Not far from Greenfield was a place called Rustic Lodge.[12]
[12] Colonel Burwell's.
This house, surrounded by a forest of grand old oaks, was not large or
handsome. But its inmates were ladies and gentlemen of the old English
style.
The grandmother, Mrs. Burwell, about ninety years of age, had in her
youth been one of the belles at the Williamsburg court in old colonial
days. A daughter of Sir Dudley Digges, and descended from English
nobility, she had been accustomed to the best society. Her manners and
conversation were dignified and attractive.
Among reminiscences of colonial times she remembered Lord Botetourt,
of whom she related interesting incidents.
The son of this old lady, about sixty years of age, and the proprietor
of the estate, was a true picture of the old English gentleman. His
manners, conversation, thread-cambric shirt-frills, cuffs, and long
queue tied with a black ribbon, made the picture complete. His two
daughters, young ladies of refinement, had been brought up by their
aunt and grandmother to observe strictly all the proprieties of life.
This establishment was proverbial for its order and method, the most
systematic rules being in force everywhere. The meals were served
punctually at the same instant every day. Old Aunt Nelly always
dressed and undressed her mistress at the same hour. The cook's gentle
"tapping at the chamber door" called the mistress to an interview with
that functionary at the same moment every morning,--an interview
which, lasting half an hour, and never being repeated during the day,
resulted in the choicest dinners, breakfasts, and suppers.
Exactly at the same hour every morning the old gentleman's horse was
saddled, and he entered the neighboring village so promptly as to
enable some of the inhabitants to set their clocks by him.
This family had possessed great wealth in eastern Virginia during the
colonial government, under which many of its members held high
offices.
But impoverished by high living, entertaining company, and a heavy
British debt, they had been reduced in their possessions to about
fifty negroes, with only money enough to purchase this plantation,
upon which they had retired from the gay and charming society of
Williamsburg. They carried with them, however, some remains of their
former grandeur: old silver, old jewelry, old books, old and
well-trained servants, and an old English coach which was the
curiosity of all other vehicular curiosities. How the family ever
climbed into it, or got out of it, and how the driver ever reached the
dizzy height upon which he sat, was the mystery of my childhood.
But, although egg-shaped and suspended in mid-air, this coach had
doubtless, in its day, been one of considerable renown, drawn by four
horses, with footman, postilion, and driver in English livery.
How sad must have been its reflections on finding itself shorn of
these respectable surroundings, and, after the Revolution, drawn by
two republican horses, with footman and driver dressed in republican
jeans!
A great-uncle of this family, unlike the coach, never would become
republicanized; and his obstinate loyalty to the English crown, with
his devotion to everything English, gained for him the title "English
Louis," by which name he is spoken of in the family to this day. An
old lady told me not long ago that she remembered, when a child, the
arrival of "English Louis" at Rustic one night, and his conversation
as they sat around the fire,--how he deplored a republican form of
government, and the misfortunes which would result from it, saying:
"All may go smoothly for about seventy years, when civil war will set
in. First it will be about these negro slaves we have around us, and
after that it will be something else." And how true "English Louis'"
prediction has proven.[13]
[13] On the route to Rustic was a small village called Liberty,
approaching which, and hearing the name, "English Louis" swore he
would not pass through any such----little republican town, and,
turning his horses, traveled many miles out of his way to avoid it.
Doubtless this gentleman was avoided and proscribed on account of his
English proclivities. For at that day the spirit of republicanism and
hatred to England ran high; so that an old gentleman--one of our
relatives whom I well remember--actually took from his parlor walls
his coat-of-arms, which had been brought by his grandfather from
England, and, carrying it out in his yard, built a fire, and,
collecting his children around it to see it burn, said: "Thus let
everything English perish!"
Should I say what I think of this proceeding I would not be
considered, perhaps, a true republican patriot.
I must add a few words to my previous mention of Smithfield, in
Montgomery County, the county which flows with healing waters.
Smithfield, like Greenfield, is owned by the descendants of the first
white family who settled there after the Indians, and its verdant
pastures, noble forests, and mountain streams and springs, form a
prospect wondrously beautiful.
This splendid estate descended to three brothers of the Preston
family, who equally divided it, the eldest keeping the homestead, and
the others building attractive homes on their separate plantations.
The old homestead was quite antique in appearance. Inside, the high
mantelpieces reaching nearly to the ceiling, which was also high, and
the high wainscoting, together with the old furniture, made a picture
of the olden time.
When I first visited this place, the old grandmother, then eighty
years of age, was living. She, like the old lady at Rustic, had been a
belle in eastern Virginia in her youth. When she married the owner of
Smithfield sixty years before, she made the bridal jaunt from Norfolk
to this place on horseback, two hundred miles. Still exceedingly
intelligent and interesting, she entertained us with various incidents
of her early life, and wished to hear all the old songs which she had
then heard and sung herself.
"When I was married," said she, "and first came to Smithfield, my
husband's sisters met me in the porch, and were shocked at my pale and
delicate appearance. One of them, whispering to her brother, asked:
'Why did you bring that ghost up here?' And now," continued the old
lady, "I have outlived all who were in the house that day, and all my
own and my husband's family."
This was certainly an evidence of the health-restoring properties of
the water and climate in this region.
The houses of these three brothers were filled with company winter and
summer, making within themselves a delightful society. The visitors at
one house were equally visitors at the others, and the succession of
dinner and evening parties from one to the other made it difficult for
a visitor to decide at whose particular house he was staying.
One of these brothers, Colonel Robert Preston, had married a lovely
lady from South Carolina, whose perfection of character and
disposition endeared her to everyone who knew her. Everybody loved her
at sight, and the better she was known the more she was beloved. Her
warm heart was ever full of other people's troubles or joys, never
thinking of herself. In her house many an invalid was cheered by her
tender care, and many a drooping heart revived by her bright Christian
spirit. She never omitted an opportunity of pointing the way to
heaven; and although surrounded by all the allurements which gay
society and wealth could bring, she did not swerve an instant from the
quiet path along which she directed others. In the midst of bright and
happy surroundings her thoughts and hopes were constantly centered
upon the life above; and her conversation--which was the reflex of her
heart--reverted ever to this theme, which she made attractive to old
and young.
The eldest of the three brothers was William Ballard Preston, once
Secretary of the Navy in the cabinet of President Taylor.