At first he would say nothing about Julien but then began to speak of Julien as if I knew all about the man. I supplied various well-known dates and facts and that moved the conversation along briskly. We left Galatoire’s finally for a small, quiet Bourbon Street café and continued our conversation until well after eight-thirty that evening.
At some point during this conversation Llewellyn realized that I had no prejudice whatsoever against him on account of his sexual preferences, indeed that nothing he was saying came as a shock to me, and this added to his relaxed attitude towards the story he told.
This was long before our use of tape recorders, and I reconstructed the conversation as best I could as soon as I returned to my hotel, trying to capture Llewellyn’s particular expressions. But it is a reconstruction. And throughout I have omitted my own persistent questions. I believe the substance to be accurate.
Essentially, Llewellyn was deeply in love with Julien Mayfair, and one of the early shocks of Llewellyn’s life was to discover that Julien was at least ten to fifteen years older than Llewellyn ever imagined, and Llewellyn only discovered this when Julien suffered his first stroke in early 1914. Until that time Julien had been a fairly romantic and vigorous lover of Llewellyn, and Llewellyn remained with Julien until he died, some four months later. Julien was partially paralyzed at that time, but still managed to spend an hour or two each day in his office.
Llewellyn supplied a vivid description of Julien in the early 1900s, as a thin man who had lost some of his height, but was generally spry and energetic, and full of good humor and imagination.
Llewellyn said frankly that Julien had initiated him in the erotic secrets of life, and not only had Julien taught Llewellyn how to be an attentive lover, he also took the young man with him to Storyville-the notorious red-light district of New Orleans-and introduced him to the better houses operating there.
But let us move on directly to his account:
“Oh, the tricks he taught me,” Llewellyn said, referring to their amorous relationship, “and what a sense of humor he had. It was as if the whole world were a joke to him, and there was never the slightest bitterness in it. I’ll tell you a very private thing about him. He made love to me just as if I were a woman. If you don’t know what I mean, there’s no use explaining it. And that voice he had, that French accent. I tell you when he started talking in my ear …
“And he would tell me the funniest stories about his antics with his other lovers, about how they fooled everyone, and indeed, one of his boys, Aleister by name, used to dress up as a woman and go to the opera with Julien and no one ever had the slightest suspicion about it. Julien tried to persuade me to do that, but I told him I could never carry it off, never! He understood. He was extremely good-natured. In fact, it was impossible to involve him in a quarrel. He said he was done with all that, and besides he had a horrible temper, and couldn’t bear to lose it. It exhausted him.
“The one time I was unfaithful and came back after two days, fully expecting a terrible argument, he treated me with what would you call it? Bemused cordiality. It turned out he knew everything that I had done and with whom, and in the most pleasant and sincere way he asked me why I had been such a fool. It was positively eerie. At last I burst into tears and confessed that I had meant to show my independence. After all he was such an overwhelming man. But I was then ready to do anything to get back into his good graces. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d thrown me out!
“He accepted this with a smile. He patted my shoulder and said not to worry. I’ll tell you it cured me of wandering out forever! It was no fun at all to feel so dreadful and have him so calm and so accepting. Taught me a few things, it really did.
“And then he went into all that about being a reader of minds, and of being able to see what was going on in other places. He talked a lot about that. I could never tell whether or not he meant it, or if it was just another one of his jokes. He had the prettiest eyes. He was a very handsome old man, really. And there was a flare to the way he dressed. I suppose you might say he was something of a dandy. When he was dressed up in a fine white linen suit with a yellow silk waistcoat and a white Panama hat, he looked splendid.
“I think I imitate him to this day. Isn’t that sad? I go about trying to look like Julien Mayfair.
“Oh, but that reminds me, I’ll tell you, he did the strangest thing to frighten me once! And to this day I don’t really know what happened. We had been talking the night before about what Julien looked like when he was young, how handsome he appeared in all the photographs, and you know it was like going through a veritable history of photography to study all that. The first pictures of him were daguerreotypes, and then came the tintypes and the later genuine photographs in sepia on cardboard, and finally the sort of black-and-white pictures we have today. Anyway, he had shown me a batch of them and I had said, ‘Oh, I wish I’d known you when you were young, I imagine you were truly beautiful.’ Then I’d stopped. I was so ashamed. I thought perhaps I’d hurt him. But there be was, merely smiling at me. I shall never forget it. He was seated at the far end of his leather couch, legs crossed, just looking at me through the smoke from his pipe, and he said, ‘Well, Richard, if you’d like to know how I was then, maybe I’ll show you. I’ll surprise you.’
“That night, I was downtown. I don’t remember why I went out. I had to get out perhaps. You know sometimes that house could be so oppressive! It was full of children and old people, and Mary Beth Mayfair was always about, and she was such a presence, to put it politely. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Mary Beth, everybody liked Mary Beth. And I liked her a great deal, until Julien died, at least. She was easy to talk to, actually. She would really listen to you when you talked to her, that is one thing I always found rather unusual about her. But she had a way of filling up a room when she came in. She outshined everyone else, you might say, and men there was her husband, Judge McIntyre.
“Judge McIntyre was a terrible sot. He was always drunk. And what a quarrelsome drunk. I tell you I had to go looking for him more than once and bring him home from the Irish bars on Magazine Street. You know, the Mayfairs weren’t his kind of people, really. He was an educated man, lace curtain Irish, to be sure. Yet I think Mary Beth made him feel inferior. She was always saying little things to him, such as that he ought to put his napkin in his lap, or not smoke his cigars in the dining room, or that he was biting the edge of his silver when he ate, and the noise annoyed her. He was eternally offended by her. But I think he really loved her. That’s why she could hurt him so easily. He really loved her. You would have had to have known her to understand. She wasn’t beautiful. That wasn’t it. But she was … she was absolutely captivating! I could tell you about her and the young men, but then I don’t want to talk about all that. But what I was trying to say was that they would sit there at the table till all hours after dinner, Mary Beth and Judge McIntyre and Julien, of course, and Clay Mayfair, too, while he was there. I never saw people who liked to talk so much after dinner.
“Julien could put away half a fifth of brandy. And little Stella would fall asleep in his lap. Ah, Stella with the ringlets, dear pretty Stella. And beautiful little Belle. She’d come wandering in with her doll. And Millie Dear. They called her Millie Dear then but they stopped later on. She was younger than Belle, but she, you know, sort of watched out for Belle. It took a long time to catch on about Belle. You just thought she was sweet at first, an angel of a girl, if you know what I mean. There were some other cousins who used to come. Seems Julien’s boy, Garland, was around plenty after he came home from school. And Cortland, I really liked Cortland. And for a while there was talk he might marry Millie, but she was only a first cousin, being Rémy’s girl, and people didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. Millie has never married. What a sad thing …