May 2012

May 29th.—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 Saussures’. 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?