A Girl's Life in Virginia before the War Part 3

"Thrown them to the bottom of the sea!" he replied.

Fortunately for the poor negro this sentiment did not prevail among us. I believe G.o.d endowed our people with qualities peculiarly adapted to taking charge of this race, and that no other nation could have kept them. Our people did not demand as much work as in other countries is required of servants, and I think had more affection for them than is elsewhere felt for menials.

In this connection I remember an incident during the war which deserves to be recorded as showing the affection entertained for negro dependents.

When our soldiers were nearly starved, and only allowed daily a small handful of parched corn, the colonel of a Virginia regiment[1] by accident got some coffee, a small portion of which was daily distributed to each soldier. In the regiment was a cousin of mine,--a young man endowed with the n.o.blest attributes G.o.d can give,--who, although famishing and needing it, denied himself his portion every day that he might bring it to his black mammy. He made a small bag in which he deposited and carefully saved it.

[1] Robert Logan, of Roanoke, Va.

When he arrived at home on furlough, his mother wept to see his tattered clothes, his shoeless feet, and his starved appearance.

Soon producing the little bag of coffee, with a cheerful smile, he said: "See what I've saved to bring black mammy!"

"Oh! my son," said his mother, "you have needed it yourself. Why did you not use it?"

"Well," he replied, "it has been so long since you all had any coffee, and I made out very well on water, when I thought how black mammy missed her coffee, and how glad she would be to get it."

CHAPTER VI.

The antiquity of the furniture in our homes can scarcely be described, every article appearing to have been purchased during the reign of George III., since which period no new fixtures or household utensils seemed to have been bought.

The books in our libraries had been brought from England almost two hundred years before. In our own library there were Hogarth's pictures, in old worm-eaten frames; and among the literary curiosities, one of the earliest editions of Shakespeare (1685) containing under the author's picture the lines by Ben Jonson:

"This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; Wherein the Graver had a strife With Nature to outdo the Life: O, could he but have drawn his Wit As well in Bra.s.s, as he has. .h.i.t His Face; the Print would then surpa.s.s All that was ever writ in Bra.s.s.

But since he cannot, Reader, look Not on his Picture, but his Book."

This was a reprint of the first edition of Shakespeare's works, collected by John Heminge and Henry Condell, two of his friends in the company of comedians.

When a small child, the perusal of the "Arabian Nights" possessed me with the idea that their dazzling pictures were to be realized when we emerged from plantation life into the outside world, and the disappointment at not finding Richmond paved with gems and gold like those cities in Eastern story is remembered to the present time.

Brought up amid antiquities, the Virginia girl disturbed herself not about modern fashions, appearing happy in her mother's old silks and satins made over. She rejoiced in her grandmother's laces and in her brooch of untold dimensions, with a weeping willow and tombstone on it,--a constant reminder of the past,--which had descended from some remote ancestor.

She slept in a high bedstead--the bed of her ancestors; washed her face on an old-fashioned, spindle-legged washstand; mounted a high chair to arrange her hair before the old-fashioned mirror on the high bureau; climbed to the top of a high mantelpiece to take down the old-fashioned high candlesticks; climbed a pair of steps to get into the high-swung, old-fashioned carriage; perched her feet upon the top of a high bra.s.s fender if she wanted to get them warm; and, in short, had to perform so many gymnastics that she felt convinced her ancestors must have been a race of giants, or they could not have required such tall and inaccessible furniture.

An occasional visit to Richmond or Petersburg sometimes animated her with a desire for some style of dress less antique than her own, although she had as much admiration and attention as if she had just received her wardrobe from Paris.

Her social outlook might have been regarded as limited and circ.u.mscribed, her parents being unwilling that her acquaintance should extend beyond the descendants of their own old friends.

She had never any occasion to make what the world calls her "_debut_,"

the constant flow of company at her father's house having rendered her a.s.sistance necessary in entertaining guests as soon as she could converse and be companionable, so that her manners were early formed, and she remembered not the time when it was anything but very easy and agreeable to be in the society of ladies and gentlemen.

In due time we were provided--my sister and myself--with the best instructors--a lady all the way from Bordeaux to teach French, and a German professor for German and music. The latter opened to us a new world of music. He was a fine linguist, a thorough musician, and a gentleman. He lived with us for five years, and remained our sincere and truly valued friend through life.

After some years we were thought to have arrived at "sufficient age of discretion" for a trip to New York City.

Fancy our feelings on arriving in that world of modern people and modern things! Fancy two young girls suddenly transported from the time of George III. to the largest hotel on Broadway in 1855!

All was as strange to us then as we are now to the Chinese. Never had we seen white servants before, and on being attended by them at first we felt a sort of embarra.s.sment, but soon found they were accustomed to less consideration and more hard work than were our negro servants at home.

Everything and everybody seemed in a mad whirl--the "march of material progress," they told us. It seemed to us more the "perpetual motion of progress." Everybody said that if old-fogy Virginia did not make haste to join this march, she would be left "a wreck behind."

We found ourselves in the "advanced age": in the land of water-pipes and dumb-waiters; the land of enterprise and money, and, at the same time, of an economy amounting to parsimony.

The manners of the people were strange to us, and different from ours.

The ladies seemed to have gone ahead of the men in the "march of progress," their manner being more p.r.o.nounced. They did not hesitate to push about through crowds and public places.

Still we were young; and, dazzled with the gloss and glitter, we wondered why old Virginia couldn't join this march of progress, and have dumb-waiters, and elevators, and water-pipes, and gas-fixtures, and baby-jumpers, and washing-machines.

We asked a gentleman who was with us why old Virginia had not all these, and he replied: "Because, while the people here have been busy working for themselves, old-fogy Virginia has been working for negroes. All the money Virginia makes is spent in feeding and clothing negroes. And," he continued, "these people in the North were shrewd enough years ago to sell all theirs to the South."

All was strange to us,--even the tablecloths on the tea and breakfast tables, instead of napkins under the plates, such as we had at home, and which always looked so pretty on the mahogany.

But the novelty having worn off after a while, we found out there was a good deal of imitation, after all, mixed up in everything. Things did not seem to have been "fixed up" to last as long as our old things at home, and we began to wonder if the "advanced age" really made the people any better, or more agreeable, or more hospitable, or more generous, or more brave, or more self-reliant, or more charitable, or more true, or more pious, than in "old-fogy Virginia."

There was one thing most curious to us in New York. No one seemed to do anything by himself or herself. No one had an individuality; all existed in "clubs" or "societies." They had many "isms" also, of which we had never heard, some of the people sitting up all night and going around all day talking about "manifestations," and "spirits," and "affinities," which they told us was "spiritualism."

All this impressed us slow, old-fashioned Virginians as a strangely upside-down, wrong-side-out condition of things.

Much of the conversation we heard was confined to asking questions of strangers, and discussing the best means of making money.

We were surprised, too, to hear of "plantation customs," said to exist among us, which were entirely new to us; and one of the magazines published in the city informed us that "dipping" was one of the characteristics of Southern women. What could the word "dipping" mean?

we wondered, for we had never heard it before. Upon inquiry we found that it meant "rubbing the teeth with snuff on a small stick"--a truly disgusting habit which could not have prevailed in Virginia, or we would have had some tradition of it at least, our acquaintance extending over the State, and our ancestors having settled there two hundred years ago.

A young gentleman from Virginia, bright and overflowing with fun,--also visiting New York,--coming into the parlor one day, threw himself on a sofa in a violent fit of laughter.

"What is the matter?" we asked.

"I am laughing," he replied, "at the absurd questions these people can ask. What do you think? A man asked me just now if we didn't keep bloodhounds in Virginia to chase negroes! I told him: Oh, yes, every plantation keeps several dozen! And we often have a tender boiled negro infant for breakfast!"

"Oh, how could you have told such a story?" we said.

"Well," said he, "you know we never saw a bloodhound in Virginia, and I do not expect there is one in the State; but these people delight in believing everything horrible about us, and I thought I might as well gratify them with something marvelous. So the next book published up here will have, I've no doubt, a chapter headed: 'Bloodhounds in Virginia and boiled negroes for breakfast!'"

While we were purchasing some trifles to bring home to some of our servants, a lady who had entertained us most kindly at her house on Fifth Avenue, expressing surprise, said: "_We_ never think of bringing home presents to our help."

This was the first time we had ever heard, instead of "servant," the word "help," which seemed then, and still seems, misapplied. The dictionaries define "help" to mean aid, a.s.sistance, remedy, while "servant" means one who attends another and acts at his command. When a man pays another to "help" him, it implies he is to do part of the work himself, and is dishonest if he leaves the whole to be performed by his "help."

Among other discoveries during this visit we found how much more talent it requires to entertain company in the country than in the city. In the latter the guests and family form no "social circle round the blazing hearth" at night, but disperse far and wide, to be entertained at the concert, the opera, the theatre, or club; while in the country one depends entirely upon native intellect and conversational talent.

And, oh! the memory of our own fireside circles! The exquisite women, the men of giant intellect, eloquence, and wit, at sundry times a.s.sembled there! Could our andirons but utter speech, what would they not tell of mirth and song, eloquence and wit, whose flow made many an evening bright!

As all delights must have an end, the time came for us to leave these metropolitan scenes, and, bidding adieu forever to the land of "modern appliances" and stale bread, we returned to the land of "old ham and corn cakes," and were soon surrounded by friends who came to hear the marvels we had to relate.