What the legislators of 1685 and 1724 endeavored to correct did not
greatly improve with the abolition of slavery, nor yet with those
political troubles which socially deranged colonial life. The
_fille-de-couleur_, inheriting the charm of the belle _affranchie_,
continued to exert a similar influence, and to fulfil an almost similar
destiny. The latitude of morals persisted,--though with less
ostentation: it has latterly contracted under the pressure of necessity
rather than through any other influences. Certain ethical principles
thought essential to social integrity elsewhere have always been largely
relaxed in the tropics; and--excepting, perhaps, Santo Domingo--the
moral standard in Martinique was not higher than in the other French
colonies. Outward decorum might be to some degree maintained; but there
was no great restraint of any sort upon private lives: it was not
uncommon for a rich man to have many "natural" families; and almost
every individual of means had children of color. The superficial
character of race prejudices was everywhere manifested by unions, which
although never mentioned in polite converse, were none the less
universally known; and the "irresistible fascination" of the half-breed
gave the open lie to pretended hate. Nature, in the guise of the _belle
affranchie_, had mocked at slave codes;--in the _fille-de-couleur_ she
still laughed at race pretensions, and ridiculed the fable of physical
degradation. To-day, the situation has not greatly changed; and with
such examples on the part of the cultivated race, what could be expected
from the other? Marriages are rare;--it has been officially stated that
the illegitimate births are sixty per cent; but seventy-five to eighty
per cent would probably be nearer the truth. It is very common to see in
the local papers such announcements as: _Enfants légitimes_, 1 (one
birth announced); _enfants naturels_, 25.
In speaking of the _fille-de-couleur_ it is necessary also to speak of
the extraordinary social stratification of the community to which she
belongs. The official statement of 20,000 "colored" to the total
population of between 173,000 and 174,000 (in which the number of pure
whites is said to have fallen as low as 5,000) does not at all indicate
the real proportion of mixed blood. Only a small element of unmixed
African descent really exists; yet when a white creole speaks of the
_gens-de-couleur_ he certainly means nothing darker than a mulatto skin.
Race classifications have been locally made by sentiments of political
origin: at least four or five shades of visible color are classed as
negro. There is, however, some natural truth at the bottom of this
classification: where African blood predominates, the sympathies are
likely to be African; and the turning-point is reached only in the true
mulatto, where, allowing the proportions of mixed blood to be
nearly equal, the white would have the dominant influence in
situations more natural than existing politics. And in speaking of the
_filles-de-couleur_, the local reference is always to women in whom the
predominant element is white: a white creole, as a general rule, deigns
only thus to distinguish those who are nearly white,--more usually he
refers to the whole class as mulattresses. Those women whom wealth and
education have placed in a social position parallel with that of the
daughters of creole whites are in some cases allowed to pass for
white,--or at the very worst, are only referred to in a whisper as being
_de couleur_. (Needless to say, these are totally beyond the range of
the present considerations: there is nothing to be further said of them
except that they can be classed with the most attractive and refined
women of the entire tropical world.) As there is an almost infinite
gradation from the true black up to the brightest _sang-mêlé_, it is
impossible to establish any color-classification recognizable by the eye
alone; and whatever lines of demarcation can be drawn between castes
must be social rather than ethnical. In this sense we may accept the
local Creole definition of _fille-de-couleur_ as signifying, not so much
a daughter of the race of visible color, as the half-breed girl destined
from her birth to a career like that of the _belle affranchie_ of the
old regime;--for the moral cruelties of slavery have survived
emancipation.
Physically, the typical _fille-de-couleur_ may certainly be classed, as
white creole writers have not hesitated to class her, with the "most
beautiful women of the human race."[46] She has inherited not only the
finer bodily characteristics of either parent race, but a something else
belonging originally to neither, and created by special climatic and
physical conditions,--a grace, a suppleness of form, a delicacy of
extremities (so that all the lines described by the bending of limbs or
fingers are parts of clean curves), a satiny smoothness and fruit-tint
of skin,--solely West Indian.... Morally, of course, it is much more
difficult to describe her; and whatever may safely be said refers rather
to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of the present half-century.
The race is now in a period of transition: public education and
political changes are modifying the type, and it is impossible to guess
the ultimate consequence, because it is impossible to safely predict
what new influences may yet be brought to affect its social development.
Befare the present era of colonial decadence, the character of the
fille-de-couleur was not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated,
she had a peculiar charm,--that charm of childishness which has power to
win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel attracted
towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as easily pleased or
as easily pained,--artless in her goodnesses as in her faults, to all
outward appearance;--willing to give her youth, her beauty, her caresses
to some one in exchange for the promise to love her,--perhaps also to
care for a mother, or a younger brother. Her astonishing capacity for
being delighted with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies,
her sudden veerings of mood from laughter to tears,--like the sudden
rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these touched,
drew, won, and tyrannized. Yet such easily created joys and pains did
not really indicate any deep reserve of feeling: rather a superficial
sensitiveness only,--like the _zhèbe-m'amisé_, or _zhèbe-manmzelle_,
whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. Such human manifestations,
nevertheless, are apt to attract more in proportion as they are more
visible,--in proportion as the soul-current, being less profound, flows
more audibly. But no hasty observation could have revealed the whole
character of the fille-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and
surprised: the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated her
with even more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of
deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her race--itself
fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection
unlimited--an inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a
marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as one
accepts the natural and the inevitable. And that desire to please--which
in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all other motives of
action (maternal affection excepted)--could have appeared absolutely
natural only to those who never reflected that even sentiment had been
artificially cultivated by slavery.
She asked for so little,--accepted a gift with such childish
pleasure,--submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man
who promised to love her. She bore him children--such beautiful
children!--whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked
to legitimatize;--and she did not ask perpetual affection
notwithstanding,--regarded the relation as a necessarily temporary one,
to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of her children's
father. If deceived in all things,--if absolutely ill-treated and left
destitute, she did not lose faith in human nature: she seemed a born
optimist, believing most men good;--she would make a home for another
and serve him better than any slave.... "_Née de l'amour_," says a
creole writer, "_la fille-de-couleur vit d'amour, de rires, et
d'oublis_."...[47]
Then came the general colonial crash!... You cannot see its results
without feeling touched by them. Everywhere the weird beauty, the
immense melancholy of tropic ruin. Magnificent terraces, once golden
with cane, now abandoned to weeds and serpents;--deserted
plantation-homes, with trees rooted in the apartments and pushing up
through the place of the roofs;--grass-grown alleys ravined by
rains;--fruit-trees strangled by lianas;--here and there the stem of
some splendid palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a mast;--petty
frail growths of banana-trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of
century-old forest giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough
remains to tell what the sensual paradise of the old days must have
been, when sugar was selling at 52.
And the fille-de-couleur has also changed. She is much less humble and
submissive,--somewhat more exacting: she comprehends better the moral
injustice of her position. The almost extreme physical refinement and
delicacy, bequeathed to her by the freedwomen of the old regime, are
passing away: like a conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is
returning to a more primitive condition,--hardening and growing perhaps
less comely as well as less helpless. She perceives also in a vague way
the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and protector, is
emigrating;--the domination of the black becomes more and more probable.
Furthermore, with the continual increase of the difficulty of living,
and the growing pressure of population, social cruelties and hatreds
have been developed such as her ancestors never knew. She is still
loved; but it is alleged that she rarely loves the white, no matter how
large the sacrifices made for her sake, and she no longer enjoys that
reputation of fidelity accorded to her class in other years. Probably
the truth is that the fille-de-couleur never had at any time capacity to
bestow that quality of affection imagined or exacted as a right. Her
moral side is still half savage: her feelings are still those of a
child. If she does not love the white man according to his unreasonable
desire, it is certain at least that she loves him as well as he
deserves. Her alleged demoralization is more apparent than real;--she is
changing from an artificial to a very natural being, and revealing more
and more in her sufferings the true character of the luxurious social
condition that brought her into existence. As a general rule, even while
questioning her fidelity, the creole freely confesses her kindness of
heart, and grants her capable of extreme generosity and devotedness to
strangers or to children whom she has an opportunity to care for.
Indeed, her natural kindness is so strikingly in contrast with the
harder and subtler character of the men of color that one might almost
feel tempted to doubt if she belong to the same race. Said a creole
once, in my hearing:--"The gens-de-couleur are just like the
_tourtouroux_:[48] one must pick out the females and leave the males
alone." Although perhaps capable of a double meaning, his words were not
lightly uttered;--he referred to the curious but indubitable fact that
the character of the colored woman appears in many respects far superior
to that of the colored man. In order to understand this, one must bear
in mind the difference in the colonial history of both sexes; and a
citation from General Romanet,[49] who visited Martinique at the end of
the last century, offers a clue to the mystery. Speaking of the tax upon
enfranchisement, he writes:--
--"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the certificates of
liberty,--on payment by the master of a sum usually equivalent to the
value of the subject. Public interest frequently justifies him in making
the price of the slave proportionate to the desire or the interest
manifested by the master. It can be readily understood that the tax upon
the liberty of the women ought to be higher than that of the men: the
latter unfortunates having no greater advantage than that of being
useful;--the former know how to please: they have those rights and
privileges which the whole world allows to their sex; they know how to
make even the fetters of slavery serve them for adornments. They may be
seen placing upon their proud tyrants the same chains worn by
themselves, and making them kiss the marks left thereby: the master
becomes the slave, and purchases another's liberty only to lose his
own."
Long before the time of General Romanet, the colored male slave might
win liberty as the guerdon of bravery in fighting against foreign
invasion, or might purchase it by extraordinary economy, while working
as a mechanic on extra time for his own account (he always refused to
labor with negroes); but in either case his success depended upon the
possession and exercise of qualities the reverse of amiable. On the
other hand, the bondwoman won manumission chiefly through her power to
excite affection. In the survival and perpetuation of the fittest of
both sexes these widely different characteristics would obtain more and
more definition with successive generations.
I find in the "Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la Martinique" for
1831 (No. 41) a list of slaves to whom liberty was accorded _pour
services rendus à leurs maîtres_. Out of the sixty-nine
enfranchisements recorded under this head, there are only two names of
male adults to be found,--one an old man of sixty;--the other, called
Laurencin, the betrayer of a conspiracy. The rest are young girls, or
young mothers and children;--plenty of those singular and pretty names
in vogue among the creole population,--Acélie, Avrillette, Mélie,
Robertine, Célianne, Francillette, Adée, Catharinette, Sidollie,
Céline, Coraline;--and the ages given are from sixteen to twenty-one,
with few exceptions. Yet these liberties were asked for and granted at a
time when Louis Philippe had abolished the tax on manumissions.... The
same "Bulletin" contains a list of liberties granted to colored men,
_pour service accompli dans la milice_, only!
Most of the French West Indian writers whose works I was able to obtain
and examine speak severely of the _hommes-de-couleur_ as a class,--in
some instances the historian writes with a very violence of hatred. As
far back as the commencement of the eighteenth century, Labat, who, with
all his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge of men,
declared:--"The mulattoes are as a general rule well made, of good
stature, vigorous, strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (_hardis_)
beyond all conception. They have much vivacity, but are given to their
pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (_cachés_), wicked, and capable of
the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced than
Père Labat, speaks of them "as physically superior, though morally
inferior to the whites": he wrote at a time when the race had given to
the world the two best swordsmen it has yet perhaps seen,--Saint-Georges
and Jean-Louis.
Commenting on the judgment of Père Labat, the historian Borde
observes:--"The wickedness spoken of by Père Labat doubtless relates to
their political passions only; for the women of color are, beyond any
question, the best and sweetest persons in the world--_à coup
sûr, les meilleures et les plus douces personnes qu'il y ait au
monde_."--("Histoire de l'Ile de la Trinidad," par M. Pierre Gustave
Louis Borde, vol. I., p. 222.) The same author, speaking of their
goodness of heart, generosity to strangers and the sick says "they are
born Sisters of Charity";--and he is not the only historian who has
expressed such admiration of their moral qualities. What I myself saw
during the epidemic of 1887-88 at Martinique convinced me that these
eulogies of the women of color are not extravagant. On the other hand,
the existing creole opinion of the men of color is much less favorable
than even that expressed by Père Labat. Political events and passions
have, perhaps, rendered a just estimate of their qualities difficult.
The history of the _hommes-de-couleur_ in all the French colonies has
been the same;--distrusted by the whites, who feared their aspirations
to social equality, distrusted even more by the blacks (who still hate
them secretly, although ruled by them), the mulattoes became an
Ishmaelitish clan, inimical to both races, and dreaded of both. In
Martinique it was attempted, with some success, to manage them by
according freedom to all who would serve in the militia for a certain
period with credit. At no time was it found possible to compel them to
work with blacks; and they formed the whole class of skilled city
workmen and mechanics for a century prior to emancipation.
... To-day it cannot be truly said of the _fille-de-couleur_ that her
existence is made up of "love, laughter, and forgettings." She has aims
in life,--the bettering of her condition, the higher education of her
children, whom she hopes to free from the curse of prejudice. She still
clings to the white, because through him she may hope to improve her
position. Under other conditions she might even hope to effect some sort
of reconciliation between the races. But the gulf has become so much
widened within the last forty years, that no rapprochement now appears
possible; and it is perhaps too late even to restore the lost prosperity
of the colony by any legislative or commercial reforms. The universal
creole belief is summed up in the daily-repeated cry: "_C'est un pays
perdu!_" Yearly the number of failures increase; and more whites
emigrate;--and with every bankruptcy or departure some fille-de-couleur
is left almost destitute, to begin life over again. Many a one has been
rich and poor several times in succession;--one day her property is
seized for debt;--perhaps on the morrow she finds some one able and
willing to give her a home again... Whatever comes, she does not die for
grief, this daughter of the sun: she pours out her pain in song, like a
bird, Here is one of her little improvisations,--a song very popular in
both Martinique and Guadeloupe, though originally composed in the latter
colony:--
--"Good-bye Madras!
Good-bye foulard!
Good-bye pretty calicoes!
Good-bye collier-choux!
That ship
Which is there on the buoy,
It is taking
My doudoux away."
--"Adiéu Madras!
Adiéu foulard!
Adiéu dézinde!
Adiéu collier-choux!
Batiment-là
Qui sou labouè-là,
Li ka mennein
Doudoux-à-moin allé."
--"Very good-day,--
Monsieur the Consignee.
I come
To make one little petition.
My doudoux
Is going away.
Alas! I pray you
Delay his going."
--"Bien le-bonjou',
Missié le Consignataire.
Moin ka vini
Fai yon ti pétition;
Doudoux-à-moin
Y ka pati,--T'enprie, hélas!
Rétàdé li."
[He answers kindly in French: the _békés_ are always kind to these
gentle children.]
--"My dear child,
It is too late.
The bills of lading
Are already signed;
The ship
Is already on the buoy.
In an hour from now
They will be getting her under way."
--"Ma chère enfant
Il est trop tard,
Les connaissements
Sont déjà signés,
Est déjà sur la bouée;
Dans une heure d'ici,
Ils vont appareiller."
--"When the foulards came....
I always had some;
When the Madras-kerchiefs came,
I always had some;
When the printed calicoes came,
I always had some.
... That second officer--Is such a kind man!"
--"Foulard rivé,
Moin té toujou tini;
Madras rivé,
Moin té toujou tini;
Dézindes rivé,
Moin té toujou tini.--Capitaine sougonde
C'est yon bon gàçon!"
"Everybody has
Somebody to love;
Everybody has
Somebody to pet;
Every body has
A sweetheart of her own.
I am the only one
Who cannot have that,--I!"
"Toutt moune tini
Yon moune yo aimé;
Toutt moune tini
Yon moune yo chéri;
Toutt moune tini
Yon doudoux à yo.
Jusse moin tou sèle
Pa tini ça--moin!"
... On the eve of the _Fête Dieu_, or Corpus Christi festival, in all
these Catholic countries, the city streets are hung with banners and
decorated with festoons and with palm branches; and great altars are
erected at various points along the route of the procession, to serve as
resting-places for the Host. These are called _reposoirs_; in creole
patois, "_reposouè Bon-Dié_." Each wealthy man lends something to help
to make them attractive,--rich plate, dainty crystal, bronzes,
paintings, beautiful models of ships or steamers, curiosities from
remote parts of the world.... The procession over, the altar is
stripped, the valuables are returned to their owners: all the splendor
disappears.... And the spectacle of that evanescent magnificence,
repeated year by year, suggested to this proverb-loving people a
similitude for the unstable fortune of the fille-de-couleur:--_Fortune
milatresse c'est reposouè Bon-Dié_. (The luck of the mulattress is the
resting-place of the Good-God).
[Footnote 46: _La race de sang-mêlé, issue des blancs et des noirs,
est éminement civilizable. Comme types physiques, elle fournit dans
beaucoup d'individus, dans ses femmes en général, les plus beaux
specimens de la race humaine_.--"Le Préjugé de Race aux Antilles
Françaises." Par G. Souquet-Basiège. St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp.
661-62.]
[Footnote 47: Turiault: "Étude sur le langage Créole de la
Martinique." Brest: 1874.... On page 136 he cites the following pretty
verses in speaking of the _fille-de-couleur_:--
L'Amour prit soin de la former
Tendre, naïve, et caressante.
Faite pour plaire, encore plus pour aimer.
Portant tous les traits précieux
Du caractère d'une amante.
Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans set yeux.]
[Footnote 48: A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food,
and, properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost
worthless.]
[Footnote 49: "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J. R., Général de
Brigade. Paris: An. XII., 1804. Page 106.]
[Illustration]