The Long Roll starts with the reading of the Botetourt Resolutions and it was in Buchanan, a village of Botetourt county, Virginia, that Mary Johnston, the daughter of John William Johnston and Elizabeth Alexander Johnston, was born on November 21, 1870. The Blue Ridge Mountains shadowed the town, which had been partly burned some six years earlier, the home of the Johnstons being one of many destroyed by the sweep of civil war. Three miles away ran a railroad. A stage-coach and canal boats joined Buchanan of the ’70s to the rest of the State and country. The village is unrecognizable now. It had a boom. There are two railroads. The old homes are in decay. The old families are spread afar.
The girl was frail and had to be educated at home. Her grandmother, a Scotchwoman, first taught her and afterward an aunt took her in hand. Major Johnston had a sizable library in which his daughter conducted her own explorations. Histories fascinated her. As she grew older governesses were employed. She did not go to school until she was sixteen and then for less than three months. The family had just moved to Birmingham, Alabama, at the behest of the father’s business and professional interests. Miss Johnston had been packed off to a finishing school in Atlanta. Her health could not stand it and she was brought home where, a year later, her mother died.
Major Johnston, a lawyer and ex-member of the Virginia Legislature, was interested in Southern railroads and had a hand in the beginnings of some of the business enterprises which give Birmingham its present industrial importance. The death of the mother left him with several children of whom Mary Johnston was the eldest. Upon her fell the direction of the household. It has been thought worthy of remark, in view of Miss Johnston’s activities as a suffragist, that she can keep house. She has not done so in later years for the very good reason that she has not had to. We come to that a little later, however.
Her writing was for some time done at no particular hour and in no especial place, but a good deal of it in the open air. Her first novel, Prisoners of Hope, published when she was twenty-eight, was begun while she was living at the San Remo in New York; and she wrote a large part of it in a quiet corner in Central Park. To Have and To Hold, appearing two years later and constituting a great popular success, was begun in Birmingham and completed mainly at a small Virginia mountain resort. The first draft was written with a lead pencil and revised with exceeding thoroughness, after which it was typewritten.
Major Johnston’s death sent his daughter to Richmond, where she made her home at 110 East Franklin street with her sisters, Eloise and Elizabeth Johnston, as the other members of the household. Miss Johnston’s father indubitably did a great deal to make possible The Long Roll and Cease Firing, her epics of the Civil War. Leaving aside the question of inherited traits and tastes we have to reflect that the father had served in the Confederate army throughout the whole war, gaining promotion to major in the artillery branch. He was wounded many times. He had not been a fire-eater nor an extreme partisan and it was not easy to get him to talk about the war. When he was launched on the subject his excellent military knowledge and his gift for vivid description enabled him to tell a wonderful story. He comprehended strategy and tactics; knew the personal bravery of the leaders on both sides; had seen nearly every aspect of the struggle. His daughter profited.
In Richmond, in the pleasant three-story “city” house with wisteria over the white porch columns, with microphylla rose vines, crinkled pink crape-myrtle and blossoming magnolias, Miss Johnston worked in a large, airy room fronting southeast and on the second floor. It was full of antique mahogany, books and pictures and not infrequently of friends come in for tea and grouped about a tea table. These invasions were possible in the afternoon. In the morning when the room was sunny Miss Johnston was busy writing or reading proofs or dictating; she had begun to dictate much of her work and afterward, at Warm Springs, Virginia, where she went to work upon The Long Roll and Cease Firing, the rattle of typewriters came to the ears of visitors to the resort like a faint crackling of musketry, an echo of that conflict which they were busied to portray.
Miss Johnston began early to travel. She has spent winters in Egypt, springs in Italy, Southern France; summers in England and Scotland; Sicily, Switzerland and Paris are part of her experience. These journeys have been partly a matter of health. It must never be forgotten in estimating Miss Johnston’s achievement that, as with Stevenson, it has been a continual struggle with illness that she has had to go through. Her will has driven her on. Perhaps, as where electricity encounters high resistance, the result has been a brighter, more incandescent flame.
With Richmond as a base the author made many excursions to Virginia resorts, but chiefly to Warm Springs. The cottage that she occupied there was at one time occupied by General Lee. Lewis Rand was written on its porch; later she worked there on her Civil War novels. Eventually she built herself a home called Three Hills on a slope half a mile away from Warm Springs and above the hollow in which the settlement lies. Off to the south from Three Hills curves the road to Hot Springs. Do not confuse Warm Springs and Hot Springs, known locally as “The Warm” and “The Hot” and distinguishable because The Warm is hotter than The Hot! Three Hills is a witness to a certain recovery of health for its owner, making it possible for Miss Johnston at last to have a permanent home.
There are forty-odd acres, mostly left as nature has disposed them, with here and there a few stone steps to help you up a slope. The house is large, roomy, with enclosed porches and sleeping porches, with segments and adjuncts which make it a large L. Miss Johnston’s study gives upon a formal garden centered about a sundial and bird bath of carved stone. Neat brick walks go between hedge plants sent by friends in Holland. Flowers execute the processional of the seasons.
Steps and porches of red brick are set almost level with the grass. The broad hall runs back to the garden and gives upon the study and the sun parlor. Eloise Johnston is her sister’s house director. There are jam closets, linen closets and a cedar room. Walled off from the garden are the kitchen and servants’ dining-room. The servants, in the style of the South, live in their own cottages. The hospitality of an older South is maintained without abatement.