Читать книгу Recollections of a Varied Life - George Cary Eggleston - Страница 26

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Another thing that peculiarly impressed me, coming as I did from a region where the mart was the center about which all life's activities circled, was the utter absence of talk about money or the things that relate to money. Practically there was no money in use among the planter folk, except when a journey to distant points required the lining of a purse. Except in the very smallest way the planters never used money in their daily lives. They rarely bought anything directly, and they never thought of selling anything except in planter fashion through accredited agencies. Once a year they shipped the tobacco and the wheat their fields had produced, to the city, for a commission merchant to sell. The commission merchant held a considerable part of the proceeds to the planter's credit, and when the planter wanted anything of consequence he simply wrote to the commission merchant to buy it for him. The rest of the money from the sale of the plantation products was deposited in bank to the planter's account. If the women folk went to town on a shopping expedition, they bought whatever they wanted in the stores and had it "charged," for every planter's credit was limitless in the shops. When the bill was rendered, which was never in a hurry, the planter drew a check in discharge of it. He had no "blank check" book. No such thing was known in that community. He simply wrote his check at top of a sheet of foolscap, stating in it what it was for, and courteously asking the bank "please" to pay the amount. Then he carefully cut off the remainder of the sheet and put it away as an economy of paper. The next time he drew a check or anything of the sort, he took a fresh sheet of paper for the purpose and carefully laid away all that was not used of it. Thus was his instinct of economy gratified, while his lordly sense of liberality in the use of material things was not offended. When he died, the drawers filled with large and small fragments of foolscap sheets were cleared out and left for his successor to fill in his turn.

Parson J——'s Checks

This custom of paying by check so strongly commended itself to a certain unworldly parson of my time, that he resorted to it on one occasion in entire ignorance and innocence of the necessity of having a bank deposit as a preliminary to the drawing of checks. He went to Richmond and bought a year's supplies for his little place—it was too small to be called a plantation—and for each purchase he drew a particularly polite check. When the banks threw these out, on the ground that their author had no account, the poor old parson found the situation a difficult one to understand. He had thought that the very purpose of a bank's being was to cash checks for persons who happened to be short of money.

"Why, if I'd had the money in the bank," he explained, "I shouldn't have written the checks at all; I should have got the money and paid the bills."

Fortunately the matter came to the knowledge of a well-to-do and generous planter who knew parson J. and who happened to be in Richmond at the time. His indorsement made the checks good, and saved the unworldly old parson a deal of trouble.

The planters were not all of them rich by any means. Hardly one of those in Virginia had possessions that would to-day rank him even among moderately rich men. But they were scrupulously honorable men, they were men of reasonable property, and their credit rested firmly upon the fact that they were able to pay and the equally important fact that they meant to pay. They lived lavishly, but the plantation itself furnished most of the materials of the lavishness, so that there was no extravagance in such living. For the rest they had a sufficient regard for those who were to come after them to keep the total volume of the debt upon the estate within such limits as the estate could easily stand.

What I wish to emphasize here is that the methods of their monetary transactions were such as to make of money a very infrequent subject of consideration in their lives and conversations.

Economically it would have been better for them if things had been otherwise, but socially, the utter absence of pecuniary flavor from their intercourse, lent a peculiar charm to it, especially in the eyes and mind of a youth brought up as I had been in an atmosphere positively grimy with the soot of monetary considerations.

There was hardly one of those plantations whose utterly waste products were not worth more in the markets near at hand than were the tobacco and wheat which alone the planters sold. When I came into the practice of law a few years later, and had charge of the affairs of a number of estates, I brought this matter of waste to the attention of my clients, with all the earnestness I could put into my pleading. I showed them prices current to prove that if they chose to market their surplus apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lambs, pigs, poultry, and dairy products, all of which they gave away or suffered to go to waste, they might discharge their hereditary debts at once and build up balances in bank. They had sagacity enough to understand the facts, but not one of them would ever consent to apply them practically. It would be "Yankee farming," was the ready reply, and that was conclusive. It was not the custom of the planters to sell any but staple products, and they were planters, not farmers.

The Charm of Leisureliness

All these things helped, when I first came into relations with them, to impress my young mind with the poise, the picturesqueness, the restful leisureliness of the Virginian life, and the utter absence from it of strenuousness, and still more of sordidness. For the first time in my life I was living with people who thought of money only on those annual or other occasions when they were settling their affairs and paying their debts by giving notes for their sum; people who regarded time not as something to be economized and diligently utilized for the sake of its money value, but as a means of grace, if I may so speak without irreverence; as an opportunity of enjoyment, for themselves and for others; as a thing to be spent with the utmost lavishness in the doing of things agreeable, in the reading of books that pleased, in the riding of horses that put the rider upon his metal to match their tameless spirit, in the cultivation of flowers, in the improvement of trees by grafting and budding, and even in the idler pleasures of tossing grace hoops, or hotly maintaining an indoor contest at battledore and shuttlecock when it rained heavily. These and a score of other pastimes seemed good in the eyes of the Virginian men and women. The men went shooting or fox hunting or hare coursing, or fishing, each in its season. The women embroidered and knitted nubias, and made fancy work, and they walked long miles when not riding with escorts, and dug much in the ground in propagation of the flowers they loved. They kept house, too, with a vigilance born of the fact that in keeping house they were also keeping plantation. For they must not only supervise the daily dispensation of foodstuffs to all the negroes, but they must visit and personally care for the sick, the aged, the infirm, and the infantile among the black people. They must put up fruits and jams and pickles and ketchups and jellies and shrubs and cordials enough to stock a warehouse, in anticipation of the plantation needs. They must personally cut out and direct the making of all the clothing to be worn by the blacks on the plantation, for the reason that the colored maids, seamstresses and dressmakers who were proud to fashion the gowns of their young mistresses, simply would not "work for de field hands,"—meaning the negroes of the plantation.

Yet with it all these women were never hurried, never scant of time in which to do anything that might give pleasure to another. I never knew one of them to plead preoccupation as a reason for not going riding or walking, or rendering some music, or joining in a game, or doing anything else that others wanted her to do.

The reason for all this was simple enough. The young women who kept house—and it was usually the young women who did so—were up and at it before the dawn. By the time that the eight-thirty or nine o'clock breakfast was served, all their necessary work was done for the day; often it was done in time to let them take a ride before breakfast if the young man suggesting it happened to be an agreeable fellow. After all was done upon which that day's conduct of the house and the plantation depended, the gentlewomen concerned adopted the views of their masculine mentors and exemplars. They accepted to-morrow as a good enough stalking horse for to-day, and, having laid out their work well in advance, they exacted of their servitors that the morrow's morning should begin with a demonstration of to-day's work well done.

So they, too, had leisure, just as the meal hours had. I had been brought up on five or six o'clock breakfasts, eleven-thirty or twelve o'clock dinners, and early suppers. Here the breakfast hour was eight thirty at the earliest and nine usually; "snack" was served about one to those who chose to come to it, dinner at three or four, with no hurry about it, and supper came at nine—the hour at which most people in the West habitually went to bed.

The thing suited me, personally, for I had great ambitions as a student and habitually dug at my mathematics, Latin, and Greek until two in the morning. I was always up by daylight, and after a plunge into the cold water provided for me in a molasses barrel out under the eaves, I usually took a ride in company with the most agreeable young woman who happened to be staying in the house at the time.

Sometimes I had two to escort, but that was rare. Usually there was another young man in the house, and usually, under such circumstances, I saw to it that he did not lie long abed. And even when there was no such recourse, the "other girl" was apt to conjure up some excuse for not wishing to ride that morning.