University of Virginia Library

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).