SOME MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD
A traveller who has all but gained the last height of the great
mist-covered mountain looks back over the painful crags he has mastered
to where a light is shining on the first easy slope. That light is ever
visible, for it is Youth.
After nigh fourscore and ten years of life that Youth is nearer to me now
than many things which befell me later. I recall as yesterday the day
Captain Clapsaddle rode to the Hall, his horse covered with sweat, and
the reluctant tidings of Captain Jack Carvel's death on his lips. And
strangely enough that day sticks in my memory as of delight rather than
sadness. When my poor mother had gone up the stairs on my grandfather's
arm the strong soldier took me on his knee, and drawing his pistol from
his holster bade me snap the lock, which I was barely able to do. And
he told me wonderful tales of the woods beyond the mountains, and of the
painted men who tracked them; much wilder and fiercer they were than
those stray Nanticokes I had seen from time to time near Carvel Hall.
And when at last he would go I clung to him, so he swung me to the back
of his great horse Ronald, and I seized the bridle in my small hands.
The noble beast, like his master, loved a child well, and he cantered off
lightly at the captain's whistle, who cried "bravo" and ran by my side
lest I should fall. Lifting me off at length he kissed me and bade me
not to annoy my mother, the tears in his eyes again. And leaping on
Ronald was away for the ferry with never so much as a look behind,
leaving me standing in the road.
And from that time I saw more of him and loved him better than any man
save my grandfather. He gave me a pony on my next birthday, and a little
hogskin saddle made especially by Master Wythe, the London saddler in the
town, with a silver-mounted bridle. Indeed, rarely did the captain
return from one of his long journeys without something for me and a
handsome present for my mother. Mr. Carvel would have had him make his
home with us when we were in town, but this he would not do. He lodged
in Church Street, over against the Coffee House, dining at that hostelry
when not bidden out, or when not with us. He was much sought after.
I believe there was scarce a man of note in any of the colonies not
numbered among his friends. 'Twas said he loved my mother, and could
never come to care for any other woman, and he promised my father in the
forests to look after her welfare and mine. This promise, you shall see,
he faithfully kept.
Though you have often heard from my lips the story of my mother, I must
for the sake of those who are to come after you, set it down here as
briefly as I may. My grandfather's bark 'Charming Sally', Captain
Stanwix, having set out from Bristol on the 15th of April, 1736, with a
fair wind astern and a full cargo of English goods below, near the
Madeiras fell in with foul weather, which increased as she entered the
trades. Captain Stanwix being a prudent man, shortened sail, knowing the
harbour of Funchal to be but a shallow bight in the rock, and worse than
the open sea in a southeaster. The third day he hove the Sally to; being
a stout craft and not overladen she weathered the gale with the loss of a
jib, and was about making topsails again when a full-rigged ship was
descried in the offing giving signals of distress. Night was coming on
very fast, and the sea was yet running too high for a boat to live, but
the gallant captain furled his topsails once more to await the morning.
It could be seen from her signals that the ship was living throughout the
night, but at dawn she foundered before the Sally's boats could be put in
the water; one of them was ground to pieces on the falls. Out of the
ship's company and passengers they picked up but five souls, four sailors
and a little girl of two years or thereabouts. The men knew nothing more
of her than that she had come aboard at Brest with her mother, a quiet,
delicate lady who spoke little with the other passengers. The ship was
'La Favourite du Roy', bound for the French Indies.
Captain Stanwix's wife, who was a good, motherly person, took charge of
the little orphan, and arriving at Carvel Hall delivered her to my
grandfather, who brought her up as his own daughter. You may be sure the
emblem of Catholicism found upon her was destroyed, and she was baptized
straightway by Doctor Hilliard, my grandfather's chaplain, into the
Established Church. Her clothes were of the finest quality, and her
little handkerchief had worked into the corner of it a coronet, with the
initials "E de T" beside it. Around her neck was that locket with the
gold chain which I have so often shown you, on one side of which is the
miniature of the young officer in his most Christian Majesty's uniform,
and on the other a yellow-faded slip of paper with these words: "Elle est
la mienne, quoiqu'elle ne porte pas mou nom." "She is mine, although she
does not bear my name."
My grandfather wrote to the owners of 'La Favourite du Roy', and likewise
directed his English agent to spare nothing in the search for some clew
to the child's identity. All that he found was that the mother had been
entered on the passenger-list as Madame la Farge, of Paris, and was bound
for Martinico. Of the father there was no trace whatever. The name "la
Farge" the agent, Mr. Dix, knew almost to a certainty was assumed, and
the coronet on the handkerchief implied that the child was of noble
parentage. The meaning conveyed by the paper in the locket, which was
plainly a clipping from a letter, was such that Mr. Carvel never showed
it to my mother, and would have destroyed it had he not felt that some
day it might aid in solving the mystery. So he kept it in his strongbox,
where he thought it safe from prying eyes. But my Uncle Grafton, ever a
deceitful lad, at length discovered the key and read the paper, and
afterwards used the knowledge he thus obtained as a reproach and a taunt
against my mother. I cannot even now write his name without repulsion.
This new member of the household was renamed Elizabeth Carvel, though
they called her Bess, and of a course she was greatly petted and spoiled,
and ruled all those about her. As she grew from childhood to womanhood
her beauty became talked about, and afterwards, when Mistress Carvel went
to the Assembly, a dozen young sparks would crowd about the door of her
coach, and older and more serious men lost their heads on her account.
Her devotion to Mr. Carvel was such, however, that she seemed to care but
little for the attention she received, and she continued to grace his
board and entertain his company. He fairly worshipped her. It was his
delight to surprise her with presents from England, with rich silks and
brocades for gowns, for he loved to see her bravely dressed. The spinet
he gave her, inlaid with ivory, we have still. And he caused a chariot
to be made for her in London, and she had her own horses and her groom in
the Carvel livery.
People said it was but natural that she should fall in love with Captain
Jack, my father. He was the soldier of the family, tall and straight and
dashing. He differed from his younger brother Grafton as day from night.
Captain Jack was open and generous, though a little given to rash
enterprise and madcap adventure. He loved my mother from a child. His
friend Captain Clapsaddle loved her too, and likewise Grafton, but it
soon became evident that she would marry Captain Jack or nobody. He was
my grandfather's favourite, and though Mr. Carvel had wished him more
serious, his joy when Bess blushingly told him the news was a pleasure to
see. And Grafton turned to revenge; he went to Mr. Carvel with the paper
he had taken from the strong-box and claimed that my mother was of
spurious birth and not fit to marry a Carvel. He afterwards spread the
story secretly among the friends of the family. By good fortune little
harm arose therefrom, since all who knew my mother loved her, and were
willing to give her credit for the doubt; many, indeed, thought the story
sprang from Grafton's jealousy and hatred. Then it was that Mr. Carvel
gave to Grafton the estate in Kent County and bade him shift for himself,
saying that he washed his hands of a son who had acted such a part.
But Captain Clapsaddle came to the wedding in the long drawing-room at
the Hall and stood by Captain Jack when he was married, and kissed the
bride heartily. And my mother cried about this afterwards, and said that
it grieved her sorely that she should have given pain to such a noble
man.
After the blow which left her a widow, she continued to keep Mr. Carvel's
home. I recall her well, chiefly as a sad and beautiful woman, stately
save when she kissed me with passion and said that I bore my father's
look. She drooped like the flower she was, and one spring day my
grandfather led me to receive her blessing and to be folded for the last
time in those dear arms. With a smile on her lips she rose to heaven to
meet my father. And she lies buried with the rest of the Carvels at the
Hall, next to the brave captain, her husband.
And so I grew up with my grandfather, spending the winters in town and
the long summers on the Eastern Shore. I loved the country best, and the
old house with its hundred feet of front standing on the gentle slope
rising from the river's mouth, the green vines Mr. Carvel had fetched
from England all but hiding the brick, and climbing to the angled roof;
and the velvet green lawn of silvery grass brought from England,
descending gently terrace by terrace to the waterside, where lay our
pungies and barges. There was then a tiny pillared porch framing the
front door, for our ancestors never could be got to realize the Maryland
climate, and would rarely build themselves wide verandas suitable to that
colony. At Carvel Hall we had, to be sure, the cool spring house under
the willows for sultry days, with its pool dished out for bathing; and a
trellised arbour, and octagonal summer house with seats where my mother
was wont to sit sewing while my grandfather dreamed over his pipe. On
the lawn stood the oaks and walnuts and sycamores which still cast their
shade over it, and under them of a summer's evening Mr. Carvel would have
his tea alone; save oftentimes when a barge would come swinging up the
river with ten velvet-capped blacks at the oars, and one of our friendly
neighbours--Mr. Lloyd or Mr. Bordley, or perchance little Mr. Manners
--would stop for a long evening with him. They seldom came without their
ladies and children. What romps we youngsters had about the old place
whilst our elders talked their politics.
In childhood the season which delighted me the most was spring. I would
count the days until St. Taminas, which, as you knew, falls on the first
of May. And the old custom was for the young men to deck themselves out
as Indian bucks and sweep down on the festivities around the Maypole on
the town green, or at night to surprise the guests at a ball and force
the gentlemen to pay down a shilling, and sometimes a crown apiece, and
the host to give them a bowl of punch. Then came June. My grandfather
celebrated his Majesty's birthday in his own jolly fashion, and I had my
own birthday party on the tenth. And on the fifteenth, unless it chanced
upon a Sunday, my grandfather never failed to embark in his pinnace at
the Annapolis dock for the Hall. Once seated in the stern between Mr.
Carvel's knees, what rapture when at last we shot out into the blue
waters of the bay and I thought of the long summer of joy before me.
Scipio was generalissimo of these arrangements, and was always at the
dock punctually at ten to hand my grandfather in, a ceremony in which he
took great pride, and to look his disapproval should we be late. As he
turned over the key of the town house he would walk away with a stern
dignity to marshal the other servants in the horse-boat.
One fifteenth of June two children sat with bated breath in the pinnace,
--Dorothy Manners and myself. Mistress Dolly was then as mischievous a
little baggage as ever she proved afterwards. She was coming to pass a
week at the Hall, her parents, whose place was next to ours, having gone
to Philadelphia on a visit. We rounded Kent Island, which lay green and
beautiful in the flashing waters, and at length caught sight of the old
windmill, with its great arms majestically turning, and the cupola of
Carvel House shining white among the trees; and of the upper spars of the
shipping, with sails neatly furled, lying at the long wharves, where the
English wares Mr. Carvel had commanded for the return trips were
unloading. Scarce was the pinnace brought into the wind before I had
leaped ashore and greeted with a shout the Hall servants drawn up in a
line on the green, grinning a welcome. Dorothy and I scampered over the
grass and into the cool, wide house, resting awhile on the easy sloping
steps within, hand in hand. And then away for that grand tour of
inspection we had been so long planning together. How well I recall that
sunny afternoon, when the shadows of the great oaks were just beginning
to lengthen. Through the greenhouses we marched, monarchs of all we
surveyed, old Porphery, the gardener, presenting Mistress Dolly with a
crown of orange blossoms, for which she thanked him with a pretty
courtesy her governess had taught her. Were we not king and queen
returned to our summer palace? And Spot and Silver and Song and Knipe,
the wolf-hound, were our train, though not as decorous as rigid etiquette
demanded, since they were forever running after the butterflies. On we
went through the stiff, box-bordered walks of the garden, past the
weather-beaten sundial and the spinning-house and the smoke-house to the
stables. Here old Harvey, who had taught me to ride Captain Daniel's
pony, is equerry, and young Harvey our personal attendant; old Harvey
smiles as we go in and out of the stalls rubbing the noses of our trusted
friends, and gives a gruff but kindly warning as to Cassandra's heels.
He recalls my father at the same age.
Jonas Tree, the carpenter, sits sunning himself on his bench before the
shop, but mysteriously disappears when he sees us, and returns presently
with a little ship he has fashioned for me that winter, all complete with
spars and sails, for Jonas was a shipwright on the Severn in the old
country before he came as a king's passenger to the new. Dolly and I
are off directly to the backwaters of the river, where the new boat is
launched with due ceremony as the Conqueror, his Majesty's latest
ship-of-the-line. Jonas himself trims her sails, and she sets off right
gallantly across the shallows, heeling to the breeze for all the world
like a real man-o'-war. Then the King would fain cruise at once against
the French, but Queen Dorothy must needs go with him. His Majesty points
out that when fighting is to be done, a ship of war is no place for a
woman, whereat her Majesty stamps her little foot and throws her crown of
orange blossoms from her, and starts off for the milk-house in high
dudgeon, vowing she will play no more.
And it ends as it ever will end, be the children young or old, for the
French pass from his Majesty's mind and he runs after his consort to
implore forgiveness, leaving poor Jonas to take care of the Conqueror.
How short those summer days? All too short for the girl and boy who had
so much to do in them. The sun rising over the forest often found us
peeping through the blinds, and when he sank into the bay at night we
were still running, tired but happy, and begging patient Hester for half
an hour more.
"Lawd, Marse Dick," I can hear her say, "you an' Miss Dolly's been on
yo' feet since de dawn. And so's I, honey."
And so we had. We would spend whole days on the wharves, all bustle and
excitement, sometimes seated on the capstan of the Sprightly Bess or
perched in the nettings of the Oriole, of which ship old Stanwix was now
captain. He had grown gray in Mr. Carvel's service, and good Mrs.
Stanwix was long since dead. Often we would mount together on the little
horse Captain Daniel had given me, Dorothy on a pillion behind, to go
with my grandfather to inspect the farm. Mr. Starkie, the overseer,
would ride beside us, his fowling-piece slung over his shoulder and his
holster on his hip; a kind man and capable, and unlike Mr. Evans, my
Uncle Grafton's overseer, was seldom known to use his firearms or the
rawhide slung across his saddle. The negroes in their linsey-woolsey
jackets and checked trousers would stand among the hills grinning at us
children as we passed; and there was not one of them, nor of the white
servants for that matter, that I could not call by name.
And all this time I was busily wooing Mistress Dolly; but she, little
minx, would give me no satisfaction. I see her standing among the
strawberries, her black hair waving in the wind, and her red lips redder
still from the stain. And the sound of her childish voice comes back to
me now after all these years. And this was my first proposal:
"Dorothy, when you grow up and I grow up, you will marry me, and I shall
give you all these strawberries."
"I will marry none but a soldier," says she, "and a great man."
"Then will I be a soldier," I cried, "and greater than the Governor
himself." And I believed it.
"Papa says I shall marry an earl," retorts Dorothy, with a toss of her
pretty head.
"There are no earls among us," I exclaimed hotly, for even then I had
some of that sturdy republican spirit which prevailed among the younger
generation. "Our earls are those who have made their own way, like my
grandfather." For I had lately heard Captain Clapsaddle say this and
much more on the subject. But Dorothy turned up her nose.
"I shall go home when I am eighteen,"--she said, "and I shall meet his
Majesty the King."
And to such an argument I found no logical answer.
Mr. Marmaduke Manners and his lady came to fetch Dorothy home. He was a
foppish little gentleman who thought more of the cut of his waistcoat
than of the affairs of the province, and would rather have been bidden to
lead the assembly ball than to sit in council with his Excellency the
Governor. My first recollection of him is of contempt. He must needs
have his morning punch just so, and complained whiningly of Scipio if
some perchance were spilled on the glass. He must needs be taken abroad
in a chair when it rained. And though in the course of a summer he was
often at Carvel Hall he never tarried long, and came to see Mr. Carvel's
guests rather than Mr. Carvel. He had little in common with my
grandfather, whose chief business and pleasure was to promote industry
on his farm. Mr. Marmaduke was wont to rise at noon, and knew not wheat
from barley, or good leaf from bad; his hands he kept like a lady's,
rendering them almost useless by the long lace on the sleeves, and his
chief pastime was card-playing. It was but reasonable therefore, when
the troubles with the mother country began, that he chose the King's side
alike from indolence and contempt for things republican.
Of Mrs. Manners I shall say more by and by.
I took a mischievous delight in giving Mr. Manners every annoyance my
boyish fancy could conceive. The evening of his arrival he and Mr.
Carvel set out for a stroll about the house, Mr. Marmaduke mincing his
steps, for it had rained that morning. And presently they came upon the
windmill with its long arms moving lazily in the light breeze, near
touching the ground as they passed, for the mill was built in the Dutch
fashion. I know not what moved me, but hearing Mr. Manners carelessly
humming a minuet while my grandfather explained the usefulness of the
mill, I seized hold of one of the long arms as it swung by, and before
the gentlemen could prevent was carried slowly upwards. Dorothy
screamed, and her father stood stock still with amazement and fear, Mr.
Carvel being the only one who kept his presence of mind. "Hold on tight,
Richard!" I heard him cry. It was dizzy riding, though the motion was
not great, and before I had reached the right angle I regretted my
rashness. I caught a glimpse of the Bay with the red sun on it, and
as I turned saw far below me the white figure of Ivie Rawlinson, the
Scotch miller, who had run out. "O haith!" he shouted. "Hand fast,
Mr. Richard!"--And so I clung tightly and came down without much
inconvenience, though indifferently glad to feel the ground again.
Mr. Marmaduke, as I expected, was in a great temper, and swore he had
not had such a fright for years. He looked for Mr. Carvel to cane me
stoutly: But Ivie laughed heartily, and said: "I wad yell gang far for
anither laddie wi' the spunk, Mr. Manners," and with a sly look at my
grandfather, "Ilka day we hae some sic whigmeleery."
I think Mr. Carvel was not ill pleased with the feat, or with Mr.
Marmaduke's way of taking it. For afterwards I overheard him telling the
story to Colonel Lloyd, and both gentlemen laughing over Mr. Manners's
discomfiture.