A Girl's Life in Virginia before the War Part 8

Now and then the old gentlemen enjoyed a practical joke on each other, and on one occasion Mr. Radford succeeded so effectually in quizzing Mr. Bowyer that whenever he thought of it afterward he fell into a dangerous fit of laughter.

It happened that a man who had married a distant connection of the Greenfield family concluded to take his wife, children, and servants to pa.s.s the summer there, dividing the time between the two houses.

The manners, character, and political proclivities of this visitor became so disagreeable to the old gentlemen that they determined he should not repeat his visit, although they liked his wife. One day Mr.

Bowyer received a letter signed by this objectionable individual--it had really been written by Mr. Radford--informing Mr. Bowyer that, as one of the children was sick, and the physician advised country air, he would be there the following Thursday with his whole family, to stay some months.

"The impudent fellow!" exclaimed Mr. Bowyer as soon as he read the letter. "He knows how Radford and myself detest him! Still I am sorry for his wife. But I will not be dragooned and outgeneraled by that contemptible fellow. No! I will leave home to-day!"

Going to the back door, he called in a loud voice for his coachman, and ordered his carriage. "I am going" said he, "to Grove Hill for a week, and from there to Lexington, with my whole family, and don't know when I shall be at home again. It is very inconvenient," said he to his wife, "but I must leave home."

Hurrying up the carriage and the family, they were soon off on their unexpected trip.

They stayed at Grove Hill, seven miles off, a week, during which time Mr. Bowyer every morning mounted his horse and rode timidly around the outskirts of his own plantation, peeping over the hills at his house, but afraid to venture nearer, feeling a.s.sured it was occupied by the obnoxious visitor. He would not even make inquiries of his negroes whom he met, as to the state and condition of things in his house.

Concluding to pursue his journey to Lexington, and halfway there, he met a young nephew of Mr. Radford's who happened to know all about the quiz, and, immediately suspecting the reason of Mr. Bowyer's exile from home, inquired where he was going, how long he had been from home, etc. Soon guessing the truth, and thinking the joke had been carried far enough, he told the old gentleman he need not travel any further, for it was all a quiz of his uncle's, and there was no one at his house. Thereupon Mr. Bowyer, greatly relieved, turned back and went his way home rejoicing, but "determined to pay Radford," he said, for such a practical joke, which had exiled him from home and given him such trouble. This caused many a good laugh whenever it was told throughout the neighborhood.

The two estates of which I am writing were well named--Greenfield; for the fields and meadows were of the freshest green, and, with majestic hills around, the fine cattle and horses grazing upon them, formed a n.o.ble landscape.

This land had descended in the same family since the Indian camp-fires ceased to burn there, and the same forests were still untouched where once stood the Indians' wigwams.

In this connection I am reminded of a tradition in the Greenfield family which showed the heroism of a Virginia boy:

The first white proprietor of this place, the great-grandfather of the present owners, had also a large estate in Montgomery County, called Smithfield, where his family lived, and where was a fort for the protection of the whites when attacked by the Indians.

Once, while the owner was at his Greenfield place, the Indians surrounded Smithfield, and the white women and children took refuge in the fort, while the men prepared for battle. They wanted the proprietor of Smithfield to help them fight and to take command, for he was a brave man; but they could not spare a man to carry him the news. So they concluded to send one of his young sons, a lad thirteen years old, who did not hesitate, but, mounting a fleet horse, set off after dark and rode all night through dense forests filled with hostile Indians, reaching Greenfield, a distance of forty miles, next morning. He soon returned with his father, and the Indians were repulsed. And I always thought that boy was courageous enough for his name to live in history.[11]

[11] John Preston, afterward Governor of Virginia.

The Indians afterward told how, the whole day before the fight, several of their chiefs had been concealed near the Smithfield house under a large haystack, upon which the white children had been sliding and playing all day, little suspecting the gleaming tomahawks and savage men beneath.

From the Greenfield estate in Botetourt and the one adjacent went the ancestors of the Prestons and Breckinridges, who made these names distinguished in South Carolina and Kentucky. And on this place are the graves of the first Breckinridges who arrived in this country.

All who visited at the homesteads just described retained ever after a recollection of the perfectly cooked meats, bread, etc., seen upon the tables at both houses, there being at each place five or six negro cooks who had been taught by their mistresses the highest style of the culinary art.

During the summer season several of these cooks were hired at the different watering-places, where they acquired great fame and made for themselves a considerable sum of money by selling recipes.

A lady of the Greenfield family, who married and went to Georgia, told me she had often tried to make velvet rolls like those she had been accustomed to see at her own home, but never succeeded. Her mother and aunt, who had taught these cooks, having died many years before, she had to apply to the negroes for information on such subjects, and they, she said, would never show her the right way to make them.

Finally, while visiting at a house in Georgia, this lady was surprised to see velvet rolls exactly like those at her home.

"Where did you get the recipe?" she soon asked the lady of the house, who replied: "I bought it from old Aunt Rose, a colored cook, at the Virginia Springs, and paid her five dollars."

"One of our own cooks, and my mother's recipe," exclaimed the other, "and I had to come all the way to Georgia to get it, for Aunt Rose never would show me exactly how to make them!"

CHAPTER XI.

Not far from Greenfield was a place called Rustic Lodge.[12]

[12] Colonel Burwell's.

This house, surrounded by a forest of grand old oaks, was not large or handsome. But its inmates were ladies and gentlemen of the old English style.

The grandmother, Mrs. Burwell, about ninety years of age, had in her youth been one of the belles at the Williamsburg court in old colonial days. A daughter of Sir Dudley Digges, and descended from English n.o.bility, she had been accustomed to the best society. Her manners and conversation were dignified and attractive.

Among reminiscences of colonial times she remembered Lord Botetourt, of whom she related interesting incidents.

The son of this old lady, about sixty years of age, and the proprietor of the estate, was a true picture of the old English gentleman. His manners, conversation, thread-cambric shirt-frills, cuffs, and long queue tied with a black ribbon, made the picture complete. His two daughters, young ladies of refinement, had been brought up by their aunt and grandmother to observe strictly all the proprieties of life.

This establishment was proverbial for its order and method, the most systematic rules being in force everywhere. The meals were served punctually at the same instant every day. Old Aunt Nelly always dressed and undressed her mistress at the same hour. The cook's gentle "tapping at the chamber door" called the mistress to an interview with that functionary at the same moment every morning,--an interview which, lasting half an hour, and never being repeated during the day, resulted in the choicest dinners, breakfasts, and suppers.

Exactly at the same hour every morning the old gentleman's horse was saddled, and he entered the neighboring village so promptly as to enable some of the inhabitants to set their clocks by him.

This family had possessed great wealth in eastern Virginia during the colonial government, under which many of its members held high offices.

But impoverished by high living, entertaining company, and a heavy British debt, they had been reduced in their possessions to about fifty negroes, with only money enough to purchase this plantation, upon which they had retired from the gay and charming society of Williamsburg. They carried with them, however, some remains of their former grandeur: old silver, old jewelry, old books, old and well-trained servants, and an old English coach which was the curiosity of all other vehicular curiosities. How the family ever climbed into it, or got out of it, and how the driver ever reached the dizzy height upon which he sat, was the mystery of my childhood.

But, although egg-shaped and suspended in mid-air, this coach had doubtless, in its day, been one of considerable renown, drawn by four horses, with footman, postilion, and driver in English livery.

How sad must have been its reflections on finding itself shorn of these respectable surroundings, and, after the Revolution, drawn by two republican horses, with footman and driver dressed in republican jeans!

A great-uncle of this family, unlike the coach, never would become republicanized; and his obstinate loyalty to the English crown, with his devotion to everything English, gained for him the t.i.tle "English Louis," by which name he is spoken of in the family to this day. An old lady told me not long ago that she remembered, when a child, the arrival of "English Louis" at Rustic one night, and his conversation as they sat around the fire,--how he deplored a republican form of government, and the misfortunes which would result from it, saying: "All may go smoothly for about seventy years, when civil war will set in. First it will be about these negro slaves we have around us, and after that it will be something else." And how true "English Louis'"

prediction has proven.[13]

[13] On the route to Rustic was a small village called Liberty, approaching which, and hearing the name, "English Louis" swore he would not pa.s.s through any such----little republican town, and, turning his horses, traveled many miles out of his way to avoid it.

Doubtless this gentleman was avoided and proscribed on account of his English proclivities. For at that day the spirit of republicanism and hatred to England ran high; so that an old gentleman--one of our relatives whom I well remember--actually took from his parlor walls his coat-of-arms, which had been brought by his grandfather from England, and, carrying it out in his yard, built a fire, and, collecting his children around it to see it burn, said: "Thus let everything English perish!"

Should I say what I think of this proceeding I would not be considered, perhaps, a true republican patriot.

I must add a few words to my previous mention of Smithfield, in Montgomery County, the county which flows with healing waters.

Smithfield, like Greenfield, is owned by the descendants of the first white family who settled there after the Indians, and its verdant pastures, n.o.ble forests, and mountain streams and springs, form a prospect wondrously beautiful.

This splendid estate descended to three brothers of the Preston family, who equally divided it, the eldest keeping the homestead, and the others building attractive homes on their separate plantations.

The old homestead was quite antique in appearance. Inside, the high mantelpieces reaching nearly to the ceiling, which was also high, and the high wainscoting, together with the old furniture, made a picture of the olden time.

When I first visited this place, the old grandmother, then eighty years of age, was living. She, like the old lady at Rustic, had been a belle in eastern Virginia in her youth. When she married the owner of Smithfield sixty years before, she made the bridal jaunt from Norfolk to this place on horseback, two hundred miles. Still exceedingly intelligent and interesting, she entertained us with various incidents of her early life, and wished to hear all the old songs which she had then heard and sung herself.

"When I was married," said she, "and first came to Smithfield, my husband's sisters met me in the porch, and were shocked at my pale and delicate appearance. One of them, whispering to her brother, asked: 'Why did you bring that ghost up here?' And now," continued the old lady, "I have outlived all who were in the house that day, and all my own and my husband's family."

This was certainly an evidence of the health-restoring properties of the water and climate in this region.

The houses of these three brothers were filled with company winter and summer, making within themselves a delightful society. The visitors at one house were equally visitors at the others, and the succession of dinner and evening parties from one to the other made it difficult for a visitor to decide at whose particular house he was staying.

One of these brothers, Colonel Robert Preston, had married a lovely lady from South Carolina, whose perfection of character and disposition endeared her to everyone who knew her. Everybody loved her at sight, and the better she was known the more she was beloved. Her warm heart was ever full of other people's troubles or joys, never thinking of herself. In her house many an invalid was cheered by her tender care, and many a drooping heart revived by her bright Christian spirit. She never omitted an opportunity of pointing the way to heaven; and although surrounded by all the allurements which gay society and wealth could bring, she did not swerve an instant from the quiet path along which she directed others. In the midst of bright and happy surroundings her thoughts and hopes were constantly centered upon the life above; and her conversation--which was the reflex of her heart--reverted ever to this theme, which she made attractive to old and young.