Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 13

We found Herring Creek a good, lazy houseboating waterway; a brown ribbon of marsh stream wandering aimlessly among the rushes. Turn after turn, and the marshes still kept us company--the quiet, lone marshes that had come to have such a charm for us. Evidently, they were beginning to feel that the year was growing old. Greens were sobering into browns, and near the water's edge were tips of silvery white. The frowsy-looking gra.s.sy bunches, here and there, were ducking blinds, where hunters soon would be in hiding with their wooden decoys floating near.

Like some great marsh creature herself, Gadabout followed the winding way, puffing along contentedly. Sometimes, when the turns were too sharp for her liking, she swung to them lazily, with a long purr of water at bow and stern, and seemed about to wallow off through the rushes.

Now something of a bank developed along our starboard side. It grew into a bluff covered with pines and thick-coated cedars and white-trunked sycamores and gray beeches. This woodland too had the year writ old. The surviving green of cedar and pine could not hide the telltale leafless trees that stood between. But more significant than leafless trees was the luxuriant holly with its ripe, red berries, gayly ready for Christmas decorations and to grace the birth of a new year.

And yet, these were among the most glorious days for houseboating: tonic days with a hint of winter in the chill, crisp air, and dreamy days with a lingering of summer in the sun's warm glow. The enervating heat was over, and the worrisome insects were gone. In peace we could sail in the marsh stream or climb the banks for ferns and holly.

Gadabout moved with ma.s.ses of pale reeds, spicy boughs of cedar, bay branches, and glowing holly nodding on her bow. The air was no longer filled with the song of birds; but it was alive and cheerily a-twitter with their fat flittings from seeds to berries, from marsh to woodland.

Heartily we declared that it was better to go an-Autumning than a-Maying.

After a while there were signs of people about. Little boats were nosing into the bank here and there, and occasionally a white farmhouse would peep over the bluff above our water-trail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LITTLE BOATS WERE NOSING INTO THE BANK HERE AND THERE."]

It was along toward dinner time when, according to our count, the houseboat had rounded as many bends as the chart seemed to require, and ought to be near Westover Church. So, upon catching sight through the trees of a brick building up on the bluff, we concluded that Gadabout had reached her journey's end, and an anchor was dropped.

Toward evening Nautica and the Commodore went ash.o.r.e. At the top of the hill was a little graveyard, and standing in it was the old church that we had come to see. It was a small building and plain, but of historic interest. As originally built, about the middle of the seventeenth century, it stood not here but down on the sh.o.r.e of the James at Westover. One of the earliest churches in the country, and then standing on one of the greatest estates in Virginia, it was a typical centre of colonial life; and gathered about it, in the little graveyard by the river, were the tombs of noted colonial dead.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the church was moved to its present site. Enclosed within a brick wall and with the tombs of generations of wors.h.i.+ppers again cl.u.s.tering about it, Westover Church had settled down once more to revered old age when the ravages of war swept over the land. In that sad war of brothers over a union that this church had seen formed, over soil that it had seen won from Great Britain, the humble old House of G.o.d was left dismantled, its graveyard walls thrown down, and its tombs broken. After the war, the church was repaired, and it is still the place of wors.h.i.+p for the countryside.

The rectory stood on a bluff near by, overlooking the wide stretch of marsh and the far windings of the stream. We found that the latest of the long line of rectors and equally important rectors' wives that Westover Church has known were the Reverend and Mrs. Cornick, who told us of the hopes of the little community that the Government would yet pay indemnity for the injury done by Federal soldiers to the old church.

The next morning brought so fine a Thanksgiving Day that our grat.i.tude rose up with the sun--though the rest of us awaited a more convenient hour. The air was crisp; the sky was unclouded. When, in good time for morning service, we went up the hill to the old brick church, we saw horses and carriages lined along the fence. Inside the building some of the people who had come early were having neighbourly confidences over the backs of the pews.

Naturally our thoughts went wandering between service and sermon and church. Sometimes (and through no fault of the good rector either), we would find ourselves far back in the story of that colonial house of wors.h.i.+p, and full two hundred years away from the text. We would see this old church as it stood at first on the wild bank of the James, and the families of those early planters gathering in. They would come from up and down the river; some in pirogues and pinnaces and sloops, and some on horseback with the fair dames on pillions behind. Or, somewhat later, lordly coaches would roll to the door bearing colonial grandees.

The plain little church had seen brave attire in those days, when the parish wors.h.i.+pped in flowered silks and embroidered waistcoats and laced head-dresses and powdered periwigs. Then, after the services, would come the social hour, when dinner invitations went round, parties were planned, and there was a general changing about of the guests that were always filling Virginia homes. Doubtless, the lavish hospitality of the master of Westover, who attended this church, caused quite a Sunday pilgrimage to that mansion of his that we had glimpsed through the trees as Gadabout entered Herring Creek.

We went out past chatting groups (stopping for the greeting of the rector and his wife); past horses that were being unhitched and vehicles that were cramping and creaking; on down to the stream where geese were paddling in the marshes, and overhead the rectory doves were wheeling in the sunny air. Rowing down the creek toward the houseboat, we stopped here and there to gather reeds and holly.

"This is the first time that we have ever gone to church by boat," said the Commodore.

"Yes," answered Nautica, "and it was just the way to do it. We have attended a colonial church in a quite colonial way."

When we sat down to our Thanksgiving dinner, we felt almost like landlubbers again; for while our home acre was a watery one and Gadabout, boat-like, swung and swayed, yet we had real neighbours up on the bluff and there was even a church next door. Later, we saw coming down the stream some good after-dinner cheer--our rowboat with mail that had been acc.u.mulating for days at Westover. Letters and papers and packages and magazines were welcomed aboard. Comfortably we settled down for an evening of catching up with the world.

Next morning Gadabout made an uneventful run down the stream, anch.o.r.ed just within the mouth of the creek, and sent Henry off into the country foraging.

Of course certain provisioning arrangements followed Gadabout from harbour to harbour. Boxes of groceries came up from Norfolk or down from Richmond by steamer; and also every few days a big cake of ice arrived in a travelling suit of burlap lined with sawdust. But that still left many things to be obtained along the way. As most of the country stores were back from the river, the sailor, on horseback or in a cart, made many a long provisioning trip.

Toward evening when there came a gentle b.u.mp upon Gadabout's guard and the rattle of a chain upon her cleat, we went out to see what the supply boat had brought. As soon as we heard the troubled sputtering, "An' I mos' give up gittin' anything," we knew that the little sh.o.r.e-boat was a nautical horn of plenty. And so she proved as her cargo came aboard to an accompaniment of running comment.

"I don' know _where_ I been, an' if I had to go back, I couldn' do it.

That's b.u.t.ter there--that'll do till the nex' box comes. The store didn' have much of anything; an' I struck out into the country, I did, an' mos' los' myse'f. But the horse he knowed the way. I got another turkey, anyhow. I'm cert'nly glad we jes' begun to eat 'em if we got to eat 'em steady. The man had done sold him; but I used my silver tongue, I did, an' he let me have him. There's some apples an' turnips an'

sweet potatoes. I got them at the store. An' where I got them eggs at, I could get a couple of chickens nex' week if I could jes' fin' the place."

So the fruits of the foraging came tumbling aboard--a promising, goodly array. And Gadabout had no troubled dreams that night of a wolf swimming up to her door.

CHAPTER XIX

WESTOVER, THE HOME OF A COLONIAL BELLE

On the following day, Gadabout scrambled across the flats out into the James again, intent upon a visit to Westover.

Unlike Brandon, Westover stands within sight from the river; and we had a good view of the old homestead as we pa.s.sed by to make our landing at the steamer pier which is a little above the house.

There was a break in the tree-fringe on the north bank of the James. A sea-wall extended along the water's edge, and from either end of it a brick wall ran far inland. Within the s.p.a.cious enclosure, the grounds swept back and up from the river, with n.o.ble trees and close-cut lawn; and crowning the slope stood the beautiful old mansion. A stately central building of red brick, with dormer windows in its steep-pitched roof, rose between low flanking corridors and wings like some overlord with his faithful va.s.sals in attendance. In neutral brown the quiet river, in shadowy green the sloping lawn, in dull red and gleaming white the lofty, many-windowed front of Westover--a picture that drew Gadabout in close to the shoals that day.

The bit of history that goes with the picture gives us many glimpses of old-time elegance and romance, and helps us to a good idea of some of the pretentious phases of colonial life. It runs in this way.

Back in the beginnings of things American, when the dissatisfied planters at James Towne were starting out to establish their estates along the river, these lands by Herring Creek attracted attention.

Under the name of Westover they soon became the property of the Byrd family, and rose to prominence among colonial estates in connection with the fortunes of that distinguished house.

The golden age of Westover was in the days of the second William Byrd, who was one of the most striking figures of colonial times. Handsome, learned, witty, and capable; with exquisite taste and elegant culture fas.h.i.+oned in the friends.h.i.+p of English n.o.blemen; with almost endless acres and boundless wealth--a cavalier of cavaliers was this London-bred Virginian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIVERWARD FRONT OF WESTOVER.]

It is surprising that this _beau-ideal_ should have remained spouseless for two years after coming into his estate. He must have been considered the most fascinating matrimonial possibility in the colony.

One can imagine how in a gathering of Virginia maidens intent upon their tambour embroidery, when the name of Westover's young master came up, a circle of eyelashes went down and a circle of tender hearts went both up and down. The prize was finally won by Lucy Parke, daughter of Colonel Daniel Parke whose portrait hangs at Brandon.

Some years later, family litigation called Colonel Byrd to England, where his wife and little daughter, Evelyn, joined him, and where his wife soon died. The residence in London continued for a number of years; and resulted in giving the Colonel a new wife in the person of a rich young widow, and in giving social finish and a broken heart to Evelyn Byrd.

Under the guidance of her father, she was educated after the manner of the fas.h.i.+onable life of that day. It must have been a time quite to the elegant Colonel's liking when London turned in admiration to his daughter; when, but sixteen and already crowned with social successes, the cultured beauty from the plantation on the James was presented at the English Court.

The stories of Evelyn Byrd's London experiences bring many noted names into the train of those who did her honour: the Lords Chesterfield and Oxford, and Pope at the height of his glory, and the cynical Lord Hervey, and Beau Nash, the autocrat of Bath. There should be mentioned too that old courtier (whoever he was) whose admiration was expressed in the rather mild witticism, "I no longer wonder that young men are anxious to go to Virginia to study ornithology, since such beautiful _birds_ are to be found there."

It was in the midst of this London gayety that Evelyn Byrd so literally met her fate in meeting the grandson of Lord Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt. The story of that unhappy love affair--the devoted pair, the opposition of the maiden's father, and the separation of the lovers--has become an oft-told but ever attractive romance.

About 1726, Colonel Byrd returned with his family to Virginia; and it was then, it seems, that he built the present mansion at Westover, and entered upon the almost sumptuous life there that was to make the plantation famous.

And Westover was a worthy setting for the worthy Colonel. Without the home, were lawns and gardens beautiful with native and imported trees, shrubs, and vines; and within the home, s.p.a.cious rooms with rich furnis.h.i.+ngs and art treasures gathered in England and on the Continent.

Here too was one of the largest and most valuable collections of books in the colonies. As a matter of course, this home was a distinguished social centre, drawing to itself the most brilliant colonial society.

Colonel Byrd died in 1744, and was buried in the old garden when it was in all its summer glory. In the next generation, Westover pa.s.sed to strangers, having been for a century and a quarter the home of the Byrds, who for three successive generations had held proud position in colonial America.

Since then, the plantation has suffered from many changes of owners.h.i.+p, and from the Civil War. The mansion was held several times by the Federal forces, being used as headquarters and as an army storehouse.

Among the war injuries it sustained was the destruction of one wing.

The destroyed portion has been rebuilt recently by the present owner of the estate, Mrs. C. Sears Ramsay. Under her owners.h.i.+p, Westover has had added interest, especially for lovers of the colonial, on account of such extensive restoration as has made the old home one of the finest examples of eighteenth century architecture and furnis.h.i.+ng in America.

Surely while we have been telling the story of Westover, Gadabout has had time to reach the steamboat pier above the house; and we may take it that she is safely tied to the pilings.

Once ash.o.r.e, Nautica and the Commodore found that a short walk along the river bluff brought them to an entrance to the Westover grounds.

Gates of wrought iron, with perhaps a martlet from the Byrd coat of arms above them, swung between tall pillars in the wall. From this entrance, a pathway approached the homestead diagonally, and afforded charming views of the house and its surroundings. To our right as we walked, the lawn, thick set with trees, sloped gently to the river wall. To our left, the views came in broken, picturesque bits; a stretch of shrubbery, a reach of garden wall, some quaint outbuildings in warm, dull red, a glimpse of courtyard beyond a corner of box, and then the old home itself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HALL, WITH ITS CARVED MAHOGANY STAIRCASE.]