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| Nella Fontaine Binckley, mid-1880s. Julius Lindsay Schaub, LaGrange, Georgia |
Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Sue Davis for their ongoing research collaboration; specifically to William for providing a scan of the original document, and in turn many thanks to Peter Binckley and Patricia D'Arcy "Trish" Binckley (1951-2007), at the source.]
That fall I took a position as art teacher in a Methodist college for girls in La Grange, Georgia. Three of us young teachers shared a huge bedroom. Ella Pond, the music teacher was from Boston. She and I were accustomed to warm rooms in winter. But here the ceiling was lofty, the windows very large -- and loose. And the only heat was a tiny grate. We nearly froze, and got dreadful colds. Stella was the third, but she was indigenous to the soil and didn't mind. She was a very quiet girl and I've forgotten her family name and what she taught.
The President of the college, Dr. Heidt, was a good natured jolly sort of man and we all liked him. Being a Methodist, he disapproved of dancing. But the young men of the town got around that by calling their dancing parties "sociables!" I always had a shrewd suspicion that he was not in the least fooled, but in the kindness of his heart winked at it.
They had very nice dances. The musicians were all colored of course, a fiddle or two and a guitar and always a banjo. Don't imagine that a fiddle is the same thing as a violin. Not at all. They may look alike, but in the capable hands of a darkey, the music is an altogether different thing. And it's the perfect music for square dances. One darkey would call out the figures according to his own fancy and hugely enjoyed doing it.They entered into the spirit of it as I don't think white people could ever do.
The youngsters of the present day don't know how much fun square dances are. The quadrille was a gay and lively dance, the figures called out. The lancers, on the contrary was a slow and stately affair, no calling out, as the figures were always the same and everybody knew them. The Southern balls always had half the programme square dances. The round dances were the waltz, the polka and an occasional schottische. The Highland schottische was a little different [and] very pretty. In La Grange, a nice young fellow named Dixie always got them to play the Highland schottische and he and I danced it. Nobody else seemed to know it, so we had the floor to ourselves while everybody looked on. All balls invariably wound up with the Virginia reel, an even more rollicking dance than the quadrille.
Down there in the [Deep] South, serenading was customary. Not like the Spanish and Mexican serenades, which were solo affairs. In La Grange the young men would bring along several darkey musicians who would play beneath the window of the lady, or ladies. We had serenades several times under our windows. The ladies so honored were supposed to wave a handkerchief from their window. In private houses, I believe refreshments were generally offered to the serenaders by servants, or men of the household. The ladies, of course, did not appear.
During the winter a gentleman I had met in Salem -- older than the young men I knew there -- was passing on his way to New Orleans and stopped off in La Grange to call on me. I took Ella down to the parlour with me, of course. We had those awful colds, and he told us his way of curing a cold. He'd get a bottle of whiskey, lock himself in his hotel room, drink it and go to bed. In the morning his cold was gone. We were impressed.
Next day, feeling pretty desperate, we decided we'd like to try it. It was a local option town, but we learned we could get some at the drug store, especially as we knew the clerk. We went there after school, coughed piteously, and he sold us a flask. I imagine it was about half a pint. We didn't know, being inexperienced. That evening we divided it into two glasses. Stella had no cold, so got none. Besides, in case the house burned down in the night it was necessary to have someone able to drag us out, as we expected to be utterly incompetent ourselves. Ella was a few years older than I and knew how to fix the glasses up with water and sugar to make the stuff palatable. I had never tasted whiskey, except once as a medicine when I had a chill and Mother dosed me.
There was a big round table in our room and we sat there and drank it. Ella drank hers right down but I sipped mine. It seemed to take hold pretty promptly. It was not long before Stella and I ceased to get any response from Ella. Then she slumped, her head on the table, and went to sleep. Meanwhile, my head had become very buzzy and I had a conviction that I had better not try to walk. But my mind was perfectly clear. We thought Ella had better get to bed, so Stella, with a little help from me (not much) got her there. There were two big beds in the room, Stella had one and Ella and I had the other. There were four pillows on our bed. Ella got partly awake as she was pushed into bed on the nearest side. She piled three pillows under her head and this propping her up considerably, put the other pillow on her chest. Then she stretched out her arm and drowsily requested, "Gimme 'nother pillow!"
She looked so funny that we were in fits of laughter. Stella said "you ought to make a sketch of her, Nel" adding derisively, "but I suppose you're too drunk to do it." "No, I'm not!" I declared. I pulled open the drawer, got out paper and pencil, and made the sketch. (I have it still.) Ella and I, fearing we might be incapacitated later, had prudently undressed and donned our robes de nuit. So, when Stella's back was turned, I seized the opportunity and managed to negotiate the short distance to the bed, crawled in and immediately went to sleep. When I woke the next morning I learned that poor Stella had been up all night with Ella, who had been very sick. It did actually cure our colds, but I wouldn't recommend it.
One of the young men who used to call on us, a young lawyer named Gaffney, was joking with me about law and offered to lend me a copy of Blackstone to read. He did. When I was ready to return it, (I can't say I had read it) I looked in the back of it where there were forms for various deeds, but couldn't find anything to fit the case. However, I got a sheet of legal cap and made out a "Deed of Return," filling it all in and sent it to him with the book. He told me afterward it was all perfectly legal and he had filed it at the courthouse. I presume it's still there.
At one of the sociables, some of the girls had [taken] a notion to powder their hair. I powdered mine, and with a pink dress and a tiny black patch of court plaster placed at a strategic point on my cheek, it was very becoming. But afterwards! For several days I was brushing out that powder and going around gray haired.
All winter Ella had been making disparaging remarks about the shiftless ways of Southerners, gates hanging on one hinge, etc. With her New England energy and neatness it was shocking to her. But I told her up North people had to be energetic to keep warm in that climate. In the Spring, when it turned terribly hot, poor Ella wilted completely. After her teaching was done, all she could do was to lie in the bed and wave a palm leaf fan -- feebly. She said she took back everything she had said about Southerners. She declared every gate might be off the hinges and she'd never be able to fix them in that climate. Or care whether they were fixed or not.
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| Smith Hall, LaGrange College (Wiki Commons) |
Ella, Nella and Stella = Ella Pond of Boston, Nella Fontaine Binckley, and Stella of Georgia.
La Grange = LaGrange, Georgia.
Dr. Heidt = John Wesley Heidt (1841-1909) served as president of LaGrange College from 1880 to 1885.]
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