L'Hermione Comes to Alexandria

A replica of one of the Marquis de Lafayette's ships is in Alexandria for three days as part of a tour of the Eastern Seaboard from Yorktown to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Suddenly, everyone is very conscious of saying its name in the French style (lair-me-own) rather than the English (like the character in Harry Potter). Lafayette sailed on the original ship in 1780, one of many times he came across the Atlantic, this time with word that France would support the Americans with men and ships. At the ceremony I attended yesterday, much was made of the historic and current French-U.S. alliance, with lots of Vive la France! cries from the speakers and audience. The real treat was to board the ship. (It had that wonderful smell of creosote or tar or something that I remember from working at Mystic Seaport many years ago.)

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Lafayette died in 1834, still a beloved figure in the U.S.

Shortly after Julia Wilbur arrived in Washington in October 1862, she took her first walk around LaFayette Sq. [sic], across from the White House, a fashionable address for Washington movers and shakers.

In Alexandria, on January 7, 1863, when her sister Frances and sister-in-law Charlotte were visiting--

...  Met Col. Tait who told us of a Museum over the Market. We went there. A police man opened the sanctorum for us. There is the bier on which Washington was carried to the grave, & Lafayette’s saddle, & Revolutionary Flags & many curious and interesting relics. They are covered with dust, & the labels are torn off some of them. I must go there again.

Everyone would have known about the Marquis de Lafayette, dust notwithstanding.

And here is the beautiful ship from a press package--which I could not begin to capture with my iphone camera.

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Alexandria Walking Tour

On Monday, April 13, Pamela Cressey, who teaches Historical Archaeology at George Washington University, asked me to join her class as she took them on an abbreviated tour to show them the places they have studied in class. We met on a beautiful spring afternoon at the King Street Metro Station and headed southeast to Duke Street. First stops" Bruin's--one of the "inspirations" for Uncle Tom's Cabin--and Franklin & Armfield slave pens. Both establishments were flourishing mid-19th century businesses that dealt in the purchase and sale of humans. Alongside Franklin & Armfield (sold and called Price Birch and Co. by 1861), the Union built a hospital for African American soldiers and civilians, called L'Ouverture Hospital, in 1864 and operated for the next several years before it was torn down.

Julia Wilbur often visited these sites.

Our last stop was Alexandria National Cemetery, the military cemetery built in 1863. In a future blog post, I will talk more about the cemetery, including an ultimately successful petition by L'Ouverture patients in late 1864 to demand that black soldiers be buried there.

Pam (Alexandria's now-retired City Archaeologist) had assigned her students a project to research some of the USCT through hospital and pension records. Then they fanned out in the cemetery to search for the gravestone of "their" soldiers.

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Mercy House Casting Call

The room had about a dozen iron bedsteads and a few men were building some kind of bunk or shelving for the show. Mercy House is the upcoming PBS series that takes place in Civil War Alexandria, using Mansion House Hospital as its focus. Filming is scheduled for later this month through June in Richmond. At this point, the production company is using a large warehouse-type building on the outskirts of Richmond, where they held a casting call for extras on April 2.

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I couldn't resist.

In greatest demand: thin young men with no tattoos and amputees. A secondary need: doctors, nurses, and orderlies who, presumably, wouldn't be totally flummoxed by the medical aspect, even if 150 years old. Middle-aged white women? not so much.

When I got there a little before 4 pm (supposedly, open hours between 4 and 8), a line had already formed and they had begun the call. We watched some men build some kind of bunk or shelf; over on the other side were a dozen or so metal bedsteads.

Two women took measurements (very important, as people need to fit already obtained costumes), then someone, possibly the extras casting director, took a head shots. We held a white board with our assigned number (mine was #21).

A few of the people (yes, mostly young thin men, although a few others, too) looked so convincing, even in their 2015 clothes, that I won't be surprised if I see them in the background of a few scenes when the show airs in 2016.

As for me? Better that I am a writer and not an actor. The director didn't even bother with a profile shot, nor ask my availability, as he did with some others before me in line.

Still, if I get the call....