Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War

by Thomas Nelson Page

At special times there was special activity: at ice-getting time, at corn-thinning time, at fodder-pulling time, at threshing-wheat time, but above all at corn-shucking time, at hog-killing time, and at “harvest.” Harvest was spoken of as a season. It was a festival. The severest toil of the year was a frolic. Every “hand” was eager for it. It was [the test of the men’s prowess] and the women’s skill. For it took a man to swing his cradle through the long June days and keep pace with the bare-necked, knotted-armed leader as he strode and swung his ringing cradle through the heavy wheat. So it demanded a strong back and nimble fingers in the binding to “keep up” and bind the sheaves. The young men looked forward to it as young bucks look to the war-path. How gay they seemed, moving in oblique lines around the “great parallelograms,” sweeping down the yellow grain, and, as they neared the starting-point, chanting with mellow voices the harvest song “Cool Water”! How musical was the cadence as, taking time to get their wind, they whet in unison their ringing blades!

Though the plantations were large, so large that one master could not hear his neighbor’s dog bark, there was never any loneliness: it was movement and life without bustle; whilst somehow, in the midst of it all, the house seemed to sit enthroned in perpetual tranquillity, with outstretched wings under its spreading oaks, sheltering its children like a great gray dove.

Even at night there was stirring about: the ring of an axe, the infectious music of the banjos, the laughter of dancers, the festive noise and merriment of the cabin, the distant, mellowed shouts of ’coon or ’possum hunters, or the dirge-like chant of some serious and timid wayfarer passing along the paths over the hills or through the woods, and solacing his lonely walk with religious song.

Such was the outward scene. What was there within? That which has been much misunderstood,—that which was like the roses, wasteful beyond measure in its unheeded growth and blowing, but sweet beyond measure, too, and filling with its fragrance not only the region round about, but sending it out unmeasuredly on every breeze that wandered by.

The life within was of its own kind. There were the master and the mistress: the old master and old mistress, the young masters and young mistresses, and the children; besides some aunts and cousins, and the relations or friends who did not live there, but were only always on visits.

The Exclusive Property of the Mistress.

Properly, the mistress should be mentioned first, as she was the most important personage about the home, the presence which pervaded the mansion, the centre of all that life, the queen of that realm; the master willingly and proudly yielding her entire management of all household matters and simply carrying out her directions, confining his ownership within the curtilage solely to his old “secretary,” which on the mistress’s part was as sacred from her touch as her bonnet was from his. There were kept mysterious folded papers, and equally mysterious parcels, frequently brown with the stain of dust and age. Had the papers been the lost sibylline leaves instead of old receipts and bills, and had the parcels contained diamonds instead of long-dried melon-seed or old flints, now out of date but once ready to serve a useful purpose, they could not have been more sacredly guarded by the mistress. The master usually had to hunt for a long period for any particular paper, whilst the mistress could in a half-hour have arranged everything in perfect order; but the chaos was regarded by her with veneration as real as that with which she regarded the mystery of the heavenly bodies.

On the other hand, outside of this piece of furniture there was nothing in the house of which the master even pretended to know. It was all in her keeping. Whatever he wanted he called for, and she produced it with a certainty and promptness which struck him as a perpetual miracle. Her system appeared to him as the result of a wisdom as profound as that which fixed and held the firmament. He would not have dared to interfere, not because he was afraid, but because he recognized her superiority. It would no more have occurred to him to make a suggestion about the management of the house than about that of one of his neighbors; simply because he knew her and acknowledged her infallibility. She was, indeed, a surprising creature—often delicate in frame, and of a nervous organization so sensitive as perhaps to be a great sufferer; but her force and character pervaded and directed everything, as unseen yet as unmistakably as the power of gravity controls the particles that constitute the earth.