Part 2 (1/2)
There is Jefferson, for instance. Almost the first letter in his published correspondence is devoted to a confession of his tender pa.s.sion for a young lady dwelling in the town of Williamsburg. Yet her name is not the one that stands next his own on the marriage register. This first love of his was a Miss 'Becca Burwell. We chance upon the young collegian's secret as we open his letter to John Page, written on Christmas day, 1762. He begins jocularly enough, yet only half in fun after all: ”I am sure if there is such a thing as a Devil in this world, he must have been here last night, and have had some hand in contriving what happened to me. Do you think the cursed rats (at his instigation, I suppose) did not eat up my pocket-book, which was in my pocket, within a foot of my head? And not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away my jemmy-worked silk garters and half a dozen new minuets I had just got.” ”Tell Miss Alice Corbin,” he adds, ”that I verily believe the rats knew I was to win a pair of garters from her, or they never would have been so cruel as to carry mine away.”
Christmas day, indeed, found him in sorry case. These losses he could have borne, but worse remained to tell: ”You know it rained last night, or if you do not know it, I am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in the usual place; and going to take her up after I arose this morning, I found her in the same place, 'tis true, but--_quantum mutatus ab illo_--all afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house, and as silent and still as the rats that had eat my pocket-book. Now, you know, if chance had had anything to do in this matter, there were a thousand other spots where it might have chanced to leak as well as this one, which was perpendicularly over my watch. But, I'll tell you, it's my opinion that the Devil came and bored the hole over it on purpose.” It was not the injury to his timepiece which drew forth these violent, half-real, half-jesting objurgations; no, there was a sentimental reason behind. The water had soaked a watch-paper and a picture, so that when he attempted to remove them, he says: ”My cursed fingers gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over. I would have cried bitterly, but that I thought it beneath the dignity of a man!” The mystery of the original of the picture and the maker of the watch-paper is soon explained, for a page or two further on, he trusts that Miss 'Becca Burwell will give him another watch-paper of her own cutting, which he promises to esteem much more, though it were a plain round one, than the nicest in the world cut by other hands. ”However,” he adds, ”I am afraid she would think this presumption, after my suffering the other to get spoiled.”
A very real and tumultuous pa.s.sion this of young Tom Jefferson's! Every letter he writes to his friend teems with reference to _her_. Now she is R. B.; again Belinda; and again, with that deep secrecy of dog Latin so dear to the collegian, she figures as _Campana in die_ (bell in day); or, still more mysteriously, as Adnileb, written in Greek that the vulgar world may not pry into the sacred secret. Oh, youth, youth, how like is the nineteenth century to the eighteenth, and that to its preceding, till we reach the courts.h.i.+p of Adam and Eve!
In October, '63, he writes to his old confidant: ”In the most melancholy fit that ever any poor soul was, I sit down to write you. Last night, as merry as agreeable company and dancing with Belinda in the Apollo could make me, I never could have thought the succeeding sun could have seen me so wretched as I now am!... I was prepared to say a great deal. I had dressed up in my own mind such thoughts as occurred to me in as moving a language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably creditable manner. But, good G.o.d! when I had an opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length, were the too visible marks of my strange confusion.” The framer of the Declaration of Independence, whose eloquence startled the world, found himself tongue-tied and stammering in a declaration of love to a provincial maiden.
At twenty-nine or thirty Jefferson had recovered enough to go a-courting again, to Mistress Martha Skelton, a young and childless widow, of such great beauty that many rivals contested with him the honor of winning her hand. The story goes that two of these rivals met one evening in Mrs.
Skelton's drawing-room. While waiting for her to enter, they heard her singing in an adjoining room, to the accompaniment of Jefferson's violin.
The love-song was so expressively executed that the admirers perceived that their doom was sealed, and, picking up their c.o.c.ked hats, they stole out without waiting for the lady.
If Jefferson in his younger days was soft-hearted toward the gentler s.e.x, his susceptibility was as nothing compared to Was.h.i.+ngton's. The sentimental biography of that great man would be more entertaining than the story of his battles, or his triumphs of government. There are evidences in his own handwriting that, before he was fifteen years old, he had conceived a pa.s.sion for a fair unknown beauty, so serious as to disturb his otherwise well-regulated mind, and make him seriously unhappy.
His sentimental poems written at that age, are neither better nor worse than the productions of most boys of fifteen. One of them hints that bashfulness has prevented his divulging his pa.s.sion:
”Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal!
Long have I wished and never dare reveal.”
At the mature age of sixteen, he writes to his ”dear friend Robin”: ”my residence is at present at his Lords.h.i.+p's, where I might, _was my heart disengaged_, pa.s.s my time very pleasantly, as there's a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house; but as that's only adding fuel to the fire, it makes me the more uneasy; for by often and unavoidably (!) being in company with her, revives my former pa.s.sion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome pa.s.sion in the grave of oblivion.” This ”chaste and troublesome pa.s.sion”
had subsided enough, when he went as a young officer to New York in all the gorgeousness of uniform and trappings, to enable him to fall in love with Miss Mary Phillipse, whom he met at the house of her sister, Mrs.
Beverly Robinson. She was gay, she was rich, she was beautiful, and Was.h.i.+ngton might have made her the offer of his heart and hand; but suddenly an express from Winchester brought word to New York of a French and Indian raid, and young Was.h.i.+ngton hastened to rejoin his command, leaving the capture of the lady to Captain Morris. Three years later we find him married to the Widow Custis, with two children and a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds sterling. Shortly after, he writes of himself from Mount Vernon, temperately enough, as ”fixed in this seat with an agreeable partner for life,” and we hear no more of amatory verses in honor of his Lowland Beauty, or flirtations with fas.h.i.+onable young dames in New York. But when the Marquis de Chastellux announced his marriage, Was.h.i.+ngton wrote him in a vein of humor rather foreign to him, and bespeaking a genial sympathy in his expectations of happiness. ”I saw by the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America,”
he writes, ”that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely be taken one day or other, as that you were a philosopher and a soldier.
So your day has at length come! I am glad of it with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming to fight in favor of the American rebels all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion--domestic felicity--which, like the small-pox or plague, a man can have only once in his life.”
Of all the joyous festivals among the Southern Colonists, none was so mirthful as a wedding. The early records of the wreck of the Sea Venture and the tedious and dangerous delay on the Bermudas mention that in even that troublous time they held one ”merry English wedding.” In any new land marriages and births are joyful events. All that is needed for prosperity is multiplication of settlers, and so it is quite natural that the setting up of a new household should be celebrated with rejoicing and merry-making.
In one respect the colonists broke with the home traditions. They insisted on holding their marriage ceremonies at home rather than in church, and no minister could move their determination. As civilization advanced, and habits grew more luxurious, the marriage festivities grew more elaborate and formal. The primitive customs gave way to pomp and display, till at length a wedding became an affair of serious expense. ”The house of the parents,” says Scharf in his ”Chronicles of Baltimore,” ”would be filled with company to dine; the same company would stay to supper. For two days punch was dealt out in profusion. The gentlemen saw the groom on the first floor, and then ascended to the second floor, where they saw the bride; there every gentleman, even to one hundred a day, kissed her.”
A Virginia wedding in the olden time was a charming picture--the dancers making merry in the wide halls or on the lawn; the black servants dressed in fine raiment for the occasion and showing their white teeth in that enjoyment only possible to a negro; the jolly parson acting at once as priest and toast-master; the groom in ruffles and velvet, and the bride in brocade and jewels. Never again will our country have so picturesque a scene to offer. Let us recall it while we may!
His Dress
[Ill.u.s.tration: His Dress.
”_In teacup time of hood and hoop And when the patch was worn_”]
If you have any curiosity to know what clothes these first Colonial Cavaliers wore, you may learn very easily by reading over the ”particular of Apparrell” upon which they agreed as necessary to the settler bound for Virginia.
The list includes: ”1 dozen Points, a Monmouth cap, 1 waste-coat, 3 falling bands, 1 suit of canvase, 3 s.h.i.+rts, 1 suit of frieze, 1 suit of cloth, 4 paire shoes, 3 paire Irish stockings, and 1 paire garters.”
Besides these he would need ”1 Armor compleat, light, a long peece, a sword, a belt and a Bandelier,” which may be reckoned among his wearing apparel, for it would be long before the settler could be safe without them when he ventured outside the palisade.
Englishmen in those days were fond of elaborate dress. It was the period of conical hats, and rosetted shoes, of doublets and sashes and padded trunk-hose, which his Majesty, James the First, much affected because they filled out his ill-shaped legs. Suits of clothes were a frequent form of gift and bequest. Captain John Smith's will declares, ”I give unto Thomas Packer, my best suite of aparrell, of a tawney colour, viz., hose, doublet, jerkin and cloake.”
The peruke began its all-conquering career in England, under the Stuarts.
Elizabeth, it is true, had owned eighty suits of hair, and Mary of Scotland had varied her hair to match her dresses. But a defect of the French Dauphin introduced the use of the wig for men as well as women, and false hair became the rage throughout the world of fas.h.i.+on. A London peruke-maker advertised: ”Full-bottom wigs, full bobs, minister's bobs, naturals, half-naturals, Grecian flyes, Curleyroys, airey levants, qu perukes and baggwiggs.” The customer must have been hard to please, who could find nothing to suit his style in such a stock.