CHAPTER VIII.
_A Southern Deer Park--A Don Quixote Steed--We Hunt for Deer and
Bag a Turkey--Getting a Dinner by Force--The French Chef and the
Colored Cook Contrasted--One is Inspired, the Other Follows
Tradition--Making a Sauce of Herbs and Cream--Shooting Ducks Across
the Moon--A Dawfuskie Pic-nic._
In a small place, life is monotonous if you do not in some way break up
this monotony. I bethought me of a friend who lived some distance from
Savannah, who had a deer park, was a sportsman, and was also the soul of
hospitality. His pride lay in his family and his surroundings; so I
wrote to him as follows: “My dear friend, I have no baronial mansion; I
am a wanderer on the face of the earth, while you possess what I most
covet, an ancestral home and a great domain. Will you then invite my
guests and me to pay you a visit and give us a chance at your deer?”
Back came the invitation: “Come to me at once with your noble friends.
I and my whole county will receive them and do them honor.” The next
morning, by ten, we were at the railway station. Before leaving the
carriage I saw a distinguished General, a sort of Dalgetty of a man, who
preferred to fight than eat, pacing up and down the railway platform. A
ruffled shirt, not spotless, a fierce air, an enormous false diamond
pin, as big as a crown piece, in the center of his ruffled shirt bosom,
with a thin gold chain attached to it and to his waistcoat, to prevent
its loss. He at once approached me and exclaimed, “By Jove! by Jove! Mc,
introduce me to your noble friends.” The introduction made, he
accompanied us to the train, and in turn presented us to a large crowd
assembled to see what Southern people were so proud of, “thoroughbreds,”
as he called them. I repeatedly heard him exclaim, “No jackass stock
here, sir; all thoroughbreds! I could tell ’em in the dark.” On rolled
the train, and we soon reached our destination, and were no sooner out
of the cars than we were enveloped by a myriad of sand flies. You could
cut them with a knife, as it were. My friend, a six-footer, stepped up
to my guests and was presented. He then addressed them as follows: “Will
your lordships ride or drive?”
In the mean while, his coachman, a seedy old darkey, in a white hat at
least ten years old, fly specked to such an extent that its original
color was lost, in shabby, old, well-worn clothes, seized me by the coat
tail, exclaiming, “Massa Ward, show me the ‘big buckras.’” After
pointing them out, we all pressed through the crowd to the wagon and
horses, two marsh tackeys, with their manes and tails so full of burrs,
and so netted together, as to form a solid mass; stirrup leathers pieced
with clothes lines, and no evidence of either of the animals having ever
seen or been touched by a curry-comb. “Don Quixote, by Jove!” exclaimed
the heir of the Shaftesburys, and vaulted into the saddle, while the
representative of the house of Devonshire and myself took our seats in
the open wagon. At this point, our hospitable host called the attention
of his lordship to his horses and gave him their pedigree. One was
sixteen hands high, had a bob tail, and high action; the other was a
little pony of fourteen hands, with an ambling gait. Not giving any sign
of moving, our host held forth as follows: “Your lordship, so well bred
are these horses that if they are not properly caparisoned, nothing
human could stir them; they will plant their feet in the soil and
neither whip nor spur would budge them. You see how well my boy keeps
their harnesses.” By this time I was convulsed. Cavendish, I saw, was
laughing inwardly, but suppressed it. The straw in one collar was
bulging out, one turret was gone, and a piece of rope lengthened one of
the traces. Truly, it had seen better days. If he calls that a fitting
harness for his horses, what am I to expect in the way of a house and
deer park? However, my fears were allayed. The house was a charming old
Southern plantation house, and the owner of it, the embodiment of
hospitality. When the cloth was removed at dinner, I trembled. For my
dear old father had always told me that on his circuit (annually made by
the Savannah lawyers) he always avoided this house, for in it one could
never find so much as a glass of whiskey. What then was my surprise, to
have placed before us a superb bottle of sherry, since world-renowned,
i.e. in this country; and a matchless Madeira, which he claimed he had
inherited from his father, to be opened at the marriage of his sister.
The next morning, at the very break of day fixed for our deer hunt, the
negro boys commenced tooting horns. As soon as I could see, I looked out
of my windows and there saw four old lean, lank dogs, lifeless looking
creatures, and four marsh tackeys, decorated, front and rear, with an
abundance of burrs. Off we went, as sorry a looking company as one’s eye
had ever seen, with a crowd of half-naked children following the
procession. We were out eight hours, went through swamp after swamp, our
tackeys up to their fetlocks in mud, and sorry a deer did we see. One
wild turkey flew over us, which my host’s colored huntsman killed, the
only man in the party who could shoot at all.
Returning to Savannah, we went after quail. One morning, being some
fourteen miles from the city, we felt famished, having provided no lunch
basket. I asked a friend, who was shooting with us and acting as our
guide, if there was a white man’s house within a mile or two where we
could get a biscuit. He replied, “No, not one.”
I pressed the matter, saying, “We must have a bite of something,” and
urged him to think again. He reflected, and then said, as if to himself,
“Oh, no use to go there, we will get nothing.” I took him up at once.
“What do you refer to,” I said. “Oh,” he replied, “there is a white man
who lives within a mile of us, but he is the meanest creature that
lives and will have nothing to give us.”
“Who is he?” I exclaimed. He gave me his name. “What,” said I, “Mr.
Jones, who goes to Newport every summer?” “The same,” said he; “do you
know him?”
“Know him?” I answered, “why, man, I know no one else. He has for years
asked me to visit his plantation. He lives like a prince. I saw him at a
great fête at Ochre Point, Newport, several years ago. He turned up his
nose at everything there, saying to me, ‘Why, my dear fellow, these
people don’t know how to live. This fête is nothing to what I can do, at
my place. Why, sir, I have so much silver I dare not keep it in my
house. The vaults of the State Bank of Georgia are filled with my
silver. This fête may be well enough here, but come to me at the South,
come to my plantation, and I will show you what a fête is. I will show
you how to live.’” My friend listened to all this with astonishment.
“Well,” said he, “I have nothing to say. That is ‘big’ talk. Go on to
your friend’s place and see what you will find.” On we moved, four as
hungry men as you could well see. We reached the plantation, on which we
found a one-story log cabin, with a front piazza, one large center room,
and two shed rooms. There was a small yard, inclosed with pine palings
to keep out the pigs, who were ranging about and ineffectually trying to
gain an entrance. We entered the house, and, seeing an old colored man,
my Southern friend opened on the old darkey with: “Where is your
master?”
“In Savannah, sir.”
“When does he dine?”
“At six o’clock, sir.”
“What have you got for his dinner, old man?”
“Pea pie.”
“Is that all that he has for his dinner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is pea pie?” I asked.
“Cow peas and bacon,” was the answer.
With this, my Southern friend stepped to the back door of the house,
asked the old man to point him out a fat turkey. The old darkey did
this, saying,
“There’s one, sir, but, Lord help me, Massa, don’t kill him.”
The protest came too late. Up to the shoulder went the gun, and down
fell the turkey. Now, turning to the old darkey, he said:
“Old man, pick that turkey and roast him, and tell your Massa four big
buckra men are coming to dine with him to-day, at six o’clock.” We got
some corn-bread from the kitchen and went off shooting. A few minutes
before six, we returned, and heard indeed a racket in that old cabin.
The “Massa” was there, as we saw by the buggy, standing in the front
yard; the horse browsing a few feet off, the harness in the buggy, and
the master shouting out, “You tell me white men came here, kill my
turkey, tell you to cook him, and you don’t know them? Who in the devil
can they be?” No sooner had he got this out, when I appeared on the
scene. Up went his arms in astonishment.
“Why, Mc., is this you? Glad to see you and your friends.”
Down we sat at his table, and had a dinner of small rice, pea pie, and
roast turkey, washed down by a bottle of fine old Madeira, which he
called “the blood of his ancestors.” I looked in vain for a side-board
to put silver on, or any evidence of any past fête having been given on
the premises. Our host was a thoroughly local man; one of those men who,
when in Paris, would say, “I’m going to town,” when he proposed
returning to Savannah, which, at that time, was to him the metropolis of
America. This gentleman then, like others in the South, cultivated the
belief that they alone lived well, and that there was no such thing as
good society in New York or other Northern cities; that New Yorkers and
Northern people were simply a lot of tradespeople, having no
antecedents, springing up like the mushroom, who did not know how to
live, and who, when they gave dinners to their friends, ordered them
from a neighboring restaurant.
At a large dinner in Savannah, given to an ex-Mayor of New York, one of
the best dinner-givers in that city made the foregoing statement, and
the ex-Mayor actually called upon me to substantiate it, declaring it
had always been his practice thus to supply his table, when he invited a
dozen or more people to dinner. So far from this being the case, I then
and there assured my Southern friends that no people in the world lived
better than New Yorkers, so far as creature comforts were concerned. I
have tested the capacity of the Southern cook alongside of the French
_chef_; I had them together, cooking what we call a “Saratoga Lake
Dinner” at Newport, a dinner for sixty people; serving alone Spanish
mackerel, Saratoga potatoes, soft shell crabs, woodcock, chicken
partridges, and lettuce salad. Both were great artists in their way, but
the _chef_ came off very much the victor. I doubted then, and I doubt
now, if the dinners in London are better than our New York dinners,
given by one of the innumerable good dinner-givers. Our material is
better in New York, and our cooks are equally as good as those in
England. The sauces of the French cuisine are its feature, while there
is not a single sauce in African or Southern cooking. The French get the
essence and flavor out of fowl, and discard the huge joints. Take for
instance, soup; give a colored cook a shin of beef and a bunch of
carrots and turnips, and of this he makes a soup. A Frenchman, to give
you a _consommé royale_, requires a knuckle of veal, a shin of beef, two
fat fowls, and every vegetable known to man. The materials are more than
double the expense, but then you have a delicacy of flavor, and a
sifting out of everything that is coarse and gross. The _chef_ is an
educated, cultivated artist. The colored cook, such as nature made him,
possessing withal a wonderful natural taste, and the art of making
things savory, i.e. taste good. His cookery book is tradition. French
_chefs_ have their inspirations, are in every way almost as much
inspired as writers. To illustrate this: when Henry IV. was fighting in
the Pyrénées, he told his French cook to give him a new sauce. The reply
was, “Where are the materials for it, your Majesty? I have nothing here
but herbs and cream.” “Then make a sauce from them,” was the King’s
answer. The _chef_ did this, and produced one of the best sauces in the
French cuisine, known as _sauce Bearnaise_.
Having exhausted quail and snipe shooting and made a failure at deer
hunting, we went on the banks of the rice plantations at night, to shoot
wild ducks, as they crossed the moon. Whilst whiling away the time,
waiting for ducks, we talked over England and America. Lord Frederick
Cavendish assured me that if I were then living in England, I could not
there lead a pleasanter life than I was then leading. He liked
everything at the South, the hospitality of the people, and their simple
contentment and satisfaction with their surroundings. On these three
places there were then six hundred slaves; the net income of these
estates was $40,000 a year. They would have easily brought half a
million. When the Civil War terminated, my brother-in-law was offered
$100,000 for them; by the war he had lost all his slaves. To-day the
estates would scarcely bring $30,000, showing the change in values
caused by the Civil War.
I was then able to show my guests a Savannah picnic, which is an
institution peculiar to the place. Leaving the city in a river steamer
our party consisting of one hundred people, after a little over an
hour’s sail we reached an island in the Atlantic Ocean, known as
Dawfuskie, a beautiful spot on which stood a charming residence, with
five acres of roses surrounding the house. The heads of families
carried, each of them, huge baskets containing their dinner, and a full
table service, wine, etc., for say, ten or a dozen people. On our
arrival, all formed into groups under the trees, a cloth was laid on the
ground, dishes, plates and glasses arranged on it, and the champagne at
once _frapped_ in small hand pails. There was then a dance in the open
air, on a platform, and in the afternoon, with cushions as seats for the
ladies, these improvised dinner-tables were filled. Each had its
separate hostess; all was harmony and pleasure. As night approached, the
people re-embarked on the steamer and returned home by moonlight.
LIFE AT NEWPORT.