MARIE GLAPION WAS only fifty-four when the Widow Paris died. She was at the height of her career. During the years that followed she remained "Marie Laveau" to the majority of the Voodoos and to the uneducated class of Negroes, who did not read the newspapers. She managed, therefore, to retain her position as supreme ruler over the queens and witch doctors of the period and it is known that she appeared at some of the St. John's Eve meetings in the 1880's. She also
still possessed the Maison Blanche.
But with her mother's death she had lost a great deal, for the most lucrative part of her business had been done in the St. Ann Street cottage. This must have been a bitter blow both to her pride and to her purse, and she must have fought against her exile with all her strength. However, to the readers of the papers Marie Laveau was dead. No doubt many of them knew it could not be the Marie Laveau they knew, but if they called at the house it was to have the door shut in their faces by Madame Legendre.
"Marie Glapion was an outcast from her family," said Virgie Wilson, an old colored woman. "You see, that Madame
{p. 130}
Legendre, her sister, was so stuck up that she done denied her. She run John Laveau out of the house, too, and didn't have nobody there but her and her two daughters. They wanted to pass for white. The daughters both married white men and their children is passing right here in New Orleans now. 'Course they done changed their names a couple of times and has forgot they was ever Laveaus or even that they come from Madame Legendre."
Marie II lived in the Maison Blanche for some years and most of her livelihood was earned by acting as a procuress for white men who wanted to meet quadroon and mulatto girls. Later she seems to have left the lakefront and returned to the city.
"She was livin' on Bourbon Street around 1888," recalled Edna Martin, who said she had been her neighbor during that period. "She told fortunes and messed wit' a lot of hoodoo stuff, but she was losin' her trade."
This was denied by Gertrude Apple, who said she, too, was a neighbor around that time. "She was the biggest hoodoo woman in town in 1890," Gertrude said.
A rather strange statement came from Alex Pique, a former postman. "I delivered a stack of mail addressed to Marie Laveau to that St. Ann Street house as late as 1887," he said. "Almost all of it was registered. I don't know exactly who was living there then." Was Madame Legendre handling the Marie Laveau correspondence? There probably had always been customers who wrote from out of town, seeking services of various sorts.
But, on the whole, the memories of Marie II began to fade somewhere in the late 1880's, and she seems to dissolve slowly into a state of non-existence, as if she had been a ghost or a mirage. There is no sudden end.
No one, for instance, can agree about how or when she died. The simplest deduction regarding the whole affair is that she lost herself completely in the Negro world. She may not have been any less important to the Voodoos when the end
{p. 131}
came, but except for them she was obscure and almost forgotten. Her prestige was to return after the coming of death.
There are many persons who insist that Marie II was drowned in Lake Pontchartrain during the late 1890's. Old colored women will often tell you stories about this.
"Marie Laveau was in her house out by the lake when the storm come up," said Louise Butler. "She was givin' a big Voodoo dance. The storm swept the house away and her and all them hoodoos with her. God punished them wicked people with flood." Louise thought this took place in 1899, but added, "I ain't got no head for dates and it could have been a year or so before or after that."
"It was in 1884," said Myrtle Rose White. "She was sleepin' in her bed and the house was washed away wit' her in it. That was the end of Marie Laveau and there was weepin' and grievin' from one end of this country to the other." Myrtle Rose was a Marie Laveau enthusiast. "She was the best woman ever lived," she said. "You know she died poor,cause she had given all her money away."
"They was having them a time out there one St. John's Eve," said Catherine Woods. "Marie Laveau called for everybody to run out into the lake like they always done. She led 'em and she stepped down in a hole and never come up. People always said she was gone to see Papa La Bas."
But as often as not she survives the storm.
"She got washed away in a big storm, but she never died," swore Alice Reno. "She floated five days on a log and was swept in to shore. She never even suffered from exposure. She was too powerful to let nothin' hurt her. She lived for years after that."
It is not always Lake Pontchartrain. Sometimes it is Bayou St. John. There was a Voodoo belief that if one walked into the Bayou St. John on St. John's Eve any spell would be washed away, but the immersion must be complete, until the water covered the individual's head. There was a certain place
{p. 132}
at which this was done, and it was known as the Cure Spot. It is very likely this was the same as the Wishing Spot,
Doris Gibson claims this is where Marie II was almost drowned. "She walked into the water and disappeared complete," said Doris. "Everybody went home and thought she was dead. Five days later they found her floatin' around, clingin' to a log. She was sick, but she got well."
"When the storm come up," said Rose Keaton, "she was in the Cure Spot. A week after that they found her sittin' in a tree that was floatin' on the Bayou. She was singin' her hoodoo songs and wasn't hurt at all."
But Sophie Key contended "that peoples gits all mixed up. Some says she was in her house and the house got washed away. They got it wrong. You see, Marie Laveau could walk on the water and that's what she was doin' when the storm come. She was walkin' 'round on the lake singin' and prayin' and the water 'neath her feets got unsteady and the waves was rockin' and all. All of a sudden a big wave come up and she fell down and broke the water and started sinkin'. But a tree come by and she caught on to that. She was floatin! on that tree almost a week before they found her."
"She was dead when they found her," said Annabelle Kate Tricou. "Her body floated in to shore and her eyes was closed and her hands folded jest like she was already laid out at her wake. There was cryin' and weepin' all over New Orleans, The people knowed a great woman had passed from their midst."
But it was Mrs. Louise Walters, a white woman, who told the most fantastic of the stories about the drowning. Mrs. Walters described herself as "a former hoodoo, queen and professional card reader."
"I was one of the best in the work," she said, "but I gave up hoodoo to please my daughter. She has modern ideas, so now we're all Baptists.
"I sure used to make a lot of money. You see I learned what I know from Marie Laveau, and she was the best in
{p. 133}
the world. It sure was funny how I met her. One day when I was a young girl I went out by Bayou St. John to catch some crawfish. It was exactly three days after the St. John's Eve storm. It was all over town that Marie Laveau was drowned, but I didn't know much about her and so I didn't pay it much mind.
"Well, I come to a place where some trees was sort of bunched together near the edge of the water and to my surprise saw a woman lying across a box. She was soaking wet and looked like she was dead. I was sure scared, but I went closer and looked at her good. She had on a brown dress and a blue veil over her face. All of a sudden I heard her moan, so I bent down and spoke to her. Then her eyes opened up. She looked straight into my face and, let me tell you, I never saw such eyes. They were beautiful and they went straight through you. Her lips moved and she said, 'Help me, child.'
"I got her to sitting up and at last she was on her feet with one arm around my shoulders. 'Take me home with you,' she said. 'I've got to have some coffee and some dry clothes. No one must see me like this.' We was sitting in my mother's kitchen before she told me who she was. First, she asked my mother to leave the room, then she said, very quiet-like, 'I love you, my child, and I don't love many people. I am Marie Laveau.' I'll tell you I began to shake, I was that scared. 'But they say you're dead,' I told her. 'I know,' she said. 'Marie Laveau's been dead before.' Wasn't that a funny thing for her to say? And then she started laughing, and she said, I'm a strong woman. You come see me sometime.'
"After that we was good friends. I went to see her in that white cabin she had all the time, and she would come see me. She taught me a lot of her secrets. But about two years after that she disappeared. God knows what become of her. She was a strange woman and a great mystic. I never did hear of her dying."
So it goes. The ideas regarding the date of her death can,be carried to almost absurd extremes. For instance, Christine Parris said, "She lived until 1918. I is sure of that 'cause it
{p. 134}
was after the big war when she died. She was still holdin' meetin's and she was still dancin'. One day she was dancin' and she stop and look up at the sky and started screamin'. Then she fell down. She was dead, and the devil had her for his own."
If that is true she was 91, and her dancing must have been remarkable. Christine had her confused with a later Voodooienne. Several probably borrowed the name of Marie Laveau.
August Augustine told a story that was entirely different from any of the others. August said he attended a masquerade ball in the Globe Hall, a building on St. Claude Street near St. Peter Street. Downstairs was the headquarters of a colored Masonic lodge and upstairs there were rooms that were sometimes rented for dances, political meetings and other affairs. This particular ball, August said, was during the Mardi Gras season of 1897. Marie came late in the evening and dressed as she always dressed, while everyone else was in costume, but, despite this, she attracted more attention than anyone else there. He added that she had become very stout and weighed well over two hundred pounds.
The ball was nearly over when Marie decided to leave. She was halfway down the stairs when she collapsed and she fell the rest of the way. When a doctor present reached her she was dead. "It was her heart," August said. "It was all over in a minute. That is really the way death came to Marie Laveau. All them other stories ain't true. She was buried in the Basin Street graveyard they call St. Louis No. 1, and she was put in the same tomb with her mother and the rest of her family. She had a big funeral because she belonged to the Society of the Ladies with Tignons and the Society of the Ladies of La Pousiniere. Right after she died them societies broke up."
There is an inscription on the Laveau-Glapion tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 that may--and certainly should--indicate that this is the resting place of Marie II. The tomb is white and has three crypts with a "receiving vault" beneath to hold the remains of other people when they must be moved
{p. 135}
to make room for a new burial. Here lie the Widow Paris--though none of the three slabs indicates the presence of her remains--and her common-law husband, Christophe Glapion. Probably there was once an inscription marking the vault in which the first Marie Laveau was buried, but it has been changed for one marking a later burial. The bones of the Widow Paris must lie in the receiving vault below. However, the middle slab reads:
Famille Vve Paris
née Laveau
Ci-Gît
Marie Philome Glapion,
décédé le 11 Juin 1897,
Âgée de Soixante-deux ans Elle fut
bonne mère, bonne amie, et
regrettée par tous ceux qui l'ont
connue Passante priez pour elle.
A great many Voodoos accept this vault as the burial place of the Marie Laveau they remember--Marie II--and they come here to knock three times on the slab and ask a favor. They bring flowers and sometimes burn candles here and leave pennies and nickels in the green flower-holders that are attached to each side of the tomb. There are always penciled crosses on the slab. The sexton washes the crosses away, but they always reappear. It is possible that some of those persons who come here do so because they know this is the burial place of the Widow Paris; however most of them know nothing of her and are seeking favors of Marie II.
There is an even larger group of those who do not accept this as her resting place at all. Where she is buried has become a highly controversial matter that has grown out of all proportion to its importance. Yet it is vital to the Voodoos. The grave of Marie Laveau should be a shrine. You can find as many opinions on the subject as there are cemeteries in New Orleans.
{p. 136}
The argument that she is not buried in the Laveau tomb is based, of course, on the fact that she was exiled from the family by Madame Legendre. "Old Madame Legendre wouldn't have nothin' to do wit' her even when she died," said Théophile Miche, who recalled Marie II well. "The writin' on that slab ain't her. That's another sister. You know in them days people might name three or four daughters 'Marie,' like one would be 'Marie Rose,' another 'Marie Theresa,' and another 'Marie Louisa.' That was an old Creole custom. Marie Laveau died of old age in 1901 and she is buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. People who goes to that place in St. Louis No. 1 is crazy."
Yet many keep coming to that tomb. It is always maintained in perfect condition, its exterior being whitewashed several times a year and the flower-holders given a coat of green paint. The sexton did not know who took care of it, said Théophile. Perhaps he did not want to say. He will tell you only that "lots of people come," and that on such occasions as All Saints' Day the tomb is decorated with bouquets of fresh flowers. Other things appear, too; bits of wax twisted into grotesque shapes are dropped into the flower-holders; sometimes a rosary is found hanging on that middle slab; once he found a full set of false teeth!
There is also a "Marie Laveau Tomb" in the cemetery known as St. Louis No. 2. This is not really a tomb at all, but one crypt among the many that form the wall encircling the cemetery. These crypts are known in New Orleans as "ovens," and are a very old and typical kind of burial place. Because until recent years ground burials were impossible in New Orleans these crypts were necessary to hold the remains of poor persons who could not afford an entire tomb. They built one on top of the other, usually about four of them, and the earliest ones each have a rounded top which accounts for their resemblance to ovens. They can even be rented and should the family fail to meet the rent the remains are removed and burned.
{p. 137}
The "oven" in which some persons believe Marie II to have been buried is at the rear of the cemetery. Its slab is always covered with literally hundreds of crosses made with red brick. Until recently there was a crack in the slab, and into this devotees would drop coins and then make a wish. There was a particular belief that here any girl wishing a husband could be certain of having her desire fulfilled. The rite consists of rapping on the slab three times, saying the wish out loud, then making a cross with red brick, a piece of which always reposes on top of the row of crypts. This place is also known as the "Wishing Vault" and the "Voodoo Vault," and probably more Voodoos will accept it as the burial place of Marie Laveau than they will the tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.
However, others will tell you that this is a mistake, and that another Voodoo queen, Marie Comtesse, is buried here, that in some way the two became confused. The sexton will tell you that "there ain't nothing in that oven but some old bones of people what died of Yellow Fever. I don't know how this started, but they keep coming--white and colored--and making their crosses. Ifs a damned nuisance."
There are many other beliefs as to where Marie Laveau lies, including Girod Street Cemetery, Louisa Street Cemetery, and Holt Cemetery, and each person has great confidence that he is correct.
Jimmie St. Clair, colored, believed the body had been buried originally in the Laveau tomb and was later moved, and that this is what started the confusion.
"She was in St. Louis No. 1," he said, "but her spirit wouldn't behave. Everybody got so scared they wouldn't go near the cemetery, and that was bad for business. She used to appear in the shape of one of them big Newfoundland dogs. Madame Legendre and the other relatives got ashamed--you know how stuck up they was--so they moved her to Holt Cemetery and buried her there without no mark on her grave. They just put a block of cement over the
{p. 138}
ground, and that kept her. They left the name off because they wanted people to forget her. That's a laugh, huh? People around this town never will forget Marie Laveau."
Elmore Lee Banks, also colored, thought he had good reason to believe this was not true and that Marie still reposed in the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 tomb.
"I was in a drugstore right near St. Louis No. 1 one day," he said, "and this wasn't no more than ten years ago. An old woman dressed in a long white dress and with a blue tignon come in and stood right next to me. I didn't pay her no mind, but kept on explaining to the drugstore man what I wanted. All of a sudden I notice he wasn't listening to me at all, but was looking at this old woman and his eyes was popping out his head like a frog's. Before I knowed what had happened he turned around and ran like a fool into the back of his store.
"I didn't know what to do, so I turned around and looked at this woman. She looked back at me, and she start laughing kind of like she was crazy. She just laughed and laughed and, me, I thought she was just some poor crazy woman that the druggist was scared of. God, if I'd known what was coming I'd have died on the spot!
"Well, she kept laughing a while, then she say, 'Don't you know me?' I say, 'No, ma'am.' Then I say, 'Where the drugstore man go at?' That seem to make her mad. Her eyes got like fire and she picked up one of her hands and smacked me right in the face. Then she jump up in the air and went whizzing out the door and over the top of the telephone wires. She passed right over the graveyard wall and disappeared. Then I passed out cold.
"When I woke up the drugstore man was pouring whiskey down my throat. 'You know who that was?' he ask me. I couldn't talk yet. 'That was Marie Laveau,' he say. 'She been dead for years and years, but every once in a while people around here see her. Son, you is been slapped by the Queen of the Voodoos!'"
{p. 139}