FROM NEW YORK TO ANTOINE’S
There were, we found, three ways to transport an automobile from New
York to Texas; to drive it ourselves, and become mired in Southern
“gumbo,” to ship it by rail, and become bankrupt while waiting weeks
for delivery, or, cheaper and altogether more satisfactory, to send it
by freight steamer to Galveston. By this means we avoided the need of
crating our lumbering vehicle; we also could calculate definitely its
date of arrival, and by taking a passenger boat to New Orleans, and
going thence by rail, be at the port to meet it.
Our baggage we stowed in a peculiarly shaped auto trunk containing five
peculiarly shaped suitcases, trapezoids all,--not a parallelepiped
among them. Made to fit an earlier car, in its day it had been the
laughing stock of all the porters in Europe. Too bulky to be strapped
outside, it was to become a mysterious occupant of the tonneau,
exciting much speculation and comment. It was to be the means of our
being taken for Salvation lassies with a parlor organ, bootleggers,
Spiritualists with the omnipresent cabinet, show-girls or lady
shirt-waist drummers, according to the imagination of the beholder; but
it never was aught but a nuisance. Whatever we needed always reposed
in the bottom-most suitcase, and rather than dig down, we did without.
Next time, I shall know better. A three-piece khaki suit, composed of
breeches, short skirt split front and back, and many-pocketed Norfolk
coat, worn with knee-high elk boots, does for daily wear in camping,
riding or driving. It sheds rain, heat and cold, does not wrinkle when
slept in, and only mellows with successive accumulations of dirt. For
dress occasions, a dark jersey coat and skirt, wool stockings and
low oxfords is magnificence itself. A heavy and a light sweater, two
flannel and a half dozen cotton or linen shirts, and sufficient plain
underwear suffice for a year’s knocking about. Add to this a simple
afternoon frock of non-wrinkling material, preferably black, and no
event finds you unprepared.
Our trunk made us trouble from the start. The administration had given
us to understand we might ship it with the car, but at the last moment
this was prevented by a constitutional amendment. Accordingly, an hour
before our boat left, we took the trunk to the line on which we were to
travel, and shipped it as personal baggage. It was only the first of
many experiences which persuaded us to adopt the frontiersman’s motto,
“Pack light.”
Every true yarn of adventure should begin with a sea voyage. The
wharves with their heaped cargoes tying together the four ends of the
world, the hoisting of the gang-plank, the steamer flirtations, the
daily soundings, the eternal schools of porpoises, the menus with their
ensuing disillusionments, and above all, the funny, funny passengers,
each a drollery to all the others,--all these commonplaces of voyage
are invested by the mighty sea with its own importance and mystery.
On board, besides ourselves, were some very funny people, and some
merely funny. A swarthy family of Spaniards next us passed through all
the successive shades of yellow and green, but throughout they were
gay, eating oranges and chanting pretty little Castilian folk-songs. At
table sat a man wearing a black and white striped shirt, of the variety
known as “boiled,” a black and white striped collar of a different
pattern, and a bright blue necktie thickly studded with daisies and
asterisks. He looked, otherwise, like a burglar without his jimmy,
especially when we saw him by moonlight glowering prognathously through
a porthole. He turned out to be only a playwright and journalist, with
a specialty for handing out misinformation on a different subject each
meal.
The stout lady, the flirtatious purser--why is he of all classes of
men the most amorous?--the bounder, the bride and groom, the flappers
of both sexes, the drummer, the motherly stewardess and the sardonic
steward were all present. And why does the sight of digestive anguish
bring out the maternal in the female, and only profanity in the male?
Our plump English stewardess cooed over us, helpless in upper and lower
berths; our steward always rocked with silent mirth, and muttered, “My
God!”
Our own stout lady was particularly rare. She appeared coquettishly
the first calm day off Florida, in a pink gingham dress, a large black
rosary draped prominently upon her,--which did not much heighten her
resemblance to a Mother Superior, owing to her wearing an embroidered
Chinese kimona and a monkey coat over it, and flirting so gayly with
the boys. On the Galveston train later, we heard her say helplessly,
“Porter, my trunk is follering me to Gal_ves_ton. How shall I stop
it?” She could have stopped an express van merely by standing in front
of it, but we did not suggest this remedy. The picture of a docile
Saratoga lumbering doggedly at her rear was too much for words.
As to the purser, we left him severely alone. We did not feel we could
flirt with him in the style to which he had been accustomed.
The last night of the voyage, when the clear bright green of the Gulf
of Mexico gave place to the turbulent coffee color of the Mississippi,
our stewardess knocked.
“On account of the river, miss, we don’t bathe tonight.” It was a
small tragedy for us. Earlier in the voyage we could not bear to see
the water sliding up and down in the tub,--so much else was sliding
up and down. It was on one of those days that the stewardess informed
us that there were “twenty-seven ladies sick on this deck, to say
nothing of twenty-four below,” and asked us how we would like a little
piece of bacon. We firmly refused the bacon, but the Gilbertian lilt
of her remark inspired us to composing a ballad with the refrain,
“Twenty-seven sea-sick ladies we.”
The river which deprived us of our baths presented at five next morning
a bleak and sluggish appearance. I missed Simon Legree and the niggers
singing plantation melodies, but it may have been too early in the day.
Most picturesque, busy, low-lying river it was, nevertheless, banked
with shipyards, newly built wharves, coaling stations, elevators,
steamship docks--evidences to a provincial Northerner that the South,
wakened perhaps by the Great War, has waited for none, but has forged
ahead bent on her own development, achieving her independence--this
time an economic independence. To the insular Manhattanite, who thinks
of New York as the Eastern gate of this country, and San Francisco as
the Western, the self-sufficiency, the bustle and the cosmopolitanism
of the Mississippi’s delta land, even seen through a six A.M. drizzle,
gives a surprising jolt.
Six months later we were to cross the Mississippi near the headwaters
not many miles from Canada. More lovely, there at the North, its broad,
clear placid waters shadowed by green forests and high bluffs, it
invites for a voyage of discovery.
On both banks of the river, whose forgotten raft and steamboat life
Mark Twain made famous, are now being built concrete boulevards,
designed to bisect the country from Canada to the Gulf. Huck Finns
of the near future will be able to explore this great artery through
what is now perhaps the least known and least accessible region of the
country.
New Orleans, those who knew it twenty or forty years ago will tell you,
has become modern and ugly, has lost its atmosphere. Drive through the
newer and more pretentious outskirts, and you will believe all you are
told. You will see the usual Southwestern broad boulevard, pointed
with staccato palmettos, but otherwise arid of verdure, bordered with
large, hideous mansions which completely overpower an occasional gem of
low-verandahed loveliness, relic of happier days. For such grandeur the
driver of our jitney,--undoubtedly the one used by Gen. Jackson during
his defence of the city,--had an infallible instinct. I don’t think he
missed one atrocity during the whole morning’s drive. Yet we passed one
quite charming “colored” dwelling,--a low rambling cottage covered with
vines, proudly made of glittering, silvery tin!
But in the old French or Creole quarters you find all the storied
charm of the city intact,--a bit of Italy, of Old Spain, of the milder
and sunnier parts of France, jumbled together with the romance of the
West Indies. In the cobbled narrow pavements, down which mule teams
still clatter more often than motors, the mellow old houses, with iron
balconies beautifully wrought, broad verandahs, pink, green or orange
plastered walls, peeling to show the red brick underneath,--shady
courtyards, high-walled with fountains and stone Cupids, glimpsed
through low arched doorways, markets like those of Cannes and Avignon,
piled with luscious fruits, crawfish, crates of live hens, strings
of onions, and barrels of huge oysters,--oh, the oysters of New
Orleans,--here lies the fascination of the town.
Set down close to the wharves is this jumble of old streets, so close
that the funnels of docked tramps mingle with the shop chimneys. From
the wharves drift smells of the sea and sea-commerce, to join the
smells of the old town. It is a subtle blend of peanuts, coffee, cooked
food, garlic, poultry,--a raw, pungent, bracing odor, inclining one to
thoughts of eating. And just around the corner is Antoine’s.
Eating? There should be a word coined to distinguish ordinary
eating from eating at Antoine’s. The building is modest and the
lettering plain, as befits the dignity of the place. The interior,
plainly finished and lined with mirrors, resembles any one of five
hundred un-noteworthy restaurants where business New York eats to
get filled. There the resemblance stops. A sparkle, restrained and
sober withal, rests on the mirrors, the glasses and the silver. The
floors and woodwork have a well scrubbed look. The linen is carefully
looked after, the china business-like; everything decent, adequate,
spotless,--nothing to catch the eye. It is not visual aestheticism
which lures us here, or causes the millionaire Manhattanite to order
his private car to take him to Antoine’s for one hour of bliss. Antoine
is an interior decorator of subtler but more potent distinction. And I
would go even farther than that New York multi-millionaire whose name
spells Aladdin to Americans; for such a meal as Antoine served us that
morning, I would travel the same distance in one of those wife-killing
contrivances which are the bane of every self-respecting motorist.
The waiters at Antoine’s are not hit-or-miss riff-raff sent up by
a waiters’ employment bureau. They are grandfatherly courtiers who
make you feel that the responsibility for your digestion lies in
their hands, and for the good name of the house in yours. Old New
Orleans knows them by name, and recognizes the special dignity of
their priesthood, with the air of saluting equals. Their lifework is
your pleasure,--the procuring of your inner contentment. You could
trust your family’s honor to them, or the ordering of your meal. Only
at Antoine’s and in the pages of Leonard Merrick does one find such
servitors.
We accepted our Joseph’s suggestion that we allow him to bring us some
of the specialties of the house. It was a wise decision,--from the
prelude of oysters Rockefeller,--seared in a hot oven with a sauce of
chives, butter and crumbs,--to the benediction of café brulôt. Between
came a marvel of a fish, covered with Creole sauce, a sublimated
chicken _a la King_, a salad and a sweet, all nicely proportioned to
each other, but their memory was crowned by the café brulôt. In came
Joseph, like all three Kings of Egypt, bearing a tall silver dish
on a silver platter. The platter contained blazing brandy, the dish
orange peel, lemon peel, cloves, cinnamon stick, four lumps of sugar,
and two spoonfuls of brandy. Joseph stirred them into a melted nectar,
then with a long silver ladle and the manner of a vestal virgin, swept
the blazing brandy into the mixture above, and stood like a benevolent
demon over the flame. An underling brought a pot of black coffee, which
was added little by little to the fiery mixture, and stirred. Finally
it was ladled into two small glasses. We swam in Swinburnian bliss. We
paid our bill, and departed to a new New Orleans, where the secondhand
stores were filled with genuine, priceless antiques, the pavings easy
on our weary feet, the skies, as the meteorologist in the popular song
observed, raining violets and daffodils. Mr. Volstead never tasted café
brulôt.