Part 6 (1/2)

When the end of his visit came his father pleaded:

”Do not think of Charleston. Whatever your talents they will there be poured out like water on the sands. Charleston! I know it only as a place of tombs.”

There came a time when he, too, knew it only as a place of tombs. Just now he knew it as the home of the Only Girl in the world, so--what was the use? And then, Charleston is born into the blood of all her sons, whether she recognizes them or not. It is better to be a door-keeper in Charleston than to dwell in the most gorgeous tents of outside barbarians. So he who was born to the Queen City would hang on to the remotest hem of her trailing robe at the imminent risk of having his brains dashed out on the cobble-stones as she swept along her royal way, rather than sit comfortably upon velvet-cus.h.i.+oned thrones in a place unknown to her regal presence. Simms came back to his native city with her ”unsociable houses which rose behind walls, shutting in beautiful gardens that it would have been a sacrilege to let the public enjoy.”

Soon after his return he was admitted to the bar and proved his forensic prowess by earning $600 in the first year of his practice, a degree of success which enabled him to unite his destiny with that of the Only Girl, and begin housekeeping in Summerville, a suburban village where living was cheap. For, though ”Love gives itself and is not bought,” there are other essentials of existence which are not so lavish with themselves.

The pen-fever had seized upon Simms with great virulence and he followed his fate. Soon after his return from Mississippi, General Charles Coates Pinckney died and Simms wrote the memorial poem for him. When LaFayette visited Charleston the pen of Simms was called upon to do suitable honor to the great occasion. Such periodical attacks naturally resulted in a chronic condition. Charleston was the scene of his brief, though not wholly unsuccessful, career as a play-wright. In Charleston he edited the _Daily Gazette_ in the exciting tunes of Nullification, taking with all the strength that was in him the unpopular side of the burning question. In the doorway of the Gazette office he stood defiantly as the procession of Nullifiers came down the street, evidently with hostile intentions toward the belligerent editor. Seeing his courageous att.i.tude the enthusiasts became good-natured and contented themselves with marching by, giving three cheers for their cause.

In that famous bookshop, Russell's, on King Street he was accustomed to meet in the afternoons with the youthful writers who looked upon him as their natural born leader. In his ”Wigwam,” as he called his Charleston home, he welcomed his followers to evenings of brightness that were like stars in their memory through many after years of darkness. When he made his home at Woodlands he often came to the ”Wigwam” to spend a night, calling his young disciples in for an evening of entertainment. His powerful voice would be heard ringing out in oratory and declamation so that neighbors blocks away would say to Hayne or Timrod next morning, ”I noticed that you had Simms with you last night.” In 1860 the ”Wigwam” was accidentally burned.

At Woodlands, Simms awaited the coming of the war which he had predicted for a number of years. There he was when the battle of Fredericksburg filled him with triumphant joy, and he saw in fancy ”Peace with her beautiful rainbow plucked from the bosom of the storm and spread from east to west, from north to south, over all the sunny plains and snowy heights.” Unfortunately, his radiant fancy wrought in baseless visions and the fires of the storm had burned away that brilliant rainbow before Peace came, as a mourning dove with shadowy wings hovering over a Nation's grave.

In May, 1864, Simms went to Columbia and was there when the town was destroyed by fire, the house in which he was staying being saved by his presence therein. ”You belong to the whole Union,” said an officer, placing a guard around the dwelling to protect the st.u.r.dy writer who counted his friends all over the Nation. He said to friends who sympathized with him over his losses, ”Talk not to me about my losses when the State is lost.”

Simms describes the streets of Columbia as ”wide and greatly protected by umbrageous trees set in regular order, which during the vernal season confer upon the city one of its most beautiful features.”

The _Daily South Carolinian_ was sent to Charleston to save it from destruction. Its editors, Julian Selby and Henry Timrod, remained in the office on the south side of Was.h.i.+ngton Street near Main, where they prepared and sent out a daily bulletin while bomb-sh.e.l.ls fell around them, until their labors were ended by the burning of the building.

From the ashes of the _Carolinian_ arose the _Phoenix_ and Simms was its editor through its somewhat brief existence. Selby relates that Simms offended General Hartwell and was summoned to trial at the General's headquarters on the corner of Bull and Gervais Streets. The result of the trial was an invitation for the defendant to a sumptuous luncheon and a ride home in the General's carriage accompanied by a basket of champagne and other good things. The next day the General told a friend that if Mr. Simms was a specimen of a South Carolina gentleman he would not again enter into a tilt with one. ”He outtalked me, out-drank me, and very clearly and politely showed me that I lacked proper respect for the aged.”

The _Phoenix_ promptly sank back into its ashes and Simms returned to Charleston to a life of toil and struggle, not only for his own livelihood but to help others bear the burden of existence that was very heavy in Charleston immediately succeeding the war. Timrod wrote to him, ”Somehow or other, you always magnetize me on to a little strength.”

In 1866 Simms visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill, the shrine to which many footsteps were turned in the days when the poet and his little family made life beautiful on that pine-clad summit. Hayne welcomed his guest with joy and with sorrow--joy to behold again the face of his old friend; sorrow to see it lined with the pain and losses of the years.

Of all their old circle, Simms was the one whose wreck was the most disastrous. He had possessed so many of the things which make life desirable that his loss had left him as the storm leaves the ruined s.h.i.+p which, in the days of its magnificence, had ridden the waves with the greatest pride. The fortnight in Copse Hill was the first relief from toil that had come to him since death and fire and defeat had done their worst upon him. His biographer says, ”He was as eager as ever to pa.s.s the night in profitless, though pleasant, discussions when he should have been trying to regain his strength through sleep.”

To a later visitor Paul Hayne showed a cherished pine log on which were inscribed the names of Simms and Timrod.

Upon the return of Simms he wrote to his friend at Copse Hill that no language could describe the suffering of Charleston. He said that the picture of Irving, given him by Hayne, served a useful purpose in helping to cover the bomb-sh.e.l.l holes still in his walls. ”For the last three years,” he writes, ”I have written till two in the morning.

Does not this look like suicide?” He mentions the fact that he shares with his two sons his room in which he sleeps, works, writes and studies, and is ”cabin'd, cribbed, confined”--”I who have had such ample range before, with a dozen rooms and a house range for walking, in bad weather, of 134 feet.” The old days were very fair as seen through the heavy clouds that had gathered around the Master of Woodlands.

In 1870, June 11th, the bell of Saint Michael's tolled the message that Charleston's most distinguished son had pa.s.sed away. His funeral was in Saint Paul's. He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery, at the dedication of which twenty-one years earlier he had read the dedication poem. The stone above him bears simply the name, ”Simms.”

On the Battery in Charleston a monument commemorates the broken life of one who gave of his best to the city of his home and his love.

Verily might he say: I asked for bread and you gave me a stone.

”UNCLE REMUS”

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

Seeing the name of Joel Chandler Harris, many people might have to stop and reflect a moment before recalling exactly what claim that gentleman had upon the attention of the reader. ”Uncle Remus” brings before the mind at once a whole world of sunlight and fun, with not a few grains of wisdom planted here and there. The good old fun-loving Uncle has put many a rose and never a thorn into life's flower-garden.

Being in Atlanta some years ago, when Mr. Harris was on the editorial staff of the _Const.i.tution_, I called up the office and asked if I might speak to him. The gentleman who answered my call replied that Mr. Harris was not in, adding the information that if he were he would not talk through the telephone. I asked what time I should be likely to find him in the office.

”He will be in this afternoon, but I fear that he would not see you if you were the angel Gabriel,” was the discouraging reply.

”I am not the angel Gabriel,” I said. ”Tell him that I am a lady--Mrs.