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never mind, we are going to take care of home folks first! How will you like to rusticate? – go back and mind your own business?” “If I only knew what that was – what was my own business.”
Our round table consists of the Judge, Langdon Cheves, 1 Trescott, 2 and ourselves. Here are four of the cleverest men that we have, but such very different people, as opposite in every characteristic as the four points of the compass. Langdon Cheves and my husband have feelings and ideas in common. Mr. Petigru, 3 said of the brilliant Trescott: “He is a man without indignation.” Trescott and I laugh at everything.
The Judge, from his life as solicitor, and then on the bench, has learned to look for the darkest motives for every action. His judgment on men and things is always so harsh, it shocks and repels even his best friends. To-day he said: “Your conversation reminds me of a flashy second-rate novel.” “How?” “By the quantity of French you sprinkle over it. Do you wish to prevent us from understanding you?” “No,” said Trescott, ” we are using French against Africa. We know the black waiters are all ears now, and we want to keep what we have to say dark.
1. Son of Langdon Cheves, an eminent lawyer of South Carolina, who served in Congress from 1810 to 1814; he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, and from 1819 to 1823 was President of the United States Bank; he favored Secession, but died before it was accomplished – in 1857.
2. William Henry Trescott, a native of Charleston, was Assistant Secretary of State of the United States in 1860, but resigned after South Carolina seceded. After the war he had a successful career as a lawyer and diplomatist.
3. James Louis Petigru before the war had reached great distinction as a lawyer and stood almost alone in his State as an opponent of the Nullification movement of 1830-1832. In 1860 he strongly opposed disunion, although he was then an old man of 71. His reputation has survived among lawyers because of the fine work he did in codifying the laws of South Carolina.
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We can’t afford to take them into our confidence, you know.”
This explanation Trescott gave with great rapidity and many gestures toward the men standing behind us. Still speaking the French language, his apology was exasperating, so the Judge glared at him, and, in unabated rage, turned to talk with Mr. Cheves, who found it hard to keep a calm countenance.
On the Battery with the Rutledges, Captain Hartstein was introduced to me. He has done some heroic things – brought home some ships and is a man of mark. Afterward he sent me a beautiful bouquet, not half so beautiful, however, as Mr. Robert Gourdin’s, which already occupied the place of honor on my center table. What a dear, delightful place is Charleston!
A lady (who shall be nameless because of her story) came to see me to-day. Her husband has been on the Island with the troops for months. She has just been down to see him. She meant only to call on him, but he persuaded her to stay two days. She carried him some clothes made from his old measure. Now they are a mile too wide. “So much for a hard life!” I said.
“No, no,” said she, “they are all jolly down there. He has trained down; says it is good for him, and he likes the life.” Then she became confidential, although it was her first visit to me, a perfect stranger. She had taken no clothes down there – pushed, as she was, in that manner under Achilles’s tent. But she managed things; she tied her petticoat around her neck for a nightgown.
April 2d. – Governor Manning came to breakfast at our table. The others had breakfasted hours before. I looked at him in amazement, as he was in full dress, ready for a ball, swallow-tail and all, and at that hour. “What is the matter with you?” “Nothing, I am not mad, most noble madam. I am only going to the photographer. My wife wants me taken thus.” He insisted on my going, too,
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and we captured Mr. Chesnut and Governor Means. 1 The latter presented me with a book, a photo-book, in which I am to pillory all the celebrities.
Doctor Gibbes says the Convention is in a snarl. It was called as a Secession Convention. A secession of places seems to be what it calls for first of all. It has not stretched its eyes out to the Yankees yet; it has them turned inward; introspection is its occupation still.
Last night, as I turned down the gas, I said to myself: “Certainly this has been one of the pleasantest days of my life.” I can only give the skeleton of it, so many pleasant people, so much good talk, for, after all, it was talk, talk, talk à la Caroline du Sud. And yet the day began rather dismally. Mrs. Capers and Mrs. Tom Middleton came for me and we drove to Magnolia Cemetery. I saw William Taber’s broken column. It was hard to shake off the blues after this graveyard business.
The others were off at a dinner party. I dined tête-à-tête with Langdon Cheves, so quiet, so intelligent, so very sensible withal. There never was a pleasanter person, or a better man than he. While we were at table, Judge Whitner, Tom Frost, and Isaac Hayne came. They broke up our deeply interesting conversation, for I was hearing what an honest and brave man feared for his country, and then the Rutledges dislodged the newcomers and bore me off to drive on the Battery. On the staircase met Mrs. Izard, who came for the same purpose. On the Battery Governor Adams 2 stopped us. He had heard of my saying he looked like Marshal Pelissier, and he came to say
1. John Hugh Means was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1850, and had long been an advocate of secession. He was a delegate to the Convention of 1860 and affixed his name to the Ordinance of Secession. He was killed at the second battle of Bull Run in August, 1862.
2. James H. Adams was a graduate of Yale, who in 1832 strongly opposed Nullification, and in 1855 was elected Governor of South Carolina.
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that at last I had made a personal remark which pleased him, for once in my life. When we came home Mrs. Isaac Hayne and Chancellor Carroll called to ask us to join their excursion to the Island Forts to-morrow. With them was William Haskell. Last summer at the White Sulphur he was a pale, slim student from the university. To-day he is a soldier, stout and robust. A few months in camp, with soldiering in the open air, has worked this wonder. Camping out proves a wholesome life after all. Then came those nice, sweet, fresh, pure-looking Pringle girls. We had a charming topic in common – their clever brother Edward.
A letter from Eliza B., who is in Montgomery: “Mrs. Mallory got a letter from a lady in Washington a few days ago, who said that there had recently been several attempts to be gay in Washington, but they proved dismal failures. The Black Republicans were invited and came, and stared at their entertainers and their new Republican companions looked unhappy while they said they were enchanted showed no ill-temper at the hardly stifled grumbling and growling of our friends, who thus found themselves condemned to meet their despised enemy.”
I had a letter from the Gwinns to-day. They say Washington offers a perfect realization of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village.
Celebrated my 38th birthday, but I am too old now to dwell in public on that unimportant anniversary. A long, dusty day ahead on those windy islands; never for me, so I was up early to write a note of excuse to Chancellor Carroll. My husband went. I hope Anderson will not pay them the compliment of a salute with shotted guns, as they pass Fort Sumter, as pass they must.
Here I am interrupted by an exquisite bouquet from the Rutledges. Are there such roses anywhere else in the world? Now a loud banging at my door. I get up in a pet and throw it wide open. “Oh!” said John Manning,
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standing there, smiling radiantly; “pray excuse the noise I made. I mistook the number; I thought it was Rice’s room; that is my excuse. Now that I am here, come, go with us to Quinby’s. Everybody will be there who are not at the Island. To be photographed is the rage just now.
We had a nice open carriage, and we made a number of calls, Mrs. Izard, the Pringles, and the Tradd Street Rutledges, the handsome ex-Governor doing the honors gallantly. He had ordered dinner at six, and we dined tete-a-tete. If he should prove as great a captain in ordering his line of battle as he is in ordering a dinner, it will be as well for the country as it was for me to-day.