The Two Children of St. Domingo

London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1875. First English edition of this scarce children’s title set during the Haitian Revolution, an uncredited translation of Louise d’Aulnay’s Les Deux Enfants de Saint-Domingue, first published in Paris the previous year with the same illustrations. The novel follows the fortunes of Louis and Josephine Philibert, the young children of a prosperous Creole planter in Saint-Domingue. The two children flee the island with their parents and enslaved servants just as the revolution erupts in 1791; Toussaint L’Ouverture himself murders William, the “faithful mulatto” who warns the family to run. In the confusion at the harbor, Louis and his elderly nursemaid Noemi board a ship to England, while the other Philiberts sail to France with Noemi’s daughter Sylvia. The families are fractured for the next fifteen years, as Louis and Josephine grow to adulthood in different countries, and the unwaveringly loyal Noemi and Sylvia long to reunite. The precarious social position of the exiles, both Creole and Black, elicits a range of responses to the colonial rebellion and race relations in general, from sympathy (“is it not dreadful to be sold like cattle?”) to sentimentality (“the negroes enjoy themselves very much at this work”) to bigotry: “Sylvia still inspired feelings of repugnance.” The illustrations veer from naturalistic portraiture to racist caricature. In the end, the Philiberts are providentially reunited as a family; Noemi and Sylvia are not as fortunate. Published as a new era of French colonialism was emerging in the late nineteenth century, Les Deux Enfants de Saint-Domingue was a popular success in France, reprinted regularly for over a decade. This first English edition is scarce: we find three holdings in the United States (Duke, Michigan, and Florida), and five in the UK. A near-fine copy. Single volume, measuring 6.25 x 4.25 inches: [4], 7-178. Contemporary blue three-quarter calf, raised bands ruled in gilt, red morocco spine label lettered in gilt, marbled boards, terracotta endpapers. Eighteen wood-engraved plates (including frontispiece); eighteen wood-engraved vignettes at chapter headings. Ink note to title page identifying the translator as “Mary Marston;” a few pencil notes in Chapter XVII. Lightest edgewear, occasional foxing. (Inventory #: 1004034)