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Chapter 5 BEFORE THE SEVEN DAYS’ BATTLES in front of Richmond were delivered , my mother insisted upon my going with my aunt to Botetourt Springs, in the southwestern hill country of Virginia, in a region that seemed to our strained and weary gaze, to our ears jaded with sounds of battle and hospital , akin to paradise.1 Leaving the train, we drove in an archaic stagecoach through a fertile valley between bluest mountains, under summer skies with little silver clouds afloat “on the broad field of heaven’s bright wilderness .” At the wayside hamlets where we stopped to water horses, stolid country folk asked vague questions about the “fighting down Richmond way,” more interested in the non-arrival of a jug of molasses or a sack of meal than in the issue of the battles. When we arrived at our destination, a young heart in spite of itself rebounded from dreadful pressure. I felt like a bird that has flown through storm-clouds to rest in some leaf-protected nest. What joy to lie down at night without fear of being awakened by shot or shell or rattle of musketry, or by summons to the window to hear of a casualty to a friend or relative—to get up to idle days of rambling in the woods, of freedom from surroundings of mangled and fevered humanity one was powerless to save! Such, at least, should have been my attitude of mind. As a fact, after a few days’ absence from Richmond I longed madly, wildly, to be back again. News penetrated to us but grudgingly. We wrested it piecemeal from the slow speech of passing stage-drivers, and from weekly newspapers. We lived from mail to mail. No privilege on earth seemed so great as sharing sorrow with those we loved. From a wounded cousin, who arrived on furlough, we heard of the fall in battle of General Turner Ashby, “the stainless, fearless hero,” as President Davis called him; of whom General Stonewall Jackson wrote in his report of the cavalry combat: Refugitta of Richmond 60 As a partisan officer, I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial; his power of endurance inexhaustible; his tone of character heroic; and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy. From childhood I had heard tales of the dashing and hard-riding Turner Ashby, of Fauquier, and had felt proud when he said nice things to me once at the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs. All the men in our family knew and lamented him. He was like one of the old-time warriors, born not made. Of that summer of sorrow I recall one bright episode—a ride on horseback of seventy miles, to and from the Natural Bridge of Virginia, with a stop on the way at the handsome old mansion of the Andersons, where our party was hospitably entertained. We felt that in that blest abode of peaceful plenty war could not penetrate; yet, in the next year, the house was burnt and the whole beautiful region surrounding it laid waste by the firebrand , General Hunter USA, in his retreat before [Generals] Early and Breckinridge. Our road lay between a succession of noble views of hill and dale, the weather was perfect, and the before mentioned spirits of youth overflowed happily. We rode races, jumped hurdles, improvised tourneys, spearing at a ring of plaited willow hung upon a bough. I wonder if a girl of to-day would believe that in addition to a haversack with necessaries of the toilet strapped to my saddle, I carried, hidden under the folds of a long, ample riding skirt, a mysterious parcel like a cage collapsed and twisted into a figure 8—the hoop-skirt, without which no self-respecting female of that day ventured to appear, save on horseback! We were upon the Natural Bridge without knowing it, of course, and I needs must alarm our party out of its wits by emulating a certain venturesome cousin, and old sweetheart of my father’s, Mary Chapman, handed down in local story as having stood waving her handkerchief on the cut-off stump of a tree projecting above the precipice. This lady was grandmother of the lovely Ella, Marquise de Podestad, renowned for her charm and beauty in Washington and Madrid, who in her later days became lady-inwaiting to ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, and died at Biarritz after a life of many sorrows. On our return...

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