Tournaments and Starvation Parties

It would seem that times were too hard and life too bitter for merry-making. Not so. With less than half a chance to be glad, the Southerner will laugh and dance and sing—and make love. At least, he used to. The Southerner is no longer minstrel, lover, and cavalier. He is becoming a money-maker. With cannons at our gates and shells driving us into cellars, guitars were tinkling, pianos were not dumb, tripping feet were not stayed by fear and sorrow. When boys in gray came from camp, women felt it the part of love and patriotism to give them good cheer, wearing smiles while they were by, keeping tears for them when absent.

With the war over and our boys coming home for good, ah, it was not hard to laugh, sing and dance, poor as we were! “Soldiers coming up the road,” “Some soldiers here for tonight,” the master of the house would say, and doors would fling wide. “Nice fellows, I know,” or “I knew this one’s father, and that one’s uncle is Governor—and this one went to school with our Frank; and these fought side by side with friends of ours,” or “Their names are so-and-so,” or just, “They are gentlemen.” Maidens would make themselves fair; wardrobes held few or no changes, but one could dress one’s hair another way, put a rose in one’s tresses, draw forth the many-times-washed-over or thrice-dyed ribbon for adornment. After supper, there would be music in the parlor, and perhaps dancing. But not always! too often, the guest’s feet were not shod for dancing. It might be that he was clothed from shirt to shoe in garments from the host’s own store. Many a soldier would decline entering the great house and beg off from presentations, feeling the barn a more fitting shelter for his rags, and the company of ladies a gift the gods must withhold.

Joy reigned in every household when its owner came home from the war, joy that defeat at arms could not kill. The war was over! it had not ended as we had prayed, but there was to be no crying over spilt milk if young people had their way.

Departure of old servants and installation of new and untried ones was attended with untold vexation, but none of this was allowed to interfere with the pleasure and happiness of young people when it was possible to prevent it. Southern mistresses kept domestic difficulties in the background or made merry over them. On the surface, domestic machinery might seem to move without a hitch, when in reality it was in so severe a state of dislocation that the semblance of smooth operation was little short of a miracle.

Reserves of cotton and tobacco that had escaped the attention of the Yankee Army sold high. Fortunate possessors were soon flush with greenbacks which were put in quick circulation. It was a case of a little new bonnet and an alpaca skirt with girls everywhere; women had done without clothes so long, they felt they just must have some now; our boys had gone in rags so long, they must have new clothes, too; everybody had lived so hard and been so sad, there must be joy now, love-making and dancing. The “Starvation Party” did not go out of fashion with war. Festal boards were often thinly spread, but one danced not the less lightly for that. Enough it was to wing the feet to know that the bronzed young soldier with his arm about your waist must leave you no more for the battle.

MISS ADDIE PRESCOTT

(A Louisiana Belle)

Afterwards Mrs. R. G. H. Kean, of Lynchburg, Va.

To show how little one could be festive on, we will take a peep at a starvation party given on a plantation near Lexington, North Carolina, by Mrs. Page, soon after General Kilpatrick’s troops vacated the mansion. “We had all been so miserable,” Mrs. Page tells, “that I was just bound to have some fun. So I gave a dining.”

She invited ten ladies, who all came wondering what on earth she could set before them. They walked; there was not a carriage in the neighbourhood. They were all cultured, refined women, wives and daughters of men of prominence, and accustomed to elegant entertainment. A few days before, one of them had sent to Mrs. Page for something to eat, saying she had not a mouthful in the house, and Mrs. Page had shared with her a small supply of Western pork and hardtack which her faithful coloured man, Frank, had gotten from the Yankees. Mrs. Page had now no pork left. Her garden had been destroyed. She had not a chair in the house, and but one cooking utensil, a large iron pot. And not a fork, spoon, cup, plate or other table appointment.

With pomp and merriment, Mrs. Drane, a clergyman’s widow, the company’s dean and a great favourite with everybody, was installed at the head of the bare, mutilated table, where rude benches served as seats. Mrs. Marmaduke Johnston, of Petersburg, was accorded second place of honour. The menu consisted of a pudding of corn-meal and dried whortle-berries sweetened with sorghum; and beer made of persimmons and honeyshucks, also sweetened with sorghum. The many-sided Frank was butler. The pudding, filling the half of a large gourd, was placed in front of Mrs. Drane, and she, using hardtack as spoon, dipped it up, depositing it daintily on other hardtack which answered for plates and saucers.

The beer was served from another gourd into cups made of newspapers folded into shape; the ladies drank quickly that the liquid might not soak through and be lost. They enjoyed the beverage and the pudding greatly and assured their hostess that they had rarely attended a more delightful feast. The pudding had been boiled in the large iron pot, and Frank had transferred it to the gourd. In his kitchen and pantry, gourds of various sorts and sizes seemed to ask: “Why were vessels of iron, pewter, and copper ever invented, and what need has the world of china-ware so long as we grow on the backyard fence?”

How Frank’s mistress, a frail-looking, hospitable, resourceful little woman, provided for herself and family and helped her friends out of next to nothing; how her cheerfulness, industry, and enterprise never failed her or others; and how Frank aided her, would in itself fill a book.

But then it is a story of Southern verve and inventiveness that could be duplicated over and over again.

Did not Sir George Campbell write in an English magazine of how much he enjoyed a dinner in a Southern mansion, when all the feast was a dish of roasted apples and a plate of corn-bread? Not a word of apology was uttered by his host or hostess; converse was so cultured and pleasing, welcome so sincere, that the poverty of the board was not to be weighed in the balance. This host who had so much and so little to give his guest was Colonel Washington Ball, nearest living kinsman to General George Washington.

The fall of 1865 was, in Virginia at least, a bountiful one. Planters’ sons had come home, gone into the fields, worked till the crop was all laid by; and then, there was no lack of gaiety. A favourite form of diversion was the tournament, which furnished fine sport for cavalry riders trained under Stuart and Fitz Lee.

One of the most brilliant took place in 1866, at a famous plantation on the North Anna River. The race-track had been beaten down smooth and hard beforehand by the daily training of knights. It was in a fair stretch of meadow-land beyond the lawns and orchards. The time was October, the weather ideal, the golden haze of Indian Summer mellowing every line of landscape. On the day appointed the grounds were crowded with carriages, wagonettes, buggies and vehicles of every sort, some very shabby, but borrowing brightness from the fair young faces within.

The knights were about twenty-five. Their steeds were not so richly caparisoned as Scott’s in “Ivanhoe,” but the riders bestrode them with perhaps greater ease and grace than heavy armor permitted mediÆval predecessors. Some wore plumed hats that had covered their heads in real cavalry charges, and more than one warrior’s waist was girt with the red silk sash that had belted him when he rode at the head of his men as Fitz Lee’s captain. A number were in full Confederate uniform, carrying their gray jackets as jauntily as if no battle had ever been lost to them. One of these attracted peculiar attention. He was of very distinguished appearance; and from his arm floated a long streamer of crape. Every one was guessing his name till the herald cried: “Knight of Liberty Lost!” The mourning knight swept before the crowd, bearing off on the point of his spear the three rings which marked his victory for at least that run.

For this sport, three gibbet-like structures stand equal distances apart on a straight race-track. From the arm of each, a hook depends and on each hook a ring is hung. Each knight, with lance poised and aimed, rides full tilt down this track and takes off all the rings he can in a given number of rides. He who captures most rings is victor. It is his right to choose the Queen of Love and Beauty, riding up to her on the field and offering a ring upon his spear. The knight winning the second highest number chooses the First Maid of Honour; and so on, until there is a royal quartette of queen and maids.

The tournament was to the South what baseball is to the nation; it was intensely exciting and picturesque, and, by reason of the guerdon won, poetic, investing an ordinary mortal with such power as Paris exercised when he gave the golden apple to Venus. It had spice of peril to make it attractive, if “danger’s self is lure alone.” Fine horsemanship, a steady hand, and sure eye were essentials.

“Liberty Lost” won, and the mourning knight laid his laurels at the feet of a beautiful girl who has since reigned as a social queen in a Northern home. The coronation took place in the mansion that evening. After a flowery address, each knight knelt and offered a crown to his fair one. The symbols of royalty were wreaths of artificial flowers, the queen’s shaped like a coronet, with sprays forming points. Her majesty wore a gown that had belonged to her great-grandmother; very rich silk in a bayadere pattern, that served as becoming sheath for her slim blonde loveliness. After the coronation, the knights led their fair ones out in the “Royal Set” which opened the ball.

Perhaps it is better to say that George Walker, the negro fiddler, opened the ball. He was the most famous man of his craft in the Piedmont region. There he was that night in all his glory at the head of his band of banjoists, violinists and violincellist; he was grandeur and gloss personified when he made preliminary bow and flourish, held his bow aloft, and set the ball in motion!

“Honour yo’ pardners!”

“And didn’t we do as George told us to do!” Matoaca says. “Such dance-provoking melodies followed as almost bewitched one’s feet. ‘Life on the Ocean Wave,’ ‘Down-town Girls Won’t You Come Out Tonight and Dance by the Light of the Moon!’ ‘Fisher’s Horn-Pipe’ and ‘Ole Zip Coon’ were some of them. Not high-sounding to folks of today, but didn’t they make feet twinkle! People did what was called ‘taking steps’ in those days. I can almost hear George’s fiddle now, and hear him calling: ‘Ladies to the right! Gents to the right! Ladies to the center! Gents to the center! Hands all ’roun’ an’ promenade all!’ Who could yell ‘Do se do!’ and ‘Sashay all!’ with such a swing?”

About one o’clock all marched in to supper, the queen and her knights and maidens leading. It was hard times in Virginia, but the table groaned under such things as folks then thought ought to adorn a festal board. There was not lacking the mighty saddle-o’-mutton, roast pig with apple in his mouth, Smithfield ham, roast turkey, and due accompaniments. The company marched back to the ball-room, and presently marched again to a second supper embracing sweets of all descriptions.

Commencements at schools and colleges, which the South began to restore and refill as quickly as she was able, brought the young people together and were strong features in our social life. So were Sunday schools; and, in the country, protracted meetings or religious revivals. And barbecues. Who that has gone out to a frolic in the Southern woods and feasted on shote or mutton roasted over a pit and basted with vinegar and red pepper gravy, can forget what a barbecue is!

Summer resorts became again meeting-grounds for old friends, and new. Social gatherings at the Greenbrier White Sulphur were notable. General Lee was there with his daughter, and the first to lead in extending courtesies to Northern guests attracted to the White by the reputation of that famous watering-place. Again, our women were at their ancient haunts, wearing silks and laces as they were prospering under the new order or as their great-grandmothers’ trunks, like that of Love and Beauty’s Queen, held reserves not yet exhausted. And under the silks and laces, hearts cried out for loved ones who would gather on the green lawns and dance in the great halls no more. But heroism presented a smiling face and took up life’s measure again.

In cities changes were not so acute as in the country, where people, without horses and vehicles, were unable to visit each other. The larger the planter, the more extreme his family’s isolation was like to be, his land and his neighbours’ lands stretching for miles between houses. I heard a planter’s wife say, “Yours is the first white woman’s face I have seen for six months.” Her little daughter murmured mournfully: “And I haven’t seen a little white girl to play with for longer than that.” Multitudes who had kept open house could no longer. To a people in whom the social instinct was so strong and hospitality second nature, abrupt ending of neighbourly intercourse was a hard blow.

Stay and bankrupt laws for the benefit of the debtor class and bearing much hardship on creditors, often orphan minors, were passed, and under these planters were sold out and moved to new places, their overseers often succeeding them and reigning in their stead. It was not an unknown thing for men to manage to get themselves sold out under these laws, thus evading payment of obligations and at the same time securing a certain quota for themselves, which the law allowed. It seemed to me that many who took it were better off than before. There were unfortunates who had to pay security debts for bankrupts. Much hard feeling was engendered.

MRS. DAVID URQUHART, OF NEW ORLEANS

A famous hostess, distinguished for her
social graces and her good deeds.

Some measure for relief of the debtor class was necessary. A man who had contracted debts on the basis of thousands of acres at fifteen to fifty dollars an acre, and owning a hundred or more negroes, worth a thousand dollars each, could not meet in full such engagements when his land would not bring two dollars an acre, when his negroes were set free, and hired labour, if he had wherewithal to hire, could not be relied on. Some men took the Bankrupt Law for protection, then set themselves to work and paid obligations which could not be exacted by law.

THE BONDAGE OF THE FREE