Articles

Belle Grove Plantation

Belle Grove Plantation seems to have been the focal point for the family of J.M. McBride. Prior to further discussion on his children and descendants it seem appropriate to discuss the importance that this home seemed to have on the family. I know it was the most important point of reference for my father, Robert R. McBride, Sr., and I suspect for his brothers and sisters as well. The most treasured possessions for many family members were those that came from the plantation, and to some extent, this sense seems to have been passed on to succeeding generations. The homestead has best been described by articles published in various newspapers and on personal recollections of family members. Several of these documents are presented below.

BELLE GROVE PLANTATION
BEGAN BEFORE CIVIL WAR

The home of James Monroe McBride, son of Peter McBride of the "Eastern Shore" of Virginia and Olive Ann Conklin of New York City, was located on the Little Bayou Black between Ardoyne and Rebecca Plantations. Peter McBride settled in Thibodauxville, as it was first called, about 1835.

His son, James Monroe, married Miss Emily Daunis and it was from the Estate of Marcellus Daunis, her father, that Mr. McBride purchased Belle Grove Plantation. Mr. Daunis started the construction of this large home in 1847, completing it after the close of the Civil War. The first Mrs. McBride died and Mr. McBride later married Mary Elizabeth Allen of Centerville, Louisiana, in St. Mary Parish. Of the children of this union two are now living , a daughter, Mrs. J. Farquhard Chauvin of 629 Verret Street, Houma and the youngest son, Robert Rankin McBride, of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Mr. J.M. McBride undertook an extensive renovation of the lower floor of the Belle Grove house, and added a very large two-story wing onto the rear of the structure.

The plantation was cultivated in sugar cane, processed in the sugar mill on the property, and later, Mr. Mcbride added a syrup factory to his operations. Some time after the loss of his second wife, Mr. McBride married Mrs. Lucretia Horner, widow of William Grace Horner, of New Orleans, whose daughter, Mrs. Stella Horner Blackburn still lives in Houma. She is widow of the late Reverend John Nelson Blackburn, the Presbyterian pastor for so many years in the community.

The familiar woe of cane mosaic disease that plagued all of the sugar planters set in at Belle Grove also and, in 1926, the plantation was acquired by the Canal Bank and Trust Company of New Orleans. Many years later, in the early 1950's, the house only was purchased by Mr. Lionel Babin, who had it taken apart and using much of the materials, constructed his new home on the Schriever Highway.

Photo included in article:
1. Belle Grove, no longer standing, was the former plantation home of James Monroe McBride.

ANN CAROL KEEPS BELLE GROVE'S MEMORIES
By Helen Wurzlow

Belle Grove, one of the loveliest homes of storied Little Bayou Black's "sugar row" is no more. This monument to graceful living, not to be confused with another Belle Grove near White Castle, has passed away; but not without a trace. Parts of it still live in a new mansion on Bayou Terrebonne. The Lionel Babin home, Ann Carol, will continue to safeguard these priceless objects of a departed age. Belle Grove's murals, by a celebrated New York artist, adorn Ann Carol's music room, dining room, and foyer. Representing the four seasons, J.F. Douthitt's paintings are as fresh and dainty in their pastel colorings as the day the artist put the finishing touches on them, and received his commission from the late James McBride, sugar planter and lord of Belle Grove. The huge brass chandeliers that shone upon them in their original setting still light up their beauty in their new surroundings. The chandeliers are said to have been designed by Stanford White, and are the same ones which lighted the old Pickwick Club in New Orleans.

Some of the classic Doric columns which pillared the broad galleries, upstairs and down, around the whole house, now support the front porch of Ann Carol. The winding, hand carved walnut stairway in the foyer of Belle Grove, the huge walnut mantels, and wall size mirrors all are now part of Ann Carol.

But gone forever are Belle Grove's cypress-lined dining room, once muraled with hunting scenes; the stained glass portrait window of Bettie, the McBride's first-born daughter, who died at the age of 16; the cupola and widow's walk which once afforded a bird's-eye view of the 1600-acre estate with its fields of waving cane, and golf course along the bayou bank; the mansard slate roof brought in as ship's ballast; the grove of beautiful oaks which gave the manor its name.

Belle Grove, which knew tragedy as well as good times, dates back to the year 1849, according to the story told by the only daughter of the manor still living in Terrebonne, Mrs. J. Farquard Chauvin. Her home on Houma's Verret St. is furnished with some of the fine pieces from her ancestral estate. She and young Farquard Chauvin were married beneath the arch in the front drawing room, she reminisces.

But the McBrides were not the builders of Belle Grove. The builder was Marcellus H. Daunis of Lafourche, who never got to live in the new home he intended for himself and his wife, the former Rebecca Tucker of Williamsburg, Va.

Daunis and the young mother were living in a small cottage on the plantation waiting impatiently to move in. Their dream house was about to become a reality. Only the upper story remained to be finished when Mrs.Daunis was accidentally burned to death in the explosion of a spirit lamp, said to be the newest invention of that day in the East.

The broken-hearted young bridegroom had no heart to finish what was to have been his home. He moved to Thibodaux and ran his plantation from there, boarding up the new house.

It was left to his son, Thomas Daunis, along about 1870, to put the finishing touches to his father's home and open it for his own bride.

Wedding bells rang again at Belle Grove when Thomas' oldest sister Emily became the bride of James McBride, a native son of Thibodaux. He transferred his allegiance from King Cotton in Minden to King Sugarin Terrebonne, bought out other heirs, and made Belle Grove his own, redecorating and making the additions to the original mansion.

The second lady of the manor was Mrs. Chauvin's mother, Mary Elizabeth Allen, descendant of Ethan Allen of the Green Mountain Boys.

The third lady of the manor, the former Lucretia Ball Horner, a native daughter of New Orleans, still living in Terrebonne, recalls some of the glory that was Belle Grove's. Her family was connected with the Daunises. She knew and visited Belle Grove as a little girl. The house was wonderfully built of cypress trees hewn right on the site, she says.

None of the McBride family has lived in the ancestral abode since 1927, Mrs. Chauvin recalls. The furniture was divided among the children, herself and her brothers and sisters still living--Daunis McBride of Richmond, Va.; Mrs. James Green Taliaferro, the former Marion McBride, of Birmingham, Ala., and Robert Rankin McBride of Sweetwater, Tex.

The plantation home was sold last year by the present owners of Belle Grove, D.W. Pipes, Jr. and Ruby Thibodeaux, both of Houma, to Mr. and Mrs. Babin.

Much of the fine woodwork, but not all, has been transplanted. "We had to take the doors apart to place them in their new setting," Mrs. Babin relates.

Mr. Babin, member of one of Terrebonne's pioneer families, is a descendant of one of four Lapeyrouse brothers, who came to Houma in the early days.

The magnolias still blossom as fragrantly, the mocking birds still sing as sweetly, the fields of waving cane still grow as green at Belle Grove as in days of yore; but the manor house which once dominated the scene is gone, first of Terrebonne's "sugar row" mansions to pass from the scene.

Photographs included in the article:
1. Stained Glass Portrait of Bettie McBride, owner's first born, who died at 16, adorned dining room
in Belle Grove's heyday. (Photo of the window)

2. Until recently, beautiful Belle Grove stood silently, one of the former proud mansions of Little
Bayou Black's "sugar row". (Photo of the home)

3. Ann Carol, lovely new home on Bayou Terrebonne, has incorporated some of Belle Grove's fine
materials, such as four of the columns. (Photo of the home)

     4. This priceless, handsome, walnut paneling which embellished Belle Grove in its lush days has been
          transferred to new house. Plantation had 1600 acres, golf course, was country showplace. (Photo of
          the fireplace and paneling)

     5. Ann Carol's rooms utilize Belle Grove's mantels, murals, and other features. Huge brass chandelier
         from Belle Grove once hung in New Orleans Pickwick Club. Early house was built in 1849. (Photo
         interior of Carol Ann home)

LIFE AT BELLE GROVE WAS SIMPLE
CHRISTMAS AT BELLE GROVE
By Roberta Carruth

Belle Grove was a plantation house that once stood on Little Bayou Black between Ardoyne and Rebecca Plantations. (See accompanying photograph) In the 1890's and early 1900's prosperous years of sugar cane farming, the family of James Monroe McBride and Mary Elizabeth Allen was living there.

Mr. McBride, son of Peter McBride of Virginia and Olive Ann Conklin of New York, had purchased Belle Grove from the estate of Marcellus Daunis, father of his first wife, Emily Daunis. After his first wife's death, Mr. McBride married Mary Elizabeth Allen of Centerville, Louisiana.

The children, Daunis (by the first marriage), Bettie, Mary Allen, Duane, Marion and Robert (all by the second marriage) were growing up at Belle Grove during those years.

Mary Allen McBride later married Mr. J. Farquahard Chauvin. She lives in Houma today. Recently she agreed to share with us her vivid memories of life at Belle Grove during that era.

"The sugar country in Louisiana was really like the Old South," says Mrs. Chauvin. "We lived simply. But it would be elegant today!"

She explains that the building of Belle Grove was begun in 1849. The cypress wood building the plantation was taken from trees growing on the plantation's acreage. The building was completed bout 1870, the work having been discontinued during the Civil War. Later, beginning in 1890, remodeled, a wing added at the back which included a new dining room and kitchen.

Mrs. Chauvin recall "wonderful carpenters almost like architects" who built plantation houses. She knows that there was a plan and an architect for Belle Grove because the plan was found in the wine cellar when the house was taken down in the 1950's by the then owner, Mr. Lionel Babin.

"Those were the happy days ---the gay '90's and early 1900's," recalls Mrs. Chauvin. "Crops were prosperous. Troubles were not so great that they overpowered the joy in living."

She remembers the families of the plantations along Little Bayou Black, "colorful families on the bayou. We shared our sorrows and our happiness together. We didn't impose, but there was a mutual concern."

Her family had many servants. "in the early days we were very close. Joys and sorrows were mutually shared. If you were sick they helped; if they were sick, you helped."

The photograph of the double drawing room reminds her that she and her sister, Bettie, used to hide behind the curtains and peek at the older members of the family entertaining guests. People would drop in without
invitations and there was always a welcome for them.

She loves a photograph she has of her father reading because of his love for books. "We were encouraged to love books,"she recalls. "Any question the children would have, my father would ask us to go to the library. We'd been taught to get the right book or encyclopedia."

Her mother was a fine musician, a doctor's daughter, good with sick people, she remembers. Her task was the enormous one of supervising the household, whose members included family, servants, and guests. "Guests" did not necessarily stay overnight only, or even for weeks. Visits were often months long and might last a winter or summer.

It was an unwritten rule at Belle Grove that whoever came to the house at any time was asked for a meal or to stay for the night. "Many a night a traveling man came. He'd ask, 'Could you take care of my horse and give me a room for the night?' "

Early in the morning, at noon and at sundown the plantation bell would ring. The passenger train from Houma to Schriever that reached Belle Grove at 2 p.m. would be passing as family and guests sat down to dinner.

Dinner was a "deliberate affair". At Belle Grove, no McBride sat down to a table unless Mr. McBride was there. Everybody sat down at the same time, "and you'd better be dressed too!"

Dinner usually lasted one and half or two hours and was served in courses by a butler and a maid. There was conversation at the dinner table. "We children could join in the conversation but couldn't monopolize it."

There was always soup -- "every day. I liked soup. My sister hated it! No soup, no dessert."

While her mother was alive (McBride married a third time after his second wife's death, to Mrs. Lucretia Horner, widow of William Grace Horner of New Orleans) a simple tea was served about 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. There was iced tea or juice or punch in the summer, hot tea in the winter. Thin slices of bread and butter and sugar, and sometimes such things as cakes, gingerbread, nuts and raisins were also served.

Supper was served at 7 p.m., a "bountiful, hot supper."

Every evening before bed the family gathered in the sitting room. Her father or her older brother read a chapter from the Bible. Hymns were sung, her father would say a prayer, and in closing there was a silent prayer.

"My mother was a trained vocalist and would sing songs after the prayer. That was the country life, the simple life...like the English country life."

Recreation consisted of reading, horseback riding, drives in the English dogcart, croquet, tennis, roller skating and playing casino. And she especially recalls as a child playing jacks and climbing trees. "On the sunny days you know where we were -- on the top of a tree.

"We used to have a picnic every spring. There were long tables with good things. There were seesaws, tennis, croquet, horses; that was watermelon time and ice-cream time...Belle Grove picnics." She also recalls Episcopal and Presbyterian Church picnics held at the plantations along Little Bayou Black.

A frequent visitor at Belle Grove was Mr. Theodore Herman Kock. Mrs. Chauvin remembers him, "a Belgian, spoke with a marked French accent...a very highly cultured gentleman...instrumental in organizing and developing the shipping of oysters."

She remembers that Mr. Kock took a trip around the world in 1904, and brought her and her sister beautiful Japanese dolls dressed in silk kimonos, and brought gorgeous moire figured silks.

In their early school years a governess taught Mary Allen and Bettie McBride. Miss Octavia "Occie" Huling was her governess, "a brilliant woman." Miss Huling and her sister, Sally, had been raised in Napoleonville in the home of Justice White of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Huling sisters were "well-connected" throughout the South, says Mrs. Chauvin. "You would have thought their little home a salon in the afternoon. she was a charming conversationalist and letter-writer. Her letters were regular diaries." For instance, Miss Huling would record all the details of traveling to New Orleans by train. "They were the happiest people. The did no moaning or complaining about things."

Mrs. Chauvin remembers that her family would go to the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans for six weeks during the carnival season and during the opera season every year. They would attend carnival balls or the opera, and share in the festivities of friends. Her governess would go along, and "we had school."

Then, at age twelve, she was sent to Agnes Scott High School in Georgia because of a yellow fever epidemic. Otherwise she says, she would probably have been sent to Miss Blake's school in New Orleans (which she did later attend).

Christmas was a special and spectacular time of the year.

She recalls her father buying boxes and boxes of raisins. On Christmas morning, all day long, people came. She and her sister were assigned to answer the door and give out gifts. Plantation workers were given small gifts of money in silver coins, and candy, oranges, apples, pecans, raisins. The older men and some of the women were given chewing tobacco or pipe tobacco. The women wee given bandannas

On the night of Christmas Eve at Belle Grove, there was always a fireworks celebration. All of the workers on the plantations came. She remembers that the workers of the plantations would fire rockets, panoramic fireworks, and large Roman candles. The first were fired by the outstanding laborers of the plantation. The children were given small Roman Candles and torpedoes and firecrackers to fire, (but you couldn't fire the giant crackers, she recalls!). Then on the night of New Year's Eve there was a second fireworks celebration.

After the Christmas fireworks everyone was treated to fruitcake, cookies, and hot eggnog. There were gallons of eggnog in big iron pots with fires underneath that had been going since morning. There were maids, houseboys, and butlers attending.

If the weather was mild, Christmas would be a holiday. But if freezing weather threatened, Christmas Day was a working day.

All through the year they worked on the crops. By two or three o'clock in the morning they would be in the fields and then home by sundown. She remembers as a child meeting the plowman and riding on the hay wagon or on the slide behind the plow. "I was a tomboy. My nurse would say, 'I know where Mary Allen is. She's on those plows.' "

There were several hundred workers on the plantation, at least she believes. There were extra hands in the wintertime. There were boarding houses for these extra workers, one for white workers, one for black. Meals were served at the respective houses from the same kitchen.

Farming in those days was not mechanized and the use of mules was important. Mrs. Chauvin remembers being delighted as a child that each mule had its own name, given carefully by the stabler and his helpers.

Grinding was an important season. The planters would send some of their head men to get the extra hands for the grinding season.

Describing her father's activities, "At grinding season he'd be right down at that old sugar house --otherwise he'd be at leisure after making the rounds."

"The grinding season was a happy, happy season," she recalls. The cane was brought in by wagons driven by teamsters to the scale house, where they were weighed on a big scale built into and level with the ground. A special bookkeeper, known as the cane-weigher, oversaw the weighing of the cane. The weight of the wagon was deducted to obtain the weight of the cane. Mrs. Chauvin adds that in those days the cane was judged by weight rather than by sucrose content.

The wagons would proceed to the carrier belt, Candlewick lanterns that resembled teapots would be swinging from the tops of the wagons. The women and men on either side of the wagon would be singing. At the carrier belt the wagon was unlocked and the cane dumped onto the ground nearby. Workers then manually lifted the cane onto the carrier belt. The cane was transported on the long belt up to the mill to be ground between rollers. Later, with the advent of the hoist, the number of workers was dramatically reduced from about 40 to about 6, she believes.

For the workers at grinding season, the final payday was after the harvesting was over. But workers were paid"watch money" for working supper to midnight or midnight to dawn shifts at different stations in the sugar house.

Each plantation had a commissary, a store that stocked dry goods and other commodities, groceries. On Saturday afternoon when no one worked, the commissary was a place for people of the plantation to gather. They would buy crackers, cheese, condensed milk, sardines, stock candy, coconut pralines that a Thibodaux man would bring, and ginger snaps much better than those of today, says Mrs. Chauvin-- perhaps because commodities were cheaper and more butter was used in recipes, she adds.....Those people gathered at the store would sing and dance, blacks and whites together, she recalls.

She remembers that Mr. Charles Dieber was the plantation storekeeper and also her father's bookkeeper. When her father died, Mr. Dieber was one of the pall bearers, she reminisces.

Death was treated very differently than now, she explains. "When you loved ones died, friends would come and offer sympathy and any services...A few close friends would stay so you could go to bed at night; they would sit in a room near the parlor. It would be quiet and peaceful....had to keep the room cool because there was no embalming. A close friend would prepare the loved one for a final rest....so different from...today."

She remembers "uncle" Charlie Jackson, a black man who worked for her father for years and had been his playmate. When her father died the family didn't want to send word to him till morning, but they found him weeping in the parlor that night. "That's a relationship that has disappeared," she says.

Her brother, M. Daunis McBride, owned the second automobile in the parish. It was a White Steamer in make but was flaming red in color. It was two-seated with no top and a big horn, she remembers.

Because of the dirt roads, people wore dusters to ride in the automobiles, she recalls. She remembers that her mother, preparing for her first automobile excursion, donned a straw hat which she tied down with a blue veil, and a duster.

Mrs. Chauvin went on to attend Packer Collegiate Institute, the first college in the United States to provide higher education for women. She studied music there, then majored in voice and piano at Barnard College. She is the mother of a daughter, Bettie (Mrs. Frank W. Wurzlow, Jr.), a resident of Thibodaux.

In the 1920's the Mosaic disease that plagued cane grown in South Louisiana devastated Belle Grove. With anguish, the family lost the plantation.

Today, with mechanization, the lifestyle her family had in the grand plantation home is impossible, believes Mrs. Chauvin. The house on Verret St. in Houma that is now her home is hardly small. It's an 1834 house that was on the border of Old Houma, and built like a plantation house. Much of her furniture there knew prior days at Belle Grove.

Her present home is a city home. The day demands different things. However, Mrs. Chauvin's rich memories of a day now past have their own presence and enrichment for her life, and for our lives, today.

Photos included in article:

1. BELLE GROVE PLANTATION HOME, no longer standing was the home of James Monroe
McBride.

2. Mary Allen and Bettie McBride (young girls)

3. DOUBLE DRAWING ROOM at Belle Grove Plantation Home near the turn of the century.

Mary Allen McBride Chauvin grew up and was married at Belle Grove Plantation and she shared some of her reminiscences of life there with Margaret McBride Holloway.

Mary Allen McBride Chauvin on Belle Grove

Belle Grove originally belonged to the Ogden family. One of the Ogdens became a very noted Presbyterian minister. I don't know whether the Ogdens failed or not, but Mr. Marcellus Daunis bought the plantation and built a new house. The cypress was from the swamps. There were two houses down there in the quarters that were enormous - one had the plantation bell on it. And there was one on the board where Uncle Jack lived. It had a little fan window and the little side pieces - a little old Louisiana house. Mr. Marcellus started Belle Grove in 1847. Of course, they had to cut the cypress, and they had to cure it. Where they sent it to be milled I don't know. I have some of the old doors from that house. During the war (Civil War) Mr. Marcellus married, and he moved his family to Thibodaux because he did not think it was safe to live on a plantation. He married Rebecca Tucker and the Tuckers were originally from Williamsburg, and your grandmother McBride (Lucretia Horner McBride) is related to them. During the war the family lived in Thibodaux and they stopped the house. I understand that the interior had not been finished but the outside was. Then, after the war, when Mr. Marcellus died, Tom Daunis finished the house.
Oh, he was a Beau Brummel. He lived in the lap of luxury. He had fine clothes, he entertained, he had a valet and butlers. He'd give enormous parties and he would have them on the porches. At Belle Grove that must have been lovely. They had galluses. They were like big blinds, you see, and they would open them up - parts of them would open - to let the sun in. they were downstairs and upstairs. Aunt Lolly and brother Tom didn't live in the house because they were afraid. There might have been some rooms, but they were not completely finished. I was born in 1893 and I can remember when they hadn't finished the parlors. There were double parlors, one was the parlor and one was the dining room in this square house. The kitchen was in the yard and my father built a wing out of the dining room and the old kitchen and store room and the laundry that Aunt Frances wouldn't use because she had to climb up steps. It became the servant's dining room and my mother used to make preserves on the old wood stove. There was a wood room that had great big bins where they put wood and the yard man and the little boy Toby, (I don't know what Toby did except look for Aunt Dora's glasses all the time. I wish I had a Toby.) They had great big bins, and they would bring the kindling and the coal and it would be in the house so you didn't have to go outside. That was called the wood room. Then there was an enormous store room. Beautiful big bins that held raw coffee, green coffee and you parched it. It smelled so good. They put butter and sugar in it and it was ground every night. You didn't drink warmed over coffee then. Coffee was brought in to you in the morning. About 7:00 or 7:30 coffee was served to you in bed, and in the meantime about two house boys would go around and make all the fires and it would be warm when you got up. Then, when we were children, we had governesses. The first governess I remember, I was too little to have a governess but I wouldn't stay out of the school room, was a Miss Gail from Virginia. She taught my brother Mac and my sister Betty. I wouldn't stay out of the school room because I was determined to read. So Miss Gail informed my father, "Mr. McBride, I can't keep her out of the room. She's anxious to read, and she's got a mind and I think she can read", so they got a big chart and I could read fluently by the time I was seven years old. Now, I didn't know ever word, but my father bought me a dictionary and I looked up the words. When I was eight years old I was reading Dickens and Scott and Jane Eyre and some of the other stories, Silas Marner and all that. And then I remember "The Scarlet Letter" and "Twice Told Tales". I can't remember now, but my mother gave me a very good explanation of what the "A" was and it satisfied me. We were allowed to read anything. And we were taught how to use a book. We couldn't mark in our books. Anything that came up we were sent to the library, so we were taught how to use a book, how to respect a book. It nearly kills me when I see someone put a pencil in a book or abuse a book. We were taught to look up in the encyclopedia. Anything that came up, any question, my father would say, "I could tell you, but you go to the library and look it up." And we were taught which ones to use. "Get the Century; get the Britannica; get the Americana; bring the dictionary." Oh, the dictionary was so big and my little bitty arms - but there was always time to tell us. I really think we were very fortunate in that kind of training. We were taught never to abuse servants and my father gave the older ones a home and took care of them.

Now, breakfast was a rather huge meal in those days. At one end there was ham and grits every morning and at the other end there might be broiled chicken, a boiled ham and eggs. There'd be chocolate and there'd be coffee and some would take tea, and there'd be a butler and a maid at every meal. We couldn't sit down until we all sat down together. Not the way they do today. You all sat down together.

Dinner was a social affair. Around two o'clock the little train would come along. We'd wait for the two o'clock train because we didn't know who was coming. And that was the law at Belle Grove; whoever came, if they came on the eight o'clock train from Houma (we had a little branch road that left Houma around 7:30 and would get to Belle Grove around 8:00 or maybe a few minutes after) and we didn't know who was going to get off. We would invite them to breakfast. Then there would be a 10 o'clock train that would come from Shriever bringing the New Orleans people back. It was a branch road. And they would get off because they knew if they would go to Mr. McBride they would get dinner, or they would get a horse, maybe, and then they could put up a horse, especially if it was night time. I've known my father and Uncle Mac to put up the horses if the yard men had gone. And they would stay. Well, dinner was a festive affair. We sat anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours and we would talk. I have never gotten over Belle Grove. It was an all course dinner. We started with soup. My sister used to say she couldn't stand the word "soup" because if she would leave the soup she couldn't have dessert. Then we would have the entree. On Fridays sometimes we would have a course of fish first and meat later. Then there would be a salad, and then the dessert and coffee. We didn't eat al that food but it was on the table cause you never knew who was coming. In the meantime there would be plenty of conversation. It might be 4 o'clock before we got up from the table. The kids would have to go to school.

I had a marvelous governess. She was the granddaughter of, I think he was, the Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. But she had two college professors, one was the president of the University of Tenn. and one was a Dean, either dean of English or Dean of Law, down at Tulane. And there was a beautiful little church that Napoleon had built by Quincy Ewing who was another cousin. She was a delightful person and a wonderful teacher. In those days if they really made money we would go down to the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans every Friday and my governess would come along, and we would get
out of school. We would have a suite of rooms, a room for my mother and father, and a bath and then our room. There would be a little place for us to go to school in the morning, but at one o'clock there was no more school. We knew the history of New Orleans, and she would take us and tell us all the stories. Rampart Street in New Orleans was a beautiful street then. Beautiful old elegant homes. New Orleans had a good many theaters and we were taken to the theater. My mother went down to the opera, papa with her, and then to the balls, etc. Of course, those were the years we made money, but many years we didn't make money so we didn't get all of this. I could go to the opera, too, if I wanted to. I was little, but I could go. I remember distinctly when Adelina Patti came to New Orleans. To me it was a marvelous conflict. I understand they say she wasn't as fine as she was in her youth, but I can see her today with her red hair, probably dyed, and she had the most beautiful ivory colored dress with applique velvet roses, and I can see her singing. I remember her and I remember her jewel song of Faust was perfect. I don't think I was much more than seven.