‘… I could say much, were it of use, of my own solitariness, now you are away. Not that I would undervalue that great blessing, which is what I do not deserve, of so many friends about me: dear Rogers, Williams, ὁ πάνυ Keble, and the friend in whose house I am staying (whom I wish with all my heart you knew as Apostolicorum princeps, Bowden); yet, after all, as is obvious, no one can enter into one’s mind except a person who has lived with one. I seem to write things to no purpose, as wanting your imprimatur. Perhaps it is well to cultivate the habit of writing as if for unseen companions; but I have felt it much, so that I am getting quite dry and hard. My dear Froude, come back to us as soon as you safely can; and then next winter, please God, you shall go to Rome, and tempt Isaac, who is very willing, to go with you. But wherever you are (so be it!) you cannot be divided from us.’
Hurrell held an irregular correspondence with some old friends to whom he was warmly attached, and remembered them in his winter leisure.
To the Rev. Robert Isaac Wilberforce,
Feb. 25, 1835.
‘I would give twopence if circumstances should ever so turn up that you could make an occasional residence in Oxford compatible with your clerical duties,[222] and that we could concoct a second edition of old times again. It makes me laugh when I think of your old clipped horse, and how I was choused[223] by John G.; and sundry other matters which come into one’s head when more serious matters ought to be there. I wonder if you are the same fellow now that you used to be? I am afraid my old self is determined to stick by me till the last. But to talk sense: I really do indulge the hope that sometime we may be thrown together
again. Undoubtedly you owe a debt to your destinies, which as a mere parish priest you can never repay. Your old project about the Mendicant Orders was the sort of thing: though perhaps something connected with later times would tell more just at present. As to myself, θεῶν ἐν γούνασι κεῖται whether I am ever to be of any use, though I now begin to entertain serious hopes that I shall recover. Perhaps you know that I have been out here, in exile inter nigridas, for this year and a quarter. The first winter I got very little good; and in the summer the heat kept me in a feverish state, which low diet could not counteract; so I began to think it was up with me; ὅταιν ὕδωρ πνίγῃ, etc., and I own I felt very doleful: but since the cool weather set in I have made a decided start, which has put me in a better humour; and the cooler it is the better I am; so that I dare say if I had gone to Madeira, or to Rome a second time, I might have been well. I shall not be sorry for an excuse for spending another winter in the south of Europe.
‘While out here I have stuck to my old prejudices as tight as I could; yet I fairly own that I think the niggers less incapable of being raised in the scale of being than I used. I don’t mean that, generally speaking, they are at all fit for the situation in which the law has placed them; but that here and there you see specimens which prove them, unequivocally enough, to be of the race of Adam, is not to be denied. Many of them are clever, and some affectionate and even honest, and if a more judicious system had been pursued, I should not have despaired of seeing them become generally so. As it is, the prospect is even in this island a very gloomy one, and in the others, the state of things seems next to hopeless. In Antigua, where they are quite let loose, they have been playing a very clever trick in many places: which is very characteristic of the negro intellect, sharp enough as to the moment, and absolutely without thought as to the next. In making sugar it is very important that the canes should be squeezed as soon as possible after they are cut: a few hours hurts them, and twenty-four spoils them; so our friends Quakoo and Co. cut away very diligently, and then strike for wages. Here in Barbados they cannot play the same trick, as the magistrates
would flog them; and indeed flogging is scarcely less common, and more severe now, than under the old system. In this island, the most melancholy result of the change yet discernible is the condition of the emancipated children under six. The mothers, who have gone on hitherto in their lax amours with a certainty that any consequences that might result would be rather in their favour than otherwise, have been bringing a host of wretched urchins into the world and consigning them over to the estate nurses, sans soin; and now the produce of the last six years is returned upon their hands, unless they will consent to apprentice them; this they will not do, out of spite to their masters, but take the trouble on themselves they will not: so the squalid little wretches starve and die off shockingly; and those that live are locked up in their mother’s house while she is at work, doing nothing but quarrel, growing up in absolute uselessness, and with no chance of improving…. As to the religious prospects of these colonies, I think them very bad indeed. If the Church was thrown on the voluntary system, and left to make its way as the Wesleyans do among the poorer classes, it would make sure as it went, though perhaps the progress might at first seem slow; but now all is mere show and rottenness…. Another difficulty arises from the views of the Clergy: those who have any deference for Church authority are too generally mere Z’s…. Religious instruction out here means marrying the niggers, baptizing them, and teaching them to read.
‘“The age[224] is out of joint. O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!”
‘Vivas, valeas, et Apostolicus fias. I shall be back in May.’