Caribbean: a novel Part 18

'Met with Cuffee. Saw his men. Saw their huge cache of stolen guns, bullets. Concluded the agreement you and I spoke of. No more killing on his part. No more fires in the night. On our part, we'll give him additional ammunition against the chance of a Spanish invasion.'

The governor exploded: 'Good G.o.d, man! You mean you s.h.i.+ed away from the real topic?'

'I did not, with all respect, sir. Cuffee and his lieutenants, all of them, agreed to harbor no more runaway slaves. He'll bring them back. Ten pounds alive, five dead.'

'Good work, Pembroke.' He saluted, left, then returned with good news for Croome: 'That cleared land? Papers have been certified, just as you said they would be. It's yours.' With a gesture of real affection, for Pentheny Croome was the kind of man he understood, he gripped the huge fellow by the shoulder and ushered him out.

Next morning Sir Hugh was up well before dawn and rode off with Roger without even saying farewell to Pentheny, for he was homesick for the one secure refuge he knew in this world, superior even to his safe seat in Parliament, the glorious green fields of Trevelyan Plantation. When he saw the outer boundaries enclosing land that was neat and clean, he cried to his son: 'Maintain it this way, Roger! A place like this is something to gladden a man's heart.'

Since the sun was well up, he was not surprised to see his slaves marching to the slightly rolling fields where the myriad little rectangles had been lined out with severe exact.i.tude, their four sides carefully delineated by hoeing up loose earth, inside which the ratoons of sugarcane would be planted, each with its own irrigation system ensured by the low earthen walls.

He did not expect the slaves to show any pleasure from the fact that he was once more among them, but had he inspected closely, he would have detected signs that they would rather have him here in Jamaica than in London: 'When de boss foot touch de soil, things grow.'

Then Hugh's heart beat faster, for he was approaching the slight rise at which he always stopped when returning home after any prolonged absence from his plantation, and when he reached the top he reined in his horse, leaned back in the saddle, and gazed once more upon one of the finest sights in Jamaica and perhaps the entire Caribbean.

Atop a hill in the distance rose a handsomely constructed stone cylindrical building, s.h.i.+ning in the morning sunlight and displaying as its crown the four big canvas sails which proclaimed it to be a working windmill. Near its foot on a large flat area stood a somewhat similar stone building that boasted no windmill, but it resembled the first in that the interior of each contained a vertical crus.h.i.+ng mechanism into which raw sugarcane was fed so that the rich juice could be extracted.

These two handsome buildings, each as well built as a cathedral, were the laboring heart of the plantation, for when the wind blew, as it did at least half the days during the harvesting season, the tall building did the work, obtaining power from its windmill. But when the winds ceased, as they sometimes did at inopportune moments, shouting black boys in the smaller building drove pairs of heavy oxen endlessly around a tight circular path to activate the heavy rollers. As long as either of the two buildings was prepared to operate, the plantation was ready for work.

Near the foot of the windmill came a meandering stream, not big enough to be called a river or even a rivulet, but nevertheless a reliable flowing stream that sometimes sang as it tumbled down the hillside to pa.s.s under a handsome stone bridge consisting of two arches. This bridge, a structure of elegant proportions, was the center of the sugar-processing area.

From the two crushers on the hill flowed down the freshly extracted juice by way of an uncovered Roman stone aqueduct which ran right across the bridge, forming one of its parapets and delivering its precious liquid to the vats where the juice was collected, the copper kettles in which it was boiled, the pans in which it turned magically into brown crystals called muscovado, the pots in which the muscovado was treated with white clay imported from Barbados to produce the white crystals that merchants and housewives wanted, all contained within a cl.u.s.ter of trimly built small stone buildings which also housed the enclosure for the mules and the stills where the wastage of the process, the rich, dark mola.s.ses, was converted into rum.

Trevelyan Plantation enjoyed an enviable reputation in the sugar-mola.s.ses-rum trade because of the intelligent decision of one of the first owners. He told his family back in the 1670s: 'Cotton and tobacco are fools' crops in Jamaica. The American colonies outproduce us in both cost and quality. But I'm told there's a canny fellow over on Barbados, Thomas Oldmixon, they say, who's beginning to earn real money by growing sugarcane smuggled in from the Guyanas. I'm sailing over to see how he does it.' He did, and found Oldmixon making a huge profit from his canes, but the man was a suspicious lot despite his air of being a friend to all: 'Why should I give you my secrets and watch Jamaican sugar outdistancing my own?' and he would tell his visitor nothing and show him less. When he caught Samuel Trevelyan creeping back at dusk to see how the canes grew, he ordered him off his plantation and let loose two dogs to ensure that he stayed off.

The visit would have been fruitless had Trevelyan not encountered a likable chap called Ned Pennyfeather-owner of The Giralda Inn along the waterfront in Bridgetown-who, after listening to the tale of defeated hopes, said: 'Stands to reason, doesn't it? Oldmixon smuggled his canes in from Brazil, I think it was, and they were furious down there when they discovered what he'd done. He doesn't want to share with you the advantage he's gained.'

'I've come a far distance for this. What am I to do?'

Pennyfeather considered this for a moment, then gave an answer which would account for Jamaica's future prosperity: 'There's a mean-spirited man atop that slight rise to the east. If you were dying of thirst, he wouldn't give you a drink, but for a handful of coins he'd sell you anything. Name's Sir Isaac Tatum.'

'Oldmixon said it was against the interest of Barbados.'

'Sir Isaac recognizes no interests but his own. You'll get your canes if you have the money.' Isaac Tatum did drive a hard bargain, but Trevelyan did get his canes, and in Jamaica they prospered, as he said in his thank-you note to Pennyfeather, 'wondrous well.'

Of course, when he knew more about sugarcane he discovered that Sir Isaac had cheated him outrageously. He had sold him not honest root cuttings which remained viable for years, but only ratoons, accidental suckers from the roots which looked like the real thing but which produced usable cane for little more than two seasons. However, the ratoons did get Samuel Trevelyan launched, and two years later he was able to buy real roots from an honest planter-and the great Jamaican plantation was on its way to the huge fortune he and his family eventually acc.u.mulated.

An accidental discovery accounted for much of the Trevelyan wealth. One of the plantation's slaves, a careless fellow, threw into the still in which mola.s.ses was being converted into rum a mess of old mola.s.ses whose sugar content had been caramelized in the sun. When he saw how much darker than usual the resulting rum was, he hid it in a special cask which happened to have been made of charred oak, and when Trevelyan finally discovered this mistake, he found not the light-golden liquid produced on the ordinary plantation, but a heavy dark rum, magnificent in flavor, now called by some 'a golden black.' Trevelyan became the recognized name for this rum, sought by connoisseurs who relished the best, and the money flowed in from its sale in Europe and New England, because no other plantation had yet mastered the trick of producing its equal.

On the right side of the bridge cl.u.s.tered the little cabins of the slaves, masonry walls halfway up, then wooden poles at the corners, with woven wattle and mud, well hardened in the sun, in between, and thatched roofs of palm fronds. The floors were hard and dry, a mixture of mud, pebbles and lime, well pounded and swept. Sir Hugh, inspecting them casually as he rode by, found them in reasonable order.

On the hill, not far from the windmill, rose the great house, a three-storied manor with mansard roof and projecting wings, called Golden Hall because of the row of trees whose bright yellow blossoms made the place joyous. Lady Beth Pembroke had loved these trees, and their brilliant blooming reminded both Sir Hugh and his three sons of her onetime presence.

Safe at last on the veranda of Golden Hall, Sir Hugh, home from the wars, could look down upon a scene whose elements were so perfectly disposed-arched bridge, stone buildings, slave quarters, rum still, tilled fields, woods-that it might have been created for the brush of some medieval artist. It was a little kingdom of which any prince of that bygone age would have been proud.

By no means the largest of the Jamaican plantations-Pentheny Croome's was more than twice as big even without the lands recently acquired-it did have seven hundred acres, of which seventy-seven were in mature canes, one hundred and fifty-four in ratoons and another seventy-seven in young plants. It was worked by two hundred and twenty slaves, forty mules and sixty-four oxen, and their joint efforts produced just under three hundred tons of sugar, about half of it clayed, the other half brown muscovado which would be s.h.i.+pped to England for refining. And, pride of the plantation, each year it barreled more than a hundred puncheons of Trevelyan rum, or about ten thousand gallons, at a masterful price when delivered abroad.

Sir Hugh, a good man with a pencil, figured his costs carefully: 'Each slave, two hundred and five American dollars; each mule a hundred and eighty; total cost of replacing the stone buildings and the windmills, two hundred thousand American; out-of-pocket expenses each year, about thirty thousand dollars; average income per year, fifty-five thousand; average profit per year, twenty-five thousand American.' He also kept his accounts in pounds sterling and Spanish currencies, but however he calculated his profits, they were immense in the money values of that time and enabled him and his family to live in what was called 'the grand style of a Jamaican planter.' This meant that Golden Hall had some dozen house servants, six yard boys, grooms for the horses, a plantation doctor, a clergyman for the little church beyond the bridge, and numerous other helpers.

As Sir Hugh studied the excellence of his plantation he reflected on what a superior island his Jamaica was. The last rough census had shown some 2,200 whites of the master-mistress category, about 4,000 whites of lower category, and 79,000 slaves. As he had told a recent visitor from England: 'We never forget that we whites, counting every one, are outnumbered six to seventy-nine. It makes us careful how we act, very careful how we manage our slaves, who could rise up and slay us all if so minded.' But he also confessed that he himself earned substantial profits from the slave trade: 'Last year in Jamaica we were able to import some seven thousand slaves from Africa, and we could have sold twice that many: we immediately forwarded more than five thousand of the newcomers on to Cuba and South Carolina, and on their sale we made a tremendous profit.'

He told every stranger who asked, either in Jamaica or England, that his island was a haven of refuge for all kinds of people: 'We accept Spaniards who flee harsh governments in South America, slaves who escape cruel masters in Georgia, artisans from New England who want to start a new life, and last year the governor issued a proclamation that henceforth he would admit even Catholics and Jews if they promised not to create public scandals.'

But the life of the Pembrokes was not limited to Golden Hall by any means, because each of the three boys had been educated in England at Rugby School in Warwicks.h.i.+re and had spent much of his youth at either the Pembroke townhouse on Cavendish Square near London's Hyde Park, or in the small and lovely Cotswold cottage in Upper Swathling, Gloucesters.h.i.+re, some fifty miles west of London, where Lady Pembroke-known to all as Lady Beth-had supervised the creation of one of the finer small flower gardens in the south of England.

The Pembrokes were like most of the West Indies sugar planters, legally domiciled on the island where their plantation lay but emotionally always tied to England. Their sons were educated in England; they maintained family homes in England; and they served in Parliament so as to protect what was recognized throughout the empire as 'the Sugar Interest.' In these years, some two dozen planters like Sir Hugh held seats in the House of Commons, where they formed an ironclad bloc monitoring all legislation to ensure that sugar received the protection they felt it deserved.

But how did an almost illiterate planter like Pentheny Croome in remote Jamaica gain a seat in Parliament? Simple. He, like the others, bought it. There were in those years in England a handful of what were called 'rotten boroughs,' the remnants of towns which had been of some importance when seats in Parliament were originally distributed but which had declined or in some cases actually disappeared. Still, each of those shadowy areas retained the right to send a man to Parliament and it became the custom for a landowner who held t.i.tle to a rotten borough to sell his seat to the highest bidder. Pentheny had paid 1,100 for his borough; Sir Hugh, 1,500 each for his two, one for himself and one for his oldest son, Roger. The other West Indians had made their own deals, and all agreed with Pentheny: 'Some of the best money I've ever spent. Helps protect us against the rascals,' a rascal being anyone who wanted a fair price on sugar.

And that was the significant difference between Great Britain's West Indian colonies and her North American ones. Maturing colonies like Ma.s.sachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia controlled not a single seat in Parliament; they were unprotected against the taxes and rules so arbitrarily imposed; they kept their politicians at home, where they mastered those intricacies of rural American politics that would carry them to freedom. The West Indies islands, infinitely more favored in those decades, would never master the local lessons, for their best men were always absent in London.

Of equal importance, when bright young lads from Jamaica and Barbados were away at school in England, their contemporaries from Boston and New York were attending Harvard and King's College in their hometowns and forming the intercolonial friends.h.i.+ps that would be so important when their colonies decided to strike for freedom. In retrospect, it would become clear that the West Indies paid a frightful penalty for the ephemeral advantages they enjoyed in the period from 1710 through the 1770s.

But now, in 1731, Sir Hugh was quite content to be in residence at Golden Hall prior to returning to London for the coming session of Parliament, when matters of grave concern to the sugar planters would be discussed. It was pleasant to have his three sons at home. Roger at twenty-six would one day inherit the baronetcy and become Sir Roger; for the present he owned the second rotten borough that the Pembrokes controlled and was making his way slowly and quietly in Parliament, in accordance with the instructions handed down by his father: 'For the first two sessions, say nothing, attract no attention, but be there to vote whenever a sugar item comes up.' Roger gave strong promise of becoming, with maturity, a leader of the sugar delegation.

But in many ways it was the second son who made the exalted position of the Pembrokes secure, because Greville stayed in Jamaica and ran the plantation. At twenty-four he had proved himself a genius in scheduling work for the slaves in such a way as to keep them reasonably happy and more than reasonably productive. He was also good at figures and had a sharp judgment as to whether it was more profitable to s.h.i.+p his surplus mola.s.ses to England or to Boston. As the Jamaica planters said: 'Ma.s.sachusetts citizens must drink more rum per person than people anywhere else in the world. They have seven distilleries up there and their appet.i.te for our mola.s.ses is insatiable.' He had engineered a profitable deal with Pentheny Croome's brother Marcus, who operated two small s.h.i.+ps carrying cargo out of Jamaica, and it seemed that whatever Greville turned his hand to earned money for the Pembrokes.

To have a son occupy the position of plantation manager was a boon that most families missed. Because many of the owners preferred to spend most of their time in England, they had to leave the running of their plantations to untested young Scotsmen or Irishmen who came to Jamaica for that purpose. Or, if lucky, they found a trusted local lawyer who would serve as manager; if unlucky, they fell into the clutches of some dishonest man who stole half their profits while they were not looking. Of the two dozen West Indian planters who formed the Sugar Interest in Parliament in the year 1731, only two had been fortunate enough to find honest members of their own families to run their plantations, whereas an appalling thirteen had gone to England as young men and had never once returned to their home island to supervise the on-site production of sugar. They were concerned only when they had to defend the islands against competing interests in England, in France, and especially in North America.

Sir Hugh's third son was something of a problem. A young man of twenty-two, John Pembroke was as fine a fellow as Jamaica produced and had he been firstborn, he would have been a worthy inheritor of his father's t.i.tle and his seat in Parliament. Had he been the second son, he might well have filled Greville's place as manager of the plantation, but there was no opening in that direction, and John himself told his father one night: 'I doubt I could ever do the job that Greville does.' So the question kept arising: 'What are we going to do about John?' and no one had an answer. He had done well at Rugby, and traditionally third sons either went into the army or clergy, but John showed no disposition for either. John a.s.sured his father nevertheless: 'I'm all right. I'll find something.'

In the meantime, he was engaged in a battle which his two brothers had waged successfully. Pentheny Croome's daughter Hester was a big, bra.s.sy young woman with prospects of inheriting an income of not less than twenty thousand pounds a year, a prodigious sum in the England of those days and certainly enough to ensure her a choice of husbands. But early in life she had set her cap for a Pembroke and had jammed it down so securely on her red head that only one of the famous island hurricanes would have been able to dislodge it. At sixteen she had made strong overtures to the future Sir Roger, but he had eluded her by marrying a planter's daughter from Barbados. At eighteen, bereft at her loss of Roger, she had settled on Greville, and would have brought him to the altar had not a lively la.s.s from a plantation near Spanish Town ensnared him.

She was now, at age twenty, much attracted to John Pembroke, whom she described to her father as 'probably the best of the Golden Hall lot.' Brazen in her attempts to allure him, she rode her gray mare to his home to invite him to dances, and insisted that he attend the play the local young people were putting on for the officers of the British wars.h.i.+p stationed at Kingston: 'It's a French farce, John. Very naughty. And I'm the leading lady, you might say, in the role of the maid.'

Reluctantly, he agreed, and found that he enjoyed himself immensely. The young officers were such fun to talk with that he wondered briefly whether he might not try to join the navy; and during the play his attention was fixed on Hester, who was more than satisfactory as the rowdy maid. She displayed a robust sense of humor, a capacity for laughing at herself, and a surprising tenderness in the love scenes.

In that two-and-a-half-hour period she promoted herself from rather objectionable to almost acceptable, and when he drove her home, the plaudits of her audience still ringing in his ears, he came close to expressing his interest, for he had seen that several of the navy men had been attracted to her lively ways. But the next day he partic.i.p.ated in a strategy meeting attended by Hester's fat father, a crude and overbearing man, and John, seeing the daughter in the father, s.h.i.+ed away.

The meeting was attended by Sir Hugh Pembroke and his two sons, Roger and John, Pentheny Croome and a big planter from Spanish Town who was almost as gross as Hester's father. The topic for debate was crucial to the welfare of the Sugar Interest, as Sir Hugh explained: 'Already they're calling it the Mola.s.ses Act, as if it were already pa.s.sed. It's bound to determine our profits for the next twenty years, so firm action is obligatory. If we let them have their way, our income plummets. If we force them to write it our way, unlimited profits.'

He explained that the West Indies planters faced three determined enemies: 'Those pitiful rascals in Boston and New York who will want to buy our mola.s.ses at bottom price so they can earn fortunes with the sorry rum they make.' Here the meeting diverted for a frosty a.s.sault on the British colonies on the North American mainland, with special opprobrium for Boston and Philadelphia, two trading centers whose rapacious Puritans and Quakers sought to steal their trading partners blind. All present agreed that in the long run, the natural enemy of the West Indian planters was that collection of ill-mannered American colonies, but the Jamaican members of Parliament knew tricks with which to frustrate them.

'Our second enemy is closer at hand,' Sir Hugh warned. 'I mean the French Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The problem's this. Our sugar plantations of Jamaica are blessed with reliable winds. The French islands have none. And since they're denied windmills, they must use horses and mules. And where do they get them? From Ma.s.sachusetts and New York. Hundreds of little s.h.i.+ps a year load up with animals in Boston and run down to Martinique and sell at a fantastic profit.'

'How does that hurt us?' the planter from Spanish Town asked, and Croome growled: 'Because when they unload at Martinique, they fill their s.h.i.+p with French mola.s.ses and run it as contraband back to Boston. Totally illegal both ways, but very profitable.'

'Croome should know,' Sir Hugh said caustically, 'because there's rumor that his brother Marcus is engaged in the trade,' and the big man replied harshly: 'He better not be.'

'And if we discipline Boston and Martinique,' Sir Hugh continued, 'we then face our permanent enemy, the housewife in England who screams constantly for a lower price on sugar.' He made a distasteful grimace as he visualized the unfair pressures brought by these women who were so eager to buy sugar at a slightly reduced price that they would imperil the wealth of the Sugar Interest.

His son Roger introduced the ugly fact they had to face: 'Word circulates. In France the best grade of clayed white sugar is eight pence a pound. In England the housewife has to pay ten a pound. The outcry is becoming stentorian.'

'What's that mean?' Pentheny asked, and Roger explained: 'Very loud. Named after the loud-voiced herald in the Iliad.'

'And what's that?'

'The poem by Homer. Greece at war with Troy.'

'I've heard of them. But Greece and Troy have nothing to do with the price of sugar in England.' It was his opinion that the controlled monopoly price should be raised, not lowered, and as for the complaints of English homemakers who knew nothing of the problems of a plantation-'the n.i.g.g.e.rs and the Maroons up the hills and French compet.i.tion'-the women could go to h.e.l.l.

Sir Hugh advised his friend not to make that speech in public, at least not in England, and the conspirators planned to meet six weeks hence in London with a rigid plan, to which all planters would be bound, to attain three ends as Sir Hugh summarized them: 'Make Boston buy her mola.s.ses from us at our price. Halt the s.h.i.+pment of mules and horses into Martinique. And raise the sale price of West Indian sugar in England while rigorously keeping out foreign supplies which would sell at half our price if allowed entry.' The men felt hopeful that if they could get the island members of Parliament to stick together, they could attain those desirable ends.

As the meeting broke up, Pentheny asked where John Pembroke, who had left the room, went, and his brother, who could guess what was coming, said: 'I don't really know,' but Sir Hugh, wanting always to have Pentheny on his side, said: 'I think he's in the library,' and when Pentheny found John, he said: 'Hester wondered if you'd be free for dinner tonight,' and John was about to say 'No,' when his father broke in: 'He'd be delighted.'

An observer who was acquainted with the powerful sugar planters of the Caribbean only in their rather rude country homes on Jamaica or Antigua or St. Kitts might catch an occasional hint as to how the planters spent their huge fortunes, but to appreciate how they used their wealth to achieve their political and social power, the onlooker would have had to visit England, and see how members of the Sugar Interest lived. Each maintained year-round a luxurious mansion in one of the popular London squares, plus a beautifully appointed country place in some rural village not too far from the capital. If a planter controlled three seats in Parliament, as several did, that family would probably have six English homes, three in London, three outside. As one witty observer remarked: 'In Jamaica these men are insufferable boors; in London, polished gentlemen who invite the Prince of Wales to tea.'

In London, Sir Hugh and his son Roger had houses on opposite sides of Cavendish Square, the father's being somewhat larger but not more ostentatious than the son's. It was four stories high, with a handsome entryway and sets of three carefully matched windows on each floor. Protected by a modest iron railing low enough to be stepped over by a gentleman, it showed no outward display of wealth except for the heavily carved door. Inside, the rooms were s.p.a.cious and handsomely furnished with an abundance of paintings in heavy gilt frames. If one looked at them casually, one had the impression that the owner displayed good taste and a nice sense of which painting went well on what wall, but upon closer inspection, one was startled by the artists represented, each name being displayed on a small, neatly engraved bra.s.s plate.

The landscape that one saw first was a Rembrandt, selected by Sir Hugh himself in Dresden. The mother and child in beautiful red and gold and green was a Raphael, the personal purchase of Lady Beth just before she died. The man on horseback was a Van Dyck and the scene with wood nymphs a Rubens. But the canvas that Sir Hugh loved above all others was a landscape, not overly large, by the Dutch painter Meindert Hobbema. It showed a country scene in Holland, with a bridge much like the one at Trevelyan, and whenever Sir Hugh chanced to come upon it by accident, as it were, he felt the presence of his plantation in Jamaica.

There were nine other paintings, including a Bellini Madonna and an attractive portrait of Lady Beth Pembroke by a fas.h.i.+onable court painter. In a back room there was a matched set of six English paintings, but they were of such scandalous character that Sir Hugh displayed them only to close friends who were known to have a ribald sense of humor.

The upper floors were decorated in a restrained style reflecting the taste of Lady Beth Pembroke, nee Trevelyan. One knowledgeable visitor, seeking to flatter Sir Hugh, said: 'I can see that whereas your wife had good judgment in art, it must have been you who encouraged her to make the purchases.'

'Not so,' snapped Sir Hugh. 'It was her money. Her good taste.' And if pressed, he would confess that on his own he had bought only the two landscapes, the Rembrandt and the Hobbema.

Many strategy meetings, formal and informal, of the Sugar Interest had been held in this house, but leaders like the elder Pitt and Robert Walpole also came here to beg the West Indies contingent to support bills that were to the benefit of the nation at large. They usually got the votes they sought, provided they promised to allow pa.s.sage of other bills of interest to the sugar men.

But Pembroke House in Cavendish Square was not the London headquarters of the Sugar Interest. That function was filled by Pentheny Croome's grand mansion in Grosvenor Square. It was really two fine Palladian houses erected originally side by side, but Mrs. Croome, brash daughter of a Jamaican sugar man, had knocked out the dividing walls, so that the interior became a vast exhibition hall for the curios she had acquired on her three rambles with her daughter Hester through Germany, France and Italy. The two women were bedazzled by German carvings in translucent limestone, paintings whipped up by Italian artists depicting Lake Como or the French s.h.i.+p which had brought them to Italy. And although they were stout Church of England members, they had been captivated by a painting of one of the popes, whose stern portrait, the dealer vowed, was among the world's most remarkable works of art.

The big double room was really a museum of travelers' art, with seven statues on plinths, depicting near-nude women with marble silks draped miraculously about them to satisfy any prudes who might enter the room. Here the members of the Sugar Interest convened most often, for the Croomes were generous hosts. Their income from their huge plantation and other interests totaled nearly 70,000 a year, and after Pentheny allowed funds for the management of his plantations, for allowances to his illegitimate mulatto children in the islands, for the expensive tastes of his wife and daughter, he still had more than enough left over to entertain handsomely during the London season.

His parties were lavish, with six or seven kinds of meat, three kinds of fowl and desserts of intricate imagination. Much drink was supplied, but out of deference to his colleagues, he always served a light rum made on his plantation and the heavy, dark rum of his neighboring plantation, Trevelyan.

In 1732, Pentheny Croome spent upward of 20,000 to ensure the pa.s.sage of the proper Mola.s.ses Act, but he was clever enough to allow his friend Sir Hugh to deal with the real leaders of Parliament, for as he told his wife after one of his own grandiose parties which the leaders.h.i.+p had ignored: 'Sometimes mere money ain't enough. But you and I can get votes that Sir Hugh could never muster. We're a strong pair.'

He had touched upon a salient factor in the way the Sugar Interest controlled so many critical votes in Parliament. Pembroke and Croome had once been humorously described in the volatile English press as 'the Two Peas in a Pod,' and the name was picked up by the furious pamphleteers who conducted the wars that raged regarding the sugar question. But the two men were not at all that, though they were two clever manipulators. Sir Hugh used his inherent taste, with his Raphael Madonna and his Rembrandt, to lure one kind of voter, while Pentheny Croome wooed the others, his burlesque display of wealth proving that hard currency backed his claims.

When the vote came on the Mola.s.ses Act of 1733, the 'Two Peas in a Pod' won a smas.h.i.+ng victory. The pusillanimous American colonies, with no voice in Parliament, got nothing but a slap in the face. The rum distillers in Boston would be forced to buy their mola.s.ses from Jamaica and her sister islands at ridiculously high prices; the lucrative trade in horses and mules to Martinique was halted, and no more cheap French mola.s.ses would be carried on the return trips. In fact, the American colonies were treated with such blatant inconsideration that hitherto loyal citizens in Ma.s.sachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia began to mutter: 'Each decision made in London favors the West Indies and damages us.' And of greatest importance to the Sugar Interest, every household in Great Britain would pay a yearly tribute to planters like Pembroke and Croome, who would grow constantly richer.

After the vote was tallied, Sir Hugh left the Houses of Parliament with Roger, rode home to their square, and bade him goodnight: 'There's not another father and son who have done as much for England this day as you and I.' He then repaired to that little private room which not many were allowed to enter, and chuckled as he surveyed the walls. The paintings had been done by the English artist William Hogarth, whose popularity was rising after his sardonic series A Harlot's Progress had been engraved and widely sold.

Sir Hugh was amused as he affectionately studied the paintings: Good G.o.d! To think I paid him to do them! Even suggested the subjects ... that is, the Jamaica part.

The set of paintings, which was already receiving attention from the engraver, was ent.i.tled: The Sugar Planter, at Home and Abroad. The central figure, a planter whom everyone in Parliament would have to recognize as Pentheny Croome, was shown in Jamaica in the first three scenes: a brute whipping a slave, a miser h.o.a.rding his gains, a father surrounded by his black concubines and their four mulattoes. In the three London scenes Croome was dressed in lavish city finery: entertaining in a huge mansion, manipulating a vote in Parliament, nodding approvingly as lines of impoverished housewives paid exorbitant prices for his sugar. It was Hogarth at his most savage, and Sir Hugh trembled to think of how his friend Pentheny might react.

No need to worry. When the engravings appeared in the shops in late 1733, Pentheny Croome proudly b.u.t.tonholed his fellow members of Parliament: 'I say, old chap! D'ja happen to see them engravings by this fellow Hogarth? That's me in the pictures.' He became the rage of London, with everyone wanting to meet him: 'Tell us, Croome? You really have four pickaninny b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the islands?' And many, awakened by the engravings to the fact that Pentheny Croome was very rich, cl.u.s.tered about in hopes of catching a share of that wealth. At the height of his notoriety he gave a thousand pounds to a school for poor boys and a subscription of five hundred to a hospital in a poor section of London. He appeared in full and majestic dress at a concert by two Italian singers, man and woman, and helped open three country fairs.

He also purchased six sets of Hogarth's engravings for his friends in the islands, but when he returned to Jamaica he found that his brother Marcus with his two small s.h.i.+ps was engaged in a most nefarious business. Loading the Carthaginian at Kingston with the maximum number of choice empty Jamaican barrels intended for the s.h.i.+pping of island mola.s.ses to Boston, Marcus had forged his papers to show that the barrels had been filled with Jamaican mola.s.ses. Then, weighing anchor, he had sneaked over to Martinique and filled his casks with a cheap French product. Running it quickly to Boston, he had papers to prove to customs that he was bringing in choice Jamaica stuff, and his profits were enormous.

When Pentheny heard of this deception, he laid a trap for Marcus, and satisfied on all points, rode over to Golden Hall to show Pembroke proof of this criminal behavior. Sir Hugh made only one response: 'He's stealing from us. It's money out of your pocket and mine, Croome, and he's got to be stopped.'

Pentheny, outraged by his brother's behavior, swore to put an end it. Along the waterfront where the sunken Port Royal had once flourished with its hordes of pirates, he chartered a small, swift vessel crewed by an unruly lot of characters who a.s.sured him they were ready for anything, and after he was certain that his brother in the Carthaginian had set sail for Boston, he swept in, overtook her and joined his sailors as they forcibly boarded the smuggler.

The confrontation was terse. 'What's this?' Marcus cried, and Pentheny roared: 'You're defrauding honest men!'

'I'm not,' his brother shouted-and there would be much debate as to what happened next, but those who stood close to the two men agreed that having said this in an ugly mood, Marcus Croome reached for a pistol. Pentheny, who had come aboard antic.i.p.ating such an act, had his pistol out seconds before Marcus, and he fired point-blank at his brother, blowing a hole in his chest.

When word reached London that Pentheny Croome had frustrated an act of piracy in this dramatic fas.h.i.+on, with the dead pirate being his own brother, his fame increased, and several patrons of Hogarth suggested that the artist add a seventh panel to his famous series on the sugar planters, and when he protested-'A set's a set'-a hack artist, copying the frame of Hogarth's series, rushed to the streets with Panel Seven, 'The Pirate Trapped by His Own Brother,' which sold famously.

It required no less than considerable turbulence in Europe for John Pembroke to escape the entangling toils of Hester Croome. In these years, that continent seemed to be in constant turmoil, and, fortunately for John, an appropriate event presented itself when needed.

This was the sequence. The King of Poland died. Tradition required that the Polish n.o.bles, a headstrong lot, elect some European prince, not a Pole, to rule the country. France and Spain backed one contestant, Russia and Austria another, and before long most of Europe was embroiled in the famous War of the Polish Succession.

Lorenz Poggenberg, a minor n.o.bleman of the Danish court, left Copenhagen on a secret mission to London, hoping to enroll Great Britain in some naval schemes that Denmark fancied in this time of trouble, and in London he was advised to present his appeal to Sir Hugh Pembroke, leader of a major faction in Parliament.

The Danish tactic accomplished nothing, but during the protracted discussions, Poggenberg learned that Sir Hugh controlled large sugar estates in Jamaica, and this awakened such considerable interest that joint British-Danish naval adventures in the Caribbean were forgotten: 'Did you say sugar, Sir Hugh?'

'I did, and a tricky business it is.'

'I know. Slaves, muscovado, rum, finding the right markets.'

Sir Hugh's interest was piqued: 'Now how would you know about such things, Baron?'

'My family has a large plantation on St. John. We simply cannot find a manager to run it properly. I can't go out, business at court, and I have no sons to handle the messy task.'

Later Sir Hugh told his wife: 'When Poggenberg said that, I did not reply for at least five minutes, for my mind was whirling like a top. But then everything cleared, like sunlight after a storm. And I thought: John is just the man they're seeking.'

He made the proposal cautiously: 'Baron, I may have the answer to your problem.' When Poggenberg leaned forward, Pembroke said: 'My son John. Twenty-four years old. Wonderfully skilled in sugar. Looking for a plantation he can whip into shape.' He paused, then added a clause that any European head of family would appreciate: 'Third son, you know. Prospects in Jamaica not too bright.' And before that day ended in London, it was agreed that John Pembroke of Trevelyan, Jamaica, would sail to St. John in the Danish islands to bring some order to the sugar plantation of the Poggenbergs.

When word of his new a.s.signment reached Jamaica in the summer of 1732, it brought both relief and joy to John Pembroke, for he saw in his removal to St. John a heaven-sent device for avoiding the entrapment of Hester Croome, and he was able to a.s.sume a mask of near-sadness when he informed her that reluctant though he might be, he must leave Jamaica to take up the duties his family had arranged for him in the Danish isles.

Hester said promptly: 'I'll sail with you. Running a sugar plantation requires a mistress of the big house, you know,' but John's older brother a.s.sured her that St. John was so primitive, et cetera, et cetera, that she tearfully withdrew her offer. But at the sailing of the cargo s.h.i.+p she promised to wait for him, and he called from the deck: 'It may be ten years before I get back to Jamaica,' at which she uttered a barely repeatable oath.

When he arrived at the Poggenberg plantation on the Danish Virgin Islands in late December, John found it much more beautiful than any he had known in Jamaica, for it shared a fine rise at the north end of St. John with two other plantations. From the big house in which he would live he could see far vistas of the Atlantic to the north and the Caribbean to the west, and each body of water was festooned with crowds of little tree-lined islets. Lunaberg Plantation it was called, and when the first full moon rose over the peaceful scene, with the waves drifting silently below, he had to agree that it had been aptly named.

It was much smaller, of course, than Trevelyan-only four hundred acres-but the land looked promising, and John was thoroughly pleased when he found that in addition to its beauties, Lunaberg had fine neighbors on its western boundary, a Danish chap, Magnus Lemvig, and his most beautiful wife, Elzabet. 'We'll help you get started,' Lemvig said in good English, and his wife, her blond hair neatly plaited in two strands bound about her head, volunteered to send her personal slaves to bring some order to the plantation house. She warned: 'Since you've brought no wife, you must be attentive to which slaves serve in your house. You can be kind to them, but don't let them dominate you.'

The plantation owner to the east was a much different sort, Jorgen Rostgaard, a disillusioned Dane in his forties with a grumpy wife: 'Watch the n.i.g.g.e.rs! They'll steal your socks while you sleep!' He had a dozen suggestions for keeping slaves obedient, all of them brutal: 'You have two choices, Pembroke. You can baby your slaves the way Lemvig does or keep them in line the way I do. You'll learn my way's best.' Then he said, almost insultingly: 'We don't spoil our n.i.g.g.e.rs the way you English do in Jamaica. The important thing, get started right. Let your n.i.g.g.e.rs know who's boss.'

John Pembroke took up his position as director of the Lunaberg Plantation on St. John on the first day of January 1733, and spent that month acquainting himself with both the land and the slaves he would be supervising, and the more he saw of each, the more satisfied he was that with the proper mix of kindness and firmness, he could whip both into shape and ensure his employers in Copenhagen a gratifying profit.

The land was first cla.s.s and its situation atop a rise a.s.sured drainage so that the canefields did not sour because of swampiness. And since the slaves seemed as strong and healthy as those he had known on his family estates in Jamaica, he a.s.sumed he would be able to weld them into a responsible team. By the end of the month he had shown that he meant for them to work hard, but that when they did they would receive such valued concessions as larger rations of food and extra supplies of cane juice for their midday meals. As February began he judged that he had got things off to a solid start. But on the fourth, a tall sergeant in the Danish armed forces rode into Lunaberg accompanied by a drummer, and when all the whites from the hilltop establishments were a.s.sembled, the sergeant nodded to the drummer, who beat a long tattoo, whereupon a scroll was unrolled displaying an official seal, and the eighteen new rules for treatment of slaves were proclaimed: Given by Governor Phillip Gardelin, may G.o.d grant him long life, St. Thomas, the Danish Isles, 31 January 1733, the new rules for the governance of slaves: 1. The leader of runaway slaves shall be pinched three times with a red-hot iron and then hanged 2. Each of the other runaway slaves shall receive one hundred and fifty lashes and then lose one leg 5. A slave who runs away for eight days, one hundred and fifty stripes; twelve weeks, lose a leg; six months, hanged 6. Slaves who steal to the value of four dollars, pinched and hanged 8. A slave who lifts his hand to strike a white person shall be pinched and hanged 13. A slave who shall attempt to poison his master shall be pinched three times with a red-hot iron, then broken on a wheel till dead 15. All slave dances, feasts and plays are forbidden unless permission be obtained from the master When Pembroke listened to the last of these draconian measures and heard the concluding drum roll, he told himself: If the blacks on St. John are as strong-minded as those we have on Jamaica, the consequences of this day will be hideous. And that night he began to hide away in his big house supplies of powder and b.a.l.l.s. When the slaves learned of the new rules as they stood at attention on the various plantations, they too began to bring together such guns and ammunition, and long knives from the cane fields, as they had been able to steal over the years. And a careful observer could detect anxiety in the conversations of whites and a growing surliness in the behavior of blacks.

John, eager to keep abreast of developments during his first months on the island, sought advice from both Lemvig on his west and Rostgaard on his east. The former frankly admitted: 'Trouble threatens, but I do believe the new laws can be enforced in a Christian way.' Elzabet, daughter of a clergyman in rural Denmark and a devout Lutheran, fortified her husband's hopes: 'I see no possibility that we, or you, would ever enforce the cruelest provisions of the new code. Breaking one of our men on the wheel? I would almost give my own life to prevent that.'

But John heard quite a different story from Rostgaard. 'Pembroke,' he said in his heavy accent, 'we have two n.i.g.g.e.rs on this hill that bear watchin', one on your place, one on mine. Before long each of them will be hanged ... or worse.'

'On my plantation?'

'Yes. Mine's the worst of the pair. Cudjoe, a bad one from the Guinea coast. Very bold. Yours is more sly. That big fellow, Vavak.'

John knew the man, a leader among the blacks but restrained in the presence of whites: 'Where'd he find such a name?'

'Jungle drums. They're all heathens, you know. His former owner told me a crazy story.'