Caribbean (88 page)

T
HE DECADES FOLLOWING THE SLAVE REBELLION IN
H
AITI SAW
vast improvements in the fortunes of blacks throughout the Caribbean. Great Britain abolished slavery everywhere in its empire in 1834; France in 1848. The United States engineered a cynical trick in 1863; President Lincoln abolished slavery in the middle of the Civil War, but only in the southern states, over which he had no control. In those border states which he did control, it continued, but in 1865 it was honestly outlawed everywhere. Spanish holdings in the Caribbean retained a brutal slavery long after other areas had stopped, with Cuba continuing till an unbelievable 1886.

Blacks were technically freed, but it was sometimes difficult, when looking at a specific situation, to realize it. In Jamaica, for example, in 1865 a volatile black Baptist preacher, George Gordon, gave a sermon in which he cried: “God wanted slavery ended, and it was,” but even as he spoke, an ominous throwback to the olden days was brewing.

“If God ever comes back to check on things,” the young man whispered, “I’m sure he’ll look like Governor Eyre.” As owner of Trevelyan, the sugar plantation producing the dark rum so highly regarded in Europe, and member of the island’s Executive Council, Jason
Pembroke exemplified the best in Jamaica. At twenty-eight he had the slim, crisp appearance of a young man who intended to keep everything around him under control, a neatly trimmed black beard and a cautious approach to his job of providing the governor with studied advice.

The man to whom he whispered his opinion was also a member of the council but entirely different in both character and appearance. He was Pembroke’s cousin, Oliver Croome, whose sugar estate was larger and more valuable. A hearty man in his forties, clean-shaven, ruddy-faced, somewhat overweight and given to explosive bursts of laughter, he saw his duties much differently than did Pembroke: “The queen tells us what to do, and we do it.” It would be unthinkable for him to utter even one word counter to directives originating from the Colonial Office in London: “And if our buggers think they can ignore the queen’s rules, there’s always the marines to whip ’em into shape.”

They were good friends, these dissimilar cousins—Pembroke austere and cautious, Croome flamboyant and given to wild statements—and although they usually differed in politics, with Pembroke a quiet, thoughtful liberal, Croome a loud-spoken archconservative, they did heartily agree on certain attitudes common to their class: loyalty to the crown, love for England, in which their families had spent more time than in Jamaica; and a fierce determination to protect the welfare of sugar planters. To accomplish these desirable ends, they gave their support to Eyre, a heroic type of man who did indeed look like some all-wise, paternal Jove or Jupiter come down from heaven to straighten out the affairs of Jamaica.

“He’s a man who knows what he’s doing,” Oliver whispered to his cousin, and the two nodded deferentially to the austere man seated at the head of their council table. Edward John Eyre, now fifty years old, was a towering figure, heavily bearded and with a mustache so thick that it obscured his mouth, making his halting speech rumble. Once when listening to him orate, Jason Pembroke had said: “When God spoke through the burning bush, He must have sounded a lot like that.”

Eyre was not a traditional colonial governor, no effete son of some notable English family who had gained his position because noble relatives had done his bargaining for him. Third son of an impoverished Church of England clergyman whose ancestors had once been well-to-do church leaders, he found himself at seventeen with a
good education but no prospects. In this extremity his prudent father did two things to aid him: he collected from friends enough money to purchase the boy a commission in the army, but just as Edward was about to become a soldier, his father suggested: “Why don’t you keep the money and try your fortunes in Australia?”

The idea was bold, unexpected, and in October 1832, Edward John Eyre bought passage to the unknown continent, where he arrived in late March of the next year, a tedious voyage of more than a hundred and forty days. In Sydney, like any thoughtful Englishman of the period, he went from house to house, office to office, presenting the numerous letters of introduction which family friends had provided, but nothing came of these solicitations, and he was left on his own with no friends and only the vast, empty continent at hand to provide a home and an occupation.

By virtue of an iron will and a well-disciplined physique, he began heroic explorations into the loneliest parts of Australia, traveling thousands of miles, often attended by only one companion—the smiling, indefatigable aborigine boy Wylie. Together they penetrated the continent in a manner that later experts would say was impossible, and in the end Eyre was recognized as one of the bravest of all Australian explorers and was honored by having the continent’s largest lake named after him. His personal courage was unequaled, his perceptions far more acute than those common at the time, and his love for that land unmatched. Had he chosen to spend his life in Australia, he would have died a revered national hero.

But, hungering after fame, the pomp of office and the prerogatives of command, he quit Australia to join Great Britain’s colonial service, determined to win rapid promotion to the governorship of some remote colony which he could rule as emperor. His grand design ran into immediate trouble, for when he was posted to New Zealand in a minor position, he accomplished nothing. He had somewhat better luck on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, and an almost soporific tour of duty on Antigua, after which, in 1862 at the age of forty-seven, he was posted to the important island of Jamaica as lieutenant governor, a job he discharged with enthusiasm and ability, especially when a great fire threatened the island’s principal town, Kingston. Reported a paper at the time:

There were, however, rumbles of discontent among the landed gentry of the island: “How dare they send us a governor with no decent family background when we’ve been accustomed to members of the aristocracy?” Others said: “His only qualification for this high office, once held by men of the highest type, often nobility, is that he once ran sheep in the godforsaken barrens of Australia. He’s not good enough for this island.” One of the more serious charges brought against him was that “he has been seen on several occasions riding not in his private carriage but in a public conveyance. Disgraceful! How lacking in dignity or respect for his position!” When a report of this impropriety reached London, Eyre’s immediate superior scribbled on the paper: “As to the charge of going in a public vehicle, I have known even a secretary of state guilty of such indecorum,” to which the head of the office, the Duke of Newcastle, replied with his own endorsement: “I’ve done the same.”

At the beginning of 1865, that critical year in which so many events would agitate Jamaica, Governor Eyre was so firmly ensconced that his ardent supporters like Pembroke and Croome had reason to suppose that he would remain in office permanently, although Jason had begun to suspect the man’s ability to hold the island’s various elements together in harmony. As he watched Eyre stalk out of the chamber in imperial grandeur, he said, tugging reflectively on his beard: “I begin to detect signs of great arrogance in our governor.”

“What in blazes do you mean by that?” Oliver asked.

“He’s so imbedded in Church of England …”

“So am I. So are you. Proper thing to be … what else?”

“But as our governor, he really ought to listen more patiently to the adherents of other religions that are growing strong on this island. Especially the Baptists.”

“They should all be shot, especially the Baptists.”

“Now that’s a silly thing to say, Oliver. The Baptists are here and they must be taken seriously.”

“Eyre has given these damned dissenters every consideration. More than generous. After all, Church of England is the religion of
this island, the law says so. We pay our taxes to support it, and its clergymen support the queen. Baptists? Who knows what they believe?” Before Pembroke could respond, Croome added, his face flushing: “I tell you, Jason, I’m not at all pleased with that ugly Baptist report that’s been circulating,” and at last Pembroke understood his cousin’s uneasiness.

Some years before, a visiting Baptist clergyman named Underhill had published, on his return to London, a favorable book on Jamaica, but he soon began receiving from the island a drumfire of letters from local Baptists lamenting the actual state of conditions there. His correspondents were harshly outspoken about the disadvantages which all nonconformist sects like the Baptists suffered at the hands of an unfeeling, ungenerous Church of England majority: “We must pay taxes to support their church and their hard-drinking clergy, but they offer our chapels not one penny in return, even though our preaching is closer to the spirit of Jesus. And the governor hates anyone with a touch of color.”

Tormented by these cries, Underhill had, in late December 1864, submitted a noninflammatory report to British authorities. Copies were promptly forwarded to Jamaica, where Church of England leaders, including of course the governor and his supporters, were outraged to think that a mere Baptist would dare to complain against not only God’s chosen church but also, by extension, the queen herself, since she had appointed her local surrogates. “It’s close to heresy,” Croome grumbled, “or treason.” And then, with that forthright, simple character that cut through ambiguities, he said with great force, banging the chair next to him as he spoke: “Those goddamned Baptists are nine-tenths niggers, and they’re led by a gang of self-ordained preachers who are nine-tenths half-castes. This report strikes at the core of the empire, and the author should be shot.” Croome, like his ancestors, was strong for shooting people.

“Calmly, calmly, Croome. Anyone who charges Governor Eyre with being anti-Negro, whether it’s some local Baptist fool or you, is ignorant of the man’s past record. I’ve taken pains to look it up, because I’ve seen animosities growing between us whites and those blacks, with the half-castes in between shifting now this way, now that.”

“What was his record?”

“In Australia he served ably as Protector of the Aborigines. In his great explorations, when he couldn’t find any white men brave enough
to accompany him he trusted a young aborigine. When he was appointed lieutenant governor of St. Vincent he was a powerful champion of niggers, and in that post in Antigua he was the same. The man is right for Jamaica.”

“That’s why it would be criminal for us to allow the damned Baptists to smear his character. Who allowed copies of that Underhill letter to reach these shores?” Before Pembroke could reply, his cousin, now red in the face, uttered the freighted words that would dictate so much Jamaican behavior in this troubled year: “Jason, our task as members of the Executive Council is to do everything we can to prevent the terrors of the Indian Mutiny, or the horrors that occurred in Haiti when niggers ran wild.”

Those were the images that dominated: Cawnpore, the city on the Ganges River where hundreds of Englishmen, men and women alike, were brutalized, slain and pitched into deep wells; and nearby Haiti, not much over a hundred miles distant, where even worse massacres had occurred.

“We must do everything possible to keep peace,” Croome said, with grim lines etched on his shaven face, “and if I could lay my hands on that Underhill or any Baptist agitators, I’d shoot them.”

Governor Eyre, returning to the council chamber at this moment, saw the cousins and came to stand before them, tall and godlike with his flowing beard: “You are the men I must rely on to protect me when you next take residence in London,” he said with as much emotion as his austere nature would permit. “You’re as much at home there as you are on your sugar plantations. A rare breed, you two.”

Their council duties over, the two cousins rode together along the magnificent trails that led north from Spanish Town, following vibrant streams which had to be forded from time to time, and as they approached the Croome plantation, Jason bade his energetic cousin farewell. “We did good work for the empire this week,” he said as Oliver turned his horse toward his gate.

At Trevelyan, Jason was greeted by a deputation he did not much care to entertain, a motley group of farmers, from St. Ann’s Parish to the north, led by one of the most difficult of the half-caste Baptist preachers—a smug, persistent man of forty-seven, one George William Gordon, of a color called by white Jamaicans
bedarkened
and with an almost insolent stare that came from fighting incessant battles
on behalf of his colored and black parishioners. His face was framed by a curious part-beard which extended from his full head of curly hair down each side of his face and completely under his chin, leaving the rest of his face unshaven and stern, as if his teeth were permanently clenched. He wore wire-set glasses and clergyman’s dress, although whether or not he had been legally ordained no one could say; Pembroke thought so, but his cousin was certain that Gordon had assumed both the title and the dress.