A Curaçao landscape
Rather because it has long been an habitual pastime than in the hope of seeing the quest greatly rewarded, I kept a constant lookout for native literature during our journey through the West Indies. Four sections in the Biblioteca Nacional of Havana are devoted to Cuban writers, totaling perhaps five hundred volumes. With the exception of about a score of these, however, the collection is made up of ponderous tomes of what might be called history were they not filled with long-winded political squabbles completely devoid of interest to the general reader, and of slender volumes of the lyric poetry which pours forth in a constant stream in all Latin-American communities. The latter, unfortunately, with their inevitable verses on the Niagara Falls, the details of feminine charms, and the horrors of unrequited love, are much more noted for their mellifluous flow of language than for original thought or imagery. Of the twenty left, possibly five would hold the interest of American readers beyond the first few pages. As “every one” writes poetry, no matter what his more useful occupation, there is comparatively little work done in imaginative prose. Nor is there any great demand for such works; the majority of Cubans never open a book, and those who do are apt to turn to translations of the trashier French novels. For, like all Latin-America, the island takes its intellectual cue from France; the “Collection of American Authors” in the Cuban library contains the name of no man born north of the Rio Grande. The natives themselves vote “Cecilia Valdés” their best work of fiction, though many years have passed since its writing. To-day three or four residents of the island are producing occasional volumes of the usual Spanish-American type of novel, over-florid in description, heavy with details, and intimate beyond the point of decency according to our standards, yet with a nicety of style seldom attained by our own present-day novelists and now and then catching a true reflection of a tropical landscape or a native idiosyncrasy. Nothing that Cuba has produced, however, stands out in full world’s stature, such as “Maria” in Colombia or “Innocencia” in Brazil.
In Haiti little or nothing of an original nature has been written. We found one small volume in the native jargon, its name, “Cric-Crac,” quite aptly describing its contents. In Santo Domingo there are literary aspirations similar to those of Cuba, and as constant, if less voluminous, a flow of “poetry.” But while several so-called novels have been, and still are, produced, they are worth reading only because of their scattered pages of often unintentional local color. Porto Rico is a disappointment in a literary way, as in some others. Though the island teems to-day, as it has for centuries, with rich material ready for the picking by the writer of fiction, we found nothing unquestionably indigenous of an imaginative character except a collection of “Cuentos Populares” and the inevitable, almost maudlin, verses of scattered parentage natural to all Spanish-American communities.
A very readable little book called “Phases of Barbadian Life,” written, however, by a native of British Guiana, and two pamphlet novels on Trinidad, were the total reward of our quest in the smaller English islands. One of the latter, “Rupert Gray,” by name, is worth perusal for the amusing side-lights it throws on the lucubrations of the African mind, by which it was conceived and brought into being. There is an added interest in reading these books, slight as is their literary merit, arising from the suspense in guessing whether the heroine is black, “colored,” or white, and the uncertainty as to the degree of sympathy which should accordingly be shown for her mishaps. In Jamaica a man who styles himself a “writer of novels” rather than a novelist has produced several modern tales in which the island life, traditions, and the character of the masses is portrayed with a facile touch in as readable a style of the King’s English as may be found anywhere. Of them all perhaps “Susan Proudleigh” and “Jane” are the most nearly excellent.
In a bit of a shop entitled “Au Bon Livre” in Martinique we picked up a small novel based on the disaster of St. Pierre, called “Coeurs Martiniquais,” a simply told, vivid little story. In the French islands we found also a book in the native patois entitled “Extraits des Bambous,” but to all outward appearances it was little more than a translation or an adaptation from La Fontaine’s fables. The French and British islands are much less given to perpetrating poetry than those in which the Spanish tongue is spoken, and show an equal disinclination to producing the heavy volumes on subjects too ponderous for the authors themselves which burden the dusty book-shelves of Ibero-American lands. On the whole, the West Indies are a virgin field for the literary artist who cares to turn his attention to them.
At various periods during the last hundred years “feelers” have been thrown out from one side or the other to sound the attitude toward the purchase of the British, French, and possibly the Dutch, West Indies by the United States. The more than attractive price which we squandered for the Virgin Islands, together with the recent suggestions of certain European statesmen that this would be an easy way for England and France to wipe out some of their crushing war debts, has revived the question, and we found it everywhere a topic of conversation in the smaller Antilles. That the mother countries themselves would consent to such a bargain, if the price corresponded to the one we recently paid for vastly less valuable possessions, is probable, despite the soothing platitudes of princes and ministers, to the general effect that “a mother does not sell her children.” What the islands themselves have to say on the subject is perhaps more to the point in these modern days of alleged “self-determination”; and they are backward in expressing themselves.
“In a way we should like to join America,” said a white resident of one of the first British islands we visited, “but we have not been entirely pleased with the way America has treated her new West Indian colonies. St. Thomas was too harshly handled; you should have broken them in gradually and left a good impression on the rest of us.” (All West Indians apparently labor under the impression that the United States is eager to add them to our population if only the mother countries and they themselves will consent.) “Then, too, we would never stand for prohibition. The negroes would burn every field of sugarcane on the islands if they were denied their rum. You would have to kill them all off. A man, even a woman, must have his liquor in the tropics. Three or four cocktails or whiskies a day take the place of the bracing cold of the North. Without it the nerves go bad. We are much more in touch with, I might even say we have more sympathy for, the United States than for England, but for those two reasons we might hesitate to advocate American ownership. Then, many of the blacks are against it because they feel that the United States has never treated the negro fairly.”
“We are doing no business except in the absolute necessities,” added another white colonial, a man with a string of twenty-six stores throughout the Lesser Antilles. “With so bad an exchange we can’t buy in the United States; England has never shipped us the goods we want at prices we can pay; we must wait until Germany gets back into the market. I am almost the only merchant in this island in favor of transferring our allegiance to America. The rest have a ridiculous sentimentality for England or are too conservative to know what is for their own good. Our prosperity would increase by leaps and bounds under the American flag. Look at the prosperity of Cuba and Porto Rico. The preferential tariff has increased their sugar output eight times over. Yet British Guiana alone could produce more sugar than Cuba under a government that would develop her resources.”