Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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wore a special uniform on their furlough, which was intended to draw attention to them and represent the Academy with style. The coat was blue and cut in the manner of a dress jacket, with long swallowtails and ten buttons down the front. The dress shirts were also fancy, with gilt buttons. The cap was an Army regulation forage cap, with the addition of a black velvet band on which was pinned a gold wreath crest with silver letters “USMA” in Old English script. Wrote Tidball, “With our neat duck pants, this coat and this cap, we went forth armed like knights of old to down every competitor and win the plaudits of all ladies.” Heth, echoing Grant, said, “these two months were among the most enjoyable of my life. The Duke of Wellington, after defeating his great enemy at Waterloo, could not have felt more exalted, or more pleased with himself, than the West Point cadet dressed in his furlough coat, with brass buttons, when strutting along the streets, or on entering the parlor of some young miss who had given a party in honor of his return to his native city or village.”30 During his cadet furlough, Heth met a young schoolgirl named Teny Selden. Twelve years later, they were married.
The custom of the time was for cadets to bestow “spoony” buttons from their coat and shirt to the girls they favored. The grand prize was the cap crest, which a cadet would not give up until the end of the trip. Being unique, the crest could be presented only once, and one can only imagine the competition or the means of obtaining it. Tidball later reminisced that his furlough days “passed away as a dream. They were full of those little incidents falling to the lot of all college students on vacation, but unworthy of record except in lovesick novels. I was greatly flattered by the attention I received on all sides; attention no doubt due more to the glamour of my furlough dress than to any merit of my own. But they were attentions all the same and I will not have the ungraciousness of now looking the gift horse in the mouth.” There were, of course, the usual risks. In the fall of 1843, Derby noted that “several (3) cadets of the second class are in arrest and will probably be summarily dismissed for contracting a horrible disease while on furlough.” He was not of the opinion they should be dismissed, since “their conduct was probably owing to thoughtlessness, rather than to want of principle and they are all very fine fellows, and stand pretty well.”31
By 1840, cadets who spent the summer at the Academy also had their share of opportunities for feminine companionship. The Independence Day dinners had grown to be a major public affair; on July 4, 1845, there were two hundred visitors at the hotel, and crowds for special events could number over five hundred. “Three boats landed with excursion people on board, among them bands, glee clubs etc. without number,” Derby wrote. “Of course the cadets enjoyed themselves highly and I think I never saw the Point present so gay an appearance as it did then—Last evening we danced until 12 o’clock.”32 Dances were common year round, and particularly in the summer. During the encampment of 1840 there were two dances per week in the mess hall, and cadets frequently held “stag dances” on the parade ground.33 These were all-cadet affairs, in which lights were placed in rows on the Plain and the dancers took turns in the center showing off their steps. Some cadets would tie handkerchiefs around their necks and play the parts of girls. It was a characteristic form of entertainment in the western part of the country, and an opportunity to engage in hilarity to entertain the onlookers. Cadet William Sherman enjoyed the stag dances because a cadet “can shuffle and cut up as much as he pleases provided he goes through the figures.”34
The summer’s frolics were capped with a large formal ball, which became a signature event of the year for the fashionable young belles who were able to attend. Hundreds of invitations were sent out, and people came from across the country. Cadet Sherman described the scene:
The Ball was a grand affair, in a fine large hall the walls decorated with wreaths of laurel and cedar—Crossed Swords, Sabers, and Bayonets—and the flags of nearly all nations of the world. From the ceiling hung a great number of elegant and tasty chandeliers, and when filled with ladies and officers both naval and military in their uniforms it presented the most dazzling and brilliant appearance I ever beheld.35
Food and drink were in abundance; as Lieutenant Jeremiah M. Scarritt, Class of 1838 and principal assistant professor of engineering, noted, there was “Champagne for the dull who would feign to be witty, sherry for those who were just forgetting their first flames, brandy for those who had no love in them.”36 Drinks were of course off limits to cadets, but those who could obtain clandestine supplies would indulge, preferably elsewhere and with their dates. The night before camp was broken, cadets held the “Illumination.” Candles were lit in and around tents, casting a gentle glow about the entire Plain, best viewed from the upper floors of the hotel or surrounding buildings. The officers’ tents had transparencies with the names of their companies. Rockets were fired, and an immense stag dance was held.37 The Illumination remained a tradition until encampment on the Plain ended in 1943.
For the Corps, encampment had become a three-month celebration of idealized Army life, with martial drills during the day and festivities at night. For those who visited West Point in the summer, it seemed that this was all the cadets did, which raised some criticism, but not from the young female visitors. “To the young and gay of the female sex the hops are the chief feature of West Point,” Tidball wrote. “In their estimation the Military Academy was established solely for such entertainments, and cadets maintained by a thoughtful government expressly to furnish them with young and nimble dancing partners.” Young civilian men who might be on hand were unable to compete with the dash of the uniformed cadets, and they had to “stand in the corners and chew the bitter cud of jealousy, while their envied rivals are whirling off their fair charmers.” For the women, West Point was a laboratory of flirtation. They could experiment as they wished in complete safety. It was an artificial environment, in which the men were tightly controlled and women could leave at will without the social repercussions that might attend them in their hometowns. In addition, for those so inclined, there was the thrill of corrupting the cadets, “the very essence of stolen fruit.” It became something of a fad, as Tidball noted:
Cadets were greatly sought after by the ladies, who seemed proud of being beaued by those stripling gallants. . . . [A]s the proportion of anxious ladies to cadets increased, a spirit of rivalry sprang up among the fair ones as to who should have the latter. Blushing young misses, flirtatious married women, and prancing widows, vied with each other in the contest. This strange infatuation developed at one time, into a species of feminine mania—a sort of contagious epidemic; it was in fact called and known as the “cadet fever,” a malady every woman, whether young or old—not too old—coming to the Point was expected to catch, and until caught, the usual morning salutation was, “have you got it?”
The cadets of course were much pleased with the attention. Some took the dalliances more seriously than others, becoming infatuated, at their peril; others played their roles with no expectations other than enjoying themselves. Sometimes these relationships would result in engagement and even marriage, but more often they were summer flings, of varying intensity. A facilitating circumstance was the advent of fly trousers around 1845. Until then, cadets had worn a traditional front-flat pattern, and the more stylish design, then in use across the country, was resisted on grounds of decorum. Tidball noted that “The social element of the Point . . . opposed it as being a shocking innovation.” Shocking, perhaps, but very practical from the cadet point of view.
The traditional West Point trysting place was the Revolutionary War era Fort Clinton, in the northeast corner of the Plain, next to the river. The overgrown stone walls and battlements made the fort a labyrinth of grassy, bush-topped mounds, strategically located adjacent to both hotel and encampment. The fort was guarded nightly, and it was a strange and lonely place to stand watch, rendered eerie with its shadowy indistinct forms, the cries of night birds and the lowing from calf boats floating downriver at night, heading for the New York butchers. The spookiness of the place only added to its allure as a site for romance. There was an unwritten code that a sentry would turn a blind eye to another cadet making a rendezvous with a young lady at Fort Clinton, though the sounds of couples so engaged could be an uncomfortable experience.
A very important event in the history of social life at West Point occurred when the Superintendent extended the permitted area to include the old chain walk,