Some people may have bought their Olympics tickets thinking that in Atlanta they would immerse themselves in the Old South. After gymnastics and before the Dream Team, they imagined wandering beneath the leafy canopy of live oaks on the grounds of Tara, listening to the rustle of crinolines, the plink of banjos and the dulcet conversations of the city’s Rhetts and Scarletts.
We have heard of their disappointment, and it touched us deeply. A lot of us already knew that Atlanta had pretty much become a snow-deficient Minneapolis by now and that it never did serve as Dixie’s capital of belles and juleps. Margaret Mitchell made the whole thing up.
Yet no one would be so impolite as to laugh at those who were so cruelly misled.
Such a place does truly exist. It is here in Natchez–about 250 miles southwest of Peachtree Street, as the egret flies, and at least 125 years distant in its sensibilities.
This is a city of noble mansions and extravagant plantation houses, domestic palaces with rooms draped in damask and velvet. Parlors and formal dining rooms glisten with French mirrors and English silver; four-posters shoulder burdens of silk canopy. The lavishly papered walls are hung with paintings of grand ladies and stern gentlemen. Wide portals hold thick oaken doors that would have slammed smartly if any of those gentlemen had decided that, frankly, they didn’t give a damn. Slavery is just a whisper.
Natchez serves as a fantasy camp for those who nurture a warm place in their hearts for magnolia and romance. They come by the busload. They arrive in their cars. A half million a year. And during certain weeks, these visits take on the proportions of a pilgrimage.
Down here, most things of importance happened before “the War Between the States” (no one believes there was anything civil about it), when the fields across the Mississippi were all puffed up with cotton and Natchez boasted as many millionaires as New York City.
A goodly number of homeowners preserved or restored that old big-bucks property, aided and abetted by the the city’s two major garden clubs. Southern cities that plea-bargained with Yankee invaders frequently managed to save their homes from the torch, thereby retaining their antebellum good looks. Atlanta burned. Natchez didn’t.
Natchez never will stage an Olympics. Too small. Only about 25,000 people live within the city limits and another 25,000 in the rest of Adams County. So it lures outsiders by making the most of its beautiful setting on a bluff high above the Mississippi and on the homes that decorate surrounding hills and hollows.
The possibilities became apparent in March 1931, when members of several state garden clubs convened in Natchez, only to discover that a late frost had wiped out all the gardens they had come to see. Their embarrassed hosts offered tours of their fabulous homes instead.
“These were simply private residences, many in poor repair because people didn’t have money in those Depression times,” resident Roger Saterstrom said not long ago. “The visitors loved it so much, they asked if they could come back the next year–just to see the houses.
“As a result, in March of 1932 the first spring pilgrimage began right here in Natchez. The fall pilgrimage began in 1977, really out of popular demand. A large growth in visitation had occurred, and we were getting a lot of requests to come here during the fall.
“And this year, again by popular demand, we are introducing the Natchez Christmas Pilgrimage, Dec. 14 through 31. So in 1996 we have the distinction of hosting the country’s oldest and the country’s newest pilgrimages.”
Oh, yes. Several other cities in the South conduct pilgrimages, putting their residences on display for reasons of pride and civic profit, all part of a thriving pilgrimage industry.
Roger Saterstrom knows so much about the subject because he is president of Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, a private company that stepped in 10 years ago to handle things for the garden clubs when crowds eventually overwhelmed them.
The 1996 fall tours begin Oct. 5 and continue through Oct. 25 (see box for more details). Anyone who goes will see that the pilgrimages require extensive planning–by organizers and pilgrims alike.
Saterstrom and his staff run an elaborate downtown visitor center, market and advertise the events, coordinate tour-bus traffic, take reservations for 30 picturesque bed-and-breakfasts in the area, sell tickets and answer questions.
The company makes a profit, he said, but even though revenue is shared with individual home owners, most lose a little money on the deal.
“Over the years, the pilgrimages have been a way to link tourism with historic preservation,” Saterstrom explained. “It’s not a theme park. The garden clubs that sponsor the events are not profit-making organizations. They do it as a preservation effort and a way to show that preservation and our heritage to visitors.”
The spring pilgrimage this year drew 32,000 visitors, who evidently spent an average of $100 each. “Our state and local tourism agencies calculate that the economic impact on Natchez was $3.2 million in direct expenditures here during the spring pilgrimage,” Saterstrom said.
I made my contribution last March as part of a whirlwind tour of the South. I hit Natchez on an impulse, which meant sleeping in a cheap motel instead of a gracious B&B and taking whatever house tours were on that day’s schedule.
The most enjoyable parts came when I simply strolled around the central city, soaking up antebellum atmosphere, admiring handsome townhouses, beautiful estates and gardens planted with lavish azalea beds, stands of camellias and rows of boxwood hedges.That night, I had to pass up the Annual Confederate Pageant (admission: $10) at the Natchez City Auditorium, because it was sold out. According to the brochure, I missed a spectacle in which men wearing snappy period uniforms and women in hoop-skirted ball gowns dance beautifully as they re-create the carefree era that preceded the Civil War.
Instead I ate an al fresco dinner at the Natchez Landing restaurant in a riverfront neighborhood called Natchez-Under-the-Hill. This, too, was historic territory, where native tribes, French, English, Spanish and Americans ruled by turns.
In the early 1800s, up until the Union river blockades, this was the raucous part of Natchez. Ships laden with cotton bales jammed the harbor, and the riverfront teemed with warehouses, brothels, saloons and gambling halls.
During my meal, a few gamblers straggled into the riverboat anchored across the way, and scores of tourists crowded the restaurants, but clearly the hot spots were gone.
Most of the action came during the day, when we tourists swarmed over the streets and byways of the city. Pilgrimage is an appropriate term for this activity. A lot of visitors appeared to be steeped in antebellum lore and pedigree. The behavior of some bordered on the zealous as they set up their camera tripods under the sweet olive trees and tried to capture the ideal blush of sunlight on Greek Revival columns. Others would relentlessly trace the family trees of Confederate generals and deceased politicians.
When the perkily costumed guides led their tours of the interiors, the pilgrims listened intently and gazed studiously. In certain preservation-aware circles, the houses of Natchez are as famous as the pyramids. Visitors approached with awe, regarded the homes with reverence and stood patiently in long lines for the privilege.
I asked Newton Wilds, co-owner of a plantation house called the Briars, why this was so.
“You have so many people interested in the lifestyle in the South,” he told me. “I guess `Gone With the Wind’ still interests them. And, of course, the houses are unique. Before the Civil War started, it was a wealthy economy, and they built grand houses. They are houses typical of what you think of when you think of `Gone With the Wind.’ And Natchez has more of them that have been preserved than any other city in the country.
“It’s just a pleasant, small community on the river. The river fascinates many people. We have visitors 12 months a year, even when the pilgrimages are not on. We have a lot of people who have been here eight or ten times. They come as sort of a weekend retreat, from New Orleans or even Dallas, because it is nice to get away from the big city into a different, more relaxed way of living.”
Tour buses lined a block on High Street, and passengers filed out of them to get a look at Stanton Hall, a Natchez superstar built in 1857. The big, white Greek Revival manse is owned and lovingly maintained by the Pilgrimage Garden Club. Dedicated manse aficionados consider Stanton Hall, as a brochure puts it, “one of the most magnificent and palatial residences of antebellum America.” I’m sure Scarlett would have approved.
I tried to take a picture of the exterior, and a few other photographers joined me. There were only so many places on Pearl and High Streets where someone could compose a picture without including motor coaches and people wearing garish tourist clothes.
That wouldn’t do at all. We wanted a clear shot at that young woman in the antebellum dress guarding the front door. We needed to capture the imposing facia and the intricate wrought-iron balustrades.
We backed into the yard of the little house across the street, ignoring it and aiming our cameras. It was a nice enough house, cozy and brick-clad, but it probably held no Rococo Revival furniture, silver door knobs, Boston coin silver tea kettles or rosewood pianos. When Gen. Douglas MacArthur came calling in 1962, he didn’t sleep over here in the little brick house, he slept over there–in the Gold Bedroom of Stanton Hall.
I admit that I did flash on “Gone With the Wind” for a second. And I could tell that the other photographers were indulging their own antebellum daydreams. Otherwise, they would have heard the sharp rapping on the window that meant we should quit trespassing on a house of the present and step back into the frame of yesteryear.
DETAILS ON NATCHEZ HOME TOUR
The Natchez Fall Pilgrimage will be held every day, Oct. 5 through 25.
Tours are arranged in morning and afternoon segments that include four historic houses each. A total of 24 houses will be on display during the pilgrimage. The segments cost $18 per person. Half-price tickets are available for children ages 6 through 17 touring with their parents.
Visitors also may tour the unique, octagonally shaped Longwood mansion with its Byzantine dome for an additional $5 if they hold a morning or afternoon pass.
No passes are sold at individual houses. They must be purchased from Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, Canal and State Streets. Also buy entertainment tickets there (see below). For more information, contact: P.O. Box 347, Natchez, Miss. 39121 (800-647-6742 or 601-446-6631).
Five houses on the tour, including the Briars (where Jefferson Davis married Varina Howell in 1845), function as bed-and-breakfasts. Bookings for those and other area B&Bs are processed at 800-647-6742. Several of the major hotel and motel chains serve the area as well.
The Annual Confederate Pageant is held only in spring, but the October Pilgrimage is not without entertainment.
Amos Polk’s Voices of Hope Spiritual Singers will present a dinner program Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays during the pilgrimage at the Carriage House Restaurant on the grounds of Stanton Hall. Dining starts at 6:45 p.m., singing at 8 p.m.; the cost is $21 per person, including the meal.
At 8:30 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, pilgrims may attend the “Mississippi Medicine Show,” an old-timey vaudeville-style revue, at Natchez Little Theatre Playhouse, for $10 per person.
The Natchez Christmas Pilgrimage, Dec. 14 through 31, will include 12 historic homes. Segment passes are $15 each. Call or write the numbers above for more details on tours and entertainment.
The visitor center, most public transportation, house grounds and sidewalks are wheelchair accessible. Stairs and doorways at some historic homes may present difficulties.
