[Handwriting: Voyage de ma grand'mere]
"Yes," I rejoined, "it purports to be a copy. We must have the little
grandmother's original manuscript, written in 1822; that or nothing."
So a correspondence sprang up with a gentle and refined old Creole lady
with whom I later had the honor to become acquainted and now count among
my esteemed friends--grand-daughter of the grandmother who, after
innumerable recountings by word of mouth to mother, sisters, brothers,
friends, husband, children, and children's children through twenty-seven
years of advancing life, sat down at last and wrote the oft-told tale for
her little grand-children, one of whom, inheriting her literary instinct
and herself become an aged grandmother, discovers the manuscript among
some old family papers and recognizes its value. The first exchange of
letters disclosed the fact that the "New Orleans Bee" ("L'Abeille") had
bought the right to publish the manuscript in French; but the moment its
editors had proper assurance that there was impending another arrangement
more profitable to her, they chivalrously yielded all they had bought, on
merely being reimbursed.
The condition that required the delivery of the original manuscript,
written over sixty years before, was not so easily met. First came the
assurance that its spelling was hideous, its writing bad and dimmed by
time, and the sheets tattered and torn. Later followed the disclosure that
an aged and infirm mother of the grandmother owned it, and that she had
some time before compelled its return to the private drawer from which the
relic-loving daughter had abstracted it. Still later came a letter saying
that since the attorney was so relentlessly exacting, she had written to
her mother praying her to part with the manuscript. Then followed another
communication,--six large, closely written pages of despair,--inclosing a
letter from the mother. The wad of papers, always more and more in the way
and always "smelling bad," had been put into the fire. But a telegram
followed on the heels of the mail, crying joy! An old letter had been
found and forwarded which would prove that such a manuscript had existed.
But it was not in time to intercept the attorney's letter saying that, the
original manuscript being destroyed, there could be no purchase or any
need of further correspondence. The old letter came. It was genuine beyond
a doubt, had been written by one of the party making the journey, and was
itself forty-seven years old. The paper was poor and sallow, the
hand-writing large, and the orthography--!
[Handwriting: Ma bien chair niaice je ressoit ta lette ce mattin]
But let us translate:
st. john baptist[1] 10 august 1836
My very dear Niece. I received your letter this morning in which you ask
me to tell you what I remember of the journey to Attakapas made in 1795 by
papa, M. -----, [and] my younger sister Françoise afterward your
grandmother. If it were with my tongue I could answer more favorably; but
writing is not my forte; I was never calculated for a public writer, as
your grandmother was. By the way, she wrote the journey, and very
prettily; what have you done with it? It is a pity to lose so pretty a
piece of writing.... We left New Orleans to go to the Attakapas in the
month of May, 1795, and in an old barge ["vieux chalant qui senté le rat
mord a plien nez"]. We were Françoise and I Suzanne, pearl of the family,
and Papa, who went to buy lands; and one Joseph Charpentier and his dear
and pretty little wife Alix [whom] I love so much; 3 Irish, father mother
and son [fice]; lastly Mario, whom you knew, with Celeste, formerly lady's
maid to Marianne--who is now my sister-in-law.... If I knew better how to
write I would tell you our adventures the alligators tried to devour us.
We barely escaped perishing in Lake Chicot and many other things.... At
last we arrived at a pretty village St. Martinville called also little
Paris and full of barons, marquises, counts and countesses[2] that were an
offense to my nose and my stomach. Your grandmother was in raptures. It
was there we met the beautiful Tonton, your aunt by marriage. I have a bad
finger and must stop.... Your loving aunty [ta tantine qui temme]