Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

  A play was now proposed to us, and, o , f course, accepted. Three men and a girl accordingly made their appearance; the men dressed like the tumblers at Astley's, the lady very tastefully in white and silver, and all with their faces concealed by masks of thin blue silk; and they proceeded to perform the quarrel between Douglas and Glenalvon, and the fourth act of I The Fair Penitent.' They were all quite perfect, and bad no need of a prompter. As to Lothario, he was by far the most comical dog that I ever saw in my life, and his dying scene exceeded all description; Mr. Coates himself might have taken hints from him! As -soon as Lothario was fairly dead, and Calista bad made her exit in distraction, they all began dancing reels like so Many mad people, till they Were obliged to make way for the Waterloo procession, who came to collect money for the next year's festival ; one of them singing, another dancing to the tune, while she presented her money-box to the spectators, and the rest of the Blue girls filling up the chorus. I cannot say much in praise of the black Catalani ; but nothing could be more light, and playful, and graceful, than the extempore movements of the dancing-girl. Indeed, through the whole day I had been struck with the precision of their march, the ease and grace of their action, the elasticity of their step, and the lofty air with which they carried their heads-all, indeed, except poor Britannia, who hung down hers in the Most "goddess-dike manner imaginable The first song was the old Scotch air of - Logie of Buchan,' o which the 'girl sang one single stanza forty times over. Bu the second was in praise of the Hero of Heroes; so I gave the songstress a dollar to teach it to me, and drink the Duke's health It was not easy to make out what she said, but as well as I could understand them, the words ran as follows:-

  "Come, rise up, our gentry,

  And hear about Waterloo;

  Ladies, take your spy-glass,

  And attend to what we do;

  For one and one makes two,

  But one alone must be,

  Then singee, singee Waterloo,

  None so brave as he ! "

  -and then there came something about green and white flowers, and a Duchess, and a lily-white Pig, and going on board of a (lashing man-of-war; but what they all had to do with the Duke, or with each other, I could not make even a guess. I was going to ask for an explanation, but suddenly half of them gave a shout loud enough "to fright the realms of Chaos and old Night," and away they flew, singers, dancers, and all. The cause of this was the sudden illumination of the town with quantities of large chandeliers and bushes, the branches of which were stuck all over with great blazing torches: the effect was really beautiful, and the excessive rapture of the black multitude at the spectacle was as well worth the witnessing as the sight itself. I never saw so many people who appeared to be so unaffectedly .happy. In England, at fairs and races, half the visitors at least seem to have been only brought there for the sake of traffic, and to be too busy to be amused ; but here nothing was thought of but real pleasure ; and that pleasure seemed to consist in singing, dancing, and laughing, in seeing and being Seen, in showing their own fine clothes, or in admiring those of others. There were no people selling or buying; no servants and landladies bustling and passing about; and at eight o'clock, as we passed through the market-place, where was the greatest illumination, and which, of course, was most thronged, I did not see a single person drunk, nor had I observed a single quarrel through the course of the day;, except, indeed, when some thoughtless fellow crossed the line of the procession, and received by the way a good box of the ear from the Queen or one of her attendant Duchesses. Everybody made the same remark to me; " Well, si r, what do you think Mr. Wilberforce would think of the state of the negroes, if he could see this scene? " and certainly, to judge by this one specimen, of all beings that I have yet seen, these were the happiest. As we were passing to our boat, through the market-place, -suddenly we saw Miss Edwards dart out of the crowd, and seize the Captain's arm-" Captain! Captain ! " cried she, " for the love of Heaven, only look at the Red lights ! Old iron hoops, nothing but old iron hoops, I declare ! Well! for my part 1 " and then, with a contemptuous toss of her head, away frisked Miss Edwards triumphantly.

  January 2.

  The St. Elizabeth, which sailed from England at the same time with our vessel, was attacked by a pirate from Carthagena, near the rocks of Alcavella, who attempted three times to board her, though he was at length beaten off; so that our Piccaroon preparations were by no means taken without good reason.

  At four o'clock this morning I embarked in the cutter for Savannah la Mar, lighted by the most beautiful of morning stars: certainly, if this star be really Lucifer, that " Son of the Morning," the Devil must be "an extremely pretty fellow." But, in spite of the fineness of the morning, our passage was a most disagreeable concern: there was a violent swell in the sea; and a strong north wind, though it carried us forward with great rapidity, overwhelmed us with whole sheets of foam so incessantly that I expected, as soon as the sun should have evaporated the moisture, to see the boat's crew covered with salt, and looking like so many Lot's wives after her metamorphosis.

  The distance was about thirty miles, and soon after nine o'clock we reached Savannah la Mar, where I found my trustee and a whole cavalcade waiting to conduct me to my estate. He had brought -with him a curricle and pair for myself, a gig for my servant, two black boys upon mules, and a cart with eight oxen to convey my baggage. The road was excellent, and we bad no above five miles to travel; and as soon as the carriage entered, my gates, the uproar and confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. 'The works were instantly all abandoned everything that bad life came flocking to the house from a quarters: and not only the men, and the women, and the children, but, " by a bland assimilation," the hogs, and the dogs, and the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest that I ever witnessed : they all talked together, sat danced, shouted, and, in the violence of their gesticulations tumbled over each other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once inquired after uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black child to me, grinning from car to ear" Look, massa, look here! -him nice lilly neger for massa! Another complained,-" So long since none come see we, massa good massa come at last." As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story,-now they had lived once to see massa, they were ready for dying to-morrow, " them no care."

  The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, the strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-coloured handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my slaves; to be sure, I never saw people look more happy in my life, and I believe their condition to be much more comfortable than that of the labourers of Great Britain; and after all, slavery, in their case, is but another name for servitude, now that no more negroes can be forcibly carried away from Africa, and subjected to the horrors of the voyage, and the seasoning after their arrival: but still I had already experienced that Juliet was wrong in saying, "What's in a name?" for soon after my reaching the lodging-house at Savannah la Mar, a remarkably clean-looking negro lad presented himself with some water and a towel: I concluded him to belong to the inn; and, on my returning the towel, as he found that I took no notice of him, he at length ventured to introduce himself by saying, " Massa not know me; me your slave! "-and really the sound made me feel
a pang at the heart. The lad appeared all gaiety and good humour, and his whole countenance expressed anxiety to recommend himself to my notice; but the word "slave " seemed to imply that, although he did feel pleasure then in serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him, " Do not say that again ; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave."

  Altogether, they shouted and sang me into a violent headache. It is now one in the morning, and I bear them still shouting and Singing. I gave them a holiday for Saturday next, and told them that I had brought them all presents from England; and so, I believe, we parted very good friends.

  JANUARY 3.

  I have reached Jamaica in the best season for seeing my property in a favourable point of view ; it is crop time, when all the laborious work is over, and the negroes are the most healthy and merry. This morning I went to visit the hospital, and found there only eight patients out of three hundred negroes, and not one of them a serious case. Yesterday I had observed a remarkably handsome Creole girl, called Psyche, and she really deserved the name. This morning a little brown girl made her appearance at breakfast, with an orange bough, to flap away the flies, and, on inquiry, she proved to be an emanation of the aforesaid Psyche. It is evident, therefore, that Psyche has already visited the palace of Cupid; I heartily hope that she is not now upon her road to the infernal regions.

  I passed the morning in driving about the estate: my house is frightful to look at, but very clean and comfortable in the in side; some of the scenery is very picturesque, from the lively green of the trees and shrubs, and the. hermitage-like appearance of the negro buildings, all situated in little gardens and embosomed in sweet-smelling shrubberies. Indeed, everything appears much better than I expected; the negroes seem healthy and contented, and so perfectly at their ease that our English squires would be mightily astonished at being accosted so familiarly by their farmers. This delightful north wind keeps the air temperate and agreeable. I live upon shaddocks and pine apples. The dreaded mosquitoes are not worse than gnats, nor as bad as the Sussex harvest-bugs; and, as yet, I never felt my self in more perfect health. There was a man once who fell from the top of a steeple, and perceiving no inconvenience in his passage through the air, " Come," said be to himself, while in the act of falling, " really this is well enough yet, if it would but last." Cubina, my young Savannah la Mar acquaintance is appointed my black attendant; and as I had desired him to bring me any native flowers of Jamaica, this evening he brought me a very pretty one; the negroes, he said, called it " John-to-Heal," but in white language it was hoccoco-pickang; it proved to be the wild ipecacuanha.

  January 4.

  There were three things against which I was particularly cautioned, and which three things I was determined not to do,- to take exercise after ten in the day ; to be exposed to the dews after sun-down; and to sleep at a Jamaica lodging-house. So, yesterday, I set off for Montego Bay at eight o'clock in the morning, and travelled till three; walked home from a ball after midnight; and that home was a lodging-house at Montego Bay; but the lodging-house was such a cool, clean lodging-house, and the landlady was such an obliging, smiling landlady, with the whitest of all possible teeth, and the blackest of all possible eyes, that no harm. could happen to me from occupying, an apartment -which been prepared by her. She was called out of her bed to make my room read for me; Yet she did everything with so much good will and cordiality-no quick answers, no mutterings : inns would be bowers of Paradise if they were all rented by mulatto landladies like Judy James.

  I was much pleased with the scenery of Montego Bay, and with the neatness and cleanliness of the town; indeed, what with the sea washing it, and the picturesque aspect of the piazzas and verandas, it is impossible for a West Indian town so situated, and in such a climate, not to present an agreeable appearance. But the first. part of the road exceeds in beauty all that I have ever seen; it wound through mountain-lands of my own, their summits of the boldest, and at the same time of the most beautiful shapes; their sides ornamented with bright green woods of bamboo, logwood, prickly-yellow, broad-leaf, and trumpet trees; and so completely covered with the most lively verdure, that once, when we found a piece of barren rock, Cubina pointed it out to me as a curiosity,-" Look, Massa, rock", quite naked!" The cotton-tree presented itself on all-sides; but as this is the season for its shedding its leaves, its wide- spreading bare white arms contributed nothing to the beauty of the scene, except where the wild-fig and various creeping plants had completely mantled the stems and branches; and then its gigantic height, and the fantastic wreathings of its limbs, from which numberless green withes and strings of wild flowers were streaming, rendered it exactly the very tree for which a landscape-painter would have wished. The air, too, was delicious; the flagrance of the sweet-wood, and of several other scented trees, but, above all, of the delicious logwood (of which most of the fences in Westmoreland are made), composed an atmosphere such, that if Satan, after promising them "a buxom air, embalmed with odours," had transported Sin and' Death thither, the charming couple must have acknowledged their papa's promises fulfilled.

  We travelled the first ten miles (Montego Bay being about thirty from my estate of Cornwall) without seeing a human creature; nor, indeed, anything that had life in it, except a black snake basking in the sunshine, and a few John-Crows - a species of vulture, whose utility is so great that its destruction is prohibited by law, under a heavy penalty. In a country where putrefaction is so rapid, it is of infinite consequence to preserve an animal which, if a bullock or horse falls dead in the held, immediately flies to the carcass before it has time to corrupt, and gobbles it up before you can say " John Crow," much less " Jack Robinson.". The bite of the black snake is slightly venomous, but that is all-, as to the great yellow one, it -is perfectly innoxious, and so timid that it always runs away from you. The only dangerous species of serpent is the whip-snake, so called from its exactly resembling the lash of a whip, in length, thinness, pliability, and whiteness; but even the bite of this is not mortal) except from very great neglect, The most beautiful tree, c rather group of trees, all to nothing, is the bamboo, both from its Verdure and from its elegance of form : as to the -cotton-tree it answers no purpose, either of ornament or utility; or, rather it is not suffered to answer any, since it is forbidden by law to export its down, lest it should hurt the fur trade in the manufacture of hats: its only present use is to furnish the negroes, with canoes, which are hollowed out of its immense trunks. I am yet so much enchanted with the country, that it would require no very strong additional inducements to make me establish myself here altogether ; and, in that case, my first care would be to build for myself a cottage among these mountains, in which I might pass the sultry months,-

  " E bruna-si; ma il bruno il bel non toglie."

  JANUARY 5.

  As I was returning this morning from Montego Bay, about a mile from my own estate, a figure presented itself before me, I really think the most picturesque that I ever beheld - it was a mulatto girl, born upon Cornwall, but whom the overseer of a neighbouring estate bad obtained my permission to exchange for another slave, as well as two little children, whom she had borne to him ; but, as yet, lie has been unable to procure a substitute, owing to the difficulty of purchasing single negroes, and Mary Wiggins is still my slave. However, as she is considered as being manumitted, she had not dared to present herself at Cornwall on my arrival, lest she should have been considered as an intruder; but she now threw herself in my way to tell me how glad she was to see me, for that she ; had always thought till now (which is the general complaint) that " she had no massa ;" and also to obtain a regular invitation to my negro festival tomorrow. By this universal complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, their greatest fear is the not having a master whom they know ; and that to be told by the negroes of another estate that 41 they belong to no massa," is one of the
most contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when they happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered for Montego Bay the next morning they fancied that I was going away for good and all, and came up to the house in such a hubbub, that my agent was obliged to speak to them, and pacify them with the assurance that I should come back on Friday without fail.

  But to return to Mary Wiggins: she was much too pretty not to obtain her invitation to Cornwall; on the contrary, I insisted upon her coming, and bade her tell her husband that I admired his taste very much for having chosen her. I really think that her form and features were the most statue-like that I ever met with: her complexion had no yellow in it, and yet was bot brown enough to be dark-it was more of an ash-dove colour than anything, else; her teeth were admirable, both for colour and shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour : her air and countenance would have suitedYarico; but she reminded me most of Grassini in " La Verginedel Sole," only that Mary Wiggins was a thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of' a white robe, she wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonized ex-cellently with her complexion; while one of her beautiful arms was thrown across her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of rings on her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. Mary Wiggins and an old cotton-tree are the most picturesque objects that I have seen for these twenty years.