American Adventures Part 21

At the time of the evacuation of Richmond, Bromwell carried off a number of the Confederate state papers, and Mrs. Bromwell took charge of the seal, transporting it through the lines in her bustle. When later, through Colonel John T. Pickett, Bromwell sold the papers to the Government, Rear Admiral Selfridge--then a captain--was the officer a.s.signed to go to Hamilton, Ontario, to inventory and receive them. It is said that Pickett gave the seal to Selfridge at about this time, first, however, having a duplicate made. This duplicate, or a copy of it, was later offered for sale as the original, but was found to be spurious. When examination of the Pickett papers by Gaillard Hunt, of the Library of Congress, finally traced the original seal to Rear Admiral Selfridge, an effort was made to buy it back. In 1912 three Richmond gentlemen, Messrs. Eppa Hunton, Jr., William H. White and Thomas P. Bryan, purchased the Seal of the admiral for three thousand dollars, subject to proof of its authenticity. Mr. St. George Bryan and Mr. William Gray, of Richmond, then took the seal to London, where the makers are still well-known engravers. Here, by means of hall marks, the identification was made complete.

No less appealing than the relics of the deceased government and great generals who are gone, are some of the humbler items connected with the deaths of privates in the ranks of North and South alike. One of the most pathetic was a small daguerreotype of a beautiful young girl. On a card, beside the picture, is the story of it, so far as that story is ever likely to be known:

Picture found on the dead body of an unidentified Federal soldier.

Presented by C.C. Calvert, Upperville, Va.

"We have always hoped," said Miss Susan B. Harrison, house regent of the museum, "that some day some one would come in and recognize this little picture, and that it would find its way back to those who ought to have it, and who might by this means at last discover what became of the soldier who was dear to them."

An even more tragic souvenir is a letter addressed to A.V. Montgomery, Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father. The letter was originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A., informing the father that his son pa.s.sed away soon after he had written.

The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote:

Spotsylvania County, Va.

May 10, 1864.

Dear Father:

This is my last letter to you. I went into battle this evening as courier for Gen'l Heth. I have been struck by a piece of sh.e.l.l and my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable.

I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son. I know death is near, that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I have friends here, too, who are kind to me. My Friend Fairfax will write you at my request and give you the particulars of my death.

My grave will be marked so that you may visit it if you desire to do so, but it is optionary with you whether you let my remains rest here or in Mississippi. I would like to rest in the graveyard with my dear mother and brothers, but it is a matter of minor importance. Let us all try to reunite in heaven. I pray my G.o.d to forgive my sins & I feel that his promises are true, that he will forgive me and save me. Give my love to all my friends. My strength fails me. My horse & my equipments will be left for you. Again a long farewell to you. May we meet in heaven.

Your Dying Son, J.R. Montgomery.

CHAPTER XXII

RANDOM RICHMOND NOTES

Richmond may again be likened to Boston as a literary center. In an article published some years ago in "Book News" Alice M. Tyler refers to Colonel William Byrd, who founded Richmond in 1733, as the sprightliest and most genial native American writer before Franklin. In the time of Chief Justice Marshall, Richmond had a considerable group of novelists, historians and essayists, but the great literary name connected with the place is that of Edgar Allan Poe, who spent much of his boyhood in the city and later edited the "Southern Literary Messenger." Matthew Fontaine Maury, the great scientist, mentioned in an earlier chapter, was, at another time, editor of the same periodical, as was also John Reuben Thompson, "Poet of the Confederacy," who wrote, among other poems, "Music in Camp," and who translated Gustave Nadaud's familiar poem, "Carca.s.sonne."

Thomas Nelson Page made his home in Richmond for thirty years; Amelie Rives was born there and still maintains her residence in Albemarle County, Virginia, while among other writers of the present time connected with the city either by birth or long a.s.sociation are, Henry Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H.

Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier, historian, essayist, and local character--a gentleman upon whose shoulders such imported expressions as _litterateur_, _bon viveur_, and _raconteur_ alight as naturally as doves on friendly shoulders.

Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions and a.s.sociations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting under the circ.u.mstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "_an_ hotel."

Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison about this.

"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarra.s.sed by the disposition of Richmond people--human and natural, I suppose, when you 'know the author'--to identify all the imaginary persons with various local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is indicated, in pa.s.sing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is borrowed from life."

The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive, with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart.

The parks are on the outskirts of the city and, as in most other cities, it is in these outlying regions that new homes are springing up, thanks in no small degree to the automobile. The Country Club of Virginia is out to the west of the town, in what is known as Westhampton, and is one of the most charming clubs of its kind in the South or, indeed, in the country.

Richmond has one of the most beautiful and several of the most curious cemeteries I have ever seen. Hollywood Cemetery stands upon rolling bluffs overlooking the James, and under its majestic trees are the tombs of many famous men, including James Monroe, John Tyler, Jefferson Davis and Fitzhugh Lee. An inscription on the Davis monument, which was erected by the widow and daughter of the President of the Confederacy, describes him as "an American soldier and defender of the Const.i.tution."

At the back of the pedestal is another inscription:

PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA 1861-1865.

FAITHFUL TO ALL TRUSTS, A MARTYR TO PRINCIPLE.

HE LIVED AND DIED THE MOST CONSISTENT OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN.

It occasionally happens that, instead of having monuments because in life they were famous, men are made famous after death, by the inscriptions placed upon their tombstones. Such is the case with James E. Valentine, a locomotive engineer killed in a collision many years ago. The Valentine monument in Hollywood Cemetery is almost as well known as the monuments erected in memory of the great, the reason for this being embodied in the following verse adorning the stone:

Until the brakes are turned on Time, Life's throttle valve shut down, He wakes to pilot in the crew That wear the martyr's crown.

On schedule time on upper grade Along the homeward section, He lands his train at G.o.d's roundhouse The morn of resurrection.

His time all full, no wages docked; His name on G.o.d's pay roll.

And transportation through to Heaven, A free pa.s.s for his soul.

In the burial ground of old St. John's Church--the building in which Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death"

oration--are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts concerning those who wrote the old-time gravestone doggerel.

The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones, but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration. Having done this to us--or perhaps it would seem more generous to say _for_ us--the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed by me.

In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco, plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work, negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and rafters. Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell, mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike in through the windows, and which seems, as it s.h.i.+fts and sparkles, to be a visible expression of the smell.

In the busy season "street n.i.g.g.e.rs" are generally used for stemming, which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond, and these "street n.i.g.g.e.rs," a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a wealth of semi-barbaric color. To give us an idea of the character of a Richmond "street n.i.g.g.e.r" the gentleman who took my companion and me through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done, and having asked one of these negroes: "Want to earn a quarter?"

To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place beside a sun-baked brick wall: "No, boss, Ah _got_ a quahtah."

The singing of the negroes is a great feature of the stemming department in a tobacco factory. Some of the singers become locally famous; also, I was told by the superintendent, they become independent, and for that reason have frequently to be dismissed. The wonderful part of this singing, aside from the fascinating harmonies made by the sweet, untrained negro voices, is the utter lack of prearrangement that there is about it. Now there will be silence in the loft; then there will come a strange, half-savage cry from some dark corner, musical, yet seemingly meaningless; soon a faint humming will begin, and will be taken up by men and women all over the loft; the humming will swell into a chant to which the workers rock as their black hands travel swiftly among the brown leaves; then, presently, it will die away, and there will be silence until they are again moved to song.

From shadowy room to shadowy room, past great dark bins filled with the leaves, past big black steaming vats, oozing sweet-smelling substances, past moist fragrant barrels, always among the almost spectral forms of negroes, treading out leaves with bare feet, working over great wicker baskets stained to tobacco color, piling up wooden frames, or operating the powerful hydraulic presses which convert the soft tobacco into plugs of concrete hardness--so one goes on through the factory. The browns and blacks of these interiors are the browns and blacks of etchings; the color of the leaves, the old dark timbers, the black faces and hands, and the ragged clothing, combined with the humming of negro voices, the tobacco fragrance, and the golden dust upon the air, make an indescribably complete harmony of shade, sound, and scent.

The department in which the pipe tobacco is packed in tins is a very different sort of place; here white labor is employed: a great many girls seated side by side at benches working with great digital dexterity: measuring out the tobacco, folding wax paper cartons, filling them, and slipping them into the narrow tins, all at a rate of speed so great as to defy the sight, giving a sense of fingers flickering above the bench with a strange, almost supernatural sureness, like the fingers of a magician who makes things disappear before your eyes; or like the pictures in which post-impressionist and cubist painters attempt to express motion.

"May I speak to one of them?" I asked the superintendent.

"Sure," said he.

I went up to a young woman who was working, if anything, more rapidly than the other girls at the same bench.

"Can you think, while you are doing this?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, without looking up, while her fingers flashed on ceaselessly.

"About other things?"

"Certainly."

"How many cans do you fill in a day?"