Hitherto, the real comprehension of the Colonial Cavalier has been hindered by the florid enthusiasm of the South, and the critical coldness of the North. His admirers have painted him as a theatrical personage, always powdered and be-ruffled, fighting duels as frequently as he changed his dress, living in lordly state in a baronial mansion, or dancing in the brilliant halls of fashion in the season at the capital. All this is, of course, seen to be absurd, as one comes to study the conditions under which he lived. We find the “capital” a straggling village, the “estate” a half-cultivated farm, and the “host of retainers” often but a mob of black slaves, clad in motley, or lying half-naked in the sun. Does it follow, then, that the lives of these men are not worth serious study? Surely not. It is in the very primitiveness of environment that the chief interest of the study of that early life lies. Here were men who brought to the New World a keen appreciation of the luxuries and refined pleasures of life, who had not eschewed them for conscience’s sake like the Puritan, yet who relinquished them all bravely and cheerfully, to face the hardships and dangers of a pioneer life; and when their descendants, growing rich with the increasing prosperity of the country, had once more surrounded themselves with beautiful homes and wide acres, they too stood ready to sacrifice them all at the call of Liberty. If we would understand Washington, and Jefferson, and the Lees, George Mason, and John Randolph, we must study them as the “Autocrat” tells us we should all be studied, for at least a century before birth.
The Colonial Cavalier must be painted, like a Rembrandt, with high lights and deep shadows. It is idle to ignore his weaknesses or his vices. They are of the kind that insist on notice. Yet, with all his faults, he will surely prove well worth our serious consideration, and however wide we open our eyes to his defects, however we seek to brush away the illusions with which tinsel hero-worship has surrounded him, we shall still find him, judged as he has a right to be, at his best, closely approaching Lowell’s definition of a gentleman: “A man of culture, a man of intellectual resources, a man of public spirit, a man of refinement, with that good taste which is the conscience of the mind, and that conscience which is the good taste of the soul.”
This little volume makes no pretensions to the dignity of a history. It aims only, through local gossip and homely details of life and customs, to open a side-door, through which we may, perchance, gain a sense of fireside intimacy with The Colonial Cavalier.
His Home
