CHAPTER III.
In 1820 or 1821, Mr. Pendleton received an appointment which
took him to reside in Richmond. The boys, Walker and William,
were then sent to school to Mr. John L. Nelson, a teacher
of considerable reputation. Under him they passed two uneventful
years, increasing in knowledge and entering with boyish zest
into the various school sports. William especially enjoyed the
exciting and dangerous game of "bandy," delighting in the
vigorous exercise and the rivalry of the contest.
Two circumstances of their school-life in Richmond were puzzling
to the brothers. No matter what care William gave to his
lessons, he never rose in the class to a place higher than the less
studious and often unprepared Walker. Nor did either of them
ever receive any of the caning freely bestowed upon their schoolmates
for smaller offences than William's mischief or Walker's
idleness. Partiality on the part of the teacher was the supposed
reason for the double injustice. Meeting his old master in after-years,
William learned with surprise that he had been kept down
in his classes and screened from punishment by his father's direction.
Mr. Pendleton had instructed Mr. Nelson that neither of
his sons should, for any cause, be subjected to the "indignity" of
a whipping, and that the younger should never be allowed to
outstrip the elder. The right of primogeniture could scarcely
have been pushed further.
The school-life in Richmond came to an end in two years, and
Mr. Pendleton returned to Caroline. Hugh, his oldest son, had
graduated at William and Mary College, and had come home to
read law. He was an excellent classical scholar and a tolerable
mathematician. To him his father now intrusted the education
of his brothers, without any restrictions as to discipline or progress
among them. Under this new system of punishment and
advancement William's love of study and desire for knowledge
were stimulated, and his activity of mind and clearness of apprehension
carried him well on in Latin, Greek, and elementary
mathematics. But the young lawyer was obliged to seek some
locality more favorable for the practice of his profession, and his
brothers were left for a time without regular instruction.
They were not, however, suffered to fall into idleness. They
were required to cultivate "truck-patches" assigned to them, and
became ambitious to raise earlier corn and sweet potatoes, and
larger watermelons, than their father's old gardener. To them
were also intrusted the various and responsible duties usually
performed by "overseers." Summoned from their slumbers before
sunrise, they took the keys of corn-crib and barn, and superintended
the feeding of the horses, mules, and oxen; saw that the
provisions given out the previous day were distributed to the
hands while the animals were feeding, and that teams and laborers
were ready for work at the proper time. This morning duty
accomplished, they were expected to appear at prayers and breakfast
neatly dressed. After breakfast they went to the field to see
that the work laid off for the forenoon was properly executed.
At twelve o'clock the stock was again fed and dinner ready for
the hands. The regular work of the day did not end for them
until the tired animals were again fed and rubbed down, the
evening rations given out to be prepared and enjoyed in leisure
at the cabins, provisions for the next day furnished to the cooks,
the keys returned to their father with a full account of the occurrences
of the day, and orders received from him as to the routine
for the morrow. They were expected to have oversight over all
farm implements, as well as men and animals, and to report on all
needed repairs. In addition to this regular work they took active
part at all busy seasons. They ploughed, planted, and hoed corn
in the spring; worked in the harvest-field and at wheat-threshing
in summer; pulled fodder and cut corn in the fall of the year.
Such training gave them habits of diligence and of patient,
faithful attention to details. Under it obedience to orders, with
a rational exercise of limited authority—watchfulness over the
welfare of others—and a practical knowledge of many of the
operations of nature, were learned in a degree unusual for boys
between fourteen and seventeen.
Nor were the graces and amenities of cultivated society neglected.
The young Pendletons did not become rude and uncouth
by reason of out-door work and rough occupations. Caroline
was thickly settled. The gentlemen farmers—the Pendletons,
Taylors, Turners, Corbins, Hoomeses, Magruders, Dickersons,
and many others—resided on large estates, and were noted for
their profuse living and lavish hospitality. The men occupied
themselves principally in hunting, card-playing, and convivial
drinking, while a continual round of dinners, parties, and balls
amused both sexes. "Bowling Green," the county seat, was the
centre of the merry-making and dissipation, and the rendezvous
of many wild young men, whose reckless pursuit of pleasure
often carried them into lamentable excesses.
Mr. Pendleton was an enthusiastic fox-hunter, and took special
pride in his pack of hounds. But he neither drank nor gambled,
kept himself out of the vortex of the county revelries, and
seconded his wife's efforts to keep their children from being
drawn into it.
This restraint was not pushed too far. The family lived on
social terms with their neighbors, gave and received entertainments,
and thought a ride of five miles for a morning visit, or
ten for a dinner, a small matter. In his youth a graceful dancer,
and throughout his life a fine performer on the violin, Mr. Pendleton
delighted to set the young people dancing, and was much
pleased to find his sons and daughters excel in that accomplishment.
William inherited some of the musical talent of his race,
and learned to play the violin on his own account, handling the
bow with such skill that he could play any tune he could whistle.
More serious occupation for leisure hours was found in the
library of English classics, partly inherited from the old judge,
and added to from time to time as a new book attracted the
attention of the reading public. Those were not the days of
cheap literature, when "Sea-Side Libraries" and "Leisure-Hour
Series" offer the works of all sorts of authors to rich and poor
alike. Sensational stories of the "Jack Harkaway" type, telling
of impossible adventures among Indians, blackguards, and cutthroats,
had not filled boys' minds with false views of pleasure
and rendered them impatient of all the restraints of home and
duty. A book was held to represent so much brain-work on the
part of the writer, and so much manual labor of the printer and
binder; and the buyer expected to get for his money not only
an hour's amusement, but something worth keeping and handing
down.
Mrs. Pendleton was a woman of excellent mind and a great
reader. From her her children derived a love of books, and she
took pains to encourage and direct them so as to form tastes for
sound and wholesome instruction. Stimulated by the example
of his brother Hugh and his sisters, and by their discussion of
the books read by them under their mother's guidance, William
passed many hours in reading. Rollin's "Ancient History,"
Goldsmith's "Greece and Rome," Plutarch's "Lives," and
Hume's "History of England" were thus read, and their contents
fixed in his mind by talking them over with the elders of the
household. For lighter reading, Shakespeare, Fielding, and Richardson
offered their graphic pictures of character and manners
during their respective periods. The Waverley novels, new and
different from their predecessors, roused enthusiasm and excited
imagination. In them the ardent mind of the boy found inexhaustible
stores of delight, and learned lessons of chivalrous devotion
to duty, of patriotism, valor, and self-forgetfulness, not to be
derived from the matter-of-fact stories or overwrought fictions
of the present day. Scott's "Metrical Romances" and Byron's
impassioned poems stood side by side with Milton, Dryden, and
Pope, and taught the youthful reader that poetry had other themes
than lofty religious speculation or didactic truth.
Roaming at will among these stores of history, fiction, and
verse,—in the associations of his home, with his intelligent and
vivacious father, his pious and cultivated mother, his sprightly
sisters and brothers, and listening to the varied conversation of the
succession of guests gathered under the roof,—the years thus
passed were not the least important in their influence upon the
character and intellect of the high-spirited, loving, fearless,
truthful, generous boy.
