The Witching Hour (80 page)

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.

That story was told to us once in 1898, and again in 1910. It has proved impossible to investigate.

By far the most valuable story we have from the earlier period was told to us by a taxi driver in 1910, who said that he once picked up Mary Beth downtown in the Rue Royale one day in 1908, and though he was certain she had gotten into his taxi alone (this was a horse-drawn hansom), he heard her talking to someone all the way uptown. When he opened the door for her before the carriage block at First Street, he saw a handsome man with her in the cab. She seemed deep in conversation with him, but broke off when she saw the driver, and uttered a short laugh. She gave the driver two beautiful gold coins and told him they were worth far more than the fare, and to spend them quickly. When the taxi driver looked for the man to follow her out of the cab he saw there was no one there.

There are numerous other servant stories in our files concerning Mary Beth’s powers, but all have a common theme—that Mary Beth was a witch and that she showed her powers whenever she or her possessions or her family was threatened. But once more, let us emphasize that the stories of these servants differ markedly from the other material we have.

However, if we consider the entire scope of Mary Beth’s life, we will see that there is convincing evidence of witchcraft from other sources.

As far as we can deduce, Mary Beth had three overriding passions.

First but not foremost was Mary Beth’s desire to make money, and to involve members of her own family in the building of an immense fortune. It is an understatement to say that she was successful.

Almost from the beginning of her life, we hear stories of treasure troves of jewels, of purses full of gold coins which can never be emptied, and of Mary Beth tossing gold coins to the poor at random.

She was said to have warned many persons to “spend the coins fast,” saying that whatever she gave away from her magic purse always returned to her.

Regarding the jewels and the coins—it could be that a thorough study of all the Mayfair finances, made entirely from public records and analyzed by those versed in such matters, might indicate that mysterious and unaccountable infusions of wealth have played a role in their entire financial history. But on the basis of what we know, we cannot make this assumption.

More pertinent is the question of Mary Beth’s use of precognition or occult knowledge in her investments.

Even a casual examination of Mary Beth’s financial achievements indicates that she was a financial genius. She was far more interested in making money than Julien had ever been, and she possessed an obvious knack for knowing what was going to happen before it did, and she often warned all her peers about impending crises and bank failures, though they often did not listen to her.

In fact, Mary Beth’s diversified investments defy conventional explanation. She was, as they say, “into” everything. She engaged directly in cotton brokering, real estate, shipping, railroads, banking, merchandising, and later bootlegging. She continuously invested in highly unlikely ventures that proved astonishingly successful. She was “in on the ground floor” of several chemicals and inventions which made her incalculable amounts of money.

One can go so far as to say that her story—on paper—doesn’t make sense. She knew too much too often and made too much out of it.

Whereas Julien’s successes, great as they were, could be attributed to one man’s knowledge and skill, it is almost impossible to explain Mary Beth’s success in this simple a fashion. Julien had no interest for example in modern inventions, as far as investment was concerned. Mary Beth had a positive passion for gadgets and technology, and never ever made a mistake in this area. The same held true for shipping, about which Julien knew little, and Mary Beth knew a great deal. Whereas Julien loved to purchase buildings, including factories and hotels, he never bought undeveloped land, but Mary Beth bought enormous tracts of it all over the United States and sold it at unbelievable profits. In fact, her knowledge of when and where towns and cities would develop is totally unaccountable.

Mary Beth was also very canny about presenting her wealth in a favorable light to other people. She made enough of a show to suit her purposes. Consequently she never inspired the wonder
or disbelief that would have inevitably followed full disclosures of her success. And she was careful all her life to avoid publicity. Her life-style at First Street was never particularly ostentatious, except that she came to love motor cars and had so many at one time that she had to rent garages all over the neighborhood for them. In sum, the picture she presented to Richard Llewellyn, quoted at length in the last chapter, is pretty much the picture she presented to everyone. Very few people knew how much money or power she had.

In fact, there is some evidence that Mary Beth possessed an entire business life of which other people weren’t aware, in the sense that she had a troop of financial employees whom she met in downtown offices, who never came near her office on First Street. There is talk even today in New Orleans of the men who worked “downtown” for Mary Beth, and how generously they were rewarded. It was a “plush job,” according to one old gentleman, who recalls that his friend often went on long trips for Mary Beth, to London and Paris and Brussels and Zurich, sometimes carrying enormous sums of money with him. Shipboard and hotel accommodations were always first class, said this old man. And Mary Beth handed out bonuses regularly. Another source insists that Mary Beth herself frequently went on such trips without the knowledge of her family, but we can make no verification of this.

We also have five different stories of Mary Beth’s taking revenge on those who tried to cheat her. One story recounts how her secretary, Landing Smith, ran off with three hundred thousand dollars of Mary Beth’s cash, taking a liner to Europe under an assumed name, quite convinced that he’d gotten away with it. Three days out of New York, he woke up in the middle of the night to discover Mary Beth sitting on the side of his bed. Not only did she take the money from him, she beat him soundly with her riding crop, and left him bloody and half mad on the cabin floor where the ship’s steward later found him. His full confession followed at once. But Mary Beth was not found on board the ship, and neither was the money. This story was recounted in the local papers, though Mary Beth herself refused to confirm or deny that anything was ever stolen.

Another story, told by two different elderly men in the year 1955, recounts how a meeting was held by one of Mary Beth’s companies which sought to dissociate itself from her and cheat her by a series of entirely legal maneuvers. The meeting was half over perhaps when all at the table realized Mary Beth was sitting there with them. Mary Beth told them simply what she thought of them, severed her tie with the company, and it soon
met with financial ruin. Descendants of those involved despise the Mayfairs to this day for this tragedy.