The Mother of Washington and Her Times. Sara Agnes Rice Pryor
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Doubtless such stories inspired many of little Mary's early dreams, and caused her to tremble as she lay in her trundle-bed—kept all day beneath the great four poster, and drawn out at night—unless, indeed, her loving mother allowed her to climb the four steps leading to the feather sanctuary behind the heavy curtains, and held her safe and warm in her own bosom.
CHAPTER VIII
GOOD TIMES IN OLD VIRGINIA
Despite the perils and perplexities of the time; the irreverence and profanity of the clergy; the solemn warning of the missionary Presbyterians; the death of good Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, so dear to the hearts of loyal Virginians; the forebodings on the accession to the throne of the untried Guelphs; the total lack of many of the comforts and conveniences of life, Virginians love to write of the early years of the century as "the golden age of Virginia." These were the days known as the "good old times in old Virginia," when men managed to live without telegraphs, railways, and electric lights. "It was a happy era!" says Esten Cooke. "Care seemed to keep away and stand out of its sunshine. There was a great deal to enjoy. Social intercourse was on the most friendly footing. The plantation house was the scene of a round of enjoyments. The planter in his manor house, surrounded by his family and retainers, was a feudal patriarch ruling everybody; drank wholesome wine—sherry or canary—of his own importation; entertained every one; held great festivities at Christmas, with huge log fires in the great fireplaces, around which the family clan gathered. It was the life of the family, not of the world, and produced that intense attachment for the soil which has become proverbial. Everybody was happy! Life was not rapid, but it was satisfactory. The portraits of the time show us faces without those lines which care furrows in the faces of the men of to-day. That old society succeeded in working out the problem of living happily to an extent which we find few examples of to-day."
"The Virginians of 1720," according to Henry Randall, "lived in baronial splendor; their spacious grounds were bravely ornamented; their tables were loaded with plate and with the luxuries of the old and new world; they travelled in state, their coaches dragged by six horses driven by three postilions. When the Virginia gentleman went forth with his household his cavalcade consisted of the mounted white males of the family, the coach and six lumbering through the sands, and a retinue of mounted servants and led horses bringing up the rear. In their general tone of character the aristocracy of Virginia resembled the landed gentry of the mother country. Numbers of them were highly educated and accomplished by foreign study and travel. As a class they were intelligent, polished in manners, high toned, and hospitable, sturdy in their loyalty and in their adherence to the national church."
Another historian, writing from Virginia in 1720, says: "Several gentlemen have built themselves large brick houses of many rooms on a floor, but they don't covet to make them lofty, having extent enough of ground to build upon, and now and then they are visited by winds which incommode a towering fabric. Of late they have sasht their windows with crystal glass; adorning their apartments with rich furniture. They have their graziers, seedsmen, brewers, gardeners, bakers, butchers and cooks within themselves, and have a great plenty and variety of provisions for their table; and as for spicery and things the country don't produce, they have constant supplies of 'em from England. The gentry pretend to have their victuals served up as nicely as the best tables in England."
A quaint old Englishman, Peter Collinson, writes in 1737 to his friend Bartram when he was about taking Virginia in his field of botanical explorations: "One thing I must desire of thee, and do insist that thee oblige me therein: that thou make up that drugget clothes to go to Virginia in, and not appear to disgrace thyself and me; for these Virginians are a very gentle, well-dressed people, and look, perhaps, more at a man's outside than his inside. For these and other reasons pray go very clean, neat and handsomely dressed to Virginia. Never mind thy clothes: I will send more another year."
Those were not troublous days of ever changing fashion. Garments were, for many years, cut after the same patterns, varying mainly in accordance with the purses of their wearers. "The petticoats of sarcenet, with black, broad lace printed on the bottom and before; the flowered satin and plain satin, laced with rich lace at the bottom," descended from mother to daughter with no change in the looping of the train or decoration of bodice and ruff. There were no mails to bring troublesome letters to be answered when writing was so difficult and spelling so uncertain. Not that there was the smallest disgrace in bad spelling! Trouble on that head was altogether unnecessary.
There is not the least doubt that life, notwithstanding its dangers and limitations and political anxieties, passed happily to these early planters of Virginia. The lady of the manor had occupation enough and to spare in managing English servants and negroes, and in purveying for a table of large proportions. Nor was she without accomplishments. She could dance well, embroider, play upon the harpsichord or spinet, and wear with grace her clocked stockings, rosetted, high-heeled shoes and brave gown of "taffeta and moyre" looped over her satin quilt.
There was no society column in newspapers to vex her simple soul by awakening unwholesome ambitions. There was no newspaper until 1736. She had small knowledge of any world better than her own, of bluer skies, kinder friends, or gayer society. She managed well her large household, loved her husband, and reared kindly but firmly her many sons and daughters. If homage could compensate for the cares of premature marriage, the girl-wife had her reward. She lived in the age and in the land of chivalry, and her "amiable qualities of mind and heart" received generous praise. As a matron she was adored by her husband and her friends. When she said, "Until death do us part," she meant it. Divorce was unknown; its possibility undreamed of. However and wherever her lot was cast she endured to the end; fully assured that when she went to sleep behind the marble slab in the garden an enumeration of her virtues would adorn her tombstone.
In the light of the ambitions of the present day, the scornful indifference of the colonists to rank, even among those entitled to it, is curious. Very rare were the instances in which young knights and baronets elected to surrender the free life in Virginia and return to England to enjoy their titles and possible preferment. One such embryo nobleman is quoted as having answered to an invitation from the court, "I prefer my land here with plentiful food for my family to becoming a starvling at court."
Governor Page wrote of his father, Mason Page of Gloucester, born 1718, "He was urged to pay court to Sir Gregory Page whose heir he was supposed to be but he despised title as much as I do; and would have nothing to say to the rich, silly knight, who finally died, leaving his estate to a sillier man than himself—one Turner, who, by act of parliament, took the name and title of Gregory Page."
Everything was apparently settled upon a firm, permanent basis. Social lines were sharply drawn, understood, and recognized. The court "at home" across the seas influenced the mimic court at Williamsburg. Games that had been fashionable in the days of the cavaliers were popular in Virginia. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, cards, and feasting, with much excess in eating and drinking, marked the social life of the subjects of the Georges in Virginia as in the mother country. It was an English colony—wearing English garments, with English manners, speech, customs, and fashions. They had changed their skies only.
Cœlum, non animum, qui trans mare currunt.
It is difficult to understand that, while custom and outward observance, friendship, lineage, and close commercial ties bound the colony to England, forces, of which neither was conscious, were silently at work to separate them forever. And this without the stimulus of discontent arising from poverty or want. It was a time of the most affluent abundance. The common people lived in the greatest comfort, as far as food was concerned. Fish and flesh, game, fruits, and flowers, were poured at their feet from a liberal horn-of-plenty. Deer, coming down from the mountains to feed upon the mosses that grew on the rocks in the rivers, were shot for the sake of their skins only, until laws had to be