Family details.
THE hospitalities of this family were so far beyond their apparent
income, that all strangers were astonished at them. To account for this,
it must be observed that, in the first place, there was, perhaps, scarce
an instance of a family possessing such uncommonly well-trained, active,
and diligent slaves as those I describe. The set that were staid
servants when they married, had some of them died off by the time I knew
the family; but the principal roots from whence the many branches, then
flourishing, sprung, yet remained. These were two women, who had come
originally from Africa while very young; they were most excellent
servants, and the mothers or grandmothers of the whole set, except of
one white-woolled negro-man, who, in my time, sat by the chimney and
made shoes for all the rest. The great pride and happiness of those
sable matrons were, to bring up their children to dexterity, diligence,
and obedience. Diana being determined that Maria’s children should not
excel hers in any quality which was a recommendation to favour; and
Maria equally resolved that her brood, in the race of excellence, should
outstrip Diana’s. Never was a more fervent competition. That of Phillis
and Brunetta, in the Spectator, was a trifle to it: and it was extremely
difficult to decide on their respective merits; for though Maria’s son
Prince cut down wood with more dexterity and despatch than any one in
the province, the mighty Cæsar, son of Diana, cut down wheat, and
threshed it, better than he. His sister Betty, who, to her misfortune,
was a beauty of her kind, and possessed wit equal to her beauty, was the
best sempstress and laundress, by far, I have ever known; and plain,
unpretending Rachael, sister to Prince, wife to Titus, alias Tyte, and
head cook, dressed dinners that might have pleased Apicius. I record my
old humble friends by their real names, because they allowedly stood at
the head of their own class, and distinction of every kind should be
respected. Besides, when the curtain drops, or, indeed, long before it
falls, it is, perhaps, more creditable to have excelled in the lowest
parts, than to have fallen miserably short in the higher. Of the
inferior personages, in this dark drama I have been characterizing, it
would be tedious to tell: suffice it, that besides filling up all the
lower departments of the household, and cultivating to the highest
advantage a most extensive farm, there was a thorough-bred carpenter and
shoemaker, and an universal genius who made canoes, nets, and paddles,
shod horses, mended implements of husbandry, managed the fishing, in
itself no small department, reared hemp and tobacco, and spun both; made
cider, and tended wild horses, (as they called them,) which was his
province to manage and to break. For every branch of the domestic
economy, there was a person allotted—educated for the purpose; and this
society was kept immaculate, in the same way that the quakers preserve
the rectitude of theirs, and, indeed, in the only way that any community
can be preserved from corruption; when a member showed symptoms of
degeneracy, he was immediately expelled, or in other words more suitable
to this case, sold. Among the domestics, there was such a rapid
increase, in consequence of their marrying very early, and living
comfortably without care, that if they had not been detached off with
the young people brought up in the house, they would have swarmed like
an over-stocked bee-hive.
The prevention of crime was so much attended to in this well-regulated
family, that there was very little punishment necessary; none that I
ever heard of, but such as Diana and Maria inflicted on their progeny,
with a view to prevent the dreaded sentence of expulsion.
Notwithstanding the petty rivalry between the branches of the two
original stocks, intermarriages between the Montagues and Capulets of
the kitchen, which frequently took place, and the habit of living
together under the same mild, though regular government, produced a
general cordiality and affection among all the members of the family,
who were truly ruled by the law of love; and even those who occasionally
differed about trifles, had an unconscious attachment to each other,
which showed itself on all emergencies. Treated themselves with care and
gentleness, they were careful and kind with regard to the only inferiors
and dependants they had, the domestic animals. The superior personages
in the family, had always some good property to mention, or good saying
to repeat of those whom they cherished into attachment, and exalted into
intelligence; while they, in their turn, improved the sagacity of their
subject animals, by caressing and talking to them. Let no one laugh at
this; for whenever man is at ease and unsophisticated, where his native
humanity is not extinguished by want or chilled by oppression, it
overflows to inferior beings, and improves their instincts to a degree
incredible to those who have not witnessed it. In all mountainous
countries, where man is more free, more genuine, and more divided into
little societies much detached from others, and much attached to each
other, this cordiality of sentiment, this overflow of good will takes
place. The poet says,
“Humble love, and not proud reason,
Keeps the door of heaven.”
This question must be left for divines to determine; but sure am I that
humble love and not proud reason, keeps the door of earthly happiness,
as far as it is attainable. I am not going, like the admirable Crichton,
to make an oration in praise of ignorance; but a very high degree of
refinement certainly produces a quickness of discernment, a niggard
approbation, and a fastidiousness of taste, that find a thousand
repulsive and disgusting qualities mingled with those that excite our
admiration, and would, (were we less critical,) produce affection. Alas!
that the tree should so literally impart the knowledge of good and evil;
much evil and little good. It is time to return from this excursion to
the point from which I set out.
The Princes and Cæsars of the Flats had as much to tell of the sagacity
and attachments of the animals, as their mistress related of their own.
Numberless anecdotes that delighted me in the last century, I would
recount, but fear I should not find my audience of such easy belief as I
was, nor so convinced of the integrity of my informers. One circumstance
I must mention, because I well know it to be true. The colonel had a
horse which he rode occasionally, but which oftener travelled with Mrs.
Schuyler in an open carriage. At particular times, when bringing home
hay or corn, they yoked Wolf, for so he was called, in a waggon; an
indignity to which, for a while, he unwillingly submitted. At length,
knowing resistance was vain, he had recourse to stratagem; and whenever
he saw Tyte marshalling his cavalry for service, he swam over to the
island, the umbrageous and tangled border of which I formerly mentioned;
there he fed with fearless impunity till he saw the boat approach;
whenever that happened, he plunged into the thicket, and led his
followers such a chase, that they were glad to give up the pursuit. When
he saw from his retreat that the work was over, and the fields bare, he
very coolly returned. Being, by this time, rather old, and a favourite,
the colonel allowed him to be indulged in his dislike to drudgery. The
mind which is at ease, neither stung by remorse, nor goaded by ambition
or other turbulent passions, nor worn with anxiety for the supply of
daily wants, nor sunk into languor by stupid idleness, forms attachments
and amusements, to which those exalted by culture would not stoop, and
those crushed by want and care could not rise. Of this nature was the
attachment to the tame animals, which the domestics appropriated to
themselves, and to the little fanciful gardens where they raised herbs
or plants of difficult culture, to sell and give to their friends. Each
negro was indulged with his racoon, his great squirrel or muskrat, or
perhaps his beaver, which he tamed and attached to himself, by daily
feeding and caressing him in the farm-yard. One was sure about all such
houses to find these animals, in whom their masters took the highest
pleasure. All these small features of human nature must not be despised
for their minuteness; to a good mind they afford consolation.
Science, directed by virtue, is a god-like enlargement of the powers of
human nature; and exalted rank is so necessary a finish to the fabric of
society, and so invariable a result from its regular establishment,
that, in respecting those whom the divine wisdom has set above us, we
perform a duty such as we expect from our own inferiors, which helps to
support the general order of society. But so very few, in proportion to
the whole, can be enlightened by science, or exalted by situation, that
a good mind draws comfort from discovering even the petty enjoyments
permitted to those in the state we consider most abject and depressed.
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