THEN one day, to our amazement, Sam Galant came with two horses which he had brought back safe all the way from Virginia! They were thin and so was he, but it was a wonderful feat, without money and without food, at a time when the soldiers returning home on foot were desperate for a horse to till and cultivate the little farms to which they were returning empty-handed. How was it possible for Sam to escape capture by some of them, almost hopeless at the great distance from their homes, which they must travel mostly afoot! Sam had wonderful tales to tell of his experiences. He kept with Hampton’s Cavalry all the time, leading horses to be at hand to replace those killed in battle. He gave a thrilling account of the death of Bill, the mail horse. Edward Wells, of the Charleston Light Dragoons, was riding him, and as they were galloping out of Cheraw, just over the bridge, a shell went through Bill from tail to head, without exploding, leaving Mr. Wells standing on his feet unhurt. “Sam, a horse,” he called, and, according to Sam’s tale, he stepped up instantly with a fresh horse, Mr. Wells mounted and was gone. Sam concluded:
“Yes, ma’am, Mr. Wells is the bravest man in the world, I believe. He neber mind de shell busting all ’round him, en I was dere right alongside him, ready to his han’.”
Oh, if I had only got Sam to come and tell it all to me quietly long afterward, so that I could write it down as I did Daddy Ancrum’s story! But Sam was comparatively young, some years younger than myself, and I always thought there was time. I never thought of his dying.
One day a messenger arrived from the plantation to mamma, with a badly scribbled line on brown paper: “Miss, cum quick, dem de ’stribute ebry ting.” Mamma questioned the boy. He said the people had gone wild, that “a Capting from de Yankee A’my kum en a kerridge en tell de people dem is free en ebry ting belongst to dem. No wite peeple ’ill neber jum back, en den him ’stribute ebery ting.”
Mamma told Daddy Aleck to have the carriage ready early the next morning, and she and I started off, leaving Della and Jane still at Crowley, with all the servants. Charley rode with us on horseback and, to our surprise, Julius Pringle turned up the evening before and said he would ride along with us too. The presence of these two, just home from all the dangers and suffering of the war, now here safe and sound, made the journey a great pleasure. Mr. Pringle rode Jerry, Charley’s young half-Arab stallion, which mamma had sent on to Virginia for him, and which he rode as one of Hampton’s scouts all the last year of the war. We had not gone far when a runner on foot from Chicora Wood met us.
He said: “Miss, I got a pa’tikler messidge fu yu, en I wan’ to speak to yu private.” So mamma got out of the carriage and went a little way into the woods with him. He said: “A’nt Milly say don’t kum, ’tis dang’us, but ef yu does kum, don’t keep de publik road. Dem de watch fu yu! Kum troo de ’oods.” Mamma thanked and told him to go on to Crowley and rest and Miss Adèle would give him plenty to eat, and when he was rested, he could start back. She got into the carriage and we drove on.
I never have understood that message from Maum Milly, whether it was a genuine anxiety on her part, or whether it was to keep mamma from coming and asserting her rights, by intimidating her. Maum Milly had always been greatly considered and trusted. She held herself and her family as vastly superior to the ordinary run of negroes, the aristocracy of the race. Whatever her intention was, the message had no effect on mamma’s plans, and we never left the public road.
That night we stopped at a house where dark caught us, and asked for shelter, simply that; we had provisions. The family were from Georgetown and had refugeed here, the Sampsons, and they received us with enthusiastic hospitality and kindness, making us most comfortable for the night, and giving us a delicious and abundant supper and breakfast of fried chicken, so that we were able to keep our supplies for the next day. I do not think I ever saw as beautiful a young Jewess as the daughter of the family, Deborah Sampson.
When we got to Plantersville we drove to Mrs. Weston to ask about them all, for we knew nothing of how they had fared in these dark days. Cousin Lizzie was rejoiced to see us after all we had both gone through, and Mr. Weston and herself and Pauline most hospitably invited us to stay with them, until we could make arrangements to get the log house in order for us to occupy, as it had been shut up a long time. There was so much to hear and so much to tell that it was hard to go to bed. They had been through a great trial in the Bunker raid, when this Yankee had come through the little village in an open carriage, followed by a throng of negroes, whooping and yelling with joy, in response to his announcement that they were free, and that everything belonged to them. He went to every house and seized every article of value, took the earrings from women’s ears and the rings from their fingers; for the inhabitants of the little hamlet had been so far removed from the centre of war that they had not thought of concealing their valuables and jewelry, as no one had any fear of the negroes. This seems to me a wonderful tribute to them, and they deserve to have the changes rung on it. When this man, announcing himself as “A N’united State Officer,” as they called it, authorized them to take possession of everything as their own, it is a marvel that license and shooting did not ensue on their part; for the end had not come yet, and none of the men had come home from the army. There were only women and children and two old men in the village, and there might have been frightful scenes there. They took all Bunker gave them, but touched nothing themselves where the white owners were present. It was only on the plantations, where the owners were absent, that, on his persuasion, they pitched in and “stributed” the contents of the houses. That darky word for it is good, for each one took what he selected as fast as he could till there was nothing left.
The next day Mr. Pringle rode up with a note from his mother, asking us to go down and stay with her at the White House, their plantation, twelve miles south of Plantersville, on the Pee Dee River,—that is, the Pee Dee ran in front of the house, and the Black River half a mile away at the back. Mamma accepted the invitation with much pleasure. Mrs. Pringle and her husband and Mary had been in Europe when the war broke out. The sons, Julius, Poinsett, and Lynch, were at Heidelberg University. The young men at once left, ran the blockade, and entered the Confederate service. Mr. and Mrs. Pringle and Mary remained in Italy. Mr. Pringle died and was buried in the beautiful cemetery in Rome in 1863, and the next spring Mrs. Pringle and Mary came to America, and stayed with Fanny Butler (daughter of Fanny Kemble), at Butler Place, outside of Philadelphia, until they were able to slip through the lines and get into Virginia, only to find the darling of them all, Poinsett, had been recently killed in battle. It was too awful for them. They stayed where they could occasionally see the other two boys, until this winter, when they made their way down to the plantation, to remain there.
I had never been to the White House before, though I had always heard of it as very beautiful; a picturesque, rambling house with three gables, set facing the river about 200 yards away, in a most beautiful garden, which had been planted by Mr. Poinsett, who was a specialist on gardens, a botanist. The White House was even more beautiful than I had imagined. As soon as you left the road you entered on a lane bordered on each side with most luxuriant climbing roses, now in riotous bloom, long garlands of white roses swaying in the breeze, high up, and quarrelling for supremacy with long garlands of pink roses. This lane took you direct to the Pee Dee River, where you made a sharp turn and drove along the avenue of live oaks just on the edge of the river, which had here a sand beach like the seashore. The effect was delightful; on the left the river, only a few feet away, on the right a green lawn, until you came to the vegetable-garden. A picture garden! All the vegetables sedately in straight rows, and having nothing to do with each other. The French artichokes standing in stately stiff rows, not so much as glancing at the waving asparagus bed, nor the rows of pale-green mammoth roses, which turn out to be heads of lettuce. I had never seen a vegetable-garden which was ornamental before. While I was taking it in we entered the flower-garden, with a wilderness of roses, azaleas, camellias, and other beautiful shrubs and plants.
Mamma and Mrs. Pringle were rejoiced to see each other, but it was sad, for both had suffered much sorrow since their last meeting. Papa had been taken from us and Mrs. Pringle had lost both her husband and beautiful son, so it was a long time before they could become composed. That evening, however, they made up, for there was so much to be told. First of all, Mrs. Pringle told mamma that the government had ordered that all property belonging to Mrs. Allston, the sister of James L. Petigru, should be protected from all damage. This seemed to impress Mrs. Pringle very much, but mamma did not seem to attach much importance to it. She said she did not think it was at all to be depended on, that she must go to Georgetown and get the commanding officer there to send a detachment of men to take from the negroes the keys of the barns at each plantation, where the large crops made were locked up. These keys they had given to the negroes, and mamma could get no corn for the horses nor provisions for herself, and they must restore the keys to her. Mrs. Pringle said it would be quite useless for her to ask anything until she took the oath of allegiance to the United States, that she had wanted something done and their reply was until she took the oath of allegiance no request could be considered; that she had declined to do so at the time, but now felt it must be done. So it was arranged that mamma would take Mrs. Pringle down in her carriage to Georgetown the next day to take the oath, while I should remain with Mary and her brothers at the White House.
Oh, what a white day that stands out in my memory! I was embroidering a waist in black silk, to make a Russian blouse out of the everlasting purple calico we were all wearing. As I sewed in a big chair in the beautiful library, filled with most delightful books, exquisite engravings on the walls and marble busts around the room, Mr. Pringle read aloud to me. He picked up the first book his hand came upon,—I think it was “Eugene Aram.” But the book was nothing; it was his voice, so beautifully modulated, and his presence, safe back from the awful danger, and in his own beautiful home. It cast a spell over me; and long afterward he told me he had no idea of what he was reading; nothing of it entered his mind; it was the simple fact of having me sitting there in his own home, sewing as if I belonged there, that intoxicated him, so that he was afraid to speak, and so took refuge in reading! So there we were, a pair of idiots, in a fool’s paradise, some might think, but such moments are immortal. Soul speaks to soul, though no voice be heard.
THAT evening reality returned heavily when the two mothers, widows and managers of large estates and property, returned. The day had been very trying. The oath was taken as the first thing, they having made up their minds to take it at once. Then mamma asked the colonel to send a guard or a single soldier to take back the keys which they had given to the negroes and give them to her, the rightful owner of the foodstuffs in the barns. He said quite nonchalantly that she could take the keys; it was not at all necessary for him to send a guard; he would give her a written order. She remonstrated with him, saying she believed in authority, and as an officer had delivered the key to the negroes, taking it from the overseer, a white man who was in charge of the plantation, she thought it was absolutely necessary that an official or a man wearing the United States uniform should take the keys from the negroes and deliver them to her; that, without that, there was an opening for dispute and contention and disrespect. The colonel said shortly he did not agree with her. She then asked about the order from Washington as to the protection of her property. Yes, he said that he had received such an order, but they knew of nothing to which it would apply. He wrote an order for the negroes to deliver the keys to her, and the interview was ended. She had some business of a different nature which she attended to in Georgetown, and then they drove back to the White House, very tired and very indignant at the want of courtesy, and desire to facilitate the return of things to a possible working order. The negroes were free—no one had a word to say on that score—but they were not owners of the land, and in order for things to assume a condition when the land could be planted, or, rather, prepared for planting, in the new order of things, the negroes would look to the officers for the tone they were expected to assume to their former owners. But it was evident these men absolutely refused to back up the white people in any way. The talk that evening was not cheering, to say the least.
Mrs. Pringle told us, after the Georgetown matter had been fully discussed, of her experience with the man, Bunker, who had led the negroes to Plantersville and behaved so outrageously there, after turning over all the houses on the river, Chicora Wood included, to the negroes, to distribute all the contents among themselves. It was two days afterward that he came down to the White House, followed by an immense throng of negroes, and demanded wine and money. Mrs. Pringle, who was as bold as a lion and very clever, tall, stout, and of commanding presence, with the face of a man, met them on the piazza and refused to let them enter the house. Bunker had been drinking heavily and also some of the negroes. She spoke with authority, and said she knew the United States Government would not sanction the seizure of her things by a drunken mob, even though one man, the leader, had on the United States uniform; and the army regulations were severe against intoxication. She was a Northern woman herself and knew all about it, and had friends in the government and the army at that moment. Bunker was a little dashed, but very angry at being talked to in that haughty manner before his followers, and things looked ugly for a moment, so that Mary, who was standing behind her mother, began to cry, and, Bunker’s attention being diverted to her, he began to try to console her. She was a very beautiful girl. He brought forward some of the things he had stolen from the Plantersville people and presented them to her—silver pitchers, etc. Mary indignantly pushed them away, but her mother bent down and said: “Take them; you can restore them to the owner.” So Mary let him bring them into the piazza and present them to her, but when he began to try to console her by complimentary speeches and admiring looks, she dropped her full length on the piazza in a dead faint! Mrs. Pringle took her by the feet and dragged her in through the hall to the dining-room, and, locking the door, put the key in her pocket, and returned to the mob; but they had vanished away, leaving rapidly and quietly. They, no doubt, thought Mary was dead; those kind of people do not faint, and to see her brilliant, radiant color suddenly turn to deadly white and her mother drag her limp body away like that sobered them. In the meantime the man whom they trusted as house-servant had busied himself getting out—the keys being in the basket in the drawing-room—all the wine and liquor there was in the house. He packed it up, and took it out of the back door to a cart which he had there, and went off with the party. He was never seen by them again. When they had all gone, Mrs. Pringle unlocked the door, and used restoratives, and finally succeeded in bringing Mary to life, but she was terribly weak and ill for some days. Mrs. Pringle reviled Mary for being such a weakling and failing her at a critical moment, but we all felt and she knew that Mary had really saved the day, diverting the unsteady mind of Bunker from his original intention of plunder, first her tears and then her faint had converted his rage first to pity and then to fright.
The next morning mamma and I left the hospitable, beautiful White House after breakfast and drove to Nightingale Hall, about two miles away. Here the negroes had been specially turbulent. The overseer there, Mr. Sweat, was a very good, quiet man, and had been liked by all the negroes, but in the intoxication of freedom their first exercise of it was to tell Mr. Sweat if he left the house they would kill him, and they put a negro armed with a shotgun to guard the house and see that he did not leave alive. Mr. Sweat seems to have been something of a philosopher, for he assured them he had no intention of leaving, and settled himself quite cheerfully to pass the time of his imprisonment. The key of the barns having been given to the negroes, he kept a little journal of all they did. From his window he watched them take supplies from the barns, corn and rice, using the baskets which were always used in measuring grain, open baskets made to hold a bushel, which is thirty-two quarts. In this way, as he knew exactly what was in the barns, having superintended the planting, harvesting, and threshing of the grains, he could tell just how much was left. He had written all of this to my mother, getting a friendly negro who cooked for him to take charge of the letter.
When we drove in the yard the negroes soon assembled in great numbers. Mamma had not seen them at all yet. She talked with the foreman, Mack, very pleasantly from the seat in the carriage, asking after all the old people on the place, and his family, etc. Then, finally, she said:
“And now, Mack, I want the keys to the barn.”
He said: “De officer giv me de key, ma’am, en I kyant gie um to yu.”
She drew from her silk reticule the order, and said: “I have here the officer’s order to you to give the key to me.”
He took the paper and looked at it, but there rose a sullen murmur from the crowd, and a young man who had stood a little way off, balancing a sharp stone in his hand and aiming it at mamma from time to time, now came nearer and leaned on the wheel of the carriage. Mamma thought he wanted to intimidate her, and so she stepped out of the carriage into the very midst of them. I motioned to follow, but she said in a low tone, as she shut the door, “Stay where you are,” and I obeyed.
The foreman said: “How we gwine eat ef we gie yu de key? We haf fu hab bittle.”
Mamma answered: “Mack, you know that every man, woman, and child on this place has full ration for a year! You know, for you measured it and gave it out yourself. If anything should be wanted, I will come down and give it out myself.”
At that the young man, still balancing the stone, laughed, and all followed in a great shout, and he said: “Yu kyant do dat, dat de man wuk. Yu kyan do um, en we’ll starve.”
But mamma held her ground, and walking up and down among them, speaking to each one by name, asking after their children and babies, all by name. Gradually the tension relaxed, and after a long time, it seemed to me ages, in which she showed no irritation, no impatience, only friendly interest, no sense that they could possibly be enemies, Mack gave her the keys without any interference from the others, and we left. She did not think it wise to go to the barn to look at the crops. Having gained her point, she thought it best to leave. We were both terribly exhausted when we got home, and enjoyed a good night’s rest in our own very original-looking log house in Plantersville, which Charley had succeeded in getting made clean and comfortable for us.
The next morning, after breakfast, we started to Chicora Wood to get the keys there. Mamma did not take Charley, for he was very weak from his illness, and having made the trip down before he was strong enough. Besides that, in the condition of the country, the negroes were apt to be more irritated by the presence of a returned soldier than with ladies only. Besides which, it was a very mortifying position for a man, whose impulse, under insolence or refusal to do the right thing, was naturally to resent it, and, being perfectly powerless, not having taken the oath, he was not even recognized as a citizen, and had no rights and would have no support from the law. Therefore, it was certainly the part of wisdom to leave him behind, though I did not fully understand it at the time. We did not have much trouble at Chicora. Daddy Primus had been the man to whom the keys were given, and he was a very superior, good old man. He had been head carpenter ever since Daddy Thomas’s death. He took mamma into each barn and showed her the splendid crops, and as he locked the door to each, she just held out her hand for it, and he placed the key to that barn in her hands without question. And here the people seemed glad to see her and to see me, and we walked about over the place and talked with every one.
We looked at the house; it was a wreck,—the front steps gone, not a door nor shutter left, and not a sash. They had torn out all the mahogany framework around the doors and windows—there were mahogany panels below the windows and above the doors there were panels painted—the mahogany banisters to the staircase going upstairs; everything that could be torn away was gone. The pantry steps being there, we went into the house, went all through, even into the attic. Then the big tank for the supply of the water-works, which was lined with zinc, had been torn to pieces, and the bathroom below entirely torn up. It was a scene of destruction, and papa’s study, where he kept all his accounts and papers, as he had done from the time he began planting as a young man, was almost waist-deep in torn letters and papers. Poor things, they were looking, I suppose, for money or treasure of some kind in all those bundles of letters and papers most methodically and carefully tied up with red tape, each packet of accounts having a wooden slat, with the date and subject of account upon it. We looked through every corner, and then went out on the piazza and sat down and ate the lunch we had brought. It is wonderful to me, as I look back, that we were so cheerful; but we were, and after a good lunch with some hard-boiled eggs Maum Mary brought us, we got into the carriage and drove home to the dear, peaceful log house.
The next morning we started early in the carriage for Guendalos, mamma and I, driven by Daddy Aleck. This plantation belonged to my elder brother, Colonel Ben Allston, who had been in the army since the beginning of the war, never having been home at all. There had been no white man on the place, and we heard the negroes were most turbulent and excited. As we neared the place the road was lined on either side by angry, sullen black faces; instead of the pleasant smile and courtesy or bow to which we were accustomed, not a sign of recognition or welcome, only an ominous silence. As the carriage passed on they formed an irregular line and followed.
This would be a test case, as it were. If the keys were given up, it would mean that the former owners still had some rights. We drove into the barnyard and stopped in front of the barn. Several hundred negroes were there, and as they had done the day before, they crowded closer and closer around the carriage, and mamma got out into the midst of them, as she had done at Nightingale. She called for the head man and told him she wished to see the crop, and he cleared the way before us to the rice barn and then to the corn barn. Mamma complimented him on the crops. As she was about to leave the corn barn a woman stretched her arms across the wide door so as to hold up the passageway. Mamma said, “Sukey, let me pass,” but Sukey did not budge. Then mamma turned to Jacob. “This woman has lost her hearing; you must make her move from the doorway.” Very gently Jacob pushed her aside and we went out and Jacob locked the door. Then mamma said: “And now, Jacob, I want the keys.” “No, ma’am, I kyant gie yu de key. De officer gen me de key, en I kyant gie um to nobody but de officer.”
“I have the officer’s written order to you to give me the keys—here it is”—and she drew from her reticule the paper and handed it to Jacob. He examined it carefully and returned it to her, and proceeded slowly to draw the keys from his pocket and was about to hand them to mamma, when a young man who had stood near, with a threatening expression sprang forward and shouted, “Ef yu gie up de key, blood’ll flow,” shaking his fist at Jacob. Then the crowd took up the shout, “Yes, blood’ll flow for true,” and a deafening clamor followed. Jacob returned the keys to the depths of his pocket. The crowd, yelling, talking, gesticulating, pressed closer and closer upon us, until there was scarcely room to stand. Daddy Aleck had followed with the carriage as closely as the crowd would allow without trampling some one, and now said to mamma: “Miss, yu better git een de carriage.” Mamma answered by saying: “Aleck, go and bring Mas’ Charles here.”
Most reluctantly the old man obeyed, and drove off, leaving us alone in the midst of this raging crowd. I must say my heart sank as I saw the carriage with the faithful old man disappear down the avenue—for there was no white person within five miles and in this crowd there was certainly not one friendly negro. Jacob, the head man, was the most so, but evidently he was in great fear of the others and incapable of showing his good feeling openly. I knew that Daddy Aleck would have to drive five miles to find Charley and then back, and that must consume a great deal of time.
The crowd continued to clamor and yell, first one thing and then another, but the predominant cry was: “Go for de officer—fetch de Yankee.” Mamma said: “By all means bring the officer; I wish to see him quite as much as you do.”
The much-desired and talked-of officer was fourteen miles away. In the midst of the uproar a new man came running and shouting out that the officers were at a plantation three miles away, so six men started at a run to fetch him. Mamma and I walked slowly down the avenue to the public road, with a yelling mob of men, women, and children around us. They sang sometimes in unison, sometimes in parts, strange words which we did not understand, followed by a much-repeated chorus:
“I free, I free!
I free as a frog!
I free till I fool!
Glory Alleluia!”
They revolved around us, holding out their skirts and dancing—now with slow, swinging movements, now with rapid jig-motions, but always with weird chant and wild gestures. When the men sent for the officer reached the gate they turned and shouted, “Don’t let no white man een dat gate,” which was answered by many voices, “No, no, we won’t let no white pusson een, we’ll chop um down wid hoe—we’ll chop um to pieces sho”—and they brandished their large, sharp, gleaming rice-field hoes, which looked most formidable weapons truly. Those who had not hoes were armed with pitchforks and hickory sticks, and some had guns.
It was a strange situation: Two women, one fifty, the other eighteen, pacing up and down the road between two dense hedges of angry blacks, while a little way off in the woods was a company of men, drawn up in something like military order—guns held behind them—solemn, silent, gloomy, a contrast to the noisy mob around us. There we paced for hours while the autumn day wore on.
In the afternoon Daddy Aleck returned without Charley, having failed to find him. It was a great relief to me, for though I have been often laughed at for the opinion, I hold that there is a certain kind of chivalry in the negroes—they wanted blood, they wanted to kill some one, but they couldn’t make up their minds to kill two defenseless ladies; but if Charley had been found and brought, I firmly believe it would have kindled the flame. When the carriage came, I said to mamma in a low tone: “Let us go now.”
She answered with emphasis, but equally low, “Say not one word about going; we must stay until the officers come”—so we paced on, listening to blasphemous mutterings and threats, but appearing not to hear at all—for we talked together as we walked about the autumn flowers and red berries, and the brilliant skies, just as though we had been on our own piazza. I heard the little children say to each other: “Luk a dem buckra ’oman, ain’t ’fraid.”
The sun sank in a blaze of glory, and I began to wonder if we would spend the night there, when there was a cry, “Dey comin’!” We thought it was the officers, and how I did wish they could come and see us there, but it turned out to be four of the runners, who had returned, saying they had not found the officers, and that Jacob and one of the men had gone on to Georgetown to see them. Then we got into the carriage and drove home. We were hungry and exhausted, having tasted no morsel of food or drop of water through the long day. We went to bed in our log castle, which had no lock of any kind on the door, and slept soundly.
In the early dawn of the next morning there was a knock at the door, and before we could reach the hallway the door was opened, and a black hand thrust through, with the keys. No word was spoken—it was Jacob; he gave them in silence, and mamma received them with the same solemnity.
The bloodless battle had been won.
Charles Petigru Allston’s Narrative
During the war there was great demand for horses, which increased as the time went on. My father always raised a few horses, and at this time there was a gray stallion (part Arab), just four years old, that my father had given to me the winter before he died; there were also several other horses, saddle and draft. After my father’s death, my mother, in the summer of 1864, made an arrangement with some friends in the Cavalry Service, C. S. A., Butler’s Command, to take and use our horses, with the promise that any that survived should be returned to us after the war.
One of the horses was killed under Edward L. Wells, of the Charleston Light Dragoons, as Butler’s Scouts were leaving Cheraw, S. C., by a Parrot shell that passed through him, going in at the tail and coming out of the chest, did not explode, and left Wells uninjured.
My gray stallion was ridden by Julius Pringle all through Virginia, wherever Butler’s Cavalry went, and returned safe and sound. The other two horses, a gray gelding and a bay filly, were alive at the time of the surrender, and Julius Pringle turned them over to a young negro of ours, who had been sent along with the horses, in charge of them (Sam Galant) somewhere in Virginia, and told him to make his way back home, and to get away before the actual surrender. The lad was of a family who had been long in our service, family servants for generations; his father had been my father’s body-servant for years, and then been succeeded in that office by one of his sons, and Sam had grown up with me. My father had sent him to Charleston to be instructed in music by Mr. Dauer, a German, with three others, and he played the violin very well. This boy had no money that we knew of, food was scarce, straggling marauders many, the horses in pretty poor shape, yet he managed to work his way with two horses through the country, and arrive at Crowley Hill safe, but nearly starved, both he and the horses, specially the gray. I asked him afterward how he managed it; he said he seldom moved during the day, but got out of the way as much as possible, and let the horses eat grass; then at night he travelled, but was careful to avoid all other travellers, and also all camp-fires. He must have done some very adroit foraging, also, or he would surely have starved. Horses were specially valuable then, and we were glad to see these two return.
After things settled down somewhat, in May, 1865, I think, my mother decided that she would have to go to the plantation home in Georgetown County to look after affairs there, and try to restore order. A deserter from the fleet off the coast had gone through all the plantations near Georgetown, and incited the negroes to plunder and rob in every direction, and had caused much trouble and demoralization. Several fine dwellings had been completely destroyed, and all of them robbed of every movable article. My mother and one of my sisters started in the carriage, with a pair of horses driven by old Aleck—I rode along on horseback—Julius Pringle, also on horseback, joined us. There was practically no law in the land, but the influence of established authority in the past kept a very fair semblance of order. We had a journey of over ninety miles ahead of us, roads and everything uncertain, but we made the trip safely and with little incident, and arrived safely at Plantersville, which was a collection of houses built irregularly in the pineland, as summer homes for the rice-planters along the rivers, who had to leave the comfortable plantation homes in May and go to the rough pineland houses until November, on account of malaria fever. Our summer house was on the sea, and could not be occupied at all during the war, so my father had built by his carpenters in this settlement a large log house, on lightwood pillars ten feet high, to escape damp, and put on it a double roof of cypress shingles, in which there was not a single metal nail; they were securely fastened on with wooden pins. (Up to the year 1900 this roof did not have to be renewed.) To this log house my mother, sister, and myself were to go.
. . . . . . . .
After a while we had to set to work to gather in some of the furniture which the negroes had carried off and hidden, for we had not enough to get along with; my mother, having taken the oath as soon as she returned to the low country, some time before, applied to the military authorities, and a corporal and three men were detailed to assist in recovering what we could find.... There were some wild and weird scenes enacted. The nigs had been told that everything would belong to them; that the government would punish the whites for the war, by taking their property and dividing it among the nigs, giving forty acres to each head of family, etc. So when we arrived, backed by soldiers, to take from them what they had collected of our belongings, they were much taken aback, and some of them were inclined to resist. However, we gathered up enough furniture and stuff to get along comfortably.
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Then came the agreements as to planting; what portion of the crop they should have in payment of their labor, and what portion we, the owners of the land, should have; here again the military had to be called in. One lieutenant, who was trying to argue with a violent gang, finally turned to my mother and said, with a most troubled face: “Mrs. Allston, I think I would rather have white help.” He could do nothing with them, and a man of sterner mould had to come another day and make the contract with that gang.
But in Plantersville we young folk took every opportunity possible to have a dance or some frolic at night. It was certainly most wholesome to have some diversion from the serious problems of the day.
Log Castle, Plantersville, July 10th, 1865.
IT seems too wonderful to be at home again in my own dear low country after being refugees so long. It is a delight to be alive, and know most of those we love are alive too after the terrible sufferings and anxieties of the War. We miss Papa more and more every day; it seems impossible it should be only a year and three months since he died, it seems years and years. Poor Mamma, who was perfectly unaccustomed to business, has had every thing upon her, and it is a perfect wonder to see her rise to each emergency as it comes. Yesterday she called Daddy Aleck and told him she had not the money to pay his wages and he would have to find another place.
He was very indignant. “Miss, I don’ want no wagis! Aint I wuk fu yu sence I bin man grown, aint my fadder wuk fu Maussa fadder! En my grandfadder de same! Aint yu feed me on de bes’! An’ clothes me in de bes’. Aint I drive yo’, de Guvna’s lady all de time Maussa bin Guv’na, en now yu tink I gwine lef’ yu, en lef’ de hosses. ’Tis true I got but a po’ pair, jes’ wat dem Yankee lef’, but I kin manige wid dem, en I wont lef’ dem en yu to dat triflin niggah boy, no ma’am, not Aleck Pa’ka, e aint mean enuf fu dat!”
It was a distressing scene. Mamma was much moved, but she was firm, and when Daddy Aleck realized that she would not be persuaded, the tears rolled down his shiny black face and I, in my corner pretending to write, ignominiously sobbed. When Daddy Aleck had gone, I remonstrated with Mamma. I did not see how we could get on without the old man, and he did not want to go, he would be content to stay if he had his food and clothes as usual, and I thought it was cruel.
Mamma said, “Child, you don’t understand; Aleck really wants to stay now, but I have no right to keep him. He is a valuable groom and hostler, can manage and drive any horses, and he can easily get a good place in Georgetown, whereas I could not only not pay him, but I could not possibly feed him as he has been accustomed to be fed, sugar and coffee and tea and all the meat he wanted. We barely have what will keep the household, and a very little coffee and tea. As to clothing him, that means a heavy outlay and is out of the question.”
As I still argued, she said, “My dear Bessie, why make things harder for me? Try and trust to my desire to do the best I can under great trial and strain.” Of course, I was ashamed of my self, and tried to say so; but I am a stubborn brute and find it hard to say I’m sorry even when I am.
Aug. 1st. My days are so happy. I cut and contrive new garments out of old, and sew and dream as I sew. Brother’s wife, Ellen, is very pretty and very sweet, but very ill, it seems to me. She cannot walk or do anything but lie still and read and talk; this last she is always ready to do, and while I rub her, as I do twice a day to try and give some strength to her limbs, she talks most entertainingly. She has been a great belle and was engaged to three other men when she married Brother. She was surprised when she first told me and I appeared shocked. It seems, in Texas, it is thought nothing of, but I solemnly advised her not to mention it here, at which she laughed heartily. Afterwards, I could not help laughing myself, for Brother has had rather a varied career in the way of engagements, but I did not tell her this.
I have been crazy to have some low necked waists to wear in the late afternoon and evenings. I always used to dress for the evenings, and I am so tired of these everlasting calico frocks which we are all wearing. Papa was lucky enough to get a piece of purple calico two years ago, which ran the Blockade. We were enchanted, it was rather a pretty pattern, purple stripes on a white ground and a little flower in each stripe. We were much in need of frocks so Mamma had made for us each two dresses and she had two herself. From that day we have been in uniform. I cut my waist myself so as to have it different. I made a Russian blouse and embroidered the shoulder straps and sleeves and belt in black, but, alas, the difference is only waist deep. The rest is just like the other eight! Two weeks ago I had a brilliant idea. Della’s bedroom curtains were pink and white chintz and were lined with pink paper cambric. The sun has faded the linings hopelessly into every shade of yellow and brown, in some places almost white. That gave me the thought that if I bleached those linings, I might have some white material to make into waists, so I went to the plantation and consulted Maum Milly. She looked at the stuff and thought it could be done. Told me how to wash it first, then let it lie in cold water a day or so, then spread it on the grass and leave it for the sun and dew to bleach, and she thought, in two or three weeks, it would be white. She has always been our laundress, but now of course we cannot pay her and have just a little girl her granddaughter doing the washing. After having given me all the directions of what to tell the “gal” to do, I said I would not think of trusting it to Clarissa. I was going to do it myself. Then Maum Milly’s heart relented and she said, “Chile, yu kyant do um proper. Gim me dat cloth, I’ll do um fu yu.” So now I know if it can be done, it will be.
Aug. 10th. Maum Milly brought my white stuff, looking like a fine piece of muslin, and I have made two lovely low necked baby waists. They are too sweet, gathered very full and little short sleeves also gathered full, and around the neck and sleeves I have put the beautiful valenciennes lace Mamma gave me, and they are things of beauty. No one would ever dream they were evolved from faded pink paper cambric curtain linings. Mrs. Pringle and Mary, who are very critical, having lived much in the great world, admired my waist very much last night when they had a little dance at their house. I was careful not to tell its history.
They are such an addition to this little village for, though in deep grief for the loss of Poinsett who was killed at Haw’s Ship, Mrs. Pringle is so thankful to have her other two sons alive and with her that, though he was the darling of her heart, she keeps herself and her house as cheerful as possible, and does all she can to make the village brighter. Most people think it proper to be very gloomy. Of course, it is hard, all the people who were rich are now very poor but there is no good being gloomy over it. So Mrs. Pringle gives little dances now and then, and they are delightful. Then we have riding parties. Dear old Daddy Aleck saved two of our side saddles for us. I am so glad mine was one.
Thanks to Sam for bringing home the horse and Daddy Aleck for the saddle, I am able to ride; and, as every body is afraid of tête-a-têtes, we go in parties, four girls and four men, all riding together. I say afraid of tête-a-têtes because the War is still so very near, and it is hard to keep to surface talk, and it is awfully dangerous to go below, for we are all paupers.
Mamma has gone to Charleston to see if she can arrange to have our house repaired. Three shells went through the roof and it is impossible to live in it until it is thoroughly repaired. I do hope she will succeed, but she has not a cent of money, and nowhere to borrow any. It does seem desperate, but I must remember when Papa was dying and Mamma in despair said, “What shall we do without you?” He answered steadily, in spite of his gasping breath, “The Lord will provide.” And we have been marvellously helped and guided.
Aug. 25th. A letter from Mamma today has upset me completely. She has been very successful in getting the house repaired. A contractor who knew her well and had worked for Papa and done up the house the last time, undertook to do all the work without any payment now; but, when he has finished, Mamma will give him her note promising to pay as soon as she can. This has lifted a great load, but the tremendous announcement is that she has determined to open a boarding and day school, and she expects me to teach! The minute I read the letter I wrote, “Mamma, I cannot teach. Don’t ask me to do it. I just hate the thought. Besides, I don’t know enough of any one thing to teach it. I cannot, indeed, I cannot.” Now that I have sent the letter I am awfully ashamed, and when we were riding this afternoon, we fell a little behind the others and I told Mr. P. He seemed so shocked and surprised. Altogether I am miserable. Am I really just a butterfly? Is my love of pleasure the strongest thing about me? What an awful thought. I try to pray, but I don’t want to pray. I just do want to be for a while like a flower in the sun. I want to open and feel the glow and the beauty and the joy of existing, even if I know I have to wither and die sometime. Flowers don’t think of that, they just rejoice in the life God has made so beautiful for them, and I do believe He likes that. Oh dear, how I wish I was good or dead, one or the other. Now I must go and rub my pretty sweet sister-in-law, and try to forget how wicked I am.
Sept. 1st. A letter from Mamma in answer to my protest that I could not teach. “My dear Bessie, your letter was a great surprise. It would be a serious disappointment if all the money your Father so gladly spent on your education has been wasted. However, I think you do yourself an injustice. At any rate, you will come down for the opening of the school and we will see.”
That is all, no reproaches for my petulance and miserable selfishness. But I notice she does not confide her plans to me any more, and that hurts more than bitter words. “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this Death.” I don’t believe I have quoted it right, but that means self. Mr. Glennie in our Bible lesson once told us that in some Eastern country the punishment for a murderer was to bind the body of his victim with chains on his back, and he must wander ever with this putrifying result of his crime, until it crumbled away. What an awful punishment, and how suitable. Mr. Glennie did not tell us it meant one’s own wretched self in that cry, but I know it does by my own experience. One is never free from that burden self. Happy those, I suppose, in whom it perishes by disintegration before they get old. Alas, alas, in some it seems well nigh indestructible!
Sept. 3rd. We cannot have any service in the dear little old log church, for Mr. Trapier will not pray for the President of the United States, and so we have not the pleasure and comfort of church.
Mr. P. comes every day and reads aloud to me. It is really unique. I sit inside the window and sew on my ingenious remakings of old things and he sits outside the window and reads, “He knew He was Right.” It is perfectly delightful for me, it is so much easier than talking. People are so disagreeable, the village is all saying we are engaged. I know he is hearing it all the time, as I am, and it is so awkward for both. I thought it would be easier if I referred lightly to it, so this morning, sewing very fast, pricking my first finger brutally, I said, “Last evening I was walking in the village and heard something so absurdly ridiculous.” I got no farther, for in a solemn, hurt voice, from across the window sill, there came, “I’m sorry it seemed so ridiculous to you. It did not seem so to me.” Then I took refuge in immoderate laughter, after which I said, “Please go on with the book.” But I felt I had been defeated in my effort to make things more comfortable.
Sept. 15th. The wild flowers are so beautiful all through the woods. I do not walk in the village now, people are so trying. I go out into the swamp behind the house every afternoon. There are great tiger lilies and the gorgeous Cardinal Flower, I call it scarlet lobelia. In the up country where we have been for four years, I never saw these flowers. Then the ferns and the lovely little partridge berry vine. This is called the lover’s vine sometimes, because there are two lovely sweet little white flowers, with the delicate perfume of the orange blossom, and when they drop there is formed only one scarlet berry, but it has two little eyes. It grows along the ground. Its dark green, regularly placed leaves and bright berries are too pretty. I mean to take some up and plant it in a box to take to Charleston with me, to remind me of this dear darling country.
Riding two afternoons ago, we were galloping along four abreast, as if for a charge, when Dot shied from a snake alongside the road, and my saddle turned completely under her, and I found myself under my neighbour’s horse! He was so frightened and so was every one else that they all seemed indignant at my laughing. It seemed unsuitable to the situation, but it really was too funny, I seated in the middle of the road under Mr. P.’s horse, whose name is Trovatore and who behaved beautifully and did not trample me or hurt me at all. Everyone was pale and clamorous for restoratives, which I did not in the least need. My saddle was put back and secured and we had a very silent ride home in spite of my efforts to talk.
Sept. 26th. Every one said my delightful solitary strolls in the swamp would end in fever, and every one is happy now for they were right and I have been laid low for a week. As there was no one here to take care of me, Ellen requiring great care herself, Mrs. Pringle, who adds to her other great qualities that of being a competent nurse, has been coming over every day to take care of me. It is delightful, for she is so clever and (for the moment) so sympathetic that I positively enjoy the state of things except when I am actually burning up with fever. Dr. Dan Tucker is attending me, and is a delightful Doctor. I was burning up with thirst, my fever so high and the practice of the country is to give water by the teaspoonful in fever. To my delight and the surprise of the inhabitants, especially that revered personage, the oldest, the Doctor, ordered a pail of water brought fresh from the spring and put by my bedside with a dear little gourd dipper, and told me to drink all I wanted! It was so clever of him, for it is so much to satisfy the eye and the imagination. I really do not drink so much, but I feel refreshed and satisfied by its presence and the fact that I can have all I want. I am sitting up today and so bored by the absence of Mrs.
MRS. WILLIAM ALLSTON (NéE ESTER LA BROSSE DE MAHBOEUF).
From a portrait painted by an English artist who visited this country before the Revolution. The portrait was pierced through the left eye by a British soldier when hanging in the dining-room of the Allston house in Georgetown, S. C.
Pringle that I have to write to pass the time. Dr. Dan Tucker was educated in Paris, that is, took his medical course there. He served through the War as Surgeon and has now settled here.
Sept. 28th. Dr. Tucker wants me fed up, and Mrs. Pringle is bringing me over delicious things to eat, made by herself for she is a distinguished cook. The Doctor shot and sent me a most beautiful summer duck two days ago. I enjoyed some of it very much, but the next day came out in huge splotches of red all over me. Mrs. Pringle was quite scared, but the Doctor said that the food was a little too strong for me yet awhile, and I must have no more till I was able to walk about.
Oct. 13th. Wild excitement! Letter from Mamma, Della has a little daughter! I am an Aunt! As if that was not excitement enough, Mamma writes I must go down to Charleston at once. The house is not yet ready, but Aunt Petigru has invited me to stay there until we are able to move into the house. I am pleased and yet I am sorry. I hate to have this summer, the happiest of my life, end. And yet I knew it had to end, and it was time. I have let myself just dream and dream, and, when one has to work, it is not good to dream. I have been far from idle in body; I have kept the house, and nursed Ellen, and rubbed her, kneeling morning and evening for an hour at a time by the bed and not minding my own back aching till I nearly drop, and I have sewed and done many other necessary things, but all the time I have been dreaming, and I do love it. But now I must be stern and say, “Get behind me, Satan,” when the dreaminess wants to seize me. The bell is ringing, I must go.
Oct. 20th. The last few days have been trying. I have had so much trouble to keep on the surface. I am going tomorrow. Brother will drive me to Georgetown to take the boat. My irresponsible life ends. It has not lasted long, for, Brother being away, I had all the copying of Papa’s will to send to the different members of the family, and the lists of the negroes and the plantations and all the property to make, and it is only these two months, since Brother has been at home and has taken charge of everything, that I have been able to enjoy being young and foolish. I love dancing and I love admiration and I love to be gay; but all the time, underneath all that, I am so terribly serious, so terribly in earnest that I find the other girls do not understand me and the men are startled and puzzled—all but my friend, and I have to be so fiercely foolish and on the surface with him if I am to prevent a catastrophe, and I must prevent it.
Charleston, Oct. 25th.
MY niece is too fascinating, tiny, red, squirming! I have never been on intimate terms with so young a baby before, and cannot be content to hold her but a little while. I want to hold her for a long time and realize her individuality, but the nurse disapproves, so I continue to find her fascinating.
Oct. 30th. I am having a delightful time. Aunt is very good and kind. She is the widow of Mamma’s brother, James L. Petigru, who was a distinguished lawyer and codified the Laws of this State. He died in the midst of the War, heartbroken, they said, at the suffering and distress for his own people that he saw ahead. Poor Mamma, it was awfully hard on her, for she simply adored Uncle, and Papa was as strongly in favour of secession as Uncle was opposed to it. So those she loved best were absolutely opposed to each other. Her opinions went with Papa, but she felt intense sympathy for Uncle, and felt it killed him. The Yankee Officers have been ordered by the Government to treat Aunt with the greatest consideration. She has but to signify a wish for it to be gratified at once. She was a great beauty and has never forgotten it through years of terrible ill health. Uncle spoiled and humoured her always, and now it seems the most natural thing in the world to have everything she wants, have officers at her beck and call and live in luxury, when every one else is almost in want. But she is most generous with her comforts and luxuries, having Nannie, her maid and nurse, seek out her friends who are ill or in need and sending them baskets from her stores. She does not hesitate to say that she did not in any way sympathize with Uncle’s opinion as to the War. She is always in bed, and with a much befrilled cap which only reveals a few curls of light yellow hair, receives the officers sent to her for command. She has a very small single bed quite low to the floor and looks like a child, and speaks in a high childish voice, most authoritatively. She has what she calls a “Lazy Scissors.” It shoots out to a length of about three feet and picks up things she wants. Nannie, her black maid, rules everything and everybody, and I am thankful Nannie happens to approve of me for it helps the situation. Aunt has a critical eye and loves beauty, and I am not pretty, but she also loves to laugh, and I can amuse her by my accounts of all my adventures when I go out, for I never stir from the house without some adventure. Just now I am trying to get Aunt to consent to my going to a party which is to be given by the young men at Miss Annie Savage Heyward’s house, corner of Lamboll and Legare. It is the first big dance given in town and I want to go, but Aunt has not as yet given her consent. Mamma has gone in the country for a while and there is no appeal from Aunt’s decision. I have got Nannie on my side. The trouble is there is no chaperone to go with me, only my Cousin Charley Porcher will come for me and bring me home. He fought all through the War and came out alive, and I’m sure that makes him fit for anything.
Nov. 5th. Well, I went to the party and had a grand time, no refreshments but water, but a beautifully waxed floor, a great big cool room, that is, two opening into each other with folding doors, and a great wide piazza all round outside to walk in after dancing. But first I must tell about my getting off. There had been no question of dress, I was thankful for that. Aunt seemed to think of course I had a ball dress. So when I was arrayed in my best black merino skirt—I was still in half mourning for Papa—and my bleached pink paper cambric baby waist, and Aunt sent Nannie to say she wished to see me before I went, I trembled. However, I summoned up all the diablerie in me to meet the ordeal. Really, I felt most uncertain of my appearance already, but I would not show it for worlds. When I went in to the darkened room, Aunt ordered Nannie to light up everything, candles and lamps, and as I stood trembling inside, while the lights asserted themselves, Aunt surveyed me and burst forth.
“Bessie, you are a fool! My God, that is no costume for a party! You look more like a funeral than a big fashionable dance! Come here and let me see that skirt. My God, it is really what I thought, black merino! Plain and full! You cannot leave my house for a party dressed like that!”
“Aunt,” I said, “If you say another word I will begin to cry and then my costume will be lighted up with a red nose to please you.” This made her laugh and I went on. “You have not looked at the exquisite lace on my bodice. Mrs. Pringle said this was an ideal young girl’s waist.”
She looked, examined the lace, and relented. “Nannie, open that top drawer to the left and get out that set of old Mexican silver. This child must have something to relieve this stern effect.”
Nannie arrived with a box and Aunt took out and had me put on a pair of broad silver bracelets like manacles of fish scales, a string of silver beads round my neck which though not plump is called pretty, and in my ears carved silver earrings about three inches long and weighing about a ton apiece. Then Aunt surveyed me once more, gave me a little push and said, “Now go, all this excitement has made me feel very ill. Do behave yourself and don’t cry if you don’t get a partner.”
Thankfully I escaped and went down to Charley, who was tired waiting for me. He was all admiration of my appearance, but Aunt had injected a new and fearful thought to my mind. “Not get a partner,” what an awful thought! I had always had my choice of partners, but now that I came to think, I had been away from town all the years of the War. Papa and Mamma had never allowed me to accept invitations to stay with my friends who had remained in Charleston. It was said that society was too informal and too gay for them to be willing for me to join it. Most of the dear boy friends whom I used to dance with had been killed or disabled, and I really was going into an unknown company. I suppose it was well that Aunt’s words had made me realize this, for it might have come with too great a shock without that. As we went in, Charley gave me my only pair of well worn slippers which he had carried, and I went into the dressing room and, taking off my walking boots, (an awful pair of English shoes, miles too big for me and stuffed with cotton, which I had worn for two years, we having been lucky to get them through the blockade), put them on. Then I braced myself up and went upstairs with Charley. Miss Annie Heyward received us and put me at my ease at once by asking if I could play a galop, for none of the girls who could play had arrived yet, and so she had to ask me etc., etc. I was delighted and went with alacrity to the piano, which was arranged most considerately, so that you faced the dancers, and you could enjoy watching them as you played. This was my forte, dance music. In Plantersville they said I could make any one dance, and it gave me almost as much pleasure as dancing itself. Soon the floor was full of whirling couples, and I had a chance to see how many of them I knew and how many I didn’t know. Alas, the latter were vastly in the majority, but, I reflected with joy, when ever I had no partner, I could play. So when Miss Heyward came to relieve me I was in a gale of spirits, and C. came to claim a promised dance; so I went through that, though with reluctance, for he was not as good a dancer as he had been fighter. I got on tant bien que mal, until glasses of water were handed round and people began to settle for “the German.” This was unknown to me, and I watched the bringing in of chairs and the happy couples placing themselves around the big room. Mr. Joe Manigault, a great society man and exquisite dancer from “before the War,” was to lead. Nearly all the chairs were filled and I was still at the piano. Then I saw Mr. M. take one young man after another into the piazza and walk them up and down, and I knew he was trying to induce them to let him present them to me so that they could ask me for the German. I could see them glance at me surreptitiously through the window, while walking. One after another returned to the room, not having yielded to Mr. M. At last, he found one who valiantly came forward, was introduced and asked for the pleasure, and I accepted with great alacrity, and never began to tease him about having ignominiously allowed Mr. M. to choose his partner for him until the German was well under way. And then I pointed to the row of “stags,” as they were called who would not take partners, relying on being “taken out,” being all good dancers. Then between times they could retire to the piazza and smoke. He was bright and able to answer my ungracious attacks, so that I got quite as good as I gave. Add to this that, as soon as any one danced with me, being thrown together in the figures of the German, they always wanted to dance with me again, and soon all the stags came up and were introduced, eager to be “taken out” by me; but nay, nay, I let them ornament the wall as far as I was concerned. And oh I had a glorious time, Mr. M. himself selecting me very often to lead the figures with him. He had to tell me just what to do, but I soon learned, and when it was my turn to play he would not let me, but suggested to one sweet quiet girl that played very well that she should take my turn, saying I had played twice my share earlier in the evening. We broke up at 12 exactly, as all the men are working hard and must get their sleep. They have formed a Cotillion Club and are going to give a dance once a month and I have been asked by three men for the next German. My ears are so sore from my adornments that I don’t think I will wear them again, though they are beautiful. Aunt was delighted with my account of the party, and laughed and chuckled over my first German partner, saying, “Men are fools, and always will be.”
Dec. 1st, 1865.
PREPARATIONS for the school are going on apace. We have moved into our house and it is too beautiful. I had forgotten how lovely it was. Fortunately, the beautiful paper in the second floor, the two drawing rooms and Mamma’s room, has not been at all injured. The school is to open Jan. 1st and, strange to say, Mamma is receiving letters from all over the State asking terms etc. I thought there would be no applications, every one being so ruined by the War, but Mamma’s name and personality make people anxious to give their daughters the benefit of her influence; and, I suppose, the people in the cotton country are not so completely ruined and without money as we rice planters of the low country are. Be it as it may, the limit Mamma put of ten boarding pupils is nearly reached already. My cousin, Marianna Porcher, will be the head teacher of French and Literature; she is wonderfully clever; I will have the younger girls, and I certainly will have my hands full, for there are a great many applications for the entry of day-scholars of the younger set. Mamma will teach all the classes of History, for which she is admirably fitted. Prof. Gibbes from the Charleston College will teach Mathematics and Latin to the advanced scholars; but I want Mlle. Le Prince, who is a first class French teacher, engaged to live in the house as well as teach. There is no way of learning French equal to speaking it. But Mamma very truly says we must go slowly, and be sure we are making, before we expand. I am frightened to death. I know girls and have been to Boarding School and Mamma’s plan of no rules except those of an ordinary well-ordered, well-conducted home, seems to me perfectly impracticable; but, having once said that, I do not dare argue the matter. I am amazed to see how clever Mamma is. She wanted to send C. to College in Virginia, his constitution has been much injured by the heavy marching and privation endured in the Army at 16. Carrying that heavy knapsack on those killing, long marches without food has given him a stoop and a weary look in his beautiful hazel eyes; but it was impossible for her to borrow the $200.00 necessary to send him. She thought the change of climate from this relaxing low country air would do him good, and enable him to build up; but, as she could not get the money, she has placed him at the Charleston College, and I am truly thankful to have him at home. Only, restless, Cassandra-like, I see a problem ahead; he is so very good-looking!
March 21st, 1866. Here we are, almost at the end of our first three months of school, and it has been and is a grand success! I have not had time to write a line here because every second of my time is occupied, and oh, I am so happy! In the first place, I find I can teach! And I love it! I have a class of thirteen girls ranging from twelve to fifteen, and, if you please, I teach them everything! except history which Mamma teaches. They are most of them very bright, delightful girls, and mind my least word, even look. Only once have I had any trouble. I kept a girl in for an hour after school because she had not pretended to study her lesson that day, and the next day I had a note from her Mother to say that she was shocked at her daughter being singled out for punishment, and requesting that it should not happen again. I returned a note saying that I also requested earnestly that it should not happen again, that M. come to her class without having studied her lesson; should it happen a second time, the punishment would have to be much more severe. I had no reply to that, but M., who is very bright tho’ very spoiled, thought wisest to study in future. A Mother, who had taught in her youth and who knew of this passage at arms, wrote me a note of sympathy, saying, “A teacher must be prepared to swallow buckets full of adders.” This was so very strong and so beyond my experience, that I did not answer it, and thus far I can truly say I have not swallowed a single mosquito even.
I have a little time today and I want to put down what I do every day, I really have not added it up even in my mind. First of all, I trim and fill all the lamps, twenty in all, for we have no light but kerosene in the house; the fixtures are all there, but gas is so expensive; then I practise a half hour before going into school at nine; school lasts until two; there is no general recess, each class going into the garden for their recess at a different time; then I give one or two music lessons every day, that takes more out of me than anything. Once a week, Mr. Hambruch gives me a lesson, from pure goodness and love of music; for, of course, I could not afford it. He taught me for years when I was young, and when he offered to give me a spare hour he had, I was too glad. Yesterday I went to him almost crying, and told him how badly I felt at taking money for girls who were not learning any thing. He laughed and answered, “Oh, Miss A., you must not mind that. We music teachers, if we only taught the ones that learn, we would starve.”
That was a great surprise and consolation to me, for he is the very best music teacher in Charleston, and I was so proud of his saying, “We music teachers.” Of course I only charge a quarter of what he charges for lessons and people have so little money that I have a good many pupils, as Mr. H. was so good as to give me a certificate as to my capacity to teach. I make every stitch of clothing that I wear, and that takes up every spare moment; add to all this that I go into society, and enjoy myself fiercely.
We have ten delightful girls as boarding pupils, from all over the State. They are preternaturally well behaved, and Mamma’s plan of its being really a home, with no rules, is succeeding perfectly. My dear, pretty little sister is a kind of lead horse in the team, and as she walks straight the rest follow. But they really are exceptionally nice ladylike girls who treat Mamma like a queen.
C. is the greatest help to Mamma, and, so far, has kept his eyes to himself. He is a wonder. He does all the marketing on his way to College! And that is no small thing. Beef is 50 c. a pound and mutton in proportion. C. sits at the foot of the table and carves and helps one dish of meat while Mamma carves the other. He is as solemn and well behaved as a judge, and though the girls adore him, it is in secret, so all goes well.
The “Young Ladies,” contrary to all my ideas, are allowed to receive visitors Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, when J. and I also have visitors, and Mamma sits in the room, sometimes talking with us, sometimes reading; but the evenings are very gay and pleasant, and, I am forced to admit, have no demoralizing effect. On the contrary, their manners and deportment have visibly improved.
Mamma looks perfectly lovely, as she sits reading in her plain black frock and widow’s cap. She is a little over fifty, but her hair is brown and curly and her complexion as smooth and unwrinkled as a girl’s, only she is very white and seldom has a colour, as she used to do. She is a great reader and one of my friends, who has a good library and also reviews the new books, and so gets them, brings her some book of great interest every time he comes to make me a visit, and they talk a great deal together. Sometimes I get quite jealous, for I do not read deep books. I mean I would not care to if I had time. I never have time to read at all.
I must explain here how the great and unexpected pleasure of going into society came to me. I had quite given up all hope of that joy, for once when I asked mamma about my going out sometimes, she seemed quite shocked, as though it were an absolute impossibility, so I never said anything more about it. But after the school was well started, the son of my father’s friend, Nicholas Williams (the same whose family had been so wonderfully good and generous to us, lending us Crowley Hill as a home for the whole war, and lavishing the products of their farm and garden upon us), brought his two beautiful daughters, one barely fifteen, the other seventeen; and Mrs. Williams asked my mother to receive them for French, literature, and history only, and expressed the wish that they should go into society, as much as practicable, as their time would not be fully occupied by their studies. My mother consented, and these delightful girls came, Serena a queenly brunette and Mary a madonna-faced blonde, but it was not wise to trust too much to that demure expression. When the first invitations came to a ball for us all, mamma came to me and said: “Bessie, you will have to go and chaperon the girls, for after the work of the day I am quite unequal to going out and sitting up half the night.”
I tried not to show my delight too plainly, but answered quietly, that I would do my best in the new r?le of chaperon. We went to the ball, and I was very proud of my beauties, and their lovely clothes. The acting chaperon was very small, very thin, and dressed in a frock she had made herself in between times, a little over twenty, and nobody thought that she would be able to manage the responsibilities, for the girls were great belles from the first moment, but there never was the least difficulty or friction; they were well-bred, well-trained girls, accustomed to recognize and yield to authority; which was for the moment represented in the person of their very small, very plain chaperon. I soon grew very fond of them. They called me “Miss Allston” most carefully. Altogether the going into society with them was just the last thing necessary to fill my cup of happiness to the brim. My every faculty was in full use, and the going out and dancing, instead of being a fatigue, took away all sense of fatigue; I myself have no doubt but that rhythmic motion to music is one of the most restful things in the world. I feel quite sure that in the end this will be recognized by the medical profession as the best cure for nervous diseases.
Charleston, January, 1867.
WE are now well on in the second year of the school, and it is no longer an experiment but a great success. Mamma’s methods and judgment have been fully justified. The “young Ladies” have behaved entirely like young ladies, and never done any of the things I feared. I have the delight of having Mlle. Le Prince established in the house, and French the language of the school, in a modified way, that is, there are no punishments for speaking English, but if a girl is really in earnest about learning, she speaks French, and if she is not it does not matter. I am getting to delight in teaching, and my little class learns amazingly.
April, ’67. I have had a grand winter; Mary and Serena came for a long visit and went out during the season. They had the most beautiful Paris ball-dresses. It is impossible to describe the effect produced by these beautiful women in their beautiful costumes.
Every one was nicely dressed, for all the girls and their mothers had become expert dressmakers, with few exceptions. But the frocks were generally of the simplest muslins, sweet and fresh, but not such as would be worn in the great world to a full-dress ball; and when these creations, which would have been thought brilliant in any ballroom burst upon us, we were filled with admiration and wonder.
I had risen to the dignity of two silk dresses this year, and felt very grand before the appearance of the Paris toilets. At the beginning of the war, mamma had packed all of Della’s and her best clothes, for which she knew they would have no use while refugees, in two large trunks, and they had been sent up the Pee Dee River to Morven in a flat with a load of rice. The flat had struck a snag and sunk, and the trunks had remained under water a long time, so that almost everything was ruined, but in looking over the mass of mildewed stuffs, I found two dresses of mamma’s, which I asked her to give me, as I thought I could make something of them. One was a very heavy thick black silk, with stripes of satin about two inches wide, every two inches apart, the stripes running across, or bayadere, as it was called then. But this was no longer the fashion; so I ripped up the very ample full skirt, and after washing it three times to get off the stains of the muddy river water in which it had lain so long, I sewed the breadths together, matching the stripes so exactly that no one could imagine that it had been done. Then I cut the most beautiful long skirt by a Paris pattern, gored like an umbrella at the top, and flaring out into the most wonderful long train, which was stiffened with buckram, so that as you danced it slid along the waxed floor, even when your partner backed you all over the room; then the low-necked waist, which did fit beautifully, was trimmed with thread lace, and was sewed to the skirt. I thought the effect was regal. The other was a very heavy purple satin brocaded so as to make the effect of a purple satin covered with black lace. This was harder to wash and cleanse than the black, but I worked at it in the holidays, and ended by succeeding in making it too a thing of beauty, and felt that I was provided with apparel suitable to my character as chaperon.
My friends were more beautiful than ever this season. I had become perfectly devoted to Serena, and she had showed that she returned the feeling, for in sending to Paris for their season’s toilets she had sent for six beautifully fine pocket-handkerchiefs for me, with my monogram most elaborately embroidered on them, the finest, most beautiful handkerchiefs I have had in my long life, I have one still just as a memento of her affection; beauty, spoiled and adored by men as she was, she had to divert some of the cotton money sent to Paris from her own finery to give me this delight.
They were not at school this year, and I found it much harder to maintain my authority and dignity with them. Serena was terribly strong, and one day when she wanted to do something to which I would not consent, she came into my room, to make a last appeal to me; I was only half dressed, and she picked me up and threw me up in the air, and as she caught me, said: “Now will you let me?” I panted out: “Now less than ever.” She threw me up once more and left the room. There was a tale of her wishing to get her father’s consent to some plan, and holding him over the banister of the second-story piazza, saying she would drop him unless he yielded to her will; of course she did not get her wish. She was a grand woman, and no wonder she counted her victims by scores.
I wish I had time to tell of my many friends; they were all such nice men, who had fought through the war, and now were not ashamed to take any kind of honest work to enable them to help their mothers and sisters. There were literally butchers and bakers, and candlestick-makers, but all thorough, true gentlemen, and most of them beautiful dancers. The only public balls we had that year were the three balls given by the Cotillion Club. They were in the South Carolina Hall, with a fine waxed floor and good band of music, but very mild refreshments.
The private parties were too delightful; the young men of the family giving the party always waxed the floor, and they became experts in doing it, and that was really the sole thing absolutely necessary to the success of a party. We were sure of good music, for there were four or five girls going into society that played delightfully for dancing. The refreshments generally consisted of rolls, handed in dishes of exquisite china, and water in very dainty glasses. At one or two houses we had the rare treat of coffee, but that did not often happen, and when the rolls appeared just before the German, they were very welcome, and greatly enjoyed, for we were all working hard, and living none too high. In the winter the only recreation, except the dancing, was walking on the Battery in the afternoon. We made engagements for this, just as we did for a German, generally with girl friends, for the men at work did not get off for the afternoons. A run on the Battery in the early dusk, or just at sunset, after a hard day’s teaching was something heavenly, and when you had a friend near enough to enjoy silence nothing could be more perfect. Before the war my father never let us walk on the Battery on Sunday afternoon, for he said it was only fair for the darkies to have it that evening, and after the war no one walked there that afternoon, for it was thronged with negroes. The regular promenade for us that afternoon after church, for every one went to church morning and afternoon in those days, was down a very narrow, rough pavement to the west end of Tradd Street, to what was then Chisolm’s Mill, beyond all the houses, where the street was simply a roadway, with the marsh behind, and the broad salt river in front. Along the road piles of logs and lumber had been dumped here and there. To this spot the élite of Charleston wended their way, lads and lasses, two and two, and sat on the logs in place of benches, and watched the sun slowly sink into the gorgeous clouds, which swallowed it up all too quickly, proclaiming the end of our happy day of Rest. Many a momentous conversation was murmured on those logs, with the strong, pungent smell of the marshes borne to us by the brisk, fresh breezes. Many a life contract was sealed there. Somehow it was easier to speak freely in those surroundings, all telling of work and toil, no beauty but God’s great lavish glory of sun and clouds and river and sky. What mattered money and income and fashion? Surely to love God and work and do your duty to the best of your ability, holding the strong, firm hand of the woman you loved, was to make the best of your life, and would insure a blessing upon it.
No one will ever know how many troths were plighted there, nor how many lives, starting out with that simple, childlike faith, in the saving power of love and duty (that word so greatly scorned now), were justified in their confidence, and were noble and happy, and have brought up families of whom they may well be proud. I can never forget the shock of my first proposal, which took place down there. I had worked so hard before I left the country to prevent the asking of that question, and had succeeded so well, knowing all the time in my secret heart that I had done so because I doubted my power to say no with sufficient firmness if the fateful words were spoken, had put all such thoughts out of my mind entirely; I went out as a chaperon, enjoying myself as a married woman would do; I knew there was only one man in the world that I would ever marry, and not quite sure that I could even marry him, but I forgot that other people did not know that. I had a great deal of attention and a great many friends, but never thought of them as possible lovers; so when one evening, sitting on a pile of squared logs which were far from comfortable, watching the tide come in, with the most glorious sunset clouds reflected in the water, and we had stopped talking for some time, and my thoughts were far away, Mr. Blank asked me to marry him, I just gasped with horror and exclaimed: “Oh, how awful! How could you spoil all our delightful friendship in this way! I am so distressed!” But he said: “Miss Bessie, this is very extraordinary conduct on your part! What did you think that I was coming to see you all the time for, and playing chess regularly once a week for, and following you about all the time at the parties, and doing everything in the world I could for you for? I have never cared for any one else, and I never thought you could fail to understand my devotion.”
“Oh,” I repeated, “it is too awful! You know, your dear sister was my best friend, and I liked you because of that, and I thought that was what made you like me, and I liked to be with you because you looked like her and reminded me of her; I have missed her so ever since she died. But now I see how blind and selfish I have been.” We had an awful walk home and parted at the steps, and he never came to see me again.
As the days passed and he did not come to see me, mademoiselle, who had become devoted to me and watched my visitors with intense interest, said to me: “Où est donc ce bon M. Blanc? Il ne vient plus! J’espère que vous ne l’avez pas renvoyé! Il était si bel homme, et si gentil! Je ne pense pas que vous ayez la chance d’attirer un si bon parti encore!”
This experience was a blow, and destroyed my confidence in and enjoyment of my friends; my eyes had been opened, and I was more careful in accepting men’s friendship as if they were girls. Nearly all the men in town fell victims to my beautiful friends, and when they left to go to their new home in Virginia things were very flat, and the men very gloomy. My diary is at an end and I am very hazy and uncertain about dates. When we went this summer for the holidays up to my brother, at the log house in Plantersville, we took Mlle. le Prince with us, as she had nowhere to go, and I devoted a good deal of my time to studying French with her. We read “Les Travailleurs de la Mer,” and I remember very distinctly her disgust and disappointment; she would exclaim: “Appeler cela un roman! Où est donc l’amour?” Never having had any love-affair of her own, she was unwilling to read any book which did not supply her craving for love-stories, and she saw no beauty in Victor Hugo’s masterpiece.
I cannot be sure, but I think it was this winter that General Sickles was put in command of Charleston. He took a big house in Charlotte Street, and soon after he got established there he brought his little daughter to mamma and asked to enter her at the school as a day-scholar, and mamma accepted her pleasantly as such. But it made quite a commotion; the feeling of many in the community was that mamma should have refused to take her. Those who were so bold as to speak to her on the subject were careful not to repeat their indiscretion. One lady, however, was bold enough to say that she did not desire such association for her daughter, and my mother told her then she had best remove her daughter from school, which she did. There never was a more pathetic little figure than that of the new scholar; very pale, very thin and tall, about ten she looked, and dressed in the deepest, plainest black, with none of the natural gaiety of a child; it was said she had just lost her mother, but there was no way of getting behind the wall of childish reserve which this young spirit had been able to build around her inner being. My mother taught her altogether herself, for she did not fit into any of the classes, and mamma was deeply interested in her.
The last year we were in Charleston the St. Cecilia Society began to revive, and determined to give two balls. This was a great event, and every one began to think about a ball dress. I, being like the immortal Mrs. Gilpin, who, “though on pleasure bent, had a frugal mind,” had bought a good piece of white alpaca, and constructed a frock of that, trimmed with handsome scarlet silk-velvet ribbon, which had trimmed an opera-cloak of my sister’s, made in Paris, which had gone down in the river with the other fine clothes. It was a miracle that the velvet survived the ordeal, and was still beautiful after being steamed, and I was delighted with my frock when it was finished. Mamma had not ever seemed to think about my clothes, but the idea of a St. Cecilia Ball roused her to ask: “Bessie, have you a suitable dress for the approaching ball?”
“Yes, mamma, I have a very nice frock.”
“What is it?”
“A white alpaca trimmed with red velvet, and I have covered my slippers with red velvet to match.”
Mamma exclaimed in horror: “An alpaca dress for a St. Cecilia Ball! Impossible! I cannot consent to your going so unsuitably dressed.”
Then I burst out most improperly: “It is too late now to say that. I have spent my hard-earned money for the frock, and it is finished. I got it because it would last better than a muslin, and when it gets dirty I can have it dyed for a day frock. You used to take great interest in Della’s clothes and choose them all, because she was pretty, but as I am ugly you have never cared what I put on.”
Poor mamma was terribly shocked, and said so; then she said: “I certainly will see that you have a proper outfit for this occasion.”
True to her word, she went out, bought and had made by Mrs. Cummings, the best dressmaker in town, a real ball dress. White tulle over white silk, and trimmed with wreaths of little fine white flowers. When I went to try it on I could scarcely believe my eyes, and found it hard to sleep that night for thinking of it. Mrs. Cummings promised to have it sent by seven o’clock Thursday, the night of the ball. I waited and looked anxiously; eight came, no dress, and finally at nine I sent the others off to the ball and went to bed. I felt I had been well punished for my wicked outburst of temper; but perhaps few can understand how I suffered, for few, I think, have the intense love of pleasure which I had in my youth. I could, and did, throw myself, heart and soul into my work, whatever it was, but I threw myself with equal vehemence into my play when the work was over. In two weeks’ time came the next St. Cecilia, and I went and wore my beautiful ball dress, but I had a very chastened feeling all the evening. The frock was a dream, quite short, with little pleatings of tulle, from the waist to the bottom; the waist fitted perfectly, and mamma had fulfilled her promise of an outfit, for she had bought white kid slippers (one and a half was then my number) and a pair of white kid gloves, something I had never even dreamed of; so for once I was properly attired according to the ideas of the great world, and mamma was very pleased when I went to show myself to her before going. We still walked to all entertainments in our boots, our slippers, carefully wrapped up, being intrusted to our escort, who received them with a kind of reverence mingled with joy, at having committed to his care a part of one’s vital belongings. This was only for real balls, however; at the little informal dances which we had very often, we danced in our walking shoes, always waxing the soles thoroughly before going into the dancing-room. This important service was also rendered by one’s escort, and was regarded almost in the light of an accolade. In the rather laborious life that I led, never any fire in my bedroom, never any hot water, I suffered terribly from chilblains, and my hands and feet were often greatly swollen, so that I could not get on my shoes; then, instead of staying away, I asked mamma if she would lend me her best shoes. This was mamma’s only extravagance; she was a very tall woman with beautiful hands and feet, long and narrow, and common shoes did not fit her at all, so she had her boots made to order, at what to us seemed an enormous price; she wore fives, much too long for her, as she liked them that way, but fitting perfectly in every other way. I could see that it was a supreme sacrifice on her part to lend me those, her most precious possession, but she consented, and I went off to a dance at the Dessaussure’s, arrayed in my black silk and mamma’s shoes, and enjoyed my comfortable feet immensely; I had stuffed the toes with cotton, as it was only in the length they were too big, and when people stepped on my foot, as was often the case that first evening that I wore them, as I had not got accustomed to managing feet so much longer than usual, they would apologize humbly and hope they had not hurt me too badly, I always answered: “You have not hurt me at all; that was only my shoe you stepped on, not my foot”—to their great amusement. One day a man said: “I was asked a conundrum that is going the rounds last night: what young lady has the biggest shoe and the smallest foot in town?” All this is very trivial and very silly, but as I make the effort to recall the past, all these foolish details come, and I just put them down.