The Youth of Washington: Told in the Form of an Autobiography

by S. Weir Mitchell

IV

While I was a child, my father, as I have said, made many voyages to England and fetched back with him convicts, and perhaps also indentured servants. Often in those days some of the unfortunate people thus sent to the colonies were under sentence for political offences, but many, of course, for crimes. One of these, a convict I was told, was my first schoolmaster. We called him Hobby, which was, I believe, a nickname; but he was named Grove, and was sexton of the Falmouth church, two miles away. Of what our sexton schoolmaster had been convicted I never heard, but of this I am assured, that my father would not have used as a schoolmaster a common thief. I used to ride the two miles to the “field-school,” as they called it, in front of a slave named Peter, and later was allowed a pony, to my mother’s alarm when he would tumble me off, as happened now and then. Hobby was a short man, with one eye, and too good-humoured or too timid to be a good teacher, even of the a-b-c’s and the little else we learned.

My father was kind to this man, and perhaps knew his history. He would even have allowed him the use of the rod, with the aid of which I might have profited more largely, for I am of his opinion that children should be strictly brought up. Hobby, being of a humourous turn, seems to me, as I remember him, to have resembled the grave-digger in the play of “Hamlet.” He sometimes amused and at other times terrified us by tales of London or of his recent life as a sexton. He believed many of the negro superstitions—as that if a snake’s head was cut off the tail would live until it thundered—and was much afraid of having what he called black magic put upon him by the negroes.

I did not learn much from Hobby and preferred to be out of doors. My father considered, I believe, that, as I was a younger son and must in some way support myself, I should be well trained in both mind and body, and had he lived the chance of the former might have been bettered. The latter was often made difficult by my mother, who was unhappy when I was subject to the risks to which all lads of spirit are exposed. I remember that, when later my father was teaching me to leap my pony, the pony refused over and over, and this being near to the house, my mother ran out, and at last had a kind of hysterick turn. My father sat still on a big stallion and took no notice of her entreaties. At last I got the pony over, and he fell with me. I jumped up and was in the saddle in a moment. My father said that was ill ridden, I must try it again; and upon this my mother ran back to the house, crying out I would be murdered. But my father was this manner of man; he hated defeat, while my mother was ever desirous of keeping me out of danger, because it made her uncomfortable; and this was strange, for I have never been able to see that she was greatly pleased when I was successful, or was much moved by what the great Master allowed me to attain in later years.

My elder brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, were both at different times sent to England for education at Appleby School, near Whitehaven, when I was a child. Lawrence had the family liking for enterprises and martial employment. I was eight years old, and he of age, when Lawrence served with Admiral Vernon and General Wentworth in the disastrous attack on Cartagena. I remember as a boy the interest this expedition caused in our neighbourhood. It was said that Harry Beverley and other Virginians captured by the Spaniards had been made to work as slaves, and this stirred up much feeling among us. The ex-Governor Spottiswood, although an aged man, would have gone as a major-general, but died suddenly at Temple Farm, near Yorktown, where forty-two years later Lord Cornwallis met me to sign the capitulations.

Lawrence was away two years. The letters wrote by him to my father were full of interest, and, as I remember, were the means of arousing in me, who was but a little lad, the liking for warfare, of which we all had a share.

I can remember how, as we sat about the hearth at evening, my father read aloud to us these letters, and explained to me the military terms used, and why, for want of foresight, the gallantry of soldiers and sailors served only to give opportunity for loss of life. This was especially in connection with the last letter we received, after the dismal failure of the attack on Cartagena. He wrote:

Honoured and dear Father: What with dissensions between the General Wentworth and Admiral Vernon, who was, as we think, not to blame, we have come away, leaving the Spaniards to crow, and our Colonel Gooch ill at Jamaica. When I am to have another dose of glory I pray to have better doctors.

We were to storm Fort Lazaro—which must mean Lazarus—at night. But we were too long getting there, or the guides treacherous, and the ladders too short and no sufficient breach. This Lazarus fort was too much alive, but we were actually on the rampart when Colonel Grant was killed, and we were driven back in sad confusion, and half of us, a good thousand, killed or wounded for want of forethought. I came off with no more hurt than to be so spent that I had no breath to curse the folly for which so many brave men died. The climate was worse than the dons, and we took ship with our tails between our legs and some two thousand shaking with agues and racked with fever.