CHAPTER VIII FIRST CHILD—PLANTATION LIFE

THE next winter, in February, mamma’s first child, a son, named Benjamin, after papa’s father, was born. She was desperately ill, and her beautiful hair was cut as short as possible. Papa had thought it wisest for her to accede to her brother and his wife’s urgent request that she should go to them in Charleston for the event; and it was most fortunate, for had she been taken ill at home, with a doctor far away, she probably would not have lived. As it was, her recovery was slow, and it was some time before she could resume her normal life at home. Aunt May, her unmarried sister, went home with her when she returned, and stayed until she regained her usual health. Aunt May was the only plain sister, for although she had beautiful complexion, brown hair, and fine figure, her face was not pretty,—but she made up in wit what she lacked in beauty. She was the wittiest, most amusing companion, and had great domestic gifts as housekeeper. Aunt May’s coffee, Aunt May’s rolls and bread, in short, every article on her table was{82} superior, and, of course, this was a great comfort to mamma. There was only one drawback. Aunt May had no patience with incompetence, and the servants were a terrible trial to her, and mamma had to hear hourly of their shortcomings, which she knew only too well already, and to sympathize with Aunt May over them.

My mother spent a very anxious time in the first year of her eldest child’s life. He was very delicate, and mamma knew nothing about babies. The plantation nurses seemed to her very ignorant, and she was afraid to trust the baby to them. However, any one who has read Doctor Sims’s very interesting account of his early practice, especially among babies, well knows that these nurses, many of them, had learned through the constant care of babies how to manage them in a way surprising to one whose knowledge is altogether theoretic and scientific. Anyway, my brother grew and strengthened before the next baby came two years afterward. Robert was a very beautiful, strong child, and from the first gave no anxiety or trouble, only delight to mamma; and the little boys were always taken for twins, the elder being small for his age and the younger large.{83}

Two years passed, and another baby came. This was the first little girl, and papa wished to name her for his mother, Charlotte Ann, and mamma asked that part of Aunt Blythe’s name be added—her name was Elizabeth Frances. She had died the winter before, and mamma missed her dreadfully. So the little girl was called Charlotte Frances; and, in the household with its number of servants, you could always distinguish those devoted to my mother, who always spoke of “Miss Fanny,” and those devoted to my father, who spoke of “Miss Cha’lot.” But I never knew this from mamma, and do not know if it were so. Hearing of her only from mamma, I only knew of her as Fanny, my perfectly beautiful little sister.

Of these years I know very little, nothing, indeed, except that my parents went the summer following to Newport and New York, and visited papa’s uncle, the great painter, Washington Allston, in Boston. When Mr. Flagg was looking over the great man’s letters preparatory to publishing his life and letters, he found one from Washington Allston to his mother, speaking of this visit and of my mother’s beauty and charm; and Mr. Flagg very kindly sent this letter to my{84} mother, who gave it to me, and there is quite a contest among my nieces and nephews as to who will be the lucky one to whom I leave it. Mamma was greatly impressed by the ethereal beauty of the artist. She had at this time as nurse for the baby a woman from the State of New York, who took the little one in to see and be seen by her great-uncle. When she came out of the studio she said to mamma: “Surely, your uncle has the face of an angel, ma’am.”

Three years passed, mamma very happy with her little family of interesting children, two of them so beautiful that wherever they went the nurse was stopped on the street by those who remarked on the wonderful beauty of Robert and Fanny. Poor, dear little Ben was neither beautiful nor strong, but he had a good mind and powerful will. Mamma often went to Charleston to visit her brother and sisters there, for by this time the youngest sister, Harriet, was also married to a young and very clever lawyer, Henry Deas Lesesne, who was in the law office of James L. Petigru, and she had her charming home in Charleston; so there were three homes to be visited there. Aunt Louise had relented in her attitude to my father and was always hospitably anxious to entertain the little{85} family. Aunt Blythe had left her fortune to my father and the two boys, still babies though they were, to the surprise and indignation of many. So these were happy prosperous years.

Papa found the house at Chicora too small for the growing family, and began the planning of a new one, to which the two very large down-stairs rooms of the old one should be attached as an L. As the spring came on, a new baby was expected, and mamma hoped it would be a little girl, to name after her mother. As my mother dreaded the move to the sea, which involved so much troublesome packing, my father built a summer house, what would now be called a bungalow, for it had large, airy rooms, but all on one floor, at a pineland about eight miles north of the plantation on the same side of the Pedee, where he had a large tract of land, and where the cattle went always in summer. It was called “The Meadows.” Mamma was very pleased to be so near the plantation, for she could drive down in the afternoons and see after her flower-garden, which was beautiful and her delight. She gathered great baskets of roses and brought them back. The Meadows was very prettily situated in a savannah, which was a natural garden of wild flowers—great,{86} brilliant tiger-lilies, white and yellow orchis, the pink deer-grass, with its sweet leaf, pink saltatia, as well as white, and ferns everywhere.

Here, in this isolated new summer home, miles away from any neighbor, mamma was taken ill about two months before the time set for the baby’s coming. Hastily the doctor was summoned, a very young man, still unmarried, but one who showed early his skill and proficiency as a family doctor; then the monthly nurse, as it was then called, Mary Holland, was found and brought. Fortunately, she had been employed in Georgetown and had not yet returned to Charleston, where she lived, and was in great demand by the doctors of best standing. I remember her as an old woman, but still tall and stately in figure, and with great dignity and poise. She was about the color of an Indian. It was a mercy she could be got, for my mother was desperately ill; but the little girl so hoped for was born, and my mother did not die. When she became strong enough to speak, and my father was with her, she said: “I want to see little Louise.”

My father answered: “I will bring little Adèle to you myself.”

She exclaimed: “Oh, Mr. Allston, I do not{87} want the baby named after me! I must name her for my dear mother.”

But he answered: “I wish her to bear the name of my beloved wife.”

She said nothing, but the tears which all of her suffering had not brought, now rolled down her cheeks. In a little while papa returned with the small bundle of flannel wrappings and most skilfully and tenderly unfolded them until the baby was visible.

Mamma looked at her, and then with something of her wonted spirit said: “You may call her Adèle if you like! Poor little soul, she cannot live! Take her away!”

I must think that this exhibition of almost cruel obstinacy on my father’s part was due to the fact that the doctor had told him mamma could not possibly recover, and he thought it the only chance to have a little girl to name after her.

Wonderful tales were told of the smallness of the little Adèle. “She was put into a quart cup with ease and comfort to her.” After mamma was well enough to hold her and play with her, she passed her wedding-ring over her hand and on her arm as a bracelet! But the little Adèle had a grit and grip on life which astounded every one, and{88} she grew to womanhood, a beautiful creature in face, form, and spirit. She married and had seven children, and never lost one from illness. They grew up healthy and strong. The tiny Adèle was born August 16, 1840, in the very middle of a very hot summer. Of course, my mother’s return to health was slow and tedious.

One can cast one’s mind back to that date, when ice was so great a luxury that it was only to be had in the North, where it was cut and put up in the winter. The Meadows was twenty miles from the nearest town and post-office, Georgetown, and everything had to be brought up by the plantation wagons and team. But milk and butter and cream were abundant, also poultry and eggs; and the Pedee furnished most delicious fish—bream and Virginia perch and trout. There were figs in abundance and also peaches, but the latter were small and a good deal troubled with cuculio. They were, however, very good stewed, and my mother made quantities of delicious preserves from them.

Around the house at Chicora grew luxuriant orangetrees, only the bitter-sweet; but these oranges make the nicest marmalade, so mamma put up quantities of that for winter use. Her vege{89}table-garden was always full of delicious things—cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and okra; and, as my father killed beef and mutton every week for use on the plantation, she had the very best soups and steaks; and there were always wild ducks to be had. Also, after August 1, there was venison in the house, for my father was devoted to deer-hunting. At the time the negroes understood preserving the venison in the hottest weather by exposing it to the broiling sun. I do not know what else they did, for it is now a lost art; but it was called “jerked venison” and was a delicious breakfast dish, when shaved very thin and broiled. They also preserved fish in the same way—called “corned fish”—it was a great breakfast dish broiled. Besides all this, about the end of August the rice-birds began to swarm over the rice, sucking out all the grain when in the milk stage. This necessitated the putting out of bird-minders in great numbers, who shot the little birds as they rose in clouds from the rice at the least noise. These rice-birds are the most delicious morsels; smaller than any other bird that is used for food, I think, so that a man with a good appetite can eat a dozen, and I, myself, have eaten six. When they go out at the end of harvest, another delicious{90} little bird comes in, called locally a coot, but really the rail or soarer of Maryland. All these things made living easy and abundant, for they came in great quantities.

Mamma spoke with great pleasure of this part of her life when she could thoroughly enjoy her little family, sorrow not yet having clouded her horizon. When the little Adèle was two years old came a little sister, strong, healthy, and beautiful, to bear the name of the beloved little French mother, Louise Gibert—then her cup of happiness was full. She had come to love the plantation life, with its duties and its power to help the sick, to have the girls taught to sew and cut out simple garments, to supply proper and plentiful nourishment for the hospital—all this came to be a joy to her. There was on the plantation, besides the hospital or “sick-house,” a “children’s house,” where all the mothers who were going out to work brought their children to be cared for during the day. The nursing babies, who were always taken care of by a child of ten or eleven, were carried to the mothers at regular intervals to be nursed. The head nurse, old Maum Phibby (Ph?be), was a great personage, and an administrator, having two under her, a nurse and a cook. Maum Phibby trained the children big

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MRS. BENJAMIN ALLSTON (NéE CHARLOTTE ANNE ALLSTON), MOTHER OF R. F. W. ALLSTON.

Miniature by Fraser.

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enough to learn, teaching them to run up a seam and hem, in the way of sewing, and to knit first squares for wash-cloths, and then stockings, and then to spin. When the war came there was not a grown woman on the plantation who could not knit stockings or spin yarn. Weaving was only taught to certain young women who showed ability and some mechanical skill.

Mamma walked out often to the sick-house to see the patients and taste the soup and other nourishment, and then on to the “chillun’s house” to see how their food was prepared, and whether they were all kept clean and healthy. This she did all her life, and I remember the joy of being allowed to go with her and of seeing the children all lined up in rows, their black skins shining, as clean black skins do, in a delightful way, their white teeth gleaming as they dropped their courtesies as mamma passed, each one holding in her hand some piece of work to exhibit. They were a healthy, happy lot and very clean, as it was an important part of Maum Phibby’s duties to report the mothers who were negligent of “clean linen.”[3] There was in the childre{92}n’s house, as well as the sick-house, a tin tub, that in the hospital big enough for the tallest man to lie straight in, and that at the children’s house smaller; and any number of huge black kettles, so that hot water in great quantities could be got very quickly on the open fires. The children were bathed and scrubbed once a week by Maum Phibby, and woe to the mother whose child was not found to have been kept clean in the meantime. I have two of those immense coffin-shaped tubs now, perfectly good and strong, and I had one freshly painted and used it until two years ago, when I was able to put in a modern bathtub. At the end of the war, when furniture and every portable thing was carried off by the darkies, the bathtubs from the sick-house were the one thing not taken. They were conspicuously in poor repute, one thing that nobody wanted! The coffin-shaped tub has a great recommendation, as taking less than half the water to cover a person entirely than the modern tub, and a very hot bath could be quickly given.

Mamma every Sunday afternoon had all the children big enough to come assembled in the little church in the avenue, and taught them what she could of the great mercy of God and what he{93} expected of his children. It was always spoken of as “katekism,” and was the event of the week to the children—their best clothes, their cleanest faces, and oh, such smiling faces greeted mamma when she arrived at the church! After the lesson a big cake was brought in a wheelbarrow by one of the house-boys, convoyed by Maum Mary, who cut it with much ceremony, and each child went up to the barrow, dropped a courtesy and received a slice, then passed to my mother with another courtesy, filed out and scampered happily home as soon as safe from Maum Mary’s paralyzing eye.

All her life mamma kept this up, and in later years we children were allowed to go on condition that we should sit still and listen to the catechism, and ask for no cake until every child had had his share. Then we were allowed a few scraps, which tasted nicer than any other cake.