Part 8

I am indeed assured by every one about me, that to manage a West-Indian estate without the occasional use of the cart-whip, however rarely, is impossible; and they insist upon it, that it is absurd in me to call my slaves ill-treated, because, when they act grossly wrong, they are treated like English soldiers and sailors. All this may be very true; but there is something to me so shocking in the idea of this execrable cart-whip, that I have positively forbidden the use of it on Cornwall; and if the estate must go to rack and ruin without its use, to rack and ruin the estate must go. Probably, I should care less about this punishment, if I had not been living among those on whom it may be inflicted; but now, when I am accustomed to see every face that looks upon me, grinning from ear to ear with pleasure at my notice, and hear every voice cry “God bless you, massa,” as I pass, one must be an absolute brute not to feel unwilling to leave them subject to the lash; besides, they are excellent cajolers, and lay it on with a trowel. Nicholas and John Fuller came to me this morning to beg a favour, “and beg massa hard, quite hard!” It was, that when massa went away, “he would leave his picture for the negroes;” that they might talk to it, “all just as they did to massa.” Shakspeare says--

“A little flattery does well sometimes!”

But, although the mode of expressing it may be artifice, the sentiment of good-will may be shown. A dog grows attached to the person who feeds and makes much of him; and as they have never experienced as yet any but kind treatment from me personally, it would be against common sense and nature to suppose that my negroes do not feel kindly towards me.

JANUARY 20.

THE RUNAWAY.

Peter, Peter was a black boy;

Peter, him pull foot one day:

Buckra girl, him * Peter’s joy;

Lilly white girl entice him away.

Fye, Missy Sally, fye on you!

Poor Blacky Peter why undo?

Oh! Peter, Peter was a bad boy;

Peter was a runaway.

* _The negroes never distinguish between “him” and “her” in their conversation_.

Peter, him Massa thief--Oh! fye!

Missy Sally, him say him do so.

Him money spent, Sally bid him bye.

And from Peter away him go;

Fye, Missy Sally, fye on you!

Poor Blacky Peter what him do?

Oh! Peter, Peter was a sad boy;

Peter was a runaway!

Peter, him go to him Massa back;

There him humbly own him crime:

“Massa, forgib one poor young Black!

Oh! Massa, good Massa, forgib dis time!”--

Then in come him Missy so fine, so gay,

And to him Peter thus him say:

“Oh! Missy, good Missy, you for me pray!

Beg Massa forgib poor runaway!”

“Missy, you cheeks so red, so white;

Missy, you eyes like diamond shine I

Missy, you Massa’s sole delight,

And Lilly Sally, him was mine!

Him say--6 Come, Peter, mid me go!’--

Could me refuse him? Could me say 6 no?’--»

Poor Peter--‘no’ him could no say!

So Peter, Peter ran away!”--

Him Missy him pray; him Massa so kind

Was moved by him prayer, and to Peter him says

“Well, boy, for this once I forgive you!--but mind!

With the buckra girls you no more go away!

Though fair without, they’re foul within;

Their heart is black, though white their skin.

Then Peter, Peter with me stay;

Peter no more run away!”--

JANUARY 21. (Sunday.)

The hospital has been crowded, since my arrival, with patients who have nothing the matter with them. On Wednesday there were about thirty invalids, of whom only four were cases at all serious; the rest had “a lilly pain here, Massa,” or “a bad pain me know nowhere, Massa,” and evidently only came to the hospital in order to sit idle, and chat away the time with their friends. Four of them the doctor ordered into the field peremptorily; the next day there came into the sick-house six others; upon this I resolved to try my own hand at curing them; and I directed the head-driver to announce, that the presents which I had brought from England should be distributed to-day, that the new-born children should be christened, and that the negroes might take possession of my house, and amuse themselves till twelve at night. The effect of my prescription was magical; two thirds of the sick were hale and hearty, at work in the field on Saturday morning, and to-day not a soul remained in the hospital except the four serious cases.

The christening took place about four o’clock. Sully’s infant, which had been destined to perform a part on this occasion, had died in the hospital; but this morning the father came to complain of his disappointment, and to beg leave to substitute a child _by another_ wife, which had been born about two months before my arrival; and as the father is a very serviceable fellow, and the mother, besides having brought up three children of her own, had the additional merit of having reared an infant whose own mother had died in child-bed, I broke through the rule of only christening those myself who should be born since my coming to Jamaica, and granted his request. By good luck, the first child to be named was the offspring of Minerva and Captain; so I told the parents that as it would be highly proper to call the boy after the greatest Captain that the world could produce, he should be named Wellington; and that I hoped that he would grow up to serve _me_ in Jamaica as well as the Duke of Wellington had served his massa, the King of England, in Europe. The Duke of Sully’s child I wanted to call Navarre; but the father had brought over a free negro from Savannah la Mar to stand godfather, who was his _fidus Achates_, by the name of John Davies, and I found that he had set his heart upon calling the boy John Lewis, after his friend and myself; so John Lewis he was.

There ought to have been a third child, born at seven months, whom the _graundee_ had reared with great difficulty, and dismissed, quite strong, from the hospital; the mother had taken great care of it till the tenth day, when she was entitled to an allowance of clothes, provisions, &c.; but no sooner had she received her reward, than on that very night she suffered the child to remain so long without food, while she went herself to dance on a neighbouring estate, that it was brought, in an exhausted state, back to the hospital; and, in spite of every care, it expired within four and twenty hours after its return.

The ceremony was performed with perfect gravity and propriety by all parties; I thought it as well to cut the reading part of it very short; but I read a couple of prayers, marked the foreheads of the children with the sign of the cross, and, instead of the concluding prayer, I substituted a wish, “that God would bless the children, and make them live to be as good servants to me, as I prayed him to make me a kind massa to them;” upon which all present very gravely made me their lowest bows and courtesies, and then gave me a loud huzza; so unusual a mode of approbation at a christening that it had nearly overturned my seriousness; and I made haste to serve out Madeira to the parents and assistants, that they might drink the healths of the new Christians and of each other. The mothers and the _graindee_ were then called up to the table, and the ladies in a family way were arranged behind them.

_Their_ title in Jamaica is rather coarse, but very expressive. I asked Cubina one day “who was that woman with a basket on her head?”

“Massa,” he answered, “that one belly-woman going to sell provisions at the Bay.” As she was going to sell _provisions_, I supposed that _belly_-woman was the name of her trade; but it afterwards appeared that she was one of those females who had given in their names as being then labouring under

“The pleasing punishment which women bear;”

and who, in consequence, were discharged from all severe labour. I then gave the _graundee_ and the mothers a dollar each, and told them, that for the future they might claim the same sum, in addition to their usual allowance of clothes and provisions, for every infant which should be brought to the overseer alive and well on the fourteenth day; and I also gave each mother a present of a scarlet girdle with a silver medal in the centre, telling her always to wear it on feasts and holidays, when it should entitle her to marks of peculiar respect and attention, such as being one of the first served, and receiving a larger portion than the rest; that the _first_ fault which she might commit, should be forgiven on the production of this girdle; and that when she should have any favour to ask, she should always put it round her waist, and be assured, that on seeing it, the overseer would allow the wearer to be entitled to particular indulgence. On every additional child an additional medal is to be affixed to the belt, and precedence is to follow the greater number of medals. I expected that this notion of an order of honour would have been treated as completely fanciful and romantic; but to my great surprise, my manager told me, that “he never knew a dollar better bestowed than the one which formed the medal of the girdle, and that he thought the institution likely to have a very good effect.”

Immediately after the christening the Eboe drums were produced, and in defiance of Sunday the negroes had the irreverence to be gay and happy, while the presents were getting in order for distribution. All the men got jackets, the women seven yards of stuff each for petticoats, &c., and the children as much printed cotton as would make a couple of frocks. The Creoles were delighted beyond measure when some of the African male negroes exclaimed, “Tank, massa,” and made a low courtesy in the confusion of their gratitude. As they were all called to receive their presents alphabetically in pairs, some of the combinations were very amusing. We had Punch and Plato, Priam and Pam, Hemp and Hercules, and Minerva and Moll come together. By twelve they dispersed, and I went to bed, as usual on these occasions, with a violent headach.

JANUARY 22.

While I was at dinner, a violent uproar was heard below stairs. On enquiry, it proved to be Cubina, quarrelling with his niece Phillis (a goodlooking black girl employed about the house), about a broken pitcher; and as her explanation did not appear satisfactory to him, he had thought proper to give her a few boxes on the ear. Upon hearing this, I read him such a lecture upon the baseness of a man’s striking a woman, and told him with so much severity that his heart must be a bad one to commit such an offence, that poor Cubina, having never heard a harsh word from me before, scarcely knew whether he stood upon his head or his heels. When he afterwards brought my coffee, he expressed his sorrow for having offended me, and begged my pardon in the most humble manner. I told him, that to obtain mine, he must first obtain that of Phillis, and he immediately declared himself ready to make her any apology that I might dictate. So the girl was called in; and her uncle going up to her, “I am very sorry, Phillis,” said he, “that I gave way to high passion, and called you hard names, and struck you: which I ought not to have done while massa was in the house;” (here I was going to interrupt him, but he was too clever not to perceive his blunder, and made haste to add) “nor if he had _not_ been here, nor at all; so I hope you will have the kindness to forgive me this once, and I never will strike you again, and so I beg your pardon.” And he then put out his hand to her in the most frank and hearty manner imaginable; and on her accepting it, made her three or four of his very lowest and most graceful bows. I furnished him with a piece of money to give her as a peace-offering; they left the room thoroughly reconciled, and in five minutes after they and the rest of the servants were all chattering, laughing, and singing together, in the most perfect harmony and good-humour. I suppose, if I had desired an upper servant in England to make the same submission, he would have preferred quitting my service to doing what he would have called “humbling himself to an inferior;” or, if he had found himself compelled to give way, he would have been sulky with the girl, and found fault with every thing that she did in the house for a twelvemonth after.

On the other hand, there are some choice ungrateful scoundrels among the negroes: on the night of their first dance, a couple of sheep disappeared from the pen, although they could not have been taken from want of food, as on that very morning there had been an ample distribution of fresh beef; and last night another sheep and a quantity of poultry followed them. Yesterday, too, a young rascal of a boy called “massa Jackey,” who is in the frequent habit of running away for months at a time, and whom I had distinguished from the cleverness of his countenance and buffoonery of his manners, came to beg my permission to go and purchase food with some money which I had just given him, “because he was almost starving; his parents were dead, he had no provision-grounds, no allowance, and nobody ever gave him anything.” Upon this I sent Cubina with the boy to the storekeeper, when it appeared that he had always received a regular allowance of provisions twice a week, which he generally sold, as well as his clothes, at the Bay, for spirits; had received an additional portion only last Friday; and, into the bargain, during the whole of that week had been fed from the house. What he could propose to himself by telling a lie which must be so soon detected, I cannot conceive; but I am assured, that unless a negro has an interest in telling the truth, he always lies--in order to keep his tongue in practice.

One species of flattery (or of _Congo-saw_, as we call it here) amused me much this morning: an old woman who is in the hospital wanted to express her gratitude for some stewed fish which I had sent her for supper, and, instead of calling me “massa,” she always said--“Tank him, _my husband_.”

JANUARY 24.

This was a day of perpetual occupation. I rose at six o’clock, and went down to the Bay to settle some business; on my return I visited the hospital while breakfast was getting ready; and as soon as it was over, I went down to the negro-houses to hear the whole body of Eboes lodge a complaint against one of the book-keepers, and appoint a day for their being heard in his presence. On my return to the house, I found two women belonging to a neighbouring estate, who came to complain of cruel treatment from their overseer, and to request me to inform their trustee how ill they had been used, and see their injuries redressed. They said, that having been ill in the hospital, and ordered to the field while they were still too weak to work, they had been flogged with much severity (though not beyond the limits of the law); and my head driver, who was less scrupulously delicate than myself as to ocular inspection of Juliet’s person (which Juliet, to do her justice, was perfectly ready to submit to in proof of her assertions), told me, that the woman had certainly suffered greatly; the other, whose name was Delia, was but just recovering from a miscarriage, and declared openly that the overseer’s conduct had been such, that nothing should have prevented her running away long ago if she could but have had the heart to abandon a child which she had on the estate. Both were poor feeble-looking creatures, and seemed very unfit subjects for any severe correction. I promised to write to their trustee; and, as they were afraid of being punished on their return home for having thrown themselves on my protection, I wrote a note to the overseer, requesting that the women might remain quite unmolested till the trustee’s arrival, which was daily expected; and, with this note and a present of cocoa-fingers and salt fish, Delia and Juliet departed, apparently much comforted.

They were succeeded by no less a personage than _Venus_ herself--a poor, little, sickly, timid soul, who had purchased her freedom from my father by substituting in her place a fine stout black wench, who, being Venus’s _locum tenens_, was, by courtesy, called Venus, too, though her right name was “Big Joan;” but, by some neglect of the then attorney, Venus had never received any title, and she now came to beg “massa so good as give paper;” otherwise she was still, to all intents and purposes, my slave, and I might still have compelled her to work, although, at the same time, her substitute was on the estate. Of course, I promised the paper required, and engaged to act the part of a second Vulcan by releasing Venus from my chains: but the paper was not the only thing that Venus wanted; she also wanted a petticoat! She told me, that when the presents were distributed on Sunday, the petticoat, which she would otherwise have had, was, of course, “given to the _other_ Venus;” and though, to be sure, she was free now, yet, “when she belonged to massa, she had always worked for him well,” and “she was quite as glad to see massa as the other Venus,” and, therefore, “ought to have quite as much petticoat.” I tried to convince her, that for Venus to wear a petticoat of blue durant, or, indeed, any petticoat at all, would be quite unclassical: the goddess of beauty stuck to her point, and finally carried off the petticoat.

Venus had scarcely evacuated the premises, when her place was occupied by the minister of Savannah la Mar, with proposals for instructing the negroes in religion; and the minister, in his turn, was replaced by one of the Sunday-night thieves, who had been caught while in the actual possession of one of my sheep and a great turkey-cock; and, to make the matter worse, the depredator’s name was Hercules! Hercules, whom Virgil states to have exercised so much severity on Cacus, when his own oxen were stolen, was taken up himself for stealing my sheep in Jamaica! The demi-god had nothing to say in his excuse: he had just received a large allowance of beef:--therefore, hunger had no share in his transgression; and the committing the offence during the very time that I was giving the negroes a festival, rendered his ingratitude the more flagrant.

I perfectly well understood that the man was sent to me by my agent, in order to show the absolute necessity of sometimes employing the cart-whip, and to see whether I would suffer the fellow to escape unpunished. But, as this was the first offender who had been brought before me, I took that for a pretext to absolve him: so I lectured him for half an hour with great severity, swore that on the very next offence I would order him to be sold; and that if he would not do his fair proportion of work without being lashed, he should be sent to work somewhere else; for I would suffer no such worthless fellows on my estate, and would not be at the expense of a cart-whip to correct him. He promised most earnestly to behave better in future, and Hercules was suffered to depart: but I am told that no good can be expected of him; that he is perpetually running away; and that he had been absent for five weeks together before my arrival, and only returned home upon hearing that there was a distribution of beef, rum, and jackets going forward; in return for all which, he stole my sheep and my poor great turkey-cock.

But now came the most puzzling business of the day. About four years ago, two Eboes, called Pickle and Edward, were rivals, after being intimate friends: Pickle (who is an excellent faithful negro, but not very wise) was the successful candidate; and, of course, the friendship was interrupted, till Edward married the sister of the disputed fair one. From this time the brothers-in-law lived in perfect harmony together; but, during the first festival given on my arrival, Pickle’s house was broken open, and robbed of all his clothes, &c. The thief was sought for, but in vain. On Monday last I found Pickle in the hospital, complaining of a pain in his side; and the blood, which had been taken from him, gave reason to apprehend a pleurisy arising from cold; but, as the disorder had been taken in its earliest stage, nothing dangerous was expected. The fever abated; the medicines performed their offices properly; still the man’s spirits and strength appeared to decline, and he persisted in saying that he was not better, and should never do well. At length, to-day, he got out of his sick bed, came to the house, attended by the whole body of drivers, and accused his brother-in-law of having been the stealer of his goods. I asked, “Had Edward been seen near his house? Had any of his effects been seen in Edward’s possession? Did Edward refuse to suffer his hut to be searched?” No. Edward, who was present, pressed for the most strict scrutiny, and asserted his perfect ignorance; nor could the accuser advance any grounds for the charge, except his belief of Edward’s guilt. “Why did he think so?” After much beating about the bush, at length out came the real _causa doloris_--“Edward had _Obeahed_ him!” He had accused Edward of breaking open his house, and had begged him to help him to his goods again; and “Edward had gone at midnight into the bush” (i. e. the wood), and “had gathered the plant whangra, which he had boiled in an iron pot, by a fire of leaves, over which he went pufij puffie!” and said the sautee-sautee; and then had cut the whangra root into four pieces, three to bury at the plantation gates, and one to burn; and to each of these three pieces he gave the name of a Christian, one of which was Daniel, and Edward had said, that this would help him to find his goods; but instead of that, he had immediately felt this pain in his side, and therefore he was sure that, instead of using Obeah to find his goods, Edward had used it to kill himself. “And were these all his reasons?” I enquired. “No; when he married, Edward was very angry at the loss of his mistress, and had said that they never would live well and happily together; and they never _had_ lived happily and well together.”

This last argument quite got the better of my gravity. By parity of reasoning, I thought that almost every married couple in Great Britain must be under the influence of Obeah! I endeavoured to convince the fellow of his folly and injustice, especially as the person accused was the identical man who had detected the Obeah priest harboured in one of my negro huts last year, had seized him with his own hands, and delivered him up to my agent, who had prosecuted and transported him. It was, therefore, improbable in the highest degree, that he should be an Obeah man himself; and all the bystanders, black and white, joined me in ridiculing Pickle for complaints so improbable and childish. But anger, argument, and irony were all ineffectual. I offered to christen him, and expel black Obeah by white, but in vain; the fellow persisted in saying, that “he had a pain in his side, and, _therefore_, Edward must have given it to him;” and he went back to his hospital, shaking his head all the way, sullen and unconvinced. He is a young strong negro, perfectly well disposed, and doing his due portion of work willingly; and it will be truly provoking to lose him by the influence of this foolish prejudice.

JANUARY 25.