“I immediately discharged the book-keeper, who contented himself with simply denying the blow having been given by him; but I told him that I could not possibly allow his single unsupported denial to outweigh concordant witnesses to the assertation: and if he grounded his claim to being believed merely upon his having a white skin, on Cornwall estate at least that claim would not be admitted; and that as the fact was clearly established nothing should induce me to retain him upon my property except his finding some means of appeasing the injured negro, and prevailing on him to intercede on his behalf.”
How dared he! In Jamaica!
“This was a humiliation to which he could not bring himself to stoop; and accordingly the man has left the estate. I was kept awake the greater part of the night by the songs and rejoicings of the negroes at their triumph over the offending bookkeeper.” And this man had only sluiced a slave with dirty water, called him a rascal, and knocked him down with a broom because he did not clear away some spilled water fast enough! No wonder the planters felt this newcomer was attempting dangerous innovations.
“It is extraordinary,” writes Lady Nugent, more than ten years earlier, “to witness the immediate effect that the climate” (always the climate) “and habit of living in this country have upon the minds and manners of Europeans, particularly the lower orders. In the upper ranks they become indolent and inactive, regardless of everything but eating and drinking and indulging themselves, are almost entirely under the dominion of their mulatto favourites. In the lower orders they are the same, with the addition of conceit and tyranny, considering the negroes as creatures formed entirely to administer to their ease, and to be subject to their caprice, and I have found much difficulty to persuade those great people and superior beings, our white domestics, that the blacks are human beings or have souls. I allude more particularly to our German and our other upper men servants.”
I am afraid there were a good many people like Lady Nugent's German and other upper men servants.
But Lewis himself had very clear ideas as to the sort of people he was trying to help. He knew you could not expect either saints or wise men from men brought up as they had been, though the life might occasionally evolve a philosopher.
“To do the negroes justice,” he writes, “it is a doubt whether they are the greatest thieves or liars, and the quantity of sugar which they purloin during the crop and dispose of at the Bay is enormous.”
And he tells another lovely story of how he was taken in and his kindness imposed upon. There was a black watchman, old and sick, to whom he regularly sent soup, and then he discovered that the old scamp had hired a girl, and had a child by her, and for this accommodation he paid £30 a year to a brown man in the mountains!
“I hope this fact will convince the African reporter,” he writes, “that it is possible for some 'of these oppressed race of human beings,' 'of these our most unfortunate fellow-creatures,' to enjoy at least some of the blessings of civilised society. And I doubt whether even Mr Wilberforce himself, with all his benevolence, would not allow a negro to be quite rich enough, who can afford to pay £30 a year for the hire of a kept mistress.”
A nice humour of his own has Lewis. He comes down to us pleasantly through the years. He gives us many little illuminating stories about the slaves and their ways. Already there were growing up among them many little differences. For instance, a pure bred negro might not aspire to the hand of a lady with some of the blood of the ruling class in her veins. One day he asked Cubina, his body-servant, the nice boy whom he had first met on his arrival, why he did not marry Mary Wiggins, a most beautiful brown girl, and they can be beautiful.