Records of Later Life Part 15

I am afraid you will think my Northern residence less propitious to correspondence than the Georgia plantation, as I am again in your debt.... But what have I to tell you of myself, or anything belonging to me? Ever since I returned from New York, whither I went to see Catharine Sedgwick sail for England, I have been vegetating here, as much as in me lies to vegetate; but though my life has quite as few incidents as the existence of the lilies and the roses in the flower-beds, the inward nature makes another life of it, and the restless soul can never be made to _vegetate_, even though the body does little else.... My days roll on in a sort of dreamy, monotonous succession, with an imperceptible motion, like the ceaseless creeping of the glaciers. I teach S---- to read. I order my household, I read Mrs. Jameson's book about Canada, I write to you, I copy out for Elizabeth Sedgwick the journal I kept on the plantation, I ride every day, and play on the piano just enough not to forget my notes, _et voila!_ Once a week I go to town, to execute commissions, or return visits, and on Sundays I go to church; and so my life slides away from me. My head and heart, however, are neither as torpid nor as empty as my hours; and I often find, as others have done, that external stagnation does not necessarily produce internal repose.

Occasionally, but seldom, people come from town to see us; and sometimes, but not often, small offices of courtesy and kindness are exchanged between me and my more immediate neighbors. And now my story is done.... I really live almost entirely alone....

I am beginning to fear that I shall not be taken to the Virginia springs this summer. If I go, I am told I must leave the children behind, the roads and accommodations being such as to render it perfectly impossible to take them with us. Indeed, the inconveniences of the journey and the discomforts of the residence there are represented to us as so great, that I am afraid I shall not be thought able to endure them. If it is settled that I cannot go thither, I shall go up to Ma.s.sachusetts, where, though the material civilities of life are yet in their swaddling clothes, I have dear friends, and the country is lovely all around where I should be.

I have just seen some plans for a large hotel, which it is proposed to build on some property we own in the city, in a position extremely well adapted for such a purpose. I was very much pleased with them: they are upon the wholesale scale of lodging and entertainment, which travelers in this country require and desire; and combine as much comfort and elegance as are compatible with such a style of establishment. We, you know, in England, always like our public houses to be as like private ones as possible. The reverse is the case here, and the lodging-house or hotel recommends itself chiefly by being able to accommodate as many people as can well congregate at a _table d'hote_ or in a public drawing-room, that being a good deal the idea of society which appears to exist in many people's minds here....

F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, Thursday, July 4th, 1839.

DEAREST HARRIET,

It is the 4th of July, the day on which the Declaration of American Independence was read to the a.s.sembled citizens of Philadelphia from the window of the City State House. The anniversary is celebrated from north to south and east to west of this vast country: by the many, with firing of guns, and spouting of speeches, drinking of drams, and eating of dinners; by the few, with understanding prayer, praise and thankfulness for the past, and hope, not unalloyed with some misgiving, for the future.

In the gravel walk, at the back of our house, under a double row of tall trees that meet overhead, all our servants and the people employed on the place and their children, are congregated at dinner, to the tune of thirty-seven apparently well-satisfied souls, and as I went to see them just now, a farmer who is our tenant across the road, and has tenanted the place where he lives for the s.p.a.ce of twenty years, a.s.sured me that I was a "real American!" He is an Irishman, and I might have returned his compliment by telling him he was half an Englishman, for a man who remains twenty years in one place in this country, and upon ground that he does not own, is a very uncommon personage.

You would scarcely believe how difficult it is to establish a pleasant footing with persons of this cla.s.s here. Dependents they do not and ought not to consider themselves (for they are not such in any sense whatever); equals, their own perceptions show them they are not in any sense, but a political one; and they seem to me, in consequence, to be far less at their ease really in their intercourse with their employers or landlords than our own people, with their much more positive and definite sense of difference of condition and habits of life. Indeed, to establish a real feeling--a _true_ one--of universal equality, warranted by the fact of its existence, would require a population, not of American Republicans, such as they are, but of Christian philosophers, such as do not exist at all anywhere yet, or, if at all, only by twos or threes scattered among millions....

You ask me how far Butler's Island was from St. Simon's [the rice and cotton plantations in Georgia]. Fifteen miles of water--great huge river mouth or mouths, and open sounds of the sea, with half-submerged salt marsh islands wallowing in the midst of them.... Over these waters--pretty rough surfaces, too, sometimes--we traveled to and fro between the plantations in open boats, generally in a long canoe that flew under its eight oars like an arrow. The men often sang, while they rowed, the whole way when I was in the boat, and some of their melodies are very wild and striking, and their natural gift of music remarkable.

As the boat approached the landing, the steersman brayed forth our advent through a monstrous conch, when the whole sh.o.r.e would presently be crowded with our dusky dependents, the whole thing reminding one of former semi-barbaric times, and modes of life in the islands of the northwest of Scotland. Some of the airs the negroes sing have a strong affinity to Scotch melodies in their general character....

It is near ten o'clock in the evening, and with you it is five hours earlier, so you are probably thinking of dressing for dinner; though, by-the-bye, you are not at home at Ardgillan, but wandering somewhere about in Germany--I know not where; neither may I by any means imagine how you are employed; and your image rises before me without one accompanying detail of familiar place, circ.u.mstance, or occupation, to give it a this-world's likeness. I see you as I might if you were dead--your simple apparition unframed by any setting that I can surround it with; and it is thus that I now see all my friends and kindred, all those I love in my own country; for the lapse of time and the s.p.a.ce of distance between us render all thoughts of them, even of their very existence, vague and uncertain. Klopstock, who wrote letters to the dead, hardly corresponded more absolutely with the inhabitants of another world than I do....

I drove into town this morning by half-past ten o'clock to church, a six-miles' journey I take most Sundays. The weekday generally pa.s.ses in reading "Nicholas Nickleby," walking about the garden, and devising alterations which I hope may turn out improvements, playing and singing half a dozen pieces of music half a century old, and writing to the "likes of you" (though, indeed, to me you are still a nonesuch).

Farewell, dearest Harriet, _und schlafen sie recht wohl_. Is that the way you say it, whereabouts you are?

Ever your affectionate, F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, July 14th, 1839.

I wrote to you a short time ago, dearest Harriet; but I am still in your debt, and though I have nothing to tell you (when should I write if I waited for that?), I have abundant leisure to tell it in, and the mind to talk with you. The last is never wanting, but now what a pity it is that I must make this miserable sheet of paper my voice, instead of having you here on this piazza, as we call our verandahs here, with the pomegranate and cape jessamine bushes in bloom in their large green boxes just before me, and a row of great fat hydrangeas (how is that spelled?) nodding their round, fat, foolish-looking pink and blue heads at me....

We are most strongly urged to try the effect of the natural hot sulphur baths of Virginia; their efficacy being very great in cases of rheumatic affections.... I am very much afraid, however, that I shall not be allowed to go thither; and in that case shall probably take my way up to my friends in Berks.h.i.+re, Ma.s.sachusetts, the Sedgwicks, who, though they have sent a detachment of six to perambulate Europe just now, still form with the remaining members of the family the chief part of the population of that district of New England.

Catharine, who is one of them that I love best, is one among the gone; but her brother and his wife, next door to whom I generally take up my abode during some part of the summer, are as excellent, and nearly as dear to me, as she is....

My occupations are nothing; my amus.e.m.e.nts less than nothing. Of what avail is it that I should tell you of lonely rides taken in places you never heard of, or books I have read, the t.i.tles of which (being American) you never saw; or that I am revolutionizing the gravel walks in my garden, opening up new and closing up old ones? There is no use in telling you any of this. As long as I live, that is to all eternity, you know that I shall love you; but it is decreed that in this portion of that eternity you can know little else about me, however it may be hereafter. I wonder if it will ever be for us again to interchange communion daily and hourly, as we once did; I do not see how it should come to pa.s.s in this our present life; but it may be one of the blessings of a better and happier existence to resume our free and full former intercourse with each other, without any of the alloy of human infirmity or untoward circ.u.mstance. Amen! so be it! G.o.d bless you, dear.

I long to see you once more, and am ever affectionately yours,

F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, July 21st, 1839.

I was looking over a letter of yours, dear Harriet, just now, which answered one of mine from Georgia, and find therein a perfect burst of eloquence upon the subject of _fis.h.i.+ng_. Now, though I know destructiveness to be not only a _b.u.mp_, but a pa.s.sion of yours, I still should not have imagined that you could take delight in that dreamy, lazy, lounging pursuit, if pursuit that may be called in which one stands stock-still by the hour. As for me, the catching of fish was always a subject of perfect ecstasy to me--so much so, indeed, that our little company of piscators at Weybridge used to entreat me to "go further off," or "get out of the boat," whenever I had a bite, because my cries of joy were enough to scare all the fish in the river down to Sheerness. It was the lingering, fidgeting, gasping, plunging agonies of the poor creatures, after they were caught, which I objected to so excessively, and which made me renounce the amus.e.m.e.nt in spite of my pa.s.sion for it. When I resumed it in Georgia, it was with the full determination to find out some speedy mode of putting my finny captives to death--as you are to understand that I have not the slightest compunction about killing, though infinite about torturing,--so my "slave," Jack, had orders to knock them on the head the instant he took the hook from their gills; but he banged them horribly, till I longed to bang him against the boat's side, and even cut their throats from ear to ear, so that they looked like so many Banquos without the "gory locks"; and yet the indomitable life in the perverse creatures would make them leap up with a galvanic spring and gasp, that invariably communicated an electric shock to my nerves, and produced the fellow-spring and gasp from me. This was the one drawback to my fis.h.i.+ng felicity; oh! yes--I forgot the worms or live bait, though! Harriet, it _is_ a hideous diversion, and that is all that can be said for it; and I wonder at you for indulging in it.

I tried paste, most exquisitely compounded of rice, flour, peach brandy, and fine sugar; but the Altamaha fish were altogether too unsophisticated for any such allurement; it would probably be safe to put a _pate de foie gras_ or a pineapple before an Irish hedger and ditcher.

The white mullet, shad, and perch of the Altamaha are the most excellent animals that ever went in water. At St. Simon's the water is entirely salt, and often very rough, as it is but a mile and a half from the open sea, and the river there is in fact a mere arm of salt water. It is hardly possible ever to fish like a lady, with a float, in it; but the negroes bait a long rope with clams, shrimps, and oysters, and sinking their line with a heavy lead, catch very large mullet, fine whitings, and a species of marine monster, first cousin once removed to the great leviathan, called the drum, which, being stewed _long enough_ (that is, n.o.body can tell how long) with a precious French sauce, might turn out a little softer than the nether millstone, and so perhaps edible: _mais avec cette sauce la on mangerait son pere_, and perhaps without the family indigestion that lasted the Atridae so long.

One of these creatures was sent to me by one of our neighbors as a curiosity; it was upwards of four feet long, weighed over twenty pounds, and had an enormous head. I wouldn't have eaten a bit of it for the world!

The waters all round St. Simon's abound in capital fish; beds of oysters, that must be inexhaustible I should think, run all along the coast; shrimps and extraordinarily large prawns are taken in the greatest abundance, and good green turtle, it is said, is easily procured at a short distance from these sh.o.r.es.

You ask what sort of house we had down there. Why, truly, wretched enough. There were on the two plantations no fewer than _eight_ dwelling houses, all in different states and stages of uninhabitableness, half of them not being quite built up, and the other half not quite fallen down.

The grandfather of the present proprietor built a good house on the island of St. Simon's, in a beautiful situation on a point of land where two rivers meet--rather, two large streams of salt water, fine, sparkling, billowy sea rivers. Before the house was a grove of large orange-trees, and behind it an extensive tract of down, covered with that peculiar close, short turf which creates South Down and Pre Sale mutton: and overshadowed by some magnificent live-oaks and white mulberry-trees. By degrees, however, the tide, which rises to a great height here, running very strongly up both these channels, has worn away the bank, till tree by tree the orange grove has been entirely washed away, and the water at high tide is now within six feet of the house itself; or rather, there are only six feet of distance between the building and the brink of the bank on which it stands, which is considerably above the river.

The house has been uninhabited for a great many years, and is, of course, ruinously out of repair. It contains one very good room, and might be made a decently comfortable dwelling; but it has been ordered to be pulled down, because, if it is not, the materials will soon be swept away in the rapid demolition of the bank by the water. The house we resided in was the overseer's dwelling, situated on the point also, but further from the water, and having the extent of gra.s.s-land and trees in front of it, together with a beautiful water prospect; in fact, in a better situation than the other. As for the house itself, it would have done very well for our short residence if it had been either finished or furnished. The rooms were fairly well-sized, and there were five of them in all, besides two or three little closets. But although the primitive simplicity of whitewashed walls in our drawing and dining-room did not affect my happiness, the wainscoting and even the crevices of the floor admitted perfect gusts of air that rather did. The windows and doors, even when professing to be shut, could never be called closed; and on one or two gusty evenings, the carpet in the room where I was sitting heaved and undulated by means of a stream of air from under the door, like a theatrical representation of the ocean in extreme agitation. The staircase was of the roughest description, such as you would not find in the poorest English farm-house, covered only by the inside of the roof, rough s.h.i.+ngles--that is, wooden tiles--and all the beams, rafters, etc., etc., of the roofing, admitting little starry twinklings of sun or moonlight, perfectly apparent to the naked eye of whoever ascended or descended. Such was my residence on the estate of Hampton on great St. Simon's Island; and it was infinitely superior in size, comfort, and everything else to my abode on Butler's Island, which was indeed a very miserable hole.

The St. Simon's house being sufficiently roomy, I presently set about making it as far as possible convenient and comfortable. I had a fine large table, such as might have become some august board of business men, made of plain white pine and covered in with sober-looking dark green merino. I next had a settee constructed--cus.h.i.+ons, covers, etc., cut out and mainly st.i.tched by my own fair fingers; we stuffed it with the native moss; and I had a pretty white _peignoir_ made for it, with stuff which I got from that emporium of fas.h.i.+onable luxury, Darien; and this was quite an item of elegance, as well as comfort. Another table in my sitting-room was an old, rickety, rheumatic piece of furniture of the "old Major's," the infirmities of which I gayly concealed under a Macgregor plaid shawl, never burdening its elderly limbs with any greater weight than a vase of flowers; and by the help of plenty of this exquisite, ornamental furniture of nature's own providing, and a tolerable collection of books, which we had taken down to the South with us, my sitting-room did not look uncomfortable or uncheerful.

If, however, I am to winter there again this year, I shall endeavor to make it a little more like the dwelling of civilized human beings by the introduction of locks to the doors, instead of wooden latches pulled by pack-thread; and bells, of which at present there is but one in the whole house, and that is a noose, hanging just outside the sitting-room door, by which I expected to be caught and throttled every time I went in and out....

I am ever yours, F. A. B.

LENOX, August 9th, 1839.

I turn from interchange of thought and feeling with my friends here, dearest Harriet, to read again an unanswered letter of yours; and as I dwell upon your affectionate words, while my eyes wander over the beautiful landscape which my window commands, my mind is filled with the consideration of the great treasure of love that has been bestowed upon me out of so many hearts, and I wonder as I ponder. G.o.d knows how devoutly I thank Him for this blessing above all others, granted to me in a measure so far above my deserts, that my grat.i.tude is mingled with surprise and a sense of my own unworthiness, which enhances my appreciation of my great good fortune in this respect.... In seasons of self-reproach and self-condemnation it is an encouragement and a consolation, and helps to lift one from the dust, to reflect that good and n.o.ble spirits have loved one--spirits too good and too n.o.ble, one would fain persuade one's self, to love what is utterly base and unworthy....

You ask me if I have kept any journal, or written anything lately.

During my winter in the South I kept a daily journal of whatever occurred to interest me, and I am now busily engaged in copying it....

Since the perpetration of that "English Tragedy," now in your safe keeping, I have written nothing else; and probably, until I find myself again under the influence of some such stimulus as my mind received on returning to England, my intellectual faculties will remain stagnant, so far as any "worthy achievement," as Milton would say, is concerned. You see, I persist in considering that play in that light....

I am ashamed to say that I am exceedingly sleepy. I have been riding sixteen miles over these charming hills. The day is bright and breezy, and full of s.h.i.+fting lights and shadows, playing over a landscape that combines every variety of beauty,--valleys, in the hollows of which lie small lakes glittering like sapphires; uplands, clothed with grain-fields and orchards, and studded with farm-houses, each the centre of its own free domain; hills clothed from base to brow with every variety of forest tree; and woods, some wild, tangled, and all but impenetrable, others clear of underbrush, shady, moss-carpeted and sun-checkered; n.o.ble ma.s.ses of granite rock, great slabs of marble (of which there are fine quarries in the neighborhood), clear mountain brooks and a full, free-flowing, sparkling river;--all this, under a cloud-varied sky, such as generally canopies mountain districts, the sunset glories of which are often magnificent. I have good friends, and my precious children, an easy, cheerful, cultivated society, my capital horse, and, in short, most good things that I call mine--on this side of the water--with one heavy exception....

My dearest Harriet, my drowsiness grows upon me, so that my eyelids are gradually drawing together as I look out at the sweet prospect, and the blue s.h.i.+mmer of the little lake and sunny waving of the trees are fading all away into a dream before me. Good-bye.

Your sleepy and affectionate F. A. B.

[When I was in London, some time after the date of this letter, I received an earnest request from one of the most devoted of the New England abolitionists, to allow the journal I kept while at the South to be published, and so give the authority of my experience to the aid of the cause of freedom. This application occasioned me great trouble and distress, as it was most painful to me to refuse my testimony on the subject on which I felt so deeply; but it was impossible for me then to feel at liberty to publish my journal.

When the address, drawn up at Stafford House, under the impulse of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's powerful novel, and the auspices of Lord Shaftesbury and the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland (by Thackeray denominated the "Womanifesto against Slavery"), was brought to me for my signature, I was obliged to decline putting my name to it, though I felt very sure no other signer of that doc.u.ment knew more of the facts of American slavery, or abhorred it more, than I did; but also, no other of its signers knew, as I did, the indignant sense of offense which it would be sure to excite in those to whom it was addressed; its absolute futility as to the accomplishment of any good purpose, and the bitter feeling it could not fail to arouse, even in the women of the Northern States, by the a.s.sumed moral superiority which it would be thought to imply.

I would then gladly have published my journal, had I been at liberty to do so, and thus shown my sympathy with the spirit, though not the letter, of the Stafford House appeal to the women of America.

It was not, however, until after the War of Secession broke out, while residing in England, and hearing daily and hourly the condition of the slaves discussed, in a spirit of entire sympathy with their owners, that nothing but the most absolute ignorance could excuse, that I determined to publish my record of my own observations on a Southern plantation.

At the time of my doing so, party feeling on the subject of the American war was extremely violent in England, and the people among whom I lived were all Southern sympathizers. I believe I was suspected of being _employed_ to "advocate" the Northern cause (an honor of which I was as little worthy as their cause was in need of such an advocate); and my friend, Lady ----, told me she had repeatedly heard it a.s.serted that my journal was not a genuine record of my own experiences and observation, but "cooked up" (to use the expression applied to it) to serve the purpose of party special pleading. This, as she said, she was able to contradict upon her own authority, having heard me read the ma.n.u.scripts many years before at her grandmother's, Lady Dacre's, at the Hoo.

This accusation of having "cooked up" my journal for a particular end may perhaps have originated from the fact that I refused to place the whole of it in the hands of the printers, giving out to be printed merely such portions as I chose to submit to their inspection, which, as the book was my personal diary, and contained matter of the most strictly private nature, was not perhaps unreasonable. The republication of this book in America had not been contemplated by me; my purpose and my desire being to make the facts it contained known in England. In the United States, by the year 1862, abundant miserable testimony of the same nature needed no confirmation of mine. My friend, Mr. John Forbes, of Boston, however, requested me to let him have it republished in America, and I very gladly consented to do so.[4]

[4] I have omitted from the letters written on the plantation, at the same time as this diary, all details of the condition of the slaves among whom I was living; the painful effect of which upon myself however, together with my general strong feeling upon the subject of slavery, I have not entirely suppressed--because I do not think it well that all record should be obliterated of the nature of the terrible curse from which G.o.d in His mercy has delivered English America.

In countless thousands of lamentable graves the bitter wrong lies buried--atoned for by a four-years' fratricidal war: the beautiful Southern land is lifting its head from the disgrace of slavery and the agony of its defense. May its free future days surpa.s.s in prosperity (as they surely will a thousand-fold) those of its former perilous pride of privilege--of race supremacy and subjugation.

An extremely interesting and clever book, called "A Fool's Errand,"

embodies under the form of a novel, an accurate picture of the social condition of the Southern States after the war--a condition so replete with elements of danger and difficulty, that the highest virtue and the deepest wisdom could hardly have coped successfully with them; and from a heart-breaking and perhaps unsuccessful struggle with which, Abraham Lincoln's murder delivered him, I believe, as a reward for his upright and n.o.ble career.]

LENOX, September 11th, 1839.