Part 13 (2/2)
”In the year 1611 n.o.ble Sir George Summers went hence to Heaven Whose n.o.ble, well-tried worth that held him still imploid Gave him the knowledge of the world so wide.
Hence 't was by heavens decree that to this place He brought new guests and name to mutual grace.
At last his soule and body being to part, He here bequeathed his entrailes and his heart.”
Even this gives us more information about the dead than most of the epitaphs. They are composed, as a rule, with Jonsonian elaborateness, and might as well be set up over Ra.s.selas, as over those they commemorate.
On the tomb of President Nelson of his Majesty's Council, in the old York churchyard, a pompous inscription announces: ”Reader, if you feel the spirit of that exalted ardor which aspires to the felicity of conscious virtue, animated by those consolations and divine admonitions, perform the task and expect the distinction of the righteous man!” The ”_distinction of the righteous_” is a delightful phrase, and sets forth the instinctive belief of the Cavalier in aristocracy in heaven.
A Latin inscription was regarded as an appropriate tribute to the learning of the deceased, who, had his ghost walked o' nights, might have needed to brush up his cla.s.sics to make quite sure of what his survivors were saying about him.
In happy contrast to the frigidity of these epitaphs wherein the dead languages bury their dead, is the verse written by his son over the ”Hon{ble} Coll. Digges,” who died in 1744:
”Diggs, ever to extremes untaught to bend Enjoying life, yet mindful of its end In thee the world an happy mingling saw Of sprightly humor and religious awe.”
How it warms our hearts to find the word _humor_ on a gravestone! It takes the chill out of death itself, and inspires us with the hope that this most lovable of traits may stand as good a chance of immortality as Faith, Hope, or Charity.
A brief and business-like epitaph written over Mistress Lucy Berkeley, declares that ”She left behind her 5 children viz. 2 Boys and 3 Girls. I shall not pretend to give her full character; it would take too much room for a Grave-stone. Shall only say she never neglected her duty to her Creator in publick or private. She was charitable to the poor, a kind Mistress, Indulgent Mother, and Obedient Wife.”
For a parallel to this matron who neglected no duty, ”publick or private,”
we must seek the tomb of a maiden. On the crumbling stone the tribute still survives, and tells that
”In a Well grounded Certainty of an Immortal Resurrection Here lyes the Remains of Elizabeth the Daughter of John and Catharine Was.h.i.+ngton She was a Maiden Virtuous without Reservedness Wise without Affectation Beautiful without Knowing it She left this life on the Fifth day of Feb{r} in the Year MDCCx.x.xVI in the Twentieth Year of her age.”
One more epitaph of the Colonial Cavaliers I must quote in full, because it alone, of all I have studied, does give a picture of the man who lies under it. If it praises him too much, it is to be set down to his credit that one who knew him well believed it all; and I for one wish peace to the dust of this gallant old mariner who sailed the seas in colonial days.
Here he lies, sunk at his moorings, ”one who never struck his flag while he had a shot in the locker; who carried sail in chace till all was blue; in peace whose greatest glory was a staggering top-sail breeze; in war to bring his broadside to bear upon the enemy, and who, when signals of distress hove out, never stood his course, but hauled or tacked or wore to give relief, though to a foe; who steered his little bark full fifty annual cruises over life's tempestuous ocean and moored her safe in port at last; where her timbers being crazy, and having sprung a leak in the gale, she went down with a clear hawse. If these traits excite in the breast of humanity that common tribute to the memory of the departed--a sigh--then traveller as thou pa.s.sest this wreck, let thine be borne upon the breeze which bends the gra.s.sy covering of the grave of _Old Job Pray_.”
This stone, like many another we find in these old brick-walled Southern burying-grounds, brings a smile which borders close upon a tear. The very spelling and lettering in these primitive inscriptions seem moss-grown with age, and tell of generations pa.s.sed away, bearing their manners and customs before them, as Mary Stuart bears her head on the charger in the Abbotsford picture. Here on one crumbling stone we read of a matron who hated strife with a capital ”S” and loved peace with a little ”p.” Here we read the touching little life-history of the young wife of John Page, who ”blest her said Husband with a sonn and a Daughter and departed this life, the twelfth day of November, Anno Dom 1702, and in the 20th yeare of her age.”
The inscriptions on the oldest tombstones are undecipherable. The bluestone slab under the ruined arch at Jamestown clasped by the roots of the sycamore was so broken and defaced even when Lossing visited it that nothing remained but the shadowy date, 1608. But in the earliest inscriptions that survive, we are struck by the virile and nervous English. It smacks of ”great Eliza's golden day.” A fragment of one runs:
”O Death! all-eloquent, you only prove What dust we dote on when 't is man we love.”
But finest of all is the n.o.ble dirge, sung over Bacon's lifeless body by some one whose name will never now be surely known, since he disguised his ident.i.ty, prompted by a wise dread of Berkeley's malignant revenge, and states that after Bacon's death ”he was bemoaned in these following lines, drawn by the man that waited upon his person as it is said, and who attended his corpse to their burial place.” Whoever the writer was, and a high authority designates him as a man named Cotton, dweller at Acquia Creek, it is very sure that no serving-man composed these lines, which are like an echo of the age that gave us Lycidas:
”Who is't must plead our cause? Nor trump nor drum Nor deputations; these, alas! are dumb; And can not speak. Our arms, though ne'er so strong, Will want the aid of his commanding tongue.
”Here let him rest; while we this truth report He's gone from hence unto a higher court To plead his cause, where he by this doth know, Whether to Caesar he was friend or foe.”
These closing words may well form the epitaph written over the Colonial Cavalier. He is gone from hence unto a higher court--gone from this world forever. His open-handed hospitality, his reckless profusion, his chivalry to women, his quick-tempered, sword-thrusting honor, are as obsolete as his lace ruffles, his doublet and jerkin, his buckles and jewels and feathers. We are fallen on a prosaic age, and it is only in our dreams of the past that we conjure up, like a gay decoration against the neutral background of modern life, the figure of ”The Colonial Cavalier.”
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