Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings (LOA #190) by Lafcadio Hearn

Author:Lafcadio Hearn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2018-05-04T17:28:26+00:00

At the pres­ent time, however, the stranger might be sufficiently impressed by the oddity and brilliancy of these dresses to ask about their origin,—in which case it is not likely that he will obtain any satisfactory answer. ­After long research I found myself obliged to give up all hope of ­being able to outline the history of Martinique costume,—partly ­because books and histories are scanty or defective, and partly ­because such an ­undertaking would require a knowl­edge possible only to a specialist. I found good reason, nevertheless, to suppose that these costumes were in the ­beginning adopted from certain fashions of provincial France,—that the respective fashions of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne were patterned ­after modes still worn in parts of the ­m­other-country. The old-time garb of the affranchie—that still worn by the da—somewhat recalls dresses worn by the women of Southern France, more particularly about Montpellier. Perhaps a specialist might also trace back the evolution of the various creole coiffures to old forms of head-dresses which still survive among the French country-fashions of the south and south-west prov­inces;—but ­local taste has so much modified the original style as to leave it unrecognizable to those who have never studied the subject. The Martinique fashion of folding and tying the Madras, and of calendering it, are prob­ably ­local; and I am assured that the designs of the curious semi-barbaric jewellery were all invented in the colony, where the collier-choux is still manufactured by ­local goldsmiths. Purchasers buy one, two, or three grains, or beads, at a time, and string them only on obtaining the requisite number. . . . This is the sum of all that I was able to learn on the ­matter; but in the course of searching various West Indian authors and historians for information, I found something far more important than the origin of the douillette or the collier-choux: the facts of that strange struggle ­between nature and interest, ­between love and law, ­between prejudice and passion, which forms the evolutional history of the mixed race.

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