The Merrimac is now called the Virginia. I think these
changes of names so confusing and so senseless. Like the French “Royal Bengal
Tiger,” “National Tiger,” etc. Rue this, and next day Rue that,
the very days and months a symbol, and nothing signified.
I was lying on the sofa in my room, and two men slowly
walking up and down the corridor talked aloud as if necessarily all rooms were
unoccupied at this midday hour. I asked Maum Mary who they were. “Yeadon and
Barnwell Rhett, Jr.” They abused the Council roundly, and my husband's name
arrested my attention. Afterward, when Yeadon attacked Mr. Chesnut, Mr. Chesnut
surprised him by knowing beforehand all he had to say. Naturally I had repeated
the loud interchange of views I had overheard in the corridor.
First, Nathan Davis called. Then Gonzales, who presented a
fine, soldierly appearance in his soldier clothes, and the likeness to Beauregard
was greater than ever. Nathan, all the world knows, is by profession a handsome
man.
General Gonzales told us what in the bitterness of his soul
he had written to Jeff Davis. He regretted that he had not been his classmate;
then he might have been as well treated as Northrop. In any case he would not
have been refused a brigadiership, citing General Trapier and Tom Drayton. He
had worked for it, had earned it; they had not. To his surprise, Mr. Davis
answered him, and in a sharp note of four pages. Mr. Davis demanded from whom
he quoted, “not his classmate.” General Gonzales responded, “from the public
voice only.” Now he will fight for us all the same, but go on demanding justice
from Jeff Davis until he get his dues — at least, until one of them gets his
dues, for he means to go on hitting Jeff Davis over the head whenever he has a
chance.
“I am afraid,” said I, “you will find it a hard head to
crack.” He replied in his flowery Spanish way: “Jeff Davis will be the sun,
radiating all light, heat, and patronage; he will not be a moon reflecting
public opinion, for he has the soul of a despot; he delights to spite public
opinion. See, people abused him for making Crittenden brigadier. Straightway he
made him major-general, and just after a blundering, besotted defeat, too.”
Also, he told the President in that letter: “Napoleon made his generals after
great deeds on their part, and not for having been educated at St. Cyr, or
Brie, or the Polytechnique,” etc., etc. Nathan Davis sat as still as a Sioux
warrior, not an eyelash moved. And yet he said afterward that he was amused
while the Spaniard railed at his great namesake.
Gonzales said: “Mrs. Slidell would proudly say that she was a
Creole. They were such fools, they thought Creole meant—” Here Nathan
interrupted pleasantly: “At the St. Charles, in New Orleans, on the bill of
fare were ‘Creole eggs.’ When they were brought to a man who had ordered them,
with perfect simplicity, he held them up, ‘Why, they are only hens' eggs, after
all.’ What in Heaven's name he expected them to be, who can say?” smiled Nathan
the elegant.
One lady says (as I sit reading in the drawing-room window
while Maum Mary puts my room to rights): “I clothe my negroes well. I could not
bear to see them in dirt and rags; it would be unpleasant to me.” Another lady:
“Yes. Well, so do I. But not fine clothes, you know. I feel — now — it was one
of our sins as a nation, the way we indulged them in sinful finery. We will be
punished for it.”
Last night, Mrs. Pickens met General Cooper. Madam knew
General Cooper only as our adjutant-general, and Mr. Mason's brother-in-law. In
her slow, graceful, impressive way, her beautiful eyes eloquent with feeling,
she inveighed against Mr. Davis's wickedness in always sending men born at the
North to command at Charleston. General Cooper is on his way to make a tour of
inspection there now. The dear general settled his head on his cravat with the
aid of his forefinger; he tugged rather more nervously with the something that
is always wrong inside of his collar, and looked straight up through his
spectacles. Some one crossed the room, stood back of Mrs. Pickens, and murmured
in her ear, “General Cooper was born in New York.” Sudden silence.
Dined with General Cooper at the Prestons. General Hampton
and Blanton Duncan were there also; the latter a thoroughly free-and-easy
Western man, handsome and clever; more audacious than either, perhaps. He
pointed to Buck — Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston. “What's that girl laughing
at?” Poor child, how amazed she looked. He bade them “not despair; all the nice
young men would not be killed in the war; there would be a few left. For
himself, he could give them no hope; Mrs. Duncan was uncommonly healthy.” Mrs.
Duncan is also lovely. We have seen her.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 148-50
