“Who?—introduce us.”
It was done in due form—the Honourable Captain Transom, Captain Cringle of his Britannic Majesty’s schooner, Wave, and Aaron Bang, Esquire. And presently we were all as thick as pickpockets.
“But come, the President will be delighted to see you.” We followed the officer who spoke, as he marshalled us along, and in an inner chamber, wherein there were also several large holes in the ceiling through which the sun shone, we found President Petion, the black Washington, sitting on a very old ragged sofa, amidst a confused mass of papers, dressed in a blue military undress frock, white trowsers, and the everlasting Madras handkerchief bound round his brows. He was much darker than I expected to have seen him, darker than one usually sees a mulatto, or the direct cross between the negro and the white, yet his features were in no way akin to those of an African. His nose was as high, sharp, and well defined as that of any Hindoo I ever saw in the Hoogly, and his hair was fine and silky. In fact, dark as he was, he was at least three removes from the African; and when I mention that he had been long in Europe—he was even for a short space acting adjutant general of the army of Italy with Napoleon—his general manner, which was extremely good, kind and affable, was not matter of so much surprise.
He rose to receive us with much grace, and entered into conversation with all the ease and polish of a gentleman—“le me porte assez bien aujourd’hui; but I have been very unwell, M. S——, so tell me the news.” Early as it was, he immediately ordered in coffee; it was brought by two black servants, followed by a most sylph-like girl, about twelve years of age, the President’s natural daughter; she was fairer than her father, and acquitted herself very gracefully. She was rigged, pin for pin, like a little woman, with a perfect turret of artificial flowers twined amongst the braids of her beautiful hair; and although her neck was rather overloaded with ornaments, and her poor little ears were stretching under the weight of the heavy gold and emerald earrings, while her bracelets were like manacles, yet I had never seen a more lovely little girl. She wore a frock of green Chinese crape, beneath which appeared the prettiest little feet in the world.
We were invited to attend a ball in the evening, given in honour of the President’s birthday, and after a sumptuous dinner at our friend M. S——‘s, we all adjourned to the gay scene. There was a company of grenadiers of the President’s guard, with their band, on duty in front of the palace, as a guard of honour; they carried arms as we passed, all in good style; and at the door we met two aides-de-camp in full dress, one of whom ushered us into an anteroom, where a crowd of brown, with a sprinkling of black ladies, and a whole host of brown and black officers, with a white foreign merchant here and there, were drinking coffee, and taking refreshments of one kind or another. The ladies were dressed in the very height of the newest Parisian fashion of the day hats and feathers, and jewellery, real or fictitious, short sleeves, and shorter petticoats fine silks, and broad blonde trimmings and flounces, and low-cut corsages—some of them even venturing on rouge, which gave them the appearance of purple dahlias; but as to manner, all lady-like and proper; while the men, most of them militaires, were as fine as gold and silver lace, and gay uniforms, and dress-swords could make them and all was blaze, and sparkle, and jingle; but the black officers, in general, covered their woolly pates with Madras handkerchiefs, as if ashamed to show them, the brown officers alone venturing to show their own hair. Presently a military band struck up with a sudden crash in the inner-room, and the large folding doors being thrown open, the ballroom lay before us, in the centre of which stood the President, surrounded by his very splendid staff, with his daughter on his arm. He was dressed in a plain blue uniform, with gold epaulets, and acquitted himself extremely well, conversing freely on European politics, and giving his remarks with great shrewdness, and a very peculiar naivete. As for his daughter, however much she might appear to have been overdressed in the morning, she was now simple in her attire as a little shepherdesses plain white muslin frock, white sash, white shoes, white gloves, pearl ear-rings and necklace, and a simple, but most beautiful, camilla japonica in her hair. Dancing now commenced, and all that I shall say is, that before I had been an hour in the room, I had forgotten whether the faces around me were black, brown, or white; every thing was conducted with such decorum. However, I could see that the fine jet was not altogether the approved style of beauty, and that many a very handsome woolly-headed belle was destined to ornament the walls, until a few of the young white merchants made a dash amongst them, more for the fun of the thing, as it struck me, than any thing else, which piqued some of the brown officers, and for the rest of the evening blackee had it hollow. And there was friend Aaron waltzing with a very splendid woman, elegantly dressed, but black as a coal, with long kid gloves, between which and the sleeve of her gown, a space of two inches of the black skin, like an ebony armlet, was visible; while her white dress, and rich white satin hat, and a lofty plume of feathers, with a pearl necklace and diamond earrings, set off her loveliness most conspicuously. At every wheel round Mr Bang slewed his head a little on one side, and peeped in at one of her bright eyes, and then tossing his cranium on t’other side, took a squint in at the other, and then cast his eyes towards the roof, and muttered with his lips as if he had been shot all of a heap by the blind boy’s but-shaft; but every now and then as we passed, the rogue would stick his tongue in his cheek, yet so slightly as to be perceptible to no one but myself. After this heat, Massa Aaron and myself were perambulating the ballroom, quite satisfied with our own prowess and I was churming to myself, “Voulez vous dansez, mademoiselle”—“De tout mon coeur,” said a buxom brown dame, about eighteen stone by the coffee-mill in St James’s Street. That devil Aaron gave me a look that I swore I would pay him for, the villain; as the extensive mademoiselle, suiting the action to the word, started up, and hooked on, and as a cotillion had been called, there I was, figuring away most emphatically, to Bang and Transom’s great entertainment. At length the dance was at an end, And a waltz was once more called, and having done my duty, I thought I might slip out between the acts; so I offered to hand my solid armful to her seat—“Certainement vouz pouvez bien restez encore un moment.”
The devil confound you and Aaron Bang, thought I—but waltz I must, and away we whirled until the room spun round faster than we did, and when I was at length emancipated, my dark fair and fat one whispered, in a regular die-away, “J’espere vous revoir bientot.” All this while there was a heavy firing of champagne and other corks, and the fun grew so fast and furious, that I remembered very little more of the matter, until the morning breeze whistled through my muslin curtains, or musquitto net, about noon on the following day.
I arose, and found mine host setting out to bathe at Madame Le Clerc’s bath, at Marquesan. I rode with him; and after a cool dip we breakfasted with President Petion at his country-house there, and met with great kindness. About the house itself there was nothing particularly to distinguish it from many others in the neighbourhood; but the little statues, and fragments of marble steps, and detached portions of old fashioned wrought-iron railing, which had been grouped together, so as to form an ornamental terrace below it, facing the sea, showed that it had been a compilation from the ruins of the houses of the rich French planters, which were now blackening in the sun on the plain of Leogane. A couple of Buenos Ayrean privateers were riding at anchor in the bight just below the windows, manned, as I afterwards found, by Americans. The President, in his quiet way, after contemplating them through his glass, said, “Ces pavilions sont bien neuf.”
The next morning, as we were pulling in my gig, no less a man than Massa Aaron steering, to board the Arethusa, one of the merchantmen lying at anchor off the town, we were nearly run down by getting athwart the bows of an American schooner standing in for the port. As it was, her cutwater gave us so smart a crack that I thought we were done for; but our Palinurus, finding he could not clear her, with his inherent self possession put his helm to port, and kept away on the same course as the schooner, so that we got off with the loss of our two larboard oars, which were snapped off like parsnips, and a good heavy bump that nearly drove us into staves.
“Never mind, my dear sir, never mind,” said I; “but hereafter listen to the old song:”
‘Steer clear of the stem of a sailing ship.’