Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography

ONE: Perspective and Retrospective

Perspective and Retrospective LATE IN THEEVENING of May l8, l86l, Mary Boykin Chesnut was in a hotel room in Montgomery, Alabama . The day had been a warm one, particularly for a woman dressed in the heavy hooped and frilled fashions of the period, so she was glad to sit by lamplight and enjoy the cool air brought by darkness. As had been her habit for three months, now, since the day in mid-February when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, Mrs. Chesnut took out an elegant red leather-bound, gilt-edged diary with a little brass lock, and jotted down the events of her day. As the wife of the first United States senator to resign following Abraham Lincoln's election—a man who was now an influential member of the Confederate Provisional Congress—Mary Boykin Chesnut had already watched and recorded the firing on Fort Sumter. For the next four years she would continue her journal in any notebook she could get her hands on; finally, after W. T. Sherman 's incendiary march through the Carolinas and Robert E. Lee's surrender, she would describe the bleak aftermath of war in the back of an old recipe book. On this particular day—a typical one during this chaotic period —Mrs. Chesnut had just returned from a quick trip south to Conecuh County to visit relatives. Traveling on anuncomfortable boat, plagued by mosquitoes, then riding overland through the close Alabama night by buggy had made her ill, so once back in Montgomery, she determined to curtail her social activities somewhat . Still, it was necessary to return eight or nine of the calls that had been paid her during her absence and to put in anappearance at dinner. "I could only manage to eat cold asparagus—& black ONE {4} MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT berries" she wrote, perhaps unconscious that her very menu—asparagus , that most aristocratic and cultivated of vegetables, and blackberries, so common that they grew wild—well reflected her catholic tastes.1 After dinner, always served at two or three in the afternoon, she went for a drive with her friend Varina Davis, whose new role as First Lady of the Confederacy had already begun to chafe a bit: "drove out with Mrs Jeff Davis—She is very queer—She preferred Washington & her friends to being Mrs President —I dont wonder!" Returning about eight o'clock to her lodgings at the overcrowded Montgomery Hall hotel, she looked forward to a quiet evening. But Mary Boykin Chesnut rarely had a quiet evening. Although she was neither young nor beautiful, at thirty-eight her charm, her intelligence, the irreverent delight she took in all the foibles of mankind had always drawn people to her, and she enjoyed a reputation wherever she went as a brilliant conversationalist , a woman of "literary" leanings, a lady whose drawing room was likely to hold attractive and important people. So tonight, as happened almost every evening, several friends dropped in. When they had finally gone, she seized a moment of peace to make notes in her diary about her visitors: came home at 8—Mr Browne [William Montague Browne, former editor of the Constitution,aide toJefferson Davis, Confederate assistant secretary of state] & Mallory [Stephen R. Mallory, Confederate secretary of the navy] insisted on my going to the reception at Mrs Toombs [wife of Robert Toombs, first Confederate secretary of state]—but I did not—Mr Hunter called [R. M. T. Hunter, former U.S. senator and speaker of the House, Confederate secretary of state after Toombs] sat some time—TheJudge [Thomas J. Withers, South Carolina delegate to the Provisional Congress and Mrs. Chesnut's uncle] joined us . . . . then Miles [William Porcher Miles, former U.S. congressman, South Carolina delegate to the Provisional Congress] & then Judge Frost [another South Carolina delegate] & then Jemison [Robert W. Jemison of the Georgia senate]—I had a pleasanter set than I should have had at the levee—Tho Mrs Browne said every body asked for me . . . . Mrs Fitspatrick [wife of Benjamin Fitspatrick, former U.S. senator from Alabama] & Miss Howell [Mattie Howell, Varina Davis' sister]— PERSPECTIVE AND RETROSPECTIVE {5} Mrs Taylor [daughter-in-law of President Zachary Taylor] Jessie James—Mrs Clayton [wife of Henry D. Clayton, Alabama delegate to the Provisional Congress] who told Washington news. After recounting snatches of the evening's conversation, she added: "I with a horrid pain in the chest sit here...