Chapter 15. Noumea and the Return

During my exile I used to let my mind return to France. From time to time down there in New Caledonia, with my gaze fixed on the sea and my thoughts free in space, I used to see the years gone by. I inhaled again the odor of roses in the yard, the hay just mown and lying in the summer sun, and the bitter reek of hemp. I saw it all again: thousands of details which had made no impression on me when they had occurred floated up from the depths of my memory. I discovered the sacrifices my mother had uncomplainingly made for me. She would have given me her very blood as piece by piece she had let me take everything we possessed so that I could promote ideas she didn’t share. All she ever wanted was to live near me in some quiet corner, in some village school lost in the woods.

Now that I have returned to France I let my thoughts roam free in space to New Caledonia. After the cyclones I witnessed there, I no longer gaze at the European storms I used to love so much. I had seen my first cyclone at night while I was on the Ducos Peninsula. I saw my second cyclone by day at Noumea. It was beautiful, but less grand than the cyclone at night had been, even though sheet-metal roofs went flying about like immense butterflies. The sea clamored with rage. The rain soaked us; it didn’t fall so much as pour down like an ocean. The needle of the compass went wild and searched for north with anguish. Great gusts of wind struck in the midst of the roar of sea and rain, and yet the dramatic effect was less awesome; perhaps I was becoming as sated with storms as I was with other things.

I had pardoned Perusset a long time before for failing to help me escape during the first cyclone, and while I was living in Noumea he died. Although he had done many other bold things, he had refused to help me escape, perhaps because he felt he had trusted his luck too often, and to have put blindly to sea would have been to provoke fate. Men, like beasts, have an instinct that warns them of danger, and when we think too much, we lose that ability. A horse has no hesitation in surrendering to instinct and can find the road hidden beneath the snow when its lost rider loosens the reins in desperation. Perhaps if Perusset had listened to me, we would have arrived in Sydney the way other waifs have dropped anchor there.

The authorities allowed me to leave the Ducos Peninsula and move to Noumea early in 1879. Those who had a profession and could be self-supporting were given a measure of freedom; so I went to Noumea to teach. There I taught not only the children of the white colonists, but also the Kanakas, and among those I taught was Daoumi’s brother.

It was fitting that I should teach him, because Daoumi was the first Kanaka I had met in New Caledonia, when he had come to Rochefort’s banquet. After that first meeting with Daoumi, I saw him again many times. To practice European life he got a job at the canteen on the Ducos Peninsula, and when I talked to him I got him to tell me the legends of the Kanakas, and he gave me vocabulary lists. For my part, I tried to tell him the things I believed it was most important for him to know.

Daoumi himself, though he was the son of a chief of Lifon, was almost European through living with whites. He knew how to read perfectly, his writing wasn’t any worse than many others, and even under the miserable stovepipe hat which he had had the naivete to burden himself with, he had the air of Othello.

He introduced his brother to me, a magnificent wild man with glittering teeth and wide phosphorescent pupils. He was dressed in the Kanakan manner, which is in nothing at all, and he spoke French, which is harsher than Kanakan dialects, with difficulty.

There is a story that a certain white woman loved Daoumi and nearly died of grief when her parents refused her permission to marry him. When I went to Noumea, I found that the white girl who had loved Daoumi was still living, but that Daoumi had died, and Daoumi’s brother had taken over the project of learning about European life. It is he who will return to his tribe with knowledge, and he who will derive the benefits from it.

That handsome wild man had begun to dress in a strange costume he believed was European. He had already learned how to read, and he came to my house to learn to write. There we used to speak about Daoumi and of the long-shadowed past of his tribe.

I do not know if the traditions which say that another race lived where their own was established are founded in fact or not, but the legends that are connected with them are too numerous for there to be no truth in them, all things considered. I don’t know the evidence for the argument that people make about some mainland Asian tribes being the same type as some Oceanic ones. But I believe that the so-called albinos seen by Cook and others in this part of the world were not albinos, but the last representatives of an Aryan branch, having long hair and, most of all, blue eyes, which are not albino characteristics. These Aryans, lost in some migration or in some geological revolution, lived on, marrying among themselves and among the Oceanic tribes. That inbreeding and intermarriage together are what explains their extinction and the rickety forms of their last representatives.

There were many legends that I learned from Daoumi and his brother. Daoumi’s brother and I also spoke of the short future that loomed before his race, when untutored and unarmed men faced our greed and our innumerable means of destruction. Seeing the lofty, resolute mind and the courageous and kind heart of Daoumi’s brother, I wondered which of us was the superior being: the one who assimilates foreign knowledge through a thousand difficulties for the sake of his race, or the well-armed white who annihilates those who are less well armed. Other races giving way before our arms is no proof of our superiority. If tigers and elephants and lions suddenly covered Europe and attacked us, they would triumph in a storm of destruction and would seem superior to us.

At my school in Noumea on Sundays, I got to know the Kanakas firsthand. They are neither stupid nor cowardly, two characteristics common in the present century. Curiosity about the unknown is as strong for them as it is for us, perhaps even more so, and their perseverance is great. It isn’t rare for a Kanaka to puzzle for days—I’ve even seen them spend years—over something that interests him, trying to understand something, and finally come and tell you, “Me understand what you say other day.” Time for them is always measured the same: ‘other day.’

In their minds, like blank pages, many new things could be inscribed, perhaps better than in ours. Ours are confused by doctrines and blurred by erasures.

Lively methods must be used to teach the Kanakas; they’re necessary for any young mind. Even educated persons learn more quickly if their teachers use dramatic colors rather than arid lists. In any case, the Kanakas don’t have the time or the facilities to wear out their pants on schoolbenches. For one thing, they have no pants.

Reading, mathematics, and the elements of music can be taught with a pointer against wall charts. With the pointer the teacher can single out letters or numbers, or using a pencil tip, can draw notes on a staff. This technique produces a spirited atmosphere, which facilitates understanding.

The Kanakas learn writing almost intuitively. If the teacher makes the words with movable letters, the blacks will write the words in an accept¬ able way very quickly. I say ‘acceptable’ with assurance, because the Kanakas have a marvelous dexterity for writing as well as for drawing.

Their sense of numbers is unlike ours. Ours has been shaped by our voyages and our crowds which have accustomed us to large numbers. Their sense of numbers is of small ones only. It is impossible for them to put a specific number on a large quantity—even one that is still small to us. Their word is ‘numerous’—that which can no longer be numbered precisely.

At Noumea I had a piano. Some of the keys were silent, and unless someone sang constantly to cover up the gaps in the melody, you couldn’t use it. Boeuf finally rebuilt the piano for me as a true instrument, and at the very end of my stay I was able to use it properly. But before it was repaired the piano served me as a teaching method that produced good results. With this piano whose broken hammers or strings made some notes in a run silent, the pupils realized there were gaps, and filled them in with their own notes. Sometimes they sang notes from the piece they were studying, and at other times they searched out their own musical phrases to fill the gap. Thus they created motifs which were often strange and sometimes beautiful. Since I’m on the subject, let me add that I tried out this method on my regular schoolchildren as well as in my Sunday class for the Kanakas.

From time to time on Sundays, when I was teaching my Kanaka classes, I noticed the head of M. Simon outside my window. Then I could be sure that shortly I would receive the white paper, boards for wood carving, notebooks, and everything else we lacked. In addition M, Simon would see to it that I got tobacco, firecrackers, and other treats for the Tayos.

At my Sunday classes there were tall Tayos, whose protruding ears had been lulled by the wind from the sea blowing through the palm trees and filled with the noise of storms. After they have reflected for five or six years over the little we have taught them, perhaps they will find from that little bit the wherewithal to astonish us. Leave them alone and let them dream about what they’ve learned. If, instead of civilizing childlike peoples with muskets, we sent schoolmasters to the tribes—as M. Simon, the mayor of Noumea, wanted to do—the tribes would have buried the warstone a long time ago.

Throughout the world there are too many minds left uncultivated, just as good land lies fallow while much of the old cultivated land is exhausted. It is the same for human races. Between those who know nothing and those who have a great deal of false knowledge—those warped for thousands of generations by infallible knowledge that is incorrect—the difference is less great than it appears at first glance. The same breath of science will pass over both.

When I returned to Europe from New Caledonia, the pen-wielding crows attacked me with various calumnies. Some hate-maddened idiot arranged for a newspaper (I forget which one) to print infamous things about my work in Noumea. Those enemies had already tried to put their lies across in a gathering where, purely by chance, some former deportees from the Commune who knew better were present, so the attack was without success, or without the sort of success they had anticipated.

Now they hoped for better luck through the publication of their lies. They did not dream that thousands of persons had watched my life day by day in New Caledonia. It was another Caledonian, M. Locamus, a lawyer and former town councilor and officer at Noumea, who answered those charges against me. Because my anonymous slanderers have been so persistent, I am obliged to reprint M. Locamus’s letter, even though it is flattering. Is it worth the trouble? Yes, because all the witnesses will soon be dead, and we ought to keep our reputations pure for the sake of the Revolution, which will live eternally. Shaking off specks of mud is not useless, so here is a clipping that prints M. Locamus’s letter:

Citizen Locamus, formerly a town councilor at Noumea, sends us the following letter. We believe we must publish it, even though our friend Louise Michel needs no testimonial to protect herself against the foul vilifications against which her whole life stands in evidence.

Paris, February 27

Dear Editors:

I have just read in the Intransigeant a few lines from Louise Michel’s response to her slanderers. I have not read the calumny, but I am convinced, as you are, that it should only be scorned. Nevertheless, because Louise Michel has deigned to answer it, I feel it is my duty to discuss the subject; also, Noumea is far away, and the response to those slanderers would come too late from there.

Happily, there are some former Noum^ans in Paris. I am one, and as town councilor of Noumea, with responsibility over public education in 1879 and 1880, I must now give a certificate of esteem and satisfaction to our former town schoolmistress.

The Board of Municipal Public Education was composed of three persons: M. Puech, an important merchant; M. Armand, a pardoned deportee, and me. The lay schools we inaugurated in the colony produced excellent results. By virtue of a governmental decree issued by the interim mayor, M. Simon, Louise Michel was invited to assist us, and she dis¬ charged her duties with unfailing devotion. Her assistance was most useful for us.

I shall add that Louise Michel’s conduct and attitude at Noumea in¬ spired respect and admiration even from her political enemies. Sincerely,

P. Locamus

In 1880, after I had spent a year and a half in Noumea, the government granted a general amnesty to us Communards. At the same time that I heard the news of the amnesty, I received word that my mother had had her first attack. Weariness had overcome her, and she was fearful she wouldn’t live to see me again. I, too, was afraid that I would arrive too late. My voyage home, therefore, was sad, and I came on deck only rarely. But the voyage was beautiful.

We were landed at Sydney and there, thanks to the lessons I had given and to help from a few friends, I was able to request passage on a mail packet rather than a slow sailing ship. That way I would get to my mother’s side more quickly. The French consul at Sydney had not yet made up his mind to repatriate me with some others scheduled to go on the mail packet. I told him that, in that case, I would be obliged to give lectures on the Commune for several days, so that I could use the fees for my trip. He preferred to send me with twenty others on the John Helder, which was leaving for London.

I don’t know the inward nature of the consul at Sydney, but in Holland I have seen a painting of a Flemish burgomaster, peaceably seated in front of a beer mug. It is exactly the consul’s portrait: his coloring, his pose, his profound calm. Standing in front of that portrait I understood him better than I had in front of his person in Sydney. I understood how our ideas appeared subversive to him, and the goodness which was hidden deep in his face would have made him prefer to allow me to leave as quickly as possible, so that I could see my mother again.

With Mme Henry as my guide I was able to see a bit of the territory surrounding Sydney before I sailed. There are great expanses of solitude cut by wide roads. Only the forest can be seen, the forest full of gum trees and eucalyptus. They say the whip-snake and others are common there, but we saw none, perhaps because it was the end of the southern winter and those animals feared the cold. I saw no kangaroos either, and they would have interested me much more. Those wide, beautiful roads cutting through the forests must keep wild animals away.

Sydney is already an old city; when the John Helder put into Melbourne even that place seemed like a European town, one washed by waves. I still have a notebook on which Mme Henry and her children, Lucien Henry, and other friends wrote inscriptions to me. When I stopped in Melbourne, some strangers came to visit us, and they wrote their names there, too. My twenty traveling companions on the John Helder also inscribed their names in that notebook, and those are the only pages left in it. The other pages were plucked out on the John Helder for sketches of my fellow passengers.

A large proportion of those sketches were ones I made of the frail and darling English babies, of which the third-class passengers had a great collection. The poor always have swarms of children; nature makes up in advance for young shoots mowed down by death. The mothers, Englishwomen as blond as the children, asked me for the sketches, and it was only proper for me to give them away. A few sketches of sailors with enormously wide shoulders met the same fate. I have only one sketch left, one I made near the Isthmus of Suez, looking over a sandy desert where the rocks seem like a sleeping Isis. In my sketch is the eternal sand, and then rocks whose corrugated surface looked like the bark of a niaouli. They form walls against which there is a caravan at rest, and camels stretch their necks out on the sand.

On that trip there was one English lady who took special care of some unfortunate girls who had been turned into prostitutes. People heaped shame on them because they were prostitutes, as if the victims and not the assassins deserved that shame.

I brought five of my oldest cats with me from Noumea, giving three others that were younger and more beautiful to friends. They had made the crossing from Noumea to Sydney on the bare deck, sheltering from the cold in a crate. As we sailed into cold regions where the wind blew harsh and icy—it was winter in the antipodes—they rubbed up against each other, probably missing the warm sun of their homeland. They had some sort of comprehension that they had to abstain from loud demonstrations either there or aboard the John Helder, onto which I smuggled all five of them, crowded into a parrot cage. They spent the whole crossing attached like ornaments to the shelf that formed my bed. They never cried out, and were satisfied with fussing over me sadly.

Once in London, in front of a fire, with an enormous bowl of milk my friends brought them, they began to stretch out, yawning. Only then did the large red tom and the old black female express their unfavorable impression of the Dutch ship. As for the three little cats, they looked at the fire with adoration.

The Figaro and other ludicrous newspapers, instead of taking as much trouble as they did to add burlesque episodes to my return, would have done better if they’d opened their eyes wide enough to see that when we came down the gangplank in London, my friends and I each had something under our arms disguised to look like briefcases. Well hidden in our coats were five cats.

Three of them are still alive, the old black female and two of the little ones. Let anybody laugh who wants to; they are something alive left from home. For me they have become a cherished souvenir—as much as anything could be to the heart of someone who has before him only a solitary life and a destroyed home. But perhaps it’s better that it is so, because when there is nothing, you don’t look back anymore.

The exiles in London welcomed us warmly. We hadn’t seen each other for ten years, and meeting that way, it seemed as if we were reliving the days of the Commune.

While en route I had gotten a letter from Marie that my mother had recovered somewhat when my return was announced. I was happy to be among my friends again, but I was in too much of a hurry to see my mother again to linger in London, and I left immediately for Paris.

With my tickets paid for and ten francs in my pocket, my London friends took me to the railroad station, from where we were to take the train that connected with the boat to Dieppe. The London railroad station had been set ringing by our singing of the Marseillaise. We continued to hear its echo as our train left, and English sensibilities weren’t offended by it. So long as we could hear it we responded, and no one reproached us for our song. At Dieppe friends were waiting for us at the station, and at the first stop after Dieppe my dear Marie and Mme Camille B-joined us.

I have a few documents concerning my return that Marie kept for me. Here is a letter I sent to Rochefort and Olivier Pain, which describes my arrival in Paris:

Dear Citizens Rochefort and Pain,

I have received a telegram from Pain asking for some details concerning my arrival [on November 9].

I don’t remember much of my arrival at Paris. I do remember that I embraced all of you, but because I was disoriented at the prospect of seeing my mother again, I didn’t wait to listen to any speeches, and I didn’t really understand anything of what was going on before we came to the Saint-Lazare station. I saw only that great rumbling crowd that I used to love so much and which I love even more now that I have returned to civilization. I heard only the Marseillaise, and a new and strange idea came to me: that instead of sending this beloved crowd to another slaughter it would be better to risk only one person. The nihilists were right.

I also hasten to express my gratitude and to say that, with the ten other deportees who also returned yesterday, we had a similar welcome in London from the exiles there which nearly prepared us for yesterday. It proves what good friends we are and how well we remember each other across time, exile, and death.

I’m writing to Joffrin about the meeting in Montmartre at the same time that I’m writing you. I can attend no other meeting before that one. It was in Montmartre that I marched before; it is with Montmartre that I march today. But you know very well that if I agree to be the object of one of those receptions—which really isn’t a high reward for a whole lifetime—I don’t want it all addressed to me personally. I want it in honor of the Social Revolution and all the women of the Revolution.

I embrace you with all my heart.

Louise Michel

I had come home.