Part 27

Soon after this a lady, living in a house which joined the premises of Madame Lalaurie, was going up stairs, when she heard a piercing shriek from the next courtyard. She looked out, and saw a little negro girl, apparently about eight years old, flying across the yard towards the house, and Madame Lalaurie pursuing her, cowhide in hand. The lady saw the poor child run from story to story, her mistress following, till both came out upon the top of the house. Seeing the child about to spring over, the witness put her hands before her eyes; but she heard the fall, and saw the child taken up, her body bending and limbs hanging as if every bone was broken. The lady watched for many hours, and at night she saw the body brought out, a shallow hole dug by torchlight in the corner of the yard, and the corpse covered over. No secret was made of what had been seen. Inquiry was instituted, and illegal cruelty proved in the case of nine slaves, who were forfeited according to law. It afterward came out that this woman induced some family connexions of her own to purchase these slaves, and sell them again to her, conveying them back to her premises in the night. She must have desired to have them for purposes of torture, for she could not let them be seen in a neighbourhood where they were known.

During all this time she does not appear to have lost caste, though it appears that she beat her daughters as often as they attempted in her absence to convey food to her miserable victims. She always knew of such attempts by means of the sleek coachman, who was her spy. It was necessary to have a spy, to preserve her life from the vengeance of her household; so she pampered this obsequious negro, and at length owed her escape to him.

She kept her cook chained within eight yards of the fireplace, where sumptuous dinners were cooked in the most sultry season. It is a pity that some of the admiring guests whom she assembled round her hospitable table could not see through the floor, and be made aware at what a cost they were entertained. One morning the cook declared that they had better all be burned together than lead such a life, and she set the house on fire. The alarm spread over the city; the gallant French creoles all ran to the aid of their accomplished friend, and the fire was presently extinguished. Many, whose curiosity had been roused about the domestic proceedings of the lady, seized the opportunity of entering those parts of the premises from which the whole world had been hitherto carefully excluded. They perceived that, as often as they approached a particular outhouse, the lady became excessively uneasy lest some property in an opposite direction should be burned. When the fire was extinguished, they made bold to break open this outhouse. A horrible sight met their eyes. Of the nine slaves, the skeletons of two were afterward found poked into the ground; the other seven could scarcely be recognised as human. Their faces had the wildness of famine, and their bones were coming through the skin. They were chained and tied in constrained postures, some on their knees, some with their hands above their heads. They had iron collars with spikes which kept their heads in one position. The cowhide, stiff with blood, hung against the wall; and there was a stepladder on which this fiend stood while flogging her victims, in order to lay on the lashes with more effect. Every morning, it was her first employment after breakfast to lock herself in with her captives, and flog them till her strength failed.

Amid shouts and groans, the sufferers were brought out into the air and light. Food was given them with too much haste, for two of them died in the course of the day. The rest, maimed and helpless, are pensioners of the city.

The rage of the crowd, especially of the French creoles, was excessive. The lady shut herself up in the house with her trembling daughters, while the street was filled from end to end with a yelling crowd of gentlemen. She consulted her coachman as to what she had best do. He advised that she should have her coach to the door after dinner, and appear to go forth for her afternoon drive, as usual; escaping or returning, according to the aspect of affairs. It is not told whether she ate her dinner that day, or prevailed on her remaining slaves to wait upon her. The carriage appeared at the door; she was ready, and stepped into it. Her assurance seems to have paralyzed the crowd. The moment the door was shut they appeared to repent having allowed her to enter, and they tried to upset the carriage, to hold the horses, to make a snatch at the lady. But the coachman laid about him with his whip, made the horses plunge, and drove off. He took the road to the lake, where he could not be intercepted, as it winds through the swamp. He outstripped the crowd, galloped to the lake, bribed the master of a schooner which was lying there to put off instantly with the lady to Mobile. She escaped to France, and took up her abode in Paris under a feigned name, but not for long. Late one evening a party of gentlemen called on her, and told her she was Madame Lalaurie, and that she had better be off. She fled that night, and is supposed to be now skulking about in some French province under a false name.

The New-Orleans mob met the carriage returning from the lake. What became of the coachman I do not know. The carriage was broken to pieces and thrown into the swamp, and the horses stabbed and left dead upon the road. The house was gutted, the two poor girls having just time to escape from a window. They are now living, in great poverty, in one of the faubourgs. The piano, tables, and chairs were burned before the house. The feather-beds were ripped up, and the feathers emptied into the street, where they afforded a delicate footing for some days. The house stands, and is meant to stand, in its ruined state. It was the strange sight of its gaping windows and empty walls, in the midst of a busy street, which excited my wonder, and was the cause of my being told the story the first time. I gathered other particulars afterward from eyewitnesses.

The crowd at first intended to proceed to the examination of other premises, whose proprietors were under suspicion of cruelty to their slaves; but the shouts of triumph which went up from the whole negro population of the city showed that this would not be safe. Fearing a general rising, the gentlemen organized themselves into a patrol, to watch the city night and day till the commotion should have subsided. They sent circulars to all proprietors suspected of cruelty, warning them that the eyes of the city were upon them. This is the only benefit the negroes have derived from the exposure. In reply to inquiries, I was told that it was very possible that cruelties like those of Madame Lalaurie might be incessantly in course of perpetration. It may be doubted whether any more such people exist; but if they do, there is nothing to prevent their following her example with impunity as long as they can manage to preserve that secrecy which was put an end to by accident in her case.

I could never get out of the way of the horrors of slavery in this region. Under one form or another, they met me in every house, in every street; everywhere but in the intelligence pages of newspapers, where I might read on in perfect security of exemption from the subject. In the advertising columns there were offers of reward for runaways, restored dead or alive; and notices of the capture of a fugitive with so many brands on his limbs and shoulders, and so many scars on his back. But from the other half of the newspaper, the existence of slavery could be discovered only by inference. What I saw elsewhere was, however, dreadful enough. In one house, the girl who waited on me with singular officiousness was so white, with blue eyes and light hair, that it never occurred to me that she could be a slave. Her mistress told me afterward that this girl of fourteen was such a depraved hussy that she must be sold. I exclaimed involuntarily, but was referred to the long heel in proof of the child's being of negro extraction. She had the long heel, sure enough. Her mistress told me that it is very wrong to plead in behalf of slavery that families are rarely separated; and gave me, as no unfair example of the dealings of masters, this girl's domestic history.

The family had consisted of father, mother, and four children, this girl being the eldest, and the youngest an infant at the breast. The father was first sold separately, and then the rest of the family were purchased in the market by the husband of my friend, the mother being represented to be a good cook and house servant. She proved to be both; but of so violent a temper that it was necessary to keep her own children out of her way when she had a knife in her hand, lest she should murder them. The anxiety of watching such a temper was not to be borne, and the woman was sold with her infant. Here was the second division of this family. The behaviour of the eldest girl was so outrageously profligate, that she was about to be disposed of also. And yet she was only a fair illustration of the results of the education by circumstance that slaves receive. When detected in some infamous practices, this young creature put on air of prudery, and declared that it gave her great pain to be thought immodest; that, so far from her being what she was thought, she had no wish to have any other lover than her master. Her master was so enraged at this--being a domestic Northern man, and not a planter--that he tied her to the whipping-post and flogged her severely with his own hands. The story of this dispersed and wretched family has nothing singular in it. With slight variations, it may be found repeated in every Southern settlement the traveller visits.

Just about the time that this was happening, a family in the neighbourhood was poisoned by a slave. I think one died, and the others had a narrow escape. The poisoner was sold in the market, as the proprietor could not afford to lose his human property by the law taking its course.

About the same time the cashier of a bank in New-Orleans sent one of his slaves out of the way, in order to be undisturbed in the violence which he meditated against the negro's attached wife. The negro understood the case, but dared not refuse to go where he was bid. He returned unexpectedly soon, however; found his home occupied, and stabbed the defiler of it. The cashier was the stronger man, and, in spite of his wound, he so maltreated the negro that he expired on the barrow on which he was being conveyed to jail. Nothing ensued on account of this affair; though, when the cashier was some time after found to be a defaulter, he absconded.

I would fain know what has become of a mulatto child in whom I became much interested at New-Orleans. Ailsie was eight years old, perfectly beautiful, and one of the most promising children I ever saw. She was quick, obedient, and affectionate to a touching degree. She had a kind master and mistress. Her mistress's health was delicate, and the child would watch her countenance wistfully, in the constant hope of saving her trouble. She would look very grave if the lady went up stairs with a languid step, take hold of her gown, and timidly ask, "What, an't ye well?" I used to observe her helping to dress her mistress's hair, her little hands trembling with eagerness, her eye following every glance of the eye which ever looked tenderly upon her. Her master declared he did not know what to make of the child, she looked so scared, and trembled so if she was spoken to; and she was, indeed, the most sensitive of children. As she stood at the corner of the dinner-table to fan away the flies, she was a picture from which it was difficult to turn away. Her little yellow headdress suited well with her clear brown complexion and large soft black eyes; nothing that she could at all understand of the conversation escaped her, while she never intermitted her waving of the huge brush of peacock's feathers. Her face was then composed in its intelligence, for she stood by her mistress's elbow; a station where she seemed to think no harm could befall her. Alas! she has lost her kind mistress. Amid the many sad thoughts which thronged into my mind when I heard of the death of this lady, one of the wisest and best of American women, I own that some of my earliest regrets were for little Ailsie; and when I think of her sensibility, her beauty, and the dreadful circumstances of her parentage, as told me by her mistress, I am almost in despair about her future lot; for what can her master, with all his goodness, do for the forlorn little creature's protection? None but a virtuous mistress can fully protect a female slave, and that too seldom.

Ailsie was born on an estate in Tennessee. Her father is a white gentleman not belonging to the family, her mother the family cook. The cook's black husband cherished such a deadly hatred against this poor child as to be for ever threatening her life, and she was thought to be in such danger from his axe that she was sent down the river to be taken into the family where I saw her. What a cruel world, what a hard human life must Ailsie find that she is born into!

Such facts, occurring at every step, put the stranger on the watch for every revelation of the feelings of the masters about the relation of the two races. Some minute circumstances surprised me in this connexion. At the American Theatre in New-Orleans, one of the characters in the play which my party attended was a slave, one of whose speeches was, "I have no business to think and feel."

At a dinner-party where three negroes were waiting, and where Ailsie stood fanning, a gentleman of very high official rank told a facetious story, at which everybody laughed heartily (being, indeed, quite unable to help it, the manner of the narrator was so droll) except a gentleman next me who had once been a slavetrader. The senator told us of a couple from the Green Island, Pat and Nancy, who had settled on the Mississippi, and, in course of time (to use the language of the region), "acquired six children and nine negroes." Pat had a mind to better his fortunes, and to go unencumbered higher up the river; and he therefore explained his plans to Nancy, finishing with, "and so, my darlin', I'll lave you; but I'll do my best by you; I'll lave you the six dear, nate, pretty little childer, and I'll take the nine nasty dirty negroes." While every other American at the table laughed without control, I saw my neighbour, the former slavetrader, glance up at the negroes who were in attendance, and use a strong effort not to laugh.

The stranger has great difficulty in satisfying himself as to the bounds of the unconsciousness of oppression which he finds urged as the exculpatory plea of the slaveholder, while he mourns over it as the great hinderance in the way of social reformation. It has been seen that an audience at the theatre will quietly receive a hit which would subject the author to punishment if he were an abolitionist. When I listened to the stories told by ladies to each other in their morning calls, showing the cleverness of their slaves, I often saw that they could not but be as fully convinced as I was that their slaves were as altogether human as themselves. I heard so many anecdotes--somewhat of the character of the following--that I began to suspect that one use of slaves is to furnish topics for the amusement of their owners.

Sam was sadly apt to get drunk, and had been often reproved by his master on that account. One day his master found him intoxicated, and cried out, "What, drunk again, Sam? I scolded you for being drunk last night, and here you are drunk again." "No, massa, same drunk, massa; same drunk."

But enough of this dark side of the social picture. I find myself dwelling long upon it, and frequently recurring to it, because all other subjects shrink into insignificance beside it; but these others must not be forgotten.

The gay visiting season at New-Orleans was over before we arrived, but we were in several parties. The division between the American and French factions is visible even in the drawing-room. The French complain that the Americans will not speak French; will not meet their neighbours even half way in accommodation of speech. The Americans ridicule the toilet practices of the French ladies; their liberal use of rouge and pearl powder. If the French ladies do thus beautify themselves, they do it with great art. I could not be quite sure of the fact in any one instance, while I am disposed to believe it from the clumsy imitation of the art which I saw in the countenance of an American rival or two. I beheld with strong disgust the efforts of a young lady from Philadelphia to make herself as French as possible by these disagreeable means. She was under twenty, and would have been rather pretty if she had given herself a fair chance; but her coarsely-painted eyebrows, daubed cheeks, and powdered throat inspired a disgust which she must be singularly unwise not to have anticipated. If this were a single case it would not be worth mentioning; but I was told by a resident that it is a common practice for young ladies to paint both white and red, under the idea of accommodating themselves to the French manners of the place. They had better do it by practising the French language than by copying the French toilet. New-Orleans is the only place in the United States where I am aware of having seen a particle of rouge.

Large parties are much alike everywhere, and they leave no very distinct impression. Except for the mixture of languages, and the ample provision of ices, fans, and ventilators, the drawing-room assemblages of New-Orleans bear a strong resemblance to the routs and dinner-parties of a country town in England. Our pleasantest days in the great Southern city were those which we spent quietly in the homes of intimate acquaintances. I vividly remember one which I was told was a true Louisiana day. We ladies carried our workbags, and issued forth by eleven o'clock, calling by the way for a friend, Ailsie's mistress. The house we were to visit was a small shaded dwelling, with glass doors opening into a pretty garden. In a cool parlour we sat at work, talking of things solemn and trivial, of affairs native and foreign, till dinner, which was at two. We were then joined by the gentlemen. We left the dinner-table early, and the gentlemen trundled rocking-chairs and low stools into the garden, where we sat in the shade all the afternoon, the ladies working, the gentlemen singing Irish melodies, telling good native stories, and throwing us all into such a merry mood, that we positively refused the siesta which we were urged to take, and forgot what a retribution we might expect from the moschetoes for sitting so long under the trees. After tea we got to the piano, and were reminded at last by the darkness of the number of hours which this delightful Louisiana visit had consumed. We all walked home together through the quiet streets, the summer lightning quivering through the thick trees in singular contrast with the steady moonlight.

We should have liked to spend every day thus, with friends who always made us forget that we were far from home; but a traveller's duty is to see every variety of society which comes within his reach. I was sought by some, and met accidentally with other persons who were on the eve of departure for Texas. Attempts were made to induce me to go myself, and also to convince me of the eligibility of the country as a place of settlement for British emigrants, in the hope that the arrival of a cargo of settlers from England might afford to the Texans a plea of countenance from the British government. The subject of Texas is now so well understood, that there is no occasion to enlarge upon the state of the question as it was two years and a half ago; and besides, if I were to give a precise account of the conversations between myself and the friends of the Texan aggression, my story would not be believed. The folly and romance of some of the agents employed, and the villany which peeped out of every admission extorted from the advocates of the scheme, would make my readers as astonished as I was myself, that any attempts should be made in the neighbourhood of the scene to gain the sympathy of strangers who were at all above the rank of knaves and fools. Suffice it that one class of advocates told me that I should be perfectly safe there, as the inhabitants were chiefly persons who could fight bravely against the Mexicans, from having nothing to lose, and from their having been compelled to leave the United States by their too free use of arms: while the opposite species of agent enlarged, not only on the beauty of the sunsets and the greenness of the savannahs, but on the delightful security of living under the same laws as the people of the United States, and amid a condition of morals kept perfectly pure by Colonel Austin's practice of having every person whom he conceived to have offended whipped at the cart's tail; the fact being carefully concealed that Colonel Austin was at that time, and had been for two years, in jail in the Mexican capital.

Our friends indulged us in what they knew to be our favourite pleasure, in country drives. There can be no great choice of drives in the neighbourhood of a city which stands in a swamp; but such places as were attainable we reached. One was a ropewalk, 1200 feet long, under a roof. It looked picturesque, like every other ropewalk that I ever saw; but what struck me most about it was the sudden and profound repose we plunged into from the bustle of the city. The cottages of the negroes were imbowered in green, and the whole place had a tropical air, with its thickets of fig and catalpa, and its rows of Pride-of-India trees. This last tree looks to my eye like a shrub which has received mistaken orders to grow into a tree. Its fragrance is its great charm. The mixture of its lilach flowers with its green leaves impairs the effect of the foliage, as far as colour is concerned; and the foliage is, besides, not massy enough. A single sprig of it is beautiful; and, probably, its fragrance propitiates the eyes of those who plant it, for I found it considered a beautiful tree. The dark shades of these thickets are enlivened by a profusion of roses, and the air is fanned by myriads of insects' wings. How the negroes make friendship with the tribes of insects which drive the white man to forego the blessing of natural shade, I could never understand; but the black never looks more contented than when he shrouds himself in rank vegetation, and lives in a concert of insect chirping, droning, and trumpeting.