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- Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
A Year in Jamaica is a complex memoir telling the story of two simultaneous journeys: Diana Lewes's 1889 trip from England to visit her family's sugar plantations in the Caribbean and, more intriguingly, the internal rite of passage of a Victorian girl on her journey to adulthood. For it is in Jamaica that Miss Lewes tries to find a place for herself in the mysterious adult world, to understand its coded rules and hidden passions. Set primarily on a plantation called Arcadia, overlooking the sea and a distant Cuba from on high, Miss Lewes alternates between the acceptable pursuits of a Victorian gentlewoman -sewing, social visits, riding -and trying to find a more meaningful role for herself in this man's world. She delights in the exhilarating freedom of careering across the countryside on horseback with her sister, is cowed by the roaring rains and horrified at watching a hen peck a lizard to death. And against this background, we see an intelligent and competent young woman appraising the society around her, and struggling with its contradictions. Quite how complex those contradictions were is only finally revealed in the publisher's afterword.
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Dedication
To my parents, William and Christine, and my wife and children, Frances, Victoria and Edward, with all my love.
To my university tutors, Dr David Crane and Dr Derek Todd, to whom I am most grateful.
Contents
Foreword
I FIRST READ my great-aunt Diana Lewes’s memoirs of her stay in Jamaica in 1889 in my early twenties and and was captivated by them. I always dreamed of seeing them published and finally, about forty years later, here they are. Her memoirs capture a moment in the complex social history of Jamaica in the late 1800s observed by an innocent eye. They raise and discuss difficult subjects such as sex and race without harm precisely because of this innocence. Like a colonial version of a heroine in Jane Austen, we hear this teenage Victorian trying to make sense of the complicated world the grown-ups have constructed around her, and with her we too feel the exhilaration and freedom that Jamaica offered to a girl brought up in England. Alongside her, we also try to fathom the darker currents that run through the story. I believe that these memoirs will resonate with anyone who, like me, has spent their childhood in Jamaica or indeed anyone else who has fallen under the island’s spell. Although she returns to England, Diana took with her from Jamaica something which remained with her for the rest of her life.
Diana’s family involvement in Jamaica began when her grandfather, William Sewell, emigrated there shortly after the abolition of slavery in 1833. Many estate owners at that time thought that sugar plantations would be uneconomic without slave labour. For example, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose father owned land in Jamaica, wrote on 27 May 1833 that ‘the West Indies are irreparably ruined if the bill [ie the Act for the Abolition of Slavery] passes’. In this environment, William Sewell and his partner, Simon Thomson, bought many estates at knockdown prices. A number of these were estates previously owned by the Barrett family, including Oxford, which features prominently in this book. Simon went on to marry William’s daughter, Lizzie. When he died childless, William inherited the share of the estates which he did not already own, making him a very wealthy man. Before he died in 1872, he realised that his son, Henry Sewell, was a spendthrift and left his estates in trust for his grandchildren (Diana and her siblings) with Henry as trustee. Henry’s extravagance, and his ambiguous alliance with his attorney, Herr Bauer, make up one of the many intriguing strands in these memoirs.
The family connection with Jamaica continued into the 1960s and ’70s, when all the estates were finally sold. My mother, who knew Arcadia in the 1950s and ’60s writes:
There was a magic about Arcadia. It was a gem in a beautiful situation on a high ridge overlooking the sea with the approach though handsome gates and an avenue of royal palms. It was a striking entrance. The house was square with walls made of cut stone and the beautiful verandahs had wrought-iron balustrades. The peacocks always reigned supreme in the gardens and common around the house with their magnificent tails either trailing after them or erected. But their early morning calls were very raucous.
Diana’s niece (Beattie’s daughter), Isabel Whitney, wrote of her visit in 1930:
Jamaica was always at the back of my brother’s and my consciousness growing up, another world, yet always part of our family. Perhaps it was talked about, I don’t remember. Some knowledge of our family connections must have seeped into our minds, children seem to be expected to know all the details relating to their forebears, but of course they don’t because people never tell them anything that makes connections, only isolated stories, and their parents’ conversations are references to events long past.
The year 1930 was not only my first visit to Jamaica, it was also a visit to the past, to the turn of the century when my grandmother’s rule had put a stamp on the house I was about to enter and live in for two months.
I crossed the threshold of Arcadia and found myself in 1903, the year my mother had left her Jamaican home for a different life. There is a poem by the French poet, Paul Verlaine, that expresses the feeling I experienced. A rough translation of it reads:
Having pushed open the narrow, creaking door,
I found myself walking in the little garden …
Nothing had changed.
I saw everything as it once had been.
On the ground floor I passed through the rooms that had once been the home of my great-grandparents, William and Mary, in the 1860s. William’s good management and frugality had brought prosperity to his estates and he had made of Arcadia (built in 1832) a comfortable, though fairly modest, Jamaican home. The original Arcadia had been built a little further to the east along the ridge that ran 800 feet above sea level and looked down on cane fields and, beyond them, the blue Caribbean. This was the Arcadia where Lady Nugent stayed, as recorded in her diary, and quoted on page 16. [Lady Nugent was the wife of General Sir George Nugent, who was Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica from 27 July 1801 to 20 February 1806. She stayed at the original Arcadia on a tour of Jamaica with her husband on 31 March and 1 April 1802.]
Isabel would probably have been welcomed on the front steps of Arcadia by her Uncle Philip, with his pipe and dog, looking much as he does in the photograph facing page 217. For now, however, it is his sister who introduces us to their Jamaican world in 1889.
Nicholas Noble 2013
A Very Short Glossary
March 31st 1802 … we proceeded to Arcadia, where we arrived at 6. Found a party ready to receive us, and sat down to dinner before 7. To bed early. Everything here is so quiet, clean and comfortable, that we feel ourselves in Arcadia indeed.
April 1st … This house is not large, but it is very neat and convenient. It stands on a high hill, overlooking the sea and a great extent of beautiful country.
From Lady Nugent’s Journal
CHAPTER 1
Arcadia
IN THE YEAR 1889, when I was sixteen and my sister Beattie four years older, we were taken by our parents from our home in England to Jamaica where my father owned a number of properties and a house at Arcadia. This he regarded as his home.
My father was a compact, dignified looking man. He had a determined face and round blue eyes set wide apart. In character he was self-willed and took immediate and effective action to suppress any opposition to his wishes. People who came to his house had either to agree with him or to resign themselves to the knowledge that they would no longer be welcomed. In England I had not really noticed this characteristic. There he had been the ideal father made up of qualities which I had considered as being proper to all dear and beloved parents. At meals he had sat at the other end of the table from my mother and had fulfilled all the functions which I had imagined fathers should fulfil. He had not conformed with my slowly built up ideal in two ways alone: he had always got up late and he had never written any letters.
When I had stayed with my friends in their homes and noticed that their fathers braved the noise and confusion of a family breakfast, a feeling of surprise and insecurity took hold of me. It seemed for a moment possible that my father, in differing from other fathers, differed from my conception of what he was. My mother, on the other hand, gave me no such cause for anxiety and remained to the end true to my picture of her. I now know that, had I remained in England, I would never have learnt to understand my father or his point of view. He would have remained cloaked for all time by my mother who, in her relations with her large family, always referred back to him for authority.
* * *
Arcadia house was surrounded by a wide verandah. The rooms were lofty and spacious. Those on the first floor opened outwards on to the verandah and inwards on to the upper landing. There is little privacy in a tropical house. Small sounds can be easily heard anywhere. My sister and I found ourselves thrown into close companionship with two people whom we loved but who were in many ways strangers to us.
Looking back on those days, Beattie and I would usually, after an early morning walk and breakfast, settle down on the shady side of the verandah and, taking it in turns, read aloud or sew until it was cool enough to ride. Lunch, in the middle of the day, would come as an unwelcome interruption. We read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall in this way from cover to cover and I think it had a greater influence on me than any other book I read at that time. I had nothing to compare with those far-off occurrences. The difference in period and morals meant nothing to me and, as I munched yam and sweet potatoes abstractedly, I felt that, had I like the author been given the gift of understanding, I would have liked to divine the causes which actuated human beings around me to behave as they did.
Every morning at eleven o’clock Henry, the black coachman, would drive the single buggy round to the front door to take my father to the office. I knew that my father owned a number of estates, possessing such names as Arcadia, Vale Royal, Drax Hall, Oxford and Cambridge, but I found it hard to visualise a man who never wrote any letters in an office. It was perhaps possible that, in his office, he was transformed into a different person and that the contemplation of such things as rum, stock and land values changed him into an active businessman, but such a metamorphosis did not seem likely. My curiosity must have become apparent for one day he invited me to go with him. That morning the double buggy came round and I climbed in feeling that a mystery was about to be elucidated.
We drove for about three miles. Once he ordered Henry to pull up by a cane field and made some remark on the growth of the canes. Later he said, ‘It’s dry, we want rain for the tops.’ These interjections and Henry’s answer ‘Yes Massa, berry dry,’ were in keeping with what I imagined for my new business father and, preoccupied with my own thoughts, I made no answer when he suggested good-humouredly that I should learn the names of all the cane pieces.
When he reached the office he got out, telling me to wait where I was. He walked up the flight of stone steps and disappeared into an open doorway. Henry did not unharness the horses but let them stand in the shade of a tree and I suppose they were used to this for they remained quiet. Then Henry, like my father, went away. He was lame and walked stiffly. I was left alone with my thoughts. The estate sugar works, boiler house and trash houses were below me. The estate was ‘about’ and the yard was full of busy black men and women who were carrying canes to the mill. The hum of the big engine and the voices of the workers came up to me on the hot air; one of the men was singing and the others swelled the refrain.
Presently Herr Bauer, my father’s attorney, came down the steps and asked me if I would like to see the office. He was a big fair man with unusually long arms and legs, a florid complexion and a thick-growing red beard. He was German by birth and had emigrated to Jamaica. In response to this invitation, I followed him obediently and peeped into the room from which he had descended and, as I had expected, I saw the desks, the high stool and the ledgers. Once in the room, I found it difficult to breathe. My father was leaning against a desk at the far end of the room. He paid no attention to me and, in fact, I don’t think he saw me. Another younger man slipped off a stool and came and shook hands. He was, I afterwards learned, the clerk and a kindly man. Herr Bauer paid no further attention to me as I hesitated at the entrance to the room but continued with a conversation which had evidently begun before I came in and which he had interrupted in order to fetch me. He spoke in a loud voice. It seemed to me strange that he should have invited me into the office only to ignore me once I was there and I stiffened as if in response to some unknown danger. This awkward situation lasted some minutes until finally my father raised his head and finally saw me. His voice when he addressed me was, for him, unusually gentle but all he said was, ‘You can go back to the buggy,’ and I went.
During that winter we spent in Jamaica, our mother often took us to an estate in the hills to watch polo matches. There we made friends among the polo players and these young men, some of whom lived fifty or more miles away, fell into the habit of coming to us for tennis on Saturdays. The intervening afternoons were filled with long rides during which we explored the countryside around Arcadia or with bathes in the turquoise sea at Harmony Hall Wharf. This pleasant life continued for two or three months until one day my father announced that he was going back to England, that our home there was to be sold, and that we were to remain in Jamaica with our mother. The news came as a shock to us for we had looked on our stay in Jamaica as a more or less pleasant interlude; and, now that it was prolonged indefinitely, our holiday began to assume more the proportions of a banishment from all we held dear.
My father drove away one lovely morning soon afterwards, leaving in a buggy drawn by two thoroughbred horses. Our farewells were, no doubt, lacking in warmth but our manners were submissive and our parting words correct. We heard the following Saturday that he had, on his way across the island, called at the polo club and forbidden our friends to come to tennis until he returned from England. Why my father did this I did not know and why he chose to let us hear of his wishes through others remained a mystery. His secrecy, in any event, hurt us more than his arbitrary action. After a last glorious tennis party, my mother, my sister and I settled down to solitude in the big house. Outwardly everything went on much as usual. My mother, though she said nothing to us about it, quite obviously disagreed with this action of my father’s. My father, on the other hand, must have thought that he was justified. Walking to and fro on the verandah a thousand feet above the Caribbean Sea discussing this, Beattie and I felt that we had done nothing to have merited this second blow.
I may have given the impression that my father was a hard man, hard at any rate to his children, but this was not the case. Friends often said to me, ‘What a delightful man your father is, I wish he were mine.’ And, up to a certain point, they were right. He was a delightful man and, when he wished, he could charm anyone. On the ship out to Jamaica, for instance, I had noticed that he was the favourite after-dinner speaker and was sought after by all. But to charm others requires effort and few people are ready and willing to charm their own children. My father was probably a lazy man but he was at least brilliant. When an effort was necessary and seemed to him to be worthwhile, he was capable of making it. He normally entertained at either lunch or dinner for on these occasions he found conviviality – wine and good food – bridged the constraint which came with strangers. I suppose it was unreasonable to expect such a man to pay court to his children. He knew no other way to attract than through the charm of words or manner which, for him, entailed both physical and mental exertion. Many times we bored him except, for example, when we amused him by repeating items of news we had gleaned. I was quick to realise this and for a time made fun of our few neighbours. But the day came when he snubbed me. Perhaps I chose my moment badly or perhaps he was feeling irritable at the time. In any case I took his rebuff to heart and stopped being amusing at other people’s expense. Therefore it fell out that there were many days when he neither talked to us nor wished for us to talk to him or among ourselves.
We admired our father and expressed our admiration by calling him suave which was the only word that seemed to proclaim and explain what he was. He could, when he was willing to exert himself, charm anybody and, at the same time, he could be very different when he chose to be, showing annoyance without losing his dignity or in any way disturbing himself. He was a strong man and we were not able to forget him so that, even during the months he was in England, his personality filled the house and we would not have been surprised if, at some moment, he had stepped out of the darkness of one of the doors to meet us.
CHAPTER 2
Mahogany Hall
WHILE MY FATHER WAS AWAY in England, one day was very much like another. Each morning we got up early and took a short walk while it was still cool. At seven we drank tea on the verandah; at nine we bathed and dressed for the day; at ten breakfast was served; at one lunch; and at seven thirty dinner. Looking back, those days seemed to be little more than a procession of meals which were served with the same ceremony as if my father was still at home. Punctually to the minute, Jack, our black butler, rang the bell and bowed us into the dining room. Behind the door stood Albert, the ‘boy’. He, like Jack, was dressed in white; his hands were encased in cotton gloves and his face was as glossy as soap and water could make it.
Until Jack, his superior, entered with the first dish and gave him a sign to follow with the vegetables, Albert stood there, his hands clasped behind his back, immovable but for his eyes which roved from side to side, resting now on a dish which he might have placed amiss, now on a fork or a spoon a little askew. As a rule, Jack and Albert waited silently but there were days when things went wrong. Perhaps Jack thought that Albert had presumed too much in handing around a special plate. Then we would hear a slap administered with the open palm on starched linen and we trembled for the dish which was snatched from us and again presented at a different level. After these scuffles, Albert retreated once more to his place behind the door and only occasionally did I catch the glint of white when the light caught his roving eye.
Of course other things happened as well as the meals. In the morning, we read or sewed and, in the afternoon, we rode, but nothing broke the monotony; the days formed themselves into a procession of meals and the weeks into a long chain of Sundays when we drove to church in our English clothes and joined in the hymns and listened to the sermon. At first these visits to church amused me. The black women in front, who had stopped at the gate to put on their shoes, knelt with their elbows on their seats and, when I happened to look up unexpectedly, I met a row of dark eyes gazing solemnly at me over the back of their pew. The reason for this transpired later when a whole family appeared in exact copies of my and my sister’s dresses. Once even a hen and chickens walked in at the open door of the church and proceeded up the aisle. In the end, however, one sermon seemed to fuse in my mind with another until I woke wondering if the Rector had said this or that on the previous Sunday or the Sunday before or if he had begun that morning with the Sermon on the Mount and carried us uninterrupted through the whole Gospel of Saint Luke. Coming home, Henry raced and overtook every buggy which had left the church gate before us while my mother, apparently unconscious of the speed at which we were travelling, chatted calmly to my sister in the back of the carriage.
There were days when my mother said to us: ‘Why don’t you ride over to Mahogany Hall and see Lucy and Catherine?’
I loved those days. It was nine miles to Mahogany Hall, and we had to get off in good time.
There were several reasons why those expeditions were particularly lovely. The days were nearly always fine with the sun shining and the wind blowing. I don’t know if my mother had any special foresight about the weather but it generally turned out that she had seen far enough ahead to send a note by post boy the previous day to announce our arrival to Lucy and Catherine. By two o’clock we would be mounted and on our way.
Our route took us inland towards the hills. We left the sugar works and cane fields behind us and followed a rough estates road through the hills and the logwood groves. Where the land was level, we cantered but, for the greater part of the way, it was too rough for quick riding. After about six miles of this sort of going, we reached the main road and pulled up in the shade of a big tree to cool our mounts, which showed dark streaks of sweat on their glossy coats. While we waited, a buggy came trotting by with dusty-looking men and women and a string of donkeys with laden panniers came into view. The jolly black women who followed them greeted us with shouts of ‘Evenin’ Misses. Evenin’ me darlin’ buckra Misses.’
The main road had something different about it from other roads I knew. It had a joke connected with it and it was as if I expected to see the joke come to life and go sidling into the sunny distance. Once one of our friends had driven a newcomer through that part of the island and, as they came to the last bend after leaving Clark’s Town, and they saw that mile-long stretch of road before them, the newcomer had exclaimed, ‘What a straight road!’ and our friend had replied, ‘Yes, Roman of course.’ The newcomer was supposed to have made the answer, ‘Dear me, yes. Wonderful roads those old johnnies constructed.’ That was the joke which I saw and which even now I see when I think of that road near Clark’s Town.
But, by the time my thoughts reached this point, my sister had moved out from the shade left by the tree into the sunshine and I followed her through Clark’s Town and up First Hill where the bananas and coconut trees grew so thickly that it was dark and shady. From First Hill it was not far to Mahogany Hall but, as the district is appropriately named and First Hill is the first of many hills, the time it takes to traverse that stretch of road is considerable. A buggy and two horses could fly down the steep hills but it was not so comfortable to descend them rapidly on horseback. Mahogany Hall, however, possessed the most perfect park-like common and there we made up for lost time and galloped for over a mile under huge cotton trees and round clumps of bamboo.
The Lockets were proud of their park and they would sometimes meet us on horseback at the entrance gate and join us in a race to the house. On this afternoon we were not disappointed for Lucy and Catherine were there waiting for us. They were dressed in old-fashioned riding habits buttoned from neck to waist and cut away over the hips, leaving two tails hanging down behind. Lucy was small with a round smiling face and bright eyes. I didn’t know why but she always reminded me of my eldest brother, Philip, and she had the same way of putting me at my ease. She was pleasant too, fond of teasing and interested in little, everyday affairs. Catherine, on the other hand, was much taller and just as thin, but she was grave. She did not, at that time, remind me of anyone in the same way as Lucy and, although she had big, dark eyes and a straight nose and, although she was better looking than her sister, I always preferred racing with Lucy.
Tea was served in the large, dark drawing room at Mahogany Hall. The floor was constructed of dark and light woods, laid alternately, and polished to a high degree and from this the house took its name, mahogany being the wood used for the darker strips. The furniture was early Victorian, the ceiling high and lost in shadows. The doors were heavy, not a sound coming through them from the rest of the house and only an occasional breath of cool air penetrated the closely jalousied windows. This room had been built during the years when all planters were wealthy and something of the elegance and luxuriousness of those days lingered, lending it dignity and calm. I tiptoed in, feeling that my high riding boots were out of place, and sat down on a black and gold chair near the tea table.
Mrs Locket was a tall, dignified woman and wore her hair looped over her ears and coiled close to the back of her head. Mr Locket was shorter, his bushy side whiskers and thick wavy hair were white. They were old-fashioned people and ceremonious in their manners. In the house, on a limited income, they clung to the same habits of ostentation and display to which they had been accustomed in their early married life.
Often, when I had sat silent for any length of time, people seemed to ask me strange questions which threw me into a state of confusion. Inexperience and the fear that I might not meet the situation calmly – that I might not only not be able to find the correct answer to an unexpected question but that I might, in fact, find no answer correct or otherwise – worried me. I was conscious that Mr Locket was looking at me and the twinkle in his little blue eyes did not bode well.
‘What is she thinking about?’ he said suddenly. And his son Charles, a young man of twenty-five, who had entered the room a few minutes before and placed himself by my sister’s chair, replied, ‘Bundle, I suppose.’
