On the 30th of August, 1831, before Octave de Armas, notary, one E. Soniat
Dufossat sold this property to a Madame Lalaurie. She may have dwelt in
the house earlier than this, but here is where its tragic history begins.
Madame Lalaurie was still a beautiful and most attractive lady, though
bearing the name of a third husband. Her surname had been first
McCarty,--a genuine Spanish-Creole name, although of Irish origin, of
course,--then Lopez, or maybe first Lopez and then McCarty, and then
Blanque. She had two daughters, the elder, at least, the issue of her
first marriage.
The house is known to this day as Madame Blanque's house,--which, you
notice, it never was,--so distinctly was she the notable figure in the
household. Her husband was younger than she. There is strong sign of his
lesser importance in the fact that he was sometimes, and only sometimes,
called doctor--Dr. Louis Lalaurie. The graces and graciousness of their
accomplished and entertaining mother quite outshone his step-daughters as
well as him. To the frequent and numerous guests at her sumptuous board
these young girls seemed comparatively unanimated, if not actually
unhappy. Not so with their mother. To do her full share in the upper
circles of good society, to dispense the pleasures of drawing-room and
dining-room with generous frequency and captivating amiability, was the
eager pursuit of a lady who nevertheless kept the management of her money
affairs, real estate, and slaves mainly in her own hands. Of slaves she
had ten, and housed most of them in the tall narrow wing that we have
already noticed.
We need not recount again the state of society about her at that time. The
description of it given by the young German duke whom we quoted without
date in the story of "Salome Muller" belongs exactly to this period.
Grymes stood at the top and front of things. John Slidell was already
shining beside him. They were co-members of the Elkin Club, then in its
glory. It was trying energetically to see what incredible quantities of
Madeira it could drink. Judge Mazereau was "avocat-général" and was being
lampooned by the imbecile wit of the singers and dancers of the calinda in
Congo Square. The tree-planted levee was still populous on summer evenings
with promenaders and loungers. The quadroon caste was in its dying
splendor, still threatening the moral destruction of private society, and
hated--as only woman can hate enemies of the hearthstone--by the proud,
fair ladies of the Creole pure-blood, among whom Madame Lalaurie shone
brilliantly. Her elegant house, filled with "furniture of the most costly
description,"--says the "New Orleans Bee" of a date which we shall come
to,--stood central in the swirl of "downtown" gayety, public and private.
From Royal into Hospital street, across Circus street--rue de la
Cirque--that was a good way to get into Bayou Road, white, almost as
snow, with its smooth, silent pavement of powdered shells. This road
followed the slow, clear meanderings of Bayou St. Jean, from red-roofed
and embowered suburb St. Jean to the lake, the swamp of giant, grizzly
bearded cypresses hugging it all the way, and the whole five miles teeming
with gay, swift carriages, some filled with smokers, others with ladies
and children, the finest equipage of all being, as you may recollect, that
of John Fitz Miller. He was at that very time master of Salome Muller, and
of "several others fairer than Salome." He belongs in the present story
only here in this landscape, and here not as a typical, but only as an
easily possible, slaveholder. For that matter, Madame Lalaurie, let it be
plainly understood, was only another possibility, not a type. The two
stories teach the same truth: that a public practice is answerable for
whatever can happen easier with it than without it, no matter whether it
must, or only may, happen. However, let the moral wait or skip it entirely
if you choose: a regular feature of that bright afternoon throng was
Madame Lalaurie's coach with the ever-so-pleasant Madame Lalaurie inside
and her sleek black coachman on the box.
"Think," some friend would say, as he returned her courteous bow--"think
of casting upon that woman the suspicion of starving and maltreating her
own house-servants! Look at that driver; his skin shines with good
keeping. The truth is those jealous Americans"--
There was intense jealousy between the Americans and the Creoles. The
Americans were just beginning in public matters to hold the odds. In
private society the Creoles still held power, but it was slipping from
them even there. Madame Lalaurie was a Creole. Whether Louisiana or St.
Domingo born was no matter; she should not be criticised by American envy!
Nor would the Creoles themselves go nosing into the secretest privacy of
her house.
"Why, look you, it is her common practice, even before her guests, to
leave a little wine in her glass and hand it, with some word of kindness,
to the slave waiting at her back. Thin and hollow-chested--the slaves?
Yes, to be sure: but how about your rich uncle, or my dear old mother: are
they not hollow-chested? Well!"
But this kind of logic did not satisfy everybody, not even every Creole;
and particularly not all her neighbors. The common populace too had
unflattering beliefs.
"Do you see this splendid house? Do you see those attic windows? There are
slaves up there confined in chains and darkness and kept at the point of
starvation."
A Creole gentleman, M. Montreuil, who seems to have been a neighbor, made
several attempts to bring the matter to light, but in vain. Yet rumors and
suspicious indications grew so rank that at length another prominent
citizen, an "American" lawyer, who had a young Creole studying law in his
office, ventured to send him to the house to point out to Madame Lalaurie
certain laws of the State. For instance there was Article XX. of the old
Black Code: "Slaves who shall not be properly fed, clad, and provided for
by their masters, may give information thereof to the attorney-general or
the Superior Council, or to all the other officers of justice of an
inferior jurisdiction, and may put the written exposition of their wrongs
into their hands; upon which information, and even ex officio, should the
information come from another quarter, the attorney-general shall
prosecute said masters," etc. But the young law student on making his
visit was captivated by the sweetness of the lady whom he had been sent to
warn against committing unlawful misdemeanors, and withdrew filled with
indignation against any one who could suspect her of the slightest
unkindness to the humblest living thing.