Summary

In Chapter 11, Grant returns to another Tableaux performance, and this time, he attends the Royal Ball of the Pilgrimage Garden Club afterwards. This after-party is thrown by the parents of the King and Queen of the Tableaux at a cost of approximately $25,000. According to Grant, "Alcohol flowed in prodigal quantities" (125), and the King and Queen remained exceedingly drunk. The after-party was then followed by a visit to the Under-the-Hill saloon, an "old, battered, scarred establishment right on the edge of the Mississippi River" (125). Here Grant learns why Natchez has been compared to New Orleans and Vicksburg and usually wins the competition for the "bloodiest, wildest, most debauched place on the entire Mississippi River" (126). Grant uses the long career of Nellie Jackson, an African American who ran a brothel for several decades, as an example of the "laissez-faire spirit" (13) of the town. As an...