XXVII
DIANA’S EXALTATION
I T was the middle of January, 1860, when Dorothy bade Arthur good-by and went away upon her mission of enjoyment and education.
It is not easy for us now to picture to ourselves what travel in this country was in that year which seems to the older ones among us so recent. In 1860 there was not such a thing as a sleeping car in all the world. The nearest approach to that necessity of modern life which then existed, was a car with high backed seats, which was used on a few of the longer lines of railroad. For another thing there were no such things in existence as through trains. Every railroad in the country was an independent line, whose trains ran only between its own termini. The traveller must “change cars” at every terminus, and usually the process involved a delay of several hours and a long omnibus ride – perhaps at midnight – through the streets of some city which had thriftily provided that its several railroads should place their stations as far apart as possible in order that their passengers might “leave money in the town.” The passenger from a south side county of Virginia intending to go to New York, for example, must take a train to Richmond; thence after crossing the town in an omnibus and waiting for an hour or two, take another train to Acquia Creek, near Fredericksburg; there transfer to a steamboat for Washington; there cross town in an omnibus, and, after another long wait, take a train for the Relay House; there wait four hours and then change cars for Baltimore, nine miles away; then take another omnibus ride to another station; thence a train to Havre de Grace, where he must cross a river on a ferry boat; thence by another train to Philadelphia, where, after still another omnibus transfer and another delay, one had a choice of routes to New York, the preferred one being by way of Camden and Amboy, and thence up the bay twenty miles or so, to the battery in New York. There was no such thing as a dining car, a buffet car or a drawing room car in all the land. There were none but hand brakes on the trains, and the cars were held together by loose coupling links. The rails were not fastened together at their badly laminated ends, and it was the fashion to call trains that reached a maximum speed of twenty miles an hour, “lightning expresses,” and to stop them at every little wayside station. The engines were fed upon wood, and it was a common thing for trains to stop their intolerable jolting for full twenty minutes to take fresh supplies of wood and water.
There was immeasurably more of weariness then, in a journey from Richmond or Cincinnati or Buffalo to New York, than would be tolerated now in a trip across the continent. As a consequence few people travelled except for short distances and a journey which we now think nothing of making comfortably in a single night, was then a matter of grave consequence, to be undertaken only after much deliberation and with much of preparation. New York seemed more distant to the dweller in the West or South than Hong Kong and Yokohama do in our time, and the number of people who had journeyed beyond the borders of our own country was so small that those who had done so were regarded as persons of interestingly adventurous experience.
Quite necessarily all parts of the country were markedly provincial in speech, manner, habits and even in dress. New England had a nasal dialect of its own, so firmly rooted in use that it has required two or three generations of exacting Yankee school marms to eradicate it from the speech even of the educated class. New York state had another, and the Southerner was known everywhere by a speech which “bewrayed” him.
And as it was with speech, so also was it with manners, customs, ideas. Prejudice was everywhere rampant, opinion intolerant, and usage merciless in its narrow illiberality. Only in what was then the West – the region between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi – was there anything of cosmopolitan liberality and tolerance. They were found in that region because the population of the West had been drawn from all parts of the country. Attrition of mind with mind, and the mingling of men of various origin had there in a large degree worn off the angles of provincial prejudice and bred a liberality of mind elsewhere uncommon in our country.
Edmonia and Dorothy were to make their formidable journey to New York in easy stages. They remained for several days with friends in Richmond, while completing those preliminary preparations which were necessary before setting out for the national capital. They were to stay in Washington for a fortnight, in Baltimore for three weeks, in Philadelphia for a week or two, and in New York for nearly two months before sailing for Europe in May.
The time was a very troubled one, on the subject of slavery. Not only was it true that if the owner of a slave took the negro with him into any one of the free states he by that act legally set him free, but it was also true that the most devoted and loyal servant thus taken from the South into a Northern state was subjected to every form of persuasive solicitation to claim and assert his freedom. It was nevertheless the custom of Southern men, and still more of Southern women, to take with them on their travels one or more of their personal servants, trusting to their loyalty alone for continued allegiance. For the attitude of such personal servants in Virginia at that time was rather that of proud and voluntary allegiance to loved masters and mistresses who belonged to them as a cherished possession, than that of men and women held in unwilling bondage.
Accordingly it was arranged that Edmonia’s maid, Dinah – or Diana as she had come to call herself since hearing her mistress read a “history pome” aloud – should accompany the two young women as their joint servitor.
As soon as this arrangement was announced at Branton, Diana began what Polydore called “a puttin’ on of airs.” In plainer phrase she began to snub Polydore mercilessly, whereas she had recently been so gracious in her demeanor towards him as to give him what he called “extinct discouragement.”
After it was settled that she was to accompany “Miss Mony an’ Miss Dorothy” to “de Norf” and to “Yurrop” – as she wrote to all her friends who were fortunate enough to know how to “read writin’,” there was, as Polydore declared, “no livin’ in de house wid her.” She sailed about the place like a frigate, delivering her shots to the right and left – most of them aimed at Polydore, with casual and contemptuous attention, now and then, to the other house servants.
“I ’clar’ to gracious,” said Elsie, one of the housemaids, “ef Diana ain’t a puttin’ on of jes’ as many airs as ef she’d been all over a’ready, an’ she ain’t never been out of dis county yit.”
“Wonder ef she’ll look at folks when she gits back,” said Fred, the cadet of the dining room, who was being trained under Polydore’s tutelage to keep his nails clean and to offer dishes to guests at their left hands.
“Don’ you be in too big a hurry to fin’ out dat, you nigga,” rejoined Polydore, the loyalty of whose love for Diana would brook no criticism of her on the part of an underling. “You’se got enough to attend to in gittin’ yer manners into shape. Diana’s a superior pusson, an’ you ain’t got no ’casion to criticise her. You jes’ take what yer gits an’ be thankful like Lazarus wuz when de rich man dropped water outer his hand on his tongue.”
Polydore’s biblical erudition seems to have been a trifle at fault at this point. But at any rate his simile had its intended effect upon the young darkey, who, slipping a surreptitious beaten biscuit into his pocket, retreated to the distant kitchen to devour it.
At that moment Diana entered the dining room with the air of a Duchess, and, with unwonted sweetness, said:
“Please, Polydore, bring me de tea things. De ladies is faint.”
Polydore, anxious that Diana’s gentle mood should endure, made all haste to bring what she desired. He made too much haste, unluckily, for in his hurry he managed to spill a little hot water from a pitcher he was carrying on a tray, and some drops of it fell upon the sleeve of Diana’s daintily laundered cambric gown.
The stately bronze colored namesake of the ancient goddess rose in offended dignity, and looked long at the offender before addressing him. Then she witheringly put the question:
“Whar’s your manners dis mawnin’, Polydore? Jes’ spose I was Miss Mony now; would you go sloppin’ things over her dat way?”
Even a worm will turn, we are told, and Polydore was prouder than a worm. For once he lost his self-control so far as to say in reply:
“But you ain’t Miss Mony, dough you seems to think you is. I’se tired o’ yer highty tighty airs. Git de tea things for yerse’f!” With that Polydore left the dining room, and Diana, curiously enough, made no reference to the incident when next she encountered him, but was all smiles and sweetness instead.
XXVIII
THE ADVANCING SHADOW
N O sooner were Dorothy and Edmonia gone than Arthur turned again to affairs. It was a troubled uneasy time in Virginia, a time of sore apprehension and dread. The “irrepressible conflict” over slavery had that year taken on new and more threatening features than ever before.
There was now a strong political party at the North the one important article of whose creed was hostility to the further extension of slavery into the territories. It was a strictly sectional party in its composition, having no existence anywhere at the South. It was influential in Congress, and in 1856 it had strongly supported a candidate of its own for president. By the beginning of 1860 its strength had been greatly increased and circumstances rendered probable its success in electing a president that year, for the hopeless division of the Democratic party, which occurred later in the year, was already clearly foreshadowed, an event which in fact resulted in the nomination of three rival candidates against Mr. Lincoln and made his election certain in spite of a heavy popular majority against him.
Had this been all, Virginia would not have been greatly disturbed by the political situation and prospect. But during the preceding autumn the Virginians had been filled with apprehension for the safety of their homes and families by John Brown’s attempt, at Harper’s Ferry, to create a negro insurrection, the one catastrophe always most dreaded by them. That raid, quickly suppressed as it was, wrought a revolution in Virginian feeling and sentiment. The Virginians argued from it, and from the approval given to it in some parts of the North, that Northern sentiment was rapidly ripening into readiness for any measures, however violent they might be, for the extinction of slavery and the destruction of the autonomy of the Southern States.
They found it difficult under the circumstances to believe the Republican party’s disclaimer of all purpose or power to interfere with the institution in the states. They were convinced that only opportunity was now wanting to make the Southern States the victims of an aggressive war, with a servile insurrection as a horrible feature of it. They cherished a warm loyalty to that Union which Virginia had done so much to create, but they began seriously to fear the time when there would be no peace or safety for their state or even for their wives and children within the Union. They were filled with resentment, too, of what they regarded as a wanton and unlawful purpose to interfere with their private concerns, and to force the country into disunion and civil war.
There were hot heads among them, of course, who were ready to welcome such results; but these were very few. The great body of Virginia’s people loved the Union, and even to the end – a year later – their strongest efforts were put forth to persuade both sides to policies of peace.
But in the meantime a marked change came over the Virginian mind with respect to slavery. Many who had always regarded the institution as an inherited evil to be got rid of as soon as that might be safely accomplished, modified or reversed their view when called upon to stand always upon the defensive against what they deemed an unjust judgment of themselves.
Arthur Brent did not share this change of view, but he shared in the feelings of resentment which had given it birth. In common with other Virginians he felt that this was a matter belonging exclusively to the individual states, and still more strongly he felt that the existing political situation and the methods of it gravely menaced the Union in ways which were exceedingly difficult for Southern men who loved the Union to meet. He saw with regret the great change that was coming over public and private sentiment in Virginia – sentiment which had been so strongly favorable to the peaceable extinction of slavery, that John Letcher – a lifelong advocate of emancipation as Virginia’s true policy – had been elected Governor the year before upon that as the only issue of a state campaign.
But Arthur was still bent upon carrying out his purpose of emancipating himself and, incidentally his slaves. And the threatening aspect of political affairs strengthened his determination at any rate to rid both his own estate and Dorothy’s of debt.
“When that is done, we shall be safe, no matter what happens,” he told himself.
To that end he had already done much. In spite of his preöccupation with the fever epidemic he had found time during the autumn to institute many economies in the management of both plantations. He had shipped and sold the large surplus crops of apples and sweet potatoes – a thing wholly unprecedented in that part of Virginia, where no products of the soil except tobacco and wheat were ever turned to money account. He was laughed at for what his neighbors characterized as “Yankee farming,” but both his conscience and his bank account were comforted by the results. In the same way, having a large surplus of corn that year, he had fattened nearly double the usual number of hogs, and was now preparing to sell so much of the bacon as he did not need for plantation uses. In these and other ways he managed to diminish the Wyanoke debt by more than a third and that of Pocahontas by nearly one-half, during his first year as a planter.
“If they don’t quit laughing at me,” he said to Archer Bannister one day, “I’ll sell milk and butter and even eggs next summer. I may conclude to do that anyhow. Those are undignified crops, perhaps, but I’m not sure that they could not be made more profitable than wheat and tobacco.”
“Be careful, Arthur,” answered his friend. “It isn’t safe to make planting too profitable. It is apt to lead to unkindly remark.”
“How so? Isn’t planting a business, like any other?”
“A business, yes, but not like any other. It has a certain dignity to maintain. But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of Robert Copeland.”
“I wish you’d tell me about him, Archer. What has he done? I observe that everybody seems to shun him – or at least nobody seems quite willing to recognize him as a man in our class, though they tell me his family is fairly good, and personally he seems agreeable. Nobody says anything to his discredit, and yet I observe a general shoulder shrugging whenever his name is mentioned.”
“He makes too many hogsheads of tobacco to the hand,” answered Archer smiling but speaking with emphasis and slowly.
“Is he cruel to his negroes?”
“Yes, and no. He is always good natured with them and kindly in his fashion, but he works them much too hard. He doesn’t drive them particularly. Indeed I never heard of his striking one of them. But he has invented a system of money rewards and the like, by which he keeps them perpetually racing with each other in their work. They badly overtax themselves, and the community regards the matter with marked disfavor. In the matter of family he isn’t in our class at all, but his father was much respected. He was even a magistrate for some years before his death. But the son has shut himself out of all social position by over working his negroes, and the fact that he does it in ways that are ingenious and not brutal doesn’t alter the fact, at least not greatly. Of course, if he did it in brutal ways he would be driven out of the county. As it is he is only shut out of society. I was jesting when I warned you of danger of that sort. But if you are not careful in your application of ‘practical’ methods down here, you’ll get a reputation for money loving, and that wouldn’t be pleasant.”
Arthur stoutly maintained his right and his duty to market all that the two plantations produced beyond their own needs, especially so long as there were debts upon them. Till these should be discharged, he contended, he had no moral right to let products go to waste which could be turned into money. Archer admitted the justice of his view, but laughingly added:
“It isn’t our way, down here, and we are so conservative that it is never quite prudent to transgress our traditions. At the same time I wish we could all rid our estates from debt before the great trouble comes. For it is surely coming and God only knows what the upshot of it all will be. Don’t quote me as saying that, please. It isn’t fashionable with us to be pessimistic, or to doubt either the righteousness or the ultimate triumph of our cause. But nobody can really foresee the outcome of our present troubles, and whatever it may be, the men who are out of debt when it comes – if there are any – will be better equipped to meet fate with a calm mind than the rest of us.”
XXIX
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF DOROTHY
F ROM the very beginning of her travels Dorothy revealed herself to Arthur in rapidly succeeding letters which were – at the first, at least – as frank as had been her talks with him during their long morning rides together. If in the end her utterance became more guarded, with a touch of reserve in it, and with a growing tendency to write rather of other things than of her own emotions, Arthur saw in the fact only an evidence of that increasing maturity of womanhood which he had intended her to gain. For Arthur Brent studied Dorothy’s letters as scrutinizingly as if they had been lessons in biology. Or, more accurately speaking, he studied Dorothy herself in her letters, in that way.
From Richmond she wrote half rejoicings, half lamentations over the long separation she must endure from him and from all else that had hitherto constituted her life. Arthur observed that while she mentioned as a troublesome thing the necessity of having still another gown made before leaving for the North, she told him nothing whatever about the gown itself.
“Gowns,” he reflected, “are merely necessary adjuncts of life to Dorothy – as yet. She’ll think of them differently after a while.”
From Washington she wrote delightedly of things seen, for although the glory of the national capital had not come upon it in 1860, there was even then abundant interest there for a country damsel.
From Baltimore she wrote:
“I’ve been wicked, and I like it. Edmonia took me to Kunkel and Moxley’s Front Street Theatre last night to hear an opera, and I haven’t yet wakened from the delicious dream. I think I never shall. I think I never want to. Yet I am very sorry that I went, for I shall want to go again and again and again, and you know that I mustn’t listen to such music as that. It will make me bad, and really and truly I’d rather die than be bad. I don’t understand it at all. Why is it wrong for me to hear great music when it isn’t wrong for Edmonia? And Edmonia has heard the greatest music there is, in New York and Paris and Vienna and Naples, and it hasn’t hurt her in the least. I wish you would tell me why I am so different, won’t you, Cousin Arthur?”
From New York she wrote of music again and many times, for she had accepted Arthur’s assurance that there was no harm but only good for her in listening to music; and in obedience to his injunction she went twice each week to the opera, where Edmonia’s friends, whose guest she was, had a box of their own. Presently came from her a pleading letter, asking if she might not herself learn to play a little upon the violin, and availing herself of Arthur’s more than ready permission, she toiled ceaselessly at the instrument until after a month or so Edmonia reported that the girl’s music master was raving about the extraordinary gifts she was manifesting.
“I am a trifle worried about it, Arthur,” Edmonia added. “Perhaps her father was right to forbid all this. Music is not merely a delight to her – it is a passion, an intoxication, almost a madness. She is very fond of dancing too, but I think dancing is to her little more than a physical participation in the music.
“And she mightily enjoys society. Still more does society enjoy her. Her simplicity, her directness and her perfect truthfulness, are qualities not very common, you know, in society, in New York or anywhere else. People are delighted with her, and, without knowing it, she is the reigning attraction in every drawing room. Ah me! She will have to know it presently, for I foresee that ‘the young Virginia belle’ as they all call her, will have many suitors for her hand before we sail – two weeks hence.
“She astonishes society in many ways. She is so perfectly well always, for one thing. She is never tired and never has a headache. Most astonishing of all, to the weary butterflies of fashion, she gets up early in the morning and takes long rides on horseback before breakfast.
“In certain companies – the sedater sort – she is reckoned a brilliant conversationalist. That is because she reads and thinks, as not many girls of her age ever do. In more frivolous society she talks very little and is perhaps a rather difficult person for the average young man to talk to. That also is because she reads and thinks.
“On the whole, Arthur, Dorothy is developing altogether to my satisfaction, but I am troubled about the music. Dr. South had a reason, of which you know nothing, for fearing music in her case, as a dangerous intoxication. Perhaps we ought not to disobey his instructions on the subject. Won’t you think the matter over, Arthur, and advise me?”
To this request Arthur’s reply came promptly. It was an oracular deliverance, such as he was accustomed to give only when absolutely sure of his judgment.
“Have no fear as to the music,” he wrote. “It is not an intoxication to Dorothy, as your report shows that indulgence in it is not followed by reaction and lassitude. That is the sure test of intoxication. For the rest Dorothy has a right to cultivate and make the most of the divine gifts she possesses. Every human being has that right, and it is a cruel wrong to forbid its exercise in any case. I am delighted to see from your letters and hers that she has not permitted her interest in music to impair her interest in other things. She tells me she has been reading a book on ‘The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin. I have heard of it but haven’t seen it yet, as it was published in England only a few months ago and had not been reprinted here when I last wrote to New York for some books. So please ask Dorothy to send me her copy as soon as she has finished it, and tell her please not to rub out the marginal notes she tells me she has been making in it. They will be helpfully suggestive to me in my reading, and, as expressions of her uninfluenced opinion, I shall value them even more than the text of the book itself. She tells me she thinks the book will work a revolution in science, giving us a new foundation to build upon. I sincerely hope so. We have long been in need of new foundations. But, pardon me, you are not interested in scientific studies and I will write to Dorothy herself about all that.”
At this point in her reading Edmonia laid the letter in her lap and left it there for a considerable time before taking it up again. She was thinking, a trifle sadly, perhaps, but not gloomily or with pain.
“He is right,” she reflected. “I sympathize with him in his high purposes and I share the general admiration of his character and genius. But I do not share his real enthusiasms as Dorothy does. I have none of that love for scientific truth for its own sake, which is an essential part of his being. I have none of his self-sacrificing earnestness, none of that divine discontent which is the mainspring of all his acts and all his thinking. It is greatly better as Fate has ordered it. I am no fit life partner for him. Had he married me I should have made him happy in a way, perhaps, but it would have been at cost of his deterioration. It is better as it is – immeasurably better, – and I must school myself to think of it in that way. If I am worthy even of the friendship that he so generously gives me, I shall learn to rejoice that he gives the love to Dorothy instead, and not to me. I must learn to think of his good and the fit working out of his life as the worthiest thing I can strive for. And I am learning this lesson. It is a little hard at first, but I shall master it.”
A few days later Dorothy, in one of her unconsciously self-revealing letters, wrote:
“I am sending you the Darwin book, with all my crude little notes in the margins. I have sealed it up quite securely and paid full letter postage on it, because it would be unjust to the government to send a book with writing in it, at book postage rates. Besides, I don’t want anybody but you to read the notes. Edmonia asked me to let her see the book before sending it, but I told her I couldn’t because I should die of shame if anybody should read my presumptuous comments on so great a book. For it is great, really and truly great. It is the greatest explanation of nature that anybody ever yet offered. At least that is the way it impresses me. Edmonia asked me why I was so chary of letting her see notes that I was entirely willing for you to see, and at first I couldn’t explain it even to myself, for, of course, I love Edmonia better than anybody else in the world, and I have no secrets from her. I told her I would have to think the matter over before I could explain it, and she said: ‘Think it out, child, and when you find out the explanation you may tell me about it or not, just as you please.’ She kindly laughed it off, but it troubled me a good deal. I couldn’t understand why it was that I couldn’t bear to let her see the notes, while I rather wanted you to read them. I found it all out at last, and explained it to her, and she seemed satisfied. It’s because you know so much. You are my Master, and you always know how to allow for your pupil’s wrong thinking even while you set me right. Besides, somehow I am never ashamed of my ignorance when only you know of it. Edmonia said that was quite natural, and that I was entirely right not to show the scribbled book to her. So I don’t think I hurt her feelings, do you?
“Now, I want to tell you about another thought of mine which may puzzle you – or it may make you laugh as it does other people. There’s a woman here – a very bright woman but not, to my taste, a lovely one – who is very learned in a superficial way. She knows everything that is current in science, art, literature, and fashion, though she seems to me deficient in thoroughness. She ‘has the patter of it all at her tongue’s end,’ as they say here, but I don’t think she knows much behind the patter. A wise editor whom I met at dinner a few days ago, described her as ‘a person who holds herself qualified to discuss and decide anything in heaven or earth from the standpoint of the cyclopædia and her own inner consciousness.’ She writes for one of the newspapers, though I didn’t know it when she talked with me about Darwin. I told her I thought of Darwin’s book as a great poem. You would have understood me, if I had said that to you, wouldn’t you? You know I always think of the grass, and the trees and the flowers, and the birds and the butterflies, and all the rest, as nature’s poems, and this book seems to me a great epic which dominates and includes, and interprets them all, just as Homer and Milton and Virgil and Tasso and especially Shakespeare, dominate all the little twitterings of all the other poets. Anyhow it seems to me that a book which tells us how all things came about, is a poem and a very great one. I said so to this woman, and next day I saw it all printed in the newspaper for which she writes. I shouldn’t have minded that as she didn’t tell my name, but I thought she seemed to laugh and jeer at my thought. She said something witty about trying to turn Darwin into dactyls and substitute dithyrambics for dogmatics in the writings of Sir Isaac Newton. Somehow it all sounded bright and witty as one read it in the newspaper. But is that the way in which a serious thought ought to be treated? Do the newspapers, when they thus flippantly deal with serious things, really minister to human advancement? Do they not rather retard it by making jests of things that are not jests? I have come to know a good many newspaper writers since I have been here, and I am convinced that they have no real seriousness in their work, no controlling conscience. ‘The newspaper’ said one of the greatest of them to me not long ago, ‘is a mirror of today. It doesn’t bother itself much with tomorrow or yesterday.’ I asked him why it should not reflect today accurately, instead of distorting if with smartness. ‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘we can’t stop to consider such things. We must do that which will please and attract the reader, regardless of everything else. Dulness is the only thing we must avoid as we shun the pestilence, and erudition and profundity are always dull.’
“ ‘But doesn’t the newspaper assume to teach men and women?’ I asked. ‘And is it not in conscience bound to teach them the truth and not falsehood?’
“ ‘Oh, yes, that’s the theory,’ he answered. ‘But how can we live up to it? Take this matter of Darwinism, for example. We can’t afford to employ great scientific men to discuss it seriously in our columns. And if we did, only a few would read what they wrote about it. We have bright fellows on our editorial staffs who know how to make it interesting by playing with it, and for our purpose that is much better than any amount of learning.’