Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

Bermuda has its own little Parliament of thirty-six members, the oldest Parliament in the New World. It really is an ideal Chamber, for every one of the thirty-six members sit on the Government side; there is no Opposition. The electors do not seem to favour youthful representatives, for the heads of the legislators were all white or grey, and there seemed in the atmosphere a wholesome mistrust of innovations. There was great popular excitement over a Bill for permitting the use of motor-cars in the islands, a Bill to which public opinion was dead opposed. There was some reason in this opposition. The roads in Bermuda are excellent, but they are all made of coral, which becomes very slippery when wet. The roads twist a great deal, and the island is hilly, and the farmers complained that they could never get their great wagons of vegetables (locally called "garden-truck") down to the harbour in safety should motor-cars be permitted. I well remember one white-headed old gentleman thundering out: "Our fathers got on without all these new-fangled notions, and what was good enough for my father is good enough for me, Mr. Speaker," a sentiment which provoked loud outbursts of applause. Another patriarch observed: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, is our motto in Bermuda, Mr. Speaker," a confession of faith which was received by the House with rapturous enthusiasm; so, by thirty-three votes to three, all motors were declared illegal in the islands.

I do not apprehend that there will ever be a shortage of building materials in Bermuda, for this is how a house is built. The whole formation being of coral, the stones are quarried on the actual site of the house, the hole thus created being cemented and used as a cistern for the rain-water from the roof. The accommodating coral is as soft as cheese when first cut, but hardens after some months' exposure to the air. The soft stones are shaped as wanted, together with thin slabs of coral for the roof, and are then all left to harden. When finished, the entire house, including the roof, is whitewashed, the convenient coral also furnishing the whitening material.

These white roofs give quite an individual character to a Bermudian landscape, their object, of course, being to keep the rain-water supply pure. The men and women who live in these houses are really delightful people, and are all perfectly natural and unaffected. They are all, as one might suppose in so small a place, inter-related. The men seem to have a natural aptitude for cricket, whilst Bermudian girls can all dance, swim, play lawn-tennis, and sail boats to perfection. On my second visit to the islands, I was much struck with one small incident. Two pretty sisters were always the first arrivals at the bi-weekly hotel dances. I found that they lived on the far side of Hamilton Harbour, some six miles by road. As they could not afford ten dollars twice a week for carriage hire, they put on sea-boots and oilskins over their ball-gowns, and then paddled themselves across a mile and a half of rough water, shook out their creases and touched up their hair on arrival, danced all the evening, and then paddled themselves home, whatever the weather. Most Bermudian girls, indeed, seem quite amphibious.

I went out the second time with a great friend of mine, who was anxious to see her son, then quartered in the island. We had attended the Parade Service on Sunday at the Garrison Church, and my friend was resting on the hotel verandah, when she heard two American ladies talking. "My dear," said one of them, "you ought to have come up to that Garrison Church. I tell you, it was a right smart, snappy, dandy little Service, with a Colonel in full uniform reading selections from the Bible from a gilt eagle."

Amongst other interesting people I saw a good deal of at that time in Bermuda was "Mark Twain," who had, however, begun to fail, and that most cultivated and delightful of men, the late William Dean Howells. I twice met at luncheon a gentleman who, I was told, might possibly be adopted as Democratic Candidate for the Presidency of the United States. His name was Dr. Woodrow Wilson.

Many country houses in Bermuda have pieces of old Chippendale and French furniture in them, as well as fine specimens of old French and Spanish silver. I entirely discredit the malicious rumours I have heard about the origin of these treasures. All male Bermudians were seafaring folk in the eighteenth century, and ill-natured people hint that these intrepid mariners, not content with their legitimate trading profits, were occasionally not averse to—a little maritime enterprise. These scandalmongers insinuate that in addition to the British Ensign under which they sailed, another flag of a duskier hue was kept in a convenient locker, and was occasionally hoisted when the owner felt inclined to indulge his tastes as a collector of works of art, or to act as a Marine Agent. I do not believe one word of it, and emphatically decline to associate such kindly people with such dubious proceedings, even if a hundred and fifty years have elapsed since then.

These merchant-traders conducted their affairs on the most patriarchal principles. They built their own schooners of their own cedar-wood, and sailed them themselves with a crew of their own black slaves. The invariable round-voyage was rather a complicated one. The first stage was from Bermuda in ballast to Turks' Island, in the British Caicos group. At Turks' Island for two hundred years salt has been prepared by evaporating sea-water. The Bermudian owner filled up with salt, and sailed for the Banks of Newfoundland, where he disposed of his cargo of salt to the fishermen for curing their cod, and loaded up with salt-fish, with which he sailed to the West Indies. Salt-fish has always been, and still is, the staple article of diet of the West Indian negro; so, his load of salt-fish being advantageously disposed of, he filled up with sugar, coffee, rum, and other tropical produce, and left for New York, where he found a ready sale for his cargo. At New York he loaded up with manufactured goods and "Yankee notions," and returned to Bermuda to dispose of them, thus completing the round trip; but I still refuse to credit the story of other and less legitimate developments of mercantile enterprise. Of course, should Britain be at war with either France or Spain, and should a richly loaded French or Spanish merchantman happen to be overtaken, things might obviously be a little different. The Bermudian owner might then feel it his duty to relieve the vessel of any objects of value to avoid tempting the cupidity of others less scrupulous than himself; but I cannot believe that this was an habitual practice, and should the dusky flag ever have been hoisted, I feel certain that it was only through sheer inadvertence.

I know of one country house in Bermuda where the origin of all the beautiful things it contains is above all suspicion. The house stands on a knoll overlooking the ultramarine waters of Hamilton Harbour, and is surrounded by a dense growth of palms, fiddle trees, and spice trees. The rooms are panelled in carved cedar-wood, and there is charming "grillage" iron-work in the fanlights and outside gates. There is an old circular-walled garden with brick paths, a perfect blaze of colour; and at the back of the house, which is clothed in stephanotis and "Gloire de Dijon" roses, an avenue of flaming scarlet poinsettias leads to the orchard: it is a delightful, restful, old-world place, which, together with its inhabitants, somehow still retains its eighteenth-century atmosphere.

The red and blue birds form one of the attractions of Bermuda. The male red bird, the Cardinal Grosbeak, a remarkably sweet songster, wears an entire suit of vivid carmine, and has a fine tufted crest of the same colour, whilst his wife is dressed more soberly in dull grey bordered with red, just like a Netley nursing sister. The blue birds have dull red breasts like our robins, with turquoise-blue backs and wings, glinting with the same metallic sheen on the blue that the angel-fish display in the water. As with our kingfishers, one has the sense of a brilliant flash of blue light shooting past one. The red and blue birds are very accommodating, for they often sit on the same tree, making startling splashes of colour against the sombre green of the cedars. That the light blue may not have it all its own way, there is the indigo bird as well, serving as a reminder of Oxford and Harrow, and pretty little ground-doves, the smallest of the pigeon family, as well as the "Chick-of-the-Village," a most engaging little creature. Unfortunately some one was injudicious enough to import the English house-sparrow: these detestable little birds, whose instincts are purely mischievous and destructive, like all useless things, have increased at an enormous rate, and are gradually driving the beautiful native birds away. All these birds were wonderfully tame till the hateful sparrows began molesting them. I am glad to say that a fine of 5 pounds is levied on any one killing or capturing a red or blue bird, and I only wish that a reward were given for every sparrow killed. That pleasant writer "Bartimaeus," has in his book Unreality drawn a very sympathetic picture of Bermuda under the transparent alias of "Somer's Island." He, too, has obviously fallen a victim to its charms, and duly comments on the blue birds, which Maeterlinck could find here in any number without a lengthy and painstaking quest.

As a boy, whilst exploring rock-pools at low water on the west coast of Scotland, I used to think longingly of the rock-pools in warm seas, which I pictured to myself as perfect treasure-houses of marine curiosities. They are most disappointing. Neither in Bermuda, nor in the West Indies, nor even on the Cape Peninsula, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet, could I find anything whatever in the rock-pools. To adopt the Sunday School child's word, there seem to be no "tindamies" on the beaches of warm seas. Every one must have heard of the little girl who got her first glimpse of the sea on a Sunday School excursion. The child seemed terribly disappointed at something, and in answer to her teacher's question, said that she liked the sea, "but please where were the 'tindamies?' I was looking forward so to the tindamies!" Pressed for an explanation the little girl repeated from the Fourth Commandment, "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all the tindamies." Tindamies is quite a convenient word for star-fish, crabs, cuttle-fish and other flotsam and jetsam of the beach.