Robert’s plan for today is a visit to Melrose Plantation. Visiting a plantation is on the top of my priority list for my trip to the South.

When my son was small, and my husband came back from his business trips, I always asked him to bring back something that my son could relate to, something symbolic of where he was. Later on we began collecting these symbols. We have an Eiffel Tower from Paris, the Brandenburg Gate from Berlin, the Colosseum from Rome, and so on. My symbol for the South would be “Tara”, the beautiful antebellum (pre-Civil war) plantation house where Scarlett O’Hara lived, in Margaret Mitchell’s famous novel “Gone With the Wind”. I read the novel in high school and later relived the anguish of watching Scarlett self-destruct in the film. What is it about this story that makes us WANT to watch someone so beautiful cause so much pain and later reap at least as much as she sowed? Some people read the book or watch the movie over and over again. For me, once of each was enough to sear an image of Southern life onto my brain. Now it’s time for me to see if my image is anything like reality.

No sooner are we out of the driveway, than we drive past dozens of the same live oak trees lining the street that I saw in Texas. But the branches of these trees are not naked brownish black. They are dressed in thick, furry green velvety stuff. This strangely beautiful plant is called “resurrection fern”. It clings to all the oak trees I see along our drive. I admire their gentle, muted appearance. With the ferns coating the branches, they look dreamy and romantic. The reason it doesn’t grow in Texas is that the air there is too dry for it to survive. It needs the humidity of air like that in Louisiana to thrive. We also see many magnolia trees in bloom too. February is not a bad time to visit Louisiana!

Our drive takes us along the Cane River. Robert explains that it is not really a river anymore, but is a thirty-plus mile-long “lake”, also called “Cane River Lake”, diverted from the Red River.

We arrive at Melrose. It is white, with the ubiquitous Greek revival pillars supporting the house, but not as grand as I had expected. It is also surrounded by outhouses, seemingly plopped down onto the property, with no roads connecting these buildings to anything. “The Cane River is their road,” Robert explains.

On the tour, I learn that this plantation was owned and built by a freed slave who was a “Creole of color” – in other words, by someone we would today call “black” or of “African American” descent. And that four generations before the Civil War! I learn that Creoles are anyone of European descent, especially French or Spanish, usually Catholic, and they may or may not have mixed Native American or African American blood. The land on which this plantation was built was owned by Louis Metoyer, one of the sons of French trader Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer and his common-law wife, Marie Thérèse Coincoin. Marie, now also affectionately called “Coincoin”, was a slave Métoyer lived with for several years before he finally bought her as a slave in order to free her. In those days whites and blacks were not allowed to marry. But there was no law against mating and conceiving. This couple had ten children together, one of whom was Louis. He purchased the land and began to build the house. It was finished by his son after his death in 1833. Many generations of Metoyers lived in this house.

Before Claude Métoyer died, he had purchased and freed five of the children he and Marie had together. At one point he left her and married a white woman. Marie, a freed slave, became an entrepeneur skilled in the healing arts. She bought land and managed to free many of her children, also some born to a man previous to Métoyer.

Two of her children, Louis and Augustin, became especially prominent -and wealthy. Augustin donated land for a church, and he and Louis built the local parish church, possibly the first church in America built by freed slaves for people of color.

I never knew that blacks owned plantations! Or that freed black people, like the Metoyers, also owned slaves. I love how Robert has not given me any spoilers, leaving me to be delighted or surprised. Just when I’m beginning to register the distasteful fact that black ex-slaves could even consider owning slaves, our tour guide says that some think the Metoyers, like the original Métoyer, purchased the slaves in order to free them.

The house is, to me, surprisingly simple. This is not at all sumptuous, not in the least ostentatious! Another surprise. A plantation can be simply farmland and a large house, probably with outhouses. I would not feel comfortable living in this house. It feels drafty, and there seem to be no cozy rooms. There are beautiful hand-made bedspreads, though. https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g40308-d254640-i28605878-Melrose_Plantation-Melrose_Louisiana.html

The house was later to become an artists’/writers’ colony. Anyone could live there as long as they could prove they were working on something. One of the servants there, Clementine Hunter, a Creole of color, lived there from around 1902 until well after the 1939. In 1939 she was able to take paints and brushes left by a visiting artist. She became a self-taught artist and is now the best-known native artist in Louisiana. Some call her the black Grandma Moses. Her paintings depict many of the scenes and daily events she saw and experienced while living at Melrose.

Robert and I visit her tomb, and I get a glimpse of a Lousiana cemetery.

By now evening is approaching. Time for a meal. We eat at a nearby restaurant called the “Commissary”. From the outside it looks like a tin shack, but it is apparently a very good, popular restaurant, with genuine Louisiana cuisine. Let’s go!

I have a Creole combo, and we share appetizers and each gets wine. A Creole combo consists of jambalaya, with a lot of sausage, Natichoches meat pies, apparently famous, and Creole fettuccini studded with crawfish. The food is great – unhealthy, mostly fried, but delicious – and very filling. Our conversation is fulfilling.

We drive home stuffed, mellow, me a bit tired, and satisfied. My first plantation was not at all what I had expected, but that’s okay. I’m learning a few things about life in Louisiana as it is, which is quite different from knowledge gained from a novel.