 
My father, William P. Baldwin, Jr., a Yankee, came down from Delaware in 1938 and spent the next fifty years working as a wildlife biologist, land consultant, and finally a plantation broker. Late in his life, he guided me through the great Lowcountry properties. On one of our expeditions, at two in the morning he sat bolt upright in his bed and said, “The Place. You understand? The Place.” Then, still sound asleep, he returned to his pillow. With my father in mind, years later I return to Middleton Place to talk with Charles Duell. He’s a Middleton descendant and longtime custodian of his family’s place. I turn onto the Garden Road, hardly wider than the Indian path it once was. Live oaks crowd the edges. Just beyond, the woods are scored with the deep gullies left behind from the phosphate mining that stripped this land but allowed the Middleton family to hang onto the property. Through the gate are far grander live oaks — sprawling, moss-draped towers three times the size of those along the highway. I’ve been reading Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory. Schama argues that a reverence for trees like these is built into our Western culture. He uses the word hysterical to describe the enthusiasm of some for pure wilderness. I’m waiting at the ticket booth where a brochure tells me that portions of the sixty acres of Middleton Place’s gardens date to 1741. The butterfly lakes, the camellias, the terraces, are well known, but there are also cypress ponds and a bamboo forest. A carriage ride will take you along rice field dikes where bald eagles nest. The house museum is actually a small flanker that survived the Yankee troops. It’s been restored and filled with the belongings of the Middleton family. The parking lot is filled with cars. Even in the middle of winter the weather is from April, and Middleton Place is undeniably beautiful — a genuine oasis. I should know — I just drove past miles of strip malls to get here. Duell shakes my hand. He’s my senior by only six years, but I’ve always relegated him to my father’s generation. He’s lean and handsome, with the distinct air of a country gentleman. On our way to lunch, we walk among the camellias and he speaks of recent changes, because he knows I’ve visited here at least a dozen times. There are still trail rides and lessons and the Middleton Place Hounds — fifty foxhounds used in a cross-country drag hunt. There are kayaking, biking, nature walks, sheep grazing on the greensward, the inn. They are growing rice again. Everything done here in the past thirty-five years is aimed at enhancing and protecting what is here. Duell wants people to stay longer than a day. “We want them to understand” is what he says. We pass by the house ruins the nineteenth-century tourist came to see, and we face the Ashley River. Terraced lawns, two lakes shaped like butterfly wings, and, beyond, a pristine riverscape. The preservation of the rural is a form of historical preservation, he explains. “After a dozen years we secured a visual easement on two miles opposite us on the riverfront so visitors look out from the lakes to see an unblemished tree line.” I point out that they are playing catch-up: The property has already been sold to developers. Four different developers, he reminds me. One by one they were convinced to become a part of the effort to preserve the upper reaches of the Ashley River. In exchange for substantial tax write-offs — the write-offs possible because Middleton Place is a National Historic Landmark — they will screen their houses behind a line of trees. In addition, nearby, the Middleton family just put several thousand acres under easement. And now for lunch. I order the gumbo and the Huguenot torte for dessert. Great meal. Duell has a salad. He had a cancer scare last year and he’s watching his diet. He speaks of his grandparents, who came to live at Middleton Place in the 1920s. “There were no paved roads,” Duell says. “They actually had to ford Church Creek. No electricity, no telephone, not even mail service. The house was a mess. They made it livable. The garden had been neglected for fifty years. My grandmother talked about getting down on her hands and knees and feeling for bricks to find the paths.” Charles Duell arrived in the late sixties. He hadn’t expected to spend his life shepherding Middleton Place. He’d planned to spend it working in New York City. Now at Middleton they have some new farm animals in the stable yard. Duell explains that one of the early Middletons brought water buffalo back from Istanbul to work the rice fields. The Union army ate some and the remainder were sent to the Bronx Zoo, where they were labeled General Sherman’s water buffalo. The American Water Buffalo Association has just given Middleton Place a couple of replacements and they’re being trained to the yoke. “Reverse reparations,” I suggest. “Exactly,” he says. I ask what else is new at Middleton. They’ve restored a cabin that was once slave quarters, and they had a tremendous reunion that included both white and black descendants. The roles that slaves played at Middleton Place — in the rice fields, the house, the grounds — have been carefully recorded. Their blood, sweat, and tears are documented on the cabin wall by way of a list of names of all the slaves that have ever been connected to this place. I ask, is it possible to separate a reverence for our landed past from the values that such a world was built on? “Stewardship,” Duell answers. “We’re mortals. We live three score and ten. I’ll be seventy next year, which puts me on the biblical edge. I’d like to beat that. Maybe the land’s not immortal, but Middleton Place was settled by my family in the 1690s. You don’t want your watch to fail. I love this place.” For reservations and information, visit middletonplace.org. |
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