With the passing of the century Virginia's picturesque Golden Age passed, never to return in the history of this country.
Even while Washington lived and held his stately court,—powdered, in full court-dress, sword at side, and no "hand-shake" for the crowd at his levees,—even then the Golden Age, the age dominated by English influence, had passed. England was no longer the authority in manner and dress. The people wished none of her customs, traditions, or principles. Naturally their hearts had turned to the French. The emancipated Englishman cared no more for family trees, still less for armorial bearings. When Bishop Meade travelled through Virginia to cull material for his history of the old families, he found them reluctant to acknowledge the possession of a coat of arms or to confess a descent from English nobility. "They seemed ashamed of it. Everybody became a 'Democrat,' a 'patriot,' and in the abstract at least 'an advocate of the rights of man.' Many families who were properly entitled to arms, lost the evidence of it in the general neglect which blighted the tree of pedigree." The manner in which Jefferson, in the opening of his autobiography, almost sneers at armorial bearings reflects the feeling of Virginia for many years after the Revolution.
Judge N. Beverley Tucker prefaces a family history with these words, "At this day it is deemed arrogant to remember one's ancestors." Nous avons changé tout cela! At this day it is suicidal to forget them!
In presenting these pictures of social life in Virginia in the eighteenth century, I have been careful to accept the testimony only of those who were actually a part of it. It has become the fashion to idealize that old society as something better than our own. It had its charm of stateliness, of punctilious etiquette, of cordial hospitality; its faults of pompous manner, of excess and vanity, differing as conditions have changed, only in type and expression, from similar blemishes in our own manners of to-day; neither better nor worse, perhaps, as the years have passed. In all that is understood by the word "society" we find many points of resemblance, a family likeness, in fact, to metropolitan society in the nineteenth century.
Has the reader ever sought an intelligent definition of the term "society"?
"Society," says Noah Webster, "is specifically the more cultivated portion of any community, in its social relations and influence; those who give and receive formal entertainments mutually." This sounds reasonable enough, but the literary world of to-day, if we may credit some of its shining lights, takes exception at the word "cultivated."
"Society," says Bishop Huntington, in his "Drawing-room Homily," "is something too formless for an institution, too irregular for an organization, too vital for a machine, too heartless for a fraternity, too lawless for a school. It is a state wherein all realism is suppressed as brutal, all natural expression or frank sign of true feeling as distasteful and startling. Its subjects are more prostrate than the slaves of the East before the Padishah! The individual finds everything decided for him. Provided he imitates copies, and repeats his models, he knows all that he need know, and has entered into salvation."
Evidently, neither now, nor in the Arcadian days of Virginia's Golden Age, has society seen fit to adopt the motto inscribed on the palace gates of the young Alexander Severus, "Let none enter here save the pure in heart." One, than whom none knows it better, has declared it to be to-day "a garden of flowers where 'sweets compacted lie.' But underneath the roses lurks a subtle and venomous serpent whose poison already threatens the fair and beloved of the land."