Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861

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My husband never knew exactly what I was laughing at. And why should he?
I was fast overcoming my weakness about names, and thinking they were
nothing, compared to things, after all.

When our laugh (for his was sympathetic) had subsided into a quiet
cheerfulness, he said, again holding up his hand,--

"Not at all curious, Del? You don't ask what Mr. Solitude Drake wanted?"

"I don't think I care what he wanted: company, I suppose."

And I went on making bad puns about solitude sweetened, and ducks and
drakes, as happy people do, whose hearts are quite at ease.

"And you don't want to know at all, Del?" said he, laughing a little
nervously, and dropping from his hand an open paper into mine. "It shall
be my wedding-present to you. It is Mr. Drake's retainer. Pretty stout
one, is it not? This is what made me jump out of the window,--this and
one other thing."

"Why, this is a draft for five hundred dollars!" said I, reading and
staring stupidly at the paper.

"Yes, and I am retained in that great Albany land-case. It involves
millions of property. That is all, Del. But I was so glad, so happy,
that I was likely to do well at last, and that I could gratify all the
wishes, reasonable and unreasonable, of my darling!"

"Is it a good deal?" said I, simply; for, after all, five hundred
dollars did not seem such an Arabian fortune.

"Yes, Del, a good deal. Whichever way it is decided, it will make my
fortune. And now--the other thing. You are sure you are very calm, and
all this won't make you sleepless?"

"Oh, no! I am calm as a clock."

"Well, then,--your Aunt Allen is dead."

"Dead! Is she? Did she leave us all her money?"

"Why, no, you little cormorant. She has left it all about: Legacies, and
Antioch College, and Destitute Societies. But I believe you have some
clothes left to you and Laura. Any way, the will is in there, in the
library: Mr. Drake had a copy of it. And the best of all is, I am to be
the executor, which is enough better than residuary legatee."

"It is very strange!" said I, thinking of the multitude of old gowns I
should have to alter over.

"Yes, it is, indeed, very strange. One of the strangest things about
the matter is, that my good friend Solitude was so taken with 'my queer
name,' as he calls it, that he 'took a fancy to me out of hand.' To be
sure, he listened through my argument in the Shore case, and that may
have helped his opinion of me as a lawyer.--Here comes Laura. Who would
have thought it was one o'clock?"

And who would have thought that my little ugly chrysalis of troubles
would have turned out such beautiful butterflies of blessings?

* * * * *

MARION DALE.

Marion Dale, I remember you once,
In the days when you blushed like a rose half-blown,
Long ere that wealthy respectable dunce
Sponged up your beautiful name in his own.

I remember you, Marion Dale,
Artless and cordial and modest and sweet:
You never walked in that glittering mail
That covers you now from your head to your feet.

Well I remember your welcoming smile,
When Alice and Annie and Edward and I
Came over to see you;--you lived but a mile
From my uncle's old house, and the grove that stood nigh.

I was no lover of yours, (pray, excuse me!)--
Our minds were different in texture and hue:
I never gave you a chance to refuse me;
Already I loved one less changeful than you.

Still it was ever a pride and a pleasure
Just to be near you,--the Rose of our vale.
Often I thought, "Who will own such a treasure?
Who win the rich love of our Marion Dale?"

I wonder now if you ever remember,
Ever sigh over fifteen years ago,--
Whether your June is all turned to December,--
Whether your life now is happy or no.

Gone are those winters of chats and of dances!
Gone are those summers of picnics and rides!
Gone the aroma of life's young romances!
Gone the swift flow of our passionate tides!

Marion Dale,--no longer our Marion,--
You have gone your way, and I have gone mine:
Lowly I've labored, while fashion's gay clarion
Trumpets your name through the waltz and the wine.

And when I meet you, your smile it is colder;
Statelier, prouder your features have grown;
Rounder each white and magnificent shoulder;
(Rather too low-necked your waist, I must own.)

Jewelled and muslined, your rich hair gold-netted,
Queenly 'mid flattering voices you move,--
Half to your own native graces indebted,
Half to the station and fortune you love.

"Marion" we called you; my wife you called "Alice";
I was plain "Phil";--we were intimate all:
Strange, as we leave now our cards at your palace,
On Mrs. Prime Goldbanks of Bubblemere Hall!

Six golden lackeys illumine the doorway:
Sure, one would think, by the glances they throw,
That we were fresh from the mountains of Norway,
And had forgotten to shake off the snow!

They will permit us to enter, however;
Usher us into her splendid saloon:
There we sit waiting and waiting forever,
As one would watch for the rise of the moon.

Or it may be to-day's not her "reception":
Still she's at home, and a little unbends,--
Framing, while dressing, some harmless deception,
How she shall meet her "American" friends.

Smiling you meet us,--but not quite sincerely;
Low-voiced you greet us,--but this is the _ton_:
This, we must feel it, is courtesy merely,--
Not the glad welcome of days that are gone.

You are in England,--the land where they freeze one,
When they've a mind to, with fashion and form:
Yet, if you choose, you can thoroughly please one:
Currents run through you still youthful and warm.

So one would think, at least, seeing you moving,
Radiant and gay, at the Countess's _fete_.
Say, was that babble so sweeter than loving?
Where was the charm, that you lingered so late?

Ah, well enough, as you dance on in joyance!
Still well enough, at your dinners and calls!
Fashion and riches will mask much annoyance.
Float on, fair lady, whatever befalls!

Yet, Lady Marion, for hours and for hours
You are alone with your husband and lord.
There is a skeleton hid in yon flowers;
There is a spectre at bed and at board.

Needs no confession to tell there is acting
Somewhere about you a tragedy grim.
All your bright rays have a sullen refracting;
Everywhere looms up the image of _him_:

Him,--whom you love not, there is no concealing.
How _could_ you love him, apart from his gold?
Nothing now left but your fire-fly wheeling,--
Flashing one moment, then pallid and cold!

Yet you've accepted the life that he offers,--
Sunk to his level,--not raised him to yours.
All your fair flowers have their roots in his coffers:
Empty the gold-dust, and then what endures?

So, then, we leave you! Your world is not ours.
Alice and I will not trouble you more.
Almost too heavy the scent of these flowers
Down the broad stairway. Quick, open the door!

Here, in the free air, we'll pray for you, lady!
You who are changed to us,--gone from us,--lost!
Soon the Atlantic shall part us, already
Parted by gulfs that can never be crossed!

CHARLESTON UNDER ARMS.

On Saturday morning, January 19, 1861, the steamer Columbia, from New
York, lay off the harbor of Charleston in full sight of Fort Sumter. It
is a circumstance which perhaps would never have reached the knowledge
of the magazine-reading world, nor have been of any importance to it,
but for the attendant fact that I, the writer of this article, was on
board the steamer. It takes two events to make a consequence, as well as
two parties to make a bargain.

The sea was smooth; the air was warmish and slightly misty; the low
coast showed bare sand and forests of pines. The dangerous bar of the
port, now partially deprived of its buoys, and with its main channel
rendered perilous by the hulks of sunken schooners, revealed itself
plainly, half a mile ahead of us, in a great crescent of yellow water,
plainly distinguishable from the steel-gray of the outer ocean. Two
or three square-rigged vessels were anchored to the southward of us,
waiting for the tide or the tugs, while four or five pilot-boats tacked
up and down in the lazy breeze, watching for the cotton-freighters which
ought at this season to crowd the palmetto wharves.

"I wish we could get the duties on those ships to pay some of our
military bills," said a genteel, clean-spoken Charlestonian, to a long,
green, kindly-faced youth, from I know not what Southern military
academy.

We had arrived off the harbor about midnight, but had not entered, for
lack of a beacon whereby to shape our course. Now we must wait until
noon for the tide, standing off and on the while merely to keep up our
fires. A pilot came under our quarter in his little schooner, and told
us that the steamer Nashville had got out the day before with only a
hard bumping. No other news had he: Fort Sumter had not been taken, nor
assaulted; the independence of South Carolina had not been recognized;
various desirable events had not happened. In short, the political world
had remained during our voyage in that chaotic _status quo_ so loved by
President Buchanan. At twelve we stood for the bar, sounding our way
with extreme caution. Without accident we passed over the treacherous
bottom, although in places it could not have been more than eighteen
inches below our keel. The shores closed in on both sides as we passed
onward. To the south was the long, low, gray Morris Island, with its
extinguished lighthouse, its tuft or two of pines, its few dwellings,
and its invisible batteries. To the north was the long, low, gray
Sullivan's Island, a repetition of the other, with the distinctions of
higher sand-rolls, a village, a regular fort, and palmettos. We passed
the huge brown Moultrie House, in summer a gay resort, at present a
barrack; passed the hundred scattered cottages of the island, mostly
untenanted now, and looking among the sand-drifts as if they had been
washed ashore at random; passed the low walls of Fort Moultrie,
once visibly yellow, but now almost hidden by the new _glacis_, and
surmounted by piles of barrels and bags of sand, with here and there
palmetto stockades as a casing for the improvised embrasures; passed its
black guns, its solidly built, but rusty barracks, and its weather-worn
palmetto flag waving from a temporary flag-staff. On the opposite side
of the harbor was Fort Johnstone, a low point, exhibiting a barrack, a
few houses, and a sand redoubt, with three forty-two pounders. And
here, in the midst of all things, apparent master of all things, at the
entrance of the harbor proper, and nearly equidistant from either shore,
though nearest the southern, frowned Fort Sumter, a huge and lofty
and solid mass of brickwork with stone embrasures, all rising from
a foundation of ragged granite boulders washed by the tides. The
port-holes were closed; a dozen or so of monstrous cannon peeped from
the summit; two or three sentinels paced slowly along the parapet; the
stars and stripes blew out from the lofty flag-staff. The plan of Fort
Sumter may be briefly described as five-sided, with each angle just so
much truncated as to give room for one embrasure in every story. Its
whole air is massive, commanding, and formidable.

Eighty or a hundred citizens, volunteers, cadets from the military
academy, policemen, and negroes, greeted the arrival of the Columbia at
her wharf. It was a larger crowd than usual, partly because a report had
circulated that we should be forced to bring to off Fort Sumter and give
an account of ourselves, and partly because many persons in Charleston
have lately been perplexed with an abundant leisure. As I drove to my
hotel, I noticed that the streets showed less movement of business
and population than when I knew them four years ago. The place seemed
dirtier, too,--worse paved, shabbier as to its brick-work and stucco,
and worse painted,--but whether through real deterioration, or by
comparison with the neatly finished city which I had lately left, I
cannot decide. There was surely not a third of the usual shipping, nor a
quarter of the accustomed cotton. Here and there were wharves perfectly
bare, not only of masting and of freight, but even of dust, as if they
had not been used for days, or possibly for weeks.

My old hotel was as well kept, and its table as plentiful and excellent
as ever. I believe we are all aware by this time that Charleston has
not suffered from hunger; that beef has not sold at thirty-five cents a
pound, but rather at ten or fifteen; that its Minute Men have not
been accustomed to come down upon its citizens for forced dinners and
dollars; that the State loan was taken willingly by the banks, instead
of unwillingly by private persons; that the rich, so far from being
obliged to give a great deal for the cause of Secession, have generally
given very little; that the streets are well-policed, untrodden by mobs,
and as orderly as those of most cities; that, in short, the revolution
so far has been political, and not social. At the same time exports
and imports have nearly ceased; business, even in the retail form, is
stagnant; the banks have suspended; debts are not paid.

After dinner I walked up to the Citadel square and saw a drill of the
Home Guard. About thirty troopers, all elderly men, and several with
white hair and whiskers, uniformed in long overcoats of homespun gray,
went through some of the simpler cavalry evolutions in spite of their
horses' teeth. The Home Guard is a volunteer police force, raised
because of the absence of so many of the young men of the city at the
islands, and because of the supposed necessity of keeping a strong hand
over the negroes. A malicious citizen assured me that it was in training
to take Fort Sumter by charging upon it at low water. On the opposite
side of the square from where I stood rose the Citadel, or military
academy, a long and lofty reddish-yellow building, stuccoed and
castellated, which, by the way, I have seen represented in one of our
illustrated papers as the United States Arsenal. Under its walls
were half a dozen iron cannon which I judged at that distance to be
twenty-four pounders. A few negroes, certainly the most leisurely part
of the population at this period, and still fewer white people, leaned
over the shabby fence and stared listlessly at the horsemen, with the
air of people whom habit had made indifferent to such spectacles. Near
me three men of the middle class of Charleston talked of those two
eternal subjects, Secession and Fort Sumter. One of them, a rosy-faced,
kindly-eyed, sincere, seedy, pursy gentleman of fifty, congratulated the
others and thanked God because of the present high moral stand of South
Carolina, so much loftier than if she had seized the key to her main
harbor, when she had the opportunity. Her honor was now unspotted; her
good faith and her love of the right were visible to the whole world;
while the position of the Federal Government was disgraced and sapped by
falsity. Better Sumter treacherously in the hands of the United States
than in the hands of South Carolina; better suffer for a time under
physical difficulties than forever under moral dishonor.

Simple-hearted man, a fair type of his fellow-citizens, he saw but his
own side of the question, and might fairly claim in this matter to
be justified by his faith. His bald crown, sandy side-locks, reddish
whiskers, sanguineous cheeks, and blue eyes were all luminous with
confidence in the integrity of his State, and with scorn for the
meanness and wickedness of her enemies. No doubt had he that the fort
ought to be surrendered to South Carolina; no suspicion that the
Government could show a reason for holding it, aside from low
self-interest and malice. He was the honest mouthpiece of a most
peculiar people, local in its opinions and sentiments beyond anything
known at the North, even in self-poised Boston. Changing his subject, he
spoke with hostile, yet chivalrous, respect of the pluck of the Black
Republicans in Congress. They had never faltered; they had vouchsafed no
hint of concession; while, on the other hand, Southerners had shamed him
by their craven spirit. It grieved, it mortified him, to see such a man
as Crittenden on his knees to the North, begging, actually with tears,
for what he ought to demand as a right, with head erect and hands
clenched. He departed with a mysterious allusion to some secret of his
for taking Fort Sumter,--some disagreeably odorous chemical
preparation, I guessed, by the scientific terms in which he beclouded
himself,--something which he expected would soon be called for by the
Governor. May he never smell anything worse, even in the other world,
than his own compounds! Unionist, and perhaps Consolidationist, as I
am, I could not look upon his honest, persuaded face, and judge him a
traitor, at least not to any sentiment of right that was in his own
soul.

Our hotel was full of legislators and volunteer officers, mostly
planters or sons of planters, and almost without exception men of
standing and property. South Carolina is an oligarchy in spirit, and
allows no plebeians in high places. Two centuries of plenteous feeding
and favorable climate showed their natural results in the _physique_ of
these people. I do not think that I exaggerate, when I say that they
averaged six feet or nearly in height, and one hundred and seventy
pounds or thereabouts in weight. One or two would have brought in money,
if enterprisingly heralded as Swiss or Belgian giants. The general
physiognomy was good, mostly high-featured, often commanding, sometimes
remarkable for massive beauty of the Jovian type, and almost invariably
distinguished by a fearless, open-eyed frankness, in some instances
running into arrogance and pugnacity. I remember one or two elderly
men, in particular, whose faces would help an artist to idealize a
Lacedaemonian general, or a baron of the Middle Ages. In dress somewhat
careless, and wearing usually the last fashion but one, they struck me
as less tidy than the same class when I saw it four years ago; and I
made a similar remark concerning the citizens of Charleston,--not only
men, but women,--from whom dandified suits and superb silks seem to have
departed during the present martial time. Indeed, I heard that economy
was the order of the day; that the fashionables of Charleston bought
nothing new, partly because of the money pressure, and partly because
the guns of Major Anderson might any day send the whole city into
mourning; that patrician families had discharged their foreign cooks and
put their daughters into the kitchen; that there were no concerts, no
balls, and no marriages. Even the volunteers exhibited little of the
pomp and vanity of war. The small French military cap was often the only
sign of their present profession. The uniform, when it appeared, was
frequently a coarse homespun gray, charily trimmed with red worsted, and
stained with the rains and earth of the islands. One young dragoon in
this sober dress walked into our hotel, trailing the clinking steel
scabbard of his sabre across the marble floor of the vestibule with a
warlike rattle which reminded me of the Austrian officers whom I used
to see, yes, and hear, stalking about the _cafe's_ of Florence. Half a
dozen surrounded him to look at and talk about the weapon. A portly,
middle-aged legislator must draw it and cut and thrust, with a smile of
boyish satisfaction between his grizzled whiskers, bringing the point so
near my nose, in his careless eagerness, that I had to fall back upon
a stronger, that is, a more distant position. Then half a dozen others
must do likewise, their eyes sparkling like those of children examining
a new toy.

"It's not very sharp," said one, running his thumb carefully along the
edge of the narrow and rather light blade.

"Sharp enough to cut a man's head open," averred the dragoon.

"Well, it's a dam' shame that sixty-five men tharr in Sumter should make
such an expense to the State," declared a stout, blonde young rifleman,
speaking with a burr which proclaimed him from the up-country. "We
haven't even troyed to get 'em out. We ought at least to make a troyal."

All strangers at Charleston walk to the Battery. It is the extreme point
of the city peninsula, its right facing on the Ashley, its left on the
Cooper, and its outlook commanding the entire harbor, with Fort Sumter,
Port Pinckney, Fort Moultrie, and Fort Johnstone in the distance. Plots
of thin clover, a perfect wonder in this grassless land; promenades,
neatly fenced, and covered with broken shells instead of gravel; a
handsome bronze lantern-stand, twenty-five feet high, meant for a
beacon; a long and solid stone quay, the finest sea-walk in the United
States; a background of the best houses in Charleston, three-storied and
faced with verandas: such are the features of the Battery. Lately
four large iron guns, mounted like field-pieces, form an additional
attraction to boys and soldierly-minded men. Nobody knew their calibre;
the policemen who watched them could not say; the idlers who gathered
about them disputed upon it: they were eighteen pounders; they were
twenty-fours; they were thirty-sixes. Nobody could tell what they were
there for. They were aimed at Fort Sumter, but would not carry half way
to it. They could hit Fort Pinckney, but that was not desirable. The
policeman could not explain; neither could the idlers; neither can I.
At last it got reported about the city that they were to sink any boats
which might come down the river to reinforce Anderson; though how the
boats were to get into the river, whether by railroad from Washington,
or by balloon from the Free States, nobody even pretended to guess.
Standing on this side of the Ashley, and looking across it, you
naturally see the other side. The long line of nearly dead level, with
its stretches of thin pine-forest and its occasional glares of open
sand, gives you an idea of nearly the whole country about Charleston,
except that in general you ought to add to the picture a number of noble
evergreen oaks bearded with pendent, weird Spanish moss, and occasional
green spikes of the tropical-looking Spanish bayonet. Of palmettos there
are none that I know of in this immediate region, save the hundred or
more on Sullivan's Island and the one or two exotics in the streets
of Charleston. In the middle of the Ashley, which is here more than a
quarter of a mile wide, lies anchored a topsail schooner, the nursery
of the South Carolina navy. I never saw it sail anywhere; but then my
opportunities of observation were limited. Quite a number of boys are on
board of it, studying maritime matters; and I can bear witness that they
are sufficiently advanced to row themselves ashore. Possibly they are
moored thus far up the stream to guard them from sea-sickness, which
might be discouraging to young sailors. However, I ought not to talk on
this subject, for I am the merest civilian and land-lubber.

My first conversation in Charleston on Secession was with an estimable
friend, Northern-born, but drawing breath of Southern air ever since he
attained the age of manhood. After the first salutation, he sat down,
his hands on his knees, gazing on the floor, and shaking his head
soberly, if not sadly.

"You have found us in a pretty fix,--in a pretty fix!"

"But what are you going to do? Are you really going out? You are not a
politician, and will tell me the honest facts."

"Yes, we are going out,'--there is no doubt of it, I have not been a
seceder,--I have even been called one of the disaffected; but I am
obliged to admit that secession is the will of the community. Perhaps
you at the North don't believe that we are honest in our professions and
actions. We are so. The Carolinians really mean to go out of the Union,
and don't mean to come back. They say that they _are_ out, and they
believe it. And now, what are you going to do with us? What is the
feeling at the North?"

"The Union must and shall be preserved, at all hazards. That famous
declaration expresses the present Northern popular sentiment. When I
left, people were growing martial; they were joining military companies;
they wanted to fight; they were angry."

"So I supposed. That agrees with what I hear by letter. Well, I am very
sorry for it. Our people here will not retreat; they will accept a war,
first. If you preserve the Union, it must be by conquest. I suppose you
can do it, if you try hard enough. The North is a great deal stronger
than the South; it can desolate it,--crush it. But I hope it won't be
done. I wish you would speak a good word for us, when you go back. You
can destroy us, I suppose. But don't you think it would be inhuman?
Don't you think it would be impolitic? Do you think it would result in
sufficient good to counterbalance the evident and certain evil?"

"Why, people reason in this way. They say, that, even if we allow the
final independence of the seceding States, we must make it clear that
there is no such thing as the right of secession, but only that of
revolution or rebellion. We must fix a price for going out of the Union,
which shall be so high that henceforward no State will ever be willing
to pay it. We must kill, once for all, the doctrine of peaceable
secession, which is nothing else than national disintegration and ruin.
Lieutenant-Governor Morton of Indiana declares in substance that England
never spent blood and money to wiser purpose than when she laid down
fifty thousand lives and one hundred millions of pounds to prevent her
thirteen disaffected colonies from having their own way. No English
colony since has been willing to face the tremendous issue thus offered
it. Just so it is the interest, it is the sole safety of the Federal
Government, to try to hold in the Cotton States by force, and, if they
go out, to oblige them to pay an enormous price for the privilege.
Revolution is a troublesome luxury, and ought to be made expensive. That
is the way people talk at the North and at Washington. They reason thus,
you see, because they believe that this is not a league, but a nation."

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