The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

It is said that an obligatory period of labour amounts to slavery, even though the contract shall have been entered into by the labourer of his own free will. I will not take on myself to deny this, as I might find it difficult to define the term slavery; but if this be so, English apprentices are slaves, and so are indentured clerks; so are hired agricultural servants in many parts of England and Wales; and so, certainly, are all our soldiers and sailors.

But in the ordinary acceptation of the word slavery, that acceptation which comes home to us all, whether we can define it or no, men subject to such contracts are not slaves.

There is much that is prepossessing in the ordinary good humour of the negro; and much also that is picturesque in his tastes. I soon learned to think the women pretty, in spite of their twisted locks of wool; and to like the ring of their laughter, though it is not exactly silver-sounding. They are very rarely surly when spoken to; and their replies, though they seldom are absolutely witty, contain, either in the sound or in the sense, something that amounts to drollery. The unpractised ear has great difficulty in understanding them, and I have sometimes thought that this indistinctness has created the fun which I have seemed to relish. The tone and look are humorous; and the words, which are hardly heard, and are not understood, get credit for humour also.

Nothing about them is more astonishing than the dress of the women. It is impossible to deny to them considerable taste and great power of adaptation. In England, among our housemaids and even haymakers, crinoline, false flowers, long waists, and flowing sleeves have become common; but they do not wear their finery as though they were at home in it. There is generally with them, when in their Sunday best, something of the hog in armour. With the negro woman there is nothing of this. In the first place she is never shame-faced. Then she has very frequently a good figure, and having it, she knows how to make the best of it. She has a natural skill in dress, and will be seen with a boddice fitted to her as though it had been made and laced in Paris.

Their costumes on fête days and Sundays are perfectly marvellous. They are by no means contented with coloured calicoes; but shine in muslin and light silks at heaven only knows how much a yard. They wear their dresses of an enormous fulness. One may see of a Sunday evening three ladies occupying a whole street by the breadth of their garments, who on the preceding day were scrubbing pots and carrying weights about the town on their heads. And they will walk in full-dress too as though they had been used to go in such attire from their youth up. They rejoice most in white—in white muslin with coloured sashes; in light-brown boots, pink gloves, parasols, and broad-brimmed straw hats with deep veils and glittering bugles. The hat and the veil, however, are mistakes. If the negro woman thoroughly understood effect, she would wear no head-dress but the coloured handkerchief, which is hers by right of national custom.

Some of their efforts after dignity of costume are ineffably ludicrous. One Sunday evening, far away in the country, as I was riding with a gentleman, the proprietor of the estate around us, I saw a young girl walking home from church. She was arrayed from head to foot in virgin white. Her gloves were on, and her parasol was up. Her hat also was white, and so was the lace, and so were the bugles which adorned it. She walked with a stately dignity that was worthy of such a costume, and worthy also of higher grandeur; for behind her walked an attendant nymph, carrying the beauty's prayer-book—on her head. A negro woman carries every burden on her head, from a tub of water weighing a hundredweight down to a bottle of physic.

When we came up to her, she turned towards us and curtsied. She curtsied, for she recognized her 'massa;' but she curtsied with great dignity, for she recognized also her own finery. The girl behind with the prayer-book made the ordinary obeisance, crooking her leg up at the knee, and then standing upright quicker than thought.

"Who on earth is that princess?" said I.

"They are two sisters who both work at my mill," said my friend. "Next Sunday they will change places. Polly will have the parasol and the hat, and Jenny will carry the prayer-book on her head behind her."

I was in a shoemaker's shop at St. Thomas, buying a pair of boots, when a negro entered quickly and in a loud voice said he wanted a pair of pumps. He was a labouring man fresh from his labour. He had on an old hat—what in Ireland men would call a caubeen; he was in his shirt-sleeves, and was barefooted. As the only shopman was looking for my boots, he was not attended to at the moment.