Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

Here again the small boy's point of view differs materially from that of the adult.

To go back to Jamaica, an acquaintance had returned early from his office, and was having a cup of coffee on his verandah at 2.30. Suddenly he saw the trees at the end of his garden rise up some eight feet. A quick brain-wave suggested an earthquake to him at once, and half-unconsciously he jumped from the verandah for all he was worth. As he alighted on the lawn, his house crashed down behind him.

There were some further milder shocks. I was engaged in shaving early one morning in our little wooden house, when I felt myself pushed violently against the dressing-table, almost removing my chin with the razor at the same time. I suspected my nephew of a practical joke, and called out angrily to him. In an aggrieved voice he protested that he had not touched me, but had himself been hurled by an unseen agency against the wardrobe. Then came a perfect cannonade of nuts from an overhanging tree on to the wooden roof of our modest temporary abode, and still we did not understand. I had at that time an English valet, the most stolid man I have ever come across. He entered the hut with a pair of brown shoes in one hand, a pair of white ones in the other. In the most matter-of-fact way he observed, "There's been an earthquake, so perhaps you would like to wear your brown shoes to-day, instead of the white ones." By what process of reasoning he judged brown shoes more fitted to earthquake conditions than white ones, rather escaped me.

Appalling tragedy though the earthquake was, like most tragedies it had its occasional lighter side. A certain leading lady of the island had been in the habit of wearing short skirts, long before the dictates of fashion imposed the present unbecoming skimpy garments. She did this on account of the numerous insect pests with which Jamaica unfortunately abounds. For the same reason she adopted light-coloured stockings, so that any creeping intruder could be easily seen and brushed off. Her wardrobe being destroyed in the earthquake, she took the train into Spanish Town in an endeavour to replenish it. In a large drapery store the black forewoman at once recognised the lady, and came forward, all bows and smiles, to greet so important a customer.

"Please, what can I hab de pleasure of showing Madam?"

"I want some silk stockings, either pink or flesh-colour, if you have any!"

"Very sorry, Madam, we hab no pink silk stockings, but we hab plenty of flesh-coloured ones," taking down as she spoke a great bundle of black silk stockings. Of course, if one thinks over it for a moment, it would be so.

The religious hysteria amongst the negroes showed no signs of abating. A black "prophet," a full-blooded negro named Bedward, made his appearance, and gained a great following. Bedward, dressed in a discarded British naval uniform, and attended by a neurotic bodyguard of screaming, hysterical negresses, made continual triumphal parades through the streets of Kingston. As far as I could ascertain the most important item in his religious crusade was the baptism of his converts in the Hope River, at a uniform charge of half-a-crown per head.

With regard to baptism, a curious incident occurred long before I was born. A sister of mine, the late Duchess of Buccleuch, was so frail and delicate at her birth that it was thought that she could not possibly survive. She was accordingly baptised privately two days after her birth. She rallied, and grew into a big sturdy girl. When she was four years old, my father had her received into the Church by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace. During the service the Archbishop became inarticulate, and many of those present feared that he had sustained a stroke, or had been suddenly afflicted with aphasia. What had happened was this: As my sister was inclined to be fidgetty and troublesome, my mother had, perhaps unwisely, given her a packet of sugar-almonds to keep her quiet. The child was actually sucking one of these when she arrived at the Chapel Royal, but was, of course, made to remove it. Unseen by any one, she managed to place another in her mouth. When the Archbishop took her in his arms, the child, seeing his mouth so close to hers, with the kindest intentions in the world, took the sugar-almond from her own mouth and popped it into the Archbishop's. Never had a Primate been in a more embarrassing situation! Having both his arms occupied in holding the child, he could not remove the offending almond with his fingers. It would be quite superfluous on my part to point out how highly indecorous it would be for an Archbishop to—shall we say to expel anything from his mouth—in church; and even after the sugar had been dissolved, an almond must be crunched before it can be disposed of, another wholly inadmissible contingency. So the poor Archbishop had perforce to remain inarticulate; let us only hope that you and I may never find ourselves in so difficult a situation.

Many people in Jamaica were in 1907 in quite as difficult a situation. I found the wife of the Chief Justice, an old acquaintance of mine in the Far East, living in the emptied swimming-bath of what had been her home. The officers of the West India Regiment at Up Park Camp were all under canvas on the cricket-ground. The officers' quarters at Up Park Barracks were exceedingly well designed for the climate, being raised on arcades. They were shattered, but the wooden shingle roofs had fallen intact and unbroken, and lay on the ground in pieces about 100 feet long, a most curious spectacle. Students of Tom Cringle will remember the gruesome description of his dinner at the Mess at Up Park Camp, during an epidemic of yellow fever, when one officer after another got up and left the room, pinching the regimental doctor on the shoulder as he did so, as an intimation that he, too, had been claimed by the yellow death. The military authorities acted unwisely in selecting Up Park as a site for barracks. It certainly stands high, but is shut off from the sea breeze by the hill known as Long Mountain, and has, in addition, a dangerous swamp to windward of it, two drawbacks which might have been foreseen.