Part 5

How long will even that ruined Past endure? The somnolent quiet of the old streets is being already broken by the energetic bustle of American commerce; the Northern Thor is already threatening the picturesque town with iconoclastic hammer. Colossal capital advances menacingly from the southern side, showing the sheet-lightning of its gold. One huge firm has already devoured a whole square, and extended itself into four streets at once, cruciform-wise, like a Greek basilica. Even the old Napoleon First furniture sets, the massive four-pillared beds, the ponderous cabinets curiously carved, the luxuriant fauteuils, the triple-footed tables,--all these solid household gods which stood upon eagle feet of gilded brass,--are being bought up by shrewd speculators and sent North, to fetch prices which no one here would dream of paying. Perhaps the antique life will make its last rally about the old Place d'Armes (_Plaza de Armas,_) in the vicinity of the quaint cathedral, under the shadow of those towers whose bells for a hundred years have rung diurnally for the repose of the soul of _Don_ _André Almonaster Roxas_, _Knight of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Charles III., Regidor and Alferez-Real of His Most Catholic Majesty_. So long as the iron tongues of those bells can speak, so long as the iron heart of the great tower-clock shall beat, something of the old life and the old faith must live in the creole quarter. Long after most of the quaint architecture shall have disappeared I fancy those two massive Spanish edifices, the old Cabildo and Casa Curial, will still remain standing upon either side of the cathedral, like grim soldiery guarding a commissary of the Holy Inquisition. The Spaniard builded well: after the lapse of nearly a hundred years, those rugged edifices testify grandly to the solid Roman character of their creators. The plaster may peel from the stout pillars of their arcades; but dilapidation only adds nobility to their quaintness; they are dignified by the scars of their battle with Time; they are imposing without loftiness; they are superb without artifice--deep-shouldered, thick-set, broad-backed, firm upon their feet, like veteran troops, like the splendid Spanish infantry of three hundred years ago.

CREOLE WOMEN IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES

I

Although it is generally well known that the condition of woman in most Latin countries is one of comparative seclusion,--totally different from that existence of large freedom she enjoys in English or American communities, some romantic misconception prevails regarding her life in the Latin tropics. Fiction, painting, and poetry have combined to create a false ideal of that life,--to make the word 'creole' suggest many happy, dreamy, luminous things. Not altogether are the artists and romance-writers at fault, nevertheless: their purpose has been only to reflect something of nature's magic in the zones of eternal summer; and no art and no words could transcend the splendor that was their inspiration. He who has once seen tropic nature under a tropic sun has received a revelation: there will come to him, if he has a heart, with a new strange meaning,--also eternal and true,--the words of John,--voiced perpetually from the purple peaks, and the undying woods, and sapphire glory of sea and sky:--'_This is the message which we announce unto you, that God is_ LIGHT!'

Light!--no one dwelling in the cities of the North may ever imagine the possibilities of light and of color in the equatorial world. And he who has once known them must continue forever enchanted,--must feel, after departure from them, like an exile from Paradise. The poetry of the tropics is born of such regret. Romance and song are essentially imaginative; and that which surpasses and satiates imagination does not directly stimulate their production: it is only as an exile that the creole becomes a poet, when he remembers the charm of his country without the pains of its daily life. There is no more touching incident, perhaps, in literary history, than the fate of Léonard, the poet of Guadeloupe. His youth had been mostly spent abroad in struggles to obtain the means of returning to his native island. Succeeding after intense strain, he returned to find himself only a victim of the revolution of 1789,--threatened with death if he persisted in remaining. His friends hurried him on board a vessel; but, although he had been already wounded and pursued by an assassin, he could not nerve himself to go. Again and again he left the ship, and only with the greatest difficulty could he be persuaded at last to remain on board. But nostalgia had brought him to the condition of a dying man before his arrival in France. At Nantes he tried to reëmbark, hoping at least to die in his beloved island; but he expired before the ship could sail.

Tropical nature is indeed an enchantress; but she does more than bewitch, she transforms body and soul. She satisfies the senses, and numbs the aspirations; she lulls the higher faculties to sleep while gratifying, as nowhere else, the physical wants of life. It has been often said that human happiness has a certain fixed measure in all conditions of existence: the quality may vary, the capacity for each individual remains the same. Such a belief would seem to have its confirmation in the conditions of tropical society. The pleasures of intellectual life become almost impossible in a climate where the least mental effort provokes drowsiness, and the middle of each day is devoted to sleep; nor can the dazzling spectacle of tropical vegetation under tropical skies wholly compensate the enervating effect of an atmosphere hot and heavy as the air of a Turkish bath. Social existence, so circumstanced, becomes of necessity both indolent and provincial; and the enchantment of the tropics should prove irresistible only to strangers able and willing to dream life away, and to abandon all gifts of civilization so hardly earned by Northern struggle. And one must know this, to guess how far from enviable is the life of white women even in the English tropics, where there is at least an effort to maintain the social customs of the mother country. But in the old Latin colonies of the Pacific and the West Indies, woman's life has always been narrowed by formal customs which no American or English girl could well resign herself to endure.

II

Time seems to have moved very slowly in the old French colonies. In the streets of Martinique or Réunion or Marie-Galante or Guadeloupe, one almost seems to live in the seventeenth century,--so little have architecture or customs been modified in two or three hundred years. The great changes effected by the abolition of slavery are not immediately discernible to a stranger; the free blacks and people of color, forming the mass of the population, still cling to the simple and bright attire of other days, and seem to hold almost the same relation to white colonial life as hired servants that they formerly held as slaves. Emancipation, republicanism, and education have not yet abolished the old manners, nor greatly modified the creole speech. Could Josephine arise from the dust of her rest to revisit her Martinique birthplace, she would find so little changed at Trois-Islets, that except for the saucier manner of the younger negroes, she could scarcely surmise the new republican conditions. And the modern life of the creole woman, though less luxurious than in the previous century of colonial prosperity, varies otherwise little from that of her great-greatgrandmother.

Her birth is announced with antique formality in the colonial papers, and duly registered in the _Archives de la Marine_. She is christened in the twilight of some colonial baptistery, where silhouettes of palm-heads quiver behind stained-glass windows; and receives those half-dozen names--names of angels, or saints, alternated with names of ancestors--by which every white creole child is ushered into the world. Then some comely black or brown woman, dazzlingly robed in bright colors, and covered with barbaric jewelry, carries her on a silken cushion from house to house that all of family kin may kiss her. Always through the recollections of her childhood there will smile back to her the memory of that kind swart face,--the face of her black nurse, of her _da_. It is the _da_ who bathes her, feeds her, dresses her, lulls her to sleep with song: doubtless for a time she believes the dark woman her mother. It is the _da_ who first takes her out into the beautiful world of the tropics,--shows her the mighty azure circle of the sea, and the coming and going of the ships, and the peaks with their circling clouds, and the whispering gold of cane-fields, and the palms, and the jewel-feathered humming birds. It is the black nurse who first teaches her to kiss,--to utter the words _'Manman,' 'Da,' 'Papoute,'_ to express her infant thoughts in the softest cooing speech uttered by human lips,--the creole tongue. It is the _da_ also who first thrills her child-fancy into blossom with stories of the impossible, and who stimulates her musical sense by teaching her strange songs,--melodies borne with slavery into the Indies from Senegal or the Coast of Gold.

Growing older, the little one is gradually separated from her _da_, is taught to speak French, to submit to many formal restraints, is finally sent,--while still a mere child,--to some convent school. She leaves it only on arriving at womanhood. Perhaps during those years she sees her parents every regular visiting day, and during the brief Christmas vacations; but she is practically separated otherwise from them as much as if imprisoned,--though they may be living only a few streets away. If they are very rich, she may be sent away to France. In the latter event she may acquire accomplishments superior to those imparted in any colonial convent; but the education mother respects is very simple and old-fashioned: the chief result aimed at in the training of girls being moral and religious rather than secular. The _pensionnaires_ of the colonial convents wear a very plain uniform,--a straightfalling dress of sombre color, belted at the waist, and a broad straw hat. The different classes are distinguished by long narrow ribbons crossed over breast and back and tied round the waist below, the ends being left to stream down at one side. One class wears blue ribbons; another pink; another white. Altogether the uniform is ugly; it gives an aspect of clumsiness which is quite foreign to the creole race. Nothing could seem more uninteresting than a procession of convent girls on their way to church, escorted by nuns. But this is only the chrysalis stage of creole girl-life: the beautiful butterfly will be revealed when that sombre uniform is abandoned forever.

At seventeen or eighteen the creole girl returns home, with a large package of class prizes,--mostly publications of Mame & Cie,--showy volumes of a semi-religious character,--with a few books of travel, perhaps, added, which have been carefully perused and recommended as safe reading by some ecclesiastical censor. A private party is given in her honor; and she makes her _début_ into creole society. Her life, thereafter, however, would not, by American girls at all events, be thought enviable. She rarely leaves home, except to pay a visit to some relatives, or to go to church under the escort of some member of the family, or some old lady chosen to accompany her. She is scarcely ever seen upon the streets. The pleasures of shopping are denied her. Whatever she needs is purchased for her by male relatives, or by her hired maid,--who selects at the store such merchandise as may be desired, and carries a stock of samples to the house, in a tray balanced upon her head. There the decision is made, the chosen articles retained, and the remainder carried back to the merchant, who in due time sends in his bill. There are no evening parties or visitings; the active life of the colony ends with sundown; all retire between eight and nine o'clock, and rise with dawn. Except during the brief theatrical season, and on the annual occasion of a carnival ball given by select society, there are no evening amusements. The discipline of the convent has prepared the young girl for this secluded existence; but were it not for the intense heat of the climate, she would probably suffer, in spite of such preparation, from the monotony of her life. Happily for her, she remains as innocent of other conditions of society as she is ignorant of all evil; and the tenderness of her mother or other relatives does all that can be done to render her existence happy. Still, she sometimes regrets her convent-days,--the liberty of play-hours in the open court, with its palms and _sabliers_: she likes to revisit the nuns occasionally, to get a glimpse of the pupils amusing themselves as she used to do,--secretly wishes, perhaps, that she were a child again. But she has yet no idea how often she will wish that wish before they robe her all in black, and put her away to sleep forever somewhere in the colonial cemetery, under the tall palms.

All about her young life glimmer conventional bars: she is a caged bird, vaguely desiring liberty, without a suspicion of what perils liberty might bring. Her pleasures, her ideas, her emotions are still those of a child,--even on the day when her mother, kissing her, first whispers to her some news that makes her flush to her hair. She has been spoken for! A gentleman, whom she scarcely knows even as a visitor, has demanded her hand. Could she love him? She does not know; she is willing to do whatever her mother deems best. They meet thereafter more frequently,--but always as before in the _salon_, in the presence of the family: there is no wooing; there are no private walks and talks; there is, in short, no romance in creole courtship;--everything is arranged and determined by the heads of both families. Her betrothal is circulated as a piece of private news throughout society; but no printed mention of it is ever made. Finally the notary is called, and the marriage contract drawn up, after a strictly business manner; she has rarely anything to do with these preliminaries, but the future husband, if a man of the world, will be careful to read the contract very attentively, and to discuss its provisions, point by point. It is, in fact, a decided weakness to omit these formal considerations of the financial side of marriage. More than one proud or sensitive man has had reason late in life to regret the impulse of trust or affection which caused him to sign his marriage contract without examining it. But the _fiancée_ had nothing to do with this: she is content to leave her parents to make every possible effort to secure her material happiness.

Marriage opens to her a larger sphere of life. She can go out freely, visit friends, entertain relatives at her home, and--in these more recent years--even occasionally enter stores. But such comparative freedom has its disadvantages. It involves a round of social duties more or less wearisome,--visits during the heated hours of the day, and the wearing of black close-fitting Parisian dresses in an atmosphere and under a sun more difficult to endure than any summer conditions of the temperate zone. Probably she feels relieved when at a later day the cares of her household and children enable her to excuse herself from taking further part in active social life; and thereafter she rarely leaves home, except to go to church.

III

For more than two centuries such has been the monotonous, half-cloistered existence of creole women in the French colonies. Such a life might have been Josephine's had she wedded a merchant or planter of Martinique, instead of a soldier. In the past century and before it, slavery and wealth made the existence of the creole woman more luxurious: there were more social pleasures for her also,--more parties, receptions, amusements,--especially in the capital, Fort Royal, where the Governor held a veritable court. Furthermore, the flower of creole society passed much of its time at Paris, and exercised some influence in the _Métropole_. But in the colony proper, the creole girl has no free joyous girlhood, no prospect of larger liberty save through marriage, and no romance of love. Yet, notwithstanding these apparent disadvantages, the _demoiselles_ of the last century were famed throughout the world for their charm of manner and singular beauty.

Climate and other tropical conditions had quite transformed the colonial race within a few generations, changing not only complexion and temperament, but the very shape of the skeleton,--lengthening the limbs, making delicate the extremities, deepening the orbits to protect the eye from the immense light. The creole became more lithe and refined of aspect than the European parent,--taller but more slender,--more supple, though less strong; and that grace which is the particular characteristic of Latin blood would seem to have obtained its utmost possible physical expression in the women of Martinique. The colony was justly proud of them; their reputation abroad had become romantic; and legends of their witchery were being circulated the world over. So much was their influence feared that the home government passed a special law forbidding any of its colonial officials to marry creoles, lest the discharge of diplomatic duties should be directed by some charming woman's will, rather than by the will of the sovereign. Yet, in a few years more, a creole woman was to share the throne of the first Napoleon, and sway the destinies of Europe by her gentle counsel,--that Josephine de la Pagerie, of Trois-Islets, whose memory lives in the beautiful marble statue erected in the _Savane_ of Fort-de-France, by the citizens of the colony.

IV

There is another Martinique memory, which one cannot pass over in speaking of the creole beauties of former days. Robert, a tiny village on the southeast coast, has a legend which once gave it quite as much distinction as Trois-Islets. Robert, or at least one of its suburbs, claimed to be the birthplace of another lovely creole, who became, it was alleged, no less a personage than the Sultana-Validé of Selim III. More than one historian seems to have given credit to this story, M. Sidney Daney, in his 'Histoire de la Martinique,' even published her portrait, with the inscription beneath: 'Aimée Dubuc De Rivéry, Sultana-Validé, et mère de Mahmoud II.--A pretty face, with hair powdered and combed back after the early fashion of the eighteenth century, and that soft roundness of lines suggesting the ripeness of sixteen years,--when the slender child is just passing into the beauty of womanhood.

The legend is said to have inspired a novel, which I was not able to find in the colony; it is perhaps long out of print. The pages of M. Sidney Daney,[1] who treats the story as a historical event, probably form the best authority for it. According to this writer Mademoiselle Aimée Dubuc Dérivry was born on the Pointe Royale plantation at Robert in December, 1766,--three years later than Josephine. She was the child of one of the oldest and most distinguished creole families of Martinique. She was sent to France at an early age to be educated, and passed several years in a convent school at Nantes. At the age of eighteen she was called home, and embarked from the same port in charge of a governess. The vessel was attacked and captured by an Algerian corsair, and Aimée, her governess, and other passengers were taken to Algiers and sold as slaves. The beauty of the young creole attracted the notice of the Dey, who, desiring to gain the friendship of the Sultan, bought the girl and sent her as a present to Selim III at Constantinople. There, it was alleged, she became first the favorite, and afterward Sultana-Validé--as the mother, in 1785, of Mahmoud II, who ascended the Ottoman throne in 1808. Such is the legend, in its briefest possible form.

To those familiar with Turkish history, the narrative is palpably absurd. But it is still believed in the colony, notwithstanding its disproval by a more careful writer than Daney,--M. Pierre Régis Dessalles, in a note attached to one of the chapters of his 'Annales du Conseil Souverain de la Martinique.'[2] Dessalles, disciplined to exactitude by his legal profession, never set down a statement without thorough examination of fact, and had to aid him all the _Archives de la Marine_,--among which are preserved in France all important colonial documents, since climate and insects render the perfect conservation of papers impossible in the tropics. From these he found the history of the De Rivéry, or Dérivry family,--the latter spelling being the official one. The father was Henri Jacob Dubuc Dérivry, of the parish of Robert, who married (24th May, 1773) Demoiselle Marie Anne Arbousset, belonging to a family illustrious in Martinique history. By this marriage he had three children:--

1. Marie-Anne, born April 5, 1774; died November 28, 1775.

2. Rose-Henriette-Germaine, born February 6, 1778. There is no documentary evidence in existence as to what became of Rose-Henriette-Germaine. This is probably the girl alleged to have entered the seraglio at Constantinople, and to have had her brother (captured with her) created a pasha--Mehemet-Ali, father of Ibrahim Pasha.

3. Marie--Alexandrine--Louise--Victoire, born June 24, 1780, and married January 15, 1806, to a Monsieur Malet.

Thus the legend evaporates! Allowing for the precocity of creole women, it is still quite evident that, as Rose-Henriette-Germaine was born February 6, 1778, and the Sultan Mahmoud (her alleged son!) on July 20, 1785, the story is impossible according to the records, which allow an interval of only twelve years between the marriage of M. Dérivry and the birth of Mahmoud, at which time Rose could have been only seven or eight years old. M. Daney says she was born at Robert, December i, 1755; but M. Dérivry was married only in 1773. Furthermore, Mahmoud II was not the son of Selim III! Yet, in spite of these hard facts, the legend is still believed; the colony still boasts of its Aimée Dérivry as a mother of Sultans; and faded MS. documents--some of which I have read, and copied myself--are shown to strangers as proof of the romantic story.

All that is certain is that about a hundred years ago some young creole girl of the Dubuc family was sent to France for her education, and was never seen again by her parents; that many strange stories were related accounting for the mystery of her disappearance, some cruel, some improbable, all false; that her relatives went to Europe and spent years in vain efforts to discover a trace of her; and that meanwhile there sprang up this legend of her fate, still told with pride to strangers in the colony, over a glass of sugar syrup and rum, by hospitable planters.

[Footnote 1: _Histoire de la Martinique, depuis la colonization jusqu'en_ 1815. Par M. Sidney Daney, Membre du Conseil Colonial de la Martinique. Fort-Royal: 1844. See vol. iv, p. 234.]

[Footnote 2: Vol. H, pp. 285, 286.]

V