Mardi Gras Day 2024.
Mardi Gras Day 1872.
Both share the date of February 13.
That date resonates in the New Orleans Carnival’s history because it was on Mardi Gras 1872 that Carnival got its King. He would be known as Rex.
Due to its French heritage, there had been various Carnival celebrations in the city’s past—an occasional parade, ball or miscellaneous bash, but nothing that was lasting until 1857 when a god named Comus would create the templet for all that would follow.
Fifteen years later the self-coronated Rex claimed primacy over the Carnival season. His parade was the ultimate big event of the time. Rather than waiting to illuminate the dark of Mardi Gras evening, Rex’s march was a daytime procession that would give momentum for declaring Mardi Gras to be legal holiday.
On the day of Rex’s debut there happened to be a gathering of notables in town, mostly by coincidence.
Prominent among the visitors was the Russian Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff who was touring the country. Russia and the United States were friends then, as evidenced by the former having sold its Alaskan territory to the latter in 1867. Alexis was literally treated royally in the United States. He wanted to learn more about the country and was especially interested in visiting the American West where an organized buffalo hunt was on his agenda. His stop in New Orleans was during the last part of his trip as his entourage moved back east.
Also in town that day was Lydia Thompson, a well-known British musical comedy performer who had been on stage in New Orleans several times before. Coincidently, Lydia and the Grand Duke had already met as the path of the two had funneled through St. Louis on their way downriver to New Orleans. Supposedly Alexis had sent Lydia a bracelet, an act that immediately fueled rumors of a romance. Overlooked was that the Grand Duke was 22 and Lydia, at 36, was an older woman. Apparently rumors of romance sprung easily when Grand Dukes were in a town.
Lydia would unintentionally have an impact on the fledgling Carnival, and it was huge. While here, she performed a show entitled “Bluebeard.” A song from the show called “If Ever I Ceased to Love” was already known in New Orleans. With words modified to fit the occasion, the song was declared to be the official anthem of Carnival. Among the new hybrid lyrics were, “May the Grand Duke Alexis ride a buffalo through Texas—if ever I cease to love.”
A sign that Alexis’ and Lydia’s romance was on the rocks, if indeed it ever existed, was that she had sent him an invitation to see her show while they were both in town, but he never attended, opting instead to attend a fancy dinner at the new Jockey Club. (The year not only marked the arrival of Rex, but the opening of the Fairgrounds racetrack.)
Lotta Crabtree, a famous actress and comedienne based in California, was also performing locally. At age 25 she was well known having first earned acclaim, and wealth, as a child star. Having a Grand Duke and an attractive theater star in town at the same time would inevitably trigger more romance rumors. (With this combination of European royalty and a California actress, perhaps they could have been the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle of their day. Fortunately, for the dignity of history, it never happened.)
Alexis watched the Rex parade from the reviewing stand in front of Gallier Hall. Because he had experienced hunting out west, he might have been impressed by seeing Dan Rice, easily the biggest of all the celebrities in town, riding in the parade. Rice was known for his travelling circus in which he performed as a singer, clown and equestrian. His show included horses and many of those were used for the parade. Rice had a prominent goatee. It is alleged that Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, used his friend Rice as the model for what is the country’s most famous caricature. Drawn with a red, white and blue top hat Dan Rice became the image of the goateed Uncle Sam.
If you are keeping count, among the celebrities in New Orleans February 13, 1872 were Alexis, Lydia Thompson, Lotta Crabtree, and Dan Rice (aka Uncle Sam). Plus, one more, the army officer who accompanied Alexis during his buffalo hunt, Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Having been a Civil War hero, he had earned some familiarity. Four years later he would achieve historic immortality because of his mortality at a place called Little Bighorn.
As far as we know, the paths of Lydia and Alexis never crossed again.
Lydia spent most of her career in Europe and died in London on November 17, 1908. We wonder if she knew that Alexis had died in Paris three days earlier, November 14, 1908.
Both, among others, had witnessed, on that Feb. 13th, the grand entry of a king named “Rex.” And on each Mardi Gras of the future his name would be the most heralded of all.
