Lady Duffus Hardy

St. Michael’s chimes.—Architectural attraction.—Magnolia Cemetery.—A philosophical mendicant.—The market.—Aboard the boat.—Fort Sumter.

A closer acquaintance with Charleston, its surroundings, and its people, deepens our first impression. A dignified gravity seems to be set like a seal upon their lives, whence all light frivolous things have been cast out, and replaced by high hopes and noble aspirations, born of a past sorrow. There is a look of preoccupation on their faces, as though their thoughts and desires have outstripped their powers of action, and they are pushing the world’s work forward that they may come up with them and realise the state of their holy ambitions. They dress sombrely, in dark neutral tints, with a quiet elegance and simplicity. They are as the sober setting to a brilliant picture, where the coloured folks supply the flaunting figures and gaudy colouring—the blacker they are the more gorgeous are their personal adornments.

Passing up the long shady Meeting Street, with its rows of tall trees on either side of it, the most prominent object in view is the old Church of St. Michael, which is a great point of interest to visitors. It was built more than a century and a half ago; the quaint and somewhat sombre interior, with its high box pews, groined roof, and dainty columns is impressive as only such ancient places of worship can be. The tall, graceful, steeple towers high above all other spires and is a landmark for miles round. It has a wonderfully fine peal of bells, too, with a most romantic history. In 1782 when the British vacated Charleston they seized these bells and shipped them to England, considering them as a military perquisite. However, in the space of a few weeks, they were re-shipped to Charleston, and replaced in the belfry. In 1861 they were sent to Columbia for safety, and in the terrible conflagration which destroyed that city they were so much damaged by fire as to be perfectly useless. They were then sent once more to England to be recast, and, strange to say, this delicate piece of work was performed by the descendants of the same firm which made them nearly a century and a half ago! They were recast from the same model, and perfected as nearly like the original as possible, and when finished were returned to Charleston, where they were detained in the custom-house for some time, the authorities being too poor to pay the duty, which amounted to several thousand dollars! These public boards are seldom public-spirited—red tapeism seems to tie down their sympathies, and strangle their patriotism. However, after all their vicissitudes, the bells were reinstated in their old place, and all Charleston went wild with excitement when the musical chimes rang out once more, seeming to tell their story in rhythmical rhyme! And when their brazen tongues again clashed out upon the ears of the people, who knows what other tales they told, or what mournful memories they sent echoing through the city, stirring all hearts like the roll of a muffled drum?

Both within and without, St. Michael’s is perhaps the most interesting of all the churches. Its preachers have always been men of note; enrolled among them are many who are now world-famous. There are places of worship for all denominations of sinners, who can choose their own road, through highways or by-ways, from this world to the next.

They can travel express through the mystic musical region of the highest of high churches, where the spiritual leader takes the train in hand and is answerable for all accidents by the way; or they may wander through quiet, peaceful meadow-lands, where only the voice of the shepherd calls their attention to the tinkling bells of salvation in the distance, whose music will ring out clearer and sweeter as they near the great beyond. Indeed, people may take their religion in any form they please; the means are abundantly supplied, from the undiluted draught of simple faith to the modest mixture of half-and-half measures, where soft music is falling, candles faintly burning—and always extinguished at the right moment—and on to the hottest, strongest spiritual essence, with incense burning, banners flying, and—why not?—drums, fifes, and trumpets playing on the march to celestial glory! And no doubt the Salvation Army will soon come streaming from the east, laden with patent piety warranted to cure the most diseased soul, and secure a front seat in the halls of heaven in a single day!—not without payment, though, for the “almighty dollar” plays a prominent part in these spiritual proceedings.

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; and in erecting new buildings, public companies as well as private individuals, instead of building according to their own special taste, have had some regard to that of their neighbours; every stone has been laid thoughtfully one upon the other, not only with regard to its own features, but as a part of a whole, and in perfect harmony with the general aspect of the city. One building never mars the effect of the other; the eye is hurt by no incongruity of architecture, no false colouring, but everywhere is a pleasant blending of symmetrical forms and delicate tints. The effect upon the eye is the same as that of a perfect melody upon the ear—no slurred notes, no flat where a sharp should be, nothing jarring, no false rhythm anywhere.

In secluded streets as well as in the public quarter of many a large city the eye is often struck with discords in bricks and mortar, marble, or stone; each structure perhaps tasteful enough in itself, but the effect being marred, and marring by contrast the work of its neighbour.

Fancy the effect of knee-breeches and a tall beaver on the Apollo Belvedere, a flat nose on “Antinous,” or a nez retroussÉ on the Venus of Milo!

The first question you are asked on entering a southern city is: “Have you been to the cemetery?”

This is one of the chief places of interest which everybody is anxious to point out; for next to the city of the living they cherish the city of their dead. It is here they come to while away their leisure hours, and bring the fresh flowers of every season to lay above the dust of their departed—for you seldom see an undecorated grave.

The Magnolia Cemetery is about three miles from the city; we pass first through a grand avenue to the German burial-ground, which is beautifully kept, with shining white walks winding among blooming flower beds and rare shrubberies, shaded by grand old oaks, clothed in their mantles of soft grey moss. Carved upon the headstones the solemn words “Her ruhet in Gott” meet the eye at every turn. Passing through this grave-garden, we soon come to the main entrance to Magnolia Cemetery; within the massive gates a colossal bell is suspended from a lofty scaffolding, which tolls slowly as the funeral approaches; a pretty Gothic chapel, where the services are held, stands to the left. Passing under the archway we come upon a few score of white wooden headstones, which stand like special guardians at the gates of death; beneath these lie the Federal dead. Farther on lies the wide Confederate burial-ground; here, side by side, and rank on rank, by hundreds—nay, by thousands—lie the soldiers of the lost cause sleeping their last sleep, happily unconscious of the ruin that fell on the land they loved before yet the grass grew over their graves. Few, very few, have an inscription to mark who rests beneath, but soft green hillocks swell in low waves on all sides of us; these hide the unknown dead, and over them are daisies and sweet wild flowers growing. Beyond these again lie the more fortunate, who have died at home, surrounded by friends and kindred, and fitly mourned in monuments of marble; there are symbolical urns and broken columns, groups of mourning friends in every possible or impossible attitudes of depression; there is a cherub blowing a trumpet as though striving to wake up the heavenly host with the news “another recruit is coming.” He is blowing so hard he seems to have blown himself out of his draperies, which are fluttering in the wind behind him, and weeping angels are drying their eyes with stony pocket-handkerchiefs, as though bemoaning that all the virtues of all the world lay perishing beneath them—at least, so says the inscription written there. As it always happens in the great cemeteries of north, south, east, and west, some of the departed are mourned in doggerel rhyme, some in ungrammatical prose. I think that many would rise up from their silent beds and wipe out these effusions if they could; but the dead have no remedy against the imbecilities of the living. One feels disposed to envy the unknown dead whose worth is chronicled and memory kept green in the hearts that loved them, with no marble monument to point the place where they lie “carved in dust.”

Passing through this silent world, we find ourselves in a wide white street which runs through the Catholic cemetery from east to west, in the centre and at the highest point of which stands a gigantic black cross. Cedar and ash and willow trees are growing in picturesque masses; green shrubberies refresh the sight, and rich red and cream roses are blooming everywhere. The grave gardens here are laid out in various shapes and sizes—square, circular, triangular, &c.—like a geometrical puzzle spread over the ground. The simplest grave has a cross above it, sometimes of wood, of iron, or of stone; the symbol of Christianity, as though growing out from the hearts of the sleepers, is lifted on all sides.

The sun is shining, the sweet air blowing, and a look of serene calm and most perfect peace is smiling everywhere. How the vexed and troubled folk, who wander here to get away from the busy, noisy world, must long to creep down under the roses and hide from this world’s noisy strife, and lie beside the sleeper under the sod, with hands crossed, eyes closed, at rest for ever more. Here is a grave covered with “forget-me-nots,” and a cry—a hard, cold cry—written in stone, craving to be “kept green in men’s memories;” as though the dead could hope to be remembered, when we who are living have to lift up our voices and struggle to the front that we may not be forgotten even while we live! Tall costly shafts of granite, wreathed with everlasting flowers, prick the skies, and elaborate architectural designs are erected here and there; one has brass cannon at the gates and sabres crossed upon the threshold, pointing the way the sleeper took to his death. After wandering about for some time we sit down to rest under a cedar tree, luxuriating in the sweet scent and bright colour of the waving flowerbeds, quite alone, as we thought, till a voice rather suggestive of “beer and skittles” came out of the silence:

“Nice weather, marm; things is sort o’ springin’ up everywheres, and some on ’em is full blowed, ain’t they?”

I look up; the owner of the voice has evidently just sidled round from the other side of the tree. He is an elderly man, with a ragged beard and patched clothing—the forlorn and decaying remnants of military glory; his face has a sodden, dissipated look, and his eyes a weak gin-and-watery appearance, anything but prepossessing. He was not exactly a nice kind of human ghoul to meet in such a solitary spot. I answered with an assenting smile or some kind of commonplace cheap civility, which evidently satisfied him, for he edged a little nearer, adding philosophically—

“Yes, it takes a good deal o’ sunshine to set things a startin’ out; sometimes I think I’d as lief be lyin’ down there in the dark as starvin’ up here in the sunshine—leastways the sun don’t always shine, not on me. I’ve been a soldier, marm,” he added with a slightly Irish accent, “and done my duty on many a gory field, and—oh! a—ah!”

He groaned a low guttural sort of groan—his feelings were evidently too much for him; he took out a red cotton handkerchief, shook it out for one moment as though unfurling a battle flag, then buried his face in it and boo-hoo’d behind it till his broad shoulders shook with emotion. I felt embarrassed. I was not sure I should not have that six feet of suffering manhood in another moment grovelling at my feet; but he recovered his mental equilibrium, replaced his handkerchief, shook his hat well forward on his head, and said somewhat irrelevantly but with a mournful intonation—

“‘Tain’t no use trying to cross yer fate. I’ve tried it, and it don’t answer; but one thing always puts me in mind of another; n’ flowers, n’ trees, n’ grass, n’ sich-like strikes me jist now as oncommon like human natur, for the sun o’ charity must shine on the human heart, before it will open up and give out the perfume from its inhuman pockets as it oughter—” There was a momentary and suspicious silence on my part; then my ragged and somewhat poetic philosopher added insinuatingly, “Yer don’t happen to hev a stray quarter hanging about yer clo’es anywheres? ’cause a sight of it would do me a deal o’ good.”

This ancient sinner wheedled the quarter out of my “clo’es,” and fearing lest he might move up his guns for another attack I got up and walked away a poorer and wiser woman, resolved never again to become the prey of a hoary impostor, but to fly from the first wag of his tongue as from the first clash of the tail of a rattlesnake.

We saunter on, and looking from the eastern point of Magnolia we have a magnificent panorama of the city and the clustering vessels afloat in the harbour, while stern and grim Fort Sumter looms in the distance; the white sails flutter to and fro, and dainty vessels curtsey to their own shadows reflected on the placid water; not a ripple stirs its surface, and the sun pours down a flood of silver on this sea of glass, lighting up and brightening the prospect all around, the purple pines and low-lying forts on the surrounding islands forming a charming background to the panoramic scene.

Charleston is reported by its inhabitants (and surely they ought to know) to be a perfectly healthy city, free from epidemics of any kind; if you dared to doubt it, all good Charlestonians would have you stoned to death on the spot. It certainly may be true within the limits of the city, but of its surroundings the healthfulness is more than doubtful. It lies low, and is surrounded by marshy lands, which at certain seasons of the year are covered with water—the overflow of the two rivers, Ashley and Cooper, which compass it on either side.

On returning through the suburbs from our visit to the cemetery, we come upon a very handsome house in a solitary situation, surrounded by a somewhat neglected garden and wide-spreading meadows. Leading to the entrance is an avenue of fine old English oaks, draped with grey Spanish moss. Although secluded, it has the spires and steeples and other prominent features of Charleston city in full view. It is in a state of perfect preservation, with no signs of dilapidation anywhere—it is simply deserted utterly both by man and beast. The dog kennels are empty, not a bird sings from the boughs, not even the domestic cat crouches upon the tiles or creeps along the weedy garden paths; even the stone lions which guard the entrance look in a damp depressed condition, as though they too would be glad to get away if they only could! On inquiring the cause of this desertion, I am answered:

“Oh, it belongs to a very fine family—they cleared out some weeks ago. They always leave in March and come back in October.”

“What a pity! It seems to me that they are away at the very pleasantest season.”

“But the most unhealthy; it is impossible to live about here during the summer months.”

“Malaria?” I hazard interrogatively.

“Worse—what we call country fever, which is more dangerous and often fatal. If it once gets thoroughly into the system people die of it, or are sufferers for life.”

Presently we are overtaken by waggon loads of men, both black and white—all singing merry rollicking songs, and driving at a rapid pace towards the city. We draw our modest vehicle to one side as they rattle and clatter past us. We then learn that they are the factory phosphate hands, driving back to their homes in the city. Although the phosphate works are only an hour’s distance from Charleston they are totally deserted every evening; not a single living creature remains upon the premises, as it is injurious to breathe the poisonous air after the sun has set, for then the noxious vapours rise and fill the air with disease and death. Over the extensive works, where the sound of pickaxe and shovel and whirring wheels and human voices are echoing all the day, a silence falls, and the malarial fiend wanders through its confined space seeking, but seeking in vain, for some human prey to torment and kill with its subtle kiss.

This lurking evil lies only in the one direction of the city; on the other side and extending round the harbour are some delightful summer resorts, Mount Pleasant and Sullivan Island being among the most prominent, both being easily reached by a pleasant river trip. The Ferry Company’s boats make the journey in about an hour, and make it many times in the day; but perhaps the loveliest of all Charleston’s surroundings is Summerville, which is reached by the South Carolina railway. It is situated in the heart of the pine woods, on a ridge which extends from the Ashley to the Cooper river; the climate is health-giving and invigorating, and in summer, though the days are warm, there is always a deliciously cool breeze in the evening, and there are no mosquitoes to make night horrible to the sleeper; it is serene and peaceful as a corner of the original paradise.

On our way to Fort Sumter we have to pass through the market, which is quite unique of its kind. It is a remarkably fine building in the form of a temple; the front faces Meeting Street, the most picturesque of all Charleston thoroughfares. Passing through a handsome lofty archway with a carved stone front and iron gates—now open, as the marketing operations are in full swing—we find ourselves in a long narrow corridor with groined roof and wide windows and doors on either side, where gawky, ill-looking buzzards are gathered, flapping their wings and feeding upon refuse.

As we walk up this narrow aisle piles of rich luscious fruit rise to the right and the left of us; there are hills of pine-apples, and yellow and red bananas, festoons of purple grapes, and mountains of strawberries, bushels of black and white currants, pumpkins, and that arch impostor, the great green water-melon, all artistically arranged, and forming a perfect mosaic of nature’s own colouring—only the rough red face of the honest British gooseberry is nowhere to be seen.

Next comes the vegetable department, where everything green looks crisp and fresh, with the diamond dew-drops still decorating the folded leaves, and everything coloured seems painted in Nature’s brightest hues. Dainty young carrots, and tiny turnips, looking like baby snowballs, are nestling among the sedate old cabbages, whose great white hearts seem enlarged almost to bursting; and the oyster and egg plant, unknown in European markets, are hiding among the common but useful rough-coated potato; and the delicate asparagus, with its purple tips and straight white stems, bound up in big bundles, the large and well-proportioned rallying round and covering up the crippled weaklings of their kind, and performing this manoeuvre so artfully that the most Argus-eyed housekeeper is sometimes taken in by the false pretence. The scarlet runners and fine marrowfat peas seem bursting out of their skins with joy at being gathered at last; from the very moment when they first unfolded their pink and purple buds they have been forced to creep up and cling to those tormenting sticks, twisting and twining and working so hard, night and day, till they were tired of living, and would really have gone soon to seed, and once more hidden themselves in their native earth. Now they are at rest—they don’t know they are going to be boiled in an hour.

Here and there we come upon a silly-looking turtle lying on its back, its flabby flippers wriggling feebly as though trying to turn over and crawl back to its native element.

Next we arrive at the fish and poultry division. There are golden pats of butter dressed in white frills and ornamented with violets, which, it is said, impart to it a delicious fragrance and flavour; and eggs from all the feathery tribe, white and brown, speckled and light blue, are eternally rolling over, trying to crack one another’s shells with all their might. Here plump young chickens, who were unfortunate enough to be born in the early spring, are strung up beside their tough old grandfathers; and prairie hens, and other wild birds from desolate regions, hang with stretched necks and drooping wings above the slabs of white marble, where fish from all waters are spread in tempting array. The shining red mullet, and the fat ugly sheep’s-head, and even the humble red horse, lie side by side with the aristocratic salmon; and the poor little baby porker, slaughtered in its infancy, before it had even had time to wear a ring through its nose or grout in the gutter, is lying close by, stiff and stark, with a lemon in its mouth.

Framed, like a picture, by the archway at the opposite end of this long aisle, lie the sparkling waters of the bay, with the swelling green hills beyond, and the little wheezy vessel which is to take us to Fort Sumter bobbing up and down by the pier. The little steamer, with the stars and stripes fluttering front the masthead, is puffing and blowing and making a great fuss, plunging head foremost, and shrieking like an angry virago for us to make haste, as she is in a hurry to get away.

With the fresh breeze blowing in our faces, and the sun shining in our eyes, as only a Southern sun can shine, we step on board, and in another moment our brisk little convoy is dancing over the water like a joyous child released from school; it trembles and leaps like a living thing, and we almost fancy that its iron heart must be beating with a feeling of sentient enjoyment like our own.

All kinds and conditions of men are crowded round us—high and low, rich and poor; evidently we are all out for a holiday, and in the most perfect sang-froid fashion, and without the slightest ceremony, everybody talks to everybody else. A lady from the North sits beside me, and shading her complexion from the sun, softly drones into my ear her whole family history, from the birth of her first baby to the vaccination of her last. I learn that she is now travelling in search of health, and cannot find it—the farther she goes, the farther it flies from her.

“And yet,” she murmurs plaintively, “I know it must sometimes be quite near me, if I could only lay my hands upon it.” She talked of health as a thing to be caught on the “hold fast” or “let go” principle.

“It seems to be like a game of ‘hot boiled beans and butter,’” I remark somewhat flippantly, “only there is no one to tell you when you are growing ‘hot’ or ‘cold.’”

Why will people afflict their fellow-travellers with the history of their family troubles or personal ailments, and so indulge in a luxury which is even forbidden to hospital patients! Our sympathies cannot be worked like a fire-engine; it is impossible for the most sympathetic to pump up a sudden interest in Jeremiah’s gout or Matilda’s inward complications, especially when there are beautiful scenes and delicious airs around you, which you may have come thousands of miles to enjoy; but there are some people to whom nothing is attractive or interesting outside of that great ogre “self.”

With the exception of ourselves they were all Americans on board—men from the East, men from the West; some were for the first time making a tour through their own Southern States, but east and west, north and south, walked up and down the deck, side by side, fraternising in the most friendly fashion, chatting upon passing scenes, or talking quietly one with another, indulging in reminiscences of that long long ago, when the links of brotherhood had been for a time broken. Close by was an old man with a stubbly grey beard and a mangy fur cap, that looked like a drowned kitten tied round his head; he had gathered a few hoary-headed comrades round him, and they were talking of old days, fighting their battles over again, setting up their guns, and drawing plans upon the deck. So, as the future narrows and closes round us, we are driven to the past for comfort. Flashes of sentiment and scraps of conversation were floating round us, and the very air seemed impregnated with a subtle something that was new and strange to us. While looking round upon this pleasant peaceful scene, the white sails dipping and coquetting with their own shadow in the water, the soft green hills and the grim old forts beyond, all bathed in peaceful sunshine, it is impossible but the mind will travel back to the day when the air was filled with lurid battle smoke, and the cannon stationed all around the shore belched forth blazing fires, while a hundred hungry, angry tongues of flame leapt from their iron mouths. Just such a calm as this lay upon the city the day the first gun was fired, though the passions of men were brooding below like a strong and silent tide, which is soon to overflow and flood the nations. A Carolinian poet thus describes the scene, and the vivid picture is present to-day as it was then:—

We pass by “Sullivan Island,” girdled by its beach of golden sand, with a beadwork of white foam embroidered in living light fringing the shore, and its pretty homes surrounded by lovely gardens and farmsteads, and tall church steeples, gleaming in the sunshine. We have but a distant view of Fort Moultrie, which is a striking feature on the low-lying land, but we have no time to pay it a visit, our hearts and our eyes too are anchored on Fort Sumter, and thitherward our saucy vessel turns its head, a crazy plank is flung to the shore, and we land at last. Federals and confederates, foreigners and strangers, saunter on together.

There is little of the old fort standing; it is a ruin now—a grim picturesque rugged ruin, almost levelled to a mound of rock and sand; desolation, with its empty socketless eyes, stares from the narrow loopholes, where twenty years ago there flashed the fiery orbs of war. We descended, or rather scrambled, down a flight of broken steps—it seemed we were going into the bowels of the earth—peeped into what looked like dark, narrow graves, where the men used to lie, smothered and half stifled, while they worked their guns, and living through this death in life for four long years, they came out of their darkness to the light of the sun to find their martyrdom had been in vain—their cause was lost. But the gates are closed upon all these things, and God keeps the key.