THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA
At one time Jamaica was peopled by a race of red men whose beauty and
timidity were the wonder and convenience of the little band of Europeans
who were the first whites to tread the fragrant shores of the Pearl of
the Antilles. To-day not a trace of these Caribs remains. Unfit for
competition with the strenuous white or muscular black, the race, so far
as Jamaica is concerned, has run its course. The red people are
remembered only by the stone implements and rude pottery preserved in
the Jamaican museum. Nowadays the island is peopled by whites--English,
American, and those of Spanish blood; blacks--grandchildren
of the slaves imported from West and West Central Africa; and
half-breeds--yellow and brown people--the descendants of those intrigues
of the white man and his black servant which, not many years back, were
common among the people of the country.
The white man needs but little description; you can see him in England
or in any colony: an Englishman who takes his cold bath, and considers
himself not the least important member of the most important race
extant. His arrogance is undiminished by the tropic sun, though his
habits of life may have become West Indianised. He rises at six and
breakfasts at ten or eleven, lunches at two or three, and dines at
seven. His food is as it is in England, save that fruit and vegetables
are more plentiful. His house is built bungalow fashion, and his
servants (with whom he has more trouble than his brethren in London) are
blacker than the blackest hat. His complexion is either white with a
yellowish tinge, or red mahogany. His women-folk dress in the latest
Parisian creations, and suffer only from lack of exercise. It is not a
climate for exertion, and the English lady goes to the length of taking
none at all. She crosses the street in her buggy, and has a black maid
to hand, so that she may never be called upon to make any unnecessary
movement. The man has his polo, and tennis, and pigeon-shooting, his
saddle-horse, and golf. If he is very brave and a great enthusiast,
there is the cricket field. The lady always prefers the unhealthy luxury
of repose. So her face is milk-coloured; she is whiter than her husband.
The society of the island is divided into three sections--the military,
the civil officials, and the others. The three sets meet occasionally
when one matches itself against another at sport, or when there is a
great reception at Government House. These foregatherings are of
interest to those who deal in scandal. In the clubs the men mix more
frequently, but it is not the men who make the social life of Jamaica.
The life of the Englishman
[Illustration: AN OLD WOMAN]
differs from that of the Anglo-Indian at a hill station; it is not the
same as the life in a provincial town. But somehow it is a strange
mixture of these two, except that in the social life the bachelor plays
but a puny part. Not many mothers take their daughters to Jamaica, so,
in the capital, the bachelor lives in one of the hotels and plays
billiards in the evenings. It would be a blessing to the single men if a
few enterprising mothers with many daughters would take up their abode
in some of the charming villa residences a few miles out of Kingston.
The life of the Jamaica negro is almost ideal. As a rule he either
entirely ignores the little work he ought to do, or leaves it to the
exhaustless energy of his indefatigable wife. He spends his life in
shady parts of the market-place, or lolls in the sun outside the place
of his abode. Nothing worries him. He is imperturbable; glorious in his
idleness, happy in a blissful ignorance which takes no account of
yesterday or to-morrow. His only grievance, if he has one, is the
limited working power of one woman. Happy is the man who is the father
of many able-bodied youngsters. If by some mischance--the accident of
domestic misfortune, or the promptings of _ennui_ born of inaction--he
is forced to work, he works with cheerfulness, and with a happy grin
complains through the day, and then spends his night in revelry. When
you have questioned one black man as to the extent and remuneration of
his labour, you have interviewed the island. The temperament of the
negro is inborn; it never varies; all negroes are blood brethren. Ask
any man if he works hard and you will hear--
“Yes, me work very hard, sah.”
“You look well on it.”
“No, me no well, sah; me not fit for work; too sick.”
“But you get well paid.”
“No well paid, sah. Plenty work; very little money, sah.”
All this with a satisfied grin except when he describes the weakness of
his health; then his eyes roll and his face clouds in a manner almost
convincing to new arrivals.
With the women it is different. They have no time for conversation with
idle strangers; they work with unceasing energy. If they pause, it is
only to stare with an air of half-timid wonder, or to break into long
peals of boisterous laughter. If it were not for the women folk, Jamaica
would indeed be hard put to it for workers.
In character the Jamaican negroes are a mixture of good and bad; of
Africa and Europe, with the vices of both the blacks and the whites, and
only some of the virtues of the people of Europe. They are civilised
with a sort of quasi-civilisation, which somehow suggests an
indifferently humorous burlesque performed by irresponsible amateurs. It
takes many months to educate a new-comer into treating the black
Jamaicans with becoming seriousness. As a rule they are well-meaning
people, full of curious mannerisms, with which
[Illustration: COCOANUT PALMS, FALMOUTH, JAMAICA]
it is difficult for the white man to be in entire sympathy. The ideas of
a black man are different from those of white. He sees things from a
different point of view, and cannot really be happy with a white, who,
legally his equal, is actually in many ways infinitely his superior. In
many ways the Jamaican native resembles his coloured brother of the
American States; he is just as arrogant--even more so--but he is not
quite so really independent, and by no means so energetic. It is
certainly a fact that the Jamaican negroes are the happiest, relatively
the richest, and quite the most comfortable inhabitants of the globe.
Though there may be poverty among them, there is no unsatisfied hunger.
The fields and the hedges, as well as the market-places, afford food and
comfort for the dweller in this land of perpetual sun. Clothes they have
in too great an abundance. It is only for the purposes of pride and
vainglory that clothes are worn at all. The climate is warm enough to
justify nudity, and although this happy condition of freedom is not
compatible with the canons of modern society, it is easily possible for
a native to be clad and outwardly furnished for a very few shillings per
annum. Overcoats are unknown. Coals are only associated with the
steamships in Kingston Harbour, and the railway. Meat is an unnecessary
luxury--almost an unhealthy one. The people live on fruit and
vegetables, with an occasional dish of salt fish caught in the rivers or
from the waters of the Caribbean Sea, and cured with a total disregard
for delicate sweetness. At the first and the twenty-first glance, the
European would pronounce the dried fish of the Jamaican nigger bad, if
not entirely putrid. The popularity of this form of diet among the
people is evidence of the over-sensitiveness of the civilised nose. The
West Indian soldier of the line receives full rations as well as his
shilling a day. The meat he receives from a beneficent Government is the
same as that served out to his English brother-in-arms, and it is from
this source that the old English settler draws the supply of fresh meat
for his own table. It is better to go among the West Indian messrooms
and buy the soldiers’ meat rations than it is to chance the tenderness
of the joints on the market butcher’s slabs. By a little enterprise and
a good deal of bargaining with a coal-black mess sergeant, you are
certain of obtaining the juiciest steak to be found on the island; and
in doing so you materially add to the popularity of the army among
possible recruits by enlarging the pocket-money of the black soldiers of
the line. Our West Indian Tommies prefer the saltest of stale salt-fish
to the juiciest of fresh juicy-steaks, and as a rule the officer of the
day is quite prepared to wink at a little irregularity which makes for
the happiness of his men and the comfort of the island. Besides, it is
probable that the same officer of the day is occasionally invited to
dine out in the bungalows of older inhabitants. The readiness with which
the soldier is prepared to part with meat rations is proof that flesh
foods are an unnecessary luxury for the West Indian native.
The negroes of the island are sharply divided into
[Illustration: A MILKMAID, BARBADOES]
two classes: those who live in the towns, and the country labourers. The
two classes differ as much as do English agriculturists and Londoners.
In Jamaica the country people are superior to the town-bred class. The
influences of town life are not good for emotional people whose fathers’
fathers hunted men in the forest lands of Western Africa. They receive
impressions too easily. They are impressed by the bad as well as by the
good. A black servant is always his own idea of his white master. A
black man must imitate; his race has only just come in contact with
civilisation. Instinctively he imitates because he has not yet reached
that state which some day may enable him to initiate. If he is to appear
in the guise of a civilised man he must follow; his experience is not
great enough to enable him to lead; his instincts are still African and
barbarian. So the town man, subject to the influences of a city in which
live types of every class of every European race, is necessarily at a
disadvantage compared with the man who lives with nature among people of
his own colour and only one or two white men of one race.
The dwellers in the Jamaican cities look down upon the country folk as
unsophisticated nonentities. The country people imagine the townsmen to
be priests of iniquity, cunning, and steeped in wickedness. Just as it
is in England, only more so. In the country all the coloured people are,
approximately, of one class; they all belong to one station. In towns
the buggyman looks down upon the costermonger as an inferior, just as
the wives of shopkeepers ignore the existence of Mrs. Buggyman. In
imitation of the English, foolish class distinction has given birth to a
form of snobbishness which is entirely ludicrous. In Kingston the
outward and visible sign of prosperity or social superiority is shown in
the costume of the women-folk, and in the simpering accent of the
maidens. The more uncomfortable a woman looks when she goes on church
parade, the more diffidence she shows before opening her mouth to answer
a simple question, the higher she is in the social scale, as it is
understood by native Jamaicans. This is as it is among the shopkeepers
and the proprietors of buggy horses and worn-out four-wheel tourist
conveyances. With the workers it is altogether different. The aged lady,
who sits for twelve hours of every day selling gingerbread beneath the
half-shade of a decaying arch fronting an important shop in the main
street, thinks little of costume and nothing of accent. She is persuaded
to talk with great difficulty, though her story would be really
interesting. An old black lady lacks that venerable appearance peculiar
to the aged dames of England. She does not appear too clean, her hair is
reduced to mangy patches of dusty black curls, showing here and there on
the top of her smooth black pate. The forehead is furrowed and her
cheeks sunken, the chin protrudes, and is the heaviest and most
noticeable of all the features. Her lips have vanished, and the eyes
peer through dull-red rims from behind a half-screen of fallen skin. She
is bent double by age and the infirmities born of rough work. There, all
day long, she sits selling gingerbread cake beneath the half-shade of
decaying archways. No one ever seems to buy her dainties, but there she
sits all day long staring vacantly into nothing. Occasionally she
fingers her cakes, and the movement of her hands disturbs a cloud of
flies who claim her cookies as their own. She is listless and entirely
dumb; there is no crowd of chattering loafers round her stall, no group
of children playing hide-and-seek under the shadow of her protection.
She is alone--a picture of desolation. She will sit there gazing at
nothing, heeding nothing, until she finds the consolation of the sleep
of death. As a conversationalist she is quite impossible. If a white man
stops to give her greeting, she replies not by word of mouth, but with
an out-thrust hand. She has money greed. Half her day is spent in silent
pleading for alms. Altogether she is not picturesque; she lacks the
elements of cleanliness, and her cookies are not wholesome. She is
something to pass by with a shudder--a human being of the lowest species
undergoing a very slow process of decay. If she has intelligence, it is
hidden with her life-story behind the shrunken eyes half-hidden by the
dull-red rims and hanging skin.
The most obvious inhabitants of Kingston are the drivers of the buggies.
A Jamaican buggy is a spider-like species of the four-wheeled vehicle,
known in England as the country fly. It is drawn by one horse, which is
neither a horse, nor a pony, nor a mule, but something remotely
resembling all these things, and raising sentiments of deep pity in the
hearts of all beholders. The driver of the buggy, the buggyman,
supplies the necessary enthusiasm to the horse and buggy alike. One
instinctively feels that but for the elevating spirit of sublime
optimism which the buggyman possesses to the fullest degree, the poor
horse would drop dead and the vehicle would fall to bits. The buggyman
ignores everything in life save possible customers. If you hire a buggy
you are the life and soul of the driver until you enter his crazy
carriage; then you become as less than nothing, and the driver
shamelessly bargains with pedestrians for the use of his coach when the
time comes for you to leave. The buggymen know Kingston as well as the
London cabby knows his London, and that is saying much. He drives with a
rattling carelessness which is entirely good for weakly nerves. He
ignores the protests of his nervous fare, and smiles in derision of the
warning hand of an outraged police. He cannons other buggies as though
they were billiard balls, and finally lands his victim, in a condition
entirely demoralised and feverish, at a place where he has no desire to
go. Then the driver blames the passenger for not giving correct
directions, and explains that to drive on will be another sixpenny fare.
The law in Jamaica reads, “Sixpence per passenger to any place in town,”
so the driver gallops to an unfrequented corner of the place and demands
an extra sixpence. The fare must pay, or walk back in the sun through
the stench of poorer Kingston. It is really better for tourists to buy a
buggy and a horse and to hire a driver if they intend to stay in the
island for
[Illustration: WAITING MAIDS]
more than three weeks. These can be as easily sold as they can be
purchased, and the possession of them saves the waste of much precious
energy, and it is better for the language and morals of a vigorous
person.
When he is not pursuing possible customers, the buggyman is asleep
inside his carriage. His battered hat is carelessly balanced on the tip
of his little nose, his feet are resting on the cushion of the front
seat, his hands hanging limp, and he slumbers deeply, exhibiting the
deep caverns of his mighty jaw. Flies settle and nest in his open mouth,
children swarm round his buggy and tickle him with half-chewed
sweetstuffs, women chaff him from the side walks, but he stirs not, not
an eyelid moves. But let a tourist or a white man come within one
hundred yards of him and he is alive again and in pursuit. He discovers
a possible fare by the sense of smell. He is all eyes and ears and nose
for white men. When he sleeps, his horse sleeps also. It is in many
cases all the rest the poor beast hopes to get. It is usual for the poor
beast to be dragged from his resting-place (it is neither stable, nor
nest, nor open field) and harnessed at 8 A.M. He retires when the night
is far spent, and the last straggler has settled beneath the mosquito
netting of his bungalow bedroom. During the day he is driven to the full
extent of his capabilities. He must always run his quickest. There are
no words spoken to him: he is driven with the whip, and with the whip
only. His food is coarse guinea-grass, and he is lucky if he finds much
of that; his water comes should his journeying carry him past a water
tank. For all that, he has the heart and soul of a carriage horse, and
he is as keen in his master’s hunt for fares as a trained polo pony is
in following the ball. In colour he is usually a bright yellowy red,
with mane and tail of light yellow. He always shows his ribs, and the
whip is pleasant to him because the lash disturbs the flies. He never
falls or stumbles; he has learned to be sure of his feet by carrying
tourists up high mountains by way of narrow winding paths. If he has one
vice it is sleepiness, but in that matter he is well under the control
of his driver.
When the buggy driver has finished his work he lolls about the drinking
shops--an important man. He is the hardest drinker in Kingston. He mixes
more with white men than do most of the other natives, and his calling
puts him in touch with the doings of men of all types. He calls for his
rum, and chaffs the barmaid, for all the world like a city clerk; and
his conversation is of horse-racing and betting odds, and worse. He is
well-to-do, and proud that the Government has sufficient confidence in
his personal character and in his prowess as a coachman to entrust him
with a license to drive a hackney coach. This license is to the Jamaica
buggyman exactly what his commission is to a newly-joined young officer.
It gives the black man status. It is a link between him and the
Government. It shows him and all Jamaica that he, buggy-driver, with a
license and a number, is not an unknown man, but an official with a
position recognised by officialdom.
When a buggyman marries he usually chooses his wife from among the
yellow women. The negress is beneath him. He likes to have as his wife a
woman who may call herself white when she receives his guests or attends
his chapel on the Sabbath. He will tell you that he married white, and
you will wonder how he managed it, until you see his lady. If you are so
inclined, you may abuse the driver and his wife and his children, his
horse and his buggy, his incapacity and everything that is his. He will
only laugh and crack his whip and sway about in his seat with merriment.
He will do anything to please you, on the chance of your dealing
generously with him when the time comes for payment. He is a
thick-skinned black man. He has no delicacy, and no false pride, and
little shame. This you will find out when you hand him your silver and
tell him to be gone. Compared with him the London four-wheel cabby is an
angel of mercy. The buggyman will abandon his horse and his buggy, and
follow you down side streets, shouting that you have paid him too
little. He will fling your silver to the ground and stamp on it. Then,
picking it up, he will follow you shouting that you owe him money. No
one heeds him. It is a common scene, and not worthy the attention of
Jamaicans.
[Illustration: DIVING BOYS, KINGSTON]
THE PHILOSOPHY OF A JAMAICAN GAMIN