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Old Creole Days
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230 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1879
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About the author
George Washington Cable
107 books30 followersGeorge Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 19, 2025
Old New Orleans is truly the main character in George Washington Cable’s work. To be sure, the great Louisiana writer of the late 19th century populates his short stories with fictive personages who possess fascinating characteristics and do interesting things; but what ultimately gives Cable’s work its power is the painstaking accuracy with which he conveys not only the physical locale, but also the spirit, of the fascinating and multicultural city of New Orleans.
The term “Creole” deserves some attention here, as the word can mean different things in various contexts. In Cable’s time, the term had very specific associations within the social and cultural milieu of New Orleans; it referred to descendants of the original French and Spanish aristocracy of the city (the Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard is a good example of a Louisiana Creole). The Creoles of Louisiana bitterly resented Cable’s suggesting (accurately) that there had been intermarriage between those French and Spanish aristocrats on the one hand, and the colony-turned-state’s African American and Native American residents on the other. Cable is apt to point out his Creoles’ excessive pride and insularity; and to this day, there are Creoles of modern New Orleans who respond with anger to the non-Creole Cable’s depiction of their society and culture.
The Signet Classics/New American Library edition of Old Creole Days that I have before me follows modern editorial practice in including the novella Madame Delphine (1881) as well as the seven short stories that originally constituted Old Creole Days when the collection was first published in 1879. Madame Delphine provides a more in-depth treatment of a theme Cable had first engaged in an Old Creole Days story titled “’Tite Poulette”: the precarious and often untenable situation that faced the women known as “quadroons.” The term referred to mixed-race women who often became the mistresses of wealthy Creoles; but as both “’Tite Poulette” and Madame Delphine set forth, the death of a wealthy Creole protector would often leave a mixed-race former mistress alone and vulnerable.
In both the short story and the novella, the former quadroon mistress has a beautiful daughter who loves, and is loved by, a white man; but the strict racial codes of slaveholding antebellum Louisiana forbid their marriage. “’Tite Poulette” engages in a bit of deus ex machina to resolve its fictive dilemma; Madame Delphine provides a more troubling, and more honest, resolution. One senses at once the justice of Madame Delphine’s riposte when she is told that the laws against mixed-race marriages exist “to keep the races separate” and replies, “They do not want to keep us separated; no, no! But they do want to keep us despised!” (p. 60).
To my mind, the two most powerful stories in the collection are probably “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” and “Jean-ah Poquelin”; and indeed, these two are the stories that one is most likely to see reprinted in American literature anthologies. “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” tells the story of one Colonel De Charleu, a Creole aristocrat who owns a Mississippi River plantation outside of New Orleans, sometime around 1850. Realizing that his plantation’s grand manor house is in danger of falling into the river, De Charleu considers defrauding his part-Choctaw relative De Carlos, or “Injin Charlie,” by arranging to trade the endangered Belles Demoiselles Plantation for De Carlos’ block of city property in New Orleans. The story’s resolution calls to mind the conclusion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and provides a singularly powerful image of the fall of the slaveholding Old South.
“Jean-ah Poquelin,” another story of great power, captures well the theme of change over time. Its title character, Jean Poquelin, is an elderly Creole whose New Orleans home was once in a remote and isolated locality; but as the story is set in 1805, two years after the Louisiana Purchase, Americans are streaming into the Crescent City, and Poquelin’s once-isolated home is now squarely in the path of future suburban and commercial development. As Poquelin firmly opposes any development of his area, the American “Building and Improvement Company” whose leaders want to move forward with development focuses upon the fact that Poquelin was once a slave trader whose beloved brother Jacques disappeared on a slave-trading expedition to the West African coast. It is not that the Americans care that Poquelin participated in the moral abomination that was the slave trade; rather, they hope that suspicions of foul play against Jacques will discredit Jean Poquelin and enable the company to go forward with its business plans.
The company’s secretary, a man whose nickname is “Little White,” conducts his own investigation and makes a crucial discovery that sets him in opposition to his own company’s policies. In the story’s conclusion, the shocking secret of what happened to the missing brother Jacques Poquelin is revealed, in a manner that calls to question the antebellum South’s obsession with issues of black and white, much the way Mark Twain in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would one day describe Huck’s white racist father as “a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.”
Cable’s fiction is not perfect; as fellow New Orleans writer Shirley Ann Grau points out in a foreword, he tends to err on the side of romance, and his depiction of his women characters is often lacking. At the same time, he represents an important early example of realism in Southern literature; he provides an important link between, on the one hand, early Southern romanticists like Edgar Allan Poe, and, on the other hand, the great authors of the Southern Literary Renaissance like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.
And the imprint of his depiction of New Orleans is still very much in evidence in the modern city. Next time you are in the French Quarter, after you have enjoyed an oyster po’-boy or a muffuletta for lunch, walk down Dumaine Street and see “Madame John’s Legacy” at 632 Dumaine. The house, built in 1788, is thought to be the home that inspired Cable’s “’Tite Poulette,” as an historical marker on the façade of the house proclaims. The house is today part of the Louisiana State Museum, and more information about it can be found at http://www.louisianastatemuseum.org/m.... Whenever I am in New Orleans, and I walk by Madame John’s Legacy, I am reminded of what Cable achieved, fictively speaking, when he gave his literary New Orleans to the world.
The term “Creole” deserves some attention here, as the word can mean different things in various contexts. In Cable’s time, the term had very specific associations within the social and cultural milieu of New Orleans; it referred to descendants of the original French and Spanish aristocracy of the city (the Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard is a good example of a Louisiana Creole). The Creoles of Louisiana bitterly resented Cable’s suggesting (accurately) that there had been intermarriage between those French and Spanish aristocrats on the one hand, and the colony-turned-state’s African American and Native American residents on the other. Cable is apt to point out his Creoles’ excessive pride and insularity; and to this day, there are Creoles of modern New Orleans who respond with anger to the non-Creole Cable’s depiction of their society and culture.
The Signet Classics/New American Library edition of Old Creole Days that I have before me follows modern editorial practice in including the novella Madame Delphine (1881) as well as the seven short stories that originally constituted Old Creole Days when the collection was first published in 1879. Madame Delphine provides a more in-depth treatment of a theme Cable had first engaged in an Old Creole Days story titled “’Tite Poulette”: the precarious and often untenable situation that faced the women known as “quadroons.” The term referred to mixed-race women who often became the mistresses of wealthy Creoles; but as both “’Tite Poulette” and Madame Delphine set forth, the death of a wealthy Creole protector would often leave a mixed-race former mistress alone and vulnerable.
In both the short story and the novella, the former quadroon mistress has a beautiful daughter who loves, and is loved by, a white man; but the strict racial codes of slaveholding antebellum Louisiana forbid their marriage. “’Tite Poulette” engages in a bit of deus ex machina to resolve its fictive dilemma; Madame Delphine provides a more troubling, and more honest, resolution. One senses at once the justice of Madame Delphine’s riposte when she is told that the laws against mixed-race marriages exist “to keep the races separate” and replies, “They do not want to keep us separated; no, no! But they do want to keep us despised!” (p. 60).
To my mind, the two most powerful stories in the collection are probably “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” and “Jean-ah Poquelin”; and indeed, these two are the stories that one is most likely to see reprinted in American literature anthologies. “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” tells the story of one Colonel De Charleu, a Creole aristocrat who owns a Mississippi River plantation outside of New Orleans, sometime around 1850. Realizing that his plantation’s grand manor house is in danger of falling into the river, De Charleu considers defrauding his part-Choctaw relative De Carlos, or “Injin Charlie,” by arranging to trade the endangered Belles Demoiselles Plantation for De Carlos’ block of city property in New Orleans. The story’s resolution calls to mind the conclusion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and provides a singularly powerful image of the fall of the slaveholding Old South.
“Jean-ah Poquelin,” another story of great power, captures well the theme of change over time. Its title character, Jean Poquelin, is an elderly Creole whose New Orleans home was once in a remote and isolated locality; but as the story is set in 1805, two years after the Louisiana Purchase, Americans are streaming into the Crescent City, and Poquelin’s once-isolated home is now squarely in the path of future suburban and commercial development. As Poquelin firmly opposes any development of his area, the American “Building and Improvement Company” whose leaders want to move forward with development focuses upon the fact that Poquelin was once a slave trader whose beloved brother Jacques disappeared on a slave-trading expedition to the West African coast. It is not that the Americans care that Poquelin participated in the moral abomination that was the slave trade; rather, they hope that suspicions of foul play against Jacques will discredit Jean Poquelin and enable the company to go forward with its business plans.
The company’s secretary, a man whose nickname is “Little White,” conducts his own investigation and makes a crucial discovery that sets him in opposition to his own company’s policies. In the story’s conclusion, the shocking secret of what happened to the missing brother Jacques Poquelin is revealed, in a manner that calls to question the antebellum South’s obsession with issues of black and white, much the way Mark Twain in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would one day describe Huck’s white racist father as “a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.”
Cable’s fiction is not perfect; as fellow New Orleans writer Shirley Ann Grau points out in a foreword, he tends to err on the side of romance, and his depiction of his women characters is often lacking. At the same time, he represents an important early example of realism in Southern literature; he provides an important link between, on the one hand, early Southern romanticists like Edgar Allan Poe, and, on the other hand, the great authors of the Southern Literary Renaissance like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.
And the imprint of his depiction of New Orleans is still very much in evidence in the modern city. Next time you are in the French Quarter, after you have enjoyed an oyster po’-boy or a muffuletta for lunch, walk down Dumaine Street and see “Madame John’s Legacy” at 632 Dumaine. The house, built in 1788, is thought to be the home that inspired Cable’s “’Tite Poulette,” as an historical marker on the façade of the house proclaims. The house is today part of the Louisiana State Museum, and more information about it can be found at http://www.louisianastatemuseum.org/m.... Whenever I am in New Orleans, and I walk by Madame John’s Legacy, I am reminded of what Cable achieved, fictively speaking, when he gave his literary New Orleans to the world.
February 16, 2021
In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain writes of children’s disappointment at Joel Chandler Harris (the author of the Uncle Remus stories) being a white man. That reminded me that when I first learned of Cable, however long ago that was, I thought he must’ve been African-American or a Creole of color. Even reading this in the 21st century, it’s unfortunately easy to see why Cable was basically run out of town (though that came later with his more overt support of racial equality and opposition to Jim Crow). These stories, despite some extravagant plots, reflect the absurdity of racial laws and the ridiculousness of the values of antebellum Creole society.
One of Cable’s strengths is his descriptions of the houses and neighborhoods of New Orleans. As far as the dialect goes, I struggled with only one story, “Café des Exilés." I enjoyed the dark fairy-tale quality of “Belles Demoiselles." I wondered if “Jean-ah Poquelin” was an influence on Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier.”
Rereading this has reinforced to me how nothing much ever seems to change.
From "Posson Jone”:
One of Cable’s strengths is his descriptions of the houses and neighborhoods of New Orleans. As far as the dialect goes, I struggled with only one story, “Café des Exilés." I enjoyed the dark fairy-tale quality of “Belles Demoiselles." I wondered if “Jean-ah Poquelin” was an influence on Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier.”
Rereading this has reinforced to me how nothing much ever seems to change.
From "Posson Jone”:
The lowest seats were full of trappers, smugglers, Canadian voyageurs, drinking and singing; Américains, too—more’s the shame—from the upper rivers—who will not keep their seats—who ply the bottle, and who will get home by-and-by and tell how wicked Sodom is…
January 14, 2025
The author is among several mentioned in ABROAD WITH THE JIMMIES by Lilian Bell.
July 9, 2020
I stumbled across this book in a used bookstore and am really glad I did. It is a book of short stories that really showed me New Orleans in the 1800's. I loved the descriptions of the sights, smells, sounds, and people. The stories are set while New Orleans was mostly French and Spanish speaking. Some of the dialect was hard to read but once I was able to get the rhythm of it I appreciated it's inclusion in the stories.
One of my favorite stories from the book was Madame Delphine which is a story of a woman and her daughter. A white banker/ex-pirate wishes to marry her daughter but his family raises a big stink because she is a quadroon(1/4 African) and it was against the law for them to get married. This story is a great sketch of the hypocrisy of the marriage laws of the south during that age. Cable writes an elegant story while getting a point across.
Another story was Belles Demoiselles Plantation which outlines the differences in social standing and blood ties. The two main characters of this story are a plantation owner and his distant Choctaw relative. The plantation owner seems to have everything but still he wants a block of buildings that is owned by his relative and refuses to be happy unless he has it. It does not end well for him. Again social caste is a big theme in this story.
I appreciated Cable's stories because they really push the reader to look at the problems with social caste and racial hypocrisy.
One of my favorite stories from the book was Madame Delphine which is a story of a woman and her daughter. A white banker/ex-pirate wishes to marry her daughter but his family raises a big stink because she is a quadroon(1/4 African) and it was against the law for them to get married. This story is a great sketch of the hypocrisy of the marriage laws of the south during that age. Cable writes an elegant story while getting a point across.
Another story was Belles Demoiselles Plantation which outlines the differences in social standing and blood ties. The two main characters of this story are a plantation owner and his distant Choctaw relative. The plantation owner seems to have everything but still he wants a block of buildings that is owned by his relative and refuses to be happy unless he has it. It does not end well for him. Again social caste is a big theme in this story.
I appreciated Cable's stories because they really push the reader to look at the problems with social caste and racial hypocrisy.
September 8, 2011
Even in the nineteenth century, New Orleans was a subject for nostalgia. Areas that are now largely tourist dominated were then fading French- and Spanish-speaking quarters. Mixed-race women and the quadroon balls figure prominently here, so race and gender issues are, perhaps unsurprisingly, both predominant and often problematic, though Cable himself was strongly pro-civil rights. Plots are often predictable, and there's even one that Cable uses twice. But these stories are fascinating, and the sense of place and time is strong; I was in New Orleans a few years ago and I felt as though I could picture many of his settings vividly based on that. I'm looking forward to reading his The Grandissimes.
February 7, 2018
I read this one in the summer during my high school years. Having no real familiarity with New Orleans, it was quite exotic but also intriguing. It gave glimpses into the life and mores of mid-19th century New Orleans which I appreciated, given my passion for history.
July 15, 2018
A fantastic collection of short stories by Cable, who delves into the realities of race, class, and the creation of American nationality in Early Republic Louisiana.
February 23, 2022
I read this book for New Orleans Literature class. Otherwise, I wouldn't touch it. This is a book of short stories post-civil war. About people of color and creoles. My top three stories:
I enjoyed reading Belles Demoiselles Plantation. This story is about a man trying to buy another man's property. He was greedy. In the end the house sunk into the Mississippi River and the old man fell ill. The two men remained friends till the end of death.
Posson Jone was about two men and their servants of color, Baptiste and Colossal. The four of them go eat and the servants go to the "kitchen," but they end up in the back alley of a grocery shop drinking instead. Baptiste and Colossal decide to go explore and Colossals owner is nervous about where he has run off to. Baptistes' owner says that Baptiste is trustworthy but shows up on the dock without Colossal. Baptiste claims he doesn't know where Colossal is but has black eyes. Colossal shows up after the ship departs but manages to get on the ship.
Jean-Ah Poquelin was a good read. A creole man, Jean, who lived in an old run-down plantation house who just wanted to be left alone. People of the town told stories about him saying that he was a witch, a hermit, that there were ghosts around his house, and maybe killed his brother. The towns people wanted to put a road through his land. Jean tried to fight the officials, but they went through with their plans and built the road. Men gathered in front of Jean's house at night and saw a white "ghost" by the tree. Most ran away, some stayed. Turns out, it was Jean's brother, "The Leper." Jean died and his brother the Leper and the mute slave went into the woods and never came back out.
These were good stories. The language can be a little confusing.
I enjoyed reading Belles Demoiselles Plantation. This story is about a man trying to buy another man's property. He was greedy. In the end the house sunk into the Mississippi River and the old man fell ill. The two men remained friends till the end of death.
Posson Jone was about two men and their servants of color, Baptiste and Colossal. The four of them go eat and the servants go to the "kitchen," but they end up in the back alley of a grocery shop drinking instead. Baptiste and Colossal decide to go explore and Colossals owner is nervous about where he has run off to. Baptistes' owner says that Baptiste is trustworthy but shows up on the dock without Colossal. Baptiste claims he doesn't know where Colossal is but has black eyes. Colossal shows up after the ship departs but manages to get on the ship.
Jean-Ah Poquelin was a good read. A creole man, Jean, who lived in an old run-down plantation house who just wanted to be left alone. People of the town told stories about him saying that he was a witch, a hermit, that there were ghosts around his house, and maybe killed his brother. The towns people wanted to put a road through his land. Jean tried to fight the officials, but they went through with their plans and built the road. Men gathered in front of Jean's house at night and saw a white "ghost" by the tree. Most ran away, some stayed. Turns out, it was Jean's brother, "The Leper." Jean died and his brother the Leper and the mute slave went into the woods and never came back out.
These were good stories. The language can be a little confusing.
January 29, 2018
Half of these stories are quite good, while the other half are a bit forgettable. That said, all of the stories exhibit the qualities and techniques that make Cable's prose so good. Chief among these are plots that advance in fits and starts with lots of backfill yet always with ambiguities and unanswered questions. These stories also frequently play with color, blurring and juxtaposing them in turn, and they frequently turn to gossip, rumor, and hearsay as an epistemological mode. Not unlike his novels, Cable occupies several different genres over the course of the collection and, at times, within individual stories. I would say that the best stories here are the haunting "Belles Demoiselles Plantation," the enigmatic "Cafe Des Exiles," and of course Cable's deservedly best-known story about interracial marriage, Catholicism, and New Orleans' transition into the republic: "Madame Delphine."
May 16, 2019
Set in pre-Civil War times, but published in 1879, this is a series of mostly forgettable short stories of characters in New Orleans looking back to a better time before the invasion of non-French immigrants. The use of dialect causes some reading challenges. Most of the characters are of mixed race trying to deal with a culture that denies them a clear racial identity and prevents them from marrying whites. The issues are important, but the sense of nostalgia and the treatment of women as exotic makes me a bit uncomfortable.
February 24, 2022
George W. Cable has always been one of my favorite authors. This collection of his short stories is about life as a creole. His way of transforming Creole dialect into words never ceases to amaze me. A few of my favorites are "Posson Jone" and "Jean-Ah Poquelin." While these stories can be hard to keep up with and might require a small bit of background knowledge on Creole culture, it's worth reading words that changed history. Anyone reading New Orleans should really check it out. These stories give some insight on how life was in 19th century New Orleans.
Want to read
July 1, 2022As seen in the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
April 24, 2018
I enjoyed this book, but sometimes it was hard to follow with the dialect. Great story and history of the Creoles in old New Orleans and a nice collection of short stories.
February 19, 2023
Melodramatic, but it does paint a picture of New Orleans and the complicated race relations of the time. Some beautiful writing, but ultimately just wanted to get through it.
December 27, 2016
Beautiful writing
February 18, 2012
This is a collection of stories from George W Cable originally published in 1879 and reproduced using the same type face.I suspect that most of the originals of this book would have been lost to the floods after hurricane Katrina so re-publication has to be a good thing. The stories provide a fascinating insight to the society of New Orleans at the time with the segregation of communities that existed - if not overtly then due to the rankings and strata's of society - as well as painting a prose picture of the French Quarter and the way new Orleans grew rapidly into the surrounding swamp area during the 1900's (see "Jean-ah Poquelin" for a lovely account of this). George Cable uses Creole patios and spells the Creole words phonetically (that is how they sound) so reading these stories takes some degree of effort. Effort to understand what the Creole are saying and effort to stay with the story due to the story telling style. Fortunately the French is written in English and the stories are quite short or I would really be lost!
A valuable book from an academic perspective and one or two of the stories are quite rewarding - "Madame Delicieuse" for example is very entertaining and "Posson Jone" (Parson - as in vicar) is a good read.
A valuable book from an academic perspective and one or two of the stories are quite rewarding - "Madame Delicieuse" for example is very entertaining and "Posson Jone" (Parson - as in vicar) is a good read.
March 14, 2014
Short stories set in old New Orleans. Some of the stories were not so interesting to me, but you could definitely feel the flavor of the city and people with their language. The stories about the quadroons and other issues of race were pretty good. You get a sense of how the folks thought and how the laws affected the people and how they mixed. The vernacular was well represented and it sounds like you would hear a native speak today.
April 2, 2015
Book was a series of stories taking place in New Orleans before the civil war. The author created some very good characters, all being Mulattos , but the stories did not have endings it seemed to me. He was obsessed with the laws against mixed marriages and the hiding of ones racial makeup. but well written.
May 15, 2012
It is an interesting book written in dialect, especially Creole patois. I found this manner difficult, in that I was distracted by the dialect. The stories are interesting and give a sense of New Orleans in the early 19th century.
February 25, 2008
The story "Cafe des Exiles", and this collection of stories in general, makes me miss New Orleans terribly ... not that I do not most of the time anyway.
September 12, 2017
Colorful dialogue, scenery in New Orleans in late 19C.
December 27, 2023
This book was difficult reading due to some of the characters’ voices written in dialect and some of the same background not written in dialect. It made for confusing reading.
November 30, 2025
Madame Delphine--3
Café des Exiles--2
Belles Demoiselles Plantation--2
Posson Jone--2
Jean-ah Poquelin--3
Tite Poulette--2
'Sieur George--1
Madame Délicieuse--3
Café des Exiles--2
Belles Demoiselles Plantation--2
Posson Jone--2
Jean-ah Poquelin--3
Tite Poulette--2
'Sieur George--1
Madame Délicieuse--3
February 21, 2018
I used this book to help me with research I am doing for a novel. It's very informative.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews