I did enjoy the visit. I got to poke around a few bookstores. I picked up a copy of Jacques Barzun's A Word or Two Before You Go at Crescent City Books (which does not want Google Glasses or firearms on premises). I admired the density of books at Arcadia Books, though wondering whether someday a patron or employee will be buried in an avalanche, and deciding that I didn't have suitcase room for some Pleiade volumes. I decided against a signed cop[y of The Poison Pen at Faulkner House Books. And I saw a bit of the city otherwise.
On Carondelet Street, I noticed an odd juxtaposition:
My guess is that Jesuit High School, now several miles farther from downtown, started here. But the right conspiracy buff could find much to work with.
It was my impression that the statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square is similar to but also slightly inferior to the statue in Lafayette Square in Washington; however, Wikipedia says that they are castings from the same mold. It may be that I'm used to seeing the statue from its right side, and in New Orleans I approached it from the left.. The base of the New Orleans statue has "The Union, It Must, and Will be Preserved" on two sides, which an acquaintance attributed to the Federal occupiers during the Civil War. The statue in Washington says "Our Federal Union: It Must Be Preserved", both versions of a toast Jackson gave at the Jefferson Day dinner of 1830.
Did you notice which compass direction the statue was facing? That symbolism apparently matters to people in the south.
ReplyDeleteIn the center of Lee Circle, Robert E. Lee faces north to warn off the Yankees; this implies deficient tactical judgment, for of course Farragut and the Federal fleet and troops came up the Mississippi from the Gulf. The Jackson statue faces southwest, maybe southwest by south, which I think is an aesthetic choice, for the battle of New Orleans was fought downriver, more or less to the east.
Delete"The Union, it must and will be preserved" has a more pleasing rhythm, slightly Churchillian perhaps
ReplyDeleteJackson was not Churchillian in any way I can think of, unless a willingness to give battle that verged on eagerness. In any case, history seems to agree with the Washington version.
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