From any more princes of the blood, libera nos Domine. May
this nice-looking, modest boy find his way home, or at least to our boundaries,
with all convenient speed.
I’ve been in hard work about His Royal Highness for
forty-eight hours. I’m weary of His Royal Highness. . . . The Ball is over,
thank Heaven, but the Trinity Church reception and services tomorrow are still
to be. What they will be, time must tell. I’ve made the most minute, definite
arrangements with Mr. Kennedy and Sergeant Cropsey and the sextons and their
aids, but I fear the crowd will out-general me. And I cannot be at the church
till the services are actually commencing, for the destinies compel me to
accompany or escort the royal party, our guests; and Hyslop and Dunscomb, who
will be at the church from nine (when the doors open) till the Prince arrives,
are timid and imbecile. I’d give a great deal if tomorrow’s august transaction
were done and well done.
Mr. Ruggles took Ellie and me, also Mrs. Hunt, to the Astor
Library yesterday morning. Only two or three onlookers were present; Mrs.
Schuyler and Mrs. John Sherwood. We waited and waited, lounged through alcoves,
looked with vain longings at the titles of nice books. The trustees of the
library were biding their time below, waiting to pounce on His Royal Highness
the moment the sound of his chariot wheels should be heard. At length, about
eleven o’clock, a noise of much people was heard without—a hooray—an opening of
the police-guarded door, feet on the stone staircase, and then a vision of a
girlish-looking young boy walking swiftly through the library with Dr.
Cogswell, followed by the hairy-faced Duke of Newcastle with Mr. S. B. Ruggles
and by William Astor, Carson Brevoort, and others of the library trustees
escorting Lord Lyons and a lot of peers and honorables beside. They inspected
the premises in double-quick time, and at the head of the staircase on their
way out. His Highness shook hands with Cogswell and thanked him very briefly,
simply, and nicely, just as any untitled gentleman would have done (think of
it!), and the royal party was gone.
I spent a few minutes in looking at some of the special
treasures of the library—the First Folio Shakespeare, the editio princeps of
Homer, and so on, and then went down to Wall Street. . . .
At eight to the Academy of Music. The doors were not yet
opened to the common herd, but my exalted official position on the committee admitted
me by the royal entrance on Fourteenth Street. The house looked brilliant,
blazing with lights and decorated with great masses of flowers. My post was
with Charles King, Ben Silliman, and Cyrus Field in the room appointed for the
reception of invited guests generally. Certain other committees had interfered
with our arrangements in an unwarrantable and unconstitutional manner. The
consequence of this outrage was (as we had distinctly foreseen and predicted)
that the great majority of the invited guests found their way to "the
floor” for themselves without being conducted thither by any legitimate organ.
Our duties were therefore light. We "received” a few South American and
Portuguese diplomats and General Paez and Major Delafield and Captain Cullum
and sundry army and navy people and a score of city militia, colonels in most
elaborate uniforms, and Mayor Wood (I had a very intimate talk with that limb
of Satan); and at ten we adjourned to the special reception room and joined
Hamilton Fish and old Pelatiah Perit (who looked like a duke in his dress coat
and white cravat), and Peter Cooper, who looked like one of Gulliver’s Yahoos
caught and cleaned and dressed up.
In came the royal party at last, with the Reception
Committeemen, who had been assigned the pleasing duty of escorting them. We
were presented to His Royal Highness seriatim. I had supposed that shaking
hands with a Prince of Wales was indecorous, and that a bow was the proper
acknowledgment of introduction to so august a personage; but when the Prince
puts out his hand, or extends and proffers his fingers like anybody else, it
seems ungracious to decline the honor and say, "Sir, I am so well bred as
to know my place, and I am unworthy to shake hands with a descendant of James I
and George III and a probable King of England hereafter.” I think of having my
right-hand glove framed and glazed, with an appropriate inscription.
Fish had assigned to each of the committee the duty of
conducting one of the Prince’s suite into the ballroom, and I was charged with
Lord Hinchinbrooke. I had implored Fish to bear in mind that most of our
committee (myself included) were unable to distinguish dukes from mere
honorables and asked him to be sure to introduce each notable to his
committeeman godfather (vide
programmes of autos-da-fè). But he forgot to do so, and we marched into the
ballroom in a very promiscuous way— Fish escorting Monseigneur, Peter Cooper
tagging after them, and the rest like a flock of sheep—and took our place at
the head of the room; that is, the east end. Orchestra plays "God Save the
Queen,” followed by "Hail Columbia!” Aspect of the house and the crowd
brilliant and satisfactory. I fall into talk with a pleasant-looking Englisher,
and introduce myself. He proves to be Englehart, the Duke of Newcastle’s
private secretary, and an amiable, agreeable man.
A space in our front was kept clean by the Floor Committee,
and through this the crowd began to defile. Fish presenting them as they passed
and people making "murgeons and jenny-fluxions to H. R. H. George Anthon
passed with Ellie. . . . I was pointing out notabilities to Englehart and the
Honorable Mr. Somebody, and just indicating John Van Buren as the son of one of
our ex-kings, when there was a dull, ugly, jarring report, quickly followed by
another of the same sort. Everybody started and peered in vain over the heads
of the densely packed crowd, and wondered what it was. But there was no panic
and no rush. Presently we learned that the temporary flooring had given way in
two places; over the stage a couple of beams broke, causing the reports we had
heard. Ellie went down into one of the pits and was frightened, but did not
lose her footing, nor her self-possession.
Of course, people crowded away from this dangerous, region
in all directions. The promenade became impracticable, and the Prince and his
suite and most of the committee retreated to the reception and supper-rooms. A
large space was presently roped off, including the two chasms in the floor, and
revealing the scandalous, criminal negligence with which the work of
constructing the supports had been done. A score of carpenters and policemen
and the illustrious Brown were energetically repairing the damage within
fifteen minutes after the accident. But there was a general sense of failure
and calamity. Everything looked bilious. Everyone said the whole floor was
unsafe. There could be no dancing; the ball was a disgraceful fiasco. I
explained to many persons that the Reception Committee had nothing to do with
the arrangements of the house. Meantime, the carpenters were working for their
lives. Brown peering down into the oblong hole looked as if engaged in his
ordinary sextonical duties at an interment. . , .
By midnight damages had been repaired and dancing set in.
People streamed over every part of the floor the moment the Prince appeared on
it. Danger was forgotten. His Royal Highness’s partners, Mrs. Goold Hoyt, Miss
Lily Mason, Mrs. John Kernochan, and others, were among our prettiest women.
Mrs. Governor Morgan, with whom the Prince opened the ball officially, is
elderly and stout, but presentable enough. It is said that she had been taking
dancing lessons for the last fortnight, rubbing up her old steps, and that when
the quadrille commenced, she timidly inquired, "Your Royal Highness, isn’t
it time for us to balancer?” Miss
Helen Russell was overpowered when the Prince was presented. Her voice failed
her for fear, and she astonished H. R. H. with a series of contortions and
muscular twitchings before she succeeded in articulating an audible word. So
they say; I saw little of the dancing. The way people crowded round was
snobbish and rude and indecent, and I kept on the outskirts, where loafed and
lounged dejectedly. . . .
While the Prince was waiting for Mrs. Camilla Hoyt, his
partner. Walker, the Presbyterian bookbinder, bustled up with a young woman
under his arm, introduced himself, and proceeded, "The lady with whom Your
Highness was to dance doesn’t seem to be ready; allow me to introduce my
daughter.’’ The Prince said, "Yes, the crowd is very dense,’’ or some such
thing, and evaded this ambitious plebeian rather gracefully for so young a
person. Ellie heard this propriis auribus.
She was presented to the Illustrious Stranger and discoursed with him and
danced in the same "Lancers.” I had a very pleasant talk with Mrs. Colonel
Scott, and was introduced to Millard Fillmore, who is well-bred and cordial,
but I spent most of the evening, or night rather, dawdling about and wishing it
were over.
Got home at daylight, weary and worn after nearly nine hours
spent in a new pair of patent leathers. Very tired. If H. R. H. appreciate my
exertions, he will send me the Victoria Cross or make me a duke in partibus, at least.
This evening at Mr. Ruggles’s awhile and saw part of the
Firemen’s procession pass up the Fourth Avenue. It was very brilliant, with
torches, colored lights, and so forth. On Madison Square, where they no doubt
displayed all their resources of Roman candles and portable fireworks, it must
have been a really attractive spectacle.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas,
Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 46-9
