Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-09-27
THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.
The Affection with Which Her Memory Is
Cherished at her Early Home.

Rebuilt in wood after the destruction
by an earthquake of its once pictures
que streets of stone, Fort de France
formerly Fort RoyaD has little of
interest by comparison with St. Pierre.
says Lafcadio Hearn in Harper's Moga-
zine. There are not many trees out
side of Savanna; the town lies in a
marshy plain and has few fine build
ings. But the Savanna itself. the great
green place with its shadowy rows of
tamarinds is pleasant to see and is
made romantic by the marble memory
of Josephine.
/ went to look at the white dream of
her there, the wonderful statue, execut-
ed by master sculptors, erected by the
creoles of the colony. 1t is absolutely
lovely!
Sea winds have bitten it; tropical
rains have streaked it; some somber
microscopic growth has darkened the
exquisite hollow of the throat. And
yet such is the human loneliness Of the
figure that you fancy you are gazing
at living presence, that it almost
seems to you it would not be folly to
speak to her. Perhaps the profile is
less human-statuesqu to the point of
revealing the chisel. But when you
look straight up into the sweet creole
face you can believe she lives; all the
wonderful West Indian charm of the
woman is there.
She is standing just in the center of
the Savanna, robed in the fashion of
the directory, with gracious arms and
shoulders bare to the winds; one white
hand leans upon medallion SCULPTURE
ed with the eagle profile of Napoleon.
Seven tall palms stand in a circle
about her, lifting their comely heads
into the blue glory of the tropical day.
Within their enchanted ring you feel
that you are treading sacred soil, the
holy ground of artist and poet. Here
in the silence all historical gossip is
hushed; the recollections of memoir
writer's vanish away; here you do not
care to know how rumor AYERS that
she lived or spoke or laughed or wept;
only the bewitchment of her lives I'M
der the thin shadowing of these femi-
nine palms, the soft creole grace, the
whole spell of womanly sweetness.
Over blue spaces of summer sea,
through the vast splendor of azure
light, she looks forever yearningly
back to the dear, silent, drowsy place
of her birth-back to emerald, old
fashioned Trois-Islets. always with the
same half-dreamy, half-plaintive smile,
unutterably touching.
And everybody loves her; you will
not think it foolish for them to love
her once you have looked into her
face. Everyone is proud of her; the
black laborers, the brown marines, the
market women, the bonnes-all the
curious many-colored population of
this quaint little town. If they do not
wash her often, if they do not Irvine
flowers about her beautiful neck and
lay bouquets before her white feet, it
is only because they are so very, very
lazy, dreadfully lazy (and everybody
gets lazy sooner or later in this eli
mate); it is not because their affection
for her has grown the least bit cold.
There is not one black or brown or
yellow mother in all this antiquated
earthquake-shaken city who does not
teach her baby to love ''Manzelle
'Fifine," the pretty white creole girl
who became the bride of an emperor.
That is all they know about her, all
they care to know; it is enough. To
their childish fancy she always lives
immortal in the summer of her beauty,
a darling young mistress of the olden
time, fine white creole lady to be al
ways petted. to be always revered, to
be always approached with smile.
No doubt they often greet her, on their
way to the market-to fill
their baskets with grotesque vegetables
and fantastic fruit, with golden and
scarlet and azure tish-salute her in
their many-voweled, caressing creole
speech. For they all talk to them
selves here-I do not know why (even
the white settlers fall into the habit)-
talk to themselves and to imaginary
beings, and to the trees, like the women
Of the Kalevala. And they would lay
down their lazy, happy lives to save
her from one wanton scratch.
Once she needed all their love very
much indeed. 1t was after the fall of
the second empire, when republican,
ism, even in Martinique, was furious
in its zeal to destroy every memory of
the Napoleons. Even Mile. 'Fifne
was doomed; a rope was fastened
about her white neck. But in this
torrid, lazy land all things are done
slowly, and the news of the design had
time to spread far and wide before the
statue could be moved.
1t was never moved. One morning
at sunrise the radical workmen enter
ing the Savanna were driven back by a
host of turbaned women, brandishing
axes, hatchets, cutlasses borrowed
from the plantations, knives snatched
from the market-staIls. All the pas
sionate affections, of the slave for the
mistress, ali the fierceness of African
devotion to Q fetch, thrilled in the
wrath of the crowd that barred the
way against the icOnoclasts and held
it fearlessly-tigerish and terrible. The
black radicals recoiled, abandoned
their purpose, and left .'Manzelle
'Fifne'' to smile and dream in peace.
Then the crowd cut the ropes away,
the women garlanded their idol with
flowers, wreathed jasmine blossoms
about her throat, heaped bouquets be-
fore her white feet. And she stands
unchanged in the heart Of the drowsy
town, in her circle of towering palms,
always smiling as in reverie, always
looking across the violet sea, through
the azure light, toward the green shad-
ows of silent Trois-Islets, where nobody
now ever goes.
ofn ~