Another day (the Sabbath) we called on our way from church to see Mrs. Wigfall. She was ill, but Mr. Wigfall insisted upon taking me into the drawing-room to rest a while. He said Louly was there; so she was, and so was Sam Hood, the wounded knight, stretched at full length on a sofa and a rug thrown over him. Louis Wigfall said to me: “Do you know General Hood?” “Yes,” said I, and the General laughed with his eyes as I looked at him; but he did not say a word. I felt it a curious commentary upon the reports he had spoken of the day before. Louly Wigfall is a very handsome girl.
December 24th.—As we walked, Brewster reported a row he had had with General Hood. Brewster had told those six young ladies at the Prestons’ that “old Sam” was in the habit of saying he would not marry if he could any silly, sentimental girl, who would throw herself away upon a maimed creature such as he was. When Brewster went home he took pleasure in telling Sam how the ladies had complimented his good sense, whereupon the General rose in his wrath and threatened to break his crutch over Brewster’s head. To think he could be such a fool—to go about repeating to everybody his whimperings.
I was taking my seat at the head of the table when the door opened and Brewster walked in unannounced. He took his stand in front of the open door, with his hands in his pockets and his small hat pushed back as far as it could get from his forehead.
“What!” said he, “you are not ready yet? The generals are below. Did you get my note?” I begged my husband to excuse me and rushed off to put on my bonnet and furs. I met the girls coming up with a strange man. The flurry of two major-generals had been too much for me and I forgot to ask the new one’s name. They went up to dine in my place with my husband, who sat eating his dinner, with Lawrence’s undivided attention given to him, amid this whirling and eddying in and out of the world militant. Mary Preston and I then went to drive with the generals. The new one proved to be Buckner[109], who is also a Kentuckian. The two men told us they had slept together the night before Chickamauga. It is useless to try: legs can’t any longer be kept out of the conversation. So General Buckner said: “Once before I slept with a man and he lost his leg next day.” He had made a vow never to do so again. “When Sam and I parted that morning, we said: ‘You or I may be killed, but the cause will be safe all the same.’”
After the drive everybody came in to tea, my husband in famous good humor, we had an unusually gay evening. It was very nice of my husband to take no notice of my conduct at dinner, which had been open to criticism. All the comfort of my life depends upon his being in good humor.
Christmas Day, 1863.—Yesterday dined with the Prestons. Wore one of my handsomest Paris dresses (from Paris before the war). Three magnificent Kentucky generals were present, with Senator Orr from South Carolina, and Mr. Miles. General Buckner repeated a speech of Hood’s to him to show how friendly they were. “I prefer a ride with you to the company of any woman in the world,” Buckner had answered. “I prefer your company to that of any man, certainly,” was Hood’s reply. This became the standing joke of the dinner; it flashed up in every form. Poor Sam got out of it so badly, if he got out of it at all. General Buckner said patronizingly, “Lame excuses, all. Hood never gets out of any scrape—that is, unless he can fight out.” Others dropped in after dinner; some without arms, some without legs; von Borcke, who can not speak because of a wound in his throat. Isabella said: “We have all kinds now, but a blind one.” Poor fellows, they laugh at wounds. “And they yet can show many a scar.”
We had for dinner oyster soup, besides roast mutton, ham, boned turkey, wild duck, partridge, plum pudding, sauterne, burgundy, sherry, and Madeira. There is life in the old land yet!
At my house to-day after dinner, and while Alex Haskell and my husband sat over the wine, Hood gave me an account of his discomfiture last night. He said he could not sleep after it; it was the hardest battle he had ever fought in his life, “and I was routed, as it were; she told me there was no hope; that ends it. You know at Petersburg on my way to the Western army she half-promised me to think of it. She would not say ‘Yes,’ but she did not say ‘No’—that is, not exactly. At any rate, I went off saying, ‘I am engaged to you,’ and she said, ‘I am not engaged to you.’ After I was so fearfully wounded I gave it up. But, then, since I came,” etc.
“Do you mean to say,” said I, “that you had proposed to her before that conversation in the carriage, when you asked Brewster the symptoms of love? I like your audacity.” “Oh, she understood, but it is all up now, for she says, ‘No!’”