The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  A marriage bed is something entirely different. A girl’s bed thinks, “Oh, how much the little one loves me!” A marriage bed thinks, “Never mind, they’ll fix it.”

  It is a sad mark of the times that our Epicureans have so little bed philosophy. Even Daniel Webster, one of the greatest and most thoughtful Epicureans of this century, has neglected to lay an amendment for a decent bed compromise on the Senate table.

  Just such an “internal improvement” should long since have earned the attention of our statesmen. It is a sad sign of the times that so much is still rotten in the state of Denmark.

  New Orleans has been summoned by a wise Providence to take the initiative in this matter.

  New Orleans has always been the leader in the United States in everything that heightens enjoyment of life and makes the dullest people into Epicureans. Not just in leisure but in so many ways of making a living.

  New Orleans is the one city in the United States where one is almost never thrown out of a boardinghouse. Nowhere are there more decent, noble, or generous boardinghouse landlords than in New Orleans.

  The landlord of a boardinghouse in our city would rather lose everything he owned than consider throwing out a boarder just because he wouldn’t or couldn’t pay, whether he was a political refugee, a degraded aristocrat, a literary vagabond, or a journalistic adventurer. If there is ever a Last Judgment, as mythology tells us, the Lord in the Vale of Josephat will not place the boardinghouse landlords of New Orleans among the goats but rather among the sheep.

  That is not all.

  New Orleans feeds its man. Whoever hungers in this town is either too lazy to open his mouth or has an abnormal stomach lining. Every boardinghouse landlord allows the most miserable passenger, even if he is not a regular boarder, to participate in the wedding at Cana. And if he cannot appear in his wedding slippers, the landlord will walk with him to the old shoemaker and go security for him. If he has no coat to put on, the landlord will accompany the unfortunate to the auction sale. If he is thirsty and there is nothing at home, the merciful Samaritan will take him to a bar. If the penniless man is an impassioned smoker, he will not be given the poorest cigar; he will be sent to Hermann Schlüter on Common Street to be supplied4: “A fine recommendation from Mr. NN, and he desires that you should supply me with a pair of your best regalios.” If the poor object of charity is used to good wine, he will be sent to John Fischer in Royal Street to drink a bottle of Rüdesheimer in good cheer.

  But if one is so perverse as not to be on a good footing with his boardinghouse landlord, he can still go into any “dime house” at lunch—but for his stomach’s sake not to a “picayune house.” Have such a good brunch that a lack of dinner can be tolerated. When that time comes, don’t go to the bar but stroke your belly happily, shake your neighbor’s hand, and depart with dignity.

  That is not all.

  If New Orleans feeds its man, it also does the same with whole families.

  Those who represent this branch of the population are divided into four categories:

  1. Levee Rats. This category includes that hopeful youth of both sexes who have made it their métier to bore into whole hogsheads of sugar and molasses, collecting the contents into baskets or bottles. If they do this too visibly, they have to watch out for the wharf police.

  2. Cotton Retailers. This category is the most dangerous, since they are concerned in subverting the primary source of our greatness and power. In doing this they have often managed to cause important deficits among our cotton brokers. They maneuver in the vicinity of the cotton presses, particularly on Tchoupitoulas Street and the corner of Claiborne and Canal Streets. The great shadowy trees in Claiborne Street protect them from the prying eyes of the night watch.

  3. Rag Pickers. In all innocence they enter houses, looking for rags and taking what they can find.

  4. Coffee Pickers. This is the best class. They consist of the most modest poor of our city.

  This is an orientation for what follows.

  Several days before the affair of the moss and the live oaks, Gertrude stood in front of the door listening to several children chatting.

  They were telling one another about their winnings in coffee, which they had brought home to their parents. Among them was a cute little girl, poorly dressed but with cheerful little eyes.

  Gertrude, who felt herself drawn to this girl, spoke to her and learned that her father, an Ohio raftsman, had been dead for more than three months and that her mother, who worked taking in laundry, was very ill. Her neighbors had supported them a bit so far, but they appeared to be growing tired of it. She herself was too small and weak to be able to earn anything in any sort of service. Since her mother loved to drink coffee and there had been none in the house for days, she had decided to go coffee picking with her playmates so her mother would have some to drink again. At first she had been ashamed to do this, but when she thought of her mother she changed her mind.

  Children form friendships very rapidly, particularly girls. They also pick up things so quickly from one another, whether good or bad. What we call naughtiness, which appears so attractive in children, has its origins in mutual friendship and affection. If they are girls, they will play mother and child with their dolls. If a girl and a boy, they will play the roles of man and wife.

  Gertrude’s curiosity was so aroused by all the talk about coffee picking that she asked the little one to tell her the next time she went hunting for beans. As a child, Gertrude naturally thought only about how she could most easily get away from her parents’ house without their knowing. The thought of how she would return, or the terror that would strike her parents and siblings if they discovered her missing, never occurred to her.

  The two girlfriends parted after making promises to each other to go on the next coffee-picking trip.

  After Constanze was so praised by her parents for bringing in the moss with Aunty, Gertrude suddenly decided to do something to better their lot as well, so she, too, could get a “Good little child!” from her parents.

  That was what had kept her thinking all the previous night.

  She thought of the little coffee pickers, her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s sick mother. She made a quick decision, not stopping to consider any complications.

  Gertrude was a bit over seven, a lovely child. The forget-me-not blue of her eyes gazed out at the world so true-heartedly, looked in your face so peacefully, that in moments you wanted to gobble up the little dove in a gulp.

  Her little mouth, which hid a full row of glistening, elegant pearls, was as red as the half-bloomed blossom of a Lilliput oleander.

  Her neck, as mobile as that of a turtledove, was of blinding whiteness and impeccable purity. Such turtledove necks are proper to girls who ripen young and are fashioned by nature to make themselves and their husband happy by becoming a mother.

  Today Gertrude was wearing a dark purple barége dress with little white flowers edged in black. It was no longer very new, but still she was neatly and cleanly dressed. Her thick blond hair was tied in two long Louisa braids that reached down to her waist.5 Her stockings were white, to be sure, but had been darned and repaired in many places, alterations that Gertrude owed to her tireless Aunty. Only shoe repair was beyond Aunty Celestine’s talents.

  For the sixth time, Gertrude stood in front of the door waiting for her girlfriend to pass by with her little basket on her arm.

  Finally she got what she’d been waiting for.

  She joined arms with the raftman’s daughter and walked away.

  “How far do we go to get coffee, Lorie?” Gertrude asked her friend after they had gone several blocks down Magazine Street.

  “Oh it isn’t very far, Gertrude. I think it would be best to do it this way, like all the children in this area do when they go coffee picking—an omnibus is about to come, we can jump up in back on the step, which costs nothing, Trudy.”

  “That bothers me, Lorie, we could easily get hurt!”

  “
I don’t like doing it when the omnibus is underway either, so I always wait for the moment when the gentlemen and ladies are climbing in and out.”

  “You are much smarter than I am, Lorie, I would not have thought of that,” Gertrude responded, looking at her friend. “But if no one climbs in or out, do you know how to get on anyway? I wouldn’t risk doing that while it’s moving.”

  “Look at me, Trudy, now we go to that corner where people are always standing to get on—that’s how I figured it,” Lorie responded calmly.

  “How smart you are, Lorie,” Gertrude declared in her astonishment.

  Lorie turned about suddenly, and, spotting an omnibus in the distance, she grabbed her friend by the arm and pulled her along to the designated place.

  As Lorie had predicted, several persons were awaiting the arrival of the omnibus.

  When it halted and Gertrude bolted forward to take her modest place, Lorie stopped her and signaled that she had to wait until everyone had entered.

  As the omnibus departed, Gertrude and Lorie were standing on the back step, holding each other with one arm and wrapping the other around the frame of a window of the door to keep their balance.

  Before we bring the two friends to their goal, we must describe something more precisely for our lady readers: Between Julia and Notre Dame Streets, fronting on Commerce Street, stand three vast warehouses known to the merchants of New Orleans by the names Pelican, Star, and Eagle. The wealth of Mr. Touro is stored in them.6 The warehouses themselves do not belong to him, they belong to the wealthy Samuel Cohn; Touro rents them for his enormous deposits. Samuel Cohn is known in the business world as Paris Cohn, and he is one of the richest and most respected men of our city, one of the few who combines his wealth with unbribable honesty, untiring efficiency, and iron patience in matters of business. He is called Paris Cohn to distinguish him from the many Cohns in New Orleans, almost all of whom are merchants and are more or less devoted to Mammon. They amount virtually to a single family, tracing their business routine and mercantile dominance from the free city of Hamburg. Many of them live in this city now, and here they are held in great respect.

  The Pelican and the Star normally only contain plaster, cable, and sailcloth, while the main product in the Eagle Warehouse is coffee. Thousands of sacks, most containing Rio and Domingo coffee, fill the huge rooms of this warehouse, testifying to the enormous traffic between our city and foreign harbors.

  What Venice was in its days of glory, New Orleans would long since have become—the queen of the seas, the monopolist of world trade. The merchant of Venice would be just as much at home here as he once was in the city on the lagoons. There is also no lack of Shylocks, with the sole difference being that the Shylocks here are not Jews but orthodox Christians who thirst not just for their pound of flesh but for whole shiploads. Yes, New Orleans would long since have become a Venice if an invisible hand had not punished it in many a year for a crime that meanness and selfishness has held to be a necessary evil.

  The scales of world history often oscillate over centuries until they finally allow one pan to sink under the weight of its guilt.

  Now let us return to our friends.

  Gertrude, who lay with her head to the opening of a sliding window, had attracted the attention of an elderly man who was sitting in the back corner of an omnibus. He continued to observe her with the greatest interest. Often it even seemed as if he had made a sudden decision. His restless movements and his intense stare, which seemed precisely to follow every action of the girl, in turn drew the attention of a younger man, who now followed the older man’s gaze with the same curiosity.

  The elderly man was aware of this.

  “You appear to be disturbed that I pay so much attention to you,” the younger man said to the elderly man, lifting his hat slightly with his right hand, as if he intended to show respect through that gesture.

  “That is anyone’s right,” the man addressed replied. “You would not hold me to have violated the etiquette of omnibuses if I had fixed you with the same stare.”

  “You are watching one of the two little girls who are standing out there—if you are so interested in that blonde little head with the forget-me-not eyes, I can only be amazed that it has not yet occurred to you to ask the pretty child to take a place next to you,” the young man said.

  “If I thought this was a good idea, your urging would have been superfluous, sir.”

  “Then if I am permitted to approach that blonde child as I please, I shall try to get her to take a place next to me,” the young man responded with rascality as he rose to carry out his intention.

  The elderly man, who seemed displeased by this, stepped into his way and pulled on the reins so the omnibus driver halted.

  “Do you wish to get out, sir? All the better for me and the two poor girls—then there will be room enough for both of them, and a third will find a place somewhere or other.”

  “Good evening, gentleman,” the elderly man called to the other, as he seized the hands of the two girls, who had hopped off the steps. He asked their permission to accompany them for a bit.

  The other man, who had also dismounted the omnibus, did not want to concede at all. He grabbed the elderly man’s arms so clumsily from behind that the old man turned about in shock to remonstrate with his accoster.

  In the meantime, Gertrude and Lorie mounted a different omnibus that passed at that instant; they looked back anxiously at the two men, who appeared no longer to be aware of them in their own agitation.

  Before the omnibus had passed out of sight of this place, Gertrude was able to see one of the two men throw the other to the ground. Then it seemed to her that the other one rose up and made a new attack. Finally she could see nothing further.

  After that, the journey went rather quickly.

  The friends had no further problems after leaving the place were the two gentlemen fought.

  Oddly enough, not a single additional person entered along the entire route to Julia Street.

  “When I tug your dress, Trudy, jump right off,” Lorie declared. “We will be on Julia Street very soon, and from there we just have to cross one street to reach our goal.”

  “But Lorie, I certainly can’t do that?”

  “Why not, Trudy? It is much easier and safer to jump off than to clamber aboard. Just get off quickly when I tug …”

  Now the omnibus passed by Julia Street, and Lorie gave her friend the tug, calling, “Come, Trudy, come now …” as she sprang from the step. But Gertrude not only didn’t follow her courageous friend, she hung even closer to the window frame.

  When Lorie saw this, she cried out to the driver with her full voice to halt.

  The omnibus driver thought someone wanted to get on, so he stopped.

  Gertrude jumped down and ran to her worried Lorie, who embraced the shocked Trudy and kissed her tenderly.

  The omnibus driver, who was not sure what to make of this display, cursed at the “damned Dutch girls” as he departed.

  There is certainly not a street in New Orleans where one is in more danger of being run over than Tchoupitoulas Street. It requires the talents of a true gymnast to get across without being trod on by horses and mules or flattened by a mass of drays. One should be able to do knee-bends, toe-touching, sit-ups, jumping-jacks, and all the exercises on the parallel bars, at the master’s level. Only after this has been accomplished should anyone dare to cross this street between eight in the morning and four in the afternoon.

  Gertrude and Lorie had to wait at least a quarter of an hour before they managed to get to the opposite sidewalk.

  As they turned onto Commerce Street, they spied the entire company of coffee pickers restlessly at work in front of the Eagle Warehouse: girls and boys, men and women, young and old—all colorfully intermixed as if they were at a bookseller’s fair in Leipzig.

  Lorie recognized many in this troop who were mere novices in the business. They were mistreated, pushed away, and rejected in the most g
odless manner by the long-term guests of the Eagle Warehouse, and some of them who thought they would be able to march home with rich booty saw their hard-won gains pitilessly taken by the experienced workers before they were chased away.

  Since these beginners still sought time and again to resume their collecting, there was no end to the dispute and abuse. A small red-headed Irish boy took an old woman’s apronful of beans and emptied them into his gray hat. The old woman chased after him for a ways until the little boy, Patrick, threw back her empty apron as he circled and mocked her. The old woman returned to the scene of her activities and began picking beans anew. Little Patrick sat opposite the Eagle on an empty lime barrel, holding his hatful of beans on high and singing ceaselessly:

  Little Patrick Horner

  Sat in the corner,

  Eating a Christmas pie;

  He stuck in his thumb,

  And pulled out a crumb,

  Crying “What a nice boy am I!”

  Now and then he rushed across the street to the coffee pickers and hit the tireless old woman in her stiff neck or knocked the beans out of her apron. She finally grew so upset with him that she lifted a stone and almost hit Patrick in the head. He finally ran away and sang again.

  I come from Alabama

  With the shovel and the hoe …

  Little Patrick Horner

  Sat in the corner …

  When Lorie and Gertrude approached the coffee pickers, hand in hand, some of the girls greeted them in the most surprising manner. They extended their arms to them and modestly yielded the place where the greatest harvest was to be gathered. Gertrude, who thought that the little coffee pickers’ deference to Lorie was amazing enough, was utterly astounded when they offered her several baskets full of the finest beans. On Gertrude’s protest that she was being offered too much, since she was incapable of carrying all of it, two boys and a grown girl offered to help her. Even the same old woman whose work had so often been interrupted by the irritating Patrick, so that her treasures were less than the others, dropped a few hand-fuls of beans into Gertrude’s basket. Lorie always nodded her thanks in response to these gifts, and one could see from her cheerful face that she was not indifferent to the positive reception her friend was receiving.