Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 43

"The subjects are frequently pastoral; the lover, for instance, invites his mistress to walk with him toward the well in Lahelo, the Arcadia of the land; he compares her legs to the tall, straight Libi tree, and imprecates the direst curses on her head if she refuses to drink with him the milk of his favorite camel."

ARABIC INFLUENCES

The Harari, neighbors of the Somals, are another people among whom Paulitschke fancied that he discovered signs of idealized love (_B.E.A.S._, 70). Their youthful attachments, he says, are intense and n.o.ble, and in proof of this he translates two of their poems on the beauty of a bride.

I. "I tell thee this only: thy face is like silk, Aisa; I say it again, I tell thee nothing but that. Thou art slender as a lance-shaft; thy father and thy mother are Arabs; they all are Arabs; I tell thee this only."

II. "Thy form is like a burning lamp, Aisa; I love thee. When thou art at the side of Abrahim, thou burnest him with the light of thy beauty. To-morrow I shall see thee again."

In a third (freely translated and printed in the appendix of the same volume) occur these lines:

"The honey is already taken out and I come with it. The milk is already drawn and I bring it. And now thou art the pure honey, and now thou art the fresh milk. The gathered honey is very sweet, and therefore it was drunk to thy health. Thine eyes are black, dyed with Kahul. The fresh milk is very sweet and therefore it was drunk to thy health. I have seen Sina--oh, how sweet was Sina.... Thine eyes are like the full moon, and thy body is fragrant as the fragrance of rose-water. And she lives in the garden of her father and the garments on her body become fragrant as basil.... And thou art like a king's garden in which all perfumes are united."

It is easy to note Arabic influences in these poems. The Harari are largely Arabic; their very language is being absorbed in the Arabic; yet I cannot find in these poems the least evidence of amorous idealism or "n.o.ble" sentiment. To have a lover compare a girl's face to silk, her form to a lance-shaft or a burning lamp, her eyes to the full moon, may be an imaginative sort of sensualism, but it is purely sensual nevertheless. If an American lover told a girl, "I bought some delicious candy and ate it, thinking of you; I ordered a gla.s.s of sweet soda-water and drank it to your health"--would she regard that as evidence of "n.o.ble" love, or of any kind of love at all, except a kind of cupboard love?

No, not even here, where Arabian influences prevail, do we come across the germs of true love. It is the same all over Africa. Nowhere do we find indications that men admire other things in women except, at most, voluptuous eyes and plump figures; nowhere do the men perform unselfish acts of gallantry and self-sacrifice; nowhere exhibit sympathy with their females, who, far from being G.o.ddesses, are not even companions, but simply drudges and slaves to l.u.s.t. A whole volume would be required to demonstrate that this holds true of all parts of Africa; but the present chapter is already too long and I must close with a brief reference to the Berbers of Algeria (Kabyles) to show that at the northern extremity of Africa, as at the southern, the eastern, the western, love spells l.u.s.t. Here, too, man is lower than animals. Camille Sabatier, who was a justice of the peace at Tizi-Ouzan, speaks[150] of "_la brutalite du male qui, souvent meme chez les Kabyles, n'attend pas la nubilite pour deflorer la jeune enfant._" The girls, he adds,

"detest their husbands with all their heart. Love is almost always unknown to them--I mean by love that ensemble of refined sentiments, which, among civilized peoples, enn.o.ble the s.e.xual appet.i.te."

TOUAREG CHIVALRY

A guileless reader of Chavanne's book on the Sahara is apt to get the impression that there is, after all, an oasis in the desert of African lovelessness and contempt for women. Touareg women, we are told therein (208-10), are allowed to dispose of their hands and to eat with the men, certain dishes being reserved for them, others (including tea and coffee) for the men. In the evening the women a.s.semble and improvise songs while the men sit around in their best attire. The women write mottoes on the men's shields, and the men carve their chosen one's name in the rocks and sing her praises. The situation has been compared to mediaeval chivalry. But when we examine it more critically than the bia.s.sed Chavanne did, we find, using his own data, more of Africa than appeared to be there at first sight. The woman, we are informed, owes the husband obedience, and he can divorce her at pleasure. When a woman talks to a man she veils her face "as a sign of respect." And when the men travel, they are accompanied by those of their female slaves who are young and pretty. Their morals are farther characterized by the fact that descent is in the female line, which is usually due to uncertain paternity. The women are ugly and masculine, and Chavanne does not mention a single fact or act which proves that they experience supersensual, altruistic love.

So far as the position of Touareg women is superior to that of other Africans, it is due to the fact that slaves are kept to do the hard work and to certain European and Christian influences and the inst.i.tution of theoretical monogamy. Possibly the germs of a better sort of love may exist among them, as they may among the Bedouins; they must make a beginning somewhere.

AN AFRICAN LOVE-LETTER

T.J. Hutchinson declares that the gentle G.o.d of love is unknown in the majority of African kingdoms: "It in fact seems to be crawling into life only in one or two places where our language is the established one." He prints a quaint love-letter addressed by a Liberian native to his colored sweetheart. The substance of the letter, it is true, is purely egotistic; it might be summed up in the words, "Oh, how I wish you were here to make me happy." Yet it opens up vistas of future possibilities. I cite it verbatim:

"My Dear Miss,--I take my pen in hand to Embrac you of my health, I was very sick this morning but know I am better but I hope it may find you in a state of Enjoying good health and so is your Relation. Oh my dear Miss what would I give if I could see thy lovely Face this precious minnit O miss you had promis me to tell me something, and I like you to let you know I am very anxious to know what it is give my Respect to the young mens But to the young ladys especially O I am long to see you O miss if I don't see you shortly surely I must die I shut my mouth to hold my breath Miss don't you cry O my little pretty turtle dove I wont you to write to me, shall I go Bound or shall I go free or shall I love a pretty girl a she don't love me give my Respect all enquiring Friend Truly Your respectfully,

"J----H----

"Nothing more to say O miss."

ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN LOVE

The founders of the Australian race, Curr believes, were Africans, and may have arrived in one canoe. The distance from Africa to Australia is, however, great, and there are innumerable details of structure, color, custom, myth, implements, language, etc., which have led the latest authorities to conclude that the Australian race was formed gradually by a mixture of Papuans, Malayans, and Dravidians of Central India.[151] Topinard has given reasons for believing that there are two distinct races in Australia. However that may be, there are certainly great differences in the customs of the natives. As regards the relations of the s.e.xes, luckily, these differences are not so great as in some other respects, wherefore it is possible to give a tolerably accurate bird's-eye view of the Australians as a whole from this point of view.

PERSONAL CHARMS OF AUSTRALIANS

Once in awhile, in the narrative of those who have travelled or sojourned among Australians, one comes across a reference to the symmetrical form, soft skin, red lips, and white teeth of a young Australian girl. Mitch.e.l.l in his wanderings saw several girls with beautiful features and figures. Of one of these, who seemed to be the most influential person in camp, he says (I., 266):

"She was now all animation, and her finely shaped mouth, beautiful teeth, and well-formed person appeared to great advantage as she hung over us both, addressing me vehemently,"

etc. Of two other girls the same writer says (II., 93):

"The youngest was the handsomest female I had ever seen amongst the natives. She was so far from black that the red color was very apparent in her cheeks. She sat before me in a corner of the group, nearly in the att.i.tude of Mr. Bailey's fine statue of Eve at the fountain, and apparently equally unconscious that she was naked. As I looked upon her for a moment, while deeply regretting the fate of her mother, the chief, who stood by, and whose hand had been more than once laid upon my cap, as if to feel whether it were proof against the blow of a waddy, begged me to accept of her in exchange for a tomahawk!"

Eyre, another famous early traveller, writes on this topic (II., 207-208):

"Occasionally, though rarely, I have met with females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men. When young, however, they are not uninteresting. The jet black eyes, shaded by their long dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely formed features of incipient womanhood give a soft and pleasing expression to a countenance that might often be called good-looking--occasionally pretty."

"Occasionally, though rarely," and then only for a few years, is an Australian woman attractive from _our_ point of view. As a rule she is very much the reverse--dirty, thin-limbed, course-featured, ungainly in every way;[152] and Eyre tells us why this is so. The extremities of the women, he says, are more attenuated than those of the men; probably because "like most other savages, the Australian looks upon his wife as a slave," makes her undergo great privations and do all the hard work, such as bringing in wood and water, tending the children, carrying all the movable property while on the march, _often even her husband's weapons_:

"In wet weather she attends to all the outside work, whilst her lord and master is snugly seated at the fire. If there is a scarcity of food, she has to endure the pangs of hunger, often, perhaps, in addition to ill-treatment and abuse. No wonder, then, that the females, and especially the younger ones (for it is then they are exposed to the greatest hardships), are not so fully or so roundly developed in person as the men."

The rule that races admire those personal characteristics which climate and circ.u.mstances have impressed on them is not borne out among Australians. An arid soil and a desiccating climate make them thin as a race, but they do not admire thinness. "Long-legged,"

"thin-legged," are favorite terms of abuse among them, and Grey once heard a native sing scornfully

Oh, what a leg,

You kangaroo-footed churl!

Nor is it beauty, in our sense of the word, that attracts them, but fat, as in Africa and the Orient. I have previously quoted Brough Smyth's a.s.sertion that an Australian woman, however old and ugly, is in constant danger of being stolen if she is fat. That women have the same standard of "taste," appears from the statement of H.E.A. Meyer (189), that the princ.i.p.al reason why the men anoint themselves with grease and ochre is that it makes them look fat and "gives them an air of importance in the eyes of the women, for they admire a fat man however ugly." But whereas these men admire a fat woman for sensual reasons, the women's preference is based on utilitarian motives. Low as their reasoning powers are, they are shrewd enough to reflect that a man who is in good condition proves thereby that he is "somebody"--that he can hunt and will be able to bring home some meat for his wife too. This interpretation is borne out by what was said on a previous page (278) about one of the reasons why corpulence is valued in Fiji, and also by an amusing incident related by the eminent Australian explorer George Grey (II., 93). He had reproached his native guide with not knowing anything, when the guide replied:

"I know nothing! I know how to keep myself fat; the young women look at me and say, 'Imbat is very handsome, he is fat'--they will look at you and say, 'He not good--long legs--what do you know? Where is your fat? What for do you know so much, if you can't keep fat?"

CRUEL TREATMENT OF WOMEN

Eyre was no doubt right in his suggestion that the inferiority of Australian women to the men in personal appearance was due to the privations and hardships to which the women were subjected. Much as the men admire fat in a woman, they are either too ignorant, or too selfish otherwise, to allow them to grow fat in idleness. Women in Australia never exist for their own sake but solely for the convenience of the men. "The man," says the Rev. H.E.A. Meyer (11), "regarding them more as slaves than in any other light, employs them in every possible way to his own advantage." "The wives were the absolute property of the husband," says the Rev. G. Taplin (XVII. to x.x.xVII.),

"and were given away, exchanged, or lent, as their owners saw fit." "The poor creatures ... are always seen to a disadvantage, being ... the slaves of their husbands and of the tribes." "The women in all cases came badly off when they depended upon what the men of the tribes chose to give them."

"The woman is an absolute slave. She is treated with the greatest cruelty and indignity, has to do all laborious work, and to carry all the burthens. For the slightest offence or dereliction of duty, she is beaten with a waddy or a yam-stick, and not unfrequently speared. The records of the Supreme Court in Adelaide furnish numberless instances of blacks being tried for murdering their lubras. The woman's life is of no account if her husband chooses to destroy it, and no one ever attempts to protect or take her part under any circ.u.mstances. In times of scarcity of food, she is the last to be fed and the last considered in any way. That many of them die in consequence cannot be a matter of wonder.... The condition of the women has no influence over their treatment, and a pregnant female is dealt with and is expected to do as much as if she were in perfect health.... The condition of the native women is wretched and miserable in the extreme; in fact, in no savage nation of which there is any record can it be any worse."

And again (p. 72):

"The men think nothing of thrashing their wives, knocking them on the head, and inflicting frightful gashes; but they never beat the boys. And the sons treat their mothers very badly. Very often mere lads will not hesitate to strike and throw stones at them."

"Women," says Eyre (322), "are frequently beaten about the head with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences."

There is hardly one, he says, that has not some frightful scars on the body; and he saw one who "appeared to have been almost riddled with spear-wounds." "Does a native meet a woman in the woods and violate her, he is not the one to feel the vengeance of the husband, but the poor victim whom he has abused" (387). "Women surprised by strange blacks are always abused and often ma.s.sacred" (Curr, I., 108). "A black hates intensely those of his own race with whom he is unacquainted, always excepting the females. To one of these he will become attached if he succeeds in carrying one off; otherwise he will kill the women out of mere savageness and hatred of their husbands" (80). "Whenever they can, blacks in their wild state never neglect to ma.s.sacre all male strangers who fall into their power. Females are ravished, and often slain afterward if they cannot be conveniently carried off."

The natives of Victoria "often break to pieces their six-feet-long sticks on the heads of the women" (Waitz, VI., 775). "In the case of a man killing his own gin [wife], he has to deliver up one of his own sisters for his late wife's friends to put to death" (W.E. Roth, 141).

After a war, when peace is patched up, it sometimes happens that "the weaker party give some nets and women to make matters up" (Curr, II., 477). In the same volume (331) we find a realistic picture of masculine selfishness at home:

"When the mosquitoes are bad, the men construct with forked sticks driven into the ground rude bedsteads, on which they sleep, a fire being made underneath to keep off with its smoke the troublesome insects. No bedsteads, however, fall to the share of the women, whose business it is to keep the fires burning whilst their lords sleep."

Concerning woman in the lower Murray tribes, Bulmer says[153] that "on the journey her lord would coolly walk along with merely his war implements, weighing only a few pounds, while his wife was carrying perhaps sixty pounds."