This is the reason Charleston and Augusta stand with the Northerners for character study, history and individual charm. Yet thousands of travelers, eager as they are about it, know almost nothing of the core of these two cities. They dwell lovingly on the quaint houses of the one and the great street of the other, but the blinds are jealously down. 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.”
A small child of that city was asked where Charleston was placed. Proudly she said, “It is between the Cooper and the Ashley Rivers, which join and form the ocean.”
When the Bostonian speaks grandly of the Mayflower, the Huguenot of Charleston smiles. He is remembering that Jean Ribaut landed a Huguenot emigration in Port Royal fifty-eight years before the Puritans landed in Massachusetts Bay. The Knickerbocker has no boast to make before the South Carolinian, because the Dutch settled New York over half a century later than Port Royal was begun.
Charleston was settled by aristocrats from France, and later from England—men who came from the court and wore the garments and spoke the language of the world’s highest circle. Like New Orleans, it sprang into life as a cultured community. It had not the struggle upward for social position. The great names it held then are its first names to-day. And the world recognizes the bearers of these names as those who have the hallmark of admission into the reserved social corners of America.
The St. Cecilia Society exists in all its former charm and exclusiveness. It is the oldest dancing club in America, as far as the Charlestonian has any record, although the Philadelphian claims this honor for the Quaker City’s famous Assemblies. It has not changed in one iota since the early days of the eighteenth century, and, as far as possible, the names of its managers have continued the same.
Josiah Quincy, who went to Charleston in 1773, says of the city, in his diary: “It far surpasses all I ever saw or ever expect to see in America.”
As early as January, 1734, Charleston had its drama, which was probably the first theatrical performance in America. Its citizens went to college in England; and Mr. Snowden, who knows his Charleston as Thackeray knew his London, says South Carolina headed all the colonies in the list of the London Inns of Court, and up to the time of the Revolution had forty-five law students there.
When the Philadelphian speaks serenely of the Liberty Bell, the Charlestonian smiles and remembers that in 1765 South Carolina took the first step for a Continental Union, and that in Charleston was formulated the first independent constitution in any of the colonies; also that she furnished three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence—Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward and Thomas Lynch, Jr. To the world of art it gave Charles Fraser, the great miniaturist; and Malbone also did his work there. The private houses held Gainsboroughs, Stuarts, Romneys and Wests in the eighteenth century.
These are a few of the reasons that give the Charlestonian that serene pride in self, country and relatives. This serenity broods over the city; and the shock of wars, earthquakes, tidal wave and stupendous fires has not shaken it.