XXXVII
THE PANIC OF ’61—A VIRGINIA VACATION—MUTTERINGS OF COMING STORM
Bayard Taylor said to me once of a publishing house, “An honest firm, but one that has an incorrigible habit of failing!”
The habit was epidemic in the first half of 1861. Among others who caught the trick were my publishers. Like a thunderbolt came the announcement, when I was expecting my February semi-annual remittance of fat royalties: “We regret to inform you that we have been compelled to succumb to the stringency of the times.”
The political heavens were black with storm-clouds, and, as was inevitable then, and is now, the monetary market shut its jaws tightly upon everything within reach. We could not reasonably have expected immunity, but we had. We had never known the pinch of financial “difficulties.” Prudent salaried men are the last to feel hard times, if their wage is paid regularly. I had three books in the hands of the “failing” firm. All were “good sellers,” and I had come to look upon royalties as my husband regarded his salary, as a sure and certain source of revenue.
We had other and what appeared to us graver anxieties. My sister Alice had passed the winter with us, and the climate had told unhappily upon her throat. My husband had not escaped injury from the pernicious sea-fogs and the malarial marshes, over which the breath of the Atlantic flowed in upon us. He had a bronchial cough that defied medical treatment; and March, the worst month of the twelve for tender throats and susceptible lungs, would soon be upon us. His physician, a warm personal friend, ordered him South, and the church seconded the advice by a formal grant of an out-of-season vacation. We did not change our main plan in consequence of the disappointment as to funds. Nor did we noise our loss abroad. Somehow, the truth leaked out. Not a word of condolence was breathed to us. But on the afternoon of the day but one before that set for our departure, the daughter of a neighborly parishioner dropped in to leave a basket of flowers, and to say that her father and mother “would like to call that evening, if we were to be at home.” I answered that we should be glad to see them, and notified my husband of the impending call. The expected couple appeared at eight o’clock, and by nine the parlors were thronged with guests who “dropped in, in passing, to say ‘Good-bye.’” None stayed late, and before any took leave, there was the presentation of a parcel, through the hands of Edgar Farmer, a member of the Consistory, who, in days to come, was to be to my husband as David to Jonathan. He was young then, and of a goodly presence, with bright, kind eyes and a happy gift of speech. Neither Mr. Terhune nor I had any misgivings of what was in prospect, when he was asked to step forward and face the spokesman deputed to wish us Bon voyage and recovery of health in our old home. Mr. Farmer said this felicitously, and with genuine feeling. Then he asked the pastor’s acceptance of a parcel “containing reading-matter for the journey.”
The reading-matter was bank-bills, the amount of which made us open our eyes wide when the company had dispersed and we undid the ribbons binding the “literature.”
That was their way of doing things in the “Old First.” A way they never lost. In a dozen-and-a-half years we should have become used to it, but we never did. Each new manifestation of the esteem in which they held their leader, and of the royally generous spirit that interfused the whole church, as it might the body and soul of one man, remained to the last a fresh and delicious surprise.
Ten days out of the six weeks of our vacation were spent in Charlotte. Mr. Terhune’s successor was Rev. Henry C. Alexander, one of a family of notable divines whose praise is in all the Presbyterian churches. He was a bachelor, and the “nest among the oaks” was rented to an acquaintance. I did not enter it then, or ever again. I even looked the other way when we drove or walked past the gate and grove. To let this weakness be seen would have been ungracious, in the face of the hospitalities enlapping us during every hour of our stay. We dined with one family, supped with another, spent the night and breakfasted with a third, and there was ever a houseful of old friends to meet us. My husband wrote to his father: