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
hate. Nature, in the guise of the
belle affranchie,
had mocked at slave codes;—in the
fille-de-couleur she still
laughed at race pretensions, and ridiculed the fable of physical
degradation. To-day, the situation has not greatly changed; and
with such examples on the part of the cultivated race, what could
be expected from the other? Marriages are rare;—it has been
officially stated that the illegitimate births are sixty per
cent; but seventy-five to eighty per cent would probably be
nearer the truth. It is very common to see in the local papers
such announcements as:
Enfants légitimes, 1 (one birth
announced);
enfants naturels, 25.
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
he refers to the whole class as mulattresses. Those women whom
wealth and education have placed in a social position parallel
with that of the daughters of creole whites are in some cases
allowed to pass for white,—or at the very worst, are only
referred to in a whisper as being
de couleur. (Needless to say,
these are totally beyond the range of the present considerations:
there is nothing to be further said of them except that they can
be classed with the most attractive and refined women of the
entire tropical world.) As there is an almost infinite gradation
from the true black up to the brightest
sang-mêlé, it is
impossible to establish any color-classification recognizable by
the eye alone; and whatever lines of demarcation can be drawn
between castes must be social rather than ethnical. In this
sense we may accept the local Creole definition of
fille-de-couleur
as signifying, not so much a daughter of the race of
visible color, as the half-breed girl destined from her birth to
a career like that of the
belle affranchie of the old regime;—
for the moral cruelties of slavery have survived emancipation.
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
clean curves), a satiny smoothness
and fruit-tint of skin,—solely West Indian. … Morally, of course,
it is much more difficult to describe her; and whatever may safely
be said refers rather to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of
the present half-century. The race is now in a period of transition:
public education and political changes are modifying the type, and
it is impossible to guess the ultimate consequence, because it is
impossible to safely predict what new influences may yet be
brought to affect its social development. Before the present era
of colonial decadence, the character of the fille-de-couleur was
not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated, she had a
peculiar charm,—that charm of childishness which has power to
win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel
attracted towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as
easily pleased or as easily pained,—artless in her goodnesses as
in her faults, to all outward appearance;—willing to give her
youth, her beauty, her caresses to some one in exchange for the
promise to love her,—perhaps also to care for a mother, or a
younger brother. Her astonishing capacity for being delighted
with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies, her sudden
veerings of mood from laughter to tears,—like the sudden
rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these
touched, drew, won, and tyrannized. Yet such easily created joys
and pains did not really indicate any deep reserve of feeling:
rather a superficial sensitiveness only,—like the
zhèbe-m'amisé,
or
zhèbe-manmzelle, whose leaves close at the touch of a hair.
Such human manifestations, nevertheless, are apt to attract more
in proportion as they are more visible,—in proportion as the
soul-current, being less profound, flows more audibly. But no
hasty observation could have revealed the whole character of the
fille-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and surprised:
the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated her
with even
more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of
deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her race
—itself fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection
unlimited—an inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a
marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as
one accepts the natural and the inevitable. And that desire to
please—which in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all
other motives of action (maternal affection excepted)—could
have appeared absolutely natural only to those who never
reflected that even sentiment had been artificially cultivated by
slavery.
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
or exacted as a right. Her moral side is still half savage: her
feelings are still those of a child. If she does not love the
white man according to his unreasonable desire, it is certain at
least that she loves him as well as he deserves. Her alleged
demoralization is more apparent than real;—she is changing from
an artificial to a very natural being, and revealing more and
more in her sufferings the true character of the luxurious
social condition that brought her into existence. As a general
rule, even while questioning her fidelity, the creole freely
confesses her kindness of heart, and grants her capable of
extreme generosity and devotedness to strangers or to children
whom she has an opportunity to care for. Indeed, her natural
kindness is so strikingly in contrast with the harder and subtler
character of the men of color that one might almost feel tempted
to doubt if she belong to the same race. Said a creole once, in
my hearing:—"The gens-de-couleur are just like the
tourlouroux:
*
one must pick out the females and leave the males alone."
Although perhaps capable of a double meaning, his words were not
lightly uttered;—he referred to the curious but indubitable
fact that the character of the colored woman appears in many
respects far superior to that of the colored man. In order to
understand this, one must bear in mind the difference in the
colonial history of both sexes; and a citation from General
Romanet,
†
who visited Martinique at the end of the last century,
offers a clue to the mystery. Speaking of the tax upon
enfranchisement, he writes:—
—"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the certificates
of liberty,—on payment by the master of
a sum usually equivalent to
the value of the subject. Public interest frequently justifies him
in making the price of the slave proportionate to the desire or the
interest manifested by the master. It can be readily understood that
the tax upon the liberty of the women ought to be higher than that of
the men: the latter unfortunates having no greater advantage than that
of being useful;—the former know how to please: they have those
rights and privileges which the whole world allows to their sex;
they know how to make even the fetters of slavery serve them for
adornments. They may be seen placing upon their proud tyrants
the same chains worn by themselves, and making them kiss the
marks left thereby: the master becomes the slave, and purchases
another's liberty only to lose his own,"
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
singular and pretty names in vogue among
the creole population,—Acélie, Avrillette, Mélie, Robertine,
Célianne, Francillette, Adée, Catharinette, Sidollie, Céline,
Coraline;—and the ages given are from sixteen to twenty-one, with few
exceptions. Yet these liberties were asked for and granted at a
time when Louis Philippe had abolished the tax on manumissions. …
The same "Bulletin" contains a list of liberties granted to colored
men,
pour service accompli dans la milice, only!
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
of Charity";—and he is not the only historian who has expressed
such admiration of their moral qualities. What I myself saw
during the epidemic of 1887-88 at Martinique convinced me that
these eulogies of the women of color are not extravagant. On the
other hand, the existing creole opinion of the men of color is
much less favorable than even that expressed by Père Labat.
Political events and passions have, perhaps, rendered a just
estimate of their qualities difficult. The history of the
hommes-de-couleur in all the French colonies has been the same;—
distrusted by the whites, who feared their aspirations to social
equality, distrusted even more by the blacks (who still hate them
secretly, although ruled by them), the mulattoes became an
Ishmaelitish clan, inimical to both races, and dreaded of both.
In Martinique it was attempted, with some success, to manage
them by according freedom to all who would serve in the militia
for a certain period with credit. At no time was it found
possible to compel them to work with blacks; and they formed the
whole class of skilled city workmen and mechanics for a century
prior to emancipation.
… 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!"
Yearly the number of failures increase;
and more whites emigrate;—and with every bankruptcy or departure
some fille-de-couleur is left almost destitute, to begin life over
again. Many a one has been rich and poor several times in succession;
—one day her property is seized for debt;—perhaps on the morrow she
finds some one able and willing to give her a home again, …
Whatever comes, she does not die for grief, this daughter of the
sun: she pours out her pain in song, like a bird, Here is one of
her little improvisations,—a song very popular in both
Martinique and Guadeloupe, though originally composed in the
latter colony:—
—"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:—
L'Amour prit soin de la former
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.
[_]
* A sort of land-crab;—the female is selected for food, and,
properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;—the male is almost
worthless.
[_]
† "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J. R., Général de Brigade.
Paris: An, XII., 1804. Page 106.