Part 2

I am struck in all these old gastronomic records with the immense amount of meat, in proportion to the vegetables used. No wonder gout was a common disease, and the overheated blood needed to be reduced by cupping and leeching. The out-of-door life, the riding and hunting of Maryland and Virginia, enabled the men to eat freely and drink deep, and the Southern table was always lavishly provided. A foreigner having remarked of Mrs. Madison that her table was like a Harvest-Home, she replied that, as the profusion which amused the visitor was the outgrowth of her country's prosperity, she was quite willing to sacrifice European elegance to Virginia liberality. Good housekeeping in those days consisted chiefly in setting a bountiful table, and the Colonial dame, in spite of her troop of servants, was kept busy in planning the meals, the breakfasts of hot bread and griddle-cakes, the afternoon dinner, and "the bite before bedtime." To her it fell, to carry the keys, to portion out the rations for the negro quarters, and to lay aside the materials from which the turbanned queen of the kitchen should compound the savory sausage, the fried chicken, the sauces, and dumplings, and cakes, which have made Southern cooking famous.

The domestic life of women on those old plantations must have been rather monotonous. The travellers who visited them, describe them as sharing little in the amusements of their husbands, and brothers, and sons. Chastellux says that, like the English, they are very fond of their _infants_, but care little for their _children_; but the annals and biographies do not bear out his statement. George Wythe learned his Greek at home, from a Testament, while his mother held an English copy in her hand and prompted him as he went on. John Mason, too, bore through life the impress of his mother's influence. He was only seven years old when she died, yet through life, "mother's room" was perfectly distinct to him, the old chest of drawers distinguished as _gown_ drawer, _shirt_ drawer, and _jacket_ drawer, the closet known as mistress' closet, containing his mother's dresses, and another cupboard, known as _the_ closet, in which hung a small green horsewhip with a silver head, carried by Mrs. Mason when she rode, and on other occasions used for purposes of correction, so that the children nicknamed it "the green doctor." An old letter recalls another "mother's room" in those eighteenth-century days: "On one side sits the chambermaid with her knitting; on the other a little colored pet, learning to sew. An old decent woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes' winter clothes, while the old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting."

Home, rather than Church, was the sacred spot to the Colonial Cavalier, in spite of his theoretical reverence for Mother Church. It was at home that most of the baptisms and funerals occurred, and Hugh Jones complains that "in houses also they most commonly marry, without regard to the time of the day, or season of the year." The central idea of the Puritan religion was fear of God; the centre of the Cavalier's religion was love of man. From this root sprung a radiant cheerfulness, an open-handed liberality, and an unbounded hospitality. If it be true that the best ornaments of a house are its guests, never were houses more brilliantly decorated than those Southern mansions. The names of Brandon, and Berkeley, and Westover, and Mont Clare, and Doughoregan call up the procession of guests who have walked, and danced, and dined, and slept under their roofs. We see stately men, in lace and ruffles, pacing the minuet with powdered dames, in "teacup time of hood and hoop, and when the patch was worn." We see lovers and maidens, brides and bridegrooms spending the honeymoon under the sheltering trees, and patriot Continentals arming in their halls for the struggle with the enemies of their country.

Not the lofty alone, but the lowly as well, could claim a welcome at those always open doors. Indians, half-breeds, and leather-clad huntsmen hung round the kitchen of Greenaway Court, while Washington and Lord Fairfax dined in the saloon. Not even acquaintance was considered necessary to ensure a cordial reception. "The inhabitants," wrote Beverly, "are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation than being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and there he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good-nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords; and the poor planters who have but one bed, will often sit up, or lie upon a form, or couch, all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey."

In Winter, the fire blazed high on the hearth, and the toddy hissed in the noggin; in Summer, the basket of fruit stood in the breeze-swept hall, and lightly clad black boys tripped in, bearing cool tankards of punch and sangaree. The guest need only enter in, to be at home. No one was considered so contemptible, as he who consented to receive money for entertaining visitors. Keeping an inn or "ordinary" was looked upon askance, and the law dealt with the proprietor rigorously, as with one who probably would cheat if he got a chance. His charges were carefully regulated, and he was subject to fine, and even imprisonment, if he went beyond them. A Maryland statute provides that "noe Ordinary-Keeper within this Province shall at any Time charge anything to account for Boles of Punch, but shall only Sell the Severall Ingredients to the Said Mixture according to the Rates before in this Act Ascertained." A traveller, in those good old days, might ride from Maryland to Georgia, and never put up at an Ordinary at all, sure, whenever he wished to stop by the way, of a cordial welcome at a private house. Some planters even kept negroes posted at their gate, to give warning of a rider's approach, that he might be invited in, and that the household might be in readiness to receive him.

Such promiscuous hospitality could only exist in a community with a happy faculty for taking life easily, an ability to dispense with the slavery to method, and to be contented though things went wrong. The fastidious European found some of the manners and customs a little trying. "In private houses as well as inns," writes a traveller, "several people are crowded together in the same room; and in the latter it very commonly happens that after you have been some time in bed, a stranger of any condition comes into the room, pulls off his clothes, and places himself without ceremony between your sheets."

Another visitor says that the Virginia houses are spacious, but the apartments are not commodious, "and they make no ceremony of putting three or four persons into the same room, nor do these make any objections to being thus heaped together."

The Colonial Cavalier was gregarious by nature. He was warmly social, and, being so much shut off by plantation life from intercourse with his fellows, he welcomed a guest as a special providence, to relieve the monotony of his life. The gentleman-planter in affluent circumstances had nothing to do, and he did it in a very leisurely way. His occupations were such as could be shared by a guest. An observant traveller has left us a vivid picture of the daily routine of such an individual: "He rises about nine o'clock. He may perhaps make an excursion to walk as far as his stable to see his horses, which is seldom more than fifty yards from his house. He returns to breakfast between nine and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, bread and butter, and very thin slices of venison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down on a pallet on the floor in the coolest room in the house, in his shirt and trousers only, with a negro at his head, and another to fan him and keep off the flies. Between twelve and one, he takes a draught of toddy or bombo, a liquor composed of water, sugar, rum and nutmeg, which is made weak, and kept cool. He dines between two and three, and at every table, whatever else there may be, a ham and greens, or cabbage, is always a standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, toddy, punch, port, claret, and Madeira, which is generally excellent here. Having drunk some few glasses of wine after dinner, he returns to his pallet, with his two blacks to fan him, and continues to drink toddy or sangaree all the afternoon. He does not always drink tea. Between nine and ten in the evening, he eats a light supper of milk and fruit or wine, sugar and fruit, etc., and almost immediately retires to bed for the night."

All this sounds as if Smyth must have made his visit to Virginia in midsummer, and fancied that the habits were the same all the year round, as in that semi-tropical season. As a picture, it is truer of Carolina than of any section farther North. As we go South we find the character more indolent, the energies more relaxed, and even the houses changing their expression. The stately brick manor-houses, modelled on the English mansion, with their deep mullioned windows and heavy doors, give place to Italian villas, with white pillars and porches gleaming from their green points of land up and down the rivers. Under this shady porch the planter might lie at his ease, watching the boats on the streams as they come and go, and breathing the perfume from the garden at his feet. The garden of those days was laid out also on the Italian pattern, in shapes of horseshoes, or stars, or palm-leaves, with avenues leading down bordered by tulips trees, with box-hedged paths, wherein Corydon and Phyllis might wander, quite hidden from the lounger on the portico. In its centre stood often a summer-house, where successive generations plighted troth, and exchanged love-tokens. Everything about the garden, as about the house, suggested England. The lawn was sown with the seed of the silvery grass, so familiar in the great English parks. Even birds were imported from the mother country. When Spotswood came over, he brought with him a number of larks to delight his ears with their familiar strain, but either the climate was unpropitious, or the stronger native birds resented the coming of the foreigners, for the larks died out, and left only here and there a lonely descendant to startle the traveller as he rode along the solitary forest roads at sunrise, with a flow of melody that called up the leafy lanes of the old home.

Sweethearts and Wives

The first settlers in America had no homes, for the first requisite for a home is a wife. They soon learned that "a better half, alone, gives better quarters." The Indian squaws were almost the only women known to the voyagers on the _Susan Constant_ and her sister ships; and though the adventurers wrote home in glowing terms of their dusky charms, they looked askance upon the idea of marriage with the heathen natives. We cannot help, however, echoing the sentiments of Colonel Byrd of Westover, when he says: "Morals and all considered, I can't think the Indians much greater heathens than the first adventurers," who, he adds, "had they been good Christians, would have had the charity to take this only method of converting the natives to Christianity. For, after all that can be said, a sprightly lover is the most prevailing missionary that can be sent amongst these, or any other infidels. Besides," he proceeds candidly, "the poor Indians would have had less reason to complain that the English took away their lands, if they had received them by way of portion with their daughters."

It was, in truth, a great benefit both to the English and to the Indians, when "Bright-Stream-Between-two-Hills"--called in the native dialect "Pocahontas"--married John Rolfe, with the approbation of both races. To this union some of the proudest families in Virginia trace their descent. Poor little Princess! The first romance of America casts its pathetic charm around you. However apocryphal the legend of your saving Smith's life, it is hard to resist the impression of your cherishing a sentimental attachment for the gallant captain, and a suspicion that you were tricked into a marriage with Rolfe.

Smith records a sad interview with Pocahontas when she was being lionized, under the name of Lady Rebecca, as a royal visitor in London. "Being about this time preparing to set sail for New England," he writes, "I could not stay to do her that service I desired, and she well deserved; but, hearing she was at Bradford with divers of my friends, I went to see her. After a modest salutation without any bow, she turned about, obscured her face as not seeming well contented. But not long after, she began to talk, and remembered me well what courtesies she had done, saying: 'You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like to you; you called him Father--being in his land a stranger--and by the same reason so must I doe you.'" Smith objects on the ground of her royal lineage, which had well-nigh brought Rolfe to grief, and she responds: "Were you not afraid to come into my father's countrie and cause feare in him and all his people but mee, and feare you here I should call you Father? I tell you then I will; and you shall call me childe; and soe will I be forever and ever your countrieman. They did tell me always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth. Yet Powhatan did command Ottamatomakkin to seek you and know the truth, because your countriemen will lie much." So ended the parting; and soon afterward the poor little Princess died a stranger in a strange land. "She came to Gravesend, to her end and grave."

The first English wedding on American soil was solemnized between John Laydon, a laborer, and Anne Buras, maid to Mistress Forest. They were "marry'd together" in 1608. Eleven years later came a ship bearing "ye maides," a company of ninety young women, "pure and uncorrupt," sent over to Virginia, at the expense of the company in London, to be married to such settlers as were able and willing to support them, and to refund to the company the cost of passage. A little later, sixty more "maides" followed; and though the cost of a wife rose from a hundred and twenty, to a hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco, there was no slackening in the demand. In Maryland, as late as 1660, the market was equally brisk. "The first planters," says the record, "were so far from expecting money with a woman, that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife, that carried good testimonials of her character, at the price of a hundred pound, and make themselves believe they had a bargain."

We read of an adventurous young lady of some social consequence, being a niece of Daniel Defoe, who, suffering from an unfortunate love-affair in England, ran away from home, and came to Maryland as a "redemptioner." Her services were engaged by a farmer named Job, in Cecil County, and soon after, according to a frequent custom of the country, she married into the family of her employer. A Maryland record of November 2, 1638, runs thus: "This day came William Lewis, planter, and made oath that he is not recontracted to any other woman than Ursula Gifford; and that there is no impediment why he should not be married to the said Ursula Gifford--and, further, he acknowledged himself to owe unto the Lord Proprietary a thousand pounds of tobacco, in case there be any precontract or other lawful impediment whatsoever, as aforesaid, either on the part of William Lewis or Ursula Gifford."

This arrangement of making the bridegroom responsible for the good faith of the lady as well as his own, is quite refreshing in these days of equal rights and responsibilities. The woman's rights question, however, was at the front in Maryland, in the seventeenth century; and the strong-minded woman who introduced it, was Mistress Margaret Brent, cousin to Governor Calvert, who had such confidence in her business sagacity and ability, that he appointed her his executrix, with the brief instructions, "Take all: pay all." She made application to the Maryland Assembly to grant her a vote in the House for herself, and another as his Lordship's attorney. The request was peremptorily refused by Governor Greene; but, nothing daunted, "the sd. Mrs Brent protested against all proceedings in this present assembly unlesse shee may be present and have a vote as aforesaid." Another woman of force in those days was Virlinda Stone. In the Maryland archives still exists a letter from her to Lord Baltimore, praying for an investigation of a fight in Anne Arundel County, during which her husband was wounded. At the end of the business-like document, she adds a fiery and altogether feminine postscript, in which she declares that "Hemans, the master of the _Golden Lion_, is a very knave: and that will be made plainly for to appeare to your Lordship, for he hath abused my husband most grossly." Such women as these were not to be trifled with. No wonder Alsop says: "All complimental courtships drest up in critical Rarities are meer strangers to them. Plain wit comes nearest to their genius; so that he that intends to court a Maryland girle, must have something more than the tautologies of a long-winded speech to carry on his design, or else he may fall under the contempt of her frown and his own windy discourse."

The Virginia women were as high-spirited as their Maryland sisters. They had no idea of being commanded into matrimony. When Governor Nicholson became infatuated with one of the fair daughters of Master Lewis Burwell and demanded her hand with royally autocratic manner, neither she nor her parents were disposed to comply. The suitor became furious, and persisted for years in his determination, which seems to have been as much a matter of pride, as of sentiment. He took pains to wreak his wrath on every one who opposed the match, going so far as to threaten the lives of the unwilling young woman's father and brother. To Commissary Blair he declared that, if she married any one but himself, he would cut the throats of three men--the bridegroom, the minister, and the justice who issued the license. Strangely enough, the damsel was not attracted by this wild wooing; and, as a candid friend wrote to the furious lover, "It is not here, as in some barbarous countries, where the tender lady is dragged into the Sultan's arms reeking with the blood of her relatives." Though this affair created such a stir throughout the Colony of Virginia and lasted so long a time, no record has remained of the young heroine's after fate, except the fact that she did not become Lady Nicholson; not even her Christian name has come down to posterity, to whom she remains a shadowy divinity.

A noticeable feature of Colonial life in Virginia, is the belleship of widows. The girls seem to have stood no chance against their fascinations. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison each married one. In the preceding century, Sir William Berkeley, who had brought no lady with him across the water, was taken captive by a young widow of Warwick County, a certain Dame Frances Stevens, who, after thirty-two years of married life, being again left a widow by Berkeley's death, wedded with her late husband's secretary, Philip Ludwell--holding fast, however, to her title of Lady Berkeley. Lord Culpeper writes in a letter of 1680, "My Lady Berkeley is married to Mr. Ludwell; and thinks no more of our world." It is to be hoped that the secretary whom the lady took for her third husband, proved a more amiable companion than the fiery old Governor, whose pride and bitter obstinacy wrought such havoc after Bacon's rebellion, that the reports of his cruelties echoed to the shores of England. Edmund Cheesman, a follower of Bacon's, being brought up for trial, Berkeley asked him: "Why did you engage in Bacon's designs?" Before Cheesman could answer, his young wife, falling on her knees, exclaimed: "My provocation made my husband join in the cause for which Bacon contended. But for me he had never done what he has done. Let me bear the punishment, but let my husband be pardoned!" Where was the chivalry of that Cavalier blood on which Berkeley prided himself? We read that her prayer availed her husband nothing, and procured only insult to herself.

Our sympathy with Bacon, in his rebellion against Berkeley's tyranny, makes us doubly regretful that he should have stained his career by a deed of cowardice and cruelty. It was one of those blunders worse than crimes, and gave him and his followers the contemptuous appellation of "White Aprons." When Bacon made his sudden turn on Sir William Berkeley, he established his headquarters at _Green Spring_, Berkeley's own mansion. There he threw up breastworks in front of his palisades, and then sent out detachments of horsemen, who scoured the country and brought back to camp the wives of prominent Berkeleyites. Among these dames were Madam Bray, Madam Page, Madam Ballard, and Madam Bacon--the last, the wife of the rebel's kinsman. Bacon then sent one of the dames to the town under a flag of truce, to inform the husbands that he intended to place them in front of his men while he constructed his earthworks. "The poor gentlewomen were mightily astonished, and neather were their husbands void of amazement at this subtile invention. The husbands thought it indeed wonderful that their innocent and harmless wives should thus be entered a white garde to the Divell"--the _Divell_, of course, being General Bacon, who, thus protected by _The White Aprons_, finished his fortifications in security; gaining a reputation for "subtility," but tarnishing his character for gallantry.

As society grew more stable, it grew also more complex. The buying of wives gave way to sentimental courtships, and men also began to learn the advantages of a single life. In Maryland so many took this view, that we find the old statutes imposing a tax on bachelors over twenty-five years of age, of five shillings, for estates under three hundred pounds sterling, or twenty shillings when over; a tax which seems to have been more successful as a means of raising money than of promoting matrimony; for we find the record of its payment by a surprising number of bachelors, St. Ann's parish vestry-books alone showing thirty-four such derelicts. Perhaps, however, this celibacy did not indicate so much aversion to marriage, as inability to meet the growing demands for luxury. The obstinate bachelors may have felt with regard to matrimony as Alsop did with regard to liberty, that "without money it is like a man opprest with the gout--every step he takes forward puts him to pain." The Abbé Robin at a later day says of Annapolis: "Female luxury here exceeds what is known in the provinces of France. A French hair-dresser is a man of importance; it is said a certain dame here, hires one of that craft at a thousand crowns a year salary." The very rumors of such extravagance must have frightened frugal young men!