Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (22 page)

The first parade was held in 1837. Because hostility existed between the Irish and the blacks over jobs and violence was likely, masks were forbidden. In 1839, the first float, a papier mâché creation, appeared. On it, a design called Chanticleer flapped its wings and crowed. On this occasion, it seems, lime was thrown on the crowds instead of flour. Trouble was brewing in the tempestuous heterogeneous population, more and more activities were becoming dangerous, and the press was calling for an end to Mardi Gras celebrations. A small group met soon after to form a secret society that would restore order and dignity to the New Orleans celebration.

In 1857, the
Mystik Krewe of Comus
was born, the organization that was credited with saving the institution of Carnival. Their tableau was an ambitious one based on
Paradise Lost.

In 1970, the
Twelfth Night Revelers
emerged, staging a tableau with the nebulous theme of the Tide of English Humor—quite a sophisticated project for a population reputed to be uneducated!

Rex, the King of Carnival,
whose parade takes place on Mardi Gras Day, held his first reign in 1872.
The New Orleans Bee,
a local newspaper, referred to the organizers as “swine-eating Saxons,” an insult directed at their English heritage, although there were undoubtedly some French Creoles among the organizers. In the same year, the
Knights of Momus
made their debut. Other krewes soon materialized, each with its own special parade and ball date.

The Lundi Gras arrival of Rex, incorporated in 1874. Near the Robert E. Lee statue, for 1879 Carnival. Print from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.
(Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

Rex
had been organized by forty enterprising men in just a few weeks, to honor the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff Alexandrovitch
of pre-revolutionary Russia, who made an amorous pursuit of Lydia Thompson, a singer, to New Orleans. Miss Thompson had sung a song in a burlesque show,
Bluebeard,
entitled “If Ever I Cease to Love
,” which the bands at the Mardi Gras
balls obligingly played and which became the theme song of the holiday. Although its lyrics include such nonsense as “If ever I cease to love,/ May oysters have legs and cows lay eggs,” it nevertheless remained the theme song of Mardi Gras for over a century.

Also introduced by Rex were the Mardi Gras colors: purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power. The most plausible explanation for their selection is that they were colors of the king’s costume in the production of Richard II, enacted by Lawrence Barrett, which was playing in the city at the time.

On the first day of Rex’s reign, the king rode a bay charger. Boeuf Gras, fatted beef (the symbol of Mardi Gras), was represented by Old Jeff, a bull from the stockyards. The krewe was masked as playing cards. The following year, there was such a demand for invitations to the Rex Ball that four thousand were mailed, and the ball had to be held in the Exposition Hall. In 1874, Rex arrived in the city by steamboat at the foot of Canal Street on the Monday before Mardi Gras. All the ships in the harbor tooted their whistles in greeting. To this day, there is a river parade. Rex is the only king not masked, since the original was, and all subsequent Kings of Carnival are, made up to look like Richard II in the play.

The
Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club
was founded in 1916 and is known for its black-faced krewe members wearing grass skirts. It is primarily an African-American carnival club. The krewe parades on Mardi Gras morning. The krewe’s signature “throw” is a hand-painted coconut.

The organizations are now so numerous that it takes two full weeks for all parades to roll, frequently several on the same date, and the balls now begin before Christmas, so that all may fit on the social calendar. Each organization pays for its own parade and ball. The parades are a gift to the people of the city; the balls are private parties for the entertainment of the friends of the krewe members.

The most prestigious krewes are those of Comus, Momus, Proteus, and Rex, who hold both parades and balls. The Twelfth Night Revelers, founded in 1870, is the oldest non-parading krewe. Other organizations that date back to the nineteenth century are the Atlanteans of 1890, the Elves of Oberon of 1894, Nereus of 1896, and Mithras of 1897. In 1871, the Twelfth Night Revelers established two carnival traditions: a queen was introduced for the first time at a carnival ball and the throwing of trinkets was begun by a member of the organization dressed as Santa Claus. Both traditions remain to this day in almost all carnival organizations.

Bacchus and Endymion, both begun in 1968, are organizations which have broken with tradition. Instead of selecting their monarchs from the lists of prominent social and civic leaders, they choose famous
personalities such as Danny Kaye
, Phil Harris
, Bob Hope
, Perry Como
,
Emeril Lagasse, Dan Aykroyd, and Kevin Costner. Entertainers such as Pete Fountain and Doc Severinson are on hand annually to play for the krewe members and their friends. These organizations are now big business and are often referred to as Super Krewes.

In 1982, the total cost of the Bacchus ball and parade was $980,000, according to Bacchus captain Augie Perez. Bacchus was formed in 1968 by a handful of businessmen who met to study the possibility of changing the whole concept of carnival organizations. Their floats are the largest ever constructed (super floats), costing as much as $100,000 for a single float.

The doubloon
, which is struck in the image of a particular Mardi Gras
organization, is a modern innovation begun by the Rex
Krewe in 1960. The 1960 Rex doubloon was designed by H. Alvin Sharpe
.
Today, more than fifty organizations throw doubloons to the spectators, and many have become collectors’ items.

The Rex and Comus jewels (crowns, scepters, necklaces, etc.) are made in Paris each year by an old firm of worldwide renown. They are allowed to be imported duty free because of the public nature of the celebrations.

On Mardi Gras
Day in the Garden District
and on St. Charles Avenue,
Mardi Gras flags fly before the homes of former kings of Rex.

No Mardi Gras
celebrations were held for two years during World War I, for four years during World War II, and in the year 1951 during the Korean War. In 1951, Mars (the god of war) paraded instead of Rex
.

The expansion of Mardi Gras
into the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s opened participation to more neighborhoods. Super Krewes such as Bacchus
and Endymion
helped modernize the festivities.

Parading krewes traditionally admitted new members of their own choice until 1992, when a ruling was passed by the City Council restricting the use of city streets for parading only to organizations admitting any and all applicants. Three of the city’s oldest krewes—Momus, Comus
, and Proteus—discontinued parading, although they continue to hold their Carnival
Balls. Others, such as Rex
and Hermes, complied with the new regulation and continued to parade. Orpheus, a beautiful parade, began to roll in 1994, replacing Proteus on its traditional Lundi Gras (Monday) night before Carnival.

Cemeteries

Some visitors to New Orleans are astonished at the sight of more than forty cemeteries of above-ground burial. This type of internment reflects French and Spanish burial customs and accommodates the high water table, which is the result of both climate and terrain. Heavy rains are common, and because the city is largely below sea level, coffins would rise to the surface of the ground unless properly anchored.

A New Orleans cemetery.
(Courtesy Kathy Chappetta Spiess)

Early in the eighteenth century, mortuary architects began building six-foot thick brick walls to keep deadly diseases inside the cemetery. Later, the walls contained casket-sized niches called ovens, available as year-and-a-day rental tombs. Into these ovens the coffins were slid, and inscribed marble (or wooden) slabs closed off the opening. Walls of ovens surrounded the first cemeteries and are still found in St. Louis Cemeteries Nos. 1, 2, and 3 and in other old cemeteries such as Lafayette Cemetery and St. Roch Cemetery.

Cemeteries were always built on the outskirts of town. Because of this, we can trace the growth of the city by the dates and locations of its main cemeteries: St. Louis No. 1 on Basin Street in 1789, St. Louis No. 2 on Claiborne Avenue in 1824, and St. Louis No. 3 at the end
of Esplanade Avenue near Bayou St. John in 1854 mark the expansion
of the center of New Orleans.

The first cemetery in the city was St. Peter’s Cemetery, dated 1724. The first Protestant Cemetery was on Girod Street, built in 1822. Many others followed, and by 1860, there were fourteen cemeteries at the end of Canal Street.

The city was growing in population and wealth, and in the thirty years after the opening of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 in 1824, the new cemeteries began to be filled with private family tombs, many of which were elaborate and beautiful. The Avet and Lazzize tomb and the Pilié tomb in St. Louis No. 2 are among the most striking examples of iron craftsmanship to be found.

J. N. B. de Pouilly,
who came to New Orleans from France in 1930 and designed the St Louis Exchange Hotel and the present St. Louis Cathedral
, brought scale drawings of tombs from Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the best examples to be found of Greek Revival design. From these sketches, de Pouilly built such beautiful burial places as the Plauché tomb in St. Louis No.
2 of Greek Revival design. He created a style of mortuary architecture which continues in New Orleans to this day.

Metairie Cemetery
was built in 1872 on Metairie Ridge on the rounds of the Metairie Race Track by a syndicate of New Orleans businessmen. During the Civil War, a portion of the track area had been converted into Camp Miller, an army training camp, for a short time. It became the largest and most elaborate burial ground in the city. There are more than 4,000 above-ground vaults and tombs and just as many ground plots spread out over 150 acres, with the 1
1
⁄
16
-mile track as the roadway.

Josie Arlington,
a famous Storyville madam, has a tomb in Metairie Cemetery. She bought it in 1914, before her death. Because of a stoplight’s reflection on her pink marble tomb, it seemed that Josie, even after death, was still in the red-light district.

Daniel Moriarty
built a magnificent monument to his wife, who died in 1887. The tall shaft of the Moriarty Monument stands just to the left of the entrance, graced by the statues of four life-size female figures at its base. The statues are simple stock figures placed on the monument for effect by the builder, but the story is told that the famous humorist, Irving J. Cobb, when visiting the cemetery in the 1920s, asked about the identity of the four females. His cab driver answered: “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” Cobb then asked, “And the fourth?” to which the cabby replied, “And who else but Mrs. Moriarty?” (In actual fact, the fourth represents Memory, carrying a wreath of immortelles.)

Kember Williams
is buried in an Egyptian temple.

P. B. S. Pinchback,
Louisiana’s only black governor during Reconstruction, was buried in Metairie Cemetery in 1921.

Metairie Cemetery is one of the showplaces of the city, with its beautiful landscaping, paved walks, lagoons, and many fine trees. Its main aisle is fronted on Bayou Metairie and was the location preferred by prominent citizens. Bayou Metairie is now Metairie Road.

In the center of a large green mound surrounded by palm trees is the handsome granite shaft, the Army of Northern Virginia Monument commemorating the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson and the men of the Louisiana Division of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under him. Above the mausoleum, in which twenty-five hundred men are buried, rises the granite monument, thirty-two feet in height. Atop this is the statue of Jackson.