CHARLESTON

The Handsomest Man

MARCH 25

ACROSS THE BAY IN CHARLESTON, LIFE AMONG THE CHIVALRY FOLLOWED its usual rhythms, with little regard for the prospect of civil war. Carriages and fine horses moved at an easy pace along the Battery as wealthy men and women strolled upon its paved frontage and greeted one another and made arrangements for tea and dinner, and for midday visits having no purpose at all. Now and then a cannon blast punctuated the conversation, but these became so frequent as Beauregard adjusted and tested his many guns that they drew no notice.

By March, Mary Chesnut had become one of the most interesting topics of the day. She had attracted the attention of former-governor Manning, who in addition to being one of the richest men in the South—he owned six hundred enslaved Blacks at several plantations in South Carolina and Louisiana—was one of the most handsome. He was also married. He had decided to engage in a “flirtation” with Mary. He did not, apparently, contemplate a true love affair with all the social opprobrium, and likely bloodshed, that could bring. A flirtation was a bona fide noun deployed in Southern culture to describe something society found much more palatable, even welcomed, for the distraction it provided.

It seems to have begun, as these things do, on a train, on Monday, March 25, when Mary and her husband traveled to Charleston from their Mulberry plantation in Camden, South Carolina. “Came down on the cars yesterday with an immense crowd,” she wrote in her diary. The train was full of men, planters mostly, attending the state’s secession convention, which continued to deliberate all manner of things, even though the main act was long over. Among the travelers was Manning, who, Mary wrote, “flew in to beg me to reserve the seat by me for a young lady under his charge.” Mary’s husband was seated on the same bench. He stood in courtly fashion to make room, she wrote. “‘Place aux dames,’ said my husband politely and went off to seek a seat somewhere else.”

As it happened, Manning’s request was a ruse. “As soon as we were fairly under way,” Mary wrote, “Governor Manning came back and threw himself cheerfully down in the vacant place. After arranging his umbrella, overcoat, &c to his satisfaction, he coolly remarked, ‘I am the young lady.’”

Mary did not mind the attention. “He is always the handsomest man alive (now that poor William Taber has been killed in a Rhett duel),” she wrote, “and he can be very agreeable. That is, when he pleases. He does not always please.” She was flattered, but she also saw value in the fact that Manning’s attention would irk her own husband, something Mary appeared to enjoy doing not out of spite, but rather to get his attention.

The Chesnuts and others of their crowd stayed at the Gidiere boarding house, where they shared a table in the dining room with other prominent souls, among them Mary’s irascible uncle, Judge Withers, and William Henry Trescot, Buchanan’s former assistant secretary of state and Confederate court spy. On Tuesday morning, March 26, the Judge was in an exceptionally acerbic mood.

Turning toward Mary, he said, “Your conversation reminds me of a flashy second-rate novel.”

“How?”

“By the quantity of French you sprinkle over it. Do you wish to prevent us from understanding you?”

Trescot, conspiratorial as always, cut in. “No,” he said in French. “We are using French against Africa.” Trescot gestured toward the enslaved staff. “We know the black waiters are all ears now, and we want to keep what we have to say dark. We can’t afford to take them in our confidence, you know.”

The Judge glared and “in unabated rage” turned away to talk with another member of the breakfast party.

On Thursday, well after James Chesnut and the other men had left the breakfast table, Manning slid over and sat in one of the empty chairs beside Mary.

“I looked at him in amazement,” Mary wrote, “as he was in full dress, ready for a ball. Swallowtail and all, at that hour!”

“What is the matter with you?” she said.

“Nothing. I am not mad, most noble Madame, I am only going to the photographer. My wife wants me taken thus.”

He needed the photograph for a “carte de visite,” a photographic calling card, then de rigueur among the chivalry. He insisted Mary join him, and she in turn retrieved her husband, ordered him to dress in formal attire, and took him along. “Mr. M,” she noted, referring to Manning, “promised me his likeness.”

Later, the day took a somber turn. Mary joined two other women for a carriage ride to the city’s Magnolia Cemetery to visit the tomb of the VanderHorst family, one of Charleston’s oldest families, “there to see the VanderHorst way of burying their dead,” she wrote. “One at least, is embalmed or kept lifelike by some process, dressed as usual—can be seen through a glass case. I did not look. How can anyone?”

She returned home “with the worst attack of the blues.”

That night, her husband chastised her for all the time she was spending with other men, especially Manning. “After dinner, Mr. Chesnut made himself eminently absurd by accusing me of flirting with John Manning, &c. I could only laugh—too funny!”