University of Virginia Library

4. FOURTH INSTALLMENT.

Having finished the outline of matters of a personal
nature, I now proceed to detail at some length the larger
works of a public character in which myself and my
agents were engaged for so many years. And first for
Lynchburg.

The object of Calvin Jones's repeated horseback rides
was to obtain a site for a park. This, after much negotiation
and not a little finesse, he secured in the vicinity
of the low range of mountains called Candler's, at a distance
of several miles from town. How many acres were
embraced in the original purchase I do not now recall,
but with the additions made to it in after-years Laura
Park[1] (so I named it) contains, as is well known, within
a fraction of four thousand acres. Everybody cried out
that the distance from town was an insuperable obstacle;
that poor people could never enjoy it; that only the
owners of horses and carriages would ever go there; omnibuses
and other hired vehicles would impose too great
a tax; that Adams always was a fool, Jones was a fool,
and that the whole thing was a notable exhibition of the
absurdities into which well-meaning men were sure to fall
whenever they undertook to execute work that required
practical sense. Jones went serenely on, year after year,
clearing, grading, grottoing, water-falling, laking, bridging,
and beautifying generally, until people were amazed
and almost ready to hang him because he did not formally
open the park to the public. Crowds went out on foot,
on horseback, in buggies, hacks, etc., to look at and admire
the work as it progressed. Livery-stable men reaped

a rich harvest, and looked forward to a harvest still richer
when the park should be completed. Something was
whispered about the right of way which Jones had bought
for a road of his own from town to the park, and endless
were the sneers and innuendoes.

“Nice man, that Jones! Oh, he's sharp. He ought
to be satisfied with his salary, his commissions on contracts,
his jobs of all kinds; but that ain't Jones, you
know. He wants a snug income of his own after all his
jobs are played out. He's a keener, Jones is!”

All of a sudden Jones, having made sufficient headway
in the park, put several thousand men at work, and in an
incredibly short time a quadruple-track road, with footways
and perfectly macadamized drives on either side of
the railways and between the double tracks, with elms and
other shade-trees planted at suitable intervals, was finished,
and the announcement made in the daily papers that cars
drawn by dummy-engines and driven by compressed air
would run every ten minutes to the park free of charge.

There was a change of tune instantly.

“Don't you remember my telling you when Jones was
a clerk in Robinson Stabler's drug-store, and Adams was
loafing around there doing nothing, that both of them
were remarkable men? Why, yes you do! I can tell
you the very place where we were standing when I told
you. It just shows, though, how different men of genius
are from ordinary people. They never do things in the
way you and I would do them. But haven't we got a magnificent
park? It beats Central Park all hollow. I just
tell you old Lynchburg has got something to be proud of.”

“Yes, the park will do very well as it is, and it will be
a great deal better when Jones has completed his improvements
on the sides and tops of the mountains; but that
reservoir business strikes me as the craziest notion that
ever entered Moses Adams's head; and what he has
bought all the land in and around Scuffletown for, I can't
imagine.”

I (or rather Jones for me) had bought the whole of
Reservoir Square, and a large force in addition to that
employed at the park was engaged in laying a massive
granite foundation all around from Dr. Payne's corner to

Mrs. Turner's, the Methodist church and the dwelling-houses
having been already demolished. Leaving the old
reservoir intact, Jones ran up his granite wall to the
height of one hundred feet, forming a grand structure of
five stories, counting the floor of the original reservoir as
one, each story supported by arched masonry of the most
solid and perfect workmanship, and each floor being in
fact an additional reservoir ten feet in depth, extending,
as did that at the bottom, over the entire square, with the
exception of some forty or fifty feet between the outer
and inner walls, which were filled in all the way to the
top with arches, upon which the stone flooring of the colonnades
was placed. There were transverse walls and
arches wherever needed to give strength to the mighty
structure. My knowledge of architecture is far too limited
to enable me to describe technically this reservoir, or
collection of reservoirs elevated one above the other, but
from what has been said the reader may form some idea
of its appearance. By flights of steps the successive floors
were easily reached, each ascension giving a broader view
of the picturesque scenery around Lynchburg, until the
battlemented summit was attained, from which the panorama
was as fine as well could be. Under the colonnades
the townspeople, and especially the lads and lasses and
the children, found a charming promenade in good and
even bad weather, except when the wind drove the rain
far under the arches. To strangers and visitors the reservoir
constituted the chief attraction of the growing city,
dividing honors with the park, and generally eclipsing it,
owing to its being within the corporate limits and so accessible.
The much more powerful machinery needed at
the pump-house was made under a special contract in
Lynchburg, the house containing it was enlarged and
beautified, and the two made another attraction to the
city.

For a time after the water was pumped into the higher
reservoirs (enough being always kept in them to furnish
an ample supply for the houses in the highest parts of the
city), the bad boys, who had not then ceased to abound
in Lynchburg, amused themselves by throwing sticks,
stones, etc., into the water, and by sailing miniature boats

thereon, but this was speedily ended by a couple of policemen,
detailed to guard the place; after which it became,
and has ever since remained, a delightful resort. Much has
been said about the Roman baths, aqueducts, and amphitheatres,
but I doubt if the world contains better masonry
than this same reservoir, the proportions of which are as
graceful as its workmanship is solid and enduring. Jones
prided himself upon the park, but for my part I shall always
consider the reservoir as the true monument of his taste
and genius.

In my youth, when engaged as local editor of the
Lynchburg Virginian, I had exerted my entire battery of
derision against the market-house,[2] a hideous affair, which
would long since have passed out of the memory of men
but for the large and very perfect photographs of it in its
different aspects, each more horrible, if possible, than the
other, which I had taken, and which remain to this day in
the new market, as unimpeachable evidence of the crude
architecture of the early age of Lynchburg. The new
market, in the form of a cross, extends under Court-house
Hill from Church Street to the foot of the hill on which
many years ago stood the residence of Mr. Charles L.
Mosby, and from what used to be called Tan-yard Alley
to a point about a square beyond West or Cocke Street.
Its width is fifty feet, height twenty feet, except in the
centre, where the dome or rotunda rises to the height of
sixty feet. Excavated throughout from the naked rock,
arched and cemented so admirably that not a drop of
water ever percolates the vaulted roof; not whitewashed,
but painted from end to end with the best quality of white
zinc, and paneled in simple but elegant designs, brilliantly
illuminated day and night with gas, of an equable temperature
nearly the year round, it is at once the most
commodious, convenient, comfortable, and useful market-house
in America. Large as the city became after the
great iron-factories were established, its size, its central
location, and the fact of its not being in the way of any
above-ground improvements, gained for it such esteem

among all classes, that no other public market has been
thought of, and but few green-groceries or private markets
have been started even upon the outskirts of the city.

[The inauguration of the New and the destruction of
the Old Market-house was made the occasion of a grand
celebration. A vast procession of former residents of
Lynchburg, headed by Mr. Frank Morrison, in a big overcoat,
lantern, umbrella, and boots, who bore a large square
banner, with the gilt device, “WE COME!” arrived in a
special train and marched in solid phalanx up Bridge
Street. Conspicuous among them were Colonels Shields,
McDonald, and R. F. Walker, of Richmond; Mr. Daniel
H. London, of New York; Mr. W. H. Ryan, of Baltimore;
Mr. S. V. Reid, of Cincinnati; Judge D. A. Wilson,
of New Orleans; Mr. J. William Royall, of St. Louis;
Mr. Mike Connell, of Memphis; and Senators Withers,
Thurman, and Allen, of Washington. President Grant
was indisposed, and could not come. At the head of
Bridge Street the procession was met by Dr. H. Grey
Latham, clad in a complete suit of armor. Behind him
were the clergy, the Knights Templar, the schools, public
and private, the fire companies, and the whole populace.
Dr. L.'s address of welcome was delivered in such tones
of thunder that it frightened the inhabitants of Amherst
Court-House, who immediately dispatched a company
of volunteers to the city, thinking the Confederacy had
broken out again. Salvos of artillery pealed aloud, and
several large sand-blasts were set off. Mr. A. McDonald
then read a beautiful poem written for the occasion by a
distinguished literary lady of the city. The proceedings
closed with a memorial oration by myself. When I
recalled the touching circumstance that those revered citizens,
B. Kidd and R. Jones, had derived the greater part
of their sustenance from the Old Market-house, and that
the maiden, Rouse, had drawn almost her entire stock of
haslets throughout a pure and prolonged life from the
butcher-blocks of that same market-house, the vast concourse
was flooded with tears. At night the city was illuminated,
there were balls, fire-works, etc., etc., but no
whisky or profane language. A full account of everything
appeared in the papers of the next morning, and was sub

sequently printed in pamphlet form, copies of which were
eagerly bought up by the New England Historical Societies,
who had agents on the spot. Cuthbert, of the New
York Herald, made an intensely interesting report of the
affair. Copies of the pamphlet are now exceedingly rare
and valuable. I know of but one in Virginia, and that is
in the hands of Mr. Thomas H. Wynne. The Virginia
Historical Society has offered five hundred dollars for a
duplicate, and an eminent Virginian archæologist has decided
to print two hundred fac-simile copies for exchange.
Market-House Memorial Day has been for many years a
legal holiday in Lynchburg. 1900.]

Simultaneously with the constructions in and near
Lynchburg, other works were carried on in Curdsville, at
the Buckingham Female Institute, in Farmville, Richmond,
and elsewhere. To my lasting regret, Jones could
not or would not take charge of the more important of
these works. I begged him to do so, but he said, not
without truth, that I had given him as much as he could
properly attend to for many years, and that, while he
cared little for reputation as an architect, engineer, and
landscape gardener, he did desire it to be said after his
death that what he had undertaken to do he had done
really well. It is a pity that others in my employ did
not share Jones's conscientiousness. I do not intend to
call names, nor is it necessary for me to do so (the works
speak for themselves), but I cannot refrain from saying
that the pain I often experienced in the failure of my
schemes to insure the happiness of individuals was hardly
ever so great as that I continually felt when looking at
some of the public edifices which I shall shortly mention.[3]
Added to the mortification I could but feel in thinking
over the folly of my selection of this or that man as my
agent, and to the rage which I never ceased to experience
whenever I was cheated or deceived, was the intolerable
sense of impotency at being balked in my plans in spite
of all my millions. Though I had counted upon all this,
and though I had steeled myself against it as best I could

(saying to myself, when I lay dreaming in bed about
being rich, “Why, even Omnipotence does not prevent
the world from going incessantly awry; and what can
you do with your little driblets of money?”), I felt it
much the same. Oftentimes I was so incensed and outraged
that I determined to abandon all my works just as
they stood, or to leave enough money to complete them
after a fashion, and go away where I could never see them
more, but could live quietly and selfishly all to myself.
But, somehow, millions do not make a man free; he
continues a slave to his thought, his dream, his scheme,
whatever it may be, hoping in spite of his better sense for
better things, and having put his hand to the plow goes
trudging along, miserably enough.

At Curdsville I bought Baldwin's big brick house with
the farm attached to it, and, moving the house away from
the allurements of the main, plain road, set going one of
the sincerest and longest-cherished desires of my heart,
to wit: a college for the education of Old Virginia fiddlers.
None but negroes and mulattoes were admitted as
students. At first, owing to the rapid decay of material
after the abolition of slavery, there was a good deal of
difficulty in finding a suitable president and professors,—
men who had never been contaminated by indulging in
operatic airs, but who understood thoroughly and enjoyed
only the real Old Virginia jigs, reels, breakdowns, and
the like—men who could play them as they ought to be
played, with fervor, with spirit, and the proper accentuation—in
fine, men, nigger men, who could and habitually
did sling, as we say, a nasty bow. And by nasty I do not
mean nasty, but every Virginian knows what I mean.
George Walker was the first president, and under him
were three professors whose names entirely escape me.
Not that there was any real need for so many teachers
where all taught the same thing, but that, in case of sickness
or death or the calling away of any of the faculty to a
big dance or frolic, the course of instruction might not be
interrupted. The number of students was limited to twenty;
everything, including food and clothing, was free, and no
diploma was granted until the student had completed his
three-years' curriculum. The scholastic year ended on

Christmas Eve, and the commencement exercises (which
wound up with a grand ball given to the young white
people) gave rise to the liveliest excitement in all the
adjacent counties; tickets were sought for with the
greatest avidity, and the written accounts of the proceedings,
published exclusively in the Richmond Whig, were
looked forward to with the most intense anxiety, and read
with profound interest not only in Virginia but throughout
the South and West. Ten thousand extra copies of
the paper were always struck off on such occasions, and
often failed to meet the demand.