Queen of the Confederacy: The Innocent Deceits of Lucy Holcombe Pickens

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: “Rouse yourself from the sweet sad dream and face the battle of life.” Ellen Middleton (1869–1875)

177 1865–1869 T ears blur Lucy’s letter to her mother—“Come back. I can not stand another night or day . . . I feel an insane instinct to flee to the uttermost parts of the earth yet I know I can never flee from the awful void & dreary pain & desolation in my breast & in my miserable life . . . Aunt Charlotte [one of the house servants] has come in to say she must have her winter frock—checked homespun please get it 9 yds. Your most miserable daughter. Lucy H. Pickens.”1 Eugenia made the long journey from Texas to comfort her daughter and granddaughter, Douschka, the affectionate, winsome ten yearold . The child proved their salvation. Like her mother at that age, Douschka preferred her pets and the outdoors to society. Mornings found her making the rounds of the farm with her mother, seeing to the needs of the servants and the care of the animals. With the dimiCHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 1869–1875 “Rouse yourself from the sweet sad dream and face the battle of life.” Ellen Middleton 178 Rouse yourself nution of help, it would not be unusual to see the two of them dressed plainly, directing the treatment of a horse for worms or walking one with colic.2 Practical when it came to the preservation of self and property , Lucy certainly preferred these duties to those of housekeeping. With heavy heart she addressed myriad and seemingly insurmountable financial problems brought on by Reconstruction. The settlement of the estate she expressed as, “Three long miserable years dragged through the courts [by] Baxter & Carrol [lawyers].”3 Lucy’s step-son-in-law, General Mathew Calbraith Butler, advised her to rent Edgewood and go away for a year, but Lucy refused and told him, “I will never, with God’s help, shirk my duty or betray the sacred trust reposed in me by the noblest & best of men, my kindest & dearest Husband.”4 Her close friend, Ellen Middleton, wisely predicted, “I do not think you will succumb under this blow, though it will no doubt cost you many a sharp struggle to rouse yourself from the ‘sweet sad dream’ and face the battle of life.”5 Edgewood, no longer the dull, quiet place that Lucy had initially resented, now housed the homeless, the wounded, and the disconsolate . Major Samuel Kirkland, a wounded veteran of the Confederacy came for tea and stayed for life. Cousin Beverly Robertson made Edgewood headquarters while he squired the eligible belles of the neighborhood and continued to profess his love for his cousin. It was not long before Fleming Gardner, the disappointed suitor, returned to his “Lady Bird.” Near and distant cousins, friends, and acquaintances arrived, assured of Lucy’s company and hospitality. Suitors, old and new, spiced their lives with flirtations but with no matrimonial success. Everyone found a welcome at Edgewood and Lucy generously supplied food and perhaps financial help. Anna’s children came for visits of several years’ duration, and occasionally brother Philemon galloped up the winding road to renew family ties. Theodore moved in to assist his sister but, from his habitual prone position on the sofa, he avoided work as much as possible.6 Thee had never labored in “The Lord’s vineyard” as his mother wished, although it was said he consumed much of the vineyard’s yield. Handsome, debonair, and 179 1869–1875 lazy, Thee’s greatest contribution to the household proved to be his good humor, his tender love, and the connection to home ties that he provided for Lucy whom he called, “Little Darling of our Sainted Mother” or sometimes the “Woman of Hapsburg.”7 During the Autumn following Francis’s funeral, Lucy visited her friends, the Middletons, at their summer home near Asheville, North Carolina. From there she resumed her correspondence with Clara Victoria Dargan. As she sat by the window and looked out over the mountains resplendent with fall foliage, she once again expressed her wish that Clara could come live with her.8 But it was not to be. Eugenia’s health, Anna’s strained situation with finances and pregnancies , worried Lucy. Then too, her own health was fragile yet she was “now able to take long walks without more than passing fatigue, & eat and drink like an honest mortal.”9 In her next letter to Clara she wrote, “I am now but a slave to free Negros [sic] & lawyers & factors—Life with me, no longer means happiness...