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THE de MONTLUZIN HOUSE (THE BAY TOWN INN)
208 North Beach Boulevard, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
The builder of this house, Ludovic Adrien de Montluzin, was the son of Louis de Montiuzin, a lieutenant in Napoleon’s Second Lancers. For personal service to the emperor during the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon pinned a medal on Lt. de Montluzin, which on the final day of battle deflected a fragment of shrapnel and thus saved his life. He had already survived a sword wound and seven lance thrusts in previous battles, and he died in bed of old age.
His son, Ludovic Adrien de Montluzin, a journalist and opponent of Napoleon Ill’s dictatorship, emigrated from France to Louisiana in 1854 and became a teacher at Jefferson College, a boys’ school in Convent, Louisiana. After the Civil War he established his own lycee, the Ecole Classique et Commerciale, at 122 Conti Street in New Orleans, where he was headmaster until his retirement, following a heart attack, to Bay St. Louis in 1874. In August 1878, partly to provide a public service and partly to indulge his interest in chemistry, he established a pharmacy (the fifth in Mississippi). After several moves and a fire in 1897, which destroyed the entire business district of Bay St. Louis, he rebuilt his pharmacy on Beach Boulevard. That building, with its round-top glass counters, crystal candy jars, and apothecary bottles labeled in gold-leaf Latin letters, survived the hurricanes of 1915 and 1947 but was destroyed by Camille in 1969.
The house at 208 North Beach Boulevard was constructed in 1899-1900 to replace the de Montluzin family’s earlier home, approximately half a block farther south on Beach Boulevard, which had burned in the 1897 fire. It accommodated Ludovic de Montluzin, his wife Reine, and five of their six children (Alfred, Jeanne, Roger, Rene, and Corinne) and even housed for a time on the second floor the consulting rooms where Roger, a physician and surgeon, had his practice. The eldest child of Ludovic and Reine, Ferdinand, never lived in the new home, having left to pursue a career in engineering before the house was built, dying of malaria in Panama in the midst of the construction of the Panama Canal. Two of the younger brothers, Alfred and Rene, became pharmacists, and it was Rene who eventually inherited the house.
Ludovic de Montluzin was a gentle, scholarly man, of philosophical bent and emotional temperament. Never forgetting the country of his birth, he raised funds for French relief during the Franco-Prussian War, served as a consular agent for France, and was awarded Palmes Academiques by the French Department of Public Instruction for his service to teaching. A good citizen, he was one of the nineteen founders of the Hancock Bank. His wife Reine was a strong-minded French matriarch who refused resolutely to learn English (which she considered a “barbaric” language) and who every day, winter and summer alike, put on her bathing dress and went swimming in the bay in front of her house. When Ludovic died on December 26, 1909, Reine, his wife of sixty-two years, had no wish to continue to live. She took to her bed; and on January 19, 1910, she died, simply because she willed it. The two were buried in a newly built family tomb in Cedar Rest Cemetery.
The house was situated on a 24-foot bluff, one of the highest points along the Bay St. Louis beach front, and had a commanding view of the bay, a memorable sight especially at sunrise and on moonlit nights. Built over the foundations of a previous house, it followed a typical architectural style of its day, using high ceilings, transoms, long windows, and a wide central hall to combat summer heat. The ceilings were fourteen feet high, the eight-foot doors were cypress, and massive beams, cut from single trees, supported the floors. On the front lawn was a magnificent registered live oak, and pecan trees, a tall magnolia, and a large twin oak also shaded the property. Sold four times, the house became, under the care of two of its owners, Ann Tidwell and Nikki Nicholson, an elegantly furnished bed-and-breakfast inn. When Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005, its last owner, Nikki, and six friends were sheltering in the house, confident that the building that had weathered the terrible hurricanes of 1915 and 1947 as well as Hurricane Camille in 1969 would provide them protection. When Katrina’s tidal surge hit, “that beautiful old house,” in Nikki’s words, “simply disintegrated around them.” Swept into the water, all seven people clung for hours to the branches of the large twin oak near the side of the house, and all survived. The tree died several months later, having saved the lives of seven people.
[Account prepared by Emily H. de Montluzin and Emily Lorraine de Montluzin, Feb. 2007]