The Witching Hour

by Anne Rice

  Of course it is common to have a very small idea of Mary Beth's dealings. As mentioned before, she was very good at keeping her immense power and influence a secret.

  But to the Talamasca, stories of Mary Beth putting a curse on a farmer who wouldn't sell her a horse sound perfectly absurd when we know that Mary Beth was buying up railroads in South America and investing in Indian tea and purchasing enormous amounts of land surrounding the city of Los Angeles, California.

  Some day perhaps someone will write a book about Mary Beth Mayfair. It is all there in the records. But as it stands now, it seems that the Talamasca alone is the only group of persons outside the family who knows that Mary Beth Mayfair expanded her financial influence and power globally--that she built a financial empire so immense, so strong, and so diversified that its gradual dismantling is still going on to this day.

  But the entire subject of Mayfair finances deserves more attention than we can give it. If those with the knowledge of such matters were to make a thorough study of the entire Mayfair history--and we refer here to public documents available to anyone diligent enough to search for them--it is possible that we would perceive a very strong case for occult power being used throughout the centuries for the acquisition and expansion of wealth. The jewels and the gold coins might represent the smallest part of it.

  Alas, we have no such expertise for that kind of study. And given what we do know, Mary Beth rises head and shoulders above Julien as an entrepreneur, and it is almost certain that no one human being could have accomplished, without supernatural aid, what she accomplished.

  To conclude, Mary Beth left her family far richer than most of them ever knew, apparently, or ever appreciated. And the wealth exists to this day.

  Mary Beth's second passion was the family. And from the beginning of her active business life, she involved her cousins (or brothers) Barclay, Garland, Cortland and other Mayfairs in her dealings; she brought them into the companies she formed and used Mayfair attorneys and Mayfair bankers for her transactions. In fact, she always used Mayfairs for business, if she possibly could, instead of strangers. And she put great pressure on other Mayfairs to do the same. When her daughter Carlotta Mayfair went to work for a non-Mayfair law firm, she was disappointed and disapproving, but she took no restrictive or punitive action regarding Carlotta's decision. She let it be known that Carlotta was guilty of lack of vision.

  With regard to Stella and Lionel, Mary Beth was notoriously indulgent and allowed them to have their friends over for days or weeks on end. She sent them to Europe with tutors and governesses when she herself was too busy to go; and she gave diem birthday parties of legendary size and extravagance, to which countless Mayfair cousins were invited. She was equally generous to her daughter Belle, her adopted daughter Nancy, and to Millie Dear, her niece, all of whom continued to live at First Street after Mary Beth's death, though they were the recipients of large trust funds which granted them indisputable financial independence.

  Mary Beth stayed in contact with Mayfairs all over the country, and fostered numerous get-togethers of the Mayfair cousins in Louisiana. Even after Julien's death and right on until the twilight of Mary Beth's life, delicious food and drink were served at these affairs, with Mary Beth supervising the menu and the wine tasting herself, and often musicians were hired to provide entertainment.

  Enormous family dinners were very common at First Street. And Mary Beth paid out fabulous salaries to hire the best cooks for her kitchen. Many reports indicate that the Mayfair cousins loved going to First Street, that they loved the long after-dinner discussions (described by Richard Llewellyn), and that they were personally devoted to Mary Beth, who had an uncanny ability to remember birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and graduation dates, and to send appropriate and very welcome cash presents.

  As already indicated, when she was young, Mary Beth loved to dance with Julien at these family parties, and encouraged dancing among young and old, and sometimes hired instructors to teach the cousins the latest dances. She and Julien would amuse the children with their spry antics. And sometimes the dance bands they hired from the Quarter shocked the more staid Mayfairs. After Julien's death, Mary Beth did not dance so much but she loved to see other people dance, and she almost always provided some music. In her last years, these affairs were managed by her daughter Stella, and her son, Lionel, and they were as spirited as ever.

  Mayfairs were not only invited to these get-togethers, they were expected to attend, and Mary Beth was sometimes unpleasant to those who refused to accept her invitations. And there are two stories of her becoming extremely angry with members of the family who discarded the name Mayfair in favor of the name of their father.

  Several stories we have gathered from friends of the family indicate that Mary Beth was both loved and feared by the cousins; whereas Julien, especially in his old age, was considered sweet and charming, Mary Beth was considered slightly formidable.

  There are several stories which indicate that Mary Beth could see the future but disliked using the power. When asked to predict or to help make a decision, she frequently warned the family members involved that "second sight" wasn't a simple thing. And that predicting the future could be "tricky." However, she did now and then make outright predictions. For example, she told Maitland Mayfair--Clay's son--that he would the if he took up airplane flying, and he did. Maitland's wife, Therese, blamed Mary Beth for his death. Mary Beth shrugged it off with the simple words, "I warned him, didn't I? If he hadn't gone up in the damned plane, he couldn't have crashed in it."

  Maitland's brothers were distraught over Maitland's death, and begged Mary Beth to try to stop such events if she could, to which she replied that she could give it a try, and would the next time something of that kind came to her attention. Again, she warned them that such things were tricky. In 1921, Maitland's son, Maitland Junior, wanted to go on an expedition in the African jungles, of which his mother Therese strongly disapproved, and she appealed to Mary Beth either to stop the boy or to make some sort of prediction.

  Mary Beth considered the matter for a long time, and then explained in her simple straightforward manner that the future wasn't predetermined, it was merely predictable. And her prediction was that this boy would die if he went to Africa. But if he stayed here worse things might happen. Maitland Junior changed his own mind about the expedition, stayed home, and was killed in a fire six months later. (The young man was drunk and was smoking in bed.) At the funeral Therese accosted Mary Beth and demanded to know why she didn't prevent such horrors. Mary Beth said almost casually that she foresaw the whole thing, yes, but there wasn't much she could do to change it. To change it, she would have had to change Maitland Junior and that was not her job in life, and besides, she'd tried, to no avail, to talk to Maitland countless times; but she certainly felt dreadful about it, and she wished the cousins would stop asking her to look into the future.

  "When I look into the future," she reportedly said, "all I see is how weak most people are, and how little they do to fight fate or fortune. You can fight, you know. You really can. But Maitland wasn't going to change anything." Then she shrugged, or so the story goes, and walked with her characteristic big steps out of the Lafayette Cemetery.

  Therese was horrified by these statements. She never forgave Mary Beth for her "involvement" (?) in the death of her husband or her son. And to her dying day, she maintained that an aura of evil surrounded the First Street house, and that whatever power the Mayfairs possessed worked only for the chosen ones.

  (This story was told to us by a friend of Therese's sister, Emilie Blanchard, who died in 1935. An abbreviated version was passed on to us by a nonrelative who overheard the conversation at the cemetery and made inquiries about it. Yet a third version was repeated to us by a nun who was present at the cemetery. And the agreement among the three as to Mary Beth's statements makes this one of our most powerful pictures of her, albeit small. The two deaths involved were reported in the papers.)

&n
bsp; There are countless other stories about Mary Beth's predictions, advice, and the like. They are all very similar. Mary Beth advised against certain marriages, and her advice always turned out to be correct. Or Mary Beth advised people to enter into certain ventures and it worked out wonderfully. But everything points to the fact that Mary Beth was very cautious about the power, and disliked direct prediction. We have one other quote from her on the matter, and this was made to the parish priest who later told it to his brother, a police officer, who apparently remembered it because he thought it was interesting.

  Mary Beth is rumored to have told the priest that any one strong individual could change the future for countless others, that it happened all the time. Given the number of human beings alive in this world, such persons were so rare that predicting the future was deceptively simple.

  "Then we are possessed of free will, you grant that much," the priest had said, to which Mary Beth replied, "Indeed we are, in fact, it is absolutely crucial that we exercise our free will. Nothing is predetermined. And thank God there aren't many strong people who upset the predictable scheme, for there are as many bad ones who bring on war and disaster as there are visionaries who do good for others."

  (It is worth noting that these statements are interesting in light of Richard Llewellyn's description of Julien coming to him in a dream and telling him that nothing is predetermined. And it is also worth noting that two hundred years before, Lasher, according to Petyr van Abel, made a mysterious prediction which deeply disturbed Petyr. If only we had more direct quotations regarding this and other subjects from the powerful psychic members of the Mayfair family! But alas we do not, and this immediate connection between two quotes makes us painfully aware of it.)

  Regarding family attitudes towards Mary Beth, many family members--according to their talkative friends--were aware that there was something strange about Mary Beth and Monsieur Julien, and whether or not to go to them in times of trouble was an ever present question in each generation. Going to them was perceived as having advantages and definite liabilities.

  For example, one descendant of Lestan Mayfair who was pregnant out of wedlock went to Mary Beth for help and, though she received a great deal of money to assist with her child, became convinced afterwards that Mary Beth had caused the death of the child's irresponsible father.

  Another Mayfair, a favorite of Mary Beth's, who was convicted of assault and battery after a drunken brawl in a French Quarter nightclub, was said to be more afraid of Mary Beth's disapproval and retribution than of any criminal court. He was fatally shot trying to escape from jail. And Mary Beth refused to allow him to be buried in the Lafayette Cemetery.

  Another unfortunate girl--Louise Mayfair--who was pregnant out of wedlock and gave birth at First Street to Nancy Mayfair (whom Mary Beth adopted and accepted as one of Stella's children), died two days after the birth, and numerous stories were circulated that Mary Beth, displeased by the girl's behavior, had let her die alone and unattended.

  But the stories of Mary Beth's occult powers, or evil doings, regarding the family are relatively few. Even when one considers the secretiveness of the family, the reluctance of most Mayfairs to gossip in any way about the legacy family to anyone, there simply isn't very much evidence that Mary Beth was a witch to her own kindred, so much as a magnate. When she did use her powers, it was almost always with reluctance. And we have numerous indications that many Mayfairs did not believe the "superstitious foolishness" repeated about Mary Beth by servants, neighbors, and occasionally by family members. They considered the story of the purse of golden coins to be laughable. They blamed superstitious servants for these tales, they considered them to be a holdover from the romantic plantation days, and they complained against the gossips of the neighborhood and the church parish.

  We cannot emphasize enough that the vast majority of tales about Mary Beth's powers do come from the servants.

  All things taken into account, the family lore indicates that Mary Beth was loved and respected by her family, and that she did not dominate people's lives or decisions, except to pressure them towards some show of family loyalty, and that, in spite of a few noteworthy mistakes, she picked excellent candidates for business ventures from among her kindred, and that they trusted her and admired her and liked to do business with her She kept her outlandish accomplishments secret from those with whom she did business, and possibly she kept her occult powers secret from others, too, and she enjoyed being with the family in a simple and ordinary fashion.

  It is also worth noting that the little children of the family loved Mary Beth. She was photographed scores of times with Stella, Lionel, Belle, Millie Dear, Nancy, and dozens of other little children all around her. And every Sunday for years the south lawn of the First Street property was covered with children tumbling and playing ball and tag while the grown-ups napped inside after dinner.

  The third great passion or obsession of Mary Beth's life, as far as we can determine, was her desire for pleasure. As we have seen, she and Julien enjoyed dancing, parties, the theater, etc. She also had many lovers.

  Though family members are absolutely mute on the subject, servant gossip, often coming to us second or thirdhand through friends of the servant's family, is the largest source of such information. Neighbors also gossiped about "good-looking boys" who were always hanging about, supposedly to do jobs for which they were often utterly unqualified.

  And Richard Llewellyn's story of the gift of the Stutz Bearcat to a young Irish coachman has been verified through simple registration records. The giving of other large gifts--sometimes bank drafts for enormous amounts--also indicate that these good-looking boys were Mary Beth's lovers. For there are no other explanations as to why she should give five thousand dollars as a Christmas present to a young coachman who could not in fact manage a team; or to a handyman who could never so much as hammer in a nail without assistance.

  It is interesting to note that when all the information on Mary Beth is studied as a whole, we have more stories about her sensual appetites than any other aspect of her. In other words, stories about her lovers, her wine drinking, her love of food, and her dancing far outnumber (seventeen to one) stories about her occult powers or her abilities in making money.

  But when all the many descriptions of Mary Beth's love of wine, food, music, dancing, and bed partners are considered, one can see that she behaved more like a man of the period than a woman in this regard, merely pleasing herself as a man might, with little thought for convention or respectability. In sum, there is nothing too unusual about her behavior if one sees it in this light. But of course people at the time did not see it in that light, and they thought her love of pleasure to be rather mysterious and even sinister. She deepened this sense of the mysterious by her casual attitude towards what she did, and her refusal to attach importance to the shallow reactions of others. More than one Mayfair close cousin begged her to "behave" (or so the servants said), and more than once Mary Beth shrugged off this suggestion.

  As for her cross-dressing, she did it so long and so well that just about everyone became accustomed to it. In the last years of her life she would often go out in her tweed suit, and with her walking stick, and stroll around the Garden District for hours. She did not bother to pin up her hair any more or hide it beneath a hat. She wore it in a simple twist or bun; and people took her appearance entirely for granted. She was Miss Mary Beth to servants and neighbors for blocks around, walking with her head slightly bowed, and with very big steps, and waving in a lackadaisical fashion to those who greeted her.

  As for her lovers, the Talamasca has been able to find out almost nothing about them. Of a young cousin, Alain Mayfair, we know the most, and it is not even certain that he was Mary Beth's lover. He worked for Mary Beth as a secretary or chauffeur or both from 1911 until 1913, but was frequently in Europe for long periods. He was in his twenties at the time, and very handsome and spoke French very well, but not to Mary Beth, who preferred English. There wa
s some disagreement between him and Mary Beth in 1914, but no one seems to know what it was. He then went to England, joined the forces fighting in World War I, and was killed in combat. His body was never recovered. Mary Beth held an immense memorial service for him at First Street.

  Kelly Mayfair, another cousin, also worked for Mary Beth in 1912 and 1913, and continued in her employ until 1918. He was a strikingly handsome red-haired, green-eyed young man (his mother was Irish-born); he took care of Mary Beth's horses and, unlike other boys whom Mary Beth kept, did know what he was doing in that capacity. The case for his having been Mary Beth's lover rests entirely on the fact that they did dance together at many family gatherings, and later had many noisy quarrels which were overheard by maids, laundresses, and even chimney sweeps.

  Also Mary Beth settled an immense sum of money on Kelly so that he could try his luck as a writer. He went to Greenwich Village in New York with this money, worked for a while as a reporter for the New York Times, and froze to death in a cold-water flat there, while drunk, apparently quite by accident. It was his first winter in New York and he may not have understood the dangers. Whatever the case, Mary Beth was distraught over his death, and had the body brought home and buried properly, though Kelly's parents were so disgusted with what had happened that they would not attend the funeral. She had three words inscribed on his tombstone: "Fear no more." And this may be a reference to the famous lines of Shakespeare in Cymbeline, "Fear no more the heat of the sun, nor the furious winter's rages." But we do not know. She refused to explain it even to the undertaker or the tombstone workers.

  The other "good-looking boys" who caused so much talk are unknown to us. We have only gossip descriptions which indicate they were all very handsome and what one might call "rough trade." Full-time maids and cooks were highly suspicious of them and resentful towards them. And most accounts of these young men say nothing per se about their being Mary Beth's lovers. They run something like this, "And then there was one of those boys of hers about, you know, one of those good-looking ones she always had around, and don't ask me for what, and he was sitting on the kitchen steps doing nothing but whittling you know and I asked him to carry the laundry basket down but he was too good for that, you can well imagine, but of course he did it, because she came into the kitchen then, and he wouldn't dare do nothing to run against her, you can be sure, and she give him one of her smiles, you know and said, 'Hello there, Benjy.' "