It was not without some trepidation of spirit that I surrendered myself into the hands of a professional maker-up of theatrical folk and saw him lay in the shadows and wrinkles necessary to the character, and adjust my front piece of grey hair into position; and, as my conception of the quaint Mrs. Partington was that of a kindly soul, I counselled the attendant—a Hungarian attaché of the local theatre—to make good-natured vertical wrinkles over my brow, and not horizontal ones, which indicate the cynical and harsh character.
My disguise was soon so perfect that my friend Mrs. L. Q. C. Lamar, who came in shortly after the ordeal of making-up was over, utterly failed to recognise me in the country woman before her. She looked about the room with a slight reserve aroused by finding herself thus in the presence of a stranger, and asked of Emily, “Where is Mrs. Clay?” At this my cousins burst into merry laughter, in which Mrs. Lamar joined when assured of my identity.
Thus convinced of the success of my costume, I was glad to comply with a request that came by messenger from Miss Lane, for our party to go to the White House on our way to Mrs. Gwin’s, to show her our “pretty dresses,” a point of etiquette intervening to prevent the Lady of the White House from attending the great ball of a private citizen. Forthwith we drove to the Executive Mansion, where we were carried _sans cérémonie_ to Miss Lane’s apartments. Here Mrs. Partington found herself in the presence of her first audience. Miss Lane and the President apparently were much amused at her verdancy, and, after a few initiative malapropisms, some pirouettes by “Titania” and our maid from the Orient, done to the shuffling of our little fortune-teller’s cards, we departed, our zest stimulated, for the Gwin residence.
My very first conquest as Mrs. Partington, as I recall it now, was of Mrs. Representative Pendleton, whom I met on the stairs. She was radiantly beautiful as the “Star-Spangled Banner,” symbolising the poem by which her father, Francis Scott Key, immortalised himself. As we met, her face broke into a smile of delicious surprise.
“How inimitable!” she cried. “Who is it? No! you shan’t pass till you tell me!” And when I laughingly informed her in Aunt Ruthy’s own vernacular, she exclaimed: “What! Mrs. Clay? Why! there isn’t a vestige of my friend left!”