“Young people liked to go to that house in Edwards Street (Hartford), and liked to be invited to the family country home, known as Esperanza. Yale boys were apt to spend a week or two there when college was out, the latter part of June, and there were always girls to go around. Picnics, rowing parties on West Hill Pond, straw rides with the oxen to draw us, private theatricals, charades, horseback rides, general good times kept us busy. All this was before what we know as weekends, and Mrs. Smith was criticized for inviting girls and boys together. Only the guest-house, Happy Thought, where the boys lived, saved the situation.”
That description comes from William Webster Ellsworth’s recollections of his first introduction to the family in the summer of 1876. The gaiety of the college summer parties were a fairly short episode, really from 1873/4-1878. Between 1879-1881, the summer parties still retained the core of the group drawn from (as WWE refers to them elsewhere) the ‘Yale boys’; but with Helen and WWE married, things naturally began to change. Summer parties came to a near stop following Lucy’s* death in 1881 and then picked up again after Julie’s death in 1883. They were now organized by WWE and Helen, and were mainly friends from the publishing, theater and art worlds. The range of activities remained the same, but with an ever greater emphasis on the performing arts, which seem to have been Helen’s passion.
This passage is also very interesting in regards to societal roles; and the more one considers it, the more complicated Julie’s position on the role of women apppears. It is no wonder she didn’t get along with Hartford’s society. However, one should not overstate the radicalism. Julie was always at great pains to advise her daughters on proper behaviour, and dearly wanted all of them to marry; furthermore while she laughed at Morris’ concerns over proper dresses for the girls, she did not think he was wrong.
Of course, one also wonders what New Hartford thought of all this…
*Lucy Smith Davis; Julie’s youngest daughter, died in February 1881 following a long illness probably connected to childbirth complications. Julie never recovered.
Acair Fearann 
I haven’t tried reading any of Julie’s books recently, but my long-ago impression was that the author had some very definite opinions on correct, morally-based behavior for young women (and men!) that came through in the novels. Might be worth another look, with her letters in mind.
I haven’t read them, ever… Probably would be worth a serious look; the difficulty with the letters as a source is they are not designed to be a coherent single treatise and the inconstancy of opinion becomes quite baffling. This is particularly evident with the topics of Hartford society, the roles of women, and religion. Julie seems to have been both unpredictable and vehement. The three things she never varies on as best as I can tell are her desire to be independent, her love of Morris, and her love of Esperanza (which is solidly bound to the first two).
I think what is interesting about these parties is that during the 1870’s the core group seems to have been primarily younger people, with the notable exception of the Yale family where the original relationship was between Julie/Morris and the Yales, rather than through or because of the girls. This is my current impression, however, I haven’t actually backed it up with the numbers…so a caveat!