The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,236

personal possessions, a veritable caravan of wagons leaving Maye Faire for the nearby port. Some fifty of Marie Claudette’s personal slaves, half of whom were of mixed blood, and some of whom were undoubtedly the progeny of Mayfair men, went with the family to Louisiana. We can assume that numerous books and written records also went with them, and some of these materials have been glimpsed since, as these reports will show.

Almost from the moment of their arrival in Louisiana, the Talamasca was able to acquire more information about the Mayfair Witches. Several of our contacts in Louisiana were already established on account of two dramatic hauntings that had taken place in that city; and at least two of our members had visited the city, one to investigate a haunting and the other on his way to other places in the South.

Another reason for the increased information was that the Mayfair family itself seems to have become more “visible” to people. Torn from its position of near feudal power and isolation in Saint-Domingue, it was thrown into contact with countless new persons, including merchants, churchmen, slave traders, brokers, colonial officials, and the like. And the wealth of the Mayfairs, as well as their sudden appearance on the scene so to speak, aroused immense curiosity.

All sorts of tales were collected about them from the very hour of their arrival. And the flow of information became even richer as time went on.

Changes in the nineteenth century also contributed, inevitably, to the increased flow of information. The growth of newspapers and periodicals, the increase in the keeping of detailed records, the invention of photography, all made it easier to compile a more detailed anecdotal history of the Mayfair family.

Indeed, the growth of New Orleans into a teeming and prosperous port city created an environment in which dozens of people could be questioned about the Mayfairs without anyone’s ever noticing us or our investigators.

So what must be borne in mind as we study the continued history of the Mayfairs is that, though the family appears to change dramatically in the nineteenth century, it could be that the family did not change at all. The only change may have been in our investigative methods. We learned more about what went on behind closed doors.

In other words, if we knew more about the Saint-Domingue years, we might have seen greater continuity. But then again, perhaps not.

Whatever the case, the witches of the 1800s—with the exception of Mary Beth Mayfair, who was not born until 1872—appear to have been much weaker than those who ruled the family during the Saint-Domingue years. And the decline of the Mayfair Witches, which became so marked in the twentieth century, can be seen—on the basis of our fragmentary evidence—to have begun before the Civil War. But the picture is more complicated than that, as we shall see.

Changing attitudes and changing times in general may have played a significant role in the decline of the witches. That is, as the family became less aristocratic and feudal, and more “civilized” or “bourgeois,” its members might have become more confused regarding their heritage and their powers, and more generally inhibited. For though the planter class of Louisiana referred to itself as “the aristocracy,” it was definitely not aristocratic in the European sense of that word, and was characterized by what we now define as “middle-class values.”

“Modern psychiatry” also seems to have played a role in inhibiting and confusing the Mayfair Witches, and we will go into that in greater detail when we deal with the Mayfair family in the twentieth century.

But for the most part we can only speculate about these things. Even when direct contact between the order and the Mayfair Witches was established in the twentieth century, we were unable to learn as much as we had hoped.

Bearing all this in mind …

THE HISTORY CONTINUES …

Upon arrival in New Orleans, Marie Claudette moved her family into a large house in the Rue Dumaine, and immediately acquired an enormous plantation at Riverbend, south of the city, building a plantation house that was larger and more luxurious than its counterpart in Saint-Domingue. This plantation was called La Victoire at Riverbend, and was known later simply as Riverbend. It was carried away by the river in 1896; however, much of the land there is still owned by the Mayfairs, and is presently the site of an oil refinery.

Maurice Mayfair, Marie Claudette’s uncle, lived out his life at this plantation, but his two sons purchased adjacent