[With William Byrd at Mrs. Fleming's on September 20, 1732.]
"Here good drink was more scarce than good victuals, the family being reduced to the last bottle of wine, which was therefore husbanded very carefully. But the water was excellent. The heir of the family did not come home till late in the evening. He is a pretty young man but had the misfortune to become his own master too soon. This puts young fellows upon wrong pursuits before they have sense to judge rightly for themselves, though at the same time they have a strange conceit of their own sufficiency when they grow near twenty years old, especially if they happen to have a small smattering of learning. 'Tis then they fancy themselves wiser than all their tutors and governors, which makes them headstrong to all advice and above all reproof and admonition.
"21 [September]. I was sorry in the morning to find myself stopped in my career by bad weather brought upon us by a northeast wind. This drives a world of raw, unkindly vapors upon us from Newfoundland, loaden with blights, coughs, and pleurisies. However, I complained not, lest I might be suspected to be tired of the good company, though Mrs. Fleming was not so much upon her guard but mutinied strongly at the rain that hindered her from pursuing her dear husband. I said what I could to comfort a gentlewoman under so sad a disappointment. I told her a husband that stayed so much at home as hers did could be no such violent rarity as for a woman to venture her precious health to go daggling through the rain after him or to be miserable if she happened to be prevented; that it was prudent for married people to fast sometimes from one another, that they might come together again with the better stomach; that the best things in this world, if constantly used, are apt to be cloying, which a little absence and abstinence would prevent. This was strange doctrine to a fond female who fancies people should love with as little reason after marriage as before.
"In the afternoon Monsieur Marij [Marye], the minister of the parish, came to make me a visit. He had been a Romish priest but found reasons, either spiritual or temporal, to quit that gay religion. The fault of the new convert is that he looks for as much respect from his Protestant flock as is paid to the popish clergy, which our ill-bred Huguenots don't understand. Madam Marij had so much curiosity as to want to come too, but another horse was wanting, and she believed it would have too vulgar an air to ride behind her husband. This woman was of the true Exchange [the Royal Exchange in London] breed, full of discourse but void of discretion, and married a parson with idle hopes he might some time or other come to be His Grace of Canterbury. The gray mare is the better horse in that family, and the poor man submits to her wild vagaries for peace's sake. She is just enough of a fine lady to run in debt and be of no signification in her household. And the only thing that can prevent her from undoing her loving husband will be that nobody will trust them beyond the sixteen thousand, which is soon run out in a Goochland store." [Sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was the statutory salary for ministers in Virginia from 1696 to the Revolution].
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.