THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN
CHAPTER XII
THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN
Foremost in the list of a negro’s recreations should be placed the game of love. The black man makes love with the persistency of a Don Juan and with the fervour of a Mexican. He learns his first lessons in courtship long before the school-day age is over. Every boy of twelve has his honey girl, just as every coloured man of sixteen has his wife. There is an Arcadian touch in their love meetings—a fascinating rhythm of sensuous art in their songs of passion. The concert platforms and music halls of London have reflected, not incorrectly, many negro love stories; and the large straw hats and white pants and extravagant phraseology may be counted as roughly typical of the costume and poetry of Jamaica. The negro makes love with the natural freedom of a savage, but the Jamaican negro tempers his love-making with poetic entreaty. I can imagine that the Jamaican loves to hear the sonorous doggerel of his own ecstatic wooing—that he pleads with his mistress as much for his own pleasure as for hers. The black lady listens, and loves to listen, because his extravagant praise appeals to her vanity, and the black lady is as vain as any white daughter of a rich “buccra.” It may come as a shock and surprise to most of my readers to learn that the love-sick black man sometimes declares his love by letter. Whether this is always due to bashfulness or to the accident of geographical distance, I know not. But I have been privileged to read one or two impassioned missives duly authenticated as being the love letters of coloured men to dusky belles. They are interesting enough for reproduction here. I obtained them from a copy of a Christmas number of a Jamaican paper—the Gleaner of Kingston.
The first is written by a love-sick native to a Creole widow. It is addressed in full to
“Mrs. Agostiss R—— .
“I hope you know Valintine is now in season. I will take the pleasure to write you this; my hearth is yours and you are mine, but do you know it. I love you as the bee love the flower. The flower may fade, but true love shall never. My love for you is a love that cannot be fade. You shall be my love here as in heaven for ever. The Rose in June is not so sweet as when two lovers’ kisses meet. Kiss me quick and be my honey. I still remain true lover,
“James.”