Mardi Gras: The Golden Age (February 1965 | Volume: 16, Issue: 2)

Mardi Gras: The Golden Age

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Authors: Leonard V. Huber

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February 1965 | Volume 16, Issue 2

“Christmas,” a recent writer has pointed out, “is a holiday which New Orleans shares with other cities, but Mardi Gras is her very own.” So it is, and so it has been since 1857, when the first of the great carnival organizations, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, staged its first elaborate parade, tableaux, and ball. Civil War and Reconstruction dampened the Mardi Gras spirit through the 1860’s and much of the decade that followed, but after the departure of what loyal Louisianians still call “the carpetbaggers,” the merrymaking was again unfettered; from then until the century’s end the city’s annual carnival knew a veritable golden age. Here and on the following pages, as preparations for this year’s Mardi Gras near a climax, AMERICAN HERITAGE brings that golden age to life again.

The Editors

A city of French and Spanish origins, New Orleans early celebrated the last day before Lent—“Fat Tuesday”—with masquerades and exhilarating parties, as towns in many Catholic countries have done for centuries. But the Mistick Krewe of Comus was the first New Orleans secret organisation devoted solely to the carnival, and its festivities in 1857 sketched a patterti that was to become standard during the golden age of Mardi Gras after the close of the Civil War.

The latter-day devotees of Comus, a minor Greek god of gregarious mirth, produced something new: an organized street parade with elaborate costumes all designed around one theme. As “The Demon Actors in Milton’s Paradise Lost ,” they were a hit with the crowds; afterward the Mistick Krewe repaired to the Gaiety Theatre for a pageantball of considerable splendor.

By 1861, Comus’ parades and glittering tableaux-balls had become an accepted part of the local scene, but then the Civil War brought Mardi Gras festivities to a temporary halt. Coming back with surprising snap in 1866, Comus put together a parade and ball around the theme of “The Horror and Sorrows of War; the Blessings and Beauties of Peace; and the Hope of a Smiling Future.” Despite the difficulties of Reconstruction, Comus successfully endured, and was flattered by imitation in 1870, when the Lord of Misrule, King of the Twelfth Night Revelers, made his bow with a parade and a tableau featuring an immense Twelfth Night Cake. The Revelers made one innovation: they stretched the carnival season all the way back to the end of the Christmas holidays, holding their ball on January 6.

The year 1872 was particularly significant in the history of the New Orleans carnival. A group of leading businessmen, hearing that the Mardi Gras that year would be honored by a visit from His Imperial Highness, Alexis Alexandrovich, younger son of the Czar of Russia, decided to do something special lor his entertainment. They organized a new group called Rex, and planned a street parade that would outdazzle all earlier efforts. A carnival flag was designed in