My Cousin Marion

My Cousin Marion

My Great Uncle Beauregard served in the Army during the Spanish/American War and came out a Major so when he got back home he was, naturally, addressed as Colonel Beauregard Lewis. Uncle Beauregard Lewis was an imposing man with wavy black hair that had turned a silvery grey over the years and with his Vandyke beard you could not imagine a more handsome, manly visage. Uncle Lewis married very well and after he and Aunt Moselle moved into the stately Golden Gables estate they presided over 640 acres of some of the best cotton and tobacco land in Eastern North Carolina. Our family was once prosperous but had gone into decline after the Civil War and all of the family’s hope and pride was transferred to Uncle Beauregard. During most conversations with people outside the family you would eventually hear something like "as my uncle Colonel Beauregard Lewis said or did." We were some proud of Uncle Beauregard Lewis.

Uncle Beauregard and Aunt Mozelle had three daughters and the oldest was my age at the time. Five years old. Cousins Annabelle, Rochelle and Dixiebelle were pampered girls and always dressed in the finest fashions. Here in the south, children born to another woman are not, necessarily, disavowed. Cousin Marion was the only son of Uncle Beauregard and a woman by the name of Lucille Waters who lived some miles away at the edge of the Dismal Swamps. When I was five, cousin Marion was about nineteen. Families get complicated, but it’s easy to tell who belongs to who. Uncle Beauregard’s three daughters were always referred to as his daughters, but his son, Marion, was always his outside son, to let others know that he was not considered part of the first family. When cousin Marion was five years old, Uncle Beauregard "rescued" him from Lucille’s shack at the edge of the Dismals and sent him off to school. On holidays he was allowed to come into the big house and I remember him as a withdrawn, skinny young man. He did not have the manly countenance of Uncle Beauregard and always appeared to be half of Uncle Beauregard. He had his eyes and brow, but his chin was receding and weak. When Uncle Beauregards daughters were asked if Cousin Marion was manly or handsome they would always laugh and say " Laws no. He isn’t anything like The Colonel or any of the other men in our family." We all had the latest framed pictures of Uncle Beauregard Lewis and the last picture of him shows a distinguished gentleman with silver hair and noble brow and an impressive Vandyke beard.

The last time I saw cousin Marion was at Uncle Beauregards funeral. Uncle Beauregard had been elected Senator from North Carolina and had served in Washington for nearly 20 years. When he was 62 he dropped dead from a massive heart attack. All of the family was at Golden Gables and I remember cousin Marion standing by the casket with tears running down his face. Aunt Mozelle shooed him away, but cousin Marion spent as much time as he could with his father. After the funeral, I never saw cousin Marion again. I later heard that cousin Marion had finished his schooling and moved to Europe and after meeting and marrying a lady from New York had moved there.

Quite by accident I found that cousin Marion had hyphenated his last name and had become Marion Waters-Lewis. At that time, I was working as a copy editor for the Dismal Swamps Picayune and a visitor from New York City remarked that I vaguely resembled a rising senator from there. He went on to tell what a gregarious, friendly man he is who married into one of the oldest, wealthiest families in New York. When the visitor gave this senators name as Marion Waters-Lewis I thought that it was simply coincidence, because I knew that my weak chinned cousin could never fit that description.

Some years later, when I was about 40 I was sitting at my desk looking over some correspondence coming over the wire from New York and there was a large story about a famous senator from New York who was making a run for the Presidency. The story went on to tell about his heroic service in Vietnam and named him as Senator Marion Waters-Lewis. At the bottom of the story was a photograph of Senator Waters-Lewis and his wife, both of them about 60 years old. I looked at the photograph and looking back at me was a handsome, manly gentleman wearing a Vandyke beard. I held the picture up beside my Uncle Beauregards photo and they were identical.

- Bob Gurkin