3-070-851 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sunday Morning in "Old Virginia" by E. A. Abbey, 1881. 'An American artist, named E. A. Abbey, has in this picture shown us a domestic scene in the life of the old-fashioned planter class of the Southern States, whose manners and habits remain...very little altered from what they were in the last century, notwithstanding...Slave Emancipation. The old gentleman...is getting himself ready to go to church, attired in buckled shoes and gaiters, knee-breeches and buttoned-up coat...while his faithful coloured servant, the mulatto Joseph, is helping him on with the overcoat...He has lately married a young wife, who comes lightly and leisurely down stairs, apparently half-inclined to excuse herself...but she has put on a smart little hat, though otherwise dressed with an easy negligence that scarcely promises more than a stroll to the garden gate. This lady has an air of serene complacency, which may, perhaps, have arisen from the consciousness of always having her own way, but which does not infallibly betoken a sweet temper or resigned disposition...We do not believe that he was a cruel master in the days of slavery; and he finds willing labourers at the fair wages he will pay in these days of an open market or field-hands of the African race'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.