The witching hour lotmw-1
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Many of them were never invited again. Between 1926 and 1929, Stella slowly dismantled the extended family created by her mother. Or rather, she refused to guide it further, and it slowly fell apart. Large numbers of cousins lost contact altogether with the house on First Street, rearing children who knew little or nothing about it, and these descendants have been for us the richest source of legend and other lore.
Other cousins were alienated but remained involved. All of Julien’s descendants, for example, remained close to the legacy family, if for no other reason than because they were legally and financially connected, and because Carlotta could never effectively drive them away.
“It was the beginning of the end,” according to one cousin. “Stella just didn’t want to be bothered,” said another. And yet another, “We knew too much about her, and she knew it. She didn’t want to see us around.”
The image of Stella we have during this period is of a very active, very happy person who cared less about the family than her mother had, but who nevertheless cared passionately about many things. Young writers and artists in particular interested Stella, and scores of “interesting” people came to First Street, including writers and painters whom Stella had known in New York. Several friends mentioned that she encouraged Lionel to take up his writing again, and even had an office refurbished for him in one of the outbuildings, but it is not known if Lionel ever wrote anything more.
A great many intellectuals attended Stella’s parties. Indeed, she became fashionable with those who were not afraid to take social risks. Old guard society of the sort in which Julien moved was essentially closed to her, or so Irwin Dandrich maintained. But it is doubtful Stella ever knew or cared.
The French Quarter of New Orleans had been undergoing something of a revival since the early 1920s. Indeed, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Edmund Wilson, and other famous writers lived there at various times.
We have no evidence to connect any individual person with Stella; but she was very familiar with the Bohemian life of the Quarter, she frequented the coffee houses and the art galleries, and she brought the musicians home to First Street to play for her and threw open her doors to penniless poets and painters very much as she had done in New York.
To the servants this meant chaos. To the neighbors it meant scandal and noise. But Stella was no dissolute drunk, as her legal father had been. On the contrary, for all her drinking, she is never described as being intoxicated; and there seems to have been considerable taste and thought at work in her during these years.
At the same time, she undertook a refurbishing of the house, spending a fortune on new paint, plaster, draperies, and delicate expensive furniture in the art deco style. The double parlor was crowded with potted palms as Richard Llewellyn has described. A Bözendorfer grand piano was purchased, an elevator was eventually installed (1927), and before that an immense swimming pool was built to the rear of the lawn, and a cabana was built to the south side of the pool so that guests could shower and dress without bothering to go into the house.
All of this-the new friends, the partying, and the refurbishing-shocked the more staid cousins, but what really turned them against Stella, thereby creating numerous legends for us to gather later, was that, within a year after Mary Beth’s death, Stella abandoned the large family gatherings altogether.
Try as he might, Cortland could not persuade Stella to give any family parties after 1926. And though Cortland frequently attended her soirees or balls or whatever they were called, and his son Pierce was often there with him, other cousins who were invited refused to go.
In the Mardi Gras season of 1927, Stella gave a masked ball which caused talk in New Orleans for six months. People from all ranks of society attended; the First Street house was splendidly lighted; contraband champagne was served by the case. A jazz band played on the side porch. (This porch was not screened in until later for Deirdre Mayfair when she became an invalid.) Dozens of guests went swimming in the nude, and by morning a full-scale orgy was in progress, or so the bedazzled neighbors were heard to say. Cousins who had been excluded were furious. Indeed, Irwin Dandrich says they appealed to Carlotta Mayfair for explanations, but everyone knew the explanation: Stella didn’t want a bunch of dreary cousins hanging about.
Servants reported Carlotta Mayfair was outraged by the noise and duration of this party, not to mention the expense. Some time before midnight she left the house, taking little Antha and little Nancy (the adopted one) with her, and she did not return until the afternoon of the following day.
This was the very first public quarrel between Stella and Carlotta, but cousins and friends soon learned that they had made it up. Lionel had made peace between the sisters, and Stella had agreed to stay home more with Antha, and not to spend so much money, or make so much noise. The money seems to have been a matter of particular concern to Carlotta, who thought filling an entire swimming pool with champagne was “a sin.”
(It is interesting to note that Stella was worth hundreds of millions of dollars at this time. Carlotta had four different fabulous trust funds in her own right. It is possible that Carlotta was offended by excess. In fact, numerous people have indicated that that was the case.)
Late that year, the first of a series of mysterious social events occurred. What the family legends have told us is that Stella sought out certain Mayfair cousins and brought them together for “an interesting evening” in which they were to discuss family history, and the family’s unique “psychic gifts.” Some said a séance was held at First Street, others that voodoo was involved.
(Servant gossip was rife with stories of Stella’s involvement with voodoo. Stella told several of her friends that she knew all about voodoo. She had colored relations in the Quarter who told her all about it.)
That many cousins did not understand the reason for this get-together, that they did not take the talk of voodoo seriously and resented being snubbed, was plainly obvious.
Indeed, the meeting sent veritable shock waves through the family. Why was Stella bothering to dig into genealogies and to call this and that cousin whom nobody had seen of late, when she did not even have the courtesy to call those who had known and loved Mary Beth so much? The doors at First Street had always been open to everyone; now Stella was picking and choosing, Stella who didn’t bother to attend school graduations, or to send presents to christenings and weddings, Stella who behaved like “a perfect you know what.”
It was argued that Lionel agreed with the cousins, that he thought Stella was going too far. Holding family get-togethers was extremely important, and one descendant told us later that Lionel had complained bitterly to his Uncle Barclay that things were never going to be the same, now that his mother was gone.
But for all the gossip, we have been unable to find out who attended this strange evening affair, except that we know Lionel was in attendance, and that Cortland and his son Pierce were also there. (Pierce was only seventeen at the time and a student at the Jesuits. He had already been accepted to Harvard.)
We know also from family gossip that the gathering lasted all night, and that some time before it was over Lionel “left in disgust.” Cousins who attended and would say nothing of what happened were much criticized by the others. Society gossip, filtered through Dandrich, thought it was Stella playing on her “black magic past” and that it was all a big game.
Several gatherings like it followed, but these were deliberately shrouded in secrecy with all parties being sworn to divulge nothing of what went on.
Legal gossip spoke of Carlotta Mayfair arguing with Cortland about these affairs, and about wanting to get little Antha and little Nancy out of the house. Stella wouldn’t agree to a boarding school for Antha and “everybody knew it.”
Lionel meantime was having fights with Stella. An anonymous person called one of our private eyes who had let it be known that he was interested in gossip pertaining to the family, and told him that Stella and Lionel had had a row in a downtown restauran
t and that Lionel had walked out.
Dandrich quickly reported similar stories. Lionel and Stella were fighting. Was there at last another man?
When the investigator began to ask about the matter, he discovered it was well-known about town that the family was in the midst of a battle over little Antha. Stella was threatening to go away to Europe again with her daughter, and was begging Lionel to go with her, while Carlotta was ordering Lionel not to go.
Meantime Lionel began to appear at Mass at the St. Louis Cathedral with one of the downtown cousins, a great-niece of Suzette Mayfair named Claire Mayfair, whose family lived in a beautiful old house on Esplanade Avenue owned by descendants to this day. Dandrich insists this caused considerable talk.
Servant gossip told of countless family quarrels. Doors were being slammed. People were screaming.
Carlotta forbid further “voodoo gatherings.” Stella told Carlotta to get out of the house.
“Nothing’s the same without Mother,” said Lionel. “It started to fall apart when Julien died, but without Mother it’s impossible. Carlotta and Stella are oil and water in that house.”
It does seem to have been entirely Carlotta’s doing that Antha and Nancy ever went to any school. Indeed, the few school records we have been able to examine with regard to Antha indicate that Carlotta enrolled her and attended the subsequent meetings at which she was asked to take Antha out of the school.
Antha was by all accounts completely unsuited for school.
By 1928, Antha had already been sent home from St. Alphonsus.
Sister Bridget Marie, who remembers Antha perhaps as well as she remembers Stella, tells very much the same stories about her as she told about her mother. But her testimony regarding this entire period and its various developments is worth quoting in full. This is what she told me in 1969.
“The invisible friend was always with Antha. She would turn and talk to him in a whisper as if no one else were there. Of course he told her the answers when she didn’t know them. All the sisters knew it was going on.
“And if you want to hear the worst part of it, some of the children saw him with their very eyes. I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t been so many; but when four children all tell you the same story, and each of them is afraid, and worried, and the parents are worried, well, then what can you do but believe?
“It was in the school yard that they would see him. Now, I told you the girl was shy. Well, she’d go over to the far brick wall at the back, and there she’d sit and read her book in a little patch of sun coming through the trees. And soon he would be there with her. A man, they said he was, can you imagine? And you ask me do I know the meaning of the words, ‘the man’?
“Ah, you see, it was a shock to everyone when it came out that he was a full-grown man. For they thought he was a little child before that, or some sort of child spirit, if you follow me now. But then it was a man, a tall dark-haired man. And that really set everyone to talking. That it was a man.
“No, I never did see him. None of the sisters saw him. But the children saw him. And the children told Father Lafferty. I told Father Lafferty. And he was the one that called Carlotta Mayfair and said, ‘You have to take her out of school.’
“Now I don’t criticize the priests, no, never. But I will say this. Father Lafferty wasn’t a man you could buy with a big donation to the church, and he said, ‘Miss Carlotta, you’ve got to take her out of school.’
“No use calling up Stella by that time. Everyone knew Stella was practicing witchcraft. She went down to the French Quarter and bought the black candles for her voodoo, and do you know, she was bringing the other Mayfairs into it? Yes, she was doing it. I heard it a long time after, that she had gone to look for the other cousins who were witches and she had told them all to come up to the house.
“It was a séance they had in that house. They lighted black candles and they burned incense and they sang songs to the devil, and they asked that their ancestors appear. That’s what I heard happened. I can’t tell you where I heard it. But I heard it. And I believe it, too.”
In the summer of 1928, Pierce Mayfair, Cortland’s son, canceled his plans to go to Harvard, and decided to go to Tulane University, though his father and his uncles were dead against it. Pierce had been to all of Stella’s secret parties, reported Dandrich, and the two were beginning to be linked by the gossips, and Pierce was not yet eighteen.
By the end of 1928, legal gossip indicated that Carlotta had declared that Stella was an unfit mother, and somebody ought to take her child away from her “in court.” Cortland denied such rumors to his friends. But everybody knew it was “coming to that,” said Dandrich. Legal gossip told of family meetings at which Carlotta demanded that the Mayfair brothers stand by her.
Meantime, Stella and Pierce were running around day and night together, with little Antha often in tow. Stella bought dolls for little Antha incessantly. She took her to breakfast every morning at a different hotel in the French Quarter. Pierce went with Stella to purchase a building on Decatur Street which Stella meant to turn into a studio where she could be alone.
“Let Millie Dear and Belle have that house and Carlotta,” Stella told the real estate agent. Pierce laughed at everything Stella said. Antha, a thin seven-year-old with porcelain skin and soft blue eyes, stood about clutching a giant teddy bear. They all went to lunch together, including the real estate agent, who told Dandrich later, “She is charming, absolutely charming. I think those people up on First Street are merely too gloomy for her.”
As for Nancy Mayfair, the dumpy little girl adopted at birth by Mary Beth and introduced to everyone as Antha’s sister, Stella paid no attention to her at all. One Mayfair descendant says bitterly that Nancy was no more than “a pet” to Stella. But there is no evidence of Stella’s ever being mean to Nancy. Indeed, she charged truckloads of clothes and toys for Nancy. But Nancy seems to have been a generally unresponsive and sullen little girl.
Meantime Carlotta alone took Antha and Nancy to Mass on Sundays, and it was Carlotta who saw that Nancy went to the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
In 1928, gossip had it that Carlotta Mayfair had taken the shocking legal step of trying to gain custody of Antha, with a view, apparently, to sending her away to school. Certain papers had been signed and filed.
Cortland was horrified that Carlotta would take things so far. At last Cortland, who had been on friendly terms with Carlotta until this juncture, threatened to oppose her legally if she did not drop the matter out of hand. Barclay, Garland, and young Sheffield and other members of the family agreed to go along with Cortland. Nobody was going to take Stella to court and take her child away from her while Cortland was alive.
Lionel too agreed to stand behind Cortland. He is described as being tortured by the whole incident. He even suggested that he and Stella go away to Europe together for a while and leave Antha in Carlotta’s hands.
Finally Carlotta withdrew her petition for custody.
But between her and Julien’s descendants, things were never the same. They began to fight over money and they have continued that fight to this day.
Sometime in 1927, Carlotta had persuaded Stella to sign a power of attorney so that Carlotta could handle certain matters for her about which Stella didn’t want to be concerned.
Carlotta attempted now to use this power of attorney to make sweeping decisions regarding the enormous Mayfair legacy which had since Mary Beth’s death been entirely in Cortland’s hands.
Family legend and contemporary legal gossip, as well as society gossip, all concur that the Mayfair brothers-Cortland, Garland, and Barclay, and later Pierce, Sheffield, and others-refused to honor this piece of paper. They refused to follow Carlotta’s orders to liquidate the hugely profitable and daring investments which they had been making with tremendous success on behalf of the legacy for years. They rushed Stella to their offices so that she might revoke the power of attorney and reaffirm that everything was to be handled by them.
They were hurt and baffled by her distrust. By 1928 they had made near incalculable amounts of money on behalf of Stella, whose affairs of course were completely entangled with their own. They could not understand Carlotta’s attitude, and they seemed to have persisted in taking it literally over the years.
That is, they patiently answered all her questions, and again and again attempted to explain what they were doing, when of course Carlotta only asked them more questions and demanded more answers and brought up new topics for examination, and called for more meetings, and made more phone calls, and made more veiled threats.
It is interesting to note that almost every legal secretary or clerk who ever worked for Mayfair and Mayfair seemed to understand this “game.” But Julien’s sons continued to be hurt and bitter about it always, as if they did not see through it to the core.
Only reluctantly did they allow themselves to be forced away from the house on First Street where all of them had been born.
By 1928, they were already being forced away but they didn’t know it. Twenty-five years later, when Pierce and Cortland Mayfair asked to examine some of Julien’s belonging in the attic, they were not allowed past the front door. But in 1928 such a thing would have been unimaginable.
Cortland Mayfair probably never guessed that the battle over Antha was the last personal battle with Carlotta that he would ever win.
Meantime, Pierce practically lived at First Street in the fall of 1928. Indeed by the spring of 1929, he was going everywhere with Stella, and had styled himself her “personal secretary, chauffeur, punching bag and crying pillow.” Cortland put up with it, but he didn’t like it. He told friends and family that Pierce was a fine boy, and he would tire of the whole thing and go east to school just as all the other boys had done.