I Live in Virginia (Paperback)

I Live in Virginia Book Description

I LIVE IN VIRGINIA BY JULIAN R. MEADE LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. NEW YORK TORONTO 1935 FOREWORD WHEN I knew that I was going to be at home for several years I resolved to study my own state and my own people and to record in a notebook what I heard and observed. This intention, when announced to my older sister, pro voked advice which I have tried to remember. If you are going to write about Virginia Mary said when she came down from New York where she had lived long enough to see what was familiar in a clearer light, try to tell both sides. Life here is not just a tale of fine old families who live in fine old houses enclosed by fine old box hedges but neither is it just a tale of starving textile workers and mistreated Negroes. Why not write about various kinds of people we see here If you did that truthfully, it might be fair for an outsider to say, This is a real picture of life in one Southern state Reading about Richmond aristocracy, for example, does not give a stranger much idea of the life most people in the South know-A good part of what passes popularly as life in Virginia is as truly Southern as Miss Mary Pickford in Coquette and, even when it is truly Southern, usually it speaks only for one class of society . I have written what is purely a personal account of va rious adventures I have experienced and of some memorable Vlil I LIVE IN VIRGINIA people, both native and foreign, whom I met on Old Dominion soil. It has been good to know a governor, a few politicians, some ladies and gentlemen it has been enlightening to know in the flesh Bishop James Cannon, a Baptist Superin tendent of Schools, and some eminent Virginia Lions who would have delighted Mr. Mencken in his happiestdays. It has been a privilege, for which one so young as I should be grateful, to know a wise woman like Miss Ellen Glasgow and a famous beauty like Princess Troubctzkoy of Castle Hill and a moderately amusing philosopher like Mr, Cabcll but it has been a privilege as well to go to Union meetings with Francis JL Gorman and Roxy Dodson, to work in the mills with Essie and Beulah who folded diapers, and Jewel and Althonia who hemmed the sheets for your bed. To know one part of a society is not enough. If I tell you about the time Lady Astor came back to her home place for a royal welcome, I must tell you as fully about the time my friend, Chief of Police J. Hannibal Martin, arrested fifty visitors from Hopewcll who said they came to attend a Booster meeting of the local Union. And I must not forget Mr. Goldman of Crooktown, Mr. Jay Wellington of Hollywood, or Mr. Laurence Stalling of Yanceyville. If I speak of our University there must be more than the spirit of Jefferson on the spacious lawn, since, across the street from the Rotunda, there are rows of boarding-houses and not far away there arc the degenerates of Shiffletts Hollow. If I speak of Lexington and its Virginia Military Institute, the most beloved of all our states anomalies, what goes on inside the gray walls of barracks is more interesting than the dress parade which tourists come so reverently to see. And, when we journey to Virginia Beach, shall we praise nothing save the beautiful shore, shall we be confined FOREWORD IX to gentle old ladies sniffing salt air and pretend that we never saw a Virginian on his annual spree What I wrote in my notebook was sometimes amusing, sometimes sad. From a varied record comes thisaccount of a few seasons in Virginia, CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PlTTSYLVAKIA IL ALBEMARLE .......... 101 III. ROCKBRIDGE ......... 155 IV. HENRICO ........... 179 V. PRINCESS ANNE ..... ., . . 205 VI PITTSYLVANU AGAIN ........ I PITTSYLVANIA I PITTSYLVANIA PrrrsYr, vANTA COUNTY welcomes you and Danville urges you to make yourself at home. Enter from the North by the great textile plants and strong-smelling tobacco fac tories along the Dan...

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