Feast of All Saints: My Obsession With Anne Rice’s Novel

1 – Where Marcel Runs Into Juliette

One morning in New Orleans, in that part of the Rue Ste. Anne before it crosses the Conde and becomes the lower boundary of the Place d’Armes, a young boy who had been running full tilt down the middle of the street stopped suddenly….. p 11

This was the street in which he lived, though he was blocks from home, and the woman lived on it also. P 11

…as he hurried across the Rue Conde after the woman…. P 12

It took me forever to figure out where the Rue Conde was. I thought, for a long time, that it was the Rue Conti, but then I went and dug up some history. The current street is Rue Chartres, but back in the day, as the Rue Chartres passes the St. Louis Cathedral, it used to turn into the Rue Conde.  Boy did I feel stupid. So where Marcel is, at that exact moment, is at what is now the corner of the Rue St. Anne, and the Rue Chartres. I don’t know which corner, seeing as I could never figure out where Marcel’s old school is, but if he came from a westernly direction, then I assume it was the SW corner. The lower boundary, I figured out, is the “downriver” edge of the Place D’Arms, that is to say, the eastern edge of it, the direction to which the river is flowing.

2 – Ste. Marie Cottage

…and the sight of his carriage listing in the narrow Rue Ste. Anne before the Ste. Marie cottage was somewhat regular…. P 13

The Ste. Marie cottage gleamed with respectability beyond its short fence and dense banana trees, a sprawl of magnolia limbs over its pitched roof…. P 14

Lights twinkled beyond, through the thick forest of oak and cypress that rose behind the garconniere, a swamp like growth that divided all the cottages of the Rue Ste. Anne from those of the Rue Dumaine…. P 53

The fenced garden of the Ste. Marie cottage was a swamp…(when it rained) pg. 71

…a row of airy crepe myrtle trees separated this small court from the path to the back outbuilding where Anna Bella lived…. Pg 196 (Marcel sits looking out the window of his garconnaiere.)

“The hell she is…” and Cecile…and barely lifting her majestic skirts she marched toward the boardinghouse at the end of the block…. Pg 212 (Marcel goes home when the Englishman is very sick and tells his mother that Mdme. Elsie wants Anna Bella home, and not looking after the Englishman.)

From this we can conclude that the St. Marie cottage is on the Rue St. Anne. That the cottage faces the Rue St. Anne with its back to the backs of the dwellings on the Rue Dumaine – which means that the St. Marie cottage is on the east side of the street.  That a row of trees separates the St. Marie cottage from the boardinghouse where Anna Bella Munroe lives and works. And that the boarding house is at the end of the block, so the St. Marie cottage is one dwelling over from the end of the block.

(Sadly there is no garden with lakes of puddles in the rainy season, though over the roof line you can see a hint of the  garçonnière, which is where Marcel would reside.)

3 – Anna Bella Monroe’s Boarding House

There’s a boarding house in the Rue Ste. Anne……you know the place, right near the Rue Burgundy…Pg 140.

The man heard a voiced saying this is just near the Ste. Marie cottage….pg 141

…as they passed the Ste. Marie cottage …pg 142 (on the way from Dolly Rose’s to the Boardinghouse)

This tells me that the boarding house is on the Rue St. Anne. Being “just near” means to me that it is right next door. Since the St. Marie cottage backs up to the Rue Dumaine, then the boarding house does too. And, if you were walking to Dolly Rose’s house from the boarding house, you would pass the St. Marie cottage.

(It doesn’t much look like a boarding house; certainly it’s not big enough to house any gentleman. Nor does it have trees and a garden separating it from the St. Marie Cottage. But the book says it’s right next door so here you go!)

4 – The Cathedral

….he had appeared in the rear pew of the Cathedral, staring at every detail….p 13

The cathedral is pretty easy to spot, so I went inside and took some photos!

5 – The Place d’Armes

…he would wander the Place d’Armes….p 14

The Place d’Armes is right where it always has been, though historical photographs show it as being without that fence around it. I took pictures of this too.

6 – Juliette Mercier’s House and Christophe’s School

Juliette’s house has “stained walls” and “weathered blinds” , the stained walls are plastered brick …Pg 39

Juliette’s house has three stories…P 39

How dare she retreat in her listing mansion on the corner of Ste. Anne and Dauphine and nail boards over the windows….P 15

…as he led Marcel, quite to his surprise, down the Rue Dumaine to meet madame Dolly Rose…. Pg 189

Since both Juliette and Marcel live on the same street, the Rue St. Anne, I walked up and down it quite a bit. Her house is, obviously, on the corner where Rue St. Anne crosses the Rue Duphine, but which corner? I looked at all the buildings (already having gotten a sense that there wouldn’t be a brick-for-brick match of Ms. Rice’s description) and made my best guess, based on the idea of something tall, with plastered brick, looking weathered, and that you would, if you went from Juliette’s house to Dolly Rose’s house, go down the Rue Dumaine (down being towards the river, I thought).

(Alas, no house at this particular corner has three stories. However, there was a street a little down the way on Rue Daphine, that had three stories and looked decrepit! I’ll include it here.)

7 – Lermontant House

…remark that they might walk home afterward in the same way…. P 81

Their new Spanish style house in the Rue St. Louis had large lacquered double doors and at night through the floating lace curtains one could glimpse a spectacle of gaslight.” P 119

His immense house in the Rue St. Louis… pg 153

Blast the Lermontants and their stupid, stupid house with its stupid lacquered double doors! There were hardly any double doors, lacquered or otherwise, on the Rue St. Louis. And how am I supposed to know what a Spanish style house is? Are we talking classic Spanish, as in from Spain? Or are we talking the New Mexico adobe concept? In the end, I took some wild ass guesses, and lots of photos, and just hoped I had it right. On my last day in New Orleans, I came across this historical house (no time to take a tour!) that somehow fit all of the descriptors, the Hermann-Grima House. I don’t know if it had lacquered doors or not, but it certainly seemed grand enough and large enough for the toweringly tall Lermontants.

8 – Larmontant Undertakers Shop

And over the door of the prosperous establishment in the Rue Royale hung the name of the white man who had freed the long dead Jean Baptists: Lermontant…. P 29

Marie goes along the Rue Royale and ends up in front of the St. Louis Hotel…Pp 117).

Monsieur Rudolphe says “come across to the shop, out of this heat, at once.” P 118

…followed his father across the Rue Royale and into the undertaker’s shop…. P 119  (Indicates that the Lermondant Undertaker Shop is across the street from the St. Louis Hotel. )

A lot of what I learned about the location of the undertaker’s shop is from Marie St. Marie’s walk to and from the office of The Notary Monsieur Jacquemine. On the way home from a dreadful errand, she goes past the Hotel St. Louis, has a fainting fit, and is rescued by Richard and his father Monsieur Rudolphe. They both invite her to step across the street, where the undertaker’s shop is, where she can rest, catch her breath, get some water, get out of the heat.  Only problem is, I couldn’t find a single record of the St. Louis Hotel on the Rue Royale, not even a historical reference. :::sigh::: There is a St. Louis Hotel on the Rue Bienville, now sadly defunct. I’m also assuming that the undertaker’s shop is not a far throw from the Spanish style house on Rue St. Louis – but seriously. With all the other buildings matching up so well, and Ms. Rice has to go throw in this wooden shoe? There was no referent at all, so I picked the most likely looking building for the undertaker’s shop and called it good. Monsieur Rudolphe would call it sloppy!

9 – Jean Jaques Shop

Is on the Rue Burbon p ??? (Can’t find my notes, but I’m pretty sure it’s in there.)

His doors lay open to the bustling street, and the potbellied stove showed a heap of red coals behind him… pg 56

A sheet of water still lay at the corner of the Rue Burbon and the Rue Ste. Anne…Ppg 72 (assume that Marcel can see the corner from the front door of Jean Jaques’ shop)

Jean Jaques is the unwitting deus ex machina in this story; it is he who gets Marcel to thinking about who he is and what kind of man he wants to become. I took it that the shop is on the Rue Burbon, and older building, nothing very fancy, because Jean Jaques wouldn’t have wanted anything fancy. So while I felt I had a good idea that it was near or at the corner of the Rue Burbon and the Rue St. Anne, I didn’t have anything to go on from the novel besides that.  So I did my best and came up with this little gem.

10 – Dolly Rose’s House

...So walking up the Rue Dumaine in the twilight… pg 131

But when he reached the block where Dolly Rose lived…p 132

…it was only three blocks to her house (three blocks from the Cathedral to the Rue Dumaine where Dolly Rose’s house is) p 182

Dolly Rose is such an interesting character; she’s nobody’s baby, and makes her own decisions, good and bad, and in the end is Marie St. Marie’s saviour. Also, Christophe hisses at Marcel that there is no man alive who can measure up to what Dolly Rose is – she’s worth ten of anybody!! So that probably influenced my opinion of her a bit. At any rate, her house is three blocks from the Cathedral, and I think I’ve lost some notes, but to get there you walk down from Juliette’s house on the Rue Dumaine, or up the Rue Dumaine from the cathedral, so I’m assuming that down is toward the river and up is away from it. (Also, downriver is east, and upriver – the direction from which the water flows – is west, at least on this map.)

(Something I recall when I read about Dolly Rose’s House was the fact that she had balconies from which to toss down the cast offs of lovers she’d dismissed from her presence. Either one of these houses would do!)

The Aunt’s Dress Shop

And with Cecile’s help veritably renovated their dress shop in the Rue Burbon and the long flat in which they lived, above…. P 55

I didn’t go looking for this one, since the only thing I know is that it’s on the Rue Burbon (the infamous Burbon Street, which was one long, continuous block party)

The Notary Monsieur Jacquemine

…in the Rue Royale….pg 90

The notary is located in the Rue Royale, and Marie St. Marie has to walk past the undertaker’s shop (assumed by me to be near the intersection of the Rue Royale and Rue St. Louis), so I’m assuming that the notary’s is west (upriver) from the undertaker’s on the Rue Royale. Since there was no other reference for this, I didn’t go get photos.
Madame Lelaud’s

The Bar Where Marcel Hangs Out

A smoky cabaret along the waterfront…. Pg 148

This is where Marcel goes when he’s being naughty. I had no luck finding this one at all! All the dilapidated buildings are long gone. I did take some pictures of the Market, which was jolly and festive, in spite of its history of being a slave market.