Lady of Vieux Carré
When Ward Mattson moved into the elegant eighteenth century house on Royal Street in the famed Vieux Carré, the French Quarter, he certainly did not expect a warm welcome. He was, after all, a banker from Massachusetts, and many of his new neighbors would undoubtedly see him as a carpetbagger. He could hardly blame people for the cool reception he received. After these proud people were forced to surrender to Admiral Farragut, they had to endure their city's occupation under Major General Benjamin Butler, the man they nickname "Beast" because of his draconian governorship.
The end of the Civil War had come three years earlier. Ward, who had been fortunate to survive several major battles including Gettysburg, returned to Boston after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox with his body intact. The only scars he bore from his military service were emotional ones: the memories of death and destruction that sometimes haunted his dreams.
It was the men that duty had forced him to kill and the homes he destroyed during the war that brought him back to the South. Unlike the more unscrupulous Northerners who hoped to make a quick buck at the expense of the Southerners' misery, Ward sincerely wanted to help his former enemies rebuild their war-torn communities and put their shattered lives back together.
"We're all one country again," he had told his brother on the evening before he left Massachusetts. "It's like Lincoln said in his second inaugural speech: let us bind up the nation's wounds. In order for the South to be rebuilt, it's going to take money."
"So you're going to help the people of New Orleans by offering them loans they have to repay even though they don't have the funds to cover the principal much less the interest."
"Ah, but I'm going to give them low-interest, long-term loans. That way, their payments will be much less than those paid to my competitors. And I'm not a hard man. I won't foreclose on their property simply because they miss an installment or two. I want to work with these people; I don't want to take advantage of them."
"Well," his brother said with a laugh, "if I were you, I wouldn't expect much. You're a Yankee. It'll be a hell of a long time before any of them warms up to you—if ever."
"I'm a patient man. I don't mind waiting," he declared optimistically.
Yet as his friendly smile was met with another scowl from a respected member of New Orleans society, the banker wondered exactly how long his patience would hold out.
* * *
Ward Mattson had been living in the house on Royal Street for nearly two months when an unexpected visitor knocked on his door. He answered it to find an unknown woman on his doorstep. He did not know what surprised him more, the fact that she was alone or that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" he asked politely.
"I hope so. I'm looking for employment, and I understand you have no cook or housekeeper."
"I ... ah ... I don't know what to say. I ... ah ...," he stammered.
"May I come in and we can discuss it?"
Ward was momentarily alarmed. Was it decorous behavior to invite an unaccompanied woman into his house? What would people think?
"Perhaps you would prefer to come back another time," he said. "You could bring a friend or a relative with you."
The woman's laughter was like a teasing melody, leaving him longing to hear more.
"I assure you I don't need a chaperone."
Ward stood to the side of the doorway and let the woman enter.
"My name is Magnolia Rhett," she introduced herself. "My husband was killed at Antietam. Up until now, I've been able to get by on what we saved before the war. Now I'm afraid my money is nearly gone."
Although Ward had not planned on hiring a domestic servant, he could well afford to do so. The words of the late Abraham Lincoln again came to him: let us care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.
"Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. Rhett, while we discuss your new position as my housekeeper?"
"Let me get it," she offered, walking in the direction of the kitchen. "That's one of the things you'll be paying me to do. Isn't it?"
With the lovely Magnolia searching his cabinets for teacups, the Yankee banker sat on the settee in his parlor, wondering exactly what had just happened. In less than ten minutes time, a strange woman appeared on his doorstep, and now she was taking over his kitchen.
* * *
Ever since he moved to the French Quarter, the nightmares Ward had experienced after returning from the war drastically increased in frequency. With Magnolia living under his roof, the bad dreams not only continued, but they also took on a more horrifying aspect. The subject of his nightmares was no longer limited to battlefield horrors. Along with the images of soldiers being blown to bits or having their limbs amputated without an anesthetic were visions of slaves being brutalized in the most inhuman ways imaginable.
Many a time the former Union Army captain would wake up in the middle of the night, his body drenched in perspiration, his heart racing in his chest and his lungs gasping for air. He would then lie awake for hours, silent tears coursing down his cheeks.
It was Austin Dampier, a young associate of his at the bank, who first noticed the change in Ward's appearance. Although he had been born and raised in New Orleans, Austin held no grudge against the North. In fact, he liked the banker from Massachusetts and considered him a friend.
"You're looking a little pale," Dampier observed with a slight hint of the French accent he inherited from his Paris-born mother. "Are you feeling under the weather?"
"Physically I'm fine," Ward confided. "I've been having trouble sleeping at night, though."
"It is perhaps a pretty woman?" his friend asked with a conspiratorial wink and smile.
"I wish such were the case, but I've been plagued with nightmares."
"Of the war?"
"Yes. They went away for a while, but they've come back with a vengeance since I moved here to New Orleans."
"What you need, my friend, is a wife and children. Then you won't have time to sleep. Hence, you will have no more nightmares."
"Well, that's as good a reason as any to get married, I suppose."
There was a time, before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, when Ward Mattson was eager to marry. There had been a young woman as intelligent as she was pretty whom he adored. While a student at Harvard, he had every intention of proposing to her upon graduation, but the advent of war put an end to the couple's dreams. It was still painful for Ward to recall the letter he received shortly after the Battle of Fredericksburg informing him that the woman he loved had gone to London with her family and, after a short courtship, married a barrister. In the years that followed he had not looked at another woman much less considered marrying one.
Perhaps it was Austin's suggestion that he find a wife that first made him suspect that Magnolia Rhett was developing a romantic interest in him. Up until that point, he attributed the special desserts she made for him and the attention she lavished on him as signs of a servant hoping to make a good impression on her new employer. Now, he wondered if such was actually the case.
On several occasions, while she was serving his dinner, she would brush up against him with her body. There were moments, too, when her eyes seemed to hold an unspoken message.
Surely it's only my imagination, he thought. Mrs. Rhett is my housekeeper, nothing more. What she feels for me is probably just gratitude for my giving her a job.
That night at dinner, however, something happened to change his mind. He had just sat down at the table, and Magnolia put a heaping bowl of beef stew in front of him.
"That's a lot of food!" he exclaimed at the size of the portion. "I can't eat all that."
"You'd better try," she advised. "I notice you've been losing weight."
"Only a few pounds."
Magnolia leaned over and took his hand in hers—hardly proper behavior for a servant.
"I mean to take care of you."
He gently removed his hand from her grasp and smiled.
"That really isn't necessary. I can take care of myself."
"The fact that you're having nightmares several times a week and haven't been eating regularly is proof that you can't."
Ward supposed he ought to be flattered that such a beautiful young woman was taking a personal interest in him, whether it be a romantic or platonic one. However, there was something about his housekeeper that made him shy away from her. Was it that she had already been married once or that she was just a little too aggressive for him? Whatever the reason, he wanted their relationship to remain that of employer-servant.
Having finished his dinner, the master of the house sat in front of the parlor fire and picked The Scarlet Letter up off the table beside his chair. As much as he enjoyed Hawthorne's writing, though, he could not keep his mind on what he read. His thoughts kept drifting back to Magnolia Rhett. Was she developing a romantic attachment toward him? If so, what could he do about it? He certainly did not want to encourage her, but he did not want to offend her or hurt her feelings either.
After reading the same page four times and not comprehending a word that Hawthorne had written, Ward finally put the book back on the table.
I'm as narrow-minded as the people of Salem portrayed in this book, he concluded with no small degree of guilt and self-loathing. So what if Mrs. Rhett appeared at the door of a stranger's house asking for employment? She's certainly done nothing immoral by moving under my roof. What right have I to judge her? I'm a man, a fairly wealthy one at that. I can go anywhere or do anything I choose. I'm not a penniless widow, grieving the loss of a husband while living in a city first conquered by war and then occupied by its enemies.
Thus, Ward developed a new-found sense of respect and admiration for his housekeeper.
I came down to New Orleans to help these people. Who is more deserving of such help than Mrs. Rhett? Starting tomorrow, I'm going to give her a raise in pay.
* * *
One Saturday evening in early November, after feeling pleasantly full from another of Magnolia's delicious, home-cooked meals, Ward again relaxed in his favorite chair beside the fireplace in the parlor. He picked up another book, having finished Hawthorne's tale of Hester Prynne and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale a month earlier. Currently, he was reading Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe. Since "The Fall of the House of Usher" was a short story, he was able to finish it in one sitting. The clock chimed midnight just as the narrator of the story watched the remains of the House of Usher disappear beneath the waters of the deep and dank tarn at his feet.
"Nothing like a little light reading before going to bed," he said to himself as he marked his place in the book. "No wonder I have nightmares."
With the bank closed on Sundays, Ward looked forward to a long, restful sleep. No doubt Magnolia would have a delectable breakfast waiting for him when he woke up in the morning.
I really am a lucky man, he thought as his head hit the pillow.
A moment later he was sound asleep.
Another nightmare. This time it began with a young slave girl, roughly twelve years old, give or take a year. She was running up a flight of stairs and out onto a roof. Ward could feel her panic as someone chased her. Having come to the end of the roof, the girl stopped and looked down at the small courtyard in the back of the house—his house. He not only heard but felt the scream as though he and the slave were one. Suddenly two hands gripped her by the throat. She tried to fight off her attacker but her frail body was no match for the strength of the unknown adult. Then the murderous hands moved from the throat to the girl's upper arms. There was no mistaking the assailant's intent: the girl was pushed off the roof to fall to her death.
Ward awoke with a start to find Magnolia in his room, standing over him in her nightclothes.
"What are you doing here?" he asked as his brain began to emerge from the disturbing shadows of his nightmare.
"I heard you screaming, so I came downstairs to make sure you were all right," the housekeeper replied.
"It was just a dream. You had better go now. You shouldn't be in my room, especially dressed the way you are."
"Yes, I suppose you're right. It's not proper for us to be together when we're not married. Good night, Ward," she said and then leaned over and gently kissed him on the mouth before returning to her third floor quarters.
Just as I had feared, it wasn't my imagination, he realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Mrs. Rhett's feelings for me have gone beyond the bounds of gratitude.
Ward slept little that night, agonizing over what he should do about his housekeeper. His initial impulse was to dismiss her and find her suitable employment elsewhere. Then he thought better of his decision. It would not be fair, he concluded, to punish her for being human. No, he would retain her services but make it clear to her that he did not nor ever would return her affections. However, like many men—both then and now—he had to think of a way of letting her down easy.
* * *
By mid-November most people's thoughts drifted to the approaching holiday season. Magnolia was no different.
"Is it possible for us to get a Christmas tree?" she asked her employer after serving his dinner to him one evening.
"If you'd like."
"Thank you. I love the holidays. When I was married, my husband and I used to have the most delightful parties!" A look of sadness clouded her beautiful face, and she added softly, "I miss those times so much."
For a brief moment, Ward felt the urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. But he did not want her to mistake his motivations. He felt pity and compassion for her, not love or affection.
"If it could only be like it was before the war," Magnolia continued. "Music, laughter, dancing, feasting."
It suddenly occurred to Ward that he might use the holiday to his advantage. If he hosted a party, it would bring Mrs. Rhett a good deal of joy and lessen the sting of rejection.
The following day at work, the Yankee banker enlisted the aid of Miss Wymore, his secretary, in planning the Christmas party.
"I'll take care of finding a chef and suitable entertainment," he told her. "But I could use your help with the invitations. I'd like to invite all my neighbors, the employees here at the bank, the city's prominent citizens and anyone else you think I ought to invite. After all, I don't want to snub anyone in New Orleans society."
Thanks to the Miss Wymore's hard work, the invitations went into the mail two days later. Nearly all of the invitees responded quickly.
"How many people are coming so far?" Ward asked when he walked into the bank on the second day of December.
"No one, I'm afraid," Miss Wymore replied, turning her head away so that her employer would not see the embarrassment on her face.
"No one!" he exclaimed. "Out of how many people responding?"
"All but three."
"What the devil is wrong?" Austin Dampier inquired when he stepped out of his office and saw the look on Ward's face. "Has the South decided to secede again?"
"It's this damned Christmas party I decided to have. It seems that no one I've invited wants to come. I honestly thought people were warming up to me. I suppose I'll never be anything but a Yankee carpetbagger to them."
"That's not true," Miss Wymore quickly reassured her employer. "Almost everyone who has met you likes you."
"And yet they refuse to come to my party."
"It's not you," Austin said, losing all hint of his former good humor. "It's the house."
"What house? My house? What's wrong with it?"
"You honestly don't know about what took place there?"
"No."
"Why don't you come into my office, and I'll explain," Austin suggested.
"Don't tell me people think the place is haunted?" Ward asked as his friend closed the door for privacy. "Is some slain Civil War soldier supposed to walk the halls?"
"There was a Creole woman born back in 1775 by the name of Delphine Macarty. She was beautiful, refined and intelligent, and she quickly became the belle of Creole society. After the death of her first two husbands—both very wealthy men—Delphine married Dr. Louis LaLaurie. In 1825, shortly after they were wed, they moved into your house on Royal Street. Madame LaLaurie was one of the most popular women in New Orleans and hosted lavish parties at her home. One day one of the family's slaves, a young girl, was found dead in the courtyard in back of the house. According to Delphine the girl had fallen of the roof, but people suspected the child's death was no accident."
Austin's tale reminded Ward of the nightmare he had in which he experienced the fear of a young slave being pursued and then pushed off the roof of the house. Could the dream have been caused by the ghost of the child who had died so tragically on his property?
"Still, this was the Old South, and no one, not even those entrusted with the enforcement of the laws, was overly concerned with the death of a slave. Then in 1834 someone reported seeing flames coming from inside the house. The firemen who responded to the blaze found the elderly cook chained to a wall in the kitchen. The old slave had started the fire herself, hoping to put an end to her life. When the men rescued her she began screaming hysterically, saying that the mistress of the house would send her up to the attic for sure."
"Do you think the old woman might have feared the ghost of the dead child, perhaps believing it haunted the attic?"
"It wasn't a ghost the cook feared, but rather what Madame LaLaurie would do to her in that attic. When the firemen went upstairs, they discovered horrors that would sicken even the cruelest slave masters. There were about a dozen slaves up there, both men and women, many barely alive. All of them would have been better off dead. A few had been cut open and their non-vital organs removed. Others had their mouths sewn shut or their eyes gouged out. There were even several that were hanging by their necks with their feet barely touching the ground so that they had to remain on their toes if they wanted to stay alive."
"Was the doctor experimenting on his own slaves?"
"Dr. LaLaurie swears he was innocent, and the surviving slaves claimed Delphine was the one who meted out punishment."
"A woman was responsible for such atrocities!" Ward exclaimed with disbelief. "What did they do to her—if anything?"
"When word of the dreadful discovery got out, Delphine LaLaurie became a social pariah in New Orleans. Her friends and neighbors shunned her, and her slaves were taken away from her because she had violated laws protecting them against such cruel treatment. There was even talk about charges being brought against her, but then she mysteriously vanished one day. A number of people claimed to have seen her boarding a ship for France. It's believed she and her husband moved to Paris where presumably the doctor practices medicine and she entertains Parisian society. Of course, that was thirty years ago. She would be an old woman by now; if she is still alive, that is."
"Thank you, Austin. I appreciate your telling me the history of my house. At least now I can understand why no one wants to come to my party."
* * *
When Ward arrived home from work later that evening, he briefly stopped outside the house on Royal Street and gazed with appreciation at the three-story, rectangular-shaped structure with its stucco walls and wrought iron balconies. The pre-Civil War home was a beautiful example of the architecture of the French Quarter. It was hard to believe the horrors that had occurred there.
As he recalled the gruesome details of Austin Dampier's narrative, his eyes went to the uppermost portion of the house, to what he assumed must be the attic.
I've never even been on the third floor much less the attic, he realized. Since I've lived here, I've only been in the kitchen, the dining room, the parlor and my bedroom.
When her employer finally entered the house, Magnolia called a greeting to him from the kitchen. He replied perfunctorily and then headed for the stairs. When he got to the third floor, he opened several doors in search of the staircase that led to the attic.
"Are you looking for something?" asked his housekeeper, who had followed him upstairs.
"How do you get to the attic?"
"What attic?"
"A house this size must have an attic. I want to see it."
"Why?" Magnolia asked nervously.
"This is my house. I don't need to have a reason to see the attic."
"I have no idea where the staircase is. I've never had occasion to use it."
Magnolia Rhett remained standing in the hall, watching him as her employer searched the entire third floor.
"There must be a way up there," he cried in exasperation.
It was during his second search that Ward noticed that one of the hallways seemed shorter than it ought to be.
"There is something behind this wall," he deduced. "Someone must have boarded up the staircase."
"Why would anyone want to do that?" Magnolia asked, still hoping to persuade him to abandon his foolish quest.
"I have a pretty good idea," Ward replied and then went downstairs in search of a hammer.
When he returned to the third floor hallway, he began to pound the wall with the hammer until he broke through the plaster.
"Just as I suspected," he announced, peering through the opening. "There's a staircase beyond this wall."
"Don't go in there," Magnolia pleaded. "It might be dangerous. That's probably why the previous owners boarded it up."
"I want to see the attic. Now stop trying to interfere."
Ten minutes later, he enlarged the hole so that he could squeeze through it.
"Please don't go!" the distraught housekeeper cried, tugging at his arm.
He pulled away, not to be deterred.
The long-unused attic was dark and strongly smelled of dust and decay. Ward took his handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his mouth and nose while he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting.
The place had clearly been ransacked as though Sherman's Army took a detour on their march from Atlanta to the sea and stopped by the house on Royal Street. Either Madame LaLaurie's slaves or her irate neighbors had taken their anger out on her chamber of horrors.
I can't imagine how those poor souls felt being left here in this hellishly dark place in unbearable agony, waiting for their cruel tormentor to finish them off. They were probably praying for death to mercifully release them from their pain. I ought to tear this house down and ....
His eyes were suddenly drawn to a splash of red near the top of the staircase.
"Who's there?" he called.
"You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?" the woman declared.
"Mrs. Rhett?"
There was no hint of a housekeeper in the beautiful Creole woman. Dressed in a fine red silk gown, she was every inch the grand dame.
"I could have made you happy if you had only given me the opportunity. Now, I'm afraid, it's too late."
As she spoke, her voice faded away and her body receded into the shadows.
"Where are you going?" her employer asked, taking several steps in her direction.
What Ward saw in the dark corner of the attic horrified him every bit as much as the half-dead brutalized slaves once revolted the fireman who came to extinguish the blaze that had threatened to destroy the house back in 1834. The skeleton chained to the wall at the hands and throat was not that of a slave, however. The red silk dress and the ruby necklace that hung loosely to the denuded bones belonged to a wealthy woman, and the dark hair that survived long after the flesh had rotted away belonged to Madame Delphine LaLaurie, or as he had come to know her, Magnolia Rhett.
"So Madame LaLaurie never escaped to France," he concluded. "Instead, she was entombed alive here in the attic where she had tortured so many innocent people."
Believing that Delphine's death was a just and well-deserved one, Ward Mattson said a silent farewell to the ghost who for the past several months had served as his housekeeper. Then he walked down the attic staircase, careful not to miss a step in the dim lighting. After crawling through the hole he had created in the wall, he walked down to the first floor and out the front door.
Determined never to return to the house of horrors on Royal Street, he went to the nearest hotel and rented a room for the night where he enjoyed a long, peaceful, dreamless sleep—the first one he'd had in months.
This story was inspired by Madame Delphine LaLaurie who is said to have tortured her slaves in the attic of her New Orleans home.
Salem likes to go to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, not for the parade, beads and marching bands but for the crawfish, jambalaya and gumbo!
