American Adventures Part 55

Then: "Third and last shirt," and after completing his argument sat down. The delighted jury gave him the verdict, but his witticism involved him in a duel with the worsted advocate. The result of this duel Professor Matthews does not tell, but if the wag's _colichemarde_ was as swift and penetrating as his wit, we may surmise that his opponent of the Code Napoleon and the code duello had a fourth shirt spoiled.

CHAPTER LVIII

FROM ANTIQUES TO PIRATES

The numerous antique shops of the French quarter, with their gray, undulating floors and their piled-up, dusty litter of old furniture, plate, gla.s.s, and china, and the equally numerous old book stores, with their piles of French publications, their shadowy corners, their pleasant ancient bindings and their stale smell, are peculiarly reminiscent of similar establishments in Paris.

That Eugene Field knew these shops well we have reason to know by at least two of his poems. In one, "The Discreet Collector," he tells us that:

Down south there is a curio shop Unknown to many men; Thereat do I intend to stop When I am South again; The narrow street through which to go-- Aha! I know it well!

And maybe you would like to know-- But no--I will not tell!

But later, when filled with remorse over his extravagance in "blowing twenty dollars in by nine o'clock A.M.," he reveals the location of his favorite establishment, saying:

In Royal Street (near Conti) there's a lovely curio shop, And there, one balmy fateful morn, it was my chance to stop--

So that, at least, is the neighborhood in which he learned that:

The curio collector is so blindly lost in sin That he doesn't spend his money--he simply blows it in!

In his verses called "Doctor Sam," Field touched on another fascinating side of Creole negro life: the mysterious beliefs and rites of voodooism--or, as it is more often spelled, voudouism.

Until a few years ago it used to be possible for a visitor with a "pull"

in New Orleans to see some of the voudou performances and to have "a work made" for him, but the police have dealt so severely with those who believe in this barbarous nonsense, that it is practised in these times only with the utmost secrecy.

Voudouism was brought by the early slaves from the Congo, but in Louisiana the negroes--probably desiring to imitate the religion of their white masters--appropriated some of the Roman Catholic saints and made them subject to the Great Serpent, or _Grand Zombi_, who is the voudou G.o.d. These saints, however, are given voudou names, St. Michael, for example, being _Blanc Dani_, and St. Peter, _Papa Liba_. This situation is the ant.i.thesis of that to be found in Brittany, where Druidical beliefs, handed down for generations among the peasants, may now be faintly traced running like on odd alien threads through the strong fabric of Roman Catholicism.

Voudouism is not, however, to be dignified by the name "religion." It is superst.i.tion founded upon charms and hoodoos. It is witchcraft of the maddest kind, involving the most hideous performances. Moreover, it is said that a hoodoo is something of which a French negro is very much afraid, and that his fear is justifiable, for the reason that the throwing of a _w.a.n.ga_, or curse, may also involve the administering of subtle poisons made from herbs.

Legend is rich with stories of Marie Le Veau, the voudou queen, who lived long ago in New Orleans, and of love and death accomplished by means of voudou charms. Charms are brought about in various ways. Among these the burning of black candles, accompanied by certain performances, brings evil upon those against whom a "work" is made, while blue candles have to do with love charms. It may also be noted that "love powders"

can be purchased now-a-days in drug stores in New Orleans.

In the days of long ago the great negro gathering place used to be Congo Square--now Beauregard Square--and here, on Sunday nights, wild dances used to occur--the "bamboula" and "calinda"--and sinister spells were cast. Later the voudous went to more secluded spots on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Pontchartrain, and on St. John's Eve, which is their great occasion, many of the whites of the city used to go to the lake in hopes of discovering a voudou seance, and being allowed to see it. A friend of mine, who has seen several of these seances, says that they are unbelievably weird and horrible. They will make a gombo, put a snake in it, and then devour it, and they will wring a cat's neck and drink its blood. And of course, along with these loathsome ceremonies, go incantations, chants, dances, and frenzies, sometimes ending in catalepsis.

There are weird stories of white women of good family who have believed in voudou, and have taken part in the rites; and there are other tales of evil spells, such as that of the Creole bride of long ago, whose affianced had been the lover of a quadroon girl, a hairdresser. The hairdresser when she came to do the bride's hair for the wedding, gave her a bouquet of flowers. The bride smelled the bouquet--and died at the church door.

It was, I think, in an old book store on Royal Street--or else on Chartres--that I found the tattered guide book to which I referred in an earlier chapter. It was "edited and compiled by several leading writers of the New Orleans Press," and published in 1885, and it contains an introductory recommendation by George W. Cable--which is about the finest guarantee that a book on New Orleans can have.

Mr. Cable, of course, more than all the rest of the people who have written of New Orleans put together, placed the city definitely in literature. And it is interesting, if somewhat saddening, to recall that for lifting the city into the world of belles lettres, for adorning it and preserving it in such volumes as "Old Creole Days," "The Grandissimes," "Madame Delphine," and other valuable, truthful, and charming works, he was roundly abused by his own fellow-townsmen. Far from attacking Mr. Cable, New Orleans ought to build him a monument, and I am glad to say that, though the monument is not there yet, the city does seem to have come to its senses, and that the prophet is no longer without honor in his own country.

Some further leaves are added to the literary laurels of the city by what Thomas Bailey Aldrich has written of it, and the wreath is made the greater by the fact that in New Orleans was born "the only literary man in New York," Professor Brander Matthews.

Another distinguished name in letters, connected with the place, is that of Lafcadio Hearn, who was at one time a reporter on a New Orleans newspaper, and who not only wrote about the French quarter, but collected many proverbs of the Creoles in a book which he called "Gombo Zebes." In his little volume, "Chita," Hearn described the land of lakes, bayous, and _chenieres_, which forms a strip between the city and the Gulf, and which, with its wild birds, wild scenery, and wild storms, and its extraordinary population of hunters and fishermen--Cajuns, Italians, j.a.panese, Spanish, Kanakas, Filipinos, French, and half-breed Indians, all intermarrying--is the strangest, most outlandish section of this country I have ever visited. The Filipinos, who introduced shrimp fishing in this region, building villages on stilts, like those of their own islands, were not there when Hearn wrote "Chita," nor was Ludwig raising diamond-back terrapin on Grand Isle, but the live-oaks, draped with sad Spanish moss, lined the bayous as they do to-day, and the alligators, turtles and snakes were there, and the tall marsh gra.s.s, so like bamboo, fringed the banks as it does now, and water hyacinth carpeted the pools, and the savage tropical storms came sweeping in, now and then, from the Gulf, flooding the entire country, tearing everything up by the roots, then receding, carrying the floating debris back with them to the salt sea. One has to see what they call a "slight" storm, in that country, to know what a great storm there must be. Hearn surely saw storms there, for in "Chita" he describes with terrifying vividness that historic tempest which, in 1856, obliterated, at one stroke, Last Island, with its fashionable hotel and all the guests of that hotel. I have seen a "little" thunderstorm in Barataria Bay and I do not want to see a big one. I have seen brown men who, in the storm of 1915 (which did a million dollars' worth of damage in New Orleans), floated about the Baratarias for days, upon the roofs of houses, and I have seen little children, half Italian, half Filipino, who were saved by being carried by their parents into the branches of an old live-oak, where they waited until good Horace Harvey, "the little father of the Baratarias," came down there in his motor yacht, the _Destrehan_, rescued them, warmed them, fed them, and gave them back to life. I was told in New Orleans that there were ten seconds in that storm when the wind reached a velocity of 140 miles per hour at the mouth of the Mississippi, that it blew for four hours at the rate of 90 miles, and that the lowest barometrical reading ever recorded in the United States (28.11) was recorded in New Orleans during this hurricane.

Of the summer climate of New Orleans I know nothing at first hand, and judging from what people have told me, that is all I want to know. The winter climate suited me very well while I was there, although the boast that gra.s.s is green and roses bloom all the year round, does not imply such intense heat as some people may suppose. Furthermore, I believe that the thermometer has once or twice in the history of the city dropped low enough to kill any ordinary rose, for a friend of mine told me a story about some water pipes that froze and burst during an unprecedented cold snap which occurred some years ago. He said that an English colonel, whom he knew, was visiting the city at the time and that, finding himself unable to get water in his bathtub, he sent out for several cases of Apollinaris, and with true British phlegm proceeded to empty them into the tub and get in among the bubbles.

Still another figure having to do with literature, and also with the history of New Orleans, is Jean Lafitte, known as a pirate, whose life is said to have inspired Byron's poem, "The Corsair." There was a time, long ago, when Lafitte, together with his brother, his doughty lieutenant, Dominique You, and his rabble of Baratarians, caused New Orleans a great deal of annoyance, but like many other doubtful characters, they have, since their death, become entirely picturesque, and the very idea that Lafitte was not a first-cla.s.s blood-and-thunder pirate is as distasteful to the people of New Orleans to-day, as his being any kind of a near-pirate at all, used to be to their ancestors.

Nevertheless Frank R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates, says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith, and knew no more about sailing a ship or even the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about the proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him that he was never at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from France, and once when he left this country, and on neither occasion did he sail under the Jolly Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave up his blacksmith shop (in which he is said to have made some of the fine wrought iron balcony railings which still adorn the old town), and went to Barataria, became nothing more nor less than a "fence" for pirates and privateers, taking their booty, smuggling it up to New Orleans, and selling it there on commission.

But if the fact that he was not a gory-handed freebooter is against Lafitte, there is one great thing in his favor. When the British were making ready to attack New Orleans in 1814, they tried both to bribe and to browbeat Lafitte into joining forces with them. As the American government was planning, at this very time, a punitive expedition against him, it would perhaps have seemed good policy for the pseudo-pirate to have accepted the British offer, but what Lafitte did was to go up and report the matter at New Orleans, giving the city the first authentic information of the contemplated attack, and offering to join with his men in the defense, in exchange for amnesty.

A good many people, however, did not believe his story, and a good many others thought it beneath the dignity of the government to treat with a man of his dubious occupation. Therefore poor Lafitte was not listened to, but, upon the contrary, only succeeded in stirring up trouble for himself, for an expedition was immediately sent against him; his settlement at Barataria--on the gulf, about forty miles below the city--was demolished and the inhabitants driven to the woods and swamps.

But in spite of this discouraging experience, Lafitte would not join the British, and it came about that when the Battle of New Orleans was about to be fought, Andrew Jackson, who had a short time before referred to Lafitte and his men as a band of "h.e.l.lish banditti," was glad to accept their aid. Dominique You--with his fine pirate name--commanded a gun, and the others fought according to the best piratical tradition. After the battle was won, the Baratarians were pardoned by President Madison.

Incidentally it may be remarked here that the American line of defense on the plains of Chalmette, below the city, had been indicated some years before by the French General Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden, as the proper strategic position for safeguarding New Orleans on the south.

Even after he had been pardoned, Lafitte felt, not without some justice, that he had been ill-used by the Americans, and because of this he determined to leave the country. He set sail with a band of his followers for other climes, but what became of them is not known. Some think their ship went down in a storm which crossed the Gulf soon after their departure; others believe that they reached Yucatan, and that Lafitte died there. Whatever his fate, he did not improve it by departing from New Orleans, for had he not done so he would, at the end, have been given a handsome burial and a nice monument like that of Dominique You--which may be seen to this day in the old cemetery on Claiborne Avenue, between Iberville and St. Louis Streets.

Having disposed of literary men and pirates, we now come in logical sequence to composers and actors. Be it known, then, that E.H. Sothern first raised, in the house at 79 Bienville Street, the voice which has charmed us in the theater, and that Louis Gottschalk, composer of the almost too well-known "Last Hope," was also born in New Orleans.

The records of the opera and the theater might, in themselves, make a chapter. As early as 1791 a French theatrical company played in New Orleans, using halls, and in 1808 a theater was built in St. Philip Street. It is said that the first play given in the city in English was performed December 24, 1817, the play being "The Honey Moon," and the manager Noah M. Ludlow; but it was not until some years later that the English drama became a feature of the city's life, with the establishment of a stock company under the management of James H.

Caldwell. Edwin Forrest appeared, in 1824, with Mr. Caldwell's company at the Camp Street Theater, which he built on leaving the Orleans Theater. The former was, when opened, out in the swamp, and people had to walk to it from Ca.n.a.l Street on a narrow path of planks. It was the first building in the city to be lighted by gas.

The annals of the old St. Charles theater, called "old Drury," are rich with history. Practically all our great players from 1835 until long after the Civil War, appeared in this theater, and an old prompter's book which, I believe, is still in existence, records, among many other things, certain details of the appearance there, in 1852, of Junius Brutus Booth, father of Edwin Booth, and mentions also that Joseph Jefferson (Sr.) then a young man, was reprimanded for being noisy in his dressing-room.

New Orleans was, I believe, the first American city regularly to support grand opera and to give it a home. For a great many years before 1859 (in which year the present French Opera House on Bourbon Street was built) there was a regular annual season of opera at the Orleans Theater, long since destroyed.

In the days of the city's operatic grandeur great singers used to visit New Orleans before visiting New York, as witness, for example, the debut at the French Opera House of Adelina Patti. Since the time of the Civil War, however, the city has suffered a decline in this department of art.

Opera seasons have not been regular, and in spite of occasional attempts to revive the old-time spirit, the ancient Opera House, with its brave columned front, its cracking veneer of stucco, and its surrounding of little vari-colored one story cafes and shops (which are themselves like bits of operatic scenery), does not so much suggest to the imagination a home of modern opera, as a mournful mortuary chapel haunted by the ghosts of old half-forgotten composers: Herold, Spontini, Mehul, Varney; old conductors, long since gone to dust: Prevost, John, Calabresi; old arias of Meyerbeer, Auber, and Donizetti; and above all, by the ghosts of pretty pirouetting ballerinas, and of great singers whose voices have, these many years, been still.

An old lady who knew Louisiana in the forties and fifties, has left record of the fact that plantation negroes used to know and sing the French operatic airs, just as the Italian peasants of to-day know and sing the music of Puccini and Leoncavallo. But if opera no longer reaches the negro, it cannot be said that it has failed to leave its stamp on the French quarter. From open windows and doors, from little shops and half-hidden courtyards, from shuttered second story galleries, there comes floating to the ears of the wayfarer the sound of music. In one house a piano is being played with dash; in another a child is practising her scales; from still another comes a soprano voice, the sad whistling of a flute, the tinkle of a guitar, or the anguished squeal of a tortured violin. Never except in Naples have I heard, on one block, so many musical instruments independently at work, as in some single blocks of the _vieux carre_; and never anywhere have I seen a sign which struck as more expressive of the industries of a locality, than that one which I saw near the house of Mme. Lalurie, which read: "Odd Jobs Done, and Music."

The reason for this musical congestion is twofold. Not only is the Creole a great lover of good light music, but the whole region for blocks about the Opera House is populated by old musicians from the opera's orchestra, and women, some middle aged, some old, who used to be in the ballet or the chorus, and who not only keep alive the musical tradition of the district, but pa.s.s it on to the younger generation.

Indeed there are almost as many places in the French quarter where music may be heard, as where stories are told.

In one street may be seen a house where the troubles with the Mafia began. On a corner--the southeast corner of Royal and St. Peter--is shown the house in which Cable's "'Sieur George" resided. This house is, I believe, the same one which, when erected, caused people to move away from its immediate neighborhood, for fear that its height would cause it to fall down. It is a four story house--the first built in the city. At the southeast corner of Royal and Hospital Streets stands that "haunted" house of Mme. Lalaurie, who fled the town when indignation was aroused because of devilish tortures she inflicted on her slaves. This house is now an Italian tenement, but even in its decay it will be recognized as a mansion which, in its day, was fit to house such guests as Louis Philippe, Lafayette, and Ney. A guest even more distinguished than these, was to have been housed in the mansion at the northeast corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets, for the Creoles had a plan to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and bring him here, and had this house prepared to receive him.

And are we to forget where Andrew Jackson was entertained before and after the Battle of New Orleans--where General Beauregard, military idol of the Creoles, resided--where Paul Morphy the "chess king" lived--where General Butler took up his quarters when, in 1862, under the guns of Farragut's fleet, the city surrendered--? Shall we fail to visit the curious old tenements and stables surrounding the barnyard which once was the _remise_ of the old Orleans Hotel? Shall we neglect old Metaire cemetery, with its graves built above ground in the days when drainage was less perfect? Shall we fail to go to the levee (p.r.o.nounced "levvy") and see the savage flood of the muddy Mississippi coursing toward the gulf behind the embankment which alone saves the city from inundation?

Shall we ignore the French Market with its clean stalls piled with fresh vegetables, sea food, and all manner of comestibles, including _file_ for the glorious Creole gombo. Shall we not view the picturesque if sinister old Absinthe House, dating from 1799, with its court and stairway so full of mysterious suggestion, and its misty paregoric-flavored beverage, containing opalescent dreams? Shall we not go to Sazerac's for a c.o.c.ktail, or to Ramos' for one of those delectable gin-fizzes suggesting an Olympian soda-fountain drink? Are we to ignore all these wonders of the city?

Yes, for it is time to go to luncheon at Antoine's!

CHAPTER LIX

ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS

Antoine's is to me one of the four or five most satisfactory restaurants in the United States,--two of the others being the Louisiane and Galatoire's. But one has one's slight preferences in these things; and just as I have a feeling that the cuisine of the Hotel St. Regis in New York surpa.s.ses, just a little bit, that of any other eating place in the city, I have a feeling about Antoine's in New Orleans. This is not, perhaps, with me, altogether a culinary matter, for whereas I remember delightful meals at the Louisiane and Galatoire's--meals which, indeed, could hardly be surpa.s.sed--I lived for a week at Antoine's, and felt at home there, and became peculiarly attached to the quaint, rambling old restaurant, up stairs and down.

Antoine's has never been "fixed up." The cafe makes one think of such old Parisian restaurants as the Boeuf a la Mode, or the Tour d'Argent.

Far from being a showy place, it is utterly simple in its decorations and equipment, but if there is in this country a restaurant more French than Antoine's, I do not know where that restaurant is.