In the 18th century, as more of colonists acquired wealth and articulated more clearly the values upon which they
would base their society, Virginians aspired to create a regional community that rivaled their European models in civility
and genteel living. Their vehicle would be the pastoral ideal, which was being celebrated by writers and artists in Augustan
England. Although in the late 17th century the absence in Virginia of an urban society, and the multifaceted economy that
would have developed with it, were seen as cause for embarrassment, a new sensibility was beginning to take shape. In
the face of the obvious superiority and complexity of the metropolitan culture of England, Virginians accepted the reality
of their rural settlement. Boasting that they could "sit safely" under their own "Vines and fig trees," they extolled the virtues
of the idyllic pastoral life. The colony's society, economy, and even its settlement patterns, were reimagined as expressions
of the European pastoral ideal.
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William Byrd II
Attributed to Hans Hysing
c. 1724
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
William Byrd II embodied Virginia's newly conceived landed gentry. After spending sizeable periods of his
life in England, where his strong ambition carried him into the highest circles of London society and gained him
friends among the nobility, the theater set, and the circle of Alexander Pope, Byrd returned to Westover, his
Virginia estate, and in correspondence often took the position that the colony was an arcadia reincarnate. He
tried to convince his friends and acquaintances, and quite possibly himself, that life in Virginia was as good as
in Great Britain. He wrote famously to the earl of Orrery, "Like one of the patriarchs, I have my flocks and
my herds," and that "we sit securely under our vines, and our fig trees." Although he would at times express
some dissatisfaction, toward the end of his life Byrd may well have believed that the tranquility of the pastoral
life in Virginia was superior to the often wicked society of London that he described in his diaries. In Westover
he provided a prototype to which all who had dreams of recreating the European pastoral ideal in Virginia
could aspire.
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Elusive Virtue
The pastoral ideal gave colonial planters the means to philosophically transform their backwater, rural seats into
idyllic, agrarian retreats, where the quest for wealth could continue, but in the more agreeable service of the pursuit of
contentment and virtue. For most, however, this would be impossible, a dream barred from its fruition by what they
saw as unfair taxation, by the depletion of the land due to negligent tobacco culture, and by the moral burdens of
slavery, without which plantations were unsustainable.
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Robert Carter III
Thomas Hudson
1753
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
The lives of three of the scions of the great Virginia families attest to the difficulties of achieving or maintaining
a virtuous life. William Byrd III committed suicide. The obituary of Ferdinando Fairfax states that "more money
escaped from him than from any other man." Robert Carter III, the wealthy, powerful namesake of the great
"King" Carter, also found difficult the search for identity in Virginia. This young man, who is shown here
dressed for a masquerade ball in London, holds a mask in his right hand as if he had just removed it. In
fact, this "unmasking" reveals a more subtle mask beneath.
In 1772 Carter abruptly retired from Williamsburg to his plantation, Nomini Hall, on the Potomac River. In time
he repudiated the major institutions of colonial gentry society: he abandoned politics, he gave up life as a planter,
and he deserted the Anglican Church, becoming a Baptist in 1778. Carter was ambivalent about many aspects
of Virginia life, including slavery, at times defending it and at others calling it a depravity; he eventually freed
his nearly 500 slaves. In the end, he escaped rural Virginia for residence in the city of Baltimore, the family
home of his wife, Frances Ann Tasker. There he became a Swedenborgian disciple.
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Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on His Continuing to Be a Proprietor of Slaves
Edward Rushton
Liverpool, 1797
Virginia Historical Society
The irony that the world's greatest liberator and the leader of a free nation was himself a slaveholder was not
lost on some European observers. This booklet was published by an English poet who once had participated in
the slave trade himself. He addressed his remarks to "a man who, notwithstanding his hatred of oppression and
his ardent love of liberty, holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow beings in a state of abject bondage." Rushton
predicted that "Ages to come will read with 'astonishment'" that Washington remained a slaveholder.
George Washington pondered the moral and economic effects of slavery throughout his adult life, even as he
vigorously pursued his own incarnation of the pastoral ideal. Although he was often troubled about this institution,
he was not able to find a way to end slavery at Mount Vernon during his lifetime and sustain the lifestyle he desired.
In his will he provided, at his wife Martha's death, for the liberation and care of the slaves over whom he had
control, which would not have included the "dower slaves" that came to him at his marriage.
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Slavery, which was the greatest of the obstacles to the achievement of virtue in the colony, had freed the leaders of
Virginia society from toiling away as active farmers. It positioned them to read and theorize, in the manner of the ancients
and their European disciples, about matters of state. Thus, such prominent Virginians as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
and George Mason were able to answer the colony's British critics by creating, at least on paper, a more perfect, more
enlightened system of government than that known in the mother country. Even these leaders, however, were befuddled
by the ever-deteriorating state of agriculture in Virginia and frustrated in their attempts to end slavery.
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Notes on the State of Virginia
Thomas Jefferson
London, 1787
Virginia Historical Society
Some of Jefferson's well-known comments about slavery appear in this volume: "There must doubtless be
an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us." After
pointing out that slavery is pernicious for the slave, for the master, who has difficulty "restraining the intemperance
of passion toward his slave," and for the master's children, who will copy what they learn from observing the
exchanges between master and slave and thereby perpetuate the problem, Jefferson famously looks ahead to
what could be the fate of the new nation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that
his justice cannot sleep forever. . . ." Jefferson's hope in Notes for a "total emancipation . . . with the consent
of the masters" would never come to pass.
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Introduction
I. Origins of the Pastoral
II. Pursuit of Gentility
III. Decline and Resistance
IV. Resurgence of the Old Order
V. Triumph of the Colonial Past
Exhibit Catalog
Acknowledgements
Comments
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Rights and reproductions
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