Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

A Louisiana Double Wedding

I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as it was said to me.

--Sir Walter Scott

An old Louisiana story that is part fact, part fiction, half legend, half myth, is that of a fabulous double wedding celebrated in 1850 in the romantic Bayou Teche country -- close by a settlement then fondly called “Le Petit Paris,” and now part of St. Martin Parish.

One million spiders imported from China, two thousand guests invited from far and near, three miles of majestic oaks and stately pines, pouches of pure gold and silver dust, the necessary man of the cloth, two lovely brides, and two grooms -- both handsome, of course -- and one doting father were involved in the splendid event.

All had been planned by the doting papa, Monsieur Charles J. Durande.

To understand the fantastic wedding celebration it is necessary to know something of this self transplanted Frenchman, Durande, his life style, and the flair with which he practiced “Southern Hospitality” before the two words were ever put together.

Sometime around 1820 Durande had come to Louisiana and established a sugar plantation in the country near St. Martinville. He was, evidently, part of an influx of French emigrants to St. Martin Parish that began as early as 1790 and continued during the French Revolution.

When Durande arrived, the ink was good and dry on the papers of the Louisiana Purchase, by which the U.S. had obtained more than a million square miles of territory. It was an ideal time to come to the U.S. And the imaginative and colorful Durande brought with him great wealth. He accumulated more, bought many servants, built a mansion, and fathered 12 children.

The Durande offspring were said by Louisiana chroniclers to be “the most charming, the gayest, and the most beautiful for miles around.”

All was happiness and gracious living at the Durande sugar plantation. Daily, when the family went for a drive into “Le Petit Paris,” they rode in fine carriages drawn by horses in gilded harness. Faithful and adoring servants waited on all the Durandes, hand and foot. They even sprinkled perfumed crystals into their bath water -- an unheard-of luxury in those days.

Most plantation owners followed the custom of planting a one-mile avenue of trees -- usually oaks -- leading up to their mansions. Durande had set out a three-mile lane of oaks and pines. He did nothing on a small scale.

Then, the wife died. Monsieur Durande was grief stricken, inconsolable. Morning and night he walked to his wife’s grave to weep. He swore never to marry again. He went so far as to erect an iron statue of himself kneeling in grief over the tomb.

Yet, within a year Durande remarried! And, in due time, fathered 12 children by his second wife.

It was for two of the daughters of this second family that Durande planned the spectacular double wedding. The arrangements were not completed overnight. Months in advance he ordered the spiders shipped by boat from China to New Orleans and then brought by wagon to the plantation.

While this was being done, couriers were dispatched to California to purchase sacks of gold and silver dust. Meantime, pigs and geese and calves were fattened and wild game was readied for the feast. The best wine was brought out.

As soon as the million spiders arrived, they were released in the tops of the oaks and pines. As if on command, they began to spin millions of yards of intricate webs. And just at daybreak on the great wedding day, scores of servants climbed the trees and with bellows sprinkled the gold and silver dust all over the webs.

One Louisiana writer tells this part of the tale this way:

“Beneath this utterly fantastic canopy, aerial and metallic, that billowed in the moving air, that glinted and quivered in the torch light when the sun descended --over carpets spread beneath the trees, the couples were led. ...Lasting till nightfall, the wedding festivities included wine and food for two thousand guests.”

Other historians have embellished the account with phrases about the “glittering metal canopy, by which the guests arrived and the scene of the fairy-tale wedding and under which they later danced under the translucent rays of the Louisiana moon!”

No matter how the story is told or re-told, this must have been a magnificent event, a proud day in the life of Papa Durande.

Let us not begrudge Durande his extravagance and his happiness on that wedding day. He simply used his wealth and his imagination to play to perfection his role as father-of-the-brides.

Soon came the Civil War. And Durande lost all -- his servants, his crops, his lands. He died in poverty. Today, all that remains of his mansion, his plantation, his grand life are a few of the pine trees. And they are bent over, decaying.

It’s all enough to bring up another line of old poetry -- the one that advises:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still ‘a flying;

And that same flower which blooms today

Tomorrow will be dying.”

Published May 1977. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.