Martinique continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 47

CHAPTER FOUR
Martinique continued
THESE northern reaches of Martinique are scattered with small gentilhommières belonging to the old
French squirearchy of the island: rectangular, verandahed and lawn-encompassed houses of wood and
stone standing in clearings in the forest, and shaded by tall trees: Pécoule, belonging to the Vicomte
d'Aurigny, Potiche, the house of Madame d'Assier de Pompignon, and Beauséjour, a fine house built on
a ledge of the northern slopes of Montagne Pelée. The details of an hour or two spent here, on a fortu-
itous visit while the rain splashed on the shutters, remain in my mind with great lucidity: the miniatures
hanging on the wooden walls; a jar that enclosed in spirits a tangle of poisonous snakes; a great case of
turquoise-coloured butterflies from Cayenne; the backs of books; and the light from the oil-lamp caught
and refracted in the golden depths of my punch-glass. Above all, the lively voice and the witty and civil-
ized discourse of our hostess, Madame de Lucy de Fossarieu. We rose to leave when the rain abated, and
found that the moon had broken through the clouds. The garden was a faint constellation of flowers that
were only distinguishable by their pallor from the darkness. Under the dripping mango trees, tier on tier
of lawn descended into the darkness. The air was warm and scented, and the forest, faintly rimmed with
silver, completely surrounded this high, sloping world. The singing of some Negro women floated up from
the village with the echo of the falling waves and the faint gasp of the shingle.
Moments like this fill one with gratitude; not necessarily so much because of their incidental beauty,
but because of the understanding they bring; they act as Rosetta stones to whole systems of hieroglyphics.
That house, those lights and voices and flowers and smells and sounds, I felt, gave me a better chance of
grasping the atmosphere, the scope and the mood of Créole life in the Antilles than a library full of mem-
oirs and chronicles.
Soon afterwards I experienced another such rewarding fraction of time. French literature and poetry of
the last two centuries are full of references to beautiful Créoles, and I had in my mind a clear picture of
what such a lady ought to be: pale and darkhaired, a hammock-dweller, compound of languor and spright-
liness, attended by worshipping black slaves, suggesting to the imagination at the same time an orchid and
a humming-bird.
Au pays parfumé que le soleil caresse
J'ai connu sous un dais d' arbres tout empourprés
Et de palmiers d' où pleut sur ses yeux la paresse ,
Une dame créole aux charmes ignorés .
Son teint est pale et chaud; la brune enchanteresse
A dans le cou des airs noblement maniérés;
Grande et svelte et marchant comme une chasseresse ,
Son sourire est tranquille et ses yeux assurés .