On August 7th, 1861, the Long Branch correspondent of The New York Herald reported great excitement in the New Jersey ocean resort town at the news that Mrs. Lincoln, wife of President Abraham Lincoln, would soon be arriving in town. Mary Todd Lincoln, then 43 years old, is pictured at left in an 1861 photo (click to enlarge) by the famous photographer Matthew Brady.
In the column "The Watering Place", published in the paper on August 9th, the anonymous correspondent, based in the National Hotel, wrote that the announcement of her arrival had "completely eclipsed, for the time, the rival sensations of our masquerade ball and Siddons' readings." Like other "watering places", Long Branch had suffered during the year from "the pressures of the times", meaning the outbreak of the Civil War, and it was hoped that Mrs. Lincoln's visit would restore the "old animation and gayety" of the resort.
In the meantime, there were "hotel wars" in Long Branch over where she would stay. D. P. Peters, proprietor of the National Hotel, expected her to stay there, since he had originally invited the Lincolns to Long Branch earlier in the year. His invitation letter of May 27, 1861, has survived; a transcription published in the book Dear Mr. Lincoln may be seen here. Due to the war, President Lincoln was not free to leave Washington, but Mrs. Lincoln would come. Might she even arrive the following day for a special event?
"To-morrow night, for example, we are to have a masquerade and fancy dress ball at this hotel, and Phillips, the costumer, is here to assist in transforming common folks into princes, queens, monks, and fools--very little transformation is needed in that character, often. If the dancers would only wear their bathing dresses, it strikes me that they would be most effectually disguised. Such a motley set as one sees on the beach of a fine morning no fancy dress ball could equal."
The National Hotel was one of many enormous seaside resort hotels that dotted Long Branch by the mid-nineteenth century. Journalist Greg Kelly has assembled a fantastic collection of photographs and postcards of many of these fine hotels in a post titled "Long Branch Hotels: Great Views" on his website Monmouth Beach Life. Sadly, the National Hotel is not among them, but there are photos of other hotels in the 1860s (search the page for "186") which will give a general idea of what it looked like. The image at left (click to enlarge), from Mr. Kelly's assemblage, is the rival United States Hotel in 1861.
By the August 8th column (published in the Herald on August 10th), anticipation for Mrs. Lincoln's presence had grown:
"To-night, however, we shall all be actors, after a fashion, for we are to have a grand masquerade and fancy dress ball here at the National. We shall have Romeos and Juliets, Pocahontas and Columbus, monks and princes, flower girls and devils, peasants and satyrs, all jumbled together, and are all in a flutter about it. Such costumes as no one sees when passing a half opened door; such fun and jollity as all expect. The great sensation Mrs. Lincoln is expected to cause can only be hinted at here, and must wait for full description until my next letter."
But, noting that it was a rainy day, and that there was nothing to do except "talk, bowl and play billiards...No one will dance, for all must go unwearied to the ball this evening", the correspondent was pessimistic about her actual arrival:
"...Mrs. Lincoln has not arrived up to the hour of this writing, and no one can imagine that she will come on such a day as this...There is nothing, therefore, to look forward to except the fancy dress ball to-night."
The denouement was described in the column of August 9th, published in the Herald on August 12th. As predicted by the correspondent, Mrs. Lincoln did not arrive. Mr. Peters and his staff improvised:
"We gave a masked ball, at which a bogus Mrs. Lincoln was present, and in order to make assurance her being here doubly sure, her name was placed in glory upon the register, with the numbers of her rooms. From the excitement which this imitation Mrs. President produced one can judge of the sensation which will be caused by the arrival of the genuine lady."
Apparently not everyone was fooled, despite the register entry proclaiming her residence with her entourage in rooms 131-135, due to the lack of said entourage. The ball proceeded anyway, though there are no further details of the "bogus Mrs. Lincoln":
"A great crowd thronged the parlors and the halls and made a long double line of spectators, which led to the dining room where the ball was given. Through this line, the subjects of all sorts of remarks and criticism, friendly and unfriendly, passed the self-devoted masquers, feeling uncomfortable beneath their masks, and looking as awkward as they felt in Phillip's gaudy suits. Of course there were exceptions to this remark; but I have often noticed that the stiff, uncomfortable look of the masquers is one of the greatest attractions and pleasing sights of a masquerade ball to an outsider."
Two interesting tidbits here: the spectators, between which the masquers paraded, and the perceived awkwardness or discomfort of the masquers in their costumes. Spectators are not unusual at, or outside, a public ball, but having the attendees pass through a double line of spectators making, apparently, audible comments about their costumes, is not a practice I've encountered before. And while I've no idea how uncomfortable the costumes were, or perhaps how psychologically uncomfortable the attendees were, it is not something I've seen commented on elsewhere.
"There went Romeo and Juliet, courtiers of Louis XIV. and Charles II., Night and the Maid of the Mist, nuns and holy friars, Mexicans and Spaniards, devils and angels--in woman's form; Neapolitan rowdies and Parisian gamins, jockeys and clowns--a motley and varied throng--all promenading around a square, cold room, adorned with several gaslights, which went out while the ball went on--and a grand colored band, which eclipsed Jullien's--talking, laughing, whispering, shaking hands cordially with people whom they never saw, mistaking friends for foes and one person for another. The pleasant throng filled the room and mingled in a most brilliant kaleidoscopic variety of forms, characters and colors."
This is a fairly standard list of costumes for the era. The black ("colored") musicians are not unusual; it was typical at the time to have a black band and perhaps even a black caller. It's one of the things Gone with the Wind got right. It's interesting to have them compared with the orchestra of the famous (and famously flamboyant) composer and conductor Louis-Antoine Jullien (1812-1860), who toured America in 1853-1854 and composed (among many, many, other pieces and quadrille sets) an "American Quadrille" incorporating popular American tunes.
"Then came the dancing, and the choice of partners afforded infinite scope for thought and merriment. Here a devil had hold of a nun--the old story. There a friar chasseed gravely to a funny little gipsy--as monks used to do sometimes. Tender Romeo danced a fancy breakdown, and there a clown was forgetting his own character and making a fool of a flower girl; here Juliet sipped an ice between the figures--did they have ices at Verona?--and near her was Satan retailing himself, having been deprived of his caudal appendage by the foot of Japanese Tommy, who was attracted--like the original--by the ladies."
Note the correspondent's little touches of anti-Catholicism in regard to the devil and the nun and the friar and the gipsy, and the punning "retailing" (re-tailing) of Satan.
A breakdown was a type of solo dance, like clogging, which I touched on briefly here.
Japanese Tommy was a yellowface costume and very up-to-the-moment. The "original" was Tateishi Onojiro, a handsome seventeen-year-old interpreter-in-training who came to America in 1860 as part of Japan's first embassy to the United States. He was very popular with American ladies, as depicted in the illustration at left (click to enlarge), published on June 6, 1860, in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. More about him may be found at the website of the Consulate General of Japan in New York.
"What can be said more? There were no rich dresses to describe--that of Juliet--a white silk, with an overskirt of lace--being the most recherche. As for the costumes, Romeo's was the most magnificent, but almost all were familiar to New York eyes, and it was no small part of the fun to recall the situations in which one had seen these dresses before. The party danced and danced; masks were soon discarded; dominoes and disguises dropped; dress coats were in the ascendancy, and by midnight the ball had become like all balls, and it ended like all, to the satisfaction of all concerned. That satisfaction praises the management better than anything I can write."
Despite this being a resort town, at which one would expect people to at least be well-off enough to afford seaside vacations, these don't seem to have been the ornate and expensive costumes typical of high society in New York. The implication of this paragraph and the earlier mention of Phillip, is that they were rented, and had been seen many other times before on other people.
From the description, it sounds like this ball did not have a formal unmasking, just people discarding masks and costume pieces as they became overheated from dancing until the ball ended at midnight.
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The residents of Long Branch continued to hope for Mrs. Lincoln's arrival:
"On Monday we expect Mrs. Lincoln, and already we are talking of a masquerade ball in her honor at the Metropolitan, a ball at the National...with other festivities innumerable, of which you shall be duly advised."
Mrs. Lincoln would eventually make it to Long Branch later in the month. She stayed at the Mansion House hotel. The site is commemorated by a plaque, as documented here. Apparently a "Grand Hop" was held in her honor -- perhaps, if I can locate some details, I will address that in a future post.
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The original correspondence columns quoted above may be seen at the Library of Congress's Chronicling America site:
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