Black Man on the Titanic by Serge Bile

Author:Serge Bile [Bilé, Serge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633539594
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2019-10-26T09:31:36+00:00

Saint Vincent de Paul, by unknown artist. Published in Magasin Pittoresque, Paris, 1840.

Saint Vincent de Paul.

Portrait and autograph by French poet Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand. Illustration from Niva magazine, publishing house A.F. Marx, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1913.

On Fridays, the “elders” also tended to the poor during visits with the brothers of Saint-Vincent de Paul. Those brothers had been active in Beauvais since 1629, when their founder Vincent de Paul himself came to establish “charity brotherhoods” in the parishes at the request of the bishop, who was dealing with generalized begging. Institution du Saint-Esprit considered the weekly participation of its students in this unique program a way to “maintain their piety.” The school believed that charity began with the poor.

The picture of a young Haitian sent every week to the bedside of destitute Frenchmen could seem paradoxical today considering the situation in Port-au-Prince in the 2010s. But, at the time, Joseph Laroche’s presence did not surprise anyone. He was not different from the others: he was a “rich kid.” As for Joseph, seeing these poor people was in sharp contrast with the beautiful idea he had of France—the rich and prosperous nation portrayed by his uncle, Nemours Auguste, and all those who’d come back from Paris. That poor people could exist in this country as well was a true revelation for the young Haitian.

The real paradox, in fact, lay somewhere else. The dedication of the students to the poor was not only meant to maintain their piety; it also allowed them to take part in the work of the brothers of Saint-Vincent de Paul, whose goal was the “evangelization of the working-class people.”

In other words, every Friday, when Joseph Laroche visited with his schoolmates the indigents of Beauvais, he really was putting himself in a missionary’s shoes.

This role reversal escaped him at the time, but it was a little as if the word “black” had been replaced by “white” and the words “Africa” and “colonies” by “Europe” and “France” in the Congregation of Saint-Esprit rule enacted by Father Libermann in 1851: “Evangelize the poor, that is our general goal. However, missions are our main objective, and in our missions we have chosen the most miserable and most abandoned souls. The Divine Providence has given us work with the blacks, either from Africa or the Colonies. They are, without dispute, the most miserable and the most abandoned, until today.”

In addition to those visits, the school “elders” also organized shows for the benefit of the destitute. For example, they performed on stage excerpts from L’aiglon,123 Edmond Rostand’s drama, or Les Erinnyes, Leconte de Lisle’s ancient tragedy in verse. The shows were performed for the parents and the other students of the school, who also contributed to the cause: the sophomores paid two francs and the juniors three francs.

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For Joseph Laroche, each day spent at Institution du Saint-Esprit was an enriching one, except for the time in French class when he read a text titled “Napoleon the First, Writer and Orator” that

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