Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

Acadian tale inspired Longfellow

by Jim Bradshaw

It is a lovely tale, but it is fiction.

"Evangeline" is the story of two young people who were separated at the time of the Acadian exile and who wandered in search of each other. It was published in 1847 some 92 years after the exile. At the time, the story of the deportation was not well known outside of the Acadian community, nor had it been well preserved within it.

According to most accounts, Longfellow heard the story from Rev. Horance Lorenzo Conolly, a native of Maine who became rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal church in south Boston. He had heard it from a parishioner and had passed it on to Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hawthorne had Conolly tell it to Longfellow in May 1844, when they were at a dinner party at Longfellow's home. According to Hawthorne's account, "the dinner was late, and we sat long," and Conolly told the story to the poet during the after-dinner conversation.

Hawthorne had heard it earlier. On Oct. 24, 1838, he'd written in his notebook that Conolly "had heard from a French Canadian the story of a young couple in Acadia." According to Hawthorne's notes:

"On their marriage day, all the men of the province were summoned to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. "When assembled, they were all seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England--among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in search of him--wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at last, when she was old, she found her bridegroom on his deathbed. The shock was so great that it killed her likewise."

The story captured Longfellow's imagination, and it is from that imagination that the story of Gabriel and Evangeline was born. Since then, there have been several families who have tried to fit Longfellow's fanciful couple into their family tree. But they had to bend some branches to do it.

One of the first Louisiana writers to retell the tale was Sidonie de la Houssaye, who in 1888 used the Evangeline story in her novel, "Pouponne et Balthazar," to tell the story of a family legend handed down to her by a great-grandmother.

In this tale, Pouponne, separated during the deportation from her fiance, Balthazar Landry, takes care of his sick father through many years of separation. Theirs, however, is a happier story than Evangeiine's. They are finally reunited and married.

But there are several things about the De la Houssaye account that make us know that it was made-up -- the most glaring being that Sidonie de la Houssaye's forebears were not Acadian. They came to Louisiana from France, before the Acadian exile.

By far the best known and most often told account comes from Felix Voorhies' "Acadian Reminiscences: The True Story of Evangeline," which is supported with some minor variations by the late Thomas Arceneaux, a dean at USL, who placed the events of the tale in his own family.

Voorhies tells the tale of Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux, who tried to flee from the village of St. Gabriel in Acadie before the deportation in 1755. But they were caught by the British and were sent their separate ways.

According to the story, Emmeline was among the Acadians sent to Maryland. They came from there to Louisiana with another group of Acadians who were led down the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers by Rene LeBlanc, who had been patriarch at St. Gabriel.

In the Voorhies book, these Acadians finally came to St. Martinville to settle and were greeted by long-lost friends and relatives when they got there. The late Andre Ouvier, who will be long remembered as a storyteller in St. Martinville, told it this way:

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"...a crowd gathered under the huge oak trees near the wharf on the bayou banks and cheered a barge and was welcomed into the hospitable new land. Among those who walked down the gangplank was frail, beautiful Emmeline Labiche, her eyes searching feverishly among the crowds lining the bank. With a hoarse cry Louis rushed forward...and took her in his arms. Then came the shocking news (that Louis had married someone else), so unbelievably cruel to the delicate Emmeline that she fell unconscious. She was never well again, (and) spent her few remaining months in gentle madness, dancing and picking flowers up and down the bayou banks, and died finally in the mournfully beautiful new land where she had found her lover at last, then lost him forever."

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Felix Voorhies maintained that the story had been handed down in his family. He said that his great-grandmother told the tale to his mother and to his uncle, Alexandre Mouton.

That is probably how the story began that it had been Gov. Mouton who had told the story to his friend Longfellow when Mouton was in the U.S. Senate. (Mouton served in the U.S. Senate from 1837 to 1842 and was Louisiana's governor from 1843 to 1846.)

The Mouton story, as it comes down to us, was told by Ann Bastarche, who was the wife of Salvador Mouton, father of Jean Mouton (who is commonly called the founder of Lafayette). According to her story, Emmeline Labiche lived with the Moutons in Acadie.

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"Emmeline Labiche was an orphan girl of Acadia whose parents died when she was yet a child, and who was taken into our family and adopted. She was sweet-tempered and loving, and grew to womanhood with all the attractions of her sex. Although not a beauty in the sense usually given the word, she was looked upon as the handsomest girl in St. Gabriel.

"Emmeline had just completed her 16th year and was on the eve of marrying a deserving...and well-to-do man of St.Gabriel, named Louis Arceneaux. Their mutual love dated back to the earliest years, and was concealed from no one. Their banns had been published in the village church, the nuptial day was fixed...when the barbarous scatterment of our colony took place. Our oppressors had driven us toward the seashore where their ships rode at anchor, and Louis, resisting with rage and despair, was wounded by them.

"Emmeline witnessed the whole scene. Tearless and speechless, she stood fixed to the spot. When the white sails vanished in the distance, she clasped me in her arms and in an agony of grief sobbed piteously. By degrees the violence of her grief subsided, but the sadness of her countenance betokened the sorrow that preyed upon her heart.

"Henceforward she lived a quiet and retired life, mingling no more with her companions, and taking no part in their amusement. The remembrance of her lost love remained enshrined in her heart.

"Thus she lived, in our midst, always sweet-tempered, with such sadness depicted on her countenance and with smiles so sorrowful that we had come to look at her not as for this earth, but rather as our guardian angel. Thus it was that we called her no longer Emmeline, but 'Evangeline,'or 'God's little angel.'

"Emmeline had been exiled to Maryland with us. She followed me in my long overland journey from Maryland to Louisiana. When we reached the Teche country at the Poste des Attakapas, we found the whole population congregated to welcome us.

"Suddenly, as if fascinated by a vision, she stopped, and then, the silvery tones of her voice vibrating with joy, she cried: 'Mother! Mother! It is he. It is Louis!' and she pointed to a tall figure of a man standing beneath an oak.

"She flew to his side, crying out in an ecstasy of joy and love. He turned ashy pale and hung his head without uttering a word.

"'Louis', she said, 'why do you turn your eyes away? I am still your Emmeline, your betrothed!'

"With quivering lips and trembling voice he answered: 'Emmeline, do not speak so kindly to me. I am unworthy of you. I can love you no longer. I have pledged my faith to another. Tear from your heart the remembrances of the past and forgive me.' Then he wheeled away and disappeared.

"A pallor spread over Emmeline's countenance and her eyes assumed a vacant stare. She followed me like a child without resistance. I clasped her in my arms and she wept bitterly

"'Emmeline, my dear, be comforted,' I said. 'There may yet be happiness in store for you.'

"'Emmeline, Emmeline,' she muttered to herself, as if to recall the name, and then: 'Who are you?' She turned away, her mind unhinged.

"Emmeline never recovered her reason, and a deep melancholy possessed her. Her beautiful countenance was lighted by a sad smile, which made her all the fairer. She never recognized anyone but me, and nestling in my arms, would bestow on me the most endearing names. She spoke of Acadia and Louis in such terms that one could not listen to her without shedding tears. She fancied herself the sweet girl of 16 on the eve of marrying her chosen one, whom she loved with so much devotion and constancy.

"Then, sinking at last under the ravage of her mental disease, she expired in my arms."

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It's a wonderful story, and it would be nice if it were true. Something like it probably did happen to a pair of Acadian sweethearts, probably to more than one pair. There could well be such a story in every Acadian family that remembers the exile. But as for this precise tale, there is no record here or in old Acadie that anyone named Emmeline Labiche lived there at the time of the exile. There was a real Louis Arceneaux, and he was the ancestor of Dean Arceneaux. But he was born in 1768, well after the exile, and in St. James Parish, in Louisiana. Nor are there any old maps or any old memories that can locate a place called St. Gabriel in old Acadie. The tale of the lovers torn apart by the exile is probably true, but the story of Evangeline and the other published stories like it simply cannot be authenticated as fact.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).