Regarding Reizenstein's Mysteries of New Orleans & Cable's Old Creole Days

      . . . . For anyone with serious interest in the history of New Orleans, the history of the South, the history of the United States, American Literature per se, and the history of our literature that hailed from the slave states, this book will be fascinating, and revealing. 

Die Geheimnisse van New Orleans (The Mysteries of New Orleans) by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein, published serially between in 1854-55 in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung.  Rediscovered in the 1990's, translated and edited by Steven Rowan, published in 2002. 

From the penultimate paragraph of Mysteries of New Orleans, Chapter 4, p. 34, written in German, by someone who is coming to New Orleans, the South and the United States from outside, i.e. not born here, where all this was so normal people hardly remarked upon it.  Except, that by the time this was published in 1854-54, the red text was being remarked upon with ever increasing anger by ever increasing numbers.:

The person to whom these lines were directed is an old, respectable lady who, besides a few of the minor failings of her sex, has the great weakness of being somewhat obsessed over her aristocratic origins. Whoever violated her aristocratic pretensions even in the slightest immediately lost her favor.  Although she could not really be called rich, she owned three house in Bourbon Street and a volante with two horses.  A mulatto she just obtained through an inheritance completes her half-dozen slaves.  She belonged to that French clique in New Orleans that could still boast of the hereditary titles they brought with them in the period of the emigration.* This considerable clique of French aristocrats, which excludes even the richer Americans from its circle, since they are regarded as not of equal birth, play the same role in the small circle of New Orleans that the grandees of South Carolina play in the whole of the United States . . . .

One can't help but wonder if  George Branch Cable had familiarity with The Mysteries of New Orleans, that this work might have contributed in terms of format and treatment his Old Creole Days. The seven story collection was first published in 1879, which gave him rewarded him with literary renown (and sales!) in the North,  and the South's condemnation, so much so, he had to move North. The book was particularly loathed in New Orleans.

So, like Reizenstein's German language serial, New Orleans and the South labeled Cable as unfit to read, stuffed with dreadful ideas, exposing break after break in the color line via the most intimate of connections, though Cable's work was considered perverse for exposing such things to the eyes of the North -- lies, all lies! -- while Reizenstein'swas perversion, populated with lesbians, gays, cross dressers, etc. of all skin color heritages. Also lies, all lies! doncha know.  These things do not happen in New Orleans and the virtuous South.

* The Napoleonic wars and slave revolution in Haiti, from where many of them emigrated to Cuba, then when Napoleon went to war with Spain, were expelled and came to New Orleans, bringing their slaves with them, particularly their female slaves, as well as their free 'colored' mistresses and children, doubling the city's population in a single year.