"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,
_o_ was substituted for _e_ and 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: