Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada. Warner Charles Dudley
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out with flower-pots and vines.
The glimpses of street life are always entertaining, because unconscious, while full of character. It may be a Creole court-yard, the walls draped with vines, flowers blooming in bap-hazard disarray, and a group of pretty girls sewing and chatting, and stabbing the passer-by with a charmed glance. It may be a cotton team in the street, the mules, the rollicking driver, the creaking cart. It may be a single figure, or a group in the market or on the levee—a slender yellow girl sweeping up the grains of rice, a colored gleaner recalling Ruth; an ancient darky asleep, with mouth open, in his tipped-up two-wheeled cart, waiting for a job; the “solid South,” in the shape of an immense “aunty” under a red umbrella, standing and contemplating the river; the broad-faced women in gay bandannas behind their cake-stands; a group of levee hands about a rickety table, taking their noonday meal of pork and greens; the blind-man, capable of sitting more patiently than an American Congressman, with a dog trained to hold his basket for the pennies of the charitable; the black stalwart vender of tin and iron utensils, who totes in a basket, and piled on his head, and strung on his back, a weight of over two hundred and fifty pounds; and negro women who walk erect with baskets of clothes or enormous bundles balanced on their heads, smiling and “jawing,” unconscious of their burdens. These are the familiar figures of a street life as varied and picturesque as the artist can desire.
New Orleans amuses itself in the winter with very good theatres, and until recently has sustained an excellent French opera. It has all the year round plenty of cafes chantants, gilded saloons, and gambling-houses, and more than enough of the resorts upon which the police are supposed to keep one blind eye. “Back of town,” towards Lake Pontchartrain, there is much that is picturesque and blooming, especially in the spring of the year—the charming gardens of the Jockey Club, the City Park, the old duelling-ground with its superb oaks, and the Bayou St. John with its idling fishing-boats, and the colored houses and plantations along the banks—a piece of Holland wanting the Dutch windmills. On a breezy day one may go far for a prettier sight than the river-bank and esplanade at Carrollton, where the mighty coffee-colored flood swirls by, where the vast steamers struggle and cough against the stream, or swiftly go with it round the bend, leaving their trail of smoke, and the delicate line of foliage against the sky on the far opposite shore completes the outline of an exquisite landscape. Suburban resorts much patronized, and reached by frequent trains, are the old Spanish Fort and the West End of Lake Pontchartrain. The way lies through cypress swamp and palmetto thickets, brilliant at certain seasons with fleur-de-lis. At each of these resorts are restaurants, dancing-halls, promenade-galleries, all on a large scale; boat-houses, and semi-tropical gardens very prettily laid out in walks and labyrinths, and adorned with trees and flowers. Even in the heat of summer at night the lake is sure to offer a breeze, and with waltz music and moonlight and ices and tinkling glasses with straws in them and love’s young dream, even the ennuyé globe-trotter declares that it is not half bad.
The city, indeed, offers opportunity for charming excursions in all directions. Parties are constantly made up to visit the river plantations, to sail up and down the stream, or to take an outing across the lake, or to the many lovely places along the coast. In the winter, excursions are made to these places, and in summer the well-to-do take the sea-air in cottages, at such places as Mandeville across the lake, or at such resorts on the Mississippi as Pass Christian.
I crossed the lake one spring day to the pretty town of Mandeville, and then sailed up the Tehefuncta River to Covington. The winding Tchefuncta is in character like some of the narrow Florida streams, has the same luxuriant overhanging foliage, and as many shy lounging alligators to the mile, and is prettier by reason of occasional open glades and large moss-draped live-oaks and China-trees. From the steamer landing in the woods we drove three miles through a lovely open pine forest to the town. Covington is one of the oldest settlements in the State, is the centre of considerable historic interest, and the origin of several historic families. The land is elevated a good deal above the coast-level, and is consequently dry. The town has a few roomy oldtime houses, a mineral spring, some pleasing scenery along the river that winds through it, and not much else. But it is in the midst of pine woods, it is sheltered from all “northers,” it has the soft air, but not the dampness, of the Gulf, and is exceedingly salubrious in all the winter months, to say nothing of the summer. It has lately come into local repute as a health resort, although it lacks sufficient accommodations for the entertainment of many strangers. I was told by some New Orleans physicians that they regarded it as almost a specific for pulmonary diseases, and instances were given of persons in what was supposed to be advanced stages of lung and bronchial troubles who had been apparently cured by a few months’ residence there; and invalids are, I believe, greatly benefited by its healing, soft, and piny atmosphere.
I have no doubt, from what I hear and my limited observation, that all this coast about New Orleans would be a favorite winter resort if it had hotels as good as, for instance, that at Pass Christian. The region has many attractions for the idler and the invalid. It is, in the first place, interesting; it has a good deal of variety of scenery and of historical interest; there is excellent fishing and shooting; and if the visitor tires of the monotony of the country, he can by a short ride on cars or a steamer transfer himself for a day or a week to a large and most hospitable city, to society, the club, the opera, balls, parties, and every variety of life that his taste craves. The disadvantage of many Southern places to which our Northern regions force us is that they are uninteresting, stupid, and monotonous, if not malarious. It seems a long way from New York to New Orleans, but I do not doubt that the region around the city would become immediately a great winter resort if money and enterprise were enlisted to make it so.
New Orleans has never been called a “strait-laced” city; its Sunday is still of the Continental type; but it seems to me free from the socialistic agnosticism which flaunts itself more or less in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago; the tone of leading Presbyterian churches is distinctly Calvinistic, one perceives comparatively little of religious speculation and doubt, and so far as I could see there is harmony and entire social good feeling between the Catholic and Protestant communions. Protestant ladies assist at Catholic fairs, and the compliment is returned by the society ladies of the Catholic faith when a Protestant good cause is to be furthered by a bazaar or a “pink tea.” Denominational lines seem to have little to do with social affiliations. There may be friction in the management of the great public charities, but on the surface there is toleration and united good-will. The Catholic faith long had the prestige of wealth, family, and power, and the education of the daughters of Protestant houses in convent schools tended to allay prejudice. Notwithstanding the reputation New Orleans has for gayety and even frivolity—and no one can deny the fast and furious living of ante-bellum days—it possesses at bottom an old-fashioned religious simplicity. If any one thinks that “faith” has died out of modern life, let him visit the mortuary chapel of St. Roch. In a distant part of the town, beyond the street of the Elysian Fields, and on Washington avenue, in a district very sparsely built up, is the Campo Santo of the Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity. In this foreign-looking cemetery is the pretty little Gothic Chapel of St. Roch, having a background of common and swampy land. It is a brown stuccoed edifice, wholly open in front, and was a year or two ago covered with beautiful ivy. The small interior is paved in white marble, the windows are stained glass, the side-walls are composed of tiers of vaults, where are buried the members of certain societies, and the spaces in the wall and in the altar area are thickly covered with votive offerings, in wax and in naive painting—contributed by those who have been healed by the intercession of the saints. Over the altar is the shrine of St. Roch—a cavalier, staff in hand, with his clog by his side, the faithful animal which accompanied this eighth-century philanthropist in his visitations to the plague-stricken people of Munich. Within the altar rail are rows of lighted candles, tended and renewed by the attendant, placed there by penitents or by seekers after the favor of the saint. On the wooden benches, kneeling, are ladies, servants, colored women, in silent prayer. One approaches the lighted, picturesque shrine through the formal rows of tombs, and comes there into an atmosphere of peace and faith. It is believed that miracles are daily wrought here, and one notices in all the gardeners, keepers, and attendants of the place the accent and demeanor of simple faith. On the wall hangs this inscription:
“O great St. Roch, deliver us, we beseech thee, from the scourges of God. Through thy intercessions preserve