FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
FRANCIS SCOTT KEYAt the age of 35
It is in the great moments of life that a man gives himself to the world, and in the giving parts from nothing of himself, for in the gift he but expands his own nature and keeps himself in greater measure than before. May not he to whom our great anthem came through the battle-storm smile pityingly upon the futile efforts of to-day to supply a national song that shall eclipse the noble lines born of patriotism and battle ardor and christened in flame?
Thus it was that Francis Scott Key reached the high tide of life before the defences of the Monumental City, and to Baltimore he returned when that tide was ebbing away, and in view of the old fort, under the battlements of which he had fallen to unfathomable depths of suffering and risen to immeasurable heights of triumphant joy, he crossed the bar into the higher tide beyond. On a beautiful hill Baltimore has erected a stately monument to the memory of the man who linked her name with the majestic anthem which gives fitting voice to our national hopes.
Away on the other edge of our continent, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, another noble shaft tells the world that "the Star-Spangled Banner yet waves" over all our land and knows no distinctions of North, South, East, or West.
In Olivet Cemetery, in the old historic city of Frederick, Maryland, is the grave of Francis Scott Key. Over it stands a marble column supporting a statue of Key, his poet face illumined by the art of the sculptor, his arms outstretched, his left hand bearing a scroll inscribed with the lines of "The Star-Spangled Banner," while on the pedestal sits Liberty, holding the flag for which those immortal lines were written.
Thus, perpetuated in granite, the noble patriot stands, looking over the town to which he long ago gave this message:
But if ever, forgetful of her past and present glory, she shall cease to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and become the purchased possession of a company of stock-jobbers and speculators; if her people are to become the vassals of a great moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and privileged nobility; if the patriots who shall dare to arraign her corruptions and denounce her usurpations are to be sacrificed upon her gilded altar,—such a country may furnish venal orators and presses, but the soul of national poetry will be gone. That muse will "never bow the knee in mammon's fane." No, the patriots of such a land must hide their shame in her deepest forests, and her bards must hang their harps upon the willows. Such a people, thus corrupted and degraded,
"Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust from whence they sprung,Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
"Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust from whence they sprung,Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
"Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence they sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
"THE POET-PRIEST"
FATHER RYAN
My first meeting with Father Ryan was at the Atlantic Hotel in Norfolk, in which town he had spent the first seven years of his life, his parents having emigrated from Limerick and found a home there a short time before his birth. He has been claimed by a number of cities, and the dates of his nativity, as assigned by biographers, range from 1834 to 1840, 1839 being the one best established. He told me that his early memories of his Norfolk home were especially associated with figs and oysters, the oysters there being the largest and finest he had ever seen, they and the figs seeming to "rhyme with his appetite." Then he told me an oyster story:
"A negro boatman was rowing some people down the river, among them two prominent politicians who were discussing an absent one. 'He has no more backbone than an oyster,' said one. The boatman laughed, and said, 'Skuse me, marsers, but if you-all gemmen don' know no mo' 'bout politicians dan you does 'bout oyschers you don' know much. No mo' backbone dan a oyscher! Why, oyschers has as much backbone as folks has, en ef you cuts into 'em lengfwise a little way ter one side en looks at 'em close you'll see dar backbone's jes' lak we all's backbone is. De only diffunce is de oyscher's backbone is ter one side, jes' whar it ought ter be, 'stead er in de middle. Dat's de reason I t'ink de debbil mus' er tuck a han' en he'ped ter mek we alls, en you know de Lord says, Letusmek man; dat shows dat He didn' do hit all by Hese'f; ef He had He'd a meked we all's backbone ter de side whar de oyscher's is, ter pertect us, en put our shin bones behime our legs, whar dey wouldn't all de time git skint, en put our calfs in de front.'"
My impression of Father Ryan was of being in the presence of a great power—something indefinable and indescribable, but invincibly sure. He was of medium height, and his massive head seemed to bend by its own weight, giving him a somewhat stooped appearance. His hair, brown, with sunny glints touching it to gold, was brushed back from his wide, high forehead, falling in curls around his pale face and over his shoulders. I recall with especial distinctness the dimple in his chin, a characteristic of many who have been very near to me, for which reason it attracted my attention when appearing in a face new to me. His eyes were his greatest beauty,—Irish blue, under gracefully arched brows, and luminous with the sunshine that has sparkled in the eyes of his race in all the generations, caught by looking skyward for a light that dawned not upon earth. His expression was sad, and the beautiful smile that illumined his face, radiating compassion, kindness, gentleness and the humor of the Kelt, made me think of a brilliant noontide sun shining across a grave.
We discussed Folk Lore, and he said that some of the best lessons were taught in the Folk Lore of the plantation negro. One of his sermons was on "Obstinacy," illustrated by a story told him by an old colored man:
"Marser, does you know de reason dat de crab walks back'ards? Well, hit's dis away: when de Lord wuz mekin' uv de fishes He meked de diffunt parts en put 'em in piles, de legs in one pile, de fins in anudder, en de haids in anudder. Do' de crab wan't no fish, He meked hit at de same time. Afterwards He put 'em tergedder en breaved inter 'em de bref er life. He stuck all de fishes' haids on, but de crab wuz obstreperous en he say, 'Gib me my haid; I gwine put hit on myse'f.' De Lord argufied wid him but de crab wouldn' listen, en he say he gwine put hit on. So de Lord gin him his haid en 'course he put hit on back'ards. Den he went ter de Lord en ax' Him ter put hit straight, but de Lord wouldn' do hit, en He tole him he mus' go back'ards all his life fer his obstinacy. En so 'tis wid some people."
FATHER RYAN
FATHER RYANFrom the portrait in Murphy's Hotel, Richmond, Virginia
Father Ryan told me that one of the greatest obstacles with which he had to contend in his dealings with people was the lack of ethic sensitiveness which rendered them oblivious to the harm of deviations from principle which seemed not to result in great evil. People who would not steal articles of value did not hesitate to cheat in car-fare, taking the view that the company got enough out of the public without their small contribution. He said, "They are like two very religious old ladies who, driving through a toll-gate, asked the keeper the rate. Being newly appointed, he looked into his book and read so much for a man and a horse. The woman who was driving whipped up the horse, calling out, 'G'lang, Sally, we goes free. We are two old maids and a mare.' On they went without paying."
When Abram Ryan was seven years old the family moved to St. Louis, where the boy attended the schools of the Christian Brothers, in his twelfth year entering St. Mary's Seminary, in Perry County, Missouri. He completed his preparation for the work to which his life was dedicated, in the Ecclesiastical Seminary at Niagara, New York. Upon ordination he was placed in charge of a parish in Missouri.
On a boat going down the canal from Lynchburg to Lexington, where he was a fellow-passenger with us, he met his old friend, John Wise, and entered into conversation with him, in the course of which he made the statement that he came from Missouri. "All the way from Pike?" quoted Mr. Wise. "No," replied Father Ryan, "my name isnotJoe Bowers, I havenobrother Ike," whereupon he sang the old song, "Joe Bowers," in a voice that would have lifted any song into the highest realms of music.
He recited his poem, "In Memoriam," written for his brother David, who was killed in battle, one stanza of which impressed me deeply because of the longing love in his voice when he spoke the lines:
Thou art sleeping, brother, sleepingIn thy lonely battle grave;Shadows o'er the past are creeping,Death, the reaper, still is reaping,Years have swept and years are sweepingMany a memory from my keeping,But I'm waiting still and weepingFor my beautiful and brave.
Thou art sleeping, brother, sleepingIn thy lonely battle grave;Shadows o'er the past are creeping,Death, the reaper, still is reaping,Years have swept and years are sweepingMany a memory from my keeping,But I'm waiting still and weepingFor my beautiful and brave.
Thou art sleeping, brother, sleeping
In thy lonely battle grave;
Shadows o'er the past are creeping,
Death, the reaper, still is reaping,
Years have swept and years are sweeping
Many a memory from my keeping,
But I'm waiting still and weeping
For my beautiful and brave.
The readers of his poetry are touched by its pathetic beauty, but only they who have heard his verses in the tones of his deep, musical voice can know of the wondrous melody of his lines.
When I said to him that I wished he would write a poem on Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, he replied:
"It has been put into poetry. Every flower that blooms on that field is a poem far greater than I could write. There are some things too great for me to attempt. Pickett's charge at Gettysburg is one of them."
A lady who chanced to be on the boat with us repeated Owen Meredith's poem of "The Portrait." At its close he said with sad earnestness, "I am sorry to hear you recite that. Please never do it again. It is a libel on womanhood."
It may be that he was thinking of "Ethel," the maiden whom, it is said, he loved in his youth, from whom he parted because Heaven had chosen them both for its own work, and his memories deepened the sacredness with which all women were enshrined in his thought. She was to be a nun and he a priest, and thus he tells of their parting:
One night in mid of May their faces metAs pure as all the stars that gazed on them.They met to part from themselves and the world;Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed;Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tearsFell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each:They were to meet no more.
One night in mid of May their faces metAs pure as all the stars that gazed on them.They met to part from themselves and the world;Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed;Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tearsFell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each:They were to meet no more.
One night in mid of May their faces met
As pure as all the stars that gazed on them.
They met to part from themselves and the world;
Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed;
Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tears
Fell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each:
They were to meet no more.
The "great brown, wond'ring eyes" of the girl went with him on his way through life, shadowed like the lights of a dim cathedral, but luminous with love and sacrifice. How much of the story he tells in pathetic verse was his very own perhaps no one may ever know, but the reader feels that it was Father Ryan himself who, after "years and years and weary years," walked alone in a place of graves and found "in a lone corner of that resting-place" a solitary grave with its veil of "long, sad grass" and, parting the mass of white roses that hid the stone, beheld the name he had given the girl from whom he had parted on that mid-May night.
"Ullainee."
Those who were nearest him thought that the vein of sadness winding through his life and his poetry was in memory of the girl who loved and sacrificed and died. When they marvelled over the mournful minor tones in his melodious verse he made answer:
Go stand on the beach of the blue boundless deep,When the night stars are gleaming on high,And hear how the billows are moaning in sleep,On the low-lying strand by the surge-beaten steep,They're moaning forever wherever they sweep.Ask them what ails them: they never reply;They moan on, so sadly, but will not tell you why!Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?The waves will not answer you; neither shall I.
Go stand on the beach of the blue boundless deep,When the night stars are gleaming on high,And hear how the billows are moaning in sleep,On the low-lying strand by the surge-beaten steep,They're moaning forever wherever they sweep.Ask them what ails them: they never reply;They moan on, so sadly, but will not tell you why!Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?The waves will not answer you; neither shall I.
Go stand on the beach of the blue boundless deep,
When the night stars are gleaming on high,
And hear how the billows are moaning in sleep,
On the low-lying strand by the surge-beaten steep,
They're moaning forever wherever they sweep.
Ask them what ails them: they never reply;
They moan on, so sadly, but will not tell you why!
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
The waves will not answer you; neither shall I.
At the beginning of the war Father Ryan was appointed a chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia, but often served as a soldier. He was in New Orleans in 1862 when an epidemic broke out, and devoted himself to the care of the victims. Having been accused of refusing to bury a Federal he was escorted by a file of soldiers into the presence of General Butler, who accosted him with great sternness:
"I am told that you refused to bury a dead soldier because he was a Yankee."
"Why," answered Father Ryan in surprise, facing the hated general without a tremor, "I was never asked to bury him and never refused. The fact is, General, it would give me great pleasure to bury the whole lot of you."
Butler lay back in his arm-chair and roared with laughter. "You've got ahead of me, Father," he said. "You may go. Good morning, Father."
One of the incidents of which Father Ryan told me occurred when smallpox was raging in a State prison. The official chaplain had fled and no one could be found to take his place. One day a prisoner asked for a minister to pray for him, and Father Ryan, whose parish was not far away, was sent for. He was in the prison before the messenger had returned and, having been exposed to contagion, was not permitted to leave. He remained in the prison ministering to the sick until the epidemic had passed.
Immediately after the war he was stationed in New Orleans where he editedThe Star, a Roman Catholic weekly. Afterward he was in Nashville, Clarksville, and Knoxville, and from there went to Augusta, Georgia, where he founded and edited the "Banner of the South," which was permanently furled after having waved for a few years.
Unlike most Southern poets, Father Ryan did not take his themes from Nature, and when her phenomena enters into his verse it is usually as a setting for the expression of some ethic or emotional sentiment. He has been called "the historian of a human soul," and it was in the crises of life that his feeling claimed poetical expression. When he heard of Lee's surrender "The Conquered Banner" drooped its mournful folds over the heart-broken South. In his memorial address at Fredericksburg when the Southern soldiers were buried, he first read "March of the Deathless Dead," closing with the lines:
And the dead thus meet the dead,While the living' o'er them weep;And the men by Lee and Stonewall led,And the hearts that once together bled,Together still shall sleep.
And the dead thus meet the dead,While the living' o'er them weep;And the men by Lee and Stonewall led,And the hearts that once together bled,Together still shall sleep.
And the dead thus meet the dead,
While the living' o'er them weep;
And the men by Lee and Stonewall led,
And the hearts that once together bled,
Together still shall sleep.
June 28, 1883, I was in Lexington and saw the unveiling of Valentine's recumbent statue of General Lee in Washington and Lee University. At the conclusion of Senator Daniel's eloquent oration Father Ryan recited his poem, "The Sword of Lee," the first time that it had been heard.
In Lexington I was at a dinner where Father Ryan was a guest. He told a story of a reprobate Irishman, for whom he had stood godfather. Upon one occasion the man took too much liquor and, under its influence, killed a man, for which he was sentenced to a term in the penitentiary. Through the efforts of the Father he was, after a time, pardoned and employment secured for him. One evening he came to the priest's house intoxicated and asked permission to sleep in the barn. "No," said the Father, "go sleep in the gutter." "Ah, Father, sure an' I've shlept in the gutter till me bones is all racked with the rheumatism." "I can't help that; I can't let you sleep in the barn; you will smoke, you drunken beast, and set the barn on fire and maybe burn the house, and they belong to the parish." "Ah, Father, forgive me! I've been bad, very bad; I've murdered an' kilt an' shtole an' been dhrunk, an' I've done a heap of low things besides, but low as I'm afther gettin', Father, I never got low enough to shmoke." The man slept in the barn and the parish suffered no loss.
One evening at a supper at Governor Letcher's we were responding to the sentiment, "Life." I gave some verses which, in Father Ryan's view, were not serious enough for a subject so solemn. He looked at me through his wonderfully speaking eyes and answered me in his melodious voice:
Life is a duty—dare it,Life is a burden—bear it,Life is a thorn-crown—wear it;Though it break your heart in twainSeal your lips and hush your pain;Life is God—all else is vain.
Life is a duty—dare it,Life is a burden—bear it,Life is a thorn-crown—wear it;Though it break your heart in twainSeal your lips and hush your pain;Life is God—all else is vain.
Life is a duty—dare it,
Life is a burden—bear it,
Life is a thorn-crown—wear it;
Though it break your heart in twain
Seal your lips and hush your pain;
Life is God—all else is vain.
"Yes, Father," I said, and there was silence.
ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE. FATHER RYAN'S LATE RESIDENCE ADJOINING
ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE.FATHER RYAN'S LATE RESIDENCE ADJOININGBy courtesy of P.J. Kenedy & Sons
Always a wanderer, our Poet-Priest found his first real home, since his childhood, when pastor of St. Mary's Church in Mobile. To that home he pays a tribute in verse.
It was an enchanting solitude for the "restless heart,"—the plain little church with its cross pointing the way upward, the front half-hidden by trees through which its window-eyes look out to the street. A short distance from the church and farther back was the priest's house, set in a bewilderment of trees and vines and shrubbery from which window, chimney, roof, and cornice peep out as if with inquisitive desire to see what manner of world lies beyond the forest.
Up into the silent skiesWhere the sunbeams veil the star,Up,—beyond the clouds afar,Where no discords ever mar,Where rests peace that never dies.
Up into the silent skiesWhere the sunbeams veil the star,Up,—beyond the clouds afar,Where no discords ever mar,Where rests peace that never dies.
Up into the silent skies
Where the sunbeams veil the star,
Up,—beyond the clouds afar,
Where no discords ever mar,
Where rests peace that never dies.
Here, amid the "songs and silences," he wrote "just when the mood came, with little of study and less of art," as he said, his thoughts leaping spontaneously into rhymes and rhythms which he called verses, objecting to the habit of his friends of giving them "the higher title of poems," never dreaming of "taking even lowest place in the rank of authors."
I sing with a voice too lowTo be heard beyond to-day,In minor keys of my people's woe,But my songs will pass away.To-morrow hears them not—To-morrow belongs to fame—My songs, like the birds', will be forgot,And forgotten shall be my name.
I sing with a voice too lowTo be heard beyond to-day,In minor keys of my people's woe,But my songs will pass away.
I sing with a voice too low
To be heard beyond to-day,
In minor keys of my people's woe,
But my songs will pass away.
To-morrow hears them not—To-morrow belongs to fame—My songs, like the birds', will be forgot,And forgotten shall be my name.
To-morrow hears them not—
To-morrow belongs to fame—
My songs, like the birds', will be forgot,
And forgotten shall be my name.
But a touch of prophecy adds the thought:
And yet who knows? BetimesThe grandest songs depart,While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymesWill echo from heart to heart.
And yet who knows? BetimesThe grandest songs depart,While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymesWill echo from heart to heart.
And yet who knows? Betimes
The grandest songs depart,
While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes
Will echo from heart to heart.
So the "low-toned rhymes" of him to whom "souls were always more than songs," written "at random—off and on, here, there, anywhere," touch the heart and linger like remembered music in a long-gone twilight.
In 1872 Father Ryan travelled in Europe, visited Rome and had an audience with the Pope, of whom he wrote:
I saw his face to-day; he looks a chiefWho fears nor human rage, nor human guile;Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,But in that grief the starlight of a smile.
I saw his face to-day; he looks a chiefWho fears nor human rage, nor human guile;Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,But in that grief the starlight of a smile.
I saw his face to-day; he looks a chief
Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile;
Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,
But in that grief the starlight of a smile.
In 1883 he began an extended lecture tour in support of a charity of deep interest in the South, but his failing health brought his effort to an early close.
The fiery soul of Father Ryan soon burned out its frail setting. In his forty-eighth year he retired to a Franciscan Monastery in Louisville, intending to make the annual retreat and at its close to finish his "Life of Christ," begun some time before. He arrived at the Convent of St. Bonifacius March 23, 1886. The environment of the old Monastery, the first German Catholic establishment in Louisville, built in 1838, is not attractive. The building is on a narrow side street filled with small houses and shops crowded up to the sidewalk. But the interior offered a peaceful home for which the world-weary heart of the Poet-Priest was grateful. From a balcony where he would sit, breathing in the cool air and resting his soul in the unbroken silence, he looked across the courtyard shaded by beautiful trees, filled with flowers and trellised vines, his heart revelling in the riot of color, the wilderness of greenery, all bathed in golden floods of sunshine and canopied with an ever-changing and ever-glorious stretch of azure sky.
Father Ryan was never again to go out from this peaceful harbor into the tumultuous billows of world-life. He had been there but a short time when his physician told him that he must prepare for death. "Why," he said, "I did that long years ago." The time of rest for which he had prayed in years gone by was near at hand.
My feet are wearied and my hands are tired,My soul oppressed—And I desire, what I have long desired—Rest—only rest.
My feet are wearied and my hands are tired,My soul oppressed—And I desire, what I have long desired—Rest—only rest.
My feet are wearied and my hands are tired,
My soul oppressed—
And I desire, what I have long desired—
Rest—only rest.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
The burden of my days is hard to bear,But God knows best;And I have prayed—but vain has been my prayerFor rest—sweet rest.
The burden of my days is hard to bear,But God knows best;And I have prayed—but vain has been my prayerFor rest—sweet rest.
The burden of my days is hard to bear,
But God knows best;
And I have prayed—but vain has been my prayer
For rest—sweet rest.
In his last days his mind was filled with reminiscences of the war and he would arouse the monastery and tell the priests and brothers, "Go out into the city and tell the people that trouble is at hand. War is coming with pestilence and famine and they must prepare to meet the invader."
On Thursday of Holy Week, April 22, 1886, the weary life drifted out upon the calm sea of Eternal Peace.
"BACON AND GREENS"
DR. GEORGE WILLIAM BAGBY
We, the general and I, were the first to be informed of the supernal qualities of bacon and greens. All Virginians were aware of the prime importance of this necessary feature of an Old Dominion dinner, but that "a Virginian could not be a Virginian without bacon and greens" was unknown to us until the discoverer of that ethnological fact. Dr. George William Bagby, read us his lecture on these cheerful comestibles. We were the first to see the frost that "lies heavy on the palings and tips with silver the tops of the butter-bean poles, where the sere and yellow pods are chattering in the chilly breeze."
In the early days after the war Dr. Bagby had a pleasant habit of dropping into our rooms at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, and as soon as the ink was dry on that combination of humor and pathos and wisdom to which he gave the classic title of "Bacon and Greens" he brought it and read it to us. I can still follow the pleasant ramble on which he took us in fancy through a plantation road, the innumerable delights along the way never to be appreciated to their full extent by any but a real Virginian brought up on bacon and greens, and the arrival at the end of the journey, where we were taken possession of as if we "were the Prodigal Son or the last number of theRichmond Enquirer." My eyes were the first to fill with tears over the picture of the poor old man at the last, sitting by the dying fire in the empty house, while the storm raged outside.
Though so thoroughly approving of "bacon and greens," there was another feature of Virginia life, as well as of Southern life generally, that met with Dr. Bagby's stern opposition—the duel. I once had opportunity to note his earnestness in trying to prevent a meeting of this kind. Two young men of whom General Pickett was very fond, Page McCarty, a writer for the press and an idol of Richmond society, and a brilliant young lawyer named Mordecai became involved in a quarrel which led to a challenge. The innocent cause of the dispute was the golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty, Mary Triplett, the belle of Richmond, who had long been the object of Page McCarty's devotion but had shown a preference for another adorer. Page wrote some satiric verses which, though no name was given, were known by all Richmond to be leveled at Miss Triplett. Mr. Mordecai resented the verses and the dispute which followed resulted in a challenge. Dr. Bagby came to our rooms when Page McCarty was there and made an unavailing effort to secure peace. Both he and the general were unsuccessful in their pacific attempts, the duel took place and Page McCarty, who bore a name that had in former times become famous in the duelling annals of Virginia, killed his antagonist at first shot.
Though so strongly opposed to the practice, Dr. Bagby twice came near taking a principal part in a duel. Soon after the close of the war he wrote an editorial on prisoners of war, in which he took the ground that more Southern soldiers died in Northern prisons than Northerners in Southern prisons, giving figures in support of his statement. A Northern officer in Richmond answered the article, questioning its veracity. The doctor promptly sent a challenge to combat which the officer declined, saying that he had fought hard enough for the prisoners in war-time, he did not intend to fight for them now that hostilities were over.
The second time that our genial humorist came near the serious reality of a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of the misunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazine article in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of Virginia Editor. The essay was a source of amusement to all its readers except one editor, who imagined himself insulted. Urged on by misguided friends, he challenged the author of the offending paper who, notwithstanding his opposition to the code, accepted. A meeting was arranged and the belligerents had arrived at historic Bladensburg with blood-thirsty intent, when one of those sunny souls, possessed of a universality of mind which rendered him a friend to all parties, arrived on the scene and a disastrous outcome was averted.
Dr. Bagby has been called "a Virginia realist." To him, receiving his first views of life from the foot of the Blue Ridge, one realism of the external world was too beautiful to admit of his finding in the ideal anything that could more nearly meet his fancy-picture of loveliness than the scenes which opened daily before his eyes. Years later a memory of his early home returns to him in the dawn:
Suddenly there came from thicket or copse of the distant forest, I could not tell where, a "wood-note wild" of some bird I had not heard for half a century nearly, and in an instant the beauty, the mystery, the holiness of nature came back to me just as it came in childhood when sometimes my playmates left me alone in the great orchard of my home in Cumberland.
He avows himself
—a pagan and a worshipper of Pan, loving the woods and waters, and preferring to go to them (when my heart was stirred thereto by that mysterious power which, as I conceive, cares little for worship made stately and to order on certain recurring calendar days) rather than to most of the brick and mortar pens that are supposed to hold in some way that which the visible universe no more contains than the works of his hands contain the sculptor who makes them; for I take it that the glittering show revealed by the mightiest telescope, or by the hope mightier even than the imagination of the highest mind, is but as a parcel of motes shining in a single thin beam of the great sun unseen and hidden behind shutters never to be wide opened.
Our "Virginia Realist" needed not to call upon his imagination for personalities with which to fill his free-hand sketches of nature, for there was in his kindly humor and geniality a charm which drew forth from all he met just the qualities necessary to fill in his world with the characters he desired. A wide and deep sympathy enabled him to make that world so real and true that his readers entered it at once and found therein such entertaining companionship that they were fain to abide there ever after.
In 1835, when a boy fresh from Parley's History of America, the future humorist made a journey from Cumberland County to Lynchburg, hearing by the way alarming sounds which the initiated recognized as the report of the blasting of rocks on the "Jeems and Kanawha Canell." To the boy, with second-hand memories of Washington and his men tramping confusedly about his mind, the noises signified a cannonade and he waited in terrified excitement for the British bullet that was to put him beyond the conflicts of the world, trying to postpone the evil moment by hiding between two large men who were fellow-passengers with him. This was in the days when the celebrated "Canell" was a subject for the imagination to contemplate as a triumph of futurity and an object for hope to feed upon—a period in which the traveller embarked upon a fascinating batteau and spent a week of dreamy beauty in sailing from Lynchburg to Richmond and ten days back to the hill city. Time was not money in those days, it was vision and peace and color and sunshine and all wherein the soul of man delighteth itself and reveleth in the joy of living. The stream of imagination was no more dammed than the river in which "shad used to run to Lynchburg," showing a highly developed æsthetic taste on the part of the shad. The youthful traveller went to the Eagle Hotel and took a view of Main Street and dared not even wonder if he should ever be big enough to live in Richmond. Rapt soul of youth's dawn, with myriad dreams all to vanish when the sun rises upon the morning!
On his return from an absence of two years in the North the great Canal was completed and, while his early impression of the unparallelled magnitude of the Queen City had suffered revision, his visions of journeying by canal were yet to be realized. At the foot of Eighth Street, Richmond, he took the packet-boat, passed under Seventh Street bridge, and with the other passengers lingered on deck to see Richmond slowly disappear in the distance. That night the doleful packet-horn, contrasted with his memory of the cheerful, musical note of the old stage-horn, brought to the lad his first realization of the inadequacies of modern improvements.
Ascending the James the traveller had a view of the best of the old Virginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphere of serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that lay cob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softly tinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books. The gentle humorist lived to see that life pass away from the Old Dominion and all too soon he vanished into another world where, like all true Virginians, he expected to find the old home-life again.
These canal days were in the early Dickens period, and occasionally the youthful traveller could not resist the temptation to go below and lose himself in those pages which had then almost as potent a charm in their novelty as they have now in their friendly familiarity. But the river-isle, which held an interest in futurity for him because of his intention to found a romance there when he should be "big enough to write for the papers," would draw him back to the deck. There was a path across the hills that the passengers must follow, disembarking for that purpose. Near Manchester was a haunted house which he looked upon with those ghostly shivers that made a person so delightfully uncomfortable, for he, like the rest of us, did believe in ghosts, whatever he might say to the contrary. There was the ruined mill and, best of all, the Three-Mile Lock, inspiring him with the highest ambition of his life, to be a lock-keeper. Then came Richmond; the metropolis of the world, to the young voyager.
DR. GEORGE W. BAGBY
DR. GEORGE W. BAGBYFrom the portrait in the possession of the family
Dr. Bagby studied for his profession at the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania and from there went to Lynchburg, opening an office where now stands the opera house. Unfortunately for his professional career but happily for the cause of the literature of Virginia life, the office of theLynchburg Virginianwas near, and its editor, Mr. James McDonald, proved a kindred soul to the young physician. In the absences of the editor, Dr. Bagby filled his chair and fell a victim to the fascination with which the Demon of the Fourth Estate lures his chosen to their doom. In Lynchburg he first found his true calling and there, too, he met with his first failure, the demise of theLynchburg Express, of which he was part owner, and which went to the wall by reason of the well-known weakness of genius in regard to business matters.
Upon the collapse of theExpressDr. Bagby went to Washington as correspondent for a number of papers, and while there attained distinction as a humorist through the "Letters of Mozis Addums," written for theSouthern Literary Messenger, of Richmond.
His abiding place is of hazy uncertainty, one of his kinsmen saying—"He didn't live anywhere," He might as well have dwelt in his own "Hobgoblinopolis." His wanderings had taught him the peculiar charm of the Virginia roads of that day, as evidenced by the aspiration of "Mozis Addums" when contemplating the limitations of his "Fifty Millions":
I want to give Virginia a perfect system of county roads, so that one may get off at a station and go to the nearest country-house without breaking his neck, and it would take five hundred millions to do that.
It may be, as the doctor laments, that "The old Virginia gentleman, All of the olden time," has passed away, the colonial house is modernized, and the ghost, the killing of whom would be "an enormity far greater than the crime of killing a live man," has been laid to rest for half a century, but the old scenes and the old-time life come back to us who once knew it, in the pages of the perennial boy who recalls the time when "me and Billy Ivins and the other fellows set forth with six pine poles and a cymling full of the best and biggest fishing worms," to fish in the Appomattox where it "curves around the foot of Uncle Jim's plantation," and where there is a patriarchal beech with a tangle of roots whereon the Randolphs of historic note were wont to repose in the days long gone. This fishing party is under the fair October skies when "the morn, like an Eastern queen, is sumptuously clad in blue and gold; the sheen of her robes in dazzling sunlight, and she comes from her tent of glistening, silken, celestial warp, beaming with tender smiles." "It is a day of days for flatback, provided the moon is right." But "Billy Ivins swears that the planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish—it's all confounded superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will kill him for a fool."
Oh, there were great old times on the Appomattox in the olden days, before its waves had turned battle-red and flashed that savage tint along the river-bank for all coming time.
AVENEL
"AVENEL"The home of the Burwells, where Dr. Bagby spent many happy days
A part of the conversation shows us that this fishing expedition took place in the autumn of 1859, not a year before Dr. Bagby was called to the post of editor of theSouthern Literary Messenger, taking the place of the poet, John R. Thompson, who was sent to England to lead the forlorn hope of a magazine to represent the Southern cause in London. A banquet was given at Zetelle's restaurant as a farewell to Mr. Thompson and welcome to Dr. Bagby.
The office of theMessengerwas in the Law Building, a four-storied structure erected in 1846 on the southeast corner of Capitol Square, fronting on Franklin Street. Here he was hard at work, making theMessengerworthy of its former editors, his predecessor, Mr. Thompson, Mr. White, of early days, Edgar A. Poe, and a succession of brilliant writers, only less widely known, when the guns before Sumter tempted the new editor to the field, a position for which he was ill fitted as to physical strength, whatever might be the force of his patriotism. He was soon running risks of pneumonia from the effects of over-drilling and the chilling breezes from Bull Run Mountain, and making up his mind "not to desert, but to get killed at the first opportunity," that being the most direct route he could think of to the two prime essentials of life, a clean shirt and solitude. He neither deserted nor was killed, but was detailed to write letters and papers for one of the officers, and slept through the fight of the 18th at Manassas as a result of playing night orderly from midnight to morning.
Under the cloudless sky of the perfect Sunday, the twenty-first, he watched the progress of the battle till the cheer that rang from end to end of the Confederate line told him that the South had won. After midnight that night he carried to the telegraph office the message in which President Davis announced the victory and, walking back through the clear, still night, saw the comet, forerunner of evil, hanging over the field, as if in recognition of a fiery spirit on earth akin to its own. At headquarters on Monday, the 22d, he looked out at the pouring rain and raged over the inaction which kept the victorious army idle on the field of victory instead of following up the advantage by a march into the enemy's Capital, a movement which he thought could have been carried through to complete success.
Having watched over his wounded friend, Lieutenant James K. Lee, until death came with eternal peace. Dr. Bagby was sent with the dead soldier to Richmond and soon afterward was discharged because of ill health, "and thus ended the record of an unrenowned warrior."
He returned to his work on theMessengerand the editorial sanctum became the meeting place of the wits of Richmond. It was here that the celebrated Confederate version of "Mother Goose" was evolved from the conjoined wisdom of the circle and written with the stub of the editorial pencil on the "cartridge-paper table-cloth," one stanza dealing with a certain Northern general thus:
Little Be-Pope came on with a lope,Jackson, the Rebel, to find him;He found him at last, then ran very fast,With his gallant invaders behind him.
Little Be-Pope came on with a lope,Jackson, the Rebel, to find him;He found him at last, then ran very fast,With his gallant invaders behind him.
Little Be-Pope came on with a lope,
Jackson, the Rebel, to find him;
He found him at last, then ran very fast,
With his gallant invaders behind him.
The various authors were astonished to find their productions in the next issue of theMessengerand were later dismayed when the verses were read at a meeting of the Mosaic Club, each with the name of the writer attached.
While editor of theMessenger, Dr. Bagby wrote occasionally for theRichmond Examiner, thereby becoming associated in a friendly way with its editor, John M. Daniel, whose brilliant and continuous fight upon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before the public. Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of theExaminer, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchant pen in treating of public affairs. This led to his possession of the famous latchkey which "fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, opposite the African Church," a key of which he wrote that it "has its charm," and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readers than any other such article has ever proved.
These two men, so different in view-point and expression, so similar in principle and purpose, met in Washington in 1861 at Brown's Hotel, that famous old hostelry dear to the Southern heart in the years before the tide of war swept the old Washington away forever and brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life. Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of theExaminerwas apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family.
That latchkey gave to its holder entrance to the first floor front room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty. The dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which Mr. Daniel was wont to refer as the former property of "old Memminger," that is, Secretary Memminger of the Confederate Treasury, who had sold his household effects on leaving his home on Church Hill. Over the mantel in the bachelor's chamber hung a miniature on ivory, "the most beautiful I have ever seen," said the doctor, an unknown beauty whose charms mystified as well as enchanted the observer; a wondrously accomplished lady of title and wealth whom Mr. Daniel had known abroad. The visitor must have viewed with some degree of curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times to buy one?" "—— it, sir! let him stay at home," was the decisive answer.
On a second floor passage was an object which must have excited more envy than the magnificent mirrors and solid old furniture were capable of arousing—a bag of Java coffee, and coffee thirty dollars a pound—the latter fact not deterring the luxurious owner of this stately abode from imbuing his pet terriers with the coffee-drinking habit. A little room cut off from a passage in the third story was a library of old and rare editions of the classics. A back room, sunlit and warm, gave a view of James River, the Henrico Hills, and the spacious dells and forests of Chesterfield. To the mind of Dr. Bagby all these things were represented by "John M. Daniel's Latchkey" and, for all the charm of "Home, Sweet Home," is it not better to have the privileges without the responsibilities of a latchkey?
Next to the editorial office of theMessengerthat of theDaily Examinerwas the place with which Dr. Bagby was, perhaps, best acquainted in Richmond. There, with the fiery editor, he spent his evenings in reading proof, comforted by a mild cigar and protected by a Derringer which Mr. Daniel would put on the table when he first arrived, a not unnecessary precaution, for if there was one place more dangerous than another in the Richmond of war days it was almost any point in the near vicinity of the belligerent editor of theExaminer.
Dr. Bagby was married to Miss Parke Chamberlayne of Richmond, and we may be sure that she was the model from which he drew his charming study of "the Virginia lady of the best type," who accompanies "The Old Virginia Gentleman" in his pages.
After the close of the war Dr. Bagby attained high distinction as a lecturer on Southern topics and later served his State as assistant secretary. But in all that he did there was with him the lost dream of the nation he had served so well through the dark and stormy years of strife, and in August, 1883, he passed beyond into the land where earth's broken hearts are renewed to youth.
It was written of him: "There is no man left in Virginia fit to lift the lid of his inkstand."
"WOMAN AND POET"
MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON
"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming regions—Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of Margaret Junkin Preston.
When I spoke of the beautiful scenery Mrs. Preston asked me if I had read Professor Maury's description of it. I replied that I had not. "I am glad," she said, "because now that you have seen our Nature-pictures you will enjoy the description so much more."
Though the name and work of Margaret Preston had long been shrined in the hearts of a host of known friends and endeared to many unknown readers whose lives had been cheered by the buoyant hopefulness expressed in her writings, she was very modest in regard to her productions, yet held it a duty to continue writing for others the thoughts which had helped her. When we were at supper in the home of Professor Lyle, who was gifted with an unusually poetic mind, he repeated passages from favorite authors. On being asked if he did not sometimes write poetry, he replied that he had often written rhymes and loved to do it, but when he would afterward read Virgil and Shakespeare and Tennyson he would tear up his own verses, feeling that he ought not to make the effort.
"Then," replied Mrs. Preston, "the gardener should not plant the seeds that bring forth the little forget-me-nots and snowdrops. He should plant only the great multiflora roses and the Lady Bankshires and magnolias."
Mrs. Preston spent much of her time in knitting because the weakness of her eyes made reading and writing difficult. "Are you never tired of knitting?" I asked. She replied that it did not tire her, and told me that Mrs. Lee said she loved to knit because she did not have to put her mind on the work. She could think and talk as well when she was knitting for the reason that she did not have to keep her eyes nor her attention upon what she was doing. She knew perfectly well when she came to a seam. In a letter from a soldier to Mrs. Lee he thanked her for the socks she had sent him, and wrote; "I have fourteen pairs of socks knitted by my mother and my mother's sisters and the Church Sewing Society, and I have not a shirt to my back nor a pair of trousers to my legs nor a whole pair of shoes to my feet." "But," said Mrs. Lee as she concluded the story, "I continued to knit socks just the same."
The first open-end thimble I ever saw was one Mrs. Preston used when I was with her at the Springs. I remarked upon it and she said that when she used a thimble she always had that kind. "I feel about a thimble as I do about mitts, which I always wear instead of gloves, because I like to see my fingers come through. So I like to see my finger come through my thimble. It is a tailor's thimble. Tailors always use that kind. I do not know whether they like to see their fingers come through or not." I had heard it said that it takes nine tailors to make a man and now I reflected that it would take eighteen tailors to make a thimble. Upon presenting this mathematical problem to Mrs. Preston she told me about the origin of the old saying:
"It was not that kind of tailor at first. In old England the custom was to announce a death by tolling a bell. After the bell had ceased tolling, a number of strokes, called 'tailers,' indicated whether the death was of a child, a woman or a man; three for a child, nine for a man. People counting would say, 'Nine tailers, that's a man,' which in time became colloquially 'Nine tailers make a man.' When the custom became obsolete the saying remained, its application was forgotten,owas substituted foreand it was used in derogation of a most worthy and necessary member of the body politic."
Margaret Preston was very small, in explanation of which fact she told me there was a story that she had been tossed on the horns of a cow. There was Scotch blood in the Junkin family and with it had descended the superstition that this experience dwarfs a child's growth. When she sat upon an ordinary chair her little feet did not touch the floor. She had a way of smoothing the front of her dress with her hands as she talked.
Knowing her as she was then and remembering her devotion to the South and the sacrifices she had made for her home through the dark years, one might have thought that she was a native daughter of Virginia. In the village of Milton, Pennsylvania, where her father, Reverend George Junkin, was pastor of the Associate Reformed Church, Margaret Junkin was born on the 19th of May, 1820, in a small, plain, rented house, a centre of love and harmony, with simple surroundings, for the family finances did not purchase household luxuries, but were largely expended in assisting those less fortunately placed.
In this little home, where rigid economy was practised and high aspirations reigned, our future poet entered upon the severe intellectual training which caused her at twenty-one, when the door of scholastic learning was closed upon her by the partial failure of her sight, to be called a scholar, though she sorrowfully resented the title, asking, "How can you speak of one as a scholar whose studies were cut short at twenty-one?"
She received her first instruction from her mother, passing then under the tutorship of her father, who fed his own ambition by gratifying her scholarly tastes, teaching her the Greek alphabet when she was six years old and continuing her training in collegiate subjects until she was forced by failing sight to give up her reading.
When she was ten the family removed to Germantown, where her father had charge of the Manual Labor School, and Margaret enjoyed the advantages at that time afforded by the city of Philadelphia, gathering bright memories which irradiated her somewhat sombre life then and lightened her coming years.
In Lafayette, a new college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin soon found opportunity to carry on his system of training for practical and religious life and here Margaret spent sixteen happy and busy years—happy but for the gray veil that fell between her and her loved studies before those years had passed. She was obliged to prepare her Greek lessons at night, and the only time her father had for hearing her recitations was in the early morning before breakfast, which in that household meant in the dim candlelight of the period; not a wholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth of forests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of the Delaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawns and glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination to melodious effort. Of Margaret as she was in the Easton days in 1836, a Lafayette freshman thus writes:
A taste for literary pursuits soon drew us together and a warm friendship sprang up, which continued unbroken to the day of her death. Her remarkable poetic talent had even then won the admiration of her associates, and to have been admitted into the charmed circle of which she was the center, where literature and literary work were discussed, admired and appreciated, I have ever counted a high privilege.
Her next home, in Oxford, Ohio, where Dr. Junkin had been elected to the presidency of Miami University, was not a dream of delight to the poetic soul of the young girl, for Scotch Calvinism, perhaps more rigid than the Calvinism of Calvin himself, which did not admit of fitting square dogmatic nails into round theological holes, insured a succession of oft-recurrent tempests for the family, as well as for the good doctor. The one letter which remains from the correspondence of Margaret Junkin at that time, though indicating a buoyant nature on the part of the writer, gives a sad view of financial difficulties, her mother's fragility, uncongenial climate, and the persecution directed against her father. Some of these misfortunes were obviated by a return to Easton, Dr. Junkin having been recalled to the presidency of Lafayette College, from which he had withdrawn a few years before because of a disagreement with the trustees on a question of government.
Not long afterward the failing health of Margaret's young brother Joseph led Dr. Junkin to accept the presidency of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, in the hope that change of climate might bring health to the invalid. Thus in the fall of 1848 the step was taken which made Margaret Junkin one of our Southern poets, devoted to her adopted State and a loved and honored daughter thereof.
On the arrival in Lexington a younger member of the family wrote:
My first memory of Lexington is of arriving, at midnight, in a December snowstorm, after a twelve hours' ride from Staunton in an old stage coach. This was before there was a turnpike or plank road, and the ups and downs we had that night made an impression on our bodies as well as our minds.
A later memory gives us a pretty glimpse of daily life as it went on in that charming little Virginia town:
From the time we went to Lexington we all used to take delightful, long rambles, rather to the surprise of Lexington people, who were not quite so energetic. We found the earliest spring flowers on the "Cliffs," and "Cave Spring" was a favorite spot to walk to (several miles from town) stopping always for a rest at the picturesque ruins of old "Liberty Hall."
"Liberty Hall" was the name of an old school building outside of Lexington.
Writing reproachfully to a friend for not coming to visit her, Margaret tells of the "sweet pure air of our Virginia mountains," of the morning "overture of the birds," "such as all the Parodis and Linds and Albonis in the world could never equal." She tantalizes her friend with a glowing picture of a gallop "over misty hills, down into little green shaded glens, under overhanging branches all sparkling with silvery dew." She tells her that they might take a walk "to 'The Cliffs,' to see the sun go down behind yon wavy horizon of mountains, if its setting promised to be fine, and saunter back in the gloaming, just in time to have coffee handed in the free and easy social Virginia style in the library."
In Lexington, Margaret's first sorrow came to her, the death of her brother Joseph, whose health had not improved with the change to Lexington and who had been sent to Florida, where he found a "far-off lonely grave."
A description of the young poet at this time is given by a girl admirer:
Miss Maggie was the object of my secret, enthusiastic worship. She was not exactly pretty, but her slight figure, fair complexion and beautiful auburn curls furnished a piquant setting for her refined, intelligent countenance which made up for the lack of mere beauty. I used to thrill with admiration as I watched her riding at a swift gallop, a little black velvet cap showing off her fairness, the long curls blowing about her face....
We wondered that a person who could write poetry, which seemed to our limited experience a sort of miraculous gift, should condescend to talk to us about our studies and games as if she were one of us.
It was in Lexington that her power reached its full development, and she even took prizes in magazines and newspapers for some stories with what her friends called "prim heroes and pasteboard heroines," classifications which she good-naturedly accepted, as she readily acknowledged that she had no gift for story-telling.
In Lexington, Margaret's sister, Eleanor, met the grave and dignified Major T.J. Jackson, Professor of Mathematics in the Virginia Military Institute, and in 1853 was married to him. Here the death of the sweet and gentle mother brought to the life of Margaret Junkin its crowning sorrow, and shortly afterward the lovely young wife of Major Jackson left the earthly home.
The Professor of Latin in the Virginia Military Institute was Major J.T.L. Preston, grandson of Edmund Randolph. He was a man of great dignity of character and manner and of unusual scholarship. Though Margaret Junkin had at times requested her nearest of kin to seclude her in an asylum for the insane should she ever manifest a tendency to marry a widower with children, she proceeded quite calmly and with reason apparently unclouded, to fall in love with and marry Professor Preston, notwithstanding his possession of seven charming and amiable sons and daughters left over from a former congenial marriage. She proved a most devoted mother to her large family, who returned her affection in full measure. A volume of her poetry is dedicated to her eldest stepdaughter who, after the death of Margaret, was her most loving and appreciative biographer. To her great sorrow, one of the sons was killed in battle.
The marriage was followed by a visit to "Oakland" on the James River, the home of Major Preston's sister, Mrs. William Armstead Cocke, where at first the ornately dignified style of living rather dazed the bride accustomed as she had been to the simplicity of a home in which the only luxury was in giving help to others. Colonel William C. Preston, the eloquent South Carolina orator, met the "little red-headed Yankee" with distinct aversion to her "want of style and presence," but was soon heard to declare with enthusiastic admiration that she was "an encyclopedia in small print." Here among ancestral trees she found inspiration and in the society of her new sister she enjoyed the most delightful soul companionship.
In the early years of her married life writing was laid aside while she devoted herself to the care of her family, the entertainment of the many visitors who came to the Preston house and the beautification of her new home, finding plenty of space in the attractive house and extensive grounds with their noble trees, orchard, garden and meadow for the outlet of all her imagination. In this ideal home she was living her peaceful and happy life when the bugle call destroyed the serenity of the country. She suffered one of her greatest sorrows in the difference of political opinion between her Northern father and her Southern husband. The latter, holding that while secession was unwise, coercion was tyranny, followed Virginia when she cast in her lot with the seceding States. Dr. Junkin and his widowed youngest daughter, Julia, returned to Philadelphia, while Colonel Preston joined Stonewall Jackson's army.
Margaret Preston's worship of the muses was woven in with her devotion to the household goddesses, and in her journal the receiving of the first copy of her new volume of poems is sandwiched in between the making of twenty-two gallons of blackberry wine and thirty-three bottles of ketchup. House-cleaning and "Tintoretto"; pickles and "Mona Lisa"; hearth-painting and "Bacharach wine" were all closely connected in her every-day experience. From a ride through the blue hills she would return with a poem singing in her heart, radiant with sun, shaded with the mists of the darkening heights, and when it had bubbled over in laughter and dreams and tears and was safe upon the written page, she would go into the kitchen and produce such marvels of cookery as made her a housewife of more than local fame.
One of her dearest friends was Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who was connected with the Military Institute in the early years after the war. On his death-bed his wife asked him if she might bury him in Hollywood near Richmond. "As you please, my dear," he said, "but do not carry me through the pass until the ivy and laurel are in bloom and you can cover my bier with their beauty." When the burial service was read over him lying in state in the Institute library, Mrs. Preston was not able to venture over the threshold, so she remained in the shelter of the porch, and when the family returned from the funeral she read them the lines she had composed in the hour that they had been gone: