beauty was very great. It made all the difference in the world to us, his children, growing up in the country, so far from picture-galleries and concerts and every kind of music. At the sale of the Bonaparte collection of pictures in Baltimore my father commissioned the artist, Sully, to attend the sale and select and buy for him six pictures. Papa was much pleased with Mr. Sully’s selection. They included:

These works of art on the walls of our country home awoke in us all an appreciation and recognition of fine paintings for which we can never be sufficiently grateful.

This great love for art and his confidence in its elevating influence is shown by his buying and having placed in the grounds of the State capitol a replica of Houdon’s statue of Washington.

Another and most characteristic evidence is furnished by the following note from a friend, to whom I wrote, asking for some facts as to my father’s public life, for I had thus far written of him entirely as I knew him in his family and home life, except for the bare outline by the dates of his election to different offices, and though I have no desire or intention of making this a history of his official and political career, feeling myself entirely unfitted for that, I felt I should give something to show his service in his own State. In reply Mr. Yates Snowden wrote:

“The day before your letter came my eye lit upon the invitation of R. F. W. Allston, president of the Carolina Art Association, inviting the members of the Convention Secession to visit the Gallery of Art in Meeting Street whilst deliberating here for the public weal. It is hoped that an hour bestowed occasionally in viewing some specimens of art, including Leutze’s illustration of Jasper and the old Palmetto Fort, may contribute an agreeable diversion to the minds of gentlemen habitually engrossed in the discussion of grave concerns of state.”—(“Journal of the (Secession) Convention,” p. W225, April 1, 1861.)

I can quite imagine that this invitation was a source, to some of the members of that convention, of great amusement, as being most unsuitable to their frame of mind.

My father’s full sympathy with the convention is shown by the following extract from Brant and Fuller’s “Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas”:

“Robert Francis Withers Allston, South Carolina statesman, scholar, and agriculturist, was born April 21, 1801.... During the nullification era and for many years afterward Mr. Allston was deputy adjutant-general of the militia, and from 1841 to 1864 was one of the trustees of South Carolina College at Columbia.... In politics he belonged to the Jefferson and Calhoun school, believing in the complete sovereignty of the States.”

During his prolonged absences in Columbia my father did not like to leave my mother alone on the plantation, with no one but the negroes to care for the children, so he secured a good, reliable Irishwoman to take charge of the children and the nursery, with the others under her. Strange to say, this was never resented, and Mary O’Shea stayed with us about fifteen years, when some of her kinfolk called her away. We called her “May” and were devoted to her. She had her trials, for my father did not approve of fire in the room where the children slept, and this, along with the open window, was a terrible ordeal to May. The day-nursery, with its roaring open wood-fire, only made the contrast more distressing to her; she never became reconciled to it, and I only wonder that she stayed all those years. As soon as the older children were big enough, we had an English governess—Miss Wells first, and afterward Miss Ayme.

I have asked my brother, Charles Petigru Allston, to write for me what he remembered of my father, and I will insert here what he has written for me.

CHAPTER III

MY BROTHER’S NARRATIVE

MY holiday, the months of December, 1863, and January, 1864, were passed with my father on the coast, where he had planting, salt boiling, and freighting up the rivers, to look after. Salt was a very scarce article at that time, and my father had it boiled from sea-water on the salt creeks of the Waccamaw seashore, behind Pawley’s Island. The vats were made chiefly of old mill boilers, cut in half and mounted on brick, with furnace below for wood, and a light shed above, to protect from the weather. A scaffold was built out in the salt creek, and a pump placed there to lift the water about twenty feet, and from the pump a wooden trough carried the water to the boilers, some 300 yards away, in the forest. At flood-tide, when the water came in from the sea, was the best time to pump, as the water had then more salt and less of the seepage water from the marshlands. Sometimes, when a man was upon the scaffold, pumping, a federal gunboat, lying off the coast, would throw a shell over the island, which cut off the sight of the works, in the direction of the smoke from the boiling vats; when this happened the man came down in wild haste and made for the brush. These interruptions became so frequent that finally the boiling had to be done at night, when the smoke was not visible. My father sent me over to inspect the salt-works and report to him more than once, so that I was familiar with the situation. Wagons came long distances from the interior to buy or barter for salt. This work was carried on entirely by negroes, without any white man in charge. My father had the faculty for organization, and his negro men were remarkably well trained, intelligent, and self-reliant. Another work which he instituted and developed was the transporting of rice and salt up the rivers to the railroad. The ports, being blockaded, and no railroad within forty miles, it became necessary to make some outlet for the rice-crop to get to market and to the army. He had two lighters built, which were decked over and secured from weather, and carried from 150 to 200 tierces (600 pounds each) of clean or marketable rice. On each lighter he put a captain, with a crew of eight men. These lighters were loaded at the rice-mill and taken up the Pee Dee River, to the railroad bridge near Mars Bluff, to Society Hill, and sometimes to Cheraw. It was a long, hard trip, and when the freshet was up it seemed sometimes to be impossible to carry a loaded barge against the current, by hand—but it was done. At such times the only progress was made by carrying a line ahead, making fast to a tree on the river-bank, and then all hands warping the boat up by the capstan; then make fast and carry the line ahead again. The crew were all able men. They had plenty to eat and seemed to enjoy themselves. I have often been with my father when the boats returned from a trip and the captain came to make his report; it was worth listening to; the most minute account of the trip, with all its dangers and difficulties. There was seldom a charge of any serious character against any of the crew; each knew that such a charge made by the captain meant the immediate discharge from the crew and a return to field work.

My father also sent rice up the Black River to the Northeastern Railroad at Kingstree, and finally built a warehouse, making a new station, which is now Salter’s; here he put a very intelligent negro, Sam Maham, in charge; he received the rice from the captains of the river-craft, and delivered it to the railroad on orders, and I have never heard a word of complaint against him. Black River, however, had to be navigated by smaller craft than the Pee Dee, open flats, boats square at each end, and 50 feet long by 12 feet wide. I well remember the report made by the captain of the first crew sent up Black River. It was thrilling in parts. He had to cut his way through after leaving the lower river, which was open for navigation. The river had never been used high up for that sort of craft, and was full of logs, etc.; besides, in places it was difficult to find the right channel, and his description of going through a section where the river was broken up by low islands, or shoals into several apparent channels, all of which were shallow, except one, was most exciting. None of these men had ever been on this river or in that locality before, and only the drilling and direction given them by my father could have carried them through; but they went through, and after that there was a regular line going. But these flats being smaller and open and no decks, were much more liable to damage the cargo; still very little was lost, strange to say. They had good sailcloth covers, and the crews took an interest in the work. The captain and crew making the best record were always well rewarded.

I became familiar with all this work during the winter of 1863-64. My father wanted me to learn as much as possible of each branch of the work, and knew how to direct my attention to the chief details to be studied and worked out.

At night we sat together and had milk and potatoes, with sassafras tea for supper, and it was very good. One who has never had to depend on sassafras tea does not know how good it is. My father had many opportunities for getting in all the supplies that he wanted, as well as for making a good deal of money by exchanging his rice and salt for cotton, and then sending the cotton out by the blockade-runners to Nassau; but he was opposed to the running of the blockade for private gain. How often as we sat by the fire in the evenings did he talk to me on that and other subjects of public interest. His idea was that the Confederate Government should control the cotton; buy it up at home, pay for it in gold, ship it out by blockade-runners, sell it in Europe for the government, and bring in such supplies as were most needed—medicines, shoes, clothes, as well as arms, etc. In this way, he said, the government would be free from the horde of speculators who were making fortunes out of our misfortunes, and thus be able to build up a financial standing in Europe that would go far toward deciding the status of the Confederate States. He was most earnest on this subject, and I know that he made more than one trip to Richmond for the purpose of urging some such measure on President Davis, but he returned disappointed, and I remember after one trip he seemed entirely hopeless as to the outcome. Feeling, as he did, he would never avail himself of the many opportunities which offered, except to get such things as were prime necessities. In February, 1864, I returned to my school in Abbeville district. I drove away from the Chicora house on my way to the railroad, forty miles distant, leaving my father standing on the platform at the front door. That was my last sight of him. He died in April, 1864, and though I was written for, the mails and transportation were so slow that he was buried before I got home.

I returned to school after being at home a few weeks in April, and remained until the following October, when the school was dismissed. The call for recruits for the army was now from sixteen years up, and would include many who were at the school. I went to my mother at Society Hill and was to get ready to join the corps of State Cadets.

While I was at Society Hill my mother heard from the overseer at Chicora Wood, that he had some trouble about repairing the freight-lighters. This being a most important matter and requiring to be promptly attended to, my mother decided to send me down to see if I could help the overseer. So I started off on a little brown horse to ride the ninety miles down to the rice country. I arrived safely, and after a few days began to make headway with the work. The largest lighter had been in the water a good long time and was very heavy to haul out, but was badly in need of repairing. It was my first experience of unwilling labor; the hands were sulky. My father’s talks and teaching now came in to the aid of my own knowledge of the negro nature, and before long I had the big lighter hauled up, high and dry. We had and could get no oakum for calking, but my father had devised a very respectable substitute in cypress bark; it was stripped from the tree and then broken, somewhat as flax is, and then worked in the hands until quite pliable; this did wonderfully well, though it did not last as well as oakum. If pitch was freely applied to the freshly calked seams a very good job was made. We got the lighter calked and cleaned and simply painted, and put back in the water ready for work.

I then returned to my mother at Society Hill and remained there until I joined the Arsenal Cadets, and we entered the active service.

My father’s eldest brother, Joseph, while a student at the South Carolina College was appointed lieutenant in the United States army by President Madison and served in Florida in the War of 1812. He attained the rank of general, and all his life was given that title. Though he died at forty-five he had been married three times, his last wife, Mary Allan, only, having children. She had two sons, Joseph Blyth and William Allan. She lived only a few years after her husband, and the little boys were left to the guardianship of my father and the care of my mother, and Chicora Wood was their home until they grew up. Joseph Blyth Allston was a gifted man, a clever lawyer and eloquent pleader. His literary talent was above the ordinary; he has written some poems of great beauty; “Stack Arms” and the longer poem, “Sumter,” deserve a high place in the war poetry of the South. By the merest chance a sketch of my father, written by him, at the request of some one whose individuality is unknown to me, has fallen into my hands at this moment, and I gladly quote from it here, leaving out only the repetitions of facts already stated:

“All the offices held by Robert F. W. Allston in the State were filled by him with credit to himself and usefulness to the country, but his private virtues gave him a much more enduring claim to the regard of his contemporaries and of posterity. In the forties he had been offered the office of governor and had peremptorily declined it. This was not for want of ambition, but because he had dined at Colonel Hampton’s a few days before, in company with Mr. Hammond, who aspired to that office, and without formally pledging himself, had tacitly acquiesced in his candidacy. A liberal economy marked his expenditures, and a cultivated hospitality made his home the centre of a large circle of friends. The rector of the parish (Prince Frederick’s) dined with him every Sunday, with his wife. At dessert the Methodist minister generally arrived from some other appointment, took a glass of wine, and then preached to the negroes in the plantation chapel in the avenue, constructed in the Gothic style by his negro carpenters, under his direction.

“He did much to improve the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine in his neighborhood, and was a constant correspondent of the Bureau of Agriculture at Washington. He was an active member of the South Carolina Jockey Club, of the St. Cecilia Society, and of the South Carolina Historical Society of Charleston; of the Winyah Indigo Society of Georgetown, of which he was long president; of the Hot and Hot Fish Club of Waccamaw; the Winyah and All Saints Agricultural Society, and the Agricultural Association of the Southern States. He was also a member of the Order of Masons.

“He was an eminently successful rice-planter and made many improvements in the cultivation of that crop and the drainage of the rice-lands.

“‘Allston on Sea-Coast Crops’ is the title of a valuable treatise on this subject, which unfortunately is now out of print. Yet one of his best overseers, when asked if he was not a great planter, replied:

“‘No, sir, he is no planter at all.’

“‘To what, then, do you attribute his great success?’

“‘To his power of organization, sir, and the system and order which he enforces on all whom he controls.’

“That was indeed the keynote of his character. He was most regular in his own habits, and all within his reach felt the influence of his example. Especially marked was it upon the negroes whom he owned. Even at this day (1900) they show by their thrift and industry the influence of his training and speak of him with pride and affection.

“Political matters and his duty as a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church often called him to the North, and sometimes he took a trip there with his family for pleasure. In 1855 he took his wife and eldest daughter abroad, and they travelled all over the Continent. He took a prize at the Paris Exposition that year for rice grown on his plantation, Chicora Wood, Pee Dee—a silver medal. The rice was presented to the war office, Department of Algeria, in the autumn, and was in such perfect preservation (in glass jars) that in the succeeding year it was again exhibited under the auspices of the Department of War, and was adjudged worthy of a gold medal [which has been placed in the National Museum in Washington for the present.—E. W. A. P.].

“Usually, however, he spent the summers on the sea-beach of Pawley’s Island, and enforced by example as well as precept the duty of the land-owner to those dependent on him. Here he fished and hunted deer, of which he has been known to send home two by 10 A.M., shot on his way to the plantation. Here he was within easy reach of his estates, and could exercise an intelligent and elevating control over the 600 negroes who called him master. This beautiful and bountiful country, watered by the noble stream of the Waccamaw and the Pee Dee, and washed by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, was very near to his heart. And here, amid the scenes in which he had spent his life, he died at his home, Chicora Wood, April 7, 1864, and lies buried in the yard of the old Church of Prince George, Winyah, at Georgetown, South Carolina.”—(Extract from paper by Jos. Blyth Allston.)

And now I must leave this imperfect portrait of my father. Of his illness and death I shall tell elsewhere.

His taking away was softened to me afterward by the feeling that he did not live to see the downfall of the hopes he had cherished for the success of the Confederacy, nor the humiliation of the State he had so loved, when its legislative halls were given up to the riotous caricature of State government by the carpetbaggers and negroes, who disported themselves as officials of the State of South Carolina, from the surrender of Lee until 1876, when Wade Hampton redeemed the State from its degradation.

It was only Hampton’s wonderful power and influence over the men, brave as lions, whom he had led in battle, that prevented awful bloodshed and woe. In 1876 I heard a high-spirited, passionate man, who had been one of Butler’s most daring scouts, say, when hearing of a youth whose front teeth had been knocked out by a negro on the street: “Why, I would let a negro knock me down and trample on me, without lifting a hand, for Hampton has said: ‘Forbear from retaliation, lift not a hand, no matter what the provocation; the State must be redeemed!’” And, thank God, it was redeemed! Those brave men did not suffer and bear insult and assault in vain. My faith in my father is so great that I cannot help feeling that if he had lived he would have been able to prevent things from reaching the depths they did. Of one thing I am certain, that if his life had been spared until after the war we as a family would not have been financially ruined. He would have been able to evolve some system by which, with his own people, he could have worked the free labor successfully and continued to make large crops of rice and corn, as he had done all through the war. His was a noble life, and Milton’s words come to my mind:

PART II

MY MOTHER

CHAPTER IV

EARLY DAYS AND OLD FIELD SCHOOL

MY mother, Adèle Petigru, was the granddaughter of Jean Louis Gibert, one of the Pasteurs du Desert, who brought the last colony of Huguenots to South Carolina in April, 1764, after enduring persecution in France, holding his little flock together through great peril and having the forbidden services of his church in forests, in barns, at the midnight hour, in order to escape imprisonment and death. There was a price set upon his head for some years before he made up his mind to leave his beloved land and escape with his little band of faithful to America. These perils and the martyrdom of some of his followers is told in “Les Frères Gibert.” It is a thrilling story, but too long to tell here. The two brothers, Etienne and Jean Louis, escaped to England, the little flock following one by one. King George III made a grant of land in South Carolina to Jean Louis for the settlement of the colony. He retained Etienne in England as his chaplain.

The difficulties and setbacks encountered by the little band were most harrowing and discouraging, but at last they reached the shores of what was to them the promised land, and disembarked at Charleston, South Carolina, April 14, 1764, from which city they made their way some 300 miles into the interior of the State where their grant was. Their difficulties were by no means over; indeed, to them it seemed sometimes as if they were only begun. The wild rugged wilderness where they were to establish themselves, they called by the names they had left in their beautiful France, New Bordeaux and Abbeville, and they set to work to clear land and plant the cuttings of grape-vines to make wine, and the cuttings of mulberry to carry on the manufacture of silk, which were their industries at home. It is hard for us now to realize what they had to encounter and endure—wild beasts, Indians, difficulties of transportation, of transforming the big trees of the forest into lumber suitable to building houses; but all these they conquered. They built homes, they planted vineyards and orchards and mulberry-groves, and succeeded in the manufacture of silk with their spinning-wheels and hand-looms. There is at the old home place in Abbeville now one of the little spinning-wheels with which the silk was spun, that the colony sent with pride as a gift to be made into a dress for the royal wardrobe of the Queen of England.

My great-grandfather was a man of executive ability and strength, with that personal charm which made him intensely beloved and revered by his little flock; and they prospered as long as he lived, but, alas, his life was cut short by an unfortunate accident. He had brought with him from France a devoted and capable attendant, Pierre Le Roy, who in this wilderness filled many and diverse offices; he delighted to vary the often very limited diet of the pasteur by preparing for him dainty dishes of mushrooms with which he was familiar in the old country. There are many varieties here unknown there, and any one who knows this delicious but dangerous vegetable, knows how easily confounded are the good and the poisonous; the deadly Aminita resembles very closely one of the best edible mushrooms; we know not exactly how, but one night the dainty dish proved fatal to the great and good pasteur, and his flock was left desolate in August, 1773, just nine years after their arrival in the New World.

Jean Louis Gibert had married Isabeau Boutiton, a fellow emigrant and sister of his assistant minister, Pierre Boutiton. She was left a widow very young, with two little daughters, Louise and Jeanne, and one son, Joseph, to struggle with the difficult new life. I cannot pursue the fortunes of the colony, but without the leader and counsellor on whom they leaned the colony soon began to disintegrate and disperse, and their descendants are now scattered all over the country. But of this I am sure, wherever they have gone they have carried their strong, upright influence, always raising the standards and ideals of the communities they entered.

Little Louise Gibert very early married William Pettigrew, a blue-eyed, fair-haired young neighbor, who was charmed by her dark beauty. His grandparents had come from Ireland and settled in Pennsylvania, from which State their sons had scattered, Charles settling in North Carolina, where he was to become the first bishop of the Episcopal Church, and William settling in South Carolina as a farmer.

They had a large family, four sons and five daughters:

John, clever and witty, but the ne’er-do-well of the family.

Tom, who died a captain in the U. S. navy.

Charles, who graduated at West Point.

The daughters were:

Jane Gibert, who married John North.

Mary, who never married.

Louise, married Philip Johnston Porcher.

Adèle, married Robert Francis Withers Allston.

Harriet, married Henry Deas Lesesne.

The sisters were all women of rare beauty, but Mary. Outsiders never could decide which was the most beautiful, but, of course, each family thought their own mother entitled to the golden apple. My mother was painted by the artist Sully when she was twenty-two, just a year after the birth of her first child, Benjamin, when she was so ill that her hair was cut, so she appears in the portrait with short brown curls, and is very lovely. There is a portrait of her painted by Flagg, in middle life. When she died in her eighty-seventh year she was still beautiful, with brown, wavy hair only sprinkled with gray.

The tradition in my mother’s father’s family was that the Pettigrews had come from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and had gone to Scotland, when they had changed the spelling of the name from Petigru, and had eventually moved to Ireland. This idea was, of course, pleasant to the little Frenchwoman, and when her eldest son, James Louis, grew up and proposed to change the spelling of his name and revert to the French spelling she was delighted, and the father consented that the children should spell the name as they preferred, but he declined to change his. So on his and his wife’s tombstone in the most interesting little God’s acre at the old home in Abbeville, his name is William Pettigrew, while all his children are recorded as Petigru. My mother said to me not long before her death that she felt it had been a mistake, as there was no survivor of the Petigru name, all the sons having died. But I do not agree with her, for my uncle, James L. Petigru, was a great man—heart, soul, and mind—and left a mark in his State, having codified her laws with knowledge and wisdom. He was almost the only man in Charleston who was opposed to secession,—I may almost say the only man in the State.[2] But he was so revered and beloved that, at a time when party feeling was intense, he walked out of his pew in St. Michael’s Church (which he never failed to occupy on Sunday) the first time the Prayer for the President of the United States was left out of the service, and no one ever said one word of criticism or disapproval. In a period when party politics ran high and bitter feeling was intense, it was a wonderful tribute to a man’s character and integrity that, even though running counter to the intense united feeling of the community, love and respect for him should have protected him from attack.

My mother always talked with great pleasure of her early life. She spoke with admiration and love which amounted to adoration of her “little mother.” Her father took second place always in her narrative, though he was a most delightful companion—very clever and full of wit, a great reader, and it was his habit to read aloud in the evenings, while the family sat around the fire, each one with some appointed task. The elder girls sewed, while all the children had their baskets of cotton to pick, for in those days the gin had not been invented and the seed had to be carefully picked from the cotton by hand! It would seem a weary task to us, but they regarded it as a game, and ran races as to who should pick the most during the long winter evenings while my grandfather read Milton, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and other masters of literature. When one contrasts those evenings, those influences on the minds of children, with the amusements and diversions deemed necessary to the young of the present day, one does not wonder at the pleasure-loving race we are becoming. Add to this that there were no little story-books to dissipate the minds of children. My mother’s ideal of a story-book was her beloved Plutarch’s “Lives,” and I remember still with intense regret her disappointment when, I having accomplished the task of learning to read fluently, she one morning placed in my lap a large volume with very good print, and turned to the Life of Themistocles, which she had so loved. Perhaps if it had not been for the long s’s which adorned this beautiful edition of Plutarch it might have been more of a success, but at the end of the half-hour I announced that I saw no pleasure in such a dull book.... I would gladly read to her from one of my story-books, and then she would see what a really nice book was. My dear mother was so pained. She had had the same experience with the older children, but she thought me very bright and felt sure that she would find a congenial mind in her “little Bessie.” Seeing how hurt she was and that she had set her heart on that special book, I did not insist on my book but came every day and read the Plutarch aloud; but I never enjoyed it, which she could never understand.

This thing of bringing all reading matter presented to a child down to its level is a great mistake; it lowers ideals and taste. Stories while you are a child, and then romances, novels, detective tales, corrupt the taste until it is so reduced that there are not many young people now who can read Scott’s novels with any more pleasure than I read Plutarch at ten. My mother’s school was the old field school of the long ago. The country was thinly settled and the schools widely separated, so that children had to make an all-day business of it. The nearest school to the family home was on Long Cane, three miles away, and mamma, at first accompanied by an older sister and brother, later alone, walked three miles to school every day. She took her little basket of lunch, a substantial one, for she did not get home again until late afternoon. It is quite surprising to find what excellent instruction was given in these “old field schools.” Education was not so widely diversified, but it was more thorough and of a higher kind, as far as it went.

Mamma learned to prove sums by “casting out the nines” in a wonderful way, which no one else that I ever saw knew anything about. Her mind was stored with treasures of good poetry which she had been required to memorize in school. On her solitary walk home she was never lonely. The birds and the little inhabitants of the woods were her delight. At a big chestnut-tree about a mile from home she had special friends—two squirrels who ran down from their castle in the top of the tree when they heard her coming, and she always reserved some of her lunch for them. She sat at the root of the tree and played with them until she saw the sun about to sink below the horizon, when she picked up her little school-bag and started at a run for the last stretch of her way home.

CHAPTER V

DADDY TOM AND DADDY PRINCE—DEATH OF LITTLE MOTHER SO BELOVED

THE farms of the up-country as a rule required few hands, and so each farmer owned only a few negroes, and, of course, the relations between master and slave were different from those in the low-country, where each plantation had a hundred or more negroes, which necessitated separate villages, where the negroes lived more or less to themselves. In the up-country it was more like one large family. In my mother’s home there were three quite remarkable, tall, fine-looking, and very intelligent Africans who had been bought by her grandfather from the ship which brought them to this country. Tom, Prince, and Maria—they occupied an important place in my mother’s recollections of her early childhood. They had been of a royal family in their own land, and had been taken in battle by an enemy tribe with which they were at war, and sold to a slave-ship. No one ever doubted their claim to royal blood, for they were so superior to the ordinary Africans brought out. They were skilled in the arts of their own country, and had artistic tastes and clever hands. Daddy Tom and Daddy Prince told tales of their wild forests, which the children were never tired of hearing nor they of telling. Maum Maria made wonderful baskets and wove beautiful rugs from the rushes that grew along Long Cane Creek. One day as she sat on the ground weaving a rug which she had hung from a tree, and my mother was listening to her stories of her home in Africa, the little girl said in a voice of sympathy: “Maum ’Ria, you must be dreadfully sorry they took you away from all that, and brought you to a strange land to work for other people.” Maum Maria stopped her work, rose to her full height—she was very tall and straight—clasped her hands and said, dropping a deep courtesy as she spoke: “My chile, ebery night on my knees I tank my Hebenly Father that he brought me here, for without that I wud neber hev known my Saviour!” She remained, hands clasped, and a look of ecstasy on her face, for some time before she sat down and resumed her work, and the little girl, greatly impressed, asked no more questions that day. When grandmother died, she left these three free, with a little sum to be given them yearly; not much, for she had little to leave. Daddy Tom took his freedom, but Daddy Prince and Maum Maria said they were grateful to their beloved mistress, but they would rather remain just as they were; they had all they needed and were happy and loved their white family, and they did not want to make any change.

My grandfather Pettigrew, with all his charming qualities of wit and good humor, had no power to make or keep money. And among the few sad memories my mother had of her childhood was that of seeing her beloved little mother sitting at the window looking out, while tears coursed down her cheeks, as she saw the sheriff taking off all their cattle, and two families of their negroes to be sold!... her husband having gone security for a worthless neighbor. My mother told it with tears, even when she was very old, the scene seemed to come so vividly before her of her mother’s silent grief.

It is curious to me that my paternal grandfather, Ben Allston, also lost his plantation for a security debt, having signed a paper when he was under age for a cousin who was in trouble pecuniarily. Grandfather was advised by a lawyer to contest the matter, as he had been a minor and it was not valid, but he would not avail himself of that plea, I am thankful to say, and lost the beautiful and valuable plantation which he had inherited, Brook Green on the Waccamaw. That is the only point of similarity between my two grandfathers, however, as they were totally different types, one Scotch-Irish, the other pure English.

The little Frenchwoman, so beloved by her children, did not live to show any sign of age, and the memory remained with my mother of her beauty, her olive skin and black hair, in which no strands of white appeared, and her graceful, small, active figure and tiny hands and feet. She always spoke broken English, but, as her husband did not speak or understand French, she never spoke it with her children through courtesy to him, and none of them spoke French. Her illness was short and the family had no idea it was to be fatal, but evidently she recognized it, for she called my mother and kissed her, and said: “My child, I want to tell you that you have been my greatest comfort. I want you to remember that always.”

CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE

AFTER the mother’s death the home seemed very desolate; and when the eldest brother’s, James L. Petigru’s, wife proposed most generously to take the younger girls to live with them in Charleston, so that their education might be carried on, their father gladly consented, and my mother from that time lived with her brother in Charleston until her marriage, having the best teachers that the city afforded and enjoying the most charming and witty social surroundings. Aunt Petigru, though a beauty and belle, was a great invalid, so that the care of the house and her two young children came much on the sisters-in-law. Louise, two years older than my mother, married first and was established in her own home. After two years in society, which was very gay then, my mother became engaged to Robert Allston. When the family heard of the engagement they were greatly disturbed that my mother should contemplate burying her beauty and brilliant social gifts in the country, and her sister Louise thought fit to remonstrate, being a matron properly established in her city residence. She made a formal visit and opened her batteries at once.

“My dear Adèle, I have come to remonstrate with you on this extraordinary announcement you have made! You cannot think of accepting this young man. Mr. Allston lives winter and summer in the country. He will take you away from all your friends and family. That he is good-looking I grant you, and I am told he is a man of means; but it is simply madness for you with your beauty and your gifts to bury yourself on a rice-plantation. Perhaps I would not feel so shocked and surprised if you did not have at your feet one of the very best matches in the city. As it is, I feel I should be criminal if I let you make this fatal mistake without doing all I can to prevent it. If you accept Mr. Blank, you will have one of the most beautiful homes in the city. You will have ample means at your command and you will be the centre of a brilliant social circle. My dear sister, my love for you is too great for me to be silent. I must warn you. I must ask you why you are going to do this dreadful thing?”

My mother was at first much amused; but as my aunt continued to grow more and more excited, contrasting her fate as my father’s wife with the rosy picture of what it would be if she accepted the city lover, mamma said: “Louise, you want to know why I am going to marry Robert Allston? I will tell you:—because he is as obstinate as the devil. In our family we lack willpower; that is our weakness.”

My aunt rose with great dignity, saying: “I will say good morning. Your reason is as extraordinary as your action.” And she swept out of the room, leaving my mother master of the field.

It was indeed a brave thing for my mother to do, to face the lonely, obscure life, as far as society went, of a rice-planter’s wife. She had been born in the country and lived there until she was fifteen, but it was a very different country from that to which she was going. It was in the upper part of the State, the hill country, where there were farms instead of plantations, and there were pleasant neighbors, the descendants of the French colony, all around, and each farmer had only one or two negroes, as the farms were small. In the rice country the plantations were very large, hundreds of acres in each, requiring hundreds of negroes to work them. And, the plantations being so big, the neighbors were far away and few in number. Whether my mother had any realization of the great difference I do not know. I hope she never repented her decision. I know she was very much in love with her blue-eyed, blond, silent suitor. They were complete contrasts and opposites in every way. Papa outside was considered a severe, stern man, but he had the tenderness of a very tender woman if you were hurt or in trouble—only expression was difficult to him, whereas to my mother it was absolutely necessary to express with a flow of beautiful speech all she felt.

They were married at St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, April 21, 1832, and went into the country at once. There was a terrible storm of wind and rain that day, which seemed to the disapproving family an appropriate sign of woe. But it was only the feminine members of the family who were so opposed to my father. My uncle approved of mamma’s choice, for he recognized in my father rare qualities of mind and spirit and that thing we call character which is so hard to define.

My uncle feared my mother would find only raw, untrained servants in her new home, so he gave her a well-trained maid and seamstress to whom she was accustomed, and who was devoted to her. Maum Lavinia was a thoroughly trained, competent house-servant, and must have been a great comfort, though she had a terrible temper. She married on the plantation and had a large family, dying only a few years ago, keeping all her faculties to extreme age. One of her grandsons is a prosperous, respected man in New York now, Hugh Roberton. I keep track of all the descendants of our family servants, and it gives me great pleasure when they make good and do credit to their ancestry. It does not always happen. In so many instances, to my great regret, they have fallen in character and good qualities instead of rising;—without training or discipline that is to be expected.

Mamma has told me of her dismay when she found what a big household she had to manage and control. Not long after they were married she went to my father, almost crying, and remonstrated: “There are too many servants; I do not know what to do with them. There is Mary, the cook; Milly, the laundress; Caroline, the housemaid; Cinda, the seamstress; Peter, the butler; Andrew, the second dining-room man; Aleck, the coachman; and Moses, the gardener. And George, the scullion, and the boy in the yard besides! I cannot find work for them! After breakfast, when they line up and ask, ‘Miss, wha’ yu’ want me fu’ do to-day?’ I feel like running away. Please send some of them away, for Lavinia is capable of doing the work of two of them. Please send them away, half of them, at least.”

But papa made her understand that he could not. These were house-servants; they had been trained for the work, even if they were not efficient and well trained. It would be a cruelty to send them into the field, to work which they were not accustomed to. Then he said: “As soon as you get accustomed to the life here you will know there is plenty for them to do. The house is large and to keep it perfectly clean takes constant work. Then there is the constant need of having clothes cut and made for the babies and little children on the place; the nourishment, soup, etc., to be made and sent to the sick. You will find that there is really more work than there are hands for, in a little while.” And truly she found it so. But it took all her own precious time to direct and plan and carry out the work. The calls to do something which seemed important and necessary were incessant. One day my father came in and asked her to go with him to see a very ill man. She answered: “My dear Mr. Urston” (she always called papa Mr. Allston, but she said it so fast that it sounded like that), “I know nothing about sickness, and there is no earthly use for me to go with you. I have been having the soup made and sending it to him regularly, but I cannot go to see him, for I can do him no good.” He answered with a grave, hurt look: “You are mistaken; you can do him good. At any rate, it is my wish that you go.” Mamma got her hat and came down the steps full of rebellion, but silent. He helped her into the buggy and they drove off down the beautiful avenue of live oaks, draped with gray moss, out to the negro quarter, which is always called by them “the street.”

The houses were built regularly about fifty yards apart on each side of a wide road, with fruit-trees on each side. There are generally about twelve houses on each side, so that it makes a little village. On Chicora Wood plantation there were three of these settlements, a little distance apart, each on a little elevation with good Southern exposure, and all named. One was called California, one Aunty Phibby Hill, and one Crick Hill, because Chapel Creek, a beautiful stream of water, ran along parallel with it and very near. In California, which was the middle settlement, was the hospital, called by the darkies “the sick-house.” To this, which was much larger than the other houses, built for one family each, my father drove. He helped mamma out and they entered; the room was large and airy, and there on one of the beds lay an ill man with closed eyes and labored breathing; one could not but see that death was near. He appeared unconscious, with a look of great pain on his face. My father called his name gently, “Pompey.” He opened his eyes and a look of delight replaced the one of pain. “My marster!” he exclaimed. “Yu cum! O, I tu glad! I tink I bin gwine, widout see yu once more.”

Papa said: “I’ve brought something good for you to look upon, Pompey. I brought your young mistress to see you,” and he took mamma’s hand and drew her to the side of the bed where Pompey could see her without effort.

His whole face lit up with pleasure as he looked and he lifted up his hands and exclaimed: “My mistis! I tank de Lawd. He let me lib fu’ see you! ’Tis like de light to my eye. God bless you, my missis.” And turning his eyes to papa, he said: “Maussa, yu sure is chuse a beauty! ’Tis like de face of a angel! I kin res’ better now, but, my marster, I’m goin’! I want yu to pray fur me.”

So papa knelt by the bed and offered a fervent prayer that Pompey, who had been faithful in all his earthly tasks, should receive the great reward, and that he might be spared great suffering and distress in his going. Then he rose and pressed the hand which was held out to him, and went out followed by my mother. As they drove home she was filled with penitence and love. She wanted to express both, but as she glanced at my father she saw that his mind was far away and she could not. He was, in mind, with the dying man; he was full of self-questioning and solemn thought: “Had he been as faithful to every duty through life as Pompey in his humbler sphere had been?” No thought of his bride came to him.

At last she spoke and said: “I thank you for having made me come with you, and I beg you to forgive my petulance about coming. I did not understand.” He pressed her hand and kissed her but spoke no word, and they returned to the house in silence.

My heart has always been filled with sympathy for my mother when she told me these things of her early life, for I was very like her, and I do not know how she stood that stern silence which came over papa when he was moved. And yet I adored him and I think she did, but all the same it must have been hard.

She found the life on the plantation a very full one and intensely interesting, but not at all the kind of life she had ever dreamed of or expected, a life full of service and responsibility. But where was the reading and study and self-improvement which she had planned? Something unexpected was always turning up to interrupt the programme laid out by her; little did she suspect that her mind and soul were growing apace in this apparently inferior life, as they could never have grown if her plans of self-improvement and study had been carried out.

CHAPTER VII

MOVE TO CANAAN—AUNT BLYTHE

At the end of May my father’s entire household migrated to the sea, which was only four miles to the east of Chicora as the crow flies, but was only to be reached by going seven miles in a rowboat and four miles by land. The vehicles, horses, cows, furniture, bedding, trunks, provisions were all put into great flats, some sixty by twenty feet, others even larger, at first dawn, and sent ahead. Then the family got into the rowboat and were rowed down the Pee Dee, then through Squirrel Creek, with vines tangled above them and water-lilies and flags and wild roses and scarlet lobelia all along the banks, and every now and then the hands would stop their song a moment to call out: “Missy, a alligator!” And there on the reeds and marsh in some sunny cove lay a great alligator basking in the sun, fast asleep. As soon as the sound of the oars reached him, he would plunge into the water, making great waves on which the boat rose and fell in a way suggestive of the ocean itself. The way was teeming with life; birds of every hue and note flew from tree to tree on the banks; here and there on top of a tall cypress a mother hawk could be seen sitting on her nest, looking down with anxious eye, while around, in ever-narrowing circles, flew her fierce mate, with shrill cries, threatening death to the intruder. No one who has not rowed through these creeks in the late spring or early summer can imagine the abundance and variety of life everywhere. On every log floating down the stream or lodged along the shore, on such a summer day rows of little turtles can be seen fast asleep, just as many as the log will hold, ranging from the size of a dinner-plate to a dessert-plate, only longer than they are broad—the darkies call them “cooters” (they make a most delicious soup or stew)—so many it is hard to count the number one sees in one trip. Besides all this, there is the less-pleasing sight of snakes on the banks and sometimes on the tree overhanging the water, also basking in the sun so trying to human beings at midday. But my mother was enchanted with this row, so perfectly new to her, and the negro boat-songs also delighted her. There were six splendid oarsmen, who sang from the moment the boat got well under way. Oh, there is nothing like the rhythm and swing of those boat-songs. “In case if I neber see you any mo’, I’m hopes to meet yu on Canaan’s happy sho’,” and “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” and “Run, Mary, Run,” “Drinkin’ Wine, Drinkin’ Wine,” “Oh, Zion!” I am filled with longing when I think of them. I was born at the seaside, and from that time until I was eighteen, the move from the plantation to the sea beach at the end of May, and the return home to the plantation the first week in November were great events and a perfect joy.

Of course, it was different for my mother, for the tearing up of stakes just as she had got accustomed to her new home and new life, the packing up of everything necessary for comfort for every member of the household for the summer and autumn was terrific. It required so much thought, so many lists, so much actual labor. At the same time carpets, curtains, and all the winter clothing had to be aired, sunned, and put up with camphor against the moths. She was pretty well worn out and tired by this new aspect of her future life, this upheaval and earthquake to be gone through twice a year, so that when she stepped into the boat she was not her gayest self; but, when the things were all stored in, the lunch-baskets and valises and a big moss-wrapped bunch of roses, and the dogs at her feet; when papa, seated by her, took the rudder ropes, when the boat shot out into the river and the hands broke into song, preceded by each one calling aloud to the other, “Let’s go, boys, let’s go,” she told me it was the most delightful revelation and sensation of her life almost. She had never been in a rowboat before; she had never been on a river. She had grown up in the interior, far in the hill country near the upper waters of the Savannah River, a rocky stream, where no woman ever thought of going in a boat. This swift, delightful movement, with the glorious sunshine and fresh morning breeze—for they always made an early start, there being so much to be done at the other end—made the row only too short.

But new pleasures awaited her, for the flat with the horses had gone ahead of them, starting with the ebb tide, at four in the morning; and, when they landed at the wharf at Waverly on the Waccamaw (which belonged to my father’s elder brother, General Joseph Allston, who died leaving his two sons, Joseph Blythe and William Allan, to papa’s care and guardianship), they found the horses all ready saddled, and they mounted and rode the four miles to “Canaan,” where they were to spend the summer. It was on the seashore, just at an inlet where the ocean view was; and, as mamma saw the great waves come rolling in, she was filled with joy anew. To me it has always been intoxicating, that first view each year of the waves rolling, rolling; and the smell of the sea, and the brilliant blue expanse; but then I was born there and it is like a renewal of birth.

My mother enjoyed her life here. It was much simpler than that at the plantation, with fewer servants, and that she much enjoyed. They had breakfast at six o’clock every morning, and as soon as breakfast was over, papa mounted his horse and rode to Waverly, where the boat met him. His horse was put in the stable and he rowed to Chicora, went over all the crop, the rice-fields first, landing on the bank opposite the house and walking round all the planted fields, seeing that the water was kept on the rice just at the right depth, that the fields which had been dried for hoeing were dry enough to begin on them with the hoe. There is a real science in rice-planting, and my father was thoroughly versed in it and most diligent in seeing after the treatment of each field. He was always followed by the trunk minder, Jacob, and in every field Jacob went down the bank to the water edge and drew out a stalk or two of rice for papa to examine the root growth, by which the water is managed. This accomplished, papa crossed to the house, where a horse was ready saddled. He mounted and rode all over the upland crop, corn, potatoes, oats, peas; went into the house, which Maum Mary kept fresh and clean, wrote a few letters, drank a glass of buttermilk and ate some fruit, got into his boat again, and returned to the seashore for a three-o’clock dinner, having done a tremendous day’s work; and he never failed, with all his work, to go into the garden and gather a bunch of roses and pink oleander to bring to mamma. Of course, his homecoming was the event of the day to my mother.

Soon papa’s aunt, Mrs. Blythe, came to be with them for the summer, which was a great pleasure to mamma. She was a woman of noble character and ample means, who was specially devoted to my father, having no children of her own, and recognizing in him a kindred nature. Aunt Blythe was a true specimen of the “grande dame” of the old South. She had been brought up to responsibility, to command herself and others; she was an old lady when mamma first knew her, but tall and stately in figure and beautiful in face. She brought her own barouche, horses, and coachman and footman, and her own maid and laundress—in short, a retinue. I never saw Aunt Blythe, as she died before I was born, but the tales of her generosity and her grandeur which were told by white and black placed her in the category of fairies and other benign spirits. I was named after Aunt Blythe, a rare instance of posthumous gratitude, I think; and my mother, in the way she did it, showed a sympathetic, romantic understanding of Aunt Blythe’s nature. She had been sought in marriage in her early youth by her first cousin, John Waties; but, when he approached her father and asked for his consent, he refused absolutely, as he disapproved of the marriage of cousins. So Aunt Blythe and her lover agreed not to be married during the father’s lifetime. Alas, alas! John Waties died very soon! He left all his property to his fiancée, which made her the rich woman of the family. This property included a large and valuable rice-plantation, with a large number of negroes. Aunt Blythe felt this a great trust and responsibility and most difficult to manage, for it was almost impossible to get an overseer who would treat the negroes with gentleness and justice. The men who sought the place of overseer in those days were invariably from the North, their one idea being to get as much work from the hands as possible, and, consequently, make as much money. Aunt Blythe could not live alone in this isolated spot, the barony of Friendfield (it is the plantation now owned by Doctor Baruch and kept by him as a game-preserve), and, after trying one overseer after another, and finding them cruel and regardless in their treatment of her people, she accepted one of her many suitors, Doctor Blythe, who had been a surgeon in the Revolutionary War. She was then able to live on her plantation and to see that her negroes were kindly and properly managed and looked after. Mamma became devoted to Aunt Blythe and wanted to name her second daughter after her, but my father wanted her named after his mother, who had died a few years before his marriage, so he named her Charlotte; but mamma wanted Aunt Blythe’s name in, so she asked to have the name Charlotte Frances—Aunt Blythe’s name was Elizabeth Frances—and papa consented, but he always called the beautiful little girl Charlotte, while mamma called her Frances. She died when she was about four, a grief my mother felt to the very end, with strange poignancy. When, some years after Aunt Blythe’s death, I made my appearance on the scene, mamma named me for her; but, instead of giving me the very pretty name of her excellent husband, she gave me the name of the man she loved, John Waties. So, instead of being Elizabeth Blythe Allston, I was named Elizabeth Waties Allston; not nearly so pretty a name, but it really made me the child of romance, I think. It was a beautiful thought and would have greatly pleased Aunt Blythe if she had known.

All of this has taken me from that first summer of my mother’s married life on the seashore. It was a very happy one, the long mornings spent in sewing and talking with one who knew people and life, which my mother did not at all; and, above all, who knew this very peculiar life, surrounded by hundreds of a different race, with absolutely different characteristics and ideas. Mamma told me that once she had said in a despairing voice to her:

“But, auntie, are there no honest negroes? In your experience, have you found none honest?”

“My dear, I have found none honest, but I have found many, many trustworthy; and, Adèle, when you think of it, that really is a higher quality. It is like bravery and courage; bravery is the natural, physical almost, absence of fear; courage is the spiritual quality which makes a man encounter danger confidently in spite of inward fear. And so honesty is a natural endowment, but trustworthiness is the quality of loyalty, of fidelity which will make a man die rather than betray a trust; and that beautiful quality I have often found. When found, you must give it full recognition and seem to trust absolutely; one trace of suspicion will kill it; but one may make a mistake, and it is well, with every appearance of complete trust, to keep your mind alert and on the subject.”

My mother exclaimed: “Oh, my dear auntie, I do not see how I can live my whole life amid these people! I don’t see how you have done it and kept your beautiful poise and serenity! To be always among people whom I do not understand and whom I must guide and teach and lead on like children! It frightens me!”

Aunt Blythe laid her hand on my mother’s hand and said: “Adèle, it is a life of self-repression and effort, but it is far from being a degrading life, as you have once said to me. It is a very noble life, if a woman does her full duty in it. It is the life of a missionary, really; one must teach, train, uplift, encourage—always encourage, even in reproof. I grant you it is a life of effort; but, my child, it is our life: the life of those who have the great responsibility of owning human beings. We are responsible before our Maker for not only their bodies, but their souls; and never must we for one moment forget that. To be the wife of a rice-planter is no place for a pleasure-loving, indolent woman, but for an earnest, true-hearted woman it is a great opportunity, a great education. To train others one must first train oneself; it requires method, power of organization, grasp of detail, perception of character, power of speech; above all, endless self-control. That is why I pleaded with my dear sister until she consented to send Robert to West Point instead of to college. Robert was to be a manager and owner of large estates and many negroes. He was a high-spirited, high-tempered boy, brought up principally by women. The discipline of four years at West Point would teach him first of all to obey, to yield promptly to authority; and no one can command unless he has first learned to obey. It rejoices my heart to see Robert the strong, absolutely self-controlled, self-contained man he now is; for I mean to leave him my property and my negroes, to whom I have devoted much care, and who are now far above the average in every way, and I know he will continue my work; and, from what I see of you, my child, I believe you will help him.”

My mother told me that this talk with Aunt Blythe influenced her whole life. It altered completely her point of view. It enabled her to see a light on the path ahead of her, where all had been dark and stormy before; the life which had looked to her unbearable, and to her mind almost degrading. Aunt Blythe urged her daily to organize her household so that she would have less physical work herself, and that part should be delegated to the servants, who might not at first do it well, but who could be taught and trained to do it regularly and in the end well. With Aunt Blythe’s help she arranged a programme of duties for each servant, and Aunt Blythe’s trained and very superior maid was able to assist greatly in the training of mamma’s willing but raw servants.

The old lady was most regular in taking her daily drives and always insisted on my mother’s going with her. It was a great amusement to her to see the preparations made. Aunt Blythe was big and heavy and always wore black satin slippers without heels. Mamma said she had never seen her take a step on mother earth except to and from the carriage, when she was always assisted. She wore an ample, plainly gathered black silk gown, with waist attached to skirt, cut rather low in the neck, and a white kerchief of fine white net for morning, and lace for dress, crossed in front, and a white cap. We have her portrait by Sully in that dress. She always carried a large silk bag filled with useful things, and as they met darkies on the way, Aunt Blythe would throw out to each one, without stopping the carriage, a handkerchief or apron, a paper of needles, or a paper of pins, or a spool of thread, or a card of buttons or hooks and eyes, or a spoon or fork—all things greatly prized, for in those days all these things were much scarcer than they are to-day, and there were no country shops as there are now, and, consequently, such small things were worth ten times as much as now to people, though they might not really cost as much as they now do. Sometimes it was a little package of tea or coffee or sugar which she had Minda, her maid, prepare and tie up securely for the purpose. Naturally, “Miss Betsey Bly” was looked upon as a great personage, and her path in her daily drives was apt to be crossed by many foot-passengers, who greeted her with profound courtesies, and apron skilfully tucked over the arm, so that it could be extended in time to receive anything.