THE day dawned heavenly fair, and waxed gloriously bright by the time
the preparations for the reception of the guests were completed.
The dust had been laid by an all-day rain forty-eight hours before.
Every blade of grass and the leaves, which rustled joyously overhead,
shone as if newly varnished. At ten o’clock all the sitting-space was
occupied, three-fourths of the assembly being of the fairer sex. Half
an hour later there was not standing-room within the sound of the
orators’ voices. A better-dressed, better-mannered crowd never graced
a political “occasion.” All were in summer gala attire, and all were
seated without confusion. My father, as chairman of the committee of
arrangements, had provided for every stage of the proceeding. It was by
a motion, made by him and carried by acclamation, that Captain Miller,
“a citizen of credit and renown,” was called to preside.
As if it had happened last week, I can, in fancy, see each feature
of this, the most stupendous function that had ever entered my young
life. I suppose there may have been five hundred people present. I
would have said, unhesitatingly, “five thousand,” if asked to make
the computation. I wore, for the first time, a sheer lawn frock—the
longest I had ever had, but, as my mother explained to the village
dressmaker—Miss Judy Cardozo—“Virginia is growing so fast, we would
better have it rather long to begin with.” I secretly rejoiced
in the sweep of the full skirt down to my heels, as giving me a
young-ladylike appearance. “Thad” Ivey, always kind to me, and not
less jolly because he was soon to be a married man, meeting me on the
way up the street, declared that I had “really a ball-room air.” My
hair was “done” in two braids and tied with white ribbon figured with
pale-purple and green flowers. Sprigs of the same color decorated the
white ground of my lawn. I carried a white fan, and I sat, with great
delight, between my mother and Cousin Mary.
“‘And bright
The _sun_ shone o’er fair women and brave men,’”
murmured a gallant Whig to the row of women behind us.
“Isn’t that strange!” whispered I to Cousin Mary; “those lines have
been running in my mind ever since we came.”
Not strange, as I now know. Everybody read and quoted “Childe Harold”
at that period, and I may add, took liberties with the text of favorite
poems to suit them to the occasion.
When the round of applause that greeted the appearance of Captain
Miller upon the platform subsided, everything grew suddenly so still
that I heard the leaves rustling over our heads. His was not an
imposing presence, but he had a stainless reputation as a legislator
and a Whig, and was highly respected as a man. He began in exactly
these words:
“Ladies and gentlemen—fellow-citizens, all!—it behooves us, always
and everywhere, before entering upon the prosecution of any important
enterprise, to invoke the presence and blessing of Almighty God. We
will, therefore, be now led in prayer by the Reverend Mr. Carus.”
My uncle-in-law “offered” a tedious petition, too long-winded to
please the average politician perhaps, but it was generally felt that
a younger man and newer resident could not have been called upon
without incivility verging upon disrespect to a venerable citizen. The
invocation over, the presiding officer announced that “the Whigs, in
obedience to the spirit of fair play to all, and injustice to none,
that had ever characterized the party, would to-day grant to their
honored opponents, the Democrats, the opportunity of replying publicly
to the arguments advanced in the addresses of those representing
the principles in the interest of which the present assembly had
been convened. The first speaker of the day would be the Hon. Holden
Rhodes, of Richmond. The second would be one almost as well known
to the citizens of county and state—the Hon. John Winston Jones, of
Chesterfield. The Whigs reserved to themselves the last and closing
address of the day by the Hon. Watkins Leigh, of Richmond.”
Nothing could be fairer and more courteous, it seemed to me. In the
hum of approval that rippled through the assembly it was apparent that
others held the like sentiment. Likewise, that the “Honorable Chairman”
had scored another point for the magnanimous Whigs. But then—as I
whispered to my indulgent neighbor on the left—they could afford to
surrender an advantage or two to the party they were going to whip out
of existence.
Holden Rhodes was an eminent lawyer, and his speech was a trifle too
professional in sustained and unoratorical argument for my taste and
mental reach. I recall it chiefly because of a comical interruption
that enlivened the hour-long exposition of party creeds.
I have drawn in my book, _Judith_, a full-length portrait of one of the
men of marked individuality who made Powhatan celebrated in the history
of a state remarkable in every period for strongly defined public
characters. In _Judith_ I named this man “Captain Macon.” In real life
he was Capt. John Cocke, a scion of a good old family, a planter of
abundant means, and the father of sons who were already beginning to
take the place in the public eye he had held for fifty years. He was
tall and gaunt, his once lofty head slightly bowed by years and—it was
hinted—by high living. He had been handsome, and his glance was still
piercing, his bearing distinguished. I ever cherished, as I might value
a rare antique, the incident of his introduction to that stalwart dame,
my New England grandmother, who had now been a member of our family for
three years.
We were on our way home after service at Fine Creek, and the carriage
had stopped at a wayside spring to water the horses. Captain Cocke
stood by the spring, his bridle rein thrown over his arm while his
horse stooped to the “branch” flowing across the highway. Expecting to
see my mother in the carriage, he took off his hat and approached the
window.
“This is my mother, Captain,” said my father, raising his voice
slightly, as he then named the new-comer to her deaf ears.
The old cavalier bowed low, his hand upon his heart: “Madam, I am the
friend of your son. I can say nothing more to a mother!”
The fine courtesy, the graceful deference to age, the instant
adaptation of manner and words to the circumstances, have set the
episode aside in my heart as a gem of its kind.
He wore on that Sunday, and he wore on every other day the year
around, a scarlet hunting-coat. I wonder if there were more eccentrics
in Virginia in that generation than are to be met with there—or
anywhere else—nowadays? Certain it is that nobody thought of inquiring
why Captain Cocke, whose ancestors had served under Washington and
Lafayette in the war for freedom, chose to sport the British livery.
We had ceased to remark upon it by the time I write of. When strangers
expressed wonderment at the queer garb, we had a resentful impression
of officiousness.
Mr. Rhodes, with the rest of his party, was thoroughly dissatisfied
with the policy (or want of policy) of John Tyler, who had been called
to the presidential chair by the untimely death of Gen. W. H. Harrison.
In the progress of his review of national affairs, he came to this name
when he had spoken half an hour or so.
Whereupon uprose the majestic figure clad in scarlet, from his seat
a few feet away from the platform. The Captain straightened his bent
shoulders and lifted lean arms and quivering fingers toward heaven. The
red tan of his weather-beaten cheeks was a dusky crimson.
“The Lord have mercy upon the nation!” he cried, his voice solemn with
wrath, and sonorous with the potency of the mint-juleps for which “The
Bell” was noted. “Fellow-citizens! I always cry to High Heaven for
mercy upon this country when John Tyler’s name is mentioned! Amen and
amen!”
He had a hearty round of applause mingled with echoes of his “amens”
and much good-humored laughter. They all knew and loved the Captain.
I felt the blood rush to my face, and I saw others glance around
reprovingly when a city girl who sat behind me, and carried on a
whispered flirtation with a fopling at her side during Mr. Rhodes’s
speech, drawled:
“What voice from the tombs is that?”
Mrs. James Saunders, née Mary Cocke, was my mother’s right-hand
neighbor. With perfect temper and an agreeable smile, she looked over
her shoulder into the babyish face of the cockney guest—
“That is my Uncle John,” she uttered, courteously.
Whereat all within hearing smiled, and the young woman had the grace to
blush.
Mr. Rhodes was speaking again, and the audience was respectfully
attentive. The orator made clever use of the Captain’s interruption.
The manner of it offended nobody. John Tyler was, perhaps, the most
unpopular man in the Union at that particular time. The Democrats
had no use for him, and he had disappointed his own party. When the
smoke and dust of political skirmishing cleared away, Virginians did
something like justice to his motives and his talents. Twenty years
thereafter, my early pre-possessions, engendered by the vituperative
eloquence of the Clay campaign, were corrected by a quiet remark made
by my father to a man who spoke slightingly of the ex-President:
“The man who chose the cabinet that served during Tyler’s
administration was neither fool nor traitor.”
John Winston Jones demolished the fair fabric Mr. Rhodes had spent so
much time and labor in constructing that I began to yawn before the
lively Democrat woke me up. I recollect that he was pungent and funny,
and that I was interested, despite his sacrilegious treatment of what I
regarded as sacred themes.
It was a telling point when he drew deliberately a wicked-looking
jack-knife from his breeches pocket, opened it as deliberately, and,
turning toward Mr. Rhodes, who sat at his left, said:
“If I were to plunge this into the bosom of my friend and respected
opponent (and I beg to assure him that I shall not hurt a hair of his
head, now or ever!), would I be regarded as his benefactor? Yet that is
what General Jackson did to the system of bank monopolies,” etc.
I did not follow him further. For a startled second I had really
thought we were to have a “scene.” I had heard that Democrats were
bloodthirsty by nature, and that sanguinary outbreaks attended
political demonstrations and cataracts of bad whiskey.
It goes without saying that the Hon. Watkins Leigh—a distinguished
member of the Richmond bar, famous for legal acumen and forensic
oratory—made quick and thorough work in the destruction of Mr. Jones’s
building, and sent the Whigs home with what I heard my mother describe
as “a good taste in their mouths.”
The orations were interspersed with “patriotic songs.” A quartette of
young men, picked out by the committee of arrangements, for their fine
voices and stanch Whiggery, stood on the platform and sang the body of
the ballads. The choruses were shouted, with more force and good-will
than tunefulness, by masculine voters of all ages and qualities of tone.
Doctor Henning, an able physician, and as eccentric in his way as
Captain Cocke in his, stood near my father, his back against a tree,
his mouth wide, and all the volume of sound he could pump from his
lungs pouring skyward in the refrain of
“Get out of the way, you’re all unlucky;
Clear the track for Old Kentucky!”—
when his eye fell upon a young man, who, having no more ear or voice
than the worthy Galen himself, contented himself with listening. As
the quartette began the next verse, the Doctor collared “Abe” Cardozo
(whom, by the way, he had assisted to bring into the world), and
actually shook him in the energy of his patriotism—
“Abraham James! why don’t you sing?”
“Me, Doctor?” stammered the young fellow, who probably had not heard
his middle name in ten years before—“I never sang a note in my life!”
“Then begin now!” commanded the Doctor, setting the example as the
chorus began anew.
How my father laughed! backing out of sight of the pair, and doubling
himself up in the enjoyment of the scene, real bright tears rolling
down his cheeks. I heard him rehearse the incident twenty times
in after-years, and always with keen delight. For the Doctor was a
scholar and a dreamer, as well as a skilful practitioner, renowned for
his horticultural and ornithological successes, and so taciturn and
absent-minded that he seldom took part in general conversation. That he
should have been drawn out of his shell to the extent of roaring out
ungrammatical doggerel in a public assembly of his fellow-citizens,
was a powerful proof of the tremendous force of party enthusiasm. The
incongruity of the whole affair appealed to my father’s ever-active
sense of humor. He would wind up the story by asserting that “it would
have made Jeremiah chuckle if he had known both of the actors in the
by-play.”
One specimen of the ballads that flooded the land in the fateful 1844
will give some idea of the tenor of all:
_Tune_: “Ole Dan Tucker”
“The moon was shining silver bright, the stars with glory
crowned the night,
High on a limb that ‘same old Coon’ was singing to himself
this tune:
_Chorus_
“Get out of the way, you’re all unlucky; clear the track
for Ole Kentucky!
“Now in a sad predicament the Lokies are for President;
They have six horses in the pasture, and don’t know which
can run the faster.
“The Wagon-Horse from Pennsylvany, the Dutchmen think he’s
the best of any;
But he must drag in heavy stages his Federal notions and
low wages.
“They proudly bring upon the course an old and broken-down
war-horse;
They shout and sing: ‘Oh! rumpsey dumsey, Colonel Johnson
killed Tecumsey!’
“And here is Cass, though not a dunce, will run both sides
of the track at once;
To win the race will all things copy, be sometimes pig and
sometimes puppy.
“The fiery Southern horse, Calhoun, who hates a Fox and fears
a Coon,
To toe the scratch will not be able, for Matty keeps him in
the stable.
“And here is Matty, never idle, a tricky horse that slips his
bridle;
In forty-four we’ll show him soon the little Fox can’t fool
the Coon.
“The balky horse they call John Tyler, we’ll head him soon or
burst his boiler;
His cursed ‘grippe’ has seized us all, which Doctor Clay will
cure next fall.
“The people’s fav’rite, Henry Clay, is now the ‘fashion’ of the
day;
And let the track be dry or mucky, we’ll stake our pile on Ole
Kentucky.
“Get out of the way, he’s swift and lucky; clear the track for
Ole Kentucky!”
(The chorus of each preceding verse is, “Get out of the way, you’re all
unlucky,” etc. The “Fox” is Martin Van Buren, or “Matty.” The “Coon” is
Clay. The “Wagon-Horse from Pennsylvany” is James Buchanan.)
Another ballad, sung that day under the trees at the back of the Court
House, began after this wise:
“What has caused this great commotion
Our ranks betray?
It is the ball a-rolling on
To clear the way
For Harry Clay.
And with him we’ll beat your Polk! Polk! Polk!
And his motley crew of folk.
O! with him we’ll beat your Polk.”
To my excited imagination it was simple fact, not a flight of fancy,
that Powhatan should be alluded to that day as “your historic county—a
mere wave in the vast Union—
“That ever shall be
Divided as billows, yet one as the sea.”
“A wave, fellow-citizens, that has caught the irresistible impulse of
wind and tide bearing us on to the most glorious victory America has
ever seen.”
Ah’s me! That was how both parties talked and felt with regard to the
Union seventeen years before the very name became odious to those who
had been ready to die in defence of it.
I cannot dismiss the subject of public functions in the “historic
county” without devoting a few pages to the annual Muster Day. It was
preceded by five days of “officers’ training.” The manœuvres of the
latter body were carried on in the public square, and, as one end of
our house overlooked this, no lessons were studied or recited between
the hours of 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. on those days. The sophisticated
twentieth-century youngling will smile contemptuously at hearing that,
up to this time, I had never heard a brass-band. But I knew all about
martial music. Already there was laid away in the fat portfolio nobody
except myself ever opened, a story in ten parts, in which the hero’s
voice was compared to “the thrilling strains of martial music.”
I boiled the tale down four years thereafter, and it was printed. It
had a career. But “that is another story.”
I used to sit with my “white work,” or a bit of knitting, in hand, at
that end window, looking across the side-street down upon the square,
watching the backing and filling, the prancing and the halting of the
eight “officers” drilled in military tactics by Colonel Hopkins, the
strains of the drum and fife in my ears, and dream out war-stories by
the dozen.
The thumping and the squealing of drum and fife set my pulses to
dancing as the finest orchestra has never made them leap since that day
when fancy was more real and earnest than what the bodily senses took
in.
By Saturday the officers had learned their lesson well enough to take
their respective stands before (and aft, as we shall see) the larger
body of free and independent American citizens who were not “muster
free,” hence who must study the noble art of war.
They came from every quarter of the county. The Fine Creek and Genito
neighborhoods gave up their quota, and Deep Creek, Red Lane, and Yellow
Jacket country kept not back. It was a motley and most democratic line
that stretched from the main street to that flanking the public square.
Butternut and broadcloth rubbed elbows; planter and overseer were
shoulder to shoulder. “Free, white, and twenty-one” had the additional
qualification of “under forty-five.” Past that, the citizen of these
free and enlightened United States lays down the burden of peaceable
military muster.
Besides those worn by the officers, there was not a uniform on duty
that Saturday. Here and there one might descry the glitter of a
gun-barrel. Walking-canes and, with the Yellow Jacket contingent,
corn-stalks, simulated muskets in the exercises dictated by Colonel
Hopkins, who was to-day at his best. I employ the word “dictated” with
intention. He had to tell the recruits (surely the rawest ever drawn up
in line) exactly what each order meant. To prevent the swaying array
from leaning back against the fence, three officers were detailed to
skirmish behind the long row and shove delinquents into place. The
Colonel instructed them how to hold their “arms,” patiently; in the
simplest colloquial phrase, informed them what each was to do when
ordered to “shoulder arms,” “right dress,” “mark time,” and the rest of
the technicalities confusing to ears unlearned, and which, heard by the
veteran but once in a twelve-month, could not be familiar even after
ten or fifteen years of “service.”
Both the windows commanding the parade-ground were filled on Muster
Day. My mother and our grown-up cousins enjoyed the humors of the
situation almost as much as we girls, who let nothing escape our eager
eyes. Especially do I recall the shout of laughter we drew away from
our outlook to stifle, when the suave commanding officer, mindful of
the dull comprehension and crass ignorance of a large proportion of
his corps, directed them in a clear voice—whose courteous intonations
never varied under provocations that would have thrown some men into
paroxysms of mirth, and moved many to profanity—to “look straight
forward, hold the chin level, and let the hands hang down, keeping
thumbs upon the seam of the pantaloons.” More technical terms would
have been thrown away. Twenty warriors (prospective) brought both
hands forward and laid their thumbs, side by side, upon the central
seams of their pantaloons! Merriment, that threatened to be like the
“inextinguishable laughter” of Olympian deities, followed the grave
anxieties of the officials in rear and front of the mixed multitude to
hinder those at the extreme ends of the line from bending forward to
watch the manœuvres of comrades who occupied the centre of the field.
In spite of hurryings to and fro and up and down the ranks, it chanced,
half a dozen times an hour, that what should have been a straight line
became a curve. Then the gallant, indomitable Colonel would walk
majestically from end to end, and with the flat of his naked sword
repair the damage done to discipline—
“Just like a boy rattling a stick along the palings!” gasped Cousin
Mary, choking with mirth.
The simile was apt.
Some staid citizens, tenacious of dignity and susceptible to ridicule,
seldom appeared upon the parade-ground, preferring to pay the fine
exacted for the omission. Others—and not a few—contended that some
familiarity with military manœuvres was essential to the mental outfit
of every man who would be willing to serve his country in the field
if necessary. This sentiment moved sundry of the younger men to the
formation, that same year (if I mistake not), of the “Powhatan Troop.”
One incident connected with the birth of an organization that still
exists, in name, fixed it in my mind. Cousin Joe—the hero of my
childish days—was mainly instrumental in getting up the company, and
brought the written form of constitution and by-laws to my father’s
house, where he dined on the Court Day which marked the first parade.
Our kinsman, Moses Drury Hoge, came with him. He prided himself, among
a great many other things, upon being phenomenally far-sighted. To test
this he asked Cousin Joe to hold the paper against the wall on the
opposite side of the room, and read it aloud slowly and correctly from
his seat, twenty feet away.
The scene came back to me as it was photographed on my mind that day,
when I read, ten years ago, in a Richmond paper, of the prospective
celebration of the formation of the “Powhatan Troop.” I was more than
four hundred miles away, and fifty-odd years separated me from the
“historic county” and the Court House where the banquet was to be
given. I let the paper drop and closed my eyes. I was back in the big,
square room on the first floor of the long, low, rambling house on the
village street. My favorite cousin, tall and handsome, held the paper
above his head, smiling in indulgent amusement at the young kinsman
of whom he was ever fond and proud. My father stood in the doorway,
watching the progress of the test. My mother had let her sewing fall
to her lap while she looked on. The scent of roses from the garden
that was the joy of my mother’s heart, stole in through open doors
and windows. The well-modulated tones, that were to ring musically
in church and hall on both sides of the sea, and for more than a
half-century to come, read the formal agreement, of which I recalled,
in part, the preamble:
“_We, the undersigned, citizens of the County of Powhatan, in the State
of Virginia._”
While the glamour of that moment of ecstatic reminiscence wrought
within me, I seized my pen and wrote a telegram of congratulation to
the revellers, seated, as I reckoned, at that very hour, about the
banqueting-board. I addressed the despatch to Judge Thomas Miller, the
grandson of the chairman on the day of the Whig rally. By a remarkable
and happy coincidence, for which I had hardly dared to hope, the
telegram, sent from a country station in New Jersey, flew straight
and fast to the obscure hamlet nearly five hundred miles off, and was
handed to Judge Miller at the head of the table while the feast was in
full flow. He read it aloud, and the health of the writer was drunk
amid such applause as my wildest fancy could not have foreseen in the
All-So-Long-Ago when my horizon, all rose-color and gold, was bounded
by the confines of “Our County.”