Feeling this strongly, it is no wonder that one of the most interesting happenings of my stay in Jamaica was my coming upon Charlotte Maxwell Hall, a young woman who is entering upon a career I should have loved at her age. She is young, extremely good looking, if she will allow me to say so, charming, and, above all, she is strenuous and vivid with energy—indomitable. She is the Government Meteorologist, and she is managing the cattle pen which her father bought forty years ago, long before she was born. She lives up at Kempshot, on top of the highest hill for miles round, which has one of the loveliest views in lovely Jamaica, and she is gradually working that 600 acres of rough hill country into a beautiful park, where the pastures are walled by stone walls as they are in Derbyshire or Northern China, walls built from the stones picked off the pastures, which must be put somewhere. She looks after her trees. She prunes; why should not shelter trees be kept beautifully, says she, and she takes every opportunity of planting trees from other lands. And as for her cattle, they are tended under her own eyes, and she wages unceasing war against that plague of Jamaica, the tick.
For the acquaintance—the friendship I think I may write now—of this young lady, I am indebted to my cook Malvina. We had left the Hyde and gone to live at Montego Bay, and the family wanted milk, wanted it rather badly, as Samuel Hyde Parsons, “young massa up at Hyde,” was but a small person and milk is a precious commodity in Montego Bay. Many people got it out of a tin. We did at first. And Malvina suggested—“Why not missus writing to Miss Maxwell Hall? Miss Maxwell Hall kindly supplying.”
I didn't know whether the lady would be “kindly supplying” or not, but I thought the offer of cash down might induce her to do so.
And my letter brought me a visit from a laughing girl in a motor, who said she did sell milk, rather to the horror of some of her relations who felt that the most she ought to do was to “oblige a few friends.” She, finding her milk going to waste, had advanced a step further and did not see why she should not oblige herself, and had set to work putting that milk-walk upon a business basis.
And there and then on the verandah looking out over the sea, we struck up a friendship based on my unbounded admiration for her and her work. Presently I was looking for a house without being able to find one that suited my needs, and she came to my rescue with an invitation to the three of us, myself, Eva and the baby, to go to Kempshot Pen.
And there I saw a side of life which gave me not only great hopes of Jamaica, but for all the tropical possessions of Britain. Here was a place run—by a woman, a young woman—and run frankly for gain and for the good of all the people surrounding it.
Charlotte Maxwell Hall is Jamaican born (of English parents) and she loves her home, and she is making a beginning of a new phase in that land. What she is doing to the surprise of her generation, the next generation will be keen on doing and they will regenerate Jamaica.