CHAPTER TWO
A Wooden Nutmeg
I had been there, on a spring morning, when the
fog stood so thick on the river that it looked as though the bowl
of the sky had spilled all its milky clouds into the valley. I was
eighteen years old, and I had walked, in stages, the long way from
the port at Norfolk. I was lean and strong, with sun-bleached hair
that stuck out near-white from under the brim of my straw
hat.
There was a little barge-ferry then, that would
stop on request, at a jetty on the island’s northern tip. I had
alighted there on a whim and walked the mile and a half to the
house, whistling the song of the boatman who had poled the
crossing. The white dogwoods were in flower all the way up the
drive, and the air seemed viscous and honey-fragrant, unlike the
mud-scent of a chill May morning on Spindle Hill. I had two heavy
trunks tied to the pole across my shoulder, and so I was
defenseless when a brace of mastiffs came baying after me, sending
the stones flying under their thick, swift paws. It was, you might
say, a typical welcome for a Connecticut peddler, our reputation
being less than luminous. Too many of us, in the quest for gain,
had forsaken honesty for cunning, decency for coarseness. But I
knew dogs: at home we’d had a collie that was like an extra pair of
arms when you needed the sheep gathered in. And I’d learned a thing
or two more on my way north from Norfolk, the most useful being
that if a Cerberus comes at you barking and snarling, call him to
you with a joyous enthusiasm. Nine dogs in ten will greet fear with
aggression, and friendship with fine humor. By the time I reached
the big house those two beasts were gamboling beside me, nuzzling
their big drooly muzzles against my thighs.
A young servant stood atop the steps, looking
surprised and perhaps a trifle annoyed by this. She whistled
sharply, and the dogs’ ears flattened as they sidled off “Those two
would more likely have a chunk each out of your hams before you’d
got a halfway up the drive than be fawning like that.” Her voice
was unexpected: refined, and resonant as a bell. She stood with
arms akimbo, her long-fingered hands, dark brown on top and pale
pink under-which contrast still surprised me-resting on the
waistband of a starched skirt striped cream and gray, which she
wore with a spotless, high-necked bodice. Around her head was
knotted a rigolette, dyed the color of beet, that made a handsome
effect against her copper-colored brow. Her appearance was an
excellent omen: a household that got its slaves up so neatly was
likely to be liberal-handed.
As she came down the steps to where I stood, I set
down my tin trunks, swept off my hat, and affected what I hoped was
my most ingratiating smile. Manners matter in the South; I had met
even field hands, half-naked and barefoot, who comported themselves
with more grace than the average educated New Englander. I had
learned, too, that winning over the upper servants was the first
object for a gentleman of the road in pursuit of a sale. It was
they, after all, who presented one’s suit for admission to the
master-or, of keener interest to me, to the mistress-and they could
do that in any number of more or less helpful ways.
Since I stand more than six feet in my stockings,
being eye to eye with a woman is not something that I have grown
much used to. But that day, my pale blue eyes gazed into her dark
ones, which were lit with a faint amusement. Even now I remember
that I was the first to look away.
“Thinking to charm me, as well as the dogs,” she
said, in that silvery voice. “Yankee, are you? From Connecticut?”
She raised her chin sharply and made a slight clicking sound with
her tongue. “The last peddler through here was a Connecticut boy,
too. Sold the cook ajar of wooden nutmegs.”
“For shame!” I said, and meant it, though I’d seen
many a likely fake whittled in the idle campfire hours of my
competitors.
“I don’t believe the household will be interested
to see your notions, but we’d be remiss if we did not offer you a
cold draught on a warm morning.”
There you are, I thought. A Negro slave, probably
not even as old as I, yet with a style of address that would not
shame a great peer. No one I knew at home talked like that, not
even the minister. Spindle Hill, a thousand feet high and with only
one narrow road leading up to it, was a terse place, where people
spoke a spare dialect that even the folk in Hartford, not twenty
miles distant, could not readily understand. I was, at home, a
“loping nimshi,” rather than an idling fool. The plural of “house”
in our thinly settled hamlet was “housen” and my father, when he
wished to assert something, would end his declaration with the
words “I snore.” Not even a century separated me from the
great-grandparents who had wrested our fields out of pine and stone
and oaken wilderness; our home, built by my father in a clearing
made by an Indian deerhunter’s fire circle, was just three rooms of
wide, unpainted board already falling into ruin. I hoped to help my
father find the funds to build a new house, and I had used to look
forward to the day I would return with profits from my peddling in
hand. But somewhere along the York or the James, I had ceased to
long for that day. Now, to my shame, I would find myself gazing at
the planters’ idle, silken wives and blushing at the memory of my
work-worn mother, her clay pipe perched on a chin that bristled
with errant hairs, her hands engaged in ceaseless toil, from the
time they touched the cow’s udder in the dim predawn to the time
they set down the shuttle of the flax loom late at night.
“I would be most grateful for that kindness,” I
replied, thinking that the great thing about being always among
people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one’s own.
The young woman led the way around to the side of the stone-walled
house, through a low gate, and into an orderly kitchen garden,
where the nobbly purple tips of asparagus stood straight as
sentries and low strawberry beds hung heavy with early green fruit.
They would be feasting on berries here before the ground at home
had thawed. I followed, noting the way she walked: perfectly erect,
yet perfectly at ease.
Inside the kitchen, wholesome morning smells of
toasting hoe cake and good, rich coffee made my stomach contract
with longing. “What you drugged in, Grace?” said the cook, a
wide-hipped woman with a flattened, sweat-glistening face. My
hunger must have been evident, for the cook, without even asking,
laid a tin plate piled high with hoe cakes in front of me, even as
she hectored me about the wicked ways of my kind, and how she
didn’t cotton to those who made a fool of her. I nodded vigorously
while spooning the food into my mouth.
“No nutmegs of any kind in my kit, ma’am,” I said.
“Just a lot of useful and pretty things for the betterment of the
body and the mind.”
“Is that right?” she said, her broad mouth turned
down in an exaggerated attempt at a scowl. “Better show Annie you
Yankee notions then, and be quick about it, for I ain’t got no time
for dawdlin’.”
When I first set out from Norfolk, I had been proud
of my beautifully japanned trunks with their interior nooks and
shelves and clever fastenings for holding stock in place. The
contents I had selected myself, with much thought, and I believed
my stock, then, to be very fine. I had invested most heavily in
goods likely to appeal to women, since I am easier in their company
than among those of my own sex. I had combs of tortoiseshell which
the fancy-goods dealer had assured me were the latest fashion;
jewelry and amulets and garnets and pearls, reticule-clasps and
rouge papers; essences and oils and fine soaps and pomatums; silver
thimbles and gold and silver spectacles with shagreen cases; sewing
silks and cottons and threads and buttons and needles with silver
and gold eyes; pencil cases, pen knives, scissors (of Rogers’ make,
at the dealer’s recommendation), playing cards, and wafers; fans
and fiddle strings; and many diverting picture bricks and puzzles
for children. At the floor of each case I had books. These I had
not got from the Norfolk dealer, but traded for on my journey,
anywhere I could. I would devour them, mastering all their
contents, before I bartered them into new hands.
I had, as I said, been proud of these things when I
set out so many long months earlier, but I now knew that most of
what I had was tawdry. I had learned this slowly, for the planters’
wives had been courteous in their expressions of interest,
exclaiming over the jewelry, but buying only utilitarian trifles
like the sewing silks or games for the children. It wasn’t their
words but my own eyes that had taught me the shortcomings of my
wares, for many of the homes in which I had been received were
temples of elegance, where even a small item such as a salt dish
might be the work of a quattrocento silversmith from Florence or
Bruges. And the jewelry! From the luster of the pearls that wrapped
slender, unwattled necks and the luminous gems in ancient, heirloom
settings, I soon learned to see my bits of paste for what they
were.
But the books were another matter. Of these, at
least, I did not need to be ashamed. I remember what I had with me
that day in some detail, as these proved both the means of securing
my place in that beautiful home and the cause of my abrupt
departure. I had old favorites, such as A Pilgrim’s
Progress, but also newer acquisitions such as the poems and
prefaces of Wordsworth, Marsh’s edition of Coleridge’s Aids
to Riflection, Cowper’s Life and Letters, Lavater’s
Physiognomy, Johnson’s Rasselas, Goldsmith’s Vicar
of Wakefield, and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. For children, I had Noah Webster’s
American Spelling Book and nicely illustrated little books of
moral fables such as The Fox and Grapes and the tale of the
milkmaid who spilled the milk.
When she saw the books the tall slave named Grace
straightened and asked if I would like a ewer of warm water for my
toilet before she showed me to the master’s room. I had shaved by
the river that morning before I’d made my crossing, but I was
pleased at the chance for a hot wash. When Grace returned, she said
the master bade me to bring the books and leave the rest. She led
the way through the narrow hall that joined the kitchen, warming
room, and buttery to the cool expanse of the main house. The house
was not especially large, nor by any means the grandest I had been
in-some of the plantation homes along the James were more like
palaces-but it was perfect in proportion and exquisite in
appointments. White walls soared to high ceilings plastered with
elaborate swags and rosettes. Turkey carpets in jewel colors warmed
the dark wood floors. In the center of the house a sinuous
staircase with acanthus leaf carving swept up from an oval entry
hall. Grace gestured with her long-fingered hand-hands that did not
appear accustomed to heavy chores, I noted-indicating I should sit
upon a marble bench that fit the curve of the south wall, directly
opposite a faux-grained door flanked by marbles of Apollo and
Daphne and Prometheus Bound. “That is the master’s library. He will
be with you presently,” Grace said, and swept away to her
duties.
The home’s massive entrance was to my right, the
wide door surrounded by lights of beveled glass, and I sat there,
watching the golden morning sunshine fracture into tiny rainbows.
Because I had been staring into the bright light, I could not see
him well when he at last opened the library door, for he stood in
its shadow. There was an impression only; of great height, very
erect bearing, and a mellow voice.
“Good day to you, sir. Would you kindly come
in?”
I entered and I stopped and twirled as if I were on
a pivot. It was a double-height room, with a narrow gallery at the
midpoint. Books lined every inch of it. A very large, plain, and
beautiful rosewood desk stood in the center.
“Augustus Clement,” he said, holding out his hand.
I shifted the weight of the books into the crook of my left arm and
shook his hand absently, for I was transfixed by the magnitude of
his collection. “I’ve always imagined paradise as something like a
library. Now I know what it looks like.” I barely realized I had
spoken aloud, but Mr. Clement laughed and clapped me on the
shoulder.
“We get a few of you men through here, or we used
to, before my daughter married. I think the word went out that she
was-what do you call it? A mark? A touch? In any regards, she
bought a bushel of worthless notions from your colleagues over the
years; I think she just liked to talk to young men, actually. But
I’ve never come across one of you with an interest in books. Set
them down there, would you?”
I placed them on the rosewood desk, and he worked
briskly through the pile. Now that I had seen the magnitude of his
library, I doubted he would find anything of interest to him. But
the Lavater Phyisognomy caught his eye. “This is a later
edition than the one I have; I am curious to see his revisions.
Tell Grace what you require for it and she will see to your
payment.”
“Sir, I don’t sell the books for cash.”
“Oh?”
“I trade for them-barter-a book for a book, you
know. That way I keep myself in something fresh to read along the
journey.”
“Do you so! Capital idea!” he said. “Though no way
to make a profit.”
“I am interested in money, of course sir; it is
necessary for a young man in my circumstances to be so. But I trust
you will not think me irresponsible if I tell you I am more
interested in laying up the riches of the mind.”
“Well said, young Mr.—March, was it? Well, as it
happens I have business elsewhere this day, so why don’t you make
yourself free of the library. Do us the honor of taking dinner
here, and you can tell me then what volume you would consider in
barter for the Lavater.”
“Sir, I could not impose upon you—”
“Mr. March, you would be doing me a great kindness.
My household is reduced, at present. My son is away with my manager
on business. Solitude is no friend to science. You must know that
we in the South suffer from a certain malnourishment of the mind:
we value the art of conversation over literary pursuits, so that
when we gather together it is all for gallantries and pleasure
parties. There is much to be said for our agrarian way of life. But
sometimes I envy your bustling Northern cities, where men of genius
are thrown together thick as bees, and the honey of intellectual
accomplishment is produced. I would like to talk about books with
you; do be kind enough to spare me an evening.”
“Mr. Clement, sir, it would be my very great
pleasure.”
“Very good, then. I shall look forward.” He paused
at the door, and turned. “Grace mentioned you had some notions for
children. Whatever you have in picture puzzles or games for the
illiterate, I will take-presents for the slaves’ little ones, you
know. Just let Grace know what compensation you think fair.”
I realize that lust stands high in the list of
deadly sins. And yet lust-the tightening throat, the flushed
cheeks, the raging appetite-is the only word accurate to describe
the sensation I felt that morning, as the painted door closed and I
was left with the liberty of all those books. By afternoon, I could
say I was ready to love Mr. Clement. For to know a man’s library
is, in some measure, to know his mind. And this mind was noble in
its reach, wide in its interests, discerning in its tastes.
Grace knocked on the door at some point and brought
me a cold collation on a tray, but even had it not been meat I
would not have paused to eat it. I did not want to take even a
moment from my perusal of the books. About an hour before
dinnertime, she came again, clucked at the uneaten food, and
offered to show me to my quarters-I was to use the absent estate
manager’s cottage. There I attempted to make myself presentable
within the very severe limits of my wardrobe. Not for the first
time since I set out, I was mortified to have to present myself at
a civilized table clad in a suit of linen, harvested from our own
flax fields, spun and sewn by my mother. I resolved that I would
reserve some part of my profits for a decent suit from a New York
tailor when I returned north.
Mr. Clement was waiting in the drawing room when I
presented myself He was alone. I had hoped to meet the lady of the
house. My face must have registered surprise.
“Mrs. Clement bids you welcome and sends her
apologies. She is not well, Mr. March: she does not dine down.
However, she said she would like very much to make your
acquaintance tomorrow, if you would be kind enough to visit her.
She would like to hear your impressions of Virginia, as they have
been informed by your travels.”
I have never been in the habit of consuming
alcohol, but out of politeness I took the glass of champagne Mr.
Clement held out to me. My mood was elevated enough by the joys of
my day, and by the time we sat down in the handsome dining room,
the bitter little bubbles seemed to be bearing me aloft. A Negro
glided in with a silver salver, upon which stood a slab of
sanguinary beef swaddled in a blanket of glistening yellow fat. The
drippings from this joint had contaminated the potatoes so as to
render them inedible to me. Next, he proffered a dish of greens,
and I accepted a liberal serving. But as I brought a forkful to my
mouth I caught the stench of pork grease and had to lay it
down.
Still, I barely noticed my hunger, engrossed as I
was in the conversation. I cannot say now all the topics upon which
we alighted, only that we moved from the ancient world to the
modern, from Rome’s Cato to our revolutionary Catos, from Kant on
apperception to Coleridge on Kant, to Coleridge’s unacknowledged
debts to Schelling. Clement led the way and I followed, the wine on
my empty stomach providing volatile fuel for my flight. I hardly
noted the translation from dining room to drawing room and do not
know what time it was when Clement finally drew a hand, on which a
handsome signet ring gleamed, across a brow which I suddenly noted
was gray with fatigue.
“You must forgive me, but I am not accustomed to
attending to estate matters, as I had to do today. Usually my son
and the manager between them handle the business of the farm,
deferring to me on only the most consequential issues. Since they
are away, I must concern myself, and as a result I find myself
weary. But I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a young man’s company so.
You have a supple mind, Mr. March. It’s clear that you have read
widely for such a youth, whose circumstances, forgive me, could not
have made this easy. If your plans allow for it, you are welcome
here for as long as you would care to remain.”
There was a saying among the Connecticut peddlers:
beware the hospitality of the planters. Many a young man had been
turned from the road and its profits by just such an offer as. was
now extended to me, and had ended his journey in idle dissipation.
And yet I was hungry for knowledge in those days, and the prospect
of spending more time exploring the library and the intellect of
Mr. Clement was more than I could withstand.
The next day, I paid a call upon Mrs. Clement. I
found her reclining on a chaise in a sunlit sitting room, a,
huge-eyed beauty clad in a froth of white lace and broderie
anglaise. Grace sat in a high-backed chair at her side, reading
poetry, with a surprising delicacy of expression. “Thank you,
Grace, my dear. That was lovely, as usual. Why don’t you take a
little break now, while this fine-looking young man is here to
amuse me?” Hearing Mrs. Clement speak, I realized that Grace’s
voice had been schooled in imitation of her mistress, and yet the
slave, having a naturally lower register, had the richer and more
resonant timbre.
Mrs. Clement held out a hand to greet me. The touch
of her skin-hot, dry, papery-was a shock. I did my best to hide my
recoil. “My husband said you were a very conversible young man, but
he did not mention that you were so handsome. Quite ‘the golden
lad’ the poet speaks of, indeed. Why, you must have the belles of
Virginia casting themselves at your feet!” She tittered girlishly.
I coughed with embarrassment. Grace shot me a cool look as she
slipped a silk bookmark into the slim volume and slid from the
room. Mrs. Clement saw my eyes following her silent exit. She
sighed. “Sometimes, I believe I am more fond of that girl than of
my own daughter. Do you think that very wicked of me, Mr. March?”
She did not expect an answer, and I gave none. “One’s son is so
much in the world, and a daughter marries young and leaves. My
daughter was married last year, and only fifteen. Can you imagine?
Such a little girl, to be mistress of her own great estate. Though
I warned her. Oh yes, I tried. But she stamped her dainty foot and
would accept the young gentleman’s proposal, for all her father and
I counseled her to wait. The young are willful, Mr. March, as you
should know, being so very young yourself Why, you can’t be much
more than a boy...”
“I shall be nineteen in November, ma’am.”
“You see? A boy, as I said ... but a very
well-grown boy...” The large, dark eyes appraised me. “What are
you? Six feet?”
“A little over, ma’am.”
“Good for you. And broad-shouldered, too. I do like
a tall, broad-shouldered man. My husband is six feet, but he will
sit all day in his library and I am afraid he has not the manly
figure he could have, if he would only ride out more ...” She gave
another mannered, musical little laugh, and then she frowned as her
fluttering thoughts alit once more upon her absent daughter. “I
said, ‘Marianne, they might call you “mistress,” but one thing you
must know: on most great plantations the mistress is the most
complete slave on the place.’” She tittered again. “I tell you, Mr.
March, my Grace has a great deal more freedom than my daughter now
enjoys. Not freedom to leave me, no; that she will never have.
Grace is mine, here with me forever. She was born right here, you
know. Mr. Clement gave her to me as a wedding gift. Such a pretty
infant. I suppose he thought I could practice my mothering skills
upon her until our own children came. Who could guess that one’s
first essay would be the most eloquent ? I taught her to read, you
know. It was no effort, no effort at all. She picked up her letters
better than I had as a child, and much better than Marianne. I do
not know what I would do now, ill as I am, without my Grace to read
to me. My daughter never cared for books. No poetry in the girl at
all. I can’t think why that is. Can you, Mr. March? No, how could
you have an opinion? You haven’t met her, have you? My mind
wanders, forgive me. It’s the illness. My son is a busy man. He
never comes to see me. Hasn’t been for days ...”
“I believe he is away on estate business,
ma’am.”
“So he is. Mr. Clement did say something about
that. It’s the illness, you see? I forget things. When you go down,
do send my son to me, would you? A boy should visit his mama, do
you not think? I think it is not so very much to ask. My daughter,
now, you would think she at least would come. But no, she married,
didn’t she? Where was it she went off to? I can’t recall the name
of the estate. Brilliant match, I recollect that everyone said so.
Most brilliant match of her season. But I can’t recall now who it
was she married ... Grace will know.” She turned her head. “Grace,
who was that gentleman?” She swiveled, looking all about for the
absent slave. Her expression became frantic. “Where is Grace?” Her
voice scraped like a knife on pewter.
“You sent her out, ma’am.”
“Fetch her back! Fetch her back! I can’t be alone
with a gentleman caller! What would Mr. Clement say? Grace!” The
effort of crying out set her coughing, horrible wracking spasms
that raised blood onto her lace handkin. Grace, who must have been
hovering, slid into the room, carrying a pitcher of minted lemon
water, which she poured and offered her mistress. Mrs. Clement took
the glass in a trembling hand and drank thirstily. Grace gently
lifted a lock of pale hair that had fallen from the lace cap,
tucked it away, and stroked the parchment brow.
“I think Mrs. Clement is tired now. I am sure she
would like you to visit her again, another time, perhaps.”
I nodded and withdrew with relief. Later, in the
cool of the afternoon, I walked out into the fields. The light
slanted on the brightly clad field hands, who sang as they planted
out vivid green tobacco seedlings. I breathed the scented air and
thought how lovely the scene was, compared to the spare fields of
Spindle Hill. I had not been wont to sing at my labors. I had
cursed rather, as the stony soil dulled the shares and the
refractory beasts stood stubborn in their traces. Turning back
toward the house, I came across Grace, picking early roses in the
cutting garden.
I held her basket for her, so she could reach some
blooms high on an arch of braided locust boughs. As she reached up,
she looked like a young bough herself, supple and slender. “Mr.
Clement did not tell you what to expect of Mrs. Clement’s
condition, did he? I thought not. He finds it hard to accept her
decline. She has never been entirely well, but two years ago there
was an accident. She was riding, coming out of the shadow of the
woods into sunlight, and her mare shied and threw her. Since then,
she has had no sure sense of balance, and keeps to her couch. The
cough and fever seem to grow worse from the lack of exercise and
outside air. She is terrified of the world, Mr. March. If she
stands her head spins, and she feels that she is falling from the
horse all over again. She sleeps a great deal nowadays, which is a
blessing.”
“It must be; I mean, to give you some
respite.”
“It is a blessing for her, Mr. March. She is the
one who requires respite-from her fears, her confusion.”
I felt the force of her rebuke. “She loves you like
a mother,” I blurted.
She turned and placed the roses carefully in the
basket, then regarded me with a steady gaze. I could not read her
expression. When she spoke, her voice was low, her words clipped.
“Does she so? I wouldn’t know. My mother was sold south by Mr.
Clement before I was one year old.” She took the basket from me and
walked, erect, swaying, up the path to the house.
That evening, Mr. Clement was full of his reading
in Lavater, and from there we progressed to Samuel Morton’s book on
human crania-a handsome new volume, to which I had been drawn by
virtue of its elegant plates. Mr. Clement, in his generosity, had
offered it as barter-a most unfavorable one for him. It was
inevitable that we should move from there to the science of
“Niggerology,” as Mr. Clement called it, and from there, by easy
stages, to the matter of slavery. I thought to begin by praising
the smooth management of the estate, and the relations of affection
and trust I had observed between master and servant.
“Trust!” He laughed, dabbing at his chin with a
heavy damask napkin. “The only way to keep slaves honest is
not to trust them!” He must have seen me wince. “Does that
seem to you a harsh assessment, Mr. March? I daresay it is, and yet
it is unfortunately too true. Why, I had a neighbor, a capital
fellow, lived just west of here. Never known to punish his slaves.
Boy became insolent one day, and when my friend reluctantly raised
the lash to him, why, the boy grabbed a white-oak branch and beat
my friend’s head to a pomace.” He grimaced and put down his
food-laden fork, signaling to the hovering slave to take the plate
away. The man was barely through the door, and hardly out of
earshot, when he continued. “Name a vice, Mr. March: laziness,
deceit, debauchery, theft. Place your trust in a slave and soon,
very soon, you will see how proficient he is in any and all of
them.”
“But, sir, surely the very condition of
enslavement, not the slaves’ inherent nature, must account for such
lapses of honor. The heart is a crimson organ, be it within white
breast or in black, and surely wickedness may dwell alike in
either...”
“But I do not speak of wickedness!” Clement said,
almost gleefully, bringing his hand down upon the table. “You have
touched upon the sinew of the matter! Does one speak of wickedness
in a child of four or five, a child who has not reached the age of
reason? Not at all. For the child knows not the distinction between
honesty and falsehood, nor does it think of future nor of
consequence, but only of the desire of the moment and how to
gratify it. So it is with the African. They, too, are children,
morally speaking, and it is for us to guide and guard them until
their race matures. And I believe it will, Mr. March. Oh yes. I am
not one of Morton’s skull-spanning acolytes. I do not think the
current order immutable. Don’t judge a book by its cover, March,
nor by its plates. You take with you a handsome volume, but you
will soon see that Morton’s methods are flawed, very flawed. Why,
even the great Aristotle was wrong in this: he held that no race
other than the Hellenes could be elevated to civilization.” He
placed his glass on the damask cloth and gestured at his finely
appointed room, its gleaming crystal and bone china. “And yet here
we are, you and I, whose forebears were blue-painted savages
gnawing on bones when Aristotle’s city flowered.” He flourished his
napkin, dabbing delicately, at his lips. The candlelight flared on
his signet ring.
“Slavery will wither, in time. Not my time. Not my
son’s. Yet wither it will, as the African grows morally in each
succeeding generation. His mere residence among us has already
wrought a great and happy change in his condition. We have raised
him out of the night, and, into the light, Mr. March. But the work
is far from complete. It is our place to act the role of stem
father. We should not rush them out of their childhood, as it were.
And if sometimes that means a resort to punishment, so be it, as
the father must punish the wayward child. But never in anger.” He
leaned back in his chair, draining the wine in his glass. His tone,
when he continued, was reflective, as if he were speaking to
himself, rather than instructing me. “To manage the Negro without
an excess of passion, this is the Christian challenge. In this way
no one mistakes personal malice for what is mere necessity of good
husbandry.”
“Forgive me, sir,” I interrupted, “but surely you
do not speak of the lash?”
“I do not speak of the lash as it appears in the
fevered imagination of your would-be Northern philanthropists,” he
replied, leaning forward, once again, declamatory. “A great deal of
whipping is never necessary. But some is. For their good, as
well as ours.”
He lay down his napkin in a neatly folded triangle
and pushed back from the table. I rose with him, and we retired to
the drawing room. We let the subject lie as the liveried slave
returned to hand a crystal decanter of brandy, which Mr. Clement
poured liberally. As the boy withdrew, Mr. Clement picked up his
own thread. “You may think that slavery is for the sole benefit of
the master, Mr. March, and there are benefits, I grant; the
institution frees one from the routine toils which interrupt the
unfettered life of the mind. But it is not so simple as that.”
Clement swirled the amber liquid in his glass, brought it to his
nose, and inhaled deeply. I imitated him. The fumes seared my
sinuses and brought tears to my eyes. “As the slave benefits from
the moral example of the master, and the glimpse of what a superior
human condition is, so the master suffers from the exigencies of
providing apt example. I believe that the holding of bondsmen
subjects a man’s temper to a true test; it will be either ruined or
perfected by the disciplines required.”
My limbs had grown warm and heavy. I smiled and
nodded, thinking what an apt example he made, how fortunate his
slaves. I, too, felt fortunate: flattered by his attention,
overcome by his wisdom, and thrilled to be, even briefly, a part of
this higher way of life.
And so my days passed in the most pleasant
combination of study and society. My place in the household
remained fluid. Though I took my dinner with Mr. Clement and had
the freedom of his library during the day, I did not sleep in the
house, but in the staff cottage, and I breakfasted, as on the first
day, in the kitchen. In some ways, I came to enjoy this meal as
much as my evenings of talk with Mr. Clement. The cook, Annie,
proved to have a very thin crust. Underneath it, she was a warm,
soft soul, full of earthy humor and motherly affection. Her
children she kept as close to her as she could. Her lively daughter
of seven years, a merry little soul named Prudence, shined shoes or
shelled peas, generally busying herself, treating chores as play.
There was also Justice, a fine-looking boy of about ten, whose task
it was to haul wood and water, to scrub blackened cooking pans, and
occasionally to help serve at table. Annie told me proudly that
Justice had been selected for house service, unlike his father, who
had been a field hand till he died in a lumbering accident. “I
ain’t a-sayin’ he weren’t a good man, no sir, Louis a fine good man
all right.” Annie was stirring a batter as she talked, and her
spoon slowed down in the mixture as she thought back on her past. A
shy half-smile lit up her wide face. “I was a nursery maid when the
young marse was born; my mama was the cook here dem days. I recall
I was out with the young marse in the yard, and it was summertime
and the flowers git be a-blooming and the honeysuckle smelling so
sweet. And up come Louis, and makes a big show of talking away to
the babe, and making funny faces for him an’ all. And I says,
‘Ain’t he a pretty baby?’ And he says, ‘Surely is, but not as
pretty as you is, Annie,’ and out of that kind of foolishness by
and by we comes to be asking the marse’s leave for a wedding. For
he lets us marry here on dis place, yes sir; he and the mistress
say it’s proper so. They doan hold with marrying in blankets.
Mistress say to the marse, ‘You kill a beef for the feastin’,’ and
the whole day before she kept me shut up in the nursery room,
sayin’ a bride ought not be seen. It was a fine wedding we had, for
sure, and the good Lord done left me these two fine chillun to
remember Louis by. Justice favors his daddy,” she said, looking
proudly at her handsome, silent son. What Justice thought, I never
learned. Unlike his sister, who chattered away, the boy said
little. But sometimes he sang, in a sweet and clear soprano.
The children were disposed to like me, as I was the
source of the playthings Mr. Clement had purchased for them, and I
encouraged their affections by showing them the workings of the
puzzles and teaching them some simple games. Sometimes, I read to
them from the children’s books I had on hand, though Grace had made
it clear that none of these were to be purchased.
I noticed that Prudence liked to stand at my
shoulder as I read, and one morning it came to me that she was
trying to follow the words on the page. I commenced then to trace
my way under the text with my forefinger, and before long I noticed
that she mouthed the sounds of short words such as to and at. The
next day, I saw that she was trying to form letters in the hearth
ash with a piece of kindling. I took up a second twig and reformed
some for her, showing how a downstroke usually preceded the curve
when making letters such as b or d Annie had her back
to us, kneading a trough of dough, when Grace came in to fetch
something for Mrs. Clement.
When Grace saw what we were about, she sucked her
breath in sharply, seized the hearth brush, and commenced sweeping
the letters away. Annie turned then from her kneading, scolding.
“Now, Grace, what you be soiling your hands for-” but then, seeing
the traces of some letters in the ash, she stopped abruptly. The
cook’s wide face darkened and she bore down on Prudence, snatching
the twig as if the child held a burning brand. She turned on me,
thunderous.
“What you thinking to do to my chile?”
I looked at her, baffled, and spread my hands to
signify that I did not understand the question.
“How long you done say you been in
Virginia?”
“Almost a year now ...”
“Almost a year, and you don’t know it’s a crime to
teach a slave her letters?”
“But Grace knows how to read.” I turned to Grace,
seeking support. “I heard you reading to your mistress. She herself
remarked on the pleasure it gives her...”
Grace closed her eyes, as if asking for patience.
“Yes, I read. Slaves my age, some of us, some lucky few, read. But
for almost ten years now it has become a crime to teach us.”
Annie had turned back to her trough, pummeling the
dough with fierce blows. “You set sunup till sundown reading in
them big ol’ books dat could stun a bullock, and yet you ain’t
learned nothing. What kind of fool puts a little chile in risk of a
whupping?”
“A whipping? Prudence? For wanting to learn her
ABCs?”
“Why doan you ask Marse Clement all ’bout dat?”
Annie said, turning the dough with an angry thwack. “But doan you
be telling him what you been up to with my chile.”
Grace inclined her head toward the door. “Mr.
March, perhaps you might help me gather some berries for Mrs.
Clement’s tea cake?”
I patted Prudence’s head, noting with chagrin that
her eyes were brimming, and followed Grace into the garden. She did
not stop until we were well clear of the kitchen, hidden from view
by a line of espaliered apple trees. Then she turned, her lips
compressed.
“Mr. March, will you help me to teach the child?
She longs to learn so badly. Annie wants the best for her, but she
doesn’t see ... For her, the future means tomorrow, nothing more.
She doesn’t look beyond. The girl might need ... that is ... it
would be better if she had the means...” Grace, so astonishingly
eloquent, for the first time seemed tongue-tied. She took a deep
breath. “None of us knows the future, Mr. March. But Prudence is an
uncommonly quick child; she’d learn in a few weeks what others
struggle on for a year or more ...”
“Why don’t you teach her yourself?”
“I’m not permitted to bring any books or writing
things from the house, and in any case, there is no private place
in the slave cabins, and the risk of discovery elsewhere is too
great. But I could fetch Prudence to you-just for an hour, in the
evenings, after Annie falls asleep.”
Grace had no way of knowing how her request touched
me. When I had left Connecticut, it wasn’t with the ambition of
peddling. I had yearned to be a teacher. It seemed to me that most
schools went about the work of instruction entirely backward,
crushing children’s natural curiosity and deafening them to the
wisdom of their own internal voice. I did not have sufficient
qualifications to do such work up north, where even distant
settlements had their pick of fresh-minted graduates from our many
universities and seminaries. So I had come south, thinking that
this population might be less nice about such matters. But I’d soon
discovered that even here, communities well set enough to have a
school wanted credentials, or at least maturity in years, neither
of which I could claim, while the poor in the remote places didn’t
care to have their children schooled at all.
“Why don’t I do as Annie suggested and ask Mr.
Clement? He is a scholar and loves learning; I am sure he will see
that this is a good thing for all the children, not just Prudence
...”
Grace pulled angrily at an apple bough, stripping
the new leaves. “You don’t know him! Perhaps Annie is right, after
all; for all your reading you-you...” She did not complete the
sentence. Whatever unflattering thing she had been about to say,
she evidently thought better of it. But she gave me another of her
unnerving stares, this time letting her gaze pass from my head to
my toes and back again. Then, as if she’d noted nothing worth
looking at, she turned and marched off. I stared at her retreating
back, gaping like the loping nimshi my father had so often called
me.
As it happened, Mr. Clement himself provided the
opening by which I was able to sound him on the matter. He sought
me out before the dinner hour, apologizing that he would not be
dining down that night on account of a most painful headache.
“In truth, Mr. March, though my son can vex me at
times with his mercantile obsessions, I am ill fixed to do without
him. I have been forced to spend the better part of this day in the
soul-deadening occupation of calculating gristmill accounts. Of
what possible consequence is it if Mrs. Carter’s grain weighed in
at six bushels or sixty?”
I thought it better to resist the obvious reply:
that it was of great consequence to Mrs. Carter. Instead, I asked,
rather disingenuously: “Cannot one of your slaves be trained to do
such routine factoring?”
Mr. Clement shot me a reproachful glare. “And have
him forging papers for every passing runaway?” He rubbed his brow.
“Are you not familiar with the history of the Tidewater
insurrection, Mr. March? The women and children butchered in their
beds? The simple farmers, rewarded for their indulgence to their
slaves with a pickax through the skull? That butcher, Turner, was a
literate man. You should study that tragedy. I must say that we in
these parts have not ceased from doing so, though it is now a
decade gone. What great moral reasoning dictates that I should risk
having my wife slaughtered in consequence of my slave reading some
incendiary tract? Your Yankee pamphleteers have much to answer for.
I’ll not have anyone on this place reading those foul, intemperate,
slanderous rags!”
I had never heard him raise his voice before. Now
he pressed the tips of his fingers to his forehead and winced.
“Forgive me for my own intemperance. I am not myself I did not mean
to offend you.” He made a bow then, wished me a pleasant evening,
and withdrew. I went to the kitchen, begged a brace of apples, and
retired to a lonely supper, accompanied by my own confusion.
By morning, I had made my decision, and so they
came that night. Grace waited till she saw my lantern passing
across the lawn that divided the house from the manager’s cottage.
I had barely splashed some water from the ewer on my face when I
heard a scratch on the door. She stood there in the dark, Prudence
at her side. The child did not look in the least as if she had just
been roused from sleep. She kept shifting her weight from one small
foot to the other in a skip of excitement.
“You managed it, then? Annie did not notice you
rousing the child?”
Prudence gave a giggle. “Mama snores too loud to
notice nothin’!”
“Your mama is up before the birds,” said Grace
gently, “making the marse’s cook fires and warming his bathing
water. That’s why she falls dead asleep as soon as ever she lays
her head down.”
I had trimmed and mended a goose quill and ruled up
a sheet of foolscap, so we opened the Webster’s and set to work.
She was, as Grace had predicted, an apt pupil. Tell her a thing but
one time and it stuck like clay to a boot. I believe she would have
worked at the letters all night if I had not stifled a yawn and
Grace called a halt to the lesson. Prudence turned to her, with a
disappointed, “Oh!”
“We must not impose too much upon Mr. March’s
kindness, and you, my little one, need some sleep, after
all.”
“You may come again,” I said. “You are a good girl
and have done well.” We agreed that if it were possible, and
conditions seemed safe, we would meet for an hour every other
evening, as long as my stay with the Clements lasted. At the door,
Grace turned. She smiled at me, and I realized I had not seen her
smile, not fully, since I had arrived there. “Thank you!” she said,
and her voice was so warm I wanted to wrap myself up in it, like a
quilt.
For the next two weeks, I felt my life more
complete than during any period I had known until that time. I had
my studies by day, enriching conversation in the evening, and at
night, a work that I found uplifting. On the nights they did not
come, I stayed up in any case, planning how best to instruct the
girl at our next lesson. I looked forward to each part of my day
with equal pleasure at first, and then, as Prudence progressed more
quickly than I could have imagined, I found that it was the secret
schoolroom that most inspired me.
I had grown to like the rich clarets that Mr.
Clement poured, but on the evenings of our lessons I held back at
dinner so as to better stay alert. One night, Clement noticed my
abstinence, and commented upon it; so I laughed and let him pour
liberally for the duration of the dinner.
As a result, my judgment was impaired that night,
for I let the lesson go longer than usual, and was waxing on some
point of no doubt critical pedagogic importance when I noticed that
my pupil, for the first time, had dropped off to sleep, her little
chin cupped in her hand. I glanced up at Grace, who smiled at the
drooping head. “I will carry her,” she whispered,
rising.
“Surely she’s too heavy for you...”
“No, no. Not at all. I have grown strong from
lifting Mrs. Clement. Oftentimes she is too faint to, well, to ease
herself unassisted...”
She glanced away. I felt the heat in my own cheeks,
half embarrassment, half anger at the thought of Grace, as refined
as any gentlewoman, required to hold the buttocks of demented Mrs.
Clement and. to clean her stinking chamber pots.
“It’s not right!” I said, forgetting to modulate my
voice.
Grace smiled then, not one of the rare, sunshine
smiles, but a sad smile of resignation. “If you live with your head
in the lion’s mouth, it’s best to stroke it some,” she said.
It was, perhaps, the beauty of her curved lips.
Perhaps it was pity, or admiration for her dignity or her patience.
Or perhaps just the extra glasses of claret. I stood, reached out a
hand, and touched her cheek. And then I kissed her.
I was eighteen and I had never kissed a woman
before. The taste of her mouth was like cool spring water. The
sweetness of it made me dizzy, and I wondered if I would be able to
keep my feet. I felt the softness of her ,tongue in my mouth for a
moment, then she raised her fingers, laid them lightly on my face,
and gently pushed me away.
“It’s not wise,” she whispered. “Not for either of
us.”
I was overcome with a rush of confused emotion:
delight at the sensation of my first kiss, mortification at my lack
of restraint, desire to touch her again, to touch her all over, to
lose myself in her. Alarm at the potency of my lust. And guilty
awarness that I had an obscene power here. That if lust mastered
me, this woman would be in no position to gainsay my desire.
“Forgive me!” I said, but my voice came out like a
bat squeak, barely audible.
She smiled again and scooped up the child as if she
weighed nothing. “Don’t be a fool,” she murmured. I opened the door
and she slipped out into the night.
I lay awake a long time, pondering the nature of
desire, and why God would endow man with such unbridled passions.
And if, indeed, we are created in his image, what part of the
divine Nature is mirrored in this? No answers came, nor any
prospect of rest. Finally, when the birds had begun their loud dawn
chorus, I gave way to temptation. There was a warm shudder,
followed instantly by a hot shame, and then sleep claimed me at
last.
I awoke to a bright band of sunlight shafting
through the opening door. I had overslept. I could tell by the heat
of the sun that it was late morning. I scrambled to my feet as a
small, sparrowlike man entered the cabin and peered at me through a
pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
“March, is it?” said the man, sweeping off a
travel-stained hat to reveal an almost bald head. “I’m Harris,
Augustus Clement’s manager. He told me you’d been staying here, but
I didn’t expect to find you still abed. Be grateful if you’d be
good enough to, ah, afford me the use of my rooms. On the road for
more than a week now, you know. Tired out, filthy, and a lot to do
this day.”
I muttered apologies and turned to gather up my
things. I saw the quill, the ink, the Webster’s, and the pages of
childish writing, scrawled all over with my corrections. I moved,
abrupt, awkward, putting my large frame between Harris and the
table, hoping to block his view. I began to speak, rapidly, in an
effort to distract him. “I do hope your venture was successful?
That your road was not too difficult?” Harris, who looked utterly
done in, drew a hand through his dusty hair.
“Yes, yes. As good as we could have expected
...”
“What route did you take? I have an interest, you
know, in Virginia’s likely byways ...” I was holding my clothes in
a bundle before me. With an awkward flick of my wrist, I tried to
fling my shirt over the pages. “Would love to go over a map with
you ...” I missed, and the garment fell in a heap by the table.
Harris, impatient to get me moving, bent to retrieve it. Seizing
that second, I spun around and swept the child’s pages under my
jacket. He rose and handed me my shirt. I was edging for the door.
As I reached to take the shirt from him, one of the pages slipped
from my fingers and fluttered to the floor. It landed facedown.
Quickly, I moved to snatch it up. Harris, his attention arrested by
my odd behavior, was just as nimble. Our skulls met with a crack.
We each had hold of the paper. I tugged, and it tore. Harris turned
his fragment of foolscap over, his brow furrowed. “What the
devil...”
He straightened, his small face pulled into a
fretwork of lines. It was clear that he grasped the whole. “This is
a fine sight to come home to! And a fine reward to the Clements for
their hospitality! Damned interfering Northern poltroon! What are
you? Abolitionist? Quaker?”
I shook my head. My mouth was filled with cotton
from the wine and the lack of sleep, and I felt a wave of bile rise
from a sour stomach.
“Whose writing is this?”
I didn’t reply.
“By the light, you’ll answer to Mr. Clement. I
think your visit here is over.”
Still wearing his muddy travel clothes, Harris
strode out, slamming the door behind him. I watched him through the
window, strutting like a bantam cock across the lawn to the house.
I sank into a chair, uncertain what to do. I wanted to warn Grace,
but since she would already be attending on Mrs. Clement, I could
think of no way to do so. I don’t think I have ever felt so low as
I did that morning, making my way, heavyhearted, to the house. Word
had preceded me. Annie, in the kitchen, was slumped over the deal
table, her head buried in the crook of one arm, the other wrapped
protectively around Prudence, whose little face was wet with tears.
Annie looked up at me as I entered, her eyes filled with reproach,
hurt, fear.
“I’m so sorry!” I said. She glared at me, her mute
rebuke more eloquent than the most scathing excoriation. I made my
way to the library. Mr. Clement had the fragment of foolscap in his
hand. He tossed it onto the rosewood desk. Beside him stood a
well-grown youth, his face a windburned version of his father’s.
The manager perched between them, his diminutive stature emphasized
by the tallness of the Clements.
When Clement spoke, I felt as if he were emptying a
glass of cold well water down my collar. “Since you have betrayed
my hospitality and flagrantly disregarded my express wishes,
perhaps you will not think it unreasonable if I inquire which of my
property you have contaminated with your instruction.”
I had felt guilt until that moment. But his use of
the word property in connection with the vivid person of
Prudence and the dignity of Grace suddenly swept that sentiment
away. “I am sorry I flouted your wishes,” I began, “but you
yourself said that providing instruction for the African is part of
the duty and burden of your system. Surely...”
“How dare you, sir!” barked Clement’s son. He took
a step toward me, his face florid. He reminded me of a pup
mimicking a grown dog’s menace. His father raised a restraining
hand.
At that moment, there was a light tap upon the
door. Mr. Clement said, “Come!” and Grace glided into the room, her
eyes, cast down, avoiding mine.
“What is it, girl?” Mr. Clement barked
impatiently.
She raised her head then and looked him straight in
the eye. “Sir, it was my doing entirely,” she said, “I asked Mr.
March to instruct Prudence. I urged him to do it, against his own
judgment and inclination. Annie knew nothing of this. I acted
expressly against her wishes:”
“Thank you, Grace. I’m much obliged to you for your
candor. You may return to attend Mrs. Clement now:” She nodded and
went out. I was unable to catch her eye for even an instant. But my
relief at the mildness of Mr. Clement’s reaction was immense.
“I expect it will not take you above one half hour
to gather your belongings and depart from my property. Forgive me
if I do not see you out.” He gave me his back then, and I crept,
like a chastised child, toward the door.
It was not gone a quarter of an hour when I set off
down the long dogwood-lined drive. While I had been Mr. Clement’s
guest, May had given way to June and now that month was waning. The
dogwood petals had fallen and the trees leafed out, offering some
protection from a midday sun that already burned with the heat of
full summer. I had gone only a little way toward the gate when I
heard Mr. Clement’s voice, calling to me.
“A moment, Mr. March, if you wouldn’t mind. There
is something you need to see before you leave us, if you would do
me the kindness of one last indulgence.”
I felt relief at his words. I hoped they signaled
that we might part on some terms, after all. I set down my trunks
and followed. He turned toward the north path that led to the
high-roofed tobacco barn where last year’s cured leaves had
recently been hanging. Inside, I was surprised to see that all the
slaves, house servants and field hands, had been gathered. Then I
saw Grace.
They had laid her facedown upon a bench, her arms
stretched out above her head, her two thumbs bound together and
fastened to a rope that then passed the full length underneath the
table and came up to bind her ankles. A wide leather strap passed
over the small of her slender back and pressed her flat against the
table. Below the strap, the lower part of her body was exposed, in
a complete state of nature.
“Surely there is no need for this violation?” I
said, my voice coming out high and cracked. Clement merely lifted
his chin and turned to Mr. Harris. From a burlap sack the man drew
out a braided leather whip almost as tall as he was. Then, moving
to a spot about six feet from where Grace lay, he made a swift,
running skip, raising the lash and bringing it down with a crack.
The stroke peeled away a narrow strip of skin, which lifted on the
whip, dangled for a moment, and then fell to the leaf-littered
floor. A bright band of blood sprang up in its place. Her whole
body quivered.
“For pity’s sake, man!” I exclaimed. Clement’s face
was as cold and immobile as one of his sculptures. It was-though I
grudge the sense of fairness which bids me set this down-almost as
white.
The whip fell, again, with an almost delicate
precision, the second strip taken just one inch lower on the
buttocks, in perfect parallel to the first. Prudence was howling
and had buried her face in Annie’s skirt. Clement raised his hand
then, and I felt my body go limp with relief at the end to this
terrible proceeding.
“Turn the child,” he said. “She must watch the
punishment.” The cook untangled her daughter’s fingers from her
pinafore, placed a hand on her wet cheek, and turned her face
around.
“Proceed,” said Clement. Strip by strip the lash
carved into Grace’s shuddering flesh. My tears were falling by
then, heavy drops, joining in the leaf dust with the blood that had
begun to trickle from the table. My limbs were so weak that I could
not even raise a hand to wipe the mucus that dripped from my
nose.
Finally, Clement raised his hand again. A column of
sunlight from a missing board in the barn roof glanced off his
signet ring. “Thank you, Mr. Harris. That will be all.” The man ran
a gray cloth along the whip to clean the blood off it and replaced
it in the bag. The women had rushed forward, one unbinding and
kneading Grace’s hands as the others brought ewers of water to
bathe her wounds. She had been lying with her head faced away from
me. She lifted it then, and turned, so that we looked at one
another. If an anvil had fallen from the sky at that moment and
landed upon me, I could not have felt more crushed.