XVII.
March 8th
… RICH households throughout the city are almost helpless for
the want of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price:
it is true that young country-girls keep coming into town to fill
the places of the dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the
disease much more readily than those who preceded them, And such
deaths en represent more than a mere derangement in the mechanism
of domestic life. The creole bonne bears a relation to the family
of an absolutely peculiar sort,—a relation of which the term
"house-servant" does not convey
the faintest idea. She is really
a member of the household: her association with its life usually
begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to carry a
dobanne of water up-stairs;—and in many cases she has the additional
claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays with
the white children,—shares their pleasures and presents. She is very
seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a
servitor: she has a pet name;—she is allowed much familiarity,—
is often permitted to join in conversation when there is no
company present, and to express her opinion about domestic
affairs. She costs very little to keep; four or five dollars a
year will supply her with all necessary clothing;—she rarely
wears shoes;—she sleeps on a little straw mattress (
paillasse)
on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse supported upon an
"elephant" (
lèfan)—two thick square pieces of hard mattress
placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal
expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the
nurse, the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,—everything, in short,
except cook and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good
bonne would not part with her on any consideration. If she has
been brought up in the house-hold, she is regarded almost as a
kind of adopted child. If she leave that household to make a home
of her own, and have ill-fortune afterwards, she will not be
afraid to return with her baby, which will perhaps be received
and brought up as she herself was, under the old roof. The
stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs; yet
the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the
formation of creole society—to the early period of slavery.
Among the Latin races,—especially the French,—slavery preserved
in modern times many of the least harsh features of slavery in
the antique world,—where the domestic slave, entering the
familia,
actually became a member of it.
