of mixed blood danced with their white suitors; and so she went with her quadroon maid to the balls, and had herself presented there as being of mixed blood, and fooled everyone. She had very dark hair and dark eyes and pale skin, and did not look in the least African, but then many of the quadroons did not. Julien had a hand in the affair, introducing his sister to several white men who had not met her before and believed her to be a quadroon.
The tale stunned the old guard when they heard it. The young white men who had danced with Katherine, believing her to be “colored,” were humiliated and outraged. Katherine and Julien and Remy thought the story was amusing. Julien fought at least one duel over the affair, badly wounding his opponent.
In 1857, when Katherine was seventeen, she and her brothers bought a piece of property on First Street in the Garden District of New Orleans and hired Darcy Monahan, the Irish architect, to build a house there, which is the present Mayfair home. It is likely that the purchase was the idea of Julien, who wanted a permanent city residence.
Whatever the case, Katherine and Darcy Monahan fell deeply in love, and Julien proved to be insanely jealous of his sister and would not permit her to marry so young. An enormous family squabble ensued. Julien moved out of the family home at Riverbend and spent some time in a fiat in the French Quarter with a male companion of whom we know little except that he was from New York and rumored to be very handsome and devoted to Julien in a way that caused people to whisper that the pair were lovers.
The gossip further relates that Katherine stole away to New Orleans to be alone with Darcy Monahan in the unfinished house at First Street, and there the two lovers pledged their fealty in roofless rooms, or in the wild unfinished garden. Julien became increasingly miserable in his anger and disapproval, and implored his mother, Marguerite, to interfere, but Marguerite would take no interest in the matter.
At last Katherine threatened to run away if her wishes were not granted; and Marguerite gave her official consent to a small church wedding. In a daguerreotype taken after the ceremony, Katherine is wearing the Mayfair emerald.
Katherine and Darcy moved into the house on First Street in 1858, and Monahan became the most fashionable architect and builder in uptown New Orleans. Many witnesses of the period mention Katherine’s beauty and Darcy’s charm, and what fun it was to attend the balls given by the two in their new home. The Mayfair emerald is mentioned any number of times.
It was no secret that Julien. Mayfair was so bitter about the marriage, however, that he would not even visit his sister. He did go back to Riverbend, but spent much time in his French Quarter flat. At Riverbend, in 1863, Julien and Darcy and Katherine had a violent quarrel. Before the servants and some guests, Darcy begged Julien to accept him, to be affectionate to Katherine, and to be “reasonable.”
Julien threatened to kill Darcy. And Katherine and Darcy left, never returning as a couple to Riverbend.
Katherine gave birth to a boy named Clay in 1859 and thereafter to three children who all died in babyhood. Then in 1865, she gave birth to another boy named Vincent, and to two more children who died in babyhood.
It was said that these lost children broke her heart, that she took their deaths as a judgment from God, and that she changed somewhat from the gay, high-spirited girl she had been to a diffident and confused woman. Nevertheless her life with Darcy seems to have been rich and full. She loved him very much, and did everything to support him in his various building enterprises.
We should mention here that the Civil War had brought no harm whatever to the Mayfair family or fortune. New Orleans was captured and occupied very early on, with the result that it was never shelled or burned. And the Mayfairs had much too much money invested in Europe to be affected by the occupation or subsequent boom-and- bust cycles in Louisiana.
Union troops were never quartered on their property, and they were in business with “the Yanquees” almost as soon as the occupation of New Orleans began. Indeed Katherine and Darcy Monahan entertained Yanquees at First Street much to the bitter disgust of Julien and Remy, and other members of the family.
This happy life came to an end when Darcy himself died in 1871 of yellow fever. Katherine, broken-hearted and half mad, pleaded with her brother Julien to come to her. He was in his French Quarter flat at the time, and came to her immediately, setting foot in the First Street house for the first time since its completion.
Julien then remained with Katherine night and day while the servants took care of the forgotten children. He slept with her in the master bedroom over the library on the north side of the house, and even people passing in the street below could hear Katherine’s continued crying and miserable exclamations of grief over Darcy and her dead babies.
Twice, Katherine tried to take her life through poison. The servants told stories of doctors rushing to the house, of Katherine being given antidotes and made to walk about though she was only semiconscious and ready to drop, and of a distraught Julien who could not keep back his tears as he attended to her.
Finally Julien brought Katherine and the two boys back home to Riverbend, and there in 1872 Katherine gave birth to Mary Beth Mayfair, who was baptized and registered as Darcy Monahan’s child, though it seems highly unlikely that Mary Beth was Darcy’s child, since she was born ten and one-half months after the death of her father. Julien is almost certainly Mary Beth’s father.
As far as the Talamasca could determine the servants spread the tale that Julien was, and so did various nurses who took care of the children. It was common knowledge that Julien and Katherine slept in the same bed, behind closed doors, and that Katherine could not have had a lover after Darcy’s death as she never went out of the house except to make the journey home to the plantation.
But this tale, though circulated widely among the servant class, never seems to have been accepted or acknowledged by the peers of the Mayfairs.
Katherine was not only completely respectable in every other regard, she was enormously rich and generous and well liked for it, often giving money freely to family and friends whom the war had devastated. Her attempts at suicide had aroused only pity. And the old tales of her having gone to the quadroon balls had been completely erased from the public memory. Also the financial influence of the family was so far-reaching at the time as to be almost immeasurable. Julien was very popular in New Orleans society. The talk soon died away and it is doubtful that it ever had any impact whatsoever on the private or public life of the Mayfairs.
Katherine is described in 1872 as still pretty, in spite of being prematurely gray, and was said to have a wholesome and engaging manner that easily won people over. A lovely and very well-preserved tintype of the period shows her seated in a chair with the baby in her lap, asleep, and the two little boys beside her. She appears healthy and serene, an attractive woman with a hint of sadness in her eyes. She is not wearing the Mayfair emerald.
While Mary Beth and her older brothers, Clay and Vincent, were growing up in the country, Julien’s brother, Remy Mayfair, and his wife-a Mayfair cousin and grandchild of Lestan Mayfair-took possession of the Mayfair house, and lived there for years, having three children, all of whom went by the name of Mayfair and two of whom have descendants in Louisiana.
It was during this time that Julien began to visit the house, and to make an office for himself in the library there. (This library, and master bedroom above it, were part of a wing added to the original structure by Darcy in 1867.) Julien had bookcases built into two walls of the room, and stocked them with many of the Mayfair family records that had always been kept at the plantation. We know that many of these books were very very old and some were written in Latin. Julien also moved many old paintings to the house, including “portraits from the 1600s.”
Julien loved books and filled the library as well with the classics and with popular novels. He adored Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, and also Charles Dickens.
There is some evidence that quarrels with Katherine drove Julien into town, away from Riverbend, though he never neglected his duties there. But if Katherine drove him away, certainly his little niece (or daughter) Mary Beth brought him back, for he was always swooping down upon her with cartloads of gifts and stealing her away for weeks on end in New Orleans. This devotion did not prevent him from getting married, in 1875, to a Mayfair cousin, a descendant of Maurice and a celebrated beauty.
Her name was Suzette Mayfair, and Julien so loved her that he commissioned no less than ten portraits of her during the first years of their marriage. They lived together in the First Street house apparently in complete harmony with Remy and his family, perhaps because in every respect Remy deferred to Julien.
Suzette seems to have loved little Mary Beth, though she had four children of her own in the next five years, including three boys and a girl, named Jeannette.
