Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together--so
often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the
impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom
regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and
handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the
suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown
curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at
five, the year of his mother's death.
His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical.
She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on
Washington Square--sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the
men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas,
the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little
whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing
cries after each song--and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian
or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be
the speech of the Southern negro.
His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to
roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid.
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