Of the accumulation of the sources of evil and causes of contamination,
there is none perhaps stands out so glaring as the immense number
of drinking houses in every part of the city, sustained only in
selling liquor by the dram. And of this practice, it may be asserted
without dispute, it is the great propelling power that drives on the
maddening car of human passion into every other scene of vice and
pollution that is its proper element. This practice of almost constant
drinking through the day, pervades all classes of society. Not only
the male portion, with scarcely an exception, but the _ladies_, or
a large majority of them, indulge in the daily use of intoxicating
drinks. Under all circumstances, in the social relations, in the
interchange of civilities, wines and liquors of all kinds constitute
the principal offerings in the courtesies of every day life. And it is
astonishing indeed, to see how perfectly hardened and proof against
the intoxicating effects of Alcohol, the great mass of the people have
become. But notwithstanding this constant steeping in liquor, and being
able to keep up under it, more than three-fourths of the men who are
moving about the streets, have become literally sots, and according
to the northern standard of intoxication, are confirmed drunkards.
And how can this be otherwise, for there are but few who take less
than a dozen drams, and from that number up to twenty-five and thirty
a day, and yet these are all high-minded, _sober_, and respectable
_gentlemen_, full of _Southern chivalry_--incapable of brooking an
insult, and ready to fight in defence of their honor and good name. It
is under such circumstances, that we see men of the South so tenacious
of their character, and manifest so much pride in having the world
understand that they are gentlemen. But of this _Southern chivalry_,
and those high-minded and noble traits of Southern men, of which we
have heard so much boast, it is all gammon. It is not there, and the
high-toned sense of propriety in observing the practice and rules of
what constitute the true gentleman, does not prevail in society at the
South, in as great a degree as it does in the more northern states. And
certain it is, the standard of what constitutes a good and respectable
man, is far, very far below the wholesome and elevated standard which
prevails at the north. For no man here could live and sustain a common
respectability, should he be guilty of the sayings and doings of a
Southern _gentleman_.--And in all that is mean and low and contemptible
in society, in backbiting, neighborhood scandal, and tea-table slander,
there is as much, according to the population and facilities for such
matters, as in any other section of the country. And in addition to
this, there are among these high-toned and chivalrous bloods, more
drunken brawls, and breaking canes over each others heads, and hair
pulling, and cat fighting, than is met with in any other part of the
world. As evidence of this, the scenes that are often witnessed in
the popular resorts and drinking houses in New Orleans, will convince
any one of the true nature of Southern chivalry. Seldom does a week
pass without some of these _magnanimous_ fights, of hair pulling,
scratching, and the lowest kind of puppy squabbles, will be exhibited
among the _gentlemen_, those of the first respectability in the city.
And yet all these fights will occur, from a high sense of honor and
self respect, prompted by an elevated tone of _genuine_ Southern
chivalry. The number of grog shops sustained by these _gentlemen_ in
New Orleans, is _more_ than legion. They are found in whole blocks--on
three of every four corners, where one street crosses another, and
ranges of buildings from street to street, every door leading into
a drinking house. The style and splendor in which some of these
establishments are fitted up, surpasses the most costly and richly
furnished parlor in the mansion of any millionaire in this country.
At the head of these “enchanting resorts” may be regarded the “GEM,”
opposite the Post Office on Royal street. The magnificence and rich
display of furniture and fixtures in this _grog-shop_, shows at once to
what extent dram drinking is practiced among the “upper ten thousand”
in this city; for none other but a _gentleman_, with white kid gloves
and burnished boots, would dare presume to enter within its brilliant
and shining walls. The expense of fitting up this room in furniture and
fixtures, simply for the purpose of a drinking house, was upwards of
eight thousand dollars. The floor is covered with a beautiful Saxony
carpet, costing three dollars and half a yard. Cast-iron settees and
chairs, with rich crimson cushions. Two mirrors suspended back of the
counter, costing seven hundred dollars each, together with beautiful
landscape paintings from the pencils of the best artists in the
country. Three massive chandeliers light the room, making it as light
as the sun at midday. And thus, is carried out, in perfect order and
taste, every article of fixture and furniture in this “Guillotine” for
the _legs_ of _gentlemen_ in this city.
This “GEM” was opened in November, 1848, and the first day the receipts
were three hundred and seven dollars for drams at ten cents a drink.
There are a number of other houses of this character fitted up in the
same costly style, and among them is the “Verandah,” the “Orleans
House,” and “Phenix,” with many others, and all of which furnish their
bars with the most costly wines, liquors and cordials, that can be
obtained from all parts of the world. In this display of attraction,
where _gentlemen_ can become drunken, fight and quarrel, and pass it
away without the event being noticed, except for a few days when the
conqueror and his friends will exhibit their prowess in boasting and
bragging of the “fine licks” and the “black eyes” given an antagonist,
and who perhaps was twice his superior in force and strength, yet
being a little more “tight” of the two, and perhaps having met with
an unlucky blow from some side arm of a friend of his competitor, he
came off second best. And here it is in these pot house brawls among
the boasted chivalry of the South, originate nine-tenths of the duels
and deadly combats which take place. From fights of this kind often
originate hostile and angry feelings, that finally on the next occasion
are followed by direct insult designed to provoke a challenge.
From these houses downwards there is every grade of grog shops, to
the lowest sipping of whiskey from a tin cup in negro pens, where
slaves steal away and imitate the example of their masters in taking a
few social glasses in view of participating in the common civilities
and courtesies of fashionable life. The practice of drinking so
often during the day, with almost every one, is such that eating and
sleeping is of small account, and they are indulged in with very little
regard to regularity except the meal at dinner. The hour for dining
is usually from three to four, and this is the feast for fat things,
and the only time at which much food is taken. Breakfast is usually
coffee in abundance, and generally is taken in bed before rising. And
after rising coffee is taken again with some light article, and this
is done from eight o’clock in the morning and at any other time as
they may happen to get from their beds before the hour for dinner.
Tea is usually taken from seven to eight in the evening, and usually
amounts to nothing in the consideration of the good _livers_ in New
Orleans. The rounds and revels of dissipation are at their height from
nine o’clock in the evening until two in the morning, by which time
the devotees of pleasure and the great mass of the inhabitants have
become fully surfeited with the things of this world, until they are
overcome with the _load_ that is upon them, and one by one they pass
away from their labors and repose for a few hours, when they return
on the morrow refreshed and invigorated, and repeat the same round
in the drama of “life in New Orleans.” From the low dens and grog
shops, the miserable victim who crawls away in his poverty and rags,
is caught up at first sight by the minions of the law, and hurried
before the Recorder’s Court on “suspicion” of being a vagrant, and
unless he can find some one to vouch for him he is thrown into the
work house for sixty or ninety days, while the proud and _chivalrous_
southern gentleman who has been drinking, carousing, and fighting at
the “Gem,” the “Verandah,” the “Orleans House,” or “Hewlett’s,” comes
out next day as one of the bloods of the city. But follow for a short
time these chivalrous knights, and you will see their steps as sure
downwards as that hour succeeds hour, until they are found in the
lowest “picayune groggery,” steeped in the very dregs of pollution
and death. An illustration and graphic commentary upon a life in New
Orleans, was exhibited before the Recorder’s Court in the fall of 1848,
in the arrest under the vagrant law of “DANGEROUS and SUSPICIOUS,”
in the person of one of those shocking and abandoned wrecks of the
“noblest works of God,” a man of mind and genius who had fallen, and
had become as he said of himself “like the gnarled oak shorn of its
green boughs,” yet he had in his better days moved and revelled in
the rounds of fashionable life, and having a ready and fluent speech,
and flashings of caustic wit and good humor, it called around him
warm and devoted friends, whose kindness was showered upon him in
repeating glass after glass until he fell below the standard of a
_gentleman_, and finally was cast off, and thus took a downward leap,
and when he appears again it is as a “dangerous and suspicious person”
before the bar of justice as a criminal. But the scene does not stop
here, for that very authority before which he now stands arraigned on
“suspicion,” sets the machinery in motion that takes the victim in at
the “LICENSED PALACE,” and carries him along through every grade down
to the lowest dens of degradation and misery, and finally brings him up
before the same authority as the natural and legitimate fruit of that
document to which its hand and seal is fixed as a license for these
blighting and damning curses, these groggeries that fill up this city
at every turn.
The following incident occurred before the Recorder, and is copied from
a city paper.
“DANGEROUS AND SUSPICIOUS.”
“But where is the iron-bound prisoner? where?”--CAMPBELL.
A very haughty and gloomy-looking individual might be seen passing
upwards from Baronne street Watchhouse, towards the Recorder’s office,
yesterday morning, about nine o’clock. He was _one_ of the number
who seemed to have undergone the Cæsarean operation at the hands of
Madame Fortune, but who, more than any of the rest, seemed to have been
ripped untimely from the womb of the circumstances by which he had been
surrounded. There was a sullenness of manner about him, perfectly in
keeping with the bitter sneer which sat enthroned on his cynical lip.
His dark eye flashed indignation towards the officer in whose keeping
he was, and every now and then, as he raised his iron-bound hands to
heaven, he shut his teeth as though he could have crunched a bar of
adamant into a pulp. Anon he shut his eyes, and opening them, there
came the searching glance and the dark scowl, which seemed to ask, in
the language of Shakspeare,
“Which of you has done this?
Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me.”
The garb of the outer man was indicative of the severe storms which
had passed over it--its looped and windowed raggedness told a tale of
misery and wretchedness too often repeated by the numerous children of
misfortune.
As the officer unloosened the handcuffs, preparatory to the old man’s
being placed in the dock, for examination before the Recorder, not a
muscle of his face, nay, of his frame, but was in motion. Shortly
after being placed there, he burst into a flood of tears, and, in a
paroxysm of the extremest agony, swooned into the arms of a fellow
prisoner. After a few moments, however, he recovered his consciousness,
and staring wildly round the Court, (as though he were among a horde of
savages in the wild desert,) he exclaimed, after a manner which showed
him to be well conversant with the drama:
“I did not faint--no, though a sickening pang
Tugg’d at my heart, and made the cold sweat creep,
Like ice-drops, o’er my body; yet, even then,
Did conscious innocence uphold my soul,
And turn’d the horrid words to senseless sounds,
That ought not to dismay.”
“Verulan Langdale!” said the crier of the court. The prisoner raised
himself slowly up from his seat, and running his fingers through
the grey and tangled locks, which fell scantily over a well formed
forehead, bowed to the court, in token of his identity.
_Recorder._--You are charged with being a dangerous and suspicious
person, following no honest occupation or calling for a livelihood.
Have you any good citizen to vouch for you?
_Prisoner._--May it please the court, I know of none--the world knows
me not--I am as you see me, the gnarled oak, shorn of its green boughs.
I am like Othello--my occupation’s gone. I came here to look after
a daughter, who eloped a long time ago with a merchant of this city
who, dying, left her all his worldly effects, and she became rich.
By chance, I heard she was in this city. She was--she is--but she is
the occupant of the Lunatic Asylum, and she has rendered me well nigh
fit to occupy the same cell. I have craved from those who have had
charity--my wants were small and they were over supplied. I was going
towards Ohio, where I have a son engaged in the profession of the law.
_Recorder._--May I ask you if you yourself have any profession on hand,
and if you are an American citizen?
_Prisoner._--I recollect Wordsworth saying in one of his fine poems,
when speaking of a foreigner in England--
From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
Ah, no! he spake the English tongue,
And bare a soldier’s name;
And when America was free
From battle and from jeopardy,
He cross the ocean came.
I bear a “soldier’s name”--I have held a commission in the British
service, under the last but one of the Georges’. I have fought, long
before I became an American citizen, under the stars and stripes,
and have been but lately mustered out of the American service--I
have ever thought and do think with Chateaubriand that--“The fairest
crown of an old man is his silver hair, and the recollection of an
honorable life.” Pronounce your sentence, if you think me dangerous and
suspicious.
As the old man repeated the last sentence in a firm and energetic tone,
he drew back the folds of his old woolen vest with the hands which had
lately been in fetters, and pointing to some half dozen scars, said--
I don’t know how suspicious you may think me, but the enemies of my
adopted country always declared me _dangerous_.
As he gave utterance to these words, a thrill of sensation passed
through the crowd, which the Recorder did not ask to check. He himself
turned aside to--peruse some other charge entered on the watch sheet.
After a short pause, the Recorder, addressing the prisoner, told him he
was at liberty to seek his son, and he hoped his search in that quarter
would be more successful than it had been on another occasion.
_Prisoner._--I hope so.
It is unnecessary to say that the old veteran had funds liberally
supplied him. A subscription was set on foot in court, to which the
Recorder most liberally subscribed, and “words, cheery words,” fell
upon his ear as he left the court, where, but a few moments before, he
had stood, to all appearances, a vagrant of the worst class. He did not
leave the dock without bowing to his fellow prisoners; then turning
to the crowd who ushered him out, he looked again on those he left
behind him, as though loth to leave his fellows in misfortune. It was
a momentary gleam of commiseration, for it lit up the face with the
sunshine of the soul, until the recollection of his past sufferings,
awakening all the misanthropic feelings which lay lurking in his
breast, found a vent in the language of the gifted Maturin:
“I was a blighted branch--the storm was on me--
And in my rifted core the winds of heaven
Sung wintry welcome, and made stern abode.
The mildewed moss upon my brown sere bark
Made verdure seem like blasting. Such was I.
The sun is on me now, the storm on thee.
Bear it as I have done.
Such oftentimes are the slender grounds on which our laws deprive men
of one of the choicest blessings said to be ensured by our republican
form of government--their liberty.
* * * * *
The life-drawn scene which is here presented in the person of the old
man, is a sad tale of desolation and woe, with which the Recorder’s
court and the work-house of this city is familiar; yet the subjects for
such exhibitions are usually much younger, having been like the old
man, “shorn of their green boughs” long before they could point to a
head with “silver locks,” and claim for them the respect and reverence
due to a ripe old age, even though clothed in rags.