After the war William Baron became well known in Charleston as a caterer, cook, and provider of elegant entertainments. He took charge of the suppers for the St. Cecilia, which were always very handsome and elaborate and quite a feature. Indeed, William was quite a personage, with grand manners, and perfectly honest. He had but one fault, to look upon the wine when it was red; he habitually took more than was good for him and lived too high, so that his health gave out before he was at all an old man. He always showed enthusiastic pleasure when he met any of the family, but especially my eldest brother to whom he had belonged. Mas’ Ben continued to fill his ideas as to what constituted a gentleman. Whenever my brother came to the city and he knew it, he would send round a dish of delicious chicken salad or a shrimp pie, for which he was famous, or a Charlotte Russe, or some dish that he knew Mas’ Ben specially liked. It was always a pleasure to meet William; his very black, round face shone with delight and every one of his very white teeth showed, as he assured you that “it did his heart good to look upon you and you were looking so fine and so well.”

Then there was Stephen Gallant, who was papa’s special servant and valet, but when there was much company he helped with the waiting, which he understood well. Joe Washington was the cook. He had been trained two years by a man who kept a very fine restaurant, Sam Lee. Phœbe and Nannie were the maids, and Nellie, Nelson’s wife, the laundress, assisted by a young girl. Daddy Moses, William’s father, was brought down from the country to take charge of the yard and be gardener under a white man, Mr. Wubb, who was employed. Harris, a boy in the house, attended the bell and ran errands. They were all good servants and I was fond of all but Stephen, whom I could not bear. He put on great airs because he went with papa to Columbia always, and felt himself superior to the others, who jokingly called him the “little guv’ner,” because he imitated papa’s walk and manner generally, in an absurd way, as he was quite small and very black.

My sister became engaged the year before the war. She had a beautiful engagement ring, a diamond. She also wore always a magnificent ruby which had been left her by Uncle Tom, captain in the navy. One day she was sewing before dinner and had taken off her rings and slipped them into her work-box, and when we went in to dinner she left it in the hall. When we came out from dinner and she opened her work-box to get the rings, they were gone! It is a very remarkable thing that the servants were not suspected at all. There was a door in the hall opening on to the driveway, and it was always taken for granted that a thief had slipped in, opened the box, and taken out the only valuables in it and escaped. The police were notified to look out for a sneak-thief, and they reported great activity on their part, ending in nothing. The rings were never heard of again. My sister was much blamed for her carelessness. I know now that poor Stephen took those rings. He was not waiting on table that day, and knew well the value of the jewels and my sister’s habit of slipping them off into her box while she was sewing. He knew about the approaching war, and he knew they would always command a good sum of money, for the great value of the pigeon-blood ruby had often been discussed. And Stephen was the only one who ran off to the U. S. fleet before the end of the conflict. Soon after my father’s death he took his whole family but one boy, Brutus, put them in a small boat and rowed through the waves from the inlet next to Pawley’s Island and joined the fleet. It must have all been arranged before, for they were on the lookout for the boat and picked them up safely. Of course, this was a great risk, and it seems strange, after braving the waves of the ocean in a small boat, Stephen should have been drowned some years after the war in the Waccamaw River. He had overloaded his boat with rough rice and it sank. His son Brutus, who was with him, escaped by swimming to shore.

When the family went into the country this year, early in December, my aunt Ann (Uncle Tom’s widow, the buying of whose negroes at her urgent request ruined my father) asked mamma to leave me with her, so that I could continue at school until the holidays and so not lose my place in my classes. So I stayed and went to school from her house. The holidays began December 20. I was to take the steamer Nina, which was the only way to reach Georgetown then except to travel the sixty miles in our own carriage, as my mother always did; but, of course, mamma and the family having gone that way, I had to take the boat. It so happened that the day for the sailing of the Nina was a day of wild excitement, as it was the 20th of December, 1860. The Ordinance of Secession was passed that morning in Charleston, and the whole town was in an uproar. Parades, shouting, firecrackers, bells ringing, cannon on the forts booming, flags waving, and excited people thronging the streets. I was to go on board the Nina at nine o’clock and sleep there, as she sailed at an unearthly hour in the morning. My aunt’s coachman was to drive me down, but he came to her and said:

“Miss, I cudn’t possible keep dem horse frum run, wid all dis racket. Dem is jest de trimble en prance een de stable now, en I dasn’t dare tek dem on de street.”

We all knew they were very spirited, overfed horses, and that the man was right. It would be a great risk to attempt to drive them. So it was decided I would have to walk. My two cousins had come to see me off and walked with me—J. Johnston Pettigrew, my great hero and ideal of a man; and Charley Porcher, who was only a little older than myself and my great friend. Fortunately my trunk had been sent down in the morning. It had rained and when we got down to the wharf it was wet and muddy, and I had no over-shoes. Without a word of warning, Cousin Johnston picked me up in his arms and carried me all the way to the boat. I was overcome by the struggle within me, mortification that I should be treated like a child when I was fifteen and thought myself grown up, and delight and gratification that Cousin Johnston cared enough for me to do it, and joy that I was in the arms of my adored hero! I never saw Cousin Johnston again. He entered the army at once and, after distinguishing himself in every action and being promoted to be general, he was killed at Gettysburg, a terrible loss to our army, and my first sorrow.

South Carolina having seceded from the Union, military preparations began at once. My brother Ben, who had been educated at West Point and served in the army until three years before, raised and equipped a company of cavalry at his own expense, aided by my father. It was called “Marion’s Men of Winyah.” The whole country was in wild excitement, drilling and preparing for war. Every one volunteered, old, young, and middle-aged. It was hard to keep the boys at school. In the spring every man we knew in Charleston was in one company or another. The Charleston Light Dragoons and the Washington Light Infantry were the favorites, but there were many other companies of great popularity.

One State after another followed South Carolina’s example, and a convention was called at Montgomery, Ala., which elected Jefferson Davis President of the Southern Confederacy.

CHAPTER XV
BOARDING-SCHOOL IN WAR TIMES

AS soon as war was declared Madame Togno moved her school from Charleston to Columbia, as every one knew it was only a question of time as to when the city would be shelled. She rented Barhamville, a well-known old school a few miles out of Columbia, and in November, 1862, my little sister and myself were sent there. The journey is specially impressed on me, for my eldest sister had talked a great deal of Mary Pringle’s delightful brother, Julius, who had left Heidelberg (where he had graduated and was then taking a law course) as soon as he heard of secession, and had run the blockade to join the Confederate army. She had been at home when he called and I had not, and she talked so much about him that I said, with my sharp tongue: “That seemed a strange way for a girl engaged to one man to talk of another, and wondered how her fiancé would like it if he could hear.” She did not in the least mind this, but continued her praise, so that my opposition was roused; and, when, as we were taking the train, with packages and much impedimenta, our good Phibby included, for she was to go with us, Della brought up the young man and introduced him to us, I said to her when he went to make some inquiry at the office for her: “So this is your paragon! You certainly shouldn’t choose for me!” However, he was a most attentive companion on the journey, and stood and talked to me all the way to Charleston, where we were to spend a few days before going on to Columbia. Jinty made me very miserable, because I was painfully dignified and speaking in the most correct and careful way, till I saw that while he stood and talked to me, she, on the opposite seat, was shooting peanuts skilfully into his coat-pockets. I could not speak to her and reprimand her, for she would have answered me back promptly, and I was terribly afraid he would turn and see what my little sister was doing. He did not, however, and must have been much amazed later to find his pockets full of peanuts.