Marion Harland's Autobiography. Marion Harland
Prince Edward County, who married my grandmother’s sister Mary, of Montrose, had served under Lafayette and came down to Richmond to do honor to his former chief. The Major’s sobriquet in the army was “Solid Column,” in reference to his “stocky” build. Although he had been on Washington’s staff, he did not expect to be recognized, after the lapse of thirty years and more, by the renowned Frenchman, who had passed since their parting through a bloodier revolution than that which won freedom for America.
General Lafayette was standing at the head of the ball-room (which was, I think, in the Eagle Hotel), where he received the crowds of citizens and military flocking to pay their respects, when he espied his whilom comrade on the outskirts of the throng. Instantly stepping outside of the cordon of aids and attendants, the Marquis held out both hands with:
“Vy, old Soleed Coluume! I am ’appy to see you!”
A marvellous memory and a more marvellous facile tongue and quick wit had the distinguished leader of freedom-lovers! There lived in Richmond, until the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, a stately gentlewoman of the very old school whom we, of two younger generations, regarded with prideful veneration, and with reason. For Lafayette, who had seen her dance at the aforesaid ball, had pronounced her, audibly, “the handsomest woman he had seen in America.” Time had handled her disrespectfully by the time I heard the tale. But I never questioned the truth of it until I found in three other cities as many antique belles upon whom he had set a seal of the self-same pattern.
We were generously fed with authentic stories of Revolutionary days in my far-off childhood. I have sat at Major Morton’s feet and learned of the veteran much that nobody else wots of in our rushing times. I recall his emphatic denial of the assertion made by a Fourth-of-July orator to the effect that so grievous was the weight of public cares upon the Commander-in-Chief, he was never seen to smile during those eventful eight years of struggle and suspense.
“Not a word of truth in it, sir!” Thus old Solid Column to the man who reported the speech to him. “I was with him at Valley Forge, sir, and nobody there tried harder to keep up the spirits of the men. I recollect, particularly, one bitter cold day, when a dozen or so of the officers were amusing themselves and trying to get warm by jumping up and down, leaping high up in the air and trying to clap their heels together twice before they struck the ground in coming down. General Greene was sure he could do it, but he was fleshy and never light on his feet, besides being naturally sober. He was a Quaker, you know, and was turned out of meeting for joining the army. Well, on this particular day he took his turn with the others in jumping. And a poor hand he was at it! He couldn’t clap his heels together once on the way down, let alone twice. By-and-by he made a tremendous effort and pitched over, head down and heels up—flat on the snow. General Washington was watching them from where he stood in his tent door, and when General Greene went down—how the General laughed! He fairly held his sides!
“ ‘Ah, Greene!’ he called out. ‘You were always a lubberly fellow!’
“I am not saying he wasn’t one of the gravest men I ever saw, as a rule, but he often smiled, and he did laugh sometimes.”
My grandfather’s uncle and godfather, Sterling Smith, was one of our family Revolutionary heroes. My mother, who had a fair talent for mimicry, had an anecdote of the old war-horse’s defence of Washington against the oft-repeated charge of profanity upon the field of Monmouth:
“ ‘He did not swear!’ the veteran would thunder when irreverent youngsters retailed the slander in his hearing—and with malice prepense. ‘I was close behind him—and I can tell you, sir, we rode fast—when what should we meet, running away, licketty-split, from the field of battle, with the British almost on their heels, but Gen’ral Lee and his men?
“ ‘Then, with that, says Gen’ral Washington, speaking out loud and sharp—says he, “Gen’ral Lee! in God’s name, sir, what is the meaning of this ill-timed prudence?”
“ ‘Now, you see, Gen’ral Lee, he was mighty high-sperrited always, and all of us could hear what was going on. So he speaks up as haughty as the Gen’ral had done, and says he:
“ ‘ “I know of no one who has more of that most damnable virtue than your Excellency!”
“ ‘So, you see, young man, it was Gen’ral Lee that swore, and not Gen’ral Washington! Don’t you ever let me hear that lie again!’ ”
A Revolutionary reminiscence of my mother’s (or mine) is always renewed by the sight of an Old Virginia plantation-gate, swinging gratingly on ponderous hinges and kept shut by the fall of a wooden latch, two yards long, into a wooden hook set in the gate-post. This latch is usually nearly half-way down the gate, and a horseman approaching it from the outside must dismount to lift the heavy bar, or be practised in the trick of throwing himself well over the top-rail to reach the latch and hold it, while he guides his horse through the narrow opening.
My grandfather, “Captain Sterling,” was at the head of a foraging-party near Yorktown when they were chased by British troopers. The Americans scattered in various directions and escaped for the most part, being familiar with the country by-ways and cross-roads. Their captain was closely pursued by three troopers to a high plantation-gate. The Virginian opened it, without leaving the saddle, shot through, shut the gate, and rammed down the latch into the socket hard. The pursuers had to alight to raise the latch, and the delay gave the fugitive time to get away.
My parents were married at Olney, in Henrico County, January 25, 1825.
The bride—not yet nineteen years of age—wore a soft, sheer India muslin, a veil falling to the hem of the gown, and white brocade slippers embroidered with faint blue flowers. The bridegroom’s suit was of fine blue cloth, with real silver buttons. His feet were clad in white-silk stockings and low shoes—“pumps” as they were called—with wrought-silver buckles. Those shoes and buckles were long preserved in the family. I do not know what befell them finally. The ceremony was performed by the brother-in-law whom I have called, for the sake of convenience, the Reverend Mr. Carus.
The girl had laughingly threatened that she would not promise to “obey,” and that a scene would follow the use of the obnoxious word in the marriage service. The young divine, with this in mind, or in a fit of absent-mindedness or of stage-fright, actually blundered out, “Love, honor—and obey, in all things consistent!”
As may be imagined, the interpolation produced a lively sensation in the well-mannered company thronging the homestead, and took rank as a family legend. How many times I have heard my mother quote the saving clause in playful monition to my masterful father!
The bride’s portion, on leaving home for the house her father had furnished for her in town, was ten thousand dollars in stocks and bonds, and two family servants—a husband and wife.
The following summer the wedded pair visited the husband’s mother in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The journey from Richmond to New York was by a packet-ship, and lasted for two weeks. My poor little mother was horribly seasick for a week each way. To her latest day she could not hear of “Point Judith” without a qualm. She said that, for a time, the association “disgusted her with her own name.” The mother-in-law, hale and handsome at forty-five, had married, less than a year before, Deacon John Clapp, a well-to-do and excellent citizen of Roxbury, and installed the buxom, “capable” widow, whose father was now dead, as the mother of four children by a former marriage, and as mistress of a comfortable home. She had not come to him portionless. The sturdy “Squire,” mindful of her filial devotion to him in his declining years, had left her an equal share of his estate with her sisters. The brother, Lewis Pierce, had succeeded to the homestead.
Mrs. Clapp appeared in the door of her pretty house, radiant in her best black silk and cap of fine lace (she never wore any other), her husband at her side, the little girls and the boy in the background, as the stage bringing her son and new daughter from Boston stopped at the gate.
At their nearer approach she uttered an exclamation, flung up her hands before her eyes, and ran back into the house for the “good