Part 9

“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, To witness if I lie.”

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.

X

FAMILY LETTERS—COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPDEN-SIDNEY—THEN AND NOW

“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.”

The foregoing extracts from a letter written by my father during the (to us) “wonderful summer” of our sojourn in Prince Edward had to do with the periodical visit paid by my grandmother to her Massachusetts home. I am deeply impressed in the perusal of these confidential epistles with the absolute dependence of the strong man—whom mere acquaintances rated as reserved to sternness, and singularly undemonstrative, even to his friends—upon the gentle woman who was, I truly believe, the one and only love of his lifetime. He talked to her by tongue and by pen of every detail of business; she was the confidante of every plan, however immature; she, and she alone, fathomed the depths of a soul over which Puritan blood and training impelled him to cast a veil. In all this he had not a secret from her. Portions of the letter which I have omitted go into particulars of transactions that would interest few women.

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! Put on thy beautiful garments”;

and,

“How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him that publisheth salvation; That saith unto Zion, ‘Thy God reigneth!’”

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.

XI

BACK IN POWHATAN—OLD VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFERY—A SINGING-CLASS IN THE FORTIES—THE SIMPLE LIFE?

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 store-room, 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 tittle-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 matinées, 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, Went roaring up the chimney wide,”

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.