Betsey, recalcitrant maid of the W.'s, has been sold to a
telegraph man. She is as handsome as a mulatto ever gets to be, and clever in
every kind of work. My Molly thinks her mistress “very lucky in getting rid of
her.” She was “a dangerous inmate,” but she will be a good cook, a good
chambermaid, a good dairymaid, a beautiful clear-starcher, and the most
thoroughly good-for-nothing woman I know to her new owners, if she chooses.
Molly evidently hates her, but thinks it her duty “to stand by her color.”
Mrs. Gibson is a Philadelphia woman. She is true to her
husband and children, but she does not believe in us — the Confederacy, I mean.
She is despondent and hopeless; as wanting in faith of our ultimate success as
is Sally Baxter Hampton. I make allowances for those people. If I had married
North, they would have a heavy handful in me just now up there.
Mrs. Chesnut, my mother-in-law, has been sixty years in the
South, and she has not changed in feeling or in taste one iota. She can not
like hominy for breakfast, or rice for dinner, without a relish to give it some
flavor. She can not eat watermelons and sweet potatoes sans discrétion, as we do. She
will not eat hot corn bread à
discrétion, and hot buttered biscuit without any.
“Richmond is obliged to fall,” sighed Mrs. Gibson. “You
would say so, too, if you had seen our poor soldiers.” “Poor soldiers?” said I.
“Are you talking of Stonewall Jackson's men? Poor soldiers, indeed!” She said
her mind was fixed on one point, and had ever been, though she married and came
South: she never would own slaves. “Who would that was not born to it?” I
cried, more excited than ever. She is very handsome, very clever, and has very
agreeable manners.
“Dear madam,” she says, with tears in her beautiful eyes, “they
have three armies.” “But Stonewall has routed one of them already. Heath
another.” She only answered by an unbelieving moan. “Nothing seemed to suit
her,” I said, as we went away. “You did not certainly,” said some one to me; “you
contradicted every word she said, with a sort of indignant protest.”
We met Mrs. Hampton Gibbes at the door — another Virginia
woman as good as gold. They told us Mrs. Davis was delightfully situated at
Raleigh; North Carolinians so loyal, so hospitable; she had not been allowed to
eat a meal at the hotel. “How different from Columbia,” said Doctor Gibbes,
looking at Mrs. Gibson, who has no doubt been left to take all of her meals at
his house. “Oh, no!” cried Mary, “you do Columbia injustice. Mrs. Chesnut used
to tell us that she was never once turned over to the tender mercies of the
Congaree cuisine, and at McMahan's it is fruit, flowers, invitations to dinner
every day.”
After we came away, “Why did you not back me up?” I was
asked. “Why did you let them slander Columbia,” “It was awfully awkward,” I
said, “but you see it would have been worse to let Doctor Gibbes and Mrs.
Gibson see how different it was with other people.”
Took a moonlight walk after tea at the Halcott Greens'. All
the company did honor to the beautiful night by walking home with me.
Uncle Hamilton Boykin is here, staying at the de
Saussure's'. He says, “Manassas was play to Williamsburg,” and he was at both
battles. He lead a part of Stuart's cavalry in the charge at Williamsburg,
riding a hundred yards ahead of his company.
Toombs is ready for another revolution, and curses freely
everything Confederate from the President down to a horse boy. He thinks there
is a conspiracy against him in the army. Why? Heavens and earth — why?
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 169-71
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