up on the saddle before me, an operation which seemed to please her better
than the vicious horse I was riding, whose various demonstrations of
dislike to the arrangement afforded my small equestrian extreme delight
and triumph. My whole afternoon was spent in shifting my bed and bed-room
furniture from a room on the ground-floor to one above; in the course of
which operation, a brisk discussion took place between M---- and my boy
Jack, who was nailing on the vallence of the bed; and whom I suddenly
heard exclaim in answer to something she had said--'Well den, I do tink
so; and dat's the speech of a man, whether um bond or free.' A very
trifling incident, and insignificant speech; and yet it came back to my
ears very often afterward--'the speech of a _man_, whether bond or free.'
They might be made conscious--some of them are evidently conscious--of an
inherent element of manhood superior to the bitter accident of slavery;
and to which, even in their degraded condition, they might be made to
refer that vital self-respect which can survive all external pressure of
mere circumstance, and give their souls to that service of God, which is
perfect freedom, in spite of the ignoble and cruel bondage of their
bodies.
My new apartment is what I should call decidedly airy; the window, unless
when styled by courtesy, shut, which means admitting of draught enough to
blow a candle out, must be wide open, being incapable of any intermediate
condition; the latch of the door, to speak the literal truth, does shut;
but it is the only part of it that does; that is, the latch and the
hinges; everywhere else its configuration is traced by a distinct line of
light and air. If what old Dr. Physic used to say be true, that a draught
which will not blow out a candle will blow out a man's life, (a Spanish
proverb originally I believe) my life is threatened with extinction in
almost every part of this new room of mine, wherein, moreover, I now
discover to my dismay, having transported every other article of bed-room
furniture to it, it is impossible to introduce the wardrobe for my
clothes. Well, our stay here is drawing to a close, and therefore these
small items of discomfort cannot afflict me much longer.
Among my visitors to-day was a poor woman named Oney, who told me her
husband had gone away from her now for four years; it seems he was the
property of Mr. K----, and when that gentleman went to slave-driving on
his own account, and ceased to be the overseer of this estate, he carried
her better half, who was his chattel, away with him, and she never expects
to see him again. After her departure I had a most curious visitor, a
young lad of the name of Renty, whose very decidedly mulatto tinge
accounted, I suppose, for the peculiar disinvoltura of his carriage and
manner; he was evidently in his own opinion a very superior creature; and
yet, as his conversation with me testified, he was conscious of some flaw
in the honour of his 'yellow' complexion. 'Who is your mother, Renty?'
said I (I give you our exact dialogue); 'Betty, head-man Frank's wife.' I
was rather dismayed at the promptness of this reply, and hesitated a
little at my next question, 'Who is your father?' My sprightly young
friend, however, answered, without an instant's pause, 'Mr. K----.' Here I
came to a halt, and, willing to suggest some doubt to the lad, because for
many peculiar reasons this statement seemed to me shocking, I said, 'What,
old Mr. K----?' 'No, massa R----.' 'Did your mother tell you so?' 'No,
missis, me ashamed to ask her; Mr. C----'s children told me so, and I
'spect they know it.' Renty, you see, did not take Falconbridge's view of
such matters; and as I was by no means sorry to find that he considered
his relation to Mr. K---- a disgrace to his mother, which is an advance in
moral perception not often met with here, I said no more upon the subject.
_Tuesday, March 3._--This morning, old House Molly, coming from Mr.
G----'s upon some errand to me, I asked her if Renty's statement was true;
she confirmed the whole story, and, moreover, added that this connection
took place after Betty was married to head-man Frank. Now, he, you know,
E----, is the chief man at the Rice Island, second in authority to Mr.
O----, and indeed, for a considerable part of the year, absolute master
and guardian during the night, of all the people and property at the rice
plantation, for, after the early spring, the white overseer himself is
obliged to betake himself to the mainland to sleep, out of the influence
of the deadly malaria of the rice swamp, and Frank remains sole sovereign
of the island, from sunset to sunrise, in short, during the whole period
of his absence. Mr. ---- bestowed the highest commendations upon his
fidelity and intelligence, and, during the visit Mr. R---- K---- paid us
at the island, he was emphatic in his praise of both Frank and his wife,
the latter having, as he declared, by way of climax to his eulogies, quite
the principles of a white woman. Perhaps she imbibed them from his
excellent influence over her. Frank is a serious, sad, sober-looking, very
intelligent man; I should think he would not relish having his wife
borrowed from him even by the white gentleman, who admired her principles
so much; and it is quite clear from poor Renty's speech about his mother,
that by some of these people (and if by any, then very certainly by
Frank), the disgrace of such an injury is felt and appreciated much after
the fashion of white men.
This old woman Molly is a wonderfully intelligent, active, energetic
creature, though considerably over seventy years old; she was talking to
me about her former master, Major ----, and what she was pleased to call
the _revelation_ war (i.e. revolution war), during which that gentleman,
having embraced the side of the rebellious colonies in their struggle
against England, was by no means on a bed of roses. He bore King George's
commission, and was a major in the British army, but having married a
great Carolina heiress, and become proprietor of these plantations, sided
with the country of his adoption, and not that of his birth, in the war
between them, and was a special object of animosity on that account to the
English officers who attacked the sea-board of Georgia, and sent troops on
shore and up the Altamaha, to fetch off the negroes, or incite them to
rise against their owners. 'De British,' said Molly 'make old massa run
about bery much in de great revelation war.' He ran effectually, however,
and contrived to save both his life and property from the invader.
Molly's account was full of interest, in spite of the grotesque lingo in
which it was delivered, and which once or twice nearly sent me into
convulsions of laughing, whereupon she apologized with great gravity for
her mispronunciation, modestly suggesting that _white words_ were
impossible to the organs of speech of black folks. It is curious how
universally any theory, no matter how absurd, is accepted by these people,
for anything in which the contemptuous supremacy of the dominant race is
admitted, and their acquiescence in the theory of their own incorrigible
baseness is so complete, that this, more than any other circumstance in
their condition, makes me doubtful of their rising from it.
In order to set poor dear old Molly's notions straight with regard to the
negro incapacity for speaking plain the noble white words, I called
S---- to me and set her talking; and having pointed out to Molly how very
imperfect her mode of pronouncing many words was, convinced the worthy old
negress that want of training, and not any absolute original impotence,
was the reason why she disfigured the _white words_, for which she had
such a profound respect. In this matter, as in every other, the slaves pay
back to their masters the evil of their own dealings with usury, though
unintentionally. No culture, however slight, simple, or elementary, is
permitted to these poor creatures, and the utterance of many of them is
more like what Prospero describes Caliban's to have been, than the speech
of men and women in a Christian and civilised land: the children of their
owners, brought up among them, acquire their negro mode of
talking;--slavish speech surely it is--and it is distinctly perceptible in
the utterances of all southerners, particularly of the women, whose
avocations, taking them less from home, are less favourable to their
throwing off this ignoble trick of pronunciation, than the more varied
occupation, and the more extended and promiscuous business relations of
men. The Yankee twang of the regular down Easter is not more easily
detected by any ear, nice in enunciation and accent, than the thick negro
speech of the southerners: neither is lovely or melodious; but though the
Puritan snuffle is the harsher of the two, the slave _slobber_ of the
language is the more ignoble, in spite of the softer voices of the pretty
southern women who utter it.
I rode out to-day upon Miss Kate again, with Jack for my esquire. I made
various vain attempts to ride through the woods, following the cattle
tracks; they turned round and round into each other, or led out into the
sandy pine barren, the eternal frame in which all nature is set here, the
inevitable limit to the prospect, turn landward which way you will. The
wood paths which I followed between evergreen thickets, though little
satisfactory in their ultimate result, were really more beautiful than the
most perfect arrangement of artificial planting that I ever saw in an
English park; and I thought if I could transplant the region which I was
riding through bodily into the midst of some great nobleman's possessions
on the other side of the water, how beautiful an accession it would be
thought to them. I was particularly struck with the elegant growth of a
profuse wild shrub I passed several times to-day, the leaves of which were
pale green underneath, and a deep red, varnished brown above.
I must give you an idea of the sort of service one is liable to obtain
from one's most intelligent and civilised servants hereabouts, and the
consequent comfort and luxury of one's daily existence. Yesterday,
Aleck, the youth who fulfils the duties of what you call a waiter, and
we in England a footman, gave me a salad for dinner, mixed with so large
a portion of the soil in which it had grown, that I requested him to-day
to be kind enough to wash the lettuce before he brought it to table.
M---- later in the day told me that he had applied to her very urgently
for soap and a brush 'as missis wished de lettuce scrubbed,' a fate from
which my second salad was saved by her refusal of these desired
articles, and further instructions upon the subject.
* * * * *
Dearest E----. I have been long promising poor old House Molly to visit
her in her own cabin, and so the day before yesterday I walked round the
settlement to her dwelling; and a most wretched hovel I found it. She has
often told me of the special directions left by her old master for the
comfort and well-being of her old age; and certainly his charge has been
but little heeded by his heirs, for the poor faithful old slave is most
miserably off in her infirm years. She made no complaint, however, but
seemed overjoyed at my coming to see her. She took me to the hut of her
brother, Old Jacob, where the same wretched absence of every decency and
every comfort prevailed; but neither of them seemed to think the condition
that appeared so wretched to me one of peculiar hardship--though Molly's
former residence in her master's house might reasonably have made her
discontented with the lot of absolute privation to which she was now
turned over--but, for the moment, my visit seemed to compensate for all
sublunary sorrows, and she and poor old Jacob kept up a duet of rejoicing
at my advent, and that I had brought 'de little missis among um people
afore they die.'
Leaving them, I went on to the house of Jacob's daughter Hannah, with whom
Psyche, the heroine of the Rice Island story, and wife of his son Joe,
lives. I found their cabin as tidy and comfortable as it could be made,
and their children, as usual, neat and clean; they are capital women, both
of them, with an innate love of cleanliness and order most uncommon among
these people. On my way home, I overtook two of my daily suppliants, who
were going to the house in search of me, and meat, flannel, rice, and
sugar, as the case might be; they were both old and infirm-looking women,
and one of them, called Scylla, was extremely lame, which she accounted
for by an accident she had met with while carrying a heavy weight of rice
on her head; she had fallen on a sharp stake, or snag, as she called it,
and had never recovered the injury she had received. She complained also
of falling of the womb. Her companion (who was not Charybdis however, but
Phoebe) was a cheery soul who complained of nothing, but begged for
flannel. I asked her about her family and children; she had no children
left, nothing but grandchildren; she had had nine children, and seven of
them died quite young; the only two who grew up left her to join the
British when they invaded Georgia in the last war, and their children,
whom they left behind, were all her family now.
In the afternoon, I made my first visit to the hospital of the estate, and
found it, as indeed I find everything else here, in a far worse state even
than the wretched establishments on the Rice Island, dignified by that
name; so miserable a place for the purpose to which it was dedicated I
could not have imagined on a property belonging to Christian owners. The
floor (which was not boarded, but merely the damp hard earth itself,) was
strewn with wretched women, who, but for their moans of pain and uneasy
restless motions, might very well have each been taken for a mere heap of
filthy rags; the chimney refusing passage to the smoke from the pine wood
fire, it puffed out in clouds through the room, where it circled and hung,
only gradually oozing away through the windows, which were so far well
adapted to the purpose that there was not a single whole pane of glass in
them. My eyes, unaccustomed to the turbid atmosphere, smarted and watered,
and refused to distinguish at first the different dismal forms, from which
cries and wails assailed me in every corner of the place. By degrees I was
able to endure for a few minutes what they were condemned to live their
hours and days of suffering and sickness through; and, having given what
comfort kind words and promises of help in more substantial forms could
convey, I went on to what seemed a yet more wretched abode of
wretchedness. This was a room where there was no fire because there was no
chimney, and where the holes made for windows had no panes or glasses in
them. The shutters being closed, the place was so dark that, on first
entering it, I was afraid to stir lest I should fall over some of the
deplorable creatures extended upon the floor. As soon as they perceived
me, one cry of 'Oh missis!' rang through the darkness; and it really
seemed to me as if I was never to exhaust the pity and amazement and
disgust which this receptacle of suffering humanity was to excite in me.
The poor dingy supplicating sleepers upraised themselves as I cautiously
advanced among them; those who could not rear their bodies from the earth
held up piteous beseeching hands, and as I passed from one to the other, I
felt more than one imploring clasp laid upon my dress to solicit my
attention to some new form of misery. One poor woman, called Tressa, who
was unable to speak above a whisper from utter weakness and exhaustion,
told me she had had nine children, was suffering from incessant flooding,
and felt 'as if her back would split open.' There she lay, a mass of
filthy tatters, without so much as a blanket under or over her, on the
bare earth in this chilly darkness. I promised them help and comfort, beds
and blankets, and light and fire--that is, I promised to ask Mr. ---- for
all this for them; and, in the very act of doing so, I remembered with a
sudden pang of anguish, that I was to urge no more petitions for his
slaves to their master. I groped my way out, and emerging on the piazza,
all the choking tears and sobs I had controlled broke forth, and I leaned
there crying over the lot of these unfortunates, till I heard a feeble
voice of 'Missis, you no cry; missis, what for you cry?' and looking up,
saw that I had not yet done with this intolerable infliction. A poor
crippled old man, lying in the corner of the piazza, unable even to crawl
towards me, had uttered this word of consolation, and by his side
(apparently too idiotic, as he was too impotent, to move,) sat a young
woman, the expression of whose face was the most suffering and at the same
time the most horribly repulsive I ever saw. I found she was, as I
supposed, half-witted; and on coming nearer to enquire into her ailments
and what I could do for her, found her suffering from that horrible
disease--I believe some form of scrofula--to which the negroes are
subject, which attacks and eats away the joints of their hands and
fingers--a more hideous and loathsome object I never beheld; her name was
Patty, and she was grand-daughter to the old crippled creature by whose
side she was squatting.
I wandered home, stumbling with crying as I went, and feeling so utterly
miserable that I really hardly saw where I was going, for I as nearly as
possible fell over a great heap of oyster shells left in the middle of the
path. This is a horrid nuisance, which results from an indulgence which
the people here have and value highly; the waters round the island are
prolific in shell fish, oysters, and the most magnificent prawns I ever
saw. The former are a considerable article of the people's diet, and the
shells are allowed to accumulate, as they are used in the composition of
which their huts are built, and which is a sort of combination of mud and
broken oyster shells, which forms an agglomeration of a kind very solid
and durable for such building purposes. But instead of being all carried
to some specified place out of the way, these great heaps of oyster shells
are allowed to be piled up anywhere and everywhere, forming the most
unsightly obstructions in every direction. Of course, the cultivation of
order for the sake of its own seemliness and beauty is not likely to be an
element of slave existence; and as masters have been scarce on this
plantation for many years now, a mere unsightliness is not a matter likely
to trouble anybody much; but after my imminent overthrow by one of these
disorderly heaps of refuse, I think I may make bold to request that the
paths along which I am likely to take my daily walks may be kept free from
them.
On my arrival at home--at the house--I cannot call any place here my
home!--I found Renty waiting to exhibit to me an extremely neatly made
leather pouch, which he has made by my order, of fitting size and
dimensions, to receive Jack's hatchet and saw. Jack and I have set up a
sort of Sir Walter and Tom Purdie companionship of clearing and cutting
paths through the woods nearest to the house; thinning the overhanging
branches, clearing the small evergreen thickets which here and there close
over and across the grassy track. To me this occupation was especially
delightful until quite lately, since the weather began to be rather warmer
and the snakes to slide about. Jack has contrived to inoculate me with
some portion of his terror of them; but I have still a daily hankering
after the lovely green wood walks; perhaps when once I have seen a live
rattlesnake my enthusiasm for them will be modified to the degree that his
is.
* * * * *
Dear E----. This letter has remained unfinished, and my journal
interrupted for more than a week. Mr. ---- has been quite unwell, and I
have been travelling to and fro daily between Hampton and the Rice Island
in the long boat to visit him; for the last three days I have remained at
the latter place, and only returned here this morning early. My daily
voyages up and down the river have introduced me to a great variety of new
musical performances of our boatmen, who invariably, when the rowing is
not too hard, moving up or down with the tide, accompany the stroke of
their oars with the sound of their voices. I told you formerly that I
thought I could trace distinctly some popular national melody with which
I was familiar in almost all their songs; but I have been quite at a loss
to discover any such foundation for many that I have heard lately, and
which have appeared to me extraordinarily wild and unaccountable. The way
in which the chorus strikes in with the burthen, between each phrase of
the melody chanted by a single voice, is very curious and effective,
especially with the rhythm of the rowlocks for accompaniment. The high
voices all in unison, and the admirable time and true accent with which
their responses are made, always make me wish that some great musical
composer could hear these semi-savage performances. With a very little
skilful adaptation and instrumentation, I think one or two barbaric chants
and choruses might be evoked from them that would make the fortune of an
opera.
The only exception that I have met with, yet among our boat voices to the
high tenor which they seem all to possess is in the person of an
individual named Isaac, a basso profondo of the deepest dye, who
nevertheless never attempts to produce with his different register any
different effects in the chorus by venturing a second, but sings like the
rest in unison, perfect unison, of both time and tune. By-the-by, this
individual _does_ speak, and therefore I presume he is not an ape,
ourang-outang, chimpanzee, or gorilla; but I could not, I confess, have
conceived it possible that the presence of articulate sounds, and the
absence of an articulate tail, should make, externally at least, so
completely the only appreciable difference between a man and a monkey, as
they appear to do in this individual 'black brother.' Such stupendous long
thin hands, and long flat feet, I did never see off a large quadruped of
the ape species. But, as I said before, Isaac _speaks_, and I am much
comforted thereby.
You cannot think (to return to the songs of my boatmen) how strange some
of their words are: in one, they repeatedly chanted the 'sentiment' that
'God made man, and man makes'--what do you think?--'money!' Is not that a
peculiar poetical proposition? Another ditty to which they frequently
treat me they call Caesar's song; it is an extremely spirited war-song,
beginning 'The trumpets blow, the bugles sound--Oh, stand your ground!' It
has puzzled me not a little to determine in my own mind whether this title
of Caesar's song has any reference to the great Julius, and if so what may
be the negro notion of him, and whence and how derived. One of their songs
displeased me not a little, for it embodied the opinion that 'twenty-six
black girls not make mulatto yellow girl;' and as I told them I did not
like it, they have omitted it since. This desperate tendency to despise
and undervalue their own race and colour, which is one of the very worst
results of their abject condition, is intolerable to me.
While rowing up and down the broad waters of the Altamaha to the music of
these curious chants, I have been reading Mr. Moore's speech about the
abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia; and I confess I think
his the only defensible position yet taken, and the only consistent
argument yet used in any of the speeches I have hitherto seen upon the
subject.
I have now settled down at Hampton again; Mr. ---- is quite recovered, and
is coming down here in a day or two for change of air; it is getting too
late for him to stay on the rice plantation even in the day, I think. You
cannot imagine anything so exquisite as the perfect curtains of yellow
jasmine with which this whole island is draped; and as the boat comes
sweeping down towards the point, the fragrance from the thickets hung with
their golden garlands greets one before one can distinguish them; it is
really enchanting.