Image unavailable: NIGHT, ANOTTA BAY, JAMAICANIGHT, ANOTTA BAY, JAMAICA
WildMan Street is the central place of Jamaican gaiety. In the day-time it seems an ordinary street, white in the roadway and green in its walls of painted houses. The evening shadows blacken the place into an abode of infamy.
We drove there through the wild scents of a tropic night. The bejewelled skies sparkled no brighter than the flashing insects; the fresh sea breeze struggled in vain to kill the half Eastern scents of the garden flowers and aromatic woods. The singing of the insects made music which the soft air translated into a sweet lullaby. As you drive to the town of Kingston, the noises and the scents become more and more suggestive of the East. The place might be Ceylon, Yokohama, or Hong Kong. We were to see a bungalow which might be found with equal ease in the byways of any of these places; the difference existing only in the skins and tongues of the women. The place was larger than an ordinary house of the working people; the gaining of fugitive wealth is the only compensation looked for by the Jamaican dancing women.
The reception room was fitted with cheap muslins and common bamboo furniture. The stained wood floor was relieved in patches by tiny squares of matting or cheap imitations of the carpets of Turkey. Several of the rickety tables supported brass ash trays in which cheap and evil-smelling pastils smouldered unhealthily, half drowning the odour of the scents the women used. With finger rings made of silver, flashing with lack lustre glass or paste; arms and necks encircled with coral or cheap pearl bands, the women, gowned in flowing robes of white or yellow, listlessly sustained a difficult part. It is difficult for a gay woman to appear gay without the aid of strong liquors. This place is one of the houses where the women dance only at the bidding of white men, the black man is not a welcome guest. The women call themselves white; really they are brown or yellow or nearly black. They use powder freely, and cheap rouge also. The effect is awful; a black man in war streaks of white or vermilion is not more hideous; they speak the pigeon English of an affected Eurasian, with a tincture of the sing-song drawl of an educated negro. To these women all the other natives of Jamaica are coloured. They speak of the England they have never seen as home. White men are “chaps” or “felhers”; whisky is their drink, and they suggest with proud frankness that they are the daughters of great white men. But coloured people, especially coloured people of this class, are not infallible. We gave them money, which they received with the grace of a dissatisfied four-wheel cab driver,
Image unavailable: A COLOURED GIRLA COLOURED GIRL
but they produced liquor and became animated. White teeth flashed and the accent became more coloured and so more natural. It was not pretty talk, and it was lacking in the elements of refinement. The gaiety of the women of this class always seems forced. As they talked and gesticulated the paint and powder flaked off their cheeks as whitewash scales off a crumpled ceiling. They lost their reserve and found abandon. One, of uncertain age but decided embonpoint, took up a mandoline, which was well varnished and hung with ribbons, but badly tuned, and sang a song. The words were indistinct; the title of the song I never knew; the tune I am glad to have forgotten.
The doors were closed and window shutters drawn; the unholy stench of the pastils filled the room with suffocating smoke; it was as though these women acted their parts and had obtained cheap properties and mismanaged scenic effects. The amusement of the place, if it existed at all, was colourless in the extreme. The dancing we did not see. So we left the place and found the sweet-smelling night breeze.
If it is possible to find a place in which the stupefying smoke of a burning pastil is not altogether bad, I would suggest that that place might be a hall in which black people are dancing the dignity dance. To the white man the negro is not without a curious odour, which seems to get more powerful when the black man takes violent exercise. Picture a room, bare as a barn, painted light blue, and filled to overflowing with people of all shades of colour, from ebony to dark walnut.Though the window shutters are half open the light night breeze is too delicate to cool all the people in a room whose temperature must be above one hundred degrees. Arranged in couples the dancers are executing most weird and complicated antics—some with a certain degree of grace and rhythm—to the noise of a band of three tired musicians. Probably the dancing would be more regular if the music were abolished. If the three men were playing the same tune, each had learned the piece in different time, and was playing his hardest in order to show the others how the thing should really run. However the dancers did not mind, so the spectator had no right to grumble. The dancing waxed more furious, and the lagging music raced to keep pace with the spirit of the dancers. The more excited of the twirling crowd began to chant a weird chorus; the words seemed to be entirely impromptu, the melody was monotonous, and somehow it reminded me of the muffled sound of a band of tom-toms. The dignity dance itself, if it has any set arrangement at all, is something like the visiting and the grand chain in our lancers. The dancers, twirling in couples at most giddy speed, frequently separated, and the men in a long line approached the women, who in turn retired. When the wall is reached the men retire, and the women do the advancing. A sudden bang on the part of the orchestra, and a shout by the eager dancers, is the signal for the breaking of the lines; and the men snatch their partners and twirl more giddy circles. Interesting as the dancing was it could not be calledeither fascinating or unique. Save for the coloured skin of the dancers, and the curious odour of the room, a similar scene can be witnessed in any European ballroom. From the dignity ballroom we went to a concert hall where all the performers were coloured and all the audience jet black. The performers seemed to enjoy the entertainment most of all.
The songs were delivered in European concert fashion, and they were mostly well known ballads:—“Robin Adair,” “I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble Halls,” and other old airs of that description. It was not an interesting performance. But the audience applauded everything, they encored everyone, and when a reciter appeared and gave a rendering of Hamlet by “Mr. William Shakespeare” members of the audience could scarcely contain themselves. It was a bad recitation, but I fancy the people in the body of the hall had paid their entrance money and were determined to make the best of the business. Certainly they seemed to like hearing themselves shout. We asked a supercilious half-breed, who wore an evening suit and a crimson necktie, where we could hear some native singing.
“If,” said he, “you refer to the songs of the negroes, I can only indicate the low rum shops, and even there it is not permitted.”
Evidently his opinion of the musical abilities of the black man was not a high one. However we accepted his advice and journeyed to the rum shops.
In the architecture of their drinking saloons, as innearly everything else, the Jamaicans have imitated New York rather than London. You enter a swing door and discover a long room fitted with a serving counter, and otherwise bare of furniture. A man presides over the rum bottles, and the drinkers are mostly negroes of the richer class; small shopkeepers, clerks, buggymen, and adventurers. We put our heads in the doors of many of the drinking shops but we never heard the native music.
We had to be content with a pilgrimage through the deserted streets of the capital. Save for a few buggies and now and then a noisy road car, Kingston was almost deserted. At some of the street corners groups of men were engaged in violent conversation, and occasionally we saw a policeman; otherwise the empty pavements echoed only the noise of our walking. There are no theatres in Jamaica, and all the wealthier people live in the distant suburbs. The poorer black men who live in the side streets of the town have to be up betimes, so they do not waste their strength by keeping up late at night. It is a cold and a deathly place at night, this little town of Kingston. No shop keeps open after dark; no lights appear in the windows of the houses; no crowds of people promenade the High Street, and jostle each other in friendly rivalry.
Occasionally when passing a house we heard the echo of laughter, and sometimes merry noise of music, but as a rule the homes were dark and silent. It seemed a decayed, deserted city; a place from which all people had fled.
Image unavailable: A SOLDIER OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIMENTA SOLDIER OF THE WEST INDIAN REGIMENT
InJamaica the Army is mainly considered as a prop to society. Among the whites the officers are in great request as dancing men, players at the game of tennis and possible husbands for fair daughters. Among the blacks the same applies to the coloured Tommy, except that there is no tennis. The West Indian regiments have seen service, and have proved their metal as fighting men in various parts of Africa. The West Indian Colonels are as proud of their black regiments as any commander of any white battalion of the line. But the languorous atmosphere of Jamaica does not suggest strife; so, the tendency among Jamaicans, high and low, rich and poor, is to regard the military as purely social people. When the Governor is one guest short at a dinner or luncheon or tennis function, an officer is requisitioned from the nearest garrison or camp. When Mama is hard up for men at one of her select dances, the subaltern receives a dainty invitation.
In the day-time the young West Indian Army officer gets through his early morning work as quickly as possible,and then scrambles, schoolboy fashion, into the playing fields. Drill is over by midday, and then the uniform (khaki and sun helmet) is flung aside for cool flannels or polo breeches. From midday until four the hours must be spent inside a house, away from the sun. So after luncheon it is forty winks, or cards or a game of pool. Then, when the full heat of the sun has smouldered into the early evening glow, the games begin. Polo, cricket, tennis, or golf; these are the first favourites. A few will take a spin on a fast pony; others, it may be, will sail across Kingston Bay and take a surf bath among the palisadoes. But for the majority it is either polo, cricket, tennis, or golf. Golf for seniors, polo for the young subaltern newly joined, tennis for the older captains, and cricket for full lieutenants. The two hours between four and six mark the playtime for the Jamaican Army. After six the clubhouses or mess smokerooms tinkle with the music of many glasses, as the young officers refresh themselves after two hours’ work in a climate marking well above 100° on the thermometer. An hour with pipes and comrades over the friendly glass, and then a bath and dinner. After dinner the officer becomes the social animal, and the messroom and barrack-yard know him no more till midnight. That is the life of the Army officer. It is rather dull and a little monotonous; but the young men make the most of it and meanwhile pray for leave and England.
With the Colonial Tommy it is different. He works at his drill or musketry and then, at midday,
Image unavailable: A TROPICAL LANDSCAPE NEAR CASTLETONA TROPICAL LANDSCAPE NEAR CASTLETON
dines. If he can he gets off for the afternoon; then he lounges into Kingston and plumes himself on the side walks to the admiration of the black and yellow girls. No sun has any terrors for your true West Indian soldier. His skull is thick enough even without the protection of his smart undress cap. His amusement is similar to that of an English Tommy in any garrison town, except that he does not drink so much. He is the idol of the populace; especially on the afternoon of the Sabbath, when, after Church is over, he is permitted to parade at large in the brilliant full-dress uniform of his regiment. Scarlet and yellow or scarlet and white, zouave jackets, and white or yellow spats, his get up is that of a French Zouave West Indianised; and he is the King of feminine Jamaica. He is popular among men and women alike, since the civilian men are conscious of a reflected grandeur when in company with a soldier in full dress. A military comrade helps them with the women, just as one returned yeoman peopled a smokeroom with heroes during our South African War. The black Tommy is paid his shilling a day, just as though he were a redcoated white man. He was recruited in some West Indian island, or in Western Africa in the district Sierra Leone,—he cares not where, for now his home is the cool barrack-room,—and he is quite content to stand before a few thousand people as a soldier of the King. Generally he has at least one silver medal to show that he has heard the music of the Martini fired in anger. He has fought savage races in lands where a white man has no right to go, and he knowsthat he has his value. He is not jealous of the draft of the white British regiment which, for some unknown reason, is always to be found in the hills somewhere about Newcastle; he is not jealous because he is too conscious of superiority. Could a white regiment have marched in the full glare of the noon sun through Ashanti and not dropped a man? Could a white man pierce jungle and fight through malarious tangled undergrowth, wading slimy swamps, swimming rushing rivers, and live? Can any company of white soldiers march with the swing of a West Indian Regiment when the black pipers shriek the quick-step?
When the white men think they can, and say so, then West India rises by half companies and ties service razors on stout sticks of ebony, and there is riot in the land of perpetual sunshine. Black men are mauled with heavy belts in the fashion of the British Infantry, and white men stagger home gashed with razor cuts and faint for lack of blood. When the civil war is over, each side, conscious of victory, willingly forgives and for several months forgets. Then peace is found among the huts at Newcastle, and sweet peace amidst the tents of the plains.
The black troops insist that it is necessary that their women should be treated with respect, even deference, by their white brothers in arms. This the white Tommy has not yet learned to do. Possibly the lesson is difficult owing to the infinite extent of the acquaintanceship with feminine Jamaica peculiar to the West Indian regiments. Every lady is a friend of somesoldier’s friend, if she is not his sister, aunt, wife, or mother. So trouble sometimes springs from this source. Then it is out belts and razors until the officers intervene. Shots have been fired, but this is unusual. And the result of the court-martial offers no encouragement to would-be marksmen. As a rule the Tommies, black and white, mix and fraternise as well as may be expected. Each has a large respect, well mixed with a great contempt, for his alien brother. Each serves the same white King whose dominion over all the earth is unquestioned. The King is the common sentiment to which hangs the brotherhood of the British soldiers, white and black.
On the other hand the Jamaican police are not popular with the people of the island. The uniform they wear is not sufficiently striking; there is no great blaze of colour—no suggestion of power or rank or beauty. A plain white tunic and dark blue trousers with a red stripe, a simple white helmet and plain black leather boots, make up the uniform of the Constabulary. It is impossible for a negro to respect such a costume, or to be proud of a police so uniformed. So the people have come to look upon the policemen as workers; men made for use, and not turned out for the sake of ornamenting a town already bright and picturesque enough. And it may be that this is the reason why the Jamaican constable is regarded as a judicial potentate—a man whose word is law—a person to be avoided, even feared. The presence of a policeman stops the noisy jabber or a street crowd offruit-sellers; his approach melts a group of excited quarrellers; his uplifted hand stems the tide of rushing traffic—just as it is in England. The police are efficient and unpopular. The constable alone among the inhabitants of Kingston does not lounge and laugh and chatter. If he smiles it is with an air of conscious superiority. The mouths of the men are curved downwards in the form of a perpetual sneer. The law cannot be merry; the limbs of the law may not be humanly happy.
The Jamaican police force is well organised and very efficient. There are inspectors and sub-inspectors, staff-sergeants and sergeants and constables, and above all one white Chief. Most of the senior officers are white men; the rank and file are black and brown, and yellow and dusky white. It is on the rank and file that the work of Government falls. A plain constable in Jamaica is a far more powerful man than any white-gloved, long-sworded police inspector in England. Every regulation beat in the island of rivers is a courthouse, presided over by an impartial and all powerful policeman-judge. Fifty times a day he will be called upon to arbitrate in matters of great delicacy. It may be that there is a doubt in the minds of two women as to the ownership of a valuable article of diet or furniture. The policeman weighs the evidence of witnesses and pronounces judgment. He will, in cases of real necessity, administer the oath to people whose mere word is open to doubt, and he makes people swear, Scotch fashion, with uplifted hands.
Round such street-corner courts small crowds are allowed to congregate, and respectfully listen to the words of one whose knowledge of police-court ritual stands him in good stead. I have heard a policeman restore to a woman that good name which the jealousy of a chattering neighbour had flung to the four winds; the same man afterwards settled a knotty point in regard to the freshness of a heap of fish which a despondent purchaser pleaded were bad. This was a serious case; the constable smelt the fish and handled them with the reverence of an usher for a barrister’s brief bag. In this instance the judgment of the constable gave satisfaction to one man and made him unpopular with a crowd. It was openly suggested that he had received a promise of largess from the man whose case he upheld. As a body the force has a Spartan-like love for unpopularity, born of the exhibition of unbending power in performing their illegal office of judge and jury. I once toured the side streets of the city with a pompous black sergeant who obviously knew the town only from the kerbstone to the railing. The Jamaica police have no eyes that see through brick walls. They have a love for intrigue, but lack the capacity of meeting cunning with detective craft. If a thing is to be seen with the naked eye they see it well enough; but, as a rule, they have no imagination and no power of working up theories. Sherlock Holmes would have been a chemist only had he been born a negro.
Every constable seems to imagine that, socially and politically, he is far above the ordinary inhabitant. Hefeels towards his coloured brethren in about the same way as a cavalry colonel feels towards a newly-joined militia private. Between a member of the constabulary force and an ordinary person there can be no close friendship. The black policeman lives in a atmosphere of the police court, and seems always to regard every member of the public as a possible prisoner and a certain criminal. Really in his heart I think he feels the bitterness of his exalted loneliness. He inwardly regrets the necessity of his aloofness from human pleasures. He would probably prefer to be a soldier. This he will never admit, even to himself. But, I repeat, probably he would prefer to be a soldier of the line. The uniform is better; it is far more picturesque. And the men of the West Indian Regiments combine dignity and popularity in a manner entirely mystifying to the Jamaican police. Besides, the brilliant-soldier companies march down the high road to the music of pipes and drums, and the weary constable has to stand by and see that the road is clear. The soldier is a picturesque hero; the police constable is—a constable of justice and nothing more.
Image unavailable: OUTSIDE A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSEOUTSIDE A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSE
A squareroom painted white and fitted with dull red benches and a raised platform; on the platform the magistrate, a weary-looking man with faded hair and wrinkled face, and eyes screened by gold-rimmed spectacles. As he sits, listlessly playing with his papers, apparently indifferent to the pleadings of the prisoners, or the garrulous stormings of nervous witnesses, he seems to suggest a tired speculator reading the first official details of his own bankruptcy. Occasionally he raises his voice and a hushed court hears, “All right, get down now,” and a witness, only just sufficiently recovered from nervousness to have reached the period of unintelligible verbosity, gets down with a sulky jerk and proud bearing. All Jamaican negroes speak a language officially known as English. From the fact that it is alleged that he can understand the unbroken flow of their fearful eloquence, the magistrate must be counted a man of consummate linguistic ability. In front of the platform is a huge table, at which all the whites and yellow-whites of the district are foregatheredto witness the administration of justice. At the head of the table, and at the feet of the magistrate, is the clerk; an ancient man with the remains of a weak voice, and a habit of looking over his steel eye-glasses in the approved scholastic style. He is an important, if not a picturesque personage. The decorative touch is afforded to the court by the appearance of the inspector of police. He sits at another corner of the large table behind a great white helmet carefully placed on the summit of a large pile of important blue papers, in the proper crown and cushion fashion. The helmet is the police inspector’s shield and guard, and badge of office. It is an inflexible example of the power and nobility of the law; it is an object on which the prisoners may fasten their eyes, should they be unable to gaze for ever into the inscrutable depths of the spectacles of the presiding magistrate. Compared with the magistrate, the clerk and the inspector of police, the other whites and yellow-whites are unimportant. Planters and tradesmen, and commission agents, they lounge gracelessly round the table, fingering their riding whips or pulling at the ends of their scrubby beards. The table marks the boundary line of the charmed circle, into which only the whites, and the not very yellow-whites, may enter with impunity. Beyond, in the public benches, grouped carelessly in picturesque disorder, are the natives. A sweltering crowd it is, throbbing with silence, just as the tropical midday throbs with heat. The prisoner at the bar, a ragged, unkempt negro, whose cleaner father must have come from the malarialswamps behind the Gold Coast, is answering to a charge of stealing, feloniously and with malicious intent, one and a half pairs of meat known and described (in Jamaica and elsewhere) as pig’s trotters. As we entered, the prisoner at the bar was tearing at the mangy patches of his mud-coloured hair, and pleading “I no took them master, sir, yer honor, I no took them; I ask to be set free. I no see them, I no eat them, ’fore God in ’eaven.”
It was interesting to watch the varied emotions playing over the expressive faces of the watching crowd of the man’s enemies and friends. Enemies first, because the natives seemed as cruelly thoughtless, and quite as vicious, as the ladies in any balcony at a Spanish bull-ring. When the monotonous mumble of the magistrate has finished, only the pleased smile of the prisoner told us the news of his acquittal. To the unexperienced ear, the magistrate’s mumble was just as incomprehensible as any of the jargon of the witnesses themselves.
The next two or three cases were concerned with the question of paternity, and in each instance the plaintive lady received the consolation of eighteen-pence a week for a period of years. Then followed a charge of assault. One lady had beaten another with an implement remotely resembling a carpenter’s stool. On each side there were many witnesses and, apparently, many liars. One coquette in a West Indian gown of yellow, green, blue, and pink, ventured to repeat to the court some of the vulgar abuse which, in her opinion,contributed to, and completely justified, the assault referred to. Hers was an eloquent and ingenious pleading. First, she swore before God and Heaven that the assault was not an assault at all, “Ester did not lay a finger on the woman”; then she justified the assault in language which stirred even the lethargic magistrate. “Such language will do your friend no good; it only serves to show that you are a low abandoned woman"—he ventured to remark in a low, even monotone.
“So’s she, she is low and abandoned too; she is ... and she said".... The woman was on her metal, and desired above all things to incriminate the enemy of her friend.
In the end someone was fined eight shillings and costs. Who it was I never knew; but my impression is that it was either a witness or the police constable.
Two young and innocent-looking boys were charged by a one-legged baker with stealing a loaf, value one penny. The baker was evidently a man of parts, one of which was religion. He kissed the book with a vivacious reverence and commenced, “Your Honour and gentlemen:—Them two boys Simon Fogarty and Thomas Smiff was in my bakery on the pretence of executing a purchase. I ask them to lift a board in order that I may take up bread enough to supply them. They become impertinent. I rebuke them. They only laugh and say I too much fool. I again rebuke them, and then I get over the counter in order to chastise them. They fly; but I seize one, Simon
Image unavailable: A NEGRO NURSE WITH CHINESE CHILDREN, JAMAICAA NEGRO NURSE WITH CHINESE CHILDREN, JAMAICA
Fogarty, and he struggle so hard that I oblige to call in the aid of Constable Perkin, who shall come before your Honour and say I speak the truth only. When I go back to my shop I find that one loaf had gone. I run into the street and see Thomas Smiff with my loaf to his lips. I call witness to see him also, and they tell you how the wicked boy, who is the pest of the street, eat my loaf for which I receive no payment.” The police constable confirmed the baker’s statement, and the magistrate looked bored to extinction. It is just the police court in which that ancient suburban drama “Black justice” might be performed with propriety.
In spite of the eloquence of the baker and the accurate testimony of the police constable, those boys might have been let off with a caution; but, just as justice was looking its weakest, the police inspector rose, and, placing one hand gracefully upon the summit of his helmet, addressed the court.
“May I venture to say that those boys are the most incorrigible rascals in the district. They do no work; they are dirty, lazy, and a terror to the neighbourhood. They give more trouble to the police than any other man or woman on the island.” The quality of mercy is immediately strained, and although the pardon flows out (mainly because the baker requests it) the dregs remain in a sentence to come up for judgment when called upon to do so.
The boys jointly attempt to hide a wide and intelligent grin behind the battered remains of what must once have been a felt hat.
And so the court goes on.
The merry hum of the day insects mingles with the shrill tones of singing birds, and the chatter of anxious litigants in the yard below. The magistrate continues his anxious calculations, and the clerk is assiduous in his endeavours to balance a pair of rusty pince-nez on a nose obviously too slippery with sweat. The police inspector frowns round the room from behind the majestic screen of his helmet, and the black usher shouts silence, or swears a witness after the usual caution of “Take se bible in you righ’ ’and"....
Image unavailable: TROPICAL RAINTROPICAL RAIN
Inthe streets of Kingston I had frequently seen companies of one or other of the brilliant West Indian Regiments swinging along to the music of their drums, and on dance and dinner nights I had noticed Artillery officers lounging about the terraces of my hotel. I had seen a couple of Service Corps men trying their polo ponies, and afar off, among a sparkling group of bejewelled women, I once caught sight of a glittering aide-de-camp. But of our friend Tommy of the line I had seen nothing. A friendly Artilleryman assured me that some of the British Line were on the island. I met him in the Kingston High Street, and he pointed towards the mountain chain which overhangs the town. “They’re up there,” he said. Following his direction, I saw a few white specks faintly showing through the summit haze of a mountain peak. The white specks, I discovered, were the cantonments of Newcastle, the military hill station of Jamaica.
The next morning we started at nine, and drove along shaded lanes and dusty, open roads, flanked bygardens and plantations, banana trees, pines, and cocoanuts. Around us the air was transparently clear, above us a sky of the deepest blue, and everywhere—above, below and around—we felt the sun. For two miles we had the level road, and then we reached the mountains.
A rushing mountain torrent crashing through a deep chasm filled almost to the brim with giant boulders, on which trees and plants and creeping flowers had found abundant soil; a road twisting like a tangled thread up and along the face of the mountain, and then lost in the mists of the summit; a heavy scent of tropical flowers; a vast sea of flashing colour—these things marked the beginning of the mountains. Slowly we crawled along a road just wide enough to contain our buggy. On one side the mountain walled us in; on the other a precipice deepened as we ascended. The valley below and the walls around were clothed in yellow grass and thickly set with trees; cotton and pine and cocoanut, banana, orange, and a hundred others grew in clumps and groves and lines, just as their father-seed had fallen or casual native had chanced to plant. Sometimes we passed a mile or so of level stretch, and there we found plantations and nigger huts. Below us we could see coffee mills and sugar estates; halfway up another peak a little church appeared amidst a tiny hamlet; but far above we made out Newcastle and the upper heights, bare and frowning amidst the gloom of the mountain mists. Soon the climate changed. In place of fruit and flowers, we found brown scrub and English gorse. Rainbows became common as trees. Then the sun disappeared,
Image unavailable: A HOUSE ON THE HILLSA HOUSE ON THE HILLS
and we found the clammy rain-mist. Somehow we had slipped away from joyous sun-kissed Jamaica and found Newcastle.
If I were a soldier I should pray all day long that I might never see the military station at Newcastle. Imagine a small parade-ground, levelled by spade work; a straggling collection of huts, built on never-ending steps; a few cottages for the officers; a very obvious burial-ground, well stocked with tombstones streaked with names, planted among the huts just outside the reading-room, and you have the cantonments of Newcastle. On the parade-ground, half a yard from the face of a step of rock thirty feet high, a couple of posts and a tape enable the sporting Tommy to practise goal shooting from dawn till sunset. Failing this he has half-a-dozen six-week old English newspapers in the reading-room, and a magnificent view of Kingston always to be seen through the mists and rain which seem for ever to bedim this eerie camp. The officers, I believe, have a tennis-court; but for Tommy it is shooting the goal, the newspapers, or the view, if he wishes to avoid the cells. Otherwise——
I heard the story from Tommy himself. He showed us the camp; first the burial-ground, and then—“Well there ain’t much more to see ’ere. That’s the parade-ground, and that’s the sergeants’ mess. We sleeps over there, and bein’ Sunday, the canteen don’t open to-day till six. We usually shoots the goal, and smokes, and sometimes we rags the blacks. See that nigger ’ut? Well, we goes there sometimes—of course, it’s out’er bounds—and takes the beer and rags the blacks. Once we chucked three or four of ’em over the gully because they set on one of ours. There’s one or two in cells now for molestin’ the natives. Then some of us deserts, you know. Goes off down to the coast, ships as firemen and gets to the States. I ’aven’t done that yet. Don’t know why we come up ’ere; there ain’t no fever nowhere now....” It was a long and interesting description he gave us. I gathered that in spite of the parade-ground and kicking the goal; in spite of the reading-room, with its platform and soldier-painted scenery; in spite even of the tiny billiard-table and the picturesque cemetery, the life of Tommy in garrison at Newcastle is not a jolly one. Tired of doing the things he is allowed to do, and without the means to appreciate expensive joys of the canteen, the youthful, full-blooded soldier sallies forth on mischief bent. Then he experiences a salutary change of scenery in the confines of the cells. Sometimes, as our friend remarked, he deserts.
Every year for many weary months a few hundred Tommies do these things in Newcastle. Kingston and the plains are peopled by tourists in search of health and pleasure; the climate of the island is entirely salubrious; Jamaica is a recognised sanatorium; but the Government says that the British soldier must live in the Hill station so many months of the year. It is a ridiculous story, something in the nature of a repetition of the blunders of fifty years ago. Then the British regiments were sent to garrison Fort Augusta, a camp delightfullysituated in the midst of a deadly swamp. From Fort Augusta the military authorities jumped to Newcastle. Fifty years hence these gentlemen may realise that the plains of Jamaica are perfectly healthy, and that Newcastle is really a little dull; until then—poor Tommy.
Newcastle is not unhealthy: it is merely a little damp and a little dull. From the point of view of the tourist it is magnificent. The romantic grandeur of the giant mountain chains stretching east and west; the wonderful view of town and harbour; the marvellous colour effects; the cathedral-like solemnity of the place—all these things are delightful in the extreme. But I turned my back on the place without regret. For I remembered that far below the valleys were bathed in light and warmth and colour. I knew that halfway down the mountain I should find the orange, the passion flower, and the scented air of the tropics. And I was glad when the horses bumped us along the path which zigzagged downwards through the clouds to the land of sunshine.
Image unavailable: GOING TO WORK, BARBADOESGOING TO WORK, BARBADOES
Foremostin the list of a negro’s recreations should be placed the game of love. The black man makes love with the persistency of a Don Juan and with the fervour of a Mexican. He learns his first lessons in courtship long before the school-day age is over. Every boy of twelve has his honey girl, just as every coloured man of sixteen has his wife. There is an Arcadian touch in their love meetings—a fascinating rhythm of sensuous art in their songs of passion. The concert platforms and music halls of London have reflected, not incorrectly, many negro love stories; and the large straw hats and white pants and extravagant phraseology may be counted as roughly typical of the costume and poetry of Jamaica. The negro makes love with the natural freedom of a savage, but the Jamaican negro tempers his love-making with poetic entreaty. I can imagine that the Jamaican loves to hear the sonorous doggerel of his own ecstatic wooing—that he pleads with his mistress as much for his own pleasure as for hers. The black lady listens, and loves to listen, because his extravagantpraise appeals to her vanity, and the black lady is as vain as any white daughter of a rich “buccra.” It may come as a shock and surprise to most of my readers to learn that the love-sick black man sometimes declares his love by letter. Whether this is always due to bashfulness or to the accident of geographical distance, I know not. But I have been privileged to read one or two impassioned missives duly authenticated as being the love letters of coloured men to dusky belles. They are interesting enough for reproduction here. I obtained them from a copy of a Christmas number of a Jamaican paper—theGleanerof Kingston.
The first is written by a love-sick native to a Creole widow. It is addressed in full to
“Mrs. Agostiss R——.“I hope you know Valintine is now in season. I will take the pleasure to write you this; my hearth is yours and you are mine, but do you know it. I love you as the bee love the flower. The flower may fade, but true love shall never. My love for you is a love that cannot be fade. You shall be my love here as in heaven for ever. The Rose in June is not so sweet as when two lovers’ kisses meet. Kiss me quick and be my honey. I still remain true lover,“James.”
“Mrs. Agostiss R——.
“I hope you know Valintine is now in season. I will take the pleasure to write you this; my hearth is yours and you are mine, but do you know it. I love you as the bee love the flower. The flower may fade, but true love shall never. My love for you is a love that cannot be fade. You shall be my love here as in heaven for ever. The Rose in June is not so sweet as when two lovers’ kisses meet. Kiss me quick and be my honey. I still remain true lover,
“James.”
James is an honest and prosperous black man in the mountains of Jamaica. It is pleasant to know that “Mrs. Agostiss” listened to his simple appeal and became “his honey.”
The second epistle has a religious flavour. King Solomon is artfully brought forward as a sort of “backer” of the ardent writer’s suit:—
“My dear Love—At present my love for you is so strong that I cannot express. So I even write that you may see it. It is every man deauty to write a formil letter.“My pen is bad and my ink is pale, but my love will never fail. King Solomon say that Love is strong as death, and Jealousy is cruel than the grave. Love me little, bear me longer; hasty love is not love at all. This is the first time I sat down to write you about it.“I love my Dove. Your love is black and ruby—the chefer of ten thousand. You head is much fine gold. You lock are bushy and black as a raven. Your eyes was the eyes in the river, by the rivers of water. Your cheeks as a bead (i.e.bed) of spices as sweet flowers. Your lips is like lilies. You hand as gold wring. Your legs as a pillar of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance as a Lebanon. Your mouth look to be more sweet. Your sweet altogether.“I have no more time to write as I am so tired and full time to go to bead. I will now close my letter with love.”
“My dear Love—At present my love for you is so strong that I cannot express. So I even write that you may see it. It is every man deauty to write a formil letter.
“My pen is bad and my ink is pale, but my love will never fail. King Solomon say that Love is strong as death, and Jealousy is cruel than the grave. Love me little, bear me longer; hasty love is not love at all. This is the first time I sat down to write you about it.
“I love my Dove. Your love is black and ruby—the chefer of ten thousand. You head is much fine gold. You lock are bushy and black as a raven. Your eyes was the eyes in the river, by the rivers of water. Your cheeks as a bead (i.e.bed) of spices as sweet flowers. Your lips is like lilies. You hand as gold wring. Your legs as a pillar of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance as a Lebanon. Your mouth look to be more sweet. Your sweet altogether.
“I have no more time to write as I am so tired and full time to go to bead. I will now close my letter with love.”
Poor “Garg Plummer” is in a desperate plight indeed. It is to be hoped that his “dear lov” listened to his strong entreaty. But it could not be otherwise. What human woman could resist the following:—
“Dear Lov—I is wrote you a letter to beg of you to make me your lover, but you is not wrote me again. I is dead of love every day wen you look so hansom I cane (i.e.cannot) sleep, cane eat. I dun no how I feel. I beg you to accep af me as your lover. The rose is not sweet as a kiss from you, my lov.“Do meet me to-night at the bottom gate an give me you love. Miss Lucy toots (i.e.teeth) so green I is like one ear of earn, an her eye dem is so pretty. Lard! I wish I never been born. Poor me, Garg (i.e.George), I lov Miss Lucy to distraction. Yours truly,“Garg Plummer.“Answer me sone lov.”
“Dear Lov—I is wrote you a letter to beg of you to make me your lover, but you is not wrote me again. I is dead of love every day wen you look so hansom I cane (i.e.cannot) sleep, cane eat. I dun no how I feel. I beg you to accep af me as your lover. The rose is not sweet as a kiss from you, my lov.
“Do meet me to-night at the bottom gate an give me you love. Miss Lucy toots (i.e.teeth) so green I is like one ear of earn, an her eye dem is so pretty. Lard! I wish I never been born. Poor me, Garg (i.e.George), I lov Miss Lucy to distraction. Yours truly,
“Garg Plummer.
“Answer me sone lov.”
The fourth letter I reprint simply to show how a little greed may kill all the romance of a negro’s love. We trace an artificiality in his love passages. It is hoped that his note produced nothing but a silent contempt:—