An election meeting in Jamaica--Two family experiences at contested
elections--Novel South African methods--Unattractive Kingston--A
driving tour through the island--The Guardsman as orchid
hunter--Derelict country houses--An attempt to reconstruct the
past--The Fourth-Form Room at Harrow--Elizabethan Harrovians--I meet
many friends of my youth--The "Sunday" books of the 'sixties--"Black
and White"--Arrival of the French Fleet--Its inner
meaning--International courtesies--A delicate attention--Absent
alligators--The mangrove swamp--A preposterous suggestion--The swamps
do their work--Fever--A very gallant apprentice--What he did.
The Guardsman's enthusiasm about Jamaica remaining unabated, I
determined to hire a buggy and pair and to make a fortnight's
leisurely tour of the North Coast and centre of the island. Though not
peculiarly expeditious, this is a very satisfactory mode of travel; no
engine troubles, no burst tyres, and no worries about petrol supplies.
A new country can be seen and absorbed far more easily from a
horse-drawn vehicle than from a hurrying motor-car, and the little
country inns in Jamaica, though very plainly equipped, are, as a rule,
excellent, with surprisingly good if somewhat novel food.
As the member for St. Andrews in the local Legislative Council had
just died, an election was being held in Kingston. Curious as to what
an election-meeting in Jamaica might be like, we attended one. The
hall was very small, and densely packed with people, and the
suffocating heat drove us away after a quarter of an hour; but never
have I, in so short a space of time, heard such violent personalities
hurled from a public platform, although I have had a certain amount of
experience of contested elections. In 1868, when I was eleven years
old, I was in Londonderry City when my brother Claud, the sitting
member, was opposed by Mr. Serjeant Dowse, afterwards Baron Dowse, the
last of the Irish "Barons of the Exchequer." Party feeling ran very
high indeed; whenever a body of Dowse's supporters met my brother in
the street, they commenced singing in chorus, to a popular tune of the
day:
"Dowse for iver! Claud in the river!
With a skiver through his liver."
Whilst my brother's adherents greeted Dowse in public with a sort of
monotonous chant to these elegant words:
"Dowse! Dowse! you're a dirty louse,
And ye'll niver sit in the Commons' House."
It will be noticed that this is in the same rhythm that Mark Twain
made so popular some twenty years later in his conductor's song.
"Punch, brothers, punch with care,
Punch in the presence of the passen-jare."
In spite of the confident predictions of my brother's followers, Dowse
won the seat by a small majority, nor did my brother succeed in
unseating him afterwards on Petition.
Another occasion on which feeling ran very high was in Middlesex
during the 1874 election. Here my brother George was the Conservative
candidate, and owing to his having played cricket for Harrow at
Lord's, he was supported enthusiastically by the whole school, the
Harrow masters being at that time Liberals almost to a man. My tutor,
a prominent local Liberal, must have been enormously gratified at
finding the exterior of his house literally plastered from top to
bottom with crimson placards (crimson is the Conservative colour in
Middlesex) all urging the electors to "vote for Hamilton the proved
Friend of the People." Possibly fraternal affection may have had
something to do with this crimson outburst. My youngest brother took,
as far as his limited opportunities allowed him, an energetic part in
this election. He got indeed into some little trouble, for being only
fifteen years old and not yet versed in the niceties of political
controversy, he endeavoured to give weight and point to one of his
arguments with the aid of the sharp end of a football goal-post. My
brother George was returned by an enormous majority.
The most original electioneering poster I ever saw was in Capetown in
March, 1914. It was an admirably got-up enlargement of a funeral card,
with a deep black border, adorned with a realistic picture of a
hearse, and was worded "Unionist Opposition dead. Government dying.
Electors of the Liesbeck Division drive your big nails into the coffin
by voting for Tom Maginess on Saturday." Whether it was due to this
novel form of electioneering or not, I cannot say, but Maginess won
the seat by two thousand votes. I still have a copy of that poster.
Neither Londonderry nor Capetown are in Jamaica, but oddly enough,
Middlesex is, for the island is divided into three counties, Cornwall,
Middlesex, and Surrey. The local geography is a little confusing, for
it is a surprise to find (in Jamaica at all events) that Westmoreland
is in Cornwall, and Manchester in Middlesex.
Kingston owes its position as capital to the misfortunes of its two
neighbours, Port Royal and Spanish Town. When Port Royal was totally
destroyed by an earthquake in 1692, the few survivors crossed the bay
and founded a new town on the sandy Liguanea plain. Owing to its
splendid harbour, Kingston soon became a place of great importance,
though the seat of Government remained in sleepy Spanish Town, but the
latter lying inland, and close to the swamps of the Rio Cobre, was so
persistently unhealthy that in 1870 the Government was transferred to
Kingston. Though very prosperous, its most fervent admirer could not
call it beautiful, and, owing to its sandy soil, it is an intensely
hot place, but in compensation it receives the full sea breeze. Every
morning about nine, the sea breeze (locally known as "the Doctor")
sets in. Gentle at first, by noon it is rushing and roaring through
the town in a perfect gale, to drop and die away entirely by 4 p.m. By
a most convenient arrangement, the land breeze, disagreeably known as
"the Undertaker," drops down from the Liguanea Mountains on to the
sweltering town about 11 p.m., and continues all through the night. It
is this double breeze, from sea by day, from land by night, that
renders life in Kingston tolerable. Owing to the sea breeze invariably
blowing from the same direction, Jamaicans have the puzzling habit of
using "Windward" and "Leeward" as synonyms for East and West. To be
told that such-and-such a place is "two miles to Windward of you"
seems lacking in definiteness to a new arrival.
As we rolled slowly along in our buggy, the Guardsman was in a state
of perpetual bewilderment at having growing sugar, coffee, cocoa, and
rice pointed out to him by the driver. "I thought that it was an
island," he murmured; "it turns out to be nothing but a blessed
growing grocer's shop." Half-way between Kingston and Spanish Town is
the Old Ferry Inn, the oldest inn in the New World. It stands in a
mass of luxuriant greenery on the very edge of the Rio Cobre swamps,
and is a place to be avoided at nightfall on that account. This fever
trap of an inn, being just half-way between Kingston and Spanish Town,
was, of all places in the island to select, the chosen meeting-place
of the young bloods of both towns in the eighteenth century. Here they
drove out to dine and carouse, and as they probably all got drunk,
many of them must have slept here, on the very edge of the swamp, to
die of yellow fever shortly afterwards.
Sleepy Spanish Town, the old capital, has a decayed dignity of its
own. The public square, with its stately eighteenth-century buildings,
is the only architectural feature I ever saw in the British West
Indies. Our national lack of imagination is typically exemplified in
the King's House, now deserted, which occupies one side of the square.
When it was finished in 1760, it was considered a sumptuous building.
The architect, Craskell, in that scorching climate, designed exactly
the sort of red-brick and white stone Georgian house that he would
have erected at, say, Richmond. With limitless space at his disposal,
he surrounded his house with streets on all four sides of it, without
one yard of garden, or one scrap of shade. No wonder that poor little
Lady Nugent detested this oven of an official residence. The interior,
though, contains some spacious, stately Georgian rooms; the
temperature being that of a Turkish bath.
Rodney's monument is a graceful, admirably designed little temple, and
the cathedral of a vague Gothic, is spacious and dignified. Spanish
Town cathedral claims to have been built in 1541, in spite of an
inscription over the door recording that "this church was thrown downe
by ye dreadfull hurricane of August ye 28, 1712, and was rebuilt in
1714." It contains a great collection of elaborate and splendid
monuments, all sent out from England, and erected to various island
worthies. The amazing arrogance of an inscription on a tombstone of
1690, in the south transept, struck me as original. It commemorates
some Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, and after the usual eulogistic
category of his unparalleled good qualities, ends "so in the
fifty-fifth year of his age he appeared with great applause before his
God."
There is a peculiarly beautiful tree, the _Petraea_, which seems
to flourish particularly well in Spanish Town. When in flower in
February, neither trunk, leaves, nor branches can be seen for its
dense clusters of bright blue blossoms, which are unfortunately very
short-lived.
Four miles above Spanish Town the hideously named Bog Walk, the famous
gorge of the Rio Cobre, commences. I do not believe that there is a
more exquisitely beautiful glen in the whole world. The clear stream
rushes down the centre, whilst the rocky walls tower up almost
perpendicularly for five or six hundred feet on either side, and these
rocks, precipitous as they are, are clothed with a dense growth of
tropical forest. The bread-fruit tree with its broad, scalloped
leaves, the showy star-apple, glossy green above deep gold below,
mahoganies, oranges, and bananas, all seem to grow wild. The
bread-fruit was introduced into Jamaica from the South Sea Islands,
and the first attempt to transplant it was made by the ill-fated
_Bounty_, and led to the historical mutiny on board, as a result
of which the mutineers established themselves on Pitcairn Island,
where their descendants remain to this day. Whatever adventures marked
its original advent, the bread-fruit has made itself thoroughly at
home in the West Indies, and forms the staple food of the negroes.
When carefully prepared it really might pass for under-done bread,
prepared from very indifferent flour by an inexperienced and unskilled
baker. It is the immense variety of the foliage and the constantly
changing panorama that gives Bog Walk its charm, together with the
red, pink, and fawn-coloured trumpets of the hibiscus, dotting the
precipitous ramparts of rock over the rushing blue river. Bog Walk is
distinctly one of those places which no one with opportunities for
seeing it should miss. It opens out into an equally beautiful basin,
St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, of which Michael Scott gives an admirable
description in _Tom Cringle_. I should hardly select that steamy
cup in the hills as a place of residence, but as a natural
forcing-house and a sample of riotous vegetation, it is worth seeing.
The native orchids of Jamaica are mostly oncidiums, with insignificant
little brown and yellow flowers, and have no commercial value
whatever. The Guardsman, however, was obsessed with the idea that he
would discover some peerless bloom for which he would be paid hundreds
of pounds by a London dealer. Every silk-cotton tree is covered with
what Jamaicans term "wild pines," air-plants, orchids, and other
epiphytes, and every silk-cotton was to him a potential Golconda, so
whenever we came across one he wanted the buggy stopped, and up the
tree he went like a lamp lighter. I am bound to admit that he was an
admirable tree climber, but I objected on the score of delicacy to the
large rents that these aerial rambles occasioned in his white ducks.
On regaining the ground he loaded the buggy with his spoils, despite
the driver's assertion that "dat all trash." Unfortunately with his
epiphytes he brought down whole colonies of ants, and the Jamaican ant
is a most pugnacious insect with abnormal biting powers. After I had
been forced to disrobe behind some convenient greenery in order to rid
myself of these aggressive little creatures, I was compelled to put a
stern veto on further tree exploration.
The ascent from Ewarton, over the Monte Diavolo, is so splendid that I
have made it five times for sheer delight in the view. Below lies
St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, a splendid riot of palms, orange, and forest
trees, and above it towers hill after hill, dominated by the lofty
peaks of the Blue Mountains. It is a gorgeously vivid panorama, all in
greens, gold, and vivid blues. Monte Diavolo is the only part of
Jamaica where there are wild parrots; it is also the home of the
allspice tree, or pimento, as it is called in the island. This curious
tree cannot be raised from seed or cutting, neither can it be layered;
it can only propagate itself in Nature's own fashion, and the seed
must pass through the body of a bird before it will germinate. So it
is fortunate, being the important article of commerce it is, that the
supply of trees is not failing. Bay rum is made from the leaves of the
allspice tree.
Once over the Monte Diavolo, quite a different Jamaica unrolls itself.
Broad pasture-lands replace the tropical house at Kew; rolling,
well-kept fields of guinea-grass, surrounded with neat, dry-stone
walls and with trim gates, give an impression of a long-settled land.
We were amongst the "pen-keepers," or stock-raisers here. This part of
the colony certainly has a home-like look; a little spoilt as regards
resemblance by the luxuriance with which creepers and plants, which at
home we cultivate with immense care in stove-houses, here riot wild in
lavish masses over the stone walls. If the cherished rarities of one
country are unnoticed weeds in another land, plenty of analogies in
other respects spring to the mind. I could wish though, for aesthetic
reasons, that our English lanes grew tropical Begonias, Coraline, and
a peculiarly attractive Polypody fern, similar to ours, except for the
young growths being rose-pink. Between Dry Harbour and Brown's Town
there is one succession of fine country-places, derelict for the most
part now, but remnants of the great days before King Sugar was
dethroned. Here the opulent sugar planters built themselves lordly
pleasure houses on the high limestone formation. Sugar grows best on
swampy ground, but swamps breed fever, so these magnates wisely made
their homes on the limestone, and so increased their days.
The high-road runs past one stately entrance-gate after another;
entrances with high Georgian, carved stone gateposts surmounted with
vases, probably sent out ready-made from England; Adam entrances, with
sphinxes and the stereotyped Adam semi-circular railings, all very
imposing, and all alike derelict. Beyond the florid wrought-iron gates
the gravel drives disappear under a uniform sea of grass; the once
neatly shaved lawns are covered with dense "bush." All gone! Planters
and their fine houses alike! King Sugar has been for long dethroned.
The names of these places, "Amity," "Concord," "Orange Grove,"
"Harmony Hall," "Friendship," and "Fellowship Hall," all rather
suggest the names of Masonic Lodges, and seem to point to a certain
amount of conviviality. The houses themselves are hardly up to the
standard of their ambitious entrance-gates, for they are mostly of the
stereotyped Jamaican "Great House" type; plain, gabled buildings
surrounded by verandahs, looking rather like gigantic meat safes; but,
as they say in Ireland, any beggar can see the gatehouse, but few
people see the house itself, and I imagine that skilled craftsmen were
rare in Jamaica in the eighteenth century.
The attempt to reconstruct the life of one, two, or three hundred
years ago has always appealed to me, especially amidst very familiar
scenes. The stage-setting, so to speak, is much as it must have
appeared to our predecessors, but the actual drama played on the stage
must have been so very different. I should have liked to have seen
these planters' houses a hundred years ago, swarming with guests,
whilst the cookhouses smoked bravely as armies of black slaves busied
themselves in preparing one of the gigantic repasts described by Lady
Nugent. Unfortunately to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the
thing, one would have been forced, in her words, "to eat like a
cormorant, and to drink like a porpoise," with the certainty of a
liver attack to follow.
Talking of bygone days, the Fourth-Form Room at Harrow has been
unchanged since Queen Elizabeth's time, and still retains all its
Elizabethan fittings: heavy, clumsy, solid oak armchairs for the
masters, each one equipped with a stout, iron-bound, oak table, and
strong oak benches for the boys. As a youngster, I liked to think that
I was sitting on the identical benches occupied, more than three
hundred years earlier, by Elizabethan youths in trunk hose and
doublets. In my youth I was much impressed in Canterbury Cathedral by
the sight of the deep grooves worn by the knees of countless thousands
of pilgrims to Thomas a Beckett's shrine in the solid stone of the
steps leading from the Choir to the retro-Choir, steps only to be
ascended by pilgrims on their knees. At Harrow the inch-thick oak
planks of the Elizabethan benches have been completely worn through in
places by the perpetual fidgeting of hundreds of generations of
schoolboys, which is as remarkable in its way as the knee grooves at
Canterbury, though the attrition is due to a different portion of the
human anatomy. As a boy I used to wonder how the trunk-hosed
Elizabethan Harrovians addressed each other, and whether they found it
very difficult to avoid palpable anachronisms in every sentence.
Their conversations would probably have been something like this:
"Come hither, young Smith; I would fain speak with thee. Only one
semester hast thou been here, and thy place in the school is but
lowly, yet are thy hose cross-gartered, and thy doublet is of silk.
Thou swankest, and that is not seemly, therefore shall I trounce thee
right lustily to teach thee what a sorry young knave thou art." "Nay,
good Master Brown, hearken to me. This morn too late I kept my bed,
and finding not my buff jerkin, did don in haste my Sunday doublet of
changeable taffeta, for thou wottest the ills that do befall those
late for school. Neither by my halidom knew I, that being yet of
tender years, it was not meet for me to go cross-gartered, so prithee,
gentle youth, cease belabouring me with thy feet."
Incidentally, I suppose that Christopher Columbus and his adventurers
all landed in the West Indies in 1492, clad in full armour, after the
fashion of the age, and I cannot imagine how they escaped being baked
alive in the scorching heat. Every suit of armour must have been a
portable Dutch-oven, inflicting tortures on its unfortunate wearer.
The little bay near Brown's Town where Columbus landed in Jamaica, on
his third voyage, is still called "Don Christopher's Cove," though the
Spanish form of his name is, of course, Cristobal Colon.
Brown's Town is the most beautiful little spot imaginable, glowing
with colour from its wealth of flowers. It had, though, another
attraction for me. The hotel was kept by a white lady of most
"serious" views, and in the hotel dining-room I found a bookshelf
containing all the books given me as a child for Sunday reading. There
they all were! _Little Henry and his Bearer_, _Anna Ross the Orphan of
Waterloo_, _Agathos_, and many, many more, including a well-remembered
American book, _Melbourne House_. The heroine of the last-named work,
an odiously priggish child called Daisy Randolph, refused to sing on a
Sunday when desired to do so by her mother. For this, most properly,
she was whipped. A devoted black maid who shared Daisy's religious
views, comforted her little mistress by bringing her a supper of fried
oysters, ice-cream and waffles. As a child I used to think how gladly I
would undergo a whipping every Sunday were it only to be followed by a
supper of fried oysters, ice-cream and waffles, the latter a comestible
unknown to me, but suggesting infinitely delicious possibilities.
Unfortunately I can never remember having been asked to sing on Sunday,
or indeed on any other day.
Speaking seriously, I do not believe that these emotionally pietistic
little books produced any good effect on the children into whose hands
they were put. I remember as a child feeling exasperated against the
ultra-righteous little heroines of all these works. I say heroine,
because no boy was ever given a chance as a household-reformer, unless
he had happened to have been born a hopeless cripple, or were
suffering from an incurable spinal complaint. In the latter case,
experience induced the certainty that the author would be unable to
resist the temptation of introducing a pathetic death-bed scene.
Accordingly, when the little hero's spine grew increasingly painful
and he began to waste away, the two next chapters were carefully
skipped in order to be spared the harrowing details of the young
martyr's demise. Girls, not being so invariably doomed to an early
death, were alone qualified to act as family evangelists, and one knew
that the sweet child's influence was bound, slowly but surely, to
permeate the entire household. Her mother would cease to care only for
"the world and its fine things," and would even endeavour to curb her
inordinate love of dress. Her father would practically abandon
betting, and, should he have been fortunate enough to have backed a
winner, would at once rush on conscience-stricken feet to pour the
whole of his gains into the nearest missionary collecting-box. Even
the cynical old bachelor uncle, who habitually scoffed at his niece's
precocious piety, became gradually influenced by her shining example,
and would awake one morning to find himself the amazed, yet gratified,
possessor of "a new heart."
In order to renew my acquaintance with the whole of these friends of
my youth, I remained two days longer in Brown's Town, with the assent
of the good-natured Guardsman.
Joss, the Guardsman, had a fine baritone voice, and the English rector
of Brown's Town, after hearing him sing in the hotel, at once
commandeered him for his church on Sunday, though warning him that he
would be the only white member of the choir. My services were also
requisitioned for the organ. That church at Brown's Town is, by the
way, the most astonishingly spacious and handsome building to find in
an inland country parish in Jamaica. On the Sunday, seeing the
Guardsman in conversation with the local tenor, a gentleman of
absolutely ebony-black complexion, at the vestry door, both of them in
their cassocks and surplices, I went to fetch my camera, for here at
last was a chance of satisfying the Guardsman's mania for turning his
trip to the West Indies to profitable account. Every one is familiar
with the ingenious advertisements of the proprietors of a certain
well-known brand of whisky. My photograph would, unquestionably, be a
picture in "Black and White," both as regards complexion and costume,
but on second thoughts, the likenesses of two choir-men in cassocks
and surplices seemed to me inappropriate as an advertisement for a
whisky, however excellent it might be, though they had both
unquestionably been engaged in singing spiritual songs.
It was Archbishop Magee who, when Bishop of Peterborough, encountered
a drunken navvy one day as he was walking through the poorer quarters
of that town. The navvy staggered out of a public-house, diffusing a
powerful aroma of gin all round him; when he saw his Chief Pastor he
raised his hand in a gesture of mock benediction and called jeeringly
to the Bishop, "The Lord be with you!" "And with thy _spirits_,"
answered Magee like a flash.
The drive from Brown's Town across the centre of the island to
Mandeville is one of the most beautiful things that can be imagined.
It can only be undertaken with mules, and then requires twelve hours,
the road running through the heart of the ginger-growing district, of
which Boroughbridge is the headquarters. The Guardsman was more than
ever confirmed in his opinion that Jamaica was only a growing grocer's
shop, especially as we had passed through dense groves of nutmeg-trees
in the morning. I have a confused recollection of deep valleys
traversed by rushing, clear streams, of towering pinnacles of rock,
and of lovely forest glades, the whole of them clothed with the most
gorgeous vegetation that can be conceived, of strange and unfamiliar
shapes glowing with unknown blossoms, with blue mountains in the
distance. It was one ever-changing panorama of loveliness, with
beauty of outline, beauty of detail, and unimaginable beauty of
colour.
We were forced to return to Kingston, for a French Cruiser Squadron
was paying a prolonged visit to Jamaica, and the Governor required my
services as interpreter.
That visit of the French Fleet was quite an historical event, for it
was the first outward manifestation of the Anglo-French Entente. The
Anglo-French Convention had been signed two years previously, on April
8, 1904. I cannot say with whom the idea of terminating the
five-hundred-year-old feud between Britain and France originated, but
I know who were the instruments who translated the idea into practical
effect: they were M. Paul Cambon, French Ambassador in London, and my
brother-in-law, Lord Lansdowne, then Foreign Secretary; between them
they smoothed down asperities, removed ancient grievances, and
lubricated points of contact where friction might arise. No one,
probably, anticipated at the time the tremendous consequences of the
Anglo-French Convention, nor dreamed that it was destined, after the
most terrible conflict of all time, to change the entire history of
the world.
In the early part of 1905 the Emperor William had made his theatrical
triumphal progress through the Turkish dominions, and on March 31 of
the same year he landed at Tangier in great state. What exact
agreement the Emperor concluded with the Sultan of Morocco we do not
know, but from that moment the French met with nothing but
difficulties in Morocco, their own particular "sphere of influence"
under the Anglo-French Convention. All the reforms proposed by France
were flouted by the Sultan, and Germans claimed equal commercial and
economic rights with the French. A conference met at Algeciras on
January 10, 1906, to settle these and other disputed questions, but
the French authorities viewed the situation with the utmost anxiety.
They were convinced that the "mailed fist" would be brandished in
their faces on the smallest provocation, and that the French Navy
might have to intervene.
Now came the first visible result of the _entente_. The British
Government offered the hospitality of Kingston Harbour, with coaling
facilities, for an unlimited period to the French Cruiser Squadron,
then in the West Indies. Kingston is not only the finest harbour in
the Antilles, but the coaling arrangements are far superior to any in
the French ports, and, most important point of all, Kingston would be
some twenty-four hours steaming nearer to Gibraltar and the
Mediterranean, in case of emergency, than the French islands of
Guadeloupe or Martinique.
The arrival, then, of the French Fleet was a great event, and, acting
possibly on a hint from home, every attention was shown to the French
officers by the Governor, Sir Alexander Swettenham. He entertained
forty French officers to luncheon at King's House, and his French
having grown rather rusty, asked me to welcome them in his name. I
took great care in preparing my speech, and began by ascertaining
whether any of the reporters who would be present understood French. I
was much relieved to find that not one of them knew a single word of
the language, for that gave me a free hand. The table, on the occasion
of the luncheon, was decorated in a fashion only possible in the West
Indies. One end of the table glowed, a scarlet carpet of the splendid
flowers of the _Amherstia nobilis_, looking like red satin tassels,
then came a carpet of the great white trumpets of the _Beaumontia_, on
a ground of white stephanotis. Lastly a blue carpet of giant solanums,
interspersed with the dainty blue blossoms of the _Petraea_, the whole
forming the most magnificent tricolour flag imaginable. The French
officers much appreciated this attention.
I spoke for twenty minutes, and fairly let myself go. With a feeling
of security due to the inability of the reporters to follow French, I
said the most abominably indiscreet things, considering that it was an
official entertainment in an official residence, but I think that I
must have been quite eloquent, for, when I sat down, the French
Admiral crossed the room and shook hands warmly with me, saying,
"Monsieur, au nom de la France je vous remercie."
Joss, the Guardsman, struck up an intimate alliance with a young
French naval lieutenant of his own age. As the Guardsman knew just two
words of French, and the Frenchman was totally ignorant of English, I
cannot conceive how they understood one another, but they seemed to
take great delight in each other's society, exploring together every
corner of Kingston, both by day and by night, addressing each other as
"Henri, old man," or "Joss vieux copain," and jabbering away
incessantly, each in his own tongue.
Lady Swettenham, the Governor's wife, paid a formal visit to the
Admiral on board his flag-ship, the _Desaix_, and I accompanied
her. The Admiral told Lady Swettenham that she and Lady Lathom, who
was with her, must consent to be tied up with ribbons bearing the
ship's name, the French naval fashion of doing honour to ladies of
distinction. The Flag-Lieutenant came in and took a good look at the
ladies' dresses; Lady Swettenham being in white, Lady Lathom in pale
mauve. Presently "Flags" reappeared bearing white and mauve ribbons
(of the exact shade of her dress) for Lady Lathom, and pale pink and
blue ones for Lady Swettenham, each about four yards long.
Proverbially gallant as are British naval officers, the idea of first
studying the ladies' dresses would not have occurred to them; that
little touch requires a Frenchman. We wished to take our leave, but
the Admiral begged us to remain; there was evidently something coming.
It was an intensely hot afternoon, and the heavy, red-plush furniture
and curtains of the Admiral's cabin seemed to add to the heat. His
face wore the expression some people assume when they are preparing a
treat for a child. "Flags" looked in and nodded. "Faites entrer
alors," ordered the Admiral, still smiling, and a steward came in
bearing six bottles of Guinness' stout. "You see that I know what you
like," added the Admiral, beaming. On a broiling hot afternoon in
Jamaica, tepid stout is the very last thing in the world that one
would choose to drink, but the Admiral was convinced that it was the
habitual beverage of all English people, and had actually sent his
steward ashore to procure the precious liquid. It was a delicate
attention, but it so happened that both ladies had a positive aversion
to stout; they drank it bravely notwithstanding, and we all assumed
expressions of intense delight, to the Admiral's immense
gratification.
It was the Admiral's first visit to the West Indies, and he did not
like them. "Non, madame. Des nuits sans fraicheur, des fleurs sans
odeur, des fruits sans saveur, des femmes sans pudeur; voila les
Antilles!"
The Guardsman and I, anxious to see more of this lovely island, went
off by train to the western extremity of Jamaica. The engineer who
surveyed the Jamaican Government Railway must have been an extremely
eccentric individual. There is a comparatively level and very fertile
belt near the sea-coast, extending right round the island. Here nearly
all the produce is grown. Instead of building his railway through this
flat, thickly populated zone, the engineer chose to construct his line
across the mountain range of the interior, a district very sparsely
inhabited, and hardly cultivated at all. The Jamaica Government
Railway is admirably designed if regarded as a scenic railway, but is
hardly successful if considered as a commercial undertaking. The train
winds slowly through the "Cockpit" country; now panting laboriously up
steep inclines, now sliding down a long gradient, with a prodigious
grinding of brakes and squeaking of wheels. The scenery is gorgeous,
but there is no produce to handle at the various stations, and but few
passengers to pick up. As we found every hotel full at our
destination, we had to take refuge in a boarding-house, though warned
that it was only for coloured people. We found four subfuse young men,
with complexions shaded from pale coffee-colour to deep sepia, at
supper in the dining-room.
"May I inquire, sir," said the Guardsman, with ready tact, to the
lightest-complexioned of the young men, "how long you have been out
from England?"
"I was born in Jamaica, sir," answered the immensely gratified youth,
"and have never left it."
"And do you, sir," continued the Guardsman to the swarthiest of them
all, "feel the heat of the climate much? It is rather a change from
England, isn't it?"
"I, too, sir, have never left Jamaica," replied the delighted young
man.
So enchanted were these dusky youths at having been mistaken for white
men, that they simply overwhelmed us with attentions during the rest
of our stay there.
The Guardsman was bent on shooting an alligator, and having heard that
these pleasant saurians swarmed in a swamp beyond the town, went there
at dusk with his rifle, and I, very foolishly, was induced to
accompany him. There is something most uncanny in these tracts of
swamp at nightfall. The twisted, distorted trees, the gleaming,
evil-smelling pools of water, and the immense, snake-like lianes
hanging from the branches all give one a curious sense of unreality,
especially on a moonlight night. It is like a Gustave Dore drawing of a
bewitched forest. The Guardsman splashed about in the shallow water,
but never a sign of an alligator did we see. Giant tortoises crawled
lazily about, just visible in the half-light under the trees;
innumerable land-crabs scurried to and fro, and unclean reptiles
pattered over the fetid ooze, but we saw no more alligators than we
should have seen in St. James's Park.
There was a little group of coral islands, decked with plumes of
cocoa-nut palms, on the other side of the bay, close to a great
mangrove swamp, and the Guardsman insisted on our hiring a boat and
rowing out there, blazing though the sun was. These mangrove swamps
are evil-looking places. The mangrove, the only tree, I believe, that
actually grows in salt water, has unnaturally green leaves. The trees
grow on things like stilts, digging their roots deep into the foul
slime. When the tide is out, these stilts stand grey and naked below
the canopy of vivid greenery, and amongst them obscene, crab-like
things crawl over the festering black ooze. The water in the labyrinth
of channels between the mangroves was thick and discoloured; there was
not a breath of air, the heat was unbearable, and the whole place
steamed with decay and disease.
Yet somehow the scene seemed very familiar, for one had read of it,
again and again, in a hundred boys' books. The same mental process was
at work both in myself and in Joss, but it took different forms. I
composed in my mind a chapter of a thrilling romance. "Suddenly down
one of the glassy channels between the mangroves we saw the pirate
felucca approaching us rapidly. She had got out her sweeps and looked
like some gigantic water-insect as she made her way towards us,
churning the sleeping waters into foam. At her tiller stood a tall
form, which I recognised with a shudder as that of the villainous
mulatto Pedro, and her black flag drooped limply in the stagnant air.
Our gallant captain at once ordered our carronades to be loaded with
canister, and then addressed the crew. 'Yonder gang of dastardly
miscreants think to capture us, my lads,' cried Captain Trueman, 'but
little they know the material they have to deal with. Even the boys,
Bob and Jim, young as they are, will show them the sort of stuff a
British tar is made of, if I am not mistaken.' On hearing our gallant
captain's noble words, Jim and I exchanged a silent hand-grip, and
Jim, snatching up a matchlock, levelled it at the head of the mulatto
Pedro, but at that very moment," etc., etc., etc., though I much fear
that the remainder of _Bob, the Boy Buccaneer of the Bahamas_ will
remain unwritten.
Our surroundings suggested the same idea to Joss, but were prompting
the Guardsman to more direct action. From one or two of his remarks I
had foreseen the possibility of his making an incredible suggestion to
me, and gradually suspicion ripened into horrified certainty.
"Would you very much mind--" he began, "at least if you are not too
old--I should so like--we shall never get another opportunity like
this--would you very much mind--" and out it came, "playing at pirates
for a little while?"
It was unthinkable! The Guardsman was actually proposing to a staid,
middle-aged gentleman of forty-eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a
church-warden, and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as
though he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual it was for an
officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty-six, to think even of so
puerile an amusement, but to include a dignified, earnest-minded,
elderly man in the invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My
justifiable indignation increased when I found that the Guardsman
actually expected me at my age to enact the role of "Carlos, the
Cut-throat of the Caribbean."
Our discussion was interrupted by a violent shivering fit which seized
me, accompanied by a sudden, racking headache. The swamps had done
their work on the previous evening. By night-time I was in a high
fever, and when we returned to Kingston next day by train, I, with a
temperature up to anywhere, was hardly conscious of where I was or
what I was doing.
I was put to bed at King's House, and the fever rapidly turned to
malarial gastritis. The distressing feature connected with this
complaint is that it is impossible to retain any nourishment whatever.
An attack of fever is so common in hot countries that this would not
be worth mentioning, except as an example of the curious way in which
Nature sometimes prompts her own remedy. The doctor tried half the
drugs in the pharmacopoeia on me, the fever simply laughed at them
all. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness of Sir Alexander and
Lady Swettenham during my illness, but as I could take no nourishment
of any kind, I naturally grew very weak. The doctor urged me to cancel
my passage and await the next steamer to England, but something told
me that as soon as I felt the motion of a ship under me, the
persistent sickness would stop. I also felt sure that were I to remain
in Jamaica another fortnight, I should remain there permanently, and
gruesome memories haunted me of an undertaker's shop in Kingston,
which displayed a prominent sign, "Handsome black and gold funeral
goods" (note the euphemism!) "delivered in any part of the city within
two hours of telephone call." As I had no desire to make a more
intimate acquaintance with the "funeral goods," however handsome, I
insisted on being carried down to the mail-steamer, and was put to bed
in the liner. It was blowing very fresh, and we heard that there was a
heavy sea outside. As long as we lay alongside the jetty in the smooth
waters of the harbour, the distressing symptoms persisted at their
regular intervals, but no sooner had the ship cleared Port Royal and
begun to lift to the very heavy sea outside, than the sickness stopped
as though by magic. The _Port Kingston_, of the now defunct Imperial
Direct West India Mail Line, was really a champion pitcher, for she had
an immense beam for her length, and a great amount of top-hamper in the
way of deck-houses. As the violent motion continued, I was able to take
as much food as I wanted with impunity, and next day, the heavy seas
still tossing the _Port Kingston_ about like a cork, I was up and
about, perfectly well, free from fever and able, as Lady Nugent would
have said, "to eat like a cormorant." I noted, however, that the motion
of the ship seemed to produce on most of the passengers an exactly
opposite effect to what it did on myself.
The voyage from Jamaica, by that line, was rather a trying one, for in
the interest of the cargo of bananas, the Captain steered straight for
the Newfoundland Banks, so in five days the temperature dropped from
90 degrees to 40 degrees, and the unfortunate West Indian passengers
would cower and shiver in their thickest clothes over the radiators,
where the steam hissed and sizzled.
Before we had been at sea two days, we heard of a most gallant act
that had been done by one in our midst. The mail-boats of the Imperial
Direct Line each carried from six to eight apprentices, young lads in
process of training as officers in the Merchant Service. The
apprentices on board the _Port Kingston_ had had a great deal of
hard work whilst the ship was loading her cargo of fruit at Port
Henderson previous to our voyage home, so the Captain granted them all
a holiday, lent them one of the ship's boats, provided them with
luncheon and fishing lines, and sent them out for a day's sailing and
fishing in Kingston Harbour.
They sailed and caught fish, and, as the afternoon wore on, began to
"rag," as boys will do. They ragged so effectually that they managed
to capsize the boat, and were, all of them, thrown into the water.
Curiously enough, three of the eight apprentices were unable to swim.
The senior apprentice, a boy named Robert Clinch, seventeen years old,
swam out, and brought back two of his young companions in safety to
the keel of the upturned boat. Clinch was just starting to bring in
the third lad, the youngest of them all, when there was a great swirl
in the water, the grey outline of a shark rose to the surface, turned
on his back, and dragged the little fellow down. Clinch, without one
instant's hesitation, dived under the shark and attacked him with his
bare fists. It was an immensely courageous thing to do, for where
there is one shark there will probably be many, and the boy knew that
he ran the risk of being torn to pieces at any minute. So rigorous was
his onslaught on the shark that the fish released his victim, though
not before he had bitten off both the little fellow's legs at the
thigh. Clinch swam back with the mangled body of his young friend to
the upturned boat, and managed to get him on to the keel, but the poor
lad bled to death in a few minutes.
Young Clinch was a most modest boy. Nothing could get him to talk of
his exploit, and should the subject be mentioned, he would grow very
red, shuffle his feet, and turn the conversation into some other
channel. The passengers drew up an address, with which they presented
him, as a mark of their appreciation of his act of heroism, but it was
with great difficulty that Clinch could be induced to accept it.
The episode made such an impression on me that I wrote out an account
of it, got it attested and signed by the Captain, and forwarded it to
Lord Knollys, an old friend of mine, who was then Private Secretary to
King Edward, asking him to bring the matter to his Majesty's notice.
I am pleased to add that, in due course, Midshipman Robert Clinch was
duly summoned to Buckingham Palace, where he received the well-earned
Albert Medal for saving life, and also the Medal of the Royal Humane
Society.
I should very much like to know what Robert Clinch's subsequent career
has been.