Mary Chesnut spent the New Year in Richmond, where her husband Colonel James Chesnut, a former U.S. senator from South Carolina, served as an aide to Jefferson Davis. During the 1860s Mary Chesnut kept a diary that she would later revise and expand between 1881 and 1884. Her diary for the winter of 1863–64 is not known to have survived, and the text printed here is taken from the revised version.
January 1st, 1864. God help my country.
Table talk.
“After the battles around Richmond, hope was strong in me. All that has insensibly drifted away.”
“I am like David after the child was dead. Get up, wash my face, have my hair cut, &c&c.”
“That’s too bad. I think we are more like the sailors who break into the spirits closet when they find out the ship must sink. There seems to be for the first time a resolute feeling to enjoy the brief hour and never look beyond the day.”
“I now long, pine, pray, and grieve—and—well, I have no hope. Have you any of old Mr. Chesnut’s brandy here still?”
“It is a good thing never to look beyond the hour. Laurence, take this key—look in such a place for a decanter marked &c&c&c.”
General Hood’s an awful flatterer—I mean an awkward flatterer. I told him to praise my husband to someone else—not to me. He ought to praise me to somebody who would tell J. C., and then praise J. C. to another person who would tell me. Man and wife are too much one person to receive a compliment straight in the face that way—that is, gracefully.
“That”—as an American demonstrative adjective pronoun, or adjective pure and simple—we give it illimitable meaning. Mrs. King, now, we were “weeping and commenting over a stricken deer,” one who would say yes but was not asked. “Do you mean to say she is looking to marry him?” Mrs. King, with eyes uplifted and hands clasped: “That willing!” Again, of a wounded soldier: “Do you mean to say he is willing to leave the army for so slight an excuse?” Again: “Willing indeed! That willing!”
A peculiar intonation, however, must be given to that to make it bear its mountain of meaning.
Again, Grundy père was said to be a man of “des absences délicieuses.”
“That’s Madame Deffand’s wit. I made a note of it—fits so many households.”
“List of the halfhearted ones—at least we all know they never believed in this thing. Stephens—vice president—No. 1. Ashmore, Keitt, Boyce—of the South Carolina delegation. Orr—he was lugged in, awfully against the grain.
“There now, look at our wisdom. Mr. Mason! We grant you all you are going to say. Who denies it? He is a grand old Virginia gentleman. Straightforward, honest-hearted, blunt, high-headed, and unchangeable in his ways as—as the Rock of Gibraltar. Mr. Hunter, you need not shake your wise head. You know it set all the world a-laughing when we sent Mr. Mason abroad as a diplomat!”
“About tobacco, now—the English can’t stand chewing—&c&c. They say at the lordliest table Mr. Mason will turn round halfway in his chair and spit in the fire!”
Jack Preston says the parting of high Virginia with its sons at the station is a thing to see—tears streaming from each eye, a crystal drop, from the corner of each mouth a yellow stream of tobacco juice.
“You know yourself, General Lee and General Huger’s hearts were nearly rent asunder when they had to leave the old army.”
“Oh! Did not Mrs. Johnston tell you of how General Scott thought to save the melancholy, reluctant, slow Joe for the Yankees? But he is a genuine F.F., and he came.”
“One more year of Stonewall would have saved us.”
“Chickamauga is the only battle we have gained since Stonewall went up!”
“And no results—as usual.”
“Stonewall was not so much as killed by a Yankee. He was shot by Mahone’s brigade. Now, that is hard.”
“General Lee can do no more than keep back Meade.”
“One of Meade’s armies, you mean. They have only to double on him when he whips one of theirs.”
“General Edward Johnson says he got Grant a place. Esprit de corps, you know, would not bear to see an old army man driving a wagon. That was when he found him out west. Put out of the army for habitual drunkenness.”
“He is their man, a bullheaded Suwarrow. He don’t care a snap if they fall like the leaves fall. He fights to win, that chap. He is not distracted by a thousand side issues. He does not see them. He is narrow and sure, sees only in a straight line.”
“Like Louis Napoleon—from a bath in the gutters, he goes straight up.”
“Yes, like Lincoln, they have ceased to carp at him because he is a rough clown, no gentleman, &c&c. You never hear now of his nasty fun—only of his wisdom. It don’t take much soap and water to wash the hands that the rod of empire sways. They talked of Lincoln’s drunkenness, too. Now, since Vicksburg they have not a word to say against Grant’s habits.”
“He has the disagreeable habit of not retreating before irresistible veterans—or it is reculer pour mieux sauter—&c&c. You need not be afraid of a little dirt on the hands which wield a field marshal’s baton, either.”
“General Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, they show blood and breeding. They are of the Bayard, the Philip Sidney order of soldiers.”
“Listen, if General Lee had Grant’s resources, he would have bagged the last Yankee or had them all safe back, packed up in Massachusetts.”
“You mean, if he had not the weight of the negro question on him?”
“No, I mean, if he had Grant’s unlimited allowance of the powers of war—men, money, ammunition, arms—[ ].
“His servant had a stray pair of French boots down here, and he was admiring his small feet and moving one so as to bring his high instep in better line of vision. For an excuse to give him a furlough, they sent some Yankee prisoners down here by him. I said, ‘What sort of creatures are they?’ ”
“Damn splay-footed Yankees, every man jack of them.”
“As they steadily tramp this way, I must say, I have ceased to admire their feet myself. How beautiful are the feet &c&c, says the Scriptures.”
“Eat, drink, and be merry—tomorrow ye die—they say that, too.”
“Why do you call General Preston ‘Conscript Father’? On account of those girls?”
“No, indeed. He is at the head of the Conscription Bureau.”
“General Young says, ‘Give me those daredevil dandies I find in Mrs. C’s drawing room. I like fellows who fight and don’t care what all the row’s about.’ ”
“Yes, and he sees the same daredevils often enough, stiff and stark, stripped, stone-dead on the battlefield.”
“Oh, how can you bring all that to our eyes here!”
“What? Not compliment your drawing-room friends, the fellows who dance and fight with light hearts—who battle fire and famine, nakedness, mud, snow, frost, gunpowder, and—well, no words about it. Take it all as it comes.”
“Talking feet—the bluest-blooded American you know, you call him ‘the giant foot.’ ”
“They found that name for him in Bulwer’s last. In the last page. A giant foot comes out of the darkness and kicks over the sort of Medea’s cauldron of a big pot they were brewing.”
Mr. Ould says Mrs. Lincoln found the gardener of the White House so nice she would make him a major general.
Lincoln said to the secretary, “Well! the little woman must have her way—sometimes.”
She has the Augean perquisite of cleaning the military stables. She says it pays so well. She need never touch the president’s saddle.
“The Roman emperor found all money of good odor.”
“We do pitch into our enemies.”
“As the English did into the French. And, later, into the Russians.”
“They got up in a theater and huzzahed—when they heard the emperor of Russia was dead.”
Marriage in high life. Senator Johnson of Arkansas—somewhere out West, I may not “locate” him properly—his friends fondly say “Bob Johnson.”
He explained his marriage to Mrs. Davis. He is a devoted friend of the president.
With his foot on the carriage steps, so to speak, he married his deceased wife’s sister. He wished to leave her power over his children, to protect them and take care of them while he was away.
Mrs. Davis asked, “Pray, why did you not tell us before?”
“I did not think it a matter worth mentioning. I only proposed it to her the morning I left home, and it was done at once. And now my mind is easy. I can stay here and attend to my business, as a man should. She is quite capable of looking after things at home.”
We did not know Mrs. Lawton, and I inquired of Mary P, who did, if she was not unusually clever.
“That clever!” said Mary P, imitating the gesture attributed to Mrs. King. “How did you guess it?”
“General Lawton will hear every word I say. No matter how ‘superior’ the men are who surround us, I knew he was accustomed to hear things worth listening to at home.”
Know now why the English, who find out the comfort of life in everything, send off a happy couple to spend the honeymoon out of everybody’s way or shut them up at home and leave them. Today the beautiful bride and the happy bridegroom came to see me. They had not one thought to give, except to themselves and their wedding. Or their preliminary love affairs. How it all was, when it was, &c&c&c. She did tell a capital story—if I could write it!
Mrs. Wright of Tennessee came for me to go with her on a calling expedition. Found one cabinet minister’s establishment in a state of republican simplicity. Servant who asked us in—out at elbows and knees.
The next a widower, whose house is presided over by a relative.
“Bob Johnson?” whispered Mrs. Wright.
“Not quite,” answered another visitor. “Splendid plan, though. Like the waiter in Dickens’s book—‘Here on suiting—and she suits.’ ”
“Wigfall’s speech—‘Our husbandless daughters.’ ” Said Isabella: “No wonder. Here we are, and our possible husbands and lovers killed before we so much as knew them. Oh! the widows and old maids of this cruel war.”
Read Germaine—About’s. It is only in books that people fall in love with their wives. The arsenic story more probable—science, then, and not theory. After all, is it not as with any other copartnership, say, traveling companions? Their future opinion of each other, “the happiness of the association,” depends entirely on what they really are, not what they felt or thought about each other before they had any possible way of acquiring accurate information as to character, habits, &c. Love makes it worse. The pendulum swings back further, the harder it was pulled the other way.
Mrs. Malaprop to the rescue—“Better begin with a little aversion.” Not of any weight either way, what we think of people before we know them. Did two people ever live together so stupid as to be deceived? What they pretend does not count.
The Examiner gives this amount of pleasant information to the enemy.
He tells them we are not ready, and we cannot be before spring. And that now is their time.
Our safeguard, our hope, our trust is in beneficent mud, impassable mud. And so feeling, I hail with delight these long, long rainy days and longer nights. Things are deluging, sloppy, and up to the ankles in water and dirt, enough to satisfy the muddiest-minded croaker of us all.
We have taken prisoner some of Averell’s raiders.
Somebody in secret session kicked and cuffed Foote, Foote of Mississippi, in the Senate.
So ends the old year.
The last night of the old year. Gloria Mundi sent me a cup of strong, good coffee. I drank two cups, and so I did not sleep a wink.
Like a fool I passed my whole life in review—and bitter memories maddened me quite. Then came a happy thought. I mapped out a story of the war. The plot came to hand, for it was true. Johnny is the hero—light dragoon and heavy swell. I will call it F.F.’s, for it is F.F.’s both of South Carolina and Virginia. It is to be a war story, and the filling out of the skeleton is the pleasantest way to put myself to sleep.
Old Hickory fought for Aunt Rachel of questionable fame. That is, she was married before her other husband died, or before her divorce was settled, or something wrong, but she did not know she was doing wrong. She is said to have been a good woman, but it is all a little confused to my straitlaced ideas. They say when someone asked if old Hickory was a Christian, the answer: “I don’t know, but if he wants to go to heaven, the devil can’t keep him out of it.” And then he stood by Mrs. Eaton in good report and in evil. And now Richmond plays old Hickory with its beautiful Mrs. M.
I can forgive Andrew Jackson the headlong wedding business, but that duel! when he deliberately waited—and after the other man had missed, or failed in some way to shoot at him—slowly and coolly killed him. But the pious North swallowed Andrew Jackson because he put his sword in the balance where we nullifiers were concerned.
England declined Nelson’s legacy of Lady Hamilton, but she accepts his glory and his fame as a typical naval hero. English to the core.
There are breaking hearts this beautiful New Year’s Day.
Young Frasier, on his way back to Maryland to be married, was shot dead by a Yankee picket.
Read Volpone until J. C. emerged for his breakfast. He asked me to make out his list for his New Year’s calls.
Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Preston, Mrs. Randolph, Mrs. Elzey, Mrs. Stanard, Mrs. MacFarland, Mrs. Wigfall, Mrs. Miles, Mrs. John Redman Coxe Lewis.
At the president’s, J. C. saw L. Q. C. Lamar who, unconfirmed by the Senate, has had to come home from Russia. They must have refused to confirm his nomination simply to annoy and anger Jeff Davis. Everybody knows there is not a cleverer man on either side of the water than Mr. Lamar, or a truer patriot. J. C. said Lamar put his arms round him (he has a warm heart) and said, “You are glad to see me, eh?” Lamar is changed so much that at first J. C. did not recognize him. Colonels Browne and Ives there, in full fig, swords and sashes, gentlemen ushers. J. C. was in citizen’s dress and stood behind Mrs. Davis all the time, out of the fray. So he enjoyed the fun immensely. No responsibility.
The Examiner indulges in a horse laugh. “Is that your idea? England come to the help of a slave power?” Turkey! Why not, O Daniel come to judgment? and India?
But slavery was the sore spot on this continent, and England touched up the Yankees that they so hated on the raw when they were shouting hurrah for liberty, hurrah for General Jackson, whom the British turned their backs on, but who did not turn his back on the exconquerors of Waterloo! English writers knew where to flick. They set the Yankees on us by incessant nagging, jeering at the inconsistency. Now the Yankees have the bit in their teeth. After a while they will ascend higher and higher in virtue, until maybe they will even attack Mormonism in its den.
“Little Vick is going to do the best she can for her country. The land of our forefathers is not squeamish but looks out for No. 1,” said the irreverent Wigfall. And then he laid sacrilegious hands on the father of his country! He always speaks of him as an old granny, or the mother of his country, because he looked after the butter and cheese on Madam Martha’s Mount Vernon farm.
“There is one thing that always makes my blood rise hot within me—this good slave-owner who left his negroes free when he no longer needed them. He rides his fine horse along the rows where the poor African hoes corn. He takes out his beautiful English hunting watch and times Cuffy. Cuffy, under his great master’s eyes, works with a will. With his watch still in hand, Farmer George sees what a man can do in a given time. And by that measure he tasks the others—strong, weak, slow, swift, able-bodied, and unable. There is magnanimity for you! George the 1st of America—the founder of the great U.S. America.”
“But Wigfall! You exaggerate. He was not a severe disciplinarian. He was the very kindest of men. Everyone knows that. But you only rave in this manner and say such stuff to be different from other people.”
“I get every word of it from his own letters.”
“He was no harder on Cuffy than English, French, German landlords are to their white tenants.”
“Do you mean to say a poor man must not work for his living, but his rich neighbor must support him in idleness?” &c&c&c.
After he had gone: “You see, we did not expect Wigfall, who shoots white men with so little ceremony, to be so thoughtful, so tender of the poor and helpless—but it is so, it seems. He was in bitter earnest. Did you notice his eyes?” At this moment Dangerfield Lewis and Maria came—and in another second L. Q. Washington was at their heels. J. C. said,
“If walls could speak, what a tale these would have to tell you!”
“How? what?”
“Oh, Louis Wigfall’s perversity. He says Lamar is as model a diplomat as Mr. Mason!” I hastily put in, “I really thought the Washington Lewis family ought not to hear—well! how aggravating Louis Wigfall can be—so I stopped you. For one thing, he is the very best husband I know and the kindest father.”