Sunday, April 30, 2017

Edward William Johnston to John Preston Johnston, November 10-11, 1839

[Edward William Johnston at Botetourt Springs, Virginia, to John Preston Johnston at West Point, New York, November 10-11, 1839. Box 26, Folder 11, Robert Morton Hughes Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Patricia W. and J. Douglas Perry Library, Old Dominion University Libraries, Norfolk, VA 23529. This is my rough transcription. Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading.]

My dear Pres

If your letters, except the last, have been neglected, you must set it down to legitimate causes, and not to disregard of the pleasure of hearing from you. To learn how well you are satisfied is, to me, learning how well you are doing. Nor, indeed, am I left uninformed of that, from other sources. Every thing about you fills me with hope for your future career, and with an approval and an affection, which make me not only desire to preserve any place, which I may have obtained in your confidence, but to win a still better one, if fate – hitherto not very kind to me – will permit me to do something more than to wish, to feel, to love, without the power of doing benefits, or anything but the sad business of struggling with ill-desired adversities.

I have never yet been able to find out the secret of worldly prosperity which fools seem so often readily to solve. I did, indeed, perhaps disdain Fortune too long; and the jealous Goddess is now, I suppose, determined to pay me back, when I begin to ask her favour. Certain it is, that her ladyship and I have, hitherto, had as little to do with each other as could well be. For the little I have hitherto got, it is certainly not her, that I have to thank. My life, on the contrary, has been a continual struggle with her. She has never yet got me completely down; but she certainly gets the better of me, in affairs where I deserved to prevail; when there was nothing selfish in my aim, nothing shabby in my methods; and where, nevertheless, I have been as completely defeated, as the meanest spirit and most disreputable conduct could deserve to be.

You can hardly figure to yourself the mischiefs that have ensued to me from that Liberty affair of the Kents, nor the fury of obloquy which has ever since been at work against me. Against such a thing, when active and widespread, a position like mine is always weak, because it is defensive. I was forbearing, good-tempered , considerate of those who were trying to injure me; and still they have raged on, with a virulence of hate and of calumny, that is really astonishing.

Unfortunately, my undertaking here compelled me to be successful at once, or to sink under their unprovoked enmity. This, they knew; and they have, for this reason, animated themselves by the continual hope of oversetting me. Strong in my own resolution, knowledge, gentlemanliness, and self-command, I should have speedily routed the combination against me: but, unhappily, the association which, for their sakes chiefly, I had formed with Mr. Mitchell & your aunt Jane, did not work well. They shewed themselves entirely unqualified for the duties they had assumed: My efforts, always kind and reasonable, to get them to do their duty, utterly failed.

I was reduced either to see them cut my throat and their own with it, or else to separate from them and incur their displeasure – an alternative certainly painful enough; but one in which the choice of a man having his honour to preserve in an important engagement, could not be doubtful.

It was evident that they could never get through with the undertaking, and that we could not carry it on in common: all that remained, therefore, was that I should take it exclusively on myself, which I have done; but, for the time, under difficulties, to which the late mismanagement has added very heavily.

I am now going on with about one-third the number of pupils that we had last session – barely enough to pay expenses. To be sure, we are now perfectly harmonious, and every duty is properly performed an enforced; but I am left to struggle with many difficulties, and have had, you may be assured, a rough time, and plagues in abundance, to distract me from such pleasanter things as that of answering your letters.

The things which I thus write you are little agreeable to tell or to be told. Misfortunes are bad enough to hear of, without the addition of disunion among those we love. I speak of them, because, though it will give you pain to know them, it will give you more to know them imperfectly. You will have heard them from Eliza; and she, I apprehend, understands them but little. The doubt, which she seems to have entertained, of returning here, implies, strongly, something, in her impressions, which adds to the painfulness, the bitterness for me, of all this matter.

I had been exceedingly anxious to procure for your aunt, by uniting Mr. Mitchell with me in an understanding like this, a better and securer lot, than the character or pursuit of her husband can give. To accomplish it, I encountered a known and serious hazard of unsteadiness and incompetency, on his part. I had hope, however, that Jane would, by her influence, keep down the defects of his character and remedy his want of sense. I have, however, been completely disappointed, and shall suffer, seriously, for the effort to improve their situation. So be it, however. There are things that one must do, in the full view of probably failure, as I did; so that there is no place for repining at the ill-event.

I have written you, perhaps, such a letter as may serve to diminish your concern at not hearing from me. It is difficult, however, in letters of mere affection, to forbear speaking of what has much occupied and disturbed one.

As to your uncle Joseph, his immediate coming hither is rendered now doubtful, by a letter of mine, which he will have met in Washington, announcing to him the impossibility of the General’s meeting him here ‘till Christmas. From your uncle Bev, I have not heard, latterly.

                                                   Ever yours,
                                                       Edward Wm. Johnston

P.S. Monday night (11th). Your uncle Joseph neither came nor wrote by this evening’s mail. No further news, of any sort. Yours to Eliza is dispatched to Burke’s Garden. I fear she will not come, because she does not want to come.

Mr. M. has withdrawn his own daughter from the school; and I cannot tell what influences may not have been used with Eliza, who was, to a great degree, withdrawn from my control, from our coming up here. Mr. M, directly against all previous agreement, set up an entirely separate establishment, determined, as it appeared afterwards, not to live under the same roof with us, who were to conduct, in partnership with him, an affair requiring such complete cooperation and harmony.

Into this extraneous household – whose separateness rendered a proper discharge of their duties impossible, and flung every thing upon us – he took Eliza, Nicketti, & Susan Smyth. The latter became completely estranged from me, and even from her duties. Judge of my situation, with such assistants as these, who, doing nothing to assist me, even then only to incumber, to censure, and to spread an ill spirit. Whether this reached Eliza or not, I cannot tell. Probably it did.

[Edward William Johnston (1799-1867), forty years old, was attempting to run a school at Botetourt Springs (now the site of Hollins University) on the property formerly owned by his uncle Charles Johnston (1769-1833).  He had relocated from a first attempt to run a school at Liberty/Bedford.
The Kents = apparently landlords in Liberty/Bedford, or otherwise closely connected to the first incarnation of the school.
Pres = John Preston Johnston/aka Johnstone (1824-1847), fifteen-year-old plebe cadet at the US Military Academy (Class of 1843).
Lizzie = Eliza Mary Johnston (1825-1909)
Aunt Jane = Jane Mary Wood Johnston (1811-1892)
Mr. Mitchell, Mr. M. = Harvey Manning Mitchell (1799-1866)
Uncle Joseph = Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807-1891) was thirty-two at the time, a first lieutenant (brevet captain) in the US Corps of Topographical Engineers.
The General = Peter Carr Johnston (1793-1877), general in the Virginia militia.
Bev = Beverly Randolph Johnston (1803-1876)
Edward’s wife, who helped administer the school = Marie Antoinette Estelle Costar Johnston (1802-1848), usually called Estelle.
Mr. M’s own daughter = Charlotte Elizabeth Griffin Mitchell (1829-1921)
Nicketti =Nicketti Buchanan Floyd (1819-1908) of Burke’s Garden, Tazewell County, Virginia.
Susan Smyth = probably related to Alexander Smyth (1765-1830)]

[Many thanks to Sue Davis, William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally Young for their ongoing research collaboration.]  



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