VI
The old-time Negro has almost quite passed from the earth, as have his old master and his old mistress. A few still remain, like the last leaves on the tree, but in no long time they, too, will have disappeared. But so long as he survives, the old family feeling of affection will remain in the hearts of those who knew him. Every week or two the newspapers contain the mention of the passing from the stage of one or more of those whose place in some old family made them notable in their lives and caused them to be followed to the grave by as sincere mourners among the whites as among the blacks. But how many of them pass without any other notice than the unfeigned mourning of those whom they loved and served so faithfully!
No Southerner, whatever his feelings of antagonism may be to the Negro race, ever meets an old Negro man or woman without that feeling rising in his breast which one experiences when he meets some old friend of his youth on whom Time has laid his chastening hand.
Nor has the old feeling by any means died out in the breast of the old Negro himself. Only as the whites look on the young blacks with some disapproval, so the old Negro regards the younger generation of whites as inferior to the generation he knew.
Not long since a friend in Richmond told me the following story: A friend of his in that city invited him in the shooting season to go down to his father’s place to shoot partridges. The house had been burned down, but old Robin was still living there, and had told him not long before that there were a good many birds on the place. Accordingly, the two gentlemen one morning took their guns and dogs and drove down to the old Ball plantation, where they arrived about sunrise. Old Robin was cutting wood in front of his cabin, and my friend began to shout for him: “Oh, Robin! Oh, Robin!” The old fellow stopped, and coming to the brow of the hill above them, called: “Who dat know me so much bettuh den I know him?”
“Come down here!” called his master.
When the old fellow discovered who it was he was delighted.
“Yes, suh,” said he; “dyah’s plenty of buds down here on de branch. I sees ’em eve’y evenin’ most when I comes down atter my cow. You go ’long and kill ’em and I’ll take keer of yo’ horse for yo’ and tell Mandy to hev some snack for yo’ ’bout twelve o’clock.”
Just as he was leaving, he stopped, and leaning out of the wagon, said: “Marse Gus, don’t yo’ shoot any ole hyahs down dere. I takes my gun down wid me when I goes down atter my cow. Dem buds flies too fas’ for me, but I kin manage to shoot a ole hyah if I ketch one settin’ in de baid.”
The promise was given and was kept by the hunters until they were about to stop for lunch. Just then a fine hare jumped up in front of Marse Gus, and gave him a fair shot. In his ardor he fired at it and knocked it over. At that moment old Robin was heard calling to them to come on up to the house as “snack was ready.”
“There!” said Gus, as he picked up the hare, “now I’ve gone and killed this hare, and that old man will never forgive me.”
“Take it and give it to him for his wife,” said his friend.
“Oh, no!” he said, “you don’t know old Robin; he will never forgive me.”
“Well, put it down in the bottom of your game-bag; he will never know the difference,” said his friend. And this was shamelessly done.
They were greeted by the old man cheerfully, with “You must have got plenty of buds, I heard you shoot so much?”
“Oh, yes, we had very good luck!” said the huntsmen.
“You didn’t shoot any ole hyahs?” he inquired confidently.
The silence aroused his suspicion, and, turning, he shot a keen glance at his master, which took in the well-filled game-bag.
“What you got in dem game-pockets to make ’em look so big? You certain’y ain’ shoot as many buds as dat in dis time?”
Gus, convicted, poked his hand into his bag and drew out the rabbit.
“Here, Uncle Robin,” he said in some confusion, “this is the only one I shot. I want you to take it and give it to Mandy.”
But the old man declined. “Nor, I don’ want it and Mandy don’ want it,” he said, half-scornfully; “you done shoot it and now yo’ better keep it.”
He stalked on up the hill in silence. Suddenly, stopping, he turned back.
“Well, well,” he said, “times certain’y is changed! Marse Gus, yo’ pa wouldn’t ’a’ told me a lie for a mule, let ’lone a’ ole hyah.”
The character of the old-time Negro can hardly be better illustrated than by the case of an old friend of mine, John Dabney, to whom I, in common with nearly all my acquaintances in Richmond, used to be greatly indebted, for he was the best caterer I ever knew. John Dabney was, in his boyhood, a race-rider for a noted Virginia turfman, Major William R. Johnson, but, possibly because of his gifts as a cook, he soon grew too fat for that “lean and hungry” calling, and in time he became a celebrated cook and caterer. He belonged to a lady in the adjoining county to my native county, and, prior to the war, he bought himself from his mistress, as was not infrequently done by clever Negroes. When the war closed, he still owed his mistress several hundred dollars on account of this debt, and as soon as he was able to raise the sum he sent it to her. She promptly returned it, telling him that he was free and would have been free anyhow and that he owed her nothing. On this, John Dabney took the money, went to his old home and insisted on her receiving it, saying that his old master had brought him up to pay his debts, and that this was a just debt which he proposed to pay. And pay it he did.
The instances are not rare in which old family servants who have worked under the new conditions more successfully than their former owners, have shown the old feeling by rendering them such acts of kindness as could only have sprung from a deep and abiding affection.
Whoever goes to the White House will find at the door of the executive offices an elderly and very stout Negro door-keeper, with perfect manners, a step as soft as the fall of the leaf, and an aplomb which nothing can disturb. His name is Arthur Simmons, and, until toward the close of the war, he was a gentleman’s servant in North Carolina; then he came North. He is, possibly, the oldest employee in the White House, having been appointed by General Grant during his first term, and having held his position, with the exception of a single term—that of General Harrison—to the present time. It is said that Mr. Cleveland’s first appointment after his return to office was that of Arthur Simmons to his old post. Possibly, Mr. Cleveland had heard this story of him: Once, Arthur, having learned that his old mistress had expressed a desire to see the President of the United States, invited her to Washington, met her at the station, saw to her comfort while in the city, arranged an interview with the President for her, and then escorted her back to take her train home.
On a part of the old plantation which I have attempted to describe has lived for the past thirty years, free of rent, the leading Negro politician in the upper end of Hanover County. His wife, Hannah, was my mother’s old maid, who, after the war, as before it, served us with a fidelity and zeal of which I can give no conception. It may, however, illustrate it to state that, although she lived a mile and a quarter from the house and had to cross a creek, through which, in times of high water, she occasionally had to wade almost to her waist, she for thirty years did not miss being at her post in the morning more than a half-score times.
Hannah has gone to her long home, and it may throw some light on the old relation between mistress and servant to say that on the occasion of the golden wedding of her old master and mistress, as Hannah was at that time too ill to leave her home, they took all the presents in the carriage and carried them over to show them to her. Indeed, Hannah’s last thought was of her old mistress. She died suddenly one morning, and just before her death she said to her husband, “Open the do’, it’s Miss ——.” The door was opened, but the mistress was not there, except to Hannah’s dying gaze. To her, she was standing by her bedside, and her last words were addressed to her.
It is a continual cause of surprise among those who do not know the South intimately that Southerners should be so fond of the old Negroes and yet should be so intolerant of things which Northerners would regard with indifference. It is a matter which can hardly be explained, but if anyone goes and lives at the South, he will quickly find himself falling into Southern ways. Let one go on the plantations where the politician is absent and the “bloody-shirt” newspaper is unknown, and he will find something of the old relation still existing.
I have seen a young man (who happened to be a lieutenant in a volunteer company) kiss his old mammy on the parade ground in sight of the whole regiment.
Some years ago, while General Fitzhugh Lee was Governor of Virginia, a wedding took place in the executive mansion at Richmond. At the last moment, when the company were assembled and all had taken their places, waiting for the bride to appear, it was discovered that mammy Celia, the bride’s mammy, had not come in, and no less a person than General Lee, the Governor of Virginia, went and fetched her in on his arm to take her place beside the mother of the bride.