Like Marie Antoinette in the Country
September-October 1988
Architectural Renovation by Barry M. Fox, AIA
Photography by Hickey-Robertson
Long before the Morrell Trimbles acquired Afton Villa in Louisiana’s West Feliciana Parish near Saint Francisville, the haunting, preCivil War estate figured in their lives. En route from their New Orleans home to Bud Trimble’s family residence in Natchez, they had often turned onto the sun-dappled avenue with its cathedral arch of live oaks to visit the Gothic revival mansion and its splendid terraced gardens. “The house was painted lovely shades of pink and gray and looked like a fairy castle,” Genevieve Trimble recalls of their early visits, speaking in clear, beautifully articulated southern tones.
David Barrow constructed Afton Villa in 1857 for his second wife, Susan, and the forty-room residence, ornamented with carved cypress, was the setting for many a lavish ball over the next century. But alas, a ravaging fire in 1963 leveled the historic dwelling and reduced it to a pile of rubble. When the Trimbles heard the news, they were devastated. Occasionally Bud Trimble swooped low over the grounds in his plane and returned with descriptions of charred ruins, honeysuckle-ensnared flower beds, and the ragged remains of the brick-hued azaleas known as Afton Villa red.
Then one sweltering August day in 1972, the two explored the abandoned estate and made a momentous decision. Fearing that someone would level the gardens to build a subdivision, they purchased the 240-acre property to prevent that tragic possibility.
Since they needed a place to stay while they were working on the grounds, the Trimbles turned their thoughts to the open pool pavilion near the ruins of the old home. Built by previous owners in the 1940s, the structure included two white tiled dressing rooms flanking a central space with a concrete floor. Even though festooned with spiderwebs, the exterior walls were sound, and a columned, brick-floored piazza faced the pool. They consulted with New Orleans architect Barry M. Fox and began to see that the pool house, stripped of its interior features, might metamorphose into far more than expedient lodgings. And indeed it did.
Sitting beside a crackling fire in the living room, the master and mistress of the house discuss the evolution of their pied-a-terre. “When we began planning, I thought I wanted a rustic setting and a Laura Ashley look,” Gen Trimble explains, scooping Muffin, the smaller of their two Lhasa Apses, into her lap. “But halfway through, I realized that if I were going to be in the country, I wanted to be like Marie Antoinette in the country.”
Architect Barry Fox appropriated several French architectural elements from descriptions by author Cyril Connolly and from Jerome Zerbe’s Les Pavillons, an aesthetic exploration of the houses near Versailles. “I love the French pavilion look, and I saw in this little house the potential for doing something like that,” Mrs. Trimble comments. A bull’s-eye window at the entrance, segmental arched doors with deep reveals, arched windows, terra-cotta tile floors, and pewter door latches delight the eye and manifest a Gallic sensibility.
It is eleven in the morning, time for cafe au lait, a delightful Louisiana tradition. Eliza Penn, a member of the Trimble household for twenty-five years, enters carrying a tray of French gold-banded cups and hot biscuits with ham. At the sight of the platter, Muffin’s gaze grows intense, though she stays politely mute. As we sip our aromatic brew, Bud Trimble calls attention to a peacock, who makes a dignified appearance on the loggia and poses in profile wearing his tiny crown. “Sometimes we wake up to find one peering silently at us through the bedroom window,” he says. Peacocks have roamed the gardens since before the Civil War. These seem well pleased with the villa’s revival.
Mrs. Trimble wanted the simple interior to appear “collected rather than decorated.” She and the late New Orleans designer Warren Newman scoured Royal Street and various auctions to find some treasures appropriate to the pied-a-terre. A seventeenth-century painting in the living room seems to have been created with Afton Villa in mind. Mrs. Trimble happened upon the large, dark-toned canvas, propped against a wall, in an art studio in the French Quarter. There, within its depths, are peacocks, rabbits, red blossoms resembling the famed Afton Villa azaleas, and a slender brunette who might well represent the villa’s first striking mistress.
The Trimbles often push back the sliding glass doors opening onto the loggia and pool. The cypress columns are placed so that they conceal the door frames, and the interior embraces the outdoors. The breezy open space provides a perfect spot for entertaining New Orleans friends for the day. After a tour of the gardens, guests return to the house for a delicious cold buffet luncheon at skirted tables on the loggia. The simple repast often includes Eliza’s renowned meat loaf, molded fruit salad, fruit punch, and French bread, or, in cooler months, a savory gumbo.
The Trimbles enjoy the tranquillity of their garden bower. “Our life in New Orleans is interesting but not peaceful. I find that in our city house I rarely sit down and open a book, whereas here in the evenings I read a lot. I feel more at ease here,” Gen Trimble muses.
“Even with the work,” her husband adds. “But the work is relaxing,” she affirms.
Though Bud Trimble insists that he is a “gopher” rather than a gardener, he too enjoys the blissful hours spent planning, digging, and dreaming among the tulips, azaleas, pansies, and daffodils. But Afton Villa’s restored gardens are themselves a story for a future issue.
