NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. LXXXV.-JUNE, 1857.-VOL. XV. CHARLESTON, BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE PALMETTO CITY. THE PALMETTO CITY. NITIES, like men, and because they are the work of men, have each, necessarily, marked features of individuality, and these will be found to illustrate, in some degree, the characteristics of the people by whom they have been founded, and by whom they are maintained. All of our American cities may be thus distinguished, each having its local atmosphere and aspect; and we propose, for the benefit of our readers, to daguerreotype the most salient of those which most commend themselves to our curiosity. It so happens that our artist has possessed himself of the Palmetto City-Charleston, South Carolina -among the first for presentation to the public through our pages. It is hardly a matter of choice that he has done so, though we should scarcely quarrel with him even had it been so; for, though not without her censors and accusers, Charleston is confessedly one of the favorite cities of the South, if not of the Union, and is commended to our regards by a thousand special considerations. She has been distinguished by her early and active share in our Revolution-in the formation of the Confederacy and the Constitution-in the noble contributions of intellect and valor which she has made to the common capital of the country-in her generous sacrifices at all times in the common cause-by the refinements of her society-by the polish of her people-the general propriety of her tastes-her lofty morals, and warm hospitality. She has her faults, no doubt, but with these we have nothing to do. We have no pleasure in fault-finding or fault-seeking, and regard with more satisfaction the more genial occupation of distinguishing only what is excellent in the people; even as in heraldry we are required to recognize only the more noble characteristics of the animal whom we symbolize on the escutcheon, rejecting all the baser ones from consideration. Founded under peculiar circumstances, at a juncture of marked transition in European affairs, under the direct patronage of the most eminent among the British nobility, and subsequently taken under the immediate protection of the Crown, the colony of South Carolina-of which Charleston was at that period the very Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the Dis trict Court for the Southern District of New York. VOL. XV.-No. 85.-A soul-was always a much-favored province of the mother country. The richness and value of her products furnished substantial reasons why she should be a favorite. Her merchants were mostly British; her native sons of family were sent to Britain for education; and the affinities between the parent state and the colony were thus rendered doubly tenacious, making the struggle of the Revolution a much severer one in this than in any other colony of the whole continent. borrowed from the practice in all the Spanish towns, where you might shake hands with your sweet-heart-nay, proceed to a loving familiarity with her lips-across the street from your mutual balconies. But the ancient plan and policy of Charleston need not have become a law for its modern population. The old city, according to the original design, covered less than a tenth of the present surface, on the southeast corner; yet, unhappily, the original mistake of the proprietors has been perpetuated by their successors, and they have been laying out new streets, within a recent period, but little wider than the miserable lanes and gloomy avenues which were preferred two hundred years ago. We have given below the ground-plan of the present city, which covers, north and south, a corporate domain nearly three miles long, by something less than two miles at the widest, east and west. The population within these limits is now estimated to range between fiftyfive and sixty-five thousand souls. But we must not be led too far from our immediate subject. We must not forget that it is not as a colonial town of Britain, but as the metropolis of an independent State, that Charleston now claims our attention. But it may concern us still somewhat to mention that, as a pet city of the British nobility, Charleston tasked more than was common the care of the lords proprietors. The original plan of the town, forming a mere cantle of the plat, as exhibited above, of the present city, was sent out from England, and in that day was held to be a plan of great beauty and propriety. The streets running at right angles, north and south, east and west, and without much heed to the topographical characteristics of the site, were as regThese unite to form the harbor, ular in their squares as those of the good Quak- which is ample, and attractive to the eye in erly city of William Penn. Unhappily, they high degree, forming a beautiful ensemble, not were lanes rather than streets; and one of the less sweet than spacious. As you enter from chief obstacles to the proper improvement of the the sea, between the Islands of Sullivan and present city is due to this original error, the Morris, the city opens before you in the forefruits of a most wretched economy of space, or ground, five miles distant-rising, like another of a more wretched mistake as to sanatory ef- Venice, from the ocean. It is built, like Venice, fects. In that period, we are to remember, the upon flats and shoals of sand and mud. So low notion was entertained that a city in the low is the land, that the illusion that it is built dilatitudes was cool in degree with the narrow-rectly in the sea, continues till you approach ness of its passages. The notion was naturally quite near it. This illusion is productive of a You see that the Palmetto City is happily placed within two spacious rivers, the Cooper and Ashley-the Etiwan and Keawah of the Red men. picturesque effect, but not sufficient to compensate you for the relief which would be yielded by an elevated background, or by lofty eminences of land on either side. As you advance, the bay expands, wide and majestic, forming a harborage to which there can be no objection, were it not for the embarrassments of the bar at the entrance, which forbids the admission of ships of very heavy draught of water. It is a present project with the Charlestonians-supposed to be quite feasible-so to dredge this channel as to remove every difficulty. In that event, Charleston must necessarily acquire a large and imposing commercial marine of her own. In front of you, commanding the channel, is Fort Sumter, a formidable pile of fortress, with double tier of heavy cannon, rising upon a mole at the head of a sand-bar. In passing Sullivan's Island, the eye readily distinguishes the Moultrie House, famous as a local watering-place; and the still more famous fortress which also bears the name of Moultrie, distinguished in American history as the scene of one of the first and best-fought battles of the Revolution, when a few hundred native riflemen, who had never fired a cannon before, beat off and nearly destroyed a formidable British fleet, making such slaughter among them as, in proportion to the numbers engaged, was not even reached by that of Trafalgar and the Nile. On the right you see Haddrill's-Mount Pleasant village which also constituted one of the fortresses of '76. On the left are the shores of James and Morris Islands, the latter bearing the light-house of the port; the former the site of old Fort Johnson, which was wrested from the British, prior to the battle of Fort Moultrie, by the en terprise of a small body of citizen soldiery. Here, at the very portals of the city, you encounter Castle Pinckney, covering an ancient mud reef; and here we propose to give you a bird's-eye view of the city itself. We are now in the ancient city itself-the Palmetto City! You see the tout ensemble at a glance, and perceive its two most prominent characteristicsthe verandas, balconies, piazzas, with the ample gardens and their foliage, which isolate every dwelling-house, and form a substitute for public squares, in which Charleston is lamentably deficient. But for the largeness of the several lots, and the taste of the people for shade trees, the deficiency would be fatal at once to the health and the beauty of the place. This city is one of many beauties, arising from this isolation of the dwellings, and from the ample verdure which girdles them; but we must not talk of its beauties, perhaps, in the presence of Monsieur Beauvallet. It is just possible, gentle reader, that you never heard of Monsieur Beauvallet? If so, let us counsel you to glance over the most comical of all ridiculous books, "Rachel in the New World." It is written by Monsieur Beauvallet (Query? Beau-valet?). Beauvallet was one of the actors in Rachel's American troupe. Rachel, as we all know, did not fail in the new world: but the speculation did; and Monsieur Beauvallet was one of the sufferers by the failure. It is a sad thing to go forth to shear, and to come home shorn! This was just "the fix" of Monsieur Beauvallet-to use our expressive Yankee vulgarism. The Frenchmen were to fleece the Philistineswe mean the Yankees-and carry home such spoils as were accumulated by Jenny Lind, Fanny Ellsler, and other foreign distinguéesto say nothing of the glorifications, the chairings, triumphs, and public processions! All was a failure-money and glory-a fraud of fortunea grievous defeat of hope and anticipation; and there was even some lachesse in the payment of hotel scores-vulgar necessities that distress even a divinity of the ballet. Beauvallet suffered from some mortifications of this sort even. But he had his revenges. He took his change out of us after a very frequent foreign fashion-made a book as soon as he got back to Paris-and such a book! Such a sorry showing as we had in that book!-Sorrow's the word-we shall hardly ever get over the shame of it. He saw us through the false medium. His glass was inverted. His sight was jaundiced, though no gold was laid upon his eyes, and he handles us accordingly, with a savage sort of monkey-tigerism, which would be quite terrible were it not so very ridiculous. But we must not waste gunpowder on Monsieur Beauvallet; and the good reader naturally asks what has he and his book to do with the Palmetto City? Very little, perhaps; a single paragraph from its pages will suffice to show for what reason we have bestowed so much space on him. He does not think Charleston so very beautiful. Nay, would you believe it, he does not think it beautiful at all! For that matter, examining his paragraphs more closely, we are half inclined to say that he thinks it an ugly city, a very unclean city; in brief, a very poor apology for a city after all! But, lest we should misrepresent him, we give his own language: "This city is dreadfully filthy; besides, it is very ugly and outrageously built." It strikes us that this is rather an unfavorable opinion. The epithets do not seem to have been chosen with any very anxious desire to compliment. Coleridge, when he said of Cologne, "the body and soul stinking town of Cologne," was hardly more equivocal in expression. "Filthy!" The comical, conceited, little Frenchman! and this is said of a city which prides itself upon its cleanliness, which has been complimented because of its cleanliness, and keeps Mayor, Town Council, Boards of Medicine, Health, Police, Sewers, and Streets, and Markets, for no other purpose than to see to the proper ablutions of the city. How could Monsieur Beauvallet come to such an opinion? for we need scarcely tell you that the epithet of "filthy" is decidedly antagonistic to any proper notion of cleanliness. The fact is, Monsieur Beauvallet had all the prying curiosity of a clever Frenchman on his travels. He was admitted into the parlor, and he saw that was clean enough, and as showy as expensive; a parlor at twenty-five dollars a week, in a fashionable hotel, must be tolerably nice. But Beauvallet was not to be imposed upon. He said to himself, with a shrug and snigger, "Ha! But I shall see for myself, I rader tink dere must be some place about dis establishment dat shall not be quite so sweet to de nose of a gentleman!" and, not to be gulled, he seeks it out, perhaps finds it! So, parading Broad and Meeting streets, the Battery, and all the better thoroughfares, he says: "All dis looks mighty superb, tolerable fine, very decent and respectable, but I shall look some oder where, and shall no doubt find some odor dere, dat | ovens of the North. They hold your fine red shall not be so savory as de Cologne;" and so, going perversely into the rear of the city, Thrusting his ridiculous nose, He caught it and carried it off in his clothes! "Ugly, and outrageously built too!" brick to be wretchedly vulgar. They insist that their demure gray brick gives to their city a noble air of antiquity which is gratefully aristocratic. But they do not reject stone entirely, and you will see some pretentious fabrics of white marble, Quincy and other granites-a growing taste, by-the-way-with trim iron railings and decorated gates of the same materials. These, as in other cities, will be found to garnish the fronts of retired shop-keepers; and there are fancy vanes which spread their wings or tails upon all the modern chimney-tops! And to be told, after all this, that their city is ugly and outrageously built! Oh! Monsieur Beauvallet, how could you? But these Frenchmen, they know nothing of that glorious saving and sheltering maxim, "De gustibus," etc. But, we confess it, our Beauvallet is half right. The Palmetto City architecture, except in recent instances, is certainly of very anomalous creation. It is with our Charleston structures as with those more famous fabrics brought home by Shakspeare's Tailor for the special use and behoof of that proverbially shrewish lady, Mrs. Katharine Petruchio, of dramatic celebrity. The stuffs are good enough, but sometimes hor Was ever a slander so deliberate and strained! Certainly, the good people of Charleston never dreamed of such an accusation. They spend a great deal of money in the Palmetto City, building new palaces and furbishing up the old. The newspaper press every now and then teems with a glowing description of what is done and doing. And, recently, they have nurtured a whole brood of flourishing young native archi-ribly marred in the making. tects, who are doing ambitious things every day in brick and granite, which every body goes to see. The brick and mortar of the place are supposed to be especially good. The Charlestonians take great pride in their gray brick, which they prefer a thousand times to the flaunting, flashy red loaves from the more fashionable "The sleeves curiously cut!" That covers all the mystery and mischief. "There's the villainy!" We shall see what comes of this cutting of the sleeves so curiously; though the people of Charleston may say of their houses, even as Mrs. Katharine said of her gown: |