University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

“The deserts of Africa are not to be compared,
for loneliness, to a South Carolinian swamp. Oh!
the comforts and blessings of a corduroy turnpike!
These, you know, are made of poles laid down in
the bottom of the swamps for a road, in humble
imitation of that same most durable web. But the
swamps gone through, and myself safely landed
here—this Belville of yours is a most desirable
place. Your father must have been a man of taste,
friend Victor. The grove of Pride of India trees,
in front of the villa, stands exactly as you left it;
the vines run up and around Bell's window as
beautiful as ever; the pigeons wheel over the
garden and cotton-fields as gayly as of old. The
flowers which perfume this delightful and balmy
air, send up their sweets from the garden and the
lawn as they have done these forty years; at least
so testifies old Tombo the gardener. Your favourite
horse thrives, and is none the worse for a
trial of his speed and bottom which I made the
other day in a race with my own impetuous

thoughts. Your mother seems happier than I have
ever seen her; and little Virginia Bell is the fairest
flower on the Chevillere estate. Will you believe
it! she introduced me to the housekeeper on my
arrival as having been her affianced bridegroom
ever since she was three months old, and then enjoyed
a school-girl laugh. By St. Benedict, that
laugh cut nearer to my heart than a funeral
sermon.

“Why have you not written to her and extolled
some of my good qualities? She will never find
them out! and as to my becoming a serious, sighing
suitor, I am ten times farther from it than I was
the first day I blundered into such dangerous company.
If I were to elongate my phiz by way of
preparative for a sigh, she would split her little
sides with laughing at me. The fact is, I begin
to think myself pretty considerably of an ass among
the ladies, as your Yankees would express it.
What shall I do? shall I run for it? or shall I
stand here and die of the cold plague? If I laugh,
she laughs with me; if I look serious, she laughs at
me; if we visit, I am laughed at; if we are visited, I
am stared at; and thus it is, day after day, and week
after week. To your mother, I no doubt appear
like a more rational creature, but before Miss
Bell I am utterly at a loss and dumbfoundered.

“How can I show your charming cousin that I
am not the fool she takes me for? must I shoot
somebody? That would be too bloody-minded.
Must I write a book? Sicken and become interesting?

Ah! I have it! I'll get the fever and
ague (no hard matter you know here); but then
a man looks so unromantic with his teeth, and his
hands, and his feet all in motion like a negro dancing
`Juba.' A lady would as soon think of falling in
love with a culprit on the gibbet. I shall certainly
try what absence will do; but then suppose that I
am a bore, and no one entreats me to stay! Your
mother might deem it indelicate, under the circumstances,
for she certainly sees that I am a lost sinner;
then I should be blown, indeed, with all my
sins upon my head! without one redeeming quality
for the little Bell to dwell upon in my absence.
If I had rescued somebody from a watery grave—
stopped a pair of runaway horses—saved somebody's
life—shot a robber—been wounded myself—
should turn out to be some lord's heir in England—
had jumped down the Passaic or the Niagara—distinguished
myself against the Indians or the Algerines—or
even killed a mad dog—it would not be
so desperate a case for the hero of a love affair.

“But here I am—a poor forlorn somebody, without
a single trait of heroism in my composition, or
a solitary past deed of the kind to boast of; unless
it may be bursting little brass bombs under the
tutor's windows in College, or shaving a horse's
tail, or one side of a drunken man's whiskers, or
laying two drunken fellows at each other's door.
Suppose I should get old Tombo, the gardener,
into the river by stratagem, merely that I might
pull him out again; as he seems to be a universal

favourite here. But then suppose I should drown
him in these mock heroics? Ah, I see I shall have
to remain plain Beverly Randolph all my days!
Alas! the days of chivalry are gone! If I could
splinter a lance with some of these Sir Hotheads,
or Sir Blunderbys, the case might not be so desperate.

“Thank Heaven, however, that the age of poetry
is not gone too; for poetry, you know, is but the
shadow or reflection of chivalry—heroism—and
action! First an age of deeds, and then an age of
song—so here goes for the doggerel. But let me
see; are there not more than two ages? what
succeeds to an age of poetry? One of philosophy!
What succeeds philosophy? Cynicism or infidelity
—next a utilitarian age, and lastly we have a mongrel
compound of all—then we have revolutions,
bloodshed, sentiment, religion, and spinning-jennies.
Now you see I have hit it! we live in the
mongrel age; a hero of this era should fight—
write—pray—and spin cotton! Let's see how all
these could be united into a picture suitable for a
frontispiece to a work of the current age. First
there must be a spinning-jenny to go by steam, to
the wheel of which there must be a hand-organ.
The steam must be scattered against an enemy;
a long nosed fellow with the real nasal twang
must be seen upon his knees attending the jenny,
and singing doggrel to the music of the hand-organ
—there's a pretty coat of arms for you, and suitable
for the present age.

“But seriously, my dear Chevillere, what am I
to do? I cannot get on without your assistance,
and yet I am ashamed to ask it; however, I shall
leave all these things to time—fate—and a better
acquaintance between the charming Miss Bell and
your humble servant.

“I find you have more negroes here than we have
in Virginia, in proportion to the whites; and existing
under totally different circumstances, so far as
regards the distance between them and their
masters.

“With us slavery is tolerable, and has something
soothing about it to the heart of the philanthropist;
the slaves are more in the condition of tenants to
their landlords—they are viewed more as rational
creatures, and with more kindly feelings; each
planter owning a smaller number than the planters
generally do here, of course the direct knowledge
of, and intercourse between each other is greater.
Every slave in Virginia knows, even if he does not
love, his master; and his master knows him, and
generally respects him according to his deserts.
Here slavery is intolerable; a single individual
owning a hundred or more, and often not knowing
them when he sees them. If they sicken and die,
he knows it not except through the report of those
wretched mercenaries, the overseers. The slaves
here are plantation live-stock; not domestic and
attached family servants, who have served around
the person of the master from the childhood of
both.

“I have known masters in Virginia to exhibit the
most intense sorrow and affliction at the death of
an old venerable household servant, who was quite
valueless in a pecuniary point of view.

“Here, besides your white overseers, you have
your black drivers;—an odious animal, almost
peculiar to the far south. It is horrible to see one
slave following another at his work, with a cowskin
dangling at his arm, and occasionally tying
him up and flogging him when he does not get
through his two tasks a day. These tasks I believe
are two acres of land, which they are required to
hoe without much discrimination, or regard to age,
sex, health, or condition; now I have seen stout
active fellows get through their two tasks by one
o'clock, while another poor, stunted, bilious creature
toiled the whole day at the same portion of labour.
Another abomination here, and even known in
some parts of Virginia, is that the females are required
to work in the field, and generally to do as
much as the males. This system is unworthy
even of refined slave-holders. But the hardest
part is to tell yet; they receive their provisions
but once a week, and then, each has for seven days,
either one peck of Indian corn, or three pecks of
sweet potatoes, without meat, or any thing else to
season this dry fare.

“I will confess to you that, at first, I thought this
allowance much more niggardly than I now consider
it. In order to see how they lived, I went
into the thickest of the quarter, on purpose to share

a part of their food myself, and observe a little of
their economy; I found two or three stout fellows
standing at a large table, or frame, into which were
fixed two grindstones, or rather one was fixed and
the other revolved upon it, like two little millstones;
the upper stone was turned by a crank,
at which the two slaves seemed to work by turns.
The arrangements for this labour they made among
themselves. I then went into the best looking hut
of the quarter, just as they had all drawn round
a large kettle of small homminy, in the centre of
which I was pleased to see a piece of salt fat pork
about the size of a large apple. The family consisted
of six persons. They had all clubbed their
portions of food into a common stock.

“`How often do you draw meat?' said I; they
informed me that they had none except at Christmas,
and that none were able to buy meat except
those who finished their two tasks early in the day,
and then cultivated their own little `patches,' as
they are called. I then went round the huts to see
how many had meat, and was much rejoiced to
find that more than three-fourths lived substantially
well.

“I was exceedingly amused at one thing in these
singular little communities, which was, that matches
of convenience are almost as common among them
as among their more fashionable masters. I suspect
it would puzzle some of your fashionable
belles to guess how these have their origin, and
what is the fortune upon which they are founded.

I will tell you, if you have never observed it yourself.
The most active and sober hands, who are
able to finish their tasks early, and of course live
well, are always in great demand for husbands;
and a well-favoured girl is almost sure to select
one of these for her helpmate in the true sense of
the word. Nor is this excellence confined to the
males; many of the women are in as much demand
among the lazy fellows for their prowess in
the field, as the active men are among the women.

“While the mothers are at work in the field,
their helpless offspring are all left under the care of
the superannuated women, in a large hut, or several
large huts provided for that purpose; and a more
unearthly set of wrinkled and arid witches you
never saw, unless you have more curiosity than
most of your Carolinians. These scenes, especially
if visited by moonlight, transport a man into
the centre of Africa at once; there is the dark,
sluggish stream, the dismal-looking pine-barrens,
and the palmetto, the oriental-looking cabbagetree,
aided by the foreign gibberish, and the
unsteady light of the pine logs before the door,
now and then casting a fitful gleam of light upon
some of these natives of the shores of the Niger,
with their tattooed visages, ivory teeth, flat noses,
and yellow and blood-shot eyeballs.

“I do not observe much difference between the
North and South Carolinians, except in the case of
those who inhabit the most southern portions of
the latter state. There your rich are more princely

and aristocratic, and your poor more wretched and
degraded; but to tell you the plain truth, many of
your little slaveholders are miserably poor and
ignorant; and what must be the condition of that
negro who is a slave to one of these miserable
wretches? They are uniformly hard and cruel
masters, and the more fortune or fate frowns upon
them, the more cruel they become to their slaves.
This is a singular development of human character,
and not easily accounted for, unless we suppose
them to be revenging themselves of fate.

“Most of the accomplished ladies whom I have
seen, were educated either at Salem or at the
north, and sometimes at both,—the preference being
given to New-York and Philadelphia. Therein
Virginia has the advantage: for scarcely a town
of two thousand inhabitants is without its seminary
for girls. I have myself visited those at Richmond,
Petersburg, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville,
Staunton, Lexington, Fincastle, &c. &c. This,
you will acknowledge, shows deep-seated wisdom
and foresight in the people; for if our wives and
mothers are intelligent, their offspring will be so
too.

“Virginia Bell has just stolen into the parlour in
the south wing, where I am now writing, so there
is an end of slavery, and education, and all that
sort of thing; unless, indeed, your humble servant
may be said to have surrendered his freedom, and
to be now undergoing a new sort of schooling.
Her look is arch and knowing, as if she had read

every word I have written; I will finish my letter
when she goes out.

“There now, I breathe more easily,—she is
gone! `Mr. Randolph,' said she, `I have a very
great curiosity to see the letter of a young gentleman;
I never saw one in my life.' `Indeed!' said
I, `then I will write you one before I leave my
seat.'

“`No, no, no!' said she, blushing just perceptibly,
`you understand me very well; I mean such letters
as you write to my cousin; there would be
something worth reading in them; as for your letters
to young ladies, I have seen some of them.
O! deliver me from the side-ache, and weeping
till my eyes are red with irrepressible laughter;
if they would write naturally and simply, it would
not be so bad. There would then be only the natural
awkwardness of the subject; but to get upon
stilts, merely because the letter is to a lady, is too
bad. But you have not answered my question;
do you intend to show me that letter?'

“`I will show you a better one.'

“`No, no! I want to see none of your set
speeches upon paper, all so prim and formal; if
you care any thing for my good opinion, you will
show me one of your careless ones,” said she.

“`Care any thing for your good opinion!' said
I, rising, and trying to seize her hand, which she
held behind her; `I value your opinion more than
that of the whole sex besides.' She raised her
eyes in mock astonishment, and puckering up her

beautiful little lips, whistled as if in amazement,
and then deliberately marched out of the room,
saying, as she stood at the entrance, `Finish your
copy like a good boy, and be sure not to blot it,
and you shall have some nuts and a sweet cake;'
and I crushed the unfortunate epistle with chagrin.
She certainly takes me for a fool, and truly I begin
to think she is not very far wrong.