descended to the estate of an ordinary corner saloon. Only ordinary
corner saloons are not ordinarily housed in structures of this sort. You
can see houses like this in the south of France and in Spain--so I am
told. For below Canal street is both French and Spanish. Remember, if
you please, that the French of the Southland shared the same hard fate
of their countrymen in that far northern valley of the great St.
Lawrence--neglect. The French are the most loyal people on earth. Their
fidelity to their language and their customs for nearly two centuries
proves that. That faith, steadfast through the tragedy of the
indifference and neglect of their mother country, doubly proves it. And
the only difference between the Frenchman of Quebec and the Frenchman of
New Orleans was that in the South the Spaniard was injected into the
problem. But the Frenchman in the South was not less loyal than his
fellow-countryman of the North. A dissolute king sitting in the wreck of
his great family in the suburbs of Paris might barter away the title of
his lands, but no Louis could ever trade away the loyalty of the older
French of New Orleans to their land and its institutions. In such a
faith was the French quarter of the city born. In such faith has it
survived, these many years. And perhaps the very greatest episodes in
the history of the city were in those twenty days of November, 1803,
when the French flag displaced the Spanish in the old Place d'Armes, to
be replaced only by the strange banner of a newborn nation which was
given the opportunity of working out the destiny of the new France.
So it was the Spaniard who took his part in the shaping of the French
quarter of New Orleans. You can see the impress of his architects in the
stout old houses that were built after two disastrous and wide-spread
fires in the closing years of the eighteenth century--even in the great
lion of the town; the Cabildo which rises from what was formerly the
Place d'Armes and is today Jackson square. And the old Absinthe House,
with its curiously wrought and half-covered courtyard is one of these
old-time Spanish houses.
Now forget about the absinthe--as the rest of the French folk of the
land are beginning to forget it--and turn your attention to the
courtyards. In another old Southern city--Charleston--the oldest houses
shut the glories of their lovely-aging gardens from the sight of vulgar
passers-by upon the street by means of uncompromising high fences. The
old houses of New Orleans do more. Their gardens are shielded from the
crowded, noisy, horrid streets by the houses themselves. And he who runs
through those crowded, noisy, horrid streets, must really walk, for only
so will he catch brief glimpses of the glories of those fading courtyard
gardens.
Sometimes, if you have the courage of your convictions and the proper
fashion of seizing opportunity by the throat you may wander into one of
the tunnel-like gateways of one of these very old houses. No one will
halt you.
Here it is--old France in new America. The tunnel-like way from the
street is shady and cool. From it leads a stair to the right and the
upper floor of the house, a stair up which a regiment might have walked,
and down which the old figure of a Balzac might descend this moment
without ever a single jarring upon your soul. The stair ends in a great
oval hall, whose scarlet paper has long since faded but still remains a
memory of the glories of the days that were. The carved entablatures
over the doors, the bravado of cornice and rosette where the plaster has
not finally fallen, proclaim the former grandeur of this apartment. And
in some former day a great chandelier must have hung from the center of
its graceful ceiling. Today--some one of the neighboring antique stores
has reaped its reward, and a candle set in a wall-lantern is its sole
illumination. A shabby room will not bear the glories of a gay
chandelier. And the old Frenchman and his wife who live in the place
have all but forgotten. They have a parrot and a sewing-machine and what
are the glories of the past to them?
Of course, such a house must have its courtyard. And if the huge
copper-bound tank is dry, and the water has not forced its way through
the battered fountain these many years, if the old exquisite tiles of
the house long since went to form the roof of the new garage of some
smart new American place up the river--the magnolia still blossoms
magnificently among the decay, and Madame's skill with her jessamine and
her geraniums would confound the imported tricks of those English
gardeners in the elaborate new places.
Here then is the old France in the new land--the priceless treasure that
New Orleans wears at her very heart. And here in the very heart of that
heart is an ugly old building boarded up by offensively brilliant
advertising signs.
[Illustration: You still see white steamboats at the New Orleans levee]
An ugly old building did we say, with rough glance at its rusty façades?
Can one be young and beautiful forever? Rusty and beautiful--oh no, do
not scorn the old St. Louis Hotel for following the most normal of all
the laws of Nature. For within this moldering and once magnificent
tavern history was made. In one of its ancient rooms a President of the
United States was unmade, while in another chamber human life was
bought and sold with no more concern than the old Creole lady on the far
corner shows when she sells you the little statues of the Blessed
Virgin.
These wonders are still to be seen--for the asking. The _concierge_ of
the old hotel is a courteous lady who with her servant dwells in the two
most habitable of its remaining rooms. There is no use knocking at the
hotel door for she is very, very deaf indeed, poor lady. But if you will
brave a stern "No Admittance" sign and ascend the graceful winding stair
for a single flight--such a stair as has rarely come to our sight--you
will find her--ready and willing. One by one she shows you the rooms,
faded and disreputable, for the hotel is in a fearful state of
disrepair. The plaster is falling here and there, and where it still
adheres to the lath the old-time paper hangs in long shreds, like giant
stalactites, from the ceiling. Once, for a decade in the "late
eighties," an effort was made to revive the hotel and its former
glories--a desperate and a hopeless effort--and the pitiful
"innovations" of that régime still show. But when you close your eyes
you do not see the St. Louis Hotel of that decade, but rather in those
wonderful twenty years before the coming of the cruel war. In those days
New Orleans was the gayest city in the new world, uptilting its saucy
nose at such heavy eastern towns as New York or Boston. Its wharves were
crowded with the ships of the world, the river-boat captains fought for
the opportunity of bringing the mere noses of their craft against the
overcrowded levee. Cotton--it was the greatest thing of the world. New
Orleans was cotton and cotton was the king of the world.
No wonder then that the St. Louis Hotel could say when it was new, that
it had the finest ballrooms in the world. They still show them to you,
in piecemeal, for they were long since cut up into separate rooms. The
great rotunda was ruined by a temporary floor at the time the state of
Louisiana bought the old hotel for a capitol, and used the rotunda for
its fiery Senate sessions.
All these things the _concierge_ will relate to you--and more. Then she
takes you down the old main-stair, gently lest its rotting treads and
risers should crumble under too stout foot-falls. Into the cavernous
bottom of the rotunda she leads you. It is encumbered with the
steam-pipes of that after era, blocked with rubbish, very dark withal.
The _concierge_, with a fine sense of the dramatic, catches up a bit of
newspaper, lights it, thrusts it ahead as a lighted torch.
"The old slave mart," she says, in a well-trained stage whisper, and
thrusts the blazing paper up at full arm's length. As the torch goes
higher, her voice goes lower: "Beyond the auction block, the slaves'
prison."
As a matter of real fact, the "slaves' prison" is probably nothing more
or less than the negro quarters that every oldtime southern hotel used
to provide for the slaves of its planter patrons. But the _concierge_
does not overlook dramatic possibilities. And she is both too deaf and
too much a lady to be contradicted. She has given you full value for the
handful of pennies she expects from you. And as for you--a feeling of
something like indignation wells within you that the city of New Orleans
has permitted the stoutly built old hotel to fall into such ruin. In an
era which is doing much to preserve the monuments of the earlier
America, it has been overlooked.
Such resentment softens a little further down. You are in Jackson square
now--the Place d'Armes of the old French days--and facing there the
three great lions that have stood confronting that open space since
almost the beginning of New Orleans. The great cathedral flanked by the
Cabilda and the Presbytery is not, of itself, particularly beautiful or
impressive. But it is interesting to remember that within it on a
memorable occasion Andrew Jackson sat at mass--interesting because he
had just fought the battle of New Orleans and ended the Second War with
England. And the _Te Deum_ that went up at that time was truly a
thankful one. The Cabilda and the Presbytery, invested as they are with
rare historical interest, are more worth while.
But to our mind the chief delight of Jackson square are the two long
red-brick buildings that completely fill the north and south sides of
that delectable retreat. In themselves these old fellows are not
architecturally important, although by close inspection you may find in
the traceries of their gallery rails the initials of the wife of the
Spanish grandee--Madama de Pontalba--historically they are not
distinguished, unless count the fact that in one of them dwelt Jenny
Lind upon the occasion of a not-to-be-forgotten engagement in New
Orleans--but as the sides of what is perhaps the most delightful square
in the entire Southland they are most satisfying. Jackson square has
fallen from its high estate. Its gardens were once set out in formal
fashion for the elect of New Orleans, nowadays they are visited by
swarms of the cheaper French and Italian lodgers of the neighborhood,
and scrawny felines from the old Pontalba buildings use it as a
congregating place. But, even in decadent days, its fascination is none
the less.
Beyond Jackson square rests the French market, the very index to all
that New Orleans' love of good eating that has become so closely linked
with the city. The market-scheme of the city as this is being written is
being greatly revised. Up to the present time the market-men have been
autocrats. The grocers of the city have been forbidden to sell fresh
fruits or vegetables; if a retailer be audacious enough to wish to set
out with a private market, he must be a certain considerable number of
squares distant from a public institution--and pay to the city a heavy
license fee as penalty for his audacity. Nor is that all. The consumer
is forbidden to purchase direct from the producer, even though the
producer's wagon be backed up against the market curb in most inviting
fashion. New Orleans recognizes the middleman and protects him--or has
protected him until the present time. Even peddlers have been barred
from hawking their wares through her streets until noon--when the public
markets close and the housewives have practically completed their
purchases for the day.
But--banish the thoughts of the markets as economic problems, cease
puzzling your blessed brains with that eternal problem of the
cost-of-living. Consider the French market as a truly delectable spot.
Go to it early in the morning, when the sun is beginning to poke his way
down into the narrow streets and the shadows are heavy under the
galleries. Breakfast at the hotel? Not a bit of it.
You take your coffee and doughnuts alongside the market-men--at long and
immaculate counters in the market-house. And when you are done you will
take your oath that you have never before tasted coffee. The coffee-man
bends over you--he is a coffee-man descended from coffee-men, for these
stalls of the famous old markets are almost priceless heritages that
descend from generation to generation. In these days they never go out
of a single family.
"_Café lait?_" says the coffee-man.
You nod assent.
Two long-spouted cans descend upon your cup. From one the coffee, from
the other creamy milk come simultaneously, with a skill that comes of
long years of practice on the part of the coffee-man.
That is all--_café lait_ and doughnuts. They make just as good doughnuts
in Boston, but New England has never known the joys of _café lait_. If
it had, it would never return to its oldtime coffee habits. And the
older markets of Boston do not see the fine ladies of the town coming to
them on Sunday morning, after mass, negro servants behind, to do their
marketing, themselves.
Hours of joy in this market--the food capital of a rich land of milk and
honey. After those hours of joy--breakfast at the Madame's.
The Madame began--no one knows just how many years ago--by serving an
eleven o'clock breakfast to the market-men, skilled in food as purveyors
as most critical of the food they eat. The Madame realized that
problem--and met it. So well did she meet it that the fame of her
cookery spread outside the confines of the market-houses, and city folk
and tourists began drifting to her table. In a few years she had
established an institution. And today her breakfast is as much a part of
New Orleans as the old City Hall or the new Court House.
She has been dead several years--dear old gastronomic French lady--but
her institution, after the fashion of some institutions, lives after
her. It still stands at the edge of the market and it still serves one
meal each day--the traditional breakfast. It is sad to relate that it
has become a little commercialized--they sell souvenir spoons and
cook-books--but you can shut your eyes to these and still see the place
in all of its glories.
A long, low room at the back of and above a little saloon, reached from
the side-door of the saloon by a turning and rickety stair. A meagerly
equipped table in the long, low room, from which a few steps lead up to
a smoky but immensely clean kitchen. From that kitchen--odors. Odors?
What a name for incense, the promise of preparation. You sometimes catch
glimpses of busy women, fat and uncorseted. Cooks? Perish the words.
These are artists, if artists have ever really been.
Finally--and upon the stroke of eleven--the breakfast. It shall not be
described here in intimate detail for you, dear reader, will not be
sitting at the Madame's hospitable table as you read these lines. It is
enough for you to know that the liver is unsurpassable and the
coffee--the coffee gets its flavor from an adroit sweetening of cognac
and of sugar. What matter the souvenirs now? The breakfast has lost none
of its savor through the passing of the years.
For here is New Orleans where it seems impossible to get a poor meal.
There is many and many an interior city of size and pretentious
marbleized and flunkeyized hotels of which that may not be said. But in
New Orleans an appreciation of good cookery is an appreciation of the
art of a real profession. And of her restaurants there is an infinite
variety--La Louisiane, Galatoire's, Antoine's, Begue's, Brasco's--the
list runs far too long to be printed here. Nor does the space of this
page permit a recountal of the dishes themselves--the world-famed
_gumbos_, the crawfish _bisque_, the red-snapper stuffed with oysters,
the crabs and the shrimps. And lest we should be fairly suspected of
trying to emulate a cook-book, turn your back upon the fine little
restaurants, where noisy orchestras and unspeakable _cabarets_ have not
yet dared to enter, and see still a little more of the streets of the
old French quarter.
More courtyards, more old houses, a venerable hall now occupied by a
sisterhood of the Roman church but formerly gay with the "quadroon
balls" which gave spicy romance to all this quarter. And here, rising
high above the narrow thrust of Bourbon street, the French Opera, for be
it remembered that New Orleans had her opera house firmly established
when New York still regarded hers as a dubious experiment. To come into
the old opera house, builded after the impressive fashion of architects
of another time, with its real horseshoe and its five great tiers rising
within it--is again to see the old New Orleans living in the new. It is
to see the exclusive Creoles--perhaps the most exclusive folk in all
America--half showing themselves in the shadowy recesses of their boxes.
And to be in that venerable structure upon the night of Mardi Gras is to
stand upon the threshold of a fairy world.
* * * * *
It is not meet that the details of the greatest annual carnival that
America has ever known should be fully described here. It is enough here
and now to say that New Orleans merely exists between these great
parties at the eve of each Lent; that nearly a twelvemonth is given to
preparations for the Mardi Gras. One _festa_ is hardly done before plans
are being made for the next--rumor runs slyly up and down the narrow
streets, _costumiers_ are being pledged to inviolate secrecy, strange
preparatory sounds emerge from supposedly abandoned sheds and houses,
rumors multiply, the air is surcharged with secrecy. Finally _the_ night
of nights. Canal street, which every loyal resident of New Orleans
believes to be the finest parade street in all the world, is ablaze with
the incandescence of electricity, a-jam with humanity. For a week the
trains have been bringing the folk in from half-a-dozen neighboring
states by the tens of thousands. There is not a single parish of
venerable Louisiana without representation; and more than a fair
sprinkling of tourists from the North and from overseas.
Finally--after Expectancy has almost given the right hand to Doubt, the
fanfare of trumpets, the outriders of Parade. From somewhere has come
Rex and The Queen and all the Great and all the Hilariously Funny and
the rest besides. From the supposedly abandoned sheds and houses, from
the _costumiers_? Do not dare to venture that, oh uncanny and worldly
minded soul!
Fairyland never emerged from old sheds, a King may not even dream of a
_costumier_. From thin air, from the seventh sense, the land of the
Mysterious, this King and Queen and all their cavalcade. Then, too, the
Royal Palace--the historic French Opera House floored and transformed
for a night. More lights, more color, the culinary products of the best
chefs of all the land working under a stupendous energy, music, dancing,
white shirts, white shoulders, gayety, beauty--for tomorrow is Ash
Wednesday, and Catholic New Orleans takes its Lent as seriously as it
gaily takes the joyousness of its carnivals.
* * * * *
For three-quarters of a century these carnivals have been the outspoken
frivols of the old French lady by the bend of the yellow river. In all
that time the carnival has progressed until it today is the outward
expression of the joyousness of a joyous city. In all that time did we
say? There was an interregnum--the Four Years. In the Four Years the
little French restaurants were closed, the lights at the Opera
extinguished--there could be no Carnival, for Tragedy sat upon the
Southland. And in a great house in Lafayette square there sat a man from
Massachusetts who ruled with more zeal than kindness. And that man New
Orleans has not forgotten--not even in the half-century that has all but
healed the sores of the Four Years.
"It is funny," you begin, "that New Orleans should make so much of the
Boston Club, when Butler came from--"
It is not funny. You saw the Boston Club which vies for social supremacy
in the old French city with the Pickwick Club, there in Canal street, at
least you saw its fine old white house in that broad thoroughfare. It
is not funny. Your New Orleans man tells you--courteously but clearly.
"We named our club from that game," he says.
"Boston was a fine game, sir," he adds. "And that without ever a thought
of that town up in Massachusetts."
* * * * *
From a carnival to a graveyard is a far cry indeed, and yet the
cemeteries of New Orleans are as distinctive of her as her Mardi Gras
festivities. We have spoken of the river and the great part it has
played in the history of the city that rests so close to its treacherous
shore. And it is that very treacherous shore that makes it so
exceedingly difficult to arrange a cemetery in the soft and marshy soil
on which the city is built.
So it is that the New Orleans' cemeteries are veritable cities of the
dead. For the bodies that are buried within them are placed above the
ground, not under them. Tombs and mausoleums are the rule, not the
exception, and where a family is not prosperous enough to own even the
simplest of tombs, it will probably join with other families or with
some association in the ownership of a house in the city of the dead.
And for those who have not even this opportunity there are the ovens.
The ovens are built in the great walls that encompass the older
cemeteries and make them seem like crumbling fortresses. Four tiers
high, each oven large enough to accommodate a coffin--the sealed fronts
bear the epitaphs of those who have known the New Orleans of other days.
A motley company they are--poets, pirates, judges, planters, soldiers,
priests--around them the scarred regiments of those who lived their
lives without the haunting touch of Fame upon the shoulder--no one will
even venture a guess as to the number that have been laid away within a
single one of these cities.
And when you are done with seeing the graves of Jean Lafitte or
Dominique You--why is it that the average mind pricks up with a more
quickened interest at the tomb of a pirate than at a preacher--the
Portuguese sexton begins plucking at the loosely laid bricks of one of
these abandoned ovens. Abandoned? He lifts out a skull, this twentieth
century Yorick and bids you peep through the aperture. Like the
_concierge_ of the old hotel, looking is made more easy from a blazing
folding copy of the morning _Picayune_. In the place are seemingly
countless skulls, with lesser bones.
"He had good teeth, this fellow," coughs the Portuguese.
You do not answer. Finally--
"Do they bury all of them this way?"
Not at first, you find. The strict burial laws of New Orleans demand
that the body shall be carefully sealed and kept within the oven for at
least a year. After that the sexton may open the place, burn the coffin
and thrust the bones into the rear of the place. And New Orleans can see
nothing unusual in the custom.
* * * * *
"New Orleans is more like the old San Francisco than any other community
I have ever seen," says the Californian. Not in any architectural sense
and of course two cities could hardly be further apart in location than
the city in the flat marshlands whose trees are below the level of the
yellow river at flood-tide, and the new city that rises on mountainous
slopes from the clear waters of the Golden Gate. But there is an
intangible likeness about New Orleans and his city that was but never
again can be, that strikes to the soul of the Californian. Perhaps he
has come to know something of the real life of the Creoles--of those
strange folk who even today can say that they have lived long lives in
New Orleans and never gone south of Canal street. Perhaps he has met
some of that little company of old French gentlemen who keep their
faded black suits in as trim condition as their own good manners, and
who scrimp and save through years and months that they may visit--not
Chicago or New York--but Paris, Paris the unutterable and the
unforgettable.
"New Orleans is more like the old San Francisco than any other community
that I have ever seen," reiterates the Californian. "It is more like the
old than the new San Francisco can ever become."
And there is a moral in that which the San Franciscan speaks. In the
twinkling of an eye the old San Francisco disappeared--forever. Slowly,
but surely, the old New Orleans is beginning to fade away. There are
indubitable signs of this already. When it shall have gone, our last
stronghold of old French customs and manners shall have gone. One of the
most fascinating chapters in the story of our Southland will have been
closed.
16
THE CITY OF THE LITTLE SQUARES