New Year’s Day. God prosper the New Year to those I love. Church with Ellie and Johnny; an effective sermon by Higby. Thereafter we took a cold “constitutional” up the Fifth Avenue to Forty-second Street, a rather vigorous winter day, still and sharp. Tonight is overcast, with promise of snow tomorrow.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 2
With Ellie to the Artists’ “Reception” in Dodworth’s Rooms; a vast crowd. Discovered Mrs. D. C. Murray and Mrs. John Weeks, General Dix, Wenzler, Stone, Rossiter, Mrs. Field (commonly distinguished as “the murderess,” being mixed up a little with the Due de Praslin affair),1 the Rev. Mr. Frothingham, Lewis Rutherfurd, and others. Many bad pictures on the walls, and some few good ones. Eastman Johnson and Charles Dix are making progress. Wenzler has a lovely portrait of one of Dr. Potts’s daughters. Stone’s portrait of my two little men was there, and people praised it—to me.
Monday the second was kept for New Year’s Day. It was a fine specimen of crisp frosty weather, with a serene sky and a cutting wind from the northwest. I set forth at eleven o’clock in my own particular hack, en grand seigneur, and effected more than twenty calls, beginning with Mrs. Samuel Whitlock in 37th Street. My lowest south latitude was Dr. Berrian’s and the Lydigs’. There were no incidents. Bishop Potter’s drawing-room was perhaps the dullest place I visited. The Bishop is always kindly and cordial, but nature has given him no organ for the secretion of the small talk appropriate to a five minutes’ call. He feels the deficiency and is nervous and uncomfortable. Very nice at Mrs. George F. Jones’s, and at Mrs. William Schermerhorn’s. At Mrs. Peter A. Schermerhorn’s, in University Place, I discovered the mamma and Miss Ellen, both very gracious. At Mrs. William Astor’s, Miss Ward (the granddaughter of the house; Sam Ward’s daughter by his first wife) talked of her friend Miss Annie Leavenworth. . . . Mrs. Edgar was charming in her little bit of a house, the “Petit Trianon.” Poor Mrs. Douglas Cruger seems growing old, is less vivacious and less garrulous. At Mrs. Serena Fearing’s I was honored with a revelation of the baby that was produced last summer.
Pleasant visit to Mrs. Christine Griffin, nee Kean—where little Miss Mary was looking her loveliest. That little creature will make havoc in society a year or two hence, when she "comes out.” She is very beautiful and seems full of life and intelligence. Mrs. Isaac Wright in Waverley Place, with her brood of four noble children rampaging about her, was good to see. . . .
Home at six, tired after a pleasant day’s work. We had a comfortable session at dinner with Dr. Peters and Mrs. Georgey Peters, Miss Annie Leavenworth, Miss Josephine Strong, Walter Cutting, Richard Hunt, Murray Hoffman, George C. Anthon, Jem Ruggles, and Jack Ehninger. Dinner was successful.
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* Henry M. Field, brother of Cyrus W. and David Dudley Field, had married (May, I85i) Laure Desportes, who was innocently involved in the famous Choiseul-Praslin murder case in France. Rachel Field has told the story in All This and Heaven Too (1938).
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 2-3
Walked uptown with George Anthon, who entertained me with the biography of his runaway cousin. Miss "Unadilla” Elmendorf, and incidents of the elopement, which is chronicled in newspaper paragraphs as a “marriage in high life.” The girl is illegitimate, and her Lochinvar a noted swindler of tailors and hotelkeepers and a parasite of opera troupes, but full of talent and impudence. He made his way into the barbarous State of Virginia to report John Brown's execution for Frank Leslie's or some other newspaper when almost—or quite—every other reporter was repulsed and excluded by the natives.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 3
To Columbia College meeting, Lafayette Place, at two in the afternoon. . . . I moved that Lieber’s opening lecture of his present Law School course be printed, which was carried.
Thereafter to Tenth Street Studio Building to call on Leutze; I spent an hour with him pleasantly. I saw his "Battle of Princeton” picture, and another, a Venetian scene—masqueraders in a gondola, the Bridge of Sighs overhead, the corpse of a state criminal just brought out into another boat, upon which the riotous festive party comes suddenly and unawares. This latter picture is unfinished, but will be among the best things Leutze has done.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 3
2 The Rev. George B. Cheever, author of God Against Slavery (1857); George William Curtis, now attacking slavery in his speeches and writings.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 3-4
News today of a fearful tragedy at Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of the wholesale murders commonly known in newspaper literature as accident or catastrophe. A huge factory, long notoriously insecure and ill-built, requiring to be patched and bandaged up with iron plates and braces to stand the introduction of its machinery, suddenly collapsed into a heap of ruins yesterday afternoon without the smallest provocation. Some five or six hundred operatives went down with it— young girls and women mostly. An hour or two later, while people were working frantically to dig out some two hundred still under the ruins, many of them alive and calling for help, some quite unhurt, fire caught in the great pile of debris, and these prisoners were roasted. It is too atrocious and horrible to think of.
Of course, nobody will be hanged. Somebody has murdered about two hundred people, many of them with hideous torture, in order to save money, but society has no avenging gibbet for the respectable millionaire and homicide. Of course not. He did not want to or mean to do this massacre; on the whole, he would have preferred to let these people live. His intent was not homicidal. He merely thought a great deal about making a large profit and very little about the security of human life. He did not compel these poor girls and children to enter his accursed mantrap. They could judge and decide for themselves whether they would be employed there. It was a matter of contract between capital and labor; they were to receive cash payment for their services. No doubt the legal representatives of those who have perished will be duly paid the fractional part of their week’s wages up to the date when they became incapacitated by crushing or combustion, as the case may be, from rendering further service. Very probably the wealthy and liberal proprietor will add (in deserving cases) a gratuity to defray funeral charges. It becomes us to prate about the horrors of slavery! What Southern capitalist trifles with the lives of his operatives as do our philanthropes of the North?
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 4
Mr. Ruggles is quite ill at Lockport (Governor Hunt’s), so ill that Mrs. Ruggles and Miss Bostwick go thither tomorrow. He went to Buffalo, last Thursday was a week, to attend to some railroad receivership and caught severe cold on the journey. Our cars in wintertime, with their sloppy floors, red-hot stoves, and currents of chill air from opened doors and windows, are perilous traps for colds and inflammations. He took refuge at Governor Hunt’s after two or three days of indisposition, which he was obliged to neglect, and was threatened with congestion of the lungs. He is reported by telegraph “mending slowly’* but has been heavily dosed with anodynes and other vigorous medicaments that have weakened and depressed him. We have but just learned how seriously ill he has been, and Elbe feels quite uneasy, but I hope without sufficient cause.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 4-5
Mr. Ruggles reported by telegraph “improving,” but not strong enough to travel.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 5
Anxious about Mr. Ruggles at Lockport. A telegram from Jem, received just before dinnertime, announced that “the physicians thought” him improving slowly, which was satisfactory enough, but for the inference, strained perhaps, that Jem did not think so.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 5
Wolcott Gibbs called by appointment tonight. We microscopized energetically, and the performances terminated with a very modest supper of chicken and hock. Gavitt was to have joined us but made default. We studied the Ross 1/12 objective and examined the circulation in the tail of a tadpole and a kitty fish, which I brought uptown with me from the little aquarium shop in Fulton street this afternoon. Results were satisfactory. My binocular is unquestionably an acquisition. It shews certain structures better than the Ross instrument.
The Rev. Mr. Bellows, who called at breakfast time this morning to ask after Mr. Ruggles, is my authority for the following diplomatic
Scene at the Tuileries. A State dinner. The Honorable Mr. Mason, F.F.V., (our Minister to France), and Don Somebody, the Spanish Ambassador, glowering at each other across the table, during intervals of deglutition, each timidly desiring to establish himself in rapport with the other.
Spain. Breaking the ice: “Parlez-vous français, M’sieu Masón?”
America. With effort: "Ung Poo.” (A pause) "Permit me, Sir, to ask whether you speak the English language?
Spain: "Small.” (Conversation closes.)
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 5-6
