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CHAPTER 1
Port Louis, Mauritius, September 1847
Notice to persons attending Balls: – Monsieur F. has the honour to inform the public and his clients, that he will keep his hairdressing room open on all such occasions in the evening.
Nineteenth-century newspaper advertisement, Port Louis
Late in November 1842, Sir William Gomm was en route to take up the position of sixth British Governor of Mauritius. His party caught their first sight of the magnificent volcanic mountains of Port Louis – a riveting spectacle from any angle and particularly so from the harbour. The town spread from the seaboard to the green foothills of the mountains, Pieter Both and Le Pouce (the thumb), which stood out in bold relief against the jumbled rooflines of churches, forts and other buildings.
The news of the Gomms' arrival spread quickly, as the signal passed from their ship, the Cleopatra, to the signal station on Long Mountain and across the valley to Port Louis. Everybody knew the significance of the Union flag hoisted on Signal Mountain, clearly visible from the streets in the town: a frigate was approaching the harbour. At three o'clock in the afternoon, according to the pages of the local bilingual newspaper, Le Cernéen, the guns on the frigate sounded and Sir William 'crossed the Place d'Armes between a double file of soldiers extending from the Port to Government House, and accompanied by all the authorities of the place, amidst the discharges of Artillery from the Citadel'. It was a grand arrival. High hopes were held for Sir William's governorship, based on the reputation that preceded him from his time in colonial administration in Jamaica (1839–42), and his military service during the Peninsular Wars and at Waterloo. The colony was certainly in need of a head, since the previous Governor, Sir Lionel Smith, had died of pneumonia ten months earlier.
High hopes were also held for Lady Elizabeth Gomm – 'la moitié gracieuse' (the charming half), as Sir William liked to call his wife. The editors of Le Cernéen anticipated that she would 'assemble around her the distinguished persons of our society and will thus be instrumental in establishing, between all parties, those bonds of sympathy and friendship, the formation of which the apathy of our former rulers has alone delayed'. Sir William, in a diplomatic gesture towards facilitating those bonds, gave his first address to the colony's legislative assembly in French.
Colonial Mauritius was still at this time, after more than thirty years of British rule, the 'Île de France' to many of its inhabitants. A small Indian Ocean island east of Madagascar, Mauritius was uninhabited before the arrival in 1598 of the Dutch, who named their new possession after their Prince, Maurits van Nassau. In little over 100 years, they had decimated the dodo, exploited the thousand-year-old ebony forests and founded the sugar industry on the back of black slavery. The island was abandoned by them in 1710, and annexed by the French East India Company a few years later, when it was renamed Île de France. Control eventually passed to the French Crown in 1764. Little more than an outpost settlement of several hundred inhabitants during the Dutch period, the island prospered under the French. However, despite defeating the British in 1810 in a famous naval battle at Grand Port in the island's south, the French shortly after ceded Île de France to the British. They were militarily outnumbered, the island was suffering from the British naval blockades and the population was largely indifferent to who ruled them, as long as normal trade was able to flourish again. The victorious British renamed the island Mauritius, and agreed to respect the culture, language, legal system and religion of the incumbent French.
Mrs Fenton, an Englishwoman who spent five months in Mauritius in 1829, noted that 'here the time of French ascendancy is still too recent to be forgotten'. She observed the French influence in the local inhabitants' general courtesy, 'which French politeness has dispersed wherever they govern'. Charles Darwin, who stopped at Mauritius during the voyage of the Beagle in 1836, remarked on the French character of Port Louis as particularly noticeable, he commented, in the shops. By that he may have meant the European origin of the goods, and their expense, or perhaps it was the persuasive charm of the shopkeepers, who were often French or Creole – the latter an appellation for those of French origin born in the island.
By the 1840s the racial and cultural mix of Mauritius – a blend of French, African, Indian and Chinese, with a hint of British – was firmly established. Mauritius was a veritable Babel, whose different races were evident to the visitor disembarking at the Port Louis docks. Alongside a young man of French origin in the latest Parisian fashion walked a shopkeeper wearing the loose cotton frock and trousers of China. Beside him, hailing from Madagascar, was a man 'bareheaded, the hair twisted and worked into snake-looking points, which stick out and leave a very Medusa-like appearance'. And over there from Bengal, one of the recent immigrants wearing a cast-off soldier's coat and a cloth tied around his middle.
When the British took possession of Mauritius in 1810 the island's population consisted of approximately 7,000 people of European origin, 8,000 'free coloureds' and 63,000 slaves. Slavery was abolished in 1835 and replaced by an apprenticeship system. This reluctant workforce was supplemented by indentured labourers from India. But amid concerns that this was just another form of slavery, Indian immigration was suspended in 1839. The issue was one of the most pressing Gomm had to contend with on his arrival in the colony, for the labour market was critical to the island's export economy, and the established plantocracy – the Franco-Mauritian owners of the sugar plantations – were powerful. Indian immigration resumed under Gomm, and there was a mass influx of labourers – more than 33,000 men in 1843 alone. By 1847 the number of indentured labourers had outstripped the number of ex-slaves working as apprentices, but the Mauritian planters continued to press for increases in immigration. Gomm, however, correctly interpreted these urgings as evidence of the planters' desire to keep the upper hand in wage-bargaining, and found himself in great conflict with them.
These proved to be difficult years for Gomm and Mauritius, marked by financial crises caused by the labour problem, overtrading and an excess of imports – the ultimate (and perhaps most useless) being, in 1847, the importation of a rhinoceros. The Governor was unpopular in certain quarters. It was felt that a military governor would never be able to understand the best interests of a colony made up of merchants and planters. When the Gomms gave a levee to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday in May of that year it was, noted local newspaper Le Mauricien, as in other years of late, badly attended.
The promulgation of an Order in Council to replace French with English as the official language of the courts in July 1847 was far removed from the conciliatory gesture of Gomm's maiden address. Due to come into effect on the 15th, it was noted in Le Cernéen of 8 July that of the 150,000 souls in Mauritius (not including those of English origin) only around 500 people knew the English language. It so happened that a young French lawyer, Célicourt Antelme, was presenting a case in Port Louis on the 14th and he prolonged the hearing until midnight, when he dramatically paused – it is said – and switched from French to English. But perhaps it is wise to remember of this anecdote that in Mauritian history (in the words of local historians) it is 'common knowledge', one of those good stories where fact and mythology are equally at home. There is a small paragraph in Le Cernéen of 17 July noting that Monsieur Antelme, in the Court of Assizes on the evening of the 15th (not the 14th), 'finished an eloquent plea with a touching goodbye to the French language, which was greeted by such loud and prolonged applause that the Chief Judge and the Substitute Procureur-General had much trouble in re-establishing silence.
Never, in the memory of the oldest members of the staff, had the crowd displayed such enthusiasm.' Each version of Antelme's story, whichever day the incident took place, has something to recommend it in the way of drama.
While the lawyer was inspiring the assembled crowd with his touching adieu to the French language, the second of the season's winter assemblies was getting under way. These were a series of seven subscription balls, held on the second Thursday of every month of the Mauritian winter, beginning in July. Similarly styled to the Almack's balls in London, they were managed by 'patronesses' (the Mesdames Stavely, Dick, D'Epinay, de Robillard and Lloyd) and 'commissaires' (the Messieurs Rawson, Barclay, Durant St André, Rudelle and Fraser). The Gomms were sure to have attended the winter assemblies, held at Port Louis's Masonic lodge – the Loge de la Triple Espérance – and undoubtedly they attended on the 15th.
Alas, on this occasion the Loge de la Triple Espérance was transformed into the Loge de la Triste Espérance. Although both the French and the British communities were well represented on the assembly's organizing committee, some of the French residents of the island chose not to attend the ball as a protest at its timing, coinciding as it did with the day deemed the 'death' of the French language in Mauritius. Four young men ranged themselves at the door of the lodge in a picket (perhaps inspired by Antelme's oration) and insulted those members of the French community who had put 'rejoicings and pleasure' above a proper regard for the gravity of the day. Their insults consisted of little more than groaning and hissing, and were more a case of bad manners than anything else (according to an editorial in Le Mauricien a week later). But the incident escalated when, in an overreaction by the government, the men were arrested and thrown into prison. They were soon set free but were then rearrested, and much bickering between the families of the prisoners and the magistrates ensued to secure their liberty again.
Sir William Gomm's growing unpopularity (with the French at least) is often advanced as the reason behind his wife's giving her famous ball of 30 September. Easing the tensions between the British and the French communities may well have been a motivating factor. However, poor Lady Gomm is popularly believed to have also been responsible for the infelicitous entertainment of 15 July, the aftermath of which long troubled the government. But it is evident from notices in Le Cernéen that she was not one of the earlier ball's patronesses. The July ball was a regular event, but in this case unfortunately timed, that was all. Five more assemblies would follow before Lady Gomm's famous fancy-dress ball, and the winter of 1847 was remembered – in British circles at least – as most enjoyable. Sir John Ewart, then a young soldier in the 35th Royal Sussex Regiment, recalled in his memoirs Lady Gomm's 'at homes', the jeunes gens balls, the winter assemblies, two delightful balls given by a Frenchman named Vigoureux, the opera, a circus, picnics and garrison theatricals. Soldiering in Mauritius was not, it seemed, a particularly onerous duty.
Ewart remembered Lady Gomm's fancy-dress ball as a grand occasion. The large ballroom was decadently lit by the lamps, nearly 200 in number, which clustered about the ceiling. It seemed that the lights themselves were in costume and vying for attention as the best dressed. Monsieur Fouqueraux, known as the host of some of the best balls in the island and commonly referred to as 'Le Prince Charmant', would probably have been in attendance, nodding approval at the exhilarating scene before his eyes. The rich brocades of the dowagers' dresses reflected the mellow glow of the lamps, mingling with the younger ladies' silks, tulles and laces, while the dress swords of the soldiers were as dazzling as the jewellery and as shiny as the polished wooden floor. Recalling the ball in later years, Ewart remarked that 'for some weeks everybody was busy preparing for it ... the dresses being magnificent, and the characters admirably sustained'. Guests who cared to dress according to the fancy theme chose from two groups of characters, the first from Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and the other from Byron's historical tragedy Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice. 'They marched into the room under a flourish of trumpets, presenting a most striking appearance.' Ewart himself wore a kilt, as he did at a ball held by one Colonel Blanchard soon afterwards. On that score Lady Gomm's ball triumphed too. The Colonel's rooms, unlike those at Government House, swarmed with mosquitoes, and poor Ewart, in his kilt, was 'exposed in a most disagreeable manner to the attacks of these voracious insects'.
Published in 1881, Ewart's memoirs – The Story of a Soldier's Life; or Peace, War, and Mutiny – would have been written up from diaries and from letters home, treasured and saved. Perhaps the soldier also had a copy – tucked away in a scrapbook, or fading in a frame somewhere – of the oft-reproduced image of the guests in fancy costume at Lady Gomm's ball, for he was able to describe it accurately thus: 'Nash, a very clever artist residing at Mauritius, made a capital sketch of these two groups, which was afterwards published.' And yet, his sporting and social life in Port Louis so well remembered, Ewart made no mention in his memoirs of Lady Gomm's stamped envelopes.
When a few of the ball envelopes finally surfaced, they were empty. How then was the connection between the ball and the birth of the stamps made? The popular version of the story holds that the envelopes contained invitations, but this is unlikely. According to the conventions of the day, Lady Gomm would have sent out her invitations at least three weeks, and certainly no later than a fortnight, in advance. Two of the envelopes later discovered bore the postmark 21 september 1847 – less than ten days before the ball. Given Ewart's comment about everybody preparing for weeks beforehand, it is more likely that the famous 'Post Office' ball envelopes contained cards of admission, to be submitted by guests on the night at Government House. That the ball and the first use of postage stamps in Mauritius are related is an accepted connection in the island: a version of Nash's ball engraving and a one penny 'Post Office' appeared together in 1978 on a Mauritian postage stamp commemorating Lady Gomm's 1847 ball and her famous 'Post Office'-bearing envelopes. Yet there is nothing in the official post office archives and not a mention in either of the island's newspapers at the time to connect them. Indeed, there was no mention of the stamps in the press at all.
CHAPTER 2
Message in a Bottle
Mauritius believed in having a new postal ordinance about every year (on the same principle as a horticulturist bedding out tulips) until they discovered which kind did best on their own particular soil, and what suited the public.
Rev. C. S. Morton, 'A Study of the Early Postal Issues of Mauritius', London Philatelist, 1924
In the early 1600s, Mauritius was still plentiful with giant tortoises and the strange, fat, flightless dodos. The island provided food, fresh water and safe harbour to the ships that plied the trading routes from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope to the east. It also provided news and information. On the Île aux Tonneliers, an islet near the entrance to the main harbour on the island's west coast (the future Port Louis), ships' crews deposited letters and instructions in upturned bottles left hanging from trees, in the hopes that others would collect and carry their mail to its intended destination. Pieter Willemsz Verhoeff found a group of such letters left by Dutch sailors at Mauritius during his expeditions of 1607–12. Preserved in the archives of the Amsterdam chamber of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (United East India Company), they are some of the earliest-known letters written from the island.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Blue Mauritius"
by .
Copyright © 2006 Helen Morgan.
Excerpted by permission of Atlantic Books Ltd.
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