2. II.
We strike tents, shoulder arms—I do not, I only buckle on a
sabre—cross the Chickahominy, and take up the line of march
for the James river—hungry.
A tedious march down the right bank of the “Swamp,” into
the low grounds of Charles City, everywhere facing Grant;
line of battle; fighting on the long bridge road; men throwing
up earthworks with their bayonets in twenty minutes,
whenever they stop; sun rising and setting; wind blowing;
woods reverberating with shots; column still moving toward
James river. Then the question is settled; General Grant is
going to try the Petersburg line of advance on Richmond, with
his base at City Point.
Judicious! General Lee said a year ago, I am told, that this
was the quarter from which Richmond was most exposed. That
terrible question of our “communications”—the Southern railroads!
After all, it is bread and meat which will decide this
war, or rather, I am afraid, the want of it. The granaries of
the Gulf States are full, and we are starving. Who is to blame?
History will answer that question. The time will come when
the survivors of this army, or their children, will know why
we are left to starve upon a microscopic ration—“so-called”—
of meat, which just enables a man to carry a musket and cartridge-box
without staggering and falling upon the march,
or in battle, from exhaustion! Some day we will know that;
meanwhile we go on starving, and try to do the work. Close
up!
Over James river above Drury's Bluff—not “Fort Darling,”
nobody ever heard of that place—on pontoons. The artillery
moves on all night; I and the most amiable of Inspector-Generals
bivouac with saddles for pillows in a clover-field. We
have just passed an ancient-looking house, but seeing no
light, forebore from arousing the lady of the establishment,
preferring to sleep al fresco, by the camp-fire. Yonder, through
the gloaming, as I lie on my red blanket—from Chancellorsville—with
feet to the rail fire, and my head on my English
saddle, as I smoke—not after supper—yonder I see the old
house. It is not a very imposing place. Set upon a handsome
hill, amid waving fields, above the James, nearly opposite the
Randolph house of “Wilton,” it would be attractive in “good
times.” But now it is pulled to pieces and dust-covered. For
the cannon of the Army of Northern Virginia have rolled by
the door hour after hour, and the trampling hoofs of the cavalry
have raised clouds of dust, hanging on the trees and walls.
House, out-buildings, fences (broken down), grass-plat, box-rows
—all disappear under the cloud. Dust is king there. We drop
asleep with rosy visions; for, in passing the house, an Ethiopian
friend named Richard, who subsequently kindled our rail fire
for us, promised us breakfast. We rise at dawn, repair to the
establishment, make our toilets (I always carry soap, brush, and
towel in my haversack), and are shown into the drawing-room,
to which the ladies have not descended, though they have sent
polite messages touching breakfast.
It is with real historic interest that I gaze upon this old
mansion. For this is “Ampthill,” the former residence of the
famous Colonel Archibald Cary of the first Revolution—the
man of the low stature, the wide shoulders, the piercing eyes,
and the stern will. He was of noble descent, being the heir
apparent to the barony of Hunsdon when he died; sat in the
Virginia Convention of 1776; lived with the eyes of his great
contemporaries fixed on him—with the ears of George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason, listening to hear
him speak, and was the sort of man who will “stand no nonsense.”
When the question of appointing Patrick Henry
Dictator was agitated, Cary said to Henry's brother-in-law,
“Sir, tell your brother that if he is made Dictator, my dagger
shall be in his breast before the sunset of that day!” There
spoke “Cary of Ampthill,” as they used to call him—a man
who religiously kept his word, saying little and performing
much. Hardest of the hard-headed, in fact, was this Ampthill
Cary, and his contemporaries nicknamed him “Old Iron”
therefor. He played a great part in old times—he is dead in
this good year 1864, many a long day ago—but this is his
house. Looking around at the wainscoted walls, the ample
apartments, and with a view of the extensive out-buildings
through the window, I come to the conclusion that those old
Virginians had a tolerably good idea of “how to live.” Here
is a house in which a reasonable individual could be happy,
provided he had a pleasing young personage of the opposite
sex to assist him. Woodwork to the ceiling; wide windows;
trees waving without, and green fields stretching far away to
the horizon; pure airs from the river fanning the cheek, and
moving gently the bright plumage of the singing birds perched
amid the rustling foliage—Cary of Ampthill must surely have
been a gentleman of taste. Is that him yonder, sitting on the
porch and reading his old blurred
“Virginia Gazette,” containing
the announcement of the proposed passage of a Stamp
Act in the English Parliament? That must be “Old Iron.”
He wears ruffles at his breast, knee-breeches, a coat with barrel
sleeves covered with embroidery, a pigtail, and a cocked hat.
His shoulders are broad, his frame low, his eye piercing—and
I think he is swearing as he reads about the doings of parliament.
He has apparently just returned from inspecting the
blood-horses in his stables, and after taking his morning julep,
is reading the
Gazette, and pondering on the probable results
of secession from England, with the sword exercise which is
sure to follow. But look! he raises his head. A gun sounds
from down the river, reverberating amid the bluffs, and echoing
back from the high banks around “Wilton,” where his friend
Mr. Randolph lives. It must be the signal of a ship just
arrived from London, in this month of June, 1764; the
Fly-by-Night,
most probably, with all the list of articles which
Colonel Cary sent for—new suits for himself from the
London tailors (no good ones in this colony as yet), fine silks
for the ladies, wines from Madeira, and Bordeaux, and Oporto,
new editions of the “Tattler,” or “Spectator,” or “Tom
Jones,” all paid for by the tobacco crop raised here at Ampthill.
The
Fly-by-Night probably brings also the
London
Gazette, showing what view is taken in England of the “rising
spirit of rebellion” in the colonies, and what the ministers
think of the doctrine of coercion. Our present Governor,
Fauquier, is not wholly “sound,” it is thought, upon these
questions, and Lord Dunmore it is supposed will succeed him.
A second gun! The Captain of the
Fly-by-Night seems to
have anchored at the wharf, and the swivel, announcing his
arrival to his patrons, is making a jolly racket. Again!—and
there again! Bomb! bomb! bomb! bomb! Can that be the
Fly-by-Night, and is that Mr. Randolph galloping up in hot
haste from the ferry opposite “Wilton?”
It is a courier who stops a moment to tell me that the Yankee
gunboats have opened below Drury's Bluff, and are trying to
force a passage through the obstructions. So my dream is broken;
I wake in the every-day world of 1864; the year 1764 has
quite disappeared; and Cary of Ampthill—where is his figure?
That is only my friend, the amiable Inspector-General, on the
porch, reading a copy of the
Richmond Examiner. I took his
looped-up felt for a cocked hat, and his officer's braid for the
ante-revolutionary embroidery! So the past disappears, but
the winds are blowing, and the cloud-shadows float just as they
did one hundred years ago. The fields are green again, the
river breeze comes to me with its low sweet murmur, and the
birds are singing in the trees as they sang for Cary of Ampthill.
“Gentlemen, will you walk in to breakfast?”
O most prosaic—but also most agreeable of announcements!
The past and its memories fade; we are again in the present,
as the most agreeable of odours indicates!
