"Roundheads and Ramblings"

February 2015

Continuing Characters: The Younger Grenville Children

Posted on Monday, February 9, 2015 12:24 PM

Seen here, (left to right): James Louis Grenville (age 11), Rebecca Jane Grenville (age 15), and Robert Dubois Grenville (age 13)

The younger children will not play any major roles in "Yankee Reconstructed," primarily because of their ages. The upheavals, riots, and political arguments of Reconstruction occur in the streets, and the Grenvilles do their best to protect the children from exposure to them. They are bit players, however, and they will be around to liven up family dinners and sometimes to inform us of what's going on through the wisdom of a child's eyes.

Becca is the oldest, and at fifteen she is hovering on the brink of adulthood. That fact sometimes scares her and often saddens her. In her own words, she wishes to be nothing more than a house cat--safe, well-fed, loved, protected, and allowed to curl up all by herself in a patch of sun. She still loves her music lessons, emulating her mother as she has before her tiny feet could reach the melodeon pedals. She reads voraciously, but is content to experience life on the printed page rather than in the round.

Robbie, at age 13, is even more miserable at the idea of growing up. His older brothers have provided him with unenviable examples. He would not be a fighter like Johnny, and he can still barely look at his brother's artificial leg. Nor does he want to be as hard a worker as Eddie. From the time of his first experience with a porcupine, he has tried to avoid the outdoors. He has no love of horses and cattle, either. Much like Becca, he would rather live in a book, although his reading tastes tend more to history and science than to fiction.

Then, of course, there is Jamey, the family ne'er-do-well. From babyhood he has been both indulged and ignored, turning him into a demanding and trouble-making element in a family that does its best to keep the peace at all costs. Perhaps he will mature and change in the course of this book, but his emerging character is still something of a mystery, even to me.

Continuing Character: Mary Susannah Grenville

Posted on Saturday, February 7, 2015 5:31 PM

In 1861, Mary Sue was a chubby, quiet, eleven-year-old -- number four in a family of seven children and therefore right in the middle. She seldom complained, and she almost never caused trouble. Her older siblings ignored her in the same way they ignored all the younger members of the family. And those younger children? They did not find Mary Sue much fun. She didn't want to play with them, and she didn't do anything interesting enough to attract their attention. In fact, at times it seemed that she only spoke one plaintive sentence: "Maybe we could get a pony." But she said it as if she didn't believe it, and the adults just rolled their eyes and went on about their business.

All except Grandmother Dubois, that is. She heard the longing in that little voice, and that Christmas -- when South Carolina had been invaded by a huge Yankee land and sea force, when half of Charleston lay in ashes from an accidental fire, when the family had nothing but the clothes on their backs, when no one knew whether they would live or die -- Grandmother Dubois gave Mary Sue a horse. A young horse, to be sure, but a magnificent animal, who would require Mary Sue's full attention for years and years to come.

It was a gift designed to shape and structure a little girl's life, and it did so, although most of the family did not notice. The colt, now named Sable Girl, went with the family when they moved to Aiken, and Mary Sue spent the war years in the stables, raising and training her horse. The fully-grown horse did not get to come back to Charleston, much to Mary Sue's great displeasure, but the horse and its future was never far from her mind.

By 1867, the middle child of the family stood on the verge of womanhood, and her dreams centered around horse-racing and dressage, planning to own not just one horse but a stable full of carefully-bred animals, and making a place for herself as a famous horsewoman. No one told her she couldn't do it, because no one suspected that she would ever want anything other than to become a wife and mother, as all Southern women were expected to do.

That's the trouble with middle children. They're sneaky. They appear to be dull and uninteresting, right up until the time they do something outrageous.

Continuing Character: Edward (Eddie) Gresham Grenville

Posted on Friday, February 6, 2015 9:50 AM

Eddie was only 14 when his older brother and sister found themselves caught up in the Civil War, In 1862 When Charlotte suffered the death of her newlywed husband and Johnny lost his leg in battle, Eddie was safely protected, tucked away on a farm in Aiken, South Carolina. He spent his days in the barns, taking care of his beloved cows and dreaming of becoming a dairy farmer on his own.

He excelled in mathematics, but paid little attention to current affairs, or to studies of history or literature. He had learned that skin color had nothing to with the nature of a man's character. His best friend and constant companion was a former slave named Eli, who also happened to be his second cousin. But he had almost no other social contacts.

By the time the war was over, Eddie was an adult, but still an unusually innocent and protected one. When the family moved back to Charleston, Eddie stayed behind in Aiken. He was fully capable of managing the farm, as well as its livestock and orchards, but he shunned the political and economic changes taking place beyond the borders of Pine View Farm.

Readers, therefore, should not be surprised to find him building a life for himself that was separate from the interests of his ancestral family. He valued simplicity, self-sufficiency, honesty, and hard work. And when he sought a wife, he would find her, not among the daughters of his parents' friends or among the elite families of coastal South Carolina, but in a family of recent Swiss immigrants who shared his values.

Continuing Character: Jonathan (Johnny) Dubois Grenville

Posted on Thursday, February 5, 2015 9:50 AM

Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) is usually associated with Veterans of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but it is not a new phenomenon. Historians find clear indications of its occurring even among the ancient Greeks. Battle fatigue, shell-shock, irritable heart -- only the names have changed, not the symptoms.

Johnny Grenville came home from the Civil War with easily recognizable symptoms--heavy drinking, hallucinations, nightmares, panic attacks, inability to concentrate, feelings that he no longer had anything in common with his family or neighbors. His wounds at Chickamauga, followed by being held as a prisoner of war and having his shattered leg amputated, had changed him forever.

For a while, as he learned to walk again, he seemed to be recovering, and he even spent some time working with other wounded soldiers, but the recovery could go only so far. What he seemed to need was a sense that there was still a place for him in a semi-military organization, and he found that purpose within some questionable organizations during the early period of Reconstruction.

Here he is in 1867, and the symptoms are clear. His eyes are haunted. His beard mimics the style worn by many Confederate officers during the war. He regards the world with suspicion -- even hatred. He throws his political support to Wade Hampton, the Confederate general in whose legion he had fought during the war. He thrives only in the companionship of others whose experiences echo his own. As riots, as well as other forms of civil disobedience, increase across South Carolina, Johnny seems to come alive again, but his family realizes, as he does not, that he is fighting for the "wrong side" again.

Continuing Character: Charlotte Grenville Rogers Pickford

Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2015 4:14 PM

Charlotte, the oldest Grenville child, had always been stubborn, willful, and petulant. Susan and Jonathan both had learned to hold their breath and walk softly when she was around. But by the time the war was over, life had worked a number of changed upon her.

Two husbands and four children had taught her to stop putting her own needs before those of her family. When she returned to Charleston for her grandmother's funeral, she came to be helpful. True, when Susan looked at her, she could see the marks of tragedy written in the lines of her face. Her eyes no longer squinted in scorn or glared in anger; they looked outward with caution, waiting to see what each new day would bring. She was thinner and more serious than she used to be. And her severe hairstyle and mourning clothes made her seem older than her years.

But in her old family circle, she blossomed into her mother's best friend and quickest helpmate. Why, then, did Susan worry so about her? Had the family circumstances broken her spirit?

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