My Kind of Town: Charleston, South Carolina

Novelist Josephine Humphreys says the city is more than just her hometown, it's her life

  • By Josephine Humphreys
  • Smithsonian magazine, March 2009, Subscribe
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Charleston South Carolina
Moviemakers love the old houses with side porches (Aiken-Rhett House, c. 1820) and palmetto-lined streets, says Josephine Humphreys. (Bernard Boutrit / Woodfin Camp / IPN)

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One spring afternoon I was sitting at my office desk when I heard the sounds of a ruckus outside. And I do welcome a ruckus. My office is on the ground floor of the Confederate Home, where widows lived after the Civil War and old ladies still live today, with the extra studio apartments rented to artists and writers. It's a quiet place hidden away in the busy heart of town, amid lawyers and tourists and Charlestonians out for a stroll. In good weather I leave my two big windows open, knowing something interesting will waft in from Chalmers Street. If I'm lucky it might be oompah music from nearby Washington Park, or a snippet of conversation from passersby who're unaware that I'm only three feet away and may well weave their snippet into what I'm writing. The noise on this particular afternoon was new: a clomping and a hollering. I looked down the street and saw a company of Union soldiers marching my way, attracting the stares of onlookers.

Suddenly the spectators turned on the men in blue, hurling first insults and then projectiles. One big brick struck a soldier in the head, and he fell to his knees with a hand over his bleeding ear. When the brick hit the street, it didn't behave like a brick at all. It bounced. Aha. Better than a ruckus, a movie! Pretty soon everyone recovered, and Makeup came to clean up the fallen soldier.

I count myself lucky to have been born in a town that's rife with contradictions, a difficult past in constant need of retelling, and real characters. Moviemakers seem to love the place. Who would not, seeing for the first time these old tall houses with their unique side porches, the streets lined with palmettos and live oaks, the muted sunlight filtering down through sea mist and humidity? We're called the "Holy City" for our skyline of steeples, and we were named America's "most well-mannered city" 11 times by the late doyenne of etiquette Marjabelle Young Stewart. Visitors notice all this beauty and politeness and history. Sometimes I do too, but more often I can't clearly see anything at all, or at least not in any pure or definable form that could lead to a sobriquet or a superlative. This is because I've lived my whole life here. I know too much. Nothing I see is simply scenery or event, but all is overlaid with memories, and those memories with other memories and stories, plus the truth of history as I've learned it over time, and finally with a film of dreams and losses, bits of music, discoveries, tragedies, wild comedy and fragments of desire. I never think of Charleston as my "hometown." I don't know what I should call it, except maybe my life.

You'd think that a lifetime spent in one town would lead eventually to understanding or at least to boredom (if those two things are not the same). That has not happened. I can still be surprised, for instance, by coincidences, by abrupt outcroppings of irony or by the way history bubbles up in one form or another. Often it's Civil War history, given the local obsession, but it can also be my own.

Last November another movie was filming farther uptown at Read Brothers store, on the corner of Spring and King, where I'd gone under the pretense of buying a bedspread. Read Brothers is the strangest store you'll ever see, a big red-brick, creaky-floored building stocked primarily with fabric but also with used books, vintage toys, folding paper fans, long johns, foam rubber and high-end stereo equipment. I like to drop in periodically to get inspired by the wacky plenitude. Evidently, the movie director was similarly inspired when he chose the store as a setting. Whether the scene was action or romance didn't matter; Read Brothers looks like a place where anything could happen. The line between then and now is thin. Some of that merchandise has been on the shelves for decades. I asked the owner, Marianne Read, what the oldest item in the store was, and without missing a beat she reached into a basket on the counter and grabbed a card of hairpins, "Victory Bobbies," vintage World War II. I bought them for a dollar and asked if I'd gotten the last set. "Oh, no," she said. "We have cartons and cartons in the storeroom."

It was reassuring to think of those extra cartons, surely an eternal supply. I realized that Read Brothers mirrors my image of Charleston itself: a place packed with oddities and treasures that will never be depleted. Or maybe I was really thinking about my own self, desperately hoping my brain will prove to be similarly provisioned for the future. But just as I was leaving Read Brothers I noticed that the stock of merchandise on the main floor seemed a little thinner than it used to be. In a corner where once my childhood friend Pat and I used to select fabric for our dance recital costumes, choosing from shelves and shelves of bright tulle and satin, now the supply of the spangliest and glitteriest had dwindled to a dozen or so bolts. I pretended not to see that. I want Read Brothers to live forever.

Those bobby pins are basically my age. I was born in 1945. The three houses where I grew up are all just a few blocks from my Confederate Home office, and Chalmers Street, which in my childhood formed a line between well-mannered downtown and a more variegated (and artier, wilder, more interesting) uptown, was my main playground. On the corner was the Fireproof Building, which as a child I never entered; it housed historical documents and didn't welcome children, as if History were something that could be destroyed not only by fire but by children. But in adjacent Washington Park, I played every afternoon with Pat, who lived just over the wall, and there was plenty of history for us in the park: not only the scaled-down replica of the Washington Monument (this one dedicated to Confederate soldiers), but also monuments commemorating the poet Henry Timrod; Francis Salvador, the first Jew elected to public office in America; and Elizabeth Jackson, mother of Andrew Jackson. Pat and I roller-skated around these monuments and memorized their inscriptions, which seemed to suggest to us a rich variety of histories. Sometimes we sat on a bench under giant live oaks and watched the comings and goings of lawyers on the way to City Hall. Beyond Pat's house was the Confederate Home, which I rather feared at the time, knowing that it housed old ladies. Charleston's old ladies ruled the town, and if you misbehaved within the hawkish eyesight of one, as Pat and I did once when we skated into the street instead of staying in the fenced park, you'd be in for a tongue-lashing even if the old-lady spy was not one you knew personally.

I don't remember ever hearing the word "woman" spoken in my early years. Is that possible? There were basket ladies, literary ladies, cleaning ladies, flower ladies, artist ladies, ladies of the evening. And two-block cobblestoned Chalmers Street had seen them all. At No. 6, two eccentric and valiant old ladies ran, on their own shoestring, the Old Slave Mart Museum, the single place I encountered where the shocking reality of slavery (human beings were bought and sold here) was acknowledged as part of our history. No. 17, "The Pink House," was the studio of Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, who painted idyllic watercolor landscapes of slaves at work on hazy pastel plantations; but in an earlier age the building had been one of the city's many bordellos. At No. 36, there lived one old lady whose presence in town would shape my future: Josephine Pinckney, the only flesh-and-blood novelist I had glimpsed, and aside from a great-aunt, the only other Josephine I'd heard of.


One spring afternoon I was sitting at my office desk when I heard the sounds of a ruckus outside. And I do welcome a ruckus. My office is on the ground floor of the Confederate Home, where widows lived after the Civil War and old ladies still live today, with the extra studio apartments rented to artists and writers. It's a quiet place hidden away in the busy heart of town, amid lawyers and tourists and Charlestonians out for a stroll. In good weather I leave my two big windows open, knowing something interesting will waft in from Chalmers Street. If I'm lucky it might be oompah music from nearby Washington Park, or a snippet of conversation from passersby who're unaware that I'm only three feet away and may well weave their snippet into what I'm writing. The noise on this particular afternoon was new: a clomping and a hollering. I looked down the street and saw a company of Union soldiers marching my way, attracting the stares of onlookers.

Suddenly the spectators turned on the men in blue, hurling first insults and then projectiles. One big brick struck a soldier in the head, and he fell to his knees with a hand over his bleeding ear. When the brick hit the street, it didn't behave like a brick at all. It bounced. Aha. Better than a ruckus, a movie! Pretty soon everyone recovered, and Makeup came to clean up the fallen soldier.

I count myself lucky to have been born in a town that's rife with contradictions, a difficult past in constant need of retelling, and real characters. Moviemakers seem to love the place. Who would not, seeing for the first time these old tall houses with their unique side porches, the streets lined with palmettos and live oaks, the muted sunlight filtering down through sea mist and humidity? We're called the "Holy City" for our skyline of steeples, and we were named America's "most well-mannered city" 11 times by the late doyenne of etiquette Marjabelle Young Stewart. Visitors notice all this beauty and politeness and history. Sometimes I do too, but more often I can't clearly see anything at all, or at least not in any pure or definable form that could lead to a sobriquet or a superlative. This is because I've lived my whole life here. I know too much. Nothing I see is simply scenery or event, but all is overlaid with memories, and those memories with other memories and stories, plus the truth of history as I've learned it over time, and finally with a film of dreams and losses, bits of music, discoveries, tragedies, wild comedy and fragments of desire. I never think of Charleston as my "hometown." I don't know what I should call it, except maybe my life.

You'd think that a lifetime spent in one town would lead eventually to understanding or at least to boredom (if those two things are not the same). That has not happened. I can still be surprised, for instance, by coincidences, by abrupt outcroppings of irony or by the way history bubbles up in one form or another. Often it's Civil War history, given the local obsession, but it can also be my own.

Last November another movie was filming farther uptown at Read Brothers store, on the corner of Spring and King, where I'd gone under the pretense of buying a bedspread. Read Brothers is the strangest store you'll ever see, a big red-brick, creaky-floored building stocked primarily with fabric but also with used books, vintage toys, folding paper fans, long johns, foam rubber and high-end stereo equipment. I like to drop in periodically to get inspired by the wacky plenitude. Evidently, the movie director was similarly inspired when he chose the store as a setting. Whether the scene was action or romance didn't matter; Read Brothers looks like a place where anything could happen. The line between then and now is thin. Some of that merchandise has been on the shelves for decades. I asked the owner, Marianne Read, what the oldest item in the store was, and without missing a beat she reached into a basket on the counter and grabbed a card of hairpins, "Victory Bobbies," vintage World War II. I bought them for a dollar and asked if I'd gotten the last set. "Oh, no," she said. "We have cartons and cartons in the storeroom."

It was reassuring to think of those extra cartons, surely an eternal supply. I realized that Read Brothers mirrors my image of Charleston itself: a place packed with oddities and treasures that will never be depleted. Or maybe I was really thinking about my own self, desperately hoping my brain will prove to be similarly provisioned for the future. But just as I was leaving Read Brothers I noticed that the stock of merchandise on the main floor seemed a little thinner than it used to be. In a corner where once my childhood friend Pat and I used to select fabric for our dance recital costumes, choosing from shelves and shelves of bright tulle and satin, now the supply of the spangliest and glitteriest had dwindled to a dozen or so bolts. I pretended not to see that. I want Read Brothers to live forever.

Those bobby pins are basically my age. I was born in 1945. The three houses where I grew up are all just a few blocks from my Confederate Home office, and Chalmers Street, which in my childhood formed a line between well-mannered downtown and a more variegated (and artier, wilder, more interesting) uptown, was my main playground. On the corner was the Fireproof Building, which as a child I never entered; it housed historical documents and didn't welcome children, as if History were something that could be destroyed not only by fire but by children. But in adjacent Washington Park, I played every afternoon with Pat, who lived just over the wall, and there was plenty of history for us in the park: not only the scaled-down replica of the Washington Monument (this one dedicated to Confederate soldiers), but also monuments commemorating the poet Henry Timrod; Francis Salvador, the first Jew elected to public office in America; and Elizabeth Jackson, mother of Andrew Jackson. Pat and I roller-skated around these monuments and memorized their inscriptions, which seemed to suggest to us a rich variety of histories. Sometimes we sat on a bench under giant live oaks and watched the comings and goings of lawyers on the way to City Hall. Beyond Pat's house was the Confederate Home, which I rather feared at the time, knowing that it housed old ladies. Charleston's old ladies ruled the town, and if you misbehaved within the hawkish eyesight of one, as Pat and I did once when we skated into the street instead of staying in the fenced park, you'd be in for a tongue-lashing even if the old-lady spy was not one you knew personally.

I don't remember ever hearing the word "woman" spoken in my early years. Is that possible? There were basket ladies, literary ladies, cleaning ladies, flower ladies, artist ladies, ladies of the evening. And two-block cobblestoned Chalmers Street had seen them all. At No. 6, two eccentric and valiant old ladies ran, on their own shoestring, the Old Slave Mart Museum, the single place I encountered where the shocking reality of slavery (human beings were bought and sold here) was acknowledged as part of our history. No. 17, "The Pink House," was the studio of Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, who painted idyllic watercolor landscapes of slaves at work on hazy pastel plantations; but in an earlier age the building had been one of the city's many bordellos. At No. 36, there lived one old lady whose presence in town would shape my future: Josephine Pinckney, the only flesh-and-blood novelist I had glimpsed, and aside from a great-aunt, the only other Josephine I'd heard of.

Today, I can spend long hours in the Fireproof Building, reading documents and manuscripts in the library of the South Carolina Historical Society. I like to dig up the stories of people who never made it into history books. At lunchtime I might eat a hot dog in Washington Park and hope to spot a bit of romantic drama in the corner behind City Hall; sometimes the couples who've just gotten a marriage license will scoot out back for a speedy wedding under the oaks, and I can watch the little scene while a story spins up in my head. Or maybe I'll walk on down Chalmers, past the building where Pat and I learned to tap-dance at Miss Mamie Forbes' Dancing School, on to the recently reopened Old Slave Mart Museum, where my friend Nichole is curator. Sometimes we eat lunch on the same bench that was Pat's and mine more than half a century ago.

Pat moved to California in the seventh grade. I don't know what happened to her, but I think of her as the antithesis of me, adventuring a continent away while I stayed home and steadily, with each day's passing but to my infinite surprise, gradually became one of this old town's old-lady spies myself. In the process, the place has grown more mysterious to me, richer in connotations and complexities, more likely to make understanding impossible. At the same time, what becomes possible is a kind of minor revelation, the kind that artists and writers need from time to time. A spur, a seed, the start of something: maybe a reverie, maybe a book.

Remarkable coincidences sometimes happen when you're ready for them. One week ago I took a break from writing about Charleston to go browsing for books, and I saw a new calendar for sale, one that illustrates each month with a sepia-toned photograph from History. The cover photo caught my eye. A suspiciously nostalgic picture, I thought, and therefore maybe not trustable. Girls on a bench...sassy pals, full of confidence, not realizing what lies ahead or even that anything does lie ahead. It took me more than a few seconds to understand that this was a picture of me, circa 1952. I'm sitting on the bench in Washington Park with my old friend Pat and a younger girl I don't recognize. It's a photograph I'd never seen before. I bought the calendar and showed it to my family. My husband says it could be me, my sister says not, but I'm saying I'm sure of it. I'm saying that was me.

Josephine Humphreys' novels include Nowhere Else on Earth and Rich in Love.


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Comments (15)

Jo, I love this article! You are a wonderful author, capturing so many vivid images that I too recall. Now I thirst for more of your works...

Posted by Leonie Gill on September 21,2011 | 07:19 AM

goodness me, I was looking up Cecelia Vaughn on the internet and found this article. I too started dance at Miss Maime's and later taught for her in the 50's while in college at the C of C. However, most of my young life was spent in *Cele* Vaughn's dance studio(s). The earliest one I remember, and my memory is not what it once was, was on the lower end of King Street, upstairs over a liquor store..Across from the Riviera Theatre, I think. Then she moved her studio west of the ashley to Savannah Highway. She lived in the area so the move made sense. Read Brothers was *the* place for costume materials and my mother made many, many costumes...not only for me but for other students in Cele's classes.

I know live right outside Indianapolis, In. and one day got to chatting with the lady who works in our local pet supply shoppe. She's 20 yrs. my younger but we found we both are from Charleston, went to St. Andrews High School and she studied dance with Cele for 18 yrs.

FWIW, I still dance and belong to a group called *The Timesteppers* who perform.

Thanks for the great memories.

Posted by Eleanor carter on January 23,2010 | 10:55 AM

Ms. Humphreys:
My wife and I took the plunge and re-located to Charleston over five years ago. We were married here and held our reception at the Confederate Home and School! Now, we live just a block or so from you over on State Street. It was a huge adjustment, obviously, but we agree with you that it is rich in history and lore. And we're becoming richer all the time with new friends we've made here. Thanks for this lovely article.

Posted by Tom Bradford on May 25,2009 | 01:37 PM

We recently checked out Charleston as a possible location for our ultimate semi-retirement years - as a physician and ships' engineer I could never retire. However, after visiting and talking to so many nice people and being super cautious about our final decision and reading this wonderful article about our future home, I feel very heartened in our decision to relocate to Charleston and try to make a contribution to the society there and try to change absolutely nothing except to enjoy life as we have up till now, but I do feel that we will enjoy life much more in Charleston than where we live now. Thank you for such a heart warming and honest assessment of Charleston.

Posted by Dr. Steven Klein on April 15,2009 | 12:00 AM

Loved your article on Charleston, one of my favorite cities in the world. I spend part of the year here as my daughter and her family live here and I love to walk the streets downtown, fantasizing about all the history that has taken place in these old buildings. How I wish I could have seen the Charleston of your childhood; everyone I meet here keeps telling me how much things have changed (though they usually add, "for the better.")But of course, the old is still very much present, especially if you look for it.

Thanks for an insider's view....

Jackie Frey
(Co-incidentally, Duke Women's College, Class of 1964)

Posted by Jackie Frey on March 17,2009 | 10:14 AM

Goodness, My broker in charge at Carolina One real estate sent this article written by Josephine.and I am reading it this morning, as i begin my week.....I am flooded with similar memories. i too was born in charleston, St Francis , in 1947.and I too went yearly to Read Brothers to purchase the shiny fabrics and glo in the dark glitter for my dance recitals at Memminger auditorium, taugh by Cecelia Vaughn Dance Studio, somewhere i think up above where Saks is now., The highlight, other than the dance class, was having mom to myself and then walking up to Woolworths. to buy 10 cents worth of malted milk balls from the vast candy counter..............The memories are flooding me right now, and I could go on for awhile, but need to get back to present...........Thanks to Josephine for writing, Brenda

Posted by Brenda Bennett Rosenthal on March 16,2009 | 08:57 AM

I loved your article, Jo. Your writing spans a wide swath of Charleston life and makes it all warm and real. I just want to insert that the picture of you on the calendar first appeared as the cover of my Charleston: A Historic Walking Tour book published by Arcadia Publishing Company. In this book I outline three downtown walking tours and give the history of selected buildings and houses seen along the way. I have the picture you are referring to but I don't know how to upload it here.

Posted by Mary Preston Foster on March 13,2009 | 05:38 PM

Hey, Josephine, What a nice surprise to open up my Smithsonian and see the great story by you! Lawrence called to say he enjoyed it too. I loved the way you describe your feelings about Charleston - I feel the same way about Kent, and realize that I am also one of the old lady spies in my life town. Your love of your beautiful town comes through clearly in your writing. I miss Charleston and miss you all...

Posted by The Other Marge on March 11,2009 | 07:38 PM

A delightful article about my favorite place to visit! (This past December was our most recent, and the homes were so beautifully decorated for Christmas.) There is something very special about Charleston, with it's 'living history', and gracious southern hospitality. Thank you for sharing your 'life' story, Josephine, it took me back once more. I'll think of you writing beside your open windows next time we stroll the city streets.

Posted by BJ Porter on March 6,2009 | 01:32 PM

Jo, the article makes me want to go back to Charleston for the umpteenth time. The old city never gets old and I even like being a little old lady there! You write with such style!

Posted by Louise Maynor on March 3,2009 | 11:01 PM

Dear Josephine Humphreys, I loved your Smithsonian story - my mother was a Read and her father was one of the original Read Brothers (Daniel Tobias Read) - she grew up playing in the store and riding to the top floor attic on the old lift. Her family "legend" was that Finnigan the Tooth Rat lived up there and collected her teeth from under her pillow and left her a shiny coin as payment (no tooth fairies in her dreams!) Love your writing! Charleston is magic! Best regards, Edie Read Crouch

Posted by Edie Crouch on March 3,2009 | 10:20 AM

Jo, I met you w/ the Lunatics Book Club on IOP and discovered recently you know Nancy Pate (Furman friend). Charleston is on my radar screen right now because I had a family painting in Maine researched (artist was Isabel Lydia Whitney) and the trail led to Society St. and the whole Gordon Langley Hall story. Not only was that house painted by Edward Hopper, but the house across the street is the house where great-great grandfather, William Gilmore Simms, died. So I MUST get to Society St. with palette and paper.. Enjoyed the article--I am a fan of Three O'Clock dinner. Anne (Lee Simms Buck) Davis

Posted by Anne Davis on March 2,2009 | 08:16 AM

Dear Ms. Humphrreys, My daughters and I will be escaping Minnesota in March in order to spend a few days in Charleston. We have a list of things to see and do, and now we have added Read Brothers to the list. Maybe we'll stand on the sidewalk outside your office and say something scandalous. We'll stop short of a ruckus, though. Thank you for your delightful article. Best wishes! Marge Lundeen Annandale, MN

Posted by Marge Lundeen on February 26,2009 | 09:14 AM

Hey, Joe. One of my novels is set in Charleston (Dreams of Sleep), and two just outside of Charleston (Rich in Love and The Fireman's Fair). Hope you have a great time here in March!

Posted by Josephine Humphreys on February 25,2009 | 07:45 PM




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