The Mulattoes.
“They hate their fathers and despise their mothers,” is a saying which is a key to the character of the mulatto. They hate the whites and despise the blacks, hence their false position. That they are looked down upon by the whites and hated by the blacks is the converse truth, which produces an unfortunate effect upon their character. They have many of the defects of the two races, and few of their good qualities. Those who have never left their country are too often conceited, and presumptuous to a degree which is scarcely credible; whilst many who have travelled appear but little influenced by bright examples of civilisation, or by their intercourse with civilised nations, retaining but the outward polish of a superficial French education. Foreigners who casually meet Haytians are often only struck by their agreeable manners, but to understand their real character one must live among them, hear their talk among themselves, or read the newspapers published for local circulation.
Travel, indeed, has little outward effect on the majority; and they return to their own country more presumptuous than ever. It has struck many attentive observers that this outward parade of conceit is but a species of protest against the inferior position they occupy in the world’s estimation, and that with their advance in civilisation and education they will rise in the opinion of others, and thus lose the necessity for so much self-assertion. I believe this to be highly probable, but until the mulattoes are convinced of their present inferiority, the improvement must be slow indeed.
It may be remarked, however, that those who have been educated in Europe from their earliest years show few or none of those defects which are implanted in them by their early associations. I have known coloured men whose first real knowledge of their own country was acquired in manhood, who were in every respect equal to their white companions, as manly and as free from absurd pretensions, and naturally without that dislike of foreigners which is instilled into home-educated mulattoes. These men, knowing the consideration in which they were held by all, had no necessity for any self-assertion.
The early training in Hayti is much at fault; their mothers, generally uninstructed, have themselves but few principles of delicacy to instil into their children’s minds. I will mention a case in illustration. A lady was asked to procure some article for a foreign visitor. She readily undertook the commission, and sent her son, a boy of ten, to seek the article. He returned shortly afterwards and said to his mother, “Our neighbour has what you want, but asks twenty-seven paper dollars for it.” “Go and tell our friend that you have found it for forty, and we will divide the difference between us.” A mutual acquaintance heard of this transaction, and subsequently reproached the lady for the lesson of deceit and swindling she had taught her child; she only laughed, and appeared to think she had done a very clever thing. The subsequent career of that boy was indeed a thorn in her side.
Their financial morality is very low indeed. A friend of mine expressing his surprise to one of the prettiest and most respectable girls in Port-au-Prince that such open robbery of the receipts of the custom-house was permitted, received for answer, “Prendre l’argent de l’état, ce n’est pas volé.”—“To take Government money is not robbery.” With such ideas instilled into the minds of all from their earliest youth, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the Haytians grow up to be completely without financial honour. Truth is another virtue which appears to be rarely inculcated by parents, and this perhaps may be accounted for by their origin. Slaves are notoriously given to falsehood, and this defect has been inherited by succeeding generations, and can scarcely be eradicated until a higher moral teaching prevails.
I was struck by an anecdote told me by a French gentleman at Port-au-Prince: it is a trifle, but it shows the spirit of the Haytian youth. A trader, in very moderate circumstances, sent a half-grown son to be educated in Paris, and as the father had no friends there, he said to my informant, “Will you ask your family to pay my son a little attention?” In consequence, a lady called at the school and took the youth for a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. Approaching the basins, she said, “I suppose you have none like these in Hayti?” “Oh,” was his reply, “my father has finer ones in his private grounds;” the fact being, that he had nothing there but a bath a few feet square. This miserable pretence is one of the causes of the slow improvement in Hayti; they cannot or they will not see the superiority of foreign countries.
A late Secretary of State was present at a review in Paris, when ten thousand splendid cavalry charged up towards the Emperors of France and Russia. “It is very fine,” he said; “but how much better our Haytian soldiers ride!” Another gentleman, long employed as a representative at a foreign court, returning home, could find nothing better to say to President Geffrard than, “Ah! President, you should send some of our officers to Paris, that their superiority of tenue may be known in Europe.” I wish I could present some photographic illustrations of a Haytian regiment in support of this assertion.
I am, in fact, doubtful whether travel as yet has done much good to the general public, as they see their young men returning from Europe and America, after having witnessed the best of our modern civilisation, who assure them that things are much better managed in Hayti.
Their self-importance may be illustrated by the following anecdote of another ex-Secretary of State. He went with a friend to see the races at Longchamps. They had their cabriolet drawn up at a good spot, when presently an acquaintance of the driver got up on the box-seat to have a better view. “I must tell that man to get down,” said the ex-Minister. “Leave him alone,” answered his French friend. “It is all very well for you, a private individual, to say that; but I, a former Secretary of State, what will the people say to my permitting such familiarity?” and he looked uneasily around, thinking that the eyes of the whole Parisian world were bent on their distinguished visitor. I once saw some boxes addressed thus:—“Les demoiselles ——, enfants de M. ——, ex-Secrétaire d’Etat.”
Of the profound dislike of the genuine coloured Haytian for the whites I will give an instance. We were invited to a school examination given by the Sisters of Cluny, and naturally the official guests were put in the front rank, with the officers of a French gunboat, from which position we assisted at a distribution of prizes, and some little scenes acted by the pupils. The next day a Haytian gentleman, one who was an ornament to his country for his extensive knowledge and legal erudition, made this remark—“When I saw those whites put into the front row, it reminded me of the time when the ancient colonists sat arms akimbo watching the dances of their slaves.” As he said this before a party of white gentlemen, we may imagine what were his utterances before his own countrymen.
Moreau de St. Méry gives a table of the different combinations of colour among the mixed race, amounting to one hundred and twenty, which produce thirteen distinct shades between the pure white and the pure black. Each has a name, the most common of which are: Quateron, white and mulatto; mulatto, white and black; griffe, black and mulatto. These were the original combinations, but constant intermarriages have produced a great variety of colour, even in the same families, some breeding back to their white, others to their black forefathers. It appears as if the lighter shades of mulatto would die out, as many of this class marry Europeans, and leave the country with their children, and the others marry Haytians more or less dark, and the tendency is to breeding back to their black ancestors. There are too few whites settled in the country to arrest this backward movement. In Santo Domingo, however, the stay for a few years (1859-64) of a large Spanish army had a very appreciable effect on the population.
The personal appearance of the coloured Haytians is not striking. Being in general a mixture of rather a plain race in Europe with the plainest in Africa, it is not surprising that the men should be ugly and the women far from handsome. Of course there is a marked distinction between the men who have more dark blood in their veins and those who approach the white; in fact, those who are less than half-European have in general the hair frizzled like a negro’s, the forehead low, the eyes dark in a yellow setting, the nose flat, the mouth large, the teeth perfect, the jaw heavy; whilst as they approach the white type they greatly improve in appearance, until they can scarcely be distinguished from the foreigner, except by the dead colour of the skin and some trifling peculiarities.
Of the women it is more difficult to speak; they are rarely good-looking, never beautiful. As they approach the white type, they have long, rather coarse hair, beautiful teeth, small fleshless hands and feet, delicate forms, and sometimes graceful movements, due apparently to the length of the lower limbs. Their principal defects are their voices, their noses, their skins, and sometimes the inordinate size of the lower jaw. Their voices are harsh, their skins blotchy or of a dirty brown, their noses flat or too fleshy, and the jaw, as I have said, heavy. Occasionally you see a girl decidedly pretty, who would pass in any society, but these are rare. In general they are very plain, particularly when you approach the black type, when the frizzled hair begins to appear.
There is one subject necessary to mention, though it is a delicate one. Like the negroes, the mulattoes have often a decided odour, and this is particularly observable after dancing or any violent exercise which provokes perspiration, and then no amount of eau de cologne or other scents will completely conceal the native perfume. The griffes, however, are decidedly the most subject to this inconvenience, and I met one well-dressed woman who positively tainted the air.
With the exception of those who have been sent abroad, the Haïtiennes have had until lately but few chances of education, and are therefore little to be blamed for their ignorance. This want of instruction, however, has an ill effect, as the time necessarily hangs heavy on their hands, and they can neither give those first teachings to their children which are never forgotten, nor amuse themselves with literature or good music.
It is the fashion in Hayti to vaunt the goodness and tenderness of their women in sickness; but what women are not good and tender under similar circumstances? I have received as much kindness in suffering from the Malays when wandering in Borneo as any one has perhaps ever received elsewhere. The fact is, that these qualities are inherent to women in general. Perhaps the greatest praise that can be given to the Haytian ladies is, that they do not appear inferior to others who reside in the tropics in the care of their children, or in the management of their households, or in their conduct towards their husbands.
They have their ways in public and their ways in private, but their greatest defect is their want of cleanliness, which is observable in their houses, their children, and their own clothes. Without going so far as to say, with the naval officer, that “their customs are dirty, and manners they have none,” I may say that they have habits which are simply indescribable; and when not dressed to receive company they are veritable slatterns, sauntering about their houses all day in dirty dressing-gowns, and too often in unchanged linen. Their bedrooms have a close, stuffy smell, the consequence of the above referred to indescribable habits, which is highly displeasing to a stranger, and induced an American gentleman to remark that their rooms had the smell of a stable. They are also very careless in another way, and will go into their kitchens even in their silks, and aid in preparing sweetmeats; and the stains on their clothes from this cause reminded me of a young Malay lady cooking a greasy curry whilst dressed in a rich gold brocade, and upsetting half of it over her dress in an endeavour to conceal herself or her work.
The conduct of the Haytian ladies who are married to foreigners is much to their credit, as rarely a case occurs to draw the attention of the public to their private life; and almost the same may be said of their married life in general, and this in defiance of the debauchery of their Haytian husbands. This virtue was, perhaps, unfairly ascribed by a French diplomatist to their sluggish temperaments and their want of imagination. But, whatever may be the cause, it appears to exist to a considerable extent.
The habit of having no fixed hours for meals appears to prevail in most tropical countries; and in Hayti, though there are fixed times for the husband and the other males of a family, who can only return from business at certain hours, yet the ladies of the family prefer cakes, sweetmeats, and dreadful messes at all hours, and only sit down to the family meal pro formâ. No wonder they are ever complaining of indigestion, and taking their wonderful remèdes.
From my own observation, and that of many of my friends, I may assert with confidence as a general proposition, that the Haytian black or mulatto is more given to drink, and to a forgetfulness of his duty to his family, than any other people with whom we were acquainted. With some marked, and I should add numerous exceptions, after his early coffee the Haytian begins the day with a grog or cocktail, and these grogs and cocktails continue until at mid-day many of the young men are slightly intoxicated, and by night a large minority at least are either in an excited, a sullen, or a maudlin state.
It appears also to be a rule among them, that, whether married or not, a Haytian must have as many mistresses as his purse will permit him; these are principally drawn from the lower classes. This practice is not confined to any particular rank; from the Presidents downwards all are tainted with the same evil. The mistresses of the first-named are always known, as they are visited publicly, often accompanied by a staff or a few select officers. I have met them even at dinner in respectable houses, and have been asked to trace a resemblance between their children and the reputed father. No one seeks to conceal it, and the conversation of married ladies continually turns on this subject. One excuse for it is that many of the ladies whom you meet in society were only married after the birth of their first children. However, according to French law, that ceremony renders them all legitimate.
Some of those admitted into society are not married at all, but their daughters’ being married prevents notice being taken of the false position of the mother.
An excuse has been made for the debauchery of the Haytians. It is said that there are three women to every two men, which is probably true, and that therefore the latter are exposed to every kind of temptation, which is also true.
I have already referred to the want of financial honour observable in Hayti; but what is equally pernicious is their utter forgetfulness of what is due to their military oath. As I shall have to notice in my remarks on the army, scarcely a single name can be cited of a superior officer who under President Geffrard did not forget his duty, and either conspire against him or betray him to the enemy. This was particularly observable during the siege of Cap Haïtien in 1865. And yet were these officers who were false to their military honour looked down upon by their countrymen? On the contrary, their only title to consideration was their treachery to their former superior, who in turn is said to have betrayed every Government he had served.
A Frenchman once wittily said, that when Geffrard was made President, being no longer able to conspire against the Government, he conspired against his own Ministers. It is the whole truth in a few words. No encouragement is given to those who hold firmly to their duty; and an officer who did not desert a tottering Government would be sure to be neglected, perhaps even punished, by those who succeeded to power.
One reason for the dislike entertained by the mulatto for the white man is the evident partiality of their fair countrywomen for the latter. It is well known that the first dream or beau ideal of the young Haïtienne is a rich, and if possible a good-looking European, who can place her in a respectable position, give her the prospect of occasional visits to Europe, with the ultimate expectation of entirely residing there. Few young girls lose the hope of securing this desirable husband, particularly among those who have received their education in Europe, until their charms begin slightly to fade, when they content themselves with the least dark among their countrymen. It is unfortunate that this should be the case, as those who are most enlightened among the Haytian ladies are thus withdrawn from the civilising influence they would otherwise naturally exert. This preference for the white to the coloured man was also very conspicuous during the French occupation; and all things considered, it is not to be wondered at, as the whites make much better husbands.
The young mulatto, seeing this evident partiality for the foreigner, naturally resents it, but instead of trying to put himself on an equality of position with his rival by the exercise of industry and by good conduct, expends his energies in furious tirades in the cafés or by low debauchery.
The Haytians are distinguished for what the French call jactance, a better word than boasting. Mackenzie tells the story of a mulatto colonel saying to him, “Je vous assure, monsieur, que je suis le plus brave de tous les mulâtres de ce pays-ci.” He was lost in admiration of his own noble qualities. At the fortress of La Ferrière, during Mackenzie’s visit, a Captain Elliot said about some trifle, “N’ayez pas peur?” Immediately the officers of the garrison clapped their hands to their swords and talked five minutes of inflated nonsense.
I remember a Haytian general once calling upon me, and asking me to get inserted in the daily London papers a long account of the battles in which he had been engaged, and of his personal exploits. He was anxious that the English people should know what a hero they had among them. As he was really a brave fellow, and a man whom I liked, I was anxious that he should not make himself ridiculous by publishing a pompous account of battles which were but skirmishes among the peasantry. I therefore gave him a letter of introduction to an editor, who, I was sure, would explain to him that the English public would not be interested in the affair. I heard no more of it, but my friend was persuaded that since Napoleon no greater general than he had arisen.
As an ideal type of the better class of mulatto, I would take the late President Geffrard; he had all the qualities and defects of the race, and was one whom I had the best opportunity of studying. In a report which for some reason I never forwarded, I find myself thus sketching his portrait when almost in daily intercourse with him (1866):—“I am loth to analyse the character of President Geffrard, but as he is the Government itself, it is necessary to know him. In manner he is polished and gentle, almost feminine in his gentleness, with a most agreeable expression, a winning smile, and much fluency in conversation. But the impression soon gains possession of the listener that, with all his amiable qualities, the President is vain and presumptuous, absorbed in himself and in his own superiority to the rest of mankind. He imagines himself a proficient in every science, although he is as ignorant as he is untravelled. There is not a subject on which he does not pretend to know more even than those whose studies have been special, as lawyers, doctors, architects, and engineers. He seriously assures you that he discovered the use of steam by independent inquiries, and that he is prepared to construct a machine which shall solve the problem of perpetual motion; and he who has not ridden anything larger than a middle-sized pony imagines he could give hints in riding to our Newmarket jockeys.”
Geffrard, like many other coloured men, was much distressed by the crispness of his hair and his dark colour, and having a half-brother very fair, he persisted in assuring us that he had been born nearly white, with straight hair, but that having unfortunately bathed in the streams of Sal Tron during many months, the water, being deeply impregnated with iron, had curled his hair and darkened his skin. In any other man I should have suspected a jest.
One of the things which contributed to the unpopularity of the Emperor Soulouque was the waste of the public finances and the extravagance of his court. General Geffrard, who lived in penury before becoming President, promised to reform this; but instead of doing so, he gradually raised his own allowance to £10,000 a year; he also had the sole control of £4000 a year for secret service, and another £4000 a year for the encouragement of the arts and sciences. The grateful country had also presented him with two large estates, the expenses of which were largely borne by the State, whilst the profits were Geffrard’s.
As nearly every one of his countrymen would have acted in the same manner if he had had the opportunity, Geffrard’s conduct excited envy rather than blame. Even in the smallest details of the household there was a mean spirit; the expenses of the meat of the family were put down to the tirailleurs, whilst some exquisite champagne purchased of a colleague was charged to the hospital. Geffrard was certainly one of the most distinguished of his race, yet he sullied his good name by all these petty meannesses. I once asked a Haytian friend why she and others were always running down Geffrard and his family. She answered, “Because when I knew them intimately, they were as poor as myself, but now Madame Geffrard insults me by calling on me in a carriage. What right has she to a carriage more than I?”
Geffrard was personally brave, which quality is not too common among his countrymen, who are rather wanting in martial qualities. He had no idea of true liberty, nor of freedom of discussion. A son of a black Minister wrote a pamphlet in favour of strict protection for the manufactures of Hayti, in order to encourage native industry. A young mulatto replied, demolishing with ease the absurd idea that manufactures could be readily established in a tropical country, which could only be made to prosper by encouraging agriculture. The father was offended by this liberty, and, to soothe his wounded feelings, Geffrard had the young mulatto arrested, put as a common soldier into a regiment, and set to work to carry on his head barrels of powder to a village five miles in the mountains. The argument was unanswerable, and it is no wonder that the pamphleteer became a protectionist, though I believe that subsequently, when he was made a senator, he was inclined to return to his primitive views.
If I wished to describe a mulatto of the most unscrupulous type, I should have selected the late General Lorquet, but I have already referred to him.
There are among the mulattoes men eminently agreeable, and perhaps the one who best pleased me was Auguste Elie, at one time Minister for Foreign Affairs. He had been brought up in France, was highly educated, and had an astonishing memory. My Spanish colleague and myself used to visit him almost every evening, and pass a pleasant hour in varied conversation. One day my friend remarked, “I am often surprised at the knowledge shown by Auguste Elie, and the elegance of the language in which it is expressed.” I replied, “This evening turn the conversation on agriculture in the South of France.” He did so, and he was again struck by the minute knowledge shown and the manner in which it was conveyed. On our return home, I opened the last number of “La Revue des Deux Mondes,” and showed him paragraph after paragraph which Auguste Elie had repeated almost word for word. I knew that he read the review regularly, and was persuaded he had not missed reading the article on the agriculture of that part of France which interested him most, and his memory was so exact that he had forgotten nothing. I had often remarked his quotations, but he could digest what he read as well as remember. A few men like Auguste Elie would have given a better tone to Haytian society.
A strong desire to appear what they are not is a defect from which the best-known Haytians are not free. A French colleague once called upon a Secretary of State, whose writings have been compared to those of Plato, and found him, book in hand, walking up and down his verandah. “Ah! my friend, you see how I employ my leisure hours. I am reading Demosthenes in the original.” But the sharp Frenchman kept his eye on the volume, and soon found that it was an interlinear translation.
Every Haytian appears fully persuaded that his countrymen never seek office except for the purpose of improving their private fortunes, and the most precise stories of official robbery were falsely made against Auguste Elie and M. Bauce, both Secretaries of State. At Auguste Elie’s death there was little left for the family, and Madame Bauce declined the succession to her husband’s effects, as the debts were not covered by the inheritance. Liaulaud Ethéart and M. Darius Denis, though long Secretaries of State, afterwards honourably supported their families, the one in retail trade, the other by keeping a school.
Perhaps, as a rule, the accusation is well founded, and nearly all, black and coloured, believe in the saying, “Prendre l’argent de l’état, ce n’est pas volé.”
When I first arrived in Port-au-Prince a small club was formed among the foreigners, and one of the first rules was, “No Haytian to be admitted.” I asked why, and was answered, that they introduced politics into every place they entered. I soon found, however, that the real reason was that their society was disliked; and one day, after listening for an hour or two to the criticism on the people—and be it remembered that half those present were married to Haytian ladies—I could not help remarking, “If I had such an opinion of this race, I would not have sought my wife among them.” The married men looked foolish, the bachelors laughed, and one of the former observed, “The women are so superior to the men.”
The following story shows some delicacy of feeling; it is told by Mackenzie, and I have heard it repeated. When the decree was issued by Dessalines that mulatto children should inherit the estates of their white fathers, two young men met, and one said to the other, “You kill my father and I will kill yours;” which they accordingly did, and took possession of their estates. On another occasion, the Emperor Dessalines said to a young man who claimed to be a mulatto, “I don’t believe it, but you can prove it by going and poniarding your French friend.” The man did not hesitate, and was accepted as a Haytian citizen. A negro general, grandfather of a lady I knew in Hayti, went to Dessalines after the appearance of the decree to murder all the white French left in the island and said, “Emperor, I have obeyed your decree: I have put my white wife to death.” “Excellent Haytian,” answered he, “but an infernal scoundrel. If ever again you present yourself before me I will have you shot,”—the only saying of his that I have seen recorded showing any humane feeling.