(It is interesting to note that Stella was worth hundreds of millions of dollars at this time. Carlotta had four different fabulous trust funds in her own right. It is possible that Carlotta was offended by excess. In fact, numerous people have indicated that that was the case.)
Late that year, the first of a series of mysterious social events occurred. What the family legends have told us is that Stella sought out certain Mayfair cousins and brought them together for "an interesting evening" in which they were to discuss family history, and the family's unique "psychic gifts." Some said a seance was held at First Street, others that voodoo was involved.
(Servant gossip was rife with stories of Stella's involvement with voodoo. Stella told several of her friends that she knew all about voodoo. She had colored relations in the Quarter who told her all about it.)
That many cousins did not understand the reason for this get-together, that they did not take the talk of voodoo seriously and resented being snubbed, was plainly obvious.
Indeed, the meeting sent veritable shock waves through the family. Why was Stella bothering to dig into genealogies and to call this and that cousin whom nobody had seen of late, when she did not even have the courtesy to call those who had known and loved Mary Beth so much? The doors at First Street had always been open to everyone; now Stella was picking and choosing, Stella who didn't bother to attend school graduations, or to send presents to christenings and weddings, Stella who behaved like "a perfect you know what."
It was argued that Lionel agreed with the cousins, that he thought Stella was going too far. Holding family get-togethers was extremely important, and one descendant told us later that Lionel had complained bitterly to his Uncle Barclay that things were never going to be the same, now that his mother was gone.
But for all the gossip, we have been unable to find out who attended this strange evening affair, except that we know Lionel was in attendance, and that Cortland and his son Pierce were also there. (Pierce was only seventeen at the time and a student at the Jesuits. He had already been accepted to Harvard.)
We know also from family gossip that the gathering lasted all night, and that some time before it was over Lionel "left in disgust." Cousins who attended and would say nothing of what happened were much criticized by the others. Society gossip, filtered through Dandrich, thought it was Stella playing on her "black magic past" and that it was all a big game.
Several gatherings like it followed, but these were deliberately shrouded in secrecy with all parties being sworn to divulge nothing of what went on.
Legal gossip spoke of Carlotta Mayfair arguing with Cortland about these affairs, and about wanting to get little Antha and little Nancy out of the house. Stella wouldn't agree to a boarding school for Antha and "everybody knew it."
Lionel meantime was having fights with Stella. An anonymous person called one of our private eyes who had let it be known that he was interested in gossip pertaining to the family, and told him that Stella and Lionel had had a row in a downtown restaurant and that Lionel had walked out.
Dandrich quickly reported similar stories. Lionel and Stella were fighting. Was there at last another man?
When the investigator began to ask about the matter, he discovered it was well-known about town that the family was in the midst of a battle over little Antha. Stella was threatening to go away to Europe again with her daughter, and was begging Lionel to go with her, while Carlotta was ordering Lionel not to go.
Meantime Lionel began to appear at Mass at the St. Louis Cathedral with one of the downtown cousins, a great-niece of Suzette Mayfair named Claire Mayfair, whose family lived in a beautiful old house on Esplanade Avenue owned by descendants to this day. Dandrich insists this caused considerable talk.
Servant gossip told of countless family quarrels. Doors were being slammed. People were screaming.
Carlotta forbid further "voodoo gatherings." Stella told Carlotta to get out of the house.
"Nothing's the same without Mother," said Lionel. "It started to fall apart when Julien died, but without Mother it's impossible. Carlotta and Stella are oil and water in that house."
It does seem to have been entirely Carlotta's doing that Antha and Nancy ever went to any school. Indeed, the few school records we have been able to examine with regard to Antha indicate that Carlotta enrolled her and attended the subsequent meetings at which she was asked to take Antha out of the school.
Antha was by all accounts completely unsuited for school.
By 1928, Antha had already been sent home from St. Alphonsus.
Sister Bridget Marie, who remembers Antha perhaps as well as she remembers Stella, tells very much the same stories about her as she told about her mother. But her testimony regarding this entire period and its various developments is worth quoting in full. This is what she told me in 1969.
"The invisible friend was always with Antha. She would turn and talk to him in a whisper as if no one else were there. Of course he told her the answers when she didn't know them. All the sisters knew it was going on.
"And if you want to hear the worst part of it, some of the children saw him with their very eyes. I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't been so many; but when four children all tell you the same story, and each of them is afraid, and worried, and the parents are worried, well, then what can you do but believe?
"It was in the school yard that they would see him. Now, I told you the girl was shy. Well, she'd go over to the far brick wall at the back, and there she'd sit and read her book in a little patch of sun coming through the trees. And soon he would be there with her. A man, they said he was, can you imagine? And you ask me do I know the meaning of the words, 'the man'?
"Ah, you see, it was a shock to everyone when it came out that he was a full-grown man. For they thought he was a little child before that, or some sort of child spirit, if you follow me now. But then it was a man, a tall dark-haired man. And that really set everyone to talking. That it was a man.
"No, I never did see him. None of the sisters saw him. But the children saw him. And the children told Father Lafferty. I told Father Lafferty. And he was the one that called Carlotta Mayfair and said, 'You have to take her out of school.'
"Now I don't criticize the priests, no, never. But I will say this. Father Lafferty wasn't a man you could buy with a big donation to the church, and he said, 'Miss Carlotta, you've got to take her out of school.'
"No use calling up Stella by that time. Everyone knew Stella was practicing witchcraft. She went down to the French Quarter and bought the black candles for her voodoo, and do you know, she was bringing the other Mayfairs into it? Yes, she was doing it. I heard it a long time after, that she had gone to look for the other cousins who were witches and she had told them all to come up to the house.
"It was a seance they had in that house. They lighted black candles and they burned incense and they sang songs to the devil, and they asked that their ancestors appear. That's what I heard happened. I can't tell you where I heard it. But I heard it. And I believe it, too."
In the summer of 1928, Pierce Mayfair, Cortland's son, canceled his plans to go to Harvard, and decided to go to Tulane University, though his father and his uncles were dead against it. Pierce had been to all of Stella's secret parties, reported Dandrich, and the two were beginning to be linked by the gossips, and Pierce was not yet eighteen.
By the end of 1928, legal gossip indicated that Carlotta had declared that Stella was an unfit mother, and somebody ought to take her child away from her "in court." Cortland denied such rumors to his friends. But everybody knew it was "coming to that," said Dandrich. Legal gossip told of family meetings at which Carlotta demanded that the Mayfair brothers stand by her.
Meantime, Stella and Pierce were running around day and night together, with little Antha often in tow. Stella bought dolls for little Antha incessantly. She took her to breakfast every morning at a different hotel in the French Quarter. Pierce went with Stella to purchase a building on Decatur
Street which Stella meant to turn into a studio where she could be alone.
"Let Millie Dear and Belle have that house and Carlotta," Stella told the real estate agent. Pierce laughed at everything Stella said. Antha, a thin seven-year-old with porcelain skin and soft blue eyes, stood about clutching a giant teddy bear. They all went to lunch together, including the real estate agent, who told Dandrich later, "She is charming, absolutely charming. I think those people up on First Street are merely too gloomy for her."
As for Nancy Mayfair, the dumpy little girl adopted at birth by Mary Beth and introduced to everyone as Antha's sister, Stella paid no attention to her at all. One Mayfair descendant says bitterly that Nancy was no more than "a pet" to Stella. But there is no evidence of Stella's ever being mean to Nancy. Indeed, she charged truckloads of clothes and toys for Nancy. But Nancy seems to have been a generally unresponsive and sullen little girl.
Meantime Carlotta alone took Antha and Nancy to Mass on Sundays, and it was Carlotta who saw that Nancy went to the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
In 1928, gossip had it that Carlotta Mayfair had taken the shocking legal step of trying to gain custody of Antha, with a view, apparently, to sending her away to school. Certain papers had been signed and filed.
Cortland was horrified that Carlotta would take things so far. At last Cortland, who had been on friendly terms with Carlotta until this juncture, threatened to oppose her legally if she did not drop the matter out of hand. Barclay, Garland, and young Sheffield and other members of the family agreed to go along with Cortland. Nobody was going to take Stella to court and take her child away from her while Cortland was alive.