the cousins would stop asking her to look into the future.
“When I look into the future,” she reportedly said, “all I see is how weak most people are, and how little they do to fight fate or fortune. You can fight, you know. You really can. But Maitland wasn’t going to change anything.” Then she shrugged, or so the story goes, and walked with her characteristic big steps out of the Lafayette Cemetery.
Therese was horrified by these statements. She never forgave Mary Beth for her “involvement” (?) in the death of her husband or her son. And to her dying day, she maintained that an aura of evil surrounded the First Street house, and that whatever power the Mayfairs possessed worked only for the chosen ones.
(This story was told to us by a friend of Therese’s sister, Emilie Blanchard, who died in 1935. An abbreviated version was passed on to us by a nonrelative who overheard the conversation at the cemetery and made inquiries about it. Yet a third version was repeated to us by a nun who was present at the cemetery. And the agreement among the three as to Mary Beth’s statements makes this one of our most powerful pictures of her, albeit small. The two deaths involved were reported in the papers.)
There are countless other stories about Mary Beth’s predictions, advice, and the like. They are all very similar. Mary Beth advised against certain marriages, and her advice always turned out to be correct. Or Mary Beth advised people to enter into certain ventures and it worked out wonderfully. But everything points to the fact that Mary Beth was very cautious about the power, and disliked direct prediction. We have one other quote from her on the matter, and this was made to the parish priest who later told it to his brother, a police officer, who apparently remembered it because he thought it was interesting.
Mary Beth is rumored to have told the priest that any one strong individual could change the future for countless others, that it happened all the time. Given the number of human beings alive in this world, such persons were so rare that predicting the future was deceptively simple.
“Then we are possessed of free will, you grant that much,” the priest had said, to which Mary Beth replied, “Indeed we are, in fact, it is absolutely crucial that we exercise our free will. Nothing is predetermined. And thank God there aren’t many strong people who upset the predictable scheme, for there are as many bad ones who bring on war and disaster as there are visionaries who do good for others.”
(It is worth noting that these statements are interesting in light of Richard Llewellyn’s description of Julien coming to him in a dream and telling him that nothing is predetermined. And it is also worth noting that two hundred years before, Lasher, according to Petyr van Abel, made a mysterious prediction which deeply disturbed Petyr. If only we had more direct quotations regarding this and other subjects from the powerful psychic members of the Mayfair family! But alas we do not, and this immediate connection between two quotes makes us painfully aware of it.)
Regarding family attitudes towards Mary Beth, many family members-according to their talkative friends- were aware that there was something strange about Mary Beth and Monsieur Julien, and whether or not to go to them in times of trouble was an ever present question in each generation. Going to them was perceived as having advantages and definite liabilities.
For example, one descendant of Lestan Mayfair who was pregnant out of wedlock went to Mary Beth for help and, though she received a great deal of money to assist with her child, became convinced afterwards that Mary Beth had caused the death of the child’s irresponsible father.
Another Mayfair, a favorite of Mary Beth’s, who was convicted of assault and battery after a drunken brawl in a French Quarter nightclub, was said to be more afraid of Mary Beth’s disapproval and retribution than of any criminal court. He was fatally shot trying to escape from jail. And Mary Beth refused to allow him to be buried in the Lafayette Cemetery.
Another unfortunate girl-Louise Mayfair-who was pregnant out of wedlock and gave birth at First Street to Nancy Mayfair (whom Mary Beth adopted and accepted as one of Stella’s children), died two days after the birth, and numerous stories were circulated that Mary Beth, displeased by the girl’s behavior, had let her die alone and unattended.
But the stories of Mary Beth’s occult powers, or evil doings, regarding the family are relatively few. Even when one considers the secretiveness of the family, the reluctance of most Mayfairs to gossip in any way about the legacy family to anyone, there simply isn’t very much evidence that Mary Beth was a witch to her own kindred, so much as a magnate. When she did use her powers, it was almost always with reluctance. And we have numerous indications that many Mayfairs did not believe the “superstitious foolishness” repeated about Mary Beth by servants, neighbors, and occasionally by family members. They considered the story of the purse of golden coins to be laughable. They blamed superstitious servants for these tales, they considered them to be a holdover from the romantic plantation days, and they complained against the gossips of the neighborhood and the church parish.
We cannot emphasize enough that the vast majority of tales about Mary Beth’s powers do come from the servants.
All things taken into account, the family lore indicates that Mary Beth was loved and respected by her family, and that she did not dominate people’s lives or decisions, except to pressure them towards some show of family loyalty, and that, in spite of a few noteworthy mistakes, she picked excellent candidates for business ventures from among her kindred, and that they trusted her and admired her and liked to do business with her She kept her outlandish accomplishments secret from those with whom she did business, and possibly she kept her occult powers secret from others, too, and she enjoyed being with the family in a simple and ordinary fashion.
It is also worth noting that the little children of the family loved Mary Beth. She was photographed scores of times with Stella, Lionel, Belle, Millie Dear, Nancy, and dozens of other little children all around her. And every Sunday for years the south lawn of the First Street property was covered with children tumbling and playing ball and tag while the grown-ups napped inside after dinner.
The third great passion or obsession of Mary Beth’s life, as far as we can determine, was her desire for pleasure. As we have seen, she and Julien enjoyed dancing, parties, the theater,
Though family members are absolutely mute on the subject, servant gossip, often coming to us second or thirdhand through friends of the servant’s family, is the largest source of such information. Neighbors also gossiped about “good-looking boys” who were always hanging about, supposedly to do jobs for which they were often utterly unqualified.
And Richard Llewellyn’s story of the gift of the Stutz Bearcat to a young Irish coachman has been verified through simple registration records. The giving of other large gifts-sometimes bank drafts for enormous amounts- also indicate that these good-looking boys were Mary Beth’s lovers. For there are no other explanations as to why she should give five thousand dollars as a Christmas present to a young coachman who could not in fact manage a team; or to a handyman who could never so much as hammer in a nail without assistance.
It is interesting to note that when all the information on Mary Beth is studied as a whole, we have more stories about her sensual appetites than any other aspect of her. In other words, stories about her lovers, her wine drinking, her love of food, and her dancing far outnumber (seventeen to one) stories about her occult powers or her abilities in making money.
But when all the many descriptions of Mary Beth’s love of wine, food, music, dancing, and bed partners are considered, one can see that she behaved more like a man of the period than a woman in this regard, merely pleasing herself as a man might, with little thought for convention or respectability. In sum, there is nothing too unusual about her behavior if one sees it in this light. But of course people at the time did not see it in that light, and they thought her love of pleasure to be rather mysterious and even sinister. She deepened this sense of the mysterious by her casual attitude towards what she did, and her refusal to attach importance to the shallow reactions of others. More than one Mayfair close cousin begged her to “behave” (or so the servants said), and more than once Mary Beth shrugged off this suggestion.
As for her cross-dressing, she did it so long and so well that just about everyone became accustomed to it. In the last years of her life she would often go out in her tweed suit, and with her walking stick, and stroll around the Garden District for hours. She did not bother to pin up her hair any more or hide it beneath a hat. She wore it in a simple twist or bun; and people took her appearance entirely for granted. She was Miss Mary Beth to servants and neighbors for blocks around, walking with her head slightly bowed, and with very big steps, and waving in a lackadaisical fashion to those who greeted her.
As for her lovers, the Talamasca has been able to find out almost nothing about them. Of a young cousin, Alain Mayfair, we know the most, and it is not even certain that he was Mary Beth’s lover. He worked for Mary Beth
