Читать книгу American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' - Julian Street - Страница 12

Table of Contents

If I am to be honest about the South, and about myself—and I propose to be—I must admit that, though I approached the fabled land in a most friendly spirit, I had nevertheless become a little tired of the southern family tree, the southern ancestral hall, and the old southern negro servant of stage and story, and just a little skeptical about them. Almost unconsciously, at first, I had begun to wonder whether, instead of being things of actuality, they were not, rather, a mere set of romantic trade-marks, so to speak; symbols signifying the South as the butler with side whiskers signifies English comedy; as "Her" visit to "His" rooms, in the third act, signifies English drama; or as double doorways in a paneled "set" signify French farce.

Furthermore, it had occurred to me that of persons of southern accent, or merely southern extraction, whom I had encountered in the North, a strangely high percentage were not only of "fine old southern family," but of peculiarly tenacious purpose in respect to having the matter understood.

I cannot pretend to say when the "professional Southerner," as we know him in New York, began to operate, nor shall I attempt to place the literary blame for his existence—as Mark Twain attempted to place upon Sir Walter Scott the blame for southern "chivalry," and almost for the Civil War itself. Let me merely say, then, that I should not be surprised to learn that "Colonel Carter of Cartersville"—that lovable old fraud who did not mean to be a fraud at all, but whose naïveté passed the bounds of human credulity—was not far removed from the bottom of the matter.

In the tenor of these sentiments my companion shared—though I should add that he complained bitterly about agreeing with me, saying that with hats alike, and overcoats alike, and trunks alike, and suitcases alike, we already resembled two members of a minstrel troupe, and that now since we were beginning to think alike, through traveling so much together, our friends would not be able to tell us apart when we got home again—in spite of this he admitted to the same suspicion of the South as I expressed. Wherefore we entered the region like a pair of agnostics entering the great beyond: skeptical, but ready to be "shown."

It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us that a Baltimore friend of ours called for us one day with his motor car and was presently wafting us over the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden over upon horseback.

It was autumn, but though the chill of northern autumn was in the air, the coloring was not so high in key as in New York or New England, the foliage being less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry, and giving the landscape an expression of brooding tenderness.

After passing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling town quite out of character with its new-sounding name, which has such a western ring to it, we traversed for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike—formerly a national highway between East and West—swooping up and down over a series of little hills and vales, and at length turned off into a private road winding through a venerable forest, which was like an old Gothic cathedral with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk columns, tall, gray, and slender.

When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we emerged upon a slight eminence commanding a broad view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn commanded by a great house.

The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome, and at the end of each a building like an ornament balanced in an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico, rising by several easy steps from the driveway level, the long line of cornice, the window sashes, the delicate wooden railing surmounting the roof, the charming little tower which so gracefully held its place above the geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning one wing at its extremity—all these were white.

No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a house, than yellow-buff and white, provided they be brightened by some notes of green; and these notes were not lacking, for several aged elms, occupying symmetrical positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies protectively above it. The green of the low terrace—called a "haha," supposedly with reference to the mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over the edge—did not reach the base of the buff walls, but was lost in a fringe of clustering shrubbery, from which patches of lustrous English ivy clambered upward over the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon the blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds were of course green; green blinds being as necessary to an American window as eyelashes to an eye.

Immediately before the portico and centering upon it the drive swung in a spacious circle, from which there broke, at a point directly opposite the portico, an avenue, straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely as the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the middle of this broad way, between grass borders each as wide as a great boulevard, and double rows of patriarchal trees, ran a road which, in the old days, continued straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away, where was the town house of the builder of this manor. As it stands to-day the avenue is less than half a mile long, but whatever its length, and whether one look down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from the far end, to where the converging lines of grass and foliage and sky melt into the house, it has about it something of unreality, something of enchantment, something of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic landscapes of those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs dancing amid the trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant dark tops are contoured like the cumulus white clouds floating above them.

There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about Doughoregan Manor, for though the house is noble, its nobility, consisting in spaciousness, simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No house could be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere, is of friendliness and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a "homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than some other mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston; and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg—not that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of those who signed the Declaration of Independence.

The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the Settler," came from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland. He was a highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.

His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist Order.

The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at Doughoregan—which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of the old Irish words dough, meaning "house" or "court," and O'Ragan, meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable—this Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was "Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law until his return to Maryland in 1765.

Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms—the bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social position and gentle breeding."

Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton, already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.

The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts.

It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his noble old cocked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his duty clear to him.

In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of the circumstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston gave the following description:

"Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll.

"Most willingly," was the reply.

"There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of those standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will get off, there are so many Charles Carrolls."

And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate him forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.

Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign as "of Carrollton" long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded that John H. B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous biographer, never heard the story from the subject of his writings.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been inclined to omit it from a public document, as to the signers of which there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like the story and intend to believe it anyway—which, it occurs to me, is the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being more or less Episcopalian and Republican.

Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small, attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin, and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."

From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French classics.

At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore, carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine, he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the commencement of that railroad—the first important one in the United States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of the manor house.

This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls. It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the house by a passageway which passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's room, a large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany and decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope away to gardens more than a century old.

Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument, in another it is a treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide hall which passes through the house from the front portico to another overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the spacious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day; no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant, therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the crib at Doughoregan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits. Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.