Belle (2 page)

The white girl’s open book is a hint of her education and gentility. Few women in the eighteenth century went to school, but well-born girls were educated at home. A good library was an essential room in a gentleman’s country house: the book perhaps also serves to flatter the commissioner of the painting by implying that he has a particularly well-stocked collection.

The sitting girl holds her book in one hand, but our attention is drawn more to the other hand, the one that is stretched out: a white hand gripping the black arm of her companion. In the age of slavery-abolitionist fervour, the motto ‘Am I not a sister and a friend’ was often emblazoned on ladies’ pincushions and hair ornaments. Some modern spectators might feel that the black girl’s ‘ethnic’ costume, her basket of fruit and her sexually charged demeanour are degrading. But the hand gesture suggests affection and equality between the girls. For all the ambiguity of the image, the standing girl is ultimately represented as sister, cousin or friend, not as a servant, slave or inferior being. She is drawn into the picture as a cherished member of the family.

Portraits tell stories, and this one tells a story of love and sisterhood, unity between black and white, illegitimacy and gentility, vitality and virtue. A story, furthermore, that brings us to the very heart of a larger historical story: the abolition of the slave trade.

In the course of the last two and a bit centuries, this double portrait has moved between Kenwood House on the northern boundary of Hampstead Heath in London, where it was painted, and Scone Palace just outside Perth in Scotland. Kenwood House was, and Scone Palace is, the seat of the Earls of Mansfield. The portrait was commissioned some time in the late 1770s or early 1780s by William Murray, the first Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice and the most admired judge in eighteenth-century Britain. His name was by this time irrevocably linked with the question of slavery and abolition, as a result of his judgement in a famous case of 1772.

But these are not Lord Mansfield’s daughters. He and his wife Elizabeth (
née
Finch) were childless. The girl in the foreground of the picture is Lady Elizabeth Murray, his great-niece, who was brought up at Kenwood following the death of her own mother when she was a young child. For much of the twentieth century, the Mansfield descendants believed that the other girl was some kind of household servant. In an inventory of Kenwood taken in 1904, the portrait was described as ‘Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton with a Negress Attendant’, and attributed to the great society artist Johann Zoffany.
¹
There was a tradition of portraits of masters or mistresses with a servant or slave in the background. It was assumed that this was a variation on the theme, though with unusual prominence given to the servant. The family did not stop to consider the irony of Lord Mansfield, forever seen as a key figure in the abolition of slavery, commissioning a portrait that might seem to imply that he kept a slave himself. The painting remained little-known.

The old portrait plate at the bottom of the frame is still there today. It records the name of only the white girl – ‘The Lady Elizabeth Finch Hatton’. The black girl remains nameless, a blank.

It was only in the 1980s that she was identified. Her name was Dido Elizabeth Belle, and this book tells her story. She was a blood relative of the white girl in pink and the Mansfield family. The outline of Dido’s life has been pieced together, but details in the surviving archives are sparse. For a fuller picture of her life, we need to set her story in the wider context of slavery and abolition. The only way of glimpsing her life is through the lives of others.

2

The Captain

Captain Sir John Lindsay, Dido’s father

On 1 June 1760, HMS
Trent
was docked in Portsmouth harbour. Captain John Lindsay, commanding officer, oversaw her substantial refitting.
¹
Over the course of the following weeks provisions were brought aboard, the ship’s pine was varnished and there were some short trips into the English Channel to test the new rigging. At the end of the month, the
Trent
moved out to Spithead. Lindsay had to deal with a few men for drunkenness and insubordination. Extra sails and small arms were taken on board. An unknown sail was spotted off Portland Bill, and the
Trent
gave chase. She proved herself fully seaworthy. Preparations were finalised for a long voyage. In August she set sail for Porto Santo, then Madeira, then Tenerife. By the end of the month she was at anchor off Senegal, on the west coast of Africa.

Then to Cape Verde, where Lindsay moored in Gorse Road while the crew dried the sails and aired the bread. Soon they would be off the Gambia, and then out into open water, heading across the Atlantic in squally weather. On 18 October they approached the Caribbean island of Montserrat, and a pilot from a Bristol-based privateer came on board. Five days later the
Trent
engaged with a schooner in French colours and boarded her, only to find the crew gone, but the ship laden with sugar and coffee. They sent the prize to St Kitts. Captain Lindsay and his crew had undergone their initiation on the Caribbean front in the worldwide war between the great colonial powers of Europe.

John Lindsay was born in the year 1737, in the bracing climate of the Easter Ross district of the Scottish Highlands. He was the younger son of a baronet, Sir Alexander Lindsay, who had made a very good marriage to Emilia, daughter of the fifth Viscount Stormont. Emilia was the sister of William Murray, who would later become the first Earl of Mansfield. The choices for the younger sons of the gentry were fairly limited: the Church, the armed forces or a life of idleness. Lindsay went into the navy, which carried more opportunity for adventure than his other options. It was a good decision. He quickly proved himself a fine sailor and a leader of men.

Before the age of twenty he was made a lieutenant and put in command of the fireship
Pluto
. This was a hazardous occupation: fireships were converted merchantmen, filled with flammable materials and explosives, intended to be sent into enemy lines with the purpose of setting the enemy’s wooden vessels on fire. Sister vessels of the
Pluto
included the aptly named
Blast
,
Blaze
,
Etna
and
Vesuvius
. The danger of accidental combustion was great enough in peacetime, but Lindsay got his first command in the midst of the Seven Years War, arguably the first global war, during which the European powers – most notably Britain and France – played out their rivalries in their colonial and trade empires. Lindsay’s first expedition aboard the
Pluto
was as part of a fleet sent to capture the French Atlantic naval port of Rochefort. The mission was not a success, but Lindsay’s contribution earned him a new posting just a few weeks later. Now he had command of the twenty-eight-gun frigate
Trent
, recently constructed out of pine, which was quicker to build with but less durable than the traditional English oak. He served on the
Trent
for the rest of the war, first in home waters and then from the West Indian station.

Reports of his exploits were soon reaching the Admiralty. In February 1759 the
Trent
joined the
Vestal
in giving chase to an enemy ship at the western end of the English Channel. This was a French frigate,
La Bellone
, en route to Martinique. They engaged in a four-hour battle at close quarters.
La Bellone
was duly captured, taken into service and renamed the
Repulse
.
²
After various further exploits, the
Trent
was taken back into dock. A report was filed in the Admiralty: ‘The Portsmouth Officers inform us the Trent is touched with the worm but she does not make water and can be repaired and used for about 9 or 10 months on Channel Service. Have approved the Officers’ proposal but if she is to go on foreign service she will have to be resheathed.’ The need for comprehensive repairs was the reason the
Trent
did not sail for the West Indies until the late summer of 1760.
³

The refit was clearly an outstanding success. The
Trent
proved herself as fast and effective as any frigate in the fleet. Captain Lindsay’s daily log reveals a succession of chases and prizes. On 1 November, a sloop en route from St Eustatia to Martinique; a few days later a Dutch schooner; and on Thursday, 20 November, a sail to the south which proved to be ‘a Spanish sloop from Teneriff to St Domingo with Settlers’.

Just before Christmas, the
Trent
joined the
Boreas
in attacking a sloop that was at anchor under the mangroves in Cumberland Harbour, St Iago Island. She was a French privateer, the
Vanquier
. Lindsay and the captain of the
Boreas
sent in a small boat with marines who boarded her after sharp resistance. The French captives were sent on shore a week later at Grand Cayman, where they were exchanged for English prisoners.

All through the following year, Lindsay continued his patrols, sailing hundreds of miles around the Caribbean basin. One day he gave chase to a Spanish man-of-war bound from St Domingo to Havana, the next he attacked
Le Bien Aimé
, a French merchant frigate from Martinique with twenty-two guns, eighty-four men, and a heavy load of sugar and coffee. He took her with only one man killed and five wounded, to the enemy’s twenty killed or wounded.
⁴
The French prisoners were transferred to HMS
Cambridge
.

There were occasional weeks of respite, when the
Trent
would be moored off Port Royal, Jamaica, for cleaning, caulking, rerigging, the removal of ballast, the supply of fresh water and provisions. Time spent at anchor was troublesome from the point of view of discipline. On one occasion at Port Royal a midshipman was punished for embezzlement, receiving nine lashes alongside every ship in the harbour, with a halter around his neck. Another time, Lindsay had to punish some men for insubordination, making them run the gauntlet through the ship. Then they would be off again: in April 1761 they took a Spanish sloop from Port au Prince laden with sugar; in August a Dutch schooner; in September
La Donna de la Providence
, bound for France – her crew were dispatched to a plantation, where they would be held until the opportunity arose for an exchange of prisoners.

Captain Lindsay’s exploits were celebrated in the press back home in England. In January 1762 the
London Chronicle
printed a front-page report from Kingston in Jamaica, dated 31 October 1761 (news travelled slowly in the days before the invention of the telegraph). It announced that:

Thursday arrived from a cruise, his Majesty’s ship
Trent
, John Lindsay, Esq; Commander, and brought in two prizes, said to be a Dutch schooner and sloop, both from Cape Francois, which he took in the Bite of Leogan, and were part of a fleet of about fifteen sail, who had been assisting our enemies at the Cape; they are both richly laden with indigo, etc. etc. It is reported, the poltroon commanders of these vessels, had the impudence to give out they would take the
Trent
; though when within sight of their enemy, they thought proper to fly away with all speed, and leave their friends a sacrifice for their presumption.
⁵

Clearly, Captain Lindsay was a man of courage and single-mindedness, if not reckless impulsiveness. The prizes were mounting up: every captured ship meant a bounty for the crew, and especially for the captain.

His greatest triumph came at the siege of the castle of Morro, which stood guard over Havana Bay on the key strategic island of Cuba, held by the Spanish. Captain Goostrey of the
Cambridge
was shot dead in action on 1 July 1762, and Lindsay was sent to fill his place, where he ‘gave many strong proofs of his valour’.
⁶
A painting by the naval artist Richard Paton, now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, shows the bombardment of the castle. It gives a vivid sense of the smoke of battle, the ease with which a wooden warship might burst into flames, and the nerves of steel demanded of the captains. The
Cambridge
is shown flying a red ensign in the mizzen shrouds, as a signal that her captain is dead. In the foreground is a little rowing boat in which Lindsay is being taken from the
Trent
to the
Cambridge
, where he will assume command.

At the end of July a breach was made with mines in the wall of the castle, and this enabled the British to take it by storm. The fall of Havana was now inevitable: it occurred on 11 August. In addition to stores and booty up to the value of £3 million, nine Spanish ships of the line were captured, and two on the stocks were burned. Possession would, however, be short-lived: under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war the following year, Havana was returned to the Spanish.

After the taking of Havana, the
Trent
participated in the mopping-up operation. The sick and wounded were transported for treatment, newly arriving Spanish ships – including some slave transporters – were headed off. Then in July 1763 came the order to return home. The
Trent
reached Spithead on 12 August, and ten days later she was moored at Long Reach. Lindsay set about stripping the ship and getting his officers ashore. After a final cleaning, he paid off the men and closed his log on Friday, 9 September. The war was over; the
Trent
had performed her service. She was decommissioned and scrapped, and Captain Lindsay was knighted for his gallantry.