Of the daily life of a rich planter we have a graphic account from John Ferdinand Smyth, a British soldier who travelled through Virginia and other colonies, and sojourned for some years in Maryland, about the middle of the eighteenth century. I cite the description, because so much has been made of it: “The gentleman of fortune rises about nine o’clock; he may perhaps make an excursion to walk as far as his stable to see his horses, which is seldom more than fifty yards from his house; he returns to breakfast between nine and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, bread-and-butter, and very thin slices of venison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down on a pallet on the floor, in the coolest room in the house, in his shirt and trousers only, with a negro at his head and another at his feet, to fan him and keep off the flies; between twelve and one he takes a draught of bombo, or toddy, a liquor composed of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg, which is made weak and kept cool; he dines between two and three, and at every table, whatever else there may be, a ham and greens, or cabbage, is always a standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, toddy, punch, port, claret, and madeira, which is generally excellent here; having drank [sic] some few glasses of wine after dinner, he returns to his pallet, with his two blacks to fan him, and continues to drink toddy, or sangaree, all the afternoon; he does not always drink tea. Between nine and ten in the evening he eats a light supper of milk and fruit, or wine, sugar, and fruit, etc., and almost immediately retires to bed for the night. This is his general way of living in his family, when he has no company. No doubt many differ from it, some in one respect, some in another; but more follow it than do not.”211
This extract seems to show that Rev. Samuel Peters was not the only writer who liked to entertain his trustful British friends with queer tales about their American cousins.212 No doubt Mr. Smyth wrote it with his tongue in his cheek; but if he meant what he said, we must remember that the besetting sin of travellers is hasty generalization. We will take Mr. Smyth’s word for it that one or more gentlemen were in the habit of passing their days in the way he describes, and we may freely admit that a good many gentlemen might thus make shift to keep alive through some furious attack of the weather fiend in August; but his concluding statement, that this way of living was customary, is not to be taken seriously. An extract from the manuscript recollections of General John Mason, son of the illustrious George Mason, gives a different picture:—
“It was very much the practice with gentlemen of landed and slave estates ... so to organize them as to have considerable resources within themselves; to employ and pay but few tradesmen, and to buy little or none of the coarse stuffs and materials used by them.... Thus my father had among his slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers, blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, and knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber and plank for the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for the blacksmith; his cattle killed for his own consumption and for sale supplied skins for the tanners, curriers, and shoemakers; and his sheep gave wool and his fields produced cotton and flax for the weavers and spinners, and his orchards fruit for the distiller. His carpenters and sawyers built and kept in repair all the dwelling-houses, barns, stables, ploughs, harrows, gates, etc., on the plantations, and the outhouses at the house. His coopers made the hogsheads the tobacco was prized in, and the tight casks to hold the cider and other liquors. The tanners and curriers, with the proper vats, etc., tanned and dressed the skins as well for upper as for lower leather to the full amount of the consumption of the estate, and the shoemakers made them into shoes for the negroes. A professed shoemaker was hired for three or four months in the year to come and make up the shoes for the white part of the family. The blacksmiths did all the ironwork required by the establishment, as making and repairing ploughs, harrows, teeth, chains, bolts, etc. The spinners, weavers, and knitters made all the coarse cloths and stockings used by the negroes, and some of finer texture worn by the white family, nearly all worn by the children of it. The distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach, and persimmon brandy. The art of distilling from grain was not then among us, and but few public distilleries. All these operations were carried on at the home house, and their results distributed as occasion required to the different plantations. Moreover, all the beeves and hogs for consumption or sale were driven up and slaughtered there at the proper seasons, and whatever was to be preserved was salted and packed away for after distribution.
“My father kept no steward or clerk about him. He kept his own books and superintended, with the assistance of a trusty slave or two, and occasionally of some of his sons, all the operations at or about the home house above described.... To carry on these operations to the extent required, it will be seen that a considerable force was necessary, besides the house servants, who for such a household, a large family and entertaining a great deal of company, must be numerous; and such a force was constantly kept there, independently of any of the plantations, and besides occasional drafts from them of labour for particular occasions. As I had during my youth constant intercourse with all these people, I remember them all, and their several employments as if it was yesterday.”213
Now when we consider that Colonel Mason had some 500 persons on his estate, and was known to have sent from his private wharf as many as 23,000 bushels of wheat in a single shipment, it is clear that no gentleman who spent the day lolling on a couch and sipping toddy could have superintended the details of business which his son describes. George Mason was, no doubt, a fair specimen of his class, and their existence was clearly not an idle one. With the public interests of parish, county, and commonwealth to look after besides, they surely earned the leisure hours that were spent in social entertainments or in field sports.
A glimpse of the life of a planter’s wife, which Bishop Meade declares to be typical, is given in a letter from Mrs. Edward Carrington to her sister, about 1798. Colonel Carrington and his wife were visiting at Mount Vernon. After telling how Washington and the Colonel sat up together until midnight, absorbed in reminiscences of bivouac and hard-fought field, she comes to Mrs. Washington, who alluded to her days of public pomp and fashion as “her lost days.” Then Mrs. Carrington continues: “Let us repair to the old lady’s [Mrs. Washington’s] room, which is precisely in the style of our good old aunt’s,—that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work. On one side sits the chambermaid, with her knitting; on the other, a little coloured pet, learning to sew. An old, decent woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes’ winter clothes, while the good old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She points out to me several pairs of nice coloured stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her sake.” At this domestic picture Bishop Meade exclaims: “If the wife of General Washington, having her own and his wealth at command, should thus choose to live, how much more the wives and mothers of Virginia with moderate fortunes and numerous children! How often have I seen, added to the above-mentioned scenes of the chamber, the instruction of several sons and daughters going on, the churn, the reel, and other domestic operations all in progress at the same time, and the mistress, too, lying on a sick-bed!”214
Although Mrs. Carrington may have finished and worn the pair of knit gloves, yet most articles of dress for well-to-do men and women were imported. London fashions were strictly followed. In the time of Bacon’s rebellion, your host would have appeared, perhaps, in a coat and breeches of olive plush or dark red broadcloth, with embroidered waistcoat, shirt of blue holland, long silk stockings, silver buttons and shoe-buckles, lace ruffles about neck and wrists, and his head encumbered with a flowing wig; while the lady of the house might have worn a crimson satin bodice trimmed with point lace, a black tabby215 petticoat and silk hose, with shoes of fine leather gallooned; her lace headdress would be secured with a gold bodkin, and she would be apt to wear earrings, a pearl necklace, and finger-rings with rubies or diamonds, and to carry a fan.216
The ordinary chances for the ladies to exhibit their garments of flowered tabby, and beaux their new plush suits, were furnished by the Sunday services at the parish church, and by the frequent gatherings of friends at home. Weddings, of course, were high times, as everywhere and always; and the gloom of funerals was relieved by feasting the guests, who were likely to have come long distances over which they must return.217 These journeys, like the journeys to church and to the court-house, might be made in boats; on land they were made on horseback. Carriages were very rare in the seventeenth century, but became much more common before the Revolution. In their fondness for horses the Virginians were true children of England. In the stables of wealthy planters were to be found specimens of the finest breeds, and the interest in racing was universal. Common folk, however, were not allowed to take part in the sport, except as lookers-on. One of the earliest references to horse-racing is an order of the county court of York in 1674: “James Bullocke, a Taylor, haveing made a race for his mare to runn w’th a horse belonging to Mr. Mathew Slader for twoe thousand pounds of tobacco and caske, it being contrary to Law for a Labourer to make a race, being a sport only for Gentlemen, is fined for the same one hundred pounds of tobacco and caske.”218 Half a century later, Hugh Jones tells us that the Virginians “are such lovers of riding that almost every ordinary person keeps a horse; and I have known some spend the morning in ranging several miles in the woods to find and catch their horses only to ride two or three miles to church, to the court-house, or to a horse-race.”219 After 1740 there was a systematic breeding from imported English thoroughbreds.220 Thirty years later, we are told that “there are races at Williamsburg twice a year; that is, every spring and fall, or autumn. Adjoining to the town is a very excellent course for either two, three, or four mile heats. Their purses are generally raised by subscription, and are gained by the horse that wins two four-mile heats out of three; they amount to an hundred pounds each for the first day’s running, and fifty pounds each every day after, the races commonly continuing for a week. There are also matches and sweepstakes very often for considerable sums. Besides ... there are races established annually almost at every town and considerable place in Virginia; and frequent matches on which large sums of money depend.... Very capital horses are started here, such as would make no despicable figure at Newmarket; nor is their speed, bottom, or blood inferior to their appearance.... Indeed, nothing can be more elegant and beautiful than the horses here, either for the turf, the field, the road, or the coach; ... but their carriage horses seldom are possessed of that weight and power which distinguish those of the same kind in England.”221
Since the Virginians were excellent horsemen, it was but natural that they should enjoy hunting. No sport was more dear than chasing the fox. Washington’s extreme delight in riding to the hounds is well known; he kept it up until his sixty-third year, when a slight injury to his back made such exercise uncomfortable. Washington was a true Virginian in his love for his dogs, to whom he gave such pretty names as Mopsey, Truelove, Jupiter, Juno, Rover, Music, Sweetlips, Countess, Lady, and Singer. Shooting and fishing were favourite diversions with Washington; when he was President of the United States, the newspapers used to tell of his great catches of blackfish and sea-bass.222 In these tastes his neighbours were like him. Less wholesome sports were cock-fighting, and gambling with cards. The passion for gambling was far too strong among the Virginians. Laws were enacted against it; gambling debts were not recoverable; innkeepers who permitted any game of cards or dice, except backgammon, were subject to a heavy fine besides forfeiting their licenses.223
An interesting newspaper notice, in the year 1737, shows that some of the innocent open-air sports of mediæval England still survived: “We have advice from Hanover County, that on St. Andrew’s Day there are to be Horse Races and several other Diversions, for the entertainment of the Gentlemen and Ladies, at the Old Field, near Captain John Bickerton’s, in that county (if permitted by the Hon. Wm. Byrd, Esquire, Proprietor of said land), the substance of which is as follows, viz.: It is proposed that 20 Horses or Mares do run round a three miles’ course for a prize of five pounds.
“That a Hat of the value of 20s be cudgelled for, and that after the first challenge made the Drums are to beat every Quarter of an hour for three challenges round the Ring, and none to play with their Left hand.
“That a violin be played for by 20 Fiddlers; no person to have the liberty of playing unless he bring a fiddle with him. After the prize is won they are all to play together, and each a different tune, and to be treated by the company.
“That 12 Boys of 12 years of age do run 112 yards for a Hat of the cost of 12 shillings.
“That a Flag be flying on said Day 30 feet high.
“That a handsome entertainment be provided for the subscribers and their wives; and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives may treat any other lady.
“That Drums, Trumpets, Hautboys, &c., be provided to play at said entertainment.
“That after dinner the Royal Health, His Honour the Governor’s, &c., are to be drunk.
“That a Quire of ballads be sung for by a number of Songsters, all of them to have liquor sufficient to clear their Wind Pipes.
“That a pair of Silver Buckles be wrestled for by a number of brisk young men.
“That a pair of handsome Shoes be danced for.
“That a pair of handsome silk Stockings of one Pistole224 value be given to the handsomest young country maid that appears in the Field. With many other Whimsical and Comical Diversions too numerous to mention.
“And as this mirth is designed to be purely innocent and void of offence, all persons resorting there are desired to behave themselves with decency and sobriety; the subscribers being resolved to discountenance all immorality with the utmost rigour.”225
The part played by violins in this quaint programme reminds us that fiddling was an accomplishment highly esteemed in the Old Dominion. As an accompaniment for dancing it was very useful in the home parties on the plantations. The philosophic Thomas Jefferson, as a dead shot with the rifle, a skilful horseman, and a clever violinist, was a typical son of Virginia. As boys learned to play the violin, and sometimes the violoncello, girls were taught to play the virginal, which was an ancestral form of the piano. Virginals, and afterward harpsichords, were commonly to be found in the houses of the gentry, and not unfrequently hautboys, flutes, and recorders.226 The music most often played with these instruments was probably some form of dance or the setting of a popular ballad; but what is called “classical music” was not unknown. Among the effects of Cuthbert Ogle, a musician at Williamsburg, who died in 1755, we find Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” and “Apollo’s Feast,” four books of instrumental scores of his oratorios, and ten books of his songs; also a manuscript score of Corelli’s sonatas, and concertos by the English composers, William Felton and Charles Avison, now wellnigh forgotten.227
After 1716 there was a theatre at Williamsburg, and during the sessions of the assembly, when planters with their families came from far and wide, there was much gayety. At other seasons the monotony of rural life was varied by the recreations above described, with an occasional picnic in the woods, or a grand barbecue in honour of some English victory or the accession of a new king.
Some time was found for reading. The inventories of personal estates almost always include books, in some instances few and of little worth, in others numerous and valuable. The library of Ralph Wormeley, of Rosegill, contained about four hundred titles. Wormeley, who had been educated at Oriel College, Oxford, was president of the council, secretary of state, and a trustee of William and Mary College; he died in 1701. Among his books were Burnet’s “History of the Reformation,” a folio history of Spain, an ecclesiastical history in Latin, Camden’s “Britannia,” Lord Bacon’s “History of Henry VII.,” and his “Natural History,” histories of Scotland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and the West Indies, biographies of Richard III., Charles I., and George Castriot, Plutarch’s Lives, Burnet’s “Theory of the Earth,” Willis’s “Practice of Physick,” Heylin’s “Cosmography,” “a chirurgical old book,” “the Chyrurgans mate,” Galen’s “Art of Physick,” treatises on gout, pancreatic juice, pharmacy, scurvy, and many other medical works, Coke’s Reports and his “Institutes,” collections of Virginia and New England laws, a history of tithes, “The Office of Justice of the Peace,” a Latin treatise on maritime law, and many other law books, Usher’s “Body of Divinity,” Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity,” Poole’s “Annotations to the Bible,” “A Reply to the Jesuits,” Fuller’s “Holy State” and his “Worthies,” a concordance to the Bible, Jeremy Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying,” “The Whole Duty of Man,” a biography of St. Augustine, Baxter’s “Confession of Faith,” and many books of divinity, a liberal assortment of dictionaries and grammars of English, French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, the essays of Montaigne and other French books, Cæsar, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Thucydides, Josephus, Quintus Curtius, Seneca, Terence, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Don Quixote,” “Hudibras,” Quarles’s poems, George Herbert’s poems, Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” Waller’s poems, the plays of Sir William Davenant, “ffifty Comodys & tragedies in folio,” “The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft,” “An Embersee from ye East India Compa to ye Grand Tartar,” “The Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate,” “A Looking Glass for the Times,” and so on.228 Though not the library of a scholar, it indicates that its owner was a thoughtful man and fairly well informed.
A more remarkable library was that of William Byrd, of Westover. It contained 3,625 volumes, classified nearly as follows: History, 700; Classics, etc., 650; French, 550; Law, 350; Divinity, 300; Medicine, 200; Scientific, 225; Entertaining, etc., 650.229 This must have been one of the largest collections of books made in the colonial period. That of the second Richard Lee, who died in 1715, contained about 300 titles, among which we notice many more Greek and Latin writers than in Wormeley’s, especially such names as Epictetus, Aristotle de Anima, Diogenes Laertius, Lucian, Heliodorus, Claudian, Arrian, and Orosius, besides such mediæval authors as Albertus Magnus and Laurentius Valla.230
Such libraries were of course exceptional. In most planters’ houses you would probably have found a few English classics, with perhaps “Don Quixote” and “Gil Blas,” and an assortment of books on divinity, manuals for magistrates, and helps in farming. Virginia was not eminent as a literary or bookish community. There was no newspaper until the establishment of the “Virginia Gazette” in 1736. As for schools, the Lords Commissioners of Plantations sent over a series of interrogatories to Sir William Berkeley in 1671, and asked him, among other things, what provision was made for public instruction. His reply was characteristic: “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”231 Lord Culpeper seems to have been much of Berkeley’s way of thinking, for we read that, “February 21, 1682, John Buckner [was] called before the Lord Culpeper and his council for printing the laws of 1680 without his excellency’s license, and he and the printer [were] ordered to enter into bond in £100 not to print anything thereafter until his majesty’s pleasure should be known.”232 The pleasure of Charles II. was, that nobody should use a printing-press in Virginia, and so he instructed the next governor, Lord Howard, in 1684.
The establishment of a system of schools such as flourished in New England was prevented by the absence of town life and the long distances between plantations. When Berkeley said there were no free schools in Virginia, he may have had in mind the contrast with New England. No such schools were founded in Virginia by the assembly, but there were instances of free schools founded by individuals; as, for example, the Symms school in 1636, Captain Moon’s school in 1655, Richard Russell’s in 1667, Mr. King’s in 1669, the Eaton school some time before 1689, and Edward Moseley’s in 1721.233 Indeed, there was after 1646234 a considerable amount of compulsory primary education in Virginia, much more than has been generally supposed, since the records of it have been buried in the parish vestry-books. In the eighteenth century we find evidences that pains were taken to educate coloured people.235 It was not unusual for the plantation to have among its numerous outbuildings a school conducted by some rustic dignitary of the neighbourhood. In the “old field schools” little more was taught than “the three Rs,” but these humble institutions are not to be despised; for it was in one of them, kept by “Hobby, the sexton,” that George Washington learned to read, write, and cipher. His father and his elder brother Lawrence had been educated at Appleby School, in England; George himself, after an interval with a Mr. Williams, near Wakefield, finished his school-days at an excellent academy in Fredericksburg, of which Rev. James Marye was master. The sons of George Mason studied two years at an academy in Stafford County kept by a Scotch parson named Buchan, “a pious man and profound classical scholar.” Afterwards John Mason was sent to study mathematics with an expert named Hunter, “a Scotchman also and quite a recluse, who kept a small school in a retired place in Calvert County, Maryland.” Much teaching was also done by private tutors. In the Mason household these were three Scotchmen in succession, of whom “the two last were especially engaged [in Scotland] to come to America (as was the practice in those times with families who had means) by my father to live in his house and educate the children.... The tutoress of my sisters was a Mrs. Newman. She remained in the family for some time.”236
Sometimes the schoolmaster or private tutor was an indented white servant who had come out as a redemptioner, or even as a convict. Among the criminals there might be persons of rank, as Sir Charles Burton, a Lincolnshire baronet, who was transported to America in 1722 for “stealing a cornelian ring set in gold;” or scholars, like Henry Justice, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister, who in 1736 was convicted of stealing from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, “a Field’s Bible with cuts, and Common-prayer, value £25, Newcastle’s Horsemanship, value £10, several other books of great value, several Tracts cut out of books, etc.” For this larceny, although Mr. Justice begged hard to be allowed to stay in England for the sake of his clients, “with several of whom he had great concerns,” he was nevertheless sent to America for seven years, under penalty of death if he were to return within that time.237 From such examples we see that, while the convict ships may not have brought many Eugene Arams, they certainly brought men more likely to find employment in teaching than in manual labour. Jonathan Boucher, rector at Annapolis in 1768, declares that “not a ship arrives with either redemptioners or convicts, in which schoolmasters are not as regularly advertised for sale as weavers, tailors, or any other trade; with little other difference that I can hear of, except perhaps that the former do not usually fetch so good a price as the latter.”238
Sometimes, as we have seen in the case of Augustine Washington and his son Lawrence, the young Virginians were sent to school in England. Oftener, perhaps, the education begun at the country school or with private tutors was “finished” (as the phrase goes) at one of the English universities. Oxford seems to have been the favourite Alma Mater, doubtless for the same reason that caused Cambridge to be chiefly represented among the founders of New England; Oxford was ultra-royalist in sentiment, while Cambridge was deeply tinged with Puritanism. This difference would readily establish habits and associations among the early Virginians which would be followed.239
It was not in all cases necessary to go to England to obtain a thorough education. James Madison’s tutors were the parish minister and an excellent Scotch schoolmaster; he was graduated at Princeton College in 1772, and never crossed the Atlantic; yet for the range, depth, and minuteness of his knowledge of ancient and modern history and of constitutional law, he has been rivalled by no other English-speaking statesman save Edmund Burke. Such an instance, however, chiefly shows how much more depends upon the individual than upon any institutions. There are no rules by which you can explain the occurrence of a heaven-sent genius.
On the whole, the facilities for education, whether primary or advanced, were very imperfect in the Old Dominion. This becomes especially noticeable from the contrast with New England, which inevitably suggests itself. It is no doubt customary with historical writers to make too much of this contrast. The people of colonial New England were not all well-educated, nor were all their country schools better than old field schools. The farmer’s boy, who was taught for two winter months by a man and two summer months by a woman, seldom learned more in the district school than how to read, write, and cipher. For Greek and Latin, if he would go to college, he had usually to obtain the services of the minister or some other college-bred man in the village. There was often a disposition on the part of the town meetings to shirk the appropriation of a sum of money for school purposes, and many Massachusetts towns were fined for such remissness.240 This was especially true of the early part of the eighteenth century, when the isolated and sequestered life of two generations had lowered the high level of education which the grandfathers had brought across the ocean. In those dark days of New England, there might now and then be found in rural communities men of substance who signed deeds and contracts with their mark.
After making all allowances, however, the contrast between the New England colonies and the Old Dominion remains undeniable, and it is full of interest. The contrast is primarily based upon the fact that New England was settled by a migration of organized congregations, analogous to that of the ancient Greek city-communities; whereas the settlement of Virginia was effected by a migration of individuals and families. These circumstances were closely connected with the Puritan doctrine of the relations between church and state, and furthermore, as I have elsewhere shown,241 the Puritan theory of life made it imperatively necessary, in New England as in Scotland, to set a high value upon education. The compactness of New England life, which was favoured by the agricultural system of small farms owned by independent yeomen, made it easy to maintain efficient schools. In Virginia, on the other hand, the agricultural conditions interposed grave obstacles to such a result. There was no such pervasive organization as in New England, where the different grades of school, from lowest to highest, coöperated in sustaining each other. There were heroic friends of education in Virginia. James Blair and the faithful scholars who worked with him conferred a priceless boon upon the commonwealth; but the vitality of William and Mary College often languished for lack of sustenance that should have been afforded by lower schools, and it was impossible for it to exercise such a widespread seminal influence as Yale and Harvard, sending their graduates into every town and village as ministers, lawyers, and doctors, schoolmasters and editors, merchants and country squires.
Among the founders of New England were an extraordinary number of clergymen noted for their learning, such as Hooker and Shepard, Cotton and Williams, Eliot and the Mathers; together with such cultivated laymen as Winthrop and Bradford, familiar with much of the best that was written in the world, and to whom the pen was an easy and natural instrument for expressing their thoughts. The character originally impressed upon New England by such men was maintained by the powerful influence of the colleges and schools, so that there was always more attention devoted to scholarship and to writing than in any of the other colonies. Communities of Europeans, thrust into a wilderness and severed from Europe by the ocean, were naturally in danger of losing their higher culture and lapsing into the crudeness of frontier life. All the American colonies were deeply affected by this situation. While there were many and great advantages in the freedom from sundry Old World trammels, yet in some respects the influence of the wilderness was barbarizing. It was due to the circumstances above mentioned that the New England colonies were more successful than the others in resisting this influence, and avoiding a breach of continuity in the higher spiritual life of the community. This is strikingly illustrated by the history of American literature. Among men of letters and science born and educated in America before the Revolution, there were three whose fame is more than national, whose names belong among the great of all times and countries. Of these, Jonathan Edwards was a native of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin and Count Rumford were natives of Massachusetts. In such men we can trace the continuity between the intellectual life of England in the seventeenth century and that of America in the nineteenth. In Virginia, if we except political writers, we find no names so high as these. But there is one political book which must not be excepted, because it is a book for all time. “The Federalist” is one of the world’s philosophical and literary masterpieces, and of its three authors James Madison took by far the deepest and most important part in creating it.242
Among books of a second order,—books which do not rank among classics,—there are some which deserve and have won a reputation that is more than local. Of such books, Hutchinson’s “History of Massachusetts Bay” is a good example. In the colonial times historical literature was of better quality than other kinds of writing; and Virginia produced three historical writers of decided merit. With Robert Beverley the reader has already made some acquaintance through the extracts cited in these pages. His “History of Virginia,” published in London in 1705, is a little book full of interesting details concerning the country and the life of its red and white inhabitants. The author’s love of nature is charming, and his style so simple, direct, and sprightly that there is not a dull page in the book. It was written during a visit to London, where Beverley happened to see the proof-sheets of Oldmixon’s forthcoming “British Empire in America,” and was disgusted with the silly blunders that swarmed on every page. He wrote his little book as an antidote, and did it so well that many coming generations will read it with pleasure.
A book of more pretension and of decided merit is the “History of Virginia” by Rev. William Stith, who was president of William and Mary College from 1752 to his death in 1755. The book, which was published at Williamsburg in 1747, was but the first volume of a work which, had it been completed on a similar scale, would have filled six or eight. It covers only the earliest period, ending with the downfall of the Virginia Company in 1624; and among its merits is the good use to which the author put the minutes of the Company’s proceedings made at the instance of Nicholas Ferrar.243 Stith’s work is accurate and scholarly, and his narrative is dignified and often graphic. His account of James I. is pithy: “He had, in truth, all the forms of wisdom,—forever erring very learnedly, with a wise saw or Latin sentence in his mouth; for he had been bred up under Buchanan, one of the brightest geniuses and most accomplished scholars of that age, who had given him Greek and Latin in great waste and profusion, but it was not in his power to give him good sense. That is the gift of God and nature alone, and is not to be taught; and Greek and Latin without it only cumber and overload a a weak head, and often render the fool more abundantly foolish. I must, therefore, confess that I have ever had ... a most contemptible opinion of this monarch; which has, perhaps, been much heightened and increased by my long studying and conning over the materials of this history. For he appears in his dealings with the Company to have acted with such mean arts and fraud ... as highly misbecome majesty.”244 From the refined simplicity of this straightforward style it was a sad descent to the cumbrous and stilted Johnsonese of the next generation, which too many Americans even now mistake for fine writing.
Contemporary with Beverley and Stith was William Byrd, one of the most eminent men of affairs in Old Virginia, and eminent also—probably without knowing it—as a man of letters. His father came to Virginia a few years before Bacon’s rebellion, and bought the famous estate of Westover, on the James River and in Charles City County, with the mansion, which is still in the possession of his family, and is considered one of the finest old houses in Virginia. From his uncle Colonel Byrd inherited a vast estate which included the present site of Richmond. He sympathized strongly with his neighbour, Nathaniel Bacon, and held a command under him; but after the collapse of the rebellion he succeeded in making his peace with the raging Berkeley. He became one of the most important men in the colony, and was commissioned receiver-general of the royal revenues. On his death, in 1704, his son succeeded him in this office. The son had studied law in the Middle Temple, and for proficiency in science was made a fellow of the Royal Society. He was for many years a member of the colonial council, and at length its president. He lived in much splendour on his estate of Westover, and we have seen what a library he accumulated there. A professional man of letters he was not, and perhaps his strong literary tastes might never have led to literary production but for sundry interesting personal experiences which he deemed it worth while to put on record. In 1727 he was one of the commissioners for determining the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. In the journeys connected with that work he selected the sites where the towns of Richmond and Petersburg were afterwards built; and he wrote a narrative of his proceedings so full of keen observations on the people and times as to make it an extremely valuable contribution to history.245 Among early American writers Byrd is exceptional for animation of style. There is a quaintness of phrase about him that is quite irrepressible. After a dry season he visits a couple of mills, and “had the grief to find them both stand as still for the want of water as a dead woman’s tongue for want of breath. It had rained so little for many weeks above the falls that the Naiads had hardly water enough left to wash their faces.” He suggests, of course with a twinkle in his eye, that the early settlers of Virginia ought to have formed matrimonial alliances with the Indians: “Morals and all considered, I can’t think the Indians were much greater heathens than the first adventurers, who, had they been good Christians, would have had the charity to take this only method of converting the natives to Christianity. For after all that can be said, a sprightly lover is the most prevailing missionary that can be sent among these, or any other infidels. Besides, the poor Indians would have had less reason to complain that the English took away their land, if they had received it by way of portion with their daughters.... Nor would the shade of the skin have been any reproach at this day; for if a Moor may be washed white in three generations, surely an Indian might have been blanched in two.”246 With such moralizing was this amiable writer wont to relieve the tedium of historical discourse. We shall again have occasion to quote him in the course of our narrative.
Among other works by writers reared before the Revolution, the well-known “Notes on Virginia,” by Thomas Jefferson, deserves high praise as an essay in descriptive sociology. Of American poetry before the nineteenth century, scarcely a line worth preserving came from any quarter. In 1777 James McClurg, an eminent physician, afterward a member of the Federal Convention, wrote his “Belles of Williamsburg,” a specimen of pleasant society verse; but it had not such vogue as its author’s “Essay on the Human Bile,” which was translated into several European languages. Science throve better than poetry, and was well represented in Virginia by John Clayton, who came thither from England in 1705, being then in his twentieth year, and dwelt there until his death in 1773, on the eve of the famous day which saw the mixing of tea with ice-water in Boston harbour. Clayton was attorney-general of Virginia, and for fifty years clerk of Gloucester County. His name has an honourable place in the history of botany; he was member of learned societies in nearly all the countries of Europe; and in 1739 his “Flora of Virginia” was edited and published by Linnæus and Gronovius.