The West Indies and the Spanish Main. Anthony Trollope
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At ten or half-past ten the nation sits down to breakfast; not to a meal, my dear Mrs. Jones, consisting of tea and bread and butter, with two eggs for the master of the family and one for the mistress; but a stout, solid banquet, consisting of fish, beefsteaks—a breakfast is not a breakfast in the West Indies without beefsteaks and onions, nor is a dinner so to be called without bread and cheese and beer—potatoes, yams, plaintains, eggs, and half a dozen "tinned" productions, namely, meats sent from England in tin cases. Though they have every delicacy which the world can give them of native production, all these are as nothing, unless they also have something from England. Then there are tea and chocolate upon the table, and on the sideboard beer and wine, rum and brandy. 'Tis so that they breakfast at rural quarters in Jamaica.
Then comes the day. Ladies may not subject their fair skin to the outrages of a tropical sun, and therefore, unless on very special occasions, they do not go out between breakfast and dinner. That they occupy themselves well during the while, charity feels convinced. Sarcasm, however, says that they do not sin from over energy. For my own part, I do not care a doit for sarcasm. When their lords reappear, they are always found smiling, well-dressed, and pretty; and then after dinner they have but one sin—there is but one drawback—they will go to bed at 9 o'clock.
But by the men during the day it did not seem to me that the sun was much regarded, or that it need be much regarded. One cannot and certainly should not walk much; and no one does walk. A horse is there as a matter of course, and one walks upon that; not a great beast sixteen hands high, requiring all manner of levers between its jaws, capricoling and prancing about, and giving a man a deal of work merely to keep his seat and look stately; but a canny little quiet brute, fed chiefly on grass, patient of the sun, and not inclined to be troublesome. With such legs under him, and at a distance of some twenty miles from the coast, a man may get about in Jamaica pretty nearly as well as he can in England.
I saw various grazing farms—pens they are here called—while I was in this part of the country; and I could not but fancy that grazing should in Jamaica be the natural and most beneficial pursuit of the proprietor, as on the other side of the Atlantic it certainly is in Ireland. I never saw grass to equal the guinea grass in some of the parishes; and at Knockalva I looked at Hereford cattle which I have rarely, if ever, seen beaten at any agricultural show in England. At present the island does not altogether supply itself with meat; but it might do so, and supply, moreover, nearly the whole of the remaining West Indies. Proprietors of land say that the sea transit is too costly. Of course it is at present; the trade not yet existing; for indeed, at present there is no means of such transit. But screw steamers now always appear quickly enough wherever freight offers itself; and if the cattle were there, they would soon find their way down to the Windward Islands.
But I am running away from my day. The inspection of a pen or two, perhaps occasionally of the sugar works when they are about, soon wears through the hours, and at five preparations commence for the six o'clock dinner. The dressing again is a dilettante process, even for the least dandified of mankind. It is astonishing how much men think, and must think, of their clothes when within the tropics. Dressing is necessarily done slowly, or else one gets heated quicker than one has cooled down. And then one's clothes always want airing, and the supply of clean linen is necessarily copious, or, at any rate, should be so. Let no man think that he can dress for dinner in ten minutes because he is accustomed to do so in England. He cannot brush his hair, or pull on his boots, or fasten his buttons at the same pace he does at home. He dries his face very leisurely, and sits down gravely to rest before he draws on his black pantaloons.
Dressing for dinner, however, is de rigeur in the West Indies. If a black coat, &c., could be laid aside anywhere as barbaric, and light loose clothing adopted, this should be done here. The soldiers, at least the privates, are already dressed as Zouaves; and children and negroes are hardly dressed at all. But the visitor, victim of tropical fashionable society, must appear in black clothing, because black clothing is the thing in England. "The Governor won't see you in that coat," was said to me once on my way to Spanish Town, "even on a morning." The Governor did see me, and as far as I could observe did not know whether or no I had on any coat. Such, however, is the feeling of the place. But we shall never get to dinner.
This again is a matter of considerable importance, as, indeed, where is it not? While in England we are all writing letters to the 'Times,' to ascertain how closely we can copy the vices of Apicius on eight hundred pounds a year, and complaining because in our perverse stupidity we cannot pamper our palates with sufficient variety, it is not open to us to say a word against the luxuries of a West Indian table. We have reached the days when a man not only eats his best, but complains bitterly and publicly because he cannot eat better; when we sigh out loud because no Horace will teach us where the sweetest cabbage grows; how best to souse our living poultry, so that their fibres when cooked may not offend our teeth. These lessons of Horace are accounted among his Satires. But what of that? That which was satire to Augustine Rome shall be simple homely teaching to the subject of Victoria with his thousand a year.
But the cook in the Jamaica country house is a person of importance, and I am inclined to think that the lady whom I have accused of idleness does during those vacant interlunar hours occasionally peer into her kitchen. The results at any rate are good—sufficiently so to break the hearts of some of our miserable eight hundred a year men at home.
After dinner no wine is taken—none, at least, beyond one glass with the ladies, and, if you choose it, one after they are gone. Before dinner, as I should have mentioned before, a glass of bitters is as much de rigeur as the black coat. I know how this will disgust many a kindly friend in dear good old thickly-prejudiced native England. Yes, ma'am, bitters! No, not gin and bitters, such as the cabmen take at the gin-palaces; not gin and bitters at all, unless you specially request it; but sherry and bitters; and a very pretty habit it is for a warm country. If you don't drink your wine after dinner, why not take it before? I have no doubt that it is the more wholesome habit of the two.
Not that I recommend, even in the warmest climate, a second bitter, or a third. There are spots in the West Indies where men take third bitters, and long bitters, in which the bitter time begins when the soda water and brandy time ends—in which the latter commences when the breakfast beer-bottles disappear. There are such places, but they must not be named by me in characters plainly legible. To kiss and tell is very criminal, as the whole world knows. But while on the subject of bitters, I must say this: Let no man ever allow himself to take a long bitter such as men make at ——. It is beyond the power of man to stop at one. A long bitter duly swiggled is your true West Indian syren.
And then men and women saunter out on the verandah, or perhaps, if it be starlight or moonlight, into the garden. Oh, what stars they are, those in that western tropical world! How beautiful a woman looks by their light, how sweet the air smells, how gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens! And then one sips a cup of coffee, and there is a little chat, the lightest of the light, and a little music, light enough also, and at nine one retires to one's light slumbers. It is a pleasant life for a short time, though the flavour of the dolce far niente is somewhat too prevalent for Saxon energies fresh from Europe.
Such are the ordinary evenings of society; but there are occasions when no complaint can be made of lack of energy. The soul of a Jamaica lady revels in a dance. Dancing is popular in England—is popular almost everywhere, but in Jamaica it is the elixir of life; the Medea's cauldron, which makes old people young; the cup of Circe, which neither man nor woman can withstand. Look at that lady who has been content to sit still and look beautiful for the last two hours; let but the sound of a polka meet her and she will awake to life as lively, to motion as energetic, as that of a Scotch sportsman on the 12th of August. It is singular how the most listless girl who seems to trail through her long days almost without moving her limbs, will continue to waltz and polk and rush up and down a galopade from ten till five; and then think the hours all too short!
And it is not the girls only, and the boys—begging their pardon—who rave for dancing. Steady matrons of five-and-forty are just as anxious, and grave senators, whose years are past naming. See that gentleman with the bald head and grizzled beard, how sedulously he is making up his card! "Madam, the fourth polka," he says to the stout lady in