In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Life in the Quarter H amilton Basso wrote that “if I never much hankered after Paris during the expatriate years, it was because, in the New Orleans of that era, I had Paris in my own back yard.” The Vieux Carré of his youth, he said, was “a sort of Creole version of the Left Bank,” and in six blocks or so, clustered around the cathedral of St. Louis, les bons temps did roll in a Bohemian sort of way. Many who were part of that scene knew the Left Bank firsthand, or Greenwich Village, and did their best to follow those models, as we shall see. But the life of the Quarter also reflected some demographic characteristics of its habitués. At the core of the Famous Creoles’ circle were the twenty-three Famous Creoles who actually lived in the Vieux Carré in 1926. That figure included the notable hosts (Sherwood and Elizabeth Anderson, Spratling, Lyle Saxon) and their most frequent guests and companions, as well as the most important of the journalists who covered the New Orleans cultural scene (Saxon, Natalie Scott, John McClure, Freddie Oechsner). Seventeen of the twenty-three were men, and only three of those were over thirty-five. Eliminate those three and throw in Basso (who 13 Young Men in the French Quarter, 1926 SINGLE Ham Basso, 22 Freddie Oechsner, 24 Oliver La Farge, 25 Bill Spratling, 25 Keith Temple, 27 Dan Whitney, 28 Bill Faulkner, 29 Harold Levy, 32 Conrad Albrizio, 32 Frans Blom, 33 Lyle Saxon, 35 Sam Gilmore, 35 MARRIED Marc Antony, 28 Roark “Brad” Bradford, 30 Jack McClure, 33 14 | The World of the Famous Creoles spent so much time in the Quarter that he might as well have lived there) and you have most of the members of a group of newspapermen, freelance writers, artists, and Tulane faculty members who called themselves, for reasons now lost, the Shasta Daisies Society. You also have a concentration of young men, nearly all unmarried—the makings of what Basso’s biographer calls a “boyish and boisterous atmosphere” that often lent a sort of fraternity house flavor to the goings-on. The Atmosphere The last drawing in Famous Creoles repays close study. Faulkner and Spratling are shown in their garret. Spratling— art teacher, author of Pencil Drawing— is holding his pencil at arm’s length in the classic technique for determining proportions. The joke is that the proportions of the drawing are totally haywire . Faulkner holds a glass and under his chair are several liquor jugs. Next to the “Viva Art” motto on the wall hangs a pump-action BB gun, which (Spratling recalled) was used “on a rainy day, or when there were distinguished visitors to be entertained,” to shoot out the windows of an empty house across the street. “From the street below no shot could be heard—only the slight tinkle of glass as it hit the pavement.” (The gun is a Daisy. Could this be where the Shasta Daisies got their name?) The boys also shot passing pedestrians, and they had a scoring system posted on the wall: “If you managed to pink a Negro nun, that rated ten points (for rarity value) and that was the highest you could go,” although bearded men were almost as valuable. When Sherwood Anderson’s teenaged son Bob visited New Orleans he became particularly fond of this sport, and made a nuisance of himself by coming around when Faulkner was writing. Bob didn’t take hints, so one day Spratling and Faulkner “grabbed him, took Spratling and Faulkner, from Famous Creoles Life in the Quarter | 15 his pants off, painted his peter green and pushed him out on the street, locking the door.” After that, Spratling recalled, he “didn’t bother us much.” The walls of the apartment’s bathroom featured nude figures Spratling had painted, with shower faucets and parts of other fixtures incorporated as anatomical features. Another attraction was what their friend Flo Field remembered years later as a “death-defying platform” built over the roof. Spratling standing in garret apartment with Hamilton Basso (?) seated. Spratling drawing of rooftops 16 | The World of the Famous Creoles Reached through a window, it offered an escape from the stifling heat of a New Orleans attic, and at one party Faulkner unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mrs. Field to crawl outside— four floors above the street—with him. The platform also offered access to adjoining roofs, across which, Ham Basso recalled, some daring partygoers...

Share