Spent seventy-five dollars to-day for a little tea and sugar, and have five hundred left. My husband’s pay never has paid for the rent of our lodgings. He came in with dreadful news just now. I have wept so often for things that never happened, I will withhold my tears now for a certainty. To-day, a poor woman threw herself on her dead husband’s coffin and kissed it. She was weeping bitterly. So did I in sympathy.
My husband, as I told him to-day, could see me and everything that he loved hanged, drawn, and quartered without moving a muscle, if a crowd were looking on; he could have the same gentle operation performed on himself and make no sign. To all of which violent insinuation he answered in unmoved tones: “So would any civilized man.
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Savages, however – Indians, at least – are more dignified in that particular than we are. Noisy, fidgety grief never moves me at all; it annoys me. Self-control is what we all need. You are a miracle of sensibility; self-control is what you need.” “So you are civilized!” I said. “Some day I mean to be.”
December 9th. – “Come here, Mrs. Chesnut,” said Mary Preston to-day, “they are lifting General Hood out of his carriage, here, at your door.” Mrs. Grundy promptly had him borne into her drawing-room, which was on the first floor. Mary Preston and I ran down and greeted him as cheerfully and as cordially as if nothing had happened since we saw him standing before us a year ago. How he was waited upon! Some cut-up oranges were brought him. “How kind people are,” said he. “Not once since I was wounded have I ever been left without fruit, hard as it is to get now.” “The money value of friendship is easily counted now,” said some one, “oranges are five dollars apiece.”
December 10th. – Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Lyons came. We had luncheon brought in for them, and then a lucid explanation of the chronique scandaleuse, of which Beck J. is the heroine. We walked home with Mrs. Davis and met the President riding alone. Surely that is wrong. It must be unsafe for him when there are so many traitors, not to speak of bribed negroes. Burton Harrison1 says Mr. Davis prefers to go alone, and there is none to gainsay him.
My husband laid the law down last night. I felt it to be the last drop in my full cup. “No more feasting in this house,” said he. “This is no time for junketing and merrymaking.” “And you said you brought me here to enjoy the winter before you took me home and turned my face to
1. Burton Harrison, then secretary to Jefferson Davis, who married Miss Constance Cary and became well known as a New York lawyer. He died in Washington in 1904.
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a dead wall.” He is the master of the house; to hear is to obey.
December 14th. – Drove out with Mrs. Davis. She had a watch in her hand which some poor dead soldier wanted to have sent to his family. First, we went to her mantua-maker, then we drove to the Fair Grounds where the band was playing. Suddenly, she missed the watch. She remembered having it when we came out of the mantua-maker’s. We drove beck instantly, and there the watch was lying near the steps of the little porch in front of the house. No one had passed in, apparently; in any case, no one had seen it.
Preston Hampton went with me to see Conny Cary. The talk was frantically literary, which Preston thought hard on him. I had just brought the St. Denis number of Les Miserables.
Sunday, Christopher Hampton walked to church with me. Coming out, General Lee was seen slowly making his way down the aisle, bowing royally to right and left. I pointed him out to Christopher Hampton when General Lee happened to look our way. He bowed low, giving me a charming smile of recognition. I was ashamed of being so pleased. I blushed like a schoolgirl.
We went to the White House. They gave us tea. The President said he had been on the way to our house, coming with all the Davis family, to see me, but the children became so troublesome they turned back. Just then, little Joe rushed in and insisted on saying his prayers at his father’s knee, then and there. He was in his night-clothes.
December 19th. – A box has come from home for me. Taking advantage of this good fortune and a full larder, have asked Mrs. Davis to dine with me. Wade Hampton sent me a basket of game. We had Mrs. Davis and Mr. and Mrs. Preston. After dinner we walked to the church to see the Freeland-Lewis wedding. Mr. Preston had Mrs. Davis on his arm. My husband and Mrs. Preston, and Burton
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THE DAVIS MANSION IN RICHMOND, THE “WHITE HOUSE” OF THE CONFEDERACY.
Now the Confederate Museum.
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Harrison and myself brought up the rear. Willie Allan joined us, and we had the pleasure of waiting one good hour. Then the beautiful Maria, loveliest of brides, sailed in on her father’s arm, and Major John Coxe Lewis followed with Mrs. Freeland. After the ceremony such a kissing was there up and down the aisle. The happy bridegroom kissed wildly, and several girls complained, but he said: “How am I to know Maria’s kin whom I was to kiss? It is better to show too much affection for one’s new relations than too little.”
December 21st. – Joe Johnston has been made Commander-in-chief of the Army of the West. General Lee had this done, `tis said. Miss Agnes Lee and “little Robert” (as they fondly call General Lee’s youngest son in this hero-worshiping community) called. They told us the President, General Lee, and General Elzey had gone out to look at the fortifications around Richmond. My husband came home saying he had been with them, and lent General Lee his gray horse.
Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Davis’s mother, says a year ago on the cars a man said, “We want a Dictator.” She replied, “Jeff Davis will never consent to be a Dictator.” The man turned sharply toward her “And, pray, who asks him? Joe Johnston will be made Dictator by the Army of the West.” “Imperator” was suggested. Of late the Army of the West has not been in a condition to dictate to friend or foe. Certainly Jeff Davis did hate to put Joe Johnston at the head of what is left of it. Detached from General Lee, what a horrible failure is Longstreet! Oh, for a day of Albert Sidney Johnston out West! And Stonewall, could he come back to us here!
General Hood, the wounded knight, came for me to drive. I felt that I would soon find myself chaperoning some girls, but I asked no questions. He improved the time between Franklin and Cary Streets by saying, “I do like your husband so much.” “So do I,” I replied simply.
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Buck was ill in bed, so William said at the door, but she recovered her health and came down for the drive in black velvet and ermine, looking queenly. And then, with the top of the landau thrown back, wrapped in furs and rugs, we had a long drive that bitter cold day.
One day as we were hieing us home from the Fair Grounds, Sam, the wounded knight, asked Brewster what are the symptoms of a man’s being in love. Sam (Hood is called Sam entirely, but why I do not know) said for his part he did not know; at seventeen he had fancied himself in love, but that was “a long time ago.” Brewster spoke on the symptoms of love: “When you see her, your breath is apt to come short. If it amounts to mild strangulation, you have got it bad. You are stupidly jealous, glowering with jealousy, and have a gloomy fixed conviction that she likes every fool you meet better than she does you, especially people that you know she has a thorough contempt for; that is, you knew it before you lost your head, I mean, before you fell in love. The last stages of unmitigated spooniness, I will spare you,” said Brewster, with a giggle and a wave of the hand. “Well,” said Sam, drawing a breath of relief, “I have felt none of these things so far, and yet they say I am engaged to four young ladies, a liberal allowance, you will admit, for a man who can not walk without help.”
Another day (the Sabbath) we called on our way from church to see Mrs. Wigfall. She was ill, but Mr. Wigfall insisted upon taking me into the drawing-room to rest a while. He said Louly was there; so she was, and so was Sam Hood, the wounded knight, stretched at full length on a sofa and a rug thrown over him. Louis Wigfall said to me: “Do you know General Hood?” “Yes,” said I, and the General laughed with his eyes as I looked at him; but he did not say a word. I felt it a curious commentary upon the reports he had spoken of the day before. Louly Wigfall is a very handsome girl.