Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [108]
Toussaint understood the dramatic effect of presenting his personal austerity in the midst of turn-of-the-century splendor; he also found his austerity practical. His self-control was absolute, and “he often pushed his sobriety to the point of abstinence.”8 His eating habits were governed in part by his not unreasonable fear of poison. He kept an “old negress” in each of the colony's important towns, whom he trusted to prepare stews for him and to serve him wine, which he would consume in private. Otherwise he could go for twenty-four hours on a glass of water and a cassava pancake, “or if there was no pancake, on one or two bananas, or two or three potatoes.”9
His standards of decorum were strict to the point of prudery. He liked his lady guests to be dressed as if for church, and on one occasion is supposed to have covered the decolletage of a young beauty with his own handkerchief, rebuking her mother by saying, “Modesty should be the endowment of your sex.”10 He also forbade the easy extramarital relations that had been so common in the colony—between white men and femmes de couleur until 1791 and between the black and colored officers and concubines of all descriptions afterward—a measure that resulted in a number of hasty marriages. It was under this pressure that Agent Roume abruptly divorced his wife, Françoise Guillemine Lambert, who was then living apart from him on the island of Trinite; married his long-term mistress, a colored woman named Mariane Elizabeth Rochard; and formally acknowledged his paternity of their ten-year-old son. Idlinger, who upon the death of Julien Raimond had been appointed general administrator of the national domains, divorced his wife to marry Marthe, a “fille de plaisir celebrated in Cap,”11 one of the colored courtesans who had been mistress to several Frenchmen before moving on to Villatte at the period of his greatest influence. When Villatte fell from power, Marthe had taken up with the pirate Moline, and cynics believed that Idlinger (renowned for his corruption) was as much interested in the pirate's gold as in the charms of his new bride.
In his own case, Toussaint made a few exceptions to this policy of strict marital fidelity. When at home, he followed his own rules. During this same period he created a new department in the colony, called the Canton Louverture, which included his and his wife's large plantations in the area of Ennery the towns of Hinche and Banica on the Central Plateau, and the port of Gona'ives on the west coast. Of course this chunk of territory also embraced all the posts in the mountains of the Cordon de l'Ouest, Toussaint's original power base, now anchored more firmly than ever by permanent access to livestock and supplies from the grasslands of the Central Plateau. At the other end of this line, Gona'ives was being rebuilt and expanded to rival the splendor of Cap Francais; Toussaint intended this town to be his capital.
His wife, Suzanne, was not an especially worldly woman, though she did know how to read and write. The high society in which Toussaint had become a central figure did not much appeal to her. She did make visits to Le Cap sometimes (where she had friends and family), but usually preferred to remain at home in Ennery, where she not only took care of the housekeeping but also managed the coffee plantation, sometimes working alongside her hired hands. A Frenchman who visited her at home described her as the fattest woman he had ever seen, yet not at all bad-looking. Her whole establishment “breathed order and decency,” while personally “she seemed to have the modesty of a girl of twenty”12
Suzanne, apparently, never traveled south of Gonai'ves. Toussaint's marital fidelity was stern in the north, but when he