What's with those Tableaux, anyway?

After having lived in Los Angeles for 25 years, it was through a different lens that I watched the Historic Natchez Pageant on a visit home in 2006. It had been many years since I’d seen it – even longer since I’d participated.

As I watched and reminisced, it occurred to me that what had seemed like such a natural form of entertainment was really quite unusual. I wondered what the tourists thought about it. I wondered how the founders of the pilgrimage came up with it.

This year, opening night at the pageant will be free of charge to the public. If you’ve never attended, now is the time to go. And for those who are unfamiliar with its unusual format, I’ve done a little research and am pleased to share what I’ve learned.

I learned that not only is the pageant about history, but its format is based on a form of entertainment that was popular all the way back to the Renaissance and reached its heyday during the late 19th Century —the tableau vivant.

Before radio, film and television, the tableau vivant (often shortened to simply “tableau) was a popular form of entertainment where people would dress in costume and recreate a famous painting, often of an historic event. So it made perfect sense that in 1932, the founders of that first Pilgrimage would pick a form of entertainment they and their parents had enjoyed. And what better place to find illustrations of life during the 19th Century than Godey’s Lady’s Book, the preeminent ladies’ magazine of the 19th Century?

The magazine was best known for the hand-tinted fashion plate that appeared at the start of each issue showing the latest in women’s fashions, including an illustration and pattern with measurements for making garments at home. Thus armed, the ladies who organized that first pageant went about recreating historically accurate dress to depict scenes from the 1850s.

What surprised me most, however, was that the first year the pageant was actually a street parade sponsored and financed by the merchants of Natchez as an attraction to draw people of the surrounding countryside into town where they would tarry long enough to shop in their stores.

Originally based on agriculture and harvests, historically, pageants in United States all have same elements — queens, mock courts, Maypoles. That first pageant or “parade” was entitled “Under Many Flags,” and the floats depicted historic events of Native American, French, English and Spanish days. Because it was impractical to have parades every other day, the evening pageant replaced that first parade.

In addition to tableaux, dances were included. The rendition of old time spirituals was given by outstanding voices of the African-American churches and of the Natchez College, an African-American institution of the city.

Even though it was in the midst of the Great Depression, that first pilgrimage was a huge success, drawing people from thirty-seven states.

And now as we face another economic crisis, it’s a good time to remember that early success and learn from it. Please join us on Friday, March 6 for a free evening of entertainment based on history with eye toward the future.

 For tickets, contact Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, 640 S. Canal Street, P.O. Box 347 Natchez, MS 39121 601-446-6631, Toll-Free 800-647-6742, Fax 601-446-8687 Visit@NatchezPilgrimage.com.

*Posted by Elodie

Matters familias - Natchez Characters

Utter the name "Katherine Miller" in Natchez, and the reactions you get vary wildly. She's either the patron saint of Natchez or evil incarnate. Sometimes both. But you have to give the old girl credit, for it was Katherine Miller who spearheaded the formation of the Natchez Pilgrimage, which saved this town from certain doom.

During the 1930s, Katherine traveled the country with a projector slideshow of antebellum homes, inviting prospective visitors to see the plantation homes of the Old South. Because of the success of her campaign, people who were barely eking by in the great Depression were able to hang onto their homes in Natchez.

For over 60 years, she ruled Natchez society engendering fear, admiration, adoration and loathing in equal measures. Under her direction, grown men were persuaded to dress up like Southern planters and dance the Soiree for strangers. They even allowed their wives to smear rouge and lipstick on their sons, and dress them in lace and knickers and ballet shoes to dance around a Maypole with little girls in hoopskirts.

Sure for the rest of the year they wore camouflage, slapped each other on the back, broke wind, went hunting, played football and talked about the price of oil. But March belonged to the women. No disgrace was too demeaning to keep them from following the orders of the matriarchs of Natchez.

When General Douglas MacArthur visited Natchez after the second World War, a photographer captured a photo of him being told to look at the camera by the Mighty Katherine Miller. She was ascared of nobody, and her legacy lives on even now as every year March comes in like the lion....or lioness and goes out like the lamb.

It was under the shadow of this matriarchal monopoly that my father spent his childhood. His mother, Bessie Rose, was Katherine's sister and, boy, was she disappointed when her only child turned out to be a boy and not a girl. She'd had visions of playing dress-up with a beautiful little girl, and the fact that the child she'd produced turned out to be a boy was but a momentary disappointment.

Bessie Rose decided she'd dress him any way she darned well pleased, and that's exactly what she did. Every morning she'd send Howard off to school in these Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits where he'd get beaten up for wearing sissy clothes. When he got home, she would throw a temper tantrum because he'd ruined his outfit. He remembers one incident, in particular, when she ripped off his jacket and started jumping up and down on it in a fit of fury. It scared the bejeebus out of him.

Like my great aunt Katherine, Bessie Rose worshipped at the altar of high society. Starting when he was as young as two years old, she and my grandfather left him at home in the evening with his elderly grandmother so they could attend parties with their friends. He and the old lady took care of each other -- she would tuck him in at night and he would feed her milquetoast. It was a lonely time.

Once he begged his parents not to go out.

"Please don't go. Stay home, please?"

"You should be happy people want to see your mother," she replied. You should be ashamed of yourself."

So he grew to hate social events and all that they entailed.

Needless to say, the harder my grandmother and her aunt tried to teach my father the social graces, the more he rebelled. He never missed an opportunity to go out on the river with his friends, hunting and exploring the muddy banks and back bayous of the Mississippi.

Handsome though he was, he always felt at odds when dressed for a party, and never missed an opportunity to thumb his nose at convention. And now, he is a successful, self-made man who can't abide pretense and won't hesitate to point it out in ridicule, no matter whom it might offend.

One of his fondest memories is of his best friend, Johnny Ogden, sneaking into the City Auditorium the afternoon before the pageant with a dead fox he'd found beside the road. Dragging the fox by the tail, Johnny made his way up and down the aisles, over and under the seats of the room, laying down a scent and then slipping back outside. They roared with laughter that evening when during the tableaux for The Hunt, the beagles and hounds used for the scene broke their leads and climbed across horrified tourists' laps, baying loudly, drooling and peeing with excitement, as they tracked the scent of the long departed fox.

And now he's one of Natchez most original characters, 83 years old and living on 400 acres in a beautiful house with ancestral portraits on the wall, wearing a wife-beater t-shirt and driving his tractor all over the property, happily pushing things around, stopping to eat a can of sardines and a slice of bread, and feeding the deer, dogs, cats, birds, squirrels and other assorted animals that call his place home. He even fills dry mud puddles with water so the frogs living therein will be happy and wet.

And so, at last, with all that being said, I now offer you his original poem about Natchez, making no excuses for the portions of it that are politically and socially incorrect. Like his aunt Katherine, he's loved (and loathed) in fairly equal portions, but no one laughs louder or longer at Howard than Howard, himself.

Natchez

If you doubt your social fame,
get an old house and give it a name.
If you still lack social position,
have it put in the Pink Edition.

If your position is still not clear,
get it decorated by a Natchez queer.
But, really, the most important of all
Is finagle your brat into the Pilgrimage Ball.

But really the mostest, most ultimate thing
Is finagle the brat into King or Queen.

We're all aware of the social mystique

that sticks to the gal with the finest antique.

Ladies, ladies, let’s hold a quorum,
to see who’ll rule the Antiques Forum.
To us this is now our holiest cause,
since we’re all well into menopause.

So you give a luncheon and I’ll give a tea.
And I’ll snub you and you snub me.

And when it’s all over, we’ll make our amends,
pretending to be the closest of friends.

But when it’s all over, we’ll have to admit
The whole damned thing is a big pile of….
old furniture.

By Howard Pritchartt, Jr. Circa 1985

*photograph of Howard Pritchartt, Jr. on the left with Joe Remondet on the right, circa 1975.

(Please check back soon for a story about Joe Remondet.)

*Posted by Elodie

This Does Not Compute

For any of you who wrote to ask about rates, availability, etc., and were wondering why we never answered your email, please accept our sincere apologies. It seems that Tommy is gizmo challenged, and didn't realize that info@shantybellum.com wasn't forwarding all emails to his Hotmail account.

He is working feverishly to write to everyone who's written and will probably get to you by the end of the day....or the week...or maybe the month, depending on exactly how gizmo challenged he really is. Nah, he'll get to you right away.

Sincere apologies for the mixup.

Suicide is Painless

People will go to any lengths for fame, won't they? In the May, 1800 edition of a Natchez Newspaper, Thomas Thackwood advertized his upcoming public suicide by pistol -- one shot for the abdomen and another for the brain (his own, that is), promising his audience plenty of staggering, convulsing and grinning.

Heck, if you've got nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, why not?

"C'mon, honey! Grab the kids. Let's go to the killin'."

Not to be outdone, however, he warned readers not to be taken in by claims of Mr. Touchwood, whose public hanging, Thackwood claimed, would only be staged.

I don't blame him. If I'm going to a killing, it better be the real deal.

You can read the ad here.

And, yeah, I couldn't resist: Mr. Thackwood went out with a bang.

*Posted by Elodie
*Photo not the man in the story. Just an old photo.

Wildlife Fundraiser on March 7

Friends of the St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge will host a family-oriented environmental education festival on March 7 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Vidalia Riverfront RV Park. Admission is free.

The festival will feature falcon demonstrations, an inflatable slide, hold a baby alligator, face painting, plant and animal identification, lives snakes, Boy Scout demonstrations, Black Bear obstacle course, youth longbow archery tournament and much more. Proceeds will go towards the construction of educational facilities on the refuge to be utilized by area schoolchildren for workshops, field trips, etc.

In addition, there will be an auction at 2 p.m. and youth trophy presentations at 4 p.m. It sounds like a lot of fun. Hope to see you there.

*Posted by Elodie

The Nicest Madam in Town

For years one of Natchez's most notable characters was a madam named Nellie Jackson. Her story is funny and tragic, and Nellie is greatly missed in our little river town. You can read about her here.


*Posted by Elodie
Photo of the front door at Nellie's taken by Johnny Watts, Natchez, Mississippi

A Natchez Childhood

Goodbye, Charlie 

You know you've lived too long 

when you're still alive after the trees 

you planted have died of old age. 

 The air is turning and the leaves 

the hurricane left crumble underfoot 

like distant memories. 

 The sidewalk at Main and Commerce, 

where Cee Tee, all crossed eyes and paranoia, 

combed his greasy hair. 

 The auditorium. 

Sy, bent half in two 

over a wheelbarrow 

selling chewing gum and peanuts 

His cowboy hat and skin, 

black and lined as a story. 

 Violins at night. 

 Nellie lost to the flames, 

Dabney's beautiful eyes, Leigh Ann's hands 

and the bay gelding at the county barn 

that sixteenth summer. 

Mud swirls in patterns in the river, 

arrowheads and pottery shift 

on ancient sandbars, disappear, 

appear again. 

I thought I heard you 

calling from the porch, 

but it was just the subtle 

thunder of a passing storm. 

 by Elodie Pritchartt 

 *Photo of Sy, the candy man courtesy William Stewart Collection, Historic Natchez Foundation

You Never Send Me Flowers Anymore

Back to 1975
When I was a freshman at the University of Mississippi, I lived in New Dorm, at that time the largest dormitory on campus.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Ole Miss, it is rife with fraternities and sororities that have a chokehold on social life at school. I was a Delta Gamma pledge that first year, sans boyfriend. Even though I was in a sorority, I never felt like part of the crowd. I always felt a bit like an outsider.

I'll never forget stepping off the elevator on the lounge floor that morning and having the scent of literally THOUSANDS of flowers hitting my senses. Every girl in that darned dorm must've gotten a bouquet of flowers...except, of course, for me.

All day girls would rush up to the desk that ran the width of the front of the dorm between the two sets of double doors out front, squealing with delight that their boyfriend had sent them flowers for Valentine's. It was a depressing cap on an already depressing day.

When I got back from my first class to find even more flowers and more screaming, ridiculous girls, I'd had it. I went up to my room and pulled out my new American Express card -- the one I'd gotten only for emergencies. Well, this was an emergency, wasn't it? I dialed the florist:

"I'd like to order some flowers, please."

"How much would you like to spend?"

"Hm...let's see. How about fifty....no. Make it seventy-five bucks."

In 1975 you could get a heckuva bouquet for $75.

"What would you like on the card?"

"To my darling, sweet beautiful Elodie from your secret admirer."

I left that stupid bouquet down in the lobby for two days and fielded all kinds of questions from my sorority sisters whose bouquets couldn't hold a candle to mine. It was glorious. Well, almost. I still hadn't really gotten anything from anyone.

It wasn't long before I realized that the reason I felt like such an outsider was because I wasn't the kind of girl who squeals out loud when some kid sends her flowers because it's Valentine's day and he's supposed to walk the walk. I wasn't the kind of girl who enjoys spending hours discussing what color material we were going to choose for our rush outfits the next year. Don't get me wrong; that's fine for some people, really fun stuff. Just not for me.

So I turned in my little anchor pin, put on a peasant skirt and joined the counterculture in Oxford, Mississippi, working at The Gin and The Hoka Theater, and enjoying it immensely.

If I had it to do over, I'd not have joined that sorority, but I gotta admit, I really did think it was a stroke of genius to buy those flowers and watch while those women chewed on the mystery of my secret admirer.

*In order to be truly Southern, I tried to find a photo of a heart-shaped red-velvet cake for this post, but alas, I couldn't. Hope you like the flower.

*Photograph by Elodie Pritchartt

...first things first

*Posted by Tommy

Elodie has been really putting some thought into the page and has come up with some really great ideas to add interesting and relevant content for those interested in Natchez as a tourist destination. I've come up with a few, myself, but none as gifted as Elodie's. That said, check back this week for some really cool, interesting things and please add to it as you see fit. This week Shantybellum has guests in for the Blues Foundation shindig in Memphis, Valentine lovebirds from Jackson and a mother and two sons on a cultural-heritage tour flying into and out of Jackson. She'll be visiting many sites other than Jackson -- Natchez, Indianola's BB King Museum, Clarksdale, Vicksburg, etc. The one common thread that excites me is none of them are coming to Natchez for the houses; it's to party, to learn and to love. Now THAT is a tourist destination, my friends. Let's build onto that and keep the area as the focus; not focus on one part of the area.