GOOD TIMES IN OLD VIRGINIA
Despite the perils and perplexities of the time; the irreverence
and profanity of the clergy; the solemn warning of the missionary
Presbyterians; the death of good Queen Anne, the last of the
Stuarts, so dear to the hearts of loyal Virginians; the forebodings
on the accession to the throne of the untried Guelphs; the total
lack of many of the comforts and conveniences of life, Virginians
love to write of the early years of the century as "the golden age
of Virginia." These were the days known as the "good old times
in old Virginia," when men managed to live without telegraphs,
railways, and electric lights. "It was a happy era!" says Esten
Cooke. "Care seemed to keep away and stand out of its sunshine.
There was a great deal to enjoy. Social intercourse was on the most
friendly footing. The plantation house was the scene of a round
of enjoyments. The planter in his manor house, surrounded by his
family and retainers, was a feudal patriarch ruling everybody;
drank wholesome wine--sherry or canary--of his own importation;
entertained every one; held great festivities at Christmas, with
huge log fires in the great fireplaces, around which the family
clan gathered. It was the life of the family, not of the world,
and produced that intense attachment for the soil which has become
proverbial. Everybody was happy! Life was not rapid, but it was
satisfactory. The portraits of the time show us faces without those
lines which care furrows in the faces of the men of to-day. That old
society succeeded in working out the problem of living happily to an
extent which we find few examples of to-day."
"The Virginians of 1720," according to Henry Randall, "lived in
baronial splendor; their spacious grounds were bravely ornamented;
their tables were loaded with plate and with the luxuries of the old
and new world; they travelled in state, their coaches dragged by
six horses driven by three postilions. When the Virginia gentleman
went forth with his household his cavalcade consisted of the mounted
white males of the family, the coach and six lumbering through the
sands, and a retinue of mounted servants and led horses bringing
up the rear. In their general tone of character the aristocracy of
Virginia resembled the landed gentry of the mother country. Numbers
of them were highly educated and accomplished by foreign study and
travel. As a class they were intelligent, polished in manners,
high toned, and hospitable, sturdy in their loyalty and in their
adherence to the national church."
Another historian, writing from Virginia in 1720, says: "Several
gentlemen have built themselves large brick houses of many rooms
on a floor, but they don't covet to make them lofty, having extent
enough of ground to build upon, and now and then they are visited
by winds which incommode a towering fabric. Of late they have
sasht their windows with crystal glass; adorning their apartments
with rich furniture. They have their graziers, seedsmen, brewers,
gardeners, bakers, butchers and cooks within themselves, and have a
great plenty and variety of provisions for their table; and as for
spicery and things the country don't produce, they have constant
supplies of 'em from England. The gentry pretend to have their
victuals served up as nicely as the best tables in England."
A quaint old Englishman, Peter Collinson, writes in 1737 to his
friend Bartram when he was about taking Virginia in his field of
botanical explorations: "One thing I must desire of thee, and do
insist that thee oblige me therein: that thou make up that drugget
clothes to go to Virginia in, and not appear to disgrace thyself and
me; for these Virginians are a very gentle, well-dressed people, and
look, perhaps, more at a man's outside than his inside. For these
and other reasons pray go very clean, neat and handsomely dressed to
Virginia. Never mind thy clothes: I will send more another year."
Those were not troublous days of ever changing fashion. Garments
were, for many years, cut after the same patterns, varying mainly
in accordance with the purses of their wearers. "The petticoats of
sarcenet, with black, broad lace printed on the bottom and before;
the flowered satin and plain satin, laced with rich lace at the
bottom," descended from mother to daughter with no change in the
looping of the train or decoration of bodice and ruff. There were
no mails to bring troublesome letters to be answered when writing
was so difficult and spelling so uncertain. Not that there was
the smallest disgrace in bad spelling! Trouble on that head was
altogether unnecessary.
There is not the least doubt that life, notwithstanding its dangers
and limitations and political anxieties, passed happily to these
early planters of Virginia. The lady of the manor had occupation
enough and to spare in managing English servants and negroes, and
in purveying for a table of large proportions. Nor was she without
accomplishments. She could dance well, embroider, play upon the
harpsichord or spinet, and wear with grace her clocked stockings,
rosetted, high-heeled shoes and brave gown of "taffeta and moyre"
looped over her satin quilt.
There was no society column in newspapers to vex her simple soul
by awakening unwholesome ambitions. There was no newspaper until
1736. She had small knowledge of any world better than her own, of
bluer skies, kinder friends, or gayer society. She managed well her
large household, loved her husband, and reared kindly but firmly her
many sons and daughters. If homage could compensate for the cares
of premature marriage, the girl-wife had her reward. She lived in
the age and in the land of chivalry, and her "amiable qualities of
mind and heart" received generous praise. As a matron she was adored
by her husband and her friends. When she said, "Until death do us
part," she meant it. Divorce was unknown; its possibility undreamed
of. However and wherever her lot was cast she endured to the end;
fully assured that when she went to sleep behind the marble slab in
the garden an enumeration of her virtues would adorn her tombstone.
In the light of the ambitions of the present day, the scornful
indifference of the colonists to rank, even among those entitled to
it, is curious. Very rare were the instances in which young knights
and baronets elected to surrender the free life in Virginia and
return to England to enjoy their titles and possible preferment. One
such embryo nobleman is quoted as having answered to an invitation
from the court, "I prefer my land here with plentiful food for my
family to becoming a starvling at court."
Governor Page wrote of his father, Mason Page of Gloucester, born
1718, "He was urged to pay court to Sir Gregory Page whose heir he
was supposed to be but he despised title as much as I do; and would
have nothing to say to the rich, silly knight, who finally died,
leaving his estate to a sillier man than himself--_one Turner_, who,
by act of parliament, took the name and title of Gregory Page."
Everything was apparently settled upon a firm, permanent basis.
Social lines were sharply drawn, understood, and recognized. The
court "at home" across the seas influenced the mimic court at
Williamsburg. Games that had been fashionable in the days of the
cavaliers were popular in Virginia. Horse-racing, cock-fighting,
cards, and feasting, with much excess in eating and drinking, marked
the social life of the subjects of the Georges in Virginia as in the
mother country. It was an English colony,--wearing English garments,
with English manners, speech, customs, and fashions. They had
changed their skies only.
_Coelum, non animum, qui trans mare currunt._
It is difficult to understand that, while custom and outward
observance, friendship, lineage, and close commercial ties bound
the colony to England, forces, of which neither was conscious,
were silently at work to separate them forever. And this without
the stimulus of discontent arising from poverty or want. It was a
time of the most affluent abundance. The common people lived in the
greatest comfort, as far as food was concerned. Fish and flesh,
game, fruits, and flowers, were poured at their feet from a liberal
horn-of-plenty. Deer, coming down from the mountains to feed upon
the mosses that grew on the rocks in the rivers, were shot for the
sake of their skins only, until laws had to be enforced lest the
decaying flesh pollute the air. Painful and hazardous as were the
journeys, the traveller always encumbered himself with abundant
provision for the inner man.
When the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe accomplished the perilous
feat of reaching the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they had
the honor of drinking King George's health in "Virginia red wine,
champagne, brandy, shrub, cider, canary, cherry punch, white wine,
Irish usquebaugh, and two kinds of rum,"--all of which they had
managed to carry along, keeping a sharp lookout all day for Indians,
and sleeping on their arms at night. A few years later we find Peter
Jefferson ordering from Henry Wetherburn, innkeeper, the biggest
bowl of arrack punch ever made, and trading the same with William
Randolph for two hundred acres of land.
We are not surprised to find that life was a brief enjoyment.
Little Mary Ball, demurely reading from the tombstones in the old
St. Stephen's church, had small occasion for arithmetic beyond the
numbers of thirty or forty years--at which age, having "Piously
lived and comfortably died, leaving the sweet perfume of a good
reputation," these light-hearted good livers went to sleep behind
their monuments.
Of course the guardians of the infant colony spent many an anxious
hour evolving schemes for the control of excessive feasting and
junketing. The clergy were forced to ignore excesses, not daring
to reprove them for fear of losing a good living. Their brethren
across the seas cast longing eyes upon Virginia. It was an age
of intemperance. The brightest wits of England, her poets and
statesmen, were "hard drinkers." "All my hopes terminate," said
Dean Swift in 1709, "in being made Bishop of Virginia." There the
Dean, had he been so inclined, could hope for the high living and
hard drinking which were in fashion. There, too, in the tolerant
atmosphere of a new country, he might--who knows?--have felt free to
avow his marriage with the unhappy Stella.
In Virginia the responsibility of curbing the fun-loving community
devolved upon the good burgesses, travelling down in their sloops to
hold session at Williamsburg. We find them making laws restraining
the jolly planters. A man could be presented for gaming, swearing,
drunkenness, selling crawfish on Sunday, becoming engaged to more
than one woman at a time, and, as we have said, there was always the
ducking-stool for "brabbling women who go about from house to house
slandering their neighbors:--a melancholy proof that even in those
Arcadian days the tongue required control."