MARY BALL'S CHILDHOOD
It is easy to imagine the childhood of Mary Ball. Children in
her day escaped from the nursery at an early age. They were not
hidden away in convents or sent to finishing schools. There were no
ostentatious débuts, no "coming-out teas." As soon as a girl was
fairly in her "teens" she was marriageable.
Little girls, from early babyhood, became the constant companions
of their mothers, and were treated with respect. Washington writes
gravely of "Miss Custis," six years old. They worked samplers,
learned to edge handkerchiefs with a wonderful imitation of
needle-point, plaited lace-strings for stays, twisted the fine
cords that drew into proper bounds the stiff bodices, knitted
garters and long hose, took lessons on the harpsichord, danced the
minuet, and lent their little hands to "clap muslins" on the great
clearstarching days, when the lace "steenkirk," and ruffled bosoms,
and ample kerchiefs, were "gotten up" and crimped into prescribed
shape. No lounging, idleness, or loss of time was permitted. The
social customs of the day enforced habits of self-control. For
long hours the little Mary was expected to sit upon high chairs,
with no relenting pillows or cushions, making her manners as became
a gentleman's daughter throughout the stated "dining days," when
guests arrived in the morning and remained until evening. Nor was
her upright figure, clad in silk coat and mittens, capuchin and
neckatees, ever absent from the front seat of the yellow chariot as
it swung heavily through the sands to return these stately visits,
or to take her mother and sister to old St. Stephen's church.
Arriving at the latter, she might possibly have had a glimpse now
and then of other little girls as she paced the gallery on her way
to the high-backed family pew, with its "railing of brass rods
with damask curtains to prevent the family from gazing around when
sitting or kneeling." Swallowed up in the great square pew she could
see nothing.
[Illustration: An Old Doll.]
From the viewpoint of a twentieth-century child, her small feet
were set in a hard, if not thorny, path. The limits of an early
colonial house allowed no space for the nursery devoted exclusively
to a child, and filled with every conceivable appliance for her
instruction and amusement. There were no wonderful mechanical
animals, lifelike in form and color, and capable of exercising many
of their functions. One stiff-jointed, staring, wooden effigy was
the only prophecy of the enchanting doll family,--the blue-eyed,
brown-eyed, flaxen-curled, sleeping, talking, walking, and dimpled
darlings of latter-day children,--and the wooden-handled board,
faced with horn and bound with brass, the sole representative of the
child's picture-book of to-day. No children's books were printed
in England until the middle of the eighteenth century; but one
Thomas Flint, a Boston printer, appreciating the rhymes that his
mother-in-law, Mrs. Goose, sang to his children, published them
in book form and gave them a name than which none is more sure of
immortality. This, however, was in 1719--too late for our little
Mary Ball. She had only the horn-book as resource in the long, dark
days when the fairest of all books lay hidden beneath the snows of
winter--the horn-book, immortalized by Thomas Tickell as far back as
1636:--
"Thee will I sing, in comely wainscot bound,
And golden verge enclosing thee around:
The faithful horn before, from age to age
Preserving thy invulnerable page;
Behind, thy patron saint in armor shines
With sword and lance to guard the sacred lines.
The instructed handles at the bottom fixed
Lest wrangling critics should pervert the text."
The "sword and lance" were in allusion to the one illustration of
the horn-book. When the blue eyes wearied over the alphabet, Lord's
prayer, and nine digits, they might be refreshed with a picture of
St. George and the Dragon, rudely carved on the wooden back. The
"instructed handle" clasped the whole and kept it together.
[Illustration: Horn-book.]
All orphans and poor children in colonial Virginia were provided
with public schools under the care of the vestries of the
parishes--"litle houses," says Hugh Jones in 1722, "built on purpose
where are taught English, writing, etc." Parents were compelled to
send their children to these schools, and masters to whom children
were bound were required to give them schooling until "ye years
of twelfe or thereabout" without distinction of race or sex. For
instance, in the vestry book of Petsworth Parish, in Gloucester
County, is an indenture dated Oct. 30, 1716, of Ralph Bevis to give
George Petsworth, "a molattoe boy of the age of 2 years, 3 years'
schooling; and carefully to instruct him afterwards that he may
read well any part of the Bible." Having mastered the Bible, all
literary possibilities were open to the said George. The gentry,
however, employed private tutors in their own families,--Scotchmen
or Englishmen fresh from the universities, or young curates from
Princeton or Fagg's Manor in Pennsylvania. Others secured teachers
by indenture. "In Virginia," says the _London Magazine_, "a clever
servant is often indentured to some master as a schoolmaster." John
Carter of Lancaster directed in his will that his son Robert should
have "a youth servant bought for him to teach him in his books in
English or Latin." Early advertisements in the _Virginia Gazette_
assured all "single men capable of teaching children to Read
English, write or Cypher or Greek Latin and Mathematicks--also all
Dancing Masters," that they "would meet with good encouragement" in
certain neighborhoods.
But this was after Mary Ball's childhood. Days of silent listening
to the talk of older people were probably her early school days. In
Virginia there were books, true, but the large libraries of thirty
years later had not yet been brought over. There was already a
fine library at Stratford in Westmoreland. Colonel Byrd's library
was considered vast when it attained to "3600 titles." Books were
unfashionable at court in England. No power in heaven or earth has
been yet found to keep the wise and witty from writing them, but in
the first years of the eighteenth century it was very bad form to
talk about them. Later, even, the first gentleman in England was
always furious at the sight of books. Old ladies used to declare
that "Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms." "Books!" said
Sarah Marlborough; "prithee, don't talk to me about books! The only
books I know are men and cards."
But there were earnest talkers in Virginia, and the liveliest
interest in all kinds of affairs. It was a picturesque time in the
life of the colony. Things of interest were always happening. We
know this of the little Mary,--she was observant and wise, quiet
and reflective. She had early opinions, doubtless, upon the powers
of the vestries, the African slave-trade, the right of a Virginia
assembly to the privileges of parliament, and other grave questions
of her time. Nor was the time without its vivid romances. Although
no witch was ever burnt in Virginia, Grace Sherwood, who must have
been young and comely, was arrested "under suspetion of witchcraft,"
condemned by a jury of old women because of a birth-mark on her
body, and sentenced to a seat in the famous ducking-stool, which had
been, in the wisdom of the burgesses, provided to still the tongues
of "brabbling women,"--a sentence never inflicted, for a few glances
at her tearful eyes won from the relenting justice the order that
this ducking was to be "in no wise without her consent, _or if the
day should be rainy_, or in any way to endanger her health!"
[Illustration: Ducking-stool.]
Stories were told around the fireside on winter nights, when the
wooden shutters rattled--for rarely before 1720 were "windows
sasht with crystal glass." The express, bringing mails from the
north, had been scalped by Indians. Four times in one year had
homeward-bound ships been sunk by pirates. Men, returning to England
to receive an inheritance, were waylaid on the high seas, robbed,
and murdered. In Virginia waters the dreaded "Blackbeard" had it
all his own way for a while. Finally, his grim head is brought home
on the bowsprit of a Virginia ship, and a drinking-cup, rimmed with
silver, made of the skull that held his wicked brains. Of course,
it could not be expected that he could rest in his grave under
these circumstances, and so, until fifty years ago (when possibly
the drinking-cup was reclaimed by his restless spirit), his phantom
sloop might be seen spreading its ghostly sails in the moonlight on
the York River and putting into Ware Creek to hide ill-gotten gains
in the Old Stone House. Only a few years before had the dreadful
Tuscaroras risen with fire and tomahawk in the neighbor colony of
North Carolina.
[Illustration: The Old Stone House.]
Nearer home, in her own neighborhood, in fact, were many suggestive
localities which a child's fears might people with supernatural
spirits. Although there were no haunted castles with dungeon, moat,
and tower, there were deserted houses in lonely places, with open
windows like hollow eyes, graveyards half hidden by tangled creepers
and wept over by ancient willows. About these there sometimes hung a
mysterious, fitful light which little Mary, when a belated traveller
in the family coach, passed with bated breath, lest warlocks or
witches should issue therefrom, to say nothing of the interminable
stretches of dark forests, skirting ravines fringed with poisonous
vines, and haunted by the deadly rattlesnake. People talked of
strange, unreal lights peeping through the tiny port-holes of the
old Stone House on York River--that mysterious fortress believed to
have been built by John Smith--while, flitting across the doorway,
had been seen the dusky form of Pocahontas, clad in her buckskin
robe, with a white plume in her hair: keeping tryst, doubtless, with
Captain Smith, with none to hinder, now that the dull, puritanic
John Rolfe was dead and buried; and, as we have said, Blackbeard's
sloop would come glimmering down the river, and the bloody horror of
a headless body would land and wend its way to the little fortress
which held his stolen treasure. Moreover, Nathaniel Bacon had risen
from his grave in York River, and been seen in the Stone House with
his compatriots, Drummond, Bland, and Hansford.
Doubtless such stories inspired many of little Mary's early dreams,
and caused her to tremble as she lay in her trundle-bed,--kept all
day beneath the great four poster, and drawn out at night,--unless,
indeed, her loving mother allowed her to climb the four steps
leading to the feather sanctuary behind the heavy curtains, and held
her safe and warm in her own bosom.