Confederados #10: Nocturne for Eliza McHatton Ripley

Confederados #10: Nocturne recalling Eliza McHatton Ripley by Elsie Ridgley

"Nocturne" represents the dreamy view of Eliza Chinn McHatton Ripley who spent 

fifteen years as an exile in Mexico and Cuba.

Eliza Chinn McHatton Ripley (1832-1912) & first husband

James A. McHatton (1813-1872)

Composite picture. Their 1852 wedding may have been the occasion for these portraits.

Eliza, born in Kentucky and raised in New Orleans, was conservative in her thinking, thoroughly believing old Southern ways were the best and any modernisms were changes to be deplored and ignored. She was one of the generation of Southern women who believed it necessary to record nostalgic memories of pre-war society, child raising and slavery, a system where, as she put it: "The whites suffered more from its demoralizing influence than the blacks." 

She published two memoirs. From Flag to Flag: A Woman's Adventures & Experiences in the South During the War, in Mexico, & in Cuba recalled her exile. A later contribution to southern nostalgia Social Life in Old New Orleans was released in 1912.

The McHattons, antebellum plantation owners in Louisiana, saw more opportunity in Mexico in the first years of the war. James shipped cotton through Texas from a base in Matamoros. “ My husband, whose energy was all-controlling, and who knew no such word as fail, rose above every emergency. It seems now, when I recall it all, the heavier were the blows, the stouter his resistance.”

Nocturne by Jeanne Arnieri

Nocturne by Jeanne Arnieri

Eliza accompanied him with son Henry born in 1856 and an infant, a “Dear baby [who] succumbed to the first illness he ever had” while they were living in Houston in April. They brought Delia and Zell, young enslaved servants who once in Mexico must have realized they were free. Delia disappeared and settled in Mexico, across the river from San Antonio, Texas. She was soon replaced by Martha sent from the Louisiana plantation. Zell remained with them as he grew up until he married.

Eliza gave birth to daughter Annella in Matamoros a few months before War’s end. After Confederate surrender the McHattons sailed to Havana, Cuba where they joined “Several Confederate officers, induced by fear of imprisonment to leave the country.” Eliza listed officers Benjamin, Breckinridge, Toombs, Fry, Magruder, Bee, Preston, Early, and Maffitt. “Many were accompanied by their wives. Exiles though all were, they enjoyed today, not knowing what the morrow had in store. One by one, as assurance of personal safety was secured, they drifted back to their old [U.S.]homes.” 

 

Havana’s harbor in the distance, 1860s

In thriving Havana, “Salons and balconies were thronged with Confederates as homeless as ourselves, but I found difficulty in recognizing in some of the belaced and befrilled beauties gliding about, the women who scarce had stockings and handkerchiefs when I last saw them in Texas.”

James decided against return to ravaged Louisiana, buying a sugar plantation and refinery about 60 miles from Havana. ”We closed the bargain, and in May moved our little belongings, Martha and Zell included, to ‘Desengaño.’ “

 

Workers who harvested the sugar cane and worked the plantation included Cuban slaves & Chinese immigrants, treated as slaves.

 

[Cuban] Lady on a Horse by Víctor Patricio de Landaluze

 As a woman who did not welcome change Eliza was predictably unhappy in a new culture. Her primary complaint was boredom. With Martha and many Cuban servants to run the household and care for her two children Eliza spent her leisure hours at needlework as she had done in Louisiana. But:

  “We had very little fancy-work. No Berlin wools work was needed in that climate, so the materials were not procurable. The laborious drawing of thread-in fine linen and embroidering over the drawn places in delicate, cobwebby designs, so intricate that it makes one's eyes ache to look at them, had no charms for us, though it was the favorite occupation of Cuban señoras. We embroidered conventional morning-glories and wheat on pillow-shams; scalloped flounces and dress-waists, and made yards upon yards of senseless tatting, till we wearied with the work. Sewing-thread could be had in abundance, and our busy fingers produced wonderful tidies and spreads, for which we had no use.”

Is this traditional Cuban ruffled dress a ”tombo” dress?

The resourceful “Martha had time to ‘take in’ sewing, and [we] amused ourselves by designing - even frequently helping in the work itself - tombo dresses for the African belles on the plantation. “

 After being shot by neighborhood bandits husband James’s health deteriorated. He died in March, 1872 of “Nervous Exhaustion” at 58. Sixteen-year-old Henry was in a U.S. military school; Eliza, Martha and Annella returned to the states. Within the year the 41-year-old Eliza married wealthy former Confederate Major Dwight Ripley (1829-1907) and settled in New York. She signed “The Oath” of allegiance to the Union in 1874, the year she gave birth to her last child Elise (1874-1941).

Dwight Ripley’s 1907 obituary from the Brooklyn Eagle. Eliza died five years later, undoubtedly decrying a Brooklyn full of Irish immigrants like my grandparents.

Eliza’s Findagrave File: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/79633410/eliza-moore-mchatton_ripley

 The Block

Nocturne by Denniele Bohannon

Nocturne was pictured in the Chicago Tribune’s Nancy Cabot quilt column in 1934. A nocturne is a rather wistful musical composition---like the life Eliza dreamed up for herself.

Cutting Sugar Cane by Cuban artist Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, 1874

 Read More:

“Too South of the South: A Louisiana Family Searches for Community in Cuba,’ Robert C. Poister in Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the American South, edited by Steven E. Nash, Bruce E. Stewart.

https://books.google.com/books?id=eS2bDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA195&dq=james+mchatton+cuba&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUtMzsiZWOAxXM4skDHQ6fG20Q6AF6BAgEEAM#v=onepage&q=james%20mchatton%20cuba&f=false

 Eliza Moore Chinn McHatton Ripley's Social Life in Old New Orleans. Being Recollections of My Girlhood, Eliza Moore Chinn McHatton Ripley.  https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/ripleyflag/ripley.html

 From Flag to Flag: A woman's adventures and experiences in the South during the war, in Mexico, and in Cuba, Eliza Moore Chinn McHatton Ripley. https://www.amazon.com/Flag-Womans-Adventures-Experiences-during/dp/1718991495