THE STORY OF EVANGELINE IN PROSE.
I spare you M. Jourdain’s oft-quoted saying. Too often, I fear, I successfully imitate the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” in speaking prose without knowing it—aye, at the very moment when I think to woo the Muse most ardently. But great is the courage demanded to announce a purpose to be prosaic—prosy, it may be—with premeditation. Especially true is this when, as in the case before me, the subject itself ranks high as poetry. Mr. Longfellow, in some of his later writings, may seem to aim at, or does, perhaps, unconsciously catch, that tone, made fashionable by the younger Victorian songsters, which sets the poet apart as a being differing from his kind, and makes him, as the English poet-laureate does, “born in a golden clime”
“With golden stars above.”
But in his “Tale of Acadie” our American Wordsworth touches with sympathetic finger the chords that vibrate with feeling in common hearts. This is the lyre he sweeps with a magic sweetness not excelled by any modern English poet. Evangeline is a poem of the hearth and domestic love. That is to say, though it is true the heroine and her betrothed never come together in one happy home, the feelings described are such as might without shame beat tenderly in any Christian maiden’s breast; such, too, as any husband might wish his wife to feel. How different is this from the fierce passion—a surrender to the lower nature—which burns and writhes and contorts itself in Mr. Swinburne’s heroines! One is Christian Love, the other the pagan brutishness of Juvenal’s Messalina. It may be said indeed with truth that, in portraying a Catholic maiden and a Catholic community, Mr. Longfellow has, with the intuition of genius, reflected in this poem the purity and fidelity blessed by the church in the love it sanctions. His admirers, therefore, cannot but regret that debasing contact with the new school of the XIXth-century realism which, in such an one of his later poems, for example, as that entitled “Love,” draws him to the worship of the “languors” and “kisses” of the Lucretian Venus. The love of Evangeline is that which is affected by refined women in every society—humble though the poet’s heroine be; the other strips the veil from woman’s weakness.
The charm of the poem is that it transports us to a scene Arcadian, idyllic, yet which impresses us with its truthfulness to nature. This is not Acadia only, but Arcadia. The nymphs, and the shepherds and shepherdesses, and the god Pan with his oaten reed, put off the stage costumes worn by them in the pages of Virgil or on the canvas of Watteau, and, lo! here they are in real life in the village of Grand Pré—Evangeline milking the kine, Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Michael the fiddler, and the level Acadian meadows walled in by their dykes from the turmoil of war that shook the world all around them. The picture is truthful; but truthful rather by the effect of the bold touches that befit the artist and poet than in the multitude of details—some more prosaic, some not so charming—which, massed together, make up the more faithful portrait of the historian. The description of scenery in the poem confuses the natural features of two widely-separated and different sections of the country; the Evangeline of Grand Pré is not in all respects the Acadian girl of Charlevoix or Murdock; the history of men and manners on the shores of the Basin of Mines,[231] as depicted by the poet, is sadly at variance with the angry, tumultuous, suspicious, blood-stained annals of those settlements. Strange as it may seem, the poem is truer of the Acadians of to-day, again living in Nova Scotia, than of their expatriated forefathers. Remoteness of time did not mean, in their case, a golden age of peace and plenty. Far from it! It meant ceaseless war on the borders, the threats and intrigues of a deadly national feud, the ever-present, overhanging doom of exile, military tyranny, and constant English espionage. Now absolute peace reigns within the townships still peopled by their descendants, and the Acadian peasant and village maiden cling in silence and undisturbed to the manners their fathers brought from Normandy nearly three centuries ago.
The first few lines give the coloring to the whole poem. They are the setting within which are grouped the characters.
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,”
stand “like Druids of eld,” or “harpers hoar”;
“While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”
This is the refrain running through the poem like the aria of the “Last Rose of Summer” through Martha. Yet the picture conveyed to the reader’s mind is that of the Atlantic coast of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, not of the Basin of Mines, where Evangeline dwelt with her people. The natural features of the two sections of country are strikingly diverse. On the east coast of Nova Scotia rises a line of granitic and other cliffs, sterile, vast, jagged, opposing their giant shoulders to the roaring surges of the Atlantic. On the hills behind, the pines and hemlocks rustle and murmur in answer to the waves. This is the “forest primeval” and the “loud-voiced neighboring ocean.” But on the west coast is quite another scene. The Basin of Mines is an inland gulf of an inland sea—the Bay of Fundy. Here the granite rocks and murmuring pines give place to red clay-banks and overflowed marshes. And here is Horton, or Grand Pré. It is separated by the whole breadth of the peninsula of Nova Scotia from the ocean. The “mists from the mighty Atlantic,” which
“Looked on the happy valley, but ne’er from their station descended,”
are in reality the fogs of the Bay of Fundy shut out by the North Mountain. Instead of the long swell of the Atlantic breaking on a rocky coast, we have in the Basin of Mines numerous small rivers running through an alluvial country, with high clay-banks left bare by the receding tide. This last feature of the scene is correctly described by the poet; but it must be borne in mind that it is not united with the natural features of the east coast. The Acadians never, in fact, affected the Atlantic sea-board. They sailed shuddering past its frowning and wintry walls, and, doubling Cape Sable, beat up the Bay of Fundy to where the sheltered Basins of Port Royal and Mines invited an entrance from the west. For over one hundred years after the founding of Port Royal the Atlantic coast of Acadia remained a waste. A fishing-village at Canseau on the north—a sort of stepping-stone to and from the great fortress of Louisburg—and a few scattered houses and clearings near La Tour’s first settlement alone broke the monotonous silence of the wilderness. The Indian hunter tracking the moose over the frozen surface of the snow, and some half-solitary Irish and New England fishermen in Chebucto Bay, divided the rest of the country between them. It was not until 1749 that Cornwallis landed his colonists at Halifax, and made the first solid footing on the Atlantic coast. But for generations previously, in the rich valley of the River of Port Royal, and along the fertile banks of the streams flowing into the Basin of Mines—the Gaspereau, the Canard, and the Pereau—the thrifty Acadians spread their villages, built their churches, and were married and buried by the good Recollect Fathers.
I was a lad scarce emancipated from college when I first visited those scenes. I remember well my emotion when I drew my eyes away from the landscape, and, turning to my companion, Father K——, asked him if there were any remains of the old village of Grand Pré. To my youthful imagination Evangeline was as real as the people about me. Father K—— was the priest stationed at Kentville, about ten miles distant from Grand Pré and the Gaspereau River, which were included in his mission. He was an old family friend, and I was going to spend the summer vacation with him. We were driving from Windsor through Horton and Wolfville to Kentville, passing on our road through all the scenes described in the poem. I have often visited that part of the country since then, but never has it made such an impression on me. The stage-coach then rolled between Windsor and Kentville, and something of the rural simplicity congenial with the poem was still felt to be around one. Last year I rode by rail over the same ground, and later on another line of railroad to Truro, and thence around the Basin of Mines on the north through Cumberland. But my feelings had changed, or the whistle of the locomotive was a sound alien to the memories of those green meadows and intersecting dykes. Evangeline was no longer a being to be loved, but a beautiful figment of the poet’s brain.
I don’t know to this day whether Father K—— was quizzing me, or was loath to shatter my boyish romance, when he told me that there were some old ruins which were said to be the home of Evangeline. It is probable he was having a quiet joke at my expense, as he was noted for his fund of humor, which I learned better to appreciate in later years. Poor Father K——! He was a splendid type of the old Irish missionary priest—an admirable Latinist; well read in English literature, especially the Queen Anne poets; hearty, jovial, and could tell a story that would set the table in a roar. And, withal, no priest worked harder than he did in his wide and laborious mission, or was a more tender-hearted friend of the poor and afflicted. He is since dead.
During the month or six weeks I spent with Father K——, that part of the country became quite familiar to me by means of his numerous drives on parish duties, when I usually accompanied him. Often, as the shades of the summer evening descended, have I watched the mists across the Basin shrouding the bluff front of Cape Blomidon—“Blow-me-down,” as it is more commonly called by the country-folk. At other times we drove up the North Mountain, where the
“Sea-fogs pitched their tents,”
and, standing there, I have looked down upon the distant glittering waters of the Bay of Fundy.
On one occasion we rode over from Kentville to Wolfville, and then up the Gaspereau, at the mouth of which
“The English ships at their anchors”
swung with the tide on the morning which ushered in the doom of Grand Pré. We rode some distance up the valley to the house of a Catholic farmer, and there put up for the day. It was the day on which the elections took place for the House of Assembly. The contest was fiercely conducted amid great popular excitement. One of those “No-Popery” cries, fomented by an artful politician—which sometimes sweep the colonies as well as the mother country—was raging in the province. Father K—— left Kentville, the county town, on that day to avoid all appearance of interference in the election, and also to get away from the noise and confusion that pervaded the long main street of the village. I can remember the news coming up the Gaspereau in the evening how every one of the four candidates opposed to Father K—— had been returned. But at that time I paid little heed to politics, and during the day I wandered down through the field to the river, and strolled along its willow-fringed banks. Some of those willows were very aged, and might have swung their long, slim wands and narrow-pointed leaves over an Evangeline and a Gabriel a hundred years before. Those willows were not the natural growth of the forest, but were planted there—by whom? No remnant of the people that first tilled the valley was left to say!
Riding home next day, a laughable incident, but doubtless somewhat annoying to Father K——, occurred. Just as we were about to turn a narrow bend of the road, suddenly we were confronted by a long procession in carriages and all sorts of country vehicles, with banners flying, men shouting, and everything to indicate a triumphal parade. It was, in fact, a procession escorting two of the “No-Popery” members elected the day before. The position was truly rueful, but Father K—— had to grin and bear it. There was no escape for us; we had to draw up at the side of the road, and sit quietly in our single wagon until the procession passed us. It was a very orderly and good-humored crowd, but there were a good many broad grins, as they rode by, at having caught the portly and generally popular priest in such a trap. Nothing would persuade them, of course, but that he had been working might and main for the other side during the election. Finally, as the tail of the procession passed us, some one in the rear, more in humor than in malice, sang out: “To h—ll with the Pope.” There was a roar of laughter at this, during which Father K—— gathered up his reins, and, saying something under his breath which I will not vouch for as strictly a blessing, applied the whip to old Dobbin with an energy that that respectable quadruped must have thought demanded explanation.
Changed indeed was such a scene from those daily witnessed when Father Felician,
“Priest and pedagogue both in the village,”
ruled over his peaceful congregation at the mouth of the Gaspereau.
It has been said in the beginning of this article that Evangeline, the heroine and central figure of the poem, is not altogether true to history as typical of the Acadian girl of that period, as seen in the annals of Port Royal; and doubtless this assertion can be borne out by the records. But, on second thoughts, it does appear, as it were, a profanation to subject such a bright creation of the poet’s mind to the analysis of history. As profitably might we set about converting the diamond into its original carbon. The magical chemistry of genius, as of nature, has in either case fused the dull and common atoms into the sparkling and priceless jewel.
The stoutest champion of her sex will not, upon consideration, contend that so absolutely perfect a creature as Evangeline is likely to be found in any possible phase of society. Is not a spice of coquetry inseparable from all women? Evangeline has none of it. She is, too, too unconscious that her lover
“Watches for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow”
under the trees in the orchard. She is the heroine of an idyl—not, indeed, of unreal Arthurian romance, but of that exalted and passionless love which the virgin heart seeks, but afterwards consoles itself for not finding. That ideal star does not shine upon this world; but its divine rays fall softly upon many an unknown heart in the cloister.
But it is incontestable that the Acadian maidens of Port Royal and Mines shared in some of the agreeable frivolities which still, it is said, sometimes distinguish their sisters in the world. They had an eye for a military uniform and clanking spurs even in those “primeval” days. It is a frequent complaint of the French governors to the home authorities at Paris that their young officers were being continually led into marriage with girls of the country “without birth,” and, worse still, often “without money.” In the old parish register of Annapolis can be seen more than one entry of the union of a gallant ensign or captain to a village belle from the inland settlements whose visit to the Acadian metropolis had subjugated the Gallic son of Mars. Nor was the goddess of fashion altogether without a shrine in close contiguity to the “murmuring pines and the hemlocks.” Some of the naval and military officers sent for their wives from Paris or Quebec, and these fine ladies brought their maids with them. This is not a supposition, but a fact which can be verified by reference to the letters of M. des Goutins and others in the correspondence of the time. Imagine a Parisian soubrette of the XVIIIth century in the village of Grand Pré! It is a shock to those who derive their knowledge of Acadie from Mr. Longfellow’s poem; but those who are familiar with the voluminous records of the day, preserved in the provincial archives, are aware of a good many stranger things than that related in them. Since Evangeline was published the Canadian and Nova Scotian governments have done much to collect and edit their records, and they are now accessible to the student. Rightly understood, there is no reason why the flood of light thus thrown upon the lives of the Acadians should detract anything from our admiration for that simple and kindly race. They were not faultless; but the very fact that they shared in the common interests, and even foibles, of the rest of the world gives that tone of reality to their history which makes us sympathize with them more justly in the cruel fate that overtook them. Yet, in depicting the young Acadian girl of that period as he has done, the poet has but idealized the truth. The march of the history of her people aids him in making the portrait a faithful one. Had he placed the time a little earlier—that is to say, under the French-Acadian régime—and his heroine at Annapolis, his poem could not have borne the criticism of later research. But in selecting the most dramatic incident of Acadian history as the central point of interest, he has necessarily shifted the scene to one of the Neutral French settlements. Here, too, he is aided in maintaining the truthfulness of his portraiture by the fact that the English conquest, in depriving the Acadians of the right of political action, and cutting them off as much as possible from intercourse with Canada and France, had thrown them back upon rural occupations alone, and developed their simple virtues. Mines and Chignecto had been noted for their rustic independence and their manners uncorrupted by contact with the world, even under the old régime. One of the military governors of Port Royal complains of them as “semi-republicans” in a letter to the Minister of Marine and Colonies at Paris. After the conquest of 1710, intercourse with Annapolis and its English Government House and foreign garrison became even more restricted. No oath of allegiance being taken to the new government, the curé was recognized both by the inhabitants and the Annapolis government as their virtual ruler. Under the mild sway of Fathers Felix, Godalie, and Miniac—in turn curés of Mines—the Acadians sought to forget in the cultivation of their fields the stern military surveillance of Annapolis, and, later, Fort Edwards and Fort Lawrence. Father Miniac comes latest in time, and shared the misfortunes of his flock in their expulsion. But in Father Godalie, the accomplished scholar and long-loved friend of the people of Grand Pré, we seem best to recognize the “Father Felician” of Mr. Longfellow’s poem. He was a guide well fitted to form the lovely character of Evangeline; nor do the authentic records of the time bear less ample testimony to the virtue of his people than the glowing imagination of the poet.
It is less in the delineation of individual character than in its description of the undisturbed peace reigning at Grand Pré that the poem departs most from the truth of history. The expulsion of 1755 was not a thunderbolt in a clear sky descending upon a garden of Eden. It was a doom known to be hanging over them for forty years. Its shadow, more or less threatening for two generations, was present in every Acadian household, disabling industry and driving the young men into service or correspondence with their French compatriots. Space would not permit, in so short a paper, to enter into the history of that desperate struggle for supremacy on this continent ending on the heights of Abraham, isolated chapters of which have been narrated with a graphic pen by Mr. Francis Parkman. Acadie was one of its chosen battlegrounds. So far from the Acadians living in rural peace and content, it may be said broadly yet accurately that from the date of their first settlement to their final expulsion from the country, during a period extending over one hundred and fifty years, five years had never passed consecutively without hostilities, open or threatened. The province changed masters, or was wholly or partially conquered, seven times in a little over one hundred years, and the final English conquest, so far from establishing peace, left the Acadians in a worse position than before. They refused to take the oath of allegiance to the English government; the French government was not able to protect them, though it used them to harass the English.
They acquired, therefore, by a sort of tacit understanding, the title and position of the “Neutral French,” the English government simply waiting from year to year until it felt itself strong enough to remove them en masse from the province, and the Acadians yearly expecting succor from Quebec or Louisburg. Each party regarded the other as aliens and enemies. Hence it is that no French-Acadian would ever have used the words “his majesty’s mandate”—applied to George II.—as spoken by Basil the blacksmith in the poem. That single expression conveys a radically false impression of the feelings of the people at the time. The church at Mines, or Grand Pré, from the belfry of which
“Softly the Angelus sounded,”
had been burned down twice by the English and its altar vessels stolen by Col. Church in the old wars. Nor had permanent conquest, as we have said, brought any change for the better. The curés were frequently imprisoned on pretext of exciting attacks on the English garrisons, and sometimes, as in the case of Father Felix and Father Charlemagne, were exiled from the province. In 1714 the intention was first announced of transporting all the Acadians from their homes. It was proposed to remove them to Cape Breton, still held by the French. The pathetic remonstrance of Father Felix Palm, the curé of Grand Pré, in a letter and petition to the governor, averted this great calamity from his people at that time. But the project was again revived by the English Board of Trade, 1720-30. In pursuance of its orders, Gov. Philipps issued a proclamation commanding the people of Mines to come in and take the oath of allegiance by a certain day, or to depart forthwith out of the province, permitting, at the same time—a stretch of generosity which will hardly be appreciated at this day—each family to carry away with it “two sheep,” but all the rest of their property to be confiscated. This storm also blew over. But the result of this continual harassment and threatening was to drive the Acadians into closer correspondence with the French at Louisburg, and to cause their young men to enlist in the French-Canadian forces on the frontier. In view of this aid and comfort given to the enemy, and their persistent refusal to take the oath of allegiance, later English writers have not hesitated to declare the removal of the Acadians from the province a political and military necessity. But the otherwise unanimous voice of humanity has unequivocally denounced their wholesale deportation as one of the most cruel and tyrannical acts in the colonial history of England. We are not to suppose, however, that the Acadians folded their hands while utter ruin was thus threatening them. In 1747 they joined in the attack on Col. Noble’s force at Mines, in which one hundred of the English were killed and wounded, and the rest of his command made prisoners. They were accused, not without some show of reason, of supporting the Indians in their attack on the new settlement at Halifax. It is admitted that three hundred of them, including many of the young men from Grand Pré, were among the prisoners taken at Fort Beau Sejour on the border a few months before their expulsion. It is not our purpose to enter into any defence or condemnation of those hostilities. But it is plain that Mr. Longfellow’s beautiful lines describing the columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense, ascending
“From a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment,”
“free from fear, that reigns with the tyrant, or envy, the vice of republics,” were not applicable to the condition of affairs at Grand Pré in 1755, nor at any time.
The poem follows with fidelity the outlines of the scenes of the expulsion. Heart-rending indeed is the scene, as described even by those who were agents in its execution. The poet gives almost verbatim the address of Col. John Winslow in the chapel. Nevertheless one important clause is omitted. Barbarous as were the orders of Gov. Lawrence, he was not absolutely devoid of humanity. Some attempt was made to lessen the pangs of separation from their country by the issuing of orders to the military commanders that “whole families should go together on the same transport.” These orders were communicated with the others to the inhabitants by Col. Winslow, and it appears, they were faithfully executed as far as the haste of embarkation would permit. But as the young men marched separately to the ships, and some of them escaped for a time into the woods, there was nothing to prevent such an incident occurring as the separation of Evangeline and Gabriel.
About seven thousand (7,000) Acadians, according to Gov. Lawrence’s letter to Col. Winslow, were transported from their homes. The total number of these unfortunate people in the province at that time has been estimated at eighteen thousand. The destruction was more complete at Grand Pré than elsewhere, that being the oldest settlement, with the exception of Annapolis, and the most prosperous and thickly settled. A few years later another attempt was made to transfer the remainder of the Acadian population to New England; but the transports were not permitted to land them at Boston, as they were completely destitute, and the New England commonwealths petitioned against being made responsible for their support. The Acadian exiles were scattered over Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. About four hundred and fifty were landed at Philadelphia.
“In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware’s waters,
Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn, the apostle,
Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded.
…
There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile,
Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country.”
A few months ago I visited the Quaker City. There, where Evangeline ended her long pilgrimage, I took up the thread of that story the early scenes of which had been so familiar to me. How different those around me! Gone were the balsamic odors of the pines and the salt spray of the ocean. One can conceive how the hearts of the poor Acadian exiles must have trembled. I sought out the old “Swedish church at Wicaco,” whence the “sounds of psalms
“Across the meadows were wafted”
on the Sabbath morning when Evangeline went on her way to the hospital, and there found her lover dying unknown. The quaint little church—not larger than a country school-house—built of red and black bricks brought from Sweden, is now almost lost in a corner near the river’s edge, in the midst of huge warehouses and intersecting railroad tracks. In the wall near the minister’s desk is a tablet in memory of the first pastor and his wife buried beneath. Fastened to the gallery of the choir—not much higher than one’s head—is the old Swedish Bible first used in the church, and over it two gilded wooden cherubs—also brought from Sweden—that make one smile at their comical features. In the churchyard, under the blue and faded gray tombstones, repose the men and women of the congregation of 1755 and years before. But no vestiges of the Acadian wanderers remain in the Catholic burying-ground.
“Side by side in their nameless graves the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie unknown and unnoticed.”
Many of the Acadians succeeded in wandering back to their country. Others escaped into what is now called New Brunswick, which was then a part of Acadia, and either returned to Nova Scotia in after-years when the whole of Canada was finally ceded to the English, or founded settlements, existing to this day in New Brunswick, and returning their own members to the Provincial Parliaments. The descendants of the Acadians, still speaking the French language and retaining the manners of their forefathers, are more numerous than is generally supposed in Nova Scotia. They number thirty-two thousand out of a total population of three hundred and eighty-seven thousand (387,000), according to the census of 1871. The poet says:
“Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants.…
Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline’s story.”
This refers, no doubt, to the settlement at Chezzetcook, which, from its closeness to Halifax, is best known. On Saturday mornings, in the market at Halifax, the Acadian women can be seen standing with their baskets of eggs and woollen mitts and socks for sale. They are at once recognized by their short blue woollen outer petticoats or kirtles, and their little caps, with their black hair drawn tightly up from the forehead under them. The young girls are often very pretty. They have delicate features, an oval face, a clear olive complexion, and eyes dark and shy, like a fawn’s. They soon fade, and get a weather-beaten and hard expression from exposure to the climate on their long journeys on foot and from severe toil.
But in Yarmouth County, and on the other side of the peninsula in the township of Clare, Digby County, there are much larger and more prosperous settlements. Clare is almost exclusively French-Acadian. The people generally send their own member to the provincial House of Assembly. He speaks French more fluently than English. The priest preaches in French. Here at this day is to be found the counterpart of the manners of Grand Pré. Virtue, peace, and happiness reign in more than “a hundred homes” under the old customs. Maidens as pure and sweet as Evangeline can be seen as of old walking down the road to the church on a Sunday morning with their “chaplet of beads and their missal.” But the modern dressmaker and milliner has made more headway than among the poor Chezzetcook people. Grand Pré itself, and most of the old Acadian settlements, are inhabited by a purely British race—descendants of the North of Ireland and New England settlers who received grants of the confiscated lands. By a singular turn of fortune’s wheel the descendants of another expatriated race—the American loyalists—now people a large part of the province once held by the exiled Acadians.