The Virginians

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Since I parted from her I had seen a great deal of fine company, and Theo and I had paid our respects to the King and Queen at St. James's; but we had seen no more stately person than this who welcomed us, and raising my wife from her knee, embraced her and led her into the house. 'Twas a plain, wood-built place, with a gallery round, as our Virginian houses are; but if it had been a palace, with a little empress inside, our reception could not have been more courteous. There was old Nathan, still the major-domo, a score of kind black faces of blacks, grinning welcome. Some whose names I remembered as children were grown out of remembrance, to be sure, to be buxom lads and lasses; and some I had left with black pates were grizzling now with snowy polls: and some who were born since my time were peering at doorways with their great eyes and little naked feet. It was, “I'm little Sip, Master George!” and “I'm Dinah, Sir George!” and “I'm Master Miles's boy!” says a little chap in a new livery and boots of nature's blacking. Ere the day was over the whole household had found a pretext for passing before us, and grinning and bowing and making us welcome. I don't know how many repasts were served to us. In the evening my Lady Warrington had to receive all the gentry of the little town, which she did with perfect grace and good-humour, and I had to shake hands with a few old acquaintances—old enemies I was going to say; but I had come into a fortune and was no longer a naughty prodigal. Why, a drove of fatted calves was killed in my honour! My poor Hal was of the entertainment, but gloomy and crestfallen. His mother spoke to him, but it was as a queen to a rebellious prince, her son who was not yet forgiven. We two slipped away from the company, and went up to the rooms assigned to me: but there, as we began a free conversation, our mother, taper in hand, appeared with her pale face. Did I want anything? Was everything quite as I wished it? She had peeped in at the dearest children, who were sleeping like cherubs. How she did caress them, and delight over them! How she was charmed with Miles's dominating airs, and the little Theo's smiles and dimples! “Supper is just coming on the table, Sir George. If you like our cookery better than the tavern, Henry, I beg you to stay.” What a different welcome there was in the words and tone addressed to each of us! Hal hung down his head, and followed to the lower room. A clergyman begged a blessing on the meal. He touched with not a little art and eloquence upon our arrival at home, upon our safe passage across the stormy waters, upon the love and forgiveness which awaited us in the mansions of the Heavenly Parent when the storms of life were over.

Here was a new clergyman, quite unlike some whom I remembered about us in earlier days, and I praised him, but Madam Esmond shook her head. She was afraid his principles were very dangerous: she was afraid others had adopted those dangerous principles. Had I not seen the paper signed by the burgesses and merchants at Williamsburg the year before—the Lees, Randolphs, Bassets, Washingtons, and the like, and oh, my dear, that I should have to say it, our name, that is, your brother's (by what influence I do not like to say), and this unhappy Mr. Belman's who begged a blessing last night?

If there had been quarrels in our little colonial society when I left home, what were these to the feuds I found raging on my return? We had sent the Stamp Act to America, and been forced to repeal it. Then we must try a new set of duties on glass, paper, and what not, and repeal that Act too, with the exception of a duty on tea. From Boston to Charleston the tea was confiscated. Even my mother, loyal as she was, gave up her favourite drink; and my poor wife would have had to forgo hers, but we had brought a quantity for our private drinking on board ship, which had paid four times as much duty at home. Not that I for my part would have hesitated about paying duty. The home Government must have some means of revenue, or its pretensions to authority were idle. They say the colonies were tried and tyrannised over; I say the home Government was tried and tyrannised over. ('Tis but an affair of argument and history, now; we tried the question, and were beat; and the matter is settled as completely as the conquest of Britain by the Normans.) And all along, from conviction I trust, I own to have taken the British side of the quarrel. In that brief and unfortunate experience of war which I had had in my early life, the universal cry of the army and well-affected persons was, that Mr. Braddock's expedition had failed, and defeat and disaster had fallen upon us in consequence of the remissness, the selfishness, and the rapacity of many of the very people for whose defence against the French arms had been taken up. The colonists were for having all done for them, and for doing nothing, They made extortionate bargains with the champions who came to defend them; they failed in contracts; they furnished niggardly supplies; they multiplied delays until the hour for beneficial action was past, and until the catastrophe came which never need have occurred but for their ill-will. What shouts of joy were there, and what ovations for the great British Minister who had devised and effected the conquest of Canada! Monsieur de Vaudreuil said justly that that conquest was the signal for the defection of the North American colonies from their allegiance to Great Britain; and my Lord Chatham, having done his best to achieve the first part of the scheme, contributed more than any man in England towards the completion of it. The colonies were insurgent, and he applauded their rebellion. What scores of thousands of waverers must he have encouraged into resistance! It was a general who says to an army in revolt, “God save the king! My men, you have a right to mutiny!” No wonder they set up his statue in this town, and his picture in t'other; whilst here and there they hanged Ministers and Governors in effigy. To our Virginian town of Williamsburg, some wiseacres must subscribe to bring over a portrait of my lord, in the habit of a Roman orator speaking in the Forum, to be sure, and pointing to the palace of Whitehall, and the special window out of which Charles I. was beheaded! Here was a neat allegory, and a pretty compliment to a British statesman! I hear, however, that my lord's head was painted from a bust, and so was taken off without his knowledge.

Now my country is England, not America or Virginia; and I take, or rather took, the English side of the dispute. My sympathies had always been with home, where I was now a squire and a citizen: but had my lot been to plant tobacco, and live on the banks of James River or Potomac, no doubt my opinions had been altered. When, for instance, I visited my brother at his new house and plantation, I found him and his wife as staunch Americans as we were British. We had some words upon the matter in dispute,—who had not in those troublesome times?—but our argument was carried on without rancour; even my new sister could not bring us to that, though she did her best when we were together, and in the curtain lectures which I have no doubt she inflicted on her spouse, like a notable housewife as she was. But we trusted in each other so entirely that even Harry's duty towards his wife would not make him quarrel with his brother. He loved me from old times, when my word was law with him; he still protested that he and every Virginian gentleman of his side was loyal to the Crown. War was not declared as yet, and gentlemen of different opinions were courteous enough to one another. Nay, at our public dinners and festivals, the health of the King was still ostentatiously drunk; and the assembly of every colony, though preparing for Congress, though resisting all attempts at taxation on the part of the home authorities, was loud in its expressions of regard for the King our Father, and pathetic in its appeals to that paternal sovereign to put away evil counsellors from him, and listen to the voice of moderation and reason. Up to the last, our Virginian gentry were a grave, orderly, aristocratic folk, with the strongest sense of their own dignity and station. In later days, and nearer home, we have heard of fraternisation and equality. Amongst the great folks of our Old World I have never seen a gentleman standing more on his dignity and maintaining it better than Mr. Washington: no—not the King against whom he took arms. In the eyes of all the gentry of the French court, who gaily joined in the crusade against us, and so took their revenge for Canada, the great American chief always appeared as anax andron, and they allowed that his better could not be seen in Versailles itself. Though they were quarrelling with the Governor, the gentlemen of the House of Burgesses still maintained amicable relations with him, and exchanged dignified courtesies. When my Lord Bottetourt arrived, and held his court at Williamsburg in no small splendour and state, all the gentry waited upon him, Madam Esmond included. And at his death, Lord Dunmore, who succeeded him, and brought a fine family with him, was treated with the utmost respect by our gentry privately, though publicly the House of Assembly and the Governor were at war.

Their quarrels are a matter of history, and concern me personally only so far as this, that our burgesses being convened for the 1st of March in the year after my arrival in Virginia, it was agreed that we should all pay a visit to our capital, and our duty to the Governor. Since Harry's unfortunate marriage Madam Esmond had not performed this duty, though always previously accustomed to pay it; but now that her eldest son was arrived in the colony, my mother opined that we must certainly wait upon his Excellency the Governor, nor were we sorry, perhaps, to get away from our little Richmond to enjoy the gaieties of the provincial capital. Madam engaged, and at a great price, the best house to be had at Richmond for herself and her family. Now I was rich, her generosity was curious. I had more than once to interpose (her old servants likewise wondering at her new way of life), and beg her not to be so lavish. But she gently said, in former days she had occasion to save, which now existed no more. Harry had enough, sure, with such a wife as he had taken out of the housekeeper's room. If she chose to be a little extravagant now, why should she hesitate? She had not her dearest daughter and grandchildren with her every day (she fell in love with all three of them, and spoiled them as much as they were capable of being spoiled). Besides, in former days I could not accuse her of too much extravagance, and this I think was almost the only allusion she made to the pecuniary differences between us. So she had her people dressed in their best, and her best wines, plate, and furniture from Castlewood by sea at no small charge, and her dress in which she had been married in George II.'s reign, and we all flattered ourselves that our coach made the greatest figure of any except his Excellency's, and we engaged Signor Formicalo, his Excellency's major-domo, to superintend the series of feasts that were given in my honour; and more fleshpots were set a-stewing in our kitchens in one month, our servants said, than had been known in the family since the young gentlemen went away. So great was Theo's influence over my mother, that she actually persuaded her, that year, to receive our sister Fanny, Hal's wife, who would have stayed upon the plantation rather than face Madam Esmond. But, trusting to Theo's promise of amnesty, Fanny (to whose house we had paid more than one visit) came up to town, and made her curtsey to Madam Esmond, and was forgiven. And rather than be forgiven in that way, I own, for my part, that I would prefer perdition or utter persecution.

“You know these, my dear?” says Madam Esmond, pointing to her fine silver sconces. “Fanny hath often cleaned them when she was with me at Castlewood. And this dress, too, Fanny knows, I dare say? Her poor mother had the care of it. I always had the greatest confidence in her.”

Here there is wrath flashing from Fanny's eyes, which our mother, who has forgiven her, does not perceive—not she!

“Oh, she was a treasure to me!” Madam resumes. “I never should have nursed my boys through their illnesses but for your mother's admirable care of them. Colonel Lee, permit me to present you to my daughter, my Lady Warrington. Her ladyship is a neighbour of your relatives the Bunburys at home. Here comes his Excellency. Welcome, my lord!”

And our princess performs before his lordship one of those curtseys of which she was not a little proud; and I fancy I see some of the company venturing to smile.

“By George! madam,” says Mr. Lee, “since Count Borulawski, I have not seen a bow so elegant as your ladyship's.”