Charleston

“ So at last Charleston has fallen, plucked like the golden apple of the fable that turned to ashes in the grasp. The great news is like wine to the pulse. The early telegrams were thought too good to be true. What a picture was that which the Tribune’s correspondents presented to us on Tuesday morning, of the flag hoisted once again upon Fort Sumter, even though waving from an oar blade for lack of a flagstaff. The rebellion is humbled in the city of its first haughtiness. Boastful, braggart Charleston skulks away from itself, and surrenders without firing one shot in its own defense. ”

“ It is not strange, then, that I almost fancied myself in another world, when after a prosperous sea voyage I one morning went on shore at Charleston, and first breathed the soft, balmy air of the South. Dense and green was the foliage of the trees, while thousands of roses and flowering shrubs filled the air with a perfume almost sickening to the senses. From Charleston to Augusta was a wearisome ride, for the cars were crowded and dirty, and there was to me nothing remarkably pleasing in the long stretches of cypress swamps and pine barrens through which we passed. ”

“ Sweet are the flowers of the field at every season of the year, but doubly sweet, when, after long icy winter, they spread all their blossoms to the spring-tide sun. Even so the daughters of Charleston, though always fair, yet never seemed so passing fair as now, when after sustaining the long wintry storms of British oppression, they came forth in all their patriot charms to greet the welcome beams of returning liberty. ”

“ The city lies on a spur or promontory between the Ashley and the Cooper rivers, and the land behind it is divided in the same manner by similar creeks, and is sandy and light, bearing, nevertheless, very fine crops, and trees of magnificent vegetation. The steeples, the domes of public buildings, the rows of massive warehouses and cotton stores on the wharfs, and the bright colours of the houses, render the appearance of Charleston, as seen from the river front, rather imposing. From the mastheads of the few large vessels in harbour floated the Confederate flag. ”

“ The British evacuate Charleston — great joy of the citizens — patriotism of the Charleston ladies.
As when a lion that has long kept at bay the fierce assaulting shepherds, receives at last his mortal wound, suddenly the monster trembles under the deadly stroke; and, sadly howling, looks around with wistful eye towards his native woods. Such was the shock given to the British, when the sword of heaven-aided justice struck down the bloody Cornwallis. ”

“ Up one street and down another, male vendors, female vendors old and young, but generally old. If any one wishes to sleep in Charleston—well, he simply cannot sleep late in Charleston. To dream of rest while: "Sweet Pete ate her! Sweet Pete ate her!" comes rolling up to your window in tones as dulcet as ever rang within an opera house would be outrageous. It is a merry jangle to open the day, quite as remote from euphony and as thoroughly delightful as the early morning church-bells of Montreal or of Quebec. ”

“ Charleston is the place in which to see those contrasting scenes of human life brought under the eye which moralists gather together for the purpose of impressing the imagination. The stranger has but to pass from street to street, to live from hour to hour in this city, to see in conjunction the extremes between which there is everywhere else a wide interval. The sights of one morning I should remember if every other particular of my travels were forgotten. ”

“ The city of Charleston is one of the handsomest and best built, and its inhabitants among the most agreeable, that I have ever seen. The American women are very pretty, simple in their manners, and exhibit a neatness, which is every where cultivated even more studiously than in England. What most charms me is, that all the citizens are brethren. In America, there are no poor, nor even what we call peasantry. Each individual has his own honest property, and the same rights as the most wealthy landed proprietor. ”

“ Of the mysteries of Charleston I shall not tell you anything, because I know them not, excepting by rumour, and that which I know merely by rumour I leave untold. Dark mysteries, more indeed than rumour has told, cannot fail in a great city in which slavery abides. I have heard it said that there is a flogging institution in Charleston for slaves, which brings the city a yearly revenue of more than ten thousand dollars. Every person who wishes to have his slave punished by the whip sends him there with money for his chastisement. ”

“ Charleston people are city people par excellence. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and [Pg 304] noblesse oblige are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions. ”

“ And I had tried to think Washington relaxed, and Richmond itself romantic, and Charleston secretly ardent! There always comes, to any traveller who doesn’t depart and arrive with the mere security and punctuality of a registered letter, some moment for his beginning to feel within him—it happens under some particular touch—the finer vibration of a sense of the real thing. He thus knows it when it comes, and it has the great value that it never need fail. ”

“ From without you may breathe the hints of old mahogany, of fine silver and china, of impeccable linen, of well-trained servants, but your imagination must meet the every test as to the details. Gentility does not flaunt herself. And if the younger girls of Charleston society do drive their motor cars pleasant mornings through the crowded shopping district of King street, that does not mean that Charleston—the Charleston of the barouche and the closed coupé—will ever approve. ”

“ Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade. [Pg 303] Were cities able to talk with one another as men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever. ”

“ He had never been in Charleston before, and he reveled in the ineluctable charm of the lovely old town. No South Carolinian is ever disappointed in Charleston. Peter thought the city resembled one of her own old ladies, a dear dignified gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, in a worn silk gown and a mended lace cap and a cameo brooch. It might be against the old gentlewoman's religious convictions to bestow undue care upon her personal appearance, but hers was a venerable, unforgetable, and most beautiful old face for all that, and perhaps because of it. ”

“ Nor is the Charleston background a mere arras of recollection. It exists everywhere in the wood and brick and stone of ancient and beautiful buildings, in iron grilles and balconies unrivalled in any other American city.... ”

“ Had the beauty of old Charleston produced the same negative effect, Southern literature would have suffered a distinct loss—if that may be regarded as lost which has never been possessed. For centuries the Queen of the Sea stood in a vision of splendor, the tumultuous waves of the Atlantic dashing at her feet, eternal sunshine crowning her royal brow. Her gardens were stately with oleanders and pomegranates, brilliant with jonquils and hyacinths, myrtle and gardenia. Roses of the olden time, Lancaster and York and the sweet pink cinnamon, breathed the fragrance of days long past. ”

“ You come again to the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets and remember that here in 1876 occurred violent Reconstruction riots; that in the Revolution, years before, the statue of William Pitt was in the center and that a British shell struck off an arm. You who have followed me on this incomparable walk have seen things of Charles Town, Charlestown and Charleston. You have seen things reminiscent of early English and early French. You have seen the evolution of a British outpost in a savage land into what William Allen White has called “the most civilized town in America.” ”

“ Wherefore, O men of Charleston! call no more upon Andrew the King, nor upon his counsellors, but call ye upon those who have the like feelings, and the like passions with yourselves, even upon the men of the South. ”

“ Charleston extended before us. The city, distinguished as a seaport, lies upon a tongue of land, formed by the rivers Ashley and Cooper: we crossed the Ashley to reach the city. A causeway, constructed of fascines, passes through the swamp to the ferry. The river is three-quarters of a mile broad; we crossed it in an eight-horse team-boat. A wooden bridge, which formerly crossed the river here, was destroyed by a severe storm, and never again rebuilt. Upon the right bank, in the vicinity of Charleston, an entirely novel spectacle expanded itself to my view. ”

“ It is not that Charleston is actually like other places, but that here in a church building, there in an old tile roof, wrought iron gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor will find himself delicately reminded of Old World towns and cities. ”

“ Charleston has lost nothing. For what is Prosperity, she may ask you, but a dollar-mark? Romance and Courtesy are without price. Romance and Courtesy still walk in her streets, in the hot and lazy summer days, in the brilliancy of the southern moon beating down upon her graceful guarding spires, in the thunder of the storm and the soft gray blankets of the ocean mantling her houses and her gardens. And Romance and Courtesy do not forget. ”

“ The many handsome churches and public buildings add largely to the attractions of Charleston, and are, to a certain extent, a reflex of the minds of the people. As the descendants of old families concentrate their energies and their pride on their ancestral home, so the good Charlestonians from generation to generation have devoted theirs to the glorification of their beloved city ”

“ Then tumbled everything on board and by gum if up didn’t go northwest storm warnings. No place to take a twister, this Charleston. So up anchor and into the clubhouse wharf where we tied snugly. On shore for another good feed. Charleston, nominally prohibition, is really more wide open than any town I ever saw. The blind tigers are running with wide open eyes at every corner and the signs of open gambling everywhere. Commend me always to a good, gambling bar for good cooking and so we hit a mahogany palace having an electric roulette wheel for a sign. ”

“ Things always moved swiftly in Charleston. There is a tale of a saloon-keeper who buried his wife in the morning, killed a man at high noon, and took unto himself a new bride before evening. If that story is not true—and old-timers vouch for it—it is at least indicative of the trend of life in the town.
And to Charleston came those followers of John Ringo and Curly Bill who did not get on with the Earps. Several of them became men of influence down here on the San Pedro. Hither flocked those boisterous spirits who craved more freedom of action on pay-day than the mining town afforded. ”

“ This image really gives us the best word for the 418general effect of Charleston—that of the practically vacant cage which used in the other time to emit sounds, even to those of the portentous shaking of bars, audible as far away as in the listening North. It is the vacancy that is a thing by itself, a thing that makes us endlessly wonder. How, in an at all complex, a “great political,” society, can everything so have gone?—assuming indeed that, under this aegis, very much ever had come. ”

“ Charleston and New York furnish me with the scenes and characters.
Our quaint old city has been in a disquiet mood for several weeks. Yellow fever has scourged us through the autumn, and we have again taken to scourging ourselves with secession fancies. The city has not looked up for a month. Fear had driven our best society into the North, into the mountains, into all the high places. Business men had nothing to do; stately old mansions were in the care of faithful slaves, and there was high carnival in the kitchen. ”

“ The wooden shutters of the domestic life are kept closed. So they miss that which is most exquisite, most appealing, in any city—personality.
Charleston is, without doubt, the most exclusive city in America. It gives nothing out to the stranger beyond its physical beauty and tempered climate. One keen observer said of it: “It has only one equal—a German principality, where almost everyone is royal and noble and all intermarried. Other places and social codes exist, of course—New York, Chicago, Denver—but not for Charleston.” ”

“ Our voyage to Charleston was very rapid. I certainly was in no hurry to have it over, when I had so disagreeable a prospect before me as a trial, and not impossibly an execution. I was treated with less harshness than the rest of the prisoners—perhaps on account of my youth—perhaps because some believed me innocent. I fain hoped on the latter account.
At length we arrived. I will not stop to describe Charleston. It is a fine, flourishing city, with a dock-yard, where many of the ships of the American navy are built. ”