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The Courage to Lead
through Values
The Courage to Lead
through Values
How Management by Values
Supports Transformational
Leadership, Culture, and Success

Liza-Maria Norlin

A PRODUC TIVIT Y PRESS BOOK

First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2021 Liza-Maria Norlin

The right of Liza-Maria Norlin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-0-367-44520-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-44377-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01015-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion Pro

by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Forewords ...............................................................................................ix
Foreword I .................................................................................. ix
Foreword II................................................................................. xi
Preface: Frustration Makes It Happen ................................................ xv
Acknowledgements..............................................................................xix
About the Author.................................................................................xxi

Chapter 1 Everything Has a Beginning ............................................. 1

Chapter 2 A Story That Needed to Be Told........................................ 7

Chapter 3 Crash Course MBV .......................................................... 19

Four Trends—The Basis of MBV.............................................22

Chapter 4 What Are Those Values?.................................................. 29

Beliefs ......................................................................................... 30
Values ..........................................................................................31
Norms..........................................................................................33
Attitudes .....................................................................................33
Behaviour and Outcomes........................................................ 34
How It Comes Together........................................................... 34
Values More Concrete.............................................................. 34

Chapter 5 Culture Is No Copycat ..................................................... 45

Chapter 6 A True Leader? ................................................................. 65

Transformative Leader..............................................................71
Change Leaders..........................................................................73
Voices about Pascal as a Leader...............................................76

v
vi • Contents

Chapter 7 Creating the Team............................................................ 81

Recruitment............................................................................... 86
The Right Person in the Right Place ...................................... 88
Consensus and Community ....................................................89
Participation.............................................................................. 90
Unlearning .................................................................................92

Chapter 8 Do We Need Visions and Missions When We Have

Values? .............................................................................. 97

Chapter 9 The Importance of the Right Conditions ..................... 105

Being in the Right Place .........................................................105
Practicalities.............................................................................107
Relationships, to Be Seen and to Feel Secure.......................108
Communication and Participation.......................................112
Resources ..................................................................................115
Expectations.............................................................................117
Meaningful...............................................................................119

Chapter 10 Control, Trust and Meatballs ........................................ 121

Chapter 11 Yet Another Reorganisation! ......................................... 131

Chapter 12 Motivation and Sustainable Drives............................... 141

Chapter 13 Stress and Belonging!..................................................... 153

Chapter 14 Steps to Make Management by Values (MBV)

Happen............................................................................ 161

Chapter 15 Success Is Knowing What You Stand For!.................... 167

Voices on the Leadership’s Importance for the
School’s Success .......................................................................171
 Contents • vii

Chapter 16 Let’s Round off This Conversation ............................... 177

Definitions and Abbreviations .......................................................... 183

Index .................................................................................................... 185
Forewords

FOREWORD I
I’m not a leader. When I was young, I was shy,
groomed to please but lacking the patience to do so.
I was impulsive and still am. I had energy and ideas
but lacked the charisma to get people on board. At
the age of 13 I was asked to lead my Scout group. I
led them through mud and rain and we did well but
I was their leader by title. I was assigned to them and
them to me. A few years later I was named captain
of my hockey team but not because of my leadership skills; my wrist shot
was deadly and captain I became. As time passed I was able to shake off
some of my demons, that kept hindering me from becoming a good leader,
while others I couldn’t shake off and still to this day, they come back to
remind me that leadership is not easy. As an adult I was again given the
chance to lead. At times I succeeded but many times I also experienced
failures. Leadership, if I can now consider myself to be worthy of the term,
did not come easily to me. Still here I am on the front page of this book.
Part of me would love to convince you not to keep reading. To simply get
you to put this book away and move on to the next one with the photo of
a real leader on the cover. I will however not do so. Please keep reading.
As usual it was a very busy afternoon at school. I had anxious parents
waiting in the corridor to talk to me, the Vice Principal was in my room
helping me solve a problem and I had a message on my phone from the
board of education in Sundsvall asking me to call them back right away.
Amidst all of this I heard a voice that said: “Hey, I would like to write a
book about you”. I have to admit that I didn’t really know what to make
of Liza-Maria Norlin’s statement. She was, however, very serious. The
journey began with a few simple words. A journey that I many times tried
to stop as I didn’t really understand why I was chosen for this.
This book is not about how to become a leader. It doesn’t provide
you with a ten-step programme to turn you from a manager to a leader.

ix
x • Forewords

This book is about a very specific conviction that Liza-Maria and I share.
Know what you stand for, communicate it, live it and dare to protect it.
This is what this book is about. It’s about knowing the importance of
having the constant courage to find new efficient ways to communicate,
discuss, implement and protect at every single level the values and ethos
that act as the compass to your organisation.
Leadership was self-imposed as it became a necessity to share the values
and ethos that I found myself believing in and wished to spread even more.
Barbara Bergström, a real leader, had the courage many years ago to turn
beliefs into reality. She wanted children to succeed and soon one school
became many. The vision, ethos and values that drove her back then are
still the foundation of what we do every single day here at Internationella
Engelska Skolan. I understood her vision. I shared her vision and I wanted
to bring it to my hometown of Sundsvall, Sweden.
I needed to become a leader if I was to succeed in doing so. It would be
a lie to say that the journey was easy. Our school’s staff, my colleagues,
would most likely agree. They see (and feel) my fumbles, experience
my weaknesses and they witness my constant struggles to shake off the
demons that have been following me my whole life. Very few, however,
would doubt my ability to look forward, to see through the fog and storms
and keep the boat sailing forward. They would agree that I share the vision
of Barbara Bergström and that I have the guts and courage to implement
it. They would probably also say that I have the creativity to find new ways
to implement this vision without slowing us down. Most of our thousands
of parents could easily tell you what we stand for and the great majority of
our students, if not all of them, would say the same. If leadership is about
daring to implement a vision and constantly daring to make shared values
at the centre of everything you do, then I would, reluctantly, say that I am
a leader.
If leadership didn’t come easily to me, then success for our school was
also not easy. Through the hard work of many great people, such as Petra
Håkansson my closest colleague, our school managed to do what many
thought impossible. In less than ten years we grew from 250 to 1100
students. We constantly delivered some of the best academic results in our
city and managed to be, as per our company’s internal surveys, amongst
the best schools in our company. Our growth and size did bring debates
to our door but even the people driving these debates tend to recognise
that we’ve done something right. This success began with a clear vision of
 Forewords • xi

what children need to succeed in life. Liza-Maria chose to use our story to
communicate the importance of daring to talk values and thus ensure that
everybody walks, together, towards the same goal.
Last, I would like to thank my wonderful family. My wife Jenny, stepson
Jonathan and daughter Liv are, more than anybody else, very much aware
of my demons but still choose everyday to give me energy to believe in
myself despite the many bumps along the road. My hopes are that you’ll
find joy in seeing that leadership is a journey that doesn’t need to be easy
but that needs to be guided by a clear understanding of the values that
your organisation stands for.

Pascal Brisson
Principal Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall

FOREWORD II
In today’s increasingly globalised, chaotic and
changing world, the main role of a leader is
to develop an organisational culture based on
shared values. In my previous work and relevant
publications, I have explained why values today
represent the DNA of both individual, group and
organisational behaviour. Values represent the
nucleus of an organisation, the DNA of its culture.
All meaning and behaviours orbit around them. If an organisation wishes to
use people only as extensions of its machines and technologies, then do not
expect them to innovate and become exemplary citizens of your enterprise.
At the other extreme, we do not assume organisations will develop cultures
of having solely fun; this is a fantasy that no organisation can afford, though
work and play are entirely possible and most desirable.
In earlier writings, I have explained the concept of culture reengineering
by developing core values that correspond to a configuration of three axes:
the economic-pragmatic axis, the ethical-social axis and the emotional-
developmental axis. The secret of culture reengineering is to align the core
value with the vision and mission of an organisation. To lead the very
xii • Forewords

challenging and complex culture change process—a good transformational

leader is needed. Such a leader embeds competencies of coaching,
communicating empathy and even spirituality. The extent to which leaders
are capable of applying this configuration of values in an organisational
context is reflected in the effectiveness of their leadership. As Liza-Maria
is proposing in this book, the leader’s main task is to develop a culture
of shared core values. Values once considered “too soft” to be managed
effectively are now accepted as the basis of organisational identity and as
a fundamental principle of an organisation’s strategy. Cultural models and
values are nothing new; they have been studied since the 1970s. However,
the perspective of a triaxial model of values, which is the essence of my
concept called MBV (managing by values) is new, and more and more
companies are now using it to change or sustain their organisational
culture.
Visionary leadership entails much more than just directing your
followers. It comes from within. Leading from within is a way of guiding
yourself towards your inner knowledge and innate strengths. Using your
values is the key to uncorking the abundant wellspring within you. I
argue, and this book is strengthening the latter, that contemporary leaders
need to develop a capacity to embrace and enact on all three axes of values
of the proposed triaxial model: economic-pragmatic, ethical-social and
emotional-developmental. I wish to label these leaders as “universal”
leaders because they deploy and refer to fundamental truths, to worldwide
faiths and spiritual traditions that, surprisingly perhaps, share much more
in common than may seem to differentiate them.
Leadership today has a direct impact on organisational effectiveness—
they provide a platform for aligning the instrumental values. In the
short term, organisations and leaders can get by without explicit values;
however, in the long term, an absence of values makes the mission nearly
impossible. Liza-Maria Norlin’s book is a personal account on the great
need for leaders to embed values in order to sustain their leadership. The
book has been written in a personal tone and reflects the author’s personal
experience. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first book on this topic
written for Swedish readers and the message is straightforward: let’s make
the concept of MBV known, and let’s show that this is not a utopia. As an
effective change agent, Liza-Maria provides a wonderful account on the
principal elements of MBV which include: the reason why; a crash course
on MBV; the role of leaders in changing culture; aligning values to the
 Forewords • xiii

mission and vision and other related themes. This is a complete manual
and a must read for all people who are already in leadership positions or
aspire to be. This is not just one more book added to the panoplies of books
written about leadership; it is a book that provides the three principle and
necessary ingredients for leaders who wish to become effective change
agents: a concept (MBV), a methodology and description of some tools. I
hope that you will enjoy reading the book and find the content illuminating
and useful.

Professor Simon L. Dolan

President of the Global Future of Work Foundation
Email: [email protected]
Preface
Frustration Makes It Happen

Hi!
I’m so happy that you have decided to read this book; my hope is that it
will stimulate many thoughts in you. Perhaps you can find some truths or
tools but most importantly, I hope you begin to see leadership in a new way.
Everything actually began with me being frustrated. If you do nothing
about that frustration, it is easy for it to become hopelessness and then
nothing constructive or creative occurs. So best to do something about
it. In the midst of this frustration, an idea was born that later became so
much more than I imagined.
When I told people that I’m writing a book about leadership—as this is
how I would summarise the book’s contents—I have been met with varied
responses. You have perhaps asked the same question: “That’s original,
doesn’t everyone write about leadership?”, “Have you had any leadership
education?” or even “Oh, how brave!” and “I have to read that”. My hope
is that the introduction will give you a picture of who I am and why I
have written the book. I have chosen to be as present a writer as possible
in this book to start a conversation with you. I think that it is through
conversation and through building together that we change/develop not
only ourselves but also the world.
After more than 20 years of being a teacher and politically active, it’s
probably quite natural that I suffer from frustration. In the last few years,
there have been two questions in particular that I have spent a lot of time
and thought on. One is the increasing mental ill health amongst young
people and women. As a local politician I tangibly see how the number
of people on sick leave has reached completely unreasonable levels and
continues to rise in our important institutions such as schools, healthcare
and social services. This is an unbelievably difficult situation, in many
countries, not only for the individual but also for welfare and society at
large. The other question is about school. New suggestions for solutions
replace each other at the same time as way too many youths don’t achieve
passing grades, insecurity rises and we stand on the brink of a growing
xv
xvi • Preface

teacher shortage. Although I’m painting quite a depressing picture, there is,
of course, so much good to talk about, but these are possibly our generation’s
most important challenges. My frustration doesn’t actually come from the
challenges themselves but from the debate about them and the solutions
presented. I realise that even I can be a part of this. Don’t worry now, this
will not be a political book and it isn’t something that just applies to the
public sector either, but it gives a picture of where this book started out.
It feels like something has gone wrong somewhere. Now and then we talk
about how managers are important, sometimes it is middle management’s
fault, and sometimes we name a lack of leadership. However, I seldom hear
about what is wrong with the leadership and how it should change. Do you
recognise: “The political leadership has failed”, “Teachers must be more
authoritarian”, “Middle management are not loyal to the leadership” and
so on? My question is: Is there a kind of leadership that can stand the
test of time? A leadership that gives customers, students, users what they
expect and need, while at the same time allowing the staff to thrive?
The search for the answer gave me the idea to tell a story worth telling.
Sometimes you don’t have to look far, sometimes the answer is just
around the corner. A few years ago, I was in the audience of a seminar at
a conference. It was about how a school works with values to begin with.
I personally call myself a real “values nerd” but it hit me how concretely
they worked with anchoring the school’s values in both the big and the
small. If you live in Sundsvall, Sweden, as I do, it is impossible to ignore
this school, it is talked about everywhere. I understood in the seminar
that the great results were not due to coincidence or happy circumstances.
In Chapter 2 you will read more facts about the school. Today, when the
school has existed for ten years, there is definitely a story to tell. Actually,
regardless of whether you know the school or not, and regardless of your
opinion on the school, it is unique in many ways and I am convinced that
this has a lot to do with the leadership.
One day I bumped into the school’s principal, Pascal Brisson. We said
hello as we knew each other from before. After saying hello, I said: “Hey, I
would like to write a book about you”. He laughed and I understood that
he didn’t really take me seriously. So, I added: “Well, it’s true, for real!”.
We didn’t have time to say so much more about that then and there but
some days later, he contacted me and asked what I meant. One evening,
a couple of months later, we met and I told him about all my ideas and
thoughts and said that I would like to connect them with his journey and
the leadership he represents. I don’t know if he was easily convinced, it’s
 Preface • xvii

not every day that someone wants to write a book about you. It became
clear quite early on that it was a big step for him to let go of the control of
something, and in this case to another person to write about him and an
institution he cared a lot about. But it was a yes. Since that day ideas about
the book have developed from our discussions and various interviews. I
see it as a great privilege to be able to do this, and I am so thankful for
his trust. It is an important story, interesting in many ways, and a central
feature in discussions about leadership.
But it isn’t leadership in general that interests me, but when leadership
is clearly linked to values. It’s specifically that that made Pascal interesting
for me, even if he himself doesn’t always agree with me and my analyses of
him and his leadership and this clear connection to values. When he reads
this book himself, perhaps he will see his leadership in a different way.
The next step was to deepen my understanding of leadership theory.
What can I find about values-driven leadership or values-based leadership?
Not so much in Sweden I found, so I expanded my search to outside of
Sweden’s borders. In the end, I found an article written by some researchers:
“Management by Values (MBV): A New Philosophy for a New Economic
Order”,1 which presented a leadership that they found was what was
required to meet the complexity that is the face of our world today. This
article got me to read a book called Managing by Values.2 It’s a guide, you
could say, to doing what the subtitle says: “A Corporate Guide to Living,
Being Alive, and Making a Living in the 21st Century”. I don’t know if
you have ever got the feeling of some kind of total affinity, as if someone
understands exactly what you think and feel. It was a bit like that for me
when I read the book. That it has been researched for over 30 years and
that there is a method that can explain what I am thinking. After reading
the book and after some interviews with Pascal, I realised even more how
these theories and methods coincide with the leadership Pascal represents
in an incredible way. To bring together a methodology with a real example
that has their processes completely separated from each other became an
exciting journey. It is this journey that you will get to participate in when
you read this book. On a personal level it has been extremely exciting and
self improving to combine knowledge of sustainable organisations, culture
transformation and of values’ central meaning with an example from a
school’s journey in Sweden. My hope is that the practical example together
with the theory will bring forward the vision of leadership in Sweden and
in your own country. There needs to be a “leadership movement” to lead us,
xviii • Preface

our organisations, institutions and businesses forward in an increasingly

complex world.
Hopefully this book will make a difference for you, your workplace,
your company or organisation and perhaps the country’s development.
Nothing is impossible! It starts with you and me.
Partway through the process I decided to contact Simon L. Dolan,3 the
person who personifies Management by Values. This was partly because
of a worry that made me send him an email. Since I realised I wanted to
use a lot of what he had written, I wanted to inform him of that, so he
wouldn’t be angry that I had stolen his ideas, you never know. Instead of
protectionism, I met a missionary, a person driven to change the world.
Or as he said in the first Skype conversation: “As teacher and politician
you are a change agent”. Which he also used as an epithet to describe
himself later on in the conversation. I believe that Pascal Brisson with his
team are change agents in one of Sweden’s most regulated and important
institutions—school. This book gives you the possibility of meeting three
different “change agents” from different contexts and at the same time give
you tools to create what Dolan would call a cultural transformation.

Liza-Maria Norlin

NOTES
1. Dolan, S. L.and Richely, B. A. (2006). Management by values (MBV): A new phi­
losophy for a new economic order. Handbook of Business Strategy, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp.
235–238. https://doi.org/10.1108/10775730610618873. Emerald Group Publishing.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/10775730610618873 (15 January
2017).
2. Dolan, S. L., Garcia, S. and Richely, B. (2006). Managing by Values, A Corporate
Guide to Living, Being Alive, and Making a Living in the 21st Century. London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
3. Professor Simon L. Dolan, ESADE Future of Work Chair and President of the
Global Future of Work. Foundation Email: [email protected].
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my husband Thomas and our patient and loving daughters
Adelina and Timea, and to all my friends out there; this could not have
happened without you. Creation happens together with others!
I would also like to thank with all my heart professor and change agent
Simon L. Dolan, Principal Pascal Brisson and the people at Internationella
Engelska Skolan Sundsvall (IESS) and Internationella Engelska Skolan
(IES) who have contributed enormously to this book.

• Allanius, Anna-Maria—From Fall 2017, vice principal IESS

• Beranger, Jocelyn—Teacher IESS
• Bergström, Barbara—Founder IES
• Brisson, Pascal—Principal IESS
• Challis, Marjorie—Teacher IESS
• Dolan, Simon L.—Professor, President of The Global Future of Work
Foundation www.simondolan.com
• Hall, Jens—Teacher IESS
• Henriksson, Karin—Receptionist IESS
• Håkansson, Petra—Vice principal IESS
• Nilsson, Mattias—Teacher IESS
• Pousette, Gustaf—Teacher IESS (Named by those who were
interviewed in the book)
• Riber, Ralph—CEO Internationella Engelska Skolan, 2013–2017
• Strijdom, Pieter—Head of Student Development Team IESS
• Åkerström, Kim—Previous student, IESS years 6 to 9
• Translation: Marjorie Challis, 2018
• Cover design and photography: © 2020 Per Helander

Liza-Maria

xix
About the Author
Liza-Maria Norlin is currently a project and process
director at Bron Innovation and politician for the
Christian Democrats (KD). She served as a member
of KD’s party board from 2007 to 2009, and has
been a regular member since 2017. In addition,
since 2014, she has served as a group leader in KD
Sundsvall and a member of the municipal council in
Sundsvall. In 2019, she appeared as a third name on KD’s EU electoral
ballot in the European Parliament elections. Previously, she served as a
Member of the Swedish Parliament from 2009 to 2010 and chair of the
Christian Democrats Sundsvall. She has a degree of Master of Education
for the Upper Secondary School and has taught high school students
Swedish and English for many years. She graduated in 2003 from
Mid Sweden University in Härnösand. She can be contacted through www.
lizamarianorlin.com.

I love values as they have been very formative throughout my life. In the
way I was brought up and taught how to view the world and people; in
my education as I got to experience many different schools in Sweden and
Europe; at university as I studied language and literature; as a teacher when
wanting to motivate, teach and support young people; as a politician on
local, regional and national level; and perhaps most importantly as a parent
and in relationships with other people.
My values over the past few years have made me experience a sense of
frustration and now I have decided to do something about it. Join me in
a conversation together with Principal Pascal Brisson and Managing by
Values!

xxi
1
Everything Has a Beginning

In the beginning, you act like a leader — until one day you realise that you
have become one.
Pascal Brisson

Pascal Brisson, high school teacher, sees the advertisement in the paper
“Internationella Engelska Skolan wants to open in Sundsvall, Sweden”.
Something in the advertisement piques his interest, it stimulates his
personal drive, creativity and willingness to take risks for the potential
of fixing something that isn’t working. In December 2008, he emails the
CEO of Internationella Engelska Skolan and says he is interested in the
job as principal of a new school in Sundsvall. “It was clear that I would get
the job when during an interview I said: ‘One thing I guarantee you, I can
really say to all parents and staff that I stand for your values.’”
Today, a little more than 11 years later, I am sitting in front of a principal
and leader who feels confident and sure in his role. In Sundsvall, his is a
well-known name and within the school group Internationella Engelska
Skolan he is a very appreciated leader. In ten years the school in Sundsvall
has gone from zero students and no staff to 1100 students and 125 staff. If
you read Pascal’s welcome on the website, it’s there in the first sentence:
“Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall is in constant evolution”.1 It
is physically clear when you visit the school—a new parkour park is in
place while at the same time expansion and rebuilding continue. It is a
result of how the school has constantly grown and continues to grow. I still
get the feeling that this constant evolution is more than just the physical
environment and that the school grows in numbers. What does this
constant evolution mean for Pascal?

1
2 • The Courage to Lead through Values

A drive that never stands still, it is a part of my personality, constantly in

motion, I constantly look at our organisation, what works, what isn’t work­
ing so well? But at the same time as we grow and constantly develop our
routines, the foundation has never changed.

Into the room walks Pieter Strijdom, the school’s Head of Student
Development Team (responsible for helping students to feel safe). He is
one of the people who has been there since the beginning and it is clear
that he and Pascal are close. I take the opportunity of course to ask if it
is true that the school is in some state of constant evolution, where the
answer with a big smile and perhaps a little sigh is: “Oooo yes!”
The email that Pascal sent to the CEO resulted in an interview
opportunity, the possibility to meet other principals from other parts
of Sweden and some visits to other schools within the school group
Internationella Engelska Skolan. When Pascal met the founder of
Internationella Engelska Skolan, Barbara Bergström, and even the principal
in Enskede, Robert Clark, there was a feeling that gave the strongest of
impressions. A feeling of being at home. This feeling arose both because
of shared values and small details. One thing that really irritated Pascal in
his time as a high school teacher was that students didn’t come on time to
lessons. He considers not coming on time to be a practical detail that has
practical consequences (disturbs others, causes explanations to be missed,
etc.) and a result of poor values; a lack of respect.

I liked that IES had high expectations on students and they both pushed
and supported them. The school’s leadership also explained why they
worked in the way they did and do. I felt that out of that foundation that
was already there in values and behaviour, I could build a school I could
believe in

says Pascal.
Pascal describes himself as a confident person who loves to take risks
and likes challenges but at the same time is very paranoid. I understand
through our conversations that Pascal really analyses his personal
characteristics and sees both the positive and negative consequences in
these. To dare to take the step of building a school from the ground up
requires courage to take risks, therefore, he saw this as a perfect challenge.
In the beginning the paranoia led to the motivation to read everything he
could about the school. It wasn’t all the lovely formulations on websites or
 Everything Has a Beginning • 3

the excellent results that you could read on Skolverket’s (Swedish National
Agency for Education) website that convinced him. An important reason
was the founder herself, Barbara, and her values. There was a clear picture
of what she wanted to create.

Barbara Bergström has from the beginning had a clear picture of what she
wants, she knew what she wanted to create when she began. She has met a
lot of resistance and has never given up. For us principals and for leaders,
many trends come and go, it is important to keep to what you believe in,
regardless of being pushed in different directions. This is a very important
part of how to succeed and Barbara has really shown that it works and is a
role model. You have to keep focus in spite of pressure from outside

says Pascal in a way that clearly shows his respect and admiration for
Barbara.
In addition to the personal characteristics he names in describing
himself I would add humour and self awareness that has come through in
our conversations, an example being from Pascal’s first job interview for
the position of principal.

I sat and waited before my interview when a man came and sat next to
me. I later found out it was Barbara’s husband. We sat and talked for
nearly 45 minutes. Then I went in. The interview went on with the CEO
and vice CEO. At one point Barbara comes into the room and says hi and
talks briefly. Then she asked what job I was there for: ‘Principal or vice
principal?’ I smiled and pointed to the CEO and said ‘I’m here for his job.’
Everyone laughed (except for the CEO who is no longer a part of the com­
pany anymore). Yes, I’m that kind of person and I think Barbara liked that

Pascal says and laughs.

I ask Barbara Bergström if she remembers the first time she met Pascal,
and she does, very well.

The first time I met Pascal was the 27th of November 2008. I remember
exactly where in the audience he sat, and he surely does too. He looked
at me hard the whole time. When we later spoke with each other we both
realised that we had a lot in common.

Pascal Brisson was born and raised in Embrun, Ontario which is a small
town in Canada. He grew up in what he himself calls a school environment.
4 • The Courage to Lead through Values

His father was chairman of the school board, his mother was a teacher and
in his family there were many teachers and principals. This has made him
feel at home in the school environment and consequently be attracted to it.
One of his dreams has always been to build and start his own school. One
day he got the chance and of course took it.
“How many teachers get the chance to start a completely new school?”
was the answer when I wondered why he chose to take on the great
responsibility of being a principal in a new school.
My question in response was if it was still an obvious choice to become
principal. I describe the principal’s job as tough in many ways, as principal,
you are liable. There are many principals who can’t handle the workload,
the pay isn’t especially good and there is a lot of pressure from different
directions, so why would he want to be a principal?

I didn’t really think of it that way. I saw the creativity in building some­
thing, it’s the creating part and starting something new that inspires me. In
my case it is about a really good school. An opportunity to meet my need to
fix things I think are wrong. This is something I get to work with every day
and it makes me feel good. Then of course when I did stand there—a princi­
pal, that was me—nothing was yet in place and at the same time I could see
that schooling is the most regulated area in Sweden, I could feel the panic.

The time between the email and interviews until Pascal became principal
was quite a quick process. In the beginning it was mostly interest and
curiosity around applying for the job and it wasn’t an instant “Yes!” when
Barbara called some days before Christmas and said: “Mr Brisson I have
the pleasure of offering you the job”.
“It wasn’t appreciated when I said: ‘I will think about it’, I heard.
“Why didn’t you say yes? Weren’t you quite convinced?”

Have to ask my wife first so I don’t say yes to something completely crazy!
I had a job anyway. Later during Christmas break I said yes to the job. In
two weeks I went from a teacher in a large high school to the Principal of
nothing.

Suddenly Pascal had the task of recruiting staff from abroad and Sweden
to a school that didn’t exist yet. Something that stands out in the school in
Sundsvall, is that many of the staff are from Canada, a choice Pascal has
made. This is why he goes there to recruit the right people and convince
them to move to Sweden and Sundsvall. He was at home in Sundsvall
 Everything Has a Beginning • 5

again after Christmas break and it was time to organise an open house in
Tonhallen (a concert theatre) to attract students and parents to a school
that didn’t have any teachers or other staff.
“A school can’t exist without students!” said Pascal.
Up until the month of June, there were two people who would organise
everything that was needed for school start in August. One challenge
in this situation was just to “sell” something that you couldn’t touch or
visit. Pascal chose, together with one of the first recruits, Jens Hall, to call
around to parents in Sundsvall and tell them about the school.
“I’m not at all a salesman so this wasn’t an easy task, but in some way
we needed to reach out and talk about what our future school could offer
parents and their children. It was just to do it”.
When everything goes very quickly and there is a lot of practical things
that must be organised, it’s easy to focus on the practical, and difficult
to find time to engage in the question of why one does something. To
be able to anchor the values or principles behind everything that has to
be done can feel burdensome. When you visit Internationella Engelska
Skolan Sundsvall (IESS) today, you get the understanding that nothing is
random, it seems as if thought has gone into everything.

One evening before the school started, Petra Håkansson (Vice Principal
today) and Jens Hall (Head of Swedish as a second language and teacher)
met at my place. We conversed and discussed what would be important
starting points for the school. The group, Internationella Engelska Skolan,
already has clear principles, but we still wanted to think about what they
mean for us and formulate our own interpretations. What does it mean to
feel safe, to have an international stamp and to see students as individuals?
That evening we wrote a mission statement. We had a huge mission for our
school in Sundsvall. What we wanted to deliver was: 1. A safe and orderly
work environment with “tough love”, and poor conduct has consequences
and not punishment; 2. High expectations both socially and academically;
and 3. That students have command of the English language. Then there
are values behind this that help us to reach these three expectations, such
as to celebrate success, have fun together, happiness, dare to be “crazy”, try
to see things from the child’s perspective. This is what we want to deliver
together with our values and to create in turn the culture we have at school

Pascal says.
During that evening, one of the conclusions drawn was that at the school
in Sundsvall, every individual will be seen. It sounds like something one
6 • The Courage to Lead through Values

has heard before and is understood in many situations as obvious. But

what makes it actually happen is that it isn’t just something described as
important but it is also connected to actions. For the staff it is about the
leaders constantly working so that the right person is in the right place
and does the right thing based on who that person is. This of course
creates the best possible result for the school and also the work situation
for employees where they feel seen and where they can do their best no
matter who they are. To see every person can also imply that they come
to the conclusion that the right place for the person is not this workplace.

We leaders coach staff at the school to work from our concept so they can
participate and help to deliver what we have promised our students and
parents. It sometimes happens, after a time of coaching, that the teacher or
we leaders feel that it doesn’t work and then we have a conversation about
that. We usually come to an agreement that we will go our separate ways.
This is a way to see the importance of the individual in a larger system.
So that every student can be seen as an individual at IESS, the leadership
works with teachers to give them the knowledge, tools and conditions that
are needed to be able to see the student.

For me, who has followed the school debate for many years, where
amongst other things the size of the class has regularly come into the
discussion, I can feel some doubt about whether it is possible to see every
student, particularly in a school with classes that have 32 students. In
the conversation with Pascal, I have understood that this is one of the
questions and reflections he often gets from different places. This subject
requires almost a whole chapter and of course discussion with both
students and teachers; that is why I will come to this question later on. In
short, it depends on how a system is in line with values and goal setting.
In August 2009, the doors of Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall
opened. Two hundred fifty students in years 6–9 were welcomed by 25
teachers in the newly renovated 100-year-old building featuring English
Oxford-like architecture.

NOTE
1. Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall. Welcome from the Principal. https://su
ndsvall.engelska.se/about-our-school/welcome-principal (14 March 2017).
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
shapeliness the most puissant comparison for human grace; the soft
name Thamar signifies a palm; the charm of woman has been likened
to the pliant symmetry of the tree by the bard of the Odyssey, by the
wild authors of the Moallakat, and by the singer of the Song of Songs.
Darkness comes without a moon; and the torch-fires of the Osceola
are kindled to light our way through the wilderness. The night-journey
becomes an astonishment, a revelation, an Apocalypse.
Under the factitious illumination the banks, the roots, the stems, the
creepers, the burdened boughs, the waving mosses, turn white as
dead silver against the background of black sky; it is a Doresque
landscape, abnormally fantastic and wan. Close to shore the relief is
weirdly sharp; beyond, the heights of swamp forest rise dim and gray
into the night, like shapes of vapor. There are no greens visible under
this unearthly radiance; all is frosty-white or phantom gray; we seem
to voyage not through a living forest, but through a world of ghosts.
Forms grotesque as fetishes loom up on all sides; the cypresses in
their tatters throng whitely to the black the night, while the woods
ever display new terrors, new extravaganzas of ghastliness. As a
traveler belated, who sings loudly in the darkness to give himself
courage, the Osceola opens her iron throat, and shouts with all her
voice of steam. And the deep forest laughs in scorn, and hurls back
the shout with a thousand mockeries of echo,—a thousand phantom
thunders; and the bitter triple cry of anguish follows us still over the
sable flood.
But the Fountain of Youth is not now far away; midnight is past; the
trees lock arms overhead; and we glide through the Cypress Gates.
Lulled by the monotonous throbbing of the machinery,—the systole
and diastole of the steamer's heart,—I sank to sleep and dreamed;
but the spectra of the woods filled all my dreams. It seemed to me
that I was floating,—lying as in a canoe, and all alone,—down some
dark and noiseless current,—between forests endless and vast,—
under an unearthly light. White mosses drooped to sweep my face;
phantoms of cypress put forth long hands to seize. Again I saw the
writhing and the nodding of the palms: they elongated their bodies
like serpents; they undulated quiveringly, as cobras before the snake-
charmer. And all the moss-hung shapes of fear took life, and moved
like living things,—slowly and monstrously, as polyps move. Then the
vision changed and magnified; the river broadened Amazonianly; the
forests became colossal,—preternatural,—world-shadowing at last,—
meeting even over the miles of waters; and the sabals towered to the
stars. And still I drifted with the mighty stream, feeling less than an
insect in those ever-growing enormities; and a thin Voice like a wind
came weirdly questioning: 'Ha! thou dreamer of dreams!—hast ever
dreamed aught like unto this?—This is the Architecture of God!'
May 6, 188-
How divine the coming of the morning,—the coming of the Sun,—
exorcising the shadowy terrors of the night with infinite restoration of
color! I look upon the woods, and they are not the same: the palms
have vanished; the cypresses have fled away; trees young and comely
and brightly green replace them. A hand is laid upon my shoulder,—
the hand of the gray Captain: 'Go forward, and see what you have
never seen before.' Even as he speaks, our boat, turning sharply,
steams out of the green water into—what can I call it?—a flood of
fluid crystal,—a river of molten diamond,—a current of liquid light?
'It will be like this for eight miles,' observed the Captain. Eight miles!
—eight miles of magic,—eight miles of glory! O the unspeakable
beauty of it! It might be fifty feet in depth at times; yet every pebble,
every vein of the water-grass blades, every atom of sparkling sand, is
clearly visible as though viewed through sun-filled air; and but for the
iridescent myriads of darting fish, the scintillations of jewel-color, we
might well fancy our vessel floating low in air, like a balloon whose
buoyancy is feeble. Water-grasses and slippery moss carpet much of
the channel with a dark verdure that absorbs the light; the fish and
the tortoises seem to avoid those sandy reaches left naked to the sun,
as if fearful the great radiance would betray them, or as though
unable to endure the force of the beams descending undimmed
through all the translucent fathoms of the stream. It has no mystery
this laughing torrent, save the mystery of its subterranean birth; it
doffs all veils of shadow; the woods gradually withdraw from its
banks; and the fires of the Southern sun affect not the delicious
frigidity of its waves. Almost irresistible its fascination to the swimmer;
one envies the fishes that shoot by like flashes of opal, even the
reptiles that flee before the prow; a promise of strange joy? of
electrical caress, seems to smile from those luminous deeps,—like the
witchery of a Naiad, the blandishment of an Undine.
And so we float at last into a great basin, dark with the darkness of
profundities unfathomed by the sun;—the secret sources of the
spring, the place of its mystic fountain-birth, and the end of our
pilgrimage. Down, down, deep, there is a mighty quivering visible; but
the surface remains unmoved; the giant gush expends its strength far
beneath us. From what unilluminated caverns,—what subterranean
lakes,—burst this prodigious flow? Go ask the gnomes! Man may
never answer. This is the visible beginning indeed; but of the invisible
beginning who may speak?—not even the eye of the Sun hath
discerned it; the light of the universe hath never shone upon it.—
Earth reveals much to the magicians of science; but the dim secret of
her abysses she keeps forever.

A TROPICAL INTERMEZZO

The broken memory of a tale told in the last hours of a summer's

night to the old Mexican priest by a dying wanderer from the
Spanish Americas. Much the father marvelled at the quaintness of
the accent of the man? which was the quaintness of dead
centuries...

Now the land of which I tell thee is a low land, where all things seem
to have remained unchanged since the beginning of the world,—a
winterless land where winds are warm and weak, so that the leaves
are not moved by them,—a beshadowed land that ever seemeth to
mourn with a great mourning. For it is one mighty wold, and the trees
there be all hung with drooping plants and drooling vines, and
dribbling mossy things that pend queerly from the uppermost
branchings even to the crankling roots. And there be birds in that
wold which do sing only when the moon shineth full,—and they have
voices, like to monks,—and measured is their singing, and solemn,
and of vasty sound,—and they are not at all afraid. But when the sun
shineth there prevaileth such quiet as if some mighty witchcraft
weighed upon the place; and all things drowse in the great green
silence.
Now on the night of which I tell thee, we had camped there; and it
seemed to me that we might in sooth have voyaged beyond the
boundaries of the world; for even the heavens were changed above
us, and the stars were not the same; and I could not sleep for
thinking of the strangeness of the land and of the sky. And about the
third watch I rose and went out under those stars, and looked at
them, and listened to the psalmody of the wonderful birds chanting in
the night like friars. Then a curious desire to wander alone into the
deep woods came upon me.—En chica hora Dios obra!—In that time I
feared neither man nor devil; and our commander held me the most
desperate in that desperate band; and I strode out of the camp
without thought of peril. The grizzled sentry desired to question me;—
I cursed him and passed on.
And I was far away from the camp when the night grew pale, and the
fire of the great strange Cross of stars, about which I have told thee,
faded out, and I watched the edge of the East glow ruddy and ruddier
with the redness of iron in a smithy; until the sun rose up, yellow like
an orange is, with palm-leaves sharply limned against his face. Then I
heard the Spanish trumpets sounding their call through the morning;
but I did not desire to return. Whether it was the perfume of the
flowers, or the odors of unknown spice-trees or some enchantment in
the air, I could not tell thee; but I do remember that, as I wandered
on, a sudden resolve came to me never to rejoin those comrades of
mine. And a stranger feeling grew upon me like a weakness of heart,
—like a great sorrow for I knew not what; and the fierceness of the
life that I had lived passed away from me, and I was even as one
about to weep. Wild doves whirred down from the trees to perch on
my casque and armored shoulders; and I wondered that they suffered
me to touch them with my hands, and were in no wise afraid.
So day broadened and brightened above me; and it came to pass that
I found myself following a path where the trunks of prodigious trees
filed away like lines of pillars, reaching out of sight,—and their
branches made groinings like work of arches above me, so that it was
like a monstrous church; and the air was heavy with a perfume like
incense. All about me blazed those birds which are not bigger than
bees, but do seem to have been made by God out of all manner of
jewels and colored fire; also there were apes in multitude, and
reptiles beyond reckoning, and singing insects, and talking birds. Then
I asked myself whether I were not in one of those lands old Moors in
Spain told of,—lands near the sinking of the sun, where fountains of
magical water are. And fancy begetting fancy, it came to pass that I
found me dreaming of that which Juan Ponce de Leon sought.
Thus dreaming as I went on, it appeared to me that the green
dimnesses deepened, and the forest became loftier. And the trees
now looked older than the deluge; and the stems of the things that
coiled and climbed about them were enormous and gray; and the
tatters of the pendent mosses were blanched as with the hoariness of
ages beyond reckoning. Again I heard the trumpet sounding,—but so
far off that the echo was not louder than the droning of the great
flies; and I was gladdened by the fancy that it would soon have no
power to reach mine ears.
And all suddenly I found myself within a vast clear space,—ringed
about by palms so lofty that their tops appeared to touch the sky, and
their shadows darkened all within the circle of them. And there was a
great silence awhile, broken only by the whispering of waters. My feet
made no sound, so thick was the moss I trod upon; and from the
circle of the palms on every side the ground sloped down to a great
basin of shimmering water. So clear it was that I could perceive
sparkles of gold in the sands below; and the water seemed forced
upward in a mighty underflow from the centre of the basin, where
there was a deep, dark place. And into the bright basin there trickled
streamlets also from beneath the roots of the immense trees; and I
became aware of a great subterrene murmuring, as if those waters—
which are beneath the earth—were all seeking to burst their way up
to the sun.
Then, being foredone with heat and weariness, I doffed my armor
and my apparel and plunged into the pool of the fountain. And I
discovered that the brightness of the water had deluded me; for so
deep was it that by diving I could not reach the bottom. Neither was
the fountain tepid as are the slow river currents of that strange land,
but of a pleasant frigidness,—like those waters that leap among the
rocks of Castile. And I felt a new strength and a puissant joy, as one
having long traveled with burning feet through some fevered and fiery
land feeleth new life when the freshness of sea-winds striketh against
his face, and the jocund brawling of the great billows smiteth his ears
through the silence of desolation. And the joyousness I knew as a boy
seemed to flame through all my blood again,—so that I sported in the
luminous ripples and laughed aloud, and uttered shouts of glee; and
high above me in the ancient trees wonderful birds mocked my
shoutings and answered my laughter hoarsely, as with human voices.
And when I provoked them further, they did imitate my speech till it
seemed that a thousand echoes repeated me. And, having left the
fount, no hunger nor weariness weighed upon me,—but I yielded
unto a feeling of delicious drowsihead, and laid me down upon the
moss to sleep as deeply as an infant sleepeth.
Now, when I opened mine eyes again, I wondered greatly to behold a
woman bending over me,—and presently I wondered even much
more, for never until then had it been given me to look upon aught so
comely. Begirdled with flowers she was, but all ungarmented,—and
lithe to see as the rib of a palmleaf is,—and so aureate of color that
she seemed as one created of living gold. And her hair was long and
sable as wing-feathers of ravens are, with shifting gleams of blue,—
and was interwoven with curious white blossoms. And her eyes, for
color like to her hair, I could never describe for thee,—that large they
were, and limpid, and lustrous, and sweet-lidded! So gracious her
stature and so wonderful the lissomeness of her, that, for the first
time, I verily knew fear,—deeming it never possible that earthly being
might be so goodly to the sight. Nor did the awe that was upon me
pass away until I had seen her smile,—having dared to speak to her
in my own tongue, which she understood not at all. But when I had
made certain signs she brought me fruits fragrant and golden as her
own skin; and as she bent over me again our lips met, and with the
strange joy of it I felt even as one about to die,—for her mouth was—
['Nay, my son,' said the priest, preventing him, 'dwell not upon such
things. Already the hand of death is on thee; waste not these
priceless moments in speech of vanity,—rather confess thee speedily
that I may absolve thee from thy grievous sin.']
So be it, padre mio, I will speak to thee only of that which a confessor
should know. But I may surely tell thee those were the happiest of my
years; for in that low dim land even Earth and Heaven seemed to
kiss; and never did other mortal feel the joy I knew of, love that
wearies never and youth that passeth never away. Verily, it was the
Eden-garden, the Paradise of Eve. Fruits succulent and perfume were
our food,—the moss, springy and ever cool, formed our bed, made
odorous with flowers; and for night-lamps we prisoned those
wondrous flies that sparkle through darkness like falling stars. Never a
cloud or tempest,—no fierce rain nor parching heat, but spring
everlasting, filled with scent of undying flowers, and perpetual
laughter of waters, and piping of silver-throated birds. Rarely did we
wander far from that murmuring hollow. My cuirass, and casque, and
good sword of Seville, I allowed to rust away; my garments fell into
dust; but neither weapon nor garment were needed where all was
drowsy joy and unchanging warmth. Once she whispered to me in my
own tongue, which she had learned with marvelous ease, though I,
indeed, never could acquire hers: 'Dost know, Querido mio, here one
may never grow old?' Then only I spake to her about that fountain
which Juan Ponce de Leon sought, and told her the marvels related of
it, and questioned her curiously about it. But she smiled, and pressed
her pliant golden fingers upon my lips, and would not suffer me to ask
more,—neither could I at any time after find heart to beseech her
further regarding matters she was not fain to converse of.
Yet ever and anon she bade me well beware that I should not trust
myself to stray alone into the deep dimness beyond the dale of the
fountains: 'Lest the Shadows lay hold upon thee,' she said. And I
laughed low at her words, never discerning that the Shadows whereof
she spake were those that Age and Death cast athwart the sunshine
of the world.
['Nay, nay, my son,' again spoke the priest; 'tell me not of Shadows,
but of thy great sins only; for the night waneth, and thine hour is not
far off.']
Be not fearful, father; I may not die before I have told thee all.... I
have spoken of our happiness; now must I tell thee of our torment—
the strangest thing of all? Dost remember what I related to thee
about the sound of the trumpet summoning me? Now was it not a
ghostly thing that I should hear every midnight that same summons,
—not faintly as before, but loud and long—once? Night after night,
ever at the same hour, and ever with the same sonority, even when
lying in her arms, I heard it—as a voice of brass, rolling through the
world. And whensoever that cursed sound came to us, she trembled
in the darkness, and linked her arms more tightly about me, and
wept, and would not be comforted till I had many times promised that
I should not forsake her. And through all those years I heard that
trumpet-call—years, said I?—nay, centuries (since in that place there
is not any time nor any age)—I heard it through long centuries after
all my comrades had been laid within their graves.
[And the stranger gazed with strange inquiry into the priest's face; but
he crossed himself silently, and spoke no word.]
And nightly I strove to shut out the sound from my ears and could
not; and nightly the torment of hearing it ever increased like a
torment of hell—ay de mit nightly, for uncounted generations of
years! So that in time a great fury would seize me whenever the
cursed echoes came; and, one dark hour, when she seemed to hear it
not, and slept deeply, I sought my rusted blade, and betook me
toward the sound,—beyond the dale of fountains—into the further
dimness of swaying mosses,—whither, meseems, the low land
trendeth southward and toward those wan wastes which are not land
nor water, yet which do quake to a great and constant roaring as of
waves in wrath.
[A moment the voice of the aged man failed him, and his frame
quivered as in the beginning of agony.]
Now I feel, padre, that but little time is allotted me to speak. I may
never recount to thee my wanderings, and they, indeed, are of small
moment.—Enough to tell thee that I never again could find the path
to the fountains and to her, so that she became lost to me. And when
I found myself again among men, lo! the whole world was changed,
and the Spaniards I met spake not the tongue of my time, and they
mocked the quaintness of my ways and jibed at the fashion of my
speech. And my tale I dared tell to none, through fear of being
confined with madmen, save to thee alone, and for this purpose only
I summoned thee. Surely had I lived much in this new age of thine
men must have deemed me bereft of reason, seeing that my words
and ways were not like unto theirs; but I have passed my years in the
morasses of unknown tropics, with the python and the cayman,—and
in the dark remoteness of forests inhabited by monstrous things,—and
in forgotten ruins of dead Indian cities,—and by shores of strange
rivers that have no names,—until my hair whitened and my limbs
were withered and my great strength was utterly spent in looking for
her.
'Verily, my son,' spake the confessor, 'any save a priest might well
deem thee mad,—though thy speech and thy story be not of to-day.
Yet I do believe thy tale. Awesome it is and strange; but the traditions
of the Holy Church contain things that are not less strange: witness
the legend of the Blessed Seven of Ephesus, whose lives were three
hundred and sixty years preserved that the heresy concerning the
resurrection of the flesh might be confounded forever. Even in some
such way hath the Lord preserved thee through the centuries for this
thine hour of repentance. Commend, therefore, thy soul to God,
repentingly, and banish utterly from thee that evil spirit who still
tempts thee in the semblance of woman.'
'Repent!' wonderingly spake the wanderer, whose great black eyes
flamed up again as with the fires of his youth; 'I do not repent, I shall
never repent,—nor did I summon thee hither that thou shouldst seek
to stir me to any repentance.—Nay! more than mine own soul I love
her,—unutterably, unswervingly, everlastingly! Aye! greater a
thousand fold is my love of her than is thy hope of heaven, thy dread
of death, thy fear of hell.—Repent—beyond all time shall I love her,
through eternity of eternities,—aye! as thou wouldst say, even por los
siglos de los siglos.'
Kneeling devoutly, the confessor covered his face with his hands, and
prayed even as he had never prayed before. When he lifted his eyes
again, lo! the soul had passed away unshriven;—but there was such a
smile upon the dead face that the priest marveled, and murmured,
with his lips: 'Surely he hath found Her at last!'—Faintly, with the
coming of the dawn, a warm south wind moved the curtains, and bare
into the chamber rich scent of magnolia and of jessamine and of
those fair blossoms whose odor evoketh beloved memory of long-
dead bridal-mornings,—until it seemed that a weird sweet Presence
invisible had entered, all silently, and stood there even as a Watcher
standeth. And all the East brightened;—and, touched by the yellow
magic of the sun, the vapors above the place of his rising formed
themselves into a Fountain of Gold.

A NAME IN THE PLAZA

June 3, 18—

Sometimes, in that Gloaming that divides deep sleep from the

awakening,—when out of the world of wavering memories the first
thin fancies begin to soar, like neuroptera, rising on diaphanous wing
from a waste of marsh-grasses,—there suddenly comes an old, old
longing that stings thought into nervous activity with a sharp pain.
The impression in the first moment of wakefulness might be likened
to a sense of nostalgia,—but the nostalgia which is rather a world-
sickness than a homesickness; there is something in it also
resembling the vain regret for what has been left perhaps twenty-
years' journey behind us, and has now become a tropical
remembrance because we have traveled so far toward the Northern
Circle of life. Yet the longing I refer to is more puissant and more
subtle than these definable feelings are;—it has almost the force of an
impulse; it has no real affinity with the recognizable Past; its visions
are archipelagoes which never loomed for us over the heaving of any
remembered seas; it is like an unutterable wish to flee away from the
Present into the Unknown,—a beautiful unknown, radiant with
impossible luminosities of azure and sun-gold! I do not know how to
account for this impulse,—unless as an unexplained Something in Man
corresponding to the instinct of migration in lower forms of life—
especially in those happy winged creatures privileged to follow the
perfumed Summer round about the world. And I think it comes to us
usually either with the first lukewarm burst of spring, or with the
windy glories of autumn. Nevertheless, in the morning it came, out of
season, and remained with me, while I watched from the balcony
birds and ships alike fleeting tropicward with many-colored wings
outspread, and thought of a tame crane at home,—with one wing
hopelessly maimed,—that used to cry out bitterly to processions of his
wild kindred sailing above the city roofs on their way to other skies.
Why these longings for lands in which we shall never be?—why this
desire for that azure into which we cannot soar?—whence our
mysterious love for that tumultuous deep into whose emerald secrets
we may never peer?—Can it be that through countless epochs of the
immemorial phylogenesis of man,—through all those myriad changes
suggested by the prenatal evolution of the human heart,—through all
the slow marvelous transition from fish to mammal,—there have
actually persisted impulses, desires, sensations, whereof the enigma
may be fully interpreted by some new science only,—a future science
of psychical dysteleology?...
So musing, I found my way to the Plaza.
Has it not often seemed to you that the more antiquated and the
more unfamiliar an object or a place is, the more it appears at first
sight to live,—to possess a sort of inner being, a fetish-spirit, a soul? I
thought that morning the ancient Plaza had such a soul, and that it
spoke to me in its mysterious dumb way, as if saying: 'Come look at
me, because I am very, very old;—but do not look at the sulphur
fountain which the Americans have made, nor at the monument they
have built; for those are not of the centuries to which I belong.'
So I entered, and idled awhile among the palms that threw spidery
shadows under the noon-light; and I deciphered the old inscription
upon the coquina pillar:—'PLAZA DE LA CONSTITUCION...;'—paying little
heed to the song of the artesian spring, and scarcely vouchsafing a
furtive glance to the newer monument, which I saw was not artistic,
not imposing, but naïve and almost cumbrous. Suddenly my
indifferent eye noted a graven word which revealed that the newer
structure had been erected by Love, and for Love's sake only. And
then, all unexpectedly, the very artlessness of the monument touched
me as with a voiceless reproach,—touched me like the artlessness of
a face in tears: so much of tender pain revealed itself through the
simplicity of the chiseled words, OUR DEAD,—through the
commonplaceness of the inscription, 'Erected by the Ladies' Memorial
Association.' Then I walked around the monument, perusing on each
of its white faces the roll-call of the dead,—sons, brothers, lovers,—
the names of your darlings, gentle women of Saint Augustine! I read
them every one; carefully spelling out many a Spanish name of
Andalusian origin: sonorous appellations holding in their syllables
etymological suggestions of Arabian ancestry—names swarthy and
beautiful as an Oriental face might be. And all the while, —dominating
the perfume of blossoms, and the keen sweet scent of aromatic
grasses,—the sulphureous smell of the Volcanic spring came to me
grimly through the warm aureate air,—like an odor of battles!
There was a name upon that white stone which affected me in a
singular way,—a name that by contrast with those dark Spanish ones
seemed fair, blonde as gold! In someplace—at some time, I had
known that name.—But where?—but when?
Even as a perfume may create for us the spectre of a vanished day, or
as a melody may suddenly evoke for us the forgotten tone of some
dear voice,—so may the sound or sight of a name momentarily revive
for us all the faded colors of some memory-portrait so beautiful, so
beloved, that we had become afraid to look at it, and had permitted
innumerable spiders of Monotony to weave their tintless gauze before
its face. But we have had experiences which are now so long dead
and so profoundly sepultured in the Cemetery of Recollection that no
mnemonic necromancy can lend them recognizable outline; they have
become totally spiritualized, and reveal themselves only as faint wind-
stirrings in the atmosphere of Thought.
Surely the experience connected in some vague way with that blonde
name must have belonged to these:—the memory had been; for I
knew the presence of its ghost; but viewless it obstinately remained.
It pursued me through the amber afternoon. By some inexplicable
mental process I discovered that it had been also associated with an
idea of death, a melancholy fancy, at the time, that I had heard or
had seen it before.—But when?—but where did I first learn that
name? ... Night came, but brought with it no answer to the enigma.
I watched the moon,—a new moon, yellow and curved like a young
banana,—droop over the dreaming sea: there were sparklings like
effervescence through the archway of stars,—perhaps the molecular
motion of some Astral Thought. Then seemed to fall upon the world a
hush like the hush of sanctuaries,—like that Silence of Secrets told of
in the Bhagavad-Gita: the peace of the Immensities. In such hours
fancies come to us like gusts of seawind,—as vast and pure; nay,
sometimes vaster,—measureless like the interspaces between sun and
sun. For it is only in these voiceless moments that the heavens speak
to us,—telling of mysteries beyond the luminous signaling of astral
deep unto astral deep, beyond the furthest burning of constellations;
mysteries that shall still be mysteries when our day-star shall have
yielded up his ghost of flame.—The death of a man; the death of a
sun:—is the awful Universe affected any more by the last than by the
first?
And with this question, the question of the morning returned,
enigmatic as before,—bringing to me the indescribable, creeping,
electrical sensation that we are said to feel especially when some
heedless foot is treading the place of our future grave.
It was late when I sought sleep that night—my last Floridian night.
And I dreamed strange dreams.
First, I dreamed of a plant,—a plant with sombre cordiform leaves,—
that bent away from the light toward me, and followed me
persistently when I retreated from it; crawling like a pet reptile to get
in front of me, and then rising up slowly, very slowly; stretching out to
me, as with dumb affection, two helpless arms—two long leafy stems
tipped with blood-colored flowers.
Then it seemed to me that I stood in a place of burial, and that, in
some inexplicable way, I could observe the processes of that dark
alchemy by which flesh is transmuted into leaf and fruit,—by which
blood is transformed into blossom, as in the old Greek myths, and into
the living substance also of those creatures, gem-winged, jewel-eyed,
that feed upon the juices, the honey, and the fruit of graveyard flora.
Then suddenly the mystery of the blonde name again came before me
—this time upon a graven square of marble; and in a little while I
thought I knew the story of the dead; for this impossible and
nameless legend shaped itself in my sleep.

VULTUR AURA

June 2, 188-
... San Juan de los Pinos:—'Saint John of the Pines,' That was the
name of the ancient fort. And in those days the names of the bastions
also were names of the Evangelists and the Apostles.
There is a ghostliness in the name! Why Saint John of the pines? Was
this low shore beshadowed in the sixteenth century by pines
tremendous, immemorial, more ancient than man,—through whose
colossal aisles the sea-gusts spake with utterance vague and vast as
the Wind of the Spirit? Did the roar of the far-off reef, the mutterings
of the mighty woods, evoke for Spanish piety dim fancies of the
Voices of Patmos, of the Thunders and the Trumpetings?
It was a timber stronghold only,—that forgotten fort, thus placed
beneath the protection of weird Saint John,—a rampart-work of pine.
Then were discovered the virtues of the coquina,—that wonderful
shell-rock which seems marble half formed, half crystallized, under
the pressure of shallow seas; and out of it was Fort San Marco built,—
very solidly, very mathematically, very slowly,—by the labor of more
than a century and the expenditure of thirty millions of good Spanish
dollars. Two hundred and fifty years ago they began to build it; to-day
it stands well-nigh as strong as in the time when Oglethorpe's English
cannon played on it in vain. Now the profane Americano, who putteth
no trust in saints, but in his own strength only, calleth it Fort Marion;
and the lizards dwell in it; and the spider weaves her tapestries above
its chapel-altar; and the dust is deep in the holy-water fonts, where
Catholic swordsmen once dipped their sinewy hands. But over the
great sally-port you may still discern the Arms of Spain,—the Crown,
the Shield, the triple turrets of Castile, the rampant Lions of Leon,
and, encircling these, the sculptured Order of the Fleece of Gold. Salty
winds have chapped the relief;—the fingers of the rain have worn it
down as the smooth face of a coin is worn;—the wings of Time have
brushed away the edges of the tablet,—and besmirched the Fleece of
Gold,—and obliterated, as in irony, the title of the King, and the
beginning of the solemn inscription,—REYNANDO EN ESPANA. The REY is
gone forever!—syllable and potentate! Underneath the pendant Lamb,
—now black,—there are dark stains of drippings,—as of blood
streaming over the stone. Nothing could be more grotesquely realistic
than the sculptured helplessness of that Lamb; yet we may well doubt
if he who chiseled it was moved by any spirit of sardonic symbolism,—
any memory of those Argonauts of the sixteenth century, who found a
new Colchis in the West, and a new Fleece, whereof the shearing
yielded in less than one generation three hundred tons of gold.
Now the moat is haunted by lizards and lovers only; and there are
buzzards upon the sentry towers; and there are bats in the barbican:
—it is just sixty-five years since the last Spanish trooper tramped out
of the sally-port, never to come back. But squamated as the structure
is, the dignity of it imposes awe,—the antiquated vastness of it
compels respect for the vanished grandeur of Spain; the majesty of its
desolation is unspeakable.—I think one feels it most on wild days,
when the mighty drum-roll of the breakers is sounded from the harbor
bar, and the winds of the Atlantic blow their mad clarions in the
barbican, and all the white cavalry of Ocean charge the long coral
coast.
... A Shadow descends the counterscarp of the sea-battery,—passes
the covered way,—crosses the ditch,—mounts the scarp,—vanishes
beyond the bastions. A moment more and it reappears,—still coming
from the sea; it is moving in circles with a swift swimming motion, as
of an opaqueness floating vaguely in the humors of the eye. Now it is
only a passing fleck, a shapeless blot; now it is the phantom of a
boat.
Look up, into the brightness,—into the violet blaze!—behold him
hovering in the splendor of heaven, sailing before the sun, that
Kharkas, 'dwelling in decay,'—whom the Parsee reveres. (For't is
written that even the flitting of his shadow over the faces of the dead
driveth out the unclean spirit that entereth into corpses.) 'From the
height of his highest flight he discerneth if there be upon the ground
a morsel of flesh not bigger than a hand; and for his comfort the odor
of musk hath been created underneath his wing,'—How magnificent
his soaring!—yet the vast pinions never beat; they veer only with his
wheeling,—sometimes presenting to the meridian their whole black
banner-breadth,—sometimes offering only the sabre-curves of their
edges. He seems to float by volition alone,—to swim the deeps of day
without effort. Higher and higher he mounts into the abyss of light;
now he seems to hang beside the sun!—now he is only a whirling
speck!—now he is gone!—My field-glass brings him again into view
for a moment—sailing, circling, spiring by turns; but once more he
dwindles into a mote, not bigger than a tiny flake of soot, which rises
up, up, up, and vanishes away at last into luminous eternities
unfathomable. Yet from those invisible heights his eye still scans the
face of the land and the features of men—that wondrous eye far
reaching as a beam of daylight. 'There is a path,' saith Job, 'which no
fowl knoweth, and which the eye of the vulture hath not seen—But
that path lies not open to the gaze of the sun; for whatsoever earthly
thing the day-star hath looked upon, that thing the ken of the vulture
also hath discerned. Rightly, therefore, hath the eye of the vulture
been mythologically likened unto the eye of deities and of demons.
Was not the sacred symbol of Isis, the Impenetrably Veiled,—Isis,
mother of Gods, 'Eye of the Sun,' who by the quivering of her feathers
createth light, who by the beating of her wings createth spirit,—a
Golden Vulture, the saving emblem hung about the throat of the
dead? And the vultures of the Vedic prayer to Indra, all-seeing
demons; great sun-vultures of the Sanscrit epic, demi-gods. By vision
alone it was given the bird Gatayus to know the past, the present,
and that which was to come; for, encompassing the world in his flight,
all things were discerned by his gaze.
O ghoul of the empyrean, well doth thy brother, the Shadow-caster of
deserts, know the time of the going and the coming of the caravans;
and he maketh likewise each year the pilgrimage to the tomb of the
Prophet!—Thy cousins sit upon the Towers of Silence; and the
charnel-pits of the dakhmas have no secrets for them! From the
eternal silences of heaven,—from the heights that are echoless and
never reached by human cry,—progenitors of thine have watched the
faces of the continents wrinkle in the revolution of centuries; they
have looked down upon the migrations of races; they have witnessed
the growth and the extinction of nations; they have read the crimson
history of a hundred thousand wars.
Another shadow crosses my feet—and yet another passes; the orbits
of their circlings intercross. Hanging above the dark fort, those black
silhouettes cutting sharply athwart the azure seem grimly appropriate
to this desolation. Doubtless the birds have haunted the coast for
centuries. The Spaniard, who gave many a rich feast of eyes and
hearts, has passed away;—the Vulture remains, and waits. For what?
—is it for some vomit of the spuming sea,—some putrefaction of the
buzzing shambles?—or does he, indeed, still hope, even after the
passing of three hundred years, for the return of Menendez?

CREOLE PAPERS

QUAINT NEW ORLEANS AND ITS HABITANTS

I. FRENCH-TOWN

Old New Orleans proper (French-Town, as it is termed by

steamboatmen; Le Carré, as its own inhabitants call it) is principally,
though not wholly, comprised in the great quadrilateral bounded by
Canal, Esplanade, Rampart, and Old Levee streets. Where the horse-
cars now run upon those thoroughfares formerly stood the bastioned
walls of the colonial city, encircled by a deep moat. Double rows of
trees now mark the old rampart lines upon three sides of the
quadrilateral, and birds sing in their branches at just the height where
brazen cannon once showed their black throats, where Swiss or
Spanish sentries paced to and fro against the sky. Within the Carr?
the streets are serried, solid, and picturesque. Memories of
aristocratic wealth still endure in certain vast mansions, broad-
balconied and deep-courted, now mostly converted into hotels or
lodging-houses, half the year void of guests; but the majority of the
dwellings are rather curious than splendid. Nearly all the larger ones
are built in the form of an L, the lower line of the letter representing
the street front, the upper line a shallow but lofty wing reaching far
back from the main building at right angles, and flanked by an
enormous green or brown cistern as by a round tower. A really
imposing archway often pierces the street façade—giving carriageway
into the deep court—much like those quaint archways characteristic of
old London taverns. Such a building often possesses three sets of
stairways—invariably two—one for the main edifice, one for the wing.
But these immense winter residences, once sheltering a population of
servants and clients large as that comprised in the Roman familia, are
now for the most part in a state of decay. There is much crumbling of
wood-work, looseness of jointing, ulcerous exposure of the brick
skeleton where plaster has rotted away in patches from piazza pillars
and from the ribs of archways. Grass struggles up between the
flagging; microscopic fungi patch the wall surfaces with sickly green.
The semi-tropical forces of nature in the South are mighty to destroy
the work of man. Dismally romantic is the Greek front upon Toulouse
Street, in rear of the old Hôtel Saint Louis, and once famous as 'The
Planters' Bank.' Through cracks in the high board fence erected about
its desolation one may see the weeds squeezing their way through
the joints of its broad stone steps, the green creepers wriggling round
its columns, and bushes actually growing from the angles of its
pediment—a vegetation planted, doubtless, by birds. This ruin has a
veritable classic dignity—a melancholy that is antique. Sorrowful
likewise are the voiceless courts of the once beautiful French hotel,
with their void galleries above and dried-up fountains below. Millions
upon millions have changed hands within that building; princely revels
were held there of old by the feudal lords of Louisiana; the splendors
of the past linger in the tarnished gilding and dying colors of the lofty
apartments, and in the decorations of the porcelain dome frescoed by
Casanova.
Many of the French and Spanish dwellings are as full of architectural
mysteries and surprises as the Castle of Otranto—corridors that
serpentine, stairways that leap from building to building, cabinets
masked in the recesses of dormer-windows, curious covered bridges
worthy of Venice. Looking up or down one of these streets, the eye is
astonished by the long patch-work of colors motley as Joseph's coat,
ultimately fading off into grayish-blues where the vista meets the
horizon. Under the golden glow of the sun these tints take delightful
warmth; there are chrome and gamboge yellows, deep-sea greens,
ashen pinks, brick reds, chocolates, azures, blazing whites, all
trimmed with the intenser green of iron balconies and the antiquated
window-shutters folded back against the wall. The old French Opera-
house I have seen painted in a peculiarly pleasing hue, to which a
summer sun would lend the mellowness of antique marble. It was a
ripe-ivorine tint, with just the faintest conceivable flush of pink; it was
a warm and human color—it was the color of creole flesh!
Speaking of it recalls the curious statement of divers writers to the
effect that the skin of the West Indian creole feels cooler than that of
a European or American from the Northern States. The same is true
of the Louisiana creole; the vigorous European or Northerner who
touches a creole hand during the burning hours of a July or August
day has reason to be surprised at its coolness—such a coolness as
tropical fruits retain even under the perpendicular fires of an
equatorial sun.

II. THE CREOLES

When an educated resident of New Orleans speaks of the creoles he

must be understood as referring to the descendants of the early Latin
colonists, the posterity of those French and Spanish settlers who
founded or ruled Louisiana. The diminutive criollo, derived from the
Spanish criar, 'to beget,' primarily signified the colonial-born child of
European blood, as distinguished from the offspring of the
Conquistadores by slave women, whether Indian or African. Nothing
could be more etymologically antithetical, therefore, than the phrase
'colored creoles,' although it has obtained considerable currency as a
convenient term to distinguish those colored people who can claim a
partly Latin origin, from the plainer 'American' colored folk who have
neither French nor Spanish blood in their veins, and to whom the
creole dialect is supremely unintelligible. Among the colored
population of lighter tint, moreover, the characteristics of the Latin
blood show themselves so strongly that the popular use of the term
distinguishing them from ordinary types of mulatto, quadroon,
quinteroon, or octoroon appears justifiable.
What old Bryan Edwards, in his excellent but obsolete 'History of the
British West Indies;' wrote concerning the creoles of the Antilles,
largely applies to the creoles of Louisiana likewise, especially in
relation to their physical characteristics. In whatever part of the
civilized Temperate Zone pronounced, the very word 'creole' conveys
to the hearer fancies tropical as the poetry of Baudelaire; to the
imagination of well-informed readers the creole invariably appears as
a person of European blood corporeally and morally modified by the
influences of a torrid climate. Whether we hear of the English creoles
of the West Indian, East Indian, or West African colonies, the French
creoles of Algeria, Martinique, or Senegal, or the Dutch creoles of
Malabar, the name invariably provokes fancies of burning suns, of
monstrous vegetation, of nights lighted by the Southern Cross. In
New Orleans we are only at the Gate of the Tropics; sometimes our
orange-trees shiver in frosty winds, our rare palms droop in January
colds. But the climate is torrid enough nevertheless to have produced
marked physical changes in the native white population of Louisiana
during the lapse of generations. It has modified the osteogeny of the
true creoles almost as remarkably as in Martinique or Trinidad; it has
greatly deepened the eye-sockets to shelter the sight from the
furnace glow of summer heat; it has made limbs suppler, extremities
more delicate; and to these changes wrought in the body's framework
is wholly attributable that languid and singular grace which
distinguishes the Louisianaise among her fairer American sisters.
Creole eyes—the eyes that tantalized Gottschalk into the musical
utterances of Ojos Criollos—are large, luminous, liquidly black, deeply
fringed, and their darkness is strangely augmented by the uncommon
depth of the orbit. The pilose system—to use anatomical phraseology
—-is richly developed; the women have magnificent hair, and creole
beards and mustaches are usually very handsome. Formerly the
Louisiana creoles excelled in exercises demanding grace and
quickness of eye; they were fine dancers and famous swordsmen—
indeed, the art of fencing is not yet lost among them. The beauty of
the women is peculiar; they possess a sveltesse—a slender elegance
that is very fascinating; but to Northerners they seem fragile of
physique, more delicate than they really are. A rosy face, a bright,
fresh complexion, is rarely seen among them; they have an ivorine
tint, a convalescent pallor, that contrasts oddly with the fire of their
dark pupils and the lustrous blackness of their hair. When the tint is
darker,—a Spanish swarthiness,—the effect is less strange. Creole
blondes are few.
The creole temperament is one of great nervous sensibility;
phlegmatic characters are anomalies; a disposition to violent extremes
of anger or affection is often masked by an exterior appearance of
listless indifference. The climate itself (nine months of summer heat,
three of snowless chill, long periods of heavy calm, broken by storms
of extraordinary and splendid violence—a climate enervating, fitful,
luxuriant) has reflected its characteristics in the native population. The
mind develops precociously, blossoms richly. There are few educated
creoles who cannot speak two or three languages well; many speak
more; and the writer has known one who was almost a Mezzofanti.
Love of the mother-country is not dead among the creoles, and their
attachment to ancient French customs has but little abated. Their
home life has scarcely changed during a century, although they are
becoming less socially exclusive. Nevertheless, the Northern stranger
invited to visit the home of a creole family may even now consider
himself the subject of a rare compliment. Such a visit, however, will
scarcely be made within the limits of the old colonial city, for the
creoles are no longer there. They have moved away to newer districts
north and south—away from the decaying streets and the crumbling
cemeteries—out to quiet suburbs where the air is sweet with breath
of jasmine flowers and orange-blossoms, out to dreamy Bayou Saint
Jean, where clusters of white-pillared cottages slumber in green. They
have mostly abandoned the Carré to the European Latins—French
emigrants from the Mediterranean coasts, Italians, Sicilians,
Spaniards, Greeks; to the population of the French Market, the
venders of fruits and meats; to the keepers of what Sala called
'absurd little shops'; and especially to the French-speaking element of
color, which still clings to the ruined Past with something of the
strange affection that erst subsisted between master and slave.
How long will even that ruined Past endure? The somnolent quiet of
the old streets is being already broken by the energetic bustle of
American commerce; the Northern Thor is already threatening the
picturesque town with iconoclastic hammer. Colossal capital advances
menacingly from the southern side, showing the sheet-lightning of its
gold. One huge firm has already devoured a whole square, and
extended itself into four streets at once, cruciform-wise, like a Greek
basilica. Even the old Napoleon First furniture sets, the massive four-
pillared beds, the ponderous cabinets curiously carved, the luxuriant
fauteuils, the triple-footed tables,—all these solid household gods
which stood upon eagle feet of gilded brass,—are being bought up by
shrewd speculators and sent North, to fetch prices which no one here
would dream of paying. Perhaps the antique life will make its last rally
about the old Place d'Armes (Plaza de Armas,) in the vicinity of the
quaint cathedral, under the shadow of those towers whose bells for a
hundred years have rung diurnally for the repose of the soul of Don
André Almonaster Roxas, Knight of the Royal and Distinguished
Spanish Order of Charles III., Regidor and Alferez-Real of His Most
Catholic Majesty. So long as the iron tongues of those bells can speak,
so long as the iron heart of the great tower-clock shall beat,
something of the old life and the old faith must live in the creole
quarter. Long after most of the quaint architecture shall have
disappeared I fancy those two massive Spanish edifices, the old
Cabildo and Casa Curial, will still remain standing upon either side of
the cathedral, like grim soldiery guarding a commissary of the Holy
Inquisition. The Spaniard builded well: after the lapse of nearly a
hundred years, those rugged edifices testify grandly to the solid
Roman character of their creators. The plaster may peel from the
stout pillars of their arcades; but dilapidation only adds nobility to
their quaintness; they are dignified by the scars of their battle with
Time; they are imposing without loftiness; they are superb without
artifice—deep-shouldered, thick-set, broad-backed, firm upon their
feet, like veteran troops, like the splendid Spanish infantry of three
hundred years ago.
 CREOLE WOMEN IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES

Although it is generally well known that the condition of woman in

most Latin countries is one of comparative seclusion,—totally different
from that existence of large freedom she enjoys in English or
American communities, some romantic misconception prevails
regarding her life in the Latin tropics. Fiction, painting, and poetry
have combined to create a false ideal of that life,—to make the word
'creole' suggest many happy, dreamy, luminous things. Not altogether
are the artists and romance-writers at fault, nevertheless: their
purpose has been only to reflect something of nature's magic in the
zones of eternal summer; and no art and no words could transcend
the splendor that was their inspiration. He who has once seen tropic
nature under a tropic sun has received a revelation: there will come to
him, if he has a heart, with a new strange meaning,—also eternal and
true,—the words of John,—voiced perpetually from the purple peaks,
and the undying woods, and sapphire glory of sea and sky:—'This is
the message which we announce unto you, that God is LIGHT!'
Light!—no one dwelling in the cities of the North may ever imagine
the possibilities of light and of color in the equatorial world. And he
who has once known them must continue forever enchanted,—must
feel, after departure from them, like an exile from Paradise. The
poetry of the tropics is born of such regret. Romance and song are
essentially imaginative; and that which surpasses and satiates
imagination does not directly stimulate their production: it is only as
an exile that the creole becomes a poet, when he remembers the
charm of his country without the pains of its daily life. There is no
more touching incident, perhaps, in literary history, than the fate of
Léonard, the poet of Guadeloupe. His youth had been mostly spent
abroad in struggles to obtain the means of returning to his native
island. Succeeding after intense strain, he returned to find himself
only a victim of the revolution of 1789,—threatened with death if he
persisted in remaining. His friends hurried him on board a vessel; but,
although he had been already wounded and pursued by an assassin,
he could not nerve himself to go. Again and again he left the ship,
and only with the greatest difficulty could he be persuaded at last to
remain on board. But nostalgia had brought him to the condition of a
dying man before his arrival in France. At Nantes he tried to
reëmbark, hoping at least to die in his beloved island; but he expired
before the ship could sail.
Tropical nature is indeed an enchantress; but she does more than
bewitch, she transforms body and soul. She satisfies the senses, and
numbs the aspirations; she lulls the higher faculties to sleep while
gratifying, as nowhere else, the physical wants of life. It has been
often said that human happiness has a certain fixed measure in all
conditions of existence: the quality may vary, the capacity for each
individual remains the same. Such a belief would seem to have its
confirmation in the conditions of tropical society. The pleasures of
intellectual life become almost impossible in a climate where the least
mental effort provokes drowsiness, and the middle of each day is
devoted to sleep; nor can the dazzling spectacle of tropical vegetation
under tropical skies wholly compensate the enervating effect of an
atmosphere hot and heavy as the air of a Turkish bath. Social
existence, so circumstanced, becomes of necessity both indolent and
provincial; and the enchantment of the tropics should prove
irresistible only to strangers able and willing to dream life away, and
to abandon all gifts of civilization so hardly earned by Northern
struggle. And one must know this, to guess how far from enviable is
the life of white women even in the English tropics, where there is at
least an effort to maintain the social customs of the mother country.
But in the old Latin colonies of the Pacific and the West Indies,
woman's life has always been narrowed by formal customs which no
American or English girl could well resign herself to endure.

II

Time seems to have moved very slowly in the old French colonies. In
the streets of Martinique or Réunion or Marie-Galante or Guadeloupe,
one almost seems to live in the seventeenth century,—so little have
architecture or customs been modified in two or three hundred years.
The great changes effected by the abolition of slavery are not
immediately discernible to a stranger; the free blacks and people of
color, forming the mass of the population, still cling to the simple and
bright attire of other days, and seem to hold almost the same relation
to white colonial life as hired servants that they formerly held as
slaves. Emancipation, republicanism, and education have not yet
abolished the old manners, nor greatly modified the creole speech.
Could Josephine arise from the dust of her rest to revisit her
Martinique birthplace, she would find so little changed at Trois-Islets,
that except for the saucier manner of the younger negroes, she could
scarcely surmise the new republican conditions. And the modern life
of the creole woman, though less luxurious than in the previous
century of colonial prosperity, varies otherwise little from that of her
great-greatgrandmother.
Her birth is announced with antique formality in the colonial papers,
and duly registered in the Archives de la Marine. She is christened in
the twilight of some colonial baptistery, where silhouettes of palm-
heads quiver behind stained-glass windows; and receives those half-
dozen names—names of angels, or saints, alternated with names of
ancestors—by which every white creole child is ushered into the
world. Then some comely black or brown woman, dazzlingly robed in
bright colors, and covered with barbaric jewelry, carries her on a
silken cushion from house to house that all of family kin may kiss her.
Always through the recollections of her childhood there will smile back
to her the memory of that kind swart face,—the face of her black
nurse, of her da. It is the da who bathes her, feeds her, dresses her,
lulls her to sleep with song: doubtless for a time she believes the dark
woman her mother. It is the da who first takes her out into the
beautiful world of the tropics,—shows her the mighty azure circle of
the sea, and the coming and going of the ships, and the peaks with
their circling clouds, and the whispering gold of cane-fields, and the
palms, and the jewel-feathered humming birds. It is the black nurse
who first teaches her to kiss,—to utter the words 'Manman,' 'Da,'
'Papoute,' to express her infant thoughts in the softest cooing speech
uttered by human lips,—the creole tongue. It is the da also who first
thrills her child-fancy into blossom with stories of the impossible, and
who stimulates her musical sense by teaching her strange songs,—
melodies borne with slavery into the Indies from Senegal or the Coast
of Gold.
Growing older, the little one is gradually separated from her da, is
taught to speak French, to submit to many formal restraints, is finally
sent,—while still a mere child,—to some convent school. She leaves it
only on arriving at womanhood. Perhaps during those years she sees
her parents every regular visiting day, and during the brief Christmas
vacations; but she is practically separated otherwise from them as
much as if imprisoned,—though they may be living only a few streets
away. If they are very rich, she may be sent away to France. In the
latter event she may acquire accomplishments superior to those
imparted in any colonial convent; but the education mother respects
is very simple and old-fashioned: the chief result aimed at in the
training of girls being moral and religious rather than secular. The
pensionnaires of the colonial convents wear a very plain uniform,—a
straightfalling dress of sombre color, belted at the waist, and a broad
straw hat. The different classes are distinguished by long narrow
ribbons crossed over breast and back and tied round the waist below,
the ends being left to stream down at one side. One class wears blue
ribbons; another pink; another white. Altogether the uniform is ugly;
it gives an aspect of clumsiness which is quite foreign to the creole
race. Nothing could seem more uninteresting than a procession of
convent girls on their way to church, escorted by nuns. But this is only
the chrysalis stage of creole girl-life: the beautiful butterfly will be
revealed when that sombre uniform is abandoned forever.
At seventeen or eighteen the creole girl returns home, with a large
package of class prizes,—mostly publications of Mame & Cie,—showy
volumes of a semi-religious character,—with a few books of travel,
perhaps, added, which have been carefully perused and
recommended as safe reading by some ecclesiastical censor. A private
party is given in her honor; and she makes her début into creole
society. Her life, thereafter, however, would not, by American girls at
all events, be thought enviable. She rarely leaves home, except to pay
a visit to some relatives, or to go to church under the escort of some
member of the family, or some old lady chosen to accompany her. She
is scarcely ever seen upon the streets. The pleasures of shopping are
denied her. Whatever she needs is purchased for her by male
relatives, or by her hired maid,—who selects at the store such
merchandise as may be desired, and carries a stock of samples to the
house, in a tray balanced upon her head. There the decision is made,
the chosen articles retained, and the remainder carried back to the
merchant, who in due time sends in his bill. There are no evening
parties or visitings; the active life of the colony ends with sundown; all
retire between eight and nine o'clock, and rise with dawn. Except
during the brief theatrical season, and on the annual occasion of a
carnival ball given by select society, there are no evening
amusements. The discipline of the convent has prepared the young
girl for this secluded existence; but were it not for the intense heat of
the climate, she would probably suffer, in spite of such preparation,
from the monotony of her life. Happily for her, she remains as
innocent of other conditions of society as she is ignorant of all evil;
and the tenderness of her mother or other relatives does all that can
be done to render her existence happy. Still, she sometimes regrets
her convent-days,—the liberty of play-hours in the open court, with its
palms and sabliers: she likes to revisit the nuns occasionally, to get a
glimpse of the pupils amusing themselves as she used to do,—secretly
wishes, perhaps, that she were a child again. But she has yet no idea
how often she will wish that wish before they robe her all in black,
and put her away to sleep forever somewhere in the colonial
cemetery, under the tall palms.
All about her young life glimmer conventional bars: she is a caged
bird, vaguely desiring liberty, without a suspicion of what perils liberty
might bring. Her pleasures, her ideas, her emotions are still those of a
child,—even on the day when her mother, kissing her, first whispers to
her some news that makes her flush to her hair. She has been spoken
for! A gentleman, whom she scarcely knows even as a visitor, has
demanded her hand. Could she love him? She does not know; she is
willing to do whatever her mother deems best. They meet thereafter
more frequently,—but always as before in the salon, in the presence
of the family: there is no wooing; there are no private walks and
talks; there is, in short, no romance in creole courtship;—everything is
arranged and determined by the heads of both families. Her betrothal
is circulated as a piece of private news throughout society; but no
printed mention of it is ever made. Finally the notary is called, and the
marriage contract drawn up, after a strictly business manner; she has
rarely anything to do with these preliminaries, but the future husband,
if a man of the world, will be careful to read the contract very
attentively, and to discuss its provisions, point by point. It is, in fact, a
decided weakness to omit these formal considerations of the financial
side of marriage. More than one proud or sensitive man has had
reason late in life to regret the impulse of trust or affection which
caused him to sign his marriage contract without examining it. But the
fiancée had nothing to do with this: she is content to leave her
parents to make every possible effort to secure her material
happiness.
Marriage opens to her a larger sphere of life. She can go out freely,
visit friends, entertain relatives at her home, and—in these more
recent years—even occasionally enter stores. But such comparative
freedom has its disadvantages. It involves a round of social duties
more or less wearisome,—visits during the heated hours of the day,
and the wearing of black close-fitting Parisian dresses in an
atmosphere and under a sun more difficult to endure than any
summer conditions of the temperate zone. Probably she feels relieved
when at a later day the cares of her household and children enable
her to excuse herself from taking further part in active social life; and
thereafter she rarely leaves home, except to go to church.

III

For more than two centuries such has been the monotonous, half-
cloistered existence of creole women in the French colonies. Such a
life might have been Josephine's had she wedded a merchant or
planter of Martinique, instead of a soldier. In the past century and
before it, slavery and wealth made the existence of the creole woman
more luxurious: there were more social pleasures for her also,—more
parties, receptions, amusements,—especially in the capital, Fort Royal,
where the Governor held a veritable court. Furthermore, the flower of
creole society passed much of its time at Paris, and exercised some
influence in the Métropole. But in the colony proper, the creole girl has
no free joyous girlhood, no prospect of larger liberty save through
marriage, and no romance of love. Yet, notwithstanding these
apparent disadvantages, the demoiselles of the last century were
famed throughout the world for their charm of manner and singular
beauty.
Climate and other tropical conditions had quite transformed the
colonial race within a few generations, changing not only complexion
and temperament, but the very shape of the skeleton,—lengthening
the limbs, making delicate the extremities, deepening the orbits to
protect the eye from the immense light. The creole became more lithe
and refined of aspect than the European parent,—taller but more
slender,—more supple, though less strong; and that grace which is
the particular characteristic of Latin blood would seem to have
obtained its utmost possible physical expression in the women of
Martinique. The colony was justly proud of them; their reputation
abroad had become romantic; and legends of their witchery were
being circulated the world over. So much was their influence feared
that the home government passed a special law forbidding any of its
colonial officials to marry creoles, lest the discharge of diplomatic
duties should be directed by some charming woman's will, rather than
by the will of the sovereign. Yet, in a few years more, a creole woman
was to share the throne of the first Napoleon, and sway the destinies
of Europe by her gentle counsel,—that Josephine de la Pagerie, of
Trois-Islets, whose memory lives in the beautiful marble statue
erected in the Savane of Fort-de-France, by the citizens of the colony.

IV

There is another Martinique memory, which one cannot pass over in

speaking of the creole beauties of former days. Robert, a tiny village
on the southeast coast, has a legend which once gave it quite as
much distinction as Trois-Islets. Robert, or at least one of its suburbs,
claimed to be the birthplace of another lovely creole, who became, it
was alleged, no less a personage than the Sultana-Validé of Selim III.
More than one historian seems to have given credit to this story, M.
Sidney Daney, in his 'Histoire de la Martinique,' even published her
portrait, with the inscription beneath: 'Aimée Dubuc De Rivéry,
Sultana-Validé, et mère de Mahmoud II.—A pretty face, with hair
powdered and combed back after the early fashion of the eighteenth
century, and that soft roundness of lines suggesting the ripeness of
sixteen years,—when the slender child is just passing into the beauty
of womanhood.
The legend is said to have inspired a novel, which I was not able to
find in the colony; it is perhaps long out of print. The pages of M.
Sidney Daney,[1] who treats the story as a historical event, probably
form the best authority for it. According to this writer Mademoiselle
Aimée Dubuc Dérivry was born on the Pointe Royale plantation at
Robert in December, 1766,—three years later than Josephine. She
was the child of one of the oldest and most distinguished creole
families of Martinique. She was sent to France at an early age to be
educated, and passed several years in a convent school at Nantes. At
the age of eighteen she was called home, and embarked from the
same port in charge of a governess. The vessel was attacked and
captured by an Algerian corsair, and Aimée, her governess, and other
passengers were taken to Algiers and sold as slaves. The beauty of
the young creole attracted the notice of the Dey, who, desiring to gain
the friendship of the Sultan, bought the girl and sent her as a present
to Selim III at Constantinople. There, it was alleged, she became first
the favorite, and afterward Sultana-Validé—as the mother, in 1785, of
Mahmoud II, who ascended the Ottoman throne in 1808. Such is the
legend, in its briefest possible form.
To those familiar with Turkish history, the narrative is palpably absurd.
But it is still believed in the colony, notwithstanding its disproval by a
more careful writer than Daney,—M. Pierre Régis Dessalles, in a note
attached to one of the chapters of his 'Annales du Conseil Souverain
de la Martinique.'[2] Dessalles, disciplined to exactitude by his legal
profession, never set down a statement without thorough examination
of fact, and had to aid him all the Archives de la Marine,—among
which are preserved in France all important colonial documents, since
climate and insects render the perfect conservation of papers
impossible in the tropics. From these he found the history of the De
Rivéry, or Dérivry family,—the latter spelling being the official one.
The father was Henri Jacob Dubuc Dérivry, of the parish of Robert,
who married (24th May, 1773) Demoiselle Marie Anne Arbousset,
belonging to a family illustrious in Martinique history. By this marriage
he had three children:—
1. Marie-Anne, born April 5, 1774; died November 28, 1775.
2. Rose-Henriette-Germaine, born February 6, 1778. There is no
documentary evidence in existence as to what became of Rose-
Henriette-Germaine. This is probably the girl alleged to have entered
the seraglio at Constantinople, and to have had her brother (captured
with her) created a pasha—Mehemet-Ali, father of Ibrahim Pasha.
3. Marie—Alexandrine—Louise—Victoire, born June 24, 1780, and
married January 15, 1806, to a Monsieur Malet.
Thus the legend evaporates! Allowing for the precocity of creole
women, it is still quite evident that, as Rose-Henriette-Germaine was
born February 6, 1778, and the Sultan Mahmoud (her alleged son!)
on July 20, 1785, the story is impossible according to the records,
which allow an interval of only twelve years between the marriage of
M. Dérivry and the birth of Mahmoud, at which time Rose could have
been only seven or eight years old. M. Daney says she was born at
Robert, December i, 1755; but M. Dérivry was married only in 1773.
Furthermore, Mahmoud II was not the son of Selim III! Yet, in spite
of these hard facts, the legend is still believed; the colony still boasts
of its Aimée Dérivry as a mother of Sultans; and faded MS. documents
—some of which I have read, and copied myself—are shown to
strangers as proof of the romantic story.
All that is certain is that about a hundred years ago some young
creole girl of the Dubuc family was sent to France for her education,
and was never seen again by her parents; that many strange stories
were related accounting for the mystery of her disappearance, some
cruel, some improbable, all false; that her relatives went to Europe
and spent years in vain efforts to discover a trace of her; and that
meanwhile there sprang up this legend of her fate, still told with pride
to strangers in the colony, over a glass of sugar syrup and rum, by
hospitable planters.
[1] Histoire de la Martinique, depuis la colonization jusqu'en 1815.
Par M. Sidney Daney, Membre du Conseil Colonial de la Martinique.
Fort-Royal: 1844. See vol. iv, p. 234.
[2] Vol. H, pp. 285, 286.

But though the old order of creole life remains almost unchanged,
that life has shrunk into much smaller channels, and has undergone
many modifications. The wealth and indolent luxury of the eighteenth
century have become memories. The influence of the race upon home
politics has totally ceased. The race itself is rapidly disappearing from
the islands. Except among the few survivors of the old régime you
may now seek in vain for that proud, fine type of valiant and vigorous
manhood, once the honor of colonial France. With the abolition of
slavery and the introduction of universal suffrage, the new social
conditions became almost unbearable for the formerly dominant class,
—with its intense conservatism. Naturally the men of strong
individuality suffered most in the hopeless war of race prejudice and
race politics provoked by a too speedy conferring of political rights
upon a population of slaves; and the more energetic whites found
themselves forced to emigrate elsewhere. Those powerful characters
who had given the old creole life all its dignity and stability vanished
from the scene; and the remnant of the whites softened down into
that condition of dull, inert, flaccid existence which is their portion to-
day. The social conditions of the time of the monarchy have been,
indeed, almost reversed: the dark population, multiplying with
wonderful rapidity ever since emancipation, is crowding the white
population out of the islands; and the former slave race is now
politically the dominant one. It seems more than possible that the
white creole race will have disappeared from all the French West
Indies within a few more generations,—certainly from Martinique.
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