nobody else can, and because when black hands touch me my soul crawls
all around inside and I get icicles and creepy things all down my back,
and, oh, dear Lord, our Father who art in Heaven, I'd rather have no
supper than have their black hands cut it up for me, and I'd rather be
dirty as the pigs than have them wash me, and I'd rather not go out
doors and see the birds and flowers and other children and things play
and pick the buttercups that the policeman don't care if we pick because
they grow wild, than have their big black-white eyes watching me. So,
our Father who art in Heaven, please send me a white nurse quick, for
Christ's sake. Amen!"
"Don't you know, my darling," I said, "that all the Southern children
have colored nurses. Your mamma had one and loved her almost like a
mother. God made the colored people."
"Well, then, there must have been a colored God around somewhere."
He thought that the black God must be very wicked and prayed that the
dusky deity might die "and let the white God make all the people."
At that time the only servants in Virginia were colored. Finding that
the child could not become accustomed to "black hands" and that his
health was endangered by his efforts to overcome a weakness that seemed
congenital, we advertised for a white nurse but with no success. Hearing
us talk about advertising, Corbell asked God to put in a "'tisement" for
a white nurse for him. He prayed for everything he wanted and asked the
Lord to do things for him that his father and mother could not do, at
the same time begging the Father in Heaven not to let us know that he
had appealed to a higher power, lest our feelings be hurt.
We were staying at the Ballard and Exchange Hotel in Richmond. One
morning as we were going out for our daily ride a beautiful woman
dressed in deep mourning was standing in the hall. With a startled
expression she held out her hands and my little Corbell ran into her
arms, exclaiming:
"Oh, you are the dear, good God's 'tisement and you have come to be my
nurse and take my 'Carthy's place. See, our mother, see! Black hands
won't ever, ever make creeps in me any more, now that our Father who art
in Heaven has sent the 'tisement to me."
The stranger clasped the child to her heart, kissing his golden curls
and sweet brown eyes while her tears fell.
"Pardon this uncontrolled emotion, madam," she said, "and excuse me,
please, for taking such a liberty with your child. I have just passed
through a great sorrow and am very nervous."
I led her to our rooms where she sat with my little darling in her arms,
gazing into his face lovingly and moaning, "My little angel! Oh, my
little angel!" He took out his tiny handkerchief and wiped her eyes and
kissing her said:
"Don't cry, 'Tisement, don't cry. Come and ride with our mother and my
little brother and me and you can hold me in your lap; come, 'Tisement,
come."
She rode with us, sitting beside me, holding my little Corbell.
"Why do you call me 'Tisement?" she asked.
Corbell explained that, hearing us talking about advertising for a nurse
and seeing how we had failed, he had sent an advertisement to God
himself, asking for just the kind he wanted, "and," he added, "I knew
you were God's 'tisement as soon as I saw you."
When we returned she told me her sad story, the tragic story of a
beautiful, fair, proud woman with the one black drop in her veins. All
her loved ones were gone, her beautiful boy the last to leave her, and
she longed for little hands to soothe away her pain. She stayed with us
and her new-found charge saw only the pure white face, the delicate
soft hands that touched him lovingly, and knew nothing of the dark link
that held her in bondage to the past.
She was a devoted nurse, helpful and diplomatic with both children, but
it was on Corbell that she showered all her pent up love. He was very
fond of music and was always ready to greet the dawn with a smile and a
song. Early one morning when George first opened his eyes after a night
in the better world of dreams, he heard Corbell's flute-like tones in
the strains of "Where, oh, where are the Hebrew Children?" The necessity
of taking up the tangled threads anew filled his little heart with
dismay, and with a sense of having been wronged he called out:
"Our mother, please come and make Corbell stop singing 'Where are the
Hebrew Children?' I don't know where the Hebrew Children are and I don't
want to know."
Mary, the faithful answer to God's "'tisement," volunteered to find the
Hebrew Children and amid her suggestions of possible places in which
they might be concealed, peace was restored.
Corbell was one of the most gifted of children. Not only could he sing,
but he was quite an artist with the scissors, and at a very early age
could cut out the most astonishing representations of birds and animals.
One day after an illness I thought he had been cutting long enough and
suggested to him to put up the scissors lest he become nervous and
tired. Click-click went the scissors. "Wait till I get the meat part of
the mule's mane right," he said. Several times I made the same
suggestion, receiving the same reply, and click-click-click went the
scissors. Then forgetting myself I raised my voice and commandingly
called, "Put those scissors down, sir, this minute!"
Bang went the scissors across the other side of the room and with eyes
flashing with indignation he cried out:
"Madam! Do you think that Aunt Mary Christ would have spoken to her
little boy Jesus like that?"
"No, my darling," I said, ashamed of myself, "and I will never, never
again speak in that way to you." And I never did.
It was probably the first time that the Blessed Virgin had ever been
spoken of as "Aunt Mary Christ," but the claim of relationship was not
surprising, as put forth by a little Virginia boy, since in the Old
Dominion elderly ladies or those who were regarded with special
reverence were always addressed as "Aunt."
Our nearest neighbors in the hotel were Colonel and Mrs. Parsons. The
Colonel had belonged to the Federal Army and after the war had brought
his family to Richmond to live. His children had some toy soldiers with
which they and my two little boys would fight great battles, the
Confederates and Federals being permitted to win alternately.
Mr. Davis came in one day when the star of victory shone on the Southern
side.
"Hurrah, boys," he said. "I am glad I came to-day. I like to see the
Confederates win."
"Wait, wait," said my little George, "and we'll let you see the Federals
win."
"Ah, my little man," replied Mr. Davis in his pathetic voice, "your
father and I have seen the Federals win."
Corbell was always interested in his father's fighting in Mexico. Of
course Mr. Davis far outranked my Soldier in that war, but when Corbell
asked, "Were you in papa's Company, Mr. Davis, or was he in yours?"
rather than hold any precedence over his father in the boy's thought,
Mr. Davis replied:
"If I remember correctly, we were both in each other's Company, I think,
my son."
"Our mama," said Corbell, after Mr. Davis had gone, "what has Mr. Davis
got in his throat that makes his talk sound so music-y?"
The summers we passed at the Old Greenbrier White Sulphur and the Salt
Sulphur Springs, the hotels in both places being kept by brothers who
had served in my Soldier's Division.
One season we occupied a cottage with Mr. Peabody, the great
philanthropist. It was his last visit to his native land, the summer
before he died. He had gone to the Springs in the vain hope of restored
health. Looking for my little Corbell one day I found him in the rooms
of Mr. Peabody who, with weak and trembling hands, was signing some
cheques. Corbell was sitting on his knee, watching his work.
"I know what makes your hand tremble," he was saying. "Our mother told
me; she says it's because of all the good things it has done for God's
people."
"Your little hand does not tremble. Aren't you glad?" asked Mr. Peabody.
"I'd rather have trembly hands if they would help me to do good to all
the people like yours," replied Corbell.
In the last summer of General Lee's life he was at the "Old White"
taking the waters. Corbell had been ordered to drink them, too, and
emphatically objected.
"Don't drink that water, General Lee," he said. "It doesn't smell good."
"But you drink it," replied the General.
"I have to; they make me," responded Corbell sadly. "You are a man and
they can't make you."
"But I like it," asserted the General.
Corbell regretfully confided to me afterward:
"They call him a great man, our mama, and, oh, he likes things that
don't smell good."
It was the only cloud upon his confidence in General Lee.
Coming in one day the General found the children building block houses.
"Is this the house that Jack built?" he asked.
"No, sir," replied Corbell. "That's the house that George built and this
is the house that Corbell built. Jack didn't build any houses down this
way."
"Don't you know the story?" asked General Lee. "'This is the house that
Jack built. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.'"
"Yes, sir," returned Corbell, "but it makes me feel weazley to keep on
saying the 'Jack built' part."
In passing out of the dining-room one evening General Lee stopped at our
table by the door. We were cracking nuts, which reminded him of the
story I had told about the young man who asked for "the nut-busters." He
said to Corbell:
"Your little hands are not strong enough to use these 'nut-busters.'
Let me crack your nuts for you."
"No, thank you, General," replied the child. "Our mama says that we may
eat all we can crack and that the squirrels don't have anybody to crack
their nuts; if they did they'd eat too many, too. 'Course she don't want
to hurt our hands, but she is afraid if somebody cracks nuts for us
we'll eat too many and be sick."
The General said if that was the case he would not offer to crack any
more nuts for little children.
I have a tender memory of a call from General Lee once when my little
Corbell was very ill at the Ballard and Exchange. One morning Uncle
Wash, the old colored porter, tiptoed in with a card.
"It's Marse Genul Lee, Missus," he whispered. "He come ter ax atter de
li'le man, en he say he moughty sorry to hyer boutn his being so bad
off. He's ret out hyer at de do'."
I went to the door and held out my hand to General Lee.
"I have heard of the illness of my little friend and have come to see
him."
My Soldier got up from the side of the bed and brought a chair.
"I have come to renew my acquaintance, George, with our little man
here," he said, calling my Soldier by his name, which I had never
before heard him do.
He was President at that time of Washington College, now the
Washington-Lee University, at Lexington, and this was the last time he
was ever in Richmond.
General Lee's fondness for children made him always a great favorite
with them, and he and our little Corbell discussed the Old White, its
nasty smelling sulphur-water, and the many friends they had made there.
Holding up his little thin hand, Corbell said:
"See, General, how wobbly my hand is. It's a heap tremblier than Mr.
Peabody's was. I can write my name now, but I can't write it to do good
with and to give things, as Mr. Peabody did; I wish I could. My,
wouldn't I make it fly?"
"Your dear little hand does more good than it could possibly do by
writing your name on paper," replied General Lee. "It is a hand of love
and that is better than anything else in the world. I saw Dr.
Minnegerode and he told me how sick you had been and how patient and
sweet you were and how hard you were trying to get well."
"Dr. Minnegerode wasn't a soldier like you and our papa, was he?" asked
our little darling, shaking his head and changing the subject.
"Yes," replied General Lee, "but he did not fight with a sword. He is a
preacher, a Bible teacher, and fights with the spirit."
"That's poetry, isn't it?" asked Corbell.
"Yes; that is poetry."
"General, Dr. Minnegerode always says his prayers with me and asks the
Lord to bless me and make me well," said Corbell.
"May I say my prayers with you, too, my boy, and ask the Lord to make us
both well and bless us?"
"Yes, General, but you are a soldier, not a preacher."
"No, I am neither now, my little man," replied the General; "just a
poor, sick, helpless child like you, asking for health."
He knelt by the bedside and prayed the most beautiful prayer I ever
heard.
It was the last time I saw General Lee.
XXXIV
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN
After the failure of the military system of agriculture developed at
Turkey Island my Soldier became the general agent for the South of a
life insurance company. His office was in Richmond, where his boyhood
had been spent and where we had many pleasant friends and old
associations.
Though living a life of deep earnestness, my Soldier was fond of a story
or a jest. He used to tell some of Lincoln's jokes and anecdotes which,
in his youthful days in Illinois, he had heard from the lips of that
famous story-teller, so that when I afterward saw the stories of the
great War President in print I remembered many of them as old friends.
Mr. Lincoln was much interested in the plantation legends told by the
Virginia boy and they exchanged stories, to the delight of both.
My Soldier especially liked a joke if it was upon me. On leaving home
for a business trip he once asked me how much money I should need
before his return. After a labored calculation I mentioned a sum which
he, knowing me, promptly doubled. He had been gone only a day when I
suddenly recalled an obligation that had escaped my memory, and
telegraphed him. By next mail came a cheque, carefully made out, payable
to "Mrs. Oliver Twist." As I must have the money it was necessary for me
to indorse it as it was made out. To tease me he kept the cheque to
dangle before my eyes on the slightest provocation, and I have it now.
He always made companions of our boys and joked and played with them as
if he were the same age as they. One morning when our little George was
about ten years old he took him to the office several blocks from home,
sending him back with a note, telling him to go directly home and not to
get into any trouble on the way. Then he followed him, watching his
progress. I still have the note in which were recorded the little
fellow's meanderings, of which this is a copy:
"Saw a man posting bills; stopped to watch him. Went on a short
distance; saw two dogs fighting. Stopped to see which beat; sicked them
on again. Farther along saw something interesting in a drug-store
window; stood and looked. Started on and came to some boys playing
marbles; stopped and took a hand in the game; lost all his own marbles,
paid up like a man, walked on, whistling. Came to a man shoveling coal;
helped him, and pocketed some small pieces. Met a man he knew; stopped
and talked to him, asked the time. Played in a pile of sand with a
stick. Had a fight with Wirt Robinson; licked each other. Found a boy
who had lost a penny down a crack; helped him to get it out. Saw a
kitten escaping from a cellar window; chased it back. Met a boy on
stilts; made him get down and let him walk on them. Saw an old woman
coming out of the doorway with a bucket of water on her head; jumped at
her, frightening her, making her head lose its balance, spilling the
water all over her. Turned his pockets inside out and gave the old woman
all his week's allowance, as compensation for the wetting he had caused.
Reached the gate; stopped to play with the latch. Went in. Time in
reaching home, one hour and twenty-five minutes."
The report was sent by a messenger, who delivered it to me before little
George came into the house, so that, to his great surprise, I was able
to tell him all that he had been doing. When I showed him the record he
said:
"I knew dear father was a great man and knew most everything, but I
didn't know he had God's eyes and could see everything."
[Illustration: "I KNOW DEAR FATHER WAS A GREAT MAN AND KNEW MOST
EVERYTHING, BUT I DIDN'T KNOW HE HAD GOD'S EYES AND COULD SEE
EVERYTHING"]
To my query whether he had done anything else by the way which his dear
father had not seen, he replied:
"Yes; I threw Branch Barksdale's hat over the fence, and I wouldn't have
been home yet if he hadn't chased me."
Charlotte Cushman was with me at the time and I had an amusing
illustration of the way in which she unconsciously threw herself into a
situation.
"Poor little man! Poor little man!" she said in her deep sympathetic
voice, as she observed the bewilderment of the child, expressed in every
line of his tense little body, his puckered features and bent fingers.
"His little brain is all puckered up, too. He can't understand how this
thing should have come to him. Poor little man! It is wicked to mystify
him so--bless his little heart!"
In her sympathy she had assumed the pose of the bewildered child, and
her face and hands were "puckered up," as she had described his brain.
This was Miss Cushman's last visit to Richmond, when she came as a
reader, having left the dramatic stage. When I first knew her she was at
the height of her wonderful career as an actress. I met her at the
house of a friend, and she often visited me when in Richmond. She became
very fond of our children and they were fascinated by her. My little
Corbell asked her:
"What is the use of acting? Why don't you be it--just be it?"
"Ah," she replied, "there is the trouble. I do 'be it,' my child. There
is where strength and vitality go--in just being it."
Corbell was anxious to see her play, but she would not let him see her
as Meg Merrilies.
"No Meg Merrilies must ever come into the life of a child like that,"
she said. "Of all the people I have ever known, he would be the most
deeply impressed by Meg Merrilies."
A friend had sent in some birds for Corbell, and he said to Miss
Cushman:
"I wasn't brought up thinking it any wrong to shoot birds or any wrong
to eat birds, and all the good people I know shoot them and eat them.
But things that have such pretty feathers and such pretty talk in their
throats must have souls, and so I don't know for sure about shooting
them and eating them, not for really, truly sure, you know."
"I think you are right, my child, about the birds having souls, and I
believe horses and dogs have souls, too. You know, dear, I believe in
reincarnation. We eat the body of the bird, the feathers we put in our
cap, and the soul is the voice that must sing in another bird."
After that Corbell did not feel so bad about the shooting of the birds.
"The soul goes out and another bird catches it and sings."
Charlotte Cushman told me how her idea of Meg Merrilies had come to her.
On the evening of the day that she had been unexpectedly called upon to
play the character she was standing in the wing awaiting her cue, book
in hand, when she heard one of the gypsies say, "Meg--why, she is no
longer what she was; she doats." In a flash there came to her the
conception of the character in which she was to make her greatest
success.
I never saw her Lady Macbeth on the stage, but retain a vivid impression
of the awesome personation when she showed me in my own room how she had
played the sleep-walking scene upon her first appearance in drama when
she was nineteen. I still see her tragic face with the dawning horror
creeping over it as she looked at the stain on her hand. With the sudden
impulse of a frightened woman, she hurriedly took up a fold of her dress
to rub it off. The futility of the effort flashing upon her, she removed
her clutch from her dress and a deeper terror gloomed into her face.
She caught up her long hanging hair and tried to rub away the stain.
With her great awe-compelling eyes fixed upon her hand she uttered the
words, "Out, damned spot!" in a tone of anguished despair that thrilled
me with terror. She did not act Lady Macbeth; she _was_ Lady Macbeth in
all her pride, all her ambition, all her determination, all her despair.
She said that she did not like to play the character because it
exhausted her. It is easy to understand that a woman of cold and
unscrupulous ambition would drain the life of one so gentle and
sweet-natured as Charlotte Cushman.
In this engagement she did not play Nancy Sikes, but she gave us her
characterization of the part because my Soldier wanted to see it.
Lawrence Barrett described it accurately when he said: "It sounded as if
she spoke through blood." She was one of the few to whom a set stage
with scenery and music and costumes and an audience are not necessary in
the production of artistic effects. A private room, or a grassy plot
under a tree, or an open space in the sunshine, was all the stage she
required, one soul that understood her was audience enough, and when she
threw herself into the character she represented no one would have known
whether she wore the garb of a beggar or a queen.
I told her of having met Ellen Tree in Canada.
"Oh," she said, "that was worth losing your name for," referring to the
fact that in Canada the General and I were known by our middle name of
Edwards. "The very fact that she could not keep from acting when off the
stage made her interesting. Did you ever see her wipe her nose?"
I never had, so, to illustrate Ellen Tree's manner of performing that
ceremony, Miss Cushman slowly and mysteriously drew her handkerchief
from her pocket. As she did so her eyes opened wide and glared
ominously, as if some scene of tragic import were looming up in the
middle distance. Her form was tense and rigid, all her muscles drawn
taut as if for a fatal spring. The handkerchief was lifted and applied
to each nostril, while the face was stern and uncompromising as might
have been that of the noble Roman sentencing his son to death for
breaking the law. The handkerchief was returned to her pocket in the
same dramatic manner.
"The blood of all the Cæsars was on that handkerchief when it was put
away," Charlotte said. "Ellen Tree could not help acting; it was her
nature."
Ellen Tree's everyday tragedy was sometimes productive of startling
results. Going into Price's dry-goods store in Richmond she asked in her
most dramatic voice:
"Have _ye_ any prints?"
"N-n-no, no, dear Madam," stammered the gallant but startled Virginian,
"I--I'm sorry."
One of the clerks came to his assistance with the information that the
lady meant calicoes, at the same time taking down some pieces from the
shelf. The customer examined them with tragic significance and looked up
with eyes filled with fathomless depths of emotion, inquiring in a voice
of intense power, dwelling with dramatic force upon each word:
"_Said ye they would wash?_"
"N-n-no, Ma'am," replied the terrified clerk, "I d-d-did not, Ma'am."
Charlotte Cushman's manner was the opposite of that of Ellen Tree. She
was a perfect child of Nature, and one meeting her would have supposed
that she was a gentle, quiet home-keeper with no thought except to
please her own.
Speaking of Joe Jefferson she said:
"I think his paintings are as marvelous as his acting, and the colors in
his voice blend as perfectly as those in his paintings. He really must
have had a dog named Schneider when he was playing Rip Van Winkle, and
if you had told him differently he would not have believed you. He could
fool himself into thinking that whatever he acted was a fact, and his
audience readily took the same view."
Once when Charlotte Cushman was with us Judge Moncure, then an old man,
came in and, meeting his wife, greeted her with great chivalry, bending
and kissing her hand. Judge Joynes, of Petersburg, asked, "How old is
Mrs. Moncure, Judge?" Judge Moncure replied, "She was sixteen when I
married her, Judge, and to me she has been that age ever since."
The little incident reminded Charlotte of the Brownings, whom she had
known in Florence, and of the beautiful compliments that Robert Browning
used to pay his wife. She spoke of his indignation when Mrs. Browning's
poetry was compared with his own in a manner unfavorable to her. He
really felt that she was superior to himself and had no patience with
people who could not appreciate her greater merit.
Miss Cushman told me that of all the parts she had ever played she most
enjoyed Romeo, which she used to play to her sister's Juliet.