American Adventures Part 20

"Oh, you shouldn't tell him that!" broke in a lady who was present.

"Why not?" demanded the old gentleman.

"He'll print it!" she said.

"Well," he answered, "ain't it true? What's the harm in it?"

"There!" she exclaimed. "You said '_ain't_.' He'll print that Virginians say 'ain't'!"

"Well," he answered, "I reckon we do, don't we?"

She laughed and gave up. "I remember," she told me, "the very spot on the turnpike going out to Ripon, where I made up my mind to break myself of saying 'ain't.' But I want to tell you that we are talking much better English than we used to. Even the negroes are. You don't hear many white people saying 'gwine' for 'going' any more, for instance, and the young people don't say 'set' for 'sit' and 'git' for 'get,' as their fathers did."

"I've heard folks say, though," put in the old gentleman, "that they'd ruther speak like a Virginian than speak correctly. The old talk was pretty nice, after all. I don't hold to all these new improvements.

They've been going too far in this Commonwealth."

"What have they been doing?" I asked.

"Doing!" he returned, "Why, they're gradually taking the cuspidors out of the church pews!"

Before the question of dialect is dropped, it should be said that those who do not believe the soft southern p.r.o.nunciation is derived from negroes, can make out an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also corrupted the language of the West Indies--British and French? French negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West Indian negroes often speak the c.o.c.kney dialect, without a trace of "n.i.g.g.e.r." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language, to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish comparable in many of its peculiarities with the English of our own South, and the south-Italians exhibit similar dialectic traits. Nor do the parallels between the north and south of Spain and Italy, and of the United States, end there. The north-Italians and north-Spaniards are the "Yankees" of their respective countries--the shrewd, cold business people--whereas the south-Italians and south-Spaniards are more poetic, more dashing, more temperamental. The merchants are of the north of Spain, but the dancers and bull-fighters are Andalusians. And just as our Americans of the North admire the lazy dialect of the South, so the north-Spaniards admire the dialect of Andalusia, and even imitate it because they think it has a fashionable sound--quite as British fashionables cultivate the habit of dropping final _g_'s, as in "huntin'" for "hunting."

Virginia, more than any other State I know of, feels its ent.i.ty as a State. If you meet a Virginian traveling outside his State, and ask where he is from, he will not mention the name of the city in which he resides, but will reply: "I'm from Va'ginia." If, on the other hand, you are in Virginia, and ask him the same question, he will proudly reply: "I'm from Fauquier," or "I'm from Westmoreland," or whatever the name of his county may be. The chances are, also, that his trunks and traveling bags will be marked with his initials, followed not by the name of his town, but by the abbreviation, "Va."

I was told of one old unreconstructed Virginian who had to go to Boston on business. The gentleman he went to see there was exceedingly polite to him, asking him to his house, putting him up at his club, and showing him innumerable courtesies. The old Confederate, writing to his wife, indicated his amazement: "Although he is not a Virginian," he declared, "I must confess that he lives like a gentleman."

The name of his Bostonian acquaintance was John Quincy Adams.

I heard this story from a northern lady who has a country place near a small town in Virginia. In the North this lady's family is far from being unknown, but in Virginia, she a.s.sured me, all persons originating outside the State are looked upon as vague beings without "family."

"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents--that they are made chemically."

This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If people are "nice people," that is enough.

Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some "F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where she had been born.

"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed, "you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n in Va'ginia it's very embarra.s.sing."

Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint"--clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.

Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may work in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that response be made by means of the same impersonal channel.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

--OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Richmond is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston.

The houses on the princ.i.p.al residence streets of Richmond are not built in such close ranks as Boston houses; they have more elbow-room; numbers of them have yards and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses the Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many houses of both cities give off the same suggestion of having long been lived in by the descendants of their builders. So, too, though the Capitol at Richmond has little architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed State House--the former having been copied by Thomas Jefferson from the Maison Carree at Nimes, and being a better building than the Ma.s.sachusetts State House, and better placed--the two do, nevertheless, suggest each other in their gray granite solidity.

It is perhaps in the quality of solidity--architectural, commercial, social, even spiritual--that Richmond and Boston are most alike.

Substantialness, conservatism, tradition, and prosperity rest like gray mantles over both.

Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as wide as Granby Street, Norfolk's chief shopping street, and for this reason, doubtless, its traffic seems less, though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine street to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of cl.u.s.tered boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is a disappointment, because, for all its fine s.p.a.ciousness, it lacks good buildings. I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I looked for young women fitted to inherit the debutante mantles of such nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving).

In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of Richmond increased 50 per cent. Her population by the last census was about 130,000, of which a third is colored. Norfolk's population is about 70,000, with approximately the same percentage of negroes. In both cities there is much new building--offices downtown, and pretty new brick homes in outlying suburban tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming signs of other days are here and there to be seen.

Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in the wealth of its historical a.s.sociations, and I know of no city which gives the respectful heed to its own history that Richmond does, and no State which in this matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was the center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol Square was, as it is to-day, the center of that center. In this square, in the shadow of Jefferson's beautiful cla.s.sic capitol building, which has the glowing gray tone of one of those water colors done on tinted paper by Jules Guerin, Confederate soldiers were mustered into service under Lee and Jackson. Within the old building the Confederate Congress met, Aaron Burr was tried for treason, and George Washington saw, in its present position, his own statue by Houdon. Across the way from the square, where the post office now stands, was the Treasury Building of the Confederate States, and there Jefferson Davis appeared seven times, to be tried for treason, only to have his case postponed by the Federal Government, and finally dismissed. East of the square is the State Library, containing a remarkable collection of portraits and doc.u.ments, including likenesses of all governors of Virginia from John Smith to Tyler, a portrait of Pocahontas, and the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, signed by Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, and seventeen other distinguished men of the day. To the west of the square is old St. Paul's Church, with the pews of Lee and Davis. It was while attending service in this church, on Sunday, April 2, 1865, that Davis received Lee's telegram from Petersburg, saying that Richmond must be evacuated. A block or two west of the church, in East Franklin Street, is a former residence of Lee. It was given by the late Mrs. Joseph Bryan and her sisters to the Virginia Historical Society, and is now, appropriately enough, the home of that organization.

In the old drawing room, now the office of the Historical Society, I found Mr. William G. Stanard, the corresponding secretary, and from him heard something of Lee's life there immediately after the War.

By the Northerners in Richmond at that time, including the Federal troops stationed in the city, Lee was of course respected and admired, while by the whole South he was, and is to-day, adored. As for his own ex-soldiers, they could not see him without emotion, and because of the demonstrations which invariably attended his appearance on the Richmond streets, he went out but little, pa.s.sing much time upon the back porch of the house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs of him were taken. Brady sent a young photographer to Richmond to get the photographs. Lee was at first disposed to refuse to be taken, but his family persuaded him to submit, on the ground that if there were any impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the young man, and that the latter might lose his position if he failed to obtain the desired pictures.

Finding the continued attention of the crowds too much for him, the general left Richmond after two months, removing to a small house in c.u.mberland County, on the James, and it was there that he was residing when called to the presidency of Washington College--now Washington and Lee University--at Lexington, Virginia. As is well known, he accepted this offer, built up the inst.i.tution, remained its president until the time of his death, and now lies buried in the university chapel.

To Mr. Stanard I am also indebted for the following information regarding John Smith and Pocahontas:

About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the brickyard region, there used to stand the residence of the Mayo family, a place known as Powhatan. This place has long been pointed out as the scene of the saving of Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates that, though Smith did come up the James to the present site of Richmond, his capture by the Indians did not occur here, but in the vicinity of Jamestown. Then Indians took him first to one of their villages on York River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and thence to a place, on the same stream, in the county of Gloucester, where the tribal chief resided. I was under the impression that this worthy's name was Powhatan, but Mr. Stanard declared "powhatan" was not a proper name, but an Indian word meaning "chief."

The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith was rescued by Pocahontas at a point about nine miles from Williamsburg on the west side of York River, but there are historians who contend that the whole story of the rescue is a fiction. One of these is Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among "Historical Liars." Virginians, who regard Smith as one of their proudest historical possessions, are somewhat disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me that there is at least some ground for it. Matthew Page Andrews, another historian, himself a Virginian, points out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown colony have been obtained from Smith's history of the settlement, which he wrote in England, some years after leaving Virginia.

"From these accounts," says Mr. Andrews, "we get an unfavorable impression of Smith's a.s.sociates in the colony and of the management of the men composing the popular or people's party in the London Company.

As we now know that this party in the London Company was composed of very able and patriotic Englishmen, we are inclined to think that Captain Smith not only overrated his achievement, but was very unjust to his fellow-colonists and the Company."

The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with the strong implication that the Indian girl was in love with him, comes to us from Smith himself. We know that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age (seven years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred), she married John Rolfe--the first Englishman to begin the cultivation of the tobacco plant. We know that she was taken to England, that she was welcomed at court as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and that she herself died there in 1617. We know also that her son, Thomas Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that through him a number of Virginians trace descent from Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one of these descendants became the wife of the President of the United States.)

But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring though he was, was not above twisting and embroidering a tale to his own glorification.

While, therefore, it is too much to affirm that his rescue story is false, it is well to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith waited until after she had become famous, and had died, to promulgate his romantic story.

Immediately to the north of Capitol Square stands the City Hall, an ugly building, in the cellar of which is the Police Court presided over by the celebrated and highly entertaining Judge Crutchfield, otherwise known as "One John" and "the Cadi"--of whom more presently. A few blocks beyond the City Hall, in the old mansion at the corner of East Clay and Twelfth Streets, which was the "White House of the Confederacy," the official residence of Jefferson Davis during the war, is the Confederate Museum--one of the most fascinating museums I ever visited.

Not the least part of the charm of this museum is the fact that it is not of great size, and that one may consequently visit it without fatigue; but the chief fascination of the place is the dramatic personalness of its exhibits. To me there is always something peculiarly engaging about intimate relics of historic figures, and it is of such relics that the greater part of the collection of the Confederate Museum consists. In one show case, for example, are the saddle and bridle of General Lee, and the uniform he wore when he surrendered. The effects of General Joseph E. Johnston are shown in another case, and in still another those of the picturesque J.E.B. Stuart, who, as here one may see, loved the little touch of individuality and dash which came of wearing a feather in a campaign hat. So also one learns something of Stonewall Jackson when one sees in the cabinet, along with his old blue hat and other possessions, the gold spurs which were given to him by the ladies of Baltimore, beside the steel spurs that he _wore_. All Jackson's personal effects were very simple.

One of the most striking relics in the museum is the Great Seal of the Confederacy, which was only returned to Richmond within the last few years, after having been lost track of for nearly half a century--a strange chapter in the annals of the Civil War.

Records in the Library of Congress, including the Confederate state papers purchased by the United States Government in 1872, of William J.

Bromwell, formerly a clerk in the Confederate State Department, brought to light, a few years ago, the fact that the seal was in the possession of Rear Admiral Thomas O. Selfridge, U.S.N., retired.