LETTER XXXIX.
hateau de Clery, La.
My Dear Mr. —:
As these letters have been mainly descriptive of
scenes and voyaging before I reached here, this will be
mainly descriptive of the scenery at the Chateau. It will
give you some idea of the domestic arrangements of the
opulent French planters, than which nothing can be more
agreeable. No people know so well how to enjoy this
world as the French; and par excellence their descendants
in Louisiana, which offers to their pleasure the climate
of Eden with all its fruits,—with the “tree of
knowledge of good and evil,” I fear; for with much
luxury, there is much evil in the world; and, unfortunately,
one cannot live magnificently, indulging all the
goods of the earth, without “sin.”
“Luxury and sin
In Eden did begin.”
The Chateau de Clery, where Talleyrand, Louis Phillippe,
and Jackson have been guests, is a large, imposing,
French-looking mansion, with almost an acre of roof,
situated on the banks of the Mississippi, and embowered
in a grove of magnolia trees, interspersed with live-oaks
and orange trees. The house is vast in width, and made
very long, with piazzaed wings, and all around it runs a
broad colonnade supported by columns entwined by flowering
plants.
The view from the upper balcony, on which all the
parlors open by Venetian windows, is very beautiful, and
to the eye of a person born in sight of mountains, novel
in the extreme. There extend to the right and left, as
far as the eye can see, level sugar-fields, waving at this
season with the green billows of the breeze-tossed cane-leaves.
The appearance of a cane-field in this month
being very similar to that of a field of corn in the green
leaf, before it begins to display its tassels. Turning the
gaze from the vast savannahs of Southern wealth, the
lawn in front of the villa fills the eye with its shady,
live-oak trees, its groves of orange trees, and long aisles
of lemon and magnolias. From the broad steps of the
entrance to the portico to the river side extends a noble
carriage-way, bordered on each side by live-oaks. A
fringe of orange trees runs all around a magnificent garden
on the left, but the severe frosts of last winter
have rendered them leafless; and there they stand, gray
and fruitless, wholly destitute of foliage, striking contrasts
to the rich vegetation everywhere visible around them.
The majestic Mississippi flows past in front of the lawn
a furlong distant, and confined to its banks by the green
levee, inside of which runs smoothly the carriage-road
down to New Orleans, and along which horsemen or carriages
are constantly passing up and down. There is
scarcely an hour in the day in which a steamer is not
visible, ploughing its huge path along, with the deep roar
of its escape-pipes and comet-like trails of black smoke
rolling along the air astern, darkening the waves beneath,
like the passing thunder-cloud. The opposite shore a
mile off, is visible, with its pretty villas, its groves and
parks, and its African villages white as snow, and the
imposing turreted sugar-houses beyond, with their tall
towers.
I am perfectly charmed with the scenery of this region.
Once I fancied that no landscape could be pretty without
hills or mountains in the distance; but the beautiful
shores of Louisiana have led me to change my opinion;
and, although I was born in sight of the White Hills, I
can see much to admire in the richness of these scenes,
where there is not an eminence of any sort—not a mole
hill. All is one vast ocean-like level; but so diversified
by cultivation, so ornamented by taste and art, so decked
with noble seats, so enriched by groves, gardens, fine
roads, and avenues, so variegated by the countless world
of flowers, and the splendor of the foliage, and gracefulness
of the forms of the forest trees, its atmosphere so
colored by the purity of the azure and golden heavens
of morning and evening, with the ever changing glory
of the moving river, that I forget the absence of mountains,
and give my heart up to the full enjoyment of the
paradise around me.
You will never behold the finest portion of the Union,
Mr.—, until you have visited the “coast of Sunny
Louisiana.” The people, too, whose lot is cast in the
midst of this mighty Eden of a hundred miles in extent,
can appreciate the charms of their scenery. Vast wealth
has begotten education and taste; and refinement, and
mental accomplishments adorn most of the elegant mansions
that border the river.
There are seventeen rooms in the Chateau de Clery,
most of them of a magnificent description. There are
two parlors, a large drawing-room, a vast hall, larger
than any room in the house, and which is the general
rendezvous of the family after dinner and tea; a sitting
room for the ladies; a nursery, several bath rooms, a
library, and a study room near it, for the governess and
children; besides numerous bed-rooms and dressing-rooms.
These rooms, the parlors and all, open out into
the piazza, which encircles the whole mansion. They
are all upon one floor, and every window is a glass door,
opening with leaves. The whole edifice is raised ten
feet from the ground, on brick pillars, leaving beneath
the pile numerous servants and store-rooms, concealed
from the eye of persons approaching the house by a lattice-work,
covering the whole front of the lower area.
The house is stuccoed, and tinted lemon color, while
the numerous columns are painted white, and being
usually enwreathed by vines, the whole effect is very
fine. Carriage ways, strewn with shells, surround the
mansion, and terminate at the stables—which are handsome
edifices, beneath the shade of two enormous live-oaks.
From the rear of the gallery is visible the snowy
houses of the African village, sixty-eight in number,
forming a long street, bordered by trees, with a small
garden in the rear of each dwelling. In the centre of
this picturesque village, every house in which is the exact
pattern of the other, rises the taller roof of the overseer's
mansion, above which still rises the tower of the
plantation bell, which peals out many times a day to call
to work and to meals.
Beyond this attractive village for slaves, where neatness
and comfort prevail, rise the tall walls of the sucrérie,
or sugar house, half a mile off, towards the centre
of the estate. It has the aspect of a huge manufactory.
It is two hundred feet long, has three vast chimneys,
one of which is seventy feet in height, and twenty feet
broad at the base. The whole structure is white, and
looks from the house, as Isabel describes it, like some
handsome convent. From the villa, a smooth road (of
course level as a floor) runs to it, and indeed, passing it,
extends to the cypress forest two miles beyond it. This
road is lined with hedges of the flowering Cherokee rose,
and is our favorite morning gallop, as the Levee road,
along the banks of the Father of Waters, is our favorite
evening drive.
To-morrow we leave this lovely place for the city; and
I will tell you a secret, Mr. —, which you mustn't
breathe for the world. The eldest son of M. De Clery,
who has only last year returned from Paris, has fallen
in love with Isabel, and they are to be married. We go
to the city to select the bridal apparel and gifts, &c.
The young gentleman is extremely handsome, four-and-twenty
years old, with a cultivated mind, and a good
heart, and unexceptionable temper. This last qualification
is the most important. If a husband is not amiable,
dear me! what a wretched woman his bride must be!
Girls should see if their suitor is good tempered, and if
he is not, have nothing to say to him. If a man is bad
tempered to his sister or mother, be sure he will be still
more so to his wife, because his wife is more completely
in his power. As a young man treats his mother and
his sister, he will treat his wife. Young ladies! take
this as an unfailing test, from your friend, Kate.
M. de Clery has a fine temper; and as he is also very
rich, and a sincere believer in Christianity, Isabel will
make a good match, and doubtless be very happy in the
dangerous lottery of matrimony. But I am in tears as
I write, at the thought of losing her; and the dear
colonel looks through tearful eyes upon her, and kissing
her, bids “God's blessing on her.” It is a hard struggle
for the father, though he desires the union.
The marriage of Isabel will change all our plans for
the summer. The whole wedding party will proceed,
soon after the nuptials, to the North, and the bridegroom
and bride will embark for Europe. You ask what will
become of me? A very sensible question, good Mr.
—. With Isabel's engagement yesterday, my vocation
as governess went. The future is all before me
where to choose. But the question of the future remains
to be settled after we return from the city, where, as I
said, we go to-morrow, to be absent a week. It is probable
I shall accompany the bridal party North, and
take the opportunity of visiting the humble home of my
childhood, amid the green hills of New England—for,
with all my attachment to the South, and the warm-hearted
Southern people, my heart,
“Dear New England, turns ever to thee.”
P. S. My next letter will be from New Orleans, from
which I hope to write you something interesting.
