CHRONICLES OF CHICORA WOOD

MRS. PRINGLE AT CHICORA WOOD.

Photograph by Amelia M. Watson.

CHRONICLES OF
CHICORA WOOD

BY
ELIZABETH W. ALLSTON PRINGLE
AUTHOR OF “A WOMAN RICE PLANTER”
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1922
Copyright, 1922, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
——
Printed in the United States of America
——
Published May, 1922

PREFACE

As I sit in the broad piazza, watching the closing of the day, I gaze into the vistas of moss-draped giant oaks. All is mystery, the mystery of nature, the mystery of the ages. These oaks, still strong, still beautiful, have seen generations pass. Through their filmy vistas the god of the day is sending his gleaming shafts as he has always done.

But brighter to me than these last rays is the pageant of the Past, which sweeps before me now: scenes as intense as the flaming sky, incidents as tender as the fleecy clouds, years as dark and tragic as that leaden storm-bank at the horizon’s edge, but redeemed from utter despair by a courage and a sacrifice equal in splendor to its illumined summits.

In my memory are stored the beauty and pathos of these years. Shall I let all this die without a word? These pictures I have treasured—so full of beauty and color—shall I let them fade, even as the sunset, into gray oblivion? I cannot bring before you as clearly as I would the charm and glamour of the past, but I can at least give a faint idea of “the days that are no more.”

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I
MY FATHER

CHAPTER I
ORIGIN OF THE TWO L ALLSTONS

JOHN ALLSTON, of St. John’s, Berkeley, was born in England in 1666, and came to this country between 1685 and 1694. He was descended from the ancient family of Allstone, through John Allston, of Saxham Hall, Newton, Suffolk, which was the seat of the Allstons for several hundred years. An Allston was the Saxon Lord of Stanford in Norfolk before the Conquest, and was dispossessed by the Normans. The old Saxon names of Rath Alstan, Alstane, were but variants of the name which John of St. John’s spelled Alstane, until the signature of his will (1718), when he wrote it Allston. The motto was “Immotus,”[1] “Az. ten stars, crest an estoile in a crescent argent.”

John Allston, of St. John’s, Berkeley, had a number of children, as self-respecting people of that date usually had, but we are concerned only with the descendants of his eldest son, John, who was the grandfather of Benjamin Allston, my father’s father, and those of his second son, William, who was the grandfather of Charlotte Ann Allston, my father’s mother. So his parents were second cousins.

Ben Allston died when his second son, Robert, was only eight years old. The boy was educated at Mr. Waldo’s school in Georgetown until he was sixteen, when his widowed mother determined to send him to West Point. He entered in 1817, graduating in June, 1821, this being the first class which made the four years’ course under Colonel Sylvanus Thayer. He was appointed lieutenant in the 3d Artillery, and assigned to duty on the Coast Survey under Lieutenant-Colonel Kearney, of the Topographical Engineers. In this position he assisted in surveying the harbors of Plymouth and Provincetown, Mass., and the entrance to Mobile Bay. While on duty here he got letters from his mother telling of her difficulties, which demanded his immediate presence at home. He asked for leave of absence, but being refused this by his commanding officer, he resigned his commission February, 1822, bought a horse and rode through northern Alabama and Georgia, then inhabited by Indians, to Charleston, and thence to Georgetown, S. C.

His mother’s difficulties in managing her property of landed estate and negroes had been great, and added to this was the effort of the purchaser of a plantation adjoining Chicora on the south to seize a tract of land (attempting to prove that this land belonged to his plantation), which when cleared became four of her best rice-fields. This had kept her in constant fiery correspondence, until my father felt it his duty to resign and come home and settle the matter.

He employed the lawyer of greatest repute at the moment, James L. Petigru; the case was brought into court, and my grandmother’s title to the land established beyond question. She did not long survive to enjoy having her son at home to take the burden of the management of her affairs, for she died October 24, 1824, after a short illness of pleurisy, in her fifty-fourth year. This was a very great sorrow to my father, for he had for her an intense affection with a sense of protection. She was beautiful and very small, so that the servants always spoke of her as “Little Miss” in distinction to Aunt Blythe, who was “Big Miss.” According to the custom of the day, the land was all left to the sons, charged with legacies to the daughters, so my father’s patrimony consisted of large tracts of swamp land in Georgetown and Marion and seventeen negroes, subject to a debt to his sisters which amounted to more than the value of the property. He entered upon its management with great energy, surveyed the land himself, cleared and drained the swamps and converted them into valuable rice-fields.

In this work his military education was of great service to him. In 1823 he was elected surveyor-general of the State, an office which he held for four years. In 1828 he was returned by the people of Winyah to the lower house of the legislature, and in 1832 was returned to the Senate. About this time he attained the rank of colonel of the militia, service of the State. He continued to be returned to the Senate, and was president of that body from 1850 to 1856, when he was elected governor. But I must go back. During the lawsuit about the land my father was entertained by James L. Petigru, came to know the lawyer’s sister, Adèle Petigru, and fell in love with her; and she finally yielded to his suit, and they were married in 1832 and went at once to his plantation, Chicora Wood, fourteen miles north of Georgetown, on the Great Pee Dee River.

I am always afraid of bursting out into praise of my father, for I adored him, and thought him the wisest and best man in the world, and still do think he was a most unusual mixture of firmness and gentleness, with rare executive ability. But I have always found, in reading biographies and sketches, that the unstinted and reiterated praises of the adoring writers rouses one’s opposition, and I write this with the hope of bringing to his grandchildren the knowledge and appreciation of my father’s character. I will try to draw his portrait with a few firm strokes, and leave the respect and admiration to be aroused by it. Now that slavery is a thing of the past, the younger generation in our Southland really know nothing about the actual working of it, and they should know to understand and see the past in its true light. Slavery was in many ways a terrible misfortune, but we know that in the ancient world it was universal, and no doubt the great Ruler of the world, “that great First Cause, least understood,” allowed it to exist for some reason of His own.

The colony of North and South Carolina, then one, entreated the mother country to send no more slaves. “We want cattle, horses, sheep, swine, we don’t want Africans.” But the Africans continued to come. The Northeastern States were the first to get rid of the objectionable human property when conscientious scruples arose as to the owning of slaves—in some instances by freeing them, but in many more instances by selling them in the Southern States. There is no doubt that in the colder climate slave labor was not profitable. When the Civil War came, the Southern planters were reduced from wealth to poverty by the seizure of their property which they held under the then existing laws of the country. It is a long and tangled story—and I do not pretend to judge of its rights and wrongs. I have no doubt that the Great Father’s time for allowing slavery was at an end. I myself am truly thankful that slavery is a thing of the past, and that I did not have to take up the burden of the ownership of the one hundred people my father left me in his will (all mentioned by name), with a pretty rice-plantation called Exchange two miles north of Chicora Wood. I much prefer to have had to make my own living, as I have had to do, except for the short six years of my married life, than to have had to assume the care and responsibility of those hundred negroes, soul and body. I have had a happy life, in spite of great sorrow and continued work and strain, but I am quite sure that with my sensitive temperament and fierce Huguenot conscience I never could have had a happy life under the burden of that ownership.

It would have been a comfort, however, if we could have gathered up something from my father’s large property, but we did not. Just before the war my mother’s brother, Captain Tom Petigru, of the navy, died, leaving a childless widow. She lived in Charleston, in her beautiful home with large yard and garden, at the corner of Bull and Rutledge Streets, and was a rich woman, as riches were counted in those days—owning a large farm in Abbeville County, where the Giberts and Petigrus had originally settled, and also a rice-plantation, “Pipe Down,” on Sandy Island on the Waccamaw, not far from my father’s estates, also one hundred negroes. As soon as Uncle Tom died, Aunt Ann wrote to my father, asking him as a great favor to buy her plantation and negroes, as she felt quite unequal to the management and care of them. My father replied immediately that it was impossible for him to comply with her request, that he had his hands full managing his own property, and that he specially felt he had already more negroes than he desired. Aunt Ann continued her entreaties. Then the negroes from Pipe Down began to send deputations over to beg my father to buy them. Philip Washington, a very tall, very black man, a splendid specimen of the negro race, after two generations of slavery, was their spokesman. My uncle had been devoted to Philip, and considered him far above the average negro in every way, and in his will had given him his freedom, along with two or three others; he pleaded the cause of his friends with much eloquence, saying they had fixed on him as the one owner they desired. Then my uncle, James L. Petigru, entered the lists, and appealed to my father’s chivalry for his old and feeble sister-in-law, and to the intense feeling of the negroes, who had selected him for their future owner, and were perfectly miserable at his refusal—if it were a question of money, he argued, my father need not hesitate, as “Sister Ann” did not desire any cash payment; she greatly preferred a bond and mortgage, and the interest paid yearly, as that would be the best investment she could have. At last my father yielded, and made a small cash payment, giving his bond and a mortgage for the rest. The deed was done—the Pipe Down people were overjoyed, and the debt assumed. This debt it was which rendered my father’s estate insolvent at the end of the war, for he died in 1864. The slaves having been freed, the property was gone, but the debt remained in mortgages on his landed estates, which had all to be sold. The plantations were: Chicora Wood, 890 acres, Ditchford, 350 acres, Exchange, 600 acres, Guendalos, 600 acres, Nightingale Hall, 400 acres, Waterford, 250 acres, beside Pipe Down itself. Also the two farms in Anson County, North Carolina, and our beautiful house in Charleston. Besides this, there were 6,000 acres of cypress timber at Britton’s Neck; 5,000 acres of cypress and pine land near Carver’s Bay; 300 acres at Canaan Seashore; house and 20 acres on Pawley’s Island. Of all this principality, not one of the heirs got anything!

My mother’s dower was all that could be claimed. In South Carolina the right of dower is one-third of the landed property, for life, or one-sixth, in fee simple. My mother preferred the last, and the Board of Appraisers found that the plantation Chicora Wood, where she had always lived, would represent a sixth value of the real estate, and that was awarded her as dower; but not an animal nor farm implement, no boats nor vehicles—just the land, with its dismantled dwelling-house. I tell this here, to explain how we came to face poverty at the end of the war.

CHAPTER II
PLANTER AND CITIZEN

NOW I must go back to my father’s early life, for I left him just married, and bringing his beautiful bride from the gay life of the city to the intense quiet, as far as social joys went, of the country. It was wonderful that their marriage proved a success, and a great credit to them both. They were so absolutely different in tastes and ideals that each had to give up a great deal that they had dreamed of in matrimony; but their principles and standards being the same, things always came right in the end. My father was always a very public-spirited man, and interested in the good of his county and his State. Of course, all this public life necessitated constant and prolonged absences from home, and the rejoicing was great always, when the legislature adjourned and he returned from Columbia. He was a scientific rice-planter and agriculturist; he wrote articles for De Bow’s Review that were regarded as authorities. His plantations were models of organization and management. All the negroes were taught a trade or to do some special work. On Chicora Wood there was a large carpenter’s shop, where a great number of skilled men were always at work, under one head carpenter. Daddy Thomas was this head, during all my childhood, and he was a great person in my eyes. He was so dignified, and treated us young daughters of the house as though we were princesses; just the self-respecting manner of a noble courtier. His wife was the head nurse of the “sick-house,” and the “children’s house,” also, so that she was also a personage—very black and tall, with a handkerchief turban of unusual height. We never went near her domain without returning with handsome presents of eggs, or potatoes, or figs, according to season, for Maum Phœbe was a very rich person and one of great authority. There were always four or five apprentices in the carpenter’s shop, so year by year skilled men were turned out, not “jack-legs,” which was Thomas Bonneau’s epithet for the incompetent. Then the blacksmith-shop, under Guy Walker, was a most complete and up-to-date affair, and there young lads were always being taught to make horseshoes, and to shoe horses, and do all the necessary mending of wheels and axles and other ironwork used on a plantation. The big flats and lighters needed to harvest the immense rice-crops were all made in the carpenter’s shop, also the flood-gates necessary to let the water on and off the fields. These were called “trunks,” and had to be made as tight as a fine piece of joiner’s work. There was almost a fleet of rowboats, of all sizes, needed on the plantation for all purposes, also canoes, or dugouts, made from cypress logs. There was one dugout, Rainbow, capable of carrying several tierces of rice. When I was a child, the threshing of the rice from the straw was done in mills run by horse-power; before I can remember it was generally done by water-power. The men and women learned to work in the mill; to do the best ploughing; the best trenching with the hoe—perfectly straight furrows, at an even depth, so as to insure the right position for the sprouting grain; the most even and best sowing of the rice. Then, skilfully to take all the grass and weeds out with the sharp, tooth-shaped hoes, yet never touch or bruise the grain or its roots, the best cultivation of the crop. Also they learned to cut the rice most dexterously, with reap-hooks, and lay the long golden heads carefully on the stubble, so that the hot sun could get through and dry it, as would not be possible if it were laid on the wet earth, so that it could be tied in sheaves the next day. For all these operations prizes were offered every year—pretty bright-colored calico frocks to the women, and forks and spoons; and to the men fine knives, and other things that they liked—so that there was a great pride in being the prize ploughman, or prize sower, or harvest hand, for the year.

Only the African race, who seem by inheritance immune from the dread malarial fever, could have made it possible and profitable to clear the dense cypress swamps and cultivate them in rice by a system of flooding the fields from the river by canals, ditches, and flood-gates, draining off the water when necessary, and leaving these wonderfully rich lands dry for cultivation. It has been said that, like the pyramids, slave labor only could have accomplished it; be that as it may, at this moment one has the pain of watching the annihilation of all this work now, when the world needs food; now when the starving nations are holding out their hands to our country for food, thousands and thousands of acres of this fertile land are reverting to the condition of swamps: land capable of bringing easily sixty bushels of rice to the acre without fertilizer is growing up in reeds and rushes and marsh, the haunt of the alligator and the moccasin. The crane and the bittern are always there, the fish-hawk and the soaring eagle build their nests on the tall cypress-trees left here and there on the banks of the river; the beautiful wood-duck is also always there, and at certain seasons the big mallard or English duck come in great flocks; but, alas, they no longer come in clouds, as they used to do (so that a single shot has been known to kill sixty on the wing). For them too the country is ruined, for them too all is changed. Those that come do not stay. It was the abundant shattered rice of the cultivated fields, flooded as soon as the harvest was over, which brought them in myriads from their nesting-grounds in the far north, to spend their winters in these fat feeding-grounds, in the congenial climate of Carolina. Now there is no shattered rice on which to feed, and in their wonderful zigzag flight they stop a day or two to see if the abundance of which their forefathers have quacked to them has returned, and not finding it they pass on to Florida and other warm climes to seek their winter food. Thus this rich storehouse and granary is desolate. With the modern machinery for making dikes and banks these fields could be restored to a productive condition and made to produce again, without a very heavy expenditure. But alas! those who owned them had absolutely no money, and after the destruction of the banks and flood-gates by the great storm of 1906 no restoration was made. A few of the plantations in Georgetown County have been bought by wealthy Northern men as game-preserves. One multimillionaire, Emerson, who bought a very fine rice-plantation, Prospect Hill, formerly property of William Allston, has some fields planted in rice every year, simply for the ducks, the grain not being harvested at all, but left to attract the flocks to settle down and stay there, ready for the sportsman’s gun.

Besides being a diligent, devoted, and scientific planter and manager of his estates, my father was greatly interested in the welfare of the poor whites of the pineland, spoken of always scornfully by the negroes as “Po’ Buchra”—nothing could express greater contempt. Negroes are by nature aristocrats, and have the keenest appreciation and perception of what constitutes a gentleman. The poor whites of the low country were at a terrible disadvantage, for they were never taught to do anything; they only understood the simplest farm work, and there was no market for their labor, the land-owners having their own workers and never needing to hire these untrained hands, who in their turn looked down on the negroes, and held aloof from them. These people, the yeomanry of the country, were the descendants of the early settlers, and those who fought through the Revolution. They were, as a general rule, honest, law-abiding, with good moral standards. Most of them owned land, some only a few acres, others large tracts, where their cattle and hogs roamed unfed but fat. Some owned large herds, and even the poorest usually had a cow and pair of oxen, while all had chickens and hogs—but never a cent of money. They planted corn enough to feed themselves and their stock, sweet potatoes, and a few of the common vegetables. They never begged or made known their needs, except by coming to offer for sale very roughly made baskets of split white oak, or some coarsely spun yarn, for the women knew how to spin, and some of them even could weave. There was something about them that suggested a certain refinement, and one always felt they came from better stock, though they never seemed to trace back. Their respect for the marriage vow, for instance, impressed one, and their speech was clear, good Anglo-Saxon, and their vocabulary included some old English words and expressions now obsolete. My father was most anxious to help them, and felt that to establish schools for them throughout the county would be the first step. In one of these schools a young girl proved such an apt scholar and learned so quickly all that she could acquire there that he engaged a place for her in a Northern school, and got the consent of her parents to her going, and she, being ambitious, was greatly pleased. He appointed a day to meet her in Georgetown, impressing on the parents to bring her in time for him to put her on the ship, before it sailed for New York. At the appointed time the parents arrived. My father asked for Hannah; the mother answered that they found they would miss Hannah too much, she was so smart and helpful, but they’d brought Maggie, and he could send her to school! My father was very angry; Hannah Mitchell was eighteen and clever and ambitious, while Maggie was fourteen, and dull and heavy-minded. Of course he did not send her. It was a great disappointment, for he had taken much trouble, and was willing to go to considerable expense to give Hannah the chance to develop, and hoped she would return prepared to teach in the school he had established. These people are still to be found in our pinelands, and have changed little.

The public roads were also my father’s constant care, and all through that country were beautifully kept. The method was simple; each land-owner sent out twice a year a number of hands, proportioned to his land, and the different gentlemen took turns to superintend the work. Our top-soil goes down about two feet, before reaching clay. The roads were kept in fine condition by digging a good ditch on each side of a sixty-foot highway; the clay from the ditch being originally thrown into the middle of the road, and then twice a year those ditches were cleared out, and a little more clay from them thrown on the road each time. The great difficulty in road-making and road-keeping, as I know from my personal observation in the present, is not the amount of labor, but the proper, intelligent direction of the work. In my father’s day, the office of road commissioner and supervisor were unpaid, and my father gave his time, work, and interest unstintedly.

My father’s love of art, and of music, and of all

ROBERT FRANCIS WITHERS ALLSTON, PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE.

Portrait by Flagg about 1850.

beauty was very great. It made all the difference in the world to us, his children, growing up in the country, so far from picture-galleries and concerts and every kind of music. At the sale of the Bonaparte collection of pictures in Baltimore my father commissioned the artist, Sully, to attend the sale and select and buy for him six pictures. Papa was much pleased with Mr. Sully’s selection. They included:

“A Turk’s Head,” by Rembrandt.

“The Supper at Emmaus,” by Gherardo del Notte.

“The Holy Family,” a very beautiful Gobelin tapestry. For this picture Mr. Sully was offered double the price he paid before it left the gallery.

“Io,” whom Juno in jealous rage had transformed into a white heifer. A very large and beautiful canvas, a landscape with the heifer ruminating in the foreground, watched by Cerberus, while on a mountainside Mercury sits playing on his flute, trying to lull him to sleep. (I still own this painting.)

“St. Paul on the Island of Melita,” a very large canvas representing a group of shipwrecked mariners around a fire of sticks; in the midst stands the figure of St. Paul just shaking from his finger a viper, into the fire, very dramatic.

“St. Peter in Prison,” awakened by the angel while his keepers sleep.

This is the match picture to the above and the same size.

These works of art on the walls of our country home awoke in us all an appreciation and recognition of fine paintings for which we can never be sufficiently grateful.

This great love for art and his confidence in its elevating influence is shown by his buying and having placed in the grounds of the State capitol a replica of Houdon’s statue of Washington.

Another and most characteristic evidence is furnished by the following note from a friend, to whom I wrote, asking for some facts as to my father’s public life, for I had thus far written of him entirely as I knew him in his family and home life, except for the bare outline by the dates of his election to different offices, and though I have no desire or intention of making this a history of his official and political career, feeling myself entirely unfitted for that, I felt I should give something to show his service in his own State. In reply Mr. Yates Snowden wrote:

“The day before your letter came my eye lit upon the invitation of R. F. W. Allston, president of the Carolina Art Association, inviting the members of the Convention Secession to visit the Gallery of Art in Meeting Street whilst deliberating here for the public weal. It is hoped that an hour bestowed occasionally in viewing some specimens of art, including Leutze’s illustration of Jasper and the old Palmetto Fort, may contribute an agreeable diversion to the minds of gentlemen habitually engrossed in the discussion of grave concerns of state.”—(“Journal of the (Secession) Convention,” p. W225, April 1, 1861.)

I can quite imagine that this invitation was a source, to some of the members of that convention, of great amusement, as being most unsuitable to their frame of mind.

My father’s full sympathy with the convention is shown by the following extract from Brant and Fuller’s “Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas”:

“Robert Francis Withers Allston, South Carolina statesman, scholar, and agriculturist, was born April 21, 1801.... During the nullification era and for many years afterward Mr. Allston was deputy adjutant-general of the militia, and from 1841 to 1864 was one of the trustees of South Carolina College at Columbia.... In politics he belonged to the Jefferson and Calhoun school, believing in the complete sovereignty of the States.”

During his prolonged absences in Columbia my father did not like to leave my mother alone on the plantation, with no one but the negroes to care for the children, so he secured a good, reliable Irishwoman to take charge of the children and the nursery, with the others under her. Strange to say, this was never resented, and Mary O’Shea stayed with us about fifteen years, when some of her kinfolk called her away. We called her “May” and were devoted to her. She had her trials, for my father did not approve of fire in the room where the children slept, and this, along with the open window, was a terrible ordeal to May. The day-nursery, with its roaring open wood-fire, only made the contrast more distressing to her; she never became reconciled to it, and I only wonder that she stayed all those years. As soon as the older children were big enough, we had an English governess—Miss Wells first, and afterward Miss Ayme.

I have asked my brother, Charles Petigru Allston, to write for me what he remembered of my father, and I will insert here what he has written for me.

CHAPTER III
MY BROTHER’S NARRATIVE

MY holiday, the months of December, 1863, and January, 1864, were passed with my father on the coast, where he had planting, salt boiling, and freighting up the rivers, to look after. Salt was a very scarce article at that time, and my father had it boiled from sea-water on the salt creeks of the Waccamaw seashore, behind Pawley’s Island. The vats were made chiefly of old mill boilers, cut in half and mounted on brick, with furnace below for wood, and a light shed above, to protect from the weather. A scaffold was built out in the salt creek, and a pump placed there to lift the water about twenty feet, and from the pump a wooden trough carried the water to the boilers, some 300 yards away, in the forest. At flood-tide, when the water came in from the sea, was the best time to pump, as the water had then more salt and less of the seepage water from the marshlands. Sometimes, when a man was upon the scaffold, pumping, a federal gunboat, lying off the coast, would throw a shell over the island, which cut off the sight of the works, in the direction of the smoke from the boiling vats; when this happened the man came down in wild haste and made for the brush. These interruptions became so frequent that finally the boiling had to be done at night, when the smoke was not visible. My father sent me over to inspect the salt-works and report to him more than once, so that I was familiar with the situation. Wagons came long distances from the interior to buy or barter for salt. This work was carried on entirely by negroes, without any white man in charge. My father had the faculty for organization, and his negro men were remarkably well trained, intelligent, and self-reliant. Another work which he instituted and developed was the transporting of rice and salt up the rivers to the railroad. The ports, being blockaded, and no railroad within forty miles, it became necessary to make some outlet for the rice-crop to get to market and to the army. He had two lighters built, which were decked over and secured from weather, and carried from 150 to 200 tierces (600 pounds each) of clean or marketable rice. On each lighter he put a captain, with a crew of eight men. These lighters were loaded at the rice-mill and taken up the Pee Dee River, to the railroad bridge near Mars Bluff, to Society Hill, and sometimes to Cheraw. It was a long, hard trip, and when the freshet was up it seemed sometimes to be impossible to carry a loaded barge against the current, by hand—but it was done. At such times the only progress was made by carrying a line ahead, making fast to a tree on the river-bank, and then all hands warping the boat up by the capstan; then make fast and carry the line ahead again. The crew were all able men. They had plenty to eat and seemed to enjoy themselves. I have often been with my father when the boats returned from a trip and the captain came to make his report; it was worth listening to; the most minute account of the trip, with all its dangers and difficulties. There was seldom a charge of any serious character against any of the crew; each knew that such a charge made by the captain meant the immediate discharge from the crew and a return to field work.

My father also sent rice up the Black River to the Northeastern Railroad at Kingstree, and finally built a warehouse, making a new station, which is now Salter’s; here he put a very intelligent negro, Sam Maham, in charge; he received the rice from the captains of the river-craft, and delivered it to the railroad on orders, and I have never heard a word of complaint against him. Black River, however, had to be navigated by smaller craft than the Pee Dee, open flats, boats square at each end, and 50 feet long by 12 feet wide. I well remember the report made by the captain of the first crew sent up Black River. It was thrilling in parts. He had to cut his way through after leaving the lower river, which was open for navigation. The river had never been used high up for that sort of craft, and was full of logs, etc.; besides, in places it was difficult to find the right channel, and his description of going through a section where the river was broken up by low islands, or shoals into several apparent channels, all of which were shallow, except one, was most exciting. None of these men had ever been on this river or in that locality before, and only the drilling and direction given them by my father could have carried them through; but they went through, and after that there was a regular line going. But these flats being smaller and open and no decks, were much more liable to damage the cargo; still very little was lost, strange to say. They had good sailcloth covers, and the crews took an interest in the work. The captain and crew making the best record were always well rewarded.

I became familiar with all this work during the winter of 1863-64. My father wanted me to learn as much as possible of each branch of the work, and knew how to direct my attention to the chief details to be studied and worked out.

At night we sat together and had milk and potatoes, with sassafras tea for supper, and it was very good. One who has never had to depend on sassafras tea does not know how good it is. My father had many opportunities for getting in all the supplies that he wanted, as well as for making a good deal of money by exchanging his rice and salt for cotton, and then sending the cotton out by the blockade-runners to Nassau; but he was opposed to the running of the blockade for private gain. How often as we sat by the fire in the evenings did he talk to me on that and other subjects of public interest. His idea was that the Confederate Government should control the cotton; buy it up at home, pay for it in gold, ship it out by blockade-runners, sell it in Europe for the government, and bring in such supplies as were most needed—medicines, shoes, clothes, as well as arms, etc. In this way, he said, the government would be free from the horde of speculators who were making fortunes out of our misfortunes, and thus be able to build up a financial standing in Europe that would go far toward deciding the status of the Confederate States. He was most earnest on this subject, and I know that he made more than one trip to Richmond for the purpose of urging some such measure on President Davis, but he returned disappointed, and I remember after one trip he seemed entirely hopeless as to the outcome. Feeling, as he did, he would never avail himself of the many opportunities which offered, except to get such things as were prime necessities. In February, 1864, I returned to my school in Abbeville district. I drove away from the Chicora house on my way to the railroad, forty miles distant, leaving my father standing on the platform at the front door. That was my last sight of him. He died in April, 1864, and though I was written for, the mails and transportation were so slow that he was buried before I got home.

I returned to school after being at home a few weeks in April, and remained until the following October, when the school was dismissed. The call for recruits for the army was now from sixteen years up, and would include many who were at the school. I went to my mother at Society Hill and was to get ready to join the corps of State Cadets.

While I was at Society Hill my mother heard from the overseer at Chicora Wood, that he had some trouble about repairing the freight-lighters. This being a most important matter and requiring to be promptly attended to, my mother decided to send me down to see if I could help the overseer. So I started off on a little brown horse to ride the ninety miles down to the rice country. I arrived safely, and after a few days began to make headway with the work. The largest lighter had been in the water a good long time and was very heavy to haul out, but was badly in need of repairing. It was my first experience of unwilling labor; the hands were sulky. My father’s talks and teaching now came in to the aid of my own knowledge of the negro nature, and before long I had the big lighter hauled up, high and dry. We had and could get no oakum for calking, but my father had devised a very respectable substitute in cypress bark; it was stripped from the tree and then broken, somewhat as flax is, and then worked in the hands until quite pliable; this did wonderfully well, though it did not last as well as oakum. If pitch was freely applied to the freshly calked seams a very good job was made. We got the lighter calked and cleaned and simply painted, and put back in the water ready for work.

I then returned to my mother at Society Hill and remained there until I joined the Arsenal Cadets, and we entered the active service.

My father’s eldest brother, Joseph, while a student at the South Carolina College was appointed lieutenant in the United States army by President Madison and served in Florida in the War of 1812. He attained the rank of general, and all his life was given that title. Though he died at forty-five he had been married three times, his last wife, Mary Allan, only, having children. She had two sons, Joseph Blyth and William Allan. She lived only a few years after her husband, and the little boys were left to the guardianship of my father and the care of my mother, and Chicora Wood was their home until they grew up. Joseph Blyth Allston was a gifted man, a clever lawyer and eloquent pleader. His literary talent was above the ordinary; he has written some poems of great beauty; “Stack Arms” and the longer poem, “Sumter,” deserve a high place in the war poetry of the South. By the merest chance a sketch of my father, written by him, at the request of some one whose individuality is unknown to me, has fallen into my hands at this moment, and I gladly quote from it here, leaving out only the repetitions of facts already stated:

“All the offices held by Robert F. W. Allston in the State were filled by him with credit to himself and usefulness to the country, but his private virtues gave him a much more enduring claim to the regard of his contemporaries and of posterity. In the forties he had been offered the office of governor and had peremptorily declined it. This was not for want of ambition, but because he had dined at Colonel Hampton’s a few days before, in company with Mr. Hammond, who aspired to that office, and without formally pledging himself, had tacitly acquiesced in his candidacy. A liberal economy marked his expenditures, and a cultivated hospitality made his home the centre of a large circle of friends. The rector of the parish (Prince Frederick’s) dined with him every Sunday, with his wife. At dessert the Methodist minister generally arrived from some other appointment, took a glass of wine, and then preached to the negroes in the plantation chapel in the avenue, constructed in the Gothic style by his negro carpenters, under his direction.

“He did much to improve the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine in his neighborhood, and was a constant correspondent of the Bureau of Agriculture at Washington. He was an active member of the South Carolina Jockey Club, of the St. Cecilia Society, and of the South Carolina Historical Society of Charleston; of the Winyah Indigo Society of Georgetown, of which he was long president; of the Hot and Hot Fish Club of Waccamaw; the Winyah and All Saints Agricultural Society, and the Agricultural Association of the Southern States. He was also a member of the Order of Masons.

“He was an eminently successful rice-planter and made many improvements in the cultivation of that crop and the drainage of the rice-lands.

“‘Allston on Sea-Coast Crops’ is the title of a valuable treatise on this subject, which unfortunately is now out of print. Yet one of his best overseers, when asked if he was not a great planter, replied:

“‘No, sir, he is no planter at all.’

“‘To what, then, do you attribute his great success?’

“‘To his power of organization, sir, and the system and order which he enforces on all whom he controls.’

“That was indeed the keynote of his character. He was most regular in his own habits, and all within his reach felt the influence of his example. Especially marked was it upon the negroes whom he owned. Even at this day (1900) they show by their thrift and industry the influence of his training and speak of him with pride and affection.

“Political matters and his duty as a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church often called him to the North, and sometimes he took a trip there with his family for pleasure. In 1855 he took his wife and eldest daughter abroad, and they travelled all over the Continent. He took a prize at the Paris Exposition that year for rice grown on his plantation, Chicora Wood, Pee Dee—a silver medal. The rice was presented to the war office, Department of Algeria, in the autumn, and was in such perfect preservation (in glass jars) that in the succeeding year it was again exhibited under the auspices of the Department of War, and was adjudged worthy of a gold medal [which has been placed in the National Museum in Washington for the present.—E. W. A. P.].

“Usually, however, he spent the summers on the sea-beach of Pawley’s Island, and enforced by example as well as precept the duty of the land-owner to those dependent on him. Here he fished and hunted deer, of which he has been known to send home two by 10 A.M., shot on his way to the plantation. Here he was within easy reach of his estates, and could exercise an intelligent and elevating control over the 600 negroes who called him master. This beautiful and bountiful country, watered by the noble stream of the Waccamaw and the Pee Dee, and washed by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, was very near to his heart. And here, amid the scenes in which he had spent his life, he died at his home, Chicora Wood, April 7, 1864, and lies buried in the yard of the old Church of Prince George, Winyah, at Georgetown, South Carolina.”—(Extract from paper by Jos. Blyth Allston.)

And now I must leave this imperfect portrait of my father. Of his illness and death I shall tell elsewhere.

His taking away was softened to me afterward by the feeling that he did not live to see the downfall of the hopes he had cherished for the success of the Confederacy, nor the humiliation of the State he had so loved, when its legislative halls were given up to the riotous caricature of State government by the carpetbaggers and negroes, who disported themselves as officials of the State of South Carolina, from the surrender of Lee until 1876, when Wade Hampton redeemed the State from its degradation.

It was only Hampton’s wonderful power and influence over the men, brave as lions, whom he had led in battle, that prevented awful bloodshed and woe. In 1876 I heard a high-spirited, passionate man, who had been one of Butler’s most daring scouts, say, when hearing of a youth whose front teeth had been knocked out by a negro on the street: “Why, I would let a negro knock me down and trample on me, without lifting a hand, for Hampton has said: ‘Forbear from retaliation, lift not a hand, no matter what the provocation; the State must be redeemed!’” And, thank God, it was redeemed! Those brave men did not suffer and bear insult and assault in vain. My faith in my father is so great that I cannot help feeling that if he had lived he would have been able to prevent things from reaching the depths they did. Of one thing I am certain, that if his life had been spared until after the war we as a family would not have been financially ruined. He would have been able to evolve some system by which, with his own people, he could have worked the free labor successfully and continued to make large crops of rice and corn, as he had done all through the war. His was a noble life, and Milton’s words come to my mind:

“There’s no place here for tears or beating of the breast.”

PART II
MY MOTHER

CHAPTER IV
EARLY DAYS AND OLD FIELD SCHOOL

MY mother, Adèle Petigru, was the granddaughter of Jean Louis Gibert, one of the Pasteurs du Desert, who brought the last colony of Huguenots to South Carolina in April, 1764, after enduring persecution in France, holding his little flock together through great peril and having the forbidden services of his church in forests, in barns, at the midnight hour, in order to escape imprisonment and death. There was a price set upon his head for some years before he made up his mind to leave his beloved land and escape with his little band of faithful to America. These perils and the martyrdom of some of his followers is told in “Les Frères Gibert.” It is a thrilling story, but too long to tell here. The two brothers, Etienne and Jean Louis, escaped to England, the little flock following one by one. King George III made a grant of land in South Carolina to Jean Louis for the settlement of the colony. He retained Etienne in England as his chaplain.

The difficulties and setbacks encountered by the little band were most harrowing and discouraging, but at last they reached the shores of what was to them the promised land, and disembarked at Charleston, South Carolina, April 14, 1764, from which city they made their way some 300 miles into the interior of the State where their grant was. Their difficulties were by no means over; indeed, to them it seemed sometimes as if they were only begun. The wild rugged wilderness where they were to establish themselves, they called by the names they had left in their beautiful France, New Bordeaux and Abbeville, and they set to work to clear land and plant the cuttings of grape-vines to make wine, and the cuttings of mulberry to carry on the manufacture of silk, which were their industries at home. It is hard for us now to realize what they had to encounter and endure—wild beasts, Indians, difficulties of transportation, of transforming the big trees of the forest into lumber suitable to building houses; but all these they conquered. They built homes, they planted vineyards and orchards and mulberry-groves, and succeeded in the manufacture of silk with their spinning-wheels and hand-looms. There is at the old home place in Abbeville now one of the little spinning-wheels with which the silk was spun, that the colony sent with pride as a gift to be made into a dress for the royal wardrobe of the Queen of England.

My great-grandfather was a man of executive ability and strength, with that personal charm which made him intensely beloved and revered by his little flock; and they prospered as long as he lived, but, alas, his life was cut short by an unfortunate accident. He had brought with him from France a devoted and capable attendant, Pierre Le Roy, who in this wilderness filled many and diverse offices; he delighted to vary the often very limited diet of the pasteur by preparing for him dainty dishes of mushrooms with which he was familiar in the old country. There are many varieties here unknown there, and any one who knows this delicious but dangerous vegetable, knows how easily confounded are the good and the poisonous; the deadly Aminita resembles very closely one of the best edible mushrooms; we know not exactly how, but one night the dainty dish proved fatal to the great and good pasteur, and his flock was left desolate in August, 1773, just nine years after their arrival in the New World.

Jean Louis Gibert had married Isabeau Boutiton, a fellow emigrant and sister of his assistant minister, Pierre Boutiton. She was left a widow very young, with two little daughters, Louise and Jeanne, and one son, Joseph, to struggle with the difficult new life. I cannot pursue the fortunes of the colony, but without the leader and counsellor on whom they leaned the colony soon began to disintegrate and disperse, and their descendants are now scattered all over the country. But of this I am sure, wherever they have gone they have carried their strong, upright influence, always raising the standards and ideals of the communities they entered.

Little Louise Gibert very early married William Pettigrew, a blue-eyed, fair-haired young neighbor, who was charmed by her dark beauty. His grandparents had come from Ireland and settled in Pennsylvania, from which State their sons had scattered, Charles settling in North Carolina, where he was to become the first bishop of the Episcopal Church, and William settling in South Carolina as a farmer.

They had a large family, four sons and five daughters:

James Louis, who became a very distinguished man, a lawyer.

JAMES LOUIS PETIGRU.

Miniature by Fraser.

John, clever and witty, but the ne’er-do-well of the family.

Tom, who died a captain in the U. S. navy.

Charles, who graduated at West Point.

The daughters were:

Jane Gibert, who married John North.

Mary, who never married.

Louise, married Philip Johnston Porcher.

Adèle, married Robert Francis Withers Allston.

Harriet, married Henry Deas Lesesne.

The sisters were all women of rare beauty, but Mary. Outsiders never could decide which was the most beautiful, but, of course, each family thought their own mother entitled to the golden apple. My mother was painted by the artist Sully when she was twenty-two, just a year after the birth of her first child, Benjamin, when she was so ill that her hair was cut, so she appears in the portrait with short brown curls, and is very lovely. There is a portrait of her painted by Flagg, in middle life. When she died in her eighty-seventh year she was still beautiful, with brown, wavy hair only sprinkled with gray.

The tradition in my mother’s father’s family was that the Pettigrews had come from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and had gone to Scotland, when they had changed the spelling of the name from Petigru, and had eventually moved to Ireland. This idea was, of course, pleasant to the little Frenchwoman, and when her eldest son, James Louis, grew up and proposed to change the spelling of his name and revert to the French spelling she was delighted, and the father consented that the children should spell the name as they preferred, but he declined to change his. So on his and his wife’s tombstone in the most interesting little God’s acre at the old home in Abbeville, his name is William Pettigrew, while all his children are recorded as Petigru. My mother said to me not long before her death that she felt it had been a mistake, as there was no survivor of the Petigru name, all the sons having died. But I do not agree with her, for my uncle, James L. Petigru, was a great man—heart, soul, and mind—and left a mark in his State, having codified her laws with knowledge and wisdom. He was almost the only man in Charleston who was opposed to secession,—I may almost say the only man in the State.[2] But he was so revered and beloved that, at a time when party feeling was intense, he walked out of his pew in St. Michael’s Church (which he never failed to occupy on Sunday) the first time the Prayer for the President of the United States was left out of the service, and no one ever said one word of criticism or disapproval. In a period when party politics ran high and bitter feeling was intense, it was a wonderful tribute to a man’s character and integrity that, even though running counter to the intense united feeling of the community, love and respect for him should have protected him from attack.

My mother always talked with great pleasure of her early life. She spoke with admiration and love which amounted to adoration of her “little mother.” Her father took second place always in her narrative, though he was a most delightful companion—very clever and full of wit, a great reader, and it was his habit to read aloud in the evenings, while the family sat around the fire, each one with some appointed task. The elder girls sewed, while all the children had their baskets of cotton to pick, for in those days the gin had not been invented and the seed had to be carefully picked from the cotton by hand! It would seem a weary task to us, but they regarded it as a game, and ran races as to who should pick the most during the long winter evenings while my grandfather read Milton, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and other masters of literature. When one contrasts those evenings, those influences on the minds of children, with the amusements and diversions deemed necessary to the young of the present day, one does not wonder at the pleasure-loving race we are becoming. Add to this that there were no little story-books to dissipate the minds of children. My mother’s ideal of a story-book was her beloved Plutarch’s “Lives,” and I remember still with intense regret her disappointment when, I having accomplished the task of learning to read fluently, she one morning placed in my lap a large volume with very good print, and turned to the Life of Themistocles, which she had so loved. Perhaps if it had not been for the long s’s which adorned this beautiful edition of Plutarch it might have been more of a success, but at the end of the half-hour I announced that I saw no pleasure in such a dull book.... I would gladly read to her from one of my story-books, and then she would see what a really nice book was. My dear mother was so pained. She had had the same experience with the older children, but she thought me very bright and felt sure that she would find a congenial mind in her “little Bessie.” Seeing how hurt she was and that she had set her heart on that special book, I did not insist on my book but came every day and read the Plutarch aloud; but I never enjoyed it, which she could never understand.

This thing of bringing all reading matter presented to a child down to its level is a great mistake; it lowers ideals and taste. Stories while you are a child, and then romances, novels, detective tales, corrupt the taste until it is so reduced that there are not many young people now who can read Scott’s novels with any more pleasure than I read Plutarch at ten. My mother’s school was the old field school of the long ago. The country was thinly settled and the schools widely separated, so that children had to make an all-day business of it. The nearest school to the family home was on Long Cane, three miles away, and mamma, at first accompanied by an older sister and brother, later alone, walked three miles to school every day. She took her little basket of lunch, a substantial one, for she did not get home again until late afternoon. It is quite surprising to find what excellent instruction was given in these “old field schools.” Education was not so widely diversified, but it was more thorough and of a higher kind, as far as it went.

Mamma learned to prove sums by “casting out the nines” in a wonderful way, which no one else that I ever saw knew anything about. Her mind was stored with treasures of good poetry which she had been required to memorize in school. On her solitary walk home she was never lonely. The birds and the little inhabitants of the woods were her delight. At a big chestnut-tree about a mile from home she had special friends—two squirrels who ran down from their castle in the top of the tree when they heard her coming, and she always reserved some of her lunch for them. She sat at the root of the tree and played with them until she saw the sun about to sink below the horizon, when she picked up her little school-bag and started at a run for the last stretch of her way home.

CHAPTER V
DADDY TOM AND DADDY PRINCE—DEATH OF LITTLE MOTHER SO BELOVED

THE farms of the up-country as a rule required few hands, and so each farmer owned only a few negroes, and, of course, the relations between master and slave were different from those in the low-country, where each plantation had a hundred or more negroes, which necessitated separate villages, where the negroes lived more or less to themselves. In the up-country it was more like one large family. In my mother’s home there were three quite remarkable, tall, fine-looking, and very intelligent Africans who had been bought by her grandfather from the ship which brought them to this country. Tom, Prince, and Maria—they occupied an important place in my mother’s recollections of her early childhood. They had been of a royal family in their own land, and had been taken in battle by an enemy tribe with which they were at war, and sold to a slave-ship. No one ever doubted their claim to royal blood, for they were so superior to the ordinary Africans brought out. They were skilled in the arts of their own country, and had artistic tastes and clever hands. Daddy Tom and Daddy Prince told tales of their wild forests, which the children were never tired of hearing nor they of telling. Maum Maria made wonderful baskets and wove beautiful rugs from the rushes that grew along Long Cane Creek. One day as she sat on the ground weaving a rug which she had hung from a tree, and my mother was listening to her stories of her home in Africa, the little girl said in a voice of sympathy: “Maum ’Ria, you must be dreadfully sorry they took you away from all that, and brought you to a strange land to work for other people.” Maum Maria stopped her work, rose to her full height—she was very tall and straight—clasped her hands and said, dropping a deep courtesy as she spoke: “My chile, ebery night on my knees I tank my Hebenly Father that he brought me here, for without that I wud neber hev known my Saviour!” She remained, hands clasped, and a look of ecstasy on her face, for some time before she sat down and resumed her work, and the little girl, greatly impressed, asked no more questions that day. When grandmother died, she left these three free, with a little sum to be given them yearly; not much, for she had little to leave. Daddy Tom took his freedom, but Daddy Prince and Maum Maria said they were grateful to their beloved mistress, but they would rather remain just as they were; they had all they needed and were happy and loved their white family, and they did not want to make any change.

My grandfather Pettigrew, with all his charming qualities of wit and good humor, had no power to make or keep money. And among the few sad memories my mother had of her childhood was that of seeing her beloved little mother sitting at the window looking out, while tears coursed down her cheeks, as she saw the sheriff taking off all their cattle, and two families of their negroes to be sold!... her husband having gone security for a worthless neighbor. My mother told it with tears, even when she was very old, the scene seemed to come so vividly before her of her mother’s silent grief.

It is curious to me that my paternal grandfather, Ben Allston, also lost his plantation for a security debt, having signed a paper when he was under age for a cousin who was in trouble pecuniarily. Grandfather was advised by a lawyer to contest the matter, as he had been a minor and it was not valid, but he would not avail himself of that plea, I am thankful to say, and lost the beautiful and valuable plantation which he had inherited, Brook Green on the Waccamaw. That is the only point of similarity between my two grandfathers, however, as they were totally different types, one Scotch-Irish, the other pure English.

The little Frenchwoman, so beloved by her children, did not live to show any sign of age, and the memory remained with my mother of her beauty, her olive skin and black hair, in which no strands of white appeared, and her graceful, small, active figure and tiny hands and feet. She always spoke broken English, but, as her husband did not speak or understand French, she never spoke it with her children through courtesy to him, and none of them spoke French. Her illness was short and the family had no idea it was to be fatal, but evidently she recognized it, for she called my mother and kissed her, and said: “My child, I want to tell you that you have been my greatest comfort. I want you to remember that always.”

CHAPTER VI
MARRIAGE

AFTER the mother’s death the home seemed very desolate; and when the eldest brother’s, James L. Petigru’s, wife proposed most generously to take the younger girls to live with them in Charleston, so that their education might be carried on, their father gladly consented, and my mother from that time lived with her brother in Charleston until her marriage, having the best teachers that the city afforded and enjoying the most charming and witty social surroundings. Aunt Petigru, though a beauty and belle, was a great invalid, so that the care of the house and her two young children came much on the sisters-in-law. Louise, two years older than my mother, married first and was established in her own home. After two years in society, which was very gay then, my mother became engaged to Robert Allston. When the family heard of the engagement they were greatly disturbed that my mother should contemplate burying her beauty and brilliant social gifts in the country, and her sister Louise thought fit to remonstrate, being a matron properly established in her city residence. She made a formal visit and opened her batteries at once.

“My dear Adèle, I have come to remonstrate with you on this extraordinary announcement you have made! You cannot think of accepting this young man. Mr. Allston lives winter and summer in the country. He will take you away from all your friends and family. That he is good-looking I grant you, and I am told he is a man of means; but it is simply madness for you with your beauty and your gifts to bury yourself on a rice-plantation. Perhaps I would not feel so shocked and surprised if you did not have at your feet one of the very best matches in the city. As it is, I feel I should be criminal if I let you make this fatal mistake without doing all I can to prevent it. If you accept Mr. Blank, you will have one of the most beautiful homes in the city. You will have ample means at your command and you will be the centre of a brilliant social circle. My dear sister, my love for you is too great for me to be silent. I must warn you. I must ask you why you are going to do this dreadful thing?”

My mother was at first much amused; but as my aunt continued to grow more and more excited, contrasting her fate as my father’s wife with the rosy picture of what it would be if she accepted the city lover, mamma said: “Louise, you want to know why I am going to marry Robert Allston? I will tell you:—because he is as obstinate as the devil. In our family we lack willpower; that is our weakness.”

My aunt rose with great dignity, saying: “I will say good morning. Your reason is as extraordinary as your action.” And she swept out of the room, leaving my mother master of the field.

It was indeed a brave thing for my mother to do, to face the lonely, obscure life, as far as society went, of a rice-planter’s wife. She had been born in the country and lived there until she was fifteen, but it was a very different country from that to which she was going. It was in the upper part of the State, the hill country, where there were farms instead of plantations, and there were pleasant neighbors, the descendants of the French colony, all around, and each farmer had only one or two negroes, as the farms were small. In the rice country the plantations were very large, hundreds of acres in each, requiring hundreds of negroes to work them. And, the plantations being so big, the neighbors were far away and few in number. Whether my mother had any realization of the great difference I do not know. I hope she never repented her decision. I know she was very much in love with her blue-eyed, blond, silent suitor. They were complete contrasts and opposites in every way. Papa outside was considered a severe, stern man, but he had the tenderness of a very tender woman if you were hurt or in trouble—only expression was difficult to him, whereas to my mother it was absolutely necessary to express with a flow of beautiful speech all she felt.

They were married at St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, April 21, 1832, and went into the country at once. There was a terrible storm of wind and rain that day, which seemed to the disapproving family an appropriate sign of woe. But it was only the feminine members of the family who were so opposed to my father. My uncle approved of mamma’s choice, for he recognized in my father rare qualities of mind and spirit and that thing we call character which is so hard to define.

My uncle feared my mother would find only raw, untrained servants in her new home, so he gave her a well-trained maid and seamstress to whom she was accustomed, and who was devoted to her. Maum Lavinia was a thoroughly trained, competent house-servant, and must have been a great comfort, though she had a terrible temper. She married on the plantation and had a large family, dying only a few years ago, keeping all her faculties to extreme age. One of her grandsons is a prosperous, respected man in New York now, Hugh Roberton. I keep track of all the descendants of our family servants, and it gives me great pleasure when they make good and do credit to their ancestry. It does not always happen. In so many instances, to my great regret, they have fallen in character and good qualities instead of rising;—without training or discipline that is to be expected.

Mamma has told me of her dismay when she found what a big household she had to manage and control. Not long after they were married she went to my father, almost crying, and remonstrated: “There are too many servants; I do not know what to do with them. There is Mary, the cook; Milly, the laundress; Caroline, the housemaid; Cinda, the seamstress; Peter, the butler; Andrew, the second dining-room man; Aleck, the coachman; and Moses, the gardener. And George, the scullion, and the boy in the yard besides! I cannot find work for them! After breakfast, when they line up and ask, ‘Miss, wha’ yu’ want me fu’ do to-day?’ I feel like running away. Please send some of them away, for Lavinia is capable of doing the work of two of them. Please send them away, half of them, at least.”

But papa made her understand that he could not. These were house-servants; they had been trained for the work, even if they were not efficient and well trained. It would be a cruelty to send them into the field, to work which they were not accustomed to. Then he said: “As soon as you get accustomed to the life here you will know there is plenty for them to do. The house is large and to keep it perfectly clean takes constant work. Then there is the constant need of having clothes cut and made for the babies and little children on the place; the nourishment, soup, etc., to be made and sent to the sick. You will find that there is really more work than there are hands for, in a little while.” And truly she found it so. But it took all her own precious time to direct and plan and carry out the work. The calls to do something which seemed important and necessary were incessant. One day my father came in and asked her to go with him to see a very ill man. She answered: “My dear Mr. Urston” (she always called papa Mr. Allston, but she said it so fast that it sounded like that), “I know nothing about sickness, and there is no earthly use for me to go with you. I have been having the soup made and sending it to him regularly, but I cannot go to see him, for I can do him no good.” He answered with a grave, hurt look: “You are mistaken; you can do him good. At any rate, it is my wish that you go.” Mamma got her hat and came down the steps full of rebellion, but silent. He helped her into the buggy and they drove off down the beautiful avenue of live oaks, draped with gray moss, out to the negro quarter, which is always called by them “the street.”

The houses were built regularly about fifty yards apart on each side of a wide road, with fruit-trees on each side. There are generally about twelve houses on each side, so that it makes a little village. On Chicora Wood plantation there were three of these settlements, a little distance apart, each on a little elevation with good Southern exposure, and all named. One was called California, one Aunty Phibby Hill, and one Crick Hill, because Chapel Creek, a beautiful stream of water, ran along parallel with it and very near. In California, which was the middle settlement, was the hospital, called by the darkies “the sick-house.” To this, which was much larger than the other houses, built for one family each, my father drove. He helped mamma out and they entered; the room was large and airy, and there on one of the beds lay an ill man with closed eyes and labored breathing; one could not but see that death was near. He appeared unconscious, with a look of great pain on his face. My father called his name gently, “Pompey.” He opened his eyes and a look of delight replaced the one of pain. “My marster!” he exclaimed. “Yu cum! O, I tu glad! I tink I bin gwine, widout see yu once more.”

Papa said: “I’ve brought something good for you to look upon, Pompey. I brought your young mistress to see you,” and he took mamma’s hand and drew her to the side of the bed where Pompey could see her without effort.

His whole face lit up with pleasure as he looked and he lifted up his hands and exclaimed: “My mistis! I tank de Lawd. He let me lib fu’ see you! ’Tis like de light to my eye. God bless you, my missis.” And turning his eyes to papa, he said: “Maussa, yu sure is chuse a beauty! ’Tis like de face of a angel! I kin res’ better now, but, my marster, I’m goin’! I want yu to pray fur me.”

So papa knelt by the bed and offered a fervent prayer that Pompey, who had been faithful in all his earthly tasks, should receive the great reward, and that he might be spared great suffering and distress in his going. Then he rose and pressed the hand which was held out to him, and went out followed by my mother. As they drove home she was filled with penitence and love. She wanted to express both, but as she glanced at my father she saw that his mind was far away and she could not. He was, in mind, with the dying man; he was full of self-questioning and solemn thought: “Had he been as faithful to every duty through life as Pompey in his humbler sphere had been?” No thought of his bride came to him.

At last she spoke and said: “I thank you for having made me come with you, and I beg you to forgive my petulance about coming. I did not understand.” He pressed her hand and kissed her but spoke no word, and they returned to the house in silence.

My heart has always been filled with sympathy for my mother when she told me these things of her early life, for I was very like her, and I do not know how she stood that stern silence which came over papa when he was moved. And yet I adored him and I think she did, but all the same it must have been hard.

She found the life on the plantation a very full one and intensely interesting, but not at all the kind of life she had ever dreamed of or expected, a life full of service and responsibility. But where was the reading and study and self-improvement which she had planned? Something unexpected was always turning up to interrupt the programme laid out by her; little did she suspect that her mind and soul were growing apace in this apparently inferior life, as they could never have grown if her plans of self-improvement and study had been carried out.

CHAPTER VII
MOVE TO CANAAN—AUNT BLYTHE

THE cultivation of rice necessitated keeping the fields flooded with river water until it became stagnant, and the whole atmosphere was polluted by the dreadful smell. No white person could remain on the plantation without danger of the most virulent fever, always spoken of as “country fever.” So the planters removed their families from their beautiful homes the last week in May, and they never returned until the first week in November, by which time cold weather had come and the danger of malarial fever gone. The formula was to wait for a black frost before moving; I believe that is purely a local expression; three white frosts make a black frost; that means that all the potato vines and all the other delicate plants had been killed so completely that the leaves were black.

At the end of May my father’s entire household migrated to the sea, which was only four miles to the east of Chicora as the crow flies, but was only to be reached by going seven miles in a rowboat and four miles by land. The vehicles, horses, cows, furniture, bedding, trunks, provisions were all put into great flats, some sixty by twenty feet, others even larger, at first dawn, and sent ahead. Then the family got into the rowboat and were rowed down the Pee Dee, then through Squirrel Creek, with vines tangled above them and water-lilies and flags and wild roses and scarlet lobelia all along the banks, and every now and then the hands would stop their song a moment to call out: “Missy, a alligator!” And there on the reeds and marsh in some sunny cove lay a great alligator basking in the sun, fast asleep. As soon as the sound of the oars reached him, he would plunge into the water, making great waves on which the boat rose and fell in a way suggestive of the ocean itself. The way was teeming with life; birds of every hue and note flew from tree to tree on the banks; here and there on top of a tall cypress a mother hawk could be seen sitting on her nest, looking down with anxious eye, while around, in ever-narrowing circles, flew her fierce mate, with shrill cries, threatening death to the intruder. No one who has not rowed through these creeks in the late spring or early summer can imagine the abundance and variety of life everywhere. On every log floating down the stream or lodged along the shore, on such a summer day rows of little turtles can be seen fast asleep, just as many as the log will hold, ranging from the size of a dinner-plate to a dessert-plate, only longer than they are broad—the darkies call them “cooters” (they make a most delicious soup or stew)—so many it is hard to count the number one sees in one trip. Besides all this, there is the less-pleasing sight of snakes on the banks and sometimes on the tree overhanging the water, also basking in the sun so trying to human beings at midday. But my mother was enchanted with this row, so perfectly new to her, and the negro boat-songs also delighted her. There were six splendid oarsmen, who sang from the moment the boat got well under way. Oh, there is nothing like the rhythm and swing of those boat-songs. “In case if I neber see you any mo’, I’m hopes to meet yu on Canaan’s happy sho’,” and “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” and “Run, Mary, Run,” “Drinkin’ Wine, Drinkin’ Wine,” “Oh, Zion!” I am filled with longing when I think of them. I was born at the seaside, and from that time until I was eighteen, the move from the plantation to the sea beach at the end of May, and the return home to the plantation the first week in November were great events and a perfect joy.

Of course, it was different for my mother, for the tearing up of stakes just as she had got accustomed to her new home and new life, the packing up of everything necessary for comfort for every member of the household for the summer and autumn was terrific. It required so much thought, so many lists, so much actual labor. At the same time carpets, curtains, and all the winter clothing had to be aired, sunned, and put up with camphor against the moths. She was pretty well worn out and tired by this new aspect of her future life, this upheaval and earthquake to be gone through twice a year, so that when she stepped into the boat she was not her gayest self; but, when the things were all stored in, the lunch-baskets and valises and a big moss-wrapped bunch of roses, and the dogs at her feet; when papa, seated by her, took the rudder ropes, when the boat shot out into the river and the hands broke into song, preceded by each one calling aloud to the other, “Let’s go, boys, let’s go,” she told me it was the most delightful revelation and sensation of her life almost. She had never been in a rowboat before; she had never been on a river. She had grown up in the interior, far in the hill country near the upper waters of the Savannah River, a rocky stream, where no woman ever thought of going in a boat. This swift, delightful movement, with the glorious sunshine and fresh morning breeze—for they always made an early start, there being so much to be done at the other end—made the row only too short.

But new pleasures awaited her, for the flat with the horses had gone ahead of them, starting with the ebb tide, at four in the morning; and, when they landed at the wharf at Waverly on the Waccamaw (which belonged to my father’s elder brother, General Joseph Allston, who died leaving his two sons, Joseph Blythe and William Allan, to papa’s care and guardianship), they found the horses all ready saddled, and they mounted and rode the four miles to “Canaan,” where they were to spend the summer. It was on the seashore, just at an inlet where the ocean view was; and, as mamma saw the great waves come rolling in, she was filled with joy anew. To me it has always been intoxicating, that first view each year of the waves rolling, rolling; and the smell of the sea, and the brilliant blue expanse; but then I was born there and it is like a renewal of birth.

My mother enjoyed her life here. It was much simpler than that at the plantation, with fewer servants, and that she much enjoyed. They had breakfast at six o’clock every morning, and as soon as breakfast was over, papa mounted his horse and rode to Waverly, where the boat met him. His horse was put in the stable and he rowed to Chicora, went over all the crop, the rice-fields first, landing on the bank opposite the house and walking round all the planted fields, seeing that the water was kept on the rice just at the right depth, that the fields which had been dried for hoeing were dry enough to begin on them with the hoe. There is a real science in rice-planting, and my father was thoroughly versed in it and most diligent in seeing after the treatment of each field. He was always followed by the trunk minder, Jacob, and in every field Jacob went down the bank to the water edge and drew out a stalk or two of rice for papa to examine the root growth, by which the water is managed. This accomplished, papa crossed to the house, where a horse was ready saddled. He mounted and rode all over the upland crop, corn, potatoes, oats, peas; went into the house, which Maum Mary kept fresh and clean, wrote a few letters, drank a glass of buttermilk and ate some fruit, got into his boat again, and returned to the seashore for a three-o’clock dinner, having done a tremendous day’s work; and he never failed, with all his work, to go into the garden and gather a bunch of roses and pink oleander to bring to mamma. Of course, his homecoming was the event of the day to my mother.

Soon papa’s aunt, Mrs. Blythe, came to be with them for the summer, which was a great pleasure to mamma. She was a woman of noble character and ample means, who was specially devoted to my father, having no children of her own, and recognizing in him a kindred nature. Aunt Blythe was a true specimen of the “grande dame” of the old South. She had been brought up to responsibility, to command herself and others; she was an old lady when mamma first knew her, but tall and stately in figure and beautiful in face. She brought her own barouche, horses, and coachman and footman, and her own maid and laundress—in short, a retinue. I never saw Aunt Blythe, as she died before I was born, but the tales of her generosity and her grandeur which were told by white and black placed her in the category of fairies and other benign spirits. I was named after Aunt Blythe, a rare instance of posthumous gratitude, I think; and my mother, in the way she did it, showed a sympathetic, romantic understanding of Aunt Blythe’s nature. She had been sought in marriage in her early youth by her first cousin, John Waties; but, when he approached her father and asked for his consent, he refused absolutely, as he disapproved of the marriage of cousins. So Aunt Blythe and her lover agreed not to be married during the father’s lifetime. Alas, alas! John Waties died very soon! He left all his property to his fiancée, which made her the rich woman of the family. This property included a large and valuable rice-plantation, with a large number of negroes. Aunt Blythe felt this a great trust and responsibility and most difficult to manage, for it was almost impossible to get an overseer who would treat the negroes with gentleness and justice. The men who sought the place of overseer in those days were invariably from the North, their one idea being to get as much work from the hands as possible, and, consequently, make as much money. Aunt Blythe could not live alone in this isolated spot, the barony of Friendfield (it is the plantation now owned by Doctor Baruch and kept by him as a game-preserve), and, after trying one overseer after another, and finding them cruel and regardless in their treatment of her people, she accepted one of her many suitors, Doctor Blythe, who had been a surgeon in the Revolutionary War. She was then able to live on her plantation and to see that her negroes were kindly and properly managed and looked after. Mamma became devoted to Aunt Blythe and wanted to name her second daughter after her, but my father wanted her named after his mother, who had died a few years before his marriage, so he named her Charlotte; but mamma wanted Aunt Blythe’s name in, so she asked to have the name Charlotte Frances—Aunt Blythe’s name was Elizabeth Frances—and papa consented, but he always called the beautiful little girl Charlotte, while mamma called her Frances. She died when she was about four, a grief my mother felt to the very end, with strange poignancy. When, some years after Aunt Blythe’s death, I made my appearance on the scene, mamma named me for her; but, instead of giving me the very pretty name of her excellent husband, she gave me the name of the man she loved, John Waties. So, instead of being Elizabeth Blythe Allston, I was named Elizabeth Waties Allston; not nearly so pretty a name, but it really made me the child of romance, I think. It was a beautiful thought and would have greatly pleased Aunt Blythe if she had known.

All of this has taken me from that first summer of my mother’s married life on the seashore. It was a very happy one, the long mornings spent in sewing and talking with one who knew people and life, which my mother did not at all; and, above all, who knew this very peculiar life, surrounded by hundreds of a different race, with absolutely different characteristics and ideas. Mamma told me that once she had said in a despairing voice to her:

“But, auntie, are there no honest negroes? In your experience, have you found none honest?”

“My dear, I have found none honest, but I have found many, many trustworthy; and, Adèle, when you think of it, that really is a higher quality. It is like bravery and courage; bravery is the natural, physical almost, absence of fear; courage is the spiritual quality which makes a man encounter danger confidently in spite of inward fear. And so honesty is a natural endowment, but trustworthiness is the quality of loyalty, of fidelity which will make a man die rather than betray a trust; and that beautiful quality I have often found. When found, you must give it full recognition and seem to trust absolutely; one trace of suspicion will kill it; but one may make a mistake, and it is well, with every appearance of complete trust, to keep your mind alert and on the subject.”

My mother exclaimed: “Oh, my dear auntie, I do not see how I can live my whole life amid these people! I don’t see how you have done it and kept your beautiful poise and serenity! To be always among people whom I do not understand and whom I must guide and teach and lead on like children! It frightens me!”

Aunt Blythe laid her hand on my mother’s hand and said: “Adèle, it is a life of self-repression and effort, but it is far from being a degrading life, as you have once said to me. It is a very noble life, if a woman does her full duty in it. It is the life of a missionary, really; one must teach, train, uplift, encourage—always encourage, even in reproof. I grant you it is a life of effort; but, my child, it is our life: the life of those who have the great responsibility of owning human beings. We are responsible before our Maker for not only their bodies, but their souls; and never must we for one moment forget that. To be the wife of a rice-planter is no place for a pleasure-loving, indolent woman, but for an earnest, true-hearted woman it is a great opportunity, a great education. To train others one must first train oneself; it requires method, power of organization, grasp of detail, perception of character, power of speech; above all, endless self-control. That is why I pleaded with my dear sister until she consented to send Robert to West Point instead of to college. Robert was to be a manager and owner of large estates and many negroes. He was a high-spirited, high-tempered boy, brought up principally by women. The discipline of four years at West Point would teach him first of all to obey, to yield promptly to authority; and no one can command unless he has first learned to obey. It rejoices my heart to see Robert the strong, absolutely self-controlled, self-contained man he now is; for I mean to leave him my property and my negroes, to whom I have devoted much care, and who are now far above the average in every way, and I know he will continue my work; and, from what I see of you, my child, I believe you will help him.”

My mother told me that this talk with Aunt Blythe influenced her whole life. It altered completely her point of view. It enabled her to see a light on the path ahead of her, where all had been dark and stormy before; the life which had looked to her unbearable, and to her mind almost degrading. Aunt Blythe urged her daily to organize her household so that she would have less physical work herself, and that part should be delegated to the servants, who might not at first do it well, but who could be taught and trained to do it regularly and in the end well. With Aunt Blythe’s help she arranged a programme of duties for each servant, and Aunt Blythe’s trained and very superior maid was able to assist greatly in the training of mamma’s willing but raw servants.

The old lady was most regular in taking her daily drives and always insisted on my mother’s going with her. It was a great amusement to her to see the preparations made. Aunt Blythe was big and heavy and always wore black satin slippers without heels. Mamma said she had never seen her take a step on mother earth except to and from the carriage, when she was always assisted. She wore an ample, plainly gathered black silk gown, with waist attached to skirt, cut rather low in the neck, and a white kerchief of fine white net for morning, and lace for dress, crossed in front, and a white cap. We have her portrait by Sully in that dress. She always carried a large silk bag filled with useful things, and as they met darkies on the way, Aunt Blythe would throw out to each one, without stopping the carriage, a handkerchief or apron, a paper of needles, or a paper of pins, or a spool of thread, or a card of buttons or hooks and eyes, or a spoon or fork—all things greatly prized, for in those days all these things were much scarcer than they are to-day, and there were no country shops as there are now, and, consequently, such small things were worth ten times as much as now to people, though they might not really cost as much as they now do. Sometimes it was a little package of tea or coffee or sugar which she had Minda, her maid, prepare and tie up securely for the purpose. Naturally, “Miss Betsey Bly” was looked upon as a great personage, and her path in her daily drives was apt to be crossed by many foot-passengers, who greeted her with profound courtesies, and apron skilfully tucked over the arm, so that it could be extended in time to receive anything.

CHAPTER VIII
FIRST CHILD—PLANTATION LIFE

THE next winter, in February, mamma’s first child, a son, named Benjamin, after papa’s father, was born. She was desperately ill, and her beautiful hair was cut as short as possible. Papa had thought it wisest for her to accede to her brother and his wife’s urgent request that she should go to them in Charleston for the event; and it was most fortunate, for had she been taken ill at home, with a doctor far away, she probably would not have lived. As it was, her recovery was slow, and it was some time before she could resume her normal life at home. Aunt May, her unmarried sister, went home with her when she returned, and stayed until she regained her usual health. Aunt May was the only plain sister, for although she had beautiful complexion, brown hair, and fine figure, her face was not pretty,—but she made up in wit what she lacked in beauty. She was the wittiest, most amusing companion, and had great domestic gifts as housekeeper. Aunt May’s coffee, Aunt May’s rolls and bread, in short, every article on her table was superior, and, of course, this was a great comfort to mamma. There was only one drawback. Aunt May had no patience with incompetence, and the servants were a terrible trial to her, and mamma had to hear hourly of their shortcomings, which she knew only too well already, and to sympathize with Aunt May over them.

My mother spent a very anxious time in the first year of her eldest child’s life. He was very delicate, and mamma knew nothing about babies. The plantation nurses seemed to her very ignorant, and she was afraid to trust the baby to them. However, any one who has read Doctor Sims’s very interesting account of his early practice, especially among babies, well knows that these nurses, many of them, had learned through the constant care of babies how to manage them in a way surprising to one whose knowledge is altogether theoretic and scientific. Anyway, my brother grew and strengthened before the next baby came two years afterward. Robert was a very beautiful, strong child, and from the first gave no anxiety or trouble, only delight to mamma; and the little boys were always taken for twins, the elder being small for his age and the younger large.

Two years passed, and another baby came. This was the first little girl, and papa wished to name her for his mother, Charlotte Ann, and mamma asked that part of Aunt Blythe’s name be added—her name was Elizabeth Frances. She had died the winter before, and mamma missed her dreadfully. So the little girl was called Charlotte Frances; and, in the household with its number of servants, you could always distinguish those devoted to my mother, who always spoke of “Miss Fanny,” and those devoted to my father, who spoke of “Miss Cha’lot.” But I never knew this from mamma, and do not know if it were so. Hearing of her only from mamma, I only knew of her as Fanny, my perfectly beautiful little sister.

Of these years I know very little, nothing, indeed, except that my parents went the summer following to Newport and New York, and visited papa’s uncle, the great painter, Washington Allston, in Boston. When Mr. Flagg was looking over the great man’s letters preparatory to publishing his life and letters, he found one from Washington Allston to his mother, speaking of this visit and of my mother’s beauty and charm; and Mr. Flagg very kindly sent this letter to my mother, who gave it to me, and there is quite a contest among my nieces and nephews as to who will be the lucky one to whom I leave it. Mamma was greatly impressed by the ethereal beauty of the artist. She had at this time as nurse for the baby a woman from the State of New York, who took the little one in to see and be seen by her great-uncle. When she came out of the studio she said to mamma: “Surely, your uncle has the face of an angel, ma’am.”

Three years passed, mamma very happy with her little family of interesting children, two of them so beautiful that wherever they went the nurse was stopped on the street by those who remarked on the wonderful beauty of Robert and Fanny. Poor, dear little Ben was neither beautiful nor strong, but he had a good mind and powerful will. Mamma often went to Charleston to visit her brother and sisters there, for by this time the youngest sister, Harriet, was also married to a young and very clever lawyer, Henry Deas Lesesne, who was in the law office of James L. Petigru, and she had her charming home in Charleston; so there were three homes to be visited there. Aunt Louise had relented in her attitude to my father and was always hospitably anxious to entertain the little family. Aunt Blythe had left her fortune to my father and the two boys, still babies though they were, to the surprise and indignation of many. So these were happy prosperous years.

Papa found the house at Chicora too small for the growing family, and began the planning of a new one, to which the two very large down-stairs rooms of the old one should be attached as an L. As the spring came on, a new baby was expected, and mamma hoped it would be a little girl, to name after her mother. As my mother dreaded the move to the sea, which involved so much troublesome packing, my father built a summer house, what would now be called a bungalow, for it had large, airy rooms, but all on one floor, at a pineland about eight miles north of the plantation on the same side of the Pedee, where he had a large tract of land, and where the cattle went always in summer. It was called “The Meadows.” Mamma was very pleased to be so near the plantation, for she could drive down in the afternoons and see after her flower-garden, which was beautiful and her delight. She gathered great baskets of roses and brought them back. The Meadows was very prettily situated in a savannah, which was a natural garden of wild flowers—great, brilliant tiger-lilies, white and yellow orchis, the pink deer-grass, with its sweet leaf, pink saltatia, as well as white, and ferns everywhere.

Here, in this isolated new summer home, miles away from any neighbor, mamma was taken ill about two months before the time set for the baby’s coming. Hastily the doctor was summoned, a very young man, still unmarried, but one who showed early his skill and proficiency as a family doctor; then the monthly nurse, as it was then called, Mary Holland, was found and brought. Fortunately, she had been employed in Georgetown and had not yet returned to Charleston, where she lived, and was in great demand by the doctors of best standing. I remember her as an old woman, but still tall and stately in figure, and with great dignity and poise. She was about the color of an Indian. It was a mercy she could be got, for my mother was desperately ill; but the little girl so hoped for was born, and my mother did not die. When she became strong enough to speak, and my father was with her, she said: “I want to see little Louise.”

My father answered: “I will bring little Adèle to you myself.”

She exclaimed: “Oh, Mr. Allston, I do not want the baby named after me! I must name her for my dear mother.”

But he answered: “I wish her to bear the name of my beloved wife.”

She said nothing, but the tears which all of her suffering had not brought, now rolled down her cheeks. In a little while papa returned with the small bundle of flannel wrappings and most skilfully and tenderly unfolded them until the baby was visible.

Mamma looked at her, and then with something of her wonted spirit said: “You may call her Adèle if you like! Poor little soul, she cannot live! Take her away!”

I must think that this exhibition of almost cruel obstinacy on my father’s part was due to the fact that the doctor had told him mamma could not possibly recover, and he thought it the only chance to have a little girl to name after her.

Wonderful tales were told of the smallness of the little Adèle. “She was put into a quart cup with ease and comfort to her.” After mamma was well enough to hold her and play with her, she passed her wedding-ring over her hand and on her arm as a bracelet! But the little Adèle had a grit and grip on life which astounded every one, and she grew to womanhood, a beautiful creature in face, form, and spirit. She married and had seven children, and never lost one from illness. They grew up healthy and strong. The tiny Adèle was born August 16, 1840, in the very middle of a very hot summer. Of course, my mother’s return to health was slow and tedious.

One can cast one’s mind back to that date, when ice was so great a luxury that it was only to be had in the North, where it was cut and put up in the winter. The Meadows was twenty miles from the nearest town and post-office, Georgetown, and everything had to be brought up by the plantation wagons and team. But milk and butter and cream were abundant, also poultry and eggs; and the Pedee furnished most delicious fish—bream and Virginia perch and trout. There were figs in abundance and also peaches, but the latter were small and a good deal troubled with cuculio. They were, however, very good stewed, and my mother made quantities of delicious preserves from them.

Around the house at Chicora grew luxuriant orangetrees, only the bitter-sweet; but these oranges make the nicest marmalade, so mamma put up quantities of that for winter use. Her vegetable-garden was always full of delicious things—cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and okra; and, as my father killed beef and mutton every week for use on the plantation, she had the very best soups and steaks; and there were always wild ducks to be had. Also, after August 1, there was venison in the house, for my father was devoted to deer-hunting. At the time the negroes understood preserving the venison in the hottest weather by exposing it to the broiling sun. I do not know what else they did, for it is now a lost art; but it was called “jerked venison” and was a delicious breakfast dish, when shaved very thin and broiled. They also preserved fish in the same way—called “corned fish”—it was a great breakfast dish broiled. Besides all this, about the end of August the rice-birds began to swarm over the rice, sucking out all the grain when in the milk stage. This necessitated the putting out of bird-minders in great numbers, who shot the little birds as they rose in clouds from the rice at the least noise. These rice-birds are the most delicious morsels; smaller than any other bird that is used for food, I think, so that a man with a good appetite can eat a dozen, and I, myself, have eaten six. When they go out at the end of harvest, another delicious little bird comes in, called locally a coot, but really the rail or soarer of Maryland. All these things made living easy and abundant, for they came in great quantities.

Mamma spoke with great pleasure of this part of her life when she could thoroughly enjoy her little family, sorrow not yet having clouded her horizon. When the little Adèle was two years old came a little sister, strong, healthy, and beautiful, to bear the name of the beloved little French mother, Louise Gibert—then her cup of happiness was full. She had come to love the plantation life, with its duties and its power to help the sick, to have the girls taught to sew and cut out simple garments, to supply proper and plentiful nourishment for the hospital—all this came to be a joy to her. There was on the plantation, besides the hospital or “sick-house,” a “children’s house,” where all the mothers who were going out to work brought their children to be cared for during the day. The nursing babies, who were always taken care of by a child of ten or eleven, were carried to the mothers at regular intervals to be nursed. The head nurse, old Maum Phibby (Phœbe), was a great personage, and an administrator, having two under her, a nurse and a cook. Maum Phibby trained the children big

MRS. BENJAMIN ALLSTON (NÉE CHARLOTTE ANNE ALLSTON), MOTHER OF R. F. W. ALLSTON.

Miniature by Fraser.

enough to learn, teaching them to run up a seam and hem, in the way of sewing, and to knit first squares for wash-cloths, and then stockings, and then to spin. When the war came there was not a grown woman on the plantation who could not knit stockings or spin yarn. Weaving was only taught to certain young women who showed ability and some mechanical skill.

Mamma walked out often to the sick-house to see the patients and taste the soup and other nourishment, and then on to the “chillun’s house” to see how their food was prepared, and whether they were all kept clean and healthy. This she did all her life, and I remember the joy of being allowed to go with her and of seeing the children all lined up in rows, their black skins shining, as clean black skins do, in a delightful way, their white teeth gleaming as they dropped their courtesies as mamma passed, each one holding in her hand some piece of work to exhibit. They were a healthy, happy lot and very clean, as it was an important part of Maum Phibby’s duties to report the mothers who were negligent of “clean linen.”[3] There was in the children’s house, as well as the sick-house, a tin tub, that in the hospital big enough for the tallest man to lie straight in, and that at the children’s house smaller; and any number of huge black kettles, so that hot water in great quantities could be got very quickly on the open fires. The children were bathed and scrubbed once a week by Maum Phibby, and woe to the mother whose child was not found to have been kept clean in the meantime. I have two of those immense coffin-shaped tubs now, perfectly good and strong, and I had one freshly painted and used it until two years ago, when I was able to put in a modern bathtub. At the end of the war, when furniture and every portable thing was carried off by the darkies, the bathtubs from the sick-house were the one thing not taken. They were conspicuously in poor repute, one thing that nobody wanted! The coffin-shaped tub has a great recommendation, as taking less than half the water to cover a person entirely than the modern tub, and a very hot bath could be quickly given.

Mamma every Sunday afternoon had all the children big enough to come assembled in the little church in the avenue, and taught them what she could of the great mercy of God and what he expected of his children. It was always spoken of as “katekism,” and was the event of the week to the children—their best clothes, their cleanest faces, and oh, such smiling faces greeted mamma when she arrived at the church! After the lesson a big cake was brought in a wheelbarrow by one of the house-boys, convoyed by Maum Mary, who cut it with much ceremony, and each child went up to the barrow, dropped a courtesy and received a slice, then passed to my mother with another courtesy, filed out and scampered happily home as soon as safe from Maum Mary’s paralyzing eye.

All her life mamma kept this up, and in later years we children were allowed to go on condition that we should sit still and listen to the catechism, and ask for no cake until every child had had his share. Then we were allowed a few scraps, which tasted nicer than any other cake.

CHAPTER IX
FIRST GRIEVING

ONE spring, when the little Louise was about three, I think, Adèle five, Fanny seven, Robert nine, Ben eleven, a neighbor wrote from Charleston to mamma, asking if she would receive her and her two children for a night. The children had been ill with scarlet fever, but were well again, and pronounced by the doctor fit to travel; but, in order to reach their home on Sandy Island in one day they would have to be out late in the evening; and she feared the night air, so took the liberty of begging mamma to receive them for the night. My mother wrote she would be happy to do so, and they came, spent the night, went on their way the next day. My mother had had no fear and the children played together. She felt as the doctor had pronounced them fit to travel it was perfectly safe. A few days after the visit Robert was playing, when he suddenly dropped his playthings and put his head in mamma’s lap, saying he felt sick. It was the dread disease. His illness was terrible from the first, but very short. He died. Then Fanny took it and followed rapidly, though Robert had been isolated from the moment he was taken. My poor mother was prostrated with her passionate grief. Every precaution then known was taken in the way of fumigation and burning up bedding and clothing, and the plague was stayed.

A great longing to visit the home of her childhood seized my mother, and my father felt it was a great thing that she should have the desire to go, as he really feared for her mind and health. So when all possible danger of contagion was considered over, he took her and the three children who were left up to Abbeville to the farm called Badwell, where she was born, and where her beloved mother lay in the family burying-ground with the pasteur of the desert, Jean Louis Gibert, her father. My father left them there and returned to his work. In a few days the beautiful little Louise was taken ill and died, and was laid by her grandmother in the God’s acre! I cannot bear to think of my mother’s suffering at this time. The tragedy of it! The child named at last for her mother, on this much-longed-for visit to her mother’s home. Now her three beautiful, strong children were gone, leaving only the delicate Ben and the delicate and tiny seven-months’ child, Adèle. It seems like the crushing out of some dainty, happy creature, a beautiful, full, happy life drained of its joy, leaving only stern, exacting duty!

I know my dear father suffered terribly at this time, too, but he never spoke to me of it. He never found it possible to put his deeper feelings into words. I think he and my mother were a great comfort to each other in their grief, and I think it was this summer that my father had the desperate illness of which my mother has told me, and I believe it was his return from the jaws of death which made her first feel life held a future for her.

They were in the same isolated, remote summer house, The Meadows. Papa came home from his harvest work on the plantation much exhausted, went at once to bed, and when mamma followed him at midnight she knew he was desperately ill—a burning, consuming fever, and his rapid whispered speech showed him delirious. She called the servants, wrote a note to Doctor Sparkman, asking him to come at once, telling him how suddenly papa had been taken, put a man on horseback and sent him off in the night, telling him to go from place to place until he found the doctor. Then she proceeded to do what she could for the patient to reduce the awful fever. Cloths wrung out in water fresh from the spring on head and face and hands was all she could do to cool it, as there was no ice. Then she had a tub of hot water brought and with the help of Hynes, the house-servant, put his feet to the knees in that, covering him with blankets to produce steam. Mercifully this quieted him and the jabbering ceased and he slept. Daylight came, no doctor, no sound came to her listening ear of horse-hoofs. The heavy sleep as of one drugged lasted until she was frightened, but she feared to wake him. She looked after the children, having Hynes, who was very faithful and intelligent, to sit by papa and fan him. She gave the children their breakfast and tried to eat, herself, for she knew she would need all her strength. Dinner-time came, evening, night. Oh, the long hours, how they dragged! She thought of her desperate, passionate grief for her children, feeling she could not bear it. Had God heard her rebellious murmurings, and was he going to show her now how blessed she had then been, having her husband left to her! How unutterably worse this grief would be! How hopeless, indeed, would life be without him!

And so the hours wore on, but she was not idle; she thought of everybody and did everything for the comfort of the house. Just at midnight the dogs began to bark. She went on the piazza and heard wheels approaching. She had kept the dinner-table laid with flowers and silver and candles, all bright and cheery. As soon as she heard wheels she ordered the servants to bring in dinner, and when the doctor entered and said, “How is Colonel Allston?” she said, “Doctor, sit down and dine first, and then I will take you in to see him.” He sat down, and she went to the sick-room, where things were unchanged, the same drugged sleep and heavy breathing. As soon as the doctor had finished, he came and listened to her accurate account of all the symptoms. Then the fight began. I do not know what he gave or what he did, but he remained doing all that his skill and science suggested, for thirty-six hours, and then he felt for the first time that there was hope, and left to see after his other patients. He told my mother that he had been with a desperately ill patient on Santee, thirty miles south of his home, for twenty-four hours; when he returned to his home he found mamma’s note and the servant, and without going into the house, though he was famished for food after a thirty-mile drive, he had had a fresh horse put in and came right on. Then he said: “Oh, Mrs. Allston, if every one thought of the doctor as you do, the life of a country doctor would be a different thing, and fewer of them would become dependent on stimulants. I was exhausted, but expected to see and prescribe for the patient before having food. When I saw that delicious dinner of roast duck and vegetables I was completely surprised, but I blessed you and felt how much clearer my brain, how much better my condition to prescribe for the patient, and how much better chance it gave him for life, though, I confess, when I first saw Colonel Allston I did not feel there was any chance of saving him.” I tell all this just as my mother told it to me. It shows what a woman she was. My father recovered slowly, and it was the last summer they spent at The Meadows, the distance from all help in illness being too great.

The next May, 1845, they again moved to Canaan Seashore, where my mother had spent her first summer of married life. They went early in May and I was born on the 29th of that month. Naturally, I suppose, after all the sorrow and anxiety mamma had had, I was a miserably delicate, nervous baby, and I have heard mamma say that for months they were afraid to take me out of the house at all. At the end of that time the house which papa was building on Pawley’s Island, just across the marsh and creek from Canaan, was finished, and they determined to move the household over to the island for the rest of the summer. That was my first outing, and the times I was taken out of the room afterward were few and far between, for it seems after going out I never closed my eyes at all that night. I was a poor sleeper at any time, but after going out I was no sleeper at all. The floor of my dear mother’s room on the beach is seamed all over by the marks of the rocking-chair in which I was eternally rocked! They had a hard struggle to keep me alive. Both mamma and papa wanted me named for the dear old aunt who had been such a blessing to everybody, so I was named Elizabeth Waties, mamma with tender sympathy giving me the name she would have borne had her dream of love materialized. I seemed to be marked for sadness, with deep lines under my eyes, as though I had already wept much, which I certainly had, only with a baby it is not weeping, but crying, with the accompaniment of much noise.

The winter I was two years old, one Sunday mamma had gone with papa in a boat to All Saints’ Church, seven miles away on the Waccamaw. She looked out of the window as she listened to dear, saintly Mr. Glennie’s sermon, and across her vision passed a young man walking in the churchyard, holding by the hand little Ben, who had been allowed to go out when the sermon began. She was much excited, because she could not imagine what stranger could possibly be there. As he passed a second time she recognized her beloved brother Charles, whom she had not seen for several years. One can understand that the rest of Mr. Glennie’s excellent discourse was lost to her, and she could scarcely wait for the blessing, to rush out and meet the stranger.

He was in the army, having graduated from West Point in 1829. He told her he was on his way to Florida, and had managed to arrange to spend one day with her, but it could only be one. So when he reached the plantation and found she had gone by water to church so far away, he ordered a boat, and followed her, so as to lose nothing of his time with her. This visit was the greatest joy to my mother. He was her youngest brother and her special favorite. She was distressed when he told her where he was going and why. The U. S. post at Tampa, Florida, had proved a very deadly one. One officer after another who had been sent there in command had contracted the terrible malarial fever of the country and died soon after getting there. His friend Ramsay had been ordered there, and he found him in despair one day, having just received his orders. He said he had a wife and a mother, both dependent on him, and it was awful to him to be going to certain death when he thought of them and what would become of them. Uncle Charles said at once: “Ramsay, I will take your place; if I apply for the exchange, I can get it, and I have no one dependent upon me, so I have the right to do it.” The exchange had been effected and Uncle Charles was on his way to take the place which West Point for years sang of in their class song, “Benny Havens, Oh!” as “Tampa’s deadly shore.” Uncle Charles left early the next morning. By the time my next little brother came, a boy born the 31st of the next July, Uncle Charles had accomplished his sacrifice and fallen a victim to the fever, so the baby was named Charles Petigru; and everybody always loved him more than any of the other children. He was so beautiful and so sweet and good that we all expected him to die, but he didn’t, but grew up to be a man and always a blessing to all around him.

Mamma’s grief at her brother’s death was great, but she had learned to suffer without rebellion, and as some wise one has written, “there is great peace and strength in an accepted sorrow.” She always felt very proud of the heroism and self-sacrifice of Uncle Charles’s death. “No greater love is there than that a man give his life for his friend”; that is not quoted exactly, but it sets a man very high. Now we are living in such a heroic time, with men giving their lives on the battle-field to save one another, every hour, that perhaps it does not seem as grand a thing. But when one thinks of a very young, handsome, popular man deliberately giving up a choice army post to take one which meant certain, unheroic, painful, and obscure death, it seems to me very, very heroic and beautiful. After Uncle Charles’s death—I think he was the seventh commanding officer of the Tampa post who died in quick succession—the post was given up. Wonderful to say, now since the science of stamping out disease has reached such a height, Tampa is a health resort! and one wonders what was the cause of that death-dealing miasma which made the place so fatal. On our way to the Chicago Exposition, having to be some hours in Atlanta, we visited the military station there, and I met a Captain Ramsay, who told me he was the son of the officer whose life had been saved by my Uncle Charles Petigru’s generous heroism, and seemed quite excited to meet two nieces and three great-nieces of the heroic young lieutenant to whom his family owed so much.

PART III
MYSELF

CHAPTER X
BABY WOES

HAVING brought things up to this point by telling what I heard from my dear mother, who had a wonderful memory, as well as a most dramatic power of speech, I must try now to put down what I remember myself. Here and there a scene stands out, just a medallion, as it were, a bas-relief from the far past, with everything as distinct and clear-cut as possible.

The very first is a very mortifying one to recount; but, if I am to put down all I remember, as I have been urged to do, I must be frank and truthful, or it will have no value. This is the old story of our first Mother Eve in that beautiful garden of Eden, temptation, fall, punishment. My mother was ill on Pawley’s Island, the beach. I must have been about three. The wife of the family doctor (who was, when we were on the beach, Doctor Hasel) had sent a plate of very beautiful peaches to my mother, and they had been put on the Sheraton sideboard in the dining-room. They were so big that one could rest on a tumbler without going in, quite different from the ordinary peaches we had; indeed, I had never seen such peaches, as big as an orange they were and with bright-red cheeks. I gazed and gazed, walking through the room several times slowly. My father was sitting in the corner of the room at his desk, writing, with his back turned, and finally Satan prevailed and I tipped in softly with my little bare feet, and tried to reach the peaches; failing, I got a chair and put it alongside the sideboard, climbed up, got the top peach and quickly and quietly made my way into the thick shrubbery outside, and ate my beautiful and delicious capture with great delight. I was somewhat sticky and messy, but fortune favored me and I made my way into the nursery without meeting any one, washed my hands and face to the best of my ability, and then went in the corner of the piazza where my dolls were, and felt serenely happy. When I came out with my doll for a walk I found quite an excitement. First May, the Irish nurse who was head of the nursery, met me and asked if I had taken one of the beautiful peaches. Quite calmly I answered “No.” Then every one I met told of the rape of the peach and asked if I knew anything about it. I always managed to answer in the same calm negative, though by this time I was far from feeling calm within. Finally May went to my father with many lamentations, and announced that one of the servants had taken one of the beautiful peaches from the sideboard. Papa said: “Send Miss Bessie to me.” So I came and papa repeated the terrible question, as it had now come to be, and I answered with the same “No,” but very faint was it this time, for I felt it was no use, as papa seemed to me to have all the qualities of the Deity, omniscience being one. He said with a terribly pained voice:

“My little daughter, why tell a lie? I was writing here and heard your little feet coming and going through the room, but thought of no possible harm until this outcry about the missing peach was brought to me, and then I turned and saw the chair placed by the sideboard, and knew what the little feet had been busy about, and sent for my little girl, feeling sure she would tell me what she had done. It was a shock to me to hear that ‘No,’ and a real grief. That my little daughter, named after my blessed Aunt Blythe, who was the soul of honor, should have taken one of the beautiful peaches sent to her mother who is ill, without asking for it, is bad enough; but that that same little daughter should tell a lie about it is a great distress. But most of all is the fact that she told a lie which would leave the guilt to fall upon an innocent person! That is a terrible thing to have done, and I must punish you, so that you may never fall so low again. Go into the little room and wait until I come.”

I went. The little room was a shed-room on the northeast corner of the piazza, which was kept always ready for any stray man guest who might arrive unexpectedly. The little mahogany bed was always made up with fresh sheets and white coverlet and looked very inviting. I sat in the rocking-chair and rocked, trying to make believe to myself that I did not care and was not frightened. After a while my father came and gave me a severe switching. When he had finished he kissed me, put me on the bed, and threw a light linen coverlet over me, and I went to sleep. I slept a long time, for when I woke up it was nearly dark, and I felt like an angel in heaven—so happy and peaceful and, above all, filled with a kind of adoration for my father. It is strange what a realization of right and wrong that gave me, baby though I was. I have never ceased to feel grateful to papa for the severity of that punishment. It had to be remembered, and it meant the holding aloft of honesty and truth, and the trampling in the dust of dishonesty and falsehood. No child is too young to have these basic principles taught them.

The next silhouette which stands out vividly is different. We had had the delight of a little sister added to our nursery. She was born in December, the only winter baby. All the rest of us were born in summer. I only remember the wild excitement in the nursery when May came in the early morning and announced, “You have a little sister,” and how we scrambled out of bed and into our clothes hastily, hoping to see her. Of course, we did not have that joy for some days.

Then a long blank, only two years, really. It was summer. We were on Pawley’s Island, and my father and mother had gone to New York, leaving us at home with the governess and nurse. Letters came saying that my mother was very ill, and instead of the carriage being ordered to meet her at the boat, directions came for a mattress to be placed in the wagon, and that was to meet her at Waverly. The afternoon came and we were so wild with expectation and excitement that the governess and nurse thought best to take us across the causeway into the woods, with the bait held out of meeting mamma as she came.

The walk in the woods was always a treat, so we went joyfully—Della, who was twelve, and Charley, the baby, still in her nurse’s arms most of the time, and myself. I remember principally in this walk a spider, the biggest I ever saw until I was an old woman. I was hanging on an oak limb, quite near to the ground. It was rotten, and it broke and I fell to the earth, and with me fell out of the hollow limb a spider as big as a dollar. I was terribly frightened and screamed for a long time.

Soon after I was quieted we heard the rumble of wheels, and the wagon came in sight, going very slowly. As it came nearer we rushed forward to meet it, but papa, who rode on horseback beside it, held up his finger in warning, and then placed it on his lips, so we remained quite still until the wagon, in which we could see nothing, passed. Papa stopped behind, got down from his horse and kissed us all, putting Charley upon the horse, while he walked beside. He told us that mamma was very ill, and we must be very good and make no noise, but keep the house very quiet. Della asked if we could see her and just kiss her, but he said no; we must be content to know she had got safely home, and thank God for that, but we would not be able to see her until she was better. Then he mounted and rode on and caught up with the wagon. When the little procession of disappointed children reached the house my mother had been carried into her own room and put to bed. A nurse had arrived in the buggy and took charge of her room. The governess and May were told to keep us entirely in the western part of the house, where we could not be heard unless we made some outrageous noise.

This dear old house consisted of two houses, each with two immense rooms down-stairs with very high ceilings and many windows and doors, and two rooms above equally large, but only half stories. These two houses were placed at right angles; the front one, toward the beach, ran north and south, the other, toward the marsh, ran east and west. Both had wide piazzas around them, which made a large, cool, shady hall where they came together. Our nursery was in the northeast up-stairs room in the front house, and though it was over the dining-room and not over mamma’s room, it was thought best to move us to the other side of the house entirely. So we slept in the bedroom next to the day-nursery, where we took our meals, at the extreme west of the house.

I cannot tell how long this stillness lasted, but it seems an age, as I look back. Then one day May came in and said mamma was better, and we had a new little brother, but we must still be very good and make no noise. I remember going very softly with my bare feet, holding Charley’s hand, until we got to the piazza outside of mamma’s room and waiting until we heard the baby cry. Then we knew the good news was true, and we crept back in delight to the playroom. Every day we made this trip, and for some days were rewarded by the delightful sound of the baby’s voice; and then one day, though we sat a long time, there was no sound—all was still. And that day, after dinner, papa came in and told us the little brother had left us; God had taken him back to heaven.

We went out for our afternoon walk very solemnly, and as we walked I held tightly to Hagar’s hand and said how I wished I could just once have seen my little brother. Hagar, who was a negro girl about fifteen, Maum ’Ria’s daughter, and was assistant in the nursery, and went out to walk with us, said: “If yu didn’t bin so coward, I cud ’a show yu de baby, but yuse too cry-baby en yu’ll tell en git me in trubble.” I declared I would not cry and I would not tell, if only she would let me see the little brother. Then she told me that when she began to take water up into the rooms, I must sit on the stairs and wait till she beckoned to me, and then very softly I must follow her up-stairs—all of which programme was carried out. And when we got into the room above my mother’s, she put me out of the window on to the shed, and followed herself, and we walked stealthily on the shingles, so they would not creak, across the shed of the piazza to the window of the other house, where the company room was. The venetian was closed, but Hagar put her hand between the slats and pulled the bolt and opened the shutter and put me in, following, herself, quickly. There, on the white-curtained dressing-table was a pretty white box of a strange shape to me. Hagar lifted the white muslin which covered it and held me up so that I could look in, and there was the most beautiful doll I had ever seen. I looked with delight. I can remember the little waxen face now. All would have gone well if I had not suddenly stooped and, before Hagar could stop me, kissed the lovely thing. The awful cold of death sent such a shock through me that I opened my mouth to scream, but before any sound came Hagar clapped her hand over my mouth and hissed into my ear: “Ain’t I say so! Yuse too cry-baby! I wish to de Lawd I neber bring yu! Yu’ll sho’ tell en git me in trubble!” I stifled my screams and choked back my tears, Hagar shaming me and adjuring me to silence until I was quiet enough for us to attempt the perilous return trip. That night I could not sleep. I sobbed and sobbed and tossed on my little bed; the cold of that kiss seemed to freeze me all over. May went to papa, saying she feared I was going to be ill. He came to the nursery at once, talked to me and patted me and, when I only cried the more, he took me in his arms and walked up and down the nursery, singing to me. As the sobs still continued, he asked: “What ails my little daughter; has she any pain?”

“No.”

“Has anything scared my little Bessie?”

Violently I shook my head and tried my best to stop the sobs. I must keep my promise to Hagar. But it was far into the night before my father’s sweet voice, singing hymn after hymn, soothed me and the sense of safety in his strong arms brought quiet, and I slept, and he laid me gently in my little trundle-bed.

I remember nothing after that until one afternoon—I do not know if it was that summer or the next—we were going out for our usual walk on the beach, May with the little Louise in her arms, Charley trudging behind, I bringing up the rear. As we came round the piazza and were about to go down the front steps, papa, who was at his desk writing in the dining-room, called to May: “Mary, do not take the children farther than the Opening. We are going to have a storm and it will surely break when the tide changes.” She came out and told us what papa had said.

I flung myself down on the top step and said: “If I can’t go any farther than the Opening, I won’t go at all.”

May argued, she pleaded with me, she warned: “For the Lord’s sake, child, don’t let your father hear you! Come on then”—and she took my hand.

But at this I lay flat back on the piazza and yelled and shrieked: “If I can’t go beyond the Opening, I won’t go at all.”

At last my father’s voice came, calm and serene, from the dining-room: “Never mind, Mary, leave her. Don’t let the other children lose their walk. Go on to the beach.” And she went.

I screamed louder and louder and kicked until my poor heels were all bruised, but I didn’t care. The devil of temper had me in its clutches, and I was crazed by it. Finally papa came out and took me into the little Prophet’s Chamber, and gave me a severe whipping. As before, I went to sleep on the little white bed and woke up feeling like an angel in heaven, with adoration in my heart for the God who had conquered the evil spirit which had possessed me. I always feel grateful for that first conquest of the evil spirit within me. It has, no doubt, saved me much suffering; but this poor, intense, self-willed nature has all its long life dashed itself against stone walls, crying: “All—or nothing!” And God has tried gently to win me to yield to his will, his plans, and I have rebelled. And he had to take from me all that he had given me with a free hand, as though I were his favorite child.

Never was a girl more blessed than I in her marriage, too happy to live, I often felt. Alas, my happiness so possessed me that it made me blind to the world outside. What cared I for the world, or outer world, as long as my little paradise was untouched? Alas, it had to go; and so one thing after another had to be taken before this poor piece of humanity was fit for the Master’s use, able to yield and to help others to yield. And now I thank the great Father for all that crushing and sorrow, as I used as a little child to thank and adore my father for his punishments. There were only these two that I have told of. Never afterward did my father have to give me even a stern look. It was my joy and pride to win his approval, generally only a smile, but it meant more to me than the most lavish praise from any one else.

My father thought riding a most healthful exercise. My sister was a fearless horsewoman, and during the summers which we passed on this beautiful island, which had a splendid hard, broad beach three miles long, she spent all her afternoons on horseback. When she came home and dismounted, my father always put me on for a little ride. I was terribly afraid and it was a fearful joy to me. I nearly always cried when I was put on the horse, whose name was Typee; I would say: “Papa, I could canter all day, but it is the stopping I mind.” I still remember with terror the high, hard trot which Typee found necessary in stopping; he could not go from his easy canter to his nice, easy walk without introducing this tremendous hard trot between, and when I was thrown up into the air I never knew whether I would drop back in the saddle or down on the sand. My brother Charley, two years younger, was a good and fearless rider; his horse Lady was swift and spirited, had a very easy gait and was not at all vicious, but nothing would induce me to mount her.

One day, when my father returned from a visit to the upper part of the State, he called me and said: “My little Bessie, I have brought a pony to be all your own; his name is Rabbit and he is very gentle, so that now you need not be afraid to ride, and you can go with Adèle instead of waiting until she comes home, for your ride.”

Of course I appeared overjoyed and thanked him with enthusiasm, but in my heart I was terribly dismayed; go to ride with Della, who went fast all the time! No, indeed, I could not do that, but after Rabbit arrived, a little, dark-brown horse with kind eyes and slow ways, I was put on his back, weeping, every afternoon, and started off with Della; but Typee went so fast that I begged her to go on and leave Rabbit and me to our own devices, which she always did, so we ambled along comfortably, he having a very nice pace which suited me better than a canter or a gallop. Della took her long, rapid ride and, returning, picked me up, so we came home demurely together. It was supposed that I was becoming a great horsewoman, and I really was getting over my fear and ceased to weep as I was mounted. Those quiet rambles along the beautiful, smooth beach, where nothing could hurt you,—with the great, beautiful sea, rolling in with its dashing waves just beside me, but limited by its great Creator—very soon became the greatest delight and joy to me. I loved to be alone with this wonderful companion, and would ride along about a mile and then turn and come slowly back, so that Della could reach me before we got home. This conduct of my father’s toward me showed his wonderful insight, and the thought he gave each individuality. Every one, my mother included, feared the effect on me of forcing me to mount and ride daily, when it was such pain to me, but he saw that if that nervous fear of everything was recognized and encouraged, the rest of me would never develop. Charley went to ride every morning with a negro boy a few years older than himself, to see that he was not too rash. I doubt whether Brutus could be called a modifier, but he understood all about horses and was a good rider, teaching Charley a great deal, running races, and jumping ditches.

CHAPTER XI
THE LITTLE SCHOOLHOUSE—BOARDING-SCHOOL

THESE tragic memories all have as a background our summer home on Pawley’s Island, which we always spoke of as “the beach,” as though this were the only beach in the world. My next memories are of the little schoolhouse at Chicora and our two English governesses—Miss Wells, who was our first, I do not remember distinctly, but Miss Ayme, who stayed with us until I went to boarding-school at nine, plays a great part in my pictures of the early days.

My father had a two-roomed cottage about 300 yards from the house, in a sunny spot in the park, near the river. It was a beautiful situation, and each room had a fireplace, where we kept up splendid oakwood fires, and to this charming schoolhouse we went at nine and remained until two, having our lunch sent down to us there, and only returning to the house when the bell sounded for preparation for dinner. In this way we avoided the inevitable interruptions when the neighbors came to visit, for as they came from a distance of several miles always, it was quite a prolonged affair, meaning tea and bread-and-butter, handed by Nelson on the big silver waiter, and wine, handed by the footman on a smaller silver waiter, and a great deal of talk. If we had been in the house when we were called for, it would have been impossible to refuse to send for us; but the fact that we were at the “schoolhouse,” which could not be seen from the front door or piazza, resulted in our never being summoned.

Miss Ayme was much before her day in many things, especially in her insistence on physical exercises, so in 1850 she introduced what is now essential in all schools, calisthenics. We exercised with poles and dumb-bells, and my sister, who stooped a little, was made to lie on her back a certain length of time every day on a wide plank, which was inclined at an angle, while Miss Ayme read aloud to her: the result was seen all her life in a beautiful figure, and erect, graceful bearing. I walked up and down for an allotted time each day, with a backboard, but as I had gone to boarding-school when the time came that I should have had the slanting-board treatment, I never have acquired the beautiful carriage of my sister. Miss Ayme also believed in telling children many of the truths of nature, which at that time was considered very indiscreet if not immoral. She was a very good teacher and, besides being a good Christian, was a lady. She had queer little ways and was a never-ending amusement to our neighbors, who had not the appreciation of the higher standards and the vision of my father and mother. Her odd dress and very English speech struck them as her principal characteristics. Miss Ayme had been a governess in a family of the nobility in England. I have, I am sorry to say, forgotten the name, of which we used to get very tired, for she told many stories about the children, who seemed preternaturally good and were fed, to our minds, very poorly, principally on porridge, which sounded miserable to us. They were eager always for the top of Miss Ayme’s boiled egg, which at that time in England was skilfully cut off with a knife, and she gave it to each one in turn, which they considered most generous of her.

When my sister was thirteen it was thought best by my parents to send her to boarding-school. There was one in Charleston, kept by Madame Togno, who took only a limited number, where French was the language spoken. This pleased my mother especially, and as the course of study was said to be very good, my sister was sent to Charleston in the early autumn. This left me as the only pupil for Miss Ayme, Charley being only six, and as she was an expensive teacher my parents decided to do without her after the New Year. I remember how I missed my sister, how terribly lonely I was without her, and how wild with delight I was when she returned in June, having enjoyed her school experiences very much and having improved in health as well as everything else, especially music, to which my father was devoted. So it was decided, as I was eager to go, that I should go too when she returned to Madame Togno’s select French school. I was only nine, small for my age and very thin and nervous, and when one thinks of it now, it seems to have been an awful risk. But I feel quite sure it was most judicious; the companionship of girls of my own age was very good. The regulated life and study I had had at home were excellent, but I was alone, with no minds of my own age to measure myself with. At school I entered a class of fourteen little girls of my own age, day-scholars, some of them exceptionally well-grounded, bright children; and it did me a world of good to find I had to work hard if I wanted to keep up.

One lovely curly-haired, blue-eyed child that looked like an angel and a kitten combined, and who had been taught by her father like a boy, Sara White, kept me always at the greatest strain in the arithmetic, history, and dictation classes. Sara was not only the best girl in the class, but the prettiest and the tiniest. Her long, golden curls and her preternaturally clean white apron were my greatest envy. She was the dearest little case of enlarged conscience I have ever met. One day in class I saw her crying quietly, the big tears dropping onto her slate, and I whisperingly asked what was the matter. She told me between suppressed sniffs that her mother had forbidden her to go into the yard without her hat; she wanted to cross the yard to wash her slate, but madame had forbidden any girl to go into the closet where the hats were hung until recess! What a plight! I, being always daring, proceeded skilfully to go after a book across the room. I quickly entered the closet and got the hat, and Sara made her trip across the yard. Dear little strong, pure soul! She has lived a heroic life, at one time nearly supporting her family in New York by her china-painting. Still dainty and sweet, with her true blue eyes and golden, snow-touched curly hair, she is one of my dearest friends.

I learned French rapidly, as it was the language required of the boarding-pupils. I quickly picked up enough French words to pass me on and I invented many others, so that I appeared to be speaking French fluently to the older girls, who were painfully following rules and phrase-books. The ingenuity with which I added French-sounding terminals to English words so as to create the impression that I was speaking French was a great amusement to madame, and I became a great favorite with her. I was a tiny child, small and thin, with deep circles under my big eyes, with an uncannily alert mind, but shy and morbid by nature; very nervous and easily thrown into violent paroxysms of weeping by reproof. Madame was quick to find out that I responded to praise by redoubled effort, but wilted under disapproval and rebuke, and she kept me near her a great deal, and encouraged me to narrate in my own original French lingo all that I saw and heard, so that I soon got over my homesickness and learned quickly, but was in a fair way to be badly spoiled. The dining-room not being very large, madame had a table made in the shape of a horseshoe. She sat at the middle of the curve on the outside of the table, and I sat just opposite her inside, and my mission was to amuse her as well as every one else at the table, so that I scarcely took time to eat enough to keep me going. The meals were always excellent, as madame prided herself on her table and looked carefully after the selection of food and the cooking.

There were about twenty boarding-pupils, most of them young ladies being “finished off,” in which process madame took much pride. We boasted three beauties, who were always put in the front rank when we went to concerts or to the theatre. Victoria Jordan looked absolutely like the pictures of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, when dressed for a party. She married the year after this and we were all distressed by her sad fate. She and her husband were blown up in a steamer on the Mississippi on their wedding-trip. Carrie Elliot came next, I think, but many thought Adèle Allston, my sister, was the loveliest. Carrie was my first love; she was seven years my senior and was not impatient of my devotion. She married a very charming man, a cousin, who became in time a bishop, greatly admired and beloved—Bishop Robert Elliot, of Texas.

My principal trouble was the constant fear of fire. Soon after I got to school there was a big fire not far off in the middle of the night, and I was waked by the ringing of the bells and the awful cries of “Fire!” I was terrified and, on getting up, the red glare which lit up the whole sky was awful. At that time the fire department was made up of volunteers and the engines were drawn entirely by man-power, an excited mob of black and white pulling on a tremendous loop of rope, running at full speed and yelling “Fire!” as they went. One afternoon when there was a fire near the Battery, and we were standing on the front step to see if we could get even a glimpse of it, as the engine passed, the impulse was too strong for me. I rushed out and took my place on the rope and ran down the street, pulling and madly yelling with the rest. The other girls who saw it were afraid to tell madame, seeming actually to fear capital punishment, and hoping that I would have the sense to come back, myself. So it was not until madame missed me in the study-hour and inquired where I was that the dreadful truth was revealed. To their great surprise, madame laughed heartily and sent the cook to the fire to bring me back. This was a great joy to the cook, as to visit a fire to them is what an opera-ticket is to us. She found me in the rabble, and, after due delay, when she was supposed to be looking for me, and in which she was really enjoying the rare treat of meeting all her friends and imagining tragedies if there were none to see, we returned home fast friends. She held me tightly by the hand and narrated volubly the difficulty she had in finding me and then in getting me to come, how “she almost had to take me up and tote me”—all of which was pure fiction. I stood a miserable prisoner at the bar, but not at all repentant, only prepared for the worst. Madame used her finest sarcasm on me.

“Well, mademoiselle, I did not know you had joined the fire-brigade! I am sorry to deprive them of so strong and competent a member; but your parents, in placing you in my care, did not mention that as one of the branches in which I was to have you instructed, and you will now retire to bed without supper and remain there until to-morrow morning. And the next time the fire-bells ring, instead of allowing you to go out on the step to see it, you will be locked up.” So, sorrowfully, I went up to my little bed. But it was very good for me for, of course, I was exhausted; and the cook, whose interest had been aroused in me for the first time, brought me a particularly nice supper. She had to wake me, for I was sound asleep.

After the fire terror, my next trouble was the going to bed. My sister and I occupied a very nice but small room. She slept in a single mahogany four-poster, with a white valance around it, under which during the day my trundle-bed was rolled. I was always sent to bed at eight. The maid went up, lit the gas, and pulled the trundle-bed out and then left, returning in fifteen minutes to put out the gas. She was not of the friendly kind and I always jumped into bed as I heard her coming. The valance of the tall bed hung over a part of my bed, as, if it was pulled out all the way, the door could not open wide, and I always imagined a robber was hid under that valance! My sister did not come till nine, and I lay there in a cold sweat till she came, perfectly certain I heard the man breathing. I always asked her in a whisper in French to look under the bed, and, of course, the man not being there, I recovered and was asleep before she got in bed; but no one can imagine how I suffered from this foolish fright.

My music was another trial this first year. I had the crossest teacher that ever was. I cannot remember her name, for we only called her “mademoiselle,” but she scolded me and cracked my knuckles till I cried, at every lesson. These were my only troubles, however, and I was very happy and dreamed many dreams. It was hard to find a place where one could dream in peace; there were girls everywhere jabbering bad French; but I found a delightful place—under the dining-table! I was a very morbid child with many imaginary sorrows, and it was a great relief to me to write journals and pour out my woes to these safe confidants. Every scrap of paper was secured and kept in my pocket, for at that day we had a large, capacious pocket in every frock, so that I had stores of paper, and when the outside world was too hard and unfeeling, I watched my chance when no one was near, and slipped to my quiet retreat under the big horseshoe dining-table, with its white cloth which swept the floor, and wrote and wrote until my griefs were assuaged, then rolled up my treasure and returned to the outer world refreshed. When the manuscript became too bulky I buried it in the garden under the pettis porum bushes. This I kept up for years, and in that way I buried my sorrows.

In the early spring mamma wrote to madame and asked that she would select and buy our spring and summer things, sending her a liberal check for the purpose. This delighted madame, and she bought and had made for us clothes that I could not abide and refused to wear at first. A straw bonnet trimmed with blue ribbons and a curl of straw around the front is a nightmare to me still. It was just like an old lady’s bonnet in the sixties, and tied under the chin; but, as soon as that was done the bonnet fell back off of my head, and in order to keep it on at all I had to keep my left hand clapped on the back. Then the frock was a purple-and-white delaine, stripes of purple flowers on a white ground. This was made with a full waist buttoned at the back, what was called “half high neck,” and had a very full deep frill around it of cotton lace! Oh, how I hated it! And when we were dressing for church the first time I was to wear it, I cried and stamped and said I would never wear it, and poor Della was in despair, not knowing what madame would do if she heard me.

She said: “Look at me, Bessie. My dress is just like yours and I am not saying a word.”

I answered: “You never do say a word. If you like it you can wear it, but I’m not going to.”

And so it went on until madame’s voice was heard, calling on us to start for church; and I let my dear, sweet sister button up my hateful frock and tie on the hateful hat and wipe my eyes and nose with a wet cloth, and we flew down the stairs in time to take our place in the procession; for we always went everywhere in twos, a teacher ahead and one behind. Madame never went to church herself.

My beloved sister must have had an awful time with me. She never did anything wrong or queer, and this year was called not only the most beautiful but the best girl in the school. I was always causing her anxious moments. One night she found me crying bitterly when she came to bed. She asked me anxiously if I were ill.

“Have you earache?”

“No.”

“Then what is the matter?”

“Oh, Della, I’m crying because I don’t love any one.”

“Mercy, Bessie, you don’t love me?”

“No. If any one else was as good to me as you are, I’d love them just as much!”

“You certainly are a queer child. You mean to say you don’t love mamma?”

“If any one else did all she does for me, I’d care just as much for them.”

I sobbed on and poor Della in despair said: “And you don’t love papa?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” I cried with the greatest relief; “I do love papa.”

“Then for mercy’s sake stop crying and go to sleep.”

CHAPTER XII
SUMMER ON THE SEA—SCHOOL AND DELLA’S ILLNESS AND TRIP ABROAD—PAPA ELECTED GOVERNOR

WE went to our summer home on Pawley’s Island in June, and oh! the delight of the freedom of the life on the sea-beach after the city, and the happiness of being at home. The bathing in the glorious surf early in the morning—we often saw the sun rise while we were in the water, for we were a very early household, and had breakfast at what would now be thought an unearthly hour, but my father did a tremendous day’s work, which could only be accomplished by rising before the sun. And we children were by no means idle. We were required to read and write and practise every day. Papa’s rules were strict: we could never go out to walk or play on the beach in the afternoon unless we had done our tasks. I was required to practise only half an hour, but it must be done. Then I wrote a page in a blank book and showed it to mamma for correction. She had me to write a journal of all that had taken place the day before, instead of writing in a copy-book. I have one of the little old books before me now, commonplace and dull, but it was a very good idea for a child, I think. I must have acquired the diary habit then, for all my life it has been a comfort to me to record my joys and my woes, when they were not too deep. Then I read aloud to mamma from some classic for half an hour, so I did not go wild during the holidays. Add to this that papa did not allow us to read a story-book or a novel before the three-o’clock dinner, so that I read by myself in the mornings Motley’s “Rise of the Dutch Republic” and Prescott’s “Philip II”—only a little portion every day, but there is no telling how much my taste was formed by it.

There were three girls of my own age living on the island, and we met and walked together every afternoon. Jane and Rebecca Alston were twins and exactly alike; there was a tale that their most competent elder sister had once given a dose of medicine to the well one when they were lying in bed together, unable absolutely to tell one from the other. This tale was a comfort to me, for though I was devoted to Rebecca and did not like Jane, when we met I could not possibly tell which was my friend until Jane showed her haughty nature in some way. They called each “Sissy,” so there was no help from that. The third girl, Kate La Bruce, was devoted to Jane and disliked Rebecca, but she was as helpless at first as I was. They have all gone to the beyond before me.

Madame had occupied a house in Tradd Street, two doors east of Meeting, that first year; but when we returned in October to school she had moved into a very nice house in Meeting Street, with a delightful big garden full of rose-bushes and violets—such a joy to us, for we could roam about it during recess and in the afternoon. This year another boarder of my own age arrived, Emma Cheves. We looked at each other with suspicious scrutiny for a while, and then we became the most devoted friends. Emma was my first friend and remained my best friend all her life. It was a great grief when she passed away a year ago. She, like myself, lived on a big rice-plantation, so we had much in common, only her beautiful home was very near Savannah.

This winter my dear, sweet, beautiful sister, who never did anything wrong and to whom all the teachers were devoted, was taken ill. It proved to be inflammatory rheumatism, and she was desperately ill. At that day trained nurses were unknown, and it seems a wonder that any one ever got over a desperate illness, but they did. Madame moved Della into her own large, airy room, and she nursed her herself, with the assistance of one of our very good negro servants that papa sent down for that purpose, and who was devoted and vigilant; and after a long illness Della recovered. It was spring when she was able to leave the room. The doctor advised a sea-voyage for her, and papa determined to take mamma and herself abroad. My mother’s eldest sister, Mrs. North, offered to take the younger children, with the nurse, Mary O’Shea, while they were gone, to her home, Badwell, Abbeville district, the original home of mamma’s people. This was very good of Aunt Jane, as it was quite an undertaking, and for six months.

I do not remember the stay there with any pleasure, though my aunt and cousins were very good to me. I was so miserable about those who had crossed the ocean. I never expected to see them again. The only thing I remember very clearly was dreadful. There was a big boy there who used to tease me and laugh at me. Aunt Jane’s coachman, Joe, a very good man, was ill all summer, and I got into the habit of asking to

MRS. R. F. W. ALLSTON (NÉE ADÈLE PETIGRU).

Portrait by Flagg about 1850.

be allowed to take something nice from the dinner-table to him every day, which seemed to please my aunt, and was the thing in the day that gave me most pleasure. One day just before dinner-time this boy called to me: “Come, Bessie, quick. Joe wants to speak to you.” I ran breathless, right up the steps, into the room, up to the bed. Joe was just in the agonies of death; a silver dollar hung over each eye—the negro method of closing the eyes in death—his mouth open and teeth all exposed with the last struggle for breath, and the terrible rattle in his throat! No words can describe the effect it had upon me. Day and night he was before my eyes, and the dread sound was in my ears. I became really ill nervously, and they had to pet me and feed me up, and dose me with stimulants.

I don’t remember anything more until I was back at home on the plantation with mamma and papa and Della all there, and seeing the lovely things they had brought for us. Then, too, I heard I was not to go to boarding-school again, but was to live with the family in the beautiful house papa had bought and given to mamma in Meeting Street, next to the Scotch church.

Papa brought with him from Paris a beautiful piano mechanique. It was an upright rosewood piano which could be played naturally like any other, but when you closed the lid on the keys you could open the top, and there was a tiny railroad-track on which you put wooden blocks about one-half inch thick, eight inches long and four wide, and having wires inserted into them much like a wool or cotton card. There was a handle which turned and carried these little flat cars along the track, but it took great skill to turn the handle evenly with the right hand and adjust the little flat cars with the left hand so that they would touch each other and make no break in the music. But dear Nelson, our head house-servant, soon learned to do it beautifully, and it was the greatest delight to him and he was ready to play all the evening. Now that there are so many inventions to give music this does not seem remarkable, but in 1855 it was most wonderful, and the greatest possible joy. We heard all the most beautiful operas and classical music that we never would have heard or known anything about. The music came in little wooden boxes about two feet long and six inches wide and high. They occupied a corner in the drawing-room, and when piled were about four feet high and four feet wide. The dear little piano was moved during the war to the interior where we refugeed, and it is still in the family—very tired, but still sweet in tone. But the boxes of music were lost during the war. I have often regretted it greatly, because it seems to me it was quite as beautiful as any of the machines I have heard since, and the collection of music was so fine. This piano cost $1,000 in Paris, besides the heavy expense of bringing it over to this country.

My sister took music lessons while in Paris from M. Lestoquoi, a distinguished pianist, and made great strides in her playing; she really was a beautiful musician.

My father was elected governor of the State the next year and as there would be necessarily a great deal of entertaining in which Della would have to take part, papa decided that it would be best for her not to return to school, as it would be impossible for her to keep her mind on her studies. So, though she was only sixteen, she left school. There were balls and receptions and dinners, and though I had no part in them, it was hard for me to study.

All my sister’s ball dresses came from Paris, and it was the most exciting thing to see her dress for a ball. At that time they wore the most beautiful artificial flowers, and I especially remember Della in a frock of tulle—little pleatings from waist to floor of white tulle and then pink tulle, and long garlands of apple-blossoms with silver stamen, and a light garland twined in her smooth, glossy brown hair. She was a picture, truly, and naturally she was a great belle and had many suitors. She did not care for attention at all, and I think that only made her the more attractive. She was not allowed to dance the “round dances,” as they were called—the waltz, the polka, and the mazurka—as only what was considered the fast set danced them; and a ring of spectators would form round the room to watch the eight or ten girls who were so bold as to dance them.

The proprieties were really worshipped at that time. I remember hearing Della severely scolded for having answered a note from a young man asking her to ride on horseback with him, in the first person. Poor Della said: “But how else could I write, mamma?”

“You should have written: ‘Miss Allston regrets that she will not be able to ride with Mr. Blank this afternoon.’”

Such a thing as driving with a young man was not possible, though at that time all the men had fine horses and buggies. But my sister, being a very good horsewoman, was allowed to ride occasionally with a young man. Girls were not allowed to receive visitors without a chaperon being in the room. Mamma found this part of her duty very trying, so I was sent to study my lessons in the east drawing-room, where my sister received her visitors; and I certainly enjoyed the situation, if no one else did. There was a beautiful drop-light on the table by which I studied at one end of the room. I always murmured my lessons aloud as I swayed backward and forward, to give the impression that I was oblivious to all but my book. But little escaped my ears. As a rule I thought the conversation dull, but one night I heard the young man say, laying his hand on the marble table beside them: “Have you ever seen any one as cold as this marble?”

Della answered composedly: “No.”

Then he said: “I am looking now at one whose heart is just as cold.” That rather pleased me, but as Della seemed bored he did not proceed in that strain.

Charleston was very gay for a few weeks in the winter at that time. There were three or four balls every week. Three balls given by the St. Cecilia Society took place at intervals of ten days, for everything had to be crowded in before Lent came. These were the most exclusive and elegant balls of all; but the Jockey Club ball, which always ended the race week, was the largest and grandest—not so exclusive, because it included all the racing people. The races were the great excitement of the winter. Every one went and every one bet. Gloves and French sugar-plums came pouring in upon every girl who had any attention at all, for that was the only time that a girl could receive any offering from a man but flowers.

These last were terribly stiff bouquets made up by a florist, with rows of trite roses and pinks and other flowers all wired on to a stick, forming a pyramid with geranium-leaves around the base, surrounded with a white lace-paper frill and wrapped in silver paper. My sister had one suitor who had sense and, instead of sending these terrible stiff pyramids, used to send her little reed baskets filled with little white musk-roses picked by himself in his aunt’s garden. They were too sweet—no stems—just a quart of little darlings that you could put in your drawer, and be conscious of, every time you took a garment out for weeks—and so recall the donor. Alas, he was killed early in the war. This was Pinckney Alston, a gallant soldier and charming man. My father was very anxious for Della to learn to sew, and she was at last spurred to the point of making a frock for herself. Up to this time her only achievement in the way of sewing had been when she was about fourteen and we were at West Point for brother’s graduation. Our great hero, General Robert E. Lee, then Colonel Lee, was superintendent at that time, and paid Della a great deal of attention, and one day when he was lamenting that he had no one to hem six new handkerchiefs, his wife being absent, mamma suggested to my sister that she should offer to hem them for him, which after much hesitation she did. She did not finish all of them before we left, and sent them with a little note when we reached home, and received from him the most charming letter of thanks, which Della always treasured among her sacred things. The great success of this venture with her needle seemed to have completely satisfied her ambition, until papa, to whom she was perfectly devoted, roused her to attempt and accomplish the great feat of the frock. I well remember her appearance when she put it on for the first time. She was very proud of it, and apparently perfectly content with it, but it was a sore trial to me. To begin with, the color displeased me. It was a yellow cambric with little black figures here and there. The skirt was very long and the waist very short and tight; the sleeves were meant to be long but failed of their intention, leaving about three inches of wrist unadorned. No one liked to discourage her first effort by any criticism. She had received from a young man the day before she first donned it, a note requesting an interview alone at twelve o’clock, which had been granted. It did not seem to excite her at all, but I was greatly excited, for this was a very good-looking man, and I had never realized that he was devoted to her, he was so quiet and undemonstrative; but I knew this must mean something, it was so unusual. And I know if he had not been the son of one of papa’s best friends, it would not have been permitted. What was my horror, then, when I saw Della going into the drawing-room to this fateful meeting in the yellow cambric frock with its inadequate sleeves! The interview did not last very long, and Della was sufficiently upset, when she rapidly went to her own room, to satisfy even my ideas!

I did not ask any questions, but I gleaned from the family talk that the young man had come to say good-by, as he was to sail for New York on his way to Europe the next day. Just at the hour at which the steamer left a beautiful pyramidal bouquet arrived in a handsome silver bouquet-holder, with Mr. Blank’s card.

CHAPTER XIII
CHRISTMAS AT CHICORA WOOD

WHILE we were at boarding-school we had not gone into the country for the short Christmas holidays; but now we went a week before Christmas with all the household, and did not return till about the 10th of January. Oh, the joy of the Christmas on the plantation! We had to have presents for so many—fruit and candy and dolls and nuts and handkerchiefs and stockings and head-handkerchiefs. Rejoicing and festivities everywhere! All busy preparing and selecting Christmas presents, and decorating the house with holly. Christmas Eve, making egg-nog, and going round with little children helping them hang up stockings and, later, going round with grown-ups and filling stockings. Christmas morning very early, “Merry Christmas!” echoing all over the house; all the house-servants stealing in softly to “ketch yu,” that is, say the magic words “Merry Christmas!” before you did. Then joyful sounds, “I ketch yu!” and you must produce your gift, whereupon they bring from the ample bosom or pocket, as the case may be, eggs tied in a handkerchief—two, three, six, perhaps a dozen, according to the worldly position of the donor. Such jolly, gay, laughing visitors, a stream coming all the time. As fast as one party left another came, always making great plans to walk softly so as to catch you, so that dressing was a prolonged and difficult matter, for you must respond and open the door when “Merry Christmas, I ketch yu!” sounded. Breakfast was apt to be late, because cook and all the servants had to creep up softly to each door and “ketch” each member and receive their presents, and open them, and exhibit them, and compare them, and see the children’s presents, and do an immense deal of unnecessary talking and joking. So that it was hard for them to settle down and come to prayers, which papa had always in the library, and then bring in the breakfast and resume the attitude of respectful and well-trained servants.

Such delicious breakfast—sausage, and hogshead cheese, and hominy, and buckwheat cakes, and honey and waffles, and marmalade, which mamma made from the oranges which grew all round the piazza. And before we got up from table, the dancing began in the piazza, a fiddle playing the gayest jigs, with two heavy sticks knocking to mark the time, and a triangle and bones rattling in the most exciting syncopated time; and all the young negroes on the plantation, and many from the other plantations belonging to papa, dancing, dancing, dancing. Oh, it was gay! They never stopped from the time they began in the morning, except while we were at meals, until ten o’clock at night. The dancers would change, one set go home and get their dinner, while another took the floor. Fiddler, stick-knocker, all would change; but the dance went on with the new set just as gaily as with the first. And this went on more or less for three days, for not a stroke of work was done during that holiday except feeding the cattle, pigs, and sheep, and horses—just three days of pure enjoyment and fun. Christmas night papa always set off beautiful fireworks with Nelson’s help. This was a grand entertainment for all, white and black. There was much feasting at Christmas, for a beef and several hogs were always killed and extra rations of sugar, coffee, molasses, and flour were given out, and great quantities of sweet potatoes. Altogether, it was a joyful time.

There were three days at New Year too, and then the clothes were given out. Maum Mary began early in the morning after New Year’s Day to bring out and pile in log-cabin fashion in the piazza rolls of red flannel, rolls of white homespun (unbleached muslin), and of thick homespun, and of calico for the women. Then, for the men, rolls of jeans, dark-colored, and rolls of white for shirts, and then rolls of the most beautiful white stuff like the material of which blankets are made. This was called plains, and with the jeans was imported from England, as being stronger and warmer than any to be got in this country. There were buttons and threads and needles in each roll of stuff, suitable for that thickness of material. All these little piles made of rolls filled up the very big piazza, and it took nearly all day for the long lists to be read out and each individual to come up and get their stuffs. Each woman had a red flannel roll, two white homespun rolls, two colored homespun, and two calico. The men had one red flannel, two white homespun, two jeans, and one white plains. Then came the blankets. Every year some one got new blankets, very strong, warm wool blankets. One year the men got them, the next the women, the next the children; so every household had some new ones every year.

The children’s clothing was given out the next day. This took longer. Each child came up to Maum Mary where she sat surrounded by whole bales of stuff, and stood in front of her. She took the end of the homespun, held it on top of the child’s head and brought the material down to the floor and then up again to the head. This would make one full garment for the child, and was the way to assure there being enough, with no waste. The red flannel was handled the same way, and the colored homespun for every-day frocks, and the calico for Sunday frocks. It was an interesting thing to watch: a name was read out by mamma, papa, or my sister from the book, and up the step came the little girl, dropped a courtesy to each of us and then to Maum Mary, and stood before her to be measured. Maum Mary was sometimes inclined to be very impatient and cross, but she dared not give way to the inclination openly, with us all watching her. She would just jerk the timid ones around a little; but if papa was there he would say quite sternly: “Gently, Mary, gently.” The little girl, as she went out loaded with her things and the things of her little brothers and sisters, would drop another courtesy of thanks. The boys were taught to “Tech dey furud,” as Maum Mary called it; being really just what the military salute is now; but they were generally very awkward about it.

The hardest thing of all was the shoes. Every man, woman, and child on the place, about a month before, was called on to give their measure—a nice, light strip of wood about an inch wide the length of their foot. Each was supposed to put the weight of the foot down on the piece of wood and have some one mark and cut it off the right length; then take it himself, so that there would be no mistake, to Mr. Belflowers, who wrote the full name upon it. These measures Mr. Belflowers brought to papa, all clearly and distinctly marked in pencil; and they were sent to the factor in Charleston, who took them to a reliable shoe dealer, and each measure was fitted into a pair of shoes. These shoes were all boxed up and sent up to the different plantations in time for distribution on the third day after New Year. Darkies have a very great dislike of big feet, so many of them were tempted to send too short a measure; and then what a disappointment and what suppressed groans and lamentations when the new shoes were tried on!

“Somebody change my meshur.” And often I was called on to examine the stick and read out the name on it. No mistake there. But these victims of vanity were few, and were always much ridiculed by the others who had wisely given the full length of the foot.

“Ki, Breder, yu got small fut, yu kno’. Yu haf’ fu suffer. Me, I got big fut an I kin run een my new shu’.”

There was much visiting among the neighbors during this season. Every one had friends from the city to spend the holidays in the country. The plantations were large, so the neighbors were not near; but they all had an abundance of horses and vehicles, and the roads were excellent. An absolutely flat country, the dirt roads were kept in the best condition. There were Mr. and Mrs. Poinsett at the White House, eight miles south of Chicora at the point of land between the Pee Dee and the Black Rivers. Mr. Poinsett was a distinguished man, a great botanist. It was he who brought from Mexico the beautiful Flor del Buen Noche to the Department of Agriculture; and it was named Poinsettia in his honor. He was secretary of war under Van Buren and was largely instrumental in the establishment of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. He married Mrs. John Julius Pringle, née Izard, a widow, and made a most beautiful garden at her plantation, the White House—so named originally because it was a little white house in the midst of a field. Mr. and Mrs. Poinsett spent their summers at Newport and most of the winters in Washington.

Mr. and Mrs. Julius Izard Pringle (née Lynch) and their daughter Mary, afterward Countess Yvan des Francs, who was my sister’s dearest friend, being just her age—lived at Greenfield, eight miles southwest of us on the Black River in winter, and went to Newport in summer. Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard (née Pinckney) and their large family lived at Weymouth, six miles south of us on the Pee Dee. They spent their winters there and travelled abroad during the summers. Doctor Sparkman and his family were at Dirliton, five miles away, Doctor Stark Heriot four miles at Birdfield, Mr. and Mrs. Nat Barnwell (née Fraser) at Enfield, three miles away. These were all south of us.

To the north were Mr. and Mrs. Francis Weston (née Tucker) and their large family. The eldest daughter has been a most remarkable woman. I speak of her as Miss Penelope in “The Woman Rice Planter.” Mrs. Weston was the daughter of my father’s eldest sister, who married Mr. John Tucker, had two daughters and died; when Mr. Tucker remarried twice and had a large number of children,—five sons, four of whom he educated in the most thorough manner as physicians, sending them to Paris for a final course, as he said the owner of a plantation with large numbers of slaves could best be fitted for the position by a good medical education. So there were three Doctor Tuckers owning plantations north of us on the Pee Dee River, and one Doctor Tucker owning plantations on the Waccamaw River. They did not practise their profession beyond their plantations, however, but were mighty hunters and good citizens.

Just north of the Weston’s historic plantation, Hasty Point, lived at Bel Rive Mr. and Mrs. J. Harleston Read (née Lance). This was entailed property, a part of the very large John Mann Taylor estate. The Reads, like the Westons, spent their summers in Charleston, where they owned beautiful houses. Mrs. Weston, once speaking to my mother of the terrible move to and from the city each spring and fall, said: “We have to take fifty individuals with us in the move, I mean children and all.”

My mother: “Why, Elizabeth, how is that possible?”

She answered: “We cannot possibly separate husband and wife for six months; so Harry, the coachman, has to have his wife and children, and the same with the cook, and the butler, and the laundress, until we are actually moving an army every time we move.”

This shows some of the bondage of the old system not generally thought of.

CHAPTER XIV
LIFE IN CHARLESTON—PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

WE returned to Charleston, January the 15th, in the midst of the gay season. Of course, I went back to school and had little to do with the gaiety, except to see Della dress for the balls and hear her account of them the next morning.

I had always suffered much from what I know now was dyspepsia, but it had no name then. I just felt badly at eleven every day if I ate any breakfast. In our family it was considered the proper thing to eat breakfast, and I had always had a fair appetite and ate my plate of hominy and butter, and an egg or a piece of sausage and then a waffle and syrup or honey. That was our regular breakfast; but I began to find, if I ate my plate of hominy, I was perfectly miserable by eleven; and so I ate less and less until I found out the delightful fact that, if I ate nothing, I did not have the misery at eleven. But, when my mother found I was eating no breakfast, she was shocked and distressed and said I could not possibly go to school and study on a perfectly empty stomach. I must eat my hominy—a mother now would say “my cereal.” I said: “Just let me eat a waffle and no hominy.” But the hominy was considered the most nourishing, easily digested thing, with a soft-boiled egg. As I was always very hungry in the morning, I yielded readily and went on suffering more and more—burning cheeks and flaming eyes and so cross every one was afraid to speak to me from eleven till two. Then it passed off, and I was exhausted and ate a hearty dinner. This went on until I could go no longer. I was too miserable and had to tell mamma and stay in bed. She sent for the family doctor, a white-haired old gentleman, Doctor Peter Porcher. He questioned me and punched me all over with his long forefinger, and then said to me:

“What would you do if you had a horse that was worn out from overwork?”

Very much tried by this question so alien to my condition, I said languidly: “Let him rest, I suppose.”

“Exactly,” said the little doctor. “Exactly, and that is what we must do to your stomach and digestive organs, which are worn out by overwork.”

Then he asked mamma to have two bedroom pitchers of warm water brought, and he made me drink glass after glass of that tepid water, which he handed me himself, until my system was emptied of every particle of undigested food. Then he said to mamma that for three days I must have absolutely nothing but a cup half full of milk filled up with hot water in the morning, nothing more. He patted my hand and said:

“Then you will be quite well and have no more trouble.”

I stayed in bed that day and was so exhausted that I slept and rested and never thought of food; but the next morning, when they brought me my cup of milk and water, I was desperately hungry and very restless. So I sent for mamma and told her that if she kept me in bed I could not possibly endure the three days’ fast, for I thought of nothing but how hungry I was; but, if she let me get up and go to school and study my lessons, I would not mind it so much. Mamma hesitated a little, but knew me so well that she was sensible and gave me permission to get up and dress and go to school; which I did, getting there just in time. I said my lessons and enjoyed myself greatly, the freedom from gnawing distress in my chest making me very gay; and, at the end of the three days, I returned to my natural diet and was in perfect health, and for years free from any kind of indigestion. I just narrate this as an instance of the heroic methods of the past. We were brought up to make light of and endure all pain silently just as long as we could stand it, and then submit to any treatment prescribed by the doctor, however drastic. For years I had suffered daily pain and discomfort, but not severe enough to attract attention to me, as I did not complain, was only miserable and cross, and correspondingly gay as soon as the misery was gone. And now I was well!

In the spring I went to my first child’s party. It was given by the Cleland Hugers in their house in Legare Street for their beautiful son, two years older than myself. Alas, he was one of the first to fall in battle during our war. He and Oliver Middleton were both so beautiful and both fell gallantly fighting when mere boys. But there was no shadow in that bright scene to tell us what was coming. Mamma had a pretty white muslin frock made for me, and my sweet sister took great pleasure in dressing me for the party—a very full, very short skirt barely covering my knees, a long expanse of white stocking, and black slippers. When I stood before the big cheval glass, Della fixing some blue ribbons on my tightly scraped back, tightly plaited hair, I began to cry and exclaimed: