I should like to give some history of Galatoire's as well as of the other two, but when I asked the patron for the story of his restaurant, he smiled, and with a shrug replied: "But Monsieur, the story is in the food!"
Do not expect any of these places to present the brilliant appearance of distinguished New York restaurants. They are comparatively simple, all of them, and are engaged not with soft carpets and gilt ceilings, but with the art of cookery.
I have been told that some of them have what may be termed "tourist cooking," which is not their best, but if you know good food, and let them know you know it, and if you visit them at any time except during the carnival, then you have a right to expect in any one of these establishments, a superb dinner. For as I once heard my friend Col. Beverly Myles, one of the city's most distinguished gourmets, remark: "To talk of 'tolerably good food' in a French restaurant is like talking of 'a tolerably honest man.'"
The carnival of Mardi Gras and the several days preceding, is one of those things about which I feel as I do concerning Niagara Falls, and gambling houses, and the red light district of Butte, Montana, and the underground levels of a mine, and the world as seen from an aëroplane, and the Quatres Arts ball, and a bull fight—I am glad to have seen it once, but I have no desire to see it again. During the carnival my companion and I enjoyed a period of sleepless gaiety. To be sure, we went to bed every morning, but what is the use in doing that if you also get up every morning? We went to the street pageants, we went to the balls at the French Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets, and when the carnival was finished we were finished, too.
The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is that it bears the relation to the life of the city, that a well-developed hobby does to the life of an individual. It keeps the city young. It keeps it from becoming pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting into a rut. It stimulates not alone the young, but the grave and reverend seigniors also, to give themselves up for a little while each year to play, and moreover to use their imaginations in annually devising new pageants and costumes. From this point of view such a carnival would be a good thing for any city.
But that is where the Latin spirit of New Orleans comes in, with its pleasing combination of gaiety and restraint. You could not hold such a carnival in every city. You could not do it in New York. For more important even than the pageants and the balls, is the carnival frame of mind. To hold a carnival such as New Orleans holds, a city must know how to be lively and playful without becoming drunk, without breaking barroom mirrors, upsetting tables, annoying women, thrusting "ticklers" into people's faces, jostling, fighting, committing the thousand rough vulgar excesses in which New York indulges every New Year's Eve, and in which it would indulge to an even more disgusting extent under the additional license of the mask.
The carnival—carne vale, farewell flesh—which terminates with Mardi Gras—"Fat Tuesday," or Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent—comes down to us from pagan times by way of the Latin countries. The "Cowbellions," a secret organization of Mobile, in 1831 elaborated the idea of historical and legendary processions, and as early as 1837 New Orleans held grotesque street parades. Twenty years later the "Mystic Krewe," now known as "Comus," appeared from nowhere and disappeared again. The success of Comus encouraged the formation of other secret societies, each having its own parade and ball, and in 1872, Rex, King of the Carnival, entered his royal capital of New Orleans in honor of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis—who, by the way, is one of countless notables who have feasted at Antoine's.
The three leading carnival societies, Comus, Momus, and Proteus, are understood to be connected with three of the city's four leading clubs, all of which stand within easy range of one another on the uptown side of Canal Street: the Boston Club (taking its name from an old card game); the Pickwick (named for Dickens' genial gentleman, a statue of whom stands in the lobby); the Louisiana, a young men's club; and the Chess, Checkers and Whist Club. The latter association is, I believe, the one that takes no part in the carnival.
Each of the carnival organizations has its own King and Queen, and the connection between certain clubs and certain carnival societies may be guessed from the fact that the Comus Queen and Proteus Queen always appear on the stand in front of the Pickwick Club, to witness their respective parades, and that the Queen of the entire Carnival appears with her maids of honor on the stand before the Boston Club upon the day of Mardi Gras, to witness the triumphal entry and parade of Rex. As Rex passes the club he sends her a bouquet—the official indication of her queenship. That night she appears for the first time in the glory of her royal robes at the Rex Ball, which is held in a large hall; and the great event of the carnival, from a social standpoint, is the official visit, on the same night, of Rex and his Queen, attended by their court, to the King and Queen of Comus, at the Comus Ball, held in the Opera House.
Passing between the brilliantly illuminated flag-draped buildings, under festoons of colored electric lights, the street parades, with their spectacular colored floats, their bands, their negro torch-bearers, their strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children ranging anywhere from eight to eighty years of age. Public masking on the streets, on the day of Mardi Gras, is also an amusing feature of the carnival.