Strapless (2 page)

Visitors to New Orleans in the mid-1800s would have been awed by the sophisticated atmosphere. There were glittering cosmopolitan touches at every corner, arcades of boutiques that stocked the latest fabrics, furniture, and decorative objects—all imported, as it was less expensive to bring luxury items from France than it was to manufacture them in Louisiana. On Jackson Square were two Parisian-inspired apartment buildings built by the notorious Baroness Pontalba, a local woman whose avaricious European husband and father-in-law had, allegedly, repeatedly tried to kill her for her money.

New Orleans was a prime destination for international visitors, not only because it offered a festive atmosphere, but also because it was a highly accessible port of call for ships from the northern United States, Europe, South America, and other distances. Visitors may or may not have known, however, that their destination had the questionable distinction of being one of the unhealthiest cities in the world. The bustling port that routinely welcomed ocean vessels and lavishly appointed riverboats harbored an underworld of pestilence, sheltering rats and other vermin. To make matters worse, New Orleans was built on swamp-land. Its streets frequently flooded and became canals of water-soaked waste. Women’s imported gowns may have been the height of fashion, but their hems were often filthy, after dragging in the mud. Omnipresent puddles of standing water bred disease-bearing mosquitoes. Thousands of people died in the cholera and yellow fever outbreaks of 1853, 1855, and 1858.

In 1857, between outbreaks, Anatole Avegno married the lovely Marie Virginie Ternant. They may have met at the Krewe of Comus ball, where young Creole men and women flirted with the full approval of their parents, because they were with their own kind. The wedding, held on May 14, 1857, at the Cathedral of Saint Louis, was a happy and advantageous union for both families. It confirmed that life was exactly as it should be, one fine Creole clan joining bloodlines with another. Anatole was one of thirteen children, the eighth child of the New Orleans landowner Philippe Avegno and his wife, Catherine Genois. Philippe was wealthy and successful, and Catherine affluent and well connected in her own right: her brother Charles had been the mayor of the city from 1838 to 1840.

The Avegnos had invested heavily in New Orleans property, especially in the European-style neighborhoods of the Vieux Carré. They were thought to have the largest real estate holdings in the city. Their home at 927 Toulouse Street, in the French Quarter, was a landmark—one of New Orleans’s earliest “sky-scrapers,” its four stories towering over other buildings in the area. It was elegantly designed, with a graceful center staircase inside and perfectly proportioned rooms framed by tall windows. Its intricate wrought-iron balconies were monogrammed with the master’s initials, “P.A.”

Dwellings in the French Quarter often featured walled and aromatic gardens that afforded their owners a private retreat from the offensive and sometimes dangerous world outside. During the steamy summers, people who could generally stayed indoors or behind garden walls to protect themselves from the filth and swelter of the streets. The garden of the Avegno home was perhaps its most impressive feature: big and secluded, with all signs of the bustle beyond magically obscured.

Combining a sizable bank account with good blood and excellent prospects, Anatole Avegno represented the best of young New Orleans. Soon after graduating from law school, he was one of the city’s most promising attorneys. His striking physical appearance was yet another asset: he had pale skin, unusual copper-colored hair, and the distinctive “Avegno nose,” long, sharp, and vaguely Roman. The Avegno nose might have been considered ugly on someone else, but on Anatole, it was almost royal, giving an upward tilt to a face that already suggested aristocratic genes.

 

Marie Virginie Ternant, his bride, was, like Anatole, pure Creole. Her mother, Virginie Trahan, was born in 1818 and grew up to be a bewitching young woman. At age seventeen, she married a forty-nine-year-old widower and landowner, Claude Vincent Ternant. The union of Virginie and Vincent raised eyebrows, because Virginie had been his ward. There were also whispers of a history of mental and emotional instability in the Trahan family. Whatever the gossip, Virginie was a fortunate bride; along with her wedding ring came the keys to the magnificent Ternant plantation.

She could have enjoyed a decorative life, embroidering, entertaining, and maintaining her appearance, as many wealthy women did at the time. But Virginie decided to take care of her husband’s plantation herself. She had fallen in love with the estate, and despite her youth and inexperience, she was a born manager. Overlooking the False River, an extension of the Mississippi north of New Orleans, the Ternant plantation was stately, serene, and verdant. The large main house was surrounded by extensive grounds featuring lush, exotic gardens and enormous oak trees, whose branches dripped with Spanish moss. Cedars planted to evoke classic estates of France flanked the long road leading to the house, and two octagonal pigeonries ensured that the family would always have a supply of fresh squab. Sheep grazed on the grounds of the estate, while cattle, mules, and horses were kept in nearby fields. Tending to the animals and the crops were 147 slaves, watched by an overseer.

Inside the house, every room was filled with fine furniture and decorations. The Ternant dinnerware included 325 china plates, thirty-four wineglasses, eighty-seven champagne glasses, cabinetfuls of expensive linens, and a fortune in silverware. The basement held a wine cellar with at least two thousand bottles of wine and a medicine room stocked like a pharmacy.

Virginie managed every detail. She was described by an observer as “the Lady of False River, the figure about which would revolve, whether they liked it or not, the lives of most of those within her reach. All that had happened before on the plantation might be taken as preliminary to her coming.”

Very young, very beautiful, and very determined, Virginie gave birth to three children in the first four years of her marriage: a son, Marius Claude Vincent; a daughter, Marie Virginie (who rarely used her first name); and another daughter, the lovely but troubled Julie Euriphile. While she loved False River, Virginie was too socially ambitious to confine the growing family to country living. The plantation was well over a hundred miles from the city, yet Virginie and Vincent remained connected to Creole high society by way of the Mississippi riverboats that passed their front lawn. New Orleans offered access to Paris, and the Ternants maintained an apartment there. They often set up housekeeping for years at a time, enjoying the luxurious expatriate life to the fullest. As with all established Creole families, French was the Ternants’ first language, and they spoke it even when they were in Louisiana. When in Paris, they lived as Parisians, playing host to the French elite and emulating the fancy manners of Napoleon III’s lavish court. Virginie and Vincent announced their comings and goings with calling cards and entertained extravagantly; they studied the
Almanach de Gotha,
the Who’s Who of the European aristocracy, so they would know who should sit next to whom at their dinner table.

Vincent Ternant died in 1842, leaving the plantation to Virginie, still in her twenties. Two years later, she married a French naval officer, Charles Parlange. He also resided in both Paris and New Orleans, and he had the distinction of possessing an extensive library at a time when literacy levels in the American South were extremely low and books were in small demand as well as supply.

Virginie renamed the Ternant plantation Parlange. In 1851 she bore another son, whom she diplomatically named Charles Vincent, in homage to both husbands. Family records are vague, but they suggest that Virginie and Charles may have had another son before Charles Vincent, one who did not survive childhood.

The Paris residence of the newly combined Ternant-Parlange family was at 45 Rue Luxembourg, near the church of the Madeleine, in one of the wealthier and more desirable neighborhoods in the city. Each member of the family was painted by Claude-Marie Dubufe, famed court artist to Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie; welcoming the opportunity to make herself look imperial, Virginie commissioned a portrait of herself measuring a grand eighty-six by sixty-one inches. The painting emphasized her delicate features and graceful form; her pale face was framed by dark ringlets, and her good figure offset by a stylish black gown. The image radiated personality, strength, and a flirtatious arrogance.

Dubufe’s paintings dominated the second-floor parlor at Parlange, where Virginie tried to re-create the oval shape of fashionable Parisian salons by hanging her children’s portraits in such a way that they obscured the corners of the room. The Parlanges believed in displaying their wealth; indeed, they covered almost every surface with their possessions.

 

Virginie had high ambitions for all her children, at the least expecting them to marry well. Marius as a teenager was already a quintessential rake, who drank, gambled, and womanized enough to be known as
“le grand m’sieu,”
the big shot, on the river. Parents would warn their daughters to stay away from him, though as the southern chronicler Harnet Kane noted, “the girls of False River—and of other parts of Louisiana and of Paris, for that matter—liked Marius too well for their own good or his.” Marius was a confirmed bachelor who had no interest in working, on the plantation or anywhere else. Spoiled and profligate, he squandered his money and repeatedly broke his mother’s heart with public displays of bad behavior. Neighbors were scandalized by the sight of him playing cards in his coach in broad daylight.

Julie, Virginie’s younger daughter, was another source of pain and disappointment to her mother. From Virginie’s family she had inherited the unfortunate legacy of madness. Her Acadian grandfather, Joseph Leufroy Trahan, was declared insane during the early years of his marriage, and Julie, along with other Trahan cousins, shared his illness. They all showed signs of melancholia that became more acute and disabling as they grew older. Their families kept these episodes as quiet as possible, fabricating—or at least not denying—tales that conveniently obscured the truth. One typically southern gothic story that circulated about Julie was that, on her wedding day, having been forced to abandon the man she loved to marry an older French aristocrat, she committed suicide by hurling herself against a giant oak tree on the plantation. The legend further claimed that Julie’s wedding-gowned ghost haunted the property, mourning her lost love. With stories like this, Julie remained in the shadows of her family for so many years that most people believed she was dead.

But Virginie’s other daughter did not disappoint her family in any way. In fact, when Marie Virginie Ternant married Anatole Avegno, she fulfilled all their expectations. The young couple took up housekeeping in the flourishing French Quarter, surrounded by Anatole’s brothers and sisters and their families.

New Orleans was enjoying a period of prosperity and tranquility in these middle years of the nineteenth century. The city had never been more colorful and exotic. The acclaimed actor Edwin Booth performed onstage as Richelieu. The Spalding & Rogers Circus was in town, advertising a “living skeleton violinist” among its featured acts. The fact that camels were promoted as the latest thing in farm animals testifies to the influence of far-off places.

On January 29, 1859, Marie Virginie and Anatole had their first child, Virginie Amélie. The baby had several names, as was the French custom, but she was called Amélie—a fashionable name then in New Orleans—probably to distinguish her from her mother and grandmother, other Virginies. There were various Amélies who might have inspired her name. Anatole’s brother Jean-Bernard had a sister-in-law named Amélie Durel, and a statue of the Virgin Mary commemorating Marie-Amélie, the last queen of France, was on display in a New Orleans church.