ABSTRACT
Edwin arrived in Charleston in early December, and we immediately started renovating the large room beyond the bookshop’s single room and rectangular hall. We would have a bed-sitting room, small kitchen, and bath there. Then we began painting, Edwin repaired the floor in the bathroom, and we built bookshelves in the room where my great aunts had had a private school for over thirty years. Two of the desks used by their students would be bins for inexpensive books on the College Street sidewalk in the front of the shop. There was a very attractive, midnineteenth-century mantel and fireplace with two brown wicker chairs with yellow and wine cushions for browsers, a small Indian rug in front of the hearth, and my old brown imitation leather chest by one of the windows near the wine cellar. Edwin soon had the garden in good shape, and there were comfortable chairs on the patio, beneath an upstairs porch. Camellias and azaleas were planted as well as a dogwood tree, and the wisteria that climbed up to the third floor of the house was carefully manicured.
