THE PILE Of THE MAYFAIR WITCHES 1 page

PART VI

The Mayfair Family from 1900 through 1929

RESEARCH METHODS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

As mentioned earlier, in our introduction to the family in the nineteenth century, our sources of information about the Mayfair family became ever more numerous and illuminating with each passing decade.

As the family moved towards the twentieth century, the Talamasca maintained all of its traditional kinds of investigators. But it also acquired professional detectives for the first time. A number of such men worked for us in New Orleans and still do. They have proved excellent not only at gathering gossip of all sorts but at investigating specific questions through reams of records, and at interviewing scores of persons about the Mayfair family, much as an investigative “true crime” writer might do today.

These men seldom if ever know who we are. They report to an agency in London. And though we still send our own specially trained investigators to New Orleans on virtual “gossip-gathering sprees” and carry on correspondence with numerous other watchers, as we have all through the nineteenth century, these private detectives have greatly improved the quality of our information.

Yet another source of information became available to us in the late nineteenth and twentieth century, which we—for want of a better phrase—will call family legend. To wit, though Mayfairs are often absolutely secretive about their contemporaries’, and very leery of saying anything whatsoever about the family legacy to outsiders, they had begun by the 1890s to repeat little stories and anecdotes and fanciful tales about figures in the dim past.

Specifically, a descendant of Lestan who would say absolutely nothing about his dear cousin Mary Beth when invited by a stranger at a party to gossip about her, nevertheless repeated several quaint stories about Great-aunt Marguerite, who used to dance with her slaves. And later the grandson of that very cousin repeated quaint stories about old Miss Mary Beth, whom he never knew.

Of course much of this family legend is too vague to be of interest to us, and much concerns “the grand plantation life” which has become mythic in many Louisiana families and does not shed light upon our obsessions. However, sometimes these family legends tie in quite shockingly with bits of information we have been able to gather from other sources.

And when and where they have seemed especially illuminating, I have included them. But the reader must understand “family legend” always refers to something being told to us recently about someone or something in the “dim past.”

Yet another form of gossip which came to the fore in the twentieth century is what we call legal gossip—and that is, the gossip of legal secretaries, legal clerks, lawyers, and judges who knew the Mayfairs or worked with them, and the friends and families of all these various non-Mayfair persons.

Because Julien’s sons, Barclay, Garland, and Cortland, all became distinguished lawyers, and because Carlotta Mayfair was a lawyer, and because numerous grandchildren of Julien also went into law, this network of legal contacts has tended to grow larger than one might suppose. But even if this had not been the case, the financial dealings of the Mayfairs have been so extensive that many, many lawyers have been involved.

When the family began to squabble in the twentieth century, when Carlotta began to fight over the custody of Stella’s daughter; when there were arguments about the disposition of the legacy, this legal gossip became a rich source of interesting details.

Let me add in closing that the twentieth century saw even greater and more detailed record keeping in general than the nineteenth. And our paid investigators of the twentieth century availed themselves of these numerous public records concerning the family. Also as time went on, the family was mentioned more and more in the press.

THE ETHNIC CHARACTER OF THE CHANGING FAMILY As we carry this narrative towards the year 1900, we should note that the ethnic character of the Mayfair family was changing.

Though the family had begun as a Scottish-French mix, incorporating in the next generation the blood of the Dutchman Petyr van Abel, it had become after that almost exclusively French.

In 1826, however, with the marriage of Marguerite Mayfair to the opera singer Tyrone Clifford McNamara, the legacy family began to intermarry fairly regularly with Anglo-Saxons.

Other branches—notably the descendants of Lestan and Maurice—remained staunchly French, and if and when they moved to New Orleans they preferred to live “downtown” with other French-speaking Creoles, in or around the French Quarter or on Esplanade Avenue.

The legacy family, with Katherine’s marriage to Darcy Monahan, became firmly ensconced in the uptown “American” Garden District. And though Julien Mayfair (half Irish himself) spoke French all his life, and married a French-speaking cousin, Suzette, he gave his three boys distinctly American or Anglo names, and saw to it that they received American educations. His son Garland married a girl of German-Irish descent with Julien’s blessing. Cortland also married an Anglo-Saxon girl, and eventually Barclay did also.

As we have already noted Mary Beth was to marry an Irishman, Daniel McIntyre, in 1899.

Though Katherine’s sons Clay and Vincent spoke French all their lives, both married Irish-American girls—Clay the daughter of a well-to-do hotel owner, and Vincent the daughter of an Irish-German brewer. One of Clay’s daughters became a member of the Irish Catholic Order of the Sisters of Mercy (following in the footsteps of her father’s sister), to which the family contributes to this day. And a great-granddaughter of Vincent entered the same order.

Though the French Mayfairs worshiped at the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter, the legacy family began to attend services at their parish church, Notre Dame, on Jackson Avenue, one of a three-church complex maintained by the Redemptorist Fathers which sought to meet the needs of the waterfront Irish and German immigrants as well as the old French families. When this church was closed in the 1920s a parish chapel was established on Prytania Street in the Garden District, quite obviously for the rich who did not want to attend either the Irish church of St. Alphonsus or the German church of St. Mary’s.

The Mayfairs attended Mass at this chapel, and indeed residents of First Street attend Mass there to this day. But as far back as 1899, the Mayfairs began to use the Irish church of St. Alphonsus—a very large, beautiful, and impressive structure—for important occasions.

Mary Beth was married to Daniel McIntyre in St. Alphonsus Church in 1899, and every First Street Mayfair baptism since has been held there. Mayfair children—after their expulsion from better private schools—went to St. Alphonsus parochial school for brief periods.

Some of our testimony about the family comes from Irish Catholic nuns and priests stationed in this parish.

After Julien died in 1914, Mary Beth was rarely heard to speak French, even to the French cousins, and it may be that the language died out in the legacy family. Carlotta Mayfair has never been known to speak French; and it is doubtful that Stella or Antha or Deirdre knew more than a few words of any foreign language.

Our investigators observed on numerous occasions that the speech of the twentieth-century Mayfairs—Carlotta; her sister, Stella; Stella’s daughter, Antha; and Antha’s daughter, Deirdre—showed distinct Irish traits. Like many New Orleanians, they had no discernible French or southern American accent. But they tended to call people they knew by both their names, as in “Well, how are you now, Ellie Mayfair?” and to speak with a certain lilt and certain deliberate repetitions which struck the listeners as Irish. A typical example would be this fragment picked up at a Mayfair funeral in 1945: “Now don’t you tell me that story, now, Gloria Mayfair, you know I won’t believe such a thing and shame on you for telling it! And poor Nancy with all she has on her mind, why, she’s a living saint and you know she is, if ever there was one!”

With regard to appearance, the Mayfairs are such a salad of genes that any combination of coloring, build, or facial characteristics can appear at any time in any generation. There is no characteristic look. Yet some members of the Talamasca aver that a study of all the existing photographs, sketches, and reproductions of paintings in our files does reveal a series of recurring types.

For example, there is a group of tall blond Mayfairs (including Lionel Mayfair) who resemble Petyr van Abel, all of whom have green eyes and strong jaw lines.

Then there is a group of very pale, delicately built Mayfairs who are invariably blue-eyed and short, and this group includes not only the original Deborah but also Deirdre Mayfair, the present beneficiary and “witch” and the mother of Rowan.

A third group of dark-eyed, dark-haired Mayfairs with very large bones includes Mary Beth Mayfair, and her uncles Clay and Vincent, and also Angélique Mayfair of Saint-Domingue.

Another group of smaller black-eyed, black-haired Mayfairs looks distinctly French, and every one of this group has a small round head and rather prominent eyes and overly curly hair.

Lastly, there is a group of very pale, cold-looking Mayfairs, all blond, with grayish eyes and fairly delicate of build, though always tall, and this group includes Charlotte of Saint-Domingue (the daughter of Petyr van Abel); Marie Claudette, who brought the family to Louisiana; Stella’s daughter, Antha Mayfair; and her granddaughter—Dr. Rowan Mayfair.

Members of the order have also noted some very specific resemblances. For instance, Dr. Rowan Mayfair of Tiburon, California, strongly resembles her ancestor Julien Mayfair, much more than she does any blond members of the family.

And Carlotta Mayfair in her youth strongly resembled her ancestor Charlotte.

(This investigator feels obligated to note with regard to this entire subject of looks that he does not see all this in these pictures! There are similarities, but the differences far outweigh them! The family does not look distinctly Irish, French, Scottish, or anything else.)

In any discussion of Irish influence and Irish traits we should remind ourselves that the history of this family is such that one can never be certain who is the father of any child. And as the later “legends” repeated in the twentieth century by descendants will show, the incestuous entanglements of each generation were not really secret. Nevertheless an Irish cultural influence is definitely discernible.

We should also note—for what it’s worth—that the family in the late 1800s began to employ more and more Irish domestic servants, and these servants became for the Talamasca priceless sources of information. How much they contributed to our vision of the family as Irish is not easy to determine.

The hiring of these Irish workers had nothing to do with the family’s Irish identity, per se. It was the trend in the neighborhood of the period, and many of these Irish-Americans lived in the so-called Irish Channel or riverfront neighborhood lying between the Mississippi wharves and Magazine Street, the southernmost boundary of the Garden District. Some of them were live-in maids and stable boys; others came to work by the day, or only on certain occasions. And as a whole, they were not as loyal to the Mayfair family as the colored and black servants were; and they talked much more freely about what went on at First Street than servants of past decades.

But though the information they made available to the Talamasca is extremely valuable, it is information of a certain kind and must be evaluated carefully.

The Irish servants working in and around the house tended on the whole to believe in ghosts, in the supernatural, and in the power of the Mayfair women to make things happen. They were what we must call highly superstitious. Hence their stories of what they saw or heard sometimes border on the fantastic, and often contain vivid and lurid passages of description.

Nevertheless, this material is—for obvious reasons—extremely significant. And much of what was recounted by the Irish servants has—for us—a familiar ring to it.

All things considered, it is not unfair to say in summary that by the first decade of this century the First Street Mayfairs thought of themselves as Irish, often making remarks to that effect; and that they emerged in the consciousness of many who knew them—servants and peers alike—as almost stereotypically Irish in their madness and eccentricity and penchant for the morbid. Several critics of the family have called them “raving Irish loonies.” And a German priest of St. Alphonsus Church once described them as existing in “a perpetual state of Celtic gloom.” Several neighbors and friends referred to Mary Beth’s son, Lionel, as a “raving Irish drunk,” and his father, Daniel McIntyre, was certainly considered to be one, by just about every bartender on Magazine Street.

Perhaps it is safe to say that with the death of “Monsieur Julien” (who was in fact half Irish) the house on First Street lost the very last of its French or Creole character. Julien’s sister, Katherine, and his brother, Rény, had already preceded him to the grave, and so had his daughter, Jeannette. Thereafter—in spite of the huge family gatherings which included French-speaking cousins by the hundreds—the core family was an Irish-American Catholic family.

As the years passed, the French-speaking branches lost their Creole identity as well, as have so many other Louisiana Creole families. The French language has all but died out in every known branch. And as we move towards the last decade of the twentieth century, it is difficult to find a true French-speaking Mayfair descendant anywhere.

This brings us to one other crucial observation—which is all too easily overlooked when proceeding with this narrative.

With the death of Julien, the Mayfair family may have lost the last member who really knew its history. We cannot know. But it seems more than likely. And as we converse more with descendants and gather more of their preposterous legends about the plantation days, it seems a certainty.

As a consequence, from 1914 on, any member of the Talamasca investigating the Mayfair family could not help but be aware that he or she knew more about the family than the family appeared to know about itself. And this has led to considerable confusion and stress on the part of our investigators.

Even before Julien’s death, the question of whether or not to attempt contact with the family had become a pressing one for the order.

After the death of Mary Beth, it became agonizing.

But we must now continue our story, backtracking to the year 1891, so that we may focus sharply upon Mary Beth Mayfair, who will carry us into the twentieth century, and who was perhaps the last of the truly powerful Mayfair Witches.

We know more about Mary Beth Mayfair than we know about any other Mayfair Witch since Charlotte. Yet when all the information is examined, Mary Beth remains a mystery, revealing herself to us in only occasional blinding flashes through the anecdotes of servants and family friends. Only Richard Llewellyn gave us a truly intimate portrait, and as we have already seen, Richard knew very little about Mary Beth’s business interests or her occult powers. She seems to have fooled him, as she fooled everyone around her, into believing that she was very simply a strong woman, when the truth was far more complex than that.

* * *

THE CONTINUING STORY OF MARY BETH MAYFAIR The week after Marguerite’s death in 1891, Julien removed Marguerite’s personal possessions from Riverbend to the First Street house. Hiring two wagons to transport the goods, he moved numerous jars and bottles, all properly crated, several trunks of letters and other papers, and some twenty-five cartons of books, as well as several trunks of miscellaneous contents.

We know that the jars and bottles disappeared into the third floor of the First Street house, and we never heard of these bottles and jars again from any contemporary witness.

Julien made his bedroom on the third floor at this time, and this is the room in which he died as described by Richard Llewellyn:

Many of Marguerite’s books, including obscure texts in German and French having to do with black magic, were put on the shelves in the ground-floor library.

Mary Beth was given the old master bedroom in the north wing, above the library, which has always since been occupied by the beneficiary of the legacy. Little Belle, too young perhaps to be displaying signs of feeblemindedness, was given the first bedroom across the hall, but Belle often slept with her mother in the early years.

Mary Beth began to wear the Mayfair emerald regularly. And it may be said that she came into her own at this time as an adult and as mistress of the house. New Orleans society certainly became more aware of her, and the first business transactions bearing her signature appear in the public records at this time.

She appears in numerous photographic portraits wearing the emerald, and many people talked about it and spoke of it with admiration. And in many of these photographs she is wearing men’s clothing. In fact, scores of witnesses verify Richard Llewellyn’s statement that Mary Beth cross-dressed, and that it was common for her to go out, dressed as a man, with Julien. Before Mary Beth’s marriage to Daniel McIntyre, these wanderings included not only the bordellos of the French Quarter, but an entire spectrum of social activity, Mary Beth even appearing at balls in the handsome “white tie and tails” of a man.

Though society in general was shocked by this behavior, the Mayfairs continued to pave the way for it with money and charm. They lent money freely to those who needed it during the various postwar depressions. They gave to charities almost ostentatiously, and under the management of Clay Mayfair, Riverbend continued to make a fortune with one bountiful sugar crop after another.

In these early years, Mary Beth herself seems to have aroused little enmity in others. She is never spoken of, even by her detractors, as vicious or cruel, though she is often much criticized as cold, businesslike, indifferent to people’s feelings, and mannish in manner.

For all her strength and height, however, she was not a mannish woman. Numerous people describe her as voluptuous, and occasionally she is described as beautiful. Numerous photographs bear this out. She presented an alluring figure in male attire, particularly in these early years. And more than one member of the Talamasca has observed that whereas Stella, Antha, and Deirdre Mayfair—her daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter respectively—were delicate “southern belle” women, Mary Beth greatly resembled the striking and “larger than life” American film stars who came after her death, particularly Ava Gardner and Joan Crawford. Mary Beth also bore a strong resemblance in photographs to Jenny Churchill, the celebrated American mother of Winston Churchill.

Mary Beth’s hair remained jet black until her death at the age of fifty-four. We do not know her exact height but we can guess that it was close to five feet eleven inches. She was never a heavy woman, but she was big-boned, and very strong. She walked with large steps. The cancer that killed her was not discovered until six months before her death, and she remained an “attractive” woman up until the final weeks, when she finally disappeared into the sickroom never to leave it.

There can be no doubt, however, that Mary Beth had scant interest in her physical beauty. Though always well groomed, and sometimes stunning in a ball gown and fur wrap, she is never spoken of by anyone as seductive. In fact, those who called her “unfeminine” dwelt at length upon her straightforward and brusque manner, and her seeming indifference to her own considerable endowments.

It is worth noting that almost all of these traits—straightforward manner, businesslike attitude, honesty, and coldness—are later associated with her daughter Carlotta Mayfair, who is not and never was a designee of the legacy.

Those who liked Mary Beth and did business successfully with her praised her as a “straight shooter,” and a generous person, quite incapable of pettiness. Those who did not do well with her called her feelingless and inhuman. This is also the case with Carlotta Mayfair.

Mary Beth’s business interests and her appetite for pleasure will be dealt with extensively below. It is sufficient to say here that, in the early years, she set the tone for what went on at First Street as much as Julien. Many family dinner parties were planned by her completely, and she persuaded Julien to make his last trip to Europe in 1896, at which time she and he toured the capitals from Madrid to London.

Mary Beth shared Julien’s love of horses from girlhood on, and frequently went riding with Julien. They also loved the theater and attended almost any sort of play, from the very grand Shakespearean productions to very small and insignificant local theatricals. And both were passionate lovers of opera. In later years, Mary Beth had a Victrola of some sort in almost every room of the house, and she played opera records continuously.

Mary Beth also seems to have enjoyed living with a large number of people under one roof. Her interest in the family was not limited to reunions and get-togethers. On the contrary, she opened her doors all her life to visiting cousins.

Some casual accounts of her hospitality suggest that she enjoyed having power over people; she enjoyed being the center of attention. But even in those stories in which such opinions are quite literally expressed, Mary Beth emerges as a person more interested in others than in herself. In fact, the total absence of narcissism or vanity in this woman continues to be astonishing to those who peruse the record. Generosity, rather than a lust for power, seems a more appropriate explanation for her family relationships.

(Allow us to note here that Nancy Mayfair, an illegitimate child of a descendant of Maurice Mayfair, was adopted by Mary Beth and brought up along with Antha Mayfair as Stella’s daughter. Nancy lived in the First Street house until 1988. It was commonly believed even by scores of Mayfairs that she was really Stella’s daughter.)

In 1891, the First Street household consisted of Rémy Mayfair, who seemed years older than his brother Julien, though he was not, and was rumored to be dying of consumption, which he finally did in 1897; Julien’s sons, Barclay, Garland, and Cortland, who were the first Mayfairs to be sent off to boarding schools on the upper East Coast where they did well; Millie Mayfair, the only one of Rémy’s children never to marry; and finally, in addition to Julien and Mary Beth, their daughter, little Belle, who as already mentioned was slightly feebleminded.

By the end of the century the house included Clay Mayfair, Mary Beth’s brother, and also the unwilling and heartbroken Katherine Mayfair after the destruction of Riverbend, and from time to time other cousins.

During all this time, Mary Beth was the undisputed lady of the house, and it was Mary Beth who inspired and carried out a great refurbishing of the structure before 1900, at which time three bathrooms were added and the gaslight was expanded to the third floor, and to the entire servants’ quarters, and to two large outbuildings as well, one of which was a stable with living accommodations above it.

Though Mary Beth lived until 1925, dying of cancer in September of that year, we can safely say that she changed little over time—that her passions and priorities in the late nineteenth century were pretty much the same as in the last year of her life.

If she ever had a close friend or confidant outside the family, we know nothing of it. And her true character is rather hard to describe. She was certainly never the playful, cheerful person that Julien was; she seemed to have no desire for great drama; and even at the countless family reunions where she danced and supervised the taking of photographs and the serving of food and drink, she is never described as “the life of the party.” Rather she seems to have been a quiet, strong woman, with very definite goals. And it is possible that no one was ever really close to her except her daughter Stella. But we shall get to that part of the story by and by.

To what extent Mary Beth’s occult powers furthered her goals is a very significant question. And there is a variety of evidence to help one make a series of educated guesses as to what went on behind the scenes.

To the Irish servants who came and went at First Street, she was always a “witch” or a person with voodoo powers. But their stories of her differ from other accounts which we possess, quite markedly, and must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

Nevertheless …

The servants spoke often of Mary Beth going down to the French Quarter to consult with the voodooiennes and of having an altar in her room at which she worshiped the devil. They said that Mary Beth knew when you told a lie, and knew where you had been, and knew where every member of the Mayfair family was, even those who had gone up north, and knew at any moment what these people were doing. They said Mary Beth made no effort to keep such things a secret.

They also said that Mary Beth was the person to whom the black servants turned when they were in trouble with the local voodooiennes and Mary Beth knew what powder to use or candle to burn in order to counteract a spell, and that she could command spirits; and Mary Beth declared more than once that this was all that voodoo was about. Command the spirits. All the rest is for show.

One Irish cook who worked in the house off and on from 1895 to 1902 told one of our investigators casually that Mary Beth told her there were all kinds of spirits in the world, but the lowly spirits were the easiest to command, and anybody could call them up if such a person had a mind to. Mary Beth had spirits guarding all the rooms of the house and all the things in them. But Mary Beth warned the cook not to try to call spirits on her own. It had its dangers and was best left to people who could see spirits and feel them the way that Mary Beth could.

“You could feel the spirits in that house, all right,” said the cook, “and if you closed your eyes halfway, you could see them. But Miss Mary Beth didn’t have to do that. She could just see them plain as day all the time, and she talked to them and called them by name.”

The cook also said Mary Beth drank brandy straight from the bottle, but that was all right, because Mary Beth was a real lady and a lady could do what she pleased, and Mary Beth was a kind and generous person. Same held true for old Monsieur Julien, but he would not have thought of drinking brandy straight from a bottle, or anything else straight from a bottle, and always liked his sherry in a crystal glass.

A laundress reported that Mary Beth could make doors close behind her without bothering to touch them, as she made her way through the house. The laundress was asked once to take a basket of folded linen to the second floor, but she refused, she was so frightened. Then Mary Beth scolded her in a rather good-natured way for being so foolish, and the laundress wasn’t afraid anymore.

There are at least fifteen different accounts of Mary Beth’s voodoo altar, on which she burned incense and candles of various colors, and to which she added plaster saints from time to time. But no account tells us precisely where this altar was. (It is interesting to note that no black servant ever questioned about this altar would utter one word about it.)

Some of the other stories we have are very fanciful. It was told to us several times, for instance, that Mary Beth didn’t just dress like a man, she turned into a man when she went out in her suit, with her cane and hat. And she was strong enough at such times to beat off any other man who assaulted her.

One morning early when she was riding her horse on St. Charles Avenue alone (Julien was ill at the time, and would very soon die), a man tried to pull her from the horse, at which time she herself turned into a man and beat him half to death with her fist, and then dragged him at the end of a rope behind her horse to the local police station. “Lots of people saw that,” we are told. That story was repeated in the Irish Channel as late as 1935. Indeed police records of the time indicate the assault, and the “citizen’s arrest” did take place in 1914. The man died in his cell several hours later.

There is another story of a foolish maidservant who stole one of Mary Beth’s rings, and awoke that night in her smothering little room on Chippewa Street to discover Mary Beth bending over her, in manly form, and demanding that she give back the ring immediately, which the woman did, only to die by three o’clock the following afternoon from the shock of the experience.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 593