Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLON IAL SOUTH '
the purpose of publication. Certainly, along with the Reminiscences and the
Discourses, they form the most voluminous record of Loyalist thinking in
the southern colonies. They are also well-written documents revealing
much on church, education, and social life.
Among those letters already published is a 1759 communication to an
English cleric, the Reverend Mr. James of St. Bees, Cumberland, from
Port Royal on the Rappahannock River in Virginia, and to James' wife:
'Tis true, whether from ye Climate, or their Manner of Education, being
early introduc'd into Company, & soon commencing ripe, they are of a
livelier, readier wit than we in Engl'd, in a general way, may boast of . ...
They live and dress well, all without any Labour & almost with'd any
Concern of their own . ... I assure you, Mr. James, the common Planter's
Daughters here go every Day in finer Cloaths than I have seen content
you for a Summer's Sunday . ... they tell me I may see in Virginia more
brilliant Assemblies than I ever e'd in the North of Engl'd, and except
Royal ones perhaps in any part of it.
Twelve days later he describes a clergyman, Isaac Giberne, a man frequently
mentioned in the Landon Carter diary, who may have influenced
Boucher in becoming an Anglican minister. Boucher's verbal portrait is
by no means entirely favorable, as it is not in his later Reminiscences of an
American Loyalist. One playful yet earnest letter addressed to the Reverend
Henry Addison of Maryland, announcing Boucher's intention of marrying
Addison's niece, is long, philosophical, poetic, and full of learned allusions
perhaps designed to impress his future relative. He may be a little coy, but
he carries the witty image of the lady as an attractive bit of real estate
throughout the long epistle, beginning
Dear Sir,
Ashamed and weary of this unproductive and unprofitable course of
life, I resolve to turn planter. There is in your neighborhood a charming
little plantation, unoccupied by anybody, which I think would exactly suit
my purpose. As to buying it, that is out of the question; it is not venal,
nor to be disposed of to the highest bidder; nor, if it were, have I wealth
enough to buy it. If it were to be sold for what it is worth, the wealth of
the Indies could not purchase it. I should indeed like to have it seiz'd in
tail, which as I am sure I should never be disposed to part with it, might
answer my purposes as well as a fee-simple. However, I shall think myself
quite happy to get it on a lease for lives.lss
In North Carolina there were well-expressed letters beginning in 1709
with those of John Lawson to James Petiver on natural history, the many
sent back by missionaries and now in the archives of the S.P.G., Baron von
Graffenreid's account of the expedition among the Indians ending in Lawson's
tragic death, and Major Christopher Gale's version of the same