It was one of those enchantingly beautiful winter mornings, never witnessed, perhaps, out of America. The ground was frozen hard; while every tuft of dry grass, every twig in view, bedecked with hoar-frost, danced and flashed and sparkled beneath the dazzling yet hazy sunlight, with the mingled glow of opals and of diamonds. And what an atmosphere! Still, but not stagnant; for behold the dreamy undulations of that slender column of smoke, so peacefully rocking above yonder whitewashed cabin! Cold, not chill; descending into the lungs as a stimulating and refreshing bath; clear, but not colorless; tinted, rather,—nay, transfigured, with the translucent exhalations of nameless gems,—such was the air that floated over lawn and river on that bright Christmas morning.
It was a day too fine to be lost; and a vote being taken, it was decided that a walk should come first. And forth the joyous procession sallied, Alice and young Jones—kindred spirits—taking the lead. Let them go their way, rejoicing in their youth; and, while awaiting their return, I shall, with the consent of the contemporaneous reader, say a word or two about Virginia society, as it was, to that reader of the future for whose edification these slight sketches are drawn; to wit, my great-great-great-etc. grandson.
In my Alice, then, I have endeavored to place before you and future generations a type taken bodily from the joyous, careless life of ante-bellum days. Many of my contemporaries will recognize her and her merry-glancing hazel eyes. My friends—all Richmond, all Virginia, in fact—will know the original of the picture,—each one his own original. But the truth is, in painting the portrait of our jolly little Alice I have aimed at more than representing the features of a charming girl. I have striven to place before you a marked phase of Virginia society,—its freedom. It was this which gave it a charm all its own, and it would be interesting, did it not lead me too far from the path of my narrative, to point out the contrasts it affords to English society. Both eminently aristocratic, it is singular that the former should have been so unshackled, so unconventional, so free, while its prototype is, without doubt, the most uncomfortable, the most stifling tyranny that men and women—and men and women, too, of one of the grandest races of all time—ever voluntarily submitted to. And, strangely enough, Virginia is almost the only one of the United States where anything like a fair type of the mother society has survived. The English gentleman, like the Virginian, has his home in the country; but this is true, in this country it may almost be said, of Virginia gentlemen alone; if, at least, the terms be not understood in a sense too literally geographical. The Southern planter was wont to betake himself to New Orleans in winter, with half his cotton crop in his pocket, reserving the other half for Saratoga and the North when summer came. Charleston was the Mecca of the South Carolinian; while the wealthy citizen of New York, if he had his villa on the Hudson, retired to it rather to avoid than to seek society, or else, still unsated with the joys of city life (the detestation of your true John Bull), even when driven out of town by the dust of summer and the glare of wall and of pavement, he hastens to Newport, there to swelter through the dog-days in all the pomp of full dress and fashionable fooleries. Some stray lord has mentioned in his hearing—or some one who has seen a stray lord—that summer is the London season (none other being possible in that climate), and straight-way he trims his whiskers à la mutton-chop and buys a book of the peerage; nor suspects that the more closely you imitate an Englishman the less you resemble him,—one of the strongest characteristics of that great race being their disdainful refusal to imitate any other.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Three o’clock was, in those days, the dinner-hour of the Virginia gentry; but my grandfather and Charley, being but two in family, and not caring to be bothered with three meals a day, had gotten into the habit of dining at five; and so, shortly before that hour, on this Christmas day, all the company, having made their toilets, had assembled in the drawing-room. But, as far back as I can remember, I don’t think that Aunt Polly had ever let us have our Christmas dinner before six. Aunt Polly could never explain this fact to our satisfaction. “Ready,” she once made reply to my boyish impatience, “no, dat tain’t, How you gwine ’spect de fire to cook all dese things quick like a few things? Jess look at dat pot! I set it d’yar to bile and d’yar it sets a-simperin’ and a-simperin’ like people never did want to eat nothin’.”
“In course,” broke in old Dick, with stately profundity, “a rolling stone never gathers no moss.”
“Git out o’ my way, Dick, and lemme lift de led off dat d’yar skillet. Moss! Moss! Who talkin’ ’bout moss, I’d like to know? And all de white folks a-waitin’ for dinner!” And she mopped her face with her sleeve.
“I meant to rubserve,” rejoined Dick, with offended dignity, “dat a watched pot never biles.”
On the present occasion Mrs. Carter gave the company an intimation that they had an hour on their hands.
“Why not adjourn to the hall,” suggested Mr. Whacker, “and while away the time with some music?”