25
and then maybe nobody could yank me away.
It was in this house that my innate knowledge of large
parties in Africa came to life. The Beaufort house had a
Halloween look and vibe – an exorcist removed remain-
ing Civil War spirits haunting the interior – twice. The
exterior walls, constructed of broken oyster shells, made
for the ideal Halloween setting. A decade before such
parties became popular, 100 people attended our first
Halloween party. Consulting the
Farmer’s Almanac
and
the full moon schedule to set the date, the weather always
cooperated. Guests filled the house, ballroom, and gardens
in perfect outdoor temperatures
and by the light of full moons.
But, in the sixth year, my party
luck failed. After a long sunny
day predicted by the
Farmer’s
Almanac
, the skies opened up
30 minutes before the party
start time so that 300 drenched,
costumed guests squeezed inside
the house along with bartenders,
servers, and the band. That night,
the house came alive like our
African parties always did. The
overcrowded Halloween party
was a sensation. In Africa, I saw
party guests of every nationality,
profession, and age get to know
each other quickly when squished
together, creating lifelong con-
nections masterminded by the
host. This knowledge was my
African heritage.
The Beaufort house became a
kind of hospital once again during
our occupation. When our eldest
son, Pete ’97, had spinal cancer
twice, the house was my refuge.
No matter how odd the compari-
son sounds, I believed that if the
house could survive centuries of adversity thrown in
its path, Pete would survive his cancer. A few years later,
my two younger sons became U.S. Marine officers and
were both deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. During this
personal siege, we had left Beaufort and moved into a
1780 house in Charleston. Again, a house was my hide-
out. With two sons in the war, I stayed home to avoid
people, questions, hearing news I didn’t want to hear,
answering questions I didn’t want to confront. Pete
survived cancer and my Marine sons returned safely
from war. I turned my houses into what I needed when
tidal waves hit and knocked me to my knees.
My family’s financial situation became precarious
twice in my life, and both times my first thought was
not how to get a job outside my house, but how to make
my house work for me and start generating dollars. I
looked at my home as the solution. Since my expertise
was managing a household and feeding a family, I turned
one of my home kitchens into a bakery. While illegal in
South Carolina, it was necessary for me as I had four
young children at home. In 1994, the author Pat Conroy
came to dinner (by now I was in a different house) and
because he arrived early, I taught him how to make pasta
from scratch, something I learned when I was seven and
watching Hassan, our cook in Mogadishu, while he rolled
out handmade pasta dough each morning, something he
learned from an Italian ambassador’s wife. The evening
after the dinner, Pat asked me to
write a cookbook with him, and
we ultimately used my home – my
kitchen and dining room – as our
test kitchen and writing center.
The Pat Conroy Cookbook
was
published a few years later.
More recently, my Rainbow
Row townhouse in Charleston,
S.C., has become the home base
for Charleston Academy of Do-
mestic Pursuits, a delightful tiny
academy that teaches the most
important lesson in the world:
How to live at home. Students
may go to St. Paul’s for academ-
ics, but when they need to know
how to build a beautiful life, they
send their application to the
Charleston Academy, c/o the
Deans (Lee Manigault and me).
We are both authorities in man-
aging a household because we
have both spent our lives doing
just that. The good news for our
followers is that we have put forth
the most important information in
our book,
The Charleston Academy
of Domestic Pursuits, A Handbook
of Etiquette with Recipes
. Even if you live in Ouaga-
dougou, Upper Volta, and cannot attend the Academy
classes in person, our book will show you how to build
a beautiful life no matter what type of house you live
in, and utilize the power of your home.
Your own house may pay you back in terms of get-
ting to know your friends or children’s friends better,
or by being the place where you host community
gatherings, or build a start-up from your dining room
table. There is a great power in knowing how to use
light and space to create a house that becomes more
than a museum to good taste or a place to store laun-
dry and eat takeout. A house is most people’s biggest
financial asset and the most must be wrung out of it.
Be sure you extract all the benefits that a house can
provide, no matter what you need at the time.
“Your own house
may pay you back
in terms of getting
to know your friends
or children’s friends
better, or by being
the place where
you host community
gatherings, or build
a start-up from your
dining room table.”
