By the time we entered the village the storm had abated. We drove to the hotel. It was crowded, packed with soldiers; no room for us, nor food either, and nine o’clock at night!
“Two miles the other side of town there is a place of entertainment where you can be accommodated, I think,” the hotel proprietor told Dan.
“I don’t go any farther to-night with my wife,” Dan said resolutely.
“It’s not mesilf as wants to be traveling any farther aither,” Miles put in. “It’s divil a bit of a pleasure ride Oi’m havin’.”
He was promptly silenced, and was made to drive us around to the various places in the village that had been mentioned; and in spite of the discouragements received, he added his earnest solicitations to ours that we might be lodged for the night. But in spite of our own pleas and Miles’s eloquence, midnight found us out at the two-miles place. I don’t know how long it had taken us to make those two miles. We had toiled over muddy roads, through fierce extremes of light and darkness, and amid deafening thunder, for the storm had come on again with renewed fury and was at its height when we stopped at the house to which we had been directed. In response to my husband’s knock an old man came to the door – the meanest old man I have ever seen before or since. He said we couldn’t come in, there wasn’t standing room in the house, the house was full of soldiers. My husband said he would come in – that he had a lady with him. I think he would have shot that old man then and there rather than have carried me farther. But the old man said if he had a lady with him all the more reason why he should not come in; the soldiers were drinking, and he whispered to Dan, and I saw Dan give in. He told Dan that he had a cousin in the village who would house us, and he directed us how to get to this cousin’s house, so we turned and drove back to the village we had just left. We made better time on our return, as we were better directed and took a shorter route, found the house to which we had been sent, and were taken in.
It was a strange old house, built in colonial days, with the veranda that ran all around it supported by tall Corinthian columns. We woke the owner up – an old man, who came down to the door shivering, candle in hand, and led us through a latticed room, then into another room and up a narrow flight of stairs with sharp turns to a bedroom with dormer windows and ancient furniture. We were welcome to our lodgings, he said, but he had nothing to eat in the house – we would be welcome to it if he had. He looked gaunt and hungry himself.
We had no fire. He left us his candle and went down in the dark himself and we got to bed as quickly as possible. Lieutenant Wumble, who was down-stairs looking after Miles and the horses and the mules, got himself stowed away somewhere.
Next morning my husband was ill; but the old man’s wife gave him some of her remedies, and with the help of a little money from me got something for us all to eat. About noon Dan insisted that he was able to travel, and that he must reach his command that day.
When we arrived at Petersburg my husband put me on the train for Richmond and bade me good-by. It was the last time I saw him before the surrender.
CHAPTER XXVI
HOW WE LIVED IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY
Though the last act of our heroic tragedy was already beginning I was so far from suspecting it that I joined mother at the Arlington, prepared to make a joke of hardships and wring every possible drop of pleasure out of a winter in Richmond, varied, as I fondly imagined, by frequent if brief visits from Dan.
The Arlington was kept on something like the European plan, not from choice of landlady or guests but from grim necessity. Feeding a houseful of people was too arduous and uncertain an undertaking in those days for a woman to assume. Mrs. Fry, before our arrival in July, had informed her boarders that they could continue to rent their rooms from her, but that they must provide their own meals. We paid her $25 a month for our room – the price of a house in good times and in good money. During my absence in Mansfield, Hicksford, and other places, mother, to reduce expenses, had rented half of her room and bed to Delia McArthur, of Petersburg. I now rented a little bed from Mrs. Fry for myself, and set it up in the same room.
We had become so poor and had so little to cook that we did most of our cooking ourselves over the grate, each woman often cooking her own little rations. There was an old negress living in the back yard who cooked for any or all of us when we had something that could not be prepared by ourselves over the grate. Sometimes we got hold of a roast, or we would buy two quarts of flour, a little dab of lard, and a few pinches of salt and treat ourselves to a loaf of bread, which the old negress cooked for us, charging ten dollars for the baking. But as a rule the grate was all sufficient. We boiled rice or dried apples or beans or peas in our stew-pan, and we had a frying-pan if there was anything to fry.
Across the hall from us Miss Mary Pagett, of Petersburg, had a room to herself. She worked in one of the departments, and in order that she might have her meals in time she went into partnership with us. Every morning she would put in with our rations whatever she happened to have for that day, and mother would cook it and have it ready when she came. Down-stairs under our room Mr. and Mrs. Sampson, their daughters Nan and Beth, and their son Don, all of Petersburg and old neighbors and friends of ours, lived, slept, cooked, and ate in two rooms, a big and a little one. They lived as we did, cooking over their grates.
Sometimes we all put what we had together and ate in company. When any of us secured at any time some eatable out of the common, if it was enough to go around we invited the others into breakfast, dinner, or tea, as the case might be. It must be understood that from the meal called “tea,” the beverage from which the meal is named was nearly always omitted. Our fare was never very sumptuous – often it was painfully scanty. Sometimes we would all get so hungry that we would put together all the money we could rake and scrape and buy a bit of roast or something else substantial and have a feast.
We all bought coal in common. Mother’s, mine, and Delia’s portion of the coal was a ton, and we had to keep it in our room – there was no other place to store it. We had a box in our room which held a ton, and the coal was brought up-stairs and dumped into that box. I can see those darkies now, puffing and blowing, as they brought that coal up those many steps. And how we had to scuffle around to pay them! For some jobs we paid in trade – only we had very little to trade off. How that room held all its contents I can’t make out. Dan sent me provisions by the quantity when he could get any and get them through to me. He would send a bag of potatoes or peas, and he never sent less than a firkin of butter – delicious butter from Orange County. The bags of peas, rice, and potatoes were disposed around the room, and around the hearth were arranged our pots, pans, kettles, and cooking utensils generally. When we bought wood that was put under the beds. In addition to all our useful and ornamental articles we had our three selves and our trunks; such clothing as we possessed had to be hung up for better keeping – and this was a time when it behooved us to cherish clothes tenderly. Then there was our laundrying, which was done in that room by ourselves.
And we had company! Certainly we seemed to have demonstrated the truth of the adage, “Ole Virginny never tire.” We had company, and we had company to eat with us, and enjoyed it.
Sometimes our guests were boys from camp who dropped in and took stewed apples or boiled peas, as the case might be. If we were particularly fortunate we offered a cup of tea sweetened with sugar. The soldier who dropped in always got a part – and the best part – of what we had. If things were scant we had smiles to make up for the lack of our larder, and to hide its bareness.
How we were pinched that winter! how often we were hungry! and how anxious and miserable we were! And yet what fun we had! The boys laughed at our crowded room and we laughed with them. After we bought our wood it was Robert E. Lee’s adjutant who first observed the ends sticking out from under the bed; he was heartily amused and greatly impressed with the versatility of our resources.
“I confidently expect to come here some day and find a pig tied to the leg of the bed, and a brood or two of poultry utilizing waste space,” said Colonel Taylor.
He wasn’t so far out of the way, for we did get hold of a lean chicken once some way or other, and we tied it to the foot of the bed, and tried to fatten it with boiled peas.
We devised many small ways for making a little money. We knit gloves and socks and sold them, and Miss Beth Sampson had some old pieces of ante-bellum silk that she made into neckties and sold for what she could get. For the rest, when we had no money, we went without those things which it took money to buy. With money a bit of meat now and then, a taste of sorghum, and even the rare luxury of a cup of tea sweetened with sugar, was possible. Without money, we had to depend upon the bags of peas, dried apples, or rice.
“If I ever keep house,” said Miss Mary one day when we were getting supper ready, “there are three things which shall never come into it, rice, dried apples, and peas.”
Mother was at the bureau slicing bread, Delia McArthur was setting the table, I was getting butter out of the firkin and making it into prints, and Miss Mary with gloves on – whenever she had anything to do she always put gloves on – was peeling and slicing tomatoes.
“I never want to hear of rice, dried apples, or peas again!” came from all sides of the room.
“If this war is ever at an end,” sighed poor mother, “I hope I may sit down and eat at a decent table again. And I fervently hope that nobody will ever set a dish of rice, peas, or dried apples before me! If they do, I shall get up and leave the table.”
“Me too,” I piped. “Even if I didn’t hate the things I should feel sensitive on the subject and take the offering of such a dish to me as a personal reflection.”
One day we agreed to have a feast. The Sampsons were to bring their contributions, Miss Mary and Delia McArthur to put in theirs as usual, and mother and I to contribute our share, of course. Each of us had the privilege of inviting a friend to tea. Our room was chosen as the common supper-room because it had fewer things in it and was less crowded than the Sampsons’. The Sampsons, in addition to their coal-box, wood-pile, bags and barrels of provisions, had one more bed than we had, and also a piano. We had our tea-party and, guests and all, we had a merry time.
I never remember having more fun in my life than at the Arlington, where sometimes we were hungry, and while the country, up to our doors, bristled with bayonets, and the air we breathed shook with the thunder of guns.
For hungry and shabby as we were, crowded into our one room with bags of rice and peas, firkins of butter, a ton of coal, a small wood-pile, cooking utensils, and all of our personal property, we were not in despair. Our faith in Lee and his ragged, freezing, starving army amounted to a superstition. We cooked our rice and peas and dried apples, and hoped and prayed. By this time our bags took up little room. We had had a bag of potatoes, but it was nearly empty, there were only a few handfuls of dried apples left – and I must say that even in the face of starvation I was glad of that! – and there was a very small quantity of rice in our larder. We had more peas than anything else.
I had not heard from my husband for more than a week – indeed, there seems to have been in Richmond at this time a singular ignorance concerning our reverses around Petersburg. There were hunger and nakedness and death and pestilence and fire and sword everywhere, and we, fugitives from shot and shell, knew it well, but, somehow, we laughed and sang and played on the piano – and never believed in actual defeat and subjugation.
Sunday morning, the second of April, as President Davis sat in his pew at St. Paul’s Church, a slip of paper was brought to him. He read it, quietly arose, and left the church.
General Lee advised the evacuation of Richmond by eight o’clock that night. That was what rumor told us at the Arlington. At first we did not believe it, but as that spring day wore on we were convinced. The Sabbath calm was changed to bustle and confusion – almost into riot. The streets were full of people hurrying in all directions, but chiefly in the direction of the Danville depot. Men, women, and children jostled each other in their haste to reach this spot. Loaded vehicles of every description rattled over the pavements.
During the day proclamation was made that all who wished could come to the Commissary Department and get anything they wanted in the way of provisions – without pay. I for one, in spite of my loathing for dried apples and peas, and a lively objection to starvation, would not entertain the thought at first. But the situation was serious. We discussed it in council, sitting around our room on beds, chairs, trunks, and the floor. We could not foresee the straits to which we might be brought. We considered that the evacuation of Richmond implied we knew not what. Unless we provided now by laying in some stores we might actually starve. Besides, Mrs. Sampson said she was just bound to have a whole barrel of flour, and she was going for it. That declaration wound up the conference. Mother said she would go with Mrs. Sampson, and I must needs go, I thought, to protect mother. We put on our bonnets – home-made straw trimmed with chicken feathers – and started. Such a crowd as we found ourselves in! such a starveling mob! I got frightened and sick, and mother and Mrs. Sampson were daunted. We had not gone many squares before we changed our course, and went to Mrs. Taylor’s (Colonel Walter Taylor’s mother) and I ran up the steps and asked her to lend us Bob, her youngest son, who was at home then, for our escort.
She and Bob explained regretfully that he could not serve us. Walter was to be married that day, and Bob had his hands full at home.
“Married?” I cried in astonishment. I had known of his engagement, and that he expected to be married as soon as possible, but marrying at this crisis was incredible.
“Yes,” said Bob. “I took the despatch to Betty while she was at church this morning. He told her to be ready and he would come to Richmond this afternoon for the ceremony. You see, General Lee is going to move the army west, and nobody knows for how long it will be gone, nor what will happen, and if Betty is married to Walter she can go to him if he gets hurt.”
Of course, as Bob had to make all the necessary arrangements for the event his escort at the present moment was out of the question.
Somehow Mrs. Sampson managed to get her barrel of flour and have it brought to her room, but we didn’t get anything.
That afternoon as I sat at my window I saw Walter ride up to the Crenshaws’, where Betty was staying. He remained in the house just long enough for the ceremony to be performed, came out, sprang on his horse, and rode away rapidly.
President Davis and his Cabinet left Richmond that afternoon in a special train. Everybody who could go was going. We had no money to go with, though we did not know where we would have gone if the money had been forthcoming.
As darkness came upon the city confusion and disorder increased. People were running about everywhere with plunder and provisions. Barrels and boxes were rolled and tumbled about the streets as they had been all day. Barrels of liquor were broken open and the gutters ran with whisky and molasses. There were plenty of straggling soldiers about who had too much whisky, rough women had it plentifully, and many negroes were drunk. The air was filled with yells, curses, cries of distress, and horrid songs. No one in the house slept. We moved about between each other’s rooms, talked in whispers, and tried to nerve ourselves for whatever might come. A greater part of the night I sat at my window.
In the pale dawn I saw a light shoot up from Shockoe Warehouse. Presently soldiers came running down the streets. Some carried balls of tar; some carried torches. As they ran they fired the balls of tar and pitched them onto the roofs of prominent houses and into the windows of public buildings and churches. I saw balls pitched on the roof of General R. E. Lee’s home. As the day grew lighter I saw a Confederate soldier on horseback pause almost under my window. He wheeled and fired behind him; rode a short distance, wheeled and fired again; and so on, wheeling and firing as he went until he was out of sight. Coming up the street from that end toward which his fire had been directed and from which he had come, rode a body of men in blue uniforms. It was not a very large body, they rode slowly, and passed just beneath my window. Exactly at eight o’clock the Confederate flag that fluttered above the Capitol came down and the Stars and Stripes were run up. We knew what that meant! The song “On to Richmond!” was ended – Richmond was in the hands of the Federals. We covered our faces and cried aloud. All through the house was the sound of sobbing. It was as the house of mourning, the house of death.
Soon the streets were full of Federal troops, marching quietly along. The beautiful sunlight flashed back everywhere from Yankee bayonets. I saw negroes run out into the street and falling on their knees before the invaders hail them as their deliverers, embracing the knees of the horses, and almost preventing the troops from moving forward. It had been hard living and poor fare in Richmond for negroes as well as whites; and the negroes at this time believed the immediate blessings of freedom greater than they would or could be.
The saddest moment of my life was when I saw that Southern Cross dragged down and the Stars and Stripes run up above the Capitol. I am glad the Stars and Stripes are waving there now. But I am true to my old flag too, and as I tell this my heart turns sick with the supreme anguish of the moment when I saw it torn down from the height where valor had kept it waving for so long and at such cost.
Was it for this, I thought, that Jackson had fallen? for this that my brave, laughing Stuart was dead – dead and lying in his grave in Hollywood under the very shadow of that flag floating from the Capitol, in hearing of these bands playing triumphant airs as they marched through the streets of Richmond, in hearing of those shouts of victory? O my chevalier! I had to thank God that the kindly sod hid you from all those sights and sounds so bitter to me then. I looked toward Hollywood with streaming eyes and thanked God for your sake. Was it to this end we had fought and starved and gone naked and cold? to this end that the wives and children of many a dear and gallant friend were husbandless and fatherless? to this end that our homes were in ruins, our State devastated? to this end that Lee and his footsore veterans were seeking the covert of the mountains?
CHAPTER XXVII
UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES
The Arlington is one-half of a double house, a veranda without division serving for both halves. Just before noon up rode a regiment of Yankees and quartered themselves next door. We could hear them moving about and talking, and rattling their sabers. But I must add that they were very quiet and orderly. There was no unnecessary noise. They all went out again, on duty, I suppose, leaving their baggage and servants behind them. They did not molest or disturb us in any way. After a while we heard a rap on the door, and on opening it three men entered. They were fully armed, and had come, as they said, to search the house for rebels. The one who undertook to search our rooms came quite in and closed the door while his companions went below. He was very drunk. Anxious to get rid of him quickly I helped him in his search.
He touched my arm and whispered: “Sis, I’m good Secesh as you – but don’t say nothin’ about it.”
“You’d better look thoroughly,” I insisted, pretending not to hear him.
Going to the bed I threw the mattress over so he could see that no one was concealed beneath. He followed and touched my arm again.
“Good Secesh as you is, sis. I ain’t agwine to look into nothin’, sis.”
“There’s nothing for you to find,” I informed him, as I pulled a bureau drawer open for his inspection.
He waved it away with scorn. “I,” he repeated, touching his breast, “am good Secesh. Don’t want to see nothin’. Don’t you say nothin’ – I’m good Secesh as you is, sis.”
I led the way into the next room to be searched, he following, asseverating in tipsy whispers, “Good Secesh as you is, sis,” every few minutes.
We found little Ruf Pagett cleaning his gun.
“Better hide that, sonny,” said our friend, glancing around. “That other fellow out there, he’ll take it from you. But I won’t take it from you. I won’t take nothin’. I’m good Secesh as you is, bud. Hide your gun, bud.”
Down-stairs our friends were having a harder time. The men who went through their rooms searched everywhere, and tumbled their things around outrageously. I could hear Mrs. Sampson quarreling. They went away, but returned to search again. She said she wouldn’t stand it – she would report them. She saw General Weitzel and made her complaint, and he told her that the men were stragglers and had no authority for what they had done. If they could be found they would be punished. Before this time the fire had been brought under control. Houses not a square from us had been in flames. What saved us was an open space between us and the nearest house which had been on fire, and wet blankets. Mrs. Fry’s son had had wet blankets spread over our roof for protection, and we had also kept wet blankets hung in our windows. At one time, however, cinders and smoke had blown into my room till the air was stifling and the danger great.
A niece of my husband’s, a beautiful girl of eighteen, who had been ill with typhoid fever, had to be carried out of a burning house that night and laid on a cot in the street. She died in the street and I heard of other sick persons who died from the terror and exposure of that time.
As night came on many people were wandering about without shelter, amid blackened ruins. In the Square numbers were huddled for the night under improvised shelter or without any protection at all. But profound quiet reigned – the quiet of desolation as well as of order. The city had been put under martial law as soon as the Federals took possession; order and quiet had been quickly established and were well preserved. Our next-door neighbors were so quiet that with only a wall between we sometimes forgot their presence.
I must tell of one person who did not weep because the Yankees had come. That was a little girl in the house who clapped her hands and danced all around.
“The Yankees have come! the Yankees have come!” she shouted, “and now we’ll get something to eat. I’m going to have pickles and molasses and oranges and cheese and nuts and candy until I have a fit and die.”
She soon made acquaintances next door. The soldiers or their servants gave her what she asked for. She stuffed herself with what they gave her, and that night she had a fit and died, as she had said in jest she would, poor little soul!
That afternoon there was a funeral from the house, and all day there were burials going on in Hollywood.
Early on the morning of the third, when Miss Mary Pagett threw open her blinds, she beheld the gallery under her window lined with sleeping Yankees. When Delia McArthur and I went out for a walk we came upon Federal soldiers asleep on the sidewalks and everywhere there was a place for weary men to drop down and rest. In all this time of horror I don’t think anything was much harder than making up our minds to “draw rations from the Yankees.” We said we would not do it – we could not do it!
But as hunger gained upon us and starvation stared us in the face Mrs. Sampson rose up in her might!
“I’ll take anything I can get out of the Yankees!” she exclaimed. “They haven’t had any delicacy of feeling in taking everything we’ve got! I’m going for rations!”
So Mrs. Sampson nerved herself up to the point where she took quite a pleasure and pride in her mission. But not so with the rest of us. It was a bitter pill, hard, hard to swallow. Mother, to whose lot some species of martyrdom was always falling, elected to go with Mrs. Sampson. So forth sallied these old Virginia matrons to “draw rations from the Yankees.” However, once on our way to humiliation we began to console ourselves with thoughts of the loaves and fishes. We would have enough to eat – sugar and tea and other delights! Presently mother and Mrs. Sampson returned, each with a dried codfish! There was disappointment and there was laughter. As each stately matron came marching in, holding her codfish at arm’s length before her, Delia McArthur and I fell into each other’s arms laughing. Besides the codfish, they had each a piece of fat, strong bacon about the size of a handkerchief folded once, and perhaps an inch thick. Now, we had had no meat for a great while, and we were completely worn out with dried apples and peas, so we immediately set about cooking our bacon. Having such a great dainty and rare luxury, we felt ourselves in a position to invite company to dinner. Mrs. Sampson invited half of the household to dine with her, and we invited the other half. Soon there was a great sputtering and a delicious smell issuing from the Sampsons’ apartments and from ours.
Mother sliced the meat into the pan, and I sat on the floor and held it over the fire, while Delia spread the table. There was a pot on, which had to be stirred now and then. I, who always had a fertile brain in culinary matters, suggested that the potatoes – I neglected to state that a handful of potatoes had been dealt out with our rations – should be sliced very thin and dropped into the pan with the meat; and this done I fried them quite brown, taking much pains and pride in the achievement. Mother dished up the peas and set them on the table before our guests; and I passed around the fried meat and potatoes in the frying-pan, from which the company, with much grace and delicacy, helped themselves. Oh, how delicious it was!
As for the codfish, we had immediately hung that out of the window. The passer-by in the street below could behold it, dangling from its string, a melancholy and fragrant codfish. From Mrs. Sampson’s window just below ours hung another melancholy codfish just like the one above it. We paid the old negress to do things for us with codfish – but not a whole codfish at a time. We cut off pieces of it, and so made good bargains, and one codfish go as far as possible. We had by this time got to a place where economy was not only a virtue but a necessity of the direst sort.
The last time I was in Richmond I took my children by the Arlington and pointed out to them the window from which our codfish hung.
And now Betty Taylor – Walter’s bride – and I began planning to run through the Yankee lines together and join our husbands.
We did not think even then, you see, that the war was over. Our faith was still crediting superhuman powers to Lee and his skeleton army. Then there was President Davis’s proclamation issued from Danville, wherein we found encouragement for hope. Then came the blow. We heard that Lee had surrendered. Lee surrendered! that couldn’t be true! But even while we were refusing to believe it General Lee, accompanied, as I remember, by one or two members of his staff, rode up to his door. He bared his weary gray head to the people who gathered around him with greetings and passed into his house.
Hope was dead at last. But other things, precious and imperishable, remained to us and to our children – the things that make for loyalty and courage and endurance – an invincible faith – the enduring record of heroic example. Lee had surrendered, but Lee was still himself and our own – a heritage to be handed down by Americans to America when sectional distinctions have been swallowed up in the strength of a Union great enough to honor every son, whatever his creed, who has lived and died for “conscience’ sake.”
Sitting in my window that sorrowful day I saw three officers in gray uniforms galloping rapidly along Main Street. I recognized familiar figures in them all before they came as far as the Arlington. One turned out of Main Street, riding home to his wife, as I knew, before they reached the window; another did the same.
The third came galloping past.
I thrust my head out of the window.
“Walter!” I called.
He looked up.
“Hello, Nell!” he cried, waving his hat around his head and galloping on.
He was on his way to his bride from whom he had parted at the altar.
But even at this supreme moment of their lives he and Betty were good enough to remember me, and in a few hours after I hailed him from the window Walter called.
“Where is Dan?” was my first question.
“I don’t know, Nell,” he answered. “But I know he’s alive and well and will be along in a few days.”
That was all the comfort I got from any friends returning from the field.
A little later there was a grand review of Federal troops in Richmond, and I remember how well-clad and sleek they were and how new and glittering were their arms. Good boots, good hats, a whole suit of clothes to every man – a long, bright, prosperous-looking procession. On the sidewalk a poor Confederate in rags and bootless, stood looking wistfully on.
The next day I heard that General Rooney Lee had arrived, and I went to see him. I was shown up to his mother’s room, and she told me that he had not come, but was hourly expected. When I called the next day I met him and Miss Mildred Lee in the door. They were going out, but the general stepped back with me into the hall.