Society as I Have Found It. Ward McAllister
to each one of them, on their arrival, enormous cedar wash-tubs and hot sheets for their morning ablutions; then a good breakfast, after which we drove to the river and had my brother-in-law’s ten-oared boat, called “The Rice Bird,” all the oarsmen in yachting rig, myself at the tiller, and the darkeys, knowing they would all have tobacco, or money, pulled for dear life from the start to the finish, giving us their plantation songs. The leader improvised his song, the others only singing in chorus. On these occasions, the colored people would give you in song all the annoyances they were subjected to, and the current events of plantation life, bringing in much of and about their “Massa” and his family, as follows: “Massa Ward marry our little Miss Sara, bring big buckra to Savannah, gwine to be good times, my boys, pull boys, pull, over Jordan!” Reaching the plantations, of which there were three, Fairlawn, Argyle, and Shaftesbury, well equipped with admirable dogs (for my brother-in-law was a great sportsman), we would shoot snipe over the rice lands until 2 P.M., then lunch elaborately in his plantation house, and row back in the cool of the afternoon, dining at 8 o’clock, and having as my guests every pretty girl within a hundred miles and more of the city. The flowers, particularly the rose called the Cloth of Gold, and the black rose, I was most prodigal with. I had given a fee to the clerk of the market to scour the country for game and delicacies, so our dinners were excellent, and the old Southern habit of sitting over Madeira until the small hours was adopted, and was, with the bright minds I had brought together, most enjoyable.
MERRYMAKING IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER VIII.
A Southern Deer Park—A Don Quixote Steed—We Hunt for Deer and Bag a Turkey—Getting a Dinner by Force—The French Chef and the Colored Cook Contrasted—One is Inspired, the Other Follows Tradition—Making a Sauce of Herbs and Cream—Shooting Ducks Across the Moon—A Dawfuskie Pic-nic.
In a small place, life is monotonous if you do not in some way break up this monotony. I bethought me of a friend who lived some distance from Savannah, who had a deer park, was a sportsman, and was also the soul of hospitality. His pride lay in his family and his surroundings; so I wrote to him as follows: “My dear friend, I have no baronial mansion; I am a wanderer on the face of the earth, while you possess what I most covet, an ancestral home and a great domain. Will you then invite my guests and me to pay you a visit and give us a chance at your deer?” Back came the invitation: “Come to me at once with your noble friends. I and my whole county will receive them and do them honor.” The next morning, by ten, we were at the railway station. Before leaving the carriage I saw a distinguished General, a sort of Dalgetty of a man, who preferred to fight than eat, pacing up and down the railway platform. A ruffled shirt, not spotless, a fierce air, an enormous false diamond pin, as big as a crown piece, in the center of his ruffled shirt bosom, with a thin gold chain attached to it and to his waistcoat, to prevent its loss. He at once approached me and exclaimed, “By Jove! by Jove! Mc, introduce me to your noble friends.” The introduction made, he accompanied us to the train, and in turn presented us to a large crowd assembled to see what Southern people were so proud of, “thoroughbreds,” as he called them. I repeatedly heard him exclaim, “No jackass stock here, sir; all thoroughbreds! I could tell ’em in the dark.” On rolled the train, and we soon reached our destination, and were no sooner out of the cars than we were enveloped by a myriad of sand flies. You could cut them with a knife, as it were. My friend, a six-footer, stepped up to my guests and was presented. He then addressed them as follows: “Will your lordships ride or drive?”
In the mean while, his coachman, a seedy old darkey, in a white hat at least ten years old, fly specked to such an extent that its original color was lost, in shabby, old, well-worn clothes, seized me by the coat tail, exclaiming, “Massa Ward, show me the ‘big buckras.’” After pointing them out, we all pressed through the crowd to the wagon and horses, two marsh tackeys, with their manes and tails so full of burrs, and so netted together, as to form a solid mass; stirrup leathers pieced with clothes lines, and no evidence of either of the animals having ever seen or been touched by a curry-comb. “Don Quixote, by Jove!” exclaimed the heir of the Shaftesburys, and vaulted into the saddle, while the representative of the house of Devonshire and myself took our seats in the open wagon. At this point, our hospitable host called the attention of his lordship to his horses and gave him their pedigree. One was sixteen hands high, had a bob tail, and high action; the other was a little pony of fourteen hands, with an ambling gait. Not giving any sign of moving, our host held forth as follows: “Your lordship, so well bred are these horses that if they are not properly caparisoned, nothing human could stir them; they will plant their feet in the soil and neither whip nor spur would budge them. You see how well my boy keeps their harnesses.” By this time I was convulsed. Cavendish, I saw, was laughing inwardly, but suppressed it. The straw in one collar was bulging out, one turret was gone, and a piece of rope lengthened one of the traces. Truly, it had seen better days. If he calls that a fitting harness for his horses, what am I to expect in the way of a house and deer park? However, my fears were allayed. The house was a charming old Southern plantation house, and the owner of it, the embodiment of hospitality. When the cloth was removed at dinner, I trembled. For my dear old father had always told me that on his circuit (annually made by the Savannah lawyers) he always avoided this house, for in it one could never find so much as a glass of whiskey. What then was my surprise, to have placed before us a superb bottle of sherry, since world-renowned, i.e. in this country; and a matchless Madeira, which he claimed he had inherited from his father, to be opened at the marriage of his sister.
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