Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 40

"None whatever; the King gives them to us to keep up our rank, sometimes as many as one hundred together, and we either turn them into wives, or make servants of them, as we please."

NOT A PARTICLE OF ROMANCE

The northeastern boundary of Uganda is formed by the waters of the lake whose name Sir Samuel Baker chose for the t.i.tle of one of his fascinating books on African travel, the _Albert N'yanza_. Baker was a keen observer and he had abundant experience on which to base the following conclusions (148):

"There is no such thing as love in these countries, the feeling is not understood, nor does it exist in the shape in which we understand it. Everything is practical, without a particle of romance. Women are so far appreciated as they are valuable animals. They grind the corn, fetch the water, gather firewood, cement the floors, cook the food, and propagate the race; but they are mere servants, and as such are valuable.... A savage holds to his cows and to his women, but especially to his cows. In a razzia fight he will seldom stand for the sake of his wives, but when he does fight it is to save his cattle."

The sentimentalist's heart will throb with a flutter of hope when he reads in the same book (240) that among the Latookas it is considered a disgrace to kill a woman in war. Have these men that respect for women which makes romantic love possible? Alas, no! They spare them because women are scarce and have a money value, a female being worth from five to ten cows, according to her age and appearance. It would therefore be a waste of money to kill them.

I may as well add here what Baker says elsewhere (_Ismailia_, 501) by way of explaining why there is no insanity in Central Africa: there are "no hearts to break with overwhelming love." Where coa.r.s.eness is bliss, 'twere folly to be refined.

NO LOVE AMONG NEGROES

Let us now cross Central Africa into the Congo region on the Western side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the Abyssinians, the Somali, and their neighbors.

In his book _Angola and the River Congo_ (133-34) Monteiro says that negroes show less tenderness and love than some animals:

"In all the long years I have been in Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for or to a negress.... I have never seen a negro put his arm round a woman's waist or give or receive any caress whatever that would indicate the slightest loving regard or affection on either side. They have no words or expressions in their language indicative of affection or love. Their pa.s.sion is purely of an animal description, unaccompanied by the least sympathetic affections of love or endearment."[145]

In other words, these negroes not only do not show any tenderness, affection, sympathy, in their s.e.xual relations, they are too coa.r.s.e even to appreciate the more subtle manifestations of sensual pa.s.sion which we call caresses. Jealousy, too, Monteiro says, hardly exists.

In case of adultery "the fine is generally a pig, and rum or other drink, with which a feast is celebrated by all parties. The woman is not punished in any way, nor does any disgrace attach to her conduct."

As a matter of course, where all these sentiments are lacking, admiration of personal beauty cannot exist.

"From their utter want of love and appreciation of female beauty or charms they are quite satisfied and content with any woman possessing even the greatest amount of hideous ugliness with which nature has so bountifully provided them."

A QUEER STORY

Thus we find the African mind differing from ours as widely as a picture seen directly with the eyes differs from one reflected in a concave mirror. This is vividly ill.u.s.trated by a quaint story recorded in the _Folk Tales of Angola_ (_Memoirs of Amer. Folk Lore Soc._, Vol.

I., 1804, 235-39), of which the following is a condensed version:

An elderly man had an only child, a daughter. This daughter, a number of men wanted her. But whenever a suitor came, her father demanded of him a living deer; and then they all gave up, saying, "The living deer, we cannot get it."

One day two men came, each asking for the daughter. The father answered as usual, "He who brings me the living deer; the same, I will give him my daughter."

The two men made up their minds to hunt for the living deer in the forest. They came across one and pursued it; but one of them soon got tired and said to himself: "That woman will destroy my life. Shall I suffer distress because of a woman? If I bring her home, if she dies, would I seek another? I will not run again to catch a living deer. I never saw it, that a girl was wooed with a living deer." And he gave up the chase.

The other man persevered and caught the deer. When he approached with it, his companion said, "Friend, the deer, didst thou catch it indeed?" Then the other: "I caught it. The girl delights me much. Rather I would sleep in forest, than to fail to catch it."

Then they returned to the father and brought him the deer. But the father called four old men, told them what had happened, and asked them to choose a son-in-law for him among the two hunters. Being questioned by the aged men, the successful hunter said: "My comrade pursued and gave up; I, your daughter charmed me much, even to the heart, and I pursued the deer till it gave in.... My comrade he came only to accompany me."

Then the other was asked why he gave up the chase, if he wanted the girl, and he replied: "I never saw that they wooed a girl with a deer.... When I saw the great running I said, 'No, that woman will cost my life.

Women are plentiful,' and I sat down to await my comrade."

Then the aged men: "Thou who gavest up catching the deer, thou art our son-in-law. This gentleman who caught the deer, he may go with it; he may eat it or he may sell it, for he is a man of great heart. If he wants to kill he kills at once; he does not listen to one who scolds him, or gives him advice. Our daughter, if we gave her to him, and she did wrong, when he would beat her he would not hear (one) who entreats for her.

We do not want him; let him go. This gentleman who gave up the deer, he is our son-in-law; because, our daughter, when she does wrong, when we come to pacify him, he will listen to us. Although he were in great anger, when he sees us, his anger will cease. He is our good son-in-law, whom we have chosen."

SUICIDES

According to Livingstone, in Angola suicide is sometimes committed by a girl if it is predicted to her that she will never have any children, which would be a great disgrace. A writer in the _Globus_ (Vol. 69, p. 358) sums up the observations of the medical missionary, G. Liengme, on suicides among the peoples of Africa. The most frequent cause is a family quarrel. Sometimes a girl commits suicide rather than marry a man whom she detests, "whereas on the other hand suicide from unhappy love seems to be unknown." In another number of the _Globus_ (70: 100), however, I find mention of a negro who killed himself because he could not get the girl he wanted. This, of course, does not of itself suffice to prove the existence of true love, for we know that l.u.s.t may be as maddening and as obstinate as love itself; moreover, as we shall see in the chapter on American Indians, suicide does not argue strong feelings, but a weak intellect. Savages are apt to kill themselves, as we shall see, on the slightest and most trivial provocation.

POETIC LOVE ON THE CONGO

In his entertaining book on the Congo, H.H. Johnston says (423) of the races living along the upper part of that river: "They are decidedly amorous in disposition, but there is a certain poetry in their feelings which enn.o.bles their love above the mere s.e.xual l.u.s.t of the negro." If this is true, it is one of the most important discoveries ever made by an African explorer, one on which we should expect the author to dwell at great length. What does he tell us about the Congo tribes? "The women," he says of the Ba-Kongo, "have little regard for their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the s.e.xes." These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a white man's mistress:

"Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy among themselves, they are far from displaying anything but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or in consideration of some small payment. Unmarried girls they are more chary of offering, as their value in the market is greater; but it may be truly said that among these people womanly chast.i.ty is unknown and a woman's honor is measured by the price she costs."

These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which enn.o.ble love. Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line, we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love. One day, the author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the sh.o.r.e of the Pool, where there was a family with two marriageable daughters. The father

"was most anxious I should become his son-in-law, 'moyennant' several 'longs' of cloth. Seeing my hesitation, he mistook it for scorn and hastened to point out the manifold charms of his girls, whilst these damsels waxed hotly indignant at my coldness.

Then another inspiration seized their father--perhaps I liked a maturer style of beauty, and his wife, by no means an uncomely person, was dragged forward while her husband explained with the most expressive gestures, putting his outspread hands before his eyes and affecting to look another way, that, again with the simple intermediary of a little cloth, he would remain perfectly unconscious of whatever amatory pa.s.sages might occur between us."

Evidently the poetry of love had not drifted down as far as the Pool.

Let us therefore see what Johnston has to say of the Upper Congo (423):

"Husbands are fond of their own wives, _as well as of those of other people_." "Marriage is _a mere question of purchase_, and is attended by no rejoicings or special ceremony. A man procures _as many wives as possible_, partly because they labor for him and also because soon after one wife becomes with child _she leaves him for two or three years_ until her baby is weaned." Apart from these facts Johnston gives us no hint as to what he understands by affection except what the following sentence allows us to infer (429):

"The attachment between these dogs and their African masters is deep and fully reciprocated. They are _considered very dainty eating_ by the natives, and are indeed such a luxury that by an unwritten law only _the superior s.e.x_--the men--are allowed to partake of roasted dog."

The amusing italics are mine.

If Johnston really found traces of poetic, enn.o.bling love in this region, surely so startling a novelty in West Africa would have called for a full "bill of particulars," which would have been of infinitely greater scientific value than the details he gives regarding unchast.i.ty, infidelity, commercialism, separation from wives and contempt for women, which are so common throughout the continent as to call for no special notice. Evidently his ideas regarding "poetic love" were as hazy as those of some other writers quoted in this chapter, and we have once more been led on by the mirage of a "false fact."[146]

In 1891 the Swedish explorer Westermarck published a book describing his adventures among the cannibal tribes of the Upper Congo. I have not seen the book, but the Rev. James Johnston, in summing up its contents, says (193):

"A man can sell wife and children according to his own depraved pleasure. Women are the slave drudges, the men spending their hours in eating, drinking, and sleeping.

Cannibalism in its worst features prevails. Young women are prized as special delicacies, particularly girls'

ears prepared in palm oil, and, in order to make the flesh more palatable, the luckless victims are kept in water up to their necks for three or four days before they are slaughtered and served as food."

BLACK LOVE IN KAMERUN

From the banks of the Congo to Kamerun is not a very far cry as distances go in Africa. Kamerun is under the German flag, and a German writer, Hugo Zoller, has described life in that colony with the eyes of a shrewd observer. What he says about the negro's capacity for love shows deep psychological insight (III., 68-70):

"Europeans residing in Africa who have married a negro woman declare unanimously that there is no such thing there as love and fidelity in the European sense. It happens with infinitely greater frequency that a European falls in love with his black companion than she with him; or rather the latter does not happen at all. A hundred times I have listened to discussions of this topic in many different places, but I have never heard of a single case of a genuine full-blooded negress falling in love with a white man.... The stupidest European peasant girl is, in comparison with an African princess, still an ideally endowed being."

Zoller adds that in all his African experiences he never found a negress of whom he should have been willing to a.s.sume that she would sacrifice herself for a man she was attached to. On another page he says:

"A negro woman does not fall in love in the same sense as a European, not even as the least civilized peasant girl. Love, in our sense of the word, is a product of our culture belonging to a higher stage in the development of latent faculties than the negro race has reached. Not only is the negro a stranger to the diverse intellectual and sentimental qualities which we denote by the name of love: nay, even in a purely bodily sense it may be a.s.serted that his nervous system is not only less sensitive, but less well-developed.

The negro loves as he eats and drinks.... And just as little as a black epicure have I ever been able to discover a negro who could rise to the imaginative phases of amorous dalliance. A negro ... may buy dozens upon dozens of wives without ever being drawn by an overpowering feeling to any one of them. Love is, among the blacks, as much a matter of money as the palm oil or ivory trade. The black man buys his wife when she is still a child; when she reaches the age at which our maidens go to their first ball, her nervous system, which never was particularly sensitive anyway, is completely blunted, so that she takes it as a matter of course to be sold again and again as a piece of property. One hears often enough of a 'woman palaver,'

which is regarded exactly like a 'goat palaver,' as a damage to property, but one never, positively never, hears of a love-affair. The negress never has a sweetheart, either in her youngest days or after her so-called marriage. She is regarded, and regards herself, as a piece of property and a beast of burden."

A SLAVE COAST LOVE-STORY