Originally appearing at: Voices of New Orleans
Louisiana Voyages By Martha R. Field
Edited by Joan McLaughlin and Jack McLaughlin
University Press of Mississippi 2006
ISBN 1-57806-826-6
220 pages
In 1881 Martha Field began writing a Sunday column under the pseudonym of Catharine Cole for the Daily Picayune that ran for more than 10 years. She traveled all over Louisiana by rail, carriage and an exotic array of boats to write about the people and places in the state. She seems to have excelled at writing about the areas most often overlooked by northern journalists and truly embraced the rural way of life in a manner that is quite staggering when you consider the period in which she lived. Field accomplished a great deal with her columns, and her work serves as a time capsule for places long gone and rarely remembered. In 2006 the University Press of Mississippi handsomely collected many of her columns and presented them in The Louisiana Voyages: The Travel Writings of Catharine Cole
I was attracted to this title solely for the opportunity to peek into Louisiana’s past from a unique vantage point. Martha Field did not have any agenda in her writing and seems to be solely interested in telling an honest story about what she saw in her region as she traveled. Editors Joan and Jack McLaughlin are careful to point out as they introduce certain pieces that she was not a woman necessarily ahead of her time in all respects; Field might have been bold enough to travel as few women did but she clearly saw boundaries between the races and sexes that modern readers will not recognize. These are historical documents, however, and while I was delighted to discover Field was not a rampant racist, I was not surprised that she lacked an awareness of civil rights. The book is less about how people live together in southern society then it is about how they survive in rural areas and maintain viable standards of living which include economically successful towns. It is unfortunate that her ability to discern much about the lives of people in the timber trade in Livingston Parish is not evident in the work of so many contemporary journalists; Field was focused on the nuts and bolts of ordinary living in a manner that is often lost in the rush to find the next big thing today.
The columns are organized by location, and the editors provide a welcomed set of endnotes for each chapter explaining specifics about people and places that Field mentions with ease but will likely be unknown today. She writes about the island homes of the fishermen of Grand Isle, a place she visited before it was devastated by an 1893 hurricane, a school for young women in Natchitoches Parish (an endeavor she clearly admired) and the beautiful homes in the Bayou Lafourche. Turtle farming, for the purposes of soups for wealthy northerners, shows up in the column on Terrebonne Parish and, when writing about Morgan City, she covers a Cajun wedding on Grand Lake. Here’s a bit of what it was like to arrive at a wedding by boat:
No roofs were in sight, nor a friendly pennon of smoke, but from all parts of the lake, starting forth as it were from the haunts of the hunted alligators, were strange craft, all apparently in chase after us, and rapidly closing around us. A curious rigger or socket was fixed up in each boat and a man stood up rowing at a great rate, his body moving at his task as a wash-woman’s does over her board. Each oarsman was bareheaded and in his shirt sleeves, and the spectacle of the boats scudding towards us, the white shirts shining in the sunset, the wind puffing the sleeves full like sails was as curious as pretty. These were all guests hastening to the wedding.
The book is a curious collection of observations about weather and climate and almost a geography lesson on valuable natural resources. Field is meticulous about noticing each town and how well it is maintained and uses this as a barometer for an area’s economic success. She writes about who is doing well and who is suffering and points to the dozens of ways that people make do in places that seem to provide less than what is required for anything beyond basic survival. The book celebrates the creative and hard working and is endlessly optimistic about Louisiana’s future. She does note the threats and damage from hurricanes and the potential for too large an environmental impact, but her columns are quite hopeful and, considering the times in which they are written, that is exactly what the reader should expect.
I came away from Louisiana Voyages with an enormous amount of respect for Martha Field. I really can’t imagine how she managed to travel to so many out of the way places in the late 19th century when even going between major cities in the state was no simple feat. Her dedication to her column and her job is really quite remarkable — she was really quite remarkable — and I’m delighted that the University of Mississippi saw the value in Field’s work. Anyone writing a history of the south or just interested in Louisiana should seek out this book. Martha Field was there, and she wrote down what she saw in a highly informed and readable manner. The lady had a gift. Rediscovering her is like rediscovering the state itself.
