[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.]
