Oroonoko

“ The next morning Trefry took Oroonoko for a walk, and by design brought him to the house of the beautiful slave.
"Clemene," he said, "did you not hear that one of the princes of your people arrived in Surinam yesterday? However you may fly from all white men, you surely ought to pay some respect to him."
Oroonoko started when a girl came out, with her head bowed down as if she had resolved never to raise her eyes again to the face of a man.
"Imoinda! Imoinda!" Oroonoko cried after a moment's silence. "Imoinda!" ”

“ In order to soothe the prince, I invited him and Imoinda to stay at my house, where I entertained them to the best of my ability.
"Surely," I said to him, "you do not suspect that we will break our word with you? Only wait patiently, my friend, till the lord-governor arrives, and you will be permitted to return to your own kingdom."
"You do not understand," Oroonoko replied. "I am angry with myself for remaining so long a slave. What! Do you white people think that I, the king of Coromantien, can be treated like the captives that I have taken in war and sold to you? ”

“ And now it was that they began to fight indeed; and so, as if they would not be outdone even by their adored hero; who turning the tide of the victory, changing absolutely the fate of the day, gained an entire conquest: and Oroonoko having the good fortune to single out Jamoan, he took him prisoner with his own hand, having wounded him almost to death. ”

“ In the licentious age of the Restoration, when she had become famous--or, rather, notorious--as a writer of unseemly plays, she astonished the town, and achieved real fame by relating the story of Oroonoko's life. There are few plots of either plays or novels so striking as that of "Oroonoko." It is the first of those romances of the outlands, which, from the days of Defoe to the days of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have been one of the glories of English literature. I.--The Stolen Bride
I do not pretend to entertain the reader with a feigned hero, whose adventures I can manage according to my fancy. ”

“ But Imoinda was in no mood to die. She knew that her lover had fled to his camp, and intended to return at the head of a large army and rescue her by main force. If she could only calm the anger of the old king for a few days, all would be well. So, with the guile of a woman, she flung herself at the king's feet, protesting in a flood of tears, that Oroonoko had broken into her room and taken her by force.
"Very well," said the old king, with a cruel look in his eyes, "I will forgive you. Having received the royal veil, you cannot marry my grandson. ”

“ The motive of the story is the tragedy of Oroonoko’s life, and this is worked out simply, but with a good deal of power. The grandson of an African king, and a youth of great strength, courage, and intelligence, Oroonoko early becomes enamored of Imoinda—“a beauty, that to describe her truly, one need only say she was female to the noble male,”—but to whom, unfortunately, his grandfather also takes a fancy. The young people are secretly married ”

“ But Oroonoko was none of those professors; but as he had right notions of honor, so he made her such propositions as were not only and barely such; but, contrary to the custom of his country, he made her vows she should be the only woman he would possess while he lived; that no age or wrinkles should incline him to change; for her soul would be always fine, and always young; and he should have an eternal idea in his mind of the charms she now bore ”

“ And, certainly, nothing is more afflicting to a decayed beauty than to behold in itself declining charms that were once adored; and to find those caresses paid to new beauties, to which once she laid claim; to hear them whisper, as she passes by, that once was a delicate woman. Those abandoned ladies therefore endeavor to revenge all the despites and decays of time, on these flourishing happy ones. And 'twas this severity that gave Oroonoko a thousand fears he should never prevail with Onahal to see Imoinda. But as I said, she was now retired to a window with Aboan. ”

“ Here he met his young wife, whom the lieutenant-governor wanted to make his mistress, and Oroonoko headed a rising of the slaves. The end of the story is that Imoinda slew herself; and Oroonoko, having stabbed the lieutenant-governor, put an end to his own life.—Thomas Southern, Oroonoko (1696) .
Impertinent (The Curious) , an Italian, who, to make trial of his wife’s fidelity, persuades his friend to try and seduce her. The friend succeeds in winning the lady’s love, and the impertinent curiosity of the husband is punished by the loss of his friend and wife too.—Cervantes, Don Quixote, I. iv. ”

“ By degrees she came to herself; and it is needless to tell with what transport, what ecstasies of joy, the lovers beheld each other. Mr. Trefry was infinitely pleased by this happy conclusion of the prince's misadventures; and, leaving the lovers to themselves, he came to Parham House, and gave me an account of all that had happened. In the afternoon, to the great joy of all the negroes, Oroonoko and Imoinda were married. I was invited to the wedding, and I assured Oroonoko that he and his wife would be set free as soon as the lord-governor of the colony returned to Surinam. ”

“ The king did not dare to tell his grandson that he had sold Imoinda as a slave, for the Coromantiens justly reckon slavery as something worse than death; so he sent a messenger to say that she was dead. At first, Oroonoko was minded to attack his grandfather, but better feelings prevailed; and he led his army against a hostile nation, resolved to perish on the battlefield. So desperate was his courage that he defeated his far more numerous foes, and took a great multitude of them captives. Many of these he sold to the captain of a slave-ship, then lying off Coromantien. ”

“ He ought to have had so much value and consideration for a maid of her quality as to have nobly put her to death, and not to have sold her like a common slave; the greatest revenge, and the most disgraceful of any, and to which they a thousand times prefer death, and implore it; as Imoinda did, but could not obtain that honor. Seeing therefore it was certain that Oroonoko would highly resent this affront, he thought good to make some excuse for his rashness to him ”

“ When he came, attended by all the young soldiers of any merit, he was infinitely surprised at the beauty of this fair Queen of Night, whose face and person was so exceeding all he had ever beheld, that lovely modesty with which she received him, that softness in her look and sighs, upon the melancholy occasion of this honor that was done by so great a man as Oroonoko, and a prince of whom she had heard such admirable things; the awfulness wherewith she received him, and the sweetness of her words and behavior while he staid, gained a perfect conquest over his fierce heart, and made him feel the victor could be subdued. ”

“ The captain pondering and consulting what to do, it was concluded that nothing but Oroonoko's liberty would encourage any of the rest to eat, except the Frenchman, whom the captain could not pretend to keep prisoner, but only told him he was secured because he might act something in favor of the prince, but that he should be freed as soon as they came to land. So that they concluded it wholly necessary to free the prince from his irons, that he might show himself to the rest; that they might have an eye upon him, and that they could not fear a single man. ”

“ Remains of the ordinary heroic style are of course not wanting. Being love-struck Oroonoko, an African negro, well read in the classics, refuses to fight, and following Achilles' example, retires to his tent. ”

“ No, I would not kill myself, even after a whipping, but will be content to live with that infamy, and be pointed at by every grinning slave, till I have completed my revenge; and then you shall see that Oroonoko scorns to live with the indignity that was put on Caesar." All we could do could get no more words from him; and we took care to have him put immediately into a healing bath, to rid him of his pepper, and ordered a chirurgeon to anoint him with healing balm, which he suffered, and in some time he began to be able to walk and eat. ”

“ Trefry. But the shame and the torture had unhinged his fine mind. He led Imoinda and his child into a forest, and asked his wife whether she would prefer to remain the slave of the white devils, or die at once by his hand. Imoinda begged him rather to kill her, and Oroonoko did so. But, instead of putting an end to himself, the prince determined to die fighting. He turned back from the forest, fiercely resolved to search out the lord-governor, and slay him ”

“ Oroonoko, and after our return to Paris, the balls of earth which we brought away with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any organic substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger; when, therefore, you inquire of an Otomac on what he subsists during the two months when the river is the highest, he shews you his balls of clay. This he calls his principal food; for at this period he can seldom procure a lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at the surface of the water. ”

“ This prince, such as I have described him, whose soul and body were so admirably adorned, was (while yet he was in the court of his grandfather, as I said) as capable of love as 'twas possible for a brave and gallant man to be; and in saying that, I have named the highest degree of love: for sure great souls are most capable of that passion.
I have already said, the old general was killed by the shot of an arrow by the side of this prince in battle; and that Oroonoko was made general. ”

“ Most of these slaves came from that part of Africa known as Coromantien. The Coromantiens, being very warlike, were continually fighting other nations, and they always had many captives ready to be sold as slaves to our planters.
The king of Coromantien was a hundred years of age. All his sons had fallen in battle, and only one of them had left behind him an heir. Oroonoko, as the young prince was called, was a very intelligent and handsome negro, and as his grandfather engaged a Frenchman of wit and learning to teach him, he received an education better than that of many European princes. ”

“ I ought to tell you that the Christians never buy any slaves but they give 'em some name of their own, their native ones being likely very barbarous, and hard to pronounce; so that Mr. Trefry gave Oroonoko that of Caesar; which name will live in that country as long as that (scarce more) glorious one of the great Roman: for 'tis most evident he wanted no part of the personal courage of that Caesar, and acted things as memorable, had they been done in some part of the world replenished with people and historians that might have given him his due. ”

“ On 10 Oct. 1753 he appeared as Oroonoko, playing subsequently Moneses in ‘Tamerlane’ and Dorimant in the ‘Man of the Mode.’ On 25 Feb. 1754 he was the original Icilius in Crisp's tragedy of ‘Virginia.’ In the season of 1754–5 he added to his repertory Carlos in ‘Love makes a Man,’ Pyrrhus in the ‘Distressed Mother,’ Hippolytus in ‘Phædra and Hippolytus,’ Osman in ‘Zara,’ Macduff, Valentine in ‘Love for Love,’ and Edgar in ‘Lear.’ On 27 Feb. ”

“ Every day, in the season of drought, when fishing is most abundant, he scrapes his balls of poya, and mingles a little clay with his other aliment. What is most surprising, is, that the Otomacs do not become lean by swallowing such quantities of earth; they are, on the contrary, extremely robust, and far from having the belly tense and puffed up. The missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno, asserts, that he never remarked any alteration in the health of the natives at the period of the great risings of the Oroonoko. ”

“ But the dead weight of the actual is too heavy for us; we cannot synthesize 175the results of experience; we gather observations, but we are unable to make artistic productions out of them. Thus, we have a “New Atalantis” (and the book is historically significant just for this reason) which is little more than a jumble of personal scandal, filled in with occasional false incidents and mendacious details; an “Oroonoko,” which is rather a fanciful biography than a tale ”

“ It was not long after, the king in person came to the otan; where beholding Imoinda, with rage in his eyes, he upbraided her wickedness and perfidy; and threatening her royal lover, she fell on her face at his feet, bedewing the floor with her tears, and imploring his pardon for a fault which she had not with her will committed; as Onahal, who was also prostrate with her, could testify: that, unknown to her, he had broke into her apartment, and ravished her. She spoke this much against her conscience; but to save her own life, 'twas absolutely necessary she should feign this falsity. ”

“ The army, beholding their officers return unsuccessful, with sad faces and ominous looks, that presaged no good luck, suffered a thousand fears to take possession of their hearts, and the enemy to come even upon them, before they would provide for their safety, by any defense: and though they were assured by some, who had a mind to animate them, that they should be immediately headed by the prince, and that in the mean time Aboan had orders to command as general; yet they were so dismayed for want of that great example of bravery that they could make but a very feeble resistance ”

“ This Onahal, as I said, was one of the cast-mistresses of the old king; and 'twas these (now past their beauty) that were made guardians or governantes to the new and the young ones, and whose business it was to teach them all those wanton arts of love with which they prevailed and charmed heretofore in their turn; and who now treated the triumphing happy ones with all the severity as to liberty and freedom that was possible, in revenge of their honors they rob them of ”