New Orleans, LA

Queen New Orleans, City By The River, was written by Harnett T Kane. Mr Kane was a lover of Louisiana and New Orleans. He wrote several books about the region, include Queen New Orleans, The Bayous of Louisiana and The Romantic South. Mr Kane died on September 4, 2007.

In honor of his memory, and to celebrate his writing, I thought I would share a short excerpt from Queen New Orleans. I have to say that I am quite proud to own a first edition; printed by Morrow in 1949. If you can get a copy, I recommend it. You can find them on ebay at times.

I enjoy this book from two perspectives. As a native New Orleanian, I can see Kane’s love for New Orleans. It’s in every word. As a writer I can see his love for words. When you read this excerpt, I don’t think you’ll be able to do anything but agree.

From Queen New Orleans, Introduction - New Orleans is a Lady.

New Orleans is a lady - part American, part Spanish, more French than either in her essential viewpoint. She is intriguing in her swift changes of mood, grande dame one moment, gamine the next. She enjoys laughter, appreciates a show, relishes a quiet hour of happiness. By the unco guid she is considered a little shady, if not worse she would be the first to admit she is no anemic Puritan. For she has seen a good deal in her day, and she doesn’t shock easily.

It is generally admitted, however, that she has taste and judgment and poise is unmistakable. To her have come glory and heartbreak, triumph and defeat, and she has profited from them all. She can look fate in the face and make the best of whatever befalls her. And above everything else she has her Gallic joie de vivre, her Latin appreciation of the generous intention, the gallant gesture.

Throughout her story New Orleans has remained faithful to herself, and to the river with which destiny has joined her. In fat years and thin, she has stayed his Queen, now a consort in ornate halls, now a tiresome helpmate eating red beans and rice in her kitchen. With the Mississippi she will live to the end; and meanwhile she will go on as always, savoring, appreciating what the days bring.

A man once said that while in most of the United States business sometimes pauses for pleasure, in New Orleans pleasure sometimes pauses for business. Though, I hasten to add, not for long!

Over many generations America has looked on New Orleans as a place outside, hardly of its own kind. In a way, New Orleans is proud of that reputation, though she really doesn’t care a great deal. At an early date she acquired tolerance, and she has been growing more tolerant ever since. To her a shrug appears better than a frown, “taking things quietly” preferable to losing her temper. There aren’t many things, she says, that justify a fit of indigestion.

Located on America’s mightiest river, a hundred and ten winding miles above the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans is a dry spot (geographically speaking) in a wet terrain; it is also a people subtly different from others; and it is an attitude. It has been American for a century and a half. Before that, for another century Louisiana belonged to France and to Spain. In mood, in philosophy, that first century was the more important. Despite all inroads of standardized “Americanization,” much of the city’s life seems closer to France than to New England, less akin to Chicago than to the Southern Europe of tradition.

For many decades people have come here to laugh and sigh, to be scornful and/or envious. The Puritan has termed it a hell-spot, dripping with scarlet wickedness. To this the Orleanian would retort that life is meant to be lived and the he cannot find it in himself to blame human beings for being -well, human. Yet only the most furious of bluenoses would call it a city without conscience, for it is a place of countless churches and of faith continuously demonstrated. And none could term it placid, a scene to be painted in pastel shades. Past and present, it has seen an unending struggle between man and man, and between man and Nature.

On the eve of Mardi Gras in 1699, the brothers Le Moyne - Pierre and Jean Baptiste - entered the forked mouth of the Mississippi on their way to a first sight of the spot. Days later they were staring at a vista of flat land inside a deep curve of the river, an Indian passage toward a narrow lake that gave rear entry to the Gulf itself.

Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, the Sieur de Bienville who was to become governor, never forgot this stretch, almost the only more or less dry area conveniently near the blue-green waters. By court order the first settlements were established along the sandy immensity of the Gulf; but Bienville repeatedly urged the need for a location on the great river itself, to be held for France. At last in 1718 came authority to establish La Nouvelle Orleans, christened after the profligate Duc d’Orleans, regent for the young Louis XV.

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