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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
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Seitenzahl: 614
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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MY BELOVED SOUTH
Mrs. T. P. O’Connor
LACONIA PUBLISHERS
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Copyright © 2016 by Mrs. T. P. O’Connor
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
My Beloved South
A FRIENDLY WORD
CHAPTER I THE DUVALS
CHAPTER II YOUTHS GLAD SUCCESS
CHAPTER III THE CONQUERING PIONEER
CHAPTER IV SAM HOUSTON
CHAPTER V ACROSS THE SEA TO MARYLAND
CHAPTER VI CHRISTMAS AND OLD MEMORIES
CHAPTER VII CHARLES TOWN AND WASHINGTON
CHAPTER VIII THE SYMBOL OF THE SOUTH
CHAPTER IX HOSPITABLE CHARLESTON
CHAPTER X THE CHARM OF CHARLESTON-THE SILVER GARDEN
CHAPTER XI IN SAVANNAH
CHAPTER XII THE MULES OF GEORGIA
CHAPTER XIII THE SUWANEE RIVER
CHAPTER XIV THE WOMEN OF NEW ORLEANS
CHAPTER XV OLD-WORLD NEW ORLEANS
CHAPTER XVI A RUSSIAN ROMEO AND JULIET
CHAPTER XVII AN OLD-TIME PLANTATION
CHAPTER XVIII THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
CHAPTER XIX HARRIS DICKSON
CHAPTER XX A PRESENT-DAY PLANTATION
CHAPTER XXI MY HERO
CHAPTER XXII SIR WALTER SCOTT’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER XXIII GALLANT, BRAVE, HEARTY KENTUCKY
ARBOUR DAY PROCLAMATION
“INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT TREES.”
“DEBATE” “White Oak Group”
CHAPTER XXIV A VIRGINIA GENTLEMAN
CHAPTER XXV A BRAVE LADY
CHAPTER XXVI MY HEALING SOUTH
The Honourable Wm. Cavendish, Esq.:
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MY BELOVED SOUTH
By
Mrs. T. P. O’Connor
Author of “Little Thank You,” “I Myself,” etc.
“The Sun is Laughter; for ‘t is He who maketh joyous the
thoughts of men, and gladdeneth the infinite world.”
To
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
Each day the memory of the old South becomes more and more a cherished dream. Its bounteous hospitality, its quixotic chivalry, its daring courage, its spotless honour, its poetic understanding, are receding into the heroic past. Therefore, we of the Old Guard must stand together, and do what we can to keep the younger and more practical generation Unforgetting. My pen is freighted with appreciation, but is, alas, inadequate, while already your genius has made “The tender grace of a day that is dead” immortal; and so, after many years of affectionate friendship, I dedicate this book to you.
A FRIENDLY WORD
“A WANDERING MINSTREL I, A thing of shreds and patches...” My book is but a reflection of myself; its sole recommendation,-that my bale of cotton grew under warm sunshine, and every thread spun and woven into material is from the old and new South. “I have gathered me a posy of other men’s thoughts, only the thread that holds them together is mine.” Some of the stories have even been told before, but they belong to me by right of inheritance and Love, so may I not tell them again?
After many years of absence, when the riches and abundance of my country were displayed to me, it was my ambition to write an informing, practical, statistical book. Such a one as would induce English settlers to set sail for the Southern States. There, English tradition, an ever-green, would extend a fraternal welcome, and with a small capital, or even none at all, except health and strong hands, a Home awaits them.
But my frank friends discouraged this undertaking. There are so many writers, they said, who know more of the progress, resources, and wealth of the country than you possibly can know. The most you can hope to do, is to make an entertaining South.
It was the great William Pitt, who, when a man was recommended to him because he talked sense, said: “Anybody can talk sense, Sir; can he talk nonsense?” And if now and then I have struck a rag-time tune—and who has a better right-underneath the nonsense and plantation songs, one earnest wish has been always in my heart, to bring England and America closer together, and to make them understand each other.
Men and women in Virginia have said to me, “I love Virginia, and after Virginia-England.” For myself, I love America in England, and England in America; they are both my countries, and if a little word of mine has made greater friendliness even for a brief moment between them, my book will not have been written in vain.
THE WARM SPRINGS,
VIRGINIA.
CHAPTER I THE DUVALS
One bright memory-only one;
And I walk by the light of its gleaming;
It brightens my days, and when days are done
It shines in the night o’er my dreaming.
Father THOMAS RYAN.
IN my wandering life of deepest shadow and occasional sunshine, there is but one thing for which I am altogether devoutly thankful,-I was born and bred in the South, and for generations on both sides of my family my ancestors were Southern people; consequently, without conflict, my qualities and defects are those of my race. For my own personal defects, given me at birth with a free hand by my whimsical fairy godmother, neither my family nor my beloved land is responsible.
My great-grandfather, Major Duval, fought in the War of the Revolution, and gave goodly sums towards the cause. He married at twenty-three a Miss Pope of Virginia, an heiress of whom he made rather a sudden and theatrical conquest, not later than five minutes after he discovered her. She, a fair-haired, dimpled beauty, wearing a silken hood, a green merino gown, little calfskin shoes with silver buckles, a black silk apron, and open-work mittens, was walking one golden October afternoon in a primeval forest near the banks of the Shenandoah. In the angle of her round arm lay a big ball of worsted, and the sun slanting down on her glancing needles struck diamond brilliance from their quick activity.
My great-grandfather, returning from the chase, young, dashing, good-looking, suddenly beheld this vision. He wore the buckskin clothes of the Virginian hunter, and carried his day’s trophy of wild turkey, ducks, and rabbits slung across his shoulder. His rifle held one last bullet.
Quickly advancing to the astonished young lady, he took off his bearskin cap, and making a bow so low that the turkeys touched the ground, he said, “Madame, permit me.” Then lifting the ball of worsted from its envied resting-place, he lightly tossed it high into the air, shot the bullet straight through its heart, and as it came down caught it and placed it, smoking with powder and with love, in her apron pocket.
The dimples all appeared as she said, “Sir, you can shoot and hit the mark.”
He bowed again and answered, “So can Cupid, and I hope,”-pointing to her fluttering heart-"in the right direction.”
The young lady, a very distant cousin whom he had never met, was from Richmond, visiting an aunt on an adjoining plantation. He walked home with her, in the mellow sunshine of an Indian summer afternoon, through the wonderful scarlet and gold forests of the early Virginia autumn, leaving on the doorstep of the wide plantation house his day’s hunt as his first love offering.
The next day he re-appeared, brave in satin small-clothes and lace ruffles, the queue of his fair hair tied with a silken ribbon, and offered himself with proper dignity as suitor for her hand. A month later they were married and lived happy ever afterwards.
I have an idea that my great-grandmother was the more interesting of the two (the Popes are an intellectual, fascinating family), and when she died so intense was her husband’s grief that finally nature mercifully relieved him with a gentle absent-minded forgetfulness.
When his children grew up, he sold his winter home in Richmond and afterwards lived entirely on his plantation, devoting the long summer days to bass fishing in the Shenandoah, which is no mean sport, as bass are wary and valorous fighters. Indeed, a mature father or bachelor fish of middle age and accumulated wisdom is seldom caught; the reckless youngsters who disregard the admonitions of their seniors are the only fish to be inveigled by the most tempting bait. Finally my great-grandfather gave up even this sport, and spent his days on the wide balcony which faced the virgin forest where he first saw the merry coquettish face of my great-grandmother. He read the Richmond newspaper from beginning to end, and gave it to a small darkey standing in attendance. This boy ran round the house, and handed him back the same paper, which “the good Major Duval” read all over again with reminiscent but deep satisfaction. It was evidently from this ancestor that my quite imbecile forgetfulness comes.
The old miniatures and portraits give him a round face, baby-like pink-and-white skin, fair hair, blue eyes, and the most friendly and engaging expression. How inevitably hereditary traits appear even in the third and fourth generation. My beautiful grandson of five said to me after a French lesson the other day: “Damma, isn’t it sad that one so young as I should have such a bad memory?” And immediately the picture of his Virginia ancestor, sitting on a wide vine-clad balcony and reading quite happily a newspaper for the fourth time, suggested itself to me.
Another Miss Pope, a kinswoman of mine, married and came to Texas to live. She was tall and dark, with jet-black hair, pearl-white teeth, a touch of dark down on her upper lip, and the most enchanting speaking voice I have ever heard. It was like golden velvet, and she talked with great brilliancy and a wealth of information on every conceivable subject, for she lived in books and not in the life around her. To that she was extremely indifferent, and had the reputation of being a humorously bad housekeeper.
My mother, with her sense of order and Spartan-like cleanliness, frankly disapproved of her, but my father loved her, and, as she was not his wife, forgave her disorder.
One afternoon when I was a very little girl my father drove out to see her, taking me with him. She lived a few miles from Austin and a little creek ran through the garden, so the flowers were glorious and plentiful, being always supplied with water. The wide hall was hung with family portraits, but the floor looked like a village street, literally covered with dried mud in little footprints, as if animals had wandered in and out at will.
The negro maid said Miss Anna was sick, but would the Judge and Miss Betty go right in. And we were shown into an immense bedroom opposite the drawing-room. A slight fever had given her a colour and she looked very handsome with her dark hair wandering over the pillow in two long thick plaits. Beside her stood a small table piled with books; some had toppled on to the bed, and there were books on the window-seat and on the sofa, and my father relieved the chair he was to sit upon of quite a small library.
He had first selected a large puffy-looking rocker, but our hostess smilingly admonished him: “Don’t take that chair, Judge, or you will sit on the new baby.” Then, seeing my eager look of interest, she said: “Go over and look at him, Betty,” and tiptoeing over to the soft white bundle, I found that it was an adorable three-months-old fat baby, sound asleep.
Then she began to talk, and though I was too little really to understand, the soft musical many-toned voice thrilled me with pleasure. After a while a stirring was heard under the bed, and an obese familiar sleepy pig made his appearance. He walked into the centre of the room, squealed loudly, stood for a moment, then trotted leisurely through the doorway, down the hall and out into the garden. She dreamily regarded but made no comment on the pig. Her rich honeyed tones continued unfalteringly. I was told afterwards that she was giving the last lines of Keats’sOde to the Nightingale. The pig, however, disturbed the child, who cried, and my father, loving babies like a woman, lifted the new man in his arms, hushed him, and began to walk the floor.
Presently a pet peacock, the hardest bird in the world to tame, with his tail magnificently spread, stood in the doorway, advanced proudly into the room, but gave a loud shriek at seeing a stranger and fled down the hall, while no comment was made onhim. It seemed to me that I was in a wonderful fairy dream, with such lovely things happening-a beautiful lady with long plaits, a soft pink baby, a peacock and a pig. Oh! I thought, if my home was only like this, how happy I should be.
My father’s voice brought me back from my dreams. He was saying, “Where is your pretty Yankee governess?” Mrs. Berkeley answered with a merry twinkle in her eye, “Gone. That’s the third, Judge, and I am going to have a new petition added to the Litany, ‘And from governesses, good Lord deliver us.’ “ This seemed to me a most beautiful sentiment, for I, too, wished to be delivered from governesses. I was too young to know that good-looking George Berkeley suffered from an impressionable nature. But eventually his wife, eight children, and later a strong-minded and elderly German governess, transformed him into a most exemplary husband.
My grandfather, Governor William Peyton Duval, was a son of the good Major Duval. His boyhood was spent in Richmond, Virginia. The house was kept by Aunt Barbara, a negro woman who was almost white. A strong character, quick-witted and capable, she had taught herself to read and write, an almost unheard-of accomplishment for a negro in those far-away days, and she was painfully thrifty, locking up everything in the establishment, and carrying a huge bunch of keys at her belt. One of them was the key to the pantry, where she spent twenty minutes every morning with a little negro to dip out sugar, coffee, tea, flour, raisins, currants, citron, butter, lard and meal. And never did her lynx eyes relax their vigilance, so there were no peculiar secret cakes from pickings in the pantry to be stealthily cooked in the cabins at nightfall, as often occurred in a Southern home.
I remember at the tender age of seven partaking of an odd little cake made of rice, two raisins, one almond, a cucumber pickle, a few tea leaves, two lumps of sugar, a pinch of flour, and an amber morsel of citron. Baked in wood ashes on the hearth of Mammy’s cabin, it seemed to me a delicious, though peculiar morsel. These were the gleanings of Henrietta, my little negro maid and playmate, who dipped for my mother when she unlocked her pantry in the morning. Not always observant, my mother gave Henrietta an opportunity to “borrow” with her lightning quick fingers.
Aunt Barbara knew the negroes and trusted none of them. Even the wearing apparel of the Quality was kept under lock and key. At half-past seven in the morning the body servants of the gentlemen were supposed to stand before an immense blue press, and Aunt Barbara counted out under-linen, socks, white waistcoats, and pocket handkerchiefs. If a lagging valet appeared at a quarter to eight he returned empty-handed to his master, who gave him such a dressing down that the next morning he waited beforetime for the unlocking of the press. In this way the house was spotlessly clean, the linen in order, and the lax easygoing ways inherent in Southern people were counteracted by vigilant management.
My great-grandfather always had family prayers, and each person present was expected to repeat a verse from Scripture. The Bible was the dearest and most revered book on earth to Aunt Barbara. Any chapter, any verse was suitable for her delivery. And each morning the family waited expectantly on her selection, which varied from the New Testament to Deuteronomy or the book of Job. One unlucky day for my grandfather, an exuberant boy of fourteen, Aunt Barbara fixed a piercing eye on him and said in a sonorous voice,
“Remember Lot’s wife.” An explosion of laughter followed and from that moment she was a sworn and somewhat unjust enemy to him.
A brother-in-law of my great-grandfather’s had been to Spain and was much impressed by the Spanish mules. He said the prettiest sight in Madrid was a lovely coquettish woman, a rose under each ear, a white lacemantilla thrown over her head, sitting in an open carriage driven by a picturesque coachman clad in scarlet, and drawn by jet-black mules made splendid by gay and jingling harness. So he brought back from Barcelona a number of Jacks, thinking to mingle the blood of Virginia thoroughbreds with that of Spanish plebeians, but horses in that part of the country were of the purest pedigree. All their owners scorned the idea of mules, never mind their strength or their powers of endurance. So the big-headed, noisy Jacks were turned loose about the fields and grew fat and saucy from having too much grass and too little exercise.
One day my grandfather was startled by a strange mighty braying. At first he was frightened; then he saw an animal looking at him with faithful eyes and as he said, “A sort of horse look,” encouraging to friendship. He tried to mount the discovery, when deftly and quickly, the rider was thrown high in the air, and the horse-like beast with triumphant heehaws galloped off in the distance. Jack, however, was later caught and ridden every day, and finally young Duval learned the dexterity of the rancher in keeping his seat. The other boys of the neighbourhood soon followed his example and the Jacks rapidly grew thinner by hard exercise.
In October he and half a dozen lads planned an excursion, starting at earliest dawn to gather nuts. For this purpose a big Jack was corralled the night before and placed in the “smoke-house.” A little one-roomed log cabin, with a thin odoriferous line of smoke rising from the chimney, and slowly making delicious hams and tongues, was to be found on every well-appointed Southern place. The next morning the unlucky boy overslept himself, and Aunt Barbara, up at daylight, dressed in stiffly starched purple calico, a gorgeous plaid head handkerchief, wide half-hoops of gold dangling from her ears, and all her keys jingling at her side, proceeded to the smoke-house and unlocked the door. She had slept ill the night before and dreamed of the devil. Suddenly, lurid eyes confronted hers, a wide mouth opened, showing great teeth, a huge voice emitted a brazen, horrid sound, and Aunt Barbara was knocked down, trampled upon, and thrown into a fit.
In those days when kindred and hospitality were part of the religion of the South, no household was composed of only the immediate family. My great-grandfather’s brother-in-law, an irritable little man, lived with him, and he soon ferreted out the author of Aunt Barbara’s illness, and not satisfied with giving the boy one beating he thrashed him every time she had a fresh fit. This treatment developed in my grandfather a determination to leave home. He said to his father: “I am going to Kentucky. I am too old to be thrashed, and no house is big enough to hold both Uncle John and me.” His father answered, very quietly: “Then you had better go, for John is our kin; I cannot ask him to leave my house.”
Young Duval loyally said, “I don’t expect you to, sir,I will leave the house to him.”
He began then to develop his fine character of sustained courage and dogged resolution. The winter passed without his speaking again of leaving home, but he kept to his determination.
Aunt Barbara, quite recovered, saw a change in her boy, and was most attentive to him, saying, “I did n’t mind, honey. I knowed you did n’t mean to hurt old Barbara. I jus’ wants you to run roun’ an’ laugh like you use ter. You studies too much to suit me. What you thinkin’ ‘bout, chile?”
“Aunt Barbara,” said the boy, “I’m going to Kentucky next month.”
“Now,” said Aunt Barbara, quite ashey-looking, “who ever heard de beat ob dat? Ain’t Virginia, where you wuz born an’ raised, good enough for you? An’ (breaking down) I wuz wid yo’ ma when you wuz born. I held you in dese arms when you wuz a hour old. I knows I bin strict wid you, I bleeged to be, but you jus’ like my own chile. Oh, honey, don’t go ‘way. Jus’ go out on de common an’ ketch dat brayin’ jackass, an’ I promise you, he kin stay a week in de smoke-house.”
Aunt Barbara began to cry and these two were friends again. But the steady look never left the boy’s face, and in May, when the trees were green and the flowers in blossom, he said to his father, “I am leaving for Kentucky to-day. Will you give me an outfit, sir?”
His father looked disappointed and said, “I thought you had given up that foolish idea,” but opening a desk, he took out a long green silk knitted purse, filled with gold, and handed it to the boy.
“Thank you,” said the lad, “and of course I will take my servant and my horse.”
“No,” said the father, “you don’t know how to take care of yourself. You are not to be trusted with a slave and a saddle-horse. If you go, you go alone.”
“Then,” the boy said proudly, “I will make my way as best I can.”
Probably his father thought hardships and discomforts would soon bring him back to Virginia. His only sister, a sweet little girl, clung round his neck in tears, and he had to gulp back a few of his own, which he managed to do.
“When are you coming back?” said his little sister, when at last he was ready to start.
“Never, by heaven,” he said, “until I come back a Member of Congress from Kentucky.”
And he fulfilled that promise. The little sister grew up, married, went to Texas to live, and became the mother of five sons. They all fought in the Confederate army and not one returned to the broken-hearted mother. Her eldest son, William Howard, a very brilliant and attractive young lawyer, studied law with my father. He was one of the first officers killed at Fort Sumter.
On the way to Kentucky the lad had the first opportunity of showing the true metal of his fine courage. He had stopped at an eating-house and heard two rough men say he was probably a runaway apprentice and should be stopped. After he had finished his dinner he went quietly out of the back door, but thinking it cowardly to steal away, he turned and walked boldly to the front door.
“Where are you going, boy?” said one of the men.
“That’s none of your business,” said the boy.
“Yes, it is,” said the man, “you’re a runaway.” And he came forward to seize him, but the lad whipped out his pistol, and pointing it said, “If you lay a hand upon me I’ll shoot you!” The man stepped back very quickly and his companion said, “He’s dangerous, let him alone.”
After this he was afraid of civilisation and tried camping out at night, and stopping at inns for his meals during the day. At Brownsville he arrived tired, soiled, and looking like a young tramp. The proprietor of the inn demurred at receiving him, but his wife discerning that he was a gentleman in spite of his dusty appearance said gently, “Have you a mother?”
“No,” said the boy, “my mother is dead.”
“Ah, that ‘s the trouble,” she said to her husband, “we are told to care for orphans. Come in, and welcome.”
After resting with this good lady a few days, the boy continued his journey upon a flat-bottomed boat from Wheeling, which slowly, floated down the Ohio. The river in those days, overhung on either side by primeval forest and almost impenetrable canebrakes, was filled with game of all sorts. Deer and bear unafraid swam across the river, and bronze flocks of wild turkeys sailed slowly overhead. Cincinnati, that most populous queen of the West, was only a straggling group of log cabins, and Louisville was scarcely settled. Where the Green River and the Ohio meet, the boy landed and started his march for the interior of Kentucky.
He had relations in Lexington, but he did not make himself known to them, for his pride was wounded. He wanted to show his father what independence could accomplish. He camped at night by beautiful crystal streams and shot turkey, smaller birds, and squirrels by day, roasting them by fires made of underbrush and dry forest wood.
His first taste of the real hunter’s silent joy was when he came upon a pack of wolves devouring the carcass of a deer. One big greedy fellow ate more than the others, snapping and snarling when they came too near, and the boy said to himself, “A prize, that leader of the pack, I shall try for him.” He loaded his rifle and shot him twice while the other wolves ran yelping away. Then, he said, a feeling of triumph came over him as though he were lord of all that leafy forest. But the deer, even when quite near him, he could never bring down. They seemed ever running. A whole herd had just gone by in a wild scamper and he was gazing longingly after them when he heard a voice say, “What are you after, Sonny?”
“Those deer,” said the boy; “are they ever still?”
“Reckon you’re a bit green, sonny; where are you from?”
“Richmond,” said the boy.
“What, not Richmond of my old Virginny?”
“Yes, I am,” said the boy.
“And how,” said the man, “did you git here?”
“I came down the Ohio and landed at Green River,” said the boy.
“All by your lone self?”
“Yes,” said the boy, “I am by myself.”
“Where be you goin’?” said the man.
“I’m going to hunt,” said the boy.
“Then,” said the backwoodsman, looking at him kindly, “come along er me, I’ll make a hunter out of you. Me and my wife don’t live fur from here. Killed anything?”
“Yes,” said the boy, “wild turkeys and squirrels.”
“But,” said the man, “can’t come it on a deer-you must step like a panther on padded feet to do that. Nary a twig must n’t crackle under yo’ feet. Deers is got the quickest ears in the forest. You have to creep up on ‘em, and then sometimes they gits away.”
Bill Smithers lived with his wife and baby in a log cabin with no chimney, but just a square hole for the smoke to escape. While the trees were being girdled preparatory to clearing the land, the food consisted of fish from the brooks, game from the forests, and luscious berries. This generous woodsman was the boy’s first teacher in hunting and woodcraft, making, my grandfather said, all of his boyish dreams come true. The forests with giant trees were magnificent, the wide prairies, covered with wild flowers, were fragrant blossoming gardens. The woods were rich in wild strawberries and blackberries, for nature in Kentucky was then, as now, prodigal of her bounty.
But he did not stay long with Smithers, finding a solitary bachelor called Miller, a famous hunter, who was glad to have a willing apprentice. Under him he became a good shot, and past master of the ways and secrets of the wilderness. The buffalo were in Kentucky then, and had just begun to migrate for safety to the West. The boy’s first success in big game hunting was to kill a bear. He, two brothers, and a dog were out together. Seeing the shaggy beast climbing a tree, he sent a shot near his heart. Bruin fell to the ground and the dog, giving a joyous bark, ran up to investigate. The bear, with one last effort, clasped the dog round its neck. They died together. My grandfather said the two simple-hearted hunters buried their friend, crying like children.
The hunters lived far apart. They wanted elbow room, and only occasionally came together, when they sat for hours silently smoking like Indians. But the light of the big fires at night warmed them at last into story-telling. The young Virginian, a good listener, with his frankness, courage, good-humour and adaptability, soon became a great favourite, especially with his host, who loved him like a son.
There was one event my Aunt Elizabeth said my grandfather loved to describe-a dance at the house of a famous fiddler, Bob Mosely. The only suit of clothes the young man possessed was his leather breeches and coat, which were soiled with hunting grease. He thought that with a good scouring they might be made to serve for the party, so he carried them to a stream, washed them, and hung them to dry, while he rested himself on the bank of the river. But the sticks upon which the clothes were stretched toppled and fell into the river, carrying their burden with them, and there the young man was left for the remainder of the afternoon to fashion, like Adam, a garment of leaves in which to go home.
Old Miller was horrified when he saw his young friend’s misfortune and heard that he could not attend the dance. He said, “You’ll not only go, but you shall be the best dressed of all the boys.” He then began to work day and night and made a soft deerskin hunting shirt, fringed on the shoulders, with leggings of the same skin fringed from top to bottom. Wearing these splendid garments and a raccoon cap with two tails floating out behind, he presented a very fine figure indeed. All the hunters were garbed in the same sort of clothes and the girls wore doeskin dresses.
About three o’clock in the afternoon when the party was at its height, the two Misses Schultz made a stage entrance, with red ribbons and tiny looking-glasses hung round their necks, which a stray pedlar had given them in gratitude for a few days’ hospitality. The simple people at the party had never seen looking-glasses before, and the girls, Sukey and Patty Schultz, were such belles that the other girls jealously threatened to go home. Young Duval, gifted with tact, explained in flattering words the situation to the Misses Schultz, telling them that their charms and looking-glasses combined would break up the party, and begged them to allow him to hang the ribbons and ornaments on the wall until the dance ended. When this was done, peace was at once restored.
About this time the young hunter grew dissatisfied and restless. His mind began to crave intellectual food. A famous woodsman came to him and said: “A bunch of us are going West. Kentuck’s too crowded. Neighbours are only fourteen miles off and I have n’t breathing room. Will you join us, Duval?” This induced the boy to go through a self-examination. He asked himself: “Am I going to remain a hunter all my days? No, the woods are for the true woodsman who desires no other life. My people have always belonged to the world. I must get back to it.”
The question then arose as to what he should do. He decided on the profession of law. He felt that if he had wasted time in the great forests, he had nevertheless laid up a store of health, strength, cheerfulness, and quickness of vision in observing the human and animal species. He knew he had dogged determination when he undertook a task. He always said that if a man with ordinary capacity worked unswervingly, heart and soul, at anything, he could succeed in it.
He still had his silken purse filled with gold, and he could sell his pile of beaver and other skins and the fine horse which he had obtained in exchange for furs. With this money he calculated to live until he was admitted to the Bar. When he spoke to Miller, the old man was deeply grieved. He could understand but one life, that of the hunter, but he loved the boy too well to discourage him.
The following day the young man rode to Bardstown, stopped at a small inn over night, and found a family who would take him to board for a dollar and a half a week. The next morning he intended riding back to Miller’s to get his little fortune of five hundred dollars, and was waiting on the hotel piazza for his horse to be brought round to him when he saw sitting in the parlour a vision of loveliness. A young girl was there, fair as alabaster, with thick auburn hair, deep blue eyes, tall, slender, and dressed all in white. After the sunburnt, rosy-cheeked maids of the woods this girl seemed something delicate and unreal. He longed to speak to her, but did, not dare. Then he longed still more, with all his clean young blood aflame, to kiss her. “Just once,” he said, “it will be a memory of bliss to carry with me all through life, and if I don’t get it I shall certainly die of longing.” He stepped into the room. She was looking dreamily out of the window, when he walked up behind her, touched her gently on the shoulder, and she looked up. He stooped and kissed her on the mouth, then made a rush for the door, ran across the balcony, down the steps, vaulted lightly to his saddle, lifted his hat, made her a low bow and dashed off madly to the woods.
When he got to the log cabin he sold his horse and walked back to Bardstown, where he settled himself and began to study law. He read sixteen and eighteen hours out of the twenty-four and sometimes all night as well as all day. He found he had so much to study besides law. He grew serious and morose with incessant work and the sudden change from outdoor life to continual confinement. But he kept doggedly on for a year, and then there came a slight interruption, for one day while taking a walk he passed on the street the only girl he had ever kissed. His heart gave two or three quick thumps and for days the little beauty’s face came obstinately between him and his books, but he studied harder than ever and took no more walks.
One cold rainy evening the young student had gone to the bar of the inn and was sitting by the fire when a gentleman, tall, distinguished looking and handsomely dressed, entered. He wore small-clothes, silver kneebuckles, his hair powdered and tied in a queue, and neat polished shoes. He asked the young man if his name was Duval. The boy, tired and depressed, said moodily, “Yes.”
“And do you,” said the gentleman, “come from Richmond?”
“I do,” said the boy, “but what is that to you?”
“Nothing, good-night.”
Next day, however, the gentleman, the pink of elegance and courtesy, called on the boy. He said he was a friend of his father’s, that he had heard of the struggle he was making, and would take him in his office and direct his studies if he would come. Young William, apologising for his previous churlishness, gratefully accepted the offer, and a little later went to live at the house of his friend, who was one of the leading lawyers of Kentucky. From that time life went easier for him. His reading was properly directed, he joined a debating society, was its most brilliant speaker, and was soon hailed as a coming genius.
One evening at a little party he met the auburn-haired beauty and was introduced to her as “Miss Nancy Hynes.” Her mother was a Miss Stuart from Scotland who had married a Kentuckian, and it was from Scotland she had got her red hair. People in the room began to talk, and they left the young couple practically alone. William was terribly embarrassed. Then he said, “Don’t you see how uncomfortable I am? Can’t you say something, anything to help me out?”
The girl’s dimples all appeared and she said, “What do you want me to say?”
He answered: “Not that you forgive me-for I don’t want forgiveness. If I had it to do over again, by heaven, I would do it, even if I died for it.”
They met frequently at dances at the houses of friends, and before the young man was nineteen he was engaged to the girl of seventeen. Her mother, a widow, objected on the score of their youth, but he told her he would marry her daughter, and very soon, if all the world rose up in defiance. The mother liked this grave, romantic wooer, and said she knew all about him and his family, and that he would only have to wait a reasonable time. He then studied harder than ever, with a prospect of a wife and home before him.
In the meantime his father, hearing where he was, wrote to say he would give him a liberal allowance if he would soon go to college. He talked it over with his sweetheart and the wise young maiden advised him to go, but just as he was starting for the Virginia University, Nancy’s mother died suddenly, leaving her with a younger sister, my great-aunt, Polly Hynes, a little girl away at a boarding-school. The chivalrous lad felt his promised bride needed a protector, so he gave up the idea of college, was admitted to the Bar that autumn, and married immediately afterwards.
Fate is kind to some mortals. These married sweethearts ever remained lovers. They were poor, for Nancy could not touch her small fortune until she came of age, and my grandfather had nothing. They lived in a little two-roomed log house, and my grandfather said, “Everything we had was in half-dozens; a half-a-dozen spoons and forks and knives and chairs, a bed, a table, a sofa, a dozen books and a little rocking-chair and work-table for my girl wife. We were so poor, but so happy.”
CHAPTER II YOUTHS GLAD SUCCESS
TO THE WHOLLY INTREPID SPIRIT is given Courage in life; Courage in danger; Courage in death.
THEY had only been married a week when court was held at a country town twenty-five miles away. It was hard for William Duval to leave his pretty bride, and he had no money, but he borrowed a little, and a horse from a neighbour and, like young Lochinvar, rode gaily away. Fate loves reckless courage and protects its possessors. The young lawyer had no case to plead before the court and no influence to get him one, but just as he entered the inn an old man in the barroom was struck by a bully. The young man promptly knocked the bully down. This secured his popularity. The crowd shook hands with the plucky stranger and plied him with drinks, which he had the judgment to refuse, for he felt the morrow would be a momentous day for him.
The next morning when the court opened, he boldly seated himself among the advocates. A man was charged with passing counterfeit money. He had been out of the range of lawyers and was asked to choose one for his defence. Looking around, he selected the eager faced lad, who was given until next day to prepare his case. As they left the court the accused man gave his counsel one hundred dollars as a retaining fee.
Young Duval spent many hours in anxious preparation of his defence and argument. When night came he was too excited to speak; in the morning he could not eat. He reached the court agitated and unnerved, and when he began to speak it was only to flounder and stammer. Presently the public prosecutor made a cruelly sarcastic remark. There was a laugh in court. At that his nerves became taut and steady. His voice rang out with a brave challenge. He marshalled his facts with telling effect and proved his client’s innocence conclusively. The case ended triumphantly in the man’s acquittal, and young Duval was made. His earnestness and eloquence had stirred even the lawyers. His youth, his courage, his knowledge of law were discussed. Other cases were given him, and when the week ended he had made seven hundred dollars. The night the fees were paid him he was like a miser. He locked his bedroom door and let the gold trickle through his fingers; he piled it up and saw in its glitter a rosy future of comfort for his wife and of gratified ambition for himself.
The next morning before dawn, he mounted the borrowed horse and started for Bardstown. His wife had prepared a delicious breakfast for him, but he was too excited to eat. Like the boy that he was, he wanted to surprise her, and he sat down at the table and began slowly counting out the money in ten-dollar gold pieces. His wife looked on and said, “Whose money is it? Have you got to take it to the bank?”
“It is my money!” said my grandfather, “mine and yours! Oh Nancy, come and dance and sing and cry.” And together they laughed and waltzed round the room, like the children they were, for poverty had gone out of the window, and success had come in at the door.
Later, my grandfather was elected to Congress from Kentucky, as he said he would be, and on his return to the States was appointed Judge of the Federal Court, which office he retained for some years. By this time three of his eight children had been added to the family. In those days the Floridas were a territory, and the Indians being somewhat troublesome a man of courage, decision, and heart was wanted for governor. The appointment was offered to my grandfather, who retained the office for twenty-four years. The youngest five children were born in Florida and the last pretty little girl was named after that land of flowers.
The new governor kept open house. All the year carriages drove back and forth, and people came and went as if it had been a hotel. Christmas and Easter were different from other seasons only in more turkeys and game, larger cakes, more egg-nog, and greater quantities of punch.
Three of my aunts and my mother were all celebrated beauties, my mother inheriting the Scotch hair, a dark auburn, and the deep blue eyes of her mother. My grandfather was always hospitable to the admirers of his daughters. They could spend the day, or even, if they felt inclined, several days, but at ten o’clock each night old Scipio, the negro butler, was required to see that the drawing-room was closed and the piazzas cleared.
Scipio made his appearance dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, his hair tied like my grandfather’s in a queue (a strain of Indian blood had given him straight hair), and bearing an enormous waiter, with a large, noisily ticking silver watch lying upon it and numerous mint juleps. The suitors were supposed to observe the time, drink the juleps, say good-night and go home.
Life in Florida in those days must have been enchanting. There were fruit and vegetables all the year round, oranges for the picking, peaches and melons in great abundance. The Indians constantly brought in all kinds of game; the woods were full of wild orchids and myriads of wild flowers, and the pink cranes and scarlet flamingoes were quite tame on the banks of the little river that flowed at the bottom of the grounds.
In 1823, Governor Duval rendered signal service to the territory of Florida and to the United States Government by putting down the conspiracy of Neamathla, one of the most noted Indians in American history. He was the chief of the Mickasookies, a fighting tribe of warriors, who had their hands not only against the white man, but against the weaker Indian as well. They had committed many depredations on the frontiers of Georgia and were constantly attacking the Seminoles, a peaceful and picturesque tribe, who gave the Government no trouble, but sought (unless influenced by the Mickasookies) its protection.
Neamathla was a splendid figure, more than six feet in height, with fierce fiery eyes and a face like a hawk. He hated white men and proudly called Governor Duval “brother,” never acknowledging his superiority.
The Indians at this time, chiefly through the governor’s influence, had signed a treaty to remove to a small section of land in the eastern part of Florida and to remain there for twenty years, thus leaving the remainder of the State free to the white man. Neamathla fought bitterly against the treaty, but finally signed it, saying quite frankly: “If I had enough warriors, brother, instead of signing the treaty, I would wipe every white man from the face of Florida. I say this to you, for though you are white, you are a Man. Your pale-faced people wouldn’t understand me.”
Thinking it wise to be near the Indians, Governor Duval had settled at Tallahassee. The village of Neamathla being only three miles away, he often rode out to have a pow-wow with him. One day he found him surrounded by all his warriors, drinking brandy freely. Neamathla began to boast that although the red man had made a treaty, the treaty was at an end, “broken by the white man, who had not delivered the cattle and money promised.”
The Governor replied, “The time for the money and cattle has not yet arrived.” But the old chief only looked sly and continued to drink and threaten. He had been cutting tobacco with a long knife, and while he was talking he flourished his keen blade not an inch away from the Governor’s throat, saying the country was the red man’s, that it should belong to him, and he would fight for it until his bones, and the bones of his warriors bleached upon its soil.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the Governor seized him by the bosom of his shirt, clenched his fist in his face, and said: “You have made your treaty. You shall keep it. I am your White Chief sent by your father in Washington to see that you do it. If you do not, the blood of every Indian in the country will dye the land, and his bones will bleach upon its soil.”
The old chief threw himself back with a bitter laugh. “Ho, ho, little white brother!” he said, “can’t you see my joke?”
My grandfather returned to Tallahassee, and things went smoothly for several months. Every day some of the Indians reported themselves at the Governor’s house, but suddenly their visits ceased, and at midnight of the fourth day after this, Yellow Hair, a young brave who loved the White Chief, stole into the house. “Governor,” he said, “at the risk of my life I’ve come to tell you that five hundred warriors are holding a secret war talk with Neamathla.”
There was no more sleep that night for Governor Duval; he saw that he must take a desperate chance. There were one hundred white families near, and he had no soldiers. Everything depended on himself. At dawn he was up, and, mounting a fleet horse, called upon the interpreter, De Witt, to follow.
The man demurred. “Wait, Governor,” he said, “until we can get the militia.”
“No,” said my grandfather, “there is not a moment to lose, we must ride fast.” And they struck for the Indian village to what De Witt thought was certain death.
“The chiefs,” he said, “are old, discontented, suspicious and exasperated. They intend serious mischief.”
Finally my grandfather said, “Go back, man, and leave me to go on alone.”
“No,” said De Witt, “I won’t leave you to die alone, but God! what a foolhardy expedition.”
They rode on in silence, and when they neared the village my grandfather said sternly, “Translate word for word what I say to you. Only courage can save us now.”
There was a great council fire, and Neamathla was sitting on a rude throne surrounded by his warriors. The Governor rode straight into the circle, while forty rifles were cocked and levelled at him. He slowly dismounted, looked Neamathla fearlessly in the eyes, and, with a gesture of contempt, stood waiting. The old chief threw up his arm; the guns were lowered. The Governor then walked up to Neamathla and asked why he was holding a council of war. The old chief was silent.
The White Chief said, “You need not answer. I know; but if a single hair of the head of a white man in this country is harmed”-he made a mighty sweeping gesture with his arm-"I will hang every chief to the trees that surround you. The Great Father in Washington holds you in the hollow of his hand. He has only to close it and you are dead. I am but one man. You may kill me, but the white man is as many as the leaves on this oak. Remember your warriors, whose bones have made the battlefields white. Remember your wives and your children dead in the swamps. Another war with the white man, and there will not be one Indian left to tell the story to his children.”
His words had effect. They sat still and silent. Then he appointed a day for them to meet him in St. Mark’s and rode forty miles straight ahead to the Apalachicolas, a friendly tribe who were at feud with the Mickasookies. They immediately sent three hundred warriors to St. Mark’s. He summoned also the regular army and the militia, and was then ready for Neamathla. Yellow Hair came again in the dead of night to tell the Governor that nine towns concerned in the conspiracy were disaffected, and from him he found out the names of the chiefs in these towns who were popular, but without power.
On the day of the conference he rode out to meet Neamathla, who, although at the head of eight hundred Indians, was afraid to venture into the court of St. Mark’s alone. He thought when he saw the troops and the preparations that he had been betrayed, but was reassured when the Governor rode by his side and told him when the talk was ended that he could go home free.
Neamathla and the older chiefs blamed the younger ones who had led them into conspiracy. “Then,” said my grandfather, “if you cannot govern your braves you must, like the white man, find men who can. I depose you, Neamathla, and appoint Little Bear in your place.” And with great ceremony a broad ribbon sewn with beads, from which a large medal of the Capitol depended, was hung around the neck of a younger chief.
In this way nine chiefs were deposed and popular braves appointed in their place. The Indians were delighted; they thought my grandfather a prophet to have divined their choice. The new warriors, he was confident, would keep an eye on the disaffected, and would remain loyal to the Government and to him.
Neamathla left the country and returned to the Creek nation, who made him a chief, but, shorn of his great power, he soon died of disappointment. The Governor’s achievement of defeating alone and unaided a conspiracy which would have brought about a terrible massacre, was a valiant and heroic act. In later years with no military escort, he was able to remove, through their confidence in him, all the Indians from Florida to the Indian Territory-thus saving the Government at Washington great trouble and expense.
When the question of the Indians was settled, he devoted himself to the development of the State. His children were being educated in Kentucky. The girls went to the Convent of Nazareth in Bardstown, and the boys to St. Joseph’s, the college of the Jesuits which gave shelter to Louis Philippe when he was a refugee in America, and where later Jefferson Davis was a hard-working student.
My uncle Burr, the eldest son, was the flower of my grandfather’s flock, tall, with a splendid figure, bright blue eyes, light waving hair, a dazzling smile, a speaking voice of golden sweetness, a dashing rider, and like his father a man of extraordinary courage, he sounds a perfect hero of romance. As a child I was ever eager for stories about him. When he graduated from college, young, gallant, intrepid, inheriting from his father the pioneer spirit, Texas, with a handful of brave men, was fighting for her liberty against the Mexicans, and Burr Duval raised in Kentucky a company of young men like himself, college bred and the sons of gentlemen. Among them was the lover of my great aunt Polly Hynes,-then a young lady who made her home with my grandfather-and my uncle John Duval, a boy of eighteen. This gallant company was called the “Kentucky Mustangs,” and Burr Duval was their captain. They offered themselves for service to Texas, and Colonel Fannin asked them to join his army.
They had not been long in the State when in a battle between Fannin’s army and the Mexicans they surrendered to General Urrea, who agreed to treat them as prisoners of war, but at Goliad, on Palm Sunday, 1836, they with other companies, about four hundred and forty-three men in the very flower of their youth, were marched out and traitorously drawn up in line and shot. A few escaped, my uncle John, being at the end of the line and fleet of foot, among them.
When the scourge of yellow fever fifteen years later visited Florida, John had returned from Texas, brown, thin, and still saddened from the loss of his gallant young soldier brother, and another and slighter grief which ever pursued him, the necessity of choking to death a little dog that he had taken to Texas from Kentucky. With Mexicans in full pursuit, the dog was about to bark, and the only way to save his own life was to strangle his one faithful friend. It was a miserable little tragedy, and when quite an old man his face would still grow melancholy when he spoke of it.
After the death of her first-born beautiful son even my grandfather, they said, could rarely make my grandmother smile, and she was one of the first to die of yellow fever, for she made no effort to live. Aunt Polly, who was a woman of strong character and affections, had closed the room where she bade her lover good-bye forever, and she allowed no one to enter it but herself. The silver candlesticks had grown tarnished, the orange blossoms were brittle in the vase, the dust, like a grey pall, covered every object. But she spent hours alone there every day.
The loss of my grandmother was a terrible blow to my grandfather, and to the end of his life he remained inconsolable. They had been like two happy birds in the springtime. He teased her, and she would laugh and pull his ears and play with him as if they were still boy and girl. After her death he was restless and miserable, having lost interest in all things. With aunt Polly and her grief, it was a depressed and changed household. My uncle John, in spite of the terrible tragedy he had lived through, wanted to go back again to Texas. He had lost his heart to that vast country, so full of excitement and of seething vivid life, and my grandfather, to seek change from his poignant grief, consented to take his remaining family and go with him. They settled first in Galveston where my aunt, Elizabeth Beall, who was a very beautiful young widow, was at the head of the house. His children gathered around him, he began to get back his cheerfulness again, to take an interest in politics and the rapid development of the great “Lone Star State.” My father, who had held the office of Supreme Judge of the State of Arkansas, resigned and came to Texas, where he married my mother and went with her to live at Austin.
Fate surely cheated me out of a joy in not knowing my grandfather. I have always felt that we were congenial spirits. He was the soul of hospitality, affectionate, generous, brave, witty, and light-hearted, even in the face of death. His love of tradition led him to wear a queue. In his youth it was tied with a black ribbon, but later in life, when considered too aristocratic and dandified, it was plaited and tucked up out of sight among his curls with a hair-pin. Doctor Blake after his death cut off the queue and sent it to my aunt, his eldest daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Beall. He was not an old man when he died in Washington from an attack of gout and pneumonia. He loved life, and he had not an enemy in the world. He was vitally interested in Texas, that splendid new country of his later years. He had many friends, and his children adored him, not with the theoretical love of children for their parents, which can brook absence, but with the real companionable love, desiring nothing so much as constant, affectionate intercourse and intimate interchange of thought. Aunt Lizzie told me that his daughters, my mother, my aunt Mary, my aunt Florida and herself were counting the days of his return from Washington, when they received a letter from old Doctor Blake announcing his death.
The Governor’s gout was very bad, [he wrote] and weakened him a good deal, but I had hopes of pulling him through until the 20th, when he seemed to grow worse. All the time he had been astonishingly cheerful, and full of amusing stories. His friends (he had too much company I thought) came in shoals from the capitol and elsewhere to keep him company, and his spirits never flagged. I stayed late the night of the 20th. When I came in he was reading his Bible-which I send you-and laying it aside, he said, “Blake, there ‘s some mighty good reading in that book. It has helped me over devilishly rough roads, and while maybe I haven’t exactly lived ‘a sober, righteous and godly life,’ I can honestly say I ‘ve never questioned. I’ve always been certain of Him. How can anybody doubt who reads intelligently His Sermon on the Mount?” I begged him to sleep and try and conserve his strength. Finally he dozed off, saying, “Yes, that wonderful Nazarene planted seed in my heart; if it has n’t made a good harvest, it is n’t His fault. But, Blake, I really prefer not to die. This is a pretty good world when all’s said and done, don’t you think so?” I stayed quite two hours while he slept, and I came again very early in the morning. I could see that the Governor was suffering, for he looked terribly ill. I said, “How are you?” as cheerfully as I could. “Blake,” he said, with his ever-ready joke, “I am about to pass in my checks.” “I hope not, Governor,” I answered. “Yes, I am,” he said smiling a weak smile, “and it’s just as well, for there are three old widows in this hotel, all of them desperately in love with me. If I got well I’d have to marry one of them, and if I did the other too
