Phalanxes of maids and grocery delivery boys came and went but Gaston would have gotten just as much use out of a hotel room out on I-85. No, his real headquarters was the Charlottetowne Country Club. The Nineteenth Hole was his royal court, where the cream of Charlotte society passed through after rounds of golf, some lingering, some pointing him out to out-of-town guests, hoping to hear Gaston Jarvis—“our local writer and wit!”—say something evil, gossip savagely, hold forth. (Gaston briefly entertained a campaign to get the prettifying e off the end of “Charlottetowne,” but that was a battle as doomed as the Southern cause itself…)
Charlottetowne’s main building, wherein resided the Nineteenth Hole, was known as the “Big House” and many of the club’s devotees earnestly reported to visitors that it was antebellum. Which was nonsense. In slave times, who would have need of a country club? Every white man’s home was a country club. Set back from the modern pool and tennis and golfing facilities, gyms and clubhouses, spas and steam rooms, stood the four-story, blindingly white, symmetrically square plantation house, eight thick columns on each side, enclosing a wide verandah on the first story and a balconied porch on the second, all mounted by a cupola and a widow’s walk. It could be a movie set. There had been numerous approaches from production companies, petitioning to use the house as a pre–Civil War setting, a ready-made Tara, with its ground-floor ballroom that spilled through twelve-foot French doorways to the verandah, its sweeping marble staircases to private function rooms in the second story, its gilded bedchambers on the third floor for overnight stays (to be rented by equity-holding, first-family members for their out-of-town guests during high-society weddings).
It was an ingenious fraud, built in the 1920s to appear much older in that time of Klan-besotted neo-chivalry and high romanticism about Civil War glories. Still, it was a grand place, a worthy second home, Gaston Jarvis often thought, enclosed with tall pines and ancient oaks, ringed by an array of azaleas—flame, orange, magenta, white—at its base, with young magnolias tactically beckoning at the right angles of the Big House, wafting the evening air with sweetness … as he stumbled nightly to the parking lot where scrupulous bartenders, withholding his keys, had rung for a taxi or for “Miz Norma” to come pick him up and drive him back home.
Gaston heartily endorsed the club’s snobbery. Charlottetowne Country Club was the city’s most exclusive, discriminating, judgmental, double- and triple-screened enclave. The club you had to be born into. Only a member could get you in (and then only for a non-equity, “residential” membership, precarious, liable to be snatched away for any infraction), and these all-powerful trustees had to be of the first families of Charlotte, some wealthy before the Civil War, most wealthy as a result of the War, many wealthy in the ruined South’s aftermath, when Charlotte’s elite cashed in royally on the last intact supplies of cotton.
Gaston could not have dreamed, ordinarily, of gaining admittance to such a patriciate bastion, but his college roommate and brother-in-law, Duke Johnston, vouched for him. The trustees were worried: mightn’t he be a writer who could one day embarrass the club with a racy or a too liberal book? But Duke stood his ground. Now that Gaston was a millionaire and their one-man Algonquin Roundtable, the trustees were delighted with their earlier gamble. Indeed, club members were likely to think that he was an equity, come to them from an ancient Charlotte family; people would be surprised to learn that he was merely a resident member. Gaston was a fearful snob. Every time certain elements in the club contemplated a loosening of the membership requirements or thought how nice it would be to host a PGA or LPGA event—which would bring unwonted
Charlottetowne’s main building, wherein resided the Nineteenth Hole, was known as the “Big House” and many of the club’s devotees earnestly reported to visitors that it was antebellum. Which was nonsense. In slave times, who would have need of a country club? Every white man’s home was a country club. Set back from the modern pool and tennis and golfing facilities, gyms and clubhouses, spas and steam rooms, stood the four-story, blindingly white, symmetrically square plantation house, eight thick columns on each side, enclosing a wide verandah on the first story and a balconied porch on the second, all mounted by a cupola and a widow’s walk. It could be a movie set. There had been numerous approaches from production companies, petitioning to use the house as a pre–Civil War setting, a ready-made Tara, with its ground-floor ballroom that spilled through twelve-foot French doorways to the verandah, its sweeping marble staircases to private function rooms in the second story, its gilded bedchambers on the third floor for overnight stays (to be rented by equity-holding, first-family members for their out-of-town guests during high-society weddings).
It was an ingenious fraud, built in the 1920s to appear much older in that time of Klan-besotted neo-chivalry and high romanticism about Civil War glories. Still, it was a grand place, a worthy second home, Gaston Jarvis often thought, enclosed with tall pines and ancient oaks, ringed by an array of azaleas—flame, orange, magenta, white—at its base, with young magnolias tactically beckoning at the right angles of the Big House, wafting the evening air with sweetness … as he stumbled nightly to the parking lot where scrupulous bartenders, withholding his keys, had rung for a taxi or for “Miz Norma” to come pick him up and drive him back home.
Gaston heartily endorsed the club’s snobbery. Charlottetowne Country Club was the city’s most exclusive, discriminating, judgmental, double- and triple-screened enclave. The club you had to be born into. Only a member could get you in (and then only for a non-equity, “residential” membership, precarious, liable to be snatched away for any infraction), and these all-powerful trustees had to be of the first families of Charlotte, some wealthy before the Civil War, most wealthy as a result of the War, many wealthy in the ruined South’s aftermath, when Charlotte’s elite cashed in royally on the last intact supplies of cotton.
Gaston could not have dreamed, ordinarily, of gaining admittance to such a patriciate bastion, but his college roommate and brother-in-law, Duke Johnston, vouched for him. The trustees were worried: mightn’t he be a writer who could one day embarrass the club with a racy or a too liberal book? But Duke stood his ground. Now that Gaston was a millionaire and their one-man Algonquin Roundtable, the trustees were delighted with their earlier gamble. Indeed, club members were likely to think that he was an equity, come to them from an ancient Charlotte family; people would be surprised to learn that he was merely a resident member. Gaston was a fearful snob. Every time certain elements in the club contemplated a loosening of the membership requirements or thought how nice it would be to host a PGA or LPGA event—which would bring unwonted
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