Built
in an antebellum rush of youth and bloom as a wedding present
for George Marshall and his bride Charlotte Hunt, Lansdowne has been
the seat of grandeur at times and has been kept together with nothing
more than the meager sales from butter and eggs after the Civil War. It
has known triumph and sacrifice. Its walls contain sentiments
of majesty and tragedy, of weddings and funerals, of 150 Christmas
mornings and 150 New Year’s Eves.
Lansdowne is still owned by the descendants of George and Charlotte. It contains most of the original furnishings. The parlor still has the original wallpaper and paint on the woodwork. Each room has original Italian marble mantles from Carrera and faux bois painting on doors and baseboards. Outbuildings two wings housing a school room, Governess's room, billiard room, kitchen and washroom, and the original Privy. Lansdowne is situated on 120 acres just one mile from the city limits of Natchez.
Lansdowne
doesn’t advertise, but you can find it. The way is farther
into the thin roads that sway with the country. Red cliffs rise
and crumble through parts of town that once knew fortune and
parts that only heard of it. Follow the road out of town, past
freshly painted picket fences, and houses with new names, to
where houses are the color of old women. This is where it all
gets real. You begin
to slow under the weight of memories – your own and not
your own. Then you see the sign for Lansdowne, flung up like
a barrier and you must stop. It walks in your skin like a visitor.
Inside the gates you may sense the fading and coming
of seasons. You will not be prepared for the beauty as you pass
under seventeen shades of green sprung from vines and deep trees,
or for the suddenness with which your slow procession leads
to the sight of the awakening house. You will not be prepared
for the lovely women, those daughters of daughters born and
buried here waiting to welcome you, or for the undeniable sentience
of personality and character acquired from the people who breathe
or have breathed in it.
Lansdowne has never been bought or sold. It has never undergone a restoration. It has endured.
What you will find is not a show, it is real. That stillness felt
around the house makes a sound like the scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back to let a lovely woman
pass, her dress just brushing his coat is real. It is the sound of
generations of ghosts who lived here and are buried here in the
family cemetery. Inside the stillness evaporates as the past and
future collide in a tapestry so complicated and beautiful that
it will leave you knowing you have found a thing you can believe in.
