Among other early recollections is a visit with my mother to the
plantation of a favorite cousin, not far from Richmond, and one of the
handsomest seats on the James River. This residence--Howard's
Neck[15]--was a favorite resort for people from Richmond and the
adjacent counties, and, like many others on the river, always full of
guests; a round of visiting and dinner parties being kept up from one
house to another, so that the ladies presiding over these
establishments had no time to attend to domestic duties, which were
left to their housekeepers while they were employed entertaining
visitors.
[15] Dr. Cunningham's.
The negroes on these estates appeared lively and happy--that is, if
singing and laughing indicate happiness; for they went to their work
in the fields singing, and returned in the evening singing, after
which they often spent the whole night visiting from one plantation
to another, or dancing until day to the music of the banjo or
"fiddle." These dances were wild and boisterous, their evolutions
being like those of the savage dances described by travelers in
Africa. Although the most perfect timists, their music, with its wild,
melancholy cadence, half savage, half civilized, cannot be imitated or
described. Many a midnight were we wakened by their wild choruses,
sung as they returned from a frolic or "corn-shucking," sounding at
first like some hideous, savage yell, but dying away on the air,
echoing a cadence melancholy and indescribable, with a peculiar
pathos, and yet without melody or sweetness.
Corn-shuckings were occasions of great hilarity and good eating. The
negroes from various plantations assembled at night around a huge pile
of corn. Selecting one of their number--usually the most original and
amusing, and possessed of the loudest voice--they called him
"captain." The captain seated himself on top of the pile--a large
lightwood torch burning in front of him, and, while he shucked,
improvised words and music to a wild "recitative," the chorus of
which was caught up by the army of shuckers around. The glare of the
torches on the black faces, with the wild music and impromptu words,
made a scene curious even to us who were so accustomed to it.
After the corn was shucked they assembled around a table laden with
roasted pigs, mutton, beef, hams, cakes, pies, coffee, and other
substantials--many participating in the supper who had not in the
work. The laughing and merriment continued until one or two o'clock in
the morning.
On these James River plantations distinguished foreigners were often
entertained, who, visiting Richmond, desired to see something of
Virginia country life. Mr. Thackeray was once a guest at one of these
places, but Dickens never visited them. Could he have passed a month
at any one of the homes I have described, he would, I am sure, have
written something more flattering of Americans and American life than
is found in "Martin Chuzzlewit" and "American Notes." However, with
these we should not quarrel, as some of the sketches, especially the
one on "tobacco-chewers," we can recognize.
Every nation has a right to its prejudices--certainly the English
people have such a right as regards America, this country appearing to
the English eye like a huge mushroom, the growth of a night, and
unsubstantial. But it is surely wrong to censure a whole nation--as
some have done the Southern people--for the faults of a few. Although
the right of a nation to its prejudices be admitted, no one has a
right, without thorough examination and acquaintance with the subject,
to publish as facts the exaggerated accounts of another nation, put
forth by its enemies. The world in this way receives very erroneous
impressions.
For instance, we have no right to suppose the Germans a cruel race
because of the following paragraph clipped from a recent newspaper:
"The cruelty of German officers is a matter of notoriety, but an
officer in an artillery regiment has lately gone beyond precedent
in ingenuity of cruelty. Some of his men being insubordinate, he
punished them by means of a 'spurring process,' which consisted in
jabbing spurs persistently and brutally into their legs. By this
process his men were so severely injured that they had to go to the
hospital."
Neither have we a right to pronounce all Pennsylvanians cruel to their
"helps," as they call them, because a Pennsylvania lady told me "the
only way she could manage her help"--a white girl fourteen years
old--"was by holding her head under the pump and pumping water upon it
until she lost her breath,"--a process I could not have conceived, and
which filled me with horror.
But sorrow and oppression, we suppose, may be found in some form in
every clime, and in every phase of existence some hearts are "weary
and heavy laden." Even Dickens, whose mind naturally sought and fed
upon the comic, saw wrong and oppression in the "humane institutions"
of his own land!
And Macaulay gives a painful picture of Mme. D'Arblay's life as
waiting-maid to Queen Charlotte--from which we are not to infer,
however, that all queens are cruel to their waiting-maids.
Mme. D'Arblay--whose maiden name was Frances Burney--was the first
female novelist in England who deserved and received the applause of
her countrymen. The most eminent men of London paid homage to her
genius. Johnson, Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were her
friends and ardent eulogists. In the midst of her literary fame,
surrounded by congenial friends, herself a star in this select and
brilliant coterie, she was offered the place of waiting-maid in the
palace. She accepted the position, and bade farewell to all congenial
friends and pursuits. "And now began," says Macaulay, "a slavery of
five years--of five years taken from the best part of her life, and
wasted in menial drudgery. The history of an ordinary day was this:
Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she might be
ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven. Till
about eight she attended in the queen's dressing-room, and had the
honor of lacing her august mistress's stays, and of putting on the
hoop, gown, and neck-handkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in
rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then
the queen was to be powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her
Majesty's hair had to be curled and craped; and this operation added a
full hour to the business of the toilet. It was generally three before
Miss Burney was at liberty. At five she had to attend her colleague,
Mme. Schwellenberg, a hateful old toadeater, as illiterate as a
chambermaid, proud, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to
conduct herself with common decency in society. With this delightful
associate Frances Burney had to dine and pass the evening. The pair
generally remained together from five to eleven, and often had no
other company the whole time. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang
again. Miss Burney had to pass a half hour undressing the queen, and
was then at liberty to retire.
"Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the wretched
monotony of Frances Burney's life. The court moved from Kew to
Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew.
"A more important occurrence was the king's visit to Oxford. Then Miss
Burney had the honor of entering Oxford in the last of a long string
of carriages, which formed the royal procession, of walking after the
queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of standing half
dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august mistress was seated at
an excellent cold collation. At Magdalen College Frances was left for
a moment in a parlor, where she sank down on a chair. A good-natured
equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots
and bread, which he had wisely put in his pockets. At that moment the
door opened, the queen entered, the wearied attendants sprang up, the
bread and fruit were hastily concealed.
"After this the king became very ill, and during more than two years
after his recovery Frances dragged on a miserable existence at the
palace. Mme. Schwellenberg became more and more insolent and
intolerable, and now the health of poor Frances began to give way: and
all who saw her pale face, her emaciated figure, and her feeble walk
predicted that her sufferings would soon be over.
"The queen seems to have been utterly regardless of the _comfort_, the
_health_, the _life_, of her attendants. Weak, feverish, hardly able
to stand, Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress
the sweet queen, and sit up till midnight, in order to undress the
sweet queen. The indisposition of the handmaid could not and _did not
escape the notice of_ her royal mistress. But the _established
doctrine of the court was that all sickness_ was to be _considered as
a pretense until it proved fatal_. The only way in which the invalid
could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called
in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing, _till she fell down
dead at the royal feet_."
Finally Miss Burney's father pays her a visit in this palace prison,
when "she told him that she was miserable; that she was worn with
attendance and want of sleep; that she had no comfort in
life,--nothing to love, nothing to hope; that her family and friends
were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men
remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labor,
the same recreation, more hateful than labor itself, followed each
other without variety, without any interval of liberty or repose."
Her father's veneration for royalty amounting to idolatry, he could
not bear to remove her from the court--"and, between the dear father
and the sweet queen, there seemed to be little doubt that some day or
other Frances _would drop down a corpse_. Six months had elapsed since
the interview between the parent and the daughter. The resignation was
not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark, but it
failed to produce a beneficial effect. She was stimulated with wine;
she was soothed with opium, but in vain. Her breath began to fail. The
whisper that she was in a decline spread through the court. The pains
in her side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the
card-table of the old fury, Mme. Schwellenberg, to whom she was
tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking
hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have
excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day
the accursed bell still rang; the queen was still to be dressed for
the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be
undressed at midnight."
At last Miss Burney's father was moved to compassion and allowed her
to write a letter of resignation. "Still I could not," writes Miss
Burney in her diary, "summon courage to present my memorial from
seeing the queen's entire freedom from such an expectation. For though
I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I
saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers.
"At last, with a trembling hand, the paper was delivered. Then came
the storm. Mme. Schwellenberg raved like a maniac. The resignation was
not accepted. The father's fears were aroused, and he declared, in a
letter meant to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire.
The Schwellenberg raged like a wildcat. A scene almost horrible
ensued.
"The queen then promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney
should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her
Majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it."
At length, however, the prison door was opened, and Frances was free
once more. Her health was restored by traveling, and she returned to
London in health and spirits. Macaulay tells us that she went to visit
the palace, "her _old dungeon, and found her successor already far on
the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till
midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever_."
An ignorant and unlettered woman would doubtless not have found this
life in the palace tedious, and our sympathy would not have been
aroused for her; for as long as the earth lasts there must be human
beings fitted for every station, and it is supposed, till the end of
all things, there must be cooks, housemaids, and dining-room servants,
which will make it never possible for the whole human family to stand
entirely upon the same platform socially and intellectually. And Miss
Burney's wretchedness, which calls forth our sympathy, was not because
she had to perform the duties of waiting-maid, but because to a gifted
and educated woman these duties were uncongenial; and congeniality
means _happiness_; uncongeniality, _unhappiness_.