Part 1

SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD VIRGINIA BEFORE THE WAR

Social Life in Old Virginia _Before the War_

BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE

_With Illustrations by_ THE MISSES COWLES

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS M DCCC XCVIII

_Copyright, 1897_, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.

University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.

List of Illustrations

PAGE

“_Tall lilies, white as angels’ wings and stately as the maidens that walked among them_” FRONTISPIECE

_The Plantation House_ 9

“_Shining tables with slender brass-tipped legs_” 12

“_There the guns were kept_” 13

“_Bookcases filled with brown-backed, much-read books_” 15

“_The flower of all others was the rose_” 18

_Tobacco_ 20

_A Typical “Mammy”_ 23

“_The little girls in their great sun-bonnets_” 26

“_Busy over their little matters with that ceaseless energy of boyhood_” 27

“_The test of the men’s prowess_” 29

_The Exclusive Property of the Mistress_ 33

“_His thoughts dwelt upon serious things_” 47

_An Old Virginia Sideboard_ 53

“_She was never anything but tender with the others_” 59

“_The Butler was apt to be severe, and was feared_” 63

_The Lady and the Ox-Cart_ 67

_An Old-fashioned Grist-Mill_ 73

_A Colonial Stove_ 79

_Dressing the Church_ 85

“_At last the ‘big gate’ is reached_” 91

_The Virginia Reel_ 97

_A Negro Wedding_ 101

_A Typical Negro Cabin_ 105

Introduction

Which none need read unless he pleases.

No one can be more fully aware of the shortcomings of this brief sketch of Social Life in the South before the War than is the writer. Its slightness might readily have excused it from republication. And yet it has seemed well to let it go forth on its own account, to take such place as it may in the great world of books. One reason is the partiality of a few friends who have desired to see it in this form. Another is the absolute ignorance of the outside world of the real life of the South in old times, and the desire to correct the picture for the benefit of the younger generation of Southerners themselves. One of the factors in that life was slavery. The most renowned picture of Southern life is one of it as it related exclusively to that institution. As an argument in the case then at bar, it was one of the most powerful ever penned. Mrs. Stowe did more to free the slave than all the politicians. And yet her picture is not one which any Southerner would willingly have stand as a final portrait of Southern life. No one could understand that life who did not see it in its entirety.

The old life at the South passed away in the flame of war and in the yet more fiery ordeal of Reconstruction. So complete was this devastation that now unless one knows where to go he may search in vain for its reality. Its remnants lie scattered in far-off neighborhoods; its fragments almost overgrown with the tangles of a new life. The picture of it which at present is mainly presented is wholly unreal. The Drama is one of the accepted modes of judging of passing life. It is assumed to be a reasonably true reflection of the life it pretends to portray. If this standard shall be accepted, what a life that must have been which existed in the South! The bloodhounds, brute and human, that chased delicate women for sport, have mainly been given up. But their place has been taken by a different species of barbarian if possible even more unreal than those they supplanted. Quite a large crop of so-called Southern plays, or at least plays in which Southerners have figured, has of late been introduced on the stage, and the supposititious Southerner is as absurd a creation as the wit of ignorance ever devised. The Southern girl is usually an underbred little provincial, whose chief characteristic is to say “reckon” and “real,” with strong emphasis, in every other sentence. And the Southern gentleman is a sloven whose linen has never known starch; who clips the endings of his words; says “Sah” at the end of every sentence, and never uses an “r” except in the last syllable of “nigger.” With a slouched hat, a slovenly dress, a plentiful supply of “sahs,” and a slurred speech exclusively applied to “niggers,” he is equipped for the stage. And yet it is not unkindly meant: only patronizingly, which is worse. That Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Lawrence, and other visitors whose English passes current, declared after a visit to America that they found the purest English speech spoken in Virginia, goes for nothing.

If the writers of the plays referred to would attend one of the formal assemblies under one of the old social associations in the South,--for instance, the St. Cecilia Ball in Charleston, one of the final refuges of old-fashioned gentility and distinguished manners,--they would get some idea of what old-time good breeding and high courtesy were.

It is perhaps partly to correct this erroneous idea of the Old South that this little essay has been attempted. But mainly it has been from sheer affection.

T. N. P.

SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD VIRGINIA BEFORE THE WAR

Let me see if I can describe an old Virginia home recalled from a memory stamped with it when a virgin page. It may, perhaps, be idealized by the haze of time; but it will be as I now remember it.

The mansion was a plain “weather-board” house, one story and a half above the half-basement ground floor, set on a hill in a grove of primeval oaks and hickories filled in with ash, maples, and feathery-leafed locusts without number. It was built of timber cut by the “servants” (they were never termed slaves except in legal documents) out of the virgin forest, not long after the Revolution, when that branch of the family moved from Yorktown. It had quaint dormer windows, with small panes, poking out from its sloping upstairs rooms, and long porches to shelter its walls from the sun and allow house life in the open air.

A number of magnificent oaks and hickories (there had originally been a dozen of the former, and the place from them took its name, “Oakland”), under which Totapottamoi children may have played, spread their long arms about it, sheltering nearly a half-acre apiece; whilst in among them and all around were ash and maples, an evergreen or two, lilacs and syringas and roses, and locusts of every age and size, which in springtime filled the air with honeyed perfume, and lulled with the “murmur of innumerable bees.”

There was an “office” in the yard; another house where the boys used to stay, and the right to sleep in which was as eagerly looked forward to and as highly prized as was by the youth of Rome the wearing of the _toga virilis_. There the guns were kept; there the dogs might sleep with their masters, under, or in cold weather even on, the beds; and there charming bits of masculine gossip were retailed by the older young gentlemen, and delicious tales of early wickedness related, all the more delightful because they were veiled in chaste language phrased not merely to meet the doctrine, _maxima reverentia pueris debetur_, but to meet the higher truth that no gentleman would use foul language.

Off to one side was the orchard, in springtime a bower of pink and snow, and always making a pleasant spot in the landscape; beyond which peeped the ample barns and stables, and farther yet lay the wide green fields.

Some of the fields that stretched around were poor, and in places where the rains had washed off the soil, red “galls” showed through; but the tillage was careful and systematic, and around the house were rich hay-fields where the cattle stood knee-deep in clover. The brown worm fences ran in lateral lines, and the ditches were kept clean except for useful willows.

The furniture was old-timey and plain,--mahogany and rosewood bedsteads and dressers black with age, and polished till they shone like mirrors, hung with draperies white as snow; straight-backed chairs generations old interspersed with common new ones; long sofas with claw feet; old shining tables with slender brass-tipped legs, straight or fluted, holding some fine old books, and in springtime a blue or flowered bowl or two with glorious roses; bookcases filled with brown-backed, much-read books. This was all.

The servants’ houses, smoke-house, wash-house, and carpenter-shop were set around the “back yard,” with “mammy’s house” a little nicer than the others; and farther off, upon and beyond the quarters hill, “the quarters,”--whitewashed, substantial buildings, each for a family, with chicken-houses hard by, and with yards closed in by split palings, filled with fruit trees, which somehow bore cherries, peaches, and apples in a mysterious profusion even when the orchard failed.

Beyond the yard were gardens. There were two,--the vegetable garden and the flower garden. The former was the test of the mistress’s power; for at the most critical times she took the best hands on the place to work it. The latter was the proof of her taste. It was a strange affair: pyrocanthus hedged it on the outside; honeysuckle ran riot over its palings, perfuming the air; yellow cowslips in well-regulated tufts edged some borders, while sweet peas, pinks, and violets spread out recklessly over others; jonquilles yellow as gold, and, once planted, blooming every spring as certainly as the trees budded or the birds nested, grew in thick bunches; and here and there were tall lilies, white as angels’ wings and stately as the maidens that walked among them; big snowball bushes blooming with snow, lilacs purple and white and sweet in the spring, and always with birds’ nests in them with the bluest of eggs; and in places rosebushes, and tall hollyhock stems filled with rich rosettes of every hue and shade, made a delicious tangle. In the autumn rich dahlias and pungent-odored chrysanthemums ended the sweet procession and closed the season.

But the flower of all others was the rose. There were roses everywhere; clambering roses over the porches and windows, sending their fragrance into the rooms; roses beside the walks; roses around the yard and in the garden; roses of every hue and delicate refinement of perfume; rich yellow roses thick on their briery bushes, coming almost with the dandelions and buttercups, before any others dared face the April showers to learn if March had truly gone, sweet as if they had come from Paradise to be worn upon young maidens’ bosoms, as they might well have done--who knows?--followed by the Giant of Battles on their stout stems, glorious enough to have been the worthy badge of victorious Lancastrian kings; white Yorks, hardly less royal; cloth-of-golds; dainty teas; rich damasks; old sweet hundred-leafs sifting down their petals on the grass, and always filling with two the place where one had fallen. These and many more whose names have faded made the air fragrant, whilst the catbirds and mocking-birds fluttered and sang among them, and the robins foraged in the grass for their greedy yellow-throats waiting in the hidden nests.

Looking out over the fields was a scene not to be forgotten.

Let me give it in the words of one who knew and loved Virginia well, and was her best interpreter:[1]--

[1] Dr. George W. Bagby. His “Old Virginia Gentleman” is perhaps the best sketch yet written in the South. To it I am doubtless indebted for much in this paper. His description might do for a picture of Staunton Hill resting in delicious calm on its eminence above the Staunton River.

“A scene not of enchantment, though contrast often made it seem so, met the eye. Wide, very wide fields of waving grain, billowy seas of green or gold as the season chanced to be, over which the scudding shadows chased and played, gladdened the heart with wealth far spread. Upon lowlands level as the floor the plumed and tasselled corn stood tall and dense, rank behind rank in military alignment--a serried army lush and strong. The rich, dark soil of the gently swelling knolls could scarcely be seen under the broad lapping leaves of the mottled tobacco. The hills were carpeted with clover. Beneath the tree-clumps fat cattle chewed the cud, or peaceful sheep reposed, grateful for the shade. In the midst of this plenty, half hidden in foliage, over which the graceful shafts of the Lombard poplar towered, with its bounteous garden and its orchards heavy with fruit near at hand, peered the old mansion, white, or dusky red, or mellow gray by the storm and shine of years.

“Seen by the tired horseman halting at the woodland’s edge, this picture, steeped in the intense quivering summer moonlight, filled the soul with unspeakable emotions of beauty, tenderness, peace, home.

“How calm could we rest In that bosom of shade with the friends we love best!

“Sorrows and care were there--where do they not penetrate? But, oh! dear God, one day in those sweet, tranquil homes outweighed a fevered lifetime in the gayest cities of the globe. Tell me nothing; I undervalue naught that man’s heart delights in. I dearly love operas and great pageants; but I do know--as I know nothing else--that the first years of human life, and the last, yea, if it be possible, all the years, should be passed in the country. The towns may do for a day, a week, a month at most; but Nature, Mother Nature, pure and clean, is for all time,--yes, for eternity itself.”

The life about the place was amazing. There were the busy children playing in groups, the boys of the family mingling with the little darkies as freely as any other young animals, and forming the associations which tempered slavery and made the relation one not to be understood save by those who saw it. There they were, stooping down and jumping up; turning and twisting, their heads close together, like chickens over an “invisible repast,” their active bodies always in motion: busy over their little matters with that ceaseless energy of boyhood which could move the world could it but be concentrated and conserved. They were all over the place; in the orchard robbing birds’ nests, getting into wild excitement over catbirds, which they ruthlessly murdered because they “called snakes”; in spring and summer fishing or “washing” in the creek, riding the plough-horses to and from the fields, running the calves and colts, and being as mischievous as the young mules they chased.

There were the little girls in their great sunbonnets, often sewed on to preserve the wonderful peach-blossom complexions, with their small female companions playing about the yard or garden, running with and wishing they were boys, and getting half scoldings from mammy for being tomboys and tearing their aprons and dresses. There, in the shade, near her “house,” was the mammy with her assistants, her little charge in her arms, sleeping in her ample lap, or toddling about her, with broken, half-formed phrases, better understood than framed. There passed young negro girls, blue-habited, running about bearing messages; or older women moving at a statelier pace, doing with deliberation the little tasks which were their “work;” whilst about the office or smoke-house or dairy or wood-pile there was always some movement and life. The peace of it all was only emphasized by the sounds that broke upon it: the call of ploughers to their teams; the shrill shouts of children; the chant of women over their work, and as a bass the recurrent hum of spinning-wheels, like the drone of some great insect, sounding from cabins where the turbaned spinners spun their fleecy rolls for the looms which were clacking in the loom-rooms making homespun for the plantation.

From the back yard and quarters the laughter of women and the shrill, joyous voices of children came. Far off, in the fields, the white-shirted “ploughers” followed singing their slow teams in the fresh furrows, wagons rattled, and ox-carts crawled along, or gangs of hands in lines performed their work in the corn or tobacco fields, loud shouts and peals of laughter, mellowed by the distance, floating up from time to time, telling that the heart was light and the toil not too heavy.

At special times there was special activity: at ice-getting time, at corn-thinning time, at fodder-pulling time, at threshing-wheat time, but above all at corn-shucking time, at hog-killing time, and at “harvest.” Harvest was spoken of as a season. It was a festival. The severest toil of the year was a frolic. Every “hand” was eager for it. It was the test of the men’s prowess and the women’s skill. For it took a man to swing his cradle through the long June days and keep pace with the bare-necked, knotted-armed leader as he strode and swung his ringing cradle through the heavy wheat. So it demanded a strong back and nimble fingers in the binding to “keep up” and bind the sheaves. The young men looked forward to it as young bucks look to the war-path. How gay they seemed, moving in oblique lines around the “great parallelograms,” sweeping down the yellow grain, and, as they neared the starting-point, chanting with mellow voices the harvest song “Cool Water”! How musical was the cadence as, taking time to get their wind, they whet in unison their ringing blades!

Though the plantations were large, so large that one master could not hear his neighbor’s dog bark, there was never any loneliness: it was movement and life without bustle; whilst somehow, in the midst of it all, the house seemed to sit enthroned in perpetual tranquillity, with outstretched wings under its spreading oaks, sheltering its children like a great gray dove.

Even at night there was stirring about: the ring of an axe, the infectious music of the banjos, the laughter of dancers, the festive noise and merriment of the cabin, the distant, mellowed shouts of ’coon or ’possum hunters, or the dirge-like chant of some serious and timid wayfarer passing along the paths over the hills or through the woods, and solacing his lonely walk with religious song.

Such was the outward scene. What was there within? That which has been much misunderstood,--that which was like the roses, wasteful beyond measure in its unheeded growth and blowing, but sweet beyond measure, too, and filling with its fragrance not only the region round about, but sending it out unmeasuredly on every breeze that wandered by.

The life within was of its own kind. There were the master and the mistress: the old master and old mistress, the young masters and young mistresses, and the children; besides some aunts and cousins, and the relations or friends who did not live there, but were only always on visits.

Properly, the mistress should be mentioned first, as she was the most important personage about the home, the presence which pervaded the mansion, the centre of all that life, the queen of that realm; the master willingly and proudly yielding her entire management of all household matters and simply carrying out her directions, confining his ownership within the curtilage solely to his old “secretary,” which on the mistress’s part was as sacred from her touch as her bonnet was from his. There were kept mysterious folded papers, and equally mysterious parcels, frequently brown with the stain of dust and age. Had the papers been the lost sibylline leaves instead of old receipts and bills, and had the parcels contained diamonds instead of long-dried melon-seed or old flints, now out of date but once ready to serve a useful purpose, they could not have been more sacredly guarded by the mistress. The master usually had to hunt for a long period for any particular paper, whilst the mistress could in a half-hour have arranged everything in perfect order; but the chaos was regarded by her with veneration as real as that with which she regarded the mystery of the heavenly bodies.

On the other hand, outside of this piece of furniture there was nothing in the house of which the master even pretended to know. It was all in her keeping. Whatever he wanted he called for, and she produced it with a certainty and promptness which struck him as a perpetual miracle. Her system appeared to him as the result of a wisdom as profound as that which fixed and held the firmament. He would not have dared to interfere, not because he was afraid, but because he recognized her superiority. It would no more have occurred to him to make a suggestion about the management of the house than about that of one of his neighbors; simply because he knew her and acknowledged her infallibility. She was, indeed, a surprising creature--often delicate in frame, and of a nervous organization so sensitive as perhaps to be a great sufferer; but her force and character pervaded and directed everything, as unseen yet as unmistakably as the power of gravity controls the particles that constitute the earth.