JAMAICA--TOWN.
Were it arranged by Fate that my future residence should be in
Jamaica, I should certainly prefer the life of a country mouse. The
town mice, in my mind, have but a bad time of it. Of all towns that
I ever saw, Kingston is perhaps, on the whole, the least alluring,
and is the more absolutely without any point of attraction for the
stranger than any other.
It is built down close to the sea--or rather, on the lagune which
forms the harbour, has a southern aspect, and is hot even in winter.
I have seen the thermometer considerably above eighty in the shade in
December, and the mornings are peculiarly hot, so that there is no
time at which exercise can be taken with comfort. At about 10 a.m.,
a sea breeze springs up, which makes it somewhat cooler than it is
two hours earlier--that is, cooler in the houses. The sea breeze,
however, is not of a nature to soften the heat of the sun, or to make
it even safe to walk far at that hour. Then, in the evening, there is
no twilight, and when the sun is down it is dark. The stranger will
not find it agreeable to walk much about Kingston in the dark.
Indeed, the residents in the town, and in the neighbourhood of the
town, never walk. Men, even young men, whose homes are some mile or
half-mile distant from their offices, ride or drive to their work as
systematically as a man who lives at Watford takes the railway.
Kingston, on a map--for there is a map even of Kingston--looks
admirably well. The streets all run in parallels. There is a fine
large square, plenty of public buildings, and almost a plethora of
places of worship. Everything is named with propriety, and there
could be no nicer town anywhere. But this word of promise to the
ear is strangely broken when the performance is brought to the test.
More than half the streets are not filled with houses. Those which
are so filled, and those which are not, have an equally rugged,
disreputable, and bankrupt appearance. The houses are mostly of wood,
and are unpainted, disjointed, and going to ruin. Those which are
built with brick not unfrequently appear as though the mortar had
been diligently picked out from the interstices.
But the disgrace of Jamaica is the causeway of the streets
themselves. There never was so odious a place in which to move.
There is no pathway or trottoir to the streets, though there is very
generally some such--I cannot call it accommodation--before each
individual house. But as these are all broken from each other by
steps up and down, as they are of different levels, and sometimes
terminate abruptly without any steps, they cannot be used by the
public. One is driven, therefore, into the middle of the street. But
the street is neither paved nor macadamized, nor prepared for traffic
in any way. In dry weather it is a bed of sand, and in wet weather it
is a watercourse. Down the middle of this the unfortunate pedestrian
has to wade, with a tropical sun on his head; and this he must do in
a town which, from its position, is hotter than almost any other in
the West Indies. It is no wonder that there should be but little
walking.
But the stranger does not find himself naturally in possession of a
horse and carriage. He may have a saddle-horse for eight shillings;
but that is expensive as well as dilatory if he merely wishes to call
at the post-office, or buy a pair of gloves. There are articles which
they call omnibuses, and which ply cheap enough, and carry men to any
part of the town for sixpence; that is, they will do so if you can
find them. They do not run from any given point to any other, but
meander about through the slush and sand, and are as difficult to
catch as the musquitoes.
The city of Havana, in Cuba, is lighted at night by oil-lamps. The
little town of Cien Fuegos, in the same island, is lighted by gas.
But Kingston is not lighted at all!
We all know that Jamaica is not thriving as once it throve, and that
one can hardly expect to find there all the energy of a prosperous
people. But still I think that something might be done to redeem this
town from its utter disgrace. Kingston itself is not without wealth.
If what one hears on such subjects contains any indications towards
the truth, those in trade there are still doing well. There is a
mayor, and there are aldermen. All the paraphernalia for carrying
on municipal improvements are ready. If the inhabitants have about
themselves any pride in their locality, let them, in the name of
common decency, prepare some sort of causeway in the streets; with
some drainage arrangement, by which rain may run off into the sea
without lingering for hours in every corner of the town. Nothing
could be easier, for there is a fall towards the shore through the
whole place. As it is now, Kingston is a disgrace to the country that
owns it.
One is peculiarly struck also by the ugliness of the buildings--those
buildings, that is, which partake in any degree of a public
character--the churches and places of worship, the public offices,
and such like. We have no right, perhaps, to expect good taste so
far away from any school in which good taste is taught; and it may,
perhaps, be said by some that we have sins enough of our own at home
to induce us to be silent on this head. But it is singular that any
man who could put bricks and stones and timber together should put
them together in such hideous forms as those which are to be seen
here.
I never met a wider and a kinder hospitality than I did in Jamaica,
but I neither ate nor drank in any house in Kingston except my
hotel, nor, as far as I can remember, did I enter any house except
in the way of business. And yet I was there--necessarily there,
unfortunately--for some considerable time. The fact is, that hardly
any Europeans, or even white Creoles, live in the town. They have
country seats, pens as they call them, at some little distance. They
hate the town, and it is no wonder they should do so.
That which tends in part to the desolation of Kingston--or rather,
to put the proposition in a juster form, which prevents Kingston
from enjoying those advantages which would naturally attach to the
metropolis of the island--is this: the seat of government is not
there, but at Spanish Town. Then our naval establishment is at Port
Royal.
When a city is in itself thriving, populous, and of great commercial
importance, it may be very well to make it wholly independent of the
government. New York, probably, might be no whit improved were the
National Congress to be held there; nor Amsterdam, perhaps, if the
Hague were abandoned; but it would be a great thing for Kingston if
Spanish Town were deserted.
The Governor lives at the latter place, as do also those satellites
or moons who revolve round the larger luminary--the secretaries,
namely, and executive officers. These in Jamaica are now so reduced
in size that they could not perhaps do much for any city; but they
would do a little, and to Kingston any little would be acceptable.
Then the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly sit at Spanish
Town, and the members--at any rate of the latter body--are obliged
to live there during some three months of the year, not generally in
very comfortable lodgings.
Respectable residents in the island, who would pay some attention to
the Governor if he lived at the principal town, find it impossible
to undergo the nuisance of visiting Spanish Town, and in this way
go neither to the one nor the other, unless when passing through
Kingston on their biennial or triennial visits to the old country.
And those visits to Spanish Town are indeed a nuisance. In saying
this, I reflect in no way on the Governor or the Governor's people.
Were Gabriel Governor of Jamaica, with only five thousand pounds
a year, and had he a dozen angels with him as secretaries and
aides-de-camp, mortal men would not go to them at Spanish Town after
they had once seen of what feathers their wings were made.
It is like the city of the dead. There are long streets there in
which no human inhabitant is ever seen. In others a silent old
negro woman may be sitting at an open door, or a child playing,
solitary, in the dust. The Governor's house--King's House as it is
called--stands on one side of a square; opposite is the house of the
Assembly; on the left, as you come out from the Governor's, are the
executive offices and house of the Council, and on the right some
other public buildings. The place would have some pretension about
it did it not seem to be stricken with an eternal death. All the
walls are of a dismal dirty yellow, and a stranger cannot but think
that the colour is owing to the dreadfully prevailing disease of the
country. In this square there are no sounds; men and women never
frequent it; nothing enters it but sunbeams--and such sunbeams! The
glare from those walls seems to forbid that men and women should come
there.
The parched, dusty, deserted streets are all hot and perfectly
without shade. The crafty Italians have built their narrow streets
so that the sun can hardly enter them, except when he is in the mid
heaven; but there has been no such craft at Spanish Town. The houses
are very low, and when there is any sun in the heavens it can enter
those streets; and in those heavens there is always a burning,
broiling sun.
But the place is not wholly deserted. There is here the most
frightfully hideous race of pigs that ever made a man ashamed to own
himself a bacon-eating biped. I have never done much in pigs myself,
but I believe that pigly grace consists in plumpness and comparative
shortness--in shortness, above all, of the face and nose. The
Spanish Town pigs are never plump. They are the very ghosts of swine,
consisting entirely of bones and bristles. Their backs are long,
their ribs are long, their legs are long, but, above all, their heads
and noses are hideously long. These brutes prowl about in the sun,
and glare at the unfrequent strangers with their starved eyes, as
though doubting themselves whether, by some little exertion, they
might not become beasts of prey.
The necessity which exists for white men going to Spanish Town to see
the Governor results, I do not doubt, in some deaths every year. I
will describe the first time I was thus punished. Spanish Town is
thirteen miles from Kingston, and the journey is accomplished by
railway in somewhat under an hour. The trains run about every four
hours. On my arrival a public vehicle took me from the station up
to King's House, and everything seemed to be very convenient. The
streets, certainly, were rather dead, and the place hot; but I was
under cover, and the desolation did not seem to affect me. When I was
landed on the steps of the government-house, the first idea of my
coming sorrows flitted across my mind. "Where shall I call for you?"
said the driver; "the train goes at a quarter past four." It was
then one: and where was he to call for me? and what was I to do with
myself for three hours? "Here," I said; "on these steps." What other
place could I name? I knew no other place in Spanish Town.
The Governor was all that was obliging--as Governors now-a-days
always are--and made an appointment for me to come again on the
following day, to see some one or say something, who or which could
not be seen or said on that occasion. Thus some twenty minutes were
exhausted, and there remained two hours and fifty minutes more upon
my hands.
How I wished that the big man's big men had not been so rapidly
courteous--that they had kept me waiting for some hour or so, to
teach me that I was among big people, as used to be done in the good
old times! In such event, I should at any rate have had a seat,
though a hard one, and shelter from the sun. But not a moment's grace
had been afforded me. At the end of twenty minutes I found myself
again standing on those glaring steps.
What should I do? Where should I go? Looking all around me, I did
not see as much life as would serve to open a door if I asked for
shelter. I stood upon those desolate steps till the perspiration ran
down my face with the labour of standing. Where was I to go? What was
I to do? "Inhospitalem caucasum!" I exclaimed, as I slowly made my
way down into the square.
When an Englishman has nothing to do, and a certain time to wait,
his one resource is to walk about. A Frenchman sits down and lights
a cigar, an Italian goes to sleep, a German meditates, an American
invents some new position for his limbs as far as possible asunder
from that intended for them by nature, but an Englishman always takes
a walk. I had nothing to do. Even under the full fury of the sun
walking is better than standing still. I would take a walk.
I moved slowly round the square, and by the time that I had reached
an opposite corner all my clothes were wet through. On I went,
however, down one dead street and up another. I saw no one but the
pigs, and almost envied them their fleshlessness. I turned another
corner, and I came upon the square again. That seemed to me to be the
lowest depth of all that fiery Pandemonium, and with a quickened step
I passed through but a corner of it. But the sun blazed even fiercer
and fiercer. Should I go back and ask for a seat, if it were but on a
bench in the government scullery, among the female negroes?
Something I must do, or there would soon be an end of me. There
must be some inn in the place, if I could only find it. I was not
absolutely in the midst of the Great Sahara. There were houses on
each side of me, though they were all closed. I looked at my watch,
and found that ten minutes had passed by since I had been on my legs.
I thought I had wandered for an hour.
And now I saw an old woman--the first human creature I had seen since
I left the light of the Governor's face; the shade I should say,
meaning to speak of it in the most complimentary terms. "Madam,"
said I, "is there an inn here; and if so, where may it be?" "Inn!"
repeated the ancient negress, looking at me in a startled way. "Me
know noting, massa;" and so she passed on. Inns in Jamaica are called
lodging-houses, or else taverns; but I did not find this out till
afterwards.
And then I saw a man walking quickly with a basket across the street,
some way in advance of me. If I did not run I should miss him; so I
did run; and I hallooed also. I shall never forget the exertion. "Is
there a public-house," I exclaimed, feverishly, "in this ---- place?"
I forget the exact word which should fill up the blank, but I think
it was "blessed."
"Pubberlic-house, massa, in dis d----m place," said the grinning
negro, repeating my words after me, only that I know _he_ used the
offensive phrase which I have designated. "Pubberlic-house! what
dat?" and then he adjusted his basket on his head, and proceeded to
walk on.
By this time I was half blind, and my head reeled through the effects
of the sun. But I could not allow myself to perish there, in the
middle of Spanish Town, without an effort. It behoved me as a man to
do something to save my life. So I stopped the fellow, and at last
succeeded in making him understand that I would give him sixpence if
he would conduct me to some house of public entertainment.
"Oh, de Vellington tavern," said he; and taking me to a corner three
yards from where we stood, he showed me the sign-board. "And now de
two quatties," he said. I knew nothing of quatties then, but I gave
him the sixpence, and in a few minutes I found myself within the
"Wellington."
It was a miserable hole, but it did afford me shelter. Indeed, it
would not have been so miserable had I known at first, as I did some
few minutes before I left, that there was a better room up stairs.
But the people of the house could not suppose but what every one knew
the "Wellington;" and thought, doubtless, that I preferred remaining
below in the dirt.
I was over two hours in this place, and even that was not pleasant.
When I went up into the fashionable room above, I found there, among
others, a negro of exceeding blackness. I do not know that I ever saw
skin so purely black. He was talking eagerly with his friends, and
after a while I heard him say, in a voice of considerable dignity, "I
shall bring forward a motion on de subject in de house to-morrow." So
that I had not fallen into bad society.
But even under these circumstances two hours spent in a tavern
without a book, without any necessity for eating or drinking, is not
pleasant; and I trust that when I next visit Jamaica I may find the
seat of government moved to Kingston. The Governor would do Kingston
some good; and it is on the cards that Kingston might return the
compliment.
The inns in Kingston rejoice in the grand name of halls. Not that you
ask which is the best hall, or inquire at what hall your friend is
staying; but such is the title given to the individual house. One
is the Date-tree Hall, another Blundle's Hall, a third Barkly Hall,
and so on. I took up my abode at Blundle Hall, and found that the
landlady in whose custody I had placed myself was a sister of good
Mrs. Seacole. "My sister wanted to go to India," said my landlady,
"with the army, you know. But Queen Victoria would not let her; her
life was too precious." So that Mrs. Seacole is a prophet, even in
her own country.
Much cannot be said for the West Indian hotels in general. By far
the best that I met was at Cien Fuegos, in Cuba. This one, kept by
Mrs. Seacole's sister, was not worse, if not much better, than the
average. It was clean, and reasonable as to its charges. I used to
wish that the patriotic lady who kept it could be induced to abandon
the idea that beefsteaks and onions, and bread and cheese and beer
composed the only diet proper for an Englishman. But it is to be
remarked all through the island that the people are fond of English
dishes, and that they despise, or affect to despise, their own
productions. They will give you ox-tail soup when turtle would be
much cheaper. Roast beef and beefsteaks are found at almost every
meal. An immense deal of beer is consumed. When yams, avocado
pears, the mountain cabbage, plaintains, and twenty other delicious
vegetables may be had for the gathering, people will insist on eating
bad English potatoes; and the desire for English pickles is quite
a passion. This is one phase of that love for England which is so
predominant a characteristic of the white inhabitants of the West
Indies.
At the inns, as at the private houses, the household servants are
almost always black. The manners of these people are to a stranger
very strange. They are not absolutely uncivil, except on occasions;
but they have an easy, free, patronizing air. If you find fault
with them, they insist on having the last word, and are generally
successful. They do not appear to be greedy of money; rarely ask for
it, and express but little thankfulness when they get it. At home,
in England, one is apt to think that an extra shilling will go a
long way with boots and chambermaid, and produce hotter water, more
copious towels, and quicker attendance than is ordinary. But in the
West Indies a similar result does not follow in a similar degree.
And in the West Indies it is absolutely necessary that these people
should be treated with dignity; and it is not always very easy to
reach the proper point of dignity. They like familiarity, but are
singularly averse to ridicule; and though they wish to be on good
terms with you, they do not choose that these shall be reached
without the proper degree of antecedent ceremony.
"Halloo, old fellow! how about that bath?" I said one morning to
a lad who had been commissioned to see a bath filled for me. He
was cleaning boots at the time, and went on with his employment,
sedulously, as though he had not heard a word. But he was over
sedulous, and I saw that he heard me.
"I say, how about that bath?" I continued. But he did not move a
muscle.
"Put down those boots, sir," I said, going up to him; "and go and do
as I bid you."
"Who you call fellor? You speak to a gen'lman gen'lmanly, and den he
fill de bath."
"James," said I, "might I trouble you to leave those boots, and see
the bath filled for me?" and I bowed to him.
"'Es, sir," he answered, returning my bow; "go at once." And so
he did, perfectly satisfied. Had he imagined, however, that I was
quizzing him, in all probability he would not have gone at all.
There will be those who will say that I had received a good lesson;
and perhaps I had. But it would be rather cumbersome if we were
forced to treat our juvenile servants at home in this manner--or even
those who are not juvenile.
I must say this for the servants, that I never knew them to steal
anything, or heard of their doing so from any one else. If any one
deserves to be robbed, I deserve it; for I leave my keys and my
money everywhere, and seldom find time to lock my portmanteau.
But my carelessness was not punished in Jamaica. And this I think
is the character of the people as regards absolute personal
property--personal property that has been housed and garnered--that
has, as it were, been made the possessor's very own. There can be no
more diligent thieves than they are in appropriating to themselves
the fruits of the earth while they are still on the trees. They will
not understand that this is stealing. Nor can much be said for their
honesty in dealing. There is a great difference between cheating and
stealing in the minds of many men, whether they be black or white.
There are good shops in Kingston, and I believe that men in trade
are making money there. I cannot tell on what principle prices
range themselves as compared with those in England. Some things are
considerably cheaper than with us, and some much, very much dearer. A
pair of excellent duck trousers, if I may be excused for alluding to
them, cost me eighteen shillings when made to order. Whereas, a pair
of evening white gloves could not be had under four-and-sixpence.
That, at least, was the price charged, though I am bound to own that
the shop-boy considerately returned me sixpence, discount for ready
money.
The men in the shops are generally of the coloured race, and they are
also extremely free and easy in their manners. From them this is more
disagreeable than from the negroes. "Four-and-sixpence for white
gloves!" I said; "is not that high?" "Not at all, sir; by no means.
We consider it rather cheap. But in Kingston, sir, you must not think
about little economies." And he leered at me in a very nauseous
manner as he tied his parcel. However, I ought to forgive him, for
did he not return to me sixpence discount, unasked?
There are various places of worship in Kingston, and the negroes
are fond of attending them. But they love best that class of
religion which allows them to hear the most of their own voices.
They are therefore fond of Baptists; and fonder of the Wesleyans
than of the Church of England. Many also are Roman Catholics. Their
singing-classes are constantly to be heard as one walks through the
streets. No religion is worth anything to them which does not offer
the allurement of some excitement.
Very little excitement is to be found in the Church-of-England
Kingston parish church. The church itself, with its rickety pews, and
creaking doors, and wretched seats made purposely so as to render
genuflexion impossible, and the sleepy, droning, somnolent service
are exactly what was so common in England twenty years since; but
which are common no longer, thanks to certain much-abused clerical
gentlemen. Not but that it may still be found in England if
diligently sought for.
But I must not finish my notice on the town of Kingston without
a word of allusion to my enemies, the musquitoes. Let no
European attempt to sleep there at any time of the year without
musquito-curtains. If he do, it will only be an attempt; which will
probably end in madness and fever before morning.
Nor will musquito-curtains suffice unless they are brushed out
with no ordinary care, and then tucked in; and unless, also, the
would-be-sleeper, after having cunningly crept into his bed at the
smallest available aperture, carefully pins up that aperture. Your
Kingston musquito is the craftiest of insects, and the most deadly.