 | INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. Swallow Barn, or A sojourn in the Old Dominion |  |
INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE.
I can imagine your surprise upon the receipt
of this, when you first discover that I have really
reached the Old Dominion. To requite you for my
stealing off so quietly, I hold myself bound to an explanation,
and, in revenge for your past friendship,
to inflict upon you a full, true, and particular account
of all my doings, or rather my seeings and thinkings,
up to this present writing. You know my cousin
Ned Hazard has been often urging it upon me,—so
often that he began to grow sick of it,—as a sort of
family duty, to come and spend some little fragment
of my life amongst my Virginia relations, and I have
broken so many promises on that score, that, in truth,
I began to grow ashamed of myself.
Upon the first of this month a letter from Ned
reached me at Longsides, on the North River, where
I then was with my mother and sisters. Ned's
usual tone of correspondence is that of easy, confiding
intimacy, mixed up, now and then, with a
slashing raillery against some imputed foibles, upon
afford to take his sarcasm in good part. But in this
epistle he assumed a new ground, giving me some
home thrusts, chiding me roundly for certain waxing
bachelorisms, as he called them, and intimating that
a crust was evidently hardening upon me. A plague
upon the fellow! You know, Zachary, that neither of
us is so many years ahead of him.—My reckoning
takes in but five years, eleven months and fifteen
days—and certainly, not so much by my looks.—He
insinuated that I had arrived at that inveteracy of
opinion for which travel was the only cure; and that,
in especial, I had fallen into some unseemly prejudices
against the Old Dominion which were unbecoming
the character of a philosopher, to which, he
affirmed, I had set up pretensions; and then came a
a most hyperbolical inuendo,—that he had good reason
to know that I was revolving the revival of a stale
adventure in the war of Cupid, in which I had been
aforetime egregiously baffled, “at Rhodes, at Cyprus,
and on other grounds.” Any reasonable man would
say, that was absurd on his own showing. The letter
grew more provoking—it flouted my opinions,
laughed at my particularity, caricatured and derided
my figure for its leanness, set at nought my complexion,
satirized my temper, and gave me over corporeally
and spiritually to the great bear-herd, as one
predestined to all kinds of ill luck with the women,
and to be led for ever as an ape. His epistle, however,
wound up like a sermon, in a perfect concord
of sweet sounds, beseeching me to forego my idle
affections, as well touching the Old Dominion
as the other conceits of my vain philosophy, and
to hie me, with such speed as my convenience might
serve withal, to Swallow Barn, where he made bold
to pledge me an entertainment worthy of my labour.
It was a brave offer, and discreetly to be perpended.
I balanced the matter, in my usual see-saw
fashion, for several days. It does mostly fall out, my
dear Zack (to speak philosophically), that this machine
of man is pulled in such contrary ways, by inclinations
and appetites setting diversely, that it shall go
well with him if he be not altogether balanced into
a pernicious equilibrium of absolute rest. I had a
great account to run up against my resolution.
Longsides has so many conveniences; and the servants
have fallen so well into my habitudes; and my
arm-chair had such an essential adaptation to my
felicity; and even my razors were on such a stationary
foundation—one for every day of the week—as
to render it impossible to embark them on a journey;
and my laundress had just begun to comprehend,
after a severe indoctrination, the precise quantum of
starch, and the proper breadth of fold, for my cravat;
to say nothing of the letters to write, and the books
to read, and all the other little cares that make up
the sum of immobility in a man who does not care
much about seeing the world; so that, in faith,
Zachary, I had a serious matter of it. And then,
after all, I was, in fact, plighted to my sister Louisa
to go with her up the river, you know where. This,
down the beam. That futile, nonsensical flirtation!
But for this fantastic conceit crossing my mind with
the bitterness of its folly, I should indubitably have
staid at home.
There are some junctures in love and war both,
where your lying is your only game; for as to equivocating,
or putting the question upon an if or a but,
it is a downright confession. If I had refused Ned's
summons, not a whole legion of devils could have
driven it out of his riveted belief, that I had been
kept at home by that maggot of the brain which he
called a love affair. And then I should never have
heard the end of it!
“I'll set that matter right at least,” quoth I, as I
folded up his letter. “Ned has reason too,” said I,
suddenly struck with the novelty of the proposed
journey, which began to show in a pleasant light
upon my imagination, as things are apt to do, when
a man has once relieved his mind from a state of
doubt:—“One ought to travel before he makes up
his opinion: there are two sides to every question,
and the world is right or wrong; I'm sure I don't
know which. Your traveller is a man of privileges
and authoritative, and looks well in the multitude: a
man of mark, and authentic as a witness. And as
for the Old Dominion, I'll warrant me it's a right
jolly old place, with a good many years on its head
yet, or I am mistaken—By cock and pye, I'll go and
see it!—What ho! my tablets,”—
Behold me now in the full career of my voyage of
on a clear, hot fifteenth of June, and looking
with a sagacious perspicacity upon the commonest
sights of this terra incognita. I gazed upon the receding
headlands far sternward, and then upon the
sedgy banks where the cattle were standing leg-deep
in the water to get rid of the flies: and ever and
anon, as we followed the sinuosities of the river, some
sweeping eminence came into view, and on the
crown thereof was seen a plain, many-windowed edifice
of brick, with low wings, old, ample and stately,
looking over its wide and sun-burnt domain in solitary
silence: and there were the piney promontories, into
whose shade we sometimes glided so close that one
might have almost jumped on shore, where the wave
struck the beach with a sullen plash: and there were
the decayed fences jutting beyond the bank into the
water, as if they had come down the hill too fast to
stop themselves. All these things struck my fancy,
as peculiar to the region.
It is wonderful to think how much more distinct
are the impressions of a man who travels pen in
hand, than those of a mere business voyager. Even
the crows, as we sometimes scared them from their
banquets with our noisy enginery, seemed to have a
more voluble, and, I may say, eloquent caw here
in Virginia, than in the dialectic climates of the
North. You would have laughed to see into what
a state of lady-like rapture I had worked myself, in
my eagerness to get a peep at James Town, with all
my effervescence of romance kindled up by the renown
the boat pointed it out when we had nearly passed
it—and lo! there it was—an old steeple, a barren
fallow, some melancholy heifers, a blasted pine, and,
on its top, a desolate hawk's nest. What a splendid
field for the fancy! What a carte blanche for a
painter! With how many things might this little
spot be filled!
What time bright Phœbus—you see that James
Town has made me poetical—had thrown the reins
upon his horse's neck, and got down from his chafed
saddle in the western country, like a tired mail carrier,
our boat was safely moored at Rocket's, and I
entered Richmond between hawk and buzzard—the
very best hour, I maintain, out of the twenty-four,
for a picturesque tourist. At that hour, it may be
affirmed generally, that Nature is an absolute liar.
The landscape becomes like one of Hubard's cuttings—every
thing jet black against a bright horizon:
nothing to be seen but profiles, with all the shabby
fillings-up kept dark. Shockoe Hill was crested
with what seemed palaces embowered in groves and
gardens of richest shade; the chimneys numberless,
like minarets; and the Parthenon of Virginia, on its
appropriate summit, stood in another Acropolis, tracing
its broad pediment upon the sky in exaggerated
lines. There, too, was the rush of waters tumbling
around enchanted islands, and flashing dimly on the
sight. The hum of a city fell upon my ear; the
streets looked long and the houses high, and every
thing brought upon my mind that misty impression
and which, I say, every stranger feels on entering
a city at twilight.
I was set down at “The Union,” where, for the
first hour, being intent upon my creature comforts,
my time passed well enough. The abrupt transition
from long continued motion to a state of rest makes
almost every man sad, exactly as sudden speed
makes us joyous; and for this reason, I take it, your
traveller in a strange place is, for a space after his
halt, a sullen, if not a melancholy animal. The
proofs of this were all around me; for here was I—not
an unpractised traveller either—at my first resting
place after four days of accelerated progression, for
the first time in my life in Richmond, in a large hotel,
without one cognizable face before me, full of excellent
feelings, without a power of utterance. What
would I have given for thee, or Jones, or even long
Dick Hardesty! In that ludicrous conflict between
the social nature of the man and his outward circumstances,
which every light-hearted voyager feels in
such a situation as mine, I grew desponding. Talk
not to me of the comfort of mine own inn! I hold it
a thing altogether insufficient. A burlesque solitariness
sealed up the fountains of speech, of the crowd
who were seated at the supper table; and the same
uneasy sensation of pent-up sympathies was to be
seen in the groups that peopled the purlieus of the
hotel. A square lamp that hung midway over the
hall, was just lit up, and a few insulated beings were
sauntering backward and forward in its light: some
others stalked alone in incommunicable ruminations,
with shaded brows, and their hands behind their
backs. One or two stood at the door humming familiar
catches and old madrigals, in thoughtful medleys,
as they gazed up and down the street, now clamorous
with the din of carts, and the gossip of serving-maids,
discordant apprentice boys, and over-contented
blacks. Some sat on the pavement, leaning their
chairs against the wall, and puffing segars in imperturbable
silence: all composing an orderly and disconsolate
little republic of humoursome spirits, most
pitifully out of tune.
I was glad to take refuge in an idle occupation; so
I strolled about the city. The streets, by degrees,
grew less frequented. Family parties were gathered
about their doors, to take the evening breeze.
The moon shone bright upon some bevies of active
children, who played at racing games upon the pavements.
On one side of the street, a contumacious
clarionet screamed a harsh bravado to a thoroughgoing
violin, that on the opposite side, in an illuminated
barber-shop, struggled in the contortions of a
Virginia reel. And, at intervals, strutted past a careering,
saucy negro, with marvellous lips, whistling
to the top of his bent, and throwing into shade halloo
of schoolboy, scream of clarionet, and screech of
fiddle.—
Towards midnight a thunder gust arose, accompanied
with sharp lightning, and the morning broke upon
me in all the luxuriance of a cool and delicious atmosphere.
my purpose was to make my way direct to Swallow
Barn. Now, what think you of my skill as a traveller,
when I tell you, that until I woke in Richmond
on this enchanting morning, it never once occurred
to me to inquire where this same Swallow Barn was!
I knew that it was in Virginia, and somewhere about
the James River, and therefore I instinctively wandered
to Richmond; but now, while making my toilet,
my thoughts being naturally bent upon my next
movement, it very reasonably occurred to me that I
must have passed my proper destination the day before,
and, full of this thought, I found myself humming
the line from an old song, which runs, “Pray what
the devil brings you here!” The communicative and
obliging bar-keeper of the Union soon put me right.
He knew Ned Hazard as a frequent visiter of Richmond,
and his advice was, that I should take the
same boat in which I came, and shape my course
back as far as City Point, where he assured me that
I might find some conveyance to Swallow Barn,
which lay still farther down the river, and that, at
all events, “go where I would, I could not go wrong
in Virginia.” What think you of that? Now I hold
that to be, upon personal experience, as true a word
as ever was set down in a traveller's breviary. There
is not a by-path in Virginia that will take a gentleman
who has time on his hands, in a wrong direction.
This I say in honest compliment to a state that is
full to the brim of right good fellows.
The boat was not to return for two days, and I therefore
Don't be frightened!—for I neither visited hospitals,
nor schools, nor libraries, and therefore will not play
the tourist with you: but if you wish to see a beautiful
little city, built up of rich and tasteful villas, and
embellished with all the varieties of town and country,
scattered with a refined and exquisite skill—come
and look at Shockoe Hill in the month of June.—You
may believe, then, I did not regret my aberration.
At the appointed day I re-embarked, and in due
time was put down at City Point. Here some
further delay awaited me. This is not the land of
hackney coaches, and I found myself somewhat embarrassed
in procuring an onward conveyance. At
a small house, to which I was conducted, I made
my wishes known, and the proprietor kindly volunteered
his services to set me forward. It was a matter
of some consideration. The day was well advanced,
and it was as much as could be done to reach
Swallow Barn that night. An equipage, however,
was at last procured for me, and off I went. You
would have laughed “sans intermission” a good
hour, if you had seen me upon the road. I was set
up in an old sulky, of a dingy hue, without springs,
with its body sunk between a pair of unusually high
wheels, that gave it something of a French shrug. It
was drawn by an asthmatic, superannuated racer,
with a huge Roman nose and a most sorrowful countenance.
His sides were piteously scalded with the
traces, and his harness, partly of rope and partly of
character. He had fine long legs, however, and got
over the ground with surprising alacrity. At a respectful
distance behind me trotted the most venerable
of outriders—an old free negro, formerly a retainer
in some of the feudal establishments of the low
country. His name was Scipio, and his face, which
was principally made up of a pair of lips hanging
below a pair of nostrils, was well set off with a head
of silver wool that bespoke a volume of gravity. He
had, from some aristocratic conceit of elegance, indued
himself for my service in a cast-off dragoon cap,
stripped of its bear skin; a ragged remnant of a regimental
coat, still jagged with some points of tarnished
scarlet; and a pair of coarse linen trowsers,
barely reaching the ankles, beneath which two bony
feet occupied shoes, each of the superficies and figure
of a hoe, and on one of these was whimsically
buckled a rusty spur. His horse was a short, thickset
pony, with an amazingly rough trot, which kept
Scipio's legs in a state of constant warfare against the
animal's sides, whilst the old fellow bounced up and
down in his saddle with the ambitious ostentation of
a groom in the vigour of manhood, and proud of his
horsemanship.
Scipio frequently succeeded, by dint of hard spurring,
to get close enough to me to open a conversation,
which he conducted with such a deferential courtesy
and formal politeness, as greatly to enhance my opinion
of his breeding. His face was lighted up with a
lambent smile, and he touched his hat with an antique
mild and subdued, and in short, Scipio, though black,
had all the unction of an old gentleman. He had a
great deal to say of the “palmy days” of Virginia,
and the generations that in his time had been broken
up, or, what in his conception was equivalent, had
gone “over the mountain.” He expatiated, with a
wonderful relish, upon the splendours of the old fashioned
style in that part of the country; and told me
very pathetically, how the estates were cut up, and
what old people had died of, and how much he felt
himself alone in the present times—which particulars
he interlarded with sundry sage remarks importing an
affectionate attachment to the old school, of which
he considered himself no unworthy survivor. He
concluded these disquisitions with a reflection that
amused me by its profundity—and which doubtless
he picked up from some popular orator: “When
they change the circumstance, they alter the case.”
My expression of assent to this aphorism awoke all
his vanity,—for, after pondering a moment upon it,
he shook his head archly, as he added,—“People
think old Scipio a fool, because he's got no sense,”
—and, thereupon, the old fellow laughed till the tears
came into his eyes.
In this kind of colloquy we made some twenty
miles before the shades of evening overtook us, and
Scipio now informed me that we might soon expect
to reach Swallow Barn. The road was smooth, and
canopied with dark foliage, and, as the last blush of
twilight faded away, we swept rapidly round the
their vespers, and soon after reached the gate
of the court-yard. Lights were glimmering through
different apertures, and several stacks of chimneys
were visible above the horizon; the whole mass being
magnified into the dimensions of a great castle. Some
half dozen dogs bounding to the gate, brought a host
of servants to receive me, as I alighted at the door.
Cousins count in Virginia, and have great privileges.
Here was I in the midst of a host of them.
Frank Meriwether met me as cordially as if we had
spent our whole lives together, and my cousin Lucretia,
his wife, came up and kissed me in the genuine
country fashion:—of course, I repeated the ceremony
towards all the female branches that fell in my way,
and by the by, the girls are pretty enough to make
the ceremony interesting, although I think they consider
me somewhat oldish. As to Ned Hazard, I
need not tell you he is the quintessence of good humour,
and received me with that famous hearty honesty
of his, which you would have predicted.
At the moment of my arrival, a part of the family
were strewed over the steps of a little porch at the
front door, basking in the moonlight; and before them
a troop of children, white and black, trundled hoops
across the court-yard, followed by a pack of companionable
curs, who seemed to have a part of the
game; whilst a piano within the house served as
an orchestra to the players. My arrival produced a
sensation that stopped all this, and I was hurried by
a kind of tumultuary welcome into the parlour.
If you have the patience to read this long epistle
to the end, I would like to give you a picture of the
family as it appeared to me that night; but if you
are already fatigued with my gossip, as I have good
reason to fear, why you may e'en skip this, and go
about your more important duties. But it is not often
you may meet such scenes, and as they produce some
kindly impressions, I think it worth while to note
this.
The parlour was one of those specimens of architecture
of which there are not many survivors, and
in another half century, they will, perhaps, be extinct.
The walls were of panelled wood, of a greenish
white, with small windows seated in deep embrasures,
and the mantel was high, embellished with
heavy mouldings that extended up to the cornice of
the room, in a figure resembling a square fortified
according to Vauban. In one corner stood a tall,
triangular cupboard, and opposite to it a clock equally
tall, with a healthy, saucy-faced full moon peering
above the dial plate. A broad sofa ranged along
the wall, and was kept in countenance by a legion
of leather-bottomed chairs, which sprawled their bandy-legs
to a perilous compass, like a high Dutch
skater squaring the yard. A huge table occupied the
middle of the room, whereon reposed a service of
stately China, and a dozen covers flanking some
lodgments of sweetmeats, and divers curiously
wrought pyramids of butter tottering on pedestals of
ice. In the midst of this array, like a lordly fortress,
was placed an immense bowl of milk, surrounded by
images on the polished board, as so many El Dorados
in a fairy Archipelago. An uncarpeted floor
glistened with a dim, but spotless lustre, in token of
careful housekeeping: and around the walls were
hung, in grotesque frames, some time-worn portraits,
protruding their pale faces through thickets of priggish
curls.
The sounding of a bell was the signal for our
evening repast, and produced an instant movement
in the apartment. My cousin Lucretia had already
taken the seat of worship behind a steaming urn and
a strutting coffee-pot of chased silver, that had the air
of a cock about to crow,—it was so erect. A little
rosy gentleman, the reverend Mr. Chub, (a tutor in
the family,) said a hasty and half-smothered grace,
and then we all arranged ourselves at the table. An
aged dame in spectacles, with the mannerly silence
of a dependant, placed herself in a post at the board,
that enabled her to hold in check some little moppets
who were perched on high chairs, with bibs under their
chins, and two bare-footed boys, who had just burst
into the room, overheated with play. A vacant seat
remained, that, after a few moments, was occupied
by a tall spinster, with a sentimental mien, who
glided into the parlour with some stir. She was
another cousin, Zachary, according to the Virginia
rule of consanguinity, who was introduced to me
as Miss Prudence Meriwether;—a sister of Frank's,
and as for her age,—that's neither here nor there.
The evening went off, as you might guess, with
abundance of plain good feeling, and unaffected enjoyment.
The ladies soon fell into their domestic
occupations, and the parson smoked his pipe in silence
at the window. The young progeny teased
“uncle Ned” with importunate questions, or played
at bo-peep at the parlour door, casting sly looks at
me, from whence they slipt off, with a laugh, whenever
they caught my eye. At last, growing tired,
they rushed with one accord upon Hazard, flinging
themselves across his knees, pulling his skirts, or
clambering over the back of his chair, until worn out
by sport, they dropped successively upon the floor,
in such childish slumber, that not even their nurses
woke them when they were picked up like sacks,
and carried off to bed upon the shoulders.
It was not long before the rest of us followed, and
I found myself luxuriating in a comfortable bed that
would have accommodated a platoon. Here, listening
to the tree frog and the owl, I dropped into a profound
slumber, and knew nothing more of this under
world, until the sun shining through my window, and
the voluble note of the mocking bird, recalled me to
the enjoyment of nature and the morning breeze.
And so, Zachary, you have all my adventures up
to the moment of my arrival. For the future, do not
expect that I mean to make you the victim of my
garrulity. I admit there is something tyrannical in
these special appeals to the patience of a friend, so I
shall henceforth set down, in a random way, all that
interests me during my present visit, and when I
read it or not, just as you like. It may be sometime
before we meet, and till then be assured I
wear you in my “heart of hearts.”
| INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE. Swallow Barn, or A sojourn in the Old Dominion | |