FROM CREEK HARBOUR TO COLONIAL RECEPTION
Eppes Creek was the most remote and isolated of all our James River
harbours. Gadabout was like a bit of civilization that had got broken
off and had drifted away into the wild. The stream was such a mere
ribbon with such tall trees along its banks, that we looked upward to
but a narrow lane of open sky. Sometimes the lane was blue, sometimes
gray, and sometimes dark and set with twinkling stars.
The wood across the creek from us was a dismal looking place. The trees
were swamp cypresses that had lost their summer green, and stood
drooping and forlorn in the low, marshy soil. Nautica wasted a good
deal of sympathy upon them as she compared them with the richly clothed
pines and the luxuriant holly upon our side of the stream.
There doubtless was game in that desolate wood; although about the only
living things that we saw in it, even when we rowed close along its
ragged shore, were owls. At night, strange, uncanny cries came out of
the wood, and probably out of the owls also; but such sad and querulous
cries as may well have been the plaints of the mournful marsh forest
itself. Upon our Shirley shore too, there lived an owl, evidently of a
different kind. We never saw him; but at night he worked untiringly
upon a voluminous woodland edition of "Who's Who."
In this harbour, we heard often the stirring cry out of the high
heavens that our ears had caught once in our anchorage at Westover. And
now we saw the wild geese themselves.
Each time, at the first faint "honk," we got quickly to the windows or
out on deck, and stood waiting for the beautiful V-shaped flight to
come swinging into our sky-lane. And with what a glorious sweep the
birds came on! And to what gloriously discordant music!
Sometimes they went over in V's that were quite regular; but often the
diverging lines would grow wavy, the beautiful flying letter still
holding but swinging in and out as though blown about on the face of
the sky.
Perhaps we had something to do with those variants of the wild goose's
favourite letter. Quite likely the sight of Gadabout, fluttering her
flags down there in Eppes Creek, made those wise old gander leaders
veer in a way somewhat disconcerting to their faithful followers.
But on they came, and on they went in their wonderful flight through
sunshine and through storm, by day and by night; leaving a strangely
roused and quickened world behind them. Just a fleet passing of wings,
a clamour of cries--why should one's heart leap, and his nerves go
restless, and joy and sadness get mixed up inside him? A few birds
flying over--yet stirring as a military pageant! A jangle of senseless
"honks"--yet in it the irresistible urge of bugle and drum!
One cannot explain. One can only stand and look and listen, till the
living, flying letter is lost in the sky; till his ear can no longer
catch the glorious, wild clangour of "the going of the geese."
Isolated as our anchorage was, we had a connecting link between
Gadabout and civilization. It was about three feet long, of a sombre
hue, and its name was Bob. Bob brought us milk and eggs and our mail,
and ran errands generally. He was usually attended by such a retinue
that only the smallest picaninnies could have been left back at the
quarters.
Sometimes, Bob lightened his labours by having a member of his
following carry a pail or the mail-bag. This worked badly; for it was
only by such badges of office that we were able to tell which was Bob.
But after several small coins had gone into the wrong ragged hats, Bob
grasped the situation; and, in a masterly way, solved the question of
identity without losing the services of his satellites. Henceforth,
when we heard the chattering boys coming through the woods, if we
looked out promptly enough, we would see Bob relieving some one of his
doubles of pail or mail-bag; and by the time he reached the houseboat,
he would be in full possession of all means of identification.
"Would you like to go to meet the ladies and gentlemen on the walls?"
Mrs. Bransford asked one day at Shirley.
The invitation was accepted with as much alacrity as if we had feared
that the reception hours were almost over. But there was really no need
of haste; for the lines of notables on Shirley's walls stand there from
generation to generation, yet receiving always with such dignity and
courtesy as permit not the slightest sign of weariness or expression of
being bored.
In meeting those old-time owners and lovers of Shirley, the visitor is
passed from one hand-clasp to another, as it were, down through the
generations of colonial times.
Giving precedence to age, we made our first fancied obeisance before
two distinguished looking people who, however, did not seem entitled to
any consideration whatever on the ground of age, being both in the
prime of life. And yet, these were Colonel and Mrs. Edward Hill, second
of the name at Shirley, and the first master and mistress of the
present manor-house.
We were a little surprised at the Colonel's appearance; for he was
clean shaven and wore a wig. Now, we had been hobnobbing long enough
with those beginners of our country--Captain John Smith, Sir Edwin
Sandys, Lord Delaware, and the rest--to know that they were a bearded
set and hadn't a wig amongst them.
Fortunately, we remembered in time that this portrait-gentleman, old as
he was, did not quite reach back to the days of those first settlers;
and that he had lived to see the great change of fashion (in the reign
of Charles II) that made Englishmen for generations whiskerless and
bewigged.
Though our land was settled by bearded men, with just the hair on their
heads that Nature gave them (and sometimes, when the Indians were
active, not all of that), yet the country was developed and made
independent and set up as a nation by smooth-faced men, most fuzzily
bewigged. That reign of the razor that began in the days of Colonel
Hill, was a long one, and, later, determined the appearance of the
Father of our Country. Imagine George Washington with a Van Dyck beard!
Of course it was bad form for us to stand there staring at the Colonel
while we reasoned out all this matter of the beards and the wigs. Now
the Commodore, at a suggestion from Nautica's elbow, shifted to the
other foot and cleared his throat to say something. But what was there
to say? It is a little trying, this meeting people who cannot converse
intelligently upon anything that has happened since the seventeenth
century.
At last, we murmured something about Charles II; and, to make sure, let
the murmuring run over a little into the reigns of James II and of
William and Mary, and then passed on; though the Commodore felt there
should have been at least some slight allusion to the pyramids and the
cave-dwellers.
We must have taken very slowly the few steps that carried us to the
next member of the receiving party; for in that time the world moved on
a generation, and we found ourselves paying respects to no less a
personage than "King" Carter himself. Too modest to suppose that he had
come over from Corotoman on our account, we strongly suspected that the
matter of alliance between the families of Hill and of Carter was in
the air; which would account for the presence of the potentate of the
Rappahannock.
He looked very imposing in his velvets and his elaborate, powdered
periwig, standing ceremoniously, one hand thrust within his rich,
half-open waistcoat.
Now was the time for all that we knew about Queen Anne and King George
the First, and about the recent removal of the colonial capital from
James Towne to Williamsburg.
The next dignitaries were very near; but again it took a generation to
get to them, the names being John Carter (usually called Secretary
Carter from his important colonial office) and Elizabeth Hill Carter,
his wife. These were the young people who united the houses of Shirley
and Corotoman. So, even yet, we had got down only to the days of George
the Second.
Secretary and Mrs. Carter were a handsome pair; she, fair and girlish,
with an armful of roses; he, dark and courtly and one of the most
attractive looking figures we had met in our travels in Colonial-land.
These people could not tell us much about the old manor-house; for,
while possessing two of the finest plantations in the colonies, Shirley
and Corotoman, they made their home chiefly at Williamsburg.
However, they were especially interesting people to meet because of
their familiarity with the first half of the eighteenth century, that
brightest and most prosperous period of colonial life. They could tell
us at first hand of those happy, easy-going times that lay between the
long struggle to establish the colonies and the fierce struggle to make
them free.
Though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Carter exactly said so, yet we gathered the
idea that those were days of much dress and frivolity. It seems that
ships came from everywhere with handsome fabrics and costly trifles;
and that rich colonials strove so manfully and so womanfully to follow
the capricious foreign fashions (by means of dressed dolls received
from Paris and London) that usually they were not more than a year or
two behind the styles.
We could not help feeling that the matter of wigs must have been an
especially troublesome one. As styles changed in England, these
important articles of dress (often costing in tobacco the equivalent of
one hundred dollars) had to be sent to London to be made over. Between
the slowness of ships and the slowness of wig-makers, it must often
have happened that even such careful dressers as the fastidious
Secretary himself would be wearing wigs that would scarcely pass muster
at the Court of St. James or at Bath. Indeed, Secretary Carter did not
deny there being some truth in this; but he appeared so at ease that
day at Shirley that we knew, on that occasion at least, he was sure of
his wig.
One more progression along the receiving line, one more generation
passed by the way, and we came upon Charles Carter, with his strong,
kindly face, a gentleman of the days of George III and of the last days
of colonial times.
And what days those were! The days of stamp acts and "tea parties" and
minute men; of state conventions and continental congresses; of
Lexington and Valley Forge and the surrender of Cornwallis; of the
Articles of Confederation and the formation of the Union. This Charles
Carter saw our nation made and, in the councils of his colony, helped
to make it. Here, in old Shirley, he put down the cup from which he had
right loyally drunk the colonial toast, "The King! God bless him!" and
he took it up again to loyally and proudly drink to "George Washington
and the United States of America."
We met still other old-time people at the manor-house that day; but it
would not do to try to tell about them all. The omitted ones do not
count much, being chiefly wives. Everybody knows that in meeting
colonial people it is scarcely worth while considering a man's wife,
for so soon she is gone and he has another.
Truly, Shirley's colonial reception was very enjoyable, we thought, as
we took a last glance at the serene, old-time faces and caught a last
whiff of ambergris from the queer, old-time wigs.