The flavor of Old Virginia is unmistakable, and life drops into an easy-going pace under this influence. What fine manners, to be sure! The waiters in the dining-room, in white ties and dress-coats, move on springs, starting even to walk with a complicated use of all the muscles of the body, as if in response to the twang of a banjo; they do nothing without excessive motion and flourish. The gestures and good-humored vitality expended in changing plates would become the leader of an orchestra. Many of them, besides, have the expression of class-leaders—of a worldly sort. There were the aristocratic chambermaid and porter, who had the air of never having waited on any but the first families. And what clever flatterers and readers of human nature! They can tell in a moment whether a man will be complimented by the remark, “I tuk you for a Richmond gemman, never shod have know'd you was from de Norf,” or whether it is best to say, “We depen's on de gemmen frum de Norf; folks down hyer never gives noflin; is too pore.” But to a Richmond man it is always, “The Yankee is mighty keerful of his money; we depen's on the old sort, marse.” A fine specimen of the “Richmond darkey” of the old school-polite, flattering, with a venerable head of gray wool, was the bartender, who mixed his juleps with a flourish as if keeping time to music. “Haven't I waited on you befo', sah? At Capon Springs? Sorry, sah, but tho't I knowed you when you come in. Sorry, but glad to know you now, sah. If that julep don't suit you, sah, throw it in my face.”
A friendly, restful, family sort of place, with music, a little mild dancing, mostly performed by children, in the pavilion, driving and riding-in short, peace in the midst of noble scenery. No display of fashion, the artist soon discovered, and he said he longed to give the pretty girls some instruction in the art of dress. Forbes was a missionary of “style.” It hurt his sense of the fitness of things to see women without it. He used to say that an ill-dressed woman would spoil the finest landscape. For such a man, with an artistic feeling so sensitive, the White Sulphur Springs is a natural goal. And he and his friend hastened thither with as much speed as the Virginia railways, whose time-tables are carefully adjusted to miss all connections, permit.
“What do you think of a place,” he wrote Miss Lamont—the girl read me a portion of his lively letter that summer at Saratoga—“into which you come by a belated train at half-past eleven at night, find friends waiting up for you in evening costume, are taken to a champagne supper at twelve, get to your quarters at one, and have your baggage delivered to you at two o'clock in the morning?” The friends were lodged in “Paradise Row”—a whimsical name given to one of the quarters assigned to single gentlemen. Put into these single-room barracks, which were neat but exceedingly primitive in their accommodations, by hilarious negro attendants who appeared to regard life as one prolonged lark, and who avowed that there was no time of day or night when a mint-julep or any other necessary of life would not be forthcoming at a moment's warning, the beginning of their sojourn at “The White” took on an air of adventure, and the two strangers had the impression of having dropped into a garrison somewhere on the frontier. But when King stepped out upon the gallery, in the fresh summer morning, the scene that met his eyes was one of such peaceful dignity, and so different from any in his experience, that he was aware that he had come upon an original development of watering-place life.
The White Sulphur has been for the better part of a century, as everybody knows, the typical Southern resort, the rendezvous of all that was most characteristic in the society of the whole South, the meeting-place of its politicians, the haunt of its belles, the arena of gayety, intrigue, and fashion. If tradition is to be believed, here in years gone by were concocted the measures that were subsequently deployed for the government of the country at Washington, here historic matches were made, here beauty had triumphs that were the talk of a generation, here hearts were broken at a ball and mended in Lovers' Walk, and here fortunes were nightly lost and won. It must have been in its material conditions a primitive place in the days of its greatest fame. Visitors came to it in their carriages and unwieldy four-horse chariots, attended by troops of servants, making slow but most enjoyable pilgrimages over the mountain roads, journeys that lasted a week or a fortnight, and were every day enlivened by jovial adventure. They came for the season. They were all of one social order, and needed no introduction; those from Virginia were all related to each other, and though life there was somewhat in the nature of a picnic, it had its very well-defined and ceremonious code of etiquette. In the memory of its old habitues it was at once the freest and the most aristocratic assembly in the world. The hotel was small and its arrangements primitive; a good many of the visitors had their own cottages, and the rows of these cheap structures took their names from their occupants. The Southern presidents, the senators, and statesmen, the rich planters, lived in cottages which still have an historic interest in their memory. But cottage life was never the exclusive affair that it is elsewhere; the society was one body, and the hotel was the centre.
Time has greatly changed the White Sulphur; doubtless in its physical aspect it never was so beautiful and attractive as it is today, but all the modern improvements have not destroyed the character of the resort, which possesses a great many of its primitive and old-time peculiarities. Briefly the White is an elevated and charming mountain region, so cool, in fact, especially at night, that the “season” is practically limited to July and August, although I am not sure but a quiet person, who likes invigorating air, and has no daughters to marry off, would find it equally attractive in September and October, when the autumn foliage is in its glory. In a green rolling interval, planted with noble trees and flanked by moderate hills, stands the vast white caravansary, having wide galleries and big pillars running round three sides. The front and two sides are elevated, the galleries being reached by flights of steps, and affording room underneath for the large billiard and bar-rooms. From the hotel the ground slopes down to the spring, which is surmounted by a round canopy on white columns, and below is an opening across the stream to the race-track, the servants' quarters, and a fine view of receding hills. Three sides of this charming park are enclosed by the cottages and cabins, which back against the hills, and are more or less embowered in trees. Most of these cottages are built in blocks and rows, some single rooms, others large enough to accommodate a family, but all reached by flights of steps, all with verandas, and most of them connected by galleries. Occasionally the forest trees have been left, and the galleries built around them. Included in the premises are two churches, a gambling-house, a couple of country stores, and a post-office. There are none of the shops common at watering-places for the sale of fancy articles, and, strange to say, flowers are not systematically cultivated, and very few are ever to be had. The hotel has a vast dining-room, besides the minor eating-rooms for children and nurses, a large ballroom, and a drawing-room of imposing dimensions. Hotel and cottages together, it is said, can lodge fifteen hundred guests.
The natural beauty of the place is very great, and fortunately there is not much smart and fantastic architecture to interfere with it. I cannot say whether the knowledge that Irene was in one of the cottages affected King's judgment, but that morning, when he strolled to the upper part of the grounds before breakfast, he thought he had never beheld a scene of more beauty and dignity, as he looked over the mass of hotel buildings, upon the park set with a wonderful variety of dark green foliage, upon the elevated rows of galleried cottages marked by colonial simplicity, and the soft contour of the hills, which satisfy the eye in their delicate blending of every shade of green and brown. And after an acquaintance of a couple of weeks the place seemed to him ravishingly beautiful.
King was always raving about the White Sulphur after he came North, and one never could tell how much his judgment was colored by his peculiar experiences there. It was my impression that if he had spent those two weeks on a barren rock in the ocean, with only one fair spirit for his minister, he would have sworn that it was the most lovely spot on the face of the earth. He always declared that it was the most friendly, cordial society at this resort in the country. At breakfast he knew scarcely any one in the vast dining-room, except the New Orleans and Richmond friends with whom he had a seat at table. But their acquaintance sufficed to establish his position. Before dinner-time he knew half a hundred; in the evening his introductions had run up into the hundreds, and he felt that he had potential friends in every Southern city; and before the week was over there was not one of the thousand guests he did not know or might not know. At his table he heard Irene spoken of and her beauty commented on. Two or three days had been enough to give her a reputation in a society that is exceedingly sensitive to beauty. The men were all ready to do her homage, and the women took her into favor as soon as they saw that Mr. Meigs, whose social position was perfectly well known, was of her party. The society of the White Sulphur seems perfectly easy of access, but the ineligible will find that it is able, like that of Washington, to protect itself. It was not without a little shock that King heard the good points, the style, the physical perfections, of Irene so fully commented on, and not without some alarm that he heard predicted for her a very successful career as a belle.
Coming out from breakfast, the Benson party were encountered on the gallery, and introductions followed. It was a trying five minutes for King, who felt as guilty, as if the White Sulphur were private property into which he had intruded without an invitation. There was in the civility of Mr. Meigs no sign of an invitation. Mrs. Benson said she was never so surprised in her life, and the surprise seemed not exactly an agreeable one, but Mr. Benson looked a great deal more pleased than astonished. The slight flush in Irene's face as she greeted him might have been wholly due to the unexpectedness of the meeting. Some of the gentlemen lounged off to the office region for politics and cigars, the elderly ladies took seats upon the gallery, and the rest of the party strolled down to the benches under the trees.