American Adventures Part 56

Antoine Alciatore, founder of the establishment, departed nearly forty years ago to the realms to which great chefs are ultimately taken.

Coming from France as a young man he established himself in a small cafe opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook and let his cooking speak for him. His dinde a la Talleyrand soon made him famous, and he prospered, moving before long to the present building. His sons, Jules and Fernand, were sent to Paris to learn at headquarters the best traditions of the haute cuisine, doing service as apprentices in such establishments as the Maison d'Or and Brabant's. Jules is now proprietor of Antoine's, while Fernand is master of the Louisiane.

The two brothers are of somewhat different type. Fernand is, above all, a chef; I have never seen him outside his own kitchen. His son, Fernand Jr., superintends the front part of the Louisiane, which he has transformed into a place having the appearance of a New York restaurant.

The young man has made a successful bid for the fashionable patronage of New Orleans, and there is dancing in the Louisiane in the evening.

Jules, upon the other hand, is perhaps more the director than his brother Fernand--more the suave delightful host, less the man of cap and ap.r.o.n. Jules loves to give parties--to astonish his guests with a brilliant dinner and with his unrivaled grace as gerant. That he is able to do these things no one is better aware than my companion and I, for it was our good fortune to be accepted by Jules as friends and fellow artists.

Never while my companion and I lived at Antoine's did we escape the feeling that we were not in the United States, but in some foreign land.

To go to his rooms he went upstairs, around a corner, down a few steps, past a pantry, and a back stairway by which savory smells ascended from the kitchen, along a latticed gallery overlooking a courtyard like that of some inn in Segovia, along another gallery running at right angles to the first and overlooking the same court, including the kitchen door and the laundry, and finally to a chamber with French doors, a canopied bed, and French windows opening upon a balcony that overlooked the side street. His room was called "The Creole Yacht," while mine was the "Maison Vert."

I remember a room in that curious little hotel opposite the Cafe du Dome, in Paris (the hotel in which it is said Whistler stayed when he was a student), which almost exactly resembled my room at Antoine's, even to the dust which was under the bed--until 'Genie got to work with broom and brush. Moreover, connected with my room there was a bath which actually had a _chaufbain_ to heat the water: one of those weird French machines resembling the engine of a steam launch, which pops savagely when you light the gas beneath it, and which, as you are always expecting it to blow up and destroy you, converts the morning ablutions from a perfunctory duty into a great adventure.

Then too, there was Marie who has attended to the _linge_ at Antoine's for the last fifty years, and who helped the gray-haired genial Eugenie to "make proper the rooms." Ever since 'Genie--as she is called, for short--came from her native Midi, she has been at Antoine's; and like Francois--the gentle, kindly, white-mustached old waiter who, when we were there, had just moved up to Antoine's after thirty-five years'

service at the Louisiane--'Genie is always ready with a smile; yes, even in the rush of Mardi Gras!

Antoine's does not set up to be a regular hotel, and we stopped there because, during the carnival, all rooms in the large modern hotels across Ca.n.a.l Street were taken. The carnival rush made room-service at Antoine's a little slow, now and then; sometimes the bell would not be answered when we rang for breakfast; or again, our morning coffee and _croissants_ would be forty minutes on the way; sometimes we became a little bit impatient--though we could never bring ourselves to say so to such amiable servitors. As a result, when we were leaving the city for a little trip, we determined to stay, on our return, at the Grunewald, a hotel like any one of a hundred others in the United States--marble lobbies, gold ceilings, rathskellers, cabaret shows, dancing, and page boys wandering through the corridors and dining-rooms, calling in nasal, sing-song voices: "_Mis_-ter _Shoss_-futt! _Mis_-ter _Ahm_-kaplopps!

_Mis_-ter _Praggle_-fiss! _Mis_-ter Blahms!"

We did return and go to the Grunewald. But comfortable as we were made there, we had to own to each other that we missed Antoine's. We missed our curious old rooms. I even missed my _chaufbain_, and was bored at the commonplace matutinal performance of turning on hot water without preliminary experiments in marine engineering. We thought wistfully of 'Genie's patient smile, and of her daily a.s.surance to us, when we went out, that "when she had made the apartments she would render the key to the bureau, _alors_,"--which is to say, leave the key at the office. We yearned for the cafe, for good Francois, for the deliciously flavored oysters cooked on the half-sh.e.l.l and served on a pan of hot rock-salt which kept them warm; for the cold tomatoes _a la Jules Cesar_; for the bisque of crayfish _a la Cardinal_; for the bouilliba.s.se (which Thackeray admitted was as good in New Orleans as in Ma.r.s.eilles, and which Otis Skinner says is better); for the unrivaled gombo _a la Creole_, and pompano _en Papillotte_, and pressed duck _a la Tour d'Argent_, and orange Brulot, and the wonderful Cafe Brulot Diabolique--that spiced coffee made in a silver bowl from which emerge the blue flames of burning cognac, and in honor of which the lights of the cafe are always temporarily dimmed.

Nor least of all was it that we wished to see again the mother of Jules, who sits back of the _caisse_ and takes in the money, like many another good French wife and mother--a tiny little old lady more than ninety-five years old, who came to New Orleans in 1840 as the bride of the then young Antoine Alciatore.

So we put on our hats and coats when evening came, and went back to Antoine's for dinner, and as long as we were in New Orleans we kept on going back.

That is not to say, of course, that we did not go also to the Louisiane and Galatoire's, or that we did not drop in for luncheon, sometimes, at Brasco's, in Gravier Street, or at Kolb's, a more or less conventional German restaurant in St. Charles Street; or that we failed to go out to Tranchina's at Spanish Fort, on Lake Pontchartrain, or to the quainter little place called Noy's where, we learned, Ernest Peixotto had been but a short time before, gathering material for indigestion and an article in "Scribner's Magazine." But when all is said and done there remain the three restaurants of the old quarter.

I should like to give some history of Galatoire's as well as of the other two, but when I asked the _patron_ for the story of his restaurant, he smiled, and with a shrug replied: "But Monsieur, the story is in the food!"

Do not expect any of these places to present the brilliant appearance of distinguished New York restaurants. They are comparatively simple, all of them, and are engaged not with soft carpets and gilt ceilings, but with the art of cookery.

I have been told that some of them have what may be termed "tourist cooking," which is not their best, but if you know good food, and let them know you know it, and if you visit them at any time except during the carnival, then you have a right to expect in any one of these establishments, a superb dinner. For as I once heard my friend Col.

Beverly Myles, one of the city's most distinguished _gourmets_, remark: "To talk of 'tolerably good food' in a French restaurant is like talking of 'a tolerably honest man.'"

The carnival of Mardi Gras and the several days preceding, is one of those things about which I feel as I do concerning Niagara Falls, and gambling houses, and the red light district of b.u.t.te, Montana, and the underground levels of a mine, and the world as seen from an aeroplane, and the Quatres Arts ball, and a bull fight--I am glad to have seen it once, but I have no desire to see it again. During the carnival my companion and I enjoyed a period of sleepless gaiety. To be sure, we went to bed every morning, but what is the use in doing that if you also get up every morning? We went to the street pageants, we went to the b.a.l.l.s at the French Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets, and when the carnival was finished we were finished, too.

The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is that it bears the relation to the life of the city, that a well-developed hobby does to the life of an individual. It keeps the city young. It keeps it from becoming pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting into a rut. It stimulates not alone the young, but the grave and reverend seigniors also, to give themselves up for a little while each year to play, and moreover to use their imaginations in annually devising new pageants and costumes. From this point of view such a carnival would be a good thing for any city.

But that is where the Latin spirit of New Orleans comes in, with its pleasing combination of gaiety and restraint. You could not hold such a carnival in every city. You could not do it in New York. For more important even than the pageants and the b.a.l.l.s, is the carnival frame of mind. To hold a carnival such as New Orleans holds, a city must know how to be lively and playful without becoming drunk, without breaking barroom mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting "ticklers"

into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing the thousand rough vulgar excesses in which New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in which it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under the additional license of the mask.

The carnival--_carne vale_, farewell flesh--which terminates with Mardi Gras--"Fat Tuesday," or Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent--comes down to us from pagan times by way of the Latin countries.

The "Cowbellions," a secret organization of Mobile, in 1831 elaborated the idea of historical and legendary processions, and as early as 1837 New Orleans held grotesque street parades. Twenty years later the "Mystic Krewe," now known as "Comus," appeared from nowhere and disappeared again. The success of Comus encouraged the formation of other secret societies, each having its own parade and ball, and in 1872, Rex, King of the Carnival, entered his royal capital of New Orleans in honor of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis--who, by the way, is one of countless notables who have feasted at Antoine's.

The three leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are understood to be connected with three of the city's four leading clubs, all of which stand within easy range of one another on the uptown side of Ca.n.a.l Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old card game); the Pickwick (named for d.i.c.kens' genial gentleman, a statue of whom stands in the lobby); the Louisiana, a young men's club; and the Chess, Checkers and Whist Club. The latter a.s.sociation is, I believe, the one that takes no part in the carnival.

Each of the carnival organizations has its own King and Queen, and the connection between certain clubs and certain carnival societies may be guessed from the fact that the Comus Queen and Proteus Queen always appear on the stand in front of the Pickwick Club, to witness their respective parades, and that the Queen of the entire Carnival appears with her maids of honor on the stand before the Boston Club upon the day of Mardi Gras, to witness the triumphal entry and parade of Rex. As Rex pa.s.ses the club he sends her a bouquet--the official indication of her queenship. That night she appears for the first time in the glory of her royal robes at the Rex Ball, which is held in a large hall; and the great event of the carnival, from a social standpoint, is the official visit, on the same night, of Rex and his Queen, attended by their court, to the King and Queen of Comus, at the Comus Ball, held in the Opera House.

Pa.s.sing between the brilliantly illuminated flag-draped buildings, under festoons of colored electric lights, the street parades, with their spectacular colored floats, their bands, their negro torch-bearers, their strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children ranging anywhere from eight to eighty years of age. Public masking on the streets, on the day of Mardi Gras, is also an amusing feature of the carnival.

The b.a.l.l.s, upon the other hand, are social events of great importance in the city, and as spectacles they are peculiarly fine. Invitations to these b.a.l.l.s are greatly coveted, and the visitor to the city who would attend them, must exert his "pull" some time in advance. The invitations, by the way, are not sent by individuals, but by the separate organizations, and even those young ladies who are so fortunate as to have "call-outs"--cards inclosed with their invitations, indicating that they are to be asked to dance, and may therefore have seats on the ground floor--are not supposed to know from what man these cards come. Ladies who have not received call-outs, and gentlemen who are not members of the societies, are packed into the boxes and seats above the parquet floor, and do not go upon the dancing floor until very late in the evening. Throughout each ball the members of the society giving the ball continue to wear their costumes and their masks, so that ladies, called from their seats to dance, often find themselves treading a measure with some gallant who speaks in a strange a.s.sumed voice, striving to maintain the mystery of his ident.i.ty. The ladies, upon the other hand, are not in costume and are not masked; about them, there is no more mystery than women always have about them. After each dance the masker produces a present for his partner--usually a pretty bit of jewelry. Etiquette not only allows, but insists, that a woman accept any gift offered to her at a carnival ball, and it is said that by this means many a young gentleman has succeeded in bestowing upon the lady of his heart a piece of jewelry the value of which would make acceptance of the gift impossible under other than carnival conditions.

After the b.a.l.l.s many of the younger couples go to the Louisiane and Antoine's, to continue the dance, and as my room at Antoine's was directly over one of the dancing rooms of the establishment, I might make a shrewd guess as to how long they stayed up, after my companion and I retired.

Let it not be supposed that we retired early. I remember well the look of the pale blue dawn of Ash Wednesday morning, and no less do I remember a conversation with a gentleman I met at the Louisiane, just before the dawn broke. I never saw him before and I have never seen him since; nor do I know his name, or where he came from. I only know that he was an agreeable, friendly person who did not wish to go to bed.

When I said that I was going home he protested.

"Don't do that!" he urged. "There's a nice French restaurant in this town. I can't think of the name of it. Let's go there."

"Well, how can we go if you don't know what place it is?" I asked, intending to be discouraging.

The young man looked dazed at this. Then his face brightened suddenly.

"Oh, yes!" he cried. "I remember the name now! It's the Louisiane! Come on! Let's get our coats an' go there!"

"But," I said, "this is the Louisiane right here."

The thought seemed to stagger him, for he swayed ever so slightly.

"All right," he said, regarding me with great solemnity. "Let's go there!"

I have wondered since if this same young man may not have been the one who, returning to the St. Charles Hotel in the early hours of that sad Ash Wednesday morning, was asked by the clerk, who gave him his key, whether he wished to leave a call.

"What day's this?" he inquired.

"Wednesday," said the clerk.

"All ri'," replied the other, moving toward the elevator. "Call me Sat.u.r.day."

CHAPTER LX

FINALE

Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away; And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why, You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky!

--GERALD GOULD.

It is good to look about the world; but always there comes a time when the restless creature, man, having yielded to the call of the seas and the stars and the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home again. Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy place than it is, he would be bound to think of it after so long a journey as that upon which my companion and I had spent so many months. For, just as it is necessary for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling, so it is necessary for the traveler to return to headquarters. The fastenings of his wardrobe trunk are getting loose, and the side of it has been stove in; his heels are running down in back, his watch needs regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is running out of notebooks and pencils and has broken a blade of his knife in trying to open a bottle with it (because he left his corkscrew in a hotel somewhere along the way). His fountain pen has sprung a leak and spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop is nicked, and he has run out of the kind of cigarettes and cigars he likes. One lens of his spectacles has gotten scratched, his mail has ceased to reach him, his light suits are spotted, baggy and worn, and his winter suits are becoming too heavy for comfort as the spring advances. His neckties are getting stringy, he has hangnails and a cough; he never could fix his own hangnails, and he cannot cure his cough because the bottle of glycerine and wild cherry provided for just such an emergency by the loved ones at home, got broken on the trip from Jacksonville to Montgomery, and went dribbling down through the trunk, ruining his reference books, three of his best shirts, and the only decent pair of russet shoes he had left. The other shoes have been ruined in various ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum hunt at Clinton, North Carolina--and it was worth it, and worth the overcoat that was ruined at the same time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with layers and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of russets was ruined by a well intentioned negro lad in Memphis, who thought they would look better painted red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing piles of notes and papers, he will lose the three books in each of which remains a few feet of "yellow scrip"--the mileage of the South--which will take him on his return journey as far as Washington.

Nor is that all. The determining factor in his decision to go home lies in the havoc wrought by a long succession of hotel laundries--laundries which starch the bosoms of soft silk shirts, which mark the owner's name in ink upon the hems of sheer linen handkerchiefs which already have embroidered monograms, which rip holes in those handkerchiefs and then fold them so that the holes are concealed until, some night, he whips one confidently from the pocket of his dress suit, and reveals it looking like a tattered battle-flag; laundries which leave long trails of iron rust on shirt-bosoms, which rip out seams, tear off b.u.t.tons, squeeze out new standing collars to a saw-tooth edge, iron little pieces of red and brown string into collars, cuffs, and especially into the bosoms of dress shirts, and "finish" dress shirts and collars, not only in the sense of ending their days of usefulness as fast as possible, but also by making them shine like the interiors of glazed porcelain bathtubs. But the greatest cruelty of the hotel laundry is to socks. It is not that they do more damage to socks, than to other garments, but that the laundry devil has been able to think of a greater variety of means for the destruction of socks than for the destruction of any other kind of garment. He begins by fastening to each sock a cloth-covered tin tag, attached by means of p.r.o.ngs. On this tag he puts certain marks which will mean nothing to the next laundry. The next laundry therefore attaches other tin tags, either ripping off the old ones (leaving holes where the p.r.o.ngs went through) or else letting them remain in place, so that, after a while, the whole top of the sock is covered with tin, making it an extraordinarily uncomfortable thing to wear, and a strange thing to look at. There is still another way in which the laundry devil tortures the sock-owner. He can find ways to shrink any sock that is not made of solid heavy silk; and of course he can rip silk socks all to pieces. He will take silk-and-wool socks of normal length, and in one washing will so reduce them that you can hardly get your foot into them, and that the upper margins of them come only about an inch above your shoe-tops. People who have no business to do so, are thus enabled, when you are seated, to see the tops of your socks and to amuse themselves by counting the tin tags with which they are adorned. Also, the socks, being so short, become better pullers than the garters, so that instead of the garters holding the socks up, the socks pull the garters down.

This usually occurs as you are walking up the aisle in church, or in the middle of a dance, and of course your garter manages to come unclasped, into the bargain, and goes trailing after you, like a convict's ball and chain.

For a time you can stand this sort of thing, but presently you begin to pine for the delicate washtub artistry of Amanda, at home; for vestments which, when sent to the wash, do not come back riddled with holes, or smelling as though they had been washed in carbolic acid, or in the tub with a large fish.