THE TOWN OF KINGSTON
The town of Kingston is made up of mean streets crammed with little
bungalow houses, filled to overflowing with people coloured in all the
shades of black and yellow. If the place resembles any well-known
capital it must be New York; but a New York built by children in
doll’s-house style, and painted green and white. In the manner of New
York the streets stretch to the wharves and quays of the giant harbour,
and electric tram-cars clang along the busy roads by day and night.
Electric poles stick up along the roadway in blatant disregard of the
finer feelings of romantic tourists. The shops are usually called
emporiums, and they flash with all the gaudy fitments common to the
meaner streets of New York city. Some there are that might be
English--quiet and respectable places in which the white man finds his
needs supplied by intelligent half-breeds, who do not count themselves
among the coloured class. These aristocrats among Jamaica’s shop
assistants have all the polish of a London draper, mixed with an
obvious consciousness of vast responsibility. As a rule he affects gold
spectacles, and closely resembles an Indian Babu studying law. With this
class of salesman it is impossible to exercise one’s powers of
bargaining. The suggestion of a reduction in the price of a linen collar
would be to these commercial gentlemen entirely in the nature of an
insult. They do not live to amass money. Their mission is to supply
Jamaican Englishmen with necessary comforts at the lowest possible
price; there is no suggestion of gain in their commerce. Homilies on the
ethics of tradesmanship, delivered with great eloquence and a religious
accent from behind a dark face screened with gold spectacles, are
impressive in the extreme. The real salesman is to be found in smaller
stores. There the tradesman regards as a man without wisdom the dull
buyer who pays more than half the sum asked for any article. It is on
such that the people wax fat in the land. This acute process of buying
is tedious if the buyer lacks experience. The easiest method is to offer
the merchant just one quarter the sum asked for any article. This gives
the keeper of the shop a shock, but impresses him with the fact that he
is not likely to be able to swindle you to an unlimited extent. It has
become legitimate trade with him, and so when you double your offer and
proffer half the original figure, the desired commodity is wrapped up
and money changes hands. It is only by adopting this method that a
tourist can afford to live in Jamaica. There is still another class of
seller, but with this class the white man has no dealings. The women who
sell sticky
[Illustration: AN OLD GATEWAY, KINGSTON]
sweetmeats or sweating pastries along the kerb-stones, do not appeal to
the adult of the race of England. Such sellers are the native
costermongers. They have no barrows or elaborate stalls; their
paraphernalia consists of a broken basket, or piece of board supported
across the knees. They are the sellers of fruit, sweetmeats, tobacco,
eggs, live poultry, and the sticky, greasy pastries dear to the heart of
the negro, be he old or young. As a rule the basket stalls are placed at
the roadside, well in the glare of the sun. The saleswoman is usually
very old, and her costume is of dull rags constructed to resemble a
lady’s dress. Her face is creased at the jaws, and the cheek bones stand
out like gnarled fists; her remaining teeth are very yellow, and her
skinny hands are for ever shuffling the contents of her basket. Such
women make no bid for trade; the buyer comes or he comes not. The dull
face shows no emotion. It may be that the basket and its contents are
the property of a negro speculator; she, the seller, perhaps, is simply
an agent working for her daily yam. These are not the merry women of the
market-place who come in from the country with a load of produce to sell
and to spend a day in town. If it were not for the sweetmeats they would
pass as ancient beggars. Of course Kingston has its gamin--the wild,
bareheaded, barelegged boy, who is always shouting or running or playing
his mysterious games of the streets. He, of course, is the essence of
youthful happiness. His day is divided between the harbour, where he
dives for pennies among the sharks alongside ocean-going passenger
boats, and the streets, where he is prepared for anything, from stealing
a water melon to chasing the donkeys of the market-place. When a
stranger accosts him he becomes all grinning innocence and flashing
teeth. “Me work, sah, yes, sah, very hard work, very little money. I ask
you for a penny, sah, for my mother’s sake, sah, one penny.” It seems to
me that every boy, be he black or white, or yellow or red, whether he
live in London, Paris, Tokio, or Kingston, Jamaica, is afflicted with
the same genius of mischief.
The capital of Jamaica has its pest also. In most places frequented by
tourists the great pest is the guide pest; in Jamaica it is the
buggyman. The buggy, of course, is the cab of the Indies, and the
buggyman is the curse of the country. With him we will deal at length
elsewhere. But the buggies and the buggyman should always be considered
as the Jamaican pests.
It is curious to see the long electric Canadian road car swing at
ten-mile speed down these narrow streets crowded with the picturesque
people of the Western Indies. The effect of the streets is
kaleidoscopic; the sudden appearance of a car reminds one of the
mutoscope which shows a railway train rushing at the audience. Such is
the impression of the road car in the crowded Jamaican streets. The
people have become accustomed to this touch of a vigorous Western world.
The noise of its rushing and the horrible jangle of its clanking bell
have ceased to provoke interest. The car is a thing on which, for a
copper or two, the workers may ride home. It saves great fatigue and
much walking. The market baskets may be placed beneath the seats; the
town slips rapidly behind, and home is reached. Heaven knows what moves
the car along. There are no horses, and no engines like those on the
railway. It is a thing causing annoyance to the buggyman, that is all.
For the rest you can ride five or six miles at ten miles an hour speed
for four Jamaican pennies.
The country-people, who come once a week to sell their produce in the
great Saturday foregathering of agricultural Jamaica, still show wonder
and fear at the approach of a tram. They still jump into the hedges as
the tram flies along--still turn their eyes away from the chaff of the
negro conductor. But that is the only respect shown to this foreign
importation.
The dusty streets of the capital melt into country lanes with scented
hedges as you swing out of the city on a journey to the Constant Spring
terminus of the tramway. White dust takes the place of the darker city
dust. The scent of half the flowers of the world crush out the musty
odour of crowded alleys, always stewing beneath a tropic sun. That is
the great charm of the tramway, the only real excuse for its existence.
By it you can rush out of evil town-life into the sweetness of the most
beautiful country in the world. To see a high range of purple mountains,
fronted by heavy fields of banana trees and towering pines, and
brilliant flowers of every tint and shade and shape--to see all these
from the seat of a tram car which might just as well be taking you from
Shepherd’s Bush to Kew, is a thing every one should experience. The
attitude of the native to the cars is representative of ingrained
indifference to everything.
Of all places in and about Kingston, the market-place is the most
fascinating. Really there are two buildings--two groups of compact
sheds, walled in and guarded by lazy constables of justice. They are
distant from each other to the extent of about half a mile, but the road
which links the one to the other is, on market days, just as busy a
place as either building. So it is easier to count both buildings and
roadway one long market. And it is better to trade in the open highway
than it is to haggle with women in a crowded building reeking with
strong smells of fruit and fowls and vegetables, musty basket-work,
decomposing meat, and a few hundred healthy negroes. Of course it is
necessary that we should go the round of the covered stalls and stand
the cross-fire of two rows of anxious saleswomen, whose lung power is of
artillery force. After the first ten yards of the passage any ordinary
Englishman has lost his power of blushing. The blandishments of the
women are crude and full of personalities. One calls you a pretty
English gentleman, and shouts her strong opinion that you would look
very handsome in her fine hat of Ippi Appa straw. Another hails you as
her long-lost lover; and a younger woman, more brazen than her seniors,
invites you to greet her with a “fine big kiss, my love.” It is
embarrassing, especially if you show embarrassment. A blush on your
cheek is, as it were, a red flag to
[Illustration: A FRUIT-SELLER ON A SIDE-WALK, KINGSTON]
the wit of three hundred women. Soon you find your utter abandon and
exchange compliments. The negro woman respects a white man who has no
reserve. At one stall you will find all the fruits of the Indies:
succulent mangoes, golden grape fruit, oranges, bananas, guavas,
nazeberries, pine-apples, and a half hundred others. The combined force
of all the smells is terrific. Next, an aged basket-woman displays
examples of the only real art-work produced by the West Indian negroes.
The baskets are really good. You can buy one of any shape, any size, and
any and every design. Coloured grass is let into snow-white reed with
fine cunning, and without regard for any canon of conventionality. The
character of the casual negroes is shown in the patterns of their
basket-work. All the younger women are told off to superintend the
stalls which cater to the weaknesses of tourists. The women are given
silver ornaments to wear on their coal black wrists, and frequently
their ears are hung with heavy Eastern rings. This is a fashion copied
from the coolie women. All the woman’s personal jewellery is offered for
sale. She will explain the meaning of the most complicated article of
native manufactures with cheerful languor. She assumes an air of
indifference so long as she knows you intend to buy. When you begin to
show indifference, the instinct of the saleswoman springs to life in
her, and she is all entreaty. She offers wonderful whips made from the
lace bark tree, whips whose butt and long plaited lash are both made
from one piece of wood. She offers walking sticks of ebony, groo groo
palm, pimento, bamboo, or cinnamon. Or if you prefer it, you can
purchase a shark’s backbone mounted on a steel rod and fitted with a
handle of scented sandal wood. This, the lady will tell you, is in
England a great novelty, and surely worth five little dollars. Of course
there is basket-work, and some pottery shaped out of red Caribbean clay.
There are strings of coloured seeds and flower-pots made from wide
bamboos. Gourds are carved and coloured and cut into useless shapes
alleged to be ornamental, and cocoa-nuts are carved into men’s heads,
the red hair left to make a frizzy beard. These, the lady says, are very
fine. There are little gourds set on wooden skewers, and so formed into
babies’ rattles. These the arch maiden sells to young men and maidens.
Last of all, she produces dainty d’oyleys and table-centres and fine
ornaments made from the lace bark-tree, and fashioned with ferns and
pressed blossoms. These things cost a great deal of money, but as a rule
they are very decorative. When you leave her stall, the lady pursues you
for many yards with a mammoth lamp-shade, which, she assures you, will
be greatly appreciated by your home folks.
But the stall of the tourist caterer suggests artificiality. After all,
the real market is under the vestibule of the great square building.
Here are the native people with their pepper-pods and cocoa, their live
fowls and jackass rope. The latter, be it understood, is tobacco. Sold
in rope form at one penny or twopence per yard, the tobacco is called
jackass rope, for what reason I could not discover. It is in this
corner of the market-place that one meets the negro only. The woman
minds the stall and does the selling, while the husband gossips with his
fellows, or sips strong liquids at the rum bars. The anxious wife
squats, nigger fashion, beside her heap of pepper-pods, and her hands
play with them listlessly, just as we imagine a miser plays with his
gold, until the heap is sold. She is patient and ladylike. The white man
walks along her strip of market land, and she voices no light banter. If
you ask questions as to her wares she answers with modesty and with
intelligence. This is the country-woman, polite and unsophisticated.
Beyond the department devoted to the sale of spices and pepper-pods and
tobacco, we come to the chicken saleroom. Jamaican market-women nurse
captive fowls just in the same manner as Englishwomen fondle lap-dogs.
They stroke them and play with their feathers, open a wing to show the
strength and youth of a bird, and hold the beak towards their face as if
pleading with the doomed fowls for farewell kisses.
Fronting the poultry-women are the sellers of native vegetables and
fruits. These wares are heaped on strips of torn sacking spread upon the
stone floor of the market. Each woman sits next her piece of sacking and
noisily shouts the merits of her own particular goods. When no customers
are about, these women are content to wrangle among themselves as to the
comparative merits of rival heaps of fruit; from commercial squabbles of
this description it is easy for the conversation to descend to the
level of vulgar personalities and strong abuse.
The meat market is the only selling place which offers no attraction to
the idle lounger. For myself I was content to smell it afar off and pass
quickly by. Opposite the main entrance to the principal building is the
market courtyard, a square patch of grey dust enclosed by an iron
railing, and containing a drinking fountain for the people and a long
water-filled trough for the donkeys. This is the resting-place for the
workers and idling-place for the idlers. Littered about the dust are
groups of children, and donkeys, and adults. The children are playing
their games, the donkeys are munching at heaps of half-dried green
grass, and the adults, stretched at full length on the dust, or on the
grass heaps at which the donkeys are taking their meal, are for the most
part sleeping the sleep of the tired negro. A few there are who have
chosen to lie in the shadow of empty market carts, but more are to be
found sleeping in the full glare of the sun.
The fountain in the centre of the courtyard is the drawing-room of the
market place. Here come the youth and the maiden to gossip and flirt
over the midday cup of water, and here lounge the matrons to discuss
prices, and costumes, and husbands. The men for the most part have found
the rum bars, but the women and the striplings congregate round the
drinking fountain, drink cups of water, and bathe their hands and faces
in the donkey’s drinking trough. The noise of the laughter and talking
is louder than the sound of a
[Illustration: THE TOBACCO MARKET, KINGSTON]
heavy tide breaking over a pebbly beach. And the place is filled with
grey dust-clouds as the people pass and repass, moving from the fountain
to make way for new-comers. The blackness of their bare legs is hidden
by the dirty grey dust. No matter how supple or glossy the skin may
really be, two minutes’ walking in the courtyard gives bare legs the
appearance of age, and suggests the existence of loathsome disease. The
grey dust rises up and powders the women’s hair until the black curls
are lightened to the colour of brown pepper. In fact the unpleasant dust
envelopes everything under a cloud of unclean greyness. In the courtyard
of the market-place the black people seem grey and diseased; the white
folk never pass beyond the entrance gate.
It is on market days that one can see in the Kingston high roads, and in
the suburban lanes, groups of country women walking beneath heavy
head-loads of garden produce. In all the world there is nothing more
graceful than the carriage of a negro woman swinging along, with free
and easy motion, under a head-load which would be heavy to an ordinary
white man. With head erect, straight neck, chest flung forward, and arms
swinging with unconscious freedom, the women present perfect examples of
graceful strength. Their stride is long, and easy, and very regular.
They are the most graceful walkers in the world. I have never seen a
lady in Europe with a carriage as perfect as that of the ordinary
Jamaica negro market-woman.
[Illustration: A MARKET WOMAN, JAMAICA]
THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA