CHAPTER XXIII

THE RIGHT WAY TO GO TO SHIRLEY

Everybody goes to Shirley the wrong way. We found that out by ourselves happening to go the right way.

When you are sailing up the James in your houseboat (You haven't one? Well, a make-believe one will do just as well, and in some ways better), do not pass Eppes Creek, as everybody does, and go to the Shirley pier; but, instead, enter the creek and tie up at Leaning Tree Landing as we did.

Then, instead of taking that trail up the hill that leads only into a cornfield, look for a path leading to the left through the woods. It is not much of a path; and unless you love Nature in even her capricious moods, when she now and then trips the foot of the unwary and mayhap even scratches, it is too bad after all that you came this way. To love of Nature should be added a certain measure of agility, so that you will be all right when you come to the fence. Fortunately, you can let down the upper rails--being careful to put them back again when you are safe on the other side.

Beyond the fence, a great pasture-field stretches away endlessly. But then everything is on a large scale at Shirley. Ampleness is the keynote; it pervades everything. Before you have half crossed the field, you will come upon a road that will lead you to a little eminence near the quarters.

No, it is not a village that you now see peeping out through the grove over there by the river; it is the group of buildings constituting the homestead of Shirley. In the bright sunlight, you can pick out bits of the mansion through the trees, of the dairy, of the kitchen, and of the smaller buildings; while farther out stand the roomy barns and the quaint turreted dove-cote. All the buildings are of brick and show a warm, dull red.

Time has left few such scenes as this--the completely equipped home-acre of a great; seventeenth century American plantation. The scene is not exactly a typical one; for few of such early colonial estates, and indeed not many of the later ones, had homesteads as complete, as substantially built, and on as large a scale as this of Shirley.

Now, as you can need no further guidance, we are going off some two or three hundred years into the past, to see if we can get hold of the other end of the story of this plantation.

Perhaps the start was "about Christmas time" in the year 1611, when Sir Thomas Dale, High Marshal of the Colony of Virginia, sailed up the river from James Towne; killed or drove away all the Indians hereabout; and then, thinking it ill that so much goodly land should be lying unoccupied, took possession of a large tract of it for the colony. But the part that came to be called Shirley is soon lost sight of in the fogs of tradition. Later, we catch a glimpse of it in the possession of Lord Delaware. But it is not until the middle of the seventeenth century that we get a firm hold of this elusive colonial seat and of its colonial owners.

At that time, in the colony of Virginia, two of the proud families on two of the proud rivers were the Hills, who had recently acquired the plantation of Shirley on the James, and the Carters, who were establishing their seat at Corotoman on the Rappahannock. In the story of these two houses is most of the story of Shirley.

The Hills became one of the leading families in the colony. It was Edward Hill, second of the name, who built the present mansion. He was a member of the King's Council; and his position is indicated, and his fortune as well, by the building in those early times of such a home. Antedating almost all of the great colonial homes, it must long have stood a unique mark of family distinction. The exact date of the building of the manor-house is not known, but doubtless it was not far from the middle of the seventeenth century.

In the meantime, the Carters had become notable. This family reached its greatest prominence in the days of Robert Carter, who was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the colony. In person he was handsome and imposing; in worldly possessions he stood almost unequalled; and in offices and honours he had about everything that the colony could give. His estate included more than three hundred thousand acres of land and about one thousand slaves. Either because of his imposing person or of his power or of his wealth, or perhaps because of all three, he was called "King" Carter. He does seem to have been quite a sovereign, and to have known considerable of the pompous ceremony that "doth hedge a king."

It was in the fourth generation of the houses of Shirley and of Corotoman, and in the year 1723, that the families were united by the marriage of John, son of "King" Carter, and Elizabeth, daughter of the third Edward Hill. John Carter was a prominent man and the secretary of the colony; Elizabeth Hill was a beauty and the heiress of Shirley. In the descendants of this union the old plantation has remained to this day.

The first time that we went from our creek harbour up to Shirley was a strange time perhaps for people to be abroad in woods and field-roads. The day was one of struggle between fog and sun, neither being able to get his own way, but together making a wonderful world of it. We walked in a luminous mist; the road very plain beneath our feet, but leading always into nothingness, and reaching behind us such a little way as to barely include the tall, following, hazy figure that was Henry.

There was little for us to see, but that little was well worth seeing; only a tree or a clump of bushes or a hedge-row here and there, but all dimmed into new forms and graces for that day and for us.

As we neared a ridge of meadowland, a pastoral for a Schenck took shape in the fog cloud before us. Scattered groups of sheep appeared close at hand, and, faintly visible beyond them, a denser mass of moving white. No tree nor landmark was to be seen; just set into the soft whiteness, showing mistily, was the snowy flock itself. Sheep grazed in groups, the tan shaded slope in faint colouring beneath them. Here and there a mother turned her head to call back anxiously for the bleating lambkin lost behind the white curtain; and, dim and grotesque, the awkward strayling would come gamboling into sight. Near by on a little hillock, a single sheep stood with its head thrown up, a ghostly lookout. The hidden sun made the haze faintly luminous about this wandering flock of cloudland. We were not the first to move and to break the picture.

As we gained higher ground, a breeze was stirring and the fog was beginning to lift. When we reached the edge of the Shirley homestead and passed the turreted dove-cote, the near-by objects had grown quite distinct. But out on the river the fog yet lay dense; and two boats somewhere in the impenetrable whiteness were calling warningly to each other.

Now we went on toward the manor-house that loomed against a soft background of river fog.

The mansion is wholly unlike either Brandon or Westover, being a massive square building without wings. It is two and a half stories high, with a roof of modified mansard style pierced with many dormer windows. It has both a landward and a riverward front, and both alike. Each front has a large porch of two stories in Georgian design with Doric columns. The walls of the house are laid in Flemish bond, black glazed bricks alternating with the dull red ones. While both the roof and the porches are departures from the original lines of the house, yet they are departures that have themselves attained a dignified age of about a century and a quarter.

Always, in the consideration of colonial homes, Shirley is regarded as one of the finest examples. This means much more than at first appears. For the mansions with which Shirley is usually compared, were built from half a century to a century later.

Continuing along the road as we studied the home, we were led around to the landward front and into the midst of the ancient messuage.

We stood in a great open quadrangle, having the house at one end, the distant barns at the other; on one side the kitchen, a large two-story building, and on the other side a similar building used for storage and for indoor plantation work. A high box hedge ran across from one of these side buildings to the other, dividing the long quadrangle into halves, one part adjacent to the house and the other to the barns.

The village effect produced by the grouped buildings must have been even more striking in colonial times; for then the manor-house was flanked by two more large brick buildings, forming what might be called detached wings. One of these was still standing up to the time of the Civil War.

The visitor is conscious of two dominant impressions, as he stands thus in the midst of this seventeenth century homestead. The massive solidity of the place takes hold of one first; but, strangely enough, the strongest impression is that of an all-pervading air of youthfulness. Doubtless the oldest homestead on the river, and one of the oldest in the country, it utterly refuses to look its age. Perhaps the solid, square compactness of the buildings has much to do with this. They appear as though built to defy time. Even the shadow of the venerable trees and the ancient ivy's telltale embrace seem powerless to break the spell of perennial youth.

In the home, we met Mrs. Bransford, widow of Mr. H.W. Bransford, Commander and Mrs. James H. Oliver, U.S.N., and Miss Susy Carter. Mrs. Bransford and Mrs. Oliver are the daughters of the late Mr. and Mrs. Robert Randolph Carter, and are the present owners of the plantation, Mrs. Bransford making her home there. Commander Oliver represents the third consecutive generation of naval officers in the Shirley family.

Upon entering the house in the usual way, from the landward side, the visitor finds himself in a large square hall occupying one corner of the building. This room discloses at a glance the type and the genius of Shirley. It begins at once to tell you all about itself; and when you know this old hall, you have the key to the mansion and to its story. It is truly a colonial "great hall." It tells you that by its goodly old-time ampleness, its high panelled walls with their dimming portraits, its great chimneypiece flanked by tall cupboards, and its massive overshadowing stairway.

The chief architectural feature of the room is this stairway. Starting in one corner, it rises along the panelled wall until half way to the ceiling, then turns sharply out into the room for the remainder of its ascent to the second floor, thus exposing overhead a handsome soffit. The effect, in connection with the great panelled well of the staircase, is one of rich and goodly ancientness.

Indeed, though you may enter Shirley feeling that the house, like some long-lingering colonial belle, is perhaps not quite frank with you about its age, you will not find the hall taking part in any such misrepresentation. Despite some modern marks and even the fact that the fireplace has been closed, this room says in every line that it is very old.

It stands true to the memory of its seventeenth-century builder who had known and loved the "great halls" of "Merrie England." It tells of the time when the life of a household centred in the spacious hall; when there the great fire burned and the family gathered round--of the time when halls were the hearts, not the mere portals, of homes.

And so in this room, as in few others in our country, does the visitor find the setting and the atmosphere of manor-house life in early colonial days. He can well fancy this "great hall" of Shirley in the ruddy light of flaming logs that burned in the wide fireplace two centuries and a half ago. Dusky in far corners or sharply drawn near the firelight, stood, in those days, chests and tables and forms and doubtless a bed too with its valance and curtains. In a medley typical of the times in even the great homes, were saddles, bridles, and embroidery frames, swords, guns, flute, and hand-lyre.

Here, in a picturesque and almost mediaeval confusion, the family mostly gathered, while favourite hounds stretched and blinked in the chimney-place beside the black boy who drowsily tended the fire.

Here, the long, narrow "tabull-bord" was spread with its snowy cloth, taken from the heavy chest of linen in the corner, of which my lady of the manor was prodigiously proud. Upon the cloth were placed soft-lustred pewter and, probably almost from the first, some pieces of silver too. The salt was "sett in the myddys of the tabull," likely in a fine silver dish worthy its important function in determining the seating about the "bord." As family and guests gathered round, the host and hostess took places side by side at one end; near them the more important guests were given seats "above the salt," while lesser folk and children sat "below the salt."

Then, from the distant kitchen in the quadrangle, came slaves or indentured servant bearing the steaming food in great chargers and chafing-dishes. Doubtless, in those earliest days, the food was eaten from wooden trenchers, not plates; while from lip to lip the communal bowl went round. Knives and spoons were plentiful, but even in such a home as Shirley forks were still a rarity; and the profusion of napkins was well when helpful fingers gave service to healthy appetites.

But that was the hall life of very early days. Gradually, in the colonies as in England, the evolution of refinement specialized the home; developed drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, libraries; and so took away from the "great halls" almost all of this intimate life of the household.

There is something pathetic in this desertion of the ancient, central hearthstone. We thought of Shirley's old hall growing sadly quiet and chill as it lost the merry chatter about the "tabull-bord"; as saddles and bridles jingled there for the last time on their way to some far outbuilding; as the gentlewomen carried their needlework away, and the little maids followed with their samplers. At last, all the old life was gone. Even the master himself came no longer to mull his wine by the andirons; and the very dogs stretched themselves less often and with less content at the chimney-side.

All the rooms at Shirley are richly panelled to the ceiling, and have heavy, ornate cornices and fine, carved mantelpieces and doorways. The examples of interior woodwork especially regarded by connoisseurs are the panelling in the morning-room, the elaborately carved mantel in the drawing-room, and the handsome doorway between that room and the dining-room.

Upstairs, a central hallway runs through the house, double doors opening at both riverward and landward ends upon broad porticoes. The bedrooms on either hand are panelled to the ceiling. They have deep-set windows, open fireplaces, and quaint old-time furnishings.

And people slept here back in the seventeenth century; dreamed here in those faraway times when James Towne, now long buried and almost forgotten, was the capital of the little colony. Here, in succeeding generations, have slept many notable guests of Shirley. Tradition includes among these the Duke of Argyle, LaFayette, our own George Washington, and the Prince of Wales.

Here, too, are some of the oldest ghosts in America. Most of these are quiet, well-behaved members of the household; but one ancient shade, Aunt Pratt by name, seems to presume upon her age as old people sometimes will, and is really quite hard to get along with.

Listen to an instance of her downright unreasonableness. Her portrait used to hang in the drawing-room among those of the Hills (she is or was, or however you say it, a sister of the Colonel Hill who built the mansion); but having become injured it was taken down and put away face to the wall. Immediately, this ghostly Aunt Pratt showed deep resentment. Womanlike, she threw herself into a chair in one of these bedrooms and rocked and rocked violently. Of course she disturbed the whole household; but no matter how noiselessly people stole in to catch her at her tantrums, she was always too quick for them--the room was empty, the chairs all still. At last the picture was got out, repaired, and rehung. At once all was peace and quiet; Aunt Pratt had had her way.