up till then! One of the very first places to which he took me was the old Second Street Market that, when I lived within a stone's throw of it, I had never set my eyes on — the old market that, south of Pine, forces Second Street to widen and make space for it and that turns the gable of the little old 278 OUR PHILADELPHIA Court House directly north, breaking the long vista of the street as St. Clement's and St. Mary's in London break the vista of the Strand — the old market that I believe the city proposes to pull down, very likely will have pulled down before these lines are in print, though there is not a Philadelphian who would not go into ecstasies over as shabby and down-at-the-heel Eighteenth Century building if stumbled upon in an English country town. And as close to his old family home and mine J. led me into inn yards that might have come straight from the Borough on the Surrey side of the Thames, and in and out of dark mysterious courts which he declared as " good " as the exploited French and Italian courts every etcher has at one time or another made a plate of — curious nooks and by- ways I had never stopped to look at during my Third Street days and would have seen nothing in if I had. And I remember going with him along Front Street, where I should have thought myself contaminated at a time when it might have varied the dull round of my daily walks, so unlike was it to the spick and span streets I knew, — glimpses at every crossing of the Delaware, Philadelphia's river of commerce that Philadelphians never went near unless to take the boat for Torresdale or, in summers of economy, the steamer for Liverpool; for several blocks, groups of seafaring men mending sails on the side-walk. Mariners' Boarding-Houses, a Mariners' Church, and Philadelphia here the seaport town it is and always has been; and then, successive odours of the barn- '\A THE OLD COACHING-INN YARD THE ROMANCE OF WORK 281 yard, fish, spice, coffee, Philadelphia smelling as strong of the romance of trade as any Eastern bazaar. And I remember J. and 1 crossing the forbidden line into " up town " to find beauty, interest, picturesqueness in " Market, Arch, Race and Vine " — old houses every- where, the old Fleeting-House, Betsy Ross' house. Provost Smith's, the Christ Church Burial Ground at Fifth and Arch where Franklin is buried, narrow rambling alleys, red and black brick, and there, up on a house at the corner of Front, where it is to this day, a sign going back to the years when Race was still Sassafras Street, and so part of the original scheme of Philadelphia, to which, with Phila- delphia docility, I had all my life believed South of Market alone could claim the right. And I remember our wandering to the Schuylkill, not by the neat and well-kept roads and paths of the Park, but where tumbled-down houses faced it near Callowhill Street Bridge and works of one kind or another rose from its banks near Gray's Ferry, and Philadelphia was a town of industry, of machines, of railroads connecting it with all parts of the world, — for already to J. " the Wonder of Work " had made its irresistible appeal. And I remember our wandering farther, north and south, east and west — interest, beauty, picturesqueness never failing us — in the end Philadelphia transformed into a vast Wonderland, where in one little section people might spend their lives dancing, paying calls at noon, eating chicken salad and croquettes from Augustine's, but where in every other they 282 OUR PHILADELPHIA were striving, struggling, toiling, to carry on Penn's tradi- tions and to give to his town the greatness, power and beauty he planned for it. In these walks I had followed J. into streets and quarters of the town I had not known. But I would be leaving out half the story if I did not say how much he showed me in the streets and quarters I did know. It is with a town, I suppose, as with life out of which, philoso- phers say, we get just as much, or as little, as we bring to it. I had brought no curiosity, no interest, no sympathy, to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia therefore had given me nothing save a monotony of red brick and green shade. But now I came keen with curiosity, full of interest, aflame with sympathy, and Philadelphia overwhelmed me with its gifts. Oh, the difference when, having eyes, one sees! I was as surprised to learn that I had been living in the midst of beauty all my life as M. Jourdain was to find he had been talking prose. Down in lower Spruce and all the neighbouring streets, where I had walked in loneliness longing for something to happen, something happened at every step — beautiful Colonial houses, stately doorways, decorative ironwork, dormer windows, great gables facing each other at street corners, harmonious proportions — not merely a bit here and a bit there, but the old Colonial town almost intact, preserved by Philadelphia through many generations only to be abandoned now to the Russian Jew and the squalor THE ROMANCE OE WORK 283 and the dirt that the Russian Jew takes with him wherever he goes. In not another American town had the old streets then changed so httle since Colonial days, in not another were they so well worth keeping unchanged. I had not to dive into musty archives to unearth the self-evident fact that the early Friends, when they left England, packed up with their liberty of conscience the love of beauty in architecture and, what was more practical, the money to pay for it; that, in a fine period of English architecture, they got good English architects, — Wren said to have been of the number — to design not merely their public build- ings, but their private houses ; that, their Founder setting the example, they carried over in their personal baggage panelling, carvings, ironwork, red and black brick, furni- ture, and the various details they were not likely to procure in Philadelphia until Philadelphians had moved from their caves and the primeval forest had been cut down; that when Philadelphia could contribute its share of the work, they modified the design to suit climate, circumstances, and material, and bequeathed to us a Philadelphia with so much local character that it never could be mistaken for an English town. This used to strike the intelligent foreigner as long as Philadelphia was content to have a character of its own and did not bother to be in architectural or any other movements. " Not a distressingly new-looking city, for the Queen Anne style in vogue when its prosperity began 284 OUR PHILADELPHIA is in the main adhered to with Quaker-like precision ; good red brick; numerous rather narrow windows with white outside shutters, a block cornice along the top of the facades and the added American feature of marble steps and entry," — this, in a letter to William ISIichael Rossetti, was Mrs. Gilchrist's description of Philadelphia in the late Eighteen-Seventies, and it is an appreciative description though most authorities would probably describe Philadel- phia as Georgian rather than Queen Anne. Philadelphia did more to let the old character go to rack and ruin during the years I was away from it than during the two centuries before, and is to-day repenting in miles upon miles of sham Colonial. But repentance cannot wipe away the traces of sin — cannot bring back the old Philadelphia I knew. I do not want to attribute too much to my new and only partially developed power of observing. Had the measuring worm not retreated before the sparrow, I might perhaps have been less prepared during my walks with J. to admit the beauty of the trees lining every street, as well as of the houses they shaded. But what is the use of troubling about the might-have-been? The important thing is that, with him I did for the first time see how beautiful are our green, well-shaded streets. With him too I first saw how beautiful is their symmetry as they run in their long straight lines and cross each other at right angles. It was a symmetry I had confused with monotony, with which most Philadelphians, foolishly misled, still con- fuse it. They would rather, for the sake of variety, that FRANKLIN'S GRAVE M THE ROMANCE OF WORK 287 Penn had left the building and growth of Philadelphia to chance as the founders of other American towns did — they would rather boast with New York or Boston of the dis- orderly picturesqueness of streets that follow old cow tracks made before the town was. But Penn understood the value of order in architecture as in conduct. It is true that Ruskin, the accepted prophet of my young days, did not include order among his Seven Lamps, but there was a good deal Ruskin did not know about architecture, and a town like Paris in its respect for arrangement — for order — for a thought-out plan — will teach more at a glance than all his rhapsodies. Philadelphia has not the noble perspectives of the French capital nor the splendid build- ings to complete them, but its despised regularity gives it the repose, the serenity, which is an essential of great art, whether the art of the painter or the engraver, the sculptor or the architect. And it gives, too, a suggestiveness, a mystery we are more apt to seek in architectural disorder and caprice. I know nobody who has pointed out this beauty in Penn's design except Mrs. Gilchrist in the de- scription from which I have already borrowed, and she merely hints at the truth, not grasping it. Philadelphia to her was more picturesque and more foreign-looking than she expected, and her explanation is in the " long straight streets at right angles to each other, long enough and broad enough to present that always pleasing effect of vista-converging lines that stretch out indefinitely and look as if they must certainly lead somewhere very pleas- 288 OUR PHILADELPHIA ant," — the streets that are to the town what " the open road " is to the country, — the long, white, straight road beckoning who can say where? Ill It was without the shghtest intention on my part that the vista-converging Hnes of the streets led me direct to William Penn. But I defy anybody to do a little thinking while walking through the streets of Philadelphia and not be led to him, so for eternity has he stamped them with his vivid personality — not William Penn, the shadowy prig of the school history, but William Penn, the man with a level head, big ideas, and the will to carry them out — three things that make for genius. To the weakling of to-day the fight for liberty of conscience would loom up so gigantic a task as to fill to overflowing his little sjjan here below. But in the fight as Penn fought it, the material details could be overlooked as little as the spiritual, the comfort of the bodies of his people no more neglected than the freedom of their souls. He did not stop to preach about town-planning and garden cities, and improved housing for the workman, like the would-be reformer of to- day. With no sentimental pose as saviour of the people, no drivel about reforming and elevating and sweetening the lives of humanity, no aspiration towards " world- betterment," Penn made sure that Philadelphia should be the green town he thought it ought to be and that men and THE ROMANCE OE WORK 289 women, whatever their appointed task, should have decent houses to hve in. He had the common-sense to under- stand that his colonists would be the sturdier and the better equipped for the work they had to do if they lived like men and not like beasts, and that a town as far south as Philadelphia called for many gardens and much green shade. The most beautiful architecture is that which grows logically out of the needs of the people. That is why Penn's city as he designed it was and is a beautiful city, to which English and German town re- formers should come for the hints Philadelphians are so misguided as to seek from them. I could not meet Penn in his pleasant streets and miss the succession of Friends who took over the responsibility of ensuring life and reality to his design, not allowing it, like Wren's in London, to lapse into a half-forgotten archaeological curiosity. Personally, I knew nothing of the Friends and envied J. who did because he was one of them, as I never coidd be, as nobody, not born to it, can. I had seen them, as alas! they are seen no longer: quiet, dignified men in broad-brimmed hats, sweet-faced women in delicate greys and browns, filling our streets in the spring at the time of Yearly JNIeeting. Once or twice I had seen them at home, the women in white caps and fichus, quiet and composed, sitting peacefully in their old-time parlours simple and bare but filled with priceless Sheraton or ChiiDpendale. They looked, both in the open streets and 19 290 OUR PHILADELPHIA at their own firesides, so placid, so detached from the world's cares, it had not occurred to me that they could be the makers of the town's beauty and the sinews of its strength. But in my new mood I could nowhere get far from them. Ghosts of the early Friends haunted the old streets and the old houses and, mingling with them, were ghosts of the World's People who had lost no time in coming to share their town and ungraciously abuse the privilege. The air was thick with association. J. and I walked in an atmosi)here of the past, delightfully conscious of it but never troubling to reduce it to dry facts. We could not have been as young as we were and not scorn any ajDproach to pedantry, not as lief do without ghosts as to grub them up out of the Philadelphia Library or the Historical So- ciety. We left it to the antiquary to say just where the first Friends landed and the corner-stone of their first building was laid, just in which Third Street house Washington once danced, in which Front Street house Bishop White once lived. It was for the belated Boswell, not for us, to follow step by step the walks abroad of Pemi, or Franklin, or any of our town's great men. It was no more necessary to be historians in order to feel the charm of the past than to be architects in order to feel the charm of the houses, and for no amount of exact knowledge woidd we have exchanged the romance which enveloped us. Could I have put into words some of the emotion I ARCH STREET MEETING THE ROMANCE OE WORK 293 felt in gathering together my material, what an article 1 would have made! But my words came with difficulty, and indeed I have never had the " ready pen " of the journalist, always I have been shy in expressing emotion of any kind. No reader could have guessed from my article my enthusiasm as I wrote it. But at least it did get written and my pleasure in it was not disturbed by doubt. I was too enthralled by what I had to say to realize that I had not managed to say it at all. IV With the publication of the article our task was at an end, but not our walks together. J. and I had got into the habit of them, it was a pleasant habit, we saw no reason to give it up. Sometimes we walked with new work as an object. There were articles about Philadelphia for Our Continent. Wq called it work — learning Romany — when we both w^alked with my Uncle up Broad Street to Oakdale Park, and through Camden and beyond to the Reservoir, where the Gypsies camped, and made Camden in my eyes, not the refuge of all in doubt, debt, or despair as its traditions have described it, but a rival in romance of Bagdad or Samarcand. When we walked still further, taking the train to help us out, to near country towns for the autumn fairs, never missing a side show, we called this the search for local colour, and I filled note-books with notes. Some- 294 OUR PHILADELPHIA times we walked for no more practical purpose than pleasure in Philadelphia. And we could walk for days, we could walk for miles, and exhaust neither the pleasure nor the town that I once fancied I knew by heart if I walked from ^Market to Pine and from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. I remember as a remarkable incident my discovery of the suburbs. With the prejudice borrowed from my Father, I had cultivated for all suburbs something of the large sweeping contempt which, in the Eighteen-Nineties, Henley and the National Observer, carrying on the tradi- tion of Thackeray, made it the fashion to profess for the suburbs of London. West Philadelphia and Germantown were no less terms of opprobrium in my mouth than Clap- ham and Brixton in Henley's. But Henley, though it was a mistake to insist upon Clapham with its beautiful Com- mon and old houses and dignified air, was expressing his splendid scorn of the second-rate, the provincial, in art and in letters. I was only expressing, parrot-like, a pose that did not belong to me, but to my Father in whose outlook upon life and things there was a whimsical touch, and who carried off* his prejudices with humour. I was the more foolish in this because few towns, if any, have lovelier suburbs than Philadelphia. Their loveli- ness is another part of our inheritance from William Penn who set no limits to his dream of a green country town, and from the old Friends who, in deference to his desire, lined not only their streets but their roads with trees. This is *' '\Y**'-'vt CLIVEDEN, THE CHEW HOUSE THE ROMANCE OF WORK 297 only as it should be, I thought when, reading the letters of John Adams, I came upon his description of the road to Kensington and beyond, " straight as the streets of Philadelphia, on each side . . . beautiful rows of trees, button-woods, oaks, walnuts, cherries, and willows." In our time, scarcely a road out of Philadelphia is without the same beautiful rows, if not the same variety in the trees, and while much of the open country it ran through in John Adams' day has been built up with town and .suburban houses, the trees still line it on each side. Every- body knows the beauty of the leafy roads of the INIain Line, quite a correct thing to know, the IVIain Line being the refuge of the Philadeli3hian jiushed out of " Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine " by business and the Russian Jew combined. But the Main Line has not the monopoly of suburban beauty, though it may of suburban fashion. The JVIain Street in Germantown, with its peacefid old grey stone houses and great overshadowing trees, has no rival at home or abroad, and I have seen as commonplace a street as W^alnut in West Philadelphia, its uninteresting houses screened behind the two long lines of trees, become in the golden light of a summer afternoon as stately an avenue as any at Versailles or St. Germain. Not only the trees, but the past went with us to Germantown. Has any other American suburb so many old houses to boast? Stenton, the Chew House, the John- son House, the Morris House, the Wistar House, W^yck — are there anv other Colonial houses with nobler interiors, 298 OUR PHILADELPHIA statelier furniture, sweeter gardens? I recall the pillared hall of Chew House, the finely proportioned entrance and stairway of Stenton, the garden of Wyck as I last saw it — rather overgrown, heavy with the perfume of roses and syringa, the June sun low behind the tall trees that stand close to the wall along Walnut Lane ; — ^I recall the memo- ries clustering about those old historic homes, about every lane and road and path, and I wonder that Germantown is not one of the show places of the world. But the foreigner, to whom Philadelphia is a station between New York and Washington or New York and Chicago, has never heard of it, nor has the rest of America to whom Philadelphia is the junction for Atlantic City. With the exception of Stenton, the old Germantown houses are for use, not for show, still lived in by the families who have lived in them from the beginning, and I love them too well to want to see them overtaken by the fate of sights starred in Baedeker, even while I wonder why they have escaped. At times J. and I walked in the green valley of the Wissahickon, along the well-kept road past the old white taverns, with wide galleries and suppers of cat-fish and waffles, which had not lost their pleasant primitiveness to pass themselves off as rural Rumpelmeyers where ladies stop for afternoon tea. Can the spring be fairer any- where than in and around Philadelphia when wistaria blossoms on ever}^ wall and the country is white with dog- wood? Often we w^andered in the Wissahickon woods, by narrow footpaths up the low hillsides, so often that, wher- THE ROMANCE OF WORK 299 ever I may be, certain effects of brilliant sunsbine filtering tbrougb tbe pale green of early spring foliage will send me straigbt back to the Wissabickon and to tbe days when I could not walk in Philadelphia or its suburbs and not strike gold at every step. And the Wissabickon was but one small section of the Park, of which the corrupt govern- ment Philadelphia loves to rail at made the largest and fairest, at once the wildest and most wisely laid-out play- ground, in America. Will a reform Government, with all its boasting, do as much for Philadelphia? I had skimmed the surface only on those boating parties up the river and those walking parties in the starlit or moonlit shade. Wide undiscovered stretches lay off the beaten track, and the mansions of the Park — Strawberry, Bel- mont, Mount Pleasant — were well stocked, not only with lemonade and cake and peanuts, with croquettes and chicken salad, but with beauty and associations for those who knew how to give the order. And, greater marvel, beauty — classic beauty — was to be had even in the Fair- mount Water Works that, after I left school, I had looked down ujion as a childish entertainment provided for the holidays, beneath the consideration of my maturer years. V Of all our walks, none was better than the walk to Bartram's on the banks of the Schuylkill beyond Gray's Ferry. It seemed very far then, before the trolley passed bv its gate, and before the rows of little two-storv houses 300 OUR PHILADELPHIA had begun to extend towards it like the greedy tentacles of the great town. The City Government had not taken it over, it was not so well looked after. The old grey stone house, with the stone tablet on its walls bearing witness that his Lord was adored by John Bartram, had not yet been turned into a museum. I am not sure whether the trees around it — the trees collected from far and near — were learnedly labelled as they are now. The garden had grown wild, the thicket below was a wilderness. It is right that the place should be cared for. The city could not afford to lose the beauty one of its most famous citizens, who was one of the most famous botanists of his day, built up, and his family preserved, for it, and when I returned I welcomed the sign this new care gave of Phila- delphia's interest, so long in the awakening. But Bar- tram's was more beautiful in its neglect, as an old church is more beautiful before the restorer pulls down the ivy and scrapes and polishes the stone. Many were the Sun- day afternoons J. and I spent there, and many the hours we sat talking on the little bench at the lower end of the wilderness, where we looked out on the river and planned new articles. When our walks together had become too strong a habit to be broken and we decided to make the habit one for life, we went back again and again to Bartram's and on that same little bench, looking out upon the river, we planned work for the long years we hoped were ahead of ■5«r#^ ^f^. ft^mf ^^ THE ROMANCE OF WORK 303 us : perhaps seeing the future in the more glowing colours for the contrast with the past ahout us, the ashes of the life and beauty from which our phcenix was to soar. The work then planned carried and kept us thousands of miles away, but it belongs none the less to the old scenes, where it was inspired, and I like to think that, though the chances of this w^ork have made us exiles for years, the memory of our life as we have lived it is inseparable from the memory of Bartram's or, indeed, of Philadelphia which, through work, I learned to see and to love. CHAPTER XII : PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE ON the principle that nothing interests a man — or a woman — so much as shop, I had no sooner begun to write than I saw Philadelphia divided not between the people who coidd and could not go to the Assembly and the Dancing Class, but between the people who could and could not write ; and, after I began to write for illustration, between the people who could and could not paint and draw. It had never before occurred to me to look for art and literature in Philadelphia. At that time, you had, literally, to look for the litera- ture to find it. Philadeljihia, with its usual reticence and conscientiousness in preventing any Philadelphian from becoming a prophet in Philadelphia, had hidden its liter- ary, with its innumerable other, lights under a bushel, content itself to know they were there, if nobody else did. As towns, like men, are apt to be accepted at their own valuation, most Americans would then have thought it about as useful to look for snakes in Ireland as for litera- ture in Philadelphia. I am not sure that the Philadelphian did not agree with them. Recently, I have heard him, in his new zeal for Philadelphia, talk as if it were the biggest literary thing on earth, the headquarters of letters in the 304 .'■^ v^k'^^ v1 '•Cvs.^ -X ■ X>S.. •^ ,s* ^^'^■1l\.r: "^in CARPENTER'S HALL INTERIOR PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 307 United States, a boast which I am told IndianapoHs also makes and, as far as I am concerned, can keep on making undisputed, for I do not believe in measuring literature like so much sheet iron or calico. But no matter what we have come to in Philadelphia, in the old days the Philadel- phian seldom gave his lions a chance to roar at home or paid the least attention to them if they tried to. I rather think he would have affected to share the Western Con- gressman's opinion of " them literary fellers " when the literary fellers came from his native town. But the Philadelphian must have done a great deal of reading to judge by the number of public libraries in the town, — the Philadelphia Library, the Ridgway, the Mer- cantile, the Free Public Library, the University Library, the Bryn Mawr College Library, the Friends' German- town Library, the Library of the Historical Society, and no doubt dozens I know nothing about — and there were always collectors from the days of Logan and Dr. Rush to those of Mr. Widener, George C. Thomas and Governor Pennypacker. But the Philadelphia reading man never talked books and the Philadelphia collector never vaunted and advertised his treasures, as he does now that collecting is correct. The average man kept his books out of sight. I remember few in my Grandfather's house, and not a book- case from top to bottom — few in any other house except my Father's. But I know that many people had books and a library set apart to read them in, and I have been as- tonished since to see the large collections in houses where 308 OUR PHILADELPHIA of old I had never noticed or suspected their presence. The Philadelphian was as reticent about his books and his pleasure in them as about everything else, with the result that he got the credit for neither, even at home. This had probably something to do with the fact that though, as far back as I can remember, I had had a fancy for books and for reading, I grew up with the idea that for literature, as for beauty, the Atlantic had to be crossed, that it was not in the nature of things for Philadelphia to have had a literary past, to claim a literary present, or to hope for a literary future. But as I had discovered my mistake about the beauty during those walks with J., so in my modest stall in the literary shop, I learned how far out I had been about the literature. It was the same story over again. I had only to get interested, and there was everything in the world to interest me. II There was the past, for Philadelphia had had a literary past, and not at all an empty past, but one full of the ro- mance of effort and pride of achievement. Because Phila- delphians did not begin to write the minute they landed on the banks of the Delaware, some wise people argue that Friends were then, as now, unliterary. But what of Wil- liam Penn, whose writings have become classics? What of Thomas Elwood, the friend of INIilton? What of George Fox who, if unlettered, was a born writer no less than Bunyan? Friends did not write and publish books PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 309 right off in Philadelphia for the same excellent reason that other Colonists did not in other Colonial towns. Living was an absorbing business that left them no time for writ- ing, and printing presses and publishers' offices and book stores did not strike them as immediate necessities in the wilderness. It was not out of consideration that the early Philadelphia Friends bequeathed nothing to the now sadly overladen shelves of the British Museum and the Library of Congress. When leisure came Philadelphians were readier to devote it to science. According to Mr. Sydney Fisher, Pennsylvania has done more for science than any other State: a subject upon which my profound ignorance bids me be silent. But science did not keep them altogether from letters. No people ever had a greater itch for writing. Look at the length of their correspondence, the minute- ness of their diaries. And they broke into poetry on the slightest provocation. Authorities say that no real poem appeared in America before 1800, but the blame lies not alone with Philadelphia. It did what it could. Boston may boast of Anne Bradstreet who was rhyming before most New Englanders had time for reading, but so could Philadelphia brag of Deborah Logan— if Philadelphia ever bragged of anything Philadelphian — and I am will- ing to believe there is no great difference between the two poetesses without labouring through their verses to prove myself wrong. And the Philadelphian was as prolific as any other Colonial in horrible doggerel to his mistress's 310 OUR PHILADELPHIA hoops and bows, to her tears and canary birds. And as far as I know, only a Philadelphian among Colonial poets is immortalized in the Duneiad, though possibly Ralph, Franklin's friend to whom the honour fell, would rather have been forgotten than remembered solely because his howls to Cynthia made night hideous for Pope. And where else did the young men so soon form themselves into little groups to discourse seriously upon literature and kindred matters, as they walked sedately in the woods along the Schuylkill? Where else was there so soon a society — a junto — devoted to learning? In innumerable ways I could see, once I could see anything, how Philadelphia was preparing itself all along for literary pursuits and accomplishment. Let me brag a little, if Philadelphia won't. Wasn't it in Germantown that the first paper mill of the Colonies was set up? Wasn't it there that the New Testament was printed in German — and went into seven editions — before any other Colony had the enterprise to print it in English, so that Saur's Testament is now a treasure for the collector? Isn't it maintained by some authorities, if others dispute it, that the first Bible in English was published in Philadelphia by Robert Aitken, at " Pope's Head above the Coffee House, in Market Street " ? And Philadelphia issued the first American daily paper, the most important of the first American reviews, the most memorable Almanac of Colonial days — can any other compete with Poor Rich- ard's? And Philadelphia opened the first Circulating c . MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 313 Library — the Philadelphia Library is no benevolent up- start of to-day. And Philadelphia publishers were for years the most go-ahead and responsible — who did not know the names of Gary, Lea, Rlanchard, Griggs, Lippincott, knew nothing of the publishing trade. And Philadelphia book stores, with Lippincott's leading, were the best patronized. And Philadelphia had the monopoly of the English book trade, with Thomas Wardle to direct it. And Philadelphia held its own views on copy- right and stuck to them in the face of opposition for years — whether right or wrong does not matter, the thing is that it cared enough to have views. There is a record for you! Why the literary man had only to appear, and Philadelphia was all swept and garnished for his comfort and convenience. And the literary man did appear, with amazing promptness under the circumstances. When the demand was for political writers, Philadelphia supplied Franklin, Dickinson, and a whole host of others, until it is all the Historical Society of Pensylvania can do to cope with their pamphlets. When the demand was for native fiction, Philadelphia produced the first American novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, and if Philadelphians do not read him in our day, Shelley did in his, which ought to be as much fame as any pioneer could ask for. When the need was for an American Cookery Book, Philadelphia presented ]Miss Leslie to the public who received her with such apprecia- tion that, in the First Edition, she is harder to find than 314 OUR PHILADELPHIA Mrs. Glasse. When, with the years, the past rose in value, Philadelphia gave to America an antiquary, and John Watson, with his Annals, set a fashion in Philadel- phia that had to wait a good half century for followers. And when the writer was multiplied all over the country and the reader with him, Philadelphia provided the periodi- cal, the annual, the parlour-table book, that the one wrote for and the other subscribed to — an endless succession of them: The Casket, The Gift, The Souvenir, which I have no desire to disturb on their obscure shelves ; the Philadel- phia Saturday Miiseinn, and Burtons Gentleman's Maga- zine, to me the emptiest of empty names ; Sartains Union Magazine, which I might as well be honest and say I have never seen; Grahanis, in its prime, unrivalled, unap- proached; Godey's Lady's Booh, offering its pages alike to the newest verse and the latest mode, the popular maga- zine that every American saw at his dentist's or his doc- tor's, edited by Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, for a woman, then as always, could get where she chose, if she had the mind to, without the help of arson and suicide ; Petersons, which I recall only in its title ; Lippincott's, in my time the literary test or standard in Philadelphia and scrupulously taken in by the Philadelphia householder. I can see it still, lying soberly on the centre table in the back parlour of the Eleventh and Spruce Street house, never defaced or thumbed, I fancy seldom opened, but like everything in the house, like my Grandfather himself, a type, a symbol PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 315 of Philadelphia respectability. It was as much an obliga- tion for the respectable Philadelphia citizen to subscribe to Lippincott's as to belong to the Historical Society, to be a member of the Philadelphia Library, to buy books for Christmas presents at Lippincott's or Porter and Coates'. The Philadelphian, who had no particular use for a book as a book or, if he had, kept the fact to himself, was content to parade it as an ornament, and no par- lour was without its assortment of pretty and expensive parlour-table books, received as Christmas presents, and as purely ornamental as the pictures on the wall and the vases on the mantelpiece. I know one Philadelphian who carried this decorative use of books still further and nailed them to the ceiling to explain that the room they decorated was a library, which nobody would have suspected for a moment, as they were the only volumes in it. For the man who had a living to make out of literature, Philadelphia was a good place, not to come away from, but to go to, and a number of American men of letters did go, though I need hardly add Philadelphia made as little of the fact as possible. In Philadelphia Washington Irving, sometimes called America's first literary man, pub- lished his books, but truth compels me to admit that he fared better when he handed them over to Putnam in New York; though of late years, the Lippincotts have done much to atone for the old failure by their successful issues of The Alhambfa and The Traveller. To Philadelphia 316 OUR PHILADELPHIA magazines, N. P. Willis, and there was no more popular American writer, pledged himself for months ahead. To Philadelphia, Lowell came from Boston to get work. Poe deserted Richmond and the South for Philadelphia, where he contributed to Philadelphia magazines, edited them, planned new ones, while Philadelphia waited until he was well out of the world to know that he ever had lived there. Altogether, when I came upon the scene, Phila- delphia had had a highly creditable literary past, and was having a highly creditable literary present, and, in pursu- ance of its invariable policy, was making no fuss about it. Ill As I look back, the three most conspicuous figures of this literary present were Charles Godfrey Leland, George Boker and Walt Whitman. All three were past middle age, they had done most of their important work, they had gained an international reputation. But that of course made no difference to Philadelphia. I doubt if it had heard of George Boker as a man of letters, though it knew him politically and also socially, as he had not lost his interest in society and the Philadelphia Club. My Uncle, having no use for society in Philadelphia and saying so with his accustomed vigour, and not having busied himself with politics for many years, was ignored unreservedly. Walt Whitman, who probably would not have been con- sidered eligible for the Assembly and the Dancing Class .£r=^ W^y'- 5^ .>, ¥Cf ■ — .-»jiiMniii-i...iai... J V* « / /if/, -^^ ,-.--.^' 1 ARCH STREET MEETING— INTERIOR PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 319 had he condescended to know of their existence, did not exist socially, and it is a question if he would have collected round him his ardent worshippers from Philadelphia had he not had the advantage of having been born somewhere else. If I am not mistaken, this worship had not begun in my time, when he was more apt to receive a visitor from London or Boston than from Philadelphia. The fact that it was my good fortune to know these three men contributed considerably to my new and pleas- ant feeling of self-importance. When I wrote the life of my Uncle a few years ago, I had much to say of him and my relations with him at this period, and I do not want to repeat myself. But I can no more leave him out of my recollections of literary Philadelphia than out of my per- sonal reminiscences. When he entered so intimately into my life he was nearer sixty than fifty, but he had lost noth- ing of his vigour nor of his physical beauty — tall, large, long-bearded, a fine profile, the eyes of the seer. He was fastidious in dress, with a leaning to light greys and browns, and a weakness for canes which he preferred thin and elegant. I remember his favourite was black and had an altogether unfashionable silver, ruby-eyed dragon for handle. On occasions to which it was appropriate, he wore a silk hat; on others, more informal, he exchanged it for a large soft felt — a modified cowboy hat — which suited him better, though he would not have forgiven me had I had the courage to say so to his face, his respect for the con- 320 OUR PHILADELPHIA ventions, always great, having been intensified during his long residence in England. It seems superfluous to add that he could not pass unnoticed in Philadelphia streets, which did not run to cowboy hats or dragon-handled canes or any deviations from the approved Philadelphia dress. Nor did his fancy for peering into shop windows make him less conspicuous, and as his daily walk was hardly com- plete if it did not lead to his buying something in the shop, were it only a five-cent bit of modern blue-and-white Japanese china, this meant that before his purchase was handed over to me, as it usually was, his pleasure being not in the possession but in the buying, he had parcels to carry, a shocking breach of good manners in Philadelphia. In his comjDany therefore I became a conspicuous figure myself, and I was often his companion in the streets; but to this I had no objection, having been inconspicuous far too long for my taste. He had written his Breitmann Ballads years before when the verse of no other American of note — unless it was Longfellow's and Whittier's and Lowell's in the Big- low Papers — had had so wide a circulation. He had also published one or two of his Gypsy books, never surpassed except by Borrow. And he was engaged in endless new tasks — more Gypsy papers, Art in the Schools, Indian Legends, Comic Ballads, Essays on Education, and I did not mind what since my excitement was in being admitted for the first time into the companionship of a man who de- -■.:^I^T^, lb hi ^— i ieebJ "^tJ .**-»•■ -n ^ !^. ^;4*^j ft /-^// V ^ FRONT AM) CA1J,()\VHILL PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 323 voted himself to writing, to whom writing was business, who sat down at his desk after breakfast and wrote as my Father after breakfast went down to his office and bought and sold stocks, who never stopped except for his daily walk, who got back to work if there was a free hour before dinner and who, after dinner, read until he went to bed. JNIoreover, he had brought with him the aroma, as it were, of the literary life in London. He had met many of the people who, because they had written books, were my heroes. Here would have been literature enough to trans- figure Philadelphia had I known no other writers. IV But, through him, I did know others. First of all, George Boker with whom, however, I could not pretend to friendship or more than the barest acquaintance. In the streets he was as noticeable a figure as my Uncle, though given neither to cowboy hats and dragon-handled canes nor to peering into shop windows and carrying parcels. Like my Uncle, he was taller than the average man, and handsomer, his white hair and white military moustache giving him a more distinguished air, I fancy, in his old age than was his in his youth. His smile was of the kindliest, the characteristic I remember best. He had re- turned from his appointments as Minister to Russia and Turkey and had given up active political and diplomatic life. He had written most of his poems, if not all, includ- 3*24 OUR PHILADELPHIA ing the Francesca da Rimini which Lawrence Barrett was shortly afterwards to put on the stage, and he impressed nie as a man who had had his fill of life and work and adventure and was content to settle down to the comforts of Philadelphia. He and my Uncle, who had been friends from boyhood or babyhood, spent every Sunday afternoon together. ]My Uncle had large spacious rooms on the QTOund floor of a house in South Broad Street where the Philadelphia Art Club now is, and there George Boker came Sunday after Sunday and there, if I dropped in, I saw him. I had tlie discretion never to stay long, for I realized that their intimate free talk was valued too much by both for them to care to have it interrupted. I can remember nothing he ever said — I have an idea he was a man who did not talk a great deal, while my Uncle did; my memory is of his kindly smile and my sense that here was one of the literary friendships I had read of in books. So, I thought, might Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith have met and talked, or Lamb and Coleridge, and Broad Street seemed tinged with tlie romance that I took for granted coloured the Temple in London and Gough Square. V Through my Uncle I also met Walt Wliitman, and he impressed me still more with the romance of literature. He was so unexpected in Philadelphia, for which I claim him in his last years, Camden being little more than a suburb, whatever Camden itself may tliink. I could nilLADELPHIA AND LITERATI liK 325 almost have imagined tliat it was for the humour of the thing he came to settle where his very appearance was an offence to the proprieties. George Boker was scrupu- lously correct. jNIy Uncle's hat and dragon-handled cane only seemed to emphasize his inhorn Philadel2)hia shrink- ing from eccentricity. But Walt Whitman, from top to toe, proclaimed the man who did not hother to think of the conventions, much less respect them. You saw it in his long white hair and long white heard, in his loose light grey clothes, in the soft white shirt unlaundered and open at the neck, in the tall, formless grey hat like no hat ever worn in Philadelphia. To have been stopped by him on Chestnut Street — a street he loved — would have filled me with confusion and shame in the days before literatm-e had become my shop. But once literature blocked my horizon, to be stopped by him lifted me up to the seventh heaven. If people tm-ned to look, and Philadelj^hians never grew quite accustomed to his presence, my pleasure was the greater. I took it for a visible sign that I was known, recognized, and accepted in the literary world. And what a triumph in streets where, of old, life had appalled me by its emptiness of incident! In one way or another I saw a good deal of AValt Whitman, but most frequently by the chance which in- creased the pictu.resqueness of the meeting. I called on him in tlie Camden house described many times by many people: in my memory, a little house, the room where I was received simple and bare, the one ornament as un- 326 OUR PHILADELPHIA expected there as Walt Whitman himself in Philadelphia, for it was an old portrait, dark and dingy, of an ancestor ; and I wondered if an ancestor so ancient as to grow dark and dingy in a frame did not make it easier to play the democrat and call every man comrade — ^or Camerado, I shonld say, as Walt Whitman said, with his curious fond- ness for foreign words and sounds. But though I saw him at home, he is more associated in my memory with the ferry- boat for Camden when my Uncle and I were on our way to the Gypsy's camping place near the reservoir; and with the corner of Front and Market and the boot- black's big chair by the Italian's candy and fruit stand where he loved to sit, and where I loved to see him, though, Philadelphian at heart, I trembled for his audac- ity; and with the Market Street horse-car, where he was already settled in his corner before it started and where the driver and the conductor, passing through, nodded to him and called him " Walt," and where he was as happy as the modern poet in his sixty-horse-power car. He was happiest when sitting out in front with the driver, and I have rarely been as proud as the afternoon he gave up that privileged seat to staj^ with my Uncle and myself inside. His greeting was always charming. He would take a hand of each of us, hold the two in his for a minute or so beam- ing upon us, never saying very much. I remember his leading us once, with our hands still in his, from the fruit- stand to the tobacconist's opposite to point out to my THE ELEVATED AT MARKET STREET WHARF PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 329 Uncle the wooden fignre of an Indian at the door, for which he professed a great a(hnirati()n as an example of the art of the people before they were trained in the Minor Arts. These chance meetings were always the best, and he told us that he thought them so, that he loved his accidental meetings with friends — there were many he prized among his most valued reminiscences. And I remember his story of Longfellow having gone over to Camden purposely to call on him, and not finding him at liome, and their run- ning into each other on the ferry-boat to jNIarket Street, and Longfellow saying that he had come from the house deeply disappointed, regretting the long quiet talk he had hoped for, but deciding that perhaps the strange chance of the meeting on the water was better. My LTncle, had he been hurrying to catch a train, would still have managed to talk ])hilosophy and art education. But I remember AValt Whitman also saying that the ferry and the corner of Market Street and the JNIarket Street car were hardlj' places for abstract discussion, though the few things said there were the less easily forgotten for being snatched joyfully by the way. It was one day in the Market Street car that he and my Uncle had the talk which left with me the profoundest impression. As a rule I was too engrossed in thinking what a great person I was, when in such company, to shine as a reporter. But on this occasion the subject was the 330 OUR PHILADELPHIA School of Industrial Ai'ts in which I was giving my Uncle the benefit of my incompetent assistance. He asked Walt Whitman to come and see it, telling him a little of its aims and methods. Whitman refused, amiably but posi- tively. I cannot recall his exact words, but I gathered from them that he had no sympathy with schemes savour- ing of benevolence or reform, that he believed in leaving people to work out their own salvation, and this, coming as it did after I had seen for myself the terms he was on with the driver and conductor, expressed more eloquently than his verse his definition of democracy. I may be mis- taken, but I thought then and have ever since that his be- lief in the people carried him to the point of thinking they knew better than the philanthropist what they needed and did not need. My Uncle was not of accord with him and I, who am neither democrat nor philanthropist, would not pretend to decide between them. My Uncle did not like Walt Whitman's attitude and refusal, convinced as he was of the good to the people that was to come of the reform he was initiating, though he was constitutionally incapable of meeting the people he was reforming on equal terms. The twinkle in Walt Whitman's eye when he refused gave me the clue to the large redeeming humour with which he looked upon a foolish world, seeing each individual in the place appointed, right in it, fitting into it, unfit for any other he did not make for himself of his own desire and coin-age — the humour without which the human tragedy would not be bearable. PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 331 1 wish I could have had more talk with Whitman, I wish I had been older or more experienced, that I might have got nearer to him — or so I felt in those old days. I have now an idea that his silence was more effective than his speech, that if he had said more to any of his de- voted following he might have been less of a prophet. But his tranquil presence was in itself sufficient to open a new outlook, and it reconciled me to the scheme of the universe for good or for ill. His personality impressed me far more than his poems. It seemed to me to explain them, to interpret them, as nothing else could — his few words of greeting worth pages of the critic's eloquent analysis. CHAPTER XIII: PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE— CONTINUED I HAD glimpses into other literary vistas, but mostly from a respectful and highly appreciative distance. How I wish I could recapture even as much as the shadow of the old rapturous awe with which any man or woman who had ever made a book inspired me ! There was reason for awe when the man was Dr. Horace Howard Furness, the editor of Shakespeare, and if Philadelphia knew its duty better than to draw attention to so scholarly a performance by a Philadelphian, scholars out of Philadelphia, who were not hampered by Philadel- phia conventions, hailed it as the best edition of Shake- speare there could be. I must always regret that in his case I succeeded in having no more than the glimpse. jNIost of my literary introductions came through my Uncle who, though he knew Dr. Furness, saw less and less oi' him as time went on, partly I think because of one of those small misunderstandings that are more unpardonable than tlie big offences — certainly they were to my Uncle. Dr. Furness' father, old Dr. Furness the LTnitarian INIinister, meeting him in the street one day, asked him gaily, but I have no doubt with genuine interest, how his fad, the school, was getting on. My Uncle, who could not stand having an 332 V. \ u • t' *ii' "^ - .?k,^ ^?*-^ T^ l-il' /•#-.^ l.illl-Wl ivj^if^;^ '^j-yxs/. THE GERMANTOWN ACADEMY PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 341 Philadelphian as he would not have thought had he known his Philadelphia better. Our Continent was too Philadel- phian to he approved in Philadelphia or to be in demand out of it. One symbol of literary respectability the town had in Lippiucott's, and one was as much as it could then support. Our Continent came to an end either just before or just after J. and I set out on our travels. There were other w^omen in journalism who exeited my envy. ]Mrs. Lucy Hooper's letters to the Evening Telegraph struck me as the last and finest word in foreign correspondence. I never, even upon closer acquaintance, lost my awe of JMrs. Sarah Hallowell who was intimately associated with the Ledger, or of JNIiss Julia Ewing, though her associa- tion with the same paper had nothing to do with its literary side. II Xow and then I was stirred to the depths by my glimpse of writers from other parts of the world. It was only when a prophet was a home product that Philadel- phia kept its eyes tight shut ; when the prophet came from another town it opened them wide, and its arms wider than its eyes, and showed him what a strenuous business it was to be the victim of Philadelphia hospitality. It was rather pleased if the prophet happened to be a lord, or had a handle of some kind to his name, but an author would answer for want of something better, especially if he came from abroad. No Englishman on a lecture tour was allowed to pass by Philadelphia. 342 OITR PHILADELPHIA Immediately on his arrival, the distinguished visitor was appropriated by George W. Childs, who had under- taken to play in Philadelphia the part of the Lord Mayor in the City of London and do the town's official enter- taining, and who was known far and wide for it — " he has entertained all the English who come over here," Matthew Arnold wrote home of him, and visitors of every other nationality could have written the same of their own people passing through Philadelphia. You would meet him in the late afternoon, fresh from the Ledger office, strolling up Chestnut Street of which he was another of the conspicu- ous figures — not because of any personal beauty, but be- cause he did not believe in the Philadelphia practice of hiding one's light under a bushel, and had managed to make himself known by sight to every other man and woman in the street; just as old Richard Vaux was; or old " Aunt Ad " Thompson, everybody's aunt, in her bril- liant finery, growing ever more brilliant with years; or that distinguished lawyer, Ben Brewster, " Burnt-faced Brewster," whose genius for the law made every one forget the terrible marks a fire in his childhood had left upon his face. Philadelphia would not have been Philadelphia without these familiar figures. Childs seldom appeared on Chestnut Street without Tony Drexel, straight from some big operation on the Stock Exchange, the two repre- senting all that was most successful in the newspaper and banking world of Philadelphia: their friendship now commemorated in that new combination of names PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATI RE 343 as familiar to the new and changing generation as Cadwallader-Riddle was to the ohl and changeless. Be- tween them it was the exception when there was not an emperor, or a prince, or an author, or an actor, or some other variety of a distinguished visitor being put through his paces and shown life in Philadelphia, on the way to the house of one or the other and to the feast prepared in his honour. At the feast, if there was speaking to be done, it was invariably Wayne MacVeagh who did it. As I was not greatly in demand at public functions, I heard him but once — a memorable occasion which did not, how- ever, impress me with the brilliance of his oratory. Matthew Arnold, the latest distinguished visitor, was to lecture, and I had been looking forward to the evening with an ardour for which alas! I have lost the faculty. Literary celebrities were still novelties — more than that, divinities — in my eyes. Among them, Matthew Arnold held particularly high rank, one of the chief heroes of my worship, and many of my contemporaries worshipped with me. Youth was then, as always, acutely conscious of the burden of life, and we made our luxury of his pessimism. I could spout whole passages of his poems, whole poems when they were short, though now I could not probably get further than their titles. There had been a dinner first — there always was a dinner first in Philadelphia — and a Philadelphia dinner being no light matter, he arrived late. The delay would have done no harm had not Wayne Mac- Veagh, who presided, introduced him in a speech to which, 344 OUR PHILADELPHIA once it was started, there seemed no end. It went on and on, the audience growing restless, with Matthew Arnold himself an object of pity, so obvious was his embarrass- ment. Few lecturers could have saved the situation, and Matthew Arnold would have been a dull one under the most favourable circumstances. I went away disillusioned, reconciled to meeting my heroes in their books. And I could understand when, years later, I read the letters he wrote home, why the tulip trees seemed to have as much to do as the people in making Philadelphia the most attrac- tive city he had seen in America. Another distinguished visitor who lectured about this period came off more gaily: — Oscar Wilde, to whose lecture I had looked forward with no particular excitement, for I was young enough to feel only impatience with his pose. After listening to him, I had to admit that he was amusing. His affected dress, his deliberate posturings, his flamboyant phrases and slow lingering over them as if loth to let them go, made him an exhilarating contrast to Matthew Arnold, shocked as I was by a writer to whom literature was not always in dead earnest, nor to teach its goal, even though it was part of his pose to ape the teacher, the voice in the wilderness. And he was so refreshingly en- thusiastic when off the platform, as I saw him afterwards in my Uncle's rooms. He let himself go without reserve as he recalled the impressions of his visit to Walt Whitman in Camden and his meeting with the cowboy in the West. To him, the cowboy was the most picturesque product of M-*r4 '^m^^f j^-^v/i' '.^ if" if :•-/-/ _ y THE STATE HOUSE FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATI RL: 347 America from whom he borrowed hat and cloak and ap- peared in them, an amazing spectacle. And I find in some prim, priggish, distressingly useless little notes I made at the time, that it was a perfect, a supreme moment when he talked to Walt Whitman who had been to him the master, at whose feet he had sat since he was a young lad, and who was as pure and earnest and noble and grand as he had hoped. That to Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde seemed " a great big splendid boy " is now matter of history. I know that Philadelphia entertained Wilde, and so I fancy him staying with George W. Childs, dining with Tony Drexel, and being talked to after dinner by Wayne MacVeagh, though I cannot be sure, as Philadelphia, with singular lack of appreciation, included me in none of the entertaining. I saw him only in Horticultural Hall, where he lectured, and at my LTncle's. This was seeing him often enough to be confirmed in my conviction that literature might be a stimulating and emotional adventure. JNIany interesting people of many varieties were to be met in my Uncle's rooms. I remember the George Lath- rops who, like Lowell and Poe of old, had come to Phila- delphia for work: Lathrop rather embittered and dis- appointed, I thought ; Mrs. Lathrop — Rose Hawthorne — a marvellous woman in my estimation, not because of her beautiful gold-red hair, nor her work, which I do not be- lieve was of special importance, but as the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne and therefore a link between me in mj^ insignificance and the great of Brook Farm and Con- 348 OUR PHILADELPHIA cord. I remember editors from Xew York, impressive creatures ; and INIembers of Parliament, hangers-on of the literary world of London; and actresses, its lions, when in England : — Janauschek, heavily tragic off as on the stage, for whom my Uncle's admiration was less limited than mine; and Miss Genevieve Ward, playing in Forget-Me- Not, her one big success, for she failed in the popularity to repeat it that comes so easily to many less accomplished. How timidly I sat and listened, marvelling to find myself there, feeling like the humble who shall be exalted in the Bible, looking upon my Uncle's rooms as the literary threshold from which I was graciously permitted to watch the glorious company within. Ill I had gone no further than this first, tremulous ardent stage in my career when my Uncle deserted his memorable rooms never to return, and J. and I started on the journey that we thought might last a year — as long as the money held out, we had said, to the discomfort of the family who no doubt saw me promptly on their hands again — and that did not bring me back to Philadelphia for over a quarter of a century. Of literary events during my absence, some- body else must make the record. When I did go back after all those years, I was con- scious that there nmst have been events for a record to be made of, or I could not have accounted for the change. Literature was now in the air. Local prophets were 'THE LITTLE STREET OE CLUBS, " CA>L\C STREET ABOVE SPRUCE STREET PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 351 acknowledged, if not by all Philadelphia, by little groups of satellites revolving round them. Literary lights had come from under the bushel and were shining in high places. Societies had been industriously multiplying for the encouragement of literature. All such encouragement in my time had devolved upon the Pemi Club that patron- ized literatin-e, among its other interests, and wrote about books in its monthly journal and invited their authors to its meetings. During my absence, not only had the Penn Club continued to flourish — to such good purpose that J. and I were honoured by one of these invitations and felt that never again could Fame and Fate bring us such a triumphant moment, except when the Academy of Fine Arts paid us the same honour and so upset our old belief that no Philadelphian could ever be a prophet in Philadel- phia! — but Philadelphia had broken out into a multitude of Clubs and Societies, beginning with the Franklin Inn, for Franklin is not to be got away from even in Clubland, and his Inn, I am assured, is the most comprehensive literary centre to which every author, every artist, every editor, every publisher who thinks himself something be- longs to the number of one hundred — ^that there should be the chance of one hundred with the right to think them- selves something in Philadelphia is the wonder! — and in the house in Camac Street, which one Philadelphian I know calls " The Little Street of Clubs," the members meet for light lunch and much talk and, it may be, other rites of which I could speak only from hearsay, my sex 352 OUR PHILADELPHIA disqualifying me from getting my knowledge of them at first hand. And there is a Business and Professional Club and a Poor Richard, bringing one back to Franklin again, in the same Little Street. And there are Browning Societies, and Shakespeare Societies, and Drama-Reform- ing Societies, and Pegasus Societies, and Societies for members to read their own works to each other; and more Societies than the parent Society discoursing in the woods along the Schuylkill could have dreamed of: with the Contemporary Club to assemble their variously divided ends and objects under one head, and to entertain litera- ture as George W. Childs had entertained it, and, going further, to pay literature for being entertained, if literature expresses itself in the form of readings and lectures by those who practise it professionally. The change dis- concerted me more than ever when I, Philadelphia born, was assured of a profitable welcome if I would speak to the Club on anything. The invitation was tentative and unofficial, but the Contemporary Club need be in no fear. It may make the invitation official if it will, and never a penny the poorer will it be for my presence: I am that now rare creature, a shy woman subject to stage fright. And I cannot help thinking that, despite the amiability to the native, the stranger, simply because he is a stranger, continues to have the preference, so many are the Englishmen and Englisliwomen invited to deliver themselves before the Club who never could gather an audience at home. ■^'^y^^fJ'li^^^$^MW^'^~^ S DOWN SANSOM STREET FROM EIGHTH STREET THE LOW HOUSES AT SEVENTH STREET HAVE SINCE BEEN TORN DOWN AND THE WESTERN END OF THE CURTIS BUILDING NOW OCCUPIES THEIR PLACE PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 355 And Philadelphia has recaptured the lead in the periodical publication that pays, and I found the Curtis Building the biggest sky-scraper in Philadelphia, tower- ing above the quiet of Independence Square, a brick and marble and pseudo-classical monument to the Ladies' Hovie Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, and if in the race literatiu'e lags behind, what matter when merit is vouched for in solid dollars and cents? What matter, when the winds of heaven conspire with bricks and mortar to make the passer-by respect it? I am told that on a windy day no man can pass the building without a fight for it, and no woman without the help of stalwart police- men. In her own organ of fashion and feminine senti- ment, she has raised up a power against which, even with the vote to back her, she could not prevail. And Philadelphia is not content to have produced the first daily newspaper but is bent on making it as big as it can be made anywhere. If I preserved my morning paper for two or three days in my hotel bedroom, I fairly waded in newspapers. On Sundays if I carried up- stairs only the Ledger and the North American, I was deep in a flood of Comic Supplements, and Photograph Supplements, and Sport Supplements, and every possible sort of Supplement that any other American newspaper in any other American town can boast of — all the sad stuff that nobody has time to look at but is what the news- paper editor is under the delusion that the public wants — in Philadelphia, one genuine Philadelphia touch added 356 OUR PHILADELPHIA in the letters and gossip of " Peggy Shippen " and " Sally Wister," names with the double recommendation to Phila- delphia of venerable age and unquestionable Philadelphia respectability. And I found that the Philadelphia writer has increased in niuubers and in popularity, whether for better or worse I will not say. I have not the courage for the role of critic on my own hearth, knowing the penalty for too much honesty at home. Xor is there any reason why I should hesitate and bungle and make myself unpleasant enemies in doing indifferently what Philadelphia, in its new incarnation, does with so much grace. I have now but to name the Philadelphian's book in Philadelphia to be informed that it is monumental — but to mention the Philadelphia writer of verse to hear that he is a marvel — but to enquire for the Philadelphia writer of prose to be assured that he is a genius. There is not the weeest, most modest little Philadelphia goose that does not sail along valiantly in the Philadelphia procession of swans. The new pose is prettier than the old if scarcely more success- ful in preserving a sense of proportion, and it saves me from committing myself. I can state the facts that strike me, without prejudice, as the lawyers say. IV One is that the last quarter of a century has interested the Philadelphia writer in Philadelphia as he had not been since the days of John Watson. JNIost Philadelphians nilLADELPIIIA AND LITERATI RE 357 owned a copy of Watson's Annals. I have one on my desk before me that belonged to J.'s Father, one must have been in my Grandfatlier's highly correct Phila- delphia house, though 1 cannot recall it there, for a Philadelphian's duty was to buy Watson just as it was to take in Lippincott's, and Philadelphians never shirked their obligations. They probably would not have been able to say what w^as in Watson, or, if they coidd, would have shrugged their shoulders and dismissed him for a crank. But they w^ould have ow^ned the Annals, all the same. Then the Centennial shook them up and insisted on the value of Philadelphia's history, and Philadelphians were no longer in fashion if they did not feel, or affect, an interest in Philadelphia and its past. After the Cen- tennial the few who began to write about it could rely upon the many to read about it. Once, the Philadelphian who was not ashamed to write stories made them out of the fashionable life of Philadel- phia. Dr. Weir ]Vlitchell inaugurated the new era, or the revolt, or the secession, or whatever name may be given it w^ith the first historical novel of Philadelphia. It is fortunate, \vhen I come to Hugh Wynne, that I have re- nounced criticism and all its pretences. As a Friend by marriage, if such a thing is possible, I cannot underesti- mate the danger. Only a Friend born a Friend is quali- fied to write the true Quaker novel, and I am told by this kind of Friend that Hugh Wijnne is not free from mis- representations, misconceptions and misunderstandings. 358 OUR PHILADELPHIA This may be true— I breathe more freely for not being able to affirm or to deny it — but, as Henley used to say, there it is — the first romantic gold out of the mine Phila- delphia history is for all who work it. Since these lines were written the news has reached me that never again will Dr. Mitchell work this or any other mine. I cannot imagine Philadelphia without him. When I last saw him, it seemed to me that no Philadelphian was more alive, more in love with life, better equipped to enjoy life in the way Philadelphia has fashioned it— the Philadelphia life in which his passing away must leave no less a gap than the disappearance of the State House or the Pennsylvania Hospital would leave in the Philadelphia streets. If Dr. Mitchell's digging brought up the romance of Philadel- phia, Mr. Sydney George Fisher's has unearthed the facts, for Philadelphia was the root of the great growth of Penn- sylvania which is the avowed subject of his history. And the men who helped to make this history have now their biographers at home, though hitherto the task of their biography had been left chiefly to anybody anywhere else who would accept the responsibility, and my Brother, Ed- ward Robins, Secretary of the University of Pennsylvania, has written the life of Benjamin Franklin, without whom the University would not have been, at least would not have been what it is. And in so many different directions has the interest spread that my friend since Our Convent Days, Miss Agnes Repplier, has taken time from her THE DOUBLE STAIRWAY IN THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 361 studies in literature and from building a monument to her beloved Agri^jpina to write its story. When she sent me her book, I opened it with grave apprehensions. In the volumes she had published, humour was the chief charm, and how would humour help her to see Philadelphia? I need not have been uneasy. There is no true humour without tenderness. If she had her smile for the towii we all love, as we all have, it was a tender smile, and I think no reader can close her book without wanting to know still more of Philadelphia than it was her special business in that place to tell them. And that no vein of the Philadelphia mine might be left unworked, Miss Anne Hollingsworth Wharton has busied herself to gather up old traditions and old reminiscences, dipping into old letters and diaries, opening wide Colonial doorways, resur- recting Colonial Dames, reshaping the old social and do- mestic life disdained by historians. The numerous editions into which her books have gone explain that she has not worked for her own edification alone, that Philadelphia, once it was willing to hear any talk about itself, could not hear too much. And after INIiss Wharton have come Mr. INIather Lippincott and Mr. Eberlein to collect the old Colonial houses and their memories, followed by ISlr. Herbert C. Wise and Mr. Beidleman to study their archi- tecture: just in time if Philadelphia perseveres in its crime of moving out of the houses for the benefit of the Russian Jew and of mixing their memories with squalor. Of all 362 OUR PHILADELPHIA the ways in which Philadelphia has changed, none is to me more remarkable than in this rekindling of interest out of which has sprung the new group of writers in its praise. Nor were the Philadelphia poets idle during my ab- sence. Dr. Mitchell had not before sung so freely in public, nor had he ranked, as I am told he did at the end, his. verse higher than his medicine. Mrs. Coates' voice had not carried so far. Dr. Francis Howard Williams had not rhymed for Pageants in praise of Philadelphia. Mr. Harrison Morris had not joined the Philadelphia choir. Mr. Harvey M. Watts had not been heard in the land. I have it on good authority that yearly the Philadelphia poets meet and read their verses to each other, a custom of which I cannot speak from personal knowledge as I have no passport into the magic circle, and perhaps it is just as well for my peace of mind that I have not. Rumour de- clares that, on certain summer evenings, a suburban porch here or there is made as sweet with their singing as with the perfume of the roses and syringa in the garden, and I am content with the rumour for there is always the chance the music might not be so sweet if I heard it. I like to re- member that the poets on their porch, whether their voices be sweet or harsh, descend in a direct line from the young men who wandered, discoursing of literature, along the Schuylkill. And Philadelphia's love of poetry is to be assured not only by its own singers but by its care, now as in the past, for the song of others. Horace Howard PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 363 Furness, Jr., has taken over his father's task and, in so doing, will see that Philadelphia eontinues to be famous for the most complete edition of Shakespeare. There had been equal activity during my absence among the story-tellers. Since Brockden Brown, not one had written so ambitious a tale as Hugh Wynne, not one had ever laughed so good-humouredly at Philadelphia as Thomas A. Janvier in his short stories of the Hutchinson Ports and Rittenhouse Smiths — what gaiety has gone out with his death! Not one had ever seen character with such truth as Owen Wister, — if only he could understand that as good material awaits him in Philadelphia as in Vir- ginia and Wyoming. And John Luther Long is another of the story-tellers Philadelphia can claim though, like Mr. Wister, he shows a greater fancy for far-away lands or to wander among strange people at home. There is no branch of literature that Philadelphia has not taken under its active protection. Who has con- tributed more learnedly to the records of the Inquisition than Henry Charles Lea, or to the chronicles of the law in the United States than Mr. Hampton L. Carson and Mr. Charles Burr, duly conscious as Philadelphia lawyers should be of the Philadelphian's legal responsibility? Who can compete in kno'v^'ledge of the evolution of the playing card with Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer or rival her collection? Who ever thought of writing the history of autobiography before Mrs. Anna Robeson Burr? The 364 OUR PHILADELPHIA time had but to come for an admirer to play the Boswell to Walt Whitman, and JNIr. Traubel appeared. When Columbia wanted a Professor of Journalism, Philadel- phia sent it Dr. Talcott Williams. When England seemed a comfortable shelter for research there was no need to be in a hiu'ry about, IVIr. Logan Pearsall Smith showed what could be done with an exhaustive study of Dr. Donne, though why he was not showing instead what could be done with the Loganian Library, where the chance to show it was his for the claiming, he alone can say. When such recondite subjects as Egyptian and Assyrian called for interpreters, Philadelphia was again on the spot with Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson and Dr. Morris Jastrow. And for authorities on the drama and history, it gives us ]VIr. Felix Schelling and Dr. MclNIaster, — but perhaps for me to attempt to complete the list would only be to make it incomplete. Here, too, I tread on dangerous ground. It may be cowardly, but it is safe to give the tribute of my recognition to all that is being accomplished by the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania and its scholars — by Bryn Mawr College and its students — by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania — by other Colleges and learned bodies — by innumerable individuals — and not invite exposure by venturing into detail and upon comment. It is in these emergencies that the sense of my limitations comes to my help. At least I am not afraid to say that, on my return, I ?^,.. a. ■ h ^ -1 '^f^'l ^. % H / X, CARPENTERS HALL, BUILT 1771 PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 367 fancied 1 found this side of Philadelphia life less a side apart, less isolated, more identified with the social side, and tlie social side, for its part, accepting the identification. The University and Bryn JNIawr could not have played the same social part in the Philadelphia 1 remember. Per- haps I shall express what I mean more exactly if I say that, returning- with fresh eyes, I saw Philadelphia ready and pleased, as I had not remembered it, to acknowledge •openly talents and activities it once made believe to ignore or despise — to go further really and, having for the first time squarely faced its accomplishments, for the first time to blow its own trumpet. The new spirit is one I approve. I would not call all the work that comes out of Philadel- phia monumental, as some Philadelphians do, or Phila- delphia itself a modern Athens, or the hub of the literary universe, or any other absurd name. But I do think that in literature and learning it is now contributing, as it always has contributed, its fair share to the country, and that if Philadelphia does not say so, the rest of the country will not, for the rest of the country is still under the delu- sion that Philadelphia knows how to do nothing but sleep. CHAPTER XIV: PHILADELPHIA AND ART I IGNORANCE of art and all relating to it could not have been greater than mine when I paid that first eventful visit to J.'s studio on Chestnut Street. I lay the blame only partly on my natural capacity for ignorance. It was a good deal the fault of the sort of education I received and the influences among which I lived — the fault of the place and the period in which I grew up. Nominally, art was not neglected at the Con- vent. A drawing-class was conducted by an old bear of a German, who also gave music lessons, and who pros- pered so on his monopoly of the arts with us that he was able to live in a delightful cottage down near the river. Drawing was an " extra " of which I was never thought worthy, but I used to see the class at the tables set out for the purpose in the long low hall leading to the Chapel, the master grumbling and growling and scolding, the pupils laboriously copying with crayon or chalk little cubes and geometrical figures or, at a more advanced stage, the old-fashioned copy-book landscape and build- ing, rubbing in and rubbing out, wrestling with the com- position as if it were a problem in algebra. The Convent could take neither credit, nor discredit, for the system; it was the one then in vogue in every school, fashionable ml ' \1U ' i- INDEPENDENCE HALL— LENGTHWISE VIEW PHILADELPHIA AND ART 371 or otherwise, and not so far removed, after all, from systems followed to this day in certain Academies of Art. Another class was devoted to an art then considered very beautifnl, called Grecian Painting. It was not my privilege to stndy this either, but I gathered from friends who did that it was of the simplest: on the back of an engraving, preferably of a religious subject and pre- pared by an ingenious process that made it transparent, the artist dabbed his colours according to written instruc- tions. The result, glazed and framed, w^as supposed to resemble, beyond the detection of any save an expert, a real oil painting and was held in high esteem. A third class was in the elegant art of making wax flowers and, goodness knows why, my Father squandered an appreciable sum of his declining fortunes on having me taught it. I am the more puzzled by his desire to bestow upon me this accomplishment because none of the other girls' fathers shared his ambition for their daughters and I was the only member of the class. Alone, in a room at the top of the house — chosen no doubt for the light, as if the deeds there done ought not to have been shrouded in darkness — I worked many hours under the tuition of Mother Alicia, cutting up little sheets of wax into leaves and petals, colouring them, sticking them together, and producing in the end two horrible masterpieces — one a water-lily placed on a mirror under a glass shade, the other a basket of carnations and roses and camelias — both of which masterpieces my poor family, to avoid hurting 372 OUR PHILADELPHIA my feelings, had to place in the parlour and keep there 1 blush to remember how long. It must be admitted that this was scarcely an achievement to encourage an interest in art. For the appreciation of art, as for its practice, it is important to have nothing to unlearn from the begin- ning; mine was the sort of training to reduce me to the necessity of unlearning everything; and most of my con- temporaries, on leaving school, were in the same plight. My eyes were no better trained than my hands. Works of art at the Convent consisted of the usual holy statues designed for our spiritual, not aesthetic edification; the Stations of the Cross whose merit was no less spiritual; two copies of Murillo and Rafael which my Father, in the fervour of conversion, presented to the Mother Superior; and a picture of St. Elizabeth of Hungary that adorned the Convent parlour, where we all felt it belonged, such a marvel to us was its combination of brilliantly-coloured needle-and-brush work. Illustrated books there must have been in the ill- assorted hodge-podge of a collection in the Library from which we obtained our reading for Thursday afternoons and Sundays. But though I doubt if there was a book I had not sampled, even if I had not been able to read it straight through, I can recall no illustrations except the designs by Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt, made for Moxon's Tennyson and reproduced by the Harpers for a cheap American edition of the Poems, a copy of which was given to me one year as a prize. Little PHILADELPHIA AND ART 373 barbarian as I was, I disliked tbe drawings of tbe Pre- Ka])liaelites l)ec'ause they mystified me — the Lady of Shalott, entangled in her wide floating web, the finest drawing Holman Hnnt ever made; the company of weep- ing queens in the Vale of Avalon, in Rossetti's harmo- niousl}^ crowded design^when I flattered myself I under- stood everything that was to be understood, more espe- cially Tennyson's Poems, many of which I could recite glibly from beginning to end — and did recite diligently to myself at hours when I ought to have been busy with the facts and figures in the class books before me. Most people, young or old, dislike anything which shows them how much less they understand than they think they do. Of the history of art I was left in ignorance as abject, the next to nothing I knew gleaned from a Lives of the Artists adapted to children, a favoiu'ite book in the Library, one providing me with the theme for my sole serious effort in drama — a three-act play, jNIichael Angelo its hero, w^hich, with a success mau}^ dramatists might envy, I wrote, produced, acted in, and found an audience of good-natured nuns for, all at the ripe age of eleven. II When I left the Convent for the holidays and eventu- ally " for good," little in my new surroundings was cal- culated to increase my knowledge of art or to teach me the first important fact, as a step to knowledge, that I knew absolutely nothing on the subject. In my Grandfather's 374 OUR PHILADELPHIA house, art was represented by the family portraits, the engraving after Gilbert Stuart's Washington, the illus- trated lamp shade, and the Rogers Group. My Father, re-established in a house of his own, displayed an unac- countably liberal taste, straying from the Philadelphia standard to the extent of decorating his parlour walls with engravings of Napoleon he had picked up in Paris — to one, printed in colour, attaching a value which I doubt if the facts would justify, though, as I have never come across it in any collection, JNIuseum, or Gallery, it may be rarer and, therefore, more valuable, than I think. Other fruits of his old journeys to Paris were two engravings, perhaps after Guys, of two famous ladies of that town, whose presence in our prim and proper and highly do- mestic dining-room seems to me the most incongruous accident in an otherwise correctly-appointed Philadelphia household. When I think of Napoleon replacing Wash- ington on our walls, I suspect my Father of having broken loose from the Philadelphia traces in his youth, though by the time I knew him the prints were the only signs of a momentary dash for freedom on the part of so scrupulous a Philadelphian. It is curious that illustrations should have as small a place in my memory of home life as of the Convent. The men of the Golden Age of the Sixties had published their best work long before I had got through school, and in my childhood books gave me mv chief amusement. But I PHILx\DELPHIA AND ART 375 remember nothing- of tlieir fine designs. The earlier Cruikshank drawings for Dickens 1 knew well in the American edition which my Father owned, and never so long as I live can 1 see the Dickens world except as it is shown in the miicli over-rated Cruikshank interpreta- tions. Other memories are of the highly-finished, senti- mental steel-engravings of Scott's heroines, including Meg Merrilies, whom I still so absurdly associate with Crazy Norah. Another series of portraits, steel-engravings, as highly-finished and but slightly less insipid, illustrated my Father's edition of Thiers' French Revolution through which, one conscientious winter, I considered it my duty to wade. And I recall also the large volumes of photo- graphs after Rafael and other masters that, in the Eighteen- Seventies, came into fashion for Christmas presents and parlour-table books, and that I think must have heralded the new departure the Centennial is sup- posed to have inaugurated. If I try to picture to myself the interior of the houses where I used to visit, art in them too seems best repre- sented by family portraits no more remarkable than my Grandfather's, by the engraving of Stuart's Washington, or of Penn signing the Treaty with the Indians, or of the American Army crossing the Delaware, all three part of the traditional decoration of the Philadelphia hall and dining-room, and by a Rogers Group and an illustrated lamp shade. The library in which a friend first showed 376 OUR PHILADELPHIA me a volume of Hogarth's engravings I remember as ex- ceptional. But I have an idea that had I possessed greater powers of appreciation then, I should have a keener memory now of other houses full of interesting pictures and prints and illustrated books, which I did not see simply because my eyes had not been trained to see them. Certainly, there were Philadelphia collections of these things then, as there always have been — only they were not heard of and talked about as they are now, or, if they were, it was to dismiss their collecting as an amiable fad. Mr. John S. Phillips had got together the engravings Avhich the Pennsylvania Academy is to-day happy to possess. People who were interested did not have to be told that Mr. Claghorn's collection was perhaps the finest in the country; J. was one of the wise minority, and often on Sundays took advantage of Mr. Claghorn's generosity in letting anybody with the intelligence to realize the privilege come to look at his prints and study them; but I, who had not learned to be interested, knew nothing of the collection mitil I knew J. Gebbie and Barrie's store flourished in Walnut Street as it hardly could had there not been people in Philadelphia, as Gebbie once wrote to Frederick Keppel, who collected " these smoky, poky old prints." Gebbie and Barrie have gone, but Barrie re- mains, a publisher of art books, and there are other dealers no less important and perhaps more enterprising, who prosper, as one of them has recently assured me they could not, if they depended for their chief support upon Phila- '■^\/^:/-^ ■■'■ '"■ "<^' -w.'^'- ^^>:\if^ "V»,»*.»i^i5;ip GIRARD COLLEGE rillLADELPIIIA AND ART 379 delphia. J5iit I'hiladelphia £remssxmam^:i.^ ^ifanwatf»A»»jri^£V-,.-Ji^ '»%'- jC // "^y / ^ UPSALA, GERMANTOWN IMIILADELPIIIA AND ART 385 these old (loeumeiits. I reeoiiiineiul in partieular a passage i?i a letter John Adams wrote to his wife from Paris. It impressed me so Axheii I eame upon it, it seemed to me sueh an admirahle explanation of a situa- tion ])erplexing to crities, that I copied it in my note- book, and I cannot resist quoting it now. "It is not indeed the fine arts which our country retpiires," he writes, " the useful, the mechanic arts are those which we have occasion for in a young country as yet simple and not far advanced in luxury, although much too far for her age and character. . . . The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take place of, indeed to exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to stud}' mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." John Adams and his contemporaries may not have had American grandfathers with the leisure to earn for them the right to study art, but they did not ignore it. All the time they felt its appeal and responded to the appeal as well as busy men, absorbed in the development of a new country, could. They got themsehes painted whenever 25 386 OUR PHILADELPHIA they happened to combine the leisure to sit and a painter to sit to. When a statesman like Jefferson, who con- fessed himself " an enthusiast on the subject of the arts," was sent abroad, he devoted his scant leisure to securing the best possible sculptor for the statue of Washington, or the best possible models for public buildings at home. Much that we now prize in architectiu'e and design we owe to the men who supposed themselves too occupied with politics and war to encourage art and artists. They were not too busy to provide the beauty without which liberty would have been a poor affair — not too busy to welcome the first Americans who saw to it that all the beauty should not be imported from Europe. " After the first cares for the necessaries of life are over, we shall come to think of the embellishments," Franklin wrote to his Lon- don landlady's daughter. " Already some of our young geniuses begin to lisp attempts at painting, poetry and music. We have a young painter now studying at Rome." In this care for the embellishments of life, of so much more real importance than the necessaries, Philadelphia was the first town to take the lead, though Philadelphians have since gone out of their way to forget it. The old Quaker lady in her beautiful dress, preserving her beauti- ful repose, in her beautiful old and historic rooms, shows the Friends' instinctive love of beauty even if they never intentionally, or deliberately, undertook to create it. For the most beautiful of what we now call Colonial furniture produced in the Colonies, Philadelphia is given the credit U.I.H I IJ>I i » XXUU 1 Vs^^!?^^- ^s^^^^,.*:' :::iia;-!SU/^^|V^^C THE HALL AT CLIVEDEN, THE CHEW HOUSE PIIILADKLPIIIA AND ART 389 by authorities on the .siil)jeet. l^'i'aiikliirs letters could also be (juoted to show I'hihulelphians' keenness to have their portraits done in " conversation " or " family " pieces, or alone in miniatures, whichever were most in vogue. Kven Friends, before Franklin, when they visited England sought out a fashionable portrait-painter like Kneller because he was supposed the best. Artists from England came to Philadelphia for commissions, artists from other Colonies drifted there, — ^Peale, Stuart, Cop- ley. Philadel2)hia, in return, spared its artists to Eng- land, and the Royal Academy was forced to rely upon Philadelphia for its second President — Benjamin West. The artist's studio in Philadelphia had become a place of such distinction by the Revolution that members of the first Congress felt honoured themselves when allowed to honour it with their presence — in the intervals between legislating and dining. The Philadelphian to-day, goaded by the moss-grown jest over Philadelphia slowness and want of enterprise into giving the list of Philadelphia " firsts," or the things Philadelphia has been the first to do in the country, can include among them the picture exhibition which Philadelphia was the first to hold, and the Pennsylvania Academy which was the first Academy of the Fine Arts instituted in America. Philadelphia was the richest American town and long the Capital; the marvel would be if it had not taken the lead in art as in politics. CHAPTER XV: PHILADELPHIA AND ART— CONTINUED I BY the time I grew up years had passed since Philadelphia had ceased to be the Capital, and ' during these years its atmosphere had not been especially congenial to art. But the general conditions had not been more stimulating anywhere in America. The Hudson River School is about all that came of a period which, for that matter, owed its chief good to revolt in countries where more was to be expected of it: in France, to first the Romanticists and then the Impressionists who had revolted against the Academic; in England to the Pre-Raphaelites who, with noisy adver- tisement, broke away from Victorian convention. Art in America had not got to the point of development when there was anything to revolt against or to break away from. What it needed was a revival of the old interest, a reaction from the prevailing indifference to all there was of art in the country. Some say this came in Philadelphia with the Cen- tennial. The Centennial's stirring up, however, would not have done much good had not artists already begun to stir themselves up. How a number of Americans who had been studying in Paris and Munich returned to America full of youth and enthusiasm in the early Eighteen-Seven- 390 THE OLD WATER-WORKS, FAIRAIOUNT PARK rillLADELPIIIA AND ART 393 tics, there to lead a new inoveineiit in American art, has long since passed into history — also the fact that one of tile most remarka})le outcomes of this new movement was the new school of illustration that (juickly made American illustrated hooks and mag-azines famous throughout the ^^()J•1(I. Hut what concerns me as a l*hiladel])hian is that, once more at this critical moment, Philadelphia took the lead. The puhlishers of the illustrated hooks and maga- zines may have heen chiefly in New York, the illustrations were chiefly from Philadelphia, and there is no reason why Philadelphia should not admit it with decent pride. Ahhey and Frost were actually, Howard Pyle and Smed- ley virtually, Philadelphians. Blum and Erennan passed through the Academy Schools. J., when 1 met him, was at the threshold of his career. And the illustrators were hut a younger offshoot of the new Philadelphia group. ^liss Mary Cassatt had already started to work in Paris, where Jules Stewart and Ridgway Knight represented the older Philadelphia school; ]Mrs. Anna I.ea Merritt was already in London; J. JNIcLure Hamilton had finished his studies at Antwerp; Alexander and Birge Harrison had been heard of in Paris where Sargent — who belongs to Philadelphia if to any American town — had carried off his first honom-s. At home Richards was painting his marines ; Poore had begun his study of animals ; Dana, I think, was beginning his water-colours; William Sartain had long been known as an engraver; JNIiss Emily Sartain was an art editor and soon to be the head of an art school; the 394 OUR PHILADELPHIA Moran family, with the second generation, had become ahiiost a Philadelphia institution; from Stephen Ferris J. could learn the technic of etching as from the Claghorn collection he could trace its development through the ages; and of the younger men and women, his con- temporaries, he did not leave me long in ignorance. My own work had led me to the discovery of so many worlds of work in Philadelphia, I could not have believed there was room for another. But there was, and the artists^ world was so industrious, so full of energy, so sufficient unto itself, so absorbed in itself, that, with the first glimpse into it, the difficulty was to believe space and reason could be left for any outside of it. This new experience was as extraordinary a revelation as my initiation into the news- paper world. I had been living, without suspecting it, next door to people who thought of nothing, talked of nothing, occupied themselves with nothing, but art : people for whom a whole army of men and women were busily employed, managing schools, running factories, keeping stores, putting up buildings — delightful people with whom I could not be two minutes without reproaching myself for not having known from the cradle that nothing in life save art ever did count, or ever could. And at this point I can afford to get ]-id of Philadelphia reticence with- out scruple since through this, to me, new world of work I had the benefit of J.'s guidance. It was a moment when it had got to be the fashion for artists in all the studios in the same building to give PHILADELPHIA AND ART 395 receptions on the same day, and I learned that J.'s, so strange to me at first, was only one of an endless number. For part of my new experience was the round of the studios on the appointed day, when I was too oppressed by my ignorance and my desire not to expose it and my uncertainty as to what was the right thing to say in front of a picture, that 1 do not remember much besides, except the miniatures of Miss Van Tromp and the marines of Prosper Senat, and why they should now stand out from the confused jumble of my memories I am sure I cannot see. Then J. took me to the Academy of Fine Arts and it was revealed to me as a place not to pass by but to go inside of: artists from all over the country struggling to get in for its annual exhibition of paintings which already had a reputation as one of the finest given in the country ; artists from all over the world drawn in for its inter- national exhibitions of etchings — Whistler, Seymour Haden, Appian, Lalanne, a catalogue-full of etchers intro- duced for the first time to my uneducated eyes; everybody who could crowding in on Thursday afternoons to sit on the stairs and listen to the music, while I upbraided myself for not having known ages ago what delightful things there were to do, instead of letting my time hang heavy on my hands, in Philadelphia. J. had me invited to more private evenings and re- unions of societies of artists, and I remember — if they do not — meeting many who were at the very heart of the 396 OUR PHILADELPHIA machinery that made tlie wheels of the new movement go round: — Mr. Leslie ^liller, the director of the School of Industrial Art from which promising students were emerging or had emerged; Stephen Parrish and Blanche Dillaye and Gabrielle Clements, whose etchings were with the Whistlers and the Seymour Hadens in the inter- national exhibitions; Alice Barber full of commissions from magazines; jNIargaret I^eslie and Mary Trotter in their fervent apprenticeship; Boyle and Stephens the sculptors; Colin Cooper and Stephens the painters. What a rank outsider I felt in their company! And how grateful I was for my talent as a listener that helped to save me from exposure ! II I saw another side of the revival at my LTncle's Indus- trial Art School in the eagerness of teachers and pupils both to know and to learn and to practise — an eagerness that had, I fear, an eye to ultimate profit. That was the worst feature of the booming of art in the Eighteen- Eighties, Gain was the incentive that drove too many students to the art schools of Pliiladelphia as to those of Paris, or I.,ondon, and set countless amateurs in their own homes to hammering brass and carving wood and stamp- ing leather. Art was to them an investment, a speculation, a gentlemanly — or ladylike — way of making a fortune. An English painter I know told me a few years since that he had put quite six thousand pounds into art, what with studying and travelling for subjects, and he thought he 5v''»' ai t \,. ■if VI •' r^-i ' I at* f •.A i h rf i y c T ^ ;v ' ■;4-i.n;t^ t\M^i jllli:. ;, c,, i»^,jjj. ji,^»^^^ ^-„,^^' JJ^ ', -r;^— / / :2SsL^S12:j|^^ ?r%pf-'-^''-^'^n^ Si-i:::iin I, ■^1 '^^-Tic^' X^ till n^ ■■; : t^*«l ^i1 ^'5'^'. -■p^(>^f iA riiK srviinvA^', state housf; PHILADELPHIA AND ART 399 had a right to look for a decent return on his money. That expresses the attitude of a vast number of Philadelphians in their new acti\'e enthusiasm. However trumpery the amount of labour they invested, they counted on it to bring them in a big dividend in dollars and cents. I am afraid my Uncle, without meaning to, encouraged this spirit, when he started not only the Industrial Art School, but the Decorative Art Club in Pine Street. He W'as an optimist and saw only the beautiful side of anything he was interested in. To please him I was made the Treas- urer of the Club. The Committee sympathised with my Uncle and worked for the ultimate good he thought the Club was to accomplish in Philadelphia. Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. INIifflin, Mrs, Pepper, Miss Julia Biddle with whom I served, agreed with him that women who had some training in art would understand better the meaning of art and the pleasure of the stimulus this understanding could give. ]My Uncle, however, always ready to do anybody a good turn, went further and was anxious that provision should also be made to sell the work done in the Club, which in this way would be open to many who could not otherwise afford it. I fancy that this provision, if not the success of the Club, was one of its chief attractions. The amateur is apt to believe she can romp in gaily and snatch what- ever prizes are going by playing with the art which is the life's work, mastered by toil and travail, of the artist. I criticise now, but in my new ardour I saw nothing to criticise. On the contrary, I saw perfection : artists and 400 OT R PHILADELPHIA students encouraged, occupations and interests lavished upon amateurs whose lives had been as empty as mine; and I worked myself up into a fine enthusiasm of belief in art as a new force, or one that if it had always existed had been waiting for its prophet, — just as electricity had waited for Franklin to capture and apply it to human needs. I went so far in my exaltation as to write an in- spired — or so it seemed to me — article on Art as the New Religion, proving that the old religions having perished and the old gods fallen, art had re-arisen in its splendour and glory to provide a new gospel, a new god, to take their place, and I tilled my essay with ingenious argu- ments, and liberal quotations from William Morris and Ruskin, and rhetorical flights of prophecy. I had not given the last flnishing and convincing touches to my ex- position of the new gospel when, with my marriage, came other work more urgent, and I was spared the humiliation of seeing my Palace of Art collapse, like the house built on sand, while I still believed in it. In the years that followed I got to know most of the galleries and exhibi- tions of Europe ; despite my scruples I made a profession of writing about art ; and the education tliis meant taught me, among other things, the simple truth that art is art, and not religion. But I cannot laugh at the old folly of my ignorance. The enthusiasm, the mood, out of which the article grew, was better, healthier, than the apathy that had saved me from being ridiculous because it risked nothing. PHILADELPHIA AND ART 401 III These years away from home were spent largely in the company of artists and were filled with the talk of art; what had been marvels to me in Philadelphia became the commonplaces of every day. Put I was all the time in Italy, or France, or England, and could not realize the extent to which, for Philadelphians who had not wandered, artists and art were also becoming more and more a part of everyday life. I did not see Philadelphia in the changing, not until it had changed, and possibly I feel the change more than those who lived through it. It is not so much in the things done, in actual accomplish- ment, that I am conscious of it, as in the new concern for art, the new attentions heaped upon it, the new deference to it. Art is in the air — ■'' on the town," a subject of polite conversation, a topic for the drawing-room. AVhen I lirst came out, art had never supplied small talk in society, never filled up a gap at a dull dinner or reception. We should have been disgracefully behind the times if we could not chatter about Christine Xilsson and Campanini and the last opera, or Irving and Ellen Terry and their interpretation of Shakespeare; if we had not kept up with TroUope and George Eliot, and read the latest Howells and Henry James, and raved over the Rubaiyat. But we might have had the brand-newest biographical dictionary of artists at our fingers' ends— as we had not — and there would have been no occasion to 26 402 OUR PHILADELPHIA use our information. Nobody sparkled by sprinkling his talk with the names of artists and sculptors, nobody asked what was in the last Academy or who had won the gold medal in Paris, nobody discussed the psychology or the meaning of the picture of the year. I remember think- ing I was doing something rather pretentious and pedantic when I began to read Ruskin. I remember how a friend who was a tireless student of Kiigler and Crowe and Cavalcaselle, as a preparation to the journey to Europe that might never come off, was looked upon as a sort of prodigy — a Philadelphia phenomenon. But to-day I am sure there is not the name of an artist, from Cimabue and Giotto to Matisse and Picasso, that does not go easily round the table at any Philadelphia dinner; not a writer on art, from Lionardo to Nordau, who cannot fill up awkward pauses at an afternoon crush; not one of the learned women of Philadelphia who could not tell you where every masterpiece in the world hangs and just what her emotions before it should be, who could not play the game of attributions as gracefully as the game of bridge, who could not dispose of the most abstruse points in art as serenely as she settles the simplest squabble in the nursery. The Academy is no longer abandoned in the wilderness of Broad and Cherry Streets; its receptions and private views are social functions, its exhibitions are events of importance, the best given in Philadelphia and through- out the land, its collections are the pride of the wealthy UPPER ROOM, STENTON PHILADELPHIA AND ART 405 Philadelpliians wlio contribute to them, its schools are stifled with scholarships. The other Art Schools have multiplied, not faster, however, than the students whose Iei»'ions account for, if they do not warrant, the existence not of the Academy Schools alone, but of the School of Industrial Art, the Drexel Institute, the Woman's School of Design, the L^ncle's old little experiment enlarged into a large Public Industrial Art School where, I am told, the Founder is comfortably forgotten — of more institutes, schools, classes than I probably have heard of. The Art Galleries have nuiltiplied: there is some reason for ^lemorial Hall now that the Wilstach Collection is housed there, and the Yellow Buskin, one of the finest Whistlers, hangs on its walls, now that the collections of decorative art are being added to by JNIrs. John Harrison and other Philadelphians who are ambitious for their town and its supremacy in all things. Xor does this Philadel- j^hia ambition soar to loftier heights than in the project for the new Parkway from the City Hall with a new Art Gallery — the centre of a sort of LTniversity of Art if I can rely upon the plans — to crown the Park end of this splendid (partially still on paper) avenue, as the Arc de Triomphe crowns the western end of the Avenue of the Champs-Elysees. The collectors multiply, their aims, purse, field of re- search, all expanding; their shyness on the subject sur- mounted; Old Masters for whom Europe now weeps mak- 406 OUR PHILADELPHIA ing their triumphant entry into Philadelphia; the highest price, that test of the modern patron, paid for a Rem- brandt in Philadelphia; the collections of Mr. Johnson and Mr. AVidener and Mr. Elkins and Mr. Thomas in Philadelphia as well known by the authorities as the Borghesi collection in Rome or the Duke of Westminster's in London. The social life of art grows and can afford the large luxurious Club in South Broad Street, artists and their friends amply supporting it. And the old Sketch Club, once glad of the shelter of a room or so, has blossomed forth in a house of its own in the flourishing " Little Street of Clubs," with the Woman's Plastic Club close by. The artists only, as far as I can see, have not multi- plied and grown in proportion. But the artist somehow appears to be the last consideration of those who think they are encouraging art. Still there are new names for my old list: Henry Thouron, Violet Oakley, Maxfield Par- rish, now ranked with the decorative painters — and, I might just point out in passing, it is to Philadelphia that Boston, Harrisburg, and at times New York must send for their decorators, whose work I have not seen in place to express an opinion on it one way or the other. Cecilia Beaux and Adolphe Borie now figure with the portrait painters; Waugh and Fromuth with the marine painters, who include also Stokes, the chronicler of Arctic splen- dors of sea and sky, and Edward Stratton Holloway, the making of beautiful books claiming his interest no less PHILADELPHIA AND ART 407 than the sea; Glackens, Thornton Oakley, Elizabeth Ship- pen Green, Jessie Wilcox Smith with the illustrators; jNIcCarter, Redfield with the group gathered about the Academy; (xrafly with the sculptors; Clifford Addams, Daniel (iarber with the winners of scholarships. Archi- tects have not lagged behind in the race — after the Furness period, a Cope and Stewardson period, a Wilson Eyre period, to-day a Zantzinger, Borie, IVIedary, Day, Page, Trumbauer, and a dozen more periods each progressing in the right direction; with young men from the Beaux- Arts and young men from the University School, eager to tackle the ever-increasing architectural commissions in a town growing and re-fashioning itself faster than any mushroom upstart of the West, to inaugurate a period of their own. IV I am not a fighter by nature, I set a higher value on peace as I grow older, and I look to ending my days in Philadelphia. Therefore I chronicle the change; I do not criticise it. But a few comments I may permit myself and yet hope that Philadelphia will not bear me in return the malice I could so ill endin*e. I think the gain to Philadel- phia from this new interest has, in many ways, been great. If art is the one thing that lives through the ages — art whether expressed in words, or paint, or bricks and mortar, or the rh}i:hm of sound, — it follows that the pleasure it gives — when genuine — is the most enduring. This is a 408 OUR PHILADELPHIA distinct, if perhaps at the moment negative, gain. A more visible gain I think comes from the new desire, the new determination to care foi- the right thing: a fashion due perhaps to the insatiable American craving for " culture," and at times guilty of unintelligent excesses, but pleasanter in results than the old crazes that filled Philadelphia draw- ing-rooms with spinning wheels and cat's tails and ^Morris mediaevalism, — if they brought Art Nouveau in their train, thank fortune it has left no traces of its passing; a fashion more dignified in results than the old standards that filled Philadelphia streets with flights of originality, and green stone monsters, and the deplorable Philadel- phia brand of Gothic and Renaissance, Romanesque and Venetian, Tudor and everything except the architecture that belongs by right and tradition in Penn's beautiful town. But interest in art does not create art, and when Philadelphia believes in this interest as a creator, Phila- delphia falls into a mistake that it has not even the merit of having originated. I have watched for many years the attempts to make art grow, to force it like a hot-house plant. The same thing is going on everywhere. In Eng- land, South Kensington for more than half a century has had its schools in all parts of the kingdom, the County Council has added to them, the City Corporation and the City Guilds have followed suit, artists open private classes, exhibitions have increased in number until they are a drug on the market, art critics flourish, the papers devote WYCK The doorway from within PHILADELPHIA AND ART 411 columns to their platitudes. And what has England to show as the outcome of all this care? Go look at the deco- rations in the Royal Exchange and the pictures in the Royal Academy, examine the official records and learn how great is the yearly output of art teachers in excess of schools for them to teach in, and you will have a good idea of the return made on the money and time and red tape lavished upon the teaching of art. It is no better in Paris. Schools and students were never so many, for- eigners arrive in such numbers that they are pushing the Frenchman out of his own Latin Quarter, American stu- dents swagger, play the prince on scholarships, are pre- sented with clubs and homes where they can give after- noon teas and keep on living in a little America of their own. And what comes of it? Were the two Salons, with the Salon des Independants and the Salon d'Automne thrown in, ever before such a weariness to the flesh? — was mediocrity ever before such an invitation to the poseur and the crank to pass ofl* manufactured eccentricity as genius ? It would not be reasonable to expect more of Phila- delphia than of London and Paris. I cannot see that finer artists have been bred there on the luxury of scholarships and schools than on their own efl'orts when they toiled all day to be able to study at night, when success was theirs only after a hard fight. The Old JNIasters got their train- ing as apprentices, not as pampered youths luxuriating in fine schools and exhibitions and incomes and every 412 OUR PHILADELPHIA luxury; they were patronized and more splendidly than any artists to-day, but not until they had shown reason for it, not until it was an honour to patronize them. The new system is more comfortable, I admit, but great work does not spring from comfort. Philadelphia is wise to set up a hiffh standard, but not wise when it makes the wav too easy. For art is a stern master. It cares not if the wxak fall by the roadside, so long as the strong, unhampered, succeed in getting into their own. The best thing that has been done at the Academy for many a day is the re- ducing of the scholarships from a two, or three, years' interval free of responsibility, to a summer's holiday among the masterpieces of Europe, which, I am told, is all they are now. CHAPTER XVI: PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE I IF interest in the art of eating called for justification, I could show that I come by mine legitimately. My family took care of that when the sensible ancestor who made me an American settled in Accomac, where most things worth eating were to be had for the fishing or the shooting or the digging, so that Accomac feasted while the rest of Virginia still starved, and when my Grandfather, in his day, moved to Philadelphia which is as well provided as Accomac and more conscientious in cultivating its possibilities. It would be sheer disloyalty to the family inheritance if I did not like to eat well, just as it would be rank hypocrisy to see in my loyalty a virtue. Accomac's reputation for good eating has barely got beyond the local history book, Accomac, I find, being a place you must have belonged to at one time or another, to know anything about. But Philadelphia made a repu- tation for its high living as soon as the Philadelphian emerged from his original cave, or sooner — read Watson and every other authority and you will find that before he was out of it, even the family cat occupied itself in hunting delicacies for the family feast. And right off the Philadelphian understood the truth the scientist has been centuries in groping after: that if people's 413 414 OUR PHILADELPHIA food is to do them good, they must take pleasm'e in it. The material was his the minute he landed on the spot, not the least recommendations of which were its fish and game and its convenience as a port where all the country did not produce could be brought from countries that did — a spot that, half-way between the North and the South, assured to Philadelphia one of the best-stocked markets in the world, ever the wonder and admiration of every visitor to the town. Pleasure in the material, if his- tory can be trusted, dates as far back. A wise man once suggested the agreeable journeys that could be planned on a gastronomical map of France — from the Tripe of Caen to the Bouillabaisse of Marseilles, from the Chateau Mar- gaux of Bordeaux to the Champagne of Rheims, from the Ducks of Rouen to the Truffles of Perigord, and so, from one end to the other of that Land of Plenty. I would suggest that an agreeable record of Philadelphia might be based upon the dinners it has eaten, from the historic dinner foraged for by the cat over a couple of centuries ago, to the banquet of yesterday in Spruce Street or Walnut, at the Bellevue or the Ritz. I should like some day to write this history myself, when I have more space and time at my disposal. I have always been blessed with a healthy appetite, a decent sense of discrimination in satisfying it, and also a deep interest in the Philosophy of Food ever since I began to collect cookery books. The more profoundly I go into the subject, the readier I am to believe with Brillat-Savarin ■vNX A .•% ;> Xi i'>4fes H"^^.'. THE PHILADELPHIA DISPENSARY FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE 417 that what a man is depends a good deal on what he eats. This is why I think tliat if the Phihidelphian is to be understood, the study of liini nmst not stop with his politics and his literature and his art, but must include his marketing and his bill of fare. He has had the wit never to doubt the importance of both, and the pride never to make light of his genius for living well. The early Friends in Philadelphia knew better than to pull a long face, burrowing for the snares of the flesh and the devil in every necessity of life, like the unfortunate Puritans up in Xew England. It was not to lead a hermit's existence William Penn invited them to settle on the banks of the Delaware, and he and they realized that pioneer's work could not be done on hermit's fare. They entertained no fanatical disdain for the pleasures of the table, no ascetic abhorrence to good food, daintily prepared. Brawn and chocolate and venison were Penn's tender offering as lover to Hannah Callowhill, olives and wine his loving gift as friend to Isaac Norris. For equally " acceptable presents " that admirable citizen had to thank many besides Penn. James Logan knew that the best way to manage your official is to dine him, and in his day, and after it, straight on, no public commissioner, and indeed no private traveller, could visit Philadelphia and not be fed with its banquets and comforted with its JVIadeira and Punch, while few could refrain from saying so with an eloquence and gratitude that did them honour. Benjamin Franklin, keeping up the tradition, was known 27 418 OUR PHILADELPHIA to feast more excellently than a philosopher ought, and his philosophy of food is explained by his admission in a letter that he would rather discover a recipe for making Parmesan cheese in an Italian town than any ancient in- scription. The American Philosophical Society could not conduct its investigations without the aid of dinners and breakfasts, nor could any other Philadelphia Society or Club study, or read, or hunt, or fish, or legislate, or pursue its appointed ends, without fine cooking and hard drinking — though I hope they were not the inspiration of Thomas Jefferson's severe criticism of his fellow Americans who, he said, were unable to terminate the most sociable meals without transforming themselves into brutes. It was impossible for young ladies and grave elders to keep descriptions of public banquets and family feasts and friendly tea-drinkings out of their letters and diaries: one reason of the fascination their letters and diaries have for Philadelphians who read them to-day. And alto- gether, by the Revolution, to judge from John Adams' account of his " sinful feasts " in Philadelphia, and General Greene's descri23tion of the luxury of Boston as " an infant babe " to the luxury of Philadelphia, and the rest of America's opinion of Philadelphia as a place of " crucifying expenses," and many more signs of the times, the dinners of Philadelphia had become so in- separable from any meeting, function, or business, that I am tempted to question whether, had they not been eaten, the Declaration of Independence could have been signed. MORRIS HOUSE, GERMANTOWN PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE 421 But it was signed and who can say, in face of the fact, that Philadelphia was any the worse for its feasting? And what if it proved a dead weight to John Adams, did Bos- ton, did anj' other town do more in the cause of patriotism and independence? One inevitable feature of the " sinful feasts " was the JNIadeira John Adams drank at a great rate, but suffered no inconvenience from. I could not dispense with it in these old records, such a sober place does it hold in my own memories of Philadelphia. The decanter of Madeira on my Grandfather's dinner table marked the state occa- sion, and I would not have recognized Philadelphia on my return had the same decanter not been produced in wel- come. It was an assurance that Philadelphia was still Philadelphia, though sky-scrapers might break the once pleasant monotony of low, red brick houses and motor horns resound through the once peaceful streets. From the beginning Madeira was one of the things no good Philadelphia household could be without — just the sound, dignified, old-fashioned wine the Philadelphian would be expected to patronize, respectable and upright as himself. Orders for it lighten those interminably long letters in the Penn-Logan correspondence, so long that all the time I was reading them, I kept wondering which of the three I ought to pity the most : Penn for what he had to endure from his people ; Logan for having to keep him posted in his intolerable wrongs; or myself for wading through all they both had to say on the subject. As time 422 OUR PHILADELPHIA went on, I do not believe there was an official function at which Madeira did not figure. There I always find it — the wine of ceremony, the sacrificial wine, without which no compact could be sealed, no event solemnized, no pleasure enjoyed. It seems to punctuate every step in the career of Philadelphians and of Philadelphia, and I thought nothing could be more characteristic, when I read the Autohiograjjliy of Franklin, than that it should have been over the Philadelphia ^ladeira one Governor of Pennsyl- vania planned a future for him, and another Governor of Pennsylvania later on discoursed provincial affairs with him, " most profuse of his solicitations and promises " under its pleasant influence. Throughout the old annals I am conscious of that decanter of Madeira always at hand, the Philadelphian " as free of it as an Apple Tree of its Fruit on a Windy Day in the month of July," one old visitor to the town records with a pretty fancy for which, as like as not, it was responsible. And throughout the more modern records, there it is again. Even in the old-fashioned Philadelphia boarding- house less than a century ago, the men after dinner sat over their Madeira. New generations of visitors, like the old, drank it and approved, the Madeira that sup- ported John Adams at Philadelphia's sinful feasts help- ing to steer Thackeray and an endless succession of strangers at the gate through Philadelphia's coiu'se of suppers and dinners. It amuses me to recall, as an in- stance of all it represented to Philadelpliia, that for a PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE 423 couple ot* years at the Convent, though a healthier child than I never lived, I ^^'as made by the orders of my Father, obeyed by no means imwillingly on my part, to drink a glass of JNIadeira, with a biscuit, every morning at eleven. And so deep-rooted was its use in the best traditions of Philadelpliia respectability, that the irreproachable Phila- delphia ladies who wrote cookery books never omitted the glass of ^ladeira from the Terrapin, and went so far as to quote Scripture and to recommend a little of it for the stomach's sake. II One of these Philadelphia ladies wrote the most fa- mous cookery book to this day published in America; a fact which pleases me, partly because, with Edward Fitz- gerald, I cannot help liking a cookerj^ book, and still more because it flatters my pride as a Philadelphian that so famous a book should come from Philadelphia. It seems superfluous to add that I mean Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery. What else could I mean? There had been cookery books in America before Miss Leslie's. America, with Philadelphia to set the standard, could not get on very far without them. If in the hurry and flurry of Colonial life, the American did not have the leisure to write them, he borrowed them, the speediest way to manufactin-e any kind of literature. There is an American edition of Mrs. Glasse, with Mrs. Glasse left out — the American pirate was nothing if not thorough. 424 OUR PHILADELPHIA There is an American edition of Richard Briggs who was not deprived of the credit of his book, though robbed of his title. There are American editions I have no doubt of many besides which I have only to haunt the old book- stalls and second-hand book stores of Philadelphia assidu- ously enough to find. But of American cookery books, either borrowed or original, before the time of ^liss Leslie, I own but the stolen Mrs. Glasse and an insignificant little manual issued in New York in 1813, an American adapta- tion probably of an English model to which I have not yet succeeded in tracing it. Nor do I know of any I do not own, and I know as much of American cookery books as any of the authori- ties, and I do not mind saying so, as I can without the shadow of conceit. Vicaire includes only two or three in his Bihliographie; Hazlitt, to save trouble, confined him- self to English books; Dr. Oxford's interest is frankly in the publications of his own country, though, in his first bibliography, he mentions a few foreign volumes, and in his second he refers to one American piracy, and these are the three chief bibliographers of the Kitchen in Europe. American authorities do not exist, when I except myself. It is true that G. H. Ellwanger made a list of cookery books, but he threw them together anyhow, with no attempt at classification, and his list scarcely merits the name of bibliography. The history of the American cookery book is a virgin field, and as such I present it to the innumerable American students who are turned out from the Univer- THE STATE HOUSE COLONNADE PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE 427 sities, year after year, for the research work that is fre- quently of as little use to themselves as to anybody else. But many as may be the discoveries in the future, Miss Leslie cannot be dethroned nor deprived of her distinction as the JNIrs. Glasse of America. Other writers, if there were any, were allowed to disappear; should they be dragged out of their obscurity now, it would be as biblio- graphical curiosities, bibliographical specimens. Miss Leslie was never forgotten, she survives to-day, her name honoiu'cd, her book cherished. She leapt into fame on its publication, and with such ardour was the First Edition bought up, with such ardour either reverently preserved or diligently consulted that I, the proud possessor of Mrs. Glasse in her First Edition " pot folio," of Apicius Coelius, Gervase Markham, Scappi, Grimod de la Reyniere, and no end of others in their first Editions, cannot as yet boast a First Edition of ^liss Leslie. I have tried, my friends have tried; the most important book-sellers in the country have tried; and in vain, until I begin to think I might as well hope for the Elzevir Patissier Fra7ifais as the 1837 Complete Cookery. It may be hidden on some miexplored Philadelphia book shelf, for it was as indispensable in the Philadelphia household as the decanter of INIadeira. I ask myself if its appreciation in the kitchen, for which it was written, is the reason why I have no recollection of it in the Eleventh and Spruce Street house, well as I remember Lippincotfs on the back parlour table, nor in my Father's library, well as I recall his editions of Scott and Dickens, 428 OUR PHILADELPHIA Voltaire and Rousseau, a combination expressive of a liberal taste in literature. But never anywhere have I seen that elusive First Edition, never anywhere succeeded in obtaining an earlier edition than the Fifty-Eighth. The date is 1858 — ^think of it! fifty-eight editions in twenty-one years! Can our " Best Sellers " surpass that as a record? Or can any American writer on cookery after Miss Leslie, from Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale and Jenny June to JMarion Harland and the Philadelphia Mrs. Rorer, rank with her as a rival to jNIrs. Glasse, as the author of a cookery book that has become the rare prize of the collector? Ill It is so proud an eminence for a quiet Philadelphia maiden lady in the Eighteen-Thirties and Forties to have reached that I cannot but wish I knew more of Miss Leslie personally. From her contemporaries I have learned nothing save that she went to tea parties like any ordinary Philadeljjhian, that she was interested in the legends and traditions of her town, which wasn't like any ordinary Philadelphian, and that she condescended to journalism, editing The Casket. There is a portrait of her at the Academy, Philadelphia decorum so stamped upon her face and dress that it makes me more curious than ever to know why she was not the mother of children instead of a waiter of books. These books explain that she had a literary conscience. In her preface to her Domestic Economy, which is not an unworthy companion to her PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE 429 Complete Coohery, slie reveals an unfeiiiinine respect for style. " 111 this as in her Cookery Book," she writes, a dignity expressed in her use of the third person, " she has not scrupled when necessary, to sacrifice the sound to the sense; repeating the same words when no others could be found to express the purport so clearly, and being always more anxious to convey the meaning in such terms as could not be mistaken than to risk obscuring it by attempts at refined phraseology or well-rounded periods." Now and then the temptation was too strong and she fell into alliteration, writing of " ponderous puddings and curdled custards." But this is exceptional. As a rule, in her dry, business-like sentences, it would be impossible to suspect her of philandering with sound, or concerning herself with the pleasure of her readers. Her subject is one, happily, that can survive the sacri- fice. The book is a monument to Philadelphia cookery. She was not so emancipated as to neglect all other kitchens. Recipes for Soup a la Julienne and INIulligatawny, for Bath Buns and Gooseberry Fools, for Pilaus and Curries, are concessions to foreign conventions. Recipes for Oys- ters and Shad, for Gumbo and Buckwheat Cakes, for ]Mint Juleps and Sweet Potatoes, for Pumpkins and INIush, show her deference to ideals cultivated by Americans from one State or another. But concessions and deferencedo not prevent her book — her two books — ^from being un- mistakably Philadelphian: — an undefinable something in the quality and quantity, a definable something in the 430 OUR PHILADELPHIA dishes and ingredients. I know that in my exile, thousands of miles from home, when I open her Complete Cookery, certain passages transport me straight back to Philadel- phia, to my childhood and my youth, to the second-story back-building dining-room and the kitchen with the lilacs at the back-yard door. I read of Dried Beef, chipped or frizzled in butter and eggs, and, as of old in the Eleventh and Spruce Street house, a delicious fragrance, characteris- tic of Philadelphia as the sickly smell of the ailanthus, fills my nostrils and my appetite is keen again for the eight o'clock tea, long since given way to the eight o'clock dinner. I turn the pages and come to Reed Birds, roasted or baked, and at once I feel the cool of the radiant fall evening, and I am at Belmont or Strawberry Mansion after the long walk through the park, one of the gay party for whom the cloth is laid. Or the mere mention of Chicken Salad sets back the clock of the years and drops me into the chattering midst of the Philadelphia five o'clock reception, in time for the spread that, for senti- ment's sake, is dear to me in memory, but that, for diges- tion's sake, I hope never to see revived. Or a thrill is in the dressing for the salad alone, in the mere dash of mus- tard that Philadelphia has the independence to give to its Mayonnaise. I am conservative in matters of art. I would not often recommend a deviation from French precedent which is the most reliable and the finest. But Philadelphia may be trusted to deviate, when it permits itself the liberty, with discretion and distinction. .M % ■^^SSg^r^s*^- f^'lr-'^ THE SMITH MEMORIAL, WEST FAIRMOUNT PARK CHAPTER XVII: PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE— CONTINUED SO mucli of Philadelphia is in ^Nliss Leslie that her silence on one or two matters essentially Phila- delphian is the greater disappointment. I have said that when I was young it was the busi- ness of the man of the house to market and to make the Mayonnaise for the dinner's salad, and I have searched for the reason in vain. His appropriation of the market- ing seems to be comparatively modern. If the chronicles are to be trusted, it was the woman's business as late as Mrs. Washington's day. But by mine, the man's going to market had settled solidly into one of those Philadelphia customs taken for granted by Philadelphians simply be- cause they were Philadelphia customs. Never in print have I seen any reference to this division of family labour except in the Philadelphia stories of Thomas A. Janvier who, as a Philadelphian, knew that it became well brought up Philadelphia men to attend to the marketing and that duties becoming to them were above explanation. Janvier knew also that only in Philadelphia, probably, could it occur to the " master of a feast " to dress the salad, and that this was the reason " why a better salad is served at certain dinner tables in Philadelphia than at any other 28 433 434 OUR PHILADELPHIA dinner tables in the whole world." INIiss Leslie is not without honour in her own town and was there reverenced by no one as truly as by Janvier, but his reverence for the Art of Cookery was more profound and he shared the belief of the initiated that in it man surpasses as hitherto, I regret to say, he has surpassed in all the arts. Janvier himself was the last " master of the feast " it was my good fortune to watch preparing the ^Mayonnaise. It was a solemn rite in his hands, and the result not un- worthy — his salads were delicious, perfect, original, their originality, however, never jDushed to open defiance of the Philadelphia precedents he respected. One of my pleasantest memories of him is of his salad-making at his own dinner table in his London rooms, one or two friends informally gathered about him, and the summer evening so warm that he appeared all in white — a splendid presence, for he was an unusually handsome man, of the rich, flamboyant type that has gone out of fashion almost everywhere except in the South of France. The white added, somehow, to the effect of ceremony, and he lingered over every stage of the preparation and the mixing, — the Philadelphia touch of mustard not omitted, — with due s-ravitv and care. How different the salad created with this ceremony from the usual makeshift mixed nobody knows how or where! That the Philadelphia man should have accepted this responsibility, explains better than I could how high is the Philadelphia standard. I could not understand Miss c. ^, \ ■: Mh ^fe:^ %