The riches of Richmond

I don’t want to leave Richmond. It has been a wonderful interlude here.

There is so much of interest in this town. We could do with a few more days. But, even on a six-month road trip, we have a schedule to follow.

I am in love with the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It upgraded us to the dreamiest suite on the tenth floor where not only have we had the luxury of spreading out in a way road trippers come to crave after a few months, but also it gives us a 180-degree view of the city. We’re at the pointy end of the hotel. The windows meet in a sharp V. We look across to the James River on one side, down to the old Tredegar Ironworks and

museum and even the great big Federal Reserve Bank. By night the view turns to lively walls of bright lights.

We see bridges and roads and also a city park which is undergoing renovations. We watch the work on the park site with fascination, using our binoculars to see the tree plantings etc. I am addicted to this project and am frustrated we will not see it completed. Similarly, on another side there is a building being demolished by one of those great big balls. Whamp! This also is fascinating to watch.

Coming down. Going up.

It’s the living theatre of a changing city.

We have slipped into a pattern of life in the Crowne, now friendly with many of the staff, loving the lilt of their southern accents. They are outgoing, interested, and interesting. They give us tips on favourite places to visit and tell us things we want to know about the area. The head doorman, a very tall, lean and imposing elderly African American man with a resonant actor’s voice and a powerful Virginian accent, fills us in on the changes in the state’s tobacco history. Virginia's tobacco farming had been his family background. Generations have worked on and loved the industry which had a particular rural rhythm and lifestyle.

But, as we have noted in our drives through the countryside, it has gone. His family has dispersed to other jobs. There are still a few tobacco farms around, he says. We may still see some in Tennessee or Kentucky. But no longer in Virginia, home of the sweetest and most famous tobacco of them all.

The Crowne breakfasts have been divine. Southern yummies - grits and gravy, that incomparable slim and crispy American bacon, biscuits (which are scones), and eggs cooked however you like them by a big, beaming African American chef. Moderation is a challenge. I swim and do my aqua guiltily in

the pool after these breakfasts before we have our adventure for the day.

On one hot day, we take a trolly tour of the city, a very comfortable way to get a big picture of a place with expert commentary. We score that in spades with Melissa as the guide and Rosco as the driver.

Melissa never seems to draw breath. She’s a torrent of knowledge. We see historic buildings and new.

We get fashionably angry with the famous medical school in witnessing its insensitivity in crowding out and spoiling the views of some of the city’s most precious heritage buildings.

We see murals, murals and more murals. Lavish street art covers acres of walls.

We see the elite mansions' district of the city; how the Richmond

zillionaires live. Gothic castles, no less.

We see Monument Avenue with its lofty stone dignitaries, including a statue of Arthur Ashe, a distant relative of Bruce’s it turns out.

We see Richmond’s canal, the famous Shockoe district and Carey Street, and Church Hill.

We are to become a bit familiar with

Carey Street. It is a cobblestone treasure of a street. It is there that we run into the colourful performance artist Elie Elis and her even more colourful poodles. She colours them purple to make people happy and so help world peace. As you do. She leaps into conversation while her garish poodles stand by, tails down, looking decidedly embarrassed.

Oh, she has great projects to save the world. Painted poodles is just one of them.

She proffers her card so that I may have the pleasure of exploring her art which, later, I do. Hmm.

It is in Carey Street where we eat fabulous

meals. Richmond is a foodie city.

First up we dine at Sam’s Grill where the crab soup is one of the most heavenly things we have ever tasted.

Then we try the famous old Tobacco House which is obviously where the swanky Richmonders go.

It is all polished wood with a 3-storey atrium around which the restaurant is set on handsome balconies.It has panelled private rooms. It has tobacco advertising mirrors on the ancient brick walls and a classic old lift taking elderly diners up and down. It has deeply respectful, formally dressed wait staff and to top it all off, the food is

gorgeous.

It is in Carey Street that we set out on our Trolley Tour and where, while waiting for the trolley, we meet a delicious African American woman called Jessie. She is watering verge plots and flower boxes when we fall into conversation. We have plopped down on a shady street bench to watch the world go by on this hot day. As a retired teacher, Jessie is

caretaker for a series of buildings three days a week. The owner, an old friend, offered her the job before she retired. Give me a few weeks to be retired before I start, she told him. Two days into retirement, I rang him up and said I will start yesterday, she laughs. I love to be busy.

She tells us about life in Shockoe Bottom, about the jazz festival, the hip hop festival, the restaurants, and the businesses. Such are the encounters which add depth to the travel experience and embed added warmth to a place. Here they underscore the reputation of The South for its friendliness and hospitality.

We venture far from the prettiness of Carey Street one night to dine at what is touted as

among the tippy top restaurants in Richmond - the Roosevelt in Church Hill. It’s an interesting area, named for St John’s Church, the oldest church in Richmond, in which Patrick Henry gave his famous “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech in 1775.

When we try to book we are told the only time slot is 5:15 PM which is a bit early for dinner but, well, this is special. We adjust our food

consumption for the day to be ready for an early meal. The restaurant is in a pretty weird, mixed suburb. Richmond is a city of extremes. One minute we are looking at absurdly sumptuous squillionaire mansions. The next we are in the midst of dilapidated houses crumbling with neglect, people hanging around on the streets, fiddling with broken cars… These streets are a bit scary. One does not hang around.

But gentrification rules these days and this restaurant is on the edge of such a suburb. There is a quality of quaint to the surrounding houses, downmarket but not destitute. Their house paint is ok. The inhabitants seem to be mainly white. The restaurant is an older corner shop. We arrive at five and the bar is hopping already. It’s fashionably rustic. We are seated at a narrow table for two and order drinks. I order one of the house special cocktails, the Jackaloupe which purports to be a cantaloupe and lavender concoction with applejack and bitters. It comes with a massive cube of ice. I can’t taste either cantaloupe or lavender. Just applejack and maybe soda. The mussels

steamed with ginger are divine, though. The glamorous scallops main is okay. But the piece de resistance is, and I’m now stuck in a zone of calorific remorse, a foie gras pound cake with berries and gelato. I had to try it. The very idea of a foie gras dessert tickled my curiosity. It seems they replace some of the butter in the pound cake with foie gras. Who on earth thought of that? Do you know, it was just gorgeous. Only the faintest hint of liver. But another sort of wicked richness. Why did I forget to photograph it?

There are lots of things to like about Richmond, apart from the food and history.

I never do get into its retail area. Bruce is a devoted anti-shopper and streets of interesting boutiques and gift stores are his idea of hell.

But we do go to the cemetery.

It is called the Hollywood Cemetery, not because of any association with movie stars but because of the holly tree and its wood.

It is a rhapsodically beautiful place.

Immense.

One must drive, curving around meandering roads which wind up and down hill slopes and along the bank of the James River. The trees are glorious: blooming crepe myrtles, huge old maples, oaks and elms.

Graves and crypts, flagpoles and memorials pepper the slopes as grey sculptural shapes.

They are very old, many of them. And departed figures of the American Civil War predominate along with the old gentry of Richmond.

Hollywood brags several US Presidents - James Monroe and John Tyler. And, to Bruce’s immense excitement, the great Confederate States’ President, Jefferson Davis. He was the South’s counterpart to

Abraham Lincoln. After the South lost the war. he was jailed for treason, even kept in shackles for a two years but in the end he was to be known as “the hero of the lost cause”.

There are myriad Confederate generals and notables buried here. Unnotables, too. And there are US congressmen, Pulitzer prize winners, judges, diplomats and governors.

And there is a little girl. A toddler.

No one is quite sure of her name. Maybe Bernadine Rees.

She was not yet three when she succumbed to disease, maybe scarlet fever, in 1862.

What everyone does know is that she has a guardian standing over her grave, a life-sized Newfoundland dog. He’s known as Iron Dog.

The story goes that Iron Dog’s owner put him there because the little girl so liked to pat him.

He is splendid.

He has a serene, eternal expression.

He guards the tiny grave whereon people pop small gifts, little toys and candies, and things a toddler may like. Touched by the spirit of it all, I leave a little koala.

Hollywood is one of the world’s magnificent cemeteries along with Paris’ Pere Lachaise and Savannah’s St. Bonaventure. It is a glorious park of ghostly grandeur and a pride of Richmond.

There are things we have not managed to do. So many museums. The Edgar Allen Poe House. He’s believed to be a distant relative of mine. I would have liked to pop in. We do not manage the art gallery either with its great collection of Faberge eggs. But that’s alright. I saw them last time.

We have done all we can fit in and it is time to move on.

And so, with mixed emotions we pack the Rogue once again and return to the open road and our next adventure.

Oh, that heartrending American Civil War.

And here we are, in the heart of Civil War territory.

Staying in the gorgeous Crowne Plaza Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, we can look out the windows to one of the great transportation corridors of the War, the James River.

It is the most exquisite, rocky and interesting river running through lovely Richmond. It has little islands and many rocks and its has rushing rapids and calm fishing spots. But here near downtown Richmond, it is not navigable. Further down, it enabled the Union army to move men and war material to places near Richmond throughout the war. I have been learning steadily about this great and terrible American war when the country was divided between north and south, Union and Confederate. Fellow countrymen slaughtered each other in the most vicious and systematic way in the favour of or opposed to slavery while the Confederate South sought recognition of its independence by Britain and France.

There is immense scholarship on this subject. Fortunately for me, Bruce is a respected expert and is my guide and we have been exploring and re-exploring some of the significant sites of the war. Richmond is one of the important places - and this lovely James river below us.

Great stonework stumps of old bridges jut out of the water in places, relics of the war.

And, right out the window we can see the Tredegar Iron Works where munitions for the South were manufactured throughout the war. It is now a Civil War museum and, despite the heat which in itself could probably melt the odd bit of iron, we walk down to visit and to learn.

The setting now is serene and lovely. The old canal area has been restored providing a scenic walk beside its shallow brown waters which dart with little fish. There’s a grassy island park where Richmonders play and have festivals. Beside the river, here are kayak rentals and, on little sandy river strands, children are playing. A couple of fisherman are perched on rocks. Approaching the museum entrance, a gaggle of young people are intently looking at their phones. Ah. Pokemon. What a strangely pervasive cult this has become.

The museum is really quiet. Apart from the Park Rangers who run it, there is only one other person. It is free admission. We are welcomed and advised to head for the top floor to see the videos.

We sit in a broad, dark corridor in front of a long wall where images are illuminated one at a time according to a string of narratives. A child’s voice tells of how the war impacted play and family. A woman tells of nursing the wounded and dying. Another woman tells of the excitement of battles around the town, of how the fire and fury of the distant conflicts looked like fireworks. Another tells of fire itself which was to consume much of Richmond toward the end of the conflict.

It is a compelling exhibit.

We walk through the big, airy showcases of Civil War relics - uniforms, doctors’s kits, canteens, muskets, and journals. The United States Colored Troops are honoured - a strong force by all accounts. There are mannequins wearing Richmond ladies’ fashions of the day, too. It is a rounded picture. Then we take our places in the screening room for a superb documentary on the unfolding of the war. Of course it brings me to tears.

We are sitting right in the Patterns building of Tredegar, right where the moulds for the weapons were made. Downstairs we see the huge cannons which horses towed across the country. We see the different ammunition they fired, so very, very cruel, able to mow down lines of men in one great boom.

This was a very close-fought war. It was largely fought on foot.

There are maps which show have much of the country the boys traversed. Incredible distances, marching to the beat of the drum, moving in vast numbers as pawns in a lethal game of strategy directed by the famous Civil War generals, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, Jubal Early, Ambrose Burnside, James Longstreet, A. P. Hill.

Those southern boys had the longest treks, on occasions short of food, barefooted, and in extreme haste. We already had visited the famous Maryland site of Antietam where 23,000 young American men were casualties in just twelve hours of fighting. Incredible September 17, 1862. The bloodiest day in American history.

It is a beautiful place. Lush undulating Maryland countryside. There’s a sophisticated Visitor Center and we pile in to see a documentary. The rangers are uncharacteristically lackadaisical and they don’t tell us about a guide speaking on the conflict right in front of the windows which show the battlefields and farmhouses of Antietam. We catch the tail end by luck. Stories of the suffering of the local farm families as well as the soldiers.

We go out and gaze upon the neatly-mown fields and the crisp, white farm houses. It is a deceptively lyrical pastoral scene. Mind’s eye conjures up the bloody clamour of battle. Oh, my. It is so hot.

We take the car and drive the well-marked route, down lines of monuments, seeing stone generals gazing into infinity across the fields.

There were encampments here, advances there, generals moving their pawns across the board, messengers riding between the troops and the generals, messengers relaying orders, bringing news of enemy movements.

Corn is still grown as it was then. Confederate boys approached stealthily through a tall cornfield to surprise their enemy. But, caught in the sunlight, their bayonets glinted above the corn. They were spotted. They were mown down along with the corn by quickly deployed artillery firing canister.

Battles raged all over the landscape. In the woods, around the creek, in

the fields and rises, around the farms. Thousands upon thousands of men. They killed with cannons or their bare hands. Knives and bayonets were used in hand-to-hand fighting as well as the rows of muskets. Thousands. They died in incomprehensible thousands. Some so young. Tired and hungry and afraid. How many called for their mothers?

We go to the saddest place of them all.

Sunken Road. The Bloody Lane.

Here, a clever strategy backfired and the boys seemingly hidden in this sunken road died one atop the other, in layers. They were slaughtered like sheep in a sheep pen.

Today the trench is well-mown and well-trodden. There’s a big, solid memorial.

It seems so serene. The air is so fresh and sweet-smelling. Birds. Crickets.

And yet...

The boys were just mown down.

McClellan was the Union General. Lee the Confederate. Burnside also of the Union. We see Burnside’s Bridge, a stronghold attempting to hold the North at bay. Beside it stands an old sycamore tree which is the only living witness to that conflict. I had taken note of its existence at the Antietam documentary and was keen to find it. It seemed very special to me. The Antietam rangers were not a bit helpful. Odd. One man ringed a spot on the map but that ring turned out to be the whole bridge area. It was a really hot day and already we had hoofed around battle field sites. No tree bore any historic marker.

We looked at possible elderly trees all around and were feeling hot and frustrated. So I asked dear Dr Google who informed me it was right beside Burnside’s Bridge. And there it was, a big old raggedy thing. The bridge is undergoing renovations. We gaze down upon it from a viewing area above, wilting somewhat in the heat. It was not this hot on the day they fought here; one mercy, if one could call anything a mercy in that terrible war.

There was Lincoln back in Washington, appalled at what was going on, seeking only peace and resolution.

But the war had to play out. He sent directives. For the most part, his generals did as he bade, but much to the President’s disappointment, McClellan moved so slowly and cautiously.

Here in Virginia, we move around forever in the spell of that war. There are so many scenes of conflict. It is hard to comprehend the scale, especially considering that everything was done on foot, except for the transport of supplies which was sometimes done by train or river, but more often by horse and cart. Those hundreds of thousands of soldiers and the many animals needed a lot of food and water. They did not always have it, especially the Confederates. They often were hungry. Sometimes bare-footed.

We pass Sailors’ Creek, another terrible war site. We are en route to Appomattox following the line of retreat of Lee from Richmond. Here in April, 1865, Robert E. Lee with his brave and exhausted army of Northern Virginia, was finally to surrender to General Grant with his by then larger and better equipped Army of the Potomac.

Lee had been outmanoeuvred. Weather and luck were against him. His supply train was intercepted. His boys were starving. Paths of retreat were blocked.

As we arrive at Appomattox, a Park Ranger is beginning a guided tour. We latch on with alacrity. What luck. This man, Albert, is one of this world’s great story-tellers. We sit under a shady tree as he begins the description, pointing to this grove of trees here where battalions camped and this rise in the land where soldiers were masked from view.

He paints pictures of the protagonists,

of Lee and Grant, and of the troops converging from here and there. Of the weather and the clothes and the cannons and the trains.

He colours that last day with thumbnail accounts of of individual soldiers - the one who came from Appomattox and did not have far to go home, the one who had fought the entirety of the war only to die on the last day here. His descriptions are so vivid that tears well in my eyes.

He describes the desperation as circumstances closed on the Confederates and how an end to fighting was called as messages were carried to and fro between Lee and Grant.

The Generals met in the house of Wilmer

McLean adjacent to the Appomattox Court House.

Lee was a handsome man. I have seen so many images of him in my time in the South. He is still considered a hero for, indeed, he was a particularly brilliant and gracious man by all accounts. And he dressed in a new uniform for his surrender, giving this sad piece of history all the dignity he could afford it. Grant, on the other hand, had

quickly ridden miles over muddy spring roads to attend the ceremony, and arrived with his boots and field uniform splattered with mud.

After the signing, Grant ordered his Union boys to create a guard of honour and for the rest of that long, sad day, the Confederate units, one after another, filed down that guard of honour.

Union men shared rations with the starving Confederates.

We stand with our ranger on that path where the soldiers stood. A few unexpected drops of rain fall like a teardrops.

Lee sought that his boys did not disperse in humiliated defeat but that their travels and travails be respected. He organised that certificates be printed for those boys retreating to the south. They were entitled to free travel where possible. A printing press procured by Grant churned out thousands of these papers.

And it was over.

But never forgotten. It was a turning point in American history and in the country’s sense of identity. It was to spell an end to that shame of slavery.

Lincoln, who long had yearned for this outcome and had preached grace and civility to all his generals, was to be assassinated only two weeks later.

Everyone still mourns him and wonders how much better things might have been had he lived.

Tears for Abraham Lincoln

But, how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?

Suddenly that is simply not funny. Not when one is at Ford's Theatre.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is one of those vile tragedies which galls people today almost as much as it appalled them 151 years ago.

Today the place where he was killed having a nice night out with his wife, a civilized evening of good theatre, is a strange Washington shrine.

It was in the Ford's Theatre that actor John Wilkes Booth did the heinous act on April 14, 1865. Oh, what a piece of hideous theatre did he perform.

Lincoln, a cultured man for whom theatre was one of life’s joys, was escaping from the immense stress which the American Civil War had placed upon him.

He had done his best to give guidance and support to a conflict which clearly caused him pain - a battle between fellow countrymen over not just constitutional imperative but the institution of slavery. There is a lot of complex politics betwixt and between the drivers of this most awful of all wars and I am not the person to articulate them all in the space of a mere travel blog. Historians and a vast realm of Civil War experts have analysed and documented this context for the past 150 years. There are enough books on the Civil War to fill a library. All I have to add, in the great scheme of things, is my tears. All wars are unconscionable. This most heartbreakingly so.

However, there were heroes in this war and above all, there was Abraham Lincoln and his clear-eyed view of how things should be. So, as this awful war rode into its fourth year of bloodshed and privation, seeing the writing on the wall and having the opposing generals in his purview, he was to recommend that the end, when it came, be dignified.

This he decreed just two weeks before his death, as the war was approaching its end. He barely survived the formal end of the war.

The South was still swarming with raggle taggle soldiers finding their way home.

The Ford Theatre is not prepossessing from the outside. It is pretty bland. The historic entrance is extremely understated.

And we can’t see inside the auditorium on the steamy, hot day we visit because it is still a working theatre and a new production is in rehearsal.

We are directed downstairs to the museum

which tells the story of Lincoln and his assassination.

But first we must have tickets to gain access.

The tickets are free but you have to have one.

The museum is run by America’s National Park Service and so, oddly, it is manned by rangers.

This is a superbly designed narrative museum.

The stories of the conspirators are clearly told and compartmentalised but linked together as one moves around.

The lighting is masterful, some of it atmospheric, some aesthetic and come conservationist. There are life-sized models of the people of the day so one can put oneself among them, or away from them as the sentiment dictates.

The profile of Lincoln is clearly presented. Even the play he was attending, Our American Cousin.

And, oh my heavens, there is the gun which killed him. Just sitting there behind a piece of glass. The actual gun. It seems so small.

And, oh, there in that dark display case are the very clothes he was wearing.

And a blood stained pillow.

I did not expect to see this.

It is desperately immediate. Intimate.

Here too are Mrs Lincoln’s opera glasses and the bunting which draped the Lincolns’ box in the theatre. There is the rip in the bunting where the athletic Booth caught his spur while leaping down to the stage, causing him to fall badly and break his leg.

And here is Arthur Doyle, a park ranger guide who is one of the world’s great experts in this tragedy. He answers our questions and adds immense depth to the story.

They carried Lincoln across the road for treatment.

Our free tickets also include admission to this place.

We trot over the road into the Peterson House where, amid all the drama and panic of the day, the paralysed president was laid upon the bed in a back bedroom.

But Lincoln had been shot in the back of the head.

He could not be saved.

The house has never been the same. It is another shrine, another museum run by the National Park Service and it, too,

has well-informed rangers giving life and colour to the history.

We encounter a particularly vivid story-teller, a park ranger with theatrical flair. He regales us with tales of the terrible fates of all those involved. Booth had a Dr. Mudd set his leg and went on the run but was shot a week or so later. Everyone touched by the assassination seemed to go mad or come to some awful end according to the ranger.

The Peterson house has three floors and we toddle around all of them looking at yet more well-presented documentation and exhibits.

Perhaps the most spectacular display is the most current. It grows pretty much by the day.

In the Peterson house they have arrayed it as a massive spiral rising over all three floors; all of the books written about Abraham Lincoln. Thousands of them. Towering metres of them. The New York Times estimated 15,000 books to have been written about the 16th President. And the output shows no sign of stopping.

Mt Rushmore, the mighty

Nothing prepares one for Mt Rushmore.

Not all the photos or documentaries. Not even North By Northwest with Cary Grant dangling from Washington’s nose.

It is a stunning rock formation which seems to glow with the finesse of the faces looking down from it.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Grand, wise, good faces. Huge. High and huge. Sixty feet high. Noses 20 ft long. Eyes 11 feet wide.

Beneath the sculptures the rubble waste cascades down the hillside like an avalanche. Rocks were not just jackhammered to make these images;

they were dynamited. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, even blasted one completed face off of the cliff - because it did not meet his aims. The project involved some 400 workers and took from 1927 - 1941.

It towers there in a magnificent landscape. Other peaks have similar boulder formations and one can imagine how they could inspire an artist to create a major work.

As we stand and gaze, clouds move across the sky and we see the sculptures in changing light. The clouds bring a different and even sharper perspective.

Oh, they are mighty.

They are serene as they gaze out across the

mountain landscape to infinity.

They imbue the world beneath with a sense of its smallness.

Of course, the sculptures have created a bit of a tourism industry.

A grand avenue has been erected where people can walk to a viewing area. It has been constructed of granite and marble and given an arch and an honour guard of the flags of all the United States of America. This gives an added sense of respect and gravitas.

Its grandeur hints a little at great

archeological sites like Ephesus and Olympia.

Of course it swarms with visitors, most of them Americans exploring their own land with curiosity and pride.

There are official information centres and souvenir shops up there, too.

But down the mountain, the real tourism industry has made its merry explosions.

There are two whole villages of ticky-tacky shops, cafes, and bars. They are set out rather as one would find in a wild west movie set.

Since there are only so many Mt Rushmore souvenirs people can buy, the shops sell souvenirs of almost everything. There’s even a

Christmas Tree shop tucked in there selling Chrissy kitsch.

There’s an old period hotel and lots more recent accommodation. There are rides and activities for the kiddies.

There are serious cultural museums, waxworks, wood sculpture yards, gold panning….something for everyone. This is America, after all.

I love it all.

Except, perhaps, for the religious exploitation which takes us rather by surprise.

At the memorial there is an evangelical pod set up on the grand avenue beneath the sculptures. A grey-haired man in a dark suit sits under an umbrella amid acolytes and promotional paraphernalia suggesting that the Bible could tell us something about all this. Bruce is unusually irritated by the bad taste of this display in this place which is about nation, art, and human endeavour.

He actually pauses and gives the missionary some feedback. “Mt Rushmore is not the place to be advertising your religion. I’m of a mind to open an atheist stand right opposite you to tell people my view,” he declares. The missionary does not respond.

Worse was to come when we spied a huge sign carved out on a large wall beneath a large development just down the valley. It was a URL, “whatisthis4.com". Bruce looked it up. Oh, no. A massive missionary centre devoted to sending people en masse out to shine their light to people of other faiths? What the?

In the shadow of those wise old men of American history, those men who believed in secular government, education, and progress?

Extraordinary arrogance.