New Orleans—Society—Creoles and Quadroons Voyage up the Mississippi
On first touching the soil of a new land, of a new continent, of a new
world, it is impossible not to feel considerable excitement and deep
interest in almost every object that meets us. New Orleans presents
very little that can gratify the eye of taste, but nevertheless there
is much of novelty and interest for a newly arrived European. The large
proportion of blacks seen in the streets, all labour being performed by
them; the grace and beauty of the elegant Quadroons, the occasional
groups of wild and savage looking Indians, the unwonted aspect of the
vegetation, the huge and turbid river, with its low and slimy shore,
all help to afford that species of amusement which proceeds from
looking at what we never saw before.
The town has much the appearance of a French Ville de Province, and is,
in fact, an old French colony taken from Spain by France. The names of
the streets are French, and the language about equally French and
English. The market is handsome and well supplied, all produce being
conveyed by the river. We were much pleased by the chant with which the
Negro boatmen regulate and beguile their labour on the river; it
consists but of very few notes, but they are sweetly harmonious, and
the Negro voice is almost always rich and powerful.
By far the most agreeable hours I passed at New Orleans were those in
which I explored with my children the forest near the town. It was our
first walk in “the eternal forests of the western world,” and we felt
rather sublime and poetical. The trees, generally speaking, are much
too close to be either large or well grown; and, moreover, their growth
is often stunted by a parasitical plant, for which I could learn no
other name than “Spanish moss;” it hangs gracefully from the boughs,
converting the outline of all the trees it hangs upon into that of
weeping willows. The chief beauty of the forest in this region is from
the luxuriant undergrowth of palmetos, which is decidedly the loveliest
coloured and most graceful plant I know. The pawpaw, too, is a splendid
shrub, and in great abundance. We here, for the first time, saw the
wild vine, which we afterwards found growing so profusely in every part
of America, as naturally to suggest the idea that the natives ought to
add wine to the numerous production of their plenty-teeming soil. The
strong pendant festoons made safe and commodious swings, which some of
our party enjoyed, despite the sublime temperament above-mentioned.
Notwithstanding it was mid-winter when we were at New Orleans, the heat
was much more than agreeable, and the attacks of the mosquitos
incessant, and most tormenting; yet I suspect that, for a short time,
we would rather have endured it, than not have seen oranges, green
peas, and red pepper, growing in the open air at Christmas. In one of
our rambles we ventured to enter a garden, whose bright orange hedge
attracted our attention; here we saw green peas fit for the table, and
a fine crop of red pepper ripening in the sun. A young Negress was
employed on the steps of the house; that she was a slave made her an
object of interest to us. She was the first slave we had ever spoken
to, and I believe we all felt that we could hardly address her with
sufficient gentleness. She little dreamed, poor girl, what deep
sympathy she excited; she answered us civilly and gaily, and seemed
amused at our fancying there was something unusual in red pepper pods;
she gave us several of them, and I felt fearful lest a hard mistress
might blame her for it. How very childish does ignorance make us! and
how very ignorant we are upon almost every subject, where hearsay
evidence is all we can get!
I left England with feelings so strongly opposed to slavery, that it
was not without pain I witnessed its effects around me. At the sight of
every Negro man, woman, and child that passed, my fancy wove some
little romance of misery, as belonging to each of them; since I have
known more on the subject, and become better acquainted with their real
situation in America, I have often smiled at recalling what I then
felt.
The first symptom of American equality that I perceived, was my being
introduced in form to a milliner; it was not at a boarding-house, under
the indistinct outline of “Miss C—,” nor in the street through the veil
of a fashionable toilette, but in the very penetralia of her temple,
standing behind her counter, giving laws to ribbon and to wire, and
ushering caps and bonnets into existence. She was an English woman, and
I was told that she possessed great intellectual endowments, and much
information; I really believe this was true. Her manner was easy and
graceful, with a good deal of French tournure; and the gentleness with
which her fine eyes and sweet voice directed the movements of a young
female slave, was really touching: the way, too, in which she blended
her French talk of modes with her customers, and her English talk of
metaphysics with her friends, had a pretty air of indifference in it,
that gave her a superiority with both.
I found with her the daughter of a judge, eminent, it was said, both
for legal and literary ability, and I heard from many quarters, after I
had left New Orleans, that the society of this lady was highly valued
by all persons of talent. Yet were I, traveller-like, to stop here, and
set it down as a national peculiarity, or republican custom, that
milliners took the lead in the best society, I should greatly falsify
facts. I do not remember the same thing happening to me again, and this
is one instance among a thousand, of the impression every circumstance
makes on entering a new country, and of the propensity, so
irresistible, to class all things, however accidental, as national and
peculiar. On the other hand, however, it is certain that if similar
anomalies are unfrequent in America, they are nearly impossible
elsewhere.
In the shop of Miss C— I was introduced to Mr. M’Clure, a venerable
personage, of gentlemanlike appearance, who in the course of five
minutes propounded as many axioms, as “Ignorance is the only devil;”
“Man makes his own existence;” and the like. He was of the New Harmony
school, or rather the New Harmony school was of him. He was a man of
good fortune, (a Scotchman, I believe), who after living a tolerably
gay life, had “conceived high thoughts, such as Lycurgus loved, who
bade flog the little Spartans,” and determined to benefit the species,
and immortalize himself, by founding a philosophical school at New
Harmony. There was something in the hollow square legislations of Mr.
Owen, that struck him as admirable, and he seems, as far as I can
understand, to have intended aiding his views, by a sort of incipient
hollow square drilling; teaching the young ideas of all he could catch,
to shoot into parallelogramic form and order. This venerable
philosopher, like all of his school that I ever heard of, loved better
to originate lofty imaginings of faultless systems, than to watch their
application to practice. With much liberality he purchased and conveyed
to the wilderness a very noble collection of books and scientific
instruments; but not finding among men one whose views were liberal and
enlarged as his own, he selected a woman to put into action the machine
he had organized. As his acquaintance with this lady had been of long
standing, and, as it was said, very intimate, he felt sure that no
violation of his rules would have place under her sway; they would act
together as one being: he was to perform the functions of the soul, and
will everything; she, those of the body, and perform everything.
The principal feature of the scheme was, that (the first liberal outfit
of the institution having been furnished by Mr. M’Clure,) the expense
of keeping it up should be defrayed by the profits arising from the
labours of the pupils, male and female, which was to be performed at
stated intervals of each day, in regular rotation with learned study
and scientific research. But unfortunately the soul of the system found
the climate of Indiana uncongenial to its peculiar formation, and,
therefore, took its flight to Mexico, leaving the body to perform the
operations of both, in whatever manner it liked best; and the body,
being a French body, found no difficulty in setting actively to work
without troubling the soul about it; and soon becoming conscious that
the more simple was a machine, the more perfect were its operations,
she threw out all that related to the intellectual part of the
business, (which to do poor soul justice, it had laid great stress
upon), and stirred herself as effectually as ever body did, to draw
wealth from the thews and sinews of the youths they had collected. When
last I heard of this philosophical establishment, she, and a nephew-son
were said to be reaping a golden harvest, as many of the lads had been
sent from a distance by indigent parents, for gratuitous education, and
possessed no means of leaving it.
Our stay in New Orleans was not long enough to permit our entering into
society, but I was told that it contained two distinct sets of people,
both celebrated, in their way, for their social meetings and elegant
entertainments. The first of these is composed of Creole families, who
are chiefly planters and merchants, with their wives and daughters;
these meet together, eat together, and are very grand and aristocratic;
each of their balls is a little Almack’s, and every portly dame of the
set is as exclusive in her principles as the excluded but amiable
Quandroons, and such of the gentlemen of the former class as can by any
means escape from the high places, where pure Creole blood swells the
veins at the bare mention of any being tainted in the remotest degree
with the Negro stain.
Of all the prejudices I have ever witnessed, this appears to me the
most violent, and the most inveterate. Quadroon girls, the acknowledged
daughters of wealthy American or Creole fathers, educated with all of
style and accomplishments which money can procure at New Orleans, and
with all the decorum that care and affection can give; exquisitely
beautiful, graceful, gentle, and amiable, these are not admitted, nay,
are not on any terms admissable, into the society of the Creole
families of Louisiana. They cannot marry; that is to say, no ceremony
can render an union with them legal or binding; yet such is the
powerful effect of their very peculiar grace, beauty, and sweetness of
manner, that unfortunately they perpetually become the objects of
choice and affection. If the Creole ladies have privilege to exercise
the awful power of repulsion, the gentle Quadroon has the sweet but
dangerous vengeance of possessing that of attraction. The unions formed
with this unfortunate race are said to be often lasting and happy, as
far as any unions can be so, to which a certain degree of disgrace is
attached.
There is a French and an English theatre in the town; but we were too
fresh from Europe to care much for either; or, indeed, for any other of
the town delights of this city, and we soon became eager to commence
our voyage up the Mississippi.
Miss Wright, then less known (though the author of more than one clever
volume) than she has since become, was the companion of our voyage from
Europe; and it was my purpose to have passed some months with her and
her sister at the estate she had purchased in Tennessee. This lady,
since become so celebrated as the advocate of opinions that make
millions shudder, and some half-score admire, was, at the time of my
leaving England with her, dedicated to a pursuit widely different from
her subsequent occupations. Instead of becoming a public orator in
every town throughout America, she was about, as she said, to seclude
herself for life in the deepest forests of the western world, that her
fortune, her time, and her talents might be exclusively devoted to aid
the cause of the suffering Africans. Her first object was to shew that
nature had made no difference between blacks and whites, excepting in
complexion; and this she expected to prove by giving an education
perfectly equal to a class of black and white children. Could this fact
be once fully established, she conceived that the Negro cause would
stand on firmer ground than it had yet done, and the degraded rank
which they have ever held amongst civilized nations would be proved to
be a gross injustice.
This question of the mental equality, or inequality between us, and the
Negro race, is one of great interest, and has certainly never yet been
fairly tried; and I expected for my children and myself both pleasure
and information from visiting her establishment, and watching the
success of her experiment.
The innumerable steam boats, which are the stage coaches and fly
waggons of this land of lakes and rivers, are totally unlike any I had
seen in Europe, and greatly superior to them. The fabrics which I think
they most resemble in appearance, are the floating baths (les bains
Vigier) at Paris. The annexed drawing will give a correct idea of their
form. The room to which the double line of windows belongs, is a very
handsome apartment; before each window a neat little cot is arranged in
such a manner as to give its drapery the air of a window curtain. This
room is called the gentlemen’s cabin, and their exclusive right to it
is somewhat uncourteously insisted upon. The breakfast, dinner, and
supper are laid in this apartment, and the lady passengers are
permitted to take their meals there.
On the first of January, 1828, we embarked on board the Belvidere, a
large and handsome boat; though not the largest or handsomest of the
many which displayed themselves along the wharfs; but she was going to
stop at Memphis, the point of the river nearest to Miss Wright’s
residence, and she was the first that departed after we had got through
the customhouse, and finished our sight-seeing. We found the room
destined for the use of the ladies dismal enough, as its only windows
were below the stem gallery; but both this and the gentlemen’s cabin
were handsomely fitted up, and the former well carpeted; but oh! that
carpet! I will not, I may not describe its condition; indeed it
requires the pen of a Swift to do it justice. Let no one who wishes to
receive agreeable impressions of American manners, commence their
travels in a Mississippi steam boat; for myself, it is with all
sincerity I declare, that I would infinitely prefer sharing the
apartment of a party of well conditioned pigs to the being confined to
its cabin.
I hardly know any annoyance so deeply repugnant to English feelings, as
the incessant, remorseless spitting of Americans. I feel that I owe my
readers an apology for the repeated use of this, and several other
odious words; but I cannot avoid them, without suffering the fidelity
of description to escape me. It is possible that in this phrase,
“Americans,” I may be too general. The United States form a continent
of almost distinct nations, and I must now, and always, be understood
to speak only of that portion of them which I have seen. In conversing
with Americans I have constantly found that if I alluded to anything
which they thought I considered as uncouth, they would assure me it was
local, and not national; the accidental peculiarity of a very small
part, and by no means a specimen of the whole. “That is because you
know so little of America,” is a phrase I have listened to a thousand
times, and in nearly as many different places. _It may be so_—and
having made this concession, I protest against the charge of injustice
in relating what I have seen.