24892: Labrom: Re The Haiti Armourial (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: jacqui Labrom <voyageslumiere@haitelonline.com>

Sometime last year I posted an article about this following my visit to
this man in London. He just came to Haiti at the invitation of the
British Ambassador and spoke at the Montana Hotel. I thought you would
all enjoy this wonderful piece of History. You can contact him direct if
you are interested in hearing more:

Clive Cheeseman - email: haitiarmorial@college-of-arms.gov


L’Armorial Général du Royaume d’Hayti

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a great pleasure, but also an honour to be
here addressing you regarding a piece of your own history. How can an
Englishman presume to talk to citizens of Haiti about that intriguing
phase in their past when part of their country was ruled by a
self-proclaimed king who named the capital after himself, created a
hereditary nobility and dispensed honours – and retracted them – with
joyful abandon? How, furthermore, can he dare to do so in French,
twisting pronunciation and rendering himself incomprehensible at the
same time?

Specific reasons for these anomalies will follow, more or less
convincing I hope. In general, I can point to the close relationship
that King Henry Christophe wished to form with the English monarchy. As
is well known, at his coronation banquet on 2 June 1811 he toasted his
‘brother king’, George III of Great Britain. British advisers, attachés,
naval envoys and educators were frequent visitors to his kingdom over
the next nine years. They did not, of course, give him the political and
military protection he sought. But the certain aspects of his reign,
especially on the ceremonial side, were indelibly coloured with a
British tinge. It is one of these aspects that I am here to talk to you
about.

As you all know, I am sure, the first weeks of Henry’s reign saw a
frenzy of decrees and edicts creating the ceremonial apparatus of a
monarchy. It was not enough to pass the Loi Constitutionelle, declaring
him King. Great officers of state must be appointed, a nobility created,
a spiritual hierarchy erected, and an order of chivalry instituted.
Regalia were ordered from London jewellers. Ceremonial dress was
decreed. A cathedral appropriate to host the coronation was built from
scratch, in ten short weeks.

Among the decrees was one creating a Collège héraldique, a corporation
of thirteen heralds under a single Roi d’Armes. What was this? I am in a
position to tell you, since it is in just such a corporation that I
work. I am one of the heralds of the British crown, and work in the
College of Arms in London, where we too are ruled over by a senior ‘King
of Arms’. Coincidentally (or is it no coincidence?) there are thirteen
of us. Our corporation was founded in 1484 and while there were once
many similar bodies in the monarchies, and even a few republics, of
Europe, very few remain. Our job is a varied one, but in large part it
consists of designing, recording and regulating the use of coats of arms
by individuals and bodies within the Queen’s realms. We are a sort of
cross between lawyers, designers and historians. And Henry Christophe’s
heralds must have been, at least in conception, something very similar.
Soon after they were created, they (or one of their number) produced a
book containing new coats of arms for the King, his family, and the new
aristocracy of the kingdom. A copy of this book, known as the Armorial,
is in the possession of the College of Arms in London, and it is this
that I come to speak to you about today.

What is this armorial like? It is a small manuscript volume, about 18 cm
by 26 cm, with 92 leaves. The first one bears the printed title
L’Armorial Général du Royaume d’Hayti, while the rest are hand-painted
and hand-written, each opening showing a single coat of arms on the
right-hand page. Above the coat of arms is a description in French,
using heraldic terminology, and below it the name of the person it
belongs to. I say ‘person’, but in fact there is one case where the arms
refer not to a man but to a city – the capital city of Henry’s realm,
Cap Haïtien, which the King had of course renamed Cap Henry. In every
other case, however, the coat of arms is ascribed to an individual: a
member of Henry’s aristocracy, or someone he wished for whatever reason
to associate with his régime.

Let us look at some of the illustrations. With your permission I shall
show you a few of the 91 coats of arms and though you will often know
far more than I about the lives of the men referred to, I can perhaps
give an indication of the great interest and unusual quality of their
heraldry. We start, of course, with the arms of the King himself. His
arms were omnipresent in his régime, seen on coins, on military
insignia, on official publications. Now it is no part of the herald’s
job to speculate on the psychological or private significance of a coat
of arms to its bearer, and heraldry is not – it should be understood – a
secret symbolic language that can be read by initiates. But one can
comment on the appropriate choice of a phoenix rising from the ashes
(together with the motto Je renais de mes cendres) for a ruler who aimed
to refashion Haiti in a glorious form after twenty years or more of
civil war. It is classic heraldry in the French style, with a touch of
the Napoleonic, odious though Henry himself would have found that
comparison. Around the shield, of course, is the chain and badge of the
national order of chivalry, the Royal and Military Order of St Henry,
founded by decree dated 20 April 1811.

We turn to the aforementioned arms of the capital city, Cap Henry. The
shield shows a marine scene, with a ship buffeted by winds in a rather
arctic sea. Graphic panoramas like this are not common in heraldry,
though the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did produce
more of them than other periods. Convincing landscapes and seascapes are
usually beyond the skills of herald artists and can be hard to
distinguish at a distance. Heraldic designers have learnt to avid them.
But here a point is being made: the ship will reach its harbour, as the
motto says, malgré les vents et les flots. Two Haitian figures of
Hercules support the shield, which is ensigned with the Royal crown to
indicate the city’s special status.

Now for the nobles. The hereditary nobility decreed by Henry consisted
of 4 with the rank of prince, 8 dukes, 22 counts and 37 barons, with a
further 14 men enrolled as chevaliers. They had ceremonial dress
(instituted by a decree of 12 April 1811) and they all appear with their
coats of arms in our manuscript. Here we see the arms of the Prince des
Gonaïves, better known as André Vernet, a Lieutenant-general in the Army
who had also been finance minister under Dessalines. He was married to
the niece of Toussaint L’Ouverture and Henry made him Grand Marshal of
Haiti. He died early in the régime, in 1813, and after his death (you
may all know this, in which case forgive me) was embalmed and exhibited
sitting upright in the Cathedral for three days. The heraldry is
unusual, not for the ‘wild men’ who support the shield (a common enough
image in heraldry) as for the almost Masonic arrangement of the eye
within the sprigs of laurel on the shield.

The Duc de l’Anse, as you will spot immediately, was a clergyman: the
Breton missionary Corneille Brell who had served as chaplain to
Toussaint, who actually crowned Dessalines emperor in 1806, and whom
Henry made Grand Almoner and Archbishop of Haiti, with his See at Le
Cap.

The name of the Duc de l’Avancé was Philippe Guerrier. He had served as
an officer under Toussaint and Dessalines, and as you know he himself
was briefly to be President of Haiti long after Henry’s death, in 1843.
Here we see for the first time some of the truly original approach to
heraldry seen in the Armorial: a splendid porcupine, together with the
motto Qui s’y frotte s’y pique. This clever, slightly elliptical
conjunction of shield and motto is something typical of the designs in
the volume, and by no means widespread in heraldry elsewhere.

Sometimes Henry’s mischievous character emerges. The Comte de Jérémie,
whose arms we see here, is a case in point. You do not need me to tell
you that Jérémie was not in Henry’s kingdom but lies far to the south.
Making someone Count of that place was a calculated insult to Pétion,
president of the southern republic. Furthermore, the recipient of the
title was not one of Henry’s subjects, but Jean-Baptiste Perrier, known
as ‘Goman’, a brigand leader who owed no allegiance either to Pétion’s
republic or to the northern kingdom, though he had given Henry military
co-operation on occasion. The motto, Ma cause et mon roi, is – to say
the least – wishful thinking on the régime’s part.

Now to look at the arms of some lesser characters. It is here that we
find some of the most startling designs. The rake and watering can in
the arms of the Baron de Béliard are, to my knowledge, unparalleled in
western heraldry. They clearly refer to his position as Director of the
Gardens, Waters and Forests of the Royal Palaces; but how – if at all –
they are referred to in the motto Utile en plus d’un genre is, I regret,
beyond me. I can only think of one use for a watering can. The use of
chameleons as supporters is again highly original and, in the context,
appropriate.

Heraldry often hints at erudition and scholarly activity, but rarely is
the reference so starkly explicit as here, in the arms of the Baron de
Sévelinge. A golden bookcase with the motto Persévérance Exactitude
leaves the inclinations of the baron in no doubt. Similarly direct is
the depiction of a palace on the shield of the Comte d’Ennery. The
building is European in style, but its appearance on a shield is not
European heraldry.

Often the designs are classicizing. The shield of the Baron de Bazin has
the aegis of Athena (itself a shield, here decorated with the head of
Medusa). Once or twice they are allegorical: the message is quite clear
on the shield of the Baron de Bazile Saillant, with its sparrow hawk
swooping on two smaller birds and the motto Guerre aux Rebelles.
Frequently, and delightfully, unusual beasts (real or imaginary) are
pressed into service as supporters. We see here a pair of sphinxes and
we have already seen in passing pairs of guinea fowl and three-headed
dogs. The Baron de Cadet-Antoine not only had a blue whale on his shield
but two more propped up against its sides. They are decorated in the
typical heraldic blue and white pattern known as ‘vair’, a pattern of
which the Armorial’s designer seems to have been fond. Two caracals
support the shield of the Baron de Mompoint, and two sea-lions that of
the Baron Bastien Fabien.

I could go on like this for ever. For a professional herald such as
myself the designs in the Armorial are a delight, and they become more
and more interesting on close inspection. Sometimes they follow European
norms – on occasions they could fit with no difficulty into British
heraldic tradition, on others they look solidly French. Very frequently,
however, the designer has produced something entirely new – something
that we can justifiably term the genesis of a specifically Haitian form
of heraldry. It is sad, perhaps, that its development was cut short. But
thankfully we have the Armorial, and it is right to repay this piece of
luck by treasuring and studying it properly.

How did this remarkable volume come to be in the possession of the
London College of Arms? The short answer is that we do not know, but it
has been there since 1859 at the latest, when it was bequeathed to us by
James Pulman. At the time of his death, Pulman occupied the position of
Clarenceux King of Arms, one of the senior English heralds, and he left
his entire, and very large, collection of genealogical and heraldic
manuscripts to the College where he had worked for well over forty
years. Most of these volumes relate laborious researches into the
ancestry of British families carried out by Pulman himself, his
associate George Beltz, and their senior partner Sir Isaac Heard, Garter
Principal King of Arms and head of the College. Any of these three could
have acquired the Haiti Armorial; it would have ended up in the massive
Pulman collection just the same. On the face of it, Sir Isaac Heard
seems the likeliest conduit. Before becoming a herald many years
previously, he had been in the Royal Navy and then operated as a
merchant trading between Bilbao and North America. His wife was American
(from Boston) and he kept up his trans-Atlantic connections even after
ceasing his mercantile life. He even corresponded with George Washington
in 1791-2 regarding the latter’s ancestry. Could it be that an old
Caribbean or American acquaintance of Sir Isaac, aware of his heraldic
profession, forwarded him an object he was sure would interest him?

But it has to be admitted that by the time the manuscript came into
being, Heard was already very old. Born in 1830, he was 81 at the
earliest point he could have acquired it (in 1811) and 90 when Henry’s
reign came to an end, the point at which one would expect to see this
artefact in circulation outside Haiti. And he died in 1822, meaning any
realistic window of opportunity to acquire it was very small indeed.
Perhaps a much more likely explanation is simply that Henry’s widow and
daughters went into exile in England, and stayed there from the summer
of 1821 to September 1824, for the most part as guests of the
anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. It is known that Marie-Louise
was compelled to sell her jewellery to satisfy the demands of the
creditors who flocked around her in London; it is not unlikely that she
also disposed of any papers and manuscripts that she had brought with
her, especially if they had curiosity value. Indeed she would doubtless
have found it considerably easier to part with such things than with the
jewels bestowed on her by her husband.  I feel the most likely
explanation for the present whereabouts of the armorial is that George
Beltz or James Pulman purchased it from the widowed queen in London in
the early 1820s. Unfortunately, of course, it cannot be proved.

However, we know that although the manuscript we are speaking of is
extremely rare and precious, it is not quite unique. I have to be quite
frank about this, or I shall seem to be misleading you slightly. In 1976
the College of Arms was contacted by a gentleman living in Paris, a
descendant of a man listed as a baron and ascribed a coat of arms in the
Armorial itself. The gentleman possessed, and still possesses (for I am
in touch with him too), another version of this manuscript. But it is
different, not least in the crucial respect that it has been badly
damaged and is incomplete, some pages missing completely. Furthermore,
one or two of the noblemen it lists and the coats of arms it depicts are
slightly different from those in the manuscript now in London. But it is
also clear that the same artist did both manuscripts. Were there others,
perhaps representing the state of the nobility at different times of
Henry’s reign? If so, they have not yet come to light. Maybe the
publication of the College’s copy will flush them out. But this just
makes the situation more interesting, and raises a host of questions.
What was the purpose of the Armorial? Were copies produced for each
nobleman in it? How often was it revised? Who was the artist? Was he
also the designer? What can we learn from the production of the Armorial
about the organization of ceremonial and symbolism at Henry’s court? The
only hope of answering these questions is to study the version we have
closely – and make it available for others to study.

Not that we have, I believe, kept it under wraps hitherto. The first
public reference to the College’s possession of the Armorial that I am
aware of came in 1934, when a herald by the name of George Bellew (later
head of the College) contributed an article to the Illustrated London
News describing it and setting it in a fairly sketchily researched
historical context. The same year the volume was among many treasures of
the College exhibited in a commemorative exhibition at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London. More recently another herald, Rodney Dennys,
dedicated a short chapter to the Armorial in his 1982 book Heralds and
the Heralds. The Canadian herald Robert Pichette wrote an article on the
subject in the 1990s, while in 1999 I included it in an exhibition I
helped to organize at the British Museum, and I discussed both the
Armorial itself and Henry Christophe’s régime in a book published the
following year entitled Rebels, Pretenders and Impostors. So by these
routes and others, the existence and whereabouts of the Armorial has
been known for quite a long time, and the College of Arms has received a
steady stream of enquiries from interested persons requesting
reproductions of single images from the volume, usually prompted by
belief in their descent from someone named in it. A different sort of
request came from the Musée Numismatique here in Port-au-Prince a few
years ago, and we were delighted to provide digital images of the entire
manuscript. But the time has come for proper publication. We do not gain
any more than anyone else from keeping it to ourselves, and while we are
happy to provide single images for enquirers, this piecemeal approach is
neither cost-effective nor particularly helpful. This remarkable
artefact deserves something better; complete reproduction respecting its
integrity as a volume, and setting it in its historical context.

What we aim to produce is this: a fully illustrated, colour publication
of the entire Armorial. It will start with a historical introduction on
the cultural and social background of the reign of King Henry
Christophe, and a short discussion of heraldry in general and as
specifically represented in this manuscript. The text accompanying the
coats of arms will be transcribed, and translated for the benefit of
monoglot anglophone readers. Where possible, brief biographical details
will be given regarding the individuals whose coats of arms are shown,
though not enough to distract from the main purpose of the publication,
which is to display the Armorial and not act as a Who’s Who of
Christophian Haiti. There will be a bibliography of works in French,
English and other languages, and a complete index. Everything, in short,
to make the publication not just attractive but useful and instructive
to as wide a range of readers as possible.

How do we plan to do this? The College of Arms is not a publishing
house, and we do not have the disposable income for ventures of this
sort. Our income is reserved for Crown purposes. But reciprocally we do
not intend to make money out of the project. It simply needs to be
self-financing. With that aim in mind I selected a publisher in London
with a proven track-record in producing high-quality, richly illustrated
books for museums and galleries, and we invited subscribers, individual
and corporate, for the planned book. The Friends of the College of Arms
assisted by underwriting the expense of an attractive publicity leaflet,
copies of which you have received today. By way of this leaflet, we have
received nearly £5000 in individual sponsorship. A generous donation has
been received from FirstCaribbean International Bank, with a view to
copies of the book being lodged with every university and college in
Barbados, and another subvention was received from the American Friends
of the College of Arms. The leaflet has also been widely distributed
through relevant interest-groups inside and outside Britain. We have
advertized the planned book to those in Europe interested in heraldry
and to those elsewhere interested in Haitian and indeed Caribbean
history and culture. Last year, for instance, the University of the West
Indies held its summer conference in Trinidad on the theme of the
Haitian Revolution; every academic attending the conference received a
copy of the leaflet. Through the good offices of the Association
Généalogique d’Haiti we have informed a wide range of other bodies and
institutions with Haitian links in North America. The word is also being
spread by our two British patrons, Lord Griffiths (formerly a Methodist
minister here in Haiti, and possibly known to some of you) and Baroness
Young (previously head of culture for the Greater London region, and a
champion of Caribbean cultural matters in our capital city). There is
still a considerable way to go in financing the publication, but I am
optimistic that we shall get there.

Finally, thanks to your kind hospitality, and assisted by the invaluable
efforts of Mr Ashcroft, British Ambassador, and Madame Boucard, our
Vice-Consul here, I am able to come and publicize the project here where
it really makes sense to do so, in Haiti itself. I have already
mentioned the specifically Haitian characteristics of the heraldry in
the Armorial. It seems to me that we owe the producers of the volume,
and the mind behind it, that of King Henry Christophe himself, a new
degree of respect. I am sure that Henry is not neglected in Haiti. But
an examination of external scholarship on Haitian history suggests to me
that his thirteen years as ruler of Haiti, and particularly his nine
years as King, have been unfairly overlooked by anglophone writers, at
any rate. It is as if the era were seen as a ‘blind alley’, and a
slightly embarrassing one at that; independent Haiti is seen as taking
an ultimately unproductive detour down the monarchic route, not for the
first time or the last, of course, but one that accords very uneasily
with the principles of revolution as seen from a traditional liberal
viewpoint, to say nothing of the Marxist or post-Marxist ones. What
attention Henry and his court have received has been non-academic and on
occasions it has progressed, I regret to say, little beyond a slight
sense of amusement that there was once someone called the Duc de la
Marmelade and the Comte de Limonade. Brief-lived, over-glorious régimes
tend to excite ridicule rather than respect, and that is fair enough,
especially if they were also violent and repressive. But they should not
be discounted as objects of serious study. As a subject and employee of
the Queen of the United Kingdom I am not inclined to regard monarchies
as automatically silly, though I recognise that they frequently are in
practice. The growth of an area of historical research in recent years
called ‘court studies’ has shown that the structures and usages of
monarchical courts, whether long lasting or ephemeral, have serious
things to show about the societies they grow out of. This area of
research has already been successfully pursued in relation to the
empires of Brazil and Mexico. In the case of Haiti there is the
fascinating additional question of the extent to which the institution
of monarchy was partly informed by practices and beliefs specific to the
freed slaves of Saint-Domingue. Time and time again, throughout history
and in countless different localities, freed or escaping slaves have set
up not republics but monarchies. It is not surprising, therefore, to
find the kingly ideal or image reappearing many times in the history of
the Haitian revolution long before Dessalines or Christophe, sometimes
clearly based on African originals, at others on French ones, and often
on a synthesis of the two. Maybe Henry introduced an English element
into the mix, with his 13 heralds. It is, at the very least, a
legitimate enquiry, and one that might make my presence here before you
today a little less anomalous.

So there I shall leave it. I firmly believe that the publication of the
Haiti Armorial will be of wide interest and advantage in a number of
ways. It is a glorious and unusual artefact. It illuminates a brief but
significant phase in Haitian history. It shows the adaptation of an
originally European vehicle of design to a form that is, in part,
specifically Haitian. It will interest, I hope, modern-day Haitians and
others who may be descendants of the very men mentioned in the Armorial.
And, from my point of view, it allows us at the College of Arms in
London to overcome, if briefly, the insularity that our work and studies
impose on us. So, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is heartfelt when I conclude
by saying, ‘Thank you for having me here’.

Clive Cheeseman
College of Arms
London

>From Jacqui Labrom

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