The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

ours after the battle of Camden, but for the inconceivable meddling of the Commander-in-Chief at New York, who paralysed the exertions of the only capable British General who appeared during the war, and sent him into that miserable cul-de-sac at York Town, whence he could only issue defeated and a prisoner. Oh, for a week more! a day more, an hour more of darkness or light! In reading over our American campaigns from their unhappy commencement to their inglorious end, now that we are able to see the enemy's movements and conditions as well as our own, I fancy we can see how an advance, a march, might have put enemies into our power who had no means to withstand it, and changed the entire issue of the struggle. But it was ordained by Heaven, and for the good, as we can now have no doubt, of both empires, that the great Western Republic should separate from us: and the gallant soldiers who fought on her side, their indomitable and heroic Chief above all, had the glory of facing and overcoming, not only veteran soldiers amply provided and inured to war, but wretchedness, cold, hunger, dissensions, treason within their own camp, where all must have gone to rack, but for the pure unquenchable flame of patriotism that was for ever burning in the bosom of the heroic leader. What a constancy, what a magnanimity, what a surprising persistence against fortune! Washington before the enemy was no better nor braver than hundreds that fought with him or against him (who has not heard the repeated sneers against “Fabius” in which his factious captains were accustomed to indulge?), but Washington the Chief of a nation in arms, doing battle with distracted parties; calm in the midst of conspiracy; serene against the open foe before him and the darker enemies at his back; Washington inspiring order and spirit into troops hungry and in rags; stung by ingratitude, but betraying no anger, and ever ready to forgive; in defeat invincible, magnanimous in conquest, and never so sublime as on that day when he laid down his victorious sword and sought his noble retirement:—here indeed is a character to admire and revere; a life without a stain, a fame without a flaw. Quando invenies parem? In that more extensive work, which I have planned and partly written on the subject of this great war, I hope I have done justice to the character of its greatest leader. [And I trust that in the opinions I have recorded regarding him, I have shown that I also can be just and magnanimous towards those who view me personally with no favour. For my brother Hal being at Mount Vernon, and always eager to bring me and his beloved Chief on good terms, showed his Excellency some of the early sheets of my History. General Washington (who read but few books, and had not the slightest pretensions to literary taste) remarked, “If you will have my opinion, my dear General, I think Sir George's projected work, from the specimen I have of it, is certain to offend both parties.”—G. E. W.]. And this from the sheer force of respect which his eminent virtues extorted. With the young Mr. Washington of my own early days I had not the honour to enjoy much sympathy: though my brother, whose character is much more frank and affectionate than mine, was always his fast friend in early times, when they were equals, as in latter days when the General, as I do own and think, was all mankind's superior.

I have mentioned that contrariety in my disposition, and, perhaps, in my brother's, which somehow placed us on wrong sides in the quarrel which ensued, and which from this time forth raged for five years, until the mother country was fain to acknowledge her defeat. Harry should have been the Tory, and I the Whig. Theoretically my opinions were very much more liberal than those of my brother, who, especially after his marriage, became what our Indian nabobs call a Bahadoor—a person ceremonious, stately, and exacting respect. When my Lord Dunmore, for instance, talked about liberating the negroes, so as to induce them to join the King's standard, Hal was for hanging the Governor and the Black Guards (as he called them) whom his Excellency had crimped. “If you, gentlemen are fighting for freedom,” says I, “sure the negroes may fight, too.” On which Harry roars out, shaking his fist, “Infernal villains, if I meet any of 'em, they shall die by this hand!” And my mother agreed that this idea of a negro insurrection was the most abominable and parricidal notion which had ever sprung up in her unhappy country. She at least was more consistent than brother Hal. She would have black and white obedient to the powers that be: whereas Hal only could admit that freedom was the right of the latter colour.

As a proof of her argument, Madam Esmond and Harry too would point to an instance in our own family in the person of Mr. Gumbo. Having got his freedom from me, as a reward for his admirable love and fidelity to me when times were hard, Gumbo, on his return to Virginia, was scarce a welcome guest in his old quarters, amongst my mother's servants. He was free, and they were not: he was, as it were, a centre of insurrection. He gave himself no small airs of protection and consequence amongst them; bragging of his friends in Europe (“at home,” as he called it), and his doings there; and for a while bringing the household round about him to listen to him and admire him, like the monkey who had seen the world. Now, Sady, Hal's boy, who went to America of his own desire, was not free. Hence jealousies between him and Mr. Gum; and battles, in which they both practised the noble art of boxing and butting, which they had learned at Marybone Gardens and Hockley-in-the-Hole. Nor was Sady the only jealous person: almost all my mother's servants hated Signor Gumbo for the airs which he gave himself; and I am sorry to say, that our faithful Molly, his wife, was as jealous as his old fellow-servants. The blacks could not pardon her for having demeaned herself so far as to marry one of their kind. She met with no respect, could exercise no authority, came to her mistress with ceaseless complaints of the idleness, knavery, lies, stealing of the black people; and finally with a story of jealousy against a certain Dinah, or Diana, who, I heartily trust, was as innocent as her namesake the moonlight visitant of Endymion. Now, on the article of morality Madam Esmond was a very Draconess; and a person accused was a person guilty. She made charges against Mr. Gumbo to which he replied with asperity. Forgetting that he was a free gentleman, my mother now ordered Gumbo to be whipped, on which Molly flew at her ladyship, all her wrath at her husband's infidelity vanishing at the idea of the indignity put upon him; there was a rebellion in our house at Castlewood. A quarrel took place between me and my mother, as I took my man's side. Hal and Fanny sided with her, on the contrary; and in so far the difference did good, as it brought about some little intimacy between Madam and her younger children. This little difference was speedily healed; but it was clear that the Standard of Insurrection must be removed out of our house; and we determined that Mr. Gumbo and his lady should return to Europe.

My wife and I would willingly have gone with them, God wot, for our boy sickened and lost his strength, and caught the fever in our swampy country; but at this time she was expecting to lie in (of our son Henry), and she knew, too, that I had promised to stay in Virginia. It was agreed that we should send the two back; but when I offered Theo to go, she said her place was with her husband;—her father and Hetty at home would take care of our children; and she scarce would allow me to see a tear in her eyes whilst she was making her preparations for the departure of her little ones. Dost thou remember the time, madam, and the silence round the worktables, as the piles of little shirts are made ready for the voyage?