The glamour of the West Indies--Captain Marryat and Michael
Scott--Deadly climate of the islands in the eighteenth century--The
West Indian planters--Difference between East and West Indies--"Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"--Training-school for British
Navy--A fruitless voyage--Quarantine--Distant view of Barbados--Father
Labat--The last of the Emperors of Byzantium--Delightful little Lady
Nugent and her diary of 1802--Her impressions of Jamaica--Wealthy
planters--Their hideous gormandising--A simple morning meal--An
aldermanic dinner--How the little Nugents were gorged--Haiti--Attempts
of General Le Clerc to secure British intervention in Haiti--Presents
to Lady Nugent--Her Paris dresses described--Our arrival in
Jamaica--Its marvellous beauty--The bewildered Guardsman--Little trace
of Spain left in Jamaica--The Spaniards as builders--British and
Spanish Colonial methods contrasted.
Since the earliest days of my boyhood, the West Indies have exercised
a quite irresistible fascination over me. This was probably due to my
having read and re-read _Peter Simple_ and _Tom Cringle's Log_ over and
over again, until I knew them almost by heart; indeed I will confess
that even at the present day the glamour of these books is almost as
strong as it used to be, and that hardly a year passes without my
thumbing once again their familiar pages. Both Captain Marryat and
Michael Scott knew their West Indies well, for Marryat had served on
the station in either 1813 or 1814, and Michael Scott lived for sixteen
years in Jamaica, from 1806 to 1822, at first as manager of a sugar
estate, and then as a merchant in Kingston. Marryat and Scott were
practically contemporaries, though the former was the younger by three
years, being born in 1792. I am told that now-a-days boys care for
neither of these books; if so, the loss is theirs. What attracted me in
these authors' West Indian pictures was the fact that here was a
community of British-born people living a reckless, rollicking, Charles
Lever-like sort of life in a most deadly climate, thousands of miles
from home, apparently equally indifferent to earthquakes, hurricanes,
or yellow fever, for at the beginning of the twentieth century no one
who has not read the Colonial records, or visited West Indian churches,
can form the faintest idea of the awful ravages of yellow fever, nor of
the vast amount of victims this appalling scourge claimed. Now,
improved sanitation and the knowledge that the yellow death is carried
by the Stegomyia mosquito, with the precautionary methods suggested by
that knowledge, have almost entirely eliminated yellow fever from the
West India islands; but in Marryat and Scott's time to be ordered to
the West Indies was looked upon as equivalent to a death sentence. Yet
every writer enlarges upon the exquisite beauty of these green, sun-
kissed islands, and regrets bitterly that so enchanting an earthly
paradise should be the very ante-room of death.
In spite of the unhealthy climate, in the days when King Sugar reigned
undisputed, the owners of sugar estates, attracted by the enormous
fortunes then to be made, and fully alive to the fact that in the case
of absentee proprietors profits tended to go everywhere except into
the owners' pockets, deliberately braved the climate, settled down for
life (usually a brief one) in either Jamaica or Barbados, built
themselves sumptuous houses, stocked with silver plate and rare wines,
and held high and continual revel until such time as Yellow Jack
should claim them. In the East Indies the soldiers and Civil Servants
of "John Company," and the merchant community, "shook the pagoda tree"
until they had accumulated sufficient fortunes on which to retire,
when they returned to England with yellow faces and torpid livers,
grumbling like Jos Sedley to the ends of their lives about the cold,
and the carelessness of English cooks in preparing curries, and
harbouring unending regrets for the flesh-pots and comforts of life in
Boggley Wollah, which in retrospect no doubt appeared more attractive
than they had done in reality. The West Indian, on the other hand,
settled down permanently with his wife and family in the island of his
choice. Barbados and Jamaica are the only two tropical countries under
the British flag where there was a resident white gentry born and bred
in the country, with country places handed down from father to son. In
these two islands not one word of any language but English was ever to
be heard from either black or white. The English parochial system had
been transplanted bodily, and successfully, with guardians and
overseers complete; in a word, they were colonies in the strictest
sense of the word; transplanted portions of the motherland, with most
of its institutions, dumped down into the Caribbean Sea, but blighted
until 1834 by the curse of negro slavery. It was this overseas
England, set amidst the most enchanting tropical scenery and
vegetation, that I was so anxious to see. Michael Scott, both in _Tom
Cringle_ and _The Cruise of the Midge_, gave the most alluring pictures
of Creole society (a Creole does _not_ mean a coloured person; any one
born in the West Indies of pure white parents is a Creole); they
certainly seemed to get drunk more than was necessary, yet the
impression left on one's mind was not unlike that produced by the
purely fictitious Ireland of Charles Lever's novels: one continual
round of junketing, feasting, and practical jokes; and what gave the
pictures additional piquancy was the knowledge that death was all the
while peeping round the corner, and that Yellow Jack might at any
moment touch one of these light-hearted revellers with his burning
finger-tips.
Lady Nugent, wife of Sir George Nugent, Governor of Jamaica from 1801
to 1806, kept a voluminous diary during her stay in the island, and
most excellent reading it makes. She was thus rather anterior in date
to Michael Scott, but their descriptions tally very closely. I shall
have a good deal to say about Lady Nugent.
The West Indies make an appeal of a different nature to all Britons.
They were the training-ground and school of all the great British
Admirals from Drake to Nelson. Benbow died of his wounds at Port Royal
in Jamaica, and was buried in Kingston Parish Church in 1702, whilst
Rodney's memory is still so cherished by West Indians, white and
coloured alike, that serious riots broke out when his statue was
removed from Spanish Town to Kingston, and his effigy had eventually
to be placed in the memorial temple which grateful Spanish Town
erected to commemorate his great victory over de Grasse off Dominica
on April 12, 1782, as the result of which the Lesser Antilles remained
British instead of French. For all these reasons I had experienced,
since the age of thirteen, an intense longing to see these lovely
islands with all their historic associations.
In 1884 I travelled from Buenos Ayres to Canada in a tramp steamer
simply and solely because she was advertised to call at Barbados and
Jamaica. Never shall I forget my first night in that tramp. I soon
became conscious of uninvited guests in my bunk, so, striking a light
(strictly against rules in the ships of those days), I discovered
regiments and army corps of noisome, crawling vermin marching in
serried ranks into my bunk under the impression that it was their
parade ground. For the remainder of the voyage I slept on the saloon
table, a hard but cleanly couch. We lay for a week at Rio de Janeiro
loading coffee, and we touched at Bahia and at Pernambuco. At this
latter place as at Rio an epidemic of yellow fever was raging, so we
had not got a clean bill-of-health. As the blunt-nosed tramp pushed
her leisurely way northward through the oily ultra-marine expanse of
tropical seas, I thought longingly of the green island for which we
were heading. We reached Carlisle Bay, Barbados, at daybreak on a
glorious June morning, and waited impatiently in the roadstead (there
is no harbour in Barbados) for the liberating visit of the medical
officer from the shore. He arrived, gave one glance at our
bill-of-health, and sternly refused _pratique_, so the hateful
yellow flag remained fluttering at the fore in the Trade wind,
announcing to all and sundry that we were cut off from all
communication with the shore. Never was there a more aggravating
situation! Barbados, all emerald green after the rainy season, looked
deliciously enticing from the ship. The "flamboyant" trees,
_Ponciana Regia_, were in full bloom, making great patches of
vivid scarlet round the Savannah. The houses and villas peeping out of
luxuriant tangles of tropical vegetation had a delightfully home-like
look to eyes accustomed for two years to South American surroundings.
Seen through a glass from the ship's deck, the Public Buildings in
Trafalgar Square, solid and substantial, had all the unimaginative
neatness of any prosaic provincial townhall at home. We were clearly
no longer in a Latin-American country. It was really a piece of
England translated to the Caribbean Sea, and we few passengers, some
of whom had not seen England for many weary years, were forbidden to
set foot on this outpost of home. It was most exasperating; for never
did any island look more inviting, and surely such dazzling white
houses, such glowing red roofs, such vivid greenery, and so absurdly
blue a sea, had never been seen in conjunction before. Barbados is
almost exactly the size of the Isle of Wight, but in spite of its
restricted area, all the Barbadians, both white and coloured, have the
most exalted opinion of their island, which in those days they
lovingly termed "Bimshire," white Barbadians being then known as
"Bims." Students of Marryat will remember how Mr. Apollo Johnson, at
Miss Betty Austin's coloured "Dignity ball," declared that "All de
world fight against England, but England nebber fear; King George
nebber fear while Barbados 'tand 'tiff," and something of that
sentiment persists still to-day. As a youngster I used to laugh till I
cried at the rebuff administered to Peter Simple by Miss Minerva at
the same "Dignity ball." Peter was carving a turkey, and asked his
swarthy partner whether he might send her a slice of the breast.
Shocked at such coarseness, the dusky but delicate damsel simpered
demurely, "Sar, I take a lily piece turkey bosom, if you please."
Dignity balls are still held in Barbados; they are rather trying to
one of the senses. In the "eighties" it was a point of honour amongst
"Bims" to wear on all and every occasion a high black silk hat. During
our enforced quarantine we saw a number of white Bims sailing little
yachts about the roadstead, every single man of them crowned with a
high silk hat, about the most uncomfortable head-gear imaginable for
sailing in. Another agreeable home-touch was to hear the negro boatmen
all talking to each other in English. Their speech may not have been
melodious, but it fell pleasantly enough on ears accustomed for so
long to hear nothing but Spanish. From my intimate acquaintance with
Marryat, even the jargon of the negro boatmen struck me with a
delightful sense of familiarity, as did the very place-names, Needham
Point and Carlisle Bay. I was fated not to see Barbados again for
twenty-two years.
In the early part of the eighteenth century a French missionary, one
Father Labat, visited Barbados and gave the most glowing account of it
to his countrymen. According to him the island was brimful of wealth,
and the jewellers' and silversmiths' shops in Bridgetown rivalled
those of Paris. I should be inclined to question Father Labat's strict
veracity. This worthy priest declared that the planters lived in
sumptuous houses, superbly furnished, that their dinners lasted four
hours, and their tables were crowded with gold and silver plate. The
statement as to the length of the planters' dinners is probably an
accurate one, for I myself have been the recipient of Barbadian
hospitality, and had never before even imagined such an endless
procession of fish, flesh, and fowl, not to mention turtle,
land-crabs, and pepper-pot. West Indian negresses seem to have a
natural gift for cooking, though their _cuisine_ is a very highly
spiced and full-flavoured one.
Father Labat's motive in drawing so glorified a picture of Barbados
peeps out at the end of his account, for he drily remarks that the
fortifications of the island were most inadequate, and that it could
easily be captured by the French; he was clearly making an appeal to
his countrymen's cupidity.
Upon making the acquaintance of Bridgetown some twenty years after my
first quarantine visit, I can hardly endorse Father Labat's opinion
that the streets are strikingly handsome, for Bridgetown, like most
British West Indian towns, looks as though all the houses were built
of cards or paper. It is, however, a bright, cheery little spot, seems
prosperous enough, and has its own Trafalgar Square, decorated with
its own very fine statue of Nelson. Every house both in Jamaica and
Barbados is fitted with sash-windows in the English style. This
fidelity to the customs of the motherland is very touching but hardly
practical, for in the burning climate of the West Indies every
available breath of fresh air is welcome. With French windows, the
entire window-space can be opened; with sashes, one-half of the window
remains necessarily blocked.
Let strangers beware of "Barbados Green Bitters." It is a most
comforting local cocktail, apparently quite innocuous. It is not;
under its silkiness it is abominably potent. One "green bitter" is
food, two are dangerous.
In St. John's churchyard, some fourteen miles from Bridgetown, is to
be seen one of the most striking examples of the vanity of human
greatness. A stone reproduction of the porch of a Greek temple bears
this inscription,
HERE LYETH YE BODY OF
FERDINANDO PALEOLOGOS
DESCENDED FROM YE IMPERIAL LYNE
OF YE LAST CHRISTIAN
EMPERORS OF GREECE
CHURCHWARDEN OF THIS PARISH
1655-1656
VESTRYMAN TWENTY YEARS
DIED OCTOBER 3, 1678.
Just think of it! The last descendant of Constantine, the last scion
of the proud Emperors of Byzantium, commemorated as vestryman and
churchwarden of a country parish in a little, unknown island in the
Caribbean, only then settled for seventy-three years! Could any
preacher quote a more striking instance of "_sic transit gloria
mundi_"?
Codrington College, not far from St. John's church, is rather a
surprise. Few people would expect to come across a little piece of
Oxford in a tropical island, or to find a college building over two
hundred years old in Barbados, complete with hall and chapel. The
facade of Codrington is modelled on either Queen's or the New
Buildings at Magdalen, Oxford, and the college is affiliated to Durham
University. Originally intended as a place of education for the sons
of white planters it is now wholly given over to coloured students.
It can certainly claim the note of the unexpected, and the quiet
eighteenth-century dignity of its architecture is enhanced by the
broad lake which fronts it, and by the exceedingly pretty tropical
park in which it stands. Codrington boasts some splendid specimens of
the "Royal" palm, the _Palmiste_ of the French, which is one of
the glories of West Indian scenery.
Though Father Labat may have drawn the longbow intentionally, some of
the country houses erected by the sugar planters in the heyday of the
colony's riotous prosperity are really very fine indeed, although at
present they have mostly changed hands, or been left derelict. Long
Bay Castle, now unoccupied, is a most ambitious building, with marble
stairs, beautiful plaster ceilings, and some of its original
Chippendale furniture still remaining. A curious feature of all these
Barbadian houses is the hurricane-wing, built of extra strength and
fitted with iron shutters, into which all the family locked themselves
when the fall of the barometer announced the approach of a hurricane.
I was shown one hurricane-wing which had successfully withstood two
centuries of these visitations.
Barbados is the only ugly island of the West Indian group, for every
available foot is planted with sugar-cane, and the unbroken,
undulating sea of green is monotonous. In the hilly portions, however,
there are some very attractive bits of scenery.
On my first visit, as I have already said, I saw nothing of all this,
except through glasses from the deck of a tramp. I was also to be
denied a sight of Jamaica, for the Captain knew that he would be
refused _pratique_ there, and settled to steam direct to the Danish
island of St. Thomas, where quarantine regulations were less strict, so
all my voyage was for nothing.
Not for over twenty years after was I to make the acquaintance of
Kingston and Port Royal and the Palisadoes, all very familiar names to
me from my constant reading of Marryat and Michael Scott.
I suppose that every one draws mental pictures of places that they
have constantly heard about, and that most people have noticed how
invariably the real place is not only totally different from the fancy
picture, but almost aggressively so.
I have already mentioned Lady Nugent's journal or "Jamaica in 1801." I
am persuaded that she must have been a most delightful little
creature. She was very tiny, as she tells us herself, and had brown
curly hair. She was a little coy about her age, which she confided to
no one; by her own directions, it was omitted even from her tombstone,
but from internal evidence we know that when her husband, Sir George
Nugent, was appointed Governor of Jamaica on April 1, 1801 (how
sceptical he must have been at first as to the genuineness of this
appointment! One can almost hear him ejaculating "Quite so. You don't
make an April fool of me!"), she was either thirty or thirty-one years
old. Lady Nugent was as great an adept as Mrs. Fairchild, of revered
memory, at composing long prayers, every one of which she enters _in
extenso_ in her diary, but not only was there a delightful note of
feminine coquetry about her, but she also possessed a keen sense of
humour, two engaging attributes in which, I fear, that poor
Mrs. Fairchild was lamentably lacking.
Lady Nugent and her husband sailed out to Jamaica in a man-of-war,
H.M.S. _Ambuscade_, in June, 1801. As Sir George Nugent had been
from 1799 to 1801 Adjutant-General in Ireland, this name must have had
quite a home-like sound to him. We read in Lady Nugent's diary of June
25, 1801, after a lengthy supplication for protection against the
perils of the deep, the following charmingly feminine note: "My
nightcaps are so smart that I wear them all day, for to tell the truth
I really think I look better in my nightcap than in my bonnet, and as
I am surrounded by men who do not know a nightcap from a daycap, it is
no matter what I do." Dear little thing! I am sure she looked too
sweet in them. They sailed from Cork on June 5, and reached Barbados
on July 17, which seems a quick voyage. They stayed one night at an
inn in Bridgetown, and gave a dinner-party for which the bill was over
sixty pounds. This strikes quite a modern note, and might really have
been in post-war days instead of in 1801.
Lady Nugent found the society in Jamaica, both that of officials and
of planters and their wives, intensely uncongenial to her. "Nothing is
ever talked of in this horrid island but the price of sugar. The only
other topics of conversation are debt, disease and death." She was
much shocked at the low standard of morality prevailing amongst the
white men in the colony, and disgusted at the perpetual gormandising
and drunkenness. The frequent deaths from yellow fever amongst her
acquaintance, and the terrible rapidity with which Yellow Jack slew,
depressed her dreadfully, and she was startled at the callous fashion
in which people, hardened by many years' experience of the scourge,
received the news of the death of their most intimate friends. She was
perpetually complaining of the unbearable heat, to which she never got
acclimatised; she suffered "sadly" from the mosquitoes, and never
could get used to earthquakes, hurricanes, or scorpions.
With these exceptions, she seems to have liked Jamaica very well. It
must have been an extraordinary community, and to understand it we
must remember the conditions prevailing. Bryan Edwards, in his
_History of the British West Indies_, published in 1793, called
them "the principal source of the national opulence and maritime power
of England"; and without the stream of wealth pouring into Great
Britain from Barbados and Jamaica, the long struggle with France would
have been impossible.
The term "as rich as a West Indian" was proverbial, and in 1803 the
West Indies were accountable for one-third of the imports and exports
of Great Britain.
The price of sugar in 1803 was fifty-two shillings a hundredweight.
Wealth was pouring into the island and into the pockets of the
planters. Lady Nugent constantly alludes to sugar estates worth
20,000 or 30,000 pounds a year. These planters were six weeks distant
from England, and, except during the two years' respite which followed
the Treaty of Amiens, Great Britain had been intermittently at war with
either France or Spain during the whole of the eighteenth century. The
preliminary articles of peace between France and Britain were signed
on October 1, 1801, the Peace of Amiens itself on March 27, 1802, but
in July, 1803, hostilities between the two countries were again
renewed. All this meant that communications between the colony and the
motherland were very precarious. Nominally a mail-packet sailed from
Jamaica once a month, but the seas were swarming with swift-sailing
French and Spanish privateers, hanging about the trade-routes on the
chance of capturing West Indiamen with their rich cargoes, so the
mail-packets had to wait till a convoy assembled, and were then
escorted home by men-of-war. This entailed the increasing isolation of
the white community in Jamaica, who, in their outlook on life,
retained the eighteenth-century standpoint. Now the eighteenth century
was a thoroughly gross and material epoch. People had a pretty taste
in clothes, and a nice feeling for good architecture, graceful
furniture, and artistic house decoration, but this was a veneer only,
and under the veneer lay an ingrained grossness of mind, just as the
gorgeous satins and dainty brocades covered dirty, unwashed
bodies. Even the complexions of the women were artificial to mask the
defects of a sparing use of soap and water, and they drenched
themselves with perfumes to hide the unpleasant effects of this lack
of bodily cleanliness. On the surface hyper-refinement, glitter and
show; beneath it a crude materialism and an ingrained grossness of
temperament. What else could be expected when all the men got drunk as
a matter of course almost every night of their lives? Over the
coarsest description of wood lay a very highly polished veneer of
satin-wood, which might possibly deceive the eye, but once scratch the
paper-thin veneer and the ugly under-surface was at once
apparent. Money rolled into the pockets of these Jamaican planters;
there is but little sport possible in the island, and they had no
intellectual pursuits, so they just built fine houses, filled them
with rare china, Chippendale furniture, and silver plate, and found
their amusements in eating, drinking and gambling.
Even to-day the climate of Jamaica is very enervating. Wise people
know now that to keep in health in hot countries alcohol, and wine
especially, must be avoided. Meat must be eaten very sparingly, and an
abstemious regime will bring its own reward. In the eighteenth
century, however, people apparently thought that vast quantities of
food and drink would combat the debilitating effects of the climate,
and that, too, at a time when yellow fever was endemic. There are
still old-fashioned people who are obsessed with the idea that the
more you eat the stronger you grow. The Creoles in Jamaica certainly
put this theory into effect. Michael Scott, in _Tom Cringle_, describes
many Gargantuan repasts amongst the Kingston merchants, and as he
himself was one of them, we can presume he knew what he was writing
about. The men, too, habitually drank, of all beverages in the
world to select in the scorching heat of Jamaica, hot brandy and
water, and then they wondered that they died of yellow fever! Every
white man and woman in the island seems to have been gorged with
food. It was really a case of "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die"; but if they hadn't eaten and drunk so enormously, presumably
they would not have died so rapidly.
Lady Nugent was much disgusted with this gormandising. On page 78 of
her journal she says, "I don't wonder now at the fever the people
suffer from here--such eating and drinking I never saw! Such loads of
rich and highly-seasoned things, and really the gallons of wine and
mixed liquors that they drink! I observed some of our party to-day eat
at breakfast as if they had never eaten before. A dish of tea, another
of coffee, a bumper of claret, another large one of hock-negus; then
Madeira, sangaree, hot and cold meats, stews and pies, hot and cold
fish pickled and plain, peppers, ginger-sweetmeats, acid fruit, sweet
jellies--in short, it was all as astonishing as it was disgusting."
It really does seem a fair allowance for a simple morning meal.
The life of a Governor of Jamaica is now principally taken up with
quiet administrative work, but in 1802 he was supposed to hold a
succession of reviews, to give personal audiences, endless balls and
dinners, to make tours of inspection round the island; and, in
addition, as _ex officio_ Chancellor of Jamaica, it was his duty
to preside at all the sittings of the Court of Chancery. During their
many tours of inspection poor little Lady Nugent complains that, with
the best wishes in the world, she really could not eat five large
meals a day. She continues (page 95), "At the Moro to-day, our dinner
at 6 was really so profuse that it is worth describing. The first
course was of fish, with an entire jerked hog in the centre, and a
black crab pepper-pot. The second course was of turtle, mutton, beef,
turkey, goose, ducks, chicken, capons, ham, tongue, and crab patties.
The third course was of sweets and fruits of all kinds. I felt quite
sick, what with the heat and such a profusion of eatables."
One wonders what those planters' weekly bills would have amounted to
at the present-day scale of prices, and can no longer feel surprised
at their all running into debt, in spite of their huge incomes. The
drinking, too, was on the same scale. Lady Nugent remarks (page 108),
"I am not astonished at the general ill-health of the men in this
country, for they really eat like cormorants and drink like porpoises.
All the men of our party got drunk to-night, even to a boy of fifteen,
who was obliged to be carried home." Tom Cringle, in his account of a
dinner-party in Cuba, remarks airily, "We, the males of the party, had
drunk little or nothing, a bottle of claret or so apiece, a dram of
brandy, and a good deal of vin-de-grave (_sic_)," and he really
thinks that nothing: moderation itself in that sweltering climate!
In spite of her disgust at the immense amount of food devoured round
her, Lady Nugent seems to have adopted a Jamaican scale of diet for
her children, for when she returned to England with them in the
_Augustus Caesar_ in 1805, she gives the following account of the
day's routine on board the ship. It must be observed that George, the
elder child, was not yet three, and that Louisa was under two. "When I
awake, the old steward brings me a dish of ginger tea. I then dress,
and breakfast with the children. At eleven the children have biscuits,
and some port wine and water. George eats some chicken or mutton at
twelve, and at two they each have a bowl of strong soup. At four we
all dine; I go to my cabin at half-past seven, and soon after eight I
am always in bed and the babies fast asleep. The old steward then
comes to my bedside with a large tumbler of porter with a toast in it.
I eat the toast, drink the porter, and usually rest well."
Those two unfortunate children must have landed in England two
miniature Daniel Lamberts. It is pleasant to learn that little George
lived to the age of ninety. Had he not been so stuffed with food in
his youth, he would probably have been a centenarian.
During Nugent's term of office events in Haiti, or San Domingo, as it
was still called then, occasioned him great anxiety. Before the
outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Haiti had been the most
prosperous and the most highly civilised of the West Indian islands.
But after the French National Assembly had, in 1791, decreed equal
rights between whites and mulattoes, troubles began. The blacks
rebelled; the French rescinded the decree of 1791 and, changing their
minds again, re-affirmed it. The blacks began murdering and plundering
the whites, and many planters emigrated to Jamaica and the United
States. That most extraordinary man, Toussaint l'Ouverture, a pure
negro, who had been born a slave, re-established some form of order in
Haiti until Napoleon, when the preliminary articles of the Peace of
Amiens had been signed between Britain and France, hit upon the idea
of employing his soldiers in Haiti, and sent out his brother-in-law,
General Le Clerc, with 25,000 French soldiers to re-conquer the
island. It was a most ill-fated expedition; the soldiers could not
withstand the climate, and died like flies; France losing, from first
to last, no less than 40,000 men from yellow fever. In 1802, Le Clerc,
who seems to have been a great scoundrel, died, and in 1804 Haiti
declared her independence.
After the Peace of Amiens the French Government were exceedingly
anxious to secure the cooperation of British troops from Jamaica,
seasoned to the climate, in restoring order in Haiti, and even offered
to cede them such portions of Haiti as were willing to come under the
British flag. During the ten months of General Le Clerc's
administration of Haiti he was perpetually sending envoys to General
Nugent in Jamaica, and continually offering him presents. It is not
uncharitable to suppose that these presents were proffered with a view
of winning Nugent's support to the idea of a British expedition to
Haiti. Nugent, however, sternly refused all these gifts. Madame Le
Clerc, Napoleon's sister, who is better known as the beautiful
Princess Pauline Borghese, a lady with an infinity of admirers, was
far more subtle in her methods. Her presents to Lady Nugent took the
irresistible form of dresses of the latest Parisian fashion, and were
eagerly accepted by that volatile little lady. Indeed, for ten months
she seems to have been entirely dressed by Madame Le Clerc, who even
provided little George Nugent's christening robe of white muslin,
heavily embroidered in gold. Ladies may be interested in Lady Nugent's
account of her various dresses. "Last night at the ball I wore a new
dress of purple crape, embroidered and heavily spangled in gold, given
me by Madame Le Clerc. The skirt rather short; the waist very high.
On my head I wore a wreath of gilded bay-leaves, and must have looked
like a Roman Empress. I think that purple suits me, for every one
declared that they never saw me looking better." Dear little lady! I
am sure that she never did, and that the piquant little face on the
frontispiece, with its roguish eyes, looked charming under her gold
wreath. Again, "I wore a lovely dress of pink crape spangled in
silver, sent me by Madame Le Clerc." She gives a fuller account of her
dress at the great ball given her to celebrate her recovery after the
birth of her son (Dec. 30, 1802).
"For the benefit of posterity I will describe my dress on this grand
occasion. A crape dress, embroidered in silver spangles, also sent me
by Madame Le Clerc, but much richer than that which I wore at the last
ball. Scarcely any sleeves to my dress, but a broad silver spangled
border to the shoulder-straps. The body made very like a child's
frock, tying behind, and the skirt round, with not much train. On my
head a turban of spangled crape like the dress, looped-up with pearls.
This dress, the admiration of all the world over, will, perhaps, fifty
years hence, be laughed at, and considered as ridiculous as our
grandmothers' hoops and brocades appear to us now."
In fairness it must be stated that General Nugent punctiliously
returned all Madame Le Clerc's presents to his wife with gifts of
English cut-glass, then apparently much appreciated by the French. He
seems to have sent absolute cart-loads of cut-glass to Haiti, but in
days when men habitually drank two bottles of wine apiece after
dinner, there was presumably a fair amount of breakage of decanters
and tumblers.
I notice that although Lady Nugent complains on almost every page of
"the appalling heat," the "unbearable heat," the "terrific heat, which
gives me these sad headaches," she seems always ready to dance for
hours at any time. Some idea of the ceremonious manners of the day is
obtained from the perpetual entry "went to bed with my knees aching
from the hundreds of curtsies I have had to make to the company."
In 1811 Sir George Nugent was appointed Commander-in-Chief in Bengal,
and their voyage from Portsmouth to Calcutta occupied exactly six
months, yet there are people who grumble at the mails now taking
eighteen days to traverse the distance between London and Calcutta.
Lady Nugent was much shocked at the universal habit of smoking amongst
Europeans in the East Indies. She sternly refused to allow their two
aides-de-camp to smoke, "for as they are both only twenty-five, they
are too young to begin so odious a custom," an idea which will amuse
the fifteen-year-olds of today.
Not till 1906 did I find myself sailing into Kingston Harbour and
actually set eyes on Port Royal, the Palisadoes, and Fort Augusta, all
very familiar by name to me since my boyhood.
I had taken the trip to shake off a prolonged bronchial attack; a
young Guardsman, a friend of mine, though my junior by many years, was
convalescent after an illness, and was also recommended a sunbath, so
we travelled together. The hotels being all full, we took up our
quarters in a small boarding-house, standing in dense groves of orange
trees, where each shiver of the night breeze sent the branches of the
orange trees swish-swishing, and wafted great breaths of the delicious
fragrance of orange blossom into our rooms. I was in bed, when the
Guardsman, who had never been in the tropics before, rushed
terror-stricken into my room. "I have drunk nothing whatever," he
faltered, "but I must be either very drunk or else mad, for I keep
fancying that my room is full of moving electric lights." I went into
his room, where I found some half-dozen of the peculiarly brilliant
Jamaican fireflies cruising about. The Guardsman refused at first to
believe that any insect could produce so bright a light, and bemoaned
the loss of his mental faculties, until I caught a firefly and showed
him its two lamps gleaming like miniature motor head-lights.
Some pictures stand out startlingly clear-cut in the memory. Such a
one is the recollection of our first morning in Jamaica. The
Guardsman, full of curiosity to see something of the mysterious
tropical island into which we had been deposited after nightfall,
awoke me at daybreak. After landing from the mail-steamer in the dark,
we had had merely impressions of oven-like heat, and of a long,
dim-lit drive in endless suburbs of flimsily built, wooden houses,
through the spice-scented, hot, black-velvet night, enlivened with
almost indecently intimate glimpses into humble interiors, where
swarthy dark forms jabbered and gesticulated, clustered round smoky
oil-lamps; and as the suburbs gave place to the open country, the vast
leaves of unfamiliar growths stood out, momentarily silhouetted
against the blackness by the gleam of our carriage lamps.
It being so early, the Guardsman and I went out as we were, in pyjamas
and slippers, with, of course, sufficient head protection against the
fierce sun. Just a fortnight before we had left England under snow, in
the grip of a black frost; London had been veiled in incessant thick
fogs for ten days, and we had fallen straight into the most
exquisitely beautiful island on the face of the globe, bathed in
perpetual summer.
When we had traversed the grove of orange trees, we came upon a lovely
little sunk-garden, where beds of cannas, orange, sulphur, and
scarlet, blazed round a marble fountain, with a silvery jet splashing
and leaping into the sunshine. The sunk-garden was surrounded on three
sides by a pergola, heavily draped with yellow alamandas, drifts of
wine-coloured bougainvillaa, and pale-blue solanums, the size of
saucers. In the clear morning light it really looked entrancingly
lovely. On the fourth side the garden ended in a terrace dominating
the entire Liguanea plain, with the city of Kingston, Kingston
Harbour, Port Royal, and the hills on the far side spread out below us
like a map. Those hills are now marked on the Ordnance Survey as the
"Healthshire Hills." This is a modern euphemism, for the name
originally given to those hills and the district round them by the
soldiers stationed in the "Apostles' Battery," was "Hellshire," and
any one who has had personal experience of the heat there, can hardly
say that the title is inappropriate. From our heights, even Kingston
itself looked inviting, an impression not confirmed by subsequent
visits to that unlovely town. The long, sickle-shape sandspit of the
Palisadoes separated Kingston Harbour on one side from the blue waters
of the Caribbean Sea; on the other side the mangrove swamps of the Rio
Cobre made unnaturally vivid patches of emerald green against the
background of hills. On railways a green flag denotes that caution
must be observed; the vivid green of the mangroves is Nature's
caution-flag to the white man, for where the mangrove flourishes,
there fever lurks.
The whole scene was so wonderfully beautiful under the blazing
sunlight, and in the crystal-clear atmosphere, that the Guardsman
refused to accept it as genuine. "It can't be real!" he cried, "this
is January. We have got somehow into a pantomime transformation scene.
In a minute it will go, and I shall wake up in Wellington Barracks to
find it freezing like mad, with my owl of a servant telling me that I
have to be on parade in five minutes." This lengthy warrior showed,
too, a childish incredulity when I pointed out to him cocoa-nuts
hanging on the palms; a field of growing pineapples below us, or great
clusters of fruit on the banana trees. Pineapples, cocoanuts, and
bananas were bought in shops; they did not grow on trees. He would
insist that the great orange flowers, the size of cabbages, on the
Brownea trees were artificial, as were the big blue trumpets of the
Morning Glories. He was in reality quite intoxicated with the novelty
and the glamour of his first peep into the tropics. By came
fluttering a great, gorgeous butterfly, the size of a saucer, and
after it rushed the Guardsman, shedding slippers around him as his
long legs bent to their task. He might just as well have attempted to
catch the Scotch Express; but, as he returned to me dripping, he began
to realise what the heat of Jamaica can do. All the remainder of that
day the Guardsman remained under the spell of the entrancing beauty of
his new surroundings, and I was dragged on foot for miles and miles;
along country lanes, through the Hope Botanical Gardens, down into the
deep ravine of the Hope River, then back again, both of us dripping
wet in the fierce heat, in spite of our white drill suits, larding the
ground as we walked, oozing from every pore, but always urged on and
on by my enthusiastic young friend, who, suffering from a paucity of
epithets, kept up monotonous ejaculations of "How absolutely d----d
lovely it all is!" every two minutes.
I had to remain a full hour in the swimming-bath after my exertions;
and the Guardsman had quite determined by night-time to "send in his
papers," and settle down as a coffee-planter in this enchanting
island.
It is curious that although the Spaniards held Jamaica for one hundred
and sixty-one years, no trace of the Spaniard in language, customs, or
architecture is left in the island, for Spain has generally left her
permanent impress on all countries occupied by her, and has planted
her language and her customs definitely in them. The one exception as
regards Jamaica is found in certain place-names such as Ocho Rios, Rio
Grande, and Rio Cobre, but as these are all pronounced in the English
fashion, the music of the Spanish names is lost. Not one word of any
language but English (of a sort) is now heard in the colony. When
Columbus discovered the island in 1494, he called it Santiago,
St. James being the patron saint of Spain, but the native name of
Xaymaca (which being interpreted means "the land of springs")
persisted somehow, and really there are enough Santiagos already
dotted about in Spanish-speaking countries, without further additions
to them. When Admiral Penn and General Venables were sent out by
Cromwell to break the Spanish power in the West Indies, they succeeded
in capturing Jamaica in 1655, and British the island has remained ever
since. To this day the arms of Jamaica are Cromwell's arms slightly
modified, and George V is not King, but "Supreme Lord of Jamaica," the
original title assumed by Cromwell. The fine statue of Queen Victoria
in Kingston is inscribed "Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress
of India, and Supreme Lady of Jamaica."
Venables found that the Spaniards, craving for yet another Santiago,
had called the capital of the island Santiago de la Vega, "St. James
of the Plain," and to this day the official name of Spanish Town, the
old capital, is St. Jago de Vega, and as such is inscribed on all the
milestones, only as it is pronounced in the English fashion, it is now
one of the ugliest names imaginable. The wonderfully beautiful gorge
of the Rio Cobre, above Spanish Town, was called by the conquistadores
"Spouting Waters," or Bocas de Agua. This has been Anglicised into the
hideous name of Bog Walk, just as the "High Waters," Agua Alta, on the
north side of the island, has become the Wagwater River. The Spanish
forms seem preferable to me.
Some one has truly said that the old Spaniards shared all the coral
insect's mania for building. As soon as they had conquered a place,
they set to work to build a great cathedral, and simultaneously, the
church then being distinctly militant, a large and solid fort. They
then proceeded to erect massive walls and ramparts round their new
settlement, and most of these ramparts are surviving to-day. We, in
true British haphazard style, did not build for posterity, but allowed
ramshackle towns to spring up anyhow without any attempt at design or
plan. There are many things we could learn from the Spanish. Their
solid, dignified cities of massive stone houses with deep, heavy
arcades into which the sun never penetrates; their broad plazas where
cool fountains spout under great shade-trees; their imposing
over-ornate churches, their general look of solid permanence, put to
shame our flimsy, ephemeral, planless British West Indian towns of
match-boarding and white paint. We seldom look ahead: they always did.
Added to which it would be, of course, too much trouble to lay out
towns after definite designs; it is much easier to let them grow up
anyhow. On the other hand, the British colonial towns have all good
water supplies, and efficient systems of sewerage, which atones in
some degree for their architectural shortcomings; whilst the Spaniard
would never dream of bothering his head about sanitation, and would be
content with a very inadequate water supply. Provided that he had
sufficient water for the public fountains, the Spaniard would not
trouble about a domestic supply. The Briton contrives an ugly town in
which you can live in reasonable health and comfort; the Spaniard
fashions a most picturesque city in which you are extremely like to
die. Racial ideals differ.