Godchaux History by Laura Westbrook
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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Common Roots: The Godchaux Family in Louisiana History, Literature, and Public Folklore A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Laura Renee Westbrook Spring 2001 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3008932 Copyright 2001 by Westbrook, Laura Renee All rights reserved. ___ ® UMI UMI Microform 3008932 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Common Roots: The Godchaux Family in Louisiana History, Literature, and Public Folklore Laura Renee Westbrook APPROVED: Marcia Gaudet, Chair iseph Andriano Professor of English "Professor of English c Mary Ann Wilson Lewis Pyenson Associate Professor of English Dean, Graduate School Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Introduction iii Chapter 1 : From Alsace to America: Lion Godchot to Leon Godchaux 1 Chapter 2: The Next Generations 78 Chapter 3: “Mice in the Same Cat’s Paws”: The Short Stories o f Elma Godchaux 157 Chapter 4: Stubborn Roots 222 Chapter 5: The Story of Reserve 283 Chapter 6 : The Future o f the Godchaux Story and La Reserve 319 Bibliography 349 Timeline 369 Glossary 381 Abstract 382 Biography 383 i Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to thank: Charlotte Godchaux Fraser; Leon Godchaux II; Justine Godchaux McCarthy; Tommy Godchaux, Richard and Victoria Whitten; Dr. Marcia Gaudet, Professor of English. University of Louisiana, Lafayette; Dr. Patricia Sawin, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Curriculum in Folklore, University of North Carolina; Catherine Kahn, Archivist, Touro Infirmary; Kathy Kraft, Acting Radcliffe Archivist, Radcliffe Archives; Jonathan Flicker, Director, Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office; Dr. Dorothy Brown, Professor Emerita of English, Loyola University of New Orleans; Julia Remondet, St. John the Baptist Historical Society, Godchaux-Reserve House Historical Society; Maida Owens, interim Executive Director of the Louisiana Division of the Arts; Susan Tucker Curator of Books and Records, Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, Tulane University; Rosalee McReynolds, Special Collections Librarian, Monroe Library, Loyola University of New Orleans; Dr. Bobbie Malone, Director, Office of School Services, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Dr. Christina Vella, Adjunct Professor of History, Tulane University; Dr. Mark Greenberg, Resident Historian, and Susan Goldberg, Registrar, Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience; and, of course, my family. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Common Roots: The Godchaux Family in Louisiana History, Literature, and Public Folklore Introduction This dissertation was bom of a reading of the book Louisiana Women Writers by Dorothy H. Brown and Barbara C. Ewell. This book, comprising a collection of scholarly essays and a bibliography, included an interesting bibliographic entry for a writer named Elma Godchaux (1896-1941), who had been highly recognized in her own time, winning the prestigious O. Henry Memorial Award Prize of 1936 for one of her short stories. Three of her stories were included in important anthologies that were published in 1935, 1937, 1940, 1953, and 1986. The biographical information was intriguingly scant: Bom in Napoleonville, Louisiana. Daughter of Edward (planter) and Ophelia Gumbel Godchaux. Educated at Radcliffe College. Married Walter Kahn; divorced; one daughter. Died in New Orleans, April 3, 1941. Novelist; short story writer. (264) A writer who has had neither a wide influence nor a place in histories of American literature, Godchaux was highly regarded in her own lifetime among her own formidable circle. Like idiosyncratic women writers of her general time period, she is not mentioned, and was probably never read, by Richard Chase or Leslie Fiedler, or even by Malcolm Bradbury, Ellen Moers, or the major rediscoverers of neglected women’s literature. The lack of available printed information about this presumably talented author, who had clearly spent at least some of her time in my own hometown of New Orleans, enticed me to read Godchaux’s works and to investigate the life of this seemingly forgotten woman. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As luck would have it, the Godchaux family was closer to me than imagined. Not only did Elma Godchaux grow up on St. Charles Avenue near my own Uptown address, but I had shopped as a girl in her family’s popular department store. My first grown-up coat and first dancing gown carried Godchaux’s labels. My family had baked with sugar packaged in the familiar red, white, and blue Godchaux’s Sugar bags. Godchaux’s novel, Stubborn Roots, contains a host of references to Louisiana history and folk traditions. Personal interviews with Elma Godchaux’s daughter, Lady Charlotte Fraser of London, disclosed that the novel is based on Elma’s personal experiences and on the life of Elma’s father, Edward Godchaux. This assertion is supported by the inscription in the University of Louisiana’s copy of the novel, written by Leon Gumbel Godchaux at the time of its donation, stating that the novel presents “a true picture” of life on a southern sugar plantation as it was experienced by his family. By Elma’s own account, Edward was the most important adult in her life. Further interviews with Elma’s first cousin Justine McCarthy and friend Dick Whitten revealed that the novel’s male protagonist shares some life experiences with Elma’s grandfather Leon Godchaux. The paucity of information about Leon Godchaux was baffling. Accounts of important people in Louisiana history contain few references to a man who was known in his own time as ‘The Sugar King of Louisiana.” Research has made it clear that Leon Godchaux’s contributions to his adopted country and state are significant. Additionally, he seems to have been an exceptional man in both a business and a personal sense. His influence on his own children and grandchildren has been demonstrably profound. Elma Godchaux has, in her literature, blended the lives of her ancestors with her own memories and observations to produce fiction that is both distinctive and evocative of the iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. place and period in which she lived. Though she grew up in “the big house,” Elma Godchaux’s sympathies are clearly with the struggling and the powerless. A child of privilege, she was able to gain perspective on the South in which she was raised during her education at Wellesley and Radcliffe, and the following eleven years in New York City. Godchaux believed that she was destined to be a writer, and her family connections make this ambition understandable. The Godchauxs of New Orleans were a highly literate and artistic family who counted many of the most highly regarded writers and artists of their time among their acquaintance. Elma began writing as a child, and as a young woman was welcomed to spend time with those writers that brought about the richest period in Louisiana literary history, the “southern renascence.” As a college student she studied under two of the most highly regarded literature professors in the country, and her years in New York helped her to solidify her friendships