Chesapeake (51 page)

How beautiful it was when the young people of this fifth generation of American Steeds came to rediscover it: deer abounded and beaver; geese and ducks vied for a place to rest; the last bears and wolves in the area made it their home; and in the small marshes at the heads of the embracing streams a thousand different kinds of life proliferated. Once again it was a paradise with vistas of enchantment, and as each night ended, with the sun struggling to break loose in the east, blue herons would fly back to their ancient home, probing the muddy bottoms of the creeks and crying in the darkness when they found succulence.

On the occasions when Fitzhugh stayed at Devon, life on the island could be most pleasant. He was a congenial man who loved his children and who savored the routines of plantation living; he was excited whenever a new shipment of slaves arrived from Haiti or when one of the family ships set forth with its hogsheads of Oronoco for London. He was especially delighted when, on those happy days which occurred once or twice a year, some incoming ship brought letters from Europe; then he would arrange them carefully on the big table in the kitchen, and without opening them, try to guess who had written and with what information.

He was courteous with his wife and insisted that all others who came into contact with her be the same. In a kind of banter he called her ‘Mistress Roz’ and seemed pleased with her management of the plantation. At least, he never interfered or tried to countermand her orders, but his acquiescence was tinged with condescension, as if her
duties were some unimportant game in which he had no interest.

Since they no longer slept together, his attitude toward her was that of an indulgent uncle, and this she had to accept if she wanted to enjoy any kind of life at all on Devon. So she did accept, without complaint, realizing that he treated her thus because he knew himself to be incompetent. She made the hard decisions because all his life he had inclined toward the easy ones, and in doing so, had dissipated whatever character he might have had.

Rosalind, for her part, treated her husband with deference and catered to his vanities. He was the master; the children were to respect him; and when the yearly issues of the
Tatler
arrived, he of course got to read them first. Invariably she addressed him by his full name, Fitzhugh, and saw to it that the children spoke of him as Father. She paid exaggerated attention to his opinions and often seconded them enthusiastically in front of the children, while intending to ignore them as soon as he was gone.

Fitzhugh had never experienced any kind of love for his wife; to him she was a big, awkward woman with a voice two levels too strong, and he would have been astounded to discover that she possessed all the emotions of a pretty young thing of seventeen. She, in the first months of their marriage, had truly loved this flashy, careless fellow and had been ecstatic in her first pregnancy, and even when she had fully discovered his incapacities, she still had tried to retain her love for him; but now she reacted to him pretty much as she might to a big and lively puppy: he was fun to have around the house but hardly of any consequence.

On those disappointing terms the Steeds existed. But their lives were not tragic. Indeed, an uninformed spectator might have judged the Steed household to be one of constant merriment, for Rosalind saw to it that spirits were kept high. In this she was abetted by her husband, for he delighted in playing games with his children and teasing them into one preposterous situation or another. With little help from his first wife, he had reared two fine offspring in Mark and Evelyn, and now he was doing the same with the three children of his later years. He taught them word games, and the locations of strange countries and the characters of mythology, and he never gave them anything or shared ideas with them before making them engage in his game of Many Questions.

‘I have brought something special from the store. Many questions.’

‘Is it made of paper?’

‘No.’

‘Can I chew it?’

‘You’d be sick if you did.’

Sometimes he would fend them off for half an hour, always sharpening their wits, then catching them in his arms when they solved his riddles.

He also ensured that the big house contained ample supplies of food, assigning two slaves to the job of hunting game. In the course of a week the Steeds might eat venison, lamb, muskrat, duck, turkey and occasionally pork. But the dish he relished above all others was shad, backed with onions and savory. When it was served, the children protested at the bones, but he muzzled them with the assurance that ‘shad makes the brain grow, because if you’re not smart enough to miss the bones, you’re not smart enough to eat it.’

He, not Rosalind, tended to supervise the kitchen, and he taught the three slaves who worked there his preferences in baking breads and making calf’s-foot jelly. He was especially attentive to the ways in which they served the two permanent staples, oysters and crab, and allowed to his visitors that nowhere in Maryland could one find better crab cakes than at Devon.

For him no banquet deserved the name unless in addition to the six meats and seven vegetables and eight desserts, it contained either platefuls of oysters or dishes of crisp crab cakes; and usually, when the table was completely set, he would lean back and in his hearty way tell any guests, ‘When Mistress Roz came across the bay to marry me, her family in Virginia accompanied her to the boat, weeping. “You’re going to Maryland! You’ll starve!” And here she is, starving.’

Fitzhugh also took charge of the wine cellar, and saw to it that it contained bottles of Burgundy, a cask of port and a tun of Madeira, and when neighboring plantations ran short of either of the last two, he generously supplied them until the next ships arrived with replenishments. He supervised his slaves in the making of cider, which his family consumed in copious amounts, but he alone prepared the three drinks for which Devon became noted. Syllabub was served at most meals: ‘One part milk, one part cream; one part ale, flavored with lemon and lime, topped with cinnamon bark.’ Possets were drunk before retiring, for they were conducive to sleep and good digestion, but persicot was reserved for festive occasions. Kept in cruets, a golden amber in color, it was served after the dessert to leave a pleasant tingling in the mouth. Of it Fitzhugh said, ‘For six weeks I warn the slaves to set aside every peach and apricot pit, and cherry, too, and when I have enough I cut each one in four parts, and steep them in French brandy with cloves and cinnamon. After three months I add some sugar water, and the longer this stands, the better it becomes.’

Rosalind tended the more mundane matters, particularly the medical care of all who pertained to the plantation; on some mornings the little house behind the mansion became an infirmary, with three Steeds, four other white planters and a dozen slaves in line for her ministrations. From long experience with plantation life, she had assembled those remedies best calculated to cure the ills that accompanied the cultivation of tobacco on remote fields: ipecac to induce vomiting, laxative salts for
opposite effect, oil of juniper for the chest, spirits of saffron to control spasms, and glyster for burns.

Her sovereign specific was hot linseed oil, applied liberally and covered with cloths; this subdued congestions. She also used tartar emetic with great frequency to cure what she called distress, and in a small bottle which she alone controlled, she kept laudanum to use when amputations or tooth extractions were necessary.

For the Steed plantations, unlike some across the bay, were centers of work. Any of the Steed boys approaching manhood had learned how to tend fields, and make casks, and cure Oronoco, and figure profits. At some point or other, most had worked in the family warehouse at Patamoke, and many had sailed as ordinary seamen to Bristol. The scorn in which many English gentlemen held trade was no part of the Steed tradition; their family had prospered not primarily from tobacco but from the myriad activities associated with it, and in some years when Oronoco sold for little in either Bristol or London, the Steeds continued to make a satisfactory income from their barrels, their beaver pelts, their ships and, above all, their warehouse. It was difficult for anyone to live along the Choptank without paying tribute in some form or other to the Steeds.

It was a good life, but sometimes when Rosalind looked at her florid husband playing with the children, she could not escape thinking: If only he had the capacity to know that an ugly woman can also be a loving human being! At such times she would harbor deep resentment that God had not made her beautiful, but when her hurt was deepest she would swear grimly: I’ll not surrender. I’ll not sink to his level. Ugly or not, I’l
l
be the best person I can.

Among the visitors to the Patamoke warehouse was a petite, solemn Quaker girl of eighteen. Dressed in prim gray, with a bonnet whose strings fell untied about her shoulders, she had that clarity of skin which makes any woman beautiful; in her case her small features were so harmoniously balanced and pleasing that whenever she entered the store Mark Steed, if he happened to be there that day, would remark upon the difference between her and the rambunctious Turlock woman. He also compared her with his mother, and from something his mother had read him from Shakespeare, thought: Since she’s pretty, she’s probably stupid.

To test this he tried on several occasions to engage her in conversation, but failed. She had come to the store for specific items required by the shipbuilders and was not to be diverted. In the bright fabrics from Paris she could express no interest, and neither she nor any of the other Paxmores needed the lace of Bruges or the copperware of Ghent. She seemed almost retarded, a gray shadow appearing mysteriously at the town wharf in a shallop sailed by her brother, saying nothing, never smiling, never responding to gallantries.

Once at home he remarked upon her strange behavior, and Rosalind
asked bluntly, ‘When are you getting married, Mark?’ and he replied, ‘When I left London, I had a kind of arrangement with Louise Fithian.’

‘London? I’d have thought you’d want a local wife.’

‘Louise is a dear, really she is.’ And he expounded on her qualities with an enthusiasm which pleased his mother.

‘Have you a silhouette?’

He did. It had been cut by a Frenchman skilled in using small scissors, and showed a standard profile, a standard pouting beauty. ‘She seems quite attractive,’ Rosalind said with no enthusiasm. Then, returning the silhouette, she mused, ‘I wonder if it’s a good idea to import a wife from London. I do wonder.’

‘The sainted Edmund imported Martha by mail. Never saw her before she stepped on his wharf.’

‘She was a fugitive. Driven from home. By her religion.’

‘That’s another problem. There are no Catholic girls on the Choptank.’

‘The Fithian girl can’t be Catholic.’

‘No. But I know her.’

‘You also know the Paxmore girl.’

‘The little gray one?’

‘Not so gray, Mark.’

And she insisted that he accompany her to Peace Cliff, and when he had tied their sloop at the Paxmore wharf and climbed the low hill to the telescope house, she led him not to young Amanda, who watched with keen interest, but to old Ruth Brinton, who was raging.

‘How terrible!’ she stormed. ‘In the square facing the courthouse.’

‘What happened?’ Rosalind asked.

‘To sell human beings under official sanction.’

‘Mrs. Paxmore,’ Rosalind interrupted. ‘It’s always been done and it’s done humanely. Now stop ranting.’

‘But yesterday they sold a mother north, a father south, and a nine-year-old daughter upriver.’

‘We do not do that on the island,’ Rosalind said quietly.

‘We all do it, my dear friend, if one does.’

‘No!’ Rosalind protested. ‘Each family lives by its own standards, and no Steed has ever abused a slave. We need them and we love them.’

‘But if a human family can be dragged onto a dock at the very door of the house of justice …’ The old woman began to tremble, whereupon Amanda moved to quieten her. Speaking defensively she said, ‘On this point Grandmother is never satisfied.’

‘Nor ever will be,’ the old woman snapped.

‘The meeting has rebuked her many times,’ Amanda said. ‘But on she goes. A voice in the wilderness.’ She said this with such simplicity that she resembled some Hebrew maiden in the Old Testament.

‘I wanted you to meet my son Mark,’ Rosalind said.

‘I’ve heard he’s a fine lad,’ Ruth Brinton said.

‘Where would you have heard that?’

‘Amanda told me. She sees him when she goes to fetch nails.’

Rosalind noticed that the little Quaker girl did not blush, she looked straight ahead without apologies; but Mark blushed profusely, and Rosalind thought: He should. It’s a very human reaction and it differentiates him from his father.

On the sail back to Devon, Rosalind said nothing, but once she had her son alone in the house she said firmly, ‘I wanted you to see a real woman,’ and she told him briefly of Ruth Brinton’s travail in Massachusetts and of the exemplary life she had lived in Patamoke, serving as the conscience of both the Quaker and the general community.

‘You don’t fool me, talking about old Mrs. Paxmore. You wanted me to see Amanda … in her home.’

‘I did indeed. I wanted you to see what a home of integrity could be.’

‘I’d be afraid of touching a Quaker. That Amanda could be a fierce woman in a household. Did you see how she took command when you were badgering the old woman?’

‘I wasn’t badgering her. It’s just that on slavery—’

‘You were badgering her. And you’re doing the same to me.’ He decided to have no more to do with the Paxmore girl, and now when she entered the warehouse he found excuses to avoid her. She was a prim, difficult and, in some undefinable way, repelling young woman, and he was afraid of her.

His problem of finding a wife was handled in an unusual way. On the October convoy Fithians sent Rosalind a disturbing letter: