A Girl's Life in Virginia before the War

by Letitia M. Burwell

As I look upon these ladies as models for our sex through all time, I enumerate some of their charms:

Entire absence of pretense made them always attractive. Having no "parlor" or "company" manners to assume, they preserved at all times a gentle, natural, easy demeanor and conversation. They had not dipped into the sciences, attempted by some of our sex at the present day; but the study of Latin and French, with general reading in their mother tongue, rendered them intelligent companions for cultivated men. They also possessed the rare gift of reading well aloud, and wrote letters unsurpassed in penmanship and style.

Italian and German professors being rare in that day, their musical acquirements did not extend beyond the simplest piano accompaniments to old English and Scotch airs, which they sang in a sweet, natural voice, and which so enchanted the beaux of their time that the latter never afterward became reconciled to any higher order of music.

These model women also managed their household affairs admirably, and were uniformly kind to, but never familiar with, their servants. They kept ever before them the Bible as their constant guide and rule in life, and were surely, as nearly as possible, holy in thought, word, and deed. I have looked in vain for such women in other lands, but have failed to find them.

Then there were old gentlemen visitors, beaux of my grandmother's day, still wearing queues, wide-ruffled bosoms, short breeches, and knee buckles. These pronounced the a very broad, sat a long time over their wine at dinner, and carried in their pockets gold or silver snuffboxes presented by some distinguished individual at some remote period.

"THERE WERE OLD GENTLEMEN VISITORS."—Page 34.

Our visiting acquaintance extended from Botetourt County to Richmond, and among them were jolly old Virginia gentlemen and precise old Virginia gentlemen; eccentric old Virginia gentlemen and prosy old Virginia gentlemen; courtly old Virginia gentlemen and plain-mannered old Virginia gentlemen; charming old Virginia gentlemen and uninteresting old Virginia gentlemen. Many of them had graduated years and years ago at William and Mary College.

Then we had another set, of a later day,—those who graduated in the first graduating class at the University of Virginia when that institution was first established. These happened—all that we knew—to have belonged to the same class, and often amused us, without intending it, by reverting to that fact in these words:

"That was a remarkable class! Every man in that class made his mark in law, letters, or politics! Let me see: There was Toombs. There was Charles Mosby. There was Alexander Stuart. There was Burwell. There was R. M. T. Hunter,"—and so on, calling each by name except himself, knowing that the others never failed to do that!