the narrow opening.
My grandfather, “Captain Sterling,” was at the head of a foraging-party near Yorktown when they were chased by British troopers. The Americans scattered in various directions and escaped for the most part, being familiar with the country by-ways and cross-roads. Their captain was closely pursued by three troopers to a high plantation-gate. The Virginian opened it, without leaving the saddle, shot through, shut the gate, and rammed down the latch into the socket hard. The pursuers had to alight to raise the latch, and the delay gave the fugitive time to get away.
My parents were married at Olney, in Henrico County, January 25, 1825.
The bride—not yet nineteen years of age—wore a soft, sheer India muslin, a veil falling to the hem of the gown, and white brocade slippers embroidered with faint blue flowers. The bridegroom’s suit was of fine blue cloth, with real silver buttons. His feet were clad in white-silk stockings and low shoes—“pumps” as they were called—with wrought-silver buckles. Those shoes and buckles were long preserved in the family. I do not know what befell them finally. The ceremony was performed by the brother-in-law whom I have called, for the sake of convenience, the Reverend Mr. Carus.
The girl had laughingly threatened that she would not promise to “obey,” and that a scene would follow the use of the obnoxious word in the marriage service. The young divine, with this in mind, or in a fit of absent-mindedness or of stage-fright, actually blundered out, “Love, honor—and obey, in all things consistent!”
As may be imagined, the interpolation produced a lively sensation in the well-mannered company thronging the homestead, and took rank as a family legend. How many times I have heard my mother quote the saving clause in playful monition to my masterful father!
The bride’s portion, on leaving home for the house her father had furnished for her in town, was ten thousand dollars in stocks and bonds, and two family servants—a husband and wife.
The following summer the wedded pair visited the husband’s mother in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The journey from Richmond to New York was by a packet-ship, and lasted for two weeks. My poor little mother was horribly seasick for a week each way. To her latest day she could not hear of “Point Judith” without a qualm. She said that, for a time, the association “disgusted her with her own name.” The mother-in-law, hale and handsome at forty-five, had married, less than a year before, Deacon John Clapp, a well-to-do and excellent citizen of Roxbury, and installed the buxom, “capable” widow, whose father was now dead, as the mother of four children by a former marriage, and as mistress of a comfortable home. She had not come to him portionless. The sturdy “Squire,” mindful of her filial devotion to him in his declining years, had left her an equal share of his estate with her sisters. The brother, Lewis Pierce, had succeeded to the homestead.
Mrs. Clapp appeared in the door of her pretty house, radiant in her best black silk and cap of fine lace (she never wore any other), her husband at her side, the little girls and the boy in the background, as the stage bringing her son and new daughter from Boston stopped at the gate.
At their nearer approach she uttered an exclamation, flung up her hands before her eyes, and ran back into the house for the “good cry” the calmest matron of the day considered obligatory upon her when state family occasions demanded a show of “proper feeling.”
The worthy Deacon saved the situation from embarrassment by the heartiness of his welcome to the pair, neither of whom he had ever met before.
The second incident linked in my mind with the important visit is of a more serious complexion. I note it upon Memory’s tablets as the solitary exhibition of aught approaching jealousy I ever saw in the wife, who knew that her lover-husband’s heart was all her own, then and as long as it beat. I give the story in her own words:
“A Miss Topliffe and her mother were invited to take tea with us one evening. I had gathered from sundry hints—and eloquent sighs—from your grandmother that she had set her heart upon a match between her son and this young lady. She even went to the length of advising me to pay particular attention to my dress on this evening. ‘Miss Topliffe was very dressy!’ I found this to be true. She was also an airy personage, talkative to your father, and supercilious to me. A few days afterward we were asked to tea at the Topliffes. I had a wretched evening! Miss Topliffe was rather handsome and very lively, and she was in high feather that night, directing most of her conversation, as before, to my husband. She played upon the piano, and sang love-songs, and altogether made herself the attraction of the occasion. I felt small and insignificant and dull beside her, and I could see that she amused your father so much that he did not see how I was pushed into the background.
“I said never a word of all this to him, still less to my mother-in-law, when she told me, next day, that ‘every one of his friends had hoped my son would marry Miss Topliffe. The match would have been very agreeable to both families. But it seems that it was not to be. The ways of Providence are past finding out!’
“Then she sighed, just as she might have mourned over a bereavement in the family. I have hated that girl ever since!”
“But, mother,” I essayed, consolingly, “you knew he loved you best all the time!”
“Of course, child, but she didn’t! There was the rub!”
I can respond now. It always is the bitter drop at the bottom of the cup held to the lips of the wife who cannot resent her lord’s innocent flirtation with “that other woman.” She knows, and he is serenely conscious of his unshaken loyalty, but the other woman has her own beliefs and hugs them.
In May, 1826, my brother William Edwin was born in the cosey home on the slope of Church Hill overlooking the “Pineapple Church.” More than forty years afterward, in the last drive I had with my mother, she leaned forward in the carriage to point out the neat three-story brick dwelling, now in the heart of the business section of the city:
“That was the house in which I spent the first three years of my married life!”
Then, dreamily and softly, she related what was the peaceful tenor of those first years. Her father was alive, and she saw him often; her sister, “Aunt Betsy,” and her children kept the old home-nest warm for him; the young couple had hosts of friends in town and country, and both were as deeply interested, as of yore, in church-work.
Edwin was two years old when a single bolt from the blue changed life for her.
My father’s partner was a personal and trusted friend before they went into business together. They had kept bachelor’s hall in partnership up to the marriage of the junior member of the firm. It transpired subsequently that the senior, who was the financial manager of the concern, had “cooked” accounts and made up false exhibits of the status of the house to coax the confiding comrade to join his fortunes with his. The tale is old and as common to-day as when my father discovered that his own savings and my mother’s wedding-portion would be swallowed up in the payment of his partner’s debts.
It was dark and bitter weather that swept down upon the peaceful home and blighted the ambitions of the rising young merchant.
The man who had brought about the reverse of fortune “took to drink.” That was likewise as common then as now. My father paid his debts, wound up the business honestly, and braced himself to begin the world anew.
In his chagrin at the overthrow of plans and hopes, he somewhat rashly accepted the proposal that the fresh beginning should be in the country. Richmond was full of disagreeable associations, and country merchants were making money.
Country
