THE CITY OF THE CREOLE
When a poet, a painter, or a sculptor wishes to personify a city, why
does he invariably give it the feminine gender? Why is this so, even
though the city be named for a man, or for a masculine saint? And why is
it so in the case of commonplace cities, commercial cities, and ugly,
sordid cities? It is not difficult to understand why a beautiful,
sparkling city, like Washington or Paris, suggests a handsome woman,
richly gowned and bedecked with jewels, but it is hard to understand why
some other cities, far less pleasing, seem somehow to be stamped with
the qualities of woman-nature rather than man-nature. Is it perhaps
because the nature of all cities is so complicated? Is it because they
are volatile, changeful, baffling? Or is it only that they are the
mothers of great families of men?
When I arrive in a strange city I feel as though I were making the
acquaintance of a woman of whom I have often heard. I am curious about
her. I am alert. I gaze at her eagerly, wondering if she is as I have
imagined her. I try to read her expression while listening to her voice.
I consider her raiment, noticing whether it is fine, whether it is good
only in spots, and whether it is well put together. I inspect the
important buildings, boulevards, parks, and monuments with which she is
jeweled, and judge by them not only of her prosperity, but of her sense
of beauty. Before long I have a distinct impression of her. Sometimes,
as with a woman, this first impression has to be revised; sometimes not.
Sometimes, on acquaintance, a single feature, or trait, becomes so
important in my eyes that all else seems inconsequential. A noble spirit
may cover physical defects; beauty may seem to compensate for weaknesses
of character. The spell of a beautiful city which is bad resembles the
spell of such a city's prototype among women.
Some young growing cities are like young growing women of whom we think:
"She is as yet unformed, but she will fill out and become more charming
as she grows older." Or again we think: "She is somewhat dowdy and run
down at the heels but she is ambitious, and is replenishing her wardrobe
as she can afford it." One expects such failings in young cities, and
readily forgives them where there is wholesome promise for the future.
But where old cities become slovenly, the affair is different, for then
it means physical decay, and physical decay should never come to a
city--for a city is not only feminine, but should be immortal. The
symbol for every city should be a goddess, forever in her prime.
Among southern cities Richmond is the _grande dame_; she is gray and
distinguished, and wears handsome old brocades and brooches. Richmond
is aquiline and crisp and has much "manner." But though Charleston is
actually the older, the wonderful beauty of the place, the softness of
the ancient architectural lines, the sweet scents wafting from walled
gardens, the warmth of color everywhere, gives the place that very
quality of immortal youth and loveliness which is so rare in cities, and
is so much to be desired. Charleston I might allegorize in the person of
a young woman I met there. I was in the drawing-room of a fine old
house; a beautifully proportioned room, paneled to the ceiling, hung
with family portraits and other old paintings, and furnished with
mahogany masterpieces a century and a half old. The girl lived in this
house. She was not exactly pretty, nor was her figure beautiful in the
usual sense; yet it was beautiful, all the same, with a sort of
long-limbed, supple, aristocratic aliveness. Most of all there was about
her a great fineness--the kind of fineness which seems to be the
expression of generations of fineness. She was the granddaughter of a
general in the Civil War, the great-granddaughter of an ambassador, the
great-great-granddaughter of a Revolutionary hero, and though one could
not but be thankful that she failed of striking resemblance to the
portraits of these admirable ancestors, nevertheless it seemed to me
that, had I not known definitely of their place in her family history, I
might almost have sensed them hovering behind her: a background,
nebulous and shadowy, out of which she had emerged.
Memphis, upon the other hand, will always be to me a lively modern
débutante. I vision her as dancing--dancing to Handy's ragtime
music--all shoulders, neck, and arms, and tulle, and twenty-dollar satin
slippers. Atlanta, too, is young, vivid, affluent, altogether modern;
while as for Birmingham, she is pretty, but a little strident, a little
overdressed; touched a little with the amiability, and the other
qualities, of the _nouveau riche_.
The beauty of New Orleans is of a different kind. She is a full-blown,
black-eyed, dreamy, drawly creature, opulent of figure, white of skin,
and red of lip. Like San Francisco she has Latin blood which makes her
love and preserve the carnival spirit; but she is more voluptuous than
San Francisco, for not only is she touched with the languor and the fire
of her climate, but she is without the virile blood of the forty-niner,
or the invigorating contact of the fresh Pacific wind. In my imaginary
picture I see her yawning at eleven in the morning, when her negro maid
brings black coffee to her bedside--such wonderful black
coffee!--whereas, at that hour, I conceive San Francisco as having long
been up and about her affairs. Even in the afternoon I fancy my New
Orleans beauty as a little bit relaxed. But at dinner she becomes alive,
and after dinner more alive, and by midnight she is like a flame.
I must admit, however, that of late years New Orleans has developed a
perfect case of dual personality, and that, as often happens where there
is dual personality, one side of her nature seems altogether
incompatible with the other. The very new New Orleans has no
resemblance to the picture I have drawn; moreover, my picture is not her
favorite likeness of herself. She prefers more recent ones--pictures
showing the lines of determination which, within the last ten years have
stamped themselves upon her features, as she has fought and overcome the
defects of character which logically accompanied her peculiar,
temperamental type of charm. I, upon the other hand, am like some lover
who values most an older picture of the woman he adores. I admire her
for building character, but it is by her languorous beauty that I am
infatuated, and the portrait which most effectively displays that beauty
is the one for which I care.
Her very failings were so much a part of her that they made us the more
sympathetic; she was too lovely to be greatly blamed for anything;
gazing into her eyes, we hardly noticed that there was dust under the
piano and in the corners; dining at her sumptuous table, we gave but
little thought to the fact that the cellar was damp, the house none too
healthy, and that there were mosquitoes and rats about the place; nor
did it seem to matter, in face of her allurements, that she was
shiftless, extravagant, improvident in the management of her affairs. If
these things were brought to our attention, we excused them on the
grounds of Latin blood and enervating climate.
But if we excused her, she did not excuse herself. Without being shaken
awake by an earthquake, or forced to action by a devastating fire or
flood, she set to work, calmly and of her own volition, to reform her
character.
First she cleaned house, providing good surface drainage, an excellent
filtered water supply from the river in place of her old
mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern sewers in place of cesspools. She
killed rats by the hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and
thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague. She began to
take interest in the public schools, and soon trebled their advantages.
She concerned herself with the revision of repressive tax laws. She
secured one of the best street railway systems in the country. But,
perhaps most striking of all, she set to work to build scientifically
toward the realization of a gigantic dream. This dream embodies the
resumption by New Orleans of her old place as second seaport city. To
this end she is doing more than any other city to revive the commerce of
the Mississippi River, and is at the same time making a strong bid for
trade by way of the Panama Canal, as well as other sea traffic. She has
restored her forty miles of water front to the people, has built
municipal docks and warehouses at a cost of millions, and has so
perfectly coördinated her river-rail-sea traffic-handling agencies that
rates have been greatly reduced. Upon these, and related enterprises,
upward of a hundred millions are being spent, and the vast plan is
working out with such promise that one almost begins to fear lest New
Orleans become too much enamored of her new-found materialism--lest the
easy-going, pleasure-loving, fascinating Creole belle be transformed
into the much-less-rare and much-less-desirable business type of woman:
a woman whose letters, instead of being written in a fine French hand
and scented with the faint fragrance of vertivert, are typewritten upon
commercial paper; whose lips, instead of causing one to think of kisses,
are laden with the deadly cant of commerce; whose skin, instead of
seeming to be made of milk and rose leaves, is dappled with industrial
soot.
Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son, intimated that
beautiful women desire to be flattered upon their intelligence, while
intelligent women who are not altogether ugly like to be told that they
are beautiful. So with New Orleans. Speak of her individuality, her
picturesqueness, her gift of laughter, and she will listen with polite
ennui; but admire her commercial progress and she will hang upon your
words. Gaiety and charm are so much a part of her that she not only
takes them as a matter of course, but seems to doubt, sometimes, that
they are virtues. She is like some unusual and fascinating woman who,
instead of rejoicing because she is not like all other women, begins to
wonder if she ought not to be like them. Perhaps she is wrong to be gay?
Perhaps her carnival proves her frivolous? Perhaps she ought not to
continue to hold a carnival each year?
Far to the north of New Orleans the city of St. Paul was afflicted, some
years since, by a similar agitation. It will be remembered that St.
Paul used to build an ice palace each year. People used to go to see it
as they go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Then came some believer in the
standardization of cities, advancing the idea that ice palaces
advertised St. Paul as a cold place. As a result they ceased to be
built. St. Paul threw away something which drew attention to her and
which gave her character. Moreover, I am told this mania went so far
that when folders were issued for the purpose of advertising the region,
they were designed to suggest the warmth and brilliance of the tropics.
Had St. Paul a bad climate, instead of a peculiarly fine one, we might
feel sympathetic tolerance for these performances, but a city which
enjoys cool summers and dry, bracing winters has no apologies to make
upon the score of climate, and only need apologize if she tries to make
us think that bananas and cocoanuts grow on sugar-maple trees. However,
in the last year or two, St. Paul has perceived the folly of her course,
and has resumed her annual carnival.
In the case of New Orleans I cannot believe there is real danger that
the carnival will be given up. Instead, I believe that the business
enthusiasts will be appeased--as they were a year or two ago, for the
first time in carnival history--by the inclusion of an industrial
pageant glorifying the city's commercial renaissance. Also the New
Orleans newspapers soothe the spirit of the Association of Commerce, at
carnival time, by publishing items presumably furnished by that capable
organization, showing that business is going on as usual, that bank
clearings have not diminished during the festivities, and that, despite
the air of happiness that pervades the town, New Orleans is not really
beginning to have such a good time as a stranger might suppose from
superficial signs. With such concessions made to solemn visaged
commerce, is the carnival continued.
* * * * *
There are at least six cities on this continent which every one should
see. Every one should see New York because it is the largest city in the
world, and because it combines the magnificence, the wonder, the beauty,
the sordidness, and the shame of a great metropolis; every one should
see San Francisco because it is so vivid, so alive, so golden; every one
should see Washington, the clean, white splendor of which is like the
embodiment of a national dream; every one should see the old gray
granite city of Quebec, piled on its hill above the river like some
fortified town in France; every one should see the sweet and
aristocratic city of Charleston, which suggests a museum of tradition
and early American elegance; and of course every one should see New
Orleans.
As to whether it is best to see the city in everyday attire, or masked
for the revels, that is a matter of taste, and perhaps of age as well.
To any one who loves cities, New Orleans is always good to see, while to
the lover of spectacles and fêtes the carnival is also worth
seeing--once. The two are, however, hardly to be seen to advantage
simultaneously. To visit New Orleans in carnival time is like visiting
some fine old historic mansion when it is all in a flurry over a
fancy-dress ball. The furniture is moved, master, mistress and servants
are excited, the cook is overworked and is perhaps complaining a little,
and the brilliant costumes of the masquerade divert the eye of the
visitor so that he hardly knows what sort of house he is in. Attend the
ball if you like, but do not fail to revisit the house when normal
conditions have been restored; see the festivities of Mardi Gras if you
will, but do not fail to browse about old New Orleans and sit down at
her famous tables when her chefs have time to do their best.