II. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN THE INTERIOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
Orangeburg C. H., September 7, 1865.
FROM Charleston to Orangeburg Court House is seventy-seven miles. Route, South Carolina Railroad. Time, seven and a half hours. Fare, five dollars. There is one train per day each way. Our train consisted of five freight-cars, the baggage-car, a box freight-car with seats for negroes, and one passenger-coach. The down train, which we met at Branchville, -- where Sherman's army was to find its doom, -- consisted of seven freight-cars, four of which were filled with troops on the way to Charleston and home, the baggage-car, and two passenger-coaches. Our one car was uncomfortably full when we started; but only eleven of the passengers came through.
"What sort of accommodations can I get at Orangeburg?" I asked of a friend in Charleston.
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"You're not going to stop up there? O you can't do it!"
"Well, I shall try it, at all events."
"Don't do it; Orangeburg is just as good as any of these towns; but I advise you to shun all of'em. The accommodations are awful: push right on to Columbia."
I was n't to be put down that way, for I had consulted a gazetteer, and learned that "Orangeburg is a pleasant and thriving town on the northeast bank of the north fork of the Edisto River. It is in the midst of a farming district, and is the centre of a large cotton trade. Population two thousand seven hundred." That was before the war, and I knew the place had been partly burned; but I felt confident that my friend exaggerated.
We left the city at seven and a half o'clock in the morning. Twenty miles out, the conductor came through the car, and collected our fares; for no tickets are sold at Charleston. In front of me sat a good-looking young woman, of about twenty-two, I judged. Hearing her very plainly say that she was going to Orangeburg, I determined to ask her about the town and its hotel accommodations.
"Yes, I live there," she said.
"Is there a hotel in the town, or any place at which a person can stop?"
"O yes, there 's a hotel," she said; and after a pause, she added, "but it's hardly such a place as a gentleman would choose, I think."
She spoke pleasantly enough, and, having answered my question, might have dropped the conversation; instead of which, she went on to say that persons who had occasion to stop in town for some days frequently took a room at a private house, and were much better suited than at the hotel.
I did the only thing I well could do, -- the thing that it was perfectly natural I should do. I asked her if she could mention one or two private houses at which I might ask for accommodations, if the hotel proved unendurable.
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I fully expected that she would say her mother sometimes accommodated gentlemen; and I may as well own that I had determined what reply I should make to that announcement.
Instead, however, she turned in her seat so as to face me, and said, with considerable vim, "Are you a Yankee?"
The question surprised me; and I simply answered, "From the North."
"By what right do you presume to speak to me, sir?" she asked, in a clear and snapping tone, that caught the ears and eyes of most of the passengers.
The strangeness of the question, no less than the remarkable change in her manner, coupled with the fact that I knew myself to be under the observation of thirty or more persons of Southern birth and feeling, embarrassed me to such degree that I could only stammer, "By the right which I supposed a gentleman always had to ask a lady a civil question."
"Well, sir, I don't choose to talk with you."
And she settled herself sharply into her seat, jerked her little body into a very upright position, and squared her shoulders in a very positive manner, -- while I sat flushed and confused.
What should I do about it? That was a question I asked myself twenty times per hour for the next thirty miles. I was seriously inclined to apologize, though I hardly knew for what; but did n't, for I feared the little Rebel might snub me again, if I gave her an opportunity. In front of her sat a young man who had been a captain in the Rebel army. Him she soon engaged in conversation, and they cheered the slow miles with most lively chat. Surely, thought I, this is beginning the three months' journey unfortunately. I could have borne her indignation quite easily; but each individual in the car soon made me aware that my Yankee baseness was well known and thoroughly appreciated.
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The forenoon wore away, and the crazy old engine dragged itself along. Little Miss was vivacious and entertaining; the ex-officer was evidently in a cheerful frame of mind; I sat alternating between repentance and indignation. Finally the whistle sounded for Branchville.
Missy rose in her seat, shook out her skirts, drew on her small thread glove, turned to me, -- mind you, not to the ex-officer, but to me, -- and asked me if I would be good enough to hand out her basket for her.
Here was another surprise. Queer creatures, these little Rebels, said I to myself, as I followed her out, -- carrying the not heavy basket. She did n't stop when we reached the platform of the station-house, but walked on towards its upper end; and I followed, demurely, but wonderingly. Fifteen or twenty yards away from the car, she suddenly stopped, and turned quickly upon me with "Thank you; I want to apologize to you; I was rude."
And here was the greatest surprise of all! It caught me in confusion; but I managed to say something to the effect that perhaps I was too forward in asking the question I did.
"No, you were not. It was right that you should ask it, and I was rude to answer you so uncivilly. But you caught me at a disadvantage; I had n't spoken to a Federal since Sumter was taken."
"Well, it did n't hurt you very much, did it?" said I. Whereat she laughed and I laughed, and then the engine whistled.
"I'm going to stop here a day or two," she remarked; and then, "You'll shake hands, won't you?" as I started for the car. So we shook hands, and I left her standing on the platform.
I had n't learned much about my chances for comfort in Orangeburg, however.
We got here at three o'clock in the afternoon. I was determined to stop, let the accommodations be what they
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would, and firmly said "No" when the stage agent at the depot urged me to take a seat for Columbia.
There were five passengers with baggage. Twenty-five negroes crowded around us, and troubled the hot air with harsh clamor. "Give yer baggage here, sir." "Luf dis yer nig tote yer plun'er, Mass'r." "Have yer balese toted to de hotel, sah?" "Tuk a hack up town, Mass'r?"
There was the man I wanted. He proved to be a strapping boy of thirteen or fourteen, who tossed my valise to the top of his head and strode off with both hands swinging.
I found the "hack" to be a rickety old short-boxed spring wagon, with two rough board seats, on the back one of which was a worn-out cushion, over both being a canvas supported on sticks nailed to each corner of the box. This establishment was drawn by a scrawny lame mule, and we were seventeen minutes in accomplishing the half-mile, which the boy called it, up to the hotel.
I was a little distrustful about the hotel; and learning from the driver that boarders were sometimes taken at another house, I stopped there and asked the white girl of fifteen, whom I found on the piazza, if they could give me meals and lodgings for about three days. She thought they could, but would call her mother. So much of the house and grounds as I could see presented an inviting appearance, and I indulged in visions of a pleasant chamber and many dreamy hours on the broad piazza. Presently "mother" appeared. She was a plump woman of thirty-three, perhaps.
"Yes, sir, we have a couple of rooms, and we sometimes take transient boarders," said she, answering the question I put to the girl.
"I am stopping three or four days in town, and had much rather be at a pleasant private house than at the hotel," I said.
"O, a Yankee, of course," I answered, smiling, though I saw breakers ahead.
"No Yankee stops here! Good day, sir!" And she turned and walked into the house.
The negro boy, who stood with my valise on his head, volunteered the remark, "Haf to go to de hotel, sah"; and I followed him back to the "hack."
At the "hotel" was a negro boy washing the steps from the piazza into the basement. I told him what I wanted. He would call the Missus. She was somewhere in the lower part of the house; and after her head came into sight above the level of the floor on which I stood, she stopped and washed her hands in the dirty water with which the boy had just finished scrubbing the stairway, smoothing her hair with them and wiping them on her apron.
I made known my desires, paid my driver his charge of seventy-five cents, and was shown by Robert -- him of the wash-rag and scrubbing-brush -- to room No. 8, the figure being at least a foot in length and rudely done in white chalk.
The room is about fourteen feet square, has one window fronting the southeast, and is in the third story. Lath and plaster there are not, on this floor at least. The partitions are of rough unmatched pine, with strips of cloth over the larger cracks, and a cheap wall paper on the boards all round. The ceiling is also of wood, and was once painted white, but is now, like the wall paper, of a smoky yellow. The paper is much broken by the shrinkage of the boards, and large patches of it have been torn off in a dozen places. The walls and ceiling are handsomely decorated with wasp's mud nests and sooty-branched cobwebs. The bed is a dirty cotton mattress in an old-fashioned high-post bedstead. There are no sheets, and in fact nothing but a cotton-stuffed pillow and a calico spread. This establishment is the abode of a numerous and industrious colony of the Improved Order of
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Red Men, to whom I nightly pay a heavy blood tribute. Beside the bed there is for furnishing of the room one caneseat chair, a seven-by-ten looking-glass, and a three-foot-square and breast-high plain pine table, on which are a cracked wash-bowl and a handleless and noseless water-pitcher, to which I prevailed on Robert to add a cracked tumbler. In the window are six sound panes of glass, four cracked ones, and the remnants of five panes more. I suppose I should add also to the furniture several very social and handsome mice, and a healthy and lively swarm of uncommonly large mosquitoes.
The house has three stories and a basement dining-room. The first and second floors have broad piazzas on each side of the house. The first floor has four rooms, and the second and third have five each. Robert says mine is the best on the upper floor, -- in which fact there is much consolation. Glimpses into the second floor rooms have not bred in me any desire to move down. In the so-called drawing-room there are three old chairs, a round and rickety centre-table, a sort of writing-desk, the wreck of a piano, and several pieces of carpet. In the dining-room are two twelve-foot plain pine tables, and twenty-three chairs of five different patterns. The table-spread of this noon was the same we had on the evening of my arrival, three days ago, and it was horribly filthy then. The dining-room itself is airy and clean. In the hall, and pasted to the wall, are a set of "rules for the hotel," twice as long and formidable as any I ever saw in any Northern house, whether first or fourth class. The hotel register, a book fully equal to the necessities of any Boston house for six months, is, with a lead pencil, handed round at the supper table each day for the reception of the names of persons who have arrived since morning.
The hotel grounds consist of a large yard, the gate of which is always open, and within which all the stray stock
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of the town has free ramble. At the bottom of the broad steps on the upper side of the house is a large mud-puddle, in which dogs and hogs alternately wallow, there being at least five of the former and nine of the latter running about. The dogs are gaunt and wolfish, -- the hogs are slab-sided, half-grown, and very long of nose. There is in the yard about everything one can name, except grass and cleanliness, -- bits of wood and crockery, scraps of old iron, wisps of straw and fodder, old rags, broken bottles, sticks, stones, bones, hoofs, horns, nails, etc., etc., ad infinitum. The barber throws the sweepings of his shop on one side the house, and the cook is equally free with her slops on the other side.
The "Missus" is the head of the house. She is tall and angular, with a complexion sallow to the last degree of sallowness, eyes in which there is neither life nor hope, hair which I am sure has not felt either comb or brush during my stay. Her dress is a greasy calico, of the half-mourning variety, to which she sometimes adds an apron which is n't more repulsive only because it can't be. She is a type of women, thank God, without counterpart in the North. She goes about the house in a shuffling, shambling manner, with the cry "Robert -- Robert -- Robert," or "'Manda -- 'Manda -- 'Manda," always on her tongue. There is no variety of accent in this cry, but only one of length, as "Robert -- Ro-be-rt -- R-o-b-e-r-t." During meals she stands at the head of the table, and serves out the allowance of tea or coffee, and sugar and milk, with an unending string of such talk as this: "Robert, tend the hominy"; "Gal, get the gemman's cup and sasser"; "'Manda, mind the flies"; "Goodness gracious, nigger, why don't ye pass them biled eggs"; "Now, Robert, do see them flies"; "'Manda, look arter them squeet pertaterses"; "Now, ye good-for-nuthin' nigger, can't ye brush away them flies?" She complains, in whining, listless fashion, to everybody, about the "niggers," telling how idle, shiftless, and ungrateful they are.
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She has a husband, who takes special pains to inform everybody that he has n't anything to do with the hotel; and whose sole occupations, so far as I can see, are smoking, complaining about "the niggers," and doctoring a poor old blind, spavined horse.
The genius of the house is Robert, who stands on his head as well as on his feet; who is trim, pert, wide-awake; who picks out a Northern man with unerring instinct, and is always ready and prompt to serve him; but who is forever out of the way, or very busy when that cry of "Robert -- Ro-be-rt -- R-o-b-e-r-t" shuffles up through the house. What trick of stealing sugar he has n't learned is n't worth learning. "She talk about the niggers, -- bah!" he exclaims, as he goes about his work.
When I was ready last evening to go to my room, I sent Robert for a light, and told him to bring me a whole candle. He came back directly and said, throwing his finger over his shoulder, "She says can't have it." I followed him into the dining-room, where she sat whining at 'Manda.
"Madam, I should like a light."
She told Robert to bring her a candle, and was about to cut off a piece two inches long.
"I should like a whole candle to-night, if you please," said I.
"Want a whole candle, sir?"
"Yes, ma'am, I 'm going to write in my room awhile this evening."
"Want a long candle? What yer goin' to write? Want all this candle?"
"Can't I have the candle?"
"The whole candle? Gemmen allers takes a short light and goes to bed right soon."
"Shall I take that candle, or shall I send Robert out to buy me one?"
"I reckon ye can have this. I'll send Robert up for it arter a while."
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I did n't stop to argue that point, but when I reached the hall I said to Robert, "You 'll find the door locked if you come up"; to which he responded, "I sha'n't come."
The table is wretched. The tea, eggs, and waffles are the only articles even passably good. Bread and biscuit are alike sour and leaden, and all the meats are swimming in strong fat. The cook is a large and raw-boned negro-woman, who is aided by the "Missus," the boy Robert, and the girl 'Manda. I suppose Sarah cooks quite to the satisfaction of her mistress; but I doubt if it would be possible for any Northern girl, even with twenty years of training, to make of herself a cook so utterly bad as Sarah is. She certainly exhibits most remarkable ability in spoiling everything in the line of eatables.
The general management of the house, I scarcely need add, is hopelessly miserable. Everything is forever at sixes-and-sevens, and the knowledge of where anything was yesterday gives not the least indication of its present whereabouts. The establishment, not less in its several parts than in its aggregate whole, is an unclean thing. Shiftlessness has here his abode, and there is neither effort nor desire to dispossess him. And the traveller's bill is three dollars and a half per day!
I have not drawn this picture except for a purpose. I hear, already, in this Southern trip, a great deal about the superior civilization of the South. This hotel is a part of its outgrowth. Orangeburg was a place of twenty-five hundred to three thousand inhabitants. It is the county seat. Here is the State Orphan Asylum. The place is midway between Charleston and the capital. Let any one consider what is the character of the only public house in any Northern town of the same size, and similarly situated, and then the quality of this boasted Southern civilization will be apparent. Nor can it be said that the war is responsible for the condition of things here, for the house was full from the beginning, and has not
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suffered any loss from either army. It could not receive a week's support in any community of any State from Maine to the Rocky Mountains. Yet here it lives on and on, year after year, a witness for Southern civilization. Let us call things by their right names, -- then shall we say Southern barbarism.