LA FILLE DE COULEUR. Two Years in the French West Indies | ||
9. LA FILLE DE COULEUR.
I.
NOTHING else in the picturesque life of the French colonies of the Occident impresses the traveller on his first arrival more than the costumes of the women of color. They surprise the aesthetic sense agreeably;—they are local and special: you will see nothing resembling them among the populations of the British West Indies; they belong to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Désirade, Marie-Galante, and Cayenne,—in each place differing sufficiently to make the difference interesting, especially in regard to the head-dress. That of Martinique is quite Oriental;—more attractive, although less fantastic than the Cayenne coiffure, or the pretty drooping mouchoir of Guadeloupe.
These costumes are gradually disappearing, for various reasons, —the chief reason being of course the changes in the social condition of the colonies during the last forty years. Probably the question of health had also something to do with the almost universal abandonment in Martinique of the primitive slave dress,—chemise and jupe,—which exposed its wearer to serious risks of pneumonia; for as far as economical reasons are concerned, there was no fault to find with it: six francs could purchase it when money was worth more than it is now. The douillette, a long trailing dress, one piece from neck to feet, has taken its place. *
But there was a luxurious variety of the jupe costume which is disappearing because of its cost; there is no money in the colonies now for such display:—I refer to the celebrated attire of the pet slaves and belles affranchies of the old colonial days. A full costume,—including violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or satin; chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery and lace; "trembling-pins" of gold (zépingue tremblant) to attach the folds of the brilliant Madras turban; the great necklace of three or four strings of gold beads bigger than peas (collier-choux);
THE MARTINIQUE TURBAN, OR MADRAS CALENDE.
[Description: Inline image. Black-and-white engraving of woman.]THE GUADELOUPE HEAD-DRESS.
[Description: Unnumbered illustration page. Black-and-white engraving of standing woman in profile holding a hat.]… Even the every-day Martinique costume is slowly changing. Year by year the "calendeuses"—the women who paint and fold the turbans—have less work to do;—the colors of the douiellette are becoming less vivid;—while more and more young colored girls are being élevées en chapeau ("brought up in a hat")—i.e., dressed and educated like the daughters of the whites. These, it must be confessed, look far less attractive in the latest Paris fashion, unless white as the whites themselves: on the other hand, few white girls could look well in douillette and mouchoir,—not merely because of color contrast, but because they have not that amplitude of limb and particular cambering of the torso peculiar to the half-breed race, with its large bulk and stature. Attractive as certain coolie women are, I observed that all who have adopted the Martinique costume look badly in it: they are too slender of body to wear it to advantage.
Slavery introduced these costumes, even though it probably did not invent them; and they were necessarily doomed to pass away with the peculiar social conditions to which they belonged. If the population clings still to its douillettes, mouchoirs, and foulards, the fact is largely due to the cheapness of such attire. A girl can dress very showily indeed for about twenty francs—shoes excepted;—and thousands never wear shoes. But the fashion will no doubt have become cheaper and uglier within another decade.
At the present time, however, the stranger might be sufficiently impressed by the oddity and brilliancy of these dresses to ask about their origin,—in which case it
* The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the people according to the designs of the printed calico:—robe-à-bambou,—robe-à-bouquet,—robe-arc-en-ciel,—robe-à-carreau,—etc., according as the pattern is in stripes, flower-designs, "rainbow" bands of different tints, or plaidings. Ronde-en-ronde means a stuff printed with disk-patterns, or link-patterns of different colors,—each joined with the other. A robe of one color only is called a robe-uni.
The general laws of contrasts observed in the costume require the silk foulard, or shoulder-kerchief, to make a sharp relief with the color of the robe, thus:—
- Foulard.
- Blue.
- Yellow.
- Green.
- Bright red.
- Violet.
- Pale blue.
- Pale rose.
Robe.
Yellow
Dark blue
Pink
Violet
Red
Chocolate (cacoa)
Sky blue
These refer, of course, to dominant or ground colors, as there are usually several tints in the foulard as well as the robe. The painted Madras should always be bright yellow. According to popular ideas of good dressing, the different tints of skin should be relieved by special choice of color in the robe, as follows:—
- Pale yellow.
- Rose.
Blue.
Green. - White.
Scarlet, or any violet color.
Capresse (a clear red skin) should wear
Mulatresse (according to shade)
Negresse
* … "Vouèla Cendrillon evec yon bel róbe velou grande lakhè. … Ça té ka bail ou mal ziè. Li té tini bel zanneau dans zóreill li, quate-tou-chou, bouoche, bracelet, tremblant,—toutt sóte bel baggaïe conm ça." … —[Conte Cendrillon,—d'après Turiault.] |
—"There was Cendrillon with a beautiful long trailing robe of velvet on her! … It was enough to hurt one's eyes to look at her! She had beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux of four rows, brooches, tremblants, bracelets,—everything fine of that sort."—[Story of Cinderella in Turinault's Creole Grammar. |
II.
CONSIDERING only the French peasant colonist and the West African
slave as the original factors of that physical evolution visible
in the modern fille-de-couleur,
YOUNG MULATTRESS.
[Description: Inline image. Black-and-white engraving of smiling girl.]
The precise time of the first introduction of slaves into
Martinique is not now possible to ascertain,—no record exists on
the subject; but it is probable that the establishment of slavery
was coincident with the settlement of the island. Most likely
the first hundred colonists from St. Christophe, who landed, in
1635, near the bay whereon the city of St. Pierre is now
situated, either brought slaves with them, or else were furnished
with negroes very soon after their arrival. In the time of Père
Dutertre (who visited the colonies in 1640, and printed his
history of the French Antilles at Paris in 1667) slavery was
already a flourishing institution,—the foundation of the whole
social structure. According to the Dominican missionary, the
Africans then in the colony were decidedly repulsive; he
describes the women as "hideous" (hideuses). There is no good
reason to charge Dutertre with prejudice in his pictures of them.
No writer of the century was more keenly sensitive to natural
beauty than the author of that "Voyage aux Antilles" which
inspired Chateaubriand, and which still, after two hundred and
fifty years, delights even those perfectly familiar with the
nature of the places and things spoken of. No other writer and
traveller of the period possessed to a more marked degree that
sense of generous pity which makes the unfortunate appear to us
in an illusive, almost ideal aspect. Nevertheless, he asserts
that the negresses were, as a general rule, revoltingly ugly,—
and, although he had seen many strange sides of human nature
(having been a soldier before becoming a monk), was astonished to
find that miscegenation had already begun. Doubtless the first
black women thus favored, or afflicted, as the case might be,
were of the finer types of negresses; for he notes remarkable
differences among the slaves procured from
PLANTATION COOLIE WOMAN IN MARTINIQUE COSTUME.
[Description: Unnumbered illustration page. Black-and-white engraving of standing
woman with a basket on her head, holding a pot.]
—"They have something of their Father and something of their Mother, —in the same wise that Mules partake of the qualities of the creatures that engendered them: for they are neither all white, like the French; nor all black, like the Negroes, but have a livid tint, which comes of both." …
To-day, however, the traveller would look in vain for a livid tint among the descendants of those thus described: in less than two centuries and a half the physical characteristics of the race have been totally changed. What most surprises is the rapidity of the transformation. After the time of Père Labat, Europeans never could "have mistaken little negro children for monkeys." Nature had begun to remodel the white, the black, and half-breed according to environment and climate: the descendant of the early colonists ceased to resemble his fathers; the creole negro improved upon his
COOLIE HALF-BREED
[Description: Inline image. Black-and-white engraving of a woman's face.]—"Under the sun of the tropics," writes Dr. Rufz, of Martinique, "the African race, as well as the European, becomes greatly modified in its reproduction. Either race gives birth to a totally new being. The Creole African came into existence as did the Creole white.
And just as the offspring of Europeans who emigrated to the tropics from different parts of France displayed characteristics so identical that it was impossible to divine the original race-source,—so likewise the Creole negro—whether brought into being by the heavy thick-set Congo, or the long slender black of Senegambia, or the suppler and more active Mandingo,—appeared so remodelled, homogeneous, and adapted in such wise to his environment that it was utterly impossible to discern in his features anything of his parentage, his original
… "The Creole negro is gracefully shaped, finely proportioned:
his limbs are lithe, his neck long;—his features are more
delicate, his lips less thick, his nose less flattened, than
those of the African;—he has the
COUNTRY-GIRL—PURE NEGRO RACE.
[Description: Unnumbered illustration page. Black-and-white engraving of a woman's face.]
This new and comelier black race naturally won from its masters a more sympathetic attention than could have been vouchsafed to its progenitors; and the consequences in Martinique and elsewhere seemed to have evoked the curinus Article 9 of the Code Noir of 1665,—enacting, first, that free men who should have one or two children by slave women, as well as the slave-owners permitting the same, should be each condemned to pay two thousand pounds of sugar; secondly, that if the violator of the ordinance should be himself the owner of the mother and father of her children, the mother and the children should be confiscated for the profit of the Hospital, and deprived for their lives of the right to enfranchisement. An exception, however, was made to the effect that if the father were unmarried at the period of his concubinage, he could escape the provisions of the penalty by marrying, "according to the rites of the Church," the female slave, who would thereby be enfranchised, and her children "rendered free and legitimate." Probably the legislators did not imagine that the first portion of the article could prove inefficacious, or that any violator of the ordinance would seek to escape
It appears to have had no more effect than the previous law, even in Martinique, where the state of public morals was better than in Santo Domingo. The slave race had begun to exercise an influence never anticipated by legislators. Scarcely a century had elapsed since the colonization of the island; but in that time climate and civilization had transfigured the black woman. "After one or two generations," writes the historian Rufz, "the Africaine, reformed, refined, beautified in her descendants, transformed into the creole negress, commenced to exert a fascination irresistible, capable of winning anything (capable de tout obtenir)." * Travellers of the eighteenth century were confounded by the luxury of dress and of jewellery displayed by swarthy beauties in St. Pierre. It was a public scandal to European eyes. But the creole negress or mulattress, beginning to understand her power, sought for higher favors and privileges than silken robes and necklaces of gold beads: she sought to obtain, not merely liberty for herself, but
Thus heavily weighted, emancipation advanced much more slowly than before, but it still continued to a considerable extent. The poorer creole planter or merchant might find it impossible to obey the impulse of his conscience or of his affection, but among the richer classes pecuniary considerations could scarcely affect enfranchisement. The country had grown wealthy; and although the acquisition of wealth may not evoke generosity in particular natures, the enrichment of a whole class develops pre-existing tendencies to kindness, and opens new ways for its exercise. Later in the eighteenth century, when hospitality had been cultivated as a gentleman's duty to fantastical extremes,—when liberality was the rule throughout society,—when a notary summoned to draw up a deed, or a priest invited to celebrate a marriage, might receive for fee five thousand francs in gold,— there were certainly many emancipations. … "Even though interest and public opinion in the colonies," says a historian, * "were adverse to enfranchisement, the private feeling of each man combated that opinion;—Nature resumed her sway in the secret places of hearts;—and as local custom permitted a sort of polygamy, the rich man naturally felt himself bound in honor to secure the freedom of his own blood. … It was not a rare thing to see legitimate wives taking care of the natural children of their husbands,—becoming their godmothers (s'en faire les marraines)." … Nature seemed to laugh all these laws to scorn, and the prejudices of race! In vain did the wisdom of legislators attempt to render the condition of the enfranchised more humble,—enacting extravagant penalties
* It is quite possible, however, that the slaves of Dutertre's time belonged for the most part to the uglier African tribes; and that later supplies may have been procured from other parts of the slave coast. Writing half a century later, Père Labat declares having seen freshly disembarked blacks handsome enough to inspire an artist:—"J'en ai vu des deux sexes faits à peindre, et beaux par merveille" (vol. iv. chap, vii,). He adds that their skin was extremely fine, and of velvety softness;—"le velours n'est pas plus doux." … Among the 30,000 blacks yearly shipped to the French colonies, there were doubtless many representatives of the finer African races.
* "Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de la Guinée," writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.
* Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques et statistiques sur la population de la Martinique." St. Pierre: 1850. Vol. i., pp. 148-50.
It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution of the black race was proof against the deadly climate of the West Indies. The truth is that the freshly imported Africans died of fever by thousands and tens-of-thousands;—the creole-negro race, now so prolific, represents only the fittest survivors in the long and terrible struggle of the slave element to adapt itself to the new environment. Thirty thousand negroes a year were long needed to supply the French colonies. Between 1700 and 1789 no less than 900,000 slaves were imported by San Domingo alone;—yet there were less than half that number left in 1789. (See Placide Justin's history of Santo Domingo, p. 147.) The entire slave population of Barbadoes had to be renewed every sixteen years, according to estimates: the loss to planters by deaths of slaves (reckoning the value of a slave at only £20 sterling) during the same period was £1,600,000 ($8,000,000). (Burck's "History of European Colonies," vol. ii., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)
III.
WHAT the legislators of 1685 and 1724 endeavored to correct did not greatly improve with the abolition of slavery, nor yet with those political troubles which socially deranged colonial life. The fille-de-couleur, inheriting the charm of the belle affranchie, continued to exert a similar influence, and to fulfil an almost similar destiny. The latitude of morals persisted,— though with less ostentation: it has latterly contracted under the pressure of necessity rather than through any other influences. Certain ethical principles thought essential to social integrity elsewhere have always been largely relaxed in the tropics; and—excepting, perhaps, Santo Domingo—the moral standard in Martinique was not higher than in the other French colonies. Outward decorum might be to some degree maintained; but there was no great restraint of any sort upon private lives: it was not uncommon for a rich man to have many "natural" families; and almost every individual of means had children of color. The superficial character of race prejudices was everywhere manifested by unions, which although never mentioned in polite converse, were none the less universally known; and the "irresistible fascination" of the half-breed gave the open lie to pretended
In speaking of the fille-de-couleur it is necessary also to speak of the extraordinary social stratification of the community to which she belongs. The official statement of 20,000 "colored" to the total population of between 173,000 and 174,000 (in which the number of pure whites is said to have fallen as low as 5,000) does not at all indicate the real proportion of mixed blood. Only a small element of unmixed African descent really exists; yet when a white creole speaks of the gens-de-couleur he certainly means nothing darker than a mulatto skin. Race classifications have been locally made by sentiments of political origin: at least four or five shades of visible color are classed as negro. There is, however, some natural truth at the bottom of this classification: where African blood predominates, the sympathies are likely to be African; and the turning-point is reached only in the true mulatto, where, allowing the proportions of mixed blood to be nearly equal, the white would have the dominant influence in situations more natural than existing politics. And in speaking of the filles-de-couleur, the local reference is always to women in whom the predominant element is white: a white creole, as a general rule, deigns only thus to distinguish those who are nearly white,—more usually
Physically, the typical fille-de-couleur may certainly be classed, as white creole writers have not hesitated to class her, with the "most beautiful women of the human race." * She has inherited not only the finer bodily characteristics of either parent race, but a something else belonging originally to neither, and created by special climatic and physical conditions,—a grace, a suppleness of form, a delicacy of extremities (so that all the lines described by the bending of limbs or fingers are parts of
She asked for so little,—accepted a gift with such childish pleasure,—submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man who promised to love her. She bore him children—such beautiful children!—whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked to legitimatize;—and she did not ask perpetual affection notwithstanding,—regarded the relation as a necessarily temporary one, to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of her children's father. If deceived in all things,—if absolutely ill-treated and left destitute, she did not lose faith in human nature: she seemed a born optimist, believing most men good;—she would make a home for another and serve him better than any slave. … "Née de l'amour," says a creole writer, "la fille-de-couleur vit d'amour, de rires, et d'oublis." … *
Then came the general colonial crash! … You cannot see its results without feeling touched by them. Everywhere the weird beauty, the immense melancholy of tropic ruin. Magnificent terraces, once golden with cane, now abandoned to weeds and serpents;—deserted plantation-homes, with trees rooted in the apartments and pushing up through the place of the roofs;—grass-grown alleys ravined by rains;—fruit-trees strangled by lianas; —here and there the stem of some splendid palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a mast;—petty frail growths of banana-trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of century-old forest giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough remains to tell what the sensual paradise of the old days must have been, when sugar was selling at 52.
And the fille-de-couleur has also changed. She is much less humble and submissive,—somewhat more exacting: she comprehends better the moral injustice of her position. The almost extreme physical refinement and delicacy, bequeathed to her by the freedwomen of the old regime, are passing away: like a conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is returning to a more primitive condition,—hardening and growing perhaps less comely as well as less helpless. She perceives also in a vague way the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and protector, is emigrating;—the domination of the black becomes more and more probable. Furthermore, with the continual increase of the difficulty of living, and the growing pressure of population, social cruelties and hatreds have been developed such as her ancestors never knew. She is still loved; but it is alleged that she rarely loves the white, no matter how large the sacrifices made for her sake, and she no longer enjoys that reputation of fidelity accorded to her class in other years. Probably the truth is that the fille-de-couleur never had at any time capacity to bestow that quality of affection imagined
—"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the certificates of liberty,—on payment by the master of
Long before the time of General Romanet, the colored male slave might win liberty as the guerdon of bravery in fighting against foreign invasion, or might purchase it by extraordinary economy, while working as a mechanic on extra time for his own account (he always refused to labor with negroes); but in either case his success depended upon the possession and exercise of qualities the reverse of amiable. On the other hand, the bondwoman won manumission chiefly through her power to excite affection. In the survival and perpetuation of the fittest of both sexes these widely different characteristics would obtain more and more definition with successive generations.
I find in the "Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la Martinique" for 1831 (No. 41) a list of slaves to whom liberty was accorded pour services rendus à leurs maîtres. Out of the sixty-nine enfranchisements recorded under this head, there are only two names of male adults to be found,—one an old man of sixty;—the other, called Laurencin, the betrayer of a conspiracy. The rest are young girls, or young mothers and children;—plenty of those
Most of the French West Indian writers whose works I was able to obtain and examine speak severely of the hommes-de-couleur as a class,—in some instances the historian writes with a very violence of hatred. As far back as the commencement of the eighteenth century, Labat, who, with all his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge of men, declared:—"The mulattoes are as a general rule well made, of good stature, vigorous, strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (hardis) beyond all conception. They have much vivacity, but are given to their pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (cachés), wicked, and capable of the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced than Père Labat, speaks of them "as physically superior, though morally inferior to the whites": he wrote at a time when the race had given to the world the two best swordsmen it has yet perhaps seen,—Saint-Georges and Jean-Louis.
Commenting on the judgment of Père Labat, the historian Borde observes:—"The wickedness spoken of by Père Labat doubtless relates to their political passions only; for the women of color are, beyond any question, the best and sweetest persons in the world—à coup sûr, les meilleures et les plus douces personnes qu'il y ait au monde."—("Histoire de l'Ile de la Trinidad," par M. Pierre Gustave Louis Borde, vol. i., p. 222.) The same author, speaking of their goodness of heart, generosity to strangers and the sick says "they are born Sisters
… To-day it cannot be truly said of the fille-de-couleur that her existence is made up of "love, laughter, and forgettings." She has aims in life,—the bettering of her condition, the higher education of her children, whom she hopes to free from the curse of prejudice. She still clings to the white, because through him she may hope to improve her position. Under other conditions she might even hope to effect some sort of reconciliation between the races. But the gulf has become so much widened within the last forty years, that no rapprochement now appears possible; and it is perhaps too late even to restore the lost prosperity of the colony by any legislative or commercial reforms. The universal creole belief is summed up in the daily-repeated cry: "C'est un pays perdu!"
—"Good-bye Madras! Good-bye foulard! Good-bye pretty calicoes! Good-bye collier-choux! That ship Which is there on the buoy, It is taking My doudoux away. |
—"Adiéu Madras! Adiéu foulard! Adiéu dézinde! Adiéu collier-choux! Batiment-là Qui sou labouè-là, Li ka mennein Doudoux-à-moin allé. |
—"Very good-day,— Monsieur the Consignee. I come To make one little petition. My doudoux Is going away. Alas! I pray you Delay his going." |
—"Bien le-bonjou', Missié le Consignataire. Moin ka vini Fai yon ti pétition; Doudoux-à-moin Y ka pati,— T'enprie, hélas! Rétàdé li." |
[He answers kindly in French: the békés are always kind to these gentle children.]
—"My dear child, It is too late. The bills of lading Are already signed; The ship Is already on the buoy. In an hour from now They will be getting her [under way." |
—"Ma chère enfant Il est trop tard, Les connaissements Sont déjà signés, Est déjà sur la bouée; Dans une heure d'ici, Ils vont appareiller." |
—"When the foulards came. … I always had some; When the Madras-kerchiefs came, I always had some; When the printed calicoes came, I always had some. … That second officer— Is such a kind man! |
—"Foulard rivé, Moin té toujou tini; Madras rivé, Moin té toujou tini; Dézindes rivé, Moin té toujou tini. —Capitaine sougonde C'est yon bon gàçon! |
"Everybody has Somebody to love; Everybody has Somebody to pet; Every body has A sweetheart of her own. I am the only one Who cannot have that,—I!" |
"Toutt moune tini Yon moune yo aimé; Toutt moune tini Yon moune yo chéri; Toutt moune tini Yon doudoux à yo. Jusse moin tou sèle Pa tini ça—moin!" |
… On the eve of the Fête Dieu, or Corpus Christi festival, in all these Catholic countries, the city streets are hung with banners and decorated with festoons and with palm branches; and great altars are erected at various points along the route of the procession, to serve as resting-places for the Host. These are called reposoirs; in creole patois, "reposouè Bon-Dié." Each wealthy man lends something to help to make them attractive,— rich plate, dainty crystal, bronzes, paintings, beautiful models of ships or steamers, curiosities from remote parts of the world. … The procession over, the altar is stripped, the valuables are returned to their owners: all the splendor disappears. … And the spectacle of that evanescent magnificence, repeated year by year, suggested to this proverb-loving people a similitude for the unstable fortune of the fille-de-couleur:—Fortune milatresse c'est reposouè Bon-Dié. (The luck of the mulattress is the resting-place of the Good-God).
* La race de sang-mêlé, issue des blancs et des noirs, est éminement civilizable. Comme types physiques, elle fournit dans beaucoup d'individus, dans ses femmes en général, les plus beaux specimens de la race humaine.—"Le Préjugé de Race aux Antilles Françaises." Par G. Souquet-Basiège. St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp. 661-62.
* Turiault: "Étude sur le langage Créole de la Martinique." Brest: 1874. … On page 136 he cites the following pretty verses in speaking of the fille-de-couleur:—
Tendre, naïve, et caressante,
Faite pour plaire, encore plus pour aimer.
Portant tous les traits précieux
Du caractère d'une amante,
Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans ses yeux.
LA FILLE DE COULEUR. Two Years in the French West Indies | ||