Doctor John Cheves is making infernal machines in Charleston
to blow the Yankees up; pretty name they have, those machines. My horses, the
overseer says, are too poor to send over. There was corn enough on the place
for two years, they said, in January; now, in June, they write that it will not
last until the new crop comes in. Somebody is having a good time on the
plantation, if it be not my poor horses.
Molly will tell me all when she comes back, and more. Mr.
Venable has been made an aide to General Robert E. Lee. He is at Vicksburg, and
writes, “When the fight is over here, I shall be glad to go to Virginia.” He is
in capital spirits. I notice army men all are when they write.
Apropos of calling Major Venable “Mr.” Let it be
noted that in social intercourse we are not prone to give handles to the names
of those we know well and of our nearest and dearest. A general's wife thinks
it bad form to call her husband anything but “Mr.” When she gives him his
title, she simply “drops” into it by accident. If I am “mixed” on titles in
this diary, let no one blame me.
Telegrams come from Richmond ordering troops from
Charleston. Can not be sent, for the Yankees are attacking Charleston,
doubtless with the purpose to prevent Lee's receiving reenforcements from there.
Sat down at my window in the beautiful moonlight, and tried
hard for pleasant thoughts. A man began to play on the flute, with piano
accompaniment, first, “Ever of thee I am fondly dreaming,” and then, “The long,
long, weary day.” At first, I found this but a complement to the beautiful
scene, and it was soothing to my wrought-up nerves. But Von Weber's “Last Waltz”
was too much; I broke down. Heavens, what a bitter cry came forth, with such
floods of tears! the wonder is there was any of me left.
I learn that Richmond women go in their carriages for the
wounded, carry them home and nurse them. One saw a man too weak to hold his
musket. She took it from him, put it on her shoulder, and helped the poor
fellow along.
If ever there was a man who could control every expression
of emotion, who could play stoic, or an Indian chief, it is James Chesnut. But
one day when he came in from the Council he had to own to a break-down. He was
awfully ashamed of his weakness. There was a letter from Mrs. Gaillard asking
him to help her, and he tried to read it to the Council. She wanted a permit to
go on to her son, who lies wounded in Virginia. Colonel Chesnut could not
control his voice. There was not a dry eye there, when suddenly one man called
out, “God bless the woman.”
Johnston Pettigrew's aide says he left his chief mortally
wounded on the battlefield. Just before Johnston Pettigrew went to Italy to
take a hand in the war there for freedom, I met him one day at Mrs. Frank
Hampton's. A number of people were present. Some one spoke of the engagement of
the beautiful Miss to Hugh Rose. Some one else asked: “How do you know they – are
engaged?” “Well, I never heard it, but I saw it. In London, a month or so ago,
I entered Mrs. –––'s drawing-room, and I saw these two young people seated on a
sofa opposite the door.” “Well, that amounted to nothing.” “No, not in itself.
But they looked so foolish and so happy. I have noticed newly engaged people
always look that way.” And so on. Johnston Pettigrew was white and red in quick
succession during this turn of the conversation; he was in a rage of
indignation and disgust. “I think this kind of talk is taking a liberty with
the young lady's name,” he exclaimed finally, “and that it is an impertinence
in us.” I fancy him left dying alone! I wonder what they feel — those who are
left to die of their wounds — alone — on the battle-field.
Free schools are not everything, as witness this spelling.
Yankee epistles found in camp show how illiterate they can be, with all their
boasted schools. Fredericksburg is spelled “Fredrexbirg,” medicine, “metison,”
and we read, “To my sweet brother,” etc. For the first time in my life no books
can interest me. Life is so real, so utterly earnest, that fiction is flat.
Nothing but what is going on in this distracted world of ours can arrest my
attention for ten minutes at a time.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 172-4
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