Carnival Keepsakes: Mardi Gras Ball Invitations and Favors
by Stephen Faure
Get your king cakes, your costumes and your throw-me-something-mister ladders ready. Carnival season is upon us, with an early February 5 date this year.
The public spectacle of the Mardi Gras parade is what most of us look forward to as we celebrate carnival (from the Latin for “farewell to meat”). Until the mid-19th century, however, the tradition of celebrating the last day before the Lenten fast mainly consisted of masking, both in the streets and at formal masked balls.
By the 1850s, the tradition of masked balls was still observed at Creole dance halls. But carnival celebration in the streets had degraded into a spectacle of unorganized street maskers who were at the mercy of hooligans dashing about dousing participants with flour—and sometimes quicklime.
In 1856, a group of businessmen intent on bringing some organization to Mardi Gras organized the Mystick Krewe of Comus. They were inspired by the Cowbellian de Rakin Society, a club in Mobile, where they had previously lived.
Born in complete secrecy, Comus planned for a costumed march Mardi Gras evening, followed by a ball and banquet. A dress committee developed a theme for the parade and traveled to Mobile to obtain costumes. More importantly, an all-powerful invitation committee issued invitations to 3,000 of the area’s most elite citizens asking them to attend the 1857 festivities. Thus was created the tradition of Comus’ issuing some of the most sought-after pieces of paper in history. Comus began its parade the next year, with a 30-float procession preceding the ball.
John Magill is a curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Williams Research Center. One of his areas of expertise is Mardi Gras ephemera—those items people made but didn’t expect to be used for very long—invitations, dance cards, programs and parade bulletins.
Magill explains how the old-line krewes’ ball invitations evolved over the years. In the beginning, the Mystick Krewe’s invitations were rather plain. After a break during 1862-1865 because of the war, the invitations grew more ornate.
Other organizations began to emulate Comus’ success. The Twelfth Night Revelers formed in 1870 and Rex and the Knights of Momus in 1872. Krewes began making more and more elaborate invitations, as well as the small cards brought to the venue for admission to the ball, called “admit cards,” and the dance cards listing the evening’s planned processionals, with empty spaces for each lady to fill in the name of her partners. They also began to give out small favors to ball attendees.
Henri Schindler has literally written the book—one should say books—on the subject. His “Mardi Gras Treasures: Invitations of the Golden Age” and “Mardi Gras Treasures: Jewelry of the Golden Age” offer a designer’s-eye-view of these mysterious little artworks—the invitations, programs, dance cards and the pins, broaches and medallions and other favors.
Schindler summarizes the regal nature of the designs in his book, “Mardi Gras New Orleans.” “The invitations and dance cards were decorative works of art, lithographed cards whose designs reflected the ball’s theme; these paper treasures grew ever more elaborate during the 1880s and 1890s, employing die-cut layers of scenes that unfolded into miniature tableaux. These beautiful messages from the gods were not entrusted to the postal system, but delivered by couriers.”
Schindler also explains that, unlike the parades, which were intended to be viewed by the public, the balls were private and invitations were scarce; many who thought they deserved to attend were not invited. This did not stop some from trying. A brochure issued by Comus in 1947 states, “[In] 1869 at the old French Opera House, uninvited ladies actually formed a flying wedge and tried to push themselves through the entrance. Six of them fainted and others had their clothes so torn they had to go home.” It also tells the tale of two admit cards that had been lost or stolen in 1877, prompting Comus to offer an award of $1,000 each for their return.
The Historic New Orleans Collection is home to an almost complete collection of invitations from the Rex and Comus balls (as well as many other krewes) from the earliest days of the organizations. Many years are represented by complete sets of invitations, admit cards, dance cards and sometimes, the envelopes in which they were delivered.
Magill notes, “You can see the envelopes were only marked with the name of the person it was to be delivered to. They didn’t trust the Postal Service; they hired private detectives to make the deliveries.”
As time passed and economic conditions changed, so did the Mardi Gras ball invitations. The relatively flush times New Orleans enjoyed in the 1880s waned after the turn of the century. Magill says, “In the 1900s, invitations changed stylistically. Comus’ 1913 invitation featuring St. George and the dragon is a good example. The artwork began to look more like illustrations in a book.”
The 1960s saw a decline in creativity; many became very simple in style, similar to customary engraved wedding invitations. The 1970s, however, saw a resurgence in design that harkened back to the turn of the century. Comus and Rex turned to artists such as Priscilla Lawrence (now director of The Collection) and Patsy Hardin to create invitations that were more elaborate. Motifs from the early years were often brought back and integrated into modern invitations and parade bulletins. Hardin’s 2001 Rex invitation, for example, incorporates several design elements from earlier years, notably the Rex moth from 1882.
Besides treating them as royal subjects at the grand ball, carnival krewes have a tradition of gifting the attendees with a little lagniappe in the form of ball favors. Small pieces of jewelry were often given out, as well as more utilitarian items such as inkwells, jewelry boxes, cigarette lighters and ashtrays.
Many of the favors bestowed through the years are on display at “Mardi Gras: It’s Carnival Time in Louisiana,” the permanent exhibit on display at the Presbytere in New Orleans. Floats, costumes, throws, invitations and favors fill all three floors of museum space. Life-size reproductions depict carnival street scenes, including a masked rider standing on a horse that illustrates a rural Cajun Mardi Gras tradition.
Even with all of this Mardi-goodness at the Presbytere, curator Wayne Phillips’ warehouse office is still jam-packed with items in the Louisiana State Museum’s inventory that are not featured in the exhibition. Objects too large for storage on shelves—if there were room on the shelves—line the walls: a Zulu king’s headdress, a flambeau from the early 1900s and float decorations.
The museum is home to some of the ultimate ball “favors”—the crown jewels borne by a krewe’s king and queen during its festivities. Because of cost considerations, krewes have been using the same sets of tiara, scepters, crowns and orbs since the 1950s. From the 1880s until then, each royal was supplied with his or her own jewels, usually imported from costume-jewelry makers in Paris, France. A few jewels and gowns have been donated to the museum.
“I’ve gotten to know so many of the women over the years who have been queen of carnival,” Phillips says. “They’ve all been so gracious and supportive of our desire to document their experience with artifacts in our collection.”
His favorite story involves Elizabeth Nicholson, who was Rex’s queen in 1948. “The early crowns and scepters that were going to be worn by the king and queen of carnival were shipped to New Orleans from Paris and would be displayed in a jewelry store window on Canal Street in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras. [The public did not know] at the time who would be king and queen. [Elizabeth] knew months in advance she would be queen, and would go stand in the crowd of people ogling her jewels, because she knew she was the one who would get to wear them. No one else knew that secret yet. And we now have that crown and scepter in our collection for everybody to see. The secret’s out.”
Another royal item is the Comus cup, a silver goblet issued to each reigning monarch of the Mystick Krewe. These cups are rare finds, and their donors anonymous, keeping sacred the tradition of complete secrecy of the krewe’s members.
Crown jewels and Comus cups may have been the ultimate ball favors, but there’s very little hope of finding a set on eBay. Luckily, most of us are able to buy a piece of Mardi Gras pageantry in the form of favor pins. “The favors I like the most and the favors that tend to be the most collectible are the favor pins. They are the official pins given out at the balls and are the earliest tradition of giving favors, going back to the 1880s,” Phillips says. “The factors that make the favor pins so attractive are those that tend to make them the most collected. Most have the krewe name and the date, and even some illustration of the theme of the ball on them, and they are wearable. It’s not like a cup or an ashtray or a little trinket that you’re going to put in a curio cabinet or on a side table and forget about.”
During this carnival season, more than 150 years after Comus’ first ball, thousands of invitations will be issued by area krewes. Although not delivered by special courier, they will still be opened with eager anticipation. Many krewes carry on the traditions of elaborate invitations, admit cards, dance cards and favors. Inevitably, some of the ephemera of the 2008 carnival season will find its way into places such as The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana State Museum to be zealously preserved for coming generations.
