We broke the journey at Woodlawn Plantation in Virginia, once the home of Martha Custis Washington, arriving in Charleston late on the night of September 23 [1962]. There was only one light in the house; the only water I could find for the animals or myself was in the shower in my dressing room. Anybody who has ever attempted to fill a Pepsi-Cola bottle with water from a shower will appreciate at least one of my problems.

The first night was spent in a strange empty mansion, sleeping upon an air mattress loaned by Read [Barnes] and a blanket by somebody else. Three days later the "somebody else", in spite of the housekeeper's protest, marched upstairs and took three of my best blankets off my bed in repayment.

There was no kitchen. In these old Southern mansions cooking in slave days had been done in a separate building behind. A new modern kitchen was to be added next to the dining room. Such arguments between the contractor, my business agent and the architect over that kitchen would be hard to imagine. There was I with a housekeeper and nothing for her to cook on.

The furniture was moved in, Annabel-Eliza and Nelly had a specially-designed electrically heated kennel; the chandeliers were hung.

Society Street, upon which my new home was located, had deteriorated over the years. Several of the houses had rather dubious reputations. The first night that my chandeliers were turned on we were pestered by sailor customers all the evening. A soldier climbed up to the second piazza and had to be forcibly evicted by the police.

Frances Edmunds gave a reception in honour of my arrival, at her own home. The part I remember best was the vocal outburst of one of my new neighbours, who objected to the action of a red-haired internationally known poetess, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, who, seeing an aged black lady fall in the street, ran out, just as she was, to help her.

Shouted the woman to the poetess: "I do wish that you would not appear on the street in your négligée. We are trying to bring up the neighbourhood."

Dawn Langley Simmons, Man into Woman
Copyright © 1970 by Dawn Langley Simmons. All rights reserved.

Posted 16 January 1997

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