Walking through bronze oak-leaf confetti, up six broad steps and standing before the towering white door of White Oaks, one gets the distinct feeling that a surprise awaits just beyond the threshold. Built in 1957 by the well-known Greenville power couple Charles E. and Homozel Mickel Daniel, this home has become their enduring legacy. At nearly ten thousand square feet, calling it a mansion is no exaggeration. A red brick façade pulses like a beacon in the warm fall sunlight; its perfectly trimmed boxwoods stand in sleek formation like a puzzle. To one side, a guesthouse borders a pool and a rose garden. On the other, two greenhouses stand near a large cutting garden, nearly empty for winter.
Waiting at the door, I have the sneaking suspicion that I might be underdressed, and perhaps a bit unprepared. Chances are that my sensible shoes and light wool coat will seem somewhat Plain Jane while admiring the museum-quality collection of Georgian antiques and oil paintings just inside White Oaks, where David Shi, president of Furman University, and his wife, Susan Thomson Shi, have lived since David became president in 1994. But, then, house manager Barbara Kamieniecki pushes open the kitchen door and settles me into a damask-covered chair in the living room as she swings open window shutters and hurries off to find Susan.
The mantel clock in the living room ticks to match the subtle tocks of the foyer’s George III mahogany clock, and long-forgotten passages from Pride and Prejudice creep into my thoughts. Surely, Jane Austen would be at home here, I think. A marble-ringed fireplace anchors the living room. A George II, mid-1700s mahogany bureau and bookcase topped with a bust of William Shakespeare stands next to the garden door. Deep red crepe myrtles fill the view out of towering windows. An oil painting of an ivory-skinned, blue-eyed beauty hangs above the fireplace. She purses her lips as I wander the room.
Later, I learn from the university collections manager that the painting is Portrait of Lady Impey, a 1788 oil-on-canvas by Thomas Gainsborough, a legendary English painter famous for his portraits, among other works. She is just the beginning of the covetable antiques Mrs. Daniel (a formal title still used by many who knew or knew of her) collected for the home while she was alive. The dark-paneled study and the blue damask-lined walls of the library to the intricate moldings in the dining room to the upstairs “Red Bedroom,” thought to be where President Richard Nixon stayed when he visited, are gasp-inducing and still the way Mrs. Daniel left them when she died in 1992 and bequeathed the home to the university to be used as the president’s residence.
“My philosophy has been one of preservation,” Susan says, as she and David balance their roles as the ten-acre estate’s caring curators as well as its everyday residents. “Furman inherited just such a lovely, totally intact home that included all of Mrs. Daniel’s art, porcelain, Persian carpets, and Steinway piano. Nothing needs to be changed. It just needs to be taken care of and preserved.” It can be a mammoth job, and Susan recently asked Furman’s Decorative and Fine Arts Committee for help. “I have a group now that helps me assess what needs attention,” she says.
At first, I wonder what Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet would think about living here, but as Susan and I tour the home, it’s the Shis’ story that intrigues. David and Susan, both Furman alumni, moved back to Greenville with their two then-teenage children, Jason and Jessica, when David became the vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at the university in 1993. The family built a home just a half-mile from White Oaks, but centuries apart in style: an informal one-floor home with a large stone fireplace, a wood stove insert, a wraparound front porch, and lots of windows. “It never dawned on us that we would ever live in this house,” Susan offers, chuckling.
In fact, David adds, the first time the couple entered White Oaks was when he returned for his new position. “It was like a scene from ‘The Great Gatsby’,” he says. “The grounds were immaculate, and the Williamsburg-brick mansion and outbuildings majestic. We felt like we were on the set of a Hollywood movie.”
When they moved in, just one year after returning to Greenville, both say it took some adjustment to living at White Oaks, a home designed for the Daniels by Philip Trammell Shutze and modeled on the restored Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia. They were anxious about the teenagers breaking something. “It was very difficult for our children in the beginning,” Susan says.
But those years also led to some comedy-rich stories Austen would have approved of. Both Susan and David say one of their favorite memories was when Jason and a friend came home from school only to find themselves locked out of White Oaks. “He had no key, so he systematically went around the house until he found an open window,” David says. He found one open and crawled in, but a neighbor was watching and, not recognizing Jason, called the police.
They also tell a story of trying to find a way to eat together. The spectacular formal dining room—which holds a pair of 1810 Derby porcelain vases with griffin-shaped handles and a Dorothy Doughty American Birds collection—has only one electric light, the George II cut-glass Waterford chandelier from the eighteenth century. “That was a big adjustment for us, especially for me,” says David, who had just written a book called “The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture.”
The chandelier’s marble-sized light bulbs are dim, so they began eating around a small card table erected in the kitchen. Condiments—ketchup, butter, and the like—found space on the floor. “If someone needed something, you’d pick it up and pass it around,” Susan says. One evening the phone rang, and as Susan talked, David and the children finished eating and left the room. “A few minutes later, we heard Susan give a loud shriek,” David says. Susan had found the family’s golden retriever, Dena, had eaten an entire tub of butter.
After a year and a half of trying to live in, but not damage, White Oaks, the family realized they needed to create more of their own space. With the university’s approval, they finished converting the three-car garage into living space and made the Daniels’ former bedrooms their private quarters.
Still, much of the home is “public,” though guests are welcomed by invitation only. Many Furman events are held here, such as the annual Easter egg hunt and tours for freshmen, including the chance to see items such as the hand-carved foyer staircase and the home’s only American antique, a Queen Anne walnut wing chair from the 1700s that is covered in rose-colored, heavily embroidered upholstery. Community organizations such as the United Way, YWCA, Alliance for Quality Education, and the Greenville Community Foundation periodically use the home for meetings. Sun-seeking Furman students often visit the pool, and select students are invited to live at the guesthouse, known as The Acorn.
At the end of my tour, Susan and I climb the corkscrew wooden staircase to the roof’s light-soaked cupola. Once outside, we admire the home’s symmetry, the expansive formal gardens, and the soaring views of Paris Mountain. It’s clear that Jane Austen isn’t who Furman University or the Shis are worried about—it’s Mrs. Daniel, who, even sixteen years after her death, remains the absent, yet always considered, overseer of White Oaks. After her death, she wanted White Oaks to be beloved by Furman and be the home of its president. It will, David says, remain so in perpetuity. “It’s been an incredible opportunity to live here and come to love its beauty and uniqueness,” Susan adds. “We hope she would like what we’ve done.”
|
