Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

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, Cæsars, 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.

STEAM TO SAVANNAH. 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.