[Illustration 5: _ANTONY VAN CORLEAR, TRUMPETER. After the painting by F. D. Millet. "It was a moving sight to see the buxom lasses, how they hung about the doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly rosy-faced, lusty bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desparate rogue among women. Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away; for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add, that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the city."_]
Moreover, there was now entering into Virginia conditions a sort of feudality, less in theory than in fact. There was much to recall the life of the old feudal baron. There was the same dependence upon the household for the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life; in the families of the great planters, such as Colonel Byrd of Westover, --whose daughter, Evelyn Byrd, was the pearl of Virginia ladies in her day, but died of a broken heart before she had grown past her first maturity,--there was manufacture of the raw materials into the finished product, under the eye of the mistress of the house. Slavery had by this time become an established feature of Virginia society, and it was at its best in results. The slaves answered in conditions to the feudal servitors; they were retainers in a way, and they were also the workmen of the home. They made shoes and rough clothing, and they performed all the household tasks which were not strictly within the province of the chatelaine. The field hands raised tobacco; and it was with this commodity that the planter bought the silks and laces which clothed his wife and daughters when they appeared _en grande tenue_. But, though thus the lady of the manor had her duties in the training of her household servants, in the supervision of the household tasks, and in the provision of certain cates and other dainties which were to be made by no hands but hers, her general duty, that which occupied more of her time and thought than any other, was to be effective and satisfactory as a hostess.