Newcomb and Jennie Wilde

In 1914, my great-grandmother, at the tender age of sixteen, studied art at Newcomb College here in New Orleans. She stayed in a set of dorms right behind Commander's Palace, so the story goes. It wasn't under the happiest of circumstances - two years prior, her mother had died in childbirth. Much to the scandal of the family, her father quickly got remarried to a flamboyant pianist with a fondness for feather boas (and little interest in children). Her new stepmother wanted to escape the Cincinnati winter down in New Orleans, and my great-grandmother was obliged to go along. Despite her reservations and the briefness of her enrollment, I'm told that Newcomb served as a life line for her. One can imagine this girl, motherless and friendless in a strange city. Art would have meant everything, as any troubled teen can attest. That spring she was sent off to boarding school. Her father (a former Episcopalian pastor, since excommunicated for disbelief in the virgin birth) soon headed out to California with his new wife, where he would eventually open a health food store and maintain chilly relations with his children from afar.

Living in the same city, I think about her from time to time. I picture a morose teen, hunched over an easel, missing home, cursing her luck and her stepmother. I wonder what all she saw - and what a time to be in the city! Louis Armstrong would have been thirteen, learning to read music at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. Storyville would have been swinging away, with the help of King Oliver and Kid Ory. And Mardi Gras would have been in the middle of a golden age. I doubt she went to Storyville, but I really hope she stayed through Mardi Gras.

Which brings me to another Newcomb artist: Jennie Wilde. In the year 1914, she was designing some of the most elegant floats in New Orleans history. Wilde possessed the sort of artistry that if she had chosen to go into something with universal appeal like, pottery or glass, she would be up there today with the biggest names of the Arts and Crafts Movement. But instead she decided to design floats, costumes, prop jewelry, queens' mantles, and the ornate, die-cut invitations for the krewes' balls. I first came across her in Henri Schindler's book of float designs, but recently I've been pouring over the more extensive collection of her work available through Tulane's digital library. Here's a few examples from the 1914 Comus parade:

The Squire's Tale

Truth

    

Anelida

Comus

The Romance of the Rose

   

The Prioress' Tale