Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
to Robert Cary, William Byrd II, Micajah Perry, Sir John Randolph, and
to various persons in England and Scotland and other parts of America.
He discusses family matters at some length with Byrd, who tried to be
jocular with him, perhaps with some success. What Custis reveals is a
sensitive and artistic mind intensely interested in nature and in painting
and drawing.142 Two straws in the wind may indicate a genuine sense of
humor-his order of 1717 for "Comicall diverting prints to hang in the
passage of my house" and the grim irony of his specified tombstone inscription
designed to show how he felt about his one venture into matrimony.
Robert "King" Carter's (1663-1732) letterbook, if the collection may
be so designated, is principally business correspondence of 1720-1727,
with a few letters to his son John, then at the Inns of Court, and to
his friends and associates such as Thomas lee and lord Fairfax or to
lieutenant-Governor Spotswood. Frequently he is brief and pointed,
usually primarily utilitarian even when addressing son John. His rhetoric
is straightforward, perhaps unconsciously reflecting his knowledge of the
rules. For example,
Dear Son John:
What I wrote to you t' other day about my children [in England] was
the result of my first thoughts. A :fit of the gout, which now I'm under,
brings me to a cooler temper. Besides the little man [Will Dawkins]
(and such are very commonly of a waspish disposition) may upon a review
of his letter condemn himself for the style of it. When you come
to show him my other letter he will no doubt produce my answer, and,
if he shows any uneasiness about my orders and confessions of his folly,
I am not for having you put them in execution . ... But, if his pride be so
overgrown that he treats you with no better manners than he has done
me, pursue my first orders and then deliver Mr. Evans's letter.143
In Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock, Moncure D. Conway
gives dozens of eighteenth-century letters written by Carter's neighbors on
all manner of subjects, though 'principally political. One is from a young
clergyman, John Thompson, attempting to persuade the young widow of
much older recently deceased former governor Spotswood to marry him.
Thompson argues well in a long epistle citing the station held by the priesthood
since biblical times. It is a beautifully organized and worded letter.
He won the lady. Fitzhughs later than founder William also expressed
themselves well, among them the immigrant's namesake William of
Rousby Hall.144
Virginians who gave epistolary advice to sons pursuing their education
in Britain included later Tory Richard Corbin (1714-179°), who wrote
on August 21, 1758: