Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 14

The riverward portal of Westover stands tall, white, and finely typical of its day. Above squared stone steps, the double doors with the fanlight above them are framed by two engaged columns supporting an elaborate pediment that has the symbolic pineapple in the centre.

We stood before the fine entrance, fancy painting the old-time scene within; that scene of eighteenth century elegance which is the traditional picture of colonial Westover. The door opened, and we entered upon perhaps quite as charming an eighteenth century scene, which is the Westover of to-day.

A panelled hall extended through the house, the double doors at the farther end opening upon a gla.s.s-enclosed vestibule. About midway, and from beneath a heavy crystal chandelier, the stairway of carved mahogany rose to a landing, where an ancient clock stood tall and dark, then turned and wound to the rooms above.

To the right of the hall was the drawing-room. Pa.s.sing over its threshold, we thought of those old colonial days, the days of Colonel Byrd. As in his time, the light came subdued through the deep-cas.e.m.e.nted windows. It fell upon the walls that he had so handsomely panelled, upon the ceiling that he had ornamented in the delicate putty-work of his day, and upon furniture in carved mahogany that was of the period of his owners.h.i.+p of Westover.

At the farther end of the room was the noted mantelpiece imported from Italy by Colonel Byrd. It is an elaborate creation of Italian marble with relief design in white upon a black background. In front of it, on either hand, stood handsome bra.s.s torcheres, with their suggestion of the mellow candle-light that was wont to fall in this same room upon the courtly Colonel, the lovely Evelyn, and those brilliant a.s.semblages of colonial times.

Opening also from the hall are the dining-room with its high colonial mantel and typical Virginia buffet, the French morning-room with its gray green tints and its touches of gilt, and the library with its old chimney-piece, high black fire-dogs, and quaint fire-tending irons. All the rooms have their colonial panelling, deep window-seats, and open fireplaces.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HEPPLEWHITE SIDEBOARD WITH BUTLER'S DESK.]

In the dining-room our interest was quickened upon our being told that the handsome sideboard had belonged to the Byrd family. It is believed to be a Hepplewhite, though similar in lines to a rare design of Sheraton's. Above the sideboard a circular, concave mirror of elaborate eighteenth century type accentuates the period furnis.h.i.+ng of the room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FOUR-POSTERS AND THE THINGS OF FOUR-POSTER DAYS."]

Up-stairs even more than below, we felt the atmosphere of the olden time. Perhaps pa.s.sing the ancient clock on the landing helped to set us back a century or two. We were quite prepared for the quiet, old-fas.h.i.+oned upper hall, with its richness half lost in the shadows and with its sleepy night-stand holding a bra.s.s house lantern and a prim array of candles in bra.s.s candlesticks.

In the bedrooms were four-posters and the things of four-poster days.

Wing-cheek chairs of cozy depths told of old-time fireside dreams; a work-table with attenuated legs called to mind the wearisome needlework of our foremothers; and a bra.s.s warming-pan carried us back to the times when only such devices could make tolerable the frigid winter beds of our ancestors.

One of the riverward bedrooms is the romantic centre of Westover. It now belongs to the little daughter of the house; but nearly two centuries ago it was the room of Evelyn Byrd. Doubtless, in a sense, it will always be hers. The soft toned panelled walls, the old fireplace opposite the door, and the cozy little dressing-room looking gardenward, all seem to speak of her; and the imaginative visitor can quite discern a graceful figure in colonial gown there in one of the deep window seats that look out upon the pleasance and the river.

Here the unfortunate colonial beauty lived and died with the grief that she brought from over the sea. Here she laid away the rich brocade, the old court gown of brilliant, bitter memories that was shown to us at Brandon. Through these windows she looked with ever more wistful eyes out upon the river, her thoughts hurrying with its waters toward the ocean and the lover beyond. And one day, it is said, a great s.h.i.+p from London came, and it touched at the pier before her windows, and Charles Mordaunt plead his cause with the stern father once more. But he plead in vain, and the s.h.i.+p and the lover sailed away. For a while longer, the colonial girl waited and looked out upon the river, then she too went away and the romance was over.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROMANTIC CENTRE OF WESTOVER; EVELYN BYRD'S OLD ROOM.]

In the family circle at Westover to-day are Mrs. Ramsay, two sons, and the little daughter, Elizabeth. Among well-known families appearing in Mrs. Ramsay's ancestry are the Sears and the Gardiners of Ma.s.sachusetts, she being a descendant of Lyon Gardiner of Gardiner's Island. She also claims kins.h.i.+p with the Randolphs and the Reeveses of Virginia, and a collateral and remote connection with the Byrds.

When we returned to the steamer pier after our visit at Westover, we found quite a wind on the river and the houseboat fretfully b.u.mping the pilings. We hastened aboard, ran down stream before a stiff wind, and skurried back into our harbour in Herring Creek, where Gadabout settled to her moorings as contented as a duck in the marshes.

CHAPTER XX

AN OLD COURTYARD AND A SUN-DIAL

For some time that little anchorage was our watery home acre. We came to call it our sunrise harbour. The opening where creek and river met faced to the east; and it was well worth while, if the morning was not too chill, to have an eye on that opening when the sun came up.

Breaking through the mist veil that hung over the James, he cast a golden pontoon across the river, and then came over in all his splendour. He made straight for the mouth of our little creek, flooding wood and marsh with misty glow, and fairly crowding his glory into the narrow channel.

One morning, quite in keeping with the splendid burst of dawn, a loud report rang out over the marshes like the sound of a sunrise gun. But it was no salute to the orb of day. Somebody was poaching. More shots followed; and ducks, quacking loudly, fluttered up out of the marshes.

Later, when we were at breakfast, a long rowboat, containing a man and a pile of brush and doubtless some ducks with the fine flavour of the forbidden, came out from a break in the marshes and went hurriedly up the stream.

As we lay in our harbour, we found ourselves almost unconsciously listening for a sound that seemed to belong to those chill, gray days.

At last, from somewhere high up in the air, it came ringing down to us--the stirring "honk, honk" of the wild goose. Though our eyes searched the heavens, we could see nothing of the living wedge of flight up there that was cleaving its way southward with the speed of the wind. But we felt the thrill of that wild, stirring cry and were satisfied.

Whether the geese brought it or not, bad weather came with them. Half a gale came driving the rain before it down the river. Gadabout lay with her bulkheads closed tight about her forward c.o.c.kpit, and must have looked most dismal. But inside, dry and warm, she was a very cheery little craft. We listened quite contentedly to the uproar, looking out from our windows upon windswept marsh and scudding clouds and the fussy little wavelets of our harbour. It added to our sense of coziness to look through a stern window out upon the river where the waters piled and broke white, in their midst an anch.o.r.ed schooner with swaying masts, tipsy between wind and tide.

One day when the heavens had gone blue again, though tattered clouds were still racing across, we hoisted anchor for another visit to Westover. When Gadabout poked her head out of the creek, she saw a queer looking craft busy on the James. It was a government buoy-tender, an awkward side-wheeler with a derrick forward, and big red sticks and black ones lying on deck.

As we pa.s.sed the tender, it was moving the red buoy at the mouth of our creek farther out into the river. Evidently the shoals were encroaching upon the channel. Gadabout showed little interest in the strange boat and its doings; and, unconcernedly turning her back, headed up the river. Of course buoys were all very well and she found them quite a help in getting about; but all this fussy s.h.i.+fting of them by a few feet mattered little to her, for she was on the wrong side of them most of the time anyway.

However, we thought of how differently the watchful buoy-tender would be regarded by the heavy laden freighters that would pa.s.s that way, their rusty hulls plowing deep. To them how important that each buoy, each inanimate flagman of the river route, should stand true where danger lies and truly point the fairway.

Reaching the little cove below the steamboat pier, Gadabout ran close in and cast anchor. She may well have been proud of the quite perceptible waves that she sent rolling to the sh.o.r.e and of the quite audible swish that they made on the beach.

That morning we saw the landward front of Westover, and straightway forgot all about the more pretentious river front. You step from the house down into an old-time courtyard. At first you do not see much of the courtyard itself, for you have heard of its noted entrance gates, perhaps the first example of ornamental iron-work in the colonies, and they stand quite conspicuously in front of you. These gates were imported from England by Colonel William Byrd, whose initials, W.E.B., appear inwrought in monogram.

Two great birds standing on stone b.a.l.l.s top the gate-posts. With a fine disregard of both ornithology and heraldry these birds have often been spoken of as martlets--the martlet appearing in the Byrd coat of arms.

They are evidently eagles, and pretty well developed specimens.

American eagles, we might call them, if they had not lighted upon these gate-posts before the American nation adopted its emblem--indeed before the American nation was born. When, in the days of the Civil War, the Federal troops came along, the soldiers seem to have stood strictly upon chronology, and to have determined that these fine prerevolutionary birds were not ent.i.tled to any immunity as national emblems nor even as kinsfolk of "Old Abe." And so their tough feathers flattened many a bullet, and one eagle had to be sent to Richmond to get some toes and a new tail.

Turning from the gates, your eyes follow down the courtyard toward the garden. Walls, outbuildings, the quaint cellar-hut, even the diamond-shaped stepping-stones along the way, all help to make up a characteristic colonial scene.

And for what striking bits of colonial life has this old courtyard been the setting! Now the exquisite Colonel and his ladies would visit the little capital of Williamsburg; so, at his door, stands ready his "lordly coach and six with liveried outriders in waiting." Again, the great gates are thrown open to guests arriving on horseback and in chariots and chairs. Pompous, beruffled dignitaries vie with gay gallants in obeisances and compliments to the ladies, and in a.s.sisting them to alight without harm to brocades and laces and rich cloaks and wide-hooped petticoats. And, yet again, all is a-bustle here with scarlet-coated hors.e.m.e.n and baying hounds and hurrying black boys and all that goes to

"Proclaim a hunting-morning."

When the ancient courtyard is left empty again--the colonial coaches rolled off through the gates; the colonial huntsmen up and away and now but distant points of red, fading to the music of hounds and horns--we fall to wondering about those early Virginians.

Such, largely, was their life--abundant leisure, elegant display, exuberant merrymaking. Just such a life, by all the rules, as would produce a useless race devoid of any solidity of mind or of character.

Just such a life as in fact produced a race of high-minded, intelligent, and capable men; a race that gave us Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, Marshall, Monroe, and the scarcely lesser names on down the long list of those wonderful sons of the Old Dominion.

It would do no good to ask even that colonial courtyard for an explanation of all this. It simply recalled what it had seen and heard.

Nor could we of to-day understand the explanation were we to get it.

Unable to reconcile industry and leisure, we underrate the real work that went with the idling of those early Virginians; and as to the gayety, we long ago lost sight of the fact that merrymaking is man-making.

Turning from the gateway, we went down the old courtyard. We followed a walk that led past the kitchen and the dairy, skirted a wall, and then turned through a box-shaded gateway into the garden.

Those December days were not the season of gardens, even in Virginia.

The paths led us not where bloom was, but where bloom had been. Yet, truly all times are garden times where warm red walls shut you in with shadowing trees and shrubs, and where ancient box and ivy hedge the prim old ways.

How much our colonial forefathers thought of their gardens! and how much their English forefathers thought of theirs! It was in the blood to have a garden, and to have it walled, and to sit and to walk and to talk in it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLONIAL COURTYARD GATES.]

Walking and talking that day with Westover's mistress in Westover's garden, we soon came upon the tomb of the noted William Byrd.

Representative as was this master of Westover of all that was most elegant in the colonial life of his day, he was much more than merely a man of the fas.h.i.+onable world. Ability of a high order went with the beauty and the ruffles and the powder. He was statesman, scholar, and author; and in England he had been made, for his proficiency in science, a fellow of the Royal Society.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOMB OF COLONEL WILLIAM BYRD.]

We owe a great deal to this old-time grandee for the glimpses his writings give us of colonial life in the South during the generation just preceding that of Was.h.i.+ngton. Unlike the Northern colonists, the Southern ones left little record of themselves. So much the more valuable, then, the accounts given by this remarkable man of the times.

We seemed turning from an impressive text as we left the tomb; left the old grand seignior in his little six feet of earth--six feet out of 175,000 acres! But, after all, it was a rueful text; not one for morning suns.h.i.+ne and blue sky, for hearts that yet beat strong, that yet gloried in a boundless estate--all the bright world ours. And the birds were holding carnival over by the stone basin under the ram's head on the wall; and the river was dancing in the sunlight; and besides, we had caught sight of a sun-dial there in that old colonial garden by the banks of the "King's River"! To he sure we were told that this was not an ancient timepiece of the sun. We were much too late to see the original sun-dial of this garden. That old colonial worthy had found time too long for its marking. Worn with the years that it had told, it had leaned and dozed, and lost count, and was gone.