Lawrence has gone back ignominiously to South Carolina. At breakfast already in some inscrutable way he had become intoxicated; he was told to move a chair, and he raised it high over his head, smashing Mrs. Grundy’s chandelier. My husband said : “Mary, do tell Lawrence to go home; I am too angry to speak to him.” So Lawrence went without another word. He will soon be back, and when he comes will say, “Shoo!! I knew Mars Jeems could not do without me.” And indeed he can not.
Buck, reading my journal, opened her beautiful eyes in amazement and said: “So little do people know themselves! See what you say of me!” I replied: “The girls heard him say to you, ‘Oh, you are so childish and so sweet!’ Now, Buck, you know you are not childish. You have an abundance of strong common sense. Don’t let men adore you so – if you can help it. You are so unhappy about men who care for you, when they are killed.”
Isabella says that war leads to love-making. She says these soldiers do more courting here in a day than they would do at home, without a war, in ten years.
In the pauses of conversation, we hear, “She is the noblest woman God ever made!” “Goodness!” exclaims Isabella. “Which one?” The amount of courting we hear in these small rooms. Men have to go to the front, and they
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say their say desperately. I am beginning to know all about it. The girls tell me. And I overhear – I can not help it. But this style is unique, is it not? “Since I saw you – last year – standing by the turnpike gate, you know- my battle-cry has been: ‘God, my country, and you!’ ” So many are lame. Major Venable says: “It is not ‘the devil on two sticks,’ now; the farce is ‘Cupid on Crutches.’ ”
General Breckinridge’s voice broke in: “They are my cousins. So I determined to kiss them good-by. Good-by nowadays is the very devil, it means forever, in all probability, you know; all the odds against us. So I advanced to the charge soberly, discreetly, and in the fear of the Lord. The girls stood in a row – four of the very prettiest I ever saw.” Sam, with his eyes glued to the floor, cried: “You were afraid – you backed out.” “But I did nothing of the kind. I kissed every one of them honestly, heartily.”
February 13th. – My husband is writing out some resolutions for the Congress. He is very busy, too, trying to get some poor fellows reprieved. He says they are good soldiers but got into a scrape. Buck came in. She had on her last winter’s English hat, with the pheasant’s wing. Just then Hood entered most unexpectedly. Said the blunt soldier to the girl: “You look mighty pretty in that hat; you wore it at the turnpike gate, where I surrendered at first sight.” She nodded and smiled, and flew down the steps after Mr. Chesnut, looking back to say that she meant to walk with him as far as the Executive Office.
The General walked to the window and watched until the flutter of her garment was gone. He said: “The President was finding fault with some of his officers in command, and I said: ‘Mr. President, why don’t you come and lead us yourself; I would follow you to the death.’ ” “Actually, if you stay here in Richmond much longer you will grow to be a courtier. And you came a rough Texan.”
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Mrs. Davis and General McQueen came. He tells me Muscoe Garnett is dead. Then the best and the cleverest Virginian I know is gone. He was the most scholarly man they had, and his character was higher than his requirements.
To-day a terrible onslaught was made upon the President for nepotism. Burton Harrison’s and John Taylor Wood’s letters denying the charge that the President’s cotton was unburned, or that he left it to be bought by the Yankees, have enraged the opposition. How much these people in the President’s family have to bear! I have never felt so indignant.
February 16th. – Saw in Mrs. Howell’s room the little negro Mrs. Davis rescued yesterday from his brutal negro guardian. The child is an orphan. He was dressed up in little Joe’s clothes and happy as a lord. He was very anxious to show me his wounds and bruises, but I fled. There are some things in life too sickening, and cruelty is one of them.
Somebody said: “People who knew General Hood before the war said there was nothing in him. As for losing his property by the war, some say he never had any, and that West Point is a pauper’s school, after all. He has only military glory, and that he has gained since the war began.”
“Now,” said Burton Harrison, “only military glory! I like that! The glory and the fame he has gained during the war – that is Hood. What was Napoleon before Toulon? Hood has the impassive dignity of an Indian chief. He has always a little court around him of devoted friends. Wigfall, himself, has said he could not get within Hood’s lines.”
February 17th. – Found everything in Main Street twenty per cent dearer. They say it is due to the new currency bill.
I asked my husband: “Is General Johnston ordered to reenforce Polk, They said he did not understand the order.”
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“After five days’ delay,” he replied. “They say Sherman is marching to Mobile.1 When they once get inside of our armies what is to molest them, unless it be women with broomsticks?” General Johnston writes that “the Governor of Georgia refuses him provisions and the use of his roads.” The Governor of Georgia writes: “The roads are open to him and in capital condition. I have furnished him abundantly with provisions from time to time, as he desired them.” I suppose both of these letters are placed away side by side in our archives.
February 20th. – Mrs. Preston was offended by the story of Buck’s performance at the Ive’s. General Breckinridge told her “it was the most beautifully unconscious act he ever saw.” The General was leaning against the wall, Buck standing guard by him “on her two feet.” The crowd surged that way, and she held out her arm to protect him from the rush. After they had all passed she handed him his crutches, and they, too, moved slowly away. Mrs. Davis said: “Any woman in Richmond would have done the same joyfully, but few could do it so gracefully. Buck is made so conspicuous by her beauty, whatever she does can not fail to attract attention.”
Johnny stayed at home only one day; then went to his plantation, got several thousand Confederate dollars, and in the afternoon drove out with Mrs. K – . At the Bee Store he spent a thousand of his money; bought us gloves and linen. Well, one can do without gloves, but linen is next to life itself.
Yesterday the President walked home from church with me. He said he was so glad to see my husband at church; had never seen him there before remarked on how well he
1. General Polk, commanding about 24,000 men scattered throughout Mississippi and Alabama, found it impossible to check the advance of Sherman at the head of some 40,000, and moved from Meridian south to protect Mobile. February 16, 1864, Sherman took possession of Meridian.
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looked, etc. I replied that he looked so well “because you have never before seen him in the part of ‘the right man in the right place.’ ” My husband has no fancy for being planted in pews, but he is utterly Christian in his creed.
February 23d. – At the President’s, where General Lee breakfasted, a man named Phelan told General Lee all he ought to do; planned a campaign for him. General Lee smiled blandly the while, though he did permit himself a mild sneer at the wise civilians in Congress who refrained from trying the battle-field in person, but from afar dictated the movements of armies. My husband said that, to his amazement, General Lee came into his room at the Executive Office to “pay his respects and have a talk.” “Dear me! Goodness gracious!” said I. “That was a compliment from the head of the army, the very first man in the world, we Confederates think.”
February 24th. – Friends came to make taffy and stayed the livelong day. They played cards. One man, a soldier, had only two teeth left in front and they lapped across each other. On account of the condition of his mouth, he had maintained a dignified sobriety of aspect, though he told some funny stories. Finally a story was too much for him, and he grinned from ear to ear. Maggie gazed, and then called out as the negro fiddlers call out dancing figures, “Forward two and cross over!” Fancy our faces. The hero of the two teeth, relapsing into a decorous arrangement of mouth, said: “Cavalry are the eyes of an army; they bring the news; the artillery are the boys to make a noise; but the infantry do the fighting, and a general or so gets all the glory.”