University of Virginia Library

3. A Southern Planter's House
BY EMILY BURKE (1845)

THE house which I promised in my last letter to describe stood upon four posts about five feet from the ground, allowing a free circulation of air beneath, as well as forming a fine covert for the hounds, goats, and all the domestic fowls. It was only one story

high, though much taller than buildings of the same description at the North. It was divided into four rooms below, and two in the roof, and was furnished with two broad piazzas, one in front of the building, which is always the gentleman's sitting room, and one on the back of the house, where the servants await their master's orders. Houses are built low on account of the high winds, for their foundations are so frail that otherwise they would easily be thrown down in one of the heavy gales.

The building was slightly covered with boards arranged like clapboards to shed the rain. This was the entire thickness of the walls; there was no ceiling, lathing, or plastering within. The floors were all single and laid in so unworkmanlike manner that I could often see the ground beneath, when the carpets were not on the floor; and they are always taken up in the summer, to make the apartments cooler. The roof was covered with long shingles nailed to the timbers, to save the expense of boards beneath, with the ends of one tier just lapping upon the next, and the work was so shabby that not only the wind, but the light and rain often found free access into the upper rooms, through ten thousand holes among the shingles. Two chimneys ornamented the outside of the house, one upon each end, built of turfs, sticks, blocks of wood, and occasionally a brick, plastered over with clay. The windows were furnished with panes of glass, a luxury but few enjoy; after all, glazed windows were used more for ornament than comfort, for in the coldest weather they were always raised, and in stormy weather the piazzas protected the inner rooms.

The above is as true a description as I can give of the singular house to which I was conducted on my arrival in the country. My appearance there was altogether unexpected by the whole family, and there was much inquiry among the negroes and the younger members of the family, why I was there, who I was, and whence the strange lady bad come, who had so unexpectedly dropped in among them. From the room in which I sat, I could look into all the

other rooms about me, and I was not a little amused to see many dark forms with bare feet and noiseless steps flitting about from one place to another, to get a peep at the new corner, and to hear the whisperings on all sides of me, of which I well understood I was the subject. The servants would come to the windows on the outside, and lift up one corner of the curtain to steal a look at me, others would creep softly up the steps of the piazza and peep into the door. One old woman, less bashful than the others, ventured into the room, dressed in a coarse cotton gown, extending a little below the knees, with bare feet, neck, and arms, and came before me and made a low courtesy, accompanied by the formal salutation, "how de Misses; "she then sat down on the floor at a little distance from me, and in a very respectful manner entered into conversation. She was one of the oldest women on the plantation, and though one of the field hands, she had free access to her master's house, and she possessed such a good share of common sense that her master and mistress always consulted her on important matters, and she was looked up to and reverenced by the whole family as a sort of mother.

All this time I was eagerly watching to see if there were any preparations going on preliminary to a supper, but as I could discover none, and it was then near nine o'clock, I had just summoned all my fortitude to meet my hungry fate with the most becoming resignation, when a robust young woman came up the steps of the back piazza into the room where I was, and brought out two or three large tables, which reached nearly from one side of the room to the other, and began to lay them for supper. Presently

another young woman came from the same quarter, bringing the eatables. When all these preparations were complete, the tea-bell was rung from the piazza. To my great surprise, for I had seen only two or three white persons, a family of twenty or twenty-five persons, consisting partly of transient members and visitors gathered round the table; where they all came from, was a mystery to me.

Soon after tea I was conducted to one of the chambers in the roof, the room I was to occupy while a resident in the family. My first impressions concerning my future comfort were very unfavorable; yet I soon learned that my accommodations for that place were unusually good, and when I had a view of the surrounding scenery from my windows, it was in one of the most delightful situations; but the darkness of evening when I first entered my room shut out from my view every object but the rough walls around me, and my forebodings could not be thought strange. Though the house was of but one story, it was so built that I bad three windows in my chamber, all closed with heavy board shutters. The floor was smooth and white, and the walls celled to the windows, the remainder being rough boards. Overhead there was nothing to be seen but the unfinished timbers and shingles warped into queer shapes. My bed had very high posts, and was covered with a spread so small that it gave the bed the appearance of standing on stilts.

When I was nicely tucked in beneath the quilts and coverlets and had extinguished my light, I was utterly thrown into the horrors, to find no close warm shelter for my head; being raised in a land where every one is taught to be afraid of the least crevice

that will admit the cold air, I could not shut my eyes to sleep for perfect terror at those thousands of holes in the roof, through which the light of the moon was staring in upon me; they seemed to me, through the greater part of that night, to be so many cold and freezing eyes trying to look me out of countenance.

In the morning when I threw open my blinds, and took a view of the surrounding scenery, I began to feel much more reconciled to my situation. At the south-cast the ever-rolling Atlantic stretched itself out as far as the eye could reach, and where the sky and water seemed to meet, now and then a sloop would lose itself to the sight, or a little white speck would appear which would grow larger and larger till a ship under full sail would ride majestically over the mighty waves. On all other sides of the plantation the dark green forest of the long leafed pines completely hemmed us in, separating us from all other plantations and leaving us a little world by ourselves.