We could easily have spent another day or two in New Orleans. But Spring Break is not that long and we had to push on to Mississippi. We had a pleasant chat with our hosts and our friends from Toronto. We pack our things and took a Lyft to the Avis/Budget office on Canal Street.
Renting a car is never a particularly enjoyable experience, but usually it is relatively quick. This was about as miserable as a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles, no, maybe worse. There were only a handful of people working in this office and more people waiting in line. The ladies behind the desk not only had to punch all those credit card numbers into the computer but then had to rush back and wash the cars as well.
Our drive to Natchez was fairly uneventful. Getting out of New Orleans was a lot easier than I feared it might be, and before we knew it we were just driving over swamp land on a raised highway by the end of Lake Pontchartrain. We stopped briefly to look for place of, er, refreshment, but for the most part we pushed on.
The interplay of the human and natural environments is at times oddly beautiful.
It took us a little longer than expected to get to Natchez, our first Mississippi destination. We had read that this town, preserved from damage in the Civil War when they had the good sense to immediately surrender, had possibly the best collection of antebellum domestic architecture in the South. And we were not disappointed … at all!
Little did we know that this is a big week in Natchez. This is the “Pilgrimage” when people from across the United States come here to visit old homes and to engage in a bit of politically-incorrect nostalgia for the Gone with the Wind South. We learned this when we pulled up to register at our bed and breakfast and John was greeted with a woman in a silk-brocade hoop skirt! Now that is what you want when you come to the South!
Our bed and breakfast was on the tour today. It is called “The Burn.” This is supposedly because “burn” is a Scots word for “creek” and there was a creek running behind the house. There were lots of tourists lined up to see it. We joined them.
This is our host, Ginger, the owner of the house. She was quite friendly and engaging, as just about all Southerners tend to be, and was delighted to fill us in with all kinds of interesting bits about the history of the house.
The place had been pretty empty when she and her husband bought it, and we purchased the antiques and oversaw the decoration. The woman’s taste is impeccable! John fell in love with the gold and the cream and wants to completely redo our living room. This nice docent told us all about the mens’ and the ladies’ parlors.
Along with the great mansions there are many smaller homes, such also quite historic. Not all are in perfect condition as you can see.
Our next stop was Choctaw Hall, and this is where things started to change from nostalgic to weird. Choctaw Hall is a large, handsome Greek Revival mansion. With Doric columns, painted bricks, and dozens of divided light windows framed with thin shutters, it could be in any historic community in the eastern United States. But the more time we spent at the house the more I felt like we had wandered into Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The big bus tour had already come through and the owner, a tiny little man, came out to greet us. I believe his name was David. In a genteel accent and a hoarse voice, he told gave us the extended history of the house. I could not follow all of it but apparently he had some connection with the original owners of the mansion, a family, I think, named the Cupits.
The inside of the house was where things became truly strange. We were met a rather obviously gay man who called himself “Jimmy the Cricket.” He showed us around the dining room, where a table was covered with every kind of Victorian configuration of fork, knife, and spoon imaginable as well as a dozen large pieces of what appeared to be eighteenth century French porcelain. Funeral size floral arrangements only made it even more excessive.
As we walked around, we were told that the owners had collected over 800 pieces of Sèvres and Meissen porcelain, mostly Jacob Petit. Not all of it was on display, but a huge amount of it was. Along with this was a large amount of mid-nineteenth century furniture, much of it massive Eastlake and Gothic Revival pieces. These seemed quite incongruous when covered with the French pottery.
A spiral staircase let to the second floor. We were met here by a man named Lee. I took him to be David’s partner, though in good Southern style, nothing was actually said about any relationship. Lee was considerably younger than David and had obviously once been quite handsome.
Lee showed us the most bizarre room of all, the master bathroom. In fairness, I do think he said that a previous owner had constructed this monstrosity. Apart from the absurdity of building a baldacchino above a spa bath, the faux marble Doric columns hardly fit with the rest of the Victorian decor.
Jimmy the Cricket had told us that there was one more house, not on the regular tour, that we absolutely had to see. He made some calls to “James” and left messages asking for two more people to be included on the evening tour of The Towers of Natchez.
Now the first thing almost anybody would say when they first approach this Italian Renaissance Revival house is, well, where exactly are the towers? We learned later that while there had originally been two third floor rooms on the far right and left of the house, these had been removed some years ago. It seems odd to call a house without towers “the towers” just because it once had them. Still, I recall a comment that the mayor of Seal Beach California had made when reminded that there were no seals on the beach there: “Well, do you think it would be an improvement to call it Sealless Beach?” The Towerless of Natchez makes even less sense.
The owner is a woman named Ginger Hyland. Her father, “Buzz” Hyland is credit with discovering radar, and he became a close associate of Howard Hughes during World War II. Ginger was born in Los Angeles and raised in the comfort of Holmby Hills. She attended the Westlake School for Girls along with Candice Bergen. She became interested in horses at a young age, and became the first woman president of the American Quarter Horse Association.
Now all of that is the official stuff you can find about Ginger from the discreet sources. But this is the South and there is always something dark and sinister lurking about. We figured out later why Ginger decided to withdraw the house from the Pilgrimage Tour even though she had once been the president of the local garden club. Ginger is 70, though thanks to the wonders of Beverly Hills physicians she had not even the slightest suggestion of a wrinkle, but she has a boyfriend over 25 years her junior named James Wesley Forde. There was a portrait in the hallway of James as a young man, and he was rather devastatingly handsome. Alas, James had a little issue with a teenage boy, and this made the crime blotter of the Natchez Democrat. (Are there really Democrats in Natchez?) This is a family blog, but you can read the sordid details here if you must.
Ginger did not want allow any photographs to be taken on the tour. This was a bit of a pity because so much of it was so weird. Ginger, who must still be living on the income from the radar royalties, has the world’s largest collection of beaded Victorian handbags and the walls are covered with several dozen of them. They were obviously the nineteenth century version of “bling” but at least show a great deal of handiwork. Less explicable is Ginger’s collection of nineteenth century eye cups. We saw a few examples of Ginger’s obsession with faux-jeweled Christmas decorations. Apparently there are hundreds of these and they are all out in December.
We took a few snapshots in the garden as we left. Most of them did not come out that well, but I liked this one of the real cat amid the fake ones.
In the evening we went down to the Natchez riverfront for a bite to eat. This area was huge slave market before the Civil War, but if there is a monument to this sordid bit of history I did not see it. Instead, there was a casino, every dying city’s hope for renewal, and a bunch of restaurants. We had a mediocre dinner and headed home.
We leave for northern Mississippi tomorrow. Both of us want to come back to Natchez again … but only during “The Pilgrimage.” This place is just too weird not to see again.
