Charles Duell works to secure the future

The steward of Middleton Place:
Charles Duell works to secure the future
Adam Parker | Dec 27 2014 2:00 pm
Middleton lineage
The Middleton family lineage
is impressive by any standard.
It began in North America with
Edward Middleton, who left
England for Barbados and then
settled in South Carolina in 1678.
Edward’s estate passed to his son,
Arthur, who had three sons. The
middle son, Henry, acquired the
Middleton Place property as part
of his dowry when he married
Mary Williams, the daughter of a
wealthy landowner.
Henry was a society man and
public figure (Speaker of the
Commons, Commissioner for
Indian Affairs, member of the
Governor’s council then leader
of the opposition to British rule,
South Carolina’s representative in
the First Continental Congress and
then its second president), so he
cared a lot about how his property
looked. He built the gardens and
added the flankers to the existing
house. He controlled more than
50,000 acres of land and at least
800 slaves.
His eldest son, Arthur, took over
in 1763 and settled down with
new wife Mary Izard in 1764.
Arthur, too, was a politician,
elected to succeed his father
in the Continental Congress
and designated a signer of the
Declaration of Independence.
He defended Charleston during
the Revolutionary War and was
imprisoned for a year by the
British in St. Augustine, Fla. He
died the first day of 1787 at 45 and
was buried at Middleton Place.
The Middleton Oak (at left) is said to have marked an Indian trail long before
Englishmen arrived in the area. Charles Duell has led the revitalization of
Middleton Place, whose settled history goes back more than 300 years. The
Middleton Oak (at left) is said to have marked an Indian trail long before
Englishmen arrived in the area. Charles Duell has led the revitalization of
Middleton Place, whose settled history goes back more than 300 years.
The symbols of a slow success are many, but the eight candlesticks beautifully made silver heirlooms - might best illustrate how the efforts of
Charles Duell have paid off.
The set was made by John Carter in 1771 and soon after took up residence
at Middleton Place. After the Civil War, the candlesticks were scattered,
along with many other objects, including furniture, paintings, documents.
The main house and the north flanker were burned to the ground by Union
troops, and the exterior walls collapsed in the terrible earthquake of 1886.
Only the structure that housed the servants remained intact enough to be
restored decades later. The candlesticks were long gone when Duell’s
grandparents settled into the house and began the slow work of reclaiming
the property.
In 1974, when Duell established Middleton Place Foundation, the
whereabouts of the candlesticks were unknown, and when the house
museum opened the next year, many heirlooms were on display, but the
His eldest son, Henry, inherited
the property.
The second Henry Middleton
served in the state legislature
and as governor, then went to
Washington as a member of
Congress. He was appointed
America’s Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary
to Russia, a post he held from
1820 to 1830. Henry enlarged
his grandfather’s gardens and
befriended the French botanist
Andre Michaux, who brought the
first camellias to Middleton Place.
Williams Middleton served in
Russia with his father, then gained
control of Middleton Place in
1846. He introduced azaleas to
the gardens and kept up the rice
cultivation. Williams and an older
brother signed South Carolina’s
Ordinance of Secession, breaking
with family tradition which tended
to favor loyalty to the Union. After
the ruin of war, Williams managed
to rebuild the south flanker,
today’s Middleton Place house.
His daughter, Elizabeth, inherited
the property in 1900, upon the
death of her mother, Susan
Pringle Smith. She passed it to
her cousin, J.J. Pringle Smith, a
young Charleston lawyer. In 1925,
Smith and his wife, Heningham,
moved in. Charles Duell has fond
memories of his grandparents,
whom he visited regularly as a
child.
The foundation
Middleton Place Foundation,
founded in 1974, has 17 active
trustees and six staff members.
Charles Duell in president
and CEO. Tracey Todd is vice
president and chief operating
officer.
The foundation oversees the
dining room table remained bare of those elegant fluted columns.
What transpired in the decades that followed was indicative of Duell’s
vision and his determination to preserve Middleton Place for posterity and
keep its history alive.
The foundation regularly organized family reunions. At these events (which
now include blacks with links to the plantation), Duell and his colleagues
would ask descendants of the Middleton brood (and its relations) to return
objects in their possession to the House Museum: a form of restitution
considered by official government moneymen as a tax-deductible gift.
Thus the first pair of candlesticks were restored, gifted by a family from
Green Spring Valley, Md. Later, another pair made its appearance, also
hailing from Maryland. The third pair was recovered from a Charleston
institution. And the fourth pair found its way back to Middleton Place just
last year, thanks to the generosity of a family from Mamaroneck, N.Y.
Today, Duell gazes at the meticulously set dining room table, with its
stunning silver epergne centerpiece laden with fake fruits, the fine china
and various accoutrements, and he marvels at how this grand project - the
protection of Middleton Place - he embraced more than 40 years ago has
achieved its own momentum and taken on a significance larger than he
could have known.
Keeping the candle lit
Duell himself exudes purpose and belonging. For most of his life, Duell
has been committed to this property, working to secure it and to make it
available to anyone interested in antebellum history.
Along the way, he has internalized every aspect of the place and speaks
comfortably about the flora, garden design, slave labor, rice culture, tourism
in the Lowcountry, the demands of historic preservation, the objects in the
collection, the family’s connections to England, Russia and Italy, and much
more.
He will tell any visitor willing to listen that the main house was built in
1705 and featured a ballroom on the second floor and bedrooms on the third
floor, that the gardens’ classical beginnings gave way to a little Romantic
influence, that the Sundial Gardens are populated with holly, sweet bay,
magnolia, quince, camellia japonica and more.
He’ll point out the new path through the small French formal garden and
explain how the wooded patch contrasts with the carefully sculpted and
manicured garden segments nearby. Every path, he’ll explain, was designed
to feature an open vista at its far end.
Inside the house, he likes to admire the four Benjamin West paintings (one
of which the foundation hopes to purchase soon) and remember the 20 or so
operation of both Middleton Place
and the Edmonston-Alston House
at 21 East Battery St.
The foundation generates about
$6 million in revenues a year,
the bulk of which comes from
its garden and food service
operations. It ended its 2014
fiscal year with a little more
than $400,000 in net income and
combined reserve and endowment
funds of $5 million.
Though its finances are stable,
the foundation continues to face
opportunities and challenges,
including the expansion of
education programming,
organization of special events,
garden maintenance and efforts to
secure and grow its collection of
objects and heirlooms.
paintings stolen after the war. He delights in the collection of porcelain and
furniture and, of course, those candlesticks. He never forgets who precisely
acquired these heirlooms and how they were likely used. He never fails to
discern the personality within the object.
“The trend in interpreting history via house museums is to talk less about the
objects and focus on the people,” he says.
This is how he keeps the candle lit. For Duell, Middleton Place has been,
and continues to be, a locus of discovery and rediscovery.
“I think Charlie has had a very clear and almost relentless vision of what
the foundation and Middleton gardens could do and contribute to a greater
community,” says Nella Barkley, a longtime friend of Duell’s, career
consultant and advocate for the arts. “The lovely thing is, as knowledgeable
as he is about the 18th and 19th centuries, and Middleton Place’s history,
he never got stuck there and sees it as such a center for education and
understanding and building people’s skills based on history. I think that he
has done a remarkable job with this, and the task before him is to create a
way for his legacy to be sustained in a sufficiently ambitious way.”
Coming of age
Duell was born on June 10, 1938, in New York City.
His father Charles Halliwell Duell helped start Duell,
Sloan and Pierce, a small, prestigious book publishing
company that worked with Archibald MacLeish, Anais
Nin, Wallace Stegner, E.E. Cummings, Benjamin Spock
and others.
Arthur and Mary Izard Middleton bought these
eight silver candlesticks during a long trip to
Europe, 1768-71. The candlesticks were scattered
after the Civil War. Charles Duell tells of the
circuitous, unlikely trip each pair made back
to Middleton Place, now a National Historic
Landmark.
At Christmas and in the spring, young Charles came
to Middleton Place to visit his grandparents, who had
moved to the old plantation in 1925 and spent winters
there (during the summer they occupied 21 East Battery,
also called the Edmondston-Alston House).
Middleton Place had been neglected since the Civil War;
Pringle and Heningham Smith worked hard to reclaim it
from the gathered years and encroaching nature, Duell
says. “They were pioneers in landscape restoration,” he
says.
His grandmother would spend hours on her hands and
knees searching for the brick remnants that indicated the property’s pathways. The couple took a machete to the
gardens. They paid Depression-era laborers $1 a day to help put things in order.
People in the silk stockings trade, traveling from New York to Florida, would stop to visit the grounds, paying $1
for entry. It was the beginning of Middleton’s transformation from a private landscape to a public heritage site.
Duell’s early impressions were of smells - pluff mud, flowers in spring. When he was 5 years old he was asked
upon arrival to open the entrance gate by lifting the lever-latch, a task he
considered a great thrill and privilege, he says.
He remembers how Pringle Smith would smoke his pipe before the fire
and listen to the radio while Heningham Ellett Smith sat across from him
writing polite answers to guests who had signed the visitors’ book.
“Many evenings she would spend writing visitors thank yous,” he says. And
during the day, she was never without a pair of clippers, “pruning things
that weren’t right, ordering the gardeners around.”
Pringle Smith would take money from a safe in his office (today’s dining
room), engage the day laborers in conversation, then pay them their small
share, counting out the money like a banker.
Charles Duell of Middleton
Place.
When he was 9, his parents divorced and Duell came to Charleston with his
mother, Josephine Scott Smith. He attended Porter Military Academy, but
that didn’t last long. A Colorado uncle convinced him to forego a summer
camp in Maine and experience life on the ranch instead.
Duell overcame a fear of horses during five formative
years out West. He learned the wide ways of the
rancher. He learned the value of hard work. By the end
of that first summer, Duell was feeling pretty good. “I
thought I was the greatest young cowboy that the state
of Colorado had ever confronted,” he says.
Using a foot-powered potter’s wheel, Jeff Neale
crafts a jar as Duell (center) and visitors from Texas
and North Carolina walk through the Middleton
Place stableyards.
Upon his return to the East Coast, he entered 8th grade
at the Riverside School in Connecticut, eventually
going on to study at the Phillips Academy in Andover
(where he excelled in math) and then at Yale (where
he excelled in English and history). He made lasting
friends, including Charles Hall Page, who became an
architect and, years later, served with Duell on the
board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“He’s the most delightful man I know,” Page says of
Duell.
Soon, Duell was on a career path. He flirted with
the Foreign Service, married his first wife Carol,
contemplated working on the Hill, then landed a job
at a New York bank. The couple had four children,
Josephine, June, Holland and Caroline.
New responsibility
Stalks of Carolina Gold rice are cut by hand in 2009
the old-fashioned way: with a scythe.
Then came the fork in the road. His mother was to
inherit Middleton Place, but she died of larynx cancer
when Duell was 16, a blow from which he would never
fully recover. Even today, Duell marks her birthday and
chokes up at her memory.
His banking career in New York was showing promise,
but destiny intervened. In 1965, Duell had provided
his grandfather with financial advice that helped the
older man - a “life tenant” of Middleton Place but not
technically its owner - to secure the property. Four
years later, Pringle Smith died and the property, both
the plantation and the house downtown, went to Duell.
Eliza’s House at Middleton Place was built by
former slaves after the Civil War.
He was ready for it. He and Carol had decided they’d
rather not raise children in New York City. And Duell’s
interests in history, finance, horses (he became an avid
fox hunter) and family combined to provide him with
the necessary devotion and acumen.
Two things smoothed the way. The life tenancy
arrangement and generation-skipping inheritance came
estate tax-free. All estate taxes had been paid in 1924.
And a $500,000 bank loan enabled Duell to begin
the process of transforming Middleton Place into a
foundation-controlled one that would result in drastic
improvements, stable finances and a cornerstone spot in
the Lowcountry’s heritage tourism trade.
Tracey Todd, vice president and chief operating
officer, explains how the barn and other buildings
on the property were designed by Bancel LaForge.
LaFarge, son of a famous painter, was a New York
architect who became the chief of the Monuments
Men, a group of artists and scholars turned Army
officers who entered the arena of World War II in
order to save the cultural legacy of Western Europe
from the Nazis.
It was around this time in 1968 when Duell first
met Dick Jenrette. Jenrette’s banking firm had been
managing some of Duell’s money, and mutual friend
Charles (Pug) Ravenel, who worked with Jenrette,
suggested a trip to Charleston to see clients.
That trip prompted Jenrette to buy the Roper House
(where he still lives) and, in partnership with Duell
and Ravenel, the Mills House Hotel, which would
become Charleston’s first luxury hotel after extensive
renovations.
Duell’s efforts to protect 21 East Battery and Middleton
Place is nothing short of heroic, Jenrette says.
“I think Charlie is a great figure in preservation,” he
says, referring to Duell’s fights with developers and
efforts to secure conservation easements not only
for Middleton Place but for the marshland across the
Ashley River from the old plantation. “He’s really an
inspiring figure when you look at it.”
Tracey Todd, the foundation’s chief operating officer,
says Duell is equally concerned about the way history is
presented.
“He’s very interested in the theater aspect of programming,” Todd says. “You have to be able to get in that same
mindset and work with him on the details. You’ve got to go the extra mile to get the product, whether it’s the
program or exhibit or piece of written material, to be the absolute best it can be.”
Bearer of history
Now Duell is stepping back a little, slowing down, contemplating the future, all that still needs to be done, how
to ensure that the foundation he started 40 years ago can last in perpetuity, how Middleton Place can thrive and
thrill.
“One of the things that was so impressive to me was what he did as a young man, inheriting this property,
making sure it was sustainable, and not to his financial benefit,” says June Bradham, another friend and a
nonprofit consultant. “Not everyone would have made that decision.”
No. He could have sold it. He could have donated it to the National Trust or Park Service. He could have
divided his 7,000 acres into disparate parts. He could have developed on the land and made lots of money.
But none of that was in the cards.
He is happily married to Sallie Duell, a friend from his youth whose path he crisscrossed over the years until,
both divorced, they got together in 2006. They live on the third floor of the Edmondston-Alston House, in a
self-contained apartment above two floors open to tourists.
Bradham says it’s a fruitful partnership. “Charlie is really the history and bearer of the family flag and historic
interpretation,” she says. “Sallie has a lot of strategic ideas about funding and building relationships that can
help Middleton Place Foundation along the way.” (Sallie Duell serves on the foundation board.)
At Middleton Place, Duell walks through the gardens admiring the careful symmetry and long vistas. He speaks
of past and future interchangeably, of what his ancestors accomplished and what the foundation must still do.
“What’s important about this place is its history,” he says. “The whole story of Colonial South Carolina is
embedded right here. History is important, and history doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the world.”
Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902. Follow him at www.facebook.com/aparkerwriter.