American Adventures A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' / Street, Julian, 1879-1947
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Author: Street, Julian, 1879-1947
Title: American Adventures A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
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Title: American Adventures
A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
Author: Julian Street
Illustrator: Wallace Morgan
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[Illustration: Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American
upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port
and _noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
according to the best traditions]
AMERICAN ADVENTURES
A SECOND TRIP "ABROAD AT HOME" BY
JULIAN STREET
WITH PICTORIAL SIDELIGHTS
BY
WALLACE MORGAN
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
P.F. COLLIER & SON, INC.
_Published, November, 1917_
TO MY AUNT
AND SECOND MOTHER
JULIA ROSS LOW
FOREWORD
Though much has been written of the South, it seems to me that this part
of our country is less understood than any other part. Certainly the
South, itself, feels that this is true. Its relationship to the North
makes me think of nothing so much as that of a pretty, sensitive wife,
to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two
had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her
headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill; she
has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their
difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he,
man-like, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled at all, now that
peace reigns in the house again, _she_ has _not_ forgotten. There still
lingers in her mind the feeling that he never really understood her,
that he never understood her problems and her struggles, and that he
never will. And it seems to me further that, as is usually the case with
wives who consider themselves misunderstood, the fault is partly, but by
no means altogether, hers. He, upon one hand, is inclined to pass the
matter off with a: "There, there! It's all over now. Just be good and
forget it!" while she, in the depths of her heart, retains a little bit
of wistfulness, a little wounded feeling, which causes her to say to
herself: "Thank God our home was not broken up, but--I wish that he
could be a little more considerate, sometimes, in view of all that I
have suffered."
For my part, I am the humble but devoted friend of the family. Having
known him first, having been from boyhood his companion, I may perhaps
have sympathized with him in the beginning. But since I have come to
know her, too, that is no longer so. And I do think I know her--proud,
sensitive, high-strung, generous, captivating beauty that she is!
Moreover, after the fashion of many another "friend of the family," I
have fallen in love with her. Loving her from afar, I send her as a
nosegay these chapters gathered in her own gardens. If some of the
flowers are of a kind for which she does not care, if some have thorns,
even if some are only weeds, I pray her to remember that from what was
growing in her gardens I was forced to make my choice, and to believe
that, whatever the defects of my bouquet, it is meant to be a bunch of
roses.
J.S.
_October 1, 1917._
The Author makes his grateful acknowledgments to the old friends
and the new ones who assisted him upon this journey. And once more
he desires to express his gratitude to the friend and
fellow-traveler whose illustrations are far from being his only
contribution to this volume.
--J.S.
New York, October, 1917.
CONTENTS
THE BORDERLAND
CHAPTER PAGE
I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES 3
II A BALTIMORE EVENING 13
III WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET 27
IV TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT 38
V TERRAPIN AND THINGS 44
VI DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS 53
VII A RARE OLD TOWN 69
VIII WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST 80
IX ARE WE STANDARDIZED? 89
X HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN 97
XI THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS 105
XII I RIDE A HORSE 117
XIII INTO THE OLD DOMINION 136
XIV CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO 150
XV THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 159
XVI FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA 169
XVII "A CERTAIN PARTY" 186
XVIII THE LEGACY OF HATE 193
XIX "YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS 203
XX IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY 214
XXI THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL 222
XXII RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES 233
XXIII JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S COT 242
XXIV NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD 248
XXV COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE 258
THE HEART OF THE SOUTH
XXVI RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS 273
XXVII ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE" 285
XXVIII UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES 296
XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY 312
XXX POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA 326
XXXI "GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY 338
XXXII OUT OF THE PAST 349
XXXIII ALIVE ATLANTA 356
XXXIV GEORGIA JOURNALISM 369
XXXV SOME ATLANTA INSTITUTIONS 384
XXXVI A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA 392
XXXVII A YOUNG METROPOLIS 403
XXXVIII BUSY BIRMINGHAM 417
XXXIX AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT 426
XL THE ROAD TO ARCADY 440
XLI A MISSISSIPPI TOWN 447
XLII OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME 458
XLIII OUT OF THE LONG AGO 467
XLIV THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM 474
XLV VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW 482
XLVI SHREDS AND PATCHES 494
XLVII THE BAFFLING MISSISSIPPI 500
XLVIII OLD RIVER DAYS 508
XLIX WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED 518
L MODERN MEMPHIS 535
FARTHEST SOUTH
LI BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH 553
LII MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP 572
LIII PASSIONATE PALM BEACH 579
LIV ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA 595
LV A DAY IN MONTGOMERY 603
LVI THE CITY OF THE CREOLE 619
LVII HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS 629
LVIII FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES 648
LIX ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS 663
LX FINALE 675
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Charleston is the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
_noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
according to the best traditions _Frontispiece_
"Railroad tickets!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience 8
Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by
night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city? 17
Coming out of my slumber with the curious and unpleasant sense of
being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me 24
Mount Vernon Place is the centre of Baltimore 32
If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and
aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the
Sacred Cod in Boston 48
Doughoregan Manor--the house was a buff-colored brick 65
I began to realize that there was no one coming 80
Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place piled up
beautifully yet carelessly upon terraced roads clinging to steep
hillsides 100
"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping 117
When I came down, dressed for riding, my companion was making a
drawing; the four young ladies were with him, none of them in riding
habits 124
Claymont Court is one of the old Washington houses 132
Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, now the residence of Mark Sullivan 148
Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees of
neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains 157
Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
moonlight 168
One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail-coach,
bearing the significant initials "F.F.V." 180
The Piedmont Hunt Race Meet 189
The Southern negro is the world's peasant supreme 200
The Country Club of Virginia, out to the west of Richmond 216
Judge Crutchfield 228
Negro women squatting upon boxes in old shadowy lofts stem the
tobacco leaves 237
The Judge: "What did he do, Mandy?" 244
Some genuine old-time New York ferryboats help to complete the
illusion that Norfolk is New York 253
"The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves his
country best" 280
St. Philip's is the more beautiful for the open space before it 300
Opposite St. Philip's, a perfect example of the rude architecture of
an old French village 305
In the doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare Street, I was
struck with a Venetian suggestion 316
Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection 320
Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the
cities of the Middle West rolled into one 328
The interior is the oldest looking thing in the United States--Goose
Creek Church 344
A reminder of the Chicago River--Atlanta 353
With the whole Metropolitan Orchestra playing dance music all night
long 368
The office buildings are city office buildings, and are sufficiently
numerous to look very much at home 376
The negro roof-garden, Odd Fellows' Building, Atlanta 385
I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge
Plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring 396
The planters cease their work 400
Birmingham--the thin veil of smoke from far-off iron furnaces
softens the city's serrated outlines 408
Birmingham practices unremittingly the pestilential habit of
"cutting in" at dances 424
Gigantic movements and mutations, Niagara-like noises, great bursts
of flame like falling fragments from the sun 437
A shaggy, unshaven, rawboned man, gray-haired and collarless, sat
near the window 444
Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! 456
The houses were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life
and an informal hospitality 465
Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat 480
As water flows down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the
visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous,
dominating stream 485
Over the tenement roofs one catches sight of sundry other buildings
of a more self-respecting character 492
Vicksburg negroes 497
On some of the boats negro fish-markets are conducted 504
The old Klein house 512
Citizens go at midday to the square 520
Hanging in the air above the middle of the stream 536
These small parks give Savannah the quality which differentiates it
from all other American cities 556
The Thomas house, in Franklin Square 561
You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of
the cocoanut grove 576
Cocktail hour at The Breakers 581
Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold 588
The couples on the platform were "ragging" 600
Harness held together by that especial Providence which watches over
negro mending 613
It was a very jolly fair 616
The mysterious old Absinthe House, founded 1799 620
St. Anthony's Garden 632
Courtyard of the old Orleans Hotel 641
The little lady who sits behind the desk 656
The lights are always lowered at Antoine's when the spectacular Cafe
Boulot Diabolique is served 664
Passing between the brilliantly illuminated buildings, the Mardi
Gras parades are glorious sights for children from eight to eighty
years of age 672
THE BORDERLAND
O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil!
O all dear to me!
WALT WHITMAN.
AMERICAN ADVENTURES
CHAPTER I
ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES
On journeys through the States we start,
... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.
We dwell a while in every city and town ...
--WALT WHITMAN.
Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we
never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the
beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our
first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put
it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The
vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great
delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and
having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour
more than part of it--a strip across the table, as it were, stretching
from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other--I have hungered
impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try
to eat it all.
Months before our actual departure for the South the day for leaving was
appointed; days before we fixed upon our train; hours before I bought my
ticket. And then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab was
ordered and my faithful battered suitcase stood packed to bulging in the
hall, my companion, the Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain
drawings he must finish before leaving were not done, that he would be
unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but must wait until the
midnight train.
Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited for him, but the
distance from New York to the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line is
short, and I knew that he would join me on the threshold of the South
next morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon as
originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse, every reason I could think
of, save the real one: namely, my impatience. I told him that I wished
to make the initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping
car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the night by wire, that
friends were coming down to see me off.
Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe in telling the truth.
The truth is good enough for any one at any time--except, perhaps, when
there is a point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it should,
if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example, it is quite true that I
prefer the conversation of my fellow travelers, dull though it may be,
to the stertorous sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not
telegraphed for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten to--and
that I remedied immediately; while as to the statement that friends were
to see me off, that was absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had,
indeed, signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last
farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very slight show of
enthusiasm with which I heard the news.
The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all, do I like to be
seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I
prefer it to be done by strangers--committees from chambers of commerce
and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live
to write agreeably of their city--of the civic center, the fertilizer
works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most
practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They
provide an equipage, and there have even been times when, in the final
hurried moments, they have helped me to jam the last things into my
trunks and bags. One of them politely takes my suitcase, another kindly
checks my baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the
secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me with inspiring
statistics concerning the population of "our city," the seating capacity
of the auditorium, the number of banks, the amount of their clearings,
and the quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When the train
is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret at parting:
expressions reminiscent of those little speeches which the King of
England and the Emperor of Germany used to make at parting in the old
days before they found each other out and began dropping high explosives
on each other's roofs.
Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing
me depart, may be useful. Not so with friends and loved ones. Useful as
they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing
elements in the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom check our
trunks.
By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful
creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would
die for me. That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate
my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab,
hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a
twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived
ahead of me! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the
rain to see me off! Enough to turn a man's head! It did turn mine; and I
noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning
too.
Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them
automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the
driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a
great shout--whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him.
This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant
dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the
other, moved across the concourse.
How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing were their
prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small
wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.
Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great
vaulted chamber, we stopped.
"Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed.
Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject
distracted my attention for the moment from the _Loreleien_, stirred my
drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.
My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly
brushed aside.
"Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you."
I gave in at once--one always does with them--and inquired of the porter
the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he
replied:
"It's away back there where we come from, boss."
It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have
been delightful.
"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled
windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.
As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the
baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the
morning's shopping expedition--hat-hunting, they called it--in the
rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman,
perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had
business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch
and demanded:
"Baggage checked?"
Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair
of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the
claim checks.
"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray
eyes.
"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks.
"That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the
checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you'd stay
in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'"
"About a week I meant to say."
"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.
"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are
so many places in the South to see."
"My sister has just been there, and she--"
"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.
"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our
conversation he might have known.
"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister--?"
"She just came home from there, and says that--"
"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.
I began again to feel in various pockets.
"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming
people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."
I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I
never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.
"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.
"Like what?"
"Why, the southern accent."
"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.
"Yes," I answered them both at once.
"Oh, you _do_?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.
"Why, yes; I think--"
"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a
slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.
I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I
judged that he had finished with me for the moment.
"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern
girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?"
"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for
doing so?"
"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such
egotism?"
"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a
man for--"
"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.
I paid him.
"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we
started to move off.
"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.
"_Hay!_" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!"
I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded
upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.
This time the porter meant to take no chances.
"What train, boss?" he asked.
"The Congressional Limited."
"You got jus' four minutes."
"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.
"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you
prided yourself on always having time to spare?"
"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case--"
"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.
Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I
can't imagine how I came to put them there.
"But in this case--_what_?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their
owner put the question.
"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the
gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this
case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."
There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses.
Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting
the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing
than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is
worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to
be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed
them both.
Then I bolted toward the gate.
"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.
At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know
how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.
As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to
be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the
Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the
blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.
There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York
City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station
you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's
tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old
slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor
of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering
moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New
Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far,
far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of
palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering
sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car
window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade,
shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums,
cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.
CHAPTER II
A BALTIMORE EVENING
I felt her presence by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the night,
As of the one I love.
--LONGFELLOW.
Before I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected
with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through
which trains pass beneath the city; the second was that when a
southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning
up, preparatory to reaching Washington.
Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an
adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to a
district of good asphalted streets, the main ones wide and well lighted.
The Baltimore street lamps are large and very brilliant single globes,
mounted upon the tops of substantial metal columns. I do not remember
having seen lamps of the same pattern in any other city. It is a good
pattern, but there is one thing about it which is not good at all, and
that is the way the street names are lettered upon the sides of the
globes. Though the lettering is not large, it is large enough to be
read easily in the daytime against the globe's white surface, but to try
to read it at night is like trying to read some little legend printed
upon a blinding noon-day sun. I noticed this particularly because I
spent my first evening in wandering alone about the streets of
Baltimore, and wished to keep track of my route in order that I might
the more readily find my way back to the hotel.
Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night,
through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same
detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human
beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a
"messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an
imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an
ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark
shadows; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness
here or there; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which
unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice
in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they--as I
do--delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires
against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead
of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting
intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as
though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a
street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide,
bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street
and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of
lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they
tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to
board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of
the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere
with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where
these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the
trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a
fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world?
For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as
these--who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an
inclination of at least mildly fantastic character--I am profoundly
sorry. The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing with
the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination.
Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks near where they
cross Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station and
Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the
suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick houses,
standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of honorable age,
and, in some cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies that in
many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be found, or, if not
that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the
period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood sofa, and
the tall, narrow mirror between the two front windows of the drawing
room.
Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn window
shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow as of
illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun
to disappear, indicating--or so, at all events, I chose to believe--that
certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with old lace
fichus held in place by ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly,
rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats.
At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street performs
a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while Chase
Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection, but
does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park
Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies,
as though exhausted by its own contortions.
Here, in a region of malformed city blocks--some of them pentagonal,
some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped--Howard Street sets
forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street,
then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important thoroughfare.
Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my attention was arrested
by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and
weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in which
antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of the location of
this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like
establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of a feather
bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking together in Howard Street,
as window displays, faintly visible, informed me.
Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause
here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further.
Baltimore--as I found out later--is probably the headquarters for the
South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank,
located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near
Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of
these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only
did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have
even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail,
accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is,
nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."
At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The
stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made
no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the
assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment, when I
was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.
However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes
make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight
of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one
dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an
old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again,
perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in
this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured
most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have
been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of
Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's
hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been
plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which
appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in
reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this
because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such
factories exist.
What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and
those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture
with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a
machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine antique," will assure
you--and not always with a strict regard for truth--that it is
"practically as good as new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the
horse dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to some
venerable quadruped--let alone a three-year-old--and discoursing upon
its merits in some such manner as the following:
"This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my
possession. Just look at it, sir! The farmer of whom I bought it assured
me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the _Mayflower_. The
place where I found it was used as Washington's headquarters during the
Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently
sat on this very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a large man
and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced
underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back
comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and--"
But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten mixed. However, you know
what I meant to indicate. I merely meant to show that a horse dealer
wouldn't talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about a
chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by the Father of his
Country, the dealer won't stress the point. You can't get him to admit
that a horse has reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one
hundred and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference between
the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques which keeps us in the dark
to-day as to exactly which horses Washington rode and which he didn't
ride; although we know every chair he ever sat in, and every bed he ever
slept in, and every house he ever stopped in, and how he is said to have
caught his death of cold.
Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk.
Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw
about me--the conglomerate assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers,
bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores--that here was the center of
the city's nighttime life.
Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very spacious and somewhat
ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went
with a ticket for standing room.
Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It
is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down
Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old
fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with
tasseled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions,
dust, and the possibility of fire and panic.
After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet
which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information
about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls
itself--thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one
sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or serving as a
monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to
convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to
monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which
many monuments have been erected--as is indeed the pleasing fact. My
pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first
to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other
monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it
was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the
details.
In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings
in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their
officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by
land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone
Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River--here practically an arm of
Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United
States cartel ship _Minden_ (used by the government in negotiating
exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend, Dr. William Beanes,
of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was held captive on a British
vessel, Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of
the _Minden_, and when he perceived "by the dawn's early light" that the
flag still flew over the fort, he was moved to write his famous poem.
Later it was printed and set to music; it was first sung in a restaurant
near the old Holliday Street Theater, but neither the restaurant nor the
theater exists to-day. It is sometimes stated that Key was himself a
prisoner, during the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a
mistake.
By a curious coincidence, only a few minutes after my pamphlet had
reminded me of the origin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" here in
Baltimore, I heard the air played under circumstances very different
from any which could have been anticipated by the author of the poem, or
the composer who set it to music.
The entertainment at the Academy that night was supplied by an elaborate
"show" of the burlesque variety known as "The Follies," and it so
happened that in the course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy,
scenery, song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number" in
which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent to resemble rulers of
various lands, marched successively to the front of the stage, preceded
in each instance by a small but carefully selected guard wearing the
full-dress-uniform of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists
principally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the different nations
being indicated, usually, by means of color combinations and various
types of soldiers' hats. No arms are presented save those provided by
nature.
The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar, the Mikado, the
British Monarch, the President of France, the King of the Belgians, the
Kaiser (for the United States had not then entered the war), and, I
think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied by his
Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate national air.
Apprehending that this symbolic travesty must, almost inevitably, end in
a grand orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the place
before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid fascination held me there
to watch the working up of "patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap,
stage tricks.
Presently, of course, the supreme moment came. When all the potentates
had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed
soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a
squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my
recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward
and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the orchestra struck
up "The Star-Spangled Banner," fortissimo, and with a liberal sounding
of the brasses. Upon this appeared at the back a counterfeit President
of the United States, guarded on either side by a female militia--or
were they perhaps secret-service agents?--in striking uniforms
consisting of pink fleshings partially draped with thin black lace.
As this incongruous parade proceeded to the footlights, American flags
came into evidence, and, though I forget whether or not Columbia
appeared, I recollect that a beautiful young woman, habited in what
appeared to be a light pink union suit of unexceptionable cut and
material, appeared above the head of the pseudo-chief executive,
suspended at the end of a wire. Never having heard that it was White
House etiquette to hang young ladies on wires above the presidential
head, I consulted my program and thereby learned that this young lady
represented that species of poultry so popular always with the late
Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, and so popular also at one time with the
President himself: namely, the Dove of Peace.
The applause was thunderous. At the sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
a few members of the audience arose to their feet; others soon
followed--some of them apparently with reluctance--until at last the
entire house had risen. Meanwhile the members of the company lined up
before the footlights: the mock president smirking at the center, the
half-clad girls posing, the pink young lady dangling above, the band
blaring, the Stars and Stripes awave. It was a scene, in all, about as
conducive to genuine or creditable national pride as would be the scene
of a debauch in some fabulous harem.
The difference between stupidity and satire lies, not infrequently, in
the intent with which a thing is done. Presented without essential
change upon the stage of a music hall in some foreign land, the scene
just described would, at that time, when we were playing a timid part
amongst the nations, have been accepted, not as a glorification of the
United States, but as having a precisely opposite significance. It would
have been taken for burlesque; burlesque upon our country, our
President, our national spirit, our peace policy, our army, and perhaps
also upon our women--and insulting burlesque at that.
Some years since, it was found necessary to pass a law prohibiting the
use of the flag for advertising purposes. This law should be amended to
protect it also from the even more sordid and vulgarizing associations
to which it is not infrequently submitted on the American musical-comedy
stage.
* * * * *
In the morning, before I was awake, my companion arrived at the hotel,
and, going to his room, opened the door connecting it with mine. Coming
out of my slumber with that curious and not altogether pleasant sense of
being stared at, I found his eyes fixed upon me, and noticed immediately
about him the air of virtuous superiority which is assumed by all who
have risen early, whether they have done so by choice or have been
shaken awake.
"Hello," I said. "Had breakfast?"
"No. I thought we could breakfast together if you felt like getting up."
Though the phraseology of this remark was unexceptionable, I knew what
it meant. What it really meant was: "Shame on you, lying there so lazy
after sunup! Look at _me_, all dressed and ready to begin!"
I arose at once.
For all that I don't like to get up early, it recalled old times, and
was very pleasant, to be away with him again upon our travels; to be in
a strange city and a strange hotel, preparing to set forth on
explorations. For he is the best, the most charming, the most observant
of companions, and also one of the most patient.
That is one of his greatest qualities--his patience. Throughout our
other trip he always kept on being patient with me, no matter what I
did. Many a time instead of pushing me down an elevator shaft, drowning
me in my bath, or coming in at night and smothering me with a pillow, he
has merely sighed, dropped into a chair, and sat there shaking his head
and staring at me with a melancholy, ruminative, hopeless
expression--such an expression as may come into the face of a dumb man
when he looks at a waiter who has spilled an oyster cocktail on him.
All this is good for me. It has a chastening effect.
Therefore in a spirit happy yet not exuberant, eager yet controlled,
hopeful yet a little bit afraid, I dressed myself hurriedly, breakfasted
with him (eating ham and eggs because he approves of ham and eggs), and
after breakfast set out in his society to obtain what--despite my walk
of the night before--I felt was not alone my first real view of
Baltimore, but my first glimpse over the threshold of the South: into
the land of aristocracy and hospitality, of mules and mammies, of
plantations, porticos, and proud, flirtatious belles, of colonels,
cotton, chivalry, and colored cooking.
CHAPTER III
WHERE THE CLIMATES MEET
Here, where the climates meet,
That each may make the other's lack complete--
--SIDNEY LANIER.
Because Baltimore was built, like Rome, on seven hills, and because
trains run under it instead of through, the passing traveler sees but
little of the city, his view from the train window being restricted
first to a suburban district, then to a black tunnel, then to a glimpse
upward from the railway cut, in which the station stands. These facts, I
think, combine to leave upon his mind an impression which, if not
actually unfavorable, is at least negative; for certainly he has
obtained no just idea of the metropolis of Maryland.
Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore is not in any
sense to be regarded as a suburb of Washington. Indeed, considering the
two merely as cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly
specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes, according to the
standards by which American cities are usually compared, the more
important city of the two, being greater both in population and in
commerce. In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the
commercial half of Washington. And while Washington, as capital of the
United States, has certain physical and cosmopolitan advantages, not
only over Baltimore, but over every other city on this continent, it
must not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other city has
one vast advantage over Washington, namely, a comparative freedom from
politicians. To be sure, Congress did once move over to Baltimore and
sit there for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British
approached the Delaware in the days before the pork barrel was invented.
As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics. Though south of Mason
and Dixon's Line, and though sometimes referred to as the "metropolis of
the South" (as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city
entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which partakes of the
qualities of both; where, in the words of Sidney Lanier, "the climates
meet," and where northern and southern thought and custom meet, as well.
This has long been the case. Thus, although slaves were held in
Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong abolitionist society was formed
there during Washington's first Administration, and the sentiment of the
city was thereafter divided on the slavery question. Thus also, while
the two candidates of the divided Democratic party who ran against
Lincoln for the presidency in 1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln
himself was nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864.
Speaking of the blending of North and South in Baltimore, you will, of
course, remember that the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a
mob as it passed through the city on the way to the Civil War. The
regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President Street Station, which
was then the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now
used as a freight station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of
_Harper's Weekly_. It was the custom in those days to hitch horses to
passenger coaches which were going through and draw them across town to
the Baltimore & Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to
transport the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked the Pratt
Street bridge over Jones's Falls, forcing the soldiers to leave the cars
and march through Pratt Street, along the water front, where they were
attacked. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown of
Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted to stop the rioting.
A few days later the city was occupied by northern troops, and the
warship _Harriet Lane_ anchored at a point off Calvert Street, whence
her guns commanded the business part of town. After this there was no
more serious trouble. Moreover, it will be remembered that though
Maryland was represented by regiments in both armies, the State, torn as
it was by conflicting feeling, nevertheless held to the Union.
A pretty sequel to the historic attack on the Sixth Massachusetts
occurred when the same regiment passed through Baltimore in 1898, on its
way to the Spanish War. On this occasion it was "attacked" again in the
streets of the city, but the missiles thrown, instead of paving-stones
and bricks, were flowers.
Continuing the category of contrasts, one may observe that while the
general appearance of Baltimore suggests a northern city rather than a
southern one--Philadelphia, for instance, rather than
Richmond--Baltimore society is strongly flavored with the tradition and
the soft pronunciation of the South; particularly of Virginia and the
"Eastern Shore."
So, too, the city's position on the border line is reflected in its
handling of the negro. Of American cities, Washington has the largest
negro population, 94,446, New York and New Orleans follow with almost as
many, and Baltimore comes fourth with 84,749, according to the last
census. New York has one negro to every fifty-one whites, Philadelphia
one to every seventeen whites, Baltimore one to every six, Washington a
negro to every two and a half whites, and Richmond not quite two whites
to every negro. But, although Baltimore follows southern practice in
maintaining separate schools for negro children, and in segregating
negro residences to certain blocks, she follows northern practice in
casting a considerable negro vote at elections, and also in not
providing separate seats for negroes in her street cars.
Have you ever noticed how cities sometimes seem to have their own
especial colors? Paris is white and green--even more so, I think, than
Washington. Chicago is gray; so is London usually, though I have seen
it buff at the beginning of a heavy fog. New York used to be a brown
sandstone city, but is now turning to one of cream-colored brick and
tile; Naples is brilliant with pink and blue and green and white and
yellow; while as for Baltimore, her old houses and her new are, as
Baedeker puts it, of "cheerful red brick"--not always, of course, but
often enough to establish the color of red brick as the city's
predominating hue. And with the red-brick houses--particularly the older
ones--go clean white marble steps, on the bottom one of which, at the
side, may usually be found an old-fashioned iron "scraper," doubtless
left over from the time (not very long ago) when the city pavements had
not reached their present excellence.
The color of red brick is not confined to the center of the city, but
spreads to the suburbs, fashionable and unfashionable. At one margin of
the town I was shown solid blocks of pleasant red-brick houses which, I
was told, were occupied by workmen and their families, and were to be
had at a rental of from ten to twenty dollars a month. For though
Baltimore has a lower East Side which, like the lower East Side of New
York, encompasses the Ghetto and Italian quarter, she has not tenements
in the New York sense; one sees no tall, cheap flat houses draped with
fire escapes and built to make herding places for the poor. Many of the
houses in this section are instead the former homes of fashionables who
have moved to other quarters of the city--handsome old homesteads with
here and there a lovely, though battered, doorway sadly reminiscent of
an earlier elegance. So, also, red brick permeates the prosperous
suburbs, such as Roland Park and Guilford, where, in a sweetly rolling
country which lends itself to the arrangement of graceful winding roads
and softly contoured plantings, stand quantities of pleasing homes,
lately built, many of them colonial houses of red brick. Indeed, it
struck us that the only parts of Baltimore in which red brick was not
the dominant note were the downtown business section and Mount Vernon
Place.
Mount Vernon Place is the center of Baltimore. Everything begins there,
including Baedeker, who, in his little red book, gives it the asterisk
of his approval, says that it "suggests Paris in its tasteful monuments
and surrounding buildings," and recommends the view from the top of the
Washington Monument.
This monument, standing upon an eminence at the point where Charles and
Monument Streets would cross each other were not their courses
interrupted by the pleasing parked space of Mount Vernon Place, is a
gray stone column, surmounted by a figure of Washington--or, rather, by
the point of a lightning rod under which the figure stands. Other
monuments are known as this monument or that, but when "the monument" is
spoken of, the Washington Monument is inevitably meant. This is quite
natural, for it is not only the most simple and picturesque old monument
in Baltimore, but also the largest, the oldest, and the most
conspicuous: its proud head, rising high in air, having for nearly a
century dominated the city. One catches glimpses of it down this street
or that, or sees it from afar over the housetops; and sometimes, when
the column is concealed from view by intervening buildings, and only the
surmounting statue shows above them, one is struck by a sudden
apparition of the Father of his Country strolling fantastically upon
some distant roof.
Though it may be true that Mount Vernon Place, with its symmetrical
parked center and its admirable bronzes (several of them by Barye),
suggests Paris, and though it is certainly true that it is more like a
Parisian square than a London square, nevertheless it is in reality an
American square--perhaps the finest of its kind in the United States. If
it were Parisian, it would have more trees and the surrounding buildings
would be uniform in color and in cornice height. It is perhaps as much
like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia as any other, and that
resemblance is of the slightest, for Mount Vernon Place has a quality
altogether its own. It has no skyscrapers or semi-skyscrapers to throw
it out of balance; and though the structures which surround it are of
white stone, brown stone, and red brick, and of anything but homogeneous
architecture, nevertheless a comparative uniformity of height, a
universal solidity of construction, and a general grace about them,
combine to give the Place an air of equilibrium and dignity and
elegance.
Including the Washington Monument, Baltimore has three lofty landmarks,
likely to be particularly noticed by the roving visitor. Of the
remaining two, one is the old brick shot-tower in the lower part of
town, which legend tells us was put up without the use of scaffolding
nearly a hundred years ago; while the other, a more modern, if less
modest structure, proudly surmounts a large commercial building and is
itself capped by the gigantic effigy of a bottle. This bottle is very
conspicuous because of its emplacement, because it revolves, and because
it is illuminated at night. You can never get away from it.
One evening I asked a man what the bottle meant up there.
"It's a memorial to Emerson," he told me.
"Are they so fond of Emerson down here?"
"I don't know as they are so all-fired fond of him," he answered.
"But they _must_ be fond of him to put up such a big memorial. Why, even
in Boston, where he was born, they have no such memorial as that."
"He put it up himself," said the man.
That struck me as strange. It seemed somehow out of character with the
great philosopher. Also, I could not see why, if he did wish to raise a
memorial to himself, he had elected to fashion it in the form of a
bottle and put it on top of an office building.
"I suppose there is some sort of symbolism about it?" I suggested.
"Now you got it," approved the man.
I gazed at the tower for a while in thought. Then I said:
"Do you suppose that Emerson meant something like this: that human life
or, indeed, the soul, may be likened to the contents of a bottle; that
day by day we use up some portion of the contents--call it, if you like,
the nectar of existence--until the fluid of life runs low, and at last
is gone entirely, leaving only the husk, as it were--or, to make the
metaphor more perfect, the shell, or empty bottle: the container of what
Emerson himself called, if I recollect correctly, 'the soul that maketh
all'--do you suppose he meant to teach us some such thing as that?"
The man looked a little confused by this deep and beautiful thought.
"He _might_ of meant that," he said, somewhat dubiously. "But they tell
me Captain Emerson's a practical man, and I reckon what he _mainly_
meant was that he made his money out of this-here Bromo Seltzer, and he
was darn glad of it, so he thought he'd put him up a big Bromo Seltzer
bottle as a kind of cross between a monument and an ad."
If the bottle tower represents certain modern concepts of what is
suitable in architecture, it is nevertheless pleasant to record the fact
that many honorable old buildings--most of them residences--survive in
Baltimore, and that, because of their survival, the city looks older
than New York and fully as old as either Philadelphia or Boston. But in
this, appearances are misleading, for New York and Boston were a
century old, and Philadelphia half a century, when Baltimore was first
laid out as a town. Efforts to start a settlement near the city's
present site were, it is true, being made before William Penn and his
Quakers established Philadelphia, but a letter written in 1687 by
Charles Calvert, third Baron Baltimore, explains that: "The people there
[are] not affecting to build nere each other but soe as to have their
houses nere the watters for conveniencye of trade and their lands on
each side of and behynde their houses, by which it happens that in most
places there are not fifty houses in the space of thirty myles."[1]
[1] From "Historic Towns of the Southern States."
The difficulty experienced by the Barons Baltimore, Lords Proprietary of
Maryland, in building up communities in their demesne was not a local
problem, but one which confronted those interested in the development of
the entire portion of this continent now occupied by the Southern
States. Generally speaking, towns came into being more slowly in the
South than in the North, and it seems probable that one of the principal
reasons for this may be found in the fact that settlers throughout the
South lived generally at peace with the Indians, whereas the northern
settlers were obliged to congregate in towns for mutual protection.
Thus, in colonial days, while the many cities of New York and New
England were coming into being, the South was developing its vast and
isolated plantations. Farms on the St. Lawrence River and on the
Detroit River, where the French were settling, were very narrow and very
deep, the idea being to range the houses close together on the river
front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock and the
James, no element of early fear is to be traced in the form of the broad
baronial plantations.
Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a
prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the
world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the
next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about
twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such
odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was
brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had
for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a
brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; that the streets were lighted
with oil lamps; that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and
epidemic were not unknown; that before the Revolution bachelors were
taxed for the benefit of his Britannic Majesty; and that at fair time
the "lid was off," and the citizen or visitor who wished to get himself
arrested must needs be diligent indeed.
CHAPTER IV
TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
--MONTAIGNE.
Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago
was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty
years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third
city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an
extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American
merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the
seven seas over.
The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the city's early
history. It consists in a simple but inspiring record of regeneration
springing from disaster. It is the story of Chicago, of San Francisco,
of Galveston, of Dayton, and of many a smaller town: a cataclysm, a few
days of despair, a return of courage, and another beginning.
Imagine yourself being tucked into bed one night by your valet or your
maid, as the case may be, calm in the feeling that all was secure: that
your business was returning a handsome income, that your stocks and
bonds were safe in the strong box, that the prosperity of your
descendants was assured. Then imagine ruin coming like lightning in the
night. In the morning you are poor. Your business, your investments,
your very hopes, are gone. Everything is wiped out. The labor of a
lifetime must be begun again.
Such an experience was that of Baltimore in the fire of 1904.
On the sickening morning following the conflagration two Baltimore men,
friends of mine, walked down Charles Street to a point as near the
ruined region as it was possible to go.
"Well," said one, surveying the smoking crater, "what do you think of
it?"
"Baltimore is gone," was the response. "We are off the map."
How many citizens of Chicago, of San Francisco, of Galveston, of Dayton
have known the anguish of that first aftermath of hopelessness! How many
citizens of Baltimore knew it that day! And yet how bravely and with
what magic swiftness have these cities risen from their ruins! Was not
Rome burned? Was not London? And is it not, then, time for men to learn
from the history of other men and other cities that disaster does not
spell the end, but is oftentimes another name for opportunity?
Always, after disaster to a city, come improvements, but because
disaster not only cleans the slate but simultaneously stuns the mind, a
portion of the opportunity is invariably lost. The task of rebuilding,
of widening a few streets, looks large enough to him who stands amidst
destruction--and there, consequently, improvement usually stops. That is
why the downtown boulevard system of Chicago has yet to be completed, in
spite of the fact that it might with little difficulty have been
completed after the Chicago fire (although it is only just to add that
city planning was almost an unknown art in America at that time); and
that also is why the hills of San Francisco are not terraced, as it was
suggested they should be after the fire, but remain to-day inaccessible
to frontal attack by even the maddest mountain goat of a taxi driver.
These matters are not mentioned in the way of criticism: I have only
admiration for the devastated cities and for those who built them up
again. I call attention to lost opportunities with something like
reluctance, and only in the wish to emphasize the fact that our crippled
or destroyed cities do invariably rise again, and that if the next
American city to sustain disaster shall but have this simple lesson
learned in advance, it may thereby register a new high mark in municipal
intelligence and a new record among the rebuilt cities, by making more
sweet than any other city ever made them, the uses of adversity.
The fire of 1904 found Baltimore a town of narrow highways, old
buildings, bad pavements, and open gutter drains. The streets were laid
in what is known as "southern cobble," which is the next thing to no
pavement at all, being made of irregular stones, large and small, laid
in the dirt and tamped down. For bumps and ruts there is no pavement in
the world to be compared with it. There were no city sewers. Outside a
few affluent neighborhoods, the citizens of which clubbed together to
build private sewers, the cesspool was in general use, while domestic
drainage emptied into the roadside gutters. These were made passable, at
crossings, by stepping stones, about the bases of which passed
interesting armadas of potato peelings, floating, upon wash days, in
water having the fine Mediterranean hue which comes from diluted
blueing. Everybody seemed to find the entire system adequate; for, it
was argued, the hilly contours of the city caused the drainage quickly
to be carried off, while as for typhoid and mosquitoes--well, there had
always been typhoid and mosquitoes, just as there had always been these
open gutters. It was all quite good enough.
Then the fire.
And then the upbuilding of the city--not only of the acres and acres
comprising the burned section, in which streets were widened and
skyscrapers arose where fire-traps had been--but outside the fire zone,
where sewers were put down and pavements laid. Nor was the change merely
physical. With the old buildings, the old spirit of _laissez faire_ went
up in smoke, and in the embers a municipal conscience was born. Almost
as though by the light of the flames which engulfed it, the city began
to see itself as it had never seen itself before: to take account of
stock, to plan broadly for the future.
Nor has the new-born spirit died. Only last year an extensive red-light
district was closed effectively and once for all. Baltimore is to-day
free from flagrant commercialized vice. And if not quite all the old
cobble pavements and open-gutter drains have been eliminated, there are
but few of them left--left almost as though for purposes of
contrast--and the Baltimorean who takes you to the Ghetto and shows you
these ancient remnants may immediately thereafter escort you to the
Fallsway, where the other side of the picture is presented.
The Fallsway is a brand-new boulevard of pleasing aspect, the peculiar
feature of which is that it is nothing more or less than a cover over
the top of Jones's Falls, which figured in the early history of
Baltimore as a water course, but which later came to figure as a great,
open, trunk sewer.
Every one in Baltimore is proud of the Fallsway, but particularly so are
the city engineers who carried the work through. While in Baltimore I
had the pleasure of meeting one of these gentlemen, and I can assure you
that no young head of a family was ever more delighted with his new
cottage in a suburb, his wife, his children, his garden, and his collie
puppy, than was this engineer with his boulevard sewer. Like a lover, he
carried pictures of it in his pocket, and like a lover he would assure
you that it was "not like other sewers." Nor could he speak of it
without beginning to wish to take you out to see it--not merely for a
motor ride along the top of it, either. No, his hospitality did not
stop there. When _he_ invited you to a sewer he invited you _in_. And if
you went in with him, no one could make you come out until you wanted
to.
As he told my companion and me of the three great tubes, the walks
beside them, the conduits for gas and electricity, and all the other
wonders of the place, I began to wish that we might go with him, for,
though we have been to a good many places together, this was something
new: it was the first time we had ever been invited to drop into a sewer
and make ourselves as much at home as though we lived there.
My companion, however, seemed unsympathetic to the project.
"Sewers, you know," he said, when I taxed him with indifference, "have
come to have a very definite place in both the literary and the graphic
arts. How do you propose to treat it?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you write about it: Are you going to write about it as a realist,
a mystic, or a romanticist?"
I said I didn't know.
"Well, a man who is going to write of a sewer _ought_ to know," he told
me severely. "You're not up to sewers yet. They're too big for you. If
you take my advice you'll keep out of the sewers for the present and
stick to the gutters."
So I did.
CHAPTER V
TERRAPIN AND THINGS
Baltimore society has a Maryland and Virginia base, but is seasoned with
families of Acadian descent, and with others descended from the
Pennsylvania Dutch--those "Dutch" who, by the way, are not Dutch at all,
being of Saxon and Bavarian extraction. Many Virginians settled in
Baltimore after the war, and it may be in part owing to this fact, that
fox-hunting with horse and hound, as practised for three centuries past
in England, and for nearly two centuries by Virginia's country
gentlemen, is carried on extensively in the neighborhood of Baltimore,
by the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, the Elkridge Fox-Hunting Club and
some others--which brings me to the subject of clubs in general.
The Baltimore Country Club, at Roland Park, just beyond the city limits,
has a large, well-set clubhouse, an active membership, and charming
rolling golf links, one peculiarity of the course being that a part of
the city's water-supply system has been utilized for hazards.
The two characteristic clubs of the city itself, the Maryland Club and
the Baltimore Club, are known the country over. The former occupies a
position in Baltimore comparable with that of the Union Club in New
York, the Chicago Club in Chicago, or the Pacific Union in San
Francisco, and has to its credit at least one famous dish: Terrapin,
Maryland Club Style.
The Baltimore Club is used by a younger group of men and has a
particularly pleasant home in a large mansion, formerly the residence of
the Abell family, long known in connection with that noteworthy old
sheet, the Baltimore "Sun," which, it may be remarked in passing, is
curiously referred to by many Baltimoreans, not as the "Sun," but as the
"Sun-paper."
This odd item reminds me of another: In the Balti-telephone book I
chanced to notice under the letter "F" the entry:
Fisher, Frank, of J.
Upon inquiry I learned that the significance of this was that, there
being more than one gentleman of the name of Frank Fisher in the city,
this Mr. Frank Fisher added "of J" to his name (meaning "son of John")
for purposes of differentiation. I was informed further that this custom
is not uncommon in Baltimore, in cases where a name is duplicated, and I
was shown another example: that of Mr. John Fyfe Symington of S.
A typically southern institution of long standing, and highly
characteristic of the social life of Baltimore, is the Bachelors'
Cotillion, one of the oldest dancing clubs in the country. During the
season this organization gives a series of some half-dozen balls which
are the events of the fashionable year.
The organization and general character of the Bachelors' Cotillion is
not unlike that of the celebrated St. Cecilia Society of Charleston. The
cost of membership is so slight that almost any eligible young man can
easily afford it. There is, however, a long waiting-list. The club is
controlled by a board of governors, the members of which hold office for
life, and who, instead of being elected by the organization are selected
_in camera_ by the board itself, when vacancies occur.
The balls given by this society are known as the Monday Germans, and at
these balls, which are held in the Lyric Theater, the city's debutantes
are presented to society. As in all southern cities, much is made of
debutantes in Baltimore. On the occasion of their first Monday German
all their friends send them flowers, and they appear flower-laden at the
ball, followed by their relatives who are freighted down with their
darlings' superfluous bouquets. The modern steps are danced at these
balls, but there are usually a few cotillion figures, albeit without
"favors." And perhaps the best part of it all is that the first ball of
the season, and the Christmas ball, end at one o'clock, and that all the
others end at midnight. That seems to me a humane arrangement, although
the opinion may only signify that I am growing old.
Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life, and of southern
life--at least in many cities--is that, instead of dealing with the
baker, and the grocer, and the fish-market man around the corner, all
Baltimore women go to the great market-sheds and do their own selecting
under what amounts to one great roof.
The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune
to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness
with _Les Halles_ of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where
the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of
taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless
stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the
table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt
that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of
comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables,
in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and
buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or--at Christmas
time--tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated
over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner
party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the
delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and
aristocratic _Malacoclemmys_, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in
Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.
The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that
"the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes
along the coast from New England to Texas, _the finest being those of
the Massachusetts and the northern coasts_." The italics are mine; and
upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of
Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed
against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith
be placed upon the State's _index expurgatorius_.
Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of
the terrapin species:
In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold--not counting
muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served
as a substitute. The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the
"slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back,"
measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at
retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand.
Somewhat better than the "fat-back," but of about the same size and
cost, is the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest poor
relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied
for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman
assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or
from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of
the other Southern States.)
Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the value of the
diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly hunted during the open
season, with the result that, like the delectable lobster, he is
passing. As the foolish lobster-fishermen of northern New England are
killing the goose--or, rather, the crustacean--that lays the golden
eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake. Two or three
decades ago, lobster and terrapin alike were eaten in the regions of
their abundance as cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her
father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to eat terrapin.
Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back to-day! In his smaller
sizes, according to my marketman, he is worth about a dollar an inch,
while when grown to fair proportions he costs as much as a railroad
ticket from Baltimore to Chicago. And for my part I would about as soon
eat the ticket as the terrapin.
Of a number of other odd items which help to give Baltimore distinct
flavor I find the following in my notebooks:
There are good street railways; also 'bus lines operated by the United
Railways Company. Under the terms of its charter this company was
originally obliged to turn over to the city thirteen per cent. of its
gross income, to be expended upon the upkeep of parks. Of late years the
amount has been reduced to nine per cent. The parks are admirable.
Freight rates from the west to Baltimore are, I am informed, enough
lower than freight rates to New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, to give
Baltimore a decided advantage as a point of export. Also she is
admirably situated as to sources of coal supply. (I do not care much
for the last two items, myself, but put them in to please the Chamber of
Commerce.)
* * * * *
It is the habit of my companion and myself, when visiting strange
cities, to ask for interesting eating-places of one sort or another. In
Baltimore there seems to be no choice but to take meals in
hotels--unless one may wish to go to the Dutch Tea room or the Woman's
Exchange for a shoppers' lunch, and to see (in the latter establishment)
great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a
lunch-counter--a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither
pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses.
The nearest thing to "character" which I found in a Baltimore
eating-place was at an establishment known as Kelly's Oyster House, a
place in a dark quarter of the town. It had the all-night look about it,
and the negro waiters showed themselves not unacquainted with certain of
the city's gilded youth. Kelly's is a sort of southern version of
"Jack's"--if you know Jack's. But I don't think Jack's has any flight of
stairs to fall down, such as Kelly's has.
The dining rooms of the various hotels are considerably used, one
judges, by the citizens of Baltimore. The Kernan Hotel, which we visited
one night after the theater, looked like Broadway. Tables were crowded
together and there was dancing between them--and between mouthfuls. So,
too, at the Belvedere, which is used considerably by Baltimore's gay
and fashionable people.
My companion and I stayed at the Belvedere and found it a good hotel,
albeit one which has, I think, become a shade too well accustomed to
being called good. Perhaps because of a city ordinance, perhaps because
the waiters want to go to bed, they have a trick, in the Belvedere
dining-room, during the cold weather, of opening the windows and
freezing out such dilatory supper-guests as would fain sit up and talk.
This is a system even more effective than the ancient one of mopping up
the floors, piling chairs upon the tables, and turning out enough lights
to make the room dull. A good post-midnight conversationalist--and
Baltimore is not without them--can stand mops, buckets, and dim lights,
but turn cold drafts upon his back and he gives up, sends for his coat,
buttons it about his paunch and goes sadly home.
It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the man who views you
with keen eye as you arrive in Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If
you are in Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he knows that,
too. Also, during racing season, he knows whether you bet, and whether
you won or lost. He is always at the station and always at the race
track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the
instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child,
and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. If you are a Baltimorean
you are already aware that I refer to the sapient McNeal, policeman at
the Union Station.
McNeal and Cardinal Gibbons are, I take it, the two preeminent figures
of the city. Their duties, I admit, are not alike, but each performs his
duties with discretion, with devotion, with distinction. The latter has
already celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his nomination as
cardinal, but the former is well on the way toward his fortieth
anniversary as officer at the Union Station.
McNeal is an artist. He loves his work. And when his day off comes and
he puts on citizen's clothing and goes out for a good time, where do you
suppose he goes?
Why down to the station, of course, to talk things over with the man who
is relieving him!
CHAPTER VI
DOUGHOREGAN MANOR AND THE CARROLLS
If I am to be honest about the South, and about myself--and I propose to
be--I must admit that, though I approached the fabled land in a most
friendly spirit, I had nevertheless become a little tired of the
southern family tree, the southern ancestral hall, and the old southern
negro servant of stage and story, and just a little skeptical about
them. Almost unconsciously, at first, I had begun to wonder whether,
instead of being things of actuality, they were not, rather, a mere set
of romantic trade-marks, so to speak; symbols signifying the South as
the butler with side whiskers signifies English comedy; as "Her" visit
to "His" rooms, in the third act, signifies English drama; or as double
doorways in a paneled "set" signify French farce.
Furthermore, it had occurred to me that of persons of southern accent,
or merely southern extraction, whom I had encountered in the North, a
strangely high percentage were not only of "fine old southern family,"
but of peculiarly tenacious purpose in respect to having the matter
understood.
I cannot pretend to say when the "professional Southerner," as we know
him in New York, began to operate, nor shall I attempt to place the
literary blame for his existence--as Mark Twain attempted to place upon
Sir Walter Scott the blame for southern "chivalry," and almost for the
Civil War itself. Let me merely say, then, that I should not be
surprised to learn that "Colonel Carter of Cartersville"--that lovable
old fraud who did not mean to be a fraud at all, but whose naivete
passed the bounds of human credulity--was not far removed from the
bottom of the matter.
In the tenor of these sentiments my companion shared--though I should
add that he complained bitterly about agreeing with me, saying that with
hats alike, and overcoats alike, and trunks alike, and suitcases alike,
we already resembled two members of a minstrel troupe, and that now
since we were beginning to think alike, through traveling so much
together, our friends would not be able to tell us apart when we got
home again--in spite of this he admitted to the same suspicion of the
South as I expressed. Wherefore we entered the region like a pair of
agnostics entering the great beyond: skeptical, but ready to be "shown."
It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us that a Baltimore friend
of ours called for us one day with his motor car and was presently
wafting us over the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling
country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden over upon
horseback.
It was autumn, but though the chill of northern autumn was in the air,
the coloring was not so high in key as in New York or New England, the
foliage being less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown
and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry, and giving
the landscape an expression of brooding tenderness.
After passing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling town quite out of
character with its new-sounding name, which has such a western ring to
it, we traversed for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike--formerly
a national highway between East and West--swooping up and down over a
series of little hills and vales, and at length turned off into a
private road winding through a venerable forest, which was like an old
Gothic cathedral with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk
columns, tall, gray, and slender.
When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we emerged upon a slight
eminence commanding a broad view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn
commanded by a great house.
The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with
wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung
wide in welcome, and at the end of each a building like an ornament
balanced in an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico, rising
by several easy steps from the driveway level, the long line of cornice,
the window sashes, the delicate wooden railing surmounting the roof, the
charming little tower which so gracefully held its place above the
geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning one wing at its
extremity--all these were white.
No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a house, than
yellow-buff and white, provided they be brightened by some notes of
green; and these notes were not lacking, for several aged elms,
occupying symmetrical positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze
down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers, aunts, and
grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies protectively above it.
The green of the low terrace--called a "haha," supposedly with reference
to the mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over the
edge--did not reach the base of the buff walls, but was lost in a fringe
of clustering shrubbery, from which patches of lustrous English ivy
clambered upward over the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon
the blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds were of course
green; green blinds being as necessary to an American window as
eyelashes to an eye.
Immediately before the portico and centering upon it the drive swung in
a spacious circle, from which there broke, at a point directly opposite
the portico, an avenue, straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely
as the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the middle of this
broad way, between grass borders each as wide as a great boulevard, and
double rows of patriarchal trees, ran a road which, in the old days,
continued straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away, where was
the town house of the builder of this manor. As it stands to-day the
avenue is less than half a mile long, but whatever its length, and
whether one look down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from the
far end, to where the converging lines of grass and foliage and sky melt
into the house, it has about it something of unreality, something of
enchantment, something of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic
landscapes of those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering
palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs dancing amid the
trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant dark tops are contoured like the
cumulus white clouds floating above them.
There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about Doughoregan Manor,
for though the house is noble, its nobility, consisting in spaciousness,
simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems
to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No house could
be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to
severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere,
is of friendliness and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a
"homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than some other
mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston;
and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or
Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg--not
that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns
the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate
expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and
of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants
inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of
those who signed the Declaration of Independence.
The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the Settler," came
from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland. He was a
highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his
descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.
His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called
because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the
Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist
Order.
The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at
Doughoregan--which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of
the old Irish words _dough_, meaning "house" or "court," and _O'Ragan_,
meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight
brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable--this
Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was
"Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be
educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at
Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he
studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went
to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law
until his return to Maryland in 1765.
Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a
basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to
be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman
Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support
of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or
churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms--the
bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social
position and gentle breeding."
Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton,
already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John
Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years
the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all
States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant
of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this
land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the
Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.
The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American
colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and
the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts.
It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in
the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of
our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances
involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed
no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his noble old
cocked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his
duty clear to him.
In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of
Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin
Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the
Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from
this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of
the circumstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston
gave the following description:
"Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll.
"Most willingly," was the reply.
"There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of those
standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will get off,
there are so many Charles Carrolls."
And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that
addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate him
forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the
peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his
accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.
Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in
possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign
as "of Carrollton" long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded
that John H.B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous biographer, never
heard the story from the subject of his writings.
Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that
though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting
his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his
son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been
inclined to omit it from a public document, as to the signers of which
there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the
story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every
man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their
wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their
biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before
the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it
seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like
the story and intend to believe it anyway--which, it occurs to me, is
the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being
more or less Episcopalian and Republican.
Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small,
attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin,
and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His
head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face
and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."
From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a
charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and
early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer
in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for
several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French
classics.
At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore,
carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six
years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams
and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the
last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial
parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine,
he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and
at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the
commencement of that railroad--the first important one in the United
States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage
and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having
lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the
Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years
before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of
the manor house.
This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any
other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls.
It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of
the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats
for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the
house by a passageway which passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's
room, a large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany and
decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John
Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and
by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command
the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope
away to gardens more than a century old.
Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument, in another it is a
treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above
all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide
hall which passes through the house from the front portico to another
overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy
library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the
spacious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful
chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that
pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never
attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing
more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past
has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no
old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea
service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day;
no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties
of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time
crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant,
therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the
crib at Doughoregan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it
rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the
ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr.
and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the
place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits.
Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the
father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his
fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but
expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents
received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and
though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they
neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.
Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the
paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall
paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place
stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few
changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its
contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American
mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is
delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love
it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be
preserved.
Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a
grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms
some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which
surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and,
though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is
starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the
country around the manor, which is full of foxes.
Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are
valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high
average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in
agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors;
most people's ancestors seem to have looked like the dickens."
Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect one of "the Signer"
as a boy, standing on the shore and watching a ship sail out to sea; one
of the three beautiful Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at
Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the home of Mr. Isaac
Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and
one of Governor John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood.
The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood supply to the Carroll
family archives that picturesqueness which the history of every old
family should possess; the former contributing beauty, the latter dash
and extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living relative, but
so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor long defunct. If anything more
be needed to round out the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of
Doughoregan Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys, and an
invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard upon the driveway before
the death of any member of the family.
Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one of them, Mrs.
McTavish, stayed at home and made the life of her grandfather happy, we
do not hear so much of her as of the other three, who were
internationally famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England
as "the Three American Graces." All three married British peers, one
becoming Marchioness of Wellesley, another Duchess of Leeds, while the
third became the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the noblemen embalmed in
verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings.
As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome, charming, and
athletic, and, as indicated in letters written to him by his father,
caused that old gentleman a good deal of anxiety. It is said that at
one time--perhaps during some period of estrangment from his wealthy
parent--he acted as a fencing master in Baltimore.
At the age of twenty-five he settled down--or let us hope he did--for he
married Harriet Chew, whose sister "Peggy," Mrs. John Eager Howard of
Baltimore, was a celebrated belle, and of whose own charm we may judge
by the fact that General Washington asked her to remain in the room
while he sat to Gilbert Stuart, declaring that her presence there would
cause his countenance to "wear its most agreeable expression." The
famous portrait painted under these felicitous conditions hung in the
White House when, in 1814, the British marched on Washington; but when
they took the city and burned the White House, the portrait did not
perish with it, for history records that Dolly Madison carried it to
safety, and along with it the original draft of the Declaration of
Independence.
Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father, "the Signer," but
the house, Homewood, which the latter built for his son and
daughter-in-law in 1809, stands to-day near the Baltimore city limits,
at the side of Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses,
many of which are of a design not out of harmony with the old mansion.
Though not comparable in size with the manor house at Doughoregan,
Homewood is an even more perfect house, being one of the finest examples
of Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country. The fate of
this house is hardly less fortunate than that of the paternal manor,
for, with its surrounding lands, it has come into the possession of
Johns Hopkins University. The fields of Homewood now form the campus and
grounds of that excellent seat of learning, and the trustees of the
university have not merely preserved the residence, using it as a
faculty club, but have had the inspiration to find in it the
architectural motif for the entire group of new college buildings, so
that the campus may be likened to a bracelet wrought as a setting for
this jewel of a house.
CHAPTER VII
A RARE OLD TOWN
The drive from Baltimore to the sweet, slumbering city of Annapolis is
over a good road, but through barren country. Taken in the crisp days of
autumn, by a northern visitor sufficiently misguided to have supposed
that beyond Mason and Dixon's Line the winters are tropical it may prove
an uncomfortable drive--unless he be able to borrow a fur overcoat. It
was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter
climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over
the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the
open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no competitors
for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive
layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen
fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic,
fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. I have driven an open car
over the New England snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm by
comparison, because I was prepared.
My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate may be shared by
others, and it is therefore well, perhaps, to enlarge a little bit upon
the subject. Never, except during a winter passed in a stone
tile-floored villa on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the
cold, have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and spring
in the South.
In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold weather, but in
private homes it is not always possible to do so, for the popular
illusion that the "sunny South" is of a uniformly temperate climate in
the winter persists nowhere more violently than in the South itself.
Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther down the
map, is without a furnace, and winter life in such houses, with their
ineffectual wood fires, is like life in a refrigerator tempered by the
glow of a safety match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is
often warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my southern voyage
I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired in Capri, of wearing an
overcoat in the house and taking it off on going out into the sunshine.
True, in Capri we had roses blooming in the garden on Christmas Day, but
that circumstance, far from proving warmth, merely proved the hardiness
of roses. So, in the far South--excepting Florida and perhaps a strip of
the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--the blooming of
flowers in the winter does not prove that "Palm Beach suits" and panama
hats invariably make a desirable uniform.
Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because some southern winter
days are warm and others cold, a Northerner feels cold in the South
more than he feels the corresponding temperature at home--on somewhat
the principle which caused the Italians who went with the Duke of the
Abruzzi on his polar expedition to withstand cold more successfully than
did the Scandinavians.
Of the southern summer I have no experience, but I have been repeatedly
assured that certain of the southern beaches are nearly, if not quite,
as comfortable in hot weather as are those of New Jersey or Long Island,
while in numerous southern mountain retreats one may be fairly cool
through the hot months--a fact which spells fortune for the hotel
keepers of such high-perched resorts as Asheville, White Sulphur
Springs, and the Hot Springs of Virginia, who have their houses full of
Northerners in winter and Southerners in summer.
* * * * *
The experience of arrival in Annapolis, delightful in any weather and at
any time of year, gives one a satisfaction almost ecstatic after a cold,
windy automobile ride such as we had suffered. To ache for the shelter
of almost any town, or any sort of building, and, with such yearnings,
to arrive in this dreamy city, whose mild air seems to be compounded
from fresh winds off a glittering blue sea, arrested by the barricade of
ancient hospitable-looking houses, warmed by the glow of their sun-baked
red brick, and freighted with a ghostly fragrance, as from the phantoms
of the rose gardens of a century or two ago--to arrive, frigid and
forlorn in such a haven, to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house
(now a hotel), is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is no
town that I know whose very house fronts hold out to the stranger that
warm, old-fashioned welcome that Annapolis seems to give.
The Paca house, which as a hotel has acquired the name Carvel Hall, is
the house that Winston Churchill had in mind as the Manners house, of
his novel "Richard Carvel." A good idea of the house, as it was, may be
obtained by visiting the Brice house, next door, for the two are almost
twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet at Annapolis, before the modern
part of the Carvel Hall hotel was built, there were the remains of
terraced gardens back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old spring
house, and a rivulet which flowed through the grounds was full of
watercress. The book describes a party at the house and in these
gardens. The Chase house on Maryland Avenue was the one Mr. Churchill
thought of as the home of Lionel Carvel, and he described the view from
upper windows of this house, over the Harwood house, across the way, to
the Severn.
Annapolis, Baedeker tells me, was the first chartered city in the United
States, having been granted its charter by Queen Anne considerably more
than two centuries ago. It is, as every little boy and girl should know,
the capital of Maryland, and is built around a little hill upon the top
of which stands the old State House in which Washington surrendered his
commission and in which met the first Constitutional Convention.
In its prime Annapolis was nearly as large a city as it is to-day, but
that is not saying a great deal, for at the present time it has not so
many inhabitants as Amarillo, Texas, or Brazil, Indiana.
Nevertheless, the life of Annapolis in colonial days, and in the days
which followed them, was very brilliant, and we learn from the diary of
General Washington and from the writings of amazed Englishmen and
Frenchmen who visited the city in its period of glory that there were
dinners and balls night after night, that the theater was encouraged in
Annapolis more than in any other city, that the race meets compared with
English race meets both as to the quality of the horses and of the
fashionable attendance, that there were sixteen clubs, that the women of
the city were beautiful, charming, and superbly dressed, that slaves in
sumptuous liveries were to be seen about the streets, that certain
gentlemen paid calls in barges which were rowed by half a dozen or more
blacks, in uniform, and that the perpetual hospitality of the great
houses was gorgeous and extravagant.
The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the best old brick
mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully
proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer
details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings
and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and
hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the
flavor of these old Southern homes. For though such venerable mansions
as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in
Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England
colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the
differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but
between the builders of them. The contrast is subtle, but marked.
Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere
simplicity. The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was
almost certainly a Calvinist. He habited himself in black and was served
by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman was not
flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard her as the devil
masquerading for the downfall of man--and no doubt with some justice,
too. Night and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose of
which was to impress upon his family and servants that to have a good
time was wicked, and that to be gay in this life meant hell-fire and
damnation in the next.
Upon this pious person his cousin of Annapolis looked with something not
unlike contempt; for the latter, though he too was a scholar, possessed
the sort of scholarliness which takes into account beauty and the lore
of cosmopolitanism. He may have been religious or he may not have been,
but if religious he demanded something handsome, something stylish, in
his religion, as he did also in his residence, in his wife, his sons,
his daughters, his horses, coaches, dinners, wines, and slaves. He did
things with a flourish, and was not beset by a perpetual consciousness
and fear of hell. He approved of pretty women; he made love to them; he
married them; he was the father of them. His pretty daughters married
men who also admired pretty women, and became the mothers of other
pretty women, who became, in turn, the mothers and grandmothers of the
pretty women of the South to-day.
Your old-time Annapolis gentleman's ideas of a republic were far indeed
from those now current, for he understood perfectly the difference
between a republic and a democracy--a difference which is not now so
well understood. He believed that the people should elect the heads of
the government, but he also believed that these heads should be elected
from his own class, and that, having voted, the people should go about
their business, trusting their betters to run the country as it should
be run.
This, at least, is my picture of the old aristocrats of Maryland,
Virginia, and South Carolina, as conveyed to me by what I have seen of
their houses and possessions and what I have read of their mode of life.
They were the early princes of the Republic and by all odds its most
picturesque figures.
* * * * *
Very different from the spirit of appreciation and emulation shown by
the trustees of Johns Hopkins University with regard to the old house,
Homewood, in Baltimore, is that manifested in the architecture of the
Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, in a city fairly flooded with
examples of buildings, both beautiful and typically American,
architectural hints were ignored, and there were erected great stone
structures whose chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look
of being "government property." The main buildings of the Academy, with
the exception of the chapel, suggest the sort of sublimated penitentiary
that Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne might, one fancies, construct under a
carte-blanche authorization, while the chapel, the huge dome of which is
visible to all the country round, makes one think of a monstrous wedding
cake fashioned in the form of a building and covered with white and
yellow frosting in ornamental patterns.
This chapel, one imagines, may have been inspired by the Invalides in
Paris, but of the Invalides it falls far short. I know nothing of the
history of the building, but it is easy to believe that the original
intention may have been to place at the center of it, under the dome, a
great well, over the parapet of which might have been seen the
sarcophagus of John Paul Jones, in the crypt. One prefers to think that
the architect had some such plan; for the crypt, as at present arranged,
is hardly more than a dark cellar, approached by what seems to be a
flight of humble back stairs. To descend into it, and find there the
great marble coffin with its bronze dolphins, is not unlike going down
into the cellar of a residence and there discovering the family silver
reposing in the coal-bin.
In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that our
sometimes piratical and always brilliant Revolutionary naval hero died
in Paris, and that until a few years ago his resting place was unknown.
The reader will remember that while General Horace Porter was American
ambassador to France a search was instituted for the remains of John
Paul Jones, the greater part of the work having been conducted by
Colonel H. Baily Blanchard, then first secretary of the Embassy,
assisted by the ambassador and Mr. Henry Vignaud, dean of secretaries of
embassy. The resting place of Jones was finally discovered in an
abandoned cemetery in the city of Paris, over which houses had been
built. The body was contained in a leaden casket and was preserved in
alcohol so that identification was easily accomplished by means of a
contemporaneous likeness of Jones, and also by means of measurements
taken from Houdin's bust. The remains were accorded military honors in
Paris, and were brought to this country on a war vessel.
Why the crypt at Annapolis is as it is, I do not know, but in my own
purely imaginary picture of what happened, I see the architect's plans
for a heroic display of Jones's tomb knocked on the head by some
"practical man," some worthy dunce in the Navy Department, whom I can
imagine as protesting: "But no! We can't take up space at the center of
the chapel for any such purpose. It must be floored over to make room
for pews. Otherwise where will the cadets sit?"
So, although the grounds of the academy, with their lawns, and aged
trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are charming, and although the solemn
and industrious Baedeker assures me that the academy is the "chief lion"
of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great school, and that we
need another like it in order properly to officer our navy, I prefer the
old town with its old houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent
names as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester.
For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted to a member
of the corps. From this admiral-to-be I learn that a "bird" or "wazzo"
is a man or boy; that a "pap sheet" is a report covering delinquencies,
and that to "hit the pap" is to be reported for delinquency; that
"steam" is marine engineering, and to be "bilged for juice" is to fail
in examinations in electrical engineering--to get an "unsat," or
unsatisfactory mark, or even a "zip" or "swabo," which is a zero. Cadets
do not escort girls to dances, but "drag" them; a girl is a "drag," and
a "heavy drag" or "brick" is an unattractive girl who must be taken to a
dance. A "sleuth" or "jimmylegs" is a night watchman, and to be "ragged"
is to be caught. Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called "mokes," while
at other times the names of certain exalted dignitaries of the Navy
Department, or of the academy, are applied to them.
* * * * *
I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept us from seeing
ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis, which was the residence
of Governor Horatio Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic
American homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to rejoice
that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day, visit Hampton, the rare
old mansion of the Ridgelys, of Maryland, which stands amid its own five
thousand acres some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore. The
Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this
region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls,
they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable
house.
CHAPTER VIII
WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
--THE TEMPEST.
Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the
beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor;
for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only
spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its
architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced
gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic
age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of
the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less
wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in
another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her
bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a
storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the
days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections
of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though
its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many
years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story
goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card
party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca
Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion
simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball
given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the
exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt
balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that
garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of
duels fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems
to whisper.
Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined avenue, leading to
Hampton, from the moment when I saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out
of beds which they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from
the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and heard the bars
of the shuttered doors being flung back for our admittance--never, from
my first glimpse of the place, have I been able to dispel the sense of
unreality I felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that Hampton
is not a house that I have seen, but one built by my imagination in the
course of a particularly charming and convincing dream.
Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of arms flank the front
doorway, and likewise the opposing doorway at the end of the enormous
hall upon which one enters, and the light from these windows gives the
hall a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is something
spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits with which the walls
are solidly covered. There are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and
other distinguished painters of times gone by, and I particularly
remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young woman in evening
dress, her hair hanging in curls beside her cheeks, her tapering fingers
touching the strings of a harp. She was young then; yet the portrait is
that of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, of present
Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled family burying
ground below the garden. But there beneath the portrait stands the harp
on which she played.
One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels
and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale,
Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might
fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense
of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits,
blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form
shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary
listening--listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to
the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall
clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old
house talking softly to itself.
From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton
Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another
angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave
cabins, and the overseer's house, with its bell tower--a house nearly
two hundred years old. But the library is perhaps the more natural
resting place for the guest, and it looks out over the garden, with its
enormous descending terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its
beautiful old trees, and arbors of ancient box. Such terraces as these
were never built by paid labor.
We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a
young lady of five or six years--a granddaughter of Captain John
Ridgely, present master of Hampton--who, with her pink cheeks, her
serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to
life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple.
Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into
the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the
absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a
style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put
on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this
respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven
image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported
from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the
most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to
think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought,
that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we
know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover,
they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is
assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man.
Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the
house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true
appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of
natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and
servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy
role as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the
verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro
servants in the South.
After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the shadows in the house,
we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the
armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the
upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and
paused just inside the door.
And now, because of what I am about to relate, I shall give the names of
those who were present. We were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.B., Ph.D.,
acting Dean of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland of
Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator; and myself.
The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting
like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows.
Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the
color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it
was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the
impression that it contained a fireplace, and that the great four-post
bed, standing to the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low
platform, a step or two above the floor--though of this I am not quite
certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim light having, perhaps, deceived
me. The rest of the furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed
in heavy vague spots against the lighter background of the walls.
Directly before the door, at about the center of the wall against which
it was backed, stood something which loomed tall and dark, and which I
took to be either a gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the
room. Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of the
windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited sidewise, in
silhouette.
I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost stories before,
and I know that ghosts had not been spoken of, but as I looked into this
room, and reflected on the long series of persons who had occupied it,
and on where they were now, and on all the stories that the room must
have heard, there entered my mind thoughts of the supernatural.
Having taken a step or two into the room, I was a little in advance of
my three friends, and as these fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over
my shoulder to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind me,
saying, half playfully:
"There ought to be ghosts in a room like this."
Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and swinging very slowly, the
door of the large piece of furniture before me gently opened. My first
idea was that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall, with a
door at the back opening on a passageway, or into the next room, and
that the little girl whom we had met downstairs had opened it from the
other side and was coming in.
I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not enter, for, as I
learned presently, she was in the nursery at the time.
After waiting for an instant to see who was coming, I began to realize
that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that,
like an actor picking up a cue, the door had begun to swing immediately
upon my saying the word "ghosts."
The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking. I turned quickly to
my friends, who were in conversation behind me, and asked:
"Speaking of ghosts--did you see that door open?"
It is my recollection that none of them had seen it. Certainly not more
than one of them had, for I remember my feeling of disappointment that
any one present should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some one
may have asked what I had seen; at all events I was full of the idea,
and, indicating the open door, I began to tell what I had seen,
when--exactly as though the thing were done deliberately to
circumstantiate my story--with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door
pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge cabinet swung
open.
This time all four of us were looking.
Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go downstairs again,
Bryan came from one of the other chambers, whither, I think, he had
carried the young lady's supper on a tray.
"Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I asked him.
Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness. Whether he believed
in ghosts or not, evidently he did not fear them.
"Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost here."
"Where?"
"In that room over there," he answered, indicating the bedroom from
which we had come.
We listened attentively to Bryan while he told how the daughter of
Governor Swan had come to attend a ball at Hampton, and how she had died
in the four-post bed in that old shadowy guest room, and of how, since
then, she had been seen from time to time.
"They's several people say they saw her," he finished. "She comes out
and combs her hair in front of the long mirror."
However, as we drove back to Baltimore that evening, we repeatedly
assured one another that we did not believe in ghosts.
CHAPTER IX
ARE WE STANDARDIZED?
Almost all modern European critics of the United States agree in
complaining that our telephones and sleeping cars are objectionable, and
that we are "standardized" in everything. Their criticism of the
telephone seems to be that the state of perfection to which it has been
brought in this country causes it to be widely used, while their
disapproval of our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption
that they have no compartments--which is not the fact, since most of the
great transcontinental railroads do run compartment cars, and much
better ones than the best _wagons lits_, and since, also, all our
sleeping cars have drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the
most comfortable European compartments.
The charge of standardization will, however, bear a little thought. It
is true that most American cities have a general family
resemblance--that a business street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much
like a business street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, St.
Paul, Kansas City, or St. Louis--and that much the same thing may be
said of residence streets. Houses and office buildings in one city are
likely to resemble those of corresponding grade in another; the men who
live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also similar; so are
the trolley cars in which they journey to and fro; still more so the
Fords which many of them use; the clothing of one man is like that of
another, and all have similar conventions concerning the date at
which--without regard to temperature--straw hats should be discarded.
Their womenfolk, also, are more or less alike, as are the department
stores in which they shop and the dresses they buy. And the same is true
of their children, the costumes of those children, and the schools they
attend.
Every American city has social groups corresponding to similar groups in
other cities. There is always the small, affluent group, made up of
people who keep butlers and several automobiles, and who travel
extensively. In this group there are always some snobs: ladies who give
much time to societies founded on ancestry, and have a Junkerish feeling
about "social leadership."
Every city has also its "fast" group: people who consider themselves
"unconventional," who drink more than is good for them, and make much
noise. Some members of this group may belong to the first group, as
well, but in the fast group they have a following of well-dressed
hangers-on: unmarried men and women, youngish rather than young, who,
with little money, yet manage to dress well and to be seen eating and
drinking and dancing in public places. There is usually to be found in
this group a hectic widow or two--be it grass or sod--and a few pretty
girls who, having been given too much freedom at eighteen, begin to
wonder at twenty-eight, why, though they have always been "good
fellows," none of the dozens of men who take them about have married
them. To this aggregation drift also those restless husbands and wives
whose glances rove hopefully away from their mates, a few well-bred
drunkards, and a few men and women who are trying to forget things they
cannot forget.
Then there is always the young married group--a nice group for the most
part--living in comfortable new houses or apartments, and keeping,
usually, both a small automobile and a baby carriage. They also go to
the Country Club on Saturday nights, leave their motors standing in the
drive, eat a lukewarm supper that tastes like papier-mache, and dance
themselves to wiltedness.
Another group is entirely masculine, being made up of husbands of
various ages, their mutual bond being the downtown club to which they go
daily, and in which the subjects discussed are politics, golf, and the
evils of prohibition. To this group always belong the black-sheep
husbands who, after taking their wives to the Country Club, disappear
and remain away until they are sent for because it is time to go home,
when they come back shamefaced and scented with Scotch.
Every American city has also what Don Marquis calls its "little group of
serious thinkers"--women, most of them--possessed of an ardent desire to
"keep abreast of the times." These women belong to clubs and literary
societies which are more serious than war. They are always reading
papers or attending lectures, and at these lectures they get a strange
assortment of "cultural" information and misinformation, delivered with
ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in cutaway coats, who go
about and spout for pay. If you meet these ladies, and they suspect you
of being infested by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you
with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious ghostly
fragrance, as of Alfred Noyes's lecture, last week, or of "the New
Republic" or the "Literary Digest." The most "liberal" of them may even
take "The Masses," precisely as people rather like them used to take
"The Philistine," a generation or two ago. Among the members of this
group are the women who work violently for suffrage--something in which
I personally believe, but which, merely because I believe in it, I do
not necessarily like to take in my coffee as a substitute for sugar, on
my bread as a substitute for butter, and in my ear as a substitute for
pleasant general conversation.
I do not wish to seem to speak disparagingly of women of this type, for
they are doing good, and they will do more good when they have become
more accustomed to possessing minds. Having but recently discovered
their minds, they are playing with them enthusiastically, like children
who have just discovered their new toys on Christmas morning. It is
delightful to watch them. It is diverting to have them pop ideas at you
with that bright-eyed, efficient, assertive look which seems to say:
"See! I am a liberal woman--a woman of the new type. I meet men on their
own ground. Do you wish to talk of birth control, social hygiene, and
sex attraction? Or shall we reverse the order? Or shall I show you how
much I know about Brieux, and household economics, and Ellen Key, and
eugenics, and George Meredith, and post-impressionism, and "Roberts'
Rules of Order," and theosophy, and conditions in the Sixteenth Ward?"
When one thinks of these city groups, and of mail-order houses, and
Fords, one may begin to fear it is indeed true that we are becoming
standardized, but when one lets one's mind drift over the country as the
eye drifts over a map; when one thinks of the quantities of modest,
thoughtful, gentle, generous, intelligent, sound American families which
are to be found in every city and every town, and thinks again, in a
twinkling, of sheriffs and mining-camp policemen in the Far West, of
boys going to Harvard, and other boys going to the University of Kansas,
others to the old Southern universities, so rich in tradition, and still
others to Annapolis or West Point; when one thinks of the snow
glittering on the Rocky Mountain wall, back of Denver; of sleepy little
towns drowsing in the sun beside the Mississippi; of Charles W. Eliot of
Cambridge, and Hy Gill of Seattle; of Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York and
Tom Watson of Georgia; of General Leonard Wood and Colonel William
Jennings Bryan; of ex-slaves living in their cabins behind Virginia
manor houses, and Filipino and Kanaka fishermen living in villages
built on stilts beside the bayous below New Orleans; of the dry salt
desert of Utah, and two great rivers meeting between green rocky hills,
at Harper's Ferry; of men working in offices at the top of the Woolworth
Building in New York, and other men working thousands of feet below the
ground, in the copper mines of Butte and the iron and coal mines of
Birmingham--when one thinks of these things one quickly ceases to fear
that the United States is standardized, and instead begins to fear that
few Americans will ever know the varied wonder of their country, and the
varied character of its inhabitants, their problems, hopes, and views.
If I lived somewhere in the region of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia
and wished quickly to learn whether the country were really standardized
or not, I should get into my automobile--or into some one else's--and
take an autumn tour through Baltimore, past Doughoregan Manor, some
miles to the west of Baltimore, on to Frederick, Maryland (where they
dispute, quite justly, I believe, the truth of the Barbara Frietchie
legend), and thence "over the mountain wall" and down into the
northeastern corner of the most irregularly shaped State in the Union,
West Virginia. I should strike for Harper's Ferry, and from there run to
Charles Town, a few miles distant (where John Brown was tried and
executed for the Harper's Ferry raid), and after circulating about that
corner of the State, I should go down into Virginia by the good highway
which leads from Charles Town to Berryville--"Bur'v'l," they pronounce
it--and to "Winchester twenty miles away" (where they say that
Sheridan's Ride was nothing to make such a lot of talk about!), and then
back, by way of Berryville, and over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the
great fox-hunting counties of Virginia: Clark, Loudon, and Fauquier.
Here I should see a hunt meet or a race meet. There are many other
places to which I might go after that, but as I meant only to suggest an
easy little tour, I shall stop at this point, contenting myself with
saying that not far to the south is Charlottesville, where Jefferson
built that most beautiful of all universities, the University of
Virginia, and his wonderful house Monticello; that Staunton (pronounced
as without the "u"), where Woodrow Wilson was born, lies west of
Charlottesville, while Fredericksburg, where Washington's mother lived,
lies to the northeast.
Some such trip as this I should take instead of a conventional New
England tour. And before starting I should buy a copy of Louise Closser
Hale's delightful book, "Into the Old Dominion."
One beauty of the trip that I suggest is that it isn't all the same. In
one place you get a fair country hotel, in another an inn, and somewhere
along the way you may have to spend a night in a private house. Also,
though the roads through Maryland, and the part of West Virginia I speak
of, are generally good, my experience of Virginia roads, especially
through the mountains, leads me to conclude that in respect to highways
Virginia remains a backward State. But who wants to ride always over
oiled roads, always to hotels with marble lobbies, or big white porches
full of hungry-eyed young women, and old ladies, knitting? Only the
standardized tourist. And I am not addressing him.
I am talking to the motorist who is not ossified in habit, who has a
love of strangeness and the picturesque--not only in scenery but in
houses and people and the kind of life those people lead. For it is
quite true that, as Professor Roland C. Usher said in his "Pan
Americanism," "the information in New York about Buenos Aires is more
extended, accurate, and contemporaneous than the notions in Maine about
Alabama.... Isolation is more a matter of time than of space, and common
interests are due to the ease of transportation and communication more
often than geographical location."
CHAPTER X
HARPER'S FERRY AND JOHN BROWN
Mad Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.
--EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
Three States meet at Harper's Ferry, and the line dividing two of them
is indicated where it crosses the station platform. If you alight at the
rear end of the train, you are in Maryland; at the front, you are in
West Virginia. This I like. I have always liked important but invisible
boundaries--boundaries of states or, better yet, of countries. When I
cross them I am disposed to step high, as though not to trip upon them,
and then to pause with one foot in one land and one in another, trying
to imagine that I feel the division running through my body.
Harper's Ferry is an entrancing old town; a drowsy place, piled up
beautifully, yet carelessly, upon terraced roads clinging to steep
hills, which slope on one side to the Potomac, on the other to the
Shenandoah, and come to a point, like the prow of a great ship, at the
confluence of the two.
There is something foreign in the appearance of the place. Many times,
as I looked at old stone houses, a story or two high on one side, three
or four stories on the other, seeming to set their claws into the cliffs
and cling there for dear life, I thought of houses in Capri and Amalfi,
and in some towns in France; and again there were low cottages built of
blocks of shale covered with a thin veneer of white plaster showing the
outlines of the stones beneath, which, squatting down amid their trees
and flowers, resembled peasant cottages in Normandy or Brittany, or in
Ireland.
It is a town in which to ramble for an hour, uphill, down and around;
stopping now to delight in a crumbling stone wall, tied together with
Kenilworth ivy; now to watch a woman making apple butter in a great iron
pot; now to see an old negro clamber slowly into his rickety wagon, take
up the rope reins, and start his skinny horse with the surprising words:
"Come hither!"; now to look at an old tangled garden, terraced rudely up
a hillside; now to read the sign, on a telegraph pole in the village,
bearing the frank threat: "If you Hitch your Horses Here they will be
Turned Loose." Now you will come upon a terraced road, at one side of
which stands an old house draped over the rocks in such a way as to
provide entrance from the ground level, on any one of three stories; or
an unexpected view down a steep roadway, or over ancient moss-grown
housetops to where, as an old book I found there puts it, "between two
ramparts, in a gorge of savage grandeur, the lordly Potomac takes to his
embrace the beautiful Shenandoah."
The liaison between the rivers, described in this Rabelaisian manner by
the author of "The Annals of Harper's Ferry," has been going on for a
long time with all the brazen publicity of a love scene on a park bench.
I recommend the matter to the attention of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, which once took action to prohibit a novel by Mr.
Theodore Dreiser. A great many people wish to read Mr. Dreiser's books
yet no one has to read them if he does not want to. But it is a
different matter with these rivers. Sensitive citizens of Harper's Ferry
and pure-minded passengers on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad are obliged
daily to witness what is going on.
Before the days of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and of the
late Anthony Comstock, when we had no one to make it clear to us exactly
what was shocking, little was thought of the public scandal between the
Potomac and the Shenandoah. Thomas Jefferson seems to have rather liked
it; there is a point above the town, known as Jefferson's Rock, at
which, it is said, the author of the Declaration of Independence stood
and uttered a sentiment about the spectacle. Everybody in Harper's Ferry
agrees that Jefferson stood at Jefferson's Rock and said something
appropriate, and any one of them will try to tell you what he said, but
each version will be different.
A young lady told me that he said: "This view is worth a trip across the
Atlantic Ocean."
A young man in a blue felt hat of the fried-egg variety said that
Jefferson declared, with his well-known simplicity: "This is the
grandest view I ever seen."
An old man who had to go through the tobacco chewer's pre-conversational
rite before replying to my question gave it as: "Pfst!--They ain't
nothin' in Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to beat
this-here scenery."
The man at the drug store quoted differently alleging the saying to have
been: "Europe has nothing on this": whereas the livery stable man's
version was: "This has that famous German river--the Rhine River don't
they call it?--skinned to death."
Whatever Jefferson's remark was, there has been added to the spectacle
at Harper's Ferry, since his day, a new feature, which, could he have
but seen it, must have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have
caused him to say more.
At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland Heights, across the
Potomac from the town, far, far up upon the side of the cliff,
commanding a view not only of both rivers, but of their meeting place
and their joint course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote distance, there
has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks
out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge
luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the
conquest of a continent. A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat
by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the
legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the
thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic,
half resigned, yet always so inscrutable: for it is none other than the
beautiful brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder
gentleman.
* * * * *
The great story of Harper's Ferry is of course the John Brown story.
Joseph I.C. Clarke, writing in the New York "Sun" of Sir Roger
Casement's execution for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion,
compared him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote. The spiritual
likeness between these three bearded figures is striking enough. All
were idealists; all were fanatics. Brown's ideal was a noble one--that
of freedom--but his manner of attempting to translate it into actuality
was that of a madman. He believed not only that the slaves should be
freed, but that the blood of slaveholders should be shed in atonement.
In "bleeding Kansas" he led the Ossawatomie massacre, and committed
cold-blooded murders under the delusion that the sword of the Lord was
in his hand.
In October, 1859, Brown, who had for some time been living under an
assumed name in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, led a score of his
followers, some of them negroes, in a surprise attack upon the
Government arsenal at this place, capturing the watchmen and taking
possession of the buildings. It was his idea to get the weapons the
arsenal contained and give them to the slaves that they might rise and
free themselves. Before this plan could be executed, however, Brown and
his men were besieged in the armory, and here, after a day or two of
bloody fighting, with a number of deaths on both sides, he was captured
with his few surviving men, by Colonel (later General) Robert E. Lee,
whose aide, upon this occasion, was J.E.B. Stuart, later the Confederate
cavalry leader. Stuart had been in Kansas, and it was he who recognized
the leader of the raid as Brown of Ossawatomie.
It is said that Brown's violent anti-slavery feeling was engendered by
his having seen, in his youth, a colored boy of about his own age
cruelly misused. He brooded over the wrongs of the blacks until, as some
students of his life believe, he became insane on this subject. His
utterances show that he was willing to give up his life and those of his
sons and other followers, if by such action he could merely draw
attention to the cause which had taken possession of his soul. In the
course of the fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was
himself stabbed and cut. Throughout the fight and his subsequent trial
at Charles Town he remained imperturbable; when taken to the gallows he
sat upon his coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold
without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently unmoved, for ten
or fifteen minutes, with the noose around his neck, while the troops
which had formed his escort were marched to their positions.
A large number of troops were present at the execution, for it was then
believed in the South that the Brown raid was not the mere suicidal
stroke of an individual fanatic, but an organized movement on the part
of the Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore
apprehended. This idea was later shown to be a fallacy, Brown having
made his own plans, and been financed by a few northern friends, headed
by Gerrit Smith of New York.
There has been a tendency in the North to make a saint of John Brown,
and in the South to make a devil of him. As a matter of fact he was a
poor, misguided zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to
do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its evils were not
comparable with the horrors which would have resulted from a slave
rebellion.
It must be conceded, however, that those who would canonize John Brown
have upon their side a strange and impressive piece of evidence. The
jail where he was lodged in Charles Town and the courthouse where he was
tried, still stand, and it is the actual fact that, when the snow falls,
it always miraculously melts in a path which leads diagonally across the
street from the one to the other. That this is true I have unimpeachable
testimony. _Snow will not stand on the path by which John Brown crossed
back and forth from the jail to the court-house._ There will be snow
over all the rest of the street, but not on that path; there you can see
it melting.
But, as with certain other "miracles," this one is not so difficult to
understand if you know how it is brought about. The courthouse is heated
from the jail, and the hot pipes run under the pavement.
CHAPTER XI
THE VIRGINIAS AND THE WASHINGTONS
In colonial times, and long thereafter, the present State of West
Virginia was a part of Virginia. Virginia, in the old days, used to have
no western borders to her most westerly counties, which, in theory, ran
out to infinity. As the western part of the State became settled, county
lines were drawn, and new counties were started farther back from the
coast. For this reason, towns which are now in Jefferson County, West
Virginia, used to be in that county of Virginia which lies to the east
of Jefferson County, and some towns have been in several different
counties in the course of their history.
The people in the eastern part of West Virginia are, so far as I am
capable of judging, precisely like Virginians. The old houses, when
built, were in Virginia, the names of the people are Virginian names,
and customs and points of view are Virginian. Until I went there I was
not aware how very much this means.
I do not know who wrote the school history I studied as a boy, but I do
know now that it was written by a lopsided historian, and that his
"lop," like that of many another of his kind, led him to enlarge upon
American naval and military victories, to minimize American defeats, to
give an impression that the all-important early colonies were those of
New England, and that the all-important one of them was Massachusetts.
From this bias I judge that the historian was a Boston man. It takes a
Bostonian to think in that way. They do it still.
From my school history I gathered the idea that although Sir Walter
Raleigh and Captain John Smith were so foolish as to dally more or less
in the remote fastnesses of Virginia, and although there was a little
ineffectual settlement at Jamestown, all the important colonizing of
this country occurred in New England. I read about Peregrine White, but
not about Virginia Dare; I read much of Miles Standish, but nothing of
Christopher Newport; I read a great deal of the _Mayflower_, but not a
word of the _Susan Constant_.
Yet Virginia Dare, if she lived, must have been nearing young ladyhood
when Peregrine White was born; Captain Christopher Newport passed the
Virginia capes when Miles Standish was hardly more than a youth, in
Lancashire; and the _Susan Constant_ landed the Jamestown settlers more
than a dozen years before the _Mayflower_ landed her shipload of eminent
furniture owners at Plymouth. Even Plymouth itself had been visited
years before by John Smith, and it was he, not the Pilgrims, who named
the place.
I find that some boys, to-day, know these things. But though that fact
is encouraging, I am not writing for boys, but for their comparatively
ignorant parents.
Not only did the first English colony establish itself in Virginia, and
the first known tobacco come from there--a point the importance of which
cannot be overstated--but the history of the Old Dominion is in every
way more romantic and heroic than that of any other State. The first
popular government existed there long before the Revolution, and at the
time of the break with the mother country Virginia was the most wealthy
and populous of the Colonies. Some historians say that slavery was first
introduced there when some Dutchmen sold to the colonists a shipload of
negroes, but I believe this point is disputed. The Declaration of
Independence was, of course, written by a Virginian, and made good by
the sword of one. The first President of the United States was a
Virginian, and so is the present Chief Executive. The whole of New
England has produced but four presidents; Ohio has produced six; but
Virginia has given us eight. The first British army to land on this
continent (Braddock's) landed in Virginia, and in that State our two
greatest wars were terminated by the surrenders of Cornwallis and of
Lee. And, last, the gallant Lee himself was a Virginian of the
Virginians--a son of the distinguished Henry Lee who said of Washington
that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
his countrymen."
* * * * *
On the pleasant drive of perhaps a dozen miles, from Harper's Ferry to
Charles Town, I noticed here and there, at the roadside, pyramidal
stones, suggesting monuments, but bearing no inscription save that each
had a number. On inquiry I learned that these were indeed Confederate
monuments, but that to find out what they marked it was necessary to go
to the county courthouse at Charles Town and look up the numbers in a
book, of which there is but one copy. These monuments were set out three
or four years ago. They appeared suddenly, almost as though they had
grown overnight, and many people wondered, as I had, what they meant.
"Eloise," one Charles Town young lady asked another, "what's that
monument out in front of your house with the number twenty-one on it?"
"Oh," replied Eloise, "that's where all my suitors are buried."
* * * * *
One of the things which gives Jefferson County, West Virginia, its
Virginian flavor is the collection of fine old houses which adorn it.
Many of these houses are the homes of families bearing the name of
Washington, or having in their veins the blood of the Washingtons. It is
said that there is more Washington blood in Charles Town (which, by the
way, should not be confused with Charleston, capital of the same State),
than in any other place, if not in all the rest of the world together.
The nearest competitors to Charles Town in this respect are Westmoreland
County, Virginia, and the town of Kankakee, Illinois, where resides the
Spottswood Augustine Washington family, said to be the only Washington
group to have taken the Union side in the Civil War. It is rumored also
that all the Washingtons are Democrats, although that fact is hard to
reconcile, at the present time, with the statement that, among the five
thousand of them, there is but a single Federal officeholder.
The settling of the Washingtons in Jefferson County, West Virginia, came
about through the fact that George Washington, when a youth of sixteen
or seventeen, became acquainted with that part of what was then
Virginia, through having gone to survey for Lord Fairfax, who had
acquired an enormous tract of land in the neighboring county of Clarke,
which is still in the mother State. To this estate, called Greenaway
Court, his lordship, it is recorded, came from England to isolate
himself because a woman with whom he was in love refused to marry him.
In this general neighborhood George Washington lived for three years,
and local enthusiasts affirm that to his having drunk the
lime-impregnated waters of this valley was due his great stature. The
man who informed me of this theory had lived there aways. He was about
five feet three inches tall, and had drunk the waters all his
life--plain and otherwise.
Washington's accounts of the region so interested his brothers that they
finally moved there, acquired large tracts of land, and built homes.
Charles Town, indeed, was laid out on the land of Charles Washington,
and was named for him, and there is evidence that George Washington,
who certainly gave the lines for the roads about the place, also laid
out the town.
Another brother, John Augustine, left a large family, while Samuel, the
oldest, described as "a rollicking country squire," was several years
short of fifty when he died, but for all that had managed to marry five
times and to find, nevertheless, spare moments in which to lay out the
historic estate of Harewood, not far from Charles Town. It is said that
George Washington was his brother's partner in this enterprise, but
excepting in its interior, which is very beautiful, there is no sign,
about the building, of his graceful architectural touch.
George Washington spent much time at Harewood, Lafayette and his son
visited there, and there the sprightly widow, Dolly Todd, married James
Madison. This wedding was attended by President Washington and his wife
and by many other national figures; the bride made the journey to
Harewood in Jefferson's coach, escorted by Madison and a group of his
friends on horseback, and history makes mention of a very large and very
gay company.
This is all very well until you see Harewood; for, substantial though
the house is, with its two-foot stone walls, it has but five rooms: two
downstairs and three up.
Where did they all sleep?
The question was put by the practical young lady whom I accompanied to
Harewood, but the wife of the farmer to whom the place is rented could
only smile and shake her head.
The bedroom now occupied by this farmer and his wife has doubtless been
occupied also by the first President of the United States and his wife,
the fourth President and his wife, by Lafayette, and by a King of
France--for Louis-Philippe, and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and
the Comte de Beaujolais, spent some time at Harewood during their period
of exile.
Having read in an extract from the Baltimore "Sun" that Harewood, which
is still owned in the Washington family, was a place in which all
Washingtons took great and proper pride, that it was "the lodestone
which draws the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts," I was
greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the shameful state of
dilapidation into which it has been allowed to pass. The porches and
steps have fallen down, the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the
graves in the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about which the
cattle graze. The only parts of the building in good repair are those
parts which time has not yet succeeded in destroying. The drawing-room,
containing a mantelpiece given to Washington by Lafayette, and the
finest wood paneling I have seen in any American house, has held its own
fairly well, as has also the old stairway, imported by Washington from
England. But that these things are not in ruins, like the porches, is no
credit to the Washingtons who own the property to-day, and who, having
rented the place, actually leave family portraits hanging on the walls
to crack and rot through the cold winter.
If there are indeed five thousand Washingtons, and if they are proud of
their descent, a good way for them to show it would be to contribute
twenty-five cents each to be expended on putting Harewood in respectable
condition.
The last member of the Washington family to own Mount Vernon was John
Augustine Washington, of Charles Town, who sold the former home of his
distinguished collateral ancestor. This Mr. Washington was a Confederate
officer in the Civil War. He had a son named George, whose widow, if I
mistake not, is the Mrs. George Washington of Charles Town, of whom I
heard an amusing story.
With another Charles Town lady this Mrs. Washington went to the
Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the two attended the Fair together
on Washington Day. On this occasion Mrs. Washington made a purchase in
one of the buildings, and ordered it sent to her home in Charles Town.
"What name?" asked the clerk.
"Mrs. George Washington."
The clerk concluded that she was joking.
"I want your _real_ name," he insisted with a smile.
"But," plaintively protested the gentle Mrs. Washington, "that is the
only name I _have_!"
* * * * *
One of the most charming of the old houses in the neighborhood of
Charles Town, and one of the few which is still occupied by the
descendants of its builder, is Piedmont, the residence of the Briscoe
family. It is a brick house, nearly a century and a half old, with a
lovely old portico, and it contains two of the most interesting relics I
saw on my entire journey in the South. The first of these is the wall
paper of the drawing-room, upon which is depicted, not in pattern, but
in a series of pictures with landscape backgrounds, various scenes
representing the adventures of Telemachus on his search for his father.
I remember having seen on the walls of the parlor of an old hotel at
South Berwick, Maine, some early wall paper of this character, but the
pictures on that paper were done in various shades of gray, whereas the
Piedmont wall paper is in many colors. The other relic is a letter which
Mrs. Briscoe drew from her desk quite as though it had been a note
received that morning from a friend. It was written on tough
buff-colored paper, and, though the ink was brown with age, the
handwriting was clear and legible and the paper was not broken at the
folds. It was dated "Odiham, Sept. 1st, 1633," and ran as follows:
To Dr. John Briscoe, _Greetings_.
Dear Sir: As the Privy Council have decided that I shall not be
disturbed or dispossessed of the charter granted by his
Majesty--the _Ark_ and Pinnace _Dove_ will sail from Gravesend
about the 1st of October, and if you are of the same mind as when I
conversed with you, I would be glad to have you join the colony.
With high esteem, Your most obedient servant,
Cecilius Baltimore.
This letter from the second Lord Baltimore refers to the historic voyage
which resulted in the first settlement of Maryland, thirteen years after
the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. As for Dr. Briscoe, to whom the
letter was written, he was one of the three hundred original colonists,
but after settling in St. Mary's, near the mouth of the Potomac, removed
to the place where his descendants still reside.
Farther out in Jefferson County the motorist may pass through two
curious hamlets which, though not many miles from Charles Town, have the
air of being completely removed from the world. One of these was known,
many years ago, as Middleway, and later as Smithfield, but is now called
Clip--and for a curious reason.
When the stagecoaches were running, the town was quite a place, as its
several good old houses indicate; but the railroads, when they were
built, ignored the town, but killed the stage lines, with the result
that the little settlement dried up. Even before this an old
plaster-covered house, still standing, became haunted. The witches who
resided in it developed the unpleasant custom of flying out at night and
cutting pieces from the clothing of passers-by. And that is how the town
came to be called Clip.
A century or so ago, when the rudeness of the witches had long annoyed
the inhabitants of Clip, and had proved very detrimental to their
clothing, a Roman Catholic priest came along and told them that if they
would give him a certain field, he would rid them of the evil spirits.
This struck the worthy citizens of Clip as a good bargain; they gave the
priest his field (it is still known as the Priest's Field, and is now
used as a place for basket picnics) and forthwith the operations of the
witches ceased. So, at least, the story goes.
Not far beyond Clip lies the hamlet of Leetown, taking its name from
that General Charles Lee who commanded an American army in the
Revolutionary War, but who was suspected by Washington of being a
traitor, and was finally court-martialed and cashiered from the army.
The old stone house which Lee built at Leetown, and in which he lived
after his disgrace, still remains. Instead of having partitions in his
house the old general lived in one large room, upon the floor of which
he made chalk marks to indicate different chambers. Here he dwelt
surrounded by innumerable dogs, and here he was frequently visited by
Generals Horatio Gates and Adam Stephen, who were neighbors and cronies
of his, and met at his house to drink wine and exchange stories.
It is said that upon one of these occasions Lee got up and declared:
"The county of Berkeley is to be congratulated upon having as citizens
three noted generals of the Revolution, each of whom was ignominiously
cashiered. You, Stephen, for getting drunk when you should have been
sober; you, Gates, for advancing when you should have retreated; and
your humble servant for retreating when he should have advanced."
Lee was a turbulent, insubordinate, hard-drinking rascal, and nothing
could be more characteristic than the will, written in his own
handwriting, filed by the old reprobate with the clerk of the Berkeley
County Court, and expressing the following sentiments:
I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or
churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist
meeting house, for since I have resided in this county I have kept
so much bad company when living that I do not desire to continue it
when dead.
During Lee's life there, Leetown was probably a livelier place than it
is to-day. Something of its present state may be gathered from the fact
that when a lady of my acquaintance stopped her motor there recently,
and asked some men what time it was, they stared blankly at her for a
moment, after which one of them said seriously:
"We don't know. We don't have time here."
CHAPTER XII
I RIDE A HORSE
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
--KING HENRY IV.
Claymont Court, near Charles Town, the house in which my companion and I
were so fortunate as to be guests during our visit to this part of the
country, is one of the old Washington houses, having been built by
Bushrod Corbin Washington, a nephew of the first President. It is a
beautiful brick building, with courts at either end, the brick walls of
which, connecting with the house, extend its lines with peculiar grace,
and tie to the main structure the twin buildings which balance it,
according to the delightful fashion of early Virginia architecture. The
hexagonal brick tile of the front walk at Claymont Court, and the square
stone pavement of the portico, resemble exactly those at Mount Vernon,
and are said to have been imported at the same time; and it is believed
also that the Claymont box trees were brought over with those growing at
Mount Vernon.
The estate was sold out of the Washington family in 1870, when it was
acquired by a Colonel March, who later sold it to a gentleman whose wild
performances at Claymont are not only remembered, but are commemorated
in the house. In the cellar, for instance, bricked up in a room barely
large enough to hold it, whence it cannot be removed except by tearing
down a heavy wall, stands a huge carved sideboard to which the young man
took a dislike, and which he therefore caused to be carried to the
cellar and immured, despite the protests of his family. It is said that
upon another occasion he conceived the picturesque idea of riding his
horse upstairs and hitching it to his bedpost; and that he did so is
witnessed by definite marks of horseshoes on the oak treads of the
stair. Later Frank R. Stockton purchased the place, and there he wrote
his story "The Captain of the Toll-Gate," which was published
posthumously.
But in all its history this glorious old house has never been a happier
home, or a more interesting one, than it is to-day. For now it is the
residence of four young ladies, sisters, who, because of their divergent
tastes and their complete congeniality, continually suggest the fancy
that they have stepped out of a novel. One of them is the Efficient
Sister, who runs the automobile and the farm of two or three hundred
acres, sells the produce, keeps the accounts, and pays off the men;
another is the Domestic Sister, who conducts the admirable menage;
another is the Sociological and Artistic Sister, who draws and plays and
thinks about the masses; while the fourth is the Sprightly Sister Who
Likes to Dance.
Never had my companion or I seen a more charming, a more varied
household, an establishment more self-contained, more complete in all
things from vegetables to brains. No need to leave the place for
anything. Yet if one wished to look about the country, there was the
motor, and there were the saddle horses in the stable--all of them
members of old Virginian families--and there were four equestrian young
ladies.
"Would you-all like to ride to-day?" one of the sisters asked us at
breakfast.
To my companion, horseback riding is comparatively a new thing. He had
taken it up a year before--partly because of appeals from me, partly
because of changes which he had begun to notice in his topography.
Compared with him I was a veteran horseman, for it was then a year and
three months since I had begun my riding lessons.
I said that I would like to ride, but he declared that he must stay
behind and make a drawing.
Sometimes, in the past, I had thought I would prefer to make my living
as a painter or an illustrator than as a writer, but at this juncture it
occurred to me that, though the writer's medium of expression is a less
agreeable one than that of the graphic artist, it is much pleasanter to
ride about with pretty girls than to sit alone and draw a picture of
their house. I began to feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our
riding gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem pathetic. My
appeals, however, made no impression upon his inflexible sense of duty,
and I soon ceased trying to persuade him to join us, and began to
speculate, instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany me,
or whether only two or three of them would go--and if so, which.
"What kind of horse do you like?" asked one.
Such a question always troubles me. It is embarrassing. Imagine saying
to a young lady who likes to ride thoroughbred hunters across fields and
over ditches and fences: "I should like a handsome horse, one that will
cause me to appear to advantage, one that looks spirited but is in
reality tame."
Such an admission would be out of character with the whole idea of
riding. One could hardly make it to one's most intimate male friend, let
alone to a girl who knows all about withers and hocks and pastern
joints, and talks about "paneled country," and takes the "Racing
Calendar."
To such a young lady it is impossible to say: "I have ridden for a
little more than a year; the horses with which I am acquainted are
benevolent creatures from a riding school near Central Park; they go
around the reservoir twice, and return automatically, and they sigh
deeply when one mounts and again when one gets off."
No; that sort of thing will not do at all; for the horse--besides having
been placed in a position more aristocratic than ever, through the
philanthropies of Henry Ford--is essentially "sporty." You must be a
"sport" or you must keep away from him. You must approach him with dash
or you must not approach him at all. And when a young lady inquires what
kind of horse you like, there is but one way to reply.
"It doesn't matter at all," I answered. "Any horse will do for me."
Then, after a little pause, I added, as though it were merely an amusing
afterthought: "I suppose I shall be stiff after my ride. I haven't been
on a horse in nearly two months."
"Then," said the sympathetic young lady, "you'll want an easy ride."
"I suppose it _might_ be more sensible," I conceded.
"Better give him the black mare," put in the Efficient Sister.
"She hasn't been out lately," said the other. "You know how she acts
when she hasn't been ridden enough. He might not know just how to take
her. I was thinking of giving him 'Dr. Bell.'"
"Dr. Bell's too gentle," said the Efficient Sister.
"Which horse do you think you'd like?" the other asked me. "Dr. Bell has
plenty of life, but he's gentle. The black mare's a little bit flighty
at first, but if you can ride her she soon finds it out and settles
down."
I want to ask: "What happens if she finds out that you _can't_ ride her?
What does she do then?" But I refrained.
"She's never thrown anybody but a stable boy and a man who came up here
to visit--and neither one of them could ride worth a cent," said the
Efficient Sister.
Meanwhile I had been thinking hard.
"What color is Dr. Bell?" I asked.
"He's a sorrel."
"Then," I said, "I believe I'd rather ride Dr. Bell. I don't like black
horses. It is simply one of those peculiar aversions one gets."
They seemed to accept this statement, and so the matter was agreeably
settled.
When, at ten o'clock, I came down dressed for riding, my companion was
out in front of the house, making a drawing; the four young ladies were
with him, all seemingly enchanted with his work, and none of them in
riding habits.
"Who's going with me?" I asked as I strolled toward them.
They looked at one another inquiringly. Then the Efficient Sister said:
"I'd like to go, but this is pay day and I can't leave the place."
"I have to go to town for some supplies," said the Domestic Sister.
"I want to stay and watch this," said the Sociological and Artistic
Sister. (She made a gesture toward my companion, but I think she
referred to his drawing.)
"I'm going away to a house party," said the Sprightly Sister who Likes
to Dance. "I must pack."
"You can't get lost," said the Domestic Sister.
"Even if you should," put in the Efficient Sister, "Dr. Bell would bring
you home."
During this conversation my companion did not look up from his work,
neither did he speak; yet upon his back there was an expression of
derisive glee which made me hope, vindictively, that he would smudge his
drawing. However inscrutable his face, I have never known a man with a
back so expressive.
"Here comes Dr. Bell," remarked the Sociological and Artistic Sister, as
a negro groom appeared leading the sorrel steed.
"Well," I said, trying to speak debonairely as I started toward the
drive, "I'll be going."
I wished to leave them where they were and go around to the other side
of the house to mount. I had noticed a stone block there and meant to
use it if no one but the groom were present; also I intended to tip the
groom and ask him a few casual questions about the ways of Dr. Bell.
I might have managed this but for a sudden manifestation of interest on
the part of my companion.
"Come on," he said to the young ladies, "let's go and see him off." It
seemed to me that he emphasized the word "off" unpleasantly. However I
tried to seem calm as we moved toward the drive.
Dr. Bell had a bright brown eye; there was something alert in the gaze
with which he watched us moving toward him. However, to my great relief
he stood quite still while two of the sisters who preceded me by a few
steps, went up and patted him. Evidently he liked to be patted. I
decided that I would pat him also.
I had approached him from the left and in order to mount I now found it
necessary to circle around, in front of him. I was determined that if
the horse would but remain stationary I should step up to him, speak to
him, give him a quick pat on the neck, gather the reins in my hand,
place my foot swiftly in the stirrup, take a good hop, and be on his
back before any one had time to notice.
Dr. Bell, however, caused me to alter these plans; for though he had
stood docile as a dog while the sisters patted him, his manner underwent
a change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any
personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any
stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably,
that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was
shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him.
This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the
mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their
performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason
at all, in a manner too treacherous and devious for human comprehension.
Their very usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on their
own folly; were it not for that, man could not even catch them, let
alone force them to submit, like weak-minded giants, to his will.
The fact is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most
idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is
his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than
those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing
wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would be lecturing to
women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities, and writing essays on
the Development of the Short Story in America.
Horse lovers, who are among the most prejudiced of all prejudiced
people, and who regard horses with an amiable but fatuous admiration
such as young parents have for their babies, will try to tell you that
these great creatures which they love are not mentally deficient. Ask
them why the horse, with his superior strength, submits to man, and they
will tell you that the horse's eye magnifies, and that, to the horse,
man consequently appears to be two or three times his actual size.
Nonsense! There is but one reason for the yielding of the horse: he is
an utter fool.
Everything proves him a fool. He will charge into battle, he will walk
cheerfully beside a precipice, he will break his back pulling a heavy
wagon, or break his leg or his neck in jumping a hurdle; yet he will go
into a frenzy of fright at the sight of a running child, a roadside
rock, or the shadow of a branch across the path, and not even a German
chancellor could shy as he will at a scrap of paper.
As I passed in front of Dr. Bell he rolled his eyes at me horribly, and
rose upon his hind legs, almost upsetting the groom as he went up and
barely missing him with his fore feet as he brought them to earth again.
"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping.
"I guess he just feels good," said the Efficient Sister.
"Yassuh, tha 's all," said the groom cheerfully. "_He's_ aw' right.
Gentle ath a lamb."
As he made this statement, I took another step in the direction of the
horse, whereat he reared again.
"_Well_, now!" said the groom, patting Dr. Bell upon the neck. "Feelin'
pretty good 's mawnin', is you? There, there!"
Dr. Bell, however, paid little attention to his attendant, but gazed
steadily at me with an evil look.
"Does he always do like that?" I asked the Domestic Sister.
"I never saw him do it before," she said.
"Maybe he doesn't admire the cut of your riding breeches," suggested my
companion.
"Oh, no, suh," protested the groom. "It 's jes' his li'l way tryin' t'
tell you he likes de ladies t' ride him better 'n he likes de gemmen."
"He means he doesn't want me to ride him?"
"Yassuh, da 's jes' his li'l idee 't he 's got _now_. He be all right
once you in de saddle."
"But how am I to get in the saddle if he keeps doing that?"
"I hold 'im all right," said the groom. "You jes' get on 'im, suh. He
soon find out who 's boss."
"I think he will," said my heartless companion.
"Nevvah you feah, suh," the man said to me. "Ah knowed the minute Ah saw
yo' laigs 't you was a _horse_man. Yassuh! Ah says t' ole Gawge, Ah
says, 'Dat gemman's certain'y been 'n de cava'ry, he has, wid dem fine
crooked laigs o' hisn.'"
"You should have told that to Dr. Bell, instead," suggested my
companion.
At this every one laughed. Even the groom laughed a wheezy, cackling
negro laugh. The situation was becoming unbearable. Clearly I must try
to mount. Perhaps I should not succeed, but I must try. As I was
endeavoring to adjust my mind to this unpleasant fact the Efficient
Sister spoke.
"That horse is going to be ridden," she said firmly, "if I have to go
upstairs and dress and ride him myself."
That settled it.
"Now you hold him down," I said to the groom, and stepped forward.
As I did so Dr. Bell reared again, simultaneously drawing back sidewise
and turning his flank away from me, but this time the Efficient Sister
hit him with a crop she had found somewhere, and he came down hastily,
and began to dance a sort of double clog with all four feet.
After several efforts I managed to get beside him. Gathering the reins
in my left hand I put my foot up swiftly, found the stirrup, and with a
hop, managed to board the beast.
As I did so, the groom let him go. Both stirrups were short, but it was
too late to discuss that, for by the time I was adjusted to my seat we
had traveled, at a run, over a considerable part of the lawn and through
most of the flowerbeds. The shortness of the stirrups made me bounce,
and I had a feeling that I might do better to remove my feet from them
entirely, but as I had never ridden without stirrups I hesitated to try
it now. Therefore I merely dug my knees desperately into the saddle
flaps and awaited what should come, while endeavoring to check the
animal. He, however, kept his head down, which not only made it
difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant sense as of riding
on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with nothing but space in front of me.
Once, with a jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that he
reared. I do not care for rearing.
To add to my delight, one of the dogs now ran out and began to bark and
circle around us, jumping up at the horse's nose and nipping at his
heels. This brought on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared
but elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog. However, there
was one good result. We stopped running and began to trot rapidly about
in circles, dodging the dog, and this finally brought us back toward the
house.
"My stirrups are too short!" I shouted to the groom.
"Ride oveh heah, suh," he called back.
I tried to do it, but Dr. Bell continued to move in circles. At last,
however, the man managed to catch us by advancing with his hand
extended, as though offering a lump of sugar, at the same time talking
gently to my steed. Then, while my companion held the bit the negro
adjusted the stirrup leathers. I was glad of the breathing spell. I
wished that it took longer to adjust stirrups.
"You'd better go out by the drive this time," said the Efficient Sister.
"I intended to before," I told her, "but he didn't seem to understand
the signals."
"You've got spurs on. Give him the spur."
As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the spur. It seemed to
me that he was annoyed with me anyway, and that the spur would only
serve to increase his prejudice. I wanted to rule him not by brute force
but by kindness. I wished that I could somehow make him know that I was
a regular subscriber to the S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals
and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb
brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me. But
how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid,
wilful, perverse, diabolical creature like a horse?
I was determined that when we started again we should not run over the
lawn if I could possibly prevent it. Therefore I had the groom head the
horse down the drive, and the moment he released him, I touched Dr. Bell
with the spurs. The result was magical. He started on a run but kept in
the road where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a sense of
having something almost like control over him. At the foot of the drive
was a gate which I knew could be opened without dismounting, by pulling
a rope, and as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately
run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would stop when he
got there. Imagine my feelings, then, when on sight of the gate he not
only failed to slacken his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than
ever. Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause momentarily,
hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming manner: then he arose,
sailed through the air like a swallow, came down beyond like a load of
trunks falling off from a truck, and galloped down the highway,
seemingly quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were flapping
at his sides and that I had moved from the saddle to a point near the
base of his neck.
My position at the moment was one of considerable insecurity. By holding
on to his mane and wriggling backward I hoped to stay on, provided he
did not put down his head. If he did that, I was lost. Fortunately for
me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with what ease he could have
dropped me at that moment, and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics,
I managed to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in doing so I
pricked him several times with the spurs, with the result that, though
he ran faster than ever for a time, he must have presently concluded
that I didn't care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his
pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to draw him down to a
trot and then to a walk.
I am glad to say that not until now had we met any vehicle. Even while
he was running, even while I was engaged in maintaining a precarious
seat upon his neck, I had found time to hope fervently that we should
not encounter an automobile. I was afraid that he would jump it if we
did.
Now, however, I saw a motor approaching. Dr. Bell saw it, too, and
pricked up his ears. Seizing the reins firmly in one hand, I waved with
the other, signalling to the motorist to stop, which he did, pulling out
into the ditch. Meanwhile I talked to Dr. Bell, patting him on the neck
and telling him to go on and not to be afraid, because it was all right.
Dr. Bell did go on. He went up to the front of the motor, past the side
of it, and on behind it, without showing the least sign of alarm. He did
not mind it at all. But the man in the motor minded. Annoyed with me for
having stopped him unnecessarily, he shouted something after me. But I
paid no attention to him. Under the circumstances, it seemed the only
thing to do. I might have gotten off; I might conceivably have beaten
him; but I never could have held the horse while doing it, or have
gotten on again.
Presently, when I was changing the position of the reins, which were
hurting my fingers because I had gripped them so tight, I accidentally
shifted the gears in some way, so to speak, sending Dr. Bell off at a
pace which was neither a trot nor a canter, but which carried us along
at a sort of smooth, rapid glide. At first I took this gait to be a
swift trot, and attempted to post to it; then, as that did not work, I
sat still in the saddle and, finding the posture comfortable, concluded
that Dr. Bell must be single-footing. I had never single-footed before.
Just as I was beginning to like it, however, he changed to a trot, then
back to single-footing again, and so on, in a curious puzzling manner.
Except for the changes of gait, we were now going on rather well, and I
had begun, for the first time, to feel a little security, when all of a
sudden he swerved off and galloped with me up a driveway leading toward
a white house which stood on a hill two or three hundred yards from the
road. Again I tried to stop him, but when I pulled on the reins he shook
his head savagely from side to side and snorted in a loud and
threatening manner.
As we neared the house I saw that two ladies were sitting on the porch
regarding our approach with interest. I hoped that Dr. Bell would find
some way of keeping on past the house and into the fields, but he had no
such intention. Instead of going by, he swung around the circle before
the porch, and stopped at the steps, upon which the two ladies were
sitting.
One of them was a white-haired woman of gentle mien; the other was a
girl of eighteen or twenty with pretty, mischievous eyes.
Both the ladies looked up inquiringly as Dr. Bell and I stopped.
I lifted my hat. It was the only thing I could think of to do at the
moment. At this they both nodded gravely. Then we sat and stared at one
another.
"Well?" said the old lady, when the silence had become embarrassing.
I felt that I must say something, so I remarked: "This is a very pretty
place you have here."
At this, though the statement was quite true, they looked perplexed.
"Is there any message?" asked the young woman, after another pause.
"Oh, no," I answered lightly. "I was riding by and thought I'd take the
liberty of coming up and telling you--telling you that although I am a
Northerner and a stranger here, I love the South, the quaint old
Southern customs, the lovely old houses, the delicious waffles, the--"
"That is very gratifying," said she "I am sorry to say we are all out of
waffles at present."
"Oh, I don't want any now," I replied politely.
"Well, if you don't mind my asking, what _do_ you want?"
"I want," I said, desperately, "to see your groom for a moment, if
possible."
"He's gone to town," she replied. "Is there anything I can do? I see
that your stirrup leather is twisted." With that she arose, came down,
removed my foot from the stirrup, in a businesslike manner, reversed the
iron, and put my foot back for me.
I thanked her.
"Anything else?" she asked, her wicked eye twinkling.
"Perhaps," I ventured, "perhaps you know how to make a horse
single-foot?"
"There are different ways," she said. "With Dr. Bell you might try using
the curb gently, working it from side to side."
"I will," I said. "Thank you very much."
"And," said the girl, "if he ever takes a notion to bolt with you, or to
go up to some house where you don't want him to go, just touch him with
the curb. That will fix him. He's very soft-bitted."
"But I tried that," I protested.
She looked at my reins, then shook her head.
"No," she said, "you've got your curb rein and your snaffle rein mixed."
"I am very much indebted to you," I said, as I changed the position of
the reins between my fingers.
"Not at all," said she. "I hope you'll get safely back to the Claymont.
If you want to jump him, give him his head. He'll take off all right."
"Thanks," I returned. "I don't want to jump him."
Then lifting my hat and thanking her again, I wiggled the curb gently
from side to side, as directed, and departed, singlefooting comfortably.
Dr. Bell and I got home very nicely. He wanted to jump the gate again,
but I checked him with the curb. After pulling the rope to open the gate
I must have got the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the
house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal, and intent
upon cantering up to the porch in fine style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly
off to the stable, went into the door, and, before I could stop him,
entered his stall.
There I dismounted in absolute privacy. It was quite easy. I had only to
climb on to the partition and drop down into the next stall, which, by
good fortune, was vacant.
With a single exception, this was the only riding I did in the South,
and on the one other occasion of which I speak I did not ride alone, but
had, surrounding me, the entire Eleventh United States Cavalry.
CHAPTER XIII
INTO THE OLD DOMINION
When two men are traveling together on an equal footing, and it becomes
necessary to decide between two rooms in a hotel, how is the decision to
be made? Which man is to take the big, bright corner room, and which the
little room that faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below?
Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a Pullman
drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep upon the shelf-like couch? Or
when there is but one lower left, which shall take the upper? If an
extra kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay for it and
own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay for this meal and who for
that? Or yet again, if there be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop,
and both desire to own that coat, which one shall have the right of
purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up the bags, or the
porter for taking down the trunks? Who shall take home from a dance the
girl both want to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who
resides in a remote suburb?
Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable complication of
politeness in such matters. On a brief journey there might be, but on a
long journey the thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each
wants his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to the
contrary.
Upon our first long journey together, some years ago, my companion and I
established a custom of settling all such questions by matching coins,
and we have maintained this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has
worked well. We have matched for everything except railroad fares and
hotel bills, and though fortune has sometimes favored one or the other
for a time, I believe that, had we kept accounts, we should find
ourselves to-day practically even.
Our system of matching has some correlated customs. Now and then, for
instance, when one of us is unlucky and has been "stuck" for a series of
meals, the other, in partial reparation, will declare a "party."
Birthdays and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there will
be a party for no particular reason other than that we feel like having
one.
Two of our parties on this journey have been given in the basement cafe
of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Both were supper parties. The first
I gave in honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like the
Shoreham cafe, and that a party seemed to be about due. That party
brought on the other, which occurred a few nights later and was given by
us jointly in honor of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And
this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of all the parties
we have had together.
It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the cafe after the
first party, that we encountered the lady who caused the second one. I
had never met her, but I was aware that my companion knew her, for he
talked about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a gentleman at
a table near the door, and had you seen her it would be unnecessary for
me to tell you that my companion stopped to speak to her, and that I
hung around until he introduced me.
After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and gazing down into
her beautiful world-wise eyes, the gentleman with whom she was supping
took pity upon us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked,
and invited us to sit down.
It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington, for besides
being beautiful and celebrated, she had just come from New York and was
able to give us news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits
for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on divorces and
remarriages, and all the little items one loses track of when one has
been away for a fortnight.
"I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she said as we were
about to leave. "I hope that we may see each other again."
Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at my companion as she
spoke, but he was seated at one side of her and I at the other, and even
with such eyes as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at
once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared by me. _I_ hoped
that "we" might meet again, and it seemed to me desirable at the moment
that she should understand (and that my companion should be reminded)
that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as Castor and Pollux, as
Pylades and Orestes, and all that sort of thing. Therefore I leaped
quickly at the word "we," and, before my companion had time to answer,
replied:
"I hope so too."
This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised, I thought, but what
of that? Don't women like to be surprised? Don't they like men to be
strong, resolute, determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't
they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was determined to be
dashing.
"We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued. "We are going
to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and into the fox-hunting country.
If we can get back here Saturday night let's have a party."
I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not care what she
thought my companion was going to the hunting country for, but I did not
wish her to think that I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I
desired her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair of
beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat, and leaping a
thoroughbred mount over fences and gates. I wished her to believe me a
wild, reckless, devil of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week
lest I be killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me
more--poor girl!
That she felt such emotions I have since had reason to doubt. However,
the idea of a party after the play on Saturday night seemed to appeal to
her, and it was arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to get
back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races, which we were to
attend on Saturday afternoon, and that if we could get back we should
telegraph to her.
We kept our agreement--but I shall come to that later.
* * * * *
Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg.
The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper; his streets
are wide, pretty, and clean; and though there are many historic
buildings--including the home of Washington's mother and the house in
which Washington became a Mason--there are enough good new ones to give
the place a progressive look.
In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg was the center
for all this part of northeastern Virginia, and particularly for the
Rappahannock Valley; and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was
legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War,
there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation
owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for
drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous
was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a
thousand slaves, but was the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters.
Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg, where a few
scattered houses stand to-day, was in early times a busy place. It is
said that the first flour mill in America stood there, and that one
Gordon, who made his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his
wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast for his ships, was
the first American millionaire.
Besides having known intimately such historic figures as Washington,
Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having been the scene of sanguinary
fighting in the Civil War, the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the
birth-place of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for the
reason that he was a great man, that he has been partially overlooked by
history, and that it is said in the South that the fame which should
justly be his has been deliberately withheld by historians and
politicians for the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the
southern cause in the Civil War.
Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has
heard of S.F.B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of
Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must
confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that
such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have
spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living
in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is
not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this
man.
Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and
meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great
contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make
that science exact.
While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the
foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with
Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham,
and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the
feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings.
Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a
midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis
then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was
master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the
Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding
that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general
publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.
When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his
retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in
recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot
of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the
log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of
observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and
Currents Charts known to all mariners.
A monograph on Maury, issued by N.W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says
of these charts:
"They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity.
Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely.
As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often
required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships
started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels
arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of
fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts.
The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the
arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the
mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced,
by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred
and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days.
"Soon after this, the ship _San Francisco_, with hundreds of United
States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor
reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to
indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind
and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the
place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the
survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word
has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the
sea.
"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and
useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of
1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind,
and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at
sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were
made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every
ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds,
currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings,
etc., while every maritime nation of the world cooeperated in a work that
was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase
of knowledge, the good of all.
"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called
the celebrated Brussels Conference for the cooeperation of nations in
matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury
advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to
the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he
urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present
Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his
perception and advocacy."
Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best
known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the
causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau
of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable.
Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection:
"Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the
work."
Maury was decorated by many foreign governments but not by his own.
Owing, it is said, to his having taken up the Confederate cause,
national honors were withheld from him, not only during the remainder of
his life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at the Naval
Academy--the establishment of which, by the way, Maury was one of the
first to advocate--was named for him, and Congress passed a bill
appropriating funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder of
the Sea," in Washington.
Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored men in the State
of Virginia.
It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son: "Am I dragging my
anchors?"
And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the father gave a brave
sailor's answer:
"All's well," he said.
* * * * *
Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham, the old Fitzhugh
house, one of the most charming of early Virginian mansions. Chatham was
built in 1728, and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by
Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and
sent by the latter to William Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at
Eton and Oxford. Not only does the name of the house lend color to the
tale, but so do its proportions, which are very beautiful, reminding one
somewhat of those of Doughoregan Manor. Chatham, however, has the
advantage of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote of it in
his quaint "Travels in North America," published in 1839) "situated on
an eminence commanding a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping
course of the Rappahannoc." Murray also tells of the beautiful garden,
with its great box trees and its huge slave-built terraces, stepping
down to the water like a giant's stairway.
In this house my companion and I were guests, and as I won the toss for
the choice of rooms, mine was the privilege of sleeping in the historic
west bedchamber, the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in
the morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted wood.
I shall always remember the delightful experience of awakening in that
room, so vast, dignified, and beautiful, and of lying there a little
drowsy, and thinking of those who had been there before me. This was the
room occupied by George and Martha Washington when they stopped for a
few days at Chatham on their wedding journey; this was the room occupied
by Madison, by Monroe, by Washington Irving, and by Robert E. Lee when
he visited Chatham and courted Mary Custis, who became his wife. And,
most wonderful of all to me, this was the room occupied by Lincoln when
he came to Fredericksburg to review the army, while Chatham was Union
headquarters, and the embattled Lee had headquarters in the old house
known as Brompton, still standing on Marye's Heights back of the river
and the town. It is said that Lee during the siege of Fredericksburg
never trained his guns on Chatham, because of his sentiment for the
place. As I lay there in the morning I wondered if Lee had been aware,
at the time, that Lincoln was under the roof of Chatham, and whether
Lincoln knew, when he slept in "my" room, that Washington and Lee had
both been there before him.
War, I thought, not only makes strange bedfellows, but strange
combinations in the histories of bedrooms.
Then the maid rapped for the second time upon my door, and though this
time I got up at once, my ruminations made me scandalously late for
breakfast.
After breakfast came the motor, which was to take us to the
battlefields, its driver a thin dry-looking, dry-talking man, with the
air of one a little tired of the story he told to tourists day in and
day out, yet conscientiously resolved to go through with it. Before the
huge cemetery which overlooks the site of the most violent fighting that
occurred in the bloody and useless Battle of Fredericksburg, he paused
briefly; then drove us to the field of Chancellorsville, to that of the
Battles of the Wilderness, and finally to the region of Spottsylvania
Courthouse; and at each important spot he stopped and told us what had
happened there. He knew all about the Civil War, that man, and he had a
way of passing out his information with a calm assumption that his
hearers knew nothing about it whatever. This irritated my companion, who
also knows all about the War, having once passed three days in the
neighborhood of a Soldiers' Home. Consequently he kept cutting in,
supplying additional details--such, for instance, as that Stonewall
Jackson, who died in a house which the driver pointed out, was shot by
some of his own men, who took him for a Yankee as he was returning from
a reconnaissance.
Either one of these competitive historians alone, I could have stood,
but the way they picked each other up, fighting the old-time battles
over again, got on my nerves. Besides, it was cold, and as I have taken
occasion to remark before, I do not like cold motor rides. Indeed, as I
think it over, it seems to me I do not like battlefields, either. At all
events, I became more and more morose as we traversed that bleak
Virginia landscape, and I am afraid that before the day was over I was
downright sulky.
As we drove back to Fredericksburg and to the train which was to take us
to Charlottesville, my companion made remarks of a general character
about people who were trivial minded, and who didn't take a proper
interest in the scenes of great historical occurrences. When he had
continued for some time in this vein, I remarked feebly that I loved to
read about battles; but that, far from mitigating his severity, only
caused him to change his theme. He said that physical laziness was a
terrible thing because it not only made the body soft but by degrees
softened the brain, as well. He said that when people didn't want to see
battlefields, preferring to lie in bed and read about them, that was a
sign of the beginning of the end.
On various occasions throughout the week he brought this subject up
again, and I was glad indeed when, as the time for our party with the
beautiful young actress, in Washington, drew near, he began to forget
about my shortcomings and think of more agreeable things.
CHAPTER XIV
CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO
When Virginians speak of "the university," they do not mean Harvard,
Princeton, Yale, or even Washington and Lee, but always the University
of Virginia, which is at Charlottesville.
The city of Charlottesville, in its downtown parts, is no more and no
less dingy and dismal than many another town of six or seven thousand
inhabitants, be it North or South. It has a long main street, lined with
little shops and moving-picture shows, and the theatrical posters which
thrill one at first sight with hopes of evening entertainment, prove, on
inspection, to have survived long after the "show" they advertise has
come and gone, or else to presage the "show" that is coming for one
night, week after next.
Nor is this scarcity of theatrical entertainment confined alone to small
towns of the South. Not all important stars and important theatrical
productions visit even the largest cities, for the South is not regarded
by theatrical managers as particularly profitable territory. It would be
interesting to know whether anaemia of the theater in the South, as well
as the falling off generally of theatergoing in lesser American
cities--usually attributed to the popularity and cheapness of the
"movies"--is not due in large measure to the folly of managers
themselves in sending out inferior companies. Any one who has seen a
theatrical entertainment in New York and seen it later "on the road" is
likely to be struck by the fact that even the larger American cities do
not always get the full New York cast, while smaller cities seldom if
ever get any part of it. The South suffers particularly in this respect.
The little "river shows," which arrive now and then in river towns, and
which are more or less characteristic of the South, have the excuse of
real picturesqueness, however bad the entertainment given, for the
players live and have their theater on flatboats, which tie up at the
wharf. But the plain fact about the ordinary little southern "road show"
is that it does not deserve to make money.
The life of a poor player touring the South must be very wretched, for
generally, excepting in large cities, hotels are poor. Before we had
gone far upon our way, my companion and I learned to inquire carefully
in advance as to the best hotels, and when we found in any small city
one which was not a fire trap, and which was clean, we were surprised,
while if the service was fairly good, and the meals were not very bad,
we considered it a matter for rejoicing.
We were advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the New Gleason, and
when we alighted at the dingy old brick railroad station--a station
quite as unprepossessing as that at New Haven, Connecticut--we began to
feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse hitched to the
hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently felt the same, for at
first he balked, and later tried to run away.
The hotel lobby was a perfect example of its kind. There were several
drummers writing at the little desks, and several more sitting idly in
chairs adjacent to brass cuspidors. All of them looked despondent with a
despondency suggesting pie for breakfast. Behind the desk was a
sleepy-looking old clerk who, as we arrived, was very busy over a
financial transaction involving change of ownership in a two-cent stamp.
This enterprise concluded, he assigned us rooms.
Never have I wished to win the toss for rooms as I wished it when I saw
the two allotted to us, for though the larger one could not by a flight
of fancy be termed cheerful, the sight of the lesser chamber filled me
with thoughts of madness.
Of course I lost.
Never shall I forget that room. It was too small to accommodate my
trunks with any comfort, so I left them downstairs with the porter,
descending, now and then, to get such articles as I required. The
furniture, what there was of it, was of yellow pine; the top of the
dresser was scarred with the marks of many glasses and many bottles; the
lace window curtains were long, hard and of a wiry stiffness, and the
wall-paper was of a scrambled pattern all in bilious brown. During the
evening I persuaded my companion to walk with me through the town, and
once I got him out I kept him going on and on through shadowy streets
unknown to us, until, exhausted, he insisted upon returning to our
hostelry. I fancy that there are picturesque old houses on the outskirts
of the town, but with that wall paper and a terrible nostalgia occupying
my mind, I was in no state to judge of what was there.
On reaching the hotel my companion went to bed, but I remained until
late in the office, writing letters, doing anything rather than go up to
my room. When at last I did ascend I planned to read, but the
arrangement of the light was bad, so presently I put it out and lay
there sleepless and miserable, thinking of foolish things that I have
said and done during a life rich with such items, and having chills and
fever over each separate recollection. How I drifted off to sleep at
last I do not know; all I remember is waking up next morning, leaping
out of bed and dressing in frantic haste to get out of my room. There
was but one thing in it which did not utterly offend the eye: that was
the steam pipe which ascended from floor to ceiling at one corner, and
which, being a simple, honest metal tube, was not objectionable.
As we passed through the office on our way to breakfast, the bus man
entered, and in a loud, retarded chant proclaimed: "Train for the
South!"
The impressive tones in which this announcement was delivered seemed to
call for a sudden stir, a rush for bags and coats, a general exodus,
but no one in the office moved, and I remember feeling sorry for the bus
man as he turned and went out in the midst of a crushing anti-climax.
"I wonder," I said to my companion, "if anybody ever gets up and goes
when that man calls out the trains."
"I don't believe so," he replied. "I don't think he calls trains for any
such purpose. He only warns people so they will expect to hear the
train, and not be frightened when it goes through."
* * * * *
Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose, as the author of
the Declaration of Independence, the third President, the purchaser of
Louisiana, and the unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party
casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican party
blames itself on Washington and Lincoln--although the lamentable state
into which both parties have fallen is actually the fault of living men.
It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items,
Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription
which he wrote for his tombstone--a modest obelisk on the grounds at
Monticello. The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the
authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for
religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of the University of
Virginia."
Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who built the university
and the house at Monticello was great. It is more true of these
buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the
autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to
see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean
handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the
Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's nature
which can be achieved in no other way.
Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees, of
neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains. It is a supremely lovely
house, unlike any other, and, while it is too much to say that one would
recognize it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not
too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace a clear
affinity resulting from a common origin--an affinity much more apparent,
by the way, than may be traced between the work of Michelangelo on St.
Peter's at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his
"David."
The introductory paragraph to the Declaration ascends into the body of
the document as gracefully and as certainly as the wide flights of easy
steps ascend to the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully
balanced paragraph which follows, building word upon word and sentence
upon sentence into a central statement, has a form as definite and
graceful as that of the finely proportioned house; the numbered
paragraphs which follow, setting forth separate details, are like rooms
within the house, and--I have just come upon the coincidence with a
pleasant start such as might be felt by the discoverer of some complex
and important cipher--as there are twenty-seven of the numbered
paragraphs in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in
Monticello. Last of all there are two little phrases in the Declaration
(the phrases stating that we shall hold our British brethren in future
as we hold the rest of mankind--"enemies in war; in peace, friends"),
which I would liken to the small twin buildings, one of them Jefferson's
office, the other that of the overseer, which stand on either side of
the lawn at Monticello, at some distance from the house. These office
buildings face, and balance upon each other, and upon the mansion, but
they are so much smaller that to put them there required daring, while
to make them "compose" (as painters say) with the great house, required
the almost superhuman sense of symmetry which Jefferson assuredly
possessed.
The present owner of Monticello is Mr. Jefferson Monroe Levy, former
United States congressman from New York. Mr. Levy is a Democrat and a
bachelor, according to the Congressional Directory, which states further
that he inherited Monticello from an uncle, Commodore Uriah P. Levy,
U.S.N., and that the latter purchased the place in 1830 "at the
suggestion of President Jackson."
Dorothy Dix, writing in "Good Housekeeping," tells a tale which I have
heard repeatedly of the acquisition of Monticello by Uriah Levy. Says
Miss Dix:
"Monticello was sold to a stranger, and Jefferson's only daughter, Mrs.
Randolph, widowed and with eleven children, was left homeless.... A
subscription of three thousand dollars was raised ... to buy back the
house ... and this money was intrusted to a young relative of the
Jeffersons' to convey to Charlottesville. Traveling in the stagecoach
with the young man was Captain Uriah P. Levy, to whom he confided his
mission. The young man became intoxicated and dallied, but Captain Levy
hastened on to Charlottesville, and purchased Monticello for two
thousand five hundred dollars. The next day the repentant and sober
young man arrived and besought Captain Levy to take the three thousand
dollars ... and let Monticello go back to the Jefferson family. Captain
Levy refused to part with his bargain, but at his death he willed
Monticello to 'the people of the United States to be held as a memorial
of Thomas Jefferson'.... The Levy heirs contested the will, and it was
finally decided upon a technicality that 'the people of the United
States' was too indefinite a term to make the bequest binding, and the
estate passed into the hands of the Levys, and so to its present
owner...."
In a biographical note upon the latter, the Congressional Directory
states that the house is "kept open to the public all the year." My
companion and I were admitted to the grounds, but were informed that,
though the building was unoccupied, no one was permitted to enter. While
we were in the vicinity of the house we were attended by one of the men
employed on the place, who told us that when people were allowed to
roam about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had been pulled
from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of brick chipped out of the
steps, and teeth knocked from the heads of the marble lions which flank
them.
Of recent years there has been on foot a movement, launched, I believe,
by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New York, to influence the Government to
purchase Monticello from its present owner. It is difficult to see
precisely how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his property, if he
did not wish to. Nevertheless public sentiment on this subject has
become so strong that he has agreed to let the Government have
Monticello "at a price"--so, at least, I was informed in
Charlottesville.
CHAPTER XV
THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime
importance for the higher education in the whole country, and
really marks a new era.
--CHARLES FORSTER SMITH.
Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those
of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might
have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of
their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which,
individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a
supreme harmony of form and color.
The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the
Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the
Pantheon at Rome. From the rotunda, at either side, starts a
white-columned arcade connecting the various houses which are
distributed at graceful intervals along the margins of the rectangular
lawn, above which loom the tops of even rows of beautiful old trees.
Flanking the buildings of the lawn, and reached by brick walks which
pass between the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick thick
which support themselves on the snake-fence principle, by progressing in
a series of reverse curves), are the "ranges": solid rows of one-story
student dormitories built of brick and fronted by colonnades which
command other lawns and other trees.
With a single exception, restorations and additions to the university
have been made with reverence and taste, and the Brooks Museum, the one
architectural horror of the place, fortunately does not stand upon the
lawn. Since it is said that beauty could not exist were there not
ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses; certainly, after
a glance at it, one looks back with renewed delight at the structures of
the central group.
Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above the buildings and
the tree-tops, a glorious full moon. At least I suppose it always hangs
there, for though it seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed
used to it.
Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
moonlight. There could not have been a finer moonlit night, I thought,
than that cold, crisp one upon which my companion stood for two hours
beside the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty grass
and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns standing out softly
from their shadow backgrounds like phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous
blue darkness. Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him. That
drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever had.
The university ought to have, and has, many traditions, and life there
ought to be, and is, different from life in any other college. Jefferson
brought from Italy the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the
descendants of some of these Italian workmen live in Charlottesville
to-day), and when the columns were in place he brought from Europe the
professors to form the faculty, creating what was practically a small
English university in the United States. Never until, a dozen years ago,
Dr. E.A. Alderman became president, had there been such an office;
before that time the university had a rector, and the duties of
president were performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the
faculty from among its members. This was the first university to adopt
the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote,
"uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of
prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the
University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the
honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found
among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian
idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with
examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received
assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need
they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers
not only examinations, but many departments of college life, eliminating
professionalism in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and
resulting in a delightful mutual confidence between the student body and
the faculty.
Madison and Monroe were active members of the university's first board
of visitors; the first college Y.M.C.A. was started there; and among
many famous men who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar
Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, whose name
appears thus upon the "University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its
three editors. The ill-starred Poe attended the university for only one
year, at the end of which time his adopted father, Mr. Allan, of
Richmond, withdrew him because of debts he had contracted while
acquiring his education in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former
room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the magazine.
The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first
Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the
university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States
when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the
university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is
a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an
introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the
words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these
being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often,
are Anglo-Saxon.
Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to
have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally
happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come
to college thus attended.
Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life
to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal
attitude of students toward one another. There is no easy-going
casualness between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by way
of greeting. They pass each other on the walks either without speaking
(men have been punished at the university by being ignored by the entire
student body), or if they do greet each other the customary salutation
is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you, gentlemen?" First-year men are
expected to wear hats, and not to speak to upper classmen until they
have been spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university,
woe betide them if they do not heed these rules.
In the early days of the university there was an effort to exercise
restraint over students, to make them account for their goings and
comings, and to prevent their going to taverns or betting upon horse
races. Also they were obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so
great that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them. He, however,
died in the same year, and friction prevailed for perhaps a decade
longer, with many student disorders, culminating in the shooting of a
professor by a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full
freedom, and two years later the honor system was adopted.
During the university's first years young men from the far South, where
dueling was especially prevalent, did not come in large numbers to the
University of Virginia, but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges,
but about the middle of the century, as feeling between North and South
over taxation, States' Rights and slavery became more acute, these men
began to flock to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and 1860
the university almost doubled in size, and at about the same time there
developed a good deal of dueling between students.
When the War ended many men who had gone into the Confederate army at
sixteen or seventeen years of age came to Charlottesville to complete
their education. The hard life of the army had made some of these into a
wild lot, and there was a great deal of gambling and drinking during
their time, and also after it, for several succeeding generations of
students looked up to the ex-soldiers as heroes, and carried on the
unfortunate traditions left by them at the university. In the nineties,
however, a change came, and though there is still some drinking and
gambling, it is doubtful whether such vices are now more prevalent at
the University of Virginia than at many other colleges. The honor system
has never been extended to cover these points.
It is related that, in Poe's time, gambling became such a serious
obstacle to discipline and work that the university authorities set the
town marshal after a score or so of gambling students, Poe among them,
whereupon these students fled to the Ragged Mountains, near by, and
remained for two weeks, during which time Poe is said to have mightily
entertained them with stories and prophecies, including a forecast of
the Civil War, in which, he declared, two of the youths present would
fight on opposite sides.
The Poe tradition is kept vigorously alive at the university. Not long
ago a member of the Raven Society, one of the rather too numerous
student organizations, discovered the burial place of Poe's mother, who
was an actress, and who died penniless in Richmond at the age of
twenty-four and was buried with the destitute. By a happy inspiration a
fund was raised among the students for the erection of a monument to
her--an example of fine and chivalrous sentiment on the part of these
young men, which, one feels, is somehow delicately intertwined with the
traditions of the honor system.
The Poe professor of English at the university, when we were there, was
Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, who has since taken the professorship of English
at the United States Naval Academy. By a coincidence which has proved a
happy one for those who love the stories of the late Sidney Porter (O.
Henry), Dr. Smith grew up as a boy with Porter, in Greensboro, North
Carolina. Because of this, and also because of Dr. Smith's own gifts as
a writer and an analyst, it is peculiarly fitting that he should have
undertaken the work which has occupied him for several years past, the
result of which has recently been given to us in the form "The O. Henry
Biography."
Dr. Smith was Roosevelt exchange professor at the University of Berlin
in 1910-11, holding the chair of American History and Institutions.
While occupying that professorship he met the Kaiser.
"I talked with him twice," he said, "and upon the second occasion under
very delightful circumstances, for I was invited to dinner at the Palace
at Potsdam, and was the only guest, the Kaiser, Kaiserin, and Princess
Victoria Luise being present.
"The Kaiser is, of course, a very magnetic man. His eyes are his most
remarkable feature. They are very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and
he rolls them in a manner most unusual. While he is always the king and
the soldier, he can be genial and charming. One might expect a man in
his position to be blase, but that, most of all, is what he is not. He
is like a boy in his vitality and vividness, and he has a great and
persistent intellectual curiosity. It is this, I think, which used to
cause him to be compared with Colonel Roosevelt. Both would like to know
all things, and both have had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than
any other two living men, the power to bring to themselves the central
figures in all manner of world events, and thus learn at first hand,
from acknowledged authorities, about the subjects that interest
them--which is to say, everything.
"He frankly admired America. I don't mean that he said so for the sake
of courtesy to me, but that he has--or did have, then--an immense and
rather romantic interest in this country. A great many Germans used to
resent this trait in him. America held in his mind the same romantic
position that the idea of monarchy did in the minds of some of us. I
mean that the average American went for romance to stories of monarchy,
but that the Kaiser, being used to the monarchial idea, found his
romance over here. (I am, of course, speaking of him as he was five or
six years ago.) He wished to come to America, but was never able to do
so, since German law forbids it. And, perhaps because he could not come,
America was the more a sort of dream to him.
"He asked me about some of the things in Berlin which I had noticed as
being different from things at home, and when I mentioned the way that
history was kept alive in the very streets of Berlin, his eyes danced,
and he said that was one of the things he had tried to accomplish by the
erection of the numerous monuments which have been placed in Berlin
during his reign. He told me of other means by which history was kept
alive in Germany: among them that every officer has to know in detail
the history of his regiment, and that German regiments always celebrate
the anniversaries of their great days.
"He speaks English without an accent, though we might say that he spoke
it with an English accent. He told me that he had learned English before
he learned German, and had also caused his children to learn it first.
He reads Mark Twain, or had read him, and he enjoyed him, but he said
that when he met Mark Twain the latter had little or nothing to say, and
that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he got him to talk at
all. He subscribed, he told me, to 'Harper's Magazine,' and he was in
the habit of reading short stories aloud to his family, in English. He
admired the American short story, and I remember that he declared: 'The
Americans know how to plunge into a short story. We Germans are too
long-winded.'"
When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you say to yourself: "I
know that it is growing late, but I cannot bear to leave until I have
heard the rest of this"; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say
the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject. At last,
however, the grandfather's clock in the hall below his study sends up a
stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise
reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of
your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave. Nor
is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to
your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not
see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again,
because you are leaving upon the morrow.
So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer. They are
forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making
new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into
the unknown.
CHAPTER XVI
FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA
Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise for cure on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
--DRYDEN.
It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake &
Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his
name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know
that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen.
His name is C.G. Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a
light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who
needed it. If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has
taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I
judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off
hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful dining-car conductor
than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no
hearts below them!
The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of
Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race
meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and
other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed
another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which,
under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all
descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place.
On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the
kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads were there
for him to trot and gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from
barbed wire, were everywhere, for him to jump.
Throughout the week we had looked forward to this day, and even more,
perhaps, to the party which, if we could get back to Washington that
night, was to follow it; wherefore the first thing we did on reaching a
place where information was obtainable was to inquire about facilities
for leaving. Herein my companion had the advantage of me, for there was
nothing to prevent his departing immediately after the races, whereas I
must remain behind for an hour or two, to learn something of fox-hunting
as practised in this region.
By motoring immediately after the races to a neighboring town--Bluemont
if I remember rightly--and there taking an interurban trolley to some
other place, and changing cars, and going without his dinner, my
companion found that he could get to Washington by nine o'clock. My case
was different. Should I be delayed more than two hours I could not get
away at all that night, but must miss the much anticipated party
altogether; and, though my companion seemed to view this possibility
with perfect equanimity, my memories of the charming lady whom we were
to meet at the stage door, after the performance, were too clear to
permit of indifference in me. The trolley my companion meant to catch
was, however, the last one; my only hope, therefore, was to motor a
distance of perhaps a dozen miles, over roads which I was frankly told
were "middling to bad," and try to catch a train at The Plains station.
If I missed this train, I was lost, and must spend a solitary night in
such a room as I might be able to find in a strange village. That
possibility did not appeal to me. I began to wish that there was no such
thing as fox-hunting, or that, there being such a thing, I had chosen to
ignore it.
"Now," said my companion cheerfully, "we'll telegraph her."
At a telegraph office he seized the pencil and wrote the following
message:
_Will call for you to-night after performance._
To this he signed his own name.
"What about me?" I suggested, after glancing over his shoulder at the
message.
"Oh, well," said he, "there's no use in going into all that in a
telegram. It's sufficient to let her know that one of us is coming."
"But I proposed this party."
"Well," he gave in, with an air of pained patience, "what shall I say,
then? Shall I add that you are unavoidably detained?"
"Not by a jugful!" I returned. "Add that I hope to get there too, and
will make every effort to do so."
He wrote it out, sighing as he did so. Then, by careful cutting, he got
it down to fourteen words. By that time the operator couldn't read it,
so he wrote it out again--gloomily.
This accomplished, we matched coins to see who should pay for the
message. He lost.
"All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness to send
such a long telegram."
"No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the machine, "it is
not foolishness. If I can make life a little brighter for a beautiful
woman, by adding a few words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I
shall do it every time."
He looked away over the fields and did not answer me. So we drove on in
silence to where stands the beautiful manor house called Huntland, which
is the residence of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. of the Piedmont Hunt.
There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the United States in
which the master of foxhounds is not the chief financial supporter, the
sport being a very costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in
Massachusetts, of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.F.H., has the
reputation of being the best appointed. The Piedmont Hunt is, however,
one of the half dozen leading organizations of the kind, and it is
difficult indeed to imagine a finer.
In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand extensive
English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a
distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach
one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much
better than certain human beings. One building is given over to the
kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each
is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house--a house full of trophies,
hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In
a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf,
and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an extraordinary diversified
crowd.
For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one: men and women of the
type whose photographs appear in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose
costumes were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in those
publications. One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail
coach, the boot of which bore the significant initials
"F.F.V."--standing, as even benighted Northerners must be aware, for
"First Families of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors and
heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside the course; and
scattered through the gathering, like brushmarks on an impressionist
canvas, one saw the brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters
were being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others kept
arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while here and there one
saw a woman rider, her hair tightly drawn back under a mannish derby
hat, her figure slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat.
Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a sweet autumnal sun,
these things made a picture of what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in
extravagant American country life. There was something, too, about this
blending of fashionables and farmers, which made me think of the
theater; for there is, in truth, a distinct note of histrionism about
many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and
there is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people. They
like to "look the part," and they dress it with no less care than they
exercise, at other seasons, in dressing the parts of opera-going
cosmopolites, or wealthy loungers at the beaches. In other words, these
fashionables had the overtrained New York look all over them, and the
local rustics set them off as effectively as the villainous young squire
of the Drury Lane melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old
Jasper, the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the Great House to
beg the Young Master to "make an honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest
lass in all Hampshire.
About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly
nonprofessional. They bore the same relation to great races on great
tracks that a very fine performance of a play by amateurs might bear to
a professional performance.
First came a two-mile steeplechase, with brush hurdles. Then, after a
couple of minor events, a four-mile point-to-point race for hunters
ridden by gentlemen in hunt uniform. This was as stiff a race for both
horses and riders as I have ever seen, and it was very picturesque to
watch the pink coats careering up hill and down dale, now over a tall
stone wall, now over a brook or a snake fence; and when a rider went
head over heels, and lay still upon the ground where he fell, while his
horse cantered along after the field, in that aimless and pathetic way
that riderless horses have, one had a real sensation--which was the
pleasanter for knowing, a few minutes later, that the horseman had only
broken an arm.
Next was run a rollicking race for horses owned by farmers, and others,
whose land is hunted over by the Piedmont and Middleburg foxhounds; and
last occurred a great comedy event--a mule race, free for all, in which
one of the hunting men, in uniform, made such a handsome showing against
a rabble of white and colored boys, all of them yelling, all of them
beating their long-eared animals with sticks, that he would have won,
had he not deliberately pulled his mount and "thrown" the race.
The last event was not yet finished when my companion, who had become
nervous about his interurban trolley, got into a machine to drive to
Bluemont.
"Of course," he said as we parted, "we'll miss you to-night."
"Oh," I said, "I hope not. I expect to get there."
"I don't see how you can make it," said he. "You have a lot of material
to gather."
"I shall work fast."
"Well," said he, trying to speak like the voice of Conscience, "I hope
you won't forget your _duty_--that's all."
"I proposed this party to-night. It is my duty to be there."
"You didn't make any definite engagement," said he, "and, besides, your
first duty is to your editors and your readers."
Having tossed me this disgusting thought, he departed in a cloud of
dust, leaving me sad and alone, but not yet altogether in despair.
The last race over, I hastened to Mr. Thomas's house, which, by this
time, looked like an old English hunting print come to life, for it was
now crowded with pink coats. For most of the technical information
contained in this chapter I am indebted to various gentlemen whom I
encountered there.
In Virginia--which is the oldest fox-hunting State in the Union, the
sport having been practised there for nearly two centuries--the words
"hunt" or "hunting" never by any chance apply to shooting, but always
refer to hunting the fox with horse and hounds. A "hunter" is not a man
but a horse; a huntsman is not a member of the hunt but a hunt-servant;
the "field" may be the terrain ridden over by the hunt, or it may be
the group of riders following the hounds--"hunt followers," "hunting
men," and "hunting women."
The following items, from "Baily's Hunting Directory," a British annual,
give some idea of certain primary formalities and practicalities of
hunting:
HINTS TO BEGINNERS
Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably
sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give
you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.
Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is
supreme.
Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none
of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest
of them.
Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good
chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace
at big timber.
Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The
steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of
lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or
passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering
magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen,
the fox.
Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may
cause damage and annoy the farmer.
Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn
during the day; and keep well away from a covert that hounds are
drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest
you head the fox.
Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push
forward in a crowd.
If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty
of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might
jump on him.
If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N.B.--Do
not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting
room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.
If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle
over his head.
HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER
It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is
fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good
feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he
is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back.
Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during
the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can
do so.
When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the
girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a
rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.
An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.
Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard
condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft
one for weeks.
In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs,
but though some followed the hounds according to the English tradition,
there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called
"hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and
watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow
across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if
caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were
infrequently saved.
Under the traditions of English fox-hunting--traditions the strictness
of which can hardly be exaggerated--"hilltopping" is a more than
doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is
taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on
first-class hunting regions.
The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old
fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate
the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in
America in early times.
The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term
"thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as
is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come
originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed
has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of
centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic
and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason
peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these
conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and
nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest
type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the
more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though
half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent,
the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited,
for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought
out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very
fast--much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the
English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that
the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.
The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless
due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller
and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were
originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are
uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do
not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality.
Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white
markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all
packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound
lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound
is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.
There has been a long controversy as to whether the English or American
type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter
seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in
the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since,
Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester,
Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side,
each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general
suitability of the American versus the English hound for American
country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and
Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him.
In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been
organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase
Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are
members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in
Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts,
three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut,
Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan--the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit,
being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some
unrecognized hunting near Chicago.
An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States
and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales
alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles,
and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many also.
The war, however, has struck hard at hunting in the British Isles.
Baily's Hunting Directory for 1915-16, says:
"Hunting has given her best, for of those who have gone from the hunting
field to join the colors, the masters lead, as they have led in more
happy days, with a tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt
secretaries following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt servants
show over 30 per cent. No exact data are available to tell of the
multitude from the rank and file that has followed this magnificent
lead, excepting that from all the hunts there comes the same report,
that practically every man fit for service has responded to the call."
It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from hunting for the
cavalry in England at the beginning of the war; and it is to be noticed
that so soon after the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published
a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action, which
occupied more than seven large pages printed in small type.
Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season" are to be found many
items of curious early war-time interest, a few of which I quote:
Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the
South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France.
Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of
beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade
hoped to hunt Belgian hares.
Capt. E.K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the
V.C. at Nery, but died from wounds.
The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.
Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at
Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.
Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed,
three wounded, and two are missing.
Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.
Captain the Honorable R.B.F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a
prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May,
and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport.
We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged
fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day
British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual
followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an
engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels.
When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the
intruders they were shot down one by one.
Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came for me; whereupon,
taking a few sandwiches to sustain me until supper time, I set forth
through the night by Ford, for the station at The Plains.
* * * * *
The publication of the larger part of the foregoing chapter on fox
hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought me a number of letters
containing hunting anecdotes.
Mr. J.R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my attention to marked
difference in character between the red fox and the gray. The red fox,
he says, depends upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes
lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he gets up, but the
gray fox depends on cunning, and is more prone to run a few miles and
"tack."
Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the gray fox's
amazing artfulness:
"We had started a fox on three different occasions," he writes, "running
him a warm chase for about four miles and losing him every time in a
sheep pasture. Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see
what became of the fox. We started him again and he took the same route
to the pasture. There the mystery was solved. The fox jumped on the back
of a large ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The fox
then jumped off and continued his run. When the hounds came up we urged
them on to the point where the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush."
* * * * *
Another correspondent calls my attention to the fact that, in Virginia,
hunting is not merely the sport of the rich, but that the farmers are
enthusiastic members of the field--sometimes at the expense of their
cattle and crops. He relates the following story illustrative of the
point of view of the sporting Virginia farmer:
"A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to
look over farms and give advice to farmers. He went to see one farmer
in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that
his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of
hounds. The agricultural expert was scandalized. He told the farmer he
ought to begin at once to raise hogs. 'You can feed them what you feed
the dogs,' he said, 'and have good meat for your family aside from what
you sell.'
"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country
and spat ruminatively.
"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with
that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as
closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed
fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no
good when you got him.'"
CHAPTER XVII
"A CERTAIN PARTY"
Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers
From their own music when they stray.
Lost is our freedom
When we submit to women so:
Why do we need 'em
When, in their best, they work our woe?
--THOMAS CAMPION.
The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that
we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been
churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost
stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept
in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from
the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races.
All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders,
sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we
taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours.
Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the
railroad station only to find that the train was late. I had a magazine
in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place
near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a
comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my
companion--and another companion much more beautiful.
I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress,
of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon
her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink,
and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float
about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of
dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns
upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt
away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by
seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven
moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a
gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing
which so often he believes her--that she is more goddess than earthly
being; for man knows well that he himself is earthly, and that a costume
made from such dream stuffs and placed on him, would not last out the
hour. He has but to look up at the stars to realize the infinity of
space, and, similarly, but to look at her in her evening gown to realize
the divinity of woman.
And that is where she has him. For it isn't so!
At last came the train--just the dingy train to stop at such a station.
I boarded it, found a seat, and continued to dream dreams as we rattled
on toward Washington.
Even when I found myself walking through that great terminal by which
all railroads enter the capital, I hardly believed that I was there, nor
did I feel entirely myself until I had reached my room in the New
Willard.
Having started my bath, I went and knocked upon the door of the near-by
room where the clerk had told me I should find my fellow traveler.
"Oh," he said, without enthusiasm as he discovered me. "You're here, are
you?"
He looked imposing and severe in his evening dress. I felt
correspondingly dirty and humble.
"Yes," I replied meekly. "Any news?"
"None," he replied. "I've reserved a table at Harvey's. They dance
there. At first they said there was not a table to be had--Saturday
night, you know--but I told them who was to be with us, and they changed
their minds."
"Good. I'll be dressed in a little while. Silk hats?"
He nodded. I returned to my own room.
Less than an hour later, my toilet completed, I rejoined him, and
together we descended, in full regalia, to the lobby.
"Shall we take a taxi?" he suggested, as we passed out of the side
entrance.
"How far away is the theater?"
"I don't know."
We asked the carriage starter. He said it was only two or three blocks.
"Let's walk," I said.
"I don't feel like walking," he returned.
We rode.
The theater was just emptying when we arrived.
"I suppose we'd better let the cab go?" I said. "There'll be quite a
while to wait while she's changing."
"Better keep it," he disagreed. "Might not find another."
We kept it.
At the stage door there was confusion. Having completed its week in
Washington, the play was about to move elsewhere, and furniture was
already coming out into the narrow passage, and being piled up to be
taken on wagons to the train. It took us some time to find the doorman,
and it took the doorman--as it always does take doormen--a long, long
time to depart into the unknown region of dressing rooms, with the cards
we gave him, and a still longer time to return.
"Says to wait," he grunted when he came back.
Meanwhile more and more furniture had come out, menacing our shins and
our beautifully polished hats in passing, and leaving us less room in
which to stand.
We waited.
After ten minutes had passed, I remarked:
"I wish we had let the taxi go."
After twenty minutes I remarked:
"I always feel like an idiot when I have to wait at a stage door."
"I don't see why you do it, then," said he.
"And I hate it worse when I'm in evening dress. I hate the way the
actors look at us, when they come out. They think we're a couple of
Johnnies."
"And supposing they do?"
I do not know how long this unsatisfactory dialogue might have continued
had not some one come to the inside of the stage door and spoken to the
doorman, whereat he indicated us with a gesture and said:
"There they are."
At this a woman emerged. The light was dim, but I saw that she wore no
hat and had on an apron. As she came toward us we advanced.
"You wait for madame?" she asked, with the accent of a Frenchwoman.
"Yes."
"Madame receive your telegram only this afternoon," she said. "All week,
she say, she wait to hear. This morning she have receive a telegram from
Mr. Woods that say she mus' come to New York. She think you not coming,
so she say 'Yes.' Then she receive your message. She don't know where to
reach you. She can do nossing. She is desolated! She mus' fly to the
train. She is ver' sorry. She hope that maybe the gentlemans will be in
Baltimore nex' week? Yes?"
"You mean she can't come to-night?"
"Yes, monsieur. She cannot. She are fill with regret. She--"
"Perhaps," said my companion, recovering, "we can drive her to the
train?"
The maid, however, did not seem to wish to discuss this point. She shook
her head and said:
"Madame ver' sorry she cannot come."
"But I say," repeated my companion, "that we shall be delighted to drive
her to the train if she wishes."
"She ver' sorry," persisted the maid negatively.
"Oh, I see," he said. "Very well. Please say to her that we are sorry,
too."
"Yes, monsieur." The maid retired.
"I want something to eat," I remarked as we passed down the long
furniture-piled passage leading to the street.
"So do I. We have that table at Harvey's."
"I know; but--"
"That's a fact," he put in. "I mentioned her name. We can't very well go
there without her."
"And all dressed up like a pair of goats."
"No."
"There's always the hotel."
"I don't want to go back there--not now."
"Neither do I. Let's make it the Shoreham," I suggested as we emerged
upon the street.
"All right." Then, looking across the sidewalk, he added: "There's that
damned taxi!"
"Yes. We'll drive around there in it."
"No," said he, "send it away. I don't feel like riding."
We walked to the Shoreham. The cafe looked cheerful, as it always does.
We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in
the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned
men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we
said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being
rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women.
That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were women to us? Nothing!
And pretty women, least of all. Ah, pretty women! Pretty women!... Yes,
yes!
I had ordered fruit to finish off the meal, and I remember that as the
dish was set upon the table, it occurred to me that we had made a very
pleasant party of it after all.
"Do you know," I said, as I helped myself to some hothouse grapes, "I've
had a bully evening. It has been fine to sit here and have a party all
to ourselves. I'm not so sorry that she did not come!"
Then I ate a grape or two.
They were very handsome grapes, but they were sour.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LEGACY OF HATE
... Immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
--PARADISE LOST.
The last time I went abroad, a Briton on the boat told me a story about
an American tourist who asked an old English gardener how they made such
splendid lawns over there.
"First we cut the grass," said the gardener, "and then we roll it. Then
we cut it, and then we roll it."
"That's just what we do," said the American.
"Ah," returned the gardener, "but over here we've been doing it five
hundred years!"
In Liverpool another Englishman told me the same story. Three or four
others told it to me in London. In Kent I heard it twice, and in Sussex
five or six times. After going to Oxford and the Thames I lost count.
In the South my companion and I had a similar experience with the story
about that daughter of the Confederacy who declared she had always
thought "damn Yankee" one word. In Maryland that story amused us, in
Virginia it seemed to lose a little of its edge, and we are proud to
this day because, in the far southern States, we managed to grin and
bear it.
Doubtless the young lady likewise thought that "you-all" was one word.
However I refrained from suggesting that, lest it be taken for an
attempt at retaliation. And really there was no occasion to retaliate,
for the story was always told with good-humored appreciation not only of
the dig at "Yankees"--collectively all Northerners are "Yankees" in the
South--but also of the sweet absurdity of the "unreconstructed" point of
view.
Speaking broadly of the South, I believe that there survives little real
bitterness over the Civil War and the destructive and grotesquely named
period of "reconstruction." When a southern belle of to-day damns
Yankees, she means by it, I judge, about as much, and about as little,
as she does by the kisses she gives young men who bear to her the
felicitous southern relationship of "kissing cousins."
Even from old Confederate soldiers I heard no expressions of violent
feeling. They spoke gently, handsomely and often humorously of the war,
but never harshly. Real hate, I think, remains chiefly in one quarter:
in the hearts of some old ladies, the wives and widows of Confederate
soldiers--for there are but few mothers of the soldiers left. The wonder
is that more of the old ladies of the South have not held to their
resentment, for, as I have heard many a soldier say, women are the
greatest sufferers from war. One veteran said to me: "My arm was
shattered and had to be amputated at the shoulder. There was no
anesthetic. Of course I suffered, but I never suffered as my mother did
when she learned what I had endured."
Be they haters of the North or not, the old ladies of the South are
among its chief glories, and it should be added that another of those
glories is the appreciation that the South has for the white-haired
heroines who are its mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and
the unfailing natural homage that it pays them. I do not mean by this
merely that children and grandchildren have been taught to treat their
elders with respect. I do not mean merely that they love them. The thing
of which I speak is beyond family feeling, beyond the respect of youth
for age. It is a strong, superb sentiment, something as great as it is
subtle, which floods the South, causing it to love and reverence its old
ladies collectively, and with a kind of national spirit, like the love
and reverence of a proud people for its flag.
Among young men, I met many who told me, with suitable pride, of the
parts played by their fathers and uncles in the war. Of these only one
spoke with heat. He was a Georgian, and when I mentioned to him that, in
all my inquiries, I had heard of no cases of atrocious attacks upon
women by soldiers--such attacks as we heard of at the time of the German
invasion of Belgium and France--he replied with a great show of feeling
that I had been misinformed, and that many women had been outraged by
northern soldiers in the course of Sherman's march to the sea. At this
my heart sank, for I had treasured the belief that, despite the
roughness of war, unprotected women had generally been safe from the
soldiers of North and South alike. What was my relief, then, on later
receiving from this same young man a letter in which he declared that he
had been mistaken, and that after many inquiries in Georgia he had been
unable to learn of a single case of such crime. If it is indeed true
that such things did not occur in the Civil War--and I believe
confidently that it is true--then we have occasion, in the light of the
European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is
the most horrible.
The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one
Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke")
toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and
tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when
my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality
that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless
warned by members of the younger generation--and their eyes would
twinkle as they said it--to "look out for mother; she's
unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did
"look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail
old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal
demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to
her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her
home--Yankees!--we could see the light come flashing up into her eyes
as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere
civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity. By dint of self-control
on her part, and the utmost effort upon ours to be tactful, the
presentation ceremony was got over with, and after some formal speeches,
resembling those which, one fancies, may be exchanged by opposing
generals under a flag of truce, we would be rescued from her, removed
from the room, before her forbearance should be strained, by our
presence, to the point of breaking. A baleful look would follow us as we
withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming
spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming
odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at
last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier
victories.... How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that!
In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I
made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with
a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I
had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express
surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the
foreground of the southern mind.
This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters
from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South. A great number of
the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters
by the southern press, have been of no small interest to me. On at
least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to
whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my
correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error,
while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others
made my convictions more profound. Where it has been possible, and where
it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have
endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this
book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in
cases where he disagrees with me.
The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of
Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements
contained in this chapter:
In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I
the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into
Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything
under the following heads: 1. True. 2. Probable. 3. Wanting
confirmation. 4. Lies, and be careful in subsequent papers to
correct all errors in preceding ones."
Allow me to suggest that your story might, under Mr. Jefferson's
category, be placed under "2." Perhaps you went to see "The Birth
of a Nation" before you wrote it. It has been my experience that my
acquaintances among the F.F.V.'s have been far more interested in
whether Boston or Brooklyn would win the pennant than in discussing
the Civil War. By the young men of the South the War was forgotten
long ago.
This letter has caused me to wonder whether the frequency with which my
companion and I heard the Civil War discussed, may not, perhaps, have
been due, at least in part, to our own inquiries, resulting from the
consuming interest that we had in hearing of the War from those who
lived where it was fought.
Yet, after all, it seems to me most natural that the South should
remember, while the North forgets. Not all Northerners were in the war.
But all Southerners were; if a boy was big enough to carry a gun, he
went. The North almost completely escaped invasion, and upon one
occasion when a southern army did march through northern territory, the
conduct of the invading troops toward the civilian population (the false
Barbara Frietchie legend to the contrary notwithstanding) was so
exemplary as to set a record which is probably unequaled in history.[2]
The South, upon the other hand, was constantly under invasion, and the
record of destruction wrought by northern armies in the valley of the
Shenandoah, on the March to the Sea, and in some other instances, is
writ in poverty and mourning unto this day.
[2] See chapter on Colonel Taylor and General Lee.
Thus, except politically, the North now feels not the least effect from
the war. But the South knew the terrors of invasion and the pangs of
conquest, and is only growing strong again after having been ruined--as
instanced by the fact, which I came across the other day, that the tax
returns from one of the southern States have, for the first time since
the Civil War, reached the point at which they stood when it began.
So, very naturally, while the War has begun to take its place in the
northern mind along with the Revolutionary War, as something to be
studied in school under the heading "United States History," it has not,
in southern eyes, become altogether "book history," but is history that
lives--in swords hanging upon the walls of many homes, in old faded
letters, in sacks of worthless Confederate bills, in the ruins of great
houses, in lovingly preserved gray uniforms, in southern battle fields,
and in southern burial grounds where rows upon rows of tombstones, drawn
up in company front, stand like gray armies forever on parade.
Small wonder if, amid its countless tragic memorials, the South does not
forget. The strange thing is that bitterness has gone so soon; that
remembering the agonies of war and the abuses of reconstruction, the
South does not to-day hate the North as violently as ever. If to err is
human, the North has, in its treatment of the South, richly proved its
humanness; and if forgiveness is divine, the South has, by the same
token, attained something like divinity.
Had the numbskull North understood these things as it should have
understood them, there would not now be a solid Democratic South.
Such rancor as remains is, I believe, strongest in the smaller towns in
those States which suffered the greatest hardships. I know, for
instance, of one lady, from a little city in Virginia, who refused to
enter the Massachusetts Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and there
are still to be found, in Virginia, ladies who do not leave their houses
on the Fourth of July because they prefer not to look upon the Stars and
Stripes. The Confederate flag is still, in a sense, the flag of the
South. Southerners love it as one loves a pressed flower from a mother's
bridal wreath. When the Eleventh Cavalry rode from Fort Oglethorpe,
Georgia, to Winchester, Virginia, a few years since, they saw many
Confederate flags, but only one Union flag, and that in the hands of a
negro child. However, war had not then broken out in Europe. It would be
different now.
A Virginia lady told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester,
Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched
the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike,
began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently
heard some one in the town speak of Sheridan's ride.
"Auntie," she said, "was Sheridan a Northerner or a Southerner?"
Owing to the rubber dam the aunt was unable to reply, but the dentist
answered for her. "He was a drunken Yankee!" he declared vehemently.
When, later, the rubber dam was removed, the aunt protested.
"Doctor," she reproved, "you should not have said such a thing to my
niece. She is from New York."
"Then," returned the unrepentant dentist, "she has heard the truth for
once!"
Doubtless this man was an inheritor of hate, like the descendants of one
uncompromisingly bitter old Southerner whose will, to be seen among the
records of the Hanover County courthouse, in Virginia, bequeaths to his
"children and grandchildren and their descendants throughout all future
generations, the bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my heart and
soul against the Yankees, including all people north of Mason and
Dixon's line."
CHAPTER XIX
"YOU-ALL" AND OTHER SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS
Let us make an honorable retreat.
--AS YOU LIKE IT.
Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern
schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves. Such words as "rebel"
and "rebellion" are resented in the South, and the historian must go
softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in
speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows
now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from
Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great
curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the
theoretical right to secede from the Union--this being the actual
question over which the South took up arms--there is much to be said on
the southern side. Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham
School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the
question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several
scholarly and temperately written booklets.
Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of their own words,
that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as a
_compact_ between the several States. He shows that three of the States
(Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact
_conditionally_, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent
sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for
the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the
New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that
John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view
to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson's
Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government
used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle's "View of the
Constitution," a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble. Robert
E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given
this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have
honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence
to show _that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United
States Military Academy_.
Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the
Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his
published statements. He writes:
Secession was legal _theoretically_, but practically the conditions
on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little
strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not
possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which
these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.
"Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade
on the journey"--to paraphrase Goldsmith--and the only way in which
these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and
bayonet, which settled them right and finally.
Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will
be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being
over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any
circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.
"Whatever you write of the South," said our hostess at a dinner party in
Virginia, "don't make the mistake of representing any one from this paht
of the country, white oh black, educated oh ignorant, as saying
'you-all' meaning one person only."
When I remarked mildly that it seemed to me I had often seen the phrase
so used in books, and heard it in plays, eight or ten southern ladies
and gentlemen at the table pounced upon me, all at once. "Yes!" they
agreed, with a kind of polite violence, "books and plays by Yankees!"
"If," one of the gentlemen explained, "you write to a friend who has a
family, and say, according to the northern practice, 'I hope to see you
when you come to my town,' you write something which is really
ambiguous, since the word 'you' may refer only to your friend, or may
refer also to his family. Our southern 'you-all' makes it explicit."
I told him that in the North we also used the word "all" in connection
with "you," though we accented the two evenly, and did not compound
them, but he seemed to believe that "you" followed by "all" belonged
exclusively to the South.
The argument continued almost constantly throughout the meal. Not until
coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not,
for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the
tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: "Do you-all take
sugah?"
Undoubtedly it would have been wiser, and politer, to let this pass, but
the discussion had filled me with curiosity, not only because of my
interest in the localism, but also because of the amazing intensity with
which it had been discussed.
"But," I exclaimed, "you just said 'you-all,' apparently addressing me.
Didn't you use it in the singular?"
No sooner had I spoken than I was sorry. Every one looked disconcerted.
There was silence for a moment. I was very much ashamed.
"Oh, no," she said at last. "When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr.
Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made
this statement, she blushed, poor lady!
Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush,
and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read
in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular.
But aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a
point of dialect?"
Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about
the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.
"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing
gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take
sugah, oh not?"
I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that
tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly--or at least
demi-tacitly--accede to the alleged plural intent of the question.
Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take any,
thanks."
Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to
me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you
would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill."
"Well, why didn't you say so?"
"Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the
answering. It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look
plural under the singular conditions."
* * * * *
No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor
letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression),
as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in
"Collier's Weekly."
Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words,"
and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing
"you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of
the South--or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the
expression is sometimes used in the singular--the Solid South to the
contrary notwithstanding.
Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern
correspondents did on this. The unanimity of their dissent was an
impressive thing. So was the violence some of them displayed.
For a time, indeed, the heat with which they wrote, obscured the issue.
That is to say, most of them instead of explaining merely denied, and
added comments, more or less unflattering, concerning me.
Wrote a lady from Lexington, Kentucky:
I have lived in Kentucky all of my life, and have never yet heard
"you-all" used in the singular, not even among the negroes. My
grandparents and friends say they have never heard it, either.
It was needless for you to tell your Virginia hostess that
"you-all" (meaning you and your friend) were Yankees. The fact that
you criticized her language proved it. Southern people pride
themselves on their tact, and no doubt, at the time, she was
struggling to conceal a smile because of some of your own
localisms.
Many of the letters were more severe than this one, and most of them
made the point that I had been impolite to my hostess, and that, in all
probability, when she looked at me and asked, "Do you-all take sugah?"
she was playing a joke upon me, apropos the discussion which had
preceded the question. For example, this, from a gentleman of Pell City,
Alabama:
My wife is the residuary legatee of Virginia's language, inherited,
acquired and affected varieties, including the vanishing _y_;
annihilated _g_; long-distance _a_, and irresistible drawl.
To quell the unfortunate tumult that has arisen in our household as
a result of your last article in "Collier's" I am commanded to
advise you that the use of "you-all" in the singular is
absodamnlutely _non est factum_ in Virginia, save, perhaps, among
the hill people of the Blue Ridge.
Also, take notice that when your hostess, with apparent
inadvertence, used the expression in connection with sugar in your
demi-tasse, the subsequent blush was due to your failure to catch
her witticism, ignorantly mistaking it for a lapse of hers.
My wife was going to write to you herself, but I managed to divert
this cruel determination by promising to uphold the honor of the
Old Dominion. There is already too much blood being shed in the
world without spilling that of non-combatants as would have been
"you-all's" fate had she gone after you with a weapon more mighty
than the sword when in the hands of Mr. Wilson or an outraged
woman.
In face of all this and much more, however, my conviction was unshaken.
I talked it over with my companion. He remembered the episode of the
dinner table exactly as I did. Moreover, I still had my notes, made in
the hotel that night. The lady looked at me. My companion was several
places removed from her at the other side of the table. How could she
have meant to include him? And how could she have expected me to say how
he took his after-dinner coffee?
At last, to reassure myself, I wrote to the wisest, cleverest, most
trustworthy lady in the South, and asked her what it all meant.
"Well," she wrote back from Atlanta, "I will tell you, but I am not sure
that you will understand me. The answer is: _She did, but she didn't_.
She looked at and spoke to you and, of course, by all rules of logic she
could not have been intending to make you Morg's keeper in the matter of
coffee dressing. _But_ she never would have said 'you-all' if Morg had
not been in her mind as joined with you. The response, according to her
thought-connotation, would have been from you _and_ from him."
This was disconcerting. So was a letter, received in the same mail, from
a gentleman in Charleston:
It is as plain as the nose on your face that you are not yet
convinced that we in the South _never_ use "you-all" with reference
to one person. The case you mentioned proves nothing at all. The
very fact that there were _two_ strangers present justified the use
of the expression; we continually use the expression in that way,
and in such cases we expect an answer from _both_ persons so
addressed. To illustrate: just a few days ago I "carried" two girls
into an "ice-cream parlor." After we were seated, I looked at the
one nearest me, and said: "Well, what will you-all have?"
Physically we are so constructed that unless a person is cross-eyed
it is impossible to look at two persons at once; the mere fact that
I looked at the one nearest me did not mean that I was not
addressing both. I expected an answer from both, and I got it, too
(as is generally the case where ice-cream is concerned).
The subject is one to which I have devoted the most careful
attention for many years. I have been so interested in it that
almost unconsciously, whenever I myself use the expression
"you-all," or hear any one else use it, I note whether it is
intended to refer to one or to more than one person. I have heard
thousands of persons, white, black and indifferent, use the
expression, and the only ones I have ever heard use it incorrectly
are what we might call "professional Southerners." For instance,
last week I went to a vaudeville show, and part of the performance
was given by two "black-face" comedians, calling themselves "The
Georgia Blossoms." Their dialect was excellent, with the single
exception that one of them _twice_ used the expression "you-all"
where it could not _possibly_ have meant more than one person. And
I no sooner heard it than I said to myself: "There is _one_ blossom
that never bloomed in Georgia!"
Another instance is the following: I was once approached by a
beggar in Atlanta, who saluted me thus: "Say, mister, can't you-all
give me a nickel?" Had I been accompanied it would have been all
right, but I was alone, and there was no other person near me
except the hobo. Did I give him the nickel? I should say not! I
said to myself: "He is a damned Yankee trying to pass himself off
for a Southerner."
Horrid glimmerings began to filter dimly through. And yet--
Next day came a letter calling my attention to an article, written years
ago by Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, jointly, in which
they plead with northern writers not to misuse the disputed expression
by applying it in the singular.
That was another shock. I felt conviction tottering.... But she _did_
look at me.... She _didn't_ expect an answer from my companion....
And then behold! a missive from Mr. H.E. Jones, a member--and a worthy
one--of the Tallapoosa County Board of Education, and a resident of
Dadeville, Alabama. Mr. Jones' educational activities reach far beyond
Tallapoosa County, and far beyond the confines of his State, for he has
educated me. He has made me see the light.
"I want to straighten you out," he wrote, kindly. "We never use
'you-all' in the singular. Not even the most ignorant do so. But, as you
know," (Ah, that was mercifully said!) "there are some peculiar, almost
unexplainable, shades of meaning in local idioms of speech, which are
not easy for a stranger to understand. I have a friend who was reared in
Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who tells me
he would have argued the 'you-all' point with all comers for some years
following his taking up his residence here, but he is at this time as
ready as I to deny the allegation and 'chaw the alligator.'
"When your young lady, in Virginia, asked, 'Do you-all take sugar?' she
mentally included Mr. Morgan, and perhaps all other Yankees. I would ask
my local grocer, 'Will you-all sell me some sugar this morning?' meaning
his establishment, collectively, although I addressed him personally;
but I would _not_ ask my only servant, 'Have you-all milked the cow?'"
And that is the exact truth.
I was absolutely wrong. And though, having printed the ghastly falsehood
in my original article, I can hardly hope now for absolution from the
outraged South, I can at least retract, as I hereby do, and can,
moreover, thank Mr. H.E. Jones, of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, for
having saved me from a double sin; for had he not given me the simple
illustration of the grocery store, I might have repeated, now, my
earlier misstatement.
CHAPTER XX
IDIOMS AND ARISTOCRACY
Southerners have told me that they can tell from what part of the South
a person comes, by his speech, just as an Easterner can distinguish, by
the same means a New Englander, a New Yorker, a Middle-Westerner, and a
Brooklynite. I cannot pretend to have become an authority upon southern
dialect, but it is obvious to me that the speech of New Orleans is
unlike that of Charleston, and that of Charleston unlike that of
Virginia.
The chief characteristic of the Virginian dialect is the famous and
fascinating localism which Professor C. Alphonso Smith has called the
"vanishing _y_"--a _y_ sound which causes words like "car" and "garden"
to be pronounced "cyar" and "gyarden"--or, as Professor Smith prefers to
indicate it: "C^{y}ar" and "g^{y}arden." I am told that in years gone by
the "vanishing _y_" was common to all Virginians, but though it is still
common enough among members of the old generation, and is used also by
some young people--particularly, I fancy, young ladies, who realize its
fetching quality--there can be no doubt that it is, in both senses,
vanishing, and that not half the Virginians of the present day
pronounce "cigar" as "segyar," "carpet" as "cya'pet," and "Carter," as
"Cyahtah."
In Virginia and many other parts of the South one hears such words as
"aunt" correctly pronounced with the broad _a_, and such words as "tube"
and "new" properly given the full _u_ sound (instead of "toobe," and
"noo," as in some parts of the North); but, on the other hand, while the
South gives the short _o_ sound in such words as "log" and "fog," it
invariably calls a dog a "dawg." "Your" is often pronounced "yore,"
"sure" as "shore," and, not infrequently, "to" as "toe."
The South also uses the word "carry" in a way that strikes Northerners
as strange. If a Southerner offers to "carry" you to the station, or
over his plantation, he does not signify that he intends to transport
you by means of physical strength, but that he will escort you. If he
"carries you to the run" you will find that the "run" is what
Northerners call a creek; if to the "branch," or "dreen," that is what
we call a brook.
This use of the word "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old
English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing
to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable
provincialism such an application of the word as "to _carry_ (instead of
_lead_) a horse to water." If the "Gazetteer" were indeed correct in
this, then the Book of Genesis contains an American provincialism.
The customary use of the word in the North, as "to _carry_ a cane, or a
bag," is equally but no more correct than the southern usage. I am
informed by Mr. W.T. Hall, Editor of the Dothan (Alabama) "Eagle," that
the word used in his part of the country, as signifying "to bear on the
back, or shoulder," is "tote." "Tote" is a word not altogether unknown
in the North, and it has recently found its way into some dictionaries,
though the old "Georgia Gazetteer" disapproved of it. Even this word has
some excuse for being, in that it is a deformed member of a good family,
having come from the Latin, _tollit_, been transformed into the early
English "tolt," and thus into what I believe to be a purely American
word.
Other expressions which struck me as being characteristic of the South
are "stop by," as for instance, "I will stop by for you," meaning, "I
will call for you in passing"; "don't guess," as "I don't guess I'll
come"; and "Yes indeedy!" which seems to be a kind of emphatic "Yes
indeed."
"As I look back over the old South," said one white-haired Virginian,
"there were two things it was above. One was accounts and the other was
grammar. Tradesmen in prosperous neighborhoods were always in distress
because of the long credits, though gambling debts were, of course,
always punctiliously paid. As to the English spoken in old Virginia--and
indeed in the whole South--there is absolutely no doubt that its
softness and its peculiarities in pronunciation are due to the influence
of the negro voice and speech on the white race. Some of the young
people seem to wish to dispute this, but we older ones used to take the
view--half humorously, of course--that if a Southerner spoke perfect
English, it showed he wasn't a gentleman; "that he hadn't been raised
with niggers around him.""
"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 pronunciation 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 cockney dialect, without a trace of
"nigger." 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 entity 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 assured 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 embarrassing."
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 principal 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
Massachusetts 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 clustered
boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is
a disappointment, because, for all its fine spaciousness, 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 associations, 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 classic 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 documents,
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, passing 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
Cumberland 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 institution, 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 associates 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.
At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell carried off a number
of the Confederate state papers, and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the
seal, transporting it through the lines in her bustle. When later,
through Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to the
Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge--then a captain--was the officer
assigned to go to Hamilton, Ontario, to inventory and receive them. It
is said that Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time,
first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate, or a copy of
it, was later offered for sale as the original, but was found to be
spurious. When examination of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of
the Library of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear
Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back. In 1912 three
Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton, Jr., William H. White and
Thomas P. Bryan, purchased the Seal of the admiral for three thousand
dollars, subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George Bryan and
Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took the seal to London, where the
makers are still well-known engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the
identification was made complete.
No less appealing than the relics of the deceased government and great
generals who are gone, are some of the humbler items connected with the
deaths of privates in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the
most pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young girl. On a
card, beside the picture, is the story of it, so far as that story is
ever likely to be known:
Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal soldier.
Presented by C.C. Calvert, Upperville, Va.
"We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison, house regent of the
museum, "that some day some one would come in and recognize this little
picture, and that it would find its way back to those who ought to have
it, and who might by this means at last discover what became of the
soldier who was dear to them."
An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to A.V. Montgomery,
Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier
of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was
originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A.,
informing the father that his son passed away soon after he had written.
The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of
the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown
spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's
mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote:
Spotsylvania County, Va.
May 10, 1864.
Dear Father:
This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening as
courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of shell and
my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable.
I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be
delighted to read a word from your dying son. I know death is near,
that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I
have friends here, too, who are kind to me. My Friend Fairfax will
write you at my request and give you the particulars of my death.
My grave will be marked so that you may visit it if you desire to
do so, but it is optionary with you whether you let my remains rest
here or in Mississippi. I would like to rest in the graveyard with
my dear mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor
importance. Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my God to
forgive my sins & I feel that his promises are true, that he will
forgive me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength
fails me. My horse & my equipments will be left for you. Again a
long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven.
Your Dying Son,
J.R. Montgomery.
CHAPTER XXII
RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES
Richmond may again be likened to Boston as a literary center. In an
article published some years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers to
Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond in 1733, as the sprightliest
and most genial native American writer before Franklin. In the time of
Chief Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group of novelists,
historians and essayists, but the great literary name connected with the
place is that of Edgar Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the
city and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger." Matthew
Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned in an earlier chapter,
was, at another time, editor of the same periodical, as was also John
Reuben Thompson, "Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other
poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave Nadaud's familiar
poem, "Carcassonne."
Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for thirty years; Amelie
Rives was born there and still maintains her residence in Albemarle
County, Virginia, while among other writers of the present time
connected with the city either by birth or long association are, Henry
Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate
Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H.
Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier,
historian, essayist, and local character--a gentleman upon whose
shoulders such imported expressions as _litterateur_, _bon viveur_, and
_raconteur_ alight as naturally as doves on friendly shoulders.
Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions
and associations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he
introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting
under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "_an_
hotel."
Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the
Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher
and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported
in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of
which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison
about this.
"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed by the
disposition of Richmond people--human and natural, I suppose, when you
'know the author'--to identify all the imaginary persons with various
local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story
were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is
indicated, in passing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic
case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think
I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is
borrowed from life."
* * * * *
The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of
the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive,
with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at
intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart.
The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities,
it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks
in no small degree to the automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is
out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one
of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the
country.
Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious
cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling
bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs
of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis
and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on the Davis monument, which was
erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy,
describes him as "an American soldier and defender of the Constitution."
At the back of the pedestal is another inscription:
PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE
STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865.
FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR
TO PRINCIPLE.
HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST
CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS
AND STATESMEN.
It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in
life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the
inscriptions placed upon their tombstones. Such is the case with James
E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years
ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well
known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for
this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone:
Until the brakes are turned on Time,
Life's throttle valve shut down,
He wakes to pilot in the crew
That wear the martyr's crown.
On schedule time on upper grade
Along the homeward section,
He lands his train at God's roundhouse
The morn of resurrection.
His time all full, no wages docked;
His name on God's pay roll.
And transportation through to Heaven,
A free pass for his soul.
In the burial ground of old St. John's Church--the building in which
Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death"
oration--are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions
which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts
concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel.
The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones,
but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed
when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the
spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration. Having
done this to us--or perhaps it would seem more generous to say _for_
us--the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had
declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it
better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as
a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had
already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement
that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed
by me.
* * * * *
In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the
warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the
breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these
pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of
factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco,
plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work,
negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural
picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting
of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In
one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves
with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women
squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their
black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and
rafters. Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell,
mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also
with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike
in through the windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to
be a visible expression of the smell.
In the busy season "street niggers" are generally used for stemming,
which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond,
and these "street niggers," a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a
hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a
wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the character of a
Richmond "street nigger" the gentleman who took my companion and me
through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done,
and having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a quarter?"
To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place
beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No, boss, Ah _got_ a quahtah."
The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the stemming department
in a tobacco factory. Some of the singers become locally famous; also, I
was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that
reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this
singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet,
untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there
is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come
a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly
meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by
men and women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a chant to
which the workers rock as their black hands travel swiftly among the
brown leaves; then, presently, it will die away, and there will be
silence until they are again moved to song.
From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great dark bins filled with the
leaves, past big black steaming vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances,
past moist fragrant barrels, always among the almost spectral forms of
negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working over great wicker
baskets stained to tobacco color, piling up wooden frames, or operating
the powerful hydraulic presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs
of concrete hardness--so one goes on through the factory. The browns and
blacks of these interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the
color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands,
and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the
tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an
indescribably complete harmony of shade, sound, and scent.
The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed in tins is a very
different sort of place; here white labor is employed: a great many
girls seated side by side at benches working with great digital
dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling
them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so
great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above
the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers
of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the
pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to
express motion.
"May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent.
"Sure," said he.
I went up to a young woman who was working, if anything, more rapidly
than the other girls at the same bench.
"Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her fingers flashed on
ceaselessly.
"About other things?"
"Certainly."
"How many cans do you fill in a day?"
"About thirty-four to thirty-five hundred on the average."
"May I ask your name?" She gave it.
I took up one of the small identification slips which she put into each
package, and wrote her name upon the back of it. The number on the
slip--for the purpose of identifying the girl who packed the tin--was
220. Let the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes Edgeworth
Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip bearing that number, he has been
served by no less a person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly
speedy fingers.
CHAPTER XXIII
JEDGE CRUTCHFIELD'S CO'T
Dar's a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad,
En de Bad's got de all-under holt;
En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad,
En you hatter holt yo' bref fer de jolt.
--UNCLE REMUS.
My companion and I had not traveled far into the South before we
discovered that our comfort was likely to be considerably enhanced if,
in hotels, we singled out an intelligent bell boy and, as far as
possible, let this one boy serve us. Our mainstay in the Jefferson Hotel
was Charles Jackson, No. 144, or, when Charles was "off," his "side
partner," whom we knew as Bob.
Having one day noticed a negro in convict's stripes, but without a
guard, raking up leaves in Capitol Square, I asked Charles about the
matter.
"Do they let the convicts go around unguarded?" I inquired.
"They 's some of 'em can," said he. "Those is trustees."
This talk of "trustees" led to other things and finally to a strong
recommendation, by Charles, of the Richmond Police Court, as a place of
entertainment.
"Is it interesting?" I asked.
"Inter-_resting_? Yes, _suh_! Judge Crutchfield he suttinly _is_. He
done chahge me twenty-six dollahs and fo'ty cents. My brothah, he got in
fight down street, heah. Some niggers set on him. I went to he'p him an'
p'leeceman got me. He say I was resistin' p'leece. I ain't resisted no
p'leece! No, _suh_! Not _me_! But Judge Crutchfield, you can't tell him
nothin'. 'Tain't no use to have a lawyer, nuther. Judge Crutchfield
don't want no lawyers in his co't. Like 's not he cha'ge you _mo'_ fo'
_havin'_ lawyer. Then you got pay lawyer, too.
"Friend mine name Billy. One night Billy he wake up and heah some one
come pushin' in his house. He hollah: 'Who thar?'
"Othah nigger he kep' pushin' on in. He say: 'This Gawge.'
"Billy, he say: 'Git on out heah, niggah! Ain't no Gawge live heah!'
"Othah niggah, he say: 'Don't make no diff'unce Gawge live heah o' not.
He sure comin' right in! Ain't nobody heah kin stop ol' Gawge! He eat
'em alive, Gawge do! He de boss of Jackson Ward. Bettah say yo' prayehs,
niggah, fo' yo' time--has--come!'
"Billy he don't want hit nobody, but this-heah Gawge he drunk, an' Billy
_have_ t' hit 'im. Well, suh, what you think this Gawge done? He go have
Billy 'rested. _Yes_, suh! But you can't tell Judge Crutchfield nothin'.
Next mo'nin' in p'leece co't he say to Billy: 'I fine you twenty-five
dollahs, fo' hittin' this old gray-haihed man.' Yes, _suh_! 'at 's a way
Judge Crutchfield is. Can't tell _him_ nothin'. He jes' set up theh on
de bench, an' he chaw tobacco, an' he heah de cases, an' he spit, an'
evvy time he spit he spit a fine. Yes, _suh_! He spit like dis: 'Pfst!
Five dollahs!'--'Pfst! Ten dollahs!'--'Pfst! Fifteen dollahs!'--just how
he feel. He suttinly is some judge, 'at man."
Encouraged by this account of police court justice as meted out to the
Richmond negro, my companion and I did visit Justice Crutchfield's
court.
The room in the basement of the City Hall was crowded. All the benches
were occupied and many persons, white and black, were standing up. Among
the members of the audience--for the performance is more like a
vaudeville show with the judge as headliner than like a serious
tribunal--I noticed several actors and actresses from a company which
was playing in Richmond at the time--these doubtless drawn to the place
by the fact that Walter C. Kelly, billed in vaudeville as "The Virginia
Judge," is commonly reported to have taken Judge Crutchfield as a model
for his exceedingly amusing monologue. Mr. Kelly himself has, however,
told me that his inspiration came from hearing the late Judge J.D.G.
Brown, of Newport News, hold court.
At the back of the room, in what appeared to be a sort of steel cage,
were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes;
while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark,
sat the judge--a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy,
peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless
divination.
"William Taylor!" calls a court officer.
A negro is brought from the cage to the bar of justice. He is a sad
spectacle, his face adorned with a long strip of surgeon's plaster. The
judge looks at him over his glasses. The hearing proceeds as follows:
COURT OFFICER (to prisoner)--Get over there! (Prisoner obeys.)
JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Sunday drunk--Five dollars.
It is over.
The next prisoner is already on his way to the bar. He is a short, wide
negro, very black and tattered. A large black negress, evidently his
consort, arises as witness against him. The case goes as follows:
JUDGE CRUTCHFIELD--Drunk?
THE WIFE (looking contemptuously at her spouse)--Drunk? Yass, Jedge,
drunk. _Always_ drunk.
THE PRISONER (meekly)--I ain't been drunk, Jedge.
THE JUDGE--Yes, you have. I can see you've got your sign up this
morning. (Looking toward cage at back of room): Make them niggers stop
talkin' back there! (To the wife): What did he do, Mandy?
THE WIFE (angrily)--Jedge, he come bustin' in, and he come so fast he
untook the do' off'n de hinges; den 'e begins--
THE JUDGE (to the prisoner, sarcastically)--You wasn't drunk, eh?
THE PRISONER (weakly)--I might of had a drink oh two.
THE JUDGE (severely)--Was--you--_drunk_?
THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. Ah wasn't drunk. Ah don't think no man's
drunk s' long 's he can navigate, Jedge. I don't--
THE JUDGE--Oh, yes, he can be! He can navigate and navigate mighty
mean!--Ten dollars.
(At this point an officer speaks in a low tone to the judge, evidently
interceding for the prisoner.)
THE JUDGE (loudly)--No. That fine's very small. If it ain't worth ten
dollars to get drunk, it ain't worth nothing at all. Next case!
(While the next prisoner is being brought up, the judge entertains his
audience with one of the humorous monologues for which he is famous, and
which, together with the summary "justice" he metes out, keeps ripples
of laughter running through the room): I'm going to get drunk myself,
some day, and see what it does to me. [Laughter.] Mebbe I'll take a
little cocaine, too.
A NEGRO VOICE (from back of room, deep bass, and very fervent)--Oh,
_no-o-o_! Don't do dat, Jedge! [More laughter.]
THE JUDGE--Where's that prisoner? If he was a Baptist, he wouldn't be so
slow.
(The prisoner, a yellow negro, is brought to the bar. His trousers are
mended with a large safety pin and his other equipment is to match.)
THE JUDGE (inspecting the prisoner sharply)--You ain't a Richmond
nigger. I can tell that to look at you.
THE PRISONER--No, suh, Jedge. That's right.
THE JUDGE--Where you from? You're from No'th Ca'lina, ain't you?
THE PRISONER--Yas, suh, Jedge.
THE JUDGE--Six months!
(A great laugh rises from the courtroom at this. On inquiry we learn
that the "joke" depends upon the judge's well-known aversion for negroes
from North Carolina.)
Only recently I have heard Walter C. Kelly as "The Virginia Judge." Save
for a certain gentle side which Mr. Kelly indicates, and of which I saw
no signs in Judge Crutchfield, I should say that, even though Judge
Crutchfield is not his model, the suggestion of him is strongly there.
Two of Mr. Kelly's "cases" are particularly reminiscent of the Richmond
Police Court. One is as follows:
THE JUDGE--First case--Sadie Anderson.
THE PRISONER--Yassir! That's me!
THE JUDGE--Thirty days in jail. That's me! Next case.
The other:
THE JUDGE--What's your name?
THE PRISONER--Sam Williams.
THE JUDGE--How old are you, Sam?
THE PRISONER--Just twenty-four.
THE JUDGE--You'll be just twenty-five when you get out. Next case!
CHAPTER XXIV
NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD
Just as New York looks newer than Boston, but is actually older, Norfolk
looks newer than Richmond. Business and population grow in Richmond, but
you do not feel them growing as you do in Norfolk. You feel that
Richmond business men already have money, whereas in Norfolk there is
less old wealth and a great deal more scrambling for new dollars. Also
you feel that law and order count for more in Richmond than in Norfolk,
and that the strict prohibition law which not long ago became effective
in Virginia will be more easily enforced in the capital than in the
seaport. Norfolk, in short, likes the things New York likes. It likes
tall office buildings, and it dotes on the signs of commercial activity
by day and social activity by night. Furthermore, from the tops of some
of the high buildings the place actually looks like a miniature New
York: the Elizabeth River masquerading as the East River; Portsmouth,
with its navy yard, pretending to be Brooklyn, while some old-time New
York ferryboats, running between the two cities, assist in completing
the illusion. In the neighboring city of Newport News, Norfolk has its
equivalent for Jersey City and Hoboken, while Willoughby Spit protrudes
into Hampton Roads like Sandy Hook reduced to miniature.
The principal shopping streets of Norfolk and Richmond are as unlike as
possible. Broad Street, Richmond, is very wide, and is never
overcrowded, whereas Granby Street, Norfolk (advertised by local
enthusiasts as "the livest street in Virginia," and appropriately
spanned, at close intervals, by arches of incandescent lights), is none
too wide for the traffic it carries, with the result that, during the
afternoon and evening, it is truly very much alive. To look upon it at
the crowded hours is to get a suggestion of a much larger city than
Norfolk actually is--a suggestion which is in part accounted for by the
fact that Norfolk's spending population, drawn from surrounding towns
and cities, is much greater than the number of its inhabitants.
Norfolk's extraordinary growth in the last two or three decades may be
traced to several causes: to the fertility of the soil of the
surrounding region, which, intensively cultivated, produces rich
market-garden crops, making Norfolk a great shipping point for "truck";
to the development of the trade in peanuts, which are grown in large
quantities in this corner of Virginia; to a great trade in oysters and
other sea-food, and to the continually increasing importance of the
Norfolk navy yard.
In connection with the navy Norfolk has always figured prominently,
Hampton Roads having been a favorite naval rendezvous since the early
days of the American fleet. Now, however, it is announced that the cry
of our navy for a real naval base--something we have never had, though
all other important navies have them, Britain alone having three--has
been heard in Washington, and that Norfolk has been selected as the site
for a base. This is an important event not only for the Virginia
seaport, but for the United States.
Farmers who think they are in a poor business will do well to
investigate Norfolk's recent history. The "trucking" industry of Norfolk
is said to amount in the aggregate to twelve or fourteen million dollars
annually, and many fortunes have been made from it. The pioneer
"trucker" of the region was Mr. Richard Cox. A good many years ago Mr.
Cox employed a German boy, a blacksmith by trade, named Henry Kern. Kern
finally branched out for himself. When, in 1915, he died, his real
estate holdings in Norfolk and Portsmouth were valued at two million
dollars, all of which had been made from garden truck. He was but one of
a considerable class of wealthy men whose fortunes have sprung from the
same source.
Many of the truck farms have access to the water. The farmers bring
their produce to the city in their own boats, giving the port a
picturesque note. At Norfolk it is transferred to steamers which carry
it to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Baltimore and
Washington. Lately a considerable amount of truck has been shipped west
by rail, as well.
Hundreds of acres of ground in the vicinity of the city are under glass
and large crops of winter vegetables are raised. Kale and spinach are
being grown and harvested throughout the cold months; strawberries,
potatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other vegetables
follow through the spring and summer, running on into the fall, when the
corn crop becomes important. Corn is raised chiefly by the peanut
farmer, whose peanuts grow between his corn-rows.
While the banks are "carrying" the peanut farmers, pending their fall
harvest, the activities of the "truckers" are at their height, so that
the money loaned to one class of agriculturist is replaced by the
deposits of the other class; and by the same token, of course, the
peanut farmers are depositing money in the banks when the "truckers"
want to borrow. This situation, one judges, is not found objectionable
by Norfolk and Portsmouth bankers, and I have been told that, as a
corollary, these banks have never been forced, even in times of dire
panic, to issue clearing house certificates, but have always paid cash.
Norfolk has grown so fast and has so rapidly replaced the old with the
new, that the visitor must keep his eyes open if he would not miss
entirely such lovely souvenirs of an earlier and easier life, as still
remain. Who would imagine, seeing it to-day, that busy Granby Street had
ever been a street of fine residences? Yet a very few years have passed
since the old Newton, Tazwell, Dickson and Taylor residences surrendered
to advancing commerce and gave place to stores and office
buildings--the two last mentioned having been replaced by the Dickson
Building and the Taylor Building, erected less than fifteen years ago.
Freemason Street is the highway which, more than any other, tells of
olden times. For though the downtown end of this lovely old thoroughfare
has lapsed into decay, many beautiful mansions, dating from long ago,
are to be seen a few blocks out from the busier portion of the city.
Among these should be mentioned the Whittle house, the H.N. Castle
house, and particularly the exquisite ivy-covered residence of Mr.
Barton Myers, at the corner of Bank Street. The city of Norfolk ought, I
think, to attempt to acquire this house and preserve it (using it
perhaps as a memorial museum to contain historical relics) to show what
has been, in Norfolk, as against what is, and to preach a silent sermon
on the high estate of beauty from which a fine old city may fall, in the
name of progress and commercial growth.
To the credit of Norfolk be it said that old St. Paul's Church, with its
picturesque churchyard and tombs, is excellently cared for and properly
valued as a pre-Revolutionary relic. The church was built in 1730, and
was struck by a British cannon-ball when Lord Dunmore bombarded the
place in 1776. Baedeker tells me, however, that the cannon-ball now
resting in the indentation in the wall of the church is "not the
original."
When I say that St. Paul's is properly valued I mean that many citizens
told my companion and me to be sure to visit. I observe, however--and I
take it as a sign of the times in Norfolk--that an extensive,
well-printed and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the Chamber
of Commerce, contains pictures of banks, docks, breweries, mills, office
buildings, truck farms, peanut farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels,
hospitals, factories, and innumerable new residences, but no picture of
the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason Street. Nor do I
find in the booklet any mention of the history of the city or the
surrounding region--although that region includes places of the greatest
beauty and interest: among them the glorious old manor houses of the
James River; the ancient and charming town of Williamsburg, second
capital of the Virginia colony, and seat of William and Mary College,
the oldest college in the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown,
"Waterloo of the Revolution"; many important battlefields of the Civil
War; Hampton Institute, the famous negro industrial school at Hampton,
nearby; the lovely stretch of water on which the _Monitor_ met the
_Merrimac_[3]; the site of the first English settlement in America at
Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the Dismal Swamp with Lake
Drummond at its heart. But then, I suppose it is natural that the
Chamber of Commerce mind should thrust aside such things in favor of the
mighty "goober," which is a thing of to-day, a thing for which Norfolk
is said to be the greatest of all markets. For is not history dead, and
is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts
without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?
[3] The _Merrimac_, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction,
was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk. A Confederate
captain, John M. Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram, and
covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails. She is called the
first ironclad. While she was being reconstructed John Ericsson was
building his _Monitor_ in New York. The turret was first used on this
vessel. It is worth noting that at the time of the engagement between
these two ships the _Monitor_ was not the property of the Federal
Government, but belonged to C.S. Bushnell, of New Haven, who built her
at his own expense, in spite of the opposition of the Navy Department of
that day. The Government paid for her long after the fight. It should
also be noted that the _Merrimac_ did not fight under that name, but as
a Confederate ship had been rechristened _Virginia_. The patriotic
action of Mr. Bushnell is recalled by the fact that, only recently, Mr.
Godfrey L. Cabot, of Boston, has agreed to furnish funds to build the
torpedoplane designed by Admiral Fiske as a weapon wherewith to attack
the German fleet within its defenses at Kiel.
And yet the modernness on which Norfolk so evidently prides herself is
not something to be lightly valued. Fine schools, fine churches and
miles of pleasant, recently built homes are things for any American city
to rejoice in. Therefore Norfolk rejoices in Ghent, her chief modern
residence district, which is penetrated by arms of the Elizabeth River,
so that many of the houses in this part of the city look out upon pretty
lagoons, dotted over with all manner of pleasure craft. Less than twenty
years ago, the whole of what is now Ghent was a farm, and there are
other suburban settlements, such as Edgewater, Larchmont, Winona and
Lochhaven, out in the direction of Hampton Roads, which have grown up in
the last six or eight years. The Country Club of Norfolk, with a very
pleasing club-house on the water, and an eighteen-hole golf course, is
at Lochhaven, and the new naval base is, I believe, to be located
somewhat farther out, on the site of the Jamestown Exposition.
Norfolk is well provided with nearby seaside recreation places, of which
probably the most attractive is Virginia Beach, facing the ocean. Ocean
View, so called, is on Chesapeake Bay, and there are summer cottage
colonies at Willoughby Spit and Cape Henry. On the bay side of Cape
Henry is Lynnhaven Inlet connecting Lynnhaven Bay and River with
Chesapeake Bay. From Lynnhaven Bay come the famous oysters of that name,
now to be had in most of the large cities of the East, but which seemed
to me to taste a little better at the Virginia Club, in Norfolk, than
oysters ever tasted anywhere. Perhaps that was because they were real
Lynnhavens, just as the Virginia Club's Smithfield ham is real
Smithfield ham from the little town of Smithfield, Virginia, a few miles
distant. On the bank of the Lynnhaven River is situated the Old Donation
farm with a ruined church, and an ancient dwelling house which was used
as the first courthouse in Princess Anne County; and not far distant
from this place is Witch Duck Point, where Grace Sherwood, after having
been three times tried, and finally convicted as a witch, was thrown
into the river.
The several waterside places I have mentioned are more or less local in
character, but there is nothing local about Fortress Monroe, on Old
Point Comfort, just across Hampton Roads, which has for many years been
one of the most beautiful and highly individualized idling places on the
Atlantic Coast.
The old moated fortress, the interior of which is more like some lovely
garden of the last century than a military post, remains an important
coast artillery station, and is a no less lovely spot now than when our
grandparents went there on their wedding journeys, stopping at the old
Hygiea Hotel, long since gone the way of old hotels.
The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently unchanged, and is
to-day as spacious, comfortable and homelike as when our fathers and
mothers, or perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago. The
Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial youth. I
remember a ball which was given there in honor of Admiral Sampson and
the officers of his fleet, after the Spanish War. The ballroom was so
full of naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian
clothing, felt wan and lonely. Most of the evening I passed in modest
retirement, looking out upon the brilliant scene from behind a potted
palm. And yet, when my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently
visited the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the same
place. Or if it was not the same, it was one exactly like it.
The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for army and navy
people, and we observed, moreover, that honeymooning couples continue to
infest it--for Fortress Monroe has long ranked with Washington and
Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding journey.
There they all were, as of old: the young husband scowling behind his
newspaper and pretending to read and not to be thinking of his pretty
little wife across the breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being
continually photographed by her adoring mate--now leaning against a pile
on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet crossed, now standing
under a live-oak within the fortress; also there was the inevitable
young pair who simply couldn't keep their hands off from each other; we
came upon them constantly--in the sun-parlor, where she would be seated
on the arm of his chair, running her hand through his hair; wandering in
the eventide along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in to
meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his "ickle finger".
* * * * *
I recall that it was as we were going back to Norfolk from Old Point
Comfort, having dinner on a most excellent large steamer, running to
Norfolk and Cape Charles, that my companion remarked to me, out of a
clear sky, that he had made up his mind, once for all, that, come what
might, he would never, never, never get married. No, never!
CHAPTER XXV
COLONEL TAYLOR AND GENERAL LEE
Forth from its scabbard all in vain
Bright flashed the sword of Lee;
'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,
It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain,
Defeated, yet without a stain,
Proudly and peacefully.
--ABRAM J. RYAN.
Though I had often heard, before going into the South, of the devotion
of that section to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never fully
realized the extent of that devotion until I began to become a little
bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember being struck, while in Norfolk,
with the fact that portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many
offices and homes, much as one might expect, at the present time, to
find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes of France, or of Haig
in the homes of Britain. It is not enough to say that the memory of Lee
is to the South like that of Napoleon I to France, for it is more. The
feeling of France for Napoleon is one of admiration, of delight in a
national military genius, of hero-worship, but there is not intermingled
with it the quality of pure affection which fully justifies the use of
the word _love_, in characterizing the feeling of the South for its
great military leader--the man of whom Lord Wolseley said: "He was a
being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom
none I ever knew, and very few of whom I ever read are worthy to be
compared; a man who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer metal
than all other men."
Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was a self-seeking
man, and one whose personal character was not altogether admirable in
other respects, and whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's
ideal of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing for
himself, was a man of great nobility of character, and was in perfection
a Virginia gentleman. At the end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was
that of an aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was that
of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire South as almost
holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt itself martyred, and came to
look upon its great general with a love and veneration unequaled in
history, and much more resembling the feeling of France for the
canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican.
When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in Norfolk, that
Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of the Marine Bank of that city, had
served through the Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became
very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that Colonel Taylor,
though at the time indisposed and confined to his home, was so kind as
to receive us.
He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of
his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned brick house at the corner of
York and Yarmouth Streets--a slender man, not very tall, I judged
(though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but
with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his
seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner,
delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men
and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual
youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is
most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign
of it is usually to be read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark,
observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though,
indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed
white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction.
Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because
she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for their sins) was also present:
a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she
received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger.
And why not? Do not women remember some things longer than men remember
them? Do not the sweethearts who stayed at home remember the continual
dull dread they suffered while the men they loved faced danger, whereas
the absent lovers were at least in part compensated for the risks they
ran, by the continual sense of high adventure and achievement?
Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders, daughter of Captain John
L. Saunders of Virginia, who died in 1860, in the service of his
country, a commander in the United States Navy. When the war broke out
Miss Saunders, wishing to serve the Confederate Government, became a
clerk in the Surgeon General's office, at Richmond, and there she
remained while Colonel Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military
Institute, coupled with his native ability, made him valuable as an
officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part of the time as the
general's aide-de-camp, and the rest of the time as adjutant-general and
chief of staff of the Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he
was present at all general engagements of the army, under Lee.
On April 2, 1865, when Lee's gallant but fast dwindling army, short of
supplies, and so reduced in numbers as to be no longer able to stand
against the powerful forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at
Petersburg, when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy was
about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been despatched by Colonel
Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant--then the colonel went to his
commander and asked for leave of absence over night, for the purpose of
going to Richmond and being married. He tells the story in his
exceedingly interesting and valuable book, "General Lee--His Campaigns
in Virginia":
At the close of the day's work, when all was in readiness for the
evacuation of our lines under cover of the darkness of night, I
asked permission of General Lee to ride over to Richmond and to
rejoin him early the next morning, telling him that my mother and
sisters were in Richmond and that I would like to say good-by to
them, and that my sweetheart was there, and we had arranged, if
practicable, to be married that night. He expressed some surprise
at my entertaining such a purpose at that time, but when I
explained to him that the home of my bride-elect was in the enemy's
lines, that she was alone in Richmond and employed in one of the
departments of the government, and wished to follow the fortunes of
the Confederacy should our lines be reestablished farther South, he
promptly gave his assent to my plans. I galloped to the railroad
station, then at Dunlops, on the north side of the river, where I
found a locomotive and several cars, constituting the "ambulance
train," designed to carry to Richmond the last of the wounded of
our army requiring hospital treatment. I asked the agent if he had
another engine, when, pointing to one rapidly receding in the
direction of Richmond, he replied, "Yonder goes the only locomotive
we have besides the one attached to this train." Turning my horse
over to the courier who accompanied me, with directions to join me
in Richmond as soon as he could, I mounted the locomotive in
waiting, directed the engineer to detach it from the cars and to
proceed to overtake the engine ahead of us. It was what the sailors
call a stern chase and a long one. We did not overtake the other
locomotive until it had reached Falling Creek, about three-fourths
of the distance, when I transferred to it and sent the other back
to Petersburg. I reached Richmond without further incident, and
soon after midnight I was married to Elizabeth Selden Saunders....
As will be readily understood, the occasion was not one of great
hilarity, though I was very happy; my eyes were the only dry ones
in the company....
The people of Richmond were greatly excited and in despair in the
contemplation of the abandonment of their beautiful city by our
troops. General Lee had for so long a time thwarted the designs of
his powerful adversaries for the capture of the city, and seemed so
unfailing and resourceful in his efforts to hold them at bay, that
the good people found it difficult to realize that he was compelled
at last to give way. There was universal gloom and despair at the
thought that at the next rising of the sun the detested Federal
soldiers would take possession of the city and occupy its streets.
The transportation companies were busily engaged in arranging for
the removal of the public stores and of the archives of the
government. A fire in the lower part of the city was fiercely
raging, and added greatly to the excitement.
Somewhere near four o'clock on the morning of the 3d of April I
bade farewell to all my dear ones, and in company with my
brother-in-law, Colonel John S. Saunders, proceeded toward Mayo's
Bridge, which we crossed to the south side of the James, in the
lurid glare of the fire, and within the sound of several heavy
explosions that we took to be the final scene in the career of the
Confederate navy, then disappearing in smoke on the James River,
near Rockets.
Before we departed from the colonel's library, which we felt obliged to
do much sooner than we wished to, owing to the condition of his health,
he called our attention to an oil portrait of his old commander, which
occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece, and asked his
daughters to let us see his scrap-book, containing personal letters from
General Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other distinguished men, as well as
various war documents of unusual interest.
We felt it a great privilege to handle these old letters and to read
them, and the charm of them was the greater for the affection in which
the general held Colonel Taylor, as evidenced by the tone in which he
wrote. To us it was a wonderful evening.... And it still seems to me
wonderful to think that I have met and talked with a man who issued
Lee's orders, who rode forth with Lee when he went to meet Grant in
conference at Appomattox, just before the surrender, who once slept
under the same blanket with Lee, who knew Lee as well perhaps as one man
can know another, and under conditions calculated to try men to the
utmost.
As adjutant, Colonel Taylor took an active part in arranging details of
surrender and parole. He says:
Each officer and soldier was furnished for his protection from
arrest or annoyance with a slip of paper containing his parole,
signed by his commander and countersigned by an officer of the
Federal army.
I signed these paroles for all members of the staff, and when my
own case was reached I requested General Lee to sign mine, which I
have retained to the present time.
This document, with Colonel Taylor's name and title in his own
handwriting, and the signature of General Lee, I am able to reproduce
here through the courtesy of the colonel's daughters, Mrs. William B.
Baldwin and Miss Taylor, of Norfolk. It is the only parole which was
signed personally by General Lee.
[Illustration]
On the back of the little slip, which is of about the size of a bank
check, is the countersignature of George H. Sharpe, Assistant Provost
Marshal general:
[Illustration]
Following his parole Colonel Taylor rode with General Lee to Richmond.
The general seemed to be in a philosophical frame of mind, but thought
much of the future. The subject of the surrender and its consequences
was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of one incident:
On the route General Lee stopped for the night near the residence
of his brother, Mr. Carter Lee, in Powhatan County; and although
importuned by his brother to pass the night under his roof, the
general persisted in pitching his tent by the side of the road and
going into camp as usual. This continued self-denial can only be
explained upon the hypothesis that he desired to have his men know
that he shared their privations to the very last.
This was perfectly in character with Lee. Throughout the War, we learn
from Colonel Taylor's book, the general used the army ration, and lived
the army life. He would not take up his quarters in a house, because he
wished to share the lot of his men, and also because he feared that, in
the event of the house falling into the hands of the enemy, the very
fact of its having been occupied by him might possibly cause its
destruction. It was only during the last year of the War, when his
health was somewhat impaired, that he consented sometimes to vary this
rule.
Lee's chivalrous nature is well shown forth in his famous General
Orders, No. 73, issued at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a few days before
Gettysburg.
After congratulating the troops on their good conduct the general
continued as follows:
There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the part of
some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the
army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and
Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy
than in our own.
The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could
befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the
perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and
defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that
have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.
Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all
connected with them, but are subversive to the discipline and
efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present
movement. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed
men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people
have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose
abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and
offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose
favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain. The
commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the troops to
abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury
to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and
bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against
the orders on this subject.
R.E. Lee,
General.
Truly, a document to serve as a model for warriors of all future
generations, albeit one showing an utter lack of "Kultur"!
Said Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts: "I doubt if a hostile
force ever advanced into an enemy's country, or fell back from it in
retreat, leaving behind it less cause of hate and bitterness than did
the Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign."
After the war, Colonel Taylor and his wife settled in Norfolk, where,
within a very short time, a United States grand jury indicted Jefferson
Davis and General Lee for treason--this, in the case of Lee, being in
direct violation of the terms of surrender. When Grant learned of the
shameful action of the grand jury he complained to Washington and caused
the proceedings against Lee to be dropped.
In Colonel Taylor's scrap-book I found a letter written by Lee before
the indictment had been quashed, referring to the subject:
Richmond, Va.
June 17, 1865.
My dear Colonel:
I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 13th. I had
heard of the indictment by the grand jury at Norfolk, and made up
my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have no wish to
avoid any trial the government may order, and cannot flee. I hope
others may be unmolested, and that you at least may be undisturbed.
I am sorry to hear that our returned soldiers cannot obtain
employment. Tell them they must all set to work, and if they cannot
do what they prefer, do what they can. Virginia wants all their
aid, all their support, and the presence of all her sons to sustain
and recuperate her. They must therefore put themselves in a
position to take part in her government, and not be deterred by
obstacles in their way. There is much to be done which they only
can do.
Very truly yours,
R.E. Lee.
As time went on, and the more gaping wounds began to heal, Colonel
Taylor's letters from the general took in many cases a lighter and
happier tone. After some years, when four daughters had been born to
Colonel and Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general chaffed
them gently on the subject: "Give my congratulations to Mrs. Taylor," he
wrote. "Tell her I hope that when her fancy for girls is satisfied (mine
is exorbitant) she will begin upon the boys. We must have somebody to
work for them."
One of the colonel's sons was present when I came upon this letter.
"And you see," he smiled, "my father obeyed his old commander to the
last, for the next baby was a boy, and the next, and the next, and the
next, until there were as many boys as girls in our family."
* * * * *
Colonel Taylor died at his home in Norfolk, March 1, 1916, and on the
subsequent June 15, was followed by his wife.
His death leaves but three members of Lee's staff surviving, namely,
Rev. Giles B. Cooke, of Portsmouth, Virginia, Inspector General; Major
Henry E. Young, of Charleston, South Carolina, Judge Advocate General;
and Colonel T.M.R. Talcott, of Richmond, Virginia, Aide-de-Camp. Of
these officers only the first two surrendered with General Lee, Colonel
Talcott having left the staff by promotion in 1863.
Yes, two of them surrendered, but if we are to believe Charles Francis
Adams we cannot say that Lee and his forces were actually vanquished,
for as the Massachusetts soldier-author put it:
"Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally
succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in
fight."
THE HEART OF THE SOUTH
CHAPTER XXVI
RALEIGH AND JOSEPHUS DANIELS
Jedge Crutchfield give de No'th Ca'lina nigger frown;
De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate,
An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town.
--I wondah what kin be de mattuh wid ouh State?
Just as it is the fashion in the Middle West to speak jestingly of
Kansas, it is the fashion in the South to treat lightly the State of
North Carolina. And just as my companion and I, long ago, on another
voyage of discovery, were eager to get into Kansas and find out what
that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we
heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our
own conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina,
however, lies in the fact that North Carolina is, so to speak, spread
very thin. It has no great solid central city occupying a place in its
thoughts and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond, in
its relation to Virginia. Like Mississippi, it is a State of small towns
and small cities. Its metropolis, Charlotte, had, by the 1910 census,
less than 35,000 inhabitants; its seaport, Wilmington, a little more
than 25,000; its capital, Raleigh, less than 20,000; its beautiful
mountain resort, Asheville, fourth city in the State, less than 19,000.
I hasten to add that the next census will undoubtedly show considerable
growth in all these cities. In Raleigh I found every one insistent on
this point. The town is growing; it is a going place; a great deal of
new building is in progress; and when you ask about the population,
progressive citizens are prepared to do much better by their city than
the census takers did, some years ago. They talk thirty thousand,
instead of twenty, and they are ready with astonishing statistics about
the number of students in the schools and colleges as compared with the
total population of the city--statistics showing that though Raleigh is
not large she is progressive. Which is quite true.
I recollect that Judge Francis D. Winston, former Lieutenant Governor of
the State, United States District Attorney, and the most engaging
raconteur in the Carolinas, contributed a story to a discussion of
Raleigh's population, which occurred, one evening, at a dinner at the
Country Club.
"A promoter," he said, "was once trying to borrow money on a boom town.
He went to a banker and showed him a map, not of what the town was, but
of what he claimed it was going to be. 'Here,' he said, 'is where the
town hall will stand. In this lot will be the opera house. Over here we
are going to have a beautiful park. And on this corner we are going to
erect a tall granite office building.'
"'But,' said the banker, coldly, 'we lend money only on the basis of
population.'
"'That's all right,' returned the promoter. 'Measured by any known
standard except an actual _count_, we have a population of two hundred
thousand.'"
I shall not attempt to point this tale more than to recommend it to the
attention of the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in every city in
the United States.
* * * * *
Raleigh is situated within seven miles of the exact center of North
Carolina. The land on which the city stands was purchased by the State,
in 1792, from a man named Joel Lane, whose former house still stands.
The town was then laid out in a one mile square, with the site selected
for the State Capitol directly at the center of it, and lots were sold
off by the State to individuals, the proceeds of these sales being used
to build the Capitol. As a result the parks, streets and sidewalks of
the original old town still belong to the State of North Carolina, and
the city has jurisdiction over them only by courtesy of the State
government. Raleigh has, of course, much outgrown its original
dimensions, and the government of the town, outside the original square
mile at the center, is as in other towns.
While Raleigh has not the look of age which characterizes many old
southern cities, causing them to delight the eye and the imagination,
its broad streets have here and there a building old enough to remove
from the town any air of raw newness, and to make it a homelike looking
place. The sidewalks are wide; when we were in Raleigh those of the
principal streets were paved largely with soft-colored old red bricks,
which, however, were being taken up and replaced with cement. Not being
a resident of Raleigh, and consequently not having been obliged to tread
the rough brick pavements daily, I was sorry to witness this victory of
utility over beauty.
One of the pleasant old buildings is the Yarborough Hotel, at which my
companion and I stayed. The Yarborough is an exceedingly good hotel for
a city of the size of Raleigh, especially, it may be added, when that
city is in the South. The Capitol, standing among trees in a small park,
also gathers a fine flavor from age. In one of the many simple dignified
apartments of this building my companion and I were introduced to the
gentleman who was governor of the State at the time of our visit. It
seemed to me that he had a look both worn and apprehensive, and that,
while we talked, he was waiting for something. I don't know how I
gathered this impression, but it came to me definitely. After we had
departed from the executive chamber I asked the gentleman who had taken
us there if the governor was ill.
"No," he replied. "All our governors look like that after they have been
in office for a while."
"From overwork?"
"No, from an overworked jest--the jest about 'what the Governor of North
Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.' Every one who meets
the governor thinks of that joke and believes confidently that no one
has ever before thought of this application of it. So they all pull it
on him. For the first few months our governors stand it pretty well, but
after that they begin to break down. They feel they ought to smile, but
they can't. They begin to dread meeting strangers, and to show it in
their bearing. When in private life our governor had a very pleasant
expression, but like all the others, he has acquired, in office, the
expression of an iron dog."
Raleigh's most widely-known citizen is Josephus Daniels, Secretary of
the Navy, and publisher of the Raleigh "News and Observer." This paper,
published in the morning, and the "Times," a rival paper, published in
the afternoon, are, I believe, the only dailies in the city.
Mr. Daniels has been so much discussed that I was greatly interested in
hearing what Raleigh had to say of him. Every one knew him personally.
The men on his paper seemed to be very fond of him; others held various
opinions.
In 1894 Mr. Daniels came from Washington, D.C., where he had been chief
clerk in the Department of the Interior, when Hoke Smith was Secretary,
and acquired the newspaper of which he has since been proprietor. In its
first years under Mr. Daniels, the paper is said to have gone through
severe financial struggles, and there is an amusing story current, about
the way the payroll was met upon one occasion. According to this tale,
the business manager of the paper came to Mr. Daniels, one day, and
informed him that he needed sixty dollars more to make the payroll, and
didn't know where he was going to get it. The only ready asset in sight,
it is related, was several cases of a patent medicine known as "Mrs. Joe
Persons' Remedy," which had been taken by the "News and Observer" in
payment for advertising space. Mr. Daniels had a few dollars, and his
business manager had a railroad pass. With these resources the latter
went out on the road and sold the patent medicine for enough to make up
the deficit.
Until Mr. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy he seems to have
been regarded by many citizens of Raleigh, as a good, earnest,
hard-working man, possessed of considerable personal magnetism and a
good political nose--a man who could scent how the pack was running,
take a short-cut, and presently appear to be leading. In other words an
opportunist. Though he has not much education, and though as a writer he
is far from polished, it is said that he has written powerful
editorials. "When his editorials have been good," said one gentleman,
"it is because he has been stirred up over something, and because he
manages sometimes to get into his writing the intensity of his own
personality." His office used to be, and still is, when he is in
Raleigh, a sort of political headquarters, and he used to be able to
write editorials while half a dozen politicians were sitting around his
desk, talking.
With his paper he has done much good in the State, notably by fighting
consistently for prohibition and for greater public educational
advantages. The strong educational movement in North Carolina began with
a group of men chief among whom were the late Governor Charles B.
Aycock, called "the educational governor"; Dr. E.A. Alderman, who,
though president of the University of Virginia, is a North Carolinian
and was formerly president of the University of that State; Dr. Charles
D. McKeever who committed the State to the principle of higher education
for women, and other men of similar high purpose. A gentleman who was
far from an unqualified admirer of Mr. Daniels, told me that without his
aid the great educational advance which the state has certainly made of
recent years could hardly have been accomplished, and that the same
thing applies in the case of prohibition--which has been adopted in
North Carolina.
"What sort of man is he?" I asked this gentleman.
"He is the old type of Methodist," he said. "He is the kind of man who
believes that the whale swallowed Jonah. He has the same concept of
religion that he had as a child. I differ with his policies, his
politics, his mental methods, but I don't think anybody here doubts that
he is trying, not only to do the moral thing himself, but to force
others to adopt, as rules for public conduct, the exact code in which he
personally believes, and which he certainly follows. His mental
processes are often crude, yet he has much native shrewdness and the
ability to grasp situations as they arise.
"He does not come of the aristocratic class, which probably accounts for
his failure, when he first became secretary, to perceive the necessity
for discipline in the navy, and the benefits of naval tradition.
"He was an ardent follower--I might say swallower--of Bryan, gobbling
whole all of the "Great Commoner's" vagaries. It has been said, more or
less humorously, but doubtless with a foundation of fact, that he was
"Secretary of War in all of Bryan's cabinets." That shows where Bryan
placed him. Yet when Bryan broke with Wilson and made his exit from the
Cabinet, Daniels found it perfectly simple, apparently, to drop the
Bryanism which had, hitherto, been the very essence of his life, and
become a no less ardent supporter of the President.
"When he was first taken into the cabinet he evidently regarded the
finer social amenities as matters of no consequence, or even as
effeminacies. He had but little sense of the fitness of things, and was,
in consequence, continually making _faux pas_; but he is observant; he
has learned a great deal in the course of his life as a cabinet member,
both as to his work in the Department, and as to the niceties of formal
social life."
At the time of our visit to Raleigh I had not met Mr. Daniels, nor heard
him speak. Since that time I have heard him several times and have
talked with him. Also I have talked of him with a number of men who have
been thrown more or less closely in contact with him. As is well known,
naval officers detested him with peculiar unanimity. This was true up
to the time of our entering the War. Whether matters have changed
greatly since then I am unable to say. One officer, well known in the
navy, said to me quite seriously that he believed the navy would be
better off without its two best dreadnoughts if in losing them it could
also lose Mr. Daniels. Such sentiments were peculiarly unanimous among
officers. On the other hand, however, a high officer, who has been quite
close to the Secretary, informs me that it is indeed true that he has
improved as experience has come to him. This officer stated that when
Mr. Daniels first took office he seemed to be definitely antagonistic to
officers of the navy. "He appeared to suspect them of pulling political
wires and working in their own interests. That was in the days when he
seemed almost to encourage insubordination among the enlisted men, by
his attitude toward them, in contrast to his attitude towards their
superiors. Of course it was demoralizing to the service. But there has
been a marked change in the Secretary since Bryan left the Cabinet."
From several sources I have heard the same evidence. I never heard any
one say that Mr. Daniels was really an able Secretary of the Navy, but I
have heard many say that he improved.
Personally he is a very likable man. His face is kind and gentle; his
features are interestingly irregular and there are heavy wrinkles about
his mouth and eyes--the former adding something to the already humorous
twinkle of the eyes. His voice has a _timbre_ reminding me of George M.
Cohan's voice. He is hardly an orator in the sense that Bryan is, yet he
is not without simple oratorical tricks--as for example a tremolo, as of
emotion, which I have heard him use in uttering such a phrase as "the
grea-_a-a-at_ Daniel _Web_-ster!" Also, he wears a low turnover collar
and a black string tie--a fact which would not be worth noting did these
not form a part of what amounts almost to a uniform worn by politicians
of more or less the Bryan type. Almost invariably there seems to be
something of the minister and something of the actor in such men.
Once I asked one of the famous Washington correspondents what manner of
man Mr. Daniels was.
"He's a man," he said, "that you'd like to go with on a hunting trip in
his native North Carolina. He would be a good companion and would have a
lot of funny stories. He is full of kind intentions. Had you known him
before the War, and had he liked you, and had you wished to take a ride
upon a battleship, he would be disposed to order up a battleship and
send you for a ride, even if, by doing so, he muddled up the fleet a
little. That would be in line with his fixing it for moving picture
people to act scenes on a battleship's deck--which he permitted. He saw
no reason why that was not proper, and the kind of people who admire him
most are those who, likewise, see no reason why it was not proper. The
great lack in his nature is that of personal dignity--or even the
dignity which should be his because of his position. If you are sitting
beside him and he is amiably disposed toward you, he may throw his arm
over your shoulder, or massage your knee while talking with you.
"But if some friend of his were to go to him and convince him that he
lacked dignity, he is the kind of man who, in my judgment, would become
so much the worse. That is, if he attempted to attain dignity he would
not achieve it, but would merely grow arbitrary. That, to my mind, shows
his great ineradicable weakness, for it not only reveals him as a man
too little for his job, but prevents his comprehending the basic thing
upon which naval discipline is founded. Nevertheless, as a man you like
him. It is as Secretary of the Navy, and particularly as a War
Secretary, that you very definitely don't."
Some time after our visit to Raleigh my companion and I heard Secretary
Daniels speak in Charleston. He told a funny story and talked
generalities about the navy. That was before the United States entered
the War. I do not know what he meant the speech for, but what it
actually was, was a speech against preparedness. So was the speech made
on the same occasion by Lemuel P. Padgett, chairman of the House
Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a disingenuous speech, a speech to
lull the country into confidence, a speech which, alone, should have
been sufficient to prove Mr. Padgett's unfitness to serve on that
committee. Mr. Daniels argued that "Germany's preparedness had not kept
Germany out of war"; that seemed enough, but there was one thing he
said which utterly dumbfounded me. It was this:
"_The Southern statesman who serves his section best, serves the country
best._"
Let the reader reflect for a moment upon such an utterance. Carried a
little farther what would it mean? Would it not be equally logical to
say that the man who serves himself best serves the country best? It is
the theory of narrow sectionalism, and by implication, at least, the
theory of individualism as well. And sectionalism and individualism are
two of the great curses of the United States.
Compare with Mr. Daniels' words those of John Hay who, veiling fine
patriotism beneath a web of delicate humor, said:
"_In my bewilderment of origin and experience I can only put on an
aspect of deep humility in any gathering of favorite sons, and confess
that I am nothing but an American._"
Or again, compare with them the famous words of Patrick Henry:
"_I am not a Virginian, but an American._"
Clearly, one point of view or the other is wrong. Perhaps Mr. Daniels
has more light on sectional questions than had Patrick Henry or John
Hay. At all events, the Charleston audience applauded.
CHAPTER XXVII
ITEMS FROM "THE OLD NORTH STATE"
Two of the most interesting things we saw in Raleigh were the model jail
on the top floor of the new County Court House, where a lot of very
honest looking rustics were confined to await trial for making
"blockade" (otherwise moonshine) whisky, and the North Carolina Hall of
History, which occupies a floor in the fine new State Administration
Building, opposite the Capitol. At the head of the first stair landing
in the Administration Building is a memorial tablet to William Sidney
Porter ("O Henry"), who was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a
bust of the author, in relief, by Lorado Taft. Porter, it may be
mentioned, was a connection of Worth Bagley, the young ensign who was
the only American naval officer killed in the Spanish-American War.
Bagley was a brother of Mrs. Josephus Daniels. A monument to him stands
in the park before the Capitol. Aside from Porter, the only author well
known in our time whom I heard mentioned in connection with North
Carolina, was the Rev. Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar,
perhaps, in connection with the moving-picture called "The Birth of a
Nation," taken from one of his novels. Mr. Dixon was born in the town of
Shelby, North Carolina, and was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle
Baptist Church, Raleigh.
The Hall of History, containing a great variety of State relics, is one
of the most fascinating museums I ever visited. Too much praise cannot
be given Colonel Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood, of the
North Carolina Historical Society, for making it what it is. As with the
Confederate Museum in Richmond, so, here, it is impossible to give more
than a faint idea of the interest of the museum's contents. Among the
exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention a few. There
was a letter written from Paris in the handwriting of John Paul Jones,
requesting a copy of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the
Ku Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton County; and
there was an old newspaper advertisement signed by James J. Selby, a
tailor, dated at Raleigh, June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten
dollars for the capture and return of two runaways: "apprentice boys,
legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson." The last named boy was
the same Andrew Johnson who later became a distinctly second-rate
President of the United States. Also there was a peculiarly tragic Civil
War memento, consisting of a note which was found clasped in the dead
hand of Colonel Isaac Avery, of the 6th North Carolina Regiment, who was
killed while commanding a brigade on the second day at Gettysburg.
_Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy._
These words were written by the fallen officer with his left hand, his
right arm having been rendered useless by his mortal wound. For ink he
used his own life blood.
Also in the museum may be seen the chart-book of Blackbeard, the pirate,
who, one of the curators of the museum informed me, was the same person
as Edward Teach. Blackbeard, who is commemorated in the name of
Blackbeard's Island, off the coast of South Georgia, met his fate when
he encountered a cruiser fitted out by Governor Spotswood of Virginia
and commanded by Lieutenant Maynard. Maynard found Blackbeard's ship at
Okracoke Inlet, on the North Carolina coast. Before he and his men could
board the pirate vessel the pirates came and boarded them. Severe
fighting ensued, but the pirates were defeated, Maynard himself killing
Blackbeard in single combat with swords. The legend around Okracoke is
that Blackbeard's bad fortune on this occasion came to him because of
the unlucky number of his matrimonial adventures, the story being that
he had thirteen wives. It is said also that his vanquishers cut off his
head and hung it at the yard-arm of their ship, throwing his body into
the sea, and that as soon as the body struck the water the head began to
call, "Come on, Edward!" whereupon the headless body swam three times
around the ship. Personally I think there may be some slight doubt about
the authenticity of this part of the story. For, while from one point of
view we might say that to swim about in such aimless fashion would be
the very thing a man without a head might do, yet from another point of
view the question arises: Would a man whose head had just been severed
from his body feel like taking such a long swim?
And what a rich lot of other historic treasures!
Did you know, for instance, that Flora Macdonald, the Scottish heroine,
who helped Prince Charles Edward to escape, dressed as a maidservant,
after the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, came to America with her husband
and many relatives just before the Revolutionary War and settled at
Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), North Carolina? When General Donald
Macdonald raised the Royal standard at the time of the Revolution, her
husband and many of her kinsmen joined him, and these were later
captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, in 1776, and taken as
prisoners to Philadelphia. Yes; and Flora Macdonald's garter-buckles are
now in the museum at Raleigh.
A portrait of Captain James J. Waddell, C.S.N., who was a member of a
famous North Carolina family, recalls the story of his post-bellum
cruise, in command of the _Shenandoah_, when, not knowing that the War
was over, he preyed for months on Federal commerce in the South Seas.
The museum of course contains many uniforms worn by distinguished
soldiers of the Confederacy and many old flags, among them one said to
be the original flag of the Confederacy. This flag was designed by Orren
R. Smith of Louisburg, North Carolina, and was made in that town. The
journals of the Confederate Congress show that countless designs for a
flag were submitted, that the Committee on a Flag reported that all
designs had been rejected and returned, the committee having adopted one
of its own; nevertheless Mr. Smith's claim to have designed the flag
finally adopted is so well supported that the Confederate Veterans, at
their General Reunion held in Richmond in 1915, passed a resolution
endorsing it.
Also in the museum is the shot-riddled smokestack of the Confederate ram
_Albemarle_, which was built on the farm of Peter E. Smith, on Roanoke
River, and is said to have been the first vessel ever launched sidewise.
The _Albemarle_, after a glorious career, was sunk by Lieutenant
Cushing, U.S.N., in his famous exploit with a torpedo carried on a pole
at the bow of a launch. It will be remembered that the launch was sunk
by the shock and that only Cushing and one member of his crew survived,
swimming away under fire.
North Carolina also claims--and not without some justice--that the first
English settlement on this continent was not that at Jamestown, but the
one made by Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, under Amadas and Barlowe,
which landed at Roanoke Island, August 4, 1584, and remained there for
some weeks. The Jamestown Colony, say the North Carolinians, was merely
the first to _stick_.
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across the sound from Roanoke Island, is the
site of the first flight of a man in an aeroplane, the Wright brothers
having tried out their first crude plane there, among the Kill-Devil
sand dunes. A part of the original plane is preserved in the museum. Nor
must I leave the museum without mentioning the bullet-riddled hat of
General W.R. Cox, and his gray military coat, with a blood-stained gash
in front, where a solid shell ripped across. General Cox's son, Mr.
Albert Cox, was with us in the museum when we stopped to look at this
grim souvenir. "It tore father open in front," he said, "spoiled a coat
which had cost him $550, Confederate, and damaged his watchchain.
Nevertheless he lived to take part in the last charge at Appomattox, and
the watchchain wasn't so badly spoiled but what, with the addition of
some new links, it could be worn." And he showed us where the chain,
which he himself was wearing at the time, had been repaired.
I must say something, also, of the North Carolina College of Agriculture
and Mechanic Arts, an institution doing splendid work, and doing it
efficiently, both in its own buildings and through extension courses.
Fifty-two per cent. of the students at this college earn their way
through, either wholly or in part. And better yet, eighty-three per
cent. of the graduates stick to the practical work afterwards--an
unusually high record.
The president of the college, Dr. D.H. Hill, is a son of the Confederate
general of the same name, who has been called "the Ironsides of the
South."
There are a number of other important educational institutions in and
about Raleigh, and there is one which, if not important, is at all
events, a curio. This is "Latta University," consisting of a few flimsy
shacks in the negro village of Oberlin, on the outskirts of Raleigh.
"Professor" Latta is one of the rare negroes who combines the habit with
white folks of the old fashioned southern darky, and the astuteness of
the "new issue" in high finance. Years ago he conceived the idea of
establishing a negro school near Raleigh, to which he gave the above
mentioned name. He had no funds, no credit and little or no education.
Nevertheless he had ideas, the central one of which was that New England
was the land of plenty. With the "university" in his head, and with a
miscellaneous collection of photographs, he managed to make a tour of
northern cities, and came back with his pockets lined. As a result he
procured a little land, put up frame buildings, gathered a few youths
about him, and was fully launched on his career as a university
president.
So long as the money held out, Latta was content to drift along with his
school. When he came to the bottom of the bag he invested the last of
his savings in another ticket north and, armed with his title of
"president," made addresses to northern audiences and replenished his
finances with their contributions.
Finally, as the great act of his career, Latta managed to get passage to
Europe and was gone for several months. When he came back he had added a
manuscript to his possessions: "The History of My Life and Work," which
he published, and which is one of the most curious volumes I have ever
seen.
It is illustrated--largely with photographs of the author. One of the
pictures is entitled, "Rev. M.L. Latta when he first commenced to build
Latta University." This shows Latta with the tips of his fingers resting
on a small table. Another picture shows him posed with one hand raised
and the other resting on what is unmistakably the same little table. The
latter picture, however, has the caption, "Rev. M.L. Latta making a
speech in Pawtucket, R.I., at Y.M.C.A." Both pictures were all too
clearly taken in a photographer's studio. Another page shows us, "Rev.
M.L. Latta and three of his Admirable Presidents." In this case Latta
merely takes for himself the upper right-hand corner, the other eminent
persons pictured being ex-Presidents Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland.
The star illustration, however, is a "made up" picture, in which a
photograph of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted onto what
is very obviously a painted picture of a hall full of people in evening
dress, all of them gazing at Latta, who stands upon the stage,
dignified, suave, impressive, and all dressed-up by the brush of the
"re-toucher." This picture is called: "In the Auditorium at London, in
1894." Similar artfulness is shown in pictures of the "university"
buildings, where the same frame structure, photographed from opposite
ends, appears in one case as, "Young Ladies' Dormitory," and in the
other as, "Chapel and Young Men's Dormitory."
In his autobiography, Latta tells how, in the course of getting his own
schooling, he raised money by teaching a district school during
vacation. He says:
After paying my expenses, I had nearly a hundred dollars to return
to school with. When I returned I was able to dress very neatly
indeed, and the young ladies received me very cordially on the
green during social hour. Before I taught school it was a common
saying among the young ladies and young men "Latta"; but after I
returned with a hundred dollars it was "Mr. Latta" all over the
campus. I would hear the young ladies saying among themselves, "I
bet Mr. Latta will not go with you--he will correspond with me this
afternoon." I paid no attention to it. I said to myself, "Don't you
see what a hundred dollars will do?"
In another place the Professor reveals how he came to write his book:
"Professor King, one of the teachers at Latta University said to me, 'If
I had done what you have done I would have wrote a history of my life
several years ago.'"
The best part of the book, however, gives us Latta's account of his
doings in London:
Just before I left the city of London I was invited by a
distinguished friend, a close relation to Queen Victoria, to make a
speech. He told me there would be a meeting in one of the large
halls in that city. I can't just think of the name of the hall. He
invited me to be present. The distinguished friend that I have just
mentioned presided over the meeting. There was an immense audience
present. If memory serves me right, I was the only Negro in the
hall. The gentleman came to me and asked if I would make a speech.
I told him I had already delivered one address, besides several
sermons I had preached, and I thought that I would not speak again
during my stay. I accepted the invitation, however, and spoke.
The Professor then tells how he was introduced as one whose addresses
were "among the ablest ever delivered in London." Also he gives his
speech in full. Great events followed. His distinguished unnamed friend,
the "close relation of the Queen," came to him soon after, he says, and
asked him if he had "ever been to the palace."
Continues Latta:
He said to me, "If you will come over before you leave the city,
and call to see me, I will take you to the palace with me and
introduce you to the Queen." I told him I would do so, that I had
heard a good deal about the royal throne, and I would be very much
interested to see the palace. He said he thought I would, because
the government was very different from ours.
I called at his residence as I had promised, and he went with me to
the palace. The Queen knew him, of course. He was received very
cordially. Everything shined so much like gold in the palace that I
had to stop and think where I was. He introduced me to the Queen,
and told her I was from North America. He told her that I spoke at
a meeting he presided over, and he enjoyed my speech very much. He
told her we had an immense audience, and all the people were well
pleased with the speech. The Queen said she was more than glad to
meet me, and she would have liked very much to have been present,
and heard the speech that her cousin said I made.... She told me
she hoped that would not be the last visit I would make to their
city. I shook hands with her and bade her good-bye. The
distinguished friend carried me and showed me the different
departments of the palace, and I bade him good-bye.
In Raleigh, I think, they rather like Latta. It amuses them to see him
go north and get money, and it is said that he appreciates the situation
himself. He ought to. Not many southern negroes have such comfortable
homes as "Latta University's" best kept-up building--the residence of
the President.
CHAPTER XXVIII
UNDER ST. MICHAEL'S CHIMES
And where St. Michael's chimes
The fragrant hours exquisitely tell,
Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes.
--RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
It has been said--by Mrs. T.P. O'Connor, I think--that whereas
twenty-five letters of introduction for New York may produce one
invitation to dinner, one letter of introduction for Charleston will
produce twenty-five dinner invitations. If this be an exaggeration it
is, at least, exaggeration in the right direction; that is, along the
lines of truth. For though Charleston's famed "exclusiveness" is very
real, making letters of introduction very necessary to strangers
desiring to see something of the city's social life, such letters
produce, in Charleston, as Mrs. O'Connor suggests, results definite and
delightful.
Immediately upon our arrival, my companion and I sent out several
letters we had brought with us, and presently calling cards began to
arrive for us at the hotel. Also there came courteous little notes,
delivered in most cases by hand, according to the old Charleston
custom--a custom surviving pleasantly from times when there were no
postal arrangements, but plenty of slaves to run errands. Even to this
day, I am told, invitations to Charleston's famous St. Cecilia balls are
delivered by hand.
One of the notes we received revealed to us a characteristic custom of
the city. It contained an invitation to occupy places in the pew of a
distinguished family, at St. Michael's Church, on the approaching Sunday
morning. In order to realize the significance of such an invitation one
must understand that St. Michael's is to Charleston, socially, what St.
George's, Hanover Square, is to London. A beautiful old building,
surrounded by a historic burial ground and surmounted by a delicate
white spire containing fine chimes, it strongly suggests the
architectural touch of Sir Christopher Wren; but it is not by Wren, for
he died a number of years before 1752, when the cornerstone of St.
Michael's was laid. When the British left Charleston--or Charles Town,
as the name of the place stands in the early records--after occupying it
during the Revolutionary War, they took with them, to the horror of the
city, the bells of St. Michael's, and the church books. The silver,
however, was saved, having been concealed on a plantation some miles
from Charleston. Later the bells were returned.
Pre-Revolutionary Charleston was divided into two parishes: St.
Michael's below Broad Street, and St. Philip's above. Under governmental
regulation citizens were not allowed to hold pews in both churches
unless they owned houses in both parishes. St. Michael's, being nearer
the battery, in which region are the finest old houses, had, perhaps,
the wealthier congregation, but St. Philip's is, to my mind, the more
beautiful church of the two, largely because of the open space before
it, and the graceful outward bend of Church Street in deference to the
projecting portico.
When the Civil War broke out St. Philip's bells were melted and made
into cannon, but those of St. Michael's were left in place until
cannonballs from the blockading fleet struck the church, when they were
taken down and sent, together with the silver plate, to Columbia, South
Carolina, for safe-keeping. But Columbia was, as matters turned out, the
worst place to which they could have been sent. The silver was looted by
troops under Sherman, and the bells were destroyed when the city was
burned. The fragments were, however, collected and sent to England,
whence the bells originally came, and there they were recast. Their
music--perhaps the most characteristic of all the city's characteristic
sounds--has been called "the voice of Charleston." Of the silver only a
few fragments have been returned. One piece was found in a pawn shop in
New York, and another in a small town in Ohio. _Mais que voulez-vous?
C'est la guerre!_
In mentioning Charleston churches one becomes involved in a large
matter. In 1801, when St. Mary's, the first Roman Catholic church in the
city, was erected, there were already eighteen churches in existence,
among them the present Huguenot Church, at the corner of Church and
Queen Streets, which, though a very old building, is nevertheless the
second Huguenot Church to occupy the same site, the first, built in
1687, having been destroyed in the great conflagration of 1796, which
very nearly destroyed St. Philip's, as well. A number of the old
Huguenot families long ago became Episcopalians, and the descendants of
many of the early French settlers of Charleston, buried in the Huguenot
churchyard, are now parishioners of St. Michael's and St. Philip's. The
Huguenot Church in Charleston is the only church of this denomination in
America; its liturgy is translated from the French, and services are
held in French on the third Sunday of November, January and March. A
Unitarian Church was established in 1817, as an offshoot of the Scotch
Presbyterian Church, the old White Meeting House of which (built 1685,
used by the British as a granary, during the Revolution, and torn down
1806) gave Meeting Street its name. Early in the history of the
Unitarian Church, the home of which was a former Presbyterian Church
building, in Archdale Street, Dr. Samuel Gilman, a young minister from
Gloucester, Massachusetts, became its pastor. This was the same Dr.
Gilman who wrote "Fair Harvard."
* * * * *
In only one instance did the letters of introduction we sent out produce
a response of the kind one would not be surprised at receiving in some
rushing city of the North: a telephone call. A lady, not a native
Charlestonian, but one who has lived actively about the world, rang us
up, bade us welcome, and invited us to dinner.
But she was a very modern sort of lady, as witness not only her use of
the telephone--an instrument which seems in Charleston almost an
anachronism; as, for that matter, the automobile does, too--but her
dinner hour, which was eight o'clock. Very few Charleston families dine
at night. Dinner invitations are usually for three, or perhaps half-past
three or four, in the afternoon, and there is a light supper in the
evening. I judge that this custom holds also in some other cities of the
region, for I remember calling at the office of a large investment
company in Wilmington, North Carolina, to find it wearing, at three in
the afternoon, the deserted look of a New York office between twelve and
one o'clock. Every one had gone home to dinner. Mr. W.D. Howells, in his
charming essay on Charleston, makes mention of this matter:
"The place," he says, "has its own laws and usages, and does not trouble
itself to conform to those of other aristocracies. In London the best
society dines at eight o'clock, and in Madrid at nine, but in Charleston
it dines at four.... It makes morning calls as well as afternoon calls,
but as the summer approaches the midday heat must invite rather to the
airy leisure of the verandas, and the cool quiescence of interiors
darkened against the fly in the morning and the mosquito at
night-fall."
The household fly is a year-round resident of Charleston, by grace of a
climate which permits--barely permits, at its coldest--the use of the
open surrey as a public vehicle in all seasons. Sometimes, during a
winter cold-snap, when a ride in a surrey is not a pleasant thing to
contemplate, when residents of old mansions have shut themselves into a
room or two heated by grate fires, then the fly seems to have
disappeared, but let the cold abate a little and out he comes again like
some rogue who, after brief and spurious penance, resumes the evil of
his ways.
The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will find on the gate a
coiled spring at the end of which hangs a bell. By touching the spring
and causing the bell to jingle he makes his presence known. The larger
houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which cause bells to
ring within. This is true of all houses which have front gardens. The
garden gate constitutes, by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree
with the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising, doubtless, out
of the fact that almost all important Charleston houses have not only
gardens, but first and second story galleries, and that in hot weather
these galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no small
part of the family life goes on. Many Charleston houses have their
gardens to the rear, and themselves abut upon the sidewalk. Calling at
such houses, you ring at what seems to be an ordinary front door, but
when the door is opened you find yourself entering not upon a hall, but
upon an exterior gallery running to the full depth of the house, down
which you walk to the actual house door. In still other houses--and this
is true of some of the most notable mansions of the city, including the
Pringle, Huger, and Rhett houses--admittance is by a street door of the
normal sort, opening upon a hall, and the galleries and gardens are at
the side or back, the position of the galleries in relation to the house
depending upon what point of the compass the house faces, the desirable
thing being to get the breezes which are prevalently from the southwest
and the westward.
* * * * *
Charleston is very definitely two things: It is old, and it is a city.
There is the story of a young lady who asked a stranger if he did not
consider it a unique town.
He agreed that it was, and inquired whether she knew the derivation of
the word "unique."
When she replied negatively he informed her that the word came from the
Latin _unus_, meaning "one," and _equus_, meaning "a horse"; otherwise
"a one-horse town."
This tale, however, is a libel, for despite the general superstition of
chambers of commerce to the contrary, the estate of cityhood is not
necessarily a matter of population nor yet of commerce. That is one of
the things which, if we were unaware of it before, we may learn from
Charleston. Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great,
as seaports go, in trade. Were cities able to talk with one another as
men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a
hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a
parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless,
Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities
of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where
modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives
to be like nothing whatsoever. She does not have to strive to _be_
something. She _is_ something. She understands what most other American
cities do not understand, and what, in view of our almost unrestricted
immigration laws, it seems the National Government cannot be made to
understand: namely, that mere numbers do not count for everything; that
there is the matter of quality of population to be considered.
Therefore, though Charleston's white population is no greater than that
of many a place which would own itself frankly a small town, Charleston
knows that by reason of the character of its population it is a great
city. And that is precisely the case. Charleston people are city people
_par excellence_. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of
city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside
in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that
Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the
United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class;
the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and
_noblesse oblige_ are fully and widely understood, and are employed
according to the best traditions.
I have been told of a lady who remarked that Charleston was "the biggest
little place" she ever saw. I say the same. The littleness of the place,
it is sometimes pointed out, is expressed by the "vast cousinship" which
constitutes Charleston society, but it is to my mind expressed much
better in the way bicyclists leave their machines leaning against the
curb at the busiest parts of main shopping streets. Its bigness, upon
the other hand, is expressed by the homes from which some of those
bicyclists come, by the cultivation which exists in those homes, and has
existed there for generations, by the amenities of life as they are
comprehended and observed, by the wealth of the city's tradition and the
richness of its background. Nor is that background a mere arras of
recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of
ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies
absolutely unrivaled in any other American city, and equaled only in
European cities most famous for their artistry in wrought iron. It
exists also in venerable institutions--the first orphanage established
in the United States; the William Enston Home; the Public Library, one
of the first and now one of the best libraries in the country; the art
museum, the St. Cecilia Society, and various old clubs. More intimately
it exists within innumerable old homes, which are treasure-houses of
fine old English and early American furniture and of
portraits--portraits by Sir Joshua, by Stuart, Copley, Trumbull, and
most of the other portrait painters who painted from the time the
Colonies began to become civilized to the time of the Civil War--among
them S.F.B. Morse, who, I believe it is not generally known, made a
considerable reputation as a portrait painter, in Charleston, before he
made himself a world figure by inventing the telegraph.
Even without seeing these private treasures the visitor to Charleston
will see enough to convince him that Charleston is indeed
"unique"--though not in the sense implied in the story--that it is the
most intimately beautiful city upon the American continent.
To call Charleston "unique," and immediately thereafter to liken it to
other places may seem paradoxical. These likenesses are, however,
evanescent. It is not that Charleston is actually like other places, but
that here in a church building, there in an old tile roof, wrought iron
gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor will find himself delicately
reminded of Old World towns and cities. Mr. Howells, for example, found
on the East Battery a faint suggestion of Venetian palaces, and in the
doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare Street, I was struck,
also, with a Venetian suggestion so strange and subtle that I could not
quite account for it. At night some of the old narrow streets, between
Meeting Street and Bay, made me think of streets in the old part of
Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; or again I would stop before an
ancient brick house which was Flemish, or which--in the case of houses
diagonally opposite St. Philip's Church--exampled the rude architecture
of an old French village, stucco walls colored and chipped, red tile
roof and all. The busy part of King Street, on a Saturday night when the
fleet was in, made me think of Havana, and the bluejackets seemed to me,
for the moment, to be American sailors in a foreign port; and once, on
the same evening's walk, when I chanced to look to the westward across
Marion Square, I found myself transported to the central _place_ of a
Belgian city, with a slope-shouldered church across the way masquerading
as a _hotel de ville_, and the sidewalk lights at either side figuring
in my imagination as those of pleasant terrace cafes. So it was always.
The very hotel in which we stayed--the Charleston--is like no other
hotel in the United States, though it has about it something which
caused me to think of the old Southern, in St. Louis. Still, it is not
like the Southern. It is more like some old hotel in a provincial city
of France--large and white, with a pleasing unevenness of floor, and,
best of all, a great inner court which, in provincial France, might be a
_remise_, but is here a garden. If I mistake not, carriages and coaches
did in earlier times drive through the arched entrance, now the main
doorway, and into this courtyard, where passengers alighted and baggage
was taken down. The Planter's Hotel, now a ruin, opposite the Huguenot
Church, antedates all others in the city, and used to be the fashionable
gathering place for wealthy Carolinians and their families who came to
Charleston annually for the racing season.
The fact that Charleston has a rather important art museum and that its
library is one of the four oldest town libraries in the country, no less
than the fact that the city was, in its day, a great racing center,
contribute to an understanding of the spirit of the place. The present
Charleston Library is not the first public library started in the city.
Not by any means! For it was founded as late as 1748, and the original
public library of Charleston was the first one of the kind in the
country, having been started about the beginning of the 18th century.
Old records of this library still exist, showing that citizens voted so
many skins to its support. Probably the most valuable possession of the
present library are its files of Charleston newspapers, dating from 1732
to the present time, including three files covering the War of 1812, and
two covering the Civil War. These files are consulted by persons from
all over the United States, for historical material. The library has
recently moved into a good modern building. In the old building there
was a separate entrance at the back for ladies, and it is only lately
that ladies have been allowed full membership in the Library Society,
and have entered by the front door. The former custom, I suppose,
represented certain old-school sentiments as to "woman's place" such as
I find expressed in "Reminiscences of Charleston," by Charles Fraser,
published in 1854. Declares Mr. Fraser:
The ambition for literary distinction is now very prevalent with
the sex. But without any disposition to undervalue their claims,
whenever I hear of a female traveler clambering the Alps, or
describing the classic grounds of Greece and Italy, publishing her
musings in the holy land, or revealing the mysteries of the harem,
I cannot but think that for every success obtained some appropriate
duty has been neglected.
I except the poetess, for hers are the effusions of the heart and
the imagination, prompted by nature and uttered because they are
irrepressible. Many females travel for the purpose of writing and
publishing books--whilst Mrs. Heman's, Mrs. Osgood's, and Mrs.
Sigourney's volumes may be regarded as grateful offerings to the
muse in return for her inspiration.
It is hard not to be irritated, even now, with the man who wrote that,
especially in view of the fact that the two most interesting books to
come out of the Carolinas of recent years are both by women: one of them
being "Charleston--the Place and the People," by Mrs. St. Julien
Ravenel, a volume any chapter of which is worth the whole of Mr.
Fraser's "Reminiscences," and the other "A Woman Rice-Planter," by
"Patience Pennington," otherwise Mrs. John Julius Pringle (nee Alston),
who lives on her plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina.
The Carolina Jockey Club subscribed regularly to the support of the
library, and now that that club is no more, its chief memorial may be
said to rest there. This club was probably the first racing club in the
country, and it is interesting to note that the old cement pillars from
the Washington Race Course at Charleston were taken, when that course
was abandoned, and set up at the Belmont Park course, near New York.
The turf history of Carolina began (according to the "South Carolina
Gazette," dated February 1, 1734) in that same year, on the first
Tuesday in February. One of the prizes was a saddle and bridle valued at
L20. The riders were white men and the course was a green at Charleston
Neck, near where the lower depot of the South Carolina Railroad now
stands. In a "History of the Turf in South Carolina," which I found in
the library, I learned that Mr. Daniel Ravenel bred fine horses on his
plantation, Wantoot, in St. John's Parish, as early as 1761, that Mr.
Frank Huger had imported an Arabian horse, and that many other gentlemen
were importing British running horses, and were engaged in breeding. The
book refers to the old York Course, later called the New Market Course.
A long search did not, however, enable me to establish the date on which
the Jockey Club was founded. It was clearly a going institution in 1792,
for under date of Wednesday, February 15, in that year, I found the
record of a race for the Jockey Club Purse--"four mile-heats--weight for
age--won by Mr. Lynch's _Foxhunter_, after a well contested race of four
heats, beating Mr. Sumter's _Ugly_, who won the first heat; Col.
Washington's _Rosetta_, who won the second heat; Capt. Alston's _Betsy
Baker_," etc., etc.
The Civil War practically ended the Jockey Club, though a feeble effort
was, for a time, made to carry it on. In 1900 the club properties and
the funds remaining in the club treasury were transferred as an
endowment to the Charleston Library Society. The proceeds from this
endowment add to the library's income by about two thousand dollars
annually. Other items of interest in connection with the Carolina Jockey
Club are that Episcopal Church conventions used to be held in Charleston
during the racing season, so that the attending parsons might take in
the races; that the Jockey Club Ball used to be the great ball of the
Charleston season, as the second St. Cecilia Ball became later and now
is; that the Charleston Club, a most delightful club, founded in 1852,
was an outgrowth of the Jockey Club; and that the Jockey Club's old
Sherries, Ports and Madeiras went to New York where they were purchased
by Delmonico--among them a Calderon de la Barca Madeira of 1848, and a
Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818.
Mr. S.A. Nies, one of the old employees of Delmonico's, tells me that
the Calderon de la Barca of the above mentioned year is all gone, but
that Delmonico's still has a few bottles of the same wine of the vintage
of 1851.
"This wine," Mr. Nies said, "is listed on our wine card at $6.00 per
bottle. It is not the best Madeira that we have, although it is a very
fine one. Recently we served a bottle of Thompson's Auction Madeira, of
which the year is not recognizable on the label, but which to my
knowledge was an old wine forty years ago. This wine brought $25.00 a
bottle and was worth it.
"The Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818 does not figure on our wine list as we
have but a few bottles left. It is $20.00 a bottle.
"The prices brought to-day by old Madeiras and Sherries do not represent
their real values. One has but to look at the compound interest of
savings banks to realize that these wines should be selling at four
times the price they are; but unfortunately, since the advent of Scotch
whisky in the American market, the American palate seems to have
deteriorated, and if the wines were listed at the price they ought to
bring, we could not sell them. As it is, the demand for the very rare
old wines is irregular and infrequent. We keep them principally to
preserve our reputation; not for the money there is in it."
CHAPTER XXIX
HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY
The cool shade of aristocracy....
--SIR W.F.P. NAPIER.
Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our
vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of
us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the
crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a
city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely
involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as
ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product.
The original Charleston colonists were English and Irish, sent out under
Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had
granted a tract of land in the New World, embracing the present States
of Georgia and North and South Carolina. These colonists touched at Port
Royal--where the Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)--but
settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from where
Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that they transferred their
settlement to the present site of the city, naming the place Charles
Town in honor of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men able to
bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674, when New York was taken by
the English from the Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the
Carolina colony. French Protestants had, at that time, already begun to
arrive, and more came after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in
1685. In 1680 Germans came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements
in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor for a short time, and in the
same year a body of New Englanders arrived from Dorchester,
Massachusetts, establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near
the present town of Summerville, a few miles from Charleston. At that
time a number of Scottish immigrants had already arrived, though more
came in 1715 and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From 1730 to
1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland and Germany. As early
as 1740 there were several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of
the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the United States still
reside there. Also, when the English drove the Acadians from Canada in
1755, twelve hundred of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then, the
city had a population of a little more than 15,000, which was about half
the number of inhabitants then contained in the city of New York. In the
case of Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at that
time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced by Sir John Yeamans,
an early British governor. By 1850 the city had about 20,000 white
citizens and 23,000 blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which
additional number two thirds were negroes. The present population is
estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of
Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in
the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
Charleston is, if the white population only is considered, a place of
approximately 30,000 inhabitants, or, roughly speaking, about the size
of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In area, also, Charleston is small, covering less than four square
miles. This is due to the position of the city on a peninsula formed by
the convergence and confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which
meet at Charleston's beautiful Battery precisely as the Hudson River and
the East River meet at the Battery in New York. The shape of Charleston,
indeed, greatly resembles that of Manhattan Island, and though her
harbor and her rivers are neither so large nor so deep as those of the
port of New York, they are altogether adequate to a considerable
maritime activity.
The Charleston Chamber of Commerce (which, like everything else in
Charleston dates from long ago, having been founded in 1748) quotes
President Taft as calling this port the most convenient one to Panama--a
statement which the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to
dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the
map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the
place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if
Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an
earthquake--something not unknown there--and should fall due south upon
the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba
interposed, to catch the debris.
Before the Civil War, Charleston was the greatest cotton shipping port
of the country, and it still handles large amounts of cotton and rice.
Until a few years ago South Carolina was the chief rice producing State
in the Union, and history records that the first rice planted in the
Carolinas, if not in the country, was secured and sown by an early
governor of Carolina, Thomas Smith, who died in 1694. It may be noted in
passing that this Thomas Smith bore the title "Landgrave," the Lords
Proprietors, in their plan of government for the colony--which, by the
way, was drawn up by the philosopher Locke--having provided for a
colonial nobility with titles. The titles "Baron" and "Landgrave" were
hereditary in several Charleston families, and constitute, so far as I
know, the only purely American titles of nobility that ever existed.
Descendants of the old Landgraves still reside in Charleston, and in at
least one instance continue to use the word "Landgrave" in connection
with the family name.
The prosperity of Charleston since the Civil War has depended more,
perhaps, than on any other single product, upon the trade in phosphate,
large deposits of which underlie this region.
The real wonder of Charleston, the importance of the place among
American cities, cannot, however, be said to have resulted primarily
from commerce (though her commerce is growing), or from greatness of
population (though Charleston is the metropolis of the Carolinas), but
is involved with matters of history, tradition and beauty. The mantle of
greatness was assumed by this city in colonial times, and has never been
laid aside. Among the most distinguished early Americans were many
Charlestonians, and in not a few instances the old blood still endures
there, and even the old names: such names as Washington, Pinckney, Bull,
Pringle, Rutledge, Middleton, Drayton, Alston, Huger, Agassiz, Ravenel,
Izard, Gadsden, Rhett, Calhoun, Read, De Saussure, Lamar and Brawley, to
mention but a few.
* * * * *
Charleston's early history is rich in pirate stories of the most
thrilling moving-picture variety. Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and other
disciples of the Jolly Roger preyed upon Charleston shipping. Bonnet
once held a Mr. Samuel Wragg of Charleston prisoner aboard his ship
threatening to send his head to the city unless the unfortunate man
should be ransomed--the demand being for medicines of various kinds.
Colonel Rhett, of Charleston, captured Bonnet and his ship after a
savage fight, but Bonnet soon after escaped from the city in woman's
clothing. Still later he was retaken, hanged, as he deserved to be, and
buried along with forty of his band at a point now covered by the
Battery Garden, that exquisite little park at the tip of the city, which
is the favorite promenade of Charlestonians. In another fight which
occurred just off Charleston bar, a crew of citizens under Governor
Robert Johnson defeated the pirate Richard Worley, who was killed in the
action, and captured his ship, which, when the hatches were opened
proved to be full of prisoners, thirty-six of them women. Even as late
as the period of the War of 1812--a war which did not affect Charleston
save in the way of destroying her shipping and causing poverty and
distress--a case of brutal piracy is recorded. The daughter of Aaron
Burr, Theodosia by name, was married to Governor Joseph Alston. After
her father's trial for high treason, when he was disgraced and broken,
she tried to comfort him, for the two were peculiarly devoted. Intending
to visit him she set sail from Charleston for New York in a ship which
was never heard from again. Somewhere I have read a description of the
distraught father's long vigils at New York, where he would stand gazing
out to sea long after all hope had been abandoned by others. Mrs. St.
Julien Ravenel tells us in her charming book, that thirty years later an
old sailor, dying in a village of the North Carolina coast, confessed
that he had been one of a pirate crew which had captured the ship and
compelled the passengers to walk the plank. This story is also given by
Charles Gayarre, who says the pirate chief was none other than Dominick
You, who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and is
buried in that city. The husband and father of Mrs. Alston were spared
the ghastly tale, Mrs. Ravenel says, since both were already in their
graves when the sailor's deathbed confession solved the mystery.
In the Revolution, Charleston played an important part. Men of
Charleston were, of course, among the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who gave us the immortal
maxim: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" who was on
Washington's staff, was later Ambassador to France and president-general
of the Sons of the Cincinnati, was a Charlestonian of the
Charlestonians, and lies buried in St. Michael's. Such Revolutionary
names as Marion, Laurens, William Washington, Greene, Hampton, Moultrie
and Sumter are associated with the place, and two of these are reechoed
in the names of those famous forts in Charleston harbor on which
attention was fixed at the outbreak of the Civil War: Moultrie and
Sumter--the latter, target for the first shot fired in the conflict.
Nearly thirty years before the Civil War, Charleston had distinguished
herself in the arts of peace by producing the first locomotive tried in
the United States, and by constructing the first consecutive hundred
miles of railroad ever built in the world, and now, with the War, she
distinguished herself by initiating other mechanical devices of very
different character--a semi-submersible torpedo boat and the first
submarine to torpedo a hostile war vessel. True, David Bushnell of
Connecticut did construct a crude sort of submarine during the
Revolutionary War, and succeeded in getting under a British ship with
the machine, but he was unable to fasten his charge of powder and his
effort consequently failed. Robert Fulton also experimented with
submarines, or "plunging boats" as he called them, and was encouraged
for a time by Napoleon I. The little _David_ of the Confederate navy is
sometimes referred to as the first submarine but the _David_ was not
actually an underwater boat, but a torpedo boat which could run awash,
with her funnels and upper works slightly out of water. She was a
cigar-shaped vessel thirty-three feet long, built of wood, propelled by
steam, and carrying her torpedo on a pole, forward. Dr. St. Julien
Ravenel of Charleston and Captain Theodore Stoney devised the craft, and
she was built by funds subscribed by Charleston merchants. In command of
Lieutenant W.T. Glassell, C.S.N., and with three other men aboard, she
torpedoed the United States ship _New Ironsides_, flagship of the fleet
blockading Charleston. The _New Ironsides_ was crippled, but not lost.
After this United States vessels blockading Charleston protected
themselves with booms. This resulted in the construction of an actual
undersea torpedo boat, the _Hunley_. This extraordinary vessel has been
spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as
the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews
on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline
engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together
turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated
sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again.
Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United
States man-o'-war _Housatonic_, but at the same time went down, herself,
drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on
the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the
Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo
boats--1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men
who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them
Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names
of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.
* * * * *
Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British
governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a
Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand
pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house
which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this
house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when
it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to
representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great
Britain, where they remained.
The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the Brewton house,
perhaps the most superb old residence in the city, was the headquarters
of General Sir Henry Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was
the residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander who
succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside the town at Drayton Hall,
which still stands, on the Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis
was exchanged for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian, who,
though he wept over the Declaration of Independence, was before long
president of the Continental Congress, and later went to France, where
he was associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in
negotiating the treaty of peace and independence for America.
Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the
superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that
Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and
reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have
cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched
buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were
Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for
even a Yankee to forgive him.
Even without the aid of the Northern general, the city has been able to
furnish disastrous conflagrations of her own, over a period of two
centuries and more, and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles
Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because of fires, many
of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look
of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886,
an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until
repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the
time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell
fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented
roof. It is recorded that when the shock came, an Englishman was in the
house, and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed others aside.
As he reached the front steps, however, the battlements came crashing
down. He was the one person from that house who perished, and his only
monument is the patch of comparatively new stone where the broken steps
have been repaired.
* * * * *
My companion and I achieved entrance to one of the famous old Charleston
houses which we had been particularly anxious to see, through the
kindness of a lady to whom we had a letter of introduction, who happened
to be a relative of the owner of the house.
It seems necessary to explain, at this juncture, that in Charleston,
many proper names of foreign origin have been corrupted in
pronunciation. A few examples will suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst,
conspicuous in the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced
"Van-Dross"; Legare, the name of another distinguished old family,
commemorated in the name of Legare Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De
Saussure has become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first
syllable, and Prioleau is called "Pray-low."
I was unaware of these matters when my companion and I visited the
ancient house I speak of. Though I had heard the name of the proprietor
of the mansion spoken many times, and recognized it as a distinguished
Charleston name, I had never seen it written; however, without having
given the matter much thought, I had, unfortunately, reached my own
conclusions as to how it was spelled. Still more unfortunately, while I
was delighting in the drawing-room of that wonderful old house, with the
portraits of ladies in powdered hair and men in cocked hats and periwigs
looking down upon me from the walls, I was impelled to reassure myself
as to the spelling of the name. Let us assume that the name sounded like
"Bowfee." That was not it but it will suffice for illustration.
"I suppose," I said to our charming cicerone, "that the family name is
spelled 'B-o-w-f-e-e'?"
I had no sooner spoken than I realized, with a sudden access of horror
what I had done. In guessing I had sinned, but in guessing wrong I had
ruined myself. All this came to me instantly and positively, as by a
psychic message of unparalleled definiteness from the dead ancestors
whose portraits hung upon the paneling. It was as though they had joined
in a great ghostly shout of execration, which was the more awful because
it was a silent shout that jarred upon the senses rather than the ear
drums. Then, before the lady replied, while the sound of my own voice
saying "B-o-w-f-e-e" seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I
suddenly comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood that,
compared with Charleston, Boston is as a rough mining camp, while New
York hardly exists at all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity.
There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed
from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was
not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was
merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone
something of gentleness.
"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot
origin."
Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor
to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her
sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my
embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an
Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had
been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That,
for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not
dragged the Emperor into the conversation.
"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."
This the lady did not dispute.
Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a
detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this
lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I
had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect
is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and
darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side
by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our
rooms.
Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my
bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into
a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In
the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I
delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one
sleeve-vent, above the cuff.
"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he
demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"
"I don't always," I answered apologetically.
"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember
where we are to be taken to-morrow?"
"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."
"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off
any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell
Pringle."
CHAPTER XXX
POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA
Charleston is very definitely a part of South Carolina. That is not
always the case with a State and its chief city. It is not the case with
the State and the City of New York. New York City has about the same
relation to New York State as a goldpiece has to a large table-top on
one corner of which it lies. Charleston, on the other hand, harmonizes
into its state setting, as a beautiful ancient vase harmonizes into the
setting afforded by some rare old cabinet. Moreover, Charleston's
individuality amongst cities is more or less duplicated in South
Carolina's individuality amongst States. South Carolina is a State as
definitely marked--though in altogether different ways--as Kansas or
California. It is a State that does nothing by halves. It has
rattlesnakes larger and more venomous than other rattlesnakes, and it
has twice had the disgraceful Cole Blease, otherwise
"To-hell-with-the-Constitution" Blease, as governor. For senator it has
the old war-horse Tillman, a man so admired for his power that, in our
easy-going way, we almost forgive his dives into the pork-barrel.
Tillman has been to South Carolina more or less what the late Senator
Hale was to his section of New England. Hale grabbed a navy yard for
Kittery, Maine (the Portsmouth yard), where there never should have been
a navy yard; Tillman performed a like service, under like circumstances,
for Charleston. Both are purely political yards. Naval officers opposed
them, but were overridden by politicians, as so often happens. For in
time of peace the army and the navy are political footballs, and it is
only when war comes that the politicians cease kicking them about and
cry: "Now, football, turn into a cannon-ball, and save your country and
your country's flag!" For obviously, if the flag cannot be saved, the
politicians will be without a "starry banner" to gesture at and roar
about.
Now, of course, with war upon us, any navy yard is a blessing, and the
Charleston yard is being used, as it should be, to the utmost. But in
time of peace the yard comes in for much criticism from the navy, the
contention being that it is not favorably located from a strategic point
of view, and that, owing to bars in the Cooper River, up which it is
situated, it cannot be entered by large ships. The point is also made
that while labor is cheaper at this yard than at any other, skilled
metal-workers are hard to get. Friends of the yard contend, upon the
other hand, that it is desirable because of its convenience to the
Caribbean Sea, where, according to naval theory, this country will some
day have to fight a battle in defense of the Panama Canal. The Pensacola
yard, it is pointed out, is exposed and can be bombarded, whereas the
Charleston yard is far enough inland to be safe from sea attack. As to
the channel, it is navigable for destroyers and other small
craft--though whether it would be so to a large destroyer which had been
injured and was drawing more water than usual, I do not know. The
practical situation of the navy, with regard to this and some of the
other political yards, is like that of some man who has been left a lot
of heterogeneous houses, scattered about town, none of them suited to
his purposes, and who is obliged to scatter his family amongst them as
best he can, or else abandon them and build a new house. We have been
following the former course, and are only now preparing to adopt the
latter, by establishing a naval base at Norfolk, as mentioned in an
earlier chapter.
Charleston politics have been peculiar. Until a few years ago the
government of the city had long rested in the hands of a few old
families, among them the Gadsdens and the Rhetts. The overthrow of this
ancient and aristocratic rule by the election to the mayoralty of John
P. Grace, an alleged "friend of the people," was spoken of by the New
York "Sun," as being not a mere change in municipal government, but the
fall of a dynasty which had controlled the city politically, financially
and socially for a century and a half. Mr. Grace may be dismissed with
the remark that he supported Blease and that he is editor of the
recently founded Charleston "American," which I have heard called a
Hearst newspaper, and which certainly wears the Hearst look about it.
On January 19, 1917, this newspaper printed a full account of the ball
of the St. Cecilia Society, Charleston's most sacred social
organization. Never before in the history of the St. Cecilia Society,
covering a period of a century and a half, had an account of one of its
balls, and the names of those attending, been printed. The publication
caused a great stir in the city and resulted in an editorial, said to
have been written by Grace, which appeared next day, and which reveals
something of Charleston tradition and something of Grace, as well. It
was headed "The Saint Cecilia Ball," and ran as follows:
We carried on yesterday a full account of the famous Saint Cecilia
Ball. From the foundation of Charleston until the present moment it
has been regarded as an unwritten law that the annual events of
this ancient society shall not be touched upon.
Of course it was permissible for the thirty-five thousand poor
white people of Charleston to talk about the Saint Cecilia, and to
indulge in the thrilling sensation that comes to the proverbial cat
when she looks at a queen. Some of them, moved by curiosity, even
ventured within half a block of the Hibernian Hall to observe from
afar the gay festivities.
The press being forbidden to cover Saint Cecilia events, there grew
up in the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the
scenes. While the Saint Cecilia has enjoyed the happy privilege of
journalistic silence, it has, therefore, correspondingly suffered
on the tongue of gossip. The truth is that we always knew that the
Saint Cecilia was just about the same as every other social
collection of human beings--a little gaiety flavored with a little
frivolity; nothing more, nothing less.
There was a time when this society was the extreme limit of social
exclusiveness. It was an anachronism on American soil, a matter of
pure heredity, the right to membership in which was as fixed as
Median law, but transcendently above the median line. Now, however,
since the society, in keeping with the spirit of the age, has
relaxed its rules to admit from year to year (if, indeed, only a
few now and then) members whose blood is far from indigo, we think
it perfectly legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL
classes of people, to invade the quondam sanctity of its functions
which are now being OPENED to all classes.
Following this, the editorial quoted from Don Seitz's book, telling how
the elder James Gordon Bennett was in the habit of mocking "events to
which he was not invited," and how, in 1840, he managed to get one of
his reporters into "Henry I Brevoort's fancy dress ball, the social
event of the period." The quotation from Mr. Seitz's book ends with the
following: "A far cry from this to 1894, when Ward McAlister, arbiter of
the '400' at Mrs. Astor's famous ball, became a leader on social topics
for the New York 'World.' It took many years for this umbrage at the
reporting of social events to wear off and make the reporter welcome.
Indeed, there is one place yet on the map where it is not even now
permitted to record a social event, though the editors and owners of
papers may be among those present. That is Charleston, South
Carolina...."
The Charleston editor then resumes his own reflections in this wise:
We regret to say, and it is the regret of our life, that we were
not one of the editors present at the Saint Cecilia. This,
therefore, relieves us of the implied condition to adhere any
longer to this silly and absurd custom which, in the language of
this great newspaper man, has made its last stand "on the map" at
Charleston. We are glad that we have forever nailed, in the opinion
of one hundred million ordinary people who make the American
nation, the absurdity that there is any social event so sacred, any
people so DIFFERENT from the rest of us poor human beings, that we
dare not speak of them.
Just why private social events should be, as Mr. Grace seems to assume,
particularly the property of the press, it is somewhat difficult to
explain, unless we do so by accepting as fundamental the theory that the
press is justified in invading personal privacy purely in order to
pander, on the one hand to the new breed of vulgar rich which thrives on
"publicity," and on the other, to the breed of vulgar poor which enjoys
reading that supremest of American inanities, the "society page."
What Mr. Seitz said in his book as to the reticence of Charleston
newspapers, where society is concerned, is, however, generally
true--amazingly so to one who has become hardened to the attitude of the
metropolitan press elsewhere. The society columns of Charleston papers
hardly ever print the names of the city's real aristocrats, and in the
past they have gone much farther than this, for they have been known to
suppress important news stories in which prominent citizens were
unpleasantly involved. It may be added that earthquakes are evidently
classed as members of the aristocracy, since occasional tremors felt in
the city are pointedly ignored by the press. Whether or not the paper
edited by the fearless Mr. Grace ignores these manifestations I am
unable to say. One can easily fancy his taking a courageous stand on
such a subject as well as upon social matters. Indeed, with a few slight
changes, his editorial upon the St. Cecilia ball, might be made to serve
equally well after an earthquake shock. He might say:
The press being forbidden to cover earthquakes, there grew up in
the vulgar mind weird stories of what went on behind the scenes.
While the earthquakes have enjoyed the happy privilege of
journalistic silence, they have, therefore, correspondingly
suffered on the tongue of gossip.
He could also make the point that since, "in keeping with the spirit of
the age," the earthquake shakes people "(if indeed only a few of them
now and then), whose blood is far from indigo, we think it perfectly
legitimate for the newspaper, which represents ALL classes of people, to
invade the quondam sanctity of its functions which are now being OPENED
to all classes."
But of course, where the editor of such a paper is concerned, there is
always the element of natural delicacy and nicety of feeling to be
considered. Mr. Grace felt that because he was not present at the St.
Cecilia ball, he was free to print things about it. An earthquake would
not be like the St. Cecilia Society--it would not draw the line at Mr.
Grace. At a Charleston earthquake he would undoubtedly be present. The
question therefore arises: Having been PRESENT, might his AMOUR PROPRE
make him feel that to REPORT the event would not be altogether in GOOD
TASTE?
The St. Cecilia Society began in 1737 with a concert given on St.
Cecilia's day, and continued for many years to give concerts at which
the musicians were both amateurs and professionals. Josiah Quincy, in
his "Journal," tells of having attended one of these concerts in 1773,
and speaks of the richness of the men's apparel, noting that there were
"many with swords on."
When, in 1819, difficulty was experienced in obtaining performers, it
was proposed that a ball be held in place of a concert, and by 1822 the
society was definitely transformed from a musical to a dancing
organization, which it has remained ever since.
The statement in the "American" editorial that St. Cecilia balls have
been the subject of scandalous gossip is, I believe, quite false, as is
also the statement that the balls are now "being opened to all classes."
Mrs. Ravenel in her book tells how the organization is run. Members are
elected, and all are men, though the names of the ladies of a member's
household are placed on the club list. "Only death or removal from the
city erases them--change of fortune affects them not at all." A man
whose progenitors have belonged to the society is almost certain of
election, though there have been cases in which undesirables of good
family have been blackballed. Two blackballs are sufficient to cause the
rejection of a candidate. Men who are not of old Charleston stock are
carefully investigated before they can be elected, but of late years not
a few such, having been considered desirable, have become members. The
members elect officers and a board of managers, and these have entire
control of the society. Three balls are given each year, one in January
and two in February. Until a few years ago the hall in which the balls
are given was lighted by innumerable candelabra; only lately has
electricity been used. The society owns its own plate, damask, china and
glassware, and used to own a good stock of wines. Of late years, I
believe, wines have not been served, the beverage of the evening
consisting of coffee, hot and iced. The greatest decorum is observed at
the balls. Young ladies go invariably with chaperones; following each
dance there is a brief promenade, whereafter the young ladies are
returned to their duennas--who, if they be Charleston dowagers in
perfection, usually carry turkey-feather fans. Cards are filled months
in advance. As lately as the year 1912 every other dance was a square
dance; since then, however, I believe that square dances have gone the
way of candle-light. The society has an endowment and membership is
inexpensive, costing but fifteen dollars a year, including the three
balls. This enables young men starting in life to be members without
going into extravagance, and is in accord with the best social tradition
of Charleston, where the difference between an aristocracy and a
plutocracy is well understood. Most of the rules of the organization are
unwritten. One is that men shall not smoke on the premises during a
ball; another is that divorced persons shall not be members or guests of
the society. In this respect the St. Cecilia Society may be said, in
effect, to be applying, socially, the South Carolina law; for South
Carolina is the only State in the Union in which divorces are not
granted for any cause whatsoever.
This reminds me that the State has an anti-tipping law. The Pullman
porter is required to hang up copies of the law in his car when it
enters South Carolina, and copies of it are displayed on the doors of
hotel bedrooms. The penalty for giving or receiving a tip is a fine of
from ten to one hundred dollars, or thirty days in jail. Perhaps the law
is observed. I know, at least, that no one offered me a tip while I was
in that State.
* * * * *
The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to Oxford or Cambridge
for an education and English tradition still remains, I fancy, the
foundation for what Charleston social life is to-day. I thought at first
that Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to the
conclusion that there is in the pronunciation of some of them a quality
resembling a very faint brogue--a brogue such as might be possessed by a
cultivated Irishman who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had
been educated there. The "vanishing _y_" of tidewater Virginia is also
used by some Charlestonians, I am told, though I do not remember hearing
it.
Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities are dangerous,
as I have good reason to know. Naturally, not all Charlestonians speak
alike. I should say, however, that the first _a_ in the words "Papa"
and "Mama" is frequently given a short sound, as _a_ in "hat"; also
that many one-syllable words are strung out into two. For instance,
"eight" is heard as "ay-et" ("ay" as in "gray"); "where" as "whey-uh,"
or "way-uh," and "hair" as "hay-uh." "Why?" sometimes sounds like "Woi?"
Such words as "calm" and "palm" are sometimes given the short _a_: "cam"
and "pam"--which, of course, occurs elsewhere, too. The name "Ralph" is
pronounced as "Rafe" (_a_ as in "rate")--which I believe is Old English;
and the names "Saunders" and "Sanders" are pronounced exactly alike,
both being called "Sanders." Tomatoes are sometimes called "tomatters."
Two dishes I never heard of before are "Hopping John," which is rice
cooked with peas, and "Limping Kate," which is some other rice
combination. What we, in the North, call an "ice-cream freezer" becomes
in Charleston an "ice-cream _churn_." "Good morning" is the salutation
up to three P.M., whereas in other parts of the South "Good evening" is
said for the Northern "Good afternoon." Charlestonians speak of being
"parrot-toed"--not "pigeon-toed." Where, in the North, we would ask a
friend, "How are things out your way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How
are things out your _side_?" The expression "going out" means to go to
St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is never used in any
other way. That is, if a lady is asked: "Are you going out this winter?"
it means definitely, "Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?" If you
heard it said that some one was "_on_ Mount Pleasant," you might
suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a
village on the mainland across the Cooper River. And what is to me one
of the most curious expressions I ever heard is "do don't," as when a
lady called to her daughter, "Martha, _do_ don't slam that door again!"
How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I
cannot say. It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in
this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally
spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not
wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language
than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other
cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I
have heard in any American city.
CHAPTER XXXI
"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY
The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes
spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and
of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that
the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla niggers," though I
have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town
of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme
dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not
know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive
tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in
Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.
A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice
plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ
somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost
incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long
practice, to understand it.
A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend. This is the
message as it was delivered:
"Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum. Enty you duh gwine come
shum?" (To get the gulla effect the sounds should be uttered very
rapidly.)
Translated, this means: "Mistress says all them other folks have come to
see her. Aren't you coming to see her?"
"Shum" is a good gulla word. It means all kinds of things having to do
with seeing--_to see her_, _to see him_, _to see it_. Thus, "You shum,
enty?" may mean, _You see him_--_her_--or _it_? or _You see what
he_--_she_--or _it_--_is doing_, or _has done_? For gulla has no genders
and no tenses. "Enty" is a general question: _Aren't you? Didn't you?
Isn't it?_ etc. Another common gulla word is "Buckra" which means _a
white man of the upper class_, in contradistinction to a poor white. I
have known a negro to refer to "de frame o' de bud," meaning the
carcass, or frame, of a fowl. "Ay ain' day" means "They aren't (ain't)
there."
A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South Carolina, has told me of
an old gulla fisherman who spoke in parables.
A lady would ask him: "Have you any fish to-day?" To which, if replying
affirmatively, he would answer: "Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The
door (of the 'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he
would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick"; signifying: "The
tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish." This old man
called whisky "muhgundy smash," the term evidently derived from some
idea of the word "burgundy" combined with the word "mash."
Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation. A train
has killed a cow, and a negro witness is being examined by a justice of
the peace:
JUSTICE--Uncle John, did you see
what killed Sam's cow?
NEGRO--Co'ose Uh shum. (Of) course I saw him.
JUSTICE--What was it, Uncle
John?
NEGRO--Dat black debble you-all (It was) that black devil you-all
runnin' tru we lan'. Nigga duh (are) running through our land.
(A) nigger (fireman) he
stan' deh, duh po' coal stands there (and) he pours coal
in eh stomach. into its stomach.
Buckra duh sit up on eh seat, (A) white man (engineer)
he sits up on his seat.
duh smoke eh cigah, an' ebry (and) he smokes his cigar, and every
tahme eh twis' eh tail eh run fasteh. time he twists its (engine's) tail it
An' runs faster. And
eh screams dis lak uh pantuh. Eben it screams just like a panther. Even
w'en eh git tuh de station, eh stan' when it gets to the station, it stands
tuh de station an' seh: "_Kyan_-stop! at the station and says: "_Can't_-stop!
_Kyan_-stop! _Kyan_-stop!" _Can't_-stop! _Can't_-stop!"
Sam cow binna browse down deh Sam's cow was browsing down there
tuh Bull Head Crick. Eh ram eh to (at) Bull Head Creek. It (engine)
rammed its
nose innum, an' eh bussum wahde nose into it (the cow), and it
busted him wide
loose. Eh t'row eh intrus on de loose (open). It threw its entrails
on the
reyel on de cross-tie, an' clean-up rails, on the cross-ties, and clean up
on de tele_gram_ pole. on the telegraph pole.
Mrs. Leiding (Harriette Kershaw Leiding), of Charleston, has done a fine
service to lovers of Old Charleston, and its ways, in collecting and
publishing in pamphlet form a number of the cries of the negro street
vendors. Of these I shall rob Mrs. Leiding's booklet of but one
example--the cry of a little negro boy, a peddler of shrimp ("swimp"),
who stood under a window in the early morning and sang:
[Music:
An' a Daw-try Daw! an' a swimp-y raw! an' a Daw-try Daw-try Daw-try Raw Swimp.]
While on the subject of the Charleston negro I must not neglect two of
his superstitions. One is his belief that a two-dollar bill is unlucky.
The curse may be removed only by tearing off a corner of the bill. The
other is that it is unlucky to hand any one a pin. A Charleston lady
told me that when she was motoring and wished to pin her hat or her
veil, she could never get her negro chauffeur to hand her pins. Instead
he would stick them in the laprobe, or in the sleeve of his coat, whence
she could pick them out herself. Another lady told me of the case of an
old black slave who lived years ago on a plantation on the Santee River,
owned by her family. This slave, who was a very powerful, taciturn and
high-tempered man, had a curious habit of disappearing for about half an
hour each day. He would go into the swamp, and for many years no one
ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do so because of
his temper and his strength. At last, however, they did spy upon him and
discovered that in the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were
strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated himself. No one ever
learned the exact significance of this, but it was assumed that the man
practised some barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa.
* * * * *
The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is rich in interest,
even though most of the houses on the old estates have been destroyed.
Drayton Hall, however, stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not
far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate), has one of the
most famous gardens in the world. Seven persons touching fingertips can
barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there
are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as
large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas--ninety-two
varieties, it is said--which, when they blossom in the spring, are so
wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to
see them.
In "Harper's Magazine" for December, 1875, I find an account of the
gardens which were, at that time, far from new. The azaleas were then
twelve and thirteen feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of
more than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread.
"It is almost impossible," says the anonymous writer of the article, "to
give a Northerner any idea of the affluence of color in this garden when
its flowers are in bloom. Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped
live-oaks overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance, and on
each side the great fluffy masses of rose and pink and crimson,
reaching far above your head, thousands upon tens of thousands of
blossoms packed close together, with no green to mar the intensity of
their color, rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the turf
below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing bare stems or
trunk, but spreading over the velvet, and trailing out like the rich
robes of an empress. Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is
like a mad artist's dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights; eyes
that have never had color enough find here a full feast, and go away
satisfied at last. And with all their gorgeousness, the hues are
delicately mingled; the magic effect is produced not by unbroken banks
of crude reds, but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of
India shawls, which the European designers, with all their efforts, can
never imitate."
Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of Magnolia, is at
Middleton Place, not many miles away, and still another is at the
pleasant winter resort town of Summerville, something more than twenty
miles above Charleston. The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden, is
said to be the only tea garden in the United States. It is asserted that
the teas produced here are better than those of China and Japan, and are
equal to those of India. The Government is cooeperating with the owners
of this garden with a view to introducing tea planting in the country in
a large way.
The finest grade of tea raised here is known as "Shelter Tea," and is
sold only at the gardens, the price being five dollars per pound. It is
a tea of the Assam species grown under shelters of wire mesh and pine
straw. This type of tea is known in Japan, where it originated, as
"sugar tea," because, owing to the fact that it is grown in the shade,
the sap of the bush, which is of starchy quality, is turned chemically
into sugar, giving the leaf an exceedingly delicate flavor.
From the superintendent in charge of the gardens I learned something of
the bare facts of the tea growing industry. I had always been under the
impression that the name "pekoe" referred to a certain type of tea, but
he told me that the word is Chinese for "eyelash," and came to be used
because the tip leaves of tea bushes, when rolled and dried, resemble
eyelashes. These leaves--"pekoe tips"--make the most choice tea. The
second leaves make the tea called "orange pekoe," while the third leaves
produce a grade of tea called simply "pekoe." In China it is customary
to send three groups of children, successively, to pick the leaves, the
first group picking only the tips, the second group the second leaves,
and the third group the plain pekoe leaves. At the Pinehurst Tea Gardens
the picking is done by colored children, ranging from eight to fifteen
years of age. All the leaves are picked together and are later separated
by machinery.
Summerville itself seems a lovely lazy town. It is the kind of place to
which I should like to retire in the winter if I had a book to write.
One could be very comfortable, and there would be no radical
distractions--unless one chanced to see the Most Beautiful Girl in the
World, who has been known to spend winters at that place.
On the way from Charleston to Summerville, if you go by motor, you pass
The Oaks, an estate with a new colonial house standing where an ancient
mansion used to stand. A long avenue bordered by enormous live-oaks,
leading to this house, gives the place its name, and affords a truly
noble approach. Here, in Revolutionary times, Marion, "the Swamp Fox,"
used to camp.
Not far distant from the old gate at The Oaks is Goose Creek Church--the
most interesting church I have ever seen. The Parish of St. James, Goose
Creek, was established by act of the Assembly, November 30, 1706, and
the present church, a brick building of crudely simple architecture, was
built about 1713. The interior of the church, though in good condition,
is the oldest looking thing, I think, in the United States. The memorial
tablets in the walls, with their foreign names and antique lettering,
the curious old box pews, the odd little gallery at the back, the tall
pulpit, with its winding stair, above all the Royal Arms of Great
Britain done in relief on the chancel wall and brilliantly colored--all
these make Goose Creek Church more like some little Norman church in
England, than like anything one might reasonably expect to find on this
side of the world.
Countless items of curious interest hang about the church and parish.
Michaux, the French botanist who came to this country in 1786, lived for
a time at Goose Creek. He brought with him the first four camellias
seen in the United States, planting them at Middleton Place above
Drayton Hall, where, I believe, they still stand, having reached a great
height. A British officer known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at
Goose Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic circumstances.
Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of the parish, was a great beauty and
a great coquette, who amused herself alike with American and British
officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with her, and it is
said that she encouraged him, though without serious intent. One day he
induced her to go horseback-riding with him and on the ride made love to
her so vehemently that she was "intimidated into accepting him." They
rode to the rectory, and Campbell, meeting the rector, demanded that he
should marry them at once. The dominie replied that he would do so "with
the consent of the young lady and her mother," but Campbell proposed to
await no such formalities. Drawing his pistol he gave the minister the
choice of performing the ceremony then and there, or perishing. This
argument proved conclusive and the two were promptly wed.
When Goose Creek was within the British lines it is said that the
minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to utter the prayer for the King
of England, in the Litany. At the end of the prayer there were no
"Amens," the congregation having been composed almost entirely, as the
story goes, of believers in American independence. Into the awkward
pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation was at last
injected. It was the voice of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not
"Amen," but "Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the church to
the memory of this worthy.
The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member of the
congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed the minister that if
he again read the prayer for the King he would throw his prayer-book at
his head. The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to read
the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that it was not, for sure
enough the prayer-book came hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were
heavier then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of this
episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter.
The church is not now used regularly, an occasional memorial service
only being held there.
* * * * *
Charleston is a hard place to leave. Wherever one may be going from
there, the change is likely to be for the worse. Nevertheless, it is
impossible to stay forever; so at last you muster up your resignation
and your resources, buy tickets, and reluctantly prepare to leave. If
you depart as we did, you go by rail, driving to the station in the
venerable bus of the Charleston Transfer Company--a conveyance which,
one judges, may be coeval with the city's oldest mansions. Little as we
wished to leave Charleston we did not wish to defer our departure
through any such banality as the unnecessary missing of a train.
Therefore as we waited for the bus, on the night of leaving, and as
train time drew nearer and nearer, with no sign of the lumbering old
vehicle, we became somewhat concerned.
When the bus did come at last there was little time to spare;
nevertheless the conductor, an easygoing man of great volubility,
consumed some precious minutes in gossiping with the hotel porter, and
then with arranging and rearranging the baggage on the roof of the bus.
His manner was that of an amateur bus conductor, trying a new
experiment. After watching his performances for a time, looking
occasionally at my watch, by way of giving him a hint, I broke out into
expostulation at the unnecessary delay.
"What's the matter?" asked the man in a gentle, almost grieved tone.
"There's very little time!" I returned. "We don't wish to miss the
train."
"Oh, all right," said the bus conductor, making more haste, as though
the information I had given him put a different face on matters
generally.
Presently we started. After a time he collected our fares. I have
forgotten whether the amount was twenty-five or fifty cents. At all
events, as he took the money from my hand he said to me reassuringly:
"Don't you worry, sir! If I don't get you to the train I'll give you
this money back. That's fair, ain't it?"
CHAPTER XXXII
OUT OF THE PAST
By no means all the leading citizens of Atlanta were in a frame of mind
to welcome General Sherman when, ten or a dozen years after the Civil
War, he revisited the city. Captain Evan P. Howell, a former Confederate
officer, then publisher of the Atlanta "Constitution," was, however, not
one of the Atlantans who ignored the general's visit. Taking his young
son, Clark, he called upon the general at the old Kimball House (later
destroyed by fire), and had an interesting talk with him. Clark Howell,
who has since succeeded his father as publisher of the "Constitution,"
was born while the latter was fighting at Chickamauga, and was
consequently old enough, at the time of the call on Sherman, to remember
much of what was said. He heard the general tell Captain Howell why he
had made such a point of taking Atlanta, and as Sherman's military
reasons for desiring possession of the Georgia city explain, to a large
extent, Atlanta's subsequent development, I shall quote them as Clark
Howell gave them to me.
First however, it is perhaps worth while to remind the reader of the
bare circumstances preceding the fall of Atlanta. After the defeat of
the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, General Joseph E. Johnston's army
fell back slowly on Atlanta, much as the French fell back on Paris at
the beginning of the European War, shortening their own lines of
communication while those of the advancing Germans were being
continually attenuated. As the Germans kept after the French, Sherman
kept after Johnston; and as Joffre was beginning to be criticized for
failing to make a stand against the enemy, so was Johnston criticized as
he continued to retire without giving battle. One of the chief
differences between Joffre's retirement and Johnston's lies, however, in
the length of time consumed; for whereas the French retreat on Paris
covered a few days only, the Confederate retreat on Atlanta covered
weeks and months, giving the Confederate Government time to become
impatient with Johnston and finally to remove him from command before
the time arrived when, in his judgment, the stand against Sherman should
be made. Nor is it inconceivable that, had the French retreat lasted as
long as Johnston's, Joffre would have been removed and would have lost
the opportunity to justify his Fabian policy, as he did so gloriously at
the Battle of the Marne.
Though Atlanta was, at the time of the war, a city of less than 10,000
inhabitants, it was the chief base of supply for men and munitions in
the Far South.
"When my father asked him why all his effort and power had been
centered, after Chickamauga, on the capture of Atlanta," said Clark
Howell, "I remember that General Sherman extended one hand with the
fingers spread apart, explaining the strategic situation by imagining
Atlanta as occupying a position where the wrist joins the hand, while
the thumb and fingers represented, successively, New Orleans, Mobile,
Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. 'If I held Atlanta,' he said, 'I was
only one day's journey from these chief cities of the South.'"
In spite, therefore, of the assertion, which I have heard made, that the
prosperity of Atlanta is "founded on insurance premiums, coca-cola, and
hot air," it seems to me that it is founded on something very much more
solid. Nor do I refer to the layer of granite which underlies the city.
The prosperity of Atlanta is based upon the very feature which made its
capture seem to Sherman so desirable: its strategic position as a
central point in the Far South.
Neither in Atlanta nor in any other part of Georgia is General Sherman
remembered with a feeling that can properly be described as
affectionate, though it may be added that Atlanta has good reason for
remembering him warmly. The burning of Atlanta by Sherman did not,
however, prove an unalloyed disaster, for the war came to an end soon
after, and the rebuilding of the city supplied work for thousands of
former Confederate soldiers, and also drew to Atlanta many of the strong
men who played leading parts in the subsequent commercial upbuilding of
the place: such men as the late General Alfred Austell, Captain James W.
English, and the three Inman brothers, Samuel, John, and Hugh--to
mention but a few names. The First National Bank, established by General
Austell, is, I believe, Atlanta's largest bank to-day, and was literally
the first national bank established in Georgia, if not in the whole
South, after the war.
Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the bar in Atlanta, and, if I mistake
not, practised law in an office not far from that meeting place of
highways called Five Points. Here, at Five Points, two important trails
crossed, long before there was any Atlanta: the north-and-south trail
between Savannah and Ross's Landing, and the east-and-west trail, which
followed the old Indian trails between Charleston and New Orleans. When
people from this part of the country wished to go to Ohio, Indiana, or
the Mississippi Valley, they would take the old north-and-south trail to
Ross's Landing, follow the Tennessee River to where it empties into the
Ohio, near Paducah, Kentucky, and proceed thence to Mississippi.
In the thirties, Atlanta--or rather the site of Atlanta, for the city
was not founded until 1840--was on the border of white civilization in
northern Georgia, all the country to the north of the Chattahoochee
River, which flows a few miles distant from the city, having belonged to
the Cherokee Indians, who had been moved there from Florida. Even in
those times the Cherokees were civilized, as Indians go, for they lived
in huts and practised agriculture. Of course, however, their
civilization was not comparable with that of the white man. If they had
been as civilized as he, they might have driven him out of Florida,
instead of having been themselves driven out, and they might have driven
him out of Georgia, too, instead of having been pushed on, as they were,
to the Indian Territory--eighteen thousand of them, under military
supervision, on boats from Ross's Landing--leaving the beautiful white
Cherokee rose, which grows wild and in great profusion, in the spring,
as almost their sole memorial on Georgia soil.
As Georgia became settled the trails developed into wagon and stage
routes, and later they were followed, approximately, by the railroads.
After three railroads had reached Atlanta, the State of Georgia engaged
in what may have been the first adventure, in this country, along the
lines of government-owned railroads: namely, the building of the Western
& Atlantic, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, to form a link between the
lower South and the rapidly developing West. This road was built in the
forties, and it was along its line that Johnston retreated before
Sherman, from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Though it is now leased and
operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad Company, it
is still owned by the State of Georgia. The lease, however, expires
soon, and (an interesting fact in view of the continued agitation in
other parts of the country for government ownership of corporations)
there is a strong sentiment in Georgia in favor of selling the railroad;
for it is estimated that, at a fair price, it would yield a sum
sufficient not only to wipe out the entire bonded indebtedness of the
State ($7,000,000), but to leave ten or twelve millions clear in the
State treasury.
* * * * *
At Roswell, Georgia, a sleepy little hamlet in the hills, not many miles
from Atlanta, stands Bulloch Hall, where Martha ("Mittie") Bulloch,
later Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, mother of the President, was born.
Roswell was originally settled, long ago, by people from Savannah,
Darien, and other towns of the flat, hot country near the coast, who
drove there in their carriages and remained during the summer. After a
time, however, three prosperous families--the Bullochs, Dunwoodys, and
Barrington Kings--made their permanent homes at Roswell.
Bulloch Hall is one of those old white southern colonial houses the
whole front of which consists of a great pillared portico, in the Greek
style, giving a look of dignity and hospitality. Almost all such houses
are, as they should be, surrounded by fine old trees; those at Bulloch
Hall are especially fine: tall cedars, ancient white oaks, giant osage
oranges, and a pair of holly trees, one at either side of the walk near
the front door.
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Mittie Bulloch met here when they were
respectively seventeen and fifteen years of age. A half sister of Miss
Mittie had married a relative of the Roosevelts and gone from Roswell to
live in Philadelphia, and it was while visiting at her home that young
Roosevelt, hearing a great deal of the South, conceived a desire to go
there. This resulted in his first visit to Bulloch Hall, and his
meeting with Mittie Bulloch. On his return to the North he was sent
abroad, but two or three years later when he went again to visit his
relatives in Philadelphia, Miss Mittie was also a guest at their house,
and this time the two became engaged.
Save that the Bulloch furniture is no longer there, the interior of the
old Georgia residence stands practically as it was when Theodore
Roosevelt and Mittie Bulloch were married in the dining room. Through
the center, from front to back, runs a wide hall, on either side of
which is a pair of spacious square rooms, each with a fireplace, each
with large windows looking out over the beautiful hilly country which
spreads all about. It is a lovely house in a lovely setting, and, though
the Bullochs reside there no longer, Miss Mittie Bulloch is not
forgotten in Roswell, for one of her bridesmaids, Miss Evelyn King, now
Mrs. Baker, still resides in Barrington Hall, not far distant from the
old Bulloch homestead.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ALIVE ATLANTA
An army officer, a man of broad sympathies, familiar with the whole
United States, warned me before I went south that I must not judge the
South by northern standards.
"On the side of picturesqueness and charm," he said, "the South can more
than hold its own against the rest of the country; likewise on the side
of office-holding and flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern
cities to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North."
As to the picturesqueness, charm, officeholding, and oratory, I found
his judgments substantially correct, but though I did perceive a certain
lack of energy in some small cities, I should not call that trait a
leading one in the larger southern cities to-day. On the contrary, I was
impressed, in almost every large center that I visited, with the fact
that, in the South more, perhaps, than in any other part of the country,
a great awakening is in progress. The dormant period of the South is
past, and all manner of developments are everywhere in progress. Nor do
I know of any city which better exemplifies southern growth and progress
than Atlanta.
My Baedeker, dated 1909, opens its description of Atlanta with the
statement that the German consul there is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt
it--but let us pass over that. It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous
commercial and industrial city and an important railroad center, well
situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a healthy and bracing
climate." That is true. Atlanta is, if I mistake not, the highest
important city east of Denver, and I believe her climate is in part
responsible for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her
vegetation is more like that of a northern than a southern city, elms
and maples rather than magnolias, being the trees of the Atlanta
streets.
Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in 1909, but the census
of 1910 jumped her up to more than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917
in the "World Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover, in the
almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth, Atlanta comes
twentieth from the top. It is my duty, perhaps, to add that the list is
arranged alphabetically--which reminds me that some cynic has suggested
that there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of names, also, in
the celebrated list in which Abou Ben Adhem's "name led all the rest."
Nevertheless, it may be stated that, according to the almanac's
population figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient city of
Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens, Georgia), as well as such
considerable cities as Bari, Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is,
in short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has not yet
achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha, Tashkent, or West Ham,
she is growing rapidly, and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even
that thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav.
As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that Atlanta is cool and
lovely in the spring, and I am told that her prosperous families do not
make it a practice to absent themselves from home during the summer,
according to the custom of the corresponding class in many other cities,
northern as well as southern.
Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located neither upon a
river nor a lake. When the city was founded, the customs of life in
Georgia were such that no one ever dreamed that the State might some day
go dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early settlers gave
no thought to water. But, as time went on, and prohibition became a more
and more important issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive
that, in emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all, have its
uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the river to the city, and is
now generally--albeit in some quarters mournfully--used. Though I am
informed by an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word
"chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered before it
reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly palatable, whether taken plain
or mixed.
Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself better off, in a
material sense at least, had she a navigable stream; for her chief
industrial drawback consists in railroad freight rates unmodified by
water competition. She has, to be sure, a number of factories, including
a Ford automobile plant, but she has not so many factories as her
strategic position, stated by General Sherman, would seem to justify, or
as her own industrial ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every
progressive American city yearn to bristle with factory chimneys, even
as a summer resort folder bristles with exclamation points? And is not
soot a measure of success?
Atlanta's line of business is largely office business; many great
corporations have their headquarters or their general southern branches
in the city; one of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is there, and there
are many strong banks. Indeed, I suppose Atlanta has more bankers, in
proportion to her population, than any other city in the United States.
Some of these bankers are active citizens and permanent residents of the
city; others have given up banking for the time being and are in
temporary residence at the Federal Penitentiary.
The character of commerce carried on, naturally brings to Atlanta large
numbers of prosperous and able men--corporation officials, branch
managers, manufacturers' agents, and the like--who, with their families,
give Atlanta a somewhat individual social flavor. This class of
population also accounts for the fact that the enterprisingness so
characteristic of Atlanta is not the mere rough, ebullient spirit of "go
to it!" to be found in so many hustling cities of the Middle West and
West, but is, oftentimes, an informed and cultivated kind of
enterprisingness, which causes Atlanta not only to "do things," but to
do things showing vision, and, furthermore, to do them with an "air."
This is illustrated in various ways. It is shown, for example, in
Atlanta's principal hotels, which are not small-town hotels, or
good-enough hotels, but would do credit to any city, however great. The
office buildings are city office buildings, and in the downtown section
they are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home, instead of
appearing a little bit exotic, self-conscious, and lonesome, as new
skyscrapers do in so many cities of Atlanta's size. Even the smoke with
which the skyscrapers are streaked is city smoke. Chicago herself could
hardly produce smoke of more metropolitan texture--certainly not on the
Lake Front, where the Illinois Central trains send up their black
clouds; for Atlanta's downtown smoke, like Chicago's, comes in large
part from railroads piercing the heart of the city. Where downtown
business streets cross the railroad tracks, the latter are depressed,
the highways passing above on steel bridges resembling the bridges over
the Chicago River. The railroad's right of way is, furthermore, just
about as wide as the Chicago River, and rows of smoke-stained brick
buildings turn their backs upon it, precisely as similar buildings turn
theirs upon Chicago's busy, narrow stream. I wonder if all travelers,
familiar with Chicago, are so persistently reminded of that portion of
the city which is near the river, as I was by that portion of Atlanta
abutting on the tracks by which the Seaboard Air Line enters the city.
Generally speaking, railroads in the South have not been so prosperous
as leading roads in the North, and with the exception of the most
important through trains, their passenger equipment is, therefore, not
so good. The Seaboard Air Line, however, runs an all-steel train between
Atlanta and Birmingham which, in point of equipment, may be compared
with the best limited trains anywhere. The last car in this train,
instead of being part sleeping car and part observation car, is a
combination dining and observation car--a very pleasant arrangement, for
men are allowed to smoke in the observation end after dinner. This is,
to my mind, an improvement over the practice of most railroads, which
obliges men who wish to smoke to leave the ladies with whom they may be
traveling. All Seaboard dining cars offer, aside from regular a la carte
service, a sixty-cent dinner known as the "Blue Plate Special." This
dinner has many advantages over the usual dining-car repast. In the
first place, though it does not comprise bread and butter, coffee or
tea, or dessert, it provides an ample supply of meat and vegetables at a
moderate price. In the second place, though served at a fixed price, it
bears no resemblance to the old-style dining car table d'hote, but, upon
the contrary, looks and tastes like food. The food, furthermore, instead
of representing a great variety of viands served in microscopic helpings
on innumerable platters and "side dishes," comes on one great plate,
with recesses for vegetables. The "Blue Plate Special" furnishes, in
short, the chief items in a "good home meal."
This is, perhaps, as convenient a place as any in which to speak of
certain points concerning various railroads in the South. The Central of
Georgia Railway, running between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of
operating Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars. This is the only railroad
I know of in the country on which the tenant of a lower berth, below an
unoccupied upper, may have the upper closed without paying for it. One
likes the Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation. The
locomotives of the Western & Atlantic carry as a distinguishing mark a
red band at the top of the smokestack. The Southern Railway assigns
engineers to individual engines, instead of "pooling power," as is the
practice, I believe, on many railroads. Because of this, engineers on
the Southern regard the locomotives to which they are regularly
assigned, as their personal property, and exercise their individual
taste in embellishing them. Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles
over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore often seen on
the engines of this road, giving the most elaborate of them a carnival
appearance, by contrast with the somber black to which most of us are
accustomed, and hinting that not all the individuality has been
unionized out of locomotive engineers--an impression heightened by the
Southern Railway's further pleasant custom of painting the names of its
older and more expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.
* * * * *
Some cities are like lumbering old farm horses, plugging along a dusty
country road. When another horse overtakes them, if they be not
altogether wanting in spirit, they may be encouraged to jog a little
faster for a moment, stimulated by example. If, besides being stupid,
they are mean, then they want to kick or bite at the speedier animal
going by. Some cities are like that, too. If an energetic city overtakes
them, they are not spurred on to emulation, but lay back their ears, so
to speak. Again, there are tough, sturdy little cities like buckskin
ponies. There are skittish cities which seem to have been badly broken.
There are old cities with a worn-out kind of elegance, like that of
superannuated horses of good breed, hitched to an old-fashioned
barouche. There are bad, bucking cities, like Butte, Montana. And here
and there are cities, like Atlanta, reminding one of thoroughbred
hunters. There is a brave, sporting something in the spirit of Atlanta
which makes it rush courageously at big jumps, and clear them, and land
clean on the other side, and be off again. Like a thoroughbred, she
loves the chase. She goes in to win. She doesn't stop to worry about
whether she can win or not. She knows she will. And as the thoroughbred,
loving large and astonishing achievement, lacks the humbler virtues of
the reliable family carriage horse, Atlanta, it cannot be denied, has
"_les defauts de ses qualites_." For whereas, on the side of dashing
performance, Atlanta held a stock fair which, in one year, surpassed any
other held in the South, and secured the grand circuit of races, on the
other side she is careless about hospitals and charities; and whereas,
on the one side, she has raised millions for the building of two new
universities (which, by the way, would be much better as one great
university, but cannot be, because of sectarian domination), on the
other, she is deficient as to schools; and again, whereas she is the