Charleston (19 page)

Sword Gate shone like a lighthouse in the warm December dark. House slaves had set out scores of candles. Bethel wanted a grand display, and for once Simms had overridden Lydia's warnings about mixing slaves and fire.

The splendor of the lights awed Alex as she and her family arrived. Edgar handed the phaeton's reins to a black youth at the hitching block. “Everyone behave,” Cassandra said as they entered through the side garden. “No matter how you feel about them, they're relatives.”

Alex thought her family handsomely dressed for the occasion. Papa looked elegant in his black frock coat, white vest, white tie, and full-length black inexpressibles
4

⁴
A euphemism for trousers, another word banned in polite society

There was a huge crowd in the house; Alex pictured the walls bulging and cracking if too many more came in. Aromas of food and drink, pine boughs and perfume, mingled in a tobacco haze. Cheerful conversation competed with a string quartet on the piazza, where couples danced in the mild evening air.

Simms, Bethel, and Lydia received their guests in the front hall, beside a tall pine tree sparkling with wax lights, gilt cord, and glass ornaments. Uncle Simms wore traditional satin knee breeches. Alex thought he looked like something from an old picture book. Lydia's eyes kept darting to the burning candles.

“So pleased to see you all,” Bethel said. “It doesn't happen often enough. Ham, you look ever so handsome.” Ham grimaced. Dressed like his father, he was miserable in his tight collar.

Bethel fanned herself. “Isn't it a crush? Half of Charleston's here.”

Simms laughed. “Bethel can't stop writing invitations. You children will find special refreshments at the rear of the piazza. Eggnog, chocolates, ice cream—things young people enjoy. Ouida and Gibbes are eager to see you. And please do look around, we have a new suite of furniture in Sheraton style.” Brag, brag. As if Alex cared. She'd rather sit on a rock with Henry than on a Sheraton, whatever that was.

Cassandra was polite, asking, “Did you import the furniture from London?”

Simms said, “Oh, of course. I wouldn't have it from any other place.” Alex wanted to stamp on his shoe and say,
What's wrong with Mr. Strong's furniture? It's beautiful.

Other arrivals were waiting; Edgar and his family moved on. Servants glided through the crowd taking orders for flips, gin slings, brandy toddies, French champagne, claret, and syllabub. Alex loved syllabub, a combination of brandy, white wine, sugar, and whipped cream. Occasionally she was allowed a sip, but Cassandra had forbidden it tonight, for the sake of appearances.

The dining-room table and double-tiered sideboards
held more food than Alex had ever seen in one place: suckling pig, two turkeys, a beef roast, veal croquettes, corn pie, onions in cream, and of course Charleston oysters, fried, steamed, and curried. Miss Ladylou Fancher, her head adorned with a gaudy turban, was devouring a plateful of fried oysters with a zeal that prohibited conversation. Alex didn't want to speak to her anyway.

By the dessert sideboard she encountered Virtue slicing a pale yellow cheesecake with a silver knife. He wore a white silk scarf tied around his head. He glowered at Alex; she retreated.

Ouida tapped her shoulder. “Dear cousin, there you are.” She embraced Alex, kissed both cheeks. Ouida wore a stunning dress of red velvet with large padded sleeves and swags of gilt passementerie accenting her budding bosom and broad hips. Fashionable ladies piled their hair high on the back of the head, but Ouida had gone to extreme with the very tallest of such arrangements, called
à la giraffe
.

“That's a dear little dress, Alex. Is it new?”

“Oh, no, it's a year old.”

“Well, the way you're shooting up, poor thing, you'll soon outgrow it.” Ouida would be thirteen in two days; Alex, ten, was taller and, as Ouida hinted, ungainly. She forced herself to compliment Ouida's red dress.

“Mama had it made at Miss Teller's on King Street. The fabric's from Paris. I feel so fortunate. You know what they say in England.”

“I guess I don't,” Alex said, noticing Gibbes peering at her from behind his sister's skirts. He reminded her of a mournful puppy.

“They say nothing from America can be fashionable or worthwhile. Have you read
The Spy
?”

“Yes. Mr. Cooper's books are exciting.”

“Mama refuses to let me read him. I'm stuck on
Kenilworth
. So boring. I think that's terrible, don't you?”

Before Alex could decide, Gibbes stepped forward and bowed. “Will you dance with me, Alex? I've had lessons. I know how to do the cotillion and the waltz.”

“I don't. Besides, you're too short for me.” She fled, feel
ing plain and out of place all at once. She wished she weren't
shooting up,
as Ouida called it. No doubt people snickered behind their hands and said she was growing
à la giraffe
.

She lingered near her father while he and Simms chatted. Edgar was describing a new gas lighting system in Baltimore. Simms didn't share his enthusiasm: “Sounds like another Yankee scheme to pick our pockets and intrude on our way of life.”

The party grew loud. Guests discussed recipes, the playhouses, favorable and unfavorable characteristics of their pastors, and, inevitably, cotton prices. Gentlemen chewed cigars and spit into brass pots called cuspidors; these recent innovations kept floors cleaner but endangered the clothing of ladies standing too near.

Alex watched Crittenden Lark pass by her father and cut him dead. Mr. Lark was a peacock—pink silk coat, ruffled shirt, black breeches, and white stockings. He cornered Mr. Petigru, a feisty little lawyer and good friend of Edgar's. Lark was soon shaking his finger in Petigru's face.

The quartet on the piazza finished “Home Sweet Home,” a popular tune from a London opera. Aware of Gibbes trailing her, Alex wriggled through the crowd to escape him. She greeted Morris Marburg and his wife. Papa said Simms despised Jews, but Mr. Marburg was a banker, and Papa also said you befriended every banker you met.

Finding Ham, she whispered, “When can we go home?” Ham shrugged, rolled his eyes, and yanked his collar again.

Alex took his hand. “Come along, let's have some chocolates.” They started for the piazza, only to be stopped by Ouida's outcry:

“You stepped on my dress. You tore it.”

Alex's cousin confronted Virtue at the dessert sideboard. He was gazing down at the ruinous rip, clasping and unclasping his white-gloved hands. “Wasn't me, Miss Ouida. Must been one of the gen'men.”

Lydia thrust between them. “Don't you contradict my granddaughter.” There was a sudden hush in the room.

A blood vessel in Virtue's forehead rose. “I tell you I did'n do nothing.”

Aunt Lydia wheeled around. “Simms?”

“Here, Mother.”

“He's calling Ouida a liar.”

Forcefully, Virtue said, “No, I ain't.”

“Remove him, Simms. Punish him.”

Virtue's expression turned ugly. “He better not. You people done enough to me.” He tore off the white scarf. His left ear was missing. The sight of lumpy scar tissue made Alex queasy.

Lydia said, “Is that a threat? Losing your ear apparently taught you nothing. This time we'll cut off your foot and make you worthless. You're not much better than that now.” She turned her back, dismissing him.

Virtue seized her around the waist. A communal gasp ran around the room. With his right hand Virtue snatched the knife from the cheesecake plate. A man exclaimed, “Oh, my God, don't hurt her.” Virtue reached over Lydia's shoulder and slashed her throat twice.

A great fan of arterial blood spewed from the wounds, raining on the heart-pine floor and the feet of the nearest guests. Virtue pushed Lydia away. She fell against Ouida, dragging the two of them down in a heap. Ouida wailed and writhed, trapped underneath. Lydia's heart kept pumping, reddening Ouida's face and throat and flailing hands.

Two older housemen rushed Virtue. He cut an arc in the air with the red knife, driving them back. Blood flew off the blade, speckling the wall and a woman's white turban. She fainted into the arms of her escort. Other ladies had fallen in similar fashion.

Crouching, Virtue swung the knife in a little circle to deter other attackers. Guests crowded in from the hall as Virtue backed toward a tall window. Simms ran at him. Virtue leapt at the window, flung his arms over his head. In a rain of glass he dropped into a narrow passage between houses. “Catch him, he's escaping,” Simms shouted. Still pinned beneath her grandmother's twitching body, Ouida screamed like a mad thing.

Simms crawled through the frame of sawtooth glass and dropped from sight as Virtue had. Cassandra ran to Alex
and Ham. “Are you children all right?” Ham said yes. Alex could only swallow and nod. Cassandra hugged them. “Oh, this is horrible, frightful. What provoked it?”

Several other men followed Simms through the broken window. It turned out to be a futile pursuit. According to reports Edgar brought home later, Virtue ran to the street, fatally stabbing the boy at the hitching block. He stole a buggy and raced away in the night. He was never caught. Many believed he slipped aboard a ship manned by black sailors who hid him until the vessel crossed the Charleston Bar at the next high tide.

Alex had nightmares about the tragedy. She asked the same question Cassandra had.
“What provoked it?”

 

The weeks following Lydia's funeral brought forth different answers. At Prosperity Hall, where Simms's family wore black and Ouida moved in a strange state of withdrawal, the answer required no thought. What provoked it was Virtue's bestial nature—the nature of all Negroes.

Cassandra's answer was not so glib. Alex heard it as she and her mother stood gazing at the Benbridge portrait of Joanna.

“What provoked it? Why, what we've done to the blacks. Treating them as chattels. Tormenting and demeaning them without remorse or the slightest thought of remedy. Your grandmother knew.”

Cassandra's soft, sad words struck into Alex's heart and mind like a white iron on flesh.
Please God,
she prayed,
I hope you hear me. I will never treat anyone so cruelly. I'll never be like those who do. I'll hate them and be their enemy forever.

In 1829 the business community hummed with talk of the “rail road” to be constructed next year. Its coming was prompted by continuing depression in cotton prices, the expansion of settlement away from the coast, and a general decline in Charleston commerce.

Two years earlier Edgar and other civic leaders had traveled to the capital to lobby for a bold remedy. The legislature responded by chartering the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company to create a rail or water link between the Ashley and Savannah rivers. Most Carolina waterways were too shallow for anything larger than rafts or poleboats, while the broad Savannah carried cargo on sizable barges. Backers of the scheme expected a canal or railway to divert a significant and profitable amount of freight and passenger traffic from the port of Savannah. Edgar shared the vision and bought shares in the new company.

The canal idea soon faltered, left in the shadow of England's innovative experiments with iron and wooden rails. Planners of the SCC & R considered systems using horsepower, sail power, or steam power. Edgar said a decision would soon be made in favor of steam, and a contract let for construction of a “loco-motive” with a required speed of eight to ten miles an hour.

New men led the nation: President Andrew Jackson and Vice President John Calhoun. Locally, Crittenden Lark had easily defeated his opponent for a seat in Congress.

Soon after the election Henry Strong surprised Alex by taking a menial job at the Charleston Theater at Savage's
Green, Broad and New Streets. The theater dated to 1793. An early manager, Alexander Placide, was fondly remembered in the city. A rope walker who entertained the French court before he emigrated, Placide had presented plays and other entertainments—acrobats, bird call artists, Indians doing war dances—at his own smaller theater before taking over the larger venue. There, he brought celebrated actors to Charleston: Henry Wallack, Junius Brutus Booth, the arrogant Englishman, Kean, who made too many hostile remarks about America during his engagement and was driven off Placide's stage by a rain of eggs and rotten vegetables.

Placide died in the summer of 1812. His wife and five children, all performers, tried to keep the house going but failed. After that it operated with a change of managers every season or so. Each said he couldn't make money because Charleston wasn't a good theater town. Audiences were unsophisticated and fickle, often preferring an exhibition of wax figures, or a panorama of the battle of Lake Erie, or Morton's Live Whale and Magic Show, to something by Shakespeare or Sheridan.

Which is exactly how Alex felt. She and Ham had been dragged to a box at the Charleston only three times, once to see a diverting spectacle called
Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp,
and then to suffer through
Romeo and Juliet
and
Macbeth
. Ham liked the swordplay and blood-letting, but Alex found the language strange and the plays boring.

She asked Henry why he'd taken such a job. They talked in Gullah, as they usually did when by themselves.

“Pa made two beautiful lobby doors for them. He heard they wanted to hire a boy and I went to see about it, without telling him. I did it because I can't get in the theater otherwise. ‘People of color not to be admitted to any part of the house.' Says so on every handbill.”

“You're mad about being kept out and you want to show them up? That's the reason?”

“Not the only one. Mama sees theater when she visits her relatives. Her aunt, Miss Rose Ward, she's a ladies' maid in New York, she takes Mama to a Negro playhouse
called Brown's. Mama says it's wonderful, magical, watching people pretend to be other people. On her last trip she heard about a young Negro from America, Ira Aldridge, who's getting famous in London where they don't care about color.”

“Yes, but how do you watch the plays if they won't admit Negroes?”

“They let me stand behind the prompt table.”

“How does your father feel about it?”

“He had a pretty long face when I told him, but he wants me to do whatever I want to do. Pa wouldn't make me a slave against my will, is how he put it.”

“Your father's a noble man.”

Henry nodded. “Wouldn't you like to see the theater? When the company leaves to play three weeks in Savannah, I can show you around.”

Late in January 1829 the moment arrived. The Charleston Theater was a handsome stone building modeled after playhouses in London. Henry met Alex at the artists' entrance. She wore a black armband that day. Grandfather Mayfield had gone to his reward, if any, two days before Christmas.

As they peeked into dressing rooms used by the artists, Alex said, “What exactly do you do here?”

“Sweep. Paint. Help build scenery. Burnish the footlight reflectors. Sometimes they let me call the half and quarter hour. Last week Mrs. Leigh Waring from the company, she's Mr. Placide's daughter, she complimented my voice.”

Alex could understand. Henry's voice had matured; grown deep and beautiful. Its tone reminded her of the tolling of Great Michael.

“I might be an actor,” he added.

“Oh, could you? I mean, is it possible for…?” She didn't finish. He knew what she meant.

“For a colored man? Not in this town. I'd have to go to New York. Or England, like Mr. Aldridge.”

Upset by the thought, Alex said, “What about that law they passed after Denmark Vesey? Any free person of color who leaves South Carolina and returns can be arrested. Made a slave again.”

“Heard about it. Guess if I go, I can't come back.”

“Oh, Henry, no. What would I do?”

“Find a good white man to marry and give you babies.”

Alex feigned shock at his language. Henry had surely changed. But so had she; the shape of her front was testimony.

She touched his sleeve. “You know I couldn't find anyone who'd be as good a friend as you.”

“Who says your husband has to be your friend?”

“I do. Don't change the subject. You and I are soul mates.”

“What's that?”

“People who care about each other. I read it in one of Mama's novels.”

“Well, if you think we're soul mates, maybe both of us should leave.”

They walked through the scene room to the stage. Beyond the apron lay the pit, dark as a chasm, with three tiers of boxes above, and then the gallery. “Holds twelve hundred people,” Henry said.

The talk of leaving Charleston depressed her. “Mr. Thomas Grimké's sister Sarah left, you know.”

“She the woman who changed churches?”

“Yes, she became a Quaker, up in Philadelphia. Mr. Grimké told Papa that his sister left because of slavery. His other sister, Angelina, may be next. She's already going to the Quaker meeting here. People like Uncle Simms and Ouida sneer and scorn her for it. But, Henry, if a person hates slavery—”

“I surely do.”

“—must the person go somewhere else?”

“Don't see any other way, 'less you want to try Vesey's way and get hung.”

Alex shivered, clasped his hand. “Let's go outside. This place is too gloomy.”

 

Alex's relationship with her cousins hadn't improved. Gibbes continued to chase her. Each time they met, he sidled up and tried to whisper flattery or tell a joke in a lame
effort to be entertaining. Alex always rebuffed him, to the point of being insulting. It didn't seem to stop him, so she avoided him whenever possible.

She had less chance of avoiding Ouida, who was finishing her studies at Miss Fancher's. Ouida would receive no further education, nor would Alex. All that remained for Miss Fancher's young ladies was marriage and motherhood, or the one profession open to women, teaching. Alex resented that.

Puberty had brought Ouida from her childhood cocoon but failed to turn her into a beautiful butterfly. She was, Alex thought with a definite tincture of dislike, a drab moth who hid the drabness with rouge, powder, and pretty clothes. Ouida had weak eyes, tended to squint. She needed thick spectacles but she was vain and wouldn't wear them. This produced collisions with furniture and, sometimes, people. If Ouida bumped into a slave and hurt herself, she punished the slave. She was known for mistreating the Negroes at Sword Gate and Prosperity Hall. Lydia had taught her well.

Though just sixteen, Ouida appeared to have a gentleman interested in her. “Oh pooh,” she protested when questioned. “Dr. Hayward's twenty-nine. Old as Methuselah.”

“But he calls on you regularly, doesn't he?” a classmate asked.

“No. He calls at our house, because Mama gets the vapors, and he's her doctor.”

Alex had met Dr. Xeno Hayward at a Christmas levee. A stout man, he had a lovely warm smile and an easygoing manner. She wondered what he saw in Ouida. Beyond her wealth and position, of course. Perhaps that was all he needed to see, Charleston being Charleston. There was just no accounting for choices in love.

Alex's assumption was speculative; nearing fourteen, she had no experience with the subject. Because of her height, her dislike of coquetry, and the quirky way she thought about things, perhaps she never would.

 

In a rosy spring twilight Alex and Henry strolled in White Point garden, observing barges anchored near a harbor shoal where army engineers were starting construction of a fort. Alex had brought her new banjo, as white people called the instrument. She wanted to show it off to Henry. His father had helped make it, over Cassandra's continuing objections.

The banjo's round body, or ring, came from a wooden cheese box. Hamnet had sculpted the underside of the neck with his screw-crank lathe, then finished the piece and attached it using hand tools. Old Drayton, who was losing his eyesight, somehow found a tanned coonskin for the head. Humoring his daughter, Edgar brought home strings made of sheep's gut. It wasn't a beautiful or expensive instrument, but it produced a ringing tone. Drayton had taught Alex to play it with an upstroke of thumb and forefinger. She learned the guitar downstroke on her own.

The garden was nearly deserted; long shadows lay on the rose-tinted paths. Henry looked around cautiously, then flopped on a cast-iron bench. “Play me something.” Alex happily obliged.

He interrupted. “You allowed to say
damn
?”

“I guess I am if I do, Henry.” She sang the rest of the song, culminating in the coon's downfall, removal from the tree by a clever black man who caught hold of his tail.

Henry grinned and applauded. On South Battery a seller of gooseberries and strawberries with a basket on his head wearily chanted his offerings. Alex retuned two of the four strings, played and sang again.

He blinked. “Where'd that come from?”

“Me. I made it up.”

“You make up songs?”

“Yes. I don't play them for anyone.”

“You played one for me.”

“I can trust you not to make fun.”

“Why'd I make fun?” He leaned back, brawny arms draped over the bench. “Tune's nice. I don't much like the ‘little' part.” He pumped himself up with a deep breath and showed a muscle. Alex laughed and touched his bare arm, just as a handsomely dressed stranger walked by. The gentleman dug in his heels, poked Alex's arm with the ferrule of his cane.

“You're Attorney Bell's daughter. What are you doing in the public garden with him?”

“Henry is a free person of color, sir. He's my friend.”

“He's a nigger. Mixing is against the laws of God and nature. Stop your folly or you'll come to grief. There are people in Charleston who will see to it. As for you”—he jabbed Henry—“it will soon be curfew.”

Henry jutted his chin. “But it ain't yet. Sir.”

The stranger pointed the cane at Alex. “Your father handled a breach-of-contract suit for me. He'll never handle another.” He wheeled and walked off. Alex and Henry exchanged looks.

She told Edgar of the experience, and of the stranger's belligerence. He hugged her, murmured that it didn't matter, Henry was a fine young man. Alex wondered if he was secretly disappointed, or worried about her indiscretion. If so he kept it to himself.