Best Companions : Letters of Eliza Middleton Fisher and Her Mother, Mary Hering Middleton, from Charleston, Philadelphia and Newport, 1839-1846

These letters hold particular significance because they record the joys, sorrows, frustrations, and concerns of a mother and a daughter, and convey the opinions and actions of all their family members, including the men. Eliza

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Chapter One

The Middleton and

the Fishers in 1839

An Introduction

Queen Victoria was newly crowned. Samuel Morse had developed an electric telegraph. Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hall had been burned after an antislavery meeting. Martin Van Buren was hoping for a second term in the White House, and Congressman John Quincy Adams was about to propose a constitutional amendment ending slavery in the United States. All of these events were in the news as 1839 began, but at Middleton Place on the Ashley River, near Charleston, South Carolina, no one was thinking much about the world outside. The Middletons were preparing for a wedding, and the bride, Eliza Middleton, lay hovering near death with a virulent case of scarlet fever.

    She survived leeches, bleeding, and nauseous drugs, as well as ulcers in her throat, and on the evening of March 12, the day set for her wedding, she was able to enter the second-floor drawing room, dressed in a simple white dress, her red hair in ringlets around her face. Her fiancé, Francis Fisher, who had sailed six hundred miles from Philadelphia through freezing winter storms to marry her, had arrived shortly before from Charleston, driven by the Middletons' coachman, attired, as befitted the occasion, in the family livery of black velvet cuffs and collar on a brown coat.

    Although Eliza was still so weak she could hardly do more than whisper the wedding vows, she and Fisher were married while family and friends rejoiced at this happy conclusion to their romance. Eliza was almost twenty-four; Fisher was thirty-two.

The Middletons and Middleton Place

The Middletons, a well-known and prominent family in South Carolina, were among the earliest arrivals in the colony at the end of the seventeenth century. By the time Eliza was married in 1839, Middleton Place had been the home base of her branch of the family for a century, her great grandfather, Henry Middleton, having received it along with his bride, Mary Williams, in 1741. The brick mansion at Middleton Place, built in the early eighteenth century, was now one of the oldest in the South Carolina Lowcountry. It was beautifully sited on high ground, from which one looked eastward over terraced gardens that descended to the Ashley River. Neighbors landed at the foot of these gardens when they came to visit, and the plantation schooner moored there when it came to load or unload supplies or bring mail from town.

    Visitors who arrived by land from Charleston, as Fisher did, usually came by ferry across the Ashley River and ten miles up the sandy river road to the Middleton Place gate. Turning in, they followed the drive across an open green where sheep kept the grass cut and around a circle to the west front of the house. Even if they had never been there before, they would have expected the "towering oaks" and elms and acres of gardens laid out "in a style of superior elegance" on their left; if they came in winter, they would have hoped to see hundreds of camellia flowers along the paths, for these, along with the Middletons' library and the artworks decorating the house, had long since made Middleton Place famous.

    The Middletons' elegant lifestyle was made possible by the profits from growing rice, South Carolina's principal, and immensely lucrative, staple crop. Large landholders from the start, the Middletons used slave labor to plant rice, first on plantations near Charleston and, as the eighteenth century progressed, on very fertile drained swamplands along the Combahee River, two days' journey to the south. Long before the Revolution, rice put the Middletons at the top of a small group of extremely wealthy families in a colony whose overall wealth far exceeded that of any of the other colonies. In 1839 rice was still the Middletons' main source of income.

    Wealth and political prominence went hand in hand. Members of the Middleton family served continuously in the colonial government until the Revolution, and since the Revolution three generations had had a role in the new nation's government. Eliza's great-grandfather, Henry (1717-1784), represented South Carolina in the First Continental Congress. Her grandfather, Arthur (1742-1787), was a member of the Continental Congress, too, and signed the Declaration of Independence, as did his brother-in-law, Edward Rutledge.

    Eliza's father, a second Henry (1770-1846), carried his family's tradition of public service into the nineteenth century. As he welcomed the wedding guests to Middleton Place on that March day in 1839, he was nearing his seventieth birthday and had spent most of his adult life as a politician and diplomat. Serving first in the South Carolina legislature, he was elected governor (1810-1812) and then was twice elected to Congress (1815-1819). His final post was as U.S. minister to Russia. Taking his family abroad with him, he remained in St. Petersburg for ten years (1820-1830).

Eliza's Parents

Henry Middleton and Mary Helen Hering

From the start, the American Revolution shaped Henry Middleton's life. In 1776, at the age of six, he shared the excitement of being in Philadelphia while his father, Arthur, attended the Continental Congress. He also lived through the turmoil and devastation of war when the British army occupied Charleston in 1780. His father, marked as one of the most prominent patriots, was imprisoned in St. Augustine, Florida, and was therefore absent from his family for long periods, either in Florida or as a member of Congress in Philadelphia.

    Henry's mother, Mary Izard Middleton, was left with the burden of fending off marauders from both the British and American armies and trying to find food to keep her family together at Middleton Place. She managed to find a French tutor to teach the regular academic subjects to her older children, but Hal (as Henry was called) had to teach himself when it came to music and drawing.

    Had the Revolution not intervened, his parents would almost certainly have sent him to England to be educated, and as an adult Henry Middleton felt he was not as well educated as he would have liked. His education was indeed informal if he compared himself with his father, who spent several years in England studying at Westminster School and Cambridge, or with the many other South Carolinians, including relatives in the Izard, Drayton, Rutledge, and Pinckney families, who went to Cambridge and Oxford or studied law at the Inns of Court in London. But Henry Middleton's opinion of his own deficiencies was not shared by others, including his son-in-law, Francis Fisher. They knew him as an accomplished scholar who had taken full advantage of alternate opportunities for education which travel and independent study had given him.

    Just as some normality was returning to the family after the Revolution, Arthur Middleton died. Young Hal, an appealing boy with "a sweet agreeable countenance, [and] a very sensible ardent look," was only sixteen. Three years later, his mother, with the advice of his uncles, Edward Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, sent him northward with letters of introduction to eminent friends, including Thomas Jefferson, so he would be "acquainted with his own country and his own Countrymen." He went abroad in 1792 and, during seven years in England and France, had an extraordinary opportunity to observe society and politics in the aftermath of the French Revolution. He also found a wife.

    Mary Helen Hering was born in Jamaica in 1772, where her father, Julines Hering, an officer in the British army, owned sugar plantations and slaves. Her mother, Mary Inglis, grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of a Scots merchant who had settled there. She married Julines Hering while he was stationed in the North American colonies in the 1760s. Though Captain Hering originally intended to bring up his own family in Philadelphia, he changed his mind when the colonial troubles broke out in the 1770s and took his wife and children back to England. His daughter, Mary Helen, therefore considered herself English, although she was really more a product of the wider English-speaking Atlantic world that existed before the American Revolution.

    When Henry Middleton entered her life, probably in late 1793 or early 1794, Mary Hering was living with her mother at Bath. She was lively and charming, intelligent, and loved and admired by her friends. She read widely, played the harp, and had a real love of music. Not surprisingly, she had suitors, but when her brother, Oliver, heard about Henry Middleton, he advised her to reject the others since "the Carolinian by your description seems better qualified to make you happy ... notwithstanding his cold platonic Disposition and pretended indifference to your Charms." He suggested she "take him who has the ability to place you in a state of independence and prosperity, in case he should declare himself your humble servant."

    He did, and they were married at Bath on November 13, 1794. He was twenty-four; Mary, twenty-two.

    The young Middletons lived first in England and then, in the summer of 1796, went to Paris for a year. Henry's uncle, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, had been sent to Paris as the American Minister, and he and his wife saw the Middletons frequently. Mrs. Pinckney described Henry as "modest without reserve and polite without affectation. I think if I were a mother," she wrote, "I should wish for just such a son." Europe, she thought, had "neither made him foppish nor assuming."

    Mrs. Pinckney described Mary Middleton as "sweet-temper'd and agreeable," a charming woman. Her figure was "very pretty and the dress she wears very well calculated to shew it to advantage," and she was an amusing companion as they explored Paris. Mary shared Henry's French lessons and took music lessons as well, but much of her time was spent caring for her "little brats." They began arriving in quick succession: Arthur was born in England in 1795; Harry (Henry) in Paris in 1797; and Oliver in 1798 in England.

    The following year, the Middletons and their three boys sailed from England for the United States, arriving in Charleston at the end of September 1799, after a tedious three-month voyage. Henry's mother and sisters welcomed them warmly. "Thank God," Mary wrote Mrs. Pinckney, "I am among those who seem disposed to supply the place of those relations I have left, and nothing shall be wanting on my part, to show them how sensible I am to their attentions." She liked Henry's sisters: Emma Philadelphia, who had married Henry Izard in 1795; Anne, soon to marry Daniel Blake; and Isabella ("Bell"), who eloped with Daniel Elliott Huger a year later. She became especially close to Henry's youngest sister, Septima Sexta, who was engaged to their cousin, Henry Middleton Rutledge.

    Culture shock, however, existed long before our century gave it a name, and it is clear that adjusting to South Carolina was not always easy for Mary Middleton. She hated the climate. She thought the house at Middleton Place was rundown and dirty when they moved in (though she conceded that the "situation" of the house was delightful) and was apparently critical of her husband for not having had it fixed up beforehand. She told her mother, perhaps after visiting the Combahee River plantations, that she was "disgusted" by the plantation and the negroes. On top of these irritants, her fourth child, John Izard, was born just four months after they reached South Carolina and was not a strong infant. A fifth, born the next year, soon died. Small wonder that she was homesick and sometimes "low in spirits."

    Her happy nature and sense of humor nevertheless usually won out. Settling into the Carolina rhythm, she and Henry interspersed the fall and spring seasons in the country with winter months in Charleston, where they enjoyed the city's extensive social life. In the summer, they moved to cooler spots such as Greenville, in the South Carolina upcountry, or to northern resorts like Ballston Spa in New York and Newport, Rhode Island. Wherever she was, Mary Middleton was always liked and respected, and she soon had many friends. "I am sure you will have a good neighbour in Mrs M," Henrietta Drayton was told by a cousin who met her just after she arrived from England. "She appears very sociable pleasing amiable & agreeable--& pretty too."

    This assessment of Mary Middleton proved accurate. It did not, however, do her justice. She had been given a good, basic education and was widely read. She could describe William's state of mind by quoting a seventeenth-century poem ("Why so dull and mute ...?") as easily as she could refer to characters in Shakespeare's or Sheridan's plays. She was as well acquainted with the musical repertoire of the time as with English literature, and though she gave up playing the harp, she was still able in her old age to coach her teenage granddaughter's singing with the assurance of an experienced singer.

    Mary Middleton was an excellent mother who, although she was helped by servants and governesses, took primary responsibility for bringing up her own children. Both she and her husband adored their children and were closely involved in their education. Careful not to show favoritism, she was sensitive to each child's needs and special character. She displayed the same attentiveness to her grandchildren thirty and forty years later.

    She was also tough. In 1813 she traveled by herself with eight of her children, including ten-month-old Catherine, far into the still-unsettled South Carolina upcountry to meet her husband, who was a member of the commission to settle the boundary with North Carolina. "You have travelled in the back parts of the State," she told a friend, "therefore I pass over the fatigue of the journey, the filth & starvation of the Taverns, but you had not a Carriage full of roaring Children." It took nine days to go 240 miles.

Washington and St. Petersburg

1816-1830

Henry Middleton was elected to Congress in 1815 and again in 1817. During the first session of the Fourteenth Congress, from December 1815 to April 1816, he lived in a Washington boardinghouse, as most congressmen did at the time. Among his fellow boarders were Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun from South Carolina. The next winter, the whole family went to Washington, where they rented a house in Georgetown and took an active part in the capital's social life. Arthur, who graduated from Harvard in 1814, and Harry, who graduated from West Point the following year, were both regular figures at their parents' and their friends' gathering.

    The elder Middletons' own charm and good hospitality were also appreciated, however. Congressman Middleton, "a gentleman of elegant manners and cultivated mind," was an intelligent conversationalist and a "munificent" host. His wife was friendly and fun with a wry sense of humor: when waltzing was new and considered an "indecorous exhibition" (because young women were held so closely by their partners), she commented to Harrison Gray Otis that the dance was popular--"to the dismay of all mothers." Mrs. Otis considered Mrs. Middleton's "the most genteel and comfortable establishment in this part of the world," while Mrs. John Quincy Adams thought the family was "the pleasantest in Washington." These seem to have been particularly happy years for the Middletons, during which they made lasting friendships among congressional colleagues and cabinet members, politicians, and diplomats.

    In 1820 President Monroe offered Henry Middleton the post of minister to Russia. He was a good choice. He was fluent in French, the language of international diplomacy, and "conversant with fashionable European manners." His wife was willing to go to St. Petersburg, and, furthermore, since American diplomatic salaries were notoriously low, his personal wealth would permit him to "live as a Minister should live in Russia." Finally, since Czar Alexander I had agreed to arbitrate the dispute between the United States and England over slaves taken by the English during the War of 1812, it was thought that a southerner, and a slaveholder, would best be able to represent slave owners' interests in the forthcoming negotiations.

    By June 1820 the Middletons, with most of their children, were en route to England, where for the first time in twenty years Mrs. Middleton was able to see her own family. They left the four youngest children in England in the care of Mrs. Middleton's brother, Oliver Hering. Catherine and Eliza, who was only five years old, were placed in one school and Edward and William in another near London. In the ensuing years, they spent school holidays with their uncle and aunt.

    Their parents then set off overland from Calais through northern Europe and, racing the winter, reached St. Petersburg in November 1820. Maria, Eleanor, and at least one of their sons were with them. They originally expected to be in Russia for two or three years, but as Middleton proved to be an able and popular diplomat and the whole family enjoyed the social life of the imperial court and diplomatic corps, their stay stretched to five, then seven, and ultimately ten years.

    It is not entirely clear why they stayed so long, although Henry Middleton may have stayed in St. Petersburg hoping he would be transferred from there to another post in Europe. In any case, it was not until the fall of 1827, seven years after they had been left in England, that Eliza, Catherine, and the two boys finally joined their parents in Russia.

    At first, Eliza was considered too young to "go into public," but she had every opportunity to absorb European culture and the details of diplomatic life by observing her parents and siblings as they made the rounds of balls, plays, concerts, dinners, and masquerades. She and Catherine continued their studies, and as their mother described it, Edward heard their "English lessons in the eveng (for their mornings are taken up entirely with French & Music) & [keeps] up their Arithmetic for me, as I am ashamed to confess I am too ignorant to do it myself. I make a great point of their not forgetting their own Language, while so much of French is going on & the Dictionary lesson is always repeated after dinner." She added, "Eliza, to be sure is in no danger of forgetting her Mother tongue, for there never was a greater chatterbox." She "was so desirous of learning German that her Governess is teaching her that language," Mrs. Middleton said, and somehow catching the essence of her youngest child, she judged that "with the desire she evinces to improve herself she cannot fail of making a rapid progress."

    Music was very much a part of the Middletons' life. Both Eliza's parents attended concerts, had music at home, and counted musicians among their friends. They encouraged Eliza and Catherine to continue playing the piano, and Eliza began to sing as well.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Best Companions by Eliza Cope Harrison. Copyright © 2001 by University of South Carolina. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.