As Major Jimmy Bass used to say, the years cut many queer capers as they
go by. The major in his own proper person had not only witnessed, but had
been the victim, of these queer capers. Hillsborough was a very small
place indeed, and, for that very reason perhaps, it was more sensitive
to changes in the way of progress and decay than many larger and more
ambitious towns.
However this may have been, it is certain that the town, assisted
by the major, had noted the queer capers the years had cut in the
neighborhood of the old Bascom Place. This attitude on the part of
Hillsborough—including, of course, Major Jimmy Bass—may be accounted for
partly by the fact that the old place had once been the pride and delight
of the town, and partly by the fact that the provincial eye and mind are
nervously alert to whatever happens within range of their observation.
Before and during the war the Bascom Place was part and parcel of a
magnificent estate. The domain was so extensive and so well managed that
it was noted far and wide. Its boundary lines inclosed more than four
thousand acres of forests and cultivated fields. This immense body of
land was known as the old Bascom Place.
Bolling Bascom, its first owner, went to Georgia not long after the close
of the Revolution, with a large number of Virginians who proposed to
establish a colony in what was then the far South. The colony settled in
Wilkes County; but Bolling Bascom, more adventurous than the rest, pushed
on into middle Georgia, crossed the Oconee, and built him a home, and
such was his taste, his energy, and his thrift, that the results thereof
may be seen and admired in Hillsborough to this day.
But the man, like so many of his fellow-citizens then and thereafter,
was land-hungry. He bought and bought until he had acquired the immense
domain, which, by some special interposition of fate or circumstance,
is still intact. Meantime he had built him a house which was in keeping
with the extent and richness of his landed possessions. It was planned in
the old colonial style, but its massive proportions were relieved by the
tall red chimneys and the long and gracefully fashioned colonnade that
gave both strength and beauty to the spacious piazza which ran, and still
runs, the whole length of the house.
When Bolling Bascom died, in 1830, aged seventy years, as the faded
inscription on the storm-beaten tablet in the churchyard shows, he left
his son, Briscoe Bascom, to own and manage the vast estate. This son was
thirty years old, and it was said of him that he inherited the gentle
qualities of his mother rather than the fiery energy and ambition of his
father.
Bolling Bascom was neither vicious nor reckless, but he was a thorough
man of the world. He was, in short, a typical Virginian gentleman, who
for his own purposes had settled in Georgia.
Whatever the cause of his emigration, it is certain that Georgia gained
a good citizen. It was said of him that he was a little too fond of a
fiddle, but with all his faults—with all his love for horse-racing and
fox-hunting—he found time to be kind to his neighbors, generous to his
friends, and the active leader of every movement calculated to benefit
the State or the people; and it may be remarked in passing, that he also
found time to look after his own affairs.
Naturally, he was prominent in politics. He represented his county in the
legislature, was at one time a candidate for governor, and was altogether
a man who had the love and the confidence of his neighbors. He gave his
son the benefit of the best education the country afforded, and made the
tour of Europe with him, going over the ground that he himself had gone
over in his young days.
But his European trip, undertaken when he was an old man, was too much
for him. He was seized with an illness on his return voyage, and,
although he lived long enough to reach home, he never recovered. In
a few years his wife died; and his son, with little or no experience
in such matters,—since his time had been taken up by the schools and
colleges,—was left to manage the estate as best he could.
It was the desire of Bolling Bascom that his son should study law and
make that profession a stepping-stone to a political career. He had been
ambitious himself, and he hoped his son would also be ambitious. Besides,
was not politics the most respectable of all the professions? This was
certainly the view in Bolling Bascom’s day and time, and much might be
said to support it. Of all the professions, politics opened up the one
career best calculated to tickle the fancy of the rich young men.
To govern, to control, to make laws, to look after the welfare of the
people, to make great speeches, to become statesmen—these were the ideas
that filled the minds of ambitious men in Bolling Bascom’s time, and for
years thereafter. And why not? There were the examples of Jefferson,
Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Hamilton, Webster, Calhoun, and the Adamses
of Massachusetts. What better could a young man do than to follow in the
footsteps of these illustrious citizens?
It may be supposed, therefore, that Bolling Bascom had mapped out a
tremendous career for his son and heir. No doubt, as he sat dozing on
his piazza in the long summer afternoons near the close of his life, he
fancied he could hear the voice of his boy in the halls of legislation,
or hear the wild shouts of the multitudes that greeted his efforts on
the stump in the heat and fury of a campaign. But it was not to be. The
stormy politics of that period had no charms for Briscoe Bascom. He was a
student, and he preferred his book to the companionship of the crowd.
He possessed both courage and sociability in the highest degree, but he
was naturally indolent, and he was proud—too indolent to find pleasure
in the whirling confusion of active politics, and too proud to go about
his county or his State in the attitude of soliciting the suffrages of
his fellow-citizens. That he would have made his mark in politics is
certain, for he made it at the bar, where success is much more dearly
bought. He finally became judge of the superior court, at a time when the
judges of the circuit courts met annually and formed a court of appeals.
His decisions in this appellate court attracted attention all over the
country, and are still referred to in the legal literature of to-day as
models of their kind.
And yet all that Briscoe Bascom accomplished at the bar and on the bench
was the result of intuition rather than of industry. Indolence sat
enthroned in his nature, patient but vigilant. When he retired from the
bench, he gave up the law altogether. He might have reclaimed his large
practice, but he preferred the ease and quiet of his home.
He was an old man before he married—old enough, that is to say, to marry
a woman many years his junior. His wife had been reared in an atmosphere
of extravagance; and although she was a young woman of gentle breeding
and of the best intentions, it is certain that she did not go to the
Bascom Place as its mistress for the purpose of stinting or economizing.
She simply gave no thought to the future. But she was so bright and
beautiful, so gentle and unaffected in speech and manner, so gracious and
so winsome in all directions, that it seemed nothing more than natural
and right that her every whim and wish should be gratified.
Judge Bascom was indulgent and more than indulgent. He applauded his
wife’s extravagance and followed her example. Before many years he began
to reap some of the fruits thereof, and they were exceeding bitter to the
taste. The longest purse that ever was made has a bottom to it, unless,
indeed, it be lined with Franklin’s maxims.
The Judge was forty-eight years old when he married, and even before the
beginning of the war he found his financial affairs in an uncomfortable
condition. The Bascom Place was intact, but the pocket-book of its master
was in a state bordering on collapse.
The slow but sure approach to the inevitable need not be described here.
It is familiar to all people in all lands and times. In the case of Judge
Bascom, however, the war was in the nature of a breathing-spell. It
brought with it an era of extravagance that overshadowed everything that
had been dreamed of theretofore. During the first two years there was
money enough for everybody and to spare. It was manufactured in Richmond
in great stacks. General Robert Toombs, who was an interested observer,
has aptly described the facility with which the Confederacy supplied
itself with money. “A dozen negroes,” said he, “printed money on the
hand-presses all day to supply the government, and then they worked until
nine o’clock at night printing money enough to pay themselves off.”
Under these circumstances, Judge Bascom and his charming wife could be
as extravagant or as economical as they pleased without attracting the
attention of their neighbors or their creditors. Nobody had time to think
or care about such small matters. The war-fever was at its height, and
nothing else occupied the attention of the people. The situation was
so favorable, indeed, that Judge Bascom began to redeem his fortune—in
Confederate money. He had land enough and negroes a plenty, and so he
saved his money by storing it away; and he was so successful in this
business that it is said that when the war closed he had a wagon-load of
Confederate notes and shin-plaster packed in trunks and chests.
The crash came when General Sherman went marching through Hillsborough.
The Bascom Place, being the largest and the richest plantation in that
neighborhood, suffered the worst. Every horse, every mule, every living
thing with hide and hoof, was driven off by the Federals; and a majority
of the negroes went along with the army. It was often said of Judge
Bascom that “he had so many negroes he didn’t know them when he met them
in the big road;” and this was probably true. His negroes knew him, and
knew that he was a kind master in many respects, but they had no personal
affection for him. They were such strangers to the Judge that they never
felt justified in complaining to him even when the overseers ill-treated
them. Consequently, when Sherman went marching along, the great majority
of them bundled up their little effects and followed after the army. They
had nothing to bind them to the old place. The house-servants, and a few
negroes in whom the Judge took a personal interest, remained, but all the
rest went away.
Then, in a few months, came the news of the surrender, bringing with it
a species of paralysis or stupefaction from which the people were long
in recovering—so long, indeed, that some of them died in despair, while
others lingered on the stage, watching, with dim eyes and trembling
limbs, half-hopefully and half-fretfully, the representatives of a new
generation trying to build up the waste places. There was nothing left
for Judge Bascom to do but to take his place among the spectators. He
would have returned to his law-practice, but the people had well-nigh
forgotten that he had ever been a lawyer; moreover, the sheriffs were
busier in those days than the lawyers. He had the incentive,—for the
poverty of those days was pinching,—but he lacked the energy and the
strength necessary to begin life anew. He and hundreds like him were
practically helpless. Ordinarily experience is easily learned when
necessity is the teacher, but it was too late for necessity to teach
Judge Bascom anything. During all his life he had never known what want
was. He had never had occasion to acquire tact, business judgment, or
economy. Inheriting a vast estate, he had no need to practice thrift or
become familiar with the shifty methods whereby business men fight their
way through the world. Of all such matters he was entirely ignorant.
To add to his anxiety, a girl had been born to him late in life, his
first and only child. In his confusion and perplexity he was prepared to
regard the little stranger as merely a new and dreadful responsibility,
but it was not long before his daughter was a source of great comfort to
him. Yet, as the negroes said, she was not a “luck-child;” and bad as the
Judge’s financial condition was, it grew steadily worse.
Briefly, the world had drifted past him and his contemporaries and left
them stranded. Under the circumstances, what was he to do? It is true
he had a magnificent plantation, but this merely added to his poverty.
Negro labor was demoralized, and the overseer class had practically
disappeared. He would have sold a part of his landed estate; indeed, so
pressing were his needs that he would have sold everything except the
house which his father had built, and where he himself was born,—that he
would not have parted with for all the riches in the world,—but there was
nobody to buy. The Judge’s neighbors and his friends, with the exception
of those who had accustomed themselves to seizing all contingencies
by the throat and wresting tribute from them, were in as severe a
strait as he was; and to make matters worse, the political affairs of
the State were in the most appalling condition. It was the period of
reconstruction—a scheme that paralyzed all whom it failed to corrupt.
Finally the Judge’s wife took matters into her own hand. She had
relatives in Atlanta, and she prevailed on him to go to that lively
and picturesque town. He closed his house, being unable to rent it,
and became a citizen of the thrifty city. He found himself in a new
atmosphere. The north Georgia crackers, the east Tennesseeans,—having
dropped their “you-uns” and “we-uns,”—and the Yankees had joined hands in
building up and pushing Atlanta forward. Business was more important than
politics; and the rush and whirl of men and things were enough to make
a mere spectator dizzy. Judge Bascom found himself more helpless than
ever; but through the influence of his wife’s brother he was appointed to
a small clerkship in one of the State departments, and—“Humiliation of
humiliations!” his friends exclaimed—he promptly accepted it, and became
a part of what was known as the “carpet-bag” government. The appointment
was in the nature of a godsend, but the Judge found himself ostracized.
His friends and acquaintances refused to return his salutation as he met
them on the street. To a proud and sensitive man this was the bitterness
of death, but Judge Bascom stuck to his desk and made no complaint.
By some means or other, no doubt through the influence of Mrs. Bascom,
the Judge’s brother-in-law, a thrifty and not over-scrupulous man,
obtained a power of attorney, and sold the Bascom Place, house and all,
to a gentleman from western New York who was anxious to settle in middle
Georgia. Just how much of the purchase-money went into the Judge’s hands
it is impossible to say, but it is known that he fell into a terrible
rage when he was told that the house had been sold along with the place.
He denounced the sale as a swindle, and declared that as he had been born
in the house he would die there, and not all the powers of earth could
prevent him.
But the money that he received was a substantial thing as far as it went.
Gradually he found himself surrounded by various comforts that he had
sadly missed, and in time he became somewhat reconciled to the sale,
though he never gave up the idea that he would buy the old place back and
live there again. The idea haunted him day and night.
After the downfall of the carpet-bag administration a better feeling
took possession of the people and politicians, and it was not long before
Judge Bascom found congenial work in codifying the laws of the State,
which had been in a somewhat confused and tangled condition since the
war. Meanwhile his daughter Mildred was growing up, developing remarkable
beauty as well as strength of mind. At a very early age she began to
“take the responsibility,” as the Judge put it, of managing the household
affairs, and she continued to manage them even while going to school.
At school she won the hearts of teachers and pupils, not less by her
aptitude in her books than by her beauty and engaging manners.
But in spite of the young girl’s management—in spite of the example
she set by her economy—the Judge and his wife continued to grow poorer
and poorer. Neither of them knew the value of a dollar, and the
money that had been received from the sale of the Bascom Place was
finally exhausted. About this time Mrs. Bascom died, and the Judge
was so prostrated by his bereavement that it was months before he
recovered. When he did recover he had lost all interest in his work of
codification, but it was so nearly completed and was so admirably done
that the legislature voted him extra pay. This modest sum the daughter
took charge of, and when her father was well enough she proposed that
they return to Hillsborough, where they could take a small house, and
where she could give music lessons and teach a primary school. It need
not be said that the Judge gave an eager assent to the proposition.