STARTING LIFE ANEW
We suffered terribly during the ensuing months for want of something
in which we might occupy ourselves. We sat silently, looking out on
a landscape marked here and there by chimneys standing sentinel over
the blackened heaps where our neighbors had made happy homes. A few
books had been saved, only those for which we had little use. A soldier
walked in one day with a handsome volume which Jefferson Davis, after
inscribing his name in it, had presented to the General. The soldier
calmly requested the former owner to be kind enough to add to the value
of the volume by writing beneath the inscription his own autograph, and,
his request granted, walked off with it under his arm. "He has been
at some trouble," said my husband, "and he had as well be happy if I
cannot!"
As the various brigades moved away from our neighborhood a few
plain articles of furniture that had been taken from the house were
restored to us, but nothing handsome or valuable, no books, pictures,
_bric-à-brac_, or house-furnishings of any kind—just a few chairs and
tables. I had furnished an itemized list of all the articles we had
lost, with only this result.
We had news after a while of our blooded mare, Lady Jane. A letter
enclosing her photograph came from a New England officer:—
"TO MR. PRYOR,
"DEAR SIR: A very fine mare belonging to you came into my
camp near Richmond and is now with me. It would add much to
her value if I could get her pedigree. Kindly send it at your
earliest convenience, and oblige
"Yours truly,
—— ——
"P.S. The mare is in good health, as you will doubtless be
glad to know."
Disposed as my General was to be amiable, this was a little too much!
The pedigree was not sent.
A great number of tourists soon began to pass our house on their way
to visit the localities near us, now become historic. They wished to
stand on the site of General Lee's headquarters, to pluck a blade of
grass from the hollow of the crater, to visit the abattis, lunettes, and
fortifications of both lines, especially Fort Steadman, Fort Gregg, and
Battery 45, where the lines were broken the last of March and on April
2.
These tourists, men and women, would pause at the well, some on
horseback, others in the dilapidated landaus or buggies for hire in
Petersburg. Uncle Frank, with his flow of courteous language and his
attractive manners, would usually meet and discourse to them, earning
many a _douceur_ by drawing from the well the cold water for which it
was famous. Abram's family was abroad in the fields, where the old man
had planted corn in June—too late to hope for other harvest than the
fodder to feed the horse the quartermaster had given him at my earnest
request. Under the impression that we were still working our negroes,
some of the tourists would dismount and harangue Abram at length upon
his "rights." The old man would listen respectfully, shaking his gray
head dubiously as they rode off. "Recollect, boy," said one of these
travellers to Alick, "the white woman in that house is now _your_
slave!" Alick was standing beneath my window, amusing himself by tying
up a rosebush. He looked up, simply advising me,—"Let 'em go 'long,"—and
resumed his work in training the rosebush.
Sometimes the tourists would ask permission to call on us, claiming
some common acquaintance. My husband was inclined to resent this. Their
sympathetic attitude was offensive to him. Like the Douglas he had
endured much, but—
"Last and worst, to spirit proud
To bear the pity of the crowd:"—
this was more than he could endure.
We were perfectly aware that they wished to see _us_, and not to gain,
as they affected, information about the historic localities on the farm.
Still less did they desire ignobly to triumph over us. A boy, when
he tears off the wings of a fly, is much interested in observing its
actions, not that he is cruel—far from it! He is only curious to see
how the creature will behave under very disadvantageous circumstances.
One day a clergyman called, with a card of introduction from Mrs.
Hartsuff, who had, I imagine, small discernment as regards clergymen.
This one was a smug little man,—sleek, unctuous, and trim, with
Pecksniffian self-esteem oozing out of every pore of his face.
"Well, Madam," he commenced, "I trust I find you lying meekly under
the chastening rod of the Lord. I trust you can say 'it is good I was
afflicted.'"
Having no suitable answer just ready, I received his pious exhortation
in silence. One can always safely do this with a clergyman.
"There are seasons," continued the good man, "when chastisement must
be meted out to the transgressor; but if borne in the right spirit, the
rod may blossom with blessings in the end."
A little more of the same nature wrung from me the query, "Are there
none on the other side who need the rod?"
"Oh—well, now—my dear lady! You must consider! You were in the wrong in
this unhappy contest, or, I should say, this most righteous war."
"_Væ victis!_" I exclaimed. "Our homes were invaded. We are on our own
soil!"
My reverend brother grew red in the face. Rising and bowing himself out,
he sent me a Parthian arrow:—
"No thief e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law."
On the afternoon of a sultry day, a black cloud suddenly darkened the
sky, thundered, lightened, and poured down a pelting storm of hailstones
and rain. A party of young people galloped up to the gate, hastily
dismounted, and ran for the shelter of our porch. There were half a
dozen or more young girls and men. The small roof affording them scant
shelter, I invited them into the parlor, where they stood dripping and
shivering until a fire was kindled. A sudden cold wind came on with the
hail. It had been a long time since I had seen happy, cheerful young
girls in their riding-habits, and I fell in love with them at once,
putting them at ease, chafing their hands, and drying their little
coats. I never saw young folk so much embarrassed. They were Northern
tourists, and felt the full force of our relative positions. When hot
tea was brought in, they were overwhelmed. I was loath to give them
up—these pretty girls. When they bade me good-by and thanked me for my
nice tea and fire, the black eyes of one little beauty snapped with an
unmistakable expression—"for your coals of fire!"
Such incidents as these were our only events. Our friends in town were
in too much poverty and sorrow to visit us. A deadly silence and apathy
had succeeded the storm. It was a long time before the community waked
up from this apathy—not, indeed, until the cool, invigorating weather
of autumn. The blood-soaked soil and the dead animals emitted sickening
odors until the frosts came to chain them up.
A bachelor friend occasionally visited us and invited the little boys
to accompany him upon relic-hunting expeditions to the narrow plain
which had divided the opposing lines on that fateful April morning, just
three months before. Ropes were fastened around extinct shells, and they
were hauled in, to stand sentinel at the door. The shells were short
cylinders, with one pointed end like a candle before it is lighted.
Numbers of minie balls were dug out of the sand.
One day Mr. Kemp brought in a great curiosity—two bullets welded
together, having been shot from opposing rifles.
Twenty years afterward I showed this twin-bullet to General Grant, not
long before his last illness. With Mrs. Grant, he had called at my home
in Brooklyn to inquire if I had good news of General Pryor, who was in
England, having been sent by Irish Americans to see what could be done
for O'Donnell, the Irish prisoner. General Grant was much interested in
this case. He found me at my late breakfast of tea, toast, and a dozen
oysters, which were divided among the three of us. After breakfast I
brought out the bullet. He laid it on the palm of his hand and looked
at it long and earnestly.
"See, General," I said, "the bullets are welded together so as to form
a perfect horseshoe—a charm to keep away witches and evil spirits."
But the General was not interested in amulets, charms, or evil spirits.
After regarding it silently for a moment, he remarked:—
"Those are minie balls, shot from rifles of equal caliber. And they
met precisely equidistant to a hair. This is very interesting, but it
is not the only one in the world. I have seen one other, picked up at
Vicksburg. Where was this found and when?" he asked, as he handed the
relic back to me. "At Petersburg, possibly."
"Yes," I answered, "but not when you were shelling the city. It was
picked up on our farm after the last fight."
He looked at me with a humorous twinkle in his eye. "Now look here," he
said, "don't you go about telling people I shelled Petersburg."
[Illustration: Met Bullets found near Fort Gregg, 1865.]
A short time before his death, just before he was taken to Mount
McGregor, he dictated a note to me, sending his kind regards to my
General, and saying he remembered with pleasure his talk with me over
a cup of tea.
But we must return (and I am sure I am pardoned for this digression) to
the weary life of enforced idleness at the cottage.
I had no garments to mend or to make, no household to manage. The sultry
days were begun and rounded by hours of listless endurance, followed
by troubled sleep. A bag of army "hardtack" stood in a corner, so the
children were never hungry. Presently they, too, sat around us, too
listless to play or talk. A great army of large, light brown Norway rats
now overran the farm. They would walk to the corner before our eyes and
help themselves to the army ration. We never moved a finger to drive
them away. After a while Alick appeared with an enormous black-and-white
cat.
"Dis is jest a leetle mo'n I can stand," said Alick. "De Yankees
has stole ev'rything, and dug up de whole face o' the yearth—and de
Jews comes all de time and pizens de well, droppin' down chains an'
grapplin'-irons to see ef we all has hid silver—but I ain' obleedged to
stan' sassyness fum dese outlandish rats."
Alick had to surrender. The very first night after the arrival of his
valiant cat there was a scuffle in the room where the crackers were
kept, a chair was overturned, and a flying cat burst through the hall,
pursued by three or four huge rats. The cat took refuge in a tree, and,
stealthily descending at an opportune moment, stole away and left the
field to the enemy.
Of course there could be but one result from this life. Malaria had hung
over us for weeks, and now one after another of the children lay down
upon the "pallets" on the floor, ill with fever. Then I succumbed and
was violently ill. Our only nurse was my dear General; and not in all
the years when he never shirked duty, or lost a march, or rode on his
own horse when his men had a toilsome march or if one of them failed by
the way, and never lost one of the battles into which he personally led
them,—not in all those trying times was he nobler, grander, than in his
long and lonely vigils beside his sick family. And most nobly did the
aged negress in the kitchen stand by us. My one fevered vision was of
an ebony angel!
After we recovered, my dear husband was ill—ague and fever had fastened
on him. When he, too, grew better, he would sit for days in hopeless
despair, looking out on the desolate landscape.
General Hartsuff and his wife often visited us. They were terribly
afraid of fever, and would send in messages from the gate while we
were all so ill. But after we had recovered, General Hartsuff came
himself—and finally sent Captain Gregory, the commissary-general, to
see me, and to reason seriously with me about the necessity of sending
General Pryor away. He had never been pardoned. There were men in power
who constantly hinted at punishment and retribution. General Pryor
would die here. He should go to New York, go by sea, shake off the
chills that shook him so relentlessly every third day, meet friends
(many Southerners were in New York), and something might result for his
benefit.
This idea grew in our minds as feasible, if only we had the money. It
had never occurred to me to make a second attempt (one had failed) to
sell my watch. I now took it to a banker in Petersburg, added to it a
cherished antique cameo set in diamonds which had never left my finger
since it was given me, like Shylock's turquoise from his Leah, when my
husband "was a bachelor." Leaving these in pledge, I received three
hundred dollars. I bought some quinine forthwith, ordered a suit of
clothes to replace the threadbare Confederate gray, and sent Roger A.
Pryor, the sometime "rebel," to New York, upon an experiment of which
the most sanguine imagination could not have foreseen the successful
result.
A difficult task lay before him. Ruined in fortune, his occupation gone,
his friends dead or impoverished, his health impaired, his heart broken,
he had yet to win support for a wife and seven children, and that in
a hostile community. Only two things were left to him—the ability to
work and the willingness to work. With what courage he commenced the
study of his profession, what difficulties he surmounted, what rebuffs
he bore with fortitude, I can give here no adequate idea. He labored
incessantly, often breaking down and fainting, at his task. In one of
his early letters he says, "Sometimes I sink in despair; but then I
rally and press on. Don't you think heaven will prosper me for _your_
sake? The obstacles to the success of 'a rebel' in this city are almost
insurmountable."
He accepted a position on the _Daily News_ which yielded him twenty-five
dollars a week. Meanwhile he must learn New York law.
There has been too much sorrow already in this story. Why tell of all
the anguish, all the suffering of the next years? During the long,
lonely winter of 1865 my husband nobly strove to sustain my hopes, and
for his sake I would not allow my heart to break.
Early in February old Abram, the faithful servant in whose care my
husband left me, announced that we had reached the end of all our
resources at Cottage Farm. Rose, the little cow, had died, the turnips
and potatoes Abram had raised were all gone, the two pigs he had
reared had fulfilled their destiny long ago, and the government rations
had ceased. He "could scuffle along himself, but 't wa'n't no use to
pertend" he could "take care of Mistis an' the chilluns, not like they
ought to be took care of."
"We must not despair, Abram," I said. "We'll feed the children, never
fear! I must plan something to help."
"Plannin' ain't no 'count, Mistis, less'n you got sump'n to work on.
What we all goin' to do for wood?"
"What you have done all along, I suppose."
"No'm. Dat's onpossible. We done burn up Fort Gregg an' Battery 45. Der
ain' no mo' fortifications on de place as I knows of."
"Fortifications!" I exclaimed. "Why, Abram! you surely haven't been
burning the fortifications?"
"Hit's des like I tell you, Mistis. De las' stick's on yo' wood-pile
now."
"Well, Abram," I said gravely, "if we have destroyed our
fortifications—burned our bridges—the time has come to change our base.
We will move into town."
Of course, without food or fuel, and without Abram, we could not live in
the country. The fields were a desolate waste, with no fences to protect
a possible crop or to keep cattle within bounds. Abram saw no hope from
cultivation—nothing to "work on." He had been a refugee from a lower
plantation, and he was now inclined to put out his children to service,
and return in his old age to his old home and to his old master, who
longed to welcome him. He was a grand old man. I doubt not he has a warm
place in the bosom of that other Abram, the faithful, but no whit more
faithful than he.
The afternoon before our departure from Cottage Farm, the weather was so
deliciously balmy that I walked over the garden and grounds, thinking
of the great drama that had been enacted on this spot. The spring
comes early in the lower counties of Virginia. Already the grass was
springing, and on the trees around the well which had so often refreshed
General Lee, tender young leaves were trembling. Our old friends the
tourists now appeared at intervals, taking in this historic ground on
their return from Florida or South Carolina, where they had spent the
winter.
The garden, which at this season had always blossomed with early
hyacinths, daffodils, snowdrops, and the rosy spikes of the flowering
almond, was now a ploughed and trampled waste of weeds. Under the
iron-clad hoofs of the cavalry horses, and the heavy wheels of the
gun-carriages, the life had been crushed out of the tender bulbs. Spring
had come to touch all scars with her gentle finger-tips. Over all the
battle-torn ground, over the grave of the young soldier who had lain so
long under my window, over the track ploughed by shot and shell, she had
spread a delicate bloom like a smile on the lips of the dead. A bit of
color attracted my attention, and stooping over a bramble-bush I found,
under its protection, a single spike of pink hyacinth. When I arose with
the treasure in my hand, I saw that an elderly gentleman had alighted
from his "buggy" and was gravely considering me. He bared his head and
introduced himself. "Madame, I am a Northern traveller. Will you give
me that little flower as a souvenir?"
"Take it!" I said; there was nothing else left, his people had all the
rest—and with effusive bows and thanks he stumbled over the briers and
uneven ground to secure his delicate souvenir of a battle-ground.
Much of my last night at Cottage Farm was spent at the window from which
I had watched on that anxious night of my first home-coming. The home
had been polluted, sacked, desecrated—and yet I was leaving it with
regret. Many a hard battle with illness, with want, with despair, had
been fought within those walls. It seemed like a long dark night in
which neither sun nor moon nor stars had appeared; during which we had
simply endured, watching ourselves the while, jealous lest the natural
rebound of youthful hope and spirit should surprise us, and dishonor
those who had suffered and bled and died for our sakes.
But now the night was gone, the hour of awakening had come. There was
work for me to do in the world; the world in which I had been divinely
taught I should "have tribulation" with the command and promise, "Fear
not! I have overcome the world." And so, as I sat again in the darkness,
and kept my midnight vigil:—
As of old when the fire and tempest had passed,
And an earthquake had riven the rocks, the Word
In a still small voice rose over the blast,
The voice of the Lord.
And the Voice said—"Take up your life again,
Quit yourself manfully, stand in your lot;
Let the Fever, the Famine, the peril, the pain,
Be all forgot."
That I might aid my husband to mend our fortunes, I persuaded seven
of my neighbors' children to take music lessons from me. I had been
carefully instructed in music, having been taught by a pupil of Liszt's,
brought over by the Hon. William C. Rives at the close of his second
term as Minister to the Court of Louis Philippe, to teach his own
daughter Amélie. So I was well equipped for my new duties, upon which,
despite my own persistent chills and fevers, I entered with enthusiasm.