THE old French part of New Orleans--anciently the Spanish part--
bears no resemblance to the American end of the city:
the American end which lies beyond the intervening
brick business-center. The houses are massed in blocks;
are austerely plain and dignified; uniform of pattern,
with here and there a departure from it with pleasant effect;
all are plastered on the outside, and nearly all have long,
iron-railed verandas running along the several stories.
Their chief beauty is the deep, warm, varicolored stain
with which time and the weather have enriched the plaster.
It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as natural
a look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds.
This charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated;
neither is it to be found elsewhere in America.
The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is often
exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful--with a large
cipher or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling,
intricate forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made,
and are now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable.
They are become BRIC-A-BRAC.
The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient
quarter of New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius,
the author of 'the Grandissimes.' In him the South has found
a masterly delineator of its interior life and its history.
In truth, I find by experience, that the untrained eye and
vacant mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge of it,
more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal
contact with it.
With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and illuminate,
a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vivid
sense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet fitful and darkling;
you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine shades or catch them
imperfectly through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it were,
of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague horizons
of Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted native.
We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices.
There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of it
as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has ever
been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the fact.
It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the Academy
of Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of the light by
the benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop except in the aisles.
The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole-bouquets on the premises
shows what might be done if they had the right kind of an agricultural head
to the establishment.
We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square in front of it;
the one dim with religious light, the other brilliant with the worldly sort,
and lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then we drove in the hot sun
through the wilderness of houses and out on to the wide dead level beyond,
where the villas are, and the water wheels to drain the town, and the commons
populous with cows and children; passing by an old cemetery where we were
told lie the ashes of an early pirate; but we took him on trust, and did
not visit him. He was a pirate with a tremendous and sanguinary history;
and as long as he preserved unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his
name and the grandeur of his ancient calling, homage and reverence were his
from high and low; but when at last he descended into politics and became
a paltry alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept.
When he died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he has
come into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman.
To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably forget
what he became.
Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road,
with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and there,
in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress,
top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as the
apple-trees in Japanese pictures--such was our course and the surroundings
of it. There was an occasional alligator swimming comfortably along
in the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored person on the bank,
flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still water and watching
for a bite.
And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels of
the usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around,
and the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the thresholds.
We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief dish the renowned
fish called the pompano, delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End and
to Spanish Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands,
take strolls in the open air under the electric lights,
go sailing on the lake, and entertain themselves in various
and sundry other ways.
We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the pompano.
Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the city.
He was in his last possible perfection there, and justified his fame.
In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish--large ones; as large
as one's thumb--delicate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled whitebait;
also shrimps of choice quality; and a platter of small soft-shell crabs
of a most superior breed. The other dishes were what one might get
at Delmonico's, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of can be had
in similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.
In the West and South they have a new institution--the Broom Brigade.
It is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume,
and go through the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket.
It is a very pretty sight, on private view. When they perform
on the stage of a theater, in the blaze of colored fires,
it must be a fine and fascinating spectacle. I saw them go through
their complex manual with grace, spirit, and admirable precision.
I saw them do everything which a human being can possibly do with a broom,
except sweep. I did not see them sweep. But I know they could learn.
What they have already learned proves that. And if they ever
should learn, and should go on the war-path down Tchoupitoulas
or some of those other streets around there, those thoroughfares
would bear a greatly improved aspect in a very few minutes.
But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would be really gained,
after all.
The drill was in the Washington Artillery building.
In this building we saw many interesting relics of the war.
Also a fine oil-painting representing Stonewall Jackson's
last interview with General Lee. Both men are on horseback.
Jackson has just ridden up, and is accosting Lee.
The picture is very valuable, on account of the portraits,
which are authentic. But, like many another historical picture,
it means nothing without its label. And one label will fit it
as well as another--
First Interview between Lee and Jackson.
Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.
Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee.
Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner.
Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner--with Thanks.
Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.
Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.
Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.
It tells ONE story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite
plainly and satisfactorily, 'Here are Lee and Jackson together.'
The artist would have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last
interview if he could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't
any way to do it. A good legible label is usually worth, for information,
a ton of significant attitude and expression in a historical picture.
In Rome, people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front
of the celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.'
It shows what a label can do. If they did not know the picture,
they would inspect it unmoved, and say, 'Young girl with hay fever;
young girl with her head in a bag.'
I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and
elisions as pleasing to my ear as they had formerly been.
A Southerner talks music. At least it is music to me,
but then I was born in the South. The educated Southerner
has no use for an r, except at the beginning of a word.
He says 'honah,' and 'dinnah,' and 'Gove'nuh,' and 'befo' the waw,'
and so on. The words may lack charm to the eye, in print,
but they have it to the ear. When did the r disappear
from Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear?
The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the North,
nor inherited from England. Many Southerners--most Southerners--
put a y into occasional words that begin with the k sound.
For instance, they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak
of playing k'yahds or of riding in the k'yahs. And they
have the pleasant custom--long ago fallen into decay in
the North--of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.'
Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, Suh',
'No, Suh.'
But there are some infelicities. Such as 'like' for 'as,'
and the addition of an 'at' where it isn't needed.
I heard an educated gentleman say, 'Like the flag-officer did.'
His cook or his butler would have said, 'Like the flag-officer done.'
You hear gentlemen say, 'Where have you been at?' And here is
the aggravated form--heard a ragged street Arab say it to a comrade:
'I was a-ask'n' Tom whah you was a-sett'n' at.' The very elect
carelessly say 'will' when they mean 'shall'; and many of them say,
'I didn't go to do it,' meaning 'I didn't mean to do it.'
The Northern word 'guess'--imported from England, where it
used to be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmen
as a Yankee original--is but little used among Southerners.
They say 'reckon.' They haven't any 'doesn't' in their language;
they say 'don't' instead. The unpolished often use 'went' for 'gone.'
It is nearly as bad as the Northern 'hadn't ought.' This reminds me
that a remark of a very peculiar nature was made here in my neighborhood
(in the North) a few days ago: 'He hadn't ought to have went.'
How is that? Isn't that a good deal of a triumph?
One knows the orders combined in this half-breed's architecture
without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other Southern.
To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, 'Where is John gone?'
This form is so common--so nearly universal, in fact--that if she
had used 'whither' instead of 'where,' I think it would have sounded
like an affectation.
We picked up one excellent word--a word worth traveling to New
Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word--'lagniappe.'
They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish--so they said.
We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in
the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second;
inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility
in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning,
but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose.
It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a 'baker's dozen.'
It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure.
The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city.
When a child or a servant buys something in a shop--
or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know--he finishes
the operation by saying--
'Give me something for lagniappe.'
The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root,
gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor--
I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely.
When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then
in New Orleans--and you say, 'What, again?--no, I've had enough;'
the other party says, 'But just this one time more--this is for lagniappe.'
When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high,
and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have been
better with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg pardon--
no harm intended,' into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for lagniappe.'
If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee down
the back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah,' and gets you another cup
without extra charge.
