You’re heading out of New Orleans, going
north, there’s a big lake in the way, what do you do? At home, we’d go round
it. In the US? You build the country’s longest bridge, all 24 miles (38km) of
it, sweeping smooth and concrete across Lake Pontchartrain right the way across past lines of power
pylons taking their own route through the lake, above their mirror images in
the glossy silver water.
We were on our way to Dallas, via a
three-day detour through some of Louisiana’s points of interest. One that we
didn’t see is the Angola Penitentiary, where there are apparently several
inmate rodeos a year, a nine-hole golf course (for visitors) and a crop and
cattle farm worked by the prisoners. It’s not all enlightened rehabilitation
though: most of them are lifers, and there is a Death Row.
Our focus today was on accommodation of a
much more congenial sort: ante-bellum plantation houses. Big, two-storey plus, pillars,
porches, surrounding oak trees hung with Spanish moss, cool (thanks to modern
AC) dim interiors furnished with antiques, the tester beds fitted with
mosquito-net rails, dining tables set with Limoges china, music rooms with
Steinway grands… Yes, grand is the word.
First was the Rosedown Plantation, built in
1835 for three generations of the Turnbull family and restored over 10 years at
a cost of $8 million by an Exxon-rich obsessive, for our delectation.
Hand-stamped linen wallpaper, portraits, imported antiques 90% original to the
family, curved staircase of treacherously steep stairs, especially for the
women handicapped by the hoop skirts on display upstairs in the bedrooms… we’re
talking rich here. That’s 3,500 acres of cotton fields, 450 slaves rich. All of
that was destroyed by a beetle, of course: the boll weevil arrived in 1909 and
wasn’t eliminated till the 1970s, so today the house and gardens are a stage on
the tourist trail.
Next stop for us was The Myrtles near St
Francisville, where we were shown around the 1796 mansion by the gorgeous Miss
Connie in her shawl and maroon silk gown: in her previous (real) life employed
in the oil industry but now finding her born-to-it place in life as pretend
mistress of a plantation house. Here they had 550 slaves, the house is
furnished with French antiques gilded with 24ct gold and dominated by an angel
theme, to keep away the evil spirits.
They might have looked in the mirror for
those, since they bought a five-piece sofa suite upholstered in fabric
embroidered in super-fine petit point by the small fingers of children using
magnifying glasses and wrecking their eyesight.
Except, the mirrors are haunted – or, at
least, the one in the entrance hall is, with its persistent blurry outline of a
woman’s face and children’s handprints. Could of course just be degradation of
the silver backing, but only a party-pooper would suggest that…
Miss Connie painted a vivid picture of the
high days of The Myrtles, the furniture cleared away for dancing, the Baccarat
crystal candelabras lit, the doors open onto the wide porch, fireflies
flickering out in the dark, the ladies’ gowns swirling and swishing. Of course,
all this grandeur came to the inevitable end with the decline of the cotton
industry and again depends on tourists to keep it ticking over.
At Frogmore (yes, named after the estate in
Berkshire) they know all about cotton. Owner Lynette and her husband still farm
it and, also (initially, till the heat got too much for her) dressed in period costume, she told us all about the boom and the
bust, as well as the practical details, with no holds barred about the slavery
that underpinned the whole industry: 250lbs a day was standard here. In a
dimly-lit wooden building, they have an original cotton processing engine – a
gin – which is a marvel of ingenuity and fine-grained magnolia wood.
Outside,
we sat in the welcome breeze blowing through the shady dog-trot passageway of
the overseer’s house as bats chittered invisibly in the rafters and Lynette
talked about shareholders, how the Chinese don’t play by the rules, and how
high thread-count is ‘propaganda’ and actually makes the fabric weaker.
And we ended the day in Alexandria, in the
Baroque opulence of the Hotel Bentley with its marble, wrought iron and stained
glass, eating across the road at the Diamond Grill, itself an architecturally
splendid former jewellery shop with high ceilings, grand staircase and,
inevitably, a ghost. But also excellent food!
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