THE LITTLE CLOUD
It seems to have been hard for England to take her American colonies seriously. "The gentlemen of the opposition on the other side of the water" were regarded as inferiors, or, at best, troublesome children, to be dealt with accordingly, and taught to know—and keep—their places.
As early as 1766 a "Planter" on the banks of the Potomac addressed a letter to "The Merchants of London," and printed in the London Public Ledger, in which he says: "The epithets of 'parent and child' have been so long applied to Great Britain and her colonies that individuals have adopted them, and we rarely see anything from your side of the water free from the authenticated style of a master to a schoolboy. He seems to say, 'We have, with infinite difficulty and fatigue, got you excused this time; pray be a good boy for the future; do what your papa and mamma bid you, and hasten to return them your most grateful acknowledgments for condescending to let you keep what is your own. If you are a naughty boy, and turn obstinate, and don't mind what your papa and mamma say to you, and pretend to judge for yourself when you are not arrived at years of discretion or capable of distinguishing between good and evil, then everybody will hate you; your parents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely, and their friends will blame them.' See what you have brought this child to! If he had been well scourged at first for opposing your absolute will and pleasure and daring to think he had any such thing as property of his own, he would not have had the impudence to repeat the crime."
The first word of resistance to the enforcement of the Stamp Act came from the Northern Neck of Virginia. At Leeds, Richard Henry Lee, born in the same county and same year with George Washington, wrote a set of resolutions which were unanimously adopted by one hundred and fifteen of the most influential of his neighbors. No Virginian could be legally tried but by his peers. No Virginian (for were they not all British subjects?) could be taxed but by consent of a parliament in which he is represented by persons chosen by the people. "Any person using the stamp paper was an abandoned wretch, lost to virtue and public good!" They bound themselves to resist and punish such persons; and at the utmost risk of lives and fortunes to protect any and every citizen who should suffer persecution because of adherence to these resolutions.
This was in 1766. The defiant paper was signed by Mary Washington's three sons,—Samuel, Charles, and John Augustine,—also by Dr. Mortimer, her family physician. The Stamp Act was soon repealed, and the stir and excitement naturally subsided. Several years later a tax on tea, glass, and paper awakened it again. Even then there was no apprehension of danger. Nobody dreamed of final separation from England. The little cloud had been no bigger than a man's hand; it was resting on the distant horizon and would give trouble to nobody.
In 1766 the odious Stamp Act was repealed. In 1767 a new and more oppressive duty was laid on glass, paper, and tea. England, in the next year, drew back again and repealed this later tax, excepting only the tax on tea, "for," said Lord North, "a total repeal cannot be thought of until America lies prostrate at our feet."
Virginia retaliated by her non-importation resolutions, binding herself to import nothing from England until the obnoxious impost should be repealed. Every known article of luxury in living or dress was specified in her proscribed list, except—oh, wise and prudent burgesses!—"women's bonnets and hats, sewing silk and netting silk!"
The resolutions were signed by 170 Virginians, including George Washington, Spencer Ball, Samuel Eskridge, and the Lees, Tayloes, Corbins, Carters, and others of Mary Washington's family, friends, and neighbors in the Northern Neck. The firmest spirit pervaded the assembly. At its close, the Gazette goes on to say, "the whole company walked in procession from the Capitol to the Raleigh Tavern, where loyal and patriotic toasts were drunk—the King, the Queen and Royal family, the Governor of Virginia, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Lord Shelburne, British Liberty in America." Warming up after half a score of glasses, somebody gave, "May the Efforts of Virginia, joined with her Sister Colonies in the Cause of Liberty, be crowned with Success;" and then, warmer still, and jealously fearful of discourtesy to the government it had just defied (for a gentleman must be polite on his own soil) this toast was enthusiastically presented and applauded, "May the Rose flourish, the Thistle grow, and the Harp be tuned to the cause of American Liberty!"
A fine "schoolboy" this, loving liberty, loving fun, too much in love with happiness to bear malice!
It was not long before the schoolboy had a fine chance for a frolic. Ships laden with tea appeared in Boston harbor. A party disguised as American Indians boarded the ships and threw the cargo overboard. This was more than any indulgent parent could be expected to stand. The schoolboy must be shut up in a closet, and the key turned on him. The port of Boston was ordered by Act of Parliament to be closed!
And now Richard Henry Lee's "Committee of Correspondence and Communication with the Sister Colonies" came into active service. Of course the governor had dissolved the assembly that adopted it. He was too late! From the moment of its adoption expresses were flying from Massachusetts to Virginia, back and forth, with details of every step in the progress of events. William Lee wrote from London that "this inter-colonial consultation had struck a greater panic in the ministers than all that had taken place since the Stamp Act." The expresses travelled fast. Not for nothing had the Virginians bred fleet horses and trained fearless riders! It was said of those riders that "they must almost have flown," so promptly did the pulse in Virginia respond to the heart-throb in Massachusetts.
The news from Boston was overwhelming. Not only was the port to be closed as punishment—the thumb-screw drew still closer. Parliament passed an "Act whereby the People of Boston shall have no power of trying any Soldier or Person for committing any crime: all such offenders to be sent Home for legal Tryal." 14 Geo. III, c. 39.
The Virginia leaders were not surprised. The little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand in 1766, had never disappeared altogether. For ten years the storm had been gathering. The sky was now overcast, the thunder was heard, the tempest was at hand. With a keen realization of all that resistance implied, some of them hesitated. Many of them were descendants of the royalists who had come over after the execution of Charles the First. They knew what revolution meant! The halter and the scaffold were still vivid in their traditions.
When the news came of the Act of Parliament closing the port, the House of Burgesses was in session. They ordained "a day of solemn fasting, humiliation and prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition for averting a heavy calamity which threatens the civil rights of America."
Every man, one would think, has a right to humble himself, abstain from food, and pray God for help in time of trouble. Not so thought his Excellency, Governor Dunmore. Summoning the Honorable—the House of Burgesses—to his Council Chamber, he spoke to them thus: "Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses, I have in my hand a paper published by order of your House conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon his Majesty and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."
So, then, the guardians of the colony were to be sent home to do their fasting and praying in private, and perchance repent or hold their tongues, at least.
But just here the unexpected happened. While the Virginians were growing more and more hostile to Lord Dunmore and treating him with ill-disguised contempt, his family arrived at Williamsburg,—the Right Honorable, the Countess of Dunmore, Lord Fincastle, and the Ladies Catherine, Augusta, and Susan Murray.
Lord Dunmore.
Here was a pretty state of things,—distinguished strangers arriving on Virginia soil and Virginia on the eve of a political earthquake. However, there was but one way out of the difficulty,—hospitality and hostility both claiming the hour, hostility must step aside for a while. There was time for all things. There must be an illumination of course; and if the ladies smiled as they entered Williamsburg in their chariot drawn by six white horses, they must receive acclamations in return.
They did smile. They made a most agreeable impression. The Virginia Gazette declared next day that the arrival of the countess gave inexpressible pleasure, that she was a very elegant woman, that her daughters were "fine, sprightly girls," and that "goodness of heart flashed from them in every look."
Before they turned into the great palace gates they had won all hearts. They were the guests of the colony. Already a herald had published a Court Etiquette, whose leaflets were in the hands of the pretty Jacqueline and Ambler girls. The finishing touch of courtly grace and usage was to be given to the high-born Virginia beauties.
True, there was small time now to study court etiquette, but a little delay could not matter much. Whether it did or no, hospitality was the prime, sacred, delightful duty of the hour.
Accordingly, the gentlemen of the House of Burgesses caused the Gazette to announce a "Ball at the Capital to Welcome Lady Dunmore and her Family to Virginia." The Apollo, which still echoed Henry's eloquence and Washington's appeal for Boston, was hastily made ready; and the men who had been most bitter in the morning in their denunciation of the Port Bill bowed low in the evening to the Countess of Dunmore, and led her and her daughters with grave courtesy through the stately figures of the minuet.
Presently it is all over. The last note dies upon the strings, the lights burn low in the coming dawn, parting words are whispered,—"adieu" not "au revoir,"—and the hands that had touched with refined finger-tips harden themselves for the gauntlet and the sword. No matter, now her ladyship has been suitably welcomed, how soon she runs away with her pretty daughters from the guns and finds refuge on the Fowey! The sooner the better, in fact.
But before that could happen Lady Dunmore had time to become immensely popular in Williamsburg. The Gazette was forever printing verses in her praise. The burgesses were welcomed to the handsome "palace" of their governor,—the palace of which they were so proud, with its "imposing cupola, lit at night on public occasions, its ample green lawn in front, its artificial lakes, gardens and terraces." Lady Dunmore gave an afternoon reception on Queen Charlotte's birthday when her youngest child was christened Virginia in compliment to the Old Dominion. Everybody was invited at night to join the royal party in a splendid ball in honor of the Queen's birthday.
"The Mimic Court at Williamsburg was exerting all its powers to please, but the patriots were not to be turned aside." They could draw the velvet glove over the gauntlet to pleasure a lady, but the gauntlet was there, nevertheless, and the gauntlet was of steel.
We are impressed in reading of all this, with the punctilious etiquette of Williamsburg society which forbade the intrusion of politics into the social life. Lord Dunmore had been regarded with suspicion and distrust from the moment of his arrival in 1772. He was perfectly aware of the feeling of the First Assembly which met under his administration. Colonel Washington was a member of that assembly, and had been present—and active—at the consultations on public affairs held in the old Raleigh tavern. Yet, but for the death of Miss Custis, he would have been Dunmore's companion when he journeyed to Western Virginia to purchase land.
He dined with Lord Dunmore a few days before the couriers brought news of the Act of Parliament closing the port at Boston. Nobody was more resolute than he in denunciation of that act, and in support of the resolutions of "sympathy for our distressed fellow-subjects of Boston." At that moment his pocket held an accepted invitation to dine with the governor. He did so dine, spent the evening with him, probably the night, too, for he breakfasted with him the next day at his farm. Two of Lord Dunmore's sons were students at William and Mary College. To all outward appearance everything was going well and smoothly among good friends and neighbors.
Robert Carter of Nomini Hall.
The fast was appointed for the first day of June, 1774. The port was to be closed on the fourth. On that day Washington wrote in his diary, "Fasted all day and went to Church." George Mason, of "Gunston Hall," in the Northern Neck wrote home, "Please tell my dear little family that I desire my three eldest sons and my two eldest daughters may attend church in mourning." His friend and neighbor, Robert Carter, ordered differently. "No one must go from hence to church or observe this fast at all." Not yet were all the colonists prepared to follow Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and Lee in defiance to the British Crown!
The fast was generally observed. The governor, it appears, had no power to prevent it. The time had not yet come when Virginia patriots, to avoid his interference, must hold their conferences in old St. John's Church at Richmond. At Williamsburg a sermon was preached from the text, "Help, Lord! for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men."
The tea was sealed up and destroyed, and money and provisions ordered to be sent to Boston. The counties were canvassed for these, and they were immediately forwarded.
The Virginia women entered with enthusiasm into all schemes for sending help to their "distressed fellow-subjects in Boston," and applauded Colonel Washington when he declared that "he was ready to raise one thousand men, subsist them at his own expense and march at their head to Massachusetts."
The colonial dames packed away in lavender-scented chests all their imported finery, their "quilts" and brocades, and clothed themselves in homespun or in mourning, destroying or sealing up their precious stock of tea, and regarding with unfriendly eyes a certain dame who continued to indulge in the proscribed luxury. It seems hard, poor lady, that she should come down in history as the only one who thus transgressed, "who continued to sip her tea in her closet after it was banished from every table," and that even her name and lineage should be given by an irreverent historian! This was no other than Kate Spotswood, she of the fawn and blue satin gown and the silver hair, now Mrs. Bernard Moore!
Even the master of "Nomini Hall" proscribed the tea long before he ceased, for he did cease at last, to toast "his Gracious Majesty, the King." "Something," says our old friend, the tutor, "in our palace this Evening very merry happened. Mrs. Carter made a dish of Tea! At Coffee she sent me a dish—I and the Colonel both ignorant. He smelt, sipt, look'd! At last with great gravity he asks, 'What's this?' 'Do you ask, Sir?' 'Poh!' and out he throws it, splash! a sacrifice to Vulcan."
It seems the tea was restored to favor, at least in the army, only three years later. The colonists were then expressing themselves in sterner language! An island was found somewhere near headquarters in June, 1778. Here the officers invited their friends in the afternoon to drink tea, and because the island was so beautiful and enchanting they honored it with the name of "Paphos." There "Lady Stirling, Lady Kilty, and Miss Brown, met his Excellency's lady, an agreeable, well-disposed, excellent woman. The prospect of an alliance in Europe had cheered every heart, and cheerfulness enlightened every countenance." Was it the "alliance" or the dearly loved beverage of which they had been so long deprived? Thenceforward and until to-day the afternoon tea has been an institution, linked with the history of our country. It came back on the island of Paphos, and it came to stay! We hear of it once again in the annals of the Revolution. The Marquis de Chastellux tells us of another afternoon tea! "I left Mr. Samuel Adams with regret, and terminated my day by a visit to Colonel Bland. He is a tall, handsome man who has been a good soldier, but at present serves his country and serves it well in Congress. I was invited to drink tea, that is, attend a sort of Assembly: pretty much like the conversazioni of Italy; for tea here is the substitute for the rinfresca. Mr. Arthur Lee, M. de La Fayette, M. de Noualles, M. de Dames, etc: were of the party." In those days men could be found at an afternoon tea!