Dorothy South: A Love Story of Virginia Just Before the War

by George Cary Eggleston

“I went at once and found her in very pitiful condition. Her apartments were mere garrets, ill furnished and utterly uncomfortable, and she herself was manifestly suffering. When I asked her why she had not sent for me before, she answered: ‘It was better not, child. You were in your proper place. You were happy. You were receiving social recognition of the highest kind and it was good for you because you are fit for it and deserve it. I have sent for you now only because I have something that I must give to you before I die. For I’m going to die almost immediately.’ She wouldn’t let me interrupt her. ‘I’m going to have a surgical operation tomorrow, and I do not expect to get over it.’

“I found out presently that she was going to a charity hospital for her treatment, and that it was because she is so poor; for by reason of her sickness, she has lost her employment, which was that of a dresser for an opera company. Think of it, Cousin Arthur! My mother,—though I didn’t know then that she was my mother—a dresser to those opera people! I’m glad she didn’t tell me she was my mother until after I had told her she should not go to a charity hospital, to be operated on before a class of gaping students and treated very much as if she were a subject in a dissecting room. I took all that in my own hands. I went down to the concierge and secured a comfortable apartment for my mother on the entresol, with a nice French maid to look after her. Then I sent for the best surgeon I could hear of to treat her, and he promised me to get her quite well again in a few weeks, which he has done. It was after I had moved her down to the new apartments and sent the maid out for a little dinner—for my mother hadn’t anything to eat or any money—it was after all that that she told me her story.

“First she gave me a magnificent ring, a beautiful fire opal set round with diamonds. Think of it! She with that in her possession and belonging to her, which would have sold for enough to keep her in luxury for months, yet shivering there without a fire and without food, and waiting for the morrow, to go to a charity hospital like a pauper, while I have the best rooms in the best hotel in Paris! And she my mother, all the while!

“When she put the ring on my finger, saying, ‘It fits you as it once fitted me—but you are worthy of it as I never was,’ I cried a little and begged her to tell me what it all meant. Then she broke down and, clasping me in her arms, told me that she was my own mother. I won’t tell you all the details of our weeping time, for they are too sacred even for you to hear. Let me simply copy here, as accurately as I can, my mother’s account of herself.

“ ‘I was born,’ she said, ‘the daughter of a Virginian of good family—as good as any. My father lived as many Virginians do, far beyond his means. Perhaps he did wrong things—I do not know, and after all it is no matter. At any rate when he died people seemed to care very little for us—my mother and me—when everything we had was sold and we went out into the world to hunt for bread. I was seventeen then, I had what they call a genius for music. We went to New York and lived wretchedly there for a time. But I earned something with my violin and my ’cello, and now and then by singing, for I had a voice that was deemed good. We lived in that wretched, ill-mannered, loose-moraled, dissolute and financially reckless set which calls itself Bohemia, and excuses itself from all social and moral obligation on the ground that its members are persons of genius, though in fact most of them are anything else. My mother never liked these people. She simply tolerated them, and she did that only because she had no choice. She did her best to shield me against harm to my soul in contact with them, but she could not prevent the contact itself. Our bread and butter and the roof over our heads depended upon that. Finally there came into our set a manager who was looking out for opportunities. He heard me play, and he heard me sing. He proposed that I should go to Europe for instruction at his expense, and that he should bring me out as a genius in the autumn. I went, and I received some brief instruction of great value to me—not that it made me a better musician but that it taught me how to captivate an audience with such gifts as I had. Well the manager brought me out, and I succeeded even beyond his expectations. I don’t think it was my musical ability altogether, though that was thought to be remarkable, I believe. I was beautiful then, as you are now, Dorothy; I had all the charm of a willowy grace, which, added to my beauty, made men and women go mad over me. I made money in abundance for my manager, and that was all that he cared for. I made money for myself too, and my mother and I were eagerly sought after by the leaders of fashion. We ceased to know the old Bohemia and came to be members of a new and perhaps not a better set—except in its conformity to those rules of life which are supposed to hedge respectability about, without really improving its morals. For I tell you child I saw more of real wickedness in my contact with those who call themselves the socially elect than I ever dreamed of among my old-time Bohemian associates. The only advantage these dissolutes had over the others was, that having bank accounts they drew checks for their debts where the others shirked and shuffled to escape from theirs.

“ ‘I was glad, therefore, when your father came into my life. He was a man of a higher type than any that I had known since early childhood—a man of integrity, of honor, of high purposes. His courtesy was exquisite, and it was sincere. It is often said of a man that he would not tell a lie to save his life. Your father went further than that, my child. He would not tell a lie even to please a woman, and with such a man as he was, pleasing a woman was a stronger temptation than saving his life. He was in New York taking a supplementary medical course—what they now call a post graduate course,—in order, as he said, that he might the better fulfil his life-saving mission as a physician. He fell madly in love with me, and I—God help me! I loved him as well as one of my shallow nature and irregular bringing up could love any man. After a little I married him. I went with him for a brief trip abroad, and after that I went to be mistress of Pocahontas. I looked forward longingly to the beautiful life of refinement there, as he so often pictured it to me. I was tired of the whirl and excitement. I was weary of the footlights and of having to take my applause and my approval over the heads of the orchestra. I thought I should be perfectly happy, playing grand lady in an old, historic Virginia house. I was only nineteen years old then,—I am well under forty still—and for a time I did enjoy the new life amazingly. But after a little it wearied me. It seemed to me too narrow, too conventional, too uninteresting. When I had company and poured my whole soul into a violin obligato,—rendering the great music in a way which had often brought down the house and called for repeated encores while delighted audiences threatened to bury me under flowers—when I did that sort of thing at Pocahontas, the guests would say coldly how well I played and all the other parrot like things that people say when they mean to be polite but have no real appreciation of music. Little by little I grew utterly weary of the life. The very things in it that had at first delighted and rested me, became like thorns in my flesh. As the rescued children of Israel longed for the flesh pots of Egypt, so at last I came to long again for the delights of the old life on the stage, with its excitements, its ever changing pleasures, its triumphs and even its failures and disappointments. Yet it was not so much a longing for that old life which oppressed me, as an intolerable impatience to get out of the new one from which I had expected so much of happiness. It seemed to me a tread-mill life of self-indulgence. I was surrounded by every luxury that a well-ordered woman could desire. But I was not a well-ordered woman, and the very luxury of my surroundings, the very exemption they gave me from all care, all responsibility, all endeavor, seemed to drive me almost insane with impatience. I had nothing to do. I was surrounded by skilled servants who provokingly anticipated every wish I could form. If I wanted even to rinse my fingers after eating a peach, I was not permitted to do it in any ordinary way. There was always a maid standing ready with a bowl and napkin for my use. My bed was prepared for me before I went to it, and the maid waited to put out the candle after I had gone to rest. Your father worshipped me, and surrounded me with attentions on his own part and on that of others, which were intolerable in the perfection of their service. I knew that I was not worthy of his worship and I often told him so, to no effect. He only worshipped me the more. The only time I ever saw him angry was once soon after you were born. I loved you as I had never dreamed of loving anybody or anything before in my life—even better ten thousand times than I had ever loved music itself. I wanted to do something for you with my own hands. I wanted to feel that I was your mother and you altogether my own child.

“ ‘So, just as old mammy was preparing to give you your bath, I pretended to be faint and sent her below stairs to bring me a cup of coffee. When she had gone I seized you and in ecstatic triumph, set to work to make your little baby toilet with my own hands. Just as I began, your father came stalking up the stairs and entered the nursery. For mammy had told him I was faint, and he had hurried to my relief. When he found me bathing you he rang violently for all the servants within call and as they came one after another upon the scene he challenged each to know why their mistress was thus left to do servile offices for herself. But for my pleading I think he would have taken the whole company of them out to the barn and chastised them with his own hand, though I had never known him to strike a servant.

“ ‘I know now that I ought to have explained the matter to him. I ought to have told him how the mother love in me longed to do something for you. I know he would have understood even in his rage over what he regarded as neglect of me, and he would have sympathized with my feeling. But I was enraged at the baffling of my purpose, and I hastily put on a riding habit, mounted my horse, which, your father, seeing my purpose, promptly ordered brought to the block, and rode away, unattended except by a negro groom. For when your father offered his escort I declined it, begging him to let me ride alone.

“ ‘It was not long after that that I sat hour after hour by your cradle, composing a lullaby which should be altogether your own, and as worthy of you as I could make it. When the words and the music were complete and satisfying to my soul, I began singing the little song to you, and your father, whose love of music was intense, seemed entranced with it. He would beg me often to sing it, and to play the violin accompaniment I had composed to go with it. I would never do so except over your cradle. Understand me, child, if you can understand one of so wayward a temper as mine. I had put all my soul into that lullaby. Every word in it, every note of the music, was an expression of my mother love—the best there was in me. I was jealous of it for you. I would not allow even your father to hear a note of that outpouring of my love for my child, except as a listener while I sang and played for you alone. So your cradle with you in it must always be brought before I would let your father hear.

“ ‘One day, when you were six or eight months old, we had a houseful of guests, as we often did at Pocahontas. They stayed over night of course, and in the evening when I asked their indulgence while I should go and sing you to sleep, your father madly pleaded that I should sing and play the lullaby in the drawing room in order that the guests might hear what he assured them was his supreme favorite among all musical compositions. I suppose I was in a more than usually complaisant mood. At any rate, I allowed myself to