30 December 2010

What Did General P.G.T. Beauregard & Joan Have In Common?

Answer: They both lived in the slave quarters of the Beauregard-Keyes house!


 Photos From Our Visit To The Beauregard-Keyes House In April 2003

The story of how Joan knew the owner of the house, author Frances Parkinson Keyes, can be found here in my "Relatively Fiction" blog about the Keyes novel, Madame Castel's Lodger (see excerpt below from my blog).
I was even more surprised when Joan (my sister's mother-in-law) told me that as a newlywed, she and her husband also lived in the slave quarters of the Beauregard-Keyes House (as did General Beauregard post Civil War). She was Madame Keye's lodger!

Another Keyes book, Once On Esplanade, offered a glimpse of life in New Orleans.  The "Relatively Fiction" blog about that novel can be found here (see excerpt below from my blog). 

Once on Esplanade reminded me of two houses; the Beauregard-Keyes House where Mrs. Keyes wrote the novel and the Jefferson Davis House (Beauvoir) where once again we were thwarted from a tour. The first time we got as far as the gift shop in Beauvoir and decided to come back later because there were umpteen tour buses there. Katrina then ravaged the house so we waited until 2009 to visit. We were chased out of Biloxi by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ida, and didn't get to Beauvoir again. It is still on our Bucket List; a visit to the Beauregard -Keyes House is "Mission Accomplished."

Ms. Keyes came to mind as I'm re-reading her autobiography, Roses in December and will blog about it some time in the future (she came from a fascinating family and married a United States Senator) at Relatively Fiction.

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