These were some of the sayings amongst the crowd, and from the manner in which they expressed themselves it is to be feared, that even in this enlightened age, the lower orders amongst us believe in witchcraft, and that they particularly believed all that had been said of this mysterious witch.
The explanation of this is, that certain individuals of both sexes are called, —generally behind their backs, —Hags. All Obeah men of repute are able to do all that the ordinary hag can; and more, no small part of their business,—among such as sell their services,—is that of insuring their patients against all sorts of evil which they may have reason to fear might be brought upon them by hags. But for a person to be called a hag does not therefore, necessarily imply that he or she is an Obeah practitioner or vice versa, for the power is one that is distinctly non-corporeal, and can only come in to action when the gross body is quiescent or as a matter of fact, dead, for the time being. This it will be seen amounts to something wanting which a person might be perfectly capable of performing any or all of the feats related in the previous chapters. ‘Hagging,’ as it is called, besides being an acquirable faculty, is in many families known to be an hereditary one.
To be a ‘hag’ is to have the power to ‘change the skin’ at will; and changing the skin is the vernacular phrase, in common local use in the English-speaking islands, for projecting the ‘Double.’ This operation is usually, but only as a matter of convenience and not of necessity, performed after night-fall, and always preferably in a cool, silent and unfrequented place. The performer usually finds it best first to strip quite naked, and having disposed of the person in a comfortable position, to recite or sing a song, at the conclusion of which the skin is changed, or in other words, the body left soulless and senseless, and ‘the Double’ free. The ‘skin being changed,’ the normal form of the skinless hag, when visible, is in appearance compared to an eggshaped mass of faint light or fire. Those that have come under my own observation agree exactly in appearance, with descriptions I have heard (and they are many) and all compare these eggshaped masses of faint greenish light, with the phosph-orescence of decaying fish, or rotting wood as seen in the dark. This luminosity is further to be described as forming a kind of envelop of semi-transparent mist, through which, if near enough one can recognize the features and form of the hag, the size being apparently somewhat less than that of the same individual in his or her ordinary corporeal form or personality, however, in daylight as a rule, there is no specific difference to be observed from the ordinary every-day appearance. The skin having been laid aside, the skinless hag can become invisible at will, or assumes the size and shape of any person or thing desired, and is also able to move through the air, and pass through walls, or even millstones not to mention keyholes, and all sorts of other impedimenta without difficulty. …
The most dreaded Hags are females, and generally old crones, and other folks entertain against them similar opinions and fears to those which were current in Europe in past times against witches; but the ‘Cantrips’ they are the most dreaded for, are such as they are accused of performing unseen, ie., in the ‘double’. And the ‘Cantrips’ about to be referred to are exclusively those against which the Obeahman’s reputed checking capabilities are invoked.
These are—(a) Entering people’s houses at night invisibly when the inmates are asleep, or sending asleep any they find awake, by breathing on them (this is a device ascribed to Hags in general), and then sucking their blood, - generally that of young children; and (b) ‘Drawing the Shadow’ of young children.
(a) Blood-sucking or Vampirism is quite well proven, insomuch as blood is sometimes, but not commonly, sucked; and traces of it found on the bed clothes and floors; but, there is nothing to show that it is done by Hags, or by any human agency at all. On the other hand there is more than a strong presumption, that whenever blood-sucking is done, it is done by Vampire Bats. As yet, therefore, that accusation against the Hags is nothing more than a ‘superstitious belief.’ Nor from another point of view is this human blood-sucking by living individuals any sort of probability, because, if an individual having the faculty from which Hags derive their title, wished to sap or assimilate the strength of another, it is hardly likely that actual sucking of the blood would be the mode resorted to.
(b) ‘Drawing the Shadow,’ sounds like the quaint echo of some old world devilment. It means in the way under consideration abstracting the ‘shadow’ (or ‘double’). The believers in this alleged performance assert that when an old woman Hag wishes to hurt one, or both, of a couple, she may have an enmity against, she chooses as the most vulnerable point the last born baby; and usually before the child is a year old, the attacks made by some procedure (the description of which the said believers are never able to give) the Hag is said to abstract its ‘shadow’ with the reported result that the child ‘pines away’ refuses sustenance, and soon dies. They also allege that if the Hag be known, and can be propitiated, she can by dandling and kissing the child, restore its ‘shadow’ whereupon it rapidly recovers. As a matter of fact, there is no method of doing such a thing within the knowledge or in any way at the disposal of such persons as Hags, so this accusation must be relegated along with the former one into the limbo of superstitions. Both in all probability are but fraudulent devices of the cunning imposters who frequently prey upon the ignorant under the guise of Obeah Doctors. These ‘Doctors’ make the supposed prevention or insurance against Hagging one of the main departments of their profession. Parents take their children to the ‘Doctors’ to be ‘washed,’ so that thereafter no Hagging or other Obeah practice can affect them – a sort of ‘devil’s baptism’ to defend the child from the powers of his fellows, while proving no barrier against the officiating ‘Doctor’s’ own powers. The unholy water made use of on these occasions, are decoctions of various plants and roots, the ingredients of which differ with nearly every ‘Doctor’, but they always include one which gives a red colouring matter to the liquid. Need it be pointed out, that if any real, instead of imaginary attacks were to be frustrated, such a ceremony would or could be of no possible effect one way or the other. (pp. 38-41)
Extract from Hesketh. J. Bell, Obeah: Witchcraft in the West Indies (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1889).
Notwithstanding the evident desire to improve themselves, so con-spicuous in the lower classes of the inhabitants of the West Indies, and the eager imitation of anything, good or bad, affected by the ‘Béké,’ as they call the whites, it has been nevertheless averred that were the upper and educated classes to abandon the islands, five years would not have elapsed before every Quashie left would have as speedily divested himself of the name and attributes of a Christian as of the clothes he had hitherto worn, and would be found dancing in the most primitive state round a fire in the high woods and virgin forests. This is possibly an exaggeration, and, let us hope, most improbable; yet in the days of slavery, the Africans imported as slaves, though in general most amenable to civilization, and apparently eager to learn all they could and to profit by the lessons taught them, nevertheless only persevered in the forms of life encouraged by their masters so long as they found it to their advantage, and secretly preferred the old bush life of their African childhood.
St. Vincent, one of the Windward Islands, was one of the last to be colonized, and in the last century was a thorn in the sides of the neigh-bouring colonies. Runaway slaves from the adjacent islands would escape thither, and, notwithstanding all they had seen of civilization while in captivity, would return with glee to their old wild life of freedom in the woods. I will certainly not say that, while in the bonds of slavery, they were in a favourable position to observe and value the attendant benefits of civilization, but on the other hand any one can see, by reading old works on the West Indies, written a century ago during the time of slavery, that, apart from some instances where owners abused their power over their fellow-creatures, the state of the negro slaves on a plantation was very little worse than the c
ondition of the labouring classes of today. The comparison is especially favourable to the state of slavery in the case of an island like Barbados, where peasant proprietorship is comparatively very rare, and at the present time the low and unremunerative price of the staple produce, sugar, renders life extremely hard and painful to the teeming population of that colony.
Old authors, such as Père Labat, Bryan Edwards, Rochefort, Du Tertre, Oveido and others, writing on the West Indies, describe the habits and condition of the African slaves on the estates and, as I said before, barring instances where brutal planters were guilty of abusing their power over their slaves, it will be seen that the life of the negro was almost exactly similar to that of the black labourer of the present day. Heaven forbid that I should for one moment seem to defend the unholy cause of slavery, or depreciate the blessings of freedom; but still, any one residing in the West Indies who has taken the trouble to question the negroes still living, who were born and worked as slaves fifty years ago, will hear from their lips that slavery was not such a horror to them after all, and that if they were occasionally flogged for laziness or theft, they were generally otherwise well treated; and as poor, childless old black people will often say, ‘Ah, me massa, if we da been slave now, we no been left to starve like this.’ The old slaves on plantations were generally well looked after and frequently kindly treated by their masters and mistresses.
It must accordingly be confessed that Wilberforce and others, in their noble efforts to procure the freedom of their fellow-creatures, carried away by their enthusiasm, must often unwittingly have been led to exaggerate the horrors of slavery. It is strange to note that, although by far the majority of West Indians have so distinctly profited by the untiring efforts and unflagging zeal of William Wilberforce, yet not a stone nor monument exists at the present moment in the West Indies, to bear witness to the love and gratitude owing to the memory of their great benefactor.
Most stringent laws were enacted to restrict the power of slave-owners and protect the negroes from a brutal master. The provisions of some of these ordinances were so exhaustive, that the slaves must, in most cases, have been effectually protected from the unwarrantable powers of their masters, and any complaint of cruelty on the part of their owners towards them was bound to be heard and investigated. Although some instances are, unfortunately, proved to have occurred where slaves died under the lash, yet the laws of the period distinctly enacted that a planter or any one else guilty of the murder of a slave would pay the same penalty as exacted in the case of the murder of a free man. Any person convicted of cruelly beating a slave was punished by fine and imprisonment. It must be remembered that a slave was valuable property, frequently worth fifty to a hundred pounds sterling, which value would be materially affected by the condition of the man or woman, and it is about as probable that, for the sake of gratifying a thirst for blood, a planter would deliberately torture his slave to death, as that a farmer of the present day would cut down a valuable horse or other animal for the pleasure of the thing.
There will, no doubt, be a great difference between the lower classes of the present generation and the population of these islands twenty years hence. The present masses are still mostly very ignorant, and though generally apt to disregard the laws of meum and tuum, are yet a most law-abiding and peaceable race, and indeed, in that respect as well as many others, would compare very favourably with the lower classes of any nation in Europe. (pp. 48-52)
Appendix D - Review of The Blood of the Vampire
Unsigned review, Speaker, 17, Jan. 1, 1898, pp. 29-30.
Mr. Bram Stoker has much to answer for. Perhaps, however, when he published his remarkable vampire-story “Dracula,” he failed to foresee the inevitable consequences which its appearance would entail upon readers and critics of contemporary fiction, in the shape of a swarm of ill-conceived and ill-executed imitations by inferior writers. Yet those consequences have, alas! followed only too speedily, and those who were genuinely thrilled and absorbingly interested by the weird fascinations of “Dracula,” have since been compelled to own themselves frankly bored by the ubiquitous vampire thrust so perseveringly upon their notice by certain minor novelists. And now here is the indefatigable Miss Florence Marryat off upon the well-worn trail, and trying hard to be fashionably “creepy” in the verbose pages of her latest novel “The Blood of the Vampire”! Is it necessary to add that she has not succeeded in that ambitious attempt? Miss Marryat is an experienced novelist, who, despite very manifest failings of taste and style, has shown herself the possessor of a certain rough energy and vivacity that have generally made her stories readable, at least, if inartistic and exaggerated: but she never has shown, nor does she show in “The Blood of the Vampire,” any trace of the special qualities requisite to such a task as she has here undertaken. The book is a mistake, and we cannot pretend to treat it as a successful experiment. Miss Marryat’s fatal lack of refinement in style, her love of florid colouring, and her heavy-handed humour combine to rob the story of those elements of tragedy at which it obviously aims. Truth to tell, this vampire is no more terrifying to grown-up minds than would be the turnip-bogey of our childhood, for they resemble each other in artless construction and transparent trickery. The said vampire is no other than the heroine of the story, Miss Harriet Brandt, an orphan heiress from the West Indies, whose acquaintance the reader makes in the opening chapter. The scene is laid at a small Belgian watering-place, and Miss Brandt’s abnormal cravings first display themselves at the table d’hôte of the “Lion d’Or,” where she devours her food with most unladylike gusto. Our suspicions of her true nature are instantly aroused when we read that this beautiful but greedy young woman has “lips of a deep blood colour”; and her subsequent behaviour amply justifies the conjecture, for she proceeds to cause the death of another guest’s baby, draining the infant of its vitality, by some mysterious process, as she dandles it constantly in her arms. At the same time she is engaged in the much more commonplace feat of stealing the affections of another girl’s betrothed lover, with whom, indeed, she “carries on” to the very verge of impropriety. At this point, however, a medical man intervenes to save Captain Pullen from the fate that threatens him by informing him of the vampire’s origin and hereditary characteristics. Miss Brandt, baulked of her desire in one quarter, begins to seek its gratification in another, and soon finds a willing victim in Captain Pullen’s cousin, Anthony Pennell. This gentleman, although as a journalist he really ought to have been more wary in his dealings with a creature of whose species he must have read so much, takes the risks of the uncanny alliance with the vampire quite readily – and, of course, soon has to pay the customary penalty. We ought, perhaps, to explain that Miss Marryat’s Vampire, unlike Mark Twain’s Jumping Frog, has points which differentiate it from others of its kind. Harriet Brandt is herself a victim of heredity, exercising her fatal gifts un-consciously and instinctively, rather than of malice prepense. The illegitimate daughter of a barbarous, vivisecting man of science and of a voluptuous Creole slave, she is scarcely likely to attain any high degree of moral perfection. One fancies that she might, even then, have passed very well as a mere average specimen of vulgarity and ill-bred forwardness, judging by her demeanour in this book, which represents her as a particularly coarse-natured minx, rather than the incarnation of tragic Fate. But heredity is a magnificent word, and the novelist is undoubtedly entitled to make capital out of it. Unfortunately, this is what Miss Florence Marryat has failed to do, and instead of being, as it is intended to be, appalling and blood-curdling, “The Blood of the Vampire” produces an impression of tediousness and disagreeable sensationalism.
Explanatory notes
[1] Harry Furniss, Some Victorian Women: Good, Bad and Indifferent (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd, 1923), p. 11.
[2] Furniss, Women, p. 10.
[3] This collaborative work has recently been reprinted – see The Fate of Fenella, ed. by Andrew Maunder (Kansas City: Valancourt Books, 2008).
[4] Please see ‘Suggestions for further reading’ for more information on critical responses to this novel and Appendix D for the Speaker review.
[5] Unsigned obituary, Academy 57 (1899: July/Dec) p. 519.
[6] Unsigned obituary, The New York Times 28 October 1899, p 13.
[7] Frederick Dolman, ‘Miss Florence Marryat at Home’, Myra’s Journal: The Lady’s Monthly Magazine vol XVII, no. 5, (1891), pp. 1-2.
[8] Dolman, ‘Marryat’, Myra’s Journal: The Lady’s Monthly Magazine vol XVII, no. 5, (1891), pp. 1-2.
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