Part 6

But though the old order of creole life remains almost unchanged, that life has shrunk into much smaller channels, and has undergone many modifications. The wealth and indolent luxury of the eighteenth century have become memories. The influence of the race upon home politics has totally ceased. The race itself is rapidly disappearing from the islands. Except among the few survivors of the old régime you may now seek in vain for that proud, fine type of valiant and vigorous manhood, once the honor of colonial France. With the abolition of slavery and the introduction of universal suffrage, the new social conditions became almost unbearable for the formerly dominant class,--with its intense conservatism. Naturally the men of strong individuality suffered most in the hopeless war of race prejudice and race politics provoked by a too speedy conferring of political rights upon a population of slaves; and the more energetic whites found themselves forced to emigrate elsewhere. Those powerful characters who had given the old creole life all its dignity and stability vanished from the scene; and the remnant of the whites softened down into that condition of dull, inert, flaccid existence which is their portion to-day. The social conditions of the time of the monarchy have been, indeed, almost reversed: the dark population, multiplying with wonderful rapidity ever since emancipation, is crowding the white population out of the islands; and the former slave race is now politically the dominant one. It seems more than possible that the white creole race will have disappeared from all the French West Indies within a few more generations,--certainly from Martinique.

How much the creole white woman has suffered in this race contest may only be understood by those long familiar with colonial life. With the decline of caste dignity and caste prosperity her existence necessarily becomes more and more narrowed, and her future vaguer in its promises of happiness. Something of her present life may be divined from its invisibility; still more from the fact that it is dominated by a religious influence which strictly, regulates and limits her diversions, her reading, and the boundaries of her knowledge. She has lost that graceful haughtiness once the particular characteristic of her race; she has also, perhaps, lost something of that aristocratic gift of fine tact which formerly distinguished her as a daughter of statesmen; she is becoming something of a _bourgeoise_, Her chances in life are also growing cruelly small. Probably the white female population now considerably exceeds the male; yet weddings are infrequent, and their number yearly grows less. Among the modern creoles, the size of a girl's dowry has most to do with influencing a match; marriages are rather dependent upon business considerations and social connections in relation to business prospects, than upon mutual affection. It was not so in the old days: marriage was then regarded as a social duty; and even the laxity of tropical morals in slave times rarely prevented any man from fulfilling that social duty, and abandoning all reckless living after a certain age. The change in colonial ideas in this respect has been attributed to moral degeneracy,--to class conservatism in creole relations with the foreign element,--to various other causes. It is simply the result of poverty! The old conditions were wholly artificial, wholly based upon the institution of slavery, supported by a strong monarchical government; and the true character of that structure is now being revealed by the fact that the white race cannot hold its own in the colonies.

Only those who remember monarchical times can decide how far the creole girl has been changed by the new conditions; the foreigner, of course, has few opportunities for observing her. Does she still possess that exotic charm which in other years lifted her to the throne of empire, and inspired that exquisite white dream in marble which still stands in the Savannah of Fort-de-France--between the Rivière Madame and the Rivière Monsieur? Does she still keep that fine witchery which frightened the foolish Métropole long ago into the utterance of the law that no French official in the colonies should marry a creole? I do not know. But it is sadly true that she is bearing more than her share of the penalty for the errors made by her fathers in the past--those errors of slavery, that have not even yet been expiated. And it is also true that many a fair proud girl--perhaps more than one with princely blood in her veins--seeks escape at last from the dull formality of an aimless and hopeless existence, by returning forever to the convent of her child-days; knowing nothing of the higher joys or deeper pains of life, and so the more innocently eager to transmute into religious ecstasy and penance that strength of love and that divine desire of self-sacrifice for some one's sake which are attributes of woman's soul.

ARABESQUES

ARABIAN WOMEN

Although sensitiveness to beauty--the æsthetic sense--is not in itself a capacity by which the comparative civilization of races may be fully estimated, it is at least an indication of the possession of powers which under favoring circumstances would enable the people possessing it to occupy a high rank in the hierarchy of nations. When found among semi-savage peoples, it gives us the right to believe that such peoples have been or might yet be the founders of civilizations; and in these days, when the study of Oriental history and ethnology is making such rapid progress, especial interest attaches to the evidences of the æsthetic sense in the earliest literature of the nations of the East. In this regard, no Oriental literature possesses so natural a charm as that of the Arabs,--particularly, perhaps, from the fact that in it is preserved every link in the history of the wonderful evolution of the æsthetic sense,--from the primitive desert-chant to the elaborate literature of the Golden Prime of Islam,--from the first camel-skin tents to the glories of Saracenic architecture in Spain and India,--from the simplicity of nomad life between sand and sun, to the luxurious era of El Rashid and El Mamoun, of which the memory still lingers in the world like a breath of perfume, like a golden afterglow, like the throbbing in the brain after some wondrous music has died away. This literature is vast and variform; it were useless to attempt in any limited space to speak, even of the titles of its main branches,--or even to touch ever so lightly upon those branches which deal especially with the sense of the beautiful. But the memory of the student, culling here and there a blossom of the poetical flora whose odor is most grateful to his special literary sense, can at least present the reader with a bouquet of fancies curious enough to interest if not beautiful enough, perhaps, to charm. If there be any particular subject the poetical treatment of which is the best evidence of the æsthetic sense, it is the beauty of woman,--and we confine our gleanings to this particular domain.

From time immemorial, before the coming of Mahomet, the desert Arabs were wont not only to honor poets highly, but to hold periodical assemblies at which poetical contests took place, the contestants being stimulated by the promise of a prize or the signal honor of having their compositions hung up in the precincts of the temples as almost-inspired masterpieces. Six out of the many victors at these ante-islamic poetical exhibitions obtained such fame that their names are still familiar to all the desert-tribes, and their poems have been preserved for us almost unchanged,--marvelous specimens of simple, beautiful, but savage genius. Naturally the field of the desert-poet had but little variation; his subjects were few and simple--the fine qualities of thoroughbred horses or camels, the triumph of battle, the lament of defeat, the joy of the chase, the beauty of a mistress. This very limitation of subject, together with the monotonous sameness of nomad life in all ages and as far as the sands extend, by increasing the difficulty of the art, renders its charming expression more wonderful to modern minds. To describe the beauty of woman, the modern poet can summon to his aid the whole art of civilization, the varied knowledge of three thousand years, the charm of all things that charm--jewels, music, flowers, birds, ivories of China and the Indies, colors of the Pacific, Greek and Etruscan arts, the melody and passion of a hundred wonderful languages. The Arab, knowing no language but his own, seeing ever about him the yellow waste, above him the unvarying blue,--ignorant of all arts save those of war and the chase,--was able to create masterpieces of language which the most learned men of our own day cannot speak of without admiration,--poems virile, supple, ardent as the desert itself and as sun-colored. Translations of these are now printed in most European languages.

Symbolism, so infinitely rich in the nineteenth century, was necessarily meagre in the deserts of Arabia before the advent of Mahomet, and the Arab lover knew of but few things to which he might compare the beauty of her he loved: comely animals and simple objects familiar to dwellers in tents constituted the bulk of his poetical stock of similes. In the neighborhood of the cities he might see other objects suited to the evocation of graceful fancies, as when he compared the loosened tresses of an Arab girl falling over her face, to 1 the graceful drooping of the flexible vine over its trellis-work,' But he generally confined his symbolism to desert-subjects,--the palm, the ostrich, the gazelle, the wild cattle of the stony hills, the antelopes,--the weapons of his people; for in all countries the eyebrow of the fair has ever been Love's bow, her gaze its arrows, her glance their barbed points that may not be readily withdrawn from the heart.

Strange some of these Arab comparisons of beauty seem, yet they are never uncouth, never commonplace or feeble. 'Graceful her waist as a nabak-branch; elegant her stature as a palm,' says one who had never heard the words of Solomon. Another compares the beauties of Nahous to ostriches, with good effect: 'The girls of the neighborhood of Nahous have made thee sick for love by reason of their cadenced walk; measured their steps are like those of the ostrich.' All the Arabian poets have alternately compared the eyes of their women to those of the wild antelope, the gazelle, or the desert cow--sharing the last mentioned simile with Homer. Nor was the nomad troubadour ashamed to compare the graces of his beloved to those of a fine steed. 'My beauty,' cries El-Acha, 'slenderly graceful as a young mare, lithe of flank! ... the curves of her bosom are as the curves of heaven aglow with light.... Woman enchantress! were she but to lean a moment on the body of a dead man, surely he would arise again!' Another sings of captive maidens beautiful as wild desert cows.' Nabiga, one of the greatest of the early poets, is fond of a similar comparison, but uses also the gazelle as a more graceful symbol: 'She hath gazed upon thee with the gaze of a young gazelle, tame, swarthy of hue, sable-eyed and decked with a necklace of strung pearls.'

But aside from mere poetical comparisons, we find the Arabs had a well-ordinated law of beauty, which even a Greek sculptor could scarcely have found fault with, although more severe in some respects than the Hellenic ideal. The Arab's estimate is based on a consummate knowledge of comparative artistic anatomy, the rare knowledge of an accomplished stockraiser applied to human anatomy, physiology and osteology. So minute, indeed, are the descriptions of female beauty in the old Arabian poets that they can seldom be faithfully translated; the general idea can alone be given. There were recognized laws of beauty for every finger of the hand, every separate toe of the foot. Every dimple had a special name. That of the chin was called _nounah_; that at the corner of the lips, _rababah_; the little hollow of the upper lip, immediately beneath the nasal cartilage, _djirthimah_; the hollow of the throat, between the collarbones, _thograh_; the dimple of the thumb-joint, near the wrist, _kouit._ Furthermore, there was not merely one recognized type of beauty; there were several types. A woman was called _melihah_, beautiful, only if so charming that every time looked at she seemed more graceful than before. A woman was called _djemilah_ if merely pretty,--if seeming to be exquisitely lovely at a distance but only graceful near by. The curve of beauty--the magical line whose secret is popularly supposed to have been known only to the Greeks, was also known to the Arabs, though they did not perhaps ever succeed in expressing it in ivory or marble; and could only find poetical comparisons for it in the undulation of waves or the rounded outlines of the sandbillows. Lips slightly pouting apart, so as to show a pearly gleam within, were also considered a beautiful possession. 'Why are thy lips so sweetly open?1 asks a desert poet of his beloved. 'Eh!' she replied, 'when the fig ripeneth to give its honey it openeth; the rose openeth also when the dew cometh to kiss it.' Complexion was also a subject of æsthetic study,--especially in regard to smoothness and clearness of skin, being compared to ivory rarely, often to the shell of the ostrich-eggs,--a simile used by Mahomet in his description of the girls of Paradise.

Flexibility of the joints was considered essential to womanly perfection; and Nabiga describes a 'delicate hand, whose fingers are like the stalks of the _anam_ that may be tied into a knot, so flexible they are.' A perfectly straight nose was not thought especially beautiful; the Arabs believed aquiline features to indicate a finer human thoroughbredness and force of character. Often the curve of a woman's nose is compared to 'the curve of a fine sabre well-furbished.' Rounded cheeks were held in abhorrence; the nomad considered fleshiness a sign of inferior blood; and 'smooth flat cheeks, like polished silver,' are highly praised. 'She hath no stoutness; sleek she is, and full-hipped' is said of a fine woman by an Arab admirer, who expressed the view of his people that solid flesh, not adipose tissue, should give the line of beauty. 'Flesh firm as the fruit of a ripening pomegranate.' The hair of a woman was indeed one of her chief glories; but a certain thickness, heaviness, and glossiness was demanded, and a poet did not think it ungallant to compare such tresses to the black splendor of his stallion's mane or sweeping tail.

Operating upon a race thus imbued with æsthetic ideas and learned in the minutest details of physical completeness, the law of natural selection could not fail to produce remarkable results. Tribes were proud of special characteristics of beauty, transmitted from generation to generation. Thus the Kodaides were famed for the beauty of foot and leg; the Kindides, for the slender elegance of their flexible waists; the Khozaides, for the graceful delicacy of both upper and lower limbs; the Ozrides, or Beni-Azra, for the eyes of their women not less than their famed liability to die of love. When the poet El-Asmai was asked by Haroun El Rashid to describe in verse the beauty of a slave, he was obliged to cite from the desert Arabs:--

She hath the members of a Kinanide, The rounded loveliness of a Saidide, The beautiful eyes of a Hilalide, The graceful mouth of a Tayide.

Islam, indeed, quenched the creative genius of Arabian poetry; but the pagan songs were sung even to the days of the last Caliph, and when some Commander of the Faithful paid his court poet a thousand pieces of gold for describing a slave, the poet seldom relied upon his own powers of improvization, but simply quoted the words of the ancient nomads,--the tamers of horses and breeders of fine camels,--which had been bequeathed by memory from generation to generation. When Abd-el-Melik, fifth Caliph of the house of Ommaya, wanted to know how to choose a woman for her beauty, it was not to a court poet or learned littérateur that he found it necessary to address his questions, but to a herder of camels,--a desert Arab,--a man of the Beni-Ratafan. The nomad's answer is remarkable; his description is absolutely sculpturesque, with a sculpturesqueness that suggests the bland smoothness, the fluent grace of a fine bronze. Its artistic perfection apologizes for its nudity, and yet we prefer to quote it in the French of the Orientalist who first gave it European publicity:--

'Prends la femme aux pieds bien unis, aux talons légers et délicats, aux jambes fines et lisses, aux genoux dégagés et dessinés, aux cuisses pleines et arrondies, aux bras potelés, aux mains déliées et fines, à la gorge relevée et ferme, aux joues rosées, aux yeux noirs et vifs, au front beau et ouvert, au nez aquilin et fier, à la bouche et aux dents fraîches et douces, à la chevelure d'un noir foncé, au cou souple et moëlleux, au ventre effacé et gracieusement ondulé.'

'But where,' asked the Caliph in astonishment, 'can such a woman be found?'

The other replied: 'Thou mayst find such a one among the Arabs of unmixed blood and the Persians of pure race.'

Neither must it be forgotten that for those desert beauties '_Kohl_ was the best of adornments and water the most excellent of perfumes.'

But it was in the time of the Abbasside Caliphs that the Arabian sensitiveness to beauty obtained its supremest gratifications and that the luxury of loveliness reached such an extreme as the Greek world never knew. The demand for beautiful slaves brought to light human marvels who would certainly have been well worthy to serve as models to Praxiteles or Lysippus,--creatures so beautiful that there seems to be good reason to believe the historians who declare that many who saw them died of love. Islam had a surplus of slaves, yet the pearls of its harems were paid for with the price of a province. The age when a Caliph could expend upon his marriage festivities the enormous sum of 50,000,000 dinars--about $140,000,000--was naturally the era of splendid slavery and of the insolence of beauty. Abou ibn Atik, one of the handsomest men of his era, and possessed of a most beautiful wife whom he dearly loved, says (writing in the far earlier days of Abd-el-Melik) that he saw slaves so beautiful that on seeing them he felt 'as one in hell who should behold hopelessly the delights of Paradise.' But those girls were certainly not to be compared with the beauties of the court of Haroun or El Mamoun, for whom the whole eastern world had been searched. The proudest of Greek sculptors would scarcely have ventured to chisel upon the pedestal of his masterpiece: 'THIS IS THE SUPREME BEAUTY.' But the possessors of splendid girls did not hesitate to place upon their human statues inscriptions to the effect: 'THIS IS THE MASTERPIECE OR GOD.' Nothing can give a better idea of the extravagant luxury of the age than the translation of inscriptions graven upon fillets worn by these girls, or upon their girdles, or upon their fans.

'Behind Haroun El Rashid,' says the poet, Abou'l Hassam, 'I saw girl slaves standing so beautiful that they seemed like magnificent statues. Fillets inlaid with rubies and with pearls clasped their smooth brows; and to these were attached thin plates of gold bearing Arab verses inscribed. One of these bore the words:--

Cruel one, thou hast disdained my love!--oh, God will judge between us!

On another:--

What doth it avail me to cast at thee the shafts of my gaze--they do not reach thee. Thou hast shot thine at me, and they have smitten me,--cruel that thou art.

A third bore the inscription:--

To submit one's cheek to the touch of love is to make oneself greater.

But these three pale into commonplaceness before the magnificent insolence of the fourth:--

I am a deserter from the houris of Paradise; I have been created to make trouble in the hearts of those who gaze upon me.

Worthy to compare with the above is the following which El-Asmai saw graven upon the fillets of beautiful slaves in Haroun's palace:--

We are young and bewitching beauties from the fields of Paradise.

God hath lavished his gifts upon us; in us there is naught to reproach.

For the love of God, sweet damozel, let me not languish for love!

And this on the girdle of a beauteous slave:--

A single wink of thine eye, a teasing touch of thy hand, will be enough to unclasp it.

For my heart is so feeble that it could almost leap from my breast.

The sight of only a part of my beauty suffices to disturb thy soul.

We quote a few more at random--graven on the fillets of El Rashid's slaves:--

Say, O men! in heaven's name is it a sun that shines beneath that fillet, or is it the fair crescent of the nights?

Is life possible without the follies of love? Nay, then! flee the sight of beautiful eyes.

Rich men of Bagdad followed the example. One El Natify had a slave on whose fillet was written:--

Seduction and the power that teaseth hearts flash from mine eye when it gazeth. Turn, unhappy man, turn away thine eye from mine eye!

On the fillet of Ward (Rose) slave of Mahany, was written:--

She is finished, all finished the beauty of her features;--nothing beyond her beauty is possible in this world.

For other mortals there is but one crescent in every month; but for me the crescent of beauty riseth daily upon the brow of Ward.

And there is a delicious coquetry in this inscription, traced with henna upon the hand of a slave-girl:--

It is not the beauty of henna that doth embellish my hand; 'tis the beauty of my hand that doth heighten the beauty of the henna.

Girl-pages, attired like men, sometimes like soldiers, were also fashionable. One of these is spoken of as having worn a helmet on which was engraved: 'Admire the beauty of this slave; never can thine eye learn to define it. Is she male or female; yes,'t is a woman! aye, 't is a man!'

And on her sword-belt was graven:--

The sword of her eyes doth not suffice her,--that terrible sword that striketh down the keenest sabres. How dare I remain between those two swords! Let thee behold but once this proud beauty marching in warrior-garb, with her twofold apparatus of slaughter; and thou wilt learn that the scimitar of her glance is even more terrible than the scimitar that is wielded with both hands.

The rage for beautiful slaves and exquisite dresses and inscribed girdles increased greatly under Haroun's reign; and the art of the poet was more than ever in demand. Even the tapestries, the coverings of furniture, were adorned with appropriate inscriptions, of which the following on a divan is a fair sample:--

More ravishing, more delicious than wine and the perfume of roses, is the group of two lovers, with cheek pressed against cheek....

The one speaking of the troubles that he feels; the other telling of the love within her heart.

Or this, upon a fan:--

I bring a tender breath of air; with me rosy shame doth play:

I serve as a veil to the amorous mouth that pouts for a kiss.

And some of the kisses of those days, too, have become historical; we read of a single kiss being paid for with two pearls worth forty thousand drachmas. The giver was no caliph, but a private citizen who sold his property to buy the pearls, and gave them away on the easy condition that the girl should take them from his lips with hers.