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Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1998.
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South, or, The Southern Experience in
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Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st
edition, 1998
Copyright, 1910, by HARPER & BROTHERS
All rights reserved
Published April 1910
Printed in the United States of America
WITH
REVERENT TENDERNESS
THIS SIMPLE STORY OF MY LONG LIFE
IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER
FROM the time when, as a mere baby, I dreamed myself to slumber every night by "making up stories," down to the present hour, every human life with which I have been associated, or of which I had any intimate knowledge, has been to me a living story. All interest me in some measure. Many enlist my sympathy and fascinate the imagination as no tale that is avowedly fictitious has ever bewitched me.
I hold and believe for certain that if I could draw aside the veil of conventional reserve from the daily thinking, feeling, and living of my most commonplace acquaintance, and read these from "Preface" to "Finis," I should rate the wildest dream of the novelist as tame by comparison.
My children tell me, laughingly, that I "turn everything into a story." In my heart I know that the romances are all ready-made and laid to my hand.
In the pages that follow this word of explanation I have essayed no dramatic effects or artistic "situations." "The Story of My Long Life" tells itself as one friend might talk to another as the two sit in the confidential firelight on a winter evening. The idea of reviewing that life upon paper first came to me with the consciousness - which was almost a shock - that, of all the authors still on active professional duty in our country, I am the only one whose memory runs back to the stage of national history that preceded the Civil War by a quarter-century. I, alone, am left to tell, of my own knowledge and experience,
what the Old South was in deed and in truth. Other and far abler pens than mine have portrayed scenes of those days with skill I cannot emulate. But theirs is hearsay evidence - second-hand testimony as truly as if they wrote of Shakespeare's haps and mishaps in the grammar-school at Stratford-on-Avon, or of Master George Herbert's early love affairs.
True, the fathers told it to the generation following, and the generation has been faithful to the traditions committed to it. What I have to say in the aforesaid gossip over the confidential fire is of what I saw and heard and did - and was in that hoary Long Ago.
Throughout the telling I have kept the personal touch. The story is autobiography - not history. I began it for my children, whose importunities for tales of the olden - and now forever gone - "times" have been taken up by the least grandchild.
It was my lot to know the Old South in her prime, and to see her downfall. Mine to witness the throes that racked her during four black and bitter years. Mine to watch the dawn of a new and vigorous life and the full glory of a restored Union. I shall tell of nothing that my eyes did not see, and depict neither tragedy nor comedy in which I was not cast for a part.
Mine is a story for the table and arm-chair under the reading-lamp in the living-room, and not for the library shelves. To the family and to those who make and keep the home do I commit it.
MARION HARLAND.
NEW YORK CITY, November, 1909.
FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT
MY father, Samuel Pierce Hawes, was born in the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, July 30, 1799.
The homestead, still standing and reckoned among the notable sites of the region, was built in 1640, by Robert Pierce, who emigrated to the New World in 1630, having sailed from Plymouth, England, in the Mary and John, in company with others of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On the voyage, he married Ann Greenaway - registered as "Daughter of Goodman Greenaway," a fellow-passenger.
The family trace their descent, by old domestic and town records, from the Northumberland Percies. Traditions, cherished by the race, affirm that Godfrey of Bouillon was a remote ancestor. It is unquestionably true that "Robert of Dorchester," as he is put down in the genealogy of the Percies, was a blood relative of Master George Percy, John Smith's friend, and his successor in the presidency of the Jamestown colony.
The emigrants had a temporary home in Neponset Village, prospering so far in worldly substance as to justify the erection of the substantial house upon the hill overlooking
the "village," ten years after the landing. So substantial was it, and so honest were the builders, that it has come down in a direct line from father to son, and been inhabited by ten generations of thrifty folk who have left it stanch and weatherproof to this day.
My father's mother, a handsome, wilful girl of seventeen, ran away to be married to one whom her father - "Squire Pierce" - considered a presumptuous adventurer. He was from Maine, a stranger in the neighborhood, and reputed (justly) to be wild and unsteady. When he asked for the girl's hand he was summarily commanded to hold no further communication with her. He had served as private in the Revolutionary War; he had winning way and a good-looking face, and Ann had a liberal spice of her sire's unbending will. She would have him, and no other of the youths who sued for her favor.
The family genealogy records that "Squire Pierce," as he was named by his neighbors, received a captain's commission from the parent government at the outbreak of the Rebellion, and on the self-same day one from the Continental Congress appointing him as a colonel in the Massachusetts forces. As "Colonel Pierce," he fought throughout the eight bloody years to which we owe our national life.
In his home he was a despot of the true Puritan, patriarchal type.
For three years after the elopement the name of his daughter's husband was never uttered in his hearing. Nor did she enter the house, until at twenty, her proud spirit bowed but not broken by sorrows she never retailed, she came back to the old roof-tree on the eve of her confinement with her first and only child. He was born there and received the grandfather's name in full. From that hour he was adopted as a son of the house by the stern old Puritan, and brought up at his knees.
With the shrewd sense and sturdy independence characteristic of the true New-Englander, the mother was never forgetful of the fact that her boy was half-orphaned and dependent upon his grandfather's bounty, and began early to equip him for a single-handed fight with the world.
Within a decade I have studied an authentic and detailed genealogy of the Hawes stock from which my grandfather sprang. It is a fine old English family, and the American branch, in which appear the birth and death of Jesse Hawes, of Maine, numbers many men of distinction in various professions. It is a comfort to a believer in heredity to be assured that the tree was sound at heart, in spite of the warped and severed bough.
By the time my father was fourteen, he was at work in a Boston mercantile house, boarding with his employer, Mr. Baker, a personal friend of the Pierces. The growing lad walked out to Dorchester every Saturday night to spend Sunday at home and attend divine service in the "Dorchester Old Meeting-House," the same in which I first saw and heard Edward Everett Hale, over forty years later. The youth arose, in all weathers, before the sun on Monday morning in order to be at his place of business at seven o'clock. When he was sixteen, his employer removed to Richmond, Virginia, and took his favorite clerk with him. From Boston to the capital of the Old Dominion was then a fortnight's journey by the quickest mode of travel. The boy could hardly hope to see his mother even once a year.
At twenty-five he was an active member of the First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, established and built up by Rev. John Holt Rice, D. D., who was also the founder of Union Theological Seminary, now situated in Richmond. The young New-Englander was, likewise, a teacher in the Sunday school - the first of its kind in Virginia, conducted under the auspices of Doctor Rice's church - a partner in a flourishing mercantile house, and engaged to be married to
Miss Judith Anna Smith, of Olney, a plantation on the Chickahominy, five miles from the city.
I have a miniature of my father, painted upon ivory a few years after his marriage. It is that of a handsome man, with deeply set gray eyes, very dark hair, and a well-cut, resolute mouth. The head is nobly shaped, the forehead full and broad. His face was singularly mobile, and deeply lined, even in youth.
In intellect he was far above the average business man. His library, at that early date, was more than respectable. Some of the most valuable early editions of the English classics that enrich my book-shelves have his book-plate upon the fly-leaves. He had, moreover, a number of standard French books, having studied the language with a tutor in the evenings. The range of his reading was wide and of a high order. Histories, biographies, books of travel, and essays had a prominent place in his store of "solid reading." That really good novels were not included in this condemnation we learn from a brief note to his betrothed, accompanying a copy of Walter Scott's Pirate. He apologizes for the profanity of certain characters in semi-humorous fashion, and signs himself, "Your friend, Samuel."
Doctor Rice, whose wife was my mother's first cousin, appreciated young Hawes's character and ability; the parsonage was thrown open to him at all times, and within the hospitable precincts he first met his future wife.
She was a pretty, amiable girl of eighteen, like himself an omnivorous reader, and, like him also, a zealous church worker.
Her father, Capt. William Sterling Smith, was the master of the ancestral estate of Olney, rechristened in the latter part of the eighteenth century by an ardent admirer of William Cowper. I am under the impression that the change of name was the work of my grandmother, his second
wife, Miss Judith Smith, of Montrose, and a second cousin of "Captain Sterling," as he was familiarly called.
Late in the seventeenth century, William Smith, of Devonshire, a lineal descendant of the brother and heir of Capt. John Smith of Pocahontas fame, married Ann Sterling in England, and, emigrating to America, pitched his moving tent, first in Gloucester, then in Henrico County. His cousin, bearing the same name, took up land in Powhatan, naming his homestead for the hapless Earl of Montrose. The questionable custom of the intermarriage of cousins prevailed in the clan, as among other old Virginia families.
My maternal grandmother was petite, refined in feature, bearing, and speech, and remarkable in her day for intellectual vivacity and moral graces. Her chief associates of the other sex were men of profound learning, distinguished for services done to Church and State. Among them were the founders of the Presbyterian Church in Virginia. The Smiths had seceded from the Established Church of England before Thomas Jefferson rent it from the State.
There lies at my elbow a time-worn volume bound in unpolished calf-skin, and lettered on one side, "D. Lacy's Letters"; on the reverse, "Friendship Perpetuated." It contains one hundred and forty-two letters, copied from the original epistles and engrossed in exquisitely neat and minute characters. They represent one side of a correspondence maintained by the scribe with my grandmother before and after her marriage. The writer and copyist was the Rev. Drury Lacy, D.D., then a professor in Hampden Sidney College, and destined to become the progenitor of a long line of divines and scholars. The Hoges, Lacys, Brookeses, and Waddells were of this lineage. The epistles are Addisonian in purity of moral teaching and in grammatical structure, Johnsonian in
verboseness, and interfused throughout with a pietistic priggishness all their own. We are glad to carry with us through the perusal (in instalments) of the hundred and forty-two, the tales current in that all-so-long-ago of the genial nature and liveliness of conversation that made him a star in social life. One wonders, in hearing of the "perpetuation" of the brotherly-and-sisterly intimacy begun months before he wedded the "Nancy" of the Montrose group, who, from all I have been able to gather, was a very commonplace personage by comparison with "Judith" - one marvels, I say, that the affection never ripened into a warmer sentiment. They had themselves better in hand evidently than the "affinities" of the twentieth century.
Old people I knew, when a child, delighted in relating how, when "Mr. Lacy" held meetings in country church in Powhatan and Prince Edward, and his sister-in-law was in the congregation, everybody listened for the voices of those two. His was strong, flexible, and sweet, and he read music as he read a printed page. While she, as an old admirer - who up to his eightieth year loved to visit my mother that he might talk of his early love - used to declare, "sang like an angel just down from heaven."
She added all womanly accomplishments to musical skill and literary tastes. An embroidered counterpane, of which I am the proud owner, is wrought in thirteen varieties of stitch, and in patterns invented by herself and three sisters, the only brother contributing what may be classed as a "conventional design" of an altar and two turtle-doves perched upon a brace of coupled hearts - symbolical of his passion for the beauty of the county, Judith Mosby, of Fonthill, whom he married. Our Judith held on the peaceful tenor of her way, reading all the books she could lay her shapely hands upon, keeping up her end of the correspondences with Lacys, Rices, Speeces, Randolphs,
and Blaines, and gently rejecting one offer after another, until she married at thirty-three - an advanced stage of spinsterdom, then - honest Capt. Sterling Smith, the widower-father of three children.
Her husband was the proprietor of broad acres, a man of birth and fair education, high-minded, honorable, and devoted to his delicate wife. Nevertheless, the dainty châtelaine must, sometimes, have missed her erudite admirers, and wished in her heart that the worthy planter were, intellectually, more in tune with herself.
My own mother's recollections of her mother were vivid, and I never wearied of hearing them. My grandmother's wedding night-gown, which I have, helps me to picture her as she moved about the modest homestead, directing and overseeing servants, key-basket on arm, keeping, as she did, a daily record of provisions "given out" from storeroom and smoke-house, writing down in her hand-book bills-of-fare for the week (my mother treasured them for years), entertaining the friends attracted by her influence, her husband's hospitality, and his two daughters' charms of person and disposition.
This gown is of fine cambric, with a falling collar and a short, shirred waist. The buttons are wooden moulds, covered with cambric, and each bears a tiny embroidered sprig. Collar and sleeves are trimmed with ruffles, worked in scallops by her deft fingers. The owner and wearer was below the medium height of women, and slight to fragility. Her love of the beautiful found expression in her exquisite needlework, in copying "commonplace-books" full of poetry and the music she loved passionately, and most healthful of all, in flower-gardening. Within my memory, the white jessamine planted by her still draped the window of "the chamber" on the first floor. Few Virginia housewives would consent to have their bedrooms up-stairs. "Looking after the servants" was no idle figure of speech
with them. Eternal vigilance was the price of home comfort. A hardy white-rose-tree, also planted by her, lived almost as long as the Jessamine - her favorite flower.
In the shade of the bower formed by these, Mrs. Judith Smith sat with her embroidery on summer days, her little name-daughter upon a cricket beside her, reading aloud by the hour. It was rather startling to me to learn that at thirteen, the precocious child read thus Pamela, The Children of the Abbey, and Clarissa to the sweet-faced white-souled matron. Likewise The Rambler, Rasselas, Shakespeare, and The Spectator (unexpurgated). But Young's Night Thoughts, Thomson's Seasons, Paradise Lost, Pope's Essays, and the Book of Books qualified whatever of evil might have crept into the tender imagination from the strong meat, spiced. Cowper was a living presence to mother and girl. My mother could repeat pages of The Tas from memory fifty years after she recited them to her gentle teacher, and his hymns were the daily food of the twain.
The Olney family drove in the heavy coach over heavy roads five miles in all weathers to the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond. My grandfather had helped raise the money for the building, as his letters show, and was one of the elders ordained soon after the church was organized.
Thither they had gone on Christmas Sunday, 1811, to be met on the threshold by the news of the burning of the theatre on Saturday night. My mother, although but six years old, never forgot the scenes of that day. Doctor Rice had deviated from the rutted road of the "long prayer" constructed by ecclesiastical surveyors along the line of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication ("A, C, T, S") - to talk as man to man with the Ruler of the universe of the terrible judgment which had befallen the mourning city. He had even alluded to it in his sermon, and it was discussed in awe-stricken tones by lingering
groups in the aisles when service was over. Then, her little hand locked fast in that of her mother, the child was guided along the valley and up the steep hill to the smoking ruins, surrounded by a silent crowd, many of them in tears. In low, impressive accents the mother told the baby what had happened there last night, and, as the little creature began to sob, led her on up the street. A few squares farther on, my grandfather and a friend who walked with him laughed slightly at something they said or saw, and my grandmother said, sorrowfully:
"How can you laugh when sixty fellow-creatures lie dead over there - all hurried into Eternity without warning?"
I have never passed the now-old Monumental Church without recalling the incident engraved upon my childish mind by my mother's story.
In the volume of "D. Lacy's Letters" I found, laid carefully between the embrowned leaves for safest keeping, several letters from Capt. Sterling Smith to his "dear Judy," and one from her to him, written while she was on a visit to Montrose, her birthplace, with her only son. We have such a pretty, pathetic expression of her love for husband and child, and touches, few but graphic, that outline for us so clearly her personality and environment, that I insert it here:
"MY DEAR MR.
SMITH, - I am sitting by my dear Josiah,
who continues ill. His fever rises about dark. The chills are
less severe, and the fever does not last as long as it did a
week ago. Still, he suffers much, and is very weak. He has
taken a great deal of medicine with very little benefit. His
gums are sore. The doctor thinks they are touched by the
calomel. He was here this morning, and advised some oil
and then the bark.
"We have been looking for you ever since yesterday.
Poor fellow! He longs to see you - and so do I! I was up last
night, and I have been to-night very often - indeed, almost
constantly - at the door and the window, listening for the
sound of your horse's feet. I have written by post, by John
Morton, and by Mr. Mosby. I think if you had received
either of the notes I should see you to-night, unless
something serious is the matter. I am so much afraid that
you are ill as to be quite unhappy.
"My love to my dear girls and all the family. My dear!
My heart is sore! Pray that God may support me. I am
too easily depressed - particularly when you are not with
me. I long to see you! I hope I shall before you receive
this. God bless you!
"Your very affectionate - your own
JUDY.
"(Saturday morning.)
"We are both better. Josiah's fever is off, but he is very
weak."
The few letters written by my grandfather that have
been preserved until now show him to have been a man
of sincere piety, sterling sense, and affectionate
disposition. One herewith given betrays what a wealth
of tenderness was poured out upon his fairy-like wife. It
likewise offers a fair sketch of the life of a well-to-do
Virginia planter of that date.
His wife was visiting her
Montrose relatives.
"OLNEY, March 30th, 1814.
"With
inexpressible pleasure I received yours by Mr. Mosby
I rejoice that the expected event with our dear sister
has turned out favorably, and that you, my dear, are
enjoying better health.
"I hope that you will not be uneasy about my lonely
situation. Every one must know that it cannot be agreeable,
but when I consider that you may be benefited by it, and
even that your health may be restored (which we have
reason to hope for), what would I not forego to secure so
great a blessing!
"I have kept close at home, except when I went to
meeting on Sabbath, and to town to-day to hear from you.
During the day I have been busy, and at night have enjoyed
the company of good books until ten or eleven o'clock, then
gone to bed and slept tolerably well. I eat at the usual times,
and have as good health as usual. Thus situated, I will try
to be as comfortable as I can until God shall be pleased to
bring us together again.
"Some of our black people are still sick. Amy is much
better, and speaks plainly. Rose is but poorly, yet no worse.
Nanny is in appearance no better. Becky has been really
sick, but seems comfortable this evening. The doctor has
ordered medicine which will, I hope, restore her to health.
Oba was a little while in the garden on Monday, but has
been closely housed ever since. His cough is very bad, and I
suppose him unable to labor.
"I wish to come for you as soon as possible, and I would,
if I could, rejoin you to-morrow. The election would not
keep me, but I have business I wish to attend to this week,
and also to attend the meeting of the Bible Society at the
Capitol on Tuesday. I hope to see you on Wednesday. I
wish you to be prepared to come home with me soon after
that. With regard to Betsy, I don't expect she will be ready
to come home with us, and, if she could, I dread riding an
ill-gaited horse thirty miles. Mr. Mosby's carriage is to go to
Lynchburg in a few days, and he talks of returning home by
way of Prince Edward, and bringing the two Betsies home.
The carriage will be empty. I shall persuade him to be in
earnest about it.
"Now, my dear, I must conclude with committing you to
the care of our Heavenly Father. May He keep you from
every evil! Give my love to the dear family you are with.
May you be a comfort to them, and an instrument in the
hands of God to do them good! Kiss my little ones for me
and tell them I love them!
"Your own affectionate,
It was, likewise, an everyday matter with our planter that
five of his "black people" should be down "sick" at one time.
The race had then, as they have to our day, a penchant for
disease. Every plantation had a hospital ward that was
never empty.
A letter penned three years earlier than that we have
just read:
out with subscription-paper. I got 162 dollars subscribed,
with a promise of more. We have now about 1800 dollars
on our subscription-list, which sum increases at least 100
dollars a day. I hope, with a little help that we have reason
to expect from New York, we shall soon be able to begin
the work, which may the Lord prosper in our hands!"
The daughters of Captain Sterling's first wife were Mary
and Elizabeth (the "Betsy" of his letters).
She married Rev.
Thomas Lumpkin, whom she met on one of her visits to
Prince Edward County, where her aunt, Mrs. James
Morton, lived in the vicinity of Hampden Sidney College.
Her husband lived but seven months from the wedding-day,
and she returned to Olney and the fostering care of her
father and the second mother, who was ever her fast and
tender friend. There, in the house where she was born, she
laid in her stepmother's arms a baby-girl, born four months
later. The posthumous child became the beloved "Cousin
Mary" of these memoirs. She had been the
petted darling of
the homestead five years when her mother married again,
and another clergyman, whom I shall call "Mr. Carus."
He was a Connecticut man who had been a tutor in the
Olney household before he took orders. For reasons
which will appear by-and-by, I prefer to disguise his name.
Others in his native New England bear it, although he left
no descendants.
From my mother I had the particulars of the death-scene
in that first-floor "chamber" in the homestead,
when, on a
sultry August day (1820), "the longest, saddest day I have
ever known" - said the daughter - the dainty, delicate
creature who was soul and heart to the home passed away
from earth.
My mother has told me how the scent of white jessamine
flowed into the room where grief was hushed to hearken
for the failing breath.
Dr. Rice's niece leaned over the pillow in which the girl
of fourteen smothered her sobs in clinging to the small
hand so strangely cold.
"She does not breathe!" the weeper heard the friend
whisper. And in a moment more, "Her heart does not
beat!"
I have dwelt at length upon the character and life of my
maternal grandmother because of my solemn conviction
that I inherit what humble talent is mine from her. I cannot
recall the time when everything connected with her did not
possess for me a sweet and weird charm; when the fancy
that this petite woman, with a heart and soul too great for
her physique, was my guardian angel, did not stay
my soul and renew my courage in all good emprises.
Her profiled portrait hangs before me as I write. The
features are finely chiselled and high-bred; the expression
is sweet. She wears a close cap with a lace border (she was
but fifty-three at death!), and a crimped frill stands up
about a slender neck.
My fantasy may be a figment of the imagination. I cherish
it with a tenacity that tells me it is more. That my mother
shared it was proved by her legacy to me of all the books and
other relics of her mother she possessed at time of her own
decease, and the richer legacy of tales that mother's life and
words, her deeds of mercy and love which cannot but make
me a better woman.
The mortal remains of my patron saint lie in the old
family burying-ground. War, in its rudest shape, swept over
the ancestral acres for two years. Trees, centuries old, were
cut down; ruffian soldiery camped upon and tramped over
desolated fields; outbuildings were destroyed, and the cosey
home stripped of porches and wings, leaving it a pitiful shell.
Captain Sterling had fought at Germantown and Monmouth,
leading his Henrico troopers in the train of Washington and
Gates. And Northern cannon and Southern musketry jarred
his bones after their rest of half a century in the country
graveyard!
Yet - and this I like to think of - the periwinkle that opens
its blue eyes in the early springtime, and the long-stemmed
narcissus, waving its golden censers above the tangled
grasses, spring from the roots her dear hands buried there
one hundred years ago.
LAFAYETTE - REVOLUTIONARY TALES - PARENTS' MARRIAGE
MY father's wooing,
carried on, now at Dr. Rice's house in
town, now at Olney, progressed propitiously. During the
engagement, Lafayette visited Richmond. My father was a
member of the once-famous volunteer company, the
Richmond Blues, and marched with it when it was detailed
as a body-guard for the illustrious guest of the nation. My
mother walked at the head of her class of Sunday-school
children in the procession of women and girls mustered
here to do him honor, as was done in Trenton and other
towns. She kept among her treasured relics the blue-satin
badge, with Lafayette's likeness stamped on it in silver, which
she wore upon her left shoulder. The Blues were arrayed
in Continental uniform, with powdered hair. So completely
was my father metamorphosed by the costume that, when,
at the close of the parade, he presented himself in Dr. Rice's
drawing-room to pay his devoirs to his fiancée, she did not
recognize him until spoke.
I have heard the particulars of that day's pageant and of
Lafayette's behavior at the public reception award him by
a grateful people, so often that I seem to have been part
of the scene in a former incarnation. So vivid were my
reminiscences that, when a bride and a guest Redhill, the
former home of Patrick Henry, I exchanged incidents and
sayings with the great orator's son, Mr. John Henry, who
had been on the Committee of Reception in
1824. In the enthusiasm of his own recollections of the
fête he inquired, naively:
"Do you, then, remember Lafayette's visit to America so
well?"
The general burst of merriment that went around the
table, and Wirt Henry's respectful, half-distressed - "Why,
father! she wasn't born!" brought both of us back to the
actual and present time and place.
A large platform erected upon the Capitol Square was
filled with distinguished guests and officials. From this
Lafayette reviewed the regiments of soldiers, and here
he stood when the schools of the city sent up as their
representative a pretty little girl, eight or ten years of age,
to "speak a piece" written for the occasion by a local bard.
The midget went through the task bravely, but with filling
eyes and trembling limbs. Her store of factitious courage
exhaled with the last line reeled off from the red lips, and,
with a scared, piteous look into the benign face brought
upon a level with hers by the table upon which she had
been set, like an animated puppet, she cast herself upon the
great man's decorated breast and wept sore. He kissed and
cuddled and soothed her as he might pet his own grandchild,
and not until she could return his smile, and he had dried her
tears upon his laced handkerchief, did he transfer her to
other arms.
Major James Morton, of "Willington," Prince Edward
County, who married my grandmother's sister Mary, of
Montrose, had served under Lafayette and came down to
Richmond to do honor to his former chief. The Major's
sobriquet in the army was "Solid Column," in reference to
his "stocky" build. Although he had been on Washington's
staff, he did not expect to be recognized, after the lapse of
thirty years and more, by the renowned Frenchman, who
had passed since their parting through a bloodier revolution
than that which won freedom for America.
General Lafayette was standing at the head of the
ballroom (which was, I think, in the Eagle Hotel), where
he received the crowds of citizens and military flocking
to pay their respects, when he espied his whilom comrade
on the outskirts of the throng. Instantly stepping outside
of the cordon of aids and attendants, the Marquis held out
both hands with:
"Vy, old Soleed Coluume! I am 'appy to see you!"
A marvellous memory and a more marvellous facile
tongue and quick wit had the distinguished leader of
freedom-lovers! There lived in Richmond, until the latter
quarter of the nineteenth century, a stately gentlewoman
of the very old school whom we, of two younger generations,
regarded with prideful veneration, and with reason. For
Lafayette, who had seen her dance at the aforesaid ball, had
pronounced her, audibly, "the handsomest woman he had
seen in America." Time had handled her disrespectfully
by the time I heard the tale. But I never questioned the truth
of it until I found in three other cities as many antique
belles upon whom he had set a seal of the self-same pattern.
We were generously fed with authentic stories of
Revolutionary days in my far-off childhood. I have sat at
Major Morton's feet and learned of the veteran much that
nobody else wots of in our rushing times. I recall his
emphatic denial of the assertion made by a Fourth-of-July
orator to the effect that so grievous was the weight of
public cares upon the Commander-in-Chief, he was
never seen to smile during those eventful eight years of
struggle and suspense.
"Not a word of truth in it, sir!" Thus old Solid Column to
the man who reported the speech to him. "I was him at
Valley Forge, sir, and nobody there tried hard keep up
the spirits of the men. I recollect, particularly, one bitter
cold day, when a dozen or so of the officers were
amusing themselves and trying to get warm by jumping up
and down, leaping high up in the air and trying to clap their
heels together twice before they struck the ground in
coming down. General Greene was sure he could do it, but
he was fleshy and never light on his feet, besides being
naturally sober. He was a Quaker, you know, and was
turned out of meeting for joining the army. Well, on this
particular day he took his turn with the others in jumping.
And a poor hand he was at it! He couldn't clap his heels
together once on the way down, let alone twice. By-and-by
he made a tremendous effort and pitched over, head down
and heels up - flat on the snow. General Washington was
watching them from where he stood in his tent door, and
when General Greene went down - how the General
laughed! He fairly held his sides!
" 'Ah, Greene!' he called out.
'You were always a
lubberly fellow!'
"I am not saying he wasn't one of the
gravest men I ever
saw, as a rule, but he often smiled, and he did laugh
sometimes."
My grandfather's uncle and godfather, Sterling Smith,
was one of our family Revolutionary heroes. My mother,
who had a fair talent for mimicry, had an anecdote of the
old war-horse's defence of Washington against the oft-repeated
charge of profanity upon the field of Monmouth:
" 'He did not swear!' the veteran
would thunder when
irreverent youngsters retailed the slander in his hearing -
and with malice prepense. 'I was close behind him - and I
can tell you, sir, we rode fast - when what should we meet,
running away, licketty-split, from the field of battle, with the
British almost on their heels, but Gen'ral Lee and his men?
" 'Then, with that, says Gen'ral Washington,
speaking out
loud and sharp - says he, "Gen'ral Lee! in God's name, sir,
what is the meaning of this ill-timed prudence?"
" 'Now, you see, Gen'ral Lee, he was
mighty high-sperrited
always, and all of us could hear what was going
on. So he speaks up as haughty as the Gen'ral had done,
and says he:
" ' "I know of no one who has
more of that most damnable
virtue than your Excellency!"
" 'So, you see, young man, it was
Gen'ral Lee that swore
and not Gen'ral Washington! Don't you ever let me hear
that lie again!' "
A Revolutionary reminiscence of my mother's (or mine)
is always renewed by the sight of an Old Virginia
plantation-gate,
swinging gratingly on ponderous hinges and kept
shut by the fall of a wooden latch, two yards long, into a
wooden hook set in the gate-post. This latch is usually
nearly half-way down the gate, and a horseman
approaching it from the outside must dismount to lift the
heavy bar, or be practised in the trick of throwing himself
well over the top-rail to reach the latch and hold it, while
he guides his horse through the narrow opening.
My grandfather, "Captain Sterling,"
was at the head a
foraging-party near Yorktown when they were chased by
British troopers. The Americans scattered in various
directions and escaped for the most part, being familiar
with the country by-ways and cross-roads. Their captain
was closely pursued by three troopers to a high plantation-
gate. The Virginian opened it, without leaving the saddle,
shot through, shut the gate, and rammed down the late into
the socket hard. The pursuers had to alight to raise the
latch, and the delay gave the fugitive time to get away.
My parents were married at Olney, in Henrico County,
January 25, 1825.
The bride - not yet nineteen years of age - wore a soft,
sheer India muslin, a veil falling to the hem of the gown,
and white brocade slippers embroidered with faint blue
flowers. The bridegroom's suit was of fine blue cloth,
with real silver buttons. His feet were clad in white-silk
stockings and low shoes - "pumps" as they were
called - with wrought-silver buckles. Those shoes and
buckles were long preserved in the family. I do not know
what befell them finally The ceremony was performed by
the brother-in-law whom I have called, for the sake of
convenience, the Reverend Mr. Carus.
The girl had laughingly threatened that she would not
promise to "obey," and that a scene would follow the use of
the obnoxious word in the marriage service. The young
divine, with this in mind, or in a fit of absent-mindedness or
of stage-fright, actually blundered out, "Love, honor - and
obey, in all things consistent!"
As may be imagined, the interpolation produced a lively
sensation in the well-mannered company thronging the
homestead, and took rank as a family legend. How many
times I have heard my mother quote the saving clause in
playful monition to my masterful father!
The bride's portion, on leaving home for the house her
father had furnished for her in town, was ten thousand
dollars in stocks and bonds, and two family servants - a
husband and wife.
The following summer the wedded pair visited the
husband's mother in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The journey
from Richmond to New York was by a packet-ship, and
lasted for two weeks. My poor little mother was horribly
seasick for a week each way. To her latest day she could
not hear of "Point Judith" without a qualm.
She said that, for
a time, the association "disgusted her with her own name."
The mother-in-law, hale and handsome at forty-five, had
married, less than a year before, Deacon John Clapp, a well-
to-do and excellent citizen of Roxbury, and installed the
buxom, "capable" widow, whose father was now dead, as
the mother of four children by a former
marriage, and as mistress of a comfortable home. She had
not come to him portionless. The sturdy "Squire,"
mindful
of her filial devotion to him in his declining years, had left
her an equal share of his estate with her sisters. The brother,
Lewis Pierce, had succeeded to the homestead.
Mrs. Clapp appeared in the door of her pretty house,
radiant in her best black silk and cap of fine lace (she
never wore any other), her husband at her side, the little
girls and the boy in the background, as the stage bringing
her son and new daughter from Boston stopped at the gate.
At their nearer approach she uttered an exclamation,
flung up her hands before her eyes, and ran back into the
house for the "good cry" the calmest
matron of the day
considered obligatory upon her when state family
occasions demanded a show of "proper feeling."
The worthy Deacon saved the situation from embarrassment
by the heartiness of his welcome to the pair, neither of
whom he had ever met before.
The second incident linked in my mind with the important
visit is of a more serious complexion. I note it upon
Memory's tablets as the solitary exhibition of aught
approaching jealousy I ever saw in the wife, who knew
that her lover-husband's heart was all her own, then and
as long as it beat. I give the story in her own words:
"A Miss Topliffe and her mother were invited to tea
with us one evening. I had gathered from sundry hints
- and eloquent sighs - from your grandmother that she
had set her heart upon a match between her son and this
young lady. She even went to the length of advising me
to pay particular attention to my dress on this evening.
'Miss Topliffe was very dressy!' I found this to be true.
She was also an airy personage, talkative to father, and
supercilious to me. A few days afterward we were asked
to tea at the Topliffes. I had a wretched evening!
Miss Topliffe was rather handsome and very lively, and
she was in high feather that night, directing most of her
conversation, as before, to my husband. She played upon
the piano, and sang love-songs, and altogether made herself
the attraction of the occasion. I felt small and insignificant
and dull beside her, and I could see that she amused your
father so much that he did not see how I was pushed into
the background.
"I said never a word of all this to him,
still less to my
mother-in-law, when she told me, next day, that
'every one
of his friends had hoped my son would marry Miss Topliffe.
The match would have been very agreeable to both families.
But it seems that it was not to be. The ways of Providence
are past finding out!'
"Then she sighed, just as she might have
mourned over a
bereavement in the family. I have hated that girl ever
since!"
"But, mother," I essayed, consolingly,
"you knew he loved
you best all the time!"
"Of course, child, but she didn't! There was the rub!"
I can respond now. It always is the bitter drop at the
bottom of the cup held to the lips of the wife who cannot
resent her lord's innocent flirtation with "that other woman."
She knows, and he is serenely conscious of his unshaken
loyalty, but the other woman has her own beliefs and hugs
them.
In May, 1826, my brother William Edwin was born in the
cosey home on the slope of Church Hill overlooking the
"Pineapple Church." More than forty
years afterward, in
the last drive I had with my mother, she leaned forward in
the carriage to point out the neat three-story brick dwelling,
now in the heart of the business section of the city:
"That was the house in which I spent
the first three years
of my married life!"
Then, dreamily and softly, she related what was the
peaceful tenor of those first years. Her father was alive,
and she saw him often; her sister, "Aunt Betsy," and her
children kept the old home-nest warm for him; the young
couple had hosts of friends in town and country, and both
were as deeply interested, as of yore, in church-work.
Edwin was two years old when a single bolt from the blue
changed life for her.
My father's partner was a personal and trusted friend
before they went into business together. They had kept
bachelor's hall in partnership up to the marriage of the
junior member of the firm. It transpired subsequently that
the senior, who was the financial manager of the concern,
had "cooked" accounts and made
up false exhibits of the
status of the house to coax the confiding comrade to join
his fortunes with his. The tale is old and as common
to-day as when my father discovered that his own savings
and my mother's wedding-portion would be swallowed up in
the payment of his partner's debts.
It was dark and bitter weather that swept down upon the
peaceful home and blighted the ambitions of the rising
young merchant.
The man who had brought about the reverse of fortune
"took to drink." That was likewise as
common then as
now. My father paid his debts, wound up the business
honestly, and braced himself to begin the world anew.
In his chagrin at the overthrow of plans and hopes, he
somewhat rashly accepted the proposal that the fresh
beginning should be in the country. Richmond was full of
disagreeable associations, and country merchants were
making money.
Country "storekeeping" was then as
honorable as the
calling of a city merchant. In fact, many town-houses had
rural branches. It was not unusual for a city man to set
up his son in one of these, thus controlling the trade of a
larger territory than a single house could command. There
were no railways in Virginia. Merchandise was carried all
over the state in big, covered wagons, known in
Pennsylvania
as "Conestogas." Long-bodied, with
hooped awnings of
sail-cloth lashed over the ark-like interior to keep
out dust and rain, and drawn by six powerful draught-horses,
the leaders wearing sprays of bells, they were a
picturesque feature of country roads. Fortunes were
amassed by the owners of wagon-lines, the great arks
keeping the road winter and summer, and well laden both
ways. Planters had their teams and wagons for hauling
tobacco and other crops to town, and bringing back stores
of groceries and dry-goods at stated periods in the spring
and autumn; but between times they were glad to avail
themselves of the caravans for transportation of butter,
eggs, poultry, potatoes, dried fruits, yarn, cotton, and
other domestic products to the city, to be sold or bartered
for articles they could not raise.
In such a wheeled boat the furniture and personal
belongings of our small family were transported from
Richmond to Dennisville, Amelia County, a journey of two
dreary days.
Husband, wife, and baby travelled in their own barouche,
my father acting as coachman. Sam and Milly, the colored
servants, had preceded them by two days, taking passage
in the Conestoga. One November afternoon, the carriage
drew up at the future home of the three passengers. The
dwelling adjoined the store - a circumstance that shocked
the city woman. The joint structure was of wood, mean in
dimensions and inconvenient in plan. Dead leaves were
heaped about the steps. As Baby Edwin was lifted from the
carriage to the ground, he stood knee-deep in the rustling
leaves, and began to cry with the cold and the strangeness
of it all. Not a carpet was down, and the efforts of the
faithful servants to make two rooms home-like
for "Miss Jud' Anna" increased the forlornness of the
situation by reminding her of the habitation and friends
she had left behind.
It was a comfortless winter and spring. I fancy it was
delightless to the husband as to the wife - just turning her
twenty-first year, and learning for the first time in her
sheltered life the taste of privation. She loved her church,
her father and her sister and dear old Olney - unchanged
while she dwelt so far apart from them and it and home-
comforts; she was fond of society, and in Richmond she
had her merry circle close at hand. In Dennisville she had,
literally, no neighbors, and without the walls of her house
no palliatives of homesickness. The cottage was small; her
servants were trained, diligent, and solicitous to spare her
toil and inconvenience; her husband and her distant friends
kept her supplied with books, and as the period her second
confinement drew near she yielded more and more to natural
lassitude, spent the summer days upon the sofa or in bed,
reading, and rarely left the house on foot.
In direct consequence, as she ever afterward maintained,
of this indolent mode of life, she went down to the gate of
death when her first daughter, Ann Almeria (named for two
grandmothers), was born in June.
Providentially, an able specialist from another county was
visiting a friend upon a neighboring plantation, and the
local practitioner, at his wits' end, chanced to think of
him. A messenger was sent for him in hot haste, and he
saved the life of mother and child. The baby was puny and
delicate, and was a source of anxiety throughout her childhood.
A COUNTRY EXILE - DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN - CHANGE
I, the third child born
to my parents, was but a few
months old when my little brother was taken by my father
to Roxbury and left there with his grandmother.
This singular and painful episode in our family history
illustrates more clearly than could any mere description,
the mode of thought and action prevalent at that date
respecting the training and education of children.
Our parents lived in an obscure country village, a mere
hamlet, destitute of school and social privileges. The few
families who, with them, made up the population of the
hamlet were their inferiors in breeding and education; their
children were a lawless, ill-mannered set, and the only
school near them was what was known as "an old field
school" upon the outskirts of a plantation three miles away.
Little Edwin, a bright, intelligent laddie, was taught to
read and write by his mother before he was five. He loved
books; but he was restless for the lack of playfellows of
his own age. His father was bent upon giving him all the
learning that could be crammed into one small head, and
cast about for opportunities of carrying out the design. The
grandmother begged to have one of the children for a long
visit; schooling of an advanced type was to be had within a
stone's-throw of her door, and the boy, if intrusted to her,
would have a mother's care. My
father urged the measure upon his weaker-willed wife. She
opposed it less and less strenuously until the boy came in
from the street one day with an oath in his mouth he had
learned from one of the Dennisville boys.
"That night, upon my knees, and with a breaking heart,
I consented to let him go North," the mother told me,
falteringly, when I was a woman grown.
The father hurried him off within the week - I imagine
lest she might change her mind - and remained in Roxbury
three weeks with him to accustom him to his new abode.
His letters written during this absence are cheerful - I am
disposed to say, "obstinately optimistic." I detect, too, a
touch of diplomacy in the remarks dropped here and there,
as to his mortification at finding Edwin so "backward in his
education by comparison with other children of his age," and
the bright prospects opening for his future in the "excellent
school of which everybody speaks highly."
The day before his father left him, Edwin accompanied
him to Boston, and books were bought for his sister, with a
pretty gift for his mother. He had grown quite fond of his
grandmother, so the father reported when he arrived at
home, and the kind-hearted "Deacon was as good as
another boy."
Letters came with gratifying regularity - fortnightly -
from Roxbury. The boy was going to school and making
amends for his "backwardness" by diligence and proficiency.
I have laid away in our family Bible quaintly worded
"Rewards of Merit" - printed forms upon paper which
crackles under the fingers that unfold it - testifying
to perfect recitations and good behavior. The boy's name
and the testimonials are filled in by his woman teacher
in legible, ladylike script. The fortnightly epistles
told of the child's health and "nice" behavior. I fancy
that more stress was laid upon the last item by his
grandmother than
upon the first. My father expressed himself as satisfied
with the result of the experiment. The mother mourned
secretly for the merry voice and bonny face of her darling.
At the end of three months the longing leaped the bounds of
wifely submission, and she won from her husband the admission
that home was not home without his boy. They would go in
company to Roxbury next summer and bring him back with
them. If he were to be sent from home to school, they
would commit him to the Olney or Richmond kinspeople.
Roxbury was a cruel distance from central Virginia.
A month later two letters were brought to my father's
counting-room with the Richmond mail. One told of Edwin's
dangerous illness, the second of his death and burial. His
malady - brain-fever - was set down by the grandmother to
"the visitation of God." In view of his rapid progress in
learning, and the strict discipline of the household in which
he studied the lessons to be recited on the morrow, and
without a blunder, we may hold a different opinion, and one
that exonerates the Deity of direct interference in the work.
Be this as it may, the precious five-year-old had died so
far from his mother's arms that, had she set out immediately
upon receipt of the news of his illness, a month would have
elapsed between the departure of the letter from Roxbury
and her arrival there, if she had travelled day and night.
His earthly education was finished.
The stricken father, staring at the brace of fatal letters -
couched, you may be sure, in duly pietistic phrase and
interlarded with Scripture texts - had the terrible task of
breaking the news to the mother whose happy dream and
talk were all of "when we go North for our boy."
He carried the letters home. His wife was not in "the
chamber," where a colored nurse - another family servant -
was in charge of the two little girls. Hearing her footsteps
approaching presently, the strong man's heart failed
him suddenly. He retreated behind the open door, actually
afraid to face the gentle woman to whom his will was law.
Suspecting a practical joke, my light-hearted mother
pulled back the door, the knob of which he had clutched
in his desperate misery, saw his face and the letters in
his hand, and fell in a dead faint at his feet.
In the summer of 1863 I visited the little grave with my
husband. Civil War raged like a sea of blood between
North and South. The parents had not seen Edwin's last
resting-place in several years. I knew the way to the
secluded corner of the old Dorchester Cemetery where,
beside the kind old step-grandfather who loved the boy
while living, lies the first-born of our Virginia home.
The stone is inscribed with his name and the names of his
parents, the dates of his birth and death, and below these:
"Our trust is in the
Lord."
None of our friends in
Roxbury and Dorchester knew so
much as the child's name. The headstone leaned one way,
the footstone another, and a desolate hollow, telling of
total neglect, lay between. Yet right above the heart of
the forgotten boy was a tumbler of white flowers, still
fresh. By whom left we never knew, although we made
many inquiries. Dr. Terhune had the grave remounded and
turfed, the stones cleaned and set upright, and at the
second visit that assured us this was done, we covered
the grave with flowers.
In my next "flag-of-truce" letter, I wrote to let his
mother know what we had seen and done, and of the bunch
of white flowers left by the nameless friend.
Our grandmother treasured and sent home to his mother,
after a while, the child's clothing and every toy and book
that had been his, even a hard cracker bearing the imprint
of the tiny teeth he was too weak to set firmly in the
biscuit.
The preservation of the odd relic was the only touch of
poetry I ever discerned in the granite nature of my father's
mother.
With him the sorrow for his boy lasted with his life. Thirty
years afterward I heard Edwin's name from his lips for the
first time.
"No other child has ever been to me what he was!" he
said. "And the pain is as keen now as it was then."
Then he arose and began pacing the room, as was his
habit when strongly moved, hands behind his back, head
depressed, and lips closely folded.
He loved the child so passing well that he could sacrifice
his own joy in his companionship to what he believed to be
the child's better good.
After this bereavement the Dennisville life became
insupportably sad. I think it was more in consequence of
this than for pecuniary profit that my father, the next
year, removed his family to Lunenburg.
My mother could never speak of her residence in Amelia
County without a pale shudder. Yet that it was not wasted
time, I have evidences from other sources.
Part of a letter written to her at Olney in the early
spring succeeding the removal to Dennisville shows with
what cheerful courage my father set about church and
neighborhood work. Next to his home and the loved ones
gathered there, the church of which he was a loyal son had
his best energies and warmest thought.
of the house. His wife did not come with him on account of
the bad roads.
"He gave us for a text John xv: 25: - 'They hated me without
a cause.'
"The congregation was nearly, if not quite, as large as when he
preached the first time, and very attentive. Many express a wish
to hear him again. He gave notice that he would on the third
Sunday in March preach, and also mentioned that an effort would
be made to establish a Sabbath-school and Bible-class. It is
really encouraging to see readily many of the people fall into the
measure, without going from home, too. Fathers have given their
names to me, wishing to send their children, and several others I
have heard of who appear anxious to embrace the opportunity.
Doctor Shore and Mr. White dined with me yesterday, and quite
unexpectedly I had the pleasure of Doctor Shore, Mr. Bland, and
Mr. Lancaster at dinner with me to-day. So you see that I now
get The society of all the good folks while you are away. But
do not be jealous, for Doctor S. had not heard of your absence,
and apologized for Mrs. Shore and Mrs. Hardy not calling on you,
saying that he considered it as his and their duty so to do, and
they would not be so remiss for the future. You cannot imagine what
a rain we have had for the last twelve hours, accompanied with
thunder and lightning. All the creeks about us are impassable, so
that we live, I may say, in a corner with but one way to get out
without swimming, and that is to go to Prince Edward. We can
get there when we can go nowhere else. I have got a hen-house
full of eggs and have been working right hard to-day to make
the hens and an old Muscovy set on them, but they are obstinate
things, and will have their own way, so I have given it up as a
bad job. Don't forget to ask Mr. Carus for some of the big pumpkin
seed. By-the-by, Mrs. Branch had found out before I returned who I
was, where I lived, what I did, and, in fact, knew almost as much
about me as I did myself. These wagoners are great telltales!
To-morrow I pen a pig for you. The calves and cows are in good
order. I will try to have some fresh butter for you. Bose is in
excellent health, and the
rats are as plentiful as ever. You must kiss our little one
for me, and take thousands for yourself. I again repeat that
time hangs heavy on my hands when you are away, but I would
not be so selfish as to debar you the pleasure of a few days'
society with those who are dear to us both."
Quite unconsciously, he gives us, in this résumé of everyday
happenings, glimpses into a life at once primitive and refined.
The roads are all afloat, but three men draw rein at his door
on one day, and dine with him while his wife is away - "an
unexpected pleasure." He busies himself with chickens, eggs,
and pigs, cows and calves, reports the health of the house-dog,
the promise of Sabbath-school and church, and runs the only
store in that part of the county successfully. And this was
the first experience of country life for the city-bred man and
merchant!
The Lunenburg home was not even a "ville." A house that had
been a rural inn, and, across the road, a hundred yards down
its irregular length, "the store," formed, with the usual
outbuildings, the small settlement three days distant from
Richmond. My father and mother boarded for a few months with
Captain and Mrs. Bragg, who lived in the whilom "House of
Entertainment" on the roadside.
I was but two years old when there occurred a calamity,
the particulars of which I have heard so often that I seem
to recollect them for myself:
One cold winter day my mother left her little daughters
with their toys at the end of the large bedroom most remote
from a roaring wood-fire; told them not to go nearer to
it, and took her work down to Mrs. Bragg's chamber. The
gentle hostess had a baby but a week old, and her
boarder's call was one of neighborly kindness. On the
stairs she met Lucy Bragg, a child about my sister's age-
five - a pretty, merry baby, and our only playfellow. My
mother's discipline was never harsh. It was ever effectual,
for we seldom disobeyed her. She stopped Lucy on the
stairs to warn her not to play near the fire.
We played happily together for an hour or two, before
Lucy complained of being cold and went up to the fireplace;
stood there for a moment, her back to the fire and
hands behind her, prattling with the children at the other
end of the room. Suddenly she screamed and darted past
us, her clothing on fire.
My mother heard the shrieks from the distant "chamber"
on the ground floor, and, without arousing the sleeping
patient, slipped noiselessly from the room and ran with all
her might toward the stairs. Half-way up she met a child
wrapped in flames, which she was beating with her poor
little hands while she shrieked for help. My mother flashed
by her, escaping harm on the narrow stairway as by a
miracle. One glance into her own room showed her that her
girls were safe; she tore a blanket from the bed and was
back so quickly that she overtook the burning figure on the
lowermost stair, and wrapped her in the blanket. Captain
Bragg appeared below at the same instant, wound the cover
about the frantic, struggling creature, and extinguished
the fire.
Little Lucy died that night. Her mother and the baby
followed her to the grave in a week.
The tragedy broke up the Bragg household, and we found
a temporary home in the family of Mr. Andrew McQuie
(pronounced "McWay"), two miles from the store. The
McQuies were prosperous planters, and the intimacy begun
that winter continued as long as the older members of the
clan lived. We girls learned to call her "Grandma," and
never remitted the title and the affection that prompted it.
Our apartments were in the "Office," a detached brick
building in the corner of the house-yard - a common
appendage to most plantation-homesteads. At some period
of the family history a father or son of the house had
practised law or medicine, and used the "office" in that
capacity. It never lost the name.
And here, on a windy wintry evening, I awoke to the
consciousness of my Individuality.
I do not know how better to express the earliest memory I
have of being - and thinking. It was a living demonstration
of the great truth shallow thinkers never comprehend -
"Cogito, ergo sum."
I had fallen asleep, tired with play, and lulled into
drowsiness by the falling rain outside. I lay among the
pillows of the trundle-bed at the back of the room, and,
awakening with a cry of fright at finding myself, as I
thought, alone, was answered by my mother's voice.
She sat by the fire in a low rocking-chair, and, guided by
her reassuring tone, I tumbled out of bed and ran toward
her. In the area lighted by the burning logs, I saw her,
as in another sphere. To this hour I recall the impression
that she was thinking of something besides myself. Baby as
I was, I felt vaguely that she was not "all there," even
when she took me upon her lap. When she said, kindly and
in her own sweet way, "Did my little girl think her mother
had left her alone in the dark?" she did not withdraw her
eyes from the ruddy fire.
Something warned me not to speak again. I leaned my
head against her shoulder, and we studied the fire together.
Did the intensity of her musing stir my dormant soul into
life? I cannot say. Only that I date my conscious personal
existence from that mystic hour. The picture is before me
to-night, as I hear my daughter singing her boy to sleep in
the next room, and the lake-wind rattles the vines about my
window. The sough of the heated air over the brands and
embers; the slow motion of the rocker as we swayed to and
fro; my mother's thoughtful silence, and my small self, awed
into speechlessness by the new thing that had come to me;
my pulpy brain interfused with the knowledge that I was a
thinking entity, and unable to grapple with the revelation
- all this is as distinct as things of yesternight.
I have heard but one experience that resembled this
supreme moment of my infancy. My best-beloved tutor
related to me when I was twelve years old that he
"recollected when he began to think." The sensation, he
said was as if he were talking to himself and could not stop.
I had that day heard the epigrammatic "Cogito, ergo sum,"
and I told of my awakening from a mere animal to spiritual
and intellectual life.
I do not comprehend the mystery better now than on that
never-to-be-forgotten evening. I but know that the miracle
was!
A BERSERKER RAGE - A FRIGHT - THE WESTERN FEVER -
UP to this point of my
story, what I have written is
hearsay. With the awakening recorded in the last chapter,
my real reminiscences begin.
The next vivid impression upon my plastic memory has its
setting in the McQuie yard; My mother had been to
Richmond on a visit and brought back, as a present from a
woman who was said to be "good," a doll for my sister.
Perhaps she considered me too young to be intrusted with
the keeping of the rare creation of wax and real hair.
Perhaps she did not recollect my existence. In either case,
as I promptly settled within myself, she was not the good
woman of my mother's painting.
Not that I had ever cared for "dead dolls." When I could
just put the wish into words, my craving was for a "real, live,
skin baby that could laugh and talk." But this specimen was
so nearly alive that it opened its eyes when one pulled a
wire concealed by the satin petticoat, and shut them at
another tweak. Moreover, the (alleged) good woman in the
beautiful city I heard as much of as of heaven, had sent my
sister the gift, and none to me. Furthermore, and worst of
all, my sister paraded the gift before my angry, miserable
eyes, and, out of my mother's hearing, taunted me with the
evident fact that "nobody cared for a little girl whose hands
were dirty and whose hair was never smooth." I was barely
three years old.
My sister was a prodigy of learning in the estimation of our
acquaintances, and nearer six than five. I took in the case
with extraordinary clearness of judgment and soreness of
heart, and meditated revenge.
Watching an opportunity when mother, nurse, and sister
were out of the way, I stole into the office-cottage,
possessed myself of the hated puppet, who had been put
into my bed for an afternoon nap - lying there for all the
world like "a sure-enough baby," with her eyes fast
shut - and bore her off behind the house. There I stripped
off her gay attire; twisted a string about her neck;
contrived - nobody could ever tell how - to fasten one end
of the cord to the lowest bough of a peach-tree, armed
myself with a stout switch, and lashed every grain of
sawdust out of the dangling effigy.
I recollect that my sister, rushing to the scene of action,
dared not approach the fury into which I had been transformed,
but stood aloof, screaming and wringing her hands. I
have no recollection of my mother's interference, or of the
chastisement which, I have been told, was inflicted with the
self-same rod that had mangled the detested doll into a
shapeless rag. In my berserker rage I probably did not hear
scolding or feel stripes.
My father rented the house vacated by the Braggs, finding
the daily ride to and from the store too long in the short
winter days. Soon after our return to our old quarters,
another boy was born to the bereaved parents - my brother
Herbert. He was but a few days old when "Grandma"
McQuie and her two daughters called to inquire after
mother and child, and carried me off with them, I suppose to
get me out of the way of nurse and mother. My whole body
was a-tingle with excitement when I found myself snugly
tucked up in shawls on the back seat of the roomy chariot,
beside the dear old lady, and rolling down the road. We had
not gone far before she untied and took off my
bonnet, and tied over my curly head a great red bandanna
handkerchief "to keep your ears warm." The warm color
and the delicious cosiness of the covering put an idea into
my head. I had heard the story of Red Riding Hood from
my colored nurse, and I had already the trick of "playing
ladies," as I named the story-making that has been my trade
ever since. I was Red Riding Hood, and my grandmother
was taking me away from the wolf. The woods we
presently entered were full of fairies. They swung from the
little branches of shrubs that brushed the carriage-windows,
and peeped at me from behind the boles of oak and hickory,
and climbed to the top of sweetbrier sprays writhing in the
winter wind. One and all, they did obeisance to me as I
drove in my state coach through the forest aisles. I nodded
back industriously, and would have kissed my hand to them
had not Grandma McQuie told me to keep it under the shawl.
My companions in the carriage paid no attention to my
smiles and antics. They were busy talking of their own
affairs, and probably did not give the silent child a look or
thought. A word or a curious glance would have spoiled the
glorious fun that lasted until I was lifted in Mr. McQuie's
arms at his hospitable door.
I never spoke of the "make believe." What child does?
The Bragg house was roomy and rambling, and nobody
troubled herself to look after me when I would steal away
alone to the stairs leading to the room we had occupied
while Mrs. Bragg and Lucy were alive, and sit on the steps
which still bore the stains of the scorching flames that had
licked up poor Lucy's life, and dreaming over the details as
I had had them, over and over, from my sister and
'Lizabeth, the colored girl whose life-work was to "look
after" us three.
Just opposite the door of our old room was one that
was always closed and locked and bolted. It shared in the
ghoul-like interest I gave to the scorched stairs, and there
was reason for this. The furniture of Mrs. Bragg's chamber
was stored here. Through a wide keyhole I could espy the
corner of a bureau, and all of a Boston rocker, cushioned
and valanced with dark-red calico. This, I assumed in the
fancies which were more real than what I beheld with the
bodily eyes, had been the favorite seat of the dead woman.
One wild March day, when the rain thundered upon the
roof over my head, and the staircase and hall echoed with
sighs and whistlings, my eye, glued to the awful keyhole,
saw the chair begin to rock! Slowly and slightly; but it
actually swayed back and forth, and, to the horrified fancy
of the credulous infant without, there grew into view a
shadowy form - a pale lady about whose slight figure
flowed a misty robe, and who held a baby in her arms.
One long, wild look sufficed to show me this. Then I sped
down the stairs like a lapwing, and into the dining room,
where sat 'Lizabeth holding my baby brother. I
rushed up to her and babbled my story in panting
incoherence. I had seen a ghost sitting in Mrs. Bragg's
rocking-chair, getting a baby to sleep!
The exemplary nurse was adequate to the occasion thrust
suddenly upon her. Without waiting to draw breath, she
gave me the lie direct, and warned me that "Mistis
wouldn't stan' no sech dreadful stories. Ef so be you
wan' a whippin' sech as you never had befo' in all yer
born days, you jes' better run into the chamber an' tell
her what you done tole me, Miss Firginny!"
I did not go. Suppression of the awful truth was
preferable to the certainty of a chastisement. Our parents
were strict in their prohibition of all bugaboo and ghost
stories. That may have been the reason we heard so many.
It certainly accounts for our reticence on subjects that
crammed our brains with fancies and chilled the marrow in
our young bones.
The wind, finding its way between sashes and under the
ill-fitting doors of the old house, no doubt set the chair in
motion. My heated imagination did the rest. Five minutes'
talk with my mother or one hearty laugh from my father
would have laid the spectre. She loomed up more and more
distinctly before my mental vision because I kept the
awesome experience locked within my own heaving heart.
Another thrilling incident, framed in memory as a fadeless
fresco upon the wall of a locked temple, is the Bragg
burial-lot, in which lay Lucy, her mother and baby-brother,
and Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Bragg's mother, who had followed her
daughter to the grave a few weeks before we returned to
the house. A low brick wall enclosed the plot, which was
overgrown with neglected shrubbery and briers. On a
certain day I set my small head like a flint upon the
execution of no less an enterprise than a visit to the
forbidden ground and a peep through the gates at the
graves! I had never seen one. I do not know what I
expected to behold of raw-head-and-bloody-bones horror.
But 'Lizabeth's hobgoblin and vampire recitals had
enkindled within me a burning curiosity to inspect a
charnel-house. Visions of skeletons lying on the bare
ground, of hovering spectres and nameless Udolphian marvels,
wrought me up to the expedition. The graveyard was a long
way off - quite at the bottom of the garden, and the walk
thither was breast-high in dead weeds. I buffeted them
valiantly, striding ahead of my companions - my protesting
sister, 'Lizabeth, and the baby borne upon her hip - and
was so near the goal that a few minutes would show me all
there was to see, when I espied Something gliding along
the top of the wall! Something that was white and
stealthy; something that moved without sound,
and that wore projecting ribbon bows upon a snowy head!
'Lizabeth emitted a bloodcurdling shriek:
"Ole Mis' Moore! Sure's you born! Don' you see her cap
on her hade?"
We fled, helter-skelter, as for our four lives, and never
stopped to look behind us.
The apparition did resemble the crown of a mob-cap
with knots of black ribbons at the sides. I saw, almost
as plainly as I had beheld her daughter's wraith, the form
hidden by the wall, picking her way over the brier-grown
enclosure.
I do not know how much longer we lived at the Bragg
house. Sure am I that I never paid a second call upon the
denizens of the half-acre defended by the brick wall.
Years afterward, my mother told me the true tale of the old
lady's pet cat that would not leave her mistress's grave,
having followed in the funeral train down the long alley and
seen the coffin laid in the ground on the day of the funeral.
The dumb beast haunted the burying-ground ever after,
living on birds and field-mice, and starved to death in a
deep snow that lay long on the frozen ground the second
winter of her watch.
Why the four-year-old child did not lose what wits were
hers by nature, or become a nerveless coward for the rest
of her days, under the stress of influences never suspected
by her parents, was due, probably, to a strain of physical
and mental hardihood inherited from a dauntless father.
It must have been shortly after this incident that,
coming into the dining-room one morning, I heard my
mother say to my father:
"My dear, Frank has the Western fever!"
Frank Wilson, a nice boy, the son of a neighboring
planter, was my father's bookkeeper and an inmate of our
house. He was very kind to me, and had won a lasting
place in my regard as the maker of the very best whistles
and fifes of chincapin bark of any one I had ever known.
They piped more shrilly and held their shape longer than
those turned out by my father and by various visitors who
paid court to my young lady cousins through me. So I looked
anxiously at the alleged sufferer, startled and pained
by the announcement of his affliction. He was eating his
breakfast composedly, and answered my father's "Good-morning
and is that true, my boy?" with a pleasant laugh. There
was not a sign of the invalid in look, action, or tone.
"I can't deny it, sir!"
I slipped into my chair beside him, receiving a caressing
pat on the hand I laid on his arm, and hearkened with
greedy ears for further particulars of the case, never asking
a question. Children of that generation were trained to
make their ears and eyes do duty for the tongue. I
comprehended but a tithe of the ensuing conversation. I
made out that the mysterious fever did not affect Frank's
appetite and general health, but that it involved the necessity
of his leaving us for a long time. He might never come
back. His proviso in this direction was, "If I do as well as I
hope to do out there."
When he had excused himself and left the table, my
father startled me yet more by his answer to my mother's
remark: "We shall miss him. He is a nice boy!"
Her husband stirred his coffee meditatively for a moment
before saying, without looking up:
"I am not sure that I have not a touch of that same fever
myself."
With the inconsequence of infancy, I did not connect the
speech with our breaking up the Lunenburg home the next
autumn and setting out for what was explained to us girls as
a round of visits to friends in Richmond and Powhatan.
We call ours a restless age, and the modern American
man a predatory animal, with an abnormal craving for
adventure. Change and Progress are the genii who claim his
allegiance and sway his destiny. In sighing for the peace and
rest of the "former times" we think were "better than these,"
we forget (if we ever knew) that our sires were possessed
by, and yielded to, unrest as intense and dreams as golden as
those that animate the explorer and inventor of the twentieth
century. My father was in no sense a dreamer of day
dreams of the dazzling impossible. He was making a fair
living in the heart of what was, even then, "Old Virginia."
He had recouped his shattered fortunes by judicious business
enterprise, and the neat share of her father's estate that had
fallen to my mother at his demise in 1829, placed her and her
children beyond the reach of poverty. The merchant was
respected here as he had been in Amelia, for his intelligence,
probity, courtesy, and energy. His place in society and in
church was assured. Yet he had caught the Western fever.
And - a mightier marvel - "Uncle Carus," the clerical
Connecticut Yankee, the soul of conservatism, who had
settled in the downiest of nests as the incumbent of Mount
Carmel, a Presbyterian church built upon the outskirts of the
Montrose plantation, and virtually maintained by that family
- sober, ease-loving Uncle Carus - had joined hands with
his wife's brother-in-law in the purchase of Western lands
and the scheme of emigration.
The two men had travelled hundreds of miles on horseback
during the last year in quest of a location for the
new home. My father's letters - worn by many readings,
and showing all over the odd and unaccountable brown
thumbmarks of time - bear dates of wayside post-offices as
well as of towns - Lynchburg, Staunton, and Charlottesville.
Finally they crossed the Ohio line, and after due deliberation,
bought a farm in partnership. The letters are
interesting reading, but too many and too long to be copied
in full.
Every detail of business and each variation of plans were
communicated as freely as if the wife were associated with
him in commercial as in domestic life.
Once, when he is doubtful what step to take next, he
writes, playfully: "Some men need a propelling power. It
might be well for you to exert a little of the 'government'
with which some of our friends accredit you, and move me
in the right direction."
When, the long journey accomplished and the purchase of
the farm completed, he returned home, he encountered no
opposition from his wife, but much from neighbors and
friends. A letter written to her from Lunenburg, whither he
had returned to close up his affairs, leaving her with her
brother at Olney, describes the numerous tokens of regret
and esteem of which he is the recipient. The climax of the
list comes in the humorous tale of how an old-fashioned
neighbor, Mrs. L--, "says it troubled her so much on New
Year's night that she could not sleep. She actually got up
after trying vainly to court slumber, lighted her pipe,
and smoked and thought the matter over. She was not
reconciled, after all. . . . When I take my departure it will be
with feelings of profound regret, and full confidence in the
friendship of those I leave behind."
The land bought in Ohio by the two victims of the
"Western fever" is now covered by the city of Cleveland. If
the two New-Englanders could have forecast the future,
their heirs would be multi-millionaires.
Behold us, then, a family of two adults and three babies
- the eldest not yet seven years old - en route from
Richmond to Montrose, travelling in a big barouche, with a
trunk strapped on the rack behind, in lumbering progress
over thirty-seven miles of execrable roads, just now at their
worst after a week of autumnal rains.
The damp discomfort of the journey is present with me
now. The sun did not shine all day long; the raw air pierced
to the bones; the baby was cross; my mother was not well,
and my sister and myself were cramped by long sitting upon
the back seat. Our horses were strong, but mud-holes were
deep, the red clay was adhesive, and the corduroy
causeways jarred us to soreness. It was late in the day
when we turned from the highway toward the gate of the
Montrose plantation. We were seen from the house, and a
colored lad of fifteen or thereabouts ran fleetly down the
avenue to open the great outer gate. He flung it wide with
a hospitable intent that knocked poor Selim - the off-horse
- flat into the mud. Once down, he did not offer to
arise from the ruddy ooze that embedded one side. He had
snapped the harness in falling, but that made no difference
to the fagged-out beast. The accident was visible from the
porch of the house, an eighth of a mile away, and four men
hastened to the rescue.
The foremost was, I thought, the handsomest man I had
ever seen. He was tall, young, as dark as a French man
(having Huguenot blood in his veins), and with a
marvellously sweet smile. Coming up to my pale mother, as
she stood on the miry roadside, he kissed her, picked up
the baby, and bade "Cousin Anna" lean upon his other arm.
My father insisted upon relieving him of the child; but the
picture of my delicate mother, supported in the walk up the
drive by the gallant youth - her favorite cousin of all the
clan - Josiah Smith, of Montrose - will never leave the
gallery of pictures that multiplied fast from this date.
I did him loving honor to the best of my poor ability as
the "Uncle Archie" of "Judith." I cannot pass him by
without this brief tribute.
A second and younger cousin, who seemed uninteresting
beside my new hero, took charge of my sister and myself,
and we trudged stiffly on to the ancient homestead.
An avalanche of feminine cousins descended upon us as
we entered the front gate, and swept us along through
porch and hall and one room after another, to the
"chamber," where a beautiful old lady lay in bed.
Her hair was dark as midnight; so were her eyes; her
cap, pillows, gown, and the bed-coverings were snowy
white. Her face was that of a saint. This was "Aunt
Smith," the widowed mistress of Montrose. She was of
The Huguenot Michaux stock, the American founders of a
colony on James River. During a widowhood of twenty
years she had, by wise management, relieved the estate
from embarrassment, brought up and educated six children,
and established for herself a reputation for intelligence,
refinement, and piety that is yet fragrant in the minds of
those who recollect Montrose as it was in its palmy days.
She was often ailing, as I saw her now. Accustomed as I
am to the improved physical condition of American women,
I wonder what was amiss with the gentlewomen of that
generation; how they lived through the protracted seasons
of "feeling poorly," and their frequent confinement to bed
and bed-chambers. The observation of that winter fixed in
my imagination the belief that genteel invalidism was the
normal state of what the colored servants classified as "real
ladies." To be healthy was to approximate vulgarity. Aunt
Smith was as much in her bed as out of it - or, so it seemed
to me. Her eldest child, a daughter and the most brilliant
of the family, had not had a day of perfect health since
she had an unhappy love-affair at twenty. She was now nearly
forty, still vivacious, and the oracle of the homestead. My
dearest "Cousin Mary," resident for the winter at Montrose
with her mother, was fragile as a wind-flower, and my own
mother fell ill a few days after our arrival at her mother's
birthplace, and did not lift her head from the pillow for
three months.
I have no data by which to fix the relative times of any
happenings of that long, long, dreary winter. It dragged by
like an interminable dream. My father was absent in Ohio
for some weeks of the first month. He had set out on a
second journey to his Promised Land when his wife fell ill.
He hurried back as soon as the news overtook him. But it
took a long time for the letter of recall to find him, and
as long for him to retrace his steps - or his horse's.
I have but a hazy recollection of his telling me one day
that I was five years old. I had had other birthdays, of
course, but this was the first I remember. It was equally, of
course, the 21st of December. There was no celebration of
the unimportant event. If anybody was glad I was upon the
earth, I had no intimation of the fact. I should not mark
the anniversary as of any note, now, had not it been fixed
in my brain by a present from my father of The New York
Reader, a hideous little volume, with stiff covers of
straw pasteboard pasted over with blue paper. My father
took me upon his knee, and talked to me, seriously and
sorrowfully, of my crass ignorance and disinclination to
"learn." I was five years old, and - this low and
mournfully, as one might state a fact disgraceful to the
family connection - I "did not even know my letters!" The
dear mother, who lay sick up-stairs, had tried, over and
over, to teach me what every big girl of my age ought to
know. He did not believe that his little daughter was a
dunce. He hoped that I loved my mother and himself well
enough to try to learn how to read out of this nice, new
book. Cousin Paulina Carus - a girl of sixteen, at home from
school on sick-leave, indefinitely extended - had offered to
teach me. He had told her he was sure I would do better
than I had done up to this time. He was mortified when
people asked him what books I had read, and he had to tell
the truth. He did not believe there was
another "nice" child in the county, five years old, who did
not know her a, b, c's.
I was wetting his frilled shirt-front with penitential tears
long before the sermon was finished. He wiped them with a
big silk handkerchief - red, with white spots scattered over
the expanse - kissed me, and set me down very gently.
"My little girl will not forget what father has been saying.
Think how pleased mother will be when she gets well to
find that you can read a chapter in the Bible to her!"
The story went for fact in the family that I set myself
zealously about the appointed task of learning the alphabet
in consequence of this lecture. I heard it told, times without
number, and never contradicted it. It sounded well, and I
had a passion for heroinism, on never so small a scale. And
grown people should know what they were talking of in
asserting that "Virginia made up her mind, the day she was
five years old, that she would turn over a new leaf, and be
no longer a dunce at her books." It may be, too, as I now
see, that the solemn parental homily (I always dreaded the
lecture succeeding a whipping more than the stripes) - it
may be, I grant, that something was stirred in my fallow
intellect akin to the germination of the "bare grain" under
spring showers. If this were true, it was a clear case of
what theologians term "unconscious conversion." Were I to
trust to my own judgment, based upon personal
reminiscence, I should say that I went to bed one night
not - as the phrase goes - "knowing B from a bull's foot,"
and awoke reading. Perhaps Dogberry was nearer right
than we think in averring that "reading and writing come by
nature." And that my time was ripe for receiving them.
I had outgrown my dislike of The New York Reader,
wearing most of the blue paper off the straw, and loosening
not a few of the tiny fibres beneath; I could read, without
spelling aloud, the stories that were the jelly to the pill
of conning the alphabet and the combinations thereof; the
spring had really come at last on the tardy heels of that
black winter. The grass was lush and warm under my feet;
the sweetbrier and multiflora roses over the Montrose
porches were in bloom, and the locust-trees were white
with flowers and resonant with the hum of bees, when, one
day, as I played in the yard, I heard a weak, sweet voice
calling my name.
Looking up, I saw my mother in a white gown, a scarlet
shawl wrapped about her shoulders, leaning from her
bedroom window and smiling down upon me.
I screamed with ecstasy, jumping up and down, clapping
my hands, and crying to my dusky playfellows, Rose and
Judy:
"Look! Oh, look! I have a mother again - as well as
anybody!"
Close upon the blessed apparition came her championship
of her neglected "middle child," against the
impositions of "Mea," Anne Carus, and a bigger niece of
Aunt Smith who was much at the homestead. On a happy
forenoon the mother I had received back from the edge
of the grave called me to her bedside, for, although
convalescent, she did not rise until noon.
Pointing to a covered basket that stood by her bed, she
bade me lift the lid. Within, upon white paper, lay a great
handful of dried cherries, a sheet of "peach leather," and
four round ginger-cakes, the pattern and taste of which I
knew well as the chef d'oeuvre of the "sweeties"
manufactured by Mam' Peggy, the Montrose cook.
"I heard that the bigger children had a tea-party last
night after you had gone to bed," she said, smilingly tender.
"It isn't fair that my little daughter should not have
share. So I sent Jane" - her maid - "down for these,
and saved them for you."
No other "goodies" were ever so delicious, but their
finest flavor was drawn from the mental repetition of the
exultant: "I have a mother again - as well as anybody!"
OUR POWHATAN HOME - A COUNTRY FUNERAL - "OLD MRS.
MY mother's illness of nearly four months deflected the
current of our lives. My father, convinced probably of the peril
to her life of a Western journey, and wrought upon by the
persuasions of her relatives, bought the "good will and fixtures"
of a store at Powhatan Court House, a village seven miles nearer
Richmond than Montrose, and thither we removed as soon as the
convalescent was strong enough.
Her husband wrote to her from Richmond en route for "the
North," where he was to purchase a stock of the "goods" upon
which the territory environing his new home was dependent for
most of the necessaries and all of the luxuries of life.
"I attended a prayer-meeting at Mr. Hutchinson's on
Thursday evening, and had the pleasure of hearing a lecture
from Mr. Nettleton. It was a pleasant meeting. I wish you had
been with me! To-day (Sunday) I heard Mr. Plumer and Mr.
Brown, both of whom were interesting. Mr. Plumer's subject was
the young ruler running to Our Saviour and kneeling down with
the inquiry, 'What must I do to be saved?' . . .
"Your brother was at church yesterday. His wife has fine boy
a month old. You have probably heard of the event,
although I did not until my arrival here. I am told he says it is 'the
prettiest thing that was ever seen,' and feels quite proud of this,
their first exhibition.
"There is great difficulty in getting to New York this spring. The
Delaware was closed by ice for two months, and up to the middle
of March this was eighteen inches thick. Merchants have been
detained in Baltimore from two to seven days, waiting for stages
to go on. The number of travellers was so large that they could
not be accommodated sooner. The steamboat runs from
Richmond to Baltimore but once a week, and leaves on Sunday
morning. Several of my acquaintances went on to-day. They were
urgent that I should go with them, but my determination is not to
travel on the Sabbath. I shall, therefore, take the land route to
Balto. . . .
"Goods are reported to be very scarce and high in all the
Northern cities. They are high in this place, and advancing every
day. Groceries are dearer than I have seen them since 1815, and it
is thought they will be yet dearer.
" 'That will do!' I hear you say, 'as I am not a merchant.' Well,
no more of it! I must charge you again to be very, very careful of
yourself. Kiss our little children for father. I shall hurry through
my business here as soon as possible and hasten my return to
my home.
"May the Lord bestow on you His choicest blessings and
grant a speedy return of health! Remember me in your prayers
Adieu, my Love!
"Your own S."
This was in the dark ages
when there was but one steamer per
week to Baltimore, and there were not stages enough to carry
the passengers from the Monument City to New York; when the
railway to Fredericksburg was a dream in the minds of a few
Northern visionaries, and the magnetic telegraph was not even
dreamed of. My mother has told me that, in reading the
newspaper aloud to her
father in 1824, she happened upon an account of an
invention of one George Stephenson for running
carriages by steam. Captain Sterling laughed derisively.
"What nonsense these papers print! You and I won't
live to see that, little girl!"
I heard the anecdote upon an express train from
Richmond to New York, his "little girl" being the narrator.
In those same dark ages, strong men, whom
acquaintances never accused of cant, or suspected of
sentimentality, went to evening prayer-meetings, and
accounted it a delight to hear two sermons on Sunday;
laid pulpit teachings to heart; practiced self-examination,
and wrote love letters to their own wives. If this were not
the "Simple Life" latter-day philosophists exploit as a
branch of the New Thought Movement, it will never be
lived on this low earth.
Our first home in the little shire-town (then "Scottville")
was at "Bellevue," a red brick house on a hill overlooking
the hamlet. Separated from Bellevue by two fields and the
public highway, was "Erin Hill," built by one of the same
family, which had, it is needless to observe, both Irish and
French blood in it.
Erin Hill was for rent just when Uncle Carus decided
to bring his family from Montrose - where they had lived
for ten years - to the village.
This is the fittest time and place in which to sketch the
pastor of Mount Carmel Church. Martin Chuzzlewit was
not written until a score of years later. When it was read
aloud in our family circle, there was not a dissenting voice
when my mother uttered, in a voice smothered by inward
mirth, "Mr. Carus!" as Mr. Pecksniff appeared upon the
stage.
The portrait was absurdly striking. The Yankee Pecksniff
was good-looking after his kind, which was the dark-eyed,
well-featured, serenely-sanctimonious type. He wore
his hair longer than most laymen cut theirs, and it curled
naturally. His voice was low and even, with the pulpitine
cadences hit off, and at, cleverly by Doctor Holmes as "a
tone supposed by the speaker to be peculiarly pleasing to
the Almighty."
His smile was sweet, his gait was felinely dignified, and a
pervasive aroma of meekness tempered his daily walk and
conversation. His wife, "Aunt Betsy," was the saintliest soul
that ever rated herself as the least important of God's
creatures, and cared with motherly tenderness for
everything else her Creator brought within her modest
sphere of action. In all the years of our intimate association
I never saw her out of temper or heard a harsh word from
the lips in which nestled and abode the law of kindness.
She brought him a tidy little slice of her father's estate,
which he husbanded wisely. He was economical to
parsimony, and contrived to imbue wife and children with a
lively sense of the need of saving in every conceivable way
"against a rainy day."
At ten years of age I asked my mother, point-blank, what
salary the church paid Uncle Carus. She answered as
directly:
"Three hundred dollars a year. But he has property of his
own."
Whereupon, without the slightest idea of being pert, I
Remarked, "If we were to get a really good preacher, I
suppose he would have to be paid more." And my mother
responded as simply: "No doubt. But your Uncle Carus is a
very faithful pastor."
I put no questions, but I pondered in my heart the purport
of a dialogue I got in snatches while reading on the back
porch one afternoon, when a good-hearted neighbor and
my mother were talking of the school to be opened in the
village under the tuition of Cousin Paulina, the eldest
daughter of Aunt Betsy and her second husband.
She was now in her eighteenth year, a graduate of a
somewhat noted "female" seminary, decidedly pretty, with
a quick temper and a talent for teaching.
"It is a pity," said the friendly visitor, "to tie her down to
a school-room when she is just at the age when girls like to
see company and go round with other young people. It isn't
as if they were obliged to put her to work."
My mother replied discreetly, yet I detected a
sympathetic tone in her speech.
The talk came into my mind many a time after the
sessions of the school began, and I saw, through the
window, young men and girls walking, riding, and driving
past, the girls in their prettiest attire, the young men
gallantly attentive, and all enjoying the gala-time of life
that comes but once to any of us.
If the dark-eyed, serious, eighteen-year-old teacher felt
the deprivation, she never murmured. I think her mother
had taught her, with her first word and trial-step, to believe
that her "father knew best."
The school - the first I ever attended - was in the
second story of an untenanted house on a side-street,
rented from a villager. It was kept for ten months of the
year. A vacation of a month in May, and another in
September, divided two terms of five months each. I
climbed the carpetless stairs to the big upper room six or
eight times daily for five days a week, for forty weeks, and
never without a quailing of nerve and sinking of heart as I
strode past a locked door at the left of the entrance.
Inside of that door I had had my first view of Death.
I could not have been six years old, for it was summer,
or early autumn, and I was walking my doll to sleep up
and down the main alley of the garden, happy and
bareheaded, and unconsciously "feeling my life in
every limb," when my mother called to me from the
window to "come and be dressed."
"I am going to take you and your sister to a funeral," she
continued, as a maid buttoned me up in a clean white frock,
put on my Sunday shoes, and brushed the rebellious mop of
hair that was never smooth for ten minutes in the day.
"May I take my doll?" asked I, "sh-sh-ing" her in a
cuddling arm. I was trying very hard to love lifeless dolls.
"Shame on you, Miss Firginny!" put in the maid, for all the
world as if I had spoken in church. "Did anybody ever see
sech another chile fur sayin' things?" she added to my
mother.
Mea looked properly shocked; my mother, ever light of
heart, and inclined to let unimportant mistakes pass, smiled.
"We don't take dolls to funerals, my daughter. It would
not be right."
I did not push inquiries as to the nature of the
entertainment to which we were bound, albeit the word,
already familiar to me by reason of two or three repetitions,
was not in my vocabulary an hour ago. Content and
pleased in the knowledge that an outing was on foot, I put
my doll to bed in a closet under the stairs used by Mea and
myself as a "baby-house," shut the door to keep Argus and
Rigo - sprightly puppies with inquisitive noses - from
tearing her limb from limb, as they had rent her immediate
predecessor, and sallied forth. The roadside was thick with
sheep-mint and wild hoarhound and tansy. I bruised them in
dancing along in front of my mother and my sober sister.
The bitter-sweet smell arose to my nostrils to be blent
forever in imagination with the event of the day.
A dozen or more carriages were in the road before the
shabby frame house I had heard spoken of as "old Mrs.
O'Hara's," but which I had never entered. Eight or ten
horses were tethered to the fence, and a group of men
loitered about the door. As we went up the steps I saw
that the parlor was full of villagers. Some were sitting;
more were standing in a kind of expectant way; all were so
grave that my spirits fell to church-temperature. Something
solemn was going on. Just inside of the parlor door the
mother of my most intimate girl-friend sat in a rocking-chair.
She had on a black silk dress and her best bonnet. Every
woman present wore black. I saw Mrs. D. beckon up Major
Goode, an elderly beau who was a notable figure in the
neighborhood, and whisper audibly to him, "If you want
more chairs, you may send over to our house for them."
It was evidently a great function, for Mrs. D. was a
notable housekeeper, and her furniture the finest in the
place. Her drawing-room chairs were heavy mahogany, and
upholstered with black horsehair. Her house, altogether
the best within a radius of several miles, was not
a hundred yards from the O'Hara cottage; but that she
should make the neighborly offer thrilled me into nameless
awe.
My mother moved forward slowly, holding my hand fast
in hers, and I was led, without warning, up to a long, black,
open box, set upon two chairs, one at each end. In the long,
black box lay a woman I had never seen before. She was
awfully white; her eyes were shut; she looked peaceful,
even happy; but she was not asleep. No sleeping creature
was ever so moveless and marble-pale. Her terrible
stillness impressed me most painfully by its very unlikeness
to the heaving, palpitating crowd about her. A mob-cap
with a closely fluted border framed the face; she was
dressed in a long cambric gown of a pattern entirely new
to me. It lay in moveless plaits as stiff as paper from her
chin to her feet, which it hid; it was pinked in tiny points at
the bottom of the skirt and the cuffs;
the hands, crossed at the wrists as no living hands are ever
laid, were bound at the crossing with white satin ribbon.
Under the moveless figure was a cambric sheet, also
pinked at the edges, that fell straight to the floor over the
sides of the coffin.
I must have pinched my mother's hand with my tightening
fingers, for she eyed me in grave surprise, not unmixed
with reproof, in taking a seat and drawing me to her side.
There was no place for children to sit down. I am sure that
she had not an inkling of the unspeakable fright that
possessed my ignorant mind.
From that day to this I have never gone to a funeral when
I could possibly keep away from it upon any decent
pretext. When constrained by circumstance to be one of
the party collected about a coffin, I invariably have a
return, in some measure, of the choking horrors of that
awful day. For days, sometimes for weeks afterward, the
dread is an obsession I cannot dispel by any effort of will.
Argue and struggle as I may, I am haunted night and day
by the memory of the woman whom I never saw while she
lived.
As if the brooding hush,
so deadly to my childish senses;
the funeral sermon, delivered in Uncle Carus's most
sepulchral chest tones, and the wild, wailing measures of
Why should we mourn
departing friends?"
sung to immemorial
"China" - were not enough to rivet the
scene forever upon my soul, a final and dramatic touch was
superadded. Two men brought forward a long, black top,
which they were about to fix in place upon the dreadful
box, when a young woman in black rushed from a corner,
flung herself upon her knees beside the coffin, and
screamed "Mother, mother! You sha'n't take her away!"
making as if she would push back the men.
"Harriet! Harriet!" remonstrated a deep voice, and
Major Goode, the tears rolling down his cheeks, stooped and
lifted the daughter by main force. "This won't do, child!"
Fifteen years later, sitting in the calm moonlight upon the porch-
steps at "Homestead," the dwelling of my chum, Effie D., I heard
from Mrs. D.'s lips the story of Mrs. O'Hara. Her cottage,
subsequently our school house, had been pulled down long ago
as an eyesore to the fastidious mistress of Homestead. At least I
got that section of the old lady's life that had to do with the
gray-haired Major Goode, a veteran of the War of 1812. Both the
actors in the closing scene seemed, in the review of my childish
impressions of the funeral, to have been too old to figure in the
tale.
"You can understand why nobody in the village could visit
her," concluded the placid narrator to whom I am indebted for
numberless traditions and real life-romances. "The funeral was
another matter. Death puts us all upon a level."
There was the skeleton of a chronique scandaleuse in the
bit of exhumed gossip.
OLD-FASHIONED HUSBAND'S LOVE-LETTER - AN ALMOST
"MY DEAR WIFE, -
Your esteemed letter of the 20th is at hand,
and it has relieved my mind to hear that you are all doing so
well. I suppose you expect a history of my movements here. Well,
on Saturday morning went to Boston; in the evening took mother
and called on all my Dorchester friends - stayed with some five
minutes, with others fifteen, etc. Sunday, went to church; very
dry sermon in morning; evening attended Mr. Abbot's church;
was much pleased with the preaching - text - 'And there came
one running and kneeling to Him, and said,' etc. At night attended
at same place what they call a 'Conference Meeting' - quite an
interesting time. Monday, went to Brookline - visited sisters. Tea
at Mr. Davis's; music of the best kind in abundance. Tuesday to
Boston in morning, evening at home to receive company. Quite a
pleasant afternoon; a good many Dorchester friends calling.
Wednesday morning as usual in the city; evening held a grand
levee: the street filled with chaises and carriages; some twenty or
more to tea. Really, my visit has created quite a sensation among
our good friends; some met yesterday afternoon who have not
seen each other for ten or more years. Don't you think I had better
come here oftener to keep up the family acquaintance? for it
seems to require some extraordinary event to set these good folks
to using their powers of locomotion. By-the-by, you must not be
jealous, but I had a lady kiss me yesterday, for the first time it was
ever done here, and who do you think it was? My cousin Mary, of whom
you have heard me speak. I have so much love given in charge
for you, my own dear wife, that it will be necessary to send
a part of it in this letter for fear that I should not be
able to travel with it all. I am especially directed to bear
from a lady two kisses to you from her, and they shall be
faithfully delivered when we are permitted to meet. You
don't know how many inquiries have been made after you,
and regret expressed that you did not come on with me.
Mother says, 'Tell Anna I should like for Samuel to stay
Longer, but know that he is wanting at home, so will not say
a word at his leaving.' She sends much love to her daughter
Anna. Father keeps coming in, and from his movements I judge
he is waiting for me to finish. You know he is clock-work,
so adieu once more. Give my love to the girls, and all
at the parsonage. Kiss the children for father. I must now
close my letter by commending you to the care and
protection of Him who preserves, guides, and directs us in
all things. May His choicest blessing rest on you, my dear
wife, and on the children of our love! Adieu, my dear wife.
"Your husband,
My father's namesake son, Samuel Horace, was born earlier
in the summer.
Although the month was June, the weather must have
been cold or damp, for a low wood fire burned upon the
hearth one afternoon as I crept into the "chamber" to
get a peep at the three-days-old baby, and perchance to
have a talk with my mother. The nurse, before leaving the
room on an errand, had laid the infant upon a pillow in a
rocking-chair (I have it now!) There was no cradle in the
house, and one had been ordered from Richmond. My
mother was asleep, and, I supposed, had the baby beside
her. Stealing noiselessly across the floor, I backed up to the
Boston rocker, in childish fashion, put my hands upon the
arms of the chair, and raised myself on tiptoe, when the
child (aroused, I fancy, by his guardian angel, prescient of
the good he would accomplish in the world he had just
entered, and compassionate of the remorseful wight whose
life would be blighted by the impending deed) stretched out
his arms and yawned. I saw the movement under my lifted
arm, and dropped flat upon the rug. I must have crouched
there for half an hour, a prey to horrible imaginings of what
might have been. My mother did not awaken, and the baby
went to sleep again. The shock would have been terrific to
any child. To a dreamer like myself, the visions that flitted
between me and the red embers were as varied as they
were fearful. Lucy Bragg's tragic death had killed her
mother and the baby-boy. If I had crushed our new baby,
my own sweet mother would have died with him. I saw
myself at their funeral, beside the coffin holding them both,
and my father shrinking in abhorrence from the murderess.
Forecasting long years to come, I pictured a stricken and
solitary woman, shunned by innocent people who had never
broken the sixth commandment, and cowering beside a briar-
grown grave, crying as I had read somewhere, "Would to
God I had died when I was born!"
I do not think I shed a tear. Tears were dried up by the
voiceless misery. I know I could not sleep that night
for hours and hours. I know, too, that I never told the
shameful thing - the almost murder - to a living creature
until it was ten years old.
I appreciate, most clearly of all, that my baby-brother
became from that hour, in some sort, my especial property.
The peculiar tenderness that has characterized our feeling
for each other, the steadfast affection and perfect
confidence in our mutual love that have known no
variableness or shadow of turning, for all our united lives,
may not have been rooted in the vigil of unutterable horror
and unspeakable thankfulness. I look back upon it as a
chrism.
Later in the year, another incident that might have been a
tragedy, stirred the even flow of domestic life. We had
finished prayers and breakfast, and my father was half way
down the avenue on his way to the village when we saw
him stop suddenly, retrace his steps hurriedly, enter the yard,
and shout to the colored butler who was at the dining-room
window. The man ran out and came back shortly, dragging
Argus and Rigo into the hall with him, shutting the front
door. My father was taking down his gun from the hooks on
the wall of the hall, and, without a word, began to load it.
One of the earliest of our nursery lessons was, "Never
ask questions of busy people!" My mother set the example
of obedience to this precept now by silence while her
husband, with set lips and resolute eyes, rammed down a
charge of buckshot into the barrel, and, saying, "Keep the
children in the house!" ran down the steps and down the
avenue at the top of his speed toward the big gate opening
upon the village street a hundred yards away.
From the front windows we now saw a crowd of men
and boys, tramping down the middle of the highway, firing
confusedly and flinging stones at a great yellow dog trotting
ahead of them, and snapping right and left as he ran.
Before my father reached the gate, the dog had turned
sharply to the right down a cross-street skirting our lower
grounds. A low fence and a ditch divided the meadow from
the thoroughfare. My father kept on our side of the fence,
raising his gun to cover the brute, which, as we could now
see, was slavering and growling hoarsely. A cry arose from
the crowd, and my mother groaned, as the dog, espying the
man across the ditch, rushed down one side of it and up the
other, to attack the new foe. My father held his hand until
the dog was within a few feet of him, then fired with steady
aim. The brute rolled over to the bottom of the ditch - dead.
That evening we were allowed to walk down the field to
see the slaughtered monster. That was what I named him
to myself, and forthwith began a story in several chapters,
with my father as the hero, and an astonishing number of
beasts of prey as dramatis personæ, that lasted me for
many a night thereafter.
The title I had chosen was none too large for the dog as
he lay, stark and still, his big head straight with his teeth
showing savagely in the open jaws. A trickle of water was
dammed into a pool by his huge bulk.
I held my father's hand and laid my cheek to it in
reverence I had not words to express, when my mother
said:
"You ran a terrible risk, love! What if your gun had
missed fire, or you had not hit him?"
"I had settled all that in my mind. I should have stood my
ground and tried to brain him with the butt."
"As your forefathers did to the British at Bunker Hill!"
exulted I, inwardly.
Be sure the sentence was not uttered. The recollection of
the inner life, in which I was wont to think out such sayings,
has made me more tolerant with so-called priggish children
than most of their elders are prone to be.
One paragraph of our next
letter has a distinctly
modern flavor. By substituting millions for thousands in
the estimate of the defalcation, we might date it in this
year of our Lord.
"RICHMOND, April 11th, 1839.
MY DEAR WIFE, - The
general subject, and, in fact, the
only one which at present occupies the minds of the
citizens here, is the late discovery of defalcations of my
old friend D., first teller of the Bank of Virginia, for
the sum, as reports say, of nearly, or quite half a million.
He has absconded, but some individuals here have had part
of the cash; among the number is the great speculator,
W. D. G., who has ruined and also severely injured many
persons in this place by borrowing, or getting them to
endorse for him. I never have before witnessed so general
an excitement here. Mr. G. has been arrested to-day, and
taken before the mayor. It is now nine o'clock and the
court is still in session. It is probable he will be
sent to the higher court for trial, etc. I expect a good
many of our plain country folks will be afraid of Bank of
Virginia notes when they hear of the loss. I hope it will
make some of them shell out and pay me all that they owe.
I should like to find a few thousands waiting for me on my
return home I expect to-morrow to attend the Sabbath-school
at the Second Church, conducted by Mr. Reeve. It is
said to be the best school in the city. Tell Herbert I have
bought a book called Cobwebs to Catch Flies, and I hope it
will be the means of catching from him many good lessons.
He must learn fast, as I have bought for him Sanford and
Merton, with plates, and when he can read he shall have it
for his own. May I not hope for a letter from you on
Tuesday? - for it seems a long time since we parted."
wore a widow's cap and a bombazine gown, and she was the
only woman I ever heard pray until I was over fourteen
years of age. There were a dozen girls in the class, which
met in a one-roomed building in a lot adjoining her garden.
We had no public schools at that date in Virginia. We were
all paid pupils, and carefully selected from families in
our own class. Those from Presbyterian families
out-numbered the rest, but no objection was made by our
parents to the "methods" of the Wesleyan relict. The
tenets of the two churches were the same in the main.
Discrepancies in the matter of free agency,
predestination, and falling from grace were adjudged of
minor importance in the present case. Mrs. Bass was not
likely to trench upon them in the tuition of pupils of tender
age. I more than suspect that there would have been a
strong objection made to intrusting us to a Baptist, who
would not lose an opportunity of inculcating the heresy
that "baptize" meant, always and everywhere in the Bible,
immersion. And every school was opened daily by Bible-
reading. To this our black-robed, sweet-faced instructress
joined audible petitions, and in our reading and the lessons
that followed she let slip no chance of working in moral
and religious precepts.
Let one example suffice:
One of our recitations was spelling, with the definitions,
from Walker's Dictionary. Betty Mosby, a pretty girl with a
worldly father and a compliant mother, had learned to
dance, and had actually attended a kind of "Hunt Ball,"
given in the vicinity by her father's sister. She had
descanted volubly upon the festivities to us in "playtimes,"
describing her dress and the number of dances in which she
figured with "grown-up gentlemen," and the hearts of her
listeners burned within us as we listened and longed.
On this day the word "heaven" fell to me to spell and
define. This done, the "improvement" came in Mrs. Bass's
best class-meeting tone:
"Heaven! I hope and pray you may get there, Virginia!
You ought not to fail of the abundant entrance, for your
parents are devout Christians and set you a good example,
but from him to whom much is given shall much be
required. Next! 'Heavenly!' "
Near the foot of the column stood "Hell."
Anne Carus rendered it with modest confidence, spelling
and defining in a subdued tone befitting the direful
mono-syllable. That she was a minister's daughter was felt by
us all to lend her a purchase in handling the theme. Mrs. Bass
was not to be cheated of her "application":
"HELL!" she iterated in accents that conveyed the idea
of recoiling from an abyss. "Ah-h-h! I wonder which of
my little scholars will lie down in everlasting burnings?"
"Mercy! I hope I won't!" cried Betty Mosby, with a
shiver of well-acted terror.
She was a born sensationalist, and quick to voice
sensation.
The teacher's groan was that of the trained exhorter:
"I can't answer for that, Betty, if you will dance and go
to balls!"
That was her "Firstly." There were at least six heads and
two applications in the lecture "in season" trailing at its
heels.
We took it all as a matter of course. Each teacher had
ways of his, and her own. Those of our relict were innocent,
and our parents did not intermeddle. We were very happy
under her tutelage. On Saturdays she had a class in
"theorem painting." That was what she called it, and we
thought it a high-sounding title. Decorators know it as one
style of frescoing. Pinks, roses, dahlias, tulips, and other
flowers with well-defined petals, also birds and butterflies,
were cut out of oiled paper. Through the openings left
by removing the outlined pattern, paint was rubbed
upon card-board laid underneath the oiled paper. I
have somewhere still a brick-red pink thus transferred
to bristol-board - a fearful production. I knew no better
than to accept it thankfully when Mrs. Bass had written on
the back, "To my dear pupil, M. V. H., from her affectionate
Teacher," and gave it to me with a kiss on the last day of
the term.
She gave up the school and left the county at the close of
that term, going to live with a brother in another part of the
State. I heard, several years later, that she had "professed
sanctification" at a Lynchburg camp-meeting. Nowadays,
they would say she "had entered upon the Higher Life."
She must have found, long ago, the abundant entrance
into that Highest Life where creeds and threatenings are
abolished. Her benign administration was to me a summer
calm that held no presage of the morrow's storm.
MY FIRST TUTOR - THE
REIGN OF TERROR
LATE in the October
vacation the tranquil routine of our
household was stirred by news of import to us children. We
were to have a tutor of our own, and a school-room under
our roof in true Old Virginia style - a fashion transplanted
from the mother-country, eight generations before.
Our father "did not believe in boarding-schools," holding
that parents shirked a sacred duty in putting the moral and
mental training of their offspring into the hands of hirelings,
and sending them away from home at the formative age, just
when girls and boys are most in need of the mother's love
and watchful care of their health and principles. Yet he fully
appreciated the deficiencies of the small private schools we
had attended, and would not hearken for a moment to the
suggestion that we should be entered as day-scholars in the
"Old-Field School," which prefigured the Co-educational
Institute of to-day. "Nice" girls and well-born boys attended
a school of this kind, and lads were prepared for college
there. The master was himself a college graduate. And the
school was within easy distance of Scottville.
"Too much of an omnium gatherum to suit my taste!" I
had overheard my father say to a friend who urged the
advantages of this place, adding that B. L. was "a good
teacher and fair classical scholar." "He may be proficient in
the classics, but he spells the name of one dead language,
'Latten.' I saw it in his own handwriting.
I doubt not that he can parse in that tongue. I believe him
capable of talking of the 'three R's.' My children may never
become accomplished, but they shall be able to write and
speak - and spell - their mother-tongue correctly!"
Besides Mea and myself there were to be in the home-class
ten other pupils, the daughters of personal friends of
like mind with the independent thinker, and my brother
Herbert, lately inducted into the integuments distinctive of
his sex, was to have his trial taste of schooling. Our mother
had taught us all to read and to write before committing our
scholastic education to other hands. I fancy we may
attribute to her training in the rudiments of learning the
gratifying circumstance that one and all of her children have
spelled - as did both parents - with absolute correctness.
The big dining-room in the left wing of the rambling house
to which we had removed from Bellevue when the owner
desired to take possession of it, was to be divided by a
partition into school-room and hall; a room opening from the
former would be the tutor's chamber, and an apartment in
another wing was to be the dining-room. Among other
charming changes in house and family, Dorinda Moody, a
ward of my father's of whom I was particularly fond, was
to live with us and attend "our school."
I trod upon air all day long, and dismissed the fairy and
wonder tales, with which I was wont to dream myself to
sleep nightly, for visions of the real and present. "Our
Tutor" - a title I rolled as a sweet morsel under my restless
tongue - was a divinity student from Union Theological
Seminary, in Prince Edward County. The widow of the
founder of this school of the prophets, and the former
pastor of my parents, lived in the immediate neighborhood
of the seminary, and was the intermediary in the
transaction. Through her my father was put into communication
with the faculty - scholars and gentlemen all of
them!! - who agreed in recommending the student whom I
have dubbed "Mr. Tayloe" in my Old-Field School-Girl.
(The significance of the twin exclamation-points will be
manifest in the next few pages.)
The sun had shivered out of sight below the horizon on a
raw November day when I returned home after a tramp
over soaked and sere fields, attended by my young maid and
her elder sister - "bright" mulattoes - and was met in the
end-porch by their mother, my mother's personal attendant
and the supervisor of nursery-tenants. She was the prettiest
mulatto I have ever seen, owing her regular features and
long hair, as she was proud of telling, to an Indian ancestor.
He had entailed upon her the additional bequest of a
peppery temper, and it was on deck now. She was full of
bustle and tartly consequential.
"Lordy, Miss Virginny! whar have you been traipsin' so late
with jus' these chillun to look after you? It's pretty nigh
plum dark, an' you, a young lady, cavortin' roun' the country
like a tom-boy!"
She hauled me into the house while she talked, and pulled
off my shawl and hood, scolding vehemently at the sight of
my muddy shoes, and promising Molly and Paulina a
whipping apiece for not bringing me back sooner.
I cared not one whit for her scolding after I heard the
news with which she was laden.
Mr. Tayloe had come! My dream-castle had settled into
stability upon rock bottom.
Ten minutes afterward the school-room door was pushed
open timidly, and a childish figure appeared upon the
threshold. I was rather tall for my years, and as lean and
lithe as a greyhound. My touzled hair had been wet and
sleeked by Mary Anne's vigorous fingers. I wore a brown
"circassian" frock and a spandy clean white apron. The
room was comfortably furnished with desks and
chairs, now pushed to the wall, the carpeted area about the
hearth being intended as a sitting-room for the tutor. There
were a table, a desk, and four or five chairs. The room was
bright with lamp and firelight. In front of the red hearth sat
my father and a much smaller man.
His diminutive stature was the first of a series of shocks
I was destined to receive. I had expected him to be tall
And stately. Village wags - with none of whom he was
popular - spread the story that he intermitted his studies for
a year in the hope that in the interim he might grow tall
enough to see over the front of a pulpit.
My father looked over his shoulder and held out his hand.
"Come in, my daughter," in kindly, hearty accents. And,
as I obeyed, "Mr. Tayloe, this is my second daughter
- Miss Mary Virginia."
The hero of my dreams did not rise. There was naught
amiss or unusual in the manner of the introduction. I was
"Miss Virginia" to men of my father's age, as to youths and
boys. I was used to see them get up from their seats to
speak to me, as to a woman of treble my years. I looked,
then, almost aghast at the man who let me walk up to him
and offer my hand before he made any motion in recognition
of the unimportant fact of my presence. His legs were
crossed; his hands, the palms laid lightly together,
were tucked between his legs. He pulled one out to meet
mine, touched my fingers coldly, and tucked both hands
back as before.
"How do you do, Mr. Tayloe?" quoth I, primly respectful,
as I had been trained to comport myself with strangers.
He grunted something syllabic in response, and, chilled to
the backbone of my being, I retreated to the shadow of my
father's broad shoulder. He passed his arm about me and
stroked what he used to call my "Shetland pony mane." He
seldom praised any one of us openly, but he
was a fond father, and he and the "tom-boy" were close
comrades.
"I hope you will not find this young lady stupid, Mr.
Tayloe," he went on, the strong, tender hand still smoothing
the rebellious locks. "She is a bit flighty sometimes, but
she has packed away a good deal of miscellaneous information
in this curly pate. I hope she may become a steady student
under your care. What she needs is application."
Receiving no answer beyond a variation of the grunt, the
tutor staring all the time into the heart of the fire, the
dear man went on to tell of books that had been read aloud in
the family, as a supplementary course to what we had learned
in school, referring to me now and then when he did not
recall title or subject. I fancy, now, that he did this to
rid us both of the embarrassment of the first interview, and
to draw out the taciturn stranger who was to guide my mind
in future. Loyal as was my worshipful admiration of my
father, I could not but feel, although I could not have
formulated the thought, that the trend of talk was not
tactful.
Nevertheless, I glowed inwardly with indignation that the
third person present never once took his eyes from the
roaring fire, and that his face, round, fair, and almost boyish
in contour, wore a slight smile, rather supercilious than
amused, his brows knitting above the smile in a fashion I
was to know more of in the next ten months.
I have drawn Mr. Tayloe's portrait at full length in An
Old-Field School-Girl, and I need not waste time and
nervous tissue in repetition of the unlovely picture. He
was the Evil Genius of my childhood, and the term of his
tutelage may be called the dark underside of an otherwise
happy school-life. Looking back from the unclouded heights
of mature age, I see that my childish valuation of him was
correct. He was, in his association with all without
the walls of the school-room - always excepting the
servants, who took his measure amazingly soon - a
gentleman in bearing and speech. He was, I have heard,
well-born. He had gained rank as a student in the university
of which he was a graduate.
At heart and in grain he was a coarse, cruel tyrant,
beloved by none of his pupils, hated by my brother Herbert
and myself with an intensity hardly conceivable in children
of our tender years. I owe him one evil debt I can never
forget. Up to now I had had my little gusts of temper and
fleeting grudges against those who angered me. Save for
the episode of the doll-whipping recorded in an earlier
chapter, I had never cherished - if I had felt - an emotion
of vindictiveness or a desire for revenge. This man - this
embryo minister of the gospel of love and peace - aroused
in me passions that had slumbered unsuspected by
all - most of all, by myself.
From the beginning he disliked me. Perhaps because he
chose to assume, from the manner of my introduction to
him, that I was a spoiled, conceited child who ought to be
"taken down." Perhaps because, while I flushed up hotly
under rebuke and sarcasms that entered lavishly into the
process of "taking down," I never broke down abjectly
under these, after the manner of other pupils. Our father
had the true masculine dislike for womanish tears. He had
drilled us from babyhood to restrain the impulse to cry.
Many a time I was sent from the table or room when my
eyes filled, with the stern injunction, "Go to your room and
stay there until you can control yourself!" I thought it harsh
treatment, then. I have thanked and blessed him for the
discipline a thousand times since. Our tutor, I verily believed
then, and I do not doubt now, gloated in the sight of the
sufferings wrought by his brutality. I can give it no milder
name. I have seen him smile - a tigerish gleam - when he had
scolded the ten outsiders - the "externes," as the French call
them - into convulsive weeping. Mea and I felt the lash of
his tongue quite as keenly as the rest, but our home-drill
stood us in good stead.
He rarely found fault with her. She was a comely girl,
nearly fourteen, and womanly for that age, exemplary in
deportment, and an excellent student. It could never be said
of her that she "lacked application." If one thing were more
hateful to me than his surliness and sneers to me, it was his
cubbish gallantry to my pretty sister. He pronounced her
openly the most promising of his scholars, and volunteered
to give her private lessons in botany. Such tokens of
preference may have been the proof of a nascent
attachment on his part, or but another of his honorable ways
of amusing himself. It was a genuine comfort to me to see
that she met his gallantries with quiet self-possession and
cool indifference remarkable in a country girl who knew
nothing of "society" and flirtation.
I was the black sheep of the flock, as he took pains to say
twice or a dozen times a week, in the hearing of the school.
To me he imparted privately the agreeable information that I
"would never be anything but a disgrace to my parents; that,
in spite of what my father might say to the contrary, I was
stupid by nature and incorrigibly lazy." He rang the changes
upon that first unfortunate interview until I was goaded to
dumb frenzy. The persecution, begun with the opening day
of the term, was never abated. He would overhear from his
chamber window snatches of talk between my mates and
myself, as we played or sat in the garden below - merry,
flippant nothings, as harmless as the twitter of the birds in
the trees over our heads. When we were reassembled in
the schoolroom he would make my part in the prattle the
text of a lecture ten minutes long, holding the astonished, quivering
child up to ridicule, or stinging her to the quick with
invectives. When he lost his temper - which happened often
- he spared nobody. He went out of his way to attack me.
Lest this should read like the exaggeration of fancied
slights to the self-willed, pert youngling he believed me to
be, let me cull one or two sprigs of rue from the lush growth
that embittered ten months of my existence:
I cut my finger to the bone one morning (I carry the scar
still). My mother bound it up in haste, for the school-bell
was ringing. I got into my seat just in time for the opening
exercises. A chapter was read - verse by verse - in turn
by the pupils, after which the prospective divine "offered" a
prayer. He stood with his eyes shut and his forehead knitted
into a frown. We knelt with our backs to him before our
chairs around the room. It seems but natural to me, in
reflecting upon that perfunctory "exercise," that our reading
"in course" should never, during Mr. Tayloe's reign, have
gone beyond the Old Testament. We read that exactly as it
came - word for word. There was nothing of the New
Testament in his walk or conversation.
On this day we had a chapter in Kings - First or Second
- in which occurred a verse my father would have skipped
quietly at our family worship. Sarah L. was the biggest girl
in the class - in her sixteenth year, and quite grown up. She
dexterously slipped past the bit of Bible history, taking the
next verse, as if by accident.
"Go back and read your verse!" thundered the young
theologue. "I will have no false modesty in my school."
My cheeks flamed as redly with anger as Sarah's had
with maiden shame, as I followed suit with the next
passage. I resented the coarse insult to a decent girl,
and the manner thereof. I was faint with the pain of the
wounded finger, and altogether so unnerved that my voice
shook and fell below the pitch at which we were taught to
read aloud.
Out barked the bulldog again over the top of the open
Bible he held:
"What ails Miss High-and-Mighty to-day? In one of your
tantrums, I see. Read that verse again, and loud enough to
be heard by somebody besides your charming self!"
Where - will be asked by the twentieth-century reader -
was parental affection all this while? How could a fearless
gentleman like your father submit for an hour to the
maltreatment of his young daughter and the daughters of
friends who confided in his choice of a tutor?
My answer is direct. We never reported the worst of our
wrongs to our parents. To "tell tales out of school" in that
generation was an offence the enormity of which I cannot
make the modern student comprehend. It was a flagrant
misdemeanor, condemned by tradition, by parental
admonition, and by a code of honor accepted by us all. I
have known pupils to be expelled for daring to report at
home the secrets of what was a prison-house for three-
fourths of every working-day. And - strangest of all - their
mates thenceforward shunned the tale-tellers as sinners
against scholastic and social laws.
"If you get a flogging at school, you will get another at
home!" was a stock threat that set the seal of silence upon
the culprit's lips. To carry home the tale of unjust
punishment meted out to a school-fellow would be a gross
breach of honorable usage.
The whole system smacked of inquisitorial methods, and
gave the reactionary impetus to the pendulum in the matter
of family discipline and school jurisdiction which helped on
the coming of the Children's Age in which we now live.
The despotism of that direful period, full of portents
and pain, may have taught me fortitude. It awoke me to the
possibilities of evil hitherto undreamed of in my sunny life.
I have lain awake late into the night, again and again,
smarting in the review of the day's injuries, and dreading
what the morrow might bring of malicious injustice and
overt insult, and cudgelling my hot brain to devise some
method of revenge upon my tormentor. Childish schemes,
all of them, but the noxious seed was one with that which
ripens into murder in the first degree.
One absurd device that haunted and tempted me for
weeks was that I should steal into the tutor's room some
day, when he had gone to ride or walk, and strew chopped
horsehair between the sheets. The one obstacle to the
successful prosecution of the scheme was that we had no
white horses. Ours were dark bay and "blooded chestnut."
No matter how finely I might chop the hairs, which would
prick like pins and bite like fleas, the color would make
them visible when the sheets were turned down.
It was a crime! - this initiation of a mere infant into the
mysteries of the innate possibilities of evil in human nature.
I had learned to hate with all my heart and soul. In all my
childish quarrels I had never felt the temptation to lift my
hand against a playmate. I understood now that I could
smite this tyrant to the earth if I had the power and the
opportunity. This lesson I can never forget, or forgive him
who taught it to me. It was a new and a soiled page in the
book of experience.
Despite the continual discouragement that attended the
effort to keep my promise to study diligently, I worked hard
in school, partly from love of learning, partly to please my
parents - chiefly, it must be confessed, because I shrank,
as from the cut of a cowhide, from the pitiless ridicule and
abuse that followed upon the least lapse from absolute
perfection in recitation.
Mathematics was never my strong point, and the tutor
quickly detected this one of many weak joints in my armor.
There was meaning in the grin with which he formed me one
day, not long after Christmas, that he had set a test-sum
for each of the second class in arithmetic.
"If you can do that sum without, any, help, from, anybody,"
slowly, the grin widening at each comma, "you
may go on with the next chapter in arithmetic. If not, you
will be turned back to Simple Division. Of course, you
will do yours, if nobody else can work out the answer!"
Sneer and taunt stung and burned, as he meant they
should. I took the slate from his hand, and carried it my
desk before glancing at it. It was a horrible sum! I knew
it would be, and I forthwith made up my mind not to try to
do it. He might turn me back to Addition, for all I cared.
The worm had turned and stiffened in stubborn protest.
At recess I discovered that not another girl of the six in
our class had an imposition half so severe as my enemy
had set for me. The effect was totally unlike what he had
anticipated. My spirit leaped to arms. I would do the sum
and keep up with my class - or die!
I bore the slate off to my room as soon as school was out
that afternoon, and wrought mightily upon the task until the
supper-bell rang. My work covered both sides of the slate,
and after supper I waylaid my sister in the hall and begged
her to look at what I had done. She was the crack
arithmetician of the school, and I could trust her decision.
She sat down upon the stairs - I standing, wretched and
suspenseful, beside her - and went patiently over it all.
Then she said, gently and regretfully: "No, it is not right. I
can't, of course, tell you what is wrong, but you have made
a mistake."
With a hot lump in my throat I would not let break into
tears, I rushed off up-stairs, rubbed out every figure of my
making, and fell to work anew upon the original example.
Except when I obeyed the summons to prayers, I
appeared no more below that night. My sister found me
bent over the slate when she came up to bed, and said not
a word to distract my attention. By ten o'clock the room
was so cold that I got an old Scotch plaid of my father's
from the closet, and wrapped myself in it. Still, my limbs
were numb and my teeth chattered when, at one o'clock
in the morning, I laid the slate by, in the joyous conviction
that I had conquered in the fight. I had invented a proof-
method of my own - truly ingenious in a child with no turn
for mathematics - but this I did not suspect. I honestly
believed, instead, that it was an inspiration from Him to
whom I had been praying through all the hours of agonized
endeavor. I thanked the Author before I slept.
When the class was called upon to show their sums next
morning, it appeared, to my unspeakable amazement and
rapture, that my example and one other - that done by
Sarah L., who was backward in figures, although advanced
in years - were right, and all the others wrong.
The gentle shepherd of our fold took up my slate again
when the examination was over, and eyed it sourly, his
head on one side, his fingers plucking at his lower lip, a
trick which I knew prefaced something particularly spiteful.
Surely I had nothing to fear now? Having wrung from him
the reluctant admission that my work was correct, I might
rest upon my laurels.
I had underrated his capacity for evil-doing. When he
glared at me over the upper frame of the big slate, the
too-familiar heart-nausea got hold upon me.
"You" - he seldom deigned to address me by my proper
name - "pretend to tell me that nobody helped you with this
sum?"
"Nobody!" I uttered, made bold by innocence.
"Ha-a-a-a!" malevolence triumphant in the drawl waxing
into a snarl. "As I happened to see you and your
sister last night in the hall, and heard you ask her to show
you how to do it, that tale won't go down, my lady."
"She didn't help me - " I began, eagerly.
"Silence!" thumping the slate upon the table, and
scowling ferociously. "How dare you lie to me?"
I glanced at Mea in an agony. She arose in her place, pale
to the lips, albeit she had never felt his wrath, but her
voice was firm:
"I only told her the sum was not right. I did not tell her
what part of it was wrong."
The blending of snarl and smile was something to be
recollected for all time. The smile was for her, the snarl
for me.
"It is natural that your sister should try to defend you.
But will you please tell me, Miss Pert, what more help
You could have wanted than to be told by somebody who
knew - as your sister did - that your sum was wrong. Of
course, you could rub out and begin again. But for her you
would not have tried a second time. Bring the sponge
here!"
I obeyed.
"Take that slate!"
He made as if he would not contaminate his hand by
passing it to me, laying it on the table and pointing a
disdainful finger at it.
Again I obeyed.
"Now, Miss Deceitful, wipe every figure off that slate,
and never try any such cock-and-bull story upon me again
as long as you live! I am too old a bird to be caught with
your chaff!"
He laughed aloud in savage glee, dismissed the class
with a wave of his hand, and called up the next.
I was turned back to Short Division, with the added
stigma of intentional deception and cheating shadowing me.
Nearly fifteen years after our first tutor withdrew his
baleful presence from our home, my husband was urging
upon my brother Herbert the claims of the ministry of
reconciliation as the profession to which the younger man
was evidently called by nature and by Providence. Herbert
looked up with the frank smile those who knew him will
never forget. It was like the clear shining of the sweetest
and purest soul ever committed to mortal keeping.
" 'Plato! thou reasonest well!' There is but one argument
you have not bowled over. I registered an oath - as bitter
as that Hamilcar exacted of Hannibal - when I was a boy,
that I would thrash that cur Tayloe within an inch of his life
as soon as I should be big enough to do it. And it wouldn't
be quite the thing to flog a brother clergyman. If anything
could keep me out of the pulpit, it would be the fact that he
is in it. That fellow's cruelties scarred my memory for life,
although I was not seven years old when I knew him."
In dismissing the disagreeable theme, I offer this bit of
testimony to the truth of my story of the reign of terror
neither of us ever forgave.
CALM AFTER STORM - OUR HANDSOME YANKEE GOVERNESS -
AMONG the treasured
relics of my youth is a steel
engraving in a style fashionable sixty years agone.
It appeared in Godey's Lady's Book, then in the heyday
of well-merited popularity. My mother was one of the
earliest subscribers. Every number was read aloud in the
family circle gathered on cool evenings about my mother's
work-stand. We had no ready-made furniture. This piece
was made to order, of solid mahogany, and is, in the
seventy-fifth year of a blameless life, in active use
in my eldest daughter's household.
Cousin Mary, living on Erin Hill, in her stepfather's
house, took Graham's Magazine - Godey's only rival. She
likewise subscribed for the Saturday Evening Courier, and
exchanged it regularly with my mother for the Saturday
Evening Post - all published in Philadelphia. The New
York Mirror, edited by N. P. Willis, George P. Morris,
and Theodore S. Fay, was another welcome guest in
both families. For Sunday reading we had the New York
Observer, The Watchman and Observer, The Presbyterian -
religious weeklies that circulated in the neighborhood
for a fortnight, and were then filed for future
reference. We children had Parley's Magazine sent to us,
as long ago as I can recollect, by our grandmother. After
the death of her second husband, the good old deacon, and
her removal to Virginia, which events were coeval with the
Tayloe dynasty, our father subscribed for Parley's.
We had all the new books that he adjudged to be worth
buying and reading, watching eagerly for anything
from Dickens, Marryat, and Cooper, and devouring with
avidity not excited by any novel, Stephens's Travels
in Arabia Petrea and in Central America, Bruce's
Travels in Abyssinia, and the no less enchanting tales
Mungo Park was telling the world of his adventures in
the Dark Continent.
"The chamber" was a big room on the first floor, and
adjoined the dining-room - so big that the wide high-poster,
curtained and ceiled with gayly figured chintz, in a far
corner, left three-fourths of the floor-space unoccupied.
My mother's bureau (another heirloom) looked small beside
the bed; a lounge was between the front windows; rocking-chairs
stood here and there; thick curtains, matching the
bed-hangings, shut out wintry gusts, and a great wood fire
leaped and laughed upon the pipe-clayed hearth from the
first of November to the middle of March. A blaze of dry
sticks was kindled there every morning and evening up to
July 4th. The younger children were dressed and undressed
there on cool days. Our mother held, in advance of her
contemporaries, that an open fire was a germ-killer.
Why do I single out that particular engraving for a place
in these reminiscences?
It graced the first page of the November number of
Godey's Lady's Book. The evening was wild with wind
and blustering rain, the fire roaring defiance as the loosely
fitting sashes rattled and the showers lashed the panes.
There were five of us girls, and each had some bit of
handiwork. To sit idle while the reading went on was almost
a misdemeanor.
Dorinda Moody, Virginia Lee Patterson, Musidora Owen,
Mea, and myself were classmates and cronies. My mother
was reader that evening, and as she opened the magazine
at the frontispiece, Virginia Patterson and I called out:
"Why, that is a picture of Miss Wilson!"
We all leaned over the stand to look at the engraving,
which my mother held up to general view.
"It is like her!" she assented.
The young lady across the table blushed brightly in
uttering a laughing disclaimer, and my mother proceeded to
explain the extreme improbability of our hypothesis. Then
she read the story, which, to the other girls, settled the
matter. It was called "Our Keziah," and began by telling
that the title of the portrait was a misnomer. It was no
"fancy sketch," but a likeness of "Our Keziah."
Silenced but not convinced, I restrained the impulse to
tell my mates that stories might be made out of nothing.
I knew it, and so did my only confidante, the handsome
governess from Massachusetts, who had been installed in
our school-room since June.
Mr. Tayloe had gone back to the theological factory to
prosecute the studies that were to fit him to proclaim the
gospel of love and peace. On the last day of the session he
had preached us a short sermon, seated in his chair at the
head of the room, twirling the seal dangling from his
watch-chain; his legs crossed, the left hand tucked between
them; his brows drawn together in the ugly horseshoe we
knew well and dreaded much.
He must have descanted darkly upon the transitoriness of
earthly joys and the hard road to heaven, for every girl in
school was in tears except Mea and myself.
As for my wicked self, as I privately confessed
subsequently to my father's young partner, "Thad" Ivey -
"I could think of nothing but Franklin's grace over the
whole barrel." In the ten months of his incumbency of the
tutorship, the incipient divine had never so much as hinted
to one of us that she had a soul.
"I suppose I ought to say that it is like returning thanks
over the empty barrel," I subjoined, encouraged by my
interlocutor's keen relish of the irreverent and
impertinent comment upon the scene of the afternoon.
"Thad" and I were great friends, and I had an idea that
our views upon this subject did not differ widely.
Mrs. Willis D., our nearest neighbor, was with my
mother, and when the tear-bedraggled procession from the
school-room filed into the porch where the two friends
were sitting with three other of the villagers, and Virginia
Winfree threw herself into her aunt's arms with a strangled
sob of: "Oh, Aunt Betty, he did preach so hard!" - the
dry-eyed composure of the Hawes girls was regarded with
disfavor.
"Your daughters have so much fortitude!" remarked one,
mopping her girl's eyes with a compassionate handkerchief.
Another, "They show wonderful self-control for their
age."
Even our sensible mother was slightly scandalized by
what she "hoped," deprecatingly, "was not want of
feeling."
Tears were fashionable, and came easily in those early
times, and weeping in church was such a godly exercise
that conversation or exhortation upon what was, in
technical phrase, "the subject of religion," brought tears
as naturally as the wringing of a moist sponge, water.
"What did you cry for?" demanded I, scornfully, of Anne
Carus, when I got her away from the porch party. "You
hate him as much as I do!"
"Oh - I don't - know!" dubiously. "People always cry
when anybody makes a farewell speech."
So the Reverend-that-was-to-be Tayloe took his shadow
from our door and his beak from out my heart. The
quotation is not a mere figure of speech.
The handsome Yankee governess opened the door of a
new life for me. Some of the parents complained that she
"did not bring the children on as fast as Mr. Tayloe had
done." Me, she inspired. I comprehended, as by a special
revelation, that hard study might be a joy, and gain of
knowledge rapture. With her I began Vose's Astronomy,
Comstock's Natural Philosophy, and Lyell's Elements of
Geology, and revelled in them all. Her smile was my present
reward, and when she offered to join me in my seemingly
aimless rambles in the woods and "old fields," I felt honored
as by a queen's favor. We sat together upon mossy stumps
and the banks of the brook I had until then called "a branch"
in native Virginian dialect - talking! talking! talking! for
hours, of nymphs, hamadryads, satyrs, and everything else
in the world of imagination and nature.
She wrote poetry, and she kept a diary; she had travelled in
ten states of the Union, and lived in three different cities;
and she never tired of answering questions as to what she
had seen in her wanderings. Her nature was singularly
sweet and sunny, and I never, in all the ten months of our
intimacy, saw in language and deportment aught that was
not refined and gentle.
With her I began to write school "compositions." The
"big girls" wrote them under the Tayloe régime - neat little
essays upon "The Rose," "The Lily," "Morning," "Night,"
and all of the Four Seasons. Never a syllable had I lisped
to one of them of the growing hoard of rhymes, tales, and
sketches in the shabby, corpulent portfolio I had fashioned
with my own fingers and kept in the bottom of a trunk
under flannel skirts and last year's outgrown frocks.
I brought them out of limbo to show to Miss Wilson, by
timid degrees, and new manuscripts as fast as they were
written. She praised them, but not without discrimination
She suggested topics, and how to treat them. I never
carried an imperfect lesson to her in class. Intellect and
heart throve under her genial influence as frost-hindered
buds under May sunshine.
"The Fancy Sketch" was so like her it was natural I
should refuse to believe the resemblance accidental. It
was as plain as day to any apprehension that the unknown
artist had seen her somewhere, and, unseen by her, had
dogged her footsteps until he fixed her face in his mind's
eye, then transferred it to canvas.
It was a shock when the probability of his pursuit of her
to Virginia, avowing his passion and being rewarded by the
gift of her hand, was dissipated by the apparition of a
matter-of-fact personage, McPhail by name, who was
neither poet nor artist. He had been betrothed to our
governess for ever so long. He spent a fortnight at the "Old
Tavern," opposite our house, and claimed all of the waking
hours she could spare from school duties.
The finale of the romance was that she went back to the
North at the end of her year's engagement with us, and
married him, settling, we heard, in what sounded like an
outlandish region - Cape Neddick, on the Maine coast.
A COLLEGE NEIGHBORHOOD - THE WORLD WIDENS - A
"RICEHILL,
February 3d, 1843.
"DEAR DORINDA, - I
suppose mother has told you of our
privileges and pleasant situation. I only want some of my friends to
enjoy it with me to make me perfectly happy. Oh, how I wish you
were here to go to the debating society with me and to hear the
young men preach! I went to college last night to hear some
speeches delivered by the Senior Class. They have questions
given, and one takes one side and one another. The two best
speeches were made on the question 'Is a love of fame more
injurious than beneficial?' One young man took the affirmative,
and one the negative. They made the best speeches. Then the
question was whether 'the execution of Charles I. was just or not.'
Both of these speakers needed prompting; that is, one of those
who had spoken or was to speak took the speaker's speech which
he had written off, and, if he forgot, set him right again. The
young man who performed this office was very well qualified for
it; he spoke in a low, distinct tone, and seemed to find no
difficulty in reading the writing. They speak again in about six
weeks. But the chief enjoyments I have are the religious
privileges. I can go to the prayer-meeting at the Seminary every
Wednesday, and can hear three sermons every Sunday. Don't you
wish you were here, too? Aunt Rice and sister went to the Court
House last Sunday evening to hear Mr. Ballantine's lecture, and
as they did not come back very soon the young men came in to
supper. While sister and Aunt Rice were away I wrote an account
of Mr. Hoge's and Mr. Howison's
sermons. Well, when Mr. Howison came in, 'Well, Miss Virginia,
have you been by yourself all this evening?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Did
you not feel very lonely?' 'Not at all.' 'Why, what have you been
doing?' 'I have been writing.' He paused, laughed, and then said,
'And what have you been writing?' And when I told him, I wish you
could have seen him! He looked at me for a while as if he did not
understand me, and then laughed heartily. He is very easy to
laugh, but his manners are as different from Mr. Tayloe's as can
be - but hush! what am I drawing comparisons for? I do not feel
in the least restrained where he is, and can talk to him better
than to any other gentleman here. Would not you like to have such
a teacher?
"Feb. 6th. - I wonder when father will come up; I have been
looking for him every day for more than a week. Mr. Nevius was
here the other day. I inquired after you, but he had never seen
you when he went to Mr. Miller's. I was quite disappointed, and I
wish you would show yourself next time - that is, if you can.
"I very often think of the times we ate roasted corn and turnips
in the midst of the corn-field; don't you remember the evening
when the supper-bell rang and we hid our corn among the leaves
of the corn that was growing? I never knew how much I loved
you or any of my friends until I was separated from them. Mr.
Nevius brought a letter for sister from Anne Carus. She still writes
in that desponding style you know she was so remarkable for in
school, but I am glad to see from her letter that she has come to
the conclusion to be contented with her lot.
"I hope you do not indulge in such feelings, and, indeed, you
have no reason to do so, for you are only six miles from your
mother and friends, and you are with your brother, and I think
you will find a valuable friend in Malvina. How do you like your
new teacher and situation? If you are ever home-sick, study hard
and forget it.
"I have made many pleasant acquaintances here, and among
them Mr. Tayloe's flame! I do not think they are engaged, but
he goes there very frequently, and the students
plague him half to death about her, and he never denies it.
He boards here. She has a fair skin, blue eyed, and almost
red hair, but she is very pretty 'for all that.' She is about
seventeen. There is a little girl about my own age here,
who takes your place in my affections while here; she is a
grand-daughter of Professor Wilson, and lives in his house.
Her name is Louisa Caruthers. I will speak to Lou about you,
for you must be acquainted. But a truce to this nonsense! Do
not show this letter to any one of Mr. Miller's family, for I
feel restrained if I think that my letters are to be shown to
any except my particular friends. I will not show yours. Show
this to mother, your mother, E. D., and V. Winfree. Give
my respects to all Mr. M.'s family, take some of my best
love for yourself, and divide the rest among my friends.
"Now farewell, do not forget me, and I will ever be
"Your sincerely attached friend,
After Miss Wilson's departure, and divers unsuccessful
attempts to obtain a successor to his liking, my father
determined upon a bold departure from the beaten path
of traditional and conventional usage in the matter
girls' education.
The widow of Reverend Doctor Rice lived in the
immediate neighborhood of Union Theological Seminary,
founded by her husband, and of which he was the first
president. The cluster of dwellings that had grown up
around the two institutions of learning - Hampden-Sidney
College and the School of Divinity - made, with the
venerable "College Church," an educational centre for a
community noted for generations past for intelligence and
refinement. Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Halifax were
closely adjacent counties peopled by what nobody then
ridiculed as some of the "first families" of the state.
Venables, Carringtons, Reades, Bouldins, Watkinses,
Randolphs, Cabells,
Mortons, Lacys - had borne a conspicuous part in state,
church, and social history. The region was aristocratic -
and Presbyterian. There was much wealth, for tobacco was
the most profitable crop of Central and Southern Virginia,
and the plantations bordering the Appomattox River were a
mine of riches to the owners. Stately mansions - most of
them antedating the Revolutionary War - crowned gently
rolling hills rising beyond the river, each, with its little
village of domestic offices, great stables, tobacco-barns and
"quarters," making up an establishment that was feudal in
character and in power.
Every planter was college-bred and a politician.
The local atmosphere of "College Hill" was not unlike that
of an Old World university town. The professors of the
sister institutions of learning occupied houses in the vicinity
of seminary and college, and the quaint church, the bricks
mellowed to red-brown by time, stood equidistant from
both.
One feature of the church impressed my youthful
imagination. "Cousin Ben," of Montrose - afterward the
senior professor in the seminary, and as Rev. B. M.
Smith, D.D., known throughout the Southern and Northern
Presbyterian Church as a leader in learning and in
doctrine - had, when a student of Hampden-Sidney, brought
from Western Virginia a sprig of Scotch broom in his
pocket. "The Valley" - now a part of West Virginia - was
mainly settled by Scotch-Irish emigrants, and the broom
was imported with their household stuff. The boy set the
withered dip in the earth just inside of the gate of the
churchyard. In twenty years it encompassed the walls with
a setting of greenery, overran the enclosure, escaped under
the fence, and raced rampant down the hill, growing tall
and lush wherever it could get a foothold. In blossom-time
the mantle of gold was visible a mile away. The smell
of broom always brings back to me a vision of that ugly
(but dear) red-brown church and the goodly throng, pouring
from doors and gate at the conclusion of the morning
service, filling yard and road - well-dressed, well-born
county folk, prosperous and hospitable, and so happily
content with their lot and residence as to believe that
no other people was so blessed of the Lord they served
diligently and with godly fear. Without the churchyard
yard were drawn up cumbrous family coaches, which
conveyed dignified dames and dainty daughters to and from
the sanctuary. Beyond these was a long line of saddle-
horses waiting for their masters - blooded hunters for the
young men, substantial cobs for their seniors None except
invalided men deigned to accept seats in carriages.
As may be gathered from the formally familiar and
irresistibly funny epistle, indited when I had been four
months an insignificant actor in the scene I have sketched,
"religious privileges" was no idle term then and there. Our
social outings were what I have indicated. There were no
concerts save the "Monthly Concert of Prayer for Foreign
Missions" (held simultaneously in every church in the state
and Union); not a theatre in Virginia, excepting one in
Richmond, banned for the religious public by the awful
memories of the burning of the playhouse in 1811. "Dining-days,"
which their descendants name "dinner-parties," were
numerous, and there was much junketing from one plantation
to another, a ceaseless drifting back and forth of young
people, overflowing, now this house, now that, always certain
of a glad welcome, and contriving, without the adventitious
aid of cards or dancing, to lead joyous, full lives.
Once a week the community turned out, en masse, for
church-going. They were a devout folk - those F. F. V.'s,
at which we mock now - and considered it a public duty
not to forsake the assembling of themselves together for
worship, prayers, and sermons. These latter were intellectual,
no less than spiritual pabulum. Oratory had not gone out of
fashion in these United States, and in Virginia it was
indigenous to the soil. Pulpit eloquence was in its glory,
and speech-making at barbecues, anniversaries, and
political gatherings, in court-rooms and upon "stumps," was
an art learned by boys in roundabouts and practiced as long
as veterans could stand upon their shrunken calves.
People flocked to church to attend reverently upon divine
service, and, when the benediction was pronounced, greeted
friends and neighbors, cheerily chatting in the aisles
and exchanging greetings between the benches they had
occupied during the services - men and women sitting
apart, as in the Quaker meeting-house - as freely as we
now salute and stroll with acquaintances in the foyer of the
opera-house.
Such were some of the advantages and enjoyments included in
the elastic phrase "religious privileges," vaunted by the
epistolary twelve-year-old.
"Rice Hill" was a commodious dwelling, one mile from the
seminary, and not quite so far from the college. Doctor
Rice had literally spent and been spent in the work which
had crowned his ministry - the foundation and endowment
of a Southern School of Divinity. At his death, friends
and admirers, North and South, agreed that a suitable
monument to him would be a home for the childless widow.
She had a full corps of family servants, who had followed
her to her various residences, and she eked out her income
by supplying table-board to students from college and
seminary. Thus much in explanation of the references to
the coming in of "the gentlemen" in the "evening" - rural
Virginian for afternoon.
A kindly Providence had appointed unto us these pleasant
paths at the impressionable period of our lives. The
goodliest feature in that appointment was that Robert Reid
Howison, subsequently "LL.D.," and the author of a History
of Virginia, and The Student's History of the United States,
became the tutor of my sister and myself.
He came to us at twelve o'clock each day, and we dined
at half-past two. Hence, all our studying was done out of
school-hours. The arrangement was eccentric in the extreme
in the eyes of my father's acquaintances and critics.
Other girls were in the class-room from nine until twelve,
and after recess had a session of two hours more. That
this, the most outré of "Mr. Hawes's experiments," would
be a ludicrous failure was a foregone conclusion. Whereas
the cool brain had reckoned confidently upon the fidelity
of the tutor and the conscientiousness of pupils accustomed
to the discipline of a home where implicit obedience was
the law.
Never had learners a happier period of pupilage, and the
cordial relations between teacher and students testified to
the mutual desire to meet, each, the requirements of the
other party to the compact.
To the impetus given our minds by association with the
genial scholar who directed our studies, was added the
stimulus of the table-talk that went on in our hearing daily.
It was the informal, suggestive chat of men eager for
knowledge, comparing notes and opinions, and discussing
questions of deep import - historical, biological, and
theological. In the main, they were a bright set of fellows;
in the main, likewise, gentlemen at heart and in bearing. It
goes without saying that the exception in my mind to the
latter clause was our late and hated tutor. I might write
to Dorinda, in constrained goody-goodyishness, of the
impropriety of "drawing comparisons" between him and Mr.
Howison, whose "easy" laugh and winning personality wrought
powerfully upon my childish fancy. At heart I loved the one
and consistently detested the other.
To this hour I recall the gratified thrill of conscious
security and triumph that coursed through my minute being
when, Mr. Tayloe having taken it upon himself to reprove me
for something I said - pert, perhaps, but not otherwise
offensive - Mr. Howison remarked, with no show of temper,
but firmly:
"Mr. Tayloe, you will please recollect that this young
lady is now under my care!"
He laughed the next moment, as if to pass the matter off
pleasantly, but all three of us comprehended what was
implied.
We began French with our new tutor, and geometry! I
crossed the Pons Asinorum in January, and went on with
Euclid passably well, if not creditably. Mathematics was
never my strong point. The patience and perfect temper of
the preceptor never failed him, no matter how far I came
short of what he would have had me accomplish in that
direction.
"Educate them as if they were boys and preparing for
college," my father had said, and he was obeyed.
Beyond and above the benefit derived from the study of
text-books was the education of daily contact with a mind
so richly stored with classic and modern literature, so keenly
alive to all that was worthy in the natural, mental, and
spiritual world as that of Robert Howison. He had been
graduated at the University of Virginia, and for a year or
more had practiced law in Richmond, resigning the
profession to begin studies that would prepare him for what
he rated as a higher calling. My debt to him is great, and
inadequately acknowledged in these halting lines.
Were I required to tell what period of my nonage had most
to do with shaping character and coloring my life, I should
reply, without hesitation, "The nine months passed at Rice
Hill." A new, boundless realm of thought and feeling was
opened to the little provincial from a narrow, neutral-tinted
neighborhood. I was a dreamer by nature and by
habit, and my dreams took on a new complexion; a born
story-maker, and a wealth of material was laid to my hand.
We were a family of mad book-lovers, and the libraries of
seminary and college were to my eyes twin Golcondas of
illimitable possibilities. Up to now, novel reading had been
a questionable delight in which I hardly dared indulge freely.
I was taught to abhor deceit and clandestine practices, and
my father had grave scruples as to the wisdom of allowing
young people to devour fiction. We might read magazines,
as we might have confectionery, in limited supplies. A
bound novel would be like a dinner of mince-pie and
sweetmeats, breeding mental and moral indigestion.
So, when Mr. Howison not only permitted, but advised
the perusal of Scott's novels and poems, I fell upon them
with joyful surprise that kindled into rapture as I became
familiar with the Wizard and his work. We lived in the
books we read then, discussing them at home and abroad as
we talk now of living issues and current topics. The Heart of
Midlothian, Marmion, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Peveril of
the Peak, and Waverley were read that winter on stormy
afternoons and during the long evenings that succeeded the
early supper. Sometimes Mr. Howison lingered when his
comrades had gone back to their dormitories, and took his
part in the fascinating entertainment. Usually the group was
composed of Aunt Rice, her sister (Mrs. Wharey, lately
widowed, who was making arrangements to settle upon an
adjoining plantation), Mrs. Wharey's daughter, another
"Cousin Mary," my sister, and myself.
Aunt Rice was a "character" in her way and day; shrewd,
kindly sympathetic, active in church and home, and with
a marvellous repertoire of tale and anecdote that made
her a most entertaining companion. "The Seminary" was
her foster-child; the students had from her maternal
interest and affection. Like other gentlewomen
of her time and latitude, she was well versed in the English
classics and in translations from the Latin and Greek. Pope,
Swift, and Addison were household favorites, and this
winter she was reading with delight the just-published
History of the Reformation, by Merle d'Aubigné. She always
wore black - merino in the morning, black silk or satin in
the afternoon - and a regulation old lady's cap with ribbon
strings tied under a double chin, and I think of her as
always knitting lamb's-wool stockings. Hers was a pronounced
individuality in every capacity she assumed to fill - mistress,
housewife, neighbor, and general well-wisher. She never
scolded, yet she managed the dozen or more servants that
had come down to her by ordinary generation - seven of
them men and boys - judiciously and well. Even then she
was meditating a scheme she afterward put into successful
execution - namely, liberating all her slaves and sending
them to Liberia. To this end she had taught them to read and
write, and each boy was trained in some manual trade. She
superintended their religious education as faithfully.
Every Sunday night all the negroes who were beyond infancy
assembled in the dining-room for Scripture readings
expounded by her own pleasant voice, and for recitations in
the Shorter Catechism and Village Hymn-book. They were
what was called in the neighborhood vernacular, "a likely
lot." The boys and men were clever workers in their several
lines of labor. The women were skilled in the use of loom,
spinning-wheel, and needle, and excellent cooks. One and
all, they were made to understand from babyhood what
destiny awaited them so soon as they were equipped for the
enterprise.
I wish I could add that the result met her fond expectations.
While the design was inchoate, her example served as a stock
and animating illustration of the wisdom of those who urged
upon Virginia slaveholders the duty of returning the blacks
to the land from which their fathers were
stolen. Colonization was boldly advocated in public and in
private, and the old lady was a fervent convert. In the
fulness of time she sent out five families, strong and
healthy, as well-educated as the average Northern farmer and
mechanic. She sold Rice Hill and well-nigh impoverished
herself in her old age to fit out the colony with clothes
and household goods, and went to spend the few remaining
years of her life in the home of her sister. The great labor
of her dreams and hope accomplished, she chanted a happy
"Nunc Dimittis" to sympathizer and to doubter. She had
solved the Dark Problem that baffled the world's most
astute statesmen. If all who hearkened unto her would do
likewise, the muttering of the hell that was already moving
from its depth under the feet of the nation, would be
silenced forever.
The competent colonists had hardly had time to send back
to their emancipated mistress news of their safe arrival
in the Promised Land, when they found themselves in
grievous straits. These, duly reported to Aunt Rice, were
African fevers that exhausted their strength and consumed
their stock of ready money; the difficulty of earning a
livelihood while they were ignorant of the language and
customs of the natives; lack of suitable clothing; scarcity of
provisions, and a waiting-list of etceteras that rent the
tender heart of the benefactress with unavailing pity. She
was importuned for money, for clothes, for groceries - even
that she would, for the love of Heaven and the sake of old
times, send them a barrel of rice - which, infidels to her
faith in colonization did not fail to remind her, was to be had
in Liberia for the raising.
The stout-hearted liberator never owned in word her
disappointment at the outcome of long years of patient
preparation and personal privation, or gave any sign of
appreciation of the truth that her grand solution of the Dark
Problem was the song of the drunkard and a by-word
and a hissing in the mouth of the unbeliever. But she
ceased long before her death, in 1858, to tax her listeners'
patience by setting forth the beauties of colonization as
the practical abolition of negro slavery in America. If her
ancestors had sinned in bringing the race into bondage,
and her teeth were thereby set on edge, she hid her hurt.
This significant silence was the only token by which her
best friends divined her consciousness of the humiliating
revelation which had fallen into the evening of a well-spent
life. She had exchanged for the five families born and
reared in her home, dependence, comfort, and happiness,
for freedom, pauperism, and discontent. The cherished bud
had been passing sweet. The fruit was as bitter as gall.
At the time of which I am writing, the dream-bubble
was at the brightest and biggest. She was in active
correspondence with the officers of the Colonization
Society; subscribed to and read colonization publications,
and dealt out excerpts from the same to all who would
listen; was busy, sanguine, and bright, beholding herself,
in imagination, the leader in a crusade that would wipe
the stain of slavery from her beloved state.
One event of that wonderful winter was a visit paid to
Aunt Rice by her aged father, Major James Morton, of
High Hill, Cumberland County, the "Old Solid Column" of
Revolutionary story. The anecdote of Lafayette's
recognition of his former brother-in-arms was related in
an earlier chapter. It was treasured in the family as a
bit of choice silver would be prized. I had heard it once
and again, and had constructed my own portrait of the
stout-hearted and stout-bodied warrior. Surprise
approximated dismay when I behold a withered, tremulous
old man, enfeebled in mind almost to childishness, his voice
breaking shrilly as he talked - a pitiable, crumbling wreck
of the stately column.
He had definite ideas upon certain subjects still, and was
doughty in their defence. For example, during this visit to
his daughter, he sat one evening in the chimney-corner,
apparently dozing, while a party of young people were
discussing the increasing facilities of travel by steam, and
contrasting them with the slow methods of their fathers.
The Major drowsed on, head sunken into his military stock,
eyes closed, and jaw drooping - the impersonation of senile
decay - when somebody spoke of a trip up the Hudson to
West Point the preceding summer.
The veteran raised
himself as if he had been shaken by
the shoulder.
"That is not
true!" he said, doggedly.
"But, Major,"
returned the surprised narrator, "I did go!
There is a regular line of steamers up the river."
The old war-horse reared
his head and beat the floor
with an angry heel.
"I say it is not
true! It could not be true! General
Washington had a big chain stretched across the river after
Arnold tried to sell West Point, so that no vessel could get
up to the fort. And, sir!" bringing his cane down upon the
hearth with a resounding thump, his voice clear and
resonant, "there is not that man upon earth who would dare
take down that chain. Why, sir, General Washington put it
there!"
A fragment of the mighty
chain, forged in the mountains
of New Jersey, lies upon the parade-ground at West Point.
Forty years thereafter I
laid a caressing hand upon a
huge link of the displaced boom, and told the anecdote to
my twelve-year-old boy, adding, as if the stubborn loyalist
had said it in my ear,
"And
there it stands until this day,
We read Ivanhoe in the open air when the spring wore into
summer. The afternoons were long, and when study-hours
were over we were wont to repair to the roomy back porch,
shaded by vines, and looking across a little valley at
the bottom of which were a bubbling spring, a twisting
brook, and a tiny pool as round as a moon, to the hill
crowned by "Morton," a plain but spacious house occupied
by the Wharey family.
Not infrequently a seminary student, attracted by Mary
Wharey's brunette comeliness and happy temper, would join
our group and lend a voice in the reading. Moses Drury
Hoge, a cousin of my mother and of Aunt Rice, was with us
at least twice a week, basking in the summer heat like a
true son of the tropics. He was a tutor in Hampden-Sidney
while a divinity student, and, as was proved by his
subsequent career, was the superior of his fellows in
oratorical gifts and other endowments that mark the youth
for success from the beginning of the race. I think he was
born sophisticated. Already his professors yielded him
something that, while it was not homage in any sense of the
word, yet singled him out as one whose marked individuality
and brilliant talents gave him the right to speak with
authority. At twenty-three, without other wealth than his
astute brain and ready wits, his future was sure.
He won in after years the title of "the Patrick Henry of
the Southern Pulpit."
Of him I shall have occasion to speak further as my story
progresses.
FAMILY LETTERS - COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPDEN-SIDNEY -
"RICHMOND, June 10th, 1843.
"MY DEAR WIFE, -
After a fatiguing day it is with great
pleasure I sit down to have a little chat with you, and to inform
you of our progress. Were I disposed to give credit to lucky and
unlucky days, a little incident occurred on our way down which
would have disturbed me very much. We were going on at a
reasonable rate when, to our surprise, the front of the 'splendid
line of coach' assumed a strange position, and for a moment I
thought we should be wrecked, but it was only minus a
wheel - one of the front ones having taken leave of us and
journeying, 'singly and alone,' on the other side of the turnpike.
We were soon 'all right,' and arrived here in good health but much
fatigued. Mother has hardly got rested yet, but thinks another
quiet day will be sufficient, and that she will be ready to start on
Monday morning and be able to hold out to go through without
again stopping. We have passed over the most fatiguing part of
our journey. We shall leave on Monday morning by the railroad,
and, unless some accident should happen on the way, expect to be
in Boston on Wednesday about 9 o'clock A. M. It is my intention
to keep on, unless mother should require rest, more than can be
had on the line of travel. . . . Well, love, are you not tired of this
overparticularity about business? I will not weary you any longer
with it. I have never left home with a stronger feeling of regret than
at the present time, and it appears that the older I get, the greater
the trial to stay away. Now you will say that it is because you
become more and more interesting. Well, it must be so, for I cannot
discover any other cause. Do not let it be long before you write.
"The heat, wind, and dust of the city to-day have put me
entirely out of trim for writing, and my talent is but small even
under the most favorable circumstances. By-the-bye, called on
Mrs. D. last evening to deliver a message from Mr. D. Quite a
pleasant ten minutes' affair, and was excused. Herbert must save
some of those nice plants for that box to be placed on a pole, and
tell him if he is a good boy we will try and have a nice affair for
the little birds. My man must have a hand in the work, if it be only
to look on, and Alice can do the talking part. Don't let Virginia
take to her chamber. Keep her circulating about the house in all
dry weather; the wind will not injure her, unless it be quite damp,
at least so I think.
"Sunday, 11th. - Attended Doctor Plumer's church this
morning, and heard a young man, the son of one of the
professors at Princeton, preach. The sermon was good, but
should have preferred the Doctor. Morning rainy and no one in
from Olney.
"Evening. - Attended Mr. Magoon's church. He preached from
the words, 'Be not deceived, God is not mocked,' etc. A good,
practical sermon; he alluded to ministers and church members
away from home, and showed them in many cases to be mockers
of God, and instanced inconsistencies, all of which he termed
'mockery.' Expect To-night to hear Doctor Plumer. Now, love, you
have a full history up to the time of our departure. Write to me
soon, and, after telling about yourself, the children, and servants,
give me an account of store, farming, and gardening operations.
Those large sheets will hold a great deal, if written very close.
Kiss Alice and the baby for father. Tell Herbert and Horace that
father wishes them to be good boys and learn fast. And now,
dear Anna, I must bid you adieu, commending you and our dear
ones to the care of Him whose mercies have been so largely
bestowed on us in days past. May He preserve you from all evil
and cause you to dwell in perfect peace."
No matter how weary he was after a day of travel or
work, he had always time to "talk it out" with his alter ego.
The term has solemn force, thus applied. In the injunction to
write of domestic, gardening, and farming affairs, he brings
in "the store," now of goodly proportions and "departments,"
and into which she did not set foot once a week, and then
as any other customer might. "Those large sheets will hold
a great deal if written very close," he says, archly. They
had evidently been provided for this express purpose before
he left home.
One paragraph in the exscinded section of the letter
belongs to a day and system that have lapsed almost from
the memory of the living.
An infant of Mary Anne, my mother's maid, was ill with
whooping-cough when the master took his journey
northward.
"I am quite anxious to hear how Edgar is," he writes "I
fear the case may prove fatal, and am inclined to blame
myself for leaving home before it was decided. Yet I know
he is in good hands, and that you have done and will do
everything necessary for his comfort. Also that, in the event
of his death, all that is proper will be attended to. When I
get home the funeral shall be preached, of which you will
please inform his parents."
No word of written or spoken comfort would do more to
soothe the hearts of the bereaved parents than the
assurance that the six-months-old baby should have his
funeral sermon in good and regular order. The discourse
was seldom preached at the time of interment. Weeks, and
sometimes months, intervened before the friends and
relatives could be convened with sufficient pomp and
circumstance to satisfy the mourners. I have attended
services embodying a long sermon, eulogistic of the
deceased and admonitory of the living, when the poor mortal
house of clay had mouldered in the grave for half a year. I
actually knew of one funeral of a wife that was postponed
by untoward circumstances until, when a sympathizing
community was convoked to listen to the sermon, the
ex-widower sat in the front seat as chief mourner with a
second wife and her baby beside him. And the wife wore a
black gown with black ribbon on her bonnet, out of respect
to her predecessor!
They were whites, and church members in good and
regular standing.
Little Edgar died the day after my father took the train
from Richmond for the fast run through to Boston - in two
days and two nights! When the master got home after a
month's absence, the funeral sermon was preached in old
Petersville Church, three miles from the Court House, on a
Sunday afternoon, and the parents and elder children were
conveyed thither in the family carriage, driven by
Spotswood, who would now be the "coachman." Then he was
the "carriage-driver." They took time for everything
then-a-days, and plenty of it.
In September, Mea and I
had the culmination of our
experiences and "privileges" upon College Hill in the
Hampden-Sidney Commencement. I had never attended
one before. I have seen none since that were so grand and
none that thrilled me to the remotest fibre of my being as
the exercises of that gloriously cloudless day. I hesitate
to except even the supreme occasion when, from a box above
the audience-floor packed with two thousand students and
blazing with electric lights, I saw my tall son march with his
class to receive his diploma from the president of a great
university, and greeted him joyfully when, the ceremonial
over, he brought it up to lay in my lap.
There were but four graduates in that far-off little country
college with the hyphenated name and the honored history.
It may be that their grandchildren will read the roll here:
Robert Campbell Anderson, Thomas Brown Venable, Paul
Carrington, and Mr. Rice, whose initials I think were "T. C."
There were, I reiterate, but four graduates, but they took
three honors. Robert Anderson was valedictorian; Mr. Rice
of the uncertain initials had the philosophical oration; Tom
Brown Venable had the Latin salutatory; and Paul
Carrington, the one honorless man, made the most brilliant
speech of them all. It was a way he had. The madcap of
the college - who just "got through," as it were, by the skin
of his teeth, by cramming night and day for two months to
make up for an indefinite series of wretched recitations and
numberless escapades out of class - he easily eclipsed his
mates on that day of days. The boys used to say that he
was "Saul," until he got up to declaim, or make an original
address. Then he was "Paul." He was Pauline, par
éminence, to-day.
I could recite verbatim
his lament over Byron's wasted
powers, and I see, as if it were but yesterday that it thrilled
me, the pose and passion of the outburst, arms tossed to
heaven in the declamation:
"O! had his harp been tuned to Zion's songs!"
Music was
"rendered" by an admirably trained choir.
The hour of the brass-band had not come yet to Hampden-
Sidney. And the choir rendered sacred music - such
grand old anthems as,
"Awake!
awake! put on thy strength, O Zion!
and,
"How
beautiful upon the mountains
Doctor Maxwell was the
president then, and was
portentous in my eyes in his don's gown.
Dear old Hampden-Sidney!
she has arisen, renewed in
youth and vigor, from the cinders of semi-desolation, has
cast aside the sackcloth and ashes of her grass-widowhood,
and stepped into the ranks of modern progress. I like best
to recall her when she maintained the prestige of her
traditional honors and refused to accept decadence as a
fixed fact.
BACK IN POWHATAN - OLD VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFERY - A
MY father's
"ways" were so well known by his neighbors
it was taken for granted that the education of his
daughters would not be conducted along conventional
lines after we returned home. Mr. Howison had completed
his theological course in the seminary, and there
were other plans on foot, known as yet to my parents
alone, which made the engagement of another tutor
inexpedient.
It did not seem odd to us then, but I wonder now over
the routine laid down by our father, and followed steadily
by us during the next winter and summer. A room in the
second story was fitted up as a "study" for the two girls.
Each had her desk and her corner. Thither we repaired at
9 o'clock A.M. for five days of the week, and sat us
down to work. When problem, French exercise, history,
and rhetoric lessons were prepared, we gravely and
dutifully recited them to each other; wrote French
exercises as carefully as if Mr. Howison's eye were to
scan them; and each corrected that of her fellow to the best
of her ability. We read history and essays upon divers
topics aloud, and discussed them freely. The course of study
was marked out for us by our beloved ex-tutor, who wrote
to us from time to time, in the midst of other and
engrossing cares, in proof of continued remembrance and
interest in his whilom pupils.
We girls wrought faithfully and happily until one o'clock
at our lessons. The rest of the day was our own, except
afternoon hours which were passed with our mother, and in
occupations directed by her. She had inherited from her
mother taste and talent for dainty needlework, and, as all
sewing was done by hand, her hands were always full,
although her own maid was an expert seamstress. The
Virginian matron of antebellum days never wielded broom
or duster. She did not make beds or stand at wash-tub or
ironing-table. Yet she was as busy in her line of
housewifely duty as her "Yankee" sister.
Provisions were bought by the large quantity, and kept in
the spacious store-room, which was an important section
of the dwelling. Every morning the cook was summoned as
soon as breakfast was fairly over, appearing with a big
wooden tray under her elbow, sundry empty "buckets" slung
upon her arm, and often a pail on her head, carried there
because every other available portion of her person was
occupied. The two went together to the storeroom, and
materials for the daily food of white and black households
were measured into the various vessels. The notable
housewife knew to a fraction how much of the raw
products went to the composition of each dish she ordered.
So much flour was required for a loaf of rolls, and so much
for a dozen beaten biscuits; a stated quantity of butter was
for cake or pudding; sugar was measured for the kitchen-
table and for that at which the mistress would sit with her
guests. Molasses was poured into one bucket, lard measured
by the great spoonful into another; "bacon-middling" was
cut off by the chunk for cooking with vegetables and for
the servants' eating; hams and shoulders were laid aside
from the supply in the smoke-house, to which the pair
presently repaired. Dried fruits in the winter,
spices, vinegar - the scores of minor condiments and
flavoring that were brought into daily use in the lavish
provision for appetites accustomed to the fat of the land -
were "given out" as scrupulously as staples. If wine or
brandy were to be used in sauces, the mistress would
supply them later. It was not right, according to her code,
to put temptation of that sort in the way of her dependants.
It was certainly unsafe. Few colored women drank. I do not
now recall a solitary instance of that kind in all my
experience with, and observation of negro servants, before
or after the war. I wish I could say the same for Scotch,
Irish, and German cooks whom I have employed during a
half-century of active housewifery.
Negro men were notoriously weak in that direction. The
most honest could not resist the sight and smell of liquor.
The failing would seem to be racial. It is an established fact
that when the solid reconstructed South "went dry" in
certain elections, it was in the hope of keeping ardent spirits
out of the way of the negroes.
To return to our housekeeper of the mid-nineteenth century:
The second stage in the daily round appointed to her
by custom and necessity was to superintend the washing of
breakfast china, glass, and silver. In seven cases out of ten
she did the work herself, or deputed it to her daughters. One
of my earliest recollections is of standing by my mother as
she washed the breakfast "things," and allowed me to polish
the teaspoons with a tiny towel just the right size for my
baby hands.
Her own hands were very beautiful, as were her feet. To
preserve her taper fingers from the hot water in which silver
and glass were washed, she wore gloves, cutting off the tips
of the fingers. The proper handling of "fragiles" was a fine
art, and few colored servants arose to the right practice of
it. I have in my memory the picture of one stately
gentlewoman, serene of face and dignified of speech, who
retained her seat at the table when the rest of us had
finished breakfast. To her, then, in dramatic parlance, the
butler, arrayed in long, white apron, sleeves rolled to
the elbow, bearing a pail of cedar-wood with bright brass
hoops, three-quarters full of hot water. This he set down
upon a small table brought into the room for the purpose,
and proceeded to wash plates, cups, glass, silver, etc.,
collected from the board at which madam still presided, a
bit of fancy knitting or crocheting in hand, which did not
withdraw her eyes from vigilant attention to his movements.
Like surveillance was exercised over each branch of
housework. Every part of the establishment was visited by
the mistress before she sat down to the sewing, which was
her own especial task. Her daughters were instructed in
the intricacies of backstitch, fell-seams, overcasting,
hemstitching, herringbone, button-holes, rolled and flat
hems, by the time they let down their frocks and put up
their hair. The girl who had not made a set of chemises for
herself before she reached her fourteenth birthday was
accounted slow to learn what became a gentlewoman who
expected to have a home of her own to manage some day.
Until I was ten years old I knit my own stockings of fine,
white cotton, soft as wool. Gentlemen of the old school
refused to wear socks and stockings bought over a counter.
In winter they had woollen, in summer cotton foot-gear,
home-knit by wives or aunts or daughters. We embroidered
our chemise bands and the ruffles of skirts, the
undersleeves that came in with "Oriental sleeves," and the
broad collars that accompanied them.
Reading aloud more often went with the sewing-circle
found in every home, than gossip. My father set his fine,
strong face like a flint against neighborhood scandal and
little-tattle. " 'They say' is next door to a lie," was
one of the sententious sayings that silenced anecdotes
dealing with village characters and doings. A more
effectual quietus was: "Who says that? Never repeat a
tale without giving the author's name. That is the only
honorable thing to do."
I do not know that the exclusion of chit-chat of our
friends drove us to books for entertainment, when miles
of seams and gussets and overcasting lay between us and
springtime with its outdoor amusements and occupations.
I do say that we did not pine for evening "functions,"
for luncheons and matinees, when we had plenty of books
to read aloud and congenial companions with whom to
discuss what we read. Once a week we had a singing-class
which met around our dining-table. My father led this,
giving the key with his tuning-fork, and now and then
accompanying with his flute a hymn in which his tenor was
not needed.
Have I ever spoken of the singular fact that he had "no
ear for music," yet sang tunefully and with absolute
accuracy, with the notes before him? He could not carry
the simplest air without the music-book. It was a clear
case of a lack of co-ordination between ear and brain. He
was passionately fond of music, and sang well in spite of it,
playing the flute correctly and with taste - always by note.
Take away the printed or written page, and he was all at
sea.
Those songful evenings were the one dissipation of
the week. A singing-master, the leader of a Richmond choir,
had had a school at the Court House the winter before, and
The Boston Academy was in every house in the village. I
could run glibly over the names of the regular attendants
on the Tuesday evenings devoted to our musicale. George
Moody, my father's good-looking ward, now seventeen, and
already in love up to his ears with Effie D., my especial
crony, who was a month my junior; Thaddeus Ivey, a big
blond of the true Saxon type, my father's partner, and
engaged to be married to a pretty Lynchburg girl; James
Ivey, a clerk in the employ of Hawes& Ivey - nice and
quiet and gentlemanly, and in love with nobody that we
knew of - these were the bassos. Once in a while,
"Cousin Joe," who was busily engaged in a seven years'
courtship of a fair villager, Effie's sister, joined us and
bore our souls and voices aloft with the sonorous "brum!
brum!" of a voice at once rich and well-trained. There
were five sopranos - we called it "the treble" then - and
two women sang "the second treble." One weak-voiced
neighbor helped my father out with the tenor. Until a
year or two before the singing-master invaded the
country, women sang tenor, and the alto was known as
"counter."
The twentieth century has
not quite repudiated the tunes
we delighted in on those winter nights, when
"The
fire, with hickory logs supplied,
and we lined both sides
of the long table, lighted by tall
sperm-oil lamps, and bent seriously happy faces over The
Boston Academy, singing with the spirit and, to the best of
our ability, with the understanding - "Lanesboro' " and
"Cambridge" and "Hebron" and "Boyleston" and "Zion," and
learning, with puckered brows and steadfast eyes glued to
the notes, such new tunes as "Yarmouth," "Anvern," and "Zerah."
"Sing at
it!" my father would command in heartsome tones,
from his stand at the top of the double line. "You will
never learn it if you do not make the first trial."
I arose to my feet the
other day with the rest of the
congregation of a fashionable church for a hymn which
"everybody" was enjoined from the pulpit to "sing."
When the choir burst
forth with
"Triumphant
Zion! Lift thy head!"
I dropped my head upon
my hands and sobbed. Were the
words ever sung to any other tune than "Anvern," I
wonder?
In the interval of singing we chatted, laughed, and were
happy. How proud all of us girls were, on one stormy night
when the gathering was smaller than usual, and good-looking
George - coloring to his ears, but resolute - sang the
bass solo in the fourth line of "Cambridge":
"Resound their Maker's praise!"
The rest caught the
words from his tongue and carried the
tune to a conclusion.
We sang until ten o'clock; then apples, nuts, and cakes
were brought in, and sometimes sweet cider. An hour later
we had the house to ourselves, and knelt for evening
prayers about the fire before going to bed.
It was an easy-going existence, that of the well-to-do
Virginia countryman of that date. If there were already
elements at work below the surface that were to heave the
fair level into smoking ruin, the rank and file of the men
who made, and who obeyed the laws, did not suspect it.
Grumblers there were, and political debates that ran high
and hot, but the Commonwealth that had supplied the
United States with statesmen and leaders since the
Constitution was framed, had no fear of a dissolution of
what was, to the apprehension of those now at the helm,
the natural order of things.
ELECTION DAY AND A
DEMOCRATIC
THE time of the singing
of birds and the departure of
winter came suddenly that year. Hyacinths were aglow in
my mother's front yard early in February, and the orchards
were aflame with "the fiery blossoms of the peach."
The
earth awoke from sleep with a bound, and human creatures
thrilled, as at the presage of great events.
It was the year of the presidential election and a
campaign of extraordinary importance. My father talked to
me of what invested it with this importance as we walked
together down the street one morning when the smell of
open flowers and budding foliage was sweet in our nostrils.
A Democratic barbecue was to be held in a field on the
outskirts of the village just beyond "Jordan's Creek." The
stream took its name from the man whose plantation
bounded it on the west. The widening and deepening into a
pool at the foot of his garden made it memorable in the
Baptist Church.
I do not believe there was a negro communicant in any
other denomination throughout the length of the county. And
their favorite baptizing-place was "Jordan's Creek." I never
knew why, until my mother's maid - a bright mulatto, with a
smart cross of Indian blood in her veins - "got through,"
after mighty strivings on her part, and on the part of the
faithful of her own class and complexion, and confided to
me her complacency in the thought that she was now safe
for time and eternity.
"For, you see, John the Babtis', he babtized in the River
Jerdan, and Brother Watkins, he babtized me in the Creek
Jerdan. I s'pose they must be some kin to one another?"
My father laughed and then sighed over the story, when I
told it as we set out on our walk. The religious beliefs
and superstitions of the colored servants were respected
by their owners to a degree those who know little of the
system as it prevailed at that time, find it hard to
believe. From babyhood we were taught never to speak
disrespectfully of the Baptists, or of the vagaries that
passed with the negroes for revealed truth. They had a
right to their creeds as truly as we had to ours.
This younger generation is also incredulous with respect
to another fact connected with our domestic relations.
Children were trained in respectful speech to elderly
servants - indeed, to all who were grown men and women.
My mother made me apologize once to this same maid -
Mary Anne by name - for telling her to "Hush her mouth!"
the old Virginian form of "Hold your tongue!"
The blesséd woman explained the cause of her reproof
when the maid was out of hearing:
"The expression is unladylike and coarse. Then, again, it
is mean - despicably mean! - to be saucy to one who has
no right to answer in the same way. If you must be sharp in
your talk, quarrel with your equals, not with servants, who
cannot meet you on your own ground."
The admonition has stuck fast in my mind to this day.
By the time we turned the corner in the direction of
Jordan's Creek, my father and I were deep in politics. He
was the stanchest of Whigs, and the ancient and honorable
party had for leader, in this year's fight, one whom my
instructor held to be the wisest statesman and purest patriot
in the land. The ticket, "Clay and Frelinghuysen," was a
beloved household word with us; talk of the tariff,
protection and the national debt, which Henry Clay's
policy would wipe out, and forever, if opportunity were
granted to him, ran as glibly from our childish tongues as
dissertations upon the Catholic bill and parliamentary action
thereupon dropped from the lips of the Brontë boy and
girls. There was not a shadow of doubt in our minds as to
the result of the November fight.
"It seems a pity" - I observed, as we looked across the
creek down into the distant meadow, where men and boys
were moving to and fro, and smoke was rising from fires
that had been kindled overnight - "that the Democrats
should go to so much expense and trouble only to be
defeated at last."
"They may not be so sure as you are that they are
working for nothing," answered my father, smiling good-
humoredly. "They have had some victories to boast of in
the past."
"Yes!" I assented, reluctantly. "As, for instance, when
Colonel Hopkins was sent to the Legislature! Father, I
wish you had agreed to go when they begged you to let
them elect you!"
The smile was now a laugh.
"To nominate me, you mean. A very different matter
from election, my daughter. Not that I cared for either. If I
may be instrumental in the hands of Providence in helping
to put the right man into the right place, my political
ambitions will be satisfied."
"I do hope that Powhatan will go for Clay!" ejaculated I,
fervently. "And I think it an outrage that the Richmond
voters cannot come up to the help of the right, at the
presidential election."
"The law holds that the real strength of the several
states would not be properly represented if this were
allowed," was the reply.
I saw the justice of the law later in life. Then it was
oppressive, to my imagination.
That most doubtful blessing of enlightened freemen -
universal suffrage - had not as yet been thrust upon the
voters of the United States. In Virginia, the man who held
the franchise must not only be "free, white, and twenty-one,"
but he must be a land-owner to the amount of at least
twenty-five dollars. Any free white of the masculine gender
owning twenty-five dollars' worth of real estate in any
county had a vote there. If he owned lands of like value in
ten counties, he might deposit a vote in each of them, if he
could reach them all between sunrise and sunset on
Election Day. It was esteemed a duty by the Richmond
voter - the city being overwhelmingly Whig - to distribute
his influence among doubtful counties in which he was a
property-holder. He held and believed for certain that he
had a right to protect his interests wherever they might lie.
Powhatan was a doubtful factor in the addition of
election returns. Witness the election to the Legislature
at different periods of such Democrats as Major Jacob
Michaux - from a James River plantation held by his
grandfather by a royal grant since the Huguenots sought
refuge in Virginia from French persecutors - and of the
Colonel Hopkins whom I had named. This last was
personally popular, a man of pleasing address and fair
oratorical powers, and represented an influential
neighborhood in the centre of the county. A most worthy
gentleman, as I now know. Then I classed him with Jesuits
and tyrants. I had overheard a sanguine Democrat declare
in the heat of political argument that "Henry L. Hopkins
would be President of the United States some day." To
which my father retorted, "When that day comes I shall
cross the ocean and swear allegiance to Queen Victoria."
When I repeated the direful threat to my mother, she
laughed and bade me give myself no uneasiness on the
subject, as nothing was more unlikely than that Colonel
Hopkins would ever go to the White House. Nevertheless,
I always associated that amiable and courtly gentleman
with our probable expatriation.
Election Day was ever an event of moment with us
children. From the time when I was tall enough to peep over
the vine-draped garden-fence - until I was reckoned too big
to stand and stare in so public a place, and was allowed to
join the seniors who watched the street from behind the
blinds and between the sprays of the climbing roses shading
the front windows - it was my delight to inspect and
pronounce upon the groups that filled the highway all day
long. Children are violent partisans, and we separated
the sheep from the goats - id est, the Whigs from the
Democrats - as soon as the horsemen became visible
through the floating yellow dust of the roads running from
each end of the street back into the country. One
neighborhood in the lower end of the county, bordering upon
Chesterfield, was familiarly known as the "Yellow Jacket
region." It took its name, according to popular belief, from
the butternut and nankeen stuffs that were worn by men
and women. The term had a sinister meaning to us, although
it was sufficiently explained by the costume of the voters,
who seldom appeared at the Court House in force except
upon Election Day. They arrived early in the forenoon - a
straggling procession of sad-faced citizens, or so we
fancied - saying little to one another, and looking neither to
the left nor the right as their sorrel nags paced up the middle
of the wide, irregularly built street. I did not understand then,
nor do I now, their preference for sorrel horses. Certain it is
that there were four of that depressing hue to one black,
bay, or gray. So badly groomed were the poor beasts, and
so baggy were the nankeen trousers of the men who
bestrode them, that a second look was needed to determine
where the rider ended and the steed began. We noted, with
disdainful glee, that
the Yellow Jacket folk turned the corner of the crossway
flanking our garden, and so around the back of the public
square enclosing Court House, clerk's office, and jail.
There they tethered the sorry beasts to the fence, shook
down a peck or so of oats from bags they had fastened
behind the saddles, and shambled into the square to be lost
in the gathering crowd.
As they rode through the village, ill-mannered boys
chanted:
"Democrats
-
Bacon being a product
for which the state was famed, the
distinction was invidious to the last degree. My mother
never let us take up the scandalous doggerel. She said it
was vulgar, untrue, and unkind. It was not her fault that
each of us had the private belief that there was a spice of
truth in it.
When we saw a smart tilbury, drawn by a pair of glossy
horses, stop before the "Bell Tavern" opposite our house,
the occupants spring to the ground and leave the equipage
to the hostlers - who rushed from the stables at sound of
the clanging bell pulled by the landlord as soon as he caught
sight of the carriage - we said in unison:
"They are Whigs!"
We were as positive as to the politics of the men who
rode blooded hunters and wore broadcloth and tall, shining
hats. The Yellow Jacket head-gear was drab in color,
uncertain in shape.
It seemed monstrous to our intolerant youth that "poor
white folksy" men should have an equal right with
gentlemen, born and bred, in deciding who should represent
the county in the Legislature and the district in Congress.
The crowning excitement of the occasion was reserved
for the afternoon. As early as three o'clock I was used to
see my father come out of the door of his counting-room
over the way, watch in hand, and look down the Richmond
road. Presently he would be joined there by one, two, or
three others, and they compared timepieces, looking up at
the weltering sun, their faces graver and gestures more
energetic as the minutes sped by. The junta of women
sympathizers behind the vine-curtains began to speculate as
to the possibility of accident to man, beast, or carriage, and
we children inquired, anxiously, "What would happen if the
Richmond voters did not come, after all?"
"No fear of that!" we were assured, our mother adding,
with modest pride, "Your father has attended to the
matter."
They always came. Generally the cloud of distant dust,
looming high and fast upon the wooded horizon, was the
first signal of the reinforcements for the Whig party.
Through this we soon made out a train of ten or twelve
carriages, and perhaps as many horsemen - a triumphal
cortege that rolled and caracoled up the street amid the
cheers of expectant fellow-voters and of impartial urchins,
glad of any chance to hurrah for anybody. The most
important figure to me in the scene was my father, as with
feigned composure he walked slowly to the head of the
front steps, and lifted his hat in courteous acknowledgment
of the hands and hats waved to him from carriage and
saddle-bow. If I thought of Alexander, Napoleon, and
Washington, I am not ashamed to recollect it now.
That child has been defrauded who has not had a hero in
his own home.
I was at no loss to know who mine was, on this bland
spring morning, as my father and I leaned on a fence on the
hither side of the creek and watched the proceedings of the
cooks and managers about the al fresco kitchen.
"Too many cooks spoil the dinner!" quoth I, as negroes
bustled from fire to fire, and white men yelled their orders
and counter-orders. "Not that it matters much what kind of
victuals are served at a Democratic barbecue, so long as
there is plenty to drink."
"Easy, easy, daughter!" smiled my auditor. "There are
good men and true in the other party. We are in danger of
forgetting that."
"None as good and great as Mr. Clay, father?"
He raised his hat slightly and involuntarily. "I do not think
he has his equal as man and pure patriot in this, or any
other country. God defend the right!"
"You are not afraid lest Polk" - drawling the mono
syllable in derision - "will beat him, father?"
The smile was a laugh - happily confident
"Hardly! I have more faith in human nature and in the
common-sense of the American people than to think that
they will pass over glorious Harry of the West, and forget
his distinguished services to the nation, to set in the
presidential chair an obscure demagogue who has done
nothing. Wouldn't you like to go down there and see half an
ox roasted, and a whole sheep?"
We crossed the stream upon a shaking plank laid from
bank to bank, and strolled down the slope to the scene of
operations. An immense kettle was swung over a fire of
logs that were so many living coals. The smell of Brunswick
stew had been wafted to us while we leaned on the fence.
A young man, who had the reputation of being an epicure,
to the best of his knowledge and ability, superintended
the manufacture of the famous delicacy.
"Two dozen chickens went into it!" he assured us.
"They wanted to make me think it couldn't be made without
green corn and fresh tomatoes. I knew a trick worth two of
that. I have worked it before with dried tomatoes and dried
sweet corn soaked overnight."
He smacked his lips and winked fatuously.
"I've great confidence in your culinary skill," was the good-natured rejoinder.
I recollected that I had heard my father say of this
very youth:
"I am never hard upon a fellow who is a fool because he
can't help it!" But I wondered at his gentleness when the
epicure prattled on:
"Yes, sir! a stew like this is fit for Democrats to eat. I
wouldn't give a Whig so much as a smell of the pot!"
"You ought to have a tighter lid, then," with the same good-
humored intonation, and we passed on to see the roasts.
Shallow pits, six or seven feet long and four feet wide, were
half filled with clear coals of hard hickory billets. Iron bars
were laid across these, gridiron-like, and half-bullocks and
whole sheep were cooking over the scarlet embers. There
were six pits, each with its roast. The spot for the speakers'
rostrum and the seats of the audience was well selected. A
deep spring welled up in a grove of maples. The fallen red
blossoms carpeted the ground, and the young leaves
supplied grateful shade. The meadows sloped gradually
toward the spring; rude benches of what we called
"puncheon dogs" - that is, the trunks of trees hewed in half,
and the flat sides laid uppermost - were ranged in the form
of an amphitheatre.
"You have a fine day for the meeting," observed my
father to the master of ceremonies, a planter from the
Genito neighborhood, who greeted the visitors cordially.
"Yes, sir! The Lord is on our side, and no mistake!"
returned the other, emphatically. "Don't you see that
yourself, Mr. Hawes!"
"I should not venture to base my faith upon the weather,"
his eyes twinkling while he affected gravity, "for we read
that He sends His rain and sunshine upon the evil
and the good. Good-morning! I hope the affair will be as
pleasant as the day."
Our father took his family into confidence more freely
than any other man I ever knew. We were taught not to
prattle to outsiders of what was said and done at home. At
ten years of age I was used to hearing affairs of personal
and business moment canvassed by my parents and my
father's partner, who had been an inmate of our house from
his eighteenth year - intensely interested to the utmost of
my comprehension and drawing my own conclusions
privately, yet understanding all the while that whatever I
heard and thought was not to be spoken of to schoolmate or
visitor.
It was not unusual for my father to confide to me in our
early morning rides - for he was my riding-master - some
scheme he was considering pertaining to church, school, or
purchase, talking of it as to an equal in age and intelligence.
I hearkened eagerly, and was flattered and honored by the
distinction thus conferred. He never charged me not to
divulge what was committed to me. Once or twice he had
added, "I know I am safe in telling you this." After which
the thumb-screw could not have extracted a syllable of the
communication from me.
It was during one of these morning rides that he unfolded
a plan suggested, as he told me, by our visit to the
Democratic barbecue-ground some weeks before.
We had to rise betimes to secure a ride of tolerable
length before the warmth of the spring and summer days
made the exercise fatiguing and unpleasant. A glass of milk
and a biscuit were brought to me while I was dressing in
the gray dawn, and I would join my escort at the front gate,
where stood the hostler with both horses, while the east
was yet but faintly colored by the unseen sun.
We were pacing quietly along a plantation road five
miles from the Court House, and I was dreamily enjoying
the fresh taste of the dew-laden air upon my lips, and
inhaling the scent of the wild thyme and sheep-mint, bruised
by the horses' hoofs, when my companion, who, I had seen,
had been in a brown study for the last mile, began with:
"I have been thinking -" The sure prelude to something
worth hearing, or so I believed then.
A Whig rally was meditated. He had consulted with three
of his friends as to the scheme born of his brain, and there
would be a meeting of perhaps a dozen leading men of the
party in his counting-room that afternoon. The affair was
not to be spoken of until date and details were settled. My
heart swelled with pride in him, and in myself as his chosen
confidante, as he went on. The recollection of the scenes
succeeding the barbecue was fresh in our minds, and the
memory sharpened the contrast between the methods of
the rival parties.
I was brimful of excitement when I got home, and the
various novelties of the impending event in the history
of county politics and village life were the staple of
neighborhood talk for the weeks dividing that morning ride
from the mid-May day of the "rally."
That was what they called it, for it was not to be a
barbecue, although a collation would be served in the
grounds surrounding the Grove Hotel, situated in the centre
of the hamlet, and separated from the public square by one
street. The meeting and the speaking would be in the grove
at the rear of the Court House. Seats were to be arranged
among the trees. It was at my father's instance and his
expense that the benches would be covered with white
cotton cloth - "muslin," in Northern parlance. This was in
special compliment to the "ladies who, it was hoped, would
compose a great part of the audience."
This was the chiefest innovation of all that set tongues to
wagging in three counties. The wives and mothers and
daughters of voters were cordially invited by placards
strewed broadcast through the length and breadth of
Powhatan. The like had never been heard of within of
memory of the oldest inhabitant. It was universally felt that
the step practically guaranteed the county for Clay and
Frelinghuysen.
A WHIG RALLY AND MUSTER DAY
THE day dawned heavenly
fair, and waxed gloriously
bright by the time the preparations for the reception of the
guests were completed. The dust had been laid by an all-
day rain forty-eight hours before. Every blade of grass and
the leaves, which rustled joyously overhead, shone as if
newly varnished. At ten o'clock all the sitting-space was
occupied, three-fourths of the assembly being of the fairer
sex. Half an hour later there was not standing-room within
the sound of the orators' voices. A better-dressed, better-
mannered crowd never graced a political "occasion." All
were in summer gala attire, and all were seated without
confusion. My father, as chairman of the committee of
arrangements, had provided for every stage of the
proceeding. It was by a motion, made by him and carried by
acclamation, that Captain Miller, "a citizen of credit and
renown," was called to preside.
As if it had happened last week, I can, in fancy, see each
feature of this, the most stupendous function that had ever
entered my young life. I suppose there may have been five
hundred people present. I would have said, unhesitatingly,
"five thousand," if asked to make the computation. I wore,
for the first time, a sheer lawn frock - the longest I had
ever had, but, as my mother explained to the village
dressmaker - Miss Judy Cardozo - "Virginia is growing so
fast, we would better have it rather long to begin with." I
secretly rejoiced in the sweep of the full
skirt down to my heels, as giving me a young-ladylike
appearance. "Thad" Ivey, always kind to me, and not less
Jolly because he was soon to be a married man, meeting
me on the way up the street, declared that I had "really a
ball-room air." My hair was "done" in two braids and tied
with white ribbon figured with pale-purple and green
flowers. Sprigs of the same color decorated the white
ground of my lawn. I carried a white fan, and I sat, with
great delight, between my mother and Cousin Mary.
"
'And bright
murmured a gallant Whig
to the row of women behind us.
"Isn't that strange!" whispered I to Cousin Mary; "those
lines have been running in my mind ever since we came."
Not strange, as I now know. Everybody read and quoted
"Childe Harold" at that period, and I may add, took liberties
with the text of favorite poems to suit them to the occasion.
When the round of applause that greeted the appearance
of Captain Miller upon the platform subsided, everything
grew suddenly so still that I heard the leaves rustling over
our heads. His was not an imposing presence, but he had a
stainless reputation as a legislator and a Whig, and was
highly respected as a man. He began in exactly these words:
"Ladies and gentlemen - fellow-citizens, all! - it
behooves us, always and everywhere, before entering upon
the prosecution of any important enterprise, to invoke the
presence and blessing of Almighty God. We will, therefore,
be now led in prayer by the Reverend Mr. Carus."
My uncle-in-law "offered" a tedious petition, too
Long-winded to please the average politician perhaps, but
it was generally felt that a younger man and newer resident
could not have been called upon without incivility verging
upon disrespect to a venerable citizen. The invocation
over, the presiding officer announced that "the Whigs, in
obedience to the spirit of fair play to all, and injustice
to none, that had ever characterized the party, would
today grant to their honored opponents, the Democrats, the
opportunity of replying publicly to the arguments advanced
in the addresses of those representing the principles in the
interest of which the present assembly had been convened.
The first speaker of the day would be the Hon. Holden
Rhodes, of Richmond. The second would be one almost as
well known to the citizens of county and state - the Hon.
John Winston Jones, of Chesterfield. The Whigs reserved
to themselves the last and closing address of the day by the
Hon. Watkins Leigh, of Richmond."
Nothing could be fairer and more courteous, it seemed to
me. In the hum of approval that rippled through the
assembly it was apparent that others held the like
sentiment. Likewise, that the "Honorable Chairman" had
scored another point for the magnanimous Whigs. But
then - as I whispered to my indulgent neighbor on the
left - they could afford to surrender an advantage or two
to the party they were going to whip out of existence.
Holden Rhodes was an eminent lawyer, and his speech
was a trifle too professional in sustained and unoratorical
argument for my taste and mental reach. I recall it chiefly
because of a comical interruption that enlivened the hour-
long exposition of party creeds.
I have drawn in my book, Judith, a full-length portrait of
one of the men of marked individuality who made Powhatan
celebrated in the history of a state remarkable in every
period for strongly defined public characters. In Judith I
named this man "Captain Macon." In real life he was Capt.
John Cocke, a scion of a good old family, a planter of
abundant means, and the father of sons who
were already beginning to take the place in the public eye he
had held for fifty years. He was tall and gaunt, his once
lofty head slightly bowed by years and - it was hinted - by
high living. He had been handsome, and his glance was still
piercing, his bearing distinguished. I ever cherished, as I
might value a rare antique, the incident of his introduction
to that stalwart dame, my New England grandmother, who
had now been a member of our family for three years.
We were on our way home after service at Fine Creek,
and the carriage had stopped at a wayside spring to water
the horses. Captain Cocke stood by the spring, his bridle
rein thrown over his arm while his horse stooped to the
branch flowing across the highway. Expecting to see my
mother in the carriage, he took off his hat and approached
the window.
"This is my mother, Captain," said my father, raising his
voice slightly, as he then named the new-comer to her deaf
ears.
The old cavalier bowed low, his hand upon his heart:
"Madam, I am the friend of your son. I can say nothing more
to a mother!"
The fine courtesy, the graceful deference to age, the
instant adaptation of manner and words to the circumstances,
have set the episode aside in my heart as a gem of its kind.
He wore on that Sunday, and he wore on every other day
the year around, a scarlet hunting-coat. I wonder if
there were more eccentrics in Virginia in that
generation than are to be met with there - or anywhere
else - nowadays? Certain it is that nobody thought of
inquiring why Captain Cocke, whose ancestors had served
under Washington and Lafayette in the war for freedom,
chose to sport the British livery. We had ceased to remark
upon it by the time I write of. When strangers expressed
wonderment
at the queer garb, we had a resentful impression of
officiousness.
Mr. Rhodes, with the rest of his party, was thoroughly
dissatisfied with the policy (or want of policy) of John
Tyler, who had been called to the presidential chair by the
untimely death of Gen. W. H. Harrison. In the progress of
his review of national affairs, he came to this name when
he had spoken half an hour or so.
Whereupon uprose the majestic figure clad in scarlet,
from his seat a few feet away from the platform. The
Captain straightened his bent shoulders and lifted lean
arms and quivering fingers toward heaven. The red tan of
his weather-beaten cheeks was a dusky crimson.
"The Lord have mercy upon the nation!" he cried, his
voice solemn with wrath, and sonorous with the potency of
the mint-juleps for which "The Bell" was noted. Fellow-
citizens! I always cry to High Heaven for mercy upon this
country when John Tyler's name is mentioned! Amen and
amen!"
He had a hearty round of applause mingled with echoes
of his "amens" and much good-humored laughter. They all
knew and loved the Captain. I felt the blood rush to my
face, and I saw others glance around reprovingly when a
city girl who sat behind me, and carried on a whispered
flirtation with a fopling at her side during Mr. Rhodes's
speech, drawled:
"What voice from the tombs is that?"
Mrs. James Saunders, née Mary Cocke, was my mother's
right-hand neighbor. With perfect temper and an agreeable
smile, she looked over her shoulder into the babyish face
of the cockney guest -
"That is my Uncle John," she uttered, courteously.
Whereat all within hearing smiled, and the young woman
had the grace to blush.
Mr. Rhodes was speaking again, and the audience was
respectfully attentive. The orator made clever use of the
Captain's interruption. The manner of it offended nobody.
John Tyler was, perhaps, the most unpopular man in
the Union at that particular time. The Democrats had
no use for him, and he had disappointed his own party.
When the smoke and dust of political skirmishing cleared
away, Virginians did something like justice to his motives
and his talents. Twenty years thereafter, my early
prepossessions, engendered by the vituperative eloquence
of the Clay campaign, were corrected by a quiet remark
made by my father to a man who spoke slightingly of the
ex-President:
"The man who chose the cabinet that served during
Tyler's administration was neither fool nor traitor."
John Winston Jones demolished the fair fabric Mr.
Rhodes had spent so much time and labor in constructing
that I began to yawn before the lively Democrat woke me
up. I recollect that he was pungent and funny, and that I
was interested, despite his sacrilegious treatment of what I
regarded as sacred themes.
It was a telling point when he drew deliberately a wicked
looking jack-knife from his breeches pocket, opened it as
deliberately, and, turning toward Mr. Rhodes, who sat at his
left, said:
"If I were to plunge this into the bosom of my friend and
respected opponent (and I beg to assure him that I shall not
hurt a hair of his head, now or ever!), would I be regarded as
his benefactor? Yet that is what General Jackson did to the
system of bank monopolies," etc.
I did not follow him further. For a startled second I had
really thought we were to have a "scene." I had heard that
Democrats were bloodthirsty by nature, and that sanguinary
outbreaks attended political demonstrations and cataracts
of bad whiskey.
It goes without saying that the Hon. Watkins Leigh -
a distinguished member of the Richmond bar, famous for
legal acumen and forensic oratory - made quick and
thorough work in the destruction of Mr. Jones's building,
and sent the Whigs home with what I heard my mother
describe as "a good taste in their mouths."
The orations were interspersed with "patriotic songs." A
quartette of young men, picked out by the committee of
arrangements, for their fine voices and stanch Whiggery,
stood on the platform and sang the body of the ballads. The
choruses were shouted, with more force and good-will than
tunefulness, by masculine voters of all ages and qualities of
tone.
Doctor Henning, an able physician, and as eccentric in his
way as Captain Cocke in his, stood near my father, his
back against a tree, his mouth wide, and all the volume of
sound he could pump from his lungs pouring skyward in the
refrain of
"Get
out of the way, you're all unlucky;
when his eye fell upon
a young man, who, having no more
ear or voice than the worthy Galen himself, contented
himself with listening. As the quartette began the next
verse, the Doctor collared "Abe" Cardozo (whom, by the
way, he had assisted to bring into the world), and actually
shook him in the energy of his patriotism -
"Abraham James! why
don't you sing?"
"Me, Doctor?"
stammered the young fellow, who probably
had not heard his middle name in ten years before
- "I never sang a note in my life!"
"Then begin
now!" commanded the Doctor, setting the
example as the chorus began anew.
How my father laughed!
backing out of sight of the pair,
and doubling himself up in the enjoyment of the scene,
real bright tears rolling down his cheeks. I heard
him rehearse the incident twenty times in after-years, and always
with keen delight. For the Doctor was a scholar and a dreamer, as
well as a skilful practitioner, renowned for his horticultural and
ornithological successes, and so taciturn and absent-minded that
he seldom took part in general conversation. That he should have
been drawn out of his shell to the extent of roaring out
ungrammatical doggerel in a public assembly of his fellow-citizens,
was a powerful proof of the tremendous force of party enthusiasm. The
incongruity of the whole affair appealed to my father's ever-active
sense of humor. He would wind up the story by asserting that "it
would have made Jeremiah chuckle if he had known both of the
actors in the by-play."
One specimen of the ballads that flooded the land in the fateful
1844 will give some idea of the tenor of all:
"The
moon was shining silver bright, the stars with glory crowned the
night,
"Get
out of the way, you're all unlucky; clear the track for Ole
Kentucky!
"Now
in a sad predicament the Lokies are for President;
"The
Wagon-Horse from Pennsylvany, the Dutchmen think he's the best of any;
"They
proudly bring upon the course an old and broken down war-horse;
"And
here is Cass, though not a dunce, will run both sides of the track at
once;
"The
fiery Southern horse, Calhoun, who hates a Fox and fears a Coon,
"And
here is Matty, never idle, a tricky horse that slips his bridle;
"The
balky horse they call John Tyler, we'll head him soon or burst his
boiler;
"The
people's fav'rite, Henry Clay, is now the 'fashion' of the day;
"Get
out of the way, he's swift and lucky; clear the track for Ole
Kentucky!"
(The chorus of each
preceding verse is, "Get out of the way,
you're all unlucky," etc. The "Fox" is Martin Van Buren, or
"Matty." The "Coon" is Clay. The "Wagon-Horse from
Pennsylvany" is James Buchanan.)
Another ballad, sung that
day under the trees at the back of
the Court House, began after this wise:
"What
has caused this great commotion
To my excited
imagination it was simple fact, not a flight
of fancy, that Powhatan should be alluded to that day as
"your historic county - a mere wave in the vast Union -
"That
ever shall be
"A wave,
fellow-citizens, that has caught the irresistible
impulse of wind and tide bearing us on to the most glorious
victory America has ever seen."
Ah's
me! That was how both parties talked and felt with
regard to the Union seventeen years before the very name
became odious to those who had been ready to die in
defence of it.
I cannot dismiss the subject of public functions in the
"historic county" without devoting a few pages to the annual
Muster Day. It was preceded by five days of "officers'
training." The manoeuvres of the latter body were carried
on in the public square, and, as one end of our house
overlooked this, no lessons were studied or recited between
the hours of 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. on those days. The
sophisticated twentieth-century youngling will smile
contemptuously at hearing that, up to this time, I had never
heard a brass-band. But I knew all about martial music.
Already there was laid away in the fat portfolio nobody
except myself ever opened, a story in ten parts, in which
the hero's voice was compared to "the thrilling strains of
martial music."
I boiled the tale down four years thereafter, and it was
printed. It had a career. But "that is another story."
I used to sit with my "white work," or a bit of knitting,
in hand, at that end window, looking across the side-street
down upon the square, watching the backing and filling, the
prancing and the halting of the eight "officers" drilled in
military tactics by Colonel Hopkins, the strains of the drum
and fife in my ears, and dream out war-stories by the dozen.
The thumping and the squealing of drum and fife set my
pulses to dancing as the finest orchestra has never made
them leap since that day when fancy was more real and
earnest than what the bodily senses took in.
By Saturday the officers had learned their lesson well
enough to take their respective stands before (and aft, as
we shall see) the larger body of free and independent
American citizens who were not "muster free," hence who
must study the noble art of war.
They came from every quarter of the county. The Fine
Creek and Genito neighborhoods gave up their quota, and
Deep Creek, Red Lane, and Yellow Jacket country kept
not back. It was a motley and most democratic line that
stretched from the main street to that flanking the public
square. Butternut and broadcloth rubbed elbows; planter
and overseer were shoulder to shoulder. "Free, white, and
twenty-one" had the additional qualification of "under forty-
five." Past that, the citizen of these free and enlightened
United States lays down the burden of peaceable military
muster.
Besides those worn by the officers, there was not a
uniform on duty that Saturday. Here and there one might
descry the glitter of a gun-barrel. Walking-canes and,
with the Yellow Jacket contingent, corn-stalks, simulated
muskets in the exercises dictated by Colonel Hopkins, who
was to-day at his best. I employ the word "dictated" with
intention. He had to tell the recruits (surely the rawest
ever drawn up in line) exactly what each order meant. To
prevent the swaying array from leaning back
against the fence, three officers were detailed to skirmish
behind the long row and shove delinquents into place. The
Colonel instructed them how to hold their "arms," patiently;
in the simplest colloquial phrase, informed them what each
was to do when ordered to "shoulder arms," "right dress,"
"mark time," and the rest of the technicalities confusing to
ears unlearned, and which, heard by the veteran but once
in a twelve-month, could not be familiar even after ten or
fifteen years of "service."
Both the windows commanding the parade-ground were
filled on Muster Day. My mother and our grown-up cousins
enjoyed the humors of the situation almost as much as we
girls, who let nothing escape our eager eyes. Especially do I
recall the shout of laughter we drew away from our outlook
to stifle, when the suave commanding officer, mindful of
the dull comprehension and crass ignorance of a large
proportion of his corps, directed them in a clear
voice - whose courteous intonations never varied under
provocations that would have thrown some men into
paroxysms of mirth, and moved many to profanity - to "look
straight forward, hold the chin level, and let the hands hang
down, keeping thumbs upon the seam of the pantaloons."
More technical terms would have been thrown away.
Twenty warriors (prospective) brought both hands forward
and laid their thumbs, side by side, upon the central seams of
their pantaloons! Merriment, that threatened to be like the
"inextinguishable laughter" of Olympian deities, followed the
grave anxieties of the officials in rear and front of the mixed
multitude to hinder those at the extreme ends of the line
from bending forward to watch the manoeuvres of
comrades who occupied the centre of the field. In spite of
hurryings to and fro and up and down the ranks, it chanced,
half a dozen times an hour, that what should have been a
straight line became a curve. Then the gallant, indomitable
Colonel would
walk majestically from end to end, and with the flat of his
naked sword repair the damage done to discipline -
"Just like a boy rattling a stick along the palings!" gasped
Cousin Mary, choking with mirth.
The simile was apt.
Some staid citizens, tenacious of dignity and susceptible
to ridicule, seldom appeared upon the parade-ground,
preferring to pay the fine exacted for the omission.
Others - and not a few - contended that some familiarity
with military manoeuvres was essential to the mental outfit
of every man who would be willing to serve his country in
the field if necessary. This sentiment moved sundry of the
younger men to the formation, that same year (if I mistake
not), of the "Powhatan Troop."
One incident connected with the birth of an organization
that still exists, in name, fixed it in my mind. Cousin
Joe - the hero of my childish days - was mainly
instrumental in getting up the company, and brought the
written form of constitution and by-laws to my father's
house, where he dined on the Court Day which marked the
first parade. Our kinsman, Moses Drury Hoge, came with
him. He prided himself, among a great many other things,
upon being phenomenally far-sighted. To test this he asked
Cousin Joe to hold the paper against the wall on the
opposite side of the room, and read it aloud slowly and
correctly from his seat, twenty feet away.
The scene came back to me as it was photographed on
my mind that day, when I read, ten years ago, in a
Richmond paper, of the prospective celebration of the
formation of the "Powhatan Troop." I was more than four
hundred miles away, and fifty-odd years separated me from
the "historic county" and the Court House where the
banquet was to be given. I let the paper drop and closed my
eyes. I was back in the big, square room on the first
floor of the long, low, rambling house on the village
street. My
favorite cousin, tall and handsome, held the paper above
his head, smiling in indulgent amusement at the young
kinsman of whom he was ever fond and proud. My father
stood in the doorway, watching the progress of the test.
My mother had let her sewing fall to her lap while she
looked on. The scent of roses from the garden that was
the joy of my mother's heart, stole in through open doors
and windows. The well-modulated tones, that were to ring
musically in church and hall on both sides of the sea, and
for more than a half-century to come, read the formal
agreement, of which I recalled, in part, the preamble:
"We, the undersigned, citizens of the County of
Powhatan, in the State of Virginia."
While the glamour of that moment of ecstatic reminiscence
wrought within me, I seized my pen and wrote a telegram
of congratulation to the revellers, seated, as I reckoned,
at that very hour, about the banqueting-board. I addressed
the despatch to Judge Thomas Miller, the grandson of the
chairman on the day of the Whig rally. By a remarkable and
happy coincidence, for which I had hardly dared to hope,
the telegram, sent from a country station in New Jersey,
flew straight and fast to the obscure hamlet nearly five
hundred miles off, and was handed to Judge Miller at the
head of the table while the feast was in full flow. He
read it aloud, and the health of the writer was drunk
amid such applause as my wildest fancy could not have
foreseen in the All-So-Long-Ago when my horizon,
all rose-color and gold, was bounded by the confines of
"Our County."
RUMORS OF CHANGES - A CORN-SHUCKING -
NEGRO TOPICAL SONG
MY mother's love for
Richmond was but second to that
she felt for husband and children. It was evident to us in
after-years that her longing to return to her early home
wrought steadily, if silently, upon my father's mind and
shaped his plans.
These plans were definitively made and announced to us
by the early autumn of 1844. Uncle Carus had removed to
the city with his family late in the summer. My sister and
I were to be sent to a new school just established in
Richmond, and recommended to our parents by Moses Hoge,
who was now assistant pastor in the First Presbyterian
Church, and had full charge of a branch of the same,
built farther up-town than the Old First founded by
Dr. John H. Rice. We girls were to live with the
Caruses that winter. In the spring the rest of the family
would follow, and, thenceforward, our home would be in
Richmond.
A momentous change, and one that was to alter the
complexion of all our lives. Yet it was so gradually and
quietly effected that we were not conscious of so much as
a jar in the machinery of our existence.
I heard my mother say, and more than once, in after-years,
crowded with incident and with cares of which we never
dreamed in those eventless months:
"I was never quite contented to live anywhere out of
Richmond, yet I often asked myself during the seven years
we spent in Powhatan if they were not the most carefree
I should ever have. I know, now, that they were."
My father gave a fervent assent when he heard this. To
him the sojourn was prosperous throughout. Energy,
integrity, public spirit, intelligence, and, under the
exterior chance acquaintances thought stern, the truest
heart that ever throbbed with love to God and love to
man, had won for him the esteem and friendship of the best
men in the county. Steadily he mounted, by the force of
native worth, to the magistrate's bench, and was a
recognized factor in local and in state politics. He had
established a flourishing Sunday-school in the "Fine
Creek neighborhood," where none had ever existed until he
made this the nucleus of a church. He was the confidential
adviser of the embarrassed planter and the struggling
mechanic, and lent a helping hand to both. He was President
of a debating society, in which he was, I think, the only man
who was not a college graduate.
His business had succeeded far beyond his expectations
Except that the increase of means moved him to larger
charities, there was no change in our manner of life. We
had always been above the pinch of penury, living as well
as our neighbors, and, so far as the younger members of
the family knew, as well as any reasonable people need
desire to live. We had our carriage and horses, my sister
and I a riding-horse apiece, abundance of delicacies for the
table, and new clothes of excellent quality whenever we
wanted them.
The ambitions and glories of the world beyond our
limited sphere came to our ken as matter of entertainment,
not as provocatives to discontent.
Two nights before we left home for our city school, the
Harvest Home - "corn-shucking" - was held. It was
always great fun to us younglings to witness the "show."
With no premonition that I should never assist at another
similar function, I went into the kitchen late in the afternoon,
and, as had been my office ever since I was eight years old,
superintended the setting of the supper-table for our servants
and their expected guests. I was Mammy Ritta's special pet, and
she put in a petition that I would stand by her now, in terms
I could not have resisted if I had been as averse to the task
as I was glad to perform it:
"Is you goin' to be sech a town young lady that you won't jes'
step out and show us how to set de table, honey?" could have
but one answer.
A boiled ham had the place of honor at one end of the
board, built out with loose planks to stretch from the
yawning fireplace, bounding the lower end of the big
kitchen, to Mammy's room at the other. My mother had
lent tablecloth and crockery to meet the demands of the
company. She had, of course, furnished the provisions
loading the planks. A shoulder balanced the ham, and
side-dishes of sausage, chine, spareribs, fried chicken, huge
piles of corn and wheat bread, mince and potato pies, and
several varieties of preserves, would fill every spare foot of
cloth when the hot things were in place. Floral decorations
of feasts would not come into vogue for another decade
and more, but I threw the sable corps of workers into
ecstasies of delighted wonder by instructing Spotswood,
Gilbert, and a stableman to tack branches of pine and cedar
along the smoke-browned rafters and stack them in the
corners.
"Mos' as nice as bein' in de woods!" ejaculated the
laundress, with an audible and long-drawn sniff, parodying,
in unconscious anticipation, Young John Chivery's - "I feel
as if I was in groves!"
It was nine o'clock before the ostensible business of the
evening began. Boards, covered with straw, were the base
of the mighty pyramid of corn in the open space between
the kitchen-yard and the stables. Straw was strewed
about the heap to a distance of twenty or thirty feet, and
here the men of the party assembled, sitting flat on the
padded earth. The evening was bland and the moon was at the
full. About the doors of kitchen and laundry fluttered
the dusky belles who had accompanied the shuckers, and
who would sit down to supper with them. Their presence
was the inspiration of certain "topical songs," as we would
name them - sometimes saucy, oftener flattering. As dear
Doctor Primrose hath it, "There was not much wit, but
there was a great deal of laughter, and that did nearly as
well."
This was what Mea and I whispered to each other in
our outlook at the window of our room that gave directly
upon the lively scene. We had sat in the same place for
seven successive corn-shuckings, as we reminded
ourselves, sighing reminiscently.
The top of the heap of corn was taken by the biggest
man present and the best singer. From his eminence he
tossed down the hooded ears to the waiting hands that
caught them as they hurtled through the air, and stripped
them in a twinkling. As he tossed, he sang, the others
catching up the chorus with a will. Hands and voices kept
perfect time.
One famous corn-shuckers' song was encored vociferously.
It ran, in part, thus:
"My
cow Maria
Chorus
"I
tell my man Dick
"And
Dick he said,
(Being of an economic
turn of mind, the owner of
deceased Maria proceeded to make disposition of her
several members:)
"I
made her hide over
"I
cut her hoof up
"Her
tail I strip'
"Her
ribs hol' op
And so on until, as Mea
murmured, under cover of the
uproarious "Go de corn!" repeated over and over and
over, with growing might of lung - "Maria was worth twice
as much dead as alive."
We had had our first nap when the chatter of the
Supper-party, saying their farewells to hosts and
companions, awoke us. We tumbled out of bed and flew
to the window. The moon was as bright as day, the dark
figures bustling between us and the heaps of shucks and the
mounds of corn, gleaming like gold in the moonlight,
reminded us of nimble ants scampering about their hills.
The supper had evidently been eminently satisfactory. We
could smell hot coffee and sausage still. Fine phrases,
impossible to any but a negro's brain and tongue, flew fast
and gayly. The girls giggled and gurgled in palpable
imitation of damsels of fairer skins and higher degree.
Hampton - the spruce carriage-driver (as coachmen were
named then) of Mr. Spencer D., Effie's father - bowed
himself almost double right under our window in worshipful
obeisance to a bright mulatto in a blazing red frock.
"Is all de ladies ockerpied wid gentlemen?" he called,
perfunctorily, over his shoulder. And, ingratiatingly direct
to the coy belle who pretended not to see his approach,
"Miss Archer! is you ockerpied?"
Miss Archer tittered and writhed coquettishly.
"Well, Mr. D.! I can't jes' say that I is!"
"Then, jes' hook on hyar, won't you?" crooking a
persuasive elbow.
THE COUNTRY GIRLS AT A CITY SCHOOL - VELVET HATS AND
OUR father took us to
Richmond the first of October. A
stage ran between Cumberland Court House and the city,
going down one day and coming up the next, taking in
Powhatan wayside stations and one or more in
Chesterfield.
We rarely used the public conveyance. This important
journey was made in our own carriage. A rack at the back
contained two trunks. Other luggage had gone down by
the stage. We had dinner at a half-way house of
entertainment, leaving home at 9 o'clock A.M., and coming
in sight of the town at five in the afternoon.
That night I was lulled to sleep for the first time by what
was to be forevermore associated in my thoughts with the
fair City of Seven Hills - the song of the river-rapids. It
is a song - never a moan. Men have come and men may go;
the pleasant places endeared by history, tradition, and
memory may be, and have been, laid waste; the holy and
beautiful houses in which our fathers worshipped have
been burned with fire, the bridges spanning the rolling river
have been broken down, and others have arisen in their
place; but one thing has remained as unchanged as the
heavens reflected in the broad breast of the stream - that
is the sweet and solemn anthem, dear to the heart of one
who has lived long within the sound of it, as the song of the
surf to the homesick exile who asked in the Vale of
Tempë, "Where is the sea!"
We were duly entered in the school conducted by Mrs.
Nottingham and her four daughters in an irregularly built
frame-house - painted "colonial yellow" - which stood
at the corner of Fifth and Franklin Streets. It was pulled
down long ago to make room for a stately brick residence,
built and occupied by my brother Horace.
The school was Presbyterian, through and through. Mr.
Hoge had a Bible-class there every Monday morning; the
Nottingham family, including boarders, attended Sunday and
week-day services in the chapel, a block farther down Fifth
Street. The eloquent curate of the Old First was rising
fast into prominence in city and church. His chapel was
crowded to the doors on Sunday afternoons when there
was no service in the mother-church, and filled in
forenoon with the colony which, it was settled, should
form itself into a corporate and independent body within
a few months.
It spoke well for the drill we had had from our tutor,
and said something for the obedient spirit in which we
had followed the line of study indicated by him, that Mea
and I were, after the preliminary examination, classed
with girls older than ourselves, and who had been
regular attendants upon boarding and day schools of
note. If we were surprised at this, having anticipated a
different result from the comparison of a desultory home-
education in the country, with the "finish" of city methods,
we were more amazed at the manners of our present associates.
They were, without exception, the offspring of refined and
well-to-do parents. The daughters of distinguished
clergymen men, of eminent jurists, of governors and
congressmen, wealthy merchants and rich James River
planters, were our classmates in school sessions and our
companions when lessons were over. It was our initial
experience in the arrogant democracy of the "Institution."
Be it day-school, boarding-school, or college, the story
of this experience is the same the world over. The frank
brutality of question and comment; the violent and
reasonless partisanships; the irrational intimacies, and
the short lives of these; the combinations against lawful
authority; the deceptions and evasions to screen offenders
from the consequences of indolence or disobedience - were
but a few of the revelations made to the two country girls
in the trial-months of that winter.
I had my first shock in the course of an examination upon
ancient history conducted by the second and gentlest of
the Nottingham sisters - Miss Sarah. I was unaffectedly
diffident in the presence of girls who were so much more
fashionably attired than we in our brown merino frocks
made by "Miss Judy," and trimmed with velvet of a darker
shade, that I felt more ill at ease than my innate pride
would let me show. But I kept my eyes upon the kind face
of the catechist, and answered in my turn distinctly, if
low, trying with all my might to think of nothing but the
subject in hand. I observed that Mea did the same. I was
always sure of her scholarship, and I tingled with pride at
her composure and the refined intonations that rendered
replies invariably correct. Honestly, I had thought far more
of her than of myself, when, after a question from Miss Sarah
revealed the fact that I had read Plutarch's Lives, a tall
girl next to me dug her elbow into my ribs:
"Law, child! you think yourself so smart!"
She was the daughter of one of the eminent professional
men I have alluded to, and three years my senior. I knew
her father by reputation, and had been immensely
impressed with a sense of the honor of being seated beside
her in the class.
"Miss Blank!" said Miss Sarah, as stern as she could
ever be. "I am surprised!"
The girl giggled. So did a dozen others. My cheeks
flamed hotly, and my temper followed suit. I made up my
mind, then and there, never to like that "creature." I have
seen the like misbehavior in college girls who took the
highest honors.
Prof. Brander Matthews, of Columbia University, once said
to a class in English literature, of which my son was a
member:
"I could go through all of my classes and pick out, with
unerring certainty, the young men who belong to what may
be called 'reading families.' Nothing in the college
curriculum ever takes the place in education of a refined
early environment and intellectual atmosphere."
I am inclined to adapt the wise utterance to the
cultivation of what we class, awkwardly, under the head of
"manners." The child, who is taught, by precept and hourly
example in home-life, that politeness is a religious duty, and
sharp speech vulgar, and who is trained to practice with the
members of his family the "small, sweet courtesies of life"
that make the society man and woman elegant and popular,
will suffer many things at the tongues of school and college
mates, yet will not his "manners" depart from him - when
he is older!
As home-bred girls, we had to undergo a system of moral
and mental acclimation during that session. I do not
regret the ordeal. Quiet, confidential talks with Cousin
Mary, whose tact was as fine as her breeding, helped me
to sustain philosophically what would have made me
miserable but for her tender and judicious ministrations.
"It is always right to do the right thing," was a maxim
she wrought into my consciousness by many repetitions.
"The danger of association with rude and coarse people is
that we may fall into their ways to protect ourselves. It may
be good for you to rough it for a while, so long as it does
not roughen you."
Little by little we got used to the "roughing." Schoolwork
we thoroughly enjoyed, and our teachers appreciated this.
From each of them we met with kind and helpful treatment
as soon as the routine of study was fully established.
Our French master supplied the crucial test of philosophy
and diligence. He was a "character" in his way, and he
fostered the reputation. In all my days I have never known
a man who could, at pleasure, be such a savage and so fine
a gentleman. He was six-feet-something in height, superbly
proportioned and heavily mustachioed. Few men curtained
the upper lip then. He had received a university education
in France; had been a rich man in New York, marrying
there the daughter of Samuel Ogden, a well-known citizen,
the father of Anna Cora Mowatt, the actress, who
afterward became Mrs. Ritchie.
Isidore Guillet lost wife and fortune in the same year, and,
after a vain effort to recoup his finances at the North,
removed to Richmond with his three sons, and became a
fashionable French teacher. He was fierce in class, and
suave outside of the recitation-room. Our late and
now-more-than-ever-lamented tutor had laid a fair
foundation for us in the French language. We were "up" in
the verbs to an extent that excited the rude applause of
our classmates. We read French as fluently as English, and
were tolerably conversant with such French classics as
were current in young ladies' seminaries. These things
were less than vanity when M. Guillet and Manesca took
the field. We were required to copy daily seven or eight
foolscap pages-full of that detestable "System." Beginning
with "Avez vous le clou?" and running the gamut of "le bon
clou," "le mauvais clou," and "le bon clou de votre père," "le
mauvais clou de votre grandmère," up to the maddening
discords of "l'interrogatif et le negatif" - we were rushed
breathlessly along the lines ordained by the merciless
"System" and more merciless master, until
it was a marvel that nerves and health were not wrecked.
I said just now that the lion roared him soft in general
society. Throughout a series of Spanish lessons given to
us two girls through the medium of French, he was
the mildest-mannered monster I ever beheld. One day he
went out of his way to account for the unlikeness to the
language-master of the class. The explanation was a refined
version of Mr. Bagnet's code - "Discipline must be
maintained." To the pair of girls who read and recited to
him in their private sitting-room, he was the finished
gentleman in demeanor, and in talk delightfully instructive.
His family in Paris had known the present generation of
Lafayettes. Lamartine - at that epoch of French
Revolutionary history, the popular idol - was his personal
Friend. He brought and read to us letters from the author-
statesman, thrilling with interest, and kept us advised,
through his family correspondence, of the stirring changes
going on in his native land. All this was in the uncovenanted
conversational exercise that succeeded the Spanish lesson.
The latter over, he would toss aside the books used in it
with an airy "Eh, bien donc! pour la conversation!" and
plunge into the matter uppermost in his mind, chatting
brilliantly and gayly in the most elegant French imaginable,
bringing into our commonplace, provincial lives the flavor
and sparkle of the Parisian salon.
To return to our first winter in a city school: The session
began on October 5th. We had ceased to be homesick, and
were learning to sustain, with seeming good-humor,
criticisms of our "countrified ways and old-fashioned talk,"
when our mother came to town for her fall shopping. She
arrived on the first of November, my father tarrying behind
to vote on the fourth. We had a glorious Saturday. It was
our very first real shopping expedition, and it has had no
equal in our subsequent experiences. There was a lecture
on Saturday morning. Mr. Richard Sterling, the
brother-in-law of our late tutor, and the head-master of a
classical school for boys, lectured to us weekly upon
Natural Philosophy. We were out by eleven o'clock, and
on emerging from the house, we found our mother awaiting
us without.
The day was divine, and we had worn our best walking-dresses,
in anticipation of the shopping frolic. Three of the girls
had commented upon our smart attire, one remarking that we
"really looked like folks." The vocabulary of school-girls
usually harmonizes with their deportment. The tall girl
I have spoken of as "Miss Blank," added to her patronizing
notice of the country girls, the encouraging assurance that
"if we only had bonnets less than a century old, we would
be quite presentable."
We held our peace, hugging to our souls the knowledge
that we were that day to try on two velvet bonnets - real
velvet - the like of which had never graced our heads
before. We could afford to smile superior to contempt and
to patronage - the lowest device of the mean mind, the
favorite tool of the consciously underbred.
I forgot heat and bitterness, and misanthropy died a
natural death in the milliner's shop. The new hat was a
dream of beauty and becomingness in my unlearned eyes.
It was a soft plum-color, and had a tiny marabou feather on
the side. I had never worn a feather. Mea's was dark-blue
and of uncut velvet. It, too, was adorned with a white
feather. I could have touched the tender blue heavens with
one finger when it was decided that we might wear the
new bonnets home, and have the old ones sent up instead.
"You know I never like to have new clothes worn for the
first time to church," our mother remarked, aside, to us.
We walked up-town, meeting my father at the foot of
Capitol Street. He was in a prodigious hurry, forging
along at a rate that made it difficult for me to overtake
him when my mother told me to "run after him, and we would
all go home together."
He drew out his watch when I told my errand breathlessly.
His eyes were bright with excitement; as he hurried back
to offer his arm to his wife, he said:
"I must be on Broad Street when the Northern train
comes in. We have just time if you don't mind walking
briskly."
Mind it! I could have run every step of the way if that
would bring the news to us more quickly. My heart smote
me remorsefully. For in the engrossing event of the new
bonnet I had forgotten, for the time, that decisive news of
the election would certainly be received by the mail-train
which ran into Richmond at two o'clock. It must be
remembered that the period of which I write antedated the
electric telegraph. We had but one through mail daily.
Election news had been pouring in heavily, but slowly. We
were not quite sure, even yet, how our own State had gone.
The returns from New York and Pennsylvania would
establish the fact of the great Whig victory beyond a doubt.
We said "the Clay victory," and were confident that it was
an accomplished, established fact. True, my father and
Uncle Carus had spoken rather gravely than apprehensively
last night of the unprecedentedly large Irish vote that had
been polled.
We were at the corner of Broad and Tenth Streets, and
still at racing speed, when the train drew slowly into the
station. The track lay in the centre of Broad Street, and
the terminus was flush with the sidewalk. I was on one side
of my father; my mother had his other arm. Mea, never a
rapid walker, was some paces in the rear. I felt my father's
step falter and slacken suddenly. Looking into his face,
I saw it darken and harden. The mobile mouth was a
straight, tense line. I thought that a groan escaped
him. Before I could exclaim, a man strode toward us from
the train. He grasped my father's arm and said something
in his ear. I caught five words of one sentence:
"The Irish vote did it!"
At the same instant the ludicrous touch, never lacking
from the supreme moments of life, was supplied to this by
a boy walking down the street, his young face disfigured by
the wrathful disappointment stamped upon the visages of
most of the men thronging the sidewalk. Some ardent
Democrat had nailed a vigorous poke-stalk against the
fence, and the lad stopped to kick it viciously. Even my
father smiled at the impotent fury of the action.
"That's right, my boy!" he said, and struck the weed into
the gutter with a blow of his cane.
"I wish other evils were as easily disposed of!" was all
that escaped the tightly-closed lips for the next half-hour.
The gloom rested upon face and spirits for twenty-four
hours. Richmond was a Whig city, and the very air seemed
oppressed by what we reckoned as a National woe. It is
not easy to appreciate in this century that the defeat of a
Presidential candidate imported so much to the best men in
the country.
"How did you know what had happened, father?" I
ventured to ask that night when the silent meal was over.
We had moved and spoken as if the beloved dead lay
under our roof. I stole out to the long back porch as we
arose from table, and stood there, leaning over the railing
and listening to the dirge chanted by the river. The stars
twinkled murkily through the city fogs; a sallow moon hung
low in the west. It was a dolorous world. I wondered how
soon the United States Government would collapse into
anarchy. Could - would my father continue to live here
under the rule of Polk? How I loathed the name and the
party that had made it historic! So quietly had my father
approached that I was made aware of his
proximity by the scent of his cigar. I was vaguely
conscious of a gleam of gratitude that he had this slight
solace. His cigar meant much to him. I laid my hand on that
resting on the railing. Such strong, capable hands as his
were! His fingers were closed silently upon mine, and I
gathered courage to put my question. The blow had fallen
before we met the man who had hissed at "the Irish vote."
"How did you know what had happened, father?"
No need to speak more definitely. Our minds had room
for but one thought.
"It was arranged with the engineer and conductor that a
flag should be made fast to the locomotive if there were
good news. It was to be a large and handsome flag.
Hundreds were on the lookout for it. As soon as I caught
sight of the train I saw that the flag was not there."
He smoked hard and fast. A choking in my throat held
me silent. For, in a lightning flash of fancy, I had before
me the glorious might-have-been that would have driven
the waiting hundreds mad with joy. I pictured how proudly
the "large, handsome flag" would have floated in the
sunshine, and the wild enthusiasm of the crowds
collected upon the sidewalks - the gladness that would
have flooded our hearts and our home.
It was, perhaps, five minutes before I could manage my
voice to say:
"How do you suppose Mr. Clay will bear it?"
I was a woman-child, and my whole soul went out in the
longing to comfort the defeated demigod.
"Like the hero that he is, my daughter. This" - still not
naming the disaster - "means more to the nation than to
him."
He raised his hat involuntarily, as I had seen him do that
bright, happy May morning when we walked down to
Jordan's Creek to be amused by the Democratic barbecue.
He removed it entirely a week later, and bowed his bared
head silently, when a fellow-Whig told him, with moist
eyes, that the decisive tidings were brought to the hero as
he stood in a social gathering of friends. Mr. Clay - so ran
the tale I have never heard contradicted - was called out
of the room by the messenger, returning in a few minutes
to resume the conversation the summons had interrupted,
with unruffled mien and the perfect courtesy that never
failed him in public and in private. It was said then that he
repeated on that evening, in reply to the expressed sorrow
of his companions - if, indeed, it was not said then for the
first time - the immortal utterance:
"I would rather be right than President!"
The inevitable dash of the ludicrous struck across the
calamity in the form of my father's disapproval of the
velvet bonnet I would not have exchanged on Saturday for
a ducal tiara. I had meant to reserve the appearance of it
as a pleasant surprise, and to call his attention to it when
I was dressed for church next day. I did not blame him for
not noticing it in our rapid tramp up Capitol Street on
Saturday. He had weightier matters on his mind. With the
honest desire of diverting him from the train of ideas that
had darkened his visage for twenty-four hours, I donned
the precious head-piece ten minutes before it was time to
set out for church, and danced into my mother's room
where he sat reading. Walking up to him, I swept a
marvellous courtesy and bolted the query full at him:
"How do you like my new bonnet?"
He lowered the book and surveyed me with lack-lustre
eyes.
"Not at all, I am sorry to say."
I fairly staggered back, casting a look of anguished
appeal at my mother. Being of my sex, she comprehended
it.
"Why, father! we think it very pretty," laying her hand
on his shoulder. "And she never had a velvet bonnet
before."
I saw the significant tightening of the small fingers, and
he must have felt it. But the dull eyes did not lighten, the
corners of the mouth did not lift.
"As I said, I do not admire it. Nor do I think it becoming."
I turned on my heel, as he might have done, and went to
my room. When Mea and I joined our parents in the lower
hall, the splendors of the new bonnets were extinguished
by thick barege veils. We had not meant to wear them in
November. They were indispensable for summer noons.
After I had confided my tale of woe to my sister, we
hastened to exhume the veils from our trunks and to bind
them over our hats. We walked, slow and taciturn behind
our elders for five squares. Then my father turned and
beckoned to us. He was actually smiling - a whimsical
gleam that had in it something of shame, and much of
humor.
"Take off those veils!" he said, positively, yet kindly
And, as we hesitated visibly: "I mean what I say! I want
to take a good look at those bonnets."
It was in a quiet corner of a secluded street, lined with
what was once a favorite shade-tree in Richmond - the
Otaheite mulberry. The night had been cold, and the last
russet leaves were ankle-deep on the sidewalk. They
rustled as I moved uneasily in loosening my veil.
I never passed the spot afterward without thinking of the
absurd little episode in the history of those melancholy
days.
"I see, now, that they are very pretty and very becoming,"
my father pursued, as they were divested of the ugly
mufflers. "I have been very cross for the past twenty-four
hours. I suppose because I have been horribly upset
by the National calamity. We will turn over a new and
cleaner leaf.
He was often stern, and oftener imperative. It was his
nature to be strong in all that he set his hand or mind unto.
I have yet to see another strong man who was so ready to
acknowledge a fault, and who made such clean work of the act.
HOME AT CHRISTMAS - A CANDY-PULL AND
WE went home at
Christmas!
Twenty years were to
elapse before I should spend
another Christmas week in the country. We did not know
this then. Not a hitch impeded the smooth unrolling of the
weeks of expectation and the days of preparation for the
holidays. We were to set out on Monday. On Friday,
Spotswood drove up to our door, and Mary Anne, my
mother's own maid, alighted. That evening James Ivey
reported for escort duty. Even elderly women seldom
travelled alone at that date. About young girls were thrown
protective parallels that would widen our college-woman's
mouth with laughter and her eyes with amazement. There
were no footpads on the stage-road from Richmond to
Powhatan, and had these gentry abounded in the forests
running down to the wheel-tracks, stalwart Spotswood and
a shot-gun would have kept them at bay. Maid and outrider
were the outward sign of unspoken and unwritten
conventions rooted in love of womankind. The physical
weakness of the sex was their strength; their dependence
upon stronger arms and tender hearts their warrant for any
and every demand they chose to make upon their natural
protectors.
We had none of these things in mind that joyful Monday
morning when Uncle Carus, on one hand, and James Ivey
on the other, helped us into the carriage. Carriage-steps
were folded up, accordion-wise, and doubled back and
down upon the floor of the vehicle when not in use. The
clatter, as the coach-door was opened and the steps let
down, was the familiar accompaniment of successive
arrivals of guests at hospitable homes, and worshippers at
country churches.
The trim flight fell with a merry rattle for the two happiest
girls in the State, and we sprang in, followed by Mary
Anne. We were wedged snugly in place by parcels that
filled every corner and almost touched the roof. Presents
we had been buying for a month with our own pocket-money
and making in our few spare hours, were bound into
bundles and packed in boxes. The wells under the
cushioned seats were crammed with fragiles and
confectionery, the like of which our lesser sisters and
brothers had never tasted.
Uncle Carus prophesied a snow-storm. My mother used
to say that he was a wise weather-prophet. We stubbornly
discredited the prediction until we had left the city spires
five miles behind us, and James Ivey's overcoat and
leggings (some called them "spatter-dashes") were dotted
with feathery flakes. Whereupon we discovered that there
was nothing in the world jollier than travelling in a
snowstorm, and grew wildly hilarious in the prospect. The
snow fell steadily and in grim earnest. By the time we got to
Flat Rock, where we were to have the horses and ourselves
fed, the wheels churned up, at every revolution, mud that
was crushed strawberry in color, topped with whiteness that
might have been whipped cream; for the roads were heavy
by reason of an open winter. This was Christmas snow. We
exulted in it as if we had had a hand in the making. Our
gallant outrider, albeit a staid youth of three-and-twenty, fell
in with our humor. He made feeble fun of his own
appearance as each wrinkle in his garments became a drift,
and his dark hair was like a horsehair wig such as we had
seen in pictures of English
barristers. His bay horse was a match to our iron-grays,
and the twelve hoofs were ploughing through a level fall of
six inches before we espied the tremulous sparks we
recognized as village windows.
Our throats ached with laughing and our hearts with
great swelling waves of happiness, as we tumbled out of
our seats - and our bundles after us - at the gate of the
long, low house that might have been mean in eyes
accustomed to rows of three-storied brick "residences" on
city streets. Every door was flung wide; every window was
red with fire and lamp light.
We had fried chicken and waffles, hot rolls, ham, beaten
biscuits, honey, three kinds of preserves, and, by special
petition of all the children, a mighty bowl of snow and
cream, abundantly sweetened, for supper. This dispatched,
and at full length, the journey having made us hungry, and
the sight of us having quickened the appetites of the rest,
we sat about the fire in the great "chamber" on the first
floor, that was the throbbing heart of the home, and talked
until ten o'clock. The faithful clock that hung above the
mantel did not vary five minutes from the truth in that
number of years; but it was dumbly discreet, never
obtruding an audible reminder of the flight of hours. I saw
one of the same pattern in a curio shop last week. The
salesman asked fifty dollars for it.
The chimney in "the chamber" drew better than any
other in the house. A fire was kindled on that hearth, night
and morning, for nine months in the year. My mother
maintained that the excellent health of her young family
was due in part to that fact. A little blaze dispelled the
lingering dampness of the morning and the gathering fogs of
night. She knew nothing of germs, benevolent and
malevolent, but she appreciated the leading fact that cold
and humidity signify danger, heat and dryness go with
health.
I coveted no girl's home and apparel, as Mea and I
snuggled down under our blankets on the mattress my
father was so far in advance of his times as to insist should
be substituted for a feather-bed in each bedroom occupied
by a child. The "whim" was one of the "notions" that earned
for him the reputation of eccentricity with conservative
neighbors.
Our windows were casements, and rattled sharply in
blasts that had thrashed the snow-storm into a tempest.
The wind pounded, as with hammers, upon the sloping roof
over our happy heads. Longfellow had not yet written
"My
little ones are folded like the flocks,"
but I know my mother felt it.
She came near saying it
when I told her at the
breakfast table that I fell asleep, saying to myself:
"He'll
go into the barn and keep himself warm
"I could think of
nothing, whenever I awoke, but the
mother sheep with her lambs all with her in the fold," was
her answer. "And of 'the hollow of His hand.' We have
much to make us thankful this Christmas."
"To make us thankful!" She was ever on the watch for
that. Like Martin Luther's little bird, she "sat on her twig,
content, and let God take care."
A bright sun left little of what had promised to be a deep
snow, by Christmas Day. Four Christmas-guns were fired
at midnight of Christmas Eve in four different quarters of
the village. That is, holes were drilled with a big auger into
the heart of a stout oak or hickory, and stuffed with
powder. At twelve o'clock a torch was applied by a fast
runner, who took to his heels on the instant to escape
the explosion. The detonation was that of a big cannon.
Sometimes, the tree was rent apart. That was a matter of
small moment in a region where acres of forest-lands were
cleared for tobacco fields by the primitive barbarism of
girdling giant trees that had struck their roots into the virgin
soil and lifted strong arms to heaven for centuries. From
midnight to sunrise the sound of "pop-crackers" and
pistol-shots was hardly intermitted by a minute's silence. With
the awakening of quieter, because older folk, the air rang with
shouts of "Christmas gift!" addressed impartially to young
and old, white and black.
The salutation was a grievous puzzle and positive
annoyance to our New-England grandmother, the first
Christmas she passed with us. By the time she was ready
for breakfast she had emptied her pocket of loose coins,
and bestowed small articles of dress and ornament upon
three or four of the (to her apprehension) importunate
claimants. When she made known the grievance - which
she did in her usual imperious fashion - my father shouted
with laughter. With difficulty he drilled into her mind that
the greeting was not a petition, still less a demand. From the
day he forbade any of us to say "Christmas gift!" to "Old
Mistis," as the servants called her. We children wished her,
"A merry Christmas." The servants never learned the
unaccustomed form. The old lady did not enter into the real
significance of the words that offended her. Nor, for that
matter, did one out of a hundred of those who had used it
all their lives, as each Christmas rolled around. It never
dawned upon me until I heard how Russian peasants and
Russian nobility alike greet every one they meet on Easter
morning with - "The Lord is risen," receiving the answer,
"He is risen indeed!" The exultant cry of "Christmas gift!"
was a proclamation of the best thing that ever came into
the world. The exchange of holiday offerings at the festal
season commemorates the same. All over Christendom it is
an act of grateful, if too often blind,
obedience to the command - "Freely ye have received,
freely give."
There were twelve servants in our family - eight adults
and four children. Not one was overlooked in the
distribution of presents that followed breakfast and family
prayers. The servants were called in to morning and
evening prayers as regularly as the white members were
assembled for the service. The custom was universal in
town and country, and was, without doubt, borrowed from
English country life - the model for Virginian descendants.
Men and women took time to pray, and made haste to do
nothing. We prate long and loudly now of deep breathing.
We practised it in that earlier generation.
On Christmas night we had a "molasses stew." We have
learned to say "candy-pull" since then. A huge cauldron of
molasses was boiled in the kitchen - a detached building of
a story-and-a-half, standing about fifty feet from "the
house." Gilbert - the dining-room servant, who would be "a
butler" now - brought it into the dining-room when it was
done to a turn, and poured it into great buttered platters
arranged around the long table. All of us, girls and boys, had
pinned aprons or towels over our festive garments, and put
back our cuffs from our wrists. My mother set the pace in
the pulling. She had a reputation for making the whitest and
most spongy candy in the county, and she did it in the
daintiest way imaginable. Buttering the tips of her fingers
lightly, she drew carefully from the surface of the platter
enough of the cooling mixture for a good "pull." In two
minutes she had an amber ribbon, glossy and elastic, that
bleached fast to cream-color under her rapid, weaving
motion, until she coiled or braided completed candy - brittle,
dry, and porous - upon a dish lined with paper. She never
let anybody take the other end of the rope; she did not
butter her fingers a second time, and used the taper tips
alone in the work, and she had the
candy on the dish before any of the others had the sticky,
scalding mass in working order. We dipped our fingers
again and again in butter and, when hard bestead, into flour,
which last resort my mother scorned as unprofessional, and
each girl had a boy at the other end of her rope. It was
graceful work when done secundum artem. The fast play
of hands; the dexterous toss and exchange of the ends of
shining strands that stiffened too soon if not handled aright;
the strain upon bared wrists and strong shoulders as the
great ropes hardened; the laughing faces bent over the task;
the cries of feigned distress as the immature confectionery
became sticky, or parted into strings, under careless
manipulation; the merry peals of laughter at defeat or
success - made the Christmas frolic picturesque and gay. I
wondered then, and I have often asked since, why no
painter has ever chosen as a subject this one of our national
pastimes.
A homelier, but as characteristic an incident of that
Christmas - the last we were to have in the country
home - was hog-killing.
The "hog and hominy," supposed by an ignorant reading-
public to have formed the main sustenance of the Virginian
planter and his big family, are as popularly believed to have
been raised upon his own farm or farms. Large herds of
pigs were born and brought up on Virginia lands. Perhaps
one-half of the pork cured into bacon by country and by
village folk, was bought from Kentucky drovers. Early in
the winter - before the roads became impassable -
immense droves of full-grown hogs crowded the
routes leading over mountain and valley into the sister
State. We had notice of the approach of one of these to our
little town before it appeared at the far end of the main
street, by the hoarse grunting that swelled into hideous
volume - unmistakable and indescribable - a continuous
rush of dissonance, across which were projected occasional
squeals.
A drove had entered the village a week before Christmas,
and rested for the night in the wide "old field" back of the
Bell Tavern. Citizens of the Court House and from the
vicinity had bought freely from the drovers. More than
twenty big-boned grunters were enclosed in a large pen at
the foot of our garden, and fed lavishly for ten days, to
recover them from the fatigue of the journey that left them
leaner than suited the fancy of the purchaser. On the
morning of the cold day appointed for the "killing," they
were driven to a near-by "horse-branch" and washed. At
noon they were slaughtered at a spot so distant from the
house that no sound indicative of the deed reached our
ears. Next day the carcasses were duly cut up into hams,
shoulders, middlings (or sides of bacon), chines, and
spareribs.
Lean leavings from the dissection were apportioned for
sausage-meat; the heads and feet would be made into
souse (headcheese); even the tails, when roasted in the
embers, were juicy tidbits devoured relishfully by children,
white and black.
Not an edible atom of the genial porker went to waste in
the household of the notable housewife. The entrails,
cleaned and scalded into "chitterlings," were accounted a
luscious delicacy in the kitchen. They rarely appeared upon
the table of "white folks." I never saw them dished for
ourselves, or our friends. Yet I have heard my father tell of
meeting John Marshall, then Chief Justice of the United
States, in the Richmond streets one morning, as the great
man was on his way home from the Old Market. He had a
brace of ducks over one arm, and a string of chitterlings
swung jauntily from the other.
And why not? Judge Marshall had "Hudibras" at his
tongue's end, and could have quoted:
"His
warped ear hung o'er the strings,
The Virginia house-mother
had classic precedent for the
utilization of what her granddaughter accounts but offal. I
once heard a celebrated divine say, unctuously:
" 'Hog-killing time' is to me the feast of the year."
And nobody stared, or smiled, or said him "Nay." Chine,
sparerib, and sausage, such as titillated our palates in the
first half of the nineteenth century, are not to be had now
for love or money. The base imitations sold to us in the
shambles are the output of "contract work."
A NOTABLE: AFFAIR OF HONOR
EARLY in the second
winter of our residence in
Richmond, the community and the State were thrilled to
painful interest by the most notable duel recorded in the
history of Virginia.
On the desk at my side lies a time-embrowned pamphlet,
containing a full report of the legal proceedings that
succeeded the tragedy.
The leading Democratic paper of the State at that time
was published by Thomas Ritchie and his sons. The father,
to whom was awarded the title of "The Nestor of the
Southern Press," was a dignified gentleman who had won
the esteem of his fellow-citizens by a long life spent under
the limelight that beats more fiercely nowhere than upon a
political leader who is also an editor. In morals, stainless, in
domestic and social life, exemplary and beloved, the elder
Ritchie enjoyed, in the evening of his day, a reputation
unblurred by the rancor of partisan spite. The policy of his
paper wag fearless, but never unscrupulous. To the
Democratic party, the Enquirer was at once banner and
bulwark. Of his elder son, William Foushee, I shall have
something to say in later chapters, and in a lighter vein. The
second son, the father's namesake, was recognized as the
moving spirit of the editorial columns.
John Hampden Pleasants was as strongly identified with
the Whig party. He was a man in the prime of life; like the
Ritchies, descended from an ancient and honorable
Virginia family, noble in physique, and courtly in bearing.
He held a trenchant pen, and had been associated from his
youth up with the press. He had lately assumed the office
of editor-in-chief of a new paper, and brought it into notice
by vigorous and brilliant editorials that were the talk of both
parties.
The opening gun of what was to be a sanguinary combat
was fired by a Washington correspondent of the Enquirer,
under date of January 16, 1846:
"I am much mistaken if Mr. John Hampden Pleasants
does not intend, with his new paper, to out-Herod Herod -
to take the lead of the Intelligencer, if possible, in exciting
Abolitionism by showing Southern Whig sympathy in their
movements; and thus, for the benefit of Whiggery, to cheat
them into the belief that the Southern patrons of either of
these gentlemen are ceasing to detest their incendiary
principles, and beginning, like the Whigs of the North, to
coalesce with them.
"They agitate to affect public opinion at the South, and
Messrs. Gales and Pleasants practically tell them to go on
- that they are succeeding to admiration."
It was a poor shot - more like a boy's play with a toy gun
than a marksman's aim. But the bullet was poisoned by the
reference to Abolitionism. That was never ineffective. A
friend in conservative Philadelphia called Mr. Pleasants'
notice to the attack, which had up to that time escaped his
eyes:
"I have d-d this as a lie every time I had a chance,
although I believe that you, like myself - a Virginian and a
slaveholder - regard Slavery as an evil."
Mr. Pleasants replied in terms that were singularly mild
for a fighting political editor.
I may say, here, that it is a gross blunder to compare the
methods of party-writers and orators of to-day with those
of sixty years ago, to the disadvantage of the former.
They fought, then, without the gloves, and as long as breath
lasted.
"I confess my surprise, nay, my regret," wrote Mr.
Pleasants, "that the present editors of the Enquirer should,
by publication, have indorsed, so far as that sort of
indorsement can go, and without any explanatory remark,
the misrepresentations of their Washington correspondent.
They ought, as public men, to know that I stand upon
exactly the same platform with their father in respect to this
subject. In 1832 we stood, for once, shoulder to shoulder,
and since that time we have both expressed, without
intermission, the same abhorrence of Northern Abolition,
and the same determination, under no circumstances which
could be imagined, to submit, in the slightest degree, to its
dictation or intrusion. . . .
"These were also the views - namely, that Slavery was
an evil, and ought to be got rid of, but at our own time, at
our own motion, and in our own way - of Washington,
Jefferson, Henry, George Mason, the two Lees, Madison,
Monroe, Wirt, and all the early patriots, statesmen, and
sages of Virginia - WITHOUT EXCEPTION!
"Such are my opinions still, and if they constitute me an
Abolitionist, I can only say that I would go further to see
some of the Abolition leaders hanged than any man in
Virginia, especially since their defeat of Mr. Clay.
"In respect to Slavery, I take no pious, no fanatical view.
I am not opposed to it because I think it morally wrong, for
I know the multitude of slaves to be better off than the
whites. I am against it for the sake of the whites, my own
race. I see young and powerful commonwealths around us,
with whom, while we carry the burden of Slavery, we can
never compete in power, and yet with whom we must
prepare to contend with equal arms, or consent to be their
slaves and vassals - we or our children. In all, I look but
to the glory and liberty of Virginia."
The confession of State's Rights would seem strong
enough to soften the heart of an original Secessionist - a
being as yet unheard of - and the respectful mention of the
Nestor of the Enquirer might have drawn the fire of the
filial editor. How far these failed of their effect is obvious in
the return shot:
"Although the language used by Mr. Pleasants may not
be considered directly offensive, yet we are unwilling to
allow him or others to make hypotheses in regard to our
veracity. When we desire lectures on morals we hope to be
allowed to choose our own preceptor. We certainly shall
not apply to him!"
In Mr. Pleasants' rejoinder he again reminds the young
men that their father and himself had been of the same
mind on the Slavery question for twenty years:
"The correspondent may have believed what he said, in
ignorance of the facts, and may therefore be guiltless of
premeditated injustice, but the editors who indorse his
calumny by printing it without any explanation, either did
know better, in which case their candor and liberality are
compromised, or ought to have known better, in which case
they themselves may say what responsibility they incur by
printing an accusation utterly false in fact, and calculated to
infuse the greatest possible prejudice against him respecting
whom it is promulgated."
The answer of the Enquirer was a sneer throughout:
"We doubt whether he knows, himself, what principles
he may be disposed to advocate. His most intimate friends
are sometimes puzzled to understand his position. . . . If our
correspondent 'Macon' wishes it, he will, of course, have
the use of our columns, but if he will take our advice, he
will let Mr. J. H. P. alone. To use an old proverb - 'Give
the gentleman rope enough, and he will hang himself!' "
In a long letter to a personal friend, but published in
the News and Star - what would be called now an "open
letter" - Mr. Pleasants sums up the points of the
controversy, and calmly assumes the animus of the attack
to be personal enmity, a sort of vendetta feud, against
which argument is powerless:
"Justice from the Richmond Enquirer I have long ago
ceased to expect. For more than twenty years I have lived
under its ceaseless misrepresentations and malevolent
misconstructions. I had hoped, when the former editor
removed to Washington to receive the rich rewards of his
devotion to party, to live upon better terms with his
successors, and I have studied to cultivate better relations
by respectful consideration and undeviating courtesy; but I
have found that other passions besides the love of liberty
are transmitted from sire to son.... Calmly reviewing this
piece of impertinence, I should be of opinion that this
assailant meditated fight, if I could think that a young brave
would seek, as an antagonist upon whom to flesh his maiden
sword, a man so much older than himself as I am, and with
dependent children."
In allusion to a former altercation with "Il Secretario," a
"foe illustrious for his virtues and talents, whom this aspirant
after knighthood" declined to encounter - the senior
combatant concludes:
"Battle, then, being clearly not his object, I must suppose
that he meant no more than a little gasconade, and the
recovery, at a cheap rate, of a forfeited reputation for
courage."
With the, to modern taste, odd blending of personality
with editorial anonymity that characterized the professional
duel throughout, "We, the junior editor," retorts:
"This letter affords strong corroborative evidence of our
opinion expressed in our article of the 27th ultimo, and
from Mr. J. H. Pleasants' communication, evidently
understood by him to the extent we intended - namely, that
fact within our knowledge proved him to be a COWARD.
"He appeals to the confines of age and dependent
children. Let it be! We shall not disturb him."
Ten years after the correspondence and the "affair" to
which it was the prelude, an eminently respectable citizen
of Richmond told my husband of a street-corner scene,
date of February 21, 1846, the day on which the last
contribution to the war of words above recorded, appeared
in the Enquirer.
"One of the groups one saw on all sides, in heated
discussion of the newspaper controversy and the
probable outcome, was collected about Doctor - , then, as
now, pastor of the - Church. He read out the last
sentences of Ritchie's ultimatum with strong excitement.
Then he struck the paper with his finger, and said: 'The
settles the matter! Pleasants must fight! There is no way
out of it!'
"One of the party ventured a remonstrance to the
effect that 'Pleasants was not a hot-headed boy to throw
his life away. He might be made to see reason, and the
matter be smoothed over,' etc.
"The minister broke in warmly, with -
" 'Impossible, sir, impossible! No honorable man could sit
down quietly under the insult! He must fight! There is no
alternative!'
"Now," continued the narrator, "I am not a church-member,
and I had no overstrained scruples against
duelling at that time. But it sent a queer shock through me
when I heard a minister of the gospel of peace take that
ground. I felt that I could never go to hear him preach
again. And I never did! I heard he made a most feeling
allusion to poor Pleasants in a sermon preached shortly
after his death. That didn't take the bad taste out of my
mouth."
How general was the sympathy with the incautiously
expressed opinion of the divine can hardly be appreciated
now that the duello is reckoned among the errors of a ruder
age. The city was in a ferment for the three days
separating the 21st of February and the 25th, on which the
memorable encounter took place. If any friend essayed to
reconcile the offending and offended parties, we have no
note of it.
The nearest approach to arbitration recorded in the story
of the trial is in the testimony of a man well-acquainted
with both parties, who was asked by one of Mr. Ritchie's
seconds to "go upon the ground as a mutual friend."
He testified on the stand: "I declined to do so. I asked
him if the matter could be adjusted. I asked if Mr. Ritchie
would not be willing to withdraw the epithet of 'coward,' in
case Mr. Pleasants should come upon the field. His reply
was that Mr. Ritchie conscientiously believed Mr.
Pleasants to be a coward."
The persuasions of other friends to whom he spoke, at an
evening party (!), of the affair to come off on the morrow,
overcame the scruples of the reluctant pacificator. He
accompanied the surgeon (the most eminent in the city, and
one of the Faculty of Richmond Medical College) to the
ground next morning. The meeting was no secret,
except - presumably - to the authorities who might have
prevented it. Going up to Mr. Ritchie's second, he made a
final effort to avert the murder:
"I renewed the application I had made the evening
before, telling him that Mr. Pleasants was on the field, and
asking him if he would not withdraw the imputation of
cowardice. He replied that he would keep his friend there
fifteen minutes, and no longer."
The morning was raw, and the wind from the river was
searching. There had been rain during the night, and the
ground was slippery with sleet. The principals were
equipped with other arms than the duelling pistols.
"Mr. Pleasants put a revolver into the left pocket of his
coat; then he took two duelling pistols, one in his right, and
the other in his left hand." At this point the witness
interpolates: "I looked away about that time." (As well he
might!) "The next weapon I saw him arm himself with was
his sword-cane under his left arm. He had a bowie-knife
under his vest."
Of Mr. Ritchie it was testified:
"He had four pistols and also a revolver. He had the
larger pistols in his belt. I did not see his sword until after
the rencontre. He had it drawn when I came up to him. I
supposed it was a bowie-knife."
After a brief parley as to the disadvantages of a position
first selected, and the choice of a second, the word was
given to advance and fire. The principals were two
hundred yards apart when the word was given.
"Mr. Ritchie fired at the distance of twenty-five or thirty
yards. Mr. Pleasants fired his first pistol within about
fifteen or twenty feet of Mr. Ritchie. . . . At the third shot
they were more rapid. Mr. Pleasants advanced. At the
third fire Mr. Ritchie's form became obscure; Mr.
Pleasants still advancing, I saw him within six or seven feet
of Mr. Ritchie. It was then that Mr. Pleasants fired his
second pistol."
Thus the eminent surgeon, who had refused to come to
the field as the friend of both parties, but yielded when
asked to serve in his professional capacity. He remarks,
parenthetically, here:
"I am now giving my recollection of events transpiring in
a short time and under great excitement."
Perhaps, in spite of the great excitement, the training of
his calling held his senses steady, for his story of the fight is
graphic and succinct.
"I saw Mr. Pleasants level his second pistol; I heard the report; I
saw Mr. Ritchie stagger back, and I remarked to Mr. D."
(the man who had been overpersuaded to witness the
murder as a "mutual friend"), " 'Ritchie is a dead man!' I so
inferred, because he had staggered back. Then I heard
several discharges without knowing who was fireing. I saw
Mr. Pleasants striking at Mr. Ritchie with some
weapon - whether a cane or a pistol, I do not know. I also
saw him make several thrusts with a sword-cane. He gave
several blows and two or three thrusts. I do not know if the
sword was sheathed. During this part of the affair I saw
Mr. Ritchie with his sword in his hand. I did not see him
draw it. I saw him in the attitude of one making a thrust,
and did see him make one or two thrusts at Mr. Pleasants.
I remarked to Mr. D., 'Let us go up, or he'll be stabbed!'
Two or three times the cry was made, 'Stop, Pleasants!
Stop, Ritchie!' We went up. Mr. Pleasants was tottering;
Mr. Ritchie was standing a few feet away, the point of his
sword on the ground; he was perfectly quiet. Mr. Archer
took Mr. Pleasants' arm and laid him down. He was on the
ground when I reached him. Before I got to him I saw Mr.
Ritchie leaving the ground. He walked a short distance, and
then ran."
It transpired afterward that not one of Pleasants's balls
had struck Ritchie. The presumption was that the elder
man was wounded by his opponent's first fire, and fired
wildly in consequence. He received six balls in various
parts of his body. But one of his bullets was found, and that
in the gable of a building out of the line of the firing. The
ball was embedded in the wood, nine feet above the
ground. Mad with pain and blinded by rage, the wounded
man struck at the other's face when they were near
together - some said, with the useless pistol, others with his
sword-cane or bowie-knife. When the fugitive reached the
carriage in waiting at the foot of the hill, his face was
covered with blood. His physician was in the carriage, and
examined him at once. But for the cut lip he was absolutely
uninjured.
The sun was just rising when John Hampden Pleasants
was lifted into the carriage and borne back to the city. He
knew himself to be mortally wounded from the moment
he fell.
This was on Wednesday, February 25th. Before the
short winter day neared its noon, the tale was known from
one end of Richmond to the other, and the whole population
heaved with excitement. Business was practically
suspended while men talked over the terrible event; the
sidewalks were blocked by gossiping idlers.
Our school was called to order at nine o'clock daily. On
this morning, teachers and pupils were unfit for lessons.
For Mr. Pleasants' only daughter was one of us, and a
general favorite. His niece was likewise a pupil, and the
two had the same desk. Their vacant chairs made the
tragedy a personal grief to each of us. When Mrs.
Nottingham bade us get our Bibles ready for the morning
service, not a girl there could read without a break in her
trembling voice, and when the dear old lady made tender
mention in her prayer of the "sorrowing," and for "those
drawing near unto death," our sobs drowned the fervent
tones.
I recall, as one of the minor incidents of the dreadful day,
that when I went home in the afternoon, my grandmother
insisted I should read the newspaper correspondence aloud
to her. She was a captious tyrant at times, and, like many
another deaf person, sensitive as to the extent of her
infirmity. She "was not so very deaf, except in damp
weather, or when she had a cold. If people would only
speak distinctly, and not mumble, she would have no trouble
in understanding what was said." In this connection she
often made flattering exception of myself as the "one girl
she knew who could speak English."
In this capacity she summoned me to her side. She had the
week's papers on her lap. I must pick out the articles "that
were responsible for this scandalous affair."
Down I sat, close beside her "good ear," and read, with
precise articulation and right emphasis, the editorials from
which I have made excerpts in this chapter.
In copying them to-day, the strait-laced New-Englander's
classification of the awful event is in my mind and ear.
Every detail of the duel and the cold-blooded preparations
therefor - the deadly weapons borne by, and girt about the
principals; the sang-froid of seconds and attendant
"friends"; the savagery of the combat; the tone of public
sentiment that made the foul fight within sight of the
steeples of the city practicable, although the leading men
of the place were cognizant of each step that led to the
scene on the river-bank before sunrise that gray morning
- can we, in these later times we are wont to compare
regretfully with those, sum up the details and the
catastrophe in phrase more fit and true?
I resented it hotly, if silently, then. Even my father, who
always spoke of duelling as a "remnant of Middle Age
barbarism," shared in the universal grief for his party leader
laid low in the prime of his useful manhood, and would
suffer no censure of the challenge that had made the fight
inevitable.
"Pleasants is a brave man, and a proud. He could not
endure to sit down quietly under the aspersion of
cowardice."
Another terrible day of suspense dragged its slow length
along. Hourly bulletins from the chamber where the
wounded man was making his last struggle with Fate,
alternately cheered and depressed us. He was conscious
and cheerful; he had exonerated his opponent from blame
in the matter of the duel:
"I thought I had run him through. It was providential
that I did not. Ritchie is a brave man. I shall not recover.
You will be candid with me, Doctor? It is all right."
These were some of the sentences caught up by young
and old, and repeated with tearful pride in the dying hero.
That was what they called him; and when on Friday morning
the flag on the capitol hung at half-mast, the mourners who
went about the streets were his fellow-townsmen, who had
no word of condemnation for him and the rash act that
ended his career.
On Saturday morning it began to snow. By Sunday
afternoon the streets were eighteen inches deep on the
level, with the heaviest snow-fall of the season. Mrs.
Pleasants, the widow of a governor of Virginia, and the
mother of the slain editor, was a member of the Grace
Street Presbyterian Church, of which Reverend Doctor
Stiles was then pastor. The funeral services were held there
on Sunday, at 3 o'clock P.M. By two the sidewalks were
blocked by a crowd of silent spectators, and, half an hour
later, every seat in the church, except those reserved for the
family and immediate friends of the deceased, was filled.
After these had taken their places, there was not standing-
room in aisles or galleries. The sermon was an eloquent
tribute to the private virtues and the public services of the
deceased. One memorable extract is inscribed upon the
monument erected by admirers and friends over his grave in
Shockoe Hill Cemetery:
With A Genius above Talent, a Courage
None ever forgot the
scene who saw the long line of
funeral carriages winding, like a black stream, through
streets where the snow came up to the axles, under the
low-hanging sky that stooped heavily and gloomed into
leaden gray
by the time the cortége reached the cemetery. And all the
afternoon the brooding air throbbed with the tolling.
We said and believed that Richmond had never known so
sad a day since she went into mourning for the three-score
victims of the burning of the theatre in 1811.
The trial of Thomas Ritchie for murder in the first, and of
the seconds as "principals in the second degree," followed
the duel with swiftness amazing to the reader of criminal
cases in our age. On March 31, 1846, four of the ablest
lawyers in Virginia appeared in court to defend the
prisoner.
The old brochure which records the proceedings is
curious and deeply interesting reading; in nothing more
remarkable than in the defence of what was admitted to be
"an unhappy custom" and directly opposed to the laws of
the country.
"The letter of the law is made to yield to the spirit of
the times" is an italicized sentence in the principal speech
of the defence. The same speaker dwelt long and earnestly
upon precedents that palliated, excused, and warranted the
time-honored (although "unhappy") practice.
Not less than fifteen instances of the supremacy of the
higher law of the "spirit of the times" were drawn from
English history.
"In not one of which had there been any prosecution.
"And now, gentlemen of the jury, does any one suppose
that duelling can be suppressed, or capitally punished, when
the first men in the kingdom - such men as Pitt and Fox,
and Castlereagh and Canning and Grattan, and Nelson and
Wellington, lend the high sanction of their names, and feel
themselves justified and compelled to peril their lives upon a
point of honor? And I would ask my friend, the
Commonwealth's Attorney, if such men as these
constitute the 'swordsmen of England,' and were alone
worthy of the times of Tamerlane and Bajazet? . . .
"Was Andrew Jackson regarded as a 'swordsman' and
duellist because he fought, not one, but three duels, and
once shed the blood of a fellow-man in single combat? He
was twice elected to the first office in the world, and died a
Christian.... How many of Henry Clay's numerous friends
in Virginia, and, especially, the religious portion of them
(including ministers of the Gospel), refused to vote for him
as President of the United States because he had fought
two duels? . . .
"The coroner's inquest held on the body of General
Hamilton brought in a verdict of wilful murder against
Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States.
"Colonel Burr afterward took his seat in the Senate of the
United States as Vice-President; his second, afterward,
became a judge; and the second of General Hamilton - a
most amiable and accomplished man - I served with in
Congress, some years ago. . . .
"I call upon you, then, gentlemen, by every motive that
can bind you to a discharge of your duty, to do justice to my
unfortunate young friend. Bind up the wounds of his broken-hearted
parents; carry joy and peace and consolation to his
numerous family and friends; wash out the stain that has
been attempted upon his character and reputation, and
restore him to his country - as, in truth, he is - pure and
unspotted."
The address of the Commonwealth's Attorney is
comparatively brief and emphatically half-hearted. We are
entirely prepared for the announcement in smaller type at
the foot of the last page:
"The argument on both sides" (!) "having been concluded,
the jury took the case, and, without leaving the box,
returned a verdict of 'Not guilty!'
"The verdict was received by the large auditory with
loud manifestations of applause. Order was promptly
commanded by the officers of the court.
"Mr. Ritchie then left the court-house, accompanied by
the greater portion of the spectators, who seemed eager to
shake hands with him and to congratulate him upon his
honorable acquittal."
THE MENACE OF SLAVE INSURRECTION
"RICHMOND, June 8th, 1847
"DEAR EFFIE, - It
is past ten o clock, and a rainy night. Just
such a one as would make a comfortable bed and a sound snooze
no mean objects of desire.
"George Moody, alias 'The Irresistible,' arrived this afternoon,
and will leave in the morning, and I cannot let so good an
opportunity of writing to you escape. I must scribble a brief
epistle.
"The drive down from Powhatan was delightful. I found Mr.
Belt extremely pleasant, full of anecdote, a great talker, yet,
withal - as Mr. Miller had told me - a good listener. A very
necessary qualification, by-the-way, for any one with whom I
may chance to be in company.
"The first thing I heard when I reached home was tidings of
that worst of bugbears to a Southern woman - an impending
insurrection. A double guard was on duty at the capitol, and a
detachment of military from the armory paraded the streets all
night. I was, I confess, somewhat alarmed, and not a little startled,
but gradually my fears wore away, and I slept as soundly that
night as if no such thing were in agitation.
" 'Puss Sheppard was in to supper, and her parting salutation
to us at going was: 'Farewell! If I am alive in the morning I will
come and see if you are!'
"The whole matter ended, like Mr. C.'s sermon - 'just where it
began - viz., in nothing.'
"Richmond is rather dull at present. The Texas excitement has
subsided almost entirely, and those who gave credence
to the report of the insurrection are desirous to keep as still as
possible.
"Morning. - I can write no more. I am sure your good-nature
will acquit me of blame so far as matter, chirography, and quality
go, when I tell you that I have written this partly by the light of a
lamp which finally went out, self-extinguished for want of oil, and
partly this morning, when I am suffering with a sick-headache. I
feel more like going to bed than writing, but 'The Unexceptionable'
is about to take his departure, and waits for this. Write soon and
much. I will try to treat you better next time."
In the debate upon the abolition of slavery in my native State,
lost by one vote in the Legislature of 1831-32, while Nat Turner's
insurrection was fresh in the public mind, John Randolph
declared, "Whenever the fire-alarm rings in Richmond every
mother clasps her baby closer to her breast."
I cannot recollect when the whisper of the possibility of
"Insurrection" (we needed not to specify of what kind) did not
send a sick chill to my heart. The menace I here dismiss with a
sentence or two was the most serious that had loomed upon my
horizon. I could not trust myself to dwell upon it within the two
days that had elapsed since my return from a vacation month in
Powhatan. How keenly every circumstance attending it was bitten
into my mind is proved by the distinctness of the etching
preserved by a memory that has let many things of greater
moment escape its hold.
My host, Mr. D., had come in to dinner the day before that set
for my stage-journey back to town, with the pleasing
intelligence that Mr. Lloyd Belt, a former citizen of
Powhatan, but for twenty years a resident of Richmond,
was "going down" - Richmond was always "down," as
London is "up" from every part of England - the next day
and would be glad to take me in his carriage. As I wrote
to Effie, the drive was delightful. My courtly escort took
as much pains to entertain me as if I had been a belle and
a beauty, instead of an unformed school-girl. It was a
way they had - those gentlemen of the Old School - of
recognizing the woman in every baby-girl, and doing it
honor.
It did not strike me as strange that Mr. Belt beguiled
the thirty-mile journey with anecdote and disquisition.
He was charming. I never thought that he was likewise
condescending. I am quite as sure that the idea did not
enter his knightly imagination.
As we drove leisurely up Main Street from the bridge,
we noticed that groups of men stood on the street corners
and in the doors of stores, chatting gravely, and, it would
seem, confidentially.
"There must be news from the seat of war!" opined my
companion.
The Mexican War was then in progress, and accompanying
raids into the debatable territory of Texas kept public
sentiment in a ferment.
My father and the rest of the family, with a couple of
neighbors, were enjoying the cool of the day upon our
front porch. He came down to the gate to assist me to
alight. So did Mr. Strobia, our elderly next door neighbor,
and he handed me up the steps while my father lingered
to thank my escort for bringing me safely home. In
the joyous confusion of greetings, I had not observed that
Mr. Belt was leaning down from the carriage to my father's
ear, and that both were very grave, until Puss Sheppard,
like the rattlepate she was, whispered loudly to Mr. Strobia:
"I'm scared to death! What is the latest news? You
men won't tell us."
"I have heard no news about anything or anybody!"
ejaculated the old gentleman, testily and loudly, glancing
over his shoulder at Gilbert, who had my trunk on his
shoulder and was carrying it in at the side-gate. "Upon
my soul, I haven't!" And as she caught his arm and swung
around to get the truth from his eyes, he bustled down the
steps and so on home.
I had the tale in full by the time my bonnet was off.
Mea, on one side, and Puss on the other, poured it forth
in excited whispers, having closed "the chamber" door.
Abolitionists had been at work among the negroes in
Henrico and Hanover counties for weeks. There were
indications of an organized conspiracy (in scope and detail
so like the plot for which John Brown's blood paid twelve
years thereafter, that I bethought me of it when the news
from Harper's Ferry stunned the nation), and the city was
under arms. Governor Smith was said to have issued a
proclamation to militia and citizens at large in Latin.
I laughed there.
" 'Extra Billy!' He knows less of Latin than of Choctaw!"
The worthy functionary had earned the sobriquet by
superdiligence in the matter of extra baggage while in the
service of a stage-coach company, and as he was a
Democrat we never forgot it.
"Let that pass!" said Mea, impatiently. "We can't get
away from the fact that where there is so much smoke
there must be a little fire. Some evil business is on foot,
and all the servants know what it is, whether we do or not."
I felt that she was right when Mary Anne and "Mammy,"
Gilbert, Tom, his assistant, and my little maid Paulina,
with black Molly, Percy's nurse, trooped in, one after the
other, to welcome "Miss Firginny" home. They had done
the like ever since I was born. I should have felt hurt and
angry had they failed in the ceremony. My sharpened
senses detected something that was overdone in manner
and speech. They were too glad to see me, and while they
protested, I discerned sarcasm in their grins, a sinister roll in
lively eyeballs.
We talked fast over the supper-table, and of all manner
of things irrelevant to the topic uppermost in our thoughts.
Once, while Gilbert and his half-grown subaltern were out
of the room, I ventured a hasty whisper to my father, at
whose right I sat:
"Father, have we any arms in the house if they should
come?"
Without turning his head, he saw, out of the tail of his
eye, Gilbert on the threshold, a plate of hot waffles in hand,
and Tom at his heels bearing a pitcher of fresh water. My
father reached out a deliberate hand for a slice of bread
from a plate near his elbow.
"All that I have to say, my daughter" (his speech as
deliberate as his hand, and every syllable sharp and clear),
"is that we are prepared for them, come when and how
they may."
A perceptible shiver, as when one catches breath after an
electric shock, ran around the table. All felt that he had
thrown down the gauntlet, and was ready to take the
consequences. My heart leaped up as an elastic bough from
the weight that had bowed it to the earth. It was no effort
after that to be gay. I told stories of my country sojourn,
retailed the humors of the visit to our old neighborhood,
mimicking this and that rustic, telling of comical sayings of
the colored people who pressed me with queries as to town
life - in short, unbottled a store of fun and gossip that lasted
until bedtime. Then, as I told my correspondent, I went to
bed and slept the sleep of youth, health, and an easy mind.
And this because he who never lied to me had said that
he was "prepared" for the assassins, come when they
might.
A week later, when the fireless smoke had vanished quite
from the horizon, and we dared jest at the "scare," I asked
my mother what arsenal my father had had in reserve that
he could speak so confidently of preparation for midnight
attack and domestic treachery.
"Nothing more formidable than a carving-knife," she
answered, merrily, "and courage that has always served
him in the hour of peril. He was not alarmed. I believe he
would face a hundred negroes with no other weapon than
his bare hands."
I am often asked why, if our family servants were really
and warmly attached to us, we should have let the
"bugbear" poison our pleasures and haunt our midnight
visions. To the present hour I am conscious of a peculiar
stricture of the heart that stops my breath for a second, at
the sudden blast of a hunter's horn in the country. Before I
was eight years old I had heard the tale of Gabriel's
projected insurrection, and of the bloodier outbreak of
murderous fury led by Nat Turner, the petted favorite of a
trusting master. Heard that the signal of attack in both cases
was to be "a trumpet blown long and loud." Again and again,
on my visits to country plantations, I have been thrown into
a paroxysm of terror when awakened from sleep in the
dead of night, by the sound of the horns carried by "coon
hunters" in their rounds of the woods nearest us. I could not
have been over ten, when, on a visit to "Lethe," a
homestead occupied for a while by Uncle Carus, I was
rambling in the garden soon after sunrise, picking roses, and
let them fall from nerveless fingers at the ringing blast of a
"trumpet blown long and loud", from the brow of a
neighboring hill. As it pealed louder and longer, until the
blue welkin above me repeated the sound, I fled as fast
as my freezing feet would carry me, to the deepest
recesses of the graveyard at the foot of the garden, and hid
in a tangle of wild raspberry bushes higher than my head.
There I lay, wet with the dews of the past night, and my
face and hands scratched to bleeding, until the winding horn
grew faint and fainter, and the bay of a pack of hounds told
me what a fool panic had made of me. We always thought
of the graveyard as an asylum in the event of a rising. No
negro would venture to enter it by day or night.
In any ordinary period of danger or distress, I would have
trusted my life in the hands of the men and women who had
been born on the same plantation with my mother, and the
younger generation, to whom she had been a faithful and
benignant friend from their cradles. In fire and flood and
tempest; in good report and evil report; in sickness and in
health; in poverty, as in riches - they would have stood with,
and for us to the death. We knew them to be but children of
a larger growth, passionate and unreasoning, facile and
impulsive, and fanatical beyond anything conceivable by the
full-blooded white. The superstitious savagery their
ancestors had brought from barbarous and benighted Africa,
was yet in their veins. We had heard how Gabriel, a leader
in prayer-meetings, and encouraged by the whites to do
Christian evangelization among his own race, had
deliberately meditated and written down, as sections of the
code to be put into practice, when he should come into his
kingdom of Lower Virginia - a plan of murder of all male
whites, and a partition of the women and girl-children
among his followers, together with arson and tortures
exceeding the deviltries of the red Indians. We had heard
from the lips of eyewitnesses, scenes succeeding the
Southampton massacre of every white within the reach of
the murderous horde howling at the heels of the negro
preacher whom his
master had taught to read and write - how the first victim
of the uprising, in the name of God and freedom, was that
master as he lay asleep at his wife's side. Of how coolly
- even complacently - Turner recorded: "He sprang up,
calling his wife's name. It was his last word. A single blow
was sufficient to kill him. We forgot a baby that was asleep
in the cradle, but Hark went back and dispatched it."
In every plan of rising against their masters, Religion was
a potent element. It was, to their excitable imaginations, a
veritable Holy War, from which there would be no
discharge. The "Mammy" who had nursed her mistress's
baby at her own bosom, would brain it, with the milk yet
wet upon its lips, if bidden by the "prophet" to make the
sacrifice. Nat Turner split with his axe the skull of a boy he
had carried in his arms scores of times, and stayed not his
hand, although the little fellow met him with a happy laugh
and outstretched arms and the cry, "Uncle Nat, you have
come to give me a ride! Haven't you?"
I repeat, we knew with what elements we should have to
deal if the "rising" ever took an organized form. This
ever-present knowledge lay at the root of the hatred of the
"abolition movement." To the Northerner, dwelling at ease
among his own people, it was - except to the leaders - an
abstract principle. "All men are created free and equal" - a
slaveholder had written before his Northern brother
emancipated his unprofitable serfs. Ergo, reasoned the
Northern brother, in judicial survey of the increasing race,
whose labor was still gainful to tobacco and wheat planter,
the negro slave had a right to "liberty and the pursuit of
happiness."
He did not count the cost of a consummation devoutly to
be desired. He had no occasion to meditate upon the bloody
steps by which the enslaved and alien race would
climb to the height the Abolitionist would stimulate him to
attain.
So well was it understood that a mother ran dangerous
risks if she put her child into the care of the colored woman
who complained that she "was tired of that sort of work,"
that neglect of such dislike of a nurse's duties was
considered foolhardy. I heard a good old lady, who owned
so many servants that she hired a dozen or so to her
neighbors, lament that Mrs. Blank "did not mind what I told
her about Frances' determination not to take care of
children. I hired the girl to her as a chambermaid, and gave
her fair warning that she just would not be a nurse. A baby
was born when Frances had been there four months, and
she was set to nurse it. You must have heard the dreadful
story? Perhaps you saw it in the papers. When the child
was six months old the wretched creature pounded glass
and put it in the baby's milk. The child died, and the girl was
hanged."
Ugly stories, these, but so true in every particular that I
cannot leave them out of my chronicle of real life and the
workings of what we never thought, then, of calling "the
peculiar institution."
One of my most distinct recollections of the discussions
of Slavery held in my hearing is that my saintly Aunt Betsy
said, sadly and thoughtfully:
"One thing is certain - we will have to pay for the great
sin of having them here. How, or when, God alone knows."
"We did not bring them to Virginia!" was my mother's
answer. "And I, for one, wish they were all back in Africa.
But what can we do, now that they are on our hands?"
Before turning to other and pleasanter themes, let me
say that my father, after consultation with the wife who had
brought to him eight or ten "family servants" as part of
her father's estate, resolved to free them and send them
to Liberia at his own expense. This was in my early
childhood, yet I recollect how the scheme failed through the
obstinate refusal of the slaves to leave master, home, and
country for freedom in a strange land. They clung to my
mother's knees, and prayed her, with wild weeping, not to
let them go. They had blood relatives and dear friends here;
their children had intermarried with men and women in
different parts of the county; their grandfathers and great-
grandfathers had left them no legacy of memories that
would draw them toward the far-off country which was but
the echo of an empty name to their descendants. They
were comfortable and happy here. Why send them, for no
fault of theirs, into exile?
"There is something in what they say!" my father had said
to my mother, in reviewing the scene. "I cannot see that
anything is left for us to do except to keep on as we are,
and wait for further indications of the Divine will."
This was in the thirties, not many years after an act of
gradual emancipation was lost in the Legislature by the
pitiful majority I named in an earlier paragraph. A score of
years had passed since that momentous debate in our
capitol, and our Urim and Thummin had not signified that
we could do anything better than to "keep on as we were."
It would be idle to say that we were not, from time to
time, aware that a volcano slumbered fitfully beneath us.
There were dark sides to the Slavery Question, for master,
as for slave.
WEDDING AND BRIDESMAID - THE ROUTINE OF A LARGE
IN the summer of 1851, my
grandmother had bought and
given to her only child the house which was to be our home
as long as we remained a resident family in Richmond. Of
this house I shall have a story to tell in the next chapter. It
stands upon Leigh Street (named for the distinguished
lawyer of whom we have heard in these pages as taking a
part in the Clay campaign), and the locality was then
quietly, but eminently, aristocratic. There were few new
houses, and the old had a rural, rather than an urban, air.
Each had its garden, stocked with shrubbery and flowers.
Some had encompassing lawns and outlying copses of
virgin native growth.
The new home held a large family. The stately old dame
who had settled us for life, occupied a sunny front chamber,
and in addition to our household proper, we had had with us,
for two years, my mother's widowed brother-in-law,
"Uncle" Carus, and the stepdaughter for whose sake we
had consented to receive him. My aunt had died soon after
her youngest child (Anne) was taken to a Better Country;
Cousin Paulina went a year later, and as the mother's
parting request to the eldest of her flock was that she would
"take care of her father," separation was not to be thought
of. None of us loved the lonely old man. One and all, we
loved her who was a younger sister to our mother, and a
second mother to her children.
So we sat down to our meals every day, a full dozen, all
told, and as we were seldom without a visitor, we must
have been "thirteen at table", times without number. If we
had ever heard the absurd superstition that would have
forbidden it, we never gave it a thought. I should not have
liked to meet my father's frown and hear his comment, had
the matter been broached in his hearing.
The modern (nominal) mistress would be horrified at the
thought of twelve eaters, drinkers, and sleepers under the
roof of a private house. We descried nothing out of the
way in it, and fared exceeding comfortably from year's end
to year's end. Large families were still respectable in the
public eye, and an increase in the number of domestics kept
the addition to the white family from bearing hard upon the
housemother.
How gayly and smoothly the little craft of my life moved
on up to the middle of '53, let a few passages from a letter
dated July 23d of that year, testify:
"I got home just in time to help Mea with the
preparations for her Northern trip, and to get ready for
Sarah Ragland's
wedding - an event that had its influence in shaping my
summer plans.
"We enjoyed the 'occasion' heartily. How could I do
otherwise when my attendant groomsman was ordered for
the affair from Charlottesville? - the very youth who smote
my already beriddled heart when I was up in that region.
He is a cousin of the Raglands - Charley Massie by
name - and the arrangement was Mary's (bless her heart!)
Mr. Budwell, the bridegroom, was indisputably the
handsomest man in the room. This was as it should be; but I
never attended another wedding where this could be said
with truth. My knight was the next best-looking, and for
once I was content with a second-best article."
Her speech was ever even and sweet. I detected a ring
of impatience or of pain in it, as she said: "Why should I
marry, Namesake? To get a nurse for life?"
I had suspected all along that she had a history known to
none of us. After that I knew it, and asked no more
questions.
Patient, brave, unselfishly heroic -
"The
sweetest soul
- she lingered day after day, now weaker, now rallying,
until she spoke her own conviction to me one day in late
July, as I sat by, fanning her, and no one else was present.
I smiled as she opened her large dark eyes, the only
beauty left in the wasted face, and saw me.
"You are better, dear! We shall have you up and out
driving before long."
"No, dear child!" - infinite weariness in tone and look.
"The old clock has run clean down!"
I did not believe it, and I said it stoutly aloud, and to
myself.
She seemed no more languid - only drowsy - the next
afternoon, as I fluttered into the room and leaned over her
in a glow of excitement:
"Cousin Mollie, darling! I have come in to say that Junius
Fishburn is down-stairs. He is in town for a day on his way
to Newport."
The great eyes opened wide, a smile lighted them into
liveliness.
"Oh, I am so glad!" she gasped.
She was "glad" of everything that gave me pleasure. I
had never doubted that. I had never gone to her with a pain
or a pleasure without getting my greedy fill of sympathy.
When I had said a hearty "bon voyage!" to my caller, I
went back to tell her of the interview. She was dying. We
watched by her from evening to morning twilight.
Ned Rhodes, who was in Boston when he got my letter,
telling briefly what had come to us, sent me lines I read
then for the first time. Had the writer shared that vigil with
us, he could not have described it more vividly:
"We
watched her breathing thro' the night,
At midnight there was a
rally for a few minutes. I was wetting
the dry lips, leaning over the pillow, so that she looked into my
eyes in unclosing hers. A smile of heavenly sweetness played
over her face - a ray that irradiated, without moving a feature or
line. The poor mouth stirred ever so slightly. I bent closer to it to
hear the whisper:
"I'm almost
there!"
Two months later I wrote
to my old friend:
"
'I cannot make her dead!'
"Then mother went
to the country for a month, and I was left
as housekeeper, with the whole care of the family on my hands.
Rising betimes to preside at father's early breakfast, pickling,
preserving, sewing, overseeing the servants, etcetera.
"Enough of this! Although the little girls' lessons begin again
to-day, and I have my sister's domestic and social duties to
perform in addition to my own, I have more leisure than you
might think, and you shall have the benefit of a spare half-hour
on this bright Monday morning. (Alice practicing, meanwhile, in
the same room!)
"Mea is still in Boston and the vicinity, and will not return for a
month or more. Lizzie M. is to be married late in October or early
in November, and wishes to have Mea with her. Another of the
three Lizzies, and the prettiest - Lizzie N. - married last week a
Mr. L. - a nice young man, Mea says. I have never seen him,
although they have been engaged for
some time. He has taken up his abode in Boston, to keep his
lovely wife with her invalid mother.
"And while upon marriage - E. G. is to wed on October 11th,
Mr. R. H., one of ten brothers. She is 'doing very well,' say the
gossips.
"Sarah and Mr. Budwell are at home again, he handsomer than
ever, while she looks prettier and happier than she ever was
before.
"While retailing news, let me chronicle the arrival of Master
Robert Wallace Courtney, an interesting youth, who - as father
dryly remarked, when I said that he 'came from a foreign
shore' - 'speaks the language of the Cry-mea.'
"Heigho! so goes this mad world of ours: death; marriage; birth.
Ranks are mowed down, and filled up as soon. Few of us
appreciate what a fearful thing it is to die, and fewer yet how
awful it is to live - writing our histories by our actions in the
Book of God's Remembrance, a stroke for every word, movement,
and thought! Again I say, if Death be fearful, Life is awful!
"We are prone to forget, as one and another fall, and the chasm
is closed up and Life seems the same - except within the bleeding
hearts of mourners - that our day is coming as surely as those
others have gone. In effect, we arrogate immortality for ourselves.
"The longer I live, and the more I see of the things that perish
with the using, the more firmly persuaded am I that there is but
one reality in life, and that is Religion. Why not make it an every-
day business? Since the loving care of the Father is the only
thing that may not be taken from us, why do we not look to it for
every joy, and cling to it for every comfort? . . .
"Write soon. Will you not come to me? I am very lonely at
times. One sister gone! Another absent!
"I am wondering if you have changed as much as I feel that I
have? It is not natural to suppose that you have. You have not
the same impression of added responsibility, the emulation to
throw yourself into the breach made by the removal of one so
beloved, and, in her quiet way, exercising
so much influence. If I could but hope that patience and
prayerful watchfulness would ever make me 'altogether
such an one' as she was!
"How many and how happy have been the meetings in
heaven since I last saw you! Dear little Sallie B! How
often in fancy do I see her walk away in the moonlight
night of our parting! I never look from the front window in
the evening without recalling that hour."
OUR TRUE FAMILY GHOST-STORY
ONE evening of the winter
following the events
recorded in the last chapter, "Ned" Rhodes and I had
spent a cosey two hours together. My parents never did
chaperon duty, in the modern acceptation of the word.
They made a habit, without hinting at it as a duty, of
knowing personally every man who called upon us. When,
as in the present case, and it was a common one, the
visitor was well known to them, and they liked him, both of
them came into the drawing-room, sat for a half-hour or
longer, as the spirit moved them, then slipped out,
separately, to their own sitting-room and books.
I have drawn Ned Rhodes's picture at length as
"Charley" in Alone. I will only say here that he was my
firm and leal friend from the time I was twelve years old
to the time of his death, in the early eighties.
He had a piece of new music for me to-night, and we fell
to work with piano and flute soon after my father's exit. It
was not difficult. The songs and duets that followed were
familiar to us both. We chatted by the glowing grate when
we left the piano - gayly and lightly, of nothing in
particular - the inconsequent gossip of two old and intimate
acquaintances that called for no effort from either.
I mention this to show that I carried a careless spirit and
a light heart with me, as I went off in the direction of my
bedroom, having extinguished the hanging lamp in the hall,
and taking one of the lamps from the parlor to light myself
bedward.
It was a big, square Colonial house, with much waste of
space in the matter of halls and passages. The entrance hall
on the first floor was virtually a reception-room, and nearly
as large as any apartment on that level. It was cut across
the left side by an archway, filled with Venetian blinds and
door. Beyond these was a broad, easy stairway, dropping,
by a succession of landings, to the lower from the upper
story. Directly opposite the front door was a second and
narrower arch, the door in which was likewise, of Venetian
slats. This led to the rooms at the back of the house. The
plan of the second floor was the same. On this eventful
night I passed through the smaller archway, closing the door
behind me. It had a spring latch that clicked into place as I
swung it to. The bed room I shared with my sister, who was
not at home that night, was directly across the passage from
that occupied by our parents. A line of light under their door
proved that they were still up, and I knocked.
"Come in!" called both, in unison.
My mother, wrapped in her dressing-gown, lay back in
her rocking-chair, her book closed upon her finger. My
father had laid aside his coat, and stood on the rug, winding
his watch.
"I was hoping that you would look in," he said. "I wanted
to ask what that new piano-and-flute piece is. I like it!"
We exchanged a few sentences on the subject; I kissed
both good-night, and went out into the hall, humming, as
I went, the air that had caught his fancy.
The lamp in my hand had two strong burners. Gas had
not then been introduced into private dwellings in Richmond.
We used what was sold as "burning fluid," in illuminating
our houses - something less gross than camphene or oil,
and giving more light than either. I carried the lamp in front
of me, so that it threw a bright light upon
the door across the passage, here a little over six feet wide.
As I shut the door of my mother's room, I saw, as distinctly
as if by daylight, a small woman in gray start out of the
opposite door, glide noiselessly along the wall, and
disappear at the Venetian blinds giving upon the big front
hall.
I have reviewed that moment and its incident a thousand
times, in the effort to persuade myself that the apparition
was an optical illusion or a trick of fancy.
The thousandth-and-first attempt results as did the first. I
shut my eyes to see - always the one figure, the same
motion, the same disappearance.
She was dressed in gray; she was small and lithe; her
head was bowed upon her hands, and she slipped away,
hugging the wall, as in flight, vanishing at the closed door.
The door I had heard latch itself five minutes ago! Which
did not open to let her through! ! I recall, as clearly as I
see the apparition, what I thought in the few seconds that
flew by as I stood to watch her. I was not in the least
frightened at first. My young maid, Paulina, a bright mulatto
of fifteen, had more than once that winter fallen asleep
upon the rug before my fire, when she went into the room
to see that all was in readiness for my retiring. The
servants slept in buildings detached from the main
residence, a custom to which I have referred before.
"The house" was locked up by my father's own hands at
ten o'clock, unless there were some function to keep one or
more of the servants up and on duty. Therefore, when I
had twice awakened Paulina from her unlawful slumber, I
had sent her off to the "offices" - in English parlance -
with a sharp reproof and warning against a repetition of the
offence. My instant thought now was:
"The little minx has been at it again!" The next, "She went
like a cat!" The third, in a lightning flash, "She did not open
the door to go through!" Finally - "Nor did she open the
door when she came out of my room!"
I had never, up to that instant, known one thrill of
supernatural dread since I was old enough to give full
credence to my father's assurances that there were no
such things as ghosts, and to laugh at the tales told by
ignorant negroes to frighten one another, and to awe white
children. I had never been afraid of the darkness or of
solitude. I would take my doll and book to the graveyard
and spend whole happy afternoons there, because it was
quiet and shady, and nobody would interrupt study or
dream.
It was, then, the stress of extraordinary emotion which
swept me back into the room I had just quitted, and bore
me up to the table by which my mother sat, there to set
down the lamp I could scarcely hold, enunciating hoarsely.
"I have seen a ghost!"
My father wheeled sharply about.
"What!"
At that supreme moment, the influence of his scornful
dislike to every species of superstition made me "hedge,"
and falter, in articulating, "If there is such a thing as a
ghost, I have seen one!"
Before I could utter another sound he had caught up the
lamp and was gone. Excited, and almost blind and dumb as
I was, I experienced a new sinking of heart as I heard him
draw back the bolt of the door through which the Thing had
passed, without unclosing it. He explored the whole house,
my mother and I sitting, silent, and listening to his swift tramp
upon floor and stairs. In a few minutes the search was
over.
He was perfectly calm in returning to us.
"There is nobody in the house who has not a right to be
here. And nobody awake except ourselves."
Setting down the lamp, he put his hand on my head - his
own, and almost only, form of caress.
"Now, daughter, try and tell us what you think you
saw?"
Grateful for the unlooked-for gentleness, I rallied to tell
the story simply and without excitement. When I had
finished, he made no immediate reply, and I looked up
timidly.
"I really saw it, father, just as I have said! At least, I
believe I did!"
"I know it, my child. But we will talk no more of it
to-night. I will go to your room with you."
He preceded me with the lamp. When we were in my
chamber, he looked under the bed (how did he guess that I
should do it as soon as his back was turned, if he had not?).
Then he carried the light into the small dressing-room
behind the chamber. I heard him open the doors of a
wardrobe that stood there, and try the fastenings of a
window.
"There is nothing to harm you here," he said, coming
back, and speaking as gently as before. "Now, try not to
think of what you believe you saw. Say your prayers and
go to bed, like a good, brave girl!"
He kissed me again, putting his arm around me and,
holding me to him tenderly, said "Good-night," and went
out.
I was ashamed of my fright - heartily ashamed! Yet I
was afraid to look in the mirror while I undid and combed
my hair and put on my night-cap. When, at last, I dared put
out the light, I scurried across the floor, plunged into bed,
and drew the blankets tightly over my head.
My father looked sympathizingly at my heavy eyes next
morning when I came down to prayers. After breakfast he
took me aside and told me to keep what I had seen to
myself.
"Neither your mother nor I will speak of it in the hearing
of the children and servants. You may, of course, take
your sister into your confidence. She may be trusted. But
my opinion is that the fewer who know of a thing that
seems unaccountable, the better. And your sister is more
nervous than you."
Thus it came about that nothing was said to Mea, and
that we three who knew of the visitation did not discuss it
and tried honestly not to think of it.
Until, perhaps a month after my fright, about nine o'clock,
one wet night, my mother entered the chamber where my
father and I were talking over political news, as we still had
a habit of doing, and said, hurriedly, glancing nervously
behind her:
"I have seen Virginia's ghost!"
She saw it, just as I had described, issuing from the
closed door and gliding away close to the wall, then vanishing
at the Venetian door.
"It was all in gray," she reported, "but with something
white wrapped about the head. It is very strange!"
Still we held our peace. My father's will was law, and he
counselled discretion.
"We will await further developments," he said,
oracularly.
Looking back, I think it strange that the example of his
cool fearlessness so far wrought upon me that I would not
allow the mystery to prey upon my spirits, or to make me
afraid to go about the house as I had been wont to do.
Once my father broke the reserve we maintained, even to
each other, by asking if I would like to exchange my
sleeping-room for another.
"Why should I?" I interrogated, trying to laugh. "We are
not sure where she goes after she leaves it. It is something
to know that she is no longer there."
Mea had to be taken into confidence after she burst into
the drawing-room at twilight, one evening, and shut the
door, setting her back against it and trembling from head to
foot. She was as white as a sheet, and when she spoke, it
was in a whisper. Something had chased her
down-stairs, she declared. The hall-lamp was burning, and
she could see, by looking over her shoulder, that the halls
and stairs were empty but for her terrified self. But
Something - Somebody - in high-heeled shoes, that went
"Tap! tap! tap!" on the oaken floor and staircase, was
behind her from the time she left the upper chamber where
she had been dressing, until she reached the parlor door.
Her nerves were not as stout as mine, perhaps, but she was
no coward, and she was not given to foolish imaginations.
When we told her what had been seen, she took a more
philosophical view of the situation than I was able to do.
"Bodiless things can't hurt bodies!" she opined, and
readily joined our secret circle.
Were we, as a family, as I heard a woman say when we
were not panic-stricken at the rumored approach of
yellow-fever, "a queer lot, taken altogether"? I think so,
sometimes.
The crisis came in February of that same winter.
My sister Alice and a young cousin who was near her
age - fourteen - were sent off to bed a little after nine one
evening, that they might get plenty of "beauty sleep." Passing
the drawing-room door, which was ajar, they were tempted to
enter by the red gleam of the blazing fire of soft coal. Nobody
else was there to enjoy it, and they sat them down for a school-
girlish talk, prolonged until the far-off cry "All's well!" of the
sentinel at the "Barrack" on Capitol Square told the conscience-
smitten pair that it was ten o'clock. Going into the hall, they
were surprised to find it dark. We found afterward that the
servant whose duty it was to fill the lamp had neglected it, and
it had burned out. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and the
great window on the lower landing of the staircase was
unshuttered. The arched door dividing the two halls was
open, and from the doorway of the parlor they had a full
view of the stairs. The moonbeams flooded it half-way up
to the upper landing; and from the dark hall they saw a
white figure moving slowly down the steps. The
mischievous pair instantly jumped to the conclusion that
one of "the boys" - my brothers - was on his way, en
déshabillé to get a drink of water from the pitcher that
always stood on a table in the reception-room, or main hall.
To get it he must pass within a few feet of them, and they
shrank back into the embrasure of the door behind them,
pinching each other in wicked glee to think how they would
tease the boy about the prank next morning. Down the
stairs it moved, without sound, and slowly, the concealed
watchers imagined, listening for any movement that might
make retreat expedient. They said, afterward, that his night
gown trailed on the stairs, also that he might have had
something white cast over his head. These things did not
strike them as singular while they watched his progress, so
full were they of the fun of the adventure.
It crossed the moonlit landing - an unbroken sheet of
light - and stepped, yet more slowly, from
stair to stair of the four that composed the lowermost
flight. It was on the floor and almost within the archway
when the front door opened suddenly and in walked the
boys, who her been out for a stroll.
In a quarter-second the apparition was gone. As Alice
phrased it:
"It did not go backward or forward. It did not sink into
the floor. It just was not!"
With wild screams the girls threw themselves upon the
astonished boys, and sobbed out the story. In the full
persuasion that a trick had been played upon the frightened
children, the brothers rushed up-stairs and made a search
of the premises. The hubbub called every grown member
of the household to the spot except our deaf grandmother,
who was fast asleep in her bed up-stairs.
Assuming the command which was his right, my father
ordered all hands to bed so authoritatively that none
ventured to gainsay the edict. In the morning he made light
to the girls and boys of the whole affair, fairly laughing it
out of court, and, breakfast over, sent them off to school
and academy. Then he summoned our mother, my sister,
and myself to a private conference in "the chamber."
He began business without preliminaries. Standing on the
rug, his back to the fire, his hands behind him, in genuine
English-squirely style, he said, as nearly as I can recall his
words:
"It is useless to try to hide from ourselves any longer that
there is something wrong with this house. I have known it
for a year and more. In fact, we had not lived here three
months before I was made aware that some mystery hung
about it.
"One windy November night I had gone to bed as usual,
before your mother finished her book."
He glanced smilingly at her. Her proclivity for reading
into the small hours was a family joke.
"It was a stormy night, as I said, and I lay with closed
eyes, listening to the wind and rain, and thinking over next
day's business, when somebody touched my feet.
Somebody - not something) Hands were laid lightly upon
them, were lifted and laid in the same way upon my knees,
and so on until they rested more heavily on my chest, and I
felt that some one was looking into my face. Up to that
moment I had not a doubt that it was your mother. Like the
careful wife she is, she was arranging the covers over me
to keep out stray draughts. So, when she bent to look into
my face, I opened my eyes to thank her.
"She was not there! I was gazing into the empty air. The
pressure was removed as soon as I lifted my eyelids. I
raised myself on my elbow and looked toward the fireplace.
Your mother was deep in her book, her back toward
me. I turned over without sound, and looked under the bed
from the side next the wall. The firelight and lamplight
shone through, unobstructed.
"I speak of this now for the first time. I have never opened
my lips about it, even to your mother, until this moment. But
it has happened to me, not once, nor twice, nor twenty - but
fifty times - maybe more. It is always the same thing. The
hands - I have settled in my mind that they are those of a
small woman or of a child, they are so little and light - are
laid on my feet, then on my knees, and travel upward to my
chest. There they rest for a few seconds, sometimes for a
whole minute - I have timed them - and something looks
into my face and is gone!
"How do I account for it? I don't account for it at all! I
know that it is! That is all. Shakespeare said, long before I
was born, that 'there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' This is one of them.
You can see, now, daughter" - turning to me - "why I was
not incredulous when you brought your ghost upon the
scene. I have been on the lookout for what our spiritualistic
friends call 'further manifestations.' "
"You believe, then," Mea broke in, "that the girls really
saw something supernatural on the stairs last night? That it
was not a trick of moonlight and imagination?"
"If we can make them think so, it will be better for them
than to fill their little brains with ghastly fears. That was the
reason I took a jesting tone at breakfast-time. I charged
them, on the penalty of being the laughing-stock of all of us,
not to speak of it to any one except ourselves. I wish you all
to take the cue. Moreover, and above everything else, don't
let the servants get hold of it. There would be no living in
the house with them, if they were to catch the idea that it is
'haunted.' "
He drew his brows into the horseshoe frown that meant
annoyance and perplexity. "How I hate the word! You girls
are old enough to understand that the value of this property
would be destroyed were this story to creep abroad. I
would better burn the house down at once than to attempt
to sell it at any time within the next fifty years with a ghost-tale
tagged to it.
"Now, here lies the case! We can talk to outsiders of
what we have seen and felt and heard in this, our home,
where your grandmother, your mother and father have
hoped to live comfortably and to die in peace, or we can
keep our own counsel like sensible, brave Christians.
'Bodiless spirits cannot hurt bodies,' and" - the frown
passing before a humorous gleam - "the little gray lady
seems to be amiable enough. I can testify that her hands
are light, and that they pet, not strike. She is timid, too.
What do you say - all of you? Can we hold our tongues?"
We promised in one voice. We kept the pledge so well
that both the girls and the boys were convinced of our
incredulity. Our father forbade them positively to drop a hint
of their foolish fancies in the hearing of the servants. Young
as they were, they knew what stigma would attach to a
haunted house in the community. As time passed, the
incident faded from their minds. It was never mentioned in
their hearing.
A year went by without further demonstration on the part
of the little gray lady, except for two nocturnal visitations of
the small, caressing hands. My father admitted this when
we questioned him on the subject; but he would not talk of
it.
The one comic element connected with the bodiless
visitant was introduced, oddly enough, by our sanctimonious
clerical uncle-in-law, who now and then paid us visits of
varying lengths. As he came unannounced, it was not
invariably convenient to receive him. On one occasion his
appearance caused dismay akin to consternation. We
were expecting a houseful of younger friends within two days,
and needed the guest-room he must occupy. He was good
for a week at the shortest.
True to the Arab-like traditions of hospitality that
pervaded all ranks of Old Dominion society, we suffered
nothing of this to appear in our behavior. Nor could he have
heard the anguished discussion of ways and means that
went on between Mea and myself late that night. It was,
therefore, a delightful surprise when he announced, next
morning, his intention of going out to Olney that day, and to
remain there for - perhaps a week. He "had let too long a
time elapse since he had paid the good people there a visit.
He didn't want them to think he had forgotten them."
One of the "good people," the wife of my mother's
brother, drove into town to spend the day with us, a week
after the close of his stay at Olney. "Aunt Sue" was a prime
favorite with us all, and she was in fine feather to-day, full
of fun and anecdote. She interrupted a spicy bit of family
news to say, by-and-by:
"Did any of you ever suspect that your house is haunted?"
"How ridiculous!" laughed my mother. "Why do you ask?"
The narrator laughed yet more merrily.
"The funniest thing you ever heard! The old gentleman
had an awful scare the last night he was here. I asked him
what he had eaten - and drunk - for supper that evening.
But he stuck to it that he was standing at his window,
looking out into the moonlight in the garden, when somebody
came up behind him, and took him by the elbows and turned
him clear around! He felt the two hands that grabbed hold
of him so plainly that he made sure Horace had hidden
under the bed and jumped out to scare him. So he looked
under the bed and in the
wardrobe and the closet, and, for all I know, in the bureau
drawers and under the washstand, for the boy. There was
nobody in the room but himself, and the door was locked.
He says he wouldn't sleep in that room another night for a
thousand dollars."
"Nobody is likely to offer it!" retorted Mea, dryly. "I
have slept there nearly a thousand nights, and nothing ever
caught hold of me."
Passing over what might or might not have been a link in
the true, weird history of our bodiless tenant, I leap a chasm
of a dozen years to wind up the tale of the "little gray lady,"
so far as it bears directly upon our family. After the death
of her husband and the marriages of sons and daughters left
my mother alone in the old colonial homestead, she decided
to sell it and to live with my youngest sister.
The property was bought as a "Church Home" - a sort of
orphanage, conducted under the patronage of a prominent
Episcopal parish renowned for good works. In altering the
premises to adapt buildings to their new uses, the workmen
came upon the skeleton of a small woman about four feet
below the surface of the front yard. She lay less than six feet
away from the wall of the house, and directly under the
drawing-room window. There was no sign of coffin or
coffin-plate. Under her head was a high, richly carved tortoise-shell
comb, mute evidence that she had not been buried in cap and
shroud, as was the custom a hundred years agone. The
oldest inhabitant of a city that is tenacious of domestic
legends, had never heard of an interment in that quarter of a
residential and aristocratic district. The street, named for the
eminent lawyer, must have been laid out since the house was
built, and may have been cut right through grounds, then far
more spacious than when we bought the place. Even so, the
grave was dug in the front garden, and so close to the house
as to
render untenable the theory that the plot was ever part of a
family burying-ground.
The papers took inquisitive note of all these circumstances, and
let the matter drop as an unexplained mystery . Within the
present occupancy of the house, I have heard that the gray
lady still walks on moonlight nights and, in gusty midnights,
visits the bedside of terrified inmates to press small, light
hands upon the feet, and so passing upward, to rest upon
the chest of the awakened sleeper. I was asked by one
who had felt them, if I had "ever heard the legend that a
bride, dressed for her wedding, fell dead in that upper
chamber ages ago."
My informant could not tell me from whom she had the
grewsome tale, or the date thereof. "Somebody had told her
that it happened once upon a time." She knew that the
unquiet creature still "walked the halls and stairs."
She should have been "laid" by the decent ceremony of
burial in consecrated ground, awarded to the exhumed
bones.
I have talked with a grandson of our former next-door
neighbor, and had from him a circumstantial account of the
disinterment of the nameless remains. They must have lain
nearer the turf above them, a century back, than when they
were found. The young man was a boy when he ran to the
hole made by the workmen's spades, and watched the men
bring to light the entire skeleton. He verified the story of the
high, carved comb. He told me, too, of a midnight alarm of
screaming children at the vision of a little gray lady, walking
between the double row of beds in the dormitory, adding:
"I told those who asked if any story was attached to the
house, that I had lived next door ever since I was born, and
played every day with your sisters and brothers, and never
heard a whisper that the house was haunted."
So said all our neighbors. We kept our own counsel. It
was our father's wise decree.
I have told my ghost-story with no attempt at explanation
of psychical phenomena. After all these years I fall
back, when questioned as to hypotheses, upon my father's
terse dicta:
"How do I account for it? I don't account for it at all!"
TWO MONUMENTAL FRIENDSHIPS
EVEN at that period, when
I visited my father's Northern
kindred, I failed to bring them to a right comprehension of
the frank, and oftentimes intimate, relations existing
between the young people of both sexes in my Virginia
home. I have marvelled within myself since, how these
relations came to be established at the first. We brought to
the New World, and retained, scores of English customs of
domestic management, and traditions of social obligations.
It was never the fashion in England, or in her Northern
colonies, for boys to begin "visiting the young ladies"
before they discarded roundabouts, and to keep up the
fascinating habit until they tottered into the grave at
four-score. For the same dozen young fellows to call at least
once a week upon as many young girls; to read, chat, jest
flirt, drive, ride, and walk with them, month after month, and
year after year, perhaps choosing one of the dozen as a
lifelong partner, and quite as often running off for a season
to another county or State, and bringing home a wife, with
whom the philosophic coterie speedily got acquainted
amiably, widening the circle to take her in, with never a
thought of chagrin.
The thumbnail sketches I have jotted down in my
"purposeful" chapter, bring in the same names, again and
again. They were, indeed, and in truth, household words.
None of the young men and maidens catalogued in the
Christmas doggerel I shall speak of, presently,
intermarried. Two - perhaps four - had secret intentions
that tended toward
such a result in the fulness of time. Intentions, that
interfered in nowise with their participation in the general
hilarity. If there were any difference in the demeanor of
the engaged, or partially betrothed, pairs from the behavior
of the fancy-free, it was in a somewhat too obvious show
of impartiality. Engagements were never "announced," and
if suspected, were ignored in general society. Thus it often
happened that a direct proposal took a girl utterly by
surprise.
I was but sixteen, and on a summer vacation in
Albemarle County, when a collegian of nineteen, who was
swinging me "under green apple boughs" - lazily, because
the rapid rush through the air would interfere with the chat
we were carrying on, in full sight of groups scattered on
the porch steps and about the lawn - brought down my
thoughts - which had strayed far afield under the influence
of the languorous motion, the sunset and the soft mingling
of young voices - with stunning velocity, by declaring that
he adored me, and "couldn't keep it to himself any longer."
With never the suspicion of a blush, I looked him straight
in the eyes and begged him not to make a goose of himself,
adding: "I didn't think you mistook me for a girl who enjoys
that kind of badinage. It is not a bit to my taste. And we
have been such good friends!"
When he suffocated himself dangerously with
protestations that actually brought tears to his eyes, I
represented that lookers-on would think we had quarrelled
if I left the swing and his society abruptly, as I certainly
should do if he did not begin to talk sensibly, out of hand. I
set the example by calling to a boy who was passing with a
basket of apples, and calmly selecting one, taking my time
in doing it.
Coquetry? Not a bit of it! I liked the lad too well to allow
him to make a breach in our friendship by
love-making. When he came to his senses (four years
later!) he thanked me for not taking the matter seriously.
We gave, and attended, few large parties. But there were
no dead calms in our intercourse. Somebody was always
getting up a frolic of some sort. Tableaux, musicales,
"sociables," where, in Christmas week, and sometimes at
other times, we played old-fashioned games, such as
"Consequences" upon slips of paper, and "Kings of England"
with cards, and "What is my thought like?" viva voce. We
had picnics in warm weather. Richmond College boys
invited us out to receptions following orations on February
22d, and we had Valentine parties, with original verses, on
February 14th.
Nowhere, and at no time, was there romping. Still less
would kissing-games be allowed among really "nice" young
people. This was deemed incredible by my Boston cousins,
and yet more strange the fact that we kept up among
ourselves decorous conventions that appeared stiff and
inconsistent to those not to the manor born and bred. For
example, while I might, and did, name our most intimate
masculine visitors, "Tom," "Dick," or "Harry" in chat with my
girl friends, I addressed them as "Mr. Smith," "Jones," or
"Robinson," and always spoke of them in the same manner
in mentioning them to strangers. For a man to touch a lady's
arm or shoulder to attract her attention, was an
unpardonable liberty. If a pair were seen to "hold hands," it
was taken for granted that they were engaged or - as I
heard a matron say, when she had surprised a couple
walking in the moonlight, the fair one's hand on the swain's
arm, and his laid lightly upon it - "they ought to be."
The well-bred girl of the fifties might be a rattle; she
might enjoy life with guileless abandon that earned her the
reputation of "dashing"; she parried shaft of teasing and
badinage with weapons of proof; but she was never "fast."
She kept her self-respect, and challenged the reverent
respect of the men who knew her best.
To this code of social and ceremonial ethics, and to the
ban put upon dancing and card-playing by church and
parents, is undoubtedly due the fact that Southern women
of that generation were almost invariably what we would
call, "good talkers." In the remembrance, and in contrasting
that all-so-long-ago with the times in which we live, I could
write a jeremiade upon "Conversation as a Lost Art."
From the list of names drawn into line by some Yuletide
rhymes of my own, bearing the date of "1852," I single two
that must have more than a passing notice if I would write
the true story of my threescore-and-ten years.
Mary Massie Ragland was, at that Christmas-tide, twenty-two
years of age. I had liked and admired her from the first.
In time she grew into a place in my heart no other friend
had ever held, and which, left vacant by her death six years
later, has never been taken. I think no man or woman has
more than one complete, all-satisfying friendship in a
lifetime. Her portrait hangs against the wall in my
bedchamber now. I awake each morning to meet her gaze
bent, as in life, on mine. In sorrow and in joy, I have gone
secretly to my room, as to an oratory, to seek in the depths
of the beautiful eyes the sympathy never denied while she
was with me, and visible to my dull vision. To a mind stored
richly with the best literature, eager to acquire and faithful
to retain, she added exquisite fancies, poetic tastes, and love
for the beautiful that was a passion. Her heart was warm,
deep, tender, and true. It well-nigh breaks mine in
remembering how true! In all the ten years in which we
lived and loved together in closest intimacy, not a cloud ever
crossed the heaven of our friendship.
One remark, uttered simply and with infinite gentleness
by her, after a great loss had chastened her buoyant spirits,
stands with me as the keynote to action and character.
I was commenting somewhat sharply upon my
disappointment in not meeting, from one whom I loved and
trusted, the fulness of sympathy I thought I had a right to
expect in what was a genuine trial to myself.
"She was hard and critical!" I moaned. "You saw it
yourself! You cannot deny it! And she was absolutely rude
to you!"
"Dear!" The stroking fingers upon my bowed head were
a benediction; the sweet voice was eloquent with
compassion. "Don't judge her harshly! She is good, and
true to you and to the right. But she has never had sorrow
to make her tender."
How boundless was the tenderness, my mentor, who
comforted while she admonished, learned in the school of
pain in which she studied until Death dismissed her spirit,
was fully known to Him alone whose faithful disciple she
was to the end.
To the world she showed a smiling front; her merry laugh
and ready repartee were the life of whatever company she
entered, and over and through it all, it might be reverently
said of the true, heroic soul, that, to high and humble, "her
compassions failed not."
"Refined by nature and refined by grace!" said one above
her coffin.
I added, inly: "And by sorrow!"
"The kind of woman to whom a fellow takes off his hat
when he thinks of her," a young cousin, who had been as a
brother to her, wrote to me after her death. "It took six
thousand years to make one such. I shall never know
another."
While on a visit to my old and beloved preceptors, Mrs.
Nottingham and her daughters, then resident in Lexington,
Virginia, I met Junius Fishburn, lately graduated from
Washington College - now Washington and Lee. He was
an early and intimate friend of the "Ragland girls," and in a
way (according to Virginia ways of reckoning kinship) a
family connection of theirs, too remote to deserve
recognition in any other region or society. But he claimed
through this the right to omit the initial steps of
acquaintanceship, and I recognized the right. We were
quickly friends - so quickly, that it was no surprise to me
when he enclosed a note to me in a letter to one of the
Ragland sisters, shortly after my return home. I answered it,
and thus was established a correspondence continued
through a term of years, without serious interruption, up to
the day when, in the second year after my marriage, my
husband entered my room with a paper in his hand, and a
grave look on his face.
"Here is sad, sad news for you," he said, gently.
"Professor Fishburn is dead!"
The beautiful young wife, to whom he had been married
less than two years, was a sister of "Stonewall Jackson's"
first wife, a daughter of Dr. George Junkin, then President
of Washington College, and sister of the poet, Margaret
Junkin Preston. After "June's" death, Mrs. Preston, my dear
friend, wrote to me of a desire her widowed sister hesitated
to express directly to me. Her husband had told her that
more of his early and inner life was told in this series of
letters to me than he could ever relate to any one else.
Would I be willing to let her read a few selected by myself?
I had known him before he met her. If the request were
unreasonable, she would withdraw it.
There could have been no surer proof of the sincerity, the
purity, and absolute absence of everything pertaining to
love-making and flirtation in our ten-year-long friendship,
than was offered in the circumstance that, without a
moment's hesitation or the exclusion of a single letter, I
made up a parcel of the epistles, and sent it, with my fond
love, to the widow of my lamented friend.
His letters were but a degree less charming than his
conversation. I considered him, then, and I have not
changed my opinion after seeing much more of the world of
society men and brilliant women, one of the best talkers I
have known.
"You have hit it off
happily there," said Mary, at the jolly
reading of the lines on New-Year's Day, to "us girls."
And she repeated:
"Social
and witty, kind and clever;
He was all this, and
more. Our correspondence was a
stage, and an important, in my education. We discussed
books, authors, military and political heroes, psychology,
philology, theology, and, as time made us more intimate with
the depths underlying the dancing waves of thought and
fancy, we talked much of religious faith and tenets.
On August 26, 1850, I wrote to Effie:
It was about this time that my presumptuous brain
conceived the thought that my friend should be in the pulpit,
instead of in the professorial chair to which he was
appointed after winning his degree from the University of
Virginia, whither he had gone from Washington College for
a post-graduate course, and a more thorough equipment for
his chosen life-work. With the Brahmin traditions strong
upon me, and the blue blood of Presbyterianism seething in
my veins, I forthwith made out a "call," amplified through
six pages of Bath post, and dispatched it to Lexington.
The nearest approach to tenderness in any of our many
letters, came out in his reply:
"A brother's fondness gushed up in my heart as I read
your earnest pleadings," was the opening sentence of a
masterly exposition of the reasons that, as he phrased it,
"forbid my unhallowed feet to stand within the sacred
desk." I was wrong, and he was right. His fearless
utterance of the faith which was the mainspring of life and
action, carried force a licensed clergyman seldom gains.
He fought the good fight in the ranks, refusing the
commission that had not, as he believed, the King's seal.
I had no living elder brother. I hardly felt the loss while
Junius lived. In 1855 he took a year's leave of absence, and
spent it in a German university. My father and myself were
just setting out for Boston and the White Mountains, and
accompanied him as far as New York. Junius and I were
promenading the deck of the Potomac steamer when I
showed him an ambrotype given me by "a friend whom I
am sorry you have never met."
He looked at it intently for a moment, and, in closing the
case, searched my face with eyes at once smiling and
piercing.
"Are you trying to tell me something?" he asked, in the
gentlest of tones.
I answered honestly: "No; there is nothing to tell. We are
warm friends - no more."
We were interrupted, and had no more opportunity for
confidential chat until that evening, when we strolled from
the hotel along the moonlighted streets to the Capitol. He
alluded playfully, in a German letter, to the never-to-be-
forgotten excursion - our last moonlit ramble, although we
did not dream of it then - as "my walk with Corinne to the
Capitol."
(Men took time and pains to say graceful things, then-a
days!)
He told me that night - what he had already written in
brief in a late letter - of his betrothal, of his happiness, and
his ambition to make the best of himself for the dear sake
of the woman who was waiting for him in the college town
engirdled by the blue Virginian mountains.
The next day but one he sailed. My father and myself
bade him "God-speed!" I was glad it so happened.
If I had fewer causes for devout thanksgiving to the
Giver of every good and perfect Joy than have crowned my
life, I should still account myself rich in the memory of these
two perfect friendships. In my ignorance of the world that
lay without, and far beyond my small circle of thought, and
what I believed were activities, I did not rightly appreciate
the rarity of the gifts. I did know that they were passing
sweet, and longed to prove myself worthy of holding them.
This chapter of my humble record is a sprig of
rosemary laid upon Friendship's Shrine.
THE "OLD AFRICAN CHURCH"
No description of the
Richmond of the forties and fifties
would be complete without a sketch of what was, if I
mistake not, the first Baptist Church erected in the city.
The white congregation that occupied it for some years
had built a large, handsome church farther up the hill, and
the squat, but spacious, house on the lower slope of Broad
Street, was made over to the colored population.
I say "population" advisedly. For perhaps half a century,
the Richmond negroes had no other place of public worship,
and the communicants in that denomination were numbered
by the thousand. They are an emotionally religious race, and
I doubt if there were, all told, one hundred colored members
of any other sect in the length and breadth of the county of
Henrico.
The low-browed, dingy, brick edifice surrendered to their
use was said to have a seating capacity of two thousand. It
was therefore in demand when mass political meetings
were convened. When John B. Gough lectured in our city,
no other building could accommodate the crowds that
flocked to see and hear him.
Big as it was, the house was filled every Sunday. There
was a regular church organization in which deacons and
ushers were colored. Of course the Pastor was a white.
And oddly enough, or so it seemed to outsiders, the
shepherd of the black flock was the President of Richmond
College and Divinity School, situated upon the outskirts of
the city.
His pastoral duties outside of his pulpit ministrations
were not onerous. The Daughters of Zion, a flourishing
society, looked after the sick and afflicted. There were no
colored paupers under the slave system, except, once in a
great while, "a no 'count free nigger." This last word was
never applied to a fellow-servant, but freely and
disdainfully fitted to the unfortunate freedman.
I was never able to disabuse my mind of appreciation of
the comic element in viewing the Rev. Robert Ryland, D.D.
(and I am not sure but "LL.D." as well), in his position
as Pastor of the First African Church. He was a staid
personage of middle age, who may have been learned. If
he were, the incongruity was the more absurd. He was
never brilliant. Nor had he the power of adapting himself to
his audience that might have saved the situation in some
measure. I heard him preach once to his dusky cure of
souls. He began by saying, apropos to his text from Paul's
First Epistle to the Corinthians:
"Shortly after the Apostle's departure from that place
there arose dissensions in the church at Co-rinth."
A preamble that was greeted by appreciative groans
from the women in the audience. As was the assertion,
later on, in the same discourse, that -
"Christ may be called the Concrete Idea of our most holy
Faith." Still more pronounced was the murmured applause
that succeeded the remark - "This may be true in the
Abstract. It is not true in the Concrete."
"Concrete" was a new word in philosophers' mouths just
then, and he worked it hard.
The anecdote of the parishioner who found "that blessed
word 'Mesopotamia' " the most comforting part of her
minister's sermon, is entirely credible if she were of African
descent. Polysyllables were a ceaseless feast to their
imaginations. Sesquipedalian periods were spiritual nectar
and ambrosia. The barbaric and the florid were bound
up in their nature, and the rod of an alien civilization could
not drive it far from them.
In church relations, they recognized and revelled rankly in
the levelling principle of Christianity which, within the
sacred circle of the bonds of a common faith, made no
invidious distinctions between bond and free. The staid
D.D. was to them "Brer Ryland" on week-days, as on
Sundays. I am sure it never occurred to the humblest of
them that whatever of dignity pertained to the relation was
his, by virtue of his holy calling, and they were honored in
that their spiritual guide belonged to a superior race and
was at the head of an institution of learning.
How freely they discussed him and his teachings, will be
illustrated by a dialogue overheard by me in my early
school-days.
I was walking behind two colored women one Sunday on
my way home from church. They were evidently ladies'
maids, from their mincing speech and affected gait, and
were invested with what was, as palpably, their mistresses'
discarded finery.
"Brer Rylan' was quite too severe 'pon dancin'," was the
first sentence that caught my ear. "He is kinder hard 'pon
innercint aversions, oncet in a while. You know we read in
the Bible that the angels in heaven dance 'round the
throne."
"Yes," assented the elder of the two, "an' play 'pon
jewsharps! But I've been heard that they don' cross they
feet, and that makes a mighty difference in the sin o'
dancin'. Of course, we all of us knows that it's a sin for a
Christyun to dance; but, as you say, Brer Rylan' is
oncharitable sometimes in talkin' 'bout young folks' ways
and frolickin'. He will let them promenade to the music of
the band when the students has parties at the college, but
never a dancin' step!"
"Not even," with a shrill giggle, "if they don't cross
they feet?"
As time whitened the good man's hair and brought
heavier duties to his head and hands, he fell into the habit of
delegating the afternoon service at the "Old African" to his
neophytes in the Divinity School. He may have judged
rightly that it was excellent practice for the 'prentice hand
of embryo pulpit orators. One of the brightest of these who
afterward made good the promise of distinguished
usefulness in the Southern Church, was the officiating
evangelist on a certain Sunday afternoon, when a lively
party of girls and collegians planned to attend the "Old
African," in a body, and witness his maiden performance.
He knew we were coming, and why, but he uttered not a
word of protest. As he said afterward, "The sooner he got
used to mixed audiences, the better."
What were known as the "Amen benches," at the left of
the pulpit, were reserved for white auditors. They were
always full. On this afternoon they were packed tightly. The
main body of the church was also filled, and we soon
became aware that an unusual flutter of solemn excitement
pervaded the well-dressed throng. The front block of seats
on each side of the middle aisle was occupied by women,
dressed in black, many of them closely veiled, and pocket-
handkerchiefs were ostentatiously displayed, generally
clasped between black-gloved hands folded upon the pit of
the stomach.
"Reminds one of a rising thundercloud!" whispered a
graceless youth behind me.
Presently a deacon, likewise lugubrious in aspect, tip-toed
into the pulpit, where sat the young theologue, and, holding
his silk hat exactly upon the small of his back in the left
hands bent low in offering the right to the preacher.
The subdued rustle and shuffling, incident to the settling
into place of a large congregation, prevented us from
hearing the low colloquy that succeeded the handshake.
We had it in full from one of the actors, that evening.
The functionary began by expressing the gratification of
the congregation that "Brer Rylan' had sent such a
talentable young gentleman to 'ficiate 'pon dis occasion.
"We been heerd a-many times of what a promisin' young
gentleman Brer W. is, an' we is certainly mightily flattered
at seein' him in our midst 'pon dis occasion. I jes' steps up
here, suh, to say dis, an' to arsk is dere anything any of us
ken do to resist Brer W. 'pon dis occasion."
"Thank you, nothing!" responded the other, courteously.
"You are very kind. The choir will take care of the music,
as usual, I suppose?"
"Suttinly, suh, suttinly! De choir am always dependable
'pon every occasion. An' dey has prepared special music
for dis solemn occasion."
Reiteration of the word had not aroused the listener's
curiosity. The last adjective, and the tone in which it was
brought out, awoke him wide.
"Solemn!" he re-echoed. "Is there anything special in the
services of to-day?"
The hand grasping the silk hat executed a half-circle in
the air that seemed to frame the black-robed block of
sitters for the startled youth.
"Yaas, suh! Surely Brer Rylan' must 'a' told Brer W. de
nature of our comin' togedder to-day! It's a funeral, suh.
De dear departed deceasted nigh 'pon two mont' ago, but
we haven't foun' it agreeable, as you mought say, to all
parties concerned, fur to bring all de family an' frien's
together tell terday. But dey are here now, suh, as you may
see fur yourself. An' we are moughty pleased dat Brer
Rylan' has sont sech a 'sponsible preacher to us as Brer
W."
"Mercy, man!" gasped the affrighted novice, clutching
frantically at the notes he had been conning when the
deacon accosted him. "I knew nothing of the funeral
when I came. I can't preach a funeral sermon out of hand!
There isn't anything about death in my notes."
His distress wrought visibly upon the deacon's
sympathies. The hat described a reassuring parabola.
"There, there! It ain't necessary for Brer W. to
discombobberate himself 'pon dat account. A young
gentleman of Brer W.'s talents needn't get sheered at a little
thing like an ev'ry-day funeral. All dat Brer W. has to
do is to say a few words 'bout de dear deceasted; 'bout de
loss to de church, an' de family, an' frien's, an' de suttinty
o' death, an' de las' change. An' den a few rousements,
you know, throwed in at de end. Law! I ken hear Brer W.
doin' it up fine, when I think on it!
"Dar! de choir is a-startin' de funeral anthim. Thank you,
suh, fur comin' to us, and don't give yo'self no oneasiness!
Sling in dem remarks 'spectin' de dear deceasted, and
you'll be all right."
I forget the text of the sermon that followed the anthem
and the prayer. I but know that neither it, nor the introduction,
had any relevancy to the "occasion." Our friend
became a brilliant speaker in later life. Now, he was no
more sophomoric than are nine-tenths of seminary students.
But as he went on, we - in the slang of this era - began to
sit up and take notice; for with dexterity remarkable in a
tyro, he switched off from the main line into a by-road that
led, like the paths of glory, to the grave. He had fine feeling
and a lively imagination, and the scene and the music had
laid hold upon both. As he confessed, subsequently, he
surprised himself by his intimate acquaintance with the
departed brother. He dwelt upon his fidelity to duty, his
devotion to the Church of his love, and what he had done
for her best interests. Singling out, as by divination, the
widow, whose long crêpe veil billowed stormily with
audible sobs, he referred tenderly to her loneliness,
and committed her and the fatherless children to the Great
Father and Comforter of all. By this time the congregation
was a seething mass of emotion. Fluttering handkerchiefs,
sighs that swept the church like fitful breezes, and
suppressed wails from the central block of reserved seats,
drowned the feeling peroration, but we guessed the purport
from the speaker's face and gestures.
As he sat down, the audience arose, as one woman, and
broke into a funeral chant never written in any music-book,
and in which the choir, who sang by note, took no part:
"We'll pass over Jordan, O my brothers, O my sisters! De
water's chilly an' cold, but Hallelujah to de Lamb! Honor de
Lamb, my chillun, honor de Lamb!"
This was shouted over and over, with upraised arms at
one portion, and, as the refrain was repeated, all joined
hands with those nearest to them and shook from head to
foot in a sort of Dervish dance, without, however, raising
the feet from the floor. It was such an ecstatic shiver as I
saw thirty-odd years thereafter, when a Nubian dancer
gave an exhibition in a private house in the suburbs of
Jerusalem.
I shall have more to say of that chant presently. Return
we to the orator of the occasion, whose extemporaneous
"effort" had stirred up the pious tumult.
As soon as his share of the service was over, he slipped
out of the box-pulpit and sidled through the throng to the
corner where we were grouped, watching for a chance to
make our exit without attracting the attention of the
worshippers. He had just reached us when the quick-eyed,
fleet-footed deacon was at his side. We overheard what
passed between them.
"Brer W., suh, I come to thank you in the name o' de
bereaved fam'ly of de dear deceasted, suh, for yo'
powerful sermon dis afternoon. Nothin' could 'a' been better an'
mo'suitabler. Dey all agree on dat ar' p'int, suh. Every
one on 'em is puffickly satisfied! You couldn't 'a' done no
better, suh, ef you 'a' had a year to get ready in."
Poor W., red to the roots of his fair hair, murmured his
thanks, and the sable official was backing away when he
recollected something unsaid:
"Dar was jes' one little matter I mought 'a' mentioned at
de fust, suh (not dat it made no difference whatsomever;
de fam'ly, maybe, wouldn't keer to have me speak o' sech
a trifle), but de dear deceasted was a sister!"
Then it was that W. turned an agonized face upon our
convulsed group:
"For Heaven's sake, is there a back door or window by
which a fellow can get out of this place?"
The choir of the "Old African" was one of the shows of
the city. Few members of it could read the words of the
hymns and anthems. Every one of them could read the
notes, and follow them aright. The parts were well
balanced and well-sustained. Those who have heard the
Fisk University Jubilee singers do not need the assurance
that the quality of the negro voice is rarely sweet and rich,
and that, as a race, they have a passion for music. Visitors
from Northern cities who spent the Sabbath in Richmond
seldom failed to hear the famed choir of the Old African.
On this afternoon, the then popular and always beautiful
Jerusalem, My Happy Home, was rendered with exquisite skill
and feeling. George F. Root, who heard the choir more
than once while he was our guest, could not say enough of
the beauty of this anthem-hymn as given by the colored
band. He declared that one soloist had "the finest natural
tenor he ever heard."
But these were not the representative singers of the
race. Still less should airs, composed by white musicians
and sung all over the country as "negro melodies," pass as
characteristic. They are the white man's conception of
what the expatriated tribes should think and feel and sing.
More than thirty years after the maiden sermon of which
I have written, our little party of American travellers drew
back against the wall of the reputed "house of Simon the
Tanner" in Jaffa (the ancient Joppa), to let a funeral
procession pass. The dead man, borne without a coffin,
upon the shoulders of four gigantic Nubians, was of their
race. Two-thirds of the crowd, that trudged, barefooted
through the muddy streets behind the bier, were of the
same nationality. And as they plodded through the mire,
they chanted the identical "wild, wailing measure" familiar
to me from my infancy, which was sung that Sunday
afternoon to the words "We'll pass over Jordan" - even to
the oft-iterated refrain, "Honor, my chillun, honor de
Lamb!"
The gutterals of the outlandish tongue were all that
was unlike. The air was precisely the same, and the time
and intonations.
We have taken great pains to trace the negro folk-lore
back to its root. The musical antiquarian is yet to arise who
will track to their home the unwritten tunes and chants the
liberated negro is trying to forget, and to which his
grandparents clung lovingly, all unaware that they were an
inheritance more than a dozen generations old.
Trained choirs might learn "book music," and scorn the
airs crooned over their cradles, and shouted and wailed in
prayer and camp meetings, by mothers and fathers. The
common people held obstinately to their very own music,
and were not to be shaken loose by the "notions" of "young
folks who hadn't got the egg-shells offen they hades."
I asked once, during a concert given by students from
Hampton Institute, if the leader would call upon them for
certain of the old songs - naming two or three. I was
told that they objected to learning them, because they were
associated with the days of their bondage. I did not take the
trouble to convince the spruce maestro that what I wished to hear
were memorials of the days of wildest liberty, when their
forbears hunted "big game" in their tangled native forests, and
paddled their boats upon rivers the white man had never
explored.
HOW "ALONE" CAME TO BE
"June 5th, 1854.
" . . . You
anticipate from this formidable array of duties,
hindrances, etc., that it will be some time, yet, before I can avail
myself of your bewitching invitation. I doubt if I shall be ready to
accept Powhie's gallant offer of his escort, although it is tempting.
But -
"
'I'm coming! yes, I'm coming!'
in July, wind, weather,
and all else permitting.
"You will probably
see a more august personage next Sunday. I
cannot resist the temptation to let you into the secret of a little
manoeuvring of my own. I had an intimation a few weeks ago that
Miss L. and poor lonely Mr. S., her near neighbor, were nodding
at each other across the road. There was an allusion to horseback
rides, and a less fertile imagination could have concocted a very
tolerable story out of the facts (?) in hand.
"But didn't I make it tell? The plausible tale crashed into the
peaceful brain of our worthy uncle-in-law like a bombshell into a
quiet chamber at midnight. How he squirmed, and fidgeted, and
tried to smile! 'Twas all a ghastly grin! I winked at Herbert, who
chanced to come in while the narrative was in progress. The rogue
had heard but the merest outline, and paid no attention to that;
but he made a 'sight draught' upon his inventive talents,
and - adding to the rides, 'moonlight walks, afternoon strolls to
the tobacco patch, and along the road toward the big gate to see
whether the joint-worm was in the wheat,' and insinuations that
these excursions
were more to the lady's taste than 'sanctuary privileges'
almost drove the venerable wooer crazy.
" 'Yes!' said he, bitterly, pushing back his chair from the
table. 'He has a house and plantation. A land-rope is a
strong rope! Women look at these things.'
"He actually followed Herbert to the front door to
supplicate - Herbert declares, 'with tears in both
eyes' - that he would at least tell him if his information was
'authentic, or if it might not be that he was trying to scare
him?' Herbert excused himself upon the plea of pressing
business, but invited him to 'drop into the office some time
if he would have further particulars.'
"Our plot works to a charm. The reverend swain sets out
'this very week' for Powhatan, and 'means to have the
matter settled.' So, look out for him!
"All this rigmarole is strictly true. No boy of seventeen
was ever more angrily jealous or desperate. You may, if
you like, let the Montrosians into the fun, but, until the
matter is settled, don't let the key pass into other hands.
"Isn't it glorious? Two bald heads ducking and ogling to
one fortunate damsel - their bleared eyes looking 'pistols
for two, coffee for one!' at each other? What an
entrancing interruption to the monotony of a life that, until
now, has flowed as gently as a canal stream over a grade
of a foot to a mile?"
Before transcribing other passages from the same letter
- one of unusual length even for that epistolary age - I
must retrace my steps to pick up the first thread of what
was in time to thicken into a "cord of stronger twine."
When I was sixteen I began to write a book. It was a
school-girl's story - a picture crudely done, but as truthful
as I could make it - of what was going on in the small
world I thought large, and every personage who figured in it
was a portrait. In that book I lived and moved, and had my
inmost being for that year. I spoke to nobody of what I was
doing. The shrinking from confiding to my nearest and
dearest what I was writing, was reluctance unfeigned and
unconquerable in the case of this, my best-beloved brain-
child. None of my own household questioned me as to what
went on in the hours spent in my "study," as the corner, or
closet, or room where I planted myself and desk, was
named. We had a way of respecting one another's
eccentricities that had no insignificant share in maintaining
the harmony which earned for ours the reputation of a
singularly happy family.
I was allowed to plan my day's work, so long as it did not
impinge upon the rights or convenience of the rest. Directly
after breakfast, I called my two willing little pupil-sisters to
their lessons. The rock and shoals of threatened financial
disaster that menaced our home for a while, were safely
overpast by now. We were once more in smooth water,
and sacrifices might be remitted. I continued to teach my
little maids for sheer love of them, and of seeing their minds
grow. Both were bright and docile. Alice had an intellect of
uncommon strength and of a remarkably original cast. It
was a delight to instruct her for some years. After that, we
studied together.
Our "school-time" lasted from nine until one. I never
emerged from the study until three - the universal dinner-hour
in Richmond. If visitors called, as often happened, my
mother and sister excused me. In the afternoon we went
out together, making calls, or walking, or driving. In the
evening there was usually company, or we practiced with
piano and flute, and, as Herbert grew old enough to join our
"band," he brought in his guitar, or we met in
"the chamber," and one read aloud in the sweet old way
while the others wrought with needle and pencil and
drawing-board. This was the routine varied by occasional
concerts and parties. Now and then, I got away from the
group and wrote until midnight.
In 1853 the Southern Era,
a semi-literary weekly owned
and run by the then powerful and popular "Sons of
Temperance," offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best
temperance serial of a given length. I had written at sixteen,
and recast it at eighteen, a story entitled "Marrying
Through Prudential Motives," and sent it secretly to
Godey's Magazine. It bore the
signature of "Mary Vale"
- a veiled suggestion of my real name. For four years I
heard nothing of the waif. I had had experiences enough of
the same kind to dishearten a vain or a timorous writer. It
was balm to my mortified soul to reflect that nobody was
the wiser for the ventures and the failures.
So I set my pen in rest, and went in for the prize; less, I
avow, for the fifty dollars than for the reward for seeing my
ambitious banding in print. So faint and few were my
expectations of this consummation, that I went off to
Boston for the summer, without intimating to any one the
audacious cast I had made. I had been with my cousins six
weeks when my mother sent me a copy of the
Southern
Era, containing what she said in a letter by the same mail,
"promised to be the best serial it had
published." I opened the
letter first, and tore the wrapper from the
paper carelessly.
How it leaped at me from
the outermost page!
OUR PRIZE STORY!
KATE HARPER
By Marion Harland
All set up in what we christened in the last quarter-century,
"scare-heads."
As I learned later from home-letters, the editor, after
advertising vainly for the author's address, had published
without waiting for it. I wrote home that night to my father,
pouring out the whole revelation, and stipulating that the
secret should be kept among ourselves.
"Marion Harland" was, again, a hint of my name, so overt
that it was not guessed at by readers in general. The editor,
an acquaintance of my father, was informed of my right to
draw the money. I continued to send tales and poems to
him for two years, and preserved my incognito.
In the late spring of 1853, "Mea," Herbert, and I were
sitting in the parlor on a wild night when it rained as rain
falls nowhere else as in the seven-hilled city. My
companions had their magazines. Mea's, as I well recollect,
was Harper's New Monthly; my brother had the
Southern Literary Messenger. Ned Rhodes had taken
Harper's for me from the very first issue. My father
subscribed conscientiously for the Messenger to encourage
Southern literature. All right-minded Virginians
acknowledged the duty of extending such encouragement
to the extent of the subscription price of "native
productions."
I had dragged out the rough copy of my book from the
bottom of my desk that day, and was now looking it over at
a table on one side of the fireplace. Chancing upon the
page describing Celestia Pratt's entrance upon school-life, I
laughed aloud.
"What is it?" queried my sister, looking up in surprise.
"See if you know her," I responded, and read out the
scene. She joined in the laugh.
"To the life!" she pronounced. "Go on!"
I finished the chapter, and the two resumed their
magazines. Presently Herbert tossed his aside.
"I say!" with boyish impetuosity. "This is stupid after
what you gave us. Haven't you 'anything more of the
same sort?' "
It was a slang phrase of the day.
It was the "Open Sesame" of my literary life.
They kept me reading until nearly midnight, dipping in
here for a scene, there for a character-sketch, until my
voice gave out.
I began rewriting Alone next day, and we welcomed
stormy evenings for the next two months. When the MS.
was ready for the press, I wrote the "Dedication to
Brother and Sister" as a pleasant surprise to my
generous critics. They did not suspect it until they read it
in print.
Getting the work into print was not so easy as the
eager praises of my small audience might have inclined
me to expect. The principal book-store in Richmond at that
time was owned by Adolphus Morris, a warm personal
friend of my father. The two had been intimate for years,
and the families of the friends maintained most cordial
relations. Yet it was with sore and palpable quakings of
heart that I betook myself to the office of the man who took
on dignity as a prospective publisher, and laid bare my project.
It was positive pain to tell him that I been writing
under divers signatures for the press since I was
fourteen. The task grew harder as the judicial look I
have learned to know since as the publisher's
perfunctory guise, crept over the handsome face. When
I owned, with blushes that scorched my hair, to the authorship
of the "Robert Remer" series, and of the prize story in the Era,
he said frankly and coolly that he "had never read
either." He "fancied that he had heard Mrs. Morris
speak of Remer papers. Religious - were they not?"
He liked me, and his pretty wife (who had far more brains
and vivacity than he) had made a pet of me. He honored
my father, and was under business obligations to
him. I was conscious, while I labored away at my share in
my first business interview, that he lent kindly heed to me
for these reasons, and not that he had the smallest grain
of faith in the merits of my work. I was a child in his sight,
and he would humor my whim.
"I am willing to submit your manuscript to my reader," he
said, at last.
I looked the blank ignorance I felt. He explained
patronizingly. He had patronized me from the moment I
said that I had written a book. I have become familiar with
this phase of publisherhood, also, since that awful day.
"John R. T. reads all my manuscripts!" fell upon my ear
like a trickle of boiling lead. "Send it down when it is ready,
and I will put it into his hands. You know, I suppose, that
everything intended for printing must be written on one side
of the paper?"
I answered meekly that I had heard as much, bade him
"Good morning!" and crept homeward, humbled to the dust.
"John R. T.!" (Nobody ever left out the "R." in speaking
of him, and nobody, so far as I ever heard, knew for what it
stood.)
He was the bright son of a worthy citizen; had been
graduated at the University of Virginia; studied at the law,
and entered the editorial profession as manager-in-chief,
etc., of the Southern Literary Messenger. He had social
ambitions, and had succeeded in acquiring a sort of world-weary
air, and a gentle languor of tone and bearing which
might have been copied from D'Israeli's Young Duke, a
book in high favor in aristocratic circles. I never saw
"Johnny" - as graceless youths who went to school with
him grieved him to the heart by calling him on the street -
without thinking of the novel. Like most caricatures, the
likeness was unmistakable.
And into the hands of this "reader" I was to commit my
"brain-child!" I cried out against the act in such terms as
these, and stronger, in relating the substance of the
interview to my father.
"Be sensible, little girl! Keep a cool head!" he
counselled "Business is business. And I suppose John R.
understands his. I will take the manuscript to Morris myself
tomorrow."
"And make him comprehend," I interjected, "that I do not
shirk criticism. I see the faults of my book. If I were sure
that it would be judged fairly, I wouldn't mind it so much."
The reader kept the manuscript two months. Then my
father wrote a civil demand to Mr. Morris for the return of
the work. I was too sick of soul to lift a finger to reclaim
what I was persuaded was predestined to be a dead failure
Two days later the bulky parcel came back. Mr. Morris
had enclosed with it the reader's opinion:
"I regret that the young author's anxiety to regain
possession of her banding has prevented me from reading
more than a few pages of the story. Judging from what I
have read, however, I should not advise you to publish it
upon speculation."
I laid the note before my father after supper that
evening. Our mother had early inculcated in our minds the
eminent expediency of never speaking of unpleasant topics
to a tired and hungry man. We always waited until bath,
food, and rest had had their perfect work upon the head of
the house. He leaned back in his arm-chair, the evening
paper at his elbow, his slippered feet to the glowing grate,
and a good cigar between his lips. His teeth tightened
suddenly upon it when he heard the note. It was curt. To
my flayed sensibilities, it was brutal. I see, now, that it was
businesslike and impersonal. Were I a professional
"reader," I should indite one as brief, and,
not a whit more sympathetic. Alone was my first book, and a
sentient fraction of my soul and heart.
For a whole minute there was no sound in the room but
the bubbling song of the soft coal. I sat upon a stool beside
my confidant, and, having passed the letter up to him, my
head sank gradually to his knee. I was unspeakably
miserable, but I made no moan. He had not patience with
weak wails when anything remained to be done. His cigar
had gone out, for when I lifted my head at his movement
toward the lamp, he had folded the scrap of paper into a
spire, and was lighting it. He touched the dead cigar with
the flame, and drew hard upon it until it was in working
order before he said:
"I believe in that book! I shall send it back to Morris,
to-morrow, and tell him to bring it out in good style and send
the bill to me."
"But," I gasped, "you may lose money by it!"
"I don't think so. At any rate, we will make the experiment."
THE DAWNING OF LITERARY LIFE
"January 28th, 1854.
"MY VERY DEAR
FRIEND, - I wish you were here this
morning! I long to talk with you. There are many things I
cannot commit to paper, or of which I might be ashamed as soon
as they were written. There are no short-hand and long tongued
reporters at our face-to-face confabulations.
"Of one thing I will give you a hint: Have you any recollection
of a certain MS., portions of which were read in you hearing last
spring? I should not be surprised if you were to hear something
of it before long. Keep your eyes upon the papers for a few
weeks, and if you see nothing that looks like a harbinger of the
advent, just conclude that I have changed my mind at the last
gasp and recalled it. For it has gone out of my hands! After the
appearance of anything that looks that way, I unseal your mouth.
"Seriously, I have much pending upon this venture. The
success of the book may be the opening of the path I cannot but
feel that Providence has marked out for me.
"As it is a Virginia story, Southerners should buy it, if it has
no other merit. My misgivings are grave and many; but my
advisers urge me on, and notices of fugitive articles that have
appeared in Northern and Southern papers have inoculated me
with a little confidence in the wisdom of their counsel.
"I had not meant to say this, or, indeed, to mention the matter
at all, but as the day of publication draws near, I am to use an
expressive Yankeeism - 'fidgety.'
"If anything I have said savors of undue solicitude for the
bantling's welfare, recollect that I am the mother. One thing
more I shall have nothing to do with advertisements. If they laud
the work too highly, bear in mind that it is 'all in the way of
trade,' and that booksellers will have their way.
"Our 'Musical Molasses Stew' came off last night. We had a
grand 'time!' Violin, flute, guitar, piano - all played by masculine
amateurs, and a chorus of men's voices. It was 'nae see bad,' as
the Scotch critic said of Mrs. Siddons's acting. The same might be
said of the real frolic of pulling the treacle. My partner was a
young Nova Scotian - 'Blackader' by name - an intelligent,
agreeable, and versatile youth who entered gloriously into the
spirit of the occasion. He played upon the piano, sang treble,
tenor, and bass by turns, and pulled and laughed with me until he
had no strength left."
"Will the author of 'Marrying Through Prudential Motives'
send her address to the editor?"
A queer story followed. The tale, sent so long ago to Mr.
Godey that I had almost forgotten it, had fallen behind a drawer
of his desk, and lain there for three years and more. When it
finally turned up, curiosity, aroused by its disappearance and
exhumation, led the editor to read it more carefully than if it had
reached him through ordinary channels. He liked it, published it,
and waited to hear from the author.
By some mischance that particular number of the "Lady's Book"
had escaped my notice. The story was copied into an English
periodical; translated from this into French, and appeared on the
other side of the channel. Another British monthly "took up the
wondrous tale" by rendering the French version back into the
vernacular. In this guise the much-handled bit of fiction was
brought across the seas by The Albion, a New York periodical that
published only English "stuff." Mr. Godey arraigned The
Albion for piracy, and the truth was revealed by degrees.
Richmond papers copied the odd "happening" from
Northern, and Mr. Morris made capital of it in advertising
the forthcoming novel.
I have more than once spoken of the Richmond of that
date as "provincial." It was so backward in literary
enterprise that the leading bookseller had not facilities at his
command for publishing the book committed to him.
On March 9, 1854, I wrote to my Powhatan correspondent:
"You will read and like it, if only because I wrote it
Whether or not others may cavil at the religious tone, and
ridicule the simplicity of the narrative, remains to be seen.
Thus far I have had encouragement from all sides. My own
fears are the drawback to sanguine expectation."
I was setting out for a walk one balmy May morning, and
standing on the front porch to draw on my gloves, when
Doctor Haxall, who had long had in our family the sobriquet
of "the beloved physician," reined in his horses at the gate
and called out that he was "just coming to ask me to drive
with him." He had often done the like good turn to me.
I was not robust, and he had watched my growth with
more than professional solicitude. Had he been of my very
own kindred, he could not have been kinder or displayed
more active interest in all my affairs - great to me
and small to him.
"Headache?" he queried, with a keen look at my pale
face when I was seated at his side.
"Not exactly! I think the warm weather makes me
languid."
"More likely overexcited nerves. You must learn to take
life more philosophically. But we won't talk shop!"
We were bowling along at a fine rate. The doctor drove
fast, blooded horses, and liked to handle the ribbons himself.
The day was deliciously fresh, the air sweet with early
roses and honeysuckle. I called his attention, in passing
Conway Robinson's grounds, to the perfume of violets rising
in almost visible waves from a ravine where the grass was
whitened by them as with a light fall of snow. I asked no
questions as we turned down Capitol Street, and thence into
Main Street. Sometimes I sat in the carriage while he paid a
professional call. This might be his intention now. We
brought up abruptly at Morris's book-store, and the blesséd
man leaped out and held his hand to me. He probably had
an errand there. He handed me into the interior in his brisk
way, and marched straight up to Mr. Morris, who advanced
to meet us.
"Good-morning! I have come for a copy of this young
lady's book!"
If I had ever fainted, I should have swooned on the
spot.
For there, in heaps and heaps upon the front counter -
in bindings of dark-blue, and purple, and crimson, and
leaf-brown - lay in lordly state, portly volumes, on the backs of
which, in gleaming gold that shimmered and shook before
my incredulous vision, was stamped:
"ALONE."
I saw, through the sudden dazzlement of the whole world
about me, that a clerk had set a chair for me. I sat down
gratefully.
Mr. Morris was talking:
"Opened this morning! I sent six copies up to you. I
suppose you got them?"
"No!" I tried so hard to say it firmly that it sounded
careless. I would have added, "I did not know it was out,"
but dared not attempt a sentence.
Mr. Morris attended us to the door to point to placards a
porter was tacking to boards put there for that express
purpose:
JUST OUT!!
ALONE!
By Marion Harland
The doctor nodded
satisfiedly and handed me into the
carriage. In taking my seat, I thought, in a dull, sick way, of
Bruce at the source of the Nile. I had had daydreams of
this day and hour a thousand times in the last ten years. Of
how I should walk down-town some day, and see a placard
at this very door bearing the title of a novel written and
bound, and lettered in gilt, and PUBLISHED! bearing my
pen-name! The vision was a reality; the dream was a
triumphant fulfilment. And I was sitting, unchanged, and
non-appreciative, by the dear old doctor, and his full, cordial
tones were saying of the portly purple volume lying on the
seat between us:
"Well, my dear child, I congratulate you, and I hope a
second edition will be called for within six months!"
He did not ply me with questions. He may not have
suspected that the shock had numbed my ideas and
stiffened my tongue. If he had, he could not have borne
himself more tactfully. He was a man who had seen the
world and hobnobbed with really distinguished live authors.
It would not have been possible for him to enter fully into
what this day was to me. When I thought of Bruce and the
Nile, it was because I did not comprehend that the very
magnitude of the crisis was what deprived me of the power
of appreciating what had happened.
No! I am not inclined to ridicule the unsophisticated girl
whose emotions were too mighty for speech that May
noon, and to minimize what excited them. Nothing that
wealth or fame could ever offer me in years to come could
stir the depths of heart and mind as they were upheaved in
that supreme hour.
The parcel of books had been opened and the contents
examined, by the time I got home. I stole past the open
door of my mother's chamber, where she and Aunt Rice,
who was visiting us, and Mea were chatting vivaciously,
and betook myself to my room.
When my sister looked me up at dinner-time I told her to
excuse me from coming down. "The heat had made me
giddy and headachy."
She bade me "lie still. She would send me a cup of tea."
"I'll leave you this for company," she cooed, laying the
book tenderly on my pillow. "We think it beautiful."
With that she went out softly, shutting me in with my
"beautiful" first-born. Mea always had her wits within easy
call. The sixth sense was born within her.
I saw of the travail of my soul and was satisfied; was
repaid a thousandfold for months of toil and years of
waiting, when my father read my book. He did not go
down-town again that day, after coming home to dinner. My
mother told me, with a happy break in her laugh, how he
had hardly touched the food on his plate. Aunt Rice's
pleasant prattle saved the situation from awkwardness when
he lapsed into a brown study and talked less than he ate.
When dessert was brought in, he excused himself and
disappeared from general view for the rest of the afternoon.
The door of "the chamber" to which he withdrew was fast
shut. Nobody disturbed him until it was too dark to read by
daylight. My mother took in a lighted lamp and set it on the
table by him.
"He didn't see or hear me!" was her report. "He is a
quarter through the book already, and he doesn't skip a
word."
He spent just fifteen minutes at the supper-table. It
was two o'clock in the morning before he reached the
last page.
After prayers next morning he put his arm about me and
held me fast for a moment. Then he kissed me very
gravely.
"I was right about that book, daughter!"
That was all! but it was, to my speechless self, as if the
morning stars had sung together for joy.
I record here and now what I did not know in the
springtime of my happiness. I never had - I shall never
have - another reader like him. As long as he lived, he
"believed" in me and in my work with a sincerity and fervor
as impossible for me to describe as it can be for any
outsider to believe. He made the perusal of each volume
(and they numbered a score before he died) as solemn a
ceremony as he instituted for the first. His absolute
absorption in it was the secret jest of the family, but they
respected it at heart. When he talked with me of the
characters that bore part in my stories, he treated them as
real flesh-and-blood entities. He found fault with one, and
sympathized with another, and argued with a third, as seeing
them in propia personæ. It was strange - phenomenal -
when one considers the light weight of the literature under
advisement and the mental calibre of the man. To me it
was at once inspiration and my exceeding great reward.
"June 5th, 1854.
"DEAR EFFIE, -
From a formidable pile of letters of
good wishes and congratulation, I select (not happen upon!)
your sweet, affectionate epistle, every word of which, if it
did not come from your heart, went straight to mine.
"I shall never be a literary iceberg! That is clear. I have
had a surfeit of compliments in public and in private, but a
word of appreciation from a true, loving friend gives me
more delicious pleasure than all else.
"I make no excuse for speaking freely to you of what you
say is 'near akin' to you. I thank you heartily for owning the
relationship. Two editions have been 'run off' already, and
another is now in press - unprecedented success in this part
of the world - or so they tell me. Northern papers notice the
book more at length and more handsomely than does the
Richmond press.
"Of the sales in your county, I know nothing. Oh yes! C.
W. told Mr. Rhodes that 'Miss Virginia Hawes's novel is
having a tremendous run in Powhatan. Tre-men-dous, sir!
Why, I had an order to buy a copy and send it up, myself,
sir!'
"Isn't that
characteristic?"
BROUGHT FACE TO FACE WITH MY FATE
THE promised visit to
Powhatan was paid in July.
"How
happily the days of Thalaba went by!"
I said over the
strangely musical line to myself scores of
times in the two months of my stay in the dear old county.
"Homestead," the home of the D.'s, was never more beautiful,
and the days were full of innocent fun, and junketings
without number. College and University boys were at home,
and city people were flocking to the country. There were
walks, drives, "dining-days," early and late horseback parties,
setting out from one hospitable house before sunrise, and
breakfasting at another ten or twelve miles away; or, better
yet, leaving home at sunset, and pacing, cantering, and
galloping (women never rode trotting horses) along highroad
and plantation lane to a house, buried in ancestral woods, in
the very heart of the county, for supper, returning by the
light of the harvest moon, as fresh as when we set forth.
With no premonition that this was to be the most eventful
summer and autumn of my hitherto tranquil life, I gave
myself up, wholly and happily, to the influences that
sweetened and glorified it.
Late in August I resolved rather suddenly to go home. My
sister was in Boston; my father would not leave his
business for so much as a week, my mother and the younger
children ought to be in the country. Since she would not
resign my father to what she spoke of as "Fate and
servants," I would throw my now rejuvenated body into the
breach, abide by the stuff and her husband and sons, while
she took a sadly needed rest with old friends in Nottoway
County.
Recollecting how persistently I clung to the decision in the
face of a tempest of protest, my own heart in secret league
with the protestants, I acknowledge with humble gratitude
the guidance of the "moving finger that writes" out the
destinies we think to control for ourselves.
The glow of the halcyon summer had not passed from my
spirit when I wrote to my late hostess two days after my
return:
"RICHMOND, August 29th, 1854.
"MY OWN FRIEND, -
I said 'I will write next week,'
but it suits my feelings and convenience to write this
morning.
"In the first place, my heart is so full of happiness that it
overflows upon and toward everybody that I love, and don't
you dear Homesteadians - yourself and Powhie,
especially - come in for a share?
"Mrs. Noble was very pleasant, but the journey was a bit
tedious. It always is! Richmond looked enchanting when at
last the spires and chimneys appeared upon the horizon, and
my sweet home was never so pretty before.
"Mother had planned an agreeable surprise, and not told
me that the painters had been at work elsewhere than in my
room. So the freshly painted shutters and the white window-
facings and cornices, contrasted with the gray walls, were
doubly beautiful, because not expected. Then Percy came
tumbling down the steps, clapping his hands and shouting in
glee, and Alice's bright smile shone upon me at the gate,
and mother left company in the parlor to give me four
kisses - and all I could say was, 'I have had such a pleasant
visit, and now I am so glad to see you all!'
"Father could not be coaxed to bed that night until one
o'clock, although mother reminded him that he had a
headache.
" 'Never mind! Daughters don't come home every night!'
" 'But this one will be tired out!'
" 'Well, she may sleep late to-morrow morning.'
"He doesn't know how lazy I have grown of late.
"I am surprised to find vegetation so luxuriant here. My
inquiries concerning the 'late drought' are answered by a
stare of amazement. Rain has been abundant in this region.
In our garden the vegetables and grape-vines grow rank and
tall. And as for flowers! There were seven bouquets in the
parlor, smiling and breathing a welcome. Last night I received
one per rail from Horace Lacy (bless his soul!), and
Herbert to-night brought up another and a magnificent,
when he came to his late supper.
"Mother had delicious peaches for supper the night I got
back, but advised me to 'eat them sparingly, at first.' Yesterday
I forgot her caution, and I think I am the better for the
lapse. Peaches, watermelons, apples, sweet potatoes, etc.,
were liberally patronized by us all. The cholera 'scare'
seems to be over. Doctor Haxall advised the members of
our family to make no change in their diet while they
continued well, and they have prospered wonderfully under
his regimen. . . .
"I wish I had time to tell you of some queer letters I found
waiting for me. Father would not forward them, 'for fear
of annoying me.' They are meant to be complimentary, one
requesting 'some particulars of your birthplace, education,'
etc. 'Wish he may get them!'
"Now, dear, forgive this egotistical scrawl - written as fast
as fingers can scratch - but just seat yourself and tell me
exactly what you have been doing, saying, and thinking since
I left; how our pet, Powhie (the dear old scamp!), is thriving;
and the state of your mother's health. also the news from
The Jungle.
"Our Heavenly Father bless and love you, my darling!"
the sultriness of the outer world. The thick walls and
lofty ceilings kept the temperature at an equable and
comfortable point. We breakfasted early, and by nine o'clock
the day was my own - or six consecutive hours of it.
In unconscious imitation of Charlotte Brontë, who began
Jane Eyre while The Professor was "plodding his
weary round from publisher to publisher," I had begun
another book by the time Alone was turned over to the
tender mercies of Mr. Morris's "reader." I finished the
first draught on the forenoon of September 11th, having
wrought at it with the fierce joy in work that ever comes
to me after a season of absolute or comparative idleness.
I was very weary when the last word was written:
"Alma was asleep!"
I read it aloud to myself in the safe solitude of my shaded
library. I had not heard then that Thackeray slapped
his thigh exultantly after describing the touch of pride
Becky felt in her husband's athletic pummelling of her
lover. I could have understood it fully at that instant.
"Thackeray, my boy, that is a stroke of genius!" cried
the great author, aloud, in honest pride.
The small woman writer sat wearily back in her chair,
and said - not murmured: "I flatter myself that is a neat
touch!"
Then I found that my head ached. Moreover, it had
a strange, empty feeling. I compared it to a squeezed
sponge. I likewise reminded myself that I had not been
out of the house for two days; that my father had shaken
his head when I told him it was "too hot for walking,"
warning me that I "must not throw away the good the
country had done for me." He would ask me, at suppertime,
if I had taken the admonition to heart.
I went off to my room, bathed, and dressed for a round
of calls. This I proceeded to make, keeping on the shady
side of the street. I called at three houses, and found everybody
out. The sun was setting when I stood in front of my
mirror on my return, and laid aside bonnet and mantle (we
called it a "visite"). The red light from the west shot across
me while I was brushing up the hair the hot dampness
had laid flat. It struck me suddenly that I was
looking rather well. I wore what we knew as a "spencer"
of thin, dotted white muslin. It would be a "shirt-waist"
to-day. It was belted at what was then a slim waist above
a skirt of "changeable" silk. Herbert had said it
"reminded him of a pale sunrise," but there were faint
green reflections among shimmering pinks. There must be
somebody in the immediate neighborhood upon whom I
might call while I was dressed to go out. A dart of
self-reproach followed swiftly upon the thought.
My old and favorite tutor, Mr. Howison, had broken down
in health two years after accepting a call to his first parish.
An obstinate affection of the throat made preaching
impracticable. At the end of a year of compulsory inaction,
he resumed the practice of law in Richmond, and within
another twelve months married the woman he had sought
and won before his illness. They lived in a pleasant house
upon the next street, so near that we often "ran around" to
see each other. "Mary's" younger sister had died during my
absence from home, and as I reminded myself, now, I ought
to have called before this.
Half a square from her door, I recalled that the young
clergyman who was supplying Doctor Hoge's pulpit while
he was abroad, and whom I had heard preach last Sunday,
was staying at the Howison's. It was not right, in the eyes
of the church, that he should go to a hotel, and since he
would go nowhere except as a boarder, the Howisons had
opened door and hearts to make him at home in his
temporary charge. He had given us an interesting sermon
on Sunday, and made a pleasing impression
generally. I had not thought of him since, until almost at
the gate of my friends' house. Then I said, inly:
"Should the youthful divine be hanging about the porch or
yard, I'll walk on unconcernedly and postpone the call."
Being familiar with the ways of young sprigs of divinity,
and having over twenty blood-relatives who had the right to
prefix their baptismal names by "The Reverend," I had no
especial fondness for the brand. Furthermore, three callow
clerics and one full-fledged had already invited me to share
parsonage and poverty with them. For all I had one and the
same reply. It might be my predestined lot, as certain
anxious friends began to hint, to live out my earthly days in
single blessedness; and, if the ancient anti-race-suicide
apostles were to be credited, then to lead apes in Hades for
an indefinite period. I would risk the terrors of both states
sooner than take upon me the duties and liabilities of a
minister's wife. Upon that I was determined.
The youthful divine was nowhere in sight. Nor did he
show up during the half-hour I passed with the Howisons.
They proposed walking home with me when I arose to go.
Just outside the gate we espied a tall figure striding up the
street, swinging his cane in very unclerical style. Mr.
Howison stopped.
"Ah, Mr. Terhune! I was hoping you might join us."
Then he introduced him to me. Of course, he asked
permission to accompany us, and we four strolled abreast
through the twilight of the embowered street. I had known
the sister of Mr. Terhune, who, as the widow of Doctor
Hoge's most intimate friend, was a frequent visitor to
Richmond. I asked civilly after her, and was answered as
civilly. We remarked upon the heat of the day and the fine
sunset; then we were at our gate, where my father and
brother were looking out for me.
My escorts declined the invitation to enter garden and
house; Mr. Howison passed over to me a big bunch of roses
he had gathered from his garden and brought with him and,
having exchanged "Good-evenings," we three lingered at
the gate to admire the flowers. There was no finer
collection of roses in any private garden in town than those
which were the lawyer's pets and pride. My face was
buried in the cool deliciousness of my bouquet when,
through the perfect stillness of the evening, we heard our
new acquaintance say:
"Your friend, Miss Hawes, walks well."
He had, as we had noticed on Sunday, a voice of
marvellous compass, with peculiar "carrying" qualities. He
had not spoken more loudly than his companions, and,
having reached the corner of the street, he fancied himself
beyond earshot. Every word floated back to us.
We laughed - all three of us. Then I said, deliberately:
"If that man ever asks me to marry him, I shall have to
do it! I vowed solemnly, long ago, to marry the first man
who thinks me handsome, if he should give me the chance.
Let us hope this one won't!"
"Amen!" responded my hearers, my father adding, "His
cloth rules him out."
It may have been a week later in the season that I was
strolling down Broad Street in company with "Tom"
Baxter, Mr. Rhodes's chummiest crony. He had overtaken
me a few squares farther up-town, and was begging me, in
the naïive way most girls found bewitching, to take a turning
that would lead us by an office where he was to leave a
paper he had promised to deliver at that hour.
"Then," he pursued, with the same refreshing simplicity
of tone and look, "there will be nothing to hinder me from
going all the way home with you."
I refused point-blank, and he detained me for a minute at
the parting of the ways, entreating and arguing, until I cut
the nonsense short by saying that I had an engagement
which I must keep without regard to his convenience and
walked on. Tom was an amusing fellow, and handsome
enough to win forgiveness for his absurdities. I was
smiling to myself in the recollection of the little farce, when
I met, face to face, but not eye to eye - for we were both
looking at the pavement - the man who had said that I
walked well. He stepped aside hurriedly; the hand that
swung the cane went up to his hat, and we went our
separate ways.
That evening I was surprised to receive a call from our
pastor pro tempore. He told me, months afterward, that he
was homesick and lonely on that particular afternoon. At
least two-thirds of the best people in the parish were out of
town, and he found little to interest him in those he met
socially.
"You smiled in such a genial fashion when we met on
that blesséd corner that I felt better at once. The
recollection of that friendly look gave me courage to call,
out of hand."
Whereupon, I brought sentimentality down on the run by
asking if he had ever heard the negro proverb, "Fired at the
blackbird and hit the crow"?
"That was Tom Baxter's smile - not yours!"
LITERARY WELL-WISHERS - GEORGE D.
AUTHORS were not so
plentiful then as to attract no
attention in a crowd of non-literary people. Men and women
who had climbed the heights had leisure to glance down at
those nearer the foot of the hill, and to send back a
cheering hail. I had twenty letters from George D. Prentice,
known of all men as the friend and helper of youthful
writers. All were kind and encouraging. By-and-by they
were fatherly and familiar. As when I lamented that I had
never been able to make my head work without my heart,
he responded, "Hearts without heads are too impulsive,
sometimes too hot. Heads without hearts are too cold.
Suppose you settle the matter by giving the heart into my
keeping, in trust for the happy man who will call for it some
day?"
His letters during the war were tinged with sadness. In
one he wrote: "My whole heart is one throbbing prayer to
the God of Nations that He will have mercy upon my
beloved country."
In reply to a letter of sympathy after the death of a
gallant young son, who fell on the battle-field, he said:
Mrs. Sigourney, then on "the retired list" of American
authors, sent me a copy of her latest volume of poems -
A Western Home - and three or four letters of motherly
counsel, one of which advised me to take certain epochs
of American history as foundation-stones for any novels I
might write in future, and bidding me "God-speed!"
Grace Greenwood opened a correspondence with the
younger woman who had admired her afar off, and we
kept up the friendship until she went abroad to live,
resuming our intercourse upon her return to New York in
the early eighties.
From Mr. Longfellow I had two letters. One told me that
Mrs. Longfellow was "reading Alone in her turn."
I am sincerely yours,
Not that I deceived myself, for one mad hour, with the
fancy that I could ever gain the right to stand for one
beatific moment on a level with the immortals whom I
worshipped. In the first flush of my petty triumph, I felt
my limitations. The appreciation of these has grown upon
me with each succeeding year. "Fred" Cozzens, the
"Sparrowgrass" of humorous literature, said to me once
when I expressed something of this conviction:
"Yet you occupy an important niche."
I replied in all sincerity: "I know my place. But the
niche Is small, and it is not high up. All that I can hope
is to fill it worthily, such as it is."
The history of one bulky packet of letters takes me back
to the orderly progress of my story, and to the most singular
and romantic episode of that first year of confessedly
literary life.
Alone had been out in the world about three months
when I received a letter from a stranger, postmarked
"Baltimore," and bearing the letter-head of a daily paper
published in that city. The signature was "James Redpath."
The writer related briefly that, chancing to go into
Morris's book-store while on a visit to Richmond, he
had had from the publisher a copy of my book, and read it.
He went on to say:
I was therefore unprepared for the strenuous manner
in which Mr. James Redpath proceeded to keep his pledge.
Not a week passed in which he did not send me a clipping
from some paper, containing a direct or incidental notice
Of any book, or work, or personality. Now he was in New
Orleans, writing fiery Southern editorials, and insinuating
into the body of the same, adroit mention of the rising
Southern author. Now he slipped into a Cincinnati paper
a poem taken from Alone, with a line or two, calling attention
to the novel and the author; then a fierce attack upon
the "detested politics and theology" flamed among book-
notices in a Buffalo journal, tempered by regrets that "real
talent should be grossly perverted by sectional prejudice
and superstition." Anon, a clever review in a Boston
paper pleased my friends in the classic city so much that
they sent a marked copy to me, not dreaming that I had
already had the critique, with the now familiar "J. R."
scrawled in the margin. The climax of the melodrama
was gained during the struggle over "bleeding Kansas" in
1855. A hurried note from the near neighborhood of
Leavenworth informed me that a pro-slavery force, double
the size of the abolitionist militia gathered to resist it, was
advancing upon the position held by the latter. My dauntless
knight wrote:
filled in a long report in a Philadelphia sheet of a meeting
with the "new star of the South," in the vestibule of the
church attended by the aforesaid. Nothing that escaped my
lips was set down, but my dress and appearance, my
conversational powers and deportment were painted in
glowing colors, the veracious portraiture concluding with the
intelligence that I would shortly be married to the son of a
former Governor of Virginia - "a man, who, despite his
youth, has already distinguished himself in the political
arena, and we are glad to say, in the Democratic ranks."
I thought my father would have an apoplectic fit when
he got to that!
"See here, my child! I don't presume to interfere with
Salathiel, or by what other name your friend may choose
to call himself, and there are all manner of tricks in the
trade editorial, but this is going a little too far. He sha'n't
marry you off, without your consent - and to a Democrat!
I had the same idea, and hearing directly from Mr.
Redpath path soon afterward, I said as much, as kindly as
I could. The remonstrance elicited a gentlemanly rejoinder.
While the style of the "report" was "mere newspaper
lingo," he claimed that the framework was built by an
attaché of the Philadelphia daily, whom he (Redpath) had
commissioned to glean all he could of my appearance, etc.,
during a flying trip to Richmond. The young fellow had
written the article and sent it to press without submitting it
to Salathiel. The like should not occur again. In my
answer to the apology, I expressed my profound sense of
gratitude to my advocate, and confessed my inability to
divine the motive power of benefactions so numerous and
unsolicited. His reply deepened the mystery:
Five years elapsed between the receipt of that first note
signed "James Redpath," and the explanation of what
followed. I may relate here, in a few sentences, what he
wrote to me at length, and what was published in an
appreciative biographical sketch written by a personal
friend after his death.
He was born in Scotland; emigrated in early manhood to
America, and took up journalistic work. Although
successful for a while, a series of misfortunes made of him
a misanthropic wanderer. His brilliant talents and
experience found work and friends wherever he went, and
he remained nowhere long. Disappointed in certain
enterprises upon which he had fixed his mind and expended
his best energies, he found himself in Richmond, with but
one purpose in his soul. He would be lost to all who knew
him, and leave no trace of the failure he believed himself to
be. He put a pistol in his pocket and set out for Hollywood
Cemetery. There were sequestered glens there, then, and
lonely thickets into which a world-beaten man could crawl
to die. On the way up-town, he stopped at the bookstore
and fell into talk with the proprietor, who, on learning the
stranger's profession, handed him the lately-published novel.
Arrived at the cemetery, Redpath was disappointed to see
the roads and paths gay with carriages, pedestrians, and
riding-parties. He would wait until twilight sent them back
to town. He lay down upon the turf on a knoll commanding
a view of the beautiful city and the river, took out his book
and began reading to while away the hours that would bring
quiet and solitude. The sun was high, still. He had the
editorial knack of rapid reading. The dew was beginning to
fall as he finished the narrative of the interrupted duel in the
sixteenth chapter.
I believed then, and I am yet more sure, now, that other
influences than the crude story told by one whose
experience of life was that of a child by comparison with his,
wrought upon the lonely exile during the still hours of that
perfect autumnal day. It suited his whim to think that the
book turned his thoughts from his design of self destruction.
Before he slept that night he registered a vow - thus he
phrased it in his explanatory letter - to write and publish one
thousand notices of the book that had saved his life.
When the vow was fulfilled - and not until then - did I
get the key to conduct that had puzzled me, and baffled the
conjectures of the few friends to whom I had told the tale.
I met James Redpath, face to face, but once, and that
was - if my memory serves me aright - in 1874. He was in
Newark, New Jersey, in the capacity of adviser-in-chief, or
backer, of a friend who brought a party of Indians from the
West on a peaceful mission to Washington and some of the
principal cities, in the hope of exciting philanthropic interest
in their advancement in civilization.
"He is as enthusiastic in faith in the future of the redman
as I was once in the belief that the negro would arise to
higher levels," remarked Salathiel, with a smile that ended in
a sigh. "Heigho! youth is prone to ideals as the sparks to fly
upward."
Learning that I was in the opera-house where the "show"
was held, he had invited me into his private stage-box, and
there, out of sight of the audience, and indifferent to the
speech-making and singing going on, on the stage, we
talked for an hour with the cordial ease of old friends. My
erst knight-errant was a well-mannered gentleman, still in
the prime of manhood, with never a sign of the eccentric
"stray" in feature, deportment, or the agreeable modulations
of his voice. He told me of his wife. He had written to me
of his marriage some years before. She was his balance-
wheel, he said. I recollect that he likened her to Madam
Guyon. At the close of the entertainment, we
shook hands cordially and exchanged expressions of mutual
regard. We never met again.
How much or how little I was indebted to him for the
success of my first book, I am unable to determine. I shall
ever cherish the recollection of his generous spirit and
steadfast adherence to his vow of service, as one of the
most interesting and gratifying episodes of my authorly
career.
MY NORTHERN KINSPEOPLE - "QUELQU'UN" AND A
I REWROTE the new book
that winter, reading it, chapter
by chapter, aloud to my father, in the evening. He was a
judicious critic, and I need not repeat here how earnest and
rapt a listener. I had received proposals for the publication
of my "next book" from six Northern publishers. In the
spring my father went to New York and arranged for the
preliminaries with the, then, flourishing firm of Derby&
Jackson.
It was brought out while I was in Boston that summer,
under the title of The Hidden Path. I anticipate dates in
jotting down here that I had my first taste of professional
envy in connection with this book.
My journeying homeward in September was broken by a
fortnight's stay at the hospitable abode of the Derbys in
Yonkers. I was at a reception in New York one evening,
when my unfortunately acute hearing brought to me a
fragment of a conversation, not intended for my edification,
between my publisher and a literary woman of note. Mr.
Derby was telling her, after the tactless manner of men,
how well The Hidden Path had "done" at the Trade Sales
just concluded.
"Ah!" said the famous woman, icily. "And I suppose she
is naturally greatly elated?"
Mr. Derby laughed.
"She hides it well if she is. Have you read the book?"
"Yes. You were good enough to send me a copy, you
know. It is quite a creditable school-girl production."
I moved clean out of hearing. I told Mr. Derby,
afterward, what I had heard, adding that my chief regret
was at the lowering of my ideal of professional generosity.
Up to that moment I had met with indulgent sympathy and
such noble freedom from envious hypercriticism, as to
foster the fondly-cherished idea that the expression of lofty
sentiment presupposes the ever-present dwelling of the
same within the soul. In simpler phrase, that the proverb -
"Higher than himself can no man think," had its converse
in - "Lower than himself can no man be."
In this I erred. I grant it, in this one instance. I had
judged correctly of the grand Guild to which I aspired, with
yearnings unutterable, to belong.
It was an eventful summer. My father and I had gone on
to Boston from New York, setting out, the same week, for
a tour through the White Mountains. I was the only woman
in the party. Our friend, Ned Rhodes, a distant cousin,
Henry Field, of Boston, and my father completed the
quartette. Ten days afterward, we two - my father and
I - met a larger travelling party in New York. Mr. and
Mrs. William Terhune, Mrs. Greenleaf, the widow of
Doctor Hoge's friend; "Staff" Little, the brother of Mrs.
William Terhune, and Edward Terhune, now the pastor of a
church at Charlotte C. H., Virginia, composed the company
which joined itself to us, and set forth merrily for Niagara
and the Lakes.
The trip accomplished, I settled down comfortably and
happily in Boston and the charming environs thereof for
the rest of the season.
Another halcyon summer!
If I have made scant mention of my father's kindred in
the land of his birth, it is because this is a story of the Old
South and of a life that has ceased to be, except in the
hearts of the very few who may take up the boast of the
Grecian historian - "Of which I was a part."
I should be an ingrate of a despicable type were I to
pass by as matters of no moment, the influences brought to
bear upon my life at that date, and through succeeding
years, by my association with the several households who
made up the family connection in that vicinity.
My grandmother's brother, Uncle Lewis Pierce, owned
and occupied the ancient homestead in Dorchester. He was
"a character" in his way. Handsome in his youth, he was
still a man of imposing presence, especially when, attired in
black broadcloth, and clean shaven, he sat on Sunday in the
pew owned by the Pierces for eight generations in the old
church on "Meeting House Hill." he did not always approve
of the doctrine and politics of the officiating clergyman. He
opened his mind to me to this effect one Sunday that
summer, as we jogged along in his low-hung phaeton,
drawn by a horse as portly and as well-set-up as his
master.
"The man that is to hold forth to-day is what my wife
scolds me for calling 'one of those higher law devils,' " he
began by saying. "He is of the opinion that the law,
forbidding slavery and denying rights to the masters of the
slaves and all that, ought to set aside the Constitution and
the laws made by better men and wiser heads than his.
He'd override them all, if he could. I've nothing to say
against a man's having his own notions on that, or any other
subject, but if he's a minister of the gospel, he ought to
preach the truth he finds in the Bible, and keep his
confounded politics out of the pulpit."
He leaned forward to flick a fly from the sleek horse
with his whip.
"I've been given to understand that he doesn't like to see
me and some others of the same stripe in church when he
preaches for us. I pay no attention to that. If he,
or any others of his damnable way of thinking, imagine
that I'm to be kept out of the church in which the Pierces
owned a pew before this man and his crew were ever
thought of, he'll find himself mistaken. That's all there is
about it!"
It was worth seeing, after hearing this, the sturdy old
representative of the Puritans, sitting bolt upright in the
quaint box-pew where his forbears had worshipped the
God of battles over a century before, and keeping what he
called his "weather eye" upon the suspected expounder of
the gospel of peace. The obnoxious occupant of the ancient
and honorable pulpit was, to my notion, an amiable and
inoffensive individual. He preached well, and with never an
allusion to "higher law." Yet Uncle Lewis kept watch and
ward throughout the service. I could easily believe that he
would have arisen to his feet and challenged audibly any
approach to the forbidden territory.
The day and scene were recalled forcibly to my memory
by a visit paid to my Newark home in 1864 by Francis
Pierce, the protestant's oldest son, on his way home from
Washington. He was one of a committee of Dorchester
citizens sent to the Capital to look after the welfare of
Massachusetts troops called into the field by a Republican
President.
The wife of the head of the Pierce homestead was one
of the loveliest women ever brought into a world where
saints are out of place. Near her lived an old widow, who
was a proverb for captiousness and wrongheadedness. I
never heard her say a kind or charitable word of neighbor
or friend , until she astounded me one day by breaking out
into a eulogy upon Aunt Pierce and Cousin Melissa,
Francis's wife:
"We read in the Scriptures that God is love. I allers think
of them two women when I hear that text. It might be said
of both of 'em: they are jest love - through an' through!"
I carried the story to the blesséd pair, you may be sure.
Whereupon, my aunt smiled compassionately.
"Poor old lady! People who don't know how much trouble
she has had, are hard upon her. We can't judge one another
unless we know all sides of a question. She is greatly to be
pitied."
And Cousin Melissa, in the gentle tone she might have
learned from her beloved mother-in-law - "I always think
that nobody is cross unless she is unhappy."
Aurora Leigh had not been written then. If it had been,
neither of the white-souled dears would have read a word
of it. Yet Mrs. Browning put this into the mouth of her
heroine:
"The
dear Christ comfort you!
The old house was a
never-ending delight to me. It was
built in 1640 (see Chapter I), ten years after the good ship
Mary and John brought over from Plymouth the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, landing her passengers in
Boston. Robert Pierce (or Percie) was, although a blood
connection of the Northumberland Percies, the younger son
of a younger son, and so far "out of the running" for title or
fortune on that account, that he sought a home and
livelihood in the New World.
My ancestress, Ann Greenaway, whose tedious voyage
from England to Massachusetts was beguiled by her courtship
and marriage to stalwart "Robert of Dorchester," bore
him many robust sons and "capable," if not fair daughters,
dying at last in the Dorchester homestead at the ripe age of
one hundred and four.
From her the long line of descendants may have
inherited the stout constitutions and stouter hearts that
gave
and kept for them a place in every community in which
they have taken root.
The story of the Pierce Homestead is told in Some
Colonial Homesteads more at length than I can give it
here.
The Virginia cousin was cordially welcomed to the cradle
of her foremothers, and a warm attachment grew up
between me and each member of the two households. My
cousin Francis had built a modern house upon a corner of
the homestead grounds, and I was as happily at home there
as in the original nest.
Another adopted home - and in which I spent more time
than in all the rest put together - was that of my cousin,
Mrs. Long, "the prettiest of the three Lizzies" referred to in
one of my letters. Her mother, my father's favorite relative,
had died since my last visit to Boston. Her daughter was
married at her death-bed. She was a beautiful and intelligent
woman, wedded to a man of congenial tastes who adored
her. The intimacy of this one of our Yankee cousins and
ourselves began before Mea and I had ever seen her. My
sister and "Lizzie" were diligent correspondents from their
school-days. To a chance remark of mine relative to their
letters, I owe one of the most stable friendships that has
blessed my life.
We sisters were in the school-room at recess one day
when I was fourteen, Mea sixteen. I was preparing a
French exercise for M. Guillet, Mea writing to Boston. We
had the room to ourselves for the time. My sister looked up
from her paper to say:
"What shall I say to Lizzie for you?"
"Give her my love, and tell her to provide me with a
correspondent as charming as herself."
In her reply Lizzie begged leave to introduce a particular
friend of her own, "intelligent and lovable - altogether
interesting, in fact." This friend had heard her talk of her
Southern cousins and wished to know them; but I must
write the first letter. I caught at the suggestion of what
commended itself to me as adventure, and it was an epistolary
age. Letters long and numerous, filled with details and
disquisitions, held the place usurped by phone, telegraph, and
post-cards. We had time to write, and considered that we
could not put it to a better purpose. So the next letter from my
sister to my cousin contained a four-pager from me, addressed
to "Quelqu'une." I gave fancy free play in conversing with the
unknown, writing more nonsense than sober reason. I set her in
the chair opposite mine, and discoursed at her of "divers
sayings." If not
"Of
ships and shoes and sealing-wax
of wars and rumors of
wars, and school duties, and current
literature.
In due time I had a reply
in like strain, but to my
consternation, written in a man's hand, and signed "Quelqu'un."
He apologized respectfully for the ambiguous terms of the
introduction that had led me into a mistake as to his sex, and
hoped that the silver that was beginning to stipple his dark hair
would guarantee the propriety of a continued correspondence.
"Time was," he mused, "when I could conjugate Amo in
all its moods and tenses. Now I get no further than
Amabam, and am constrained to confess myself in the
tense at which I halt."
We had written to one another once a month for two
years before the sight of a note to Lizzie tore the mask
from the face of my graybeard mentor, and confirmed my
father's suspicions as to his identity with Ossian Ashley, the
husband of Aunt Harriet's elder daughter. The next visit I
paid to Boston brought us together in the intimacy of the
family circle. He never dropped the role
of elderly, and as time rolled on, of brotherly friend. He
was, at that date, perhaps thirty-five years of age, and a
superb specimen of robust manhood. I have seldom beheld
a handsomer man, and his port was kingly, even when he
had passed his eightieth birthday. Although a busy man of
affairs, he was a systematic student. His library might have
been the work-shop of a professional litterateur; he was a
regular contributor to several journals upon financial and
literary topics, handling each with grace and strength. His
translation of Victor Cherbuliez's Count Kosta was a
marvellous rendering of the tone and sense of the original
into elegant English. He was an excellent French and Latin
scholar, and, when his son entered a German university, set
himself, at sixty-odd, to study German, that he "might not
shame the boy when he came home."
Before that, he had removed to New York City, and engaged
in business there as a railway stock-broker. He was, up to a
few months prior to his death, President of the Wabash
Railway, and maintained throughout his blameless and beneficent
life, a reputation for probity, energy, and talent.
Peace to his knightly soul!
He was passing good to me that summer. In company
with his wife, we drove, sailed, and visited steamships,
Bunker Hill Monument, and other places of historic interest.
In their society I made my first visit to the theatre, and
attended concerts and lectures. He lent me books, and led
me on to discuss them, then, and when I was at home. And
this when he was building up his business, looking after
various family interests, not strictly his own (he was forever
lending a hand to somebody!), and studying late into the
night, as if working for a university degree. I am told that
such men are so rare in our time and country as to make
this one of my heroes a phenomenon.
It is not marvellous that friendships like these, enjoyed
when character and opinion were in forming, should have
cultivated optimism that has withstood the shock and
undermining of late disappointments. It may well be that I
have not known another man who, with his fortune to
found, a household to support, and a press of mental toil that
would have exhausted the energies of the average student,
would have kept up a correspondence with a child for the
sake of pleasing and educating her, and carried it on out of
affectionate interest in a provincial kinswoman.
Affection and genial sympathy, with whatever concerned
me or mine, endured to the end. He was my husband's
warm friend, a second father to my children - always
and everywhere, my ally.
My last sight of him, before he succumbed to lingering
and mortal illness, is vividly present with me. We had dined
with him and his wife, and said to ourselves as we had
hundreds of times, that time had mellowed, without dimming
her beauty, and made him magnificent. The word is none
too strong to describe him, as he towered above me in the
parting words exchanged in light-heartedness unchecked by
any premonition that we might never chat and laugh
together again this side of the Silent Sea. He was over six
feet in height; his hair and flowing beard were silver-white;
his fine eyes darker and brighter by contrast; his smile was
as gentle and his repartee as ready as when he had jested
with me in those bygone summers from which the glory has
never faded for me.
My upturned face must have expressed something of
what filled heart and thoughts, for he drew me up to him
suddenly, and kissed me between the eyes. Then, with the
laugh I knew so well, he held out his hand to my husband:
"You mustn't be jealous, my dear fellow! I knew her a
long time before you ever saw her. And such good friends
as we have been for - bless my soul! - can it be more than
fifty years?"
Again I say: "God rest his knightly soul!" It is worth living
to have known one such man, and to have had him for my
"good friend" for "more than fifty years."
MY FIRST OPERA - "PETER PARLEY" - RACHEL AS
THE three weeks passed in
New York on my way home
were thronged with novel and enchanting "sensations." I
saw my first opera - Masaniello, and it was the début of
Elise Henssler. The party of which I was a member
included Caroline Cheeseboro, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and
Samuel Griswold Goodrich - "Peter Parley." To my intense
satisfaction, my seat was beside the kindly old gentleman.
Was not Parley's Magazine the first periodical I had ever read?
And had not I devoured every book he had written, down to a
set of popular biographies for which my father had subscribed
as a gift to me on my eighteenth birthday? That I should, really
and truly, be sitting at his side and hearing him speak, was a
treat I could hardly wait until to-morrow to dilate upon in my
home-diary letter. He was social and amusing, and, withal,
intelligently appreciative of the music and actors. He rattled
away jovially in the entr'actes of other operas and personal
traits of stage celebrities, theatrical, and operatic. He told me,
too, of how he had been ridiculed for embarking upon a career
his friends thought puerile and contemptible, when he issued
the initial number of Parley's Magazine. If I was
secretly disappointed that his affection for his juvenile
constituency was more perfunctory than I had supposed
from his writings, I smothered the feeling as disloyal, and
would be nothing short of charmed.
I wrote to my mother next day that he was "a nice,
friendly old gentleman, but impressed me as one who had
outlived his enthusiasms." If I had put the truth into
downright English, I should have said that the circumstance
that he was enshrined in thousands of young hearts as the
aged man with a sore foot propped upon a cushion, and
whose big heart was a fountain of love, and his brain a
store-house of tales garnered for their delectation - was
of minor importance to the profit popularity had brought
him. I was yet new to the world's ways and estimate of
values.
The next night I saw Rachel in Les Horaces. I had never
seen really great acting before. I had, however, read
Charlotte Brontë's incomparable portraiture, in Villette, of
the queen of the modern stage. Having no language of my
own that could depict what was done before my eyes, and
uttered to my rapt soul, I drew upon obedient memory. Until
that moment I had not known how faithful memory could
be. In the breathless excitement of the last act of the
tragedy, every word was laid ready to my hand. I seemed
to read, with my subconscious perceptions, lines of
palpitating light, the while my bodily sight lost not a gesture
or look of the stricken tigress:
"An inordinate will, convulsing a perishing mortal frame,
bent it to battle with doom and death; fought every inch of
ground, sold every drop of blood; resisted to the last the
rape of every faculty; would see, would hear, would breathe,
would live, up to, within, well-nigh beyond the moment when
Death says to all sense and all being - 'Thus far and no
farther!' "
I saw others - some said as great actors - in after years.
Among them, Ristori. I do not think it was because I had
seen none of them before the Vashti of Charlotte
Brontë's impassioned periods flashed upon my unaccustomed
sight, that I still hold her impersonation of Camille in
Les Horaces to be the grandest triumph of the tragedian's
art mine eyes have ever witnessed. Ristori was always the
gentlewoman, born and reared, in whatever rôle she assumed.
Rachel - and again I betake myself to the weird word-painting:
"Evil forces bore her through the tragedy; kept up her
feeble strength. . . . They wrote "HELL" on her straight,
haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment.
They writhed her regal face to a demonic mask. Hate and
Murder and Madness incarnate, she stood.
I fancy that I must have been whispering the words as I
gathered up my wraps and followed my companions out of the
box. I recollect that one or two persons stared curiously
at me. In the foyer I was introduced to some strangers,
and went through certain civil forms of speech. I did not
recollect names or faces when we got back to the hotel.
After I was in bed, I could not sleep for hours. But one
other actor has ever wrought so mightily upon nerves and
imagination. When I was forty years older I was ill for
forty-eight hours after seeing Salvini as Othello.
During this memorable stay in New York I met Bayard
Taylor. At the conclusion of his first call, I rushed to
my desk and wrote to my sister:
"He
has a port like Jove.
"Nature
might stand up
For once my ideal did
not transcend the reality. Would
that I could say it of all my dream-heroes and heroines!
At his second call, Mr. Taylor was accompanied by Richard
Henry Stoddard. At his first, he brought Charles Frederick
Briggs, journalist and author, whose best-known book,
Harry Franco, I had read and liked. I met him but once.
Mr. Taylor honored me with his friendship until his
lamented death. My recollections of him are all pleasant.
We met seldom, but our relations were cordial; the renewal
of personal association was ever that of friends who liked
and understood each other. I reckoned it a favor that
honored me, that his widow accepted me as her husband's
old acquaintance, and that his memory has drawn us together
in bonds of affectionate regard.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was then (in 1855) a mere stripling,
yet already famous as the author of Babie Bell and Elsinore,
poems that would have immortalized him had he not written
another line. I came to know him well during my Northern
sojourn. His charming personality won hearts as inevitably
as his genius commanded admiration. Halleck's hackneyed
eulogy of his early friend might be applied, and without
dissent, to the best belovéd of our later poets. To know
him was to love him. The magnetism of the rarely-sweet
smile, the frank sincerity of his greeting, the direct
appeal of the clear eyes to the brother-heart which, he
took for granted, beat responsive to his, were irresistible,
even to the casual acquaintance. His letters were simply
bewitching - as when I wrote to him after each of us had
grown children, asking if he would give my youngest
daughter the autograph she dearly coveted from his hand.
He began by begging me to ask him, the next time I wrote,
for something that he could do, not for what was
impossible for him to grant. He had laid it down as a
rule, not to be broken under any temptation, whatsoever,
that he would never give his autograph.
"THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH."
George P. Morris I met again and again. With the frank
conceit, so permeated with the amiability and naïiveté of the
veteran songster, that it offended nobody, he told me how
Braham had sung Woodman, Spare That Tree, before
Queen Victoria, at her special request, and that Jenny
Marsh of Cherry Valley was more of an accepted classic
than Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch. He narrated, too, the
thrilling effect produced upon an audience in New York or
Philadelphia by the singing for the first time in public
of Near the Rock Where Drooped the Willow, and smiled
benignantly on hearing that it was a favorite ballad in
our home. He was then associated with N. P. Willis in the
editorship of The New York Mirror, and agreed fully with
me that it had not its peer among American literary
periodicals.
My mother had taken it for years. We had a shelf full of
the bound volumes at home. I have some of them in my
own library, and twice or three times in the year, have a
rainy afternoon-revel over the yellowed, brittle pages
mottled with the mysterious, umber thumbmarks of Time.
Colonel Morris's partner, Nathaniel Parker Willis, who
had not yet taken to writing out the name at full length, was
at his country-seat of "Idlewild." He was ten years older
when I saw him last, and under circumstances that took the
sting from regret that I had not met him when life was fresh
and faiths were easily confirmed.
While in Dorchester I had enjoyed improving my
acquaintanceship with Maria Cummins. Encyclopædias
register her briefly as "An American novelist. She wrote
The Lamplighter." In 1855, no other woman writer was
so prominently before the reading public. The Lamplighter
was in every home, and gossip of the personality of the author
was seized upon greedily by press and readers. Meeting
Augusta Evans, of Rutledge and St. Elmo and Beulah, four years
thereafter, I was forcibly reminded of my Dorchester friend,
albeit they belonged to totally different schools of literature.
Both were quietly refined in manner and speech, and incredibly
unspoiled by the flood of popular favor that had taken each by
surprise. Alike, too, was the warmth of cordiality with which
both greeted me, a stranger, whom they might never meet
again.
An amusing incident connected with one of Maria
Cummins's visits broke down any lingering trace of
strangerhood. She was to take tea at the house of my
cousin, Francis Pierce. I was sitting by the window of the
drawing-room, awaiting her arrival and gazing at the
panorama of Boston Bay and the intervening hills, when an
old lady, a relative-in-law of "Cousin Melissa," stole in.
She was over eighty, and so pathetically alone in the lower
world that Melissa - the personation of Charity, which is
Love - had granted her home and care for several years. She
had donned her best cap and gown; as she crept up to me,
she glanced nervously from side to side, and her withered
hands chafed one another in agitation she could not conceal.
"I say, dearie," she began, in a whisper, bending down to
my face, "would you mind if I was to sit in the corner over
there" - nodding toward the back parlor - "and listen to
your talk after Miss Cummins comes? I won't make the
least mite of noise. I am an old woman. I never had a
chance to hear two actresses talk before, and I may never
have another."
I consented, laughingly, and she took up her position just
in time to escape being seen by the incoming guest. We
chatted away cheerily at our far window, watching the
sunset as it crimsoned the bay and faded languidly into
warm gray.
"Summer sunsets are associated in my mind, in a dreamy
way, with the tinkle of cow-bells," observed my companion,
and went on to tell how, as a child, living in Salem, she
used to watch the long lines of cows coming in from the
meadows at evening, and how musically the tinkle of many
bells blended with other sunset sounds.
"I have the same association with my Virginia home," I
answered. "So had Gray with Stoke Pogis. But his
herd lowed as it wound slowly over the lea."
"Perhaps English cows are hungrier than ours," Miss
Cummins followed, in like strain. "I prefer the chiming
bells."
We dropped into more serious talk after that. The unseen
listener carried off, up-stairs, when she stole out, like my
little gray ghost, but one impression of the "actresses' "
confabulation. Cousin Melissa told me of it next day. The old
lady was grievously disappointed. We had talked of nothing but
cows and cow-bells, and cows coming home hungry for supper,
and such stuff. "For all the world as if they had lived on a
dairy-farm all their days!"
I supped with Miss Cummins and her widowed mother a
day or so later, and we made merry together over the poor
crone's chagrin.
It was rather singular that in our several meetings neither
of us spoke of Adeline D. T. Whitney. She had not then
written the books that brought for her love and fame in
equal portions. But she was Maria Cummins's dear friend,
and a near neighbor of the Pierces. When we, at last,
formed an intimacy that ceased only with her life, we
wondered why this should have been delayed for a score of
years, when we had so nearly touched, during that and other
visits to my ancestral home.
At our earliest meeting in her Milton cottage, whither
I had gone by special invitation, she hurried down the stairs
with outstretched hands and - "I cannot meet you as a
stranger. My dear friend, Maria Cummins, has often talked
to me of you!"
In the hasty sketch of a few representative members of
the Literary Guild of America, as it existed a half-century
ago, I have made good what I intimated a few chapters back,
in alluding to my introductory experience of professional
jealousies, which, if cynics are to be credited,
pervade the ranks of authors, as the mysterious, fretting
leprosy ate into the condemned garment of the ancient
Israelite. In all frankness, and with a swelling of heart
that is both proud and thankful, I aver that no other order,
or class, of men and women is so informed and permeated
and colored with generous and loyal appreciation of whatever
is worthy in the work of a fellow-craftsman; so little
jealous of his reputation; so ready to make his wrongs
common property, and to assist the lowliest member of the
Guild in the hour of need.
I make no exception in favor of any profession or calling,
in offering this humble passing tribute to the Fraternity
of American Authors. I could substantiate my assertion
by countless illustrations drawn from personal observation,
had I space and time to devote to the task. In my sixty years
of literary life, I have known nearly every writer of note in
our country. In reviewing the list, I bow in spirit, as the
seer of Patmos bent the knee in the presence of the shining
ones.
ANNA CORA (MOWATT) RITCHIE - EDWARD EVERETT
IN 1854, Anna Cora
Mowatt, "American actress, novelist,
dramatist, and poet," as the cyclopædias catalogue her, left
the stage to become the wife of William Foushee Ritchie of
Richmond, Virginia.
Mrs. Mowatt, née Ogden, was the daughter of a prominent
citizen of New York. She was born in France, and partially
educated there. Returning to America, she married, in her
sixteenth year, James Mowatt, a scholarly and wealthy man,
but much the senior of the child-wife. By a sudden reverse
of fortune he was compelled to relinquish the beautiful
country home on Long Island, to which he had taken his
wife soon after their marriage. With the romantic design of
saving the home she loved, Mrs. Mowatt began a series of
public readings. Her dramatic talent was already well known
in fashionable private circles. At the conclusion of the round
of readings given in New York and vicinity, she received a
proposal from a theatrical manager to go upon the stage. For
nine years she was a prime favorite with the American
theatre-going public, and almost as popular abroad. She
never redeemed "Ravenswood," and her husband died while
she was in the zenith of her brilliant success.
Her union with William Ritchie, who had admired her for
a long time, was a love-match on both sides. He brought her
to quiet Richmond, and installed her in a
modest cottage on our side of the town, but three blocks
from my father's house. The Ritchies were one of the best
of our oldest families; Mrs. Mowatt belonged to one as
excellent; her character was irreproachable. I recollect
Doctor Haxall insisting upon this when a very conservative
Mrs. Grundy "wondered if we ought to visit her."
"You will see, madam, that she will speedily be as popular
here as she has been elsewhere. She is a lovely woman, and
as to reputation - hers is irreproachable - absolutely! No
tongue has ever wagged against her."
I listened with curiosity that had not a tinge of personal
concern in it. It went without saying that an ex-actress was
out of my sphere. The church that condemned dancing was
yet more severe upon the theatre. True, Mrs. Ritchie had
left the stage, and, it was soon bruited abroad, never
recited except in her own home and in the fine old colonial
homestead of Brandon, where lived Mr. Ritchie's sister,
Mrs. George Harrison. But she had trodden the boards for
eight or nine years, and that stamped her as a personage
quite unlike the rest of "us."
So when William Ritchie stopped my father on the street
and expressed a wish that his wife and I should know each
other, he had a civil, non-committal reply, embodying the
fact that I was expecting to go North soon, and would not
be at home again before the autumn.
During my absence my father sent me a copy of the
Enquirer containing a review of The Hidden Path, written by
Mrs. Ritchie, so complimentary, and so replete with frank,
cordial interest in the author, that I could not do less than
to call on my return and thank her.
She was not at home. I recall, with a flush of shame, how
relieved I was that a card should represent me, and that
I had "done the decent thing." The "decent thing," in
her opinion, was that the call should be repaid within the
week.
No picture of her that I have seen does her even partial
justice. In her youth she was extremely pretty. At
thirty-eight, she was more than handsome. Time had not
dimmed her exquisite complexion; her hair had been cut
off during an attack of brain-fever, and grew out again
in short, fair curls; her eyes were soft blue; her teeth
dazzlingly white. Of her smile Edgar Allan Poe had written:
"A more radiant gleam could not be imagined." In manner,
she was as simple as a child. Not with studied simplicity,
but out of genuine self-forgetfulness.
She struck what I was to learn was the keynote to
character and motive, before I had known her ten minutes.
I essayed to thank her for what she had said of my book.
She listened in mild surprise:
"Don't thank me for an act of mere justice. I liked the
book. I write book-reviews for my husband's paper. I could
not do less than say what I thought."
And - at my suggestion that adverse criticism was
wholesome for the tyro - "Why should I look for faults
when there is so much good to be seen without searching?"
A woman of an utterly different type sounded the same
note a score of years afterward.
I said to Frances Willard, whose neighbor I was at a
luncheon given in her honor by the wife of the Commandant
at Fort Mackinac:
"You know, Miss Willard, that, as General Howard said
just now of us, you and I 'don't train in the same band.' "
"No?" The accent and the sweet candor, the ineffable
womanliness of the eyes that sought mine, touched the
spring of memory. "Suppose, then, we talk only of the many
points upon which we do agree? Why seek for opposition
when there are so many harmonies close at hand?"
Of such peacelovers and peacemakers is the kingdom of
heaven, by whatsoever name they are called on earth.
Mrs. Ritchie was a Swedenborgian. I had learned that in
her Autobiography of an Actress. All denominations -
including some whose adherents would not sit down to
the Lord's Supper with certain others, and those who
would not partake of the consecrated "elements" if
administered by non-prelatic hands - united in shutting and
bolting the door of heaven in her face.
In the intimate companionship, unbroken by these and
other admonitions, I never heard from Mrs. Ritchie's lips a
syllable that was not redolent with the law of kindness. I
learned to love her fondly and to revere her with fervor I
would not have believed possible, six months earlier. It
was not her fascination of manner alone that attracted
me, or the unceasing acts of sisterly kindness she poured
upon me, that deepened my devotion. She opened to me the
doors of a new world: broadened and deepened and
sweetened my whole nature. We never spoke of doctrines.
We rarely had a talk - and henceforward our meetings
were almost daily - in which she did not drop into my mind
some precious grain of faith in the All-Father; of love
for the good and noble in my fellow-man and of compassion,
rather than blame, for the erring. Of her own church she
did not talk. She assumed, rather, that we were "one family,
above, beneath," and bound by the sacred tie of kinship,
to "do good and to communicate." She had a helpful hand,
as well as a comforting word, for the sorrowing and the
needy. As to her benefactions, I heard of them, now and
again, from others. Now it was an aged gentlewoman, worn
down to the verge of nervous prostration, and too poor to
seek the change of air she ought to have, who was sent
at the Ritchies' expense to Old Point Comfort for a month;
or a struggling music-mistress, for whom Mrs. Ritchie
exerted herself quietly to secure pupils; or a girl
whose talent for elocution was developed by private
lessons from the ex-actress; or a bedridden matron, who
had quieter nights after Mrs. Ritchie ran in, two or three
evenings in a week, to read to her for half an hour in the
rich, thrilling voice that had held hundreds enchanted in
bygone days.
To me she was a revelation of good-will to men. She
lectured me sometimes, as a mother might and ought,
always in infinite tenderness.
"I cannot have you say that, my child!" she said once,
when I broke into a tirade against the hypocrisy and general
selfishness of humankind at large, and certain offenders in
particular. "Nobody is all-wicked. There is more
unconquered evil in some natures than in others. There is
good - a spark of divine fire - in every soul God has made.
Look for it, and you will find it. Encourage it, and it will
shine.
And in reply to a murmur during the trial-experiences of
parish work, when I "deplored the effect of these belittling
cares and petty commonplaces upon my intellectual
growth," the caressing hand was laid against my hot cheek.
"Dear! you are the wife of the man of God! It is a sacred
trust committed to you as his helpmate. To shirk anything
that helps him would be a sin. And we climb one step at a
time, you know - not by bold leaps. Nothing is belittling
that God sets for us to do."
She, and some other things, gave me a royal winter.
Another good friend, Mrs. Stanard, had notified me that
Edward Everett, then lecturing in behalf of the Mount
Vernon Association, was to be her guest while in
Richmond, and raised me to the seventh heaven of delighted
anticipation by inviting me to meet him at a dinner-party
she would give him. Mrs. Ritchie forestalled the
introduction to the great man by writing a wee note to me
on the morning of the day on which the dinner was to be.
The Mount Vernon Association had for its express
object the purchase of Washington's home and burial-place,
to be held by the Nation, and not by the remote descendant
of Mary and Augustine Washington, who had inherited it.
Mrs. Ritchie was the secretary of the organization.
Her note said:
"A committee of our Association will wait upon Mr.
Everett at the Governor's house this forenoon. I will
smuggle you in, if you will go with us. I shall call
for you at eleven."
When we four who had come together were ushered into
the spacious drawing-room of the gubernatorial mansion,
we had it to ourselves. Mrs. Ritchie, with a pretty gesture
that reminded one of her French birth, fell to arranging five
or six chairs near the middle of the room, into a seemingly
careless group. One faced the rest at a conversational
angle.
"Now!" she uttered, with a playful presence of secrecy;
"you will see Mr. Everett seat himself just there! He can
do nothing else. Call it a stage trick, if you like. But he
must sit there!"
The words had hardly left her lips when Mr. Everett
entered, accompanied by a younger man, erect in carriage
and bronzed in complexion, whom he presented to us as
"My son-in-law, Lieutenant Wise."
To our secret amusement, Mr. Everett took the chair set
for him, and this, when three remained vacant after the
ladies were all seated.
Lieutenant Wise and I, as the non-attached personages
present, drifted to the other side of the room while official
talk went on between the orator-statesman and the
committee.
The retentive memory, which has, from my babyhood,
been both bane and blessing, speedily identified my
companion with the author of Los Gringos (The Yankees),
a satirical and very clever work that had fallen in my way
a couple of years before. He was a cousin of the
Governor. I learned to-day of his connection with the
Everetts.
He was social, and a witty talker. I had time to discover
this before the Governor appeared with his daughter, a
charming girl of seventeen, who did the honors of the house
with unaffected grace and ease.
I had met her before, and I knew her father quite well.
Mrs. Ritchie had taken herself severely to task that very
week for speaking of him as "our warm-hearted, hot-headed
Governor."
The characterization was just. We all knew him to be
both, and loved him none the less for the warm temper that
had hurried him into many a scrape, political and personal.
We were rather proud of his belligerency, and took real
pride in wondering what "he would do next." He was
eloquent in debate, a bitter partisan, a warrior who would
fight to the death for friend, country or principle. Virginia
never had a Governor whom she loved more, and of whom
she was more justly proud.
This was early in the year 1856. I do not recollect that I
ever visited the state drawing-room of the mansion again,
until I stood upon a dais erected on the very spot where
Lieutenant Wise and I had chatted together that brilliant
winter day, and I lectured to crowded parlors in behalf of
the Mary Washington Monument Association. Another Governor
reigned in the stead of our warm-hearted and hot-headed
soldier. Another generation of women than that which had
saved the son's tomb to the Nation was now working to
erect a monument over the neglected grave of the mother.
When the throng had dispersed, "Annie" Wise, now Mrs.
Hobson - and still of a most winsome presence - and I
withdrew into a corner to speak of that five-and-forty-year-
old episode, and said: "The fathers, where are they? And the
prophets - they do live forever!"
Of the group collected about Mr. Everett, on the noon
preceding the delivery of his celebrated oration, but we
two were left alive upon the earth.
Of the Stanard dinner I retain a lively recollection.
Among the guests were Lieutenant Wise; Mr. Corcoran,
the Washington banker and philanthropist; his slim,
engaging young daughter (afterward Mrs. Eustis), and Mr.
Everett's son, Sidney. Mrs. Stanard was the most judicious
and gracious of hostesses. "A fashionable leader of
fashionable society!" sneered somebody in my hearing,
one day.
Mrs. Ritchie took up the word promptly. Detraction
never passed unchallenged in her presence.
"Fashionable, if you will. But sincere. She is a true-hearted
woman."
In subscribing heartily to the truth of the statement, I append
what I had abundant reason to know and believe. She was a
firm friend to those she loved, steadfast in affection that
outlasted youth and prosperity.
She made life smooth for everybody within her reach
whenever she could do it. She had the inestimable talent of
divining what would best please each of her guests, and
ministered to weakness and desire.
On this night, she did not need to be told that a personal talk
with the chief guest would be an event to me. She lured me
adroitly into a nook adjoining the drawing-room, and as Mr.
Everett, who was staying in the house, passed the door, she
called him in, and presently left me on his hands for half an
hour. He was always my beau ideal of the perfect gentleman.
He talked quietly, in refined modulations and chaste English
that betokened the scholar. Like all really great men, he bore
himself with modest dignity, with never a touch of bluster or
self-consciousness. In five minutes I found myself listening and
replying, as to an old acquaintance. His voice was low, and so musical
as to fasten upon him the sobriquet of the "silver-tongued
orator." I could repeat, almost verbatim, his part of our talk
on that occasion. I give the substance of one section that
impressed me particularly.
We spoke of Hiawatha, then a recent publication. Mr.
Everett thought that Longfellow transgressed artistic rules,
and was disobedient to literary precedent in translating
Indian names in the text of the poem. The repetition of
"Minnehaha - Laughing Water," "The West Wind - Mudjekeewis,"
"Ishkooda - the Comet," etcetera, was affected and
tedious.
"Moreover," he continued, smiling, "I have serious doubts
respecting the florid metaphors and highly figurative
speech which Cooper and other writers of North American
Indian stories have put into the mouths of their dusky
heroes." He went on to say that, when Governor of
Massachusetts, he received a deputation of aborigines from
the Far West. In anticipation of the visit, he primed
himself with an ornate address of welcome, couched in the
figurative language he imagined would be familiar and
agreeable to the chiefs. This was delivered through an
interpreter, and received in blank silence. Then the principal
sachem replied in curt platitudes, with never a trope or
allegorical allusion. Mr. Everett added that he had learned
since that the vocabulary of the modern Indian is meagre
and prosaic in the extreme.
The justice of the observation was borne in upon me
when I sat in James Redpath's box at the Indian Exhibition
I have spoken of in another chapter, and heard snatches of
alleged oratory as transmitted by a fluent interpreter to the
Newark audience. Anything more tame and bare it would
be hard to imagine.
A MUSICAL CONVENTION - GEORGE FRANCIS ROOT - WHEN
REVERSING the wheel of
Time by a turn or two, we are in
the thick of preparations for the Christmas of 1855.
It is less than a year
since I read and re-read a letter that
had lain among the leaves of my journal for a long term of
years. It was never read by any eyes except my own, and
those of him who wrote it. In the solemn conviction that
for any other - no matter how near of kin and dear of heart
- to look upon the lines, would be profanation, I burned
the old letter. Life is short and uncertain. I would take no
risks. And what need of keeping what I can never lose
while memory remains faithful to her trust?
I require no written or printed record to remind me what
set that Yule-tide apart from all the anniversaries that had
preceded it, and distinguished it from all that were to follow
in its train.
We had had a guest in the house for three weeks. A
Musical Convention - the first ever held in Richmond - was
in session under the conduct of Lowell Mason and George
Francis Root. My father, my sister, my brother Herbert,
and myself were members of a flourishing Sacred Music
Society, composed principally of amateurs, and we had
engaged the distinguished leaders in the profession to
preside over the Conference, by which it was hoped public
taste in the matter of choir and congregational singing
might be improved. Classes were formed for the study of
methods and for drill in vocalization. The course would be
closed by a grand concert, in which no professional
artists would take part.
The thought that the imported leaders in the programme
should be allowed to put up at a hotel was opposed to the
genius of Southern hospitality. Doctor and Mrs. Lowell
Mason were the honored guests of Mr. Williams, the
President of the Society. My father invited Mr. Root
"to make our house his home while he was in our city."
That was the old-fashioned form of asking strangers to
take bit and sup and bed with us. We made good the words,
too. The "home" was theirs as truly as it was ours. The
Convention was advertised to last ten days. When the time
was nearly expired, the extraordinary success of the
experiment induced the projectors to extend the time to a
month. Mr. Root was for removing to a hotel, but we arose
up in arms and forbade it. His bonhomie, intelligence,
and general attractiveness of manner and disposition had
endeared him to us all. We hailed as a reprieve the
postponement of the date of departure. He had never seen
a Virginia Christmas, and here was a special providence he
must not overlook. Household machinery moved as if he
had not been there. He entered jovially into plans, and
connived at confidences - the necessary deceits that are to
be condoned by agreeable surprises in the fulness of time.
When the personage whom Mea had long ago dubbed "The
Young Evangelist," appeared upon the scene a week in
advance of the holiday, and spent three-fourths of each day
under our hospitable roof - a state of affairs that evidently
was no new thing - the Professor took in the situation
without the quiver of an eyelash, and asked never a
question. He did more to prove how cordially he was one
with the family. Discovering in the course of the first
evening after the new arrival
had enlarged our circle, that he had an exceptionally fine
voice, and knew how to use it, he pressed him eagerly into
service as "the basso he had been longing for," and the two
sang themselves into each other's good graces inside of
twenty-four hours.
I had had a cold for a fortnight, and I made the most of
my demi-semi-invalidism when there were sessions of the
Convention at uncanny hours, and secured, instead, quiet
evenings at home. All of which was transparent to our
Professor, as I suspected then, and knew subsequently. He
did not disturb a tête-à-tête one December afternoon by
bringing down into the parlor a freshly written sheet of
music he wished to try on the piano. His quartette clustered
about the instrument at his summons, and the hymn was
sung over and over. I sat by the fire and listened. At the
third repetition, I asked:
"The music is yours, but where did you get the words?"
Mr. Root answered that his mother had clipped them from
a Western paper, and handed them to him. The music fitted
itself to them in his mind at the first reading. He struck
the chords boldly in saying it, and the four rendered the
whole hymn with spirit.
"I am no prophetess," I commented, "nor the daughter of a
prophet; but I predict that that will be the most popular of
your compositions. It has all the elements of life, and a long
life, in it. Once more, please!"
They sang it with a will:
"My
days are gliding quickly by,
Millions have sung it since. Millions more will yield heart,
soul, and voice to the bound and swing and exultant leap of
the melody "thought out" by the composer in the earliest
reading of the anonymous verses. "Almost," has been
"quite" with him for many a year.
It was during that Christmas week that I attended a full
rehearsal of the programme to be given at the grand
concert. Near the close of the rehearsal, Mr. Root came
down to the back of the house and dropped into a seat by
me, among the auditors and lookers-on. He was tired, he
explained, "and would loaf for the rest of the affair."
The "affair" wound up with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. My
"loafing" neighbor pricked up his ears, as the warhorse at
sound of the trumpet; sat upright and poured the might of
heart and voice into the immortal opus. With the precision
of a metronome, and the fire of a seraph, he went through
it, from the first to the last note, with never a book or
score. It was more to us, who had the good fortune to be near
him, than all the rest of the performance.
It was inevitable that two of us should recall and speak
together in awed tones, of Handel's rejoinder to a query, as
to his emotions in writing the Chorus:
"I did verily believe that I saw the Great White Throne
and Him Who sat thereon, and heard the harpers harping
with their harps, and all God's holy angels."
I was watching the fine, uplifted head and rapt
unconsciousness of him whose whole frame throbbed and
thrilled with clarion tones that pealed out, "Hallelujah!
hallelujah!" when a voice on the other side of me murmured
in my ear:
"And all that sat there, steadfastly watching him, saw his
face as it had been the face of an angel."
I cherish a hundred pleasant and dear memories of our
musical visitor. I like none other so well as this vision. It
so befell that my one and only visit to the grave of Oliver
Goldsmith was made when the choir of the adjacent
Temple church was practicing the Hallelujah Chorus.
Although in the heart of mighty London, the place was
strangely still and solitary. We lingered there until the last
chord died into silence. It was not necessary for either of us
to put into words what held the fancy of both. Only - as we
turned away we looked up to the sky, and one whispered
"He is singing it, still!"
Engagements of marriage were never announced in Old
Virginia. We took more pains to keep them secret than
family and friends take nowadays to trumpet them abroad.
Mr. Derby ran on from New York to spend Christmas and
the next day with us. He came and departed without an
intimation of any change in the feelings and prospects of
his last September guest. Mr. Terhune went back to his
Charlotte parish; letters travelled regularly and frequently
back and forth. Some were addressed to me; more bore
my brother's name on the envelope, to hoodwink village
post-office gossips. Young men, who were habitual
visitors, called as often and were received with the olden
friendliness; I accepted the escort of this, that, and the
other one impartially, and at will. "The Young Evangelist"
was in town for a few days of every month, and was more
with us than anywhere else. And why not? He had visited
us more intimately than at any other house during his six
months' occupancy of Doctor Hoge's pulpit. It happened
repeatedly that he was one of three or four callers in the
evening. On these occasions he, magnanimously, as he
phrased it, "never interfered with another fellow's running."
He was as assiduous in his attentions to girls who chanced
to be present as Ned Rhodes, Tom Baxter, or any other
Tom, Dick, or Harry of the party could be to me. At ten
o'clock he arose, made his adieux in decorous sort to the
ladies of the house and to the company generally, and
withdrew. If nobody showed a disposition to follow
his example, he, to quote again from his tactics, "took
account of stock," and, having assured himself that the
others lived in different directions, appeared in the open
door, overcoat on, hat in hand, and in his mouth a jaunty
query as to the probability of having company in his walk
to the Exchange Hotel, where he usually put up. Few were
bold enough to loiter later when the privileged habitue
of the house showed so plainly that the family kept early
hours. After his regrets at the prospect of a lonely tramp
were uttered, he departed in good earnest. He had made but
a few rounds of the block when the shutters of the front
parlor window were closed, the signal that the course was
clear for a return.
In mid-April he came to Richmond to receive his
widowed sister, who passed some weeks with us. Mea and
I had had an engagement with Messrs. Rhodes and Baxter
to go to a Dempster concert. The pair were so often on
escort duty that they were dubbed "The Circumstances" by
our saucy brothers and sisters. It was, according to the
younglings, a settled matter, when we based our
prospective presence at any festive scene upon
"circumstances," that Damon and his Pythias should show
up in season to take us thither.
Mrs. Greenleaf arrived on Tuesday. Her brother came
by the noon train on Wednesday. It was not until I noted
the grave wonder in her blue eyes, as I congratulated her
and him that they would have the evening to themselves
and home-talk, that it dawned upon me how unconventional
was the proceeding altogether. North of Mason and
Dixon's line it would have been downright impropriety for
an engaged girl to walk off coolly, in the escort of another
man, within a few hours after the coming of the betrothed
whom she had not seen for a month
The person who would be supposed to suffer most
discomfort from the outrage to conventionality was,
fortunately, more au fait to Virginia manners and social
usages than his relative. When I took an opportunity to
express misgivings lest I might lose ground in her good
graces if I kept the engagement to hear the famous
ballad-singer, I was bidden not to "waste a thought on
that matter, but to enjoy the concert with all my heart.
For his part, he was delighted that I had the chance to go."
So, when our escorts appeared, I carried off a light heart,
and was obedient to the injunction to get all the enjoyment
that Dempster, then evidently in the decadence of his
powers, could give a music-lover.
I heard him but that once. I do not regret that I went then,
although sadness mingled with pleasure while we listened.
Dempster's rendition of English ballads, without other
accompaniment than the piano played by himself, with no
effort after brilliancy of execution, had moved two
continents to smiles and tears. One searches vainly for his
name in cyclopædias and dictionary lists of the famous
dead. He was now a gray and flabby oldish man. His voice
was broken in the high register, and thickened on the lower;
his breath was irregular and short. Yet certain
passages - notably in the Irish Emigrant's Lament - had
sympathetic sweetness that helped one to credit the stories
of his former successes. He sang Tennyson's May Queen
all through, not skipping a stanza of the three parts. It was
a dreary performance, that grew absolutely painful before the
consumptive was finally relegated to the bourne
"Where
the wicked cease from troubling,
"Thank
Heaven!" sighed Mr. Rhodes as the last wordquavered forth; and Mea - "She ought to apologize for
being such an unconscionably long time in dying."
WEDDING BELLS - A BRIDAL TOUR - A DISCOVERED
"RICHMOND, August 16th, 1856.
"MY VERY DEAR
EFFIE, - My long silence has seemed strange
and may have appeared unkind to you, but there have
been a thousand hindrances to my writing.
"A sudden fit of illness interrupted the health that had
remained firm throughout the warm spring weather, and obliged
me to make my visit to Goochland earlier than I intended. For a
week or more after my arrival there I was worse than I had been at
home. When I began to recover the amendment was rapid.
"To cut short these details, I am most unromantically well and
robust, am gaining flesh daily, and boast an appetite that would
throw a sentimental young woman into convulsions were she to
witness my gastronomic exploits. Yet I have delayed writing to
you because I wished to arrange everything relating to the final
'performances' before notifying you of the same.
"There have been sundry alterations in the programme since you
and I last consulted over these things, the principal of which
is the change of the day and hour. We expect, now, to leave
home on Tuesday fortnight (September 2d) in the morning,
instead of (as was first spoken of) on the afternoon of
Wednesday, the 3d. This will allow us two days in Philadelphia,
and, being the plan most approved of by father and Mr. Terhune,
of course I am submissive.
"The bridal party will spend both Monday and Tuesday
evenings, besides breakfasting here on Tuesday morning So you
girls may bring evening dresses.
Bridesmaids are to wear blue muslin or lawn skirts, with white
muslin basques - a neat breakfast costume that will look pretty
as a uniform, and be becoming to all of you, without throwing my
quiet travelling attire too much into the shade. You know that
at a morning wedding it is customary for each to dress as she
pleases. This never pleased my fancy. The company wears a motley
look. Full bridal robes would be equally out of place. Therefore,
we have selected this medium.
"Now, ma chère! cannot you keep your intention of the Richmond
trip as profound a secret as you have other matters we wot of?
Your father and mother must be apprized of it, and Colonel and
Mrs. Graves; but, for a few days, cannot the story be kept
within the two families? I trust you to do this for me.
"The Charlotte party will come down on Monday, the 1st. We shall
expect you and Virginia some days in advance of that date. I hope
to have everything in readiness, even to packing my trunks, by the
middle of the preceding week, and to have time to enjoy your society.
Write as soon as your plans are formed, and let that time be very
soon. As to my trousseau - thanks to nimble and kind fingers, the
work is nearly done. Next week my time is to be divided between the
dressmaker and a gentleman who writes that he has 'business to
attend to in Richmond,' and who, it is fair to presume, may call
occasionally. The latest gossip is that there is to be a double
wedding here next month; that both sisters are to be dressed
precisely alike and be married in the evening. Therefore, come
prepared for the worst - or the best, as the case may seem.
"To drop business and jesting together - it is very hard to
realize that, if Providence permit, one little fortnight will
bring such a change into my life. Here, in the home of my girlhood,
where all else is unaltered, and I seem to be welded, as it were,
into the household chain, I cannot believe that my place is so
soon to be vacant. Brain and heart are so full of crowding thoughts
and emotions that I marvel how I preserve a composed demeanor.
The past, with its tender
and hallowed memories; the present, with a wealth of calm,
real happiness; the bright, although vague future, alike
strive to enchain my mind.
"I long to see you; to have a good, old-fashioned chat, a
familiar interchange of our plans and our hopes. There is a
sentence in your last that promises much - a promise I
shall surely call upon you to redeem when we meet. I
would have you feel that by this union you gain, not lose a
friend. . . .
"My love to your mother and to 'Cousin Mag.' May I not
ask from them a sincere 'God-speed'?
"You will not disappoint me, now, dear one? Write at once
that you are all coming. You and Virginia G. will require
little preparation - besides the blue skirt and the thin
muslin spencer (which you are sure to have!), a pair of
white gloves will be all you need.
"This is a hasty and, I fear, an incoherent letter, but a full
freight of love goes with it. As I began, I end with 'COME!' "
We were of one mind on that point. To secure the
presence of our most intimate friends, we went through the
form of selecting bridesmaids and groomsmen. It was the
custom to have a long train of attendants at large wedding-parties,
and we took advantage of the fashion to limit the
company to be assembled on that early September morning
to "the bridal party" and the family. The exceptions to the
limit were dear old Doctor Haxall (whose wife was out of
town) and three friends of the bridegroom. Two were from
New Jersey and family connections, although not related by
blood. The other was Mr. Word, of Charlotte, the gentlest-
hearted of old bachelors - known affectionately by his
intimates as "Cousin Jimmy."
Genial old saint! My heart swells now at the flashlight
picture fastened upon memory of my first sight of,
and speech with him. He was more closely shaven than
I ever saw him afterward - and he was ever the pink of
neatness. An expanse of white vest and shirt-bosom
covered a broad chest that palpitated visibly, as, enfolding
my hand in both of his, he said, in the best manner of the
gentleman of the old school (and there are no finer
gentlemen anywhere):
"My dear madam, let me entreat you to regard me from
this moment as a BROTHER!"
No capitals can endow the word with the meaning he put
into it. He fulfilled his part of the compact nobly.
To go back to the preparation for the quiet bridal: A
Richmond fashion I have never known elsewhere, and which
outlasted the war by some years, was that the bride-elect and
two or three of her bridesmaids drove from house to house a
day, or two or three, before the marriage, and left cards upon
acquaintances who were not bidden to the ceremony. This was
done in cases where, as with me, it was to be a house-wedding,
and the attendants were confided to a few family friends.
If there were to be a church-wedding, followed by a reception,
or if the ceremony at home were to be witnessed by a large
party of guests, the drive and delivery of cards preceded
the "occasion" by a week or ten days. To send an invitation
to any social gathering by post would be a transgression of
decorum and precedent - a cheap trick unworthy of any one
tolerably well versed in social forms. The delivery by the
bride and her suite was delicately complimentary to those
she wished to honor.
In furtherance of our design of keeping even the date of
the marriage secret up to the last possible hour, we had
delayed the delivery of my "P. P. C." cards until Monday.
At the very bottom of the box of time-discolored letters
preserved by the friend of my childhood and intimate of my
girlhood, I found one of these cards. Time's thumbmarks
have not spared the bit of glazed pasteboard. My
maiden name is there, and, in the left-hand lower corner
"P. P. C." That was all the information it deigned to give
the curious and the friendly. I was going away - somewhere.
Just when and where was nobody's business.
It will hardly be believed that we kept our own counsel
so well that our own servants, while they might have their
suspicions, were only certain that I was going North on
Tuesday, as I had often gone on other summers, and that
the girls who had been visiting me for a week were to
remain to a party my sister would give on Tuesday evening.
Not until Monday morning were any of them, except
"Mammy Rachel," informed what was on foot.
The day dawned - if dawn it could be called - through
steady sheets of rain. No delusive adage of "Rain before
seven, clear before eleven" ever gained currency in
Richmond. It was as clear to our dismayed souls that this was
an all-day rain, as that the drive and cards could not be
postponed until to-morrow. Sampson, the carriage driver,
whom we did not dub "coachman" until after the war, was
notified by the mouth of Tom, the young dining-room
servant, that he must have the carriage at the door at ten
o'clock, and prepare for a long expedition. We were at the
breakfast-table when word came back that "it warn't a fittin'
day for no young ladies to go out. Nor for his carriage an'
horses. De ladies will have to put off their shoppin' for
another time."
Mea turned upon the respectful emissary with the snap
of the eyes and incisive accent he knew full well:
"Say to Sampson that Miss Virginia is to be married
to-morrow, and that we have to take out cards. He will be
here on time!"
We had an answer before we left our chairs.
"Yes, ma'am! He says he'd go if it killed him and the
horses!"
We set forth at the appointed hour. Mea, Effie,
Virginia Graves, and myself, wrapped up as for a winter
journey, but in as high spirits as if the sun had shone and
birds sung blithely in trees that shivered and shrank and
streamed under the weight of the bitter rain. Poor Tom -
for the nonce, the footman whose duty it was to jump down
from his perch at every door before which we signalled
Sampson to stop, to receive the enveloped card upon a
silver tray, and to scamper up a walk or up a flight of
steps, his umbrella held low over the precious consignment
had the worst of it all. He was soaked to the skin by the
time the route was finished and we turned homeward. We were
out four hours. And in all the four hours the rain never
intermitted one drop, and the wind only changed from the
east to blow from all quarters of the heavens at once. If
coachman and patient footman were drenched, we were
more than moist, and so chilled that we rejoiced with
exceeding great joy at the sight of blazing fires in chambers
and dining-room on our return.
The home atmosphere was all that it should be on the eve
of the first wedding in a household where the happiness of
one was the joy of all. Maybe I took it too much as a
matter of course, then. I value the recollection with
something akin to jealous fondness. How, all day long, while
the skies streamed without and the wind dashed the water
by pailfuls against the windows, mirth and frolic within went
on like a peal of joy-bells, and every look, gesture, and word
carried to my heart the sweet persuasion that I was not
absent from the thoughts of one of them for a moment.
So certain were we that nothing could "gang agley" - and
this in the teeth of the storm that had abated naught of its
fury by nightfall - that when Herbert, who had gone to the
station to meet the Charlotte party (including Doctor Hoge,
who was returning from his vacation), brought back a
rueful countenance and the news that "the flood had
washed away a bridge on the Danville Railway and made it
impracticable for trains to run for twenty-four hours,"
fell upon him with a hail-storm of laughing reproaches
that swept away the presence of sorrowful sympathy.
How could anything go wrong? Not one of us was
hoaxed for the fraction of a second.
We took for granted, with the like gay confidence, that
the tempest would rage itself faint by morning It was no
surprise that the day was so brilliantly clear; so fresh
and fragrant, that Doctor Hoge was reminded of
"The
rose that was newly washed by the shower" -
and, after the
ceremony, strayed from one to another of
the thirty present, asking if any one could tell him who
was the author of the line.
Which quest, when comparison of notes elicited the
fact that ten persons had been catechised, took a place
among our family jests.
One incident of the journey to Washington stands out in
my mind among the thousand and one "coincidences,"
falsely so-called, that star or mar every human life, if we
will but heed them and their consequences. Mr. Terhune
and Mr. Cardwell, one of the groomsmen, who went as far
as Baltimore with us, on his way to speak at a political
meeting, had gone to look to the luggage after settling me
in the car in Richmond. The air was close, and I tried to
raise the window by me.
"Allow me!" said a pleasant voice in my ear, and a
strong hand reached forward to perform the trifling
service.
I said, over my shoulder, "Thank you!" catching sight of
a fine, manly face, lighted by a pair of kind, gray eyes. I
saw the shadow of the hand that went up to his hat, as he
uttered some conventional phrase in acknowledgment, and
thought no more of him until we had taken the Potomac
boat at Acquia Creek. I recognized my neighbor of the
train then, in the tall man who tramped the deck to stretch
long limbs cramped by sitting in the car, and checked his
walk to pick up and comfort a child that fell headlong in
running away from its nurse. I was struck by the
gentleness of the handsome giant in handling the baby, and
the tact he displayed in taking the weeper in his arms, and
directing his attention to a passing steamer. The little
fellow stopped crying at once, and, when the frightened nurse
found the runaway, he clung to the stranger's neck, much
to the amusement of the latter. He carried him to the far
end of the boat, talking cheerily with him, and finally
handed him over to the woman, with a kiss upon the
baby-lips held up to him.
The call to dinner diverted my mind from the little scene,
and it was not until we were in our hotel in
Washington that I alluded to it, and told Mr. Terhune of
the courtesy the stranger had rendered me on the train.
"I wish you had mentioned it before," he said. "I should
have thanked him. I saw him at the hotel last night. His
name is Brookes, I think. He is a cousin of Doctor Hoge.
By-the-way, he must be related to your mother. And"
- laughingly - "naturally, to yourself."
"Of course!" I broke in, excitedly. "I wish I had guessed
who he was. It must be the Rev. James Brookes, my
mother's cousin. You needn't laugh! and you must not say
'Another?' He is a splendid fellow. His mother was Judith
Lacy, and named for my grandmother!"
As the genealogist of the family, I reckoned up the
"handsome giant" forthwith. I even knew incidents of his
family history he never heard until I rehearsed them to him
in his St. Louis home, thirty years afterward. He was, by
then, to me the best-belovéd of all my clerical kinsmen. I
upbraided him, when we were made known to
one another, for not letting me know who he was at our
first encounter.
"My dear cousin! On your wedding-day!" was his
exclamation. "Even the tie of kindred blood would not
have justified the intermeddling of a stranger at the time."
We made up for the delay of a quarter-century by full
and glad recognition of the blood-claim. He was a master
in Israel; eloquent in the pulpit; as a writer, strong and
convincing; in parish ministrations, as tender as a woman
and helpful as a brother. He adorned his profession; as a
citizen he fought evil with a lion's strength, and succored
the erring with the wisdom of Paul, the gentleness of John.
What strength and comfort I drew from intimate association
with this wise, tender, and leal kinsman, may not be told
here. I can never acknowledge it aright until I speak with
the tongue of angels.
More than a dozen years have passed since the Easter
noon, when the lightning leaped along a thousand miles of
telegraph lines, to bring me this message from his son-in-law:
"James H. Brookes
fell asleep at sunrise on Easter morning."
Since that glorious
awakening he has dwelt forever
with the Lord.
PARSONAGE LIFE - WILLIAM WIRT HENRY - HISTORIC SOIL -
THE village of Charlotte
Court-House was a rambling
hamlet in 1856. The plank-road from the nearest railway
station ("Drake's Branch") entered the village at one side,
and cut abruptly into the main street. This thoroughfare
meandered leisurely from a country road at each end,
through the entire length of the shiretown. It was lined
irregularly with public and private buildings. The
Court House, three or four stores, a couple of hotels,
and perhaps half a dozen residences, made up the nucleus
of the place. Beyond, and on either side, dwellings - some
of brick, some of wood - were surrounded by spacious
grounds embracing shrubbery, plantations, groves, and
gardens. The "Village Church," a brick edifice hoary with
years, and redolent of ecclesiastical traditions, stood at
the left of the plank turnpike as one approached the village
from the station. A porticoed manor-house, that had a
history almost as old, faced it across lawn and shrubbery
on the opposite side of the way. When one had left the
turnpike for the main street, and driven a quarter of a mile
or so toward the "real country," one passed the Parsonage.
It stood well away from the street, from which it was
screened by a grove of native oaks. Behind it lay a large
yard, at one side of which were the kitchen and other
domestic offices. A picket fence divided the yard from a
garden, and at the left of this were the stables
and pasture. Back of the garden a field lost itself in
wood of virgin growth.
The house was a white cottage, a story-and-a-half high,
fronted and backed by wide porches. A hall cut the lower
floor in half, and ran from the entrance to the back door.
On the left of the hall was a parlor of fair dimensions,
with windows at the front and rear. "The chamber," of
like shape and proportions, was on the other side. The
dining-room was one wing, and "the study" another Both
connected directly with a deep portico which filled the
intermediate space. Two bedrooms above stairs, and a
store-room adjoining the dining-room, completed the tale of
rooms.
A modest establishment in very truth, but not contemptible
from the Old Virginia standpoint. Small as it was,
we did not have it to ourselves until after Christmas. I
esteemed this a fortunate circumstance from the first,
considering how much I had to learn of housekeeping and
parish work. Subsequently, I knew it for one of the signal
blessings of a life that has been affluent in goodness and
mercy.
For the occupants of the Parsonage, pending the
completion of a house of their own in building at the other
end of the village, were Mr. and Mrs. Wirt Henry, a young
married couple with one child. They had rented the cottage
for the year ending January 1st, and kindly consented to
receive us as boarders until the term had expired.
From the moment that Wirt Henry came out to assist me
to alight from the carriage that had brought us front the
station, one mid-October day, to the end of his honored and
useful life, his friendship for us knew no variableness nor
shadow of turning. He was already my husband's staunch
right hand in church and community. He took me upon trust
for the time. I learned to love husband and wife long before
we became separate households.
To this day, his widow is to me as a sister. In the
care-free three months of our happy companionship, Mrs.
Henry helped me tactfully through the initial stages of
acquaintanceship with parish and neighborhood. To the
manor born, and connected by blood with two-thirds of the
best families in the county, her gentle "coaching" was an
inestimable benefit to the stranger within her gates.
Her husband was a grandson of Patrick Henry, and a
lawyer of note, although not yet thirty years of age. He
attained eminence in his native county as time went on, and
in Richmond, to which city he removed after the War. His
Life and Letters of Patrick Henry is a standard biographical
and historical classic; he filled with distinction several public
offices, among them that of President of the American
Historical Society, and Delegate to the Historical Congress
at The Hague, in 1897.
In private life he was the best of husbands and fathers,
sweet-hearted to the core, a thorough gentleman always
and everywhere, and a genial and delightful comrade.
When I turned study and pen in the direction of Colonial
historical research, he was an invaluable auxiliary. I
told him, over and over, that he was to me an exhaustless
reservoir of information. I had only to open a sluiceway,
to draw in copious measure in my hour of need. As a faint
expression of my sense of overwhelming obligation to him,
I dedicated to him my first volume on Colonial Homesteads
and Their Stories, published in 1896.
I cannot say that my thirst for Colonial traditions and
histories was created by my residence in Charlotte. From
childhood I had been indefatigable in the pursuit of
genealogical details and the tales of real life and
happenings collected from the converse of my elders of the
"former days," which they rated as better than these in
defiance of Solomon's admonition. But it was not possible
to live for three years, as I did, in a region where the very
earth
was soaked in historical associations; where every other
name mentioned in my hearing was interwoven with recitals
of deeds of valor and of statesmanship performed by
the fathers of American history, and not be kindled into
zealous prosecution of my favorite studies.
The Court House, built in 1823, was designed by Thomas
Jefferson. A more interesting building was a shabby
tumbledown house, not far from the site of the newer and
better edifice. It was the "Court House" in the stirring
days when the paternal Government would not squander money
upon Colonial seats of justice. From the porch of this,
Patrick Henry delivered his last speech to his adoring
constituents. He was tottering upon the verge of the grave,
into which he sank gently a few weeks later. A crisis of
national and state importance had called him from his home
at Red Hill, a dozen miles away. Keyed up by a sense of
the imminence of the peril to the country he had saved,
his magnificent will-power responded to the call; the
dying fire leaped high. He had never reasoned more
cogently, never pleaded with more power than on that
day. But as the last word fell from his lips, he sank
fainting into the arms of his attendants. Dr. John Holt Rice
stood on the outskirts of the crowd. As the dying lion fell in
his tracks, the clergyman cried out: "The sun has set in all
his glory!"
From the same homely rostrum John Randolph (whose
homestead of "Roanoke" is but a few miles from the
county-seat) made his maiden speech, and addressed for
the last time those of whom he declared - "No other man
ever had such constituents." In this address he recounted
the history of that relation, from the hour when the
beardless boy had raised his reedy voice to confute the
arguments of the people's idol - Patrick Henry - to the
date of this, his resignation of his office.
"Men of Charlotte!" The piercing voice that carried
further in his weakness than more stentorian tones, sent the
farewell to the outskirts of the breathless throng - "Forty
years ago you confided this sacred trust to me. Take it
back! Take it back!"
The gesture, as of rolling a ponderous weight from heart
and arms, was never forgotten by those who saw it. With it
he left the platform, mounted his horse without another
word, and rode off to Roanoke.
Mr. Jacob Michaux, of Powhatan County, was at that
time a student in Hampden-Sidney College, and came over
to Charlotte for the express purpose of hearing the famous
orator. I had from his lips the description of the scene. John
Randolph, as is well known, never used notes in speaking. It
sent a sort of shudder, therefore, through the audience,
when he took a folded paper from his pocket and opened it,
saying:
"The infirmities of advancing age, and the consequent
failure of memory, have made it expedient that I should
bring with me to-day a few notes to remind me of what I
would say to you."
He held the paper in his hand while speaking, and referred
to it twice in the exordium. Warming to his work, he waved
it aloft in his impassioned gesticulation, evidently forgetful
of it and what was written on it. At last, it escaped from
his fingers and fluttered down to Mr. Michaux's feet. The
crowd, engrossed in the fervid oratory, did not notice what
had happened. The student put his foot upon the bit of paper,
without change of place or position. "It flashed across my
mind that I would secure it when the speech was over, and
keep it as a souvenir," he said. "The next moment I forgot
it, and everything else except what the man before me was
saying. It was a Vesuvian tide of eloquence, and carried
thought, feeling, imagination along with it. One hears
nothing like it in these degenerate days. I did not recollect
the paper until
I was a mile away from the Court House, and the orator's
voice began to die out of my ears."
What a souvenir that would have been! I do not know that
this anecdote has ever been published before. I had it,
as I have said, directly from Mr. Michaux's lips, and vouch
for the authenticity.
Many of the stories that clung to the Parsonage had to do
with the Orator of Roanoke. The house was at one time the
home of Captain "Jack" Marshall, the father of the late
Judge Hunter Marshall. The latter was, during our
residence in Charlotte, a near neighbor and charming
acquaintance. His father, "Captain Jack," was one of the
cronies whom John Randolph's eccentricities and fits of
violent rage had not estranged. Politically, his constituents
adored Randolph. Personally, they found him intolerable.
Mrs. Eggleston, of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by,
told me of visiting a playfellow in the Marshall home
while John Randolph was staying with Captain Marshall.
The two little girls were busy with their dolls in the lower
hall, when a hand-bell was rung furiously above stairs.
Little Lucy looked wonderingly at her companion.
"Who is that? And what does it mean?"
"Oh, it's Mr. Randolph trying to frighten away the devil.
He has just got up, you see, and he says the devil creeps
from under his bed as soon as he wakes up."
The ringing continued at intervals for some minutes, and
Lucy, terrified by the fancy that the fleeing demon might
appear on the stairs, ran off home with the tale.
"My mother had heard it often, before," said my friend,
laughing at my horrified incredulity. "It was but one of his
crazy antics. No-o-o!" doubtfully, as I put a question "I
don't believe it was delirium tremens. He took opium at
times. I don't know that he drank heavily. Everybody took
his toddy in those days, you know. John
Randolph was queer, through and through, from the cradle
to the grave, and like no other man that ever lived! We
children were terribly afraid of him."
One of the numerous stories Mr. Henry told of the
eccentric was of his asking a neighboring planter who was
dining at Roanoke, if "he would not take a slice of cold
meat upon a hot plate?"
As "Juba," Mr. Randolph's body-servant, was at the
guest's elbow with the hot plate, the gentleman thought
he was expected to say "Yes," and fearing to anger the
choleric host, took the plate, accepting the offered cold
meat. Whereupon, Randolph swore savagely at him for a
"lick-spittle," and a "coward."
"You dare not speak up to me like a man!" he snarled. "I
asked the question to see what you would say."
He was as brutal to members of his own family. A clergyman,
who studied divinity under Doctor Rice in Richmond,
told me of a conversation between John Randolph
and his sister-in-law, the widow of Richard Randolph. She
was very fond of the Rices, spending weeks together at
their home, and at last, dying while on one of these visits.
Some months prior to her death, she joined the Presbyterian
Church, and shortly after taking this step, had a call from
her terrible brother-in-law. Regardless of the fact that two
of the students were in the next room, and that what he
shrieked in his piercing falsetto must be heard from the top
of the house to the bottom, the irate Congressman berated
Mrs. Judith Randolph in the coarsest terms for the disgrace
she had brought upon an honorable name in uniting with
"the Dissenters."
He stayed not for any law, written or tacit, of respect due
to host or hostess, reviling both as scheming hypocrites and
wolves in sheep's clothing, who had decoyed her into their
"conventicle" in the hope of securing her fortune for
themselves.
Yet, there is extant a letter which I have read, from John
Randolph to Doctor Rice, written after his sister-in-law's
death, extolling her piety, thanking her late host for
his great goodness to the sainted deceased, and winding
up by saying that he had, all day, been possessed by the
idea that he could see her spirit, "mild, loving, and
benignant, hovering above him!"
We must fall back upon Mrs. Eggleston's dictum -
"Queer, through and through, from the cradle to the grave
and like no other man that ever lived!"
Before quitting my gossip of the Randolphs, I must touch
upon one of the most pitiful of the many tragedies that
darken the history of the aristocratic clan.
The Sunday after my arrival in my new home, I saw, from
my seat in church, a late-comer stride up the aisle to one of
the pews running at right angles with those filling the body
of the building. The tardy worshipper was a man above the
medium height, and erect as a Virginia pine He walked like
an Indian, as I observed at once, planting his feet straight
forward, and rising on his toes with a loping motion. His
hair was snowy white, and hung down to the collar of his
coat. When he took his seat, and faced the congregation,
one saw that his eyes were dark and piercing; his eyebrows
black; his features finely chiselled. A full white beard
added to his venerable appearance and accentuated the
quaintness of the figure in a community where shaven chins
and upper lips were the rule.
I had hardly noted these peculiarities when he bowed his
head upon his hands, resting his elbows upon his knees,
evidently in silent devotion, and remained thus for several
minutes. The choir was singing the introductory anthem
when he sat upright, and perceived the occupant of the
pulpit. A brilliant smile irradiated the grave features;
to my amazement he arose, ran up the steps of the sacred
desk, and held out his hand to the preacher, the other
hand
upon his heart, and bowed deferentially. Mr. Terhune arose,
with no sign of surprise or annoyance, and bowed silently
over the locked hands. As nimbly as he had mounted the
steps, the eccentric individual ran down and resumed his
seat. Neither man had unclosed his lips, but the
pantomime of welcome and acknowledgment was so
significant that words would have been superfluous. The
Unknown appeared to hearken devoutly to reading and
to sermon, accompanying his listening by actions foreign
to the behavior of latter-day church-goers. They were
singularly expressive to me, whose eyes wandered to him
covertly every few minutes. Nobody else paid any
attention to him. Now, his joined hands were raised
almost to his chin, and the bowed head shaken over them,
as in deep contrition - an attitude that recalled the
"publican standing afar off." Once he beat softly upon
his breast. Again, he nodded approval of what he heard.
Often he closed his eyes, and his lips moved in prayer.
He was the foremost of the retiring congregation to
leave the church after the benediction, passing down the
aisle with the free, sweeping lope that had reminded me
of an Indian.
I had the story over our early Sunday dinner. When Mr.
Henry finished it, I recalled that I had heard, when a mere
child, my mother speak of meeting at Doctor Rice's, in her
early girlhood, a nephew of John Randolph - St. George
Randolph by name - who was deaf and dumb.
"One of the handsomest young men I ever saw," she
subjoined, "with flashing black eyes and dark, beautiful
curls. He frightened me by offering to teach me the finger
alphabet; but his manners were very pleasant, and he
seemed gay, in spite of his affliction. He was educated
in France, and had just come home when I saw him.
Obedient memory, following this clue, unearthed a passage
in Garnett's Life of John Randolph, which was part of my
biographical library. In a letter to an old friend the
uncle lamented that his nephew St. George had become
insane. He had made several efforts to marry, and was
unsuccessful - as he was given to understand - on
account of his infirmity.
Mr. Henry's narrative brought the biography down to date.
The unhappy youth - sole heir to his father and his uncle's
wealth after the death of his younger brother, Tudor - was
committed to an asylum for the insane. How long this
man - born in the purple, highly educated, refined in taste,
and elegant in bearing - was allowed to linger in the filthy
inferno of the old-time "madhouse," I would not recollect
if I could. Then the creaking wheel of his fortunes took
an unexpected turn. By some legal manipulation I do not
pretend to understand, Mr. Wyatt Cardwell, of Charlotte,
the father of our groomsman and travelling companion in
the first stage of our wedding-journey, became the guardian
of the almost forgotten lunatic. A visit to his afflicted
charge wrought so powerfully upon Mr. Cardwell's
sympathies, that he left no stone unturned until the last
of the direct line of Randolphs was a free man, and
domesticated in the home of his guardian. The remnants of
his once fine library were placed at his disposal; he had
his own riding-horse, and other luxuries - in short, all
that he was able to enjoy. The Charlotte people respected
his misfortunes, and treated him kindly whenever occasion
offered. He read, and apparently enjoyed books, reading
French, Latin, and English at pleasure. His reminiscences
of his distinguished uncle, and the politics of his unquiet
day, were distinct, and to those who communicated with him
by signs or by writing, extremely entertaining.
His fellow-citizens came to have a pride in the relic of
the heroic age. His shrewd comments upon men he had
known in his prime, and the acquaintances of to-day, were
repeated as bon mots.
Sane, he would never be. The splendid intellect, that should
have surmounted the frightful disability imposed at birth,
was hopelessly shattered. But he was a local celebrity,
about whom clung a glamour of romantic importance.
I entered fully into this feeling within three weeks after I
had my earliest glimpse of him.
The Rev. Mr.--, from another county, who had filled the
pulpit of the Village Church more frequently in past years
than was quite agreeable to the congregation, chanced to
spend the Sunday in the neighborhood, and was invited to
preach. He arose to announce the opening hymn just as St.
George Randolph lifted his head from his private devotions.
The expression of ineffable disgust, when he discovered
who was to officiate that forenoon, was unmistakable and
indescribable. Then he deliberately went through the
pantomime of sharpening a pencil, a forefinger doing duty
as the pencil, three fingers of the right hand holding an
imaginary pen-knife. The sharpening done, he blew the
imaginary refuse into the air with a disdainful puff. We all
witnessed the operation, and the dullest could not miss the
meaning. More than one was unable to join in the song of
praise selected by the only man who was unconscious of the
by-play. In the forty-five years of his active pastorale, my
husband but twice violated pulpit and pew proprieties so far
as to exchange meaning and amused glances with me. That
was one of the times. As for Wirt Henry, nothing but an
agonized ray from his wife's eye kept him from disgracing
himself.
Having testified to the nature and sincerity of his
sentiments with respect to the obnoxious interloper, as he
considered him, our local wit turned a cold shoulder toward
the pulpit and buried himself in the pages of a small,
much-worn volume he drew from his pocket, never vouchsafing
another glance at desk or occupant during the service.
The little book was a collection of devotional readings
he carried with him everywhere. His mother had given it
to him when he went abroad. From her, too, he had learned
to kneel by his bed each night and pray, as he had done
at her knee in infancy. He never remitted the habit. I
used to wonder, with a hard heartache, if he kept it up
during that dark, dreadful age in the asylum.
Less than three years after my first sight of him, the
deaf, dumb and lunatic heir of the vast Randolph estate
joined the mother he had not forgotten, nor ceased to
love and venerate in the long night that had no star of
hope, and which was to know no dawning this side of heaven.
PLANTATION PREACHING - COLORED COMMUNICANTS -
IN the group of midland
counties that embraced Charlotte,
Prince Edward and Halifax - names that fell into line,
as by natural gravitation, in the thought and speech of
the "Old Virginian" - the Presbyterian was the leading
denomination. Rice, Lacy, Hoge, Alexander, and Speece
had left their mark upon preceding generations, and a
fragrant memory - as of mountains of myrrh and hills of
frankincense - through all the Southern Church.
Five out of seven of the leading planters in the region
were Presbyterians. The others were, almost without
exception, Episcopalians, and the two denominations
affiliated more cordially than with Baptists, Methodists, and
the sparse sprinkling of Campbellites, or "Christians," as
they preferred to call their sect.
Slavery existed in Virginia in its mildest possible form, and
nowhere was the master's rule more paternal than in the
group of counties I have named. The negroes were permitted
to hold their own prayer-meetings in their cabins
whenever it pleased them; they attended religious services
as regularly as their owners, and, in a majority of the old
families, were called in to family worship with the children
of the household. No more convincing proof of their
religious freedom could be desired than the fact that the
bulk of the colored population belonged to the Baptist
Church Why, I could never make out. The Methodists
would seem likely to attract them with equal force, their
methods appealing to the emotional, excitable natures of the
semi-tropical race as strongly as those of the denomination
that found favor in their sight. Yet, when one of our
servants "got through" the spiritual conflicts that ushered in
a state of grace, we expected him, or her, to join the Baptist
Church as confidently as we looked for the child of the
Covenant, "ordered in all things and sure," to confirm, when
it arrived at "the age of discretion," the vows taken by
parents and sponsors in baptism.
It was not singular, therefore, that the new pastor of the
Village Church at Charlotte Court-House should find, at his
installation in his cure of souls, the name of but one colored
person upon the roll of communicants. We never spoke of
them as "negroes" in that benighted age.
"Uncle Cæsar," the trusted "headman" upon the
plantation of Colonel Marshall - Mrs. Henry's father - had
once partaken of the Lord's Supper in the church in which
his master was an elder. Which violation of the laws of his
denomination, being duly reported, was the occasion of a
case of discipline long talked of throughout the colored
community. The recusant was sharply reprimanded, and
notified that a second offence would be punished by
excommunication. The doughty old servitor thereupon
declared that, as he hoped to sit down to the supper of the
Lamb in heaven with his master, so he would continue to do
on earth, when the Lord's table was spread in the Village
Church. An example was made of him for the edification of
others, and Cæsar became a Presbyterian, taking his seat
among the communicants gathered in the main body of the
church, whenever a Communion season came around.
With a broad catholicity of spirit that appears, in
perspective, incompatible with the narrowness of creeds
and ordinances prevalent, even among the educated
Christians
of that time, the "plantation preachings" held regularly
during the summer at various homesteads in those parts of
the county near the churches, were attended by the colored
population in large numbers, irrespective of the sect to
which the officiating minister might belong. It was an
established custom in the Village Church that the second
Sunday service should be, in summer, at the house of some
neighboring planter, and held for the colored people, in
particular. That the whites, within a radius of five or six
miles, drove over for the afternoon service, did not alter
the expressed purpose of the meeting, or the manner of
conducting it.
Autumn was tardy in approach that year, and so it fell out
that notice was given on the second Sunday morning after
my arrival at my new abode, of "a plantation preaching to
be held, at three o'clock, at the residence of Mr. Richard I.
Gaines, to which all are cordially invited."
We had an early dinner in consequence of the service.
Over the dessert - the servants having been excused, that
they might get ready for the "preaching" - we talked more
freely of their ideas and mode of worship, than would have
been kind in their presence. Among other anecdotes I
related one I had had from Ned Rhodes last summer, when
he had, as he reported, been "blackburying" on Sunday
afternoon.
The cemetery of the colored people was then, as now,
situated upon high, rising ground, overlooking the ravine
separating Shockoe Hill from the adjacent country. Mr.
Rhodes and a friend, in the course of a Sunday afternoon
walk, were drawn to the spot by the sight of a great crowd
of negroes and a string of mourning coaches.
When the two young men were near enough to the concourse
to hear what was going on, they were espied by the orator
of the day, who instantly soared into what his ilk
admired as "dictionary English." Upon the heap of
red clay beside the grave was a tiny coffin. The newcomers
agreed, in telling the story, that they had never beheld
a smaller, and that the size of the pitiful little casket,
wrapped with flowers, by contrast with the number of
attendants upon the pompous service, set the stamp of
absurdity upon the whole performance before they caught
what the man was saying.
That this was in keeping with the rest, they speedily
perceived. In hortatory tones that thundered to the remotest
auditor, he dilated upon the uncertainty of life:
"...Even de distinguished lives of de two 'lustr'ous
strangers what has honored us by comin' among us dis
blessed arternoon, to jine in our mo'nin'. What is they?
And what is we? And what is any man, bo'n o' woman, my
brethren? Up ter-day wid de hoppergrass, and down
ter-morrow wid de sparrergrass! Like de flower ob de
cornfiel', so he spreads hisself, like a tree planted by de
horsebranch. Den de win' rises and de tempes' blows, an'
beats upon dat man - and whar is he? An' he shan' know
dat place o' his'n, no mo'."
Pausing in mid-career, he touched the pathetically
ridiculous box with a disdainful foot.
"As fur dis t'ing!" rising on his toes in the energy of his
contempt - "as fur dis 'ere itum - put de t'ing in de groun'!
It's too small fer to be argyin' over!"
Mr. Henry followed with a story of a darky, who prayed
that "we might grow up befo' de Lord, like calves and
beeves of de stall, and be made meat for de kingdom o'
heaven."
Mrs. Henry had a tale of a man who prayed at a
plantation-meeting at Woodfork - Dr. Joel Watkins's
homestead - that Rev. John Rice, Mr. Terhune's immediate
predecessor and a nephew of "Aunt Rice's" husband -
"might soon cease from his labors, and his works, may dey
foller him!"
"After which performance," she continued, "my uncle -
his master - had a private interview with him, and forbade
him ever to pray in public again."
Then I heard that, within the two years' incumbency of
the present pastor, ten colored members had been added to
the Village Church, much to the satisfaction of their
owners. Among them, one Dabney and his brother Chesley,
or Chelsea (I am not sure which), were prominent in all
good words and works. Both could read and write, and both
were skilled carpenters, who had hired their time from
their master, and were working at their trade for
themselves - respectable citizens in all but the right of
franchise. The pastor spoke seriously and gratefully of their
influence for good among their fellows, and of his hopes for
the class they represented.
"Dabney is especially gifted in prayer," commented Mr.
Henry, gravely.
I did not then comprehend why his eyes twinkled, and
why the others laughed. I was to know before the day was
done.
The Gaines homestead was a fine old brick building,
fronted by a broad veranda (we said "porch" then, in true
English fashion). A spacious lawn stretched between the
house and the gate. Under the trees shading the turf were
ranged long rows of benches, occupied, that Sunday
afternoon, by men and women from the Gaines plantation
and from other freeholdings for miles around. There may
have been four hundred, all told. A healthier, happier
peasant class could not be found on either side of the
ocean. All were clean; all were well-dressed. The younger
women were gay with the discarded finery which was the
perquisite of house-servants, ladies' maids in particular.
The porch and the windows of the drawing-room were
filled with guests of fairer complexion, but in demeanor and
general behavior not a whit more quietly reverent. The
brief invocation, the reading of the Scriptures, and the
sermon were the duty of the presiding clergyman. He stood
at the head of the short flight of steps, facing the dusky
throng, and paying no more heed to the small audience
behind him than if it had not been. It was the "colored
people's" service. In the selection of hymns the leader was
guided by his knowledge of what would be familiar to them.
The first went with a swing and a rush that shook the
branches above the singers' heads, and brought down slow
showers of tinted leaves upon the grass.
It was a perfect afternoon. The fields were golden
brown; no frost had fallen to blacken or bleach them.
Hickories were canopies of warm amber; oaks were
reddening, and the maples were aglow with autumnal fires.
The still air was nutty sweet.
The prayer, immediately preceding the sermon, was
offered by an aged farm-hand, upon whom the leader called
to conduct our devotions. His hair was pale chinchilla; his
back was bent, and his thin voice quavered sadly. All the
same, he voiced the petitions of every heart for strength,
wisdom, and righteousness, briefly and pertinently. The
sermon over, Dabney was bidden to "lead us in prayer."
I was more than curious to hear the "gifted" brother. I
had, on the drive out from the village, illustrations of his
practice of introducing pointed personalities into extempore
blending of supplication, confession, and adoration. How,
the year before, when the smallpox appeared in the lower
end of the village, Doctor Flournoy, a leading physician in
the county, undertook the charge of the few cases of the
dreaded disease, quarantining himself from the homes of
other patients and acquaintances. In the cold weather, the
second service of the Sabbath was still for the negroes. But
they occupied the lower part of the church, and the whites
sat in the gallery, reversing the order of the morning
services. There were few in the gallery when Doctor
Flournoy, peeping in at the door, thought it safe to slip
into a seat in the choir-loft, which was quite empty.
Dabney's falcon eye had descried him, and when he arose to
pray he "improved" the incident:
"O Lord! we beseech Thee to bless and take care of the
good doctor who has crope into the gallery up yonder,
'cause why, he's afeerd he may carry smallpox in his clo'es
to some of us. Be a shield about that good man whose heart
so faints for the courts of the Lord that he jes' can't keep
away. See to it, O Shepherd of Thine Isrul! that he don't
ketch the smallpox himself!"
With all this, I was so far unprepared for what was to
follow the uprising of the tall figure from the ranks of the
believers, collected in the heart of the congregation, that I
shrank back, out of sight of those who might have their
eyes open and focussed upon me, in my seat just within a
front window.
For thus held forth the man mighty in prayer, when he
had disposed comfortably of the world at large and the
brotherhood of saints in especial:
"O Lord! have mercy upon the hardened and hell-defying,
hell-desarvin' sinners, in these 'ere low-groun's of sin an'
sorrow, 'roun' about Charlotte Coate-House, from the rivers
to the ends of the yearth.
"Bring 'em to mou'n as one mou'ns fer his first-born, and
come a flockin' into the kingdom, as doves to their
windows, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
"Bless the master an' mistis of this home, an' pour out on
'em the riches of the heavens above, and the earth beneath,
and the waters under the earth, from the rivers to the ends
of the yearth.
"O Lord! in the plentifulness of Thy mercy, bless with all
manner of mercies the great and notable man of God,
whom Thou hast placed over us in speritual things. Bless
him in his rising up, and goin' about, and among the sheep
of his parstur', from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
"Bless her who Thou hast given to him to be a pardner in
the lan' what flows wid milk an' honey, an' in de was' and
desolate po'tions, whar no water is, from the rivers to the
ends of the yearth.
"May they two live together for many a long year, like
two turtle-doves in one nes', with nary a jar between, from
the rivers to the ends of the yearth!"
"A powerful figure - that of the family jars!" said my
companion, when we had had our confidential laugh out
driving homeward between the hedgerows of the plantation
on-road and the cool depths of forest-lands. "And the only
one he did not borrow from the Bible. He knows but one book."
MY NOVITIATE AS A PRACTICAL HOUSEWIFE - MY COOK
FIFTY years after it was
written, I found among some
family papers a letter from my husband to his father, dated
"February 20, 1857." His description of the cottage home in
which we were now installed, as master and mistress,
reads like a pastoral. He was not addicted to sentimental
rhapsodies. If this were ever his style, he would have
curbed the disposition to effervesce, in writing to another
man. But the tone of the whole epistle is that of one
thoroughly content with his home and the management
thereof.
One sentence brought deep gratification to me, blended
oddly with amusement and a tinge of melancholy:
"Virginia is very well and very busy. I confess to some
surprise at her skill in housewifery. She seems as much at
home in the kitchen as in the drawing-room, to which she is
summoned many times a day to receive visitors."
Until I read that letter, I had not meant to devote so
much as a page - much less a chapter - to the crucial
experiences of that novitiate in domestic lore. Now, I feel
it incumbent upon me, as a duty I owe to the countrywomen I
have tried to help along these lines, for forty-odd years, to
lift the veil from the homely, ill-appointed kitchen in which I
successfully deluded a quick-eyed, quick-witted man into
believing I was mistress of the situation.
In my father's house I was considered to have a turn, if
not a talent, for housewifery. From childhood it was my
delight to haunt the laundry, where the finer branches
of cookery were carried on when the washing was out of
the way. My mother was a very Mrs. Rundle in the
excellence of her preserves and pickles. Mary Anne, the
comely Indo-mulatto, was proficient in the composition of
cakes, jellies, and pastries, syllabubs and creams. She liked
to have me "help" her, as she put it. That is, I whipped eggs
and beat butter and pounded spices, peeled fruit, topped
and tailed gooseberries, when I felt like it, and kept her
amused with my chatter.
At ten, I was trusted to carry the key-basket and to "give
out" ingredients required for the day's cooking and serving.
At fourteen, I believed myself to be a clever cake-maker,
and at sixteen, proudly assumed the responsibility of putting
up preserves and pickles for the winter's consumption, one
summer, when my mother's health obliged her to leave
town in the height of the fruit season. When she came
home, the stern old granddame, with whom I was rather a
favorite (if she ever indulged her buckram-clad spirit in the
weakness of having a favorite), informed her gentle
daughter-in-law that "Mary" - as she persisted in calling
me - "had kept the house so well that we had hardly missed
her mother."
It was not strange, therefore, that I took the helm of my
newly launched barque with faint and few misgivings as to
my ability to navigate the unknown seas that looked calm
and bright from the shore.
Ours was a prosperous country parish, and liberal
hospitality was the law of daily living. The Henrys vacated
the Parsonage a few days before Christmas, and I went
down to Richmond for a fortnight, to complete the
household plenishing we had begun during the honeymoon.
My sisters-in-law - with whom I was ever upon cordial
terms -
had lent advice and co-operation in the selection of
furniture at the North. My carpets were bought in New
Brunswick, New Jersey, where Judge Terhune was an old
and honored resident. My mother had seen to the outfit of
household linen. I smile now, in recollecting how carefree
was my mood through that happy Christmas fortnight, after
the receipt of a letter from the member of the firm who
abode by the stuff for ten days of my holiday, apprised me
of the arrival of the furniture from New Brunswick and
from Richmond, likewise, that "Mrs. Eggleston and Mrs.
Henry, with some other ladies, kindly insist upon having
the house cleaned, the carpets made and put down, and the
furniture settled in place while you are away."
The proceedings would astound me now that I know
more of humankind, and of parishes. Still more
extraordinary would I consider the cool, matter-of-course
way in which I received the intelligence. It was the Old
Virginia atmosphere in that long-dead-and-buried time.
I did open my eyes, and break into ecstatic gratitude,
when, on taking formal possession of our real home, where
we had expected to live in picnic fashion upon the
provisions we had laid away in baskets and trunks before
leaving Richmond, we beheld the table set in the dining-
room for supper, and fires alight in every room. Further
search revealed that the house was in perfect order, the
curtains hung, carpets down, and the larder stocked to
overflowing with staples and delicacies. The cook and
chambermaid hired for the year - as was the invariable
custom of the "system" - were on hand, and John, the man-
of-all-work, had met us at the station. Not another human
creature was visible. For any evidence furnished to the
contrary, by sight or hearing, the "surprise" might have been
the work of benevolent pixies. My sister Alice - a girl of
fourteen - would be an inmate of our house for most of the
time, and study with us as heretofore. She
and I ran about the house like two madcaps, after supper
and until bedtime, calling out excitedly at each fresh
discovery.
Two barrels of flour and one of corn-meal; two of apples
and one of potatoes; a half-barrel of sugar, and other staple
groceries, in divers measures, made the foundation of the
abundant supply for creature wants. The upper shelves of
the store-room were crowded with pickles, preserves and
all manner of conserved fruits for which the Virginia
housewife was justly famed. Truly, the lines had fallen to
us in pleasant places.
Excitement was renewed next morning by the appearance
at the outer gate, and streaming down the walk, of a
procession of colored men and women, each laden with
basket, or pail, or tray, or parcel. The women bore their
burdens on their heads, the men upon shoulders or in their
arms. All, like the Greeks of old, came bearing gifts, and
of a more perishable nature than those that loaded pantry
and store-room shelves. Honey, breads of all shapes and
characters; cakes, butter, and eggs; chickens, dressed for
the table; sausage, spareribs, hams, and shoulders; a roast
of beef; custards and puddings and mince-pies - seemed
designed to victual a garrison rather than a family of three
whites and three servants. To crown the profusion and add
to the variety, the elegant young lawyer, Mr. Cardwell, who
had figured in our bridal train, drove up through the main
street, in at our front gate, and down to the Parsonage door,
a cow and calf, to the unbounded delight of the village
urchins who flocked at his heels up to the gate. The cow,
"Old Blue," as she was dubbed, because her color could not
be more accurately described, gave the richest milk I ever
skimmed. I would let no one else take care of it after one
week's experience had taught me the necessity of giving
my personal attention to each department of housewifery, if
I would not be cheated at every conceivable opportunity.
Thus gayly began my training in a school from which
I have not yet been graduated.
My mother was a good housekeeper, and the wheels of her
machine ran in smooth ruts. She had old and competent
servants. I doubt if she had ever swept a room, or roasted
a piece of meat, in her life. The cook we had hired from
a neighboring planter had excellent recommendations. True,
she had been one of the superfluous "hands" who were
hired out from year's end to year's end, and such were
not warranted as first-class workers. They were prone
to become shiftless and indifferent to their work,
by reason of frequent changes. Still, Emily was reputed
to be a fair cook and laundress. Among the cuts of
fresh meat sent in by the friends, whose consistent
generosity moved me to the invention of the phrase
"kitchenly-kindness," was a noble beefsteak. I ordered
it to be cooked for breakfast the second day of our
incumbency.
Emily fried it brown - almost to a crisp!
Five cook-books were in my just-unpacked library.
Breakfast over, I sought out Miss Leslie's Complete
Cook-Book, and read up on beefsteak.
Two more were sent in that day from country parishioners.
Next morning, I hied me surreptitiously to the kitchen
before my husband or sister was awake. I bore the steak
upon a charger - alias, a crockery platter. It had been
under lock and key until then; otherwise, its fair
proportions would inevitably have been shorn. The honesty
of the hired hand was an axiomatic negligible quantity;
and the most faithful of family servants seldom resisted
successfully the temptation to appropriate to their own
use an unlawful share of eatables. They were a gluttonous
race, and the tenet that "taking from marster wasn't
stealing," stood high in their creed.
I had told Emily overnight that I would show her how a
steak should be cooked, and she was more than ready for me.
I had never touched a bit of raw meat before, and the
clamminess of the gory cut sent "creeps" all over me.
It was very bloody to my eyes, and I washed it well in cold
water preparatory to laying it upon the broad bottom of the
frying-pan, heated and buttered, which, I had learned from
another of the five manuals, was "a passable substitute for
a gridiron if the young housekeeper had failed to provide
herself with this important utensil." Emily had not
found a gridiron in the box of kitchen utensils unpacked
before my arrival, and there was no time to look it up. The
steak, dripping wet, went into the broad pan set over a bed
of red coals. We cooked with wood in Old Virginia. It
hissed and spluttered and steamed like the escape-valve of
a balky locomotive. Miss Leslie said "Turn it at the end of
eight minutes." The sodden pallor of the exposed side did
not look right to me, somehow.
"Oh!" quoth Emily, "you is gwine to stew it - is you?"
Pass we quickly over the abhorrent tale! The steak
never attained unto the "rich brown" which, according to
my cook-book makers, it should display when ready for
table. I turned it four times, and, with a vague idea that
butter browned more readily than meat, I added a great
spoonful to the juices oozing from the steak. There was a
great deal of gravy in the dish when it was served, and my
companions pronounced it "extremely savory."
"But you should not have gone out into the kitchen,"
demurred my husband. "Does not the cook understand her
business?"
"Few of her class can do without teaching," I rejoined
valiantly.
I had already made a resolve from which I never swerved:
If my cook did not understand her business, and I
understood it even less, I would not confess it. As time
went on, I was to feel such test of the heroic resolve as I
had never anticipated. For, as the knowledge of Emily's
ineptitude
grew upon me, the conviction of my own crass and
comprehensive ignorance waxed into a haunting horror. I
was as unlearned as the babe unborn in everything that a
practical housekeeper should know. I could not make a
batch of bread, or boil a potato, or broil a chop, had my
eternal welfare - or my husband's happiness - depended
upon it. As for soup-making, roasting, stewing, and boiling
meats, frying and baking fish - the very commonest and
coarsest rudiments of the lore in which I was supposed to
be proficient - I was as idiotically void of comprehension as
if I had never heard of a kitchen. How I maintained a
brazen show of competency is a mystery to me at this
distance from that awful trial-period. I studied my quintette
of cook-books with agonized earnestness. And when I was
tolerably positive that I had mastered a recipe, I "went and
did it" with Squeersian philosophy. How many failures were
buried out of the sight of those who loved me best, and
were most constantly with me, would have shocked the
frugal housewife into hysterics. My mastery of this and of
that process was painfully slow, but it began to tell upon our
daily fare. I got out the gridiron, and learned to cook to
perfection the steaks my husband's soul loved, and from my
nonpareil of neighbors, Mrs. Eggleston, I got a recipe for
quick biscuits.
To the acquisition of that particular formula, and the
conversation that embedded the gift, I attribute a large
measure of the success which eventually rewarded the
striving unto blood, that was my secret martyrdom for half
a year.
She was a "capable" housewife, according to Mrs.
Stowers characterization of the guild. She was, moreover,
warm-hearted, sensible, and sympathetically reminiscent of
her own early struggles with the housekeeping problem.
When I took her into confidence as to my distrust of my
quintette of manuals, she laughed out so cheerily that I
felt the fog lift from my spirits.
"All written by old maids, or by women who never kept
house," she declared. "To my certain knowledge, Miss
Leslie has boarded in a Philadelphia hotel for twenty
years. I wouldn't give a guinea a gross for their books.
Make your own! I do! When I get a tiptop, practical recipe
- one that I have tried for myself and proved, I write
it down in my own every-day language; then I have met that
enemy, and it is mine!"
We were in her house, and she brought out the manuscript
book in which her victories were recorded. Next, she
offered to lend it to me.
"I don't think," she subjoined, tactfully, "that old-fashioned
housekeepers, like your mother and mine - yes, and my
mother-in-law - take the lively interest in learning new
ways of doing things that we do. I am very proud of some
discoveries and a few inventions that I have written down
there. Those quick biscuits, for instance, are my resource
when the bread doesn't turn out just right. They never fail.
And speaking of bread, here is a sort of short cut to
excellence in that direction. That is my composition, too.
Take the book with you, and copy anything you fancy."
"Bread is Emily's strong point," I remarked, complacently,
in accepting the loan. "Nevertheless, I shall try your
composition."
The promise was fulfilled in a way I had not expected. I
had been keeping house now about four months, and was
beginning to justify, in some degree, the fond boast of the
son to the father of my familiarity with kitchen-craft, when
Emily announced one morning, as I was "giving out" for the
day:
"Tain' no use measurin' out dat ar' flour, Miss Virginny!"
(The old-time servant never said "Mrs." to, or of anybody.)
"I done got my han' out makin' bread! I'd jes' spile yer flour
an' things ef I was to try to make a batch o' bread."
"What is the matter with your hands?" I looked at the
members, brown and brawny, and apparently uninjured.
She spread them out as a bat might his wings,
and regarded them in affectionate commiseration.
"As I tole you, I done got my han' out for make bread.
Nobody don' know how-come a body's han' gits out for
somethin' or 'nother. Sometimes, it's fur bread, an' then
agin it's fur cake, or maybe cookin' chickens, or the likes
o' that. Thar's some as thinks it's a sort of bewitched, or
conjurin'. Some says as how it's the ole Satan what takes
his spite on us that 'ar way. I don't know nothin bout how
that may be. I jes' know that my han' done got out for
makin' bread. I been done feel it soon's I go: out o' bade
this mornin'."
"And may I ask," I interrupted, in freezing politeness that
was utterly wasted, "how long your hand is likely to stay
out?"
She shook her head, sadly, imperturbably.
"Nobody can' never say how long, Miss Virginny. May
be six days, and maybe two mont's. Sis' Phoebe" (fellow
church-members were always "Brother" and "Sister" even
in every-day speech), "what b'long to Mars' Wyatt Cardwell,
she got her han' out for two or three t'ings at oncet
las' year, an' sho's you're born an' I'm standin' here in
this yere blessed sto'-room, she ain't got it in agin fur
better'n six mont. I's certainly mighty sorry fur you an'
Mars' Ed'ard, but the Lord's will is jes' p'intedly got to be
done."
Constant to my vow of discretion in all things pertaining
to domestic tribulations, I said never a word to the other
members of the smitten household of what menace them.
The congestion was the more serious, inasmuch a there
was not a baker within twenty miles, and we bake fresh
bread and rolls every day. I was in poor physical
case for culinary enterprise, for one of the constitutional
headaches which I had inherited from both parents had
warned me of its approach; I ought to keep quiet and
discourage the advance. Instead of which, I girded up the
loins of my spirit and concluded that there could hardly be
a more propitious opportunity for trying Mrs. Eggleston's
bread recipe. Since a knowledge of practical bread-making
was one of life's stringent necessities in this latitude,
"better sune than syne."
I set the sponge at noon, in pursuance of directions laid
down so explicitly that a novice with a headache that was
by now a fixed fact, could not err therein. I could not sit up
to supper for the blinding pain. Alice was taking that meal,
and was to spend the evening with a friend, and my husband
had a business call in his study. No one would be privy to
the appeal I meditated making to my tyrant. I sent for her,
and ordered her to bring to my room the sponge I had left in
a secluded corner of the dining-room. When it came, I bade
her bring kneading-tray and flour. These set in order on the
table, I called her attention to the hopeful and enticing
foaming condition of the sponge, and assured her that no
evil could befall the dough if she were to knead in the flour
and prepare the mass for the night's working, there under
my eyes.
She planted herself in the middle of the floor and
surveyed me mournfully - a sphinx done in chocolate.
"I suttinly is mighty sorry for you, Miss Virginny, an' I'd
do anyt'ing what I could do fur to help you out o' you'
trouble. But thar ain't no manner o' use in my layin' my han'
to that ar' dough. It wouldn't never rise, not 'tell the
jedgment-day. It would be temptin' Providence, out and out.
When a body's han' is out, it's out for good and all! I done
do my best to make you onderstan' what's happen' to me,
an' angels couldn't do no mo'! Lord 'a' mercy! what is you
goin' to do?"
I had jumped up and belted in my dressing - gown, rushed
to the wash-stand, and washed my hands furiously. Without
a syllable I tackled the sponge, measured and worked in
the flour, and fell to kneading it in a blind rage,
Pretty soon my strength flagged; the pain in my temples
and back of the eyes beat me faint. To get a better
purchase on the stiffened mass, I set the tray down on
the floor and knelt over it. That bread had to be made
if I perished in the attempt.
The chocolate-colored sphinx surveyed me sorrowfully,
without stirring an inch from her place on the hearth-rug.
Neither of us heard the door open, softly and cautiously,
lest the noise might disturb my slumbers. Both of us started
violently at the voice that said:
"What is the meaning of this?"
I sat up on my knees and faced the speaker, essaying a
miserable imitation of a laugh.
"Emily has got her hand out in bread-making, and I am
trying mine. This is almost ready now."
He walked across the floor and lifted me to my feet; laid
me incontinently upon the lounge, and confronted the cook.
"Take up that tray!" She obeyed dumbly. "Carry it out
into the kitchen and finish the bread. Yes! I mean it! Get
your hand in before you are a minute older, or I'll know the
reason why. And if the bread is not good, I shall send you
back to your master to-morrow morning, and tell him I have
no further use for you."
He would have cut his hand off before he would have
struck a woman, and the creature knew it as well as I did,
but she cowered before the blue blaze of his eyes, as at a
lightning flash.
His call stayed her on the threshold.
"Do you understand what I have said?"
The sphinx crumbled:
"Ya'as, suh!"
"You understand, too, that your hand is not to get out
again?"
"Not ef I can holp it, Mars' Ed'ard!"
"See that you do help it!"
Then I held my head hard with both hands to keep the
sutures from flying asunder, and laughed until I cried.
From the stress and toils, the mortifications and
bewilderment of that year, grew into a settled purpose the
longing to spare other women - as ill-equipped as I was,
when I entered upon my housewifely career - the real
anguish of my novitiate. The foundation of Common Sense in
the Household was laid in the manuscript recipe-book begun at
Mrs. Eggleston's instance. I had learned, to my bitter woe,
that there was no printed manual that would take the tyro
by the hand and show her a plain path between pitfalls and
morasses. I learned, by degrees, to regard housewifery as
a profession that dignifies her who follows it, and
contributes, more than any other calling, to the mental,
moral, and spiritual sanity of the human race. I received my
call to this ministry in that cottage parsonage.
My departure from the beaten track of novel-writing, in
which I had achieved a moderate degree of success, was in
direct opposition to the advice of the friends to whom I
mentioned the project. The publishers, in whose hands my
first cook-book has reached the million mark, confessed
frankly to me, after ten editions had sold in as many
months, that they accepted the work solely in the hope that
I might give them a novel at some subsequent period. Even
my husband shook a doubtful head over the wild scheme. It
was the only book published by me that had not his frank
and hearty approval. Upheld by the rooted conviction that I
had been made, through my own shortcomings and battles,
fit to supply what American women lacked and needed
sorely, I never debated or doubted.
My husband found me "gloating" over a copy of Common
Sense the week after it was published.
"I verily believe," he said, wonderingly, "that you take
more pride in that book than in all the rest you have
written."
I answered, confidently, "It will do more good than all
of them put together."
This was fifteen years after Emily's hand got out, and I
knelt on the carpet in my bedroom to knead my trial batch
of bread.
THE STIRRED NEST AMONG THE OAKS -
"CHARLOTTE C. H., April 12th, 1857
"MY
STILL-REMEMBERED FRIEND, - It is a raw, cloudy
Sunday afternoon; Mr. Terhune is suffering somewhat from a
cold and is, moreover, fatigued by the labors of the day. I have
persuaded him to take a siesta on the lounge. Even my birds are
quiet under the drowsy influence of the weather, and only the
fire and clock interrupt the stillness of my pleasant chamber. . . .
"I have been on the point several times of writing to you
(despite your broken promise of last September), begging you to
visit us during the summer. Need I say how happy we should be
to see you in our Home?
"It is a sweet word to my ear, a sweet place to my heart, for a
happier was never granted to mortals. I do not say this as a
matter of course. You should know me too well than to suppose
that. It comes up freely - joyously - from a brimming heart. My
only fear is lest my cup should be too full, for what more could I
ask at the hands of the Giver of mercies? I have a dear little home,
furnished in accordance with my own taste; delightful society,
and an abundance of it; perfect health, having scarcely seen a
sick day since my marriage - and the best husband that lives
upon the globe. . . .
"This is a large and flourishing church, demanding much hard
work on his part; but he is young and strong, and he loves his
profession. We visit constantly together, and here end my out-of-door
'pastoral duties.' Within doors, my aim is to make home
bright; to guard my husband from annoyance and intrusion
during study-hours; to entertain him when he is weary, and to
listen sympathizingly to all that
interests him. I shall never be a model 'minister's wife.' I knew
that from the first, so I have never attempted to play the rôle.
Fortunately, it is not expected, much less demanded.
"We shall make a flying visit to Richmond in May. After that,
we shall be at home, off and on, certainly until September. Our
cottage parsonage - the 'little nest among the oaks,' as Alice
calls it - is ever ready to receive you, and so are our hearts.
"Were my other and very much better half awake, he would
join me in love and good wishes, for I have taught him to know
and to love you all."
"CHARLOTTE
C. H., November 8th, 1857.
"MY OWN DEAR
FRIEND, - A fact overlooked by Mr. Terhune and
myself, occurred to me a little while ago - viz., that there
is only a semi-weekly mail to Smithville. Therefore, to insure
your reception of this in season at Montrose, it should go from
this place to-morrow. It was Mr. Terhune's intention to drop a
line to Mr. Campbell to-night; but I have begged that I might
write to you instead.
"I have many and bright hopes for you. Hopes, not 'as lovely
as baseless,' but founded upon a knowledge of your
character and that of him whom God has given you as your other
and stronger self. When I rejoiced in your union, it was with
sincere and full delight. You have a mate worthy of you - one
whom you love, and who loves you. What more does the woman's
heart crave? You have chosen wisely, and happiness, such as
you have never known before, must follow.
"Will you not come up and see us this winter? Nothing would
give me more pleasure than to see you in our dear little home.
"Mr. Terhune is very anxious that I should accompany him to
Powhatan, but I dare not suffer my mind to dwell upon a project
so charming. He cannot, all at once, get used to visiting
without me, but in the crib, over in the corner, lies an
insurmountable obstacle - tiny to view, but which may not be
set aside.
"I wish you could see my noble boy, who will be two months
old to-morrow! He is very pretty, says the infallible 'Everybody.'
To us, he is passing dear. Already he recognizes us and frolics by
the half-hour with us, laughing and cooing - the sweetest music
that ever sounded through our hearts and home. Nothing but the
extreme inconvenience attendant upon travelling and visiting with
so young a child, prevents me from accompanying the Reverend
gentleman. . . .
I have no advice to give you except that you shall be yourself,
instead of following the kind suggestions of any Mrs. Grundy
who has an ideal pattern of the 'Minister's Wife' ready for you
to copy. I am confident that you will be 'helpmeet' for the man,
and since he will ask no more, his parish has no right to do it.
"My warm regards to Mr. Campbell. When I see him I will
congratulate him. You would not deliver the messages I would
send to him. 'Eddie' seeds a kiss to 'Auntie Effie.' "
state of society that seems, by contrast with the complex
interests of To-day, pastoral in simplicity. In reviewing the
setting and scenes of my early history, I am reading a
quaint chronicle, inhaling an atmosphere redolent of spices
beloved of our granddames, and foreign to their descendants.
It is not I who have told the story, but the girl from provinces
that are no more on earth than if they had never been. The
Spirit of that Past is the narrator. I sit with her by the open
"chimney-piece," packed as far as arms can reach with blazing
hickory logs; as she talks, the imagery of a yet older day comes
to my tongue. We knew our Bibles "by heart" in both senses of
the term, then, and believed in the spiritual symbolism of that
perfervid love-Canticle - the song of the Royal Preacher. I
find myself whispering certain musical phrases while the tale
goes on, and the story-teller's face grows more rapt:
"Thy lips drop as the honey-comb; honey and milk are under
thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of
Lebanon;
"Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant
fruits; camphire, with spikenard;
"Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon."
It is not a mystic love-chant, or a dreamy jargon, that I recite
under my breath. The sadly few (more sad and few with each
year) who recall with me the days that are no more - and
forever - will feel what I cannot put into words.
Soon after the dawn of the year 1858, we had news of the
death of my husband's youngest sister, a bright, engaging
matron, of whom I had grown very fond in my visits to her New
Jersey home. The happy wife of a man who adored her, and the
mother of a beautiful boy, she had but one unfulfilled wish on
earth. When a baby-girl
was put into her arms, she confessed this, and that now she
could ask nothing more of heaven. The coveted gift cost her her
life.
In March, my dearest friend, Mary Ragland, paid a long-
promised visit to the "nest among the oaks." She had not
been strong all winter. She was never robust. I brought her
up from town, in joyous confidence that the climate that had
kept me well and vigorous would brace her up to concert
pitch. For a few weeks she seemed to justify that belief.
Then the languor and slow fever returned. She faded before
our incredulous eyes as a flower droops on the stem. She
had no pain, and so slight was the rise in temperature that
made her thirsty by night that we would not have detected it
had she not mentioned casually at breakfast that she arose
to get a drink of water and chanced to see, through the
window, a lunar rainbow. This led to the discovery that she
always arose two or three times each night to quench her
thirst. It was characteristic that she saw the rainbow, and
was eager to report it next day. Beautiful things floated to
her by some law of natural attraction. She never took to her
bed. To the last, she averred, laughingly, that she was "only
lazy and languid." She "would be all right very soon."
As a sort of low delirium overtook her senses, her
fantasies were all of fair and lovely sights and sweet
sounds. She asked me "where I got the chain of pearls I
was wearing and why she had never seen it before?" She
exclaimed at the beauty of garlands of flowers wreathing
pictures and window-cornices, invisible to our eyes. Music
- a passion of her life - was a solace in the fearful
restlessness of the dying hours. She would have us sing to
her - first one, then the other, for an hour at a time - lying
peacefully attent, with that unearthly radiance upon her face
that never left it until the coffin-lid shut it from our
sight, and joining in, when a favorite hymn was sung, with the
rich contralto which was her "part" in our family concerts.
"She is singing herself away," said my husband, at
twilight on the ninth of May - my mother's birthday.
At nine o'clock that evening the swan-song was hushed.
We carried her down to Richmond, the next day but one.
I have said elsewhere that it is not given to one to have two
perfect, all-satisfying, friendships this side of the Land that
is all Love. She had gladdened our cottage for little over a
month. It was never quite the same after she flew heavenward.
Nor was my life.
To everybody else, it seemed that the "stirring" of the
nest began during the visit we paid to Northern friends that
summer.
Our vacation was longer than usual. It could not be gay,
for our mourning garments expressed but inadequately the
gloom from which our spirits could not escape, with the
memory of two bereavements fresh in the minds of all.
It was during this sojourn with the relatives, whose
adoption of me had been frankly affectionate from the
beginning of our association, that I learned of the desire of
my father-in-law to have his son removed nearer to the rest
of the family. The old Judge was proud and fond of the
boy, and Virginia was a long distance away from New
York - to him, and other loyal Middle Statesmen, as truly
the Hub of Civilization as Boston to the born Bostonian.
Moreover, the Village Church at Charlotte Court-House
was a country charge, although eminently respectable in
character, and honorable in all things pertaining to church
traditions. Other men as young, and, in the father's opinion,
inferior in talent and education, were called to city
parishes. "It was not right for Edward to bury himself in
the backwoods until such time as he would be too near the
dead line, with respect to age, to hope for preferment."
All this and more of the like purport fell upon
unheeding ears, when addressed to me. I had but one
answer to make after listening respectfully to argument
and appeal.
"I promised Edward, of my own free will and accord, before
our marriage, that I would never attempt to sway his
judgment in anything relating to his profession. Least of
all, would I cast the weight of what influence I might have
into either scale, if he were called upon to make change
of pastorate. He must do as he thinks best."
More than one church had made overtures to the rising
man, and his kindred were hanging eagerly upon his
decision. The initial "stir" had been given. It was a
positive relief when we turned our faces southward.
The nest was full that autumn. My husband's widower
brother-in-law, crushed by his late bereavement, and
compelled to resign the home in which his wife had taken
just pride; helpless, as only a man of strictly domestic tastes
can be in such circumstances, abandoned his profession of
the law, and resolved to study divinity. My brother Herbert
turned his back upon a promising business career and made
the same resolution. Both men were rusty in Latin and
Greek, and neither knew anything of Hebrew. My husband
- ever generous to a fault in the expenditure of his
own time and strength in the service of others - rashly
offered to "coach" them for a few months. I think they
believed him, when he represented that Latin was mere
play to him, and that an hour or two a day would be an
advantage to him in refreshing his recollection of other
dead languages.
Alice and I bemoaned ourselves, in confidence and privily,
over the loss of the quietly-happy evenings when we sewed
or crocheted, while the third person of the trio read
aloud, as few other men could read - according to our
notion. We grudged sharing the merry chats over the little
round table with those who were not quite au fait to all our mots de famille,
and did not invariably sympathize with our
judgment of people and things. Mr. Frazee was one of the
most genial of men - good through and through, and as
kind of heart as he was engaging in manner. My brother was
a fine young fellow, and his sisters loved him dearly. It
was ungracious, ungenerous, and all the other "uns" in the
English language, to regret the former order of everyday
life. We berated ourselves soundly, at each of our secret
conferences, and kept on doing it. Home was still passing
lovely, but the stirring went on.
Is everything - moral, spiritual, and physical - epidemic?
I put the question to myself when, less than a week after
the arrival of an invitation to become the leader of the
Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, and
before a definite answer was returned, the mail brought an
important document, portentous with signatures and seals
official, requesting Rev. Edward Payson Terhune to
assume the pastorate of the First Reformed Church in
Newark, New Jersey.
Here was a crucial test of my voluntary pledge never, by
word, look, or deed, to let my husband suspect the trend of
my inclinations with respect to any proposed change of
clerical relations!
For, as I am at liberty now to confess, I wanted to go to
Richmond horribly! Family, friends, ties of early association,
strengthened by nearly fifteen years of residence at the
formative period of life; the solicitations of parents,
brothers, sisters, and true and tried intimates, who
wrote to say how delighted they were at the prospect of
having me "back home" - tugged at my heartstrings until I
needed Spartan firmness of will and stoical reticence, to
hold me fast to my vow. Meanwhile, letters bearing Northern
postmarks were fluttering down upon the one whose must be
not the casting vote alone, but the responsibility of the
decision of what he felt was one of the most momentous
problems he was ever to face. Fortunately, neither of us
knew then the full gravity of the crisis.
Looking back from the top of the hill, I see so clearly the
working out of a benign and merciful design in what was
then perplexity, puzzle, and pain, that I cannot say whether
humility or devout gratitude has the ascendancy in my
thoughts. Especially is this true when I reflect that strength
was vouchsafed to me to hold my peace, even from what I
conceived was "good," when my husband brought both calls
to me, after four days of anxious deliberation, and bade me
speak one word in favor of, or against, either.
Side by side, they lay upon my table, and with them a
paper upon which he had set down, clearly and fairly, the
pros and cons of each.
He read these aloud, slowly and emphatically, then
looked up at me.
"I am in a sore strait! Can you help me?"
In my heart I thought I could, and that right speedily.
With my tongue I said: "No one has a right to say a word.
It is a matter between God and yourself."
He took up the papers silently, and went to the study.
And I prayed, with strong crying and tears, that God would
send us to Richmond.
An hour later he came back. The light of a settled
purpose was in his face. All he said was:
"I have decided to go to Newark. We will talk it over
to-morrow morning."
He slept soundly that night, for the first time in a week
So did not I!
MIGRATION NORTHWARD - ACCLIMATION -
ALBERT EDWARD,
ONE who had known my
husband well for fifty years,
wrote of him soon after his translation: "More than any
other man I ever knew, he had a genius for friendship."
This testimony is amply supported by the fact that he
kept, to his journey's end, the friends whose loving
confidence he gained during the five years of his Charlotte
pastorate. Those who loved him in his youth loved him to
the end - or so many of them as remained to see the
beautiful close of his long day.
We left our Parsonage home and the parish, which was
our first love, laden with proofs of the deep affection
inspired by devoted service in behalf of a united
constituency, and the rare personal gifts of the man who
suffered, in the parting, a wrench as sharp as that which
made the separation a grief to each member of the flock he
was leaving. It was a just tribute to his integrity of purpose
and conscientiousness that the purity of his motives in
deciding upon the step were never questioned. Leading
men in the church said openly that they could not have
hoped to keep him, after his talents and his ability to fill
worthily a wider field were recognized in the world outlying
this section of the Great Vineyard. They had foreseen that
the parting must come, and that before long. He was a
growing man, and the sphere they offered was narrow.
It was in no spirit of Christian philosophy that I
dismantled the nest among the oaks, and packed my Lares
and Penates with a fair show of cheerfulness. Inly, I was
in high revolt for a full week after the die was cast.
The final acceptance of the inevitable, and the steadfast
setting of my face Northward, ensued upon the persuasion
that the one and only thing for a sensible, God-fearing
woman to do was to make the very best of what no human
power could avert.
It is a family saying, based upon the assertion of eldest
daughter, that "if mother were set down in the middle of the
Desert of Sahara, and made to comprehend that she must
spend the rest of her days there, she would within ten
minutes, begin to expatiate upon the many advantages of a
dry climate as a residential region."
By the time we stayed our flight in Richmond, where we
spent our Christmas, I took from the worn and harassed
man of the hour the burden of explanation and defence of
the reasons for tearing ourselves up by the roots and
transplanting the tender vine into what some of our best
wishers called, "alien soil." I had worked myself into an
honest defender of the Middle States in contradistinction
to "Yankee land," before we departed, bag, baggage, and
baby, for the new home.
Mr. Terhune had preached twice in Newark, in
December, after formally accepting the call. We removed
to that city in February of 1859.
With the Saharan spirit in full flow, I met the welcoming
"people", settled in the house we bought in a pleasant
quarter of the growing city - then claiming a population of
less than seventy-five thousand - installed white servants;
received and returned calls, and was, for the first time in
my life, homesick at heart for three months.
In the recollection of the eighteen years that succeeded
that period of blind rebellion against the gentle leading
which was, for us, wisdom and loving-kindness throughout,
I write down the confession in shame and confusion of
face, and abasement of soul.
I stay the course of the narrative at this point to record,
devoutly and gratefully, that never had pastor and pastor's
wife, in any section of our land, a parish in which "pleasant
places" did more richly abound. I would write down, yet
more emphatically and thankfully, the amazing fact that, in
the dozen-and-a-half years of my dwelling among them, I
never had a word of unkind criticism of myself and my
ways; not a remark that could wound or offend was ever
addressed to me.
I wish I might have that last paragraph engraved in golden
capitals and set to the everlasting credit of that Ideal
Parish! To this hour, I turn instinctively in times of joy
and of sorrow, as to members of the true household of
faith, to the comparatively small band of the once large
congregation who are left alive upon the earth.
For eighteen years I walked up the central aisle of the
church, as I might tread the halls and chambers of my
father's house in that far Southern town, with the
consciousness that we were surrounded by an atmosphere
of affectionate appreciation, at once comforting and
invigorating.
All this - and I understate, rather than exaggerate, the
real state of circumstance and feeling I am trying to
depict - was the more surprising, because I went to this
people young, and with little experience as a clergyman's
wife. In Charlotte, I had, as we have seen, done no
"church work." I was petted and made much of, in
consideration of my position as the wife of the idolized
pastor, and my newness to the duties of country
housekeeping and the nursery. In Newark, I was gradually
to discover that I could not shirk certain obligations
connected with parish and city charities. The logic of
events - never the monitions of friends and parishioners
opened my eyes to the truth. When, at length, I took
charge of a girls' Bible
Class, and, some years after, worked up the Infant Class
from tens to hundreds, there was much expression of
unfeigned gratification and eager rallying to my help, not an
intimation of relief that I "had, at last, seen my way clear
to the performance of what everybody else had expected
of a minister's wife."
I have never had a higher compliment than was paid me
by the invitation, a dozen years back, to address the
Alumni of Union Theological Seminary in New York City
upon the subject of "Ministers' Wives."
I took occasion, in the presence of that grave and reverend
assembly of distinguished theologues, to pay a brief
tribute, as strong as words could make it, to that Ideal
Parish. I could not withhold it then. I cannot keep it back
now. I believe my experience in this regard to be highly
exceptional. More's the pity and the shame!
Five children were born to us in those happy, busy years.
Each was adopted lovingly by the people, so far as prideful
affection and generous deeds implied adoption. We were
all of one family.
Returning to the direct line of my narrative - the spring
of 1860 found us well, at work, and contented. I had good
servants, kindly neighbors, and a growing host of congenial
acquaintances. Our proximity to New York was an important
factor in the lives of both of us, bringing us, as it did,
within easy reach of the best libraries and shops in the
country, and putting numberless means of entertainment
and education at our very door. There were two babies by
now - healthy, happy, bright - in every way thoroughly
satisfactory specimens of infant humanity. In the matter of
children's nurses, I have been extraordinarily blessed among
American women. In the twenty-one years separating the
birth of our elder boy from the day when the younger was
released from nursery government, I had but three of these
indispensable comforts.
Two married after years of faithful service; the third
retired upon an invalid's pension. All were Irish by birth.
After much experience in, and more observation of, the
Domestic Service of these United States, I incline to
believe that, as a rule, we draw our best material from
Celtic emigrant stock.
So smoothly ran the sands of life that I recall but one
striking incident in the early part of 1860. That was the
visit of the Prince of Wales to this country. We witnessed
the passage of the long procession that received and
escorted him up-town, to his quarters at the, then, new and
fashionable hostelry - the Fifth Avenue Hotel. My husband
went down to the Battery to see the princeling's review of
the regiments drawn up in line before him, as he rode from
end to end of the parade-ground.
Joining us at the window, from which we had a splendid
view of the pageant, the critic, who was an accomplished
horseman, reported disdainfully that "the boy was
exceedingly awkward. He had no seat to speak of, leaning
forward, until his weak chin was nearly on a line with the
horse's ears, and sticking his feet out stiffly on each side."
Our impression of the imperial youth was not more agreeable.
He sat back in the open coach, "hunched" together in an
ungainly heap, looking neither to the right nor the left,
evincing no consciousness of the existence of the shouting
throngs that lined the pavements ten deep, other than by
raising, with the lifeless precision of a mechanical toy,
the cocked hat he wore as part of the uniform of a British
colonel.
There was a big ball the next night, at which gowns of
fabulous prices were sported, and reported by the
newspapers, and Albert Edward flitted on to his mother's
dominions of Canada, leaving not a ripple in the ocean of
local and national happenings.
That ocean was stilling and darkening with the brooding
of a threatening storm. Newspapers bristled with portents
and denunciations; demagogues bellowed themselves
hoarse in parks and from stumps; torchlight processions
displayed new and startling features.
"So much for so little!" sighed I, upon our return from a
lookout at the nearest corner, commanding long miles of
marching men. "It was ingenious and amusing; but what a
deal of drilling those embryo patriots must have gone
through to do it so well! And for what? The President
will be elected, as other Presidents have been, and as
maybe a hundred others will be, and there the farce will
end. Does it pay to amuse themselves so very hard?"
"If we could be sure that it would end there!" answered
my husband, with unexpected gravity. "The sky is red and
lowering in the South. Between politicians, and the freedom
of the press to play with all sorts of explosives, there is
no telling what the rabble may do."
I looked up, startled.
"You are not in earnest? The good Ship of State has
been driving straight on to the rocks ever since I can
recollect, and she has not struck yet. Think of the Clay and
Polk campaign!"
"Child's play compared with the fight that is on now!"
was the curt retort.
Something - I know not what - in his manner moved me
to put a leading question.
"Have you made up your mind how you will vote?"
"Yes."
"A month ago, you said you had not."
"A good deal has happened in that month."
It was not like him to be sententious with me, but I
pushed the subject.
"I have never interfered with your political opinions, as
you know, and I don't care to vote, myself; but if I had a
vote, I should be in no doubt where to cast it. Lovers
of peace and concord should unite upon Bell and Everett.
That party seems to me to represent the sanest element in
this mammoth muddle."
He smiled.
"To say nothing of your fondness for Mr. Everett. A
charming gentleman, I grant. But the helm of state is not
to be in his hands. Even, supposing" - grave again, and
sighing slightly - "that they are strong enough to hold it
in a storm."
There was a boding pause. Then I spoke, and unadvisedly:
"I ask no questions that I think you would not care to
answer. But I do hope you are not thinking of voting for
Abraham Lincoln? Think of him in the White House! Mr.
Buchanan may be weak - and a Democrat. I heard father say,
as the one drop of comfort he could express from his election:
'At any rate, he is a gentleman by birth and breeding.' Mr.
Lincoln is low-born, and has no pretensions to breeding."
"Then, if I should be so far lost to the proprieties as to
vote for him, I would better not let either of you know."
And he glanced teasingly at Alice, who had just entered
the room.
"I could never respect you if you did!" she said,
spiritedly. "I am persuaded better things of you."
A teasing rejoinder was all she got out of him. The matter
was never brought up again by any of us. When Election
Day came, I was too proud to seem inquisitive. But in my
inmost soul I was assured that reticence boded no good to
my hope of one gallant gentleman's vote for Bell and
Everett.
Months afterward, when we were once again of one mind
with respect to the nation's peril and the nation's need,
he told me that he had kept his own counsel, not only
because the truth might grieve me, but that party feeling
ran so high in his church he thought it best not to intimate
to any one how he meant to vote.
"And, like Harry Percy's wife, I could be trusted not to
tell what I did not know?" said I.
"You might have been catechised," he admitted. "There
are times when the Know-nothing policy is the safest.
PANIC OF '61 - A VIRGINIA VACATION -
MUTTERINGS OF
BAYARD TAYLOR said to me
once of a publishing house,
"An honest firm, but one that has an incorrigible
habit of failing!"
The habit was epidemic in the first half of 1861. Among
others who caught the trick were my publishers. Like a
thunderbolt came the announcement, when I was expecting
my February semi-annual remittance of fat royalties: "We
regret to inform you that we have been compelled to
succumb to the stringency of the times."
The political heavens were black with storm-clouds, and,
as was inevitable then, and is now, the monetary market
shut its jaws tightly upon everything within reach. We could
not reasonably have expected immunity, but we had. We had
never known the pinch of financial "difficulties." Prudent
salaried men are the last to feel hard times, if their wage
is paid regularly. I had three books in the hands of the
"failing" firm. All were "good sellers," and I had come to
look upon royalties as my husband regarded his salary, as a
sure and certain source of revenue.
We had other and what appeared to us graver anxieties.
My sister Alice had passed the winter with us, and the
climate had told unhappily upon her throat. My husband had
not escaped injury from the pernicious sea-fogs and the
malarial marshes, over which the breath of the Atlantic
flowed in upon us. He had a bronchial cough that defied
medical treatment; and March, the worst month of the
twelve for tender throats and susceptible lungs, would
soon be upon us. His physician, a warm personal friend,
ordered him South, and the church seconded the advice by
a formal grant of an out-of-season vacation. We did not
change our main plan in consequence of the disappointment
as to funds. Nor did we noise our loss abroad. Somehow,
the truth leaked out. Not a word of condolence was breathed
to us. But on the afternoon of the day but one before
that set for our departure, the daughter of a neighborly
parishioner dropped in to leave a basket of flowers and
to say that her father and mother "would like to call
that evening, if we were to be at home." I answered that
we should be glad to see them, and notified my husband
of the impending call. The expected couple appeared at
eight o'clock, and by nine the parlors were thronged
with guests who "dropped in, in passing, to say
'Good-bye.' " None stayed late, and before any took leave,
there was the presentation of a parcel, through the hands
of Edgar Farmer, a member of the Consistory, who, in
days to come, was to be to my husband as David to
Jonathan. He was young then, and of a goodly presence,
with bright, kind eyes and a happy gift of speech. Neither
Mr. Terhune nor I had any misgivings of what was in
prospect, when he was asked to step forward and face the
spokesman deputed to wish us Bon voyage and recovery of
health in our old home. Mr. Farmer said this felicitously,
and with genuine feeling. Then he asked the pastor's
acceptance of a parcel "containing reading-matter for the
journey."
The reading-matter was bank-bills, the amount of which
made us open our eyes wide when the company had dispersed
and we undid the ribbons binding the "literature."
That was their way of doing things in the "Old First." A
way they never lost. In a dozen-and-a-half years we should
have become used to it, but we never did. Each
new manifestation of the esteem in which they held their
leader, and of the royally generous spirit that interfused
the whole church, as it might the body and soul of one
man, remained to the last a fresh and delicious surprise.
Ten days out of the six weeks of our vacation were spent
in Charlotte. Mr. Terhune's successor was Rev. Henry C.
Alexander, one of a family of notable divines whose praise
is in all the Presbyterian churches. He was a bachelor, and
the "nest among the oaks" was rented to an acquaintance. I
did not enter it then, or ever again. I even looked the
other way when we drove or walked past the gate and grove.
To let this weakness be seen would have been ungracious,
in the face of the hospitalities enlapping us during every
hour of our stay. We dined with one family, supped with
another, spent the night and breakfasted with a third, and
there was ever a houseful of old friends to meet us. My
husband wrote to his father:
"Swinging around the circle at a rate that would turn
steadier heads. And talk of the fat of the land and groaning
tables! These tables fairly shriek, and the fat flows like a
river Heaven send we may live through it! We like it, all
the same!"
And enjoyed every hour, albeit senses less agreeably
preoccupied might have detected the smell of gunpowder
in the air.
I am often asked if we were not uneasy for the safety of
the Union, while in the thick of sectional wordy strife, and
how it was possible to enjoy visits when much of the talk
must have jarred upon the sensibilities of loyal lovers of
that Union.
The truth is that I had been used to political wrangling
from my youth up. The fact that South Carolina and six
other States had seceded in name from the control of the
Federal government; that, in every county and "Cross-Roads"
hamlet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, bands
of volunteers were drilling daily and nightly and that
cargoes of arms were arriving from the North and in
distribution among the enlisted militiamen; that the Southern
papers sounded the tocsin of war to the death and "Death
in the last ditch!" and "Down with the Yankees!" with
every red-hot issue; that a convention had been solemnly
summoned to meet in Richmond to decide upon the action
of the Old Dominion at the supreme moment of the nation's
destiny - weighed marvellously little against the settled
conviction, well-nigh sublime in its fatuousness, that the
right must prevail, and that such furious folly must die
ignominiously before the steadfast front maintained by the
Union men of the infected section.
To my apprehension, so much that we heard was sheer
gasconade, amusing for a time from its very unreason and
illogical conclusions, and often indicative of such blatant
ignorance of the spirit and the resources of the Federal
government, that I failed to attach to it the importance the
magnitude of the mischief deserved to have.
I refused stubbornly to let the clear joy of my holiday be
clouded by the smoke from blank cartridges. So light was
my spirit that I made capital for fun of bombastic threats
and gloomy predictions, touching the stabling of
Confederate cavalry in Faneuil Hall inside of three months
from the day of the inauguration of the "Springfield Ape" at
Washington. The Vice-President was a full-blooded negro,
or, at the least, a mulatto, I was assured over and over.
Wasn't his name damning evidence of the disgraceful fact?
What white man ever called his child "Hannibal"?
I supplied other confirmation to one fiery orator:
" 'Ham-lin' sounds suspicious, too. I wonder you have
not thought of the color that gives to your theory."
The youth foamed at the mouth. He wore a Secession cockade
on his breast, and proved, to a demonstration, that
any Southerner over fourteen years old was equal, on the
battle-field, to five Yankees. Why not seven, I could never
ascertain.
Such funny things were happening hourly, and such
funnier things were said every minute, that I was in what
we used to call, when I was a child, "a continual gale."
Let one bit of nonsense illustrate the frivolity that, in the
retrospect, resembles the pas seul of a child on the edge of
a reeking crater.
I was summoned to the drawing-room, one forenoon, to
receive a call from the son of an old friend who had
promised his mother to look me up, in passing through the
city on his way to the "Republic of South Carolina." That
was the letter-head of epistles received from the Palmetto
State.
In descending the stairs, I heard the scamper of small
boots over the floor of the square, central hall, and caught
the flash of golden curls through the arched doorway
leading into the narrower passage at the rear of the house.
Knowing the infinite capacity of my son for ingenious
mischief, I stayed my progress to the parlor, and looked
about for some hint as to the nature of the present
adventure. Sofa and chairs were in place, as was the
mahogany table at the far corner. On this was a silver tray,
and on the tray the pitcher of iced water, which was a
fixture the year through. Two tumblers flanked it on one
side, and my visitor had set on the other the sleekest tall
silk hat I had ever seen outside of a shop window. There was
absolutely no rational association of ideas between the iced
water-pitcher and that stunning specimen of headgear. Yet I
glanced into the depths of both. One was half-full; the other
was empty. Clutching the desecrated hat wildly, I sped to the
sitting-room. "Oh, mother,
what is to be done? Eddie has emptied the water-pitcher
into William M.'s hat!"
Whereupon, that gentlest, yet finest, of disciplinarians,
who would have sent one of her own bairns to bed in the
middle of the day, for an offence one-tenth as flagrant,
dropped her sewing on her lap and went off into a
speechless convulsion of laughter. A chuckle of intense
delight from behind her rocking-chair, and a glimpse of
dancing blue eyes under her elbow, put the finishing
touches to a scene so discreditable to grandmotherly ideas
of domestic management, that the family refused to believe
the story told at the supper-table, when the culprit was
safe in his crib.
Leaving the dishonored "tile" to the merciful manipulations
of the laundress, who begged me to "keep the pore young
gentleman a-talkin' 'tell she could dry it at the fire,"
I went to meet the unsuspecting victim.
It was not difficult to keep him talking, when once he
was launched upon the topic paramount in the mind of what
he denominated as "every truly loyal and chivalrous Son of
the South." He had a plan of campaign so well concerted
and so thoroughly digested, that it could have but one
culmination.
"But why Faneuil Hall ?" I demurred, plaintively. "You
are the sixth man who has informed me that your cavalry
are to tie and feed their horses there. Why not the City
Hall in New York? There must be stable-room short of
Boston."
He flushed brick-red.
"It is no laughing matter to us who have been ground
down so long under the iron heels of Yankee mud-sills!"
I found his mixed metaphors so diverting that I was near
forgetting the ruined head-piece, and the inexorable
necessity of confession.
Sobering under the thought, I let him go on, lending but
half an ear, yet, in seeming, bowed by the weight of his
discourse. Moved by my mournful silence, he stopped midway.
"I beg your pardon if my feelings and patriotism have
carried me too far. I own that I am hot-headed - "
Another such chance would not come in a life-time. I
broke his sentence short.
"Oh, I am glad to know that! For my boy has filled
your hat with iced water!"
Eheu! That night's supper was the last merry meal the
old home was to know for many a long month and year.
For, by breakfast-time next day, the news had come of the
bombardment of Fort Sumter, and men's hearts were hot
within them, and women's hearts were failing them for fear
of battle, murder, and sudden death to sons, husbands, and
brothers.
One might have fancied that a visible pall hung over the
city, so universal and deep was the agony of suspense.
While the recollection of suspense and agony was fresh
in my mind, I wrote of the awful awakening from my fool's
paradise of incredulity and levity:
"For two days, the air was thick with rumors of war and
bloodshed. For two days, the eyes and thoughts of the
nation were fixed upon that fire-girt Southern island, with
its brave but feeble garrison - the representative of that
nation's majesty - testifying, in the defiant boom of every
cannon's answer to the rebel bombardment, that resistance
to armed treason is henceforward to be learned as one of
the nation's laws. For two days, thousands and hundreds of
thousands of loyal hearts all over this broad land, cried
mightily unto our country's God to avert this last and direst
trial - the humiliation of our Flag by hands that once helped
to rear it in the sight of the world, as the ensign of national
faith. And under the whole expanse of heaven, there was
no answer to those prayers, except the reverberation of the
cruel guns.
"On Saturday, April 14th, the End came!"
THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861, IN
WE had planned to leave Richmond for home on Tuesday
afternoon. At noon on Saturday, my husband asked me if
I would not like to prolong my stay with my relatives,
adding significantly:
"We do not know how long it may be before you can get
South again. There is thunder in the air."
I looked up from the letter I was writing to Newark:
"Thunder - alone - is harmless. I take no stock in
gasconade that is only thunder. And if trouble is coming
it is clear that our place is not here."
The letter-writing went on not uncheerfully. Far down in
my soul was the belief that a peaceful issue must be in
store for the land beloved of the Lord. Were we not
brethren? When brought, face to face, with the fact that
brothers' hands must be dipped in brothers' blood, reaction
was inevitable.
So foolish was I, and ignorant of the excesses to which
sectional fury can carry individuals and nations.
I was in my room, getting ready for our last walk among
scenes endeared to us by thousands of associations, my
husband standing by, hat in hand, when a terrific report split
the brooding air and rent the very heavens. Another and
another followed. We stood transfixed, without motion or
speech, until we counted, silently, seven.
It was the number of the seceding States! As if
pandemonium had waited for the seventh boom to die sullenly
away among the hills, the pause succeeding the echo was
ended by an outburst of yells, cheers, and screams that
beggars description. The streets in our quiet quarter were
alive with men, women, and children. Fire-crackers, pistols
and guns were discharged into the throbbing air.
"The fort has fallen!" broke in one breath from our lips.
And simultaneously: "The Lord have mercy upon the country!"
We ran down-stairs and into the street.
My sister "Mea" was upon the front porch, and the steps
were thronged by children and servants, wild with curiosity.
I have not mentioned that my sister had married, two
years before, Mr. John Miller, a Scotchman by birth. He
was much liked and respected by us all, and it spoke
volumes for his breeding and the genuine good feeling
prevailing among us, that although he was the only "original
secessionist" in our household band, our cordial relations
remained unbroken in spite of the many political arguments
we had had with him.
aloft her baby boy, a pretty year-old,
in her arms. A Secession cockade was pinned upon his breast;
in his chubby hand he flourished a rebel flag, and he
laughed down into her radiant face.
We feigned not to see them as we hurried past. But a gulf
seemed to open at my feet. As in a baleful dream, I
comprehended, in the sick whirl of conflicting sensations,
what Rebellion, active and in arms, would mean in hundreds
of homes on both sides of the border.
"Is the world going mad?" muttered my husband, between
his teeth, and I knew that the same horror was present with
him.
Secession flags blossomed in windows and from roofs;
were waved from doors and porches by girls and women;
were shaken in mad exultation by boys on the sidewalks;
hung upon lamp-posts, and were stretched from side to
side of the street. It was like the magical upspringing
baneful fungi. Where had they all come from? And at what
infernal behest had they leaped into being?
The living stream poured toward the Capitol Square,
and it swept us with it. The grounds were filled with
tumultuous crowd. Upon the southern terrace was the
park of artillery that had fired the salute of seven guns.
As we entered the upper gate a long procession of men
issued from the western door of the Capitol, and
descended the steps.
"The convention has adjourned for the day," remarked
Mr. Terhune. We were at the base of the Washington
monument, and he drew me up on the lower step of the
base to avoid the press.
The delegates streamed by us in groups; some striding in
excited haste; talking gleefully, and gesticulating wildly.
Others were grave and slow, silent, or deep in low-toned
conversation; others yet - and these were marked men
already - walked with bent heads, and faces set in
wordless sadness. One of these, recognizing Mr. Terhune,
approached us, and with a brief apology to me, drew him
a few paces apart.
Three years before, I had seen the ceremonies by which
this monument - Crawford's finest work in marble - was
uncovered and dedicated. On the next day, Mr. Everett
had repeated his oration on Washington in the Richmond
theatre. The silver-tongued orator had joined hands, then
and there, with Tyler, Wise, and Yancey, in proclaiming
the unity of the nation. General Scott had sat in the centre
of the stage, like a hoary keystone in the semi-circle of
honorable men and counsellors.
Was it all a farce, even then, this talk of brotherhood
and patriotism? And of what avail were wisdom and
diplomacy and the multitude of counsels, if this were to
be the end?
I was saying it to myself in disgustful bewilderment, when
the crowd cheered itself mad over a fresh demonstration
of popular passion. The rebel flag had been run up from
the peak of the Capitol roof!
My husband came back to me instantly. He was pale,
and the lines of his mouth were tense.
"Let us get out of this!" he said. "I cannot breathe!"
On the way to Gamble's Hill - a long-loved walk with
us - I heard how Sumter had fallen. We were not hopeless,
yet, as to the final outcome of the tragical complication
that had turned the heads of the populace. The outrage
offered the Flag of our common country must open the eyes
of true men, and all who had one spark of patriotism left
in their souls. We could have no longer any doubt as to
the real animus of the Rebellion. One thing was certain:
To-day's work would decide the question for Virginia. She
could not hang back now.
Thus reasoning, we took our last look of the lovely
panorama of river, islets, and hills; of the city of the dead
- beautiful in wooded heights and streams and peaceful
valleys, on our right - while on the left was the city of the
living, noble and fair, and, in the distance, now as silent as
Hollywood.
My companion lifted his arm abruptly and pointed
northward.
A long, low line of cloud hung on the horizon - dun, with
brassy edges - sullen and dense, save where a rainbow,
vivid with emerald, rose-color, and gold, spanned the murky
vapor.
"Fair weather cometh out of the North," uttered the resolute
optimist. "With the Lord is terrible majesty. After all, He
is omnipotent. We will hope on!"
We were measurably cheered on our way back to the heart of
the city by the sight of the Flag of Virginia flying
serenely from the staff where had flaunted the Stars and
Bars, an hour ago. At supper, my father related with gusto
how a deputation of Secessionists had waited on the
Governor to offer congratulations upon the Confederate
victory. How he had received them but sourly, being, as
the deputation should have known, an "inveterate Unionist."
When felicitated upon the result of the siege, he returned that
he "did not consider it a matter for any compliments." At
that instant he caught sight of the flag hoisted to the roof
of the Capitol, demanded by whose order it was done, and
straightway commanded it to be hauled down and the State
flag, usually sported when the Legislature was in session,
to be run up in its stead.
"Governor Letcher has a rough tongue when he chooses
to use it," commented my father. "He is honest, through and
through."
The talk of the evening could run in but one channel. Our
nerves were keyed up to the highest tension, and the day's
events had gone deep into mind and heart. Two or three
visitors dropped in, and both sides of the Great Controversy
were brought forward, temperately, but with force born of
conviction. If I go somewhat into the details of the
conversation, it is because I would make clear the truth
that each party in the struggle we feared might be imminent,
believed honestly that justice and right were at the
foundation of his faith. I wrote down the substance of the
memorable discussion, as I recorded and published other
incidents of the ever-to-be-remembered era, while the
history of it was still in the making. I am, then, sure that
I give the story correctly.
John Miller opened the ball by "hoping that the North
was now convinced that the South was in earnest in
maintaining her rights."
I liked my Scotch brother-in-law, and we bandied jests
safely and often. But it irked me that we should have a
Secessionist in a loyal family, and I retorted flippantly,
lest I should betray the underlying feeling:
"There has been no madness equal to Secession since
the swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea.
The choking in the waves will come later."
"Let wise men stand from under!" he retorted, smiling
good-humoredly. "As to the choking, that may not be such
an easy job as you think."
A visitor took up the word, and seriously:
"The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as
old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: 'I
saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia
saw it - the poison under its wings.' Grayson, another
far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to
pass. He said of the consolidation policy taught in the
Constitution: 'It will, in operation, be found unequal,
grievous, and oppressive.' He foresaw that the manufacturer
of the North would dominate the agriculturist of the South;
that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate
representation; in short, that there would be numberless
encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the
Southern slaveholder."
"He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a republic, of
the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty faction,
dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran
several men?"
This was said by a young man who had not spoken until
then.
My father replied: "Suppose Breckenridge had been
elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?"
"Circumstances alter cases," said my brother Horace,
dryly.
Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson
and Randolph.
"It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit
to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have
scorned to put with their cattle," he said, with temper.
I saw the blue fire in my husband's eyes before he
spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was
studiedly calm.
"For more than seventy years, the South has prospered
under the Constitution, which, according to the renowned
authorities cited just now, had poison under its wings. Hers
have been the chief places in our national councils and the
most lucrative offices in the gift of the government. It is
her boast, if we are to believe what this one of your leading
papers says" - unfolding and reading from the editorial
page - "that 'since the organization of the Union she has
held the balance of power - as it is her right to do -
her citizens being socially, morally, and intellectually
superior to those of the North.' "
My father filliped his cigar ash into the fire.
"Now you are improvising?"
"Not a word! Our editor goes on to say further: 'Our
whilom servants have lately strangely forgotten their places.
They now aspire to an equal share in the administration of
the government. They have presumed to elect from their
own ranks an illiterate, base-born, sectional tool, whom they
rely upon to do their foul work of subverting our sovereignty.
It is high time the real masters awoke from their fatal
lethargy, and forced their insubordinate hinds to stand once
more, cap in hand, at their behest.' "
The stump of my father's cigar followed the ash.
"Come, come, my dear boy! it isn't fair to take the ravings
of one fool as the sentiment of the section in which that
stuff is printed. I could quote talk, as intemperate and
incendiary, from your Northern papers. You wouldn't have
us suppose that you and other sane voters indorse them?"
"I grant what you say, sir. And, as I long ago affirmed, the
shortest and best way to put out the fire that threatens the
integrity of the government, would be to muzzle every
political ranter in the country, and suppress every
newspaper for six months. The conflagration would die for
want of fuel."
My mother interposed here:
"Good people, don't you think there is 'somewhat too much
of this'? I, for one, refuse to believe that anything but
smoke will come of the alarm that is frightening weak
brothers out of their wits. The good Ship of State will 'sail
on, strong and great,' when our children's children are in
their graves."
She changed the current of talk, but not of thought. After
the rest had gone, there lingered a young fellow whose
case was so striking an example of a host of others, who
were forced into the forefront of the battle, that I take
leave to relate it.
He still lives, an honored citizen of the State he loved as
a son loves the mother who bore and nursed him. Therefore I
shall not use his real name. Eric S., as I shall call him,
was an intimate friend of my brother Herbert, and as much at
home in our house as if he were, in very deed, one of the
blood and name. He had visited us in Newark, and made
warm friends there, during the past year. Mr. Terhune had
had long and serious consultations with him since we came
to Virginia, and, within a few days, as the war-cloud took
form, had urged him to accompany us to New Jersey, or, at
least, to promise to come to us should hostilities actually
begin between the two sections. The lad (scarcely twenty-one)
was an ardent Unionist, and, although a member of a crack
volunteer company in Richmond, had declared to us that
nothing would ever induce him to bear arms under the Rebel
government. Mea and her spouse went up-stairs early, and
the rest of us were in
hearty sympathy with our guest. He had not taken an active
share in the discussion, and his distrait manner and sober
face prepared us, in part, for the disclosure that followed
the departure of the others.
He had been credibly and confidentially informed that a
mighty pressure would be brought to bear upon the convention,
at their next sitting, to force the Ordinance of Secession.
If it were carried, by fair means or foul, every man who
could bear arms would be called into the field.
While he talked, the boy stood against the mantel - erect
lithe, and handsome - the typical mother's and sister's
darling, yet manly in every look and lineament. The thought
tore through my imagination while I looked at him:
"And it is material like this that will go to feed the maw
of War! - such flesh and blood as his that will be mangled
by bullet and shell!"
I had never had the ghastly reality brought so near to me
until that moment.
"Oh-h!" I shuddered. "You won't stay to be shot at like a
mad dog!"
The first bright smile that had lighted his face was on it.
"It isn't being shot at that I am thinking of." The gleam faded
suddenly. "I don't think I am a coward. It doesn't run in the
blood. But" - flinging out his arm with a passionate gesture
that said more than his words - "I think that would be
paralyzed if I were to lift it against the dear old flag!"
Before he left it was agreed privately, between him and
my husband, that he would try his fortune on the other side
of Mason and Dixon's line, should the axe fall that would
sever Virginia from the Union her sons had been mainly
instrumental in creating.
Sunday came and went. Such a strange, sad Sunday as it
was! with the marked omission, in every pulpit of
the prayer for the President of the United States and others
in authority; with scanty congregations in the churches, and
growing throngs of excited talkers at the street corners, and
knots of dark-browed men in hotel lobbies, and the porches
of private houses.
In the length and breadth of the town but one Union flag
was visible. Nicholas Mills, a wealthy citizen of high
character and fearless temper, defied public opinion and
risked popular wrath, by keeping a superb flag flying at the
head of a tall staff in his garden on Leigh Street. We went
out of our way, in returning from afternoon service, to
refresh eyes and spirits with the sight.
On Monday, the mutterings of rebellion waxed into a roar
of angry revolt over the published proclamation of the
President, calling for an army of seventy-five thousand men
to quell the insurrection. The quota from Virginia was, I
think, five thousand.
"A fatal blunder!" said my father, in stern disapproval.
My husband's answer was prompt:
"To omit her name from the roll would be an accusation
of disloyalty."
The senior shook his head.
"It may have been a choice of evils. I hope he has chosen
the less! But I doubt it! I doubt it!"
So might Eli have looked and spoken when his heart
trembled for the ark of the Lord.
That afternoon, the flagstaff in the Mills garden was
empty. The Stars and Stripes were banned as an unholy
ensign.
Eric S. paid us a flying visit that evening. His parents
urged his going. The father was especially anxious that
he should not risk the probability of impressment, and,
should he refuse to serve, of imprisonment. Already Union
men were regarded with suspicion. The exodus of the
disaffected could not be long delayed. He had influential
family connections at the North who would see to it that he
found occupation. When we parted that night, it was with
a definite understanding that he would be our travelling
companion.
Tuesday noon, he appeared, haggard and well-nigh desperate.
Going, like the honorable gentleman he was, to the Colonel
of his regiment early in the day, to tender his resignation
and declare his intentions, he was stricken by the news that
the State had seceded in secret session Monday night.
Whereupon the Colonel had offered the services of his
regiment to the authorities of the Confederate States. They
were accepted.
"You are now in the Confederate army," added the superior
officer, "and, from present indications, we will not be
idle long."
"But," stammered the stunned subaltern, "I am going
North this very afternoon with friends, and I shall not
consent to serve."
"If you attempt to leave, you will be reckoned as a
deserter from the regular army, and dealt with accordingly."
I do not attempt to estimate what proportion of men, who
would have remained loyal to flag and government if they
could, were coerced, or cajoled, into bearing arms under a
government they abhorred. I tell the plain facts in the
instance before me.
Eric S. fought in fifteen general engagements, and came
out with his life when the cruel war was over. He told with
deep satisfaction, in after-years, that he had never worn the
Confederate uniform, but always that of his own regiment.
It is easy for us to prate, at this distance from those times
of trial to brave men's souls, of the high and sacred duty of
living and, if need be, of dying for the right. From our
standpoint, it is as clear as the noonday sun, that allegiance
to the general government should outrank allegiance to the
State in which one has chanced to be born and to live. We
have had an awful object-lesson in the study of that creed
since the day when the Virginian, who saw his native State
invaded, believed that he had no alternative but to "strike
for his altars and his fires."
Upon the gallant fellows who, seeing this, and no further,
risked their lives unto the death, fell the penalty of the
demagogues' sin.
We may surely lay the blame where it belongs.
THE LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS"
I COPY in substance, and
sometimes verbatim, the account
written in 1861, and published later, of our journey
northward in the last train that went through to Washington
before the outbreak of hostilities.
I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful
provision of the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond
our strength, we, one and all, kept up to our own hearts the
sanguine incredulity in the possibility of the worst coming to
pass, which was characteristic of Union lovers at the South,
up to the battle of Manassas.
After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my
mother hoped confidently that the war-cloud would blow
over, and that, before long, she would not have allowed
Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place was with
my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to
keep with her.
Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national
problem, if only through the awakening of the fraternal love
of those whose fathers had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to
wrest their country from a common oppressor, I could not
have said "Good-bye" smilingly to home and kindred. When
I said to my mother: "We shall have you with us at the
seashore, this summer," it was not in bravado, to cheat her
into belief in my cheerfulness
Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine,
with their nurse and myself, was comfortably
bestowed in the train that was to meet the boat at Acquia
Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after as seddously
as if there were no superior interest in our minds.
The very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready
and sending us off, exactly as had been done, time and time
again, were in themselves heartening. What had been,
would be. To-morrow should be as to-day.
When we and our appurtenances were comfortably bestowed
in the ladies' car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers,
as yet), I had leisure to note what was passing without.
The scene should be that which always attends the departure
of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet I felt, at
once, that there was a difference.
I noticed, and not without an undefined sense of uneasiness,
the unusual number of strollers that lounged up and down
the sidewalks, and loitered about the train, and that some
of these were evidently listening to the guarded subtones
to which the voices of all - even the rudest of the
loungers - were modulated. With this shade of uneasiness
there stole upon me a strange, indescribable sense of the
unreality of all that I saw and heard. The familiar streets
and houses were seen, as through the bewildering vapors of
a dream; men and women glided by like phantoms, and there
was a shimmer of red-and-orange light in the air - the
reflection of the glowing west - that was vague and dazing,
not dazzling.
The train slid away from the station. My father and my
brother Horace lifted their hats to us from the pavement;
we held the children up to the open window to kiss their
hands to them; I leaned forward for one last, fond look into
the dear eyes, and our journey had begun.
Not a word was exchanged between the members of our party,
while we rumbled slowly up Broad Street toward the open
country.
I was unaccountably indisposed to talk, and this feeling
seemed to pervade the company of passengers. The dreamy
haze enveloped me again. The car was very full and very
quiet. The languorous hues of the west swooned into
twilight, and here and there a star peeped through the
gray veil of the sky.
We had cleared the city limits, and the blending of daylight
and the falling darkness were most confusing to the eye,
when I became aware that the train was slowing up where
there was no sign of a switch or "turn-out." If it actually
halted, it was but for a second, just long enough to enable
two men, standing close to the track, to board the train.
They entered our car, and my husband pressed my arm as
they passed down the aisle to seats diagonally opposite to
us.
Under cover of the rattle and roar of the speeding train,
he told me presently - after cautioning me not to glance
in their direction - that they were Messrs. Carlisle and
Dent - well known to visitors to the convention as most
prominent among the leaders of the Union party.
On through the gathering gloom rolled the ponderous train
- the only moving thing abroad, on that enchanted night.
Within it there was none of the hum of social intercourse
one might have expected in the circumstances. Adult
passengers were not drowsy, for every figure was upright,
and the few faces, dimly visible in the low light of the
lamps overhead, were wakeful - one might have imagined,
watchful. I learned subsequently that the insufficient light
was purposely contrived by conductor and brakemen, and
why. But for the touch of my husbands hand, laid in
sympathy or reassurance upon mine, and the sight of my
babies, sleeping peacefully - one in the nurse's arms, the
other on the seat beside her, his head in her lap - I might
have believed the weird light within, the
darkness without, and the motionless shapes and saddened
faces about me, accessories to the fantasy that gained
steadily upon me.
The spell was broken rudely - terribly - at Fredericksburg.
We steamed right into the heart of a crowd, assembled to
await the arrival of the train, which halted there for wood
and water. It was a tumultuous throng, and evidently drawn
thither with a purpose understood by all. The babel of
queries and exclamations smote the breezeless night-air like
a hail-storm. It was apparent that the railway officials
returned curt and unsatisfactory replies, for the noise
gathered volume, and uncomplimentary expletives flew freely.
All at once, a rush was made in the direction of the
ladies' car. Eager and angry visages, dusky in shadow, or
ruddied by torch-light, were pressed against closed
windows, and thrust impudently into the few that were
open.
"Three cheers for the Southern Confederacy!" yelled
stentorian tones.
Three-times-three roars of triumph deafened us.
"Three cheers for Jefferson Davis - the savior of
Southern liberties!" shouted the fugleman.
Again a burst of frenzied acclamation that made the
windows rattle.
I could see the leader of the riot - a big fellow who stood
close to our window. He was bareheaded, and he rested
one hand on the side of the car, swinging his hat with the
other, far above his head.
"Three groans for Carlisle!"
Nothing else that has ever pained my ears has given me the
impression of brute ferocity that stopped the beating of
my heart for one awful moment.
From the mob went up a responsive bellow of execration
and derision.
"All aboard!" shouted conductor and trainmen.
The hoarse call and the shriek of the engine were welcome
music to the travellers.
My husband's eyes met mine.
"What Eric S. told us was then true," he said, without
forming the words with his lips. "Virginia has joined her
sisters. And the people have got hold of the news. Are they
blind, not to see that their State will be the battle-ground,
if war should be declared?"
How dearly and for how long she was to pay for her
blindness, let the history of the next four years say!
Leaving the boat at Washington, we were conveyed by
stages across the city to the Baltimore station. It was two
o'clock in the spring morning, when we passed the Capitol.
It was lighted from basement to roof, but, to passers-by, as
still as a tomb. Nothing had brought home to us the fact and
the imminence of the peril to our national existence, as did
the sight of that lighted pile. For, as we had been informed,
it was filled with armed men, on guard against surprise or
open attack. On the train, we heard how troops had been
hurried from all quarters of the still loyal States into
Washington. The war was on!
Full appreciation of what the Great Awakening was, and
what it portended, came to us in Philadelphia. I had not
known there was so much bunting on this side of the Atlantic
as fluttered in the breeze in the city of staid homes and
brotherly loves. It was a veritable bourgeoning of patriotism.
From church-spires; from shop-windows; from stately dwellings,
and from the lowliest house in the meanest street - they
"All
uttered forth a glorious voice."
Successful rebellion
seemed an impossibility in the face
of the demonstration.
Every village, town, and farm-house along the route
proclaimed the same thing. So convinced were we that
the mere knowledge of the strength and unity of the North,
East, and West would carry conviction to the minds of the
led, and strike terror to the hearts of the leaders in the
gigantic Treason, that we rallied marvellously the spirits
which had flagged last night.
The train ran into Newark at eight o'clock that evening.
By the time it stopped, we had a glimpse of familiar and
anxious faces. We stepped off into the arms of four of our
parishioners, all on the alert for the first sight of the man
of their hour. They received us as they might welcome friends
rescued from great and sore perils.
Carriage and baggage-wagon were waiting. We were tucked
into our seats tenderly, and with what would have been
exaggerated solicitude in men less single of heart and
motive.
"But you knew that we would surely come back?" I said
to Mr. Farmer, at the third repetition of his - "Thank
Heaven you are here!"
The quartette of heads wagged gravely.
"We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is
no telling what may not happen in these times."
Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that
very week, a Massachusetts regiment, en route for
Washington, was assailed by a Baltimore mob, several
killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks torn up, to
prevent the progress of troops to the national capital.
We laughed a little, and were much moved to see a
handsome flag projecting from a second-story window of
our house, as we alighted at the door. It was a mute
token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles and softness
chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge
during our absence, related how the "beautiful supper,"
smoking hot, and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands,
was the gift of two neighbors, and that pantry and larder
were "just packed full" of useful and dainty edibles and
brought by ladies who had forbidden her to tell their
names.
Thus began the four years of separation from my early home
and those who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful
journey was the dividing line between the Old Time and the
New. With it, also dawned apprehension of the gracious
dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful with us - His
ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have
been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles
of fidelity to the government, and uncompromising adherence
to what he believed to be the right in the lamentable
sectional strife, to remain in the seceding State. Dearly
as he loved Virginia - and romantic and tender as was his
attachment to the brave old days that were to him the
poetry of domestic and social life - he must have severed
his connection with a parish in which he would have been
accounted a "suspect." Before the storm broke, we were
gently lifted out of the "nest among the oaks" and
established, as tenderly, in the "pleasant places" the
Father - not we - had chosen.
DOMESTIC SORROWS AND NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS -
WE were to need all the
fulness of consolation that could
be expressed from divine grace and human friendships, in
the years immediately succeeding the events recorded in
the last chapter.
The Muse of American History has set a bloody and fire-blackened
cross against 1861. To us, it was darkened,
through three-quarters of its weary length, by the shadows
of graves. One death after another among the friends to
whom we clung the more gratefully, because of the gulf -
fast filling with blood - that parted us from kindred and
early companions, followed our home-coming. In the last
week of August, my husband recorded, in his pastor's
notebook, that he had stood, in fourteen weeks, at the open
graves of as many parishioners, among them some who had
been most forward in welcoming him to his new field, and
most faithful in their support of him in it.
"It is literally walking in the valley of the shadow of
death!" he sighed, closing the melancholy pages. "I ask
myself tremblingly, after each funeral - Who next?"
At noon on September second - the fifth anniversary of
our wedding day - our boy came home from a drive with his
father, feverish and drowsy, and fell asleep in my arms. On
the fourteenth of the same month, he was folded in an
embrace, yet more fond and safe, beyond the touch of
mortal sorrow.
My bonnie, bonnie boy! who had never had a day's illness
until he was stricken by that from which there was no
recovery! Diphtheria was comparatively new at that time,
even to the able physician who was our devoted personal
friend. The boy faded before it, as a lily in drought. Four
days before he left us, his baby sister was smitten by the
same disease. Two days after the funeral, their father fell
ill with it. Why neither Alice, I, nor the faithful nurse
who assisted us in the care of the three patients, did not
take the infection is a mystery. There were no quarantine
regulations to prevent the spread of what is now recognized
as one of the most virulent of epidemics. We took absolutely
no precautions; friends flocked to us as freely as if there
were no danger. Our fearlessness may have been a catholicon.
We nursed the sufferers back to health, and, looking to God
for strength, took our places again in the ranks.
Such a trite, every-day story as it is! To the soul for
which the task is set, it is as novel and crucial as death
itself. It is not the young mother who finds comfort and
tonic in the inspired assurance:
"For
while we bear it, we can bear;
For four months, we had
not a letter from Richmond. The
cordon was drawn closely about the chief seat of the
Rebellion - now the capital of the Confederacy. It was hard
to smuggle private letters through the lines. We wrote by
every possible opportunity, and were certain that my family
were as watchful of chances, likely and improbable. At
Christmas, we had a packet that had been run through by
way of Kentucky, by a man who wrote to say that he had
been ill in a Richmond hospital and received great kindness
from my mother. When he was well enough to rejoin his
regiment, he had offered to get
her letters to me, if it were in the power of man to do it.
His plan, he said, was to entrust the parcel to a trusty
negro, who would swim the Ohio River on horseback at a
point where the stream was narrow, and post letters on the
other side. If I should receive them, I might know that he
had fulfilled his pledge to my mother. If I did not get them,
I would never know how hard he had tried to keep his word.
I have often wondered if he received the answers we
dispatched to the post-office from which our precious
letters were mailed. I never heard from him again.
Home-bulletins brought the news of the death of my stern
old grandmother at the advanced age of eighty-four. She
had never given her sanction to the war, disapproving of
military operations with the whole might of her rugged
nature. On a certain Sunday in June, news was brought by
fast express, while the people were in church, that the
war-vessel Pawnee was on its way up the river to bombard the
town. Owing to the old lady's deafness, she did not fully
comprehend why the services were closed summarily, and
the streets were too full of people hurrying to and fro, for
my father to explain the state of affairs on the way home.
On the front steps they met my brother Horace in the
uniform of the Richmond Howitzers, to which he belonged.
They had been ordered summarily to repair to the point
from which the expected attack was to be repelled. A few
hasty sentences put her into possession of leading facts; the
boy kissed her; shook hands with his father, and ran down
the street.
The old Massachusetts dame, whose father and husband had
fought in the Revolutionary War, stood still and looked
after him until he was out of sight.
He was her favorite of the boys - we fancied because he
resembled the Edwin she had wished to adopt, and who
died in her arms.
The lad she followed with puzzled and griefful eyes was
of a goodly presence, and never goodlier than in his
uniform. Did she bethink herself of the probability that she
might never see him again? What she thought, and what she
felt, will never be known. When my father addressed her,
she gazed at him with uncomprehending eyes, turned and
walked feebly up the stairs.
"I am afraid mother is not well," said my father to my
mother, after they had talked a few minutes of the alarm
and Horace's departure. "She looked shaken by the boy's
going. Will you go up and look after her?"
She had undressed and gone to bed. She had taken her
seat in church that morning, a fine-looking dame of the old
school; erect and strong; alert of wits and firm of purpose.
My mother looked into the face of a shrunken, dull-eyed
crone, who asked, in quavering accents, "Who she was, and
what was her business?" Then she began to moan and beg
to be taken "home." That was her cry, whenever she spoke
at all, all summer long. But once did she quit her bed. That
was when the nurse left her, as they supposed, sleeping, and
discovered her half an hour later, fumbling at the lock of
the front door, and in her nightgown. She "wanted to go home!
she would go home!" She went on September 5th, while we,
hundreds of miles away, were watching over our sick boy.
"The war killed off most of our old people," said an
ex-Confederate officer once to me. "Almost as many died of
sheer brokenheartedness, as on the battle-field! That's an
account somebody has got to settle some day, if there is any
justice in heaven."
In the autumn of 1862, the state of my sister Alice's
health demanded a change of climate so imperatively that
we had no option in the consideration of the emergency Her
throat was seriously affected; she had not spoken above a
whisper for six months. To keep her in Newark
for another winter was not to be thought of. Our parents
were writing by every available flag of truce strenuous
orders that she should "come home." In early October, Mr.
Terhune took her down to an obscure village in Maryland
directly upon Chesapeake Bay. It was, in fact, a smuggling-station,
from which merchandise of various sorts was
ferried into Virginia, in direct violation of embargo laws.
Southern sympathizers, whom loyalists were beginning to
brand as "Copperheads" - a name that stuck fast to them
throughout the war - ran the enterprise and profited by it.
Through one of these, information sifted to us of which we
made use. When necessity drives, it will not do to be
fastidious as to instruments that will save us.
At dead of night my young sister was put into a boat,
warmly wrapped from the river-fogs, and, in charge of a
Richmond gentleman who was returning home, sent across
the unlicensed ferry. Her father awaited her on the other
shore. A mile above and a mile below, lurid gleams, like the
eyes of river-monsters watching for their prey, showed
where United States gunboats lay in midstream to intercept
unlawful commerce and to arrest offenders. My husband
did not impart to me the details of the adventure until we
had heard of the child's restoration to her father's arms.
Then he told of the fearful anxiety with which he waited on
the Maryland shore, under starless skies, scanning the
menacing lights up and down the river, and straining his ears
for the ripple against the sides of the boat making its way,
cautiously, with muffled oars, across the watery track. To
deflect from the viewless course would be to awaken the
sleeping dogs of war. The lonely watcher feared every
minute to see from either of the gunboats a flash of fire,
followed by the boom of a cannon, signalling the discovery
of the attempt to evade the embargo.
"The dreariest vigil imaginable!" he said. "I stayed
there for two hours, until I was sure the boat must have
made the landing. Had it been intercepted, I should have
seen some change in the position of those red eyes and
heard a shot."
Before she embarked he had given the fugitive a self-
addressed envelope enclosing a card, on which was written
"Arrived safely." She pencilled below - "Alice," and sent it
back by the boatman. It was a week old when he got it and
creased and soiled by much handling.
Then fell silence, that was felt every waking hour, and
lasted for four long months. On the first day of February,
my husband being absent from home, I walked down to the
city post-office with Mrs. Greenleaf, my eldest sister-in-law,
who was visiting us, and took from our box a thin letter
addressed in my mother's hand, and stamped "FLAG OF TRUCE."
It was but one page in length. Flag-of-truce communications
were limited to that. The first line branded itself upon my
brain:
"I have written to you several times since our precious Alice's
death!"
She had rallied finely in her native air, and was,
apparently, on the highroad to health when smallpox broke
out in Richmond military hospitals. It spread to the citizens.
The town was crowded, and quarantine laws were lax. Dr.
Haxall called and insisted that the entire family be
revaccinated. He had his way with all save one. Alice put
him off with a jest, and my mother bade him "call again,
when she may be more reasonable." I fancy none of them
put much faith in the honest physician's assertion that
the precautionary measure was a necessity. In those days a
"good vaccination scar" was supposed to last a lifetime. My
sister fell ill a fortnight afterward, and the seizure was
pronounced to be "varioloid."
A girl's wilful whim! A mother's indulgence! These may,
or may not, have been the opening acts of the tragedy. God
knows!
Alice was in her twenty-second year, and in mind the most
brilliant of the family. She was an ardent student for
learning's sake, and an accomplished English scholar; wrote
and spoke French fluently, and was proficient in the Latin
classics. The one sketch from her pen ever published
appeared in The Southern Literary Messenger while she was
ill. It proved what we had known already, that her talent for
composition was of a high order. Had she lived, the reading
world would have ratified our judgment.
On March 7th of that dark and bloody year, the low tide
of hope with the nation, our home was brightened by the
birth of a second daughter - our first brunette bairnie. Her
brother and sister had the Terhune blue eyes and sunny
hair. She came on a wild, snowy day, and brought such
wealth of balm and blessing with her as seldom endows
parents and home by reason of a single birth. From the hour
of her advent, Baby Alice was her father's idol. Why, we
could not say then. The fact - amusing at times - always
patent - of the peculiar tenderness binding together the
hearts of the father and the girl-child - remained, and was
gradually accepted, without comment, by us all.
It was an unspeakable comfort to be able once more to
talk of "the children." One never divines the depth of
sweetness and significance in the term until one has been
robbed of the right to use it, through months of missing
what has been.
Other, if minor, distractions from personal sorrow and
public solicitudes were not wanting that year. I had been
drawn into charitable organizations born of the times. Our
noble church was forward in co-operation with municipal
and State authorities in relieving the distress of the
thousands who were reduced to poverty by the loss of the
Southern trade and the stagnation of home industries.
Prices went up, and wages went down; soldiers' widows
and orphans must be cared for; the soldiers in camps and
hospitals were but ill-provided with the comforts they had
a right to expect from the government and their fellow-
citizens. We had Soldiers' Relief Societies, and Auxiliary
Societies to the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, and
by-and-by, as the monetary situation told fiercely upon
the women and children of unemployed operatives,
associations that supplied their wives with sewing.
But for active participation in each of these benevolent
organizations, I do not see how I could have kept my reason
while the fratricidal conflict gathered force and heat.
My situation was peculiar, and, among my daily associates,
unique. Loving the Union with a passion of patriotism
inconceivable by those who have never had what they call
by that name put to such test of rack and flame as the
martyrs of old endured, I yet had no personal interest
in one soldier who fought for the Cause as dear to me as
life itself. My prayers and hopes went out to the Federal
army as a glorious engine, consecrated to sublime and
holy purpose - even the salvation of the nation by the
preservation of the Union. And all the while, my best-beloved
brother was in the fiercest of the fight down there,
in the State dearer to me than any other could ever be.
Cousins by the score, and friends and valued acquaintances
by the hundred, were with Lee and Jackson, Early, Stuart,
and Hill, exposed to shot and shell and sword. My brother
Herbert had gone home in '61, after he was graduated
from the Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, and
received a license to preach.
Shortly after his installation in a country parish, he had
married a girl he had fallen in love with while studying
with my husband in Charlotte. Although a non-combatant,
he might be forced by circumstances to take up arms, as
many of the profession were doing. His home was raided
more than once by predatory bands of stragglers from the
Federal army, and twice by cavalry dashes under leaders
whose names were a terror throughout southern and
central Virginia. My brother Percy, at fourteen, enlisted,
and quickly gained reputation as a courier under Lee's own
eye, being a daring rider, courting, instead of shunning,
danger, and, like his father and brothers, an utter stranger
to physical fear in any shape whatsoever.
When - as happened almost daily - our papers published lists
of the killed and wounded in Lee's army, my hand shook so
violently in holding the sheet, that I had to lay it on the
table to steady the lines into legibility, my heart rolling
over with sick thuds, while my eyes ran down the line of
names. Add to this ceaseless horror of suspense the long,
awful spaces of silence between the flag-of-truce
letters - and is it to be wondered at that I plunged into
routine work - domestic, literary, religious, charitable,
and patriotic - with feverish energy, as the only hope of
maintaining a tolerable degree of sanity?
And how good "our people" were to me through it all! The
simple act of setting the flag above our door-steps when
we returned from Rebeldom, was emblematic of the position
taken and held by them, as a body, during that trial-period.
They trusted us without reservation. Moreover, never,
howsoever high might run the tide of popular feeling at
the tidings of defeat or victory to the national Cause, was
one of them ever betrayed into a word of vituperation of my
native South, or ungenerous exultation over her downfall.
The tact and delicacy in this respect displayed by them,
without an exception, deserves higher praise than I can
award in this humble chronicle.
Loving loyalty of this type was a panoply and a stimulant to
my sorely-taxed spirit. Sheer gratitude should have bound
me to them as a co-worker.
When men like Peter and John Ballantine - than whom God
never made a nobler pair of brothers - and Edgar Farmer
- all the busiest of men - would go out of their way, in
business hours, to make a special call upon me after the
news of a battle had set the town on fire with excitement,
to "hope," in brotherly solicitude, that "this this does
not mean a heartache for you?" - when the safety of my
brothers, and the welfare of my parents, was the subject
of affectionate inquiry, whenever we met friend or
acquaintance connected with church or parish, I used to say
to my husband and myself, that the world had never seen
more truly chivalrous natures than those of these practical
Middle States men, who never thought of themselves as
knightly.
FORT DELAWARE - "OLD GLORY" -
IN the last week of May,
1864, I had a letter from my
brother Horace, now a Lieutenant in the Richmond
Howitzers, C. S. A.
It bore the heading: "Under the walls of Fort Delaware,"
and was scribbled upon the deck of a United States
transport.
With the gay courage that was his characteristic, and
without waste of words in preliminaries, directness in
action and speech being another prominent trait with
him, he informed me that "General Hancock, by making an
ungenerously early start at Spottsylvania Court-House -
before breakfast, in fact - on the morning of May 21st,
captured part of our division."
The letter wound up with: "We are now approaching Fort
Delaware, which is, we are told, our destination. I am well.
Don't take this to heart. I don't!"
I was so far from taking it to heart that I called upon my
soul, and all that was within me, to return thanks to Him
who had delivered my darling boy from the battle that was
against him. He was now out of the reach of bullet and
bayonet.
If I did not summon neighbors and friends to rejoice with
me over my brother's capture, the news spread fast, and
congratulatory calls were the order of the next few days.
Not satisfied with words of good-will, every bit of
political machinery at the command of our friends was put
in motion to secure for me the great joy of visiting him.
One of these plans so nearly succeeded that I went,
under the escort of the plotter, as far as Delaware City,
within sight of the gloomy fortress, to be turned back by a
new order - incited by a rumored attempt at escape of the
prisoners - prohibiting any visitors from entering the fort.
In the tranquil assurance of the captive's security from
the chances of war, I bore up under the failure better
than could have been expected, solacing myself by writing,
regularly, long letters, and the preparation of boxes of
books and provisions, which I was allowed to forward
weekly. It was "almost as good," I wrote to him, gleefully,
"as having a son at school, for whom I could get up boxes
of goodies."
Twice I had direct intelligence of him from army
officers who sought him out and talked to him of us.
One wrote: "Fine-looking fellow - hearty as a buck! In
good heart, and in good looks." Another: "Never met a
nicer fellow. I wish he had been on our side!"
While I was comforting myself with these mitigating incidents,
the line of communication was abruptly severed by the
transfer of prisoners from Fort Delaware to Hilton,
South Carolina. I had no letter for a month, and began to
think - I might say, to fear - that an exchange of prisoners
had returned him to Virginia. He gave the reason for his
silence finally:
"In pursuance of the retaliatory policy determined upon
by the Federal authorities, we were brought here and
placed, for three weeks, under the fire of our own guns
from the shore. Our fare was pickles and corn-meal, for
the same time. I did not write while this state of things
prevailed. It would have distressed you uselessly."
He went on to say that the order of retaliation for the
cruelties inflicted upon Federal captives in Confederate
prisons, had been rescinded. The Confederates, now at
Hilton Head, could hardly be said to be lodged
luxuriously; but they were no longer animated targets.
Through the intercession of a friend with Gen. Stewart L.
Woodford, then in command in South Carolina, I gained
permission to supply my brother with "plain clothing, books,
papers, food, and small sums of money." The latter went to
him by the kind and safe hand of Richard Ryerson, a young
Jerseyman, holding office in the Commissary Department
at Hilton Head. My letters were forwarded under cover to
the same generous intermediary.
Thus was another crooked way made straight.
The news of the evacuation; of my brother's removal back
to Fort Delaware, and a letter from my father, sent by
private hand to Mr. Terhune, came simultaneously. My
husband had had a verbal message through a trusty "refugee,"
as long ago as January, to the effect that the fall
of the city could not, in my father's judgment, be long
delayed. Since confiscation was sure to follow the collapse
of the Confederacy, he instructed my husband to repair to
Richmond, at the earliest possible moment after the way
was cut open by the victorious army, and claim the family
estate in the name of his wife, our loyalty being
unquestionable.
In the light of what really happened when the city was
occupied by the invaders, the precaution seems absurdly
useless. Then, it was prudent in the estimation of those
best acquainted with the current of public affairs. Every
dollar belonging, in fact, or constructively, to Northern
citizens, that the Confederate authorities could reach,
had been confiscated early in the action. My husband was
a non-combatant in the eye of the law, by reason of his
profession. Yet the few thousands we had invested in
various ways in Virginia had gone the way of all the rest.
It was but fair to suppose that the rebels would be stripped
of houses, lands, and money.
On New-Year's day, we had a call from Dr. J. J. Craven,
Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, a warm personal
friend of Mr. Terhune. He was stationed at Fort Monroe,
the key to the James River. Him, my husband took into
confidence, and it was arranged between them that the
latter was to be notified of the practicability of entering
the city in the track of the troops, when the inevitable
hour should arrive.
On one and the same day in April, Mr. Terhune had a
telegram from Fort Monroe, containing three words: "Come
at once," and I a letter from my faithful ally, Ossian Ashley,
enclosing an introductory note from General Butterfield to
the Commandant at Fort Delaware, requesting him to
permit me to see my brother.
Mr. Farmer, my husband's companion in many expeditions
and journeyings, consented gladly to go with him now.
We three left next morning for Philadelphia, and the
two gentlemen accompanied me in the afternoon to Fort
Delaware.
We were courteously received by the officials, the
Commandant voluntarily relaxing the rules at our parting, to
let my brother walk across the drawbridge and down to the
wharf with me. High good-humor reigned in all branches
of the service. The war was virtually over. As we sailed out
into the bay, and I threw a last salute to the soldierly figure
standing on the pier, it was with a bound of hope at my
heart to which it had been long a stranger. "My boy" would
join us in our home before many days. He had never been a
rebel, indeed; he had gone reluctantly into the service, as
had thousands of others The chance to take the oath of
allegiance to the Federal government would be readily
embraced by him and his
comrades. And my husband had engaged to see to it that
the opportunity should not be long delayed. We parted in
Philadelphia, I passing the night with friends there, the
two men going on to Fort Monroe. By Doctor Craven's kindly
management, they found a transport awaiting their arrival.
They were, thus, the first civilians to enter Richmond after
the military took possession.
A hasty note from Fort Monroe apprised me of the success
of the expedition, up to that point. Beyond that place
there were no postal or telegraphic facilities. I must
wait patiently until they touched Old Point on the return
journey.
With a thankful spirit and busy hands, I fell to work,
making ready for the home-coming of husband and brother.
It was as if the world and the house were swept and
garnished together.
In the early dawn of April 15th, too happily excited to
sleep, I arose and looked from my dressing-room window
over intervening buildings and streets, to the spire of Old
Trinity Church.
Church's picture, Our Banner in the Sky, was painted
during the Rebellion, and every print-shop window displayed
a copy of it. Some of my older readers may recollect it. A
tall, and at the summit, leafless, pine stood up, stark and
gaunt, against a sky barred with crimson-and-white. Above,
a cluster of stars glimmered faintly in the dusky blue. It was
a weird "impressionist" picture, that fired the imagination
and thrilled the heart of the lover of our glorious Union.
From my window, I saw it now in fulness of detail. I had
heard the story of "Old Glory," a little while before. The
words leaped from my lips at the sight of the splendid flag
on the staff towering from the church-spire. Straight and
strong, it streamed over the sleeping city in the fresh
breeze from the sea, emblem of the triumphant right of a
saved nation!
"Old Glory!" I cried aloud, and fell upon my knees to
thank God for what it meant.
Had another woman in the land - now, more than ever and
forever, "God's Country" - such cause as I to return
thanks for what had been in the last month?
The glow of exultation still warmed my inmost being when
I halted on the upper stair on my way down to breakfast.
Hearing a ring at the door-bell, with the thought of a
telegram, as probable explanation of the untimely call, I
leaned breathlessly over the balustrade as the maid opened
the door.
It was a parishioner, and a neighbor. He spoke hurriedly:
"Will you say to Mrs. Terhune that the President was
assassinated in Ford's Theatre in Washington last night?"
When, hours and hours afterward, I looked, with eyes dimmed
by weeping, upon "Old Glory," it hung limp at half-mast,
and the background was dull with rain-clouds.
I had many visitors that day. My nearest neighbor, and, to
this hour, one of my closest friends, ran in to "see how I
was bearing it. I must not get overexcited!" Then she broke
down, and wept stormily, as for a murdered father.
"We never knew how we loved him until now!" she
sobbed.
That was the cry of every torn heart. At last, we knew
the patient, tender-hearted, magnificent patriot-hero for
what he was - the second Father of his Country. At least a
dozen men dropped in to "talk over" the bereavement. One,
as rugged of feature and as soft of heart as our martyred
head, said, huskily, holding my hand in our "good-bye":
"Somehow, it does me good to hear you talk, in your
Southern accent, of our common grief. I can't exactly
express what it means to me. Words come hard to-day.
But it may be a sign that this awful sorrow may, in God's
hands, be the means of bringing us brothers together again.
He always felt kindly toward them. Some day, they may be
brought to see that they have lost their best friend. God
knows!"
I thank Him that, in the fulness of time, the old man's
hope has been fulfilled.
My husband brought home with him my youngest sister,
Myrtle.
One of the incongruities that strike oddly across our
moments of intensest emotion was, that, in the excitement
of welcome and surprise (for I had had no intimation of her
coming), I bethought myself that I had never known, until I
heard her call my name, that girls' voices change as boys'
do, in passing from childhood into youth. I left her a little
girl in short dresses. In four years she had passed the delta
"Where
the brook and river meet."
Girls and boys matured
fast under the influences that had
ripened her character.
It was a rare and lovely product which linked itself into
the chain of my life, for the score of years beyond our
reunion. To say that her companionship was a comfort and
joy unspeakable, that summer, would be to describe feebly
what her coming brought into my existence. The burden of
solicitudes and suspense, of actual bereavement and dreads
of the morrow's happenings, slid from my shoulders, as
Christian's pack from him at the Cross. I grew young again.
My third baby-girl, Virginia Belle, was ten days old when
my liberated brother was added, like a beautiful clasp, to
the golden circle of our reunited family. He
came directly to us, and lingered longer than I had dared
expect, for recuperation, and for enjoyment of the society
from which he had been so long exiled.
A pretty love-story, the initial chapters of which had
been rudely broken into by the war, was resumed and
continued at this visit. That the girl-friend who had grown
into a sister's place in our home and affection should marry
my dearest brother, was a dream too fair of complexion
and too symmetrical in proportions, to be indulged under
conditions that had prevailed since his visit to Newark,
almost five years ago. Yet this was the vision that began to
define itself into a blessed reality, by the time the soldier-
returned-from-the-war packed the outfit of civilized
and civilian clothing - the getting-together of which had
been one ostensible excuse for extending the visit - and took
his way southward.
It was a divine breathing-spell for us and for the country
- that summer of peace and plenty.
For three years past, we had spent each July and August
in a roomy farm-house among the Jersey hills. For the first
season, we were the only boarders. Then, perhaps because
we boasted somewhat too freely of the healthfulness of the
region, and the excellent country fare set before us by
good Mrs. Blauvelt, the retreat from malaria and mosquitoes
became too popular for our comfort. When there were three
babies, a nurse, a visiting sister, our two selves, and a
horse, to be accommodated, we found the once ample quarters
too strait for us.
For baby Belle's sake we migrated late in June of this
year. We were discussing the seriousness of the problem
consequent upon a growing family, as we drove up a long
hill, one July day, Alice on a cricket between us in the
foot of the buggy, when an exclamation from my husband
stopped a sentence in the middle. He drew the horse to a
sudden halt.
Woodmen were busy with destructive axes upon a body of
native trees at the left of our road. They had opened to
our sight a view heretofore hidden by the wood. A lake,
blue and tranquil as the heavens it mirrored; green slopes,
running down to the water; wooded heights, bordering the
thither banks, and around, as far as the eye could reach,
mountains, benignant in outline and verdant to their summits,
billowing, range beyond range, against the horizon - why
had we never seen this before? It was like a section of the
Delectable Mountains, gently lowered from Bunyan's Beulah
Land, and set down within thirty miles of the biggest city
in America.
The rapt silence was ended by one word from my companion:
"Alabama!"
He passed the reins into my hands, and leaped over the
wheel. Making his way down the hill, he stopped to talk
with the workmen for ten minutes. Then he came back, held
up a hand to help me out of the carriage, and lifted
"Brownie" in his arms. Next, he tied the horse to a tree,
and, saying to me - "Come!" led the way to the lake.
We bought the tract, in imagination, and decided upon the
site of our cottage, in the next half-hour. On the way home
we called upon the owner of the tract, paid a hundred
dollars down to bind the bargain, and left orders that not
another tree was to be felled until further notice.
It would have been expecting too much of human nature
had we been required to go back to the farm-house dinner,
without driving again by "Our Land." The happy silence of
the second survey culminated in my declaration and the
instant assent of my companion to the same:
"And we will name it 'Sunnybank'!"
A CHRISTMAS REUNION - A MIDNIGHT WARNING -
HOW A
"SKIES bright, and
brightening!" was the clan watchword,
in passing along the summons for a rally in the old home
at Christmas-time, 1866, that should include three
generations of the name and blood.
On Sunday, December 23d, we attended church in a body,
in morning and afternoon. Not one was missing from the
band except my brother Herbert, whose professional duties
detained him over Sunday. He was pledged to be with us
early on Monday morning.
That evening, we grouped about the fire in the parlor, a
wide circle that left room for the babyest of the party to
disport themselves upon the rug, in the glow of the grate
piled with cannel coal. My father, entering last of all,
stooped to pick up a granddaughter and kiss her, in
remarking:
"I had intended to go down to hear Doctor Moore
tonight. I am very fond of him as man and preacher.
But" - a comprehensive glance around the room, pointing
the demurrer - "you look so comfortable here that I am
tempted to change my mind."
A chorus of entreaties broke forth. It had been so long
since we had had - "all of us together - a Sunday evening
at home; there was so much to talk of; Christmas was so
near; the night was damp and raw; there would be snow by
ten o'clock," etc. - all in a breath, until the dear man
put his hands to his ears, ready to promise anything and
everything, for the sake of peace.
This was before supper, a jolly meal, over which we
lingered until the mothers of the company had to hustle the
younglings off to bed by the time we left the table.
Returning to the drawing-room after hearing my girls'
prayers, and assuaging their impatience at the lagging flight
of time, by telling them that, in twenty-two hours more, they
would be hanging up their stockings, I found my father
alone. He stood on the rug, looking down into the scarlet
depths of the coals, his hands behind him and his head
bent - in thought, not in sadness, for he turned a bright face
to me as my voice awoke him from his revery:
" 'A penny for your thoughts!' "
I said it gayly, laying my hand on his shoulder. He turned
his cheek to meet it.
"My thoughts were running upon what has kept them busy
all day. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess it,
but I lost one 'head' of Doctor Hoge's sermon this
afternoon. I was thinking of - my children!"
His voice sank into a tender cadence it seldom took. He
was reckoned an undemonstrative man, and he had a full
strain of the New England Puritan in his blood.
I waited to steady my own voice before asking, softly,
"And what of them, father?"
The query was never answered. The opening door let in a
stream of happy humanity - mother, brothers, and sisters
- Mea and her husband, Horace and Percy, Myrtle and her
fiancé, "Will" Robertson, who would, ere long, be one of
us in fact, as he was now in heart. They were full of
Christmas plans and talk. Among other items one was fixed
in my memory by subsequent events. In consequence of the
intervention of Sunday, the business of decorating the house
had to be postponed until Monday.
The evergreens were to be sent in from the country early
on the morrow. Percy reported that the snow had begun to
fall. If the roads were heavy by morning, would the
countryman who had promised a liberal store of running
cedar, pine, and juniper, in addition to the Christmas-tree,
keep his word?
"I will see that the evergreens are provided," my father
laid the disquiet by saying. "There will be no harm in
engaging a double supply."
Then Mea went to the piano, and we had the olden-time
Sunday-evening concert, all the dear old hymns we could
recall, among them two called for by our father:
"God
moves in a mysterious way,"
and,
"There
is an hour of peaceful rest,
We sang, last of all,
The Shining Shore, and talked of the
time when the composer set the MS. upon the piano-rack,
with the ink hardly dried upon the score, and trial was made
of the music in that very room - could it be just eleven years
ago?
My father left us as the clock struck ten. My mother
lingered half an hour later. We all knew, although none of us
spoke of it, that he liked to have a little time for devotional
reading on Sunday evening, before he went to bed. He had
not demitted the habit in fifty-odd years, yet I doubt if he
had ever mentioned, even to his wife, why he kept it up and
what it meant to him.
Our mother told me afterward that when she joined him
in their chamber, the Bible was still open on the stand
before him. He closed it at her entrance and glanced
around, a smile of serene happiness lighting up his face.
"We have had a delightful Sunday!" he observed. "It is
like renewing my youth to have all the children about us
once more."
He had had his breakfast and gone down-town, when we
came into the dining-room next morning. At my exclamation
of regretful surprise, our mother told us how he had hurried
the meal for himself, pleading that he had much to attend
to that forenoon. The snow was not deep, but it was sodden
by the fine rain that had succeeded it toward the dawn of
the gray December day, and he feared the evergreens
might not be forthcoming.
"I shall send a couple of carts into the country at once,"
were his parting words. "I would not have the children
disappointed for ten times the worth of the evergreens."
It was to be a busy morning with us all. As soon as breakfast
was dispatched, the long table - pulled out to its utmost
limit to accommodate the tribe - was cleared of dishes,
plates, and cloth, and we fell to tying up parcels for the
tree, sorting bonbons, and other light tasks. Mince-pies,
concocted according to the incomparable recipe handed down
from mother to daughter, in the Montrose and Olney families,
for a century-and-a-half, had been baked last week, and
loaded the pantry-shelves. My mother's unsurpassable
crullers, superintended by herself at Christmas, and at no
other season, were packed away in stone jars; and, that no
distinctive feature of Yuletide might be missing from the
morrow's dinner, the whitest, plumpest, tenderest sucking
pig the market could offer, lay at length in a platter in
the store-room. Before he could go into the oven, he would
be buttered from nose to toes, and coated with bread-crumbs.
When he appeared on the table, he would be adorned with a
necklace of sausages,
cranberries would fill out the sunken eyes, and a lemon be
thrust into his mouth. A mammoth gobbler, fattened for the
occasion, would support him at the other end of the board.
I had offered last Friday to make pumpkin-pies - the
genuine New England brand, such as my father had eaten
at Thanksgiving in the Dorchester homestead.
The colored cooks could not compass the delicacy. He
had sent home four bouncing pumpkins on Saturday, and
two had been pared, eviscerated, and stewed. I sat at the
far end of the table, beating, seasoning, and tasting. My
mother was filling candy-bags at the other, when Myrtle
rallied her upon not tasting the confectionery, of which she
was extravagantly fond.
"Mother is saving up her appetite for the Christmas pig!"
she asserted.
"I never eat sweets when I have a headache," was the
answer. "I did not sleep well last night."
This led to her account of a "queer fright" she had had at
midnight, or thereabouts. Awakened from her first sound sleep
by the unaccountable thrill of alarm each of us has felt,
in the impression that some one or something that has no
right to be there, is in the darkened chamber, she lay still
with beating heart and listened for further proof of the
intrusion. In a few minutes she heard a faint rustle that ran
from the farthest window toward her bed, and passed to the
door leading into the hall. Thoroughly startled, she shook my
father's shoulder and whispered to him that there was some
one in the room. He sprang up, lighted the gas, and made a
thorough search of the chamber and the dressing-room. The
door was locked, and, besides themselves, there was no
occupant of the apartment. He had fallen asleep again, when
she heard the same rustling noise, louder and more definite
than before. There was no mistaking the direction of the movement.
It began at the window, swept by the bed, and was lost at
the door. The terrified wife again awoke her husband, and
he made the round a second time, with the same result as
before.
When the mysterious movement seemed to brush her at the
third coming, she aroused her companion in an agony of
nervousness:
"I am terribly ashamed of my foolishness," she told him,
shivering with nameless fears; "but there really is something
here, now!" He was, as I have said in a former part of my
true story, usually so intolerant of nervous whimsies that
we forbore to express them in his hearing. He had mellowed
and sweetened marvellously within the last few years, as
rare vintages are sure to ripen. Arising now, with a good-
humored laugh, he made a third exploration of the premises,
and with no better result. When he lay down again, he put
his hand affectionately upon my mother's arm with a
soothing word:
"I will hold you fast! You are the most precious thing in
the house. Neither burglar nor bogie shall get you."
"What was it?" we asked.
"Oh, probably the wind blowing the shade, or making free
with something else that was loose. It was a stormy night.
We agreed, this morning, that it must have been that."
She spoke carelessly, and we took the incident as little to
heart. Passing through the hall, awhile later, I espied my
maid Ellen, who had lived with me for five years, whispering
with a mulatto woman in a corner. They fell apart at seeing
me, and Ellen followed me to the sitting-room.
"Rhoda was saying that the colored people think what
happened last night was a warnin'," she observed, with
affected lightness. "They are awful superstitious, ma'am,
ain't they?"
"Very superstitious and very ignorant!" I returned,
severely.
The trifling episode was gone, like a vapor passing from a
mirror, before my brother Herbert appeared. He had arisen
at daybreak, driven to Petersburg, and taken there the train
to Richmond, arriving by nine o'clock.
At the same hour our father reached his office. I have
heard the story of his walk down-town so minutely described
that I can trace each step. It was more than a mile from his
house to the office. There were no streetcars or omnibuses
in the city, at that time. Sometimes he drove to his place
of business; sometimes he rode on horseback. Generally, he
chose to walk. He was a fine horseman and a fearless driver,
from his youth up. At sixty-eight he carried himself as
erect as at thirty, and made less of tramping miles in all
weathers than men of half his age thought of pacing a dozen
squares on a sunny day. As he had reminded his wife, in
excusing his hurried breakfast, there were errands, many and
important, to be looked after. He stopped at Pizzini's, the
noted confectioner of the town, to interview that dignitary
in person, anent a cake of noble proportions and brave with
ornate icing - Christmas fruit-cake - of Pizzini's own
composition, for which the order was given a week ago. To
the man of sweets he said that nothing must hinder the
delivery of the cake beyond that evening.
"We are planning a royal, old-fashioned family Christmas,"
he subjoined, "and there must be no disappointments."
The evergreens were ordered as stringently. Two cart-loads,
as he had said, and two more Christmas-trees, in case one
was not satisfactory. "There must be no disappointments."
Not far from Pizzini's he met Doctor Haxall, also
"Christmasing." The two silver-haired men shook hands,
standing in the damp snow on the corner, and exchanged
the compliments of the season.
"What has come to you?" queried the doctor, eying his
friend curiously. "You are renewing your youth. You have
the color, the step, and the eyes of a boy!"
"Doctor!" letting his hand drop upon the other's shoulder,
"to morrow will be the happiest day of my life! After four
terrible years of war and separation, I am to have in the old
home all my children and grandchildren - a united and loving
family. It will be the first time in eight years! My cup
runneth over!"
He strode into his office with the springing step that had
brought him all the long mile and a half; spoke cheerily to
two or three employees who were on hand; remarked upon
the weather, and his confidence that we would have a fine
day to-morrow, and laid aside his overcoat and hat. Then he
stepped to the outer door to issue an order to two colored
men standing there, began to speak, put his hand to his head,
and fell forward. The men caught him, saved him from falling,
and supported him to a chair. He pointed to the door, and
spoke one word:
"Horace!"
My brother was his partner in business, and he could not
be far away. The messenger met him within a short distance
of the door. The dulling eyes brightened at sight of him;
with an inarticulate murmur, the stricken man raised his
hand to his head, to indicate the seat of pain, leaned back
upon the strong young arms that held him, and closed his
eyes.
He was still breathing when they brought him home. Doctor
Haxall had galloped on ahead of the carriage containing
him and the attendants, to prepare us measurably for what
was coming. The unconscious master of the home was brought
through the hall between banks of evergreens, delivered in
obedience to his order issued
but three hours earlier. Two tall Christmas-trees and three
wagon-loads of running cedar, pine, and spruce heaped the
floor, and were pushed aside hastily by the servants to
make way for the mournful procession.
He did not speak or move after they laid him upon his
own bed.
One more hour of anguished waiting, and we knew that
he had entered upon the "happiest day of his life."
TWO BRIDALS - A BIRTH AND A PASSING -
"MY LITTLE LOVE" -
IN October, 1867, I had
the great happiness of seeing my
favorite brother married to the woman he had loved so long
and so faithfully that the marriage was the fitting and only
sequel the romance of the Civil War could have. From the
day of our coming to Newark, she, who was now my sister,
then a school-girl, had established herself in our hearts. She
was my sister Alice's most intimate friend, and, after Alice
left us, glided into the vacant place naturally. With the
delicacy and discretion characteristic of a fine and noble
nature, she never, during those dreary years of separation
and silence, alluded, in her talks with me, to the tacit
"understanding" existing between herself and my brother.
When he visited us immediately upon his liberation from Fort
Delaware, it was evident that both of the unacknowledged
lovers took up the association where it had been severed
four years ago.
They were wedded on October 5th. The next day Mr. (now
"Doctor") Terhune, the three little girls, and myself,
with their nurse, took the train for Richmond to assist in
the preparations for the marriage of Myrtle and "Will"
Robertson. The newly wedded pair returned from their
bridal tour in season to witness the second marriage, on
October 17th.
On February 4, 1869, my little Myrtle opened her beautiful
eyes upon the world in which she was to have
an abiding-place for so short a time that the fast, bright
months of her sojourn are as a dream to me at this distance
from that spring and summer. She was a splendid baby,
finely developed, perfect in feature, as in form, and grew
so rapidly in size and strength that my fashionable friends
pointed to her as a lively refutation of my theory that "bottle
babies" were never so strong as those who had their natural
nourishment. A tedious spell of intermittent fever that laid
hold of me, when she was but two months old, deprived her
of her rightful nutriment. When she was four months old,
we removed for the summer to Sunnybank, and set aside one
cow expressly for her use. She throve gloriously until, in
September, dentition sapped her vitality, and, as I had
dreaded might ensue upon the system of artificial feeding,
none of the various substitutes for nature's own provision
for the young of the human race, were assimilated by the
digestive organs. On the last day of the month she passed
into safer hands than ours.
I have told the story of our Alice's wonderful life in My
Little Love. Now that my mind and nerves have regained a
more healthful tone than they could claim during the months
when I found a sad solace in the portraiture of our lost
darling, I cannot trust myself to dwell at length upon the
rich endowments of mind and heart that made the ten-year-old
girl the idol of her home, and a favorite with playmates and
acquaintances. Although thirty-five years have set that
beautiful life among the things of a former generation, I still
meet those who recollect and speak of her as one might of a
round and perfect star.
We, her parents, knew her for what she was, while she was
spared to glorify our home. Once and again, we congratulated
ourselves that we comprehended the value of our treasure
while we held it - did not wait for the brightening
of the fleeting blessing. When He who bestowed the good
and perfect gift recalled her to Himself, we thanked Him,
from the sincere depths of broken hearts, that He had
deemed us worthy to keep it for Him for almost eleven
years.
She went from us January 1, 1874.
By the time the spring opened, repeated hemorrhages from
lungs I had been vain enough to believe were exceptionally
strong, had reduced me to a pitiable state of weakness.
If I have not spoken, at every stage of the narrative of
these late years, of the unutterable goodness of Newark
friends and parishioners, it is not that this had abated in
degree, or weakened in quality. In all our afflictions they
bore the part of comforters to whom our losses were theirs.
Strong arms and hearts in our hours of weakness were ever
at our call. When it became apparent that my health was
seriously impaired, the "people," with one voice, insisted
that Doctor Terhune should take a vacation of uncertain
length, and go with me to the Adirondacks for as long a
time as might be needed to restore me to health and vigor.
I had worked hard for the past five or six years. Besides
my literary engagements, which were many, including the
arrangement of material for, and publication of, Common
Sense in the Household, I was deep in church and charitable
work, and had a large visiting-list. Little account was made,
at that date, of nervous prostration. I should have laughed
that little to scorn had it been intimated by physician or
friend that I was a victim to the disorder. I know now, to a
certainty, that I was so near the "verge" that a touch would
have toppled me over. My very ignorance of the peril may
have saved me from the fall.
We were four months in the Adirondacks. Except that
the sore lungs drew in the resinous airs more freely than
they had taken in the fog-laden salt air of the lowlands, and
that I slept better, I could not discern any improvements in
my condition when the shortening and cooling days called us
southward.
In July, a telegram from Richmond had informed me of my
mother's death. So battered and worn was I that the full
import of the tidings did not reach my mind and heart, until
my brother Herbert sought in the balsam forests relief from
the cares of home and parish, and we talked together of our
common loss in the quiet woods fringing the lake. I shall
never forget the strange chill that froze my heart during one
of these talks, when I bethought myself that I now belonged
to the "passing generation." My mother's going had struck
down a harrier which kept off the cold blast from the
boundless Sea of Eternity. I could not shake off the fancy
for many weeks. It recurred to me in wakeful midnights, and
in the enforced rest succeeding toilful days, until it
threatened to become an obsession. Instead of accepting this
and other, to me, novel and distressing sensations, as
features of confirmed invalidism, I fought them with all the
might of a will that was not used to submission.
The next winter was one of ceaseless conflict. I grew
insanely sensitive on the subject of my failing health. When,
after walking quickly up the stairs, or climbing the hill from
the lower town to our home, a fit of coughing brought the
blood to my lips, I stanched it with my handkerchief and kept
the incident to myself. I went into a shop, or turned a corner,
to avoid meeting any one who would be likely to question me
as to my health, or remark upon my pallor. At home, the
routine of work knew no break; I attended and presided at
charitable and parish meetings, as if nervous prostration
were a figment of the hypochondriacal imagination.
So well did I play the part to the members of my own
household, that my husband himself believed me to be on the
low, if not the high, road to recovery. He was as busy in
his line as I pretended to be in mine, and certain projects
affecting the future welfare of his parish were on foot,
enlisting his lively interest. How far the pious deception may
have gone, was not to be tested. The active intervention of
one plain-spoken woman was the pivotal point of our two
lives.
I mentioned, some chapters back, the call of one of my
best friends and the best neighbor I ever had, on the day of
Mr. Lincoln's death. Although we had removed, by medical
advice, to the higher part of the city, and a full mile away
from her home, she never relaxed her neighborly kindness. I
had not been aware of her close surveillance of myself; still
less did I suspect at what conclusion she had arrived. She
had reasons, cogent and sad, for surveillance and
conclusions. Several members of her own family had died of
consumption, and she was familiar with the indications of the
Great White Plague. When she came, day after day, to take
me to drive at noon, when, as she phrased it, "the world was
properly aired," and, when she could not come, sent carriage
and coachman with the request that I would use the
conveyance at pleasure - I was touched and a little amused
at what was, I conceived, exaggerated solicitude for me,
whose indisposition was only temporary. Meanwhile, her
quick eyes and keen wits were busy. Not a change of color,
not a flutter of the breath escaped her, and in the fulness
of time she opened her mouth and spoke.
My husband had a habit, of many years' standing, of
winding up a busy, harassing day by dropping into the home
of our whilom neighbors, and having a tranquillizing cigar
with the husband. I never expected him home before
midnight when he did this, and on one particular
evening, knowing that he was at the B.'s, and feeling more
than usually fatigued, I went to bed at ten. Awakened,
by-and-by, by the glare of a gas-burner full in my face, I
unclosed my eyes upon a visage so full of anxiety so
haggard with emotion, that I started up in alarm.
"Don't be frightened!" he said, soothingly. "Nothing has
happened. But, is it true that you are so ill as Mrs. B.
would have me believe? And have I been blind?"
The energetic little lady had, as she confessed to me when
I charged her with it, freed her burdened mind without
reserve or fear:
"It was time somebody opened his eyes, and I felt myself
called to do it."
Within twenty-four hours a consultation of physicians
was held.
They, too, made no secret of their verdict. The apex of
the right lung was gone, and it was doubtful whether
anything could prevent the rapid waste of both. When
Doctor Terhune, ever a stanch believer in the efficacy of
change of air and place, declared his determination to take
me abroad, without the delay of a month, two of the Galens
affirmed that it would be of no use. I "had not three months
of life left to me, under the most favorable circumstances."
The ghastly truth was withheld from me at the time. I was
told that I must not spend another winter in Newark, and
that we would, if possible, go to the south of Europe for the
winter. "To go abroad" had been the dream of my life. Yet,
under the anticipation of the labor and bustle of closing
the house, perhaps breaking up our home for good, and going
forth into a new world, my strength failed utterly. Now
that my husband knew the worst, there was no more need of
keeping up appearances. I became aware that I had, all
along, been holding on to life with will-power that had no
physical underpinning. Each day
found me weaker and more spiritless. The idea that I
was clinging to a shred of existence by a thinning thread,
seized upon me like a nightmare. And I was tired! tired!
TIRED!
There came a day when I resolved to let go and drift out.
That was the way I put it to my husband when he approached
my bed, from which I never arose until nine or ten o'clock,
and inquired how I felt.
"I am worn out, holding on!" I informed him. "I shall not
get up to-day. All that is needed to end the useless fight is
to let go and drift out. I shall drift!"
He sat down on the side of the bed and looked at me. Not
gloomily, but thoughtfully. There was not a suspicion of
sentimentality in the gaze, or in the tone in which he
remarked, reflectively:
"I appreciate fully what you mean, and how hard it is for
you to keep on living. And I say nothing of the inconvenience
it would cause your girls and myself were you to die. It is
asking a great deal of you -" (bringing out the words slowly
and with seeming reluctance). "But if you could bring
yourself to live until Bert is through college, it would
be a great kindness all around. The boy will go to the devil
without his mother. Think of it - won't you? Just hold on
until your boy is safely launched in life."
With that he left me to "think of it."
My boy! My baby! Just four years old, on my last birthday!
The man-child, of whom I was wont to say proudly that he
was the handsomest birthday gift I ever had, and that no
young man could ever pay his mother a more delicate and
gracious compliment than he had paid me in timing his
advent upon December 21st. The baby that had Alice's
eyes and brunette coloring! I lay still, staring up at
the ceiling, and doing the fastest thinking I
had ever accomplished. I saw the motherless boy, sensitive
and high-spirited, affectionate and clever, the butt of
rude lads, and misinterpreted by brutish teachers; exposed
to fiery temptations at school and in college, and yielding
to them for the lack of a mother's training and the ægis
of a mother's love.
"The boy will go to the devil without his mother!"
Hard words those, and curtly uttered, but they struck
home as coaxings and arguments and peltings could not
have done.
In half an hour my husband looked in upon me again. I
intercepted remark or query by saying:
"Will you ring the bell for Rose to help me dress? I have
made up my mind to hold on for a while longer."
The tactful ruse had given me a new lease of life.
One more circumstance connected with our first foreign
trip may be worth mentioning here.
During the summer of 1855, which I spent in Boston and
the vicinity, I consulted Ossian Ashley with regard to a
project that had engaged my mind for some months - viz.,
indulging my long-cherished desire to visit Europe, and to
spend a year there. There was no reason, that I could see,
why I should wait longer to put the plan into execution.
My parents were living, and were in the prime of healthy
maturity; I had plenty of money of my own, and, if I had
not, my father would cheerfully defray the expenses of the
trip. We discussed the scheme at length, and with growing
zest. Then he made the proposition that his wife should
accompany me, taking her boy and girl along (she had but
two children then), and that he would join us in time to
journey with us for a few months, and bring us home.
With this well-digested scheme in my mind, I returned to
Richmond. There I met with strenuous opposition from an
unexpected quarter:
"If you will stay at home and marry me, I guarantee to
take you abroad within seven years," was one of the few
promises the speaker ever broke to me.
Just twenty-one years from the day in which Ossian Ashley
and I blocked out the route his wife and I would take on
the other side, I looked into his New York office to say
that we had engaged passage for Liverpool for October 15th,
and that we expected to be absent for two years at the least.
His look was something to be remembered. His son was in
a Berlin University, and Mrs. Ashley and her two young
daughters would sail on September 15th for Liverpool,
intending to go thence to Germany. They would remain
there for two years.
On the morrow, we had a letter from him, notifying us that
they had exchanged the date of sailing for October 15th,
and the boat for the City of Berlin, in which we were to
sail.
"A trifling delay of twenty-one years!" observed my
husband, philosophically. "If all human projects came as
near prompt fulfilment as that, there would be fewer
grumblers."
We took with us our three children and my maid, who had
been the boy's nurse. In Loiterings in Pleasant Paths, written
in part while we sojourned abroad, she figures as "The
Invaluable." Never was title more justly earned. In that book
the events of the next two years are recorded at greater
length than they could be set down here.
I made no note there of the pain that seemed to pluck out
our heartstrings, consequent upon our parting with our
Newark parish and fellow-citizens. We had grown with the
place, which was a mere village, eighteen years ago, by
comparison with the large city we left. Her interests were
ours. Doctor Terhune was identified with her public and
private enterprises, and known by sight and by reputation
throughout the town and its environs. His church stubbornly
refused to consider his resignation
as final. He might have an indefinite leave of absence -
two, four, six years - provided he would engage to come
to them when he could bring me back well. He wisely refused
to listen to the proposal. The business quarter of the
thriving city was encroaching upon the neighborhood of
the church. It was likely to be abandoned as "a residential
locality" within a few; years. In which event, the removal
of building and congregation would be a necessity. The
history of such changes in the character of sections of
fast-enlarging cities is familiar to all urbanites. It
was essential, in the opinion of the retiring incumbent,
that the church should select another pastor speedily, if
it would retain its integrity and identity.
The love and loyalty that had enveloped us, like a vitalizing
atmosphere, for almost a score of winters and summer
wrapped us warmly to the last. There were public receptions
and private house-parties, by the dozen, and
"Partings
such as press
and a gathering on the
steamer on sailing-day that made us
homesick in anticipation of the actual rending of ties that
were living flesh and blood - and we were afloat.
As one of the leading men in the church shook my husband's
hand, in leaving the deck, he pressed into it an envelope.
We were well down the bay when it was opened. It contained
a supplementary letter of credit of three thousand dollars
- the farewell gift of a few men whose names accompanied the
token.
"Faithful to the
end!" murmured the recipient, reading the
short list through mists that thickened between his eyes and
the paper. "Had ever another man such a parish?"
I answered
"No!" then, emphatically.
My response would be the
same to-day.
TWO YEARS OVERSEAS - LIFE IN ROME AND GENEVA
THE main events of the
two years spent abroad by our
small family, including "The Invaluable," as we soon came to
call Rose O'Neill, are set down in Loiterings in Pleasant
Paths, a chatty volume of travel and sojourn, published soon
after our return to America. The private record of those
two dozen months would far surpass the book in bulk. It will
never be written except as it is stamped upon "the fleshly
tables of the hearts" of those who lived and loved, studied,
and revelled with us.
We had meant to pass the first winter in Paris, but the
most beautiful city of the world was unfriendly to my sore
and aching lung. After an experiment of six weeks, we
broke camp and sped southward. Ten days in the fair Florence
I was to learn in after years to love as a second home,
repeated the doleful tale of fog, rain, and chill that
pierced our bones.
An old Richmond friend, with whom I had had many a jolly
frolic in my early girlhood, was now Reverend Doctor
Taylor, a resident of Rome. After the exchange of several
letters, we adopted his friendly advice that we should give
the Eternal City a trial as the refuge we sought - so much
less hopefully than at first, that I entreated my husband,
on the rainy evening of our arrival in Rome, not to push
inquiries further, but to let me go home, and die in comfort
there.
Doctor Taylor had ordered rooms for us in a family
hotel well spoken of by Americans, and was at the station
to conduct us to our quarters.
I was deposited upon a sofa, when my wraps were removed,
and lay there, fairly wearied out by the railway journey.
The room was fireless and carpetless. I could feel the
chill of the stone flooring and the bare walls through the
blankets in which I was swathed by distressful Rose, who
"guessed these Eyetalians hadn't the first notion of what
American comfort is!" Three long French casements afforded
a full view of leaden, low-stooping skies and straight
sheets of rain. When a fire of sticks, besmeared with
resin, was coaxed into a spiteful flare, the smoke puffed
as spitefully into the room, and drifted up to the ceiling
twenty feet overhead. Invited by my ever hospitable husband
to seat himself near an apology for a cheery hearthstone -
less pitiful to him after his ten years residence in Italy
than to us, the new arrivals - our friend fell into social
chat of ways and means. The carpet would be down to-morrow;
the sun would shine to-morrow; I would be rested to-morrow.
He broke off with a genial laugh there, to impart a bit of
information we were to prove true to the utmost during the
next year:
"Everything is 'domano' with Italians. I think the babies
are born with it in their mouths. One falls into the habit
with mortifying ease."
I am afraid I dozed for a few minutes, lulled by the patter
of rain and the low-toned talk going on at the far (literally)
side of the apartment. A lively visitor used to wonder if we
"could see across it on cloudy days without an opera-glass."
This was the next sentence that reached me:
"Thus far, we have met with discouragement. March is
the most trying month to weak lungs in America. And ever
since we landed in Liverpool we have had nothing but
March weather. I think now we shall push on to Algiers" -
glancing ruefully at the murky windows. "Upon one I thing I
am determined - to find a land where there is no March, as
we know the month. For one year I want to secure that for
my wife's breathing apparatus."
"I know of but one such region." The answer was in the
slight drawl natural to the George Taylor I used to
know; the speaker stared sombrely into the peevish fire.
"And that?"
interrogated the other, eagerly.
The drawl had now a nasal
touch befitting the question:
"
'No chilling winds, no poisonous breath
"Heavens and
earth, man! That is just where I don't want
her to go yet! Nor for many a long year!"
The laugh I could not suppress helped to warm and brighten
us all. Do any of us suspect how much we owe to the funny
side of life?
Thus began my Roman winter. With "domano" came the
sunshine and the carpet, and the first of the hundred drives
in and about the storied city, that were to bring healing and
vigor, such as even my optimistic husband had scarcely
dared to anticipate. That I am alive upon this wonderful,
beautiful earth at this good hour, I owe, under God, to those
divine four months among the Seven Hills. Doctor Terhune
had received the appointment to the Chaplaincy of the
American Chapel in Rome before we left Paris. He decided
to accept it within a week after our arrival in the Eternal
City. It was a cosey corner for pastor and flock - that little
church in Piazza Poli, belonging to an Italian Protestant
corporation, and occupied by them for half of each Sunday,
by American tourists and transient residents of Rome for
the other half. All my memories of the wonderful and
bewitching winter are happy. None have a gentler charm than those which
renew the scenes of quiet Sunday forenoons when visitors
from the dear home-land, who had never before looked
upon the faces of their fellow-worshippers, gathered by
common consent in the place "where prayer was wont to
be made" in their own tongue. There were no strangers in
the assembly that lingered in the tiny vestibule and blocked
the aisle when the service was over. The spirit of mutual
helpfulness spoke in eye and speech. It should not have
been considered singular that those thus convened were,
almost without exception, refined and educated, and so unlike
the commonly accepted type of travelling American, that
we often commented upon the fact in conferences with
familiar friends. We felicitated our selves that we caught
the cream of the flow of tourists, that season.
"It is a breath of the dear old home-life!" said more than
one attendant upon the simple services, where the
congregation was kaleidoscopic in outward seeming, the
same in spirit.
I cannot pass over this period of our foreign life without
a tribute to one whose friendship and able co-operation in
the work laid to Doctor Terhune's hand, did more than any
other one influence to make for him a home in Rome. Dr.
Leroy M. Vernon, who subsequently became Dean of the
University of Syracuse, in New York State, was the rarest
combination of strength and gentleness I have ever seen.
He had been for some years resident in Rome; was an
enthusiastic archaeologist and art-student, speaking Italian
with fluency and grace, and thoroughly au fait to the best
literature of that tongue. From the beginning of their
acquaintanceship, the two men fraternized heartily. In the
ripening of liking into intimacy, they walked, rode, talked,
and studied together. What the association was to the
younger of the two, may be imagined by one who has had
the privilege of close communion with a beloved
comrade who held the key to the treasure-house one has
rouged all his life to enter.
"The winter in Italy with Vernon was worth more to me
than a course in the Academy of Fine Arts, combined with
ten years of archæological lectures from experts," was
the testimony of the survivor, twenty years later, when
the news of the dean's death was brought to us.
They loved each other tenderly to the end of mortal
companionship.
Who can doubt that it has been renewed in the City
where eager minds are never checked by physical
weakness, and aspiration is identical with fulfilment?
In mid-May, when the Pincio put on its beautiful garments
in the purple flowering of the Judas-trees, and the tawny
Tiber rolled between hills of living green, we turned our
backs upon what those marvellous months had wrought into
our own familiar dwelling-place, and took our sad,
reluctant way to Florence. Five weeks there were varied by
excursions to Fiesole, Bologna, and Venice. Our next move
was to Lucerne. Leaving the children in care of "The
Invaluable," we ran up to Heidelberg, joining there our
kinspeople, the Ashleys, and travelling with them leisurely
over mountain and through pass, until we brought up in
Geneva.
We were hardly settled, as we supposed for the season, in
the bright little town of Calvin and Voltaire, when a
summons came from the American Chapel in Paris for
Doctor Terhune's services, pending the absence of the
regular incumbent in America, whither he had been
summoned by the illness of his mother. We had no thought
that the separation of the head from our transplanted family
would be a matter of even a few weeks, whereas it lasted for
four months. There was visiting back and fro; a reunion at
Christmas under the massive crowns of mistletoe, such as
grow nowhere else - not even in the Britain of the Druids
- and a memorable New-Year's dinner at the Hotel
Metropole, arranged under American auspices, the chief
pride of the feast being mince-pies, concocted by Yankee
housewives, and misspelled among the French dishes on
the gorgeously illuminated menus. In February, my eldest
daughter and myself went to Paris for a fortnight - a
tentative trip which proved beyond a question that the air of
the city on the Seine was rank poison to the healing lungs.
We hurried back to jolly, friendly Geneva, where I could
walk five miles per diem in air that was the very elixir of
life to my system, physical, mental, and moral. Even the
lusty winds from Mont Blanc, and the rough gales that
lashed Lake Leman into yeasty ridges for a week at a time,
wrought strength, instead of harm. That bodily strength
grew apace was but one element in the fulness of content in
which we basked throughout the eight months we spent in
the lakeside city, behind which the Alps stood in sublime
calmness that was in itself tonic and inspiration. We had
a pleasant appartement in the Pension Magnenat, directly
upon the quay. From our drawing-room windows we looked
across the lake upon the Juras, capped with snow, and made
beautiful exceedingly all day long, by changeful lights and
shadows, reflected in the waters in opaline, prismatic hues
we had never seen surpassed, even in Italy.
The American colony in Geneva has a stable reputation
for intelligence and good-breeding. One expects to find
these in university towns abroad, as at home. It may not
have been unusually delightful that winter. Perhaps climate
and health combined with our peaceful domestic life, to
incline us to be more than satisfied with our social
environment. Certain it is that the circle of congenial
associates, that had widened to take us in, as a part of
a harmonious corporate whole, was, to our apprehension,
ideally charming. Everybody had some specific work or
pursuit to explain his, or her residence in Geneva. The
younger men were in the university, or in preparation for
it, with "coaches"; the girls were studying French, German,
and Italian, or painting from nature under such instructors
as Madame Vouga, whose renown as a painter of wild flowers
was international. We matrons had a reading-class,
enlivened by the membership of our daughters, that met
weekly at the house of some one of the party. To it we
brought our easels, boards, and paint-boxes, our embroidery,
or other fancy-work. One of the girls read aloud for two
hours - history, biography, or essay - and at five o'clock
what had been read was discussed freely over afternoon
tea. A club of young people of both sexes read German,
alternately with Italian and French plays, on Wednesday
night, in my salon, I playing chaperon at my embroidery-
frame at a side-table, and admitted to the merry chat that
went around with coffee and cake, when the reading was
concluded. Some of the members of that informal "Club"
have made their mark in the large outer world since that
care-free, all-satisfying sojourn in what we forgot to call
an alien land, so happily did we blend with the classic
influences, lapping us about so softly that we were never
conscious of the acclimating process.
The tall youth, who submitted meekly (or gallantly) to
correction of lingual lapses in his rendering of Molière
or Wallenstein or Ariosto, from the girl at his elbow -
revenging himself by a brisk fire of badinage in honest
English after the books were closed - is an eminent
metropolitan lawyer, whose income runs up well into the
tens of thousands; another, a Berlin graduate, is the dignified
dean of a law school attached to an American university;
another is a college professor; another, a Genevan graduate,
is rising in fame and fortune in an English city; one, beloved
by all, completed a brilliant course at Harvard, and when
hope and life were in their prime, laid his noble head down
for his last sleep in Mount Auburn. The gay girls are staid
matrons and mothers now, with sons and daughters of their
own, as old as themselves were in that far-off, care-free time.
I have written "care-free" twice upon one page, and
because I can conjure up no other phrase that so aptly
describes what that veritable arbor on the Hill Difficulty
we call "Life," was to me. Household cares were an unknown
quantity in the well-conducted pension. Our breakfast of
French rolls, coffee, tea, boiled eggs, honey and, for
the younger children, creamy milk, was brought to our
salon every morning. A substantial luncheon (the déjeuner
à la fourchette) was served in the pension salle à
manger at one, and a dinner of six or seven courses,
at seven. Our fellow-guests were, for the most part,
unobjectionable; a fair proportion were agreeable and
desirable acquaintances. About one-third were Americans;
another third were English; the rest were Italians,
Germans, Russians, and French. A table at one end of
the room was assigned to English-speaking boarders,
and we soon made up a pleasant clique that did not,
however, exclude several foreigners. Thus we persisted in
calling them to ourselves. There were excursions every
few day to places of interest within easy reach. Coppet,
the home and burial-place of Madame de Staël; the Villa
Diodati, where Byron and Shelley lived and wrote; Ferney
the château from which Voltaire wrote letters to the
magnates of the world, and within the walls of which he
entertained all the famous wits and many of the beauties
of his stirring times; Chillon, immortalized by Bonnivard
and the poem founded upon his captivity - were some of
the memorable haunts with which frequent visits made us
familiar.
Exercise was a luxury in the ozone-fraught air, fresh
every morning, and work was the natural result of the
abounding vitality thus engendered. In no other quarter
of the globe have I found such sustained vigor of mental
and physical forces as during our residence in Switzerland.
I record the fact gratefully, and as a possible helpful
suggestion to other sufferers from the overstimulating
climate and prevalent energy of American life. Rome was a
gracious rest; Geneva was upbuilding.
It was a positive wrench to the heartstrings to leave her
in May, and take our course leisurely northward.
The summer was given, and happily, to England, our
headquarters being, successively, the Isle of Wight,
Leamington, and Brighton.
Late in September, we sailed for New York.
SUNNYBANK - A NEW ENGLAND PARISH -
"MY BOYS" -
WITH no more idea as to
our permanent abiding-place than had
the Father of the Faithful, when he turned his back upon Ur of
the Chaldees, and his face toward a land he knew not of, "still
journeying toward the south," in obedience to daily marching
orders - we sought, upon reaching our native shores, the one
pied-à-terre left to us on the continent.
Sunnybank had been left in charge of the gardener, who, with
his comely English wife and four children, had now occupied
the lodge at the gate of our domain for ten years. He was
Pompton-born and bred, and so unromantic in sentiment and
undemonstrative in demeanor, that we were not prepared to
behold a triumphal wreath on the gate when we drove into the
grounds. No human creature was visible until, winding through
the grove that hides the house from the highway, we saw the
whole family collected about the door. All were in holiday garb;
wreaths of goldenrod hung in the windows, and above the porch
was tacked a scroll with the word "WELCOME" wrought upon it
in the same flowers. Yet more amazed were we when, as Doctor
Terhune stepped from the carriage, Conrad knelt suddenly and
embraced the knees of his employer, with an inarticulate shout of
joy, tears raining down his tanned cheeks.
"Just like a scene in an English play!" commented
Christine, afterward. "But not a bit like what one would expect
in Pompton, New Jersey, U. S. A."
The unexpectedness of it all, especially the involuntary
outbreak in a man who had never seen a play in his life, and
despised "foolishness" of whatsoever description, moved us to
answering softness, and brought the first rush of home-gladness
we had felt since landing. For, to be honest, I confess that
none of us were as yet reconciled to exchanging the life we had
luxuriated in for the past two years - full, rich, and varied -
for a toilful routine of parish duties, we knew not where.
Without confiding the weakness to the others, each of us, as
we owned subsequently with a twinge of shame, had been wofully
dashed in spirit by the circumstances attending our arrival.
Clarence Ashley had met us upon the wharf, his mother and
sisters being at their country-place; the day was unseasonably
warm for late September, and New York was in its least attractive
out-of-season dress and mood. The docks were dirty, and littered
with trunks, crates, and boxes; the custom-house officers were
slow, and most of them sulky. We parted on the wharf with a dear
friend from Virginia, who had travelled with us for nearly a
year, and had taken return passage in the same ship. She had
a home to which to go. We felt like pilgrims and strangers in a
foreign land. As the carriage into which we had I packed ourselves
threaded its way through the grimy purlieus of the lower city, I
found myself saying over mentally the unpatriotic doggerel I used
to declare was unworthy of any true American:
"The
streets are narrow and the buildings mean -
Then, the fields and
roads past which the train (yclept "an
accommodation") bumped and swung, were ragged and dusty;
the hedge-rows were unkempt, the trees
untrimmed. Fresh as we were from the verdure of English
parks, the shaven lawns, and blossoming hedges that make a
garden-spot of the tight little island we proudly recognized
as our Old Home, the effect of that sultry afternoon was
distinctly depressing. Our lakeside cottage, the one nook
in all the broad land we could call "Home," on this side of
the water, was another disappointment. Mrs. Haycock and her
girls had wrought zealously to make it comfortable, and
even festive. The wee rooms (as they looked to us) were
shining clean; flowers were set here and there, white
curtains, white bedspreads, and bright brasses betokened
loving solicitude for our welfare and contentment, and the
good woman had ready a hot supper, enriched with such
Pompton dainties as she knew we loved. "The Invaluable"
bustled over luggage, and added finishing touches to
bedrooms and nursery. I am sure she was the only one of
the returned exiles who was really happy that night.
I am thus frank in relating our experiences, because I
believe them to be identical with those of a majority of
tourists, upon resuming home-habits in their native country.
After excitement and novelty comes the ebb-tide of reaction
for the bravest and the most loving. Home is home but
readjustment precedes real enjoyment of the old scenes and
ways.
We were hardly settled in the nest before we paid a
promised visit to Richmond. There were resident there,
now, three families of the clan. My brother Horace and
the noble wife with whom my intimacy continued unshadowed
by a cloud of distrust until her death in 1894; my sister
Myrtle, more my daughter than sister, her husband, and
the boy who was my husband's namesake; and Percy, the
youngling of the brood, with a dainty little spouse and
their first-born son - made up the group that welcomed us
to dear old Richmond in early December.
To this was added, a week or so later, our eldest sister,
who journeyed all the way from her Missouri home to join
in the greetings to the whilom wanderers. We had one more
Christmas-week together - the last that was to collect
the unbroken band under one roof-tree. Then Mea went
westward, and we took our way toward the north, leaving
Christine to make her début in society under the auspices of
her uncles and aunts, and where her mother had first tasted
the pleasures of young-ladyhood.
It was, as I wrote to her, history repeating itself, and that
I felt as if I had taken root again in my native soil, and was
budding anew into a second springtime.
In May I wrote to the girl whose first winter "out" had,
thanks to the affectionate adoption of uncles and aunts,
fulfilled her rosiest dreams:
"Do you recollect that I quoted to you at our parting in
January, what a quaint old lady said to me in my girlhood:
'My dear, you may be an angel some day! You will never
be young again. Therefore, make the most of youth.'
"I paraphrase her counsel now, and to you: Make the most
of your present freedom, for you are going to be a pastor's
daughter again. As you know, your father has been preaching
hither and yon all winter, and has had four calls to as
many different churches: two in New Jersey, one in New
Haven, and, lastly, in Springfield, Massachusetts. For
reasons that seem good and sufficient to him, he has
accepted the last-named invitation, and he will enter upon
the duties connected therewith, this month.
"The 'Old First' is the most ancient church in Springfield,
if not the oldest in the Connecticut Valley. It has had an
honorable history, in more than two hundred years of
existence. If you have read Doctor Holland's Bay Path, you
will recollect Mr. Moxon, the then pastor of this church.
Perhaps because I have read the book, and maybe because
my old Massachusetts grandmother (a Puritan of the
Puritans, and preciously uncomfortable to live with, she was!)
talked to me of the straitlaced notions, works, and ways of the
'orthodox' New-Englander, which she thought 'blazed' the
only road to heaven - I have an idea that we will find the
atmosphere of Springfield very different from any other in
which we have lived. If I am right, it will be a change
even from Presbyterian Richmond. However this may be, I
counsel you to enjoy the remaining weeks of your stay there
to the utmost."
If I were called upon to describe what was the real
"atmosphere" of the loveliest of New England towns, in
which we lived for five busy years, I should say that it was
"stratified," and that in a fashion that puzzled us grievously
up to the latest day of our sojourn. Public spirit of the best
and most enlightened sort; refinement and taste in art and
literature; social manners and usages that were metropolitan,
and neighborliness which made the stranger and sojourner
welcome and at ease - all this was "shot," if I may so
express it, with strata of bigotry; with stubborn convictions
that the holders thereof were right, and the insignificant
residue of the world utterly wrong, and with primitive modes
of daily life and speech, that never ceased to surprise
and baffle us. Yet we flattered ourselves that we knew
something of the world and the inhabitants thereof!
In the process of acclimation we had occasion, if we had
never had it before, to be thankful for the unfailing and
robust sense of humor that had stood our friend in many
straits which would else have been annoyances. Before
long, we recognized that certain contradictory phases of
conduct and language, hard to comprehend and hard to
endure, had their keynote in what one of the best of my
new friends once aptly defined to me as "an agony of
incommunicableness," inherent in the New-Englander's
composition. He may have drawn the strain through nearly
three centuries from his early English ancestry. I have
seen the same paradox in the Briton of this generation.
Of one such man I said, later in life, when I was alone with
my sick son, thousands of miles from home: "The ice was
slow in breaking up; but it gave way all at once, and there
was warm water under it."
"Agony of incommunicableness!" Over and over, during
those five years, I blessed the man who put that key into
my hand.
I cannot better illustrate what I am trying to explain than
by relating what is, to me, one of the most precious and
altogether satisfactory memories connected with our
Springfield experiences.
Four months after our removal to the beautiful city, I
received a formal request (everything up to that time had a
smack of formality to my apprehension) that I would take
charge of a young men's Bible-class, the teacher of which
had left the town. The application was startling, for not
one of the young fellows had ever called on me, or evinced
other consciousness of the insignificant fact of my existence
than was implied in a grave salutation at the church-door
and on the street. After consultation with my husband I
accepted the position, and on the next Sabbath was duly
inducted into office by the superintendent. That is, he
took me to the door of the class-room and announced: "Mrs.
Terhune, young gentlemen, who will conduct your class in
the place of Mr. L., resigned."
I walked up the room to face eight bearded men, the
youngest twenty-two years of age, drawn up in line of
battle at the far end. I bowed and said "Good-afternoon," in
taking the seat and table set for me in front of the line.
They bowed in silence. I began the attack by disclaiming
the idea of "teaching" them, concealing as best I could my
consternation at finding men where I had looked for lads. I
asked "the privilege of studying with them," and thanked
them for the compliment of the invitation to do this. Then
I opened the Bible and delivered
a familiar running lecture upon the lesson for the day.
Not a question was asked by one of the dumb eight, and
not a comment was made at the close of the "exercises"
upon what had been said. I went through the miserable form
of shaking hands with them all as we separated, and carried
home a thoroughly discouraged spirit. By the following
Sunday I hit upon the idea of calling upon each student to
read a reference text, as it occurred in the course of the
lecture, and I took care there should be plenty of them.
That was the first crack in the ice. Encouraged by the
sound of their own voices, the young fellows put a
query or two, and I used these as nails upon which to hang
observations not indicated in the "lesson-papers." Next
week there were sixteen in line. Before the first year was
out there were forty, and they gave a dramatic entertainment
in a neighboring hall, which netted a sum large enough
to enlarge the class-room to double the original size. They
decorated it with their own hands, and I was with them
every evening thus employed.
Still, there was never a syllable to indicate that this was
anything but a business venture. I love boys with my whole
heart, and I had said this and more in their hearing, eliciting
no response.
At the end of the second year, when there were fifty
members in the class, one of the eldest of the number
removed from Springfield to a distant city. One of the
greatest surprises of my life was in the form of a letter
I had the week after he had bidden me good-bye as coolly
as if he had expected to see me next Sunday as usual.
He began by telling me how often he had wished he could
express what those Sunday afternoons had been in his life.
He "feared that I might have thought him unresponsive
and ungrateful."
"If indeed you ever troubled yourself to bestow more
than a passing thought upon this one of the many to whom
you have ministered," he went on, "I don't believe you ever
noticed that I let nobody else take the seat next to you on
the left? I used to go very early to make sure of it. I shall
unite with the church here next Sunday. You have a right to
know of a purpose, formed weeks ago, in that class-room -
the most sacred spot to me on earth."
He wrote to me of his marriage two years later, then of
the coming of his first-born son. About once a year I heard
from him, and that he was prospering in business and happy
in his home. Ten years ago I had a paper containing a
marked obituary-notice bearing his name.
The same story, with variations that do not affect the
general purport of the class-history, might be repeated here.
I hear of "my boys" from all parts of the world. All are
gray-haired now who have not preceded their grateful leader
to the Changeless Home.
There were sixty-six of them when I told them, one Sunday
afternoon, five years after our first meeting, that
Doctor Terhune had accepted a pressing call to a Brooklyn
church, and that I must leave them. The news was absolutely
unexpected, and a dead silence ensued. Then one fellow, who
had been received into the church with ten others of our
class, at the preceding communion season, arose in his place:
"Is there anything we could do to keep him - and you?" he
asked, huskily. "Has anybody done anything to make your
residence here unpleasant? If so" - stammering now, and a
defiant scowl gathering upon his handsome face - "Say!
can't we fellows just clean them out, and keep you and the
Doctor?"
It was impossible not to laugh. It was as impossible to
hold back the tears at the odd demonstration of the "boys' "
claim to membership in the Church Militant. He may have
forgotten the upgushing of the warm water under the ice.
I shall never lose the memory.
Nor yet of the farewell
reception to which the boys rallied
in force, excluding all other guests from the pleasant
class-room we had built, and in which I spent some of the
happiest hours vouchsafed to me in the city I had called "a
cold-storage vault," before I got under the ice of English
reserve and Puritanical self-consciousness engendered, as
I am fain to believe, by the rigid self examination enjoined
by the founders of State and Church. In those rude and
strenuous days, self-examination took the place, with
tortured, naked souls, of the penances prescribed in the
communion they had left to find
"Freedom
to worship God,"
and
"A
church without a bishop,
The class-room was
wreathed with flowers; there was music
by the boys, and social chat; a collation of their own
devising: then the eldest of the band, a married man for
years, goodly of form and feature, and with a nature as
lovely as his face, arose to make a farewell "presentation
address." He never finished it, although it began bravely
enough. The handsome set of brasses he passed over to me
were labelled, as he showed me, "FROM YOUR BOYS."
"You will have another class in your new home," the
speaker broke into the carefully prepared peroration to say,
"but please let us always call ourselves, 'Your Boys!' "
They are that still, and they will be evermore! A finer,
more loyal body of young men it would be hard to find in
New England, or elsewhere. It has happened so often that
I have come to look for it, that, on steamer or train, on
the street or in hotel, I am accosted by a middle-aged
man - invariably highly respectable in appearance - with -
"I beg your pardon. Let me recall myself to your
memory, I belonged to your Bible-class in Springfield."
If, as usually happens, he adds to his name, "One of your
boys" - the ashes are blown away from the embers of long-
past acquaintanceship. The talk that ensues invariably
emphasizes the pleasing fact that, if there were a black
sheep in our fold, he has, up to date, escaped detection.
God bless each and every one of them!
I cannot close the chapter that has to do with our
Springfield days, without paying a brief tribute to two who
played important parts in the drama of our family life. Both
have passed from mortal vision, and I may, therefore, name
them freely.
The house built for us by a parishioner in the pleasantest
part of the city, was in the immediate neighborhood of the
homestead of the late Samuel Bowles, the well-known
proprietor of the Springfield Republican. The house was
now occupied by his widow and family. To the warm
friendship that grew up between Mrs. Bowles and myself I
owe more than I can trust my pen to express here. From
our earliest meeting, the "middle wall of partition" of
strangerhood ceased to be to either of us. Hers, as I often
reminded her, was the one and only house in the place into
which I could drop, between the lights, unannounced, when
the humor seized me, and without putting on hat or coat. The
ascent of the half-block of space dividing our doors is ever
associated in my mind with the gloaming and moonlight, and
slipping away from duties to relax thought and tongue, for
one calming and sweetening half-hour, in the society of one
"who knew." It was not alone that, as one who had been born,
and had lived out her girlhood in the Middle States, her
range of ideas and sympathies was not limited by the circle
of hills binding Springfield into a close corporation. Her
great, warm heart took in the homesick stranger that I was, for
many a month after transplantation, and gave me a corner of
my very own. She was a safe, as well as an appreciative
listener, and
gave me many a hint respecting my new environment that
wrought out good to me. Her fine sense of humor was
another bond that drew us together. The snug sitting-room,
looking upon the quiet street, up which the shadows
gathered slowly on summer evenings, and where the sleigh.
bells jingled shrilly in the early winter twilight, echoed to
bursts of laughter better befitting a pair of school-girls
than two matrons who were both on the shady side of fifty. I
was in the earthly Jerusalem, with my son, when the gates
of the Celestial City opened to receive her faithful, loving
spirit. I am sure that, as Bunyan affirmed when another
travel-worn pilgrim entered into rest, "All the bells of the
city rang for joy."
In April, 1884, our eldest daughter became the wife of
James Frederick Herrick, one of the Republican's editorial
staff. We left her in Springfield when, in the same year, we
returned to the Middle States to take up our abode for the
next twelve years in Brooklyn. We could not have left her in
safer, tenderer keeping. A brother-editor said of him once
that he "had a heart of fire in a case of ice." The simile did
not do justice to the gentle courtesy and dignity that lent a
touch of old-school courtliness to manner and address. In all
the intimate association of the next ten years, I never saw in
him an act, or heard a word that approximated unkindness or
incivility. I wrote him down then, as I do now, as in all
respects, the thorough gentleman in what makes the much-abused
word a badge of honor. His ideals were high and pure; his
life, private and professional, above reproach.
"The stuff martyrs and heroes are made of," said one
who knew him well and long.
He would have died for the truth; he would have laid
down his life with a smile for his wife and children. Such
harmonious blending of strength and sweetness as were
found in the life of this man - modest to a fault,
and resolute to a proverb - I have never seen in another.
"I have fought the good fight" is the wording of his
epitaph. I could have wished to add, "Of whom the world
was not worthy."
In 1886 he received an appointment that brought him to
New York. There he yielded up a blameless life in 1893. If
his last illness were not the direct result of steady,
unremitting work, it is yet true that he wrought gallantly
after the fatal fever fastened upon him, standing patiently
in his lot until prostrated by delirium.
I shall part with reason and memory before I forget that
his last thought was of the young wife kneeling at his pillow,
and that the dying eyes, in losing their hold upon earth,
committed her to me.
RETURN TO MIDDLE STATES -
THE HOLY LAND - MY FRIENDS
IN the sketch of my
husband's life-work, written by a faithful
co-laborer in the vineyard which is the world, and appended to this
story, his reasons for returning to the Middle States are briefly
given. As I near the latter chapters of my record, I am hampered by
the necessity of treating cautiously of persons and incidents too
near the present day to be spoken of with the freedom time made
justifiable in earlier reminiscences. Those twelve years in the
City of Churches were crowded with events of more or less moment.
They were busy, and not unhappy years. Our home-group, reduced
to four by the marriage of our eldest daughter, was made still
smaller by the marriage of her sister on March 5, 1889, to
Frederic Van de Water, of Brooklyn. The choice was wise, and the
union has been one of rare blessedness.
"In-laws" have no terrors in our circle. No sinister significance
attaches to the term "mother-in-law." The adopted sons were loyal
and loving to the parents of their wives. Not a cloud darkens the
memory of our intercourse. The only obstacle to Belle's marriage
was thus stated in whimsical vexation by her father:
"It is hard that, when there are said to be fifteen hundred proper
names in the English language, my girls must select men who have
the same. It leads to no end of confusion!"
Our boy, now grown into an athletic six-footer, was
graduated from Columbia University in 1893. We three had lived
in great peace and contentment during his college course. We
talk often, and wistfully, of those four years of church-work,
social duties, literary tasks, and academic studies, which
filled hands and heads. We spent our winters in town. Sunnybank
grew to be more and more a home in the summer months. It was
like a return to the time when our own babies filled house and
verandas with merry prattle, and our hearts made music; for
there were, at the date I name, four boys to repeat the history
for the proud grandparents. But for the great sorrow that had
broken up Christine's happy home in February, and brought her
back to us with her two boys, and the birth, a fortnight thereafter,
of Belle's second boy, the years slipped by brightly, without other
signal event until "Bert's" graduation at the June Commencement.
There was, for me, one notable exception to the gentle flow.
It was, I think, in mid-June, that l had a letter from the proprietor
of the Christian Herald, a religious paper of wide circulation,
asking me to write a serial that should run through six months'
issues of that periodical. Just at that time my mind was working
upon a projected story (published afterward in book-form under
the caption The Royal Road), and this seemed a promising
medium for circulating it among the classes I wished to reach.
Accordingly, I called at the Christian Herald office to discuss the
plan. My brief and satisfactory interview with the managing editor
over, I arose to go when he invited me to step into the adjoining
room, where the proprietor would like to speak with me for a
minute. I was courteously received, and final arrangements for
the publication of the serial were made. I was again on the point
of departure, when the proprietor directed my attention to a new
and handsome map of the city of Jerusalem, spread out upon his desk,
inquiring, in an offhand way:
"Have you ever visited the Holy Land?"
"Never," I replied, adding involuntarily, "It has been one
of my dearest dreams that I might go some day."
"It would be a very easy matter for you to fulfil the
wish," in the same easy, unpremeditated tone.
"Easy?" I repeated. "Yes; in my dreams!"
"In the flesh, and in reality. Will you sit down for
moment, please?"
He proceeded then, in less time than it will take to write
it, to unfold a plan in which I soon saw, although he did
not say it, that the serial story, my call, and the map of
Jerusalem, conspicuously displayed on his desk, were so
many stages of a carefully concerted scheme. He wanted
me to go to Syria, with the express purpose of investigating
the condition of the women of that land, and getting an
insight into their domestic life, and at the same time
incidentally gleaning material for sketches of historical
localities - in short, to gather material for such "familiar
talks" as I had held with American women upon household
and social topics. These were to be supplied to his paper,
week by week. His provision for travelling expenses would
include those of my husband, or any other escort I might
select. The sum he named as remuneration for the work
was handsome, but this circumstance made a slight
impression upon me at the time. Our dialogue ended in my
promise to take the matter into consideration, and to let
him have my decision in a day or two. I hope he never
guessed at the whirl of emotions lying back of a sober
face and calm demeanor.
I recollect walking out into the bustling streets as if I
trod upon air, my head ringing as if nerves were taut
harpstrings, my heart throbbing tumultuously. I scarcely
knew where I was, or whither I was going. Something,
somewhere - it seemed in the upper ether, yet so near that
I heard words and music - was singing rapturously:
"Jerusalem
the Golden!
It was my favorite
hymn, but it was nothing in me that
sang it then.
"One of my dearest
dreams!" - ever since, as a child, I
had fed a perfervid imagination upon Bible stories, and
chanted David's psalms aloud in the Virginia woods, to
tunes of my own making. One of them broke into the jubilant
Jerusalem the Golden pealing in the ether overhead:
"My
feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!"
Was I, then, so near
the fulfilment of the heavenly dream?
We sailed for the Holy
City in September - my big boy
and I. Doctor Terhune could not go, and we had always
promised that our son should have a foreign trip when his
university work was done. The opportunity was auspicious.
Each of us told as much of the story of the memorable
seven months abroad as we were willing the public should
read - I, in the letters published first in the Christian Herald,
subsequently in book-form under the title, The Home of the
Bible; Bert, in a smaller volume, Syria from the Saddle, a
breezy chronicle of a young man's impressions of what he
saw and heard while in Syria. I considered it then, and I
think it now, a remarkable book, coming, as it did, from the
pen of a boy of twenty-one. He celebrated
his majority in the desert-places between Damascus and
Jerusalem.
Two or three incidents, eventful forever to us, may be
mentioned briefly in this personal narrative.
I am not a believer in dreams. I do attach importance to
"coincidences," holding some that have fallen into my life
in reverence the more sincere because I cannot explain them
away.
One night in Paris, where we spent a fortnight on the way
to Syria via Egypt, I had a long and distressing dream of
carrying a poor ailing baby along dark streets and over
fences and fields. My arms ached under the weight of the
limp body; my heart and ears ached with the piteous wailing
of the sufferer, for whom I could do nothing. I awoke in
the morning, utterly worn out in nerve, and depressed
unreasonably in spirit. That forenoon I wrote my daughter:
"It was as an ugly, gruesome dream. Your aunt Myrtle would
see in it an omen of evil. She says that a death in the
family has always followed her dream of the sick baby she
cannot put out of her arms. It is an old superstition. You may
recollect that Charlotte Brontë alludes to it in Jane Eyre. I
have no such dreads. Yet I find myself wishing that I had not
had that 'visitation.' It has left a very unpleasant impression
on my mind - a sort of bad taste in my mental mouth. I am
thankful that it came to me, and not to Myrtle."
My sister had been ill before we left home, but was
convalescent when we sailed, and a letter from her husband
awaited us in Paris, conveying the cheerful assurance of her
confirmed improvement in health and strength, and bidding
me have no further anxiety on her account.
It was, therefore, a terrible shock when a letter, forward
from place to place, overtook us in Northern Syria,
informing us that my dear little "sister-daughter," as she
loved to call herself, had died on the night of November 3,
1893 - the very night through which the "gruesome" dream
had pursued me from midnight until dawn. Christine wrote
in reply:
"When we read your letter of that date, Belle's eyes met
mine in silent, awesome questioning. Merely a coincidence?
Perhaps, but strange!"
I can add no other comment.
My second eventful incident hinges upon a short severe
illness that prostrated me, the third day after we landed in
Beirut from the steamer we had taken at Port Said. I had
already made acquaintance with President Bliss and some
of the professors in the American College, crowning one of
the heights of the beautiful town, and I sent at once for
Doctor Schauffler, whom I had known slightly in Springfield,
Massachusetts.
On the fourth day of my illness I asked him, plaintively:
"Do you know there is not a woman-servant in this hotel?
The person who 'does' my room has a long white beard and
wears a skull-cap. Bert calls the photograph he has made
of the nondescript: 'Le femme de chambre!' It is very
funny - and rather dreadful!"
"The beloved physician" eyed me in-thoughtful compassion.
"We are so used to that sort of thing here that we rarely
think of it as out of the way. No decent woman would take a
position in a house where she must work with men. She would
lose caste and reputation, forthwith. Hence, 'le femme
de chambre.' I can see that it must be intensely disagreeable
to you."
There the matter dropped. I was still in bed when, at four
o'clock that afternoon, he paid his second visit. He wasted
no time in apology or solicitation. His carriage
was at the door, packed with cushions. I must be taken out
of bed, rolled up in rugs and shawls, carried down stairs
by my son and my dragoman, deposited in the carriage and
driven up to his house.
"Where there are women-servants," he added, laughingly,
"and where a cordial American welcome awaits you. Doctor
and Mrs. Webster, of Haifa, are visiting us, and you will be
well looked after. And Mrs. Bliss is coming over to drink
afternoon tea with you. So, we have no time to lose."
That was the beginning of ten days of such luxurious rest
and continuous petting as I had never expected to find out
of my native land and my own home. I rallied fast under the
new conditions of invalidism. In two days I left my bed and
lay, for most of the forenoon and all the latter part of the
day, upon a luxurious lounge in the square central hall, from
which doors led on all sides to the other parts of the house.
The ceilings were twenty feet above me; the casements opened
down to the tiled floors; palms, and other tall plants
rounded the corners of the hall, and vases of cut flowers
filled the cooled air with fragrance. As I lay, I could see
trees laden with oranges and tangerines in the gardens
below; hedges of cactus and geraniums, the latter in the
fulness of scarlet bloom, intersecting the grounds of the
college and the neighboring dwellings. The colony of
President and professors was one united family, and they
took me - sick, and a stranger - into the heart of the
household. I recall, with pride, that not a day passed that did
not bring me a call from Doctor Bliss, the genial and honored
head of the noble institution, while Mrs. Bliss's neighborly
attentions were maternally tender. I had not been at the hotel
in the lower town for an hour before she appeared, laden
with flowers and an offering of "American apples, such as
one cannot buy in the East." The next day, and for every
day following, before Doctor Schauffler carried me off with
benevolent violence, she sent to me home-made bread,
having heard (as was true) that the hotel bread was
generally sour.
I looked forward with especial pleasure to the afternoon-tea
hour. The gathering about my lounge would have graced any
salon where wits do congregate. The silver-haired
President never failed to put in an appearance; Doctor Post,
the distinguished senior of the medical professors, and his
charming daughter, afterward my cicerone in the visits I
paid to Syrian women in their own homes; Doctor and Mrs.
Eddy, whose daughter was just then surprising the social
world of Constantinople by taking her degree in medicine,
and with honor; the Jessup brothers and their families,
known to all readers of church and charitable literature by
their achievements in the mission-field; Doctor and Mrs.
Porter, in whose house we had celebrated Thanksgiving Day
the evening succeeding our arrival in Beirut, singing, at
the close of the joyous festivities, "My country, 'tis of thee,"
with all the might of our lungs, and with hearts aglow with
patriotism distance and expatriation could not abate - these,
with a group of younger professors, tutors, and winsome
girls, were the ministering genii that buoyed me speedily
back to robust health.
They gave me a concert, a night or two before our parting.
The light in the great hall was a pleasant chiaro-oscuro,
the music-room opening out of it being brilliantly illuminated
for the performers upon piano, violin, violoncello, guitar,
and flute. From my sofa I had a full view of them all, and
through one long window a moon, but four days old, looked at
us through the orange-trees.
Is it strange that the chapter in my Home of the Bible,
headed "My Friends the Missionaries," was penned with
grateful memories too tender for speech?
We had in Jerusalem another true, hearty, and affectionate
home-welcome. Dr. Selah Merrill, the well-known
archaeologist and Oriental scholar, had then been United
States Consul at Jerusalem for nine years. The change of
administration in Washington had put in his place Rev.
Edwin Wallace, and we found both consuls still in residence
upon our arrival. It was a happy combination for us. The
consuls and their wives were settled in the one good hotel
in the city - the "Grand New" - to which our incomparable
dragoman, David Jamal, conducted us. We fraternized at sight.
Doctor Merrill and his successor were upon most amicable
terms, the senior and late incumbent doing all in his power
to lessen the labors of the novice. The fatherly kindness of
one, and the gentle deference of the junior, were beautiful
to behold. We two travellers shared the advantages enjoyed
by Mr. Wallace in his first visits to memorable places in
the new home, of which he has written eloquently in his book
- Jerusalem the Holy. I shall always esteem as one of the
rarest bits of good-fortune which befell us in our wanderings
in storied lands, that Doctor Merrill was emphatically our
"guide, philosopher, and friend," during our stay in Southern
Syria. He, it was, who made out our itinerary when he could
not conduct us personally, as he did in our expeditions in
and about Jerusalem.
I reckon the four, who made the City of the Great King
home to us, among the friends to whom my obligations are
not to be described in words. And what royally "good times"
we had together! Had it been in the power of Mrs. Merrill
and Mrs. Wallace to spare me every possible inconvenience
of tent-life and Eastern transit, I should have been lapped
in luxury throughout our tour of village and desert.
Of these I have written elsewhere, and at length.
LUCERNE - GOOD SAMARITANS AND
AN ENGLISHMAN - A
OUR homeward journey was
performed in a delicious,
leisurely fashion. We had worked hard for three months,
collecting material for our prospective books. Once and
again, when we would fain have had heart and imagination
free to take in, at their full value, associations connected
with, and emotions excited by, this or that sacred spot -
did we remind ourselves of the plaint of the poet, who could
never give himself up to the enjoyment of nature, because he
saw, stamped upon sea and sky, mountain and river, in huge
capitals - "MATERIAL." Neither of us meant to write up Egypt,
Rome, Florence, Switzerland, and the British Isles. With very
much the joyous sense of relief with which children scamper
home, when school is out, we roamed and lingered to our
hearts' content for the ten weeks that were left of our
vacation. We fell in with congenial travelling companions in
Egypt, joining parties for the run through Greece and Lower
Italy. In Florence, we were reunited to friends with whom
we had crossed the ocean, and did not part from them until,
in Lucerne, they were summoned to Paris, while we planned
a stay of some days in romantic regions endeared to us by
former experiences, when the "Boy" of Loitering in Pleasant
Paths was too young to appreciate the grandeur of mountain
passes, snow-capped heights, azure lakes, and historic
cantons.
Anticipation received a cruel blow in the beautiful lakeside
city in which we had passed the heart of a memorable
summer, fifteen years before. My son was stricken down
with appendicitis in Lucerne, and I knew not a human
creature beside himself in all Switzerland! By rare good-
fortune, I recalled the name of a physician with whom my
husband had become acquainted in our former stay here,
and sent for him at once. He had retired from the active
duties of his profession, resigning his practice to his son,
who was, I learned, at the head of the hospital in Lucerne.
To my infinite relief, he informed me that there would be
no need of an operation unless more serious symptoms
should intervene. I subjoin the addenda to the verdict for
the benefit of those whom it may concern:
"You Americans are too fond of the knife! It is not always
necessary to cut out an inflamed appendix. In my hospital
we have had four hundred cases of appendicitis within the
last ten years, and have operated just forty times! The
patients recovered without the use of the knife."
If I had ever leaned, never so slightly, to misanthropic
judgment of my fellow-mortals, I must have been shamed
out of them by the incidents of the next fortnight of cruel
anxiety, and what would have been unutterable loneliness
but for the exceeding and abounding charity of the strangers
by whom I was surrounded.
"It is my opinion," pronounced the patient, when, on Easter
morning, his chamber was fragrant with flowers and
brightened by cards and messages of cheer and sympathy -
"my decided and well-grounded conviction - that this
Canton is peopled by the posterity of the Good Samaritan.
Even the innkeeper has taken a hand in the mission to the
traveller on the Jericho Road!"
The last remark was drawn out by the opening of a great box
of violets, richly purple, and so freshly gathered
that the odor floated into the air, like clouds of incense,
with the lifting of the cover.
And, as a sudden thought struck him: "Have the blasted
Britishers spoken yet?"
"No! Their conversation is confined to their own party."
I had brought the like report every day for a week. "The
blasted Britishers," for whom he had no milder name, were a
young man, his wife, and sister, who were at the end of my
table and my nearest neighbors. The hotel was very full. A
fair sprinkling of Americans, a few English, and a mixture
of French, Swiss, Germans, and Italians made up a crowd that
changed daily in some of its features. From the proprietor
down to the porter, there was not an employé or official
connected with the house who did not inquire, whenever I
showed myself in hall or salle à manger, "how the young
gentleman was getting on?" and express the hope of his early
recovery. The entire working-staff of the Hotel de Cygne
was at our feet, and the guests in the house were assiduous
in offers of assistance and assurances of sympathy.
Strangers inquired across the table as to the patient's
condition, and if there were any way in which they could be
of service. The "B. B.'s" - as the object of this kindly
solicitude contemptuously abbreviated the appellation - held
aloof, apparently ignorant of my existence, much less of
the cause of inquiry and response. They chatted together
pleasantly, in subdued, refined tones betokening the
gentlefolk they were, but, for all the sign they gave of
consciousness of the existence of the afflicted Americans,
they might have been - to quote again from the indignant
youth above-stairs - "priest and Levite, rolled into one mass
of incarnate selfishness."
So matters went on until next to the last day we spent in
Lucerne. My patient was on his feet in his room, and
had been downstairs twice to drive for an hour, and test his
strength for the journey to Paris, which he was impatient
to begin. I had heard that there was a sleeping car - a
"wagon-au lit," as the Swiss put it - upon one train each
day. This I wished to take, if possible, and to break the
journey by stopping overnight at least once, in the transit
of fifteen hours that separated us from the French capital.
It so chanced that the talk of the "B. B.'s" at luncheon
that day turned upon this train, and, forgetful for the
moment, of their discourteous reserve, I addressed the man
of the party with - "Pardon me! but can you tell me at what
hour that train leaves Lucerne, and when it reaches Basle?"
"With great pleasure!" turning an eager face upon me.
"But may I ask, first, how your son is to-day? We have
inquired constantly of the proprietor, and of the doctor,
when we could see him, how he was getting on. We were
delighted to hear that he is improving, etc., etc., etcetera"
- while I was getting my breath, and rallying my fluttered
wits. With this preamble, he proceeded to tell me all he
knew of trains that were likely to be of service, volunteering
to make direct inquiries at the station that afternoon,
and begging to know in what way he could forward my purpose.
When I could escape, I carried a bewildered face and soul
up to the convalescent.
Then it was that I made the remark I quoted in a former
chapter, apropos of New England "incommunicableness":
"The ice is broken, and there is warm water under it!"
We had not finished discussing the idiosyncrasies of Old
and New England when, half an hour later, there came a
gentle tap at the door. I opened it, and nearly swooned
with an access of amazement when I saw the young Englisman.
He had a paper in his hand, and began without preface:
"I have made so bold as to look up the trains, don't you
know? And - oh, I say" - breaking off as he espied the
figure on the lounge through the half-opened door -
"mayn't I come in and see him? We are both young men,
you know!"
He was at the sofa by this time, and shaking hands with
the occupant. "Awfully glad to see you are doing so well!
Oh, by Jove!" interrupting himself anew, with the frank
boyishness that had marked his entrance. "I believe you
are taller than I!"
He surveyed the recumbent figure with undisguised
admiration.
"Six feet, two-and-a-half, gymnasium measure!" rejoined
the other, laughing.
It was impossible to resist the cordial bonhommie of the
self-invited guest.
"And I six, three!" complacently. "But a fellow looks
longer when he is on his back. May I sit down?" drawing
up a chair for me, and one for himself. "And would it
tire you to talk a bit about routes and so on? Do you
think you are really fit for the jaunt?"
The "bit" of talk lasted an hour, and the invalid brightened
with every minute. The "Britisher" was an army man, at
home on leave, after ten years in India. He had travelled
far and used all his senses while en route. He was eloquent
in praise of India, and so diligently was the time improved
by both the young men that, in leaving, the elder exacted
a promise that, when the other should visit India, he would
apply to him - the "B. B." - for letters of introduction to
"some fellows" who might be of use to him. He gave us his
card, lest he might not see us again. It bore the name of
a fashionable London hotel, at which he "hoped to see" his
new acquaintance, since he was going to London within the
month. He did see us again, calling on the morrow to ask if there were
anything he could do to facilitate our departure. He brought,
also, the compliments and good wishes of his wife and
sister for our safe journey. The schedule of travel he had
arranged for us was so carefully drawn up that a fool
could not err therein.
We never saw or heard from him again. It was not convenient
for Bert to call during the brief stay we made in London, on
the very eve of sailing for home. And we have never yet been
to India. The "B. B." seemed not to be able to conceive the
possibility that any one who could get to that end of the
earth could refrain from going.
I have seen enough of the English since to comprehend that
this was not a phenomenal illustration of native reserve,
that waits for the initiative from the other party to the
meeting, and, like the traveller in the fable of the contest
between the wind and sun, throws away the cloak of
strangerhood as soon as the first step is taken by another. I
have heard other anecdotes descriptive of a characteristic
which belies the depth and warmth of the underlying heart,
but none that bring it more prominently into view. It is
strange - and interesting - to us of a more emotional race,
to see the sudden leap of the unsealed fountain.
During the summer and autumn succeeding our return to America,
I utilized much of the "material" collected in the East in a
series of lectures delivered in seven different States. For
two summers preceding my tour abroad, I had, in conjunction
with Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, conducted what we called
"Women's Councils", in various Summer Schools modelled upon
the famous Chautauqua Assemblies. I had hardly settled in the
peaceful home-nest when applications from similar organizations
began to arrive. Upon former expeditions, my husband, and
sometimes our son, and Mrs. Sangster's nephew, Bert's classmate
and chum, had accompanied us, and when the "Council" adjourned,
we made up a jolly party to Mackinac
Island (in which beautiful spot I laid the scene of With the
Best Intentions), to Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and
divers other summer resorts. Mrs. Sangster had no share in
my present lecture engagements, and neither my husband nor
son could spare the time to accompany me. In the comparatively
secluded and carefully sheltered life of to-day, I marvel at
the courage that enabled me to journey for thousands of
miles, unattended, and to face audiences that numbered from
one to two thousand women, with never a misgiving as to my
reception, and perfect security from annoyance. Wherever I
went, doors and hearts were opened to me. But once, in a
series that comprised twenty towns and villages, was I ever
allowed to stay at a hotel, and that was for a single night.
The friends made then are cherished to this hour.
Time would fail me and the patience of the reader be
exhausted, were I to attempt even a catalogue of the
localities in which I talked, as woman to woman, of what I
had seen and heard in those seven months of wandering and
study. If I had never loved women before, and held in
especial and tender regard those of my own country, I must
have learned the sweet lesson in the unescorted itineraries
from Syracuse, N.Y., to Chicago; from Vermont to
Michigan; from Richmond, Va., to Cincinnati. And in all the
thousands of miles, and in the intercourse with tens of
thousands of people whose faces I had never seen before, I
had, in the three lecture seasons in which I took part, not
one unkind word - received nothing but kindness, and that
continually. Hospitality and brotherly (and sisterly) love
have had new and deeper meaning to me, ever since. I permit
myself the recital of two "happenings" in Ohio, that have
historic interest in consideration of subsequent events.
After fulfilling a delightful engagement at Monona Lake
- near Madison, Wisconsin - I set out for Lakeview, Ohio,
where I was to hold a Women's Council for the next week,
beginning Monday. This was Saturday noon, and I was to
travel all night. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage, whom I had seen
at Monona Lake, had told me of a branch road connecting the
station, at which I was to leave the main line early Sunday
morning, with Lakeview. I would reach that place, he said, by
seven o'clock, and have a quiet Sunday to myself. This was
preferable to passing it in Chicago or any other large town.
In the Madison station I was so fortunate as to meet Mr.
Hamilton W. Mabie and Dr. Francis Maurice Egan, at that
time Professor of English Literature in the Georgetown (R.C.)
University, and, subsequently, United States Minister to
Denmark. Both of these distinguished men had been lecturing
at Monona Lake Assembly. The rest of the day passed
swiftly and brightly. Mr. Mabie left us in Chicago, where we
were detained until midnight, on account of some delay in
incoming trains. Doctor Egan, whose spirits never flagged,
proposed a walk through the illuminated streets, and a supper
together, which "lark" we enjoyed with the zest of two
schoolchildren. Then we returned to the waiting train, and
bade each other "Good-bye."
The journey had begun so auspiciously that I alighted from
the sleeper in the early dawn, feeling, what the sporting
Englishman would call "uncommonly fit," and with no
prevision of what lay before me.
For not a symptom of the promised branch line was to be seen,
as far as eye could reach. There were two houses at the
terminus of my railway journey. One was the usual station
and freight-house; the other, a neat cottage a stone's-throw
away, was, I found, the dwelling of the station-agent. He
was the one and only human thing in sight. Beyond lay woods
and cultivated fields.
The man was very civil, but positive in the declaration that
the branch line connecting with the Assembly grounds
was ten miles further on; also, that no trains ran over it on
Sunday. As at Monona Lake, admission was denied to the public
on that day. Otherwise, the ground would be overrun by the
rabble of curious sight-seers. There was no hotel within five
miles, and no conveyance to take me to it, or to Lakeview.
The predicament was serious, yet it provoked me to mirth.
Doctor Talmage's directions to alight at this particular point
(as he "had done not a week ago"); my cheerful confidence that
the day would be as yesterday, if not more abundant in enjoyment;
the immediate prospect of starvation and discomfort, since all
the accommodations I could command were that one room of the
country station - made up a picture at which any woman must
laugh - or cry. The station-master looked relieved that I did
not weep, or whine. When I laughed, he smiled sympathetically:
"If you will sit here for a few minutes," leading the way
into the room behind us, "I'll step over and talk to my wife."
From that moment I had no apprehension of further
misadventures.
It I had indulged a fleeting misgiving, it would have been
dissipated by the sight of the woman to whom I was introduced
when I had accepted the invitation to "step over" to the neat
cottage a few rods down the road.
It was a veritable cottage - low-browed and cosey, vine-
draped, and simply but comfortably furnished. The mistress
met me in the door with a cordial welcome, and took me into
her bedroom to wash away the dust of travel and lay off my
hat. For I was to breakfast with them, after which her
husband would get up the horse and buggy, and she would
drive me over to the Assembly grounds. She looked, moved,
and spoke like a gentlewoman. Against the background of
my late predicament, she wore the guise
of a ministering angel. The breakfast was just what she had
prepared for her husband. She proved the quality of her
breeding there, too, in not lisping a syllable of apology.
None was required for a meal so well-cooked and served,
but few women would have let the occasion pass of informing
the stranger within their gates how much better they might
have done had they been notified of the coming of "company."
On the road she told me that she had a season-ticket for
the Summer School, and that she had attended the sessions
regularly during the week that had passed since it opened.
She was a pretty little body, becomingly attired, and
intelligent beyond her apparent station. I was to learn more
in time of the minds and manners of the average Ohio woman
and man, and to be moved to wondering admiration thereby. The
road, level as a floor for most of the way, lay between
fields, orchards and vineyards so well cultivated that they
recalled the husbandry of older lands. My companion was au
fait to the agricultural interests of her native State, and
descanted upon the resources of the region with modest
complacency. The weather was delicious, the drive a pleasure.
Not until we were in sight of the lake, on the shores of
which the camp was located, did she suggest the possible
difficulty of gaining admission to the grounds. She had her
ticket, which would pass her on Sunday, as on week-days.
Perhaps I had one? I said, "No," frankly. Were the rules
very strict? She was "afraid they were." It was evident that
she had wholesome respect for the regulation barring out
unlicensed intruders. My credentials, in the form of letters
and contract, were in the trunk the station-master had engaged
to send over on Monday. Up to this moment I was an anonymous
wayfarer to my hosts, and I did not care to owe their
hospitality to any prestige that might attach to an advertised
name. So I said we would postpone uneasiness until I was
actually refused admittance by the
gate-keeper. When he halted us, my companion produced her
passport, and I offered, as warrant of my eligibility, to
send for Doctor Lewis, the superintendent of the Assembly,
to vouch for me. He gave me a searching glance, and stood
back to let us pass.
I recognized my guardian angel in my audience on Monday,
and made it my business and pleasure to seek her out at
the conclusion of the lecture.
"We made up our minds last night, as we were talking it over,
who you were," she remarked, quietly. "I had my list of the
speakers, and you were set down for to-day. I wished, then,
that I had guessed the truth before."
I did not echo the wish. My first taste of Ohio hospitality
would have lost the fine flavor that lingers in my memory,
like the aroma of old Falernian wine. A duchess of high
degree might have taken lessons in breeding and Christian
charity from the station-keeper's wife.
Daring the week spent at Lakeview I had an opportunity,
which I prize now beyond expression, of meeting Mr. McKinley,
then the Governor of Ohio. He passed a day at the principal
hotel of the place with his wife, and visited the Assembly.
I was invited, with other visitors, to dine with him, and
afterward to drive into the country with himself and Mrs. McKinley.
"The future President of the United States!" a friend had
said to me when I told her of the projected drive.
"I don't think so," was my answer. "But a good man and
an honest politician."
As he lifted his invalid wife into the carriage, a packet of
letters was handed to me.
In taking his place on the front seat he begged me to
open them:
"Home letters should never be kept waiting."
"I will avail myself of your kind permission so far as to
look into one," I answered. "It is the daily bulletin from
my husband. A glance at the first paragraph will tell me
how matters are at home."
"A daily bulletin!" repeated Mr. McKinley, as I refolded
the epistle after the satisfactory glance.
"Yes - and we have been married nearly forty years!"
"A commendable example -" he began, when his wife
caught him up:
"Which he does not need! He never fails to write to me
every day when he is away; but when he was in Washington,
some years ago, and I was not well enough to go with him,
he telegraphed every morning to know how I was, besides
writing a long letter to me in the afternoon."
Laughingly putting the remark aside, he leaned forward to
direct my attention to a row of hills on the horizon, and to
talk of certain historical associations connected with that
part of the State. She resumed the topic, awhile later,
descanting in a low tone upon his unwearied regard for her
health, his tender solicitude, his skill as a nurse, and similar
themes, drawn on by my unfeigned interest in the story, until
he checked her, with the same light laugh:
"Ida, my dear! you are making Mrs. Terhune lose the finest
points in the landscape we brought her out to admire."
"Permit me to remind you that there are moral beauties
better worth my attention," retorted I.
He lifted his hat, with a bright look that went from my
face to dwell upon that of the fragile woman opposite him,
with affectionate appreciation, and full confidence that I
would comprehend the feeling that led her to praise him - a
flashing smile, I despair of describing as it deserves. It
transfigured his face into beauty I can never forget. In all
my thoughts of the man who became the idol of his compatriots,
dying, like a martyr-hero, with a plea for mercy for the
insane assassin upon his lips, I recur to that incident in
my brief personal acquaintanceship with him,
as a revelation of what was purest and sweetest in a
nature singularly strong and gentle.
In relating the little by-play to my dear friend, Mrs. Waite,
the widow of the Chief-Justice, then living in Washington, I
said that it was a pity to see a man in Mr. McKinley's
exalted and responsible position tied to the arm-chair of a
hopeless invalid, who could contribute nothing to his
usefulness in any relation of life.
"He owes more to her than the public will ever suspect," was
the reply. "We knew him from a boy, and watched his early
struggles upward. His wife was his guiding star, his right
hand. She was, then, a woman of unusual personal and mental
gifts, more ambitious for him than he was for himself. My
husband often said that she was Mr. McKinley's inspiration.
Those who have never known her except as the fragile, nerveless
creature she is now, cannot imagine what she was before the
deaths of her children and her terrible illness left her the
wreck you see. But he does not forget what she was, and what
she did for him."
I treasured the tribute gratefully, and I never failed to
quote it when I heard - as was frequent during Mr. McKinley's
administration - contemptuous criticism of the helpless,
sickly woman - the poor shade of the First Lady of the Land
- whose demands upon his time and care were unremittent and
heavy. He was held up to the world by his eulogists as a
Model Husband, a Knight of To-day, whose devotion never
wavered. As my now sainted mentor said, few of the admiring
multitude guessed at his debt of gratitude and at his
chivalrous remembrance of the same.
THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN -
ABROAD AGAIN -
WHAT one of Doctor
Terhune's biographers has alluded to
as his "splendid vitality," had been cruelly taxed by his
professional labors in his first charge in Brooklyn. With
a strong man's aversion to the acknowledgment of physical
weakness, he had fought, with heroic courage and reserve,
the inroads of a disease that was steadily sapping his
constitution and vigor. None except his physician and myself
dreamed of the gnawing pain that was never quiet during his
waking hours, and robbed the nights of rest. The services of
Sunday left him as weak as a child, and stretched him upon
the rack all of that night. When, the work he had assigned
to himself soon after accepting the pastorale of the Bedford
Avenue Church having been accomplished, he resigned the
position, and quoted his physician's advice that he should
take a few months of rest and change of scene - the
information was couched in terms so light that, with the
exception of two or three of his chosen and most faithful
friends, his parishioners had no suspicion of his real
condition. The public press hazarded the wildest and most
absurd guesses at the causes that had stirred the nest he
had builded wisely and well during the last seven years.
Perhaps the theory that amused us most, and flew most
widely from the mark, was "that his wife - known to the
public as 'Marion Harland' - took no interest in church-work
- in fact, never attended church at all." My class of
forty-four splendid "boys" - the youngest being twenty-one
years of age - begged to be allowed to look up the
imaginative reporter and, as the Springfield member of the
Church Militant had proposed, "fire him out." Calmer counter-
statements from older heads, and hearts as loyal, met the
assertion in print and in private. To me, it weighed less than
a grain of dust in the greater solicitude that engrossed my
thoughts. For, in a week after the formal resignation of his
office, the patient sufferer was under the surgeon's knife.
They called it "a minor operation," and enjoined complete
rest, for a month or so, that ought to bring recuperation
of energies so sadly depleted that those who knew him best
were urgent in the entreaty that the mandate should be
obeyed. He "rested" in the blessed quiet of Sunnybank for
a couple of months; then set out for a leisurely jaunt
westward. He had been invited to preach in Omaha, and
thought that he would "take a look at the country" which he
had never visited. He got no further than Chicago, falling
in love with the warm-hearted people of a church which he
agreed to supply for "a few weeks." The weeks grew into
seven months of active and satisfying work among his new
parishioners. Our eldest daughter was with him part of the
time, and I went to him for a visit of considerable length,
returning home with the sad conviction, deep down in my
soul, that to accept the offered "call" to a permanent
pastorate would be suicidal. He could never do half-way
work, and he loved the duties of his profession with a love
that never abated. By the beginning of the next summer, he
was forced to admit to himself that his physical powers were
inadequate to the task laid to his hand. Yet, on the way
home, he was lured into agreeing to supply the pulpit of a friend,
a St. Louis clergyman, during the vacation of the latter, preaching
zealously and eloquently for five weeks, and this in the heat
of a Missourian summer.
It was but a wreck of his old, buoyant self that he brought
back to us. Confident in his ability to rise above "temporary
weakness," he insisted that "Sunnybank and home-rest were
all he needed to set him up again as good as new."
I had said once, jestingly, in his hearing, after his quick
recovery from a short and sharp attack of illness:
"It is hard to kill a Terhune. Nothing is really effectual
except a stroke of lightning, and that will paralyze but one
side. None of them die under ninety!"
He reminded me of the foolish speech, many and many a time,
in the weeks that dragged themselves by us who watched
the steady ebb of vital forces and the pitiable failure of
all remedial agencies. He was the finest horseman I have
ever known, and, as I have already said, sat his saddle as
if he were a part of the spirited animal he bestrode. "Let
me once get into the saddle again, and all will be right,"
had been his hopeful prognostication in every illness prior
to this mysterious disorder. He mounted his horse a few
times after he got home, and rode for a mile or two, but
listlessly and with pain. Then he ceased to ask for the
old-time tonic that had acted like a magic potion upon the
exhausted body, in answer to the indomitable spirit. The
spring of desire and courage was not broken, but it bent
more and more visibly daily, until it was a gray wraith of
the former man that lay, hour after hour, upon the library
sofa, uncomplaining and patient, utterly indifferent to
things that once brought light to the eyes and ring to the
voice. Even his voice - a marvel up to seventy-five, for
sweetness, resonance, and strength - quavered and broke when
he forced himself to speak.
In this, our sore and unprecedented extremity, we who
watched him took counsel together and urged him to
go to the city and consult Doctor McBurney, the ablest
specialist and surgeon in New York, and with no superior
in America. The patient offered feeble opposition. It was
easier to do as we wished, than to argue the point. Our
eldest daughter was living in New York, and not far from
the surgeon. We lost no time in securing an appointment, and
the surgeon was prompt in decision. "The minor operation,"
in which he had had no hand, was well enough as far as
scalpel and probe had gone, but the seat of the malady was
left untouched. There was a malignant internal growth which
had already poisoned the blood. To delay a "major operation"
a fortnight, would be to forfeit the one and only chance of
life. It might already be too late.
In three days the almost dying man was in the Presbyterian
Hospital, and under the knife.
I hasten past the month that followed. With clean blood, a
temperate life, and a superb constitution as his backers,
my brave husband stood once more upon his feet, and was
apparently upon the highroad to recovery. When he was
restored to our home-circle in season for the Christmas
festivities, we rejoiced without a prevision of possible
further ill from the hateful cause, now forever removed, as
we fondly believed. Early in January, I had a sudden and
violent hemorrhage from the lungs, superinduced, we were
told by the eminent specialist summoned immediately, by the
long-continued nervous strain and general weakening of the
entire system.
Doctor Terhune took me to the train when I set out upon
the southern trip prescribed strenuously by consulting
practitioners. My dearest and faithful brother was to meet
me on the last stage of my easy journey. When the late
invalid waved his hat to me from the platform as the train
began to move, I noted with pride and devout gratitude, how
clear were his blue eyes, how healthful his complexion,
and, looking back as far as I could catch sight of him, that
his step had the elasticity of a boy of twenty.
He wrote daily to me, and in the old, lively fashion, for
three weeks. Then a letter dictated by him to Christine told
of a boil upon his wrist that hindered pen-work. I "was not to
be uneasy. It was probably a wholesome working out of the
virus of original sin. He would be all the better when the
system was freed from it."
I wrote at once, begging that nothing might be concealed
from me, and setting a day for my return.
A telegram from my husband forbade me to stir until the
time originally named as the limit of my visit. And the daily
letters continued to arrive. One, I recollect, began:
"A second rising, farther up the arm, is 'carrying on the
work of purification.' So says the poor Pater, with a rueful
glance at his bandaged hand and arm. If it were only the
left, and not the right hand, he would not have to put up with
this unworthy amanuensis."
Those six weeks in Richmond stand out in memory like
sunlighted peaks seen between clouds that gathered below
and all around it. My brother's wife, the cherished girlfriend
of our Newark life, was so far from well that we enacted
the rôles of semi-invalids in company. Sometimes we
breakfasted in her room, sometimes in mine, as the humor
seized us. I lounged in one easy-chair, and she in another,
all the forenoon, making no pretence of occupation. Had we
not been straitly commanded to do nothing but get well?
We drove out in company, every moderately fine day. When
we tired of talking (which was seldom), we had our books. I
sent to a book-store for a copy of Barrie's Margaret
Ogilvie - the matchless tribute of the brilliant son to the
peasant woman from whom he drew all that was noblest
and highest in himself - and gave it to
my fellow-invalid to read. Then we talked it over - we two
mothers - tenderly and happily, as befitted the parents of
grown children who were fulfilling our best hopes for them.
I repeated to her once, in the twilight of a winter afternoon,
as we sat before the blazing fire of soft coal that tinted
the far corners of the library a soft, dusky red - a stanza
of Elizabeth Akers Allen's Rock Me to Sleep, Mother:
"Over
my heart in the days that have flown,
"That is one of my
husband's favorite songs," I said. "I
often sing it to him and to Bert in the twilights at home."
And with a little laugh, I added: "My boy asked me once to
emphasize 'patient.' He says that is the strongest
characteristic of the mother's love."
"They repay us for
it all!" was the fervent reply.
And I returned as
feelingly, "Yes, a thousandfold."
She was ever the true,
unselfish woman, generous in
impulse and in action, sweet and sound to the very core of
her great heart. We had loved each other without a shadow
of changing for over thirty years. In all our intercourse there
is nothing upon which I dwell with such fondness as on the
days that slipped by brightly and smoothly, that late January
and early February. If I observed with regret that I rallied
from my sudden seizure more rapidly than she threw off the
languor and loss of appetite which, she assured us, over and
over, "meant next to nothing" - I was not seriously uneasy at
what I saw. She had not been strong for the last year. Time
would restore her, surely. She had just arisen on the morning
of my departure, when I went into her room to say, "Good-bye."
She smiled brightly as I put my arms about her and bade
her, "Hurry up and return my visit."
"You will see me before long," she said, confidently "As
soon as I can bear the journey I shall go to Newark. My
native air always brings healing on its wings."
My beloved friend Mrs. Waite had passed from earth, six
months before. The visit I paid at her house, on the way
back to New York, was the first I had made there since the
beauty of her presence was withdrawn.
On the morning after my arrival I had a long letter from
Christine. It began ominously:
"I have a confession to make. Father has been far more
indisposed than I would let you think. Do not blame me.
I have acted under orders from him and from the doctor.
Neither would hear of your recall. Not that this relapse
is a dangerous matter. The 'boils' were a return of the
old trouble. He has not left his bed for a fortnight. I
thought it best to prepare you for seeing him there."
An hour later I had a telegram from my brother:
"M. is decidedly worse. We apprehend heart-failure."
Again I say, I would shorten the recital of how the clouds
returned after the rain which we had believed would clear
the atmosphere.
I was seated at the bedside of my husband, who aroused
himself with difficulty to speak to me, as one shakes off a
stupor, relapsing into slumber with the murmured welcome
on his fevered lips, when a dispatch was brought to me from
Richmond.
My sister-in-love had died that afternoon.
Five months to a day, from the beginning of my husband's
serious illness, he was brought down-stairs in the arms of a
stalwart attendant, and lifted into a carriage for his first
ride. We drove to the neighboring Central
Park, and were threading the leafy avenues before the
convalescent offered to speak. Then the tone was of one
dazed into disbelief of what was before his eyes:
"The last time I was out of doors, the ground was covered
with snow. I am like those that dream. I never knew until
now what a beautiful place the world is!"
It was glorious in July verdure when we got him back to
Sunnybank. There was no talk now of the saddle, and the
briefest of drives fatigued him to faintness. Whatever the
doctors might say as to the ultimate elimination of the hidden
poison they had found so difficult to drive out, watchers, who
had more at stake in the issue of his protracted illness, failed
to see the proof that skill had effected what they claimed.
After the glow of pleasure at getting home again subsided,
he relapsed into the old lassitude and sad indifference to
what was going on about him; his eyes were dull; his tone
was lifeless; he seemed to have forgotten that he had ever
had appetite for food.
At last, one day, as I sat fanning him, while he lay on the
wicker sofa on the vine-clad veranda, regarding neither lake
nor mountain, and smiling wanly at my chatter of the seven
birds'-nests in the honeysuckle, from which the last fledgling
had been coaxed away by their parents that morning - an
inspiration came to me. - I laid my hand on his to make sure
that he would be aroused to listen, and stooped to the ear
that shared in the deadening of the rest of the body.
"What do you say to going abroad again - and very soon?"
He opened his eyes wide, lifting his head to look directly
at me.
"What did you say?"
I repeated the query.
He lay back with closed lids for so long I thought he
was asleep. Then an echo of his own voice, as it was in the
olden time, said:
"I think, if I could once more hear the rush of the waves
against the keel of the steamer, and feel the salt air on my
face, it would bring me back to life. But - where's the use
of dreaming of it? I shall never be strong enough to go on
board."
"You will, and you shall! You saved my life by taking me
abroad. We will try the efficacy of your own prescription."
I think that not one of the crowd of friends who came
down to the steamer to see us off, had any hope of seeing
again his living face. I heard, afterward, that they said
as much among themselves, when the resolutely cheerful
farewells had been spoken, and they stood watching the
vessel's slow motion out of the dock, the eyes of all fixed
upon one figure recumbent in a deck-chair, a thin hand
responding to the fluttering handkerchiefs above the throng
on the end of the pier.
Our son was there with his betrothed, who wrote to me
afterward that he was "depressed to despondency." Belle,
with her husband and boys, would occupy Sunnybank while
we were away. Christine had insisted that it was not kind
or safe to leave to me the sole care of the invalid. In the
three weeks that elapsed between the "inspiration" and our
embarkation, the brave girl had wound up all affairs that
would detain her in America, and made herself and two sons
ready to accompany us. The party was completed by the
faithful maid who had nursed her children from infancy, and
who was quite competent to aid me in nursery offices to the
patient for whose sake the desperate expedition was
undertaken.
He averred, in later life, that he felt an impulse of new life
with the first revolution of the paddle-wheel. Certain it is
that he showed signs of rallying before twenty-four
hours had passed, spending all the daylight hours upon
deck, and, before the voyage was half over, joining in our
promenades from bow to stern. Always an excellent sailor,
he drank in the sea-breeze as he might have quaffed so
much nectar. The only complaint that escaped him was that,
"whereas he had been promised an eleven days' voyage, we
steamed up the Clyde on the afternoon of the ninth day."
A series of jaunts in Scotland and England was the
prelude to our settling down in Florence for the winter.
Had I no other reason to urge for my deep and abiding love
for that fairest and dearest of Italian cities, it would
suffice me to recollect the unutterable peace and full content
of that memorable half-year.
Friends, old and new, clustered about us, and lent the
charm of home to the cosey apartment in Via San Giuseppe,
where the gentle flow of domestic life was bright with the
shining of present happiness and rekindled hope of the
future. We learned to know "La Bella" at her best in those
halcyon days. The boys were at a day-school; thanks to our
efficient "padrona," there were no household anxieties, and
we seniors were free to enjoy to the full all that makes up
the inestimable riches of the storied city.
Doctor Terhune and I claimed the privilege of convalescent
and custodian, in declining to accept invitations to evening
functions, thus securing opportunity for what we loved far
better than the gayest of "entertainments" - long, quiet
hours spent in our sitting-room "under the evening lamp,"
I, busy with needle-work or knitting, while he read aloud,
after the dear old fashion, works on Florentine history,
art, and romance, all tending to enfold us more closely with
the charmed atmosphere of the region. It would be laughable
to one who has never fallen under the nameless spell of
Florence to know how often, that season, we repeated aloud,
as the book was laid aside for the night:
"With
dreamful eyes
Letters from home were
frequent and regular. Much was
happening across the water while we revelled in our
dreams. The Spanish War was on. It was begun and ended
during our peace-fraught exile. In January, our boy took
unto himself the young wife to whom he had beer troth-
plight for a year, and we were the easier in mind for the
knowledge that this, the last of our unwedded bairns, was
no longer without a home of his own.
In the spring we travelled at pleasure through Switzerland
and Belgium, and so to England - my husband and I now in
the solitude à deux belovéd by congenial souls. Christine
and her sons were left in Switzerland for a longer tour of
that country.
Still wandering, lingering, and dreaming, in the long,
delicious calm succeeding the darkest and stormiest period
our united lives were ever to know, we revisited English
villages and towns, and made acquaintance in Scotland with
new and enchanting scenes, until the September day when
we took passage from Glasgow for New York.
We steamed into our harbor on Sunday afternoon, just as
the news of peace between the warring nations was
acclaimed through the megaphone to incoming craft, and
thundered from the mouths of rejoicing cannon.
THE GOING-OUT OF A YOUNG LIFE - PRESENT ACTIVITIES
As upon our return from foreign lands nearly twenty years
before this home-coming, Sunnybank was now our pied a
terre. Our daughter, Mrs. Van de Water, and her family had
occupied it during our absence. It was, therefore, not merely
swept and garnished for our reception, but the spirit of
Home, sweet, radiant, and indescribable, was in full
possession. We were settled in the nest within an hour after
we drove up to the open door. A week later, the happy
circle was widened by the arrival of our son and his young
wife from the Adirondacks. A second attack of appendicitis
had made an operation imperatively necessary. It was
performed in July, and as soon as the patient was strong
enough to travel, he was sent to the mountains for
recuperation. The pair were our guests for four weeks.
Then they returned to town to prepare for the housekeeping
upon which they had planned to enter in October. Happy
letters, telling of the preparations going briskly forward, and
filled with domestic details, than which nothing in the wide
world was more fascinating to the little wife, reminded us of
the contented cooings of mating pigeons, or, as I told the
prospective housewife, of the purring of the kittens she loved
to fondle under the honeysuckles of the veranda, while with us.
On October 5th an unexpected telegram brought the
news of the premature birth of a baby daughter, and that
"mother and child were doing well." Four days later a
second dispatch summoned us to New York. The tiny girl
was but four days old when her gentle mother passed quietly
out of the life, so rich in love and hope that, up to the
hour when she laid herself down cheerfully upon her couch
of pain, she was, to use her own words, "almost frightened
at her own happiness."
She was married on January 10, 1898. We bore her to her
last home October 12th of the same year. She sleeps in
the quiet "God's Acre," back of the old colonial church in
Pompton, in the heart of the fairest of New Jersey valleys.
A peaceful spot it is, cradled by the everlasting hills. There
were but three graves in our family plot when we took her
there. There are five, now.
We spent that winter in the city, and our boy was again
one of our small household. But for the care and the blesséd
comfort of the baby daughter, the light and life of hearts
and house, we might have fancied the events of the last five
years a dream, and that we were once more the busy trio
with whom time had sped so swiftly and brightly while
"Bert" was in college. We were busy now as then. Doctor
Terhune preached with tolerable regularity in different
churches, and he was ever a diligent. Bert wrought
faithfully in his chosen profession of journalism, and I
accepted in, 1901, the charge of a Woman's Syndicate page
established by The North American, in Philadelphia. I had
never been idle. Month after month work was laid to my
hands that pleased my taste, and occupied all the time I could
devote to literary tasks. When I agreed to take on the new
burden, it was with no forecasting of what proportions it
might assume.
"What do these women write to you about?" asked the
proprietor of the paper under the auspices of which the
syndicate was carried on.
I answered, laughingly, "Everything - from Marmalade
to Matrimony."
When he put the question, I was representing the need of
an assistant, since I was getting twenty letters per diem.
Four years later, a secretary and a stenographer shared the
labor of keeping in touch with writers who poured in upon
my desk an average mail of one hundred letters a day. Two
years afterward, the average was over a thousand a week.
I have been asked often why I expend energies and fill my
days in what my critics are pleased to depreciate as "hack-
work." Nobody believes my assertion that I heartily enjoy
being thus brought into intimate association with the women
of America. The Syndicate has extended its territory into
twenty-five States, and it is still growing. Women, boys, and
girls, and housefathers - no less than housemothers - tell me
of their lives, their successes, their failures, their trials,
and their several problems. From the mighty mass of
correspondence I select letters dealing with topics of general
interest, or that seem to call for free and friendly discussion,
and base upon them daily articles for the Syndicate public.
Thousands of letters contain stamps for replies by mail. Out
of this germ of "hack-work" has grown "The Helping-Hand
Club," an informal organization, with no "plant" except my
desk and the postal service that transports applications for
books, magazines, and such useful articles as correspondents
know will be welcome to the indigent, the shut-in, the aged,
charitable societies and missions in waste places. Quietly,
and without parade, our volunteer agents visit the needy, and
report to us. We distribute, by correspondence, thousands of
volumes and periodicals annually; we bring together supply
and demand, "without money and without price," and in ways
that would appear ridiculous to some, and incredible to many.
"For Love's Sake" is our motto, and it is caught up
eagerly, from Canada to California. "The Big Family," they
call themselves - these dear co-workers of mine whose
faces I shall never see on earth. When, as happens daily,
I read, "Dear Mother of us all," from those I have been
permitted to help in mind, body, or estate, I thank the
Master and take courage.
After eight years' active service in the field so strangely
appointed to me that I cannot but recognize (and with humble
gratitude) the direct leading of the Divine Hand, I say,
frankly, that I have never had such fulness of satisfaction
in any other sphere of labor.
"But it is not Literature!" cried a friend to me, the other
day, voicing the sentiment of many.
"No," I answered, "but it is Influence, and that of the
best kind."
I have, with all this, made time - or it has been made for
me - to write half a dozen books in the last ten years.
Where Ghosts Walk (1898) was a joy in the writing, as was
the collection of material. It reproduces for me - as I turn
the pages, in maternal fashion, lingering upon a scene here,
and snatching a phrase there - our strayings in storied climes,
rambles into enchanted nooks untrodden by the conventional
tourist, but full of mystery and charm for us. In those dim
paths I still walk with the ghosts that were once visible and
sentient things like ourselves.
Literary Hearthstones (1899-1902) was, even more
emphatically, a labor of delight. I had made studies of
Charlotte Brontë and Hannah More, of John Knox and
William Cowper, in the homes and haunts they glorified into
shrines for the reading and the religious world. Other
hallowed names are yet on my memorandum-book, and in
my portfolio are the notes made in other homes and haunts,
and pictures collected for the illustrations of four more
volumes of the series.
If I live and hold my
strength and health of body and of
mind, I shall, please God, complete the tale of worthies I
have singled out for study. If not - they are yet mine own
brain-children. None may rob me of the pleasure of having
and of holding them - until death us do part.
I should be ungrateful,
and do my own feelings a wrong,
were I to fail, in this connection, to acknowledge my
obligations to those who kindly seconded my efforts to
accumulate the material for the Hearthstones.
Our pilgrimages to
Haworth, Olney, Wrington, and
Edinburgh, are starred in the reminiscence by hospitable
intent and deed, by such real sympathy in my mission, and
friendly aid in the prosecution of my design, that I cannot
pass them over with casual mention.
For Charlotte Brontë
I had, since my early girlhood,
nourished admiration that ripened into reverence, as I read
with avidity every page and line relating to the marvellous
sisters. I had conned her books until I knew them, from
cover to cover. Her dramatis personæ were friends more
familiar to the dreaming girl than our next-door neighbors.
It was a bitter disappointment to me that the unforeseen
miscarriage of our plans frustrated my longing to go to
Haworth, at our first visit to the Old World. So, when my son
and I set out for our Eastern trip, Haworth stood first upon
our memorandum of places that must be seen in England. I
had letters from four men who had engaged to facilitate my
attempts to enter the Parsonage. One and all, they assured
me that I would find the door inhospitably closed in my face.
Nevertheless, they advised me to go to Haworth, and put up
at "that resort of the thirsty - the Black Bull." Thus one of
the quartette, and who had lately published a book on the
Brontës:
"The present incumbent of the parish is an ogre, a veritable
dragon!" he went on to say. "He savagely refused to let me
set foot upon his threshhold, and he turns hundreds
of pilgrims away empty every year. But go to Haworth, by
all means! Put up at the ancient hostelry; walk about the
old stone house and tell well its windows, and take pleasure
in Emily's moors. The dragon has restored (?) the Brontë
church, and consigned the remains of the wonderful family
to a genteel crypt under the renovated pavement. All the
same, go to Haworth! The hills and the moors and the
heather are unchanged."
In my Life of Charlotte
Brontë, I have related how I
fared in the pilgrimage that stands out clearly in my memory
as one of the sunniest spots of that memorable seven
months' tour. I have not told how simple and direct were the
means by which I gained the fulfilment of my desires. Within
an hour after we had registered our names in the shabby
book kept for guests and transients at the Black Bull, I wrote
a note to Mr. Wade, the rector of Haworth Church, asking
permission to "stand, for a few minutes, within the doors of
the house that had been the home of Charlotte and Emily
Brontë." I added that I should not blame him if he objected
to the intrusion of strangers upon domestic privacy.
The messenger returned speedily with word that Mr. Wade
had that hour returned from London, and that he could not
then write a note. He would, however, be happy to see
me at the Rectory on the morrow (Sunday), and would write
in the morning, naming the hour for our call. His note came
while we were at breakfast, to say that he would be at
liberty to receive us between services. We attended morning
service, but, when it was over, refrained from making
ourselves known to the rector, lingering, instead, in the
church to see the tablet above the Brontë vault, and the
fine window, set in the restored wall by an anonymous
American, "To the glory of God, and in pleasant memory of
Charlotte Brontë." Emerging from the church, with the
intention of strolling up to the Parsonage,
we were met by Mr. Wade, who had gone home, expecting to
find us there, and was on his way to the inn to look us
up. His cordial hand-clasp and genial smile were so
opposed to our preconceptions of the "dragon," that we
exchanged furtive glances of relief. He took us back to the
Parsonage, and showed us everything we had wished to see,
with much we had not thought of, telling us, in the same
hospitable way, that, although he was the only member of
the family at home that day, he would be happy to have us
partake of a bachelor's luncheon. When we declined,
gratefully, he accompanied us to the church, and unlocked
the case in which is kept the register of Charlotte Brontë's
marriage, signed by herself - the last time she wrote her
maiden name.
Several letters passed between us, in the course of the
next four years, and he opened to me, on our second visit
to Haworth, in 1898, unexpected avenues of information
respecting her whose biography I was writing, which were
of incalculable value to me. When he retired from the active
duties of his profession to Hurley, in another county, he
wrote to me a long, interesting letter, enclosing a copy of
the resolutions passed by the Yorkshire parish he had served
faithfully for forty-seven years.
Besides the precious stock of building "material" for the
construction of my story of Charlotte, which I could have
gained in no other way than through his kindly offices, this
odd friendship taught me a lesson of faith in my kind, and of
distrust of hearsay evidence and of popular disfavor, that will
last me forever. I dedicated the biography to "Rev. J. Wade,
for forty-seven years incumbent of Haworth, in cordial
appreciation of the unfailing courtesy and kindly aid
extended by him to the American stranger within his
gates."
A dedication that brought me many letters of surprised
dissent from English and American tourists, and writers
whose experience was less pleasant than my own. I tell the
tale, in brief, as an act of simple justice to a much-abused
man.
"You have been told that I am a vandal and a bear," he
said to me on that Sunday. "I found church and Parsonage
almost in ruins. I was not appointed to this parish as the
curator of a museum, but to do my best for the cure of souls.
When I tell you that, for ten years after Mr. Brontë's
death, the average number of sight-seers who called at the
Parsonage was three thousand a year, and that they still
mount up to a third of that number, you may be more lenient
in judgment than the touring public and the press proved
themselves to be."
From Rev. Mr. Langley - incumbent of Olney, and resident
in the quaintly beautiful parsonage that was the home of
Lady Austin, Cowper's friend and disciple - we met with
courtesy as fine. And in seeking details of Hannah More's
private life, I found an able and enthusiastic assistant
in Rev. Mr. Wright, of Wrington, in the church-yard of
which the " Queen of Barleywood" is buried.
Cherished reminiscences are these, which neither the
mists of years nor the clouds of sorrow have dimmed. In
dwelling upon them, as I near the close of my annals of an
every-day woman's life, I comprehend what the Psalmist
meant when he said, "They have been my song in the house
of my pilgrimage."
Perhaps I erred in writing, "every-day life." Or, it may be
because so few women have recorded the lights and shadows
of their lives as frankly and as fully as I am doing,
that I am asking myself whether it may not be that the
chequered scene I survey from the hill-top - which gives me
on clear days a fine view of the Delectable Mountains - has
been exceptionally eventful, as it has been affluent in God's
choicest gifts of home-joys and home-loves, and in
opportunities of proving, by word and in deed, my love for
fellow-travellers along the King's Highway.
The reader who has followed me patiently, because
sympathetically, from the beginning of the narrative, will
comprehend, through the depth of that sympathy, why I now
leave to other pens the recital of what remains to be said.
The hands that guided the pen were tender of touch, the
hearts were true that dictated the report of the Golden
Wedding and the abstract of a noble life, now developing
throughout the ages into the stature of the Perfect Man. The
voluntary tributes they combined to offer are dear beyond
expression, to wife and children and to a great host of
friends.
PERMIT one who has
loved Doctor Terhune for fifty years, to
pay tribute to his character and outline his attainments.
He was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, November 22, 1830.
It does not seem possible that this was his birth-year, he was so
vigorous and his spirit was so youthful to the end. The best things
in life were his rich inheritance. His father, Judge John Terhune,
for fifty-four years an elder in the Presbyterian Church, was a
rare man, and for generations the family had led in the moral
and material development of New Jersey. He was named for Edward
Payson, his father's friend, a saintly Christian leader still
remembered in the American church. Few boys have had a happier
childhood. It was partly spent with his grandmother in Princeton.
Her house was a centre of influence. Doctors Alexander, Hodge,
Miller, and other professors were her intimate friends, and the
boy was welcomed at their homes. Members of their families were
life-long companions. Entering Rutgers, he was graduated in the
class of 1850 with Doctors Elmendorf and Sheperd, Judges Lawrence
and Ludlow, and others who became equally distinguished. His
heart was set on becoming a physician, and for nearly two years
he studied medicine. Then he obeyed the higher call and
consecrated himself to the Christian ministry.
On graduating from the New Brunswick Seminary, several calls
came. He accepted that of the Presbyterian Church of Charlotte
Court-House, Virginia, and in the spring of 1855
began his pastorate. It was an ideal charge for any man. The best
blood of the Old Dominion was in the congregation. No less than
eighty-six of the members were college graduates. In 1856 he
married Miss Mary Virginia Hawes, of Richmond. Their home
became as near the ideal as any this earth has known - beautiful
in its comradeship, beneficent in its influence.
In 1858, Doctor Terhune was called to the pastorate of the First
Reformed Dutch Church, of Newark. To decide as he did, must have
been a singular test of faith and courage. The claims of material
comfort, intellectual fellowship, and family ties on one side, on the
other a depleted church, in a community almost entirely dependent
for support on manufacturing interests, most of which were then
bankrupt. But Doctor Terhune was a soldier of the cross, and the
red fighting blood ran too strong in him to resist the opportunity
that called for heroic self-denial, constraint, toil and trials of faith
and patience that would, for years, tax to the utmost every power of
heart and mind. Few men have possessed as clear a vision of life;
for him there were no illusions in the Newark outlook. He knew that,
in the modern city life, then just beginning, must be fought the main
battle of Christianity with the powers of evil. His commission was
to lead, and he accepted the detail. For eighteen years Doctor
Terhune remained at his post. Immediately his work began to tell for
blessing, nor was this confined to his parish; - the entire city felt
his presence. While his work in all its many parts was of the highest
order, the man was always greater than his work. Men, women, and
children instinctively loved him. They brought to him their
problems, then felt his impression on their hearts. And it was
abiding. To-day a great company scattered throughout the earth
thank God for what he wrought in them.
In 1876, in consequence of the state of Mrs. Terhune's health,
Doctor Terhune resigned his Newark charge, and went abroad. His
ministry did not lapse, for all the time he labored as chaplain, first
in Rome and then in Paris, having entire charge of the American
churches there.
Immediately on his return, in 1878, he received calls from leading
churches in Newark, Plainfield, New Haven, and Springfield,
Massachusetts. The last named he accepted. There he remained for
five years, honored and loved throughout the city. Then came
another call. The Williamsburg Reformed Church in Brooklyn had
had a remarkable history. At times prosperous, then on the verge of
collapse. In the centre of a great population, with a plant capable
of accommodating an enormous congregation, it had never fulfilled
its promise. Unless an unusual man, with rare gifts, not merely
eloquence and ordinary leadership, but with almost divine tact,
patience, and unselfishness, came to save it, the church would
disband. Doctor Terhune loved the Old Dutch Church as loyally as
any man who has ever served her, but this call must have taxed his
sense of proportion. I am sure it was his Master's higher call that
decided him to go to Williamsburg. He had never cared for wealth
except for its uses, was generous in every direction, and needed
all the salary he could win; and the church was $80,000 in debt;
its membership was scattered, and its attendants divided into
antagonistic groups. More than one friend urged him to refuse
such a sacrifice. What the seven years' labor there cost him only
God knew. He became twenty years older in appearance, and he lost
much of the splendid vitality that had never before failed him for
any length of time. But he left the church united, entirely free
from debt, and with a promise for the future never before so bright.
A year abroad was needed to establish his broken health.
Since then Doctor Terhune, while refusing another pastorate,
has been a constant laborer. Large churches in Chicago and St.
Louis called him. In these, he became for upward of a year a stated
supply, but he knew that his physical strength was waning. A few
years ago, he underwent a serious surgical operation, and for
nearly six months lay helpless from its effect. Indeed, his life
was despaired of. I talked with his surgeon, who told me that, in
his long experience, he had "never known a patient endure greater or more constant suffering; I cannot understand his marvellous self-control. He
is always bright, always thinking of others, and never of himself."
It was characteristic. After his recovery Doctor Terhune led an
active life. The churches sought his help, and he was a frequent
preacher in New York, Newark, and elsewhere. More than forty
years ago, he purchased a tract of land on Pompton Lake, New
Jersey. It was then a primitive region, to which he was attracted by
the scenery and the opportunity to satisfy his special recreation;
for from boyhood he was a great fisherman. As time and means
permitted, he made "Sunnybank" blossom into rare beauty. How he
loved this home! There he lived close to nature, and the trees
flowers, streams, and sky rested and refreshed him. Because a true
child of nature, she gave back to him rich treasures that are denied
to most; a joy in her communion; knowledge of her secrets; a
vision of God through her revelation. There dear friends gathered
about him, and the ideal beauty of a country home was, through
his inspiration, revealed to some for the first time.
A year ago, Doctor and Mrs. Terhune celebrated their golden
wedding. After a day of loving congratulations from friends almost
innumerable, who, in body or spirit, gathered about them, they
took their wedding journey in their carriage, driving horses born
on their place, through the country of his boyhood and elsewhere.
The refreshment of this fortnight of perfect happiness lingered on
for all the remaining days of earth.
More than forty years ago, while a pastor in Newark, Doctor
Terhune united with Alpha Delta, an association limited to twelve
active members, meeting monthly at their homes. With its founders
in 1855, among whom were Drs. G. W. Berthune, Robert Davidson,
A. R. Van Nest, A. B. Van Zandt, and others, he was intimate. After
the death of Doctor Chambers he became the senior member, and
in 1900 prepared its history, a copy of which is before me now. In
the brief studies of the character of nearly two score friends, there
is revealed the secret of his power. He possessed the genius of
friendship as few have done.
Ten days before the end came, he read to Alpha Delta a
paper prepared at our request, "The Story of the Jamestown,
Virginia, Settlement and the James River Estates." Every
monograph of Doctor Terhune had its special value, but into
this last he poured the memories of happy years and an estimate
of values in human life, as never before. All through there
ran that subtle charm of style, tender pathos, and gentle
humor of which he was master. And there was added a peculiar
quality impossible to define. I think we all felt that,
unconsciously, he had pictured himself, always seeing, knowing,
loving, and inspiring the best in men. Not feeling well, he
left us suddenly. There was no good-bye. Perhaps it is better
so. But Alpha Delta can never be the same to us here.
After a week of fever he fell asleep, to awaken in the Father's
House, to the vision of the One he loved, and with Him, the
children who had passed before.
More than once I have been asked to describe the distinctive
characteristics of admirable men, and have named them "many-
sided," and "standing four square." But as I think of Doctor
Terhune, the trite phrases seem insufficient. Nor is it easy
to differentiate his character. He was a strong man physically,
intellectually, and morally. As few of his generation, he held
his course through a long life of trial consistently. He had a
definite hatred of sin, and when duty called, never hesitated to
particularize the evil of which men were guilty. But in this he
always aimed to discover to such the good they were capable of
attaining. His fearless courage was balanced by the finest
gentleness. His presence was gracious, and the charm of perfect
manners was natural in him. Instinctively, men looked up to him
and remembered his sayings. Doctor Terhune was a diligent man;
all his life he was a student. He loved his books intelligently.
His literary experience was unusual in its range and depth. Even
more than books he studied men; their problems were his greatest
interest. He thought these out so wisely and sympathetically that
he seemed to possess the prophet's vision.
In the pulpit, Doctor Terhune was earnest, clear, direct, and
simple. His teachers had been rare men in the school of
eloquence that was the glory of America fifty years ago. On
occasion he was equal to the best of these. As I recall his presence
in his Newark church, I seem now to hear his wonderful voice ring
out words that moved men to purer thinking, noble living, and
greater loyalty to the Master he loved. As a pastor, he was
devoted to every interest of his people; in their home no guest
was as welcome. These, and other traits I could name, found their
spring in as tender a heart as ever beat; constantly he carried
there all God gave him to love. Next to the members of his family,
I think his ministerial brethren realized most this supreme value
in their friend. They knew he loved them as few men could. I have
never heard him speak an unkind word of a clergyman. His presence
never failed to hearten and stimulate them in their work. So he
honored his manhood and his calling. He has left behind not only
a stainless name, but living and blesséd power.
IN her beautiful home
at Pompton, New Jersey, surrounded by
the flowers she loves so dearly, "Marion Harland," the celebrated
writer, held court, Saturday afternoon. More properly speaking,
Dr. and Mrs. Edward Payson Terhune were "at home" from four
to seven o'clock, the occasion being the celebration of their
golden-wedding anniversary.
In front of the house, upon the prettiest bit of lawn for miles
about, was set the present that children and grandchildren
gave - a sundial made of Pompton granite, inscribed with the same
pretty legend as that upon the famous one of Queen Alexandra at
Sandringham:
"Let
others tell of storm or showers,
The little room, set
aside, as upon the occasion of a real
wedding, for the presents, revealed plenty of sentiment. There
was a cake, made from an old Virginia recipe, baked in the
shape that every Virginian bride in "Marion Harland's" girlhood
days used to have. It had been made by an old friend. A great
bowl of water-lilies stood near by - some one had got up at
daybreak and scoured their haunts to get fifty of them to present.
Gold purses and gold-trimmed purses - some of them with gold
pieces inside - a gold brooch for the wife and a gold scarf-pin
for her husband, gold fruit-knives, and Austrian glassware were
among the gifts.
In the receiving-party were Doctor and Mrs. Terhune's daughters
and daughter-in-law - Mrs. Christine Terhune Herrick, Mrs.
Van de Water, and Mrs. Albert Payson Terhune. The men of the
family did honors as ushers, and the boys - the grandsons -
patrolled the porches and lawn with ices and salads and
delicious yellow-iced cakes.
Golden-rod and golden-glow were everywhere. The porch posts
were hidden from sight by them, and the room where the receiving-party
stood was banked and massed in a bewilderment of blooms.
And "Marion Harland" herself, in her beautiful gown of black
lace, with violet orchids pinned upon her bosom, did honors, much
after the manner of that famous hostess of old whose greeting
was invariably "At last!" and whose parting word was "Already?"
Only (unlike that famous hostess) through her greetings
unmistakably rang the note of sincerity.
Everybody wandered about in delightfully informal fashion.
Doctor Terhune and General Buffington gossiped of old times in
one corner; "Marion Harland," Margaret E. Sangster, May Riley
Smith, and two or three others made an interesting group in
another, and reminiscences were so beautiful and so many - "Do
you remember when we used to do this or that?" - the sentence
most constantly heard - that unconsciously you began to regret
that you, yourself, had not lived in those days, so splendid
seemed the sentiment and the honor of the times.
Everybody came who could. Some had travelled all day to get
there, and must travel all night to get home again. Letters -
there were hundreds of them, for it seemed that everybody
who even knew her slightly, wanted to send some word of
greeting to "Marion Harland."
Among the invited guests were Prof. and Mrs. John W. Burgess,
Prof. and Mrs. William H. Carpenter, Prof. and Mrs. B. D.
Woodward, of Columbia; Miss Laura D. Gill, Dean of Barnard
College; Dr. and Mrs. G. H. Fox, Mrs. Henry Villard, Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Scribner, Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Putnam, Mr. and Mrs. Edward
Lauterbach, the Rev. Dr. George Alexander, Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter
Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mr. and Mrs. George
Cary Eggleston, the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. James I. Vance, of Newark,
New Jersey; Mr. and Mrs. Talcott Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Francis
Howard Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Churchill Williams, of Philadelphia;
Gen. and Mrs. A. R. Buffington, Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, Miss
Ida Tarbell, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Smith. -
Philadelphia North American, September 2,1906.
Return to Menu Page for Marion Harland's Autobiography... by M. Return to First-Person Narratives of the American South, Beginnings to
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"(Ten o'clock at night.)
Page 10
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"WM. S. SMITH."
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Page 27III
OF HOME - A FIRESIDE TRAGEDY - "COGITO, ERGO SUM."
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Page 37IV
MONTROSE - A MOTHER REGAINED
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Page 52V
O'HARA."
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Page 61VI
HOMICIDE - "SLAUGHTERED MONSTER" - A WESLEYAN
SCHOOLMISTRESS.
Page 62
"SAMUEL."
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"(Saturday night.)
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Page 70VII
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Page 84VIII
THE NASCENT AUTHOR
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Page 90IX
BELOVED TUTOR - COLONIZATION DREAMS AND
DISAPPOINTMENT - MAJOR MORTON
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"M. V. H."
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To
witness if I lie."
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Page 104X
THEN AND NOW
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Put
on thy beautiful garments";
Are
the feet of him that publisheth salvation;
That
saith unto Zion,
'Thy
God reigneth!' "
Page 110XI
SINGING-CLASS IN THE FORTIES - THE SIMPLE LIFE?
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Page 115
Went
roaring up the chimney wide,"
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Page 117XII
BARBECUE
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They
eat rats!
But
Whigs
Eat
pigs!"
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Page 129XIII
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The
sun shone o'er fair women and brave men,' "
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Clear
the track for Old Kentucky!" -
Page 136Tune: "Ole Dan Tucker"
High
on a limb that 'same old Coon' was singing to himself this tune:
Chorus
They
have six horses in the pasture, and don't know which can run the
faster.
But
he must drag in heavy stages his Federal notions and low wages.
They
shout and sing: 'Oh! rumpsey dumsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumsey!'
Page 137
To
win the race will all things copy, be sometimes pig and sometimes
puppy.
To
toe the scratch will not be able, for Matty keeps him in the stable.
In
forty-four we'll show him soon the little Fox can't fool the Coon.
His
cursed 'grippe' has seized us all, which Doctor Clay will cure next
fall.
And
let the track be dry or mucky, we'll stake our pile on Ole Kentucky.
Our
ranks betray?
It
is the ball a-rolling on
To
clear the way
For
Harry Clay.
Page 138
And
with him we'll beat your Polk! Polk! Polk!
And
his motley crew of folk.
O!
with him we'll beat your Polk."
Divided
as billows, yet one as the sea."
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She
fell in de fire.
"Go
de corn! Go de corn!
To
pull 'er out quick.
(Go
de corn!)
Page 147
'Dis
cow done dade!'
(Go
de corn!)"
For
a wagon-cover.
(Go
de corn!)
For
a drinkin' cup.
(Go
de corn!)
Fur
a wagon-whip.
(Go
de corn!)
Dat
wagon top.
(Go
de corn!)"
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CLAY'S DEFEAT
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HOG-KILLING
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And
hide his head under his wing."
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Which
was but souse to chitterlings."
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above Heroism
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FAMILY - MY FIRST BEREAVEMENT
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That
ever looked with human eyes,"
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Her
breathing soft and low,
As
in her breast the wave of life
Kept
heaving to and fro.
Page 200
Our
very hopes belied our fears,
Our
fears our hopes belied:
We
thought her dying while she slept,
And
sleeping when she died."
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His
chat an easy, pleasant flow,
A
thread you'd never wish to sever."
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SIGOURNEY - GRACE GREENWOOD - H. W.
LONGFELLOW -
JAMES REDPATH - "THE
WANDERING JEW"
Page 263
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW."
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Page 270XXVII
LIFE-LONG FRIENDSHIP
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You
must have been most miserable
To
be so cruel!"
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And
cabbages and kings" -
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"CAMILLE" - BAYARD TAYLOR - T. B. ALDRICH -
G. P. MORRIS - MARIA CUMMINS - MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY
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And
say to all the world: " 'This is a MAN!' "
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Page 288XXIX
GOVERNOR WISE - A MEMORABLE DINNER-PARTY
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Page 297XXX
"THE SHINING SHORE" WAS FIRST SUNG - THE HALLELUJAH
CHORUS - BETROTHAL - DEMPSTER IN HIS OLD AGE
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And
I, a pilgrim stranger,
Would
not detain them as they fly,
Those
hours of toil and danger.
For,
oh, we stand on Jordan's strand,
Our
friends are passing over:
And
just before, The Shining Shore,
We
may almost discover."
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And
the weary are at rest."
Page 304XXXI
RELATIVE - A NOBLE LIFE
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Page 313XXXII
JOHN RANDOLPH - THE LAST OF THE RANDOLPHS
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Page 325XXXIII
A "MIGHTY MAN IN PRAYER"
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Page 333XXXIV
"GETS HER HAND OUT" - INCEPTION OF "COMMON SENSE
IN THE HOUSEHOLD"
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Page 346XXXV
A CRUCIAL CRISIS
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Page 355XXXVI
PRINCE OF WALES, IN NEW YORK - POLITICAL PORTENTS
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Page 363XXXVII
COMING STORM
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Page 370XXXVIII
RICHMOND
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Page 382XXXIX
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Page 389XL
FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE
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Past
that - we lay it down!"
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Page 399XLI
LINCOLN'S
ASSASSINATION - THE RELEASED PRISONER OF WAR
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Page 408XLII
GOOD MAN CAME TO "THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE"
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To
weary wanderers given;
There
is a joy for souls distressed,
A
balm for every wounded breast, -
'Tis
found alone in Heaven!"
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Page 417XLIII
"DRIFTING OUT" - A NONPAREIL PARISH
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The
life from out the heart," -
Page 427XLIV
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Can
reach that healthful shore!' "
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Page 436XLV
TWO "STARRED" NAMES
Page 437
Did
I, or fancy, leave them broad and clean?"
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A
state without a king."
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Page 448XLVI
THE MISSIONARIES - TWO CONSULS IN JERUSALEM
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Methinks
each flower that blows,
And every bird a-singing
Of
that sweet secret knows.
I
know not what the flowers
May
feel, or singers see,
But
all these summer raptures
Are
prophecies of thee!"
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Page 457XLVII
LECTURE TOUR - OHIOAN HOSPITALITY - MR. AND MRS.
MCKINLEY
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Page 470XLVIII
HEALING AND HEALTH - IDYLLIC WINTER IN
FLORENCE
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No
love like mother-love ever has shone;
No
other worship abides and endures,
Faithful
unselfish, and patient like yours."
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My
spirit lies
Under
the walls of Paradise."
Page 481XLIX
- "LITERARY HEARTHSTONES" - GRATEFUL
REMINISCENCES
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Page 491APPENDIX
THE REV. EDWARD PAYSON TERHUNE, D.D.
BY REV. JOSEPH R. DURYEE, D.D.
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A GOLDEN WEDDING
I
only mark the sunny hours."
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THE END.