Last night I was awakened by loud talking and candles
flashing, tramping of feet, growls dying away in the distance, loud calls from
point to point in the yard. Up I started, my heart in my mouth. Some dreadful
thing had happened, a battle, a death, a horrible accident. Some one was
screaming aloft — that is, from the top of the stairway, hoarsely like a
boatswain in a storm. Old Colonel Chesnut was storming at the sleepy negroes
looking for fire, with lighted candles, in closets and everywhere else. I
dressed and came upon the scene of action.
“What is it? Any news?” “No, no, only mamma smells a smell;
she thinks something is burning somewhere.” The whole yard was alive, literally
swarming. There are sixty or seventy people kept here to wait upon this
household, two-thirds of them too old or too young to be of any use, but
families remain intact. The old Colonel has a magnificent voice. I am sure it
can be heard for miles. Literally, he was roaring from the piazza, giving
orders to the busy crowd who were hunting the smell of fire.
Old Mrs. Chesnut is deaf; so she did not know what a
commotion she was creating. She is very sensitive to bad odors. Candles have to
be taken out of the room to be snuffed. Lamps are extinguished only in the
porticoes, or farther afield. She finds violets oppressive; can only tolerate a
single kind of sweet rose. A tea-rose she will not have in her room. She was
totally innocent of the storm she had raised, and in a mild, sweet voice was
suggesting places to be searched. I was weak enough to laugh hysterically. The
bombardment of Fort Sumter was nothing to this. After this alarm, enough to
wake the dead, the smell was found. A family had been boiling soap. Around the
soap-pot they had swept up some woolen rags. Raking up the fire to make all
safe before going to bed, this was heaped up with the ashes, and its faint
smoldering tainted the air, at least to Mrs. Chesnut's nose, two hundred yards
or more away.
Yesterday some of the negro men on the plantation were found
with pistols. I have never before seen aught about any negro to show that they
knew we had a war on hand in which they have any interest.
Mrs. John de Saussure bade me good-by and God bless you. I
was touched. Camden people never show any more feeling or sympathy than red
Indians, except at a funeral. It is expected of all to howl then, and if you
don't “show feeling,” indignation awaits the delinquent.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 66-7
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