"A charming picture of Southern life both in Charleston and in the country before and after the Civil War." - Library Occurrent, 1923
"Pringle writes with great spirit." -Springfield Republican, 1923
"Poignantly revealing, the courage and endurance underlying the pleasure loving characteristics of the delicately bred women of the South under stress of conditions spared us of the North stand most fully confessed." -Booklist, 1923
In her 1922 book "Chronicles of Chicora Wood," Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle (1845-1921) writes recollections of the old South and of plantation life in South Carolina both before and after the Civil War.
Her father, who owned a number of plantations and many slaves, was a scientific rice planter whose plantations were models of organization and management. Both her father and her mother were among those who felt the responsibility of owning human beings and who devoted themselves to their training and well-being.
The chronicles tell of the author's mother coming as a young woman to her husband's plantations, which were so big that neighbors were few and far away, and of the wisdom and self control she had to learn in her dealings with her slaves.
The life of the luxurious days before the war is clearly shown, the privations and suffering of war time which for these people included the experience of Sherman's raid, and the difficulties of readjustment.
In describing the moment Sherman's raiders raided the family's plantation, she writes:
"One day mamma had just helped us all to a delicious piece of turkey when Phibby rushed in, crying: 'Miss, dey cumin!' Bruno, Jane's little water-spaniel, began to bark, and she rushed out to the wide roofless porch where he was, threw her arms round his neck and held his throat so tight he couldn't bark, just as a soldier was about to strike him with a sword. 'Whiskey! We want liquor! Don't lie; we know you have it! We want whiskey! We want firearms!'"
"Whenever they asked me anything I answered with some quick, sharp speech which would intensely amuse any one but the questioner, who generally relapsed into sulky silence.... At last the noises on the highway ceased, and we knew Sherman's great army had passed on toward the North. We began to breathe freely and feel that we could go to bed at night and sleep."
The book offers an intimate look at the fortunes of a wellborn Southern family before, during, and after the Civil War in which plantations and slaves figure heavily, but also with frequent references to life in Charleston, both before and after the war.
