CHAPTER VIII.
B. RANDOLPH TO V. CHEVILLERE.
"Belville, High Hills of the Santee, S. Carolina.
"DEAR CHUM,
"The deserts of Africa are not to be compared, for loneliness, to a South Carolinian swamp. Oh! the comforts and blessings of a corduroy turnpike! These, you know, are made of poles laid down in the bottom of the swamps for a road, in humble imitation of that same most durable web. But the swamps gone through, and myself safely landed here--this Belville of yours is a most desirable place. Your father must have been a man of taste, friend Victor. The grove of Pride of India trees, in front of the villa, stands exactly as you left it; the vines run up and around Bell's window as beautiful as ever; the pigeons wheel over the garden and cotton-fields as gayly as of old. The flowers which perfume this delightful and balmy air, send up their sweets from the garden and the lawn as they have done these forty years; at least so testifies old Tombo the gardener. Your favourite horse thrives, and is none the worse for a trial of his speed and bottom which I made the other day in a race with my own impetuous thoughts. Your mother seems happier than I have ever seen her; and little Virginia Bell is the fairest flower on the Chevillere estate. Will you believe it! she introduced me to the housekeeper on my arrival as having been her affianced bridegroom ever since she was three months old, and then enjoyed a school-girl laugh. By St. Benedict, that laugh cut nearer to my heart than a funeral sermon.
"Why have you not written to her and extolled some of my good qualities? She will never find them out! and as to my becoming a serious, sighing suitor, I am ten times farther from it than I was the first day I blundered into such dangerous company. If I were to elongate my phiz by way of preparative for a sigh, she would split her little sides with laughing at me. The fact is, I begin to think myself pretty considerably of an ass among the ladies, as your Yankees would express it. What shall I do? shall I run for it? or shall I stand here and die of the cold plague? If I laugh, she laughs with me; if I look serious, she laughs at me; if we visit, I am laughed at; if we are visited, I am stared at; and thus it is, day after day, and week after week. To your mother, I no doubt appear like a more rational creature, but before Miss Bell I am utterly at a loss and dumbfoundered.
"How can I show your charming cousin that I am not the fool she takes me for? must I shoot somebody? That would be too bloody-minded. Must I write a book? Sicken and become interesting? Ah! I have it! I'll get the fever and ague (no hard matter you know here); but then a man looks so unromantic with his teeth, and his hands, and his feet all in motion like a negro dancing 'Juba.' A lady would as soon think of falling in love with a culprit on the gibbet. I shall certainly try what absence will do; but then suppose that I am a bore, and no one entreats me to stay! Your mother might deem it indelicate, under the circumstances, for she certainly sees that I am a lost sinner; then I should be blown, indeed, with all my sins upon my head! without one redeeming quality for the little Bell to dwell upon in my absence. If I had rescued somebody from a watery grave--stopped a pair of runaway horses--saved somebody's life--shot a robber--been wounded myself--should turn out to be some lord's heir in England--had jumped down the Passaic or the Niagara--distinguished myself against the Indians or the Algerines--or even killed a mad dog--it would not be so desperate a case for the hero of a love affair.
"But here I am--a poor forlorn somebody, without a single trait of heroism in my composition, or a solitary past deed of the kind to boast of; unless it may be bursting little brass bombs under the tutor's windows in College, or shaving a horse's tail, or one side of a drunken man's whiskers, or laying two drunken fellows at each other's door. Suppose I should get old Tombo, the gardener, into the river by stratagem, merely that I might pull him out again; as he seems to be a universal favourite here. But then suppose I should drown him in these mock heroics? Ah, I see I shall have to remain plain Beverly Randolph all my days! Alas! the days of chivalry are gone! If I could splinter a lance with some of these Sir Hotheads, or Sir Blunderbys, the case might not be so desperate.
"Thank Heaven, however, that the age of poetry is not gone too; for poetry, you know, is but the shadow or reflection of chivalry--heroism--and action! First an age of deeds, and then an age of song--so here goes for the doggerel. But let me see; are there not more than two ages? what succeeds to an age of poetry? One of philosophy! What succeeds philosophy? Cynicism or infidelity--next a utilitarian age, and lastly we have a mongrel compound of all--then we have revolutions, bloodshed, sentiment, religion, and spinning-jennies. Now you see I have hit it! we live in the mongrel age; a hero of this era should fight--write--pray--and spin cotton! Let's see how all these could be united into a picture suitable for a frontispiece to a work of the current age. First there must be a spinning-jenny to go by steam, to the wheel of which there must be a hand-organ. The steam must be scattered against an enemy; a long nosed fellow with the real nasal twang must be seen upon his knees attending the jenny, and singing doggerel to the music of the hand-organ--there's a pretty coat of arms for you, and suitable for the present age.
"But seriously, my dear Chevillere, what am I to do? I cannot get on without your assistance, and yet I am ashamed to ask it; however, I shall leave all these things to time--fate--and a better acquaintance between the charming Miss Bell and your humble servant.
"I find you have more negroes here than we have in Virginia, in proportion to the whites; and existing under totally different circumstances, so far as regards the distance between them and their masters.
"With us slavery is tolerable, and has something soothing about it to the heart of the philanthropist; the slaves are more in the condition of tenants to their landlords--they are viewed more as rational creatures, and with more kindly feelings; each planter owning a smaller number than the planters generally do here, of course the direct knowledge of, and intercourse between each other is greater. Every slave in Virginia knows, even if he does not love, his master; and his master knows him, and generally respects him according to his deserts. _Here_ slavery is intolerable; a single individual owning a hundred or more, and often not knowing them when he sees them. If they sicken and die, he knows it not except through the report of those wretched mercenaries, the overseers. The slaves here are plantation live-stock; not domestic and attached family servants, who have served around the person of the master from the childhood of both.
"I have known masters in Virginia to exhibit the most intense sorrow and affliction at the death of an old venerable household servant, who was quite valueless in a pecuniary point of view.
"Here, besides your white overseers, you have your black _drivers_;--an odious animal, almost peculiar to the far south. It is horrible to see one slave following another at his work, with a cow-skin dangling at his arm, and occasionally tying him up and flogging him when he does not get through his two tasks a day. These tasks I believe are two acres of land, which they are required to hoe without much discrimination, or regard to age, sex, health, or condition; now I have seen stout active fellows get through their two tasks by one o'clock, while another poor, stunted, bilious creature toiled the whole day at the same portion of labour. Another abomination here, and even known in some parts of Virginia, is that the females are required to work in the field, and generally to do as much as the males. This system is unworthy even of refined slave-holders. But the hardest part is to tell yet; they receive their provisions but once a week, and then, each has for seven days, either one peck of Indian corn, or three pecks of sweet potatoes, without meat, or any thing else to season this dry fare.
"I will confess
to you that, at first, I thought this allowance much more niggardly than I now consider it. In order to see how they lived, I went into the thickest of the quarter, on purpose to share a part of their food myself, and observe a little of their economy; I found two or three stout fellows standing at a large table, or frame, into which were fixed two grindstones, or rather one was fixed and the other revolved upon it, like two little mill-stones; the upper stone was turned by a crank, at which the two slaves seemed to work by turns. The arrangements for this labour they made among themselves. I then went into the best looking hut of the quarter, just as they had all drawn round a large kettle of small homminy, in the centre of which I was pleased to see a piece of salt fat pork about the size of a large apple. The family consisted of six persons. They had all clubbed their portions of food into a common stock.
"'How often do you draw meat?' said I; they informed me that they had none except at Christmas, and that none were able to buy meat except those who finished their two tasks early in the day, and then cultivated their own little 'patches,' as they are called. I then went round the huts to see how many had meat, and was much rejoiced to find that more than three-fourths lived substantially well.
"I was exceedingly amused at one thing in these singular little communities, which was, that matches of convenience are almost as common among them as among their more fashionable masters. I suspect it would puzzle some of your fashionable belles to guess how these have their origin, and what is the fortune upon which they are founded. I will tell you, if you have never observed it yourself. The most active and sober hands, who are able to finish their tasks early, and of course live well, are always in great demand for husbands; and a well-favoured girl is almost sure to select one of these for her _helpmate_ in the true sense of the word. Nor is this excellence confined to the males; many of the women are in as much demand among the lazy fellows for their prowess in the field, as the active men are among the women.
"While the mothers are at work in the field, their helpless offspring are all left under the care of the superannuated women, in a large hut, or several large huts provided for that purpose; and a more unearthly set of wrinkled and arid witches you never saw, unless you have more curiosity than most of your Carolinians. These scenes, especially if visited by moonlight, transport a man into the centre of Africa at once; there is the dark, sluggish stream, the dismal-looking pine-barrens, and the palmetto, the oriental-looking cabbage-tree, aided by the foreign gibberish, and the unsteady light of the pine logs before the door, now and then casting a fitful gleam of light upon some of these natives of the shores of the Niger, with their tattooed visages, ivory teeth, flat noses, and yellow and blood-shot eyeballs.
"I do not observe much difference between the North and South Carolinians, except in the case of those who inhabit the most southern portions of the latter state. There your rich are more princely and aristocratic, and your poor more wretched and degraded; but to tell you the plain truth, many of your little slaveholders are miserably poor and ignorant; and what must be the condition of that negro who is a slave to one of these miserable wretches? They are uniformly hard and cruel masters, and the more fortune or fate frowns upon them, the more cruel they become to their slaves. This is a singular development of human character, and not easily accounted for, unless we suppose them to be revenging themselves of fate.
"Most of the accomplished ladies whom I have seen, were educated either at Salem or at the north, and sometimes at both,--the preference being given to New-York and Philadelphia. Therein Virginia has the advantage; for scarcely a town of two thousand inhabitants is without its seminary for girls. I have myself visited those at Richmond, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, Staunton, Lexington, Fincastle, &c. &c. This, you will acknowledge, shows deep-seated wisdom and foresight in the people; for if our wives and mothers are intelligent, their offspring will be so too.
"Virginia Bell has just stolen into the parlour in the south wing, where I am now writing, so there is an end of slavery, and education, and all that sort of thing; unless, indeed, your humble servant may be said to have surrendered his freedom, and to be now undergoing a new sort of schooling. Her look is arch and knowing, as if she had read every word I have written; I will finish my letter when she goes out.
"There now, I breathe more easily,--she is gone! 'Mr. Randolph,' said she, 'I have a very great curiosity to see the letter of a young gentleman; I never saw one in my life.' 'Indeed!' said I, 'then I will write you one before I leave my seat.'
"'No, no, no!' said she, blushing just perceptibly, 'you understand me very well; I mean such letters as you write to my cousin; there would be something worth reading in them; as for your letters to young ladies, I have seen some of them. O! deliver me from the side-ache, and weeping till my eyes are red with irrepressible laughter; if they would write naturally and simply, it would not be so bad. There would then be only the natural awkwardness of the subject; but to get upon stilts, merely because the letter is to a lady, is too bad. But you have not answered my question; do you intend to show me that letter?'
"'I will show you a better one.'
"'No, no! I want to see none of your set speeches upon paper, all so prim and formal; if you care any thing for my good opinion, you will show me one of your careless ones,' said she.
"'Care any thing for your good opinion!' said I, rising, and trying to seize her hand, which she held behind her; 'I value your opinion more than that of the whole sex besides.' She raised her eyes in mock astonishment, and puckering up her beautiful little lips, whistled as if in amazement, and then deliberately marched out of the room, saying, as she stood at the entrance, 'Finish your copy like a good boy, and be sure not to blot it, and you shall have some nuts and a sweet cake;' and I crushed the unfortunate epistle with chagrin. She certainly takes me for a fool, and truly I begin to think she is not very far wrong.
"B. RANDOLPH."