The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life

by George Washington Cable, Michael Kreyling (Introduction)

Overview

Setting forth formidable arguments for racial equality, Cable’s novel of feuding Creole families in early nineteenth-century New Orleans blends post–Civil War social dissent and Romanticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140433227
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/28/1988
Series:	Brown Thrasher Books Series
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.81(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born in New Orleans in 1844, George Washington Cable began his writing career as a columnist and reporter for local newspapers. A talent scout from Scribner’s Monthly “discovered” the writer, and the nation’s appetite for the exotic scenes and characters of the remnants of Creole civilization helped to make him popular. His first collection of Creole tales, Old Creole Days, was hailed as the equal of Hawthorne’s tales of New England; Cable's first novel, The Grandissimes, was constantly in print during his lifetime. He died in 1925.

Michael Kreyling is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches Southern literature and American literature. He has written two books: a study of the fiction of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty’s Achievement of Order, and a literary-cultural study of Southern fiction from the 1820s to the 1970s, Figures of the Hero in Southern Narrative.

Table of Contents

I.	Masked Batteries	1
II.	The Fate of the Immigrant	11
III.	"And who is my Neighbor?"	20
IV.	Family Trees	23
V.	A Maiden who will not Marry	34
VI.	Lost Opportunities	41
VII.	Was it Honore Grandissime?	46
VIII.	Signed--Honore Grandissime	55
IX.	Illustrating the Tractive Power of Basil	58
X.	"Oo dad is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"	67
XI.	Sudden Flashes of Light	72
XII.	The Philosophe	76
XIII.	A Call from the Rent-Spectre	83
XIV.	Before Sunset	94
XV.	Rolled in the Dust	104
XVI.	Starlight in the rue Chartres	123
XVII.	That Night	128
XVIII.	New Light upon Dark Places	143
XIX.	Art and Commerce	156
XX.	A very Natural Mistake	166
XXI.	Doctor Keene Recovers his Bullet	177
XXII.	Wars within the Breast	181
XXIII.	Frowenfeld Keeps his Appointment	187
XXIV.	Frowenfeld Makes an Argument	192
XXV.	Aurora as a Historian	204
XXVI.	A Ride and a Rescue	208
XXVII.	The Fete de Grandpere	221
XXVIII.	The Story of Bras-Coupe	240
XXIX.	The Story of Bras-Coupe, Continued	262
XXX.	Paralysis	281
XXXI.	Another Wound in a New Place	288
XXXII.	Interrupted Preliminaries	293
XXXIII.	Unkindest Cut of All	296
XXXIV.	Clotilde as a Surgeon	299
XXXV.	"Fo' wad you Cryne?"	305
XXXVI.	Aurora's Last Picayune	310
XXXVII.	Honore Makes some Confessions	316
XXXVIII.	Tests of Friendship	325
XXXIX.	Louisiana States her Wants	337
XL.	Frowenfeld Finds Sylvestre	343
XLI.	To Come to the Point	352
XLII.	An Inheritance of Wrong	361
XLIII.	The Eagle Visits the Doves in their Nest	369
XLIV.	Bad for Charlie Keene	384
XLV.	More Reparation	386
XLVI.	The Pique-en-terre Loses One of her Crew	390
XLVII.	The News	401
XLVIII.	An Indignant Family and a Smashed Shop	403
XLIX.	Over the New Store	414
L.	A Proposal of Marriage	419
LI.	Business Changes	426
LII.	Love Lies-a-Bleeding	431
LIII.	Frowenfeld at the Grandissime Mansion	438
LIV.	"Cauldron Bubble"	446
LV.	Caught	449
LVI.	Blood for a Blow	457
LVII.	Voudou Cured	464
LVIII.	Dying Words	470
LIX.	Where some Creole Money Goes	477
LX.	"All Right"	481
LXI.	"No!"	486
	Photogravures
	"They paused a little within the obscurity of the corridor, and just to reassure themselves that everything was 'all right'"
	"She looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted her own mask a little, and then a little more; and then shut it quickly"	10
	"The daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in many-colored robes of shining feathers crossed and recrossed with girdles of serpent-skins and of wampum"	11
	"Aurora,--alas! alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon the candle's flame"	102
	"The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting"	103