Charles Testut

Background

He was born in France circa 1818.

Career

He was in New York in November 1839 and assisted at the birth of a new French newspaper, L'Indicateur. After it died, almost still-born, he moved to Pointe-à-Pitre on the island of Guadeloupe. Testut lost his small fortune of 85, 000 francs when the terrible earthquake of 1843 completely destroyed that city; but he escaped with his wife and daughter to a ship in the harbor, and it eventually landed him in New Orleans, La. , bare of all possessions except a broken trunk, an old mattress, and fifteen cents in cash.

During the next few years he supported his family by writing for the Creole newspapers until he had saved enough money to buy a weekly of his own, Le Chronique. He immediately augmented it by a "literary supplement" which contained serialized romances based on Louisiana history. Many of these he wrote himself, and he later collected them in two volumes under the title Las Veillées Louisianaises (1849).

In 1850 he went to Mobile and launched a bilingual paper called the Alabama Courrier, but it soon failed and he returned to New Orleans. For the rest of his life he was ridden by an irresistible urge to found newspapers; they multiplied like mushrooms and died like flies. Among the ones he organized were La Semaine de la Nouvelle Orléans in 1852, L'Equité in 1871, La Lanterne in 1873, La Semaine Littéraire in 1876, and Le Journal des Familles about 1888 (changed in 1890 to Le Journal du Peuple).

He wrote poetry as well as prose, and in 1849 published his first book of verses, Les Échos. This was followed two years later by a second volume of poetry, Fleurs d'Été. In 1850 he brought out a collection of short criticisms of the local writers, under the title Portraits Littéraires, and in 1852-53 a series in parts of Creolized dime novels called Les Mysteres de la Nouvelle-Orléans. These were full of counterfeiters, seducers, and noble heroes. They first appeared as "literary supplements" to La Semaine.

His most interesting novel was Le Vieux Salomon, which he wrote in eighty-nine consecutive evenings while on a visit to New York in 1858. It resembled Uncle Tom's Cabin, and told the story of a wise old African of Guadeloupe who helped two young slaves to get married. Unfortunately after the ceremony their master lost his fortune and the young couple were sold and shipped to New Orleans. Their new master tried to seduce the wife and treated the husband with the greatest brutality. Knowing the feeling of the South towards this sort of abolition propaganda, Testut did not dare publish it until 1872, when he serialized it in L'Equité before bringing it out in book form. Even then, however, it created a great deal of animosity, a feeling he fanned by openly advocating the cause of the former slaves in his editorials.

With a consummate aptitude for antagonizing his friends and subscribers, he wrote a series of slurring attacks against Pope Pius IX, which enraged all the Catholics in New Orleans, and published a defense of Free Masonry which certainly did nothing to placate them. Finally a number of editorials affirming his implicit belief in spiritism deprived him of his remaining readers and L'Equité died of starvation. With a temperament such as Testut's he could never make money. Inevitably he became a penniless old man and during his latter years was kept alive by a group of generous women who took turns in bringing him food each day. When he died in July 1892, they paid for his funeral.

Achievements

• He is remembered as an author of books of poetry and prose.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Calisto

    (C'est entre Moscou et La Nouvelle-Orléans du XVIIIe siècl...)

  • Le Vieux Salomon

    (Le Vieux Salomon, Charles Testut. Centenary College of Lo...)

  • Saint-Denis (French Edition)

    ("Saint-Denis" de Charles Testut. écrivain français de Lou...)