Not far from Greenfield was a place called “Rustic Lodge.”

This house surrounded by a forest of grand old oaks, was not large or handsome. But its inmates were ladies and gentlemen of the old English style.

The grandmother, about ninety years of age, had been in her youth one of the belles at the Williamsburg Court in old colonial days. A daughter of Sir Dudley Digges, and descended from English nobility, she had been accustomed to the best society. Her manners and conversation were dignified and attractive.

Among reminiscences of colonial times, she remembered Lord Botetourt, of whom she related interesting incidents.

The son of this old lady, about sixty years of age, and the proprietor of the estate, was a true picture of the “old English gentleman.” His manners, conversation, thread-cambric shirt frills, cuffs and long queue tied with a black ribbon, made the picture complete. His two daughters, young ladies of exquisite refinement, had been brought up by their aunt and grandmother to observe strictly all the proprieties of life.

This establishment was proverbial for its order and method, the most systematic rules being in force everywhere. The meals were served punctually at the same instant every day. Old “Aunt Nelly” dressed and undressed her old mistress always at the same hour. A gentle “tapping at the chamber door”—not by the “raven,” but the cook—called the mistress to an interview at the same moment every morning with that functionary, which resulted in the choicest dinners, breakfasts and suppers; this interview lasting half an hour and never repeated during the day.

Exactly at the same hour every morning the old gentleman’s horse was saddled, and he entered the neighboring village so promptly as to enable some of the inhabitants to set their clocks by him.

This family had possessed great wealth in Eastern Virginia during the colonial government under which many of its members held high offices.

But impoverished by high living, entertaining company and a heavy British debt, they had been reduced in their possessions to about fifty negroes, with only money enough to purchase this plantation upon which they had retired from the gay and charming society of Williamsburg. They carried with them, however, some remains of their former grandeur: old silver, old jewelry, old books, old and well-trained servants, and an old English coach, which was the curiosity of all other vehicular curiosities. How the family ever climbed into it, or got out of it, and how the driver ever reached the dizzy height upon which he sat, was the mystery of my childhood.

But although egg-shaped and suspended in mid-air, this coach had doubtless, in its day, been one of considerable renown, drawn by four horses, with footman, postillion and driver in English livery.

How sad must have been its reflections on finding itself shorn of these respectable surroundings, and after the revolution drawn by two Republican horses, with footman and driver dressed in Republican jeans!

Strange that it could have lived on and on thus Republicanized!

A great uncle of this family, unlike the coach never would become Republicanized, and his obstinate loyalty to the English crown, with his devotion to everything English gained for him the title “English Louis,” by which name he is spoken of in the family to this day. An old lady told me not long ago that she remembered when a child the arrival of “English Louis” at “Rustic” one night, and his conversation as they sat around the fire, how he deplored a Republican form of government, and the misfortunes which would result from it saying:

“All may go smoothly for about seventy years, when civil war will set in. First, it will be about these negro slaves we have around us, and after that it will be something else.” And how true “English Louis’” prediction has proven.[4]

Doubtless this gentleman was avoided and proscribed on account of his English proclivities. For at that day the spirit of Republicanism and hatred to England ran high; so that an old gentleman—one of our relatives whom I well remember—actually took from his parlor walls his coat of arms which had been brought by his grandfather from England, and carrying it out in his yard built a fire and collecting his children around it, to see it burn, said: “Thus let everything English perish!”

Should I say what I think of this proceeding, I would not be considered perhaps a true Republican patriot.

I cannot forget to mention in the catalogue of pleasant homes, Smithfield in Montgomery county, the county which flows with healing waters.

Smithfield, like Greenfield, is owned by the descendants of the first white family who settled there after the Indians, and its verdant pastures, noble forests, mountain streams and springs, with the superb cattle on its hills form a prospect, wondrously beautiful.

This splendid estate descended to three brothers, who equally divided it; the eldest keeping the homestead, and the others building attractive homes on their separate plantations.

The old homestead was quite antique in appearance. Inside the high mantlepieces reaching nearly to the ceiling, which was also high, and the high wainscotting together with the old furniture made a picture of the olden time.

When I first visited this place, the old grandmother, then eighty years of age, was living. She, like the old lady at “Rustic,” had been a belle in Eastern Virginia in her youth. When she married the owner of Smithfield sixty years before, she made the “bridal jaunt” from Norfolk to this place on horseback, two hundred miles. Still exceedingly intelligent and interesting, she entertained us with various incidents of her early life, and wished to hear all the old songs which she had then heard and sung herself.

“When I was married” said she, “and came first to Smithfield my husband’s sisters met me in the porch, and were shocked at my pale and delicate appearance. One of them whispering to her brother, asked, ‘Why did you bring that ghost up here?’ And now,” continued the old lady, “I have outlived all who were in the house that day, and all my own and my husband’s family.”

This was an evidence certainly of the health restoring properties of the water and climate in this region.

The houses of these three brothers were filled with company winter and summer, making within themselves a delightful society. The visitors at one house were equally visitors at the others, and the succession of dinner and evening parties from one to the other, made it difficult for a visitor to decide at whose particular house he was staying.

One of these brothers had married a lovely lady from South Carolina, whose perfection of character and disposition endeared her to every one who knew her. Everybody felt like loving her the moment they saw her, and the more they knew her the more they loved her. Her warm heart was ever full of other people’s troubles or joys, never thinking of herself. In her house many an invalid was cheered by her tender care; and many a drooping heart revived by her bright Christian spirit. She never omitted an opportunity of pointing the way to heaven; and although surrounded by all the allurements which gay society and wealth could bring, she did not depart an instant from the quiet path which leads to heaven. In the midst of bright and happy surroundings, her thoughts and hopes were constantly centered upon the life above; and her conversation—which was the reflex of her heart—reverted ever to this theme, which she made attractive to old and young.