The kind of letter to expect from one who, as a girl of eighteen, could
shoot and swim and was called by her father "my son"; the antipode of her
sister Françoise. My attorney wrote that the evidence was sufficient.
His letter had hardly got into the mail-bag when another telegram cried
hold! That a few pages of the original manuscript had been found and
forwarded by post. They came. They were only nine in all--old, yellow,
ragged, torn, leaves of a plantation account-book whose red-ruled columns
had long ago faded to a faint brown, one side of two or three of them
preoccupied with charges in bad French of yards of cottonade, "mouslin à
dames," "jaconad," dozens of soap, pounds of tobacco, pairs of stockings,
lace, etc.; but to our great pleasure each page corresponding closely,
save in orthography and syntax, with a page of the new manuscript, and the
page numbers of the old running higher than those of the new! Here was
evidence which one could lay before a skeptical world that the transcriber
had not expanded the work of the original memoirist. The manuscript passed
into my possession, our Creole lady-correspondent reiterating to the end
her inability to divine what could be wanted with "an almost illegible
scrawl" (griffonage), full of bad spelling and of rather inelegant
diction. But if old manuscript was the object of desire, why, here was
something else; the very document alluded to by Françoise in her memoir of
travel--the autobiography of the dear little countess, her beloved Alix de
Morainville, made fatherless and a widow by the guillotine in the Reign of
Terror.
"Was that all?" inquired my agent, craftily, his suspicions aroused by the
promptness with which the supply met the demand. "Had she not other old
and valuable manuscripts?"
"No, alas! Only that one."
Thus reassured, he became its purchaser. It lies before me now, in an
inner wrapper of queer old black paper, beside its little tight-fitting
bag, or case of a kind of bright, large-flowered silken stuff not made in
these days, and its outer wrapper of discolored brief-paper; a pretty
little document of sixty-eight small pages in a feminine hand, perfect in
its slightly archaic grammar, gracefully composed, and, in spite of its
flimsy yellowed paper, as legible as print: "Histoire d'Alix de
Morainville écrite à la Louisiane ce 22 Aout 1795. Pour mes chères amies,
Suzanne et Françoise Bossier."
One day I told the story to Professor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard
University. He generously offered to see if he could find the name of the
Count de Morainville on any of the lists of persons guillotined during the
French Revolution. He made the search, but wrote, "I am sorry to say that
I have not been able to find it either in Prudhomme, 'Dictionnaire des
Individues envoyés à la Mort judiciairement, 1789-1796,' or in the list
given by Wallon in the sixth volume of his very interesting 'Histoire du
Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris.' Possibly he was not put to death in
Paris," etc. And later he kindly wrote again that he had made some hours'
further search, but in vain.
Here was distress. I turned to the little manuscript roll of which I had
become so fond, and searched its pages anew for evidence of either
genuineness or its opposite. The wrapper of black paper and the
close-fitting silken bag had not been sufficient to keep it from taking on
the yellowness of age. It was at least no modern counterfeit. Presently I
noticed the total absence of quotation marks from its passages of
conversation. Now, at the close of the last century, the use of quotation
marks was becoming general, but had not become universal and imperative.
Their entire absence from this manuscript of sixty-eight pages, abounding
in conversations, meant either age or cunning pretense. But would a
pretender carry his or her cunning to the extreme of fortifying the
manuscript in every possible way against the sallowing touch of time, lay
it away in a trunk of old papers, lie down and die without mentioning it,
and leave it for some one in the second or third generation afterward to
find? I turned the leaves once more, and lo! one leaf that had had a large
corner torn off had lost that much of its text; it had been written upon
before it was torn; while on another torn leaf, for there are two, the
writing reads--as you shall see--uninterruptedly around the torn edge; the
writing has been done after the corner was torn off. The two rents,
therefore, must have occurred at different times; for the one which
mutilates the text is on the earlier page and surely would not have been
left so by the author at the time of writing it, but only by some one
careless of it, and at some time between its completion and the manifestly
later date, when it was so carefully bestowed in its old-fashioned silken
case and its inner wrapper of black paper. The manuscript seemed genuine.
Maybe the name De Morainville is not, but was a convenient fiction of Alix
herself, well understood as such by Françoise and Suzanne. Everything
points that way, as was suggested at once by Madame Sidonie de la Houssaye
--There! I have let slip the name of my Creole friend, and can only pray
her to forgive me! "Tout porte à le croire" (Everything helps that
belief), she writes; although she also doubts, with reason, I should say,
the exhaustive completeness of those lists of the guillotined. "I recall,"
she writes in French, "that my husband has often told me the two uncles of
his father, or grandfather, were guillotined in the Revolution; but though
search was made by an advocate, no trace of them was found in any
records."
An assumed name need not vitiate the truth of the story; but discoveries
made since, which I am still investigating, offer probabilities that,
after all, the name is genuine.
We see, however, that an intention to deceive, were it supposable, would
have to be of recent date.
Now let me show that an intention to deceive could not be of recent date,
and at the same time we shall see the need of this minuteness of
explanation. Notice, then, that the manuscript comes directly from the
lady who says she found it in a trunk of her family's private papers. A
prominent paper-maker in Boston has examined it and says that, while its
age cannot be certified to from its texture, its leaves are of three
different kinds of paper, each of which might be a hundred years old. But,
bluntly, this lady, though a person of literary tastes and talent, who
recognized the literary value of Alix's _history_, esteemed original
_documents_ so lightly as, for example, to put no value upon Louisa
Cheval's thrilling letter to her brother. She prized this Alix manuscript
only because, being a simple, succinct, unadorned narrative, she could use
it, as she could not Françoise's long, pretty story, for the foundation of
a nearly threefold expanded romance. And this, in fact, she had written,
copyrighted, and arranged to publish when our joint experience concerning
Françoise's manuscript at length readjusted her sense of values. She sold
me the little Alix manuscript at a price still out of all proportion below
her valuation of her own writing, and counting it a mistake that the
expanded romance should go unpreferred and unpublished.
But who, then, wrote the smaller manuscript? Madame found it, she says, in
the possession of her very aged mother, the daughter and namesake of
Françoise. Surely she was not its author; it is she who said she burned
almost the whole original draft of Françoise's "Voyage," because it was
"in the way and smelt bad." Neither could Françoise have written it. Her
awkward handwriting, her sparkling flood of words and details, and her
ignorance of the simplest rules of spelling, make it impossible. Nor could
Suzanne have done it. She wrote and spelled no better at fifty-nine than
Françoise at forty-three. Nor could any one have imposed it on either of
the sisters. So, then, we find no intention to deceive, either early or
recent. I translated the manuscript, it went to the magazine, and I sat
down to eat, drink, and revel, never dreaming that the brazen water-gates
of my Babylon were standing wide open.
For all this time two huge, glaring anachronisms were staring me, and half
a dozen other persons, squarely in the face, and actually escaping our
notice by their serene audacity. But hardly was the pie--I mean the
magazine--opened when these two birds began to sing. Wasn't
that--interesting? Of course Louis de la Houssaye, who in 1786 "had lately
come from San Domingo," had _not_ "been fighting the insurgents"--who did
not revolt until four or five years afterward! And of course the old
count, who so kindly left the family group that was bidding Madelaine de
Livilier good-bye, was not the Prime Minister Maurepas, who was _not_
"only a few months returned from exile," and who was _not_ then "at the
pinnacle of royal favor"; for these matters were of earlier date, and this
"most lovable old man in the world" wasn't any longer in the world at all,
and had not been for eight years. He was dead and buried.
And so, after all, fraudulent intent or none, _this_ manuscript, just as
it is, could never have been written by Alix. On "this 22d of August,
1795," she could not have perpetrated such statements as these two. Her
memory of persons and events could not have been so grotesquely at fault,
nor could she have hoped so to deceive any one. The misstatements are of
later date, and from some one to whom the two events were historical. But
the manuscript is all in one simple, undisguised, feminine handwriting,
and with no interlineation save only here and there the correction of a
miswritten word.
Now in translating madame's "Voyage de ma Grandmère," I noticed something
equivalent to an interlineation, but in her own writing like all the rest,
and added in a perfectly unconcealed, candid manner, at the end of a
paragraph near the close of the story. It struck me as an innocent gloss
of the copyist, justified in her mind by some well-credited family
tradition. It was this: "Just as we [Françoise and Alix] were parting, she
[Alix] handed me the story of her life." I had already called my friend's
attention to the anachronisms, and she was in keen distress, because
totally unable to account for them. But as I further pondered them, this
gloss gained new significance and I mentioned it. My new inquiry flashed
light upon her aged memory. She explained at once that, to connect the two
stories of Françoise and Alix, she had thought it right to impute these
few words to Françoise rather than for mere exactness to thrust a detailed
explanation of her own into a story hurrying to its close. My question
called back an incident of long ago and resulted first in her rummaging a
whole day among her papers, and then in my receiving the certificate of a
gentleman of high official standing in Louisiana that, on the 10th of last
April (1889), this lady, in his presence, took from a large trunk of
written papers, variously dated and "appearing to be perfectly genuine," a
book of memoranda from which, writes he, "I copy the following paragraph
written by Madame S. de la Houssaye herself in the middle of the book, on
page 29." Then follows in French:
June 20, 1841.--M. Gerbeau has dined here again. What a singular story he
tells me. We talked of my grandmother and Madame Carpentier, and what does
M. Gerbeau tell me but that Alix had not finished her history when my
grandmother and my aunt returned, and that he had promised to get it to
them. "And I kept it two years for want of an opportunity," he added. How
mad Grandmamma must have been! How the delay must have made her suffer!
Well and good! Then Alix did write her story! But if she wrote for both
her "dear and good friends," Suzanne and Françoise, then Françoise, the
younger and milder sister, would the more likely have to be content,
sooner or later, with a copy. This, I find no reason to doubt, is what
lies before me. Indeed, here (crossed out in the manuscript, but by me
restored and italicized) are signs of a copyist's pen: "Mais helas! il
desesperoit de reussir quand' _il desespe_ rencontra," etc. Is not that a
copyist's repetition? Or this:"--et lui, mon mari apres tout se fit mon
_marim_ domestique." And here the copyist misread the original: "Lorsque
le maire entendit les noms et les _personnes_ prenoms de la mariée," etc.
In the manuscript personnes is crossed out, and the correct word, prenoms,
is written above it.
Whoever made this copy it remains still so simple and compact that he or
she cannot be charged with many embellishments. And yet it is easy to
believe that some one, with that looseness of family tradition and
largeness of ancestral pride so common among the Creoles, in
half-knowledge and half-ignorance should have ventured aside for an
instant to attribute in pure parenthesis to an ancestral De la Houssaye
the premature honor of a San Domingan war; or, incited by some tradition
of the old Prime Minister's intimate friendship with Madelaine's family,
should have imputed a gracious attention to the wrong Count de Maurepas,
or to the wrong count altogether.
I find no other theory tenable. To reject the whole matter as a forgery
flies into the face of more incontestable facts than the anachronisms do.
We know, from Suzanne and Françoise, without this manuscript, that there
was an Alix Carpentier, daughter of a count, widow of a viscount, an
_emigrée_ of the Revolution, married to a Norman peasant, known to M.
Gerbeau, beloved of Suzanne and Françoise, with whom they journeyed to
Attakapas, and who wrote for them the history of her strange life. I hold
a manuscript carefully kept by at least two generations of Françoise's
descendants among their valuable private papers. It professes to be that
history--a short, modest, unadorned narrative, apparently a copy of a
paper of like compass, notwithstanding the evident insertion of two
impossible statements whose complete omission does not disturb the
narrative. I see no room to doubt that it contains the true story of a
real and lovely woman. But to come back to my attorney.
While his grave negotiations were still going on, there met me one evening
at my own gate a lady in black, seeking advice concerning her wish to sell
to some publisher a private diary never intended for publication.
"That kind is the best," I said. "Did you write it during the late war?" I
added at a guess.
"Yes."
"I suppose, then, it contains a careful record of each day's public
events."
"No, I'm sorry to say--"
"Nay, don't be sorry; that lack may save it from the waste-basket." Then
my heart spoke. "Ah! madam, if you had only done what no woman seems to
have seen the importance of doing--written the women's side of that awful
war--"
"That's just what I have done," she interrupted. "I was a Union woman, in
the Confederacy. I couldn't talk; I had to write. I was in the siege of
Vicksburg from beginning to end."
"Leave your manuscript with me," I said. "If, on examining it, I find I
can recommend it to a publisher, I will do so. But remember what I have
already told you--the passage of an unknown writer's work through an older
author's hands is of no benefit to it whatever. It is a bad sign rather
than a good one. Your chances of acceptance will be at least no less if
you send this to the publishers yourself."
No, she would like me to intervene.
How my attorney friend and I took a two days' journey by rail, reading the
manuscript to each other in the Pullman car; how a young newly married
couple next us across the aisle, pretending not to notice, listened with
all their might; how my friend the attorney now and then stopped to choke
down tears; and how the young stranger opposite came at last, with
apologies, asking where this matter would be published and under what
title, I need not tell. At length I was intercessor for a manuscript that
publishers would not lightly decline. I bought it for my little museum of
true stories, at a price beyond what I believe any magazine would have
paid--an amount that must have filled the widow's heart with joy, but as
certainly was not beyond its worth to me. I have already contributed a
part of this manuscript to "The Century" as one of its "Wax-papers." But
by permission it is restored here to its original place.
Judge Farrar, with whom I enjoyed a slight but valued acquaintance,
stopped me one day in Carondelet street, New Orleans, saying, "I have a
true story that I want you to tell. You can dress it out--"
I arrested him with a shake of the head. "Dress me no dresses. Story me no
stories. There's not one of a hundred of them that does not lack something
essential, for want of which they are good for naught. Keep them for
after-dinner chat; but for the novelist they are good to smell, not to
eat. And yet--tell me your story. I have a use for it--a cabinet of true
things that have never had and shall not have a literary tool lifted up
against them; virgin shells from the beach of the sea of human events. It
may be I shall find a place for it there." So he told me the true story
which I have called "Attalie Brouillard," because, having forgotten the
woman's real name, it pleased his fancy to use that name in recounting the
tale: "Attalie Brouillard." I repeated the story to a friend, a gentleman
of much reading.
His reply dismayed me. "I have a faint impression," he said, "that you
will find something very much like that in one of Lever's novels."
But later I thought, "Even so, what then? Good stories repeat themselves."
I remembered having twice had experiences in my own life the accounts of
which, when given, would have been great successes only that they were old
anecdotes--great in their day, but long worn out in the club-rooms and
abandoned to clergymen's reunions. The wise thing was not to find out or
care whether Lever had somewhere told something like it, but whether the
story was ever a real event in New Orleans, and, if so, to add it to my
now, to me, priceless collection. Meeting the young judge again, I asked
boldly for the story's full authentication. He said promptly that the man
who told it of his own knowledge was the late Judge T. Wharton Collins;
that the incidents occurred about 1855, and that Judge McCaleb could
doubtless give the name of the notary public who had been an actor in the
affair. "Let us go to his office right now," said my obliging friend.
We went, found him, told him our errand. He remembered the story, was
confident of its entire verity, and gave a name, which, however, he begged
I would submit for verification to an aged notary public in another
street, a gentleman of the pure old Creole type. I went to him. He heard
the story through in solemn silence. From first to last I mentioned no
name, but at the end I asked:
"Now, can you tell me the name of the notary in that case?"
"Yes."
I felt a delicious tingling as I waited for the disclosure. He slowly
said:
"Dthere eeze wan troub' 'bout dat. To _which_ case do you _riffer? 'Cause,
you know, dey got t'ree, four case' like dat_. An' you better not mention
no name, 'cause you don't want git nobody in troub', you know.
Now dthere's dthe case of----. And dthere's dthe case of----. And dthere's
the case of----. He had to go away; yes; 'cause when _he_ make dthe dade
man make his will, he git _behine_ dthe dade man in bade, an' hole 'im up
in dthe bade."
I thanked him and departed, with but the one regret that the tale was true
so many more times than was necessary.
In all this collection the story of the so-called haunted house in Royal
street is the only one that must ask a place in literature as partly a
twice-told tale. The history of the house is known to thousands in the old
French quarter, and that portion which antedates the late war was told in
brief by Harriet Martineau as far back as when she wrote her book of
American travel. In printing it here I fulfill an oft-repeated promise;
for many a one has asked me if I would not, or, at least, why I did not,
tell its dark story.
So I have inventoried my entire exhibit--save one small matter. It turned
out after, all that the dear old Creole lady who had sold us the ancient
manuscript, finding old paper commanding so much more per ton than it ever
had commanded before, raked together three or four more leaves--stray
chips of her lovely little ancestress Françoise's workshop, or rather the
shakings of her basket of cherished records,--to wit, three Creole African
songs, which I have used elsewhere; one or two other scraps, of no value;
and, finally, a long letter telling its writer's own short story--a story
so tragic and so sad that I can only say pass it, if you will. It stands
first because it antedates the rest. As you will see, its time is
something more than a hundred years ago. The writing was very difficult to
read, owing entirely to the badness--mainly the softness--of the paper. I
have tried in vain to find exactly where Fort Latourette was situated. It
may have had but a momentary existence in Galvez's campaign against the
English. All along the Gulf shore the sites and remains of the small forts
once held by the Spaniards are known traditionally and indiscriminately as
"Spanish Fort." When John Law,--author of that famed Mississippi Bubble,
which was in Paris what the South Sea Bubble was in London,--failed in his
efforts at colonization on the Arkansas, his Arkansas settlers came down
the Mississippi to within some sixty miles of New Orleans and established
themselves in a colony at first called the _Côte Allemande_ (German
Coast), and later, owing to its prosperity, the _Côte d'Or_, or Golden
Coast. Thus the banks of the Mississippi became known on the Rhine, a
goodly part of our Louisiana Creoles received a German tincture, and the
father and the aunt of Suzanne and Françoise were not the only Alsatians
we shall meet in these wild stories of wild times in Louisiana.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Name of the parish, or county.--Translator.
[2] Royalist refugees of '93.--TRANSLATOR.