American Adventures Part 29

This reminds me that the State has an anti-tipping law. The Pullman porter is required to hang up copies of the law in his car when it enters South Carolina, and copies of it are displayed on the doors of hotel bedrooms. The penalty for giving or receiving a tip is a fine of from ten to one hundred dollars, or thirty days in jail. Perhaps the law is observed. I know, at least, that no one offered me a tip while I was in that State.

The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to Oxford or Cambridge for an education and English tradition still remains, I fancy, the foundation for what Charleston social life is to-day. I thought at first that Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to the conclusion that there is in the p.r.o.nunciation of some of them a quality resembling a very faint brogue--a brogue such as might be possessed by a cultivated Irishman who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had been educated there. The "vanishing _y_" of tidewater Virginia is also used by some Charlestonians, I am told, though I do not remember hearing it.

Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities are dangerous, as I have good reason to know. Naturally, not all Charlestonians speak alike. I should say, however, that the first _a_ in the words "Papa"

and "Mama" is frequently given a short sound, as _a_ in "hat"; also that many one-syllable words are strung out into two. For instance, "eight" is heard as "ay-et" ("ay" as in "gray"); "where" as "whey-uh,"

or "way-uh," and "hair" as "hay-uh." "Why?" sometimes sounds like "Woi?"

Such words as "calm" and "palm" are sometimes given the short _a_: "cam"

and "pam"--which, of course, occurs elsewhere, too. The name "Ralph" is p.r.o.nounced as "Rafe" (_a_ as in "rate")--which I believe is Old English; and the names "Saunders" and "Sanders" are p.r.o.nounced exactly alike, both being called "Sanders." Tomatoes are sometimes called "tomatters."

Two dishes I never heard of before are "Hopping John," which is rice cooked with peas, and "Limping Kate," which is some other rice combination. What we, in the North, call an "ice-cream freezer" becomes in Charleston an "ice-cream _churn_." "Good morning" is the salutation up to three P.M., whereas in other parts of the South "Good evening" is said for the Northern "Good afternoon." Charlestonians speak of being "parrot-toed"--not "pigeon-toed." Where, in the North, we would ask a friend, "How are things out your way?" a Charlestonian may inquire, "How are things out your _side_?" The expression "going out" means to go to St. Cecilia b.a.l.l.s, and I have been told that it is never used in any other way. That is, if a lady is asked: "Are you going out this winter?"

it means definitely, "Are you going to the St. Cecilia b.a.l.l.s?" If you heard it said that some one was "_on_ Mount Pleasant," you might suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a village on the mainland across the Cooper River. And what is to me one of the most curious expressions I ever heard is "do don't," as when a lady called to her daughter, "Martha, _do_ don't slam that door again!"

How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I cannot say. It occurs to me, however, that, a.s.sembled and catalogued in this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I have heard in any American city.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY

The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla n.i.g.g.e.rs," though I have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.

A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long practice, to understand it.

A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend. This is the message as it was delivered:

"Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum. Enty you duh gwine come shum?" (To get the gulla effect the sounds should be uttered very rapidly.)

Translated, this means: "Mistress says all them other folks have come to see her. Aren't you coming to see her?"

"Shum" is a good gulla word. It means all kinds of things having to do with seeing--_to see her_, _to see him_, _to see it_. Thus, "You shum, enty?" may mean, _You see him_--_her_--or _it_? or _You see what he_--_she_--or _it_--_is doing_, or _has done_? For gulla has no genders and no tenses. "Enty" is a general question: _Aren't you? Didn't you?

Isn't it?_ etc. Another common gulla word is "Buckra" which means _a white man of the upper cla.s.s_, in contradistinction to a poor white. I have known a negro to refer to "de frame o' de bud," meaning the carca.s.s, or frame, of a fowl. "Ay ain' day" means "They aren't (ain't) there."

A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South Carolina, has told me of an old gulla fisherman who spoke in parables.

A lady would ask him: "Have you any fish to-day?" To which, if replying affirmatively, he would answer: "Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The door (of the 'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick"; signifying: "The tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish." This old man called whisky "muhgundy smash," the term evidently derived from some idea of the word "burgundy" combined with the word "mash."

Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation. A train has killed a cow, and a negro witness is being examined by a justice of the peace:

JUSTICE--Uncle John, did you see what killed Sam's cow?

NEGRO--Co'ose Uh shum. (Of) course I saw him.

JUSTICE--What was it, Uncle John?

NEGRO--Dat black debble you-all (It was) that black devil you-all runnin' tru we lan'. n.i.g.g.a duh (are) running through our land.

(A) n.i.g.g.e.r (fireman) he stan' deh, duh po' coal stands there (and) he pours coal in eh stomach. into its stomach.

Buckra duh sit up on eh seat, (A) white man (engineer) he sits up on his seat.

duh smoke eh cigah, an' ebry (and) he smokes his cigar, and every tahme eh twis' eh tail eh run fasteh. time he twists its (engine's) tail it An' runs faster. And eh screams dis lak uh pantuh. Eben it screams just like a panther. Even w'en eh git tuh de station, eh stan' when it gets to the station, it stands tuh de station an' seh: "_Kyan_-stop! at the station and says: "_Can't_-stop!

_Kyan_-stop! _Kyan_-stop!" _Can't_-stop! _Can't_-stop!"

Sam cow binna browse down deh Sam's cow was browsing down there tuh Bull Head Crick. Eh ram eh to (at) Bull Head Creek. It (engine) rammed its nose innum, an' eh bussum wahde nose into it (the cow), and it busted him wide loose. Eh t'row eh intrus on de loose (open). It threw its entrails on the reyel on de cross-tie, an' clean-up rails, on the cross-ties, and clean up on de tele_gram_ pole. on the telegraph pole.

Mrs. Leiding (Harriette Kershaw Leiding), of Charleston, has done a fine service to lovers of Old Charleston, and its ways, in collecting and publishing in pamphlet form a number of the cries of the negro street vendors. Of these I shall rob Mrs. Leiding's booklet of but one example--the cry of a little negro boy, a peddler of shrimp ("swimp"), who stood under a window in the early morning and sang:

[Music:

An' a Daw-try Daw! an' a swimp-y raw! an' a Daw-try Daw-try Daw-try Raw Swimp.]

While on the subject of the Charleston negro I must not neglect two of his superst.i.tions. One is his belief that a two-dollar bill is unlucky.

The curse may be removed only by tearing off a corner of the bill. The other is that it is unlucky to hand any one a pin. A Charleston lady told me that when she was motoring and wished to pin her hat or her veil, she could never get her negro chauffeur to hand her pins. Instead he would stick them in the laprobe, or in the sleeve of his coat, whence she could pick them out herself. Another lady told me of the case of an old black slave who lived years ago on a plantation on the Santee River, owned by her family. This slave, who was a very powerful, taciturn and high-tempered man, had a curious habit of disappearing for about half an hour each day. He would go into the swamp, and for many years no one ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do so because of his temper and his strength. At last, however, they did spy upon him and discovered that in the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated himself. No one ever learned the exact significance of this, but it was a.s.sumed that the man practised some barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa.

The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is rich in interest, even though most of the houses on the old estates have been destroyed.

Drayton Hall, however, stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate), has one of the most famous gardens in the world. Seven persons touching fingertips can barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas--ninety-two varieties, it is said--which, when they blossom in the spring, are so wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to see them.

In "Harper's Magazine" for December, 1875, I find an account of the gardens which were, at that time, far from new. The azaleas were then twelve and thirteen feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of more than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread.

"It is almost impossible," says the anonymous writer of the article, "to give a Northerner any idea of the affluence of color in this garden when its flowers are in bloom. Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped live-oaks overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance, and on each side the great fluffy ma.s.ses of rose and pink and crimson, reaching far above your head, thousands upon tens of thousands of blossoms packed close together, with no green to mar the intensity of their color, rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the turf below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing bare stems or trunk, but spreading over the velvet, and trailing out like the rich robes of an empress. Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is like a mad artist's dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights; eyes that have never had color enough find here a full feast, and go away satisfied at last. And with all their gorgeousness, the hues are delicately mingled; the magic effect is produced not by unbroken banks of crude reds, but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of India shawls, which the European designers, with all their efforts, can never imitate."

Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of Magnolia, is at Middleton Place, not many miles away, and still another is at the pleasant winter resort town of Summerville, something more than twenty miles above Charleston. The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden, is said to be the only tea garden in the United States. It is a.s.serted that the teas produced here are better than those of China and j.a.pan, and are equal to those of India. The Government is cooperating with the owners of this garden with a view to introducing tea planting in the country in a large way.

The finest grade of tea raised here is known as "Shelter Tea," and is sold only at the gardens, the price being five dollars per pound. It is a tea of the a.s.sam species grown under shelters of wire mesh and pine straw. This type of tea is known in j.a.pan, where it originated, as "sugar tea," because, owing to the fact that it is grown in the shade, the sap of the bush, which is of starchy quality, is turned chemically into sugar, giving the leaf an exceedingly delicate flavor.

From the superintendent in charge of the gardens I learned something of the bare facts of the tea growing industry. I had always been under the impression that the name "pekoe" referred to a certain type of tea, but he told me that the word is Chinese for "eyelash," and came to be used because the tip leaves of tea bushes, when rolled and dried, resemble eyelashes. These leaves--"pekoe tips"--make the most choice tea. The second leaves make the tea called "orange pekoe," while the third leaves produce a grade of tea called simply "pekoe." In China it is customary to send three groups of children, successively, to pick the leaves, the first group picking only the tips, the second group the second leaves, and the third group the plain pekoe leaves. At the Pinehurst Tea Gardens the picking is done by colored children, ranging from eight to fifteen years of age. All the leaves are picked together and are later separated by machinery.

Summerville itself seems a lovely lazy town. It is the kind of place to which I should like to retire in the winter if I had a book to write.

One could be very comfortable, and there would be no radical distractions--unless one chanced to see the Most Beautiful Girl in the World, who has been known to spend winters at that place.

On the way from Charleston to Summerville, if you go by motor, you pa.s.s The Oaks, an estate with a new colonial house standing where an ancient mansion used to stand. A long avenue bordered by enormous live-oaks, leading to this house, gives the place its name, and affords a truly n.o.ble approach. Here, in Revolutionary times, Marion, "the Swamp Fox,"

used to camp.

Not far distant from the old gate at The Oaks is Goose Creek Church--the most interesting church I have ever seen. The Parish of St. James, Goose Creek, was established by act of the a.s.sembly, November 30, 1706, and the present church, a brick building of crudely simple architecture, was built about 1713. The interior of the church, though in good condition, is the oldest looking thing, I think, in the United States. The memorial tablets in the walls, with their foreign names and antique lettering, the curious old box pews, the odd little gallery at the back, the tall pulpit, with its winding stair, above all the Royal Arms of Great Britain done in relief on the chancel wall and brilliantly colored--all these make Goose Creek Church more like some little Norman church in England, than like anything one might reasonably expect to find on this side of the world.

Countless items of curious interest hang about the church and parish.

Michaux, the French botanist who came to this country in 1786, lived for a time at Goose Creek. He brought with him the first four camellias seen in the United States, planting them at Middleton Place above Drayton Hall, where, I believe, they still stand, having reached a great height. A British officer known as Mad Archy Campbell was married at Goose Creek Church during the Revolution, under romantic circ.u.mstances.

Miss Paulina Phelps, a young lady of the parish, was a great beauty and a great coquette, who amused herself alike with American and British officers. Campbell met and fell desperately in love with her, and it is said that she encouraged him, though without serious intent. One day he induced her to go horseback-riding with him and on the ride made love to her so vehemently that she was "intimidated into accepting him." They rode to the rectory, and Campbell, meeting the rector, demanded that he should marry them at once. The dominie replied that he would do so "with the consent of the young lady and her mother," but Campbell proposed to await no such formalities. Drawing his pistol he gave the minister the choice of performing the ceremony then and there, or perishing. This argument proved conclusive and the two were promptly wed.

When Goose Creek was within the British lines it is said that the minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to utter the prayer for the King of England, in the Litany. At the end of the prayer there were no "Amens," the congregation having been composed almost entirely, as the story goes, of believers in American independence. Into the awkward pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation was at last injected. It was the voice of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not "Amen," but "Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the church to the memory of this worthy.

The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member of the congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed the minister that if he again read the prayer for the King he would throw his prayer-book at his head. The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to read the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that it was not, for sure enough the prayer-book came hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were heavier then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of this episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter.

The church is not now used regularly, an occasional memorial service only being held there.