Went with our leviathan of loveliness to a ladies’ meeting. No scandal to-day, no wrangling, all harmonious, everybody knitting. Dare say that soothing occupation helped our perturbed spirits to be calm. Mrs. C—— is lovely, a perfect beauty. Said Brewster: “In Circassia, think what a price would be set upon her, for there beauty sells by the pound!”
Coming home the following conversation: “So Mrs. Blank thinks purgatory will hold its own—never be abolished while women and children have to live with drunken fathers and brothers.” “She knows.” “She is too bitter. She says worse than that. She says we have an institution worse than the Spanish Inquisition, worse than Torquemada, and all that sort of thing.” “What does she mean?” “You ask her. Her words are sharp arrows. I am a dull creature, and I should spoil all by repeating what she says.”
“It is your own family that she calls the familiars of the Inquisition. She declares that they set upon you, fall foul of you, watch and harass you from morn till dewy eve. They have a perfect right to your life, night and day, unto the fourth and fifth generation. They drop in at breakfast and say, ‘Are you not imprudent to eat that?’ ‘Take care now, don’t overdo it.’ ‘I think you eat too much so early in the day.’ And they help themselves to the only thing you care for on the table. They abuse your friends and tell you it is your duty to praise your enemies. They tell you of all your faults candidly, because they love you so; that gives them a right to speak. What family interest they take in you. You ought to do this; you ought to do that, and then the everlasting ‘you ought to have done,’ which comes near making you a murderer, at least in heart. ‘Blood’s thicker than water,’ they say, and there is where the longing to spill it comes in. No locks or bolts or bars can keep them out. Are they not your nearest family? They dine with you, dropping in after you are at soup. They come after you have gone to bed, when all the servants have gone away, and the man of the house, in his nightshirt, standing sternly at the door with the huge wooden bar in his hand, nearly scares them to death, and you are glad of it.”
“Private life, indeed!” She says her husband entered public life and they went off to live in a far-away city. Then for the first time in her life she knew privacy. She never will forget how she jumped for joy as she told her servant not to admit a soul until after two o’clock in the day. Afterward, she took a fixed day at home. Then she was free indeed. She could read and write, stay at home, go out at her own sweet will, no longer sitting for hours with her fingers between the leaves of a frantically interesting book, while her kin slowly driveled nonsense by the yard—waiting, waiting, yawning. Would they never go? Then for hurting you, who is like a relative? They do it from a sense of duty. For stinging you, for cutting you to the quick, who like one of your own household? In point of fact, they alone can do it. They know the sore, and how to hit it every time. You are in their power. She says, did you ever see a really respectable, responsible, revered and beloved head of a family who ever opened his mouth at home except to find fault? He really thinks that is his business in life and that all enjoyment is sinful. He is there to prevent the women from such frivolous things as pleasure, etc., etc.
I sat placidly rocking in my chair by the window, trying to hope all was for the best. Mary Hammy rushed in literally drowned in tears. I never saw so drenched a face in my life. My heart stopped still. “Commodore Barron is taken prisoner,” said she. “The Yankees have captured him and all his lieutenants. Poor Imogen—and there is my father scouting about, the Lord knows where. I only know he is in the advance guard. The Barron’s time has come. Mine may come any minute. Oh, Cousin Mary, when Mrs. Lee told Imogen, she fainted! Those poor girls; they are nearly dead with trouble and fright.”
“Go straight back to those children,” I said. “Nobody will touch a hair of their father’s head. Tell them I say so. They dare not. They are not savages quite. This is a civilized war, you know.”
Mrs. Lee said to Mrs. Eustis (Mr. Corcoran’s daughter) yesterday: “Have you seen those accounts of arrests in Washington?” Mrs. Eustis answered calmly: “Yes, I know all about it. I suppose you allude to the fact that my father has been imprisoned.” “No, no,” interrupted the explainer, “she means the incarceration of those mature Washington belles suspected as spies.” But Mrs. Eustis continued, “I have no fears for my father’s safety.”
August 31st.—Congress adjourns to-day. Jeff Davis ill. We go home on Monday if I am able to travel. Already I feel the dread stillness and torpor of our Sahara of a Sand Hill creeping into my veins. It chills the marrow of my bones. I am reveling in the noise of city life. I know what is before me. Nothing more cheering than the cry of the lone whippoorwill will break the silence at Sandy Hill, except as night draws near, when the screech-owl will add his mournful note.
September 1st.—North Carolina writes for arms for her soldiers. Have we any to send? No. Brewster, the plain-spoken, says, “The President is ill, and our affairs are in the hands of noodles. All the generals away with the army; nobody here; General Lee in Western Virginia. Reading the third Psalm. The devil is sick, the devil a saint would be. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me!”
September 2d.—Mr. Miles says he is not going anywhere at all, not even home. He is to sit here permanently—chairman of a committee to overhaul camps, commissariats, etc., etc.