Palmetto Leaves Part 12

This idea of taking even the blowing of the last trump cool and easy seemed to be so like the general negro style of attending to things, that it struck me as quite refreshing. As to singing, the most doleful words with the most lugubrious melodies seemed to be in favor.

"Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,"

was a special favorite. With eyes shut, and mouth open, they would pour out a perfect storm of minor-keyed melody on poor old Dr. Watts's hymn, misp.r.o.nouncing every word, till the old doctor himself could not have told whether they were singing English or Timbuctoo.

Yet all this was done with a fervor and earnest solemnity that seemed to show that _they_ found something in it, whether we could or not: who shall say? A good old mammy we used to know found great refreshment in a hymn, the chorus of which was,--

"Bust the bonds of dust and thunder; Bring salvation from on high."

Undoubtedly the words suggested to her very different ideas from what they did to us; for she obstinately refused to have them exchanged for good English. But when the enlightened, wise, liberal, and refined for generations have found edification and spiritual profit from a service chanted in an unknown tongue, who shall say that the poor negroes of our plantation did not derive real spiritual benefit from their night services? It was at least an aspiration, a reaching and longing for something above animal and physical good, a recognition of G.o.d and immortality, and a future beyond this earth, vague and indefinite though it were.

As to the women, they were all of the cla.s.s born and bred as field-hands. They were many of them as strong as men, could plough and chop and cleave with the best, and were held to be among the best field-laborers; but, in all household affairs, they were as rough and unskilled as might be expected. To mix meal, water, and salt into a hoe-cake, and to fry salt pork or ham or chicken, was the extent of their knowledge of cooking; and as to sewing, it is a fortunate thing that the mild climate requires very slight covering. All of them practised, rudely, cutting, fitting, and making of garments to cover their children; but we could see how hard was their task, after working all day in the field, to come home and get the meals, and then, after that, have the family sewing to do. In our view, woman never was made to do the work which supports the family; and, if she do it, the family suffers more for want of the mother's vitality expended in work than it gains in the wages she receives. Some of the brightest and most intelligent negro men begin to see this, and to remove their wives from field-labor; but on the plantation, as we saw it, the absence of the mother all day from home was the destruction of any home-life or improvement.

Yet, with all this, the poor things, many of them, showed a most affecting eagerness to be taught to read and write. We carried down and distributed a stock of spelling-books among them, which they eagerly accepted, and treasured with a sort of superst.i.tious veneration; and Sundays, and evenings after work, certain of them would appear with them in hand, and earnestly beg to be taught. Alas! we never felt so truly what the loss and wrong is of being deprived of early education as when we saw how hard, how almost hopeless, is the task of acquisition in mature life. When we saw the sweat start upon these black faces, as our pupils puzzled and blundered over the strange cabalistic forms of the letters, we felt a discouraged pity. What a dreadful piece of work the reading of the English language is! Which of us would not be discouraged beginning the alphabet at forty?

After we left, the same scholars were wont to surround one of the remaining ladies. Sometimes the evening would be so hot and oppressive, she would beg to be excused. "O misse, but two of us will fan you all the time!" And "misse" could not but yield to the plea.

One of the most dreaded characters on the place was the dairy-woman and cook Minnah. She had been a field-hand in North Carolina, and worked at cutting down trees, grubbing land, and mauling rails. She was a tall, lank, powerfully-built woman, with a pair of arms like windmill-sails, and a tongue that never hesitated to speak her mind to high or low.

Democracy never a.s.sumes a more rampant form than in some of these old negresses, who would say their screed to the king on his throne, if they died for it the next minute. Accordingly, Minnah's back was all marked and scored with the tyrant's answers to free speech. Her old master was accustomed to reply to her unpleasant observations by stretching her over a log, staking down her hands and feet, and flaying her alive, as a most convincing style of argument. For all that, Minnah was neither broken nor humbled: she still a.s.serted her rights as a human being to talk to any other human being as seemed to her good and proper; and many an amusing specimen of this she gave us. Minnah had learned to do up gentlemen's shirts pa.s.sably, to iron and to cook after a certain fashion, to make b.u.t.ter, and do some other household tasks: and so, before the wives of the gentlemen arrived on the place, she had been selected as a sort of general housekeeper and manager in doors; and, as we arrived on the ground first, we found Minnah in full command,--the only female presence in the house.

It was at the close of a day in May, corresponding to our August, that Mrs. F---- and baby and myself, with sundry bales of furniture and household stuff, arrived at the place. We dropped down in a lazy little sail-boat which had lain half the day becalmed, with the blue, hazy sh.o.r.es on either side melting into indefinite distance, and cast anchor far out in the stream; and had to be rowed in a smaller boat to the long wharf that stretched far out into the waters. Thence, in the thickening twilight, we ascended, pa.s.sed through the belt of forest-trees that overhung the sh.o.r.e, and crossed the wide fields of fine white sand devoted to the raising of cotton. The planter's house was a one-story cottage, far in the distance, rising up under the shelter of a lofty tuft of Spanish oaks.

Never shall we forget the impression of weird and almost ludicrous dreariness which took possession of us as Mrs. F---- and myself sat down in the wide veranda of the one-story cottage to wait for the gentlemen, who had gone down to a.s.sist in landing our trunks and furniture. The black laborers were coming up from the field; and, as one and another pa.s.sed by, they seemed blacker, stranger, and more dismal, than any thing we had ever seen.

The women wore men's hats and boots, and had the gait and stride of men; but now and then an old hooped petticoat, or some cast-off, thin, bedraggled garment that had once been fine, told the tale of s.e.x, and had a wofully funny effect.

As we sat waiting, Minnah loomed up upon us in the twilight veranda like a gaunt Libyan sibyl, walking round and round, surveying us with apparent curiosity, and responding to all our inquiries as to who and what she was by a peculiarly uncanny chuckle. It appeared to amuse her extremely that Mr. F---- had gone off and left the pantry locked up, so that she could not get us any supper; we being faint and almost famished with our day's sail. The sight of a white baby dressed in delicate white robes, with lace and embroidery, also appeared greatly to excite her; and she stalked round and round with a curious simmer of giggle, appearing and disappearing at uncertain intervals, like a black sprite, during the mortal hour and a half that it cost our friends to land the goods from the vessel.

After a while, some supper was got for us in a wide, desolate apartment, fitted up with a small cooking-stove in the corner.

Never shall we forget the experience of endeavoring to improvise a corn-cake the next morning for breakfast.

We went into the room, and found the table standing just as we had left it the night before,--not a dish washed, not a thing done in the way of clearing. On inquiry for Minnah, she was gone out to milking. It appeared that there were sixteen cows to be milked before her return. A little colored girl stood ready to wait on us with ample good nature.

"Lizzie," said we, "have you corn-meal?"

"Oh, yes'm!" and she brought it just as the corn had been ground, with the bran unsifted.

"A sieve, Lizzie."

It was brought.

"A clean pan, Lizzie. Quick!"

"All right," said Lizzie: "let me get a pail of water." The water was to be drawn from a deep well in the yard. That done, Lizzie took a pan, went out the door, produced a small bit of rag, and rinsed the pan, dashing the contents upon the sand.

"Lizzie, haven't you any dish-cloth?"

"No'm."

"No towels?"

"No'm."

"Do you always wash dishes this way?"

"Yes'm."

"Well, then, wash this spoon and these two bake-pans."

Lizzie, good-natured and zealous as the day is long, bent over her pail, and slopped and scrubbed with her bit of rag.

"Now for a pan of sour milk," said we.

It was brought, with saleratus and other condiments; and the cake was made.

But, on examination, the flues of the little cooking-stove were so choked with the resinous soot of the "light-wood" which had been used in it, that it would scarcely draw at all; and the baking did not progress as in our nice Stuart stove in our Northern home. Still the whole experience was so weirdly original, that, considering this was only a picnic excursion, we rather enjoyed it.

When we came to unpack china and crockery and carpets, bureau and bedsteads and dressing-gla.s.s, Minnah's excitement knew no bounds.

Evidently she considered these articles (cast-off remnants of our Northern home) as the height of splendor.

When our upper chamber was matted, and furnished with white curtains and shades, and bed, chairs, and dressing-gla.s.s, Minnah came in to look; and her delight was boundless.

"Dear me! O Lord, O Lord!" she exclaimed, turning round and round. "Dese yer Northern ladies--they hes every thing, and they does every thing!"

More especially was she taken with the pictures we hung on the walls.

Before one of these (Raphael's Madonna of the Veil) Minnah knelt down in a kind of ecstatic trance, and thus delivered herself:--

"O good Lord! if there ain't de Good Man when he was a baby! How harmless he lies there! so innocent! And here we be, we wicked sinners, turning our backs on him, and going to the Old Boy. O Lord, O Lord! we ought to be better than we be: we sartin ought."

This invocation came forth with streaming tears in the most natural way in the world; and Minnah seemed, for the time being, perfectly subdued.

It is only one of many instances we have seen of the overpowering influence of works of art on the impressible nervous system of the negro.

But it is one thing to have an amusing and picturesque specimen of a human being, as Minnah certainly was, and another to make one useful in the traces of domestic life.

As the first white ladies upon the ground, Mrs. F---- and myself had the task of organizing this barbaric household, and of bringing it into the forms of civilized life. We commenced with the washing.

Before the time of our coming, it had been customary for the gentlemen to give their washing into the hands of Minnah or Judy, to be done at such times and in such form and manner as best suited them.

The manner which _did_ suit them best was to put all the articles to soak indefinitely, in soapsuds, till such time as to them seemed good.

On being pressed for some particular article, and roundly scolded by any of the proprietors, they would get up a shirt, a pair of drawers, a collar or two, with abundant promises for the rest when they had time.

The helpless male individuals of the establishments had no refuge from the feminine ruses and expedients, and the fifty incontrovertible reasons which were always on hand to prove to them that things could be done no other way than just as they were done; and, in fact, found it easier to get their washing back again by blandishments than by bullying.

We ladies announced a regular washing-day, and endeavored to explain it to our kitchen cabinet; our staff consisting of Minnah and Judy, detailed for house-service.

Judy was a fat, lazy, crafty, roly-poly negress, the Florida wife of the foreman Mose, and devoted to his will and pleasure in hopes to supplant the "Virginny" and "Carliny" wives. Judy said yes to every thing we proposed; but Minnah was "kinky" and argumentative: but finally, when we represented to her that the proposed arrangement was customary in good Northern society, she gave her a.s.sent.