The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses

by James Anthony Froude

Thus the proposal of annexation, which has never gone beyond wishes and talk, has so far been coldly received; but the Americans did make their offer a short time since, at which the drowning Barbadians grasped as at a floating plank. England would give them no hand to save them from the effects of the beetroot bounties. The Americans were willing to relax their own sugar duties to admit West Indian sugar duty free, and give them the benefit of their own high prices. The colonies being unable to make treaties for themselves, the proposal was referred home and was rejected. The Board of Trade had, no doubt, excellent reasons for objecting to an arrangement which would have flung our whole commerce with the West Indies into American hands, and might have formed a prelude to a closer attachment. It would have been a violation also of those free-trade principles which are the English political gospel. Moreover, our attitude towards our colonies has changed in the last twenty years; we now wish to preserve the attachment of communities whom a generation back we should have told to do as they liked, and have bidden them God speed on their way; and this treaty may have been regarded as a step towards separation. But the unfortunate Barbadians found themselves, with the harbour in sight, driven out again into the free-trade hurricane. We would not help them ourselves; we declined to let the Americans help them; and help themselves they could not. They dare not resent our indifference to their interests, which, if they were stronger, would have been more visibly displayed. They must wait now for what the future will bring with as much composure as they can command, but I did hear outcries of impatience to which it was unpleasant to listen. Nay, it was even suggested as a means of inducing the Americans to forego their reluctance to take them into the Union, that we might relinquish such rights as we possessed in Canada if the Americans would relieve us of the West Indies, for which we appeared to care so little.

If Barbadoes is driven into bankruptcy, the estates will have to be sold, and will probably be broken up as they have been in the Antilles. The first difficulty will thus be got over. But the change cannot be carried out in a day. If wages suddenly cease the negroes will starve, and will not take their starvation patiently. At the worst, however, means will probably be found to keep the land from falling out of cultivation. The Barbadians see their condition in the light of their grievances, and make the worst of it. The continental powers may tire of the bounty system, or something else may happen to make sugar rise. The prospect is not a bright one, but what actually happens in this world is generally the unexpected.

As a visit my stay at Government House was made simply delightful to me. I remained there (with interruptions) for a fortnight, and Lady L—— did not only permit, but she insisted that I should be as if in an hotel, and come and go as I liked. The climate of Barbadoes, so far as I can speak of it, is as sparkling and invigorating as champagne. Cocktail may be wanted in Trinidad. In Barbadoes the air is all one asks for, and between night breezes and sea breezes one has plenty of it. Day begins with daylight, as it ought to do. You have slept without knowing anything about it. There are no venomous crawling creatures. Cockroaches are the worst, but they scuttle out of the way so alarmed and ashamed of themselves if you happen to see them, that I never could bring myself to hurt one. You spring out of bed as if the process of getting up were actually pleasant. Well-appointed West Indian houses are generally provided with a fresh-water swimming bath. Though cold by courtesy the water seldom falls below 65°, and you float luxuriously upon it without dread of chill. The early coffee follows the bath, and then the stroll under the big trees, among strange flowers, or in the grotto with the ferns and humming birds. If it were part of one's regular life, I suppose that one would want something to do. Sir Charles was the most active of men, and had been busy in his office for an hour before I had come down to lounge. But for myself I discovered that it was possible, at least for an interval, to be perfectly idle and perfectly happy, surrounded by the daintiest beauties of an English hothouse, with palm trees waving like fans to cool one, and with sensitive plants, which are common as daisies, strewing themselves under one's feet to be trodden upon.

After breakfast the heat would be considerable, but with an umbrella I could walk about the town and see what was to be seen. Alas! here one has something to desire. Where Père Labat saw a display of splendour which reminded him of Paris and London, you now find only stores on the American pattern, for the most part American goods, bad in quality and extravagantly dear. Treaty or no treaty, it is to America that the trade is drifting, and we might as well concede with a good grace what must soon come of itself whether we like it or not. The streets are relieved from ugliness by the trees and by occasional handsome buildings. Often I stood to admire the pea-green Nelson. Once I went into the Assembly where the legislature was discussing more or less unquietly the prospects of the island. The question of the hour was economy. In the opinion of patriot Barbadians, sore at the refusal of the treaty, the readiest way to reduce expenditure was to diminish the salaries of officials from the governor downwards. The officials, knowing that they were very moderately paid already, naturally demurred. The most interesting part of the thing to me was the hall in which the proceedings were going on. It is handsome in itself, and has a series of painted windows representing the English sovereigns from James I. to Queen Victoria. Among them in his proper place stood Oliver Cromwell, the only formal recognition of the great Protector that I know of in any part of the English dominions. Barbadoes had been Cavalier in its general sympathies, but has taken an independent view of things, and here too has had an opinion of its own.

Hospitality was always a West Indian characteristic. There were luncheons and dinners, and distinguished persons to be met and talked to. Among these I had the special good fortune of making acquaintance with Sir Charles Pearson, now commanding-in-chief in those parts. Even in these days, crowded as they are by small incidents made large by newspapers, we have not yet forgotten the defence of a fort in the interior of Zululand where Sir Charles Pearson and his small garrison were cut off from their communications with Natal. For a week or two he was the chief object of interest in every English house. In obedience to orders which it was not his business to question, he had assisted Sir T. Shepstone in the memorable annexation of the Transvaal. He had seen also to what that annexation led, and, being a truth-speaking man, he did not attempt to conceal the completeness of our defeat. Our military establishment in the West Indies is of modest dimensions; but a strong English soldier, who says little and does his duty, and never told a lie in his life or could tell one, is a comforting figure to fall in with. One feels that there will be something to retire upon when parliamentary oratory has finished its work of disintegration.

The pleasantest incident of the day was the evening drive with Lady L——. She would take me out shortly before sunset, and bring me back again when the tropical stars were showing faintly and the fireflies had begun to sparkle about the bushes, and the bats were flitting to and fro after the night moths like spirits of darkness chasing human souls.

The neighbourhood of Bridgetown has little natural beauty; but the roads are excellent, the savannah picturesque with riding parties and polo players and lounging red jackets, every one being eager to pay his or her respect to the gracious lady of the Queen's representative. We called at pretty villas where there would be evening teas and lawn tennis in the cool. The society is not extensive, and here would be collected most of it that was worth meeting. At one of these parties I fell in with the officers of the American squadron, the commodore a very interesting and courteous gentleman whom I should have taken for a fellow-countryman. There are many diamonds, and diamonds of the first water, among the Americans as among ourselves; but the cutting and setting is different. Commodore D—— was cut and set like an Englishman. He introduced me to one of his brother officers who had been in Hayti. Spite of Sir Spenser St. John, spite of all the confirmatory evidence which I had heard, I was still incredulous about the alleged cannibalism there. To my inquiries this gentleman had only the same answer to give. The fact was beyond question. He had himself known instances of it.

The commodore had a grievance against us illustrating West Indian manners. These islands are as nervous about their health as so many old ladies. The yellow flags float on ship after ship in the Bridgetown roadstead, and crews, passengers, and cargoes are sternly interdicted from the land. Jamaica was in ill name from small-pox, and, as Cuba will not drop its intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls also under the ban. The commodore had directed a case of cigars from Havana to meet him at Barbadoes. They arrived, but might not be transferred from the steamer which brought them, even on board his own frigate, lest he might bring infection on shore in his pocket. They went on to England, to reach him perhaps eventually in New York.

Colonel ——'s duties, as chief of the police, obliged him to make occasional rounds to visit his stations. He recollected his promise, and he invited me one morning to accompany him. We were to breakfast at his house on our return, so I anticipated an excursion of a few miles at the utmost. He called for me soon after sunrise with a light carriage and a brisk pair of horses. We were rapidly clear of the town. The roads were better than the best I have seen out of England, the only fault in them being the white coral dust which dazzles and blinds the eyes. Everywhere there were signs of age and of long occupation. The stone steps leading up out of the road to the doors of the houses had been worn by human feet for hundreds of years. The houses themselves were old, and as if suffering from the universal depression—gates broken, gardens disordered, and woodwork black and blistered for want of paint. But if the habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in the fields. Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and yams and other strange things the names of which I heard and forgot; but there was not a weed to be seen or broken fence where fence was needed. The soil was clean every inch of it, as well hoed and trenched as in a Middlesex market garden. Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food of the blacks, is imported; but vegetables enough are raised in Barbadoes to keep the cost of living incredibly low; and, to my uninstructed eyes, it seemed that even if sugar and wages did fail there could be no danger of any sudden famine. The people were thick as rabbits in a warren; women with loaded baskets on their heads laughing and chirruping, men driving donkey carts, four donkeys abreast, smoking their early pipes as if they had not a care in the world, as, indeed, they have not.

On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve miles an hour, and I wondered privately what was to become of our breakfast. We were striking right across the island, along the coral ridge which forms the backbone of it. We found ourselves at length in a grove of orange trees and shaddocks, at the old church of St. John's, which stands upon a perpendicular cliff; Codrington College on the level under our feet, and beyond us the open Atlantic and the everlasting breakers from the trade winds fringing the shore with foam. Far out were the white sails of the fishing smacks. The Barbadians are careless of weather, and the best of boat sailors. It was very pretty in the bright morning, and the church itself was not the least interesting part of the scene. The door was wide open. We went in, and I seemed to be in a parish church in England as parish churches used to be when I was a child. There were the old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned communion table, the old pulpit and reading desk and the clerk's desk below, with the lion and the unicorn conspicuous above the chancel arch. The white tablets on the wall bore familiar names dating back into the last century. On the floor were flagstones still older with armorial bearings and letters cut in stone, half effaced by the feet of the generations who had trodden up the same aisles till they, too, lay down and rested there. And there was this, too, to be remembered—that these Barbadian churches, old as they might seem, had belonged always to the Anglican communion. No mass had ever been said at that altar. It was a milestone on the high road of time, and was venerable to me at once for its antiquity and for the era at which it had begun to exist.