LA FILLE DE COULEUR. Two Years in the French West Indies | ||
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 | ||