The man’s body lay face down on the grass traffic island, as if he were sleeping. His head and shirt had been dyed dark red with his own blood. The car that hit him was parked a few yards away, its two occupants crouched at the kerbside staring straight ahead in shock, unable to face the sight of their victim as they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Traffic slowed as early morning commuters, myself included, peered at the carnage a few feet from their own vehicles, then curiosity satisfied, gradually picked up speed again for the daily rush towards St. Denis. It was the third fatal accident I had seen in the same number of weeks, on the same stretch of the busy N1 which traces the outline of the coast all the way to the capital from St. Pierre in the south.
Everyone complains about the traffic. It’s not what you expect of a tropical island, but the impenetrable bulk of Réunion’s volcanoes mean there is only one practical route from the west coast to the east. For at least two hours each morning and evening, the route du littoral is a dizzying conveyor belt of speeding vehicles all seemingly driven with a dangerous mixture of Gallic bravado and creole joie de vivre. They are all trying to get to St. Denis, the commercial, political and cultural hub of the island, and where I was making use of the national archives. To avoid the excessive heat of the city I stayed at Saline-les-Bains, a small offshoot of the more fashionable resort of St. Gilles where surfing and serious sunbathing are turned into an artform. The drawback of being near the beach was the hour-long drive in each direction every time I had business in St. Denis. Each night, Madame Louvat, my landlady, would look up from her office and shake her head pityingly. “Bad traffic?”
Things really slow to a crawl at the island’s northernmost tip, where everything is drawn into a narrow logjam at the main city esplanade they call Barachois. Buses and lorries, cars and vans spill out of the old narrow streets of the city onto the seafront under the watchful gaze of the statue to Roland Garros: the first man to fly non-stop across the Mediterranean who was later killed in an heroic dogfight just weeks before the end of World War I. Standing beside a large propeller, he is trapped in a concrete suit. On the other side of the road, a line of impressive old cannons faces out to sea defending the heart of the colonial city. Not far away is the smart white edifice of the prefecture where I once attended a cocktail party with no less than three uniformed French admirals in attendance. And up there, stretching along the high ground are the grandest of St. Denis’s old houses, a cluster of wooden mansions along the Rue de Paris protected from the street by ornate iron railings.
Many of the grand houses are uninhabited, awaiting restoration, with shutters closed and white paint peeling from Doric columns under the fierce southern sun. Fountains stand dry and cracking in their courtyards, and delicate ironwork aviaries with pagoda roofs are empty of ornamental doves. The law says that these houses are part of the island’s heritage, and any restoration must be true to the original design. Rather than foot the bill, the families that own them leave them to decay. At the far end of the Rue de Paris there is the old botanical garden now called the Jardin de l’Etat, but once Jardin du Roi. Its layout, and some of the trees, date from the days of the French East India Company, and were collected in the Indies by Pierre Poivre himself. Here too, Captain Philibert brought his treasures from Cayenne and the Philippines. The gardens are a little shabby now, battered by cyclones in recent years but still a haven from the traffic of the surrounding streets.
Since 1946, Réunion has been a fully-fledged département of France, the President of the Republic represented locally by a Préfet, but with its own regional council. Five deputies and three senators sit in the French parliament and the island is also part of the European Union. The islanders are entirely free to travel to mainland France, and to live there if they choose. In practice few make the move, unwilling to exchange their tropical lifestyle and sunshine for the cooler motherland.
Much of the island’s heritage is stored in the Archives départementales, which date back to the early seventeenth century. Now housed in a modernist tower-block at Champ-Fleuri on the outskirts of the capital, the history of Bourbon and Réunion is under the guardianship of a fierce set of librarians and archivists who bring the full force of French bureaucracy to bear on their task. None of them spoke a word of English, claiming my grasp of their own language would be all we needed to communicate. I wasn’t quite so confident, and I never quite felt I mastered the arcane cataloguing system within the archives. Card index trays, microfiches, hand written ledgers and various ring-binders of different colours all contained code numbers which must be written down and handed in to the desk staff in any attempt to locate a particular document. After several weeks of battling the system I could never fathom exactly which catalogue might contain the information I needed. There were also rules to be followed. Only seven documents could be requested before midday, and the same number following lunch. Lunch is from midday until two.
Photocopies of rare documents require that a letter be written to the Chief Archivist, who resides on the fifth floor. This she must stamp and return before the document can be transported the two metre distance from the issuing desk to the copying machine. After I had spent a month using the archives the novelty of dealing with an Englishman seemed to wear down one or two of the responsables in charge of the photocopying machine. Not only would my presence at the issue desk be greeted with a half-smile, but occasionally, very occasionally, I was permitted an illicit duplicate without having to wait for Madame La Directrice’s imprimatur. Perhaps, they decided, it was easier to just provide a photocopy that to decipher my execrably written French.
In the archives I found many of the original handwritten documents relating to the time of Edmond’s discovery, and before. There was Commandant Philibert’s neat copperplate handwriting, and letters from Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont in a bold flowing hand. Their signatures lay on faded and cracking paper bound in folders with red ribbons. Once I asked for a photograph of an etching in an old book. After two weeks I enquired when it might be ready. “Ah! But the photographer is on leave this week. First thing on Monday …”
On Monday, the photographer (whom I never met nor spoke to directly) was ‘snowed under with work after his holidays’. A week later my request had been marked ‘urgent’ and ‘priorité’, but alas, it still did not appear. With five days left on the island I asked if a date could be set when I might receive the photograph. “But Monsieur, you mean you haven’t received it? … oh la-la, I will ring Madame la Directrice! Indeed, she has your request in front of her, she will make sure it is done this afternoon.” Each false alarm necessitated the hour-long drive in each direction, and the long traffic queues to circumnavigate St. Denis. Finally, on my penultimate day on the island I was told: “Desolé, Monsieur … there has been a contre-temps!”
“How big is this contre-temps?” I asked, attempting a strained smile.
“Ah, well, it seems that the photographer has run out of black and white film. Could you possibly provide him with one? Otherwise we will have to wait for Madame la Directrice to order some more. And we really cannot say how long that might take.”
I returned a few hours later with the film. “If Monsieur could call tomorrow, I’m sure it will be ready.”
“On my way to the airport?”
“Perhaps Monsieur should telephone before making the journey.” Perhaps. Four months later, after a lengthy exchange of emails, the image arrived in London by post.
French historians have uncovered much of the existing evidence about Edmond, and his master, Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont. But there are large gaps in the story, and at times, earlier writers have glossed over the events which followed Edmond’s discovery. Sometimes, they have flatly denied that the boy had anything to do with the beginnings of the vanilla industry on the island. In the light of what happened to him in later years, it is hardly surprising. Important and valuable as his contribution would become to the island’s economy, he was after all, still just a slave. Within a short time of Edmond’s discovery the rumours and arguments began. Could such a young boy, particularly a young black boy, really have discovered and perfected something as intricate and important as the secret of manual pollination? Such doubts persist today.
In Tahiti, another former French possession, I met a vanilla grower who laughed when I told him what I knew of the story of Edmond. “Rubbish!” he said, with a scowl. “In fact, the boy was just a slave—and it is well known that he hated his owner. If he did fertilise the vanilla flower—it was an accident, not any kind of discovery! The truth is, Edmond had been scolded by his master about something, and for revenge he went out into the garden and crushed all the vanilla flowers he could find. Some of them were fertilised that way, that’s all.”
Another vanilla grower, this time in Réunion, repeated another version of the legend to me. “Edmond was in the garden with a creole girl and they were making love. You know,” she whispered conspiratorially, “Les Africains—they start to have sex very young. Well, to impress this girl, the boy told her he could show her the male and female parts of an orchid. You can imagine—la fécondation—it is a very sensual process. Afterwards, Edmond suggested that he could do to the girl what he had just done to the orchid.”
Slavery, and the attitudes to race that it left behind have not been entirely forgotten in the Indian Ocean islands. The modern Réunionnais are proud of their French citizenship, and hesitate to draw attention to each other’s bloodlines. But once, when I told a friend that a vanilla grower had failed to keep an appointment with me, she exclaimed “Ah oui! Of course he’s pretending to be busy, as if he is an important businessman. He’s such a Grand Blanc!”
France finally abolished slavery in all of its possessions on the 27th, April 1848. The news reached Bourbon in June, causing great disquiet among the plantocracy, who feared that economic ruin and social uproar would follow. By now, slaves accounted for sixty percent of the population of the island and the white landowners knew they were outnumbered. In October, a new Governor, Joseph Napoléon Sarda-Garriga disembarked at St. Denis with a copy of the new law among his papers. Knowing that there were great misgivings about the emancipation, and to allay the fears of the planters, he agreed that any slaves not yet freed should remain in service until the 20th December. This would give the employers time to plan for the liberation, and also to harvest that year’s crops with a full complement of staff.
When the great day for freedom finally arrived, the Governor received a delegation of specially selected slaves, to hear the official proclamation.
“My friends,” he began. “By decree of the French Republic, you are free. All men are equal under the law, and you have no-one around you but brothers. Liberty, you will understand, brings its own obligations, one of which is work and respect for law and order.”
Sarda-Garriga seems to have gone out of his way to induce the freed slaves not to desert their masters, exhorting the freed slaves to remember that they should “respect God’s will, and be good workers like your brothers in France. Respect your employers and remember that this colony is not rich: many employers can only pay your wages after the harvest has been gathered.”
The Governor was also quite clear that he would not tolerate any misbehaviour or vagabondage. “We must all work together for the prosperity of the colony. Remember, my friends,” he continued. “Labouring in the fields is not a sign of servitude. You are playing your part in creating the common good. Henceforth, proprietors and workers will form one common family whose members must help each other.”
The final paternal flourish of the decree reminded the slaves how lucky they were: “Call me father, and I will love you like children. Listen to my advice: always remember that it was the French Republic that set you free! And that your duty is to God, France and Work. Vive la République!”
After this florid proclamation, Sarda-Garriga reported that the eight slaves who were present threw themselves upon the floor in front of him. “My friends,” said the Governor. “It is only at the feet of God that men should prostrate themselves. Take my hand.”
The previous social rules of the colony were now under assault, but it would be some years before the attitudes of the plantocracy towards its largely black labour force softened. Freed slaves would now be recognised as citizens, their names dutifully recorded on the Civil List, complete with their newly chosen surnames—many of them adopting the name of the family to whom they had belonged, or the name of the estate on which they worked. Occasionally they simply chose a name they liked.
By December 1848, Edmond had already been a freeman for half a year. Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont knew that the official emancipation was on its way, and like many planters he granted his ‘favourite boy’ his liberty. Edmond was not only free: he also had a surname—Albius. As with so much of Edmond’s story, even his name is a curiosity—it means ‘white’, and various historians have argued that it might be an honorary reference to his free status, or as some kind of ill-conceived joke at his expense by the white-men in charge of the registry. Others have claimed that he was simply relatively light-skinned, even though portraits refute this. One writer at the turn of the century even suggested that Edmond may not have been a black person, suggesting that he was of mixed race, and by implication owed any of his genius to his white heritage.
Like all slaves, Edmond had been born without a surname, and his mother’s identity is recorded simply as Mélise, a maid in service in the district of Sainte Suzanne. She died giving birth to Edmond, and he was told later that his father, whom he never met, was a slave named Pamphile. When the boy was old enough to be of some use, his owner, a woman named Elvire, sent Edmond to live at her brother’s estate at Belle-vue. There, Edmond became a house-boy to his new master, Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont and his wife, Angelique.
Within Bourbon’s small social circle of white landowners Bellier-Beaumont had a reputation as a knowledgeable horticulturist, and he enjoyed experimenting with new varieties of decorative plants as well as with commercial fruit and vegetables. As the boy Edmond grew, he followed his master around the estate, watching and learning as Bellier-Beaumont tended his plants. Years later, his master wrote: “this young black boy became my constant companion, a favourite child always at my feet.”
The detail of Edmond’s childhood is lost, his life at Belle-vue a daily round of household chores at the behest of his master, albeit a kindly man who would later defend the boy’s reputation.
A year after his emancipation, Edmond’s name is listed in the county register for Sainte Suzanne. There, he is recorded simply as ‘citizen Edmon’ (sic), the son of deceased slaves, Mélise and Pamphile. The registrar’s task was to formally recognise any former slaves within their own community and record their new names for posterity.
Abandoning the rural isolation of Belle-vue, Edmond joined the ranks of the other sixty-two thousand one hundred and fifty slaves on Réunion released by order of the Revolutionary Government in Paris. Meanwhile, the industry that his discovery seven years earlier had created was beginning to flourish, the vanilla crop an essential part of the new economy. Whether Edmond’s success resulted from malevolence, ingenuity or simply a stroke of luck, there is no doubt that a rapid rise in vanilla production followed directly from the events of 1841, when Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont summoned other landowners to his estate at Belle-vue to learn Edmond’s technique. After Edmond’s discovery, numerous planters on the north-east coast began cultivating vanilla in earnest. From small beginnings they propagated and planted new vines, so that by 1848 the island was able to export fifty kilograms of vanilla pods to France. Ten years later, Bourbon (now officially re-named La Réunion), was able to send two tonnes of dried pods back to the motherland. The curing process used on the island became known as the Bourbon method, and it is still applied to the beans today. Just as French wine makers from Champagne reserve the name for sparkling wines from their own locality, there are attempts to restrict the term ‘Bourbon vanilla’ for those beans grown only the former French possessions of Réunion, Madagascar and Comoros. However, some dealers use the term loosely, applying it to any Vanilla planifolia pods cured in the Bourbon manner.
Year by year, cultivation and curing methods were improved so that by 1867 the island could export twenty tonnes, and in 1898 a record two-hundred tonnes of dried vanilla. By then, Réunion had outstripped Mexico to become the world’s largest producer of vanilla beans.
Vanilla as a new resource could not have come at a better time. Coffee, one of the most important products of the island had already had its heyday, with production affected by pest, and sales damaged by the influx of much cheaper coffee from the Antilles and South America. Cyclones in 1806 and 1807 had also resulted in severe damage to plants, as well as soil erosion and avalanches which badly affected the amount of land available for coffee production. Sugar, which had enjoyed a peak production of three and a half tonnes in the year that Edmond first fertilised his vanilla orchids would gradually also decline. By 1850 production had already halved, and in 1865 the crop would be afflicted by a parasitic insect. More seriously, the tropical sugar-cane grass was being replaced by the temperate sugar-beet, which by 1880 would become the main source of sugar in Europe. The opening of the Suez Canal after 1869 would also dramatically reduce the number of ships stopping at the island, and further weaken the strategic value of the colony to France.
With so many threats to the agricultural prosperity of the island, the colonial government was quick to see the commercial advantages of a new crop, and by 1853 they had already imposed a tax of five francs per kilogram on any vanilla exports, money which the Official Colony Bulletin revealed would ‘be used to encourage other, local agricultural efforts’.
The archive collection of photographs and engravings of the old estates led me into a forgotten world. In manners and lifestyle the grands blancs were keen to emulate the latest fashions of Paris. The colony had its own newspaper, Le Moniteur, and there were music and art societies for the upper classes to attend. From 1860–63, a local author, Antoine Roussin, published three large volumes offering a snapshot of life on Réunion. His aim, he said, was to ‘represent the most picturesque sites and the principle monuments of the colony’. Describing the city of St. Denis, he asks his reader; “Do you expect a primitive place at the end of the oceans where people speak in old-fashioned ways? You will be amazed. Our beautiful city knows all the tricks of flirtation: she reveals her charms little by little, and she will not show you her best parts all at once.”
The allure of St. Denis worked its magic upon the young Edmond, enticing him away from the countryside to the hustle and bustle of the city. It was not to be a happy move. When Edmond left his master’s estate at Belle-vue he had no formal education, and he was just one of many thousands of agricultural workers who were faced with the choice between remaining on the farm or looking for some kind of paid work in the towns. Although he may have had a grand blanc name, Bellier-Beaumont was not a wealthy man, and it was other planters who would take up vanilla cultivation on a large scale after Edmond’s discovery. Consequently, he could only afford to give Edmond a small amount of cash when he left the estate to start a new life. Even though the vanilla industry was still in its infancy, Bellier-Beaumont knew that Edmond had laid the foundations of a lucrative trade. As his favourite boy prepared to leave Belle-vue, Bellier-Beaumont wrote to Governor Sarda-Garriga’s office, asking if any kind of official stipend could be paid to Edmond for his role in making the vanilla industry a possibility. By all accounts an enlightened man, Sarda-Garriga did not reply. The letter was buried in a pile of official correspondence which he did not have time to answer before he was recalled to France.
At eighteen, and with the prospect of a new life away from the narrow confines of the estate near Ste. Suzanne, Edmond Albius was eager to experience the delights of the city. Like any young man, Edmond hoped that life in the capital might offer better prospects than a life of domestic servitude on the farm. Nearby Ste. Suzanne was hardly thrilling, a place described by a contemporary writer as “neither town nor village, just a collection of homes between two ravines.”
Afterwards, the bulletin of the Society for Science and the Arts of La Réunion would record: “Edmond left Belle-vue, and ungrateful black boy that he was, forgot all the good things his master had done for him since he was a child. He ran to the city, chasing after who knows what golden dream … and ended up in bad company.”
For a time Edmond found menial work as a labourer in St. Denis, before eventually being employed as a kitchen boy at the house of an officer in the city’s garrison. One night, there was a robbery at the house and some jewellery was taken. A white woman was injured in the process and although it seems as if there were several men involved in the crime, Edmond was blamed. A trial was held, and Albius would later tell Bellier-Beaumont that the state defender refused to listen to his own version of the events leading up to the theft. Edmond was found guilty, and the court duly applied the harsh discipline that Sarda-Garriga had promised former slaves who failed in their civic duty. On June 15, 1852, the freeman, known as Albius, was sentenced to five years imprisonment with hard labour.
Albius’s sentence was hardly surprising. The authorities were determined that any breaches of law by former slaves would be dealt with severely, and the assault on a white woman made it a serious crime. Records for the St. Denis assizes reveal that freed slaves accounted for the largest number of prisoners at the time, perhaps unsurprisingly as they were the majority of the population. In the prison there were three Europeans with convictions for theft (and one for bigamy), five white creoles and five black creoles. These were all classified as freemen, while twenty six criminals were labelled ‘freed slaves’, their former place in society forever affixed to their name like a badge around their necks. Ranked even lower than the freed slaves were thirty-one Indians, whose main crimes were murder and rape, and finally twenty-six Malagasy whose crime was simply vagabondage.
Edmond Albius did not serve out his entire sentence. Although his former master had not been able to get him a state pension as reward for discovering how to fertilise vanilla, he was at least able to vouch for the boy’s previous good character. Bellier-Beaumont also enlisted the support of Ste. Suzanne’s local justice of the peace; a man named Mézières Lépervanche, who wrote to the governor on Edmond’s behalf within a few months of his detention. “It is possible,” wrote Lépervanche, “that if some kind of state pension had been provided, this man would not have turned to crime to satisfy his desires, a taste for fine living acquired when in the service of his original owner.”
Bellier-Beaumont did not give up on his favourite boy. Early in 1855, when Edmond was half way through his sentence, he wrote again to the Governor appealing for an early release. The faded black ink is drawn with a narrow nib, barely legible against the ancient paper, its surface darkened as yellow as vanilla custard. The tone of the letter is formal, but reveals the planter’s sensitivity:
Sir,
I appeal to your compassion, and your sense of justice, in the case of a young black boy condemned to hard labour. For more than two years he has suffered in silence, his conduct irreproachable …
… Edmond Albius, is just one of many slaves in our country, who was thrust into the wide world without proper preparation. Left to his own resources after emancipation, he could not resist the temptations of crime, temptations which many of our population find themselves in the midst of—and especially the temptation to steal …
Since his condemnation, he has told me the exact circumstances of his crime, and about those who took advantage of his youth and inexperience. I have also learnt that the boy’s defence counsel did not take these circumstances into account. …
… Surely, Sir, any just society must take some account of services rendered to that society when considering a person’s punishment. If anyone has a right to clemency and to recognition for his achievements, then it is Edmond. It is entirely due to him that this country owes a new branch of industry—for it is he who first discovered how to manually fertilise the vanilla plant.
Bellier-Beaumont recounts the details of Edmond’s discovery, and names the other Grands Blancs planters who can verify his story:
… these men will recall how they welcomed Edmond to their plantations, so that he could teach their own workers his technique. I, myself, even wrote to a local journal describing what the boy had done, and this will stand as further evidence of his acts. Later, I wrote to the Governor, asking if the boy could be considered for some kind of allowance in recognition of his contribution, a recognition that at least one section of our society feels is due to him.
For these reasons, Sir, I believe this unfortunate condemned man should be considered for clemency, and because of these facts I appeal to your compassion, and dare to hope for your goodwill.
Your humble and obedient servant,
F. Bellier-Beaumont.
The appeal was successful, and by order of Governor Louis-Henri Hubert Delisle, Edmond was released in 1855. He returned to the safety of the estate at Belle-vue, where Bellier-Beaumont allocated him a small parcel of land to cultivate. It is possible that little more would ever have been heard of Edmond, if it had not been for Bellier-Beaumont’s determination to exonerate Edmond’s character in a copious flow of correspondence with a couple of interested parties. Thanks to these letters a few more snapshots of the events surrounding Edmond’s discovery, and his eventual fate gradually emerge. The planter wrote to Ste. Suzanne’s justice of the peace, Monsieur Ganne, who in 1861 had asked for some precise details concerning the circumstances surrounding Edmond’s discovery. Bellier-Beaumont reveals that Edmond’s vanilla technique was an adaptation of the manual fertilisation he had seen him apply to a type of watermelon. “In this plant,” wrote Bellier-Beaumont, “the male and female flowers occur on different plants, and I taught the little black boy, Edmond, how to marry the male and female parts together.”
Bellier-Beaumont has no qualms about crediting Edmond with the discovery. “This clever boy, had realised that the vanilla flower also had male and female elements, and worked out for himself how to join them together.”
In April 1862, Bellier-Beaumont was to commit the details of Edmond’s discovery to paper once more, this time in letters written to a local historian, Eugene Volsy Focard. Focard would recount Edmond’s story in the third volume of Roussin’s Album de la Réunion published in 1863. Bellier-Beaumont and Volsy Focard were at great pains to clarify Edmond’s role in the history of vanilla on the island. When shown an early draft of the article which would eventually appear, Bellier Beaumont writes:
“The paragraphs concerning Edmond’s discovery are quite correct. And you add, with some justification, that this young negro deserves recognition from this country. It owes him a debt, for starting up a new industry with a fabulous product.”
In later correspondence it becomes clear that Volsy Focard had been told that a prominent botanist, identified as ‘Mr. Jean-Michel Richard’, had denied that Edmond had been the first to discover the secret of manual fertilisation. Mr. Richard had apparently claimed that he had been experimenting with vanilla pollination in Paris, and had paid a visit to Réunion in 1838, where he had demonstrated his technique to various horticulturists. Edmond the slave-boy, claimed Richard, must have learned the technique then. Bellier-Beaumont is quick to reply:
“My dear Compatriot,
“No-one could possibly believe that I would be stupid enough or audacious enough to try to pass off [Edmond’s] discovery as something new if it were not so. Why would such notable gentlemen as Messr. Floris, Patu de Rosemont, Joseph Debassyns and others come here in search of a young negro to teach their staff how to do it if the process was already well known?
How could Mr. Richard have taught the young boy this technique in 1838—when he was only eight years old? And if he did so, why would a botanist of such note keep such a lesson to himself, sharing it only with this young boy and not with myself or other planters? I suggest, that the esteemed Mr. Richard’s memory is playing tricks with him.
Mr. Richard also claims that it is impossible that an uneducated boy of eleven or twelve could not be expected to have the scientific knowledge to make such an important discovery. Indeed, but what Edmond lacked in schooling, he made up for by experience. He had been helping me in the garden for many years, and had seen me fertilising other plants as we have discussed.”
The botanist Richard, also claimed to have been manually pollinating vanilla orchids before 1837, in other words, before Charles Morren discovered the technique practised at Liège. Bellier-Beaumont is at a loss to explain this discrepancy, suggesting tactfully that the French botanist has become confused over the dates. Bellier-Beaumont apologises for having to send all this information to Volsy Focard by letter, saying he is indisposed. He indicates that Edmond will be the bearer of his letter, “as he is my factotum while I am kept indoors.”
Bellier-Beaumont’s correspondence with Volsy Focard also reveals that he has been discussing the whole issue of the vanilla story with Edmond:
“Edmond is more than happy to assist you in getting the facts straight. And he does not mind having his picture appear in Mr. Roussin’s album …
… The best answer to those who contest the truth of Edmond’s involvement in this story is that the method of pollination used today is the very same technique that he first demonstrated all those years ago. I will stop here, Sir, at the end of this long plea in favour of the man who discovered the process of vanilla fertilisation in our colony.”
This was not the end of the matter. In December 1862, Bellier Beaumont is forced to respond in even greater detail about Mr. Richard’s claims. He expresses his sincere apologies for questioning the word of a respected expert, but adds: “I have been his friend for many years, and regret anything which causes him pain, but I also have my obligations to Edmond. Through old age, faulty memory or some other cause, Mr. Richard now imagines that he himself discovered the secret of how to pollinate vanilla, and imagines that he taught the technique to the person who discovered it! Let us leave him to his fantasies.”
The result of the lengthy exchange of letters between Bellier-Beaumont and Volsy Focard was that Edmond’s role in the history of vanilla was accepted and printed in the third volume of Roussin’s ‘Album’. Volsy Focard also repeated the detail of the story in a paper for the Academy of Science and Art the same year. He also tried to address the tangled history of whom should be credited with transporting the vanilla plants to the island in the first place. Some favoured Captain Philibert, while others preferred Marchant, the man who collected specimens from the botanical gardens in Paris. In the introduction to his third volume Roussin describe Edmond Albius as one of several children who have rendered service to Réunion. “For this reason,” he writes, “his portrait appears in this volume. Quite naturally, it goes alongside the portrait of the man who first brought vanilla plants to our island. We trust that it will not be judged inappropriate that his grey linen jacket sits close to the gold embroidery on the uniform of a ship’s captain.”
Roussin may have mocked the proprieties of Réunion’s class system, but he also asked the plantocracy to examine their consciences. Would it not be possible to reward Edmond Albius for his discovery? “Could not our vanilla planters save a few bundles of their harvest for this man?” he wrote. “Surely it would not take much to build him a house with a straw roof, and a small patch of land to farm.”
Nothing came of Roussin’s appeal, and Edmond remained dependent on Bellier-Beaumont’s charity. In his final letter to Volsy Focard, Edmond’s former master added a post-script. “Edmond thanks you for the copies of the drawings of him that you sent. The ingenious inventor of vanilla fertilisation has been able to show them to all his friends and family, who like all negroes, are great connoisseurs of drawing and engraving.”
The engraving that appeared in Roussin’s album shows Edmond standing beside a vanilla vine. The portrait is an oddly posed thing, with Edmond now in his thirties wearing a pale jacket and black bow-tie, looking for all the world like a waiter. An earlier image also survives, a daguerreotype said to be of Edmond aged about eighteen. Smartly dressed in a frock-coat and white breeches, the boy has a handsome open face.
Edmond remained at Belle-vue until he married. Of his wife, no information survives, other than that she was called Marie Pauline Rassama, and that she was a seamstress. They had no children, and she died before Edmond. Vanilla brought Edmond little reward, except his early release from gaol, and the offer of a return to life as Bellier-Beaumont’s factotum. The last contemporary detail of Edmond’s life lay concealed in the vaults at the archives. According to the catalogue, the Moniteur newspaper of August the twenty-sixth 1880, had recorded his death. The paper was in extremely poor condition, and had been removed from public view. For some weeks I was told it was impossible to look at it, the document was simply too fragile to be handled. On my last day in the archives I tried one more time. Madame Vidal, the head librarian shook her head sadly. “Oh la-la … tsk-tsk … it’s too fragile Monsieur. We cannot touch it!”
As I tidied my belongings and packed away my notes, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Madame Vidal. She beckoned me into a corridor behind the reading room, and wordlessly escorted me to her private office. There on the desk was the bound volume containing the newspaper. It had split horizontally and the paper was as dry as tinder. Gingerly we opened the book as slowly and gently as we dared and found the edition for the last week of August, 1880. There, towards the back, was a section entitled ‘faits divers’—the equivalent of a modern day ‘snippets’ column. I read that the paquet boat ‘Rio’ had arrived from Mananzary in Madagascar that week, bringing news that another boat ‘Louis Rumler’ had been lost the previous month on the coast at Mahanooroo. From Mauritius came news that the Turf Club was to launch a new race, the Maiden Stakes. Locally, Monsieur Louis August Hoareau, a farmer from Palmiste Rouge had suffered a robbery in which he had lost the sum of eighty francs. And then:
Thursday 26 August.
The very man who at great profit to this colony, discovered how to pollinate vanilla flowers, has died in the public hospital at Sainte-Suzanne. It was a destitute and miserable end.
The column repeats some of the detail of Edmond’s story, information reproduced from an article by Volsy Focard, before adding:
We need scarcely add that Volsy Focard’s plea for an allowance has never brought a response.
Edmond was fifty-one years old when he died. His name lives on in a small way in Réunion with a couple of towns naming streets in his honour. Like Pierre Poivre, Sarda Garriga and the World War I flying ace Roland Garros, he also has his name attached to a school. The Collège Edmond Albius at Le Port, close to St. Denis, is a rather featureless modern set of buildings with almost a thousand pupils.
Just over twenty years ago, a local newspaper—Ce Matin,—published a short article entitled “A Great Creol”, focussing on the lack of a monument to Edmond. The article urged the authorities to rectify the situation, “in order that Réunion can prove itself less ungrateful than Bourbon.”
Like the original appeals for a pension to be funded from the vanilla crop, the call went unanswered. However, I learned that some kind of monument had been built near Sainte Suzanne. It was Madame Vidal, at the archives who first mentioned it, and she used the old-fashioned word ‘stêle’. It wasn’t marked on any of the maps I could find, and she had not actually seen the monument herself. No-one I asked seemed to have visited the spot, but they said it was close to where the plantation at Belle-vue had been. I wanted to see it for myself.