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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY
Writers of Reminiscences are interested—perhaps more interested than their readers—in recalling their earliest sensations, and through them determining at what age they had "found themselves"; i.e. become conscious of their own personality and relation to the world they had entered. Long before this time the child has seen and learned more perhaps than he ever learned afterwards in the same length of time. He has acquired knowledge of a language sufficient for his needs. His miniature world has
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
I had a childless aunt, who annually came up from her home in Hanover to spend part of the summer with my parents and my grandfather. She begged me of my mother for a visit, meant to be a brief one, and as she was greatly loved and respected by her people, I was permitted to return with her. There were no railroads in Virginia at that time. All journeys were made in private conveyances. The great coach-and-four had disappeared after the Revolution. The carriage and pair, with the goatskin hair t
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The general impression I retain of the world of my childhood is of gardens—gardens everywhere; abloom with roses, lilies, violets, jonquils, flowering almond-trees which never fruited, double-flowering peach trees which also bore no fruit, but were, with the almond trees, cherished for the beauty of their blossoms. And conservatories! These began deep in the earth and were built two stories high at the back of the house. They were entered by steps going down and only thus were they entered. Wind
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
No house in Virginia was more noted for hospitality than my uncle's. I remember an ever coming and going procession of Taylors, Pendletons, Flemings, Fontaines, Pleasants, etc. These made small impression upon me. Men might come and men might go, but my lessons went on forever; writing, geography, and much reading. I had Mrs. Sherwood's books. I wonder if any present-day child reads "Little Henry and his Bearer," or Miss Edgeworth's "Rosamond," or "Peter Parley's Four Quarters of the Globe"! Han
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
Something akin to the tulip mania of Holland possessed the Southern country in the early thirties. The Morus multicaulis , upon the leaves of which the silkworm feeds, can be propagated from slips or cuttings. These cuttings commanded a fabulous price. To plant them was to lay a sure foundation for a great fortune. My uncle visited Richmond at a time when the mania had reached fever-heat. Men hurried through the streets, with bundles of twigs under their arms, as if they were flying from an enem
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
When it was found that a refined and intelligent society was inclined to crystallize around the court green of Albemarle County, it became imperative to choose a fitting name for a promising young village. In 1761 there was a charming princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; intelligent, amiable, and only seventeen years of age. She had stepped forth from the conventional ranks of the young noblewomen of her day, and written a spirited letter to Frederick the Great, in which she entreated him to stop t
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
Masters were found in a preparatory school for my home education. Happy to escape from the schoolroom, I worked as never maiden worked before, loving my summer desk in the apple tree in the garden, loving my winter desk beside the blazing wood in my uncle's office, passionately loving my music, and interested in the other studies assigned me. With no competitive examinations to stimulate me, I yet made good progress. Before I reached my thirteenth year, I had learned to read French easily. I had
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
The society of Charlottesville in the forties was composed of a few families of early residents and of the professors at the University. Governor Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy in Tyler's time, Mr. Valentine Southall of an old Virginia family, and himself eminent in his profession of the law, Dr. Charles Carter, Professor Tucker, William B. Rogers, Dr. McGuffey, Dr. Cabell, Professor Harrison,—all these names are well known and esteemed to this day. There were young people in these families, and
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
The year after my fifteenth birthday was destined to be an eventful one to me. In May of that year I wrote a letter to my aunt, Mrs. Izard Bacon Rice, who lived at "The Oaks" in Charlotte County. This letter, the earliest extant of my girlhood, has recently been placed in my hands, and I venture to hope I may be pardoned for inserting the naïve production here; not for any intrinsic merit, but because of the light it reflects upon my development and associations at the age of fifteen,—a light no
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Many of the best types of purely American society could have been found in the forties in the towns of the country. Now everybody, high and low, rich and poor, seeks a home in the cities. It is not without reason that all classes should flock to the metropolis. There wealth can be enjoyed, poverty aided, talent appreciated; but there individual influence is almost lost. The temptation to self-assertion, repugnant as it is to refined feeling, is almost irresistible. Men and women must assert them
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
Two years after our marriage, my husband was seriously ill from an affection of the throat, and consulted Dr. Green, an eminent specialist of Philadelphia. He was ordered to a warmer climate, and forbidden to speak in or out of court. The tiny law office at a corner of the court green in Charlottesville was abandoned, and we hastened to Petersburg, near his birthplace. As it was absolutely impossible for him to exist without occupation, he purchased a newspaper, sallied forth one morning to soli
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
We had the good fortune to secure pleasant rooms in the large boarding-house of Mrs. Tully Wise, sister of Henry A. Wise of Virginia. Mrs. Wise had a number of agreeable people in her house: Professor and Mrs. Spenser Baird of the Smithsonian Institution; Professor Baird's assistants,—Mr. Turner, an Englishman, and a Swiss naturalist whom Professor Baird addressed as "George,"—Mr. James Heth, Commissioner of Pensions, and his family; Commodore Pennock and his wife, sister of Mrs. (Admiral) Farra
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
Mr. Fillmore was a fine type of the kind of man Americans love to raise to the highest office in their gift. He had not been a mill boy, nor lived in a log-cabin, nor split rails (which was to his discredit), but he had been an apprentice to a wool-carder in Livingston County, New York. Afterward he had worked in a lawyer's office all day and studied at night. He had had no patron. He was essentially a self-made man. When, by the death of President Taylor, he became President of the United State
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
I was peacefully enjoying a cup of tea with Mrs. Arnold Harris, when her father, old General Armstrong, entered, and brought me the astounding news that my husband had resigned his position as editor of the Washington Union . "Oh, that boy! He thinks he knows more about foreign politics than I do." I was very fond of the General, who had always treated me in a fatherly and most kind manner. But of course I could not hear my husband discussed, even by him, so I expressed polite regrets and hasten
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
William Walker, the "Grey-eyed Man of Destiny," who was in 1854 more talked about than any other man in the country, was our guest for several days in Richmond. Whether he came to accept a dinner given him by the city, or whether the dinner was the result of the visit, I cannot remember. Although we knew him to be an interesting character, we were unprepared for the throng that filled our house every day while he was with us. Beginning early in the day, they poured in until night, and remained,
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
A bit of paper, yellow and crumbling from age, has recently been sent to me by the son of an old Charlottesville friend. The tiny scrap has survived the vicissitudes of fifty-one years, and because of the changes it has seen and the dangers it has passed, if for nothing more, it deserves preservation. It marks an important era in our life, although it contains only this:— " Charlottesville , July 1, 1858. " Dear Mrs. Cochran :— "May I have your receipt for brandy-peaches? You know Roger is speak
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Washington was like a great village in the days of President Pierce and President Buchanan. My own pride in the federal city was such that my heart would swell within me at every glimpse of the Capitol: from the moment it rose like a white cloud above the smoke and mists, as I stood on the deck of the steamboat (having run up from my dinner to salute Mount Vernon), to the time when I was wont to watch from my window for the sunset, that I might catch the moment when a point on the unfinished dom
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
The "overt act," for which everybody looked, had been really the reënforcement by federal troops of the fort in Charleston harbor. When Fort Sumter was reduced by Beauregard, "the fight was on." My husband, with other gentlemen, was deputed by General Beauregard to demand the surrender of the fort, and in case of refusal which he foresaw, to direct the commandant of the battery, Johnson, to open fire. When the order was delivered to the commandant, he invited my husband to fire the first shot; b
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
On the 13th of August, 1862, McClellan abandoned his camp at Harrison's Landing and retired to Fortress Monroe. General Lee withdrew all his troops from Richmond but two companies of infantry left behind to protect the city in case of cavalry raids. General Jackson joined General Lee, and the battle known as the second Manassas was fought. Wilcox, Pryor, and Featherstone were again to the front, and at one time when the desperate struggle of this hard-fought battle was at its height, and the sit
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
As for myself, when my general was no longer needed on the Blackwater, the camp chest and I and the little boys took the road again. We wandered from place to place, and at last were taken as boarders, invited by a farmer, evidently without the consent of his wife. There I was, of all women made most miserable. The mistress of the house had not wanted "refugees." Everything combined to my discomfort and wretchedness, and my dear general, making me a flying visit from Richmond where he was detain
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
Early in June the two armies of Grant and Lee confronted each other at Petersburg. My dear general had bidden a silent and most sad farewell to his little family and gone forth to join his company, when my father entered with great news. "I have just met General Lee in the street." "Passing through?" I asked. "Not at all! The lines are established just here and filled with his veterans." My general soon reëntered joyfully. He would now be on duty near us. The next Sunday a shell fell in the Pres
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
The morning of November 29, 1864, found me comfortably seated at my breakfast table with my little boys and my small brother, Campbell Pryor. My venerable father, Dr. Pryor, had departed on his daily rounds to visit the sick and wounded in the hospitals, and my husband was away on special duty for General Lee. John had reported early with one cupful of milk—all that little Rose, with her slender rations, was capable of yielding. This we had boiled with parched corn and sweetened with sorghum mol
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
In the colony escaped from the shells and huddled together around General Lee were two very humble poor women who often visited me. One of them was the proud owner of a cow, "Morning-Glory," which she contrived to feed from the refuse of the camp kitchens, receiving in return a small quantity of milk, to be sold at prices beyond belief. I never saw Morning-Glory, but I often heard her friendly echo to the lowing of my little Rose, morning and evening. Being interpreted, it might have been found
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
The day drew near when the husband and father of our little family was to be restored to his own home and his own people. Paroled, and not yet exchanged, we could hope for a brief visit from him. John was in a great state over the possibilities of a welcoming banquet. Peas, beans, flour, sorghum molasses,—these in small quantity he might hope to command. A nourishing soup could be made of the peas, and if only he could "find" an egg, he could mix it with sorghum and bake it in an unshortened ope
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
My condition during the military occupation of Petersburg was extremely unpleasant. I was alone with my children when General Sheridan demanded my house for an adjutant's office. Such alarming rumors had reached us of outrages committed by marauding parties in the neighboring counties that my husband had obtained an extension of his parole to visit his sisters in Nottoway County. His first information of them was from finding their garments in a wagon driven by German soldiers, who, challenged b
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
We found it almost impossible to take up our lives again. All the cords binding us to the past were severed, beyond the hope of reunion. We sat silently looking out on a landscape marked here and there by chimneys standing sentinel over blackened heaps, where our neighbors had made happy homes. Only one remained, Mr. Green's, beyond a little ravine across the road. We had, fortunately, no inclination to read. A few books had been saved, only those for which we had little use. A soldier walked in
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
It was supposed that my husband would be absent only a week. The following letter from New York explains his delay:— "I had intended leaving here yesterday, but our friend, General Warren, invited me for dinner Sunday. I find him in a handsome house in a fashionable quarter of the city. Mrs. Warren inquired kindly about you. She has two charming sisters of our Gordon's age. "What will you think when I tell you that several gentlemen suggest to me to settle here? Dare I 'then, to beard the lion i
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CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
In March my husband wrote a letter of warm congratulation upon my success in gathering all our children together, and sent me a sum to be used in sending them to school. That I might aid my husband to mend our fortunes, I persuaded seven of my neighbors' children to take music lessons from me. The boys were entered to Mr. Gordon McCabe—the accomplished gentleman and scholar so well known and so popular in England as well as at home. My daughter Gordon entered an excellent school of which Profess
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CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
In April my husband exultantly announced that he had "eight little cases" on the calendar; on May 14 he wrote:— "I am over head and ears with work, preparing Mrs. —'s case for trial. It is infinitely troublesome; but if I win, my fee will be $2000—otherwise nothing." He did win! In July he received his fee! Within two weeks I had wound up all my small affairs in Petersburg, kissed "good-by" to my tearful little band of music scholars, sent my Aunt Mary with my Gordon and little Mary to "The Oaks
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CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
November found us at the end of a long, dull season. No business had come into the little law-office—the centre of all our hopes. We had made no friends among our neighbors, to whom, of course, we had made no advances. The silence was broken, however, one evening by a visit from a well-groomed, handsome young fellow, who, with many apologies, requested an interview with General Pryor. "So the reporters have found us out," said my general, but he was mistaken. His visitor had "ventured to call fo
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CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
While these sad days and nights of heaviness hung over us, we were painfully conscious that some of our own people misunderstood my husband's position in New York. Our having left Virginia was resented at the time, and now General Pryor's avowed belief that the salvation of the South could only be assured by acquiescence in the inevitable, and in the full exercise of justice to the negro, was most unacceptable. This was before the right of suffrage had been conceded to the negro; in the interval
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CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
Early in the spring of 1868 we removed to Brooklyn Heights near the Ferry, much nearer my husband's office in Liberty Street. New York had not then stretched an arm across East River and taken into its bosom Brooklyn—already the third city in the Union. The two cities, now one in name, were practically one in interest as early as 1867. A great multitude of the dwellers of Brooklyn crossed the ferry every morning on their way to their daily work in New York. Brooklyn was a huge, overgrown village
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CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
I soon found that two of my children were old enough to pine for something more than physical comfort. They did not propose to live by bread alone. The appealing eyes of our daughter Gordon were not to be resisted and, as I have said, she entered the Packer Institute with her little sisters, entering the senior class, where she soon graduated with the first honors,—and where she nobly taught an advanced class,—relinquishing at eighteen years of age all the pleasures to which she was entitled. Th
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CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
In 1872 Horace Greeley was nominated by the Democratic party for the presidency, to oppose General Grant's second term, and wrote to my husband:— " Dear General Pryor :— "I want you to help me in this canvass. I want you to go to Virginia and do some work for me there and at the South. "Your friend, " Horace Greeley ." Mr. Greeley had at first opposed the Civil War. He had suffered great mental distress at its approach. He labored with all his might to prevent a resort to arms—but, when this was
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CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXV
Gordon and I had the privilege of seeing Charlotte Cushman when, no longer able to act in the plays in which she had so distinguished herself, she gave a reading at one of the large halls in New York. She was infirm, less from age than a malady which was consuming her. I found an immense audience assembled in her honor. There were no more seats, no more standing room. She had no assistants, no support. A chair behind a small table was all the mise en scène , and here, dressed in a matronly gown
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CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVI
In 1877 the leading citizens of Brooklyn invited General Pryor to deliver an address at the Academy of Music on Decoration Day. This was an opportunity he had long desired, and the invitation was eagerly accepted. With great zeal and bitterness some of the veterans of the Grand Army resented the invitation, upon which my husband promptly declined the honor. I do not give the names of the old soldiers—they have long ago been forgiven and are fully understood. A heated correspondence followed—one
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CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVII
In October, 1883, General Pryor was sent to England, as counsel to defend Patrick O'Donnell, who had been indicted for the murder of James Carey, and was now imprisoned in London. Carey had been one of the leaders of the Irish "Invincibles" in 1881, and was an accomplice in the assassination of Mr. T. H. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phœnix Park. He was arrested on January 13, 1883, and turned queen's evidence. In order to escape the vengeance of the "Invincibles," he was secretly shippe
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The circle that finally gathered around the fireside in the little library at 157 Willow Street was long remembered by some of the men who made it brilliant. John G. Saxe, whom we had known in Washington, was one of these men. Thither also came the Southern author, William Gilmore Simms. I remember one evening spent in our tiny library with Mr. Simms, John R. Thompson, and General Charles Jones, when the trio of literary men told stories,—not war stories,—ghost stories. Mr. Thompson recalled a g
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CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XXXIX
Early in the winter I had a visit from a beautiful young lady, an orphan daughter of a rear admiral of whom I had known in former days. She had found herself temporarily embarrassed, and had planned an afternoon of music and reading, was about to send out some cards, and wished me to be one of her patronesses. I gladly consented, and on the afternoon designated, went to her boarding-house near the Park, her landlady having kindly given her rooms for the entertainment. I was early, and as nobody
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CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XL
I have always thought that New York's Centennial celebration in 1889 was largely responsible for the patriotic societies of men and women which have swept the country. Everybody was willing at the time of the celebration to sit for two entire days on rude seats under the April sun while the evidences of the power and achievements of our great country passed in review before us. We remember the military pomp of the first day, the dignified carriage of the governors of our United States as they ba
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CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLI
In the summer of 1888 yellow fever appeared in Florida and raged with peculiar violence in Jacksonville. Early in September I received a letter inviting me to meet a number of ladies at rooms on Broadway to organize a committee for the relief of the Jacksonville sufferers. Mrs. Stedman (wife of the poet) was with me at the time I received the letter, and she agreed with me that it would be a most beautiful thing for the New York women to send substantial relief to their stricken sisters in Flori
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CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLII
In the autumn of 1900 a strange disaster befell the beautiful city of Galveston. A mighty wave lifted its crest far out at sea and marched straight on until it engulfed the city. It all happened suddenly, in a night. Thousands of men, women, and children perished. Hundreds of babies were born that night, and picked up alive, floating on the little mattresses to which drowning mothers had consigned them. The Catholic sisters and their orphan charges all perished. The Protestant Orphan Asylum, on
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CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIII
The years which had brought me such interesting work were full years also to my dear general. In June, 1888, he delivered an address to the graduating class at the Albany Law School—an address so inspiring, so highly commended at the time, that it should not be lost. He had been all his life intimately acquainted with the great legal lights abroad. They had given him his first aspirations, and been his inspired teachers ever after. And yet he could truthfully tell the American student:— "Nor nee
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A Selected List of Biographies and Autobiographies
A Selected List of Biographies and Autobiographies
ACTON, ( Lord ) J. E. E. Letters to Mary Gladstone, with Memoir by H. Paul Illustrated. Cloth, 8vo, $3.00 net ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM A Diary Edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford. Cloth, 8vo, $3.75 net ARBLAY, MADAME D' Diary, Life, and Letters of Madame d'Arblay Cloth, 8vo, $15.00 net BISMARCK Some Secret Pages of his History By M. Busch. Portraits. Cloth, 8vo, $10.00 net BROWN, Dr . JOHN Letters of Dr. John Brown Edited by his son and D. W. Forrest. Cloth, 8vo, $4.00 net CHURCHILL, LORD RANDOLPH L
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