Went to a hotel kept by a coloured family, named Jones, and was
appointed to comfortable summer-quarters in an outbuilding, where I
received an immediate call from Mr. R. R----d, a cousin of my friend, W.
R----d, of New York; and with this gentleman I dined at an excellent
boarding-house where there were three or four excellent Frenchmen
resident. Here I spent a pleasant evening, despite the severe cold.
_28th._--After two days of weather for the severity of which no people
can be worse provided, we are relieved by as lovely a day as can well be
imagined; the thermometer is at 77 degrees, the breeze bland, the
atmosphere of singular purity.
On this day I visited the theatre, a barn; the building originally
erected for this purpose being changed into a school of anatomy: so
cutting up is still the order of the day; only the practice is no longer
confined to the poets, but extended to subjects generally. After
arranging with my manager, I took a ride, making a rapid survey of the
town and its immediate vicinity.
Vegetation still appears in progress; the orange trees are flourishing,
the grass looking green, and only the forest appears clad in the sober
brown of winter.
At this season Charleston is dull to a proverb; most of the planters,
with their families, being in the country, and the rest preparing to
follow; the city is, therefore, nearly abandoned to the cotton-shippers;
and so it will remain until the month of February, when the race-meeting
draws the whole State together; and, for a period of four or five weeks,
few places, as I learn, can be more lively or more sociable. After this
date, the country families once more return to their plantations, where
they can remain with safety until about the second week in April: after
which date the choice between country and city may be summed up in the
words of Shakspeare, to "go and live, or stay and die;" since to stay is
assuredly to die, after once the malaria is fairly in movement.
Formerly, the winter campaign used to be prolonged until the middle of
June; but of late years the time has been, from some cause or other,
gradually abridged by common consent, until now the 15th of April is
considered the last day of security.
The forest rides leading on either hand from the main road to the Cooper
and Ashley rivers by which the sandy neck the city occupies is flanked,
are, though flat, very delightful. Plants and flowers of rare beauty and
in great variety abound here; the wild vine and other climbing plants
are drawn from tree to tree; and the live-oak, sycamore, hickory, with
the loftiest pines, altogether form avenues down which the eyes of a
stranger wander with delight, and in which on these delicious calm days
it is a joy to linger. My rides were sometimes solitary; and it was on
these occasions I most enjoyed these forest paths, now as healthful as
beautiful; yet, let only a few months pass away, and to sleep one night
within their shade would be death as certain as though it were spent
beneath the boughs of the poisonous Upas.
I could hardly conceive the possibility of such a baneful change, as, on
a bright day of December, I sauntered carelessly along, watching the sun
dancing in long lines of light over the smooth water, and an atmosphere
before me glowing, as though a veil of gold tissue had been drawn above
the forest. Yet so it is; the overseers alone remain upon the plantation
after sunset, and amongst these the numerous deaths, as well as the
cadaverous hue of the survivors, afford unquestionable testimony of the
peril incurred by such a residence.
To the negro alone this air appears congenial, as the lively look of the
chubby little imps that fill every cabin fully indicates. It is
impossible not to be struck by the contrast between the looks of these
children of the sun and the degenerate offsets of northern men; I have
often observed with feelings of sorrow the sickly aspect of the children
of some road-side store-keeper, or publican of the white race, as they
sit languidly before their parents' door, with sallow parchment skins
and lack-lustre eyes, the very emblems of malaria, possessing neither
the strength nor the desire to follow those active sports natural and in
fact necessary, at their age: whilst, sporting about or near them, might
be observed the offspring of their slaves; the elder ones, with hardly
any covering, pursuing each other, shouting and grinning from ear to
ear; the youngsters, quite naked perhaps, rolling on the kitchen floor,
or creeping about in the dust like so many black beetles, almost as
broad as long. Despite their degraded condition, I have at such times
been tempted to exclaim, "Surely this must here be the most enviable
lot!"
This picture, however, must not be applied to the wealthy portion of the
landed proprietors, who either migrate north with each season, or else
seek the shelter of the dry sandy soil of the Pine-barrens, and on their
heights breathe health and life; whilst below and around, at no great
distance, stalk disease and death.
Amongst this class, on the contrary, I have often been surprised to find
children whose elastic forms and ruddy complexions would have been
noticeable even in the health-giving air of Britain; and indeed, taken
as a whole, I should say that the population of Charleston City, the
capital of this deadly country, wears as fresh a look, and presents as
many hale, hearty old persons, as any of the northern cities of this
continent. I was, perchance, the more struck with this fact from having
expected the very reverse.
An air of greater antiquity prevails throughout this city than may be
discovered in any other I have visited in the States; I should conceive
it to be just in the condition the English army left it; I did not see a
large house that appeared of newer date; and the churches, guard-house,
&c. must be the same.
This population apparently has slept whilst their persevering brethren
of the North, to use one of their familiar sayings, have "continually
gone ahead" with an energy of purpose admirable as irresistible. This
difference can, I fancy, be accounted for in two ways: first, much may
be fairly set down to climate, which limits the business months here to
about six; next, the revolution found here a sort of aristocratic
association of wealthy proprietors, the produce of whose estates
furnished them with ample means, but whose business habits were limited
to periodical settlements with their factors or brokers. The revolution,
and the changes consequent upon it, awoke the spirit and incited the
hope of every man to whom the absence of inherited wealth supplied an
impetus to labour; and the populated portions of these States became as
a hive thronged with an active, money-seeking swarm, by which the idle
and the inert were thrust aside before they became awake to their
changed condition, or heard a murmur of the tide whose waves were
encircling them about on every side.
The law of primogeniture having ceased to exist, estates became subject
to division and subdivision, until the growing families of the original
proprietors found themselves unable to continue planters with any
prospect of advantage. In such cases the property was sold, and the
proceeds divided according to law, or in conformity to the will of the
testator, and so passed into strange hands; whilst with straitened means
the members of the family of the once wealthy planter removed to some
city, and here clung to their original habits and prejudices; nor,
except in a few instances, ever turned their thoughts to trade, at once
the source and secret of their changed condition; and into the hands of
whose active agents, in fact, had passed the home and the inheritance of
their fathers.
Comparatively few of the old families now remain who are wealthy; but
happily these have mostly become aware of the effects certain to follow
the existing state of society and laws, as well as of the necessity of
providing their children with the means of warding off their worst
consequences. Now, therefore, the sons of the best men of the South are
wisely placed in counting-houses in the great trading cities; or,
however good their prospects may be, are bred up to some useful calling,
which in this country will, if pursued with industry, ensure decent
competence if not always wealth.
The condition of numbers of men, among those of the South who have never
been trained to this laudable course, is at this day one that excites
great commiseration. How many fine intelligent-looking young fellows may
be observed lounging about in the most hopeless idleness, easily to be
distinguished for the sons of gentlemen, wearing in a half slovenly way,
but with a flashy air, expensive clothes and ill-assorted articles of
finery, without possessing either means or energy to cultivate those
manly dissipations which in some sort redeem the idleness of our
European youth, and at certain seasons withdraw them from mere pursuits
of sensuality; making that at least graceful, if not useful to the
community, which here becomes truly hideous, as the reckless air and
wasted features of most of these unfortunate hereditary idlers
sufficiently attest.
I do not anywhere know a class more to be pitied in a country, wherein
the idle man finds neither sympathies, pursuits, nor associates, from
which he can derive emulation, improvement, or even amusement worthy a
rational being; it is, let me add, an exceedingly small class, and of
necessity must, I conceive, decrease rapidly; at present its members
ought to be regarded by parents as moral landmarks, living to warn the
wise and worthy from that course on which their hopes have foundered.
The young ladies appear possessed of the same _naive_, simple, yet
perfectly easy manners which characterise their countrywomen of the
North, where indeed they are principally educated and instructed in all
those graceful accomplishments which embellish and refine our life. It
appears upon a first view strange that, superior as they are, they do
not exercise a greater influence over the youth of the other sex; but
this may be ascribed to the fact, that they are brought out before
either their judgment or knowledge of the world are sufficiently matured
to make them aware of the existence of certain abuses, or of their own
power of reforming them. Then again, marrying very young, they commonly
quit society, in a great measure, at the moment the influence of their
example might be of the greatest service to it.