Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
For where these airry pleasures have taken intire possession of the mind
the rational faculties are more and more unactive and, without doubt,
for want of use will degenerate into downright dulness so that 'tis not
playing a game at Cards or going to a ball now and then to relax the
mind-but the immoderate love of them is sinful.162
If she seems here a bit prudish or almost puritan, she is merely displaying
qualities or attitudes of mind characteristic of the southern planter class
from the mid-seventeenth century. The epistles written from England
1753-1757 indicate the way of life for a southern colonial in London a
full generation after William Byrd's last sojourn there. Travel, friends
from Carolina and among the British gentry and nobility, her children
and their education, and anecdotes of people make up much of this section.
The last letters, of 1758-1762, are from Carolina, most of them after Colonel
Pinckney died within a few weeks of their return to America. Her letter
of August 1758 to her sons in school at Camberwell, breaking the news
of their father's death, indicates profound grief, a strong religious faith, and
a depth of affection for the two boys. Her letters on the same subject to
others, including her mother, show much the same qualities, and in addition
a fervid tribute to her late husband: "I did not know a Virtue he did
not posess. This pleases while it pains and may be called the Luxury of
grief." 163 Epistles to friends in Britain, including Dr. Kirkpatrick, are full
of her grief but far from morbid. But her letters to her sons, crowded with
sound advice and reflections on many things, such as the English public
schools of Westminster and Warrington, are the best of those emanations
from a remarkable mind.
The recently published handsome two-volume edition of The Letterbook
of Robert Pringle . . . I737-I745 has brought alive one of the prominent
merchants of colonial South Carolina who was for a decade a judge of
the Court of Common Pleas. His letter book, or copybook, is said to be the
earliest full description of Charleston's trade. It antedates the Laurens papers
and his own years on the bench. Pringle arrived in Charleston in 1725
a Scot born in the county of Edinburgh. Though called a merchant, he
was actually, like Callister in Maryland, a factor, in his case for a number
of English and American firms.
Though this is preeminently a business correspondence, Pringle expresses
his opinions on local happenings, as on the Indian frontier, and on international
events. His denigration of North Carolinians parallels that of
William Byrd II, though for somewhat different reasons. Criticism of
Oglethorpe's expedition against St. Augustine fills a number of letters. As
amateur gardener and active agriculturist, he encouraged Eliza Pinckney's
experiments with indigo. Like most busy men, he wrote tersely, and many
of these letters are quite brief. But all of Carolina colonial life is here, and
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