de je vue

Sitting in the courtyard of the Napoleon House, I am taken back in time. I feel the present slip away and I am once again in a courtyard of many centuries ago. This is but one of the first of many experiences that I would have as I lived, loved, and, sometimes cried in the Vieux Carré.


The heat and humidity was the first senses to awaken my memories of the life that I once knew as a girl of thirteen in old New Orleans. A child of France and poverty I was shipped off as an indentured servant. The Ursuline nuns took me under their wings.


The Ursulines were unique for their time. In the autumn of 1727 they admitted girls into their schools. Slaves and free, rich or poor, white or black., Indian or immigrant - all were welcomed by these women whose goal was to lift up women through education. In and around New Orleans was a group of women who created a confraternity and named themselves the Children of Mary. The goal of this group of women, under the guidance of the Ursulines, took upon themselves the holy mission to catechize their slaves.


Many young girls of poverty were shipped off to the New World to be servants, brides of man or God, or prostitutes. The Ursulines would be the clearing house for these young girls. Those who were deemed capable of being wives were married to the men of the settlement. Those who were attractive enough but not quite able to be wives, perhaps because of being criminals in the old world were to become prostitutes it is said in the brothel that is sang about as The House of The Rising Sun which is just across the street from the current Ursuline Convent. The least marketable became Nuns of the New Orleans order. The racial diversity of the Ursulines was unique for the time period and the literacy rate for women of that time in New Orleans was 71 percent and higher than the men. In the other colonies the literacy rate for women was half that of the men.


But I digress as I tell my story of my memories of a life when I was incarnated in New Orleans. As I sat in the courtyard of the Napoleon House, I was moved back in time. I could feel myself dressed in a loose white dress that was sheer and comfortable and allowed the air to reach my perspiring skin. I was older now and mistress of the house and ran it from my courtyard in the summer. I can see little children at my feet some black and some white. Children of master and slave playing in the heat with an openness that I often saw in the schoolyards in the Quarters as I would walk from Ursuline Street where I lived to up Royal to St. Phillips. Fragments of memories came back to me – smells, sounds of horses’ feet on muddy streets after the rains, rich dark coffee, and feelings of being trapped like a bird in a gilded cage.


Many times as I would walk through the Quarter in my modern reality I would know what house I would see before I turned a corner. I would get a flash of a memory, sometimes pleasant and sometimes sad but always everything new seemed like de je vue and I would be swept back in time again.