Harrison, Mrs. Burton, 1843-1920. Recollections Grave and Gay

Recollections
Grave and Gay:
Electronic Edition

Harrison, Mrs. Burton, 1843-1920

Funding from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition
supported the electronic publication of this title.

Text scanned (OCR) by Jessica Mathewson
Title page scanned by Heather Bumbalough
Text encoded by Heather Bumbalough and Natalia Smith
First edition, 1998
ca. 1 MB
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1998.
© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Call number E487.H31 1911 (Davis Library, UNC-CH)

        The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-CH digitization project, Documenting the American South, or, The Southern Experience in 19th-century America.
        Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
        All quotation marks and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
        All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " and " respectively.
        All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ' and ' respectively.
        Indentation in lines has not been preserved.
        Running titles have not been preserved.
        Spell-check and verification made against printed text using Author/Editor (SoftQuad) and Microsoft Word spell check programs.

Library of Congress Subject Headings, 19th edition, 1996

LC Subject Headings:

Harrison, Burton, Mrs., -- 1843-1920.
Women authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography.
Women -- Virginia -- Biography.
Women -- Virginia -- Social life and customs.
Women -- Southern States -- Social life and customs.
Confederate States of America -- Social life and customs.
United States -- Social life and customs.
Virginia -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives, Confederate.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Women.
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs.
Theater -- New York (State) -- New York.

RECOLLECTIONS
GRAVE AND GAY

MRS. BURTON HARRISON

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1911

TO
THE BELOVED MEMORY OF
MY BROTHER
WHO AFTER LONG SUFFERING, GALLANTLY ENDURED,
PASSED INTO REST AS THESE PAGES WERE
GOING THROUGH THE PRESS

Sea Urchins, Bar Harbor
September, 1911

Page 1

RECOLLECTIONS, GRAVE AND GAY

Page 3

CHAPTER I

MY father was Archibald Cary, of Carysbrooke - all old-time Virginians loved to write themselves down as part of their parental estates - son of Wilson Jefferson Cary, a nephew of Thomas Jefferson, whose marriage with Miss Virginia Randolph had taken place at Monticello; upon which occasion the bride was given away by the master of the house, who hung around her neck a little pearl necklace sent for by him to Paris, and still treasured by her descendants. There remains also a copy of "Don Quixote" in French, lovingly inscribed by Mr. Jefferson to my grandmother.

Jefferson's mother, it will be recalled, was Jane, daughter of Isham Randolph; and when, in 1790, Martha Jefferson married Thomas Mann Randolph, she and her husband claimed a great-great-grandfather in common. Young Randolph having lived with the Jeffersons for two years in Paris, completing his education under Mr. Jefferson's direction at the University of Edinburgh, was entirely at home in the household of his future wife; so much so, that after their marriage he brought into it his little sister, Virginia, whose wit and charm, with her gift of making sweet music, appealed to Mr. Jefferson as strongly as did her motherless condition. Miss Randolph grew up under her sister-in-law's devoted care, and to Mr. Jefferson owed the

Page 4

intellectual impetus he so well knew how to give to a girl's education.

She was by him inspired with the love of letters and habit of authorship that marked her in later years, when Mrs. Cary's novels, essays, and poems enjoyed considerable vogue. My father always spoke to me admiringly of his good mother's literary achievements, when, as a very little girl perched upon his knee, I listened in charmed awe to the tales of a grandmamma who was a real live author, publishing every scrap of MS. as fast as she wrote it; and said by the critics to combine the style of Hannah More with a grace and humor all her own. When I tried to read her books it must be owned that I thought them rather too grave and sermon-like for human nature's daily food. Not until many years had gone over my head did I appreciate them at their rightful value.

My father, an old-line Whig of the enthusiastic type, yet had great personal admiration for and loved to talk about his "Uncle Jefferson," the "Father of American Democracy." Certainly, he induced all of us, and our children after us, to look with appreciation upon Jefferson's splendid originality of thought and fearless expression of opinion, still more upon the breadth of his interest in the whole human field of intellectual endeavor, which made him a pharos in his time. Mr. Henry Watterson has well expressed our united family opinion in saying that, after Washington and Franklin, the one clear figure in the early history of American politics is Jefferson - "a perfect Doric column."

My son, Congressman Francis Burton Harrison, is fortunate in possessing a fine Gilbert Stuart portrait of Jefferson. Strangely enough, there is a strong likeness

Page 5

in this, as in the St. Memin profiles of Jefferson, to various members of the family in the present generations.

A crackling (alas! time-dried) letter lying before me, addressed by my father to his sister, Mrs. Gouverneur Morris, of Morrisania, "Harlaem, New York," announces the arrival in this world of his daughter Constance, stating that "although she has red hair, he hopes if nothing happens she will not be a homely girl; of this, however, nothing can be said with certainty. The upper part of her head is very much like our mother's, so that "should she live, I anticipate for her some of her grandmother's talent for writing, particularly as I have great confidence in phrenology." This I insert more as a contribution to the annals of the science of bumps than with confidence in its interest to the public.

The Carys of my father's line had been scholars, leaders, and land-owners in the Virginia colony since 1640, and before that were well known in south-western Britain.

The head of the house is Byron Plantagenet, Viscount Falkland, a worthy inheritor of the family title of the great Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, who died on the field at Newberry for England's glory and his own. Of late years it has been a pleasure to me to meet in my recurrent visits to London the family of the present viscount, and to be welcomed into their hospitable home, filled with portraits and relics, some of which are duplicated in our transatlantic dwellings.

Lord Falkland, whose wife was Miss Mary Reade, of New York, has a household of handsome sons and daughters, his eldest son, possessing the picturesque title of the Master of Falkland.

Page 6

Of the Carys of Virginia, a noteworthy one was Colonel Archibald Cary, of Ampthill, near Richmond, on the James, known as "Old Iron" in the American Revolution. He married a Miss Randolph of the Curls branch of that numerous family. Through these Curls Randolphs we have received a dash of Pocahontas blood, and I have found no reason to decry this attenuated strain of descent from the long-gone little Indian princess whose high fidelity and noble unselfishness made its indelible mark upon colonial history.

It must be owned we were brought up to think of our Randolph blood as a slightly menacing inheritance. "They were clever, every man and woman of them," said a family oracle,"often brilliant, successful, fascinating - but, beware, my dear, of eccentricity! Look at your cousin, John of Roanoke! He began by being one of the most beautiful and innocent looking lads the world ever beheld, as anyone can see from that picture of him in boyhood, painted by Gilbert Stuart; and look what a miserable life he led," etc., etc.

We did not trouble our heads much about the transmission of physical tendencies by descent in those days, and found the strange stories of our morbid kinsman very much to our taste. As leader of the Jefferson party in Congress at twenty-eight, also chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, we felt very proud of him.

We were to hear of Randolph of Roanoke in more substantial fashion just before the war began. His estate, devolving upon his insane brother, St. George, who had lived in retirement all these years, was finally divided between Randolph heirs at large, among whom my brother

Page 7

and myself were numbered. We received, to my great satisfaction, several "plums" in the way of executor's checks, a condition pleasingly continuing until after I was married and living in New York, and then the fountain ceased to flow. Various members of the family put these odd fragments of Randolph inheritance into souvenir rings and silver tea-sets, to be handed down in memoriam of the unhappy genius, the shooting-star of the Randolph galaxy.

My father was at the time of his death just entering upon his fortieth year (a period traditionally dreaded by Cary men as likely to cut short their mortal span), living in the beautiful mountain town of Cumberland, in Maryland, where he was editor of its leading newspaper, The Cumberland Civilian. Bred in the practice of literary study, well equipped in history, a classic by descent from men educated at English universities, and owners of the best libraries in the State, he was also an ardent Whig politician, and has left printed pamphlets, speeches, and editorials breathing the fiery spirit of his creed. One of my earliest recollections was being taken as a very small child to a hotel in Cumberland to visit his idol, Henry Clay, then an aged man, who lifted me in his arms and kissed me, to my secret discomfiture, as I thought him dreadfully old and ugly. A gentleman present remarked: "Little girl, you must never forget that you started in life with a kiss and a blessing from the immortal Henry Clay."

Of that interview I ought to have retained a silver pencil-case, which I promptly lost.

My father, when a young lawyer of three-and-twenty, had married his cousin Monimia, youngest daughter of Thomas, ninth Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron in the Scottish peerage, who, residing quietly on his

Page 8

estates in Virginia, had never assumed his title except when going once to England to claim an inheritance.

My grandparents sometimes took a house in Washington for the season, and there my mother, making her début at seventeen, had been admired and belauded in the society of the capital. Chapman, the artist, engaged to paint "The Baptism of Pocahontas" for the rotunda of the Capitol, asked leave to introduce her into his picture as one of the two Englishwomen, their heads wrapped in scarfs, who stand directly behind the kneeling Pocahontas. My mother, at this time, made friends with Mr. and Mrs. N. P. Willis, he greatly extolling her beauty and inviting her to accompany them to various festivities. She remembered going to see them one day in their sitting-room at a hotel, and finding the lion still at his breakfast, in a gorgeous dressing-gown and smoking-cap, like Thackeray's "Clarence Bulbul," with a page-boy kneeling before the fire at his feet, toasting each mouthful of bread as demanded by his fastidious master, Willis declaring it was "the only way to make toast tolerable," to the amusement of the little Virginia girl bred in simplicity by her austere sire.

There is a story of the wedding-journey of this very young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Cary, when they travelled, as the custom was, to New York, stopping at some Broadway hotel, where, on the day of their arrival, the bridegroom went off alone to visit Trinity Church and church-yard. She was but eighteen, had never been so far from home before, and as lunch-time came and her husband did not, feared to go down to the big dining-room alone, because people "stared at her so." (The Rev. Dr. Philip Slaughter, a learned historian of

Page 9

Virginia, wrote to me once, "I have a vivid picture of your mother in my memory, when, as Burke said of the young Queen of France, 'She first arose above the horizon of womanhood, and shone like the morning star, full of life and splendor and beauty.' ") When the recreant returned, hours after, full of concern and loving apology, his excuse was that he had been copying inscriptions on the tombstones in Trinity church-yard, and had no idea how the time flew.

My antiquarian progenitor seems, indeed, to have resembled that learned lawyer of the fifteenth century, William Budaeus, who, upon his wedding-day, stole away from his bride for six hours to hold converse with the mighty dead through his books.

Of the marriage of Archibald Cary and Monimia Fairfax, the fifth between these two families, were born three children, two sons, Falkland and Clarence, and myself. My brother Falkland, who died at sixteen, was one of those rare beings sent into the world to adumbrate perfection, then cut short in the flower of youth, to the bewilderment of mortals who cannot grasp the meaning of the Creator's scheme. As he lay after death, face and form were like one of the recumbent statues of sleeping Greeks in the galleries at Rome. All intellectual exercise was facile to him, languages ancient and modern were acquired without effort, and his literary compositions won the astonished comment of his teachers. Join to this an incomparably sweet temper and a great love of physical exercise, and his loss to his family may be understood.

My brother Clarence and I have kept together through a long life of harmonious association, varied by much travel and experience of people and places; we look back pleasantly upon our life in Cumberland, in the

Page 10

brown modern Gothic house in Decatur Street, with its tower and balconies (which must have seemed rather spectacular in the quiet old town) bought by our father for his little family. In the tower I kept a small regiment of dolls with whom I used to enact plays from a tattered old copy of Dick's "Shakespeare," reading all the parts myself. I was once near hating my good parents and a friend of theirs, who, unknown to me, had crept up the tower stairs to listen laughingly to one of these performances. In our nursery my brother and I made tents out of bedclothes, and told each other, successively, stories of original travel and adventure, we who had never voyaged anywhere save from "the blue bed to the brown." The boys once had a mock trial, condemned and hung over the battlements a doll of mine, whose fate nearly broke my heart; but I enjoyed it, nevertheless. My father, very indulgent to his only girl, used to delight me with endless stories. Particularly did I relish those of the French-Indian campaign in that very neighborhood and of young Colonel Washington's return from the disastrous venture to Mount Vernon, where our mother's grandfather, Colonel William Fairfax of Belvoir, his son George the Tory (Washington's old comrade in surveying), and George's fascinating wife Sally, our father's great-aunt, had hastened to console the young Achilles sulking in his tent by kind notes and visits.

I loved all the gossip about the Mount Vernon and Belvoir families, and felt as if they still lived in my day. Then there were Indian massacres of the most exciting sort, the scenes of occurrence in the mountain fastnesses around us; and often was I bid to travel over-sea, and hear about the mother-land and the people we sprang from there. But, affectionate to England, my father

Page 11

believed with all his heart in the ideal of our own republic and its institutions. He used to describe how its borders would go on broadening till it compassed the whole mighty continent; and once pointed out to me suddenly, in the red glow of sunset, the splendid cleft in the Alleghanies through which a river and a railway ran, westward of the town. "That, my daughter, is the gateway for the future greatness of our land," he said, so impressively that I looked to see some actual titanic form with trailing garments sweep outward through the gorge.

My education was carried on at day-school, in the polite establishment for young ladies of a Miss Jane Kenah, where I must have done something, however inadequate, to win from her the copy of "The Lady of the Lake," in faded red and gold, which still haunts my book-shelves, "Presented to Constance Cary, as a reward for scholarship, by her loving teacher." I honestly do not now believe I deserved it in the least, for I did not enjoy that school, nor yet the lessons in Latin imposed upon me by my father, at the hands of the amiable and learned Rev. Hillhouse Buel, in his study at the rectory. I must have made them a misery to my instructor! And as to mathematics in general, I have always considered them an invention of the evil one!

The Rev. Mr. Buel, a distinguished father in the church, was in my eyes chiefly an incarnation of the Spirit of Ritualism in which my darling mother took strange satisfaction. His beautiful church stood on a bold bluff over the river dividing the town; our house was at a good distance on the other side; and many a time, during Lent especially, I was haled from my warm bed in the gray dawn of a winter's morning,

Page 12

dressed hastily without breakfast (my mother fasted on Fridays in Lent till after sunset), and made to accompany her on a brisk, chill walk to matins, celebrated by the rector, in the almost empty church, for the benefit of a literal "two or three." Once, she, I, and the celebrant were the only persons present on a stormy morning. On Sundays our family filled the first pew in the left transept, after a preceding hour of Sunday-school for the juveniles. When doctrine became too heavy for me I plaited the fringe of my mother's embroidered shawl of China crepe, to me the most sumptuous of garments, which she would afterward find woven into as many little kinks as a darky's wool.

The rule of our house was firm if loving. There was no weak yielding by either parent to our whims. Our pleasures were of a simple sort: long walks on the hills, flower-picking, skating in winter, and sledding over "jumps" on the snow-clad heights above our home; excursions to Flintstone, Frostburg, and the Mines; tea-parties with our little friends and, at rare intervals, a show at some town-hall, into which we walked proudly with free tickets as children of the editor. I think we heard Mme. Anna Bishop sing. My brother's sled bore her name in crimson letters.

There was a grand triple entertainment for grown people, given by my mother and her neighbors, Mrs. Thruston and Mrs. Davidson, living diagonally opposite us on Decatur Street. The invitations, printed in silver at the office of The Civilian, bid their friends repair to Mrs. Thruston, who lived in a wide, handsome old house in a terraced garden, at eight o'clock, for the reception; to Mrs. Cary, who possessed a large drawing-room and veranda, at nine, for dancing: and to

Page 13

Mrs. Davidson (whose husband was a brother of the poetesses Lucretia and Margaret Davidson), for supper, at eleven. Allowed to sit up for this unprecedented festivity, I recall the guests assembling duly in Mrs. Thruston's stately rooms, to sip Madeira and lemonade and taste her excellent plum-cake; then coming in a variegated string across the street to our big dancing-room, decorated with evergreen and flowers, with a band in my father's study. Proud as I was of our place in the programme, prouder still I felt at the spectacle of my lovely young mother in "white swiss," with bunches of scarlet geraniums in her curls and at her breast; wearing her pearls, my father's wedding-gift; with flushed cheeks and laughing eyes and lips, leading "down the middle," with Mr. Philip Roman, in a Virginia reel! The supper at Mrs. Davidson's was, to my eyes, something too great and wonderful to be believed in. We and the Davidson children disgraced ourselves surreptitiously by eating impossible things, and when caught we were sent home with a swift rush and told to go straight to bed, arising next day none the worse for our indulgence. Since then, banquets in many lands have been set before us, but none could equal this! Lord Lytton, in his later days, said: "It's a long time since I've been hungry, but, thank God, I am still greedy" - a consolation in a very modest way.

One of the practices of Cumberland was for the male head of the house to go to market betimes in the morning, accompanied by a servant carrying a basket into which purchases were put. One of my keenest pleasures was when, at intervals, I was allowed to go there with my father. The dim spaces in the long building lit by swinging oil lanterns; the smiling, wheedling black faces behind piles of vegetables, meats, fowls,

Page 14

fruit, and eggs; the joy of nibbling radishes, of licking honey that oozed out of its receptacle, of receiving gifts of horse-cakes from friendly merchants, of struggling through the busy crowd at my father's coat-tails; I tried religiously not to prefer it to matins, but failed.

A vivid memory of my father is of an occasion when my busy mother, going off for one of her rare holiday jaunts to Berkeley Springs, and leaving her children and their nurse in his care, I awoke in the night crying for her and would not be consoled. No one heard me, no one answered, and I sprang out of bed and ran barefooted down the stairs. There, in the little study where he was accustomed to sit half the night (in an armchair I still possess), and make clippings from exchange journals for The Civilian, I beheld the editor buried in reading, snowed in with newspapers! At my timid note of alarm he looked up, frowned a little, then smiled tenderly, and, bounding up the steps, caught me in his arms, pressed me to his breast, carried me down to his den, and after a brief, delicious time of cosseting and soothing, carried me back to bed, and stayed by me, tender as any mother, till I slept!

With his death, our Cumberland home was broken up forever. My mother, with her three young children, was reclaimed by her own mother, who took the long journey from Alexandria to Cumberland to fetch us. It did not seem a hardship to go to live with dear Grandmamma Fairfax - sweetest and gentlest of mortals!

Once, in an outburst of infant rebellion against powers that were, I had conceived the idea of running away from Cumberland to take refuge with her. I had been told the canal passing through our town

Page 15

ran straight to her neighborhood, so I packed a preposterous little bundle, containing, among other necessaries, a tooth-brush, a prayer-book, and some lumps of sugar, and set out to walk down to the towing- path. A servant of ours, whom I always resented for the interruption to my very first adventure, espied, pursued, and captured me long before I reached the initial stage of my journey - the first lock of the canal.

Grandmamma was now a widow - the cold, stately old patriarch with silver locks and eyes of steely blue, whom I dimly recalled in earliest infancy, having gone to sleep with his grandfathers on the slope of a Virginian hill-side. He had been a wealthy man, as Virginian fortunes went, and to each of his sons - Albert, the eldest, grandfather of the present twelfth lord; Henry, of Ashgrove, a captain in the United States Volunteers, who died of exhaustion in marching through burning sun beside his soldiers in the war in Mexico, to encourage them; Orlando, the "beloved physician" of Alexandria and Richmond; and Reginald, then a lieutenant in the United States navy - he had given an estate, or its equivalent in money.

Vaucluse, the place in Fairfax County near the Theological Seminary of Virginia, had been left to the widow during her lifetime, to her son Reginald after her. And at Vaucluse our composite family lived until it was destroyed by the war between the States. When the dear châtelaine breathed her last there, our sailor uncle declared that everything must be kept as it was, to be a happy port for him at the end of his voyages. I was very much overawed by the continual remembrance of my dead grandpapa when first we reached Vaucluse. I did not dare tell any one how I was possessed by

Page 16

an image of him when I was three years old (seen through an accidentally opened door, lying in bed in the Long Room in the wing, whether ill or merely asleep I have no idea), but the picture of that stern ivory profile against the pillow, and the long locks like spun glass beside it, haunted me for years with shuddering. There was a flight of stairs leading past his door to my mother's room, up which I used to fly with fast-beating heart after nightfall. Also, I dreaded a long clock-case standing at the foot, which I associated with a story in a chapbook, told me by my nurse, about a corpse set on end in one of them.

My brother tells me there was a tale among the servants at Vaucluse, that my grandfather, once looking in his mirror in the Long Room, saw over his shoulder a negro woman standing, who gazed into his face appealingly. Recognizing her as a servant who had been sent away to Ashgrove, he turned to ask when she had come back and what she was doing there, and found - nobody! Two days later they heard that she had died at Ashgrove at that same hour.

Grandpapa Fairfax was a devout Swedenborgian and had his children baptized in that faith, some of them subsequently being rechristened in the Episcopal Church, by their own desire. It was said in Virginia that in early days he had covers laid at table for the departed members of his family, but for this I cannot vouch. In my time, every place at meals was filled by a very hungry set of material beings. In actual fact, the old gentleman was not so alarming as reputed.

Thomas, ninth Lord Fairfax, although singularly reserved in habit, was a vigorous personality. Son of the Hon. and Rev. Brian Fairfax (eighth lord and rector

Page 17

of old Christ Church in Alexandria, and life-long friend of Washington) and of Elizabeth Cary, of Ceelys, on the James, he had in boyhood made a journey to England with his Tory father in 1777, in order to make good before the House of Lords the claim of the latter to his title. In this then arduous expedition, made in raw winter weather, the father and son were assisted to pass through the lines of the American army by personal order of General Washington, who also assumed care of the wife and children left behind on the Virginian plantation. A tattered diary and letter written by little Sally Fairfax, during this time, were published by me in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1876, under the title of "A Little Centennial Lady." All that I could hear or glean about this quaint and charming little great-aunt was delightful to me, and a certain phrase in the letter to her sire in London, which he was to "receive owing to the Generall's interposition" has passed into family quotation. "My love to my brother Tommy, with the hope that he will preserve the polite assurance and affable cheerfulness of a gentleman, yet not forgetting the incidents of Fairfax County."

Of the diary I copy a few entries. Amid preparations for a Christmas dance at her father's house, Towlston, little housewife Sally writes: "On Thursday, mama made 6 mince pies and 7 custards, 12 tarts, 1 chicking pye and 4 pudings for the ball."

"Miss Molly Page and Mr. Perce Baillie and Mr. William Page and Mr. William Sandford, Mr. Mody and Miss Jenny, a man who lives at Colchester, Mr. Hurst, Mrs. Hurst's husband, young Harry Gunnell, son of old William Gunnell, John Seal from the little falls, Mr. Watts and Mr. Hunter, (etc, etc, etc) these are all the gentlemen and ladies that were at the

Page 18

ball. Mrs. Gunnell brought her sucking child with her."

"On Monday night, when papa was at Mount Vernon my aunt Fairfax" [Mrs. George William Fairfax, born Cary] "sent my muslin apron to him which she gave me when I was at Belvoir, but I did not bring it home with me, so she made Miss Polly work it for me, and in it she sent me a note, the apron is mighty pritty."

"On Friday the 3rd, of Janna, came jon vane to undertake the building of the henhouse he got no incouragement so he went away the same way he came."

"On Friday the 3 of Jan came here granny Carty, she cut me out a short gown, and stayed all night."

"On Friday the 3 of Jan, papa went to Collo Washington's and came home again the next Wednesday which was the 8."

"On Friday the 3 of Jan that vile man Adam at night kild a poor cat of rage because she eat a bit of meat out of his hand and scratched it. O vile reach of new negrows if he was mine I would cut him to pieces a son of a gun a vile negrow he should be kild himself by rites."

"On Thursday the 2 of Jan Marjerry went to washing and brought all the things in ready done on the 9 of the same month I think she was a great wile about them a whole week if you will believe me reader."

"On Friday the 10 of Jannuary in the morning came here Danny Govens overseer for Taff, and Taff went away accordingly poor Taff I pitty him indeed, reader."

Page 19

"On Friday the 17 of Jan I mended Tommy's shirt from head to foot. S. F."

"On Monday the 27 of Jan there fell an amazing snow two foot and a half deep, on Tuesday the 28 of Jan I craked a loaf of sugar, on Tuesday the 28, Adam cut down a cherry tree on Friday the 14 of Febberary, the red and white cow calved and had a red and white calf, 1772. S. FAIRFAX."

We have, alas! no portrait of S. F. in the family gallery. My grandmother, Margaret Herbert, who afterward became brother Tommy's wife, remembered pretty Sally, at seventeen, at the Carlyle house in Alexandria, dressed for a birthright ball, to which General and Mrs. Washington were to take her. She was now engaged to "a young Mr. Washington," cousin or nephew of the general's, and on this occasion the great Washington "devoted himself to her especially, leading off in a minuet with her, when they were the observed of all observers. Sally wore a dress of white net over white satin, the net trimmed with rose-colored satin leaves, a pink rose in her hair, with one white ostrich plume. It was the last ball she ever attended." So poor, bright, quaint little Sally, "the general's" pet of all her family, was cut off on her virgin stalk, dying before her wedding-day.

We always heard that our grandpapa mourned for her to his long life's end.

Later in life, Thomas, Lord Fairfax, again went abroad to take possession of an inheritance coming to him from his aunt, Mrs. George William Fairfax, of Bath, England, born Sally Cary, the famous belle of

Page 20

Revolutionary times, around whom, with her two sisters, Mary, afterward Mrs. Ambler, and Elizabeth, wife of Brian Fairfax, cluster many a story, with variants, in the histories of the youthful Washington. She, with her Tory husband, finding life in the colony unendurable, had gone to live in England, passing on their voyage out the tea-laden ship that was to work havoc with king-craft in Boston harbor. Some of the silver now in daily use in my home, notably a pair of Corinthian column candlesticks with repoussé bases, was part of their table furniture. A full service of it had originally been brought to the colony by Colonel William Fairfax, of Belvoir, had voyaged back with Mr. and Mrs. George William Fairfax, was again transported to Virginia by my grandfather, used for years at Vaucluse, lay buried under the ruins of Vaucluse during the four years of war, and finally, exhumed intact, was distributed among the Fairfax heirs.

My grandmother, after the Southern custom, perhaps too often followed, was a cousin of her husband. As Margaret Herbert, of Alexandria, she had grown up in the old Carlyle house, with its heavy chimneys, dormer-windows, double balconies, and small-paned windows, now shown to tourists as the scene of Braddock's conference, in 1755, with the five governors of the colonies about the march to Fort Duquesne. The dwelling, in the temporary absence of the family, had been lent for the purpose by her grandfather, Major Carlyle, afterward quartermaster of the expedition, and his wife, Sarah Fairfax, of Belvoir. Traditions of this dwelling, coming to me from her, embody certain visits there "to dine and lie," of General and Mrs. Washington on the occasion of birthright balls at the City Hotel, describe the toilets and trains worn by the ladies,

Page 21

Sister Nancy's collision with Aaron Burr on the stairway, when he put his hand on his heart with a bow and smile that (we youngsters thought) kept the lady forever unwed, and much of the same kind. The circumstance that I perhaps approved of most was that grandmamma was allowed to "come out" at fourteen!

Page 22

CHAPTER II

OUR establishment at Vaucluse now consisted of the dear and beneficent lady, its head, and her two widowed daughters with their children (six of the latter, off and on), together with an endless procession, coming and going, of aunts and cousins, who stayed as long as they found it convenient and agreeable. Now, the "connection," as it was called, embraced a surprising number of people with the same blood in their veins, and habit had made it law that any one included in this brotherhood should be sacrosanct and free of all the house could offer as entailed upon hospitality. So the old white stucco dwelling, with its wings to right and left under the great oak trees of its lawns, went on stretching to receive guests, the stable took in their horses, the servants' building, a little way from the pantry wing, received their attendants, and nobody ventured to think anybody was ever inconvenienced!

The two daughters of the house, my mother, and my aunt, Mrs. Hyde, took care between them of the housekeeping. Our servants were hired black people, good and faithful souls, but, thank Heaven! not slaves of ours. My grandfather Fairfax had been the first gentleman in Virginia to manumit his slaves, had each of them taught a trade, and the efficient ones sent to Liberia at his expense. The latter part of his humanitarian scheme was, needless to say, not a success, most of them writing imploring letters to "old marse" to take them back again.

Page 23

There was no farm attached to the place, only gardens, a chicken-yard, orchard, and dairy, from which the table was supplied with country dainties. In the rooms were assembled the flotsam of family furnishings accumulated from other homes in England and Virginia, Towlston, Belvoir, and Ashgrove. We had on the walls a few interesting old Fairfax portraits: a "Percy, Earl of Northumberland," a "Parliamentary General," a Lady Fairfax with a busk, carrying a long feather in her hand, Roundheads and Cavaliers; and in the secretary many old parchments and a pedigree illuminated in Elizabethan days, with a land transfer of the date of Richard Coeur de Lion. The drawing-room was large and bright, with many windows, all furnished and curtained in crimson damask. A large open grate held in winter a fire of logs and lumps of coal making a royal blaze; upon the mantle were girandoles and ostrich eggs, with some Dresden cups and saucers beautifully painted with wreaths of blossoms. In an alcove to one side were shelves of books, mostly old English volumes, saffron-hued and musty, that when opened were apt to send little queer bloodless insects scuttling out of them. There I sat (oftenest upon my foot) poring over the world of joy I got from this fragment of a library. When not thus employed, I was out-of-doors, scouring the woods, climbing trees, riding horses to water, wading streams, and picking wild flowers. Except for my cousin, Meta Hyde, younger than I, a big-eyed quaint creature whom her brothers teased and petted alternately, I was the only girl child at Vaucluse. Of the young men and boy cousins, passing in and out of the house, Vaucluse sent fourteen or fifteen to the war. They always seemed to me to illustrate what Colonel Lambert told Harry Warrington about the Persians. "They can ride and speak the

Page 24

truth." The wonder is I was not spoiled utterly by their setting me on a pinnacle and doing all I asked, big or little, in or out of season.

It was then decided by my mother that I could no longer roam and ride, or go shooting with the boys; so, after a long foreign correspondence, a French governess, Mademoiselle Adami, appeared upon the scene and was instructed to keep with me always in my walks abroad. Poor lady! It must be owned that she had her hands full, that I writhed under her mincing conventionalities of social doctrine, and that the boys played many a welcome trick on her, including the offering of persimmons from a tree in the pasture upon which frost had not yet laid its redeeming spell. But she knew how to teach, and in school-hours I was interested, and learned to like reading in French, which I have kept up unremittingly all my life since.

Washington, our chief shopping-place, eight miles distant, was usually attained from Vaucluse in the family coach drawn by two highly groomed chestnuts with long frizzled tails, in which we jogged over the Long Bridge to have our daguerreotypes taken at Whitehurst's, to order bonnets of Miss Wilson, and to eat ices at Gautier's. To keep us children quiet on the drive, so that the elders could talk coherently, it was grandmamma's practice to smuggle into the carriage Scotch cakes, Everton toffee, and rosy apples. While we nibbled and munched (especially if the draw on the bridge were off and some slow-sailing Potomac craft were pursuing its dignified course down the tawny stream) they chatted, and oh! of what interesting things! Of the doings at Queen Victoria's court, which these British lined ladies dearly loved to discuss, of Washington social affairs and notabilities, of the dear bishop our neighbor and matters

Page 25

of the church in Virginia, of books read, and of events, ancient and modern, in families who somehow or other seemed always to be of kin to ours! As the war came on the talk grew more solemn. They none of them wanted secession, and were waiting to see what Colonel Robert Lee would do. Sometimes mademoiselle was told off to conduct us upon improving visits to the dentist and various government buildings, especially the Patent Office, while my mother and aunt made calls upon old friends. Sometimes we children, too, were taken to call upon long- suffering acquaintances. At the corner of I Street and Sixteenth stood a brick house, overgrown with ivy, around which was a pleasant old garden. Here lived a kinswoman, Mrs. Richard Cutts, and in residence with her was her mother, Mrs. Hackley, sister of my grandmother Cary. My obeisance accomplished to Aunt Hackley, I generally made all speed to the garden in company with our little Cutts cousins, Gertrude (now Mrs. Moorfield Storey, of Boston) and her sister Lucia. My first glimpse of the radiant Adelaide Cutts, afterward Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, was in this garden, and the vision smote my heart-strings with delight. And, strange to say, in part of the same garden was afterward built the house where I have now pitched my tent, "a day's march nearer home."

My grandmother Fairfax had a daughter, Mrs. Irwin, living in Washington with her husband and two children; so that we had always a pied à terre for visits and stops-over to see special sights. To this kind aunt I owed many happinesses as I grew older, and from her house, years after, I went to my first ball in Washington at the house of my present next-door neighbor - still living in the same spacious mansion, with its wide garden

Page 26

shadowed on my side by a noble maple, in which, in early spring, to perch numberless migrating birds, including the cardinal grosbeak, who taps at my windowpane and flits through the branches, revealing his scarlet majesty before the leaves are out.

Better even than our visits to the seat of government, I loved those to quiet, dreamy old Alexandria, where every one of the historic cobblestones of King Street (now mercifully broken up, and relaid under a couch of asphalt) had some family chronicle to tell me. Because I may not be able so well to express the spirit of the place as it then appealed to me, I venture to quote here the opening pages of a book of my short stories, called "Belhaven Tales," chiefly published in the Century Magazine. Into that collection crept, without my knowing it, so much of autobiography that I have a kindly feeling even for its faults.

"In the quiet, grass-grown town of Alexandria, first named Belhaven, situated upon the lower bank of the Potomac, in Virginia, might have been perceived, just before the outbreak of the war between the States, a faint flavor of early colonial days lingering like the scent of rose-leaves in an old-time China jar.

"To begin with the streets - what a Tory smack in their names! - King, Prince, Duke, Royal, Queen, Princess, Duchess. Odd enough in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon - nay, under the very shadows, as it were, of the great dome of the National Capitol! At the time referred to, enjoyment for the greater part of a century of the blessings of political enfranchisement had not deprived some Alexandrians of a certain relish for the affairs of the English court. They liked to read the Illustrated London News, and to obtain correct information about the queen's walks with the youthful

Page 27

royalties and the queen's drives, attended by Ladies X, Y, and Z. Had they not been fed upon the traditions of an English ancestry, as upon the toothsome hams, the appetizing roe-herrings, of their famous market-place? The Georgian era of tea-drinking and tambour, of spangles and snuffboxes, of high play and hair-powder, represented to them the Golden Age in the fortunes of their families of which every vestige must be guarded jealously. As children they had stood on tiptoe to study the lineaments of Great-grandaunt Betty, hanging in the fly-specked frame somewhere near the ceiling, and had been eager to hear how she had been toasted at Mayfair supper-tables or had danced the gavotte at a Ranelagh ball. Yonder beetle-browed warrior in a voluminous wig was a general in Queen Anne's time, before he condescended to his present station above the sideboard. The beautiful youth in armor, slender and graceful, with the fiery eyes, fought for King Charles against the Roundheads, never dreaming that he would come across the seas to find his niche in a staid Virginian sitting-room! In this wainscoted parlor, where the light comes through small, greenish panes of glass veiled with ivy branching from stems knit in a fibrous mass upon the outer wall, had great-grandmamma, dressed in her satin-paduasoy ('You may see a piece of it upon your aunt Prunella's pin-cushion, my dear!'), her hose with silver clocks, stood to receive General Braddock, on occasion of his first visit to the town."

In walking through the streets of Alexandria to-day, one sees residences keeping up the traditions of prosperous hospitality. Enclosed within high-walled gardens, where the Southern sun coaxes from mellow soil jasmines yellow and white, roses in prodigal variety, honeysuckle and other sweet-smelling things, the owners

Page 28

of these homes dwell year after year, unambitious of change, gazing contentedly from afar upon that "microcosm on stilts, yclept the great world." It is the business quarter of the town that strikes most forcibly the visitor from one of the present centres of American commerce. From this old-time seat of Virginian custom, the "fret and fever of speculation" have forever fled. In the line of warehouses along the wharves the quick "pulse of gain" has ceased to beat. The vessels lying at anchor must be haunted by ghostly crews; they give no sign of life. The steamboat that plies her way between Washington and Alexandria seems to approach the wharf cautiously, as if fearing to awake a slumberer. Even the fishing industry - for the beautiful river has not ceased to yield her tribute - appears to move but languidly. All this has its delightful aspect; and he who would view a lotus-eater in his paradise should watch an Alexandrian darky dangling his legs over the worn beams of the dock under pretence of fishing - listening to the lap of water against the green and shiny piles, and droning away the livelong afternoon until the level sun, which gleams fiery red upon the broken windows of the warehouse at his back, begins to stir in him vague thoughts of corn-pone browning on the cabin hearth at home.

One winter of my early youth spent by us at the Mansion House in King Street, Alexandria, I used to look out, across the way, at a large old brick mansion with closed window shutters wearing a melancholy air of decay. When I asked who lived there, I was told that little girls should not ask questions and I had better run away and play. One day I espied, descending the high steps, the oddest little figure carrying a pitcher in her hand. She was a tiny old lady dressed in an "umbrella"

Page 29

skirt, with white stockings and black kid slippers, a fantastic scarf around her shoulders, and, to crown all, a poke-bonnet covered with a sprigged black lace veil. Very quietly, with perfect dignity of demeanor, she tripped over to a pump in the neighborhood, filled her pitcher, and returned inside the dismal doorway. Even the street boys failed to jeer at her, and passers-by looked on respectfully. Then, to stay my eager curiosity, her story was told to me. She was a harmlessly mad kinswoman, who lived alone with her equally stricken sister in their old family home, the only survivors of a large household. For some time my grandmother had taken care of their needs, allowing them to remain in the home which they pitifully prayed to keep. Their handsome father, son of an Irish family of ancient lineage who had come to Virginia, it was said, to make good his losses on the Curragh race-track at Kildare, was reputed to be under ban by the priests in his native land because of his offence against the church of pulling down a chapel on the estate and using the stones to build a banquet-hall! Arrived in the New World, he had at first prospered, married an heiress, and had many children. But in the course of years everything went wrong with him; debts and his dissipation wrecked his wife's fortune, every son born to them died by violence or accident; finally, they two passed out of life, leaving these hapless daughters overpowered by their sorrows. One of the sons, with his little boy, died by accidental poisoning at the hands of the family doctor while on a visit to Mount Vernon, and they are both buried there; another, styled "Singing Billy" by the townspeople, having "a voice like an angel heard above all others in Christ Church choir," was, with his brother, swept off by a sudden pestilence of cholera in the

Page 30

town. Still another was killed by lightning; and one, his exact fate foretold by his negro "mammy" in Alexandria, perished at the hands of Indians on the Western plains.

While I was away at boarding-school in Richmond came tidings that the two afflicted sisters had been finally removed to a sanitarium. The younger, to her life's end, wore around her neck a locket she would allow nobody to open, and it was buried with her. Those of her kindred who went through the forsaken house collecting their scattered belongings described a scene like a page from Dickens's "Great Expectations" - laces, cashmeres, slippers, gowns, heaped in dusty corners, cobwebs everywhere. Thus was wrought out the priest's ban in Ireland, and so ended a hapless family.

Our first place of rest in going to Alexandria was always my uncle's old home in Cameron Street, called "the Fairfax House" on modern post-cards. A hundred associations cluster around that house, with its brick-walled garden and semicircular front steps. There my uncle and his wife exhaled the kindness and fragrance of their truly Christian lives; there their son, the heroic young Randolph Fairfax, was born; there my brother Falkland died, a tragedy in my young life; and there I was one day to be, for the space of twenty-four hours, a prisoner of war.

The house of the two old maiden ladies everybody in our connection called "my aunts" was another, but less popular, resort of our early youth. It had rather a grim exterior, we thought, an impression intensified by our being bidden, before entering, to lay aside any flowers or sweet calycanthus shrubs we might happen to be carrying. It was in King Street, not far

Page 31

from the river, where, in old times, the lawns in that part of town went down to the water's edge, and the owners of ships could see their cargoes coming safe to port, with everything ordered in England, from silken paduasoys to a coach for driving "four."

It used to be hard for me to picture my elder great-aunt as a "little pet" of family letters, on a visit to Madam Washington at Mount Vernon, learning from her to make a quilt, or perched on a taboret to sing "Ye Dahlian God" at General Washington's request.

But she left that quilt to me, so I know the tale was true. She was rather an alarming old lady, we all thought. Her stern Roman profile resembled that of a warrior on a bas-relief, her hawk's eye seemed to be searching for juvenile depravity. At Vaucluse she would sometimes so alarm shy theological students who came to call that they hardly spoke at all during the visit.

The other aunt was warm, generous, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, a walking encyclopedia of Virginian genealogy. She would "comfort us with apples," also gingercakes, and send us out into the backyard to pick up the little pipes that fell from a great sycamore tree shading it. Sometimes she let us go upstairs to visit a cousin who lived with them, who rarely went abroad on account of her unusual size. This was a very clever, pungent lady, whom we credited with having read all the books in the world, and who bred canary birds.

After "my aunts" came to reside at Vaucluse with "Sister Peggy," I cannot think of its long, cheerful living-room without seeing on either side of the fireplace a large beaded mahogany arm-chair containing an ancient dame poring over books and newspapers, which they kept stuffed around their persons as they sat. They

Page 32

read, from morning until night, grave books, and all sorts and conditions of fiction, from Madame d'Arblay to George Eliot, when not talking about people who seemed to me coeval with the flood.

At the outbreak of the war, when my mother and Mrs. Hyde elected to leave Vaucluse and go to the scene of fighting in order to be near their volunteer soldiers and serve as nurses if desired, "my aunts" declined to move elsewhere. They were not afraid of armies, nor indeed of anything but mice. They stayed till the place was taken as a United States camp, and when courteously informed by the officer in command that they must go into Alexandria, for which purpose the war-carriage, an ambulance, stood in waiting at the door, the older sister positively refused to move of her own accord; and there she sat defying them, fire in her glance, iron in her veins, till two soldiers between them lifted her, chair and all, and bore her forever from the chimney-corner of Vaucluse.

The aged gentlewomen, finding refuge in the Cameron Street house, lived there during the remainder of the war. They will be kindly remembered by many Alexandrians of the old régime, as by their numerous kin. The older lady, unconscious of her surroundings for some time before the end, would not rest without books and newspapers literally covering her in bed. She bequeathed to me an interesting mezzotint, now hanging in my library, of General Nathanael Greene, presented by Washington to her father, and the counterpane of transfer work made by her at Mount Vernon; one of the Italian cotton toiles de Gênes, so familiar to tourists on the Riviera, cut out and "buttonholed" upon a heavier background, presenting to view a large tree with flowers fruit and birds, all at once upon its branches.

Page 33

Our neighborhood was always deeply interested in what concerned the Lees, of Arlington, who lived in elegance and comfort not far away. Colonel Lee's splendid, soldierly figure was a mark for general approval when, on his visits home, he rode into Alexandria to visit his old friends. What he said upon subjects of national and civic interest was apt to lead other opinions always. His wife, a daughter of Mr. George Washington Parke Custis, "the old man eloquent," was of kin to us through her mother, a Randolph, and we knew all their boys and girls. I remember Mary Custis Lee, on horseback, accompanied by her little brother "Robbie," on his white pony Santa Anna, riding up on Sunday to service at the chapel of the Theological Seminary; two handsome and gallant figures they seemed to lookers-on. Mildred Lee was my dear friend, and during a tour we made together in the Dolomites, a few years before her death, we loved to conjure up old Arlington and Vaucluse reminiscences. In one of our walks near Cortina, she ventured into an enclosure where a couple of fierce dogs bounded out, barking, upon her; and I, from the road, beheld Mildred go forward to meet them without flinching, reducing both assailants to the condition of fawning upon her knees, she, absolutely calm, with no sign of the quickening of a pulse. The peasant who ran to her aid was astonished out of his wits; but he probably had never heard of General Lee, and was unaware of the transmission of hereditary traits.

The Augustin Washingtons, of Mount Vernon, were rather too far away from Vaucluse for us to see much of them, for our Fairfax County roads were then, as now, not inviting to sociability except on horseback. I had a delightful visit at Mount Vernon in childhood, and after the place became the property of the Women

Page 34

of America, our cousin, Mr. Upton Herbert, an intimate friend of the late owner, was appointed to be resident superintendent. The most distinguished occasion I can remember at Mount Vernon was that of the visit of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Henry Holland, Lord Lyons, and others, with President Buchanan and his beautiful niece, Miss Harriet Lane, who came down by water and roamed freely about the old house and grounds. I had the glory of standing by a box hedge in the garden and presenting to his royal highness a basket of flowers picked from bushes traditionally said to have been planted by Mrs. Washington. Of this event I chiefly remember the young prince's charming manner in receiving the token, at once consigned to one of his followers to carry, and my own desperate anxiety lest my leghorn "flat," crowned with a wreath of feather flowers brought by my sailor uncle from Madeira, should have gone askew during my previous wild races through the garden.

On a high bluff commanding beautiful reaches of the Potomac, just below Mount Vernon, from which estate it was divided by a creek called Dogue Run, stand in a tangled wilderness of trees and shrubs, relics of the foundation walls of old Belvoir House, burnt down during the Revolution. This dwelling, familiar in Virginia annals as the home of Colonel William Fairfax, of Yorkshire, collector of the king's customs on the Potomac, and the frequent stopping-place of the bachelor Lord Fairfax of Greenway Court, has an especial interest to patriotic Americans in that it was the second home and beloved resort of Washington in youth. Of Belvoir, he himself writes that the happiest hours of his life were spent there.

Page 35

My childhood was fed upon stories of old Belvoir and its inmates - the master, Washington's mentor in the art of war - his son, the young soldier who went away from there to find his death with Montcalm before Quebec - he to whom Wolfe said, "Young man, when we come into action, remember the name you bear" - and the sailor boy Thomas who went down in his majesty's ship Harwich fighting the French off Bourdaloue in the East Indies. Anne, the oldest daughter, married Lawrence Washington, and became the first mistress of Mount Vernon. George was Washington's comrade in the surveying tour in the Western wilderness. Hannah became Mrs. Warner Washington, and last, not least, was Brian, my great-grandsire, subsequently eighth lord. I cannot remember when I did not wish that the family would recreate the traditions of this old home. But Hygeia has been against it, for the old bogie of chills and fever to which our Virginian forebears bowed down so meekly - simply recording its annual return in their diaries, taking quinine or its equivalent and quaking without remonstrance - has never been banished from the spot.

My son, Fairfax Harrison, has come nearer than any other to realizing my dreams, for he has established a new Belvoir in Fauquier County, Virginia, upon land formerly belonging to the Greenway Court properties; and upon his library table lies the original "visitors' book" of the Revolutionary home, a copy of Thoresby's "Antiquities of Yorkshire," which, he had the luck to secure from England. Sold with other effects of the Fairfaxes at Bath, England, this interesting volume had for years been in the hands of the antiquarian collector, B. F. Stevens, Esq., in London, where a friend found it, subsequently waiving his right as a purchaser in

Page 36

favor of my son. Upon its fly-leaves are written many names of the frequenters of old Belvoir, appended to "sentiments," mostly in French or Latin. Three great-great grandsons of the original owner recently inscribed themselves on its time-worn record, headed by the present American-born Lord Fairfax, who, in this twentieth century, has become an English subject, his title confirmed to him by the House of Lords in November, 1908.

As regards the pronunciation of the name "Belvoir," it is probable it was in early days pronounced "Beever," like the seat of the dukes of Rutland, who were akin to the English Fairfaxes. Colonel Harrison Dodge, the representative of the national owners of Mount Vernon, who is nothing if not exact, so pronounces it, but the moderns of our family give it the French sound.

In the small dining-room at Mount Vernon may be seen a fine old iron fireback, reclaimed from the ruins of Belvoir, bearing the lion crest and motto, "Fare Fac."

In our part of the county everything clerical was under the immediate domination of the Theological Seminary. We and other neighborhood families sat on Sundays in the chapel of that institution (my grandmother reserving two front pews in the left-hand transept for herself and guests), the main part of the nave being filled by the students and the high-school boys. Well do I remember when those pews of ours were filled to overflowing by devout female worshippers from Vaucluse - mothers, aunts, and cousins who would not have shirked attendance for the world. They made nothing of two services and two sermons a day, and if the great and learned Dr. Sparrow

Page 37

chanced to be in the pulpit, those sermons were no twenty-minute screeds! Other professors beloved in our circles were the Rev. Doctors Packard and May; and at a little distance to the left, going down the hill where in my time blue iris bordered the roadside, lived dear Bishop Johns, genial, lovable, and strong mentally, as befits a father in the church. It was the custom of our neighborhood to give from time to time tea-parties to the clergy and seniors among the students. On these evenings my grandmother's table was spread with her fairest damask, the best silver, cut glass, and a service of early Derby china, deep lapis lazuli blue, bordered with gilt, with pink eglantine in the centre. A few cups and plates of this china deck my shelves to-day. Among the dainties heaped on the table one may be sure broiled chicken and thinnest slices of pink ham were not absent; nor hot Maryland biscuit, thin biscuit, every kind of biscuit, fresh butter, and a bewildering variety of preserves, including segments of watermelon rind carved like lace work, with peaches and quinces in amber syrup, for the clergy always liked Vaucluse preserves. Next followed a course of waffles, crisp and golden brown, over which one was asked to shake, out of the sifter of Queen Anne silver, a shower of sugar and cinnamon combined. To these reflections, in their turn came Messrs. Phillips Brooks and Henry Potter (already in their student days a head higher intellectually than the average of their fellows, and much in demand by Hill hostesses) with many another subsequent dignitary of the church. With the Hyde children and Clarence, I used to peep agape through the pantry door as it opened for the passage of successive good things, and wonder if the clericos intended to eat all night!

Page 38

Among our neighbors were the McGuires, of Howard, he the reverend rector of the Episcopal High School, she a delightful whole-souled woman, born Brockenborough, who afterward wrote a lively chronicle of war days; the families of the professors I have named, and the household of General Samuel Cooper, then United States adjutant- general in Washington, who had a country home, Cameron, on the hill. Mrs. Cooper was a daughter of George Mason, of Gunston Hall, and sister-in-law of General Lee's brother, Admiral Sydney Smith Lee. She had two daughters, Maria (Mrs. Wheaton), and Jennie, a great friend of mine. The Coopers, who drove to service in a two-horse carriage with a smart coachman, took the pas over Vaucluse in this respect, since we either walked or drove ourselves in a one-horse rockaway, our servants all having holiday on Sunday, it seemed to us.

Near Cameron lived Miss Emily Mason, with her widowed sister, Mrs. Rowland, agreeable and cultivated women both, with Mrs. Rowland's two daughters and two sons. Miss Mason, since widely known for her noble service as an army nurse as well as for her literary works and compilations, was an especial spot of sunshine on "the Hill." She died in Georgetown, very recently, at an advanced and green old age.

Commodore French Forrest, with his gentle wife and his son, the late Rev. Douglas Forrest, once of the C. S. A., lived at Clermont. It was an attractive house, with wonderful box hedges and calycanthus bushes of unusual size. I remember a dance given by handsome Mrs. Forrest, when I wore a white "book-muslin," with my hair glued to my head with bandoline, then plaited in sixteen-strand braids coiled in a basket low upon the neck, in which were inserted

Page 39

white cape-jasmines set in rose-geranium leaves. We danced hard till daybreak, and I drove home in a buggy with one of the older male cousins without dreaming of a chaperon.

Near Vaucluse lived our cousin Arthur Herbert, of Muckross (he was like the youngest son of grandmamma's household), who was to go off to war as captain in the Seventeenth Regiment of Alexandria Volunteers, and after four years of hard fighting, through almost every battle of the army of northern Virginia, come back as colonel, with a record of many gallant deeds, and settle again in his old home. He found the crest of the hill on which his former house had stood bare of everything - dwelling, trees, fences, and outhouses all gone; but a United States fort built upon the site had left behind casemates of solid masonry, serving as fine cellars for the new house. Colonel Herbert married Miss Alice Gregory, of Petersburg, and, with their family, has continued to reside at Muckross - named for the original home of the Herberts near Killarney, in Ireland.

Farther up in the county abode Mrs. Fitzhugh, of Ravensworth, the aunt by marriage of Mrs. Lee, of Arlington, to whose second son, General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, she bequeathed her ancient estate. A visit I once made to Ravensworth, from Mr. Upton Herbert's neighboring "Bleak House," has been always remembered pleasantly. When my cousin Upton was nearly eighty, he used to make his visits to Ravensworth riding upon a fiery young unbroken colt, and the Lee family would send a mounted servant after him when he returned to Bleak House, with orders not to show himself, but to keep the old gentleman in sight.

At Ravensworth, to-day, lives the widow of General W. H. Fitzhugh Lee (once handsome Miss Bolling, of

Page 40

Petersburg), with her sons, and General Custis Lee, who, dispossessed of Arlington, has since made his home with his late brother's family.

Time glided by peacefully in our sweet old home, broken only by the necessary severing of links in the chain of life that, by Heaven's mercy, close again to give us courage to go on. The early death of my brother Falkland, was followed in a few years by that of my gentle grandmother. We had few excitements; occasionally we went to the Springs, to make visits at Charlottesville, Baltimore, or Washington, and to the country-houses of friends. I visited sometimes at the Vineyard, the home of Mr. Conway Robinson, the learned Virginian jurist, near Washington. His son, Leigh Robinson, a brilliant graduate of the University of Virginia, fought through the war in the Army of Northern Virginia, and has since been at the bar in Washington. I had one journey, only, to the North, to visit the home of my aunt and uncle, the Gouverneur Morrises, of Morrisania. Not only did it seem wonderful to be penetrating to such a far-away region as New York, but I had heard such interesting stories about Morrisania: How it was built upon the site of his earlier home by Gouverneur Morris, member of the convention which adopted the Constitution of the United States, senator, and minister to France during the Reign of Terror - who had known familiarly all the great actors of that awful drama, and the grandees of other countries. How he had come back to live at Morrisania, bringing a ship-load of relics from old palaces in France, mirrors, tapestries, gilded chairs and couches, books, a rare dessert service of old Sèvres, with forks and spoons of solid gold - and had put all these inside the oak-panelled

Page 41

walls of his home on the Harlem Kills, where they still remained. How he had entertained Talleyrand, the Jerome Bonapartes, Tom Moore, and all the visiting celebrities as well as statesmen of his day. How his romantic marriage at sixty with Miss Anne Randolph, of Virginia, had occurred there, his wife having a year later given him his only son, the then master of the house. How this second Gouverneur had in his turn married a Virginian lady, a first cousin. How when Grandmamma Cary went to see her nephew at Morrisania, in the early days after her sister's death, they would drive and drive, and be always, like the Marquis of Carabas, upon his own land! Now the estate had come down to forty acres surrounding the delightful, mellow old house. Piece by piece, my uncle had sold it for stations on the Hartford and New Haven railways, or else the great encroaching monster of New York had swallowed it by bits.

Naturally, I was eager to visit there, and it was a time of unalloyed pleasure with my uncle and aunt and their family of boys and girls near my own age.

But nothing whispered to me that one day, after a terrible war that should destroy my own home, I would be married from Morrisania. And yet this was to be!

I am making no attempt to record chronologically the events of my modest experience in childhood. I am simply writing down, as they drift to me out of the mists of memory, things about the people most familiar to me, thinking it may interest readers as a page torn from old- time chronicles of American social life before the war. The two or three years after the reign of my French governess came to an end, were spent by me in Richmond at the boarding-school of M. Hubert Pierre Lefebvre. As a rule, narratives of boarding-school life

Page 42

are more interesting to the teller than to hearers, and I will only say that the experience broadened my horizon in introducing to me types of girls from the higher classes of society all over the South, and convincing me that the surrounding slave service was inspiring neither to the energy of body nor independence of ideas I had been taught to consider indispensable. Many of these pretty, languid creatures from the far Southern States had never put on a shoe or stocking for themselves; and the point of view of some about owning and chastising fellow-beings who might chance to offend them was abhorrent to me. But they all came out grandly during the war, and after it.

In some mysterious way I had drunk in with my mother's milk - who inherited it from her stern Swedenborgian father - a detestation of the curse of slavery upon our beautiful Southern land. Then, of course, omnivorous reader that I was - I had early found and devoured "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "that mischievous, incendiary book," as some of our friends called it. When the thunderbolt of John Brown's raid broke over Virginia I was inwardly terrified, because I thought it was God's vengeance for the torture of such as Uncle Tom.

I was on a visit to my aunt, Mrs. Irwin, in Washington, following Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, while yet arose in many households spirited discussion concerning the trend of national events. We young people had not waked up to a full understanding of the issues involved, nor had become the fierce partisans of after days. When, therefore, my aunt's husband (who remained a supporter of the Union during the war) insisted that, as an epoch in life, I should be taken to see the new President, I went with him to one of the levees at the White House. A terrible crush of people, it

Page 43

seemed to me, of all sorts and conditions, foreign ministers preceding backwoodsmen in flannel shirts and Sunday coats, great ladies of the administration, in line with struggling women and children hardly dressed or kempt for festal occasion. That was the reception where the curtains had pieces cut out of them for souvenirs by the backwoodsmen, who, it was said, swarmed to Washington in the wake of the "man of the people." Budding secessionist although I was, I can distinctly remember that the power of Abraham Lincoln's personality then impressed itself upon me for a lifetime. Everything faded out of sight beside the apparition of the new President, towering at the entrance of the Blue Room. He held back the crowd a minute, while my hand had a curious feeling of being engulfed in his enormous palm, clad in an ill-fitting white kid glove. He said something kind to his youthful visitor, and over his rugged face played a summer lightning smile. We passed on, and I saw him no more till he drove past our house in captured Richmond, in an ambulance, with his little son upon his knee.

Page 44

CHAPTER III

AND now the war-clarion blew, the clans were all alert, and every male creature belonging to us was straining for the fray. As Vaucluse lay in the track of probably advancing armies, my mother and aunt decided to send their younger children out of harm's way. Accordingly, to my despair, I was packed off with my brother Clarence and my little cousin Meta Hyde to stop with a relation at Millwood, in Clarke County, Virginia. Consolation, in the shape of lovely surroundings, bountiful hospitality, visits to such places as Saratoga, Carter Hall, The Moorings, Annfield, etc., made the May days dance along, until we were suddenly confronted with the news that Vaucluse had been forsaken by my mother and aunt, who had driven away by night in their own carriage, their destination the immediate neighborhood of Manassas Junction, where the Southern troops were massing.

One of the letters from my mother of this date told how at the last moment before leaving Vaucluse, having no way of despatching the silver to a safety-vault in Washington or Alexandria, she had undertaken to bury it in the cellar of the house. Aided by a young nephew who was to go on the morrow to volunteer at Manassas, and a faithful old negro gardener, who died soon afterward, they worked half the night (she holding a lantern) till pits were made large enough to contain two large travelling trunks, into which the silver

Page 45

had been hastily packed. The pits filled in and rubbish strewn over them, my mother got into the carriage before daybreak and drove away to the Confederate lines.

Four years later, the house having been destroyed by incendiaries, all the trees on the place cut down for breastworks, and the site used for a United States camp during many months, she came back to her home, accompanied by men with spades and picks. Save for slight depressions in the grass, there was no token of where the house had stood, and many bewildered moments were spent in searching for it. Some hours followed while the men toiled, and my mother sat on the ground and looked on, amid gathering tears. Any idle soldier prodding the ground might have struck the boxes, she argued, and there was little hope. Just as she was about giving the order to stop work, one of the men cried out, holding up a teaspoon black as jet! Soon the earth was covered with dark objects from around which the boxes had rotted. Candelabra, urn, tea-set, tankards, bowls, dishes, and the complete service of small silver were recovered, not a salt-spoon missing! Sent to Galt's, in Washington, for treatment, they were soon restored to pristine brilliancy.

In Mrs. Judith Brockenborough McGuire's "Diary of a Southern Refugee" is found the following, under date of July 30, 1862:

"Vaucluse, too, the seat of such elegant hospitality, the refined and dearly loved home of the Fairfax family, has been levelled to the earth, fortifications thrown up across the lawn, the fine old trees felled, and the whole grounds, once so embowered and shut out from public gaze, now laid bare and open - Vaucluse no more!"

Page 46

If we were to join her at all, wrote my mother from Bristoe Station, it must be now, as who knew when the military lines might shut us out? She warned me in eloquent phrase that our sylvan paradise at Millwood must be exchanged for a poor little roadside tavern on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, treeless, shabby, crowded to excess with officers' families, under burning sun all day, no ice for rather muddy water, no fruit, the plainest of fare, and nowhere to walk but up and down the railway track. Per contra, the camp containing our boys was but five miles away; we should get all the army news direct; and day after day would see trains thundering by, full of eager soldiers, thrilling and shouting with joy that they were so near the goal! When the battle came we should be nearest it, to do our best for them. If our troops were to be driven back - why, then, we would "take our chance!"

We went. By lumbering stage-coach down the peaceful Shenandoah Valley, clad in the radiancy of summer foliage, by way-train here and there, passing "the Junction," the centre of all hopes and thoughts, the cradle of the future Army of Northern Virginia - arriving safely and gladly at Bristoe to "take our chance" with the others.

The month that elapsed before the first battle of the war, on July 18, 1861, was one in which I woke up to the strongest feeling of my young life. My mother saw her only remaining son, aged fifteen, looking several years younger, go into service as a marker in an Alexandria regiment. She sewed for him, with the neatest of stitches, white gaiters, and a "havelock" for his cap - these afterward abandoned by authority as too shining marks for riflemen - tears dropping now and then upon her handiwork, but never a thought of telling

Page 47

him he should not go. All about me were women ready to give their all. I realized that love of country can mean more than love of self.

In the family carriage, sold later as a superfluity of luxury to refugees and hospital nurses, we drove to several impromptu entertainments at Camp Pickens, during the month of waiting the enemy's advance. What young girl's heart would not beat quicker in response to such experience? There were dinners cooked and served to us by our soldier lads, spread upon rough boards, eaten out of tin plates and cups amid such a storm of rollicking gayety and high hope that war seemed a merry pastime. In the infancy of war, the Louisiana chieftain, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, of ancient Creole family, was distinctly looked upon as the future leader of the Confederacy. His name was upon all lips, his praise on every breeze that blew. Some early war rhymester wrote verses, of which the refrain was:

"Beau canon, Beauregard! Beau soldat, Beauregard!
Beau sabreur! Beau frappeur! Beauregard, Beauregard!"

Needless to say that to be received with visitors' honors at his head-quarters was a source of undying pride. We met there the lamented Brigadier-General Bartow, killed at the first battle of Manassas; General Longstreet, who in those days, before he lost several children at once by scarlet fever, was rollicking and jolly always, looking, as his aid, Moxley Sorrel, afterward said of him: "Like a rock of steadiness when sometimes in battle the world seemed flying to pieces"; and many another destined to high fame. There were drills, dress parades, and reviews, viewed from the headquarters tents of great generals. In all our dreams

Page 48

sounded the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums. And so till the morning of July 17, when word came that our troops were moving forward!

Now knew we the rude reality! Those women and girls and children left at Bristoe, who, on the 18th, spent all day on the railway tracks, straining eyes and ears in the direction of the belt of woodland above which arose columns of gun smoke, hearing the first guns of the war as distinctly as one hears a fog-horn on an Atlantic liner, had mostly all they loved best in the fight. It seemed eternal, that sullen roar of artillery, that crackle of fire-arms. And who should say how it was coming out? We could not rest; we could not speak or eat. Toward afternoon appeared, limping down a long, red clay road, a single, smoke-stained, fiery-faced bandaged soldier. With one accord the women fell upon him like a swarm of bees, questioned, fed, soothed, exalted him. He was rather a dreadful-looking person, we had to own, and his manner unpleasant, to say the least. His wound, on examination, proved a mere scratch on the middle finger, but he rose to the occasion as a hero, and answered our fevered, eager queries with statements that took our breath away.

"The Seventeenth Virginia," he responded to our especial inquiry. "Why, they fought like tigers and was cut all to pieces. Hardly an officer was left."

A beaming smile and a strong whiff of whiskey accompanying this revelation, we took heart to doubt. But none the less, that first wounded soldier from Bull Run had enjoyed a monopoly of patriotic sympathy never again to be surpassed.

A little later we heard of Confederate victory and that our boys were safe. It nerved us for the evening's work. After dark, a train came thundering into our station,

Page 49

stopping to ask food and drink for the wounded. By lantern light we passed through the cars, carrying and distributing all there was to give.

Over and again we were to do this service during the four years to come. Never, perhaps, with such keen emotion.

The day before, a closely veiled, shabbily dressed little woman, her luggage a small archaic hair-trunk inscribed with undistinguished name, had been put off a train from Richmond upon the platform before our poor, overpacked hostelry. In vain did Lipscomb, our distracted host, assure her there wasn't a room or a bed left for any one - nothing save a servant's pallet on the floor of a hot garret. Also, he stated, looking her over doubtfully, all the occupants of this 'hotel' were members of officers' families well known to General Beauregard. She kept her ground manfully, explained that she had been ill of typhoid, had come all the way from New Orleans to be near her brother at the front, and had no strength to turn back; so he gave her the garret, where a negro girl carried her food and drink; and we lookers-on thought no more of her in the greater excitement of the coming battle.

In the evening, my mother having gone on to Culpeper Court House to volunteer as a nurse in the new military hospital, my aunt, who was busy elsewhere, suggested that I go up to see what had become of the odd little woman in the garret. When I tapped at the door it was no uneducated voice that bade me enter, but one sweet and refined, coming from a girl huddled on a chair near the window, who sprang up to meet me with a cry of joy.

"News! News from the front?" That was all she wanted, not supper or anything. The servant girl had

Page 50

told her the troops were moving. It was a mercy to speak to any one; she had cried all day, and now thought she would go mad.

Little by little, it came out that she was the petted daughter of a wealthy Creole family, engaged to a lieutenant of artillery, with whom she had quarrelled and broken just as he went off to Virginia with the battalion in which her brother was also an officer. Repenting, she tried to wire him her regrets, and finally, on the impulse of a moment, had left the plantation where her family were, went into her mother's town house, possessed herself of the housekeeper's trunk and garments, and set off for Virginia. Her intention, only to see him and then go back again, spite of her dread of the brother's wrath should he find out her escapade, was now frustrated by the movement to the front!

Taken thus into confidence in a rare romance of which the heroine seemed to my fervid imagination one of the most fascinating little creatures ever seen - charmed by her good looks, her dainty lingerie with fine embroidery and lace, the rich toilet articles strewn about, and the gold-mounted writing-case from which she took her lover's portrait to show it to me I readily promised secrecy and, if possible, help. She cheered up at this, and to my surprise ended by kissing me, then promised to eat her neglected supper and try to sleep.

During the battle, next day, she again passed out of my mind, and when, at dusk, a shabby little veiled figure stole up upon the platform and begged me to go with her for an instant to her room, I acquiesced. When there, she burst into a storm of tears and sobs. The day had nearly killed her, she had spoken to nobody, her heart was breaking with anxiety. She had heard there was a list of wounded in the grocery store; would I

Page 51

mind seeing whether his name or her brother's was upon it?

And then she told the names which I was to come to know well and respect in after days!

I coaxed her downstairs again, and while all the rest of us squeezed into the little country store where, behind the counter, by the light of a tallow candle, a man was spelling out a newly arrived register of the casualties of the day, she stood outside in the darkness, afraid to show herself. Begging for a glance at the paper, I ran my eye hastily over it, and the third or fourth name was that of her lover, "badly wounded!" And - strange happening of my first war love-story! - just after I had induced her to go back to her room with her misery, the first train of wounded men from Manassas slowed up at Bristoe, and while every woman and girl in the hotel except herself went through it carrying milk, water, brandy, and bread, to my lot it fell to minister to a young Louisiana artilleryman lying upon a cot in a freight car, suffering greatly, but with perfect fortitude; while she who had been his affianced was at ten steps from him, wearing her heart out in longing for him, yet knowing nothing of his vicinity.

The sequel of this episode was, alas! not cheerful. They met again in Richmond, whither he was taken and she followed, but the breach between them widened instead of drawing together, and then two lives went apart.

On Saturday evening, July 20, a messenger was sent by General Beauregard to the ladies and children at Bristoe, saying that an engine and car would be placed at their disposal, with urgent advice for them to leave immediately for a point of greater safety, since a battle was impending upon whose issue it was impossible to

Page 52

count. The women, sewing flannel shirts and making bandages fast as hands could fly, looked at each other and sent thanks to the general, with the answer that they preferred to stay.

That Sunday of the "first Manassas" was a repetition on a larger scale of our experience of the 18th. Some women sewed awhile, then ran bareheaded, desperate, out in the burning sun to look, to listen, to pray, to yearn! With every fresh roar of cannon came the piercing javelin of thought, "Was mine taken then?" "Was mine?"

By mid-day we heard of victory and the rout of the Federal forces. By evening we had individual returns. Again, those most near to us were preserved in safety.

My brother, the marker, although twice ordered by his sympathetic superiors to the rear to guard hospital stores, had managed to get his full share of the excitement. The story told by his captain of seeing the tired little fellow, during an interval in the fight, asleep under a tree, near which a shell had burst without warning or awakening him, went into the newspapers with sundry other more sensational accounts of his prowess, since disavowed. He told us of wading Bull Run quite up to his knees, in pursuit of the fleeing enemy, and of the long tramp to Fairfax Court House and back; the greatest hardship to our troops being that they were obliged to pass by forsaken tents with delicious soup boiling itself away upon the fires, and abundant food everywhere - together with a sutler's wagon broken open, its tempting contents scattered on the ground - when all they could lay hold of as first spoils of war was a jar of "sticks of candy," greatly enjoyed in the ranks as far as it would go.

Page 53

My brother was that same evening ordered by General Longstreet, who picked him up upon the field, to his head-quarters as "courier." His duties of message-carrying to the various head-quarters through the camps were made lighter by the necessity of exercising the fine horses of a late staff officer, Colonel Fisher, killed in the action of the 21st, and his leisure time more pleasant by the society of Colonel Moxley Sorrel and an afterward much-talked-of Major Terry, a noted scout and Texan ranger, who delighted him by stories of Indian warfare on the plains, etc.; the line of demarcation between officers and privates having hardly yet made itself felt, so numerous were the gentlemen in ranks. Shortly afterward, through our friend, Congressman W. W. Boyce, of South Carolina, Clarence received his commission as midshipman in the Confederate States navy, and reported for duty in Richmond. From that time till the end of the war he was in active service whenever opportunity occurred.

A fact about the first battle of Manassas told to me by my husband, years later, as an authentic instance of the secret history of the war, may be inserted here. A lady in Washington it was, a member of the family of Mrs. Dolly Madison, who actually enabled the Confederate generals to win that important victory in July, 1861, and the Confederate government, after that success, to muster men and resources in the South unavailable had we suffered defeat. The fact was well known and always admitted by Confederate authorities.

An impatient expectation was at fever heat in both North and South. General Scott and his lieutenants were incessantly urged by his government to move upon the enemy. The whole Northern press was clamoring

Page 54

"on to Richmond." "We shall move to-morrow," was repeatedly announced from Washington, to be followed, on the morrow, by the explanation, "The advance is necessarily delayed for a week, for further preparation." By the middle of July, everything seemed to depend for the South upon concentration of our forces at the exact moment of advance, before General McDowell could be reinforced by General Patterson. Until then, her brigades must be kept widely distributed - General Johnston before Martinsburg, General Bonham at Fairfax Court House, General Holmes on the Potomac, near Eastport; a force that, if assembled, would be greatly outnumbered by General McDowell's single column.

To accomplish this end, General Beauregard must know exactly when McDowell should be ordered to begin his march of invasion.

From the lady in Washington this fateful information came to Confederate head-quarters, carried by a trusty messenger down the Potomac on the Maryland side, who, crossing near Dumfries, reached Manassas at the critical instant, safely arrived with a note, reading as follows:

"McDowell has certainly been ordered to advance on the sixteenth. (Signed) R. O. G."

The informant's initials and handwriting were recognized, her statement accepted. Bonham, pulled behind the line of Bull Run, narrowly escaped his pursuers, who, at noon on the 17th, marched through what had been his camp. Holmes was brought up on the right; Johnston was called down from before Patterson, to arrive in the very nick of time during the battle of

Page 55

the 21st when the unexpected appearance of his men threw McDowell's right into confusion, resulting in the panic and rout of his army.

So much for a clever woman's use of official information gained unexpectedly. Not the first time, however, that a woman's touch has set the pendulum of a nation's fate aswing!

My dearest mother was by now well launched in her hospital nursing at Culpeper Court House, first, among the many soldiers ill in the Methodist church, and, later, among the wounded. Her life from this time forward (afterward at Camp Winder, near Richmond) was of the hardest and most heroic kind. I have never known any woman possessed of better qualifications for her task. With a splendid physique, almost unbroken good health, a tireless hand, and a spirit of tender sympathy, she was the ideal attendant upon homesick boys from the far South, disheartened by illness at the outset of their campaign, as well as those cruelly mangled and wounded in the first fights. Almost every comfort we have nowadays in nursing was absent from the beginning, and toward the last the hospitals were unspeakably lacking in needfuls. Sleeping on a soldier's bunk, rising at dawn, laboring till midnight, my mother faced death and suffering with the stout spirit that was a rock of refuge to all around her. Her record, in short, was that of a thousand other saintly women during that terrible strife. How many dying eyes looked wistfully into hers; how many anguished hands clung to hers during operations or upon death-beds! What poor lonely spirits far from home and kin took courage from her lips, to flutter feebly out into the vast unknown! What words of Christian cheer she whispered! what faith, hope, love were embodied in that tall, noble figure

Page 56

and sweet, sad face moving tirelessly upon her rounds!

"They call to me all over the church like a set of boys after their mother," she wrote me at this time, "and tell me they should give up and die if I left them," and then, characteristically modest, she begs me not to show this letter to any one. And here, a lifetime intervening, I venture to disobey her!

A week after the first battle of Manassas I rode on horseback with a party over the field, between hill-sides piled with hecatombs of dead horses and scattered with hasty graves. The trees and undergrowth were broken and bullet-riddled. The grass between the scars of upturned earth was green as if it had known no baptism of fire and blood, and little wild flowers had already begun to bloom again, but for obvious reasons we could take but a passing glimpse. I saw a ghastly semblance of a hand protruding at one spot, and thought of it when I stood in the crypt of the Pantheon, in Paris, by the gloomy tomb of Rousseau, where a skeleton hand holds up from within the bronze coffin lid of the French philosopher and epoch-maker.

My mother had arranged for me to stay near her at Culpeper, at a beautiful old place called Belpré, where I was most kindly entreated and made one of themselves by the family. It was my wise mother's desire that I, already pressing forward into unwonted privilege and eager to consider myself "a young lady," should be put back into the place habitual to immature years, and spend my days in reading and study. Alas! it was wartime; I had already tasted the sweets of emancipation; the woods were full of handsome and delightful officers and privates, eager to be entertained and heartened for the fray. Like all the other girls of my acquaintance

Page 57

thereabout, I grew up in a night, and soon there was plenty of women's work for us!

Even now, writing of it after so many, many years, I seem to feel again the pulse of that thrilling time. And it was here that there came intimately into my life one of its strongest influences, in the radiant person of my cousin, Hetty Cary, daughter of my uncle, Wilson Miles Cary, of Baltimore, my father's elder and only brother. She, with her younger sister, Jennie, had taken the lead in the secessionist movement among the young girls in Baltimore, who, having seen all their best men march across the border to enlist with the Confederates for the war, relieved their strained feelings by overt resentment of the Union officers and troops placed in possession of their city.

It was Jennie Cary who set Randall's stirring poem of "Maryland" to the air of "Lauriger Horatius" (brought to her by Burton Harrison, when a student at Yale College), and first sang it with a chorus of her friends in a drawing-room in Baltimore. She tells me that the refrain, as originally printed in the copy of verses cut by them out of a newspaper, was simply "Maryland!" and that she added the word "My" in obedience to the exigency of the music. As the song thus boldly chanted by young Confederate sympathizers, in a city occupied by their enemy and under strict martial rule, was to drift over the border, to be caught eagerly by the troops of the Maryland line, and to echo down the ages as the most famous battle-song of the Confederacy, it is fitting that to Miss Jennie Cary should be awarded all the honor of this achievement. We both sang it amid a little group of visitors in September, 1861, standing in the doorway of Captain Sterrett's tent at Manassas, the men of the Maryland line facing us in

Page 58

the dusk of evening. This was in answer to the request sent in from the soldiers to their friend, Captain Sterrett, "that they might hear a woman's voice again." I can hear now the swing of that grand chorus, as the men gradually caught up the refrain and echoed it, and by next day, to our joy and pride, the whole camp at Manassas was resounding with "My Maryland!"

Miss Hetty Cary, as fearless as she was beautiful, having incurred the displeasure of the military government of Baltimore by shaking from the window of her father's home, while the Union troops marched by it, a Confederate banner smuggled through the lines, had been warned to leave Baltimore under penalty of immediate arrest and transfer to a Northern bastile. The two sisters, carrying drugs for the hospitals and uniforms for friends, had run the blockade with their brother, crossing to join the army through many perilous adventures, and were now stopping with friends in Orange, to be ultimately under my mother's chaperonage. I had always looked up to my cousin, Hetty, as a young girl is apt to do to an acknowledged belle and beauty older than herself, with a sort of adoring championship, and as circumstances were to throw us into the closest intimacy, I hardly believed in my good fortune, that summer, of going around with her in the exciting diversions of the hour.

Lest I be thought over-partial, I will quote an extract from a newspaper letter describing my cousin to the readers of the New Orleans Crescent (which gives also a fair idea of the liberality of praiseful epithet bestowed by Southerners upon their elected belles):

"Look well at her, for you have never seen, and will probably never see again, so beautiful a woman! Observe her magnificent form, her rounded arms, her neck

Page 59

and shoulders perfect as if from the sculptor's chisel, her auburn hair, the poise of her well-shaped head. Saw you ever such color on woman's cheek? And she is not less intelligent than beautiful.... She is dressed in pure white. It is worth a king's ransom, a lifetime of trouble, to look at one such woman. No wonder Beauregard pronounced her the most beautiful in that city of lovely women - Baltimore."

Such, with variants, was the kind of rhetoric bestowed on this young lady in her path through life. Perhaps the best thing I can say of her is that it never spoiled her, that she was always simple, straightforward, generous, and high- minded - daring to a fault, but not stooping from her inheritance of good breeding and gentle womanhood. In her train, her sister and I enjoyed some merry experiences of military entertainment that would not otherwise have come our way. In addition to the already-spoken-of visit to Manassas, in September of that year - when our party slept, or rather giggled, half the night, upon layers of cartridge flannel on the hard floor of a tent, with a row of hoop-skirts hanging like balloons on the pole overhead, and soldiers guarding us outside - we enjoyed a dinner with General Beauregard upon what he called his "last duck." On this occasion was organized the troop of the "Cary Invincibles." On a scrap of torn blue paper I find pencilled the list of its officers, including myself as "captain- general"; Miss Hetty Cary, lieutenant-colonel; Miss Jennie Cary, first lieutenant, etc., etc., with many dignitaries of the day placed in inferior positions! Colonel A. S. Barbour and Colonel H. W. Vandegrift were our military engineers; staff officers, Colonel W. W. Boyce and Lieutenant P. B. Hooe; Lieutenant-Colonel William Munford was historian and bard; the Hon.

Page 60

Mr. Clingman, private secretary; Mr. John Addison, chief cook; Governor Manning, scribe-general; and the vivandière was Mr. A. D. Banks.

To the readers of that ineffable romance, "The Heroine," will immediately occur the personnel of the Lady Cherubina de Willoughby's followers! So much fun grew out of our organization, and so much wit was lavished upon it by others, I venture to insert our nonsense here.

The Cary Invincibles being once bidden to a certain head-quarters dinner, given on a hot summer's day at a little roadside cabin near Bull Run, were treated afterward to the stirring spectacle of a division on the march, defiling along a red clay road gashed in Virginia soil, thus to be pictured by me as it appeared to my eager eyes:

"What was yonder cloud of luminous vapor rolling in - that wave of sound, gathering strength and substance as it reached the ear? Presently, emerging from the golden mist, we saw, first, horsemen, pacing leisurely; then caissons and guns; and after them, rank upon rank of marching men in gray! And above the dust, banners of scarlet crossed with blue!" And as they passed our group, some officer, recognizing us, started a chant, caught up along the line and rendered into a grand sonorous swing:

"She breathes, she burns, she'll come, she'll come
Maryland! My Maryland!"

There were our merry hosts, joining in the refrain with tremendous lung power; and there were we three girls laughing and crying, at once, in our delight. Who ever before had the luck, or planned with such consummate skill, so to entertain guests?

Page 61

In the autumn, when my cousins had gone to Albemarle to visit relatives, we three had the honor of being asked by the committee of Congress to make the first battle-flags of the Confederacy after the design finally decided on by them. It is generally stated by historians that these flags were constructed from our own dresses, but it is certain we possessed no wearing apparel in the flamboyant hues of poppy red and vivid dark blue required. We had a great search for materials. I had to content myself with a poor quality of red silk for the field of mine, necessitating an interlining, which I regretted. I have always been sorry we did not keep the model sketches, with directions, assigned to us by the committee which decided the matter, and delivered by Major A. D. Banks. Our work done, a golden fringe sewed around each flag (and, in my case, my name embroidered upon it in golden letters), we were at liberty to present them as head-quarters banners to our favorite generals. Miss Hetty Cary, having first choice, sent hers to General Joseph E. Johnston, Miss Jennie Cary's went to General Beauregard - serving to drape the coffin of Beauregard and of Jefferson Davis - and mine to General Earl Van Dorn, a dashing cavalry leader, for whom was then predicted great fame and success. I had never seen Van Dorn, and was rather alarmed at my temerity in selecting him, but I knew his aide-de-camp, Captain Durant da Ponté, grandson of the librettist of "Don Giovanni," and himself a charming poet. Through Captain da Ponté, I was emboldened to send off my flag, with the following note. In those days, as I have shown, we were in favor of the flowery style of expressing high sentiment. I transcribe the correspondence from a newspaper clipping of the period:

Page 62

"CULPEPER COURT HOUSE, VA.,
"NOV. 10,1861.

"Will General Van Dorn honour me by accepting a flag which I have taken great pleasure in making, and now send with an earnest prayer that the work of my hand may hold its place near him as he goes out to a glorious struggle - and, God willing, may one day wave over the re-captured batteries of my home near the down-trodden Alexandria ?

"I am, very respectfully, Genl. Van Dorn's obedient servant,

"CONSTANCE CARY."

"ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, MANASSAS,
"Nov. 12, 1861.

"To MISS CONSTANCE CARY, CULPEPER C. H.
"Dear Lady: The beautiful flag made by your hands and presented to me with the prayer that it should be borne by my side in the impending struggle for the existence of our country, is an appeal to me as a soldier as alluring as the promises of glory; but when you express the hope, in addition, that it may one day wave over the re-captured city of your nativity, your appeal becomes a supplication so beautiful and holy that I were craven-spirited indeed, not to respond to it with all the ability that God has given me. Be assured, dear young lady, that it shall wave over your home if Heaven smiles upon our cause, and I live, and that there shall be written upon it by the side of your name which it now bears, 'Victory, Honor and Independence.'

"In the meantime, I shall hope that you may be as happy as you, who have the soul thus to cheer the soldier on to noble deeds and to victory - should be, and that the flowers wont to bloom by your window, may bloom

Page 63

as sweetly for you next May, as they ever did, to welcome you home again.

"Very truly and respectfully, dear lady, I am your humble and obedient servant.

"EARL VAN DORN,
"Major-General, P. A. C. S."

Captain da Ponté told me that when the flag arrived at Van Dorn's head-quarters and was adopted into the division, a young officer sprang up, unsheathed his sword, and held it hilt downward upon the table, while one after the other of his comrades clasped the blade; when all swore a knightly oath to make good the giver's petition, after which they drank to the flag and to her.

Ah! well! One may grow old and the snows of "yesteryear" may have fallen thick over young hearts and hopes, but one does not forget such scenes or the spirit that inspired them!

One day at Culpeper, when I sat sewing with my mother, I was summoned to see a man who said he "was a messenger from General Van Dorn." I found awaiting me, cap in hand, a huge cavalryman with a bashful boy's face, who bowed and blushed as I came in, explaining that he had a note from the general, to be put into my hand only. The note placed at my disposition Charles Dillon, special scout and most trustworthy courier, who "might be soon going into Alexandria, and would bring out, if he had an order to my friends, anything I had left behind, and wanted."

"Oh! But there's nothing I have, or ever had, worth risk to a brave soldier," I made haste to protest. "I've the general's orders, miss," he said, "and if it wornt anything better, I was to get you a little bit of a flower. You're the lady that made our

Page 64

head-quarters battle-flag, miss, and we think a good bit of that flag."

The end of it was that, ten days later, Dillon brought me a little wrap of blue and white, one of my girlish treasures, deeply lamented, which he had secured through a note to my great-aunts, now removed to Alexandria. He had gone into the town disguised as a countryman driving a cart-load of firewood; and what further the big fellow brought away with him, I never asked.

Dillon became one of the most famous scouts of the early war time, achieving a hundred brilliant exploits. He came to his death, poor fellow, at the hands of a party of United States cavalrymen, who are said to have cut the head from his body, leaving him in the woods. For this horror I cannot vouch. After mentioning him in an article for the Century Magazine, I received this letter:

"ALLEGHANY, NEW YORK, March 31, 1886.

"MADAM:
"In your article, "A Virginia Girl in the First Year of the War," published in the August (1885) number of the Century, you speak of a famous scout by the name of Dillon, and when I read it I was filled with a desire to know if he was not Charles Dillon, a noted Confederate scout and spy, who lost his life near Burke's Station, Virginia, in March, 1862. This fellow surely was one of the most daring, and his body was decently buried by my company.

"Very likely his comrades never knew his end, his grave was marked with his name, but the evacuation of Manassas was begun about that time, and the Confederates never had possession of that territory afterwards.

Page 65

The incident of his capture created no little interest at the time and you may have known of it. If you did not, then I think if he was the same Dillon who brought you the relics, you will be interested to know what I have written; and these thoughts I beg to offer as an apology for the liberty I take in addressing you.

"Very respectfully yours,
"H. C. ALTENBURG."

Strangely enough, I never met General Van Dorn, whose sphere of military action was soon transferred to the South-west. My flag went with him through much brilliant service to the Confederacy in Virginia, in the trans-Mississippi, and the States of Tennessee and Mississippi. It was torn with bullets and stained with the smoke of Pea Ridge, Corinth, Iuka, Holly Springs, and other battle-fields, when, after his death, it was finally put back into my hands, through the general's instructions, by his nephew, Captain Clement Sullivan. I have it now at my house in Washington.

One of the meetings I prized most was that with Major Pelham, of Alabama, a young hero, whose name, "the gallant Pelham," given to him by General Lee, was already on every tongue around us. He was on horseback before a friend's door in Culpeper, waiting till I came out to mount for a ride somewhere. A slim boy with a dark, sparkling face is what the splendid Pelham seemed to me in that brief encounter, followed by a little war of wits. He was killed in 1863 - having just received his promotion as lieutenant-colonel - in an engagement at Beverley Ford, to which he had hastened on a borrowed horse while on furlough, making a visit. Springing to arms at the first sound of a cannon in his neighborhood, this brilliant

Page 66

young officer, who had passed through so many general engagements with safety, fell in a terrible fire from the enemy, and was carried back into Culpeper to the house of the friends where I first met him, and where his death occurred.

Page 67

CHAPTER IV

IN the early days of the winter of '62, my mother, wedded to her beloved hospital work at Culpeper Court House, sent me to Richmond to be under care of my uncle and aunt, Dr. and Mrs. Fairfax, who had found quarters in the Clifton House, a dreary old building, indifferently kept, honey-combed with subterranean passages suggesting the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe, where, however, we girls certainly managed to extract "sunbeams from cucumbers." For there my Cary cousins, Hetty and Jennie, arrived from Charlottesville to join our refugee band, and the reign of the beautiful Hetty began as, perhaps, chief of the war beauties of the day. Our cousin, Jennie Fairfax, was also of our merry group. For want of a sitting-room, we took possession of what had been a doctor's office, a little way down the hilly street, communicating with the hotel by an underground passage, dark as Erebus, through which, in rainy or snowy weather, we passed by the light of a bedroom candle. Many a dignitary of State and camp will recall our Clifton evenings. Several times we gave suppers to which we contributed only a roast turkey, a ham, and some loaves of bread, with plates and knives and forks. It was an amusing sight to see a major-general come in hugging a bottle of brandied peaches, and a member of Congress carrying his quota of sardines and French prunes. At these feasts there was a democratic commingling of officers and "high-privates."

Page 68

To the latter, it was part of our creed always to dispense our best smiles and tidbits. So great was the rush of visitors that our mulatto attendant, Cornelius, dubbed "the Centurion," was kept from striking for liberty only by much cajolery and frequent small tips.

Of the town gayeties that winter I recall a fancy-dress party at the McMurdo's, in Grace Street. One of the daughters, Miss Saidee McMurdo, an exquisite creature with large dark eyes and arched brows, married Mr. Alfred Rives, of Albemarle, and became the mother of Amélie Rives, the author, now Princess Troubetskoi (Mrs. Rives has died since these words were written). This was my first "real" party in Richmond, and my mother being in town on a rest furlough, she made up for me, with her own dear fingers, the costume of a Louis XV court lady, styled "Mme. la Marquise de Crêve-Coeur," decided upon chiefly because of a stiff old petticoat of wine-colored reps silk found in some family trunk. Shopping diligently, she had found spangles for my shoes and fan; feathers for the high-rolled powdered hair were lent from some one's store; mask, pearl necklace, and old blonde lace were forthcoming, and my kind uncle cut out from court-plaster a coach and horses, by way of a patch of the period, for the cheek. What the other girls wore I selfishly can't remember!

The first event to bring all patriotic Richmond into the streets that winter was the inauguration of our President, Jefferson Davis, on February 22, 1862. We were asked to witness the ceremony from a window of the Virginia State Library in the Capitol by our friend, Mr. John R. Thompson, the librarian-in-chief, and were entertained, while awaiting events, with the latest Northern papers, Harper's Weekly and others, together

Page 69

with the extraordinary apparition of a box of French bonbons just arrived by underground express.

It was a dismal day, depressing to stoutest spirits, rain falling heavily, and Capitol Square beneath us one mass of open umbrellas. When the poor wet bishop and the President-elect came upon the stand, there was an immediate, portentous hush in the crowd. One heard nothing but the patter of the winter rain. The brief ceremony over, when President Davis kissed the book, accepting, under God, the great trust of our young and struggling nation, a great shout went up and we distinctly heard cries of "God bless our President!" That evening President and Mrs. Davis received at their residence, making a most favorable impression upon all Richmond.

We had been hearing a good deal of the inner life of the President's family from a young inmate of his household destined to play an important part in my life thereafter. This was Burton Norvell Harrison, born in Louisiana, of Virginia parentage on the father's side, who, at the instance of his friend, Congressman L. Q. C. Lamar, had been summoned by the President to be his private secretary at the moment when Mr. Harrison was about to enlist in New Orleans as a private in the ranks of the Washington Artillery. Mr. Harrison, having graduated at Yale in the class of 1859, had been designated by President F. A. P. Barnard, then of Oxford University, in Mississippi (whose first wife was Mr. Harrison's aunt), to occupy a junior professorship in that institution, and had remained there until the outbreak of the war.

During vacations from Yale spent with his uncle, the Rev. Dr. William Francis Brand, rector of St. Mary's Church, near Emmorton, Maryland, Mr. Harrison had made friends with my Baltimore cousins, who were

Page 70

intimate with the Brand family; but I had never chanced to meet the much-praised young Yalensian, whom the Cary girls had vaunted until I declared myself aweary of his name. It was at the Clifton House, where Mr. Harrison came to call upon my cousins, that our acquaintance began.

We were all interested in what Burton Harrison had to say of the Davises. Every one knew the traditions of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, as handed down from her career as a senator's wife in Washington, in the administrations of Pierce and Buchanan. She was declared to be a woman of warm heart and impetuous tongue, witty and caustic, with a sensitive nature underlying all; a devoted wife and mother, and most gracious mistress of a salon. Miss Margaret Howell, the exceedingly clever sister of Mrs. Davis, afterward Mme. de Stoeurs, of England, was the young lady of the Richmond White House; and it is safe to say that no wittier talk was ever bandied over the teacups in any land than passed daily between the several bright spirits thus assembled at the President's table. Mrs. Davis had been somewhat depressed, on the day of the inauguration, by an arrangement for her progress to Capitol Square made by her negro coachman. When they set out, at a snail's pace, she observed, walking solemnly and with faces of unbroken gloom, on either side of her carriage, four negroes in black clothes, wearing gloves of white cotton. Demanding impatiently of the coachman what in the world this performance meant, she was informed: "This, madam, is the way we always does in Richmond at funerals and sich-like." Mrs. Davis, telling the story inimitably that evening, said she was almost grieved to have to "order the pall-bearers away," so proud were they of their dignified position.

Page 71

Concerning the affairs, big or little, of "The Chief," Mr. Harrison was wont to preserve continual discreet silence. He would say only that the President had the happiest relations with his family, by whom he was revered, incidentally remarking that to accompany the chief on horseback, always his duty, together with some of the aides, was to sit in the saddle indefinitely, in good or bad weather alike, never knowing when they were to bring up at home again, and keeping Mrs. Davis in continual uncertainty as to her dinner-hour, to say nothing of her husband's fate. A familiar and picturesque figure was President Davis in the streets of Richmond from that day forth. From "Richmond Scenes in '62," published in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," I reproduce my sketch of him, which, since it was edited by my husband, I feel may be regarded as of some worth:

"He might be seen daily walking through the Capitol Square from his residence to the executive office in the morning, not to return until late in the afternoon; or riding just before nightfall to visit one or another of the encampments near the city. He was tall, erect, slender, and of a dignified and soldierly bearing, with clear-cut and high-bred features, and of a demeanor of stately courtesy to all. He was clad always in Confederate gray cloth, and wore a soft felt hat with wide brim. Afoot, his step was brisk and firm; in the saddle he rode admirably and with a martial aspect. His early life had been spent in the Military Academy at West Point and upon the then north-western frontier in the Black Hawk War, and he afterward greatly distinguished himself at Monterey and Buena Vista in Mexico; at the time when we knew him everything in his appearance and manner was suggestive of military training. He was reported

Page 72

to feel quite out of place in the office of President, with executive and administrative duties, in the midst of such a war; General Lee always spoke of him as the best of military advisers; his own inclination was to be with the army, and at the first tidings of the sound of a gun, anywhere within reach of Richmond, he was in the saddle and off for the spot - to the dismay of his staff-officers, who never knew at what hour of the night or of the next day they should get back to bed or to a meal."

The stories Burton Harrison told us of his adventures on such excursions were many, and sometimes amusing. For instance, when General Lee crossed the Chickahominy, President Davis, with several staff-officers and his secretary, overtook the column, and, with the secretary of war and a few other non-combatants, forded the river just as the battle of Mechanicsville began. General Lee, surrounded by members of his own staff and other officers, was found a few hundred yards north of the bridge, in the middle of the broad road, mounted and busily engaged in directing the attack then about to be made by a brigade sweeping in line over the fields, to the east of the road and toward Ellerson's Mill, where in a few minutes a hot engagement commenced. Shot, from the enemy's guns out of sight, went whizzing overhead in quick succession, striking every moment nearer the group of horsemen in the road as the gunners improved their range. General Lee observed the President's approach, and was evidently annoyed at what he considered a foolhardy expedition of needless exposure of the head of the government, whose duties were elsewhere. He turned his back for a moment, until Colonel Chilton had been despatched at a gallop with the last

Page 73

direction to the commander of the attacking brigade; then, facing the cavalcade and looking like the god of war indignant, he exchanged with the President a salute, with the most frigid reserve of anything like welcome or cordiality. Then without allowance of opportunity for a word from the President, the general, looking not at him but at the assemblage at large, asked in a tone of irritation:

"Who are all this army of people, and what are they doing here?"

No one moved or spoke, but all eyes were upon the President; everybody perfectly understood that this was an order for him to retire to a place of safety, while the roar of the guns, the rattling fire of musketry, and the bustle of a battle in progress, with troops continually arriving across the bridge to go into action, went on. The President twisted in his saddle, quite taken aback at such a greeting - the general regarding him now with glances of growing severity. After a painful pause the President said, deprecatingly: "It is not my army, General." "It certainly is not my army, Mr. President," was the prompt reply, "and this is no place for it" - in an accent of command. Such a rebuff was a stunner to Mr. Davis, who, however, soon regained his serenity and answered:

"Well, General, if I withdraw, perhaps they will follow," and, raising his hat in another cold salute, he turned his horse's head to ride slowly toward the bridge - seeing, as he turned, a man killed immediately before him by a shot from a gun which at that moment got the range of the road. The President's own staff-officers followed him, as did various others; but he presently drew rein in a stream where the high bank and the bushes concealed him from General Lee's repelling

Page 74

observation, and there remained while the battle raged. The Secretary of War had also made a show of withdrawing, but improved the opportunity afforded by rather a deep ditch on the roadside to conceal himself and his horse for a time from General Lee, who at that moment was more to be dreaded than the enemy's guns.

In the Union raid on Columbia, S. C., in the spring of 1865, Mr. Davis's best-known mount, a white Arabian, was captured with all the horses and mules belonging to General James Chestnut, to whose care the President had entrusted it. I find in my album a letter from General Chestnut to the President, lamenting this occurrence, and saying he ranked all his own losses as nothing beside that of the famous steed.

About March 1, 1862, martial law was proclaimed in Richmond, and from that time till the day of the evacuation we lived amid continually thrilling scenes. Now came the joyful tidings that my brother's ship, the cruiser Nashville, had successfully slipped through the blockading fleet off Beaufort, N. C., and that all on board were well. Her commander, the stately and gallant Captain Robert Pegram, welcomed with acclamation on his return to Richmond, came to call on us at the Clifton, and gave to our eager ears a synopsis of their stirring experiences since leaving Charleston in October. A few days later our midshipman walked in, looking taller, broader, and supremely happy to greet us all again.

The Nashville, intended for the convoy of the Confederate States commissioners, Mason and Slidell, but proving too big, had run the blockade from Charleston to Bermuda, coaled at Bermuda, and made a long voyage of twenty-three days to Southampton, England. In the British Channel, off the Needles, they had burnt and

Page 75

sunk the American merchant-man, Harvey Birch, bringing her men, thirty in number, into Southampton, where they were set at liberty. This exploit and the discussion ensuing in the newspapers caused the Nashville to rise immediately into prominence in England. While they lay in port numberless visits were made to the ship. My brother, standing one day on the quay, saw approaching him "a tall, distinguished-looking man, with a florid face and long smooth chin, whom I knew at once was 'somebody.'" This proved to be no less a personage than Lord Palmerston, Premier of England, who, on his way to visit the queen at Osborn House, had turned aside, unofficially, to make a call upon the commander of the famous Nashville. At his request, my brother took his card in to Captain Pegram, who immediately came out and conducted his lordship to his cabin, where he remained some time, an incident fortunately not getting into print.

Some of the officers of the Nashville repaired at once, on leave, to London, others to Paris. My brother, in company with his close friend and fellow-midshipman, Irving Bullock, of Georgia (uncle of ex-President Roosevelt), ran up to London to see the sights, and two happier lads could not have been found. Drawing their pay in gold, petted and welcomed by sympathetic Britons, and having achieved the éclat of a notice in Punch, they described themselves as "living like fighting chickens generally."

Irving Bullock was declared by his comrades to be "a tall, stalwart fellow, the best in the world, and a splendid officer." Long after the war, when Mr. Bullock, married to an English lady, was living in Liverpool, he would make it a point whenever my brother crossed to England to come out on the tender and welcome

Page 76

his old shipmate, literally with open arms, lifting Clarence off his feet in an exuberant embrace. His death was a sorrow to all who knew him. Mr. Cary has frequently talked of him to Colonel Roosevelt, who remembers his uncle with sincere affection and respect.

London and all England was then under the pillar of cloud of the Prince Consort's death. An incident of the Nashville's stay at Southampton was the arrival of the Trent, having aboard the Confederate ladies of the commissioners' families. My brother had the opportunity of hearing, at first hand, the version given by charming Miss Slidell of her adventure with our mother's first cousin, Lieutenant Donald Fairfax, U. S. N., the young officer sent aboard the Trent to remove the Confederate envoys, whom history has alleged to have been smitten in the face by this spirited and justly wroth young lady! When, in later years, Admiral Fairfax came to visit me at my summer home in Bar Harbor, we did not revert to those long-ago events.

Another happening in port, was the embarcation, for service in Canada, of two crack regiments of the Royal Life Guards, whose officers exchanged entertainment and courtesies with those of the Confederate cruiser. When the two troop-ships finally sailed away, decks crowded, bands playing, colors flying, our midshipman decided that to be the most gallant spectacle seen in all his life.

Very soon this holiday experience was to be exchanged for grim duty. The Queen having declared England to be neutral ground for the two opposing forces, the United States warship Tuscarora, tired of lying in wait outside for the coveted prize in harbor, came in to coal. While they were obliged to wait in port for twenty-four

Page 77

hours stipulated by international law, the Nashville, hoisting what colors she could muster, sailed out to sea, and lost them their precious opportunity. The voyage, extremely bad from start to finish at Bermuda, was yet without encounter with the enemy. More than once, with broken machinery, both paddle-boxes stove in, starboard bulwark carried away, decks and houses continually under water, they almost gave up hope of reaching land. At Bermuda they coaled and repaired the ship. Starting for Fort Macon, at Beaufort, North Carolina, they captured and burnt a schooner, and at six o'clock on a Friday morning, in broad daylight, ran the blockade at that point by means of a ruse, flying the private signal flag of the New York merchant firm, "Spofford & Tileston," under the United States flag.

One of the blockading squadron, believing them to be the United States mail-boat, and thereby neglecting precautions, lowered a boat for mail. The Nashville, by that time inshore of her enemy, hauled down her false colors, ran up the stars and bars, and dashed for Fort Macon at a speed that made the old ship tremble at every jump. Immediately, but in vain, the blockader sent thirty shots after the fleeing cruiser, received with rapturous applause by several thousand Confederate soldiers on the ramparts of the fort!

In April my mother left Culpeper Court House to rejoin me, and we removed from the coal, smoke, and gloom of the Clifton House to lodgings in Miss Clarke's pleasant home in Franklin Street, surrounded by a pretty garden and embowering trees. In Richmond the spring opens with a sudden glory of green leaves, magnolia blooms, and flowering shrubs. My cousins, Hetty and

Page 78

Jennie, were with us under my mother's charge. We had rides into the surrounding country and walks in the woods bordering the river and canal. There was a brief interval of peace following the long winter of disaster and uncertainty.

I had, at the request of Captain B. F. Eshleman, of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, a body of admirable soldiers who had wakened to enthusiasm the daughters of Virginia, made for and sent to them another battle-flag. One morning an orderly arrived at Miss Clarke's, to say the battalion, on its march through Richmond, would pass the house at a given hour, and desired my presence at the front gate, that they might salute the donor of their flag. Punctual to the moment, we stood, a group of ladies, bareheaded under the canopy of green leaves above the sidewalk, I a little in advance, while the travel-stained battalion filed by us. My heart beat high with pride as the officers saluted with their swords, the band played "My Maryland," the tired soldiers sitting on the caissons that dragged wearily through the muddy streets set up a rousing cheer; and there, in the midst of them, taking the April wind with daring, was my banner, dipping low until it passed me!

These were no holiday soldiers. Their gold was tarnished - their colors faded by sun and wind and gallant service - they were veterans on their way to the front, where the call of duty never failed to find the flower of Louisiana.

In Captain William Miller Owen's spirited book, "In Camp and Battle With the Washington Artillery," occurs a passage describing the battalion as it went into battle at Malvern Hill, a short time after: "This is a supreme moment in the history of the Washington Artillery -

Page 79

the first time it ever moved in full armament, with its four batteries, to the battle-field. What a glorious sight! See the sixteen guns! What beauties - rifles and Napoleons taken from the enemy at Manassas and Seven Pines. Sixteen caissons - thirty-two carriages in all - nearly three hundred men and two hundred horses. What a sight to gladden a soldier's eye! In front of all rides the colonel on his black stallion, 'Rebel,' a pace behind rides the adjutant; then the chief bugler and the guidon-bearer carrying the little scarlet banner with the blue cross, the gift of Constance Cary. Just behind came the batteries, the captains riding in front of each."

Mr. Sumpter Turner, of the Washington Artillery, writes, in 1908: "This flag, now in the arsenal at New Orleans, was the one we carried through the war."

I went to a war-wedding at the Monumental Church on the site of that old-time tragedy, the burning of the Richmond Theatre, when Miss Adeline Deane, a beautiful blonde, daughter of Dr. Deane, was married to Dr. Lyons. There was a reception afterward at Dr. Deane's house in Grace Street, crowded with rusty uniforms. A daughter of this couple is Mrs. Swanson, wife of the recent Governor of Virginia.

On coming out of church one Sunday we heard the crushing news of the fall of New Orleans and of the capture of our iron-clads. The information coming from the lips of Mrs. Randolph, wife of our kinsman, General George Randolph, Secretary of War, was undisputable. Mr. Jules de Saint Martin, of New Orleans, brother-in-law of Mr. Benjamin, who was walking with us, made no remark.

"This must hit you hard," said some one to him.

Page 80

"I am ruined, voilà tout!" was the answer, with a characteristic gesture of throwing care to the winds.

This debonair little gentleman was one of the great favorites in war society in Richmond. His cheery spirit, wit, and exquisite courtesy made friends for him everywhere; and although his nicety of dress, after the Parisian style, was the subject of comment when he first appeared upon our streets, he joined the volunteers before Richmond and roughed it pluckily in the trenches as a private. Years after, M. de Saint Martin, calling on my mother and me in Paris, told a story of camp life in the freezing trenches, when on one occasion Colonel T. L Bayne called him away from his place of bivouac on the ground to come with him, bidding him tell nobody, as he had found a spot where they could "sleep warm." Eagerly Saint Martin followed his guide to be introduced, in the wintry dark, to an enclosure full of snuffling, grunting creatures, among whom they lay down in oozing mud; it was a pigsty, nothing less, and there they slept till morning!" It is true that their noses disturbed me now and then," said the narrator, "but que voalez vous! I was freezing!"

Now nothing was talked of but the capture of New Orleans. The stout spirit of the South had received its most telling blow! My brother, the midshipman, had just before this been ordered to what was considered one of the finest commands in the Confederate States navy - the new iron-clad Mississippi, then building in New Orleans, and expected to sweep the Northern coast. On the day before the United States fleet passed in to the taking of the forts, Clarence had been sent in charge of a boat-load of deserters and ordnance to a Confederate States ship in the river. That day, "just for fun," as

Page 81

he expressed it, he and another middy accompanied Lieutenant Reed, going on duty at Fort Jackson, under a hot fire of shelling. While crossing the moat around the fort in a canoe, a 13-inch mortar shell fell near them, half filling their craft with water. No wonder the commandant of the fort, in greeting them, asked the two midshipmen, in vigorous terms, "What are you young fools doing here, anyway?" They dodged about for a while in the bomb-proof casements, listening to the swift rush downward through the air of shells "that sounded as motor-cars do now" (says the projector of this foolhardy expedition), and then pulled back against the fierce strength of the Mississippi current under the same fire, passing a wounded alligator, hit by a piece of shell.

Aboard the steamship Star of the West (the vessel that drew the opening shots of the war at Charleston and which was seized off Indianola, Texas, in 1861, and was later sunk by the Confederates in the Yazoo, near Fort Pemberton), next day, saw my brother and other midshipmen in charge of six millions in gold and silver coin from the mints and banks of New Orleans, with three millions in paper money, over which their orders were to keep guard with drawn swords, hurrying away from doomed New Orleans, where along the levees burning ships and steamers and bales of cotton stretched in a fiery crescent. Had they delayed a day, they would all have been swept away in the enemy's resistless onslaught. Keeping just ahead of the enemy's fleet, they reached Vicksburg, thence went overland to Mobile, where their charge was delivered up in safety, my brother returning to Richmond, where he was assigned by Secretary Mallory to the somewhat light duty of aid to the Secretary - "principally

Page 82

reading newspapers at the Navy Department and once escorting Mrs. Mallory to Drury's Bluff," as recorded by himself.

We had come to the end of May, when the eyes of the whole continent turned toward Richmond. On the 31st Johnston assaulted the Federals, who had advanced to Seven Pines! It was so near that the first guns sent our hearts into our mouths, like a sudden loud knocking at one's door at night. The women left in Richmond had, with few exceptions, husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers in the fight. I have never seen a finer exhibition of calm courage than they showed in this baptism of fire. No one wept or moaned aloud. All went about their task of preparing for the wounded, making bandages, scraping lint, improvising beds. Night brought a lull in the frightful cannonading. We threw ourselves dressed upon our beds to get a little rest before the morrow.

During the night began the ghastly procession of wounded brought in from the field. Every vehicle the city could produce supplemented the military ambulances. Many slightly wounded men, so black with gunpowder as to be unrecognizable, came limping in on foot. All next day, women with white faces flitted bareheaded through the street and hospitals, looking for their own. Churches and lecture-rooms were thrown open for volunteer ladies sewing and filling the rough beds called for by the surgeons. There was not enough of anything to meet the sudden appalling call of many strong men stricken unto death. Hearing that my cousin, Reginald Hyde, was reported wounded, two of us girls volunteered to help his mother to search for him through the lower hospitals. We tramped down Main Street through the hot sun over burning pavements,

Page 83

from one scene of horror to another, bringing up finally at the St. Charles Hotel, a large old building. What a sight met our eyes! Men in every stage of mutilation, lying waiting for the surgeons upon bare boards, with haversacks or army blankets, or nothing, beneath their heads. Some gave up the weary ghost as we passed them by. All were suffering keenly and needing ordinary attention. To be there empty-handed nearly broke our hearts. Bending down over bandaged faces stiff with blood and thick with flies, nothing did we see or hear of the object of our search, who, I am glad to say, arrived later at his mother's home, to be nursed by her to a speedy recovery.

The impression of that day was ineffaceable. It left me permanently convinced that nothing is worth war!

My mother was now in her element - expert, silent, incomparable as a nurse, she was soon on regular duty in an improvised hospital. I spent that night at the window of my room panting for fresh air, and longing to do something, anything, to help. The next day my friend, Emily Voss, and I had the pride and pleasure of having assigned to our care, under an older woman, two rooms containing fifteen wounded men lying on pallets around the floor. From that moment we were happier, although physically tried to the utmost. Gradually, some order came out of the chaos of overtasked hospital service. The churches gave their seat cushions to make beds; the famous old wine-cellars of private houses sent their priceless Madeira, port, sherry, and brandy; everybody's cook was set to turning out dainties, and for our own men we begged unblushingly until they were fairly well supplied. At night, carrying palm-leaf fans, we sauntered out into the streets scarcely less hot than in full sunshine. Once, literally panting for a fresh

Page 84

breath of air, a party of us went with an official of the Capitol up through the vapor bath of many steep stairs, to emerge on a little platform on the summit of the building. There - oh! joy - were actually breezes that brought relief. There we sat and looked down on the city that could not sleep, and talked, or listened to the voice of the river, that I seem to hear yet over the tramp of rusty battalions, the short, imperious stroke of the alarm bell, the clash of passing bands, the gallop of horsemen, the roar of battle, the moan of hospitals, the stifled note of sorrow - all the Richmond war sounds, sacred and unforgettable.

Day after day one heard the wailing dirge of military bands preceding a soldier's funeral. One could not number those sad pageants in our leafy streets: the coffin with its cap and sword and gloves, the riderless horse with empty boots in the stirrups of an army saddle! Such soldiers as could be spared from the front marching with arms reversed and crape-shrouded banners, passers-by standing with bare bent heads.

Funerals by night were common. A solemn scene was to be enacted in the July moonlight at Hollywood when they laid to rest my own uncle, Lieutenant Reginald Fairfax, of whom in the old service of the United States, as in that of the Confederate navy, it was said "he was a spotless knight." My uncle, who had commanded a battery on the James, was prostrated by malarial fever and taken to Richmond, where he died at the Clifton House, tenderly nursed by his sisters. He was to my brother and me a second father. His property, fortunately so invested in Northern securities as to be unavailable during the war, was left between his three sisters, thereby enabling us, after peace was declared, to resume a life of comfort, when many of our Confederate

Page 85

friends were in absolute want. My other uncle, Doctor Fairfax, of Alexandria, had, in the abundance of his belief in the Confederacy, put all of his fortune into Confederate bonds, and suffered a total loss of it.

A personal incident of the fight of Seven Pines was a visit during that morning from a young officer, sent into town from the battle-field with important despatches to the President. Whilst awaiting the reply, he came, with his orderly in attendance, to say a word to me, and as I stood with him at our garden gate the cannonading suddenly increased tremendously.

"That's my place, not this. If I don't come out of it, remember I tried to do my duty," he said with a hasty handshake, and springing into his saddle, the horse rearing fiercely, he waved his cap and spurred away, the orderly clattering after him. It was the last time I ever saw him. In one of the battles of July he fell, leading his men in a splendid charge, and in him many bright hopes and a noble future were extinguished.

Page 86

CHAPTER V

BEFORE the seven days' battles in front of Richmond were delivered, my mother insisted upon my going with my aunt to Botetourt Springs, in the south-western hill country of Virginia, in a region that seemed to our strained and weary gaze, to our ears jaded with sounds of battle and hospital, akin to paradise. Leaving the train, we drove in an archaic stagecoach through a fertile valley between bluest mountains, under summer skies with little silver clouds afloat "on the broad field of heaven's bright wilderness." At the wayside hamlets where we stopped to water horses, stolid country folk asked vague questions about the "fighting down Richmond way," more interested in the non-arrival of a jug of molasses or a sack of meal than in the issue of the battles. When we arrived at our destination, a young heart in spite of itself rebounded from dreadful pressure. I felt like a bird that has flown through storm-clouds to rest in some leaf-protected nest. What joy to lie down at night without fear of being awakened by shot or shell or rattle of musketry, or by summons to the window to hear of a casualty to a friend or relative - to get up to idle days of rambling in the woods, of freedom from surroundings of mangled and fevered humanity one was powerless to save!

Such, at least, should have been my attitude of mind. As a fact, after a few days' absence from Richmond I longed madly, wildly, to be back again. News penetrated to us but grudgingly. We wrested it piecemeal

Page 87

from the slow speech of passing stage-drivers, and from weekly newspapers. We lived from mail to mail.

No privilege on earth seemed so great as sharing sorrow with those we loved. From a wounded cousin, who arrived on furlough, we heard of the fall in battle of General Turner Ashby, "the stainless, fearless hero," as President Davis called him; of whom General Stonewall Jackson wrote in his report of the cavalry combat: "As a partisan officer, I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial; his power of endurance inexhaustible; his tone of character heroic; and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy."

From childhood I had heard tales of the dashing and hard-riding Turner Ashby, of Fauquier, and had felt proud when he said nice things to me once at the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs. All the men in our family knew and lamented him. He was like one of the old-time warriors, born not made.

Of that summer of sorrow I recall one bright episode - a ride on horseback of seventy miles, to and from the Natural Bridge of Virginia, with a stop on the way at the handsome old mansion of the Andersons, where our party was hospitably entertained. We felt that in that blest abode of peaceful plenty war could not penetrate; yet, in the next year, the house was burnt and the whole beautiful region surrounding it laid waste by the firebrand, General Hunter, in his retreat before Early and Breckinridge.

Our road lay between a succession of noble views of hill and dale, the weather was perfect, and the before- mentioned spirits of youth overflowed happily. We rode races, jumped hurdles, improvised tourneys, spearing at a ring of plaited willow hung upon a bough. I

Page 88

wonder if a girl of to-day would believe that in addition to a haversack with necessaries of the toilet strapped to my saddle, I carried, hidden under the folds of a long, ample riding skirt, a mysterious parcel like a cage collapsed and twisted into a figure 8 - the hoop-skirt, without which no self-respecting female of that day ventured to appear, save on horseback!

We were upon the Natural Bridge without knowing it, of course, and I needs must alarm our party out of its wits by emulating a certain venturesome cousin, and old sweetheart of my father's, Mary Chapman, handed down in local story as having stood waving her handkerchief on the cut-off stump of a tree projecting above the precipice. This lady was grandmother of the lovely Ella, Marquise de Podestad, renowned for her charm and beauty in Washington and Madrid, who in her later days became lady in waiting to ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, and died at Biarritz after a life of many sorrows.

On our return from this expedition we heard of the renewal of fighting before Richmond. My aunt heard, too, of the alarming illness of her brother Reginald, in Richmond. She was eager to go to him, and as to our convalescent colonel, wild horses could not have bound him to remain! I, only, was left under care of the principal of the Hollins Institute and his kind family. How I begged to go back with the others!

Next came the awful battle week - seven days of furious fighting close to the gates of Richmond. During the battle of Mechanicsville, the President and many of the cabinet, with hundreds of spectators, watched its progress from the encircling hills. The roofs of the high buildings in the town were also crowded with lookers-on, and the enemy's balloons were plainly visible hovering over the field. After dark that night, the firing

Page 89

still went on, and numbers of people saw the magnificent sight of bombs bursting in air and the flash of thousands of muskets, accompanied by the incessant roar of artillery. To go home from such a spectacle was to seek a bed, but not to sleep, and dawn next day brought a renewal of the terrible experience, while the streets were again and again filled with ambulance trains, the result of the day before.

And now a great pæan of gratitude went up to General Lee, acclaimed as the savior of Richmond from destruction, the supreme leader to whom all eyes turned for protection from our foe. My family letters were full of pride that our old neighbor at Arlington had thus risen to the forepeak of glory in the Confederacy. Every one, too, was talking of the wonders of Stonewall Jackson's generalship; the two great Virginians seemed to be riding on a wave of popular glory.

We chafed at absence from the centre of all interest. Had not Commodore Sydney Smith Lee, our midshipman's chief in the Navy Department, sent my brother to me to recruit after an attack of malarial fever, I could hardly have borne the strain, as news of my uncle Reginald's death came at the same time. Then my mother gave herself a brief rest. Worn out with grief and nursing, with new lines in her sweet face, and eyes full of unshed tears, she came to her children. Nothing seemed hopeless after that!

When it was certain that our boys were marching across the border into Maryland, and that, save for my brother on sick leave, every male creature belonging to our numerous "Connection" was in the advance, what wonder that we strained at the leash of patience till it burst. No longer able to endure peace in Botetourt, back we all went to hot, dusty, uncomfortable Richmond.

Page 90

There we found all thoughts fixed on Maryland, all hearts dilating proudly with oft-repeated tales of victory to our arms. Letters drifted to us telling of the hardships of the march; of subsistence on a diet of parched corn, or corn plucked and eaten raw as did the disciples theirs, of old; of bare feet; of burning thirst quenched by lapping from roadside pools and cowtracks; of ragged clothes and dirt intolerable, borne until some blessed stream or river gave them a chance to dip.

Many of these privates in the ranks were mothers' darlings, hitherto lapped in the luxury of lavish Southern homes - numbers of them just ready to enter the university. One of his comrades told us of the youngest son of the commanding general, a private in the Rockbridge Artillery, at the battle of Sharpsburg, where his battery had suffered from having three guns disabled and losing many men and horses. Having but one gun left, they were ordered out of the fight. Coming unexpectedly upon General Lee and his aide, the general looked at first with unrecognizing eyes upon the smoke-stained goblin who revealed himself his son. Upon hearing that their remnant was ordered again to the front for duty, young Lee protested: "Why, General, you are not going to send us in again?"

"Yes, my son," he answered smiling, "you must all do what you can to help to drive those people back." Another incident, told in a soldier's letter, was when Private Robert E. Lee, shabby and travel-worn, appeared at the commanding general's head-quarters barefooted, carrying in his hand the ragged remnant of a pair of shoes. "I only wanted to ask, sir, if I might draw a new pair, as I can't march in these."

"Have the men of your company received permission to draw shoes yet?" asked the general.

Page 91

"No, sir; I believe not yet."

"Then go back to your battery, my boy, and wait until they have."

After recording these anecdotes, I received a visit at Belvoir House, Virginia, from Captain Robert E. Lee (strongly resembling his illustrious father) with his wife and little girl, Ann Carter Lee. He says the Rockbridge Artillery stories are in the main true. He doesn't remember about the shoes, but it might well have been. What he does recall, and has told in his own most interesting book about General Lee, was once when, after one of the battles before Richmond, black with dirt and smoke, he had crawled under his caisson on the open battle-field, trying to get a sleep, some fellow poked him awake with a sponge- stick and said: "Come out o' that, will you! Here's somebody wants to see you!"

On emerging, he was confronted by General Lee, in speckless full uniform, mounted upon his charger and surrounded by his staff with some distinguished foreign visitors. Again the general did not recognize the begrimed being who modestly presented himself, but when he did so a loving smile broke over his face and he spoke to him cheerily, saying he had ridden by to see if he were safe and was glad he was well through it!

Captain Lee tells me it required some nerve to meet the curious glances bestowed upon him by all those clean and well-equipped people!

If of such stuff the leader, what of the troops? Such stories, passed from lip to lip on bivouac, or written home to anxious parents, did a world of good in heartening those who had to bear the same hardships.

The tale of the Maryland campaign had about it a dash and daring peculiarly attractive to young minds.

Page 92

Our blood coursed hot in answer to the news of Stonewall Jackson's repulse of Banks at Cedar Mountain; of Jeb Stuart's wonderful raid, circling the entire Federal army; of Jackson's capture of Union stores at Manassas; of the bloody battles of Groveton, second Bull Run, and Chantilly.

During their two hundred miles of march in one short month, fighting and skirmishing continually, our friends went barefooted, or with their feet in raw cowhides, living on half rations, but their letters bore no complaint. Had not their beloved General Lee said to them: "History records few examples of greater fortitude and endurance than this army has exhibited." After that, what did little things matter?

About one of my own nearest of kin, young Randolph Fairfax, private in the Rockbridge Artillery in this campaign, his friend and messmate, now the Rev. Lancelot Blackford, head-master of the Episcopal High School in Fairfax County, wrote:

"I have seen him when detailed as teamster from the 15th of July to the last of August, after a fatiguing day's march and just as we were about to go to rest, called up to go in the dark for forage to feed his teams. He bore all exacting duties such as watering, feeding, currying and harnessing horses with such equanimity and sweetness as to strike his associates. The point on which officers and men chiefly agreed in admiring Fairfax was his unswerving devotion to duty whether in camp or in action. Members of the company would remark with emphasis, 'What a good soldier Fairfax is!'" The quality of men in action under whip and spur of a certain animal excitement does not always bear the fine test of such experience as this; I cite it as illustrating a phase of war life on the Southern side necessarily overshadowed in

Page 93

history by the conspicuous achievements of the leaders. In John Codman Ropes's splendid "Story of the Civil War" I find the following:

"The population (of the Southern States), almost wholly occupied in agricultural pursuits, was necessarily accustomed to life in the open air, to horses, to hunting and fishing, to exposure, to unusual physical exertion from time to time. Such conditions of life naturally foster a martial spirit. Then the aristocratic régime which prevailed in the slave-holding States was conducive to that preference of military over civil pursuits which has generally been characteristic of aristocracies. The young men of the better classes eagerly embraced the profession of arms as offering by far the noblest opportunities for the exercise of the higher virtues, and for allowing the greatest distinction in the State. . . . Endowed with a marvellous capacity of endurance, whether of physical exertion or lack of food, uncomplaining, ever ready for a fight, the soldiers of the South were first-rate material in the hands of the able officers who so generally commanded them.... It cannot be doubted that the Southern volunteers frequently scored successes over their Northern adversaries for the simple and sole reason that to them, the game of war, was not only a perfectly legitimate pursuit, but one of the noblest, if not the noblest that could claim the devotion of brave and free men. They went into it con amore; they gave to its duties their most zealous attention; and they reaped a full measure of the success which those who throw themselves with all their hearts into any career deserve and generally attain."

We were in Richmond when that desperate fight was fought at Antietam, of which a war historian has written, "It is likely that more men were killed and wounded

Page 94

on the 17th of September than on any single day in the whole war." Twelve thousand men killed on each side! Twenty-four thousand of the hope of the great continent, the joy of their homes, North and South, left dead upon a single battle-field!

By this time, in some degree keyed up to endurance of the repeated shocks of war, we went quietly about our tasks of daily life. Except for the numbers of people swathed in black met in its thoroughfares, Richmond showed little trace of its battle summer. As yet the pinch of the times did not greatly affect the home commissariat, although we refugees had to be satisfied with simple living in other people's rooms, since a whole house to ourselves could not be thought of. When asked into private houses we found tables laid, as of old, with shining silver and porcelain and snowy damask, although the bill of fare was unpretending. The custom of giving the best of everything to the hospitals went on till the end of the war. Society was reinforced by a number of agreeable and high-bred women from all parts of the South, many of whom had previously graced a wider social sphere in Europe and America. Its peculiar attraction lay in the total absence of pretence. People thus bound by a common tie of interest and poignant sympathy tolerated no assumption of superior fashion in any of their number. In such an atmosphere flourishes best the old-fashioned grace of neighborliness. To the very last, each refugee family shared what it had with the other; while Richmond folk threw open their broad, delightful homes to receive their friends, with or without gastronomic entertainment; lent furniture to those in need, and sent dainty little dishes to the sick. All rejoiced in each other's joys, grieved with each other's griefs. Hardships in such company were lightened

Page 95

of their weight. Sorrows so shared were easier to bear.

From our midshipman, now aboard the receiving-ship Indian Chief, in Charleston harbor, came a stirring account of a night of mutiny aboard, due to the crew breaking into the spirit-room and possessing themselves of its contents, then going mad with drink. For a time the officers kept the drunken brutes in order with their cutlasses; several were wounded, some fell down a hatchway, breaking legs and arms, and then the rest were secured. Next morning the ship presented a singular appearance, prisoners in bonds on all sides, decks encumbered with seamen bucked and gagged, and the rigging freely adorned with men triced by their thumbs!

Next, our lad was transferred to the "Ladies' gunboat," the gift of the women of Charleston to the Confederate States Government, an iron-clad carrying four guns, called Palmetto State - an experience of bitter cold, in November weather with no fires aboard. Later in the winter Palmetto State went outside Charleston bar, in company with the C. S. S. Chickamauga, and attacked the blockading fleet. In their "metallic coffin," they ran up toward the U. S. S. Mercedita, in the dim light of early morning, and rammed her with their bow. "A crash, a smash, a broadside" - so runs the letter I copy here - "and the Mercedita surrendered, sinking. We had a running fight all day, but slipped away unharmed, and came back by Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, receiving their salutes." That night Charleston could not make enough of her defenders!

In December, 1862, Fredericksburg was fought. In that notable victory to Confederate arms our family met with an irreparable loss. My uncle's son, Randolph Fairfax, aged eighteen, a private in the ranks, fell

Page 96

beside his gun and was buried by his comrades after dark upon the spot. This youth, handsome and gifted, serious and purposeful beyond his years, the flower of his school and college, in all things worthy the traditions of his warlike ancestry, was killed by a piece of shell entering the brain, as he stood by his gun at sunset under a hot fire from the enemy's batteries. A day or two later his body, still wrapped in his soldier's blanket, was disinterred and brought through freezing weather to Richmond, where he was placed, uncoffined, on a bier before the altar in St. James's Church. An ever fresh memory is that of the sweet and noble face so unchanged, after two days' burial. Save for the cruel mark on the temple made by the piece of shell, and the golden curls matted with the clay of his rude sepulchre, he might have been asleep. He wore still the coarse flannel shirt, stained with battle smoke, in which he fell, and across him was thrown the blanket that had been his winding-sheet. When it was proposed to my uncle that the body be dressed again, he answered:

"No. Let my son sleep his long sleep as he fell at the post of duty." And thus, his coffin draped with the flag he had died for, Randolph Fairfax was borne to his rest in Hollywood. From camp at Fredericksburg, on December 28th, General Lee wrote to my uncle the words that follow:

"I have grieved most deeply at the death of your noble son. I have watched his conduct from the commencement of the war and have pointed with pride to the patriotism, self-denial and manliness of character he has exhibited. I had hoped that an opportunity would have occurred for the promotion he deserved; not that it would have elevated him, but have shown that his

Page 97

devotion to duty was appreciated by his country. Such an opportunity would undoubtedly have occurred; but he has been translated to a better world, for which his purity and piety have eminently fitted him. You do not require to be told how great his gain. It is the living for whom I sorrow. I beg you will offer to Mrs. Fairfax and your daughters, my heartfelt sympathy, for I know the depth of their grief. That God may give you and them strength to bear this great affliction, is the earnest prayer of your early friend.

"R. E. LEE."

Our stricken family, like many another, felt how nobly the great leader helped to bind up the wounds of war by words like those!

General Lee certainly united extraordinary qualities. I think it was Sir Walter Scott who somewhere said: "My voice shall be for that general who will possess those qualities which are necessary to command men like us. High born he must be or we shall lose our rank in obeying him - wise and skillful, or we shall endanger the safety of our people - bravest of the brave, or he shall peril our own honour; temperate, firm and manly, to keep us united. Such is the man to command us!" He might have added, "gentle as a woman in conveying sympathy."

In the latter part of February, 1863, it became necessary for either my mother or my aunt to carry to Washington certain papers connected with the inheritance coming to them from the estate of their late brother, in order to secure much-needed provision for the clouded and uncertain future of their families. After some debate it was decided that Mrs. Hyde should be the one

Page 98

to go; and I, with the love of adventure coursing through my veins, induced them to let me accompany my aunt. I should never allow a girl of my own to do it, assuredly - but "autre temps, autre moeurs" - and then, I knew not fear.

Bidding farewell to those friends in Richmond who looked upon us as predestined to a Northern prison, we went first to stop with our friends, the owners of Belpré, near Culpeper, not far from the winter-quarters of General Fitzhugh Lee's division of cavalry. Here we remained while casting about us for ways and means to cross the border and get into Alexandria. Not only were the chances of war in favor of our capture on the way - that did not appall us, since we were intent strictly on private business - but from every side came gloomy tales of swollen rivers, deserted villages, a war-ravaged country liable to forays from prowling vagabonds of either army, and the likelihood of running upon a skirmish at any moment. Worst of all, it seemed impossible to hire a conveyance.

Waiting, however, in a pleasant country house near the head-quarters of a crack cavalry division, with a dozen gallant knights ready to do one's lightest bidding, had its endurable side. There were visits to and from camp; rides, shooting-matches - "General Fitz" presenting me with a tiny Smith and Wesson revolver captured by himself, which he taught me to wear and use - and, at evening, gatherings around the big wood fire at Belpré, when we laughed and talked and sang . . . !

At this distance of time, it is not telling tales out of school to say that the leader of fun in those evenings was the major-general commanding, future governor of the commonwealth of Virginia, and years later a trusted chief of the United States forces in the Spanish-American

Page 99

war. One was as sure of jollity and good-fellowship in "General Fitz" off duty as of soldierly dash tempered by the wisdom of a born leader when in action.

It is pleasant to note that to the last of his varied soldierly experience this General Lee retained the wide measure of popularity with the masses that had always been his portion. It was observed that during the progress of the procession at President Cleveland's inauguration ceremonies, General Fitzhugh Lee, riding a magnificent horse, provided for his use by a loyal old friend, a citizen of Alexandria, was more continuously applauded when passing down the lines than any other person present saving the hero of the day; and this was apt to be the case in all his public appearances.

One day, when returning from a visit to a friend, I rode from Culpeper Court House to Belpré with the general, a darky sent ahead on mule-back, detailed to carry my other hat and dressing-bag, a very demon of mischief entered into my escort. In a wood road, where no one could see him, he rode standing in the saddle, picking dried wayside flowers at a gallop, backward, forward, in every attitude that man can assume upon a steed, while forcing my horse to keep pace with his "stunts," as he called them, acquired in his old army life upon the plains. Presently, espying our Mercury, despatched some time before, slowly jogging down the narrow road ahead of us, he put spurs to his horse, uttered an Indian war-whoop, and bore down upon him at a run. The negro, terrified by the onslaught, not stopping to inquire into its nature, lashed his mule and set off like the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, I, overpowered with laughter, left far behind.

Looking around us for an opportunity of entering the Union lines at Fairfax, we heard of a lady living at

Page 100

some distance from Culpeper who had the same end in view as ours. To visit this lady and propose joining forces and sharing expenses in the expedition, it was necessary to ride twelve miles across country as the crow flies, for which purpose General Fitz Lee offered me his mare, Refugitta - a beautiful high-spirited little creature I had ridden several times before - and the escort of his aid and cousin, Major Robert Mason. We set off in high feather on a sunshiny morning of February, but were overtaken by a tremendous storm of wind and rain, changing to snow, when remote from any possibility of shelter, in a desolate part of the country, all fences gone, a deserted negro cabin here and there the only sign of past habitation. Very soon my habit was wet through, my gloves were clinging to fingers so cold I could hardly hold the bridle. When Major Mason, himself looking like a young Father Christmas, finally insisted that I should get down for a while and walk, to restore circulation, I slipped like a log from my saddle, so stiff that my members refused to do their office. The short cape and military gauntlets of my comrade had already been forced upon me.

Thus equipped, we tramped back and forth, beneath a grove of pines, till the fury of the gale was spent. By and by the wind lessened, the snow fell sparsely, and we resumed our saddles. Soon, over on the slope of a near-by mountain, we descried a large farm-house with - oh! joy - a blue curl of smoke issuing from the chimney. Making all speed, we reached the goal, which, indeed, proved to be the dwelling we were in search of. Never have a big wood fire, hot drinks, food, and a rest between blankets, while my habit was dried, seemed such a boon to me! To my disappointment, I found that the mistress of the house had already set out "to

Page 101

run the blockade," and that she would have been "only too glad" of our company. I will not aver that the twelve miles of ride home that day was not a trial to my endurance. My comrade, a hardened cavalryman, said afterward that he spent his time wondering if girls were not of tougher build than men. I should have died of shame to confess how often I longed to break down and say I couldn't stand it a minute longer. Happily, after a good night's rest, I was none the worse for my expedition.

At last General Fitz Lee told my aunt that from the report of scouts he could venture to send us in a head-quarters ambulance, with a guard of picked men, as far as Warrenton. Our families being so closely allied in friendship for many a year, he felt and appreciated the importance of our mission, and most kindly desired to furnish the transfer to Riggs's Bank, in Washington, of the papers my aunt carried upon her person.

To Mrs. Hyde was apportioned a split-bottomed chair in a comfortable ambulance drawn by the best mules at head-quarters. To me was again allotted my favorite "Refugitta," the general and several staff-officers forming a gay cortège of escort for a certain distance on our way, and Major Mason put in charge of the expedition. It was a brilliant, cloudless day in late February, with a promise of spring in the air, when we set out. Long before reaching Hazel River, our first crossing of a risky ford, the general and his aides had taken leave, after wishing us a hearty bon voyage. On the banks of Hazel River, an angry, turbid little stream, boiling between red clay banks, we were obliged to possess our souls in patience for half a day, waiting until it was safe to attempt a crossing for the ambulance. Beyond the swelling flood we were to meet somewhere the escort of

Page 102

twenty-five cavalrymen, assigned to guard us into Warrenton and sent on the day before to see that the way was clear. In the society of a garrulous miller and his spouse, who told many weird tales of skirmishes around them during the past months, we remained till afternoon, when the miller announced that though it was "still a leetle resky for wimmin folks crossin'," he "reckoned we mout try."

Consigned to a chair in the ambulance, on which I was glad enough to climb and crouch before the end, we began the passage of the Red Sea. Major Mason and his orderly, kneeling in their saddles, rode by the heads of our mules, tugging and adjuring them. At one point both mules and horses became lost to sight, save for their heads, brave little Refugitta following the orderly. A sticky fluid lapped around our feet. Shouts rent the air. A sort of hurricane of strong language burst from our united protectors. Our mules were swimming.

Perched on our chairs, trying not to listen to the "music in the air," we at last felt our wheels grate upon a pebbly bottom. A long, strong tug, accompanied by more language, and we were safe, if moist, upon a miry bank! "You've jist got to coax a muel," said our driver blandly, turning in his seat.

"Is that the way you coax in the Army of Northern Virginia?" we asked, looking around rebukingly on the chief guardian of our party. But he was mysteriously absent, and did not show again till ready to help me upon Refugitta's back. Bounding along in a swift, even gallop over a smooth wood road, we spoke in undertones, for we were now on debatable ground, where no one knew what an hour might bring forth in the way of a surprise.

Page 103

Approaching Jeffersontown, a poor deserted hamlet where we were to pass the night, the major halted the convoy while he rode forward to investigate. It was too dark to distinguish faces. From a forsaken smithy upon a little knoll, we saw issue two or three military figures, showing black against a streak of yellow lingering in the western sky. Simultaneously, a challenge, an answer, and a cheer! It was our bodyguard on bivouac, waiting, uncertain as to the cause of our delay. They surrounded and preceded us, as we went hopefully forward to the sleeping- quarters they had secured in a dwelling not far off. To the ladies a bedroom was given, the major had another, while the escort slept on their arms in the hallway below.

The family owning the house were ardent secessionists, who made us welcome to their best. Two nights before, they had less willingly provided refreshment for a party of Union cavalry. One could never tell, they said, when the blue-coats might ride up, or when the gray. Not a sound, however, broke the silence of that wintry night. When we came down, next morning, it was to find a snapping fire of logs, around which gathered, in cheerful sunshine, a circle of tall, bearded fellows, who rose up and stood smiling at our approach. A good country breakfast of "hog and hominy," with hot coffee, had already been served to them. While the same fare, with corn-dodgers, was being prepared for us, we made individual acquaintance with our manly guards.

Off again, over ground every inch of which knew the ring of troopers' steel and the clash of sudden conflict. Two scouts preceding, the rest formed into a double line, I riding midway with the major, the ambulance following. Snow began to fall, and the deep woods were transformed into a fairy-land of beauty, powdered

Page 104

branches meeting overhead, a white mantle resting lightly underfoot upon the carpet of last year's leaves and moss. If there were a fallen branch ahead of me, a dozen hands were stretched out to remove it. A big, rough trooper rode up and begged me to put over my wet gloves the woolen mittens his wife had knit for him at home. There was no wind, and I did not mind the snow. Never would I have exchanged this royal progress for the tame comfort of the inside of the ambulance.

"One mo' ribber for to cross!" sang out somebody ahead, and this time I begged to keep on my saddle, effecting successfully the passage of a chafing stream. Nearing Warrenton, we left the warm shelter of the woods for a turnpike road, where every movement must be one of caution. Our men, alert, speechless, eager, did not relax their vigilance till one of the scouts, riding back at a gallop, announced the way free into the village.

Clattering up to the door of the hotel, we found rooms and supper. To my sorrow, our escort was dispersed into the countryside to seek quarters less exposed. And now, a long farewell to all our greatness! Into thin air melted the pageant of the days before. Vanished our plumed cavaliers, our bounding steeds, our mules and equipage! Henceforward we must encounter for ourselves the perils of the road, stealing like marauders into our own county, where our people had been rooted like the oaks around their homes.

We hired a country cart of the old-time hooded variety, wherein, drawn by mules and enthroned on straw, we made creeping progress toward Centreville. On the road we passed a tired woman carrying her baby, a crying child tugging at her skirts, driven by starvation, she

Page 105

said, to go inside the Union lines. We naturally picked them up, and the hours that followed were hardly cheerful. Sleeping at a poor farm-house that night, we awoke to find a party of Federal soldiers ringed around it, who proceeded to search the premises. When we got downstairs the officer in charge was waiting at the breakfast-table. Although they were in pursuit of some one more important, it was necessary for him to know who we were and what our business there. "Property owners in Fairfax County, going to their home on matters of private business," did not seem to suffice him as an explanation. We must come with him to report at United States head-quarters in Centreville.

Lacking other means of advance, we then hired the only vehicle of the establishment, a pole on four wheels, drawn by two oxen; and balanced upon this, our trunks bound on somehow by the depressed Confederate sympathizer who drove us, a bayonetted guard walking on either side, we superbly entered the village of Centreville. At head-quarters the officials in charge made a thoroughly conscientious effort to penetrate our disguise of innocence and stamp us guilty, but the case baffled them. A full examination of our luggage failed to develop anything save the fact that Confederate principles were antagonistic in a marked degree to the theory of personal adornment. In the perplexity of the situation, they decided to send us on as prisoners of war to Brigadier-General Hayes, stationed at Union Mills, on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, whence, they said, parties of "refugees from the rebel lines" were daily expedited to Alexandria.

The bitter cold drive of six miles to Union Mills in a little open trap, plunging up and down in deep ruts of frozen clay cut by army wagons in a heavy soil, or going

Page 106

at a snail's pace between six stolid Germans, holding their bayonets as they marched on either side of us, was actually the most painful experience of our adventure. My aunt, with her stately figure and beautiful clear profile, in her mourning garb, sitting so calm and self-controlled amid her strange surroundings, reminded me of some grande dame of the French Revolution going in a tumbril to execution. For nothing in the world would she have condescended to make a complaint; we had deliberately placed ourselves in this situation, and must make the best of it!

Ahead of us were several wagons loaded up with country refugees, Germans and Irish, going to Washington to take oath of allegiance and seek for better fortunes. One of these vehicles, piled high with household goods, upset, and there were wails from the women and children belonging to it, though nobody was badly hurt. While waiting for them to clear the road, we suffered intensely with the cold, arriving finally at Union Mills so thoroughly congealed it was hard to set our feet upon terra firma.

Stumbling to the ground, we paid our driver and were shown into a room heated to suffocation by a red-hot stove, and crowded with the unhappy "refugees," men, women, and children, who had arrived ahead of us, all nearly perishing of cold and fatigue. We gave but one glance into the interior and turned away sickened by the noxious atmosphere, to meet a smart young staff-officer who, with the most astonished face I ever saw, could not for the life of him understand what we two were doing there!

Ten minutes later, seated before a bright fire in the officers quarters above, we were kindly and courteously urged to partake of hot coffee, which we accepted, and

Page 107

champagne, which we refused. How long it had been since we had seen champagne!

A room, hastily made ready, contained two army cots, gayly striped blankets, tin basins set upon a bench, delicious toilet soap and towels, a mirror, and two tall tin cans of boiling water. A tray of supper sent in "with the general's compliments," filled our hearts with overflowing gratitude to our noble foes!

"I am glad I've Scripture warrant for it, for I simply love my enemies," one of us exclaimed, in heart-felt tones.

A cattle-train, the box-cars crowded with the poor emigrants on benches, afforded the sole means for our getting on next day. Our kind host, the general, relieved his mind of us by letting us go to Alexandria on parole, under supervision of the provost-marshal there. By order from his head-quarters we were allowed to travel in the cab of the engine, and thus whizzing past many a well-known landmark in our county, we regained the old town left two years before under such different circumstances.

We went at once to my uncle's house in Cameron Street, where my great-aunts were installed, and spent a day or two with them, going about in the interval among old friends. Things looked very sad, the secession spirit in the town kept under by a rod of iron giving people a wistful, cowed expression, and the streets crowded with alien soldiers. Wherever we went, in shop or dwellings, our hands were grasped with speechless sympathy, tears impeding the utterance of greetings, then we were hurried into corners to ask about "our boys." When I compared our shabby clothes with their apparently smart ones, they would exclaim: "But what are clothes to standing side by side with those one loves in a life-or-death struggle like ours?"

Page 108

Finally, leave was accorded us by authority to visit Washington and remain there until some decision could be arrived at in our case. We accordingly resorted to the house of a relative at the Federal capital, and with brief delay visited Riggs's Bank, where my aunt had the infinite relief of depositing her valuable papers and realizing upon them funds much needed by our refugee family in the Confederacy.

For a few days we indulged in the pleasure of daily seeing my aunt, Mrs. Irwin, and her children, and other dear friends, as well as the unwonted practice of shopping in establishments that, after the barren wilderness of haberdashers' shelves in Richmond, seemed resplendent. Then fell a thunderbolt! Certain Union sympathizers among our whilom friends having taken pains to communicate to the Secretary of War that he was harboring dangerous characters from the seat of rebellion, nearly allied with the leaders of Confederate Government, and full of menace to the Union cause, an order was sent to us, which I transcribe:

"HEADQUARTERS, MILITARY DIV. OF WASH.
"WASHINGTON, D. C., March 19, 1863.

"CAPTAIN H. B. TODD,
"Provost Marshal,

"Captain: By direction of the Secretary of War Mrs. E. C. Hyde and Miss Constance Cary, refugees from Richmond, will be sent South over the lines, with orders not to return inside the lines of the United States forces.

"By Command of
"BRIGADIER GEN. MARTINDALE
"(Signed) JOHN P. SHERBURNE
"Ass. Adjt. General

"Official
"A. W. BAKER, Lt. and Adjutant, Washington D .C."

Page 109

A trim young lieutenant with good manners and, as afterward developed, a feeling heart - Lieutenant Clark Smith of the 169th New York regiment - stood in the hall below, as the instrument of fate. There was a wild rush of packing, surrounded by zealous friends. Whatever it was possible to squeeze into the Dixie trunks, with little presents for all our circle, went into them; much was worn, a good deal condensed into hand luggage. A smart braided riding- habit, a gown or two, and other coveted fripperies had to be left with their makers, ultimately reaching us by flag of truce. But one thing I could not entirely forsake - a new hat, an unimagined luxury since many months, that had been tried on and was waiting orders at the milliner's! We had no sooner seated ourselves in the carriage opposite the polite lieutenant than a siege of the enemy ensued, shorter but no less successful than that of Richmond. In the end, our carriage, on its way to the boat wharf, drew up before the door of Miss Wilson's fashionable millinery in Pennsylvania Avenue, and our lieutenant, issuing from it, returned carrying a bandbox! I hope this transgression has long ago been forgiven him! The new hat, so thought the Richmond girls, was well worth a dash upon the enemy.

I should perhaps have mentioned before the adventure of the hat that we had been driven first to the office of Provost-Marshal Todd, where the oath of allegiance to the United States Government was offered, and declined, with thanks. Mr. Montgomery Blair had sent me a note, addressed to those in high authority, stating that as I was the child of an early friend of his, he would be glad if circumstances would allow them to grant my requests (I suppose they were that we should not be molested, but allowed to stay and shop, since that was

Page 110

really all I wanted) but this did not avail! We were told that we must positively return to Virginia "as we had come," and that without delay.

In Alexandria once more, we spent the night as prisoners of war, on an upper floor of my uncle's house, the lieutenant occupying the little study to the left of the front door, a guard upon the pavement. From the town we were the recipients of universal sympathy, but in our hearts felt that since our work in Washington was done, and well done, our chief desire was now to get back to our friends. People flocked to the house, asking for us and sending messages. One of them, Miss Mary Daingerfield, afterward Mrs. Philip Hooe, eluding the guard at the front, went in the rear way where she had played as a child with my Fairfax cousins, climbed through a window, and arrived in our room, cobwebby and joyous, bearing a parcel of delightful little gifts.

Back at Union Mills again, and surrendered into the hands of our former host, we were greeted by jovial General Hayes with pleasant tidings. "I'm not going to let Fitz Lee boast he treated you better than we shall," he exclaimed, when the question arose as to how he should dispose of the bad pennies returned upon his hands. So behold us seated in a smart ambulance, under escort of a dashing guard of forty men in blue, the general himself, with two of his staff, accompanying us to the limit of the Union lines. (I was, in time to come, to see my own boy wearing the blue uniform, as a member of Troop A of New York, a volunteer in the United States service in the war with Spain.) In parting I asked if General Hayes had any message to send to his old West Point comrade, General Ewell, who had lately lost a leg in Confederate service. (We had liked and admired

Page 111

General Ewell since the beginning of the war. After his wound we went sometimes to call at his lodgings, where we generally found installed, as guardian of his hearth and spirits, his widowed cousin Mrs. Brown, and her pretty, bright-eyed daughter Harriott, now living in Washington as the widow of Major Thomas Turner, of Kentucky, once of General Ewell's staff. General Ewell's marriage to Mrs. Brown was the outcome of his convalescence from this wound.) "Give my best love to good old Dick, and tell him I wish it had been his head," was the laughing answer, transmitted in due time.

We made our way by divers methods and in slow stages across the debatable ground, always received for the night by sympathizers eager to greet and hear from us. After giving us of their best, they managed to hitch up some sort of a horse and vehicle to carry us on the next stage. A memorable stop was at the interesting old house of the Marstellars, whose master, even at that date, wore the queue and smallclothes of his ancestors. They sent us on in an antique coach of colonial pattern, yellow-bodied, blue- wheeled, high-swung, with a flight of carpeted steps letting down to admit the occupant, and a hoary old negro perched on the high box, to preside over the meanderings of "Blackberry and the colt," the only steeds left in the Marstellar stable by raiders!

In bleak March weather, we crept wearily over deep- rutted clay roads, or "Black Jack" sloughs of Virginia mire, through melancholy wastes of landscape strewn with felled trees and burned houses. We recognized Camp Pickens, the seat of former gay visits to the troops, only by the junction of the Manassas and Orange railroads. At another old camping ground the earth was

Page 112

inlaid with hundreds of shoes cast away by Union troopers, newly shod. Handsome homesteads crowning the hills looked at us through empty eye-sockets, showing no sign of life; burnt barns and mills, trampled fields were everywhere - it was depressing in the extreme.

But we forged ahead, and for the final stage of our journey - to Rappahannock Station, where we expected to find an ambulance from General Fitz Lee's head- quarters, in answer to a note despatched by a wandering Black Horse man encountered on the road - hired a timorous countryman, in whose veins ran skim-milk, to drive us in a little covered cart. We started betimes in the morning, and as the day declined our protector's fears waxed voluble.

"There ain't hardly a day somebody don't git held up hereabouts," he would say gloomily. "One side or t'other, 'tis 'bout the same with these scouts when there's hosses or mules to loot. Coase I ain't afeared for myself, but when there's ladies - thet toy pistol o' yours ain't but a mite, and anyways I'm no gret hand to shoot. A fellow don't like to lose his critturs; does he, now? Last week they took a man's mules and left him stropped up in the bottom of his wagon. This ain't no place for female wimmen, nohow. Reckon the money I get from you won't pay me for the worry. It's a bad place we're comin' to, ahead. If ever I git home safe-----"

He was interrupted by the apparition, on the summit of the hill up which his tired beasts were slowly creeping, of a horseman, looming to the height of a Doone warrior against the evening sky. Was he friend or foe?

My brave aunt, who made moan over nothing, sat up, breathing a little quicker. My heart gave a wild bound

Page 113

as I grasped my pistol. All I could think of was what a perfectly horrible thing it would be to have to fire it against live flesh and blood! I, who had seen and dressed so many wounds! What a relief to us and our chicken-hearted driver when the stranger announced himself a Confederate scout who hadn't had a mouthful of food that day! How joyfully we watched him clutch at the remainder of our luncheon and eat it like a hungry wolf! How good to hear that the big railway bridge over the Rappahannock was but a mile beyond, and that the way was clear, with General Lee's outpost pickets on the farther side! "But I misdoubt your crossin' that there ford to-night, ladies," were his last disheartening words as we parted company.

Alas! it was too true. The Rappahannock, swelled to fury by spring rains, was now a tearing, resistless yellow flood, the ford invisible. And now our driver rose and asserted his manhood. Go back we must and would. If we liked, he'd take us "to the nighest house," some five miles in our rear.

Upon the far side of the maddened stream we could plainly see the camp-fires of our pickets. How to reach them, we knew not; but turn back - no!

Our driver paid and in the act of swift retreat, our trunks and bags piled under the stone buttress of the bridge, we climbed the steep bank and stood upon the track above, straining our eyes in the direction where we fain would be. In vain did I throw all the vigor of strong lungs into a halloo for notice. The rush of the river drowned my attempts, and it was growing dark. The Rappahannock bridge, subsequently burnt by military order, was then the highest and longest on the lines of the Orange and Alexandria Road. There was no way of crossing it save by stepping from tie to tie of the

Page 114

railway. When I proposed essaying this, for the first time Mrs. Hyde's courage failed her. Over that raging river she could not walk without vertigo, and how could she let a young girl go alone?

The irreverent answer was that there were times when a girl with a steady brain and a light foot was worth any chaperon! And before the dear, alarmed lady could cry out, I was off skipping across the ties, till about the middle of the bridge the pickets espied me and sent forth a mighty shout.

Three or four of them came running to meet me and hear my tale. They said they were never more astonished than to look up and see a young lady coming, at that hour, apparently alone, out of the forsaken waste of country beyond the bridge. They had had no order from the general, but there was a house near their picket post where we could put up for the night. After that all became easy work in our eyes. Two of the troopers brought my aunt across between them, others followed with our belongings. At their little camp by the track over the water's edge we were mounted on peaked saddles, upon rawboned horses, and led along an unspeakably muddy road, a big cavalryman loaded down with our rugs, bags, and bandboxes bringing up the rear. At the farm-house where they asked shelter for us the good woman fairly embraced us in her hospitality. Cut off in that lonely world, where battles, raids, and skirmishes were her only excitement, we were a godsend. So eager was she to ask questions, we could hardly eat the bacon and corn-bread she offered for answering them. Warmed by a fire of pine knots, washed and comforted, we sank at last into a feather-bed in the loft, with heart-felt gratitude to God that we were safe at last in dear, war-worn old Dixie!

Page 115

Toward morning our sleep was broken by a noise as of thunder beneath our windows - wheels, shouts, the tramp of horses' feet, the ring of soldiers' steel - what was it? Broad awake and up in the moment, we believed a skirmish to be in progress. But leaning from the window we espied in the gray dawn our host in colloquy with a Confederate uniform, and the little house yard completely filled with gray troopers dismounting around an empty ambulance. The happy truth flashed upon us! This was our ambulance, our guard, sent by our loyal friend, the general, to convoy us to our original starting point! Hurrah for General Fitz!

Page 116

CHAPTER VI

OUR "On to Washington" experience was a nine days' wonder among our friends in Richmond, and for a brief space I enjoyed distinction as an arbiter of fashion, resulting from possession of a new hat and gown, boots and gloves, all at once. My few fineries, snatched from the protesting clutch of Uncle Sam, were handed about to be copied, till I feared they would be worn out. My mother having withdrawn for a while from her hospital work, we enjoyed a semblance of home in the portion of a dwelling in Third Street, kindly leased to us by the friends who owned it. We had a large sitting-room with a pantry back of it. In this we received visitors and took our meals, prepared by our friend's negro cook in the kitchen in the backyard. Upstairs were our bedrooms and bath. My cousin Hetty Cary, returning again from Baltimore, had rejoined us. My brother, who had been at Charleston doing guard-boat duty at the time of the first attack on Sumter by the iron-clad fleet - lying night after night in a small boat upon an open sea, rocking on the waves, listening intently for a movement from the enemy - was ordered back to Richmond, to the school-ship Patrick Henry, on the James.

There, as adjutant of the ship, he had sometimes occasion to read out his own name in the punishment list, for the offences of smoking, laughing in section-room, etc. The Navy Department had wisely decided not to allow its little kiddies to grow up only in the school of

Page 117

arms. To his rations of "real" tea and coffee saved for his mother, we were indebted for the only taste of those props of feminine existence that we enjoyed till the end of the war. We had eggs, butter, potatoes, salt meat, and rice in abundance, but almost no butcher's meat or fowls. My mother catered for us, and we fared well, though by then had set in the period when it was said a citizen went to market with his money in a market basket and brought home his provisions in his pocket-book. It is certain I could not write a war book and omit that anecdote! Water- cresses were the only green things visible at market, and they were actually cheap. The precious bluebacks of Confederate currency became alarmingly plentiful and secured for us less and less. Early in the war there had been a brief period of "individual" notes, quickly suppressed by government. We had a good laugh at finding in our honored mother's purse, whither it had drifted with some change, one of these, inscribed: "Good for one drink. John Smith."

One of our former boarding-house hostesses had offered to supply our little ménage with china and glass, not to be bought at any price in Richmond. We accepted gratefully, and for a brief time enjoyed the luxury of French porcelain plates and cups, when one day arrived a messenger requesting the immediate return of these articles, as an accident had occurred in which all of Mrs. ---'s were broken. Back went the borrowed glory, and that day we dined upon tin plates, with our salt and pepper in cocked-hat dishes made of writing-paper. Another family had, in this fashion, to give up a borrowed dining-table at the very moment when their invited guests had just seated themselves around it.

Letter-paper became desperately scarce. To Burton Harrison I was indebted for the gift of a large package

Page 118

of cream laid paper with envelopes to match, which took the place on my writing-table of a pile of prescription blanks presented to me by a doctor in a hospital, used with envelopes made of wall-paper, the pattern side within. Mr. Harrison said he was protecting himself against excuses for non-response to notes. Wall-paper served also for the binding of some of Miss Mühlbach's works, and of a translation from Victor Hugo, welcomed in the army under the popular title of "Lee's Miserables" ("Les Misérables").

I suppose, in view of the amount of ink-splashing afterward perpetrated, I may be excused for saying that before this time I had begun to write stories, verses, and sketches which the editors of various war papers flattered me by consenting to print. The Southern Illustrated News, the "Best Family Journal in the Confederacy," edited by Messrs. Ayers and Wade, had for its "regular contributors" Messrs. John R. Thompson, John Esten Cooke, Harry Timrod, James Barron Hope, and Paul H. Hayne, certainly a list of important and charming writers. The News, "sent to all parts of the Confederacy at ten dollars a year," paid me my first literary checks. The paper on which it was printed was yellow and coarse, and the illustrations, mainly of generals in the field, made those hopes of our nation look like brigands and cutthroats of the deepest dye. The Magnolia Weekly, "A Home Journal of Literature and General News," was the other patron of my budding literary ambition. Both of these weeklies struggled under the drawback of having the military authorities of Richmond descend at any moment and drag off editors, printers, engravers, and contributors to delve in the mud of trenches or to stand guard around the prisons and bridges of the Confederate capital. At that

Page 119

peremptory call of the alarm bell Richmond learned to know so well, the entire staff of the two periodicals often had to forsake office duty and be absent for an indefinite time. During the summer of 1864 there were many suspensions of publication, but the work began again in October, 1864, and continued I know not how long, to the satisfaction of camps and citizens.

The greatest feather in my literary cap, however, I conceived to be an appearance in verse in the columns of the critical Examiner, of which people stood in awe for the caustic utterances of its editor, Mr. John M. Daniel, on subjects military and otherwise. I had met Mr. Daniel and considered him as unapproachable as the north pole was till recently; but, as has been proved, even the north pole has been misunderstood, and the Jove-like editor not only gave me a place on the editorial page, but came to call afterward, and continued to be a kind friend. The verses in question were the wail of a mother for a son shot in battle before Richmond. Probably I imitated Mrs. Browning, but without knowing it, for I always tried to write what I knew or could feel myself. I had shyly shown them first to our delightful next-door neighbor in lodgings, Mr. John Mitchel, the famous Irish agitator, whom we knew only as a kind-eyed, brown-bearded man, full of literary taste and culture, residing with his family to whom he was entirely devoted. To Mr. Mitchel I owed a range of new ideas. He superintended my reading and urged me to go on writing and to work hard. Mr. Daniel, too, gave me sane and strong counsel. My third literary godfather was Mr. John R. Thompson, former editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, of which Poe was the most illustrious contributor. Mr. Thompson wrote charming vers de société after the style of Austin Dobson.

Page 120

He was also a sort of laureate of the Confederacy, since to him were due many tender and graceful verses written and published in the daily press upon subjects of immediate public interest, like the death of army heroes and the winning of great battles. In 1864 he went to London to take an editorial position on The Index, a journal supported by the Confederate Government with the hope of inducing France and England to lend aid to its cause, and became also a leader writer on the London Standard. To reach a British port, he ran out of Wilmington in a Confederate blockade-runner, slept on a cotton bale, was chased by a United States steamer, but reached Bermuda safely. There he took the British mail-packet for Halifax, thence went by the Asia to Liverpool. From London, he made visits to aristocratic country houses in Scotland and Ireland, and on returning to town in the autumn, surrounded himself with a circle of friends comprising Tennyson, Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, Bulwer, Lord Donoughmore, Lord Houghton, the Duke of Sutherland, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, Disraeli, Dickens, Mowbray Morris, editor-in-chief of the London Times, Woolner, Millais, Charles Kingsley, Dean and Lady Stanley, Lady Augusta Stanley (then lady in waiting to Queen Victoria), who entertained him at luncheon at Windsor Castle; Dowager Marchioness of Bath, a warm friend of the Confederacy; Miss Thackeray, Mrs. Sartoris, Sir Edwin Landseer, Lady Georgiana Fane, the Countess of Harrington, and many others. An account in his diary of this time described drinking tea and spending the evening with Thomas Carlyle at 5 Cheyne Row, on October 14, 1864.

"Mrs. Carlyle has been for some time an invalid, but made her appearance. Lady Ashburton and Miss Baring

Page 121

came in after tea. Mr. Carlyle said it was his habit to drink five cups of tea. He ran off into table-talk about tea and coffee, told us that he had found in Lord Russell's 'Memoirs of Moore,' which he called a rubbishy book, the origin of the word biggin; it comes from one Biggin, a tinner, who first made the vessel and was knighted afterwards. Then he talked of pipes and tobacco and recited the old verse, 'Think this, and smoke tobacco.' There was but one honest pipe made in Britain - by a Glasgow man, who used a clay found in Devonshire. Mr. Carlyle enquired about the Confederacy, its resources, army, its supplies of food and powder. He read a letter from Emerson in which the Yankee philosopher declared that the struggle now going on was the battle of humanity. When we rose to say good night, he called a servant for his coat and boots (he had received us in dressing-gown and slippers), and walked with us within a stone's throw of Grosvenor Hotel, two miles, at half past eleven. On the way passing Chelsea Hospital, he burst into a tribute to Wren the architect, of whom he said there was a rare harmony, a sweet veracity, in all his work. We mentioned Tennyson, and he spoke with great affection of him, but thought him inferior to Burns: he had known 'Alfred' for years; said he used to come in hob-nailed boots and rough coat, to blow a cloud with him. Carlyle said he thought Mill's book on Liberty the greatest nonsense he had ever read, and spoke despairingly of the future of Great Britain: too much money would be the ruin of the land."

On October 31,1864: "At Carlyle's, who made many enquiries about Lee, whom he greatly admires."

Again on May 17, 1865: "Went to Chelsea. Mr. Carlyle amused us very much by his comments on the

Page 122

proclamation of (President) Johnson. He styled him a sanguinary tailor seated on Olympus."

On November 15, 1865: "Called on Carlyle. Found the Irish patriot, Gavan Duffy there. Carlyle gave us a graphic account of a visit to the thieves quarter at Whitechapel. He also spoke of the great ignorance of the educated classes in England and Germany, of German history and literature."

On January 25, 1866: "Called at Cheyne Row. Found Carlyle in the best of humours. He gave us an account of the rise of Chartism in England. He denounced the Emperor Napoleon and John Bright with equal severity, and said while there was not one noble soul to be found in all France, England had become a great, horrible discordant blacksmith's shop."

On June 1, 1866: "Met in Hyde Park Carlyle, the first time since the death of his wife. We walked as far as Brompton Road. He talked with all his peculiar brilliancy - speaking of Jefferson Davis he declared that looking at the war from first to last, Davis seemed to him one of the manliest actors in it, and whatever the jury might say on his trial, the grand jury of mankind had already declared him not guilty."

In Carlyle's "Reminiscences," edited by Froude, occurs this passage concerning Mrs. Carlyle's sympathy with the South: "Amongst other last things she told me that evening was, with deep sympathy: 'Mr. Thompson' (a Virginian who sometimes came) 'called one night; he says there is little doubt they will hang President Davis!' Upon which I almost resolved to write a pamphlet upon it, had not I myself been so ignorant about the matter, so foreign to the whole fratricidal 'war' (as they call it); self-murder of a million brother Englishmen for the sake of sheer phantasms and totally

Page 123

false theories upon the Nigger, as I had reckoned it - and that probably I should do poor Davis nothing but harm."

On the 15th of June, in the same year, Thompson makes another visit to Chelsea, when he saw Carlyle's brother and his niece, Mrs. Welsh. "Mr. Carlyle said it seemed to him men were bent on reversing the idea of a millennium, which was to lock up the devil a thousand years, and were going to give him a free passage to do his worst on earth."

A portion of Mr. Thompson's diary was edited and published by his friend Mrs. Elizabeth Stoddard, author of several vigorous novels, and wife of Richard Henry Stoddard, the poet. Thompson was a great deal at their house when he lived, after the war, in New York, as an associate editor of the Evening Post. Mrs. Stoddard mentioned to me an entry in the journal of a check, "the proceeds of a poem on the obsequies of General Stuart," sent to me, but "never received."

I explained to her that there was some mistake about this, since I have now in my album the letter accompanying the check sent as an offering to my work in the hospitals. Mr. Thompson was present at my marriage and wrote an account of it (strictly without names). He did not live long enough after that, poor fellow, in his adopted Northern home to become the frequenter of our house my husband and I would both have wished him to be, for a sweeter- tempered man and one more pleasingly in love with literature never lived, than he!

To Mr. Thompson I was indebted not only for guidance of my taste in reading and research, but for a steady provision of English classics from the State Library, weekly piled upon my table. I read constantly, and

Page 124

studied. We had almost no ephemeral publications, therefore no temptation to stray out of the straight and narrow path of standard literature. I studied French, Italian, and Spanish, and no day passed in which I did not write something. I think, in this connection, the distinguished trio of advisers who protected my juvenile efforts in literature must have felt they had pulled a string of a shower-bath from the scribblings that presently poured from my pen. To these productions I began by signing the name "Refugitta," meaning "Exile." From letters received from friends across the line, I invented a "Blockade Correspondence" between "Secessia," in Baltimore, and "Refugitta," in Richmond, published in the Southern Illustrated News. In one of these letters, dated 1864, "Secessia" advises her blockaded friend to read "Russell's Snobbish Diary, "Barren Honour,'" by the author of that "nice, naughty, 'Guy Livingston,'" and especially "Orley Farm," by Anthony Trollope; Lever's "Barrington," and Miss Mulock's "Mistress and Maid." She is in despair because the dear Autocrat of the Breakfast Table has called us Southerners "Lords of the Lash," but hopes he will live to repent. She describes the newest method of hairdressing, styled "rats and mice" - the forelock rolled back, the back hair parted and rolled forward, a "cache peigne" of ribbon or flowers in the middle of the head behind; also the new bonnets, off the head two inches at the top, filled with tulle ruching, in which rest full-blown roses. She announces that high-necked ball dresses are coming in, and raves over a bewitching pair of Paris boots with scarlet heels and a ruche of black satin ribbon about the ankle! She ridicules the New York public for going wild about the marriage at Grace Church, superintended by Brown and Barnum, of Tom

Page 125

Thumb and his bride; says the last mode for dessert in Paris is to have strawberries growing in pots placed before each guest at table; and describes the travelling gown of the new Princess of Wales as "a silk Victoria tartan dress, trimmed around the skirt with a full row of black velvet, a jacket of silver grey poplin, and a bonnet of white crêpe, without a veil."

"Refugitta," in return, narrates the difficulties of getting anything at all to wear or to eat in Richmond, describes the thrilling passage through the town of shabby, war-worn, hungry troops, a thousand times dearer and more welcome than in their days of gold lace and glitter; the amusing attempts of the women to turn old rags into new garments; quotes Southey's north countrywoman's directions to her tailor: "Here, talleor, tak this petcut; thoo mun bind me't, and thoo mun tap-bind me't; thoo mun turn it rongsid afoor, tapsid bottom, insid oot." Next, "Secessia" is made to feel that for all the fashions of Paris and New York combined, Richmond girls would not exchange the chance of receiving flying visits from Uncle Robert's boys in gray uniforms, however threadbare and smoke-stained from a hundred fights.

"Refugitta," in passing, makes note of a cruel disappointment endured by the maidens of Richmond for whose entertainment had been planned, by the gallant and plucky Jenkins's brigade of South Carolina stationed near town, a tournament in which the prowess of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois Guilbert were to be emulated. "Expectation was on tiptoe, when the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold; in plain words, General Elzey, Mr. Seddon, and other hard-hearted officials, shut down a lid upon our hopes, and ordered the brigade away!"

Page 126

A mixing of metaphors does not yet seem to have been eliminated from the style of the young aspirant for literary place!

That spring we rode a great deal to the battle-fields below Richmond, sometimes in sight of the Union picket lines. My companion in these expeditions was now and then the private secretary of the President, sitting erect and easily upon his gallant gray; but this was only when his chief would let him off from the afternoon rides that wore out the patience of the staff.

Sometimes there was an excursion by steamer down the James, to Drury's Bluff and beyond, including all the people who made up gay society (a misnomer that, when a sigh followed almost every smile!) chaperoned by Mrs. Davis, or Mrs. Mallory, the wife of the Secretary of the Navy. Our favorite walks were in the direction of Hollywood and on to the bank of the canal above the turbulent rapids of the James.

We received many visitors in our little ménage, and shared our ups and downs of housekeeping with some stately and important personages.

Charles Godfrey Leland has said that "every brain is like a monastery of the Middle Ages, or a beehive. It is thought that no man, however learned or experienced he might be, ever contrived during all his life to so much as even half fill the cells of his memory. Yes, they are all there - every image of the past, every face which has ever smiled on us - every line read in print, every picture, every face and house is there----"

It is certain that since I began to write these pages, memory has summoned up for me many names, persons, and circumstances of my early youth that had been overlaid by a thousand succeeding impressions, and apparently forgotten.

Page 127

I will try to extract from my honey-comb some of the personalities of the war. But as I am just now writing currente calamo, with a few old letters and jottings of a girl's diary to draw upon, I must take them as they come.

Our most illustrious caller that spring was the commander-in-chief of the Army of Northern Virginia. General Lee came one evening, and after a pleasant talk with my mother and me, arose to go, we escorting him to the front door. It was broad moonlight, and I recall as if it were yesterday the superb figure of our hero standing in the little porch without, saying a few last words as he swung his military cape around his shoulders. It did not need my fervid imagination to think him the most noble looking mortal I had ever seen. As he swept off his hat for a second and final farewell, he bent down and kissed me as he often did the girls he had known from their childhood. At that time General Lee was literally the idol of the Confederacy. His moral grandeur, recognized by all, lifted him into the region where "Envy, nor calumny, nor hate, nor pain" did not venture to assail him. We felt, as he left us and walked off up the quiet leafy street in the moonlight, that we had been honored as by more than royalty.

We went often to Mrs. Davis's receptions, where the President never failed to say kind words in passing, and sometimes to tarry for a pleasant chat. Always grave, always looking as if he bore the sorrows of a world, he was invariably courteous and sometimes playful in his talk with very young women. These entertainments of Mrs. Davis, in the evening between limited hours, were attended by every one not in deep mourning. The lady of the Confederate White House, while not always sparing of witty sarcasms upon those who had affronted

Page 128

her, could be depended upon to conduct her salon with extreme grace and conventional ease. Her sister, Margaret Howell, aided to lend it brilliancy.

To one of these receptions, Hetty and I had accepted the escort of a captain, convalescent after the loss of a leg in service, who, poor fellow, was rejoicing in the possession of a new artificial leg of the latest pattern, with all modern improvements, which had reached him through the blockade. We had all three walked together through the dimly lit streets for but a short distance, when our escort gave signs of distress - halted, begged our pardon, stammered, then declared he could go no farther, as his leg had "come unstrapped." The street was empty of passers, and we, filled with dismay at our inability to serve, could but aid him to back up against a house wall and, one on either side of him, stand there almost crying through sympathy, to await the arrival of assistance. After a long delay, some officers came up, by whom we were relieved of our charge and finally convoyed to the President's house.

Mrs. Semmes, wife of the Louisiana senator, a handsome woman with a gift for tragic acting that might have carried her far upon the stage, gave an evening of charades in pantomime. Mrs. Chestnut had asked to call and take me there, "in a carriage" - a great event, as we usually walked everywhere! Until I read her diary, published long after her death, I had no idea of the marital discussion that had gone on between her husband and her lively self about the price of that carriage - "twenty-five dollars for the evening!" When she arrived at our house we had just been hearing from Von Borcke about the compliment paid him by Congress the day before, a vote of "thanks of the country to Major Héros von Borcke." He blushed tremendously

Page 129

as always when we praised him. I think he and young Preston Hampton were also asked by Mrs. Chestnut to share in the transit to the party in that twenty-five dollar carriage. She was so delightful we did not care if we never got there. In her diary, she says she sent it back for her husband, who brought Hetty Cary and Mr. Tucker, so it certainly did duty as an omnibus.

When we reached the Semmes', the drawing-rooms were crowded with smart people, the President and Mrs. Davis, Mr. Benjamin, the silver-tongued Secretary of State, Mr. and Mrs. Mallory and their sparkling little Ruby, with all the high world of the government. When it came my turn to perform (in something forgotten, where I wore a cap and apron and carried a duster), they had to wrench me away from a lively and pleasant conversation with the President, whom I was trying to amuse between the acts.

Of that performance, easily the best feature was the strong realistic acting of the hostess; and we considered it an achievement that she had induced the hitherto haughty and unyielding secretary of the President not only to appear in such things at all, but to cut off his mustache in order to be Eleazar to her Rebecca at the Well. Long after, when my husband consented to put on an Arab sheik's costume to please us, in Jerusalem, I was reminded of his attire in the Semmes' tableaux, made up by Mrs. Davis and Miss Howell from Oriental shreds and patches found about the house.

General Stuart was, I think, one of their performers; a tremendous card for the management when induced to stalk through a pilgrimage scene and lay his sword at the foot of a votive cross; then Mr. Cooper de Leon, in gloom and chains, represented so thrillingly a condemned prisoner in Bridewell as to leave the audience

Page 130

inconsolable till the lights were turned up again. And lastly, the evening was made memorable by a supper from the hands of a chef; not a supper of makeshifts and dire disappointments to the palate, but a genuine old-time banquet.

One of the most picturesque and royally remembered figures of our war was that same Prussian baron, Lieutenant-Colonel Héros von Borcke, serving as a volunteer on Stuart's staff. When he first appeared among us, in the spring of 1863, he was a giant in stature, blond and virile, with great curling golden mustaches, and the expression in his wide-open blue eyes of a singularly modest boy. It was said that he rode on the biggest horse and wielded the heaviest sabre in the army, making his appearance in skirmish or battle a living terror to his enemy. Holding, from the first, high place in the esteem of his fellow-officers and superiors, Von Borcke, whom the troopers styled "Major Bandbox," won brilliant renown in service, and was equally popular in society in Richmond. To dance with him in the swift-circling, never-reversing German fashion was a breathless experience, and his method of avoiding obstacles in the ballroom was simply to lift his partner off her feet, without altering his step, and deposit her in safety farther on. Poor Von Borcke received a dangerous wound in the throat in battle, and was nursed back to life again by the family of the late Professor Thomas R. Price, of Columbia, then resident near Richmond. He went back into service, despite the fact that "my bullet," as he always called it, was never removed and became liable, upon any unusual exertion, to move its position and threaten to choke him. Once, when sitting in our drawing-room, he insisted upon leaning over the back of a sofa to pick up a wandering thimble from

Page 131

the floor, the effort bringing on a frightful fit of coughing and struggling for breath, which my dear mother dealt with skilfully, while we girls assisted with tears streaming from our eyes. I have pictures of Von Borcke before and after his wound, the first of the Athos, Porthos and Aramis variety of manly hero, the last painfully thin and emaciated. It was some consolation to his friends in the South when, after having fought with distinction in the Franco-Prussian War, married and settled upon his ancestral estates in Pomerania, Colonel von Borcke returned to visit America, displaying far more than his original supply of avoirdupois. An absence in Europe at this time prevented our claiming the pleasure of receiving him at our home. His own account of his adventures in our war was published soon after it in Blackwood's Magazine. He died some years since, but it is certain that no hero of our side has been more treasured in memory both for his dashing feats at arms and his lovable qualities of mind and heart than he.

Prince Camille de Polignac, who as readily adapted himself to our simple ways in Richmond as he had done to the courts of Europe, was much liked in our society. I can still remember his look of sudden dismay when a guileless Richmond hostess, at the end of an evening party, asked him if he would "mind seeing" a certain young lady "home." This meant a sufficiently long walk, without chaperon, through the dim streets, but the prince acquiesced gravely, and wrapping his Napoleonic cloak around him, he strode majestically beside his charge, hardly speaking till he deposited her at the parental door.

A very handsome and plucky young Englishman, Lord Edward St. Maur, of the Duke of Somerset's family,

Page 132

who had come to America with the Marquis of Hartington, appeared in Richmond in the spring of 1862, and bore himself with gallantry under hot fire with Longstreet at the battle known as "Frayser's Farm," or "Glendale," soon afterward going by flag of truce into the Union lines, and returning to England to the regret of Richmond people who had hoped to see more of him. General Moxley Sorrel records that Lord Edward met the sad fate of being mauled and eaten by a tiger while hunting big game in India.

Colonel Garnet Wolseley, of the British army, now Viscount Wolseley, who has endeared himself to all Southerners of the true faith by his splendid eulogies of Lee - ranking him with Marlborough and Wellington - made a flying visit to the Confederacy, coming through from Canada where he was then stationed. "Praise from Sir Hubert," are Lord Wolseley's words of the Southern leaders, since he has himself climbed to the pinnacle of the ladder of fame in military service, and is now field-marshal in the British army.

The Hon. Francis Lawley, correspondent in the Confederacy for the London Times, is cordially remembered among the survivors of the Southern friends whose cause he so generously espoused.

Frank Vizitelly, correspondent and artist for the London Illustrated News, could hardly have been called a "ladies' man," but we nevertheless met him several times and were immensely entertained by his varied accomplishments. He was a big, florid, red-bearded Bohemian, of a type totally unfamiliar to us Virginians, who could and would do anything to entertain a circle. In our theatricals, tableaux, and charades, he was a treasure-trove. Everything we proposed was according to what they had done in London in the theatrical club

Page 133

of which Charles Dickens was the shining light, and we, of course, bowed before his superior knowledge. He painted our scenery and faces, made wigs and armor, and was a mine of suggestion in stage device. He sang songs, told stories, danced pas seuls, and was generally most kind and amusing. The men said he was very plucky in the saddle and on the battle-field. Later in life, we heard of him in wars here, there, and everywhere, in the service of the London Illustrated News. To our regret, we learned of his death under Hicks Pasha, in the Soudan, and were glad to find his name inscribed with honor on a memorial tablet set in the wall of grand old St. Paul's in London.

At the time of which I am now writing, Lieutenant- Colonel Freemantle, of the British Coldstream Guards, had not yet come to Richmond, where he afterward joined General Lee's army and went with it in the disastrous invasion of Pennsylvania. No one ever heard Colonel Freemantle spoken of by his Southern comrades save in terms of enthusiastic praise. When he went back to England after this campaign, his book, "Three Months in the Southern States," was published, making its way to the Confederacy, where its charming spirit and interesting presentment of the situation was greatly welcomed. By the next season we were all eagerly reading this brochure reprinted in Mobile for circulation in the army. During the remainder of his life Sir Arthur Lyon-Freemantle, K.C.M.G., held distinguished place in the British army and was during four years Governor of Malta, a place of highest honor in his Majesty's service.

To return to our pseudo-housekeeping in Third Street. One day when we had been giving tea to a

Page 134

party of friends, I left my mother and cousin to entertain them, while I, as we had only half the service of a maid, retired into the pantry to wash the tea things for a second use. Little Mr. de St. Martin, always merry and helpful, insisted upon following me to volunteer in drying the cups and saucers, so I equipped him with a long white apron and bestowed on him a tea towel. While busily engaged he and I did not observe that the pantry door was softly opened, until a burst of laughter revealed my cousin Hetty and several of our callers standing there making sport of us!

In that same pantry I had rather a startling experience. Coming home late from a party where, as usual, there was no supper, after we had gone to our rooms, I ran downstairs to get some food to stay the cravings of our ever keen appetites. On lighting the gas, I immediately saw that the window looking upon the back was open at the bottom, the sill clutched by ten vigorous black fingers. What to do cost me a momentary pang. But I reflected that the town was full of half-starved, marauding negroes, and that, in any case, I would get nothing by crying out. So, appearing to have noticed nothing, I pulled down the window with a slam, and the fingers withdrew suddenly. I locked the sash at the top, lowered the blind carelessly left up, secured my plate of cold corn-dodgers, put out the gas, then tore, breathless, palpitating, and scared to death, upstairs to rejoin my comrades. All together, we looked out into the darkness of the yard, but our robber had already climbed the fence and taken to his heels.

The reign of expedients in food had now begun. We had pork enough in different forms, potatoes, bread, and eggs (did we not practice the one hundred different ways of cooking an egg?). For sweets, there were pies

Page 135

made with dried fruit, or cakes with black sorghum molasses in lieu of sugar, chopped dried peaches in place of currants, dried orange-peel making believe it was citron, and dried apples doing their best, but failing, to masquerade as raisins.

Ladies plaited straw hats around the evening lamp. Von Borcke, waxing enthusiastic about a Confederate bride whom he had seen, declared: "Ach, she was most beautiful in von spun-home dress and von self-made hat!" We sewed dreadful-looking gloves of chamois leather, cut by a pattern handed from friend to friend. Some made shoes that others declared they would sooner by far go barefoot than appear in. As loot from the battle-fields, young men passed on to their sweethearts presents of toilet-soap, combs and brushes, needlebooks (ah! so carefully made for the out- going soldier in far-away Northern homes!), scissors, pins. On the retreat from Maryland in the previous autumn, yards of calico, rolls of tape, and spools of sewing cotton, had been tucked into knapsacks to be gratefully received by wives, mothers, and daughters of the soldiers.

Thanks to my shopping in Washington, I had gloves in plenty, but shoes were sadly lacking. When Captain Joseph Denègre said blushingly that he had received a pair of ladies' boots by blockade from Nassau, intended for his sister in New Orleans, which since he could not possibly get them to her, he would presume to offer to me, never was gift more gladly welcomed! Earlier in the war, Paul Morphy, the celebrated chess-player, whom we knew in Richmond, accepted a commission to purchase for me in New Orleans, whither he was returning, a French voilette of real black thread lace, the height of my ambition. When the veil arrived,

Page 136

as selected by himself, we voted Mr. Morphy an expert in other arts than chess.

We even heard of a private in the Confederate ranks bringing back from Maryland a pair of stays, which he presented to his fiancée. One remembers when Mr. Jefferson was minister to France, a young lady in America commissioning him to buy for her the latest fashion in corsets, he complying gracefully, and writing in return: "Should they be too small, you will be good enough to lay them by awhile, as there are ebbs as well as flows in this world." A blockade-runner, coming in to a Southern port, brought, instead of arms and drugs, an entire cargo of corsets sold out at great profit by the venturer who had stocked her! For women must lace, while men will fight, might have been a motto of the hour!

Page 137

CHAPTER VII

DARK days were in store for Richmond. An incipient bread riot occurred in her streets in April, when a large number of women and children of the poorer class met and marched through Main and Cary streets, attacking and sacking several stores kept by known speculators. President Davis, Governor Letcher, General Elzey, and General Winder, with Mr. Seddon, Secretary of War, met the painful situation by prompt but kind measures and personal appeal. Rations of rice issued by the government aided to calm the disturbance, which left, however, a distressing impression upon all minds.

A thrilling day for us was the Sunday of Stoneman's raid, when, as usual, a large congregation met at St. Paul's Church, remaining for the communion service. We knew that a big and terrible fight was on at Chancellorsville, in which sons, husbands, brothers of many of the people present were engaged. Outside in the soft spring air, a tumult of war sounds continually distracted our thoughts and racked our nerves. The marching of armed men, the wheels of wagons containing shot and shell, the clash of iron gates in the Capitol Square opposite, went on without ceasing, while repeatedly messengers came up the aisle touching some kneeling or sitting worshipper on the shoulder, a summons responded to by an electric start, and then the hurried departure of shocked, pallid people from the church. These were the calls to come and receive some beloved

Page 138

one brought in dead or wounded from the field. To the rector of the church, Dr. Minnegerode, in the act of administering the sacrament with another clergyman, the sexton carried and delivered at the altar rails one of these dread messages, at once obeyed by the father whose son was reported dead and awaiting him at the railway station. A great weight was lifted from the congregation when the rector, looking dreadfully shaken but relieved, came back to resume his interrupted service. It was the corpse of another volunteer whom they had mistaken for his boy.

Nothing in the war, perhaps, excepting the surrender, ever struck Richmond with such stunning force as the announcement of Stonewall Jackson's fall, of the amputation of his arm, and finally of his death, following the battle of Chancellorsville. Even the brilliant victory of our arms was in total eclipse by this irreparable loss. From the first, when the shy Puritan professor of the Virginia Military Institute had startled the armies by his extraordinary daring and military skill, Jackson had taken hold of the popular mind as a supreme favorite. "Old Stonewall," "Old Jack," or "Old Blue Light" was by the soldiers held in the reverence bestowed by Napoleon's grenadiers upon the person of their sacred emperor. With Lee and Jackson to the fore, quiet people sitting in their homes felt themselves behind two massive towers of strength and meeting every adverse wind.

Because it has somewhat passed out of memory, I insert here Dr. J. W. Palmer's stirring lyric, "Stonewall Jackson's Way." No man who writes a taking war song can realize its power until he hears it soar up in a mighty chorus of men's voices, fired by its eloquence. How many a time have I played the accompaniment

Page 139

for this, sitting at the piano, surrounded by a ring of bronzed, rusty, gray-coated veterans, young in years but old in bloody service, singing with martial fire! It was set to music, by whom I know not, as I have lost my copy of the song.

STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY

FOUND ON THE BODY OF A SERGEANT OF THE OLD STONEWALL
BRIGADE, WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA.

                        Come, stack arms, men! Pile on the rails;
                        Stir up the camp fire bright;
                        No matter if the canteen fails,
                        We'll make a warring night.
                        Here Shenandoah brawls along,
                        There burly Blue Ridge echoes strong
                        To swell the Brigade's rousing song
                        Of "Stonewall Jackson's way."

                        We see him now! - the old slouched hat
                        Cocked o'er his eye askew -
                        The shrewd dry smile - the speech as pat -
                        So calm, so blunt, so true.
                        The Blue Light Elder knows o'er well;
                        Says he, "That's Banks - he's fond of shell,
                        Lord save his soul! - we'll give him - well,
                        That's Stonewall Jackson's way!"

                        Silence! ground arms. Kneel all! Caps off!
                        Old Blue Light's going to pray.
                        Strangle the fool that dares to scoff!
                        Attention! it's his way.
                        Appealing from his native sod
                        In forma pauperis to God -
                        Lay bare thine arm; stretch forth thy rod,
                        Amen! That's Stonewall's way.

Page 140

                        He's in the saddle now. Fall in
                        Steady - the whole brigade!
                        Hill's at the ford cut off. We'll win
                        His way out, ball and blade.
                        What matter if our shoes are worn;
                        What matter if our feet are torn,
                        "Quick step," we're with him before dawn.
                        That's Stonewall Jackson's way.

                        The sun's bright lances rout the mists
                        Of morning, and by George
                        There's Longstreet struggling in the lists,
                        Hemmed in an ugly gorge.
                        Pope and his Yankees, whipped before,
                        "Bay'net and grape," hear Stonewall roar.
                        "Charge Stuart! Pay off Ashby's score,"
                        In Stonewall Jackson's way.

                        Ah! maiden, wait and watch, and yearn,
                        For news of Stonewall's band.
                        Ah! widow! read with eyes that burn
                        That ring upon thy hand.
                        Ah! wife, sew on, pray on, hope on,
                        Thy life shall not be all forlorn;
                        The foe had better ne'er been born
                        Than get in Stonewall's way.

And now, Stonewall Jackson, Lee's right arm, was dead of his wounds received, by the awful irony of Fate, at the hands of his own men. Dead? He, the stern Puritan leader, who, when he rose up from wrestling in prayer, launched himself like a destroying thunderbolt against the foe! He, whose sword never lay idle in its scabbard, whose iron frame had not once sought repose during all those months of fighting - who saved the day at Manassas, by standing like a stone wall and won

Page 141

himself a deathless sobriquet; who had fought and won so many desperate fights, independently, in the Valley; who had smitten McClellan's flank with fury at Seven Pines - Jackson, to follow whom the flower of our Southern youths were proud to suffer all things - this, indeed, was a blow under which his country staggered.

When they brought his body from the place of his death to Richmond, all citizens were in the streets, standing uncovered, silent or weeping bitterly, to see the funeral train pass to the Capitol.

We were admitted privately late at night into the hall, where the great leader lay in state. Two guards, pacing to and fro in the moonlight streaming through high windows, alone kept watch over the hero. A lamp burned dimly at one end of the hall, but we saw distinctly the regular white outline of the quiet face in its dreamless slumber.

How still he lay, the iron chieftain, the fierce, untiring rider of Valley raids! The Confederate flag that covered him was snowed under by the masses of white blossoms left that day by all the fair hands of Richmond, together with laurel wreaths and palms.

And then, Gettysburg! Mourning fell like a pall of crape over the entire South, even though beneath it hearts thrilled with deathless pride in the charge of Pickett's Virginians.

In the middle of the hottest season of the year, Hetty and I went into King William County, far as yet from war's alarms, to stay at an old house surrounded by plantations of sorghum and cotton, by means of which its owners hoped to resist the outside pressure of blockade. The cotton crop, unfamiliar to our eyes, was a beautiful one, from its blossoms of a delicate lemon tint, to the boll, opening to disclose a fairy fall of snow. We took our

Page 142

first lessons in spinning from an expert old darky woman in the "quarter," and also in weaving the stuffs required to clothe the small army of blacks on the estate. In her cabin we tasted watermelon molasses, and were regaled with genuine ash-cake, wrapped in cabbage leaves, baked under hickory embers upon the hearth, and served with fresh butter and foaming milk, by way of what she called "des a little snack, honey, to keep yer strength up."

What a pretty scene met our gaze as we stood in the doorway of the spinning-woman's hut! Two rows of whitewashed cabins, bowered in foliage and overgrown with morning-glory and scarlet runner, each having its neat patch of ground with corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbage - ("Their vegetables beat mine all hollow!" laughingly said the mistress of the house) - the walks between, like the floors of the cabins, swept as clean as the decks of a man-of-war. In chairs before their doors sat the patriarchs of both sexes, looking out for numerous little darkies who romped and kicked in the sunshine. No sign here of the horrors for which John Brown had died on the scaffold at Harper's Ferry!

All my observation of the colored folk that summer kept me wondering if they could be happier free. For years after the war I kept coming upon wretched homesick specimens of their class in New York, praying aid and counsel of us Southerners of the old régime, in whom they instinctively trusted more than in their representative abolition friends. One of the best women I ever knew, a lecturer and missionary to her race, said to me once: "Some of these people call me 'Miss' and ask me to sit down in their grand parlors in satin chairs while they tell me how well off my people are. Your

Page 143

kind says, 'You, Susan Jones! you're just wet through, tramping the streets; go straight downstairs to my kitchen and get dry and have your dinner.'"

The maid specially detailed to attend to us at the "gret hus" came one night about nine o'clock to my room on the ground floor in the wing, to conduct me to the quarter where I had promised to read the Bible to a few "church members" in the cabin of our spinning friend. We went down long paths lit by the stars alone and embalmed with the scent of sweet flowers after dark; and to my dismay found the quarter in a state of advanced preparation for an "event." The cabin where I was to read, its inner walls lined with pictures cut from magazines, was brilliant with the glare from pitch-pine torches set in the fireplace, while a couple of tallow candles, in brass candlesticks, illumined the pages of the Holy Book, laid open on a spotless pine table beside a split-bottomed arm-chair. Every available space inside and out of the house was filled with negroes in Sunday best, their black, cream, or chocolate faces looking in at windows and open door. In the foliage outside, fire-flies were glancing. Near by, a whippoorwill was calling. Not another sound broke the stillness as I, in great embarrassment, began to read.

Soon my equanimity was disturbed by an old woman who sat in the corner rocking her body to and fro. "That's so! Bress Jesus!" she cried out piercingly, and this was the beginning of a fusillade of pious ejaculations, grunts, and moans, which I could end only by shutting the Book and desiring an ancient elder in their church to lead in prayer. Once I could repeat - I have forgotten them now - his words, extraordinarily picturesque, at times vividly eloquent. To my surprise, he prayed for the stricken Southern country and for

Page 144

"our pore sufferin' soldiers in the camps and on the march." He prayed for their "dear old mistis," for everybody present, some specially mentioned, for their reader, in very flattering and touchingly grateful terms, and, lastly, for that "hoary old sinnah Uncle Si, settin' ober da on his own do'-step this blessed minit, hearin' what was read an' scornin' God's Holy Word, he hade a-whitenin' fur de grabe, he soul a-ripenin' for hell's dark do'."

The climax bringing about a perfect tumult of groans and piously abusive comments upon pagan Uncle Si, I was able to make my escape. Susan told me afterward, that the quarter had "no use for Uncle Si, anyways" and had taken this occasion to administer a public rebuke. The meeting was kept up till nearly morning.

From that time I was always the recipient of smiles, kind words, and little gifts from the quarter. A wooden bowl of luscious peaches, fresh from the tree, would be poked through my open window of a morning; or flowers, a couple of fresh eggs, a bag of chenquapins, and even a fat sweet potato, left upon the sill.

The portly cook (whose price was far above rubies!) lost her husband, and on the following Sunday gave him an imposing funeral: returning from which she was escorted, arm-in-arm, by the deacon who had performed the ceremony, an enterprising fellow with an eye to the rich pickings from the "gret hus" kitchen. The following Sunday they were married amid much rejoicing. Emily, a trim little housemaid, used to petition me to write letters to her fiancé, Tom, a neighbor's "boy," who had followed his young master to the war. In one of these epistles I was requested, with many giggles, to tell Tom "yes, please, young mistis." On beseeching her to supply words for this avowal, she threw her apron

Page 145

over her head and, tittering, observed: "Why, don' you know, Miss? Jes' de way you does it yerself!"

When I wound up the epistle by bidding Tom "God speed in his efforts to seek the bubble reputation in the quartermaster's department," and asked if she liked the phrase, Emily smiled rapturously. "Why, laws, Miss, I jes knowed you'd turn it off someway grand." Another year, Emily and Tom waited on me in gratitude for my share in their newly wedded bliss.

We went to a "baptism" in a lovely mill-pond and saw the sable clergyman stand knee deep in water beside a little island, beckoning in one after another of the candidates. One of these, proving obstinate to his appeal, remained goggle-eyed upon the bank, staring toward the preacher, when the latter called out persuasively: "Why does yo' tarry, brother? Why don't yo' come to glory? What is it that yo' fear?"

"I'se afeard o' that darned little moccasin on de lawg 'longside o' you," was the answer, and with one bound, not stopping to look back, the celebrant gathered up his skirts and made for the shore and safety.

When we came to leave our sweet asylum for the stern realities and short commons of Richmond, there was an overhauling of our trunks to find what we could afford to give away to Susan and Emily, and an old crone from the quarter, tottering up to our outer door, looked in longingly at the unpacking. A certain antique petticoat of changeable pigeon's-neck silk, used in some of my theatricals, captured her fancy mightily. (A similar one was offered me recently in the show-room of a fashionable dressmaker in Paris.) Finally, she told me if I would let her have it she would "pay me out" with a turkey sent to Richmond as soon as hers were fit to kill. I gave old Dilsey the garment and forgot it. In the late

Page 146

autumn one day, a quaint old back country wagon stopped at our door in town, and the darky driver brought in a box containing not only a splendid fat turkey, but a fine supply of sweet potatoes, some apples, and a bag of chestnuts, with "Dilsey's service, please mistis, and she hopes you find them good eatin'."

Good eating! Conquering a strong temptation to send the whole box to the hospital, we committed the rash act of giving a dinner party. None of us had in months tasted fowl of any kind, and the result was a dazzling success. The cordon bleu whose services we claimed covered herself with glory. I fail to recall any of the guests save our neighbor lodging in the same house, Mr. Robert Dobbin of Baltimore, who accepted, on condition that he might bring with him a round of Maryland spiced beef, which had just dropped like manna upon his path. He came, bearing his contribution in a large china dish, made himself most witty and agreeable, and at the close of our banquet withdrew, carrying the remainder of his beef, at my mother's insistent request.

Upon our return to town that autumn, owing to General Meade's ruminant attitude and the consequent inaction of our troops, the streets and our drawing-rooms were well filled with gray figures wearing stars, bars, scrolls, and other insignia of military rank. The daily increasing need of wearing apparel for women brought about a wide range of inventions to meet the demands of the entertainments, on all sides given and shared in. My one new evening dress of the war, bought in our raid on Washington and sent through the lines by friends, had been reserved for the smartest party of the season (given by the "Scotch" Allens in the spacious old house that sheltered Poe's wayward youth, the home of his adoptive

Page 147

father, Mr. John Allen) where there was to be, wonder of wonders, a supper with, it was whispered by gossips, ten thousand dollars worth of champagne! My dearest mother had worked all day at the alterations necessary in my gown, and I entered the rooms feeling as much puffed up with pride as pet Marjorie's turkey. In the agitation of offering some one beyond me in the supper-room a plate of real creamed oysters and chicken-salad, a man spilt its entire contents over my luckless gown, irrevocably ruining it. Nothing could be done to restore the soiled and spotted breadths, since, from Richmond, French cleaners were absent. A minor tragedy, but one that sank deep in my soul!

Hope springs eternal, and for the next evening reception at Mr. Stanard's, where one was sure to meet the cream of society and all distinguished visitors to the capital, we fell upon a new device. Two venerable dresses in the family repertory, a fawn and a brown silk, were ripped, pressed, laid upon patterns of the latest date, per underground, and trimmed with double-pinked quillings of the same materials, dispersed ingeniously in curley-cues upon the skirt and "postilion bodice." We had invented, pinked, ruffled, and sewed ourselves into a state of exhaustion, when at ten o'clock at night the last stitch was set, and I soon stood arrayed in what at casual glance seemed a brand-new modish toilette. My way into Mrs. Stanard's drawing-rooms was made glad by hearing other girls whisper that I had got another new dress by blockade. But I took care, during the evening, to sit in sequestered spots, not daring to stand anywhere near the central chandeliers.

Early next morning came Mrs. Coulter Cabell's maid, carrying a neat little oil-skin covered basket and a note from her mistress - renowned for her elegance in dress

Page 148

- to ask if I would mind letting her take the pattern of my charming "postilion," which should be returned in half an hour. Alas! poor me! Full well I knew that in daylight all the pressed places, pieced places, washed and ironed quillings, the age and expedients of that presumptuous garment would stand revealed! But I bravely lent it, and the poor dear fraud came back within the stipulated time!

I went to Cary Street to make a visit to Mrs. Chestnut, in whom Hetty and I delighted. Although she might well have been my mother, I never felt the difference in age, so gay and sprightly was she as a comrade, leading all the fun and nonsense in our talk. I found her with the Preston girls and others, lamenting that she hadn't a bonnet of any kind to wear in full dress. The few milliners of the town were asking $500 for hats made of the homeliest materials from "other side" patterns. She had heard of my knack at millinery. Wouldn't I advise her and earn her undying gratitude? So we all went into dear, laughing Mrs. Chestnut's chamber, where the bed was soon strewn with wrecks and relics of her Washington finery. I selected and another girl ripped up an old velvet bodice, mignonette green in hue, a point lace barbe, and some sprays of artificial nasturtiums, pale yellow and old gold, and set to work to shape over an old bonnet frame. It was a rainy day; Mrs. Chestnut begged me to stay for luncheon, and, amid a feu de joie of fun and droll sayings from those clever women, I worked on till, whatever may be thought by scornful latter-day maidens, a very stylish and becoming head-piece was evolved.

Mrs. Chestnut declared she wore it with pride to every function of state or fashion afterward. If I had possessed the mercantile spirit of some London great

Page 149

ladies of to-day, I might, after that initial success, have set up a millinery on my own account; but the epoch of commercialism in society had yet to come.

Just as I had put the finishing touch on my work, Colonel Chestnut came in, saying he must be off at once with the President to inspect fortifications, as the enemy were within a few miles of Richmond. A tremendous roar of cannon began and continued at intervals all the afternoon. I helped Mrs. Chestnut to solace her warrior with sandwiches for the fray, and we saw him off on horseback, returning to every-day matters quite calmly, so used had we become to such happenings. Burton Harrison told me that in these rides of inspection, his chief, mounted on the white Arab stallion, always led the staff as close to the ragged edge of danger as was humanly possible, having an apparent longing to escape from official thraldom and return to the risks of his days of soldiering. But for all that, Mr. Davis would not allow his private secretary, whom he treated in every respect as a son, to indulge in his own ardent wish to resign his position with the Executive and enlist in the army. Twice during the four years of war, Mr. Harrison (styled colonel by the President, as a member of his personal staff) offered his resignation, and was asked to withdraw it in deference to the wishes of his chief, who used these words: "I can get many men to serve me in the field, but no one who will take your place."

It was assuredly an interesting post held by the young graduate of Yale, so unexpectedly summoned to the innermost councils of the Confederate President. Before him daily deployed the chief actors of the Southern side of the mightiest struggle of modern warfare; under his hands passed the most secret reports and instructions, going to and from statesmen and military leaders;

Page 150

he lived, literally, in the heart of a thrilling crisis. During the whole period of the war and in the trying times thereafter, his tact, vivid intelligence, and high courtesy enabled him to preserve cordial relations with all those associated in his life, friends and foes alike; and this, I think, there will be no one to gainsay.

To return to my chronicle of Richmond gayeties. Now was instituted the "Starvation Club," of which, as one of the original founders, I can speak with authority. It was agreed between a number of young women that a place for our soldier visitors to meet with us for dancing and chat, once a week, would be a desirable variation upon evening calls in private homes. The hostesses who successively offered their drawing-rooms were among the leaders in society. It was also decided that we should permit no one to infringe the rule of suppressing all refreshment, save the amber- hued water from the classic James. We began by having piano music for the dances, but the male members of the club made up between them a subscription providing a small but good orchestra. Before our first meeting, a committee of girls waited on General Lee to ask his sanction, with this result to the spokeswoman, who had ended with: "If you say no, general, we won't dance a single step!" "Why, of course, my dear child. My boys need to be heartened up when they get their furloughs. Go on, look your prettiest, and be just as nice to them as ever you can be!"

We even had cotillons, to which everybody contributed favors. The gatherings were the jolliest imaginable. We had constant demands to admit new members, and all foreigners and general officers who visited Richmond were presented to our club, as a means of viewing the best society of the South.

Page 151

In summoning "spirits from the vasty deep" to record upon these pages, I had occasion to address a question or two, in writing, to a friend of yore, a Virginian who has identified himself with the best intellectual achievement in his State, since the sword he bore through all the battles delivered by the Army of Northern Virginia was laid aside to gather the rust of peaceful years. If it be a crime to quote a passage from the letter he sent me in return, I cry "Peccavi," swearing that I will never reveal his name. No one else living, perhaps, could have written it, and its insertion here is my best excuse.

"Lord! Lord! What a dazzling, wholesome highbred little society it was! Night after night, I galloped into town to attend dances, charades, what not? and did not get back to my camp until two - three - what matter the hour? - but was always up, fresh as paint, when the reveillé bugles blew, and when, a little later on, my first sergeants reported to me as adjutant with their Battery Reports.

"To you and to me, looking back, it was such a blending of a real "Heroic Age" and a real "Golden Age" as could come but once in a million years. Everybody knew everybody (in the highest sense of that phrase), and there was youth, and beauty, and devotion, and splendid daring, a jealous honor and an antique patriotism, an utter self- abnegation and utter defiance of fate, a knightly chastity and beautiful surrender (of the coyest maid when her love was going to certain death). God! what a splendid high society that little handful was! Oh! I never talk of it now. People would only say, 'Why there wasn't one of them worth $100,000.'

"I wish I could tell you something, because, as Owen Meredith sings, 'old ties, they cling, they cling.' But

Page 152

I scarce remember anything of that brilliant winter except that I went everywhere, that 'the Queen' was most gracious to me, and that John S---, and C. de L---, and I were said to be the best 'round dancers,' as they were called then, in the world (think of that!); also that I was very much in love with Miss --- (I was afraid to be in love with the Queen, because my dearest, dearest L--- R--- had said to me at the University of Virginia that he'd 'offer up to instant death any caitiff who ever dared look at her'); and then with Miss ---, and remotely with Miss ---. It's all very vague, but I have an uneasy remembrance that I was engaged to all of them, and that when the bugles sounded in the early spring, I went to the front with a hang-dog but a joyful heart!"

Wonderful were the toilettes concocted that festal winter. Maternal party dresses that had done duty at Newport, Saratoga, Sharon, the White Sulphur Springs, and in Washington and New Orleans ball-rooms, were already worn to rags. One of them would be made to supply the deficiencies of the other until both passed into thin air. The oft-told stories of damask curtains taken down to fabricate into court trains over petticoats of window curtain lace, and of mosquito nettings made up over pink or blue cambric slips, now took shape. Certain it is that girls never looked prettier or danced with more perfect grace than those shut-in war maidens, trying to obey the great general's behest and look their prettiest for the gallant survivors of his legions.

If one were to trust the melancholy old faded vignette photographs and cartes-de-visite of the sixties, any statement as to the beauty of the women might be taken with polite acquiescence but interior doubt. Before writing my memories, I have looked over dozens of these

Page 153

waifs of a long gone era, and in hardly one do I see more than a faint suggestion of the beauty of the original. To read descriptions brimming over with laudatory adjectives, and then turn to the portrait of the subject, brings in most cases a downfall of enthusiasm. It is always with a sigh of regret that I turn away from the illustrations of the belles of the Confederacy embalmed in the agreeable and sprightly volumes of recollections published of late years.

Of the women who were most in evidence in the Confederate capital, I have already spoken of Mrs. Davis and her sister and adoptive daughter, Margaret Howell. The ladies of General Lee's family lived in a pleasant house in lower Franklin Street, then and afterward held as a shrine in the eyes of patriotic pilgrims. Mrs. Robert E. Lee, not strong in health and always a reserved woman in society, rarely showed herself in general gatherings. Miss Mary Custis Lee, who has for years been known to the exclusive circles of foreign capitals, having spent most of her latter life abroad, took the post of receiving and entertaining the friends and admirers who thronged around their doors. The death of a beloved daughter during the war, followed by that of Mrs. Fitzhugh Lee and her children, while her husband was in prison in the North, placed the family in mourning, disqualifying them for conspicuous appearance in society. Also, it was understood that Mrs. Lee felt a sense of impropriety in the suggestion that the wife and daughters of the commanding general of half-starved armies, himself sleeping always in a tent and living on ascetic fare, should take the lead in any entertainments of a social sort; so the old elegant hospitality of Arlington House, which had opened its doors to so many in the past, was allowed to pass

Page 154

away, to be renewed, however, at their future home in Lexington.

Mrs. Joseph E. Johnston, coming of the distinguished McLane family of Baltimore, had a little court of her own, in later days rather antagonistic to the ruling power of the Confederate White House, it was said.

Two daughters of Judge John Archibald Campbell, late of the Supreme Court of Washington - Mrs. Lay, and Miss Mary Ellen Campbell who married Arthur Pendleton Mason, of Colross, Alexandria - were an important element in the social side of Richmond life. To no one memory of those days do I turn now, with kindlier feeling, than to that of handsome and original Mary Ellen Campbell, who was one of my chosen friends.

The family of General John S. Preston, of Columbia, South Carolina, who had left a beautiful rose-embowered home to share the weal or woe of the Confederacy, was installed in a small undistinguished house in Franklin Street. It consisted of the handsome aristocratic parents, two sons in the army, and three daughters, like goddesses upon a heaven-kissing hill, tall and stately, with brilliant fresh complexions, altogether the embodiment of vigorous health.

I met two of this beautiful trio in Paris after the war, where they occupied, with their parents, a residence in the Rue Lord Byron, receiving and received by the best of French society, with the same grace they brought to our happy-go-lucky refugee existence in Richmond.

Our good neighbors at Vaucluse, the Samuel Coopers, had removed to Richmond, where the general, albeit of Northern birth, had elected to serve the South. Made adjutant-general of the Confederate Government, he was much esteemed by his confrères and the public.

Page 155

His wife, born as the nineteenth century came in, lived for many years after the war at "Cameron," her home in Fairfax, with her son and daughter, a picture of old-time dignity and high breeding in her late eventide of life. Their daughter, afterward Mrs. Dawson, fair and thoroughbred, with a charming frankness of speech and manner, was one of my coadjutors in the founding of the Starvation Club, and with the joyous hours of my Confederate experience her image blends pleasingly.

Commodore Sydney Smith Lee, son of "Light Horse Harry" and brother of General Lee, had married a sister of Mrs. Cooper. No one can forget the illumining brightness and cheery sympathy of Mrs. S. S. Lee, who had given all her stalwart sons to the Southern service, from "General Fitz," always in the forefront of danger, to handsome "Midshipman Dan," my brother's messmate and pal in many a bit of risky naval service, now a settled but by no means subdued paterfamilias, living on his own acres near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Mrs. Chestnut, known to the world through the posthumous publication of letters revealing her strength, sweetness, and vivacity of mind, was a fixed star in the refugee circle of Richmond. The delightful Harrisons, of Brandon, gave over their historic home upon the James to the shelling of General Butler's gun-boats and subsequent occupation by bats and birds and squirrels, and came to live in Linden Row. Mrs. George Harrison, formerly the beautiful Gulielma Gordon, of Savannah, had just come to them as a bride. Mrs. Myers, daughter of General Twiggs, of New Orleans, and youthful wife of General A. S. Myers, quartermaster-general of the Confederacy, bewitched men and women alike. When, just after the war, my mother and I took up our abode at the Ville au Bois, a villa of apartments at

Page 156

Neuilly, General and Mrs. Myers and their little daughter came to live there also, and made a large part of the pleasure of our Parisian days. Mrs. Clement Clay, of Alabama, was ever foremost in providing things clever and original for the diversion of her friends. Mrs. Alfred Barbour, wife of General Johnston's chief quartermaster, with her sister, Miss Frances Daniel, later, wife of my cousin John Brune Cary, of Baltimore, were among the blooming young beauties of the day. Pretty Miss Lizzie Peyton Giles, came through the lines from St. Louis, reputedly to marry a Confederate general, bearing with her sheaves in the shape of a trousseau of smart and admirably fitting gowns. To our disappointment, the promised wedding was declared "off," but since we kept the bride and she kept her finery to delight us, no great harm was done to our feelings. Colonel and Mrs. Eugene McLean, she ever bright and sparkling, were much in evidence. My room-mate of the Lefebvre school-days, pretty and outspoken Evelyn Cabell, who sang like a bird, had already married young Russell Robinson, of Richmond, and was disproving the statement that a Southern matron, however few of years, cannot hope to retain the belleship of her former estate. And apropos of this assertion, it was said that the elegant Captain John Moncure Robinson, of Philadelphia, recently arrived from European travel and possessing a wide range of social experience, had announced that his real mission in benighted Richmond was to introduce the German cotillon and bring out the young married women. What Captain Robinson actually did was to marry Miss Champe Conway, one of the prettiest of the more youthful set!

It is hard to write of the living save in stilted and self- conscious phrase; but who could depict the days of

Page 157

war in Richmond, and omit those two cousins, Jennie Pegram (now Mrs. McIntosh, of Baltimore) and Mattie Paul, whose marriage to Captain William Myers was one of the interesting occurrences of that time! So blended are they both in my memory with the long procession of friends who have passed over the river and rest under the shade of ever-living trees, that I know not whether to mention them in sad or joyous words. But even under the stress of that terrible hand of steel that for four years held us down, we had many bright hours together.

Most of the people I have cited were in our own class of refugees. Of the resident families, many of them abiding in the wide old ample houses, set back from the street in gardens of redundant bloom and foliage, with magnolia trees guarding the portals, that we would pass in our walks envying their suggestion of home delights, the list is longer. Not only do their names represent, to any student of Americana, the direct outgrowth of the best Colonial stock, but it would have been hard to find a group of gentle-folk better equipped to conduct the functions of good society.

A very young person who had been reading with avidity some of the domestic war chronicles printed in latter days, asked me quite gravely if it were true that every man of that period was handsome, clever, and a paladin of bravery, and every woman a radiant belle and beauty. We all know how, as described in family letters and on tombstones, our grandmothers and great-aunts, our grandfathers and the uncles who died young, have seemed to our imagination to wear separate little haloes. It behoves me, therefore, to touch lightly upon the charms and virtues of those old-time citizens of Richmond, and to let adjectives of praise remain embalmed in the rosemary of individual recollection.

Page 158

The Macfarland house in Grace Street was running over with young and winsome women; including Miss Turner Macfarland, who married Colonel Wilcox Brown, with her cousins, the Bierne sisters and Mrs. Parkman, like tiny Dresden figurines, the latter early a war-widow, clad in deep sables, and rarely seen in public. Miss Bierne Turner, the fifth of that group of charmers, married Colonel John S. Saunders, of Baltimore, where they lived for many years. Miss Betty Bierne became the wife of the Hon. Wm. Porcher Miles in the autumn of 1862, and Miss Susan Bierne married Captain Henry Robinson, of Georgetown.

With the hospitable dwelling of Mr. Barton Haxall in Grace Street, I had been made familiar through my friendship at Lefebvre's school with Harriet Haxall, later Mrs. Henry A. Wise, Jr. Miss Lucy Haxall, the eldest daughter of the house, who married Captain Edward Lees Coffey, an Irish officer volunteering for Confederate service, later lived and died in New York, where her daughter Edwalyn met and married Mr. Charles de Kay, author and poet. Charlotte Haxall, the first wife of Captain Robert E. Lee, died early; Mrs. Wise, whose son, Barton Haxall Wise, wrote an excellent life of his grandfather, the fiery and virile ex-governor, later Brigadier-General Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, passed away in the prime of matronhood. Captain Philip Haxall married Mary Triplett, of Richmond, whom I last saw at an entertainment given for the first Mrs. William Whitney and myself at General Joseph Anderson's in Richmond. When Mrs. Whitney, all enthusiasm over her glimpse of the South and its society, on our journey from Washington to Florida, beheld the famous Richmond beauty, she whispered to me: "Here is one that more than realizes what has been said of her!"

Page 159

Fair as the lilies of the valley bordering her corsage, dressed in a gown of white satin moulded to her beautiful form, with gleaming eyes and a wonderful pink flush on her cheeks, so I like to think of the Mary Haxall ere long to pass away in her sleep from heart trouble, leaving no child to endow with her heritage of beauty.

One of the younger set represented by Miss Triplett, whose name was oftenest heard bracketed with hers, was Miss Lizzie Cabell, now Mrs. Albert Ritchie, of Baltimore. Miss Mattie Ould, daughter of General Robert Ould, belonged to this group of girls who came on late in the war. Good-looking, well placed and connected, this young girl stands out on the background of the day as a spontaneous wit and suave talker on any subject, one of those who, like Mlle. Julie de Lespinasse in the salons of old France, would have found her special chronicler. But the sayings and repartees left behind at Mattie Ould's death seem to me spoiled by handling, and such as I have seen in print really give no idea of the girl's inimitable drollery and continual play of wit. The home of Dr. Charles Bell Gibson on Grace Street was a haunt of clever and responsive people, welcomed and inspired by Mrs. Gibson and her daughter Mary, to whose credit were circulated many bon mots and amusing strictures on things current.

I think we all fancied that Mrs. Robert Stanard came nearer to realizing the French ideal of a salon than any other hostess in Richmond. She was a widow, reputed wealthy and of considerable personal distinction, handsome, dark-eyed, and wondrously persuasive with the other sex, who came when she called and left promptly when she gave token of a change of mood. After the war Mrs. Stanard was heard of in various

Page 160

places abroad, always received with the cordiality befitting her recognized position as a leader in her own home. We knew her in New York after she became Mrs. Robb, and to the last she maintained the gracefully imperious manner of the admitted sovereign - a "she-who-must-be-obeyed" to all around her.

At Mrs. Stanard's one saw much of Mr. Pierre Soulé, of New Orleans, dark, suave, courtier-like, diplomatic in little things and big ones. Mr. Benjamin brought there his charming stories, his dramatic recitations of scraps of verse, and clever comments on men, women, and books. The Vice-President, Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, rarely seen in other houses - spare, worn, pungent - dropped in upon her sometimes; our brilliant friend Mr. L. Q. C. Lamar lent the witchery of his presence; all the foreigners in town made speed to attend her evenings; statesmen and soldiers, old and young, came into the circle of her magnetism. Needless to add, the women of Richmond were not slow in availing themselves of her none too profuse invitations.

Mrs. Pegram's house in Linden Row was another centre for pleasant gatherings. Her daughter, Miss Mary Pegram, and her younger daughter Jennie, aided this gentle lady in doing the honors of a home which was also to give to the Confederacy two of the fixed stars in its military firmament. General John Pegram, a West Point graduate, who fell at Hatcher's Run, near Petersburg, commanding Early's old division, on February 6, 1865, in almost the last battle of the war, was a noble and lovable fellow, and a fine officer. His marriage with my cousin, Hetty Cary, three weeks before his death, elsewhere told, was one of the tragedies of the time, unforgettable by those who shared in it. His brother, William Pegram, going into service aged

Page 161

nineteen, at the outbreak of hostilities, and quickly attaining rank and reputation as an officer of the Purcell Battery, with which he took part in every general action fought by the Army of Northern Virginia from the first battle of Manassas to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, won brilliant fame as a soldier. Colonel Pegram came to his lamented death at the battle of Five Forks, while seated upon his charger cheering his men to victory. The loss of these two valiant brothers, who sleep side by side in Hollywood, was keenly felt by Richmond, where their memory is still treasured as a heritage to succeeding generations of her citizens.

Of other hospitable homes overshadowed by the sacrifice of their best beloved in war, one was that of Colonel George Munford, secretary of the commonwealth, whose beautiful young son, Ellis, killed at Malvern Hill, was brought home in the dusk of evening, lying across his own caisson, and delivered to his family sitting all unconscious of their loss, upon the steps of their dwelling, seeking the cooler temperature that falls after dark in a Southern summer.

Another home made desolate was that of Lieutenant- Colonel Bradfute Warwick, brought there to die of wounds received in the battle of Gaines's Mill, aged barely twenty- three, but with an experience in military service as full and brilliant as his life was brief. Bradfute Warwick, the son of a wealthy father, had just completed a journey in Europe and the East, when his daring spirit was attracted to volunteer with Garibaldi, in whose stirring campaign in Sicily he won high honors. Upon the outbreak of war between the States, he hurried back to give his sword to Virginia, and was assigned to his first service in the western part of the State.

Page 162

In October, 1861, he received his appointment from President Davis as major of the Fourth Texas Regiment, upon the promotion of whose colonel, Hood, to be brigadier-general, Warwick became lieutenant-colonel. At the battle near Barhamsville, called Elkton's Landing, he was conspicuous for gallant bearing and the resistless fury of his attack. During the battle of Gaines's Mill, at a moment when the tide seemed to have turned against Confederate arms, three brigades having been broken to pieces in the attempt to storm the enemy's works, General Hood gave his old regiment preference to lead in a final desperate assault. The fall of Marshall, their colonel, just before the command to charge was heard, gave young Warwick the leadership of this band of splendid soldiers. His fierce and intrepid dash upon the enemy's breastworks, breaking both their lines, has been told as a tale to their children, by the two hundred and odd men who came alive out of the furious fire that had cut down as many more of their number. At the very moment of victory, when Colonel Warwick, seizing a battle-flag from its bearer, was about to plant it upon a captured battery, his right breast was pierced by a minie ball, and he fell mortally wounded.

One of my favorite comrades on many a ride near Richmond was young Preston Hampton, a model of manly beauty, son of the gallant leader of cavalry, General Wade Hampton, of South Carolina. A feeling of poignant sorrow came into our home circle with the sad story of Preston Hampton's death while fighting beside his brother, Wade, as members of their father's Legion. It was said that the general, seeing his youngest son plunge forward, far in advance of his line of battle, ordered Lieutenant Wade Hampton to "bring the boy back." The older son obeying, reached his brother

Page 163

as Preston fell from his saddle dead, and as he caught the body, was himself shot through the shoulder. The general, spurring toward them himself, lifted the dead boy from the brother's arms, kissed Preston's face, and commending his other son to his comrades, rode on into the fight, not knowing till the day's end whether Wade had lived or died.

Of other Carolinians in service in Virginia, whom we were accustomed to meet often, were the seven Haskell brothers, renowned for gallantry in action and courtesy in the society of women; and Colonel, afterwards General, Moxley Sorrel, slender, high-bred, and handsome, whose recent "Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer," finished shortly before his death, narrates better than can I, the story of his valorous career.

I never saw Miss Antoinette Polk until long after she had been the Baronne de la Charette, wife of the gallant and illustrious General Baron de Charette, leader of the Pope's zouaves, said to be to-day the most honored and beloved soldier of the old régime in France. I had the pleasure to be their guest at their chateau, La Basse Motte, near St. Malo, in Brittany, a few years since. She was one of the heroines of the sixties with whose beauty and romantic daring the Southern country rang. It was the general himself who told me, in rapid and dramatic French, this story of his wife's youth, while we were standing in the chapel of his chateau, hung with memorials and tattered banners of his own stirring war life. She was a superb horsewoman, and one day she and a girl cousin rode six miles into Columbia, Tennessee, to find the town occupied by Union cavalry. Ashwood Hall, her father's home, was at the moment filled with young Confederate officers, all unconscious of the enemy's vicinity. Miss Polk, grasping the situation

Page 164

at a glance, decided to warn her friends. She and her cousin, turning their horses, started at a run for home, chased by a squad of United States soldiers, suspecting mischief. The tradition of this wild ride by two girls, "over brake and brier," till, as their horses began to show fatigue, they suddenly wheeled and jumped fences their pursuers dared not attempt, reaching Ashwood in time to save their kinsmen from capture and imprisonment, has been handed down wherever Baronne de Charette has carried her charming presence; and it is always added how beautiful she looked on arrival at her home, breathless and nearly spent, her hat and whip gone, her blonde hair falling all over her like a mantle.

No picture of Richmond in war days would be histoire véridique omitting the household of the Hon. Randolph Tucker, attorney-general of Virginia, the echo of whose fame as a wit, story-teller of rare skill, and a brilliant jurist, still echoes down the corridor of time in Washington as in Richmond. When I went from New York to Washington to visit the William C. Whitneys in H Street, while he was Secretary of the Navy, my host said to me: "I am getting together a dinner of the cleverest men and best fellows of my acquaintance, at which I wish you and my wife to be present, and whatever else is left out of it, there are two indispensables: Ran Tucker and an old Smithfield ham!" Mr. Tucker came to this dinner and, as a treat to me, was placed upon my right. Brilliantly did he justify his reputation in making the social wheels go round. One continued laugh accompanied the menu at our end of the table, but, as usual with table-talk, it was as hard to gather up as split globules of quicksilver. I remember we asked him if it were true they

Page 165

served coffee in large breakfast cups during the White House dinners in Mrs. Hayes's régime; and whether he had given to a course of Roman punch, frappé with brandy unknown to the good hostess and served in little boats of crystal, the name of "Life-Saving Station"; but this he was too discreet a diplomatist to admit.

My uncle, Dr. Fairfax, of Alexandria, had taken up his abode in Grace Street, in a small house, poor in contrast with the broad generous one in Cameron Street, Alexandria, forsaken through patriotic motives. Here his oldest daughter, Monimia, was married to the Hon. George Davis, of Wilmington, North Carolina, attorney- general in Mr. Jefferson Davis's cabinet, a man of high character and mind, distinguished as a public servant in the broadest sense, to whose memory his city has recently erected a substantial monument. My cousin removed later to live a happy life in Wilmington, where her two daughters survive her.

Page 166

CHAPTER VIII

NOW came the winter's lull before the new fury of the storm should break forth with the spring. It was evident to all older and graver people that the iron belt surrounding the Southern country was being gradually drawn closer and her vitality in mortal peril of exhaustion. Our armies were dwindling, those of the North increasing with every draft and the payment of liberal bounties. Starved, nearly bankrupt, thousands of our best soldiers killed in battle, their places filled by boys and old men, the Federal Government refusing to exchange prisoners; our exports useless because of armed ships closing in our ports all along the coast, our prospects were of the gloomiest, even though Lee had won victory for our banners in the East. We young ones, who knew nothing and refused to believe in "croakers," kept on with our valiant boasting about our invincible army and the like; but the end was beginning to be in sight.

Christmas in the Confederacy offered as a rule little suggestion of the festival known to plum-pudding and robin-red-breast stories in annuals. Every crumb of food better than the ordinary, every orange, apple, or banana, every drop of wine and cordial procurable, went straightway to the hospitals, public or private. Many of the residents had set aside at least one room of their stately old houses as a hospital, maintaining at their own expense as many sick or wounded soldiers as they could accommodate. On Christmas eve, all the

Page 167

girls and women turned out in the streets, carrying baskets with sprigs of holly, luckily plentiful, since the woods around Richmond still held its ruddy glow in spots where bullets had not despoiled the trees beyond recall.

Our little household had been gladdened by the return of our midshipman from Charleston, where he had been again on duty, and his re-establishment on board the "Old Pat," as their school-ship was called by the youngsters. Just here opened a delightful vision. We were all invited to spend Christmas at "The Retreat," in King William County, the way being then open and without danger of interruption, save by overfull rivers. The postscript to this agreeable epistle was brief, but to the point: "Bring your own gentlemen!" After much merriment in deciding whom this would include, the matter settled down into finding out who could be got to go. Of the limited supply of men who could get off for the jaunt, our friends Lee Tucker, naval paymaster, Confederate States and Captain Joseph Denègre, of the ordnance department, with my small brother, were happily found available, and in the gray dawn of a December morning we set off by train from Richmond. At the last minute it was discovered that Midshipman Cary had forgotten his passport, he and Mr. Tucker remaining behind to secure it, thus necessitating a walk next day of half the distance from the terminus of their railway journey, the rest of the way by a hired buggy.

At our stopping-place, reached about 9 A.M. after a cold and joggling run by train, finding Uncle Nebuchadnezzar, a Retreat darky, in waiting in a covered wagon lined with straw, we inquired of him the distance to the house.

Page 168

"Well, mistis," he answered beamingly, "it mout be ten miles and then agin, it mout be twenty; some says one! some says t'other! but it's a right smart little bit; mebbe it's more, mebbe it's less, but sure as yer bawn, I disremembers."

And "Sure as yer bawn, I disremembers," was incorporated in our coterie-sprache from that moment. Whatever were the facts, evening found us still in the wagon, less buoyant than at the start. Our Confederate ideas of pleasuring were on a limited scale compared with those of to-day, when parties of young people must have motors, fur coats, foot-warmers, and thermos vacuum bottles to facilitate their winter jaunts. When, toward sunset, we finally turned in at the Retreat gate, amid the barking of dogs and the rush out-doors of our glad hosts and their children, attended by scarcely less welcoming negroes, all woes were forgotten. Two minutes later we were in enjoyment of intense physical relief, seated around a fire of generous logs sending out a glow that wrapped us in its warmth; and in half an hour we sat down to a table heaped with old-time luxuries: partridges, a sugar-cured ham, spare-ribs, and sausage - for those who knew what pork at the Retreat could be - corn-pone, biscuits, fresh, delicious butter, pitchers of mantling cream, and coffee, hot, rich, fragrant, tasting of the bean! We had literally no words!

Dear, cheery little "Cousin Nannie," our hostess, despairing because Nebuchadnezzar had taken the wrong ford, thereby causing our delay and suffering, did not stop lamenting over us till we had eaten a disgraceful amount of supper. As soon as possible, she insisted that we girls should go to our rooms, and there, sinking into lavender- scented, linen-spread feather-beds, with a fire dancing itself out upon the hearth, and a smiling

Page 169

negro woman waiting to extinguish the candles, elysium was attained. Was it true - could such home comforts still be for us war-worn children of the Confederacy? The last sounds in my waking ears were the patter of childish feet upon the landing, and a merry little golden-haired elf putting her head in at the door to cry, "I'll catch you, Christmas gift!" Then the strong, delicious aroma of forest greens from the hall below was wafted in as some one in authority captured the tiny invader and bore her off - and so - oblivion!

Next day, a quiet, cosey morning on a sofa wheeled up before the fire, with winter sunbeams glancing through crimson curtains into a room bowered in Christmas garlands. At mid-day a ramble through a forest heavy with pine odors, where a carpet of brown needles and dry twigs crackled musically under foot, amid currents of warm perfumed air; across denuded fields, where morning rime still glittered in fence corners upon the skeletons of last summer's wild flowers, and in the wide blue sky overhead crows wheeled and cawed - peace everywhere, peace infinite, no evil sight or sound to break the spell; and best of all, on our return to the house to find our two lost sheep of yesterday arrived and safe in the fold! To have had our boy miss that dinner would have robbed it of all savor.

Such a dinner! Served at three o'clock P.M. (after a luncheon, at twelve, of cordials and cakes), the host at his end of the long table, dispensing an emperor among turkeys, "Cousin Nannie" at hers, engaged in carving another ham (that of the night before having already gone to its long rest among the house servants) - a ham befrilled with white paper, its pink slices cut thin as shavings, the fat having a nutty flavor - with cloves stuck into a crust of sugar. I remember a course of

Page 170

game, and then the plum-pudding, with a berg of vanilla ice-cream and a mould of calves'-foot jelly, together with many little iced cakes and rosy apples in pyramids. This for us who had been for months living on salt pork and rice, beans and dried apples, who were to live on that fare (and in short rations, too) until poor old Richmond fell! The deeds done with fork and spoon that day, are they not written in the annals of the Retreat?

Once more unto the breach, dear friends! Our holiday was over. Again packed in the wagon, this time with the warmth of kindly good-byes and the memory of a royal welcome forming a shield around our hearts against cold and all Pandora's box of ills. "And just look here!" said Joe Denègre as we started, designating a large split basket of luncheon hidden in the straw. "Then, don't any of you say there's such a word as trouble in this world!"

We creaked along. We sank into deep ruts and dragged through miry reaches. The drive seemed endless. The cork came out of our persimmon beer and it filled Lee Tucker's shoe, but nobody complained. The victim, possessing a very nice voice of his own, started: "If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry," in which everybody chimed. Other songs followed, and catches: "Frère Jacques!" "A southerly wind and a cloudy sky," and "White sand and gray sand." At two o'clock we had luncheon, and a happy silence fell.

More songs; then "Muggins" was proposed, a game of cards I thought detestable; but they played it as earnestly as people nowadays play bridge. Next, Mr. Tucker got out "Elsie Venner," and gave us an example of his elocution in the tea-party of "Mrs. Marilla

Page 171

Rowens," and so we arrived at a ford that of course we couldn't cross.

To crown all, it was raining. Captains Denègre and Tucker went off in the gathering darkness through mud ankle-deep, reappearing with news of a house somewhere into which we might be taken. Whatever failed us in those days, it was not Virginian hospitality! The good people whose home we invaded seemed more than pleased to receive us, and next morning betimes started us again "On to Richmond." By that time all Christmas cheer had gone out of us. To reach a ferry, where there was only a tiny makeshift of a skiff, we and the mules wearily took up the burden of life again, plodding five miles through sloughs of hopeless mud, up perpendicular hills and down again, till every bone ached and philosophy ceased to be a virtue.

Once more on the shores of classic Pamunkey, liquid mud flowing everywhere, in prospect a crossing, two by two, in a miserable egg-shell made of slimy planks, the bottom quite under water! The crowning feat of our expedition was, on reaching the other shore, all vehicles failing, to take heart of grace and walk six miles, in a downpour, to the nearest station of the railway. Old Uncle Nebuchadnezzar, an ebon shade, smiling broadly over his coat-pocket full of Confederate blue-backs administered as tips, remaining with his mules on the far bank of the Stygian River, alone told the tale of our perfect holiday. If it is asked what were our notions of perfection, I would answer that in those days we were sustained by what Cervantes styled "the bounding of the soul, the bursting of laughter, and the quicksilver of the five senses."

As all chronicles of our war-time must of necessity drop often into melancholy detail, I am trying to

Page 172

assemble some of the more cheerful aspects of Richmond life. One day in January, Mrs. George Wythe Randolph, the beautiful Oriental-looking wife of our cousin, the Secretary of War, appealed to me to arrange for her an entertainment for an evening party which it devolved upon her to give to social and official Richmond. So I "thought up" a series of charades in pantomime, called in the players I could depend upon, and with the aid of Vizitelly, who not only painted a reversible drop scene but the faces of all the actors, the affair came off successfully.

The ready muse of Mr. Thompson bubbled over in a set of verses, read with spirit between each word, by Miss Mary Preston in the costume of a Greek chorus. I have them now, in the author's beautiful distinct caligraphy. "Knighthood," was the first word, and when the stanza I shall quote was read, the allusion it contained to General Hood, sitting well to the front in our audience, was a complete surprise. The object of the eulogy, looking like the hero of a Wagner opera, was compelled by a tumult of hand-clappings to arise and bow, blushing to the roots of his hair, and it was several minutes before the performance could go on.

                        "Knight is my first, my second is a name
                        That's doubly linked unto enduring fame;
                        The gentle poet of the Bridge of Sighs,
                        The hero, cynosure of tenderest eyes.
                        HOOD, whose keen sword has never known a stain,
                        Whose valor brightened Chickamauga's plain;
                        Well might he stand in glory's blazing roll
                        To represent to future times my whole;
                        For goodlier Knighthood surely never shone
                        Round fair Queen Bess upon her stately throne
                        Than his, whose lofty deeds we proudly call our own."

Page 173

General Hood, who had recently lost a leg in battle, was generally supposed to be engaged to marry the fair and regal being near whom he sat at our entertainment. His staff- surgeon going abroad through the blockade about this time was reported to carry, as his chief's direction for purchase in Paris, this order: "Mem: Three cork legs, and a diamond ring."

The love affair attributed to him did not materialize. It was some time after the war, when General Hood, married to a beautiful girl in New Orleans, and possessed of an unusually liberal allowance of young children, was said, upon his travels over the Southern country, where he had once wired orders deploying conquering armies, to telegraph ahead for fresh milk at the ensuing station.

From a stray leaf of my working copy of the programme, I find our dramatis personæ in "Pen" were Miss Josephine Chestney, as a quaint and pretty "Fanny Squeers," cajoling Major Ward, as "Nicholas Nickleby," to sharpen her quill pen.

In "Eye," Miss Herndon, as the "Widow Wadman," displayed her ailing orb to Mr. Forbes, as "Uncle Toby."

In "Tent" we had one of those Eastern scenes dear to amateurs, with all the jewels, spangles, and scarfs of friends and family united on the persons of young ladies who loll upon sofa cushions. In this word, Mrs. Russell Robinson was a lovely "Light of the Harem." The only real harem I ever penetrated in my journeys in Eastern countries was utterly unlike our representation, but we were all quite satisfied.

The word "Penitent" was posed by Miss Lizzie Giles in the garb of a novice with what seemed real tears upon her roseate cheeks.

Page 174

Our next was time-honored "Matrimony." In "Mat," Mr. Robert Dobbin lost his lady-love by too great anxiety in looking for a mat to kneel upon before Miss Pollard.

"Rye" revealed Vizitelly's painted fields as a background for my Cousin Hetty Cary's appearance in the guise of a Scotch lassie far too good-looking to be true, a picture several times redemanded while the piano industriously repeated "Comin' Thro' the Rye." After this scene my cousin was about to go around to sit among the audience, when her presence became necessary to quell an incipient strike among my supers behind the scenes. These volunteers being none other than Generals J. E. B. Stuart and Fitz Lee, the former declared he wouldn't stay by himself in that stuffy place next the butler's pantry and hold up a step-ladder unless Miss Hetty Cary would come and talk to him.

The result of this arrangement was that as the curtain was about to rise upon "Money" - where I, as a rustic maiden, was to divide my smiles between Colonel John Saunders, an humble swain of my own estate, and Vizitelly, a plumed cavalier with a purse of gold to offer - a fiasco occurred that nearly wrecked me and the syllable. My scene, charmingly painted as an English thatched cottage wreathed in roses, with a glimpse of the Thames in the background, had a garden fence, on the stile of which I was supposed to be perched coquettishly. Just as I had seated myself upon the stile, held up by General Stuart in the rear, and Vizitelly was prepared to make his swaggering entrance from the side, while Colonel Saunders began enacting whole volumes of jealousy, my perch gave way and I slid to the ground. Instantly the heroine was transformed into an irate stage-manager darting behind the scenes to scold

Page 175

an offending super. In vain General Stuart protested abject penitence for having forgotten for a moment and let go, and promised better behavior. Accused of gross neglect while on duty, he was sentenced to lose his position and sit among the audience for the remainder of the show. General Fitz Lee, virtuously declaring that no young lady could make him forget his responsibility as a step-ladder, took and held General Stuart's post.

Poor Stuart - gallant and joyous Stuart! Lee's right arm - the meteor cavalryman whose men gloried in following him to the death! In a few short months after this brief dalliance with fun in Richmond, he was to ride his last ride, and be shot down by a bullet from the outpost after the battle of the Yellow Tavern. In all our parties and pleasurings, there seemed to lurk a foreshadowing of tragedy, as in the Greek plays where the gloomy end is ever kept in sight.

For those of this generation less familiar than were we with Stuart's fame, I quote a striking description from a book called the "Crisis of the Confederacy," written by an English officer, Captain Cecil Battine, of the Fifteenth King's Hussars. "James Stuart, or Jeb, as he was called in the army, from his first initials, proved himself in his short career the greatest warrior amongst the great men who have been so called. Whether or not he was really descended from Robert the Bruce, he certainly inherited the kingly talent for leading men and making war. He won the great battle of May 3, which was decisive in this campaign, by skillful and gallant leading. He was but twenty- eight years old when he took Jackson's place at the head of the Second Corps." And again, in describing Chancellorsville: "The signal was then given for an assault right along the line. While

Page 176

the guns swept the road and the clearing on either side of it, Stuart led his infantry once more across the ravine, singing at the top of his voice, and waving his sword. His blonde beard, blue eyes and noble figure on horseback recalled the Norman hero who led the van at Hastings, singing the songs of Roland."

The finale of our performance at General Randolph's (given before the President, the cabinet, and as many more official people as the spacious rooms could hold) was very satisfying to our pride, although that is a condition rarely missing from the efforts of amateur actors. The whole word "Matrimony" was embodied in the quarrel scene from the "School for Scandal," beginning with the peevish protest of "Sir Peter": "Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, I'll not bear it," in which the protean Mr. Lee Tucker and the writer of these lines took the parts of the ill-matched pair. My costume that night was like a New England minister's donation party, a combination of unrelated parts contributed by friends. Miss Maria Freeland, our neighbor, had at the last moment sent over the white ostrich plumes, sought wildly among my friends without success, that crowned the superstructure of my powdered locks, and I wore dear knows who's pearl necklace, in mortal fear of losing it. Everybody borrowed; everybody lent; we had not the least reserve in seeking.

That winter, also, was given the amateur performance of which several accounts have recently gone into print. Mrs. Clement Clay, as "Mrs. Malaprop," was astonishingly good, dominating our little stage with the ease of a veteran actress. Mr. John Randolph as "Sir Anthony," Paymaster L. M. Tucker as "Jack Absolute," Major R. W. Brown as "Sir Lucius," Major

Page 177

Frank Ward as "Bob Acres," Mr. George Robinson as "David," and Mr. R. Dobbin as "Coachman," with my little brother as "Fag," carried off their parts with a dash that made me often long in the after days, when I conducted so many amateur theatricals for charity in New York, for such admirable material with which to cast my plays. The drollest incident was when General Hood, new to "The Rivals," said about "Bob Acres": "By Jove, I believe the man's afraid!"

The witty, rattling old comedy went from beginning to end without a lagging moment. I had the uninspiring part of "Lydia Languish," serving as a foil for the real brilliancy of Mrs. Clay's performance. We played it two nights successfully before large audiences of our friends. I find in a scrap of old diary, without a date, this entry: "My first dress was white muslin, lace negligé cap, blue ribbons; second dress, petticoat and bodice of pale blue brocade (once worn by somebody else at a White House levee), train of pale pink moiré antique, powdered hair, wreath of pink roses, fichu of old Mechlin lace.... "Clarence had an especial permit from the Secretary of the Navy (Mr. Mallory) to leave the school-ship for these occasions. Mamma patched up his livery with much skill, and at the first performance, had the pride of hearing an old general, doubled with laughter on the seat next to her, say: "By George, that Fag beats all the rest of 'em! It's the best bit of acting I ever saw...."

Tired as we were, next morning I went with Hetty, General Fitz Lee, and Colonel von Borcke for a long ride in brilliant winter sunshine, our hearts bounding with our horses. Hetty looked so beautiful in her habit none of us could keep our eyes off her. (The only girl I ever thought compared with her in the saddle was Sally

Page 178

Preston, whose habit, made in England, fitted her noble figure like a glove. She rode in London park style, and when mounted on her fine bay, Fairfax, was a glowing picture of vigorous beauty.) I made them laugh by telling "behind the scenes" anecdotes, and complaining of the black and blue spot left on my shoulder by Mrs. Malaprop's real pinch. I also confided to them that I should love to go upon the real stage, but knew, if I did, all the grandfathers and great-aunts would rise from their graves in horror! It was not so long before that a member of the Episcopal Church in Virginia was forbidden to go to the theatre, and to races, or threatened with excommunication for waltzing. This was during the period when the spirit of valiant old Bishop Meade still controlled our Church, in reaction from the days of the card-playing, fox-hunting clergy and resident chaplains who read the service in surplices worn over pink coats, keeping their hunters saddled and tethered at the vestry door!

I am trying to remember, to write down here, some of the men we were accustomed to meet at our parties and to receive in our drawing-rooms. Of the general officers, first and last, the list is a long one, besides those already mentioned in these pages. General Custis Lee; General W. H. F. Lee; Generals Elzey, Gracie, Roger A. Pryor, Lawton, Albert Sydney Johnston (the noblest Roman of them all in appearance), Gordon, Morgan, Buckner, McCullough, Jenkins, Edward Johnston, P. M. B. Young, and splendid General Breckinridge. The Hon. Mr. Clingman was a devoted if rather melancholy squire of dames. Then there were Colonels John Taylor Wood, Lubbock, and Preston Johnston, of the President's staff; Colonels George Deas and Bayne; Captain Basil Gildersleeve, of Ewell's staff; Colonel

Page 179

Osmun Latrobe (who has not let himself belong to a by-gone age but still holds his own at New York, Newport, and Lenox, as in our little war-jammed Richmond); always popular Colonel Henry Kyd Douglas, of whom we were to see so much in later days at Bar Harbor; Hon. William Porcher Miles; General Chestnut and Governor Manning; Captain Gordon McCabe (very young, but a hot fighter, a nimble dancer, and already a rare wit); Captain Joseph Bryan; Captain Frank Dawson (the clever, handsome, venturesome English lad, who, in order to cast his fortunes with the Confederacy, had come out from Southampton as a stowaway in the Nashville's mad run described in my brother's recital, and was to win fame and distinction in his adopted land); that picturesque old warrior and fire-eater, Colonel Frederick Skinner, of the First Virginia; Captain Page McCarty; Captain John Esten Cooke, the author; Dr. George Ross; Mr. Cooper de Leon, whom I had known since crepuscular days in Washington; Captain Samuel Shannon; Captain "Wragge" Ferguson; Captains Shirley Carter, Stuart Symington, and James Fraser; Major Theodore Chestney; Major Thomas Brander; Colonel William Munford; young Captain John Sargeant Wise; Captain Travers Daniel; the brilliant and many-sided Innis Randolph; Captain Legh Page; Majors Caskie Cabell and Willie Caskie; and my brother's friends, Midshipmen Jefferson Davis Howell and handsome James Morris Morgan, the latter early betrothed to the youthful daughter of Secretary Trenholm.

A friend and guest of our Vaucluse days was Captain William Washington, the artist of "The Burial of Latane," a touching war picture, and others, some of which still hang upon the walls of old Confederate sympathizers, more, perhaps, "In Memoriam," than because

Page 180

of very great intrinsic merit. Washington was a capital fellow, clever, well-bred, and versatile, and deserved more fame and fortune than he had won when we saw him later, buffeting the fierce current of New York following the war.

Mr. Edward Valentine I met first when I was a schoolgirl at Lefebvre's and he a mere lad trying short flights with his budding wings of genius into the empyrean of success he has since attained as a sculptor. To him the South owes, besides many other works, the immortal recumbent statue of General Lee on the hero's tomb at Lexington that to my mind is as noble as any piece of memorial sculpture in Italy or Greece, worthy to lie upon the glorious sarcophagus (called that of the great Alexander) that stands in the museum at Constantinople.

The Chevalier Moses Ezekiel, a sculptor also born in Richmond, but long resident in Rome, where he won his title and high honors from the Italian Government, has sent back to his native country many examples of his ripely cultured art. The "Virginia Mourning Her Dead," presented by him to the campus of the Virginia Military Institute, where he was a student in early youth; his bronze "Homer," recently installed at the University of Virginia; his "Jefferson," in Louisville, Kentucky; and his promised "Stonewall Jackson," still I believe in his atelier in the classic quarter of the Baths of Diocletian at Rome, will enduringly attest the fame of Virginia s wandering son.

William L. Sheppard, of Richmond, early transferred his scene of activity as a clever draughtsman, colonist, and modeller of war statuettes to New York, where his art is familiar in the Harpers' publications and in other prominent Journals and magazines.

Page 181

Poor Alexander Galt, a modest and gentle fellow who did good work in marbles representing some of our leaders, came occasionally to visit us. He had asked my mother's permission to make a bust of her daughter, and the preliminary sketch, etc., was done, another appointment settled, etc., when we heard to our grief and horror that he was lying dangerously ill of contagious smallpox, of which he shortly died.

A protégé of General Wise was Conrad Wise Chapman, a young artist from Italy, son of my mother's friend, John G. Chapman, who had painted her at eighteen in "The Baptism of Pocahontas" for the Rotunda at Washington. He left Rome to come over and enlist in the Confederate army, and saw varied service. A number of etchings of his battle scenes were put into circulation. We met him later at his own studio in the Twenty-third Street Building, corner of Fourth Avenue, New York, in which city, I think, he still abides.

I could never employ the critical faculty in my estimate of the work of John A. Elder, an artist of Fredericksburg, Virginia, simply because his treatment of Confederate subjects so gripped my heart that tears prevented a closer scrutiny. His "Appomattox," "The Crater," and "The Scout's Prize" have stood the test of years.

No feeling heart in Richmond failed to yield tender sympathy to the President's family in the calamity that befell them when little, merry, happy "Joe," petted by all visitors to the Executive Mansion - he who, when his father was in the act of receiving official visitors, once pushed his way into the study and, clad only in an abbreviated night-gown, insisted upon saying his evening prayer at the President's knee - fell from the porch in

Page 182

the rear of their dwelling and was picked up dead on the brick pavement underneath. From Burton Harrison, upon whom devolved all arrangements in behalf of the stricken parents, we heard a pitiful tale of the mother's passionate grief and the terrible self-control of the President, who, shutting himself in his own room, had walked the floor without ceasing all of the first night. To the bier of the little lad, it seemed that every child in Richmond brought flowers and green leaves.

The battle of the Wilderness, on May 6, 1864, and its terrible sequel, of musketry setting fire to brush and undergrowth on the field where dead and wounded were alike wrapped in flame and smoke during one long appalling night; the serious wounding of Lieutenant-General Longstreet; the battles of Spottsylvania Court House on May 10 and 12, with the death of Stuart near the Yellow Tavern on the later date, renewed all the old strain of continual yearning over the fortunes of our army. The horrors of the slaughter at Cold Harbor, on June 3, in which the Union amy lost over 13,000 men, the result, it was said, of little over one hour's fighting, and the beginning of the siege of Petersburg, focussed emotion. It did not seem we could stand more of these "bludgeonings of Fate."

My mother, for some time inactive in her nursing, declared she could rest no longer. She had been out to visit the hospital at Camp Winder, in a barren suburb of the town, where the need of nurses was crying. My aunt, Mrs. Hyde, deciding to accompany her, they were soon installed there, my mother as division matron, in charge of a number of rude sheds serving as shelter for the patients, my aunt controlling a dispensary of food for the sufferers. It had been proposed that I should remain

Page 183

in town with friends, but my first glance at my mother's accommodations in the camp made me resolve to share them and try to do my part. To the nurses and matrons was allotted one end of a huge Noah's Ark, built of unpainted pine, divided by a partition, the surgeons occupying the other end. Near by were the diet kitchens and store-rooms, around which were gathered wards and tents, the whole camp occupying an arid, shadeless, sun- baked plain, without grass or water anywhere, encircled by a noxious trench too often used to receive the nameless débris of the wards. To my mother, and myself as a volunteer aid to her, was assigned a large bare room with rough-boarded walls and one window, a cot in each corner, two chairs, a table, and washing apparatus. Then a kind lady coming to see us and declaring she was about to remove to the country and had nowhere to store a roomful of furniture, we fell heir to some nice old bits of mahogany, a folding-screen, a matting rug, a mirror, and a pair of white muslin curtains. While my mother was absent one day upon her rounds, I invoked the aid of a nice old colored man, and presto! our room was changed into a bower, bed and sitting room combined. When the curtain was hung up at the window - looking to the west, where each evening the sun sank, sending up a fountain of radiance behind a belt of inky pines - and tied back with my one blue sash, I had a bright idea. We would have a box of growing flowers nailed to the outside of the sill. Enlisting the services of my friendly darky to secure a box for me, he soon returned with what seemed exactly the right thing. When he told me it had been given him by the surgeons and had contained artificial legs my zeal decreased - but we covered it with bark from the woodshed, I bought somewhere plants of ivy,

Page 184

geraniums, and sweet alyssum, and, in the end, our window-garden was the envy of the camp. Just when I had finished arranging my new bailiwick, a couple of rosy Irish sisters, good, loving souls employed in the hospital, came in to bring me linen sheets and pillowcases spun by their mother in the old country and given to them for their weddings in the New World - "an' seein' the Yankees don't seem of a mind to spare us husbands anyhow, we'd be proud for you to use 'em, miss, in your be-youtiful room that's like a palace beside the rest."

Alas! the heat, the smell of the wounds, and close confinement to her rounds brought upon my mother the only illness I could remember, for her muscles and nerves always seemed to be made of iron. It was fortunately brief, and I then took my turn at the same trouble. But our initiation to Camp Winder over, we soon found forgetfulness of discomfort in the awful realities of brave men's suffering on every hand. I followed my mother in her rounds, aiding and supplementing her. Ere long, I found certain patients who in due course were relegated entirely to my care, with a ward helper in attendance. My whole heart passed into the work. I could hardly sleep for wishing to be back in those miserable cheerless wards, where dim eyes would kindle feebly at sight of me and trembling lips gave me last messages to transmit to those they would never see again. Once, going into one of my mother's wards, I found my way blocked by an arm lying on the floor, and the surgeons who had just amputated it still at work on Cavanagh, one of our favorite patients, a big, gentle Irishman, always courteous and considerate. The blood was gushing profusely from the flaps they were sewing together, and for a moment I paused uncertain. "Can you stand

Page 185

it?" asked one of the doctors kindly. "If so, there's a little help needed, as we're short-handed this morning." I stayed, and in a moment I saw clear and all seemed easier. When they hurried off, leaving Cavanagh to me, he came out of chloroform looking me full in the eyes, as I stood sponging his forehead. "So it's gone at last, the poor old arm we worked so hard to save," I said, trying to speak lightly. "Yes, miss, but it's not meself you should be thinkin' about," he answered, "an' you standin' by, dirtyin' your dress with the blood o' me." Cavanagh, I am glad to say, got well and left the hospital, swearing eternal fealty to his nurse.

One night, following a day when the cannon had not ceased till sunset, we were awakened by an orderly coming to tell my mother that a lot of new wounded had been brought in from the field and were still coming. They were putting them in a new ward just built at the far end of the camp, but had actually no food or stimulant to give them. Did Mrs. Cary think she could possibly spare a little from her store-room, since many of these poor fellows had been in the ambulance since the day before, some without a mouthful passing their lips?

We sprang up, hurried into our clothes, and were outside in a few minutes. My mother, unlocking her stores with a sinking heart, found she had but one bucket of milk, a small bottle of brandy, a piece of cold boiled pork, and a pile of cold corn-bread. With our arms full, we stumbled in the darkness over the rough ground, following the orderly and his lantern. If we had spilt that precious milk our hearts would have broken then and there!

The Southern night had spent its early heat, and a wandering breeze laden with wood odors came up from

Page 186

the river and smote our foreheads gratefully. At the door of the new ward, a long pine shed, ambulances were disgorging their ghastly contents, some of the wounded uttering pitifully prayers to be left to die in peace, some mercifully in stupor, while other forms were lifted out already stiffened in their last sleep. Those for whom the jolting ride from the battle-field had not finished the work of the enemy's bullets were carried in and laid on the cots, and by the insufficient glimmer of oil lanterns and tallow dips the surgeons began their rounds. Before they were half finished, a streak of saffron came into the sky seen through the open windows, and in the sparse trees on the outskirts of the camp, birds had begun to stir and chirp. We placed our supplies on a table near the door, and my mother, telling me the surgeons needed her assistance, bade me find out the exact number to be fed and "make it go around." Ah! that division of meagre portions! Never since, have I been able to endure with complacency seeing the waste of food in peace times. When, aided by the ward helpers, I began to distribute it, some were past swallowing, and their more vigorous neighbors looked with covetous eyes upon the poor rejected bits. To hurry by carrying off these morsels, to take cups away from thirsty lips before they were satisfied, was a keen sorrow.

At length, when I had nearly finished the task and almost exhausted my resources, I came upon a cot where lay upon his face a mere boy apparently dying. There was no time to call a doctor. I mixed milk and brandy, and after forcing his body over poured it by teaspoonfuls down his throat, keeping on till I had the joy of seeing the vital spark creep back. Little by little he reached the point of opening his eyes, and telling me he didn't exactly know what was the matter with him,

Page 187

but that he felt "so tired." As soon as I could capture my favorite doctor, I brought him to my patient. A wound was found, but a slight one. The lad was simply dying from exhaustion, the joggling of hours in the ambulance, and want of food. "He may thank his stars you kept on trying," said my doctor, "or he'd have been a dead one before now. Think of children like this put into the ranks to fill the places of the seasoned men they've killed for us!"

This patient also recovered on our hands, and in due time went back to his "old woman" in North Carolina, whose poor, scrawling letters to her son I had to read and answer for him. While at Camp Winder he was indulged by me to an extent that caused some jealousy and cutting comment from his neighbors in the ward. For him were reserved all the tidbits I could lay hands upon, but fortunately he went home before he was too badly spoiled.

If we had visitors, there was nowhere to receive them, so the few I allowed to come appeared during my off time in the afternoon, and took me out to walk. With the private secretary of the President, who never came save with some welcome book in hand, I oftenest wandered out of the grim precincts of Camp Winder into the woods above the canal and river bank, where we would sit under the shelving boughs and watch the silent boats steal by below, reading, talking, and trying to forget the incubus of war. Here the air knew no taint, wild flowers sprung profusely, there was no sound save that of the chafing river. Sometimes, on the canal-boats gliding past, the negro deck-hands would sing in plaintive chorus, or play an obligato upon some wind instrument dying in the distance like horns of Elfland. Walking back in the evening, we carried bouquets

Page 188

and sprays of foliage arranged while we sat; some for my own quarters, most of them for patients lying alone in the tents where they put infected wounds. These last had my deepest sympathy, so childlike they were in their terror of being shut out of the wards and left day and night alone save for the rare visits possible where there were so many needing attention. We generally timed ourselves to reach camp at sunset, just as the one-armed and one-legged soldier on duty at the headquarters flag-staff lowered the stars and bars to their evening rest, afterward performing upon his asthmatic bugle a melancholy strain. Then I had an hour of duty in feeding the patients in our ward who could not help themselves, and after that my mother, my aunt and I repaired to a bare refectory on the ground-floor of our Noah's Ark, where we shared with innumerable flies a coarse and insufficient evening meal.

To multiply instances of our work among the sufferers that long, long summer would be monotonous. I depict it as an example of a life led by hundreds of women of the South - women who had mostly come out of beautiful and luxurious homes. My mother, previously a volunteer, was now a paid servant of government, and, of what she received, spent the greater part in amplifying the conveniences and supplies of her diet kitchen. We were then in straits for everything considered indispensable in the outfit of modern hospitals. Our surgeons, working with pure devotion, were at their wits end to renew needful appliances. Without going into painful detail, I can say that our experience was continually shocking and distressing, as were the burials of our dead in a field by Hollywood, six or seven coffins dropped into one yawning pit, and hurriedly covered in, all that a grateful country could render

Page 189

in return for precious lives. All told, that Camp Winder episode was the most ghastly I ever knew. If we had possessed enough of any one hospital requisite it would have been less grim!

In June, 1864, my brother, who had been under fire repeatedly that spring aboard the iron-clad Virginia, in the campaign against Butler below Drury's Bluff, was ordered back to the school-ship for examination, becoming passed midshipman. Thence he was sent to the Chickamauga, at Wilmington, then fitting out for a destructive cruise which she was to watch her opportunity of making. Often when my mother and I returned from the hospital rounds to our pine barracks, heated red-hot by the torrid Southern sun, we would sit down to rest weary bones and speculate about our wanderer - whether he was yet out upon the deep that tells no tales, his ship to be shattered by a broadside from the blockading fleet, and he to go down in her, without a chance to send us a last message or farewell; less happy in that regard than the young fellows from whose brows we had that day wiped the death damps, whilst charging ourselves with letters to their beloved ones in far Southern homes.

It is a long lane that has no turning, and my holiday came at last. Late in the summer a small house-party, consisting of two men and two girls, was made welcome at "The Retreat." Spite of all drawbacks and darkest prospects, youth and happiness emerged triumphant from the shadows, making the week one of immemorial incident. After the male guests went back to duty, one of them, returning for a "week-end" visit, left Richmond on horseback late Saturday evening, rode all night, his horse swimming a river wherever the ferryman was absent, spent Sunday with us, and rode back

Page 190

through the night, just arriving in time for a certain official breakfast-table on Monday, where the mystery of his absence created endless humorous speculations, even from his stately chief.

A year later, the gay rider was in rigorous confinment in the casemate of a Northern fortress, fighting fate hourly within his valiant soul. The other - true knight, true lover, tried and proved leader of armies in the field - lay in his hero's grave in Hollywood, his radiant bride a stricken widow, whose story passed into tradition as among the saddest of the war.

My cousin Hetty and I lingered on in the country until my holiday ended disastrously. A sudden sharp illness - "Pamunkey fever," they called it, following the long stretch of hospital work in summer heat - summoned my mother from Richmond to attend me. She arrived in an ambulance, finding me, however, so much on the mend that I was able to drive back with her through the crimson and golden glories of the Pamunkey Swamps.

Things, as I recall them, seem to have rushed onward with the speed of lightning during the last winter of the war. We had again settled ourselves in quarters in town. I had recovered my full strength, and was almost always hungry. We had little money, little food. It was impossible to draw upon our funds in Washington, and my mother, with a number of ladies, took a situation to sign bank-notes in the Treasury Department. In what they called "Mr. Memminger's reception-room," she daily met gentlewomen, in whose veins ran the purest currents of cavalier and Huguenot blood. The names written upon those bank-notes might have served to illustrate the genesis of Southern aristocracy.

This time we had been able to secure only one room

Page 191

in a friend's house, with the use of her drawing-room and dining-room and service of her cook, the latter being a nominal one only; our breakfast, at 8 A.M., consisting of corn-bread with the drippings of fried bacon instead of butter, and coffee made of dried beans and peanuts, without milk or sugar. For luncheon we had, day in and day out, bacon, rice, and dried apples sweetened with sorghum. For our evening repast were served cakes made of corn-meal and water, eaten with sorghum molasses, and more of that unspeakable coffee. I cannot remember getting up from any meal that winter without wishing there were more of it. I went once to call upon a family antecedently wealthy, and found father, mother, and children making their dinner upon soup-plates filled with that cheerless compound known as "Benjamin" hard-tack, soaked in hot water, sprinkled with salt or brown sugar. It is to be said, however, there was in our community no discussion of diets, fads, or cures, and the health chase of modern society was an unknown quantity. People in better physical condition than the besieged dwellers of Richmond, when their cause was beginning to feel the death-clutch at its throat, were certainly not to be found.

Page 192

CHAPTER IX

THE question of executive policy was by no means left at rest among the exponents of public opinion in Richmond. While there was a large faction supporting the President in his disapproval of General Johnston's method of playing the game of war with General Sherman, in northern Georgia, many a bitter comment was heard upon Mr. Davis's final action in relieving Johnston of his command. People we met said outspokenly that the Executive's animus against Johnston was based upon a petty feud between their wives, who had been daily associates and friends in the old Washington days. Others warmly defended Mr. Davis, declaring that the brilliant and aggressive Hood was the general of all others to make up for Johnston's delay in bringing matters to a crisis.

It is certain that Johnston felt keenly the blow of his removal. One of my cousins, close to this general throughout the war, told me the great soldier shed tears of bitter mortification upon his removal, and that he heard him say:

"I had drawn and drawn and drawn Sherman, and just when I got him where I wanted him to be, I was taken away."

And now for a stirring chapter in family annals, supplied by our midshipman, between whom and his mother and sister the veil of silence and uncertainty had fallen for several months. I knew that England had struck her fiercest blow at Spain by preying upon her

Page 193

commerce in open waters; that France, in the Seven Years' War, had sent numbers of bold privateers to destroy shipping off the English coast and in the Irish Sea; that, following these depredations, "all England had gone mad after privateering," and had sent out hundreds of vessels great and small to put the Frenchmen back in their proper places. Any one might read of the liberal use made by America in her war for independence of the fleets of commissioned privateers sent forth to harry Britain upon the ocean. It was all fair-play according to historical precedent, and our President had issued letters of marque and reprisal to private armed ships to do their best against Northern merchant-men. All that one felt in cold blood, however, was swept away in the thrilling excitement of actual adventure.

I may here state that a diary (exacted of their midshipmen by the Confederate navy, following the old-time custom of the navies of England and the United States), kept by my brother on the cruise of the Chickamauga and during the siege of Fort Fisher, achieved, unexpectedly to him, the honor of passing into the archives of the State Department at Washington, where, in "Room 311, Case 21," this boy's record of sea adventure is now preserved. Found in the naval school after the occupation of Richmond by Lieutenant- Commander James Parker, U. S. N., it was sent by him to the Navy Department in Washington. "The journal of Midshipman Cary," says Commander Parker, "seemed to me a very important and valuable contribution to the naval side of a dispute between Admiral Porter and General Butler as to the propriety of the withdrawal of the troops at Fort Fisher. It was just such a journal as I would have kept in my midshipman days fifteen or

Page 194

more years before; and its entire truthfulness and correctness were apparent, colored as they were by boyish enthusiasm and frankness of statement.

"I promptly sent it to the Navy Department. I heard no more of it until its reappearance several years later in evidence before the Geneva Tribunal; where it contributed largely to fix the responsibility of Great Britain for the destruction of our shipping by these Confederate cruisers, whose doings were faithfully chronicled in the journal."

How the diary came to be discovered in the files of the Navy Department by those charged with preparing the case of the United States for the Geneva Tribunal, and extracts from it edited for that case, Mr. Cary has never heard. It was not until the publication of the arbitration proceedings in 1871 that he learned of the continued existence of his almost forgotten journal, or that it had so contributed to the making of history.

"The purpose of the production of the journal," writes Mr. Cary, "was to show that the British had granted undue favors to the Chickamauga during her call at their neutral port at St. George's in Bermuda, both in respect of coal supply and length of stay." In the "Opinions of Sir Alexander Cockburn," a privy councillor and lord chief-justice of England, and one of the arbitrators at Geneva, occurs the following:

"The only authority for this statement (i. e., as to the Chickamauga's overstaying her time limit of 24 hours at Bermuda and her receipt there of 82 tons of coal instead of the prescribed 25) is the diary of a midshipman who was serving on board the ship. The diary is not unamusing, and is not without its value.... In the result, the whole question becomes immaterial. We see from Mr. Cary's diary that the Chickamauga

Page 195

arrived at Wilmington, where this young officer unfortunately 'slipped up on his expectations,' on the 19th of November without having fallen in with, taken, or destroyed a single United States vessel. The coaling at Bermuda therefore did not the least injury to the United States, and cannot in any point of view found a claim for damages."

Lord Chief-Justice Cockburn's satirical quotation of a bit of American boy's slang, as italicized above, gives my brother occasion to observe that his unpretending little journal "evoked the sole suggestion of humor that appears to have enlivened the grave international proceedings here concerned."

To go back to the beginning of the Chickamauga's cruise in October, 1864, succeeding a long delay in Wilmington harbor and several abortive attempts to nose her way out through the blockading squadron. "In profound silence; lights all dowsed, engine hatches and even the slightest glow of the binnacle lamp alike carefully shrouded; her furnaces crammed with picked Cardiff coal that would neither smoke nor flare from the funnels, deck orders were passed in whispers. At last we were off, on a wild night of October 28th, with easterly squalls and inky skies and a lumpy sea - creeping at first, furtively.... Some of the obstructing ships were dimly seen tossing like tiny dots against a ragged eastern sky line."

Here is how running the blockade appeared to Midshipman Cary, "on duty forward in the darkness and slop of the top-gallant-forecastle deck, feeling the quivering plunges of the little cruiser and the chill edges of the short rough seas which bucketted down my shivery neck.

Page 196

"A shuddering anxious touch on the sand rip, and then signal lights in jagged lines of red and white suddenly flashed across the broken water; there was a glare of partial broadsides, lighting alien guns and guns' crews and a bit of black rigging overhead; there were the whiz of harmless shells aloft, then a puzzled lull among the enemy, followed by their chasing rockets! Meanwhile the Chickamauga underwent a lively change! On the instant her sloppy staggering decks became the scene of greatest activity. Back went the coal bags (extra cruising fuel piled forward to lighten her after weight) hustled aft, somehow or anyhow, whether on trucks or by hand; to clear the guns and charge the trim, with officers in full swing of commanding energy; the boatswain and his mates heard at over concert pitch, using characteristic language - and the Chickamauga escaped her foe, going away eastward at her best fourteen knot gait!"

Next morning, eluding a persistent chaser, the cruiser began her hot work of as active a career of destruction as may be found. Upon her first prize, the bark Mark L. Potter, were found china-ware of which they had almost none, and all sorts of food from "plum-pudding to pickles." Close by the Capes of Delaware three more prizes fell into their hands - the bark Emily D. Hall, sugar laden from Cardenas to Boston; the crack clipper ship Shooting Star, "a cloud of snowy canvas from her graceful hull to her tapering top-gallant masts," and another bark, the Albion Lincoln, which, bonded and released, served to relieve them of the four crews of paroled prisoners already in their hands. The Shooting Star, from New York, with supplies for the United States Pacific Squadron, was a rich find, containing, above all things desirable, a cargo of fine coal. Her

Page 197

burning in the winter twilight was a glorious spectacle, the comedy element of her capture being that of the captain's wife, Mrs. Drinkwater, "who ignominiously routed in turn all the young officers of the Chickamauga" until the Lincoln relieved them of the shrewish lady's presence.

Struck by a gale of wind lasting seven days, the Chickamauga then made her way to Bermuda, where our midshipman was sent ashore to face Yellow Jack and look up deserters, and, after sundry individual adventures, set sail again in the cruiser for Wilmington and home, contriving to run in under the veil of a thick fog, upon whose sudden lifting next morning they found themselves face to face with the whole blockading squadron of the enemy! After an hour's hot fight, shot and shell raining fiercely around them, Fort Fisher came to their aid, firing aimlessly but enough to frighten off the fleet. "We started in, got stuck on a sand bar, when behold the blockaders were down on us again, but by lightening the ship we succeeded in gliding over the bar to safety."

From the midshipmen of Battery Buchanan, on the shore at the river's mouth, a signal by flags was fluttered to the midshipmen on the victorious Chickamauga, to this import: "For Heaven's sake send us some Yankee china. We are eating our soup out of cigar boxes!" This, when Captain Wilkinson and his first lieutenant of the Chickamauga were eagerly expecting official instructions, may have been said to break down the ceremony of the occasion!

A brief rest for our youngster brought him to Christmas holidays of a memorable sort. By requisition of Major General Whiting, commanding the land forces at Fort Fisher, soon to be the scene of fierce conflict, my

Page 198

brother was sent with two lieutenants and twenty-five picked men of the Chickamauga's crew, to man navy guns mounted on unfinished batteries within the fort. On Christmas eve the United States fleet with 580 guns, headed by iron-clads, moved in and attacked the fort, throwing all kinds of projectiles from a three-inch bolt to a fifteen-inch shell. "The grandest sight of my life," wrote the young participant. "The firing on both sides was heavy all day."

Our one Christmas gift that year, received with tears and smiles, was an item in the official report of Major-General Whiting, sent on from the Navy Department by our good friend Commodore S. S. Lee, whose son, Daniel Murray Lee, was a midshipman on the Chickamauga.

"To passed Midshipman Cary, I wish to give personal thanks. Though wounded, he reported after the bursting of his gun to repel the threatened assault, and actively assisted Colonel Tansill on the land front."

We had already heard that our boy's wound was on the mend, and could afford to rejoice without alloy.

From the law offices of Cary & Whitridge, 59 Wall Street, New York, in 1902, my brother wrote to me as follows:

"The enclosed may interest you, for certainly the circumstance is extraordinary, if only in the sense that it can never possibly - with all its antecedents, etc. - occur again."

Extract of letter from Bartlett S. Johnson to Clarence Cary, dated December 3, 1902:

"What you say about the three Confederate midshipmen on the Virginia Debt Reorganization Committee had already occurred to me. I think it shows that our fasting and privation kept our stomachs in good shape

Page 199

and still keeps us among the live men of the day. Then our grit - pardon me for classing myself with you and Newton - has something to do with it. I always had more than a friendly feeling toward you. It is close to affection, and dates back from the day when the men cheered you after Fort Fisher fight."

Mr. Cary further writes to his sister:

"This correspondence shows a bit of diversion by the way in the thorny paths of business. I think you will feel a sort of clutch about the throat if not a slight moisture of the eyes. Of course the 'cheering' referred to our ship's little ragged remnant of mates returning after hard knocks.

"We had an exposed, unfinished part of the fort to hold, had to show off before the soldier chaps and had our own two big guns burst under our noses, the whole with a net result that nineteen out of our twenty-six men were killed or wounded.

"So you see it was not unnatural that our shipmates aboard of the C. S. Chickamauga should give us a cheer when we got back; or perhaps that the army and the other forts along our route did likewise. I protest, as Thackeray would say, I can't now think with equanimity of that ox-cart load of removable wounded and their ragged, bandaged, shabby survivors alongside, stumbling through the heavy sand, after two days of hell, la bas, in Fort Fisher. It seems so ridiculously far off, too, and there is a pathetic side about the youth of its actors. Our oldest must have been Lieutenant Roby, of the mature age of twenty- six. Dornin, the other lieutenant, perhaps a year older, stayed behind to await amputation that day performed upon his leg."

As a final chapter of this episode, I have received, when my work is nearly finished, a letter from my brother's

Page 200

friend and shipmate of Confederate navy days, Colonel James Morris Morgan, of Washington, himself sufficiently acquainted with the methods of gallant service to be a trusted reporter of Mr. Cary's youthful prowess.

"When Fort Fisher was threatened, two of the guns of the Chickamauga were taken ashore and mounted in the fort. Midshipman Cary was in charge of one of them, and during the battle his gun burst, killing and wounding some twenty odd men who were standing near it. Cary was unhurt and, walking up to General Whiting, asked if he could not give him something more to do. The Federal fleet was at that time sweeping the beach with six hundred guns. General Whiting expressed his desire to get a communication to a detached battery some hundreds of yards away, but said he would not order any man to carry it, as he considered it hardly possible that the feat could be accomplished under such a fire. Midshipman Cary begged to be allowed to attempt the perilous journey. Lieutenant Roby and Midshipman Berrian, who were present, described the scene to me, and several of my old classmates, who were with the Federal fleet, have borne testimony to the accuracy of their statements.

"It seems that hardly had the little midshipman started on his way when the shells from the fleet ploughed the sand from under his feet and down he went into the hole made. There was a groan from the fort as some one exclaimed, 'Little Cary's gone!' and then, to their relief, they saw him struggle to his feet and trudge on. This happened again and again, until at last, as he neared the battery, a shell was seen to explode very near him which fairly buried him in the sand. All in the fort gave him up for dead when, suddenly, to their amazement, they saw him totter to his feet again, though wounded in

Page 201

the leg. The fleet ceased firing and, as he staggered on to his destination, both the men in the fort and on board the fleet broke into a mighty cheer. This is the only occasion I ever knew of during the war when a man heard both sides cheer him."

The engagement of my cousin Hetty Cary to Brigadier- General John Pegram having been announced, their decision to be married on January 19 was a subject of active interest. My aunt, Mrs. Wilson Miles Cary, of Baltimore, had before Christmas obtained from Mr. Lincoln, through General Barnard (chief of the United States Engineer Corps, married to her adopted daughter), a pass to go to Richmond to visit her children. The presence of Mrs. Cary gave General Pegram opportunity to urge that his marriage should not be longer delayed, and such preparations as were possible were hurried on. My aunt was stopping at the house of her niece, Mrs. Peyton, whence the ceremony took place. On the evening of January 19 all our little world flocked to St. Paul's Church to see the nuptials of one called by many the most beautiful woman in the South, with a son of Richmond universally honored and beloved. Two days before, I being confined to my room with a cold, Hetty had come, bringing her bridal veil that I, with our mothers, might be the first to see it tried on her lovely crown of auburn hair. As she turned from the mirror to salute us with a charming blush and smile, the mirror fell and was broken to small fragments, an accident afterward spoken of by the superstitious as one of a strange series of ominous happenings.

While a congregation that crowded floor and galleries of the church waited an unusually long time for the arrival of bride and groom, my aunt and the other members

Page 202

of our family being already in their seats, I stood in the vestibule outside with Burton Harrison and Colonel L. Q. C. Lamar, speculating rather uneasily upon the cause of the delay. Mr. Harrison told us that Mrs. Davis (who tenderly loved and admired the bride) had begged to be allowed to send the President's carriage to drive her to the church, and he was sure it had been in prompt attendance at Colonel Peyton's door. Directly after, a shabby old Richmond hack drove up, halting before the church, and from it issued the bride and groom, looking a little perturbed, explaining that at the moment of setting out the President's horses had reared violently, refusing to go forward, and could not be controlled, so that they had been forced to get out of the carriage and send for another vehicle, at that date almost impossible to secure in Richmond.

When the noble-looking young couple crossed the threshold of the church, my cousin dropped her lace handkerchief and, nobody perceiving it, stooped forward to pick it up, tearing the tulle veil over her face to almost its full length, then, regaining herself, walked with a slow and stately step toward the altar. As she passed there was a murmur of delight at her beauty, never more striking. Her complexion of pearly white, the vivid roses on her cheeks and lips, the sheen of her radiant hair, and the happy gleam of her beautiful brown eyes seemed to defy all sorrow, change, or fear. John Pegram, handsome and erect, looked as he felt, triumphant, the prize-winner - so the men called him - of the invincible beauty of her day. Miss Cary's brother, Captain Wilson Miles Cary, representing her absent father, gave away the bride. After the ceremony we, her nearest, crowded around the couple, wishing them the best happiness our loving hearts could picture.

Page 203

General Pegram's mother, brothers, and sisters did the same; then, as they passed out, all eyes followed them with real kindness and unalloyed good feeling. There was but a small reception afterward, but one felt in the atmosphere a sense of sincere gladness in happy love, very rare on such occasions.

Three weeks later, to the day, General Pegram's coffin, crossed with a victor's palms beside his soldier's accoutrements, occupied the spot in the chancel where he had stood to be married. Beside it knelt his widow swathed in crape. Again Dr. Minnegerode conducted the ceremony, again the church was full. Behind the hearse, waiting outside, stood his war charger, with boots in stirrups. The wailing of the band that went with us on the slow pilgrimage to Hollywood will never die out of memory. Burton Harrison drove in the carriage with me and my mother, my poor cousin with her mother, brother, and General Custis Lee, her husband's intimate friend, who stood beside her, as, leaning on her brother's arm, she remained during the service close to the grave. General Pegram's family clustered beyond her. Snow lay white on the hill-sides, the bare trees stretched their arms above us, the river kept up its ceaseless rush and tumble, so much a part of daily life in our four years of ordeal that we had grown accustomed to interpret its voice according to our joy or grief.

The newly married couple had gone directly to General Pegram's head-quarters, near Petersburg, where he was at the head of Early's division. Their new home was in a pleasant farm-house nine miles out of Petersburg, close to the line of General Pegram's command, near Hatcher's Run. Here, within constant sound of shot and shell, her taste and skill busied itself in fitting up rooms that seemed to her soldier the perfection of

Page 204

beauty and comfort, and in preparing for him little dishes that transformed their ordinary fare. When she rode beside him during their short honey-moon, the men thronged to look at her with pride in their leader's lovely wife. On February 5 a demonstration was made by the enemy against General Lee's extreme right, in which General Pegram's forces were engaged. He returned to their lodgings and, before daylight on the 6th, was aroused by the information that the enemy was about to renew attack. His wife made coffee and prepared breakfast for him in the gray of dawn; then, after seeing him ride off, spent the day with her mother, who had fortunately arrived upon a visit to her son, Captain Cary. As the short winter's day closed in, a messenger arrived from General Pegram to say he had come safely through the fight.

The ladies were at this time sitting in an ambulance at some distance away carding lint. At sunset a new charge was formed against the enemy, General Pegram leading it, sword in hand, when a minie-ball (claimed to have been fired by a sharp-shooter a great way off) entered his heart, killing him instantly, after striking the sword from his hand and filling its scabbard with his blood. Of his comrades, none was found who would volunteer to break the news to my cousin.

Captain Gordon McCabe, of Richmond, a close friend of General Pegram, has thus written to me:

"I can tell you of the tragic time after he was killed, when our guns pulled past the ambulance where she was carding lint and I heard her laughing merrily within. I knew he was dead, shot at the head of his division, while she sat there waiting for him to come to her." After his body had been tenderly placed in the room used as the adjutant- general's office at head-quarters,

Page 205

word was sent to her that "she might safely return to their quarters and go to bed, for it would be late before he could get back." So she slept peacefully that night, in the room above his body - a bride of three weeks.

In the morning an old gentleman, a civilian, volunteered to go up and call her down to where Pegram lay. Kneeling beside the body, she put her hand into the breast of his coat, drawing out first his watch, still ticking, that she had wound for him just before they parted; next, a miniature of herself, both stained with life blood. My aunt and her son accompanied the widow to Richmond in a freight car, she sitting beside the coffin. No one of us is likely to forget the sad days that followed. She was like a flower broken in the stalk.

Another ordeal was in store for her in the death in battle of General Pegram's younger brother, Colonel William Pegram, who fell in the retreat from Petersburg. To remain with the mother of these heroes, during her time of crushing grief, was my cousin's loving duty. A short time after the occupation, Mrs. Cary and Mrs. Pegram, accompanied by Captain Cary, returned to their home in Baltimore, with a free pass from General Grant.

At the end of March hope in the stoutest spirits seemed to flicker but feebly and the ultimate failure of the Confederacy to be a foregone conclusion. Coming in late from a walk on the evening of March 29, I found to my surprise a note from Burton Harrison, who had called in my absence to say that he was unexpectedly desired to take charge of Mrs. Davis, her sister, and the Davis children on a "visit" to Charlotte, North Carolina. He had just been for a farewell visit to Mrs. Wilson Miles Cary and Mrs. Pegram - "the saddest I ever knew" - and must hasten to the train, hoping to be back

Page 206

in town ere long, to find me "well and happy and light of heart."

When I saw him again, it was in the following autumn, behind prison bars, after months of solitary confinement succeeding his capture with the chief whose fortunes he loyally chose to follow, when a dozen times he might have found opportunity to avoid his subsequent hard fate.

Page 207

CHAPTER X

ON the morning of April 2, a perfect Sunday of the Southern spring, a large congregation assembled as usual at St. Paul's. I happened to sit in the rear of the President's pew, so near that I plainly saw the sort of gray pallor that came upon his face as he read a scrap of paper thrust into his hand by a messenger hurrying up the middle aisle. With stern set lips and his usual quick military tread, he left the church, a number of other people rising in their seats and hastening after him, those who were left swept by a universal tremor of alarm. The rector, accustomed as he was to these frequent scenes in church, came down to the altar rail and tenderly begged his people to remain and finish the service, which was done.

Before dismissing his congregation the rector announced to them that General Ewell had summoned the local forces to meet for defence of the city at three in the afternoon. We knew then that Longstreet's regulars must have been suddenly called away, and a sick apprehension filled all hearts.

On the sidewalk outside the church we plunged at once into the great stir of evacuation, preluding the beginning of a new era. As if by a flash of electricity, Richmond knew that on the morrow her streets would be crowded with her captors, her rulers fled, her government dispersed into thin air, her high hopes crushed to earth. There was little discussion of events. People meeting each other would exchange silent hand grasps

Page 208

and pass on. I saw many pale faces, some trembling lips, but in all that day I heard no expression of a weakling fear. Movement was everywhere, nowhere panic. Begarlanded Franklin Street, sending up perfume from her many gardens, was the general rendezvous of people who wanted to see the last of their friends. All over town citizens were aiding the departure of the male members of their family who could in any way serve the dispossessed government. In the houses we knew, there was everywhere somebody to be helped to go; somebody for whose sake tears were squeezed back, scant food prepared, words of love and cheer spoken. Those good, dear women of Richmond, who had been long tried as by fire, might bend but would not break.

Between two and three in the afternoon formal announcement was made to the public that the government would vacate Richmond that evening. By nightfall all the flitting shadows of a Lost Cause had passed away under a heaven studded by bright stars. The doomed city lay face to face with what it knew not.

In my "Confederate Album" is the original telegram from General J. C. Breckinridge, Secretary of War, to President Davis at Danville, describing the evacuation of Richmond. It is written upon a half sheet of cheap yellowish paper, and marked "206 / Collect 103.00," and runs as follows:

"RED HOUSE, VIA CLOVER STATION,
"R. & D. R.R.

"THE PRESDT.
"Evacuation of Richmond completed in order on morning of third. Genl. Lee concentrated pretty well about Amelia C. H. on 5th, but enemy occupied Junction that evening, and our forces moved during the night

Page 209

and morning of the 6th to Rice's Station. During the morning we captured some eight hundred (800) prisoners, but in afternoon met a serious reverse, and portion of army placed across Appomattox at High Bridge and other points. I left Genl. Lee at Farmville yesterday morning, where he was passing main body across the River for temporary relief. He will still try to move around towards North Carolina. There was very little firing yesterday and I hear none to-day. No definite information as to movements of enemy from Junction towards Danville. Stoneman's advance reported yesterday to be near Liberty. Lomax reports enemy in considerable force advancing up Shenandoah Valley. No news from Echols, but he is supposed to be close on Stoneman's rear. Genl. Lee has sent orders to Lomax to unite with Echols against Stoneman and to Colston to make firm defence at Lynchburg. The straggling has been great and the situation not favorable. Genls. Gilmer, Lawton, and St. John are with me. We will join you as soon as possible.

"J. C. BRECKINRIDGE,
"Secy. of War."

I had gone with my brother to the station in the afternoon, and saw him off with a heart that for the first time in our war partings felt heavier than lead. His farewell present to me was a ham, of which he unexpectedly came into possession after we had said good-by, sending it to me by a negro tipped with a large amount of Confederate currency, who, to his honor be it said, was faithful to his trust. My brother was aware that in addition to leaving me alone in our lodging (in my mother's absence, gone to nurse my cousin Ethelbert Fairfax, wounded in the battle of Bentonville in

Page 210

North Carolina) our larder was very nearly bare. I had promised them if an emergency arose to go to my uncle's house, where I presently arrived, my ham following!

I insert a letter written at this time:

"GRACE STREET, RICHMOND, April 4,1865.

"MY PRECIOUS MOTHER AND BROTHER:
"I write you this jointly, because I can have no idea where Clarence is. Can't you imagine with what a heavy heart I begin it--? The last two days have added long years to my life. I have cried until no more tears will come, and my heart throbs to bursting night and day. When I bade you good-bye, dear, and walked home alone, I could not trust myself to give another look after you. All that evening the air was full of farewells as if to the dead. Hardly anybody went to bed. We walked through the streets like lost spirits till nearly daybreak. My dearest mother, it is a special Providence that has spared you this! Your going to nurse poor Bert at this crisis has saved you a shock I never can forget. With the din of the enemy's wagon trains, bands, trampling horses, fifes, hurrahs and cannon ever in my ears, I can hardly write coherently. As you desired, in case of trouble, I left our quarters and came over here to be under my uncle's wing. In Aunt M.'s serious illness the house is overflowing; there was not a room or a bed to give me, but that made no difference, they insisted on my staying all the same. Up under the roof there was a lumber-room with two windows and I paid an old darkey with some wrecks of food left from our housekeeping, to clear it out, and scrub floor and walls and windows, till all was absolutely clean. A cot was found and some old chairs and tables - our

Page 211

own bed linen was brought over, and here I write in comparative comfort, so don't bother about me!

"Hardly had I seemed to have dropped upon my bed that dreadful Sunday night - or morning rather - when I was wakened suddenly by four terrific explosions, one after the other, making the windows of my garret shake. It was the blowing up, by Admiral Semmes, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, of our gunboats on the James, the signal for an all-day carnival of thundering noise and flames. Soon the fire spread, shells in the burning arsenals began to explode, and a smoke arose that shrouded the whole town, shutting out every vestige of blue sky and April sunshine. Flakes of fire fell around us, glass was shattered, and chimneys fell, even so far as Grace Street from the scene.

"By the middle of the day poor Aunt M.'s condition became so much worse in consequence of the excitement, the doctor said she positively could not stand any further sudden alarm. His one comfort is that you, his dear sister, are taking care of his wounded boy of whom his wife has been told nothing. It was suggested that some of us should go to head-quarters and ask, as our neighbors were doing, for a guard for the house where an invalid lay so critically ill. Edith and I were the volunteers for service, and set out for the Capitol Square, taking our courage in both hands. Looking down from the upper end of the square, we saw a huge wall of fire blocking out the horizon. In a few hours no trace was left of Main, Cary, and Canal Streets, from 8th to 18th Streets, except tottering walls and smouldering ruins. The War Department was sending up jets of flame. Along the middle of the streets smouldered a long pile, like street-sweepings, of papers torn from the different departments' archives of our beloved Government, from

Page 212

which soldiers in blue were picking out letters and documents that caught their fancy. The Custom House was the sole building that defied the fire amongst those environing the Square. The marble Statesman on the Monument looked upon queer doings that day, inside the enclosure from which all green was soon scorched out, or trampled down by the hoofs of cavalry horses picketted at intervals about it. Mr. Reed's Church, Mrs. Stanard's house, the Prestons' house, are all burned; luckily the Lee house and that side of Franklin stand uninjured. General Lee's house has a guard camped in the front yard.

"We went on to the head-quarters of the Yankee General in charge of Richmond, that day of doom, and I must say were treated with perfect courtesy and consideration. We saw many people we knew on the same errand as ourselves. We heard stately Mrs. --- and the ---'s were there to ask for food, as their families were starving. Thank God, we have not fallen to that! Certainly her face looked like a tragic mask carved out of stone.

"A courteous young lieutenant, now General Peck, U. S. A., was sent to pilot us out of the confusion, and identify the house, over which a guard was immediately placed. Already the town wore the aspect of one in the Middle Ages smitten by pestilence. The streets filled with smoke and flying fire were empty of the respectable class of inhabitants, the doors and shutters of every house tight closed.

"I ought to tell you the important news that your tin box of securities is safe and in my keeping. How do you think this happened? On Sunday, after Clarence left, and we were wandering around the streets like forlorn ghosts, I chanced to meet our friend, Mr. ---, the president of the --- Bank, in which I knew you

Page 213

kept them. He was very pale and wretched looking, said he could not vouch for the safe-keeping of anybody's property, asked after you and wondered if I would feel like taking your papers in charge. I walked with him to the bank where he put the box in my hands and then I hurried back with it to my uncle's house. I slept with the papers under my head Sunday night, and spent Monday afternoon in ripping apart the trimming of my gray beige skirt. You know that trimming, like a wide battlement of brown silk all around the hem? Well, into this wall of Troy I sewed with the tightest stitches I could make (you would say those were nothing to boast of, remembering the sleeve that came apart) every one of your precious documents. And here I am with the family fortune stitched into my frock, which I have determined to wear every day with a change of white bodices, till I see you or can get to some place where it is safe to take it off...."

I will say in concluding the episode of the hidden papers, that the next day after I had received them, the bank went down in the track of the awful Main Street fire, its contents destroyed utterly. I continued to wear the skirt, heartily sick of it before I dared lay the thing aside, until the day in late April when I went by flag of truce to Baltimore, and there, at the home of my uncle, Mr. Cary, extracted the papers, put them in a new tin box, and consigned them to proper safe-keeping. I have certainly never since worn a gown of the value of that one, ungratefully cast aside at the first opportunity!

"And what will you say when I tell you that my one and only book, like poor Mr. John R. Thompson's 'Across the Atlantic,' has gone up in flames and smoke, in the establishment of 'Messrs. West and Johnson, Publishers,' who lost everything in the fire? A little

Page 214

while ago, I should have wanted to cry over this calamity. So many pages of good Confederate fool's cap closely scribbled over; so much eloquence and pathos lost to the world forever! Really now, joking apart, if West and Johnson, who are clever men, hadn't thought it worth publishing they wouldn't have accepted it, would they? Now - now - nothing seems to hurt much, in the fall of our Confederacy. Perhaps my poor 'Skirmishing' has made more of a blaze in the world in this way, than it ever would have done in the ordinary course of events!"

Certainly that conclusion was the wisest I could have arrived at, and I lived to rejoice that this jejune effort never saw daylight! It was years before I again ventured into print. But I should like now to know what it was all about!

To resume the letter to my mother and brother: "The ending of the first day of occupation was truly horrible. Some negroes of the lowest grade, their heads turned by the prospect of wealth and equality, together with a mob of miserable poor whites, drank themselves mad with liquor scooped from the gutters. Reinforced, it was said, by convicts escaped from the penitentiary, they tore through the streets, carrying loot from the burnt district." (For days after, even the kitchens and cabins of the better class of darkies displayed handsome oil paintings and mirrors, rolls of stuff, rare books, and barrels of sugar and whiskey.) "One gang of drunken rioters dragged coffins sacked from undertakers, filled with spoils from the speculators' shops, howling so madly one expected to hear them break into the Carmagnole. Thanks to our trim Yankee guard in the basement, we felt safe enough, but the experience was not pleasant.

Page 215

"Through all this strain of anguish ran like a gleam of gold the mad vain hope that Lee would yet make a stand somewhere - that Lee's dear soldiers would give us back our liberty.

"Dr. Minnegerode has been allowed to continue his daily services and I never knew anything more painful and touching than that of this morning when the Litany was sobbed out by the whole congregation.

"A service we went to the same evening at the old Monumental I never shall forget. When the rector prayed for 'the sick and wounded soldiers and all in distress of mind or body,' there was a brief pause, filled with a sound of weeping all over the church. He then gave out the hymn: 'When gathering clouds around I view.' There was no organ and a voice that started the hymn broke down in tears. Another took it up, and failed likewise. I, then, with a tremendous struggle for self-control, stood up in the corner of the pew and sang alone. At the words, 'Thou Saviour see'st the tears I shed,' there was again a great burst of crying and sobbing all over the church. I wanted to break down dreadfully, but I held on and carried the hymn to the end. As we left the church, many people came up and squeezed my hand and tried to speak, but could not. Just then a splendid military band was passing, the like of which we had not heard in years. The great swell of its triumphant music seemed to mock the shabby broken-spirited congregation defiling out of the gray old church buried in shadows, where in early Richmond days a theatre with many well-known citizens was burned! That was one of the tremendous moments of feeling I experienced that week.

"Dear Aunt E--- (Mrs. Hyde) is still at Camp Winder, not yet reorganized under Federal rule. (I

Page 216

hope the poor creatures there will fare better than we could make them!) She wants to send to Redlands for Meta, then go through the lines to Bert Mason's place as soon as the way is clear. She has been with me to-day and yesterday and says I must tell you her heart is broken.

"I walked around to the Campbells' this morning. The Judge's quiet determination to remain on in Richmond has produced some criticism, but his friends say that is nonsense. I looked over at the President's house, and saw the porch crowded with Union soldiers and politicians, the street in front filled with curious gaping negroes who have appeared in swarms like seventeen-year locusts. The young leaves are just shaking out, the fruit trees a mass of blossoms - the grass vividly green, the air nectar. I come in from my melancholy walks and sit in this dull garret, and pine and yearn for - what?

"I have just seen the Evening Whig, issued under direction of a Northern editor. Governor Weitzel, the new U. S. Commandant, says in his telegram to Stanton: 'The people received us with the wildest joy.' That scene in the Monumental Church looked like it, don't you think so? Mr. R. D'Orsey Ogden reopens the theatre to-night with one of his blood-and-thunder plays. Invitations have been sent to Lincoln and Stanton to be present at the manoeuvres (here a piece is torn from the original) the first we have had since the Occupation. Some of the shops in Broad Street are already restocked and opened by their Jewish proprietors and are doing a flourishing trade in greenback currency. We went into the Hall of Congress, finding there a sable official in uniform, seated writing at the Speaker's desk. In the State Library there have been

Page 217

many pilferings of coins, medals and valuable papers. I noticed they had removed from the library railings all the captured Federal banners with which we had been able abundantly to drape them."

Another letter of this time, addressed to Burton Harrison, then supposed to be with the Confederate President at Danville, Virginia, describes my efforts to meet his request (in a note sent in some way to me) to secure some packages of private letters left with his belongings at the President's house.

"I had hoped that your things had been sent to your uncle's home, but Mrs. Samuel Harrison informs me this is not so. She suggesting that the President's housekeeper may be still in the house, I found this to be the case, so I went to the Campbells', and sent a message across the street to ask Mrs. O'C. to come to me, which she did immediately. She was very nice and obliging, but when I asked about your trunks, said she had delivered all of your luggage to James Brown, your old servant at the President's, to deposit at your uncle's house. I asked where James could be found but felt rather hopeless, thinking a darkey's probable view of the situation would include his right to everything left behind by the Southern Government. Fancy my delight when, soon after, while engaged in packing at our forsaken lodgings, James Brown himself walked in on me with a perfectly beaming face. We had a conference, and it appeared he had the trunks, letters, clothes, books all safe, waiting a good chance to carry them himself to your uncle's, fearing they might be overhauled by Federal authority. I could not induce James to understand that my authority extended to letters alone, and finally had to break down in a hearty laugh when he

Page 218

persisted in enumerating the garments packed: 'clothes on top of books, collars, and little things in trays,' etc., etc., with much minuteness of detail.

"'It's all right, James; all I want is for you to get those letters out and bring them to me, and send the trunks to Mr. Samuel Harrison's.'

"'Suttenly, miss, suttenly. I perfectly apprehend the situation,' is what James answered. 'An' I tell you truly that I have a prominent affection for Colonel Harrison. If he was a mother or a brother to me, I couldn't love him any better.'

"He suggested, before we parted, that the hardest trouble of your lot must be your inability to send me any more little notes by him, saying: 'I don' know jes how it kin be managed, miss, unless Colonel Harrison could somehow dodge the government an' git to see you. Don' you think he mout dodge the government, miss?'

"While I write there is a commotion in the streets and rumor of a reverse to Yankee arms. Oh! if I dared believe it! A young woman has just passed wearing a costume composed of United States flags. The streets fairly swarm with blue uniforms and negroes decked in the spoils of jewelry shops, etc. It is no longer our Richmond, yet sometimes our eyes have a rest and are gladdened by the gray uniforms of the Confederate surgeons left here on parole to attend our sick and wounded soldiers. When one of them goes by, instantly every shutter is flung wide open, every cheek fluhes , every eye sparkles a welcome. One of the girls tells me she finds great comfort in singing 'Dixie' with her head buried in a feather pillow. My dear uncle, the most saintly of men, to-day read prayers to his assembled family, and having in hand an old-time prayer-book, inadvertently read out the petition for

Page 219

'the President of these United States.' Edith, his youngest daughter, on our arising from our knees, immediately cried out in reproachful tones, 'Oh! papa. You prayed for the President of the United States!' 'Did I?' said the good old doctor ruefully. 'Devil fetch him!' at which we all laughed.

"Last night, from the sweetest of dreams, I was aroused by a band playing 'Annie Laurie' so beautifully it seemed to chime with my happier thoughts. Directly it changed to the majestic strains of 'The Star Spangled Banner,' which I had not heard in four years. In one minute I was broad awake and weeping. Oh! that such a noble air should send such a pang to rend me!

"To-day, Mr. Lincoln, seated in an ambulance with his son Tad upon his knee, drove down Grace Street, past this house, a mounted escort clattering after."

A short time only after these letters were penned came the tidings of Lee's surrender, and then our streets were filled up again with the gray uniforms of soldiers on parole, dusty, threadbare, with tarnished buttons and insignia. I hope I may never again see men made in God's image wear such sad faces as they did. We girls and women had all we could bear hearing the heartbreaking story of the final days before Appomattox, and giving such consolation as our own rent hearts could offer.

The war was over. What had it cost the country now to be ours again by force of arms? "More than seven hundred men a day," says Professor Woodrow Wilson in his "History of the American People," " for every day of the four long years of campaign and battle; four hundred killed or mortally wounded in the field, the rest

Page 220

dead of disease, exposure, accident, or the slow pains of imprisonment. The Federal Government had spent thirty- four hundred millions of dollars upon the war - nearly two and a half millions for every day it lasted - and less than eight hundred millions of that vast sum had come into its coffers from the taxes. More than twenty-six hundred millions had been added to the National debt. The Confederacy had piled up a debt upon its part of nearly fourteen hundred millions and had spent besides no man could say how much. The North had spent out of its abundance. The South had spent all that it had, and was stripped naked of its resources. While the war lasted, it had been stripped naked also of its men."

My chief personal interest in the trend of events after the surrender at Appomattox lay naturally with the retiring government. The story of that retreat and the capture of his chief was told by Burton Harrison in a paper written for his sons, which the editors of the Century Magazine secured for publication in their number of November, 1883. A letter from Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, appended to my bound copy of this narrative, says: "It is of absorbing interest, told with evident frankness and truthfulness, and with a refreshing sense of humor giving the comedy along with the tragedy of the events. It would be one of the most interesting and important contributions to history that the Century has published, and I can see no reason why you should withhold it longer or till the generation which would take most interest in it, is passed away."

The prophecy of general interest in the paper put forth by the editors had been assured to us on an occasion, soon after the war, when my husband reluctantly told the story, following a dinner at the Rev. Henry M.

Page 221

Field's, at Stockbridge, Mass., where, among other hearers besides our clever and inspiring host and hostess, we had Mr. David Dudley Field, President Andrew White, of Cornell University, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is true that much was lent to the narrative by the teller's inimitable gift of narrative so well known to his friends, his extraordinary flow of words, and dramatic action in recital. But even among that company of antagonists in politics and principle he won sympathy and interest as well as full belief that the events disclosed had been exactly what he said of them. When he had finished, all the guests gathered around, thanking him for a vividly interesting chapter of history; Mrs. Stowe, in particular, expressing herself as profoundly impressed by what she had heard - a new light thrown upon things misunderstood before.

Of this story it must suffice for me to give here the leading incidents without detail or comment. After an intolerably slow journey by interrupted trains, Mr. Harrison succeeded in establishing Mrs. Davis and her party at Charlotte, where, on Wednesday the 4th of April, he received a telegram from President Davis at Danville merely announcing that he was there. This was their first news of the evacuation of Richmond on April 2.

Directly after Mr. Harrison joined his chief at Danville, the President received the announcement of the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, and immediately gave his secretary orders for the withdrawal of their party, the staff, cabinet officers and others of the government, then at Danville, into North Carolina. A train secured by Mr. Harrison and soon crowded by depressed officials, their families and hangers on, was enlivened when en route by an explosion resulting from a young

Page 222

officer of the Ordnance Bureau seating himself rather hard on the flat top of a stove, the detonation caused by some torpedo appliance carried in his coat-tail pocket!

At Greensboro, North Carolina, there was a halt for consultation with General Joseph E. Johnston, whose army was then confronting Sherman. A conference was held including the President, General Johnston, General Breckinridge (Secretary of War), General Beauregard, Mr. Benjamin (Secretary of State), Mr. Mallory (Secretary of the Navy), Mr. Reagan (Postmaster-General), and others, in the temporary rooms of Colonel John Taylor Wood, of the President's staff. On the next day the retiring government moved southward, the President, his staff, and some members of the cabinet riding their own horses. Mr. Benjamin, declaring that he should not mount a horse until forced to do so, General Samuel Cooper (adjutant-general and ranking officer of the whole army), no longer a young man; Mr. George Davis, the Attorney-General, and Mr. Benjamin's brother-in-law, Mr. de Saint Martin, brought up the rear of the column in an ambulance. Once, riding back in search of this distinguished contingent, Mr. Harrison found the whole party stalled in a hopeless mud-hole in the darkness.

"I could see from afar the occasional bright glow of Benjamin's cigar. While the others of the party were perfectly silent, Benjamin's silvery voice was presently heard as he rhythmically intoned for their comfort verse after verse of Tennyson's 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'"

That Mr. Benjamin could ride as well as another, was afterwards proved on this expedition, when he ultimately left the party and set out alone for the sea-coast,

Page 223

making his way to England via Bermuda. "So long as he remained with us his cheery good-humor and readiness to adapt himself to the requirements of all emergencies made him a most agreeable comrade." At Yale College when a boy; at the bar in New Orleans; in the Senate of the United States from Louisiana; at first Attorney-General, then Secretary of War, and finally Secretary of State of the Confederate States at Richmond, this gentleman became Queen's Counsel at the London bar and had high honors bestowed on him by the bench and bar of the United Kingdom.

"During all this march," wrote Mr. Harrison, "Mr. Davis was singularly equable and cheerful. He seemed to have had a great load taken from his mind, to feel relieved of responsibilities, and his conversation was very bright and agreeable. He talked of men and of books, particularly of Walter Scott and Byron; of horses and dogs and sports; of the woods and the fields; of roads and how to make them; of the habits of birds and of a variety of other topics. His familiarity with and correct taste in the English literature of the last generation, his varied experiences in life, his habits of close observation, and his extraordinary memory made him a charming companion when disposed to talk. Indeed, like Mark Tapley, we were all in good spirits under adverse circumstances, and I particularly remember the entertaining conversation of Mr. Mallory, the Secretary of the Navy" (which does not agree with the item I recently found in an old letter of Major Walton's to Mr. Harrison, in which this secretary is styled "Mr. Malheureux ").

At Charlotte it was found that Mrs. Davis and her party had left the day before to go further South. As the Presidential party entered a house with difficulty

Page 224

obtained for them (all the inhabitants fearing a threat made by Stoneman's troopers to burn every house giving refuge to Jefferson Davis), the President received by carrier from General Breckinridge the news of President Lincoln's assassination, tidings universally regretted by the staff and following. "Everybody's remark," wrote Mr. Harrison, "was that in Lincoln the Southern States had lost their only refuge in their then emergency. There was no expression other than that of surprise and regret. As yet we knew none of the particulars of the crime."

During the speech made at this juncture by Mr. Davis to a column of General Basil Duke's cavalry, Mr. Harrison stood close to the speaker and heard distinctly every word uttered by him. There was no reference whatever to the assassination and no other speech was made. Mr. Davis's remark to Colonel William Preston Johnston in Mr. Bates's house, later on, was that "Mr. Lincoln would have been much more useful to the Southern States than Andrew Johnson, his successor, was likely to be"; "I myself," said Mr. Harrison, "heard Mr. Davis express the same opinion at that period."

So much for the oft-quoted charge against Mr. Davis that he had on this occasion spoken approvingly of the horrible crime committed by Booth in the name of the conquered South! My husband often told me that of such a spirit, much less an expression, Mr. Davis could never have been guilty.

"No man ever participated," he went on to say, "in a great war of revolution with less of disturbance of the nicest sense of perfect rectitude in conduct or opinion; his every utterance, act, and sentiment was with the strictest regard for all the moralities, throughout that

Page 225

troubled time when the passions of many people made them reckless or defiant of the opinions of mankind. His cheerfulness continued in Charlotte and I remember his there saying to me, "I cannot feel like a beaten man.'"

At Charlotte, Mr. Davis's anxiety about his wife and family led him to despatch his secretary to Abbeville, South Carolina, in search of them, using his own judgment as to what to do after he met them; the President himself proposing to go as rapidly as possible to the Trans- Mississippi Department to join the army under Kirby Smith.

At Abbeville, Mr. Harrison found Mrs. Davis and her party comfortably installed as the guests of Colonel Burt. Mrs. Davis insisted upon at once seeking the sea-coast with a view to sailing for Europe. Had she remained where she was, yielding to the entreaties of all around her, the capture of Jefferson Davis might never have been a chapter of contemporaneous history.

Mr. Harrison's party, re-enforced by two gallant volunteers, artillerymen of the Southern army, Captain Moody and Major Victor Maurin, proceeded in wagons, toilsomely southward; the men watching at night while the women and children slept, to guard against the theft of their wagons and horses by roving freebooters of whom the woods were full.

At midnight, several days later, Mr. Harrison, who with two teamsters (old soldiers) constituted the picket-guard, heard the soft tread of horses approaching their camp on the sandy road. Harrison challenged and to his astonishment was answered by the President's voice. Mr. Davis was attended by Colonel William Preston Johnston, Colonel John Taylor Wood, Colonel Frank R. Lubbock, Mr. Reagan, Colonel Thorburn, and Robert, the President's negro servant.

Page 226

This unexpected encounter kept the President with his family for some days, when, in compliance with the earnest solicitation of the staff, he consented to leave them and go on unhampered by a wagon train. At the village of Abbeville, South Carolina, he was overtaken by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, with torrents of rain, and, fearing for the safety of his family camping out at night, again rode after them, to the discomfiture of the party, joining Mrs. Davis in camp near the little hamlet of Irwinsville in Georgia. Here, after promising his friends that he would leave Mrs. Davis's party, finally, in the morning, Mr. Davis retired to rest in the tent occupied by his wife. Mr. Harrison, overcome by fever and dysentery contracted on the journey, threw himself on the ground not far away and fell into profound sleep, from which he was awakened at daybreak by Jones, Mrs. Davis's coachman, running to him saying the enemy was upon them.

"I sprang to my feet and in an instant a rattling fire of musketry began on the north side of the creek. Almost at the same moment Colonel Pritchard and his regiment charged up the road from the south upon us. . . . We were taken by surprise and not one of us exchanged a shot with the enemy. Colonel Johnston tells me he was the first prisoner taken. In a moment Colonel Pritchard rode directly to me and, pointing across the creek, said: 'What does that mean? Have you any men with you?' Supposing the firing was done by our teamsters, I said: 'Of course we have. Don't you hear the firing?' He seemed to be nettled at the reply, gave the order 'Charge,' and boldly led the way across the creek, nearly every man in his command following. Our camp was thus left deserted for a few minutes, except by one mounted soldier near Mrs. Davis's tent

Page 227

(afterward said to have been stationed there by Colonel Pritchard in passing), and by the few troopers who stopped to plunder our wagons. I had been sleeping on the same side of the road with the tent occupied by Mrs. Davis, and was then standing very near it. I saw her come out and say something to the soldier mentioned. Perceiving she wanted him to move off, I approached and actually persuaded the fellow to ride away. As the soldier moved into the road and I walked beside his horse, the President emerged for the first time from the tent at the side farther from us, and walked away into the woods to the eastward, at right angles from the road.

"Presently, looking around and observing somebody had come out of the tent, the soldier turned his horse's head and, reaching the spot he had first occupied, was again approached by Mrs. Davis, who engaged him in conversation. This trooper was joined by perhaps two of his comrades.... They remained on horseback and soon became violent in their language with Mrs. Davis. The order to 'Halt!' was called out by one of them to the President. It was not obeyed, and was quickly repeated in a loud voice several times. At least one of the men then threatened to fire, and pointed a carbine at the President. Mrs. Davis, overcome with terror, cried out in apprehension, and the President (who had now walked sixty or eighty paces away into the unobstructed woods), turned around and came rapidly back to his wife near the tent. As the President reproached the soldier who was using rough language to his wife, one of the others, recognizing him, called out: 'Mr. Davis, surrender! I recognize you, sir!'

"While these things were happening, Miss Howell and the children remained within the other tent....

Page 228

I have not found that there was any one, excepting Mrs. Davis, the single trooper by her tent, and myself, who saw all that occurred and heard all that was said at the time. Any one else who gives an account of it has had to rely upon hearsay, or his own imagination, for this story....

"The business of plundering commenced immediately after the capture; we were soon left with only what we had on and what we had in our pockets.... While this was going on, I emptied the contents of my haversack into a fire where some of the enemy were cooking breakfast, and there saw the papers burn. They were chiefly love-letters, with a photograph of my sweetheart."

The prisoners en route for Macon were allowed to ride their own horses (promptly seized by their captors when four days later they reached the railway station in that town), whence they were taken by train to Augusta, on their way to Fortress Monroe.

What concerns Jefferson Davis in his subsequent terrible imprisonment at Fortress Monroe, belongs to history.

The experience of Burton Harrison as a prisoner of war was detailed to me by him in 1904, to refresh my memory, during his last illness at our temporary home in Washington, where we had gone to pass the winter near our sons. While there was never any bitterness about it in his speech, or in his manly soul, I could not, even after that lapse of years, hear the recital without a pang of deep pain for what he had needlessly suffered.

Whilst between him and the friends he had left in Richmond a black veil of silence and sickening uncertainty as to his ultimate fate had fallen, he had been confined at first in a room of the Old Capitol Prison. A

Page 229

few days later he was taken by a detective from this place and conducted to a room in the same building, under pretext of being introduced to a Confederate "lady" he might "like to know." Feeling instinctively that mischief threatened, he had no difficulty in keeping himself in check when in the presence of an "old untidy woman with a shifty eye," afterward identified as a spy for both sides, who, with every assurance of cordiality for the South, sought to lead him into conversation about Mr. Davis and Confederate matters in general. She did not name the young girl suffering from a bad headache, who, deadly pale, with a white bandage around her brow, struck him as resembling some face on a Roman coin. In honeyed tones the spy woman sought to induce both of them to join in her strictures against the Government and expressions of sympathy for the conspirators. In a flash he divined the poor girl had been brought there for the same purpose as himself. It was designed that they should talk unguardedly in the presence of authority. It was not until the interview - futile as to results - was over that he chanced to hear the detective call the young woman "Miss Surratt." He came away from this hateful interview feeling he had escaped a trap. After the disgust of it, his prison with the rough jailers seemed a welcome haven.

Next day all the rebel prisoners at the Old Capitol were allowed to crowd to the barred windows to witness Sherman's imperial progress of return to Washington.

To eyes long used to faded gray and rusty accoutrements, the vast array of blazing sheen and color seemed oppressive. But all the same, he said, the Johnny Rebs enjoyed the show hugely, not begrudging professional praise to military details and ensemble.

Turning away from his window, he felt a touch upon

Page 230

his shoulder from a detective he had not before seen, who curtly told him he was to go to "another place." His prison comrades, surrounding him with handshakes and kind words, watched him depart sadly. The rumor had got abroad that Jefferson Davis's secretary and confidential friend was to be dealt with to the full rigor of the law.

A drive in an ambulance - in war-time serving for all purposes of transfer - brought him to the United States Arsenal, situated upon a peninsula running out from the marshy borders of the eastern end of the Potomac, now the site of the War College. It then contained, close to the water's edge, a group of brick buildings amid level military plazas, banked with pyramids of shells and balls, surrounded by cannon, their carriages and caissons. Behind a high wall towered conspicuously a sombre building with barred and grated windows. Old Washington knew this as a District Penitentiary. It was now transformed into a military and political prison where, in the inner cells, were confined the prisoners implicated in the murder of President Lincoln. In the upper story was sitting a Military Commission whose proceedings filled the world with awesome interest.

On every one of these piping days of early summer the conspirators were brought in irons through a massive nail- studded door communicating with the cells and placed in a line punctuated with armed guards, to sit in the court-room facing their judges and a mixed audience, till, at the end of the day's session, they were returned to their dungeons.

The ambulance containing the new prisoner and his guard was several times put out of line before the arsenal door by carriage loads of fine people, the women

Page 231

dressed as if for a race day. One after the other of these gay parties passed in, laughing and chatting, under a grim wall atop of which patrols, ten feet apart, kept always on the lookout. It had become a modish thing for society to drop in for a peep at the conspirators' trial. Passes, limited to the capacity of the courtroom, were in demand, like opera tickets to a special performance.

The prisoner's last glimpse for many a day of the outer world was of a broad dusty avenue with shabby fringes of negro cabins and booths leading up to the entrance gate that looked like a country fair. Cattle with lolling tongues were there, disgruntled pigs, and mangy dogs getting in the way of marching soldiers and fashionable vehicles. To the left he saw a military encampment filling a sun-baked plain where, under shelter tents, soldiers off duty lounged, dozed, played cards, or tossed quoits. In the background of the prison two gun-boats kept unceasing watch upon the river front.

The prisoner was hurried through the door, marched up two flights of steps, and, without warning, ushered before the gaze of the crowded court-room, gaping for new sensations, there to stand awaiting the Provost Marshal General to whom he was consigned.

Without moving, he faced the ordeal, his lips set, hot anger coursing through his veins. Spite of his sense of unnecessary degradation, he noted and remembered well the make-up of the scene - the Judge Advocate General, Holt, presiding, with his swart cold face, boding ill for a prisoner falling under his displeasure; his assistants, the judges of the military commission, unfortunately for themselves appointed to conduct this trial; the reporters of the commission; the large whispering, smiling audience; and the accused, seven men

Page 232

and one woman shackled together, almost inevitably doomed to death.

When relieved from his unpleasant position by the arrival of the functionary who was to take official possession of his body, he was again led out of the court-room, through a jostling vulgar crowd, affecting to shrink away on either side of him as if from a monster ill-secured. The general, having annexed a formidable key, led the way, the prisoner followed by the guard brought up the rear, a band of vagabond loungers shuffling after them until turned back at the entrance to a ponderous grated door.

Life stood still for him a long time thereafter, while he alternately lay or sat upon a blanket on the cemented floor of a felon's cell, four feet by eight, dark as night in daytime. During five long weeks he was forbidden speech with any one whomsoever. But in those days and nights, when he threw himself down upon the blanket, or else walked, or used gymnastic exercises to stretch his muscles and save his reason, he might have said what a virile poet wrote long afterward: "I am the Master of my Fate. I am the Captain of my Soul."

He said what he minded most was the eye of a bayonetted soldier, perpetually looking through the grating in his door.

Of whatever his enemies might have accused him, it was not a failure in stoic endurance of his lot. One of his jailers at Fort Delaware told me afterward that of the many thousands they had held, no Confederate prisoner had borne himself with higher courage and cooler pluck. But that experience of the dark cell came near to permanent weakening of his strong physique. When they heard him singing and laughing to himself

Page 233

one day, the guards made haste to summon surgeon and provost marshal, believing he had gone mad.

The surgeon finding his prisoner a wreck in physical strength, the matter was reported to the War Department, after which he was given leave to take daily exercise in the prison yard below. From this glimpse of the world of the living, such as it was, the return to solitary darkness became more and more exhausting to nerve and body. His good doctor again reporting his condition, he was then transferred to a cell facing the Capitol, through which plentiful summer sunlight sifted in, and he could see afar the glitter of the golden dome. A chair allowed him, his next demand was for a copy of Horace or Tennyson, for which the doctor substituted Louis Napoleon's "Life of Cæsar," with a promise of more literature to follow.

Under these changed conditions the prisoner's health improved daily. Although no one spoke to him of daily happenings, his intuition kept him actually abreast of the grim tragedy enacting under the roof that sheltered him. He said he felt like a savage trained to notice the dropping of a nut or the crackle of a twig. Of the unhappy beings on trial he knew nothing, nor had he any sentimental desire that they should escape justice. Once, walking in the prison yard, he had seen at a window the wan face of the girl met in the spy's company at the Old Capitol - now the most crushed and sorrow-stricken creature that ever met his gaze.

In the yard, also, he once picked up and secreted a bit of greasy newspaper blown from some sentry's lunch. From this he saw that the conspirators were hastening to their doom.

When, one day, the guards failed to come for him to walk, and from the yard below arose a great clamor of

Page 234

saws and hammering, he surmised what was to be. Every night before he had heard coming through the ventilating tube the melancholy whistling of an occupant of the cell beneath his, evidently absent in the day; for which sound he had learned to listen with an odd sense of companionship. That evening the whistle began - but was halted suddenly and the listener thought the effort was beyond the power of a condemned man probably on the eve of execution.

That night also he heard a new sound - a ship's bell striking the watches, close by.

"Some of them are to be transported, and that boat is here to take them off," flashed through his mind.

At dawn he turned in his blanket, wakened by the noise of renewed hammering. From his window he could see many troops massing in Pennsylvania Avenue, and amid them, riding alone, the Catholic priest - Father Walter, the intrepid soldier of Christ (who, because of his belief in the innocence of one of the condemned, was forbidden to go with her to the scaffold) - coming to shrive departing souls.

The officer detailed as usual to watch him at his breakfast, generally so genial, to-day avoided meeting the prisoner's eye, as did the soldier always holding a musket before his door. He asked no questions, ate his food, and sat afterward for hours without stirring from his chair.

Thenceforward, every sound in the prison came unnaturally distinct. On all sides he heard the incessant tramp of gathering soldiers. On the roof facing the arsenal he saw gazers assembled, and could not look at them.

He heard cell doors opening below, and their occupants led out into the corridor; heard the sobbing

Page 235

of anguished women whose feet kept hurried pace a little while with the others, then turned back heavily.

And lastly a hush, an awful calm, while the lives of a woman and three men were taken from them upon the scaffold.

At his usual hour that evening the guards came to lead him out for exercise. Stepping from the prison door upon the pavement of the courtyard, he saw the scaffold looming black, exactly across a path he had made in the weedy grass, called by the soldiers "Harrison's beat." And there, lying across the path, were four new made graves . . . "like beads upon a string," he said, over and over to himself, "like beads upon a string."

The guards and bystanders watching curiously for evidence of his emotion were not gratified. Giving no sign, he began making for himself a new path parallel with the former one.

That night he heard the sound of a faint, tremulous, dejected whistle coming up the ventilating tube, and actually laughed aloud, so glad he was to think the poor devil had not been hanged. When the ship's bells ceased to strike he was sure it had carried his whistling friend away!

All these things were told to and written down by me, a short time before my husband's death in 1904 - calmly, without resentment or animus of any kind. He also said that Major ---, a Dane from Michigan, who shortly after this transferred him to Fort Delaware, told him during the journey that he had been in personal charge of Mrs. Surratt in prison, had put the black cap over her head and the rope around her neck, launching her into eternity. He said Mrs. Surratt had nothing to do with the plot to kill Lincoln - that she was party to a

Page 236

scheme to capture him only, and that she died an innocent woman. (See General Butler's charge to Judge Bingham in the House of Representatives that he had hanged an innocent woman!)

Major --- also told Mr. Harrison that before sentence of death was passed upon Mrs. Surratt her daughter had tried continually, but in vain, to gain access to her cell. After she was condemned the girl was allowed to meet her mother. Major --- was present at the interview and said he never saw such an exhibition of character. As the girl came into the cell she could not stand but fell upon the floor, creeping over it, weeping bitterly, till she reached her mother's feet and kissed them, with a thousand loving, imploring words of tenderness. The mother remaining cold as a stone, his heart filled with wrath against her hardness to her child, but, when Miss Surratt finally went out of the cell, the woman broke down in such an awful passion of tears as he prayed he might never see again, melting him utterly into sympathy with her.

Burton Harrison was personally on good terms with his jailers. When Major --- was conducting him, with two guards, to Fort Delaware, they were halted in the station at Philadelphia because of the failure of a carriage expected to take them to the boat wharf. In some perplexity the major said he would go himself and look for it. "And in the meantime, colonel," he added seriously, "will you have an eye upon these fellows of mine, and see that they don't leave you?"

With General Hartranft also, the provost marshal who had locked him in the black cell at the arsenal and came every day with the surgeon to see if the prisoner kept his health and sanity, Mr. Harrison had kind relations.

Page 237

In after years, when as counsel for the Union Telegraph Company, my husband went to conduct some business for them at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he found the official he had to consult professionally was none other than his former jailer. When Mr. Harrison came downstairs in the morning at the Lochiel Hotel and saw Hartranft waiting for him in the hall, he threw up his hands, exclaiming, "My God, general, you are not after me again?"

They shook hands and the general answered: "I tell you, Harrison; you haven't a better friend than I am in the world. Come to breakfast and, after we've finished business, we'll spend the day together."

Before ending this grim chapter, one of the horrible sequelæ of the Civil War, I will say that after hearing these stories told again in Washington in 1904, I desired to drive with my husband to the scene of his old ordeal, where the present War College buildings were then going up on the site of the old prison of the arsenal.

Sitting in a victoria, he directed the coachman as well as he could where to go, but became soon confused about localities in the altered aspect of the place. We pulled up, and I addressed the "boss" of a gang of workmen, asking if he could tell me where we were.

"Why, ma'am, don't you know?" he answered. "This is the place where the scaffold stood on which Mrs. Surratt and the other conspirators were hanged."

My husband made no comment, nor did I, and silently we drove homeward.

Page 238

CHAPTER XI

IT was thought best for us ex-Confederates of both sexes to keep quietly out of public observation while still the wave of feeling (enormously increased by the assassination of Lincoln) dashed high over our reunion with Northern friends.

Our cousin, the Rev. Herbert Norris, rector of the Episcopal Church at Woodbury, New Jersey, who had lost a noble son in the Union service at Antietam, was good enough to ask that I should be sent to remain under his protection, and that of his wife, one of the Rawle family of Philadelphia, intensely in sympathy with the triumphing cause.

They were more than kind to their poor little storm- tossed, rebel visitor, carrying in her young heart a world of painful experience together with certain fears and sad yearnings of which she could speak to nobody. It was as if an iron door had closed between her and the one who had gone out of her life so unsuspectingly that day of March on the eve of the Occupation! Not a word had come from him, and she only knew he was treated as a "dangerous" prisoner.

The first thing Mrs. Norris wisely judged to be a healthy restorative for girlish spirits, was for me to overhaul my Confederate wardrobe and spend the check my mother had given me for new clothes. I went into Philadelphia escorted by my cousin Herbert, who took me to all the necessary shops, and stood by patiently till my ardor was appeased. I cannot now imagine anything

Page 239

much uglier than the gored ruffled skirts stretched over wide hoops, the short bolero jackets, and insignificant little round hats shelved forward upon our brows. But when they came home and were compared with the threadbare, faded made-overs of my Richmond supply, I felt richer than a queen! These exhilarations did not last long, and many a night I sobbed for bygones and for friends who felt with me. The great city of Philadelphia as I saw it on our visits seemed so untouched by the war - casual people were so prosperous, so indifferent, except to say bitter, biting things against the Southern cause. If I had been wiser I should have realized that the North, too, was riddled with painful remembrances and sorrows of the war.

My next visit was one of some length to my father's sister, at old Morrisania. She had lent a son to the Union army and, with her girls, was in mourning for President Lincoln when I arrived. My uncle, an original member of the Republican party (having been, like my father, an old- line Whig of ardent enthusiasm), was strongly opposed to the Southern idea of secession, and for the Confederacy and its leaders had no tolerance or consideration. While a man of large generosities and kind impulse, he was violent in invective against the rebels and all their works. At table and elsewhere it was the constant effort of the family, who had received me with open arms and cemented a friendship lasting all our lives, to restrain him from jocular remarks of triumph over the conquered South that swelled my heart to bursting, unable as I was to retort or give expression to my sufferings. One day at luncheon, when he quoted the verse about "hanging Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree," I for a while "saw red," and came very near leaving the house on foot and taking refuge I knew not

Page 240

where. Afterward, on learning from his wife how he had pained me, he was as sorry as I could have wished. I could not understand why some of their country neighbors, calling at Morrisania, looked at me curiously as at a brand snatched from the burning. This dear house was to become a second home to me, I to assume the position of elder daughter to my aunt who had been my father's favorite sister, and in the course of time I was to go out from under its hospitable portal as a bride.

The ease and luxury of my surroundings, in startling contrast to the life so recently led in Richmond, would have been better appreciated had I known what was befalling my prisoner at Fort Delaware. My girl cousins, full of sympathy in the case, had already become warm advocates of the unseen private secretary of the late Confederate President. There was a universal thrill of satisfaction in the family when, at last, one day in August, I received from him a long full letter.

The way in which it came to me was never revealed until by a letter written in 1876 by that preux chevalier, Colonel Henry Kyd Douglas, of Hagerstown, Maryland, after reading a Virginian paper I had published in Scribner's Magazine. This letter tells, better than I can, the conditions under which my prisoner was passing his days.

"In August, 1865, I was a prisoner in Fort Delaware, sent there by the sentence of a military commission. My imprisonment was not a harsh one, and what with the courtesy of the commanding officer, and free access to a well-filled library and the liberty of the island, my time passed easily if not rapidly.

"But up in a keep among the battlements, strictly guarded and confined, with no privileges and no companionship of men and books, in solitary imprisonment,

Page 241

Colonel Harrison passed a longer servitude, wearily and impatiently. He was suffering vicariously for the alleged treason of his chief. Morning and evening he took his unsatisfactory exercise along the battlements. We were forbidden to speak to, or recognize each other, and yet there was no prison rule which could prevent the unspoken salute of the raised hat, although with averted faces. Even the keepers and jailers of that fort, used as they had become to many senseless tyrannies during the war, were disgusted with the strict and hard imprisonment of Colonel Harrison, and the men on duty freely expressed their opinion of it. The day before I was released, a stalwart, open-faced, coatless soldier came into my room. After telling me that he cooked for and waited on Colonel Harrison, he began to deplore the stringency of his confinement, especially the order that forbade him to write to, or receive letters from, his family and friends; and most especially, with hot wrath and an oath, did he think it was a shame the prisoner couldn't even write to the young lady he was in love with! (How he obtained this information I do not know.) He then said that 'one way or another' Colonel Harrison had got hold of pen and ink and paper, and had written a number of letters he wanted to send out to his family; would I take charge of them? A flash of suspicion on my part was dispelled by a look into his honest face. . . . The next day he strolled again into my quarters and after expressing his satisfaction at my release, and his regret that Colonel Harrison was not freed, wandered about the room a bit, then said good-by and walked out. Upon taking down my coat which hung against the wall, I found therein a solid pack of letters. That day General Schoeff took me to Wilmington in his boat; that evening the letters were delivered to Mrs. Cary

Page 242

in Baltimore. I think the fullest letter there was addressed to - whom? She must have received and evidently appreciated it. Does she remember it?"

Other letters followed. A vegetable seller became the messenger of Cupid, and carried more than one out of the fort in hollowed carrots and cucumbers. We, in return, contrived to get letters back addressed to a certain "Tony Hardiman," care of a certain somebody else, at a certain post-office, which shall be forever nameless. We knew, now, that things had otherwise improved for the prisoner, that books from the post library heaped his table, and a friendship had sprung up between himself and the brave commandant of the fort, ending in walks on the island and visits to the general's home.

These things inspired in me hope that a pleasure even greater might be given to the captive. With my mother, I returned in the autumn to Woodbury, New Jersey, where, with the aid of my young cousin, Dr. Herbert Norris, we three made an attack in person upon the fort.

Our ways of getting there were devious and thorny. From a village on the opposite shore of the Delaware River, we sailed in a leaky fishing boat across a swelling, roughening tide. Arrived at the moated fortress on the bank, we sent in our cards by a soldier to the commandant. To our delight, no question was made about receiving us and, crossing a bridge to enter gloomy corridors, we were soon in the presence of the redoubted chief. Had I divined that the general's kind heart was already enlisted for the prisoner, not only through his own pleasure in his society, but because of his family's warm liking and championship - had I supposed that in after years these dear people were to name a son "Burton Harrison," and to bid their other sons try to

Page 243

model themselves upon one whom they conceived to be "a perfect gentleman" - then I should not have been so faint-hearted.

The general, maintaining a severe official aspect, looked us over, and enquired of Mrs. Cary whether we were perchance the mother and sister of Colonel Harrison.

"No," said my mother; "only friends."

"I understand!" said the general, hemming and hawing greatly. A moment more and he had taken the parcel my mother handed to him - a miniature of myself painted by Mrs. Thompson in New York, to replace the one burnt up in the soldier's camp-fire in the Georgia wilderness - and the open letter sent with it, and despatched them by an orderly to the prisoner.

And then, a sudden, even kinder, impulse overcoming him, he asked my mother if she could trust him to show me the interior of the fortress. He led, I followed, to a door opening on the inner court, where, bidden to look up toward the battlements, I saw my prisoner, standing indeed between bayonets in a casemate, but alive and well, waving his hat like a school-boy, and uttering a great irrepressible shout of joy!

These are the things that remain green in memory when the landscape of life is elsewhere dry and sere! But for the courage and devotion of my dear mother and my cousin, in accompanying me on what seemed a forlorn hope, we should never have won the day!

The next winter we had a house in Washington, principally for the purpose of winning the prisoner's release. Through the tireless efforts with President Johnson of our dear old friend, Hon. Francis Preston Blair, this was finally accomplished. On the 16th of January, 1866, Burton Harrison was freed from Fort Delaware,

Page 244

coming at once to visit us in Washington, on his way to rejoin his mother and sister in the South. Having spent the latter months of his imprisonment in studying law, through the aid of books furnished him by his old friends and Yale chums, Eugene Schuyler and S. D. Page, of Philadelphia, he, after journeys to Canada and to Europe, was admitted to the New York bar. By advice of Mr. Charles O'Conor, his first friend and advisor, then the leading lawyer of New York, he entered the law office of ex-Judge Fullerton, and shortly after began practice for himself, which continued during many years of busy and successful experience.

In October, 1866, my mother and I sailed in the ship Arago for Havre, the passenger list made up of many New Yorkers known to each other, including the family of the new American minister to the Court of Napoleon III, General Dix. Other people we knew on board were Mr. Martin Zborowski, of New York - whose wife had been a Morris - with his sons, John, or "Laddie," and Elliot, and his young daughter Anna, now the Countess de Montsaulnin, of Paris. A young Southern widow, Mrs. Hewitt, formerly Miss Belle Key, of Mississippi (sister-in- law of Mrs. Walker Fearn), was taking a little blonde daughter, Marie Hewitt, subsequently the handsome Mme. Wilkinson, of Paris, to be put at Mme. Grenfell's school in Paris. It was hardly a surprise to us when some months later we were bidden to the marriage of Mr. Zborowski with Mrs. Hewitt. Afterward we saw much of their conjoined families abroad and in Westchester County where Mr. Zborowski had a charming home. Several young couples on their bridal tours (who have strangely managed to become old couples by now) bore names familiar to New York

Page 245

society. Everybody on board was nice to us recent enemies of the republic, and we contracted more than one friendship of an enduring nature.

As our winter in Paris was avowedly for the purpose of giving my education the "finishing" touches sadly omitted in war experience, I was forthwith started in lessons of various kinds, including a training of the voice by M. Archaimbaud, of the Paris Conservatoire. To meet exigencies of foreign opinion, I was transformed back into the conventional jeune fille, accompanied everywhere by my mother. I often wondered what my testy little maître de chant would think if I told him I had sung war songs to marching troops, or played accompaniments for a chorus of soldiers surrounding me at the piano? I believe he would have fainted, then and there!

Archaimbaud took interest in my voice and inspired me with delight in his methods. By and by we removed from the Hotel de Lille et d'Albion to a quaintly attractive domicile where some New Orleans creole friends, had advised my mother to go for the betterment of my French accent. This was "La Ville au Bois," a villa boarding and apartment house, at the Porte Maillot in Neuilly, as pretty a place as could be, with ivy-grown buildings surrounding a paved courtyard, where in fine weather the tables for meals were set out of doors under the shade of great old trees. A high brick wall, overhung with creepers, divided us from the Bois de Boulogne. There, in a small but daintily furnished rez de chaussée, consisting of two bedrooms and a sitting-room, the latter upholstered in a warm crimson moreen stuff, opening upon a wee garden of our own, we spent the winter. We grew so attached to our French home that when, during the Franco-Prussian war, we heard it had been destroyed by shot and shell - the second abode

Page 246

of mine laid low through war's necessities - we were genuinely grieved.

Until then, I had not believed there were so many bright- eyed, smiling, chattering old people in the world as among our comrades at Ville au Bois! The mystery was explained when on Sundays, younger men and women, with children carrying bouquets, came reverently to call upon their seniors, most often leading them off in their best caps and redingotes, to dine en ville with their offspring. The Ville au Bois, generally, was dying to understand about "ces dames de l'Amérique du Sud," who had taken the rez de chaussée apartment. Upon my mother, who had a beautiful clear olive complexion with large dark eyes, they looked with some comprehension, but continued to ask her if Mademoiselle were not remarkably fair for a denizen of her country.

Old Mme. Letellier, Alexandre Dumas's sister, who had an apartment all rosy chintz and growing plants, showed me a lock of their "sainted father's" hair (we called it wool in our part of the world), asking me if that was not like the hair of our people, generally. She pointed with pride to the deep tinting of blood underneath her finger nails, and said: "I, too, am of your race, mademoiselle." To all of them, to be of the South meant to be off color in complexion!

She was a dear little old person, who lent me books, gave me one of the great Alexandre's MS. and petted me extravagantly. She adored her nephew, Dumas fils, whose "Les Idées de Mme. Aubray" had just made its success at the Gymnase Theatre, and showed me the photograph of her famous brother sitting with Adah Isaacs Menken on his knee, saying, indulgently, "He was always an imprudent boy, ce bon gros Alexandre."

Page 247

One old lady had on her wall a picture, swathed in crape, of her son, in French soldier's uniform, who had been shot following Maximilian in Mexico. Underneath it was a vase that always held fresh flowers.

We heard a glorious midnight mass at Christmas at the Madeleine, with a baritone from the opera singing Adolphe Adam's "Noël." Then came the joyous New Year's day, and on Twelfth Night they had a regular bourgeois "Dîner des Rois" at our establishment, to which we were formally invited. A flower bed, over which butterflies and humming-birds quivered, seemed the array of caps for this occasion; and even the untidy, snuff-taking old gentleman who distracted me by making queer noises in his throat, was shaved and brushed, wearing a white waistcoat and new skull cap with the inevitable red button of the Legion d'Honneur on his breast. He ultimately won the bean constituting him king of the revels, our landlady's baby granddaughter, a charming imp of five, getting the other bean that made her queen. Hand-in-hand, their majesties circulated around the tables, clinking glasses with every one, and - to my horror, as I saw them coming nearer to "ces dames" - kissing as they went! Upon my hand, luckily, the king, after a moment's hesitation, bestowed a moist salute, but my poor mother received hers upon her brow. I was glad to compromise by giving little Marie a hearty hug and kiss.

From La Ville au Bois we usually walked to the Barrière de l'Etoile, then took a cab or bus, to view the sights of Paris. The Sainte Chapelle, Musée de Cluny, and Napoleon's tomb at the Invalides were my favorites, but eagerly we took it all in. Soon visitors began to appear, old friends from the Confederacy, and some

Page 248

new friends made at the North and on shipboard. Our little red salon, with its "feu d'enfer," as Jean, our attendant, called our generous fire, opened to some interesting people. Prince Camille de Polignac and M. de St. Martin were very kind in coming, also dear old Mr. Francis Corbin, whose family were hereditary friends of the Fairfaxes.

The ancestor of the Corbins had settled in Virginia about 1650, his son, Gawin Corbin, becoming president of the Council of Virginia. In 1754, George Washington wrote making application to Mr. Corbin to use his influence in the council to procure for him a commission as lieutenant- colonel, which Mr. Corbin answered in the following brief phrase:

"DEAR GEORGE:
"I enclose you your commission, God prosper you with it.

"Your friend,
"RICHARD CORBIN."

My mother's great-uncle, it was, who took the son of this gentleman, then a boy, in one of the Fairfax ships from Virginia to England, where the youngster was put to school.

Mr. Francis Corbin invited us to dinner in the old Rohan hôtel in the rue de Grenelle where he had long resided, and we met an agreeable company, French and English, of Southern sympathizers, of whom I remember only Mr. Moncure Robinson, of Philadelphia, a connection of our family.

Once, handsome General Breckinridge called, with Colonel Dudley Mann, late Confederate States commissioner to France, who won our hearts by asking if

Page 249

we were "related to the gallant little Midshipman Cary, who made so many friends when Captain Pegram ran the Nashville into Southampton." From my Southern album I take an interesting letter from Colonel Dudley Mann to President Davis, which has never before been published.

"BRUSSELS, Dec. 17, 1864.

"Private.
"MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT.
"The Secretary of State will doubtless communicate to you the suggestion which I made yesterday the subject of a dispatch to him.

"I confidently believe that I can render singularly valuable services to our cause if it shall be agreeable to you to embrace the Germanic Confederation and Holland, in my present mission, in the manner indicated to Mr. Benjamin.

"From the Emperor of the French, we never had nor have now, anything favorable to expect. His Imperial Majesty is deaf to international justice and blind to its usages when he conceives that Mexico may possibly be involved in danger. It is quite certain, as I had long ago supposed, that there is a cordial understanding between the Cabinets of the Tuileries and Washington in relation to Maximilian. I now understand, upon good authority, that the latter is to consider the Monroe Doctrine as utterly obsolete, and that for this concession the former will decline for an indefinite period to establish diplomatic relations with us. This is a monstrous wrong, but one for which unfortunately we have no redress. The hour of retribution, however, may arrive sooner or later.

"Our friends everywhere enjoy your recent speeches and your message. They like your confident and earnest

Page 250

language. Our enemies, too, know that you speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

"I am hopeful that we have seen the darkest days of our struggle. I indulge the belief that we shall experience no more severe disasters. I have never feared but that our independence was established, durably, the day that it was declared.

"With cordial good wishes for your family, I pray you to believe me,

"Yours devotedly,
"A. DUDLEY MANN.

"His EXCELLENCY JEFFERSON DAVIS,
"President C. S. A., Richmond, Virginia."

The Preston girls came from Rue Lord Byron; Mrs. Myers, with her rosy young face, bright eyes, and dark hair powdered with white, and the Amaron Ledoux's, originally from New Orleans, long resident in Paris, aunt and cousins of Burton Harrison. It was hard to tell which was lovelier in this family - the mother, renowned since her youth for good looks and gracious manners; Alice, who died young; Anina, now the Baronne Brin, of Chateau Beausoliel; or Gabrielle, the present Marquise de Valori.

Ex-Senator and Mrs. Gwin, of California, maintained much of their accustomed elegance in a large apartment where they gave many parties; Dr. and Mrs. Marion Sims, with their handsome daughters, Mrs. Pratt (who appeared at a fancy ball, as an American Indian princess, with great éclat), Carrie, and Florence; and the Slidells, one of whom went to the same ball as "Rain" under a wonderful umbrella dripping with a shower of silver drops, were Southerners much admired in the society of the day. Mr. and Mrs. John Bigelow, to be

Page 251

our good friends and neighbors in Gramercy Park in later years, were just leaving Paris to yield their place to General and Mrs. Dix when we arrived. Mr. Parke Godwin, our future neighbor at Bar Harbor, made the speech of the evening at the farewell banquet given to Mr. Bigelow at the Grand Hotel in December.

Among the New York set two noted young beauties were the Beckwith sisters - a miracle of cream and rose complexions and charming costumes. "Baby" Beckwith was afterward Lady Leigh, of England, her sister becoming Mrs. Thorne. One saw a good deal of the pretty faces of that period, since the Empress had set the fashion of bonnets no bigger than a postage stamp. The newspapers complained that this mode, requiring a great deal more hair than the other, would cost husbands and fathers accordingly, since hair fetched a much higher market price than did silk and artificial flowers.

We went to "le skating," on a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, where there were coronetted carriages, powdered and plushed footmen, and Tom Thumb grooms waiting on all the grand people of the Tuileries society. There I had my first view of the Empress Eugénie, skating slowly, holding on to a bâton supported between two gentlemen of her court. She wore a short costume of sapphire blue velvet, trimmed with grèbe, with a toque of the same plumage. I lost my heart to her instantly, such beauty, grace, distinction were hers, and her smile adorable.

Now for some extracts from my diary.

"We hear of a negro actor named Ira Aldridge, who has made his appearance in "Othello" at Versailles, after a grand dinner given to him by theatre people and literati, including Dumas père. He is said to play the part superbly, wearing a costume covered with jewels."

Page 252

"There was a sale of autographs last week, when George Sand's brought six francs; Seward's, ten francs; Jefferson Davis's, fifteen francs; and Verdi's, three francs, fifty centimes.

"Heard Adelina Patti in 'Don Pasquale' at Les Italiens. She doesn't look a day older than when I saw her, in Washington before the war, as 'Rosina' in the 'Barbière,' a little tripping thing of fifteen or sixteen. Now she is a great diva, making twenty-four thousand pounds in a season at the Italian Opera here. Crowds follow her carriage and wait around her hotel till she comes out on the balcony to throw them flowers. At Marseilles she was jostled until her bonnet fell off and was torn to pieces for souvenirs. Certainly she sings like the lark at Heaven's gate.

"Saw a ballet called 'La Source,' which fairly dazzled my eyes - my first grand 'spectacle.' I wondered what they would say to it on Seminary Hill. I accused mamma of shutting her eyes during part of the capering. I also rallied her for saying we had accomplished so much sight-seeing together she did not believe there was a hole or corner of Paris we had left undone! We really do have the most delightful and sympathetic walks and explorings. She is a marvel in remembering history, and is working at her French grammar like a school-girl.

"Longstreet Branham called, a charming boy from Mississippi, a friend of Burton Harrison and L. Q. C. Lamar. We walked home from service in the Avenue Marboeuf with the Smith Bryces, our companions on the Arago. They have a pretty new apartment where they asked us to breakfast the other day: only the family present - Clémence and the two boys, Lloyd and Carroll. The major says he wishes his ladies

Page 253

would go more to the Louvre Gallery and less to the Louvre Magasin."

"Saw that horrid, vulgar Teresa, the chanteuse of music halls, of whom the fashionable world makes so much. After one of her appearances in a salon of the Faubourg St. Germain, she said quite naïvely: 'The songs I sing here wouldn't be tolerated by the police in a music hall.' The Papal Nuncio and his secretary were invited to hear her at a very distinguished house and incontinently left the premises. Princess Metternich sent her own carriage to fetch her to one of her parties. As a commentary, Teresa's predecessor, Rigolboche, who set Paris aflame a short time since, died recently and was buried in the fosse commune, or universal ditch where paupers are consigned.

"Had pointed out to me in the Champs Elysées the Oh!- no-we-never-mention-her - Cora Pearl, with a lap-dog dyed to match her yellow hair. She is a common-looking thing!

"Went to a ball at the Gwins - everything beautifully done. All the best-known ex-Confeds were present, with crowds of foreigners. Mme. Ledoux took me, and introduced many danseurs. Danced with Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and Mesopotamians, who presented themselves clicking their varnished heels together, and murmuring 'Est ce que j'aurai l'honneur, Mademoiselle?' after which we circled without a word passing between us, till they brought me back to my chaperon. I could have told them I knew better fun than that. Alice and Anina looked radiant and were the greatest belles. A little slim Montenegrin prince of royal family, named 'Dieu-Donné Petrovitch,' asked me to dance twice, and actually said the room was hot. The cotillon lasted till half-past three. I danced

Page 254

it with the Count de Marnas. I wore blue silk under an embroidered white muslin, made by Lucie Décharme. It was cut in Empire fashion with the waist up under the arms and a big blue sash, with a wreath of forget- me-nots in the hair - 'toilette tout à fait jeune fille, et très comme il faut,' Lucie said, when she brought it home in a cab.

"To-day, the coldest of the winter, mamma and I walked across the Bois de Boulogne in by-ways, under pines and cedars fringed with snow, in a crisp delicious atmosphere, coming out at the cascade where the ivy on the rocks glittered with icicles. Then, on past Longchamps, to Surèsnes, where we hired a voiture to bring us home. How bitter chill it was! All Europe is grumbling at the cold. Birds and beasts everywhere creeping from their retreats in search of food.

"Went to the opera to hear Marie Battu sing in 'Alceste.' Archaimbaud insists that I must hear good music constantly - a very nice prescription.

"To-day, through the Ledoux, who know him very well, came from the Duc de Bassano, the Emperor's Chamberlain, two huge rose-colored cards, admitting us to the Midday Mass at the Tuileries Chapel, at which their Majesties will be present. I had thought I had a dreadful cold, but it got better directly after that. Of course the trouble with my seeing court functions is that my dearest angel of a mother won't hear of my receiving any favors from the American Minister, although the Dixs have been so good in offering things. She, who is gentleness itself, actually said with a flushed face and flashing eyes, that I should never go inside the Tuileries if it depended on receiving favors from the representative of 'that Government!' 'Besides, only a year ago, he gave the order to shoot anybody who wanted

Page 255

to pull down the Stars and Stripes, and you know, my child, we did.'

"We were introduced into the Chapel by liveried functionaries after waiting in an anteroom till the doors were opened. To-day is the Feast of Candles, or Purification of the Virgin Mary, and the pictures and frescoes and gilding were lit up by a blaze of wax lights, each priest and acolyte also holding one. At twelve, there was a cry in the gallery 'L'Empereur,' repeated by a functionary upon the altar steps. Then the priests came in, and into the tribune draped with crimson velvet studded with golden bees, stepped their Majesties. The Empress sat on the Emperor's left, the Prince Imperial, a nice, manly boy, on his right. She looked like some old ivory carving of a saint. She wore a casaque and toque of marron velvet, with a wreath of black and gold leaves low on her lovely fluffy hair. She seemed pensive, even distressed, her lids drooping, her face resting upon one long slender well- gloved hand. I looked at the Emperor with close attention, as at one whom some consider the master-mind of Europe in these days. His face was grayish in tint, lined with deep marks, his eyes had puffy places under them. While at prayer, he seemed suddenly to break down into an old unhappy man, goaded by unpleasant thoughts, probably of Mexico and his lamentable fiasco there. But then, how can any French Monarch feel settled and happy, living in that great marble palace looking out on the fateful Place de la Concorde?

"While the Emperor and Empress received the sacrament alone, I looked, first at an exquisite painting of an Annunciation" (destroyed in the Commune) "then back at the pale sad face of the Empress. There was music of harp and organ with voices chiming in pianissimo -

Page 256

"We walked home through the Tuileries Garden, where for a penny I bought of a most polite old woman, a bunch of violets that fills the room with perfume as I write. No, I shouldn't like to be peerless Eugénie in the Palace of the Tuileries!

"We were asked to a soirée to be given by an English lady in the Avenue de l'Imperatrice. Her cards read: 'Tea at eight. Electricity at nine. Music at ten.'

"We got there for the music, furnished mostly by the guests. Mrs. Blanchard Jerrold, daughter of Mark Lemon of Punch, helped to make it. Later on, to my dismay, our hostess descended upon me. She was a large formidable lady like a rocking horse in expression. Somebody had fallen out, and she insisted I should sing in the garden duet from 'Faust'; with whom but Garvarni, one of the tenors I had heard at the Italian opera? I was cold with fear, but managed to get through my part, my Faust helping enormously with his unerring skill and ease. Archaimbaud was amazed, but secretly pleased when I told him of this next day at my lesson, and that I had also sung 'Cours mon aiguille,' from the 'Noces de Jeannette,' at which he had kept me working away till I was sick of it. My clever cross little teacher then condescended to say I had rather a nice voice, with some musical feeling, and if I sang 'exercises' and 'vocalises' for a thousand years or so I might do fairly well.

"Heard 'Mignon' at the Opéra Comique, with Galli Marie and Victor Capoul, both exquisite. Then, the treat of all treats, Christine Nilsson as the 'Queen of Night' in Mozart's 'Magic Flute' her 'vocalises' like a rain of jewels." I heard la diva afterward in New York in all her rôles, and regretted to miss her appearance in Thomas's "Hamlet," at the Théatre Lyrique,

Page 257

after I left Paris, when the audiences simply went mad over her. Her farewell in that opera in the spring of 1868 is said to have been the most extraordinary scene of enthusiasm; flowers covering the stage, and thunders of applause that would not die away. I met her frequently at the houses of friends in New York, and find among my autographs a gracious little note from her accepting an invitation to our home. I saw her, as the Countess Miranda, at Monte Carlo, a few years ago, a thin net veil over her face, sitting at the tables absorbingly intent upon her game. All that beauty of complexion, the light of those wide-open eyes, that grace and virginal joyousness were gone. She was quite another person; a grievous disillusion!

"Heard some delicious concerts by Pasdeloup's orchestra at the Salle l'Athénée. Have been in turn to hear all the best artists of the day at the operas, also to the Théatre Français, and to the Châtelet, for spectacles. All the others are tabooed to a young girl. Went to the Cirque de l'Impératrice, to see Léotard jump, or rather fly through the air." After we left Paris he fell once into the lap of our friend, Count de ---, and broke the poor count's leg, not his own.

"On Feb. 27th, a card arrived for me for the ball at the Tuileries, sent through a Southern friend married into one of the old families of France, who offered to take me with her daughter. We went up the fifty steps of the grand staircase, on each end of which stood like a statue one of the Cent Gardes, the Emperor's body-guard, the tallest and handsomest men in the military service of France, wearing the classic helmet with a snowy horse's tail arched over its crest. I had to own to myself that nothing I had seen at the poor shabby White House 'befo de wah' or in the Governor's house

Page 258

in Richmond, could come up to this! In the gorgeous Salle des Maréchaux, with Strauss playing his best waltzes in the gallery, we saw their Majesties sitting on golden thrones under curtains studded with golden bees. Never since, have I seen the outward form of sovereignty so splendidly assumed.

"The Empress wore white tulle over satin, the skirt bordered by a garland of soft white roses, the bodice a mass of scintillating gems, her hair linked with diamond clasps, around her waist her famous jewelled girdle. My friends pointed out to me all the distinguished people of the hour - Prince Napoleon, his wife, Princess Clotilde, Princess Mathilde, Marquise de Gallifet, Duchesse Tascher de la Pagerie, the diplomats generally, etc. I was most interested in Princess Pauline Metternich, who calls herself 'the monkey of the court,' because she dares anything for a moment's diversion, but is, nevertheless, grande dame to the finger tips. She has recently played three parts of an evening, at theatricals given at Compèigne - a vivandière, a cab-man (in complete costume, argot and all!) and then the 'Spirit of Song' in white tulle, the skirt decorated with music bars, the bodice one solid mass of diamonds. The wit and tact of this Austrian Embassadress are quoted everywhere. I stood near her at another ball where I could not but overhear her sparkling talk - equalled in glitter only by the high collar of emeralds and diamonds around her slim throat.

"The State Ball at the Tuileries was such a terrible squash, as they say in England, our tulles and laces were simply carried away upon sword hilts. A handsome old officer, asked by a lady pushed upon him in the jam, to kindly take his finger out of her ear, said politely, 'Mille excuses, Madame, but at present it is impossible.'

Page 259

I had one dance only, with the 'God-given' Montenegrin prince, who was not to be resisted as he came to seek me in his stunning national costume, gleaming with color and gold lace; but my feet were fairly trodden out of shape. This Prince Pétrovitch, with Sir Hubert Jerningham, the handsome young attaché of the British Legation - whom, as a distinguished diplomat, author, and traveller, I was to know in years to come, when I had the pleasure to be his guest at his beautiful Longridge Towers near Berwick-on- Tweed; on which estate are the ruins of Norham Castle, the scene of the opening canto of Scott's 'Marmion' - were often invited by the Empress Eugénie to lead the cotillons at her private dances.

"We did not wait to taste the imperial supper, but, letting ourselves be put into our wraps by the functionaries in black velvet with silver chains around their necks, got into our carriage and hurried away between huge bonfires built at intervals in the rue de Rivoli, to keep waiting coachmen and footmen warm, to a bal privé in the Boulevard Malesherbes, where I danced in a cotillon till 3 A. M."

After that, we had more pomps and vanities, of which the foregoing will serve as a sample. But amid all this bedazzlement to ex-Confederate eyes, it is not to be supposed that our hearts swerved from continual remembrance of the dear ones left behind, with whom we were in constant correspondence. Their joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, were ours, and tears often flowed in thinking of them. My mother, indeed, carried the Confederacy written in her heart till death, as Queen Mary once bore Calais.

My mother had by now settled down into a more tranquil state of mind concerning her son, who, like many

Page 260

another young officer of the Confederate States navy after the collapse of our cause, had relieved the intolerable uncertainty of the first days of reconstruction by shipping before the mast in the bark Clifton, sailing from Baltimore to Rio de Janeiro. This exploit, a greater ordeal to us than to him, embodied a voyage of fifty days to South America. Being a protégé of the owner, he at first lived aft in the cabin, but resenting some chaff of the captain when in his cups, he took his tin pot and spoon and went forward into the forecastle with the men, who received him with open arms.

"I was soon at home with the ship, and as active aloft as any, turning out to reef and furl and laying out on the weather top-sail yard-arm when the squall was roaring and the sea below us outside the narrow hull churned to froth and spoondrift. We were short-handed, and often and again did our watch get below from off the sloppy decks in nasty weather, and into the steaming forecastle, just in time enough to fall into tired slumber - when bang, bang, bang would come a handspike on the forecastle door, and hoarse voices cry, 'All hands reef topsails!'

"Out we rolled, struggling into wet sea boots and clinging oilskins, and tumbling half-awake out on the slanting deck, and so with the weather rigging and up that steep path against which the gale would flatten one; the same gale which was roaring aloft and making the lowered sail flat and struggle like a furious wild thing!

"Aloft and quickly with the swarming crowd, and over the fullock shrouds, and away out on the yard-arm, standing on the swaying foot rope and holding fast with tooth and eyelid to the spar, from which the sail we wished to catch and reef, would flap and belly out in its

Page 261

imprisoning bunt and reef-lines. On the yard-arm, the swinging roll of the ship was quick and wide reaching, leaving one at moments poised as a bird in air over the black and tumbling sea, and under a blacker fiercer sky. No shout would reach us against the wind, but a whispered word went back plainly to leeward. Obeying a sign from the 2nd mate in the bunt, all hands reached out and grasped the struggling devilish sail, and with a pull together, which cracked one's back, and started finger- nails, a little fold was gathered in and held under one's body, until another skin could be had, and also fastened, and the whole secured by reef points. Then 'Lay down from aloft,' was the cry, and back we clambered, the watch stumbling into the forecastle to sleep out what remained of its precious time. The Clifton top-sails, I may add, were of the old-fashioned back-breaking sort, rigged with single top-sail yards. In early days, the most difficult seamanship was in reefing top-sails, and the supreme test of the able seaman was his manner of passing the weather ear-ring, a duty which required him to be first aloft and on the weather yard-arm, which he perched upon, a-straddle, with foot on Flemish horse, and back against the left, ready to make fast the ear-ring at the reef, provided the flattening sail did not flap over his head and drag him from the yard, as happened now and then."

I have copied this bit from my brother's diary, because to me it has in it the whistle of angry seawinds and the stern resistance of man to the elements. It will also give an idea of a phase of sailor's life now passed away, as well as mark the contrast between his experience as a young officer in early command, and that of a common seaman before the mast, in both doing his manly duty cheerily.

Page 262

The voyage threw him into contact in Rio with sundry other young ex-rebels like himself, experimenting for future service in the merchant marine, and also with a Harvard man at sea for a lark, on his way to India, who held out his hand to Clarence, observing, "Hello! you, too, must be a gentleman!" They laughed, shook hands, and parted, never to meet again.

On his safe return to New York, my brother, who had not abandoned his project of entering the merchant- service, shared his quarters in that city with his old navy shipmate, Jeff Howell, a brother of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, afterward lost at sea in the wreck of a merchant vessel under his own command. At the urgent entreaty of his family, my brother abandoned this idea, and after a time spent partly at hospitable Morrisania, partly in law studies in Charleston, South Carolina, varied by fox hunting with his friends Frank Trenholm and James Morris Morgan, finally settled down in the law offices of Harrison & Wesson in New York.

Long after he was an established member of the bar, Mr. Cary avowed his weakness for spending spare time wandering on the docks of New York, studying the shipping, and filling his lungs with a whiff of salt air and his nostrils with the smell of tarred ropes.

No, we were not yet thoroughly reconstructed, and when in the spring we saw a superb review in Paris, of troops gathered in honor of the royal and imperial visitors to the "Exposition Universelle," a poignant memory got hold of me. I thought of all those heroes of our war I had seen defile into the shades of death, of their surviving leaders, scattered, suffering ignominy, exile, or galling poverty, and my tears changed into sobs;

Page 263

there was nothing for it but to give up and ask to be taken home.

As a matter of course, we and all the other wandering children of the South we knew in Paris, were critically anxious for the release of Jefferson Davis from his two years of painful imprisonment in Fortress Monroe. His trial, long delayed, now coming on under the care of some of the most eminent counsel of the American bar, was ever in our thoughts.

The story of that trial and Mr. Davis's release on bail was told to us in two letters from Burton Harrison (here for the first time put into print), and lifted a weight from our lives.

"RICHMOND, VA., May 13, 1867.

"To-morrow's papers may inform the far-off world of Paris that our great chieftain has been finally liberated on bail. In a little while we are to go into the courtroom where the last act of his long drama of imprisonment is to be performed - we may yet be disappointed, and may be called upon to conduct Mr. Davis again to a dungeon . . . we are very anxious of course - feverishly so - but there seems to be no reason to apprehend failure this time.

"I left New York early Tuesday morning and have been constantly busy moving ever since I brought the documents here which have since been published to the world, and have set the newspaper quidnuncs scribbling ten thousand crude speculations. But my long training to reticence in diplomacy, has enabled me to keep our real devices concealed from the gossips.

"Spent Wednesday and Thursday here plotting and making ready for the great day. On Friday I went down to the Fortress and there spent, with him, the last

Page 264

night of his sojourn in the bastile. It was the second anniversary of our capture. Next day we came up the river. General Burton was as courteous to his prisoner as he could be - subjected him to no restraint, brought no guards - and we travelled as amiably as a select party of gentlemen could. There were very few passengers on the boat, but it had become generally known that the chief was on board, and at every landing was assembled an enthusiastic little group to greet the President. It did my heart good to see the fervent zeal of the good people at Brandon. They came aboard and such kissing and embracing and tears as Belle Harrison, Mary Spear Nicholas and Mrs. George Harrison employed to manifest their devotion to the leader who was beaten, have never been seen out of dear old Virginia.

"We were brought to the Spotswood Hotel and Mr. and Mrs. Davis occupy the same rooms they used in 1861 when they first came to Richmond under such different circumstances. The Northern proprietor of the house has caught the zeal of the entire community and actually turned his own family out of that apartment. There are no sentinels, no guards - no stranger would suppose the quiet gentleman who receives his visitors with such peaceful dignity is the State prisoner around whose dungeon so many battalions have been marshalled for two years, and whose trial for treason against a mighty government, to-day excites the interest of mankind.

"Almost every one has called, bringing flowers and bright faces of welcome to him who has suffered vicariously for the millions. Yesterday, after service, half the congregation from St. Paul's Church was here, and I confess I haven't seen so many pretty women together for years.

Page 265

"A mighty army of counsel is here. O'Conor is towering in his supremacy over all lesser personages and looked like a demi-god of antiquity, yesterday, when we gathered a few of us around Mr. Davis to explain the details of his arrangements. It was a scene so remarkable for the men who constituted the group and for the occasion of their meeting that I shall never forget it."

"NEW YORK, May 18, 1867.

"My last letter was written in Richmond on the morning of the great crisis. The telegrams in the newspapers informed you of the result of our labors, and you will see accounts enough of the various scenes of the drama from newspaper correspondents. I enclose you one from the Baltimore Gazette, written by Wilkins Glenn - as good a story of what occurred as I have seen. The World will give you a report of the speeches made by O'Conor and the rest, which were very meager.

"The fact was everything had been agreed upon beforehand, between O'Conor and the Attorney General, and it was understood there should be no speeches of pretentious declamation. Each actor in the drama did his part soberly and with satisfactory precision. Although Underwood, the Judge, had received from the government an intimation of their desire that he should accept bail, we were not sure that he would not disappoint us with some assertion of the 'independence of the judiciary.' Underwood is the bête noire of Richmond. The people regard him with unlimited fear and dislike. They say he has shown himself such an agent as has not sat on the bench to torment humanity, since the days of James's Chief Justice. They were terribly frightened by the step we took in securing Mr. Davis's removal from Fortress Monroe to be within control of the 'Civil'

Page 266

authorities - thought it the greatest possible blunder - were certain that Underwood would avail himself of the opportunity to punish the whole Confederacy through their representative man, and looked for nothing better than a transfer of our chief from the quarters at the Fortress where the custodian was a gentleman and his surroundings were those of comfort, to the filthy dungeons of the town jail! The women were in an agony of prayer - the men more anxious than at any moment since the evacuation of Richmond.

"But it really seemed as if the deep feeling of the community had possessed the United States officials. The desire to be polite and gracious manifested itself in every one of them. After we were all in the court-room awaiting the arrival of the judge and the prisoner, General Burton came in dressed in full uniform and followed by Mr. Davis. The marshal conducted them to the prisoner's dock, coming immediately to me to invite me to sit by Mr. Davis, that he might feel he had a friend with him and lose the disagreeable consciousness of the presence of constables and turnkeys. As I pushed my way through the crowd I thanked the marshal heartily, and sitting down beside the prisoner felt that I was enthroned with a king.

"In a very few moments, the courtesy was extended by asking us to remove from the seat of the accused to join Mr. O'Conor and Mr. Reed within the bar. There I stood behind Mr. Davis during the whole of the proceedings, and when it was all over, was the first to congratulate him.

"Observation of this kindness on the part of the officials had inspired in anxious friends more hope in the Judge - but there was still such a dread in everybody's eyes when Underwood was about to speak - such a perfect

Page 267

stillness in the halls as I shall rarely see again in a lawyer's life of anxiety in court-rooms. And when the oracle came - 'The case is undoubtedly bailable, and as the Government is not ready to proceed with the trial, and the prisoner is and for a long time has been ready and demanding trial - it seems eminently proper that bail should be allowed' - such joy and relief as came upon all faces---!

"When it was done and 'the prisoner discharged,' Mr. Davis asked me to convey him as rapidly as possible from the court to his rooms at the Spotswood, and I did so in triumph.

"Our carriage was beset with a crowd frantic with enthusiasm, cheering, calling down God's blessings, rushing forward to catch him by the hand and weeping manly tears of devotion to 'our President.' I shall never see such joy in a crowd again and some of the faces I saw thro' the tears in my own eyes will remain impressed on my memory forever.

"Reaching the hotel, he took my arm through the crowd and up the stairway. The halls were full of friends waiting to congratulate him, but everybody held back with instinctive delicacy as he went in to his wife.

"In a moment I followed. Dr. Minnegerode, Miss Jenny Ritchie and Mr. George Davis were already there, helping Mrs. Davis to pass the time which we spent in the court-room. The door was locked and we knelt around a table, while the rector offered a prayer of thanksgiving; every one of us weeping irrepressibly, for God had delivered the captive at last, and with him we were all liberated!

"After a while the doors were opened, and I ran away from the multitude of men and women who laughed and cried by turns. And now, the whole town rejoiced.

Page 268

The animosity of war was put aside, and every house-hold vied with its neighbor in extending hospitalities to Genl. Burton and the other U. S. officials who seemed to find almost as much happiness in the result as we did. They were breakfasted, dined and toasted, till they fully realized what Virginian hospitality can be.

"We determined to take the chief as quickly as possible away from these scenes of explosive excitement, and went aboard ship that evening, coming to New York by sea to avoid the multitudes on land. He will go in a few days to visit his children in Canada. Beyond that his plans are not made.

"At the New York Hotel he has been beset by congratulating friends, and had become so nervous and weakened by continued excitement that last night I took bodily possession of him, put him into a carriage and drove him out to Mr. O'Conor's to have a restful sleep in the country and a day or two of quiet.

"He remonstrated, but in vain. He has been so long accustomed to submit to his keepers that at last he ceased to resist and I conveyed him away forcibly.

"Mrs. Davis and Miss Howell went to see Ristori - her last night in New York. I suppose they will be in town for a day or two longer, and I shall continue to be in diligent attendance. But the decree which admitted Mr. Davis to bail, liberated me also - and from that moment I was released from all bonds - save one.

"The past is now the past - all is now in the future."

No one could read this loyal outpouring of a young man's enthusiasm for a fallen chief with any doubt that his friendship and hearty desire to serve Mr. Davis continued always. Many letters in my possession attest the warmth of their mutual regard; but the course of

Page 269

their lives, diverging at this point, never ran in parallel lines again. When Mrs. Davis, after her widowhood, lost her gifted daughter Winnie, and was to carry the body almost in state, for interment in Richmond, she sent for my husband to accompany her, and leaned upon him like a son.

Our days in Paris, when we returned to the Hotel France et Choiseul in the autumn for shopping, were nearly over.

I have recorded the preceding glimpses of the French capital in the later days of imperial régime because it has never been, in outward show, so splendid since the reign of Napoleon III and his beautiful consort.

The exposition brought into its streets thousands of visitors and many of the sovereigns of Europe, or their representatives. The great show itself was (in comparison with its successors everywhere) rather meagre and disappointing. Save for the exhibits of France and Austria there was nothing resplendent to be seen. It was, indeed, with a long sigh of relief of mind and body that we went away from the modern Babylon, in June, into beautiful rural Switzerland.

Except that we made the ascent of the Grand St. Bernard Pass with a party of English friends, a little too early in the season to be safe, and were taken in, almost exhausted, by the Clavendier and monks at the hospice, there was nothing of moment to record. My cousin, Anne Cary Morris, came out to join us, also the James Howard McHenrys, of Baltimore, so that our little group of kinsfolk made a happy oasis in that summer of beautiful wandering.

In the autumn we received an invitation from Charles Wykeham Martin, Esq., M.P. to Kent, to make him a visit at Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, before returning

Page 270

to America. It was the first time either of us had been in England, and I had the surprise of hearing my good mother say to herself, devoutly, as we landed: "Thank God, I have at last set foot upon the soil of home!" The blood of her tory ancestors had evidently not been chilled in her veins by the lapse of a century of republicanism , or, perhaps, as she could no longer claim Virginia, she would have naught else but England! She was further made happy by cordial welcome in one of the loveliest old castles in England, overflowing with potraits, busts, books, and relics of her family. My bedroom, a tower chamber once occupied by the maids of honor of poor Anne Boleyn, during Henry VIII's ownership of the castle, looking across the moat into a park where deer were seen grazing or vanishing amid great tree boles, filled my own measure of satisfaction. The grandson of our kind old friend is the present owner of the property. We had the pleasure, upon our arrival at Leeds Castle, of beholding, set in the oak of the mantel-piece in the banquet-hall, a replica of our portrait of Henry, the fourth Lord Fairfax, of the seventeenth century (the "missing link" they called it in England, long years since vanished into America), which we had brought over, the year before, to be cleaned in London, allowing this copy to be made for Leeds Castle, another for Colonel Ackroyd, of Yorkshire. The copy of the graceful young man in armor still keeps its place at Leeds Castle, but the original, after sundry wanderings in the New World, has now "brought up" on the wall of my library in which these lines are penned.

After an inspiring visit to London, we re-embarked at Southampton in the Western Metropolis, a poor old side- wheel steamer, put on by the Guion Line to replace the one in which we had engaged passage. While

Page 271

crossing recently in a new "monster of the deep," with every luxury from a lift to a Ritz restaurant and wireless telegraphy aboard, I thought of our sailing in that wretched tub on an autumn voyage through stormy seas, when it took sixteen days to bring us from shore to shore, and for a week we rolled and plunged over mighty billows, hardly cr

Recollections Grave and Gay: Electronic Edition