On the thirteenth of March, I had another son, a fine boy whom we called Alexander Gregg after the Bishop. We were very proud and happy in his birth, and his brother Calvin took him to his child heart with a passionate affection. From the first hour of his life he watched over him. His care lasted a little over four years, and then in death, they were not divided.
After Alexander’s birth, any soul at all prescient might feel the end of many things approaching. The stores of all kinds were nearly empty, and I noticed that no stocks were renewed: I could not get an inch of flannel for the new born child, and Mr. Illingworth sent me three of his fine English undershirts to make barrow coats for him. With this gentleman and his wife and children, we had been on the most familiar terms for two years. He was the youngest son of an English family of old and noble lineage, and had run away from college in his twenty-second year. In some way he reached the Creek Indians, and incorporated himself with the tribe, remaining seventeen years with them. On his return to civilization he married a beautiful girl, and had three children. His knowledge of Indian affairs made him of great value to the government, and his desk in the Capitol was close to Robert’s.
Soon after Alexander’s birth, an English lawyer came to Austin seeking Mr. Illingworth. His father was dead, and there was a large fortune waiting his identification. That night he and the lawyer took supper with us, and we talked about England, until I went to bed with a pain in my heart. At this 243 time Mr. Illingworth was separated from his wife, but in the morning I rode to her house, about two miles away, and told her what had happened, advising her, for her children’s sake, to make up her quarrel with her husband. I was sorry that I had been her confidant in the matter, for no one has any business to say a word this way, or that way, between a man and his wife. The confidence however had been forced on me, and I thought then, and I think yet, that she was not much to blame. Given an Englishman inheriting all the authoritative, stubborn qualities and prejudices of an aristocratic family, the same carefully cultivated by the traditional education of his class, and superinduced upon it the education of an American Indian Chief, and you have a variety of the animal called man, any woman might fail to please. I saw him on his return from England, and he was, in spite of his quarter of a century in America, the most English of all the Englishmen I had ever seen. What the cradle rocks, the spade buries. But he was excellent company, and among other things he related the following bit of conversation between himself and Lady C—— at a dinner given to him by his mother’s family, the high, well-born Carews.
“Are you married yet, Mr. Illingworth?”
“I am, Lady C——.
“To an American?”
“Yes, to an American.”
“Is she very dark?”
This question illustrates well the amount of knowledge the noble Englishwoman had of American woman, half a century ago.
Very soon I began to really feel the pinch of war. It seemed an incredible thing not to be able to buy a little domestic or print, when I had money to do so, but I could not. Many people were without shoes, moccasins were commonly worn in the house. Pins and needles were extraordinarily scarce, some were compelled to use mesquite thorns for pins. I once gave a lady three needles number six, number eight, and number ten, and she was so grateful she sent me a fine ham, and two pounds of coffee; real coffee that her husband had brought from Mexico. 244 Alas, there was no more real coffee in Austin, and a majority of people were using the dried leaves of the beautiful Yupon tree instead of real tea. Somehow or other, I cannot tell how, I never wanted either tea or coffee; the Bishop sent me some, and also about twenty pounds of rice. Mr. Durham sent me a little box of English Breakfast tea, and I was just out of that, when Dr. Bacon of the United States Sixth Cavalry sent me a fresh supply. And upon my honor, I do not think there is anything that so firmly and pleasantly cements friendship, as little courtesies of something good to eat. Though I am in my eighty-first year now, I remember how delighted I was with these things, and to go back no further than last Christmas, though I had many gifts of many kinds, the one that gave me the most pleasure of all, was a plum pudding and a dish of Nativity tarts, that an aged Yorkshire lady visiting in Cornwall made for me with her own hands.