“Forget what you have learned”: The Mistick Krewe’s 1914 Mardi Gras Chaucer

If you were one of the thousands thronging the cold and sleety streets of New Orleans on Mardi Gras evening in 1914, you would have witnessed a magnificent display of pomp and festivity as the final parade of Carnival—that season marked by Twelfth Night’s fixed observance at the beginning and Shrove Tuesday’s movable feast at the end—marched its way through the streets.¹ Sponsored by the Mistick Krewe of Comus, this annual procession appeared after weeks of parades and balls sponsored by the city’s other krewes (as the New Orleans secret societies responsible for Mardi Gras called themselves). Breaking through the evening’s dark and damp, the procession entitled “Tales from Chaucer” began at 7 p.m. when the Mistick Krewe emerged from its warehouse on Calliope Street, then rolled down St. Charles Avenue and the broad boulevard of Canal Street. Heading the parade on a white steed was the Mistick Krewe’s captain—masked, plumed, and bearing a silver whistle used to signal the parade’s start (Schindler, New Orleans 92). Behind him, 20 static tableaux moved through the streets on mule-drawn wagons flanked by black men carrying flambeaux (Kinser 357n52). The first float enshrined Comus holding an ornate goblet. Portrayed by a masked Kreweman anointed for the annual honor, his true identity known only to a few, Comus presided over the parade and represented the carnival’s spirit of unrestrained gaiety. Each of the next 19 cars depicted an image drawn from Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century life and work; walkers carried banners identifying each tableau’s narrative source: after the title car bearing Chaucer’s armorial insignia, you would have seen cars titled “Romance of the Rose,” “Man of Law’s Tale,” “Shipman’s Tale,” “The Prioress’s Tale,” “Book of the Duchess: Ceyx and Alcyone,” “Sir Thopas,” “The Monk’s Tale: Nebuchadnezzar’s Triumph over Jerusalem,” “The Frankeleyn’s Tale,” “The Wife of Bath,” “House of Fame: Palace of Fame,” “The Squire’s Tale,” “Chaunticleer,” “Griselda,” “Melibeus,” “Pyramus and Thisbe,” “St. Cecilia,” “Anelida,” and “Truth.” Designed by Jennie Wilde and built by local craftsmen using papier-mâché techniques imported by French artisans, each fantastically decorated float depicted an exemplary narrative moment from these Chaucerian works (Gill 102). As the tableaux passed, masked and ornately costumed Krewemen portraying both male and female characters—no women were allowed to ride on the floats—would have thrown candies and nuts to the onlookers crowding the parade route (Shrum and Kilburn 427; Tallant 43).

Those further down Canal Street would have seen the procession stop first at City Hall and then at the Boston Club (Kinser 353n7). On a grandstand fronting the Club waited the 1914 queen of Comus, Miss Mary Orme, and her four maids of honor, young women selected for their beauty and their luck in being daughters of prominent men (Mitchell 102–5; Young 227; Leathem 119). Unlike the Krewemen, neither the queen nor her court wore costumes, nor did the young women wear masks. Instead, each wore a stylish evening gown, signaling her father’s wealth and her mother’s good taste (Leathem 122, 128).² The queen’s only nod to the evening’s regal fiction was her crown, mantle, and royal jewels (Tallant 75–76). On foot, Comus and his queen continued up Bourbon Street to Toulouse Street into the heart of the French Quarter, where they entered the French Opera House for a formal dance, making the parade a “king’s procession through the city” to a royal ball (Mitchell 98–99).

At this point, when the Mistick Krewe’s Mardi Gras festivities retreated from the public street into the semiprivate Opera House, the spectacle’s audience shifted from the general crowd to New Orleans’s elite (Mitchell 99). Inside, Krewemen and their guests (carefully screened by much-coveted hand-delivered invitations) attended the long carnival season’s culminating social event, a formal ball lasting until midnight. Once admitted to the carefully-guarded ball precinct, guests were assigned seats that favored some people over others: Comus’s...