III.
AND who was Père Labat,—this strange priest whose memory,
weirdly disguised by legend, thus lingers in the oral literature
of the colored people? Various encyclopedias answer the question,
but far less fully and less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the
Martinique historian, whose article upon him in the Etudes
Statistiques et Historiques has that charm of sympathetic
comprehension by which a master-biographer sometimes reveals
himself a sort of necromancer,—making us feel a vanished
personality with the power of a living presence. Yet even the
colorless data given by dictionaries of biography should suffice
to convince most readers that Jean-Baptiste Labat must be ranked
among the extraordinary men of his century.
Nearly two hundred years ago—24th August, 1693—a traveller
wearing the white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by
a black camlet overcoat, entered the city of Rochelle. He was
very tall and robust, with one of those faces, at once grave and
keen, which bespeak great energy and quick discernment. This was
the Père Labat, a native of Paris, then in his thirtieth year.
Half priest, half layman, one might have been
tempted to surmise
from his attire; and such a judgement would not have been unjust.
Labat's character was too large for his calling,—expanded
naturally beyond the fixed limits of the ecclesiastical life; and
throughout the whole active part of his strange career we find in
him this dual character of layman and monk. He had come to
Rochelle to take passage for Martinique. Previously he had been
professor of philosophy and mathematics at Nancy. While watching
a sunset one evening from the window of his study, some one
placed in his hands a circular issued by the Dominicans of the
French West Indies, calling for volunteers. Death had made many
wide gaps in their ranks; and various misfortunes had reduced
their finances to such an extent that ruin threatened all their
West Indian establishments. Labat, with the quick decision of a
mind suffering from the restraints of a life too narrow for it,
had at once resigned his professorship, and engaged himself for
the missions.
… In those days, communication with the West Indies was slow,
irregular, and difficult. Labat had to wait at Rochelle six
whole months for a ship. In the convent at Rochelle, where he
stayed, there were others waiting for the same chance,—including
several Jesuits and Capuchins as well as Dominicans. These
unanimously elected him their leader,—a significant fact
considering the mutual jealousy of the various religious orders
of that period, There was something in the energy and frankness
of Labat's character which seems to have naturally gained him the
confidence and ready submission of others.
… They sailed in November; and Labat still found himself in
the position of a chief on board. His account of the voyage is
amusing;—in almost everything except practical navigation, he
would appear to have regulated the life of passengers and crew.
He taught the captain
mathematics; and invented amusements of all
kinds to relieve the monotony of a two months' voyage.
… As the ship approached Martinique from the north, Labat
first beheld the very grimmest part of the lofty coast,—the
region of Macouba; and the impression it made upon him was not
pleasing. "The island," he writes, "appeared to me all one
frightful mountain, broken everywhere by precipices: nothing
about it pleased me except the verdure which everywhere met the
eye, and which seemed to me both novel and agreeable, considering
the time of the year."
Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by the Superior
of the convent to Macouba, for acclimation; Macouba then being
considered the healthiest part of the island. Whoever makes the
journey on horseback thither from St. Pierre to-day can testify
to the exactitude of Labat's delightful narrative of the trip. So
little has that part of the island changed since two centuries
that scarcely a line of the father's description would need
correction to adopt it bodily for an account of a ride to Macouba
in 1889.
At Macouba everybody welcomes him, pets him,—finally becomes
enthusiastic about him. He fascinates and dominates the little
community almost at first sight. "There is an inexpressible
charm," says Rufz,—commenting upon this portion of Labat's
narrative,—"in the novelty of relations between men: no one has
yet been offended, no envy has yet been excited;—it is scarcely
possible even to guess whence that ill-will you must sooner or
later provoke is going to come from;—there are no rivals;—there
are no enemies. You are everybody's friend; and many are hoping
you will continue to be only theirs." … Labat knew how to take
legitimate advantage of this good-will;—he persuaded his
admirers to rebuild the church at Macouba, according to designs
made by himself.
At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to sojourn as long as the
good people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable:
he had shown certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable
at Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre,
or Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,—an
appalling condition in those days,—and seemed doomed to get more heavily
in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and set to
work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as
engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really
wonderful things. You can see them for yourself if you ever go
to Martinique; for the old Dominican plantation-now Government
property, and leased at an annual rent of 50,000 francs—remains
one of the most valuable in the colonies because of Labat's work
upon it. The watercourses directed by him still excite the
admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the mills he built
or invented are still good;—the treatise he wrote on sugar-making
remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its
kind, and the manual of French planters. In less than two years
Labat had not only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but
had made it rich; and if the monks deemed him veritably inspired,
the test of time throws no ridicule on their astonishment at the
capacities of the man. … Even now the advice he formulated as
far back as 1720—about secondary cultures,—about manufactories
to establish,—about imports, exports, and special commercial
methods—has lost little of its value.
Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread admiration,—
nor to win for him a reputation in the colonies beyond precedent.
He was wanted everywhere. … Auger, the Governor of Guadeloupe,
sent for him to help the colonists in fortifying and defending
the island against the English; and we find the missionary quite
as much
at home in this new role-building bastions, scarps,
counterterscarps, ravelins, etc.—as he seemed to be upon the
plantation of Saint-Jacques. We find him even taking part in an
engagement;—himself conducting an artillery duel,—loading,
pointing, and firing no less than twelve times after the other
French gunners had been killed or driven from their posts. After
a tremendous English volley, one of the enemy cries out to him in
French: "White Father, have they told ?" (
Père Blanc, ont-ils
porté?) He replies only after returning the fire with, a better-directed
aim, and then repeats the mocking question: "Have they
told?" "Yes, they have," confesses the Englishman, in surprised
dismay; "but we will pay you back for that!" …
… Returning to Martinique with new titles to distinction,
Labat was made Superior of the order in that island, and likewise
Vicar-Apostolic. After building the Convent of the Mouillage, at
St. Pierre, and many other edifices, he undertook that series of
voyages in the interests of the Dominicans whereof the narration
fills six ample volumes. As a traveller Père Labat has had few
rivals in his own field;—no one, indeed, seems to have been able
to repeat some of his feats. All the French and several of the
English colonies were not merely visited by him, but were studied
in their every geographical detail. Travel in the West Indies is
difficult to a degree of which strangers have little idea; but in
the time of Père Labat there were few roads,—and a far greater
variety of obstacles. I do not believe there are half a dozen
whites in Martinique who thoroughly know their own island,—who
have even travelled upon all its roads; but Labat knew it as he
knew the palm of his hand, and travelled where roads had never
been made. Equally well he knew Guadeloupe and other islands;
and he learned all that it was possible to learn in those years
about the productions and resources of the other colonies.
He travelled with the fearlessness and examined with the
thoroughness of a Humboldt,—so far as his limited science
permitted: had he possessed the knowledge of modern naturalists
and geologists he would probably have left little for others to
discover after him. Even at the present time West Indian
travellers are glad to consult him for information.
These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion,
in a climate deadly to Europeans. They also involved much
voyaging in waters haunted by filibusters and buccaneers. But
nothing appears to daunt Labat. As for the filibusters, he
becomes their comrade and personal friend;—he even becomes their
chaplain, and does not scruple to make excursions with them. He
figures in several sea-fights;—on one occasion he aids in the
capture of two English vessels,—and then occupies himself in
making the prisoners, among whom are several ladies, enjoy the
event like a holiday. On another voyage Labat's vessel is
captured by a Spanish ship. At one moment sabres are raised
above his head, and loaded muskets levelled at his breast;—the
next, every Spaniard is on his knees, appalled by a cross that
Labat holds before the eyes of the captors,—the cross worn by
officers of the Inquisition,—the terrible symbol of the Holy
Office. "It did not belong to me," he says, "but to one of our
brethren who had left it by accident among my effects." He seems
always prepared in some way to meet any possible emergency. No
humble and timid monk this: he has the frame and temper of those
medieval abbots who could don with equal indifference the helmet
or the cowl. He is apparently even more of a soldier than a
priest. When English corsairs attempt a descent on the
Martinique coast at Sainte-Marie they find Père Labat waiting for
them with all the negroes of the Saint-Jacques plantation, to
drive them back to their ships.
For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. He studies the
phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while
his comrades on the ship abandon hope. When seized with
yellow-fever, then known as the Siamese Sickness (mal de Siam),
he refuses to stay in bed the prescribed time, and rises to say
his mass. He faints at the altar; yet a few days later we hear of
him on horseback again, travelling over the mountains in the
worst and hottest season of the year. …
… Labat was thirty years old when he went to the Antilles;—he
was only forty-two when his work was done. In less than twelve
years he made his order the most powerful and wealthy of any in
the West Indies,—lifted their property out of bankruptcy to
rebuild it upon a foundation of extraordinary prosperity. As
Rufz observes without exaggeration, the career of Père Labat in
the Antilles seems to more than realize the antique legend of the
labors of Hercules. Whithersoever he went,—except in the
English colonies,—his passage was memorialized by the rising of
churches, convents, and schools,—as well as mills, forts, and
refineries. Even cities claim him as their founder. The
solidity of his architectural creations is no less remarkable
than their excellence of design;—much of what he erected still
remains; what has vanished was removed by human agency, and not
by decay; and when the old Dominican church at St. Pierre had to
be pulled down to make room for a larger edifice, the workmen
complained that the stones could not be separated,—that the
walls seemed single masses of rock. There can be no doubt,
moreover, that he largely influenced the life of the colonies
during those years, and expanded their industrial and commercial
capacities.
He was sent on a mission to Rome after these things had been
done, and never returned from Europe. There he travelled more or
less in after-years; but finally settled
at Paris, where he
prepared and published the voluminous narrative of his own
voyages, and other curious books;—manifesting as a writer the
same tireless energy he had shown in so many other capacities.
He does not, however, appear to have been happy. Again and again
he prayed to be sent back to his beloved Antilles, and for some
unknown cause the prayer was always refused. To such a character,
the restraint of the cloister must have proved a slow agony; but
he had to endure it for many long years. He died at Paris in
1738, aged seventy-five.
… It was inevitable that such a man should make bitter
enemies: his preferences, his position, his activity, his
business shrewdness, his necessary self-assertion, yet must have
created secret hate and jealousy even when open malevolence might
not dare to show itself. And to the these natural results of
personal antagonism or opposition were afterwards superadded
various resentments—irrational, perhaps, but extremely
violent,—caused by the father's cynical frankness as a writer.
He spoke freely about the family origin and personal failings of
various colonists considered high personages in their own small
world; and to this day his book has an evil reputation undeserved
in those old creole communities, but where any public mention of
a family scandal is never just forgiven or forgotten. … But
probably even before his work appeared it had been secretly
resolved that he should never be permitted to return to
Martinique or Guadeloupe after his European mission. The exact
purpose of the Government in this policy remains a mystery,—
whatever ingenious writers may have alleged to the contrary. We
only know that M. Adrien Dessalles,—the trustworthy historian
of Martinique,—while searching among the old Archives de la
Marine, found there a ministerial letter to the Intendant de
Vaucresson in which this statement occurs:;—
… "Le Père Labat shall never be suffered to return to the
colonies, whatever efforts he may make to obtain permission."