by Anne Rice
This brings to a conclusion the story of Petyr’s investigation of the Mayfair Witches, who can reliably be considered Petyr’s descendants on the basis of his reports. The story continues … Please go to Part V.
Seventeen
THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART V
The Mayfair Family from 1689 to 1900
Narrative Abstract by Aaron Lightner
After Petyr’s death, it was the decision of Stefan Franck that no further direct contact with the Mayfair Witches would be attempted in his lifetime. This judgment was upheld by his successors, Martin Geller and Richard Kramer, respectively.
Though numerous members petitioned the order to allow them to attempt contact, the decision of the governing board was always unanimously against it, and the cautionary ban remained in effect into the twentieth century.
However, the order continued its investigation of the Mayfair Witches from afar. Information was frequently sought from people in the colony who never knew the reason for the inquiry, or the meaning of the information which they sent on.
RESEARCH METHODS
The Talamasca, during these centuries, was developing an entire network of “observers” worldwide who forwarded newspaper clippings and gossip back to the Motherhouse. And in Saint-Domingue several people were relied upon for such information, including Dutch merchants who thought the inquiries of a strictly financial nature, and various persons in the colony who were told only that people in Europe would pay dearly for information regarding the Mayfair family. No professional investigators, comparable to the twentieth century “private eye,” existed at this time. Yet an amazing amount of information was gathered.
Notes to the archives were brief and often hurried, sometimes no more than a small introduction to the material being transcribed.
Information about the Mayfair legacy was obtained surreptitiously and probably illegally through people in the banks involved who were bribed into revealing it. The Talamasca has always used such means to acquire information and was only a little less unscrupulous than it is now in years past. The standard excuse was then, and is today, that the records obtained in this manner are usually seen by scores of people in various capacities. Never were private letters purloined, or persons’ homes or businesses violated in criminal fashion.
Paintings of the plantation house and of various members of the family were obtained through various means. One portrait of Jeanne Louise Mayfair was obtained from a disgruntled painter after the lady had rejected the work. A daguerreotype of Katherine and her husband, Darcy Monahan, was obtained in similar fashion, as the family bought only five of the ten different pictures attempted at that sitting.
There was evidence from time to time that the Mayfairs knew of our existence and of our observations. At least one observer-a Frenchman who worked for a time as an overseer on the Mayfair plantation in Saint-Domingue-met with a suspicious and violent death. This led to greater secrecy and greater care, and less information in the years that followed.
The bulk of the original material is very fragile. Numerous photocopies and photographs of the materials have been made, however, and this work continues with painstaking care.
THE NARRATIVE YOU ARE NOW READING
The history which follows is a narrative abstract based upon all of the collected materials and notes, including several earlier fragmentary narratives in French and in Latin, and in Talamasca Latin. A full inventory of these materials is attached to the documents boxes in the Archives in London.
I began familiarizing myself with this history in 1945 when I first became a member of the Talamasca, and before I was ever directly involved with the Mayfair Witches. I finished the first “complete version” of this material in 1956. I have updated, revised and added to the material continuously ever since. The full revision was done by me in 1979 when the entire history, including Petyr van Abel’s reports, was entered into the computer system of the Talamasca. It has been extremely easy to fully update the material ever since.
I did not become directly involved with the Mayfair Witches until the year 1958. I shall introduce myself at the appropriate time.
Aaron Lightner, January 1989
THE HISTORY CONTINUES
Charlotte Mayfair Fontenay lived to be almost seventy-six years old, dying in 1743, at which time she had five children and seventeen grandchildren. Maye Faire remained throughout her lifetime the most prosperous plantation in Saint-Domingue. Several of her grandchildren returned to France, and their descendants perished in the Revolution at the end of the century.
Charlotte’s firstborn, by her husband Antoine, did not inherit his father’s disability, but grew up to be healthy, to marry, and to have seven children. However, the plantation called Maye Faire passed to him only in name. It was in fact inherited by Charlotte’s daughter Jeanne Louise, who was born nine months after Petyr’s death.
All his life Antoine Fontenay III deferred to Jeanne Louise and to her twin brother, Peter, who was never called by the French version of that name, Pierre. There is little doubt that these were the children of Petyr van Abel. Both Jeanne Louise and Peter were fair of complexion, with light brown hair and pale eyes.
Charlotte gave birth to two more boys before the death of her crippled husband. The gossip in the colonies named two different individuals as the fathers. Both these boys grew to manhood and emigrated to France. They used the name Fontenay.
Jeanne Louise went only by the name of Mayfair on all official documents, and though she married young to a dissolute and drunken husband, her lifelong companion was her brother, Peter, who never married. He died only hours before Jeanne Louise, in 1771. No one questioned the legality of her using the name Mayfair, but accepted her word that it was a family custom. Later, her only daughter, Angélique, was to do the same thing.
Charlotte wore the emerald necklace given her by her mother until she died. Thereafter Jeanne Louise wore it, and passed it on to her fifth child, Angélique, who was born in 1725. By the time this daughter was born, Jeanne Louise’s husband was mad and confined to “a small house” on the property, which from all descriptions seems to be the house in which Petyr was imprisoned years before.
It is doubtful that this man was the father of Angélique. And it seems reasonable, though by no means certain, that Angélique was the child of Jeanne Louise and her brother Peter.
Angélique called Peter her “Papa” in front of everyone, and it was said among the servants that she believed Peter was her father as she had never known the madman in the outbuilding, who was chained in his last years rather like a wild beast. It should be noted that the treatment of this madman was not considered cruel or unusual by those who knew the family.
It was also rumored that Jeanne Louise and Peter shared a suite of connecting bedrooms and parlors added to the old plantation house shortly after Jeanne Louise’s marriage.
Whatever gossip circulated about the secret habits of the family, Jeanne Louise wielded the same power over everyone that Charlotte had wielded, maintaining a hold upon her slaves through immense generosity and personal attention in an era that was famed for quite the opposite.
Jeanne Louise is described as an exceptionally beautiful woman, much admired and much sought after. She was never described as evil, sinister, or a witch. Those whom the Talamasca contacted during Jeanne Louise’s lifetime knew nothing of the family’s European origins.
Runaway slaves frequently came to Jeanne Louise to implore her intervention with a cruel master or mistress. She often bought such unfortunates, binding them to her with a fierce loyalty. She was a law unto herself at Maye Faire, and did execute more than one slave for treachery. However, the goodwill of her slaves towards her was well known.
Angélique was Jeanne Louise’s favorite child, and Angélique was devoted to her grandmother, Charlotte, and was with the old woman when she died.
A fierce storm surrounded Maye Faire on the night of Charlotte’s death, which did not abate til
l early morning, at which time one of Angélique’s brothers was found dead.
Angélique married a very handsome and rich planter by the name of Vincent St. Christophe in the year 1755, giving birth five years later to Marie Claudette Mayfair, who later married Henri Marie Landry and was the first of the Mayfair witches to come to Louisiana. Angélique also had two sons, one of whom died in childhood, and the second of whom, Lestan, lived into old age.
Every evidence indicates that Angélique loved Vincent St. Christophe and was faithful to him all their lives. Marie Claudette was also devoted to him and there seems no question that he was her father.
The pictures which we possess of Angélique show her to be not as beautiful as either her mother or her daughter, her features being smaller and her eyes being smaller. But she was nevertheless extremely attractive, with very curly dark brown hair, and was thought of as a beauty in her prime.
Marie Claudette was exceptionally beautiful, strongly resembling her handsome father Vincent St. Christophe as much as her mother. She had very dark hair and blue eyes, and was extremely small and delicate. Her husband, Henri Marie Landry, was also a good-looking man. In fact, it was said of the family by that time that they always married for beauty, and never for money or for love.
Vincent St. Christophe was a sweet, gentle soul who liked to paint pictures and play the guitar. He spent much time on a small lake built for him on the plantation, making up songs which he would later sing to Angélique. After his death Angélique had several lovers, but refused to remarry. This too was a pattern with the Mayfair women; they usually married once only, or only once with any success.
What characterizes the family through the lifetimes of Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, Angélique, and Marie Claudette is respectability, wealth, and power. Mayfair wealth was legendary within the Caribbean world, and those who entered into disputes with the Mayfairs met with violence often enough for there to be talk of it. It was said to be “unlucky” to fight with the Mayfair family.
The slaves regarded Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, Angélique, and Marie Claudette as powerful sorceresses. They came to them for the curing of illnesses; and they believed that their mistresses “knew” everything.
But there is scant evidence that anyone other than the slaves took these stories seriously. Or that the Mayfair Witches aroused either suspicion or “irrational” fear among their peers. The preeminence of the family remained completely unchallenged. People vied for invitations to Maye Faire. The family entertained often and lavishly. Both the men and the women were much sought after in the marriage market.
How much other members of the family understood about the power of the witches is uncertain. Angélique had both a brother and a sister who emigrated to France, and another brother, Maurice, who remained at home, having two sons-Louis-Pierre and Martin-who also married and remained part of the Saint-Domingue family. They later went to Louisiana with Marie Claudette. Maurice and his sons went by the name of Mayfair, as do their descendants in Louisiana to the present day.
Of Angélique’s six children, two girls died early, and two boys emigrated to France, the other, Lestan, going to Louisiana with his sister Marie Claudette.
The men of the family never attempted to claim the plantation or to control the money, though under French law they were entitled to do both. On the contrary, they tended to accept the dominance of the chosen women; and financial records as well as gossip indicate that they were enormously wealthy men.
Perhaps some compensation was paid to them for their submissiveness. Or perhaps they were accepting by nature. No tales of rebellion or quarrels have been passed on. The brother of Angélique who died during the storm on the night of Charlotte’s death was a young boy said to be kindly and acquiescent by nature. Her brother Maurice was known to be an agreeable, likable man, who participated in the management of the plantation.
Several descendants of those who emigrated to France during the 1700s were executed in the French Revolution. None of those emigrating before 1770 used the name Mayfair. And the Talamasca has lost track of these various lines.
During this entire period the family was Catholic. It supported the Catholic church in Saint-Domingue, and one son of Pierre Fontenay, Charlotte’s brother-in-law, became a priest. Two women in the family became Carmelite nuns. One was executed in the French Revolution, along with all the members of her community.
The money of the colonial family, during all these years as their coffee and sugar and tobacco poured into Europe and into North America, was frequently deposited in foreign banks. The degree of wealth was enormous even for the multimillionaires of Hispaniola, and the family seems always to have possessed quite fantastic amounts of gold and jewels. This is not at all typical of a planter family, whose fortunes are generally connected with the land and easily subject to ruin.
As a consequence the Mayfair family survived the Haitian revolution with enormous wealth, though all of its land holdings on the island were irretrievably lost.
It was Marie Claudette, who established the Mayfair legacy in 1789, right before the revolution that forced the family to leave Saint-Domingue. Her parents were by that time dead. The legacy was later enhanced and refined by Marie Claudette after she was settled in Louisiana, at which time she shifted a great portion of her money from banks in Holland and Rome to banks in London and in New York.
THE LEGACY
The legacy is an immensely complicated and quasi-legal series of arrangements, made largely through the banks holding the money, which establishes a fortune that cannot be manipulated by any one country’s inheritance laws. Essentially it conserves the bulk of the Mayfair money and property in the hands of one person in each generation, this heir to the fortune being designated by the living beneficiary, except that should the beneficiary die without making the designation, the money goes to her eldest daughter. Only if there is no living female descendant will the legacy go to a man. However, the beneficiary may designate a male, if she chooses.
To the knowledge of the Talamasca, the beneficiary of the legacy has never died without designating an heir, and the legacy has never passed to a male child. Rowan Mayfair, the youngest living Mayfair Witch, was designated at birth by her mother Deirdre, who was designated at birth by Antha, who was designated by Stella, and so forth and so on.
However, there have been times in the history of the family when the designee has been changed. For example, Marie Claudette designated her first daughter, Claire Marie, and then later changed this designation to Marguerite, her third child, and there is no evidence that Claire Marie ever knew that she was designated, though Marguerite knew she was the heiress long before Marie Claudette’s death.
The legacy also provides enormous benefits for the beneficiary’s other children (the siblings of the heir) in each generation, the amount for women usually being twice that given to the men. However, no member of the family could inherit from the legacy unless he or she used the name Mayfair publicly and privately. Where laws prohibited the heir from using the name legally, it was nevertheless used customarily, and never legally challenged.
This served to keep alive the name of Mayfair well into the present century. And in numerous instances, members of the family passed the rule on to their descendants along with their fortunes, though nothing legally required them to do so, once they were one step removed from the original legacy.
The original legacy also contains complex provisions for destitute Mayfairs claiming assistance, as long as they have always used the name Mayfair and are descended from those who used it. The beneficiary may also leave up to ten percent of the legacy to other “Mayfairs” who are not her children, but once more, the name Mayfair must be in active use by such a person or the provisions of the will are null and void.
In the twentieth century, numerous “cousins” have received money from the legacy, primarily through Mary Beth Mayfair, and her daughter Stella, but some also through. Deirdre, the money being administered for her by Cortland M
ayfair. Many of these people are now “rich,” as the bequest was frequently made in connection with investments or business ventures of which the beneficiary or her administrator approved.
The Talamasca knows today of some five hundred and fifty descendants all using the name Mayfair; easily one half of these people know the core family in New Orleans, and know something about the legacy, though they are many generations removed from their original inheritance.
Stella gathered together some four hundred Mayfairs and related families in 1927 at the house on First Street, and there is considerable evidence that she was interested in the other psychic members of the family, but the story of Stella will be related further on.
DESCENDANTS
The Talamasca has investigated numerous descendants, and found that among them mild psychic powers are common. Some exhibit exceptional psychic powers. It is also common to speak of the ancestors of Saint-Domingue as “witches” and to say that they were “lovers of the devil” and sold their souls to him, and that the devil made the family rich.
These tales are now told lightly and often with humor or with wonder and curiosity, and the majority of the descendants with whom the Talamasca has made limited contact do not really know anything concrete about their history. They do not even know the names of the “witches.” They know nothing of Suzanne or Deborah, though they do banter about statements such as “Our ancestors were burnt at the stake in Europe,” and “We have a long history of witchcraft.” They have rather vague notions about the legacy, knowing that one person is the main beneficiary of the legacy and they know the name of that one person, but not much else.
However, descendants in the New Orleans area know a great deal about the core family. They attend wakes and funerals, and were gathered together on countless occasions by Mary Beth and by Stella, as we shall see. The Talamasca possesses numerous pictures of these people, in family gatherings and singly.