"Black, White and Brown," Civilian and Galveston Gazette, October 19, 1838

Summary: The editor told an amusing story about the exploits of a Miss Morbid. Morbid apparently went to an abolitionist meeting and then vowed never to eat sugar again because it was grown by slave labor. She extended this vow to her servants and family, who were much annoyed by it. The story climaxed with Morbid being betrayed by a free black she hired, who stole money from her. Demanding an explanation, the free black ultimately said she stole the money to buy sugar.

From Hood's Own Republished by G. Dearborn & Co., New-York.

BLACK, WHITE AND BROWN.

All at once Miss Morbid left off sugar.

She did not [illegible word] it as some persons lay down their carriage, the full bodied family coach dwindling into a charriot, next into a fly and then into a sedan chair. She did not shade it off artistically, like certain household economists, from white to whitey brown, dark brown, and so on, to none at all. She left it off, as one might leave off walking on the top of a house; or on a slide, or on a plank with a further end to it; that is to say slapdash all at once without a moment's warning. She gave it up, to speak appropriately, in the lump. She dropped it,--as Corporal Trim let fall his hat,--dab. It vanished as the French say, foot sweet. From the 30th of November, 1830, not an ounce of sugar, to use Miss Morbid's expression, "ever darkened her doors."

The truth was, she had been present the day before at an anti Slavery Meeting; and had listened to a lecturing Abolitionist, who had drawn her sweet tooth, root and branch out of her head. Thenceforth sugar, or as she called it, "shugger" was no longer white or brown, in her eyes but red, blood red--an abomination, to indulge in which would convert a Christian into a practical Cannibal. Accordingly she made a vow, under the influence of moist eyes and refined feelings, that the sanguinary article should never more enter her lips or her house: and this pretty parody of the famous Berlin Decree against our Colonial produce was rigidly enforced. However others might countenance the practice of the slave owners by consuming "shugger," she was resolved for her own part, "no suffering sable son of Africa should ever rise up against her out of a cup of tea."

In the mean time, the cook and house maid grumbled in concert at the prohibition. They natturally thought it very hard to be deprived of a luxury which they enjoyed at their own proper cost and at last only consented to remain in the service on condition that the privation should be handsomely considered in their wages. With a hope of being similarly remembered in her will, the poor relations of Miss Morbid continued to drink the "warm without" which she administered to them every Sunday, under the name of Tea: and Hogarth would have desired no better subject for a picture than was presented by their physiognomies. Some pursed up their lips as if resolved that the nauseous beverage should never enter them, others compressed their mouths as if to prevent it from rushing out again. One took it mincingly, in sips--another gulped it down in desperation--a third in a fit of absence, continued to stir very superstrenously with a spoon; and there was one shrewed old gentleman who by a little dexterous by play, used to bestow the favour of his small sonchong on a sick geranium. Now and then an astonished Stranger would retain a half cupfull of the black dose in his mouth, and stare round at his fellow pests, as if tacitly putting to them the very question of Mathews's Yorkshireman in the mail coach--"Company! pop or doon?"

The greatest sufferers, however, were Miss Morbid's two nephews, still in the morning of their youth, and boy like, far more inclined to "sip the sweets" than to "hail the dawn." They had formerly looked on their aunt's house as peculiarly a dulce domum. Prior to her sudden conversion, she had been famous for the manufacture of a sort of hard cake, commonly called toffy or taffy--but now, alas 'taffy was not at home,' and there was nothing else to invite a call. Currant is tart indeed without sugar, and as for the green gooseberries, they always tasted, as the young gentleman affirmed, "like a quart of berries sharpened to a pint." In short, it always required six pennyworth of lollilops and bulls-eyes, a lick of honey, a dip of [illegible word], and a pick at a grocer's hogshead, to sweeten a visit at aunt Morbid's.

To tell the truth, her own temper soured a little under the prohibition. She could not persuade the sugar eaters that they were vampires, instead practising, or even admiring her self denial, they laughed at it; and one wicked wag even compared her, in allusion to her acerbity and her privation to a crab without the nippers. She preserved, notwithstanding, in her system; and to the constancy of a martyr added something of the wilfulness of a bigot--indeed, it was hinted by patrons and patronesses of white charities that European objects had not their fair share in her benevolence. She was, preeminently, the friend of the blacks. Howbeit[sic] for all her sacrifices, not a lash, was averted from their sable backs. She had raised discontent in the kitchen, she had disgusted her acquaintance, sickened her friends, and given her own dear little nephews stomachacle, without saving Quashy from one cut of the driver's whip or diverting a single kick from the shins of Sambo. Her grocer complained loudly of being called a dealer in human gore, yet not one hogshead the less was imported from the plantations. By an error common to all her class, she mistook a negative for a positive principle, and persuaded herself by not preserving damsons she preserved the niggers: that by not sweetening her own cup she was dulcifying the lot of all her sable brethern in bondage. She persevered in setting her face against sugar instead of slavery--against the plant instead of the planter--and had actually abstained for six months from the forbidden article, when a circumstance occurred that aroused her sympathies into more active exertions. It pleased an American lady to import with her a black female servant, whom she rather abruptly dismissed on her arrival in England. The case was considered by the Hampshire Telegraph of that day as one of great hardship--the paragraph went the rounds of the papers--and in due time attracted the notice of Miss Morbid. It was precisely addressed to her sensibilities, and there was a "Try Warren tone about it that proved irresistible. She read--and wrote--and in the course of one little week, her domestic establishment was maliciously but truly described as consisting of "two white slaves and a black companion."

The adopted protege was, in reality, a strapping clumsy negress as ugly as sin, and with no other merit than that of being of the same color of the crow. She was artful, sullen, gluttonous, and above all so intolerably indolent that if she had been literally carved to obey, as old Fuller says, she could scarcely have been of less service to her protectress. Her notion of free labor seemed to translate it into laziness and taking liberties and as she seriously added to the work of her fellow-servants, without at all contributing to their comfort they soon looked upon her as a complete nuissance. The housemaid dubbed her "a divil"--the cook roundly compared her to "a mischievous beast as runs out on, a herd o' black cattle"--and both concured in the policy of laying all household sins upon her sooty shoulders, just as slatterns select a color that hides the dirt. It is certain that shortly after the instalment of the negress in the family, a moral disease broke out with considerable violence, and justly or not, the odium was attributed to the new comer. Its name was theft. First, there was a shilling short in some loose change--next, a missing half crown from the mantle-piece--then there was a stir with a tea-spoon; anon, a piece of work about a thimble. Things went, nobody knew how--the "devil" of course excepted.--The cook could, the house-maid would, and Diana should and ought to take an oath declaratory of innocence, before the mayor; but as Diana did not volunteer an affidavit like the others, there was no doubt of her guilt in the kitchen.

Miss Morbid, however, came to a very different conclusion. She thought that whites who could eat sugar were capable of any atrocity, and had not forgotten the stand which had been made by the "pale faces" in favor of the obnoxious article. The cook especially incurred suspicion for she had been notorious aforetime for a lavish hand in sweetening, and was accordingly quite equal to the turpitude of stealing and bearing false witness. In fact the mistress had arrived at the determination of giving both the white hussies their month's warning, when unexpectedly the thief was taken as the lawyers say, "in the manner," and with the goods upon the person. In a word, the ungrateful black was detected in the very act of levying what might be called her "Black Mail."

The horror of Amelia, on discovering that the Moor had murdered her mistress, was scarcely greater than that of Miss Morbid! She hardly, she said, believed her own senses. You might have knocked her down with a feather. She did not know whether she stood on her head or her heels. She was rooted to the spot! and her hair if it had been her own, would have stood upright upon her head. There was no doubt in the case. She saw the transfer of a portion of her own bank stock, from her escritoire into the right hand pooket of her protege--she heard it chink as it dropped downwards--she was petrified--dumb-founded--thunder-bolted--annihilated! She was as white as a sheet, but she felt as if all the blacks in the world had just blown in her face.

Her first impulse was to rush upon the robber and insist on restitution--her second was to sit down and weep, and her third was to talk. The opening as usual was a mere torrent of ejaculations, intermixed with vituperation--but she gradually fell into a lecture with many heads. First, she described all that she had done for the blacks, and then, alas! all that the blacks had done for her. Next, she insisted on the enormity of the crime, and anon, she enlarged on the nature of its punishment. It was here that she was most eloquent. She traced the course of human justice, from detection to conviction, and thence to execution. Liberally throwing dissection into the bargain; and then decending with Dante into the unmentionable regions, she painted its terrors and tortures with all the circumstantial fidelity that certain old Masters, have displayed on the same subject.

"And now you black wretch," she concluded, having just given the finishing touch to a portrait of Satan himself, "and now, you black wretch you, I insist on knowing what I was robbed for. Come tell me what tempted you! I'm determined to hear it," I insist, I say, on knowing what was to be done with the wages of iniquity.

She insisted, however, in vain. The black wretch had seriously inclined her ear to the whole lecture, grinning and blubbering by turns. The Judge with his black cap, the counsel and their wigs, the twelve men in a box, and Jack Ketch himself--whom she associated with that pleasant West Indian personage, John Canoe, had amused, nay tickled her fancy; the press-room, the irons, the rope, and the ordinary, whom she mistook for an overseer, had raised her curiosity and excited her feats; but the spiritualities without any reference to Obean had simply mystified and disgusted her, and she was now in a fit of the sulk.--Her mistress, however, persisted in her question, and not the less pertinaciously, perhaps, from expecting a new peg whereon to hang a fresh lecture. She was determined to learn the destination of the stolen money; and by dint of insisting, cajolling, and, above all, threatening--for instance with the whole posse comitatis--she finally carried her point.

"Cus, him money! Here's a fuss." exclaimed the culprit, quite worn out at last by the persecution,--"Cus him money! her's a fuss! What me 'teal him for? What me do wid him? What any body 'teal him for? Why for sure, to buy sugar."

Source Copy Consulted: "Black, White and Brown," Civilian and Galveston Gazette, October 19, 1838, p. 1