Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899

[235] distant cousin of his own. Mrs. Hampton talked much of Thackeray, who had been, while in this country, a familiar visitor at her father's house. She told me that she recognized bits of her own conversation in some of the sayings of Ethel Newcome, and I have little doubt that in depicting the beautiful and noble though wayward girl he had in mind something of the aspect and character of the lovely Sally Baxter. In his correspondence with the family he was sometimes very playful, as when he wrote to Mrs. Baxter thanking her for the ‘wickled palnuts and pandy breaches,’ which she had lately sent him.

When we left Havana our new friends went with us to Charleston, and invited us to visit them at their home in Columbia, S. C. This we were glad to do. The house at which the Hamptons received us belonged to an elder brother, Wade Hampton, whose family were at this time traveling in Europe. Wade Hampton called upon Dr. Howe, and soon introduced a topic which we would gladly have avoided, namely, the strained relations between the North and the South. ‘We mean to fight for it,’ said Wade Hampton. But Dr. Howe afterwards said to me: ‘They cannot be in earnest about meaning to fight. It would be too insane, too fatal to their own interests.’ So indeed it proved, but they then knew us as little as we knew them. They