Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

Dearest Harriet,

A WILD SPOT. The stars are shining like one vast incrustation of diamonds; and though 'tis the 8th of January, I have been out with bare neck and arms, standing on the brink of the Altamaha, and seeking relief from the oppressive heat of the house. I am here, with the children, in the midst of our slaves; and it seems to me, as I look over these wild wastes and waters, as though I were standing on the outer edge of creation. That this is not absolutely the case, however, or that, if it is, civilization in some forms has preceded us hither, is abundantly proved by the sights and sounds of busy traffic, labor, and mechanical industry, which, encountered in this region (still really half a wilderness), produce an impression of the most curiously anomalous existence you can imagine.

Right and left, as the eye follows the broad and brimming surface of this vast body of turbid water, it rests on nothing but low swamp lands, where the rattling sedges, like a tawny forest of reeds, make warm winter shelters for the snakes and alligators, which the summer sun will lure in scores from their lurking-places; or hoary woods, upon whose straggling upper boughs, all hung with gray mosses like disheveled hair, the bald-headed eagle stoops from the sky, and among whose undergrowth of varnished evergreens the mocking-birds, even at this season, keep a resounding jubilee. All this looks wild enough; and as the peculiar orange light of the southern sunset falls upon the scene, I almost expect to see the canoes of the red man shoot from the banks, which were so lately the possession of his race alone. Immediately opposite to me, however (only about a mile distant, the river and a swampy island intervening), lies the little town of Darien, whose white gable-ended warehouses, shining in the sun, recall the presence of the prevailing European race, and we can hear distinctly the sound of the steam which the steamboat at the wharf is letting off.

Upon this island of ours (I think I look a little like Sancho Panza) we enjoy the perpetual monotonous burden of two steam-engines working the rice mills, and instead of red men and canoes, my illustrious self and some prettily built and gaily painted boats, which I take great delight in rowing.

The strangeness of this existence surprises me afresh every hour by its contrast with all my former experiences; and as I sat resting on my oars at the Darien wharf the other evening, watching a huge cotton-raft float down the broad Altamaha, my mind wandered back to my former life—the scenes, the people, the events, the feelings which made up all my former existence; and I felt like the little old woman whose petticoats were cut all round about. "O Lord a mercy! sure this is never I!" But, then, she had a resource in her dog, which I have not; and so I am not quite sure that it is I....

The climate is too warm for me, and I almost doubt its being as wholesome for the children as a colder one. We have now summer heat, tempered in some degree by breezes from the river and the sea, which is only fifteen miles off; but the people of the place complain of the cold, and apologize to me for the chilliness of the weather, which they assure me is quite unusual. I have come home more than once, however, after a walk round the rice banks, with a bad headache, in consequence of the fierce sunshine pouring down upon these swamps, and do not think that I should thrive in such a climate. It is impossible here to take exercise on horseback, which has become almost indispensable to me; and though I have adopted rowing as a substitute I find it both a fatiguing and an inadequate one.

We live here in a very strange manner. The house we inhabit, which was intended merely as the overseer's residence, is inferior in appearance and every decent accommodation to the poorest farm-house in any part of England. Neither cleanliness nor comfort enter into our daily arrangements at all. The little furniture there is in the rooms is of the coarsest and roughest description; and the household services are performed by negroes, who run in and out, generally barefooted, and always filthy both in their clothes and person, to wait upon us at our meals. How I have wished for a decent, tidy, English servant of all work, instead of these begrimed, ignorant, incapable poor creatures, who stumble about round us in zealous hindrance of each other, which they intend for help to us. How thankful I should be if I could substitute for their unsavory proximity while I eat, that of a clean dumb waiter. This unlimited supply of untrained savages, (for that is what they really are) is anything but a luxury to me. Their ignorance, dirt, and stupidity seem to me as intolerable as the unjust laws which condemn them to be ignorant, filthy, and stupid.

The value of this human property is, alas! enormous; and I grieve to think how great is the temptation to perpetuate the system to its owners. Of course I do not see, or at any rate have not yet seen, anything to shock me in the way of positive physical cruelty. The refractory negroes are flogged, I know, but I am told it is a case of rare occurrence; and it is the injustice, and the kind, rather than the severity, of the infliction that is the most odious part of it to me. The people are, I believe, regularly and sufficiently fed and clothed, and they have tolerably good habitations provided for them, nor are they without various small indulgences; but of their moral and intellectual wants no heed whatever is taken, nor are they even recognized as existing, though some of these poor people exhibit intelligence, industry, and activity, which seem to cry aloud for instruction and the means of progress and development. These are probably rare exceptions, though, for the majority of those I see appear to be sunk in the lowest slough of benighted ignorance, and lead a lazy, listless, absolutely animal existence, far more dirty and degraded (though more comfortable, on account of the climate) than that of your lowest and most miserable wild "bog trotters."

SLAVERY. I had desired very earnestly to have the opportunity of judging of this matter of slavery for myself; not, of course, that I ever doubted that to keep human beings as slaves was in itself wrong, but I supposed that I might, upon a nearer observation of the system, discover at any rate circumstances of palliation in the condition of the negroes: hitherto, however, this has not been the case with me; the wrong strikes me more forcibly every hour I live here. The theory of human property is more revolting to every sentiment of humanity; and the evil effect of such a state of things upon the whites, who inflict the wrong, impresses me as I did not anticipate that it would, with still more force.

The habitual harsh tone of command towards these men and women, whose labor is extorted from them without remorse, from youth to age, and whose hopeless existence seems to me sadder than suffering itself, affects me with an intolerable sense of impotent pity for them.... Then, too, the disrepute in which honest and honorable labor is held, by being thus practiced only by a degraded class, is most pernicious.