Early in the year, in the midst of a particularly terrible cold snap, Mrs. Gray recalls the winter of 1844, shortly before her marriage:[1]

1 Beacon Hill Place, Boston, Saturday, 20 February 1875: Thirty-one years ago the English Steamer was released from Boston Harbour, by the cutting of a channel through the ice __ miles long, to liberate it, and I well remember, being then a visitor at Mr. Josiah Bradlee’s[2] [house] in Pearl St., the excitement about it…

Mrs. Patrick Grant has a Washington’s birthday reception on Monday, in emulation of her aunt Mrs. H. G. Otis[3] – but no one in Boston is quite competent to fill Mrs. Otis’s place in that way, I suppose. Carrie Oxnard and Mrs. Richards,[4] also, each have an evening reception on the 22d. Mrs. Richards’s is to be a “bal poudré” and she insists on all who come being in powder & patches & rouge &c., which will thin her numbers a good deal.

Tuesday, 23 February 1875: We hear the bal poudré at Mrs. Richards’s was a failure in numbers, and especially scant of gentlemen. Boston people do not like such nonsense, and it takes a more leading person than Mrs. Cornelia Walter Richards to urge them up to it! Mrs. Grant’s [reception] from four to six was crowded but stiff – Carrie Oxnard’s small, quite pleasant & sociable.

Philadelphia, Tuesday, 13 April 1875: Since I left home, three engagements have been confided to me, which are to be kept secret for longer or shorter times[5] – one sorrowful piece of news also, wh[ich] must leak out ere long, but about which I am not to speak. News of Mrs. Ben Wainwright’s[6] death met me here, too.

Boston, Sunday, 14 November 1875: A painful report reaches us that little Pinkie Codman,[7] who cannot be more than 16 or 17 years old, has run away with her father’s courier in Europe & married him. A fearful blow to [her parents] the J. Amory Codmans[8] if true – she is their only daughter – they have one son. The child has been tied to her mother’s side always…

This last entry affords some insight into the hairdressing practices of the period:

Boston, Sunday, 10 December 1875: Last Thursday Mary [Perkins] dau. of C. C. Perkins[9] was persuaded by young “Teddy” Wharton[10] to cross the ice in Jamaica Pond, he having skated over it safely. It cracked – she slipped in her alarm, fell through and disappeared. Wharton went in after her and caught her by the lovely golden front hair, wh[ich] being part of the fair young head did not come off in his hand, as fraudulent back hair might have done! Morris Meredith,[11] the other member of the party, in trying to help them went in himself involuntarily, and the situation which seems only ludicrous now was then rather tragic. [Their] shouts for help summoned a party of workmen, who made a line, got them half out, when some one’s grasp gave way, and down they went again – however they were all rescued at last, and conveyed to Pine Bank.[12] Why they are not all laid up with rheumatism or pneumonia is one of the mysteries of youthful endurance & impunity!

Notes

[1] Hedwiga Regina Shober (1818–1885) was married to Dr. Francis Henry Gray 1844–80. All extracts from the Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections.

[2] Josiah Bradlee (1777–1860) was the father of Mrs. Gray’s stepmother, Lucy Hall Bradlee (1806–1902), who was married to Samuel Lieberkuhn Shober 1830–47.

[3] Eliza Boardman Henderson (1796–1873) was married to Harrison Gray Otis 1817–27; her receptions, at her house on Mount Vernon Street, were nationally renowned.

[4] Caroline Walter Adams (1823?–1898), who married George Dearborn Oxnard in 1853, and her aunt Cornelia Wells Walter (1813–1898), at one time editor of the Boston Transcript; she married William Bordman Richards in 1847.

[5] On 6 May the diarist noted that she could finally speak of her daughter’s friend Lucy Bowditch’s engagement to Richard Stone.

[6] This report was incorrect. Julia Ann Sanderson Coolidge (b. 1814), who married Benjamin Greene Wainwright in 1834, died in 1882.

[7] Martha Catharine Codman (1858–1948). The elopement was probably an exaggerated report: Miss Codman did not marry until 1928, when she wed the singer Maxim Karolik; together they amassed a large collection of American decorative arts pieces, later donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

[8] The painter John Amory Codman (1824–1886) married Martha Pickman Rogers in 1850.

[9] Mary Eleanor Perkins (b. 1856), daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Callahan Perkins.

[10] Edward Robbins Wharton (1850–1928), who married Edith Newbold Jones – the novelist Edith Wharton – in 1885.

[11] James Morris Meredith (b. 1850), son of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ogden Meredith.

[12] The Brookline home of Mrs. Gray’s brother-in-law William Gray (1810–1892), who married Sarah Frances Loring in 1834.