XXII.
A drive into the country—Pleasant road—Charming villa—Children at play—Governess—Diversities of society—Education in Louisiana—Visit to a sugar-house—Description of sugar-making, &c.—A plantation scene—A planter's grounds—Children—Trumpeter—Pointer—Return to the city.
This is the last day of my sojourn in the great emporium of the south-west. To-morrow will find me threading the majestic sinuosities of the Mississippi, the prisoner of one of its mammoth steamers, on my way to the state whose broad fields and undulating hills are annually whitened with the fleece-like cotton, and whose majestic forests glitter with the magnificent and silvery magnolia—where the men are chivalrous, generous, and social, and the women so lovely,
—— "that the same lips and eyes
They wear on earth will serve in Paradise."
A gentleman to whom I brought a letter of introduction called yesterday—a strange thing for men so honoured to do—and invited me to ride with him to his plantation, a few miles from the city. He drove his own phaeton, which was drawn by two beautiful long-tailed bays. After a drive of a mile and a half, we cleared the limits of the straggling, and apparently interminable faubourgs, and, emerging through a long narrow street upon the river road, bounded swiftly over its level surface, which was as smooth as a bowling-green—saving a mud-hole now and then, where a crevasse had let in upon it a portion of the Mississippi. An hour's drive, after clearing the suburbs, past a succession of isolated villas, encircled by slender columns and airy galleries, and surrounded by richly foliaged gardens, whose fences were bursting with the luxuriance which they could scarcely confine, brought us in front of a charming residence situated at the head of a broad, gravelled avenue, bordered by lemon and orange trees, forming in the heat of summer, by arching naturally overhead, a cool and shady promenade. We drew up at the massive gateway and alighted. As we entered the avenue, three or four children were playing at its farther extremity, with noise enough for Christmas holidays; two of them were trundling hoops in a race, and a third sat astride of a non-locomotive wooden horse, waving a tin sword, and charging at half a dozen young slaves, who were testifying their bellicose feelings by dancing and shouting around him with the noisiest merriment.
"Pa! pa!" shouted the hoop-drivers as they discovered our approach—"Oh, there's pa!" re-echoed the pantalette dragoon, dismounting from his dull steed, and making use of his own chubby legs as the most speedy way of advancing, "oh, my papa!"—and, sword and hoops in hand, down they all came upon the run to meet us, followed helter-skelter by their ebony troop, who scattered the gravel around them like hail as they raced, turning summersets over each other, without much diminution of their speed. They came down upon us altogether with such momentum, that we were like to be carried from our feet by this novel charge of infantry and laid hors du combat, upon the ground. The playful and affectionate congratulations over between the noble little fellows and their parent, we walked toward the house, preceded by our trundlers, with the young soldier hand-in-hand between us, followed close behind by the little Africans, whose round shining eyes glistened wishfully—speaking as plainly as eyes could speak the strong desire, with which their half-naked limbs evidently sympathized by their restless motions, to bound ahead, contrary to decorum, "wid de young massas!"
Around the semi-circular flight of steps, ascending to the piazza of the dwelling,—the columns of which were festooned with the golden jasmine and luxuriant multiflora,—stood, in large green vases, a variety of flowers, among which I observed the tiny flowerets of the diamond myrtle, sparkling like crystals of snow, scattered upon rich green leaves—the dark foliaged Arabian jasmine silvered with its opulently-leaved flowers redolent of the sweetest perfume,—and the rose-geranium, breathing gales of fragrance upon the air. From this point the main avenue branches to the right and left, into narrower, yet not less beautiful walks, which, lined with evergreen and flowering shrubs, completely encircled the cottage. At the head of the flight of steps which led from this Hesperean spot to the portico, we were met by a little golden-haired fairy, as light in her motion as a zephyr, and with a cheek—not alabaster, indeed, for that is an exotic in the south—but like a lily, shaded by a rose leaf, and an eye of the purest hue, melting in its own light. With an exclamation of delight she sprang into her father's arms. I was soon seated upon one of the settees in the piazza,—whose front and sides were festooned by the folds of a green curtain—in a high frolic with the trundlers, the dismounted dragoon and my little winged zephyr. You know my penchant for children's society. I am seldom happier than when watching a group of intelligent and beautiful little ones at play. For those who can in after life enter con amore, into the sports of children, tumble with and be tumbled about by them, it is like living their childhood over again. Every romp with them is death to a score of gray hairs. Their games, moreover, present such a contrast to the rougher contests of bearded children in the game of life, where money, power, and ambition are the stake, that it is refreshing to look at them and mingle with them, even were it only to realize that human nature yet retains something of its divine original.
The proprietor of the delightful spot which lay spread out around me—a lake of foliage—fringed by majestic forest trees, and diversified with labyrinthyne walks,—had, the preceding summer, consigned to the tomb the mother of his "beautiful ones." They were under the care of a dignified lady, his sister, and the widow of a gentleman formerly distinguished as a lawyer in New-England. But like many other northern ladies, whose names confer honour upon our literature, and whose talents elevate and enrich our female seminaries of education, she had independence enough to rise superior to her widowed indigence; and had prepared to open a boarding school at the north, when the death of his wife led her wealthier brother to invite her to supply a mother's place to his children, to whom she was now both mother and governess. The history of this lady is that of hundreds of her country-women. There are, I am informed, many instances in the south-west, of New-England's daughters having sought, with the genuine spirit of independence, thus to repair their broken fortunes. The intelligent and very agreeable lady of the late President H., of Lexington, resides in the capacity of governess in a distinguished Louisianian family, not far from the city. Mrs. Thayer, formerly an admired poet and an interesting writer of fiction, is at the head of a seminary in an adjoining state. And in the same, the widow of the late president of its college is a private instructress in the family of a planter. And these are instances, to which I can add many others, in a country where the occupation of instructing, whether invested in the president of a college or in the teacher of a country school, is degraded to a secondary rank. In New-England, on the contrary, the lady of a living collegiate president is of the élite, decidedly, if not at the head, of what is there termed "good society." Here, the same lady, whether a visiter for the winter, or a settled resident, must yield in rank—as the laws of southern society have laid it down—to the lady of the planter. The southerners, however, when they can secure one of our well-educated northern ladies in their families, know well how to appreciate their good fortune. Inmates of the family, they are treated with politeness and kindness; but in the soirée, dinner party, or levée, the governess is thrown more into the back-ground than she would be in a gentleman's family, even in aristocratic England; and her title to an equality with the gay, and fashionable, and wealthy circle by whom she is surrounded, and her challenge to the right of caste, is less readily admitted. But this illiberal jealousy is the natural consequence of the crude state of American society, where the line of demarcation between its rapidly forming classes is yet so uncertainly defined, that each individual who is anxious to be, or even to be thought, of the better file, has to walk circumspectly, lest he should inadvertently be found mingling with the canaille. The more uncertain any individual is of his own true standing, the more haughtily and suspiciously will he stand aloof, and measure with his eye every stranger who advances within the limits of the prescribed circle.
Education in this state has been and is still very much neglected. Appropriations have been made for public schools; but, from the fund established for the purpose, not much has as yet been effected. Many of the males, after leaving the city-schools, or the care of tutors, are sent, if destined for a professional career, to the northern colleges; others to the Catholic institutions at St. Louis and Bardstown, and a few of the wealthier young gentlemen to France. The females are educated, either by governesses, at the convents, or at northern boarding-schools. Many of them are sent to Paris when very young, and there remain until they have completed their education. The majority of the higher classes of the French population are brought up there. This custom of foreign education—like that in the Atlantic states, under the old regime, when, to be educated a gentleman, it was considered necessary for American youth to enter at Eton, and graduate from Oxford or Cambridge—must have a very natural tendency to preserve and cherish an attachment for France, seriously detrimental to genuine patriotism.—But all this is a digression.