Pastor of the People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
Helen never raised more hell in Troy than the island of St. Lucia did in
the West Indies. It is some 250 square miles, is volcanic, and has been
in constant war-like upheaval.
Our ship, the “Caraquet” has arrived here, where for 150 years the
French and English have cut each others throats. From 1605, when English
settlers landed in the “Oliph Blossome” from Barbadoes and were massacred
in less than two months—others were smoked out by natives burning red
pepper—to 1814, when the isle was finally ceded to Great Britain, St.
Lucia has been seeded with hate and borne a harvest of death. In three
years, from 1793 to 1796, England lost 80,000 soldiers, including
40,000 dead. This topped the loss of Wellington’s army from all causes
during the Peninsular war. Add to this yellow fever, malaria, the deadly
fer-de-lance snake, hurricanes, earthquakes, bush-bandits and runaway
slaves the revolution set free (who kidnapped, ravished, maimed, burned
and robbed) and St. Lucia’s cup of gall and gore is running over—as are
the wasps, centipedes, tarantulas, mosquitoes and scorpions over the
people.
This was a Pandora’s, not a Christmas box. I wonder that all the
inhabitants are not like the mad woman who rushed out of the insane
asylum howling at us as we entered Castries harbor. St. Lucia was a
martyred maid in the time of Diocletian, and lost her money and her
eyes. The island bearing her name has suffered outrage and martyrdom
and may well invoke her as the patroness of the poor and blind, for its
inhabitants are afflicted with poverty and eye disease.
The land-locked harbor is the military key to the West Indies. Morne
and Vigie are striking fortifications, and historic hill-tops in the
back-ground have been bathed in the blood of those climbing the Calvary
of death. They were drenched in mist and rain when we docked. Coal and
not carnage is the leading industry now. Instead of shambles, all is
soot. Ships come for fuel, not to fight. As at Nagasaki, Jamaica, St.
Thomas and Martinique, women do the coaling. In place of Kingley’s poem,
“Men must work and women must weep,” it is, “women must work and men
must sleep.”
The coal wenches are amazing Amazons. How they wiggled and waltzed with
coal-baskets on their heads, sweating, swearing, singing snatches of
French songs and swaying to the music of a carnival band that came down
to the boat and acted like madcap strolling players standing on heads and
hands. The girls made a few cents a basket; if one greedily ran ahead
out of turn, there was a “switchman” to lash her back in line. What
coal-black Caryatides! Wonderful models—not of manners or morality—but
muscles that would give a sculptor fits. Sure Mike Angelo would have
wrestled with them, but Ben Cellini would have thought twice before he
dared throw them about as he did his model whom he grabbed by the hair,
kicked and mauled so she was compelled to anoint her wounds with bacon
fat while he stood around and “larfed.” These husky, dusky damsels would
have brained him with a lump of coal, thrown him in the sea, or mopped up
the island with him. This holiday work gave the begrimed beauties extra
money. They like work and carry their burdens on, not in their heads, the
baskets often weighing 150 pounds each.
Streets of Castries are laid out in right angles, and many of the
population were laid out in the streets at all angles. Every old soak
fills up. I saw a black man and woman stagger along the walk, fall in
the gutter, make love and wallow there like pigs. In the outskirts darky
women were dragging their drunk lovers, brothers or husbands through
the mud by heels or head or spreading them out like clothes to dry on
doorsteps or windowsills. The squalor was stentorious and stercoraceous.
Castries was a medley of noise, music and mud. The only bible commandment
followed was the eleventh. “Thou shalt get stewed.” The patron saint of
the city must be Saint Amant, the French seventeenth century bacchanalian
bard who received inspiration for his drinking songs by imbibing enormous
quantities of spirits which resulted in ebullitions like “La Debauche.”
Alcaeus said, “Wine and truth”—and it was a very naked truth we saw in
the Casino on the hill. Yes, it was quite “orgiferous.” What is an orgy?
Listen to Gautier:
“Oh, the orgy giving to the winds its heaving breasts, red with kisses;
the orgy shaking out its perfumed hair upon its bare shoulders, dancing,
singing, shouting, holding one hand out to this man and the other to
that one; the orgy, hot courtezan, that yields readily to every fancy,
that drinks punch and laughs, that stains the cloth and its gown, that
dips its garland of flowers in a bath of Malmsey wine; the ribald orgy,
showing its foot and its leg, letting its heavy head fall to right or
left; the quarrelsome, blaspheming orgy, quick to snatch its stilleto
from its garter; the quivering orgy, that has only to stretch out its
wand and turn an idiot into a poet and a poet into an idiot; the orgy
that duplicates our being, and sends fire running through our veins, sets
diamonds in our eyes and rubies on our lips; the orgy, the only poetry
that is possible in these prosaic days.”
The Casino orchestra was squeaking, the couples reeking; airs were
lively like those of the girls. One temptress asked me to give her a good
time—and my watch; another charmer wanted my gold charm; but discretion
was the better part of virtue and valor. To escape with money and morals,
we slid down hill after throwing them a few shillings to buy religious
tracts to make tracks in a different direction. In town a crowd stood
watching two women fighting and shaking their fists and naked breasts at
each other till the sweet milk of kindness turned to sour hate.
I went to a local banker to change some money. He was not in his office
or home, but his charming daughter was. We exchanged Christmas courtesies
and coin. She said she disliked our high American exchange, the color
line in United States, and praised the fact that blacks and whites in St.
Lucia ate, slept and grew up together. I was sorely tried, for a long
time resisted temptation, but eventually succumbed to the enticements of
this Eve’s daughter. She made me drink a glass she had filled with old
French rum, syrup, lime-juice and other good things. I can’t remember,
except that it was eloquent of the time, place and occasion. O tempora, O
mores! How blessings brighten as they take their flight. I write with a
glass of water nearby, in spite of the Horatian dictum that songs are not
able to live long or please that are written in draughts of water. But I
am writing prose, not poetry.
The guide-book asserts that “modest sleeping accommodations can be found
in this island.” If so, it is one of the few places in the West Indies
where, by day and night, the traveler is offered sleeping accommodations
far removed from sleep or modesty. Cricket is popular in Castries, but
not the bed-bug and cockroach.
If one is socially inclined there is many a black beauty whose back
steps “take hold on hell.” One is accosted noon and night. Boat traffic
in the West Indies is not always legitimately commercial. At different
isles girls come aboard to sell beads, fruit and themselves. A ship is
often delayed in getting these moral derelicts and strumpet stowaways
put off. Do not be surprised if at various ports, men board the ship and
invite Americans going ashore for the night to come and stay with their
sisters—a hospitality quite Mexican and Latin-American. This is “old
stuff” to observing travelers, but not often referred to by the average
writers and lecturers on the West Indies who profoundly inform you the
sky is blue, the grass green and the water wet. True, but Columbus
discovered that—is there nothing else to describe?
* * * * *