![was married five times, and one instance is recorded of a colonial
dame in the best society who had six husbands! The early marriage
of widows was the more desirable because of the outlying estates
which required management. Martha Custis gave this as excuse for
her prompt acceptance of Colonel Washington. But Ann Mason and
Mary Washington never married again. Each possessed great
executive ability, as well as unusual personal and intellectual gifts.
Each elected to devote those gifts to her children. Each was the
mother of a great patriot. And it is altogether probable that each one
was the devoted friend of the other, and that the close friendship
between the two Georges was inherited from their parents. Another
Ann Mason left letters and records which give us a hint of the
belongings of a Virginia housewife of her day. She enumerates
among her daughter's expenses prices paid for shoes with wooden
heels, hoop petticoats, and linen. George Mason of Gunston Hall,
the greatest, perhaps, of all the statesmen in an age of great
statesmen, remembered the furniture of his mother's bedroom. In it
was a large chest of drawers—a veritable high-boy![6]
Three long
drawers at the bottom contained children's garments, in which the
children might rummage. Above these and the whole length of the
case were the gown-drawer, the cap-drawer, the shirt-drawer, the
jacket-drawer; above these a series of drawers always kept locked,
containing gauzes, laces, and jewels of value—ten or twelve drawers
in all! Then there were two large, deep closets, one on each side of
the recess afforded by a spacious stack of chimneys, one for
household linen, the other the mistress's closet, which last
contained a well-remembered article, a small green horsewhip, so
often successfully applied to unruly children that they dubbed it the
green Doctor. George Mason remembered other things in
connection with this splendid woman. She gathered her children
around her knees morning and evening to say their prayers. She
was a lovely woman, true to her friends, pious to her Maker,
humane, prudent, tender, charming:—
Free from her sex's smallest faults,
And fair as womankind can be.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3308252-250523213509-dd011758/85/Creating-Performances-For-Teaching-And-Learning-A-Practice-Session-For-Pedagogy-Chris-Mcrae-30-320.jpg)
Creating Performances For Teaching And Learning A Practice Session For Pedagogy Chris Mcrae
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- 5. Creating Performances for Teaching and Learning Creativity, Education and the Arts CHRIS MCRAE AND AUBREY HUBER A Practice Session for Pedagogy
- 6. Creativity, Education and the Arts Series editor Anne Harris Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Melbourne, Australia
- 7. This series emerges out of recent rapid advances in creativity- and arts- informed research in education that seeks to reposition creativity studies within (and in conversation with) education as a multi- and interdiscipli- nary field. This series takes as its starting point the interrelationship between arts-based research and a growing neuroscientific, cultural and economic discourse of creativity and creative industries, and the need for education to play a larger role in these expanding discourses. It also takes as a priori an invitation to creativity scholars to move more robustly into theorizing the work of arts- and creativity-based research work, bridging a histori- cal gap between ‘science’ and ‘art’, between ‘theoretical’ and ‘applied’ approaches to research, and between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms. The following are the primary aims of the series: • To publish creativity research and theory in relation to education (including schools, curriculum, policy, higher education, pedagogy, learning and teaching, etc.). • To put education at the heart of debates on creativity, re-establish the significance of creativity for learning and teaching and development analyses, and forge links between creativity and education. • To publish research that draws on a range of disciplinary and theoreti- cal lenses, strengthening the links between creative and arts education and geographies, anthropology, creative industries, aesthetics and phi- losophy, history, and cultural studies. • To publish creativity research and theory with an international scope that explores and reflects the current expansion of thought and prac- tice about global flows, cultural heritage, and creativity and the arts in education. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14926
- 8. Chris McRae · Aubrey Huber Creating Performances for Teaching and Learning A Practice Session for Pedagogy
- 9. Chris McRae Department of Communication University of South Florida Tampa, FL, USA Creativity, Education and the Arts ISBN 978-3-319-54560-8 ISBN 978-3-319-54561-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54561-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939107 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Halfpoint/iStock/Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Aubrey Huber Department of Communication University of South Florida Tampa, FL, USA
- 10. We dedicate this project to our collaborators: past, present, and future.
- 11. vii After a collaborative performance presentation at a national conference our friend, mentor, and colleague, Amy Kilgard, met us in the back of the room and kindly complimented our performance. She told us that she especially appreciated the way we often worked and presented together. She went on to explain that what she appreciated most about this kind of collaborative presentation (in addition to the content of our work) was the way we put on display the fact that all of our work (as scholars) is always already some kind of collaboration. This comment reflects an important ethic that informs this project: First, our work as researchers, teachers, and artists is only ever possible because of others. And second, our work here is a collaboration in the broadest possible sense. Acknowledging, even if only partially, the others who make this book possible is an opportunity both to express our gratitude for these people, and to articulate and name some of the people and relationships who we are lucky to count as collaborators. We would therefore like to acknowledge and thank our teachers who exemplify for us what it means to commit to, theorize, and practice lib- eratory pedagogy. First, we both thank our teacher, friend, and mentor, Stacy Holman Jones. We are grateful to Stacy for her continued enthusi- asm for and dedication to performance scholarship, and her everlasting encouragement of our work. Stacy is not only our teacher and mentor, she demonstrates for us what it means to be a scholar-practitioner who is not only committed to her work, but to others. We thank Stacy for Acknowledgements
- 12. viii Acknowledgements introducing us to the thoughtful reader, and generous scholar, Anne Harris. We appreciate Anne’s support of this project, and we are grateful to her for opening up space for us in the Creativity, Education, and the Arts series. We thank Karen Mitchell who introduced Aubrey to Performance Studies through her activist forum theater troupe, SAVE (Students Against a Violent Environment), and Elizabeth Bell, Marcyrose Chvasta, and Michael LeVan who enacted teacher–performer–activists for Chris during his time as a student at the University of South Florida. Similarly, we are grateful for the faculty at Southern Illinois University (SIU), who introduced us to critical performance pedagogy and helped us develop our identities as teacher-scholars. Specifically, we thank our disserta- tion advisors, Nathan Stucky and Ron Pelias, for offering us thoughtful, gracious examples of scholarly collaboration and mentorship through- out our degree programs and beyond. We are thankful for the careful interpretative, critical, and performance pedagogies modeled for us by Nilanjana Bardhan, Ross Singer, Suzanne Daughton, Lenore Langsdorf, Satoshi Toyosaki, Craig Gingrinch-Philbrook, Jonny Gray, and Sandy Pensoneau-Conway. We are also grateful to our friend and mentor Kathy Hytten, whose commitment to critical and social justice pedagogies are invaluable to us in our writing, teaching, and scholarly collaboration. Our understanding and application of critical performance pedagogy would not be possible without Elyse Pineau. We were lucky to find her scholarship, and even more fortunate to experience her direction on stage and in the classroom. We also greatly appreciate the impact of our late teacher, mentor, and friend, John T. Warren, for cultivating our interest in critical and performance pedagogies, for the various introduc- tions to scholars and practitioners that continue to influence our work, and most of all, for teaching us how to take seriously our classrooms as essential sites of research. His pedagogy and scholarship continues to serve as a springboard for our individual and collaborative work. By extension of what we learn from our teachers, we want to acknowl- edge the scholars and friends who continue to shape our teaching and scholarship. Thank you Amy Kilgard, Keith Nainby, Deanna Fassett, Deanna Shoemaker, Abe Kahn, Jeanine Minge, Tony Adams, Jillian Tullis, Heather Hull, Mike Garvin, and Danielle Dick McGeough. In acknowledging those who have taught us, we would be remiss if we did not also take time to thank the students who not only teach us how to be teachers, but who also are our collaborators. Without the
- 13. Acknowledgements ix efforts of students, we would be unable to document and theorize peda- gogical settings or fully develop our ideas for the “practice session.” We would like to acknowledge the students who have taken classes with us, specifically our undergraduate performance classes, and our gradu- ate classes. We would also like to thank the undergraduate and graduate students who engaged in our first collaborative performance workshop, “Speech Acts!” Particularly, we want to express our appreciation to Alyse Keller. We are grateful to Alyse for collaborating with us in performance workshops, working with us in classes, and for caring for our son so we could make time to work on this project together. This book would not have been possible without the support and col- laboration of our families. It is likely our parents were the first people who taught us about the value and necessity of collaboration in giving us the most precious gifts we could have received as first-born children: siblings. We greatly appreciate what we learned about collaboration from growing up and engaging with our siblings and their partners, Danny, Michelle, Mandy, Zach, Katy, and Chris. As we are now parents our- selves, we so value the collaborations of our parents. We want to also acknowledge our parents’ continued commitment to collaborating with us as they have spent countless hours charming and caring for our son during this project. Laurie and Randy, Bob and Lyn, this project is made possible by your love and support. Thank you. Lastly, we want to acknowledge the impact and importance of the col- laborations that emerge from our interactions with our son Graham. He teaches us daily about the critical value of creativity, imagination, and play. We also look forward to the collaborations that are yet to come with the newest member of our family, Oliver.
- 14. xi 1 Introduction: Creating Performances for Teaching and Learning 1 2 Practice Space 15 3 Performance as Research 43 4 Music and Routine 71 5 Crafting Pictures and Reflexivity 97 6 Writing and Experimentation 127 7 Future Sessions 155 Index 183 Contents
- 15. xiii Teaching and Learning as Critical Performative Encounter It is with great pleasure that I welcome Chris McRae and Aubrey Huber’s beautiful new text into the Palgrave Macmillan series Creativity, Education and the Arts. My intention in establishing this series was to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of much creativity education work, which tends to often remain outside of the “creative conversation” of creative and cultural industries, performance studies, youth studies, art history and aesthetics, and even at times the Deleuzian turn in theoriz- ing creativity and practice led research. I knew creativities research in education to be robust and long-standing (Craft 2004; Jeffrey and Craft 2004; Burnard 2007; Cremin et al. 2006; Thomson and Sefton-Green 2010; Sefton-Green et al. 2011; Harris 2014, 2016), if still somewhat of a loner. This series’ express intention is not to suggest that work is not being done at this intersection, but to highlight it and bring it into conversation with other disciplines. This latest book by Chris McRae and Aubrey Huber represents another important expansion of scholarship on creativity and its educative power, this time into the fields of perfor- mance studies, critical pedagogy and communication theory. It repre- sents new extensions by emerging scholars of well-established scholarship at their own intersections of these areas, and I congratulate them on this dynamic and innovative contribution. It goes without saying that I also once again extend my gratitude to Palgrave Macmillan and in particular Series Editor’s Introduction
- 16. xiv Series Editor’s Introduction to editor Eleanor Christie for her commitment and support to continu- ing to champion and expand this book series, as well as expertly shep- herd new works like this current text from McRae and Huber. These authors invite us into their world through the evocative open- ing describing their hot autumn graduate school days in southern Illinois, and their simultaneous awakening into both a love of critical performance pedagogies, and into a rich and sustained collaboration with one another. They extend Elyse Pineau’s pivotal work on critical performative pedagogy (2002, 2005) and theorize a new application for that work which brings us into palpable touch with classrooms and per- formances spaces in this second decade of the twenty-first century. For them, as for Pineau, embodiment is central to the educative, the political and the creative cause. The growing body of scholarly research into critical performance and pedagogy (in its many forms including work by Denzin 2009; Alexander et al. 2004; McLaren and Kincheloe 2007; Madison and Hamera 2006) is now well established and thoroughly interdisciplinary. McRae and Huber’s text provides a welcome expansion of this body of work. In addition to its important focus on the critical (including gender, race, and socio-economic), this book documents the authors’ commitment to process and embodiment, as well as the summative outputs which result. Such a rich text only eventuates from the kind of decade-long collabora- tion that these two co-authors use as the basis of their present enquiry. While all texts included in this series fit the mandate of the creativ- ity–education–arts intersection, this text’s foregrounding of embodied performance as a kind of processual teaching and learning together is a masterful example of how education, at its best, is both a doing and an event, a becoming and a product, a mutual relationship always in the context of a critical social, political and historical moment, in which we are all simultaneously the performer/audience, teacher/student, and changer/changed. One major innovation of this book concerns the authors’ decision to structure it as a series of “practice sessions,” a familiar notion to any musical or theatre performer, yet combined cleverly with the format of a lesson plan it is transformed into a user-friendly modeling of the kinds of critical creative approaches the authors are advocating here for bring- ing performance into any kinds of classroom situation. This combination offers a literal and metaphoric starting place for readers to develop our
- 17. Series Editor’s Introduction xv own sessions and extend the work provided—another reminder that this text is a tool that the co-authors wish us to use, not just read and put away. McRae and Huber offer practical and helpful examples, an offering as would happen in an improvisation or collaborative performance rela- tionship. All of these unique features contribute to this book’s strength and its authors’ commitment and constant return to the methods and principles of performance as research, as readers become a part of this community and set of practices on every page. I congratulate McRae and Huber for their beautiful work and impor- tant alignment with the mandate of this series, going far beyond the highlighting of intersections between education, creativity, and the arts, and making us think expansively about the varying ways that classrooms can become sites for creative innovation. McRae and Huber’s book does this in both formal and informal ways, firstly through their chapter struc- ture which targets explicit “pedagogical practices and creative acts.” Yet beyond the explicit, there is an implicit modeling and enacting of the theory and practice (praxis) here that will show readers just how to pur- sue the goals these authors articulate. And now, more than ever, we need lived and usable examples of how to move forward creatively and criti- cally, in formal and informal learning spaces, with relational and embod- ied attention to social change. That is what you will find in this book, and I’m so pleased to include it in this series. January 2017 Anne Harris References Alexander, B. K., Anderson, G. L., Gallegos, B. (Eds.). (2004). Performance theories in education: Power, pedagogy, and the politics of identity. NY: Routledge. Burnard, P. (2007). Reframing creativity and technology: Promoting pedagogic change in music education. Journal of Music, Technology Education, 1(1), 37–55. Craft, A. (2003). Creativity across the primary curriculum: Framing and develop- ing practice. Routledge. Cremin, T., Burnard, P., Craft, A. (2006). Pedagogy and possibility thinking in the early years. Thinking skills and creativity, 1(2), 108–119. Melbourne, Australia
- 18. xvi Series Editor’s Introduction Denzin, N. K. (2009). A critical performance pedagogy that matters. Ethnography and Education, 4(3), 255–270. Harris, Anne. 2016. Creativity and Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Harris, Anne. 2014. The Creative Turn. Rotterdam: Sense. Jeffrey, B., Craft, A. (2004). Teaching creatively and teaching for creativity: distinctions and relationships. Educational studies, 30(1), 77–87. Madison, D. S., Hamera, J. (Eds.) (2006). The Sage handbook of performance studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McLaren, P., Kincheloe, J. L. (2007). Critical pedagogy: Where are we now? (Vol. 299). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Pineau, E. L. (2002). Critical performative pedagogy: Fleshing out the politics of liberatory education. In N. Stucky C. Wimmer (Eds.), Teaching perfor- mance studies (pp. 41–54). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Pineau, E. L. (2005). Teaching is performance: Reconceptualizing a problem- atic metaphor. In B. K. Alexander, G. L. Anderson, B. P. Gallegos (Eds.), Performance theories in education: Power, pedagogy, and the politics of identity (pp. 15–39). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sefton-Green, J., Thomson, P., Jones, K., Bresler, L. (Eds.). (2011). The Routledge international handbook of creative learning. Routledge. Thomson, P., Sefton-Green, J. (Eds.). (2010). Researching creative learning: Methods and issues. Routledge. Other Books in this Series Creativity and Education (2016) Anne Harris Creative Methods for Engaging and Encountering the Drama in Teacher Leadership (2016) Jerome Cranston and Kristin Kusanovich Knowledge, Creativity and Failure: A new pedagogical framework for creative arts education (2016) Chris Hay Critical Autoethnography, Performance and Pedagogy (2017) Stacy Holman Jones Marc Pruyn (Eds)
- 19. 1 We first met in 2007. The summer had been a hot one and the fall semester promised no relief from the heat as we separately unloaded our belongings and readied ourselves for our new lives in Carbondale, Illinois. We first met as graduate students, both interested in studying performance at Southern Illinois University (SIU). We both chose SIU having fallen in love with possibilities of performance studies at our sub- sequent universities: the University of South Florida, where Chris stud- ied with Stacy Holman Jones, Marcy Rose Chvasta, and Elizabeth Bell, and the University of Northern Iowa where Aubrey worked with Karen Mitchell. These women greatly influenced and continue to impact how we conceptualize what it means to perform, teach performance, and commit our work and ourselves to social justice practices. Our understanding of the connection between performance and social justice strengthened for us while taking classes and developing projects with John Warren, Elyse Pineau, Nathan Stucky, Ron Pelias, Jonny Gray, and Craig Gingrich Philbrook. We were fortunate to take not only classes that included performance methods, theory, and criticism, but also classes in political performance and critical, performance, and com- munication pedagogies. It was in graduate school that we first became collaborators as teacher–artist–scholars. And, it was in our coursework, which fused social justice, performance, and pedagogy that the burgeon- ing ideas for this book about creative pedagogical practices as critical acts emerged. CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Creating Performances for Teaching and Learning © The Author(s) 2017 C. McRae and A. Huber, Creating Performances for Teaching and Learning, Creativity, Education and the Arts, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54561-5_1
- 20. 2 C. MCRAE AND A. HUBER Over the past 10 years, we have worked together to develop our ideas about critical performance pedagogies. As teachers, we draw from criti- cal, performance, and communication pedagogy scholarship, as well as our experience as performance students, to continuously craft and refine our approach to critical performance pedagogy. We say this to acknowl- edge that there are many important approaches to critical work and to creative and performance pedagogies. Though our perspective reflects the influences of many others, it is not all encompassing, nor do we mean for it to be. We offer this book as one possibility for engaging in critical performance pedagogy. We articulate our approach to theorizing and practicing teaching as critical performance pedagogy, which is closely aligned with Pineau’s (1994, 1995, 2002) germinal work on critical performative pedagogy. As performance practitioners and scholars, we take seriously Pineau’s (1995) call to document and theorize the performance work that we do in our classrooms and pedagogical spaces. We do this as a way to mark what is learned through embodiment and to fully explore and theorize the con- nections between performance and education. Pineau (1994) argues that performance has something inherently valu- able to add to critical pedagogy research, and “it is a critical moment for performance scholar-practitioners their theoretical and practical knowl- edge to bear upon this emergent research in education” (p. 5). Teaching as performance is not merely an empty cliché, but functions as powerful metaphor and heuristic that provides careful insights into what it means for bodies to teach and learn. As Pineau articulates, understanding teaching as performance through a performance scholar–practitioner lens “offers a more theoretically sophisticated and methodologically innovative ground for developing new research agendas in educational performance” (p. 5). For us, theorizing performance and employing performance as a method are essential components of our critical pedagogical approach that strives toward social justice. In defining critical performative peda- gogy, Pineau (2002) writes: The pedagogy I am advocating embraces performance as a critical meth- odology that can be fully integrated throughout the learning process. The shift from “body-on-display” to the “body as a medium for learn- ing” requires clarification. In disciplinary terms, performance methodol- ogy means rigorous, systematic, exploration-through-enactment of real and imagined experience in which learning occurs through sensory and
- 21. 1 INTRODUCTION: CREATING PERFORMANCES FOR TEACHING 3 kinesthetic engagement (Pineau). In more colloquial terms, performance methodology means learning by doing that might include any experien- tial approach that asks students to struggle bodily with course content. In addition, performance methodology emphasizes process over product by requiring students to use their bodies systematically over a period of time, rather than simply at the end of the unit. (p. 50) In other words, critical performative pedagogy requires an intense com- mitment to embodied learning. Critical performative pedagogy privileges bodies as a medium for learning, focusing corporeal experimentation. Similarly, critical performative pedagogy focuses on process, of bodies becoming, instead of on bodies as finite and finished products. This embodied, processual approach to learning also emphasizes a ped- agogy of social justice. Alexander (2010) extends Pineau’s (2002) articula- tion of critical performative pedagogy, linking it directly to social justice, which he defines by drawing on Madison’s (2006) work. He explains: Social justice is not an end, it is a practice; it is doing. Social justice is a dynamic rehearsal that has no intention of final performance. It is a rehearsal in everyday life toward perfection of social interaction, a process of strategizing the multiple dimensions of being human – being humane, of being in the company of others – that respects the multiple interpreta- tions of that existential human possibility. (p. 333) Alexander links critical performative pedagogy with social justice in writ- ing: “Critical performative pedagogy is built on the foundations of social justice and must continue to empower students with strategies to criti- cally articulate, translate, and apply such knowledge toward public and social transformation” (p. 334). In other words, critical performative pedagogy engages performance as a way of coming to knowledge and as a way of enacting a process of social justice that privileges and strives for inclusivity and equity. We work to develop, revise, and practice a critical performance peda- gogy that works to engage and work toward this articulation of social justice as an ongoing practice. For us, the classroom presents an oppor- tunity for crafting pedagogical approaches that work toward social jus- tice. The micro-practices and mundane communicative acts that take place in the classroom context are all opportunities for moving toward inclusivity, the recognition and respect of others, and reflexive awareness of the ways context enables and constrains certain bodies in ways that
- 22. 4 C. MCRAE AND A. HUBER are not always symmetrical. In approaching social justice as a process that can be engaged pedagogically, we also work to avoid the pitfall of indi- vidualizing the process and accomplishment of social justice. Instead, we emphasize the ways social justice emerges collaboratively, gradually, and over long periods of time. The work of critical performance pedagogy as an enactment of social justice is never complete. Each class, each assign- ment, and each interaction presents another opportunity for working toward social justice. Our experience as collaborators and colleagues in performance and pedagogy over the past 10 years has led to numerous projects, discus- sions, and new ideas about pedagogy, performance, and critical and social justice-oriented scholarship. Over this time, we have created and attempted to create projects that include staged performances, perfor- mance workshops, performance assignments, conference presentations, and new courses in communication, performance, and pedagogy. We have also experimented with a variety of performance styles and medi- ums including playing the trumpet, learning to play the ukulele, mak- ing homemade cards, creating stop-motion animation, and writing. One of the consistent themes throughout our collaborative relationship is a focus on how we might engage in performance practices in our teaching and research even when performance might not appear to be the cen- tral focus of the classes we are teaching or the research we are engaging. As we begin to interpret and theorize our collaborations, the following questions about pedagogy and performance emerge: How can we bring performance to the classroom (even if the central focus of the class is not necessarily a question of performance)? How can we use perfor- mance as a way of developing our pedagogy and research? How might a performance approach transform specific topics or themes? How might performance enable new and different understandings of the world and others? How might performance generate a pedagogy of social justice? How might performance shape the ways we design and conceptualize our classes and assignments? How might both our failed attempts and our successful accomplishments function pedagogically? What we continue to discover is that performance, as a creative mode of inquiry, always yields new insights. Sometimes these insights are directly related to the questions and problems we are considering. Performance can provide specific answers about teaching and the pro- cess of learning. And in other instances performance engenders an indi- rect solution, or an entirely new line of questioning. Performance may
- 23. 1 INTRODUCTION: CREATING PERFORMANCES FOR TEACHING 5 generate new ways of thinking about pedagogy. Either way, performance is a generative mode of inquiry that extends and expands our commit- ments to critical performance pedagogy and social justice. Performance asks us to attend to the specificity of our practices in the classroom as critical sites of cultural production. Performance asks us to acknowledge the ways our choices as teachers and students constrain and enable our interactions with and amongst others. Performance asks us to develop connections, to listen for context, and to privilege the relationship between bodies and learning. Throughout this book, we engage and use performance as a means of cre- ating various practices for teaching and learning. This includes the creation of embodied performances, musical practices, practices of crafting, and writ- ing as performance. These practices shape the way we come to think about, make sense of, and develop the philosophy and enactment of our teaching. This book emerges from the realization that our collaborative performance projects present an opportunity for theorizing and engaging in creative prac- tice as acts of critical pedagogy. As you read this book, we invite you, the reader, to collaborate with us in developing this idea of the practice session for pedagogy. We invite you to engage in the consideration and extension of our creative practices as possible sites for extending and expanding your own pedagogical approach. We also invite you to develop and engage your own creative interests, practices, and performances as critical pedagogical acts. Goals of the Book Our overarching goal in this book is to advocate for the creation of a peda- gogy that privileges performance and creative practices as a way to critically work toward social justice. We describe and theorize performance peda- gogy as a site for social justice by employing the metaphors of the prac- tice session and the practice space to frame a pedagogy that emphasizes emergent and generative creative practices. The practice session metaphor allows us to consider pedagogical interactions in terms of play, experimen- tation, repetition, and preparation, articulates a collaborative relationship between teachers and students, and accentuates an embodied approach to learning. Similarly, the practice space metaphor draws attention to the physical limits and possibilities of our pedagogical spaces, highlights the ways in which relationships between teachers and students are constituted, and requires us to examine the implications for educational practices in regard to the stress placed on embodied performances.
- 24. 6 C. MCRAE AND A. HUBER This book presents the process and practice of developing perfor- mances and other creative projects as the impetus for generating criti- cal philosophies and methods of teaching and learning. In other words, this book presents performance as an embodied tactic for developing and applying critical approaches to pedagogy. Our primary goal is to offer an invitation for students and teachers to create performance as a means for cultivating a philosophy and practice of teaching and learning. This book works to engage and extend conversations in performance studies, critical pedagogy, and critical communication pedagogy about the relationship between performance and pedagogy by offering an application of performance as a means of generating critical approaches to pedagogy. We emphasize the creative process and practice of devel- oping performance as a generative method and model for creating an approach to teaching and learning that considers creativity and esthetic practices as central to pedagogical efforts that attend to embodiment, diverse perspectives and experiences, and social justice. This work is applicable to scholars and students with a wide range of interests in education, the classroom, and pedagogy including, but not lim- ited to, communication studies, performance studies, education, and cul- tural studies. In particular, this book is aimed at expanding conversations about performance and pedagogy in a way that realizes and demonstrates the value of generating performance and creative approaches to education that move beyond the performance classroom. We offer practical sugges- tions and insights for engaging in performance as a means for generating philosophies and practices of teaching and learning that are grounded in a celebration of the critical implications of creativity and performance. Throughout the book, we invoke the metaphor of the practice session in order to frame our experience developing performances and artistic/ creative projects. The practice session is a time and space for repetition, refinement, and rehearsal. Practice sessions allow both for the systematic development of performance practices and for experimentation and play in creating new possibilities for performance. The practice session func- tions as an important moment and method for generating performance, and in this book, the practice session also provides an interpretive frame- work for theorizing the process of creating performance as an educa- tional and pedagogical act. The features of the practice session, as a method both for generating performance and for generating pedagogy, are articulated in a presenta- tion and analysis of our own collaborative performance and pedagogical
- 25. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 26. with Mrs. Washington and Miss Custis; loading his wagons to provision his family and Colonel Bassett's on a visit to try the waters of the warm springs, much exercised lest Jack Custis were premature in winning the affections of Miss Calvert (for Jack was only eighteen, had been fickle, and might wound the young lady); nay, he was beating his sword into a ploughshare, his spear into a pruning-hook, planting May-Duke cherries and guelder-roses, and lamenting Rust in the wheat and Drought in the Corn crop. Moreover, he was writing letters to England, giving orders for all sorts of foreign elegancies, for his own wear and that of Madam Washington and her children. Let us copy a summer order sent to London in 1761. Williamsburg.
- 27. MARTHA CUSTIS. For his use the great man wants a superfine velvet suit with garters for the breeches; pumps, riding-gloves, worked ruffles at twenty shillings a pair; housings of fine cloth edged with embroidery, plain clothes with gold or silver buttons! For Mrs. Washington he orders a salmon-colored tabby velvet with satin flowers; ruffles of Brussels lace or point, to cost twenty pounds; fine silk hose, white and black satin shoes; six pairs of mitts; six pairs of best kid gloves; one dozen most fashionable pocket-handkerchiefs; one dozen knots and breast-
- 28. knots; real miniken (very small) pins and hairpins; a puckered petticoat; six pounds of perfumed powder; handsome breast flowers (bouquets de corsage) and some sugar candy. I have not room for Master Custis's outfit at eight years old, nor that of Master Custis's liveried servant of fourteen years old, but I cannot omit the delightful order for little Miss Custis, six years old, namely, A coat of fashionable silk, with bib apron, ruffles and lace tucker; four fashionable dresses of long lawn; fine cambric frocks; a satin capuchin hat and neckatees; satin shoes and white kid gloves; silver shoe-buckles; sleeve-buttons, aigrettes; six thousand pins, large and short and minikin; a fashionable dressed doll to cost a guinea; gingerbread, toys, sugar images and comfits; a Bible and prayer- book; and one very good spinet, to be made by Mr. Plinius, harpsichord maker, in South Audley street, Grosvenor square, with a good assortment of spare strings. Not too much, assuredly, for the little beauty, but not Spartan simplicity nevertheless. Six years later, it is recorded that the Fair Sex, laying aside the fashionable ornaments of England, exulted, with patriotic pride, in appearing dressed with the produce of their own looms.
- 29. CHAPTER XVIII IN AND AROUND FREDERICKSBURG The origin of the names of the estates in the Northern Neck can easily be traced. A few were Indian: Quantico, Occoquan, Monacan, Chappawamsic, Chotank. Many were English: Stratford, Wakefield, Marlboro, Chatham, Gunston Hall, Mount Vernon, Ravensworth, Blenheim, Marmion,—the latter, of course, not named for Scott's fictitious hero (seeing that Sir Walter had not yet been born), but, doubtless, by some emigrant of Lincolnshire descent, in honor of Sir Robert de Marmion, who came over with the Conqueror, and was granted a manor in Lincolnshire. Chantilly was thus named by Richard Henry Lee, after the beautiful chateau and grounds of the Prince Condé, near Paris. Mount Vernon was not too distant to be in Mary Washington's neighborhood. She had but to cross the neck of land to the Potomac, and a pleasant sail would bring her to the little wharf at Mount Vernon—just where we, patriotic pilgrims, so often now land to render our pious homage to the sacred homestead. Within visiting distance of Mount Vernon was the Chippawamsic plantation, at which lived another widow, rich, young, and beautiful, —Ann Mason, the mother of George Mason, the patriot and statesman, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights (the first complete formula of the civil and political rights of man ever promulgated) and author of the Virginia constitution of 1776, the first written constitution of government ever adopted by a free people. No one who studies the peculiar characteristics of Virginians of this period can doubt that both these young widows were sought by many suitors. The zeal with which men made haste to fill the places of departed wives was something marvellous! Samuel Washington
- 30. was married five times, and one instance is recorded of a colonial dame in the best society who had six husbands! The early marriage of widows was the more desirable because of the outlying estates which required management. Martha Custis gave this as excuse for her prompt acceptance of Colonel Washington. But Ann Mason and Mary Washington never married again. Each possessed great executive ability, as well as unusual personal and intellectual gifts. Each elected to devote those gifts to her children. Each was the mother of a great patriot. And it is altogether probable that each one was the devoted friend of the other, and that the close friendship between the two Georges was inherited from their parents. Another Ann Mason left letters and records which give us a hint of the belongings of a Virginia housewife of her day. She enumerates among her daughter's expenses prices paid for shoes with wooden heels, hoop petticoats, and linen. George Mason of Gunston Hall, the greatest, perhaps, of all the statesmen in an age of great statesmen, remembered the furniture of his mother's bedroom. In it was a large chest of drawers—a veritable high-boy![6] Three long drawers at the bottom contained children's garments, in which the children might rummage. Above these and the whole length of the case were the gown-drawer, the cap-drawer, the shirt-drawer, the jacket-drawer; above these a series of drawers always kept locked, containing gauzes, laces, and jewels of value—ten or twelve drawers in all! Then there were two large, deep closets, one on each side of the recess afforded by a spacious stack of chimneys, one for household linen, the other the mistress's closet, which last contained a well-remembered article, a small green horsewhip, so often successfully applied to unruly children that they dubbed it the green Doctor. George Mason remembered other things in connection with this splendid woman. She gathered her children around her knees morning and evening to say their prayers. She was a lovely woman, true to her friends, pious to her Maker, humane, prudent, tender, charming:— Free from her sex's smallest faults, And fair as womankind can be.
- 31. Both these Ann Masons—the wife of the statesman and her mother- in-law—lived and died near Mary Washington's home before 1773. Both were brilliant women, with personal charm and amiable dispositions. Near the Masons, at Marlboro, lived John Mercer, a lawyer of fine talents and attainments, and owner of one of the best private libraries in the colony. Virginia bibliophiles still boast in their collections some of his books containing his heraldic book-plate. There was a George in his family, one year younger than George Washington. Their homes were just sixteen miles apart—a mere nothing of distance, as neighborhoods were reckoned in those days —and both in Overwharton parish. The Mercers were lifelong friends of Mary Washington. General Mercer died in her grandson's arms. Judge James Mercer wrote her will. Then, not far from John Mercer's, lived one of the largest landed proprietors in Stafford, a prominent burgess and planter of his day, Raleigh Travers—of Sir Walter Raleigh's family—and married to Mary Washington's half-sister, Hannah Ball. They were founders of one of Virginia's great families, distinguished in later years for breeding, learning, and eloquence. Two miles from Marlboro lived one of their daughters, Sarah, married to Colonel Peter Daniel, of the Crow's Nest. Then came Boscobel, the residence of Thomas Fitzhugh, the father of a family of interesting young people. Susannah Fitzhugh still smiles to us from these pages in her rich robe over a pearl embroidered skirt and bodice of white satin, with a necklace of pearls festooned over her fair bodice. She was just three years younger than her beautiful cousin Elizabeth, who lived at Belle-Air (her mother was Alice Thornton), and whose portrait, painted by Hesselius, presents the fashionable dress of her day. The gown is of fawn color, square corsage, elbow sleeves with lace ruffles (like Susannah's), the hair carried smoothly back from her brows, piled high over a cushion, and dressed with strings of pearls.
- 32. The Fitzhughs did not quite own the earth in their region,—Lord Fairfax did that,—but they owned a goodly portion of it: Eagle's Nest in Stafford County, Somerset in King George, Boscobel, Belle-Air, and Chatham in Stafford, Ravensworth in Fairfax. At the latter General Custis Lee, an honored descendant of this honored race, sits to-day under the trees his fathers planted. In the Fitzhugh pedigree the Thorntons crop up again and again. One may sink a mine in any Virginia genealogy and he will encounter the names of all these neighbors of Mary Washington. At Salvington lived the Seldens, to whom Mary Washington was bound by ties of close kindred. Mary Ball, daughter of Major James Ball of Bewdley, in whose arms Mary Washington had hastened to place her son George when one month old, had married John Selden. For his second wife he chose her first cousin, Sarah Ball, whose tombstone may be seen to-day in the woods a mile from Lancaster court-house. Later, a Samuel Selden married Mary Thompson Mason (she of the wooden-heeled shoes and hoop petticoat), famous for her beauty, as was her mother before her. The second wife of Samuel Selden was Ann Mercer. Many of the descendants of these women inherited great beauty. Even a little drop of their blood suffices to endow many a Virginia woman of to-day. At Cleve, on the Rappahannock, lived Charles Carter, and thither Light-horse Harry Lee went for his sweet wife Anne. Charles Carter's father, Robert, the mighty man of Lancaster,—King Carter, —died in the year George Washington was born. He had built Christ Church, where Mary Washington was possibly baptized, for her father lived near the church. King Carter owned 300,000 acres of land, 1000 slaves, £10,000 in money. The cattle on a thousand hills were his. He left many children, all of whom he was able to enrich, and many of whom distinguished themselves in things better than riches.
- 33. Light-horse Harry Lee. Cleve, with its octagon front, is still in good preservation, and is a fine example of the early Georgian manor-house, having been built early in the eighteenth century. An excellent portrait of its builder, Charles Carter, looks down to-day upon his descendants who still own and live in the mansion.
- 34. Governor Spotswood. Four miles below Mary Washington's home was Newpost, the ancestral home of John Spotswood, a son of Governor Spotswood. His two sons, Alexander and John, were destined to serve in the Revolutionary War, one as a general, the other a captain, and to mingle the Spotswood with the Washington blood by marriage with one of Mary Washington's granddaughters. They came honestly by their dash and spirit through the Spotswoods. It appears that the Virginia Gazette of 1737 lent its columns to an article against Governor Spotswood, written by a Colonel Edwin Conway, upbraiding the governor for delaying to turn over the arms intended for Brunswick County. The article was entitled, A Hint to
- 35. discover a few of Colonel Spotswood's Proceedings. A few days after its appearance the Gazette printed the following:— An Hint for a Hint Mr. Parks, I have learnt in my Book, so far as to be able to read plain English, when printed in your Papers, and finding in one of them my Papa's name often mentioned by a scolding man called Edwin Conway, I asked my Papa whether he did not design to answer him. But he replied: 'No child, this is a better Contest for you that are a school Boy, for it will not become me to answer every Fool in his Folly, as the lesson you learned the other day of the Lion and the Ass may teach you.' This Hint being given me, I copied out the said Lesson and now send you the same for my answer to Mr. Conway's Hint from Sir, your Humble Servant John Spotswood. Feb. 10. A Lion and an Ass An Ass was so hardy once as to fall a mopping and Braying at a Lion. The Lion began at first to show his Teeth, and to stomach the Affront. But upon second Thoughts, Well, says he, Jeer on and be an Ass still, take notice only by the way that it is the Baseness of your Character that has saved your Carcass. There was a famous beauty in the family of Spotswood who shared, as we shall see hereafter, in the spirit of her race. This was Kate! She wore, on her high days and holidays, fawn-colored satin, looped over a blue satin petticoat, square bodice and elbow sleeves and ruffles; and her feet, which were extremely small and beautifully
- 36. formed, were shod in blue satin shoes, with silver buckles. Age did not wither this haughty beauty. Her granddaughter remembered her as she combed a wealth of silver hair, a servant the while holding before her a mirror. Not far from Pine Grove was Traveller's Rest, the most beautiful and significant of all the ambitious names of stately mansions on the Rappahannock. It should be called, said Byrd Willis, Saint's Rest— for only they ever go there! Traveller's Rest was part of the 200 acres of land on ye freshes of Rappahannock River bequeathed to Mary Ball by her father, Joseph Ball. The family of Gray long lived at Traveller's Rest, and thither in after years, Atcheson Gray brought his child-wife Catherine Willis, the great-granddaughter of Mary Washington. These are only a few of the country gentry among whom Mary Washington lived, and to whom she was related. Time would fail to describe them all—Colonel Thomas Ludwell Lee of Berry Hill; Bellevue and its occupants; the Brent family at Richland, in Stafford County; Belle Plaine, the residence of the Waugh family. All these places were in a space of eight or ten square miles, and from generation to generation the sons looked upon the daughters of their neighbor cousins, and found them fair, until the families were knit together in every conceivable degree of kinship. In the town of Fredericksburg Mary Washington had near relatives and friends. Roger Gregory, the merry-hearted, had married a woman as merry-hearted as himself,—Mildred Washington, George Washington's aunt and godmother. Foremost at the races, and first on all occasions of mirth, was Roger Gregory. It has been said that Augustine Washington was optimistic in his temperament, and, like his sister Mildred, conspicuous for cheerfulness—also that from him Betty Washington and her brothers inherited their love for gay, social life—that Mary Washington was always serious, and in her later years almost tragic. She surely had enough, poor lady, to make her so.
- 37. Roger Gregory had died just before George Washington was born, and his widow married Henry Willis of Willis's Hill, Fredericksburg, afterwards Marye's Heights, where the fierce battle of the Civil War was fought. Mildred's three charming Gregory girls were prominent figures as they trod the streets of old Fredericksburg—the streets named after the Royal Princes—clad in their long cloaks and gypsy bonnets tied under their chins. They were soon absorbed by a trio of Thorntons, and their mother Mildred left alone with her one son, Lewis Willis. Old Henry Willis, his father, had married three times, boasting that he had courted his wives as maids and married them as widows. He was a rich old fellow with a long pedigree and gorgeous coat of arms on his coach panels. Mildred Gregory had wept so bitterly when the death of his first wife was announced to her, that a friend expressed surprise. Mildred Willis, she explained, was my namesake and cousin, and I grieve to lose her. But that is not the worst of it! I am perfectly sure old Henry Willis will soon be coming down to see me—and I don't know what in the world I can do with him! Would it be sinister to suggest that the lady was already won? It appears she knew her man. Had he not been her suitor in her girlhood? His grandson says, In one little month he sat himself at her door and commenced a regular siege: and in less than two months after his wife's death he married her. If the shade of this wife was permitted to be a troubled witness of her recent husband's marriage, she could not complain. She had been herself the widow, Brown, only for one month before she had married Henry Willis. This Colonel Henry Willis was known as The Founder of Fredericksburg. Colonel William Byrd visited him immediately after his marriage with Mildred Gregory, and spoke of him as the top man of the place. Mildred Washington (Widow Gregory) had one son by her marriage with Henry Willis. She named him for her first husband —her first love—Lewis. He was two years younger than his cousin, George Washington. The boys attended the same school, and were companions and playmates. Lewis Willis often spoke of George Washington's industry and assiduity at school as very remarkable.
- 38. While his brother Samuel, Lewis Willis, and the other boys at playtime were at bandy or other games, George was behind a door cyphering. But one day he astonished the school by romping with one of the large girls—a thing so unusual that it excited no little comment among the other lads. Through the Willis family Mary Washington's descendants became allied to the Bonapartes. The second child of Byrd C. Willis (son of Lewis Willis) was Catherine. Her mother was the daughter of George Lewis, Betty Washington's son. Thus Mary Washington was ancestress of Catherine Willis, who at thirteen years of age married, and at fourteen was a widow, having lost also her child. She accompanied her parents to Pensacola, where she married Achille Murat, ex-prince of Naples and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very beautiful—this child—twice married and a mother before she was fifteen. The Murat and Bonaparte families at first opposed the marriage, but all opposition vanished when they learned that she was nearly related to General Washington.
- 39. Prince Murat. It is said that she was well received abroad: In London she stood up for her country and fought its battles in all companies. She was once accompanied by John Randolph of Roanoke and other distinguished personages on a visit to the London art galleries. In one of these the portraits of Washington and Napoleon hung side by side, and Randolph (who was always dramatic), pointing to the pictures, said, Before us we have Napoleon and Washington, one the founder of a mighty Empire, the other of a great Republic. Then turning to Catherine with extended hand, Behold! he exclaimed, in the Princess Murat the niece of both—a distinction which she alone can claim. As the century neared its highest noon Fredericksburg became the home of one and another of the men destined to earn immortal
- 40. fame in the Revolution. James Monroe lived there, whose hand, long since mingled with the dust, has yet the power to stay the advance of nations. Men of wealth secured the pleasant society all around by a residence in the town. As many as ten coaches were wont to drive out in company when the summer exodus to the springs set in. There was a famous tailor in Fredericksburg who made the lace- trimmed garments for these gentry,—William Paul, a Scotchman. Hanging in his shop, was a handsome portrait of my sailor brother John as he explained to his customers. Anon the tailor died, and John came over to administer upon his estate. He found friends— Colonel Willy Jones and Doctor Brooke—who aided him materially in the first years of his life in Fredericksburg. In gratitude to the former he assumed the name of Jones, and the latter he made surgeon of the Bon Homme Richard—for this was John Paul Jones the great, the brilliant naval officer of our Revolution. Congress gave him a commission and a ship, The Alfred, and on board that ship he hoisted before uelphia, with his own hands, the flag of freedom—the first time it was displayed. He claimed and received the first salute the flag of the infant Republic received from a foreign power. He served through the war, and at his death was the senior officer of the United States navy.
- 41. CHAPTER XIX SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS The essential principles in the drama of human life are ever the same although its outward aspect changes with changing circumstances. But in some ages events develop more rapidly than in others under the urgency of peculiar conditions. In colonial Virginia the story was told over and over again before the final fall of the curtain. Scenes shifted with wonderful rapidity. The curtain, in mimic drama, is usually rung down at the church door after the early or late wooing and marriage; but in Virginia in the eighteenth century this was only the first in a drama of five or more acts. The early death of the first bride left a vacancy speedily filled by new and successive unions with new associations and combinations. Five times was not an unusual number for men to remarry. This meant five wooings, five weddings, five infairs, many births (varying in number from one to twenty-six), five funerals,—all to be included in thirty adult years more or less. Then, too, there were five tombstones to be erected and as many epitaphs to be composed— no two of which to be alike. One wife (usually the first) almost exhausts the vocabulary of adoring affection, another's piety is emphasized, another lived peacably with her neighbors; each one was as a wife dutiful. Obedient was a word dear to the colonial husband. We have no authority for supposing that the officiating clergyman at a funeral was ever actually retained for the ensuing nuptials of the bereaved. Initial steps in that direction were never taken in Virginia
- 42. until a husband or wife was well under the sod. Divorce being unknown, unthinkable indeed, husbands and wives were united in bonds indissoluble, until death did them part. But when it did—why, then there was no reasonable cause for delay. It was not at all unusual for the new husband to offer for probate the will of his predecessor. Man in those days did not believe he was made to mourn, at least not for maid or matron, nor that charming women were created to weep in widow's weeds beyond the decent period of two months. The little hands were firmly drawn from their pressure upon the tearful eyes, tucked comfortably under a new, strong arm, and the widow's little baronry stitched to a new sleeve. There were exceptions, of course, but not many. When one of the husbands of Mary Washington's charming nieces (the Gregory girls) lay mortally ill, he looked up with anguish at the lovely young wife bending over him, and implored her to keep herself for him. She readily promised never again to marry, and kept her promise. Another, left a widow, essayed to follow the sublime example of her sister. One of the masterful Thorntons sued for twenty years, but won at last. The statute of limitations in Cupid's court held for twenty years only in colonial Virginia. Writers of the period explain these multiplied marriages by the necessity of a protector for every woman owning land to be cultivated by negro slaves and indented servants, and on the other hand the woful state of a large family of young children left motherless at the mercy of those servants. The new master and the new mother became a necessity. It sometimes happened that the newly contracting parties had already many children from the three or four previous marriages. These must now be brought under one sheltering roof. The little army must be restrained by strict government; hence the necessity for the stern parental discipline of colonial times. It is gratifying, my dear, said an amiable patriarch, to find that your children, my children, and our children can live so peacefully together, nobody knowing so well as the patriarch and the children at what price the peace had been purchased.
- 43. Thus it can be easily seen how maddening an enterprise is the attempt to trace Virginia relationships, and how we so often lose a woman and give her over as dead to find her resurrected under a new name. We once lost Mary Washington's sister Hannah (Ball) Travers. She turned up at last as Mrs. Pearson! To sort and label and classify Virginia cousins means nervous prostration. In the families of Thornton, Carter, and their kin, it means more! Madness lies that way! The spinster of uncertain age, known irreverently as an old maid, was a rare individual in colonial Virginia. We all know Colonel Byrd's Miss Thekky, mourning her virginity. We really cannot name another. When a good man, addressing himself to the compilation of family records for his children, was constrained to admit that one was unmarried, he made haste to declare that she lived single by her own choice. Colonel Byrd Willis says of his daughter Mary, She is unmarried—but by her own choice. It will be a fine fellow who can tempt her to leave her home. She has not seen him yet! He goes on to enumerate her social triumphs. There had been a Bouquet Ball, of which a certain commodore was made king. He chose Miss Mary Willis, and bestowed upon her the bouquet. A foot-note informs us that she isn't single any more! She has married the commodore!
- 44. Colonel Byrd. Stern as was the parental discipline of the time, the spirit of the young men, who were accounted grown and marriageable at nineteen, was in no wise broken or quenched. Many of them ran away from their masters at the schools in England and Scotland, and their fathers' agents had much ado to find and capture them again. The sons of John Spotswood were lost in England for many months, but were back home again in time to be gallant officers in the Revolution. And even the conservative blood of the Washingtons was not strong enough to temper that of the Willises, for Mildred Washington's grandson Jack Willis ran away from school and
- 45. joined a party to explore the wilderness of Kentucky. They were attacked by Indians, and were scattered; Jack escaped in a canoe, and was the first white man to descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His father had sewed some doubloons in his jacket, but he gave them to a man in New Orleans to purchase clothing and food, and never again beheld his agent or the doubloons or their equivalent. He worked his way in a sailing vessel to New York, and walked from New York to his home in Virginia, arriving, like the Spotswood boys, just in time to enter the army with his father and serve to its close. He was a son of Lewis Willis, Washington's schoolmate. About 1740 the importation of horses of the English racing stock commenced, also the breeding of horses for racing. Between 1740 and 1775 are recorded the names of fifty imported horses and thirty mares of note: Aristotle, Babraham, Bolton, Childers, Dabster, Dottrell, Dimple, Fearnaught, Jolly Roger, Juniper, Justice, Merry Tom, Sober John, Vampire, Whittington, Janus, Sterling, Valiant, etc. Owners of these horses among Mary Washington's neighbors were Roger Gregory, Colonel John Mercer of Marlboro, Mr. Spotswood, William Fitzhugh of Chatham, all the Thorntons, and later Colonel George Washington of Mount Vernon, who was a steward of the Alexandria Jockey Club and ran his own horses there and at Annapolis! There was a fine race-course at Fredericksburg, and purses were won from ten to a hundred pounds. This, the prime amusement in spring, summer, and autumn, was varied (alas!) by cock-fights, wrestling-matches, and rough games, in which the common people, as in England, participated, while the gentry looked on and awarded prizes. But in the long winter evenings, neighbors gathered for Christmas and other house-parties, indulged in the gentle art of story-telling. Later, old Fredericksburg boasted a notable, peerless raconteur, John Minor, but his stories were built upon Virginia's legends; his home, Hazel Hill, was the rendezvous of all the neighbors, young and old, in quest of sympathy or counsel, or advice in the honorable settlement of quarrels, or for a season of genial companionship. Around the fireside at Hazel Hill the children
- 46. would gather for their own story-telling hour between daylight and dark, and there the immortal B'rer Rabbit appears, but not for the first time, in the annals of colonial history, and her Serene Highness, the Tar Baby, held her nightly court. Around the winter fireside in the old colonial houses, the children, and their seniors as well, learned the folk-lore of their native colony, for, young as was the new country, Virginia had already her legends: the mystic light on the lake in the Dismal Swamp, where the lost lovers paddled their ghostly canoe; the footprints of the Great Spirit on the rocks near Richmond; the story of Maiden's Adventure on the James River; the story of the Haunted House—the untenanted mansion at Church Hill—untenanted for eight decades because the unhappy spirit of a maiden tapped with her fan on the doors where wedded couples slept, invoking curses upon love that had failed her; of sweet Evelyn Byrd, who rested not under her monument at Westover, but glided among the roses, wringing her hands in hopeless grief for the loss of a mortal's love; and of the legend of the wonderful curative spring just discovered in Greenbrier County (learned from an old Indian of the tribe of the Shawnees)—how one of the great braves had once been missed from the council-fires and been found in a valley, weak and supine, binding the brows of an Indian maid with ferns and flowers; how two arrows had sped by order of the Great Spirit, one destined for the man, one for the maid; how the recreant warrior had been slain by the one, but the other arrow had buried itself in the earth and when withdrawn a great, white sulphur spring had gushed forth; how the maiden was doomed to wander as long as the stream flowed, and not until it ceased could her spirit be reunited to that of her lover in the happy hunting-grounds; also how the body of the slain warrior was laid towards the setting sun, and the form of the sleeping giant might be clearly discerned despite the trees that grew over it.
- 47. WESTOVER. And one more Indian legend is so charming that we may be forgiven for perpetuating it on these pages, remembering that these are genuine Indian legends which have never before been printed. This last was the story of the Mocking-bird. How once long ago there were no wars or fightings, or tomahawks or scalpings among the Indians. They were at perfect peace under the smile of the Great Spirit. And in this beautiful time those who watched at night could hear a strange, sweet song sweeping over the hills and filling the valleys, now swelling, now dying away to come again. This was the music of all things; moon, stars, tides, and winds, moving in harmony. But at last Okee, the Evil One, stirred the heart of the red man against his brother, and the nations arrayed themselves in battle. From that moment the song was heard no more. The Great
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