A century and a half ago foreign travel was more of an adventure than one bargained for. Much of what was known was word of mouth. No Conde-Nast glossy magazine proclaimed Charleston’s charms. Not even the innovative, Leipzig-based Baedeker Guide mentions Charleston until the year 1900.

Fortunately, almost all educated folks kept a journal. Personal travel journals made for lively reading in the 19th century, and thankfully a number of the English diaries survived. And they reveal quite a bit about Charleston before the War of 1861. Historians have resorted to old diaries for candid observations of everything from the climate and cuisine to the architecture and the sophistication of the locals.

The best collection of British travel diary excerpts relating to antebellum Charleston belongs to Ivan D. Steen, professor of history at State University of New York in Albany. Steen is one of the leading authorities when it comes to understanding the European influence upon early American urban centers. Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Cincinnati -- Steen has published accounts of foreigners’ impressions of these cities as they existed at the time when the age of steam was shrinking distance and travel time. In January, 1970, Ivan Steen published an essay on English travel impressions of Charleston in the South Carolina Historical Quarterly. In this piece he uncovers some little-known aspects of antebellum Charleston culture, and he relates anecdotes that English visitors communicated to friends back home about our ancestors.

Most readers agree that Charleston remains a charming and cosmopolitan seaport with a distinctive Barbadian, or Bermudan charm. In the 1850s visitors who were fortunate to be invited into the walled gardens and double piazza homes all concurred that, not only was there refined hospitality on a grand scale equal to the gentry of Old England, but there was stimulating conversation abounding at our social gatherings.

The 1850s was the time of the world-renown John E. Holbrook, M.D., as chief lecturer at the Medical College. Holbrook married into the Rutledge family and their Tradd Street residence and country seat, Hollow Tree (near the navy base), became well-known for visitations from world famous thinkers such as zoologist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz and his equally famous educator wife, Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz. Holbrook hosted the Swedish novelist and pioneer feminist Frederika Bremer and Atlantic Monthly Magazine editor, James Russell Lowell a relative of the Gilmans here. And these travelers noted the excellent discussions and entertainments they experienced in Charleston among the planter elite and their scholarly New England guests.

A notable topic of discussion among foreigners was Charleston’s declining population in the decade prior to the War. The census of 1850 puts Charleston’s white population at 49,985. Yet by 1860 the city count had diminished by 19 percent to just above 40,000. Was Charleston in economic decline as it plunged headlong into war?

Visitors note that the commercial district here appeared tatty as one wandered east or west of the commercially vibrant Meeting and King Streets.

Walter Thornbury, an Englishman, writes (1852) that Charleston possesses two of the finest hotels anywhere on the continent — the Mills House and the Charleston Hotel, both situated on Meeting Street. He labeled the Mills House “a noble palace of a hotel where could be had all the fineries” one could command in Europe. Amelia Murray, a genteel English woman, remarks that the Mills House is finer than the Willard in Washington. Jane and Marion Turnbull, noted world travelers from Britain, exclaimed that the table set by the Mills was the finest they’d encountered in America.

Eyre Crowe accompanied William Thackery on his USA tour in the 1850s and records that The Charleston Hotel on Meeting Street was a majestic building possessing an enormous reception hall where steamship trunks were stacked so high that hotel guests had to maneuver around a maze of incoming luggage. Other trunks awaited transport to the waterfront. Celebrities such as Thackery, Jenny Lind, the Booth acting family, and politicians frequented The Charleston Hotel.

The New York Times published correspondence received from Thackery involving a friend named Rankin who was with him in Charleston. Rankin had a mishap at the Charleston Hotel where he was robbed of $20, a large slice his ready cash. Elegantly upholstered benches lined the lobby at the Charleston Hotel and gentleman loungers, or loafers, congregated there daily to smoke cigars, ogle the ladies, and savor the seaport’s international flavor.

Foreign visitors noted that Charleston streets had more in common in appearance with European streets than any city in America, except for New Orleans. As far as port activity goes, foreigners commented that our waterfront bustled, but that the shipping activity didn’t appear as organized as ports in New York or New Orleans. Cotton bales bound for Manchester, Glasgow, or Bristol were piled a mile along Cooper River wharves. Bales were open to the weather and stacked haphazardly to mountainous height as overflowing warehouses dominated the eastern side of the city — jamming right up to the old Exchange Building.

Visitors were stunned by the overwhelming number of Africans they saw on the streets, most of whom were slaves. The odd thing for Englishmen to grasp was that their notion of slavery included chains and an overseer with a bull whip. Here in Charleston, slaves strolled freely carrying bundles on their heads and wearing the most colorful attire seen on anyone in the states. The irony was that they were free to travel the streets on errands, but the sidewalk was forbidden and no person of color could be out and about after 9 p.m. The bells of St. Michael’s were rung promptly at 9 p.m. to announce the patrol of the horse guards who kept nightly vigilance, less there be another slave insurrection such as the one planned by Denmark Vesey in 1822.

Reading accounts of old Charleston from the travel diaries of foreigners reaffirms our quaint notion that Charleston has charmed sightseers in every decade of its 340 year existence.

Next week History’s Lost Moments will share some of the humorous tidbits recorded by English diarists.

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