(1844-)
Perhaps the first intimation given to the world of a literary and
artistic awakening in the Southern States of America after the Civil
War, was the appearance in Scribner's Magazine of a series of short
stories, written by an unknown and hitherto untried hand, and afterward
collected and republished in 'Old Creole Days.' This was long before the
vogue of the short story, and that the publication of these tales was
regarded as a literary event in those days is sufficient testimony to
their power.
[Illustration: GEORGE W. CABLE]
They were fresh, full of color and poetic feeling--romantic with the
romance that abounds in the life they portrayed, redolent of indigenous
perfumes,--magnolia, lemon, orange, and myrtle, mingled with French
exotics of the boudoir,--interpretive in these qualities, through a fine
perception, of a social condition resulting from the transplanting to a
semi-tropical soil of a conservative, wealthy, and aristocratic French
community. Herein lay much of their most inviting charm; but more than
this, they were racy with twinkling humor, tender with a melting pathos,
and intensely dramatic.
An intermixture of races with strong caste prejudices, and a time of
revolution and change, present eminently the condition and the moment
for the romance. And when added to this, he finds to his hand an almost
tropical setting, and so picturesque a confusion of liquid tongues as
exists in the old Franco-Spanish-Afro-Italian-American city of New
Orleans, there would seem to be nothing left to be desired as
"material." The artist who seized instinctively this opportunity was
born at New Orleans on October 12th, 1844, of colonial Virginia stock on
the one side, and New England on the other. His early life was full of
vicissitudes, and he was over thirty before he discovered story-telling
to be his true vocation. From that time he has diligently followed it,
having published three novels, 'The Grandissimes,' 'Dr. Sevier,'
'Bonaventure,' and 'John March, Southerner,' besides another volume of
short stories.
That having received his impressions in the period of transition and
ferment following the upheaval of 1861-1865, with the resulting
exaggerations and distortions of a normal social condition, he chose to
lay his scenes a half-century earlier, proclaims him still more the
artist; who would thus gain a freer play of fancy and a surer
perspective, and who, saturated with his subject, is not afraid to trust
his imagination to interpret it.
That he saw with open sympathetic eyes and a loving heart, he who runs
may read in any chance page that a casual opening of his books will
reveal. That the people whom he has so affectionately depicted have not
loved him in return, is perhaps only a corroboration of his own words
when he wrote, in his charming tale 'Belles Demoiselles Plantation,'
"The Creoles never forgive a public mention." That they are tender of
heart, sympathetic, and generous in their own social and domestic
relations, Mr. Cable's readers cannot fail to know. But the caste line
has ever been a dangerous boundary--a live wire charged with a deadly if
invisible fluid--and he is a brave man who dares lay his hand upon it.
More than this, the old-time Creole was an aristocrat who chose to
live behind a battened door, as does his descendant to-day. His
privacy, so long undisturbed, has come to be his prerogative.
Witness this spirit in the protest of the inimitable Jean-ah
Poquelin--the hero giving his name to one of the most dramatic stories
ever penned--when he presents himself before the American governor of
Louisiana to declare that he will not have his privacy invaded by a
proposed street to pass his door:--"I want you tell Monsieur le
President, _strit--can't--pass--at--me--'ouse_." The Creoles of Mr.
Cable's generation are as jealous of their retirement as was the brave
old man Poquelin; and to have it invaded by a young American who not
only threw their pictures upon his canvas, but standing behind it,
reproduced their eccentricities of speech for applauding Northern
audiences, was a crime unforgivable in their moral code.
Added to this, Mr. Cable stands accused of giving the impression that
the Louisiana Creole is a person of African taint; but are there not
many refutations of this charge in the internal evidence of his work? As
for instance where in 'The Grandissimes' he writes, "His whole
appearance was a dazzling contradiction of the notion that a Creole is a
person of mixed blood"; and again when he alludes to "the slave
dialect," is the implication not unequivocal that this differed from the
speech of the drawing-room? It is true that he found many of his studies
in the Quadroon population, who spoke a patois that was partly French;
but such was the "slave dialect" of the man of color who came into his
English through a French strain, or perhaps only through a generation of
close French environment.
A civilization that is as protective in its conservatism as are the
ten-foot walls of brick with which its people surround their luxurious
dwellings may be counted on to resent portrayal at short range, even
though it were unequivocally eulogistic. That Mr. Cable is a most
conscientious artist, and that he has been absolutely true to the letter
as he saw it, there can be no question; but whether his technical
excellences are always broadly representative or not is not so certain.
That the writer who has so amply proven his own joy in the wealth of his
material, should have been beguiled by its picturesqueness into a
partisanship for the class making a special appeal, is not surprising.
But truth in art is largely a matter of selection; and if Mr. Cable has
sinned in the gleaning, it was undoubtedly because of visual limitation,
rather than a conscious discrimination.
In 'The Grandissimes,' his most ambitious work, we have an important
contribution to representative literature. In the pleasant guise of his
fascinating fiction he has essayed the history of a civilization, and in
many respects the result is a great book. That such a work should attain
its highest merit in impartial truth when taken as a whole, goes without
saying.
The dramatic story of Bras Coupe is true as belonging to the time and
the situation. So is that of Palmyrea the Octoroon, or of Honore
Grandissime's "f. m. c." the half-brother, or of the pitiful voudou
woman Clemence, the wretched old _marchande de calas_. Had he produced
nothing more than his first small volume of seven tales, he would have
made for himself an honored place in literature.
As a collection, these stories are unrivaled for pictorial power and
dramatic form, and are so nearly of equal merit that any one would be as
representative in the popular mind as the one which is given here.
"POSSON JONE'"
From 'Old Creole Days': copyrighted 1879, 1881, 1883, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
To Jules St. Ange--elegant little heathen--there yet remained at manhood
a remembrance of having been to school, and of having been taught by a
stony-headed Capuchin that the world is round--for example, like a
cheese. This round world is a cheese to be eaten through, and Jules had
nibbled quite into his cheese-world already at twenty-two.
He realized this, as he idled about one Sunday morning where the
intersection of Royal and Conti Streets some seventy years ago formed a
central corner of New Orleans. Yes, yes, the trouble was he had been
wasteful and honest. He discussed the matter with that faithful friend
and confidant, Baptiste, his yellow body-servant. They concluded that,
papa's patience and _tante's_ pin-money having been gnawed away quite to
the rind, there were left open only these few easily enumerated
resorts:--to go to work--they shuddered; to join Major Innerarity's
filibustering expedition; or else--why not?--to try some games of
confidence. At twenty-two one must begin to be something. Nothing else
tempted; could that avail? One could but try. It is noble to try; and
besides, they were hungry. If one could "make the friendship" of some
person from the country, for instance, with money,--not expert at cards
or dice, but as one would say, willing to learn,--one might find cause
to say some "Hail Marys."
The sun broke through a clearing sky, and Baptiste pronounced it good
for luck. There had been a hurricane in the night. The weed-grown
tile-roofs were still dripping, and from lofty brick and low adobe walls
a rising steam responded to the summer sunlight. Up-street, and across
the Rue du Canal, one could get glimpses of the gardens in Faubourg
Ste.-Marie standing in silent wretchedness, so many tearful Lucretias,
tattered victims of the storm. Short remnants of the wind now and then
came down the narrow street in erratic puffs, heavily laden with odors
of broken boughs and torn flowers, skimmed the little pools of
rain-water in the deep ruts of the unpaved street, and suddenly went
away to nothing, like a juggler's butterflies or a young man's money.
It was very picturesque, the Rue Royale. The rich and poor met together.
The locksmith's swinging key creaked next door to the bank; across the
way, crouching mendicant-like in the shadow of a great importing house,
was the mud laboratory of the mender of broken combs. Light balconies
overhung the rows of showy shops and stores open for trade this Sunday
morning, and pretty Latin faces of the higher class glanced over their
savagely pronged railings upon the passers below. At some windows hung
lace curtains, flannel duds at some, and at others only the scraping and
sighing one-hinged shutter groaning toward Paris after its neglectful
master.
M. St.-Ange stood looking up and down the street for nearly an hour. But
few ladies, only the inveterate mass-goers, were out. About the entrance
of the frequent _cafe's_ the masculine gentility stood leaning on canes,
with which now one and now another beckoned to Jules, some even adding
pantomimic hints of the social cup.
M. St.-Ange remarked to his servant without turning his head that
somehow he felt sure he should soon return those _bons_ that the mulatto
had lent him.
"What will you do with them?"
"Me!" said Baptiste, quickly; "I will go and see the bull-fight in the
Place Congo."
"There is to be a bull-fight? But where is M. Cayetano?"
"Ah, got all his affairs wet in the tornado. Instead of his circus, they
are to have a bull-fight--not an ordinary bull-fight with sick horses,
but a buffalo-and-tiger fight. I would not miss it--"
Two or three persons ran to the opposite corner, and commenced striking
at something with their canes. Others followed. Can M. St.-Ange and
servant, who hasten forward--can the Creoles, Cubans, Spaniards, San
Domingo refugees, and other loungers--can they hope it is a fight? They
hurry forward. Is a man in a fit? The crowd pours in from the
side-streets. Have they killed a so-long snake? Bareheaded shopmen leave
their wives, who stand upon chairs. The crowd huddles and packs. Those
on the outside make little leaps into the air, trying to be tall.
"What is the matter?"
"Have they caught a real live rat?"
"Who is hurt?" asks some one in English.
"_Personne_," replies a shopkeeper; "a man's hat blow' in the gutter;
but he has it now. Jules pick' it. See, that is the man, head and
shoulders on top the res'."
"He in the homespun?" asks a second shopkeeper. "Humph! an
_Americain_--a West-Floridian; bah!"
"But wait; 'st! he is speaking; listen!"
"To who is he speak--?"
"Sh-sh-sh! to Jules."
"Jules who?"
"Silence, you! To Jules St.-Ange, what howe me a bill since long time.
Sh-sh-sh!"
Then the voice was heard.
Its owner was a man of giant stature, with a slight stoop in his
shoulders, as if he was making a constant good-natured attempt to
accommodate himself to ordinary doors and ceilings. His bones were those
of an ox. His face was marked more by weather than age, and his narrow
brow was bald and smooth. He had instantaneously formed an opinion of
Jules St.-Ange, and the multitude of words, most of them lingual
curiosities, with which he was rasping the wide-open ears of his
listeners, signified, in short, that as sure as his name was Parson
Jones, the little Creole was a "plum gentleman."
M. St.-Ange bowed and smiled, and was about to call attention, by both
gesture and speech, to a singular object on top of the still uncovered
head, when the nervous motion of the _Americain_ anticipated him, as,
throwing up an immense hand, he drew down a large roll of bank-notes.
The crowd laughed, the West-Floridian joining, and began to disperse.
"Why, that money belongs to Smyrny Church," said the giant.
"You are very dengerous to make your money expose like that, Misty
Posson Jone'," said St.-Ange, counting it with his eyes.
The countryman gave a start and smile of surprise.
"How d'dyou know my name was Jones?" he asked; but, without pausing for
the Creole's answer, furnished in his reckless way some further
specimens of West-Floridian English; and the conciseness with which he
presented full intelligence of his home, family, calling, lodging-house,
and present and future plans, might have passed for consummate art, had
it not been the most run-wild nature. "And I've done been to Mobile, you
know, on busi_ness_ for Bethesdy Church. It's the on'yest time I ever
been from home; now you wouldn't of believed that, would you? But I
admire to have saw you, that's so. You've got to come and eat with me.
Me and my boy ain't been fed yit. What might one call yo' name? Jools?
Come on, Jools. Come on, Colossus. That's my niggah--his name's Colossus
of Rhodes. Is that yo' yallah boy, Jools? Fetch him along, Colossus. It
seems like a special provi_dence_.--Jools, do you believe in a special
provi_dence_?"
Jules said he did.
The new-made friends moved briskly off, followed by Baptiste and a
short square old negro, very black and grotesque, who had introduced
himself to the mulatto with many glittering and cavernous smiles as
"d'body-servant of d'Rev'n' Mr. Jones."
Both pairs enlivened their walk with conversation. Parson Jones
descanted upon the doctrine he had mentioned, as illustrated in the
perplexities of cotton-growing, and concluded that there would always be
"a special provi_dence_ again' cotton untell folks quits a-pressin' of
it and haulin' of it on Sundays!"
"_Je dis_," said St.-Ange, in response, "I thing you is juz right. I
believe, me, strong-strong in the improvidence, yes. You know my papa he
hown a sugah-plantation, you know. 'Jules, me son,' he say one time to
me, 'I goin' to make one baril sugah to fedge the moze high price in New
Orleans.' Well, he take his bez baril sugah--I nevah see a so careful
man like me papa always to make a so beautiful sugah _et sirop_. 'Jules,
go at Father Pierre an' ged this lill pitcher fill with holy-water, an'
tell him sen' his tin bucket, and I will make it fill with _quitte_.' I
ged the holy-water; my papa sprinkle it over the baril, an' make one
cross on the 'ead of the baril."
"Why, Jools," said Parson Jones, "that didn't do no good."
"Din do no good! Id broughd the so great value! You can strike me dead
if thad baril sugah din fedge the more high cost than any other in the
city. _Parceque_, the man what buy that baril sugah he make a mistake of
one hundred pound"--falling back--"_mais_ certainlee!"
"And you think that was growin' out of the holy-water?" asked the
parson.
"_Mais_, what could make it else? Id could not be the _quitte_, because
my papa keep the bucket, an' forget to sen' the _quitte_ to Father
Pierre."
Parson Jones was disappointed.
"Well, now, Jools, you know, I don't think that was right. I reckon you
must be a plum Catholic."