I did leave with regret Maum Mary. She was such a good,
well-informed old thing. My Molly, though perfection otherwise, does not
receive the confidential communications of new-made generals at the earliest
moment. She is of very limited military information. Maum Mary was the comfort
of my life. She saved me from all trouble as far as she could. Seventy, if she
is a day, she is spry and active as a cat, of a curiosity that knows no bounds,
black and clean; also, she knows a joke at first sight, and she is honest. I
fancy the negroes are ashamed to rob people as careless as James Chesnut and
myself.
One night, just before we left the Congaree House, Mr.
Chesnut had forgotten to tell some all-important thing to Governor Gist, who
was to leave on a public mission next day. So at the dawn of day he put on his
dressing-gown and went to the Governor's room. He found the door unlocked and
the Governor fast asleep. He shook him. Half-asleep, the Governor sprang up and
threw his arms around Mr. Chesnut's neck and said: “Honey, is it you?” The
mistake was rapidly set right, and the bewildered plenipotentiary was given his
instructions. Mr. Chesnut came into my room, threw himself on the sofa, and
nearly laughed himself to extinction, imitating again and again the pathetic
tone of the Governor's greeting.
Mr. Chesnut calls Lawrence “Adolphe,” but says he is simply
perfect as a servant. Mary Stevens said: “I thought Cousin James the laziest
man alive until I knew his man, Lawrence.” Lawrence will not move an inch or
lift a finger for any one but his master. Mrs. Middleton politely sent him on
an errand; Lawrence, too, was very polite; hours after, she saw him sitting on
the fence of the front yard. “Didn't you go?” she asked. “No, ma'am. I am
waiting for Mars Jeems.” Mrs. Middleton calls him now, “Mr. Take-it-Easy.”
My very last day's experience at the Congaree. I was waiting
for Mars Jeems in the drawing-room when a lady there declared herself to be the
wife of an officer in Clingman's regiment. A gentleman who seemed quite friendly
with her, told her all Mr. Chesnut said, thought, intended to do, wrote, and felt.
I asked: “Are you certain of all these things you say of Colonel Chesnut?”
The man hardly deigned to notice this impertinent interruption from a stranger
presuming to speak but who had not been introduced! After he went out, the wife
of Clingman's officer was seized with an intuitive curiosity. “Madam, will you
tell me your name?” I gave it, adding, “I dare say I showed myself an
intelligent listener when my husband's affairs were under discussion.” At
first, I refused to give my name because it would have embarrassed her friend
if she had told him who I was. The man was Mr. Chesnut's secretary, but I had
never seen him before.
A letter from Kate says she had been up all night preparing
David's things. Little Serena sat up and helped her mother. They did not know
that they would ever see him again. Upon reading it, I wept and James Chesnut
cursed the Yankees.
Gave the girls a quantity of flannel for soldiers' shirts;
also a string of pearls to be raffled for at the Gunboat Fair. Mary Witherspoon
has sent a silver tea-pot. We do not spare our precious things now. Our silver
and gold, what are they? — when we give up to war our beloved.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 153-5
