 | The Old Dominion |  |
IX
AN OLD VIRGINIA SUNDAY
UNTIL just now there has been apparent an
impression which somehow became quite
general out of the South, that nearly everything
that has counted for much in the history of this
country, either sprang from or took its color
from New England. Much of the history which
has been written of late years teaches this—inferentially,
perhaps, but quite distinctly.
For example, the New England Puritans have
been rather assumed to have been the only very
religious population of the colonies. They have
certainly been declared by those who have undertaken
to set up as teachers, to have been the
only section of the population inspired by a high
ethical principle. While, on the other hand,
the population of the South, particularly of Virginia,
have been assumed to have been a roystering,
hell-raking lot of adventurers who, ready
enough maybe to fight in any cause, good or bad,
yet wanted the essential principle of serious
could spring.
Even so thoughtful, and later, so well informed
an historian as the late John Fiske
stated in his "Beginnings of New England"
that the principle of "No taxation without
representation" on which the Revolutionary
War was fought, had its first beginning in
America in a town-meeting in Massachusetts
in 1630.
Much of the recent teaching of history has
been to the effect that Virginia was settled
mainly with a view to discovering gold and obtaining
worldly wealth, while into the name of
the Virginia adventurers, whose far-seeing wisdom,
patriotic zeal and religious fervor devoted
their fortunes and in many instances their lives
to building up an Anglo-Saxon Empire in the
West, has been read a debased meaning which
grew out of later and quite other conditions.
The planting of Virginia had its origin in the
patriotic zeal of the people of England to wrest
this continent from Spain, and build up for
England a great Anglo-Saxon Protestant State
in the West which should enable her to withstand
Spain's vaulting ambition which menaced
the world.
It has been charged by those ignorant of the
Virginia was planted only for gain. The fact is
far otherwise.
The planting of Virginia had its origin in the
religious zeal of the people of England; the
prime objects of the movement were ever expressed
to be the "welfare of the Kingdom of
God and the Kingdom of England," and the
final instructions to the first colony that settled
at Jamestown closed with an exhortation "to
serve and fear God, the Giver of all Goodness,
for every plantation which our Heavenly Father
hath not planted shall be rooted out." This
exhortation the new settlers ever observed, and
though the forms of worship differed on their
part, and on the part of the Puritans, no Puritans
were ever more zealous than these Church of
England colonists of Virginia. Religious fervor
was the characteristic of the time. The annals
and records show that religion was a prominent
part of their life, and from that day to this the
people of Virginia have been among the most
religious people in the world.
On that first Sunday when the Indians took
the fort, as soon as the attack had been repulsed,
"Worthy Master Hunt" asked the president if
it were his pleasure to have a sermon, and Wingfield
replied that the "men were weary and
some other time." And even this failure was
made the subject of a charge against him by his
enemies.
The records are full of the piety of the time,
and the ministrations of those faithful Soldiers
of Christ, who came in the true missionary
spirit, prepared to lay down their lives even
with joy in their Master's service.
It is believed that the first edifice erected after
the construction of the fortifications was, however
rude, a church, and on its site four sacred
edifices arose before Jamestown ceased to be
the Capital of Virginia.
The first act of Lord Delaware on his arrival,
when he had met and turned back the famishing
remnant of the colony, was to fall on his knees
before he entered the South Gate of the fort
where Sir Thomas Gates was drawn up with his
fifty soldiers to receive him.
The first laws posted in Virginia contained
the laws promulgated by Argall and his Council,
enjoining attendance on divine worship under
penalty of lying neck and heels on the corps de
garde and slavery to the colony for a week for
the first omission; for the second, slavery for a
month, and for the third, slavery to the colony
for a year.
Indeed, whatever the short-comings of the
Virginians were, the lack of piety was not among
them. I venture to make the assertion that
their attendance upon divine worship from the
time of Argall's laws, down to the last ringing of
the church-bells has not been exceeded by the
people of any other colony or State in this country.
It gave the complexion to their life, and
with chivalry and love of the rights of freemen,
gave its fibre.
It is true that the seeking of wealth bore its
part in the enterprise, as it has ever borne its
part as one of the objects of human endeavor.
Sir Walter Raleigh sought El Dorado; but who
will be so stupid as to charge that this was his
chief aim? So none can read the true story of
the founding of Virginia without discovering on
how much broader a foundation it was laid.
The aspiration was for the establishment of a
great Protestant State; a bulwark for England
across the seas. The foundation was cemented
by the dust of thousands of bold soldiers of
Christ, who left comfort and ease behind them
to face Death in its most terrible form.
Those who will take the trouble to burrow out
from the musty records of the time their history,
will find it the story of as high and noble fortitude
as ever illumined the pages of human endeavor.
it may be said, as was said at the time, "That
nothing can purge that famous action from the
infamous scandal some ignorantly have conceted,
as the plain, simple and naked Truth."
It was a church-going time. Religion engrossed
the energies of the people. Participation in
worship was the law, and whoever failed in it
was a law-breaker and was dealt with accordingly.
One of the early laws provided that on
every plantation an apartment should be set
aside for religious services and should be used
for no secular purpose. Such a law was not
needed. Religion was the basis of the life as it
still is today, and the idea that it was not is but
an echo of the time when every form of Puritanism
thought every other form of religion worse
than idolatry. Later on, for a brief period, prior
to the Revolution, came a certain laxness—the
reflex of the taut-strung bow—when the fox-hunting,
cock-fighting parsons were inducted into the
livings; but as the causes were temporary, the
main cause being the political appointment by
an absentee metropolitan, so the effect was not
permanent.
It was out of these conditions that the Hanover
Presbytery sprang, under the influence of Patrick
Henry's model, the eloquent "Parson Davies,"
was out of these conditions that the Methodist
Church and the Baptist Church came into being.
Indeed, while some of the English parsons, who
have made the time notorious, were dicing and
drinking and fighting, the laity were standing
staunchly for the old customs, and were making
the saddling upon them of such miscreants
one of the charges in their indictment against
the Government "at home." They withstood
innovation. They kept the faith. They built
churches which still stand to-day as memorials of
their piety and churchmanship. Among the
finest architectural relics of the colonial period
are the massive brick churches throughout Tidewater
Virginia, some of them now towering in
a wilderness, like that on Carter's Creek, near
the Rappahannock. It is possible that pride,
too, entered into the motive at times, for it is related
that old Mrs. Carter, of Corotomon, whose
family built the church on Carter's Creek, directed
when she came to die, that she should be
buried under the aisle on the side where the poor
sat, that they might walk over her in her death,
who had carried herself so loftily in her life.
"President" Nelson, of the King's Council,
who owned the land in Hanover County on which
the mansion described in this paper was built two
at his home in York, to entertain the congregation
that attended the church there.
Lists of the vestries have been published, and
every student of the history of that time must be
struck by the number of those who became noted
in the great Revolutionary struggle. The rolls of
the great conventions were almost made up from
the vestry-lists.
Having achieved independence, these same
churchmen disestablished the Church. Mr.
Madison said that the clergy, having so largely
taken the English side, had made the Church so
unpopular that the churchmen felt it necessary
to disestablish it to save it. Their feeling is illustrated
by the story told by Bishop Meade of the
old gentleman in his cocked hat and ruffles who,
during the contest over the disestablishment
measure, was approached by a constituent with
an inquiry as to how he would vote.
He said he should vote for the bill; for he was
of opinion that every man should have the right
to choose his own road to heaven; but he was
very sure that a gentleman would always take the
Episcopal way.
Even the drastic measure of disestablishment
hardly saved the Church; the gentry had largely
been ruined by the war, and the plain people
them. Thus, the first bishops, Madison and
Moore, had a hard struggle to build up the
waste places.
Then came the iron bishop, Meade, who saw
the task before him clearly, and went about it
with an irresistible resolution. A man of remarkable
intellect, of unquestioned piety, and of
iron will, he took the Church in Virginia in his
strong grasp and moulded it to suit himself. He
was the supreme dictator among the Episcopalians
of the State, and stamped his impress
indelibly on their thought and life. He was a
Spartan in habit and a Calvinist in creed. He
asked no one to do what he would not do himself;
but few could endure without suffering what
was merely a spur to his energy and an inspiration
to his zeal.
The writer remembers him in his early childhood,
when the Bishop came on his Episcopal
visitation to stay with his relatives in Hanover.
His place beside his wife's grave was railed in
and reserved in their lot at St. Martin's, the Old
Fork Church, which used to give us youngsters a
grewsome feeling before we knew how close to
Life is Death. I have since seen the archbishops
of both the Roman and Anglican communions,
and have seen the House of American Bishops in
received with the homage that this stern head of
the Virginia Church had from his people.[1] And
this he effected by the sheer force of his intellect
and character. In the old parlor at Oakland an
engraving of him in his episcopal robes hung
beside an engraving of St. Peter preaching, one
of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes, and
one of the Washington family.
The boys of the household of the preceding
generation had gone to school to him, and recited
their Latin with their jackets off, and the
entire connection still took the law and the gospel
from him, on all mooted points.
He was married in Hanover, and arriving the
day before that set for the wedding, and finding
the clergyman in attendance, he declined to wait,
and, the bride assenting, they stood up and were
married that evening. No one gainsaid him.
He preached a stern gospel and lived it.
Horce-racing, cards, the theatre, and dancing
were all banned as equally wicked. The observance
of Sunday was enforced as a cardinal
doctrine.
It was in a family established in the doctrines
of the Church as expounded by this virile divine
the Sabbath this rearing was after the straitest
sect of our religion. Religion entered into the
life as he has never known it do anywhere else.
Instead of being stowed away in a corner or laid
up for use on Sunday, it was always at hand, and
became a part, and a very obvious part, of the
daily life. Nor was it a religion softened and
emasculated to suit the delicate fancies of modern
dilettanteism. It was the religion of the grim
evangelical divines of the last century. This
world was only "a vale of misery," through
which we had to walk with fear and trembling so
as to reach in safety the other world where true
Life begins. The Bible was the literal word of
God, and the only admissible question on any
point was what the Bible said. No man took
from it, even if somewhat was added to it by
Calvinistic exegesis. It is related that the wife
of the old churchman of York who used to
spread his table to entertain the whole congregation,
on coming from church one Sunday called
her maid to come and help her off with her dress,
as she "had heard so much about hell and
damnation that she did not feel as if she would
cool off before Christmas." The style had not
changed in a hundred years. The lurid glare of
fire was pictured from the pulpit, denounced
soft musings of the psalmist in hours of hope,
and the gentle sayings of the Saviour as he
yearned over a fallen world. These, though
hardly understood beside the terrific interpretation
of the old divines, were somehow clung to
and believed in. Fast-days were kept as regularly
as Sundays.
The family life was so religious in the week
that it was necessary to have Sunday quite completely
given up to devotion to distinguish it.
Family prayers—with a hymn sung by the whole
family—were always had twice a day, and after
the beginning of the war, when the President
of the Confederacy asked in a proclamation for
special prayers every day for the soldiers, they
were held also at one o'clock, a custom which has
been kept up in the household ever since, though
someone characterized it as a Mohammedan custom.
Whenever a clergyman came to the house
he was always asked to have prayers before he
left. Thus, occasionally "prayers" were had
four times a day.
My uncle, Colonel Nelson, was the master
of the plantation and always read prayers if he
was at home. In his absence they were read
by the next in seniority. The first sound in
the morning was his vigorous call to prayers,
the hymn. In slavery days he always had
prayers for his servants before they went to the
field in the morning, and later on he always
drew up his men and read prayers to his battalion.
This Virginian churchman was a stout
Cromwellian who prayed with his sword in his
hand and fought with a prayer on his lips. He
was known during the war as "Old Ironsides."
The rule for the youngsters was "no butter"
unless we got to prayers, a persuasive ordinance;
for "dry bread" is dry indeed to a youthful
tongue. The singing of the hymn, however,
served a double purpose: it gave us notice and
granted us some minutes of grace. It had
another and more permanent effect it taught
us insensibly the hymns of the prayer book.
Away farer from a distant State passing through
the country on some business, was directed to
Oakland to spend the night. He was detained
for a day or two by bad weather, and after he
went away he told someone that he had been to
a curious place, an old bachelor's home where
twenty people sat down at table and where when
they were not eating they were praying.
We were brought up on the Bible, our regular
duty being the reading of the lessons for the day,
a grounding which we little appreciated at the
elders to the worship of God. In preparation
for it our playthings, never very numerous, were
put away, and the reading of secular books was
discontinued Saturday night. After thirty years
I can recall the lorn emptiness of my Sunday
pockets. We were not allowed to "play" or
"do" anything on Sunday; our sole "recreation"
—a word which has always had an unpleasant
sound for me since—being a walk. It should be
said that the resourcefulness of the juvenile mind
was not infrequently equal to the emergency
and, avoiding the forbidden line of games, we
occasionally substituted not less interesting entertainments.
Those Sunday afternoons sometimes
witnessed boxing and wrestling matches,
"clod battles," and other athletic exercises which
were not reported at the house.
Our reading was carefully looked after and
guarded, all our "week-day books" being prohibited
and our reading being confined to "Sunday
books." Prominent among these were Mrs.
Sherwood's works, beginning with "Henry Milner,"
"Little Henry and His Bearer," and "The
Fairchild Family," the latter a grim and terrifying
collection of moral teachings. One of these
I well remember was an account of an excursion
on which the father took little Harry and Lucy,
body of a man who had killed his brother.
The writer was nearly thirty years old before
he ever saw a lady read a novel on Sunday, and
such is the effect of early training that he never
sees one so engaged now without its raising
doubts, at least, a to her social standing.
The churches, Trinity and "The Old Fork,"
were four and ten miles off, respectively, and
service was held in them on alternate Sundays.
The Old Fork, amid its immemorial oaks, is
one of the old colonial churches, built of brick
with the glazed "headers" which, mellowed by
the years, give that soft gray color so pleasing in
old structures, and with fine, simple lines that
render a building dignified and impressive.
The road to the Fork Church was at that time
bordered by the plantations of gentle-folk, well
cultivated prior to the close of the war, and supporting
a large population. It followed the ridge
for miles. Now there are scarcely three places
left in the hands of their original owners, and the
country is almost entirely grown up. But the
writer has had occasion to know that their influence
has not perished from the earth. Their
sons have gone out into many lands, stout
soldiers of the cross, and fighters for the principles
of their fathers.
We always went to church irrespective of the
weather, or—what was more remarkable—of the
roads, unless, indeed, the weather was so surpassingly
bad that there was no possibility of the
preacher himself attending. When we stayed at
home, we had the service and a sermon, for our
elders believed in calling upon us to hear sermons.
This, however, was on rare occasions. If the
Fork Church road was exceptionally bad, a
standard that can only be appreciated by those
who have travelled in winter that bottomless
stretch of clay hills and Serbonian mud, an extra
pair of horses or mules were hitched on in
the lead and we went with four-in-hand, or with
a postilion. This, so far from being a hardship
to us, was in fact generally a pleasure; for the
gathering at church had a social side to it.
We saw our friends, and sometimes even strangers
were there. No one who has not lived in a
back-country neighborhood can appreciate the
interest that a stranger excites. I can remember
casual strangers whom I saw at church during my
boyhood better than I can now recall notables
that I have seen in later years. The church
in the country fills a larger place in the life of the
people than it does in town. It was and still is
the centre of the life in St. Martin's Parish, in
Hanover.
On arriving at church each gentleman had his
own place, generally "a swinging limb," at which
to tie his horse, quite as much as he had his seat
in church, and it would have been quite as great
a breach of decorum to take the one as to usurp
the other. This was a matter of strict and necessary
etiquette; for there were certain families who
never were on time, just as there were others
who were always on time. Indeed, occasionally
this variance was the case in the same family, for
I remember a discussion in which one gentleman
charged another with always having been late for
church, while the latter declared that he had
never been "too late for church in his life."
The ladies always went "into church" immediately
on arrival; the older gentlemen as
soon as the clergymen entered the chancel; the
younger gentlemen at the first sound of his voice;
and those of the plainer people who were not
Episcopalians came in about the time of the
second lesson, their object being—inscrutably as
we thought—to hear the sermon.
In church the men sat on one side of the aisle,
the ladies on the other.
Before the minister entered there was usually
a buzz of conversation throughout the church,
and after service there was quite a levee in the
aisle. I remember once Colonel Nelson, the
service grew too loud, rose in his seat and said,
quietly, "The Lord is in His holy temple, let all
the earth keep silence before Him." The hubbub
ceased.
The organ was in the gallery over the entrance,
and as the chants were sung a number
of the men used to turn their backs on the pulpit
and leaning against the back of the pew gaze
up at the choir.
The choir led the singing, but the whole congregation
sang. When I can first remember, the
hymns were "lined out," two lines at a time, and
as there were a number of the older ladies who
preferred their own deliberate pace to any
"time" that the younger portion who composed
the choir could set, the result was sometimes
amazing. But there were many fresh voices,
and the singing was hearty and inspiring. I remember
one old gentleman who always used to
sing with his eyes shut fast, even though he was
standing up, a peculiarity which possibly explained
his keeping them also shut when he was
sitting during the sermon. I remember to have
essayed the same convenient practice; but my
seniors were not to be deceived, I was poked up
and made to open my eyes.
The pulpit was high up on the wall, and an
clergyman, after the service, left the chancel and
went to the vestry-room to exchange his surplice
for his gown and bands—for no one then
preached in a surplice. The gown that I first
remember, during and soon after the war, was
a venerable garment, and our rector was very
tall and spare. I can see him now as he used to
come striding up the aisle, his gown flying and
fluttering behind him in a way wonderful to behold.
We knew that he carried half concealed
his sermon, and it was an anxious moment, for
the pulpit was too high for us to see it after he
reached that exalted perch, and on the glimpse
we caught as he passed by depended our gauge
of the thickness of his manuscript and the length
of time it would take him to deliver it. It was
usually dishearteningly thick.
One of the clergy having on an occasion
broken through a bridge as he was travelling
through the parish, an old gentleman was asking
what injury he had suffered.
"None," said his informant, "except that his
sermons all got wet."
"Oh," said the old gentleman, "they will get
dry again."
The preaching was of the old-fashioned kind,
largely hortatory, very loud and very long, and
sermons of the Duke of Argyle's dominie. But,
however many heads, there was one point in all;
the fiery condemnation of the wicked and the
felicity of those who escaped. Learning, eloquence,
and zeal were piled up on this perennial
theme. I early made the discovery that duration
of time is not at all measured by its passage,
but that an hour may be many times as long
under some circumstances as under others, and
that of all the means to lengthen time a sermon
is, perhaps, the most effective.
It was, however, when taken with the surrounding
life, effective preaching, and all the
young girls and nearly all the young men early
became members of the church.
After church, Hospitality had its claim even
on Piety, and every one invited every one else to
"stop by" and take dinner, the rule being not to
accept an invitation given only at the plantation
gate. This was a custom that was highly appreciated
by us juniors, for it gave us a day out
with our friends and furnished us the coveted
opportunity to ride strange horses to water.
The horses of St. Martin's parish "went to
water" often on Sundays.
The dinner was always cold, but it was so
good that after thirty years we of St. Martin's
of the week.
In the afternoon unless we reached home too
late, we had to learn the collect and a hymn, and
"say" the catechism, an exercise which I appreciate
more highly now than I did then.
The days were undoubtedly very long, and
would have been very wearisome to us youngsters
had we not recognized the inexorable necessity
of yielding, as to any other divine decree. We
do not complain of the law of gravitation or kick
against the pricks of the laws of age and decay.
When we are ready to submit, the work of submission
is already half accomplished.
Reading and reflection have satisfied the writer
that this extreme Sabbatarianism is not enjoined
by the New Dispensation, and has not been
taught by the general Church. The Sabbatarianism
of our people was a result of the tide of
Puritanism which swept over the country of our
fathers a few centuries before, being based on
the Old Testament dispensation, and in protest
against whatever the Catholic Church taught or
allowed. The extreme type that it took in Virginia
was a form of repudiation of the laxness
of the ante-Revolutionary period, and of the free
thought of the post-Revolutionary time following
the French Revolution.
Men had to take sides, and they took them.
However hard the old regimen was, and the
writer cannot deny that he is glad to have escaped
from its severities, yet he is satisfied that in
the main its effect was excellent. For one thing,
it taught the habit of obedience and of reverence;
for another, that of self-denial. No one can
deny himself in obedience to a sense of duty
without being a gainer thereby.
Men from time to time tax the hardness of
their early training with their aversion to attending
church. But one rarely hears them credit
their virtues to their training. The writer's observation
is that those who have been trained to
go to church, in the main continue to do so in
after-life. If there are any who were not brought
up to attend church, they did not come from
Hanover. The old Virginian in "The Barton
Experiment," however low he sank during the
week, always "shaped up," put on a clean shirt,
and attended church on Sunday, because his
mother had brought him up to do it.
Moreover, there was something that came
from that direct recognition of God, and that
sturdy determination to do one's duty as it was
understood, that gave a "body" to the character
not so commonly found nowadays.
But however rigorous was the life, we who
It was clean and pure and stimulating.
In a measure it still exists, though tempered by
the softening influence of freer thought, the currents
of which have reached even that retired
haven.
Most of the old homes that once bordered the
Fork Church road have passed away; but happily
a few of them still remain. The old Fork
Church, with its generations of worshippers
sleeping in the shade of its oaks and cedars,
still stands as a sanctuary for those who were
reared in its teachings.
One cannot leave the dust and turmoil of the
city and spend a Sunday there without feeling
that he has climbed to a higher level and breathed
a rarer air. It is as if he had taken a plunge into
a cool and limpid spring. He comes away refreshed
and stimulated. It was in old times
one of the centres of the old Virginia Life; after
a period of declension, it is becoming so once
more, and peace and happiness, truth and justice,
religion and piety are established there.
May they be so established to all generations!
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