IN WHICH I INTRODUCE MYSELF
I doubt not that by this time the reader is beginning to wonder who this
fellow is that has claimed his attention, and so, since there is no one
else to introduce me, I must needs present myself.
It so happened that when that stern old lion, Oliver Cromwell, crushed
the butterfly named Charles Stuart at Worcester in the dim dawn of the
third day of September, 1651, and utterly routed the army of that unhappy
prince, one Thomas Stewart fell into the hands of the Roundheads, as,
indeed, did near seven thousand others of the Royalist army. Now this
Thomas Stewart had very foolishly left a pretty estate in Kincardine,
together with a wife and two sturdy boys, to march under the banner of
the Princeling, as he conceived to be his duty, and after giving and
taking many hard knocks, here he was in the enemy's hands, and Charles
Stuart a fugitive. They had one and all been declared by Parliament
rebels and traitors to the Commonwealth, so the most distinguished of the
captives were chosen for examples to the rest, and three of them, the
Earl of Derby among the number, were sent forthwith to the block, where
they comported themselves as brave men should, and laid down their heads
right cheerfully.
The others were sent to prison, since it was manifestly impossible to
execute them all,--nor was Cromwell so bloodthirsty, now the rebellion
was broken utterly,--and some sixteen hundred of them were sentenced to
be transported to the colony of Virginia, which had long been a dumping
ground for convicts and felons and political scapegoats. Hither, then,
they came, in ships crowded to suffocation, and many dead upon the way
and thrown to the sharks for burial, but for some reason only one of the
ships stopped here, while the others went on to Barbados to discharge
their living freight. I more than suspect that Cromwell's agents soon
discovered the Commonwealth had few friends in Virginia, and feared the
effect of letting loose here so many of the Royalist soldiers. At any
rate, this one ship dropped anchor at Hampton, and its passengers, to the
number of about three hundred, were sold very cheaply to the neighboring
planters. I may as well say here that all of them were well treated by
their Cavalier masters, and many of them afterwards became the founders
of what are now the most prominent families in the colony.
Now one of those who had been sold in Virginia was the Thomas Stewart
whom I have already mentioned, and whom neither stinking jail nor crowded
transport had much affected. Doubtless, no matter what the surroundings,
he had only to close his eyes to see again before him the green hills
and plashing brooks of Kincardine, with his own home in the midst, and
the bonny wife waiting at the door, a boy on either side. Alas, it was
only thus he was ever to see them this side heaven. He was bought by a
man named Nicholas Spenser, who owned a plantation on the Potomac in
Westmoreland County, and there he worked, first as laborer and then as
overseer, for nigh upon ten years. His master treated him with great
kindness, and at the Restoration, having made tenfold his purchase money
by him, gave him back his freedom.
Despite the years and the hard work in the tobacco-fields, Stewart's
thoughts had often been with the wife and children he had left behind in
Scotland, and he prevailed upon Spenser to secure him passage in one of
his ships for London, where he arrived early in 1662. He made his way
back to Kincardine, where he found his estate sequestered, his wife and
one child dead in poverty, the other disappeared. From a neighbor he
learned that the boy had run away to sea after his mother's death, but
what his fate had been he never knew. Weary and disheartened, Stewart
retraced his steps to London, and after overcoming obstacles innumerable,
occasioned mostly by his want of money, laid his case before the king.
Charles listened to him kindly enough, for his office had not yet grown a
burden to him, and finally granted him a patent for two thousand acres of
land along the upper Potomac. It was a gift which cost the king nothing,
and one of a hundred such he bestowed upon his favorites as another man
would give a crust of bread for which he had no use. Stewart returned to
Virginia with his patent in his pocket, and built himself a home in what
was then a wilderness.
In five or six years he had cleared near three hundred acres of land, had
it planted in sweet-scented tobacco, for which the Northern Neck was
always famous, bought two-score negroes to tend it, and began to see
light ahead. It was at this time that he met Marjorie Usner, while on a
visit to Williamsburg, and he married her in 1670, having in the mean
time erected a more spacious residence than the rude log-hut which had
previously been his home. He was at that time a man nigh fifty years of
age, but handsome enough, I dare say, and well preserved by his life of
outdoor toil. Certainly Mistress Marjorie, who must have been much
younger, made him a good wife, and when he died, in 1685, he left a son
and a daughter, besides an estate valued at several thousands of pounds,
accumulated with true Scottish thrift. It was this daughter who named the
estate Riverview, and though the house was afterwards remodeled, the name
was never changed. The Stewarts continued to live there, marrying and
giving in marriage, and growing ever wealthier, for the next half
century, at the end of which time occurred the events that brought me
into being.
In 1733, Thomas Stewart, great-grandson of the Scotsman, was master of
Riverview. His portrait, which hangs to-day to the left of the fireplace
in the great hall, shows him a white-haired, red-faced, choleric
gentleman, with gray eyes and proudly smiling mouth. He had been chosen a
member of the House of Burgesses, as had his father before him, and was
one of the most considerable men in the county. His son, Tom, was just
twenty-one, and had inherited from his father the hasty temper and
invincible stubbornness which belong to all the Stewarts.
It was in the fall of 1733 that they made the trip to Williamsburg which
was to have such momentous consequences. The House of Burgesses was in
session, and Mr. Stewart, as the custom was, took his whole family with
him to the capital. I fancy I can see them as they looked that day. The
great coach, brought from London at a cost of so many thousand pounds of
tobacco, is polished until it shines again. The four horses are harnessed
to it, and Sambo, mouth stretched from ear to ear, drives it around to
the front of the mansion, where a broad flight of stone steps leads
downward from the wide veranda. The footmen and outriders spring to their
places, their liveries agleam with buckles, the planter and his lady and
their younger son enter the coach, while young Tom mounts his horse and
prepares to ride by the window. The odorous cedar chests containing my
lady's wardrobe are strapped behind or piled on top, the negroes form a
grinning avenue, the whip cracks, and they are off, half a dozen servants
following in an open cart. It is a four days' journey to Williamsburg,
over roads whose roughness tests the coach's strength to the uttermost
but it is the one event of all the year to this isolated family, and
small wonder that they look forward to it with eager anticipation.
Once arrived at Williamsburg, what craning of necks and waving of
handkerchiefs and kissing of hands to acquaintances, as the coach rolls
along the wide, white, sandy street, scorching in the sun, with the
governor's house, called by courtesy a palace, at one end, and the
College of William and Mary at the other, and perhaps two hundred
straggling wooden houses in between. The coaches and chariots which line
the street give earnest of the families already assembled from Princess
Ann to Fairfax and the Northern Neck. My lady notes that the Burkes have
at last got them a new chariot from London, and her husband looks with
appreciative eyes at the handsome team of matched grays which draw it. As
for young Tom, his eyes, I warrant, are on none of these, but on the bevy
of blooming girls who promenade the side-path, arrayed in silks and
satins and brocades, their eyes alight, their cheeks aglow with the joy
of youth and health. Small blame to him, say I, for that is just where my
own eyes would have been.
That very night Governor Gooch gave a ball at his palace, and be sure the
Stewart family was there, my lady in her new London gown of flowered
damask in the very latest mode, and Tom in his best suit of peach-blossom
velvet, and in great hopes of attracting to himself some of the bright
eyes he had seen that afternoon. Nor was he wholly unsuccessful, for one
pair of black eyes rested on his for a moment,--they were those of
Mistress Patricia Wyeth,--and he straightway fell a victim to their
charms, as what young man with warm heart and proper spirit would not?
Young Tom must himself have possessed unusual attractions, or a boldness
in wooing which his son does not inherit, for at the end of a week he
disturbed his father at his morning dram to inform him that he and
Mistress Patricia had decided to get married.
"Married!" cried the elder Stewart. "Why, damme, sir, do you know who the
Wyeths are?"
"I know who Patricia is," answered young Tom very proudly, his head
well up at this first sign of opposition. "I care naught about the
rest of them."
"But I care, sir!" shouted his father. "Why, the girl won't have a
shilling to bless herself with. Old Wyeth has gambled away every penny he
possesses, and a good many more than he possesses, too, so they tell me,
at his infernal horse-racing and cock-fighting, and God knows what else.
A gentleman may play, sir,--I throw the dice occasionally, myself, and
love to see a well-matched, race as well as any man,--but he ceases to be
a gentleman the moment he plays beyond his means,--a fact which you will
do well to remember. A pretty match for a Stewart 'pon my word!"
During this harangue young Tom would have interrupted more than once,
but his father silenced him with a passionate waving of his arm. At
last he was compelled to pause for want of breath to say more, and the
boy got in a word.
"All this is beside the point, father," he said hotly. "My word is given,
and I intend to keep it. Even if it were not given, I should still do my
best to win Patricia, because I love her."
"Love her, and welcome!" cried his father. "Marry her, if you want
to. But you'll never bring a pauper like that inside my house while I
am alive."
"Nor after you are dead, if you do not wish it," answered Tom, with his
head higher in the air than ever.
"No, nor after I am dead!" thundered the old man, his anger no doubt
carrying him farther than he intended going. "You are acting like a
scoundrel, sir. You know well enough I can't cut you out of the estate,
since you are the eldest, so you think to take advantage of me."
"Never fear, sir," cried Tom, his lips white with anger and his eyes
ablaze. "You shall ask me back to Riverview yourself ere I return there;
yes, and beg my wife's pardon for insulting her."
"Then, by God, you'll never return!" snorted his father, and without
waiting to hear more, Tom stalked from the room and from the house. I
think even then his father would have called him back, had the boy given
him the chance, and his face was less red than usual when he heard the
street door slam.
Of course there was a great to-do immediately. Tom's mother interceded
for him, and I doubt not a single word on his part would have won full
pardon from his father, but one was no less stubborn than the other, and
the word was never spoken. When Mistress Patricia heard of the quarrel,
she straightway informed her lover that she would never marry him and
ruin his inheritance, and returned to her home above Charles City, taking
her old reprobate of a father with her, where he died not long
afterwards, perhaps finding life not worth living when there remained no
one who would take his wagers.
At the close of the session, the Stewart coach rolled back to Riverview,
but young Tom did not ride beside it. He remained at Williamsburg, and
managed to pick up a scanty practice as an attorney, for he had read a
little law in want of something better to do, and to fit himself for his
coming honors as a member of the House of Burgesses. And at Riverview his
father moped in his office and about his fields, growing ever more
crabbed and more obstinate, and falling into a rage whenever any one
dared mention Tom's name before him.
It was in the spring of 1734 that Tom Stewart mounted his horse and rode
out of Williamsburg across the Chickahominy, to try his fortune once more
with Patricia Wyeth. The winter had been a hard one for a man brought up
as Tom had been, and that suit of peach-bloom velvet had long since been
converted into bread. Yet still he made a gallant figure when, on the
evening of an April day, he cantered up the road to Patricia's home, and
I dare say the heart of the owner of those bright eyes which peeped out
upon him from an upper window beat faster when they saw him coming. But
it was a very demure little maiden who met him at the great door as he
entered, and gave him her hand to kiss. She was all in white, with a
sprig of blossoms in her hair, and she must have made a pretty picture
standing there, and one to warm the heart of any man.
Of the week that followed, neither my father nor my mother ever told me
much,--its memories were too sweet to trust to words, perhaps,--but the
event was, that on the first day of May, 1734, Thomas Stewart, attorney,
and Patricia Wyeth, spinster, were made man and wife in Westover church
by the Reverend Peter Fontaine, of sainted memory. How well I recall his
benign face, and what tears of affectionate remembrance brimmed my eyes
when I heard, not long ago, that he was dead! The closing sentences of
his will show how he ever thought of others and not of himself, for he
wrote: "My will and desire is, that I may have no public funeral, but
that my corpse may be accompanied by a few of my nearest neighbors; that
no liquors be given to make any of the company drunk,--many instances of
which I have seen, to the great scandal of the Christian religion and
abuse of so solemn an ordinance. I desire none of my family to go in
mourning for me." His sister sent me a copy of the will, and a very
pretty letter, in which she told me how her brother often spoke of me,
and wished me to have his Bible. It is there on the shelf at my bedside,
and while God gives me life I will read in no other.
It was in the modest Wyeth homestead, on the bank of the James, that my
father and mother entered upon their honeymoon. Of the depth of their
love for each other I know best of all, and the summer slipped away on
golden wings. My father thought no more of returning to Williamsburg, nor
did he greatly regret Riverview. He wrote a formal letter to his mother
announcing his marriage, but no answer came to it, and I doubt not that
worthy woman sobbed herself to sleep more than once in grieving over the
obstinacy of her husband and her son. Dear lady, it was this trouble
which did much to shorten her days, and the end came soon afterwards. 'T
is said that on her deathbed she tried to soften her husband's heart
against their boy, but with such ill success that she fell sobbing into
the sleep from which she was never to awaken. To such a degree can a
fault persisted in change the natural humor of a man.
My father, perhaps, hoped for a reply to his letter, but he showed no
sign of disappointment when none came, and never spoke upon the subject
to my mother. He soon found enough in his affairs at home to occupy his
mind, for old Samuel Wyeth had left the estate sadly incumbered with his
debts, and more than half of it was sacrificed to save the rest. With
care and frugality, there yet remained enough to live on, and for the
first year, at least, there came no cloud to dim their happiness. Their
cup of joy was full to overflowing, so my mother often told me, when, on
the night of April 15,1735, a child was born to them. It was a boy, and a
week later, before the altar of the little Westover church, its worthy
rector christened the child "Thomas Stewart," the fifth of his line in
the New World.