[The above mention of shipwreck, refers to the disastrous loss of thePulaski; an event, the horror of which was rendered more memorable to me by an episode of noble courage, of which our neighbor, Mr. James Cooper, of Georgia, was the hero, and of which I have spoken in the journal I kept during my residence on our plantation.]
[The above mention of shipwreck, refers to the disastrous loss of thePulaski; an event, the horror of which was rendered more memorable to me by an episode of noble courage, of which our neighbor, Mr. James Cooper, of Georgia, was the hero, and of which I have spoken in the journal I kept during my residence on our plantation.]
Rockaway, Friday, August 10th.
Where are you, my dearest Harriet; and what are you doing? Drinking of queer-tasting waters, and soaking in queer-smelling ones? Are you becoming saturated with sulphur, or penetrated with iron? Are you chilling your inside with draughts from some unfathomable well, or warming your outside with baths from some ready-boiled spring?
LOVE FOR THE ABSENT.Oh! vainest quest of that torment, the love for the absent! Do you know, Harriet, that I have more than once seriously thought of never writing any more to any of my friends? the total cessation of intercourse would soon cause the acutest vividness of feeling to subside, and become blunt (for so are we made): the fruitless feeling after, the vain eager pursuit in thought of those whose very existence may actually have ceased, is such a wearisome pain! This being linked by invisible chains to the remote ends of the earth, and constantly feeling the strain of the distance upon one's heart,—this sort of death in life, for you are all so far away that you are almost asbadas dead to me,—is a condition that I think makes intercourse (such intercourse as is possible) less of a pleasure than of a pain; and the thought that somany lives with which mine was mingled so closely are flowing away yonder, in vain for me here (and of hereafter who can guess!), prevents my contentedly embracing my own allotted existence, and keeps me still with eyes and thoughts averted towards the past, from the path of life I am appointed to tread. If I could believe it right or kind, or that those who love me would not be grieved by it, I really feel sometimes as if I could make up my mind to turn my thoughts once and for all away from them, as from the very dead, and never more by this disjointed communion revive, in all its acuteness, the bitter sense of loss and separation....
You see I discourse of my child's looks; for at present, indeed, I know of nothing else to discourse about in her. Of her experiences in her former states of existence she says nothing, though I try her as Shelley used to do the speechless babies that he met; and her observations upon the present she also keeps religiously to herself, so that I get no profit of either her wisdom or her knowledge....
The vast extent of this country offers every variety of climate which an invalid can require, and its mineral waters afford the same remedies which are sought after in the famous European baths. God has everywhere been bountiful, and doubtless no country is without its own special natural pharmacopæia, its medicines, vegetable and mineral, and healing influences for human disease and infirmity. The medicinal waters of this country are very powerful, and of every variety, and I believe there are some in Virginia which would precisely answer our purpose....
We are now staying for a short time on the Long Island shore, at a place called Rockaway. As I sit writing at my window here, the broad, smooth, blue expanse of the Atlantic stretches out before me, and ships go sailing by that are coming from, or returning to, the lands where you live.
You cannot conceive anything more strange, and to me more distasteful than the life which one leads here. The whole watering-place consists of a few detached cottages, the property of some individuals who are singular enough to comprehend the pleasure of privacy; and one enormous hotel, a huge wooden building, of which we are at present among the inmates.
How manycansleep under this mammoth roof, I know not; but upwards offour hundredhave sat down at one time to feed in the boundless dining-hall. The number of persons now in the house does not, I believe, exceed eighty, and everybody is lamenting the smallness of the company, and the consequent dullness of the place; and I am perpetually called upon to sympathizewith regrets which I am so far from sharing, that I wish, instead of eighty, we had only eight fellow-lodgers.... The general way of life is very disagreeable to me. I cannot, do what I will, find anything but constraint and discomfort in the perpetual presence of a crowd of strangers. The bedrooms are small, and furnished barely as well as a common servant's room in England. They are certainly not calculated for comfortable occupation or sitting alone in; but sitting alone any part of the day is a proceeding contemplated by no one here.
BATHING IN AMERICA.As for bathing, we are carried down to the beach, which is extremely deep and sandy, in an omnibus, by batches of a dozen at a time. There are two little stationary bathing-huts for the use of the whole population; and you dress, undress, dry yourself, and do all you have to do, in the closest proximity to persons you never saw in your life before.... This admitting absolute strangers to the intimacy of one's most private toilet operations is quite intolerable, and nothing but the benefit which I believe the children, as well as myself, derive from the bathing would induce me to endure it.
From this place we go up to Massachusetts—a delightful expedition to me—to our friends the Sedgwicks, who are very dear to me, and almost the only people among whom I have found mental companionship since I have been in this country.
I have not had one line from my sister since her return from Germany, whence she wrote me one letter. I feel anxious about her plans—yet not very—I do not think her going into public life adds much to the anxiety I feel about her.... God bless you, dear. What would I give to be once more within reach of you, and to have one more of our old talks!
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Rockaway, Long Island, August 23d, 1838.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
... I forget whether you visited any of the watering-places of this New World; but if you did not, your estate was the more gracious. This is the second that I have visited, and I dislike it rather more than I did the first, inasmuch as the publicity here extends not only to one's meals, but to those ceremonies of one's toilet which in all civilized parts of the world human beings perform in the strictest seclusion.
The beach is magnificent—ten good miles of hard, sparkling sand, and the broad, open Atlantic rolling its long waves and breaking in one white thunderous cloud along the level expanse.The bathing would be delightful but for the discomfort and positive indecency of the non-accommodation.
There are two small stationary dressing-huts on the beach, and here one is compelled to disrobe and attire one's self in the closest proximity to any other women who may wish to come out of the water or go into it at the same time that one does one's self. Moreover, the beach at bathing time is daily thronged with spectators, before whose admiring gaze one has to emerge all dripping, like Venus, from the waves, and nearly as naked; for one's bathing-dress clings to one's figure, and makes a perfect wet drapery study of one's various members, and so one has to wade slowly and in much confusion of face, thus impeded, under the public gaze, through heavy sand, about half a quarter of a mile, to the above convenient dressing-rooms, where, if one find only three or four persons, stripped or stripping, nude or semi-nude, one may consider one's self fortunate....
I have wished, as heartily as I might for any such thing, that I could have seen the glorification of our little Guelph Lady, the Queen, particularly as the coronation of another English sovereign is scarcely likely to occur during my life; but this unaccomplished desire of mine must go and keep company with many others, which often tend to the other side of the Atlantic. Thank you for your account of my sister.... Hereafter, the want of female sympathy and companionship may prove irksome to her, but at present she will scarcely miss it; she and my father are exceedingly good friends, and pleasant companions and fellow-travelers, and are likely to remain so, unless she should fall in love with, and insist upon marrying, a "fiddler."
Instead of being at Lenox, where I had hoped to be at this season, we are sweltering here in New York, for whatever good we may obtain from doctors, leeches, and medicine. I mean to send S—— up into Berkshire to-morrow; she is well at present, but I fear may not continue so if confined to the city during this dreadfully hot weather.... For myself, I am keeping myself well as hard as I can by taking ice-cold baths, and trudging round the Battery every evening, to the edification of the exceedingly disreputable company who (beside myself) are the only haunters of that one lovely lung of New York.... It is not thought expedient that I should be stared at alone on horseback; being stared at alone on foot, apparently, is not equally pernicious; and so I lose my most necessary exercise; but I may comfort myself with the reflection that should I ever become a sickly, feeble, physically good-for-nothing, broken-down woman, I shall certainly not be singular in this free and enlightenedrepublic, where (even more than anywhere else in the world) singularity appears to be dreaded and condemned above any or all other sins, crimes, and vices....
Pray be kind enough to continue writing to me. Every letter from the other side is to me what the drop of water would have been to the rich man in Hades, whom I dare say you remember. What do you think I am reading? "The Triumphs of God's revenge against the crying and execrablesinneof wilful and premeditatedmurther"—that's something new, is it not?—published in 1635.
So believe me ever very truly yours,
F. A. B.
New York, Friday, August 24th, 1838.
My Dearest Harriet,
ADELAIDE KEMBLE.I wrote to you (I believe) a short time ago, ... but I have since then received a letter from you, and will thank you at once for it, and especially for the details concerning my sister.... I rejoice in the change which must have taken place in her physical condition, which both you and dear Emily describe; indeed, the improvement had begun before I left England.... I believe I appreciate perfectly all the feelings which are prompting her to the choice of the stage for her profession; but I also think that she is unaware (which I am not) of the necessity for excitement, which her mode of life and the influences that have surrounded her from her childhood have created and fostered in her, and for which she is no more answerable than for the color of her hair. I do not even much regret her election, little as I admire the vocation of a public performer. To struggle is allotted to all, let them walk in what paths they will; and her peculiar gifts naturally incline her to the career she is choosing, though I think also that she has much higher intellectual capabilities than those which the vocation of a public singer will ever call into play.... We are always so greatly in the dark in our judgments of others, and so utterly incapable of rightly estimating the motives of their actions and springs of their conduct, that I think in the way of blame or praise, of vehement regret or excessive satisfaction, we need not do much until we know more. I pray God that she may endeavor to be true to herself, and to fulfill her own perception of what is right. Whether she does so or not, neither I, nor any one else, shall know; nor, indeed, is any onereallyconcerned in the matter but herself. She possesses some of the intellectual qualities from which the most exquisite pleasures are derived.... But she will not be happy in this world; but, as nobody else is,she will not be singular in that respect: and in the exercise of her uncommon gifts she may find a profound pleasure, and an enjoyment of the highest kind apart from happiness and its far deeper and higher springs.
Her voice haunts me like something precious that I have lost and go vainly seeking for; other people play and sing her songs, and then, though I seem to listen to them, I hearheragain, and seem to see again that wonderful human soul which beamed from every part of her fine face as she uttered those powerful sweet spells of love, and pity, and terror. To me, her success seems almost a matter of certainty; for those who can make such appeals to the sympathy of their fellow-beings are pretty sure not to fail. Pasta is gone; Malibran is abroad; and Schroeder-Devrient is the only great dramatic singer left, and she remains but as theremainsof what she was; and I see no reason why Adelaide should not be as eminent as the first, who certainly was a glorious artist, though her acting surpassed her singing, and her voice was not an exceptionally magnificent one....
This letter has suffered an interruption of several days, dear Harriet, ... and I and my baby have been sent after S——; and here I am on the top of a hill in the village of Lenox, in what its inhabitants tautologically call "Berkshire county," Massachusetts, with a view before my window which would not disgrace the Jura itself.
Immediately sloping before me, the green hillside, on the summit of which stands the house I am inhabiting, sinks softly down to a small valley, filled with thick, rich wood, in the centre of which a little jewel-like lake lies gleaming. Beyond this valley the hills rise one above another to the horizon, where they scoop the sky with a broken, irregular outline that the eye dwells on with ever new delight as its colors glow and vary with the ascending or descending sunlight, and all the shadowy procession of the clouds. In one direction this undulating line of distance is overtopped by a considerable mountain with a fine jagged crest, and ever since early morning, troops of clouds and wandering showers of rain and the all-prevailing sunbeams have chased each other over the wooded slopes, and down into the dark hollow where the lake lies sleeping, making a pageant far finer than the one Prospero raised for Ferdinand and Miranda on his desert island....
F. A. B.
Lenox, Monday, September 3d, 1838.
It is not very long since I wrote to you, my dear Mrs. Jameson,and I have certainly nothing of very special interest to communicate to warrant my doing so now; but I am in your debt by letters, besides many other things; and having leisure to back my inclination just now, I will indite.
I am sitting "on top," as the Americans say, of the hill of Lenox, looking out at that prospect upon which your eyes have often rested, and making common cause in the eating and living way with Mary and Fanny A——, who have taken up their abode here for a week [Miss Mary and Fanny Appleton; the one afterwards married Robert, son of Sir James Mackintosh; the other, alas! the poet Longfellow]. Never was village hostelry so graced before, surely! There is a pretty daughter of Mr. Dewey's staying in the house besides, with a pretty cousin; and it strikes me that the old Red Inn is having a sort of blossoming season, with all these sweet, handsome young faces shining about it in every direction.
ABSENCE OF CEREMONY.You know the sort of life that is lived here: the absence of all form, ceremony, or inconvenient conventionality whatever. We laugh, and we talk, sing, play, dance, and discuss; we ride, drive, walk, run, scramble, and saunter, and amuse ourselves extremely with little materials (as the generality of people would suppose) wherewith to do so....
The Sedgwicks are under a cloud of sorrow just now.... They are none of them, however, people who suffer themselves to be absorbed by their own personal interests, whether sad or gay; and as in their most prosperous and happy hours they would have sympathy to spare to the sufferings of others, so the sickness and sorrow of these members of their family circle, and the consequent depression they all labor under (for where was a family more united?), does not prevent our enjoying every day delightful seasons of intercourse with them....
Pray write me whatever you hear about my people. Lady Dacre wrote me a kind and very interesting account of my sister the other day. Poor thing! her ordeal is now drawing near, if anybody's ordeal can properly be said to be "drawing near," except before they are born; for surely from beginning to end life is nothing but one long ordeal.
I am glad you like Lady M——; she is a person whom I regard very dearly. It is many years since I first became acquainted with her, and the renewal of our early intimacy took place under circumstances of peculiar interest. Is not her face handsome; and her manner and deportment fine?... I must stop. I see my young ladies coming home from their afternoon drive, and am going with them to spend the hours between this and bed-timeat Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's. Pray continue to write to me, and
Believe me ever yours very truly,
F. A. B.
Begun atLenox, ended atPhiladelphia,Sunday, October 29th, 1838.
Dearest Harriet,
... Since the receipt of your last letter, one from Emily has reached me, bringing me the intelligence of my mother's death!... There is something so deplorable in perceiving (what one only fully perceives as they are ceasing forever) all the blessed uses of which these mysterious human relations are capable, all their preciousness, all their sweetness, all their holiness, alas! alas!...
Cecilia and Mr. Combe arrived in this country by theGreat Westernabout a fortnight ago. On their road from New York to Boston they passed a night within six miles of Lenox, and neither came to see nor sent me word that they were so near, which was being rather more phrenological and philosophically phlegmatical than I should have expected of them. For my heart had warmed to Cecilia in this pilgrimage of hers to a foreign land, where I alone was of kin to her; and I felt as if I both knew and loved her more than I really do....
I understand Mr. Combe has parceled out both his whereabouts and whatabouts, to the very inch and minute, for every day in the next two years to come, which he intends to devote to the phrenological regeneration of this country. I am afraid that he may meet with some disappointment in the result of his labors: not indeed in Boston, where considerable curiosity exists upon that subject, and a general proneness to intellectual exercises of every description....
Throughout New England, his book on the "Constitution of Man," and his brother's, on the treatment of that constitution, are read and valued, and their name is held in esteem by the whole reading community of the North. But I doubt his doing more than exciting a mere temporary curiosity in New York and Philadelphia; and further south I should think he would not be listened to at all, unless he comes prepared to demonstrate phrenologically that the colored population of the Southern States is (or are), by the conformation of their skulls, the legitimate slaves of the whites.
Can anything be stranger than to think of Cecilia trotting over the length and breadth of North America at the heels of a lecturing philosopher? When I think of her in her mother'sdrawing-room in London, in the midst of surroundings and society so different, I find no end to my wonderment. She must have extraordinary adaptability to circumstances in her composition.
I have just finished the play of which you read the beginning in England—my "English Tragedy"—and am, as usual, in high delight just now with my own performance. I wish that agreeable sentiment could last; it is so pleasant while it does! I think I will send it over to Macready, to try if he will bring it out at Covent Garden. I think it might succeed, perhaps; unless, indeed, the story is too objectionable for anything—butreality.
Perhaps I have had my share of health. I am sure I have had enough to be most grateful for, if I should lie on a sick-bed for the rest of my days....
God bless you, dear.
I am ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Philadelphia, Tuesday, November 13th, 1838.
... The sad news of my poor mother's death, my dear Mrs. Jameson, reached me while I was staying up at Lenox, among those whom my good fortune has raised up in this strange country to fill for me the place of the kindred and friends from whom I am so widely sundered....
WINTER IN GEORGIA.That the winter in Georgia, whither we are going immediately, may be beneficial to the invalid member of our party, is the only pleasant anticipation with which I set my face towards a part of the country where the whole manner of existence is repugnant to my feelings, and where the common comforts of life are so little known, that we are obliged to ship a freight of necessary articles of food, for our use while we are on the plantation.
Wheaten bread is unknown, meal made of the Indian corn being alone used there: and though the provision Nature has furnished, in the shape of game, abounds, the only meat, properly so called, which can be procured there, is shipped in barrels (salted, of course) from the North.
Society, or the shadow of it, is not to be dreamt of; and our residence, as far as I can learn, is to be a half-furnished house in the midst of rice-swamps, where our habitual company will be our slaves, and our occasional visitors an alligator or two from the Altamaha.
Catharine Sedgwick is spending the winter in Lenox. She and Mr. and Mrs. R—— and Kate are going to Europe in the spring; and if I should return alive from Slavery, perhaps I may go with them. Pray do not fail to let me know everything youmay hear or see of my sister.... I was at Lenox when your parcel for Catharine Sedgwick arrived. We were all enchanted with the engraving from the German picture of the "Sick Counsellor."
F. A. B.
Dearest Harriet,
RAILWAY TRAVEL.On Friday morning we started from Philadelphia, by railroad, for Baltimore. It is a curious fact enough, that half the routes that are traveled in America are either temporary or unfinished,—one reason, among several, for the multitudinous accidents which befall wayfarers. At the very outset of our journey, and within scarce a mile of Philadelphia, we crossed the Schuylkill, over a bridge, one of the principal piers of which is yet incomplete, and the whole building (a covered wooden one, of handsome dimensions) filled with workmen, yet occupied about its construction. But the Americans are impetuous in the way of improvement, and have all the impatience of children about the trying of a new thing, often greatly retarding their own progress by hurrying unduly the completion of their works, or using them in a perilous state of incompleteness. Our road lay for a considerable length of time through flat, low meadows that skirt the Delaware, which at this season of the year, covered with snow and bare of vegetation, presented a most dreary aspect. We passed through Wilmington (Delaware), and crossed a small stream called the Brandywine, the scenery along the banks of which is very beautiful. For its historical associations I refer you to the life of Washington. I cannot say that the aspect of the town of Wilmington, as viewed from the railroad cars, presented any very exquisite points of beauty; I shall therefore indulge in a few observations upon these same railroad cars just here.
And first, I cannot but think that it would be infinitely more consonant with comfort, convenience, and common sense, if persons obliged to travel during the intense cold of an American winter (in the Northern States), were to clothe themselves according to the exigency of the weather, and so do away with the present deleterious custom of warming close and crowded carriages with sheet-iron stoves, heated with anthracite coal. No words can describe the foulness of the atmosphere, thus robbed of all vitality by the vicious properties of that dreadful combustible, and tainted besides with the poison emitted at every respiration from so many pairs of human lungs. These are facts which the merest tyro in physiological science knows, and the utter disregard of which on the part of the Americans rendersthem the amazement of every traveler from countries where the preservation of health is considered worth the care of a rational creature. I once traveled to Harrisburg in a railroad car, fitted up to carry sixty-four persons, in the midst of which glowed a large stove. The trip was certainly a delectable one. Nor is there any remedy for this: an attempt to open a window is met by a universal scowl and shudder; and indeed it is but incurring the risk of one's death of cold, instead of one's death of heat. The windows, in fact, form the walls on each side of the carriage, which looks like a long green-house upon wheels; the seats, which each contain two persons (a pretty tight fit too), are placed down the whole length of the vehicle, one behind the other, leaving a species of aisle in the middle for the uneasy (a large portion of the traveling community here) to fidget up and down, for the tobacco-chewers to spit in, and for a whole tribe of little itinerant fruit and cake-sellers to rush through, distributing their wares at every place where the train stops. Of course nobody can well sit immediately in the opening of a window when the thermometer is twelve degrees below zero; yet this, or suffocation in foul air, is the only alternative. I generally prefer being half frozen to death to the latter mode of martyrdom.
Attached to the Baltimore cars was a separate apartment for women. It was of comfortable dimensions, and without a stove; and here I betook myself with my children, escaping from the pestilential atmosphere of the other compartment, and performing our journey with ease enough. My only trial here was one which I have to encounter in whatever direction I travel in America, and which, though apparently a trivial matter in itself, has caused me infinite trouble, and no little compassion for the rising generation of the United States—I allude to the ignorant and fatal practice of the women of stuffing their children from morning till night with every species of trash which comes to hand.... I once took the liberty of asking a young woman who was traveling in the same carriage with me, and stuffing her child incessantly with heavy cakes, which she also attempted to make mine eat, her reason for this system,—she replied, it was to "keep her baby good." I looked at her own sallow cheeks and rickety teeth, and could not forbear suggesting to her how much she was injuring her poor child's health. She stared in astonishment, and pursued the process, no doubt wondering what I meant, and how I could be so cruel as not to allow pound-cake to my child. Indeed, as may easily be supposed, it becomes a matter of no little difficulty to enforce my own rigid discipline in the midst of the various offers of dainties which tempt my poorlittle girl at every turn; but I persevere, nevertheless, and am not seldom rewarded by the admiration which her appearance of health and strength excites wherever she goes.
I remember being excessively amused at the woeful condition of an unfortunate gentleman on board one of the Philadelphia boats, whose sickly-looking wife, exhausted with her vain attempts to quiet three sickly-looking children, had in despair given them into his charge. The miserable man furnished each of them with a lump of cake, and during the temporary lull caused by this diversion, took occasion to make acquaintance with my child, to whom he tendered the same indulgence. Upon my refusing it for her, he exclaimed in astonishment—
"Why, madam, don't you allow the little girl cake?"
"No, sir."
"What does she eat, pray?" (as if people lived upon cake generally).
"Bread and milk, and bread and meat."
"What! no butter? no tea or coffee?"
"None whatever."
"Ah!" sighed the poor man, as the chorus of woe arose again from his own progeny, the cake having disappeared down their throats, "I suppose that's why she looks so healthy."
I supposed so, too, but did not inquire whether the gentleman extended his inference.
We pursued our way from Wilmington to Havre de Grace on the railroad, and crossed one or two inlets from the Chesapeake, of considerable width, upon bridges of a most perilous construction, and which, indeed, have given way once or twice in various parts already. They consist merely of wooden piles driven into the river, across which the iron rails are laid, only just raising the train above the level of the water. To traverse with an immense train, at full steam-speed, one of these creeks, nearly a mile in width, is far from agreeable, let one be never so little nervous; and it was with infinite cordiality each time that I greeted the first bush that hung over the water, indicating our approach toterra firma. At Havre de Grace we crossed the Susquehanna in a steamboat, which cut its way through the ice an inch in thickness with marvelous ease and swiftness, and landed us on the other side, where we again entered the railroad carriages to pursue our road.
DISCOMFORTS OF TRAVEL.We arrived in Baltimore at about half-past two, and went immediately on board the Alabama steamboat, which was to convey us to Portsmouth, and which started about three-quarters of an hour after, carrying us down the Chesapeake Bay to the shoresof Virginia. We obtained an unutterably hard beefsteak for our dinner, having had nothing on the road, but found ourselves but little fortified by the sight of what we really could not swallow. Between six and seven, however, occurred that most comprehensive repast, a steamboat tea; after which, and the ceremony of choosing our berths, I betook myself to the reading of "Oliver Twist" till half-past eleven at night. I wonder if Mr. Dickens had any sensible perception of the benedictions which flew to him from the bosom of the broad Chesapeake as I closed his book; I am afraid not. Helen says, "'tis pity well-wishing has no body," so it is that gratitude, admiration, and moral approbation have none, for the sake of such a writer, and yet he might, peradventure, be smothered. I had a comical squabble with the stewardess,—a dirty, funny, good-humored old negress, who was driven almost wild by my exorbitant demands for towels, of which she assured me one was a quite ample allowance. Mine, alas! were deep down in my trunk, beyond all possibility of getting at, even if I could have got at the trunk, which I very much doubt. Now I counted no less thansevenhandsome looking-glasses on board of this steamboat, where one towel was considered all that was requisite, not even for each individual, but for each washing-room. This addiction to ornament, and neglect of comfort and convenience, is a strong characteristic of Americans at present, luxuries often abounding where decencies cannot be procured. 'Tis the necessary result of a young civilization, and reminds me a little of Rosamond's purple jar, or Sir Joshua Reynolds's charming picture of the naked child, with a court cap full of flowers and feathers stuck on her head.
After a very wretched night on board the boat, we landed about nine o'clock, at Portsmouth, Virginia. I must not omit to mention that my morning ablutions were as much excepted to by the old negress as those of the preceding evening. Indeed, she seemed perfectly indignant at the forbearance of one lady, who withdrew from the dressing-room on finding me there, exclaiming—
"Go in, go in, I tell you; they always washes two at a time in them rooms."
At Portsmouth there is a fine dry dock and navy yard, as I was informed.... The appearance of the place in general was mean and unpicturesque. Here I encountered the first slaves I ever saw, and the sight of them in no way tended to alter my previous opinions upon this subject. They were poorly clothed; looked horribly dirty, and had a lazy recklessness in their air and manner as they sauntered along, which naturally belongs to creatureswithout one of the responsibilities which are the honorable burthen of rational humanity.
Our next stopping-place was a small town called Suffolk. Here the negroes gathered in admiring crowds round the railroad carriages. They seem full of idle merriment and unmeaning glee, and regard with an intensity of curiosity perfectly ludicrous the appearance and proceedings of such whites as they easily perceive are strangers in their part of the country. As my child leaned from the carriage-window, her brilliant complexion drew forth sundry exclamations of delight from the sooty circle below, and one woman, grinning from ear to ear, and displaying a most dazzling set of grinders, drew forward a little mahogany-colored imp, her grandchild, and offered her to the little "Missis" for her waiting-maid. I told her the little missis waited upon herself; whereupon she set up a most incredulous giggle, and reiterated her proffers, in the midst of which our kettle started off, and we left her.
To describe to you the tract of country through which we now passed would be impossible, so forlorn a region it never entered my imagination to conceive. Dismal by nature, indeed, as well as by name, is that vast swamp, of which we now skirted the northern edge, looking into its endless pools of black water, where the melancholy cypress and juniper-trees alone overshadowed the thick-looking surface, their roots all globular, like huge bulbous plants, and their dark branches woven together with a hideous matting of giant creepers, which clung round their stems, and hung about the dreary forest like a drapery of withered snakes.
It looked like some blasted region lying under an enchanter's ban, such as one reads of in old stories. Nothing lived or moved throughout the loathsome solitude, and the sunbeams themselves seemed to sicken and grow pale as they glided like ghosts through these watery woods. Into this wilderness it seems impossible that the hand of human industry, or the foot of human wayfaring should ever penetrate; no wholesome growth can take root in its slimy depths; a wild jungle chokes up parts of it with a reedy, rattling covert for venomous reptiles; the rest is a succession of black ponds, sweltering under black cypress boughs,—a place forbid.
The wood which is cut upon its borders is obliged to be felled in winter, for the summer, which clothes other regions with flowers, makes this pestilential waste alive with rattlesnakes, so that none dare venture within its bounds, and I should even apprehend that, traveling as rapidly as one does on the railroad,and only skirting this district of dismay, one might not escape the fetid breathings it sends forth when the warm season has quickened its stagnant waters and poisonous vegetation.
After passing this place, we entered upon a country little more cheerful in its aspect, though the absence of the dark swamp water was something in its favor,—apparently endless tracts of pine-forest, well called by the natives, Pine-Barrens. The soil is pure sand; and, though the holly, with its coral berries, and the wild myrtle grow in considerable abundance, mingled with the pines, these preponderate, and the whole land presents one wearisome extent of arid soil and gloomy vegetation. Not a single decent dwelling did we pass: here and there, at rare intervals, a few miserable negro huts squatting round a mean framed building, with brick chimneys built on the outside, the residence of the owner of the land and his squalid serfs, were the only evidences of human existence in this forlorn country.
NORTH CAROLINA.Towards four o'clock, as we approached the Roanoke, the appearance of the land improved; there was a good deal of fine soil well farmed, and the river, where we crossed it, although in all the naked unadornment of wintry banks, looked very picturesque and refreshing as it gushed along, broken by rocks and small islands into rapid reaches and currents. Immediately after crossing it, we stopped at a small knot of houses, which, although christened Weldon, and therefore pretending to be a place, was rather the place where a place was intended to be. Two or three rough-pine warerooms, or station-houses, belonging to the railroad; a few miserable dwellings, which might be either not half built up, or not quite fallen down, on the banks of a large mill-pond; one exceedingly dirty-looking old wooden house, whither we directed our steps as to the inn; but we did not take our ease in it, though we tried as much as we could.
However, one thing I will say for North Carolina—it has the best material for fire, and the noblest liberality in the use of it, of any place in the world. Such a spectacle as one of those rousing pine-wood chimneyfuls is not to be described, nor the revivification it engenders even in the absence of every other comfort or necessary of life. They are enough to make one turn Gheber,—such noble piles of fire and flame, such hearty, brilliant life—full altars of light and warmth. These greeted us upon our entrance into this miserable inn, and seemed to rest and feed, as well as warm us. We (the women) were shown up a filthy flight of wooden stairs into a dilapidated room, the plastered walls of which were all smeared and discolored, the windows begrimed and darkened with dirt. Upon the three beds, which nearlyfilled up this wretched apartment, lay tattered articles of male and female apparel; and here we drew round the pine-wood fire, which blazed up the chimney, sending a ruddy glow of comfort and cheerfulness even through this disgusting den. We were to wait here for the arrival of the cars from a branch railroad, to continue our route; and in the mean time a so-called dinner was provided for us, to which we were presently summoned. Of the horrible dirt of everything at this meal, from the eatables themselves to the table-cloth, and the clothes of the negroes who waited upon us, it would be impossible to give any idea. The poultry, which formed here, as it does all through the South, the chief animal part of the repast (except the consumers, always understood), were so tough that I should think they must have been alive when we came into the house, and certainly died very hard. They were swimming in black grease, and stuffed with some black ingredient that was doubt and dismay to us uninitiated; but, however, knowledge would probably have been more terrible in this case than ignorance. We had no bread but lumps of hot dough, which reminded me forcibly of certain juvenile creations of my brothers, yclept dumps. I should think they would have eaten very much alike.
I was amused to observe that while our tea was poured out, and handed to us by a black girl of most disgustingly dirty appearance, no sooner did the engine drivers, and persons connected with the railroads and coaches, sit down to their meal, than the landlady herself, a portly dame, with a most dignified carriage, took the head of the table, and did the honors with all the grace of a most accomplished hostess. Our male fellow-travelers no sooner had dispatched their dinner than they withdrew in a body to the other end of the apartment, and large rattling folding-doors being drawn across the room, the separation of men and women, so rigidly observed by all traveling Americans, took place. This is a most peculiar and amusing custom, though sometimes I have been not a little inclined to quarrel with it, inasmuch as it effectually deprives one of the assistance of the men under whose protection one is traveling, as well as all the advantages or pleasure of their society. Twice during this southward trip of ours my companion has been most peremptorily ordered to withdraw from the apartment where he was conversing with me, by colored cabin-girls, who told him it was against the rules for any gentleman to come into the ladies' room. This making rules by which ladies and gentlemen are to observe the principles of decorum and good-breeding may be very necessary, for aught I can tell, but it seems rather sarcastical, I think, to have them enforced by servant-girls.
IN NORTH CAROLINA.The gentlemen, on their side, are intrenched in a similar manner; and if a woman has occasion to speak to the person with whom she is traveling, her entrance into the male den, if she has the courage to venture there, is the signal for a universal stare and whisper. But, for the most part, the convenient result of this arrangement is, that such men as have female companions with them pass their time in prowling about the precincts of the "ladies' apartment"; while their respective ladies pop their heads first out of one door and then out of another, watching in decorous discomfort the time when "their man" shall come to pass. Our sole resource on the present occasion was to retire again to the horrible hole above stairs, where we had at first taken refuge and here we remained until summoned down again by the arrival of the expected train. My poor little children, overcome with fatigue and sleep, were carried, and we walked from thehotelat Weldon to the railroad, and by good fortune obtained a compartment to ourselves.
It was now between eight and nine o'clock, and perfectly dark. The carriages were furnished with lamps, however, and, by the rapid glance they cast upon the objects which we passed, I endeavored in vain to guess at the nature of the country through which we were traveling; but, except the tall shafts of the everlasting pine trees, which still pursued us, I could descry nothing, and resigned myself to the amusing contemplation of the attitudes of my companions, who were all fast asleep. Between twelve and one o'clock the engine stopped, and it was announced to us that we had traveled as far upon the railroad as it was yet completed, and that we must transfer ourselves to stage-coaches; so in the dead middle of the night we crept out of the train, and taking our children in our arms, walked a few yards into an open space in the woods, where three four-horse coaches stood waiting to receive us. A crowd of men, principally negroes, were collected here round a huge fire of pine-wood, which, together with the pine-torches, whose resinous glare streamed brilliantly into the darkness of the woods, created a ruddy blaze, by the light of which we reached our vehicles in safety, and, while they were adjusting the luggage, had leisure to admire our jetty torch-bearers, who lounged round in a state of tattered undress, highly picturesque,—the staring whites of their eyes, and glittering ranges of dazzling teeth exhibited to perfection by the expression of grinning amusement in their countenances, shining in the darkness almost as brightly as the lights which they reflected. We had especially requested that we might have a coach to ourselves, and had been assured that there would be one for theuse of our party. It appeared, however, that the outside seat of this had been appropriated by some one, for our coachman, who was traveling with us, was obliged to take a seat inside with us; and though it then contained five grown persons and two children, it seems that the coach was by no means considered full. The horrors of that night's journey I shall not easily forget. The road lay almost the whole way through swamps, and was frequently itself under water. It was made of logs of wood (a corduroy road), and so dreadfully rough and unequal, that the drawing a coach over it at all seemed perfectly miraculous. I expected every moment that we must be overturned into the marsh, through which we splashed, with hardly any intermission, the whole night long. Their drivers in this part of the country deserve infinite praise both for skill and care; but the road-makers, I think, are beyond all praise for their noble confidence in what skill and care can accomplish.
You will readily imagine how thankfully I saw the first whitening of daylight in the sky. I do not know that any morning was ever more welcome to me than that which found us still surrounded by the pine-swamps of North Carolina, which, brightened by the morning sun, and breathed through by the morning air, lost something of their dreary desolateness to my senses....
Not long after daybreak we arrived at a place called Stantonsborough. I do not know whether that is the name of the district, or what; for I saw no village,—nothing but the one lonely house in the wood at which we stopped. I should have mentioned that the unfortunate individual who took our coachman's place outside, towards daybreak became so perished with cold, that an exchange was effected between them, and thus the privacy (if such it could be called) of our carriage was invaded, in spite of the promise which we had received to the contrary. As I am nursing my own baby, and have been compelled to travel all day and all night, of course this was a circumstance of no small annoyance; but as our company was again increased some time after, and subsequently I had to travel in a railroad carriage that held upwards of twenty people, I had to resign myself to this, among the other miseries of this most miserable journey.
A PRIMITIVE TOILET.As we alighted from our coach, we encountered the comical spectacle of the two coach-loads of gentlemen who had traveled the same route as ourselves, with wrist-bands and coat-cuffs turned back, performing their morning ablutions all together at a long wooden dresser in the open air, though the morning was piercing cold. Their toilet accommodations were quite of the most primitive order imaginable, as indeed were ours. We (thewomen) were all shown into one small room, the whole furniture of which consisted of a chair and wooden bench: upon the latter stood one basin, one ewer, and a relic of soap, apparently of great antiquity. Before, however, we could avail ourselves of these ample means of cleanliness, we were summoned down to breakfast; but as we had traveled all night, and all the previous day, and were to travel all the ensuing day and night, I preferred washing to eating, and determined, if I could not do both, at least to accomplish the first. There was neither towel, nor glass for one's teeth, nor hostess or chambermaid to appeal to. I ran through all the rooms on the floor, of which the doors were open; but though in one I found a magnificent veneered chest of drawers, and large looking-glass, neither of the above articles were discoverable. Again the savage passion for ornament occurred to me as I looked at this piece of furniture, which might have adorned the most luxurious bedroom of the wealthiest citizen in New York—here in this wilderness, in a house which seemed but just cut out of the trees, where a tin pan was brought to me for a basin, and where the only kitchen, of which the window of our room, to our sorrow, commanded an uninterrupted prospect, was an open shed, not fit to stable a well-kept horse in. As I found nothing that I could take possession of in the shape of towel or tumbler, I was obliged to wait on the stairs, and catch one of the dirty black girls who were running to and fro serving the breakfast-room. Upon asking one of these nymphs for a towel, she held up to me a horrible cloth, which, but for the evidence to the contrary which its filthy surface presented, I should have supposed had been used to clean the floors. Upon my objecting to this, she flounced away, disgusted, I presume, with my fastidiousness, and appeared no more. As I leaned over the bannisters in a state of considerable despondency, I espied a man who appeared to be the host himself and to him I ventured to prefer my humble petition for a clean towel. He immediately snatched from the dresser, where the gentlemen had been washing themselves, a wet and dirty towel, which lay by one of the basins, and offered it to me. Upon my suggesting that that was not acleantowel, he looked at me from head to foot with ineffable amazement, but at length desired one of the negroes to fetch me the unusual luxury.
Of the breakfast at this place no words can give any idea. There were plates full of unutterable-looking things, which made one feel as if one should never swallow food again. There were some eggs, all begrimed with smoke, and powdered with cinders; some unbaked dough, cut into little lumps, by way of bread;and a white, hard substance, calling itself butter, which had an infinitely nearer resemblance to tallow. The mixture presented to us by way of tea was absolutely undrinkable; and when I begged for a glass of milk, they brought a tumbler covered with dust and dirt, full of such sour stuff that I was obliged to put it aside, after endeavoring to taste it. Thusrefreshed, we set forth again through the eternal pine-lands, on and on, the tall stems rising all round us for miles and miles in dreary monotony, like a spell-land of dismal enchantment, to which there seemed no end....
North Carolina is, I believe, the poorest State in the Union: the part of it through which we traveled should seem to indicate as much. From Suffolk to Wilmington we did not pass a single town,—scarcely anything deserving the name of a village. The few detached houses on the road were mean and beggarly in their appearance; and the people whom we saw when the coach stopped had a squalid, and at the same time fierce air, which at once bore witness to the unfortunate influences of their existence. Not the least of these is the circumstance that their subsistence is derived in great measure from the spontaneous produce of the land, which, yielding without cultivation the timber and turpentine, by the sale of which they are mainly supported, denies to them all the blessings which flow from labor. How is it that the fable ever originated of God's having cursed man with the doom of toil? How is it that men have ever been blind to the exceeding profitableness of labor, even for its own sake, whose moral harvest alone—industry, economy, patience, foresight, knowledge—is in itself an exceeding great reward, to which add the physical blessings which wait on this universal law—health, strength, activity, cheerfulness, the content that springs from honest exertion, and the lawful pride that grows from conquered difficulty? How invariably have the inhabitants of southern countries, whose teeming soil produced, unurged, the means of life, been cursed with indolence, with recklessness, with the sleepy slothfulness which, while basking in the sunshine, and gathering the earth's spontaneous fruits, satisfied itself with this animal existence, forgetting all the nobler purposes of life in the mere ease of living? Therefore, too, southern lands have always been the prey of northern conquerors; and the bleak regions of Upper Europe and Asia have poured forth from time to time the hungry hordes, whose iron sinews swept the nerveless children of the gardens of the earth from the face of their idle paradises: and, but for this stream of keener life and nobler energy, it would be difficult to imagine a more complete race of lotus-eaters than would now cumber the fairest regions of the earth.
THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE.Doubtless it is to counteract the enervating effects of soil and climate that this northern tide of vigorous life flows forever towards the countries of the sun, that the races may be renewed, the earth reclaimed, and the world, and all its various tribes, rescued from disease and decay by the influence of the stern northern vitality, searching and strong, and purifying as the keen piercing winds that blow from that quarter of the heavens. To descend to rather a familiar illustration of this, it is really quite curious to observe how many New England adventurers come to the Southern States, and bringing their enterprising, active character to bear upon the means of wealth, which in the North they lack, but which abound in these more favored regions, return home after a short season of exertion, laden with the spoils of the indolent southerners. The southern people are growing poorer every day, in the midst of their slaves and their vast landed estates: whilst every day sees the arrival amongst them of some penniless Yankee, who presently turns the very ground he stands upon into wealth, and departs a lord of riches at the end of a few years, leaving the sleepy population, among whom he has amassed them, floated still farther down the tide of dwindling prosperity....
At a small place called Waynesborough, ... I asked for a glass of milk, and they told me they had no such thing. Upon entering our new vehicle, we found another stranger added to our party, to my unspeakable annoyance. Complaint or remonstrance, I knew, however, would be of no avail, and I therefore submitted in silence to what I could not help. At a short distance beyond Waynesborough we were desired to alight, in order to walk over a bridge, which was in so rotten a condition as to render it very probable that it would give way under our weight. This same bridge, whose appearance was indeed most perilous, is built at a considerable height over a broad and rapid stream, called the Neuse, the color of whose water we had an excellent opportunity of admiring through the numerous holes in the plankage, over which we walked as lightly and rapidly as we could, stopping afterwards to see our coach come at a foot's pace after us. This may be called safe and pleasant traveling. The ten miles which followed were over heavy sandy roads, and it was near sunset when we reached the place where we were to take the railroad. The train, however, had not arrived, and we sat still in the coaches, there being neither town, village, nor even a road-side inn at hand, where we might take shelter from the bitter blast which swept through the pine-woods by which we were surrounded; and so we waited patiently, the day graduallydrooping, the evening air becoming colder, and the howling wilderness around us more dismal every moment.
In the mean time the coaches were surrounded by a troop of gazing boors, who had come from far and near to see the hot-water carriages come up for only the third time into the midst of their savage solitude. A more forlorn, fierce, poor, and wild-looking set of people, short of absolute savages, I never saw. They wandered round and round us, with a stupid kind of dismayed wonder. The men clothed in the coarsest manner, and the women also, of whom there were not a few, with the grotesque addition of pink and blue silk bonnets, with artificial flowers, and imitation-blonde veils. Here the gentlemen of our party informed us that they observed, for the first time, a custom prevalent in North Carolina, of which I had myself frequently heard before—the women chewing tobacco, and that, too, in a most disgusting and disagreeable way, if one way can be more disgusting than another. They carry habitually a small stick, like the implement for cleaning the teeth, usually known in England by the name of a root,—this they thrust away in their glove, or their garter-string, and, whenever occasion offers, plunge it into a snuff-box, and begin chewing it. The practice is so common that the proffer of the snuff-box, and its passing from hand to hand, is the usual civility of a morning visit among the country-people; and I was not a little amused at hearing the gentlemen who were with us describe the process as they witnessed it in their visit to a miserable farm-house across the fields, whither they went to try to obtain something to eat.
It was now becoming dark, and the male members of our caravan held council round a pine fire as to what course had better be adopted for sheltering themselves and us during the night, which we seemed destined to pass in the woods. After some debate, it was recollected that one Colonel ——, a man of some standing in that neighborhood, had a farm about a mile distant, immediately upon the line of the railroad; and thither it was determined we should all repair, and ask quarters for the night. Fortunately, an empty truck stood at hand upon the iron road, and to this the luggage and the women and children of the party, were transferred. A number of negroes, who were loitering about, were pressed into the service, and pushed it along; and the gentlemen, walking, brought up the rear. I don't know that I ever in my life felt so completely desolate as during that half-hour's slow progress. We sat cowering among the trunks, my faithful Margery and I, each with a baby in our arms, sheltering ourselves and our poor little burthens from the bleak northern wind that whistled over us.
The last embers of daylight were dying out in dusky red streaks along the horizon, and the dreary waste around us looked like the very shaggy edge of all creation. The men who pushed us along encouraged each other with wild shouts and yells, and every now and then their labor was one of no little danger, as well as difficulty,—for the road crossed one or two deep ravines and morasses at a considerable height, and, as it was not completed, and nothing but the iron rails were laid across piles driven into these places, it became a service of considerable risk to run along these narrow ledges, at the same time urging our car along. No accident happened, however, fortunately, and we presently beheld, with no small satisfaction, a cluster of houses in the fields at some little distance from the road. To the principal one I made my way, followed by the rest of the poor womankind, and, entering the house without further ceremony, ushered them into a large species of wooden room, where blazed a huge pine-wood fire. By this welcome light we descried, sitting in the corner of the vast chimney, an old, ruddy-faced man, with silver hair, and a good-humored countenance, who, welcoming us with ready hospitality, announced himself as Colonel ——, and invited us to draw near the fire.
COLONEL.The worthy colonel seemed in no way dismayed at this sudden inbreak of distressed women, which was very soon followed by the arrival of the gentlemen, to whom he repeated the same courteous reception he had given us, replying to their rather hesitating demands for something to eat, by ordering to the right and left a tribe of staring negroes, who bustled about preparing supper, under the active superintendence of the hospitable colonel. His residence (considering his rank) was quite the most primitive imaginable,—a rough brick-and-plank chamber, of considerable dimensions, not even whitewashed, with the great beams and rafters by which it was supported displaying the skeleton of the building, to the complete satisfaction of any one who might be curious in architecture. The windows could close neither at the top, bottom, sides, nor middle, and were, besides, broken so as to admit several delightful currents of air, which might be received as purely accidental. In one corner of this primitive apartment stood a clean-looking bed, with coarse furniture; whilst in the opposite one, an old case-clock was ticking away its time and its master's with cheerful monotony. The rush-bottomed chairs were of as many different shapes and sizes as those in a modern fine lady's drawing-room, and the walls were hung all round with a curious miscellany, consisting principally of physic vials, turkey-feather fans, bunches of driedherbs, and the colonel's arsenal, in the shape of one or two old guns, etc.
According to the worthy man's hearty invitation, I proceeded to make myself and my companions at home, pinning, skewering, and otherwise suspending our cloaks and shawls across the various intentional and unintentional air-gaps, thereby increasing both the comfort and the grotesqueness of the apartment in no small degree. The babies had bowls of milk furnished them, and the elder portion of the caravan was regaled with a taste of the colonel's home-made wine, pending the supper to which he continued to entreat our stay. Meantime he entered into conversation with the gentlemen; and my veneration waxed deep, when the old man, unfolding his history, proclaimed himself one of the heroes of the revolution,—a fellow-fighter with Washington. I, who, comforted to a degree of high spirits by our sudden transition from the cold and darkness of the railroad to the light and shelter of this rude mansion, had been flippantly bandying jokes, and proceeded some way in a lively flirtation with this illustrious American, grew thrice respectful, and hardly ventured to raise either my eyes or my voice as I inquired if he lived alone in this remote place. Yes, alone now; his wife had been dead near upon two years.
Suddenly we were broken in upon by the arrival of the expected train. It was past eight o'clock. If we delayed we should have to travel all night; but then, the colonel pressed us to stay and sup (the bereaved colonel, the last touching revelation of whose lonely existence had turned all my mirth into sympathizing sadness). The gentlemen were famished and well inclined to stay; the ladies were famished too, for we had eaten nothing all day. The bustle of preparation, urged by the warmhearted colonel, began afresh; the negro girls shambled in and out more vigorously than ever, and finally we were called to eat and refresh ourselves with—dirty water—I cannot call it tea,—old cheese, bad butter, and old dry biscuits. The gentlemen bethought them of the good supper they might have secured a few miles further and groaned; but the hospitable colonel merely asked them half a dollar apiece (there were about ten of them); paying which, we departed, with our enthusiasm a little damped for the warrior of the revolution; and a tinge of rather deeper misgiving as to some of his virtues stole over our minds, on learning that three of the sable damsels who trudged about at our supper service were the colonel's own progeny. I believe only three,—though the young negro girl, whose loquacity made us aware of the fact, added, with a burst of commendable pride andgratitude, "Indeed, he is a father to us all!" Whether she spoke figuratively, or literally, we could not determine. So much for a three hours' shelter in North Carolina....
F. A. B.
Dearest Harriet,
I had been very much struck with the appearance of the horses we passed occasionally in enclosures, or gathered round some lonely roadside pine-wood shop, or post-office, fastened to trees in the surrounding forest, and waiting for their riders. I had been always led to expect a great improvement in the breed of horses as we went southward, and the appearance of those I saw on the road was certainly in favor of the claim. They were generally small, but in good condition, and remarkably well made. They seemed to be tolerably well cared for, too; and those which we saw caparisoned were ornamented with gay saddle-cloths, and rather a superfluity of trappings forcivilanimals.
A NORTH CAROLINIAN DAMSEL.At our dismal halt in the woods, while waiting for the railroad train, among our other spectators was a woman on horseback. Her steed was uncommonly pretty and well-limbed; but her costume was quite the most eccentric that can be imagined, accustomed as I am to the not over-rigidequipmentsof the northern villages. But the North Carolinian damsel beat all Yankee girls, I ever saw, hollow, in the glorious contempt she exhibited for the external fitness of things in her exceeding short skirts and huge sun-bonnet.
After our departure from Colonel ——'s, we traveled all night on the railroad. One of my children slept in my lap, the other on the narrow seat opposite to me, from which she was jolted off every quarter of an hour by the uneasy motion of the carriage, and the checks and stops of the engine, which was out of order. The carriage, though full of people, was heated with a stove, and every time this was replenished with coals we were almost suffocated with the clouds of bituminous smoke which filled it. Five hours, they said, was the usual time consumed in this part of the journey; but we were the whole mortal night upon that uneasy railroad, and it was five o'clock in the morning before we reached Wilmington, North Carolina. When the train stopped it was yet quite dark, and most bitterly cold; nevertheless, the distance from the railroad to the only inn where we could be accommodated was nothing less than a mile; and, weary and worn out, we trudged along, the poor little sleepingchildren carried by their still more unfortunate, sleepless nurses—and so by the cheerless winter starlight we walked along the brink of the Cape Fear River, to seek where we might lay our heads.
A WILMINGTON HOTEL.We were shown into a room without window-curtains or shutters, the windows, as usual, not half shut, and wholly incapable of shutting. Here, when I asked if we could have some tea, (having fasted the whole previous day with the exception of Colonel ——'s bountiful supper), the host pleasantly informed us that the "public breakfast would not be ready for some hours yet." I really could not help once again protesting against this abominable tyranny of the traveling many over the traveling few in this free country. It is supposed impossible that any individual can hunger, thirst, or desire sleep at any other than the "public hours." The consequence is, that let one arrive starved at an inn, one can obtain nothing till such hours as those who are not starving desire to eat;—and if one is foredone with travel, weary, and wanting rest, the pitiless alarum-bell, calling those who may have had twelve hours' sleep from their beds, must startle those who have only just closed their eyes for the first time, perhaps for three nights,—as if the whole traveling community were again at boarding-school, and as if a private summons by the boots or chambermaid to each apartment would not answer the same purpose.
We were, however, so utterly exhausted, that waiting for the public appetite was out of the question; and, by dint of much supplication, we at length obtained some breakfast. When, however, we stated that we had not been in bed for two successive nights, and asked to be shown to our rooms, the same gentleman, our host, an exceedingly pleasant person, informed us thatourchamber was prepared,—adding, with the most facetious familiarity, when I exclaimed "Our chamber!" (we were three, and two children)—
"Oh! madam, I presume you will have no objection to sleeping withyour infant" (he lumped the two into one); "and these two ladies" (Miss —— and Margery) "will sleep together. I dare say they have done it a hundred times."
This unheard-of proposition, and the man's cool impudence in making it, so astonished me that I could hardly speak. At last, however, I found words to inform him that none of our party were in the habit of sleeping with each other, and that the arrangement was such as we were not at all inclined to submit to. The gentleman, apparently very much surprised at our singular habits, said, "Oh! he didn't know that the ladies were notacquainted" (as if, forsooth, one went to bed with all one's acquaintance!) "but that he had but one room in the ladies' part of the house."
Miss —— immediately professed her readiness to take one in the gentlemen's "part of the house," when it appeared that there was none vacant there which had a fireplace in it. As the morning was intensely cold, this could not be thought of. I could not take shelter in ——'s room; for he, according to this decent and comfortable mode of lodging travelers, had another man to share it with him. To our common dormitory we therefore repaired, as it was impossible that we could any of us go any longer without rest. I established Margery and the two babies in the largest bed; poor Miss —— betook herself to a sort of curtainless cot that stood in one corner; and I laid myself down on a mattress on the floor; and we soon all forgot the conveniences of a Wilmington hotel in the supreme convenience of sleep.
It was bright morning, and drawing towards one o'clock, when we rose, and were presently summoned to the "public dinner." The dirt and discomfort of everything was so intolerable that I could not eat; and having obtained some tea, we set forth to walk to the steamboatGovernor Dudley, which was to convey us to Charleston. The midday sun took from Wilmington some of the desolateness which the wintry darkness of the morning gave it; yet it looked to me like a place I could sooner die than live in,—ruinous, yet not old,—poor, dirty, and mean, and unvenerable in its poverty and decay. The river that runs by it is called Cape Fear River; above, on the opposite shore, lies Mount Misery,—and heaven-forsaken enough seemed place and people to me. How good one should be to live in such places! How heavenly would one's thoughts and imaginations of hard necessity become, if one existed in Wilmington, North Carolina! The afternoon was beautiful, golden, mild, and bright,—the boat we were in extremely comfortable and clean, and the captain especially courteous. The whole furniture of this vessel was remarkably tasteful, as well as convenient,—not forgetting the fawn-colored and blue curtains to the berths.
But what a deplorable mistake it is—be-draperying up these narrow nests, so as to impede the poor, meagre mouthfuls of air which their dimensions alone necessarily limit one to. These crimson and yellow, or even fawn-colored and blue silk suffocators, are a poor compensation for free ventilation; and I always look at these elaborate adornments of sea-beds as ingenious and elegant incentives to sea-sickness, graceful emetics in themselves, all provocation from the water set aside. The captain's wife andourselves were the only passengers; and, after a most delightful walk on deck in the afternoon, and comfortable tea, we retired for the night, and did not wake till we bumped on the Charleston bar on the morning of Christmas-day.
TheWilliam Seabrook, the boat which is to convey us from hence to Savannah, only goes once a week.... This unfrequent communication between the principal cities of the great Southern States is rather a curious contrast to the almost unintermitting intercourse which goes on between the northern towns. The boat itself, too, is a species of small monopoly, being built and chiefly used for the convenience of certain wealthy planters residing on Edisto Island, a small insulated tract between Charleston and Savannah, where the finest cotton that is raised in this country grows. This city is the oldest I have yet seen in America—I should think it must be the oldest in it. I cannot say that the first impression produced by the wharf at which we landed, or the streets we drove through in reaching our hotel, was particularly lively. Rickety, dark, dirty, tumble-down streets and warehouses, with every now and then a mansion of loftier pretensions, but equally neglected and ruinous in its appearance, would probably not have been objects of special admiration to many people on this side the water; but I belong to that infirm, decrepit, bedridden old country, England, and must acknowledge, with a blush for the stupidity of the prejudice, that it is so very long since I have seen anything old, that the lower streets of Charleston, in all their dinginess and decay, were a refreshment and a rest to my spirit.
I have had a perfect red-brick-and-white-board fever ever since I came to this country; and once more to see a house which looks as if it had stood long enough to get warmed through, is a balm to my senses, oppressed with newness. Boston had two or three fine old dwelling-houses, with antique gardens and old-fashioned court-yards; but they have come down to the dust before the improving spirit of the age. One would think, that after ten years a house gets weak in the knees. Perhaps these houses do; but I have lodged under roof-trees that have stood hundreds of years, and may stand hundreds more,—marry, they have good foundations.
CHARLESTON.In walking about Charleston, I was forcibly reminded of some of the older country towns in England—of Southampton a little. The appearance of the city is highly picturesque, a word which can apply to none other American towns; and although the place is certainly pervaded with an air of decay, 'tis a genteel infirmity, as might be that of a distressed elderly gentlewoman. It hasnone of the smug mercantile primness of the northern cities, but a look of state, as of quondam wealth and importance, a little gone down in the world, yet remembering still its former dignity. The northern towns, compared with it, are as the spruce citizen rattling by the faded splendors of an old family-coach in his newfangled chariot—they certainly have got on before it. Charleston has an air of eccentricity, too, and peculiarity, which formerly were not deemed unbecoming the well-born and well-bred gentlewoman, which her gentility itself sanctioned and warranted—none of the vulgar dread of vulgar opinion, forcing those who are possessed by it to conform to a general standard of manners, unable to conceive one peculiar to itself,—this "what-'ll-Mrs.-Grundy-say" devotion to conformity in small things and great, which pervades the American body-social from the matter of church-going to the trimming of women's petticoats,—this dread of singularity, which has eaten up all individuality amongst them, and makes their population like so many moral and mental lithographs, and their houses like so many thousand hideous brick-twins.