older country towns in England--of Southampton a little. The appearance
of the city is highly picturesque, a word which can apply to none other
American towns; and although the place is certainly pervaded with an air
of decay, 'tis a genteel infirmity, as might be that of a distressed
elderly gentlewoman. It has none of the smug mercantile primness of the
northern cities, but a look of state, as of quondam wealth and
importance, a little gone down in the world, yet remembering still its
former dignity. The northern towns, compared with it, are as the spruce
citizen rattling by the faded splendors of an old family-coach in his
newfangled chariot--they certainly have got on before it. Charleston has
an air of eccentricity, too, and peculiarity, which formerly were not
deemed unbecoming the well-born and well-bred gentlewoman, which her
gentility itself sanctioned and warranted--none of the vulgar dread of
vulgar opinion, forcing those who are possessed by it to conform to a
general standard of manners, unable to conceive one peculiar to
itself,--this "what-'ll-Mrs.-Grundy-say" devotion to conformity in small
things and great, which pervades the American body-social from the
matter of church-going to the trimming of women's petticoats,--this
dread of singularity, which has eaten up all individuality amongst them,
and makes their population like so many moral and mental lithographs,
and their houses like so many thousand hideous brick-twins.
I believe I am getting excited; but the fact is, that being politically
the most free people on earth, the Americans are socially the least so;
and it seems as though, ever since that little affair of establishing
their independence among nations, which they managed so successfully,
every American mother's son of them has been doing his best to divest
himself of his own private share of that great public blessing, liberty.
But to return to Charleston. It is in this respect a far more
aristocratic (should I not say democratic?) city than any I have yet
seen in America, inasmuch as every house seems built to the owner's
particular taste; and in one street you seem to be in an old English
town, and in another in some continental city of France or Italy. This
variety is extremely pleasing to the eye; not less so is the
intermixture of trees with the buildings, almost every house being
adorned, and gracefully screened, by the beautiful foliage of evergreen
shrubs. These, like ministering angels, cloak with nature's kindly
ornaments the ruins and decays of the mansions they surround; and the
latter, time-mellowed (I will not say stained, and a painter knows the
difference), harmonize in their forms and coloring with the trees, in a
manner most delightful to an eye that knows how to appreciate this
species of beauty.
There are several public buildings of considerable architectural
pretensions in Charleston, all of them apparently of some antiquity (for
the New World), except a very large and handsome edifice which is not
yet completed, and which, upon inquiry, we found was intended for a
guard-house. Its very extensive dimensions excited our surprise; but a
man who was at work about it, and who answered our questions with a good
deal of intelligence, informed us that it was by no means larger than
the necessities of the city required; for that they not unfrequently had
between fifty and sixty persons (colored and white) brought in by the
patrol in one night.
"But," objected we, "the colored people are not allowed to go out
without passes after nine o'clock."
"Yes," replied our informant, "but they will do it, nevertheless; and
every night numbers are brought in who have been caught endeavoring to
evade the patrol."
This explained to me the meaning of a most ominous tolling of bells and
beating of drums, which, on the first evening of my arrival in
Charleston, made me almost fancy myself in one of the old fortified
frontier towns of the Continent where the tocsin is sounded, and the
evening drum beaten, and the guard set as regularly every night as if an
invasion were expected. In Charleston, however, it is not the dread of
foreign invasion, but of domestic insurrection, which occasions these
nightly precautions; and, for the first time since my residence in this
free country, the curfew (now obsolete in mine, except in some remote
districts, where the ringing of an old church-bell at sunset is all that
remains of the tyrannous custom) recalled the associations of early
feudal times, and the oppressive insecurity of our Norman conquerors.
But truly it seemed rather anomalous hereabouts, and nowadays; though,
of course, it is very necessary where a large class of persons exists in
the very bosom of a community whose interests are known to be at
variance and incompatible with those of its other members. And no doubt
these daily and nightly precautions are but trifling drawbacks upon the
manifold blessings of slavery (for which, if you are stupid, and cannot
conceive them, see the late Governor M'Duffy's speeches); still I should
prefer going to sleep without the apprehension of my servants cutting my
throat in my bed, even to having a guard provided to prevent their doing
so. However, this peculiar prejudice of mine may spring from the fact of
my having known many instances in which servants were the trusted and
most trustworthy friends of their employers, and entertaining, besides,
some odd notions of the reciprocal duties of _all_ the members of
families one towards the other.
The extreme emptiness which I observed in the streets, and absence of
anything like bustle or business, is chiefly owing to the season, which
the inhabitants of Charleston, with something akin to old English
feeling, generally spend in hospitable festivity upon their estates; a
goodly custom, at least in my mind. It is so rare for any of the
wealthier people to remain in town at Christmas, that poor Miss ----,
who had come on with us to pay a visit to some friends, was not a little
relieved to find that they were (contrary to their custom) still in the
city. I went to take my usual walk this morning, and found that the good
citizens of Charleston were providing themselves with a most delightful
promenade upon the river, a fine, broad, well-paved esplanade, of
considerable length, open to the water on one side, and on the other
overlooked by some very large and picturesque old houses, whose piazzas,
arches, and sheltering evergreens reminded me of buildings in the
vicinity of Naples. This delightful walk is not yet finished, and I
fear, when it is, it will be little frequented; for the southern women,
by their own account, are miserable pedestrians,--of which fact, indeed,
I had one curious illustration to-day; for I received a visit from a
young lady residing in the same street where we lodged, who came in her
carriage, a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, to call upon me.
It is impossible to conceive anything funnier, and at the same time more
provokingly stupid, dirty, and inefficient, than the tribe of
black-faced heathen divinities and classicalities who make believe to
wait upon us here,--the Dianas, Phillises, Floras, Caesars, et cetera,
who stand grinning in wonderment and delight round our table, and whom I
find it impossible, by exhortation or entreaty, to banish from the room,
so great is their amusement and curiosity at my outlandish modes of
proceeding. This morning, upon my entreating them not to persist in
waiting upon us at breakfast, they burst into an ungovernable titter,
and withdrawing from our immediate vicinity, kept poking their woolly
heads and white grinders in at the door every five minutes, keeping it
conveniently open for that purpose.
A fine large new hotel was among the buildings which the late fire at
Charleston destroyed, and the house where we now are is the best at
present in the city. It is kept by a very obliging and civil colored
woman, who seems extremely desirous of accommodating us to our minds;
but her servants (they are her slaves, in spite of her and their common
complexion) would defy the orderly genius of the superintendent of the
Astor House. Their laziness, their filthiness, their inconceivable
stupidity, and unconquerable good humor, are enough to drive one stark,
staring mad. The sitting-room we occupy is spacious, and not
ill-furnished, and especially airy, having four windows and a door, none
of which can or will shut. We are fortunately rid of that familiar
fiend of the North, the anthracite coal, but do not enjoy the luxury of
burning wood. Bituminous coal, such as is generally used in England, is
the combustible preferred here; and all my national predilections cannot
reconcile me to it, in preference to the brilliant, cheerful, wholesome,
poetical warmth of a wood fire. Our bedrooms are dismal dens, open to
"a' the airts the wind can blaw," half furnished, and not by any means
half clean. The furniture itself is old, and very infirm,--the tables
all peach with one or other leg,--the chairs are most of them minus one
or two bars,--the tongs cross their feet when you attempt to use
them,--and one poker travels from room to room, that being our whole
allowance for two fires.
We have had occasion to make only two trifling purchases since we have
been here; but the prices (if these articles are any criterion) must be
infinitely higher than those of the northern shopkeepers; but this we
must expect as we go further south, for, of course, they have to pay
double profits upon all the commonest necessaries of life, importing
them, as they do, from distant districts. I must record a curious
observation of Margery's, on her return from church Tuesday morning. She
asked me if the people of this place were not very proud. I was struck
with the question, as coinciding with a remark sometimes made upon the
South, and supposed by some far-fetching cause-hunters to have its
origin in some of their "domestic institutions." I told her that I knew
no more of them than she did; and that I had had no opportunity of
observing whether they were or not.
"Well," she replied, "I think they are, for I was in church early, and I
observed the countenances and manner of the people as they came in, and
they struck me as the haughtiest, proudest-looking people I ever saw!"
This very curious piece of observation of hers I note down without
comment. I asked her if she had ever heard, or read, the remark as
applied to the southern people? She said, "Never," and I was much amused
at this result of her physiognomical church speculations.
Last Thursday evening we left our hotel in Charleston, for the steamboat
which was to carry us to Savannah: it was not to start until two in the
morning; but, of course, we preferred going on board rather earlier, and
getting to bed. The ladies' cabin, however, was so crowded with women
and children, and so inconveniently small, that sleeping was out of the
question in such an atmosphere. I derived much amusement from the very
empress-like airs of an uncommonly handsome mulatto woman, who
officiated as stewardess, but whose discharge of her duties appeared to
consist in telling the ladies what they ought, and what they ought not
to do, and lounging about with an indolent dignity, which was
irresistibly droll, and peculiarly Southern.
The boat in which we were, not being considered sea-worthy, as she is
rather old, took the inner passage, by which we were two nights and a
day accomplishing this most tedious navigation, creeping through cuts
and small muddy rivers, where we stuck sometimes to the bottom, and
sometimes to the banks, which presented a most dismal succession of
dingy, low, yellow swamps, and reedy marshes, beyond expression
wearisome to the eye. About the middle of the day on Friday, we touched
at the island of Edisto, where some of the gentlemen-passengers had
business, that being the seat of their plantations, and where the
several families reside--after the eldest member of which, Mr. Seabrook,
the boat we were in was named.
Edisto, as I have mentioned before, is famous for producing the finest
cotton in America--therefore, I suppose, in the world. As we were to
wait here some time, we went on shore to walk. The appearance of the
cotton-fields at this season of the year was barren enough; but, as a
compensation, I here, for the first time, saw the evergreen oak-trees
(the ilex, I presume) of the South. They were not very fine specimens of
their kind, and disappointed me a good deal. The advantage they have of
being evergreen is counterbalanced by the dark and almost dingy color of
the foliage, and the leaf being minute in size, and not particularly
graceful in form. These trees appeared to me far from comparable, either
in size or beauty, to the European oak, when it has attained its full
growth. We were walking on the estate of one of the Mr. Seabrooks, which
lay unenclosed on each side of what appeared to be the public road
through the island.
At a short distance from the landing we came to what is termed a
ginning-house--a building appropriated to the process of freeing the
cotton from the seed. It appeared to be open to inspection; and we
walked through it. Here were about eight or ten stalls on either side,
in each of which a man was employed at a machine, worked like a turner's
or knife-grinder's wheel, by the foot, which, as fast as he fed it with
cotton, parted the snowy flakes from the little black first cause, and
gave them forth soft, silky, clean, and fit to be woven into the finest
lace or muslin. This same process of ginning is performed in many
places, and upon our own cotton-estate, by machinery; the objection to
which however, is, that the staple of the cotton--in the length of
which consists its chief excellence--is supposed by some planters to be
injured, and the threads broken, by the substitution of an engine for
the task performed by the human fingers in separating the cotton and
presenting it to the gin.
After walking through this building, we pursued our way past a large,
rambling, white wood house, and down a road, bordered on each side with
evergreen oaks. While we were walking, a young man on horseback passed
us, whose light hair, in a very picturesque contempt of modern fashion,
absolutely flowed upon the collar of his coat, and was blown back as he
rode, like the disheveled tresses of a woman. On Edisto Island such a
noble exhibition of individuality would probably find few censors.
As we returned towards the boat we stopped to examine an irregular
scrambling hedge of the wild orange, another of the exquisite shrubs of
this paradise of evergreens. The form and foliage of this plant are
beautiful, and the leaf, being bruised, extremely fragrant; but, as its
perfume indicates, it is a rank poison, containing a great portion of
prussic acid. It grows from cuttings rapidly and freely, and might be
formed into the most perfect hedge, being well adapted, by its close,
bushy growth, to that purpose.
After leaving Edisto, we pursued the same tedious, meandering course,
over turbid waters, and between low-lying swamps, till the evening
closed in. The afternoon had been foggy and rainy and wretched. The
cabin was darkened by the various outer protections against the weather,
so that we could neither read nor work. Our party, on leaving the
island, had received an addition of some young ladies, who were to go on
shore again in the middle of the night, at a stopping-place called
Hilton Head. As they did not intend to sleep, they seemed to have no
idea of allowing any one else to do so; and the giggling and chattering
with which they enlivened the dreary watches of the night, certainly
rendered anything like repose impossible; so I lay, devoutly wishing for
Hilton Head, where the boat stopped between one and two in the morning.
I had just time to see our boarding-school angels leave us, and a
monstrous awkward-looking woman, who at first struck me as a man in
disguise, enter the cabin, before my eyes sealed themselves in sleep,
which had been hovering over them, kept aloof only by the incessant
conversational racket of my young fellow-travelers.
I was extremely amused at two little incidents which occurred the next
morning before we were called to breakfast. The extraordinary-looking
woman who came into the boat during the night, and who was the most
masculine-looking lady I ever saw, came and stood by me, and, seeing me
nursing my baby, abruptly addressed me with "Got a baby with you?" I
replied in the affirmative, which trouble her eyes might have spared me.
After a few minutes' silence, she pursued her unceremonious catechism
with "Married woman?" This question was so exceedingly strange, though
put in the most matter-of-course sort of way, that I suppose my surprise
exhibited itself in my countenance, for the lady presently left me--not,
however, appearing to imagine that she had said or done anything at all
unusual. The other circumstance which amused me was to hear another lady
observe to her neighbor, on seeing Margery bathing my children (a
ceremony never omitted night and morning, where water can be procured);
"How excessively ridiculous!" Which same worthy lady, on leaving the
boat at Savannah, exclaimed, as she huddled on her cloak, that she never
had felt so "_mean_ in her life!" and, considering that she had gone to
bed two nights with the greater part of her day clothes on her, and had
abstained from any "ridiculous" ablutions, her _mean_ sensations did
not, I confess, much surprise me.
When the boat stopped at Savannah, it poured with rain; and in a perfect
deluge, we drove up to the Pulaski House, thankful to escape from the
tedious confinement of a _slow_ steamboat,--an intolerable nuisance and
anomaly in the nature of things. The hotel was, comparatively speaking,
very comfortable; infinitely superior to the one where we had lodged at
Charleston, as far as bed accommodations went. Here, too, we obtained
the inestimable luxury of a warm bath; and the only disagreeable thing
we had to encounter was that all but universal pest in this crowd-loving
country, a public table. This is always a trial of the first water to
me; and that day particularly I was fatigued, and out of spirits, and
the din and confusion of a long _table d'hote_ was perfectly
intolerable, in spite of the assiduous attentions of a tiresome worthy
old gentleman, who sat by me and persisted in endeavoring to make me
talk. Finding me impracticable, however, he turned, at length, in
despair, to the hostess, who sat at the head of her table, and inquired
in a most audible voice if it were true, as he had understood, that Mr.
and Mrs. Butler were in the hotel? This, of course, occasioned some
little amusement; and the good old gentleman being informed that I was
sitting at his elbow, went off into perfect convulsions of apologies,
and renewed his exertions to make me discourse, with more zeal than
ever, asking me, among other things, when he had ascertained that I had
never before been to the South, "How I liked the appearance of 'our
blackies' (the negroes)?--no want of cheerfulness, no despondency, or
misery in their appearance, eh, madam?" As I thought this was rather
begging the question, I did not trouble the gentleman with my
impressions. He was a Scotchman, and his adoption of "our blackies" was,
by his own account, rather recent, to be so perfectly satisfactory; at
least, so it seems to me, who have some small prejudices in favor of
freedom and justice yet to overcome, before I can enter into all the
merits of this beneficent system, so productive of cheerfulness and
contentment in those whom it condemns to perpetual degradation.
Our night-wanderings were not yet ended, for the steamer in which we
were to proceed to Darien was to start at ten o'clock that evening, so
that we had but a short interval of repose at this same Pulaski House,
and I felt sorry to leave it, in proportion to the uncertainty of our
meeting with better accommodation for a long time. The _Ocmulgee_ (the
Indian name of a river in Georgia, and the cognomen of our steamboat)
was a tiny, tidy little vessel, the exceeding small ladies' cabin of
which we, fortunately, had entirely to ourselves.
On Sunday morning the day broke most brilliantly over those southern
waters, and as the sun rose, the atmosphere became clear and warm, as in
the early northern summer. We crossed two or three sounds of the sea.
The land in sight was a mere forest of reeds, and the fresh, sparkling,
crisping waters had a thousand times more variety and beauty. At the
mouth of the Altamaha is a small cluster of houses, scarce deserving the
name of a village, called Doboy. At the wharf lay two trading-vessels;
the one with the harp of Ireland waving on her flag; the other with the
union-jack flying at her mast. I felt vehemently stirred to hail the
beloved symbol; but, upon reflection, forbore outward demonstrations of
the affectionate yearnings of my heart towards the flag of England, and
so we boiled by them into this vast volume of turbid waters, whose noble
width, and rapid rolling current, seem appropriately called by that most
euphonious and sonorous of Indian names, the Alatamaha, which, in the
common mode of speaking it, gains by the loss of the second syllable,
and becomes more agreeable to the ear, as it is usually pronounced, the
Altamaha.
On either side lay the low, reedy swamps, yellow, withered Lilliputian
forests, rattling their brittle canes in the morning breeze.... Through
these dreary banks we wound a most sinuous course for a long time; at
length the irregular buildings of the little town of Darien appeared,
and as we grazed the side of the wharf, it seemed to me as if we had
touched the outer bound of civilized creation. As soon as we showed
ourselves on the deck we were hailed by a shout from the men in two
pretty boats, which had pulled alongside of us; and the vociferations of
"Oh, massa! how you do, massa? Oh, missis! oh! lily missis! me too glad
to see you!" accompanied with certain interjectional shrieks, whoops,
whistles, and grunts, that could only be written down in negro language,
made me aware of our vicinity to our journey's end. The strangeness of
the whole scene, its wildness (for now beyond the broad river and the
low swamp lands the savage-looking woods arose to meet the horizon), the
rapid retrospect which my mind hurried through of the few past years of
my life; the singular contrasts which they presented to my memory; the
affectionate shouts of welcome of the poor people, who seemed to hail us
as descending divinities, affected me so much that I burst into tears,
and could hardly answer their demonstrations of delight. We were
presently transferred into the larger boat, and the smaller one being
freighted with our luggage, we pulled off from Darien, not, however,
without a sage remark from Margery, that, though we seemed to have
traveled to the very end of the world, here yet were people and houses,
ships, and even steamboats; in which evidences that we were not to be
plunged into the deepest abysses of savageness she seemed to take no
small comfort.