Literary Hearthstones of Dixie Part 10

In 1835, when a boy fresh from Parley's History of America, the future humorist made a journey from c.u.mberland County to Lynchburg, hearing by the way alarming sounds which the initiated recognized as the report of the blasting of rocks on the "Jeems and Kanawha Canell." To the boy, with second-hand memories of Washington and his men tramping confusedly about his mind, the noises signified a cannonade and he waited in terrified excitement for the British bullet that was to put him beyond the conflicts of the world, trying to postpone the evil moment by hiding between two large men who were fellow-pa.s.sengers with him. This was in the days when the celebrated "Canell" was a subject for the imagination to contemplate as a triumph of futurity and an object for hope to feed upon--a period in which the traveller embarked upon a fascinating batteau and spent a week of dreamy beauty in sailing from Lynchburg to Richmond and ten days back to the hill city.

Time was not money in those days, it was vision and peace and color and sunshine and all wherein the soul of man delighteth itself and reveleth in the joy of living. The stream of imagination was no more dammed than the river in which "shad used to run to Lynchburg,"

showing a highly developed aesthetic taste on the part of the shad. The youthful traveller went to the Eagle Hotel and took a view of Main Street and dared not even wonder if he should ever be big enough to live in Richmond. Rapt soul of youth's dawn, with myriad dreams all to vanish when the sun rises upon the morning!

On his return from an absence of two years in the North the great Ca.n.a.l was completed and, while his early impression of the unparallelled magnitude of the Queen City had suffered revision, his visions of journeying by ca.n.a.l were yet to be realized. At the foot of Eighth Street, Richmond, he took the packet-boat, pa.s.sed under Seventh Street bridge, and with the other pa.s.sengers lingered on deck to see Richmond slowly disappear in the distance. That night the doleful packet-horn, contrasted with his memory of the cheerful, musical note of the old stage-horn, brought to the lad his first realization of the inadequacies of modern improvements.

Ascending the James the traveller had a view of the best of the old Virginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphere of serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that lay cob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softly tinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books.

The gentle humorist lived to see that life pa.s.s away from the Old Dominion and all too soon he vanished into another world where, like all true Virginians, he expected to find the old home-life again.

These ca.n.a.l days were in the early d.i.c.kens period, and occasionally the youthful traveller could not resist the temptation to go below and lose himself in those pages which had then almost as potent a charm in their novelty as they have now in their friendly familiarity. But the river-isle, which held an interest in futurity for him because of his intention to found a romance there when he should be "big enough to write for the papers," would draw him back to the deck. There was a path across the hills that the pa.s.sengers must follow, disembarking for that purpose. Near Manchester was a haunted house which he looked upon with those ghostly shivers that made a person so delightfully uncomfortable, for he, like the rest of us, did believe in ghosts, whatever he might say to the contrary. There was the ruined mill and, best of all, the Three-Mile Lock, inspiring him with the highest ambition of his life, to be a lock-keeper. Then came Richmond; the metropolis of the world, to the young voyager.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. GEORGE W. BAGBY From the portrait in the possession of the family]

Dr. Bagby studied for his profession at the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania and from there went to Lynchburg, opening an office where now stands the opera house. Unfortunately for his professional career but happily for the cause of the literature of Virginia life, the office of the _Lynchburg Virginian_ was near, and its editor, Mr. James McDonald, proved a kindred soul to the young physician. In the absences of the editor, Dr. Bagby filled his chair and fell a victim to the fascination with which the Demon of the Fourth Estate lures his chosen to their doom. In Lynchburg he first found his true calling and there, too, he met with his first failure, the demise of the _Lynchburg Express_, of which he was part owner, and which went to the wall by reason of the well-known weakness of genius in regard to business matters.

Upon the collapse of the _Express_ Dr. Bagby went to Washington as correspondent for a number of papers, and while there attained distinction as a humorist through the "Letters of Mozis Addums,"

written for the _Southern Literary Messenger_, of Richmond.

His abiding place is of hazy uncertainty, one of his kinsmen saying--"He didn't live anywhere," He might as well have dwelt in his own "Hobgoblinopolis." His wanderings had taught him the peculiar charm of the Virginia roads of that day, as evidenced by the aspiration of "Mozis Addums" when contemplating the limitations of his "Fifty Millions":

I want to give Virginia a perfect system of county roads, so that one may get off at a station and go to the nearest country-house without breaking his neck, and it would take five hundred millions to do that.

It may be, as the doctor laments, that "The old Virginia gentleman, All of the olden time," has pa.s.sed away, the colonial house is modernized, and the ghost, the killing of whom would be "an enormity far greater than the crime of killing a live man," has been laid to rest for half a century, but the old scenes and the old-time life come back to us who once knew it, in the pages of the perennial boy who recalls the time when "me and Billy Ivins and the other fellows set forth with six pine poles and a cymling full of the best and biggest fishing worms," to fish in the Appomattox where it "curves around the foot of Uncle Jim's plantation," and where there is a patriarchal beech with a tangle of roots whereon the Randolphs of historic note were wont to repose in the days long gone. This fishing party is under the fair October skies when "the morn, like an Eastern queen, is sumptuously clad in blue and gold; the sheen of her robes in dazzling sunlight, and she comes from her tent of glistening, silken, celestial warp, beaming with tender smiles." "It is a day of days for flatback, provided the moon is right." But "Billy Ivins swears that the planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish--it's all confounded superst.i.tion." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will kill him for a fool."

Oh, there were great old times on the Appomattox in the olden days, before its waves had turned battle-red and flashed that savage tint along the river-bank for all coming time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AVENEL"

The home of the Burwells, where Dr. Bagby spent many happy days]

A part of the conversation shows us that this fishing expedition took place in the autumn of 1859, not a year before Dr. Bagby was called to the post of editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, taking the place of the poet, John R. Thompson, who was sent to England to lead the forlorn hope of a magazine to represent the Southern cause in London. A banquet was given at Zetelle's restaurant as a farewell to Mr. Thompson and welcome to Dr. Bagby.

The office of the _Messenger_ was in the Law Building, a four-storied structure erected in 1846 on the southeast corner of Capitol Square, fronting on Franklin Street. Here he was hard at work, making the _Messenger_ worthy of its former editors, his predecessor, Mr.

Thompson, Mr. White, of early days, Edgar A. Poe, and a succession of brilliant writers, only less widely known, when the guns before Sumter tempted the new editor to the field, a position for which he was ill fitted as to physical strength, whatever might be the force of his patriotism. He was soon running risks of pneumonia from the effects of over-drilling and the chilling breezes from Bull Run Mountain, and making up his mind "not to desert, but to get killed at the first opportunity," that being the most direct route he could think of to the two prime essentials of life, a clean shirt and solitude. He neither deserted nor was killed, but was detailed to write letters and papers for one of the officers, and slept through the fight of the 18th at Mana.s.sas as a result of playing night orderly from midnight to morning.

Under the cloudless sky of the perfect Sunday, the twenty-first, he watched the progress of the battle till the cheer that rang from end to end of the Confederate line told him that the South had won. After midnight that night he carried to the telegraph office the message in which President Davis announced the victory and, walking back through the clear, still night, saw the comet, forerunner of evil, hanging over the field, as if in recognition of a fiery spirit on earth akin to its own. At headquarters on Monday, the 22d, he looked out at the pouring rain and raged over the inaction which kept the victorious army idle on the field of victory instead of following up the advantage by a march into the enemy's Capital, a movement which he thought could have been carried through to complete success.

Having watched over his wounded friend, Lieutenant James K. Lee, until death came with eternal peace. Dr. Bagby was sent with the dead soldier to Richmond and soon afterward was discharged because of ill health, "and thus ended the record of an unrenowned warrior."

He returned to his work on the _Messenger_ and the editorial sanctum became the meeting place of the wits of Richmond. It was here that the celebrated Confederate version of "Mother Goose" was evolved from the conjoined wisdom of the circle and written with the stub of the editorial pencil on the "cartridge-paper table-cloth," one stanza dealing with a certain Northern general thus:

Little Be-Pope came on with a lope, Jackson, the Rebel, to find him; He found him at last, then ran very fast, With his gallant invaders behind him.

The various authors were astonished to find their productions in the next issue of the _Messenger_ and were later dismayed when the verses were read at a meeting of the Mosaic Club, each with the name of the writer attached.

While editor of the _Messenger_, Dr. Bagby wrote occasionally for the _Richmond Examiner_, thereby becoming a.s.sociated in a friendly way with its editor, John M. Daniel, whose brilliant and continuous fight upon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before the public. Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of the _Examiner_, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchant pen in treating of public affairs. This led to his possession of the famous latchkey which "fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, opposite the African Church," a key of which he wrote that it "has its charm," and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readers than any other such article has ever proved.

These two men, so different in view-point and expression, so similar in principle and purpose, met in Washington in 1861 at Brown's Hotel, that famous old hostelry dear to the Southern heart in the years before the tide of war swept the old Washington away forever and brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life.

Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the _Examiner_ was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his a.s.sistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family.

That latchkey gave to its holder entrance to the first floor front room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty. The dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which Mr. Daniel was wont to refer as the former property of "old Memminger," that is, Secretary Memminger of the Confederate Treasury, who had sold his household effects on leaving his home on Church Hill.

Over the mantel in the bachelor's chamber hung a miniature on ivory, "the most beautiful I have ever seen," said the doctor, an unknown beauty whose charms mystified as well as enchanted the observer; a wondrously accomplished lady of t.i.tle and wealth whom Mr. Daniel had known abroad. The visitor must have viewed with some degree of curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times to buy one?" "---- it, sir! let him stay at home," was the decisive answer.

On a second floor pa.s.sage was an object which must have excited more envy than the magnificent mirrors and solid old furniture were capable of arousing--a bag of Java coffee, and coffee thirty dollars a pound--the latter fact not deterring the luxurious owner of this stately abode from imbuing his pet terriers with the coffee-drinking habit. A little room cut off from a pa.s.sage in the third story was a library of old and rare editions of the cla.s.sics. A back room, sunlit and warm, gave a view of James River, the Henrico Hills, and the s.p.a.cious dells and forests of Chesterfield. To the mind of Dr. Bagby all these things were represented by "John M. Daniel's Latchkey" and, for all the charm of "Home, Sweet Home," is it not better to have the privileges without the responsibilities of a latchkey?

Next to the editorial office of the _Messenger_ that of the _Daily Examiner_ was the place with which Dr. Bagby was, perhaps, best acquainted in Richmond. There, with the fiery editor, he spent his evenings in reading proof, comforted by a mild cigar and protected by a Derringer which Mr. Daniel would put on the table when he first arrived, a not unnecessary precaution, for if there was one place more dangerous than another in the Richmond of war days it was almost any point in the near vicinity of the belligerent editor of the _Examiner_.

Dr. Bagby was married to Miss Parke Chamberlayne of Richmond, and we may be sure that she was the model from which he drew his charming study of "the Virginia lady of the best type," who accompanies "The Old Virginia Gentleman" in his pages.

After the close of the war Dr. Bagby attained high distinction as a lecturer on Southern topics and later served his State as a.s.sistant secretary. But in all that he did there was with him the lost dream of the nation he had served so well through the dark and stormy years of strife, and in August, 1883, he pa.s.sed beyond into the land where earth's broken hearts are renewed to youth.

It was written of him: "There is no man left in Virginia fit to lift the lid of his inkstand."

"WOMAN AND POET"

MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON

"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute, I entered at once two charming regions--Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of Margaret Junkin Preston.

When I spoke of the beautiful scenery Mrs. Preston asked me if I had read Professor Maury's description of it. I replied that I had not. "I am glad," she said, "because now that you have seen our Nature-pictures you will enjoy the description so much more."

Though the name and work of Margaret Preston had long been shrined in the hearts of a host of known friends and endeared to many unknown readers whose lives had been cheered by the buoyant hopefulness expressed in her writings, she was very modest in regard to her productions, yet held it a duty to continue writing for others the thoughts which had helped her. When we were at supper in the home of Professor Lyle, who was gifted with an unusually poetic mind, he repeated pa.s.sages from favorite authors. On being asked if he did not sometimes write poetry, he replied that he had often written rhymes and loved to do it, but when he would afterward read Virgil and Shakespeare and Tennyson he would tear up his own verses, feeling that he ought not to make the effort.

"Then," replied Mrs. Preston, "the gardener should not plant the seeds that bring forth the little forget-me-nots and snowdrops. He should plant only the great multiflora roses and the Lady Bankshires and magnolias."

Mrs. Preston spent much of her time in knitting because the weakness of her eyes made reading and writing difficult. "Are you never tired of knitting?" I asked. She replied that it did not tire her, and told me that Mrs. Lee said she loved to knit because she did not have to put her mind on the work. She could think and talk as well when she was knitting for the reason that she did not have to keep her eyes nor her attention upon what she was doing. She knew perfectly well when she came to a seam. In a letter from a soldier to Mrs. Lee he thanked her for the socks she had sent him, and wrote; "I have fourteen pairs of socks knitted by my mother and my mother's sisters and the Church Sewing Society, and I have not a shirt to my back nor a pair of trousers to my legs nor a whole pair of shoes to my feet." "But," said Mrs. Lee as she concluded the story, "I continued to knit socks just the same."

The first open-end thimble I ever saw was one Mrs. Preston used when I was with her at the Springs. I remarked upon it and she said that when she used a thimble she always had that kind. "I feel about a thimble as I do about mitts, which I always wear instead of gloves, because I like to see my fingers come through. So I like to see my finger come through my thimble. It is a tailor's thimble. Tailors always use that kind. I do not know whether they like to see their fingers come through or not." I had heard it said that it takes nine tailors to make a man and now I reflected that it would take eighteen tailors to make a thimble. Upon presenting this mathematical problem to Mrs.

Preston she told me about the origin of the old saying:

"It was not that kind of tailor at first. In old England the custom was to announce a death by tolling a bell. After the bell had ceased tolling, a number of strokes, called 'tailers,' indicated whether the death was of a child, a woman or a man; three for a child, nine for a man. People counting would say, 'Nine tailers, that's a man,' which in time became colloquially 'Nine tailers make a man.' When the custom became obsolete the saying remained, its application was forgotten, _o_ was subst.i.tuted for _e_ and it was used in derogation of a most worthy and necessary member of the body politic."

Margaret Preston was very small, in explanation of which fact she told me there was a story that she had been tossed on the horns of a cow.

There was Scotch blood in the Junkin family and with it had descended the superst.i.tion that this experience dwarfs a child's growth. When she sat upon an ordinary chair her little feet did not touch the floor. She had a way of smoothing the front of her dress with her hands as she talked.

Knowing her as she was then and remembering her devotion to the South and the sacrifices she had made for her home through the dark years, one might have thought that she was a native daughter of Virginia. In the village of Milton, Pennsylvania, where her father, Reverend George Junkin, was pastor of the a.s.sociate Reformed Church, Margaret Junkin was born on the 19th of May, 1820, in a small, plain, rented house, a centre of love and harmony, with simple surroundings, for the family finances did not purchase household luxuries, but were largely expended in a.s.sisting those less fortunately placed.

In this little home, where rigid economy was practised and high aspirations reigned, our future poet entered upon the severe intellectual training which caused her at twenty-one, when the door of scholastic learning was closed upon her by the partial failure of her sight, to be called a scholar, though she sorrowfully resented the t.i.tle, asking, "How can you speak of one as a scholar whose studies were cut short at twenty-one?"

She received her first instruction from her mother, pa.s.sing then under the tutorship of her father, who fed his own ambition by gratifying her scholarly tastes, teaching her the Greek alphabet when she was six years old and continuing her training in collegiate subjects until she was forced by failing sight to give up her reading.

When she was ten the family removed to Germantown, where her father had charge of the Manual Labor School, and Margaret enjoyed the advantages at that time afforded by the city of Philadelphia, gathering bright memories which irradiated her somewhat sombre life then and lightened her coming years.

In Lafayette, a new college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin soon found opportunity to carry on his system of training for practical and religious life and here Margaret spent sixteen happy and busy years--happy but for the gray veil that fell between her and her loved studies before those years had pa.s.sed. She was obliged to prepare her Greek lessons at night, and the only time her father had for hearing her recitations was in the early morning before breakfast, which in that household meant in the dim candlelight of the period; not a wholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth of forests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of the Delaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawns and glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination to melodious effort. Of Margaret as she was in the Easton days in 1836, a Lafayette freshman thus writes:

A taste for literary pursuits soon drew us together and a warm friendship sprang up, which continued unbroken to the day of her death. Her remarkable poetic talent had even then won the admiration of her a.s.sociates, and to have been admitted into the charmed circle of which she was the center, where literature and literary work were discussed, admired and appreciated, I have ever counted a high privilege.