by J. Michael Warner

It’s hard to know where you’re headed if you don’t know where you’re from. So in September 1976, 20-year-old Emily Davis left her West Coast home seeking missing parts of her background. She first headed to New York City, where a noted artist held the key to her past. The man was Noel Rockmore, her father.

By February 1977, she was living with Rockmore in New Orleans, where the artist had lived part-time since 1959. Barely out of her teens – Emily – who later adopted the name Emilie Rhys – knew her father’s name and had seen a little of his art. But her mother had rarely spoken of him after their painful marriage had broken up 18 years earlier. 

It’s hard to know where you’re headed if you don’t know where you’re from. So in September 1976, 20-year-old Emily Davis left her West Coast home seeking missing parts of her background. She first headed to New York City, where a noted artist held the key to her past. The man was Noel Rockmore, her father. 

Rockmore was an ingenious painter and draftsman, as well as an accomplished violinist; no dimension of his life was small. He prodigiously created painting after painting, often in massive formats. While he could express great joy, he sometimes withdrew into long-smoldering anger. His vast ego was impossible to caricature. He sometimes bragged that he had gone to bed with thousands of women. Often self-destructive, he nurtured a deep and enduring loyalty to his friends. 

Artistic talent ran strong in Emily’s family.  Her father was the son of two well-known East Coast artists, Gladys Rockmore Davis and Floyd Davis. Gladys and Floyd met at the Grauman Brothers advertising firm in Chicago where they were both employed, and by 1925, they married. Noel was born in 1928 and his sister, Deborah, arrived in 1930.

Floyd had left high school at an early age to help earn an income for his family. He had a keen interest in draftsmanship and largely taught himself the craft. He established a lifelong career as a commercial illustrator, and his work is still collected today.

Gladys had studied at the Chicago Art Institute and, later, at the Art Students League of New York. She began her career as a fashion and commercial artist. But a year-long trip to the Côte d’Azur of France for the entire family in 1932 exposed Gladys to Impressionists, Expressionists, Fauves, Nabis, and other styles of work that were totally removed from what she had been creating. When they returned to the States, she no longer worked for advertising firms and turned instead to a career in fine art.

After Allied forces liberated the North of France in 1944, Life magazine sent Gladys and Floyd to Paris to document the restoration of the city. That made Gladys the first female accredited wartime artist-correspondent for that publication.   

Noel followed in his parents’ fine art footsteps. As a young man, he married Elizabeth Hunter, a woman from a well-established family, and they had three children. His career began to blossom. By the mid-1950s, he had held well-received shows at New York’s Salpeter Gallery and was included in group shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.

But in 1958, driven by ambition, old friendships, and his ego, Noel left Elizabeth and their children. A year later, he moved to New Orleans. Thereafter, Elizabeth avoided even mentioning his name. 

Which was not the one he’d been born with. In the 1950s – and to his parents’ chagrin –  Noel changed his surname from Davis to his mother’s family name – Rockmore.  He claimed there were too many Davises in the New York art world (in addition to his parents and sister, noted artist Stuart Davis were all working on West 67th Street).

Emily and her siblings grew up essentially having never known Rockmore. But that was soon to change. 

Driven by a need to learn about their father, Emily and her brother Chris – a few years older than her – had reconnected with Rockmore individually. A plan was hatched for the kids to join Rockmore in New Orleans for the spring and summer of 1977. 

Emily arrived in New Orleans first,  already an artist with raw talent and a natural gift for portraiture, one who was quite comfortable with a pastel stick in her hand. When she arrived at New Orleans Airport, she was greeted by a woman named Gypsy Lou Webb. Rockmore had arranged for Lou to receive Emily because he was out of town, in the process of closing out his New York studio. 

Lou was slim, in her early 60s. Her dark hair and penetrating eyes had inspired Bob Dylan to describe her in song. She was an artist, a Bohemian. With her husband, she established Loujon Press and published the ground-breaking literary journal, The Outsider. She knew Kerouac. Hemingway. Tennessee Williams. Henry Miller. William Boroughs. Charles Bukowski.

Lou took Emily to stay at her third-floor two-room apartment at 640 Royal Street – what locals sometimes refer to as the “first skyscraper” because it was one of the tallest historic buildings in the neighborhood.  In Lou’s small apartment facing the courtyard, Emily settled in until Rockmore returned from New York. 

The Skyscraper Building housed a thriving Bohemian community. In an apartment down the courtyard from Lou was etcher Howard Mitcham.  Mitcham was also a gourmet cook, poet, and author. He ran a “cooking laboratory” on the third floor of the Skyscraper, where he prepared and tested hundreds of recipes as research for his cookbooks. Photographer Johnny Donnels maintained a studio in the building, while another denizen, Darlene Doherty, modeled nude for Donnels’s photographs.

Not long after Emily’s arrival, Lou assigned her a project. “That wall out there on the balcony, it’s so bare,” said Lou. “Why don’t you paint something on that?” 

So as she awaited her father’s arrival, Emily composed a mural of herself with Rockmore, and Gypsy Lou and others in the building. Darlene makes an appearance as a mermaid. Another of her dad’s friends is depicted in the mural.  Bob Page was a retired merchant marine and a primitive artist in his own right, who Rockmore called Old Man or OM. Emily thought his warm, friendly face looked “about 110 years old” from hard living.

Returning from New York in March 1977, and flush with money from the sale of his studio, Rockmore moved Emily to live with him in a grand townhouse on the 900 block of Orleans Avenue in the Quarter, just a few blocks from Jackson Square. Emily was impressed by the home’s double parlor and its twin fireplaces and ornate chandeliers. 

It’s there that she helped her father finish an ambitious 4-ft x 12-ft mixed media work on canvas entitled “Bourbon Street Parade,” presently on display at the New Orleans Jazz Museum. In the process, the artist came to recognize Emily’s talent. 

When Chris arrived in New Orleans, the artist found a small apartment on Royal Street for his son.  “He didn’t want me to be living with him and Emily because Noel was bipolar and his tirades would just kind of erupt unexpectedly,” Chris said in a recent interview.  “And he thought apparently that I wouldn’t have put up with them.”

Rockmore had another close friend, artist John Miller, who sold pastel portraits along the fence at Jackson Square. Rockmore asked Miller to help his daughter and son to set up their own stations on the Square. Emily specialized in portraiture, while Chris struggled to follow suit. He didn’t share her flair for capturing likenesses, and when he gave up his spot on the Square, he began creating exquisite drawings of New Orleans’ hauntingly beautiful cemeteries and quick sketches of people lounging on benches and in cafes.  

Most days, Emily jig-sawed chairs and pastels, paper and easel into a metal shopping cart, which she could push to her spot on the fence. She soon developed a habit of arriving at the fence in the small hours each morning – as artists still do today –  to stake out a choice location. Her favorite spot was at St. Ann Street near Chartres, where she could later catch a spot of shade from the afternoon sun. 

Though already a good artist, the work on the Square forced Emily to focus on her technique, to turn it into a profession. It was the first time she regularly made money off her work – a living income. She had sold a few works before, but it was nothing like the “day-in and day-outness” of working “on the fence.”

To attract business, Emily displayed some of her work, including an exceptional pastel copy of a Rembrandt self-portrait. Her father’s friend, OM, came to chat and shill for her by posing for a pastel portrait first thing each morning. Tourists would line up to watch. And then they’d want one too. Most portraits took twenty or thirty minutes. 

“They talk about the 10,000 hours of the Beatles and how the band built that knowledge and confidence and ability in Hamburg,” said Emilie, in a recent interview. “I feel like my first experience of something akin to that was being on the Square and working so hard every day, building those skills and my confidence.” 

And she made money. Lots of money, for a kid just out of her teens. “At a certain point I was tripping over this stash of money that I would throw under the rug in my little room,” she said. “It became a mound.” 

Working day in and day out, Emily didn’t have time to do anything with her newfound wealth. “You’d think I’d have stashed it in a bank account,” she recalled, laughing. “But I didn’t even have one yet.” 

Late in the summer, as Emily sat at her spot on the Square, she was approached by an extraordinarily tall man. An absurdly tall fellow. Pro-basketball tall. He was with an entourage, and as he walked up and down the Square, he examined the displays, sometimes chatting with one artist or another. 

The man stopped with Emily before wandering off to visit other portraitists. But he returned. And he gave Emily a $100 bill and two hours later, he left with his portrait. To this day, she doesn’t know who it was. 

Emily’s father would sometimes come to the square to watch his daughter work. According to Chris, she was attracting crowds of admiring onlookers, many staying to watch till she finished a portrait. Applause would follow. Rockmore sometimes laughed at her, in a sort of jealous derision, but his daughter refused to be marginalized. 

The jealousy extended to their attention – Rockmore craved the full devotion of Emily and Chris all for himself. He didn’t encourage them to develop friendships outside of his entourage. Chris remembers, “I think Noel kind of wanted us to just be in his world. And by his world, you know, paying attention to him.”

Emily also felt the force of Rockmore’s ego. “He was such a bombastic personality. There would be a lava flow because his furies would be extended, happening over a period of time.”

And then there were Rockmore’s frequent bar fights, which he made a habit of losing. 

By fall, Emily had accomplished everything she had sought when she’d arrived in February. She had created the Skyscraper mural and helped with the “Bourbon Street Parade” painting with her father. She took on a series of portrait sketches of early jazz musicians for inclusion in Mitcham’s book, Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz. She had worked full days on the Square. The admiration tourists had shown in her work had stoked her confidence and she’d earned an income that made the now twenty-one-year-old feel rich.  

Emily had also accomplished her goal of getting to know her father – for better or for worse – finding both positive and challenging aspects in his personality. Emily had worked side-by-side with Rockmore, learning from him and participating in the creation of iconic works. He had helped her get a start at the square. Yet, overall, the relationship was emotionally draining.

“Initially, he was insulting on occasion,” she remembers. “And as time passed, he built to a crescendo of vitriol so vile it was impossible to withstand.”

Around November, Chris and Emily left New Orleans, having learned enough of their father – enough so that she did not communicate with him for about a year. Emily and Chris each continued their artistic careers. Chris currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, and shows his work at Carter Burden Gallery in New York City. In 2011, Emily (now Emilie Rhys) returned to New Orleans where she has operated SceneBy Rhys Fine Art (1036 Royal Street) since 2016.  

It would take years for the father and daughter to reconcile, after Emily became an established artist in her own right. The two became close. Before the end of his life in 1995, Rockmore finally expressed admiration for Emily’s evolution from a shy kid to a professional fine artist. 

Perhaps as important as anything: during that magical, aggressive, discovery summer, Emily began to blossom into the professional artist she’d eventually become, Emilie Rhys.  Her time in Jackson Square remains at the center of her early artistic development – as it is for many New Orleans artists.

One of the most striking things she learned that summer was that portraiture on Jackson Square was generational. 

“People who chose me to do their portraits often would say their parents had brought them to Jackson Square as children to have their portraits done,” she said. “And now they were coming back with their kids. So I thought that was really wonderful continuity.”

Today, Emilie’s French Quarter studio is also on Orleans Street, just a block away from the townhouse she shared with her father in 1977. As she walks from her studio to her Royal Street gallery, she traces the same path she walked decades ago, pushing her shopping cart brimming with the accouterment of a Jackson Square artist. 

“Walking on that street, going toward that place, reconnects me every day with my younger self,” Emilie said. “We all carry a younger self within us, but I couldn’t connect with mine until 2011 when I moved back to the Quarter and began forging a life that included him [Rockmore] but wasn’t ruled by him.

“Some people have a hometown they can go to,” she continued. “When I was young we moved around too much, so I didn’t have that.  But my 20-year-old self bonded so strongly with the French Quarter! When I moved back it felt like the prodigal daughter returning. I felt like I’d come home.” 

Originally published in the French Quarter Journal, January 2025.

The post How Emilie Rhys Found Her Father – and Her Groove appeared first on J. Michael Warner.

Second-place winner of the 2019 IndieReader Discovery Award for Fiction!

Lyle Chambers Saxon earned his writing chops while reporting for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As a young man in the early 1920s, Saxon pursued an exhausting newspaper career, writing the stories and character sketches that gave him the skills to produce his later classics of Louisiana literature, such as Fabulous New Orleans, Children of Strangers and Lafitte the Pirate.

First published 1919-1923 in the Times-Picayune, the thirty-nine tales that comprise A Lyle Saxon Reader include short stories, preservationist essays and character sketches of the Saxon’s beloved city.

Most of the works in this book have been out of print since they were originally published. In this rediscovered collection of Lyle Saxon’s early short stories and character sketches, readers will take great pleasure in seeing in print for the first time in nearly a century some of the author’s early classics such as The Last Reunion and Who Would Hunt for Spanish Doubloons and Pieces of Eight?

Also among the stories in this volume are metaphorical visions of Saxon’s childhood, when Saxon was abandoned by his father and raised by his mother and grandparents. He draws other stories from contemporary headlines or images of antebellum gentility.

In each, Saxon pays special attention to the odd quirks expressed by that most-honored of New Orleans species, the French Quarter character.

Cultured Oak Press

ISBN 978-0-692-14152-6

A Lyle Saxon Reader can be ordered at your local bookstore or online.

Bookshop.org

Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble

Apple Books

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Originally published October 2019 in The French Quarter Journal.

“I thought it was a joke when they called me.”

Robert Cangelosi was in his office at the architectural firm Koch & Wilson when he received a phone call. It was May 12, 1988. And the Cabildo was engulfed in flames.

“They called me, and I was president of the Friends of the Cabildo. At first, it was like, ‘Ha, ha, ha! What’s the joke?’ I picked up my vice president, who lived nearby, and we drove down there immediately.”

Fire trucks were already on the scene at Jackson Square and more arrived each moment, reporting from surrounding communities. They pumped 10,000 gallons of water per minute onto burning timbers where there had once been a two-century-old mansard roof. Flames erupted through a ruined cupola, driven by the updraft.

Residents and tourists watched together from the street and through windows and rooftops, expecting the blaze to jump to adjacent buildings at any moment. Some locals wept to see one of Jackson Square’s stately architectural anchors being devoured before their eyes.

Started by a Torch

A worker’s soldering torch reportedly sparked the fire, which smoldered unnoticed for some hours before breaking through the roof. As the flames raged, firefighters went inside to rescue some of the artifacts held by the state museum within the Cabildo. They covered display cases with thick tarpaulins to protect from the water, and then set up a sort of bucket brigade, to carry historic pieces out and over to the Presbytere. The bronze death mask of Napoleon, centerpiece of the museum, was found undamaged.

Later, a few volunteers were allowed inside to help rescue museum pieces and assess damage.

“It was like being under Niagara Falls, with the water coming down through the building there,” said Cangelosi. “You could barely see in front of your hand, with the amount of water that was coming through the building.”

By the next day, the fire was extinguished and the damage assessment began. The entire third floor was destroyed – the Sala Capitular, where the documents were signed to consummate the Louisiana Purchase, and where the Louisiana Supreme Court heard arguments in the landmark Plesy v. Ferguson court case. But surprisingly, the first two floors were spared the fire, and the overall structure was salvageable.

Restoration Effort

Work began immediately on assessments and plans for reconstruction. The building which had been slated for demolition in the early 1900s became the focus of a heroic restoration effort.

Federal funds were available, but with that came a requirement to rebuild according to modern standards – and that meant a steel frame. But the museum and the state, with support of then-Gov. Buddy Roemer, wanted to see it rebuilt with historically-appropriate materials and methods. That meant cypress timbers and custom-hewn mortise-and-tenon joints.

The scale of this project was daunting, and the request was to complete the construction on a short schedule. Cangelosi, named as the chief architect for the project, worked with consultants across the nation to find the materials and artisans. The LSU Forestry Department studied charred remnants to identify the wood species, and the UNO Geology Department examined the stone staircase.

Search for Cypress

Appropriate cypress was found near Orlando, Fla., and pine came from the forests near Hammond, La. “We brought in a consultant on historic French timber framing,” said Cangelosi. “Most of the people doing heavy timber framing in the United States were following an English method. This was done in the French method.” They used the Presbytere as a model because it had a roof of similar vintage.

Extensive architectural surveys had been performed on the Cabildo. “I was talking to the architect at Independence Hall,” said Cangelosi. “He was shocked when I talked to him, because I was telling him everything we had on the Sala Capitular, and he said, ‘My God, you know we have no clue what the space the Declaration of Independence was signed in looked like at the time it was done.’”

Iron and Stone

The structure of the roof could be rebuilt, but artisans skilled in other details had to be found also. Some craftspeople were sourced locally. Sculptor Roc Paul of Abita Springs, La., was hired to replace lost ironwork and stone relief. In preparation for his work, he inspected the burnt structure from a unique vantage point – the roof of Le Petit Theatre, across St. Peter Street from the Cabildo.

The upper floor of the theatre “was the creepiest place I ever had to go through in my life,” Paul said. “And then a couple of years later, I was watching a documentary on haunted places in New Orleans. That place is haunted. I had to go through the storage place up there.” Paul reproduced the details of decorative metalwork and stonework from original sketches.

Witness to Reconstruction

I was fortunate to see for myself some of the reconstruction work. On the morning of March 13, 1992, I passed in front of the barricaded Cabildo on my way to meet friends. Laid out on the slate surface of Chartres Street were individually cut pieces of cypress, like a giant Lego project. It was the frame of the new cupola, literally to cap off the rebuilt roof. I had a 35mm camera with me, and captured images of the scene.

The puzzle parts included verticals and cross-members, and a circular cap, or tambour. Each cypress piece had been cut with care to fit together with mortise and tenon. The fitted parts were held together by oak pegs.

“The peg, which is oak, a harder wood, is driven on through,” said Cangelosi. “And as I said, it was done very, very authentically. We did do some cheating. We did use a crane to put them in place instead of using block and tackle.” Much of the assembly was performed in mid-air, with parts dangling from the crane.

It took considerable time and many more hours of work before the museum re-opened on Feb. 27, 1994. Former Gov. Edwin Edwards snipped the ribbon, commemorating the rebirth of a Vieux Carré landmark.

Work on the Cabildo continues. The fence around the arcade, called in the original documents, the portelis, was replaced after the main restoration. “There were problems with people urinating on it,” said Cangelosi. “And actually I found reports the mayors, going back to the 1840s, were complaining of guys urinating on what was there.”

Some things just don’t change.

The post Up From the Ashes: Rebuilding the Cabildo appeared first on J. Michael Warner.

Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 book, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner) is an engrossing novel of a Mississippi family struggling with issues of race, unemployment and threatened family breakup. It is a difficult book to put down.

Set on the Gulf Coast and in the Mississippi Delta, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a story of thirteen-year-old Jojo, his grandfather Pop, grandmother Mam, mother Leonie and toddler sister Kayla. Jojo has a close relationship with Pop, whose years of experience have made him wise and patient. Pop teaches Jojo how to cope with the difficult things in life, and Jojo wants to show Pop that he can take life as an adult.

Mam lies in her room, in the last days of her battle with cancer. Key to the story, Jojo and Leonie are able to see and speak to spirits of the dead who have not yet left this world. They inherited this ability, or burden, through Mam, who is able to use natural forces, herbals and words to help people.

On the surface, this is a story of the release of Leonie’s husband (Michael, Jojo and Kayla’s father) from Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s notorious high-security and historically black prison, after serving time on drug charges. Leonie is black and Michael is white. Michael’s father is a man who cannot see past race and he hates Leonie because of it; it is another family torn apart.

Leonie demands Jojo and Kayla join her on the trip to Parchman to pick up Michael, over Pop’s objections. It turns out Pop is right. Leonie is a neglectful mother, to the point of child endangerment. Leonie’s self-absorption and Michael’s absence force Jojo to be the parent to his little sister Kayla. The role of parent matures Jojo, but his maturity is also driven by the need of the dead to use his voice.

The spirits with whom Jojo and Leonie communicate are those of people who have suffered a deep wrong or have left something unresolved in life, and must stay in this world until these issues are answered. Leonie’s brother, Given, is one of those spirits, but Leonie can only see Given while she is using drugs.

Killed by Michael’s cousin, and the racially-charged murder thinly covered up as a hunting accident, Given cannot move on to the next world because he has been silenced, and his story remains untold and unresolved. The lack of a voice is both figurative and literal; spirit Given cannot speak aloud.

Another ghost appears to Jojo later in the book, when the group arrives at Parchman Farm. This is the spirit of a twelve-year-old African American boy, Richie, who was imprisoned at Parchman for a minor offense, at the same time Pop was serving a sentence there. Richie is young and naïve; he does not understand the forces at play in the prison, and Pop tries to protect him. But Richie is killed while serving his time.

On the ride back to the Gulf Coast after Parchman, Richie’s spirit haunts, gnaws at, weighs on Jojo, and constantly seeks something from the living boy. He demands Jojo ask: Why did your grandfather not protect me in prison? What happened to me? The spirits cannot speak, so they require that the living ask the questions.

And that’s the title of the book. Ward has her characters speak for the silenced and forgotten. In an interview on National Public Radio in August 2017, Ward referred to those killed at Parchman and elsewhere: “I thought about all those people whose suffering had been erased, and thought, ‘Why can’t they speak? Why can’t I undo some of that erasure?’” In Sing, Unburied, Sing, the living must provide a voice for the dead to ask the questions that most of the living do not want to answer. In the title, Unburied means that these questions are still unsettled and will not allow these spirits to rest.

Ward uses a multiple narrative technique: the perspective of each chapter is rotated among the different characters. This is a difficult technique, but Ward makes it work well. A very different Mississippi writer, William Faulkner, used this technique in his classic novel, As I Lay Dying. In that book, the Bundren family treks across the state to bury the mother of the family. Faulkner also has each of his characters takes a turn narrating a chapter, including the spirit of the deceased mother. But in Sing, Unburied, Sing, the multiple narrative effectively makes the family a living being itself, with a voice and a desire to survive.

Other recurring themes in Sing, Unburied, Sing include blood and water. Pop’s given name is River and Mam is called the saltwater woman. On the drive to Parchman Farm, Leonie buys drinks for herself and her girlfriend, but leaves the children thirsty. “Sometimes I wonder who that parched man was, that man dying for water, that they named the town and jail after,” Jojo says.

In this book, water is a symbol for life, love and nurturing. Leonie is not a nurturing mother; instead, she is neglectful and her children go thirsty. But Pop and Mam have always looked out for their grandchildren.

Blood is sometimes used to represent both family and maturity. As the book opens, Jojo narrates a scene in which he helps Pop slaughter a goat.

I follow Pop out the house, try to keep my back straight, my shoulders even as a hanger; that’s how Pop walks. I try to look like this is normal and boring so Pop will think I’ve earned these thirteen years, so Pop will know I’m ready to pull what needs to be pulled, separate innards from muscle, organs from cavities. I want Pop to know I can get bloody. Today’s my birthday.

Jesmyn Ward knows well the part of the country in which the events of Sing, Unburied, Sing occur; she was born in DeLisle, Mississippi, not far from the Gulf Coast, and resides there now. She is an associate professor of creative writing  at Tulane University. Other books from her include novels Salvage the Bones (2012, Bloomsbury) and Where the Line Bleeds (2018, Scribner), and essay collection The Fire This Time (2016, Scribner). She is a two-time National Book Award winner.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is an important and thought-provoking book that deserves reading.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Scribner
$26.00
ISBN 978-1501126062
Published September 5, 2017
304 pp.

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It’s not just for Monday anymore!  New Orleans red beans and rice can be made anytime you have a day-long project from which you can take occasional breaks to stir the pot. The ingredients are easy to find and inexpensive. When I was in college, my buddy Mark and I decided that we were going to treat our friends to a red beans and rice dinner. The only problem: we didn’t know how to cook it. So I called home and my father answered. His recipe was, “Soak the beans overnight, then add some pork meat and spices. Then boil the hell out of it.” My mother called back in a few minutes and gave me the following recipe. I’ve modified it a little bit. It’s great when served with a dessert like bread pudding.

TIPS:

• Fresh spices yield the best results, but you can use dry in a pinch. Seasoning the red beans is a matter of taste. Some like it more flavorful than others, but keep in mind that spicy-hot is not the same as flavorful. The various seasonings listed below will create a complex melody of flavors. If you want it hotter, you can hit it with a shake or two of hot sauce when it’s on the plate.
• Be extra careful when adding salt. The diced ham contains a lot of salt already. And it’s far easier to add more salt than to take it out.
• Most recipes have us soak the beans under water overnight in a large stockpot. The idea is to soften the beans so that the cook time is shorter. Experiments have shown that it doesn’t really make much difference to the final product. Still, I always soak the beans. Tradition, and all that.
• You will know when the beans are done because the batch will have a consistent, creamy texture and essentially all of the beans will have broken up.
• You should occasionally taste the red beans and decide if you want to adjust the seasonings. I usually add more as the recipe progresses. Consider the ingredients below a starting point that might be adjusted upward.
• Make sure the sausage is pork-based. Anything else will just taste strange. No, don’t use turkey sausage.
• Red beans and rice is traditionally served with a baguette of fresh French bread on the side. And beer doesn’t hurt.

Red Beans

Serves six

Ingredients

1 one-pound bag of dry, large red kidney beans
1-1/2 lb. pork sausage such as andouille or kielbasa, cut into 3-4 inch lengths
1/2 lb. diced ham1 large white onion, diced
1 tbsp. fresh sage, chopped
1 tbsp. fresh rosemary, chopped
1/2 tbsp. fennel seed
3-4 sprigs fresh thyme
3-4 large bay leaves
1/2 tbsp fresh ground black pepper
salt to taste hot sauce to taste
water as required
For garnish: chopped green pepper or parsley

Soak

Place the dry beans in a large stockpot (8 quart size or larger will do).  A black cast iron kettle is perfect, but you can use any pot with a thick metal bottom that allows even heat distribution. Add water until the level is about an inch or two above the beans. Allow to stand overnight.

Season and Simmer

Get up the next morning and have a cup of coffee. Set the burner under the beans to medium-high heat. The beans will have swollen overnight, so if necessary, add more water until the level is about one inch above the beans. Add the diced onion and diced ham. Add all the seasonings except the salt. Bring the pot to a boil and then reduce to medium-low heat and allow to simmer. Cover with a lid.

This part takes five hours or more, so it’s a good time to read a book, or write one. During this period, stir the pot occasionally and don’t let it scorch too much, although there is a school that says you’re supposed to allow it to scorch a little to add flavor. Sometimes I follow this advice by accident. Add water as necessary to maintain a constant level. Taste occasionally (don’t burn your tongue!) and adjust the seasonings to taste. If you add salt, add just a pinch or two at a time and taste again. You have at least five hours, so there’s no reason to rush it.

Reduce

Around hour five, the simmering mixture should have a consistent appearance. Remove the lid and allow it to slowly boil down until the beans have a thick, creamy texture. Remember that this is really hot, and when it cools down on the plate, the consistency will be thicker still. Stir occasionally. Fish out the stems from the thyme sprigs, if you can find them.

Serve

After the beans have reduced in volume by an inch or so, and the viscosity of the mix is similar to that of heavy cream, you are ready. Serve over white or brown rice and garnish with chopped green onion or chopped parsley. Dose with two or three shakes of hot sauce, if you wish.

Rice

1 cup dry white rice
2 cups water
1/4 tsp salt

Place the water and salt in a large sauce pan and bring to a boil. Add the rice and stir, then reduce the heat to low and cover for eighteen minutes. Fluff the rice and serve.

The post Best Red Beans and Rice in the World appeared first on J. Michael Warner.

A mysterious dancer in the early 1800s mesmerized crowds and caused consternation by cross-dressing and challenging social norms.

She led a life both romantic and tragic, the stuff of which epics are written. Yet, little is known about her birth and upbringing. In the ballet halls of 18th-century Paris, she was declared a child prodigy. Later, she became America’s first female choreographer, and among the first to perform a full ballet in this country.

Men fought over her. She was an acclaimed beauty. But she contracted a disfiguring disease, and eventually died in New Orleans, alone and in poverty.

Born in France

Suzanne was from Dole, France. Her birth name was Suzanne Théodore Vaillandé, and she was said to be an illegitimate child, un enfant naturel, born in 1778 to Marie Reine Vaillandé, a woman of modest means.

But by 1786, at the age of eight, Suzanne was in Paris. There she learned to dance, probably at the Royal Academy of Music. She showed so much talent that she was soon engaged to perform at the Paris Opera Ballet and at Nicolet’s Théâtre des Grand Danseurs du Roi. Though just a child, Suzanne was famous for her grace and admired for her beauty.

At Nicolet’s, Suzanne caught the eye of a man named Alexandre Placide, who soon began to produce her performances. Placide was born in 1750, making him about four times the girl’s age. His stage talent was extraordinary: actor, singer, musician, acrobat, poet, pantomimist, tightrope walker, swordsman, director, and producer. And he was a powerful force within the politics of French theater.

Skipped Town

But Placide had legal troubles. His wife filed a police complaint against him for pawning her jewelry, and for forcing himself upon their 13-year-old servant girl.

To escape punishment, Placide skipped town with 10-year-old Suzanne around 1788, just before the French Revolution. Soon, he and Suzanne found themselves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, today called Haiti.

There, Placide pulled together a stage company called the Troupe des Danseurs du Roi. Suzanne was the starring female performer, and he billed her as Mme. Placide.

They toured Saint-Domingue for a few years, sometimes performing acrobatic displays, comic ballets, and harlequinades. But Placide smelled political trouble, and removed the troupe to the United States, just weeks before the 1791 Haitian rebellion of enslaved people.

Suzanne debuted on a U.S. stage in Annapolis on October 29, 1791. It was the first full ballet ever performed in the U.S., and Suzanne was said to be the first trained ballerina to perform in this country. Her January 25, 1792 performance in The Bird Catcher at the John Street Theater was the first ballet performed in New York.

Suzanne still appeared as Mme. Placide, despite her age and the fact that she and Placide were not married. Disturbing rumors of Placide’s intentions with this child were confirmed when, at the age of 15, Suzanne gave birth to a daughter.

Charleston Their Base

The company eventually made Charleston their base. There, at the Charleston French Theatre in 1796, Suzanne choreographed Echo et Narcisse, a pastoral ballet about the unrequited love of the nymph Echo for self-indulgent Narcissus. With this, Suzanne became the first woman choreographer in the U.S.

One of the performers at the Charleston theatre was Louis Boucher Douvillier. Louis was 35 years old and handsome, a popular opera singer and ballet dancer. By 1796, he had fallen in love with Suzanne. She was then 18, and had not only the daughter, but a son as well.

Sensing Louis’ feelings for Suzanne, Placide challenged the younger man to a duel in the streets of Charleston. Scandal-fueled stories of the battle soon spread, with contradictory accounts of who wounded whom. Days after the duel, Suzanne and Louis fled Charleston together with Suzanne’s daughter. They left the son with Placide. But without a hint of shame, Placide married someone else, just a few days later: a 16-year-old girl.

After leaving Charleston, Louis and Suzanne produced a show and went on tour, including a year-long residency in Philadelphia. By 1799, they had married, and established a permanent home in New Orleans. She began to appear onstage as Mme. Douvillier.

Arrival in New Orleans

This was a tumultuous period in New Orleans. The Crescent City was under Spanish occupation, and the administration was detested by the French residents. And in recent years, immigration to New Orleans had mushroomed. Refugees from the Saint-Domingue revolt flooded in, overwhelming resources.

But Suzanne’s marriage turned sour. Around 1802, Louis left her for another woman, a soprano with whom he had previously appeared onstage.

Suzanne and Louis never divorced, and she continued to appear onstage as Mme. Douvillier. But she needed neither Louis nor Placide, for she led her own career in New Orleans.

In 1808 Suzanne opened Le Théâtre de la Gaîté on St. Philip Street, between Royal and Bourbon. But the theatre was an economic failure. It closed after six months. The St. Philip Street Theatre moved into that location and hired Suzanne as the principal dancer and ballet mistress. She was still, it seems, the only female choreographer in the U.S.

Jill of All Trades

Suzanne held many jobs at the St. Philip Street Theatre, including directing, stage performance, hospitality, management, and probably advertising. During the 1812-13 theater season, Suzanne became the first woman to design and paint stage sets in the U.S.

She was the jack-of-all-trades needed to keep the theatre alive and profitable. Really, not much has changed from Shakespeare’s day, through Suzanne’s time, until now.

In 1808, she was the first woman in America to appear onstage in male costume – en travesti, they say in operatic circles. Where else would this have happened than in New Orleans? It turns out that the use of castrated male singers, castrati, went out of style in the early 19th century, and women began to take the mezzo soprano male roles. There is no evidence that Suzanne was a singer, but the changing practice may have opened the doors to similar roles for women in ballet.

Though they had been separated for years, tensions remained high between Suzanne and Louis.

Protest

A public battle erupted between them in November 1812, when Suzanne engaged a Mons. Dupré to sing onstage at the St. Philip with other performers. The decision was forward-thinking for the times, because Mons. Dupré was a man of color in a segregated business.

Louis loudly protested. He and twelve other performers refused to go onstage with Dupré because of the man’s race. They even sent a letter to Mayor Nicolas Girod, asking him to intercede and ban the performance, though it’s not clear whether Girod acted on the request. The protest may have been an effort to wrest control of the theater from Suzanne.

Bethany Ewald Bultman, Co-Founding Director and Chair of the New Orleans Musicians Clinic & Assistance Foundation, has been researching Suzanne’s life:

I am not sure if this is fact, but there is a belief that male theater owners in early 19th century post-colonial Louisiana complained about her “skirting” the rules. Then once she succeeded in creating an audience for ballet, they did all they could to run her out of business. This 1812 letter seems to be an example of their trying to destroy her business. And her ex- was right on board with that.

In the mid-1810s, Suzanne fell on hard times. She was never rich, and as she aged, she no longer made the income younger performers might receive. She fell into poverty.

Worse, Suzanne was stricken with a terrible medical condition. American actor and memoirist Noah Ludlow provided a firsthand account.

Ludlow and his company had performed in New Orleans for the 1817-18 theater season, and in April 1818, he hired Louis and Suzanne, sight unseen, to perform the ballet Don Juan.

Louis played the title character, and Suzanne took the role of Donna Anna. But she did not come to the rehearsals. When she finally appeared at the theater, on the night of the first performance, she wore a black silken mask that covered her face from chin to just below the eyes.

Though Suzanne wore the mask throughout the performance, she received immense applause.

Neither Louis nor Suzanne explained to Ludlow the purpose of her mask – in fact, Suzanne never spoke at all. But Ludlow later learned that Suzanne had contracted a disease to which she had lost her nose and part of her mouth. Some speculated cancer. Early 19th-century cancer treatments were mostly limited to surgical removal, such as rhinectomies.

For the remainder of her life, she never appeared in public without the mask.

The 1818 performance was apparently Suzanne’s last time on stage. She was soon unable to perform, and it was rumored she sometimes pulled a firewood cart through the Vieux Carré to make a little money.

Accomplishments to Be Recognized

Louis died suddenly in 1821. Suzanne died five years later at the still-young age of 48, alone and in poverty. She and Louis are buried in paupers’ graves in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Bultman is seeking to locate Suzanne’s wall tomb, and perhaps to install a plaque to her memory.

Suzanne Vaillandé Douvillier’s accomplishments in American ballet must be recognized: she was the first trained ballerina to perform in the U.S., the first female choreographer in the U.S., the first woman to appear on an American stage en travesti, the first female set designer in the U.S, and perhaps the first woman to open and manage a theater in New Orleans.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Bethany Ewald Bultman, Co-Founding Director and Chair of the New Orleans Musicians Clinic & Assistance Foundation, and Lori Shexnayder, Research Services Library Associate, Tulane University Library Special Collections, for their help on this story.

References

Bozak, Nina, “A Woman of Firsts: Suzanne Douvillier Changed Dance in New Orleans—and in America,” The Historic New Orleans Collection, August 28, 2018, https://www.hnoc.org/publications/first-draft/woman-firsts-suzanne-douvillier-changed-dance-new-orleans%E2%80%94and-america.

“721 St. Philip St.,” Vieux Carré Digital Survey, https://www.hnoc.org/vcs/property_info.php?lot=22928-01.

Costonis, Maureen Needham. Ballet Comes to America, 1792-1842: French Contributions to the Establishment of Theatrical Dance in New Orleans and Philadelphia. 1989. New York University, PhD dissertation.

Andros, Dick. “The Beginnings of American Ballet,” Andros on Ballet, September 1993, http://michaelminn.net/andros/history/beginnings_of_american_ballet/index.html.

Plyer, Alison and Lamar Gardere. “The New Orleans Prosperity Index: Tricentennial Edition,” The Data Center, April 11, 2018, https://www.datacenterresearch.org/reports_analysis/prosperity-index/.

Bardet, Jean-Pierre. “Early Marriage in Pre-Modern France,” Hist. Fam., 6(3) 2001, 345-63.

Needham, Maureen. “Suzanne Douvillier,” American National Biography, February 2000, https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1800317.

“Suzanne Théodore Vaillande Douvillier,” Encyclopedia Birtannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Suzanne-Theodore-Vaillande-Douvillier

Ludlow, N.M. Dramatic Life As I Found It. St. Louis: G.I. Jones and Company, 1880, pp. 145-149.

Braun, Juliane. Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia. 2019.

Louis Douvillai death record, July 26, 1821, Tulane University Library Special Collections, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Suzanne Théodore Vaillandé death record, August 30, 1826, Tulane University Library Special Collections, New Orleans, Louisiana.

James, Edward T. et al. “Suzanne Douvillier.” Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Boston: Belknap Press. 1971.

Kaufman, Sarah. “New Orleans & Dance, Partners Again.” The Washington Post. June 15, 2003, p. N1.

The post Danseuse du Roi: The Life of Suzanne Vaillandé Douvillier appeared first on J. Michael Warner.

Who created the wonderfully detailed iron balconies in New Orleans? In 1920, the last in a line of French Quarter forgerons put down his hammer. M. Charles Antoine Mangin, Jr., a Creole and fifth-generation iron monger, decided to retire because he could no longer find workers interested in learning this art.

Each piece that came from his shop was unique and original. On June 6 that year, Times Picayune reporter Marguerite Samuels published an interview with Mangin in which the smithy explained his ideas of the French Quarter’s iron works.¹ Cast iron works are created from molten iron cast into molds. But each wrought iron work is unique.

Wrought iron is like an oil painting – every stroke is put on by hand, and there is only one copy in the world. Cast iron is like printing – once you have the plate, you may run off millions of copies.

From France Via NOLA

Mangin was born in New Orleans on August 17, 1854, but his grandfather arrived from France in 1832 and set up the shop at 621 Bourbon Street; there was a forge in the courtyard of that address at least until Mangin’s retirement eighty-eight years later.

I hardly had to learn at all. It was born in me. I have worked around a forge since I was fourteen. Every member of my family has been an ornamental ironworker, except one, the smartest – he was a priest.

This brawny and mustachioed forgeron lived above the shop with his French-born wife, Antonia Meraux Mangin. Over the years, various close relatives lived with them, including Charles’ brother John, who also worked in the shop.² But at the time of his retirement, Mangin was sixty-six years old, and the couple were living alone with no children to carry on the legacy.³

Iron-Clad Knowledge

Mangin was said to know more about ornamental ironwork than anyone else, and he made this clear as he led the reporter on a tour of the Vieux Carré. The wrought iron at 621 Bourbon was among the most detailed in the French Quarter, and each piece was made by hand in the forge at this address. Mangin also loved the French-made balcony next door at 619 Bourbon, and believed it to be the oldest in the city.

But he considered the works gracing the façade of Waldhorn’s Antiques Shop at 343 Royal Street to be the most beautiful.

It has the French brass ball at the end of a scroll-design which could not have been made in less than eight heats for every scroll. And the scroll is repeated an uncountable number of times.

Veranda

Although etymologists would disagree with him, Mangin claimed to know the origin of the word veranda:

A certain Hidalgo of Spain, by the name of La Veranda, with an open gallery outside his house, had a sudden architectural inspiration to protect his family against sun and rain. He ran up pilasters, and put on a roof – and behold! the snuggest balcony Seville had ever seen. Delighted, his daughter never left the spot. She was a striking beauty, with Castilian coloring and a lift to her head that made passersby say, “Look! That’s La Veranda.”

After closing the shop, Mangin continued working with iron, but on a smaller scale: he became a locksmith.⁴ He died in 1924 and is buried in St. Louis Cemetery Number 1. Antonia passed away just seven years later.

References

¹ Marguerite Samuels, “Art in the Iron Verandas of New Orleans,” Times Picayune, sec. 3, p. 1, June 6, 1920. Quotes in this blog post are taken from this article.

² Twelfth Census of the United States, New Orleans City, June 9, 1900. Thirteenth Census of the United States, New Orleans City, April 22, 1910.

³ Succession of Charles A. Mangin, Civil District Court, Parish of Orleans, State of Louisiana, No. 153281, Div. C, Docket 1, June 26, 1924.

⁴ Soards’ New Orleans City Directory (New Orleans: Soards, 1923), 1735.

Ironwork image: By aprilzosia (Flickr: 4.5.08) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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In the Roaring 20s, feisty Uptown socialite Martha Westfeldt opens a French Quarter bookstore that becomes Bohemia Central.

From time to time, a shop opens in the French Quarter that becomes a nexus for creative minds. The shop is sometimes a restaurant or a gallery or book store that brings together New Orleanians of diverse talent. But it is always driven by an original and congenial personality.

During Prohibition, one such French Quarter nexus was Martha Westfeldt’s Green Shutter Tea Room and Book Shop. The shop was described in 1928 by poet and author Carl Carmer:

O the Green Shutter, the Green Shutter,

Where artists fume and poets sputter,

Where books are read but seldom bought

And many a battle of words is fought,

I will recall with my heart’s last flutter

That heathen crowd at the Green Shutter. [1]

Fairy Tale Deb

Martha Jefferson Celine Gasquet was born in New Orleans on a Spring day of 1883 to Francis James Gasquet (1835-1907) and Louise Lepeyre (1845-1913). Francis was a wealthy landowner and industrialist from Virginia, a handsome man with blond hair and blue eyes. Louise was a cousin of John Singer Sargent’s Madam X, whose sensuous portrait had scandalized Paris a generation earlier—the Louisiana-born Virginie Amélie Avegno, known in France as Madame Pierre Gautreau.

The youngest of five children, Martha grew up as a classic fairy tale debutante and socialite. She spent summers abroad or in cooler northern states, and had her debut at a New Year’s Eve costume ball in 1900. During Mardi Gras in 1902 she was surprised to be selected from a crowd and crowned queen at the Krewe of Nereus ball.

Shortly after the turn of the century, Martha met another wealthy New Orleanian, George Gustav Westfeldt (1880-1961). George was active in politics and the arts and was heir to the Westfeldt Bros. coffee importing business, and was a leader of Crescent City society (on Mardi Gras in 1947, George rode enthroned through the streets as Rex, King of Carnival). Martha and George wed on October 28, 1905.

Martha Westfeldt had many gifts; for example, she was a ceramicist and an artist, mostly a talented cartoonist. But she was also an astute businesswoman. Around 1920, she began to buy properties in the French Quarter, with an eye toward historic preservation, and many of her purchases were near the corner of St. Peter and Royal Streets. She donated temporary space in one such house at 629 Royal Street to the newly-formed Arts and Crafts Club for their official charter on June 1, 1921.

The Green Shutter

But by November of that year, Martha founded—at this same address—a social coffeehouse and tea salon that she named the Green Shutter. Presumably, they served Westfeldt Bros. coffee. Soon the shop moved next door to 633 Royal, where it settled in for many years.

Initially it was a small restaurant, but Martha also sold artwork and, with the aid of a few employees, began a trade in books and antiques. She also operated a kiln in the back courtyard and sold her ceramics in the shop. From 1922-1924, the Green Shutter was the fashionable place for artists and socialites to entertain.

Martha continued to support New Orleans arts, and many of the best-known local artists showed works in the Green Shutter, including Alberta Kinsey, William Spratling, Morris Henry Hobbs and Clarence Millet.

Before long, the shop expanded into 710 St. Peter Street, just around the corner, and patrons could access either building through a passage in the courtyard. Among its patrons, the Green Shutter drew now-famous names, including William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, William Spratling, Lyle Saxon and Roark Bradford. Under the Green Shutter label, Martha even published at least one book, Mollie E. Moore Davis’ Selected Poems (1927).

New Orleans writer and bon vivant Lyle Saxon observed the activities at the Green Shutter approvingly:

Around the corner from Royal, in St. Peter street, there is tremendous activity—the Green Shutter is open and is in full swing, with artists in smocks discussing this business of life as they sip their coffee in the courtyard, and with a sprinkling of ‘uptown’ people who have come to see just what these artists are up to. It is here that the world of fashion touches, ever so lightly, the world of art—Kismet! [2]

Luncheon Politics

By the early 1930s, gatherings at the Green Shutter took a more serious tenor, and luncheon topics covered politics and women’s issues. Martha became one of the founders of the Women’s Committee of Louisiana, the main thrust of which was to recall the mercurial Louisiana senator, Huey P. Long.

Long was always the source of controversy, and was not infrequently accused of wrongdoing. While governor, he survived an impeachment attempt, and there were allegations of corruption and fraud in Long’s 1932 senate campaign.

The Women’s Committee formed shortly after the 1932 election and was headed by a friend and colleague of Martha’s, Hilda Phelps Hammond. The two women found Long’s brash personality and tactics offensive. Martha also supported Roosevelt’s New Deal, which Long often criticized.

In support of the Women’s Committee, Martha donated office space on the second floor of 633 Royal. And to benefit the committee, she organized well-advertised antiques sales at 710 St. Peter. The Times-Picayune newspaper, never a friend of Long, provided ample free publicity.

The committee grew to a membership of over 1500 women, but met with resistance from many corners of Washington. Although backed by national newspapers and growing popular support, their petitions to investigate and recall Long made slow progress. However, the committee’s work became moot upon Long’s assassination on September 5, 1935, at the steps of the capitol building in Baton Rouge. A year or so later, the group dissolved.

France Forever

Martha remained active in important issues, however. During World War II, she ran a branch of a national organization called France Forever from the rooms of the Green Shutter, raising funds for French soldiers and donating food and goods to French and Belgian families caught up in the war.

Newspapers recounted that, while she held a meeting of France Forever at her home one day, eight Vichy French sailors showed up and asked Martha for help. The Vichy regime was a puppet government set up after Germany overran France. The sailors had jumped ship and somehow made their way to New Orleans.

Martha secreted them in her Garden District backyard, and later hid them at the Westfeldt summer home in Waveland, Mississippi, until they could be sent to New York and then onward to support the Allied de Gaulle forces.

After the armistice, France recognized her work and made her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Belgium honored her with the Silver Medal of the Order of the Crown.

Recipes and Philanthropy

In the years after the war, Martha returned to life as a socialite and philanthropist. With the exception of an occasional letter to the editor, she largely retired from politics. The Green Shutter was turned over to the American Cancer Society as a headquarters.

But Martha did not disappear. She found a cause in support of the New Orleans Public Library, and she often published her favorite recipes in the Times-Picayune. Here is Martha’s courtbouillon recipe.[3]

Prepare a good roux from a tablespoon of lard, a tablespoon of flour and a cup of water to which is added a finely minced clove of garlic and a can of tomato paste, using water to rinse out can, and two bay leaves and a tablespoon of sugar. Add pepper and salt to taste and simmer for a few minutes. Now add your raw fish and cook until done. Serve on slices of toast.

Martha Westfeldt died from a heart attack on April 15, 1960 and was survived by her husband George, four children and multiple grandchildren. She is most remembered for her contributions to the arts and society through her work at the Green Shutter, but her legacy in politics and social work extends much further.

Today the Royal Street location of the Green Shutter is occupied by Naghi’s, an antiques store and art gallery. Owner Effie Naghi has been in that location since 1986. He still has the original Green Shutter sign, stored upstairs in the building’s attic.

Special thanks to The Historic New Orleans Collection for use of several images in this story.

[1] Carl Carmer, “Song for the Green Shutter,” French Town (New Orleans: The Quarter’s Bookshop, 1928) unnumbered page.

[2] Lyle Saxon, “What’s Doing,” Times-Picayune Sunday Magazine, October 25, 1925, p. 2.

[3] “Favorite Dishes of Prominent Women,” Times-Picayune, November 10, 1950, p. 44.

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