THE BLACK UNDER BRITISH RULE—THE GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA AND SUITE
Without unduly congratulating ourselves as first-class colonists, I
think we can fairly say that the black is at his best under British
rule. He has learnt industrial arts. The best of his race are mechanics,
policemen, soldiers, sailors, shopkeepers, and domestic servants.
They may not be brilliant, but in this hot climate, where it is an
impossibility for the European to do field labour, they serve their
purpose. In Jamaica the trains and the electric trams in and round
Kingston are driven by natives, your clothes are washed by negresses,
and very well done too; occasionally you suffer from their excessive
professional zeal, when they send home your stockings stiff with starch.
The waiters, chambermaids, domestic servants, farm labourers, are all
black. In the hotels it is noticeable how well they speak English.
The harmless, courteous country folk one meets in one’s drives over the
island are, from all accounts, very different to their dusky brethren in
the United States of America, where life is none too safe, and lynch law
apparently a necessary evil.
[Illustration: GROUP OF NATIVES.
_To face p. 26._]
So far as I can see, their worst fault is laziness. It is a most
irritating fault to the man who wants labour; but if the pay of three
days’ work suffices to keep a negro in what he considers comfort, it is
hard to see that he should be compelled to work six days out of seven to
suit his employer’s crops. And if his or her highest ambition is to cut a
fine figure on Sunday, I should be inclined, whilst inculcating thrift,
to encourage that amiable weakness to the uttermost. One reads sometimes
of the _poor_ negro, but in a country like Jamaica, where anything once
planted in the soil grows in the most prolific manner, and where such
nourishing food as yams and sweet potatoes form the chief nutriment of
the black, to say nothing of the beautiful climate necessitating only the
very lightest of clothing, real poverty, such as we are unfortunately
acquainted with in England, does not exist.
Probably in a few years’ time, the problem of an enormous black
population will confront the government of these islands. We know that
in the United States such is the case. Barbadoes, too, has an immense
population. If one thinks seriously of it, what else can be expected of
a people severed from their natural state, and placed in the happiest
of circumstances, where the increase of population has no such checks
operating upon it, as it must have had in the wild and pristine condition
of savage life amongst African forests, where a thousand petty warfares
thinned the ranks of the warriors, and where cannibalism and disease
would probably account for quite half the yearly tribal babies. Now,
Jamaica’s best crop is picaninnies. Nor are there epidemics severe
enough, or earthquakes bad enough, to carry off the superfluous nigger
babies.
A story which had its comical side was told me by a captain of the
R.M.S. He knew a negro in Kingston who had long courted the lady of his
affections. She had responded, but not to the degree demanded of her by
her impassioned lover. In the captain’s presence he begged her on his
knees to marry him, and “make an honest man” of him.
Strangers to the West Indies are often surprised at the use of slang and
funny expressions by the natives. On landing at Trinidad, we wished to be
driven up to the Queen’s Park Hotel for lunch. There were three of us, a
lady and gentleman and myself. To our enquiry as to how much our driver
would charge for taking us there, the ready answer came, “a bob each.” We
preserved serious faces, the driver evidently being unconscious of having
said anything out of the ordinary, and paid our shillings.
I was driving one day in Kingston, when my coachman turned a sharp corner
at a furious rate. In so doing, a woman was nearly run over. “Out of de
way, my lub, for God’s sake!” exclaimed he, not attempting to slacken his
horse’s pace.
There were other passengers whose eccentricities afforded the passengers
of the _Port Antonio_ some amusement and much subject-matter for
conversation. We had the Governor of Jamaica and, according to the London
newspapers, “suite” on board. In what the “suite” consisted, I am still
at a loss to divine. They were the last to come on board at Avonmouth
Dock, and as the rest of us who had come by an earlier train watched the
small steamer, which brought them alongside the _Port Antonio_, plunging
and rolling in the heavy seas which even then were racing up the Bristol
Channel, we congratulated ourselves that we had walked straight on to the
vessel from the quay an hour before. When their Excellencies “and suite”
came on board, the ship was standing out some distance from the shore. I
counted five adults, three babies, and three women-servants. The party
consisted of Sir Augustus and Lady Hemming, their secretary, a married
daughter with her husband, a coffee planter in Jamaica, three small
children belonging to the latter, two nurses and a maid.
The present Governor of Jamaica was formerly a clerk in the office of the
Secretary of State for the Colonies. In 1884 he was sent as a delegate
to the West African Conference at Berlin, and later, on special service
to Paris in 1890, in connection with the delimitation of French and
English possessions on the west coast of Africa. He became the Governor
of British Guiana, 1896, and succeeded Sir Henry Norman as Governor
of Jamaica in 1898. The term of office is for five years, and this is
consequently his last year in Jamaica, unless a special application is
made for an extension; but one can scarcely imagine that that will be the
case with Sir Augustus and Lady Hemming. Not but what it is conceded on
all hands that His Excellency is a most amiable man; if not brilliant,
at least he has shown conspicuous talent in the fiscal department. Owing
to his clever financial administration, the island budget for the first
time this year shows a surplus, although the best that can be said
of the condition of Jamaica is that which Mr Chamberlain declared in
the House of Commons, to the effect that up to the present the local
government had been able to do little more than bring about an equipoise
between revenue and expenditure.
The social relations between the chief people in the island and
the reigning lady at the gubernatorial residence did not strike me
as being particularly happy or satisfactory. One felt sorry that
striving colonists such as the Jamaicans should lack that sympathy and
consideration which, whether they be white or coloured, they certainly
have a right to expect from the wives of those officials who govern them
in the King’s name, and who are paid very handsomely out of the island
revenues for doing so.
An elderly lady who was present at a ball given last month at King’s
House, which is situated in lovely grounds about three miles out of
Kingston, remarked to me that it was unlike entertainments of the kind
given in times past, in that it lacked “grace, dignity, and refinement.”
I was sorry to miss this ball, but, being absent amongst the Windward
Islands at the time it took place, I returned to find my invitation
awaiting me at my hotel.