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25 Oo Philanthropy and Ecology As the years passed and development increased in Horry and Georgetown counties, Belle was alarmed by the destruction of natural habitat and the diminishing wildlife. The wild turkeys were seldom seen anymore and the number of ducks dwindled each year. Awareness grew within her that the land and creatures she had taken for granted since childhood would not necessarily always be there. Until she became active in the management of the property, it had not occurred to her that the land had to be replenished and nourished if it was to continue to give its bounty. Habitat had to be maintained for the birds and animals and varieties of vegetation planted to feed the deer, ducks, and other wildlife. A major problem was the proliferation of feral hogs, domestic animals gone wild. The woods and rice fields were full of them. They would root up the young pine seedlings, raid the eggs of those birds that nested on the ground, and generally destroy the vegetation in parts of the woods. Taylor trapped them year ’round, often catching as many as ten to fifteen in a single trap. Belle hunted them almost daily, usually from late afternoon until sundown. James Bessinger Jr., only a boy of eight or nine at the time, recalls seeing Belle out in her jeep hunting. “Nolan Taylor, Ms. Baruch, and a black fella named Chappie [Chappel Green] came over to ride on the beach [DeBordieu]. They had a four-wheel drive jeep with kind of a wooden back at the rear. The jeep had a headlight on each fender. If you sat on a pillow on the light, the light would hold you on the jeep. Chappie would drive and Taylor and Belle would each sit on a headlight, riding up and down the roads, shooting pigs.” Baroness of Hobcaw 154 “She always had a hat on,” Bessinger recalled. “She reminded me of a man to be quite honest with you. I remember her as just an outspoken person. She didn’t mind a minute tellin’ you what she thought. The way I feel now that I’ve grown some, it was either her way or no way. The kids all knew who she was. She’d always come by the school and blow the horn, waving at the children.”1 Few people in Georgetown knew her well. She would attend church, go to a movie, or dine in a restaurant, but she was content to live quietly on the plantation and seldom socialized. Debby Baruch Adams, a distant cousin of Belle and a friend of Aileen Donaldson, said, “In the twenty years I knew Belle, I never saw her in a dress but one time—at a ceremony in Camden honoring her father. She made a great impression on people, had quite an air of command about her. She was the kind of person that when she came into a room people would say, ‘Who is that?’ Our mutual friendship with Aileen was my only contact with Belle, but I found she had a great sense of humor and was very kind.” Belle always preferred pants and usually wore jodhpurs, riding boots, tweed hacking jacket, and a black beret. Occasionally a wide-brimmed hat that offered more protection from the weather replaced the French beret. When fishing she favored a man’s green brimmed hat festooned with fishing lures. In the hot summers she wore beautifully tailored slacks with a shirt outside the waistband. Pants were eminently more suited to riding, hunting, and exploring the woods. They offered protection from the ubiquitous ticks and mosquitoes, just as riding boots were practical in the saddle and thick, high-topped rubber hunting boots were ideal for wading through mud, snake-infested swamps, and vegetation. Belle was sophisticated and “dressed to the nines” in New York and Europe but saw no reason to bother with formality at home at Bellefield. Designer dresses and furs would be ridiculous in the Hobcaw woods. It was well known among the Hobcaw residents that Bernard Baruch hated pants on women except when riding or hunting and had been known to append a postscript to his invitations for Belle to dine that read “Please wear a skirt.” Belle would snort and grumble to Nolan Taylor: “Pa expects me to come and host those people and I haven’t got a damn thing in common with them. I’d rather go shoot coons and hogs with you.” Then...

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