CHAPTER XII
DRIVES AND COUNTRY LIFE AT MANDEVILLE—NEGROES AND FUNERAL CUSTOMS
It was on Boxing Day 1902, that I returned to Jamaica, the Trent arriving at Kingston at 7 A.M. enabled me to catch the morning train for Mandeville.
I breakfasted with friends at Myrtle Bank Hotel, was delighted to find a number of letters awaiting me at the post-office. I then betook myself at ten o’clock that morning to the railway station. These are, naturally, somewhat primitive; the trains, too, are not noted for their punctuality, they are known to break down occasionally, which is rather trying to the temper. I speak from sad experience. Still one remembers, if things are not up to date, that one is not in the most flourishing of the British Colonies.
In view of the late depression of trade, it strikes me, as it does nearly everybody I have met who considers the subject at all, that a large proportion of the island revenue goes to support a very expensive gubernatorial machinery which constitutes the government of this country.
When sugar was £70 instead of £5 a ton, when 100 lbs. of coffee fetched 80s. instead of 20s., when the wealth of the West Indian planter was proverbial, the salaries of the officials were not disproportionate.
The prosperity of those days will never probably revisit this island, but the salaries are likely to remain at their present high figure. One hears much animadversion and grumbling on this subject from the better-class inhabitants of Jamaica. The Colonial Secretary, say they, might well have another thousand per annum in addition to his present stipend, if that would ensure so efficient and capable a man for that post as the present occupant; but it is apparent to many that £5000 a year, with a fine house to live in, wines and spirits free of duty, does not guarantee to the island either acceptable or fitting representatives of royalty.
At the same time, the stability and justice of the present government is fully appreciated by the inhabitants as well as by those Americans who have large financial interests, such as the Fruit Companies in Jamaica. Justice is administered to the black very differently by the present legislature than formerly. In the country districts the overseers who had to send to the absentee landlords annual sums from their estates invariably mulcted the negro of his pay to make up the deficit.
The information which Whittaker’s Almanac supplies, under the head of Jamaica, will give to the reader an idea of how large and how expensive is the staff of officials who are employed in the government. The Government Handbook of Jamaica will give details as to the expenditure of the yearly revenue.
ROAD NEAR KINGSTON.
In 1900-1901 this amounted to £760,387. The expenditure of the same year was £763,902. I have heard it said that if you cut down the official incomes you won’t get the right men, and that the Jamaicans would not like to be considered, or to rate themselves, a third-rate colony. If that be so, all one can say is, that they must pay for their pride. A government official, who worked hard for something under £400 a year, told me he thought that Englishmen would not live year after year in such an enervating climate unless the pay was good. He had been six years out here; his work was hard and unremitting, and he had not even left the island for a holiday in all that time. When he came to Jamaica he was an athlete, now he could scarcely run a quarter of a mile. Thus there are two sides to every question!
Soon after leaving Kingston we passed through swamps covered with mangroves, then through a thousand acres of level land quite recently irrigated and brought into cultivation. The climate here is hot, and specially suited to the growth of bananas. Since the days of sugar failure this has been a remunerative industry. Eleven years ago, about thirty bunches of bananas were imported into England. In 1901, 3,000,000 came from the Canaries and 450,000 from Jamaica. The revenue of the island for the first five months of the financial year 1902, exceeded by £40,000 the receipts for the same period in the year previous, and, owing to the extension of the fruit trade, the financial outlook is more hopeful than it has been for years. Canada, so the local papers say, is looking forward to consignments of Jamaican bananas.
The fact of Elder, Dempster & Co. having combined with the United Fruit Company means a continual market open to the banana trade, both in Britain and in the United States. The latter is an American enterprise, having steamers running between the West Indies, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Sir Alfred Jones, who is the moving spirit of the Direct Line, is most generous in his dealings with this poverty-stricken island. He announced, some months ago, that the Line he represents (Elder, Dempster) would take, free of freight from Bristol, English stallions, bulls, and rams, for breeding purposes, the object being to improve the breeds of cattle, there being splendid grazing land in some parts of the island.
At a dinner given by the West Indian Club in London, 1st October 1902, Sir Alfred Jones, in referring to the position of the West Indies, said he thought there “had been too much complaining, the people should do what they could themselves to develop the island. There were many possibilities before them. The tourist traffic might be developed, and there were splendid opportunities for breeding horses and cattle. Mineral also afforded a possible field for expansion. The great thing for West Indians was not to sit down and think they had a grievance, but to get up and put their shoulders to the wheel.” He also referred to the prosperous olden time when activity reigned in the cotton industry, and trusted to see a revival of it some day. He believed in the future of the island, deploring the ignorance still reigning in England regarding the West Indies.
One is somewhat amused here at the newspaper revelations. Great confidence in Mr Chamberlain is felt over the difficulties connected with the Sugar Convention, etc. One paragraph states that a good deal of literature is being circulated just now concerning the injustice of depriving the working man at home of his cheap sugar. “The best answer,” says the paper to this, “is that the Trades Unions are dead against bounties, and ask that bounty-fed sugar should be denied access to this country altogether.”
Rumours of discontent are also to be heard in this land to the effect that the chief trade goes to America and not to Britain. Local economists talk of the mother-country giving preferential tariffs to her colonies and dependencies, having learnt their lesson from no less a person than Mr Seddon, of New Zealand fame. They should have heard Judge Shaw’s paper, read last September in the Section of Economics, at the British Association, Belfast, in which he strove to show how the law of commercial development meant the natural and inevitable selection of the nearest market, whatever code of tariffs prevailed, and instanced Canada’s trade with the United States as an example of this. If the mother-country were to give to her colonies preferential trading facilities, it would disorganise all existing fiscal agreements with every Continental power, he said, and the price she would pay would be financial and commercial suicide. Since we are a nation of shopkeepers and traders, our teeming millions of workers must be fed as cheaply as possible.
After passing through the level lands of St Catherine’s parish, the line gradually ascends, until at Williamsfield, the station for Mandeville, it is 1000 feet above sea-level. The scenery becomes broken and wild as you get among the hills; dry river beds in the rainy season are roaring torrents. There are in the island upwards of 114 streams finding their way to the sea, besides numerous tributaries, some streams being navigable. When I glanced around at the different stations we stopped at, I never saw a white face. Porus is about 10 miles from Mandeville, and a quaint, busy little town. J. A. Froude says no explanation is given in any handbook of this singular name, but he found that a Porus figured amongst the companions of Columbus! From this place the train crawled, squeaked, and groaned up to Williamsfield.
A drive of 5 miles brought me to The Grove, Mandeville, a very comfortable private hotel, where I spent some happy weeks, and from whence I took pen in hand to relate my experiences. The drive from the station was lovely; the ground here is red and the foliage very green, which makes the country most picturesque. It is one continual ascent through roads bordered and sheltered with waving bamboos, palms, orange-trees, cedars, and mangoes. Sometimes one caught sight of magnificent silk-cotton trees standing in lonely grandeur in the midst of a pasture. At last, turning a sharp corner, the horses clattered up a steep, stony hill, rushed me across what looked like a village green, my driver pulling them up with a jerk in front of Mrs England’s verandah. Intending visitors to Mandeville cannot do better than trust themselves to the above lady’s catering; the food is excellent, the house most healthily situated, and everything is done with a view to the guest’s comfort. Mrs England has not been long in the island, but she has managed to learn how to deal with the black domestics very successfully.
This district of the Manchester Hills in which Mandeville lies, is the heart of the orange industry; unfortunately, the beautiful tangerine which abounds, as well as the other kinds, will not keep long enough for packing. These grow wild in the hills, and negro children sell them at the station, six for a quatty, i.e. 1½ d. I saw large wooden buildings at Williamsfield owned by fruit shippers, where fruit bought locally is sorted as to size, wrapped in paper, and packed in barrels or boxes. Some enterprising person might well start a marmalade factory with the thousands of rejected ones thrown away.
The climate of this little township is eminently cool and recuperative. In August, residents come from Kingston to escape the excessive heat. After Christmas, Americans visit the island to avoid the rigorous cold of New York and the northern states. As I write, there is no representative of the British flag but myself amongst the guests.
Across the green, or parade, as it is called, stands a fine County Court House. Opposite, at a distance of two hundred yards or so, the parish church is to be seen. Irregularly placed around this central patch of grass are several stores where most things are to be purchased, also a chemist’s shop, and a room where a dentist and a lawyer seem to hold appointments with their clients on alternate days. The place boasts of an hotel and a club, but its chief attraction to me is its large market, which on Saturdays is quite interesting. I have visited it with Mrs England and her cook on two occasions, and am beginning to know the look of the numerous island vegetables before they are cooked. Small cultivators come many miles to this market, and the blacks strike one as being more prosperous and more respectful than those at Kingston. The women carrying their stock-in-trade in large baskets on their heads, with a fine hat generally perched on the top of that, step like “young panthers,” and often walk 5 miles an hour. The men or boys bring the goods to sell in baskets on donkeys, and sleep in the market shelters, I have often seen pigs sitting quite comfortably in these baskets, and looking as if they enjoyed their ride. Besides vegetables, chickens and native tobacco, twined into rope at 3d. a yard, are sold here. Dark, mysterious-looking pats of sugar, made in the negro’s pot, also find customers. I hear the blacks make a drink of the latter. There is a shed for those who sell meat, but the rest of them just squat on the pavement, chattering together like magpies.
The majority of the parishioners are small growers, renting five, ten, or twenty acres at £1 an acre. Oranges nearly always pay the rent. Where science and method prevail in knowing how best to fertilise the trees, the grower gets a better crop and larger fruit; he can pack his own oranges and get 50 per cent. more for them.
Mandeville strikes one as thoroughly English; there are lovely walks and drives in the neighbourhood. Several families have properties not far from the town; in fact there seems quite a pleasant society for miles round. There is a tennis-club, to which people drive in their buggies. One of the ladies makes tea, and although these people have lost much of late years over the decline of the sugar trade, they are certainly hospitable, courteous, and refined. This is a charming spot to recruit in after the heat of the lowlands. One can walk in the moonlight for miles without the smallest fear of anything unpleasant. I have done so with Mrs England’s daughters, and nothing is more enjoyable. One can see the foliage against the sky so much clearer, and the shapes of the different trees thus become impressed upon one’s memory.
After nine o’clock, except just in Mandeville itself, not a soul is to be seen in the lanes. I fancy the negro goes to roost betimes like the feathered tribe. Perhaps this is because of his hereditary and ingrained fear of the supernatural. He calls all ghostly visitants “duppies,” and tells you he sees them sitting on the trees where your own visual organ fails to inform you of any living thing, or otherwise.
One night three or four of us had emerged from deep shadow into bright moonlight: our dresses were white. Wheels were heard behind us, and immediately after, a one-horsed conveyance with two people sitting in it appeared. As it approached out of the gloom, the figure nearest us sat huddled up holding a huge umbrella close over its head. My companions recognised the chaise as belonging to an old black proprietor. We thought he had taken us for “duppies,” and returned to the hotel much amused; but we were informed that the umbrella was not to protect its owner from ghostly visitants, but to keep him from getting moon-struck.
One day I took a drive to a property some miles from here, where the family owned a good old Norman name, well known in some parts of England. They had been settled in their estate for one hundred and fifty years, had seen both good times and bad. The house in which I sat was really a beautiful two-storied building with verandahs both downstairs and upstairs; the drawing-room was of noble proportions, and Mrs G—— told me that the wood employed in the construction had all been cleared from their own estate, and consisted principally of mahogany, bullet-wood, and cedar. They were several miles from a town or a market, and nearly everything that came to table was produced on the property.
The negro shanties about here are not very large for the accommodation of the numerous members of a family. The Keswick delegate, Mr Meyer, drew attention to the narrow limits of these. It seems the blacks will not build additional buildings or better accommodation since they would be liable to increased taxation. Each little home is mostly provided with yams, a few banana-trees, and several orange-trees planted anywhere without any method.
I have only so far summoned up courage to enter one of them belonging to a coloured woman who takes in washing. She informed me she had four children, “two young gentlemen and two young ladies.” It is amusing to hear the negresses say to each other, “Yes, ma’am,” and a negro in the wordiest altercation never fails to address his opponent as “Sah!” The greatest contempt which a woman feels for another is expressed in the words, “You black niggah!” They only call each other black niggahs when further words fail to express their disgust. A negro proverb says, “Choose wife Saturday on Sunday.” This means if she works well on Saturday—and that is the great market day here—she can be asked to marry on Sunday, their leisure day and time for “walking out.”
I was curious as to the burial-place of the black population, for the few churchyards I had seen with their scattered graves seemed out of all proportion to the population of the island. One day when I was out for a drive I learnt from a very loquacious driver that his elderly relatives were buried in the backyard of the little home he called his own, “under de shadder, missus, of a big cedar-tree, dar dey lie buried.”
This I found to be true; that owing to hot climate and the distance at which some of these dwellings lie, it is deemed expedient to allow them to bury their dead in their own little properties. Of course they have to duly notify the fact. I could not help thinking that this custom would facilitate any nefarious proceedings on the part of those who might be benefited by the death of an aged relative, but I was assured on good authority that very rarely has anything of the kind come to light.
The peasantry have a great horror of prison, and have a wholesome terror of the officers of the law. At the same time, they are very litigious, and amongst themselves are much given to argument.
For a person desirous of spending a quiet winter in a warm climate, where they would be able to get out-of-doors every day for a certainty, I can think of no better place than Mandeville for them to come to. The drives are really exquisite; I have been most of them, which are generally about 6 miles away, returning by different routes. Thus, Fairview is the home of the widow of a Moravian minister who lived fifty years here; the house is built on a commanding situation on a spur of the Manchester Hills, from which one sees the sea at Alligator Pond on the south coast of the island, 17 miles away, whilst stretching far off on the right, an extended vista of the Santa Cruz Mountains is to be obtained. Here on the horizon, 30 miles away, a large palm-tree is pointed out, and Malvern House, 30 miles from Mandeville, is known far and wide as a comfortable hotel. The salubrious air of the Santa Cruz Mountains is much recommended for lung complaints by the medical faculty. Another very popular drive is to a spot called Bel Retiro; this is in exactly the opposite direction and is also on the summit of a hill, where a house is in course of erection on the ruins of an old sugar mill. A grand view over Old Harbour in the distance, and the white houses of Porus below one’s feet, dotted amongst the green trees with the Manchester Hills in the background, constitutes another very lovely scene.
One day we had a picnic to an untenanted house, from which there was a beautiful view. The verandah from the upper storey was converted into a dining-room for the occasion, and nothing more enjoyable can be imagined than taking one’s lunch with such an exquisite picture to gaze upon. Everywhere, so far as the eye could see, was undulating ground covered with tropical foliage, lofty cotton-trees and stately palms waved over coffee plantations, and negro huts here and there dotted the landscape. The house where we lunched, with 100 acres, was to be sold; the owner wanted £1200 for it.
Life in this quiet Jamaican country town passes pleasantly by, notwithstanding its distance from the attractions of the “madding crowd.” One day the shouts of joyous school-children announced the fact of a Sunday School treat. Hundreds of children were entertained in the Rectory fields, in much the same way as similar gatherings in England. Swings and cricket seemed most popular amongst the small blacks, whilst the little girls’ conscious grandeur in well-starched clean frocks was quite apparent.
Another time the unusual ringing of the church bell awakened our curiosity; we learnt that it was for service before the Parochial Board of Manchester held its customary meetings. Mandeville also has its tragedies; whilst I was there we were all shocked to hear that the proprietor of the local hotel had shot himself, owing to embarrassed circumstances. This establishment is very badly situated. The management for some time past has been unsatisfactory, and few visitors have cared to put up there, preferring the boarding-houses in the place. Perhaps it is only in tropical countries that one realises what walking shadows we are—this poor fellow had eaten his breakfast a little after seven o’clock that morning—shot himself at eight, was taken to his grave at a little after five the same afternoon. It happened on a Saturday—Mandeville market day; crowds of people coming in from the country stayed over to witness the funeral. All that afternoon the grave, which was being dug, was surrounded by onlookers who, squatting round, watched the progress with a curious expression of fascinated and morbid interest on their dusky faces, reminding us forcibly of the way their ghoulish scavengers, the John Crows, large black native buzzards, sit upon the house-tops surveying from that elevated vantage-spot the ground below, where haply some spicy breakfast awaits them in the garbage line.
Nothing appeals so much to the “duppy”-ridden imagination of the black as everything connected with our transit from this world to the next. The correct thing is to be laid out in a suit of clean white ducks and white gloves; whilst the women, if they have it, are similarly arrayed in clean white attire, also with the needful gloves. I asked the reason of this almost universal practice amongst them, and was told it was to “rise up tidy on de reburrection mornin,” and also that they should appear fitly dressed to “sit down at de marriage supper of de Lamb.” They are quite familiar with this phraseology, which is current in the chapels, which are numerous all over Jamaica; and as their mental powers of assimilation and digestion scarcely touch the spiritual plane, the crudity and grotesqueness of their ideas of another life, mixed up as they are with their hereditary Obeah-worship and dread of “duppies,” produces curious results. They mostly celebrate a death with a wake, especially in the country parts. A clergyman’s wife living in the Blue Mountains told me of a man who was ill, and expected quite confidently to die. His wife bought provisions for the burial wake. The chickens, with their legs tied together, were hung upon the bough of a tree, plenty of yams were in readiness, and the savings of weeks past were represented in the shape of a bottle of rum; the white duck clothes waved in the breeze in the backyard, having been duly washed. Strange to say, the man recovered. “It was in de middle of de night, missus,” he explained to the lady. “I got hungry, and I felt under de bed wher dey put a box of sweet biscuits; I eat one, and den I ate up de rest and got well.”
This was a box of Huntley & Palmer’s sweet biscuits, carefully stowed away for the wake, which had resuscitated the invalid. “No man can dead before his time,” they say in the country parts, and evidently this man’s time had not yet come.
It was with feelings of regret that I turned my back on this pretty English-looking spot, although I looked forward with interest to staying a short time on a pen with friends not very far away from Mandeville.