Passing the same way half an hour later, I heard him thus deliver himself: “Here y’are—Dr. Johnson’s great work ‘Rasselas’! Seventy-five cents for ‘Rasselas’! He was Prince of Abyssinia—that’s a country in West Africa where they’s a powerful lot o’ coloured folks.” But there was, in the phrase of the country, nothing doing in “Rasselas.” I saw only one actual transaction concluded—a negro could not resist the allurement of “Doré’s Bible Gallery,” on which he lavished three shillings.
Next morning I awoke to look out upon a moist mist rising over the vast green chequer-board of rice-fields, as we approached New Orleans. |Disillusionment.| Again a country of wonderful richness, to which clumps of splendid trees gave a park-like aspect. The population seemed sparse. Little wooden churches were dotted every here and there, each with its pigmy spire—a feature not elsewhere common. The whole region, of course, was as flat as a windless sea.
But, oh! the disappointment of New Orleans! To come from the dainty pages of Cable to this roaring, clanging, ragged-edged, commonplace American city! It seemed particularly frayed and grimy, because the streets had everywhere been torn up for much-needed sewerage operations; but under the best of circumstances it must be, I should say, a city devoid of charm. In respect of mere width, Canal Street is doubtless a splendid thoroughfare; but even it, with its two or three scattered sky-scrapers and its otherwise paltry buildings, produces a raw, unfinished effect; while it is so often cluttered up with electric cars, on its six or eight tracks, as to have the air of a crowded railway-yard.
The usually truthful Baedeker tells us that “New Orleans is in many ways one of the most picturesque and interesting cities in America, owing to the survival of the buildings, manners, and customs of its original French and Spanish inhabitants.” He further states that “Canal Street divides the French quarter, or ‘Vieux Carré’ from the new city, or American quarter.” I therefore plucked up fresh hope, dodged the swarming street-cars of Canal Street, and made for a street of the “Vieux Carré,” which had at least a French name—Bourbon Street. But here my disappointment became abysmal. It is difficult to believe that the French city, with its narrow, rectangular streets and its commonplace houses, can ever have been picturesque; now, at all events, it has sunk into a rookery of grimy and dismal slums. There is still a certain pleasantness about the old Place d’ Armes (now Jackson Square), with its cathedral and its old-world red-brick Pontalba Mansions; but, for the rest, the glory of the old city has absolutely departed. Baedeker duly informs us where “Sieur George” lived, and “Tite Poulette,” and “Madame Délicieuse,” but I did not take the trouble to identify the houses. If I am ever again to read Mr. Cable with pleasure, I must forget all I saw of old New Orleans. Of only one spot in it have I a grateful recollection—namely, Fabacher’s Restaurant, in Royal Street (Rue Royale). There I partook of a “Creole Gumbo”—a soup compounded of ham, crab, shrimps, chicken, and oysters—the bouillabaisse, I take it, of Louisiana.
In the new residential quarters of the city, in St. Charles Avenue and about Audubon Park, there are, no doubt, many beautiful houses, pleasantly embowered in semi-tropical vegetation. One or two of the newest and showiest mansions, in the Spanish style of architecture, I suspected of being built after a fashion I had observed on the outskirts of Memphis—with only a “veneer” of stone. The essential structure is of wood; but an outside casing is added, consisting of rusticated blocks of stone some three or four inches thick, an air-chamber being left between the stone and the wood. Whether this method of building is found successful I cannot say. The effect is often pleasing enough, even though the Lamp of Truth may not shine conspicuous in the architecture.
A run in a river-steamer for several miles up and down the Mississippi enabled me to realize in a measure the commercial magnitude and importance of New Orleans. But what impressed me most of all in the city was its cemeteries, of which it is justly proud. They are certainly magnificent and “pretentious” cities of the dead. (The word “pretentious” is currently used in America as a term of laudation.) Yes; if you want to get buried with everything handsome about you, by all means go to New Orleans. But as a place to live in, I cannot, on short acquaintance, commend it.
A Champion of the Children.
My pleasantest memory of New Orleans is of a house on Prytania Street—cool and airy, on an evening of extreme sultriness—where a lady of Scottish name and descent was good enough to talk to me of her manifold public activities. She is an ardent Suffragist—a rarity in these climes—but, above all things, she devotes herself to the work of holding in check, so far as may be, the terrible evils of child-labour, which its rapidly growing industrialism has brought upon the South.
“It is quite true,” said Miss Graham, in answer to a question of mine, “that you may often see the black child going to school while the white child goes into the factory. The negro child is not wanted in the factories; it could not be relied on; it would fall asleep over its work. You know, I dare say, that we are now overrun in New Orleans with Southern and Eastern Europeans—Italians, Roumanians, Lithuanians, Greeks. It is their children that are the chief sufferers.”
“In what forms of employment?”