Indeed these “old folks” talked so much about what “used to be in their day” at the old White Sulphur, I found it hard to convince myself I had not been bodily present, seeing with my own eyes certain knee-buckled old gentlemen, with long queues, and certain Virginia and South Carolina belles attired in short-waisted, simple white cambrics, who passed the summers there. These white cambrics, we were told, had been carried in minute trunks behind the carriages; and were considered, with a few jewels and a long black or white lace veil thrown over the head and shoulders, a complete outfit for the reigning belles! Another curiosity was, that these white cambric dresses—our grandmothers told us—required very little “doing up;” one such having been worn by Mrs. General Washington—so her granddaughter told me—a whole week without requiring washing! It must have been an age of remarkable women, and remarkable cambrics! How little they dreamed then of an era when Saratoga trunks would be indispensable to ladies of much smaller means than Virginia and South Carolina belles!
To reach these counties flowing with mineral waters the families from Eastern Virginia and from South Carolina passed through a beautiful region known as Piedmont, Va., and those who had “kinsfolk or acquaintance” here usually stopped to make them a visit. Consequently the Piedmont Virginians were generally too busy entertaining summer guests to visit the springs themselves. But indeed why should they? For no more salubrious climate could be found than their own; and no scenery more grand and beautiful. But it was necessary for the tide-water Virginians to leave their homes every summer on account of chills and fevers.
In the lovely Piedmont region over which the “Peaks of Otter” rear their giant heads, and chains of blue mountains extend as far as eye can reach, were scattered many pleasant and picturesque homes. And in this section my grandfather bought a plantation, when the ancestral estates had been sold, in the Eastern part of the State, to repay the British debt, which estates, homesteads and tombstones with their quaint inscriptions are described in Bishop Meade’s “Old Churches and Families of Virginia.”
While the tide water Virginians were already practicing all the arts and wiles known to the highest English civilization; were sending their sons to be educated in England; receiving brocaded silks and powdered wigs from England; and dancing the minuet at the Williamsburg balls with the families of the noblemen sent over to govern the Colony, Piedmont, Virginia, was still a dense forest, the abode of Indians and wild animals.
It was not strange, then, that the Piedmont Virginians never arrived at the opulent manner of living adopted by those on James and York rivers, who, tradition tells us, went to such excess in high living, as to have “hams boiled in champagne,” and of whom other traditions have been handed down amusing and interesting. Although the latter were in advance of the Piedmont Virginians in wealth and social advantages, they were not superior to them in honor, virtue, or kindness and hospitality.
It has been remarked that, “when natural scenery is picturesque there is in the human character something to correspond; impressions made on the retina are really made on the soul, and the mind becomes what it contemplates.”
The same author continues: “A man is not only like what he sees, but he is what he sees. The noble old Highlander has mountains in his soul, whose towering peaks point heavenward; and lakes in his bosom, whose glassy surface reflects the skies; and foaming cataracts in his heart to beautify the mountain side and irrigate the vale; and evergreen firs and mountain pines that show life and verdure even under winter skies!”
“On the other hand,” he writes, “the wandering nomad has a desert in his heart; its dead level reflects heat and hate; a sullen, barren plain—no goodness, no beauty, no dancing wave of joy, no gushing rivulet of love, no verdant hope. And it is an interesting fact that those who live in countries where natural scenery inspires the soul, and where the necessities of life bind to a permanent home, are always patriotic and high minded; and those who dwell in the desert are always pusillanimous and groveling!”
If what this author writes be true, and the character of the Piedmont Virginians accords with the scenery around them, how their hearts must be filled with gentleness and charity inspired by the landscape which stretches far and fades in softness against the sky! How must their minds be filled with noble aspirations suggested by the “everlasting mountains!” How their souls must be filled with thoughts of heaven, as they look upon the glorious sunsets bathing the mountains in “rose-colored light;” with the towering peaks ever pointing heavenward and seeming to say: “Behold the glory of a world beyond!”[5]