That history began in the first year or two of the century, when the Baron de Pontalba, a stanch old Bonapartist who did as he pleased, did it with exceptionally good taste and built this mansion. Soft ground or no soft ground, the Pontalbas were a vigorous family, who, when they wanted houses, built them. Gossip said the Baron and his daughter-in-law never got on well together. There may have been some truth in it, for years later they found the Baron dead in his room at Mont l’Eveque, and daughter-in-law in her own room badly wounded by pistol shots. True, however, to the tradition of hardihood which ran in the family, she recovered, and lived through the Franco-Prussian War, carrying the bullets in her body to her grave.
The Baron had earnestly advised Napoleon to sell Louisiana to Jefferson. Oddly enough, the Purchase which he advocated brought about a change in New Orleans which attacked the very identity of such families as the Pontalbas. An invasion of uncultured Americans from the north swept down the valley, settled in the city, and beat against the social barriers of the French and Spanish circles in the vieux carré. Hitherto they had dictated the life of the city, and it was disturbing to those who dated from the “filles de la cassette” and the grandees of the Spanish Main to contemplate this immigration of a new race, unancestored and, from a Latin standpoint, uncivilized. It was more than disturbing, it was electro-chemical, and although there was at first little fraternity between the races, it produced shortly a lively society.
The Duke of Saxe-Weimar is responsible for an interesting picture of its customs and habits in 1825. During a visit to New Orleans he was entertained at the home of a famous gambler, the Baron de Marigny (he who had entertained the princes of Orleans in ’98), where he admired, not without cause, a set of chinaware decorated with portraits of the French royal family and its palaces. The winter was gay, and he made the rounds of dances, masques and theatres. He frequented coffee-houses, he danced with the ladies, whom he found “very pretty, with a genteel French air,” and when “the gentlemen, who were far behind the ladies in elegance, did not long remain, but hastened away to other balls,” he was among those also-hastening, for the naughty young gentlemen were on their way to a quadroon ball. On another occasion he called upon the august lawyer Grymes, who figured prominently in the notorious case of Salome Mueller, a white slave-girl. Grymes was a “foremost citizen” in that society, so was Miller, Salome’s claimant, who probably knew she was white and therefore entitled to freedom. A foremost citizen, even in our own enlightened and prohibited day, can do no wrong—if he has the right lawyer. The Duke found the city magnificent in her unbridled emotion, charming in her graces, attractive if perverse in her ethics, and altogether capable of making a stranger’s head spin.
Thus, when there came to New Orleans in 1825 a benevolent middle-aged gentleman of France, the Marquis de Lafayette, the city gave him a superlative welcome. In the light of recent Franco-American exchanges it is pleasant to think of him as the recipient of every token of hospitality the city could offer, from triumphal arches to dinners of state. It suits our specific purpose to watch him chatting in the drawing-room of the Pontalba house, to peep through the shutters of the great windows and see the street below filled with bobbing lanterns of the crowd that has collected to see the great man step into his carriage, to turn back again into the drawing-room and see that he has no intention of leaving, for he is the center of a sparkle of wit that matches the crystal chandelier for brilliance. Here he discoursed, up yonder he passed the night. With his departure in the morning, the chronicled glory of the house ends, and its tragedy begins.
Among the old court records there is an entry which establishes the fact that at the height of the interesting social period marked by Lafayette’s visit the Pontalba house changed hands. On August 30, 1831, it was bought by Madame McCarty-Lopez-Blanque-Lalaurie, a woman of more than ordinary magnetism and the wife of Dr. Louis Lalaurie. Her establishment was quite up to the standards of Créole society. The touch of her expert hand was evident in the decoration of the house, and the choice and disposition of the furniture and paintings were a compliment to her taste. Her ten slaves were more than enough to care for its needs. She drove out along the Bayou road of an afternoon behind fine horses, her coachman was coveted as a correct and desirable servant. What the world calls fine people came to her house with as keen an appetite for the intellectual cocktails of the hostess as for the creature hospitality they anticipated at her table.
Like most ladies of social pursuits she had pronounced likes and dislikes, and she got herself talked about. Being a pure-blood Créole she resented the nouveau-riche American invasion of the city. “Let them come,” she said. “There are some things they cannot buy”—and her good opinion was one, her invitations another. Some of “them” resented the fact that they would never be bidden to enter the deep-arched vestibule, nor see the ponderous door swing wide to them as guests, nor ascend the graceful winding stair. So they railed, and Madame Lalaurie tossed her head. They muttered unpleasant things, and she sniffed. Then they cried scandal, to which she was deaf.
A susceptible young Créole attached to the office of the district attorney was sent one day to call upon Madame Lalaurie and to bring to her attention the annoying rumor that she had been unkind to her slaves. He went away with his copy of Article XX of the Old Black Code unrecited, and his addled young head full of impatience that such slander could have been perpetrated against a person so obviously kindly as Madame Lalaurie had just shown herself to be. He had been, in fact, charmed, and he admitted it.
There is no telling how long the matter might have carried on if it had not been for a chance glimpse through a window. The unsubstantiated scandal persisted. But there happened to be a small staircase window in a neighbor’s house which gave on Madame Lalaurie’s courtyard, and which commanded not only the screened courtyard-galleries of the house itself but those of the slave quarters, which stood at right angles to the house.
The neighbor was going upstairs when she heard a piercing shriek. From the window she saw a little negro girl fly screaming across the courtyard, with Madame Lalaurie in close pursuit, the lady armed with a whip. Into the shelter of the house fled the child, then out again upon the lower latticed balcony. Although the neighbor could not penetrate the lattice, she followed the progress of the chase by a crescendo of terrified cries, as the child raced up the outside stairs to the next gallery, then to the next. In a moment she emerged upon the roof, her last frantic bid for sanctuary. There were seven different angles of pitch to that roof, and it was covered with shiny tiles. The child slipped, clutched, fell to the courtyard and was killed.
Madame Lalaurie buried her that night in a shallow grave in the courtyard. The neighbor saw that, too. Then, and not until then, she reported the whole episode. The authorities came and found the grave, corroborated the story, and punished Madame Lalaurie by selling all her slaves. The purchasers were her relatives, and she promptly bought all her slaves right back.