The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I | Page 4

on the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes; her mother was Esther Barclay, a member of a family which
gave the name of Barclaysville to a small town half way between
Raleigh and Fayetteville, North Carolina. It is a member of this tribe to
whom Page once referred as the "vigorous Barclay who held her
receptions to notable men in her bedroom during the years of her
bedridden condition." She was the proprietor of the "Half Way House,"
a tavern located between Fayetteville and Raleigh; and in her old age
she kept royal state, in the fashion which Page describes, for such as
were socially entitled to this consideration. The most vivid impression
which her present-day descendants retain is that of her fervent devotion
to the Southern cause. She carried the spirit of secession to such an
extreme that she had the gate to her yard painted to give a complete
presentment of the Confederate Flag. Walter Page's mother, the
granddaughter of this determined and rebellious lady, had also her
positive quality, but in a somewhat more subdued form. She did not die
until 1897, and so the recollection of her is fresh and vivid. As a mature
woman she was undemonstrative and soft spoken; a Methodist of
old-fashioned Wesleyan type, she dressed with a Quaker-like simplicity,
her brown hair brushed flatly down upon a finely shaped head and her
garments destitute of ruffles or ornamentation. The home which she
directed was a home without playing cards or dancing or smoking or
wine-bibbing or other worldly frivolities, yet the memories of her
presence which Catherine Page has left are not at all austere. Duty was
with her the prime consideration of life, and fundamental morals the
first conceptions which she instilled in her children's growing minds,
yet she had a quiet sense of humour and a real love of fun.
She had also strong likes and dislikes, and was not especially
hospitable to men and women who fell under her disapproval. A small
North Carolina town, in the years preceding and following the Civil
War, was not a fruitful soil for cultivating an interest in things
intellectual, yet those who remember Walter Page's mother remember
her always with a book in her hand. She would read at her knitting and

at her miscellaneous household duties, which were rather arduous in the
straitened days that followed the war, and the books she read were
always substantial ones. Perhaps because her son Walter was in delicate
health, perhaps because his early tastes and temperament were not
unlike her own, perhaps because he was her oldest surviving child, the
fact remains that, of a family of eight, he was generally regarded as the
child with whom she was especially sympathetic. The picture of mother
and son in those early days is an altogether charming one. Page's
mother was only twenty-four when he was born; she retained her youth
for many years after that event, and during his early childhood, in
appearance and manner, she was little more than a girl. When Walter
was a small boy, he and his mother used to take long walks in the
woods, sometimes spending the entire day, fishing along the brooks,
hunting wild flowers, now and then pausing while the mother read
pages of Dickens or of Scott. These experiences Page never forgot.
Nearly all his letters to his mother--to whom, even in his busiest days in
New York, he wrote constantly--have been accidentally destroyed, but
a few scraps indicate the close spiritual bond that existed between the
two. Always he seemed to think of his mother as young. Through his
entire life, in whatever part of the world he might be, and however
important was the work in which he might be engaged, Page never
failed to write her a long and affectionate letter at Christmas.
"Well, I've gossiped a night or two"--such is the conclusion of his
Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was thirty-eight, with a growing
family of his own--"till I've filled the paper--all such little news and
less nonsense as most gossip and most letters are made of. But it is for
you to read between the lines. That's where the love lies, dear mother. I
wish you were here Christmas; we should welcome you as nobody else
in the world can be welcomed. But wherever you are and though all the
rest have the joy of seeing you, which is denied to me, never a
Christmas comes but I feel as near you as I did years and years ago
when we were young. (In those years big fish bit in old Wiley
Bancom's pond by the railroad: they must have been two inches
long!)--I would give a year's growth to have the pleasure of having you
here. You may be sure