Chronicles of Chicora Wood

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

be allowed to take something nice from the dinner-table to him every day, which seemed to please my aunt, and was the thing in the day that gave me most pleasure. One day just before dinner-time this boy called to me: “Come, Bessie, quick. Joe wants to speak to you.” I ran breathless, right up the steps, into the room, up to the bed. Joe was just in the agonies of death; a silver dollar hung over each eye—the negro method of closing the eyes in death—his mouth open and teeth all exposed with the last struggle for breath, and the terrible rattle in his throat! No words can describe the effect it had upon me. Day and night he was before my eyes, and the dread sound was in my ears. I became really ill nervously, and they had to pet me and feed me up, and dose me with stimulants.

I don’t remember anything more until I was back at home on the plantation with mamma and papa and Della all there, and seeing the lovely things they had brought for us. Then, too, I heard I was not to go to boarding-school again, but was to live with the family in the beautiful house papa had bought and given to mamma in Meeting Street, next to the Scotch church.

Papa brought with him from Paris a beautiful piano mechanique. It was an upright rosewood piano which could be played naturally like any other, but when you closed the lid on the keys you could open the top, and there was a tiny railroad-track on which you put wooden blocks about one-half inch thick, eight inches long and four wide, and having wires inserted into them much like a wool or cotton card. There was a handle which turned and carried these little flat cars along the track, but it took great skill to turn the handle evenly with the right hand and adjust the little flat cars with the left hand so that they would touch each other and make no break in the music. But dear Nelson, our head house-servant, soon learned to do it beautifully, and it was the greatest delight to him and he was ready to play all the evening. Now that there are so many inventions to give music this does not seem remarkable, but in 1855 it was most wonderful, and the greatest possible joy. We heard all the most beautiful operas and classical music that we never would have heard or known anything about. The music came in little wooden boxes about two feet long and six inches wide and high. They occupied a corner in the drawing-room, and when piled were about four feet high and four feet wide. The dear little piano was moved during the war to the interior where we refugeed, and it is still in the family—very tired, but still sweet in tone. But the boxes of music were lost during the war. I have often regretted it greatly, because it seems to me it was quite as beautiful as any of the machines I have heard since, and the collection of music was so fine. This piano cost $1,000 in Paris, besides the heavy expense of bringing it over to this country.

My sister took music lessons while in Paris from M. Lestoquoi, a distinguished pianist, and made great strides in her playing; she really was a beautiful musician.

My father was elected governor of the State the next year and as there would be necessarily a great deal of entertaining in which Della would have to take part, papa decided that it would be best for her not to return to school, as it would be impossible for her to keep her mind on her studies. So, though she was only sixteen, she left school. There were balls and receptions and dinners, and though I had no part in them, it was hard for me to study.

All my sister’s ball dresses came from Paris, and it was the most exciting thing to see her dress for a ball. At that time they wore the most beautiful artificial flowers, and I especially remember Della in a frock of tulle—little pleatings from waist to floor of white tulle and then pink tulle, and long garlands of apple-blossoms with silver stamen, and a light garland twined in her smooth, glossy brown hair. She was a picture, truly, and naturally she was a great belle and had many suitors. She did not care for attention at all, and I think that only made her the more attractive. She was not allowed to dance the “round dances,” as they were called—the waltz, the polka, and the mazurka—as only what was considered the fast set danced them; and a ring of spectators would form round the room to watch the eight or ten girls who were so bold as to dance them.

The proprieties were really worshipped at that time. I remember hearing Della severely scolded for having answered a note from a young man asking her to ride on horseback with him, in the first person. Poor Della said: “But how else could I write, mamma?”

“You should have written: ‘Miss Allston regrets that she will not be able to ride with Mr. Blank this afternoon.’”

Such a thing as driving with a young man was not possible, though at that time all the men had fine horses and buggies. But my sister, being a very good horsewoman, was allowed to ride occasionally with a young man. Girls were not allowed to receive visitors without a chaperon being in the room. Mamma found this part of her duty very trying, so I was sent to study my lessons in the east drawing-room, where my sister received her visitors; and I certainly enjoyed the situation, if no one else did. There was a beautiful drop-light on the table by which I studied at one end of the room. I always murmured my lessons aloud as I swayed backward and forward, to give the impression that I was oblivious to all but my book. But little escaped my ears. As a rule I thought the conversation dull, but one night I heard the young man say, laying his hand on the marble table beside them: “Have you ever seen any one as cold as this marble?”