I took a tomato salad lunch the other day, which was a very common, simple and inexpensive thing to do, yet if I had done it (or tried to do it, for I couldn’t have done it) forty years ago, I would have been looked upon in mingled wonder and disgust; for they didn’t know the real beauty and delicacy of the Tomato in New York till a comparatively recent period. I remember, when a boy, havin’ a man pointed out to me with wonder by another boy as “a man who eats tomatoes,” just as we would speak now of a man who eats horses or dogs as a regular article of diet.
Lola Montez was one of the first to eat and enjoy the tomato, and, it is claimed, introduced it into New York. The day she gave Judson a horsewhippin’ in the street for slanderin’ her, she had breakfasted heartily on tomatoes. I don’t infer from this, though, that the tomato has any tendency to induce horsewhippin’, though if I did infer this, it would be about a sensible as inferrin’ a good many other things that the “parsons” on one side and the “infidels” on the other side “infer” from trifles not half as useful or pleasant as tomatoes.
By the by, it is a somewhat singular coincidence that the young man Follin who recently married (and is, I understand, since divorced from) the actress, Maude Granger, is the son of the man who lost his head and life for the actress and adventuress, Lola Montez.
The story goes that the elder Follin, becomin’ infatuated with Lola, left New York with her and went round the world, or part way round, in her company. Then trouble arose between ‘em and Follin got moody and took to drinkin’. This made the trouble worse, until the unfortunate gentleman ended it and himself by jumpin’ overboard in the ocean and bein’ eaten by the sharks.
Another woman who was one of the first to eat and enjoy the tomato (who, in fact, claimed to have introduced its use, although Lola claimed that, too) was a woman who made at one time a big stir in the political world throughout the country, and who afterwards was the principal figure in one of the strangest family complications that ever were heard of, even in this much family be-complicated city. I mean the once famous character, Mrs. General Eaton, afterwards known as Madam Bourganant. [sic, Buchignani]
This Mrs. Eaton must have been a very pretty and fascinatin’ woman in her time, for when I got a glimpse of her one day in the street some fifteen years ago, though she was nearly seventy years old then, she was still strikin’ lookin’, tall, slender, and with the blackest, sharpest pair of eyes I ever saw in anybody’s head, man or woman.
Her history was a remarkable one in every way. She was a Miss O’Neill, of good family. She married a man named Timberlake, in the United States service. He had always an idea that he would die soon, and he always wanted his old friend, a General Eaton, to marry his wife or widow; told him so often before her. Well, Timberlake fulfilled his part of the plan by dyin’, and Eaton fulfilled his part by makin’ Mrs. Timberlake Mrs. General Eaton. The general was a great friend of President Jackson’s, who appointed him Secretary of War, at the same time becomin’ very attentive to his wife.
Now Calhoun, Jackson’s personal enemy “on the quiet,” was Vice-President then, and Martin Van Buren, of New York, was in the cabinet as Jackson’s particular personal friend. Both Calhoun and Van Buren had their eyes on the next presidency, and Jackson favored his friend Van Buren, of course. This, of course, made Calhoun mad, who tried to get even with Jackson. He got his chance it is said with this Mrs. Eaton. He set the wives of the cabinet ministers against her, on the ground of her being too intimate with Jackson, and the cabinet ladies gave her the cold shoulder, though she was a cabinet lady herself. This made Jackson mad, for the lady’s sake and his own, and after trying in vain to change matters among the ladies, and only makin’ things worse, he asked his friend, Van Buren, to do him the favor of resignin’, which he did, so as to force the other members of the cabinet into followin’ his example, which they had to do, although very much against their wills. This case caused a great deal of talk, especially in New York, and it was discussed at Downing’s with gusto.
Here was a case in which a woman ruled a President and caused the dissolution of a Cabinet. Yet this very same woman, a few years after, was completely duped and ruined by a man who used to peddle images about the street.
There was a barber-lookin’ Italian chap called Bourganani, with curly hair, an Italian who came to this country and hawked those little statuettes around. After a while he used his legs in a better fashion than street walkin’ and got to be a dancin’ master. Among his pupils was a girl, a thin blonde, with thin lips and gray eyes and a rather pretty face.
From the first the Italian completely fascinated this young girl, as the snake does the bird. He told her to get him introduced to her grandmother, with whom she lived, and who was no other than this Mrs. General Eaton, now a widow. The girl did as she was told and obtained him the introduction. Then the young Italian dancin’ master talked himself into the good graces of the old widow, who had been left a large property, and at last he married her. Then, after marriage, he got his wife to make over all her property to him. Then he got her to appoint him guardian of her granddaughter, whose property he soon got away from her. Then, while robbin’ both the women, he made love, on the sly, to the granddaughter of his own wife, under his wife’s roof (or his own, through her), the girl goin’ to Sunday-school regularly all the time; and finally while the three were livin’ together in New York in a fashionable boardin’ house, corner Clinton place and University place, two of the queerly associated three disappeared. The young husband left the wife who was old enough to be his mother, and ran off with his nominal granddaughter, who was really young enough to be his daughter. But old Mrs. Timberlake-Eaton-Bourganani, now recovering from her folly, called herself a fool, took the matter coolly and seemed rather to enjoy the new lease of notoriety the elopement gave her.
Altogether it was an odd affair. A reporter who interviewed Mrs. T.-E.-B. on the case found the old lady eagerly devouring a lot of raw tomatoes, of which she was just as fond as when she had first taken a notion to ‘em thirty years ago. I wonder if tomatoes had anythin’ to do with it?
[Editor’s notes: Tomatoes were cultivated and eaten in the United States long before Lola and Peggy arrived on the scene; so, at best, they can be credited with exposing the berry to the uninitiated. Tomatoes likely came the United States from a variety of sources, as they had been widely spread from their Mesoamerican origins. In 1820, a story is told that Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem, New Jersey, demonstrated to the public that they were edible and delicious.]
