He was born to wealth, with a wife and children in a mansion on St. Charles, land from Natchez to Memphis, a man of taste and discretion, well-schooled in the ways of the world.
She was born in poverty, with a red leather trunk containing everything she owned, a woman/child knowing nothing but footlights. But, oh, how she shined.
One night she plucked out his heart and held it in her hand. For an ethereal week, he kept her in an apartment on Ursuline. Then the revue—a musical comedy, ‘In Dahomey’—swept her away to Chicago, Manhattan, London, and Paris, into the arms of others.
When he bought 24,000 acres in Boliver County the next year, he named the land for her face, radiant in the lime light, and her body, warm beside his in the morning sun.
