The Colonial Cavalier Part 13

Meanwhile the colonists had not followed up their good beginning at Mount Malado. Hospitals had not grown with the growth of the community. Doctors had none of the advantages of the study of surgery and medicine which are given by the hospital system, but the sick were tenderly cared for, nevertheless. In Jefferson's notes on the advantages enjoyed by the Virginians, he speaks of: "their condition too when sick, in the family of a good farmer where every member is emulous to do them kind offices, where they are visited by all the neighbors, who bring them the little rarities which their sickly appet.i.tes may crave, and who take by rotation the nightly watch over them, without comparison better than in a general hospital where the sick, the dying and the dead are crammed together in the same room, and often in the same bed." When we read the accounts of hospitals in the eighteenth century, antiseptics unknown, and even ordinary cleanliness uncommon, we can readily agree with the conclusion that "Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller expense, and with less abuse."

Every wind that swept the sick-room in those colonial farm houses, brought balm from the pines, or vigor from the sea. Three thousand miles of uncontaminated air stretched behind them and before. This pure, balmy, bracing air cured the sick, and kept the well in health, in spite of general disregard of hygiene, which prevailed almost universally, especially in all matters of diet. "We may venture to affirm," exclaims a horrified Frenchman, fresh from the land of scientific cookery, "that if a premium were offered for a regimen most destructive to the teeth, the stomach and the health in general, none could be desired more efficacious for these ends than that in use among this people. At breakfast they deluge the stomach with a pint of hot water slightly impregnated with tea, or slightly tinctured, or rather coloured with coffee; and they swallow, without mastication, hot bread half-baked, soaked in melted b.u.t.ter, with the grossest cheese and salt or hung beef, pickled pork, or fish, all which can with difficulty be dissolved. At dinner, they devour boiled pastes, called absurdly puddings, garnished with the most luscious sauces.

Their turnips and other vegetables are floated in lard or b.u.t.ter. Their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste imperfectly baked."

The entire day, according to this cheerful observer, is pa.s.sed in heaping one indigestible ma.s.s on another, and spurring the exhausted stomach to meet the strain, by wines and liquors of all sorts. The population who lived on such a diet, ought to have died young, to point the moral of the hygienist; but Nature pardons much to those who live in the open air. If digestions were taxed, nerves remained unstrained. Even in our age of hurry and bustle, anything like nervous prostration is rare, south of Mason and Dixon's line. The soft air and the easy life soothe the susceptibilities, and oil the wheels of existence. It is for these reasons, perchance, that the records of the burying-grounds in the Southern colonies show such a proportion of names of octogenarians who had survived to a ripe old age, in spite of hot breads washed down with hotter liquors.

These burying-grounds of the old South are robbed of much of the dreariness of their kind by being generally laid out in close proximity to the living world, as if the chill of the tomb were beaten back by the fire-light falling on it from the familiar hearth stone close at hand. It is a comfort to think of genial Colonel Byrd, who loved so well the good things of this world, resting under a monument which duly sets forth his virtues, on the edge of the garden at Westover, beneath an arbor screened only by vines from the door where he pa.s.sed in and out for so many years.

Hugh Jones, that conservative son of the church, lamented that the Virginians did not prefer to lie in the church-yard for their last long sleep. "It is customary," he says regretfully, "to bury in garden, or orchards, where whole families lye interred together, in a spot, generally handsomely enclosed, planted with evergreens, and the graves kept decently. Hence, likewise, arises the occasion of preaching funeral sermons in houses where, at funerals, are a.s.sembled a great congregation of neighbors and friends; and if you insist on having the service and ceremony at church, they'll say they will be without it, unless performed after their own manner."

Here we have a flash of the spirit of resistance to undue encroachments from church or state, which flamed up half a century later into open revolt. There is something touching in this clinging to the home round which so many memories cl.u.s.ter, in this desire to lay the dead there close to all they had loved, and when their own time came, to lie down beside them under the shadow of the old walls which had sheltered their infancy, and youth, and age.

If the burying-grounds were cheerful, still more so were the funerals.

They partook, in fact, of the nature of an Irish wake. Wine was freely drunk, and funeral baked meats demolished, while the firing of guns was so common that many asked by will that it be omitted, as friends to-day are "kindly requested to omit flowers."

The funeral expenses of a gentleman of Baltimore town in the eighteenth century were somewhat heavy, as any one may judge from an itemized account preserved to us, which includes: "Coffin 6 16s, 41 yds. c.r.a.pe, 32 yds.

black Tiffany, 11 yds. black c.r.a.pe, 5-1/2 broadcloth, 7-1/2 yards of black Shaloon, 16-1/2 yds. linen, 3 yds. sheeting, 3 doz. pairs men's black silk gloves, 2 doz. pairs women's do., 6 pairs men's blk. gloves (cheaper), 1 pr. women's do., black silk handkerchiefs, 8-1/2 yards calamanco, mohair and buckram, 13-1/2 yds. ribbon, 47-1/2 lbs. loaf sugar, 14 doz. eggs, 10 oz. nutmegs, 1-1/2 pounds alspice, 20-5/8 gallons white wine, 12 bottles red wine, 10-3/8 gallons rum." The total cost of these preparations amounts to upward of fifty pounds sterling, besides the two pounds to be paid to Dame Hannah Gash and Mr. Ireland for attendance, while ten s.h.i.+llings additional were allowed for "coffin furniture."

When a Thomas Jefferson, ancestor of _the_ Thomas Jefferson, died in Virginia in 1698, his funeral expenses included the items:

To Benj. Branch for a Mutton for the funerall 60lbs. tobacco.

To Ann Carraway and Mary Harris for mourning Rings 1 To Sam'll Branch for makeing y{e} coffin 10{s} For plank for y{e} coffin 2{s} 6{d}

The list of expenses closes with unconscious satire, thus: "Previous item--to Dr. Bowman for Phisick, 60 lbs. tobacco," showing that every arrangement for the taking under was complete.

These inventories and wills cast wonderful sidelights on the manners and customs of "y{e} olden tyme." To our age, accustomed to endless post-mortem litigation, there is a refres.h.i.+ng simplicity in these old doc.u.ments, which seem to take for granted that it is only necessary to state the wishes of the testator. Richard Lightfoote, ancestor of the Virginia Lightfoots, who made his will in 1625, "in the first yeare of the raigne of our Soveraigne Lord King Charles," feeling perhaps a little fearful of disputes among his heirs, appoints Thomas Jones "to bee overseer herof, to see the same formed in all things accordinge to my true meaninge; hereby requestinge all the parties legatees aforenamed to make him judge and decider of all controversies which shall arise between them or anie of them." But there is no record that the services of Thomas Jones were needed as mediator, and when Jane Lightfoote, his wife, makes her will, she goes about it in a still more childlike and trustful fas.h.i.+on.

She leaves her "little cottage pott" to one, and her "little bra.s.se pan"

to another. No object is too trifling to be disposed of individually. The inventory of Colonel Ludlow, who departed this life in 1660, is a curious jumble of things small and large. Here we have "one rapier, one hanger, and black belt, three p'r of new gloves and one p'r of horn buckskin gloves, one small silver Tankard, one new silver hat-band, two pair of silver breeches b.u.t.tons, one wedding Ring, one sealed Ring, a pcell of sweet powder and 2 p'r of band strings," besides which is specially mentioned: "Judge Richardson to y{e} Wast in a picture," valued at fifty pounds of tobacco. In addition to these, Colonel Ludlow died possessed of "12 white servants and ten negroes, 43 cattle, 54 sheep and 4 horses."

The favorite testimonial of affection to survivors was the mourning ring or seal. These gifts figure in almost every will we examine, one mentioning a bequest of money for the purchase of "thirty rings for relatives." The keepsakes were carefully cherished, and the survivors in turn set up the memorial tablet, or carved the tombstone, or presented some piece of plate to the parish church, to keep fresh the name and memory of the deceased. In Christ Church, at Norfolk, is an old Alms Bason marked with a Lion Pa.s.sant and a Leopard's Head crowned, in the centre a coat of arms, three Griffins' heads erased, and the inscription:

"The gift of Capt. Whitwell in memory of Mrs. Whitwell who was intered in the church at Norfolk, y{e} 8{th} of March, 1749."

The same church owns a flagon with a crest, "a demi-man ppr-crowned in dexter three ostrich feathers," given by Charles Perkins as a memorial to his wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1762.

It was a pleasant thought thus to renew the memory of departed friends by flagon, and plate, and alms-basin--a wiser way, one feels, than the carving of long epitaphs on gloomy stones surmounted by skull and cross-bones. How often, as we read these dreary tributes, we long for some shock of truth to nature, among all this decorous conventionalism! What tales these old colonial graveyards might have told us if they would! Here lie men who, perchance, supped with Shakespeare, or jested with Jonson and Marlow at _The Mermaid_.

Here rest gallants who closed round the royal standard on the fatal field of Marston Moor, or danced at Buckingham Palace with the free and fair dames of the merry court of Charles Second after the Restoration; but not a word of all this appears on the stones that represent them. Their epitaphs plaster them over with all the Christian virtues, and obscure their individuality as completely as the whitewash brushes of Cromwell's soldiers obliterated the dark, quaintly carved oak of the cathedrals. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_ makes churchyard literature very dull reading, when it should be the most interesting and instructive in the world. Had the stones set forth the lives of those who rest beneath, we might learn much of such a man as Sir George Somers, whose strange experiences on the _Sea-Venture_ and his adventures on the Bermudas make me want to know more of him. I want to know what caused the trouble between him and Gates; how he built his cedar s.h.i.+ps; how he looked, and walked, and talked; and what manner of man he was, all in all. Instead of gratifying my innocent curiosity, his tombstone in Whitchurch, where he is buried, puts me off with a florid verse of poor poetry, and I am little better helped when I turn to the records of the island where he died. Here Capt. Nathaniel Butler, "finding accidentally" (so runs the old chronicle) "a little crosse erected in a by-place amongst a great many of bushes, understanding there was buried the heart and intrailes of Sir George Somers, hee resolved to have a better memory of so worthy a Souldier than that. So, finding also a great Marble Stone brought out of England, hee caused it to bee wrought handsomely, and laid over the place, which he invironed with a square wall of hewen stone, tombe-like, wherein hee caused to be graven this epitaph he had composed, and fixed it on the Marble Stone and thus it was:

"In the year 1611 n.o.ble Sir George Summers went hence to Heaven Whose n.o.ble, well-tried worth that held him still imploid Gave him the knowledge of the world so wide.

Hence 't was by heavens decree that to this place He brought new guests and name to mutual grace.

At last his soule and body being to part, He here bequeathed his entrailes and his heart."

Even this gives us more information about the dead than most of the epitaphs. They are composed, as a rule, with Jonsonian elaborateness, and might as well be set up over Ra.s.selas, as over those they commemorate.

On the tomb of President Nelson of his Majesty's Council, in the old York churchyard, a pompous inscription announces: "Reader, if you feel the spirit of that exalted ardor which aspires to the felicity of conscious virtue, animated by those consolations and divine admonitions, perform the task and expect the distinction of the righteous man!" The "_distinction of the righteous_" is a delightful phrase, and sets forth the instinctive belief of the Cavalier in aristocracy in heaven.

A Latin inscription was regarded as an appropriate tribute to the learning of the deceased, who, had his ghost walked o' nights, might have needed to brush up his cla.s.sics to make quite sure of what his survivors were saying about him.

In happy contrast to the frigidity of these epitaphs wherein the dead languages bury their dead, is the verse written by his son over the "Hon{ble} Coll. Digges," who died in 1744:

"Diggs, ever to extremes untaught to bend Enjoying life, yet mindful of its end In thee the world an happy mingling saw Of sprightly humor and religious awe."

How it warms our hearts to find the word _humor_ on a gravestone! It takes the chill out of death itself, and inspires us with the hope that this most lovable of traits may stand as good a chance of immortality as Faith, Hope, or Charity.

A brief and business-like epitaph written over Mistress Lucy Berkeley, declares that "She left behind her 5 children viz. 2 Boys and 3 Girls. I shall not pretend to give her full character; it would take too much room for a Grave-stone. Shall only say she never neglected her duty to her Creator in publick or private. She was charitable to the poor, a kind Mistress, Indulgent Mother, and Obedient Wife."

For a parallel to this matron who neglected no duty, "publick or private,"

we must seek the tomb of a maiden. On the crumbling stone the tribute still survives, and tells that

"In a Well grounded Certainty of an Immortal Resurrection Here lyes the Remains of Elizabeth the Daughter of John and Catharine Was.h.i.+ngton She was a Maiden Virtuous without Reservedness Wise without Affectation Beautiful without Knowing it She left this life on the Fifth day of Feb{r} in the Year MDCCx.x.xVI in the Twentieth Year of her age."

One more epitaph of the Colonial Cavaliers I must quote in full, because it alone, of all I have studied, does give a picture of the man who lies under it. If it praises him too much, it is to be set down to his credit that one who knew him well believed it all; and I for one wish peace to the dust of this gallant old mariner who sailed the seas in colonial days.

Here he lies, sunk at his moorings, "one who never struck his flag while he had a shot in the locker; who carried sail in chace till all was blue; in peace whose greatest glory was a staggering top-sail breeze; in war to bring his broadside to bear upon the enemy, and who, when signals of distress hove out, never stood his course, but hauled or tacked or wore to give relief, though to a foe; who steered his little bark full fifty annual cruises over life's tempestuous ocean and moored her safe in port at last; where her timbers being crazy, and having sprung a leak in the gale, she went down with a clear hawse. If these traits excite in the breast of humanity that common tribute to the memory of the departed--a sigh--then traveller as thou pa.s.sest this wreck, let thine be borne upon the breeze which bends the gra.s.sy covering of the grave of _Old Job Pray_."

This stone, like many another we find in these old brick-walled Southern burying-grounds, brings a smile which borders close upon a tear. The very spelling and lettering in these primitive inscriptions seem moss-grown with age, and tell of generations pa.s.sed away, bearing their manners and customs before them, as Mary Stuart bears her head on the charger in the Abbotsford picture. Here on one crumbling stone we read of a matron who hated strife with a capital "S" and loved peace with a little "p." Here we read the touching little life-history of the young wife of John Page, who "blest her said Husband with a sonn and a Daughter and departed this life, the twelfth day of November, Anno Dom 1702, and in the 20th yeare of her age."

The inscriptions on the oldest tombstones are undecipherable. The bluestone slab under the ruined arch at Jamestown clasped by the roots of the sycamore was so broken and defaced even when Lossing visited it that nothing remained but the shadowy date, 1608. But in the earliest inscriptions that survive, we are struck by the virile and nervous English. It smacks of "great Eliza's golden day." A fragment of one runs:

"O Death! all-eloquent, you only prove What dust we dote on when 't is man we love."

But finest of all is the n.o.ble dirge, sung over Bacon's lifeless body by some one whose name will never now be surely known, since he disguised his ident.i.ty, prompted by a wise dread of Berkeley's malignant revenge, and states that after Bacon's death "he was bemoaned in these following lines, drawn by the man that waited upon his person as it is said, and who attended his corpse to their burial place." Whoever the writer was, and a high authority designates him as a man named Cotton, dweller at Acquia Creek, it is very sure that no serving-man composed these lines, which are like an echo of the age that gave us Lycidas:

"Who is't must plead our cause? Nor trump nor drum Nor deputations; these, alas! are dumb; And can not speak. Our arms, though ne'er so strong, Will want the aid of his commanding tongue.

"Here let him rest; while we this truth report He's gone from hence unto a higher court To plead his cause, where he by this doth know, Whether to Caesar he was friend or foe."

These closing words may well form the epitaph written over the Colonial Cavalier. He is gone from hence unto a higher court--gone from this world forever. His open-handed hospitality, his reckless profusion, his chivalry to women, his quick-tempered, sword-thrusting honor, are as obsolete as his lace ruffles, his doublet and jerkin, his buckles and jewels and feathers. We are fallen on a prosaic age, and it is only in our dreams of the past that we conjure up, like a gay decoration against the neutral background of modern life, the figure of "The Colonial Cavalier."