II
Time seems to have moved very slowly in the old French colonies. In the streets of Martinique or Réunion or Marie-Galante or Guadeloupe, one almost seems to live in the seventeenth century,—so little have architecture or customs been modified in two or three hundred years. The great changes effected by the abolition of slavery are not immediately discernible to a stranger; the free blacks and people of color, forming the mass of the population, still cling to the simple and bright attire of other days, and seem to hold almost the same relation to white colonial life as hired servants that they formerly held as slaves. Emancipation, republicanism, and education have not yet abolished the old manners, nor greatly modified the creole speech. Could Josephine arise from the dust of her rest to revisit her Martinique birthplace, she would find so little changed at Trois-Islets, that except for the saucier manner of the younger negroes, she could scarcely surmise the new republican conditions. And the modern life of the creole woman, though less luxurious than in the previous century of colonial prosperity, varies otherwise little from that of her great-greatgrandmother.
Her birth is announced with antique formality in the colonial papers, and duly registered in the Archives de la Marine. She is christened in the twilight of some colonial baptistery, where silhouettes of palm-heads quiver behind stained-glass windows; and receives those half-dozen names—names of angels, or saints, alternated with names of ancestors—by which every white creole child is ushered into the world. Then some comely black or brown woman, dazzlingly robed in bright colors, and covered with barbaric jewelry, carries her on a silken cushion from house to house that all of family kin may kiss her. Always through the recollections of her childhood there will smile back to her the memory of that kind swart face,—the face of her black nurse, of her da. It is the da who bathes her, feeds her, dresses her, lulls her to sleep with song: doubtless for a time she believes the dark woman her mother. It is the da who first takes her out into the beautiful world of the tropics,—shows her the mighty azure circle of the sea, and the coming and going of the ships, and the peaks with their circling clouds, and the whispering gold of cane-fields, and the palms, and the jewel-feathered humming birds. It is the black nurse who first teaches her to kiss,—to utter the words 'Manman,' 'Da,' 'Papoute,' to express her infant thoughts in the softest cooing speech uttered by human lips,—the creole tongue. It is the da also who first thrills her child-fancy into blossom with stories of the impossible, and who stimulates her musical sense by teaching her strange songs,—melodies borne with slavery into the Indies from Senegal or the Coast of Gold.
Growing older, the little one is gradually separated from her da, is taught to speak French, to submit to many formal restraints, is finally sent,—while still a mere child,—to some convent school. She leaves it only on arriving at womanhood. Perhaps during those years she sees her parents every regular visiting day, and during the brief Christmas vacations; but she is practically separated otherwise from them as much as if imprisoned,—though they may be living only a few streets away. If they are very rich, she may be sent away to France. In the latter event she may acquire accomplishments superior to those imparted in any colonial convent; but the education mother respects is very simple and old-fashioned: the chief result aimed at in the training of girls being moral and religious rather than secular. The pensionnaires of the colonial convents wear a very plain uniform,—a straightfalling dress of sombre color, belted at the waist, and a broad straw hat. The different classes are distinguished by long narrow ribbons crossed over breast and back and tied round the waist below, the ends being left to stream down at one side. One class wears blue ribbons; another pink; another white. Altogether the uniform is ugly; it gives an aspect of clumsiness which is quite foreign to the creole race. Nothing could seem more uninteresting than a procession of convent girls on their way to church, escorted by nuns. But this is only the chrysalis stage of creole girl-life: the beautiful butterfly will be revealed when that sombre uniform is abandoned forever.
At seventeen or eighteen the creole girl returns home, with a large package of class prizes,—mostly publications of Mame & Cie,—showy volumes of a semi-religious character,—with a few books of travel, perhaps, added, which have been carefully perused and recommended as safe reading by some ecclesiastical censor. A private party is given in her honor; and she makes her début into creole society. Her life, thereafter, however, would not, by American girls at all events, be thought enviable. She rarely leaves home, except to pay a visit to some relatives, or to go to church under the escort of some member of the family, or some old lady chosen to accompany her. She is scarcely ever seen upon the streets. The pleasures of shopping are denied her. Whatever she needs is purchased for her by male relatives, or by her hired maid,—who selects at the store such merchandise as may be desired, and carries a stock of samples to the house, in a tray balanced upon her head. There the decision is made, the chosen articles retained, and the remainder carried back to the merchant, who in due time sends in his bill. There are no evening parties or visitings; the active life of the colony ends with sundown; all retire between eight and nine o'clock, and rise with dawn. Except during the brief theatrical season, and on the annual occasion of a carnival ball given by select society, there are no evening amusements. The discipline of the convent has prepared the young girl for this secluded existence; but were it not for the intense heat of the climate, she would probably suffer, in spite of such preparation, from the monotony of her life. Happily for her, she remains as innocent of other conditions of society as she is ignorant of all evil; and the tenderness of her mother or other relatives does all that can be done to render her existence happy. Still, she sometimes regrets her convent-days,—the liberty of play-hours in the open court, with its palms and sabliers: she likes to revisit the nuns occasionally, to get a glimpse of the pupils amusing themselves as she used to do,—secretly wishes, perhaps, that she were a child again. But she has yet no idea how often she will wish that wish before they robe her all in black, and put her away to sleep forever somewhere in the colonial cemetery, under the tall palms.
All about her young life glimmer conventional bars: she is a caged bird, vaguely desiring liberty, without a suspicion of what perils liberty might bring. Her pleasures, her ideas, her emotions are still those of a child,—even on the day when her mother, kissing her, first whispers to her some news that makes her flush to her hair. She has been spoken for! A gentleman, whom she scarcely knows even as a visitor, has demanded her hand. Could she love him? She does not know; she is willing to do whatever her mother deems best. They meet thereafter more frequently,—but always as before in the salon, in the presence of the family: there is no wooing; there are no private walks and talks; there is, in short, no romance in creole courtship;—everything is arranged and determined by the heads of both families. Her betrothal is circulated as a piece of private news throughout society; but no printed mention of it is ever made. Finally the notary is called, and the marriage contract drawn up, after a strictly business manner; she has rarely anything to do with these preliminaries, but the future husband, if a man of the world, will be careful to read the contract very attentively, and to discuss its provisions, point by point. It is, in fact, a decided weakness to omit these formal considerations of the financial side of marriage. More than one proud or sensitive man has had reason late in life to regret the impulse of trust or affection which caused him to sign his marriage contract without examining it. But the fiancée had nothing to do with this: she is content to leave her parents to make every possible effort to secure her material happiness.
Marriage opens to her a larger sphere of life. She can go out freely, visit friends, entertain relatives at her home, and—in these more recent years—even occasionally enter stores. But such comparative freedom has its disadvantages. It involves a round of social duties more or less wearisome,—visits during the heated hours of the day, and the wearing of black close-fitting Parisian dresses in an atmosphere and under a sun more difficult to endure than any summer conditions of the temperate zone. Probably she feels relieved when at a later day the cares of her household and children enable her to excuse herself from taking further part in active social life; and thereafter she rarely leaves home, except to go to church.
III
For more than two centuries such has been the monotonous, half-cloistered existence of creole women in the French colonies. Such a life might have been Josephine's had she wedded a merchant or planter of Martinique, instead of a soldier. In the past century and before it, slavery and wealth made the existence of the creole woman more luxurious: there were more social pleasures for her also,—more parties, receptions, amusements,—especially in the capital, Fort Royal, where the Governor held a veritable court. Furthermore, the flower of creole society passed much of its time at Paris, and exercised some influence in the Métropole. But in the colony proper, the creole girl has no free joyous girlhood, no prospect of larger liberty save through marriage, and no romance of love. Yet, notwithstanding these apparent disadvantages, the demoiselles of the last century were famed throughout the world for their charm of manner and singular beauty.
Climate and other tropical conditions had quite transformed the colonial race within a few generations, changing not only complexion and temperament, but the very shape of the skeleton,—lengthening the limbs, making delicate the extremities, deepening the orbits to protect the eye from the immense light. The creole became more lithe and refined of aspect than the European parent,—taller but more slender,—more supple, though less strong; and that grace which is the particular characteristic of Latin blood would seem to have obtained its utmost possible physical expression in the women of Martinique. The colony was justly proud of them; their reputation abroad had become romantic; and legends of their witchery were being circulated the world over. So much was their influence feared that the home government passed a special law forbidding any of its colonial officials to marry creoles, lest the discharge of diplomatic duties should be directed by some charming woman's will, rather than by the will of the sovereign. Yet, in a few years more, a creole woman was to share the throne of the first Napoleon, and sway the destinies of Europe by her gentle counsel,—that Josephine de la Pagerie, of Trois-Islets, whose memory lives in the beautiful marble statue erected in the Savane of Fort-de-France, by the citizens of the colony.
IV
There is another Martinique memory, which one cannot pass over in speaking of the creole beauties of former days. Robert, a tiny village on the southeast coast, has a legend which once gave it quite as much distinction as Trois-Islets. Robert, or at least one of its suburbs, claimed to be the birthplace of another lovely creole, who became, it was alleged, no less a personage than the Sultana-Validé of Selim III. More than one historian seems to have given credit to this story, M. Sidney Daney, in his 'Histoire de la Martinique,' even published her portrait, with the inscription beneath: 'Aimée Dubuc De Rivéry, Sultana-Validé, et mère de Mahmoud II.—A pretty face, with hair powdered and combed back after the early fashion of the eighteenth century, and that soft roundness of lines suggesting the ripeness of sixteen years,—when the slender child is just passing into the beauty of womanhood.
The legend is said to have inspired a novel, which I was not able to find in the colony; it is perhaps long out of print. The pages of M. Sidney Daney,[1] who treats the story as a historical event, probably form the best authority for it. According to this writer Mademoiselle Aimée Dubuc Dérivry was born on the Pointe Royale plantation at Robert in December, 1766,—three years later than Josephine. She was the child of one of the oldest and most distinguished creole families of Martinique. She was sent to France at an early age to be educated, and passed several years in a convent school at Nantes. At the age of eighteen she was called home, and embarked from the same port in charge of a governess. The vessel was attacked and captured by an Algerian corsair, and Aimée, her governess, and other passengers were taken to Algiers and sold as slaves. The beauty of the young creole attracted the notice of the Dey, who, desiring to gain the friendship of the Sultan, bought the girl and sent her as a present to Selim III at Constantinople. There, it was alleged, she became first the favorite, and afterward Sultana-Validé—as the mother, in 1785, of Mahmoud II, who ascended the Ottoman throne in 1808. Such is the legend, in its briefest possible form.
To those familiar with Turkish history, the narrative is palpably absurd. But it is still believed in the colony, notwithstanding its disproval by a more careful writer than Daney,—M. Pierre Régis Dessalles, in a note attached to one of the chapters of his 'Annales du Conseil Souverain de la Martinique.'[2] Dessalles, disciplined to exactitude by his legal profession, never set down a statement without thorough examination of fact, and had to aid him all the Archives de la Marine,—among which are preserved in France all important colonial documents, since climate and insects render the perfect conservation of papers impossible in the tropics. From these he found the history of the De Rivéry, or Dérivry family,—the latter spelling being the official one. The father was Henri Jacob Dubuc Dérivry, of the parish of Robert, who married (24th May, 1773) Demoiselle Marie Anne Arbousset, belonging to a family illustrious in Martinique history. By this marriage he had three children:—
1. Marie-Anne, born April 5, 1774; died November 28, 1775.
2. Rose-Henriette-Germaine, born February 6, 1778. There is no documentary evidence in existence as to what became of Rose-Henriette-Germaine. This is probably the girl alleged to have entered the seraglio at Constantinople, and to have had her brother (captured with her) created a pasha—Mehemet-Ali, father of Ibrahim Pasha.
3. Marie—Alexandrine—Louise—Victoire, born June 24, 1780, and married January 15, 1806, to a Monsieur Malet.
Thus the legend evaporates! Allowing for the precocity of creole women, it is still quite evident that, as Rose-Henriette-Germaine was born February 6, 1778, and the Sultan Mahmoud (her alleged son!) on July 20, 1785, the story is impossible according to the records, which allow an interval of only twelve years between the marriage of M. Dérivry and the birth of Mahmoud, at which time Rose could have been only seven or eight years old. M. Daney says she was born at Robert, December i, 1755; but M. Dérivry was married only in 1773. Furthermore, Mahmoud II was not the son of Selim III! Yet, in spite of these hard facts, the legend is still believed; the colony still boasts of its Aimée Dérivry as a mother of Sultans; and faded MS. documents—some of which I have read, and copied myself—are shown to strangers as proof of the romantic story.
All that is certain is that about a hundred years ago some young creole girl of the Dubuc family was sent to France for her education, and was never seen again by her parents; that many strange stories were related accounting for the mystery of her disappearance, some cruel, some improbable, all false; that her relatives went to Europe and spent years in vain efforts to discover a trace of her; and that meanwhile there sprang up this legend of her fate, still told with pride to strangers in the colony, over a glass of sugar syrup and rum, by hospitable planters.
[1] Histoire de la Martinique, depuis la colonization jusqu'en 1815. Par M. Sidney Daney, Membre du Conseil Colonial de la Martinique. Fort-Royal: 1844. See vol. iv, p. 234.
[2] Vol. H, pp. 285, 286.
V
But though the old order of creole life remains almost unchanged, that life has shrunk into much smaller channels, and has undergone many modifications. The wealth and indolent luxury of the eighteenth century have become memories. The influence of the race upon home politics has totally ceased. The race itself is rapidly disappearing from the islands. Except among the few survivors of the old régime you may now seek in vain for that proud, fine type of valiant and vigorous manhood, once the honor of colonial France. With the abolition of slavery and the introduction of universal suffrage, the new social conditions became almost unbearable for the formerly dominant class,—with its intense conservatism. Naturally the men of strong individuality suffered most in the hopeless war of race prejudice and race politics provoked by a too speedy conferring of political rights upon a population of slaves; and the more energetic whites found themselves forced to emigrate elsewhere. Those powerful characters who had given the old creole life all its dignity and stability vanished from the scene; and the remnant of the whites softened down into that condition of dull, inert, flaccid existence which is their portion to-day. The social conditions of the time of the monarchy have been, indeed, almost reversed: the dark population, multiplying with wonderful rapidity ever since emancipation, is crowding the white population out of the islands; and the former slave race is now politically the dominant one. It seems more than possible that the white creole race will have disappeared from all the French West Indies within a few more generations,—certainly from Martinique.
How much the creole white woman has suffered in this race contest may only be understood by those long familiar with colonial life. With the decline of caste dignity and caste prosperity her existence necessarily becomes more and more narrowed, and her future vaguer in its promises of happiness. Something of her present life may be divined from its invisibility; still more from the fact that it is dominated by a religious influence which strictly, regulates and limits her diversions, her reading, and the boundaries of her knowledge. She has lost that graceful haughtiness once the particular characteristic of her race; she has also, perhaps, lost something of that aristocratic gift of fine tact which formerly distinguished her as a daughter of statesmen; she is becoming something of a bourgeoise. Her chances in life are also growing cruelly small. Probably the white female population now considerably exceeds the male; yet weddings are infrequent, and their number yearly grows less. Among the modern creoles, the size of a girl's dowry has most to do with influencing a match; marriages are rather dependent upon business considerations and social connections in relation to business prospects, than upon mutual affection. It was not so in the old days: marriage was then regarded as a social duty; and even the laxity of tropical morals in slave times rarely prevented any man from fulfilling that social duty, and abandoning all reckless living after a certain age. The change in colonial ideas in this respect has been attributed to moral degeneracy,—to class conservatism in creole relations with the foreign element,—to various other causes. It is simply the result of poverty! The old conditions were wholly artificial, wholly based upon the institution of slavery, supported by a strong monarchical government; and the true character of that structure is now being revealed by the fact that the white race cannot hold its own in the colonies.
Only those who remember monarchical times can decide how far the creole girl has been changed by the new conditions; the foreigner, of course, has few opportunities for observing her. Does she still possess that exotic charm which in other years lifted her to the throne of empire, and inspired that exquisite white dream in marble which still stands in the Savannah of Fort-de-France—between the Rivière Madame and the Rivière Monsieur? Does she still keep that fine witchery which frightened the foolish Métropole long ago into the utterance of the law that no French official in the colonies should marry a creole? I do not know. But it is sadly true that she is bearing more than her share of the penalty for the errors made by her fathers in the past—those errors of slavery, that have not even yet been expiated. And it is also true that many a fair proud girl—perhaps more than one with princely blood in her veins—seeks escape at last from the dull formality of an aimless and hopeless existence, by returning forever to the convent of her child-days; knowing nothing of the higher joys or deeper pains of life, and so the more innocently eager to transmute into religious ecstasy and penance that strength of love and that divine desire of self-sacrifice for some one's sake which are attributes of woman's soul.
[ARABESQUES]
ARABIAN WOMEN
Although sensitiveness to beauty—the æsthetic sense—is not in itself a capacity by which the comparative civilization of races may be fully estimated, it is at least an indication of the possession of powers which under favoring circumstances would enable the people possessing it to occupy a high rank in the hierarchy of nations. When found among semi-savage peoples, it gives us the right to believe that such peoples have been or might yet be the founders of civilizations; and in these days, when the study of Oriental history and ethnology is making such rapid progress, especial interest attaches to the evidences of the æsthetic sense in the earliest literature of the nations of the East. In this regard, no Oriental literature possesses so natural a charm as that of the Arabs,—particularly, perhaps, from the fact that in it is preserved every link in the history of the wonderful evolution of the æsthetic sense,—from the primitive desert-chant to the elaborate literature of the Golden Prime of Islam,—from the first camel-skin tents to the glories of Saracenic architecture in Spain and India,—from the simplicity of nomad life between sand and sun, to the luxurious era of El Rashid and El Mamoun, of which the memory still lingers in the world like a breath of perfume, like a golden afterglow, like the throbbing in the brain after some wondrous music has died away. This literature is vast and variform; it were useless to attempt in any limited space to speak, even of the titles of its main branches,—or even to touch ever so lightly upon those branches which deal especially with the sense of the beautiful. But the memory of the student, culling here and there a blossom of the poetical flora whose odor is most grateful to his special literary sense, can at least present the reader with a bouquet of fancies curious enough to interest if not beautiful enough, perhaps, to charm. If there be any particular subject the poetical treatment of which is the best evidence of the æsthetic sense, it is the beauty of woman,—and we confine our gleanings to this particular domain.
From time immemorial, before the coming of Mahomet, the desert Arabs were wont not only to honor poets highly, but to hold periodical assemblies at which poetical contests took place, the contestants being stimulated by the promise of a prize or the signal honor of having their compositions hung up in the precincts of the temples as almost-inspired masterpieces. Six out of the many victors at these ante-islamic poetical exhibitions obtained such fame that their names are still familiar to all the desert-tribes, and their poems have been preserved for us almost unchanged,—marvelous specimens of simple, beautiful, but savage genius. Naturally the field of the desert-poet had but little variation; his subjects were few and simple—the fine qualities of thoroughbred horses or camels, the triumph of battle, the lament of defeat, the joy of the chase, the beauty of a mistress. This very limitation of subject, together with the monotonous sameness of nomad life in all ages and as far as the sands extend, by increasing the difficulty of the art, renders its charming expression more wonderful to modern minds. To describe the beauty of woman, the modern poet can summon to his aid the whole art of civilization, the varied knowledge of three thousand years, the charm of all things that charm—jewels, music, flowers, birds, ivories of China and the Indies, colors of the Pacific, Greek and Etruscan arts, the melody and passion of a hundred wonderful languages. The Arab, knowing no language but his own, seeing ever about him the yellow waste, above him the unvarying blue,—ignorant of all arts save those of war and the chase,—was able to create masterpieces of language which the most learned men of our own day cannot speak of without admiration,—poems virile, supple, ardent as the desert itself and as sun-colored. Translations of these are now printed in most European languages.
Symbolism, so infinitely rich in the nineteenth century, was necessarily meagre in the deserts of Arabia before the advent of Mahomet, and the Arab lover knew of but few things to which he might compare the beauty of her he loved: comely animals and simple objects familiar to dwellers in tents constituted the bulk of his poetical stock of similes. In the neighborhood of the cities he might see other objects suited to the evocation of graceful fancies, as when he compared the loosened tresses of an Arab girl falling over her face, to 1 the graceful drooping of the flexible vine over its trellis-work,' But he generally confined his symbolism to desert-subjects,—the palm, the ostrich, the gazelle, the wild cattle of the stony hills, the antelopes,—the weapons of his people; for in all countries the eyebrow of the fair has ever been Love's bow, her gaze its arrows, her glance their barbed points that may not be readily withdrawn from the heart.
Strange some of these Arab comparisons of beauty seem, yet they are never uncouth, never commonplace or feeble. 'Graceful her waist as a nabak-branch; elegant her stature as a palm,' says one who had never heard the words of Solomon. Another compares the beauties of Nahous to ostriches, with good effect: 'The girls of the neighborhood of Nahous have made thee sick for love by reason of their cadenced walk; measured their steps are like those of the ostrich.' All the Arabian poets have alternately compared the eyes of their women to those of the wild antelope, the gazelle, or the desert cow—sharing the last mentioned simile with Homer. Nor was the nomad troubadour ashamed to compare the graces of his beloved to those of a fine steed. 'My beauty,' cries El-Acha, 'slenderly graceful as a young mare, lithe of flank! ... the curves of her bosom are as the curves of heaven aglow with light.... Woman enchantress! were she but to lean a moment on the body of a dead man, surely he would arise again!' Another sings of captive maidens beautiful as wild desert cows.' Nabiga, one of the greatest of the early poets, is fond of a similar comparison, but uses also the gazelle as a more graceful symbol: 'She hath gazed upon thee with the gaze of a young gazelle, tame, swarthy of hue, sable-eyed and decked with a necklace of strung pearls.'
But aside from mere poetical comparisons, we find the Arabs had a well-ordinated law of beauty, which even a Greek sculptor could scarcely have found fault with, although more severe in some respects than the Hellenic ideal. The Arab's estimate is based on a consummate knowledge of comparative artistic anatomy, the rare knowledge of an accomplished stockraiser applied to human anatomy, physiology and osteology. So minute, indeed, are the descriptions of female beauty in the old Arabian poets that they can seldom be faithfully translated; the general idea can alone be given. There were recognized laws of beauty for every finger of the hand, every separate toe of the foot. Every dimple had a special name. That of the chin was called nounah; that at the corner of the lips, rababah; the little hollow of the upper lip, immediately beneath the nasal cartilage, djirthimah; the hollow of the throat, between the collarbones, thograh; the dimple of the thumb-joint, near the wrist, kouit. Furthermore, there was not merely one recognized type of beauty; there were several types. A woman was called melihah, beautiful, only if so charming that every time looked at she seemed more graceful than before. A woman was called djemilah if merely pretty,—if seeming to be exquisitely lovely at a distance but only graceful near by. The curve of beauty—the magical line whose secret is popularly supposed to have been known only to the Greeks, was also known to the Arabs, though they did not perhaps ever succeed in expressing it in ivory or marble; and could only find poetical comparisons for it in the undulation of waves or the rounded outlines of the sandbillows. Lips slightly pouting apart, so as to show a pearly gleam within, were also considered a beautiful possession. 'Why are thy lips so sweetly open?1 asks a desert poet of his beloved. 'Eh!' she replied, 'when the fig ripeneth to give its honey it openeth; the rose openeth also when the dew cometh to kiss it.' Complexion was also a subject of æsthetic study,—especially in regard to smoothness and clearness of skin, being compared to ivory rarely, often to the shell of the ostrich-eggs,—a simile used by Mahomet in his description of the girls of Paradise.
Flexibility of the joints was considered essential to womanly perfection; and Nabiga describes a 'delicate hand, whose fingers are like the stalks of the anam that may be tied into a knot, so flexible they are.' A perfectly straight nose was not thought especially beautiful; the Arabs believed aquiline features to indicate a finer human thoroughbredness and force of character. Often the curve of a woman's nose is compared to 'the curve of a fine sabre well-furbished.' Rounded cheeks were held in abhorrence; the nomad considered fleshiness a sign of inferior blood; and 'smooth flat cheeks, like polished silver,' are highly praised. 'She hath no stoutness; sleek she is, and full-hipped' is said of a fine woman by an Arab admirer, who expressed the view of his people that solid flesh, not adipose tissue, should give the line of beauty. 'Flesh firm as the fruit of a ripening pomegranate.' The hair of a woman was indeed one of her chief glories; but a certain thickness, heaviness, and glossiness was demanded, and a poet did not think it ungallant to compare such tresses to the black splendor of his stallion's mane or sweeping tail.
Operating upon a race thus imbued with æsthetic ideas and learned in the minutest details of physical completeness, the law of natural selection could not fail to produce remarkable results. Tribes were proud of special characteristics of beauty, transmitted from generation to generation. Thus the Kodaides were famed for the beauty of foot and leg; the Kindides, for the slender elegance of their flexible waists; the Khozaides, for the graceful delicacy of both upper and lower limbs; the Ozrides, or Beni-Azra, for the eyes of their women not less than their famed liability to die of love. When the poet El-Asmai was asked by Haroun El Rashid to describe in verse the beauty of a slave, he was obliged to cite from the desert Arabs:—
She hath the members of a Kinanide,
The rounded loveliness of a Saidide,
The beautiful eyes of a Hilalide,
The graceful mouth of a Tayide.
Islam, indeed, quenched the creative genius of Arabian poetry; but the pagan songs were sung even to the days of the last Caliph, and when some Commander of the Faithful paid his court poet a thousand pieces of gold for describing a slave, the poet seldom relied upon his own powers of improvization, but simply quoted the words of the ancient nomads,—the tamers of horses and breeders of fine camels,—which had been bequeathed by memory from generation to generation. When Abd-el-Melik, fifth Caliph of the house of Ommaya, wanted to know how to choose a woman for her beauty, it was not to a court poet or learned littérateur that he found it necessary to address his questions, but to a herder of camels,—a desert Arab,—a man of the Beni-Ratafan. The nomad's answer is remarkable; his description is absolutely sculpturesque, with a sculpturesqueness that suggests the bland smoothness, the fluent grace of a fine bronze. Its artistic perfection apologizes for its nudity, and yet we prefer to quote it in the French of the Orientalist who first gave it European publicity:—
'Prends la femme aux pieds bien unis, aux talons légers et délicats, aux jambes fines et lisses, aux genoux dégagés et dessinés, aux cuisses pleines et arrondies, aux bras potelés, aux mains déliées et fines, à la gorge relevée et ferme, aux joues rosées, aux yeux noirs et vifs, au front beau et ouvert, au nez aquilin et fier, à la bouche et aux dents fraîches et douces, à la chevelure d'un noir foncé, au cou souple et moëlleux, au ventre effacé et gracieusement ondulé.'
'But where,' asked the Caliph in astonishment, 'can such a woman be found?'
The other replied: 'Thou mayst find such a one among the Arabs of unmixed blood and the Persians of pure race.'
Neither must it be forgotten that for those desert beauties 'Kohl was the best of adornments and water the most excellent of perfumes.'
But it was in the time of the Abbasside Caliphs that the Arabian sensitiveness to beauty obtained its supremest gratifications and that the luxury of loveliness reached such an extreme as the Greek world never knew. The demand for beautiful slaves brought to light human marvels who would certainly have been well worthy to serve as models to Praxiteles or Lysippus,—creatures so beautiful that there seems to be good reason to believe the historians who declare that many who saw them died of love. Islam had a surplus of slaves, yet the pearls of its harems were paid for with the price of a province. The age when a Caliph could expend upon his marriage festivities the enormous sum of 50,000,000 dinars—about $140,000,000—was naturally the era of splendid slavery and of the insolence of beauty. Abou ibn Atik, one of the handsomest men of his era, and possessed of a most beautiful wife whom he dearly loved, says (writing in the far earlier days of Abd-el-Melik) that he saw slaves so beautiful that on seeing them he felt 'as one in hell who should behold hopelessly the delights of Paradise.' But those girls were certainly not to be compared with the beauties of the court of Haroun or El Mamoun, for whom the whole eastern world had been searched. The proudest of Greek sculptors would scarcely have ventured to chisel upon the pedestal of his masterpiece: 'THIS IS THE SUPREME BEAUTY.' But the possessors of splendid girls did not hesitate to place upon their human statues inscriptions to the effect: 'THIS IS THE MASTERPIECE OR GOD.' Nothing can give a better idea of the extravagant luxury of the age than the translation of inscriptions graven upon fillets worn by these girls, or upon their girdles, or upon their fans.
'Behind Haroun El Rashid,' says the poet, Abou'l Hassam, 'I saw girl slaves standing so beautiful that they seemed like magnificent statues. Fillets inlaid with rubies and with pearls clasped their smooth brows; and to these were attached thin plates of gold bearing Arab verses inscribed. One of these bore the words:—
Cruel one, thou hast disdained my love!—oh, God will judge between us!
On another:—
What doth it avail me to cast at thee the shafts of my gaze—they do not reach thee. Thou hast shot thine at me, and they have smitten me,—cruel that thou art.
A third bore the inscription:—
To submit one's cheek to the touch of love is to make oneself greater.
But these three pale into commonplaceness before the magnificent insolence of the fourth:—
I am a deserter from the houris of Paradise; I have been created to make trouble in the hearts of those who gaze upon me.
Worthy to compare with the above is the following which El-Asmai saw graven upon the fillets of beautiful slaves in Haroun's palace:—
We are young and bewitching beauties from the fields of Paradise.
God hath lavished his gifts upon us; in us there is naught to reproach.
For the love of God, sweet damozel, let me not languish for love!
And this on the girdle of a beauteous slave:—
A single wink of thine eye, a teasing touch of thy hand, will be enough to unclasp it.
For my heart is so feeble that it could almost leap from my breast.
The sight of only a part of my beauty suffices to disturb thy soul.
We quote a few more at random—graven on the fillets of El Rashid's slaves:—
Say, O men! in heaven's name is it a sun that shines beneath that fillet, or is it the fair crescent of the nights?
Is life possible without the follies of love? Nay, then! flee the sight of beautiful eyes.
Rich men of Bagdad followed the example. One El Natify had a slave on whose fillet was written:—
Seduction and the power that teaseth hearts flash from mine eye when it gazeth. Turn, unhappy man, turn away thine eye from mine eye!
On the fillet of Ward (Rose) slave of Mahany, was written:—
She is finished, all finished the beauty of her features;—nothing beyond her beauty is possible in this world.
For other mortals there is but one crescent in every month; but for me the crescent of beauty riseth daily upon the brow of Ward.
And there is a delicious coquetry in this inscription, traced with henna upon the hand of a slave-girl:—
It is not the beauty of henna that doth embellish my hand; 'tis the beauty of my hand that doth heighten the beauty of the henna.
Girl-pages, attired like men, sometimes like soldiers, were also fashionable. One of these is spoken of as having worn a helmet on which was engraved: 'Admire the beauty of this slave; never can thine eye learn to define it. Is she male or female; yes,'t is a woman! aye, 't is a man!'
And on her sword-belt was graven:—
The sword of her eyes doth not suffice her,—that terrible sword that striketh down the keenest sabres. How dare I remain between those two swords! Let thee behold but once this proud beauty marching in warrior-garb, with her twofold apparatus of slaughter; and thou wilt learn that the scimitar of her glance is even more terrible than the scimitar that is wielded with both hands.
The rage for beautiful slaves and exquisite dresses and inscribed girdles increased greatly under Haroun's reign; and the art of the poet was more than ever in demand. Even the tapestries, the coverings of furniture, were adorned with appropriate inscriptions, of which the following on a divan is a fair sample:—
More ravishing, more delicious than wine and the perfume of roses, is the group of two lovers, with cheek pressed against cheek....
The one speaking of the troubles that he feels; the other telling of the love within her heart.
Or this, upon a fan:—
I bring a tender breath of air; with me rosy shame doth play:
I serve as a veil to the amorous mouth that pouts for a kiss.
And some of the kisses of those days, too, have become historical; we read of a single kiss being paid for with two pearls worth forty thousand drachmas. The giver was no caliph, but a private citizen who sold his property to buy the pearls, and gave them away on the easy condition that the girl should take them from his lips with hers.
The tendency of such splendid voluptuousness, extravagance, and luxury has been the same in all civilized countries; the results similarly lamentable: national enervation, indolence, loss of patriotism and warrior-daring, loss of moral principle, death of ethical sentiment. Pleasure ruined the Caliphate as it ruined Rome. Abou Nouwas, Haroun's court poet, wrote two poems, of which two fragments reveal the whole history of the moral decadence of Islam. The first fragment is not without beauty:—
Ruby the wine and pearl the cup in the hands of the beautiful slave with waist so slender and voluptuous.
Ravishing the beauty who giveth thee to drink at once of her gaze and of her hand! Thus art thou ever seized with two intoxications.
But the second fragment gives us the dismal sequel:—
Multiply thy sins to the utmost; for thou art to meet an indulgent God.
When thou comest before Him thou wilt gnaw thy hands with regret for those pleasures thou didst avoid through fear of hell.
[RABYAH'S LAST RIDE]
A TRADITION OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA
This is the relation of the death of Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, of the Beni-Firaz, according to the legend transmitted from generation unto generation by the rawis, or reciters of poems and of great deeds.
And it is written down in the commentary which Abou Zakariyah Yahyah-al-Tibrizi made upon those mighty poems chanted before Islam which are called Hamasah,—a word signifying all that is stalwart and noble in a man,—and in the Hamasah the place of the legend of Rabyah is in the second book, which is the 'Book of Dirges.' But the tale hath also been told by Al-Maidani, and by Abou Riyash; and it is likewise preserved in the great Kitab-al-Aghanij or 'Book of Songs,' collected and written down by Abou I Faraj Al' Ispahani, who devoted fifty years alone to the study of the poems and the legends of the Desert Arabs of old.
Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, of the Beni-Firaz, was famed as the bravest and the strongest and the most generous of his tribe what time he lived, and he was celebrated as an escort. For from the day that he had, single-handed, as a very young man, successfully defended his bride, Raytah, against the horsemen of the Beni-Djoucham on a foray, the women deemed it no little honor to have Rabyah as their escort. And no woman ever intrusted herself to the protection of Rabyah for a journey to whom any mishap befell while he remained with her.
Now on the day of his death Rabyah was escorting a caravan of women through the country of the Beni-Sulaim, and he was the only horseman with them. For though there had been blood between the Beni-Firaz and the Beni-Sulaim, the price of blood had been paid, and it was thought peace had been brought about. And the mother and sister of Rabyah were with the caravan.
And all that land was yellow and dry as long-dead bone; and it was strewn with great stones that seemed to have been rained down from heaven with fire, so seared and so blackened they were. And the pass leading to their own country—the Pass of Ghazal—was still far off when Rabyah, looking back, saw a distant rising of dust, like the smoke of a fire newly kindled. Now Rabyah rode upon his favorite gray mare, Ghezala, whom no desert steed might ever overtake, but he rode slowly for the sake of the women, who were mounted upon camels.
So he drew rein, and gazed at the dust cloud, and perceived a gleam break through it, and another, and another, and many glimmerings—a lightning of lances. And looking a little while longer, he could discern a company of men in helms of iron and shirts of mail, riding upon lean black horses; and as they sped swiftly he knew the helm of the horsemen that led them—Nubaishah, of whom it was said that Death, the Mother of Vultures, ever rode with him.
Then Rabyah spurred in haste after the women, and urged on faster the toiling camels, and said unto his mother: 'There is treachery, O mother! Lo! Nubaishah, the son of Habib, pursueth us with the wild men of Sulaim.' And even as he spoke, the far-off drum-roll of galloping hoofs brake heavily upon their ears through the hot and thirsty air.
And turning his mare round, Rabyah added: 'Haste ye toward the Pass, while I strive to hold them back; and I shall meet ye all at the Pass, to hold it so that ye can reach our tents and arouse the horsemen.'
And he rode to meet the wild men of Sulaim, while the women urged their beasts faster over the dusty path.
Then Rabyah's sister, Oumm 'Amr, cried out in fear, and those with her lamented, as they saw Rabyah ride back all alone. But his mother, Oumm Saiyar, chided them, saying:—
While there remaineth so much as one drop of blood in his veins, no son of mine will ever fail to do the deeds of a man and the duty of a man. Have no fear, ye foolish ones! when did Rabyah ever fail to protect a woman? How many such robbers as those hath he not harassed ere this, even as lizards in their desert holes are harassed with a stick? How many an enemy's corpse hath he not left to be devoured by the lions of the woods, by the ancient eagles of the hills? In how many encounters hath he not been hard pressed before—ay, even tightly pressed as the sandal strap between the toes of the wearer? Know ye not that my son is unto men as a beacon-light—ay, as the signal-fires that be lighted upon mountain-tops?'
Yet Rabyah's sister only would not be comforted, and she wept and said: Purely my brother hath never before been placed in any peril like unto this peril, for the men of Sulaim are many, and it hath ever been said of Nubaishah that Death, the Mother of Vultures, rides with him.'
But Oumm Saiyar answered her sharply: 1 He that feareth death, verily death shall End him, though he have a ladder long enough to climb to heaven upon. Better is death than shame! Fear rather for thine own honor, girl—urge on thy beast while Rabyah holds them back!'
Then Rabyah, alone, strove against all the swarm of Sulaim.
Now in Arabia there was no archer more skilful than Rabyah, and he bent his bow against the pursuers; and with his first shaft he pierced the throat of a son of Sulaim, so that the horseman died upon his horse, and with his second he nailed the thigh of another to the ribs of his animal, and with a third he shattered the sword-arm of the strongest Sulaimite; and seeing that it was Rabyah, the men of Sulaim fled from his archery; and he drove them back yet farther, sending his arrows humming like Djinns behind them. And when he had thus kept them back a good while, he turned and rode after the women again.
Then the men of Sulaim rode furiously in pursuit of him, and shot arrows after him in vain. For though all the black horses strove until they were sweating like well-filled water-skins in the great heat, only Nubaishah's stallion could follow after Rabyah's gray mare; and the gray mare's skin remained dry.
And so soon as Rabyah—after having urged on the toiling camels of the women still faster—turned once more and laid an arrow across his bow, the drum-beat of pursuing hoofs broke up into a sound of scraping and of stumbling, while the men of Sulaim scattered and drew back in dismay. And many times Rabyah thus checked them. Only Nubaishah, the son of Habib, ever sat firm upon his black stallion and faced the humming shaft, and dexterously avoided it or turned it from him with marvelous surety of eye and trueness of hand.
So, fleeing and turning, halting and proceeding, pursuers and pursued ever drew nearer to the jagged teeth of the western hills; and in the black-toothed line of them appeared the bright gap of the Pass of Ghazal, ever widening and brightening as they rode. And now the great stones upon the way made long black shadows over the plain; for the sun was setting before them. So they rode into the edge of the shadow of the hills, and Rabyah turned to make a last stand, and the pounding of the pursuing hoofs became a shuffling once again as the band of Sulaim drew rein in a cloud of dust. But now in Rabyah's quiver there were no more shafts.
Then Oumm Saiyar cried out to him from afar off: 'Sword and spear, son! Sword and spear for the women of the Beni-Firaz! Give them sword and spear for thy mother's sake, for thine own Raytah, who waiteth in the tent.'
And again and again did Rabyah charge them with spear and sword, scattering them even as a hawk scattereth quails. Only Nubaishah, the son of Habib, fled not, but yielded way cunningly to let him pass, and always thereafter circled menacing about him, like a vulture sweeping close to the sand.
And it happened at last that as Rabyah bore down upon a man of Sulaim, Nubaishah suddenly circled by him rapidly as a whirling wind, and thrust with his lance as he whirled, and the lance-blade burst its way through Rabyah's shirt of Persian mail and into his entrails.
And Nubaishah laughed, and drew back the blade of his wet spear between his stallion's ears, and smelled the odor of the blood upon it, and shouted, 'Thou hast thy death-wound, O Rabyah!' For never had swarthy Nubaishah lifted his spear against a man to slay him and failed in his purpose—so keen his eye, so subtle his hand.
But Rabyah, seeking to deceive him for the women's sake, shouted back with all the deep power of his voice, 'Thou liest in thy throat, Nubaishah!'
And Nubaishah laughed again, and shook his head in scorn, and circled away among his men.
Then Rabyah rode after the women swiftly, sitting firm as a tower despite his pain; and even at the Pass of Ghazal he came up with his mother, as he had promised, and he said to her, 'O mother, give me to drink! I have received my death-wound.'
And Oumm Saiyar looked upon the wound—a ghastly wound, that gaped even as the mouth of a camel with divided lip.
But she was of the race of eagles, and she answered him, tearlessly, 'Nay, my son, for if I give thee to drink now thou diest, and we would then be taken and put to shame, and while even one drop of blood lives in thy veins, O son of mine, thy duty remains to stand in defence of the weakness of woman and the honor of thy people. Turn back, son of Mokaddem! Turn and smite them while thy strength lasts, and bear the thirst for thy mother's sake; yet suffer me first to bind up thy wound.'
And while she strove to bind it with her veil—for that was all she had to bind it with—Rabyah murmured to her, 'O mother, the sons of Firaz have indeed lost him they were wont to call their battle-hawk—their deep-diving hawk of battle—him they held precious unto them as fire-shining gold. They have lost their darling horseman, O mother!'
But Oumm Saiyar said to him, as she knotted tightly the long veil about his wound: 'Son, are we not of mighty Thalabah's stock, and Malik's breed, whose daily lot is bereavement? Well hath it been said that among us no man dieth in his tent! What is the record of our race but an outpouring of ghosts from the clash of battle, even as the spark-flood's perpetual gush from the grinding of swords? Yet thou knowest that blood of ours is never shed without vengeance; and when one of us falleth, straightway another riseth up to do the deeds of a man—to help the weak, to strive with them that are mighty for evil. Bear thou the thirst for thy people's sake; turn now, O son, and smite them stoutly while thy strength endures.'
And Rabyah turned back again, while the women fled; and once more he scattered the band of Sulaim, and drove them before him, and held all the Pass. And he sat guarding the narrow way, upon his gray mare.
Then fell and died the day, in awful passion of fire, behind the Pass, and against the mighty glow, as in a flame, the horseman towered like a Djinn.
And the sons of Sulaim drew afar off, and watched Rabyah—as vultures wait and watch, pluming themselves, about the place where a lion lieth down to die. And because they would not again attack Rabyah, Nubaishah mocked them with rhymes piercing as the iron of lances. But they could not be moved to approach him; and Nubaishah foamed at the mouth like a camel that hath eaten bitter herbs.... And the night came.
But Rabyah, remaining in the shadow of the Pass, felt that his ghost was about to depart from him. And bending to the ear of his slim gray mare, he whispered unto her, softly, 'Stand thou still, darling; stand still as a stone for the love of me!' Then he pressed the foot of his long spear into the ground, even as he sat upon her, and leaned upon it.
And in the darkness his ghost went out from him.
But ever, as a king sitteth upon his throne, so Rabyah sat upon his mare; and ever the gray mare stood still as a stone for the love of him.
Over the black desert of the sky slowly moved the long white caravan of the stars; and the night waned. But dead Rabyah still sat upon his mare; and the beautiful mare stood as a graven image standeth, for the love of him.
Until the cheek of the morning reddened, as for shame; and Nubaishah saw that Rabyah's head drooped, as though he slept upon his mare.
Then Nubaishah called unto him an archer of Khuzaah, a mighty man to bend the bow; and he asked the archer, 'Hast thou an arrow left, my son?'
And the man looked to where Rabyah was, and replied, fearfully, 'One only—and it is for my life.'
But Nubaishah said: 'Thy life is safe now. Shoot the arrow, my son; shoot at the gray mare.'
And the mare saw the arrow coming, and leaped aside; and Rabyah fell upon his face. Then, for the first time, all the men of Sulaim knew that he was dead; and they sent up a great shout.
And they went up to where he lay, and looked upon him, and wondered, and they spoiled him of his helm and his broken shirt of mail, and his lance and sword, and his sandals. But the mare had fled toward the tents of the Beni-Firaz, and none might overtake her.
And swart Nubaishah muttered: 'There was no other like him among the men of Firaz. I almost repent me to have slain him.'
And a wild man of Sulaim, marveling, smote the foot of his spear into the dead man's eye, and cried aloud, in the uncouthness of his admiration, 'God curse thee!-a man who defendeth his women even after he is dead!'
But Oumm Saiyar and the women had reached the tents of the Beni-Firaz, and aroused the tribe. And the best men of the camp sprung to horse in haste, and rode fiercely to the Pass of Ghazal; but they only found Rabyah lying there, naked and dead, and the vultures circling above him. And leaving him there, they pursued so furiously after the sons of Sulaim that the long way smoked beneath them; yet they could not overtake them.
So they rode back to where Rabyah lay, and they buried him there, with great mourning, in the place of his last and greatest deed. And they built above him a hill of black stones to mark the spot, and in the midst thereof, at the summit, they set up a great white stone, shaped like the back of a camel.
And never thereafter—until the days of the Prophet—did any Arab of any tribe pass that way who did not sacrifice a camel in honor of the valiant one who had defended his women even after he was dead. (Except, indeed, Hafs, son of Al-Ahnaf, who, having but one camel, could not make the sacrifice; but he composed an immortal poem in honor of Rabyah, and his verses are still in the mouths of the Arabian people.)
And never a son of Firaz passed that way to war who did not cry out unto Rabyah: 'La tab'adan! Abide with us! Be with us this day, O Rabyah!'
And after Islam, not less than in the Days of Ignorance, the wives of the desert horsemen prayed they might become mothers of brave tall boys worthy to bear Rabyah's name.
And whenever, in time of foray, or in days of ill fortune of war, or amid the ghastly perils of desert travel, women found themselves face to face with the fear of shame, they would cry out the name of him upon whom no woman had ever called vainly in those wild, dark days before Islam.
And Islam itself, spreading like a holy fire east and west, two hundred days' journey from India to the Sea of Darkness, bore abroad his name, and flashed it far into the black South, making it known unto the blue-eyed Touareg, whose camels dance to the sound of music—making it known even to those swart sultans whose domains do border upon the unknown lakes of Afrikia.
And these are some of the verses that were composed in that long rolling measure which is called Kamil, before the sepulchre of Rabyah, by the poet Hafs, the son of Al-Ahnaf:—
Bide with us still, Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, near!
May the clouds of dawn keep green thy grave with unfailing showers....
My camel fled when she spied the cairn on the stony waste,
Built over one who was free of hand, most quick to give.
Start not, O camel! for sure no shape to be shunned was he—
A carouser mirthful, a mighty stirrer of battle-flame.
Long is my way, and the thirsty desert before me lies,
Else here for thee she had fallen, butchered to feast thy friends.[1]
[1] C. J. Lyall's version, as given in his admirable Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry (London: 1885).