Hospitality.
Extravagance in living was further stimulated by the regal hospitality for which the great planters early became famous. Although the life upon their estates was much more busy than some writers seem to suppose, yet the drudgery of business did not consume all their time; and in their rural isolation, with none of the diversions of town life, the entertainment of guests by the month together was regarded both as a duty and as a privilege; and the example set by the large plantations was followed by the smaller. Even the keeper of an inn, if he wished to make a charge for food and shelter, must notify the guest upon his arrival, for a statute of 1663 declared that in the absence of such preliminary understanding not a penny could be recovered from the guest, however long he might have staid in the house.[197] As a rule, no person whose company was at all desirable was allowed to stop at an inn, for the neighbours vied with one another in offering hospitality. Every planter kept open house, and provided for his visitors with unstinted hand.
Visit to a plantation; the negro quarter.
Let us put ourselves into the position of one of these visitors, and get some glimpses of life upon the old plantation. Our host we may suppose to be a vestryman, justice of the peace, and burgess, dwelling upon a plantation of five or six thousand acres, with his next neighbours at a distance of two or three miles.[198] The space is in great part cleared for the planting of vast fields of tobacco, but here and there are extensive stretches of woodland and coppice, with noble forest trees and luxuriant undergrowth, much rougher and wilder than an English park. The cabins for slaves present the appearance of a hamlet. These are wooden structures of the humblest sort, built of logs or undressed planks, and afflicted with chronic dilapidation. An inventory of 1697 shows us that the cabin might contain a bed and a few chairs, two or three pots and kettles, “a pair of pot-racks, a pot-hook, a frying-pan, and a beer barrel;” and advertisements for runaways describe Cuffy and Pompey as clad in red cotton, with canvas drawers, waistcoat, and wide-brimmed black hat. Their victuals, of “hog and hominy” with potatoes and green vegetables, were wholesome and palatable. If there were white servants on the estate, they were commonly but not necessarily somewhat better housed and clothed.
Other appurtenances.
The Great House.
Leaving the negro quarters, with their grinning mammies and swarms of woolly pickaninnies, one would presently come upon other outbuildings; the ample barns for tobacco and granaries for corn, the stable, the cattle-pens, a hen-coop and a dove-cot, a dairy, and in some cases a malt-house, or perhaps, as we have seen, a country store. There were brick ovens for curing hams and bacon; and the kitchen likewise stood apart from the mansion, which was thus free from kitchen odours and from undue heating in summer time. There was a vegetable garden, with “all the culinary plants that grow in England, and in far greater perfection,” besides “roots, herbs, vine-fruits, and salad-flowers peculiar to themselves,” and excellent for a relish with meat.[199] Nearer to the house, among redolent flower-beds gay with varied colours, some vine-clad arbour afforded shelter from the sun. A short walk across the mown space shaded by large trees, called, as in New England, the yard, would bring us to the mansion, very commonly known as the Great House. From this epithet no sure inference can be drawn as to the size of the building, for it simply served to contrast it with its dependent cabins and outhouses. It was often called the Home House. It was apt to stand upon a rising ground, and from its porch you might look down at the blue river and the little wharf, known as “the landing,” with pinnaces moored hard by and canoes lying lazily on the bank or suddenly darting out upon the water. Turning away from the river, the eye would rest upon an orchard bearing fruits in great variety, and a pasture devoted to horses of some special breed.
Brick and wooden houses.
The planter’s mansion might be built of wood or brick, but was comparatively seldom of stone. In tidewater Virginia, good stone for building purposes was not readily found, but there was an abundance of red clay from which excellent and durable brick could be made. A number of brick houses were built in the seventeenth century, but wood was much more commonly used, since the work of clearing away the forests furnished great quantities of timber of the finest quality. Among the many articles that were imported from England, bricks are not to be reckoned.[200] Brickmaking went on from the earliest days of the colony, and much of this work was done by white servants and freedmen. In course of time there came to be many brick houses, and chimneys were regularly of this material. For roofs the strong and durable cypress shingle was the material most commonly used. Partition walls, covered first with a tenacious clay and then white-washed, were very firm and solid. The glass windows, for protection against storms of a violence to which Englishmen had not been accustomed, had stout wooden shutters outside, which gave the house somewhat the look of a stronghold.
House architecture.