by First a confession: I loved the first three books of Ann Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles”. In fact, they inspired me to write two vampire books many, many years later. So when I arrived here in New Orleans, visiting her home and the Lafayette Cemetery, plus finding Lestat’s home, were on my to-do list.
According to Google, author Anne Rice’s former home in the Garden District is at 1239 First Street, which is quite close to where I am staying right now. Easy to find.
Did Lestat live with Anne Rice
But if one Googles “Lestat’s house”, the search results turn up info about the late Anne Rice. And I’m pretty sure that Lestat didn’t live with Anne Rice — except in her imagination. So I will show you the Rice home first, then go on to Lestat the Vampire. The ornamental ironwork on the gate in front of the home suggests the shape of a skull. Yes, I’ll admit they could be flowers or fleur de lis instead of skulls, but I haven’t seen another home in the area with ironwork in this design. See more of this home in this slide show, below, including scaffolding as the home is being restored.
While this grand antebellum home is suitable for a wealthy, famous author, it doesn’t quite match another image I’ve had about vampires’ residences–an image that is much more gloomy and dark, even on sunny days, For example, a home like this one, below, with an aura of decadence about it. This home in Faubourg Delassize with its green facade struck me as the perfect place for a vampire or vampire book author to live. Actually, it is a large apartment building a few blocks away from Rice’s home and is suffering from from some deferred maintenance.
Searching for Lestat’s home
Okay…now on to Lestat’s home. I downloaded a free sample of the book, “The Vampire Lestat”, from Kindle and in the early pages the character describes his home as being on Prytania near Sixth where he had buried himself in the yard back in the early 20th Century only to be awakened decades later by rock musicians. The house is described as being “small”, but “small”, of course, is relative — particularly when compared to the huge mansions in the Garden District. These three homes, below, are on Prytania near Sixth. The two on the right are exceptionally small for the neighborhood. Did Rice use one of these as her model for Lestat’s house?
And now for his treasure
Across the street from those homes is the Lafayette Cemetery, owned by the City of New Orleans, where the fictional Lestat supposedly buried the fictional wealth he had accumulated over the centuries. The ferns growing from the wall are perfect for New Orleans where so many buildings seems to being barely three steps away from decadence. If this wall were cleaned up, re-plastered and repainted it would seem unnatural for the city.
Neglected tombs or maybe a disguise?
I was particularly struck by 2 vaults in the Lafayette cemetery: One was the Dowty Family Tomb, which had the name of an unrelated person, Coashtie Dark listed on it. Eavesdropping on a tour guide, I learned that not only family members are entombed in a vault, but unrelated friends are sometimes interred there, too at the family’s request. This answers a question I had at the Delcambre Cemetery.
Then there is this unmarked vault, right. Once, no doubt it was covered with marble or stone of some kind and bore the names of well-known people. Now, just brick with no names on any side of it. It reminded me of the vandalized tomb of an 18th Century Marquis I came across in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris decades ago. Both of these markers of lives, now gone, had been abandoned for eons. Whatever glory or fame that was connected to their names has now vanished. And in both, I see symbols of all things passing into dust.
But then again, maybe it is the place where Lestat stashed his treasure and disguised it by creating the appearance of an abandoned vault.
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