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First edition, 1998
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Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998.
Call number 917.5 O18m 1914
(Davis Library, UNC-CH)
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Library of Congress Subject Headings,
21st edition, 1998
LC Subject Headings:
O'Connor, T. P., Mrs., d. 1931.
Texas -- Social life and customs.
Southern States -- Social life and customs.
1998-12-14,
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Each day the memory of the old South becomes more and more a
cherished dream. Its bounteous hospitality, its quixotic chivalry, its
daring courage, its spotless honour, its poetic understanding, are receding
into the heroic past. Therefore, we of the Old Guard must stand
together, and do what we can to keep the younger and more practical
generation Unforgetting. My pen is freighted with appreciation, but
is, alas, inadequate, while already your genius has made "The tender
grace of a day that is dead" immortal; and so, after many years of
affectionate friendship, I dedicate this book to you.
"A WANDERING minstrel I, a thing of shreds
and patches..." My book is but a reflection of
myself; its sole recommendation, - that my bale
of cotton grew under warm sunshine, and every thread
spun and woven into material is from the old and new South.
"I have gathered me a posy of other men's thoughts,
only the thread that holds them together is mine."
Some of the stories have even been told before,
but they belong to me by right of inheritance and
Love, so may I not tell them again?
After many years of absence, when the riches
and abundance of my country were displayed to me, it was
my ambition to write an informing, practical, statistical
book. Such a one as would induce English settlers to
set sail for the Southern States. There, English tradition,
an ever-green, would extend a fraternal welcome,
and with a small capital, or even none at all, except
health and strong hands, a Home awaits them.
But my frank friends discouraged this undertaking.
There are so many writers, they said, who know more
of the progress, resources, and wealth of the country
than you possibly can know. The most you can hope
to do, is to make an entertaining South.
It was the great William Pitt, who, when a man
was recommended to him because he talked sense, said:
"Anybody can talk sense, Sir; can he talk nonsense?"
And if now and then I have struck a rag-time tune -
and who has a better right - underneath the nonsense
and plantation songs, one earnest wish has been always
in my heart, to bring England and America closer together,
and to make them understand each other.
Men and women in Virginia have said to me, "I love
Virginia, and after Virginia - England." For myself,
I love America in England, and England in America;
they are both my countries, and if a little word of mine
has made greater friendliness even for a brief moment
between them, my book will not have been written in vain.
One bright memory - only one;
And I walk by the light of its gleaming;
It brightens my days, and when days are done
It shines in the night o'er my dreaming.
Father THOMAS RYAN.
IN my wandering life of deepest shadow and occasional
sunshine, there is but one thing for which I am
altogether devoutly thankful, - I was born and bred
in the South, and for generations on both sides of my
family my ancestors were Southern people; consequently,
without conflict, my qualities and defects
are those of my race. For my own personal defects, given
me at birth with a free hand by my whimsical fairy godmother,
neither my family nor my beloved land is responsible.
My great-grandfather, Major Duval, fought in the
War of the Revolution, and gave goodly sums towards
the cause. He married at twenty-three a Miss Pope
of Virginia, an heiress of whom he made rather a sudden
and theatrical conquest, not later than five minutes
after he discovered her. She, a fair-haired, dimpled
beauty, wearing a silken hood, a green merino gown,
little calfskin shoes with silver buckles, a black silk
apron, and open-work mittens, was walking one golden
October afternoon in a primeval forest near the banks
of the Shenandoah. In the angle of her round arm lay
a big ball of worsted, and the sun slanting down on her
glancing needles struck diamond brilliance from their
quick activity.
My great-grandfather, returning from the chase,
young, dashing, good-looking, suddenly beheld this
vision. He wore the buckskin clothes of the Virginian
hunter, and carried his day's trophy of wild turkey,
ducks, and rabbits slung across his shoulder. His
rifle held one last bullet.
Quickly advancing to the astonished young lady, he
took off his bearskin cap, and making a bow so low
that the turkeys touched the ground, he said, "Madame,
permit me." Then lifting the ball of worsted from its
envied resting-place, he lightly tossed it high into the air,
shot the bullet straight through its heart, and as
it came down caught it and placed it, smoking with
powder and with love, in her apron pocket.
The dimples all appeared as she said, "Sir, you can
shoot and hit the mark."
He bowed again and answered, "So can Cupid, and
I hope," - pointing to her fluttering heart - "in the
right direction."
The young lady, a very distant cousin whom he had
never met, was from Richmond, visiting an aunt
on an adjoining plantation. He walked home with
her, in the mellow sunshine of an Indian summer
afternoon, through the wonderful scarlet and gold
forests of the early Virginia autumn, leaving on the
doorstep of the wide plantation house his day's hunt
as his first love offering.
The next day he re-appeared, brave in satin small-clothes
and lace ruffles, the queue of his fair hair tied with a
silken ribbon, and offered himself with proper
dignity as suitor for her hand. A month later they
were married and lived happy ever afterwards.
I have an idea that my great-grandmother was the
more interesting of the two (the Popes are an intellectual,
fascinating family), and when she died so intense
was her husband's grief that finally nature mercifully
relieved him with a gentle absent-minded forgetfulness.
When his children grew up, he sold his winter home
in Richmond and afterwards lived entirely on his
plantation, devoting the long summer days to bass
fishing in the Shenandoah, which is no mean sport, as
bass are wary and valorous fighters. Indeed, a mature
father or bachelor fish of middle age and accumulated
wisdom is seldom caught; the reckless youngsters who
disregard the admonitions of their seniors are the only
fish to be inveigled by the most tempting bait. Finally
my great-grandfather gave up even this sport, and
spent his days on the wide balcony which faced the
virgin forest where he first saw the merry coquettish
face of my great-grandmother. He read the Richmond
newspaper from beginning to end, and gave it to a
small darkey standing in attendance. This boy ran
round the house, and handed him back the same paper,
which "the good Major Duval" read all over again
with reminiscent but deep satisfaction. It was
evidently from this ancestor that my quite imbecile
forgetfulness comes.
The old miniatures and portraits give him a round face,
baby-like pink-and-white skin, fair hair, blue
eyes, and the most friendly and engaging expression.
How inevitably hereditary traits appear even in the
third and fourth generation. My beautiful grandson
of five said to me after a French lesson the other day:
"Damma, isn't it sad that one so young as I should
have such a bad memory?" And immediately the
picture of his Virginia ancestor, sitting on a wide
vine-clad balcony and reading quite happily a
newspaper for the fourth time, suggested itself to me.
Another Miss Pope, a kinswoman of mine, married
and came to Texas to live. She was tall and dark, with
jet-black hair, pearl-white teeth, a touch of dark
down on her upper lip, and the most enchanting speaking
voice I have ever heard. It was like golden velvet,
and she talked with great brilliancy and a wealth of
information on every conceivable subject, for she lived
in books and not in the life around her. To that she
was extremely indifferent, and had the reputation of
being a humorously bad housekeeper.
My mother, with her sense of order and Spartan-like
cleanliness, frankly disapproved of her, but my father
loved her, and, as she was not his wife, forgave her
disorder.
One afternoon when I was a very little girl my father
drove out to see her, taking me with him. She lived a
few miles from Austin and a little creek ran through
the garden, so the flowers were glorious and plentiful,
being always supplied with water. The wide hall was
hung with family portraits, but the floor looked like a
village street, literally covered with dried mud in little
footprints, as if animals had wandered in and out at will.
The negro maid said Miss Anna was sick, but would
the Judge and Miss Betty go right in. And we were
shown into an immense bedroom opposite the drawing-room.
A slight fever had given her a colour and she
looked very handsome with her dark hair wandering
over the pillow in two long thick plaits. Beside her
stood a small table piled with books; some had toppled
on to the bed, and there were books on the window-seat
and on the sofa, and my father relieved the chair he
was to sit upon of quite a small library.
He had first selected a large puffy-looking rocker,
but our hostess smilingly admonished him: "Don't
take that chair, Judge, or you will sit on the new baby."
Then, seeing my eager look of interest, she said: "Go
over and look at him, Betty," and tiptoeing over to the
soft white bundle, I found that it was an adorable
three-months-old fat baby, sound asleep.
Then she began to talk, and though I was too little
really to understand, the soft musical many-toned voice
thrilled me with pleasure. After a while a
stirring was heard under the bed, and an obese
familiar sleepy pig made his appearance. He walked
into the centre of the room, squealed loudly, stood
for a moment, then trotted leisurely through the doorway,
down the hall and out into the garden. She dreamily regarded
but made no comment on the pig. Her rich honeyed
tones continued unfalteringly. I was told afterwards
that she was giving the last lines of Keats's Ode to the
Nightingale. The pig, however, disturbed the child,
who cried, and my father, loving babies like a woman,
lifted the new man in his arms, hushed him, and began
to walk the floor.
Presently a pet peacock, the hardest bird in the
world to tame, with his tail magnificently spread, stood
in the doorway, advanced proudly into the room, but
gave a loud shriek at seeing a stranger and fled down
the hall, while no comment was made on him. It
seemed to me that I was in a wonderful fairy dream,
with such lovely things happening - a beautiful lady
with long plaits, a soft pink baby, a peacock and a pig.
Oh! I thought, if my home was only like this, how
happy I should be.
My father's voice brought me back from my dreams.
He was saying, "Where is your pretty Yankee governess?"
Mrs. Berkeley answered with a merry twinkle in her eye,
"Gone. That's the third, Judge, and I am going to have
a new petition added to the Litany, 'And from governesses,
good Lord deliver us.' " This seemed to me a most beautiful
sentiment, for I, too, wished to be delivered from governesses.
I was too young to know that good-looking George Berkeley
suffered from an impressionable nature. But eventually
his wife, eight children, and later a strong-minded and
elderly German governess, transformed him into a
most exemplary husband.
My grandfather, Governor William Peyton Duval,
was a son of the good Major Duval. His boyhood was
spent in Richmond, Virginia. The house was kept by
Aunt Barbara, a negro woman who was almost white.
A strong character, quick-witted and capable, she had
taught herself to read and write, an almost unheard-of
accomplishment for a negro in those far-away days,
and she was painfully thrifty, locking up everything in
the establishment, and carrying a huge bunch of keys
at her belt. One of them was the key to the pantry,
where she spent twenty minutes every morning with a
little negro to dip out sugar, coffee, tea, flour, raisins,
currants, citron, butter, lard and meal. And never
did her lynx eyes relax their vigilance, so there were no
peculiar secret cakes from pickings in the pantry to be
stealthily cooked in the cabins at nightfall, as often
occurred in a Southern home.
I remember at the tender age of seven partaking of
an odd little cake made of rice, two raisins, one almond,
a cucumber pickle, a few tea leaves, two lumps of
sugar, a pinch of flour, and an amber morsel of citron.
Baked in wood ashes on the hearth of Mammy's cabin,
it seemed to me a delicious, though peculiar morsel.
These were the gleanings of Henrietta, my little
negro maid and playmate, who dipped for my mother when
she unlocked her pantry in the morning. Not always
observant, my mother gave Henrietta an opportunity
to "borrow" with her lightning quick fingers.
Aunt Barbara knew the negroes and trusted none of
them. Even the wearing apparel of the Quality was
kept under lock and key. At half-past seven in the
morning the body servants of the gentlemen were
supposed to stand before an immense blue press, and
Aunt Barbara counted out under-linen, socks, white
waistcoats, and pocket handkerchiefs. If a lagging
valet appeared at a quarter to eight he returned
empty-handed to his master, who gave him such a dressing
down that the next morning he waited beforetime for
the unlocking of the press. In this way the house was
spotlessly clean, the linen in order, and the lax easygoing
ways inherent in Southern people were counteracted
by vigilant management.
My great-grandfather always had family prayers,
and each person present was expected to repeat a verse
from Scripture. The Bible was the dearest and most
revered book on earth to Aunt Barbara. Any chapter,
any verse was suitable for her delivery. And each
morning the family waited expectantly on her selection,
which varied from the New Testament to Deuteronomy
or the book of Job. One unlucky day for my grandfather,
an exuberant boy of fourteen, Aunt Barbara
fixed a piercing eye on him and said in a sonorous voice,
"Remember Lot's wife." An explosion of laughter
followed and from that moment she was a sworn and
somewhat unjust enemy to him.
A brother-in-law of my great-grandfather's had been
to Spain and was much impressed by the Spanish mules.
He said the prettiest sight in Madrid was a lovely
coquettish woman, a rose under each ear, a white lace
mantilla thrown over her head, sitting in an open
carriage driven by a picturesque coachman clad in
scarlet, and drawn by jet-black mules made splendid
by gay and jingling harness. So he brought back from
Barcelona a number of Jacks, thinking to mingle the
blood of Virginia thoroughbreds with that of Spanish
plebeians, but horses in that part of the country were
of the purest pedigree. All their owners scorned the
idea of mules, never mind their strength or their powers
of endurance. So the big-headed, noisy Jacks were
turned loose about the fields and grew fat and saucy
from having too much grass and too little exercise.
One day my grandfather was startled by a strange
mighty braying. At first he was frightened; then he
saw an animal looking at him with faithful eyes and as
he said, "A sort of horse look," encouraging to friendship.
He tried to mount the discovery, when deftly
and quickly, the rider was thrown high in the air, and
the horse-like beast with triumphant heehaws galloped
off in the distance. Jack, however, was later caught and
ridden every day, and finally young Duval learned the
dexterity of the rancher in keeping his seat. The other
boys of the neighbourhood soon followed his example
and the Jacks rapidly grew thinner by hard exercise.
In October he and half a dozen lads planned an
excursion, starting at earliest dawn to gather nuts.
For this purpose a big Jack was corralled the night before
and placed in the "smoke-house." A little one-roomed
log cabin, with a thin odoriferous line of smoke
rising from the chimney, and slowly making delicious
hams and tongues, was to be found on every well-appointed
Southern place. The next morning the unlucky
boy overslept himself, and Aunt Barbara, up at daylight,
dressed in stiffly starched purple calico, a gorgeous
plaid head handkerchief, wide half-hoops of gold
dangling from her ears, and all her keys jingling at her
side, proceeded to the smoke-house and unlocked the
door. She had slept ill the night before and dreamed
of the devil. Suddenly, lurid eyes confronted hers, a
wide mouth opened, showing great teeth, a huge voice
emitted a brazen, horrid sound, and Aunt Barbara
was knocked down, trampled upon, and thrown into a fit.
In those days when kindred and hospitality were part
of the religion of the South, no household was composed
of only the immediate family. My great-grandfather's
brother-in-law, an irritable little man, lived with him,
and he soon ferreted out the author of Aunt
Barbara's illness, and not satisfied with giving the boy
one beating he thrashed him every time she had a fresh
fit. This treatment developed in my grandfather a
determination to leave home. He said to his father:
"I am going to Kentucky. I am too old to be thrashed,
and no house is big enough to hold both Uncle John
and me." His father answered, very quietly: "Then
you had better go, for John is our kin; I cannot ask him
to leave my house."
Young Duval loyally said, "I don't expect you to,
sir, I will leave the house to him."
He began then to develop his fine character of sustained
courage and dogged resolution. The winter
passed without his speaking again of leaving home, but
he kept to his determination.
Aunt Barbara, quite recovered, saw a change in her
boy, and was most attentive to him, saying, "I did n't
mind, honey. I knowed you did n't mean to hurt old
Barbara. I jus' wants you to run roun' an' laugh like
you use ter. You studies too much to suit me. What
you thinkin' 'bout, chile?"
"Aunt Barbara," said the boy, "I'm going to Kentucky
next month."
"Now," said Aunt Barbara, quite ashey-looking,
"who ever heard de beat ob dat? Ain't Virginia,
where you wuz born an' raised, good enough for you?
An' (breaking down) I wuz wid yo' ma when you wuz
born. I held you in dese arms when you wuz a hour
old. I knows I bin strict wid you, I bleeged to be,
but you jus' like my own chile. Oh, honey, don't go
'way. Jus' go out on de common an' ketch dat brayin'
jackass, an' I promise you, he kin stay a week in de
smoke-house."
Aunt Barbara began to cry and these two were friends
again. But the steady look never left the boy's face,
and in May, when the trees were green and the flowers
in blossom, he said to his father, "I am leaving for
Kentucky to-day. Will you give me an outfit, sir?"
His father looked disappointed and said, "I thought
you had given up that foolish idea," but opening a desk,
he took out a long green silk knitted purse, filled with
gold, and handed it to the boy.
"Thank you," said the lad, "and of course I will
take my servant and my horse."
"No," said the father, "you don't know how to take
care of yourself. You are not to be trusted with a
slave and a saddle-horse. If you go, you go alone."
"Then," the boy said proudly, "I will make my way
as best I can."
Probably his father thought hardships and discomforts
would soon bring him back to Virginia. His only
sister, a sweet little girl, clung round his neck in tears,
and he had to gulp back a few of his own, which he
managed to do.
"When are you coming back?" said his little sister,
when at last he was ready to start.
"Never, by heaven," he said, "until I come back a
Member of Congress from Kentucky."
And he fulfilled that promise. The little sister grew up,
married, went to Texas to live, and became
the mother of five sons. They all fought in the Confederate
army and not one returned to the broken-hearted
mother. Her eldest son, William Howard, a
very brilliant and attractive young lawyer, studied law
with my father. He was one of the first officers killed
at Fort Sumter.
On the way to Kentucky the lad had the first opportunity
of showing the true metal of his fine courage.
He had stopped at an eating-house and heard two
rough men say he was probably a runaway apprentice
and should be stopped. After he had finished his
dinner he went quietly out of the back door, but thinking
it cowardly to steal away, he turned and walked
boldly to the front door.
"Where are you going, boy?" said one of the men.
"That's none of your business," said the boy.
"Yes, it is," said the man, "you're a runaway."
And he came forward to seize him, but the lad whipped
out his pistol, and pointing it said, "If you lay a hand
upon me I'll shoot you!" The man stepped back very
quickly and his companion said, "He's dangerous,
let him alone."
After this he was afraid of civilisation and tried
camping out at night, and stopping at inns for his
meals during the day. At Brownsville he arrived tired,
soiled, and looking like a young tramp. The proprietor
of the inn demurred at receiving him, but his wife
discerning that he was a gentleman in spite of his dusty
appearance said gently, "Have you a mother?"
"No," said the boy, "my mother is dead."
"Ah, that 's the trouble," she said to her husband,
"we are told to care for orphans. Come in, and welcome."
After resting with this good lady a few days,
the boy continued his journey upon a flat-bottomed boat
from Wheeling, which slowly, floated down the Ohio.
The river in those days, overhung on either side by
primeval forest and almost impenetrable canebrakes,
was filled with game of all sorts. Deer and bear unafraid
swam across the river, and bronze flocks of wild
turkeys sailed slowly overhead. Cincinnati, that most
populous queen of the West, was only a straggling
group of log cabins, and Louisville was scarcely settled.
Where the Green River and the Ohio meet, the boy
landed and started his march for the interior of
Kentucky.
He had relations in Lexington, but he did not make
himself known to them, for his pride was wounded.
He wanted to show his father what independence could
accomplish. He camped at night by beautiful crystal
streams and shot turkey, smaller birds, and squirrels
by day, roasting them by fires made of underbrush
and dry forest wood.
His first taste of the real hunter's silent joy was
when he came upon a pack of wolves devouring the
carcass of a deer. One big greedy fellow ate more than
the others, snapping and snarling when they came too
near, and the boy said to himself, "A prize, that leader
of the pack, I shall try for him." He loaded his rifle
and shot him twice while the other wolves ran yelping
away. Then, he said, a feeling of triumph came over
him as though he were lord of all that leafy forest.
But the deer, even when quite near him, he could never
bring down. They seemed ever running. A whole
herd had just gone by in a wild scamper and he was
gazing longingly after them when he heard a voice say,
"What are you after, Sonny?"
"Those deer," said the boy; "are they ever still?"
"Reckon you're a bit green, sonny; where are you from?"
"Richmond," said the boy.
"What, not Richmond of my old Virginny?"
"Yes, I am," said the boy.
"And how," said the man, "did you git here?"
"I came down the Ohio and landed at Green River," said the boy.
"All by your lone self?"
"Yes," said the boy, "I am by myself."
"Where be you goin'?" said the man.
"I'm going to hunt," said the boy.
"Then," said the backwoodsman, looking at him
kindly, "come along er me, I'll make a hunter out of
you. Me and my wife don't live fur from here. Killed
anything?"
"Yes," said the boy, "wild turkeys and squirrels."
"But," said the man, "can't come it on a deer - you
must step like a panther on padded feet to do that.
Nary a twig must n't crackle under yo' feet. Deers is
got the quickest ears in the forest. You have to creep
up on 'em, and then sometimes they gits away."
Bill Smithers lived with his wife and baby in a log
cabin with no chimney, but just a square hole for the
smoke to escape. While the trees were being girdled
preparatory to clearing the land, the food consisted of
fish from the brooks, game from the forests, and luscious
berries. This generous woodsman was the boy's first
teacher in hunting and woodcraft, making, my grandfather
said, all of his boyish dreams come true. The
forests with giant trees were magnificent, the wide
prairies, covered with wild flowers, were fragrant
blossoming gardens. The woods were rich in wild strawberries
and blackberries, for nature in Kentucky was then, as now,
prodigal of her bounty.
But he did not stay long with Smithers, finding a
solitary bachelor called Miller, a famous hunter, who
was glad to have a willing apprentice. Under him he
became a good shot, and past master of the ways and
secrets of the wilderness. The buffalo were in Kentucky
then, and had just begun to migrate for safety to the
West. The boy's first success in big game
hunting was to kill a bear. He, two brothers, and a dog
were out together. Seeing the shaggy beast climbing
a tree, he sent a shot near his heart. Bruin fell to the
ground and the dog, giving a joyous bark, ran up to
investigate. The bear, with one last effort, clasped
the dog round its neck. They died together. My
grandfather said the two simple-hearted hunters buried
their friend, crying like children.
The hunters lived far apart. They wanted elbow
room, and only occasionally came together, when
they sat for hours silently smoking like Indians. But the
light of the big fires at night warmed them at last into
story-telling. The young Virginian, a good listener,
with his frankness, courage, good-humour and adaptability,
soon became a great favourite, especially with his
host, who loved him like a son.
There was one event my Aunt Elizabeth said my
grandfather loved to describe - a dance at the house of
a famous fiddler, Bob Mosely. The only suit of clothes
the young man possessed was his leather breeches and
coat, which were soiled with hunting grease. He
thought that with a good scouring they might be made
to serve for the party, so he carried them to a stream,
washed them, and hung them to dry, while he rested
himself on the bank of the river. But the sticks upon
which the clothes were stretched toppled and fell into
the river, carrying their burden with them, and there
the young man was left for the remainder of the afternoon
to fashion, like Adam, a garment of leaves in
which to go home.
Old Miller was horrified when he saw his young
friend's misfortune and heard that he could not attend
the dance. He said, "You'll not only go, but you shall
be the best dressed of all the boys." He then began to
work day and night and made a soft deerskin hunting
shirt, fringed on the shoulders, with leggings of the
same skin fringed from top to bottom. Wearing these
splendid garments and a raccoon cap with two tails
floating out behind, he presented a very fine figure
indeed. All the hunters were garbed in the same sort
of clothes and the girls wore doeskin dresses.
About three o'clock in the afternoon when the party
was at its height, the two Misses Schultz made a stage
entrance, with red ribbons and tiny looking-glasses
hung round their necks, which a stray pedlar had given
them in gratitude for a few days' hospitality. The
simple people at the party had never seen looking-glasses
before, and the girls, Sukey and Patty Schultz,
were such belles that the other girls jealously threatened
to go home. Young Duval, gifted with tact, explained
in flattering words the situation to the Misses Schultz,
telling them that their charms and looking-glasses
combined would break up the party, and begged
them to allow him to hang the ribbons and ornaments on
the wall until the dance ended. When this was done,
peace was at once restored.
About this time the young hunter grew dissatisfied
and restless. His mind began to crave intellectual
food. A famous woodsman came to him and said:
"A bunch of us are going West. Kentuck's too
crowded. Neighbours are only fourteen miles off and
I have n't breathing room. Will you join us, Duval?"
This induced the boy to go through a self-examination.
He asked himself: "Am I going to remain a hunter all
my days? No, the woods are for the true woodsman
who desires no other life. My people have always
belonged to the world. I must get back to it."
The question then arose as to what he should do.
He decided on the profession of law. He felt that if
he had wasted time in the great forests, he had
nevertheless laid up a store of health, strength, cheerfulness,
and quickness of vision in observing the human and
animal species. He knew he had dogged determination
when he undertook a task. He always said that if a
man with ordinary capacity worked unswervingly,
heart and soul, at anything, he could succeed in it.
He still had his silken purse filled with gold, and he
could sell his pile of beaver and other skins and the fine
horse which he had obtained in exchange for furs.
With this money he calculated to live until he was
admitted to the Bar. When he spoke to Miller, the
old man was deeply grieved. He could understand
but one life, that of the hunter, but he loved the boy
too well to discourage him.
The following day the young man rode to Bardstown,
stopped at a small inn over night, and found a family
who would take him to board for a dollar and a half a
week. The next morning he intended riding back to
Miller's to get his little fortune of five hundred dollars,
and was waiting on the hotel piazza for his horse to be
brought round to him when he saw sitting in the parlour
a vision of loveliness. A young girl was there, fair as
alabaster, with thick auburn hair, deep blue eyes, tall,
slender, and dressed all in white. After the sunburnt,
rosy-cheeked maids of the woods this girl seemed
something delicate and unreal. He longed to speak to her,
but did, not dare. Then he longed still more, with all
his clean young blood aflame, to kiss her. "Just
once," he said, "it will be a memory of bliss to carry
with me all through life, and if I don't get it I shall
certainly die of longing." He stepped into the room.
She was looking dreamily out of the window, when he
walked up behind her, touched her gently on the shoulder,
and she looked up. He stooped and kissed her
on the mouth, then made a rush for the door, ran across
the balcony, down the steps, vaulted lightly to his saddle,
lifted his hat, made her a low bow and dashed
off madly to the woods.
When he got to the log cabin he sold his horse and
walked back to Bardstown, where he settled himself
and began to study law. He read sixteen and eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four and sometimes all night
as well as all day. He found he had so much to study
besides law. He grew serious and morose with incessant
work and the sudden change from outdoor life to
continual confinement. But he kept doggedly on for
a year, and then there came a slight interruption, for
one day while taking a walk he passed on the street the
only girl he had ever kissed. His heart gave two or
three quick thumps and for days the little beauty's
face came obstinately between him and his books, but
he studied harder than ever and took no more walks.
One cold rainy evening the young student had gone
to the bar of the inn and was sitting by the fire when a
gentleman, tall, distinguished looking and handsomely
dressed, entered. He wore small-clothes, silver kneebuckles,
his hair powdered and tied in a queue, and
neat polished shoes. He asked the young man if his
name was Duval. The boy, tired and depressed, said
moodily, "Yes."
"And do you," said the gentleman, "come
from Richmond?"
"I do," said the boy, "but what is that to you?"
"Nothing, good-night."
Next day, however, the gentleman, the pink
of elegance and courtesy, called on the boy. He said he
was a friend of his father's, that he had heard of the
struggle he was making, and would take him in his
office and direct his studies if he would come. Young
William, apologising for his previous churlishness,
gratefully accepted the offer, and a little later went to
live at the house of his friend, who was one of the leading
lawyers of Kentucky. From that time life went easier
for him. His reading was properly directed, he joined
a debating society, was its most brilliant speaker, and
was soon hailed as a coming genius.
One evening at a little party he met the auburn-haired
beauty and was introduced to her as "Miss
Nancy Hynes." Her mother was a Miss Stuart from
Scotland who had married a Kentuckian, and it was
from Scotland she had got her red hair. People in the
room began to talk, and they left the young couple
practically alone. William was terribly embarrassed.
Then he said, "Don't you see how uncomfortable I am?
Can't you say something, anything to help me out?"
The girl's dimples all appeared and she said, "What
do you want me to say?"
He answered: "Not that you forgive me - for I don't
want forgiveness. If I had it to do over again, by
heaven, I would do it, even if I died for it."
They met frequently at dances at the houses of
friends, and before the young man was nineteen he was
engaged to the girl of seventeen. Her mother, a widow,
objected on the score of their youth, but he told her he
would marry her daughter, and very soon, if all the
world rose up in defiance. The mother liked this
grave, romantic wooer, and said she knew all about him
and his family, and that he would only have to wait a
reasonable time. He then studied harder than ever,
with a prospect of a wife and home before him.
In the meantime his father, hearing where he was,
wrote to say he would give him a liberal allowance if
he would soon go to college. He talked it over with
his sweetheart and the wise young maiden advised him
to go, but just as he was starting for the Virginia University,
Nancy's mother died suddenly, leaving her
with a younger sister, my great-aunt, Polly Hynes, a
little girl away at a boarding-school. The chivalrous
lad felt his promised bride needed a protector, so he
gave up the idea of college, was admitted to the Bar
that autumn, and married immediately afterwards.
Fate is kind to some mortals. These married sweethearts
ever remained lovers. They were poor, for
Nancy could not touch her small fortune until she came
of age, and my grandfather had nothing. They lived
in a little two-roomed log house, and my grandfather
said, "Everything we had was in half-dozens; a half-a-dozen
spoons and forks and knives and chairs, a bed,
a table, a sofa, a dozen books and a little rocking-chair
and work-table for my girl wife. We were so poor, but
so happy."
To the
wholly intrepid spirit is given Courage in life; Courage in
danger; Courage in death.
THEY had only been married a week when court was held at a country town twenty-five miles away. It was hard for William Duval to leave his pretty bride, and he had no money, but he borrowed a little, and a horse from a neighbour and, like young Lochinvar, rode gaily away. Fate loves reckless courage and protects its possessors. The young lawyer had no case to plead before the court and no influence to get him one, but just as he entered the inn an old man in the barroom was struck by a bully. The young man promptly knocked the bully down. This secured his popularity. The crowd shook hands with the plucky stranger and plied him with drinks, which he had the judgment to refuse, for he felt the morrow would be a momentous day for him.
The next morning when the court opened, he boldly seated himself among the advocates. A man was charged with passing counterfeit money. He had been out of the range of lawyers and was asked to choose one for his defence. Looking around, he selected the eager faced lad, who was given until next day to prepare his case. As they left the court the
accused man gave his counsel one hundred dollars as a retaining fee.
Young Duval spent many hours in anxious preparation of his defence and argument. When night came he was too excited to speak; in the morning he could not eat. He reached the court agitated and unnerved, and when he began to speak it was only to flounder and stammer. Presently the public prosecutor made a cruelly sarcastic remark. There was a laugh in court. At that his nerves became taut and steady. His voice rang out with a brave challenge. He marshalled his facts with telling effect and proved his client's innocence conclusively. The case ended triumphantly in the man's acquittal, and young Duval was made. His earnestness and eloquence had stirred even the lawyers. His youth, his courage, his knowledge of law were discussed. Other cases were given him, and when the week ended he had made seven hundred dollars. The night the fees were paid him he was like a miser. He locked his bedroom door and let the gold trickle through his fingers; he piled it up and saw in its glitter a rosy future of comfort for his wife and of gratified ambition for himself.
The next morning before dawn, he mounted the borrowed horse and started for Bardstown. His wife had prepared a delicious breakfast for him, but he was too excited to eat. Like the boy that he was, he wanted to surprise her, and he sat down at the table and began slowly counting out the money in ten-dollar gold pieces. His wife looked on and said, "Whose money is it? Have you got to take it to the bank?"
"It is my money!" said my grandfather, "mine and yours! Oh Nancy, come and dance and sing and cry." And together they laughed and waltzed round the
room, like the children they were, for poverty had gone out of the window, and success had come in at the door.
Later, my grandfather was elected to Congress from
Kentucky, as he said he would be, and on his return to
the States was appointed Judge of the Federal Court,
which office he retained for some years. By this time
three of his eight children had been added to the family.
In those days the Floridas were a territory, and the
Indians being somewhat troublesome a man of courage,
decision, and heart was wanted for governor. The
appointment was offered to my grandfather, who
retained the office for twenty-four years. The youngest
five children were born in Florida and the last
pretty little girl was named after that land of flowers.
The new governor kept open house. All the year carriages drove back and forth, and people came and went as if it had been a hotel. Christmas and Easter were different from other seasons only in more turkeys and game, larger cakes, more egg-nog, and greater quantities of punch.
Three of my aunts and my mother were all celebrated beauties, my mother inheriting the Scotch hair, a dark auburn, and the deep blue eyes of her mother. My grandfather was always hospitable to the admirers of his daughters. They could spend the day, or even, if they felt inclined, several days, but at ten o'clock each night old Scipio, the negro butler, was required to see that the drawing-room was closed and the piazzas cleared.
Scipio made his appearance dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, his hair tied like my grandfather's in a queue (a strain of Indian blood had given him straight hair), and bearing an enormous waiter, with a large, noisily ticking silver watch lying upon it and numerous
mint juleps. The suitors were supposed to observe the time, drink the juleps, say good-night and go home.
Life in Florida in those days must have been enchanting. There were fruit and vegetables all the year round, oranges for the picking, peaches and melons in great abundance. The Indians constantly brought in all kinds of game; the woods were full of wild orchids and myriads of wild flowers, and the pink cranes and scarlet flamingoes were quite tame on the banks of the little river that flowed at the bottom of the grounds.
In 1823, Governor Duval rendered signal service to the territory of Florida and to the United States Government by putting down the conspiracy of Neamathla, one of the most noted Indians in American history. He was the chief of the Mickasookies, a fighting tribe of warriors, who had their hands not only against the white man, but against the weaker Indian as well. They had committed many depredations on the frontiers of Georgia and were constantly attacking the Seminoles, a peaceful and picturesque tribe, who gave the Government no trouble, but sought (unless influenced by the Mickasookies) its protection.
Neamathla was a splendid figure, more than six feet in height, with fierce fiery eyes and a face like a hawk. He hated white men and proudly called Governor Duval "brother," never acknowledging his superiority.
The Indians at this time, chiefly through the governor's influence, had signed a treaty to remove to a small section of land in the eastern part of Florida and to remain there for twenty years, thus leaving the remainder of the State free to the white man. Neamathla fought bitterly against the treaty, but finally signed it, saying quite frankly: "If I had enough warriors,
brother, instead of signing the treaty, I would wipe every white man from the face of Florida. I say this to you, for though you are white, you are a Man. Your pale-faced people wouldn't understand me."
Thinking it wise to be near the Indians, Governor Duval had settled at Tallahassee. The village of Neamathla being only three miles away, he often rode out to have a pow-wow with him. One day he found him surrounded by all his warriors, drinking brandy freely. Neamathla began to boast that although the red man had made a treaty, the treaty was at an end, "broken by the white man, who had not delivered the cattle and money promised."
The Governor replied, "The time for the money and cattle has not yet arrived." But the old chief only looked sly and continued to drink and threaten. He had been cutting tobacco with a long knife, and while he was talking he flourished his keen blade not an inch away from the Governor's throat, saying the country was the red man's, that it should belong to him, and he would fight for it until his bones, and the bones of his warriors bleached upon its soil.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the Governor seized him by the bosom of his shirt, clenched his fist in his face, and said: "You have made your treaty. You shall keep it. I am your White Chief sent by your father in Washington to see that you do it. If you do not, the blood of every Indian in the country will dye the land, and his bones will bleach upon its soil."
The old chief threw himself back with a bitter laugh.
"Ho, ho, little white brother!" he said, "can't you see my joke?"
My grandfather returned to Tallahassee, and things went smoothly for several months. Every day some
of the Indians reported themselves at the Governor's house, but suddenly their visits ceased, and at midnight of the fourth day after this, Yellow Hair, a young brave who loved the White Chief, stole into the house. "Governor," he said, "at the risk of my life I've come to tell you that five hundred warriors are holding a secret war talk with Neamathla."
There was no more sleep that night for Governor Duval; he saw that he must take a desperate chance. There were one hundred white families near, and he had no soldiers. Everything depended on himself. At dawn he was up, and, mounting a fleet horse, called upon the interpreter, De Witt, to follow.
The man demurred. "Wait, Governor," he said, "until we can get the militia."
"No," said my grandfather, "there is not a moment to lose, we must ride fast." And they struck for the Indian village to what De Witt thought was certain death.
"The chiefs," he said, "are old, discontented, suspicious and exasperated. They intend serious mischief."
Finally my grandfather said, "Go back, man, and leave me to go on alone."
"No," said De Witt, "I won't leave you to die alone, but God! what a foolhardy expedition."
They rode on in silence, and when they neared the village my grandfather said sternly, "Translate word for word what I say to you. Only courage can save us now."
There was a great council fire, and Neamathla was sitting on a rude throne surrounded by his warriors. The Governor rode straight into the circle, while forty rifles were cocked and levelled at him. He slowly dismounted, looked Neamathla fearlessly in the eyes,
and, with a gesture of contempt, stood waiting. The old chief threw up his arm; the guns were lowered. The Governor then walked up to Neamathla and asked why he was holding a council of war. The old chief was silent.
The White Chief said, "You need not answer. I know; but if a single hair of the head of a white man in this country is harmed" - he made a mighty sweeping gesture with his arm - "I will hang every chief to the trees that surround you. The Great Father in Washington holds you in the hollow of his hand. He has only to close it and you are dead. I am but one man. You may kill me, but the white man is as many as the leaves on this oak. Remember your warriors, whose bones have made the battlefields white. Remember your wives and your children dead in the swamps. Another war with the white man, and there will not be one Indian left to tell the story to his children."
His words had effect. They sat still and silent.
Then he appointed a day for them to meet him in St.
Mark's and rode forty miles straight ahead to the
Apalachicolas, a friendly tribe who were at feud with
the Mickasookies. They immediately sent three
hundred warriors to St. Mark's. He summoned also the regular army and the militia, and was then ready for Neamathla. Yellow Hair came again in the dead of night to tell the Governor that nine towns concerned in the conspiracy were disaffected, and from him he found out the names of the chiefs in these towns who were popular, but without power.
On the day of the conference he rode out to meet Neamathla, who, although at the head of eight hundred Indians, was afraid to venture into the court of St. Mark's alone. He thought when he saw the troops
and the preparations that he had been betrayed, but was reassured when the Governor rode by his side and told him when the talk was ended that he could go home free.
Neamathla and the older chiefs blamed the younger ones who had led them into conspiracy. "Then," said my grandfather, "if you cannot govern your braves you must, like the white man, find men who can. I depose you, Neamathla, and appoint Little Bear in your place." And with great ceremony a broad ribbon sewn with beads, from which a large medal of the Capitol depended, was hung around the neck of a younger chief.
In this way nine chiefs were deposed and popular braves appointed in their place. The Indians were delighted; they thought my grandfather a prophet to have divined their choice. The new warriors, he was confident, would keep an eye on the disaffected, and would remain loyal to the Government and to him.
Neamathla left the country and returned to the Creek nation, who made him a chief, but, shorn of his great power, he soon died of disappointment. The Governor's achievement of defeating alone and unaided a conspiracy which would have brought about a terrible massacre, was a valiant and heroic act. In later years with no military escort, he was able to remove, through their confidence in him, all the Indians from Florida to the Indian Territory - thus saving the Government at Washington great trouble and expense.
When the question of the Indians was settled, he devoted himself to the development of the State. His children were being educated in Kentucky. The girls went to the Convent of Nazareth in Bardstown, and the boys to St. Joseph's, the college of the Jesuits
which gave shelter to Louis Philippe when he was a refugee in America, and where later Jefferson Davis was a hard-working student.
My uncle Burr, the eldest son, was the flower of my grandfather's flock, tall, with a splendid figure, bright blue eyes, light waving hair, a dazzling smile, a speaking voice of golden sweetness, a dashing rider, and like his father a man of extraordinary courage, he sounds a perfect hero of romance. As a child I was ever eager for stories about him. When he graduated from college, young, gallant, intrepid, inheriting from his father the pioneer spirit, Texas, with a handful of brave men, was fighting for her liberty against the Mexicans, and Burr Duval raised in Kentucky a company of young men like himself, college bred and the sons of gentlemen. Among them was the lover of my great aunt Polly Hynes, - then a young lady who made her home with my grandfather - and my uncle John Duval, a boy of eighteen. This gallant company was called the "Kentucky Mustangs," and Burr Duval was their captain. They offered themselves for service to Texas, and Colonel Fannin asked them to join his army.
They had not been long in the State when in a battle between Fannin's army and the Mexicans they surrendered to General Urrea, who agreed to treat them as prisoners of war, but at Goliad, on Palm Sunday, 1836, they with other companies, about four hundred and forty-three men in the very flower of their youth, were marched out and traitorously drawn up in line and shot. A few escaped, my uncle John, being at the end of the line and fleet of foot, among them.
When the scourge of yellow fever fifteen years later visited Florida, John had returned from Texas, brown, thin, and still saddened from the loss of his gallant
young soldier brother, and another and slighter grief which
ever pursued him, the necessity of choking to death a little
dog that he had taken to Texas from Kentucky. With
Mexicans in full pursuit, the dog was about to bark, and the
only way to save his own life was to strangle his one faithful
friend. It was a miserable little tragedy, and when quite an
old man his face would still grow melancholy when he spoke
of it.
After the death of her first-born beautiful son even my
grandfather, they said, could rarely make my grandmother
smile, and she was one of the first to die of yellow fever, for
she made no effort to live. Aunt Polly, who was a woman of
strong character and affections, had closed the room where
she bade her lover good-bye forever, and she allowed no
one to enter it but herself. The silver candlesticks had grown
tarnished, the orange blossoms were brittle in the vase, the
dust, like a grey pall, covered every object. But she spent
hours alone there every day.
The loss of my grandmother was a terrible blow to my
grandfather, and to the end of his life he remained
inconsolable. They had been like two happy birds in the
springtime. He teased her, and she would laugh and pull his
ears and play with him as if they were still boy and girl.
After her death he was restless and miserable, having lost
interest in all things. With aunt Polly and her grief, it was a
depressed and changed household. My uncle John, in spite
of the terrible tragedy he had lived through, wanted to go
back again to Texas. He had lost his heart to that vast
country, so full of excitement and of seething vivid life, and
my grandfather, to seek change from his poignant grief,
consented to take his remaining family and go with him.
They settled first in Galveston where my aunt,
Elizabeth Beall, who was a very beautiful young widow,
was at the head of the house. His children gathered around
him, he began to get back his cheerfulness again, to take an
interest in politics and the rapid development of the great
"Lone Star State." My father, who had held the office of
Supreme Judge of the State of Arkansas, resigned and
came to Texas, where he married my mother and went
with her to live at Austin.
Fate surely cheated me out of a joy in not knowing my
grandfather. I have always felt that we were congenial
spirits. He was the soul of hospitality, affectionate,
generous, brave, witty, and light-hearted, even in the face
of death. His love of tradition led him to wear a queue. In
his youth it was tied with a black ribbon, but later in life,
when considered too aristocratic and dandified, it was
plaited and tucked up out of sight among his curls with a
hair-pin. Doctor Blake after his death cut off the queue and
sent it to my aunt, his eldest daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Beall.
He was not an old man when he died in Washington from
an attack of gout and pneumonia. He loved life, and he had
not an enemy in the world. He was vitally interested in
Texas, that splendid new country of his later years. He had
many friends, and his children adored him, not with the
theoretical love of children for their parents, which can
brook absence, but with the real companionable love,
desiring nothing so much as constant, affectionate
intercourse and intimate interchange of thought. Aunt
Lizzie told me that his daughters, my mother, my aunt
Mary, my aunt Florida and herself were counting the days
of his return from Washington, when they received a
letter from old Doctor Blake announcing his death.
The Governor's gout was very bad, [he wrote] and
weakened him a good deal, but I had hopes of pulling him
through until the 20th, when he seemed to grow worse. All
the time he had been astonishingly cheerful, and full of
amusing stories. His friends (he had too much company I
thought) came in shoals from the capitol and elsewhere to
keep him company, and his spirits never flagged. I stayed
late the night of the 20th. When I came in he was reading
his Bible - which I send you - and laying it aside, he said,
"Blake, there 's some mighty good reading in that book. It
has helped me over devilishly rough roads, and while maybe
I haven't exactly lived 'a sober, righteous and godly life,' I
can honestly say I 've never questioned. I've always been
certain of Him. How can anybody doubt who reads
intelligently His Sermon on the Mount?" I begged him to
sleep and try and conserve his strength. Finally he dozed off,
saying, "Yes, that wonderful Nazarene planted seed in my
heart; if it has n't made a good harvest, it is n't His fault. But,
Blake, I really prefer not to die. This is a pretty good world
when all's said and done, don't you think so?" I stayed quite
two hours while he slept, and I came again very early in
the morning. I could see that the Governor was suffering,
for he looked terribly ill. I said, "How are you?" as cheerfully
as I could. "Blake," he said, with his ever-ready joke, "I am
about to pass in my checks." "I hope not, Governor," I
answered. "Yes, I am," he said smiling a weak smile, "and
it's just as well, for there are three old widows in this hotel,
all of them desperately in love with me. If I got well I'd have
to marry one of them, and if I did the other too would die of
broken hearts, so it 's just as well I 'm going." And with this
he turned his head, still smiling, and a moment later he was
dead. And the world holds one less natural, generous,
unaffected, gallant and witty gentleman. The Governor's
death is no less a grief to me than it is to you. Pray permit
me to convey to you my sincere sympathy. . . .
A little painted parchment fan, brought by one of the
Duval brothers from Rouen, with the family tree, a silver
christening dish, and a few other heirlooms, is always in
some way to me associated with my grandfather's death. It
was small, with ivory sticks, inlaid with a pattern of gold.
On it a gentleman in satin small-clothes and a powdered
wig danced the minuet with a lady in pointed bodice, a
flowered brocaded petticoat, red high-heeled slippers, and
her hair dressed à la Marie Antoinette. A little trail of roses
finished the fan at top and bottom, and on the other side a
picturesque shepherd and two beribboned lambs disported
themselves on green, downy hillocks. The fan was said to
have been used, on her way to the guillotine, by an
ancestress of my grandfather, a certain Lucienne Duval.
She, a devoted loyalist, was condemned as an extra
indignity to ride publicly with her lover on the tumbril to
their place of execution. All Paris, even the scum of the
French Revolution, knew of the affair, for the lady had
none of the hypocrite in her, so little that she gave no
excuse for her conduct, and indeed always spoke of her
husband as a great gentleman without fault.
"Perhaps," she said, "he is too perfect; that, maybe, is
why I love de Tocqueville. God knows he has enough
faults for two, but he is, and ever has been, the one man on
earth for me."
The day of the execution these two who had sinned
much, but loved much, went bravely to their death, he
taking snuff from his enamelled box, and talking as gaily as
if going to a May Day dance at Petit Trianon, she standing
erect and waving defiance with that gay and airy trifle, her
little painted fan. When the tumbril stopped de Tocqueville
said, "For the first time
in my life I shall reverse etiquette. Madame, I will precede
you."
"No," she said with a tender smile, "Philippe, you have
often kept me waiting; I shall go first and be waiting for you
still." And then before all the jeering multitude he took her
in his arms and kissed her on the eyes and on the
mouth, saying, "I've always loved you, always." And she,
looking into his eyes, asked, for she had been jealous, "And
loved me faithfully?" He whispered back quite humbly,
"Before God, dear woman, as faithfully as you have loved
me!"
Then, deaf to the insults of the crowd about her, who
called out, "Look at the painted cocotte, brazen to the last!"
she walked erect to the guillotine, still holding the little fan
and whispering "Toujours fidèle, toujours." In a moment
the basket received her head. When de Tocqueville stepped
from the tumbril, a man suddenly old, he had to be supported
to his execution, for he could not walk. The mob laughed
with delight and roared with triumph, "Voyez, voyez, lâche,
lâche!" They did not see that he had already died with his
brave lady, and that for once they would execute a corpse.
The mistress of a lackey in the Duval household was
said to have picked up the fan and returned it to the family.
May all the descendants of this poor lady meet death as
bravely as she. Certainly my grandfather did, and that is
why Lucienne's fan makes me think of him. Death finds so
many who fear his grim and affrighting presence that he
must love those and say a word in their favour, who in the
very last moment turn to him with a brave face, and meet
him with a gay and unexpected smile.
Courage comes straight from God,
With it He has created saints, martyrs,
Heroes, soldiers,
Lent them to the world,
And taken them to Himself again.
THE best blood of America is in Texas, the hardy blood of
the conquering pioneer. Even to-day, by instinct,
inheritance, and tradition, the men of Texas are still
pioneers, for they must be ever on the alert to fight nature
as she tries their prowess in droughts, floods, hurricanes
and tornadoes, but the golden possibilities in that vast land -
oil and coal to-day, topaz and turquoise to-morrow, gold
and silver in the future - urge them on to hope and fresh
endeavour.
The men who first established the Republic had force
enough to wrest the land from the Indian, and afterwards
from the Mexican. They were strong, they fought to
conquer or to die. And not only were there pioneer men,
but splendid pioneer women as well. How wise is Nature in
aptly supplying her needs! After the Civil War all the
babies born in the South were boys. It was impossible for
mothers who longed for them, to produce girls, and when
women were needed with intrepid souls, great powers of
endurance, and vigorous health to share a life of difficulty
and
danger with daring men, Nature produced them. Medea,
when asked, "Country, husband, children are all gone, what
remains?" answered, "Medea remains." There were many
Medeas in Texas. When husband and children were killed
by the Indians, and later by the Mexicans, houses destroyed
by fire, cattle and horses confiscated, still these hardy
women lived on to a brave old age.
Mrs. Long, whose husband of her youth was assassinated
by the Mexicans, spent a long life in trying to avenge his
death. It needs an iron constitution and rugged health, to
survive the memory of bloody tragedies, and life in those
days was melodramatic in its intensity. If the occurrences of
a day or a week of that time were now put on the stage, it
would give us, sitting in our seats in a theatre, fierce and
bloodcurdling thrills.
The crest of that wave of supreme daring - and history,
ancient or modern, contains no more sublime display of
courage - was the defence of the Alamo. Not one man
survived. They died like their leaders, Travis, Crockett,
Bowie and Bonham, fighting until death loosened the grip of
the smoking weapons from their brave hands. There is
something glorious and complete in a bloody struggle where
every man dies. On the old monument of the Alamo was the
inscription: "Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat, but
the Alamo had none." None was needed. It was better for
that superhumanly gallant band to die together. They have
made an imperishable page of glory in history, and left a
proud heritage of unconquerable courage for the state to
hand down to her sons.
But the battle of San Jacinto, when the Texans,
concealed behind a gradually sloping hill, descended
unawares upon the Mexicans with the terrible cry from
every man: "Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo!
Goliad! The Alamo!" avenged many deaths. And in such
furious, revengeful haste were the soldiers that, coming to
close quarters with the Mexicans they clubbed their
muskets, and fought hand to hand with bayonets and knife.
"Goliad! Goliad!" which in hoarse, fierce cries echoed
over the battlefield, meant death to the Mexican army, for,
cruel memories crowding upon them, the men fought like
savages. The artillerymen ordered: "Guns to the front!
Guns to the front! God! This for the Alamo!" and a steady
stream of fire poured forth on the Mexicans. The men at
the guns were blackened with powder; the cannon smoked
and sent out long tongues of flame.
"Fire, fire," cried one, "in God's name, fire!"
"In the name of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, fire, men,
fire!"
The guns roared like wakeful hyenas, the band of drum
and fife stridently played, "Will you come to the bower?"
The Mexicans were running, rushing, fleeing, agonised and
appalled from "The Bower."
The battle lasted only half an hour, but six hundred and
thirty Mexicans were dead on the fertile plain, more than
two hundred were wounded, and more than seven hundred
were prisoners. Arms, munition, mules, horses, money in
gold and silver, were taken as loot from the Mexicans, and
of the brave little army of seven hundred and forty-three
Texans there were only six killed and twenty-five
wounded. Goliad and the Alamo were avenged.
Santa Anna when captured was generously treated as a
prisoner of war. If women, the mothers and wives of the
men slain at the massacre of Goliad and
shot at the Alamo, had taken him prisoner he would have
met instant death, which he deserved, but he lived to again
betray in 1843 the Texan troops at Nier, when Fisher's men,
surrendering under a written promise to be accorded
treatment as prisoners of war, were instantly tied together in
pairs, and driven like cattle towards the city of Mexico.
In the early dawn of the following day, led by a brave
Scotchman, Captain Ewan Cameron, many of them
escaped. The remaining number who could not get away
were commanded by Santa Anna to be drawn up in a line
and shot, but the order was modified to the drawing of black
beans. The man, who, blindfolded, drew the fatal colour was
shot. Seventeen men in this way were executed, and those
who drew white beans had better have died than lived, so
cruelly did they suffer. But every day brought nearer to the
undaunted pioneers of Texas the hope of freedom and
independence. Men may have been many things in that
struggling republic, filibusters, outlaws, adventurers,
gamblers, pirates, but I never heard of a coward.
We had the honour of sharing with Louisiana the
picturesque gentleman pirate Lafitte, who was said by his
enemies to make love or to scuttle a ship with equal success,
and by his friends to be a seigneur with letters of marque
from the French government. He was certainly, to put it
politely, a violator of the revenue, and Governor Claybourne
had put a price upon his head, when, at an opportune
moment for him, General Jackson and his army arrived in
New Orleans. With the ready assurance of the bold
adventurer, Lafitte offered his services and that of an armed
company for the defence of the state, and though General
Jackson had denounced "robbers, pirates, and hellish
bandits," he entered the army, was commended for
bravery, gained a full and free pardon by the government,
and left Louisiana rehabilitated, only to start privateering in
the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Galveston. In an
incredibly short space of time he had gathered more than a
thousand lawless adventurers about him. Finally a
Government vessel was robbed of some thousands in gold.
After that he disappeared and was supposed to have sailed
for South America.
La Salle, that brave and intrepid discoverer, having
claimed and named Louisiana for Louis XIV, sailed for
Texas, landed at Matagorda Bay, explored the Lavaca
River, and built Fort St. Louis. He called it "The St. Louis
of Sorrow," and so it proved for him. It is a pity that its
historic name has been changed to Dimmit's Point. A
leader of men can never escape the destroying jealousy of
those whom he dominates. They admire him. They fear
him. They envy him to the point of hatred. La Salle
escaped the dangers of the explorer by land and sea only
to die by the hand of an assassin, one of his own men, on
the Neches River.
There was courage and daring and carelessness of life in
Texas; not only in those early days, but even as a child I
myself remember the old disregard of danger which
prevailed in Texas. There is a great deal in atmosphere.
When a man lives in a country where cowardice is not
tolerated, although he may quake inwardly he would never
dare to show the white feather. On a Saturday night if a
frontiersman had drunk enough liquid "hell-fire," he would
ride into the town yelling like a Comanche Indian, the reins
of his horse thrown
over his arm or held in his teeth, and both hands occupied
in alternately firing off pistols, one perhaps pointed upward
to the heavens, the other downward to the earth, or by
misadventure hitting a human being. My youngest brother,
Ridge, standing on the side-walk, enjoying one of these all
too realistic spectacular performances, was shot through the
foot. He was about fifteen years old and we were the
greatest friends, then and always. After a few days I was
allowed as a great privilege to see the little greyish hole in
his instep. I don't think he minded it much; with a bundle of
newspapers and a pile of books he was always oblivious to
the world.
When I grew up and married, during my visits to Texas
my brother Ridge always spent a part of every day with me
and he had such a restful, comfortable, sensible, original way
of visiting. He wanted to see me, but having nothing in
particular to say, he said nothing. Arriving with a dozen
newspapers under one arm and several books under the
other, he gave me a brief but affectionate greeting, and,
sitting down, he read steadily for two hours, got up, patted
me on the head or shoulder, and said, "Good-bye, Betts
Swizzlegigs, see you to-morrow." And off he would go; but
he always saw me on the morrow. For, in the whole of his
life, he never broke the slightest promise, or told a little or a
big lie.
When he talked, which he did amazingly well, it was to
say something worth while, for he had a perfectly
astounding memory. It was like a moving picture show, and
seemed to have literally photographed every event, every
book, and every poem that he had ever read. He was very
fond of some little verses by Rollin Ridge, a talented
Cherokee Indian:
I love thee as the soaring bird
The bright blue morning when he sings,
With circling, circling melody,
And Heaven's sweet sunlight on his wings.
I love thee as the billows love
In tropic lands the pearly shore;
They come and go - they come and go,
With answering kisses evermore.
I love thee as the mariner
Far driven o'er the stormy sea
The bright and shining silver star
Which tells him where his home may be.
I love thee thus and ever shall;
Thine eyes their bright and glorious light
Shine in my soul for evermore
Illumining its darkest night.
and he always repeated again the lines,
"With circling, circling melody
And Heaven's sweet sunlight on his wings."
and I hope in that other and more beautiful country where
he has gone, "Heaven's sweet sunlight" is shining upon
him.
As a little girl, I had a great desire to be brave, but, like
the burglar described to me by F. C. Froest, the able
superintendent of police in London, who had three terrors -
an old-fashioned iron bar fastened across a door, a little
shrill barking dog, and an old maid who always sleeps with
one eye open, - there were three things, which struck
terror to my soul. These were the drunken yells of the
galloping outlaws, the old Voodoo negro witch living near
us, who was said to make people die by putting a spell on
them; and the bellowing
of a bull, which for a long time I believed to be the devil
roaring aloud for bad children whom he was seeking to
devour. This fable had been told me by a little negro girl on
the place, and had sunk deep into my well of credulity,
where even yet the waters have not been dried to dust by
the world's disillusionment.
Maum Phyllis, the Voodoo witch, had been brought to
Texas from South Carolina by my uncle Marcellus Duval,
and my father always said she was the last slave who had
been born in Africa. She was so black that even her lips
were a blue-black colour; her eyes were large and rolling;
she never smiled and seldom spoke. In her ears she wore big
hoops of gold, and a snow-white head handkerchief instead
of the gay plaid turban always worn by other negro women.
The contrast of her stern black face and the white above it
was startling. There was no scandal, no secret, no small
incident in any house in town which was unknown to her,
and even white women were not above buying her love
philtres. One of her peculiar talismans, composed of a bat's
wing, a rabbit'a foot, some hemp from the rope which had
hanged a murderer, and drops of milk from the breasts of a
mother and daughter, each nursing a baby of the same age,
was supposed to bring unwilling lovers to the most forbidding
of woman-kind. In the South, where women married very
young, it was not an unusual thing for the mother's youngest
child to be of the same age as her daughter's firstborn.
Mammy, although a very religious and ardent Methodist,
was a firm believer in Voodooism, charms, amulets, the evil
eye, "sperrits" and all the rest of it, I cannot even now
disabuse my mind of superstition and I know, "de cunjhe
book" contains many warnings and shuddering peeps into
the future.
"De cunjhe book say dat he prowl by night,
En' de cunjhe-book ought to know;
Deh 's a chance dat he 's neah when de dew gleam bright
En de ol' bak lawg buhn low -
Deh 's a chance det he 's neah when de stars wink weak,
En' de tallow cup buhn blue;
En' doan yo' dahe to speak
When de ol' flo' creak -
It 's de
Voodoo Bogey-Boo!
"He 's de awfullist thing, de cunjhe books say,
(Wuss den de uddeh bogy-boos)
En' de' ain't no chahm det kin keep him away -
He jes' come aroun' when he choose.
Deh 's snake-skin, en' bat-wing, en' rabbit-foot,
Well, its mighty li'l good dey 'll do,
Foh de cunjhe-book tell
It 's hahd to put a spell,
On de
Voodoo Bogey-Boo!
"Sum say det he gallop on an ol' blac' cat
Roun' de rim ob de big full moon,
Sum say det he cum in de shape of a bat
Fum his home in de swamp lagoon,
En' gran'mammy tell dat he 's always neah
When ebeh deh 's a grabe dug new,
En' she say if yo' heah
A ringin' in yo' eah
It 's de
Voodoo Bogey-Boo!
"Lemme tell yo', l'il boy, you betteh keep still
De dawg 's at de do' peepin' fru'
En' eben de cricket in de damp do'sill
Am stoppin' to listen too -
De room am still en' de fiah am daid
Deh 's sumfin a cummin' foh yo'
Jes' yo' jump right in baid
En' kibbeh up yo' haid,
It 's de Voodoo Bogey-Boo!"
Voodooism is now a thing of the past, but all the world
knows that a rabbit's foot which has danced on a tombstone
in a graveyard will bring extraordinary good luck. I have
never been fortunate enough to possess one. My mascot of
these days is a bracelet made from the hairs of an
elephant's tail, an ornament guaranteed to bring at least
some good fortune. It is lucky in the first place to get the
bracelet at all, for not every elephant has hair on his tail, and
to have the black spikes necessary to bend like tiny
whalebones into a circle, the elephant must have been free,
a dweller in forests, a monarch of all he surveyed, and a
leader in the elephant world. He must have lifted up his
trunk and deeply trumpeted when he heard the lion's loud
roar in the jungle; he must have been wise and more than a
century old, for thin weak hairs cannot appease an angry
fate. My Helen gave me a tiger's whisker; it was neatly
curled up and enclosed in a little sapphire studded gold heart,
and attached to a bracelet, but a fair-haired German waiter
stole it from me two years ago in New York. I daresay by
this time he is proprietor of a prosperous hotel and all the
luck intended for me has been transferred to him.
One little piece of good fortune that I had was being born
in Texas, that great, wide, cheerful, courageous territory,
with the most picturesque history of all the states and a
distinct individuality of its own, inheriting as it has something
of aloofness and independence from
the old Republic. During her long struggle with Mexico,
England and France, for their own reasons, had both shown
great interest in the future of Texas, but without help she
had fought bravely on, overcoming with bleeding steps
defeat and disaster, until at length Mexico was obliged to
offer her terms of peace. This brought the United States to
a realisation of her position and importance. Goethe said
"Thought expands and weakens the mind; action contracts
and strengthens it"; certainly these men of action know
how to wait. Patience has won more battles than bravery,
for it means unending, sustained courage.
The most thrilling thing I ever heard Parnell say in his
even steady voice was, "I can always bide my time."
These pioneer statesmen bided their time. Quietly resting
between Mexico and the United States they calmly
compared the advantages of a republic, or a state, and
delicately weighed in the scales all that would be to their
own advantage. Each of the other states had asked to be
admitted to the Union, but Texas proudly waited, and when
she received her card of invitation said, "Yes, I am
flattered at your polite invitation, but I must enter the Union
on my own terms." And if she wishes it to-morrow, she
can be divided into four States and send twelve men to the
Senate; but this will never be, for she is proud of her
stupendous size, of her unique position and, above all, of
being the "Lone Star State."
When the United States agreed in 1846 to her
independent terms, at the first faint streak of dawn
cannons boomed to assemble together the patriots and
pioneers who had fought for her liberty in the past and
would guard it jealously in the future. The sunrise was
magnificent, and amidst a profound silence the honoured
flag with its single star was lowered and furled, and a flag
with stars hoisted and unfurled. The President of the late
Republic said with deep feeling: "The final act in the great
drama is finished, the Republic of Texas is dead. The State
of Texas lives." There was a wild shout, and Texas was
enrolled in the Union.
When the Legislature assembled, the state constitution,
framed by just and honest men, showed that sagacity and
wisdom ruled her counsels. Much of the Common Law in
England was used and some of the laws improved upon. All
property owned by the husband or wife at the time of
marriage and all acquired afterwards remained the separate
property of each, and all property acquired during marriage
was common property. Offences against the persons of
slaves were punished in the same way as those committed
against white people. The homestead was, and still is,
exempt from debt. Public free schools were supported by
taxation; and a sum of money was voted for the
maintenance of the Texas rangers, a small army necessary
to the State in the quick capture and punishment of
marauding outlaws and "Hellish bandits." My father often
commented upon the wisdom of the constitution of the
State. He was himself the author of Paschal's Digest of
the Laws of Texas. Martin Lyttleton, that brilliant lawyer
and fine orator, told me it was the first law book he had ever
read, and although he has now attained prominence in the
Congressional life of Washington, he never forgets Texas
and his love for that great State.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land;
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My
homing thoughts will fly. DOROTHEA MACKELLER.
BEFORE the war, society in Austin must have been very
varied and interesting. General Sam Houston was
governor of the State. My mother did not like him,
holding him responsible for the massacre of Goliad
where my Uncle Burr Duval had been shot; but from
this history exonerates him. He came to Texas in the
first instance, like many another man, to mend a
broken heart, and for a time eschewed the society of
the white man and above all the white woman. Living
entirely with the Indians, he learned their language,
adopted their costume, and to the end of his life
retained a certain bold picturesqueness in his dress.
When Governor of the State, he wore a soft silk shirt,
a flowing red necktie, a leopard-skin vest, coat and
trousers of brown camel's hair, a wide sombrero of
grey felt embroidered in silver, and a rich-coloured
Mexican serape. Some of these serapes woven by
the Indians
are of great value; they are made on a fine frame not unlike
the manner of weaving an Eastern rug, and are splendid in
colouring and as pliable and soft as an Indian shawl. Age
only improves them; with care they last for generations and
are with the Mexicans valued heirlooms. Governor Houston
loved popularity and was always sending my mother,
through my father, some small carved object. Like Madame
de Staël he required constant occupation for his hands; she
played with a twig or a flower, he was always whittling, and
he was rarely seen without a knife and a piece of soft wood
which he transformed into stars, hearts, diamonds, and
Noah's Ark people and animals. Eventually my mother
softened towards him, for he and my father were always
friends. In a quarrel which he had with a public man, my
father was trying to mend matters when Governor Houston
said: "You are right, Judge, I must n't be too hard on Jones;
he has every quality of the dog except his fidelity."
The romance of his life was not unlike that of Claude
Melnotte, but without the happy ending which romance so
easily, but life rarely, gives. He was a man of great ability
and when very young was elected governor of
Tennessee. During his term of office he fell ardently in love
with a beautiful and ambitious girl. The wooing was not
without difficulty as he had a rival, a young man, undesirable
and undistinguished, who scarcely entered into his big busy
mind. The girl he loved lived in an adjoining town, and the
courtship was mainly through letters, therefore he had not
the opportunity of properly studying her character. As was
the fashion of the time they were married at night, in a
candle-lighted, flower-wreathed church. There was a big
wedding, for everybody wanted to see the
handsome young couple, and to congratulate the Governor,
but at last, at the end of the festivities, he sought the
beautiful bride. All shimmer of satin and glimmer of pearl,
she awaited him, in the rose-and-white bridal chamber.
He went quickly towards her, speechless with emotion,
and tenderly gathered her in his arms. "Don't," she said,
pushing him away, "you will crush my veil." Her voice
struck coldly upon his quickened emotions, but he was
repelled only for a second. He was too happy to take
warning, and he unfastened her veil, laid it reverently on
the sofa, and softly lifted her face to kiss her. She drew
back with a look almost of dislike, and said, "Please,
please, not now." He thought it was maidenly modesty and
said: "I have n't thanked you yet for marrying me, but I
do. See, I am humble; I am on my knees, my darling, to
thank you," and he knelt and covered her hands with
kisses.
Another, softer woman, not loving him, would have
done it then, and laying her hand upon his head would have
thanked God for this adoring heart, but her own was of
ice. She said, somewhat sharply: "Do get up and don't be
foolish; I don't want you to thank me for marrying the
Governor of Tennessee." He said very gently, "You have
married your lover, Madame."
"I don't want a lover," she said, coldly, "if I had wished
to give myself up to love, - a thing I don't believe in, - I
would have married S.," naming his rival.
"Did you," said her husband fiercely, "love him?"
"No," she said, "but I might have loved him, if you had
not been a man of successful ambition. I have married, as
I said before, the Governor of Tennessee."
eyes, "you do not love this gentleman - this paltry Governor - "
She said, "Love is not necessary in an ambitious
marriage. I am the Governor's wife. I am to sit at the head
of his table, to receive his friends, to share his triumphs - "
"And," he cried with a great burst of passion, "to starve
his heart and leave it empty! To break it in the end, and to
make ambition his curse. Even now," he added bitterly, "my
ambition is dead. You have killed all my hopes, and I suffer
the torments of the damned, for I wanted you and I loved
you, - my God, how I loved you!"
She answered calmly: "I thought men placed ambition
before a woman. I am willing for you to do that. You are the
Governor of . . ."
"By heaven, Madame," he said harshly, "there is no such
person."
And with that, he strode to the writing-table, wrote his
resignation to the State, threw it at her feet, picked up his
hat, and said:
"I married you for love, the purest, the truest, the most
reverently adoring that man ever gave to woman. You
married me without love. I scorn a woman's body without
her soul. We are as far asunder as the poles. We part here,
now and forever."
He closed the door and went out into the darkness of the
stormy night - his tragic wedding night - and they never
met again.
He sought forgetfulness among the Indians, and was only
roused from lethargy by the desperate efforts of the
struggling Republic of Texas towards liberty. When he
became General of the army, his wife, at last loving him
deeply, should, according to romance, have
travelled thousands of miles and appeared, travel-stained,
softened and repentant, to sue for his forgiveness; but in
reality they were divorced. Each married again, and they
never met after the fatal night of their parting.
Texas must have held more than her share of thrilling
romance at this period. Men made love with impulsive
ardour, for the rapid uncertainty of life brings greediness
for all it holds. During the war, one day's courtship served
for marriage. "Love to-night and death to-morrow," was
the soldier's motto.
Among the first settlers of Texas a number of
representatives of old Southern families had established
themselves in Austin. James Raymond had helped to frame
the constitution of the State and was a banker; the
Flournoys (what pity to anglicise the aristocratic name of
Fleur Noire!), the Lubbocks, the Wauls (Waul's
confederate Texas brigade was later to become a synonym
in the army for undaunted courage); - the Hancocks, the
Duvals, the Peases - Elisha Pease, afterwards governor,
although born in the North and a Union man, never lost the
affection or confidence of the people - these were among
the most distinguished of the early settlers. Then there
were the Throckmortons, the Wests, the Burlesons, the
Steiners, the Haynes, and the Wigfalls. Louis Wigfall had
been sent from Texas to the United States Senate. With
uncompromising Southern proclivities, he became in 1861
one of the leaders of Secession, and was a fiery, vehement,
passionate speaker, earning for himself the sobriquet of
"the stormy petrel."
Mrs. Chesnut, in her Diary from Dixie, 1860-65,
frequently mentions the Wigfalls. "I sent Mrs. Wigfall a
telegram - 'Where shrieks the wild seamew?'
She answered, 'Seamew at the Spotswood Hotel will
shriek soon. I will remain here.' " And of the bombardment
of Fort Sumter, she says, "Wigfall was with them on
Marius' Island when they saw the fire in the fort. He
jumped into a little boat and, with his handkerchief, as a
white flag, rode over . . . . As far as I can see, the fort
surrendered to Wigfall. It is all confusion." And at
Richmond in 1861 she says: "Heavens! He manoeuvered
until I was weary for their sakes. Poor fellows, it was a hot
afternoon in August and the thermometer in the nineties.
President Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall kept his hat
on. Is that military?" After the war Louis Wigfall lived for a
time in England, but eventually returned to the United States.
Matthias Ward, another Senator from Texas in 1860,
was very popular. He had a great sense of humour and
enjoyed a story against himself. His face was extremely
youthful, with fresh bright eyes as blue as that dear flower,
the prairie blue-bonnet, and cotton-white hair. Travelling
from New Orleans to St. Louis by a Mississippi steamer,
he had engaged the state-room number one hundred and
ten. The boat was immensely crowded, and his room had
been taken possession of by a party of lawless men.
Standing outside the open door of the ladies' cabin, the
steward called to one of the understewards, "Here, can't
you get this poor man, one hundred and ten, a berth?" A
pretty lady put her head out of the state-room. "Oh,
steward, bring him right in here," she said; "the ladies won't
mind a harmless old man of a hundred and ten, and, poor
old soul, he must have somewhere to sleep." "Pull your hat
down," said the steward, "and hobble to your berth; it will
be all right." But the lovely
ladies chattering, relieving their pretty heads of hundreds of
curls and braids, letting their own hair flow over their
shoulders, and dropping immense hoop skirts which fell
with a clang like steel armour to the floor, were
temptations too strong to be withstood. Mr. Ward peeped,
and immediately an observant young lady called out,
"Steward, steward, come quick and get your hundred and
ten. He's looking at us with young blue eyes." And the
steward had to find him another state-room, minus
crinolines.
There were many men in Texas opposed to Secession at
the beginning of the war. The State had entered the
Union on her own terms; she was prosperous and far
enough away from the passionate excitement in
Washington for astute statesmen to see inevitable defeat.
From the beginning everything was against the South. The
North had wealth, open ports, greater numbers, and even
with success the South must have suffered horribly from a
war fought on her own territory. But when Texas finally
accepted Secession she did it with no half measures,
furnishing to the Confederate army eighty-eight regiments
of infantry and cavalry, and more than thirty batteries of
artillery. In all, seventy-five thousand Texas men fought for
the Southern cause. Albert Sydney Johnston ranked among
the ablest officers in the service. Ben McCullough
commanded the Texas Rangers, who did not know fear.
Sam Bell Maxey, a cousin of my mother's, soon won his
two stars. General William Steele, who had married my
aunt Laura Duval's sister, an ardent sympathiser with the
South, had resigned from a crack cavalry regiment in the
United States army to take command in Texas. And the
long roll-call of glory holds hundreds of Texas names.
A baptism of fire during the siege of Vicksburg gave
Texas an adopted son whose name is well-known to history.
An important redoubt had been captured by the Federals and
it was necessary for the Confederates to recapture it. One
entire company from Alabama had been shot down to the
very last man, when Waul's Texas brigade volunteered to
capture the fort. Captain Bradley said he wanted no married
officers to take part, the danger was too great. Pettus, a
young Confederate officer said: "Bradley, you are a married
man yourself. Give me your command." Bradley answered:
"No, where my troops go, I will lead them." Captain Pettus
said, "All right, come ahead." He placed himself well in
front, led them by a circuitous route, and before the Federals
knew it, the fire of the Confederates was destructively
centred upon the fort, which they unexpectedly approached
in the rear. The quick volley and attack caused a panic, the
fort was seized, and a greater number of prisoners than their
own men were captured. Before the enemy fully realised
their position, the Confederates had spiked their guns and
without the loss of a single man had gained a complete
victory. They marched back with heads up and banners
flying to the quick-step of Dixie, played with drum and fife.
A Texas soldier, full of enthusiasm, asked who the tall man
was who led them. Someone said, "Pettus of Alabama."
Then the brigade broke into a wild Texas yell and gave
cheer after cheer for "Pettus of Texas!" "Pettus of Texas!"
And Senator Pettus ever afterwards claimed to be a man
of two States, Texas and Alabama, for he had been
rebaptised on the field of battle for an act of unsurpassed
daring by a legion of the Lone Star State.
who fight valiantly forgive generously. Confederate soldiers
came back with no bitterness or animosity in their hearts
towards the North, and they worked at whatever
occupation offered itself without hesitation or shame. A
gallant Captain, with a bullet still in his arm, measured a
yard of ribbon in a shop; or a Major, his only possession
one mule, ploughed a long straight furrow and planted
sugar-cane or cotton. Good birth luckily cannot be measured or
ploughed away. It remains, and in a crisis it always counts.
It is said that during the war a gentleman by birth
recovered from wounds that were fatal to the son of the
soil. It was not one man fighting death; the influence of his
gallant forbears abided to help him.
In the days of my childhood courage was a fetish in
Texas. Girls and boys tried to bear a hurt without a cry.
They were brought up to an open air life, and early learned
to ride and run and swim and fish and hunt. When I was a
baby my father had a Mexican saddle made with a pommel
about the size of a soup-plate and, sitting in front of him, I
rode in this way all over the country until I was big enough
to mount a pony. Then I learned to ride on a gay little
animal called "Buttons." He was of creole stock, an active,
boyish, sturdy little fellow of the sweetest temper and the
warmest heart, as eager for affection and petting as a dog,
and as playful as a kitten. If I held up a pocket-handkerchief
he stood rigidly still looking at it, showing the
white of his eyes with roguish knowingness, until
unexpectedly, with a rush, he ran and seized it out of my
hand. Although my father paid only twenty-five dollars for
him he had good Spanish and Norman blood in his veins,
and with his bright bay colour and long black mane and tail
was a very good-looking little
animal. Sometimes out of sheer joy of life he tilted me over
his head and I would find myself sitting on the grass very
surprised, looking into his mischievous face.
After Buttons, I held in love my pet pig, "Pancake." He
was extremely jealous of the pony whom he held in
detestation, and he stood by squealing with rage when I
mounted for my afternoon ride. This quaint pet I had literally
raised from the dead. We had a famous Berkshire sow of
enormous size and distinguished pedigree who overlaid her
litter of pigs, leaving them as flat as pancakes. They were
thrown out behind the stable waiting for a cart to bear them
away, when I found them, thought one of them breathed,
and carried him into the kitchen to Mammy. She dosed him
with paregoric - wrapped him in hot flannels, put him by the
fire and gave him a bottle of fresh warm milk. Slowly he
revived, and for a long time I tended him every day and
Mammy every night. Finally he began to fatten, to take
notice, and to develop a loving heart. He trotted at my heels
like a dog and sat on the balcony in the evening looking out
on the garden while my mother watered her flowers.
Dressed in a black barège gown with low neck and short
sleeves and a little tulle cape trimmed with pink satin ribbons,
she would go from bed to bed, carrying a big watering-pot,
while a crowd of little darkies bearing smaller watering-pots
trotted after her. Evidently it afforded Pancake great
satisfaction to see other people at work, while he was
grunting at leisure. He got his own way in everything, not by
moral suasion, but by intimidation. The moment he saw a
negro enter the dining-room with a dish he began to squeal,
and the loud, penetrating and shrill noise continued until in
despair my father would say, "Get a plate and let me give
Pancake his dinner first." And before anyone else was
served, a huge plate of steaming food was taken out to him
for the sake of quiet.
Our house in Austin was built of stone, with very thick
walls to make it cool. A piazza in front and another at the
rear ran along the full length of the house. After the
foundations were begun it was found that a noble elm-tree
would have to be sacrificed to make room for the balcony,
and my father was indeed the woodsman who spared the
tree, for he built both upper and lower galleries round the
trunk of it, and left the wide-spreading branches to make a
thick shade in summer over the roof. My mother always
regretted that it had not been cut down, as she said it
brought insects into the house, but I loved its rough body
and my bird-cages conveniently hung upon it. The first
mocking-bird I tried to raise had a pathetic fate. Its father,
rather than leave his son in captivity, became its filiuscide.
My fledgling was getting on splendidly; his dewy eyes were
soft and bright, he had a ferocious appetite and was fat and
happy, when one day the parent bird approached the cage
with a little red berry, fed him with it, and in a moment he
was dead.
I profited by my experience. The next mocking-bird I
adopted was brought up out of a cage; he was called
"Moonlight," and was perfectly tame, hopping about in
every room in the house and sleeping at night on the back
of a chair on the balcony. When he was just budding into
manhood and had begun to try his voice with low-toned,
beautiful warblings, he met a tragic end through a yellow
cat who caught him, for although he was rescued it was
only to die very quickly. I cried myself into a fever, and my
father would have shot the cat if I had not begged for its
life.
A great and constant delight after my pets was the
garden, now gone forever, for although the old house stands
the ground has been divided and sold away from it:
I would know it, could I find it;
And before I reached the gate,
I would catch the smell of roses,
Where the fragrant hedge encloses
And the fair white lilies wait.
Tall they were, the hedge and lilies,
When my little feet ran there;
And I laughed and played beside them,
But the weary long years hide them,
Though I seek them everywhere.
I would know it, could I find it;
And before I reached the gate,
I'd escape long years and pain
And would be a child again,
Where the tall white lilies wait.
It is to me a supreme sadness that with my passionate
love of every flower that grows, my only garden is that dark
and solitary enclosure, where I have wept and suffered and
battled with loneliness and despair, my Garden of
Gethsemane.
My mother's garden was a whole acre of blossoms. The
splendid Spanish bayonet (Yucca), with its thick pure waxen
flower, grew near the gate. The exotic cactus, with its
gorgeous blossoms of scarlet, flourished where the sun
shone hottest; and there were beds of heart's-ease,
forget-me-nots, single pinks and carnations,
creeping ice-plant and the delicate sensitive plant,
shrubs of crêpe myrtle and althea, with rows of holly-hocks
and gravelled walks thickly bordered with white and
pink and purple gillyflowers. And the rose garden was
scarcely ever, even in mid-winter, without a few persistent
blossoms. There were Maréchal Niel and heavy-headed
tea roses, the soft mauve-pink Caroline Testout, deep red
Jacqueminot roses, white roses with their delicate reticent
perfume, and the little starry picayune, and banksia; and
crimson and white ramblers. The old-fashioned sweet,
opulent, cabbage roses, yellow and pink; the moss-rose,
whose stem and foliage are almost as fragrant as the
flower, and the hardy hundred-leaf rose, with its thorny
stem, grew in riotous profusion everywhere. A German
horticulturist had helped my mother to make one
picturesque rose bed. When the bushes reached a certain
height they were bent, the ends cut and replanted in the
earth, where they took root and grew in the shape of a half-hoop,
and in leaf and blossom, with the thick foliage and
the many-hued roses covering every inch of ground, this
was a wonderful spot of beauty. Tall lilies, white and pink
and scarlet, stood like sentinels on either side of the path
leading to the front door, and in a protected corner of the
garden heliotrope, oleander, gardenia, lemon verbena, spitti
sporum, and sweet olive made the air a perfect bouquet of
fragrance. My mother worked early and late among her
flower beds, making war on blight, insects and ants, and
giving the thirsty plants enough water to drink. There was
one bed of four o'-clocks, a species of yellow azalea
whose blossoms remained closely folded buds until four
o'clock, when they opened their lazy golden eyes and
gave forth a deliciously fresh clean perfume. As a child I
would wait patiently for the magic hour, but these
flowers
were shy, and I never saw them actually unfold their
leaves.
Beyond Waller's Creek, which ran just at the back of the
garden, was a wide, open prairie with a fine grove of post
oaks in the centre, trees of beautiful shape with broad green
leaves. In the spring the prairie was rich with variegated
colour from the many wild flowers which burst into blossom
almost over night. There were bachelor buttons, coxcomb,
wild pink and white cyclamen, scarlet sage, sweet william, a
large delicate pink and white primrose (a different variety
from the small English flower), and nigger heads, a very
sweet-smelling flower with a big round centre of dark brown
and small yellow and red petals. A fragrant white lily, called
rain lily from its quick blossoming after a shower, bloomed
there, and amidst all this flashing of brilliant tints were soft
undulations of purest azure, as if little lakes reflecting the sky
were in a state of gentle upheaval. This pretty phenomenon
was produced by vast quantities of thickly growing blue-bonnets
(Lupinus subcarnosus) in such vivid luxuriance as
to form whole patches of sky-blue on the wide prairie. I
loved that little upright, exquisite, intensely coloured flower,
with its clear-cut saucy profile and greyish green leaves.
Perhaps some day I shall see it again.
And there was the creek, the fascinating never-to-be-forgotten
creek, where the moment the weather was warm
enough we, my cousins and I, waded up- and down-stream
to make discoveries on the fertile banks. We found natural
grape-vine swings, and ladders of strong creepers almost to
the tops of some of the trees, and underneath a thick growth
of wild-rose bushes a startled whip-poor-will would dart out,
and when we peeped between the leaves there would lie her
soft
brown nest on a carpet of moss. When the sun shone hot, a
turtle would leave her snow-white egg on the sand, and the
rainbow lizard would take a siesta in the afternoon.
Sometimes we saw one with no tail, showing that, while he
too-soundly slept, a mischievous boy had dropped a sharp
stone and cut it off. And there were gentle-eyed horned
frogs, who never ran away, but would let us, with wildly
beating hearts, handle them and put them down again. On
the banks grew pokeberry bushes, dipping towards the
stream, and we gathered their rich purple berries and
painted each other's cheeks and lips a deep vermilion-red;
and there were beautiful teasel-tufts, that indelibly stained
our hands. We made bouquets from the great beds of
horsemint with its tiny white blossom, and we shelled the
milkweed pod and with the white silky hair stuffed
mattresses for our dolls. The beautiful kingfisher made
darts of light at our approach and the little, harmless, jade-green
water-snakes, who touched our bare legs, would
make us shriek aloud with frightened ecstasy. We could
hear the Bob-White calling in the distance and sometimes
find his low nest built almost in the water. The slow-moving
tortoise drew in his head when, chattering, we passed. The
melancholy coo of the wood-dove made us momentarily
sad, for we thought he was calling for his missing mate and
would be a solitary bird bachelor all the rest of his
melancholy life, since we were always told that when a
dove died the other never mated again.
The green katy-did sang long and lingeringly along the
margin of the creek; the crickets chirped more loudly
there, and the brown frogs gave forth a mellower boom. It
was a place of dear enchantment, and how disappointed
we were when a drought came and dried
the dimpling, clear, brown water and turned the irregular
little stream into a dusty road-bed. Ah! the poor little city
children who are devoid of all these sweet woodland melodies!
And if my borrowed cousins sometimes went home
and I had no playfellow, there were all of my dear dream
friends who in imagination dwelt with me. Little Red Riding-Hood,
Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Bluebeard and his
wives, Sister Ann, Puss-in-Boots, Jack the Giant-killer,
Jack-of-the-Beanstalk, the fairy Princess and Bob Goodfellow,
Little Bo-peep and Little Boy-blue and Sleeping Beauty,
were all as real to me as my father and mother and aunt
Polly Hynes, who lived part of the year with us and was
always ready to read me these enchanting fairy stories. I
loved her dearly and feared her too, for she was a lady of
unassailable dignity and rigorous habits. Never on the
warmest summer's day did she take off her "stays" and put
on a loose muslin wrapper; no matter how high the
temperature, she was always scrupulously dressed, with not
a hair out of place. A ruffled cap of beautiful lace with
strings was tied under her chin; an embroidered collar of
sheer muslin was fastened at the neck with the miniature of
a young man in a uniform; and a deep purple or black and
white muslin gown neatly fitted her tall erect figure. She
always carried a brocaded silk bag which contained two
snuff-boxes, one of dark enamel, the other of gold, with
Holyrood castle engraved on the top. Two handkerchiefs, a
gaily coloured one for snuff, the other of sheer fine linen,
and a pair of black woollen mitts, in case her hands got cold,
completed the contents. At precisely eleven o'clock in the
morning a little negro, who rarely left her side except for this
office, entered the room with
a glass of sangaree (ice and claret sugared, and powdered
thickly on the top with nutmeg) and two cakes. She
delicately drank the claret and nibbled the cakes, and I
remember thinking that as soon as I grew up I should
certainly take snuff and drink sangaree.
When Aunt Polly grew very old the sexton of St. David's
who was old too, called her "Aunt Polly." She drew herself
up and said, "Only my nephews and nieces call me that -
Miss Hynes, if you please," and Miss Hynes she remained
even to our youngest and most intimate friends. Of all her
nieces she loved best her namesake, Molly Duval, the
beauty of the family. Molly was my favourite too. She had
hair as yellow as ripe corn, a beautifully smooth pink and
white skin, brown eyes, and a charming sense of humour.
When she reached girlhood she was a great toast and
belle, breaking many hearts, but finally she married William
Nelson of Virginia. Even those of us who were not so
beautiful as Molly had a lovely time. As Austin was a
military station, there were, in addition to the young men of
the town, any number of cavalry and infantry officers,
while other young soldiers stationed at solitary posts came
down occasionally from the frontier, and not having seen a
woman for months they were very impressionable, and
generally became engaged to some girl not many days
after their first meeting. There were balls and dances,
moonlight picnics, rides and drives, serenades and
champagne breakfasts, and life was as careless and gay
as youth, health, and high spirits could make it.
And yet beneath that carelessness the inexorable spirit
of the country was and is always present. The way of
transgressors is not unusually hard in that dear land, but no
leper in a desert island is more avoided than
a hypocrite when found out; and the punishment meted out
to him is remorseless. I remember a man who came to
Texas, took orders for the ministry, and became assistant
curate to an Episcopal clergyman. There was a rumour that
he was married, but he was uncommunicative about his
affairs, and nothing was definitely known until he produced
a newspaper which contained a notice of the death of his
first wife. He fell in love with a sweet, amiable, and
charming girl, and a little later married her. It was such a
pretty wedding, all smiles and tears, white tulle, fresh
orange blossoms, white Swiss muslin, bridesmaids, many
loving gifts, and heartfelt and affectionate wishes for the
modest bride. The bridegroom, a plain, dark, swarthy,
unattractive man, was so filled with joy that he appeared
almost good-looking. After the marriage two children were
born, and they were quite happy until the first wife
appeared to say that she had never died, and had never
been divorced from her husband. She had last heard of him
in Arizona as having married a Mexican girl; then he
disappeared, and she had now traced him to Texas. A trial
for bigamy was begun, he was convicted and sentenced to
serve one or two years in the penitentiary. His young wife,
the mother of his children, was that most touching, amazing
creature on earth, a woman with perfect faith in the man
she loved. She did not believe the first wife's tale, nor the
evidence (if she even read it), nor the jury nor the judge.
She simply rested upon the word of her husband. This
attitude aroused even the pity of the first wife, and she,
upon being appealed to by the husband's counsel, agreed
to divorce him.
The decree was granted without delay, and before he
went to serve his term of imprisonment he was
allowed, in consideration of his second wife's family, to
leave the prison, and be married in his own house at five
o'clock in the morning by a justice of the peace.
It was after he had served his term that his true
punishment began. He was not only ostracised; he even
ceased to exist in the community, and earned his bread by
going to the back door of the houses where he had been an
honoured guest and leaving blocks of ice. The people
resented with bitterness the betrayal of their trust. They
could not forget that a hypocrite had married the young,
prayed for the sick, and buried the dead, and they could
never forgive him. Texas might pardon a filibuster, an
outlaw or a hot-blooded impulsive slayer of men (I won't
say murderer), but a hypocrite goes unpardoned.
My father once questioned the old sexton who wanted
him to defend a man who had committed a murder. "But,
Stavely," he said, "has n't O'Brien already shot six men?"
"He is, Jedge," Stavely answered, "but there 's one thing
to be said for him, he ain't never killed no man that did n't
want killing mighty bad."
The man who has met with "an accident" and killed
another man is regarded leniently - but a ban is laid upon
the hypocrite. He is a coward, and a coward is worse than
an outcast, for life in that wide country is of less value than
honour. My father, who was the best, kindest, and most
humane gentleman I ever knew, believed in the duello. He
said a man had a perfect right to protect his own home and
his womenkind at the point of a pistol. He argued that
through this drastic means we were freed from long,
salacious, divorce or breach of promise cases, or suits for
damaged affections; that men when they deceived or
compromised
women knew the consequences and were more careful of
their conduct. He did not live long enough to comprehend
the modern woman who, best of all, is taught and is able to
protect herself.
The men of Texas are eminently manly. They look life
squarely in the face with unflinching candid eyes, and they
do not mind in the least the laugh being turned on them for
their patriotic devotion to their State. They may not be quite
so self-centred as that famous gentleman of history,
Honorius, who wept at Ravenna when told that Rome was
lost, thinking that his pet chicken had flown away, and when
he found it was only the capital of the world was immensely
relieved; nor, like Louis XVI, who on a day when there was
no hunt wrote in his diary, "Nothing doing," although at that
moment Paris stormed the Bastille; but Texans ever bear
first in mind the needs and the advancement of that wide
opal-hearted country. It is said that if a member of Congress
goes to the Texas delegation with a bill which affects the
life of the whole nation, they listen politely and probably
answer: "This bill is all very well, but what are you going to
do for the harbour at Galveston?" Or they mention some
other appropriation for the benefit of that vast land, and
certainly the very core of the heart of the Lone Star State
is rooted in its soil.
The modern Texan is a fine, independent, upstanding
human being, who boldly carves out his future, arguing that
a man must first achieve his own glory before he boasts of
the glory of his forbears. Man is a product of the land he
lives in. The Texas men in Congress are characterised by a
certain honest forceful directness, courage and
independence, doubtless an inheritance of the intrepid spirit
of the old Republic.
Senator Culberson, with many busy years of service to the
State to his credit, is honoured for his impeccable honesty.
Albert Sydney Burleson, a man of fine character, great
courage and varied interests, valiantly carries forward the
tradition of his fighting ancestors who helped to make the
brave history of the State. His character is interestingly
complex, combining great directness and simplicity with the
ready acuteness of the far-seeing politician. And he views
with a prophetic eye, not only the political arena of
America, but of the whole world. But the whole Texan
delegation are good men and true, fearless, manly, and
kind. They are not crafty or strategic politicians, for the
Texan men and women take life with straightforward
directness, praise their friends, and abuse their enemies. It
may not be the wisest course to pursue, but oh, it can be
done with such enjoyment and sincerity!
Truth only needs to be for once spoke out,
And there 's such music in her, such strange rhythm,
As makes men's memories her joyous slaves,
And clings around the soul, as the sky clings
Round the mute earth, forever beautiful,
And if o'erclouded, only to burst forth
More all-embracingly divine and clear.
Get but the Truth once uttered, and 'tis like
A star new-born, that drops into its place.
And which once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.
I don't believe it would be possible for a man from that
great gulf State to have written the letter of Clement Clay
to his wife when, after the war, he was unjustly
incarcerated at Fortress Monroe:
Do what you can for the comfort of my parents. . . .
Try to exercise charity to all mankind, forgiving injuries,
cherishing hatred to none, and doing good even to enemies.
This is true wisdom, even if there were no life beyond the
grave because it is the best way of securing peace of mind
and of promoting mere worldly interests.
To forgive our enemies is hard; to do good to them is
harder. I have known but one person who even
contemplated it. Mrs. Mackay, who had suffered from the
malice of two fashionable American women, offered, when
they encountered reverses and contemplated going into
business, to furnish the capital if her name could be kept a
secret. I have never had any money to give my friends, but
I have grave doubts whether, even if I had a fortune, I
should wish to enrich my enemies.
Wells, in his excellent but not always understanding book,
The Future of America - for after all he was only six
weeks in that vast land - said that every man above forty
and most of those below that limit seemed to be enthusiastic
advocates of unrestricted immigration, "and," he adds, "I
could not make them understand the apprehension with
which this huge dilution of the American people with
profoundly ignorant foreign peasants filled me." But there is
no danger. Every age must take care of itself. America
was, under the providence of God, established as the home
of the desolate and oppressed, and this is her destiny. In her
vast melting-pot old evils disappear like dross, and new
forces are fused into a metal whose purity the future alone
can test. It must not be forgotten that she receives these
peasants in their ignorance and need, gives them food for
their bodies, instructs their minds, and endows them with
fresh energy. And Mr. Wells does n't realise that when
America stretches out her
strong arm and takes to her broad bosom all nationalities,
Scandinavians, Germans, Frenchmen or Irishmen, she
transforms them in six months or a year into loyal citizens.
Whether it be the hope born of a fresh environment, new
possibilities or newly awakened self-respect, the subtle
influence of the boundless forests, the great Lakes, the
long chains of mountains, or vast noble prairies like those
of Texas, something vital holds a man in a mighty grasp in
our mighty land. His soul, freshly awakened, lifts up its
voice and cries out, "I am an American." We take the
discordant elements of all the world, and remould them into
law-abiding citizens, ready to shoulder a musket in defence
of our country and of Liberty. What other country can do
it? But we have done it, and are doing it every day.
Better a day of strife
Than a century of sleep.
Give me instead of a long stream of life,
The tempests and tears of the deep.Father THOMAS RYAN.
WHEN the responsibility of my own life was suddenly and
violently thrust upon me and I found myself
homeless and alone, the waves of misery which
rushed over and submerged me were so thunderous
and heavy, they left me bruised, beaten, and broken.
Blindly I struggled to shore, as one already dead.
The first thing that brought me to life was the voice
of a little child.
It was a long, long way off, and it was only in my dreams,
but one day it came closer, and then the dear Love, my
grandson, rushed into my room and said, "Damma, you have
come to live with us, and must never go away again, not for
one minute!" And all these precious words were said
between little close, bear-like hugs and haphazard warm
kisses. When he left me the drought of my tears was over. I
could weep again, and life could not be altogether desolate
when the day began with play and toys. Quite early in the
morning my bedroom door was flung open with a cheerful,
"Well, little Dam!" and the Love, with his
hands full of soldiers, or ducks, or bears, or boats, would
perch himself on my bed. And when he returned to his
nursery he always left one little toy so that "Damma would n't
be lonesome." And so throughout the day, if my troubles
weighed too heavily upon me, I would touch for a moment
the toy soldier, or the little boat, or the woolly dog, and they
brought me consolation.
But the nights were dreadful, the long nights of hideous
sleeplessness, with one maddening thought hammering my
brain into pulp. I was like an uprooted plant dying in a new
soil. Lura, my sweet Love's mother and an affectionate
daughter to me, said: "Mother, you must go to America and
get well, not to New York, not to Washington, not to any of
the large cities, but go down to the very heart of the South,
go where the sun shines. Go, dear, it will prove a healing
balm to your spirit; I am sure it will." And I looked into my
little Love's beautiful eyes and said:
"What seek you, soul that never sleeps,
Within these loved eyes' crystal deeps?
I seek content, content.
The eyes allure and they are dear,
Still I must go - it is not here."
But a horribly sad inertia possessed me, and it was
months before I could gather strength enough to cross the
Atlantic, although it is the easiest thing possible to go to
Tilbury, get on board one of the Atlantic Transport Line
Steamers, and almost immediately a beneficial rest cure
begins. The boats are particularly comfortable and quiet;
they are primarily built for carrying valuable cattle, and the
accommodation for horses, cows, sheep and pigs, is vastly
more comfortable
and better ventilated than third-class passengers get on
the larger steamers.
I often cross on this line and always go down on the
lower deck to see the four-footed travellers; sometimes they
are valuable thoroughbreds, or a hundred draft horses, big,
black, brown and bay fellows, from Belgium, France, and
England.
Once there were sixty Egyptian donkeys with us, beauties
in colour, colossal in size and also in voice. One morning
when a loud noise clove the air, a lady passenger turned
alarmed and said to me: "What a strange
thing, the fog whistle is blowing and there is n't any fog.
Something serious must be the matter." But it was only an
Egyptian donkey braying a regret for the Nile. And there are
occasional prize dogs, beautiful fluffy-haired cats, and
wonderfully bred guinea pigs with such long feathery hair,
high crests, and top-knots that they bear a strange likeness to
unwinged cockatoos. And the gulls followed us, those
gipsies of the air, darting here and there or balanced on a
wave almost all the way to New York. The service is
excellent on these sensible ships, the food is good and
abundant. The nine or ten days of our voyage passed
quickly, for there were most agreeable people on board.
Dr. Venning, from Charles Town, in West Virginia, helped
me by a good deal of sound advice. I think I never saw a
saner, healthier, kinder or more capable man than this young
surgeon. His mind, his body, and his work are all attuned to
his profession which make for success. He drinks neither
tea, coffee nor stimulants of any kind. He sleeps in the open
air, lives on simple food, has a contented mind and is
altogether a Man - frank, honest, and straightforward. He
is happily married, is an intelligent, strict father, and, above
all, he is deeply interested in his profession and ambitious
about his work. In his short vacation in England he had
spent every afternoon in the operating-room of some
hospital, and yet he could drop his work and all thought of it
in a minute, talk about any subject under the sun, and laugh
with the heartiness of a boy. What a help his very
presence must be in the sick room!
When we arrived in New York I lingered unnecessarily.
My healing had not begun - I had not enough energy to
unpack and leave my winter belongings, and take out my
lighter clothes for the South. And Julia, one of my adopted
daughters, begged me to stay. I have five adopted
daughters - Helen, for brilliancy and inspiration; Caroline,
for beauty and gentleness; Bee, for loyalty and
unselfishness; dear Margaret Douglas for sweetest
sympathy and appreciation, and Julia for love and honeyed
flattery (Ah, what soothing balm!).
Julia is of good birth and lineage, a tall, fair daughter of
the South, and through certain qualities she has won
success in that hard city. The stranger passing up and
down Fifth Avenue can see on a modest but very distinct
sign,
Miss CARROLL
Gowns.
This is the way it came about. Julia, with a negro
Mammy, living in New York, was somewhat helplessly
looking round for work when she and the negress, a
beautiful needlewoman, made a Southern gown for a
Southern woman going to Saratoga. It was one of those
cobwebby New Orleans organdies, trimmed with much
Valenciennes insertion and lace, with here and there a
heavenly satin bow made by Mammy, whose
genius lay in that direction. The dress was an instantaneous
success, and Julia became a specialist in wash-dresses.
Later, silk and fine woollen gowns were added to her
jaconets and muslins, and now she goes to Paris
twice a year and all the latest modes fashioned from the most
wonderful materials are to be found in her splendid shop,
with its setting of beautiful antique furniture, carved
mirrors, cases of old fans, china, and bric-à-brac. This
success has grown, not out of the rosebud organdie, but
from Julia's tact - tact in the morning, tact in the
afternoon, tact in the evening. Julia puts it on like armour
before the polyglot waiter arrives in her apartment with her
breakfast.
"Where," she said to a strange dark little man, "is
Tony?"
"Gone, Madame."
"And do you take his place?"
"Yes, Madame."
"And what are you?"
"A Greek, Madame; I am going back to Athens in the
spring for the Olympic games."
"And," said Julia, very sweetly, - but absent-mindedly,
looking at his queer little knock-kneed legs - "do you take
part in the Olympic games?"
The poor creature tried to stand straight, and said with
an air of pride, "No, Madame, that is . . . "
"Ah," said Julia, "I am sure you could." And whenever
after that she telephoned, the Olympian appeared with
lightning rapidity.
Moreover, Julia does n't only listen to bores, she goes
further; she drinks in what they have to say and laughs
spontaneously at their witless jokes. It is royally splendid.
Of course now and then she has to
retire to a sanatorium to seek silence and a rest cure,
for eternal tact tries the most robust health.
One of her customers has a chicken farm, and, next to
the agricultural department, there is no one who knows so
much of cocks and hens, their food and their vagaries as
Julia. Another is a rose grower, and on slugs too she could
take a degree. Her true position in the world should be that
of an ambassadress in a foreign country having very
complicated relations with America, - Japan, for example.
With Julia there to pour oil on the troubled waters, we
would never be embroiled in war.
So, without energy, I stayed on. The first impetus to
encourage my departure occurred at a charming dinner in
the house of that wonderfully successful woman, Elizabeth
Marbury. She lives in Washington Irving's pretty, old house
in Seventeenth Street; it is decorated and furnished in
perfect taste by her friend and comrade, Elsie de Wolfe,
and is one of the few old landmarks left in that restless city
of constant change and continual progress.
I remembered that my grandfather had dined with
Washington Irving in this very house. In that white
dining-room whose walls must have heard many a brilliant
jeu d'esprit, he had talked and laughed and told stories (for he
was a famous raconteur) which that delightful writer
afterwards used in Wolfert's Roost.
I heard at my left a fragment of conversation between a
Southern lady, living in England, and Professor Pupin.
"So do I," she said, "but, as an American, I don't
think you are entitled to it. But now that we have
settled the question of your nationality, where do you
really come from?"
He said smiling, "I am a Slav. Does that mean
anything to you?"
"Oh, yes," she said, "a Slav can come from Poland,
or Russia, or Bulgaria."
"As a matter of fact," the professor replied, "I hail
from a place that doubtless you have never heard of,
the Balkans."
"The Balkans!" said the lady, with a twinkle in her
eye. "Why, my husband has been devoted to a lady
in London for twenty years, who lives round the corner
from us, and whenever I ask him where she is he always
says, 'In the Balkans.' "
"Now why," said the professor, "this long devotion?"
"Well," said the lady, "this Greek siren is said to
be wicked, beautiful, and fascinating."
"Surely," said the professor, "you don't expect a
man to withstand so seductive a combination?"
"No," said the lady, "I am very broad-minded; I
don't expect a man to withstand any combination."
"That," said the professor, "is very kind of you,
but it shows a lack of credulity. A perfect woman
should always be trusting."
"The Balkan influence," said the lady, "destroys
trust, and I make no presence to perfection."
"Listen!" said the professor; "they are talking
about New Thought across the table. Are you
interested in it?"
"A bit," answered the lady, "but I have a much older
religion than that."
"What is it?" asked the professor.
She replied, "I am a London Buddhist."
"That sounds broad," said the professor, "and what does
your creed embody?"
Said the lady: "Reincarnation, tolerance, quick
understanding - for instance, when I meet a very
agreeable man, with a foreign accent, but an American at
heart, I know that we have been friends in a Paleozoic
time."
"Fair lady," said the professor, "I see that you, too, are
from the Balkans."
As I listened, I said to myself, "Southern people still
possess the art of conversation. I will go to the South and
be amused."
And next morning letters came from Washington which
aroused me to immediate action. My brother Sam wrote:
BRIERBANK,
CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND,
December 15th.
DEAREST BESSIE,
Lois and I were delighted to read this morning of your
arrival in New York. Of course you are coming to spend
Christmas in the bosom of your family, so write us how
soon you will arrive. We will give you Maryland oysters, a
Virginia turkey, fresh cranberry sauce, candied sweet
potatoes, fried hominy and bully ice cream. I will
guarantee you will relish your Christmas dinner.
Our house is full of servants to wait on you, I do not
know whether with judgment, but I am sure you will be
entertained and amused. The butler, the cook's husband,
got his house training from driving a Knox express waggon
for nineteen years, and is just a trifle absent-minded as to
plates and dishes. In the dining-room when he is not falling
over his own feet, he is absently standing on his
heels, but if you remind him of food, he will willingly serve it
to you, for he is amiable and well-disposed.
Our chambermaid is one Harrison Leffingwell, who came
to be a chauffeur but fell from the motor to making beds, as
soon as I perceived that he did n't know the difference
between a radiator and a trunk rack. He is shaped like Sir
Richard Calmady, but he can walk and Sir Richard could
not; and he makes a better chambermaid than the wenches,
who are not willing to leave the city. I have an idea that you
will be able to get more work out of Harrison Leffingwell
than we do. He likes fine clothes, so bring your best frocks
along, and he likes the grand air, and being ordered about.
We have told him that you are English, so he is already duly
impressed.
I regret to say the one time he drove the motor he sent it
to the machine shop for a fortnight's repairs, so I cannot
meet you at the station, but Harrison will be there to take all
the enormous quantities of useless and unnecessary luggage
you English carry about with you, and will put it on the car
which almost passes our door.
Lois is busy with the Christmas tree. Mysterious
packages continually arrive and the children are full of vivid
interest in them. I am going to keep Coco until the end of
your visit, although he is in danger of sudden dissolution,
being such a vagabond that he will not stay in the house, and
the police are on the track of all wandering dogs. Not even a
muzzle will save him, as there is an epidemic of rabies in
Chevy Chase; but I know you would like to see him before
he goes as a "paying guest" to the country. I shall have to
send him a good long distance from home, otherwise he will
turn up again, as he dislikes darkies as much as a Northern
man. And the only person I can get to take him until the
epidemic is over is a negro farmer living in Virginia.
Coco was a friend of yester year, an interesting mongrel
brought over from England by a dog fancier as a hound of
the purest breed. But he seemed to have been crossed by
a mastiff, for he soon began to grow to an enormous size
and his owner in disgust turned him loose upon the
community, where he picked up a precarious living, until he
made acquaintance with Sam. Then began his morning
calls at Brierbank. These continued for a few weeks, until
one afternoon, very quietly and unobtrusively, he entered
the drawing-room, and stowed himself away in a dark
corner. A few successive afternoons he did the same
thing; a little later he extended his visits until evening, and
one blessed night he stayed until next day, and after that
was legally adopted.
The days of his vagabondage were over; he was
homeless no longer, and he never put on airs, remembering
the time of his poverty and waifdom.
He was always enthusiastically grateful for the smallest
attention, or the slightest notice. His tail was like that of a
beaver, broad, wide and muscular. "Hello, Coco!" and that
heavy tail delivered a rapid number of heavy thumps, while
"Good Coco, good old dog," made him hysterical with
delight, and brought down a volley of thunderous strokes
which fairly shook the house.
On my former visit to Chevy Chase Coco and I had
become devoted friends, and I rejoiced to know he would
be there to welcome me. He was not like "Carlo," the
collie of Sam's neighbour across the way, quite unselfish,
gentle with children, always ready to play with them, no
matter how tired, and a perfect gentleman; but he had his
good points, and considering the want of training and
education of his puppyhood,
Coco was a very excellent specimen of the self-made dog.
Another of my letters was from Mary Clark, the loyal
and faithful friend of many years. She wrote:
I want you very much for Christmas week, but if the
family claim you, then my week must come later; but for
Christmas dinner I must have you. I know, dear Bessiekins,
how you still enjoy many things that grown-ups no longer
care for, and Bee and I (her daughter and my dearly loved
friend) have been preparing a surprise for you, an
old-fashioned Southern Christmas. Write or telegraph to me at
once, dear.
Mary, though a Southern woman, is extraordinarily
prompt and exact. She has not a drop, like me, of the "Old
Reliable" blood in her veins. If she arranges to go on
Tuesday she goes; if I arrange to go on Tuesday I go on
Wednesday, or maybe on Thursday morning, and why not
if the sun shines and someone wants me to stay?
I telegraphed to Mary that I would come to the Christmas
dinner, and to Sam to expect me the next afternoon.
Harrison Leffingwell met me at the station. He really is one
of the most comical looking negroes I ever saw. His face is
round with a wide flat nose, a huge mouth, splendid white
teeth, shoulders broad enough for a man six feet tall, and
arms extraordinarily long and strong, but he has scarcely any
legs at all, and somehow his idea of covering the deficiency
is to have his trousers made immensely wide. Consequently,
at a little distance he looks like the dwarf of the Arabian
Nights wearing Turkish trousers - certainly the lower part
of his body has the appearance of being attired in harem
garb. His strong long arms gathered up my
numerous bags and impedimenta, and we soon found
ourselves in Chevy Chase. Sam said that Harrison as he
advanced towards the house was entirely obscured by the
luggage, which appeared to be walking alone, but he was
as strong as a horse and could have carried more if
necessary.
Although it was late in December, the sun was shining
like May and there was every indication of a very green
Christmas. We were quite sure of this when Sam and I,
standing by a long French window looking out upon the
lawn, saw a flash of scarlet, and a slender Kentucky
cardinal swung himself to and fro on a little bare rose-bush.
He was soon joined by a blue-bird, with his faint rose
breast and his sweet little song, and later a silver dove
fluttered down from a tall tree.
"There," said Sam "did you ever in your life see such a
good-looking crowd? Is n't the red bird the handsomest
thing you ever laid your eyes on? And that blue-bird, with
his fashionable rose-coloured breast, I don't know but
after all he is the greater dandy of the two."
I said:
"And then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
Who hails with his warble the charms of the season."
" 'In mantle of sky blue and bosom so red - ' "
added Sam.
"Of course," I said, "that 's purely poetry, because his
bosom is n't really red, it 's pink. Look at his profile, is n't it
classic?"
"I have never seen red birds and blue-birds and doves in
December," said Sam; "they are here to celebrate your
home-coming. Look at the combination, red, white, and
blue, - that 's to arouse your patriotism."
Then Mary Lois, Sam's only daughter, came up to the
garden walk and the birds flew away. Sam said, "Mary
Lois, did n't you see those birds? You should have gone
round the back way."
Mary Lois has, I am sure, a successful career before her.
I shall expect her even without a dot, - and this will be a
greater triumph for America than either a polo victory or a
yacht trophy - to marry at least a Duke. For already at the
tender age of six she has a number of admirers, her father's
friends, who believe in deeds not words; they give her dolls
and boxes of candy and toys of every conceivable
description, and she has already all the qualities to make her
popular as a belle. In the first place, of course, she is very
pretty. Men are always talking about liking intellectual
women and admiring clever ones, but they fall in love with,
and make tragedies over the pretty ones. Beauty is the most
important asset, for beauty governs the world.
Mary Lois has golden hair, sympathetic, observant eyes, a
neat nose, and a charming smile that she never takes off.
She does not talk too much and she is exceedingly
affectionate, and oh, greatest gift of all, she is for ever
looking up and adoring. She loves praise and she loves to
give it. She is very gentle, delights in pretty clothes, keeps
them clean, and is always gentle and flattering.
When on a very hot afternoon a gentleman, himself a
father, goes out to Chevy Chase laden with a wax doll
fashionably dressed in clothes that button and unbutton, and
Mary Lois's eyes sparkle with gratitude and love and
adoration as he presents it to her, my hopes for a future
Duke are in the ascendant. She takes every correction with
gentle placidity, and she was
immediately sorry that she had not gone through the back
garden, and avoided scaring the birds away.
Harrison Leffingwell proved an excellent servant. He
brushed my clothes, gave my shoes a brilliant polish,
cleaned my silk blouses, pressed my tailor-made coats and
skirts, and showed real talent as a maid. Also, when we
got to know each other better he told me he was a solo
singer in his church and sang hymns varied with rag-time
tunes to me, and certainly he has a beautiful tenor voice
and is quite capable of making a success in vaudeville. I
asked him one day whether he would go to England to live
with me. He said he would like it immensely. Sam was at
once interested about a livery for him. He thought there
ought to be scarlet somewhere, either a scarlet waistcoat
or a scarlet tie, and a blue coat with brass buttons and a
scarlet collar. He said: "Harrison can do the work of a
maid, answer the door, wait at table, and then in the
evening you can call him in, and let him entertain your
guests. It seems to me Leffingwell will be a unique
ornament to your establishment."
Rose is red and violet's blue,
Sugar 's sweet and so are you,
If you love me as I love you,
No knife can cut our love in two.
LOVE is a poor invertebrate thing, unless the people who
care for each other are congenial. They must enjoy long
talks, spontaneous laughs, long silences, and the confidences
that only midnight brings; for there is something about that
hour which induces a true communion of spirits. How Sam
and I have owled it, talking far into the morning, until Lois
has called out, "Are you two ever coming to bed?"
In every family certain members are particularly
congenial to each other. We two seem to have so much to
talk about - our father, first and best of all. I can always
talk of him, and Sam, who was only four when our father
died, can always listen. "You know," I said, disregarding
Lois, "Pappy was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin with the
tail of childern following after him. He had kept the heart of
a child and was one of them, and his pockets bulged with
candy and oranges for the little ones. He was tender to all
humanity, and he had a great taste for romance!"
And I told Sam my father's story of Jonathan Meigs,
who, some four generations ago, was a suitor for the
hand of a charming coquettish Virginia beauty. He was
desperately in love with her and anxiously uncertain as to
his fate. At last after months of abject devotion on his part,
he made up his mind to offer her his hand and heart, feeling
that if she refused him it would mean a life-long
disappointment.
The young lady lived on Capitol Hill in a house with a
garden in front and a long flagged path leading to the gate.
One beautiful moonlight night while she was sitting on the
balcony, and the mocking-bird trilled a love song to his mate,
Jonathan took his courage in both hands and proposed to the
love of his life. She was uncertain - said she liked him very
much, but she did not love him and could not marry him.
The blow of her refusal was even more terrible than he had
anticipated, and when he said good-night to her and walked
down the path, the moonlight streaming on his bare head,
she saw a face of deathlike pallor, and his shoulders were
bent like those of an old man.
In that moment pity entered her gentle heart, and a tender
maternal love came fluttering after it, for the love of every
true woman should have in it something of the mother too.
As Jonathan reached the front gate and raised the latch, he
heard a sweet, gentle, tender voice say, "Return, Jonathan!
Jonathan! Return!" In a moment he was a man again, the
colour came back to his face, he raised his head like a crest,
squared his shoulders, and walked up the path with the
proud step of a soldier who had won a battle. She was
standing on the balcony, and he knelt down before her and
kissed the hem of her gown, saying, "God bless you, dear,
for those beautiful words, 'Return, Jonathan.' "
there was a grand christening, and the name given to it was
"Return Jonathan."
There have been four Return Jonathans in the Meigs
family since.
"I hope," said Sam, "the name will ever continue."
The story of Senator Pettus was another of Pappy's
favourite love stories. Young Pettus belonged to an
excellent family, but his father had a moderate income and
he did not go to college. When he fell in love it was with a
girl of high education, great beauty and vaulting ambition.
She liked the attentions of the frank, agreeable young man,
but when he proposed marriage to her she said, "Mr. Pettus,
when I marry it must be a college-bred man, and a man of
energy and ambition. Life holds for me more than love."
He took his defeat very quietly, and the next thing she
heard of him was, that he had gone to college without even
saying good-bye to her. The years passed and she received
no letter nor any indication whatever that she was
remembered, but her thoughts often strayed to the young
man who had shown at least a practical regard for her
opinion, for she knew that his college course must have cost
both himself and his family a valiant effort. At the end of
four years, in the sweet summertime, she was sitting in the
garden in a little arbour all overgrown with roses, when she
heard a quick, triumphant step coming up the path, and
Edmund Pettus appeared before her, having graduated
brilliantly. He laid his diploma on her knee with a low bow,
saying, "Madam, I have been to college."
It had been a hardly won guerdon, for he was not like a
knight of old who had fought his fight in joust or tournament
in one glorious encounter. His battle had meant four years
of struggle and hard work, but
he had won. Of course the lady was his, for she looked at
the diploma with suspiciously shining eyes, and said, "I love
it." And, he answered leaning over and kissing her hand, "I
hope you love me a little too."
They were married shortly afterwards and lived happy
ever after. "Mighty pretty," said Sam, "all that old romance
of the South."
Lois called down the stairs, "Do you know the hour? It
is one o'clock; time for even owls to stop hooting."
"To-morrow," said Sam, "we will go to bed at nine
o'clock." Oh, those good resolutions, so delightfully broken!
The next day was Christmas, and Lois and I went into
Washington to dine with Mary. The house presented a
festive appearance, with wreaths of holly and bunches of
holly and mistletoe adorning the pretty rooms. The menu
for the feast included Blue Point oysters, fresh from the
mouth of the Potomac River, a splendid Christmas turkey
stuffed with chestnuts, and served with sausages from
Virginia, a smoked ham of rare excellence, fried hominy,
candied sweet potatoes, cranberries, and wonderful
complex ice-cream of different layers and colours. But the
chef d'oeuvre of this dinner was my Santa Claus chimney
which adorned the centre of the table.
Bee has a singular talent for carpentry and the creation
of all sorts of pretty things, and instead of a Christmas tree
she had made the top of a chimney. It was of wood,
covered with red paper simulating little bricks. The edge of
the chimney was heaped thickly with a deep layer of snow,
which if it was not real snow looked very like it and lasted
better than the genuine article. The table all around the
chimney glittered with snowflakes, and Santa Claus waited
to descend
and fish up the Christmas presents with a small hook.
There was an affectionate thought for everybody at the
table, but Mary had imparted to my family and friends the
secret of the chimney, and the pretty things drawn up for
me by that little Santa Claus and his hook were so numerous
that I was deeply touched and it was more difficult for me
to smile than to weep. My gifts were chosen with love and
discretion, many of them being things useful for a wanderer
over the face of the earth like myself. When the last
remembrance, a silver book marker was fished out of the
chimney I said, "Now, no more gifts, or I shall be undone."
Injustice or unkindness has always a hardening tonic effect
upon me, but kindness, ah! that is different, it touches me
and makes me weak - it is what I most value in life.
But with all the affection and friendliness of my dear ones
in Washington - Sam, Lois, and Mary, and my other dear
Mary, and Bee, and my sister Minnie, so clever, so capable,
so kind and unselfish, with the executive ability of a
statesman and the courage of a soldier - I could not seem,
even in the midst of these happy influences to get any better
in health, so I decided to act on Mary Clark's advice and go
into Miss Sylvester's Nursing Home for a rest cure.
The evening that I arrived there, feeling desperately
lonely and depressed, just as I got out of the carriage a
brisk-looking cheerful fox terrier ran affectionately to me, stood
upon his hind legs, thrust his icy nose in my hand and said,
"Don't be downhearted, I am going to stand by you, whatever
happens." He then whisked round and disappeared, and
when I went into the house and to my room, he was sitting
in the middle of
my bed, with his pink tongue hanging out, smiling most
cheerily.
The nurse said, "I am sorry, but you will have to send
your dog away, we do not admit dogs to the Home." "He is
not my dog," I said, "he is just a sympathetic soul who has
come to give me courage." The sympathetic soul, however,
had decided on the necessity of remaining permanently
and he sat perfectly rigid, growling, and showing his teeth
when requested to go. In the end, the cab driver was called
upstairs and led him away. He cast a regretful glance at
me, which seemed to say, "I am astonished that you have
refused my kind offices. I had intended to stay here and
comfort you." And, indeed, my last hope seemed to vanish
with him.
I cannot imagine anything more trying for a restless,
independent human being than the first week of a rest cure.
To give yourself, your mind, your body, your desires, your
wishes all completely into the hands of someone else is so
difficult. It requires strength of will to endure it. My one
consolation was my secret plan of a solitary elopement.
Every day during my rest I intended to dress myself in the
afternoon, quietly slip away, and appear unexpectedly at
Mary Clark's; and without my saying a word Miss
Sylvester divined my intention. She said she never entered
the room without expecting to find me gone. The next
week the régime was easier to bear; the week after that I
liked it; and the fourth week I was full of regret at leaving.
Miss Sylvester, a Johns Hopkins graduate, is an ideal
nurse, calm, firm, not affected by any untoward symptoms
and having much experience in nervous diseases. She
understands perfectly how to treat
patients suffering from them. I could not have believed it
possible for anyone to have gained as much benefit from
treatment as I did from that rest cure, and yet I did not
take it as intelligently as I would a second one. I was not
reconciled to the rigid rule of seeing no one, and writing no
letters and just being an obedient child, and I struggled to
the very end against my cold-water packs. Two a day,
forty minutes altogether in a cold sheet, and yet nothing
was more beneficial to my raw and blistered nerves than
this lingering application of cold water. When I have time I
am going back to take another rest cure, and no patient
that Miss Sylvester has ever had will be so docile, so
obedient, as I.
I went back for a few days to Chevy Chase before
going to Virginia. Sam always came to my room in the
early morning for our coffee together. "Are you dressed?"
he asked. "No, not yet," I said. "Well, put on your kimono
and I'll come in." We then began our usual long talk, and
I remembered to enquire one day what had become of our
old housekeeper.
"Is Josephine still living?" I asked him.
"No," he said, "she died some years ago. The fact is,
she never fully recovered from her affair with Silas Bundy."
"Poor thing," I said, "before that time she had never
looked at a man."
"What a misfortune," said Sam, "that in her middle age
she should fall entirely, helplessly, violently and jealously in
love with Silas Scipio Bundy." And as we drank our
coffee, Josephine's love affair came vividly back to me.
She was a bright-skinned mulatto who lived with us
from the time we started housekeeping in Washington.
Her pretty face was perfectly round, with bright dark eyes,
wavy, not kinky, hair, and when she smiled her teeth were
dazzlingly white. Being fat and hopelessly lazy, to
compensate for her worthlessness she made herself
diplomatically and flatteringly agreeable and she was, when
necessary, extremely capable. There was no regularly
appointed place in the house for her, but she was generally
filling in some hiatus. If the cook was suddenly taken ill,
Josephine went into the kitchen and we revelled in excellent
meals. If the housemaid left at a moment's notice she took
charge of the bedrooms. If the butler decamped without
warning, Josephine waited at the dining-room table, never
forgot the salt, or the pepper, or the mustard, or the clean
napkins; arranged the flowers with an understanding hand
and all went well until the new servant arrived.
Generally speaking, she was a sort of useful maid,
sewing a little, answering the door a little, brushing clothes,
cleaning shoes; and sitting with her hands restfully folded,
waiting patiently until the time came to quit work. Her great
attraction was her dependableness and her domesticity, for
she was consistently lazy - her fondest lover could not
deny that. She cared nothing whatever for people of her
own colour, she rarely ever went to church, she never went
out in the evening, and was as much a fixture in the house
as one of the chairs or tables.
When Sam was born, a much belated, but altogether
welcome little brother, Josephine became his devoted
nurse. In that capacity she was as excellent as in all others.
She did not wear out the baby's patience with too many
clean pinafores, or a too clean face, but she made his
childhood entirely happy. He could go out
in the morning in the garden and make mud pies all
day if he liked. If he refused to change his dress in the
evening she took his supper to the nursery and regaled him
with enchanting stories until he went to sleep. He was
certainly the most adorable child I
ever saw, with deep sapphire-blue appealing eyes, a tow head,
a little round face and a rare irresistible
smile. Of course he had his own way in everything, but he was
unspoilable.
All my people have an intense love of animals; in Sam
it is almost a mania. At one period he had
guinea pigs, prairie dogs, three chickens, two hens and a
rooster, a frog, a fox terrior, spotted Japanese mice,
and a good-sized alligator of unusually rapid growth. Of
all his family he loved the alligator best. When he and the
alligator were about the same size, he used to carry him
upstairs from the kitchen to the bathroom
in the evening for his swim. At almost every step he
walked on the alligator's tail, and we always expected to see
him enter the bathroom minus a hand or an ear,
but strange to say, this almost wooden animal seemed
to have developed a human heart, and he really looked
at his master with eyes quite watery with affection.
At this time, when Sam was about six, Josephine
had moved down permanently into the kitchen as cook,
and was not in the least disturbed by prairie dogs in one corner,
guinea pigs in the other, chickens walking in and out, the fox terrier
always under heel, and the alligator generally asleep in the largest
and most comfortable chair.
She still retained the old habit of never going out of the house
so how she met Silas Bundy remained for
ever a profound secret, but that she did meet him is a
tragic certainty. Every Thursday evening for about
six months, Silas Bundy in elaborate attire called upon
Josephine, who, for the first time in her life really cleaned up
the kitchen, arrayed herself in a stiffly starched calico dress,
put a table cover over the large table in the centre of the
room, and under this shoved the cages of the various
animals, and arranged a delicious supper for the tall black
plumber. Sam said he hid himself under the table with the
animals on several occasions, but he never noticed any
tenderness between Silas and Josephine. They conversed in
a distant manner with very large words of their own
composition. Josephine said she was glad she "war n't
skittish as the animals, who were always in competual
motion." Silas ate his supper and then rose to go, saying,
"Miss Josephine, I suttenly will see you dis nex' comin'
Thursday evening if I live an' nothin' happens." And
Josephine answered, "Mr. Silas, I suttenly will be mighty
sorry if anything wuz to happen."
On St. Valentine's Eve Josephine got a valentine, one of
the good old-fashioned kind with two splendid red hearts
pierced by a gilt arrow and upheld by robust, be-ribboned
cupids who balanced pink toes on a cushion of forget-me-nots.
All this loveliness was surrounded by a heavy wreath
of vivid pink roses, and underneath was written in violet ink:
Rose is red and violet 's blue,
Sugar 's sweet and so are you,
If you love me as I love you,
No knife can cut our love in two.
Sam told me that for many days, even in the middle of
cooking dinner, Josephine would get out her valentine, pull
the string that made the wreath come forward and the
hearts overlap, and breathe a deep sigh of
ecstasy, then put it back with a few stray bits of dried
vegetables into her table drawer until the next blissful
moment to look at it arrived; and ever afterwards it was her
most treasured possession.
Never going out and never spending any money for many
years, Josephine had saved a considerable sum and was
quite well off for a woman in her position, so Silas was an
impatient bridegroom and the future bride fixed an early
wedding day. All the family gave her useful and excellent
presents: linen sheets and pillow cases, a quantity of towels,
nice curtains, kitchen utensils, and to these mother added a
whole set of bedroom furniture.
Then a day came when all the meals were full of red
pepper and absolutely uneatable. Also the bride elect was
seen to go restlessly up and down stairs at least a dozen
times - a thing that had never occurred in all the years she
had lived with us. After supper she and a very cruel plaited
black cowhide whip with an end of knife-like sharpness,
which some friend had sent Sam from Texas, disappeared
together. A "grapevine telegram" had reached her about
Silas, and she waddled off to verify it. Perhaps she was not
greatly surprised to find him sitting in a small cosy house
with a very black lady by his side, presumably his wife, or as
the darkies say, "a lady friend." Josephine was a very large
woman, extremely muscular and strong. She had never been
the least bit angry in all her life, but now that she was
roused, there was an enormous accumulation of temper on
hand and she was like an elephant gone amok.
She stormed the room of the Silas Bundys', gave him a
cut with the keen lash of the whip across the face, severing
the skin from the flesh, nearly blinding him.
She then touched up Mrs. Silas, who ran screaming into the
yard; and after the Silas Bundys there followed through the
open door a perfect avalanche of china, glass, pictures and
furniture. George Washington and Lincoln were ruined for
ever by splinters of glass which scratched their faces. Silas
and Mrs. Bundy were also gashed and bleeding from
cut-glass goblets thrown with unerring aim. Then Josephine
went upstairs; and the wardrobe of Mrs. Bundy, torn and
fluttering in the breeze, with jugs and basins and ripped-up
mattresses, looking-glasses, Silas Bundy's best clothes
tattered and torn to bits, and pillows emptied of their
feathers, all wildly descended through the window into the
garden.
The frightened screams of the Bundys, or the crash of
falling furniture, or the clouds of feathers floating out upon
the night attracted the notice of the police, and eventually
they arrived at the gutted house, arrested Josephine, and
with tufts of feathers clinging to their fine uniforms,
escorted her home at ten o'clock for mother to go her bail.
If a miracle had been performed, the family could not have
been more surprised. That the quiet, sweet-tempered,
amiable and conservative Josephine should have wounded
and beaten husband and wife and demolished the contents
of an entire house was unbelievable, incomprehensible. The
policemen said the wreck looked like the work of a cyclone
or tornado. Josephine's eyes were of a deep red and the
black whip which she carried was quite moist and had a
suspicious substance clinging to it that might have been and
probably was human skin.
When the day for her trial came, Josephine, escorted by
mother, went to court. A good lawyer was employed for
the defence. Silas and Mrs. Bundy, with
their wounds neatly dressed, appeared against her. Our
lawyer made an excellent defence, giving a short account of
the blameless and amiable existence of the faithful servant,
and her many years of devoted service. He described in
glowing terms the blackguardism of the would-be bigamist,
sitting there in smug complacency by the side of his already
one too many wife. Mother was genuinely anxious, for she
really loved poor sorry Josephine.
The Judge, an old friend of the family, with a sense of
humour, turned to her and said, "Josephine Paschal, what
have you got to say for yourself?" Josephine, the poor
violent, destructive, faithful elephant, looked at the Judge
with imploring eyes, the corners of her mouth turned down
like a yellow baby about to cry, and for a moment made no
answer. Then bursting into tears, she covered her face with
her nice clean apron, rocked her huge bulk violently
backwards and forwards and said, "I ain't got nothin' to say,
'ceptin' I wants my Silas Bundy - I des wants my Silas
Bundy, my Silas Bundy."
The whole court room was convulsed with laughter, but
Josephine got off without even a fine, while Silas Bundy left
the court a vainer man than when he entered it.
I said, after I had finished my coffee, "How it all comes
back to me now, although I have n't thought of it for years!
Poor Josephine!"
"And," said Sam, "although Josephine continued to be a
splendid cook, the light of her life had gone out for ever with
Bundy. I don't think she was ever quite the same again. One
night when the alligator had grown too big for me to carry
upstairs, she carried him up for me, put him in the bathtub
and absent-mindedly
turned on the hot water and he was scalded to death.
Then my heart was quite broken. For there never was such
a temperamental alligator, so affectionate, so sensible, and
so handsome. Poor Josephine, she never saw Bundy again,
but she was faithful to the family until her death."
The man who melts
With social sympathy, though not allied,
Is than a thousand kinsmen of more worth.
EURIPIDES.
WE talked over various places for my after cure, and I
decided on Charles Town, West Virginia. I had heard of its
quaintness, and old-time charm, and I knew the weather
would be real West Virginia weather, crisp, frosty, and
delicious. Luckily for me my faithful Bee had not the heart
to let me go alone, and arranged that we should take the
afternoon train which reached Charles Town about six
o'clock. Dr. Venning met us at the station and advised Miss
Anna Hughes's Sanatorium. Usually it is a place for active
work, as many operations are performed there, but at the
moment it was unusually quiet.
I had a delightful bedroom, a little sitting-room, and a
bathroom all on the first floor. The weather was not too cold
for us to walk and drive about the country. Bee is born to
understand and love the whole animal world, but horses are
her first favourites, and she is an excellent whip. When she
went to the stable the livery man, in the process of
harnessing the horse to the buggy, said, "You 've got a good
horse here; Maud ain't got but one fault in the world and that
she can't help."
"Well," said the livery man, "she 's ugly. She was born
ugly. She was an ugly colt, and she 's ugly now, but except
for that she 's perfect and there ain't nothin' on earth that
can scare her, neither automobile, nor train nor nothin'."
And Maud was not only "ugly," she was uniquely ugly. A
more singular looking animal cannot be imagined. She was
evidently built for the present fashion, and could wear a
hobble skirt with great success. I have never seen such a
narrow figure, in fact her body looked like a brown almond
set on four slim legs. Her head was immense and very bony,
but she had large lovely eyes and as the livery man had said,
Maud was sensible. Neither trains of cars, nor snorting
motors made the slightest impression upon her.
A special sense indeed seemed to be given to the horses
of West Virginia, for Dr. Venning told me of an old negro
who was driving leisurely across a railway track, and even a
long train loaded with coal did not in the least hurry him, and
when one of the cars touched and lifted the back of the cart,
almost turning it over, the horse stood quite still, and the old
negro looking around, called out angrily to the passing train,
"You-all better min' out what you 're doing. I 'm goin'
straight home and tell Marse John Carter de way what you
is tryin' to destroy dis cart, and he' ll come down here and
gib' you a good and planty. He will so, I tell you dat right
now."
Charles Town was surveyed, laid out, and settled by
Charles Washington, a brother of George Washington. And
the Washington house was its special point of interest, with
a mantelpiece of fine carved marble, a gift from George
Washington, and a twin to the dining-room mantelpiece in
Mount Vernon. The old
house, which still belongs to some member of the
Washington family, is now in the hands of a working
manager, and though it has a park and noble trees, it is used
only as a farm, and lacks the graces and distinction that a
gentleman would give it.
The little town lies high and is beautifully situated. It was
in the Charles Town court house that John Brown was tried.
He was hanged in a near-by field, now the site of a fine
house of colonial architecture, which he is good enough not
to haunt, at least they have never had any sign or token of
his presence. Indeed if it had not been for the stirring song
of "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but
his soul is marching on," I fear that he himself would occupy
only a very small and indifferent part in history.
One of the most historic, interesting, and beautiful old
places around Charles Town is that of Mrs. Briscoe. It is a
fine and exact copy of an old English mansion, a large
square hall with a quaint staircase and wide generous rooms
on either side. The beautifully proportioned drawing-room is
papered with one of those charming hand-painted panelled
papers depicting delightful Italian gardens, with swans and
marble fountains, and vistas beyond the bluest lake, and
deepest green of summer. In the hall there were some
interesting portraits, one of General William Dark, the
grandfather of William Dark Briscoe. He fought in the war
of the Revolution and was taken prisoner and confined in a
man-of-war outside Philadelphia. He said the English
soldiers would shove him a bowl of soup and say, "There,
drink, you rebel dog."
Mrs. William Dark dressed herself as a cabin boy, tied
her hair in a queue and got on board the ship to see her
husband. According to a portrait she was a
slender, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked, daring young Virginia
lady. The commander of the English man-of-war had a
keen eye for beauty and he discovered her sex almost
immediately, but was so filled with admiration of her
courage and daring, that when she left the ship, he gave her
a chest filled with fine linen and lace. A remnant of the
latter is still preserved as a family heirloom. Another portrait
is of the child of this American Rosalind, a little girl with
brown hair, neatly parted and worn in curls on either side of
the face, her leaf-green gown trimmed with the historic
lace, and a broad ribbon and locket round her neck. By the
side of her portrait hangs the speech of Thomas Jefferson
on his inauguration, printed on white satin and sent to the
Briscoes by special messenger from Monticello.
Among Mrs. Briscoe's treasures is a letter written on
thick, faded yellow paper and folded after the old-fashioned
manner to simulate an envelope. The red seals still dangle
on it, and the handwriting is frank and boyish. It is
addressed to Dr. John Briscoe, Birkshaugh, New Biggin,
Cumberland, and the letter reads:
OUIDIHAM, September, 1663.
To Dr. JOHN BRISCOE,
Greeting:
DEAR SIR,
As the privy council have decided that I shall not be
disturbed or dispossessed of the charter granted by His
Majesty, the Ark and the Pinnace Dove will sail from
Gravesend about the first of October. And if you are of the
same mind as when I conversed with you I would be glad to
have you join the colony.
Dr. Briscoe was of the same mind and sailed with Lord
Baltimore for America and settled in Virginia, where the
Briscoe family have lived ever since and have taken firm
root, for I think I never saw people love a home more. Dr.
John Briscoe's wife asked to be buried so that she could
look towards the house, and there is a little shaft of granite
in the garden where she wished it placed.
America instilled a strong love in her colonists. It is no
infrequent thing to find an old tomb in the beautiful garden of
a Southern plantation which marks the resting-place of a
former owner who wished ever to sleep among the flowers
he loved so well. There are fine old trees around the Briscoe
place, a bountiful spring bubbles up to the right of the house
and forms a pool, upon which ducks lead their little broods
for their first swim. The water is clear as crystal, is ice cold,
and by the side of this spring stands the spring house where
milk, watermelons, and fruits are kept cool on the hottest
summer day. In this little town, as in England, the young and
adventurous leave for the larger cities, but there are men
and women in the distant parts of America who look back to
their childhood in Charles Town with affection, and whose
tenderest memory is connected with the old Briscoe
mansion, the blossoming apple and peach orchard and the
deep sweet spring. Even the stranger finds a warm
welcome and hospitality from the gentle châtelaine within
that gate.
Another house that greatly interested me was "Claymont,"
where Frank Stockton wrote so many of his delighful books.
It belonged originally to Bushrod Washington, a nephew of
George Washington. Mr. Stockton paid thirty or forty
thousand dollars for the place, made enough money to
cultivate and improve
it, and left a considerable fortune, for humour always
commands its price. Dr. Venning, who was his friend as
well as his physician, told me he was a firm believer in
realism, and at one time when he was in New York he
called on a noted surgeon, sent in his name, and when he
was admitted to the consulting-room said: "Doctor, I did n't
come to see you about myself, I came to consult you about
a very dear friend of mine who has met with an accident.
He was knocked down on Broadway, suffered a fracture
of the skull, and is now in hospital. I am here to ask your
further advice for him."
The surgeon stiffened, and said, "I have not seen your
friend, Mr. Stockton; but even if I had, medical etiquette
forbids that I should interfere with the treatment of the
other physicians at the hospital."
"Well, doctor," said Frank Stockton, with a whimsical
smile, "to tell you the truth, the man is a hero of mine in a
book I am writing; and now that I have got him in hospital I
don't know how the dickens to cure his wound and get him
out again. Perhaps you would n't mind helping me."
"Oh, in that event," said the surgeon, "I am entirely at
your disposal." So he dressed the wound, there were no
complications following, the man rapidly got well, and he
was out of hospital before Mr. Stockton left the surgeon's
house.
"Now," said Mr. Stockton, "You have treated with
unsurpassed skill my friend's terrible accident, roused him
from unconsciousness and effected a wonderful cure, so I
must pay you his fee."
The doctor said, "I could n't think of such a thing." But
the writer insisted, and left his fee upon the surgeon's table.
Frank Stockton was a small, delicate, frail man, whose
body was not equal to his active, creative mind. I know no
books that have given me purer joy than his. He has a
charming style of his own, and his humour is inimitable and
natural. Take, for example, the beginning of The House of
Martha. A precise, exact, comfort-loving young man,
makes a long tour in England and on the continent. He was
not at all fond of travelling, and it was the anticipation of
telling his provincial friends who had never crossed the
ocean, what he had seen and done, rather than a love of
adventure, which caused his protracted journeyings. But
when he returned to the friendly, self-centred New England
village, nobody was in the least interested in listening to him.
As soon as he began to describe Windsor Castle to a
neighbour, the lady interrupted him with an account of a
blizzard from which the village had suffered while he was
away, and he found that Holyrood, Mary Stuart, and the
blood-stain of Rizzio, were nothing in comparison to the
founding of the free Kindergarten; the Venus of Milo and
the Arc de Triomphe paled into insignificance beside the
troubles of Jane and Adelaide who had to go without music
lessons for nearly ten days on account of measles in the
family. There was one person left, who he knew, would
listen to him with appreciation - the grandmother who had
taken his mother's place. But when he described to her his
three days in the forest of Arden, and the veritable Jaques
he met there, even her attention wandered and she
remarked: "That must have been extremely interesting.
Speaking of woods, I wish you would say to Thomas that I
want him to bring some of that rich wood soil, and put it
round the geraniums nearest the house." This was the last
straw. But the traveller,
gifted with a dogged perseverance, inserted in a Boston
paper this advertisement. "Wanted . . . a respectable and
intelligent person willing to devote several hours a day to
the recitals of a traveller. Address, stating compensation
expected. Oral."
Now, who has not experienced in life, at some time or
other, a very great disappointment in a listener? I know on
many occasions I have started out with enthusiasm on what
I considered a humorous story and in a few moments I
have found that nobody was paying the slightest attention,
and that the person I had most relied upon for appreciation
had herself begun another story, and everybody was
listening to her. The art of a good listener is indeed a rare
one. I never saw its absence more markedly demonstrated
than once in London, when a friend told a really witty story
and told it well. Suddenly a lady who had not heard a word
of it, turned vague and empty, though kind eyes, towards
the company and said, "That was funny, was n't it? It
reminds me of a story I know." And she proceeded to tell
the same story from beginning to end, leaving out the
point entirely. She never knew why it was greeted with
such uproarious laughter, thinking, of course, that she had
made an enormous success.
Beside Frank Stockton's humour, which was original
and unexpected, he wrote with remarkable charm. How
poetical is this little paragraph from The Late Mrs. Null:
There are times in the life of a man when the goddess of
Reasonable Impulse raises her arms above her head, and
allows herself a little yawn; then she takes off her crown
and hangs it on the back of her throne, after which she
rests her sceptre on the floor, and, rising, stretches herself
to her full height, and goes forth to take a long refreshing
walk by the waters of Unreflection. Then her minister
Prudence stretches himself upon a bench and with his
handkerchief over his eyes, composes himself for a nap.
Discretion, Wordly Wisdom, and even sometimes that agile
page called Memory, no sooner see their royal mistress
depart, than, by various doors, they leave the palace and
wander far away.
Then, silently, with sparkling eyes and parted lips, comes
that fair being Unthinking Love. She puts one foot upon the
lower step of the throne, she looks about her, and with a
quick bound she seats herself. Upon her tumbled curls she
hastily puts a crown, with her small white hand she grasps
the sceptre, then, rising, waves it and issues her commands.
The crowd of emotions which serve her as satellites seize
the great seal from the sleeping Prudence, and the new
Queen reigns.
If there has been a time in the life of a man or a woman,
when Reasonable Impulse has not been supplanted by
Unthinking Love, then I am sorry for them, for they have
missed much. Everyone, young or old, should have some
little green and fragrant memory hidden away from the
world, of spontaneous impulse, of surprised, uncalculating
love.
Dr. Venning is a bold motorist and we had long drives
along the banks of the Shenandoah, that river so closely
associated with the great soldier, whose legion stood a wall
of stone, in the fiercest fire of the enemy. "Do you," I said,
"remember the old war poem about Stonewall Jackson?"
"Yes," said Dr. Venning, "I used to recite it with
martial effect when a boy - "
Come! stack arms, men! Pile on the rails
Stir up the camp fires bright,
No matter if the canteen fails,
We 'll make a roaring night.
Here Shenandoah brawls along,
There lofty 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 so pat,
So calm, so blunt, so true.
The "Blue Light Elder" knows them 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 who 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 Jackson's Way."
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 ere the morn."
That 's "Stonewall Jackson's way."
The sun's bright glances rout the mists
Of morning - and, by George!
There 's Longstreet struggling in the lists,
Hemmed in an ugly gorge.
Pope and his columns whipped before,
"Bay'nets and grape!" hear Stonewall roar;
"Charge Stuart! pay off Ashby's score!"
Is "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."
If there was no road the little car responded to the
hand of Dr. Venning and skimmed over bumps and hollows
like a swallow. Can there be, in all the world, more beautiful
waters than the Shenandoah? The Indians thought the origin
divine, and indeed it came by its name through an almost
miraculous happening.
Late in his life a girl child was born to a great chief, and
she grew up as perfect as though sculptured by a master
hand in bronze. Her head and throat were nobly fashioned,
and her round limbs were superhumanly agile. Her long,
black, silky hair was of great thickness and extraordinary
length, and the scarlet blood of an open-air existence
mantled itself like damask roses in her lips and cheeks. She
was not only beautiful but accomplished, for she could send
an arrow from the bow to rival Diana, and there was never
a fisherman so wily or so lucky as she. The name of this
beautiful goddess was Shenandoah, and the tribe of Indians
to which she belonged lived near a crystal-clear, low-singing,
swiftly-flowing nameless river. It was rich in many varieties
of fish, but especially renowned
for its bass, and one fish was bigger, handsomer,
and more crafty than all the rest. He was frequently seen
apparently trying to guide a reckless youngster away from
a seductively cruel morsel. If he ever cast his knowing eye
in the direction of bait it was only to frown and to warn.
Shenandoah respected his wisdom but was ambitious to
catch him. She had been fishing for many days and he had
been busy keeping guard. In a fatigued moment he was
seen in a deep pool, near the bottom of the river, apparently
taking a nap, for his watchful eyes were closed and he lay
without movement. Shenandoah, as noiseless as a still
summer day, raised herself to her full height, stretched out
her perfect arms and pointed hands, and suddenly cut the
water like an unerring knife. When she rose again to the
surface, it was with the struggling fish clasped to her bosom
with muscles of steel, but she could not land without
hands, so she swam down to a depth shallow enough for
her to stand upright. Her father, returning from his day's
hunt, found her on the bank of the river with the big
fish balanced in her strong arms above her sleek head. A
splash, and the bass slowly swam out to mid-stream. The
great chief asked why she had set free her longed-for prize,
and she said he looked at her with human eyes that said, "It
was not fair sport, you took advantage of me while I
slept. You are no Indian." She could not stand this
reproach so she returned him to the waters. But the big
fish was never seen again. Perhaps he died of
mortification from such an extraordinary unfishlike
experience.
The next day there was a great gathering to
celebrate her prowess, and with impressive ceremony the
river was named after the beautiful woodswoman,
"Shenandoah."
The clear water comes rushing through from the heart of
the mountain bringing with it cool and refreshing air, as it
winds along the side of the Blue Ridge. Its loftiest crags are
where the eagle builds its nest, and at evening the hunter
sees the wild deer drinking from its swift water, while
miniature fountains and wreaths of crystal are sent high up
in the ambient air by great rocks that bar its swift progress.
The Shenandoah has had many illustrious lovers -
Washington, and Jackson, and Jefferson, all appreciated its
beauties, and every Virginian loves it and the legend
connected with it.
After my week in Charles Town I was able to travel,
and, on my way to South Carolina, stayed some days in
Washington, that fair city which even in winter has the
appearance of spring, with its endless avenues of trees,
many of them evergreen, and numerous grassy squares of
late blooming flowers. In spring and summer, with every
shrub in leaf and every flower in blossom and the streets a
sea of unbroken green, it is like a great emerald. Governor
Shepherd's plans have been carried out - broad avenues,
fine streets, all the old trees saved and rows of new ones
planted. When finished it will be one of the most beautiful
cities in the world and it is to be hoped it will always keep its
independent character, southern atmosphere and individual
habits and customs.
In the summer there is no prettier sight in the evenings
than an open street-car going Chevy Chase way, looking as
if it had suddenly broken into blossom, with its freight of
hatless women and girls, clothed in fresh diaphanous white.
And on the warmest days
it is quite ordinary to meet ladies going to market or
shopping with a pretty parasol for a head covering, instead
of a hat. The market in Washington used to be quite a
rendezvous in the morning. The men of the family, if they
take an interest in the cuisine, often go to select some
particularly toothsome delicacy, and whenever a man takes
an interest in the table there is sure to be good cooking.
Even a poet assures us, that
"Man may live without hope - what is hope but deceiving,
He may live without love - what is passion but pining,
But where is the man that can live without dining?"
Cooks somehow are always more flattered by the praise of
a man than that of a woman and men will not put up with
bad cooking, also, they have the advantage of being
permitted to swear. I have often thought a Swearer in a
woman's club, who could be called upon to express what a
woman feels but dare not say when a dreadful dish is put
before her, would be most useful. For the office he would
require a stentorian voice, a fluent vocabulary, and prompt,
efficient action.
One of my red-letter days in Washington, I met Mrs.
Champ Clark at the Burlesons. She is, as all the world
knows, the wife of the Speaker of the House. But with her
strong personality, she is so much more than that. It is
difficult to describe a woman different from all other
women, and more difficult still to get a right perspective if
she has taken by storm your heart, your intelligence, and
your sense of humour. Mrs. Clark herself does n't look in
the least humorous. On the contrary, with her very slim,
erect, graceful figure, her white face and burning dark
eyes, she appears more like a tragic muse, for the sorrow
of the world weighs
upon her. I wonder whether happiness would not be quite
impossible for a sensitive human being - if, with a heart to
feel and a keen realisation of the cruel wrongs and
incurable miseries of humanity, every personal wish could
be gratified?
This distinguished lady says of herself: "I was the
youngest of seven children and they all waited on me, and
petted me. I had the happiest sort of childhood and then I
married Champ, and all the world knows what a husband he
is - perfect, as they go. And my children are satisfactory;
both of them have brought themselves up well. So what
have I to cast me down and darken my spirit? The golden
rule of 'Do as you would be done by,' and 'Love thy
neighbour as thyself,' - If I had my life to live over again how
I would flout and trample those mistaken rules! Now I've
formed a habit of caring for others and it 's too late. I 've
always got the poor, the unfortunate, and the failures on my
back. I 've always got a Civil Service list of women waiting
to get into office through my persuasive influence, and I 've
always girls on hand to recommend for all kinds of
occupations; I may hesitate to ask for something for a
woman, but I can refuse a girl nothing. You see my
Geneviève is a girl, a tender sensitive girl.
Suppose she wanted work, so sweet and modest
and pretty and old-fashioned as she is, she could n't
get it for herself, and if somebody refused to help her?
Sometimes I do get physically, mortally tired. Then I say
'Geneviève,' just a whisper of her name, and I go on and do
what I can. I 've a sort of feeling that what I do for the poor
and the needy will in some way come back to my child. It 's
her heritage from me."
lifts up the weak-hearted, comforts the afflicted, and
succours struggling womankind, for the sake of her
daughter! Surely the beautiful inheritance of sweet
Geneviève will not end here, but continue where "neither
moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves
do not break through nor steal."
I said, "Take care not to overdo your good work, you
are none too strong; and think of all your duties for the
coming winter." (The Speaker of the House of
Representatives has really as much power as the
President, and his wife is an overwhelmingly busy
woman.)
"I know," she said, "I know; and if I can just get two
women that I have on my hands now into one of the
government departments I 'm going to give myself a rest."
"No, you won't," said Adèle Burleson, Mrs. Clark's
great friend, and one of the wisest and cleverest little
women in Washington. "You'll have somebody else on
hand."
"No," said Mrs. Clark. "If I can only land these two I
won't bother anybody for a long time. Mr. Burleson, why
don't you help me?"
Albert said, "I 've done all I can, neither of the
women is qualified for the Civil Service. You know that."
"Qualified!" said Mrs. Clark scornfully. "They 've
got to live, and I believe sometimes they are hungry. Oh,
it 's weary work, I tell you. Champ's secretary has
written letters for me, and I 've made that nice secretary
of yours, Ruskin McArdle, who does all the things you
ought to do and don't do, write in your behalf, and I get
nothing done!"
"Has Ruskin been writing in my name?" asked
Albert.
"He has," said Mrs. Clark, "a beautiful letter in which he
spoke of the service of the lady's father to his country."
"No," said Albert, "I wrote that letter."
"Then," said Mrs. Clark, "what 's the use of being the
prominent member from Texas if your letters have no
effect?"
Albert said, "How long have you had this lady on your
hands?"
"Long enough," said Mrs. Clark, "nearly to give me
nervous prostration. You and Champ must storm the
departments. I must get her something to do; I tell you I
must. I 'll introduce her to you."
"No," said Albert, "not for anything in the world."
Mrs. Clark replied, "I 've introduced her to Ruskin; he
thinks she 's a dear woman."
Adèle remarked, "If Albert knew her, he 's easily
touched, - she would have him working as hard for her as
you do."
"Then," said Mrs. Clark, "some day I 'll surprise him
with an introduction."
Long ago it would have been the easiest thing in the
world for a woman of influence and importance to place a
clerk in Washington. A word would have done it, but that
time has passed and now, as in England, everything must go
by routine.
Adèle and I were lunching at the Capitol with Mrs. Clark
and I overheard her say in the Speaker's Gallery: "Now
why did you order such an elaborate menu?"
"She 's English," said Mrs. Clark, speaking of me; "I was n't
going to have her think we came from the creek."
I leaned over and said, "I don't know where you came
from, but I really did come from the creek, -
Waller's Creek in Texas. Not a very big creek, and not
always a wet creek, but that is where I came from. Adèle,
now, is more aristocratic; she came from Onion Creek, -
there 's always water there."
Mrs. Clark called me up on the telephone one morning to
ask if I had ever read Henry James' The Liars, and,
abbreviating the story, she told it to me in Henry James's
own language; all his expressions, all his subtleties, all his
exquisiteness came fluently through the telephone, an
instrument which he resents and abominates. I laughed so
constantly I could scarcely hold the receiver. Mrs. Clark is
an omnivorous reader and, what one rarely finds, a truly
enthusiastic one. She is an ardent admirer of the genius of
Thomas Hardy. "Oh," she said, "when I was in England,
how I did enjoy meeting him! I said to him, 'Mr. Hardy, you
have made me feel everything that your heroines felt. I 've
even felt everything that your villains felt! I 've loved and
suffered and sinned with everyone of your creations. I 've
gone to the scaffold with Tess, and I 've died with Elfrida.
You have given me the gamut of all the emotions.' We
talked for hours, I could scarcely bring myself to leave
him."
And I can imagine how this fresh, original, great-hearted,
unspoiled, frank, natural woman, must have impressed
Thomas Hardy. What an appetising morsel she would be
for jaded London society. In the expressive vernacular of
the stage, "They would eat her."
Champ Clark, brilliant and witty, has a way of making
unforgettable phrases. I asked him why a certain very
talented member of Congress had no following. "Well," said
he, "his opinion and his morals are in a fluid condition. You
can't take hold of him any more than you can of water."
"That not only describes him," I said, "but a few other
politicians of my acquaintance."
My days in Washington were all too short. I wanted the
sunshine of the South, and yet the idea of going alone was
distinctly depressing. One evening Mary Clark - I was
staying with her - came into my room and said,
"Bessiekins, I am going to let Bee go with you to Charleston
if you really want her." If I wanted Bee -
who is such a comfort, so companionable, and unselfish. I
breathed a great sigh of relief, and at once gave myself into
her capable hands. She intended to get a new kodak, and to
finish some shelves in the pantry before we started. "And,"
she said, "you want to see Mr. Page before you go, about
your Beloved South, don't you?"
"Yes," I said, "I do."
"Then," she replied, "we can leave on Thursday evening,
unless you don't mind Friday."
"Friday," I said, "has no terrors for me; Monday is my
'black Friday.' I was born on that day."
"All right," said Bee, who has no superstitions, "we will
start on Friday night."
Then - in that day - we shall not meet
Wrong with new wrong, but right with right:
Our faith shall make your faith complete
When our battalions reunite.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE has served his country well.
He built at a propitious moment a bridge between the
North and the South. The first great arch was laid
with those touching pages of realism, Marse Chan.'
At that time a gulf, not of bitterness, but of coldness
and indifference, separated us. He spanned it with
stories of the Old South, so true to life, so gracious, so
full of tenderness that the hearts of the North
understood - and warmed toward us. We were
grateful for their appreciation, - and the bridge was
builded. When I read Marse Chan' to Henry Ward
Beecher, he said, "I should regret the War less if
Marse Chan' had been spared; Page must be a first-rate
fellow to have written that story."
He is more than "a first-rate fellow" - he is a
high-minded gentleman, and a staunch American. How
patriotically he expresses his enthusiasm:
I have journeyed the spacious world over
And here to thy sapphire wide gate,
America, I, thy True Lover
Return now, exalted, elate,
As an heir who returns to recover
His forefathers' lofty estate.
How crude then and rude then soever
Thy struggles to lift from the sod,
Thy Freedom is strong to dissever
The Shackles, the Yoke, and the Rod:
Thy Freedom is Mighty forever,
For men who kneel only to God.
Even our ambassadors do not bend the knee to kings and
princes, they only bend the back. I should like Mr. Page to
represent our country at some European court. My
prophetic vision sees him the most popular ambassador since
the time of Mr. Lowell, when he gathered around him a
coterie of brilliant literary men and inspired Henry James to
carve delicately one of his most exquisite literary cameos.
Mr. Page is richer than Mr. Lowell, who was a widower, in
having the able assistance of his wife. Mrs. Page is a
charming lady and an ideal hostess, with the easy hospitality
of a woman born to the purple. He himself has the gracious
manner of a citizen of the world, but it never conceals his
real tenderness of heart and he is the most loyal,
disinterested, and encouraging of friends.
"I think," he said, "the binding of My Beloved South had
better be dark blue, with a spray of jessamine on the cover."
"No, I am not going to have yellow jessamine," I said,
"much as I love it, but something more characteristic of all of
that devoted land, something to express the life of the South
from Virginia to the Gulf, from Texas to the Pacific."
"That 's ambitious," asked Tom Page, "what is it to
be?"
"A palm leaf fan," I answered.
"It is n't a bad idea," he said, "even in the War they
had palm leaf fans."
For myself I have never been without one. Very likely
mine is the only one in London. It is kept in a special
drawer, and often in the cold, dark, sleepless nights, as the
raw, grey dawn penetrates my room, I will get out of bed,
take from its place my old palm leaf fan and lay my tired
head upon its uneven surface. It seems to give me a
moment's comfort when nothing else can, for it speaks of
sunshine, of the magnolia, of the banjo, that oldest of
musical instruments, born in the Ark and listened to by
Noah:
De Ark she kep' a-sailin' an' a-sailin' an' a-sailin';
De lion got his dander up, an' like to bruk de palin';
De sarpints hissed; de painters yelled; till, what wid all de
fussin'
You c'u'd n't hear de mate a-bossin' roun' an' cussin.'
Now, Ham, de only nigger what wuz runnin' on de packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop an' c'u'd n't stan' de
racket;
An' so, fur to amuse he-se'f, he steamed some wood an'
bent it,
An' soon he had a banjo made, de fust dat wuz invented.
He wet de ledder, stretched it on; made bridges, screws
an' aprin;
An' fitted in a proper neck, 'twas berry long an' taperin';
He tuk some tin, an' twisted him a thimble fur to ring it;
An' den de mighty question riz, how wuz he gwine to
string it?
De possum has as fine a tail as dis dat I 's a singin';
De ha'r 's so long an' thick an' strong, des fit fur banjo
stringin',
Dat nigger shaved 'em off as short as wash-day dinner
graces;
An' sorted ob dem by de size, f'om little E's to basses.
He strung her, tuned her, struck a jig, 't was 'Nebber
min' de wedder,'
She soun' like forty-lebben bands a-playin' all togeder;
Some went to pattin', some to dancin', Noah called de
figgers
An' Ham he sot and knocked de tune, de happiest ob de
niggers.
Now, sence dat time, it 's mighty strange, dere's not de
slightest showin',
Ob any h'ar at all upon de 'possum's tail a-growin';
An curi's too, dat nigger's ways; his people nebber' los'
em',
Fur whar you find de nigger, dar's de banjo an' de
possum.
My old fan dissipates the London fog, and conjures a
picture of Aunt Polly Hynes and Aunt Lizzie, rocking slowly
in their light cane chairs and fanning themselves on the long
gallery that ran across the entire length of my old home in
Texas. My mother sat there, too, with her fan, which was of
a more sublimated pattern than the others, for it was made
of a young, tender leaf, finely sewn at the edge, and
mounted on an ivory handle with a tiny hole at the bottom
through which a green silk tassel was looped, and where the
ivory joined the leaf it was finished by a little carved rosette
of mother-of-pearl. But I love just the ordinary palm leaf fan
that is bought for a picayune. Its office has often been
beyond rubies and pearls, in saving the sick, comforting the
dying, and making life bearable on the hottest days to the
living. On every gallery when summer comes numbers of
these fans appear. In all the churches they are slipped in
between the cushion and the pew, and they can even be
found in the dear old musty Court Houses throughout the
South.
On one occasion they not only cooled the air but were
more intimidating than a regiment of soldiers to a renowned
prelate. An English bishop, a tall, erect, downright man,
called "the Soldiers' Bishop" on account of his influence
with the soldier-man, came to America to deliver a series of
sermons throughout the South. While in New Orleans the
weather turned suddenly hot, and when he ascended the
pulpit, what was his consternation to find a vast sea of
movement all over the church. Every woman, young and
old, wafted a palm-leaf fan. The grandmothers were
making a soft sideways movement, the girls, rebellious at
the sudden rise in temperature, were waving their fans back
and forth vigorously, while some very old ladies made
almost a pause between their movements, and there was no
spot of repose to be found for his bewildered eyes. The
Soldier Bishop said that for a moment he was dreadfully
perturbed, felt frightened and, indeed, rather sea-sick. He
even ingloriously contemplated retreating from the pulpit,
leaving the fans victorious on the field of battle. Then he
stood quite still, shut his eyes, offered up a stout prayer for
endurance, and got creditably through his sermon. A
Southern clergyman, brought up from infancy to the fan
habit, would probably not even have noticed this undulating
sea of creamy waves.
Every Southern woman must carry some memory in her
heart connected with this dried, brittle, but blessed and
grateful leaf. Girls of sixteen have used it, young mothers
have fanned their first babies with it, grandmothers sitting
on moonlit porches have brought back the memories of a
lifetime with its slowly waving motion. Even the gravest
and most dignified governors and judges have been driven
to its help in
torrid weather. There is, indeed, no nook or corner in the
South where at one time or another, it has not been an
almost vital necessity.
At one time in Texas we had - an unusual thing for us - a
spell of terribly, unceasingly hot weather. The sun sank to
rest a brazen shield, leaving the earth baked and cracked
like a pie crust; it rose the next morning a blazing eye of
unrelenting fire, and continued unblinking throughout the long
day. Old people died from exhaustion, middle-aged people
suffered, young people were excitable and impatient, and
the poor little children were simply scorched out of
existence by this dreadful tropical weather.
The first little baby of a young cousin of mine who lived
on the adjoining place, was taken suddenly very ill. The
doctor was almost hopeless about the child's recovery, and
said it depended on a change in the weather. For a fortnight
we had gone on merely existing under this cruelly
devastating sun. What was to be done? The young mother,
pale and wan from the heat, was in despair, but the negro
foster-mother, a strong, vigorous young woman, said, "Ef
dat 's all de trouble; ef it 's coolness dat 's wanted I 'se gwine to
save dis chile." And giving orders to a little darkey in the
room, she said, "Bring me a bucket of cold water, and drap it
deep in de well." And into the fresh water she dipped a wide
palm-leaf fan, and began slowly, evenly, and continually, to
make a cool moist breeze from the baby's hot head to his
little restless feet.
Except to nurse him she never stopped the flail-like
movement for thirty-six hours. The fan was dipped again
and again into the water, and on and on it went in its
regularity of movement, keeping down the fever,
and letting the child get an occasional hour or two of sleep.
Late in the evening of the second day came a merciful
thunder storm. The heavens were riven with lightning and
peals of thunder sounded like heavy artillery. The sky
opened and let down, not rain, but great waterfalls of cooling
water. The outsides of the houses were washed clean. The
cracks of the baked earth were filled with the blessed fluid.
The creeks began to murmur, and in a few hours the dry
beds of stream became roaring torrents. The air rapidly
cooled, and the baby was out of danger, but when his black
mammy dropped the fan her arm was the size of a human
leg; the muscles stood out swollen and rigid, and her hand
was almost paralysed. The doctor found the young mother
smoothing the big swollen hand, and crying like a baby. The
crisis was passed; for the first time in weeks the child had
taken notice of things about it, and was actually hungry.
"Well, Jemima," said the doctor, picking up the fan, "the
youngster owes his life entirely to you and to this."
"Why, laws a mercy, doctor," said Jemima, with a shaky
laugh, "you did n't spose I was gwine to let my chile die
when one ob dese here five-cent fans could save him, did
you? Course I would n't, but my arm feels mighty funny. I
'spect it will all pass away, though." And it did. In a few
days Jemima's strong arm was normal again, and to-day that
palm leaf fan baby is a flourishing and brilliant young lawyer.
Now, of course, science has arranged the electric fan to
be worked by machinery, but in those days cool air
came from love and service and splendid muscular
strength.
And one solitary fan at least figured on the field of
Gettysburg. Mrs. Pickett, in her touching tribute to
My Soldier, says:
Five thousand Virginians followed him at the start; but
when the Southern flag floated on the ridge, in less than half
an hour not two thousand were left to rally beneath it, and
these for only one glorious, victory-intoxicated moment.
They were not strong enough to hold the position they had so
dearly won; and broken-hearted even at the very moment of
his immortal triumph, my soldier led his remaining men down
the slope again. He dismounted and walked beside the
stretcher upon which General Kemper, one of his officers,
was being carried, fanning him and speaking cheerfully to
comfort him in his suffering. When he reached Seminary
Ridge again and reported to General Lee, his face was wet
with tears as he pointed to the crimson valley and said: "My
noble division lies there!"
"General Pickett," said the Commander, "you and your
men have covered yourselves with glory."
Another tender memory of mine of the palm-leaf fan is
one connected with a girl who came to New York from
South Carolina to seek her fortune. She was not pretty but
she had a wonderful figure, as slender as a reed, a little
round kittenish face with grey eyes, a snub nose, a line of
freckles across it, beautiful white teeth, a low forehead, a
quantity of dark hair, and she possessed to an unusual
degree that intangible thing called charm, and a rare talent
for music. Her voice, a warm soprano, had something in it of
appeal, a thrill of passion and an insistence that went straight
to your heart. The first manager she saw in New York was
Mr. Daly, who gave her a very small part in a comedy,
and one verse of a little song to sing. She made a favourable
impression, for she had individuality and a
great desire to please, combined with a vivid joy of life. Her
criticisms were encouraging and plenty of bouquets, boxes
of candy, and admiring notes found their way round to the
back of the stage. She was of a gregarious nature, loving
not only her kind, but light, laughter, music, gaiety and
amusement. She soon knew a crowd of artists, journalists,
actors and young men about town, was immensely popular,
always going about, and her more serious friends were
greatly troubled about her, but she was so radiant with all
her new emotions and experiences that she paid no heed to
anything but enjoyment.
After a year on the stage she married. It was a love
match. The man was a well-built, straight-limbed,
regular-featured, soft-voiced, dark-haired, human tiger. I never saw
a more repellent expression in any face. Nancy, however,
was desperately in love with him. She did n't mind his being
poor and they went to live in a small flat with such steep
stairs that to get to it was really like climbing a fire-escape.
The first time I went to see her in her spotlessly clean,
daintily furnished little apartment, she said to me, "I think I
am the happiest woman in the world. When Norman goes
down town I love him so much that I take one of his old
coats out of his dressing-room, and lay my head on the
shoulder and kiss the sleeve, just because he has worn it.
And, oh, how glad I am to see him when he comes home
from the office. It is just as if we had been separated for a
week."
After the honeymoon was over Norman came to the
conclusion that Nancy was a woman with a past, and he
became inordinately jealous and very abusive. She was
patient and hopeful at first of giving him confidence, but his
nature was mean, petty, and suspicious,
combined with an utter lack of generosity, and the brutality of a
wild beast waiting to spring upon his prey. Nancy's mother
sent her an old-fashioned diamond ring. It arrived one
morning when this heartless monster was at his office.
When he returned home she showed it to him and he said,
"A lover has given it to you."
She said, "My mother sent it to me from Charleston." He
answered by saying, "You lie," sprang at her, choked her,
knocked her down, and kicked her until she was bruised
from shoulder to ankle. He had been the winner of more
than one Marathon race, and his kick was no mean thing.
When I answered her telegram to come to her, she was
in a high fever and very ill. I never saw a more appalling
sight than her black, swollen, and almost broken limbs. Even
then she forgave him his murderous attack, but, of course,
their separation was only a question of time, and when it did
come, he left her bereft of all that an unprotected woman
needs. She had lost faith in everything, even in herself. She could
not live with him, she could not forget him, the pain she
suffered made her utterly reckless.
In the beginning she went back to the stage as a chorus
girl in a musical comedy. Then she got ill, and later she
became an artist's model. I urged her to go South and put
aside the feverish life she lived. I said, "There must be so
many things to offend you, for, after all, you are born and
bred a lady. Musical comedy people are not of your class,
and for you the life of an artist's model must be the saddest
thing on earth. Do give it all up and go back to the country
where you belong and teach music. You are quite capable
of doing it; you are so sweet and charming
and so young. Life must hold happiness in store for you
yet."
But she said, "No, it is too late, I must have excitement, I
am not like a widow who can live on memory. It is not the
quiet dead who kill us with grief. It is the terrible living
dead, who must be forgotten and never thought of a single
moment in the day or in the night, for that way madness
lies. Oh, these living dead, to what desperate straits they
drive us! If I could always have your steady hand, as now,
on my wrist, I could begin life all over again, but you are
busy. You must work. Let me go, dear, and only love me. I
don't say that I will do anything wrong, but I must have
forgetfulness at any cost. I must have it! Do you remember
the bruises, and how I loved my husband? Well, the ache is
still there. I don't mean only the hurt of the spirit, that never
leaves me; but the hurt of the flesh. I so often have a pain
in my side that I think he must have given me a vital blow."
And yet she looked well and was apparently always gay
and cheerful. Eventually she went back to Comedy, won
some success, and remained on the stage. She was the
most generous creature I ever knew. Once, when she had
only two pairs of shoes, she gave one pair to a girl in the
chorus poorer than herself. And for weeks during the
hottest weather in New York when she could have gone to
the country, she stayed on and sewed day and night to
make a pretty layette for a poor unwedded mother. She
never had a baby of her own, but she loved children with a
real mother's unselfish instinct. And she sold a rich gold
chain, her last remaining heirloom, and gave the money for
a course of treatment to a young actress, threatened with
blindness. That warm heart of hers was always full
of sympathy and kindliness and help for human suffering.
Her troubles were powerless to embitter her, and I never
heard her make a complaint.
Finally, I married and went to England to live. She wrote
to me cheerfully from time to time and said how much she
wanted to see me, but never mentioned her health. Then
came a letter telling me she was in a hospital, and had been
operated on successfully for appendicitis. She said the
Sisters of Charity were very kind, and that it was the
peacefullest and happiest time she had known for years, and
I must come at once to see her when I arrived in New York -
I was going over that autumn - and that she was looking
forward with great joy to our meeting.
When I got to the hotel I scarcely looked at my rooms,
but hurried off at once to the hospital and to Nancy. I was
too late; she had died the week before.
The Sister who had taken care of her, came into the room
and told me of her illness and unexpected death. She said:
"You don't know how we loved her. She was the most
charming and cheerful patient we ever had. When she
came, it was as if she was going on a pleasure tour. She
brought her banjo, tied with many bright ribbons, and slung it
across the foot of her bed. She was making Irish lace, and
that hung in a little brocade bag on the handle of her bureau,
and with her silver brushes and boxes and her candlesticks
on the mantelpiece and her books about, the room did n't
look a bit like one of our rooms. And her dressing jackets
and pocket handkerchiefs were so pretty and dainty, she
said she had made and embroidered everything herself.
"We put her photographs on the mantelpiece by her little
clock, one of her father and sister, and one," said
the nun looking at me, "of you. She used so often to talk to
me about you. I never saw anything like her courage. The
very morning of her operation she was playing on her banjo,
and she went quite gaily to the operating-room and
everything passed off well, and her recovery was quick and
satisfactory. When she was apparently quite herself
again she wanted a little fresh air, and we thought it would
do her no harm to take a short walk. She went out for half
an hour, a sudden rain storm came up and drenched her to
the skin.
"She came in shivering, her teeth were chattering with
cold, and that night pneumonia developed. I do not know if
she thought she was going to die. She was very cheerful,
but she said, 'If I die, as you are from "Way Down South
in Dixie," I want to give you my banjo.' One morning she
was terribly weak and restless; her fever was high, and I
was fanning her with a palm-leaf fan, when presently she
put out her hand and said, 'Sister, I am sure you are very
tired, give me that fan,' and taking it from me with a sweet
but tired smile, she moved it feebly for a few times; when I
turned, the little hand was still. She was dead. Her last
action was an unselfish one, a thought for another."
I said, "I hope you pray for her."
The Sister replied, "Oh, yes, I do, every day. She had
great temptations, but great love, great generosity and great
self-forgetfulness, and," she added softly, "God is merciful
- always merciful. Would you like to see her banjo? One
of the Sisters plays a little and I keep it in that box."
"No," I said; "I feel now as if I never wanted to see
another banjo."
Fair were our nation's visions, and as grand
As ever floated out of any fancy-land;
Children were we in simple faith,
But god-like children, whom nor death,
Nor threat of danger drove from honour's path -
In the land where we were dreaming.D. B. LUCAS.
It was said before the War that one letter of introduction
to Charleston would give you twenty-five dinners, and
twenty-five letters in New York would give you one
dinner. Dinners are, alas, more difficult to give in
Charleston now, as the present-day negro does not
approve of late hours, but the hearts of the people are as
hospitable as ever.
We arrived in that beautiful white city on Saturday, and I
had no sooner delivered my letters of introduction than
cards were left accompanied by invitations (such a pretty,
charming attention), to occupy various pews in St.
Michael's, a quaint, interesting church of English
architecture, very reminiscent of St. Martin's in the Fields
in London. The old-fashioned pews are so high they almost
hide the occupants, and the sweet chime of bells, like the
horses of St. Mark's in Venice, have journeyed far, as in
1782 Major Traille of the British Army, carried them as a
trophy of war to London. In 1783 they were re-shipped to
Charleston, replaced in the steeple, and once more rang
out their silvery peals.
For many years St. Michael's was a church by day and a
blessed lighthouse by night, sending out from its tall spire
rays of warning to ships at sea. The little sweet
old-fashioned churchyard is covered with grass and full of
flowers. The old tombs certainly bear witness to the healthy
climate, for almost everybody seemed to have lived to the
ripe age of seventy-five, seventy-eight, eighty or eighty-two
years. Probably the most unique monument in all the world
is a rude memorial on one of these ancient graves. A young
English settler came to Charleston with his wife and his
belongings, among them a very solid oak bedstead. When
his wife died he had no money for a headstone, but hoping
eventually to buy one he put up temporarily the head of the
bed. On it is cut in rude letters: "Mary Ann Luyton, wife of
Will Luyton. Died September 9th, 1770, in the 27th year of
her age." Perhaps he left Charleston before he could
provide another headstone; at any rate, this stout oak
memorial is as good to-day as when it was erected in 1770.
Its quaintness making it a subject of keen interst to the
tourist, it is now protected by a strong wire netting, and
there seems to be no reason why it should not last another
century.
Charleston had pleasant memories for me, as my Aunt
Polly Hynes had made a visit there in her youth, many years
before the War, and, as a little girl, I used to hear her speak
of the Rhetts, the Pinckneys, the Middletons, the Vander Horsts,
the Barnwells, the Pringles, the Ravenels, the Izards,
the Draytons, the Allstans and the Chesnuts, at whose
house she visited. The great families apparently lived like
princes, and even people who were not rich kept fifteen or
twenty servants.
Mrs. Chesnut was the "Southern Planter's Northern
Bride," having been born in Philadelphia. My grandfather,
Governor Duval, met them in Washington and
corresponded afterwards for many years with her husband.
The families interchanged visits, for the Chesnuts were as
hospitable as my grandfather, and fifty times richer. It was
said there were more than a thousand slaves on Mulberry
plantation and sixty or seventy servants about the house.
Mrs. Chesnut got all her gowns from Paris and was
distinguished for her beautiful head-dresses and her lovely
jewels. Aunt Polly, during her visit, was provided with an
accomplished lady's maid, who was an excellent
hair-dresser and a wonderful clear-starcher.
In those days ladies wore transparent India muslins
embroidered and trimmed with lace, and organdies with a
blue or purple ground. These dainty gowns required starch
made of gum arabic, which was as transparent as jelly, and
not every maid understood the art of using it. Aunt Polly
embroidered quite as well as any professional
needlewoman; her English thread lace was transferred
from one dress to another and her India muslins must have
been exquisite, so she appreciated a proper blanchisseuse.
I have a little cape of drawn work and embroidery, which I
believe she was several years in making, that is quite
worthy of a museum. After the death of my grandmother,
who was her only sister, she always wore black-and-white
or purple and I never saw her in a light-coloured dress.
Whenever dreams were spoken of, Aunt Polly
always related the fortunate dream of her friend, Mrs.
Robert Shubrick, which had, under extraordinary
circumstances, saved the life of her brother who was
coming to Charleston
by boat from Philadelphia. Three times in one night this
lady had a recurrent vision of him in a surging sea with a
little white flag floating in front of him. So impressed was
she with the truth of the warning, that she got her husband
to send a pilot boat to cruise in the track of the incoming
vessels, and the third day something small and white was
seen floating on the waves of the sea, and, coming nearer, a
half-starved man was picked up lying on a chicken-coop -
the only survivor of a ship which had gone down
three days before.
Aunt Polly, who was a famous gardener, had taken back
the gardenia with her to Florida and from there she had
brought it to Texas. It was named after Doctor Garden of
Charleston, a famous horticulturist, a popular doctor and,
although a Royalist, after the Revolution he never left
Charleston and died there. My mother, who was more proud
of her garden than of anything in the world, used to say
when she showed the hibiscus, a flower which in the
morning was white, in the afternoon rose and in the evening
red, and which I always thought in my childhood came from
fairyland - "This was sent me from South Carolina by one
of the Pinckneys."
The first time I went into the street in Charleston the
catalpa, and the sweet bay, and the pink mimosa, all old
friends, gave me a fragrant greeting. But the live oaks,
draped in moss, were the oldest friends of all. Bee and I
started out intending to take a long walk on Monday
morning. The open doors of the library, however, were too
tempting and there we stopped. It was organised in 1728 and
is truly a delightful place in which to spend an hour or two. It
contains some rare and valuable manuscripts and the
Gazette, Charleston's
first newspaper, a tiny little sheet, printed on grey paper
with a printer's ink which must have been very rich as it is
as thick and black as possible even to-day. Occasionally, it is
cold enough for fires, but the windows and the doors of the
library are continually open, the bright yet softened sunlight
of the winter streams in, and the air is like champagne, warm
enough for comfort and cool enough to be exhilarating, for
Charleston has a wide sea frontage. The beautiful East and
South Batteries with their splendid houses and avenues of
palmettos and magnolias, are suggestive of Nice, but the
climate is infinitely superior to that of the South of France, as
there is no raw chill with the setting of the sun, but just an
agreeable crisp coolness. A letter in 1617 to Lord Ashley in
England quaintly describes the climate of Charleston: "It
must of necessity be very healthy, being free from any
noxious vapours, all summer long being refreshed with cool
breathings from the sea, which up in the country we are not
so fully sensitive of."
The old houses are stately and beautiful. They combine
the best periods of English architecture with the needs of
the South. Generally two long balconies, one on the first and
one on the second storey, run along the entire side of the
house, and there Charleston people live during the summer,
which is said to be by no means an unpleasant part of the
year, with the bathing and boating by moonlight on the silver
sea. The water of Charleston is quite unique, it flows from
artesian wells, is very cool and pleasant to drink and highly
charged with soda, magnesia, and salt, therefore it is a
strong and valuable medicinal water, a splendid aid to the
digestion (it was marvellously beneficial to me), and a great
skin beautifier. If a little German village possessed
the waters of Charleston, half of Europe would be
flocking to drink them. A clever doctor from Boston
staying in the same house with me, who had suffered
for years from indigestion, said the waters of
Charleston had completely cured him. He declared
that if he was ten years younger he
would settle there, open a large sanatorium,
which with the combination of the sun, the tonic air, and the
curative properties of the waters would enable many a
chronic invalid to recover health. The environs of
Charleston are quite delightful. Summerville, a
beautiful little place, semi-tropical
in verdure, rich in the odour of flowering shrubs, is so
extraordinarily profuse in its abundance of wistaria that it
looks like a long amethyst picture from a Japanese screen.
There is an excellent hotel in the midst of pine and cypress
and magnolia trees, and a large tea plantation not far away,
which we drove through. The tea did not interest me so
much as the beautiful roses and camellias, but we bought a
small package and tried it. In this respect I fear I am
de-nationalised, for I infinitely prefer the tea we get in England.
On the other side of Charleston, fifteen or twenty minutes
by boat and a little distance by rail, is the Isle of Palms
where many of the residents have cottages. It is a charming
spot and might with equal appropriateness be called the Isle
of Oleanders, for they grow to a fine size and in great
luxuriance among the palmetto trees down to the very
water's edge. On our return from the Isle of Palms we
stopped at Fort Moultrie and saw the tomb of Oceola, the
Indian chief who fought for America during the Seminole
War. The Fort is now a pleasant military post and a
fine-looking Irish sergeant showed us over it, and pointed out
with pride Fort Jasper, named in honour of Sergeant Jasper,
a gallant non-commissioned officer of the Revolution. When
the British were besieging the fort the flagstaff was shot
away and the flag fell, arousing the British to a great cheer,
for they thought it meant surrender. Jasper leaped from the
wall, seized and tore the flag from the broken staff and,
climbing back fastened it to a rod, saying, "Colonel, we
must fight under our flag!" and the white crescent rose
again. Sergeant McCarthy said it was the only monument of
a private soldier in America.
I asked him a good many questions about military
service. He had been in the service for years and said it
was harder every day to get recruits. America has so many
resources and possibilities for the working man that he
hesitates to join the army. "Still there are chances even for
soldiers," the Sergeant added; "we have a private in the . . .
who owns a restaurant in Charleston."
"How did he manage that?" asked Bee.
"He is a Greek," said the Sergeant. "He enlisted as soon
as he came over here and he lent out his first month's pay
at a dollar-and-a-quarter interest on the dollar, the money to
be returned within the month."
"There is a Greek proverb in the East," I said, "that it
takes two Jews to be equal to one Greek."
"Since then," said Sergeant McCarthy, "while never
spending a penny himself, he has lent money to the whole
regiment."
"And always," I said, "gets back his usurious interest."
"Always," said the Sergeant, "although if the Colonel
knew about it he would stop his game. In four years he has
made about four thousand dollars, but," he
added with a sigh, "only a Greek can do it, not a native-born
American nor an Irishman. My pay is good, fifty or so
dollars a month. I am a bachelor with no kids to provide for,
and yet I go now and then to Calegeiri Clementeanio for a
loan."
What a pity that Greek cannot meet Greek only in this
world, for evidently he will always get the better of every
other nationality.
On my way home it was borne in upon me that I was
really in my own leisurely land, for as we were hurrying to
the boat the Captain smilingly called out, "We will wait: take
your time, take your time, we are not going off without you."
"Now," I said to Bee, "there is the true, considerate,
obliging spirit of the South."
Charleston socially is one of the most agreeable places in
America and one of the most English, though it really has no
right to be, for it was not like Virginia, settled by the
Cavaliers, but by a mixture of races - English, Scotch, and
Irish, Belgian, Swiss, and French Huguenots. But the
English curiously enough have left their impress here more
clearly than anywhere else in America. The accent is a
pretty, softened, musical English, the tastes of the people,
the literature, the atmosphere, after all these centuries, are
still English.
I went to have a dish of tea with Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel,
the author of that delightful book, Charleston, the Place
and the People, and found that she was intimately
conversant with English politics, literature, and present-day
affairs. She subscribes to a number of English periodicals,
pictorial magazines, and The Times, and is as well up in the
news of London as any lady living in one of the provincial
towns in England. She
is a tall, distinguished-looking woman of delicate and fair
appearance, not unlike the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts, for
she has the same serious manner and the same cultivated
dignity and lovableness. She said she had seen an article
lately in one of the Northern magazines which spoke of the
want of cultivation in the women who formerly lived on
plantations. "There was never a more unfounded assertion
than this," she declared, "because women who were brought
up on a plantation had little to do except read. They generally
had excellent governesses, with access to good libraries
and abundance of leisure. There was constant intercourse
between England and Charleston. The men of the family
were sent to Eton and Oxford to be educated, and their
sisters emulated them in learning. Many women knew both
Greek and Latin, were well versed
in literature and knew French well." This article went on to
say that they knew nothing of English literature; yet I
remember one friend, who had received her entire education
in England, telling me years ago that she had only read four
American authors - Poe, Hawthorne's Marble Faun, but
not his Yankee Tales, Washington Irving, and Prescott's
Conquest of Mexico, "although," she added, "I believe
that is mostly fiction."
Mrs. Ravenel herself is certainly one of the most widely
read women I have ever met and, indeed, I found all the
people of Charleston cultivated and intelligent, with the
charming manner inherited from aristocratic ancestors, who
already from older countries had great traditions, and pride of
family behind them. There is a certain stateliness of
deportment still remaining. Quite young people speak to their
elders as "Mistress Pinckney," "Mistress Pringle," and so
on. Even some of the very old negroes have beautiful
manners.
John Rutledge wrote to his brother studying for the
Bar in England in 1769:
The very first thing you should be thoroughly acquainted
with is the writing of shorthand, which you will find an
infinite advantage. Take down notes of everything in Court,
even if not worth transcribing, for your time may as well be
employed in writing as in hearing. By no means fall into the
too common practice of not attending a place of worship.
There is generally a good preacher at the Temple Church. . . .
If you stick to French and converse generally in that
language you may soon be master of it. Whatever study you
attempt, make yourself completely master of it; nothing
makes a person so ridiculous as to pretend to things he does
not understand. I know nothing more entertaining and more
likely to give you a graceful manner of speaking than seeing
a good play well acted. Garrick is inimitable, mark him well
and you will profit by him. You must not neglect the
classics. Get a good private tutor who will point out their
beauties to you and at your age you will in six months
become better acquainted with them than a boy at school
generally in seven or eight years. Read Latin authors, the
best frequently. . . . Read the apothegms of Bacon, English
history, and the enclosed list of law books; and when I say
read, I don't mean run cursorily through them as you would
a newspaper, but read carefully and deliberately and
transcribe what you find useful in it. Bacon, you know, is my
favourite. You will think I have cut out work enough for you
while in England, and indeed though it is a long time to look
forward to, if you mind your business you will not have too
much time to spare. . . . One word in regard to your
deportment. Let your dress be plain, always in the city and
elsewhere, except when it is necessary that it should be
otherwise, and your behaviour rather grave.
Farewell, my dear brother. Let me hear from you by
every opportunity,
Believe me,
Yours affectionately
J. RUTLEDGE.
It was the fashion in those days to preserve a grave exterior. Alas! It is
somewhat of a fashion still. I fancy it was supposed to
portend an ambitious future. Even now, any position of
importance and more especially the office of senator seems
to weigh heavily upon the American man. A gay and witty
senator would be a positive anachronism. Charles Sumner
said that in his early youth he made one or two jokes in the
Senate, and was advised by a friend if he hoped to
succeed in public life never to joke again, and he never did.
Imagine it!
But I have an idea that all the world over humour is
regarded as somehow inconsistent with seriousness of
purpose, yet how very clearly the eyes of a humourist can
see, for humour gives a just perspective, and warmth of
heart, keen affection, and a sensitive nature often
accompany it.
That gay and gallant jester, Henry Labouchere, who for
so many years illumined the House of Commons with his
transcendent wit, wrote me a letter after the death of his
wife in which he said now that she had gone before him,
death could not come to him too soon. Yet how often men,
who would scarcely give a sigh of regret or remembrance
at the death of their wives, have called him heartless. I
think American people are really graver and more serious
than English people. I suppose it is the fashion, just as it is
the fashion in England to take grave events with
sangfroid and composure.
Dr. Milligan, a surgeon, wrote to London from
Charleston about 1775, and said:
The inhabitants are of complexion little different to the
English, of good stature, well-made, lively, agreeable,
sensible, spirited, open-hearted, exceed most people in acts
of benevolence, hospitality and charity. The men and
women who have a right to the class of gentry, (who are
more numerous here than in any other colony of North
America,) dress with elegance and neatness. The personal
qualities of the ladies are much to their credit and
advantage. Middling stature, genteel and slender, fair
complexioned without the help of art, regular features, fond
of dancing, sing well, play upon harpsichord and guitar, etc.
There is a list made about this date of merchandise
shipped to Charleston: "Fine Flanders lace, the finest Dutch
linens, French cambrics, English chintz; Hyson tea; silks,
gold and silver laces; the finest Broadcloth, carpets, British
and East Indian handkerchiefs, gloves and ribbons, metals,
pewter, brass and copper wrought of all sorts; plate and
silver; watches, gold and silver; books, china, fans and other
millinery wares. Looking-glasses, pictures, and prints, salad
oil; beer in casks and bottles, wine of all sorts, but the chief
kind drunk here is Madeira, imported directly from the place
of growth." The day I dined with Judge Brawley and his
wife (he is one of South Carolina's most distinguished sons,
a brave soldier in the Confederate army, who lost one arm in
a gallant encounter almost at the beginning of the War), we
drank to the success of our beloved South in fine old
Madeira.
It was while I was at Charleston that Sam wrote to tell
me of the fall of Harrison Leffingwell.
We have missed you very much at Chevy Chase. The
birds all went South when you did, and after that a severe
snowstorm set in which lasted several days, but the weather
is now warmer again. Also, your maid has been discharged.
The motor, after it came back from the machine shop in
perfect order, suddenly and unaccountably went wrong. On
questioning George, the butler (he of the Knox Express
fame), it came out that Harrison Leffingwell had borrowed
the motor and taken his best girl for a long ride, which will
cost me at the very least $25.00, so I discharged him on the
spot. He was very saucy and said, "I take it, as you are a
man of honour and I am another, that this unpleasantness
between us will not prevent my going to England with Mrs.
O'Connor." I was not so severe with him as I might have
been because I considered that his wild career was
undoubtedly helped along by you. You made him think he
was a Caruso and a ladies' maid combined, and there was
no standing him after you left. He will doubtless revenge
himself on the family, as he has taken I Myself with him and
I suppose he will tear out the pictures and have them
framed. So you are probably by this time adorning some
small negro shack. You certainly have the faculty of spoiling
people more than anybody I know. Your family, however,
long ago got reconciled to you.
We don't want you to stay too long in the South, and
we hope you are coming back for a visit this spring.
There is a mocking-bird who builds his nest just outside
your bedroom window, and when the evenings are warm
he sings every night at nine o'clock, - and as this is going
to be a warm spring he will come early. So hurry up. With
love.
Your affectionate brother,
Sam.
P. S. Harrison Leffingwell had the impudence to call me
Page 144
up on the telephone and ask me to give him your address.
Maybe he has written you by this time; if he has I wish you
would tell him to send me back your book.
And my faithful Rose wrote to tell me of my dear old dog
Coaxy's death. I was glad to have Bee with me, for she
loved Coaxy well and was one of his best friends. She knew
there never was such a fox-terrier - so intelligent, so
original, so clever, so quick and so affectionate as Coaxy.
"Do you remember," I said to Bee, "that scarlet leather
collar with the brass nails that you sent Coaxy from Paris,
and how proud he was of it?" He never forgot Bee, even
after an absence of one or two years, and was filled with joy
when he saw her and remembered how in his puppyhood,
when ill with distemper, she had sat for a whole day with a
gentle hand in his basket. It was a sad thought that I was
never again to see my faithful friend Coaxy, a name evolved
from his sweet irresistible coaxing ways. When he laid
himself out to coax, nobody could resist him.
"Put on your hat," said Bee, "and come out in the sun, it
always cheers you, and here 's a little case for your
stamps." It was marked in gilt letters "Swizzlegigs." How
many, many long years since I had seen that comical dear
name, invented in my babyhood by my uncle John Duval, a
tender humourist, who said it expressed my peculiar
vagaries. I have often thought it wholly appropriate to my
entire restless, changing, inconsequent life. It would be
impossible for any human being who suggested the name of
Swizzlegigs to live an ordinary humdrum existence.
"Bee," said I, "how did you ever remember?" But I
need not have asked; Bee never forgets.
"Here are your gloves," she said, "we will go to the
Exchange and see the pretty things."
On our arrival in Charleston we had been lucky enough to
find shelter in the house of Mrs. Dotterer, a handsome,
agreeable woman and an excellent housekeeper. Mrs.
Chapman, her mother, after the War, started the Woman's
Exchange, a most useful institution with all sorts of
interesting objects for sale, authentic antiques, carved
looking-glasses, good specimens of genuine Sheffield plate
and good copies of old furniture. I bought a wild turkey-tail
fan and shall use it in England as a fire-screen. The "Lady
Baltimore" cake, the chef d'oeuvre of the Exchange, so
toothsomely described by Owen Wister, is now known all
over the world. The ladies there receive orders from Russia,
China, Japan, and I daresay, even from the Balkans. My
kind hostesses, hearing of my sad loss, gave me a little
surprise that evening, a "Lady Baltimore" cake all my own.
It was exceedingly good, but very rich, being made with
layers of delicate white cake filled between with a thick
sugared paste of divers sorts of nuts and citron. The top is
of richly flavoured icing, and covered with candied flowers.
That night at supper someone told the story of Mrs.
Pettigru King, one of the idols of my childhood. She had
incomparable wit, great charm, and, if not beauty, the
reflection of it, for her skin was exquisite, her bright shining
nut-brown hair a lovely colour, and her smile was
enchanting. Thackeray had heard of her wit, and, to draw
out her powers when she asked him the question, "Mr.
Thackeray, how do you like America?" his eyes twinkling
with mischief, he answered: "Very much, but the
Americans, they are vulgar." Whereupon she quickly
answered: "That is easily understood,
for we are all descendants of the English." He said,
laughing, "Forgive my rudeness, it was only to make
you unsheathe the dagger of your wit. I am quite
satisfied with the result." And after these sharp
thrusts on both sides they became the greatest of
friends.
CHAPTER X
THE CHARM OF CHARLESTON - THE SILVER GARDEN
THERE is no function
historically more delightful or
interesting in America than Charleston's St. Cecilia balls.
The society began in 1737 with a concert given on a
Thursday, St. Cecilia's day, and comprised originally a
number of earnest musical amateurs who soon became
ambitious and paid a large salary to the chef d'orchestre,
who in 1773 received five hundred guineas a year. The arts
and graces declined, however, as the years went by, giving
place perforce to more practical interests. Fewer men had
time for the study of music, and when President Monroe
accompanied by John C. Calhoun, his Secretary of State,
visited Charleston, it was decided that St. Cecilia must give
a ball in lieu of a concert. Since then, except during the
War, there has been no interruption of the three balls given
every winter by the St. Cecilia Society. The members are
elected by the society and it is no uncommon thing for the
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of an applicant to
have been members before him. Mrs. Ravenel says, "If a
new resident, or a family recently brought into notice, there
will be inquiry, perhaps hesitation and a good backing will be
desirable. When a man is elected the names of the ladies of
his household are at once put upon the list and remain there
forever, changes of fortune affecting them not at all. The
members elect the Vice-President, Secretary and
Treasurer and Board of Managers; the managers continue
from year to year, vacancies occurring only by death, the
eldest manager becoming President and Vice-President in
due order."
The invitations are in themselves quite unique, for every
name on them has figured in history before and during the
Revolution, bringing back memories of the old picturesque
life of the plantation gone to come no more. Edward
Rutledge, one of the present managers, is a descendant of
John Rutledge who wrote so heroically to Moultrie in 1776:
"General Lee wishes you to evacuate the Fort. You will not
do so without an order from me. I will cut off my right hand
sooner than write it. - J. RUTLEDGE."
Joseph W. Barnwell, my escort to supper, a handsome
clean-shaven barrister, with dark humorous eyes is a
descendant of "Tuscarora Jack," a favourite hero of my
childhood, chiefly I think on account of his name, although he
was a daring, resolute fighter in the wars with the Indians.
Another of the family, Robert Woodward Barnwell, a
member of the Convention at Montgomery, gave the casting
vote which made Jefferson Davis President of the
Confederacy. But every name, - Middleton, Porcher,
Vander Horst, Sinkler, Stony, Barker, Ravenel - is
honoured in the history not only of the State of Carolina, but
of America, and these splendid names have been as nearly
as possible preserved in the invitations of the St. Cecilia's
Society by the election of sons, grandsons, and
great-grandsons throughout the centuries. They are as gallant
gentlemen as their great-grandfathers and even in the
present-day balls a trace of the old order exists. No sitting
out on stair-steps or hiding away in corners is allowed at
these historic parties.
A story is told of one of the "Four Hundred," who on
her way from Florida to New York received an invitation to
a St. Cecilia ball. She sat out one or two of the dances on
the staircase outside the ballroom. Such a breach of
etiquette was unknown and was certainly not to be allowed,
so the President, a man of beautiful manners and charming
address, found the lady in a secluded corner and offering
his arm said, "I have come, dear Madam, to conduct you to
the ballroom. We cannot afford, if only for a brief moment,
to lose so brilliant an ornament."
"Oh," she said, "I know I am breaking a rule, but all the
world does it in New York and London." The President
replied, "New York and London are too large to look after
individual guests; here we can see to their welfare, and I
fear you will take cold in this draughty hall." The lady
laughed, took his arm, and went back to the ballroom.
The men of Charleston subscribe liberally, and the balls
are beautifully arranged. The society owns its own napery,
silver, glass and table ornaments and, with each table
decorated with flowers, the balls have all the refinement of
private entertainments. The suppers are served promptly at
twelve o'clock, as the dances begin at nine, and are
prepared by negro cooks, the ladies of Charleston
superintending everything and often cutting sandwiches and
preparing some special delicacy with their own hands. The
round dances are interspersed with rather stately music
when the older people walk round the room, for the St.
Cecilias, unlike most balls in America, are by no means
given exclusively for young girls. Mammas and even
grandmammas are expected to be present and to
participate in the evening's enjoyment.
Etiquette requires the president to take down the latest
bride to supper, while the vice-president takes the most
distinguished stranger. The girls are supposed after each
dance to return to their chaperons, and in this way the men
are left free to seek in time the partners engaged for the
next dance. This is a fashion that might well be introduced
at other balls in America. All the invitations of the St.
Cecilias are delivered by hand and a stranger must almost
belong to the livre d'or to receive one. When, however,
the guest has arrived she is entertained like a queen; every
dance on her programme is filled up, or if she happens not
to dance, agreeable partners are provided for
conversation, and no one who has attended a St. Cecilia
ball is likely to forget its distinctive and hospitable charm.
There was one thing I wanted very much in Charleston
that I did not get, a palmetto salad - it is said to be a very
great delicacy and is made from the heart of the palmetto
tree. It seems a great extravagance to destroy an entire tree
for a dish, but on the plantations there are so many trees
that one more or less makes very little difference. Those
who have eaten of it say there is no flavour so fine and
delicate as this round white heart dressed with fresh olive
oil, lemon instead of vinegar, and a dash of salt. One of my
hostesses, sweet little Mrs. Mitchell, promised if I would
remain a few days longer she would send to her plantation
for this luxurious speciality of South Carolina, and make a
salad with her own tiny hands. I could n't wait, but some
day I am going back for it.
The morning for our visit to the Magnolia Cemetery was
glorious with sunshine, and Bee proposed that we should
make a détour and go by the East Battery to take our car.
Even grim Fort Moultrie looked cheerful
that day; there were several beautiful yachts in the harbour,
the avenue of palmettos rustled their leaves in a faint bright
breeze, and as I turned to look at the pretty white town,
peaceful and prosperous, it seemed amazing that so much
of it had survived the five hundred and sixty days of
bombardment it had sustained during the Civil War.
Certainly no city has suffered in the past more than
Charleston, for, after the long siege, when her sons by land
and sea kept her "virgin and inviolate to the last," came a
severe earthquake. The house we were living in carries a
great iron bar across the front in memory of this event. Fate
seems indeed to have tried the people in order to prove their
courage, which is indomitable.
The cannon along the Battery always detained us for a
little; they speak so eloquently of that long bombardment,
and each bears a brass tablet telling of the service it had
done. A big gun looking directly upon Fort Moultrie had
been down in the depths of the sea and this was its
honourable record: "This gun, having taken part in the
attack on Fort Sumter by an armoured squadron, April 7th,
1863, was recovered from the wreck of the sunken Keokuk
by an exploit of heroic enterprise, and mounted on Sullivan's
Island, where for two years it was used in defence of the
city it had once been brought to attack. Removed to this
place by the Civil Authority, August, 1889."Some of the guns
had seen four years of active service; when the sun shone
so brilliantly upon them it turned the black of the iron into a
shimmering blue. Fate, with even her hardest knocks,
cannot deprive Charleston of its ideal climate, and in another
decade all her old prosperity will return to her, for there is
no more beautiful spot in America than this lovely city by
the sea. Even Magnolia
Cemetery smiled that day, and the dead seemed in happy
peace. The monument to South Carolina's great soldier,
General Wade Hampton, stands in the centre of the
Confederate dead, whom with such valiant courage he led
into heroic action. The most beautiful monuments are not
however of stone; they are nature's great live-oaks, with
their widely spreading branches, bending tenderly over the
hundreds of little headstones, as if to say, "Soldiers, sleep
well." And I thought of Father Ryan's little verses:
Old trees! old trees! in your mystic gloom
There 's many a warrior laid,
And many a nameless and lonely tomb
Is sheltered beneath your shade.
Old trees! old trees! without pomp or prayer
We buried the brave and the true,
We fired a volley and left them there
To rest, old trees, with you.
Old trees! old trees, keep watch and ward
Over each grass-grown bed;
'Tis a glory, old trees, to stand as guard
Over our Southern dead;
Old trees, old trees, we shall pass away
Like the leaves you yearly shed,
But ye! lone sentinels, still must stay
Old trees, to guard our dead.
The sun grew so warm that to escape it I sat under one
of the trees with the long grey moss softly touching my face
like the gentle hand of an old friend. Bee was busy with her
kodak trying to get an impression of one of the ancient oaks
carrying seven centuries of mystic gloom, when a lady,
dressed in deepest mourning, with a sweet face, old, thin
and very white, came and
sat beside me. She said, "Good morning; the sun is very
warm for this time of the year."
I said, "It is, indeed, but having been out of the South so
long I am more than grateful for it."
"Do you," she said, "live abroad?"
"Yes," I said, "I live in London, at least I used to live in
London; but now I have no 'dwelling more by sea or shore.' "
"Ah," she said, "then it is better to wander."
"Yes," I said, "perhaps; - this is a very beautiful place for
rest."
She said, "I try to find it so, for, like Bobbie, the little
faithful dog in Edinburgh, who when he lost his master
spent his life by the side of his grave, I spend my life here.
All my six children sleep over there - " she pointed to a row
of graves not far off. "Whenever the sun shines I come
here in the morning, and I leave in the evening. I do not
always bring flowers, but I talk to them and often I go
away comforted, for I feel they have talked to me."
"I, too, have my sorrows, but they are nothing compared
to yours."
"I can bear mine," she said, "for I know I shall find my
children again. I am a little lonely and I grow weary of
waiting, but that is all."
"Good-bye," I said "I shall often think of you."
"I need not give you my address in Charleston," she said,
"you will always find me here."
Bee had photographed the noble tree and met me with
her camera.
"You look white and fagged, are you tired?" she asked.
"No," I said, "but a broken heart that still lives has been
shown to me. The quiet hearts of the dead
are at peace; it is the sorrows of the living that are
overwhelming."
And as we walked along under the brilliant sunshine, I
told her of the poor lady that we had left with all her devoted
dead; and when I had finished Bee's cheeks were not quite
so pink, for she has a very tender, maternal, protecting
nature. Her hand is instinctively stretched out to succour and
to help. If she gets out of a street-car and an old lady
follows, Bee waits like a perfect gentleman to help her out.
If a friend is ill, Bee never fails to make a daily visit; if a
child is fretful Bee can comfort it, and there is nothing in
medicine or science for the benefit of humanity which does
not appeal to her. To the world she presents a frank, boyish
front, and never, under any circumstances, indulges in gush,
even with her best beloved friends. But in her blue eyes
there is the same expression that I remember in the eyes of
a nun, who when she died, left eighteen hundred foundlings
and waifs under her roof. Bee is sensitively proud and the
soul of modesty. She is indifferently polite to men, unless
they happen to be engaged to her best friends, when she
puts aside her maidenly armour and is her own gracious
hospitable self.
"Why do you," I said to her, "stand that conceited bore of
a professor, give him Mary's best wine to drink, and have
turkey for dinner whenever he comes?"
"Because," said Bee, "he is going to marry my friend
Dorothy next month. She lives in Boston, and she has been
such a long time making up her mind to do it I felt that I
must give her some encouragement."
I said, "Poor Dorothy; she is going to be bored to
extinction."
But Bee answered cheerfully, "He has his good points."
Friendship is with Bee a sacred trust, something not to be
lightly embarked upon, but when once undertaken it
assumes for her life-long and loyal obligations. She belongs
to the type of woman who having married, would never,
however unhappily mated, divorce her husband, and at no
matter what cost to herself would bear her sorrows in noble
silence and live up to her highest ideals to the end. And
sometimes Fate is kind to me, for Bee is my friend.
It was early for the Garden of the Magnolias, that
marvellous spot of beauty now frequently described and
illustrated both in pictorial papers and in magazines. The
boats were not running yet to the Ashley River, and to go
first to Summerville and then a long drive to the garden and
back again in one day meant a fatiguing journey, so Bee and
I evolved an excellent plan. We found a man with a motor
boat who said if we secured eighteen passengers he would
take us on reasonable terms. Five people were mustered
from our house, and the remainder from different hotels,
which we notified of our excursion, and the next morning at
ten o'clock we embarked. It was a warm soft spring day.
The sky was deep blue, with a few billowy white clouds
blown by a bright wind into eager motion. In the distance, a
violet and pearl mist slowly lifted itself, leaving the fresh
tender green of budding trees and shrubberies greener still
from the soft moisture, and now and then a breath of yellow
jessamine or honeysuckle floated towards us, showing that
the sun had been kind.
We steamed along amidst pretty scenery, quiet
plantations on either side, many of them having historical
interest and all of them former scenes of open-armed,
hospitable gaiety. The grass at the landing of
the Magnolia Gardens was as green as that of Ireland. The
red-bud and flowering peach and plum and almond trees
were all in blossom, and the hum of the bees seemed to
belong to midsummer.
A cohort of black gardeners, male and female, met us, the
men in blue jean and the women wearing calico dresses and
plaid head handkerchiefs, as "befo' de wa'." They led us
politely through the winding paths, where on each side every
known flower was grown, yellow and pink old-fashioned
cabbage roses, the canary coloured tea-rose, the monthly
rose, which in the South is a daily rose until January, and
sometimes faithfully blooms the whole year round. The
hundred-leaf rose, with its close rosette in the centre; the
little white and pink Cherokee rose, the crimson and yellow
rambler; the musky moss-rose, in great luxuriance, and there
were wide beds of pinks and carnations, yellow, white, rose
and red. A carnation always breathes to me of passion, but
a clean passion; there is nothing heavy and sultry about its
fresh perfume, it is frank; robust and hardy. Even in the dry
hot atmosphere of an over-heated room this flower, so full
of vitality, refuses to die, and lasts for many days. A friend,
young, happy, distinguished in his career, once travelled a
day and a night to see me for only one hour. He gave me at
our parting half a hundred splendid carnations, a flower for
each day of our separation; - before they were withered he
was dead. I never saw him again, but every carnation
throughout all the years brings me a fragrant memory of
him.
Near the beds of these dear flowers was a stately tomb
of Italian marble; the negroes said it was a former owner
who wished to sleep always amidst the luxuriance of the
flowers he loved so well. If the gardens had been called the
Gardens of the Camellias
it would not have been a misnomer, for before the
blossoming of the magnolias they reign supreme and are of
every colour, size, and known variety. The white flower was
in perfection that gave Marguerite Gautier her poetic name,
The Lady of the Camellias, one of which she gave to
Armand Duval, saying, "When this flower is withered come
back to me." As a contrast to its dazzling purity, scarlet
flowers flamed on either side, and there were camellias of a
pink so evanescent that it was like the blush of a fair young
girl. Other varieties seemed to borrow the glories of them
all, scarlet flecked with white, white splashed with crimson,
and a pale pearl pink, the leaves deepening at one side into a
vivid vermilion. The real queen of the garden was an opulent
flower of a rich, pure du Barry rose, painted with splashes
of white, as if Puck had dashed on the colours with reckless
brush while waiting to go on that gay and breathless journey,
when he girdled the world in forty minutes. The bold-faced
trumpet flower, giving colour to the long pendants of sombre
moss, had climbed to the very tops of some of the beautiful
old live-oaks, the trees that in all the world I love the best.
For one of my first memories is of my father finishing a
chapter of Guy Mannering or The Bride of Lammermoor,
under the spreading shade of a great live-oak, with little
negroes and dogs tumbling at his feet, while I, a maiden of
five, called to him from the porch to come, for Buttons, my
pony, and Pomp, his horse, were waiting at the gate for our
afternoon ride.
There is an eternal beauty about the live-oak surpassing
that of all the other forest trees. With its great age, its
superb dignity, its rough, burly bark, and its thousands of
leaves, it is an inspiring poem:
"I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not
abide;
I have come ere the dawn, oh beloved, my live-oaks to hide
In your gospelling glooms - to be
As a lover in heaven, the marsh, my marsh, and the sea,
my sea."
Near the protecting branches of a splendid live-oak grew
a perfect tree, the glory of the South, the magnificent
magnolia grandiflora, in the first perfection of exquisite
bloom. Its glossy pointed dark green leaves held that divine
chalice of creamy white as if to shelter and guard its
unapproachable beauty. Each flawless leaf of the flower
seemed sculptured in fine, smooth ivory; its perfume was the
breath of all the South, evanescent, yet powerful and
alluring, creating a strange desire to breathe its manifold
fragrance again and yet again, for it was redolent of a
thousand odours, myrrh and sandalwood, musk and
mignonette, myrtle and olive, orange and oleander, rose and
geranium, mimosa and gardenia. It is all of them, yet none of
them, but only itself, this stately grandiflora, the most fitting
emblem of the South.
The azaleas were not in full flower, but they blossomed
thickly around a miniature lake, to the very water's edge,
forming a frame of pink and yellow fire, the blue water
reflecting again the rose and gold, made a very feast of vivid
colour. A trifle to the right of this rainbow lake, the
shrubbery seemed impenetrable, but I pushed my way
though and my startled eyes rested upon a silver garden, a
circle of shimmering patterned silver lace. It seemed a
beautiful unreal vision, this most strange and exquisite fairy
ring, formed by a belt of live-oaks, one standing a little
forward as if listening to the voices of the others; the
greenness of each tree softly and modestly veiled by the
long, pearly grey, waving moss, which from time to time had
fallen and been blown about, until a soft, light, and tender
silver grey resilient carpet covered all the earth. Each tendril
of the moss, dependent from the trees, was be-pearled by a
light rain of the night before, and where the strong rays of
the sun penetrated and shone upon the pearls they were
turned to myriads of sparkling diamonds. And beyond this
enchanting zone there were flashes of colour mingling with
the subdued radiance of the silver. From the outside of the
circle, yellow and white jessamine and purple wistaria and
coral honeysuckle had climbed over the tops of the trees
and softly trailed over the grey moss, forming on the inside
an irregular fringe of flowers. And, peeping impudently
through the lower branches of the trees, there appeared the
saucy face of a pink or rose or red japonica, while here and
there the outer edge of the carpet was brightened by an
occasional patch of fallen white and scarlet petals, and
underneath the tall oak, standing inside the charmed circle, a
little ring of pointed, green leaves, with their starry blossoms
had gallantly pushed themselves up through the silver moss,
and, covered with dew-drops, they glistened like a band of
translucent opals. And I knew that if I waited until nightfall
Titania and Oberon and Puck would meet me there.
No one came to see this silver garden and I was glad that
its solitary loveliness was to be mine alone. I heard Bee
calling and I walked down the winding path with long wands
of bridal wreath, flowering almond, and trails of roses
touching my face, but when I saw a little by-path I turned
back again for I wanted this vision of luminous pearl and
tarnished silver to be
fixed forever in my memory. And I thought of one who
could have immortalised its glory, a Southern poet, young,
gifted, beautiful, who died on the threshold of life. He
believed that "Music was harmony - Harmony was Love -
and Love was God." Perhaps these many years he has
abided in a silver garden whose radiance is unfading, whose
light is eternal.
"WHY on earth do you go to Savannah?" said a very old
lady in Charleston with thick white hair majestically rolled
back from her forehead, and her wrinkled hands adorned
with quaint diamond rings, relics of her ancestors before the
Revolution. "You won't see anything there except Jews
and Yankees."
"Jews," I said, "are a wonderful race. Look at the artists
and musicians, authors and financiers they have given us,
and for me they have been among my best and most
serviceable friends. At the close of the Confederacy Mrs.
Clement Clay could not have got to Washington to plead for
the life of her husband, except for the whole-hearted
kindness of a Jew. Don't you remember what she wrote in
her memoirs:
" 'The middle of November had arrived ere, by the aid of
Mr. Robert Herstein, a kindly merchant of Huntsville - may
his tribe increase' - (and so say I) - 'who advanced me one
hundred dollars, (and material for a silk gown to be made
when I should reach my destination), I was enabled to begin
my journey to the Capital,' - A distinguished Jew at a
grand party in London was once my escort to supper and I
ate so many olives he asked me if I was a Jewess."
"With that blunt nose of yours, my dear," said my friend,
"he must have been a stupid Jew."
"And," I said, "I know a true and wonderful romance of a
Jew gifted with godlike beauty, and an Empress. Some day
I am going to tell the story and call it The Heart of a Jew."
The lady drew herself up stiffly. "You are Catholic in
your tastes," she said, "and what do you think of Yankees?"
"Josh Billings," I said, "when asked after a tour in France
what he thought of the French, answered, 'I find that
generally everywhere human nature prevails.' I have
known very charming, agreeable, and generous Yankees."
The lady said coolly, "My dear, you have been very
lucky; but you are a Southern woman no longer, you are
merely a citizen of the world."
"No," I said, "that is where you are mistaken. The one
satisfactory thing in my shorn and unsatisfactory life is that I
was born a Southern woman. I love the South and
everything in it. I could be, if I allowed myself, rigid and
narrow, but I just open my heart and won't be. It seems to
me we should all try in a measure to understand the pæan
of praise written in memory of that brilliant Irishman, John
Boyle O'Reilly:
" 'Sees he the planet and all on its girth -
India, Columbia and Europe - his eagle-sight
Sweeps at a glance all the wrong upon earth.
Races or sects were to him a profanity:
Hindoo and Negro and Kelt were as one;
Large as mankind was his splendid humanity,
Large in its record the work he has done.'
least I cannot," I added, "but my beloved father, with his
broad humanity managed it, and not only his body, but his
soul - the very essence of him, belonged to the South."
"You loved your father," said the lady.
"I think," I said, "that every human being brought into
contact with that noble, generous spirit loved him."
"I too," said the lady, "loved my father. He was the
grandest gentleman I ever knew. He came from Savannah,
but that was, of course, before the War, and it was there I
met my husband at a fancy ball. How handsome he was,
dressed in black velvet as the Duke of Buckingham. I went
as little Red Riding Hood, wore a red cloak, long yellow
curls on either side of my face, and carried a basket of
eggs. My husband had this little gold egg, which is a
vinaigrette, made in memory of our meeting and I 've worn
it on my châtelaine ever since. My father is buried at
Bonaventure. Of course," she said, relenting, "you will
enjoy Savannah as a city, but you will see that it does n't
compare with Charleston."
I got up to say good-bye and a quaint portrait of two
children attracted my attention.
"Mary Ellen and Laura Lee," said my hostess, "they
were real Charles the First children in appearance and I
always cut their hair and dressed them in that fashion. It
was the only style that became them."
Yet it is said that America is modern! America is what
you wish to find it - intensely progressive, or entirely of
the past and conservative. In its broad area any climate in
the world can be found. Any taste in the world can be
gratified.
getting back to Washington to work. Can you go to
Savannah to-morrow?"
"Yes," I said, "I can; we could have gone before only I
dread your leaving me, and starting off to New Orleans
alone."
We, however, went the next day to Savannah and
found, as in Charleston, a heavenly winter climate. It was
warm enough to go to the theatre in the evening without
wraps or hats. We spent the next morning at the Art
Gallery, where they have the nucleus of an interesting
collection of pictures. Gari Melchers, himself a most
distinguished artist, buys for the gallery, and I never saw a
better Hitchcock - a long stretch of early tulips in Holland,
a very wealth of fresh, exhilarating, variegated, vivid colour.
In the afternoon Mrs. Lester, the widow of Senator
Rufus Lester, who for years so ably represented Georgia in
the United States Senate, came in her motor to take us out
to Thunderbolt, one of the picturesque and convenient
suburbs of the city. It is on the beautiful Warsaw River and
was named from a thunderbolt, which in a terrifying storm
buried itself deep in the ground, loosening the waters which
ever afterwards gushed forth in a bountiful spring. The
sunshine was white and weak, and a thin gauzy mist of blue
and lavender lingered on the river, but even while we looked
upon it the sun shone brightly, penetrated the fair veil and
promised the splendour of an orange and purple sunset.
"That," said Mrs. Lester, pointing to a picturesque house,
"is the Savannah Yacht Club." And as we motored farther
along the fine road, "There is Bannon Lodge, famous for its
wonderful variety of fish and the excellence with which it is
cooked." When we turned
towards the river I saw palmetto and myrtle, orange and
magnolia, catalpa, sweet olive and oleander, giving out
already their thin sweet scents and promising a wealth of
fragrance a little later in the spring. We were almost in
sight of Bonaventure, known to me from a much-liked
story that my father, who was born in Georgia, used to tell.
In 1760, the property belonged to Colonel Mulryne, an
Englishman. The grounds were of surpassing loveliness,
immense live-oaks draped in moss made the air cool with
their grateful shade. There was a large brick house facing
the grassy terraces which extended to the river, and a
famous grove of magnolias leading to the road scented all
the air. Colonel Mulryne was entertaining a large company
at dinner when he was informed that the roof was ablaze
and there was no possibility of saving the house.
"Ah," he said quickly, "then we must dine on the lawn."
The table was quickly removed by a number of slaves and
the dinner finished while the house burned to the ground.
Cool and sustained courage is certainly one of the most
picturesque and admirable of human traits. I know an
ex-naval officer who had gone into business in New York.
While giving a large dinner at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, he
happened to look up at the special report of the stock
market while the guests were being marshalled in the
dining-room, and saw that through an unexpected panic
everything he owned had been swept away, leaving him
penniless. His face never changed, and no one at the
dinner was more gay or agreeable than the self-possessed
host. Next morning, one of the guests, a millionaire, hearing
of his loss and remembering the way he had borne it,
called upon him
and said, "I 've come to place forty thousand dollars at your
disposal. A man with your steady nerve is bound to win."
And he did, eventually becoming president of the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company, with a salary of fifty thousand
dollars a year.
Colonel Mulryne rebuilt his house and was living in it at
the beginning of the Revolution. He was a Whig, but his
patriotism stopped at the Declaration of Independence; and,
giving shelter to Governor Wright, he was persuaded to
accompany him when he left America and sailed in a
man-of-war for England. Mary Mulryne, his daughter, an heiress,
had married Josiah Tatnall, a Royalist, who in disgust also
went to England to live. Her boys, however, born in
America, wished to return and the eldest, Josiah, finally ran
away, and on his arrival in Georgia joined the army of
General Nathaniel Greene. Inheriting the cool, intrepid
courage of his grandfather, he served with great distinction
during the War of the Revolution and was rapidly promoted
from a lieutenancy to be Colonel of the first Georgia
regiment. In recognition of his services, part of his estates,
including his birthplace, Bonaventure, were restored to him,
and when the war was over he made a no less distinguished
statesman than soldier. He served first in the Legislature,
and was afterwards sent to Congress. On his return from
Washington he was elected Governor of Georgia, and all this
brilliant career was compassed in the short space of thirty-six
years. Had he lived, his would doubtless have been one
of America's most illustrious names. He was buried in the
grounds of Bonaventure that he loved so well, beneath a
great oak, and his son inherited the beautiful estate won
back to the family by his father's patriotism. But it was not
to remain with the Tatnalls, for nearly
a century later Bonaventure was again confiscated, when
his grandson, Commodore Tatnall, refused to remain in the
service of the United States Navy. He was the officer who
in June, 1859, had helped the British fleet in the Peiho,
giving as his reason in a despatch to the Navy Department
"that blood is thicker than water." During the war with
Mexico, he fought so gallantly that the State of Georgia had
sent him a splendid sword. He could not turn that sword
against her in her bitter hour of need. And yet he had been
a distinguished officer in the United States Navy for fifty
years when he joined the Confederacy. A whole long
lifetime.
Americans are the most patriotic people in the world, for
theirs is a sort of double-barrelled patriotism, first the love
of their State, of which they are inordinately proud, and in
no lesser degree the love of the United States. To fold a
flag and put it out of sight under which a man has served
for fifty years, must have been a moment of supreme
tragedy. The pain could be no less intense in divorcing an
old wife.
I knew an English couple who separated after fifty years
of married happiness and the quarrel, alas, arose out of a
book. The man in his old age, was deeply interested in
writing his experiences of travel by land and sea. The lady,
who had always found him an exemplary husband and, that
rare individual, - a man willing to put aside his desires to
please his wife, asked him one day to come for a drive. He
refused, saying he was busy writing his book. She told him
with cruel frankness that he would never find either
publishers or readers. When she came back from her drive
he was gone, never to return, - and thus do separations and
tragedies of life grow out of trifles light as air.
There will be no more changes for beautiful Bonaventure,
for it is now a sweet and peaceful, quiet resting-place for
the dead, and the Tatnalls, after a life's feverish struggle can
once more go home. Mrs. Lester pointed out as we passed
it a handsome house, very interesting to me with my love
and admiration of Thackeray, for it is said that he wrote the
greater part of The Virginians there while visiting Andrew
Low, the Englishman who built it.
How Thackeray was entertained in America! Everything
this bounteous land produces - fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables
and fruit - were served to him in lavish abundance by
proud but anxious hostesses. He afterwards said that at
every American table he was first served with "grilled
hostess." The poor ladies at the head of their tables, fiery
red, anxious and hot, had evidently been until the last
moment occupied in superintending some special dish!
There was an ancient fashion in South Carolina and
Georgia of serving an enormous turkey which, like a
Chinese box, contained one after the other about six other
birds, until it finished with a rice bird, small and delicate
enough for even the little bones to be edible. The juices of all
the different birds, basted in fresh butter, were supposed to
be of unique and marvellous flavour. Probably Mr.
Thackeray ate of this gastronomic complexity on more than
one occasion.
Mrs. Clay, in A Belle of the Fifties, says: "Mr.
Thackeray's lecture and poetry were a red-letter occasion,
and the simplicity of that great man of letters, as he recited
Lord Lovel and Barbara Allen, was long afterwards a
criterion by which others were judged." And in that sprightly
and human book, A Diary from Dixie, Mrs. Chesnut writes:
Letter from home carried Mr. Chesnut to Charleston to-day.
Thackeray is dead. I stumbled upon Vanity Fair myself.
I had never heard of Thackeray before. I think it was in
1850, I know I had been ill at the New York hotel, and when
left alone I slipped downstairs and into a bookstore that I
had noticed under the hotel for something to read. They
gave me the first half of Pendennis. I can recall now the
very kind of paper it was printed on, and the illustrations as
they took effect upon me, and yet when I raved over it and
was wild for the other half, there were people who said it
was slow."
Even to-day there are great Thackeray lovers in
America. When Major Judson, that brilliant officer of the
Engineer Corps, was - luckily for the American army -
ordered to the East to study the methods of fighting during
the Russo-Japanese War, he carried with him only two
books, one of them being Vanity Fair. On a roof garden in
Washington one blazing night this last memorable summer,
he went through a highly creditable examination on that
wonderful book, which is as familiar to me as Pinkie and
the Fairies.
After a day of activity and motoring in Savannah, any
normal human being would have slept, but it was my off
night and if sleep comes to me at all every other night, it is
as much as I can hope for. Fortunately I discovered
before I went to bed that my room was bare of books and
the manager at the office lent me two volumes which,
although read before, interested me until seven o'clock
next morning. One of these was Mrs. Chesnut's Diary from
Dixie, and contained this paragraph about the mother of
my Nancy who had died in New York;
CAMDEN, S. C., August 2nd, 1865.
Mary Kirkland has had experience with the Yankees.
She has been pronounced the most beautiful woman on this
side of the Atlantic and has been spoiled accordingly in all
society. When the Yankees came, Monroe, their negro
manservant, told her to stand up and hold two of her children
in her arms, with the other two pressed close against her
knees. Mammy Selina and Lizzie stood grimly on each side
of their young missis and her children, while for four mortal
hours the soldiers searched through the rooms of the house.
Sometimes Mary and her children were roughly jostled
against the wall, but Mammy and Lizzie were staunch
supporters. The Yankee soldiers taunted the negro women
for their foolishness in standing by their cruel slave-owner,
and taunted Mary for being glad of the protection of a poor
ill-used slave. Monroe, meanwhile, had one leg bandaged
and pretended to be lame, so that he might not be enlisted as
a soldier, and kept making pathetic appeals to Mary. "Don't
answer them back, Miss Mary," said he, "let 'em say what
dey want to; don't answer em back, don't gib em any
chance to say you were impudent to em."
How dramatically my poor friend Nancy began her life,
although she was then only a baby in arms.
A further extract from Mrs. Chesnut's diary relates two
incidents, one tragic the other amusing.
July 13th, 1863.
Halcott Green came to see us. Bragg is a stern
disciplinarian according to Halcott, and he did not in the least
understand citizen soldiers. In the retreat from Shiloh he
ordered that not a gun should be fired. A soldier shot a
chicken and then the soldier was shot. "For a chicken!" said
Halcott, "A Confederate soldier for a chicken!"
Mrs. McCord says that a nurse who is a beauty had
better leave her beauty with her cloak and hat at the door.
One lovely nurse said to a soldier whose wounds could not
have been dangerous "Well, my good soul, what can I do
for you?" "Kiss me," said he. Mrs. McCord was furious
at the woman for telling it, for it brought her hospital into
disrepute, and very properly.
Frederic Norton, the frankest of humourists, once said to
me: "The difference between a man and a woman is this -
a woman only wants to kiss the man she loves; a man will
kiss any woman who will let him - tall, short, fair, dark,
fat, thin, grave or gay." Some men I am sure are not quite
so universally affectionate, but "out of evil cometh good;"
the request for a kiss made to a friend of mine completely
reconciled her to the short-comings of her husband.
She had quarrelled with him and left him, and her idea
had been to take her broken heart to the stage, that kind
refuge for so many troubled souls. She had a beautiful voice
which had been trained with extraordinary care by the best
masters in France and Italy, and she carolled like a veritable
canary. Her husband was rich and she, young, pretty, and
attractive, had been at the head of a large establishment and
had had not only the protection of a home, but of a man. It
was a very different position from that of a woman alone in
the world, who generally comes to know that in spite of the
boasted chivalry of man, she will meet one at least, now and
again, ready to take advantage of her defenceless situation.
My friend went to sing for a fat, bald, old impresario. He
sat at his ease on a sofa with arms outstretched, while she
hurriedly unfastened her gloves, played the introduction to
Proch's variations, and began to sing. She knew she was in
good voice and she displayed all her vocal pyrotechnics with
great effect. Roulades, the chromatic scale, trills, all came
like smooth silver
that morning. She improvised a little, her voice mounting
higher and higher, and finished with a bird-like D sharp.
Then she turned to the quiet gentleman, expecting that he would
at least say, "Your voice has been admirably trained." But what he
did say was, "Come and kiss me!" He did n't even offer to get up
and go to her, so sure was he of his power. There he sat, old, fat, common,
vulgar, calmly asking such a favour as a matter of course. It really was an
intensely comical situation, but my friend had no sense of humour.
"Think of the humiliation," she said; "I almost die at the memory."
I sent for her husband. Luckily he had no sense of humour either. He wanted
at once to thrash the impresario for insulting his wife. "He would show him,"
etc., etc. I suggested that if his wife had been in her own home, which she would
never have left except for his vagaries, the kiss would not have been demanded,
and a sensible reconciliation followed.
I am terribly opposed to a condemnation based upon circumstantial evidence.
What a commentary upon it is this other little story, taken from A
Diary in Dixie:
April 22nd, 1861.
Arranging my photograph book. On the first page
Colonel Watts. And here goes a sketch of his life: Beaufort
Watts, bluest blood, gentleman to the tips of his fingers,
chivalry incarnate, he was placed in charge of a large
amount of money and bank bills. The money belonged
to the State and he was on the way to deposit it. When
he went to bed at night he placed the roll on a table at
his bedside, locked himself in, and slept soundly. The
next morning the money was gone. Well, all who knew him
believed him innocent. Of course he searched and they
searched, but to no purpose - the money was gone. It
was a damaging story and a cloud rested upon him. Years
after, the house in which he had taken that disastrous sleep
was pulled down. In the wall behind the wainscot was found
his pile of money. How the rats got it through so narrow a
crack was most mysterious. Suppose that house had been
burned, or the rats had knawed up the bills past recognition.
People in power understood how that proud man had suffered
those many years in silence when men looked askance at
him. The country tried to repair the work of blasting
the man's character. He was made Secretary of Legation
to Russia, and was afterwards our Consul at Santa Fé de
Bogotá. When he was too old to wander far afield they
made him Secretary to all the Governers of South Carolina in
regular succession.
Yet another extract from the diary:
Camden, S. C., Nov. 5th, 1863.
Mattie Reedy (I knew her as a handsome girl in Washington
several years ago) got tired of hearing Federals abusing
John Morgan. One day they were worse than ever in their
abuse and she grew restive. By way of putting a mark
against the name of so rude a girl the Yankee officer
said, "What is your name?" "Write, Mattie Reedy now, but
by the grace of God, I hope one day to call myself the wife
of John Morgan." She did not know Morgan, but he
eventually heard the story - a good joke it was said to be.
But he made it a point to find her out; and as she was
as pretty as she was patriotic, by the grace of God she
is now Mrs. Morgan! These timid Southern women
under the guns can be brave enough.
The Fates evidently liked Mattie Reedy. They
gave her what she wanted, and had no such
surprise in store for her as they had for an
American girl who when travelling by carriage
in Italy with her mother stopped at a wretched,
muddy, damp, dirty little village for supper.
It was late, the horses were tired,
the idea had been to spend the night there, but her
sensibilities were so offended that she urged her mother to
try the next little township, which she agreed unwillingly
enough to do. In Rome, the following winter, the girl met an
Italian who lived in a tumble-down villa in that same
abhorred village. She married him. It was a love match and
they were poor, so she went back to the shabby villa and
lived in the impossible hamlet without leaving it for seven
years.
How Fate disciplines us with mocking laughter and quaint
surprises. "I cannot bear it," "I would die with that," and
straightway, both inflictions are sent to us. She had a rod in
pickle for Frances Anne Kemble when her marriage with
Pierce Butler was ordained. He was a handsome, not too
brilliant American, whose wealth all came from his
plantations in Georgia. There was nothing of the assimilative
blood of her French grandfather in this admirable lady. She
was a straightforward, respectable British matron, though
she lived in both Pennsylvania and Georgia; and in spite of
the appreciation and fortune she received when she gave
her Shakespearean readings throughout the country, she
disliked America cordially, and had little good to say of it.
When she wielded that conscientious and prolific pen of
hers, it has always the heavy touch of the tragedian, and
never by any chance the lighter one of the comedian.
I was fond of a certain little old-fashioned poem which
she gives in the records of her girlhood, a little song called
the Spirit of Morn.
Now on their couch of rest
Mortals are sleeping
While in dark, dewy vest,
Flowerets are weeping.
Ere the last star of night
Fades in the fountain,
My finger of rosy light
Touches the mountain.
Far on his filmy wing
Twilight is wending,
Shadows encompassing
Terrors attending:
While my foot's fiery print,
Up my path showing,
Gleams with celestial tint,
Brilliantly glowing.
Now from my pinions fair
Freshness is streaming,
And from my yellow hair
Glories are gleaming.
Nature with pure delight
Hails my returning,
And Sol, from his chamber bright,
Crowns the young morning.
And there was a time when she seemed to me the
sweetest poet in the world. It was in my extreme youth at
(to be exactly accurate) fifteen and a half, after my parting
from a young artillery lieutenant, a brand new graduate of
West Point, all brightest of brass buttons, bluest of eyes
and untiringest of dancers. When my first love letter from
him followed me to Texas he quoted her poem of
Absence:
What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?
How shall I charm the interval that lowers
Between this time and that sweet hour of grace?
Shall I in slumber steep each weary sense,
Weary with longing? - shall I flee away
Into past days, and with some fond pretence
Cheat myself to forget the present day?
Oh! how, or by what means, may I contrive
To bring the hour that brings thee back more near?
How may I teach my drooping hope to live
Until that blessed time, and thou art here?
I will tell thee; for thy sake, I will lay hold
Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee
In worthy deeds, each moment that is told
While thou, belovèd one! art far from me.
I will this dreary blank of absence make
A noble task-time, and will therein strive
To follow excellence, and to o'ertake
More good than I have won, since yet I live.
So may this doomèd time build up in me
A thousand graces which shall thus be thine;
So may my love and longing hallowed be,
And thy dear thought an influence divine.
And he ended the letter by imploring me to return to
Washington and end as soon as possible the "doomèd time"
of our separation. But long before this dreary blank of
absence was over there was a curly-haired officer of the
Engineers, and a fair Cavalryman looming in the horizon,
also the Captain of Engineers had the advantage of writing
original and very eulogistic poetry, so my taste for Frances
Anne as a poet soon suffered an eclipse.
No one in Savannah remembered that Frances
Kemble had lived both at St. Simeon's and in Butler's
Island. Yet not only was her home there, but she had
really appreciated the beauties of the country.
In 1838 she wrote:
Last Thursday evening we left out hotel at Charleston for
the steamboat which was to carry us to Savannah. About
the middle of the day we landed at the Island of Edisto
which is famous for producing the finest cotton in America,
therefore I suppose in the world. On Sunday morning the
day broke most brilliantly over these Southern waters and
as the sun rose the atmosphere became clear and warm as
in the early Northern summer. We now approached
Butler's Island and on landing from the boat, we were
seized, pulled, pushed, carried, dragged and all but lifted in
the air by the clamour of the black multitude (the slaves).
They seized our clothes, kissed them, then our hands, and
almost wrung them off. "Howdy Missy!" "God bless
Missy!" "Hallelujah! Missy 's come!" they cried . . .
And later she wrote from St. Simeon's:
March, 1839.
I wish, dear Emily, I could for an instant cause a vision to
rise before you of the perfect paradise of evergreens
through which I have been opening paths on our estate in
an island called St. Simeon's, lying half in the sea and half
in the Altamaha. Such noble growth of dark-leaved, wide
spreading oaks; such exquisite natural shrubberies of
magnolia, wild myrtle and bay, all glittering evergreens of
various tints, bound together by trailing garlands of wild
jessamine, whose yellow bells like tiny golden cups, exhale
a perfume like that of the heliotrope and fill the air with
sweetness, and cover the woods with perfect curtains of
bloom; while underneath all this spread the spears and fans
of the dwarf palmetto, and innumerable tufts of a little
shrub whose delicate leaves are pale green underneath and
a polished dark brown above, while close to the earth clings
a perfect carpet of thick growing green, almost like moss,
bearing clusters of little white blossoms like enamelled stars;
I think it is a species of Euphrasia.
At least something of the charm of my dear Southern
land had penetrated her Northern spirit.
In the morning when Bee came in she found me with
Mrs. Chesnut's book still in my hand.
"Is it possible," she asked, "that you have been reading all
night?"
I told her it was, but nevertheless I felt fairly fresh, quite
well enough to go for a sight-seeing walk after breakfast.
Savannah has any number of excellent shops. It was a
perfectly beautiful morning and we stopped to look at the
pretty spring fashions in the windows. Walking along Liberty
Street I had the impression of pearls in the air, but it was
only a negro shoe-black smiling a broad smile and disclosing
two perfect rows of milk-white teeth. "Mek yo' shoes lak
black diamonds." And as my shoes had never been "lak
black diamonds" I stopped. He brushed, and he blew long
breaths upon them, and he smiled and blew again, and
brushed and blew, lifted each foot, cleaned the soles, and
when he had finished they certainly did resplendently shine. I
asked his charge. "Twenty-five cents," he said. "Twenty-five cents!
Is n't that very dear?" I asked. "Not," he said,
"when I breffs 'em. Eff I jes blacks 'em it 's only fifteen
cents, but eff I breffs 'em it 's twenty-five." Then he smiled
his superb, appealing smile, and I willingly gave him his
quarter.
"I suppose," I said to Bee, "breathing on them is an extra
effort. He has a great deal of breath; they feel quite damp."
We talked about taking the trolley to the beautiful old
plantation of "The Hermitage," where the long row of slave
quarters are still to be seen. But Bee said that we really
ought to go down first to the wharf and see the cotton.
"Don't forget," she said, "that Savannah is the largest cotton
port on the Atlantic and the third largest lumber port in the
world."
The wharf proved a most busy and intensely interesting
place, and Savannah will find it an immense advantage to
be the nearest port to the Panama Canal, when that work
of genius is completed.
The morning passed all too quickly and in the afternoon
Judge Speer, that courtly and accomplished gentleman,
came with his wife to call upon us. He brought me a book
of Sketches of Prominent Men of America to read in
the train and in the evening Bee and I separated.
She went back to Washington and her Art School, and I
alas, started alone for New Orleans.
"Take out yo' mule, boys,
Hang up yo' gear;
Daytime is gone, boys,
Night-time is here."
ALTHOUGH fine gentlemen in Virginia refused as late as
1820 to breed the mule, he has become since that date
almost as much of an institution in the South as the palm
leaf fan.
After the war, in 1865, a cousin of mine who had gallantly
served his turn in the Confederate army returned to his
home in Georgia. He had left a pretty little white house of
two storeys, with balconies stretching across the front,
overgrown with flowering vines. At the rear there was a
neat stable, a smoke-house, a wash-house by the
never-failing old spring,
a big barn which held enough hay to feed
the cattle for the winter, and all the usual comfortable
outhouses of a Southern plantation. His place lay directly in
the path of Sherman's march to the sea. He returned in his
ragged grey clothes, with a tarnished star on his collar, and
the bridle of a big gaunt mule over his arm, to find even the
land blackened by fire. The only evidence of former
habitation was a handful of salt under one of the charred
logs of the smoke-house.
A few negroes agreed to work on the chance of a cotton
crop. He then cut down from the primeval forest near by
enough logs to make a rude cabin, and to this home he
brought his wife and three little children to begin life over
again. Their sole and only dependence was Satan, a mule
who in the first place had inherited from his mother a
defiant, reckless, suspicious mind, and, in the second, had
begun life under the management of a rather cruel negro.
Consequently, his disposition was early made sour,
resentful, and pessimistic.
Almost in his colthood the war came on, and he changed
the negro for another master and the strenuous life of a
hard-worked Union mule. His indifference to calamity
caused him always to place himself in the front of the
battle, and he was very soon shot in one of his hind legs.
With his excellent constitution, he rapidly recovered, and
was later captured by the Confederate artillery. With them
he served until the end of the war, his disposition getting
daily more cranky, and his views of life more saturnine.
Every time he hauled a heavy gun it always gave his lame
leg a recurrent pain. He had no faith in the goodness of
man, either white or black. He had no affection for any
human being and was filled with bitterness and cunning. If
a horse or a mule stood too near him he invariably left the
mark of either his teeth or his hoofs somewhere about the
unfortunate animal, and though of enormous size, he had
the agility of a cat in his movements.
More than one negro had to be taken to the hospital with
literally a terrible sinking of the stomach after one of the
mule's hind feet had been planted there violently and
unexpectedly. His feet, indeed, as he had no hands, were
against every man, and he felt that every man was against
him. Anything more resentful, more hopeless or full of
scorn and wickedness than Satan
could not be found in the world. Even his splendid strength
and robust health never lifted the black clouds that
environed his sad mule estate. He rarely lifted his voice, but
when he did his "heehaw" was full of satanic rage.
This was the capital that my cousin brought home from
the war.
One of the negroes, whose business it was to load the
waggon with logs for Satan to haul from the woods to the
former site of the house, said, "Dat mule suttenly am got de
right name. Dere could n't a been one found better suited
to him, an' he look like it too. Dere ain't no time when he
can't show de white ob his eye, an' he jes' curl up his lip at
you and frof at de mouf if you speak to him, like his whole
soul wuz full ob hate. He suttenly is a scornful mule.
Sometimes he eben scorns de fodder, but I will say he can
do 'bout three times de work of an' ordinary mule, an' dere 's
one thing to be said 'bout him, he will work. It seem like to
me he got some secret sorrow, an' he des tries to fergit it by
his job, 'cause if he took it into his head not to work, it would
be des like gettin' one of dese here ellifants to move."
And early and late Satan and the Major were up and
stirring - three o'clock in the morning often found them
ploughing. "The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb" - sometimes. There certainly never was such a crop
as those first years of cotton and corn. Every acre yielded
two bales, and the silky gold of the myriads of corn tassels
promised a rich harvest for the autumn.
A little smoke-house had been built, and the Major had
bought several pigs that were being fattened for the winter's
hams and bacon. They were allowed to
run at large, and had made a deep crescent-shaped hole
under the logs at the back of the house. One joyous day
for Satan the Major was obliged to go to Atlanta and he
was given a holiday. Such a thing had not happened to
him since he ran by the side of his mammy, and he
became quite active and gay. He ran round the fields
kicking his heels in the air, and finally lay down to take a
good wallow, but unfortunately he stuck his great head in
the hollow place under the smoke-house and had n't
enough horse sense, being a mule, to get it out again.
There he lay screaming and kicking and floundering about,
with his legs flying round like the arms of a windmill. No
negro dared to go near those horrible heels that were
ready to destroy anything within range.
Jenny Lilly, the Major's wife, attracted by the noise,
came out of the house and her imagination at once
projected the consequences of this scene. It meant future
desolation - the mule would die, for there was no way of
extricating him, the splendid cotton crop and all those
plumes of corn tassels would mean nothing. How could
they get the bales of cotton to Atlanta? How were the
bushels of corn to be hauled to the railroad? And success
seemed so near - even the new frame house was just in
sight. She covered her face with her hands and cried like
a child. What could be done?
Then an idea occurred to her. She went into the
smoke-house and, regardless of the curling lips and wild
eyes of the mule, she seized his head and with superhuman
strength pushed it until it just escaped the logs. Satan was
free! Her arms were covered with blood and she was
almost in a fainting condition. As for Satan, one of the
negroes wanted to shoot him at once
and put him out of his agony. The whole side of his long
head was torn and bleeding; the bare flesh could be seen;
one eye, apparently, was blind, and there he stood, a horribly
skinned, maimed, and dangerous creature.
Jenny's greatest attraction was her soft, pretty, caressing
voice. She fearlessly went quite near the poor suffering
creature, and began to condole with him, "Oh honey," she
said, "oh honey, don't die and ruin us." It was the first time in
his life he had heard that word and it sounded very sweet to
his ears. " Honey," how different from "damned beast." But
what was to be done? One negro had already gone to the
house and loaded a pistol. "Miss Jinny," he said, "dere ain't
no use in de worl' tryin' to do nothin' wid dat mule, he des
boun' to die. De wedder is so hot, his head will mortify in a
day. Dere ain't no more use in tryin' to sabe him, den dere
would be, to 'spect a cool stream ob water to come out ob
dis here dry rock."
But a woman is usually dauntless and resourceful in the
interest of the man she loves. Miss Jinny pictured the Major
coming home in his old grey soldier clothes - he still wore
his uniform minus the star and epaulets - and the death of
Satan would be a too cruel and horrible blow to him. Who
would break the news? And something had touched Satan;
some chord in his memory had been awakened; perhaps as
a colt a little darkey had given him a bit of bread and honey.
Now, with his great head sore and bleeding he was standing
quite still, tortured but evidently thinking.
Miss Jinny went fearlessly up to him, took him by the
mane, and led him to the little log house. There was a long
window opening into the kitchen. She placed him near it and
when she went in she took a pone
of corn bread, recklessly covered it with butter, and held it
out to Satan. He put his huge head through the window, and
bit by bit she fed him. Then she gave him a drink of cold
water. By this time the flies had begun to settle on the bare
flesh. Miss Jinny then filled a bucket with fresh water and
sponged the wound gently, oh so gently, scraped an old linen
sheet into a square of lint, put it all over the raw flesh, made
an enormous linseed poultice and laid it comfortingly over
the lint. Strange to say, Satan stood perfectly still while the
poultice, quite a yard long and three quarters of a yard wide,
was gently but firmly bound around his big head.
For two weeks or more Miss Jinny was up day and night,
stirring linseed and poulticing that great, black, stubborn
head. Never during that time did he attempt to bite her, nor
was he in any way vicious. At the end of the fortnight he
gave the first instance of his reformation; he put his black
nose on her hand and kept it there for quite a minute. This
was in appreciation of a beautiful sort of mule baby talk, that
had been evolved for his condition. He could not at first
believe that any human being had such a sweet voice and
such a sweet nature, and so much confidence in mules.
When he heard, "Hold still honey, poor good honey, Miss
Jinny would n't hurt her old mule for all the world," he felt
his life-long cynicism flowing away like honey. At last the
climax was reached when the nine months old baby was
lifted up, and put his soft arms around Satan's neck, bubbled,
cooed, kissed the white star on his forehead, and laughed
and tried to poke his finger in Satan's eye. There was only
one visible, for the poultices were still over the other.
had softened, his faith in human nature was awakened, his
love of mankind was fast being developed. At any rate there
was one woman, slim and tall, with a sweet anxious face,
gentian-blue eyes and hands never idle, who worked from
daylight until dark, for whom Satan could really have died.
When his convalescence was over and he began to work
again and was put back into the plough, he kept one weather
eye on that magic window, outside of which he had stood
for so many hot and feverish days, and where he had found
gentle hands, and heard for the first time in his life words of
sympathy and tender love.
The moment the plough stopped he turned, gently trotted
to the kitchen, put his huge head in the window, and
patiently waited for his Miss Jinny. Every night he had his
little pone of corn bread and butter or an autumn apple or
some little delicacy. He even pretended to have a taste for
bananas, notwithstanding he considered them a most
effeminate fruit, without the least flavour, but then Miss
Jinny and the children ate them, that was enough. Whatever
they offered him, like Adam with the apple, "he did eat."
The next year when the second crop came, there was
enough money to buy a basket phaeton. Satan actually
allowed Miss Jinny to harness him to it, although he found it
a most trivial affair, and drive to the nearest little town,
about three miles distant and back again.
After his recovery he had a great deal more white hair
than the star on his forehead, as it had grown in patches of
black and white all over his long head. With his gay harness
and jingling bells, everyone stopped to look at him, but Miss
Jinny did n't mind, for she said that after the Major and her
children,
Satan was really first in her affections. She petted him,
called him "Satan-honey," "Satan-angel," and to the day of
his death he was allowed to stand with his head in the
kitchen, while he ate his evening meal.
His heart had been unearthed, his affections had been
developed, and this had made him the gracious and tolerant
mule that he had become. He was even amiable towards
the darkies. The ploughman said, "I tell you what it is, Miss
Jinny's bin dat mule's salvation. He 's bin on de mourners'
bench shoutin' an' gone an' got religion. 'Tain't nothin' else
could a done it. Whenever he see her he do jes' like de
glory ob God done shine on him. Maybe mules is got souls;
I tell you I b'lieve dis one is, he 's gone sho' nuff from de
sinner to de saint. Why you can even rely on him, an' dat
ain't natchul for no mule. Eve'y day I watches him, spectin'
a outbreak, but it ain't come yit. Maybe it never will. An' his
eye is des as sof' as a dove."
When they could afford a cook and the negro woman
first came, Satan showed some of the old spirit and gave
the tip of her ear one small nip. But perhaps it was just as
well, as she was the greatest "borrower" in the
neighbourhood, and the Major and Miss Jinny, at that time
could not afford to have little sacks of coffee, and sugar
and flour and jugs of molasses carried away. Satan had
sound instincts after all; he brayed triumphantly and kicked
up his legs with joy when the cook left, and Miss Jinny
again handed him his corn bread.
He lived to be very old, his teeth were all worn away,
and he could no longer chew. Miss Jinny with her own
hands made him delicious corn mashes; the children wove
daisy chains for his neck, and basking in consideration and
love, he forgot all the sorrows of his youth
in the happiness of his old age (oh, thrice happy mule)! and
met a gentle death with calmness and fortitude. The last
words he heard were Miss Jinny's blessed ones of long ago,
"Oh, honey, don't die." And he would have lived for her if he
could, but he was old and weak; his time had come. The
children, big boys now, built a paling fence round his grave
and cut on a little block of limestone: "Here lies Satan, Miss
Jinny's old Angel Mule. He combined all the virtues of a
mule and a horse. His family loved him. August 1875." And
although he was only a black devil of an outcast mule, Love
never worked a greater miracle than when he gave Satan a
gentle trusting heart.
Last summer a group of gentlemen went hunting in Maine.
One night around the camp-fire a prize was offered to the
man who could tell the best animal story. That delightful
lover of all animal nature, Thompson Seton, was to be the
umpire, and the prize was a set of his delightful books. Dr.
Venning of West Virginia won it with the following story:
A retired gentleman jockey [he said], living near
Charleston, a mighty good fellow of an inventive turn of
mind, had been lucky in his dealings with a man in Saratoga
who had won several races with Virginia bred horses. One
day going through a field he noticed a negro ploughing with
a young, agile, good looking, intelligent black mule which,
when unhitched from the plough, instead of going home by
the road with the other mules, leaped a six foot fence with a
"hee" and with an exultant "haw" alighted on the other side,
nimbly trotted over the field, with a regular professional gait,
took another fence, and was eating his oats, almost before
the other mules had started by the regular road. The
gentleman jockey turned to the ploughman and said, "Don't
put that mule in the plough again; I see glory
and fame awaiting him in the North." He then sent for a
veterinary surgeon, renowned for the skill with which he
used the knife, and told him to fashion the mule's ears and
tail according to the pattern of a thoroughbred horse. This
was done. The cuts healed quickly, he was clipped and
curried until he looked like a piece of shining satin, and
although his head was somewhat long and his nose rather
flat, this was not noticed when he was in rapid motion,
leaping into the air like a deer, and taking any fence that
came.
When his training was finished the man from New York
was invited to come down and inspect the wonderful
jumper. He came, and the mule, untrue to the traditions of
his race, behaved not with contrariness, but quite as a
thoroughbred steeplechaser. He ran like a steam engine
round the track, and a five-barred hurdle seemed to him a
positive joy. The Northern sportsman, tremendously
surprised said, "He 's fast, but there 's something queer
about him. His head looks to me very bony; and is n't one
ear a trifle longer than the other?" The Virginia jockey said,
"My dear fellow, you 're not running his head, it 's his legs
you are after. Did you ever see anything like him?" "No,"
said the man, "I never did." So he agreed to pay ten
thousand dollars for the wonderful steeplechase horse, and
he was sent on a special train to Saratoga.
The day of the races came, and he won everything.
When the horses were put in line he stood at the head,
waiting for the blue ribbon to be placed on his proudly
arched neck, victory in his eye and pride written all over
him, when suddenly he seemed to collapse, his head
dropped down with a humbleness of which even the least
respecting cab horse would not be guilty, his big upper lip
curved back, showing all of his mule teeth, and the air was
filled with an agonised bray. "Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw."
The blue ribbon in the judge's hand waved as if a
Texas norther had struck it. The dread secret was out, and
the horse was submerged in the mule.
I don't know why it is that the most ruffianly of all the
mules in the world seem to come from Georgia. The
inimitable history of this one is described over the telephone.
"Hello - yassah - hello - dis Marse Henry?"
"Yassah - dis Bob - yassah - Maud, dat ar mule, she
dun bawk! Not far - 'bout two blocks outen de stable -
Yassah."
"Oh, we dun dun dat, Marse Henry. Yassah - we dun
twis' her tail."
"Yassah - little ole' trav'lun man f'um Boston - he twis'
her tail. Yassah, he 's in de hospittle - dey dun kerried him
ober dare."
"Yassah - he 's hurt mighty bad, Marse Henry, but dey'll
take keer ob him in de hospittle."
"Yassah, Marse Henry, we dun dat too, we tied up her
fore foot - yassah."
"Nawsuh - nawsuh - hit did n't wuck - she had two
hind foots lef'."
"Yassah - yassah - nice man whut preaches - yassah
he said no mule could do it wid one foot tied up."
"Yassah - yassah, but she dun dun it, yassah - biffed
him in de stumick - de p'leece pourin' water on his head
now - yassah."
"Yassah - yassah - we dun dat too - tied a horse hair
'roun her year."
"Yassah, yassah - a big fat man, yassah - jes' passin'
by - don't know his entitlement - yassah."
"Nawsuh - nawsuh - not a bery big piece - jes' bit a
little chunk outen his jowl - it 's bleedin' right smart but he
ain't hurt much."
"Yassah - yassah - dey are sewin' up his jaw - right
now - he 's all right."
"Yassah - yassah - we dun built a fire under her
too, yassah."
"Burn
part ob de cart? yassah."
"Yassah - yassah - dun burn right smart ob de cart.
Dat 's exactly what I 'se been tryin' to tell you, Marse
Henry - dun burn de whole cart all up, but I did n't want
to shock you, an' I wuz jes' gwine to ax you when you
gwine send a nurr' cart down heah sah, yassah."
List, e'en now a wild bird sings,
And the roses seem to hear,
Every note that thrills my ear,
Rising to the heavens clear,
And my soul soars on its wings.
Father RYAN.
IN Florida, that land of flowers and of birds, it is said the
mocking-birds sing more sweetly than anywhere else in all
the world.
On a mellow summer afternoon, when even the air,
hushed to stillness, seemed waiting, there lay dying in a long,
low, white cottage covered with trumpet flowers and
honeysuckle, a little child. Her father and mother, bowed
with grief, were kneeling by the bedside and her negro
Mammy stood over her, with all her strength turned to pain,
listlessly moving a palm leaf fan. Outside the window grew
a splendid live-oak, the noble tree that inspired Sidney
Lanier's exquisite appeal:
Teach me the terms of silence, preach me
The passion of patience,
Lift me, impeach me,
And there, oh there!
As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,
pray me a myriad prayer.
From its branches came the silver note of a mocking-bird.
He sang with crystalline sweetness, as if to pour out
his pure heart in one last gush of melody. It was thrillingly,
appealingly tender, then piercingly triumphant, and finally
victoriously exultant.
In the midst of his silent grief the father could not endure
those tuneful, iridescent dew-drops of sound; he arose from
his knees and went out into the garden to frighten the bird
away. As he stood under the tree the notes mounted higher
and still higher, up! up! up! until they floated away into blue
ether and then seemed to break all together into one
exultant chord of soul-stirring harmony. There was a
moment of profound silence, then the bird dropped dead at
his feet. He picked it up and went into the house to find the
negro Mammy closing the blue eyes of his little girl, and he
placed the dead bird in the little dead hand. Was it, he
wondered, the song of an angel or the song of a bird?
One bitter cold winter day, long ago in New York, an
accumulation of homesickness flooded my soul, and I
determined to drop my work and hear the mocking-bird sing
once more. Going to Texas by train was too expensive for
me in those days, so I went by boat, and was luckily
accompanied by my friend Phoebe, a most agreeable
companion, and by far the wittiest woman I have ever
known, for her wit was innocent, gay, impersonal,
infectious, and never hurt a human being in the world.
We left New York in a driving snowstorm, and in two
days we were sailing into perpetual sunshine with the
Atlantic as calm as a lake. The only fellow-passenger that I
recollect was a girl baby, a very beautiful child about a year
old, with little soft, gold rings of hair all over her head, dark
eyes with black fringes, a dimple in either cheek and in her
chin, and the gayest,
happiest little laugh I have ever heard. - "There are only
three things real on all the earth, Birth, Mother love and a
little child's Mirth." - She was travelling alone with her
nurse, a worried-looking, but very kind negro mammy who
told us the child's history.
Her father, a young clergyman, had died of consumption
leaving a family of five children. It was not long before the
mother developed the same disease. Before her death she
wished to see all her little flock cared for, and so, one by
one, she had given them away to people who wished to
adopt them, and a lady from Key West was going to take
the last one, the baby. What sorrow it must have been to the
Spartan mother to give up that dimpled darling before the
end came!
When we arrived at Key West, although in December, it
was the most heavenly summer day, and in the dusk of the
evening we saw myriads of roses lifting their pink-and-white
and scarlet buds and blossoms in the soft, dewy air. The
first three people to board the boat were the baby's new
family. First came a lady, dark, tall, and vigorous, with quick,
capable movements, dressed in a black tailor-made gown.
She wore a little black hat on her abundant hair, and carried
a charming bouquet of Cloth of Gold roses in her hand.
Walking quickly to the nurse she said, "Is this my baby, my
little Margaret?"
She took the child in her arms with a most beautiful,
close maternal embrace and, turning, called to her husband,
"Harry, come quickly, our daughter has arrived!" A tall
gentleman, with an indulgent smile, stepped across the deck
followed by three sturdy, dark rather shy little boys. "Hurry
up, boys," said the lady, "here is your little sister, come and
kiss her." And all the boys stood in a row while the little,
golden-haired
child cooed, made fluttering noises, and held out her
arms towards the eldest, who carried her off the boat, the
mother and father, the two younger boys, and the nurse,
following. It was such a pretty, attractive picture,
particularly after New York, where children are not
convenient and often are not wanted even by their own
parents.
And, oh, what a night of nights we spent at Key West!
The boat cast anchor on account of our heavy cargo, and
we did not leave until the next morning at nine o'clock.
Phoebe and I - dear, witty Phoebe, who is now waiting for
me on the other side - went up on deck to sit for an hour
or two, but the glory of the night was so great, so
stupendous, so wonderful that we never went below until
seven o'clock next morning. There was a full moon of such
penetrating radiance that we could see the clear sapphire
colour of the sky, with occasional clouds of silver floating
across it, and the sea was like an enormous looking-glass,
reflecting all the glories of the world. Phoebe said, "I
understand now
" 'Peace, deep as the sleeping sea,
When the Stars their myriads glass
In its blue immobility.' "
The sapphire chalice of the heavens, studded with
glittering stars, and the silver clouds were all reflected in its
smooth glittering surface, and there were many flying fish
of purple, of azure and silver, leaping out of the still water,
like amphibious butterflies, leaving a shower of diamonds in
their wake. As the morning dawned, the wind came up out
of the sea and rippled a thousand little foam-crested waves
into being, and on each one rode a tiny, opalescent craft in
full sail, of
pink and gold, and mauve and orange, for a shoal of flying
fish were floating out to deep water for their morning swim.
There was a glow of rose in the East, at first of the palest
pink then gradually deepening and, inch by inch, the sun
began to push his luminous head up into this rainbow world
of marvellous colour. But the moon, in her sea of blue, shone
bravely on, till at last there was a silver moon in a sapphire
sky in the West, and a golden sun in a roseate sky in the
East. Between the sunshine and the moonshine there was a
great dividing bridge of thousands of little clouds, making an
immense path of translucent opalescent enamel, like the
scales of a giant silver fish, some of them pink, and some of
them silver, and some of them gold. And the blue, blue
water was so clear we could look down into its depths and
see, shining on the golden sand, a lost bit of silver. Far away
to the South, the flying-fish were disappearing like fairy
shallops of mother-of-pearl. To the right lay Key West,
embowered in flowers, a little white, smokeless town (for
there were no chimneys, save those of the kitchens). A
bright wind came up and freshened all the world, and we
went downstairs permeated and intoxicated with the vivid
beauty of that scene.
It was something of which painters have dreamed. It was
Turner's visions quickened into air, and light, and harmony.
All that he ever imagined or painted of subtle, pellucid,
penetrating, soul-satisfying, transparent colour was in this
marvellous picture of Key West.
My mother and grandfather always loved Florida, and my
mother talked of it continually, but I am sure neither one of
them ever saw anything so beautiful as
my unforgotten night and morning there. And it is Florida
that has produced the American song best known to all the
world.
A little time ago six Southern people were dining in a
pretty house in London, and one of them announced that he
had crossed the Suwanee River between Texas and
Louisiana. The other four jeered at the assertion, but at the
same time were absolutely vague as to the geography of
this river. In spite of the world-wide reputation of the song
which makes so pathetic an appeal to many great singers
and has become to one famous vocalist her favourite
encore, there was but one person at the table who knew the
situation of the Suwanee River, which has its source in
southern Georgia and flows south through Florida into the
Gulf of Mexico, and her knowledge came not from a map
but from an unforgotten story.
A friend of mine, [she said], a well-known fisherman
from the North, went to Florida for Tarpon fishing. He said
that one night the boat was floating down a small, narrow
stream with giant trees meeting overhead so closely that
they completely shut away even the starlight. Suddenly the
boat turned and they entered a broad, shining river. The
moon had just risen, that radiant Southern moon that
illumines the darkest shadows, and turns everything to
purest silver. There were primeval trees on each side of the
bank which threw black shadows on the water, and the
grey moss was of such luxuriant length that some of it
dipped into the silvery ripples. It was a scene of marvellous
beauty, while a hundred different perfumes - honeysuckle,
night-blooming jessamine, wild roses, rain lilies, oleander,
magnolias, pink mimosa and myriads of orange blossoms
- were wafted from the shore.
The gentleman drew a long breath and rejoiced that he
was alive, and alive in that particular spot. The boatman,
a Florida cracker, could neither read nor write; he knew
nothing of the world nor in the world, but that he was a
fisherman. My friend turned and asked him what river it
was.
"This," he answered, "is the Suwanee River."
"What!" said my friend, "the Suwanee River, the river that
is beloved of all the world and has been the inspiration of an
unforgotten song?"
"I ain't never heard of no song, but sho' 'nuff it 's the
Suwanee River."
My friend said, "You have never heard the song with
which Christine Nilsson, the greatest singer in the world,
has brought tears to the eyes of thousands of people? You
never heard, ' 'Way Down Upon The Suwanee River?' "
"No, I ain't never heard it, and I ain't never heard of it,"
said the man.
"Well," said my friend, "you are not to go to your grave,
my good man, without hearing it. I have never sung before
in my life, but I am going to sing it to you now."
And he raised his voice and sang,
" 'Way down upon de S'wanee ribber,
Far, far away,
Dar's whar my heart is turnin' ebber,
Dar's whar de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation,
Sadly I roam;
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home."
"Well," said the man, with indifference. "I ain't never
heard the song before and I don't care if I never hear it agin."
I suggested to my friend that perhaps it was the way he
sang it, but he said: "No, I was inspired and am sure I sang
it quite beautifully; it is simply that a river, like a man, is not
a prophet in his own country."
Strange to say, one of my most vivid memories of this
haunting song is connected with Venice. Renée, a beautiful
young friend, and I were floating along in a gondola on the
Grand Canal. It was the middle of October, the air was
delightfully fresh and crisp, and to add to our pleasure there
was a harvest moon. Presently we turned, leaving the other
boats behind, and lazily faced the Lido, when immediately in
front of us, gliding silently along, we noticed a gondola
which suggested the introduction to an interesting romance.
The boat was spick and span and beautiful. The gondolier,
tall, handsome, with a red cap on his head, a silken sash
around his waist and most graceful in all his movements,
was leisurely handling the oar. A tall, lonely lady, partly sat
and partly reclined on the black cushions. She was dressed
all in black and enveloped in splendid furs from her neck to
her feet. An enormous black hat, with drooping black
feathers shaded her face so that we could only see a little
of her white neck. A subtle perfume was wafted towards
us, there was something magnetic and mysterious in her
appearance, and I said to Renée, "She is our first chapter in
a thrilling novel." Her gondola was a little in advance of
ours, and we told our boatman to follow it. For some
moments the two gondolas floated along in perfect silence,
there was no one else in sight, and we were getting nearer
the Lido. Suddenly the lady in the furs began to sing, Way
Down Upon the Suwanee River, with such a voice, such
feeling, such sweet tenderness and longing, that the tears
rushed to my eyes and Renée seized me by the wrist and
exclaimed, "Why, it's Calvé."
When she finished the Suwanee River her voice
became full of supplication and tenderness in Victor
Hugo's Sérénade.
"Quand tu ris sur ta bouche l'amour s'épanouit, Et soudain le farouche soupçon s'évanouit. Ah! le rire fidèle prouve un coeur sans détour. Ah, riez, riez, ma belle, riez, riez, toujours! Riez, riez, ma belle, riez toujours, riez."
Then she flashed out her great song, the Habanara in
Carmen, and Dixie followed with an adorable accent and
all the fire of the South. How my heart thrilled at her
intensity as she sang,
"I wish I was in a land of cotton
Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,
Look away, look away, look away, down South in Dixie."
By this time we had arrived at the Lido, and although it
was after ten o'clock and dark, the inhabitants recognised
Calvé's wonderful voice. Windows were thrown open, and
calls of "Calvé!" "Bravo!"
"Calvé!" "Calvé!" "Bravissimo!"
came towards us with spontaneous
applause. As the boats turned round and faced Venice,
she turned her noble head and said, "Madame, quand je
suis triste, je chante toujours."
And I answered, "Madame, your sorrow is our joy."
Renée and I were full of wonder and talk until we
arrived at our hotel, when it was our pleasure to find that
Madame Calvé had preceded us and was occupying a
suite of apartments on our floor. My charming friend in
Paris, Madame Runkle, a delightful musician herself, had
asked me once or twice to meet Madame Calvé, but it had
been impossible, and when I introduced myself as
Madame Runkle's friend, she said, "But I felt when you
passed me in the boat, that it contained a sympathetic soul,
that is why I spoke to you. Now we must be together
every moment while we are in Venice." And we were.
Apparently she was there to make a pilgrimage of churches.
She said she had a dear memory connected with that adorable
city at the sea. At the moment she was very sad, so our being
together meant that she and I and handsome Renée said our
prayers, and wept together in every church in Venice. She wept
for the sorrows of the present, I for the sorrows of the past,
and dear, young Renée for the sorrows of the future,
At night we went to the Lido and she gave us heavenly concerts
all along the way, but the Suwanee River,
and Dixie have
never been sung with such beauty, such pathos, such hopeless
longing or such fiery defiance as by this great artist.
THE "Crescent City" is no meaningless name, for the
Mississippi in its constant movement has shaped the banks
where New Orleans lies into a half-moon, and this Spanish,
French, Creole city preserves to a very great extent its
romantic atmosphere. Its distinctive charm and character
remain French. There is no slightest reminder of the Pilgrim
Fathers in its warmth and colour, but a suggestion of the
mail-clad Spaniard who came in quest of glory, and the
sanguine Frenchman, believing in visions of the seven fabled
Cities of Gold. With the Spanish knights came dark-eyed
beauties with fan and mantilla, and from France ladies with
powdered hair, high-heeled shoes, music, song, and dance.
The English Cavalier came later, followed by the Colonial
squire with his comfortable fortune and his slaves. But
already, the gay and witty Latin gentleman, the man of
adventure, had set his seal on Louisiana, and to-day, even in
the midst of its advance and progress, the foreign spirit, the
delightful atmosphere of the past lingers in the lap of the
present.
The Southern woman has always been distinguished for her
spirit and self-possession. When New Orleans fell in 1862
and all was wild excitement and tumult, a very pretty lady
with dark eyes, a white dress and rose-wreathed hat, was
gracefully and coquettishly walking
along the banquette, her sweet face quite placid and
undismayed.
"What," she said, stopping to speak to a soldier, "is the
latest order?"
"They say," was the answer, "that General Butler is
going to imprison women, if they do not behave
themselves."
Her lip curled in scorn.
"How very gauche of him," she observed,
"this timid
General who fears a petticoat."
"Take care, Madame," said the soldier, "I shall have to
arrest you."
"Really," said the lady, "that would not be very polite of
you. I hope you will permit me to change my gown first.
What would you like me to wear in prison?"
"It would be an impertinence for me to advise you,"
said the Northerner. "If I was n't a soldier and a despised
Yankee, I might add 'in any gown you would be gracious in
my eyes.' "
"Perhaps," said the lady, "I may give you an
opportunity of saying that to General Butler in my defence.
Meanwhile, why are those boys and men screaming,
yelling, and running?"
"Madame," said the soldier, "a shell has burst over their
heads or under their feet."
"Indeed," she said, "how very unpleasant for them!
Au revoir, monsieur; pour vos nouvelles mille
remercîments." And, turning, she adjusted her rose-coloured
parasol, making one cheek pinker than the other,
and holding up her dainty skirt, walked composedly and
gracefully away.
The soldier looked after her and said, "Game, by
gad, game all through."
grown less with her modern development and advancement,
in which New Orleans compares most favourably with other
cities of the Union. The Sophie Newcomb College for the
higher education of women, founded by Mrs. Josephine
Louise Newcomb as a memorial to her daughter, is a
department of the Tulane University. The endowment is
magnificent, making it one of the richest colleges in
America, with a power for development possible in any
direction. Mrs. Sneath, a lady originally from the West, who
is greatly interested in the college, where her daughter
received her education, was my cicerone. The buildings are
beautifully located and there is every comfort and
convenience within their ample space. The long kitchen,
spotlessly clean and complete, with every modern cooking
utensil, and a cordon bleu
to give lectures and practical
demonstrations, sends forth accomplished academic cooks.
It seems to me that, with servants daily becoming more
scarce, cooking is far more necessary for women than a
course in the classics. From kitchen to garden was but a
step. The walks and courts are ample grassy places, shaded
by fine oaks with their long pendants of grey moss, and the
girls when not in their classes lead a free, open-air, athletic
life.
Professor Elsworth Woodward showed us through the art
department, where there were many original specimens of
pottery. A large plaque of shaded Chinese blue with fine
broad-leaved magnolia blossoms was worthy of any cabinet,
and one piece of embroidery would certainly have aroused
the enthusiasm and inspired the gifted pen of Ruskin. It was
a scarf, the groundwork of which was of an old gold natural
silky flax, woven with a round thread in a diamond pattern,
and either end was heavily embroidered in a conventional
design of crêpe myrtle. The deep colour of the pink
and the delicate form of the flower and foliage lend
themselves to a most happy decoration. The lady who
made it planted and grew the flax, gathered and spun the
threads, wove them into linen, watched and waited for the
flower to blossom, and while she breathed its faint perfume
copied it with her needle. It is a most exquisite and original
piece of work. The landscapes, the glorious sunsets, a
perfect feast of colour, the tropical and semi-tropical
foliage of Louisiana, are all inspirations to the artist, and
that department of Newcomb College under the
enthusiastic direction of Professor Woodward will go far in
its development.
Another institution, the Christian Woman's Exchange, is
not endowed, but has nevertheless since 1881 worked itself
into an important success, and has bought its own
buildings. Besides the business of exchange and
embroidery it provides excellent lunches, both for ladies of
fashion and the working women. New Orleans is, with
every reason, proud of having erected the first statue in
America to a woman, a humble Irish heroine who could
neither read nor write, and whose only signature was a
cross. But she made her sign in memory of Him Who said,
"Suffer little children to come unto Me and forbid them not,
for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Margaret Haughery began life as a chamber-maid. She
saved money, and, having been brought up on a farm,
bought "a dun cow," sold the milk, made a beginning in this
way, saved more money, and invested in a small bakery.
The bread was excellent; she was prompt in her delivery
and prospered, until at last the little bakery developed into
an immense money-making affair worked by steam, which
yielded her a fortune. But
from the moment she began to prosper she began to give.
Her heart was not the heart of a mother whose love is
centred only in her own children; she was one of those gifts
from God, a universal mother to the lonely children in a hard
world. All orphans, those poor and friendless little ones
found in her a tender mother who worked early and late to
provide for their needs and give them homes. She had good
business capacity and succeeded in her various enterprises.
She built St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum facing the Square.
What joy it must have given her big heart to see the
foundations laid! She helped to build St. Elizabeth's Industrial
Home for Girls, and when she died the whole of her fortune
was distributed among different charities for the children
whom she loved so well.
Although Margaret was a good Catholic, her intelligence
was too large for sectarianism. Jews and Protestants were
alike to her - they were little, they were helpless, they were
babies, - she gave from her largesse to them all. Her will,
leaving the whole of her savings to New Orleans
orphanages and homes, was signed with her blessed mark, a
cross, and now, like the beautiful Elizabeth, Austria's
murdered Queen, who sits looking ever toward the towering
mountains she loved so well, Margaret's face is turned
toward the windows of her Orphanage, and the children
stand at twilight look back and say, "There is dear
Margaret. I wish I might have known her." And the very
marble seems to smile. The face is rugged and broad, but
strong and kind and even distinguished, as every face must
be that is illumined by a divine spirit from within. She is
plainly dressed and wears a crochet shawl, her Sunday best,
made by tiny fingers that, but for her, might have perished
by the wayside. Keep guard, dear mother's
heart, over those helpless ones who are taught by the
gentle nuns always to remember you in their innocent
prayers.
Another great work in New Orleans had its beginnings in
the humble endeavour of a woman to help a fellow-creature.
A circus had come to town, and, although the
animals were well trained and there were clever riders and
acrobats, the show had been a dead failure. The last day
came, the circus was disbanded, and the pleasant smell of
sawdust lingered in the air. The manager had said good-bye,
and these strolling players were free to find what
occupations they could. Fate sat smiling and turning over in
her roguish, inventive mind what should result from this sad
little failure. Then she clapped her hands and laughed, as
she saw the largest night school in New Orleans arising
from that soiled heap of tarnished, spangled, torn tarletan
and cast-off finery.
One of the performers, a young athlete of twenty-five, a
fine specimen of manhood, had awakened to the fact that
he wanted to do more than exhibit his muscles to the
multitude. If he only had a little more education, he thought,
he would try for a place in the Civil Service, settle down to
steady occupation, and have a home of his own with
regularity and certainty in his life.
As he wandered about he saw a sign, "Day School for
Girls." Why not here as well as anywhere? He walked up
the path. He rang the bell, and a girl came to the door. She
was delicate and crippled, but the self-sacrificing soul of the
universal mother shone from her tender eyes. He humbly
answered the look, and knew he had found succour. In
short, broken sentences he told his simple little story - how
he had run away from home as a boy, joined a circus, and
had no education.
"Could she, would she help him?" And she said impulsively,
"Certainly I can and will help you."
Then she considered that all her days were occupied, her
time being closely divided between teaching in her own
seminary and the Normal School. The man said, "I have no
money, not a penny; you will even have to give me a spelling-book."
And the girl answered, "I 'll manage that, but I 'm poor too.
I work all day teaching and have only my nights
free. Can you come then?"
Of course he could, and he was only the first of a steady
stream that began to flow, ever broadening, through the
wide-opened heavenly door. Her willing maternal hands
began to lift the thick heavy veil of ignorance from the poor
and needy and to let in, little by little, the light upon their dark
benighted way.
With her hard work all day, her crippled frame and
over-active brain, sometimes the weak body was tired, but she
worked on, undaunted in spirit, widening her scope of
influence, until there was scarcely a corner in New Orleans
where it was not felt, and where the name of Sophie Wright
was not honoured and known. Volunteers came to help in
the noble work, and only two conditions were exacted of the
pupils - they must be unable to attend day schools on
account of being employed during the hours when they were
open, and they must be too poor to pay for lessons.
In the meantime her own school, the Home Institute, had
prospered. Her pupils were well-to-do girls; she did her duty
strictly by them, but her struggling, ignorant men and needy
boys were her real children. They were creatures to whom
she was necessary. She was their helpful, spiritual mother
and teacher. She was giving them the means through
education to earn their bread and to better themselves.
Jews, Gentiles,
Catholics and Protestants, the school was open to all.
Grown men came to learn their A, B, C's, boys to improve
their arithmetic, young men to learn mechanical drawing.
And frail, crippled, with no rich patrons, Sophie Wright
dared Fate. She fearlessly borrowed the money for her
night school at eight per cent. compound interest. She
bought a larger house. Her guardian angel hovered ever
near her. The day school prospered. She put all the money
into books, maps, and articles necessary for the night
school, and even with her constant outlay she reduced her
debt one-half, until the yellow fever swept New Orleans.
Then she turned her schoolhouse into a dispensary to which
food, clothes, old linen and medicines were sent for
distribution, and there she stayed except when on her tours
through the afflicted city.
When the frost came to kill the detestable stegomyia, the
poisonous striped mosquito, and the fever was finally
routed, Sophie Wright was face to face with ruin.
Apparently neither her own school could go on, nor the
night school, which was so dear to her heart. But Heaven
again befriended her. A banker took over her mortgage and
lent her ten thousand dollars, while two men interested in
her school each promised two thousand dollars a year.
Before the yellow fever came she had had three hundred
pupils in her night school; before the end of the following
year she had a thousand. And she not only had room for
them, but clean books, stout desks, good maps, and forty
teachers to assist her. There were European teachers who
understood foreign languages to instruct the raw
immigrants, and now girls were also admitted to certain
departments. The course was enlarged to algebra,
geometry, calculus, shorthand, mechanical drawing,
bookkeeping and history. All
sorts and conditions of students came - clerks, machinists,
typesetters, errand boys, post office boys, newsboys,
bootblacks, and, finally, the "Spasm Band," a group of
nameless waifs who sold papers by day and made night
hideous with horrible noises. Stale Bread, the leader, had
decided that Slowfoot, Pete, Warm-gravy, Zu-Zu, and Rum-Punch
must be educated. They however, proved too wild
even for Miss Sophie's strong will to subdue, and only Stale
Bread remained until he could read, then, sadly enough,
blindness blotted out the newly acquired letters from his
sight. But the night school prospered, although the debt of
ten thousand dollars still remained, until a cheque for the
amount, accompanied by a loving cup - a tribute from New
Orleans to its Best Citizen a woman, - was presented to the
founder of the night school, Sophie Wright.
Sometimes there does seem to be, even on this earth, a
law of compensation. It has come to Sophie Wright, who
was born in 1866 at a time when the South was poorest. At
the age of three, becoming a cripple from a fall, she spent
six years strapped in a chair. It must have been a time of
pure torture for this child to remain inactive, with her eager
questioning mind, desiring to drink thirstily from the fount of
knowledge. Afterwards she completed her education in five
years and opened a little school for girls. If she had been
strong and well, she would in all probability have married,
and whether happier for her or not, it certainly was better
for the world, that she should have entered the arena of
public life and have become the intellectual mother of so
many neglected children. She gave one thousand, five
hundred and eighty-one pupils to the city of New Orleans
when she turned over her night school to its care, and, like
all mothers who send
their children out into the world, she has her lonely
moments. But honours are still showered upon her. The
Girls' High School in New Orleans has just received the
name of "The Sophie Wright School," and to all who know
her she stands for the absolute triumph of Mind over
Matter, the unanswerable evidence of a valiant soul
conquering and surmounting the dragging flesh, and
presenting an argument for the soul's immortality to the
unbelieving.
And though New Orleans can strike a serious note, it is a
gay-hearted city. New York is too hurried even to smile,
London on the sunniest day can only look complacent and
cheerful, but New Orleans can riotously laugh. During the
carnival, Rex, its king, is the merriest, maddest, gayest of all
living monarchs. Mardi Gras makes even the most
melancholy citizen cheerful. The people love the carnival
and never grow tired of it, for it means colour, light, music
and movement. When I saw the wonderful frescoes of
Goya in Madrid, they brought back memories of the rich
Spanish colours - the orange and rose, purple and red,
gold and green - of the New Orleans Carnival.
What an experience it is for the young - a lifting of life's
practical veil, a veritable peep into long-lost fairyland. The
mystery that surrounds this merry function is more alluring
still. Rex and his Broow flower, the blossom of laughter
invented by himself - the very mention of him brings back
merriment forgotten, and that jolly king is, above all, the
most gallant monarch in the world, for, even more than his
kingdom, he loves chivalry and beauty and youth. To-night
he gives the ever dear and always entrancing story of
Cinderella. The Prince, brave in velvet, satin, gold lace,
silken hose and diamond garter, is surrounded by his
gallant gentlemen-in-waiting. The selfish Mamma and Papa
and the Ugly Sisters are arrayed in purple and fine linen.
The Fairy Godmother, with her pointed hat, starched ruff,
and quilted petticoat, leans on her magic staff, and a crowd
of girls, like fluttering white doves, await the Prince and the
slipper:
"Ho, ho! Ho, ho! Ho, ho!
But lowly and high are eager to try
In attic and yard and cellar;
Each maid in the land is longing to stand
In the slippers of Cinderella.
Ho, ho! Heel and toe!
Nay, pretty maid, they are not for you.
Your ankle's neat, and your stockings are sweet,
But you have n't the foot for a fairy shoe."
There is only One for that enchanted slipper, and she, the
youngest of them all, sits dreaming and unconscious of the
high rank that in a moment kind Fate is about to bestow
upon her. Among the ladies-in-waiting a charming, eager,
dainty maiden has a tender hope of the coming honour her
sister may receive. She remembers now that months ago a
gallant knight was extremely solicitous as to the size of her
sister's shoe. Why? What reason had he? Her heart beats to
suffocation. Her sister is from Virginia; it is rare that an
outside girl is chosen as the Queen of Beauty. New Orleans
favours first her own fair daughters. But her sister is so
lovely, so sweet, so exquisite - surely she is "Queen of all
the rosebud garden of girls." She looks lovingly at that fair
proud head; perhaps - ?
The music sounds importantly; the Prince and his precious
trophy, the little glass slipper covered in overlapping,
iridescent spangles, sparkling with the rainbow's
every hue, has started on his quest. Anxiety brings
the Fairy Godmother a little forward; she looks first at one
girl, then at another. No, not this pretty foot, nor this, nor
this. The Ugly Sisters can only balance the fairy slipper
upon one toe and fan their masks in vexation. Their rage
makes the house rock with laughter.
It is easy to laugh to-night. What a pretty ankle! But no,
the little glass slipper goes farther afield. The anxious
Godmother almost points her wand, but it would n't be fair,
and it only trembles in her hand. Look! the Prince has
paused; is it the beautiful face uplifted to his? No! He
kneels to a still more beautiful girl, and lifts an astonished
little foot to his knee; his equerry bends over and delicately
adjusts the folds of silk in modest place. The glass slipper
fits; it is on, Cinderella is found!
"Ho, ho! Blow high, blow low!
Come winter snow or come skies of blue!
You 'll tread upon air as through life you fare,
If only you 're wearing a fairy shoe."
The music gives a splendid blare of triumph. For a moment
the scene for Cinderella is blurred, the lights blend together
in rose, gold, blue and silver. Then her own generous sister
(not one of the plain ones) touches her lovingly on the
shoulder, saying, "Steady, dear Princess, your crown awaits
you." The Prince takes her hand, assists her to rise;
gentlemen-in-waiting reverently bearing the insignia of her
rank advance. In a second all the front of her simple white
gown glitters with jewels, splendid diamonds encircle her
throat and wrists, a crown of rubies and pearls is placed on
her abundant hair, a court train of ermine and velvet
is attached by ropes and tassels of glittering stones to her
shoulders. She is no longer Cinderella, but a veritable
shimmering Princess of Fairyland. The future Consort, this
gallant Cavalier and Prince by her side, has lightly kissed,
with his beautiful pink, wax lips, her hand and gently placed
it on his arm.
The music plays a passionate throbbing waltz. Is she
dancing, she wonders, or merely floating in air? Her cheeks
are aflame, her eyes are glittering blue-steel stars, her lips
are rose-leaves parted over pearls, all her emotional nature
awakened, she is transcendently lovely. Hold high, Queen of
Beauty, the Beaker of Life and drink; drain every drop of its
intoxicating nectar to-night, for it is filled to the brim with
mystery, music, laughter, light, gaiety, youth (you are barely
eighteen), rose-red beauty and awakening love. Perhaps
your future betrothal and wifehood lie just behind that
handsome impenetrable mask, for those gloved hands are
wonderfully tender, guiding you through the mazes of the
dance. And no matter, dear Cinderella, what sorrow the
Fates hold in store for you, this is your supreme hour. You
are Queen of the World, and yours is not the dull Kingdom
of Inheritance, but the unlimited Kingdom of the
Imagination. It is given you with lavish hand, for you are all
the gods love - glad youth, sweet beauty, unconscious
innocence. Dance, dance, until you are breathless, go home
with a happy heart in the saffron dawn. And, without his
mask, to-morrow the Prince will come to woo.
Society in New Orleans is the most agreeable in
America, for the reason that women do not entirely make it.
Men are of it and in it. They belong to it by right of
inheritance; they brought from the gay salons
of Paris two centuries ago an appreciation, an intimacy
with women and an understanding of them, and they
are to-day thoroughly at ease, courtly and happy in the
society of ladies, and at the same time are manly men of affairs.
The women of New Orleans are open-heartedly hospitable and kind.
Mrs. Bruns, who married Dr. Henry Bruns, the son of Dr. J. Dickson Bruns
(who until his death was an extremely popular doctor and more than
an ordinary poet), is a unique woman, pretty, dainty, agreeable, full of enthusiasm,
with both the door of her heart and her house ever on the latch.
Someone said, "Katie Bruns's husband is going to give her
a new carriage." "Why," said a woman who knows her well,
"that won't be the least use to her. What Katie wants is a roomy omnibus
to accommodate all her friends."
Mrs. Logan, Mrs. Bruns's mother, was visiting her
when I was at her house, and, discovering that she had
nursed Judge Brawley during the War when he was
wounded and lost an arm, I said, "This is not according
to romance; you should have married him, dear Mrs. Logan."
She blushed, the blush of seventy which is as delicate as the
beautiful blush of seventeen, and said, "I married his most intimate
friend. The Judge was always talking to me of my husband.
I think I loved General Logan even before I met him."
(Another case of Priscilla and Miles Standish!) "When my husband
first saw me," she continued, "he was pleased to call me the
'pious flirt,' but finally apologised by falling in love with me,
and we were married at the end of the War." How delightful it is to be
charming at seventy!
With no effort or trouble Mrs. Bruns entertains constantly. The moment
I arrived in New Orleans I was bidden to come next morning to an eleven o'clock
breakfast. Ruth McEnery Stuart, that true daughter of the
South and talented delineator of Southern life, was there.
No one, not even Uncle Remus himself, has written more
humorously and tenderly of the negro than she. And as a
woman she is so entirely lovable, free from pettiness, and
generous.
Mrs. Bruns said, handing me a silver filagree basket,
"Let me recommend these cakes to you."
"No, thank you," I said.
"Ruth McEnery Stuart made them especially for you,"
she added.
"Then," I said, "give me the whole basket and I will eat
them all."
It was so reminiscent of the old dear neighbourly South,
to prepare a delicacy for a friend. Ruth Stuart is a
wonderfully proficient cook and has invented a number of
toothsome dishes. She recited her own poems in negro
dialect that afternoon and they were so touching that when
she finished no one was able to speak at first, least of all
myself. Some day she is coming to England to conquer
London and with her energy she will do it. When she invited
me to a six o'clock breakfast party in the old French market
I paused for a moment, before accepting it, but, of course, I
went and the party was a great success. The coffee served
there is unsurpassed in the world. Miss Stuart said an old
Cajan priest declared it to be, "as pure as the angels, as
strong as the devil, and as hot as hell," combining the three
qualities necessary to make coffee perfection. But William
Beer, who with an indelible memory and wide reading,
knows everything, said, "I fear your worthy priest is a
plagiarist; Talleyrand said before him:
'le café doit être
noir comme la mort, doux comme l'amour, chaud
comme l'enfer.' " We drank this superb coffee in thick
cups on a table covered with American cloth, but it was a
better beverage than one can get in Dresden china cups in
New York.
The old market is wonderfully picturesque and a
veritable feast of colour. The heaps of wild flowers,
goldenrod, pitcher plant, coxcomb, purple cyclamen and
wild orchids were still gleaming with the dew of the early
morning. The fish stalls were shimmering mounds of silver,
purple and blue, with strings of red snappers hanging
above, seemingly carved out of pink coral. Grey trout,
speckled with orange and scarlet, were flanked with
enormous lobsters and greenish grey crabs. On the next
stall were pheasants and wild turkeys, with their beautiful
rich bronze, gold and green feathers. Golden plover, tiny
reed birds, wild ducks with soft breasts of blue, grey and
green made a shining mass of colour. And opposite them
stood a table of richly dyed Indian baskets, filled with
smooth, shining, satiny, strong beads, deep red, pale canary,
orange, aqua marine, scarlet, and pearl colour with a sheen,
like silver. "Now these you must have," said Ruth
McEnery Stuart, touching the last, "they just match your
gown." And I wore away a long string of dull silver-gray
beads.
We stopped at the cathedral, where there is a shrine to
Our Lady of Lourdes, and as we walked along through the
French quarter Mr. Beer pointed out the old house built for
Napoleon when the Creoles formed a plan to rescue him
from St. Helena, which, alas, was never carried out. On
Bienville Street in an old pawn shop, my quick eye
discovered the quaintest ornament in the window, a
pendant composed of two little Egyptian figures, doubtless
Cleopatra and Mark Antony, in blue, mauve, and white
enamel. The man held in his hand
an infinitesimally small fan, cooling the air for the Egyptian
queen. And the little figures in profile were surrounded by
old rose diamonds set in heavy silver. I did want that
peculiar jewel badly. We went in and asked the price; the
dealer said it was fourteenth century work, and of course it
was far beyond my purse. It filled with regret the generous
heart of Ruth McEnery Stuart that she could not
immediately present it to me, but later I forgot even Antony
and Cleopatra, when we sat down to a
déjeuner à la
fourchette in a splendid red and gold restaurant and ordered
soft-shell crabs, hot rolls, black coffee and gumbo!
There is continual entertaining of an easy agreeable sort
going on in New Orleans. Mrs. Eustace has a beautiful old
house, with a splendid hall forty feet long and enormous
rooms on either side, which accommodate any number of
people comfortably. Mrs. George Penrose, a charming,
pretty woman, is distinguished for her lunches and her black
butler, who has the manners of a courtier. Mrs. Norvin
Trent Harris, whose husband, a famous shot, can talk more
entertainingly of birds and beasts than any sportsman I have
ever met, keeps open house. And there are people in New
Orleans of divers interests, musicians, poets, journalists,
writers and ardent suffragists, of whom one, Miss Gordon,
has done excellent work for the Cause, and a goodly
sprinkling of delightful, soft-spoken Creoles, bankers, and
cotton kings, - in fact, society is as varied as one would
have it, and both the men and women have easy gracious
manners. I regretted not meeting Grace King, an authority
on the history of Louisiana and a most entertaining author.
Cornelius Donovan, the engineer of the mouth of the
Mississippi, who for years has been studying the vagaries of
that uncertain stream, offered, if I
remained another week, to take me down the river. It is
always changing, that wonderful stream, receding from the
land to-day, and overflowing it to-morrow. The continual
uncertainty of its movements, lends a constant interest to
the vast immensity of water. I wanted to sail away, and
see one of those marvellous Gulf days so poetically
described by Lafcadio Hearn:
It must have been to even such a sky that Xenophon
lifted up his eyes of old when he vowed the Infinite Blue
was God; - it was indeed under such a sky that De Soto
named the vastest and grandest of Southern havens
Espiritu Santo, - the Bay of the Holy Ghost. There is
something unutterable in this bright Gulf air that compels
awe, something vital, something holy, something pantheistic;
and reverentially the mind asks itself if what the eye
beholds is not the Infinite Breath, the Divine Ghost, and the
great Blue Soul of the Unknown. All, all is blue in the
calm, - save the lowland under your feet, which you
almost forget, since it seems only as a tiny green flake
afloat in the liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, caressingly,
irresistibly, the witchery of the Infinite grows upon you; out
of Time and Space you begin to dream with open eyes, - to
drift into delicious oblivion of facts - to forget the past, the
present, the substantial, to comprehend nothing but the
existence of that infinite Blue Ghost as something into
which you would wish to melt utterly away forever. . . ."
ALL my first memories of New Orleans are those of pure
delight. When my father, on our way North to place me in a
boarding-school, stopped a fortnight there, he was very busy
attending to the famous Gaines case, and Mrs. Delgado
offered to take care of the lonely little girl who was staying
at the hotel. This lady belonged to the ancien
régime, and
was a very grande dame indeed. Her complexion was pale,
she had dark hair, clearly cut aquiline features, very
beautiful soft dark Creole eyes, and her hands and feet were
exquisitely shaped and very small. In later years when she
grew stout those tiny feet refused their office and she
ceased to walk, going everywhere in her carriage. She
dressed exquisitely, and her house was no less perfect. As
the walls were very thick, and the floors covered with white
matting, it was quite cool even in very warm weather, and
throughout, the rooms were pervaded with an odour of eau
de cologne, which Mrs. Delgado used with lavish profusion.
It was in New Orleans that I had my first feast of the
theatre, and it was, I am sure even now, an exceedingly
good bill, for Joe Jefferson was starring in The Cricket on
the Hearth. I already knew the story by heart, and
everything in life faded away from me, except the sight of
the people that I loved so well really living,
speaking, and unfolding their romance before my absorbed
and intense vision.
After the theatre I remember my dear father stopped at a
little café on Canal Street and got us each a saucer of
gumbo, a dish for which New Orleans is famous. Okra is a
poetic and historic plant, as it grew in luxuriance along the
banks of the Nile in 50 B.C. Caesar, Mark Antony, and
Cleopatra ate of it, and it is not only a succulent vegetable,
with its tender green pod, but it is worthy of being grown in
the handsomest flower garden, for its lovely bell-shaped
blossom of thick canary-coloured petals, ending where they
join the stem in a deep rich shade of garnet. Gumbo is not,
as many people suppose, a vegetable, but is a very thick
soup made from a combination of young boiled chicken and
okra, flavoured with a soupçon of garlic, and well seasoned
with salt, pepper, and rich, fresh butter - an unforgettable
delicacy. Thackeray found the name so amusing that he
gave it to his negro in The Virginians.
In one greenhouse in England this plant is grown, for
Lord Ashburnham brought the seed back with him from
Egypt, and at a time when I was ill, a little package arrived
from Ashburnham Place, and when I opened it, lo and
behold, to my surprise and grateful joy, there was a box of
okra, the fresh green pods looking exactly as if they had
been grown in Louisiana.
In the French Quarter, which was not far from the house
of Mrs. Delgado, a young negress kept a little stand, where
she sold pecan pralines, and a tiny bouquet of single pinks
went with each package of the nut candy. She had the most
charming animated manners and an insinuating smile, but
she only spoke a sort of patois French which I did not
understand. Her dress was of dark blue cotton, sprinkled
with little white dots,
and she wore a white fichu, a string of red coral beads
round her neck, and on her head a gay plaid handkerchief.
Another interesting personality whom I never forgot was a
tall man with soft brown eyes and brown whiskers. He wore
the Confederate grey, and the little button of the Southern
Cross of the Confederacy on the lapel of his coat. His shirt
was spotlessly clean, with cuffs which he turned back, and
he played a triangle to attract customers. He carried a
fascinating large blue box strapped across his broad
shoulders, and when he lowered it there was a fine
assortment of pretty wafer biscuits of many charming
colours. The topmost of them had an icing of pale green,
pink or mauve, while there were others without any icing at
all, and they were all as crisp and toothsome as it was
possible for wafers to be. But the little musical triangle,
which he played as if a grasshopper sang faint far-away
tunes, was much more seductive to me than the wafers. My
black Mammy played the instrument, and the moment I
heard the slight sweet notes I ran quickly down the stairs
and was out in the street to make a selection from his wares,
for the musician always gave his little customer "lagnieppe" - an
extra wafer. Other children, too, loved the triangle,
and the wafers and the vendor. I made one or two charming
friends through his introduction. One little girl who lived two
streets beyond Mrs. Delgado had long, much admired,
keenly-envied yellow curls, and before we parted she gave
me a lock of her hair.
When I went back to New Orleans I looked for my old
friend. Now the brown whiskers would be white, I knew,
and the erect shoulders carrying the box would be bent; but
he was gone. I did find the negro woman
still selling pecan pralines, her head as white as cotton. She
is of a great age, and has grown peevish and impatient; her
manners are not so good nor her smile so sweet as in years
gone by. And since then she has learned some half-dozen
words of English.
I went to the Hotel De Soto on my arrival, to be near my
life-long friend, the Major. He said, "I want to introduce
you to the manager of the hotel." And, bringing forward an
exceedingly good-looking young man, he presented him as
Mr. Alexander, who asked, "Were n't you Miss Betty
Paschal, of Texas?"
"Yes," I replied, "a good while ago I was Miss Betty
Paschal, of Texas."
He said, " My name is John Alexander, and we come
from the same town of Austin."
"Then," I said, "you are a relation of Dr. Alexander, our
old doctor who was with my mother when I was born."
He said, "I am his grandson."
"Not the little Johnnie Alexander, " I asked, "whom I
remember as a child being shot in the wrist?"
He held out his right hand. The wrist was scarred and
considerably broader than the other, and I had seen that
wound dressed. His father was a chemist in Austin, and this
baby, just learning to walk, was standing on the counter
holding out his arms to his grandfather when a desperado
walking down the street, jerked out his pistol and shot at a
man standing in the back of the shop. The bullet missed the
man but hit the baby. My aunt's house was nearest to the
chemist's, he was brought in to have the wound dressed,
and I remember running to the kitchen to get a jug of warm
water for the doctor. The boy who shot him was not more
than sixteen years old and this was the beginning of a
career
of crime. He subsequently took the lives of a number of
men and at least three women, beginning with a young
vaudeville actress, who fell in love with him, and after he
had left her, tried to see him. He told her if she ever came
near him again he would shoot her. One morning at a hotel
in San Antonio she went to his bedroom door and opened it.
He was lying in bed with a pistol by his side, which he
picked up, aimed deliberately at her, and she fell dead, shot
through the heart.
Johnnie Alexander made my stay at the Hotel De
Soto pleasant and comfortable. And my faith in the old-time
negro was refreshed and revived, for the Major has, what
before the war was called a "body servant." John is quite
black, with very kind, amiable, foxy eyes. He is extremely
neat, has a good figure and, dressed in the Major's well cut
cast-off clothes, he makes quite a fine appearance. He came
to my room the morning after my arrival and said, "De Major
sent me to say dat while you is here, I am to come two or
three times a day to see if dar' s anything I kin do for you."
I said, "I am sure there is, John."
"De Major was talkin' dis mornin' des like he was gwine
ter give me to you, but he can't give me to nobody, he can
only loan me. I told him he can loan me to you des as much
as he likes, but de Major can't get rid ob me," he said with a
chuckle, "not ef he was to try."
"You must take good care of the Major," I replied, "because
he is getting on, you know, in years."
"Don't say dat, for de Major is jes' as full of ambition as
he kin be," he said, "an' he suttenly is got a gallant heart.
Even when he got de gout he puts on dem shiny shoes ob
his (I suttenly does make de Major's shoes shine like a
crow's wing), an' he won't even let me
tie 'em up for him, he is des as ambitious as he kin be, and
not only is he got a gallant heart, but he is got a gallant
young heart."
I said, "That is what I have heard, John."
John chuckled loudly and said, "I tell you what it is, I am
proud ob de Major. When I sends him out in de mornin'
dere ain't no young blade in New Orleans what is any
better turned out, den what de Major is. I don't let no
speck nor spot stay on him, not a minute, I tell you what,
when he is walkin' down de street even right young girls
turns dere heads to look at de Major."
I said, "John, I 'm afraid you are leading the Major
into temptation."
John gave a loud guffaw.
"No 'm," he said, "I ain't don dat but sometimes he 's
right hard to manage."
"John," I said, "I want a laundress, and I have six
pairs of gloves to be cleaned."
"Yassum," he said, "I knows des de best kind of a
cleaner, and I know a laundress what can make your
clothes look des like new."
When John returned with my clothes and gloves, I came
to the conclusion that he himself was my laundress and
also my glove cleaner. The gloves were enormously
stretched, a good deal more soiled than when I sent them,
and the charge for cleaning was forty cents a pair.
"John," I said, "is n't that an awful price for gloves?"
He replied, "Yassum, 'deed it is, and I jes' talked wid dat
woman wid such eloquence dat she 's gone out ob bisniss,
an' I 'spect she 's gone clean away from New Orleens. I
never did give any woman such a dressin'
down an' a trouncin' wid my tongue as I give dis here same
woman."
"Look at my clothes," I said, "they are very badly done. I
heard that laundresses in New Orleans were so good."
"Yassum," he said, "dey is good, but dis woman done los'
her husband. He died des as she was beginning to wash
your close an' de poor creature's in sich grief I could n't
bear to scol' her so I jes' brought 'em along. I 'spect dem
close was sprinkled wid tears."
I paid for the clothes and I paid for the tears, but I made
up my mind that John had better confine his offices to the
Major. I could not, however, get rid of his assiduous
attentions. And one morning he told me, with a great look of
expectation in his eyes, that he was going to be married in
four days. I knew what the look meant quite well - a
wedding present. "Why, John," I said, "I thought you were a
confirmed old bachelor."
"So I is, Miss Betty," he said (he had dropped the Madam
and got to an affectionate "Miss Betty"), "but de Major
don't like my runnin' roun', and you know a man is des
'bleeged to run 'round, lessen he 's married. De Major is one
of dese here moral men, he say men oughter to stay home in
de evenin's, so I 'm gwine to git a home to stay in. I don't
want to git married, I'm des marryin' to please de Major. An'
hits one of dese here sensible kind ob marriages too. De
lady what I am gwine ter marry is 'bout de bes' cook in
New Orleens, she can wash wid any ob dese here French
women, and she 's des as neat as a pin 'bout de house; but I
must be bringing down dat pineapple what I got fur you."
When John brought down the pineapple it was stale and
over-ripe. I don't think he had been to market for
it, but had bought it from a huckster on the street for three
cents."
"John," I said, "is n't this pineapple rather a poor one for a
good marketer to buy?"
He said, "Yassum, Miss Betty, dat 's de Major's fault. I
done tole him to let me go to market an' he done sent me
to one ob dese fruit shops kept by a Italian, an' dere ain't
no 'pendence in de roun' world to be put in dese here
furriners. You can't trust 'em for a single minute. De
pineapple what I said I 'd take was all right, but dis here
man done change it for another, when he put it in de bag. I
thought you was in a hurry, so I did n't take it back, I des
cut it up."
And never once did he supply me with fresh fruit. The
Major confided to me that his only grievance against John
was his extraordinarily bad memory when it came to
accounts, his laxity in putting down on paper any money
that he spent and his never bringing back a receipted bill.
But there was never anything in the world like the
diplomatic excuse which John always had ready. I gave
him two dollars as a wedding present, but the Major has
since written to tell me of the postponement of the
marriage. All the employees in the Major's office had given
him sums of money and by the time he is again to be
married a second contribution will be levied. Never have I
seen anyone who understood the art of flattery better than
John. Every morning he told me I was much younger and
better looking than the day before; that his happiness would
be complete if I should decide to live in New Orleans; that
the climate agreed with me, that everybody in the hotel
loved me, that the Major's spirits and appetite had improved
since I came, in fact every conceivable amiable lie possible
of invention he heaped upon me.
He supplied me with withered flowers and stale fruit. He
kept me waiting for my clean clothes and gloves; he
cheated me out of my change and was hours in doing any
small errand. Nevertheless, I had a sort of easygoing liking
for him; he was so very transparent, so really without guile.
One afternoon I was sitting in the hotel waiting for him to
return from the post-office when I noticed coming down the
corridor a clean-shaven, rather stout, kindly looking man
carrying in one hand a lily and in the other an exquisite rose.
He stopped, saying, "Lady, may I present this flower to
you?" and handed me the rich red rose.
"Perhaps you do not know this variety," he said; "it is a
difficult one to find, for they are going out of fashion. It is
the Napoleon rose and was at one time a great favourite in
New Orleans, where as you know, Napoleon's memory is
still warmly cherished. This is the rose which he asked to
have sent to St. Helena from France, and he planted it there
with his own hands. See what a marvellous flower it is;
observe the tenderness of the stem; look at the perfect
petals, - they seem to be cut out of ruby velvet, - and note
how this single blossom perfumes all the air. It is a pity that
more attention is not given to these roses, because they
grow rarer every year. I present this to you in memory of
Napoleon."
I said, "I accept it from you and from him. You seem to
be fond of flowers."
"Yes," he said, "flowers are my friends. I go to a flower
shop every morning to regale my soul and to provide myself
with a little perfumed friendship for the day. If I had to do
without my cup of coffee or without my rose, I would give
up my coffee."
And he made me a low bow and went away, and
although I saw him almost every day in the hotel and he
looked kind and friendly, we did not have any further
conversation. But I shall not forget him, for what better
introduction can any man have than a Napoleon rose?
How eager I was to explore that fascinating city again.
The very morning after my arrival found me at nine o'clock
in one of the public automobiles, making a hurried tour to
revive my memory of the old French Quarter and see the
many changes in the more modern city. The car was full of
tourists and the guide shouted with a strong voice through a
megaphone. Nothing of his intonation remains in my
memory except his reply to a tourist who asked, as we
entered one of the beautiful cemeteries, what the four
figures kneeling at the corners at the base of a tall marble
shaft represented. He said the monument was erected by
Mr. Moriarity, and that the four figures represented Faith,
Hope, and Charity, and Mrs. Moriarity.
A large proportion of the tourists were Northern people
and we stopped in front of a very large old-fashioned house
with galleries on every side. The house was white, with
heavy green shades such as were used in the old Creole
quarters; there was a grove of orange trees leading to the
gate, groups of oleander and tall magnolias in splendid leaf
and blossom in a pleasant garden surrounding it. An old
gray-haired Mammy, hemming a little white frock, sat with
her foot on the wheel of a perambulator taking care of a
sleeping baby, while five or six children were tumbling and
playing about together. It was a pretty scene of peace and
Southern life.
The guide said: "Ladies and gentlemen, we stop here,
not to see the house, although it is a fine one, but because
four generations live happily in it, - a great-grandmother
who was married when she was fifteen, two grandmothers
and a mother, whose children are playing in the garden. I
have heard," he said, "that some folks don't get along with
their families, but here in the South we are learned to look
after the old people, and we expect to do it as long as we
live, for they are our kin."
Just then a very old lady with perfectly white hair came
down the steps leaning on the arm of a tall, charming
looking octoroon maid. One of the children ran to take her
other hand, saying, "Gran, Gran, let me help you." So I
suppose this was the great-grandmother, and it was the
pleasantest and the most refreshing picture that I saw in
New Orleans.
In the park the old landmarks are the same. The great
live-oaks with their wealth of Spanish moss, under whose
branches duels were fought, remain unchanged, and on
many tombs in the old French cemetery of St. Louis will be
found, "Mort sur le Champ d'Honneur," or "Victime de
l'honneur," in memory of the gay cavaliers who met their
death under these noble trees. The French Quarter has
perhaps grown a little shabbier. The old houses are still
made attractive by the inner court and quaintly shaped
flower beds, with a clipped centrepiece of spitti-sporum, that
delightfully odorous shrub of the South, and borders of
sweet violets, jonquils, lilies, amaryllis, fragrant myrtle and
cape jessamine. These old-fashioned blooms still perfumed
the narrow street with their sweetness. I was looking so
longingly at one of these gardens that a pretty Creole girl
gave me a little nosegay. The old placards, "Chambres
Garnies," dangled from the balconies, half-hidden
by flowering vines, and everywhere the French language
is heard or the English tongue
spoken with the prettiest imaginable French-Creole accent.
Antique shops in Vieux Carré are perilously enticing. Every
memory of my childhood seems to be embodied in these
shabby old shops with their varied contents, carved rosewood
furniture covered with worn French brocade; little work-tables
with flaps letting down on either side and two drawers with
glass knobs that were in every Southern lady's bedroom; little,
low four-legged rosewood footstools, covered with moth-eaten
embroidery; old square pianos, tall heavy candlesticks in sets
of four which were used on every supper-table, and splendid
candelabra of ormolu with their tinkling weight of triangular
crystals. In the porches of the South, tall glass cylinders used
to encircle candles. A pair of these proved irresistible; I bought
them and shipped them to England. Then there were the
old-fashioned French coloured steel engravings - I remember
a set of these called "Le Manteau," in my mother's bedroom.
In the first, a tall slender, exquisite gentleman in a cavalry uniform,
with little side-whiskers, splendid cap and a long full cloak, was
wooing a young lady in a white Swiss muslin hobble skirt, pink
sash, and a bunch of curls on either side of her round,
rather foolish face. In the next picture she is eloping from a white
château in a pink muslin gown, and "Le Manteau" envelops
her form, as well as the soldier's. In the third picture
she is sitting with a curly-headed child resting against her
knee, dressed in widow's weeds, still wearing "Le Manteau"
which was apparently her husband's only legacy. In the last
picture, with a long black veil floating over "Le Manteau" and
holding the chubby infant by the hand, she is walking up the steps
of the château, where I certainly hope she found refuge and
forgiveness. I always thought the story incomplete. The last
one should have had "Le Manteau" hanging up in the hall,
the lady free from it at last, she in her father's arms, and the
grandmother embracing the small boy.
The window of one of those shabby shops in Royal Street
displayed an artfully seductive placard over two cups and
saucers, two plates, and a little jardinière of exquisite and
original design. The china was transparent and very white,
with lines of black, narrower at the base than at the top,
running vertically on all the pieces, and softened on either
side by a lace-like tracery in gold that converged in a little
disc of gold lace in the centre. Underneath was written in a
fine, old-fashioned French hand, "Faïence de Diane de
Poitiers," and in parentheses, ("La Duchesse de
Valentinois"), so the vendor knew something of history. I
went into the shop to ask the price, which I knew
beforehand would be far beyond my purse, and the
distinguished-looking, white-haired little Creole lady said, "It
is dear; but, Madame, it is veritable, it bears the colours of
the Duchesse de Valentinois, who never left off mourning
for her husband, Monsieur de Brèze."
"Yes, Henri II," I said, "wore her colours, black and
white, at the tournament when he was fatally wounded."
She smiled and said, "Then Madame is a student of
French history?"
"No," I said, "but I know something of it from a dear Irish
friend, Mrs. Emily Crawford, who has lived in France forty
years. She gave me a little lecture on famous Frenchwomen
one day when we walked in the garden of the Tuileries. 'It
was through her buoyant
health,' she said, 'that Diane de Poitiers, although nineteen
years older, kept her dominion for so many years over
Henri II. She was a woman far in advance of her times.
She bathed daily in tepid water when other women
scarcely bathed at all; she was an intrepid horsewoman,
she invented athletic exercises, she drank cold water, and
she ate simple food. She was a cheerful philosopher; and
above all things men value cheerfulness - it makes them
comfortable. The infidelities of her royal lover disturbed
her but little. She knew her power, and felt sure of his
return, and although Catherine de' Medici, his queen, bore
him ten children and was an astute statesman, she never
dislodged Diane.' "
"Yes," said the Creole lady, "Diane was a great woman.
And the faïence, Madame?"
I took out a little book and wrote down her name and
address.
"Madame," I said, "if I am ever rich these relics shall
be mine. I cannot afford to buy them just now, but I can
have visions. These addresses are all those of my future
treasures. This is a quaint little shop in the square of St.
Mark's in Venice, where there is a Doge's bottle of gold
and crystal; and here, at The Hague, a small squat clock
of old silver, with a wreath of pink enamelled roses, is
waiting for me. But at the present moment I would forfeit
all of my dreams for the faïence of Diane de Poitiers."
There was a little, old, inexpensive oil portrait of the
Duc de Choiseul in a battered frame which she offered
me as a bargain, for the history of Louisiana does not
make the picture easy of sale. Louis XV saved him, but
not New Orleans.
"You will be damned, Choiseul," said Louis to his Prime
Minister.
"I? Oh, I am different, I am the Anointed of God."
And all France laughed and applauded, for wit is allowed
there; but if one of England's kings said lightly that he was
the Anointed of God, the nation would be shocked, from
the Archbishop of Canterbury to the humblest subject. No
public jokes are allowed in England or in America; the
door of the castle or the cottage in these countries must be
closed on wit.
The amiable little lady bade me a smiling farewell,
saying, "Adieu, Madame, bonne chance, et revenez le plus
tôt possible, avec la bouteille du Doge et la pendule de la
Hollande pour la faïence de Diane."
He that is stricken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve but as a note
Where I may read, who pass'd that passing fair?
Farewell;
thou canst not teach me to forget. Romeo and Juliet.
THE history of New Orleans is a series of the most
romantic and delightful episodes, connecting this fascinating
city with the great romances of the world. Where can a
more beautiful story be found than that of this latter-day
Romeo and Juliet, who lived in 1712?
The Duke of Brunswick, Wolfenhüttel, was the father of
a daughter called Charlotte. She was beautiful, tall and
slight, with a regal crown of fair hair. She sang charmingly,
was very accomplished, possessed a most tender,
sympathetic nature, perfect health, high spirits, and at the
same time she was docile and obedient. Naturally every
one in the little duchy loved her. Attached to her father's
court was a handsome young Frenchman, the Chevalier
d'Aubant, a man of a passionate yet faithful temperament - oh,
rare combination!
It had not been necessary for these two exquisitely
attuned human beings to speak of love; they felt it, it
surrounded them, it was in the air and in the flowers,
and it bloomed with exotic radiance in their two young
hearts. D'Aubant would have been an acceptable suitor in
her father's eyes, for he was not only a man of family but
he possessed a small fortune, and life was charming, quiet,
dignified, and quite happy in this pretty Lilliputian court. But
unfortunately for these devoted lovers an unexpected
traveller appeared in Brunswick in the person of Alexis, the
eldest son of Peter the Great, the heir apparent to the
crown, who had been a great disappointment to his father.
He was unbelievably stupid, cruel, and wicked. There
was no vice in which he had not steeped himself - the
palace and the hovel were alike to him. His father was in
despair that such a being was to become the future ruler of
the millions of people whom he had made every effort to
enlighten and elevate, and as a last resource he sent Alexis
on a long journey.
While he was the guest of the Duke of Brunswick he fell
in love with the charming, aristocratic young Princess
Charlotte. Alexis wrote home to the Czar, and Peter
received the news with joy. He had heard of the beauty, the
virtue, the charm of Charlotte, and a hope sprang up in his
heart that her noble character and example might have an
influence upon his impossible son. A message was
conveyed at once to the Duke of Brunswick to demand his
daughter's hand in marriage.
Being a tender father, his heart was filled with sorrow for
the future of his sensitive, carefully-reared daughter, but he
did not dare to refuse, knowing that Peter the Great was of
all things an unrelenting despot.
It was only necessary to look into the cowardly eye of
Alexis to know his brutal character, and there were no
rejoicings at the wedding. It was a most pathetic
affair, and Charlotte, who had done her father's bidding
and sacrificed herself that the duchy and the power of the
Duke of Brunswick might remain unimpaired, clung to her
father like a drowning woman, and had to be lifted from
his arms into the carriage.
Six powerful, wild Mazeppa horses were waiting to
speed the bride and bridegroom to Russia to the great
Court of St. Petersburg, and a rough escort of Cossacks
surrounded the travelling coach. There was one who rode
like mad, always ahead of the others, with his thick,
shaggy Tartar cloak pulled down close over his head and
ears. Occasionally he turned and came back to the
carriage door, and whenever he did so Charlotte leaned
forward, as though to touch his friendly cloak. This
Cossack was, of course, d'Aubant, who was following
her into Russia with a broken heart.
After the betrothal of Charlotte was announced, he had
scarcely spoken and never smiled, but he made that
rough journey possible for her, for whenever the horses
were unruly his hand was the first to restrain them, and he
was always rendering the Princess some slight service.
Once she slipped in getting out of the carriage. Blessed
moment! for one brief second he held her lightly in his
arms. When he put her down this hooded Cossack
swayed like a tree in the forest that is swept by a mighty
tornado.
On the entrance of the bridal pair to St. Petersburg the
bells rang out one hundred chimes, the people shouted
until their throats were hoarse, and a dozen military bands
gave forth inspiring music to welcome the beautiful bride
of Alexis to the imperial city. The faithful Cossack rode
ahead and stood by the door with humble mien as the tall,
beautiful woman passed by him. That night her faithful
German maid carried
him a letter; the words were brief, but there was some
comfort in them. She wrote:
D'AUBANT:
Your disguise was not one to me. It could not deceive my
heart. Now that I am the wife of another know for the first
time my long-kept secret - I love you. Such a confession is
a declaration that we must never meet again.
The mercy of God be upon us both.
CHARLOTTE.
This letter contained another paper. It was a passport
signed by the Emperor, and it gave to the Chevalier
d'Aubant the right to leave the empire at his own
convenience. At dawn the following day d'Aubant was far
beyond St. Petersburg, and eventually he arrived in Paris.
But he was always sad and restless, and in 1718 he was
appointed Captain in the colonial troops that were starting
for Louisiana. On his arrival there he was stationed in New
Orleans, and although a favourite with men and officers, for
his manner was exquisitely gentle and polite and his face
expressed resignation, yet there was always a sorrowful
look in his eyes and he evidently preferred solitude to the
gaiest and most brilliant company.
Near New Orleans was a small village of friendly Indians,
and a road called the "Bayou Road" ran through a primeval
forest, connecting the little village with the French
settlement. D'Aubant became a favourite with the Indians,
and they gave him permission to build a rural hut on the
outskirts of their village. It was fashioned of fragrant cedar
logs with a thatched palmetto roof, and was furnished with
rustic chairs and tables. Above the mantelpiece of one room
was a remarkable
picture in a heavy carved gilt frame - a
full-length portrait of a wonderfully beautiful girl. She was
dressed in flowing white and the face was that of an
innocent virgin; a great coil of fair hair crowned her proud
head, and her deep blue eyes, filled with melancholy, gazed
upon a pointed crown which, instead of lying on a cushion,
rested crushingly upon a human heart.
This picture must have been painted from memory by
d'Aubant, who was something of an artist, for the likeness
to the Princess Charlotte was faithful and living, as if a
man had wielded the paint-brush with his soul. Whenever
he could be spared from his military duties, all his time was
spent in adoring this lifelike portrait, which was tended like
a shrine. Great pots of mimosa and magnolia and crêpe
myrtle stood before it, roses and lilies filled rude but
beautifully shaped vases of clay made by the Indians; and
the little room was fragrant with cedar and aromatic with
the odours of the South, while a small lamp burned
perfumed oil below the crown and the heart, and cast a
soft light on the face of d'Aubant's great lady.
Through all the long years he had not communicated
with her except to send her a magnolia leaf with "May
16th" written upon it - a date which neither of them could
forget, because she had danced with him on that day for
the first time at the ball given on her birthday in the far-off
duchy of Brunswick; and there were two names marked
upon the leaf - "D'Aubant" and "New Orleans."
Charlotte's future destiny was settled by that magnolia
leaf. Her finer nature, her exquisite refinement, her virtue,
her religion had only served to exasperate and annoy
Alexis. He could not change her, he could
not lower her pure morality, and finally his irritation
developed into brutality, for the constant injustice of a cruel
man towards a delicate woman inevitably ends in hatred.
Thinking of the most refined insult which he could put
upon her, Alexis conceived the idea of compelling Charlotte
to receive at court a kitchen wench, with whom he had an
open liaison, - a broad-faced, broad-hipped person, who
could neither read nor write, of low intellect and coarse
instincts which matched his own. He knew, of course, that
Charlotte would decline to receive her, as she did with
firmness, spirit, and dignity. As the last words of refusal left
her pure lips he rushed at her with the infuriated cry of a
wild animal, his mouth foaming with rage. He called her all
the names of his loathsome vocabulary. He tore her fair
hair, and doubling up his great fists knocked her down,
beating her until she was senseless. And in all that court
neither nobleman nor gentlewoman dared to interfere, for
Alexis was their despotic and merciless master. It was,
however, the beginning of the end for him. He was losing
control of himself, and not many years afterwards Peter the
Great, justified in his own eyes and acting, as he said, for the
good of Russia, with his own hands put his inhuman son to
death.
During the maniacal attack on Princess Charlotte, the
Countess of Königsmark had made a step towards her
friend as if to rescue her, for she alone had the complete
confidence of the Princess, and served her with loyalty and
a great love. At this time in St. Petersburg there was a
wonderful apothecary, who had developed his talents under
the encouragement of Peter the Great until it was said that
he could almost raise the dead. Certainly, like Friar
Laurence, he could
successfully put the living into a deathlike sleep, and
Charlotte, with the aid of her friend the Countess of
Königsmark, obtained from him a little phial. The Princess
had borne all that she could bear and yet live; if death
came she would welcome it. And she had taken the
desperate resolve when she awoke to join d'Aubant in that
far-away land, kind alike to aristocrat and to numbered
convict.
The Countess of Königsmark brought the draught, and,
with a prayer to God for mercy, the Princess Charlotte
eagerly drank it. Then she felt
A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease;
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou liv'st;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes; thy eyes' windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life.
Each part, deprived of supple government,
Shall stiff, and stark, and cold appear, like death;
And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death
Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
The funeral of Charlotte was even more magnificent
than the sumptuous fête of welcome to St. Petersburg.
There was a great gilded hearse with waving sable
plumes, a sound of muffled drums, an impressive cathedral
service of barbaric music and clouds of incense, the
intoning of many gorgeously-robed priests, and then the
quiet of the vault. Through it all Charlotte slept her
deathlike sleep, with her hands crossed and cold in their
waxlike rigidity.
The face of the Countess of Königsmark was white
and fixed with anxiety. She had much to do; permission
had been granted her to sit by the side of her beloved
friend, and there in the chill vault she waited for the blue
lips to change to a soft rose, for the stiffened eyelids to
relax to mobility, for the proud eyes to open once more
upon this tragic world.
When Charlotte woke she was weak and needed wine
and food, but Hope warmed her heart to life and a sense of
elation gave her palsied limbs strength. She belonged to
herself now, and to no other. The Princess Charlotte was
dead.
All Europe rang with the news, but a woman, young,
beautiful, nameless and free, lived; a woman carrying
deathless fidelity in her heart, a woman whose soul
whispered to another soul thousands of leagues away of a
winged love and a swift meeting.
Simply attired, with a few jewels and a well-filled purse,
Charlotte issued from the tomb, nameless, unknown, but
warm, living, and happy. In 1721 two hundred immigrants
arrived in New Orleans, among them a beautiful, highbred
woman, with an imperial crown of fair hair. She had never
spoken her name, and, though her manners were gentle and
unassuming, she unconsciously commanded those about her,
and they, as unconsciously recognising her as one above
them, obeyed. Instinctively they felt her to be a creature
singled out by the gods for the fulfilment of an extraordinary
destiny.
On arriving at New Orleans, she said she had a letter to
the Chevalier d'Aubant, and she was told he was in his rural
retreat near the settlement, but that it would not be
necessary for her to go so far, as a dozen willing knights
offered to carry him her message. She, however, declined
their offers, asking only for a humble guide, and a black-eyed,
silent Indian led her to the forest.
It was a tender, tranquil summer evening with the long
rays of a declining sun slanting through the leaves. One ray
penetrated a wide-open door and illumined a picture of
herself. D'Aubant, in a reverential attitude, was gazing
upon it as though it were the image of a saint, when a
shadow darkened the doorway, and he looked up. A
woman stood before him with outstretched hands,
tear-filled eyes, and soft quivering lips, a woman all light and
gladness, with the purified love and longing of many years
of weary waiting in her sweet eyes.
He started towards her and then stopped.
"Oh, God!" he cried, "if you are a vision, stay with
me; if a woman, comfort my starving heart!"
She said in low, tremulous tones, "I am a woman - your
woman, now and for all eternity."
In a moment he held her in a heavenly embrace. Then
came the miraculous explanation of her presence there,
and next day in the golden dawn of early morning, in a
rude little church, they were married, and the bride softly
whispered her one name, "Charlotte."
But there are no secrets in the whole of the universe.
People personally concerned in a secret fondly imagine
they are hiding the dread truth, but even at that moment
the world discusses it.
Many times it is to the interest of all concerned to guard
a secret, but the wind whispers it to the trees, the trees to
the flowers; the flowers are gathered and breathe it to the
house. And it is possible for one mind without words to
communicate with another. Charlotte and the Chevalier
d'Aubant certainly remained silent. Perhaps the Countess
of Königsmark told the secret to her lover, and during a
supper with wine flowing like water, he whispered it to a
friend; or
it might have been revealed in another way. There are
undoubtedly people in the word gifted with second sight.
Perchance some sorceress banished from France gazed on
Charlotte with prescient eye and divined her history. At any
rate, rumours soon began to be whispered in the colony
about this wonderful couple. They were regarded with so
much furtive interest that d'Aubant felt they would be safer
among a multitude, and very quietly they left New Orleans
for Paris. But in the garden of the Tuileries Marshal Saxe
recognized Charlotte. The Chevalier felt there was danger.
By this time he had been promoted and was Major of his
regiment, and at his request he was transferred to the island
of Bourbon. Charlotte accompanied him, and they resided
there for a long period. In 1754, after more than thirty years
of perfect married happiness, d'Aubant died, leaving
Charlotte with one daughter. She survived him nearly
twenty years, and in the end died in great poverty.
There are historians who doubt this story, but it has
always been credited in Louisiana, and Gayarré presents it
most graphically in his delightful history of the land he loved
so well.
The swamp-land all around New Orleans is rapidly being
reclaimed. Pretty, quaint little houses and bungalows,
brilliantly painted, are being built, and the outskirts of the
town offer a gay and exotic appearance. One house with a
roof of orange colour, was painted white, with cobalt blue
shutters and a wide blue gallery. It was a daring
combination, but under the intense sapphire sky and amid
the surrounding growth of tropical green it was not
unpleasing, or, to use the favourite word of smart London, it
was
"amusing." The road to Lake Pontchartrain, where there is
a club and a tea house and boats of divers kinds for hire, is
now lined with motors, and it presents a livelier aspect than
the long stretch of lonely sands where, when Louisiana
belonged to France, Des Grieux and beautiful Manon
Lescaut, the immortal heroine whether of reality or fiction,
journeyed to the death of one and the everlasting grief of
the other.
All the world knows that touching story, the subject of
drama and opera, the inspiration of pictures and statues
innumerable. It convinces by its sincerity, it flames with
amorous love, and is undoubtedly the truthful revelation of
the soul of that passionate reckless lover, soldier, and
priest, the Abbé Prévost, who, like other men of genius,
was born to feel
Time flowing in the middle of the night
And all things moving toward a day of doom.
Manon Lescaut is indeed more than a story; it is, in its
way, a symbol, an illustration of mere passion developing
into love, and love, with its infinite tenderness and sense of
protection, destroying the grossness of passion and finally
ending in tragic suffering and expiation. It is a refreshing
vision of many thirsty souls held in durance vile by weak
and sensual bodies; it is an end devoutly to be wished but
rarely attained.
Romances of the heart, however, are not the only
thrilling episodes connected with the history of New
Orleans. There is a very moving little story of a really
noble redskin who died to save his son. A Colapissa Indian
killed a Choctaw chief and hid himself in New Orleans.
The Choctaws followed him, found him out, and demanded
him from the Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who at
first refused to give him up. When he
was finally forced to order his arrest, it was found that
the Indian had escaped. His old father then appeared and
offered his life to the Choctaws in place of that of his son.
After a powwow the offer was accepted. The old man at
once stretched himself on the trunk of a forest tree, and a
mighty Choctaw chief with one great blow severed his head
from his body.
I have always thought one of the most splendid
arguments against capital punishment - which, if necessary
for the criminal, who is only one man, is distinctly brutalising
to the jailors, the warders, and the hangman,
- was the tragic action of a noble slave.
When Louisiana was a colony it was without an
executioner, and every white man refused the office with
horror and loathing. Finally it was decided that a negro
blacksmith must be forced to accept it. He was a man of
herculean strength and health, called Jeanot, who belonged
to the Company of the Indies. He was shoeing a horse
when he was sent for and given his freedom. His heart
bounded with joy at the unexpected news, and he was just
about to express his gratitude when he was told that it was
necessary for him to be a free man as he had just been
appointed public executioner. He groaned in agony.
"Oh, God," he said, "I can't be that. Let me be a slave
again; I 'll work my fingers to the bone for you."
When they refused him he went down on his knees and
prayed and wept in anguish, crying out, "I will never cut off
the head of a man who has done me no harm. Never! Do
not ask it! I will die rather than do it." But his masters were
coldly obstinate. So he got up from his knees with a wild
and desperate look and said:
He ran quickly to his cabin, picked up his hatchet, laid
his right hand on a block of wood, and with his left, cut it
off at one blow. Then returning to, the group of waiting
men, he held out the bloody stump silently and grimly
towards them. Quickly the wounded arm was bound up
and his freedom was given him.
There must be something wrong with a system which
places such a stigma as the executioner bears upon a
human being. Who in the world would ever invite a
hangman to tea? Would n't it be a horrible blight upon the
feast? And yet, if he is but the agent for the execution of
strict justice, why is he not honoured?
Because in our hearts we know that only God has the
right to cut short human life. We arrogate too much to
ourselves when we hang the worst criminal. Imprisonment
for life, with no possibility of a pardon, is punishment
enough; wrong, injustice, oppression, cruelty, have more
than once turned the merely weak into the vicious wicked.
Heredity, circumstance, environment make most of us
what we are.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than his might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
How thankful we should be if our lot makes us escape
without breaking the laws openly, to be judged at the last
by God, and not by man.
Oh! hush my heart, and
Take thine ease,
For here is April weather!
The daffodils beneath the trees
Are all a-row together.
REESE.
ON my way to the plantation of The Magnolias to visit my
friend Mary Davis, I stayed over night at Port Gibson, a
delightful little place, all valleys and soft rolling hills, with a
wide, grassy main street shaded by a fine avenue of cotton
trees, clothed in the tender, vivid green of early spring. The
cool umbrella-shaped trees, called the Pride of China, were
just beginning to open their purple and amethyst blossoms,
perfuming the air with their unforgetable pungent odour. In
my childhood a big China tree with its wide-spreading, cool
branches grew just outside my Aunt Elizabeth's window.
How often have I seen her in the early morning, in a fresh
white wrapper, stretch out her pretty, round arm, and gather
a lavender blossom for her belt. So I have double reason for
my love of this beautiful tropical tree, - the dear memory
that it holds for me and the charm of its own beauty.
Port Gibson is more than merely a pretty town; it is the
birthplace of that short-lived, remarkable
Southern genius, Irwin Russell, lawyer (who though a
minor, was admitted to the bar after a brilliant examination,
by special act of the legislature), wanderer, traveller,
author, and above all poet. I tried to find the house where
he was born, but the people I asked knew nothing of it. In
spite of his having modelled his poetic style on Burns and
the English poets, he was able to emancipate his mind from
tradition and was really the first American author who
truthfully described the life and character of the negro.
There has been nothing ever written more full of
movement, more vivid and lifelike than "Fiddling Josie," in
"Christmas Night in the Quarters":
Git yo' pardner, fust kwatillion!
Stomp yo' feet, an' raise 'em high;
Tune is, "Oh: dat watermillion!
Gwine to git it home bime-bye."
S'lute yo' pardners; scrape perlitely -
Don't be bumpin' gin de res' -
Balance all! now step out rightly;
Alluz dance yo' lebbel bes'.
Fo'wa'd foah! - whoop up, niggers!
Back ag'in - don't be so slow! -
Swing cornahs! - mind de figgers!
When I hollers, den yo' go.
Top ladies cross ober!
Hol' on, tell I take a dram -
Gemmen solo - yes I's sober -
Hands around! - hol' up yo' faces,
Don't be lookin' at yo' feet!
Swing yo' pardners to yo' places!
Dat 's de way - dat 's hard to beat.
Sides fo'wa'd - when you 's ready -
Make a bow as low 's you kin!
Swing acrost wid op'site lady!
Now we 'll let yo' swap ag'in.
Ladies change! - shet up dat talkin';
Do yo' talkin' arter while!
Right an' lef'; - don't want no walkin' -
Make yo' steps, and show yo' style.
What character, what understanding, what reality, what
go, is in this inspired jingle. The first appreciative helping
hand extended to him was that of the Scribners, who have
always befriended the South, and they published many of his
poems. He only wrote when impelled by inspiration and
everything he left will live. He died at twenty-six, still a boy,
but tired of life and glad to rest.
While I was waiting at the station for the train, which of
course, in Southern fashion, was quite an hour late, a neat,
well-dressed, pleasant-faced woman spoke to me. She was
expecting her husband, who was, she told me, "a travelling
man." She pointed to a pretty white cottage on the hill and
said she had so little to do, only her housework and the
clothes for herself and two little girls to make, that to occupy
her "idle hours" she had taken to chicken farming. Yet it is
said that Southern women are lazy! Fancy a woman having
"idle hours" with her own housework to do and dressma
