Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

[122] See Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy, _infra_, chap. V.

[123] John Marshall, when at the height of his career, liked to talk of these times. ”He ever recurred with fondness to that primitive mode of life, when he partook with a keen relish of balm tea and mush; and when the females used thorns for pins.” (Howe, 263, and see _Hist. Mag._, iii, 166.)

Most of the settlers on the frontier and near frontier did not use forks or tablecloths. Was.h.i.+ngton found this condition in the house of a Justice of the Peace. ”When we came to supper there was neither a Cloth upon ye Table nor a knife to eat with; but as good luck would have it, we had knives of our [own].” (_Writings_: Ford, i, 4.)

Chastellux testifies that, thirty years later, the frontier settlers were forced to make almost everything they used. Thus, as population increased, necessity developed men of many trades and the little communities became self-supporting. (Chastellux, 226-27.)

[124] More than a generation after Thomas Marshall moved to ”The Hollow”

in the Blue Ridge large quant.i.ties of bear and beaver skins were brought from the Valley into Staunton, not many miles away, just over the Ridge.

(La Rochefoucauld, iii, 179-80.) The product of the Blue Ridge itself was sent to Fredericksburg and Alexandria. (See Crevecoeur, 63-65.) Thirty years earlier (1733) Colonel Byrd records that ”Bears, Wolves, and Panthers” roamed about the site of Richmond; that deer were plentiful and rattlesnakes considered a delicacy. (Byrd's _Writings_: Ba.s.sett, 293, 318-19.)

[125] See _infra_, chap. VII.

[126] Even forty years later, all ”store” merchandise could be had in this region only by hauling it from Richmond, Fredericksburg, or Alexandria. Transportation from the latter place to Winchester cost two dollars and a half per hundredweight. In 1797, ”store” goods of all kinds cost, in the Blue Ridge, thirty per cent more than in Philadelphia. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 203.) From Philadelphia the cost was four to five dollars per hundredweight. While there appear to have been country stores at Staunton and Winchester, over the mountains (Chalkley's _Augusta County (Va.) Records_), the cost of freight to those places was prohibitive of anything but the most absolute necessities even ten years after the Const.i.tution was adopted.

[127] _Hist. Mag._, iii, 166; Howe, 263; also, Story, in Dillon, iii, 334.

[128] Story, in Dillon, iii, 331-32.

[129] _Ib._

[130] See Binney, in Dillon, iii, 285.

[131] ”Fauquier was then a frontier county ... far in advance of the ordinary reach of compact population.” (Story, in Dillon, iii, 331; also see _New York Review_ (1838), iii, 333.) Even a generation later (1797), La Rochefoucauld, writing from personal investigation, says (iii, 227-28): ”There is no state so entirely dest.i.tute of all means of public education as Virginia.”

[132] See Binney, in Dillon, iii, 285.

[133] Story, in Dillon, iii, 330.

[134] Marshall to Story, July 31, 1833; Story, ii, 150.

[135] See _infra_, chaps. VII and VIII.

[136] ”A taste for reading is more prevalent [in Virginia] among the gentlemen of the first cla.s.s than in any other part of America; but the common people are, perhaps, more ignorant than elsewhere.” (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 232.) Other earlier and later travelers confirm this statement of this careful French observer.

[137] Story thinks that Thomas Marshall, at this time, owned Milton, Shakespeare, and Dryden. (Dillon, iii, 331.) This is possible. Twenty years later, Chastellux found Milton, Addison, and Richardson in the parlor of a New Jersey inn; but this was in the comparatively thickly settled country adjacent to Philadelphia. (Chastellux, 159.)

[138] Story, in Dillon, iii, 331, and Binney, in _ib._, 283; _Hist.

Mag._, iii, 166.

[139] Lang: _History of English Literature_, 384; and see Gosse: _History of Eighteenth Century Literature_, 131; also, Traill: _Social England_, V, 72; Stephen: _Alexander Pope_, 62; and see Cabot to Hamilton, Nov. 29, 1800; _Cabot_: Lodge, 299.

[140] Binney, in Dillon, iii, 283-84; Was.h.i.+ngton's _Diary_; MS., Lib.

Cong.

[141] Irving, i, 45; and Lodge: _Was.h.i.+ngton_, i, 59. Many years later when he became rich, Was.h.i.+ngton acquired a good library, part of which is now in the Boston Athenaeum. But as a young and moneyless surveyor he had no books of his own and his ”book” education was limited and shallow.

[142] Binney, in Dillion, iii, 281-84.

[143] Irving, i, 37, 45; and Sparks, 10.