Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

The Sunday School child's mistake is rather akin to that of the old Sussex shepherd who had never had a day's illness in his life. When at last he did take to his bed, it was quite obvious that he would never leave it again. The vicar of the parish visited him almost daily to read to him. The old man always begged the clergyman to read him the hymn, "The roseate hues of early dawn." At the tenth request for the reading of this hymn the clergyman asked him what it was in the lines that made such an appeal to him. "Ah, sir," answered the old shepherd, "here I lie, and I know full well that I shall never get up again; but when you reads me that beautiful 'ymn, I fancies myself on the downs again at daybreak, and can just see 'Them rows of ewes at early dawn'!"

Had the old shepherd lived in Bermuda instead of in Sussex, that is a sight which he would never have seen, for the local grass, though it appears green enough to the eye, is a coarse growth which crackles under the feet and contains no nutriment whatever as pasture; so all cows have to be fed on imported hay, rendering milk very costly. For the same reason all meat and butter have to be imported, and their price even in pre-war days was sufficiently staggering. The high cost of living and the myriads of mosquitoes are the only draw-backs to life in these Delectable Islands. That no systematic effort to exterminate mosquitoes has ever been made in Bermuda is to me incomprehensible, for these mosquitoes are all of the Stegomyia, or yellow-fever-carrying variety. The Americans have shown, both in the Canal Zone and in Havana, that with sufficient organisation it is quite possible to extirpate these dangerous pests, and the Bermudians could not do better than to follow their example.

Our soldier-gardeners at Government House had their own methods, and were inclined to attach importance to points considered trivial by civilians. The men were laying out a new vegetable garden for the Governor, and I went with the corporal one evening to inspect progress. The corporal, after glancing at the new-planted rows of vegetables, shook his head in deep sadness. "'Arris, 'Arris, I'm surprised at you! Look at the dressing of that there rear rank of lettuces. Up with them all!" and I had to point out that the lettuces would grow quite as well, and prove just as succulent, even should they not happen to be in strict alignment, and that the dressing was only important at a subsequent stage. I laid out a new border to the approach for the Governor, with the help of four soldiers, and it was really rather a successful piece of work. I began with a large group of Kentia and Chamaeropes palms, after which came a patch of bright yellow crotons, giving place to a thicket of a white-foliaged Mexican shrub, followed by a mass of crimson and orange crotons and copper-coloured coleus, which arrangement I repeated. What with scarlet poinsettias, many-hued hibiscus, and the pretty native orange pigeon-berry, I got quite an amount of colour into my border.

Pretty as are the gardens of Government House, they have to yield the palm to those of Admiralty House, which have been carefully tended by generations of admirals. Bartimaeus in Unreality grows quite enthusiastic over these gardens, though he does not mention their three peculiarities. One is a fountain, the only one in the islands. As there is not one drop of fresh water, this fountain has its own catchment area, and its own special rain-water tank. My own idea is that the Admiral reserves its playing for the visits of foreign naval men, to delude them into the idea that Bermuda has an abundant water supply. The second unusual feature is a series of large chambers hewn out of the solid rock, with openings towards the sea. These caves were cut out by convict labour as a refuge from the fierce heat of the summer months. The third is a flat tombstone by the lawn-tennis ground, inscribed "Here lies a British Midshipman 1810," nothing more; no name, no age, no particulars. I have often wondered how that forlorn, nameless, ageless midshipman came to be lying in the Admiral's garden. He was probably drowned and washed ashore without anything to identify him, so they buried him where they found him.

The particular white battalion quartered in Bermuda during my first visit there was very fortunate in its ladies, for it had an unusual proportion of married officers. I have the greatest admiration for these plucky little women who accompany their husbands all over the globe, and who always seem to manage, however narrow their means, to create a cheerful and attractive little home for their menkind. They all appeared able to dress themselves well, though, if the truth were known, they were probably mostly their own dressmakers, and, owing to the servant difficulty in Bermuda, their own cooks as well; they had transformed their little white-washed houses into the most inviting little dwellings, and in spite of having to do a great part of their own housework, they always managed to look pretty and charming. The average wife of the average officer of a Line regiment is a wonderful little woman.

The supper-parties in the married officers' quarters at Prospect Camp were the cheeriest entertainments I have ever been at. Every one had to contribute something. My own culinary attainments being confined to the preparation of three dishes, I was compelled to repeat them monotonously. The subalterns were made to carry the dishes from the kitchen, and to "wash-up" afterwards, yet I am sure that the average London hostess would have envied the jollity, the fun and high spirits that made those informal supper-parties so delightful, and would have given anything to introduce some of this cheery atmosphere into her own decorous and extremely dull entertainments, where the guests did not have to cook their own dinners.

I gave a dinner-party at an hotel to eleven people, all officers or officers' wives. The conversation turned on birthplaces, and the answers given were so curious, that I wrote them all down. Not only were all my guests soldiers and soldiers' wives, but they were nearly all the sons and daughters of soldiers as well. One major had been born at Cape Town; his very comely wife in Barbados. The other major had been born at Meerut in India, his wife at Quebec, and her unmarried sister in Mauritius; and so it was with all of them. Of those twelve people of pure British blood, I was the only one who had been born in England or in Europe; even the subaltern had been born in Hong-Kong. I do not thing that stay-at-homes quite realise the existence of this little world of people journeying from end to end of the earth in the course of their duty, and taking it all as a matter of course.

I regret that the Imperial West India Direct Line should now be defunct, for this gave a monthly direct service between Bristol and Bermuda, and I can conceive of no pleasanter winter quarters for those desirous of escaping the rigours of an English January and February. Ten days after leaving Bristol, ten days it must be confessed of extremely angry seas, the ship dropped her anchor in Grassy Bay, and the astonished arrival from England found ripe strawberries, new peas, and new potatoes awaiting his good pleasure. No visitor could fail to be delighted with the pretty, prosperous little island, and with its genial and hospitable inhabitants. For Americans, too, the place was a godsend, for in forty-eight hours they could escape from the extreme and fickle climate of New York, and find themselves in warm sunshine, tempered, it is true, by occasional downpours, for Nature, realising that the inhabitants were dependent on the rainfall for their water supply, did her best to avoid any shortage of this necessity of life. Canadians had also a great liking for the islands, for not only were they on their own soil there, but in sixty hours they could transport themselves from the ice and snow of Montreal and Toronto to a climate where roses and geraniums bloomed at Christmas, and where orange and lemon trees and great wine-coloured drifts of Bougainvillaa mocked at the futile efforts of winter to touch them. The Bishop of Bermuda, who also included Newfoundland in his See, declared that climatically his diocese was absolutely ideal, for he passed the six winter months in Bermuda and the remainder of the year in Newfoundland, thus escaping alike the rigorous winters of the northern island and the fierce summer heat of the southern one. The Bishop himself was a Newfoundlander, as were many of the Church of England clergy in Bermuda. A humorous friend of mine, a sapper in charge of the "wireless," shared to the full my liking for the islands and their pleasant inhabitants, but positively detested Prospect Camp where he was stationed. Prospect, though healthy enough, is wind-swept, very dusty, and quite devoid of shade. He declared that the well-known hymn should be altered, and ought to run:

"What though the Ocean breezes
Blow o'er Bermuda's isle;
Where every man is pleasing
And only Prospect vile."

Few people seem to realise that Bermuda is a first-class fortress, a dockyard, and an important naval coaling-station. A glance at the map will show its strategic importance. Nature has made it almost inaccessible with barrier-reefs, and there is but one narrow and difficult entrance off St. George's. This entrance is jealously guarded by a heavy battery of 12 in. and 6 in. guns, and the ten-mile long ship-channel inside the reefs from St. George's to the Dockyard is very difficult and complicated, though I imagine that, with modern guns, a ship could lie outside the reefs and shell the islands to pieces.