These people may have a feud, and sometimes they do; but this rarely remains long unsettled. No one will ever hear it publicly alluded to, and assuredly they will never hear it uttered in slanderous vituperation of the absent party. I may be permitted here to narrate an incident illustrative of this peculiarity.
A gentleman, knowing of a dissension between two parties, was dining with one of them, in company with several others. This guest spoke to the hostess disparagingly of the enemy of her husband, who, hearing the remark, rebuked his officious guest by remarking to him: "Doctor, my lady and myself would prefer to find out the foibles and sins of our neighbors ourselves." The rebuke was effectual, and informed the doctor, who was new in the country, of an honorable feeling in the refined population of the land of his adoption alien to that of his birth, and which he felt made these people the superior of all he had ever known.
No one has ever travelled upon one of those palatial steamers abounding on the Mississippi, in the spring season of the year, when the waters swell to the tops of the levees, lifting the steamer above the level of the great fields of sugar-cane stretching away for miles to the forest on either bank of that mighty river, who has not been delighted with the lovely homes, surrounded with grounds highly cultivated and most beautifully ornamented with trees, shrubs, and flowers, which come upon the view in constant and quick succession, as he is borne onward rapidly along the accumulated waters of the great river. This scene extends one hundred and fifty miles up the river, and is one not equalled in the world. The plain is continuous and unbroken; nor hill nor stream intersects it but at two points, where the Plaquemine and La Fourche leave it to find a nearer way to the sea; and these are so diminutive, in comparison with all around, that they are passed almost always without being seen.
The fringe of green foliage which is presented by the trees and shrubs adorning each homestead, follows in such rapid succession as to give it a continuous line, in appearance, to the passers-by on the steamer. These, denuded of timber to the last tree, the immense fields, only separated by a ditch, or fence, which spread along the river—all greened with the luxuriant sugar-cane, and other crops, growing so vigorously as at once to satisfy the mind that the richness of the soil is supreme—and this scene extending for one hundred and fifty miles, makes it unapproachable by any other cultivated region on the face of the globe. Along the Ganges and the Nile, the plain is extensive. The desolate appearance it presents—the miserable homes of the population, devoid of every ornament, without comfort or plenty in their appearance—the stinted and sparse crops, the intervening deserts of sand, the waste of desolation, spreading away far as the eye can reach—the streams contemptible in comparison, and the squalid, degraded, thriftless people along their banks, make it painful to the beholder, who is borne on his way in some dirty little craft, contrasting so strangely with the Mississippi steamer. Yet, in admirable keeping with everything else, all these present a grand contrast to the valley of the Mississippi, and only prove the latter has no equal in all that pertains to grandeur, beauty, and abundance, on the globe. To appreciate all these, you must know and mingle with the population who have thus ornamented, with labor and taste, the margin of this stream of streams.
As this great expanse of beauty is a fairy-land to the eye, so is the hospitality of its homes a delight to the soul. In this population, if nowhere else in America, is seen a contented and happy people—a people whose pursuit is happiness, and not the almighty dollar. Unambitious of that distinction which only wealth bestows, they are content with an abundance for all their comforts, and for the comfort of those who, as friends or neighbors, come to share it with them. Unambitious of political distinction, despising the noisy tumult of the excited populace, they love their homes, and cultivate the ease of quiet in these delicious retreats, enjoying life as it passes, in social and elegant intercourse with each other, nor envying those who rush into the busy world and hunt gain or distinction from the masses, through the shrewdness of a wit cultivated and debased by trade, or a fawning, insincere sycophancy toward the dirty multitude they despise. By such, these people are considered anomalous, devoid of energy or enterprise, contented with what they have, nor ambitious for more—which, to an American, with whom, if the earth is obtained, the moon must be striven for, is stranger than all else—living indolently at their ease, regardless of ephemeral worldly distinctions, but happy in the comforts of home, and striving only to make this a place for the enjoyment of themselves and those about them.
To the stranger they are open and kind, universally hospitable, never scrutinizing his whole man to learn from his manner or dress whether he comes as a gentleman or a sharper, or whether he promises from appearance to be of value to them pecuniarily in a trade. There is nothing of the huckster in their natures. They despise trade, because it degrades; they have only their crops for sale, and this they trust to their factors; they never scheme to build up chartered companies for gain, by preying upon the public; never seek to overreach a neighbor or a stranger, that they may increase their means by decreasing his; would scorn the libation of generous wine, if they felt the tear of the widow or the orphan mingled with it, and a thousand times would prefer to be cheated than to cheat; despising the vicious, and cultivating only the nobler attributes of the soul.
Such is the character of the educated French Creole planters of Louisiana—a people freer from the vices of the age, and fuller of the virtues which ennoble man, than any it has fallen to my lot to find in the peregrinations of threescore years and ten. The Creoles, and especially the Creole planters, have had little communication with any save their own people. The chivalry of character, in them so distinguishing a trait, they have preserved as a heritage from their ancestors, whose history reads more like a romance than the lives and adventures of men, whose nobility of soul and mind was theirs from a long line of ancestors, and brought with them to be planted on the Mississippi in the character of their posterity.
Is it the blood, the rearing, or the religion of these people which makes them what they are? They are full of passion; yet they are gentle and forbearing toward every one whom they suppose does not desire to wrong or offend them; they are generous and unexacting, abounding in the charity of the heart, philanthropic, and seemingly from instinct practising toward all the world all the Christian virtues. They are brave, and quick to resent insult or wrong, and prefer death to dishonor; scrupulously just in all transactions with their fellow-men, forbearing toward the foibles of others, without envy, and without malice. In their family intercourse they are respectful and kind, and particularly to their children: they are cautious never to oppress or mortify a child—directing the parental authority first to the teaching of the heart, then to the mind—instilling what are duties with a tenderness and gentleness which win the affections of the child to perform these through love only. Propriety of deportment toward their seniors and toward each other is instilled from infancy and observed through life. All these lessons are stamped upon the heart, not only by the precepts of parents and all about them, but by their example.
The negro servants constitute a part of every household, and are identified with the family as part of it. To these they are very kind and forbearing, as also to their children, to whom they uniformly speak and act gently. A reproof is never given in anger to either, nor in public, for the purpose of mortifying, but always in private, and gently—in sorrow rather than in anger; and where punishment must be resorted to, it is done where only the parent or master, and the child or servant, can see or know it. This is the example of the Church. The confessional opens up to the priest the errors of the penitent, and they are rebuked and forgiven in secret, or punished by the imposition of penalties known only to the priest and his repentant parishioner. Is it this which makes such models of children and Christians in the educated Creole population of Louisiana? or is it the instinct of race, the consequence of a purer and more sublimated nature from the blue blood of the exalted upon earth? The symmetry of form, the delicacy of feature in the males, their manliness of bearing, and the high chivalrous spirit, as well as the exquisite beauty and grace of their women, with the chaste purity of their natures, would seem to indicate this as the true reason.
All who have ever entered a French Creole family have observed the gentle and respectful bearing of the children, their strict yet unconstrained observance of all the proprieties of their position, and also the affectionate intercourse between these and their parents, and toward each other—never an improper word; never an improper action; never riotous; never disobedient. They approach you with confidence, yet with modesty, and are respectful even in the mirth of childish play. Around the mansions of these people universally are pleasure-grounds, permeated with delightful promenades through parterres of flowers and lawns of grass, covered with the delicious shade thrown from the extended limbs and dense foliage of the great trees. These children, when wandering here, never trespass upon a parterre or pluck unbidden a flower, being restrained only by a sense of propriety and decency inculcated from the cradle, and which grows with their growth, and at maturity is part of their nature. Could children of Anglo-Norman blood be so restrained? Would the wild energies of these bow to such control, or yield such obedience from restraint or love? Certainly in their deportment they are very different, and seem only to yield to authority from fear of punishment, and dash away into every kind of mischief the moment this is removed. Nor is this fear and certainty of infliction of punishment in most cases found to be of sufficient force to restrain these inherent proclivities.