Spring is approaching. One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is do my best to recreate the Mayfair garden in 3D. I've already built most of the structural elements, the "hardscape". The pool patio, the balustrades, even the swimming pool...
The smaller buildings on the property appear as they do for the moment as placeholders for the actual buildings around the pool and patio area. The cabana won't still look like this when I'm done:
This is before I made the patio feature the flagstones it actually does. And before I added the remaining fountains.
One thing I've wanted to do with a 3D model of the Mayfair house from the novels is to use the garden as a way of showing the types of flowers, shrubs, trees and other features that are described. A fun way of identifying what grows there that might also appeal to garden enthusiasts.
The garden itself plays a major role in the stories of the Mayfair Witches. There is Deirdre's Oak, which is also what marks the graves of (spoiler alert) and Emaleth. The garden is what Deirdre Mayfair saw every day of her life for so many years, and up until she died. The side porch is where Deirdre sat in her rocking chair, looking at who knows what and inspiring one local to refer to her as "a nice bunch of carrots". WH Ch 1
Nice.
The garden is where Michael Curry saw Lasher, and where Mona Mayfair found a trash can to use to get through a first floor window into the house to search for Michael. But the area of the garden that really plays a role is the swimming pool.
It's hard to imagine what is, in reality and real life, a beautiful swimming pool being full of muck for decades and surviving. I do not know when the actual pool was built on the property, but we can be reasonably sure it was not built by the original owner, Albert Hamilton Brevard.
In The Witching Hour, the swimming pool was added by Stella Mayfair, whose party guests would often amuse themselves in it. So, the pool was built in the 1920's, in the novel timeline. Swimming pools actually scare me somewhat, but I also find them fascinating for some weird reason.
Imagining a swimming pool like this being emptied by shoveling out several decades' worth of muck and then restored is more than a little creepy, I think. But fascinating. And definitely a haunted swimming pool.
Michael Curry, during the restoration of the house, decided he'd take a dip one night when he was alone at the house. And promptly found himself looking at a scene from the past, something that might have been either a time slip or a residual type of haunting. Seeing a ghostly replay of Stella Mayfair's Roaring Twenties party could certainly be called residual.
But the ghost of Arthur Langtry of the Talamasca, who also died in 1929, standing at one end of the pool and urging Michael to "Come away from there, man!" certainly isn't residual.
Haunted or not, a swimming pool like this in the middle of a garden full of lush, flowering plants would certainly be an enchanting, magical sight to behold. Hopefully, I can achieve this effect, or come very close.
Speaking of the ghostly replay and the ghost of Arthur Langtry, here is a tidbit from Season 1 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches that jumped out at me. I don't believe I've gone into this much, but why not?
When Rowan was trapped in the Mayfair house after Deirdre's funeral and Carlotta's attempt to burn the house down, she had quite an odyssey. She and Ciprien Grieve. Ciprien Grieve found himself making the acquaintance of a man named Stuart Townsend. And Stuart Townsend had some advice for Ciprien Grieve.
Don't die in the house.
Those who have read The Witching Hour will probably know who Stuart Townsend is. He was indeed in the novels. For those who don't know or might not remember, Stuart Townsend also belonged to the Talamasca. Stella Mayfair was aware of the order, and even had a little fun with them when signing a photograph of herself for them.
By 1929, the sibling rivalry between Stella, the Designee, and Carlotta, the older sister who was originally the Designee until their mother, Mary Beth Mayfair, decided it would be Stella, instead. Mary Beth Mayfair had died of cancer in 1925, and the relations between the siblings deteriorated alarmingly.
Stella had wanted to get away from her family, and apparently had hoped Stuart Townsend, who had fallen in love with Stella, would help her. Well, Carlotta did not like that, and the brother, Lionel, was jealous as well. What happened? Carlotta tricked Lasher and provoked Lionel into shooting Stella in the double parlor from the main staircase.
Unfortunately, Stella's 8-year-old daughter Antha saw her mother shot to death.
Arthur Langtry was also in the Mayfair house when Stella was killed. Actually, A LOT of people were in the Mayfair house when Stella was killed. Because it happened during what would turn out to be her last wild, Roaring Twenties party.
Langtry was able to leave the Mayfair house to head home, but died on the ship he was traveling on. Stuart Townsend?
Well, he went "missing".
Kinda.
See, he never left the Mayfair house after Stella was killed. And he wouldn't leave it for another sixty years. That was when Stella's great-granddaughter Rowan realized there was a reason that rolled up carpet on the third floor looked funny.
Some of this might sound familiar to those who recall Season 1--except it was Deirdre who was the murder victim rather than Stella (so far). In the book, Lionel, the actual shooter, was taken to a psychiatric hospital and died soon after, thanks to Lasher tormenting him.
All of this activity appears to have also caused the haunting to include the swimming pool. Those familiar with the novels will no doubt recall that when Michael came home and found Lasher "in the flesh", the two of them fought, and Michael ended up drowning and being brought back--again--in the swimming pool.
No matter how trivial a detail might seem on the face, Anne Rice had a way of integrating it into the stories in the novels she wrote. Every single thing described about the Mayfair house and all of the items in it has a purpose to the rest of the tale. While a haunting, blue-green ambience and the sight of moss dripping from branches, descriptions of the china, silver, and crystal found in the butler's pantry and other things might seem pointless on the face, they're not. Even those things are telling the story.
It might be more accurate to say it was Lasher, rather than Carlotta, who stopped time at the Mayfair house since 1929.
I'm pretty anxious to finally be at the point where I'm ready to start adding the flowers to the garden...