correspondence than the Georgia plantation, as I am again in your
debt.... But what have I to tell you of myself, or anything belonging to
me? Ever since I returned from New York, whither I went to see Catharine
Sedgwick sail for England, I have been vegetating here, as much as in me
lies to vegetate; but though my life has quite as few incidents as the
existence of the lilies and the roses in the flower-beds, the inward
nature makes another life of it, and the restless soul can never be made
to _vegetate_, even though the body does little else.... My days roll on
in a sort of dreamy, monotonous succession, with an imperceptible
motion, like the ceaseless creeping of the glaciers. I teach S---- to
read. I order my household, I read Mrs. Jameson's book about Canada, I
write to you, I copy out for Elizabeth Sedgwick the journal I kept on
the plantation, I ride every day, and play on the piano just enough not
to forget my notes, _et voila!_ Once a week I go to town, to execute
commissions, or return visits, and on Sundays I go to church; and so my
life slides away from me. My head and heart, however, are neither as
torpid nor as empty as my hours; and I often find, as others have done,
that external stagnation does not necessarily produce internal repose.
Occasionally, but seldom, people come from town to see us; and
sometimes, but not often, small offices of courtesy and kindness are
exchanged between me and my more immediate neighbors. And now my story
is done.... I really live almost entirely alone....
I am beginning to fear that I shall not be taken to the Virginia springs
this summer. If I go, I am told I must leave the children behind, the
roads and accommodations being such as to render it perfectly impossible
to take them with us. Indeed, the inconveniences of the journey and the
discomforts of the residence there are represented to us as so great,
that I am afraid I shall not be thought able to endure them. If it is
settled that I cannot go thither, I shall go up to Massachusetts, where,
though the material civilities of life are yet in their swaddling
clothes, I have dear friends, and the country is lovely all around where
I should be.
I have just seen some plans for a large hotel, which it is proposed to
build on some property we own in the city, in a position extremely well
adapted for such a purpose. I was very much pleased with them: they are
upon the wholesale scale of lodging and entertainment, which travelers
in this country require and desire; and combine as much comfort and
elegance as are compatible with such a style of establishment. We, you
know, in England, always like our public houses to be as like private
ones as possible. The reverse is the case here, and the lodging-house or
hotel recommends itself chiefly by being able to accommodate as many
people as can well congregate at a _table d'hote_ or in a public
drawing-room, that being a good deal the idea of society which appears
to exist in many people's minds here....
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, Thursday, July 4th, 1839.
DEAREST HARRIET,
It is the 4th of July, the day on which the Declaration of American
Independence was read to the assembled citizens of Philadelphia from the
window of the City State House. The anniversary is celebrated from north
to south and east to west of this vast country: by the many, with firing
of guns, and spouting of speeches, drinking of drams, and eating of
dinners; by the few, with understanding prayer, praise and thankfulness
for the past, and hope, not unalloyed with some misgiving, for the
future.
In the gravel walk, at the back of our house, under a double row of tall
trees that meet overhead, all our servants and the people employed on
the place and their children, are congregated at dinner, to the tune of
thirty-seven apparently well-satisfied souls, and as I went to see them
just now, a farmer who is our tenant across the road, and has tenanted
the place where he lives for the space of twenty years, assured me that
I was a "real American!" He is an Irishman, and I might have returned
his compliment by telling him he was half an Englishman, for a man who
remains twenty years in one place in this country, and upon ground that
he does not own, is a very uncommon personage.
You would scarcely believe how difficult it is to establish a pleasant
footing with persons of this class here. Dependents they do not and
ought not to consider themselves (for they are not such in any sense
whatever); equals, their own perceptions show them they are not in any
sense, but a political one; and they seem to me, in consequence, to be
far less at their ease really in their intercourse with their employers
or landlords than our own people, with their much more positive and
definite sense of difference of condition and habits of life. Indeed, to
establish a real feeling--a _true_ one--of universal equality, warranted
by the fact of its existence, would require a population, not of
American Republicans, such as they are, but of Christian philosophers,
such as do not exist at all anywhere yet, or, if at all, only by twos or
threes scattered among millions....
You ask me how far Butler's Island was from St. Simon's [the rice and
cotton plantations in Georgia]. Fifteen miles of water--great huge river
mouth or mouths, and open sounds of the sea, with half-submerged salt
marsh islands wallowing in the midst of them.... Over these
waters--pretty rough surfaces, too, sometimes--we traveled to and fro
between the plantations in open boats, generally in a long canoe that
flew under its eight oars like an arrow. The men often sang, while they
rowed, the whole way when I was in the boat, and some of their melodies
are very wild and striking, and their natural gift of music remarkable.
As the boat approached the landing, the steersman brayed forth our
advent through a monstrous conch, when the whole shore would presently
be crowded with our dusky dependents, the whole thing reminding one of
former semi-barbaric times, and modes of life in the islands of the
northwest of Scotland. Some of the airs the negroes sing have a strong
affinity to Scotch melodies in their general character....
It is near ten o'clock in the evening, and with you it is five hours
earlier, so you are probably thinking of dressing for dinner; though,
by-the-bye, you are not at home at Ardgillan, but wandering somewhere
about in Germany--I know not where; neither may I by any means imagine
how you are employed; and your image rises before me without one
accompanying detail of familiar place, circumstance, or occupation, to
give it a this-world's likeness. I see you as I might if you were
dead--your simple apparition unframed by any setting that I can surround
it with; and it is thus that I now see all my friends and kindred, all
those I love in my own country; for the lapse of time and the space of
distance between us render all thoughts of them, even of their very
existence, vague and uncertain. Klopstock, who wrote letters to the
dead, hardly corresponded more absolutely with the inhabitants of
another world than I do....
I drove into town this morning by half-past ten o'clock to church, a
six-miles' journey I take most Sundays. The weekday generally passes in
reading "Nicholas Nickleby," walking about the garden, and devising
alterations which I hope may turn out improvements, playing and singing
half a dozen pieces of music half a century old, and writing to the
"likes of you" (though, indeed, to me you are still a nonesuch).
Farewell, dearest Harriet, _und schlafen sie recht wohl_. Is that the
way you say it, whereabouts you are?
Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, July 14th, 1839.
I wrote to you a short time ago, dearest Harriet; but I am still in your
debt, and though I have nothing to tell you (when should I write if I
waited for that?), I have abundant leisure to tell it in, and the mind
to talk with you. The last is never wanting, but now what a pity it is
that I must make this miserable sheet of paper my voice, instead of
having you here on this piazza, as we call our verandahs here, with the
pomegranate and cape jessamine bushes in bloom in their large green
boxes just before me, and a row of great fat hydrangeas (how is that
spelled?) nodding their round, fat, foolish-looking pink and blue heads
at me....
We are most strongly urged to try the effect of the natural hot sulphur
baths of Virginia; their efficacy being very great in cases of rheumatic
affections.... I am very much afraid, however, that I shall not be
allowed to go thither; and in that case shall probably take my way up to
my friends in Berkshire, Massachusetts, the Sedgwicks, who, though they
have sent a detachment of six to perambulate Europe just now, still form
with the remaining members of the family the chief part of the
population of that district of New England.
Catharine, who is one of them that I love best, is one among the gone;
but her brother and his wife, next door to whom I generally take up my
abode during some part of the summer, are as excellent, and nearly as
dear to me, as she is....
My occupations are nothing; my amusements less than nothing. Of what
avail is it that I should tell you of lonely rides taken in places you
never heard of, or books I have read, the titles of which (being
American) you never saw; or that I am revolutionizing the gravel walks
in my garden, opening up new and closing up old ones? There is no use in
telling you any of this. As long as I live, that is to all eternity, you
know that I shall love you; but it is decreed that in this portion of
that eternity you can know little else about me, however it may be
hereafter. I wonder if it will ever be for us again to interchange
communion daily and hourly, as we once did; I do not see how it should
come to pass in this our present life; but it may be one of the
blessings of a better and happier existence to resume our free and full
former intercourse with each other, without any of the alloy of human
infirmity or untoward circumstance. Amen! so be it! God bless you, dear.
I long to see you once more, and am ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, July 21st, 1839.
I was looking over a letter of yours, dear Harriet, just now, which
answered one of mine from Georgia, and find therein a perfect burst of
eloquence upon the subject of _fishing_. Now, though I know
destructiveness to be not only a _bump_, but a passion of yours, I
still should not have imagined that you could take delight in that
dreamy, lazy, lounging pursuit, if pursuit that may be called in which
one stands stock-still by the hour. As for me, the catching of fish was
always a subject of perfect ecstasy to me--so much so, indeed, that our
little company of piscators at Weybridge used to entreat me to "go
further off," or "get out of the boat," whenever I had a bite, because
my cries of joy were enough to scare all the fish in the river down to
Sheerness. It was the lingering, fidgeting, gasping, plunging agonies of
the poor creatures, after they were caught, which I objected to so
excessively, and which made me renounce the amusement in spite of my
passion for it. When I resumed it in Georgia, it was with the full
determination to find out some speedy mode of putting my finny captives
to death--as you are to understand that I have not the slightest
compunction about killing, though infinite about torturing,--so my
"slave," Jack, had orders to knock them on the head the instant he took
the hook from their gills; but he banged them horribly, till I longed to
bang him against the boat's side, and even cut their throats from ear to
ear, so that they looked like so many Banquos without the "gory locks";
and yet the indomitable life in the perverse creatures would make them
leap up with a galvanic spring and gasp, that invariably communicated an
electric shock to my nerves, and produced the fellow-spring and gasp
from me. This was the one drawback to my fishing felicity; oh! yes--I
forgot the worms or live bait, though! Harriet, it _is_ a hideous
diversion, and that is all that can be said for it; and I wonder at you
for indulging in it.
I tried paste, most exquisitely compounded of rice, flour, peach brandy,
and fine sugar; but the Altamaha fish were altogether too
unsophisticated for any such allurement; it would probably be safe to
put a _pate de foie gras_ or a pineapple before an Irish hedger and
ditcher.
The white mullet, shad, and perch of the Altamaha are the most excellent
animals that ever went in water. At St. Simon's the water is entirely
salt, and often very rough, as it is but a mile and a half from the open
sea, and the river there is in fact a mere arm of salt water. It is
hardly possible ever to fish like a lady, with a float, in it; but the
negroes bait a long rope with clams, shrimps, and oysters, and sinking
their line with a heavy lead, catch very large mullet, fine whitings,
and a species of marine monster, first cousin once removed to the great
leviathan, called the drum, which, being stewed _long enough_ (that is,
nobody can tell how long) with a precious French sauce, might turn out a
little softer than the nether millstone, and so perhaps edible: _mais
avec cette sauce la on mangerait son pere_, and perhaps without the
family indigestion that lasted the Atridae so long.
One of these creatures was sent to me by one of our neighbors as a
curiosity; it was upwards of four feet long, weighed over twenty pounds,
and had an enormous head. I wouldn't have eaten a bit of it for the
world!
The waters all round St. Simon's abound in capital fish; beds of
oysters, that must be inexhaustible I should think, run all along the
coast; shrimps and extraordinarily large prawns are taken in the
greatest abundance, and good green turtle, it is said, is easily
procured at a short distance from these shores.
You ask what sort of house we had down there. Why, truly, wretched
enough. There were on the two plantations no fewer than _eight_ dwelling
houses, all in different states and stages of uninhabitableness, half of
them not being quite built up, and the other half not quite fallen down.
The grandfather of the present proprietor built a good house on the
island of St. Simon's, in a beautiful situation on a point of land where
two rivers meet--rather, two large streams of salt water, fine,
sparkling, billowy sea rivers. Before the house was a grove of large
orange-trees, and behind it an extensive tract of down, covered with
that peculiar close, short turf which creates South Down and Pre Sale
mutton: and overshadowed by some magnificent live-oaks and white
mulberry-trees. By degrees, however, the tide, which rises to a great
height here, running very strongly up both these channels, has worn away
the bank, till tree by tree the orange grove has been entirely washed
away, and the water at high tide is now within six feet of the house
itself; or rather, there are only six feet of distance between the
building and the brink of the bank on which it stands, which is
considerably above the river.
The house has been uninhabited for a great many years, and is, of
course, ruinously out of repair. It contains one very good room, and
might be made a decently comfortable dwelling; but it has been ordered
to be pulled down, because, if it is not, the materials will soon be
swept away in the rapid demolition of the bank by the water. The house
we resided in was the overseer's dwelling, situated on the point also,
but further from the water, and having the extent of grass-land and
trees in front of it, together with a beautiful water prospect; in fact,
in a better situation than the other. As for the house itself, it would
have done very well for our short residence if it had been either
finished or furnished. The rooms were fairly well-sized, and there were
five of them in all, besides two or three little closets. But although
the primitive simplicity of whitewashed walls in our drawing and
dining-room did not affect my happiness, the wainscoting and even the
crevices of the floor admitted perfect gusts of air that rather did. The
windows and doors, even when professing to be shut, could never be
called closed; and on one or two gusty evenings, the carpet in the room
where I was sitting heaved and undulated by means of a stream of air
from under the door, like a theatrical representation of the ocean in
extreme agitation. The staircase was of the roughest description, such
as you would not find in the poorest English farm-house, covered only by
the inside of the roof, rough shingles--that is, wooden tiles--and all
the beams, rafters, etc., etc., of the roofing, admitting little starry
twinklings of sun or moonlight, perfectly apparent to the naked eye of
whoever ascended or descended. Such was my residence on the estate of
Hampton on great St. Simon's Island; and it was infinitely superior in
size, comfort, and everything else to my abode on Butler's Island, which
was indeed a very miserable hole.
The St. Simon's house being sufficiently roomy, I presently set about
making it as far as possible convenient and comfortable. I had a fine
large table, such as might have become some august board of business
men, made of plain white pine and covered in with sober-looking dark
green merino. I next had a settee constructed--cushions, covers, etc.,
cut out and mainly stitched by my own fair fingers; we stuffed it with
the native moss; and I had a pretty white _peignoir_ made for it, with
stuff which I got from that emporium of fashionable luxury, Darien; and
this was quite an item of elegance, as well as comfort. Another table in
my sitting-room was an old, rickety, rheumatic piece of furniture of the
"old Major's," the infirmities of which I gayly concealed under a
Macgregor plaid shawl, never burdening its elderly limbs with any
greater weight than a vase of flowers; and by the help of plenty of this
exquisite, ornamental furniture of nature's own providing, and a
tolerable collection of books, which we had taken down to the South with
us, my sitting-room did not look uncomfortable or uncheerful.
If, however, I am to winter there again this year, I shall endeavor to
make it a little more like the dwelling of civilized human beings by the
introduction of locks to the doors, instead of wooden latches pulled by
pack-thread; and bells, of which at present there is but one in the
whole house, and that is a noose, hanging just outside the sitting-room
door, by which I expected to be caught and throttled every time I went
in and out....
I am ever yours,
F. A. B.
LENOX, August 9th, 1839.
I turn from interchange of thought and feeling with my friends here,
dearest Harriet, to read again an unanswered letter of yours; and as I
dwell upon your affectionate words, while my eyes wander over the
beautiful landscape which my window commands, my mind is filled with the
consideration of the great treasure of love that has been bestowed upon
me out of so many hearts, and I wonder as I ponder. God knows how
devoutly I thank Him for this blessing above all others, granted to me
in a measure so far above my deserts, that my gratitude is mingled with
surprise and a sense of my own unworthiness, which enhances my
appreciation of my great good fortune in this respect.... In seasons of
self-reproach and self-condemnation it is an encouragement and a
consolation, and helps to lift one from the dust, to reflect that good
and noble spirits have loved one--spirits too good and too noble, one
would fain persuade one's self, to love what is utterly base and
unworthy....
You ask me if I have kept any journal, or written anything lately.
During my winter in the South I kept a daily journal of whatever
occurred to interest me, and I am now busily engaged in copying it....
Since the perpetration of that "English Tragedy," now in your safe
keeping, I have written nothing else; and probably, until I find myself
again under the influence of some such stimulus as my mind received on
returning to England, my intellectual faculties will remain stagnant, so
far as any "worthy achievement," as Milton would say, is concerned. You
see, I persist in considering that play in that light....
I am ashamed to say that I am exceedingly sleepy. I have been riding
sixteen miles over these charming hills. The day is bright and breezy,
and full of shifting lights and shadows, playing over a landscape that
combines every variety of beauty,--valleys, in the hollows of which lie
small lakes glittering like sapphires; uplands, clothed with
grain-fields and orchards, and studded with farm-houses, each the centre
of its own free domain; hills clothed from base to brow with every
variety of forest tree; and woods, some wild, tangled, and all but
impenetrable, others clear of underbrush, shady, moss-carpeted and
sun-checkered; noble masses of granite rock, great slabs of marble (of
which there are fine quarries in the neighborhood), clear mountain
brooks and a full, free-flowing, sparkling river;--all this, under a
cloud-varied sky, such as generally canopies mountain districts, the
sunset glories of which are often magnificent. I have good friends, and
my precious children, an easy, cheerful, cultivated society, my capital
horse, and, in short, most good things that I call mine--on this side of
the water--with one heavy exception....
My dearest Harriet, my drowsiness grows upon me, so that my eyelids are
gradually drawing together as I look out at the sweet prospect, and the
blue shimmer of the little lake and sunny waving of the trees are fading
all away into a dream before me. Good-bye.
Your sleepy and affectionate
F. A. B.
[When I was in London, some time after the date of this letter, I
received an earnest request from one of the most devoted of the New
England abolitionists, to allow the journal I kept while at the
South to be published, and so give the authority of my experience to
the aid of the cause of freedom. This application occasioned me
great trouble and distress, as it was most painful to me to refuse
my testimony on the subject on which I felt so deeply; but it was
impossible for me then to feel at liberty to publish my journal.
When the address, drawn up at Stafford House, under the impulse of
Mrs. Beecher Stowe's powerful novel, and the auspices of Lord
Shaftesbury and the Duchess of Sutherland (by Thackeray denominated
the "Womanifesto against Slavery"), was brought to me for my
signature, I was obliged to decline putting my name to it, though I
felt very sure no other signer of that document knew more of the
facts of American slavery, or abhorred it more, than I did; but
also, no other of its signers knew, as I did, the indignant sense of
offense which it would be sure to excite in those to whom it was
addressed; its absolute futility as to the accomplishment of any
good purpose, and the bitter feeling it could not fail to arouse,
even in the women of the Northern States, by the assumed moral
superiority which it would be thought to imply.
I would then gladly have published my journal, had I been at liberty
to do so, and thus shown my sympathy with the spirit, though not the
letter, of the Stafford House appeal to the women of America.
It was not, however, until after the War of Secession broke out,
while residing in England, and hearing daily and hourly the
condition of the slaves discussed, in a spirit of entire sympathy
with their owners, that nothing but the most absolute ignorance
could excuse, that I determined to publish my record of my own
observations on a Southern plantation.
At the time of my doing so, party feeling on the subject of the
American war was extremely violent in England, and the people among
whom I lived were all Southern sympathizers. I believe I was
suspected of being _employed_ to "advocate" the Northern cause (an
honor of which I was as little worthy as their cause was in need of
such an advocate); and my friend, Lady ----, told me she had
repeatedly heard it asserted that my journal was not a genuine
record of my own experiences and observation, but "cooked up" (to
use the expression applied to it) to serve the purpose of party
special pleading. This, as she said, she was able to contradict upon
her own authority, having heard me read the manuscripts many years
before at her grandmother's, Lady Dacre's, at the Hoo.
This accusation of having "cooked up" my journal for a particular
end may perhaps have originated from the fact that I refused to
place the whole of it in the hands of the printers, giving out to be
printed merely such portions as I chose to submit to their
inspection, which, as the book was my personal diary, and contained
matter of the most strictly private nature, was not perhaps
unreasonable. The republication of this book in America had not been
contemplated by me; my purpose and my desire being to make the facts
it contained known in England. In the United States, by the year
1862, abundant miserable testimony of the same nature needed no
confirmation of mine. My friend, Mr. John Forbes, of Boston,
however, requested me to let him have it republished in America, and
I very gladly consented to do so.[4]
[4] I have omitted from the letters written on the plantation,
at the same time as this diary, all details of the condition of
the slaves among whom I was living; the painful effect of which
upon myself however, together with my general strong feeling
upon the subject of slavery, I have not entirely
suppressed--because I do not think it well that all record
should be obliterated of the nature of the terrible curse from
which God in His mercy has delivered English America.