Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774.. Fithian Philip Vickers
for his own use. Though disturbed conditions in Europe and the burdens imposed by the British regulatory system led to repeated attempts to develop other staples for export, tobacco continued to be the mainstay. Aside from money crops, however, the great landowners had to supply numerous foodstuffs and other commodities needed on their plantations.
A proprietor customarily resided on what was generally known as the "manor plantation."[2] This seat usually served as the nerve center of the activities of his entire estate, with the other units subordinate to it. Not infrequently some of the outlying properties were devoted to producing commodities needed by the manor plantation and by such other plantations as were engaged in raising tobacco and other marketable staples. Overseers or stewards managed the units over which the owner found it difficult to exercise personal supervision. These men reported to him at regular intervals to receive instructions and give an account of their stewardship.
Though the basis of life was agricultural, the great landowners discharged a wide variety of other economic functions. They served as factors for their neighbors, buying their crops, selling them supplies, and providing them with credit facilities. Many sent vessels regularly up and down the Chesapeake and the Virginia rivers, purchasing the produce of others for later marketing. In like fashion they brought manufactured goods from overseas for sale in the plantation stores. When European conditions interfered with the import trade, enterprising men frequently set up grist mills, textile factories, foundries, and other manufactories on their plantations, to supply their own and their neighbors' needs.
The great Tidewater proprietors of the Golden Age were, then, no perfumed courtiers spending their days in idleness and diversion and consciously seeking to avoid all "taint of trade." In a very real sense they were capitalists, acute men of business, seriously concerned with managing their estates, tilling their lands and disposing of their produce, and eager to reap a profit through trading with their neighbors. Their ledgers and their correspondence reveal their energy, shrewdness, and enterprise. In a similar way the constant stream of letters they wrote the factors who served them in London, Bristol, and other ports of the mother country show their vital interest in conditions in the world market.
The planters' preoccupation with such matters does not signify that they lacked grace of living, nor that they were deficient in aristocratic ideals. They were determined they should not revert to barbarism in the wilderness. At no time did they allow themselves to forget that they were inheritors of British civilization.[3] Taking the English gentry as their model, they tried, insofar as colonial conditions would allow, to follow the ways of the country gentlemen of the homeland. On that pattern they fashioned their manners, their homes, their diversions; and with a similar aim they sought to acquire, and instruct their sons in, every branch of knowledge useful to a gentleman.
That it was a constant concern of these planter-businessmen to see that their children should acquire "polite" accomplishments is clearly revealed in their papers. In a letter in 1718 Nathaniel Burwell of "Carter's Grove" deplored his son's inattention to his studies, not only because an ignorance of arithmetic would hamper him in "the management of his own affairs," but also because, lacking a broad basis of knowledge, he would be "unfit for any gentleman's conversation and therefore a scandalous person and a shame to his relations, not having one single qualification to recommend him."[4] In a like spirit William Fitzhugh of "Bedford" in Stafford County asserted in 1687 that his children had "better be never born than illbred."[5]
Though a parent sometimes specified that his sons be taught languages, philosophy, dancing, fencing, and other such "polite" subjects, practical studies were not neglected. Such subjects as mathematics, surveying, and law prepared a youth for managing the estate he would one day inherit and for discharging the obligations to society imposed by his position. The goal was not professional specialization, but, rather, an education which would develop fully every side of a gentleman's character. George Washington expressed this ideal in referring to plans for the education of his ward, young "Jacky" Custis, in 1771. Admitting that "a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built," he explained that he did not think "becoming a mere scholar is a desirable education for a gentleman."[6] Thus, also, Robert Beverley, father of Harry Beverley of "Hazelwood" in Caroline County, directed in his will that his son's guardians should continue the boy's education until he should be taught "everything necessary for a gentleman to learn."[7]
Books provided a ready means of transmitting English standards of life to the colony. The carefully selected volumes in the manor houses clearly reveal their owners' aspiration to become "compleat gentlemen." It was not unusual for the collection of a prosperous planter to number as many as one or two thousand. Works providing guidance in the mode of life they admired greatly predominated, though works of literature were not absent. English "courtesy" and "conduct" books were on every gentleman's shelves. Richard Allestree's A Gentleman's Calling and Henry Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman, and other works which portrayed fortitude, prudence, temperance, justice, liberality, and courtesy as cardinal virtues appear again and again in the inventories of the period, along with the writings of Castiglione and other Italians of an earlier day from whom English authors had derived ideas of courtly conduct.
Most numerous were works stressing a gentleman's religious obligations. Duty to God and Church was set forth in devotional works of various kinds, collections of sermons, and theological treatises. Then came books on historical subjects which offered actual examples of men of great deeds. There were also many volumes on politics and statecraft and military manuals, all of them useful in teaching the larger obligations which a man of wealth owed to society. Guidance in the practical duties of a great estate was furnished in treatises on various phases of farming and gardening, manuals of medicine and surgery, books on surveying and engineering, commentaries on law and legal procedure and handbooks of architecture.[8]
Naturally, the character of the schooling provided for the growing generation greatly concerned the Virginia gentlemen. Many, eager to give their children direct contact with the traditional learning and culture of the mother country, sent them for a period of years to English schools.[9] Not infrequently, mere infants were placed under the protection of relatives and friends in the mother country. As early as 1683 William Byrd II, then nine years old, and his sister Susan, about six, were being watched over in English schools by their Horsmanden grandparents, and plans were making to send over their little sister, Ursula, aged four. Each of the great "King" Carter's five boys was sent overseas at an early age. In 1762 John Baylor of Caroline County, who had received his own education at Putney Grammar School and Caius College, Cambridge, sent his twelve-year-old son to Putney, and about the same time put his four young daughters at a boarding school at Croyden in Kent.[10]
The high value placed upon schooling in England is well illustrated in the attitude of Robert Beverley of "Blandfield" when he prepared to send his young son, William, abroad in 1773. Confiding the lad for a season to a tutor in the home of his father-in-law, Landon Carter of "Sabine Hall," he carefully explained his purpose. "I would recommend to Mr. Menzies the Latin Lillies Grammar," he wrote Carter, "because, as no other rudiments are used in any Schools of Eminence, when he goes to England, he may in part have gotten over the Drudgery of Education. All I wish to learn him in Virginia is, to read, write, & cypher, & do as much with his Grammar, as the Time will admit of…"[11] Planters frequently provided in their wills that their young sons and daughters be educated abroad. It is likely that an even larger number of small children would have been sent "home," as the planters fondly called the mother country, had their parents not feared the dangers of an ocean voyage and the mortal effects of the smallpox which was raging in England during the eighteenth century.
As an alternative to sending children overseas, the traditional learning of the English schools could be brought to Virginia by English-trained tutors and governesses. Well-to-do planters customarily engaged such persons to instruct their children
In the issue of the
Cf. Wright, Louis B.,
Stanard, Mary Newton,
Hornsby, Virginia Ruth, "Higher Education of Virginians," p. 10. Typed M.A. Thesis, Library of the College of William and Mary.
Cf. Wright,
An Englishman visiting Virginia at the close of the eighteenth century stated, with reference to persons he met who had been educated abroad before the Revolution, that he "found men leading secluded lives in the woods of Virginia perfectly
Stanard,
Letter of Robert Beverley to Landon Carter, Blandfield, May 19, 1772, in possession of Mrs. William Harrison Wellford of Sabine Hall. Cf. "Extracts from Diary of Landon Carter in Richmond County, Virginia";