Dixie After the War Part 13

She invited ten ladies, who all came wondering what on earth she could set before them. They walked; there was not a carriage in the neighbourhood.

They were all cultured, refined women, wives and daughters of men of prominence, and accustomed to elegant entertainment. A few days before, one of them had sent to Mrs. Page for something to eat, saying she had not a mouthful in the house, and Mrs. Page had shared with her a small supply of Western pork and hardtack which her faithful coloured man, Frank, had gotten from the Yankees. Mrs. Page had now no pork left. Her garden had been destroyed. She had not a chair in the house, and but one cooking utensil, a large iron pot. And not a fork, spoon, cup, plate or other table appointment.

With pomp and merriment, Mrs. Drane, a clergyman's widow, the company's dean and a great favourite with everybody, was installed at the head of the bare, mutilated table, where rude benches served as seats. Mrs.

Marmaduke Johnston, of Petersburg, was accorded second place of honour.

The _menu_ consisted of a pudding of corn-meal and dried whortle-berries sweetened with sorghum; and beer made of persimmons and honeyshucks, also sweetened with sorghum. The many-sided Frank was butler. The pudding, filling the half of a large gourd, was placed in front of Mrs. Drane, and she, using hardtack as spoon, dipped it up, depositing it daintily on other hardtack which answered for plates and saucers.

The beer was served from another gourd into cups made of newspapers folded into shape; the ladies drank quickly that the liquid might not soak through and be lost. They enjoyed the beverage and the pudding greatly and a.s.sured their hostess that they had rarely attended a more delightful feast. The pudding had been boiled in the large iron pot, and Frank had transferred it to the gourd. In his kitchen and pantry, gourds of various sorts and sizes seemed to ask: "Why were vessels of iron, pewter, and copper ever invented, and what need has the world of china-ware so long as we grow on the backyard fence?"

How Frank's mistress, a frail-looking, hospitable, resourceful little woman, provided for herself and family and helped her friends out of next to nothing; how her cheerfulness, industry, and enterprise never failed her or others; and how Frank aided her, would in itself fill a book.

But then it is a story of Southern verve and inventiveness that could be duplicated over and over again.

Did not Sir George Campbell write in an English magazine of how much he enjoyed a dinner in a Southern mansion, when all the feast was a dish of roasted apples and a plate of corn-bread? Not a word of apology was uttered by his host or hostess; converse was so cultured and pleasing, welcome so sincere, that the poverty of the board was not to be weighed in the balance. This host who had so much and so little to give his guest was Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton Ball, nearest living kinsman to General George Was.h.i.+ngton.

The fall of 1865 was, in Virginia at least, a bountiful one. Planters'

sons had come home, gone into the fields, worked till the crop was all laid by; and then, there was no lack of gaiety. A favourite form of diversion was the tournament, which furnished fine sport for cavalry riders trained under Stuart and Fitz Lee.

One of the most brilliant took place in 1866, at a famous plantation on the North Anna River. The race-track had been beaten down smooth and hard beforehand by the daily training of knights. It was in a fair stretch of meadow-land beyond the lawns and orchards. The time was October, the weather ideal, the golden haze of Indian Summer mellowing every line of landscape. On the day appointed the grounds were crowded with carriages, wagonettes, buggies and vehicles of every sort, some very shabby, but borrowing brightness from the fair young faces within.

The knights were about twenty-five. Their steeds were not so richly caparisoned as Scott's in "Ivanhoe," but the riders bestrode them with perhaps greater ease and grace than heavy armor permitted mediaeval predecessors. Some wore plumed hats that had covered their heads in real cavalry charges, and more than one warrior's waist was girt with the red silk sash that had belted him when he rode at the head of his men as Fitz Lee's captain. A number were in full Confederate uniform, carrying their gray jackets as jauntily as if no battle had ever been lost to them. One of these attracted peculiar attention. He was of very distinguished appearance; and from his arm floated a long streamer of c.r.a.pe. Every one was guessing his name till the herald cried: "Knight of Liberty Lost!" The mourning knight swept before the crowd, bearing off on the point of his spear the three rings which marked his victory for at least that run.

For this sport, three gibbet-like structures stand equal distances apart on a straight race-track. From the arm of each, a hook depends and on each hook a ring is hung. Each knight, with lance poised and aimed, rides full tilt down this track and takes off all the rings he can in a given number of rides. He who captures most rings is victor. It is his right to choose the Queen of Love and Beauty, riding up to her on the field and offering a ring upon his spear. The knight winning the second highest number chooses the First Maid of Honour; and so on, until there is a royal quartette of queen and maids.

The tournament was to the South what baseball is to the nation; it was intensely exciting and picturesque, and, by reason of the guerdon won, poetic, investing an ordinary mortal with such power as Paris exercised when he gave the golden apple to Venus. It had spice of peril to make it attractive, if "danger's self is lure alone." Fine horsemans.h.i.+p, a steady hand, and sure eye were essentials.

"Liberty Lost" won, and the mourning knight laid his laurels at the feet of a beautiful girl who has since reigned as a social queen in a Northern home. The coronation took place in the mansion that evening. After a flowery address, each knight knelt and offered a crown to his fair one.

The symbols of royalty were wreaths of artificial flowers, the queen's shaped like a coronet, with sprays forming points. Her majesty wore a gown that had belonged to her great-grandmother; very rich silk in a bayadere pattern, that served as becoming sheath for her slim blonde loveliness.

After the coronation, the knights led their fair ones out in the "Royal Set" which opened the ball.

Perhaps it is better to say that George Walker, the negro fiddler, opened the ball. He was the most famous man of his craft in the Piedmont region.

There he was that night in all his glory at the head of his band of banjoists, violinists and violincellist; he was grandeur and gloss personified when he made preliminary bow and flourish, held his bow aloft, and set the ball in motion!

"Honour yo' pardners!"

"And didn't we do as George told us to do!" Matoaca says. "Such dance-provoking melodies followed as almost bewitched one's feet. 'Life on the Ocean Wave,' 'Down-town Girls Won't You Come Out Tonight and Dance by the Light of the Moon!' 'Fisher's Horn-Pipe' and 'Ole Zip c.o.o.n' were some of them. Not high-sounding to folks of today, but didn't they make feet twinkle! People did what was called 'taking steps' in those days. I can almost hear George's fiddle now, and hear him calling: 'Ladies to the right! Gents to the right! Ladies to the center! Gents to the center!

Hands all 'roun' an' promenade all!' Who could yell 'Do se do!' and 'Sashay all!' with such a swing?"

About one o'clock all marched in to supper, the queen and her knights and maidens leading. It was hard times in Virginia, but the table groaned under such things as folks then thought ought to adorn a festal board.

There was not lacking the mighty saddle-o'-mutton, roast pig with apple in his mouth, Smithfield ham, roast turkey, and due accompaniments. The company marched back to the ball-room, and presently marched again to a second supper embracing sweets of all descriptions.

Commencements at schools and colleges, which the South began to restore and refill as quickly as she was able, brought the young people together and were strong features in our social life. So were Sunday schools; and, in the country, protracted meetings or religious revivals. And barbecues.

Who that has gone out to a frolic in the Southern woods and feasted on shote or mutton roasted over a pit and basted with vinegar and red pepper gravy, can forget what a barbecue is!

Summer resorts became again meeting-grounds for old friends, and new.

Social gatherings at the Greenbrier White Sulphur were notable. General Lee was there with his daughter, and the first to lead in extending courtesies to Northern guests attracted to the White by the reputation of that famous watering-place. Again, our women were at their ancient haunts, wearing silks and laces as they were prospering under the new order or as their great-grandmothers' trunks, like that of Love and Beauty's Queen, held reserves not yet exhausted. And under the silks and laces, hearts cried out for loved ones who would gather on the green lawns and dance in the great halls no more. But heroism presented a smiling face and took up life's measure again.

In cities changes were not so acute as in the country, where people, without horses and vehicles, were unable to visit each other. The larger the planter, the more extreme his family's isolation was like to be, his land and his neighbours' lands stretching for miles between houses. I heard a planter's wife say, "Yours is the first white woman's face I have seen for six months." Her little daughter murmured mournfully: "And I haven't seen a little white girl to play with for longer than that."

Mult.i.tudes who had kept open house could no longer. To a people in whom the social instinct was so strong and hospitality second nature, abrupt ending of neighbourly intercourse was a hard blow.

Stay and bankrupt laws for the benefit of the debtor cla.s.s and bearing much hards.h.i.+p on creditors, often orphan minors, were pa.s.sed, and under these planters were sold out and moved to new places, their overseers often succeeding them and reigning in their stead. It was not an unknown thing for men to manage to get themselves sold out under these laws, thus evading payment of obligations and at the same time securing a certain quota for themselves, which the law allowed. It seemed to me that many who took it were better off than before. There were unfortunates who had to pay security debts for bankrupts. Much hard feeling was engendered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. DAVID URQUHART, OF NEW ORLEANS

A famous hostess, distinguished for her social graces and her good deeds.]

Some measure for relief of the debtor cla.s.s was necessary. A man who had contracted debts on the basis of thousands of acres at fifteen to fifty dollars an acre, and owning a hundred or more negroes, worth a thousand dollars each, could not meet in full such engagements when his land would not bring two dollars an acre, when his negroes were set free, and hired labour, if he had wherewithal to hire, could not be relied on. Some men took the Bankrupt Law for protection, then set themselves to work and paid obligations which could not be exacted by law.

THE BONDAGE OF THE FREE

CHAPTER XVI

THE BONDAGE OF THE FREE

"Had slavery lasted a few years longer," I have heard my mother say, "it would have killed Julia, my head-woman, and me. Our burden of work and responsibility was simply staggering."

In the ante-bellum life of the mistress of a Southern plantation there was no menial occupation, but administrative work was large and exacting. The giving out of rations, clothes, medicines, nursing of the sick, cutting out of garments, sewing, spinning, knitting, had to be directed. The everlasting teaching and training, the watch-care of sometimes several hundred semi-civilized, semi-savage people of all ages, dispositions and tempers, were on the white woman's hands.

The kitchen was but one department of that big school of domestic science, the home on a Southern plantation, where cooks, nurses, maids, butlers, seamstresses and laundresses had understudies or pupils; and the white mistress, to whom every student's progress was a matter of keen personal interest and usually of affectionate concern, was princ.i.p.al and director.

The typical Southern plantation was, in effect, a great social settlement for the uplift of Africans.

For a complete picture of plantation life, I beg my readers to turn to that chapter in the "Life of Leonidas Polk" written by his son, Dr. W. M.

Polk, which describes "Leighton" in the sugar-lands on Bayou La Fourche.

Read of the industrial work and then of the Sabbath, when the negroes a.s.sembled in the bishop's house where the chaplain conducted the service while the bishop sat at the head of his servants. Wors.h.i.+p over, women withdrew into another room, where Mrs. Polk or the family governess gave them instruction; the children into still another, where Bishop Polk's daughter taught them; the men remained with the chaplain for examination and admonition. The bishop made great efforts to preserve the sanct.i.ty of family life among his servants. He christened their babies; their weddings were celebrated in his own home, decorated and illuminated for them. The honour coveted by his children was to hold aloft the silver candlesticks while their father read the marriage service. If a couple misbehaved, they were compelled to marry, but without a wedding-feast.

Andrew P. Calhoun, eldest son of John C. Calhoun, was President of the South Carolina Agricultural College and owner of large lands in Alabama and South Carolina. He took pride in raising everything consumed on his plantations. In the New York home of his son, Mr. Patrick Calhoun, three of his old servants live; his wife's maid says proudly: "I have counted thirty things on my Miss' dinner-table that were grown on the place."

Cotton and wool were grown on the place and carded, spun, dyed, woven into cloth by negro women; in great rooms, well lighted, well aired, well equipped, negro cutters, fitters and seamstresses fas.h.i.+oned neat and comfortable garments for a contented, well-cared-for laboring force. Mrs.

Calhoun devoted as much time to this department of plantation work, which included the industrial and moral education of negro women, as Mr. Calhoun devoted to the general management of his lands and the industrial and moral uplift of negro men. The Polk and Calhoun plantations were types of thousands; and their owners types of thousands of planters who applied the same principles, if sometimes on lesser scale, to farming operations.

No inst.i.tutional work can take the place of work of this kind. It is like play to the real thing. Without decrying Hampton, Petersburg and Tuskegee, it can be said with truth that these inst.i.tutions and many more in combination would be unable to do for a savage race what the old planters and the old plantation system of the South did for Africa's barbarians.

Employers of white labor might sit at the feet of those old planters and learn wisdom. Professor Morrison, of the Chair of History and Sociology at Clemson College, tells me that the instruction of students in their duty to their servants const.i.tuted a recognised department in some Southern colleges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANCES DEVEREUX POLK

(Wife of General Leonidas Polk, the Warrior Bishop.)

She was the spiritual and industrial educator of many negroes, and the mistress of a large sugar plantation.]

Mammy Julia was my mother's a.s.sistant superintendent, so to speak. "I could trust almost anything to her," her mistress bore testimony, "for she appreciated responsibility and was faithfulness itself. I don't know a negro of the new order who can hold a candle to her." Mammy Julia and my mother had no rest night or day. Black folks were coming with troubles, wants, quarrels, ailments, births, marriages and deaths, from morning till night and night till morning again. "I was glad and thankful--on my own account--when slavery ended and I ceased to belong, body and soul, to my negroes." As my mother, so said other Southern mistresses.

Perhaps the Southern matron's point of view may be somewhat surprising to those who have thought that under ante-bellum conditions, slavery was all on the negro's side and that all Southern people were fiercely bent on keeping him in bonds. Many did not believe in slavery and were trying to end it.

Mrs. Robert E. Lee's father and uncle freed some five hundred slaves, with General Lee's approval, thus alienating from her over $500,000 worth of property. The Hampton family, of South Carolina, sent to Liberia a great colony of freed slaves, who presently plead to be brought home. General Preston, Confederate, of Kentucky, freed his negroes; he would not sell, and could not afford to keep, them; they were "over-running and ruining his plantation, and clearing up forests for firewood; slavery is the curse of the South."