The young man from Hannibal, Missouri, had seen a lot in just 23 years of life.
Drawn to the Mississippi by some unexplainable but undeniable force, he had already spent almost three years of life on the river – and a person grows up quickly when earning his keep between the levees.
But even young Sam Clemens – by then still four years from adopting the nom de plume Mark Twain – was left agog by the surreal scene he found upon stepping onto the New Orleans riverfront of March 1859.
“I posted off up town yesterday morning as soon as the boat landed, in blissful ignorance of the great day,” he wrote to big sister Pamela Moffett. “At the corner of Good-Children and Tchoupitoulas streets, I beheld an apparition! – and my first impulse was to dodge behind a lamp-post. It was a woman – a hay-stack of curtain calico, 10 feet high – sweeping majestically down the middle of the street.”
He then spotted another young woman dressed like a Spanish cavalier, complete with “a nodding crimson feather in the coquettishest little cap in the world.” When the young cross-dresser doffed said cap and bowed to him, he could think of little else to do but bow back.
“And then I saw a hundred men, women and children in fine, fancy, splendid, ugly, coarse, ridiculous, grotesque, laughable costumes, and the truth flashed upon me — ‘This is Mardi-Gras!’”
Not much has changed.
Then as now, New Orleans had a taste for seizing Fat Tuesday with both fists, whooping it up rapturously one final time before the descent on the city of Ash Wednesday and its somber reminder that this life, like all good things, is but temporary.
It also hints at one of the dualities of Carnival in New Orleans: Whatever else it is, Mardi Gras is and has long been a study of the ecstasy of life in the present tense. At the same time, it is firmly rooted in the past, draped in centuries of tradition.
It is in that spirit, with one foot planted in today’s world and the other in yesteryear, that we embark on a journey through Carnival history to commune with ghosts of Carnivals past – many of which continue to whisper through the streets where the city first learned the fleeting joy of the now.
IN THE BEGINNING
It is one of those debates that will, in all likelihood, never end: Where did the first Mardi Gras in the Americas take place?
The practice of indulging in a day of gluttony before the wet blanket of Lent was by no means invented in New Orleans. Its roots lie in ancient European traditions. We have, however, perfected it.
Be that as it may, if you ask anyone from Mobile, they will strenuously insist the first Mardi Gras celebration in these parts took place in their Alabama city – not New Orleans. That claim is not without at least a modicum of merit.
Brushing aside the unverifiable assertion that Mobile was celebrating Carnival by 1711, many historians recognize a roving public celebration in 1831 Mobile as the first documented public observance of Carnival in the Americas.
That perambulating rumpus, an antecedent to the myriad walking krewes that add to the pageantry of Carnival in New Orleans today, was instigated by a group of merry mischief-makers calling themselves the Cowbellion de Rakin Society. Remember them. They will prove important.
There are noteworthy “buts” to Mobile’s party-starting claim, however.
To begin with, the Cowbellions’ celebration took place on New Year’s Day, and as any self-respecting reveler will tell you, Carnival does not begin until King’s Day, on Jan. 6. New Orleans, on the other hand, was marking Carnival with public celebration on Mardi Gras itself – as is proper – by 1838, as reported in that year’s Ash Wednesday edition of The Daily Picayune.
Which brings us to the crux of this Carnival debate: Is an out-of-season Carnival parade a true Carnival parade?
How a person answers can be accurately predicted by his or her area code.
Secondly, there’s the fact that French-Canadian explorer-siblings Iberville and Bienville, upon landing on the east bank of the Mississippi River on the day before Mardi Gras 1699, deemed that spot Pont du Mardi Gras, as recorded in Iberville’s journal. The waterway running alongside it was additionally dubbed Bayou Mardi Gras.
True, this was all about 60 miles downriver from present-day New Orleans – which wouldn’t be founded for another couple of decades. Also, it wasn’t much of a party. But it was an observance.
Which brings us back to our animating question: Where was the first Mardi Gras in the Americas observed?
The answer can be found by driving down to Fort Jackson, near Triumph in Plaquemines Parish. There, you will find a historical marker directing visitors’ attention across the river to the mouth of Bayou Mardi Gras, the very spot on which Iberville and Bienville made history – and, depending on whom you ask, got the good times rolling.
A UNIQUE ORIGIN
Although they were celebrated on Fat Tuesday itself, the earliest documented Carnival celebrations in New Orleans proper didn’t bear much resemblance to the rolling displays of art and satire that roll through the street throughout the season today. Rather, they were dominated by raucous street parties that, at one point, had city leaders considering doing away with the celebration altogether.
Enter (or re-enter) the Cowbellions, those OG paraders from Mobile – and unlikely saviors of the city’s signature celebration.
In January 1857, a collection of six former Cowbellions decided New Orleans’ Carnival did not need to be banned. It just needed a little organization. And they were just the fellows to introduce it.
Which is how 30 hand-picked men came to receive mysterious invitations in January 1857 summoning them to a room over barman Alfred Arnold Pray’s Gem Saloon on Royal Street. It would be the first meeting of the Pickwick Club, the secret society that begat the Mystic Krewe of Comus – which begat New Orleans’ first modern Mardi Gras parade that same year.
To stage that inaugural pageant, Comus notably borrowed inspiration – along with floats and costumes – from their Cowbellion contacts in Mobile.
They did more than throw a good party. They helped write the rulebook. They gave us the word “krewe” for a parading society. They reached back to ancient mythology for their name, Comus. And they introduced the template Mardi Gras more or less still follows: a formal nighttime parade lit by flambeaux, masked riders rolling through the streets, and a ball to cap it all.
In other words: They invented Mardi Gras as we know it today.
As for the Gem Saloon, it is long gone – but the three-story brick building at 127-129 Royal St. that housed it still stands. What’s more, it is open to the public. But not as a museum.
Today, that spot – ground zero for all of New Orleans’ modern Mardi Gras traditions – is home to the Unique Grocery, a no-frills quickie mart where you can get cheap wine, cold beer and overpriced liquor to go with your Carnival history.
IN TWAIN’S FOOTSTEPS
It is entirely possible that young Sam Clemens, upon his arrival in New Orleans in 1859, was genuinely unaware it was Fat Tuesday. It is also entirely possible – perhaps likely – that the young scribe was merely exercising a bit of literary liberty to add a comic throughline to his observations.
Whatever the case, there is no doubt he appreciated the pageantry of it all. It was in that same letter to his big sister, in fact, that he famously wrote, “It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.”
Less famous is his description of another enduring Carnival tradition: the seemingly at-odds blend of ennui and excitement that comes with waiting for a parade to arrive.
“I waited – yes, I waited – standing on both feet as long as I could – then on one – then on tother — and was just preparing to stand on my head awhile, when a shout of ‘Here they come!’ kept me still in the proper position of a box of glassware,” he wrote. “But it was a false alarm – and after a while we had another false alarm – and then another – each repetition stirring up the impatience and anxiety of the crowd and setting it to heaving and surging at a fearful rate. … Five thousand people near me were tip-toeing & bobbing & peeping down the long street, & wondering why the devil it didn’t come along faster.”
Those hoping to experience Carnival from the same vantage point as Clemens might have a little trouble today. The corner of Good Children and Tchoupitoulas, where he first encountered that calico hay-stack, is no more. Good Children Street would become St. Claude Avenue – we know that much – but it no longer crosses Tchoupitoulas, that intersection having fallen victim long ago to the city’s ever-changing street grid.
Later in his letter, however, he describes taking in the Comus parade on St. Charles Avenue “near the middle of the street opposite the St. Charles Hotel.” That onetime landmark, known far and wide for its grandness, ain’t there no more, either; in its place stands the Place St. Charles officer tower.
But based on his description, it can be determined Clemens was standing between Gravier and Common streets and across the street from the hotel. That places him roughly in front of the main entrance to the Hancock Whitney Bank branch that stands there today, almost directly opposite the entrance of Place St. Charles – and a locale that remains on the downtown parade route.
A VISIT FROM ST. NICK
From the beginning, New Orleans adored its Mardi Gras parades. After Comus and the Cowbellions demonstrated how it was done, more krewes joined the annual cavalcade.
Still, one of the most cherished parts of today’s Carnival parades was missing until 1871: throws.
Then, the spectacle of elaborately designed floats rolling through the city’s streets, illuminated by flambeaux and mounted by mysteriously masked riders, was a gift itself. Never mind that there were no beads or boas, no cups or coconuts, no “throw me something, misters.”
Then, on Jan. 7, 1871, came the second-ever edition of the Twelfth Night Revelers parade. It rolled mostly as one would expect. Until the final carriage.
That carriage was sponsored by Piffet’s, a department store so proud of its toy selection that it trumpeted itself every holiday season as “Santa’s local headquarters.” Consequently, few were probably surprised to see an out-of-season Santa Claus riding atop the Piffet’s carriage.
But what he was doing would change everything.
“Very liberally did he along the route of procession distribute his presents, alternately out of a panier with which his back was encumbered, and out of a box marked ‘From Piffet’s, Canal Street,’ standing at his feet,” The Daily Picayune reported.
Those gifts are recognized as the first Mardi Gras throws.
The concept wouldn’t catch on until the 1920s, when riders with the Rex Organization began tossing beads to the masses – but Santa, and Piffet’s, did it first.
Alas, even its friendship with St. Nick couldn’t save Piffet’s from time. With the death of third-generation store owner John Piffet in December 1889, there was no one left in the family to run things. The company’s assets were liquidated.
Just like that, Piffet’s – which operated stores on Chartres Street and later, Canal – was gone.
Its flagship store in the 700 block of Canal – part of the crowded row of similarly designed commercial buildings known as Touro Row – went on to house the Marks Isaacs Department Store, a retail landmark that catered to New Orleans shoppers well into the 20th century.
In the early 2000s, the Marks Isaacs space – and, by extension, Piffet’s old footprint – was folded together with several neighboring buildings to create the then-new Astor Crowne Plaza hotel. It still occupies that spot today.
Which is how Carnival works in New Orleans. Faces change, buildings are repurposed, costumes evolve. But the impulse remains.
Each year we step into the street knowing we are part of something older than ourselves, celebrating in the present tense while standing on ground still warm with memory.
Then, when the last float passes and the street sweepers arrive, we do what New Orleanians have always done: fold it all up, store it away and start counting the days until next year.
