It was a cool, crisp morning in December that they went away. In a ramshackle wagon, drawn by an ill-mated team, Arsène Pauché and his family left Mr. Mathurin’s plantation for their old familiar haunts on Little River. The grandmother, looking like a witch, with a black shawl tied over her head, sat upon a roll of bedding in the bottom of the wagon. Sauterelle’s bead-like eyes glittered with mischief as he peeped over the side. Azélie, with the pink sunbonnet completely hiding her round young face, sat beside her father, who drove.
’Polyte caught one glimpse of the group as they passed in the road. Turning, he hurried into his room, and locked himself in.
It soon became evident that ’Polyte’s services were going to count for little. He himself was the first to realize this. One day he approached the planter, and said: “Mr. Mathurin, befo’ we start anotha year togetha, I betta tell you I’m goin’ to quit.” ’Polyte stood upon the steps, and leaned back against the railing. The planter was a little above on the gallery.
“W’at in the name o’ sense are you talking about, ’Polyte!” he exclaimed in astonishment.
“It’s jus’ that; I’m boun’ to quit.”
“You had a better offer?”
“No; I ain’t had no offa.”
“Then explain yo’se’f, my frien’—explain yo’se’f,” requested Mr. Mathurin, with something of offended dignity. “If you leave me, w’ere are you going?”
’Polyte was beating his leg with his limp felt hat. “I reckon I jus’ as well go yonda on Li’le river—w’ere Azélie,” he said.
SOURCE: Kate Chopin. A Night in Acadie. Chicago: Way and Williams, 1897.
* * *
1. blue-points: a type of oyster from Blue Point, Long Island.
1. fanfaron: French for “swaggering.”
2. que voulez-vous?: French for “what do you want?”
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858–1932) was the first commercially successful African-American writer of fiction. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he grew up in North Carolina, became a teacher, married, and moved to New York City before returning to live in Cleveland, where he studied law. “Uncle Wellington’s Wives” is one of his fine and wry stories about the “Color Line,” a line that had consequential legal and social repercussions. That is, as this miniature novella unfolds, Uncle Wellington, living in a small town in North Carolina where he grew up, in the decade after the Civil War, yearns for something else, beyond his comfortable home with his impatient, hard-working wife.
Uncle Wellington’s Wives (1899)
1.
UNCLE WELLINGTON BRABOY was so deeply absorbed in thought as he walked slowly homeward from the weekly meeting of the Union League, that he let his pipe go out, a fact of which he remained oblivious until he had reached the little frame house in the suburbs of Patesville, where he lived with aunt Milly, his wife. On this particular occasion the club had been addressed by a visiting brother from the North, Professor Patterson, a tall, well-formed mulatto, who wore a perfectly fitting suit of broadcloth, a shiny silk hat, and linen of dazzling whiteness,—in short, a gentleman of such distinguished appearance that the doors and windows of the offices and stores on Front Street were filled with curious observers as he passed through that thoroughfare in the early part of the day. This polished stranger was a traveling organizer of Masonic lodges, but he also claimed to be a high officer in the Union League, and had been invited to lecture before the local chapter of that organization at Patesville.
The lecture had been largely attended, and uncle Wellington Braboy had occupied a seat just in front of the platform. The subject of the lecture was “The Mental, Moral, Physical, Political, Social, and Financial Improvement of the Negro Race in America,” a theme much dwelt upon, with slight variations, by colored orators. For to this struggling people, then as now, the problem of their uncertain present and their doubtful future was the chief concern of life. The period was the hopeful one. The Federal Government retained some vestige of authority in the South, and the newly emancipated race cherished the delusion that under the Constitution, that enduring rock on which our liberties are founded, and under the equal laws it purported to guarantee, they would enter upon the era of freedom and opportunity which their Northern friends had inaugurated with such solemn sanctions. The speaker pictured in eloquent language the state of ideal equality and happiness enjoyed by colored people at the North: how they sent their children to school with the white children; how they sat by white people in the churches and theatres, ate with them in the public restaurants, and buried their dead in the same cemeteries. The professor waxed eloquent with the development of his theme, and, as a finishing touch to an alluring picture, assured the excited audience that the intermarriage of the races was common, and that he himself had espoused a white woman.
Uncle Wellington Braboy was a deeply interested listener. He had heard something of these facts before, but his information had always come in such vague and questionable shape that he had paid little attention to it. He knew that the Yankees had freed the slaves, and that runaway negroes had always gone to the North to seek liberty; any such equality, however, as the visiting brother had depicted, was more than uncle Wellington had ever conceived as actually existing anywhere in the world. At first he felt inclined to doubt the truth of the speaker’s statements; but the cut of his clothes, the eloquence of his language, and the flowing length of his whiskers, were so far superior to anything uncle Wellington had ever met among the colored people of his native State, that he felt irresistibly impelled to the conviction that nothing less than the advantages claimed for the North by the visiting brother could have produced such an exquisite flower of civilization. Any lingering doubts uncle Wellington may have felt were entirely dispelled by the courtly bow and cordial grasp of the hand with which the visiting brother acknowledged the congratulations showered upon him by the audience at the close of his address.
The more uncle Wellington’s mind dwelt upon the professor’s speech, the more attractive seemed the picture of Northern life presented. Uncle Wellington possessed in large measure the imaginative faculty so freely bestowed by nature upon the race from which the darker half of his blood was drawn. He had indulged in occasional day-dreams of an ideal state of social equality, but his wildest flights of fancy had never located it nearer than heaven, and he had felt some misgivings about its practical working even there. Its desirability he had never doubted, and the speech of the evening before had given a local habitation and a name to the forms his imagination had bodied forth. Giving full rein to his fancy, he saw in the North a land flowing with milk and honey,—a land peopled by noble men and beautiful women, among whom colored men and women moved with the ease and grace of acknowledged right. Then he placed himself in the foreground of the picture. What a fine figure he would have made in the world if he had been born at the free North! He imagined himself dressed like the professor, and passing the contribution-box in a white church; and most pleasant of his dreams, and the hardest to realize as possible, was that of the gracious white lady he might have called wife. Uncle Wellington was a mulatto, and his features were those of his white father, though tinged with the hue of his mother’s race; and as he lifted the kerosene lamp at evening, and took a long look at his image in the little mirror over the mantelpiece, he said to himself that he was a very good-looking man, and could have adorned a much higher sphere in life than that in which the accident of birth had placed him. He fell asleep and dreamed that he lived in a two-story brick house, with a spacious flower garden in front, the whole inclosed by a high iron fence; that he kept a carriage and servants, and never did a stroke of work. This was the highest style of living in Patesville, and he could conceive of nothing finer.
Uncle Wellington slept later than usual the next morning, and the sunlight was pouring in at the open window of the bedroom, when his dreams were interrupted by the voice of his wife, in tones meant to be harsh, but which no ordinary degree of passion c
ould rob of their native unctuousness.
“Git up f’m dere, you lazy, good-fuh-nuffin’ nigger! Is you gwine ter sleep all de mawnin’? I ’s ti’ed er dis yer runnin’ ’roun’ all night an’ den sleepin’ all day. You won’t git dat tater patch hoed ovuh ter-day ’less’n you git up f’m dere an’ git at it.”
Uncle Wellington rolled over, yawned cavernously, stretched himself, and with a muttered protest got out of bed and put on his clothes. Aunt Milly had prepared a smoking breakfast of hominy and fried bacon, the odor of which was very grateful to his nostrils.
“Is breakfus’ done ready?” he inquired, tentatively, as he came into the kitchen and glanced at the table.
“No, it ain’t ready, an’ ’t ain’t gwine ter be ready ’tel you tote dat wood an’ water in,” replied aunt Milly severely, as she poured two teacups of boiling water on two tablespoonfuls of ground coffee.
Uncle Wellington went down to the spring and got a pail of water, after which he brought in some oak logs for the fireplace and some lightwood for kindling. Then he drew a chair towards the table and started to sit down.
“Wonduh what ’s de matter wid you dis mawnin’ anyhow,” remarked aunt Milly. “You must ’a’ be’n up ter some devilment las’ night, fer yo’ recommemb’ance is so po’ dat you fus’ fergit ter git up, an’ den fergit ter wash yo’ face an’ hands fo’ you set down ter de table. I don’ ’low nobody ter eat at my table dat a-way.”
“I don’ see no use ’n washin’ ’em so much,” replied Wellington wearily. “Dey gits dirty ag’in right off, an’ den you got ter wash ’em ovuh ag’in; it ’s jes’ pilin’ up wuk what don’ fetch in nuffin’. De dirt don’ show nohow, ’n’ I don’ see no advantage in bein’ black, ef you got to keep on washin’ yo’ face ’n’ han’s jes’ lack w’ite folks.” He nevertheless performed his ablutions in a perfunctory way, and resumed his seat at the breakfast-table.
“Ole ’oman,” he asked, after the edge of his appetite had been taken off, “how would you lack ter live at de Norf ?”
“I dunno nuffin’ ’bout de Norf,” replied aunt Milly. “It ’s hard ’nuff ter git erlong heah, whar we knows all erbout it.”
“De brother what ’dressed de meetin’ las’ night say dat de wages at de Norf is twicet ez big ez dey is heah.”
“You could make a sight mo’ wages heah ef you ’d ’ten’ ter yo’ wuk better,” replied aunt Milly.
Uncle Wellington ignored this personality, and continued, “An’ he say de cullud folks got all de privileges er de w’ite folks,—dat dey chillen goes ter school tergedder, dat dey sets on same seats in chu’ch, an’ sarves on jury, ’n’ rides on de kyars an’ steamboats wid de w’ite folks, an’ eats at de fus’ table.”
“Dat ’u’d suit you,” chuckled aunt Milly, “an’ you ’d stay dere fer de secon’ table, too. How dis man know ’bout all dis yer foolis’ness?” she asked incredulously.
“He come f’m de Norf,” said uncle Wellington, “an’ he ’speunced it all hisse’f.”
“Well, he can’t make me b’lieve it,” she rejoined, with a shake of her head.
“An’ you would n’ lack ter go up dere an’ ’joy all dese privileges?” asked uncle Wellington, with some degree of earnestness.
The old woman laughed until her sides shook. “Who gwine ter take me up dere?” she inquired.
“You got de money yo’se’f.”
“I ain’ got no money fer ter was’e,” she replied shortly, becoming serious at once; and with that the subject was dropped.
Uncle Wellington pulled a hoe from under the house, and took his way wearily to the potato patch. He did not feel like working, but aunt Milly was the undisputed head of the establishment, and he did not dare to openly neglect his work.
In fact, he regarded work at any time as a disagreeable necessity to be avoided as much as possible. His wife was cast in a different mould. Externally she would have impressed the casual observer as a neat, well-preserved, and good-looking black woman, of middle age, every curve of whose ample figure—and her figure was all curves—was suggestive of repose. So far from being indolent, or even deliberate in her movements, she was the most active and energetic woman in the town. She went through the physical exercises of a prayer-meeting with astonishing vigor. It was exhilarating to see her wash a shirt, and a study to watch her do it up. A quick jerk shook out the dampened garment; one pass of her ample palm spread it over the ironing-board, and a few well-directed strokes with the iron accomplished what would have occupied the ordinary laundress for half an hour.
To this uncommon, and in uncle Wellington’s opinion unnecessary and unnatural activity, his own habits were a steady protest. If aunt Milly had been willing to support him in idleness, he would have acquiesced without a murmur in her habits of industry. This she would not do, and, moreover, insisted on his working at least half the time. If she had invested the proceeds of her labor in rich food and fine clothing, he might have endured it better; but to her passion for work was added a most detestable thrift. She absolutely refused to pay for Wellington’s clothes, and required him to furnish a certain proportion of the family supplies. Her savings were carefully put by, and with them she had bought and paid for the modest cottage which she and her husband occupied. Under her careful hand it was always neat and clean; in summer the little yard was gay with bright-colored flowers, and woe to the heedless pickaninny who should stray into her yard and pluck a rose or a verbena! In a stout oaken chest under her bed she kept a capacious stocking, into which flowed a steady stream of fractional currency. She carried the key to this chest in her pocket, a proceeding regarded by uncle Wellington with no little disfavor. He was of the opinion—an opinion he would not have dared to assert in her presence—that his wife’s earnings were his own property; and he looked upon this stocking as a drunkard’s wife might regard the saloon which absorbed her husband’s wages.
Uncle Wellington hurried over the potato patch on the morning of the conversation above recorded, and as soon as he saw aunt Milly go away with a basket of clothes on her head, returned to the house, put on his coat, and went uptown.
He directed his steps to a small frame building fronting on the main street of the village, at a point where the street was intersected by one of the several creeks meandering through the town, cooling the air, providing numerous swimming-holes for the amphibious small boy, and furnishing water-power for grist-mills and saw-mills. The rear of the building rested on long brick pillars, built up from the bottom of the steep bank of the creek, while the front was level with the street. This was the office of Mr. Matthew Wright, the sole representative of the colored race at the bar of Chinquapin County. Mr. Wright came of an “old issue” free colored family, in which, though the negro blood was present in an attenuated strain, a line of free ancestry could be traced beyond the Revolutionary War. He had enjoyed exceptional opportunities, and enjoyed the distinction of being the first, and for a long time the only colored lawyer in North Carolina. His services were frequently called into requisition by impecunious people of his own race; when they had money they went to white lawyers, who, they shrewdly conjectured, would have more influence with judge or jury than a colored lawyer, however able.
Uncle Wellington found Mr. Wright in his office. Having inquired after the health of the lawyer’s family and all his relations in detail, uncle Wellington asked for a professional opinion.
“Mistah Wright, ef a man’s wife got money, whose money is dat befo’ de law—his’n er her’n?”
The lawyer put on his professional air, and replied:—
“Under the common law, which in default of special legislative enactment is the law of North Carolina, the personal property of the wife belongs to her husband.”
“But dat don’ jes’ tech de p’int, suh. I wuz axin’ ’bout money.”
“You see, uncle Wellington, your education has not rendered you familiar with legal phraseology. The term ‘personal property’ or ‘estate’ embraces, accordin
g to Blackstone, all property other than land, and therefore includes money. Any money a man’s wife has is his, constructively, and will be recognized as his actually, as soon as he can secure possession of it.”
“Dat is ter say, suh—my eddication don’ quite ’low me ter understan’ dat—dat is ter say—”
“That is to say, it’s yours when you get it. It is n’t yours so that the law will help you get it; but on the other hand, when you once lay your hands on it, it is yours so that the law won’t take it away from you.”
Uncle Wellington nodded to express his full comprehension of the law as expounded by Mr. Wright, but scratched his head in a way that expressed some disappointment. The law seemed to wobble. Instead of enabling him to stand up fearlessly and demand his own, it threw him back upon his own efforts; and the prospect of his being able to overpower or outwit aunt Milly by any ordinary means was very poor.
He did not leave the office, but hung around awhile as though there were something further he wished to speak about. Finally, after some discursive remarks about the crops and politics, he asked, in an offhand, disinterested manner, as though the thought had just occurred to him:—
“Mistah Wright, w’ile ’s we ’re talkin’ ’bout law matters, what do it cos’ ter git a defoce?”
“That depends upon circumstances. It is n’t altogether a matter of expense. Have you and aunt Milly been having trouble?”
“Oh no, suh; I was jes’ a-wond’rin’.”
“You see,” continued the lawyer, who was fond of talking, and had nothing else to do for the moment, “a divorce is not an easy thing to get in this State under any circumstances. It used to be the law that divorce could be granted only by special act of the legislature; and it is but recently that the subject has been relegated to the jurisdiction of the courts.”
Uncle Wellington understood a part of this, but the answer had not been exactly to the point in his mind.
The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II Page 32